AN: Ok, so people (rightfully) have questions, and I'll try to answer them here.

-Insomniac Rand and her PADDS: The way I see it, the ship never really sleeps. So while it was 3am as far as Kirk (who's on Alpha shift) is concerned, for Rand (on Gamma) it was the middle of the day. It seemed logical that there'd be a drop box/mail box type thing for people to put reports in as the need takes them. It could be on the bridge, but Kirk doesn't strike me as the type to get much work done when there're other people around that he can talk to.

-Safe Mode: I've got explanations planned, but I don't think they're going to make it into the story anytime soon. Guess you'll just have to stick around!

-Loosey-goosey Spock: Six23 pointed out that Spock's a bit all over the place. Sorry! Part of it might be that I don't have a very good handle on the character. Another part is probably due to that fact that I've been gobbling TOS episodes recently, and now Prime and Nu are both floating around my head. If anyone's got any suggestions for improvement, don't hesitate to tell me!

-Kirk's knife: I'm not quite sure whether he has a logical reason for possessing a knife on a starship, but it seemed like the sort of thing he'd have around for away missions (actually, it might have helped if I'd told you that, in my mind, it was a Swiss army knife).

Reviews/comments/critiques are win, and readers in general are win^2. Sorry about the long AN, and on with the story!

/AN

In Which The Doctor Is Suspicious

Bones was waiting for them outside of Kirk's quarters.

"What the hell, Jim? I get a call from your Yeoman asking why all your furniture's in the hallway, and I thought, ok, maybe he's taken it into his mind to repaint his quarters, or something. I don't pretend to know what'd goin' on inside your mind. Then I get here, and I see some chairs arranged around a chess set like you've decided to have a nice little Victorian tea party in the hall. And the bed's blocking the whole corridor! What were you doing, trying to build a barricade?" Halfway through the tirade, Bones whipped out his tricorder and began to scan his friend while Spock looked at the placement of the furniture with new interest.

"Doctor, would I be correct in my assumption that a, as you term it, 'tea party,' should, by necessity, involve tea in some way?" Spock had an utterly innocent expression on his face, which McCoy apparently found fault with because Spock found himself on the receiving end of the tricorder's scanner.

"I thought you were concerned for the Captain's mental state. Why are you scanning me?"

"Gee, thanks Spock." Kirk said with a smile. Spock's eyes returned it. McCoy looked at the two of them, then came to a decision.

"Medbay. Both of you. No complaints."

XXXXXX

"Hey Spock?"

"Yes, Captain?"

Kirk sniggered.

McCoy huffed as he readjusted the biobed Spock was reluctantly reclining on. "Who are you, and what have you done with the real Jim and Spock?" He asked.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Kirk asked grouchily. He was feeling sleepy again.

"Exactly what I said, Jim! I saw you not much more than three hours ago! You complained about how the hobgoblin refused to spend any of his off duty hours with you. He wouldn't even eat lunch with you! And now I find out that you were crawling around the Jeffries tubes together, and back there in the corridor you were engaging in, for lack of a better term, eye sex!"

Jim sputtered. Spock raised an eyebrow that was calculated to, knowing him, render 99.7% of all recipients unconscious on impact. McCoy remained unaffected.

"I admit that I do not know the exact meaning on the term 'eye sex'," he said with apparent distaste, "but I was certainly not engaging in it."

"You most certainly were! And that brings me back to my point: what the hell's happened?" McCoy leveled a piercing gaze at Kirk, judging that he'd be the easier one to crack.

"Uh, nothing's happened, Bones. We're fine. We're—" here he was cut off by a yawn "—ok , so I'm actually really tired, but I'll go to sleep as soon as Spock helps me move my bed back into my quarters."

"Uhhuh," the doctor said slowly. "And why is it Spock's responsibility to help you clean up that damned illogical mess?"

Kirk and Spock exchanged glances. This almost set McCoy off again, but the first officer started speaking before the doctor was able to find the words he needed to express just how wrong everything was.

"Because, Doctor McCoy, I was the one who assisted him in moving it."

McCoy looked at Kirk.

"It's true, Bones! We…we've been spending a lot more time together than I led you to believe. I guess." He amended.

"I'm going to be keeping my eye on you two." McCoy growled as Kirk impatiently used Spock's shoulder to steer him out of sickbay.

XXXXXX

Kirk was understandably twitchy as he led the way back to his room. Spock, as expected, was not. After offering a chagrined smile to the crewmembers currently trying to negotiate their way around the bed blocking most of the hallway, they maneuvered the furniture back into the captain's quarters in silence. They had gotten so used to being together that Spock did not wait for a verbal invitation before taking a seat. Kirk claimed the bed with a yawn.

"I realize you require rest, Captain. Should this discussion be postponed?" Spock asked, leaning forward slightly.

"Do you require rest, Spock?" Kirk asked, purposely parroting his first officer.

"Not at this time. Captain." Kirk winced. The emphasis Spock had put on his title was meant as reminder that this was yet another habit which should not be allowed to continue. Upon seeing Kirk's expression of remorse, however, Spock lightened his expression.

"Shift starts at 0800." Kirk muttered to himself. "Ok. I'm going to sleep for the next two hours. Could you prepare a briefing on everything that's going on at the moment? All the stuff I should have in my head because it only happened last shift?" He was embarrassed about asking Spock to do this for him, but he knew that he'd be sure to miss something and that it'd come off as negligence or lack of organization.

"Certainly. It is nothing less than the first officer's job to keep the Captain abreast of current events. However, I would suggest that you devote 1.5 additional hours to sleep. If your mind is not properly rested, you will have even greater trouble behaving as though nothing has happened." Kirk mentally translated; Of course I don't mind, Jim. It is my job to keep you from dribbling on yourself in public. But if you don't get more sleep, you'll keep eyesexing me on the bridge, and I don't want to give the doctor an excuse to drag us back down to medbay. He blinked sleepily at himself. Where the hell had that last bit come from?

Spock must have seen the momentary look of confusion which crossed Kirk's face, because he reiterated, "Set your alarm for 0700, Captain. If you are not fully briefed by the time your shift begins, we can convene in the conference room. Is this satisfactory?"

"Yes, Mother." Kirk said lightly. Recognizing Spock's expression, he amended, "I know you're not my mother. It's a figure of speech. See you in a few hours, Commander." Before his companion could respond, and without bothering to change his clothes, he stuck a pillow over his face to block out the light and promptly fell asleep.

XXXXXX

McCoy watched their interactions like a hawk. Before Kirk and Spock had spent time together in Stasis, the doctor had been reluctant to leave his sickbay in the hands of anyone but himself. Now he'd take any excuse he could find to be present on the bridge during Alpha shift. His increased scrutiny (or perhaps his big mouth) cued the rest of the bridge crew into the fact that there might be something worth watching.

And to Kirk and Spock's annoyance, there was.

They couldn't not interact, and when interacting, they couldn't not give the impression that they'd gotten to know each other much better than they had any right to. In self defense, they began to eat dinner and converse in the privacy of the captain's quarters, which did wonders for gossip but had the decided advantage of not giving Kirk and Spock the feeling that they were residing in a giant fish bowl.

It was only natural that their discussions turned to the very phenomenon which had brought them together. Spock suggested a few areas of study which might be worth perusing, and….

XXXXXX

"What've I done to you?" Came the aggrieved voice of McCoy as he set down his salad and claimed a seat opposite Kirk in the mess. Kirk was eating alone because Spock had to oversee an experiment in one of the labs.

"Huh?" was the ineloquent reply.

"What did I do to you, to have you avoiding my company like the plague?" McCoy peered at him, his food forgotten on the table, in much the same way he'd peer right before he decided that Kirk was injured and in need of a few hyposprays.

"I haven't been avoiding you, Bones." Kirk looked sincerely confused.

"Oh really now? Couple days ago, I couldn't get rid of you! You're visiting me when you're on duty to complain about paperwork. You're visiting me off duty to drink and watch those ancient holovids you like so much. You're comming me to entertain you when you can't sleep, when you have a nightmare—no, shut up, I know you never told me about them but I roomed with you for two years, Jim! Damnit! I've barely gotten a glimpse of you since that morning you decided to rearrange your furniture and then explore the Jeffries tubes with that green-blooded hobgoblin! So tell me, Jim. Why have I fallen out of your oh-so-fickle favor? Why's the Vulcan your new bff?" McCoy ranted, spearing Kirk with his gaze.

"I, I'm sorry…I'd forgotten." Jim muttered, wide-eyed like a deer caught in headlights.

"You'd forgotten that I'm your friend? Jim, let me repeat, what the hell!" The tricorder was off his belt and scanning Kirk almost before he'd started speaking.

"Bones, Bones, I'm fine. No head trauma, see?" Kirk said, alarmed at his friend's reaction.

"Yeah, well, there can be other causes, other things that take more than a tricorder to find. Was it something that pointy-eared bastard did? I may not like him, but I didn't think he'd do anything to your mind…."

"No, of course not! Spock hasn't done anything!" McCoy did not look convinced.

"Uhm, ok." Kirk said slowly, toying with his half-finished lunch. "Let me see your comm."

"What for?"

"Just give it to me!"

"Fine!" McCoy said forcefully, ripping the comm off of his belt and thunking it down on the table in front of his captain. Kirk picked it up and messed around with a few settings.

"There," he said, handing it back to the doctor. "For the next week you'll have captain's privileges with the security camera footage. Find the bit where something happens to me, and I'll come to sickbay with you."

"Jim. Why are you doing this?" He looked more confused and worried than angry, now.

"Just find it. You won't believe me otherwise." Kirk collected his plate and left the table.

XXXXXX

It took approximately four shift rotations for McCoy to show up at Kirk's door with a murderous expression on his face. Kirk knew that the expression meant that McCoy was more confused, not less, by what he'd seen in the security footage. It also meant that he knew the only evidence of foul play he had didn't add up, but it wasn't about to stop him.

In short, the doctor was in a bloody stubborn mood.

Kirk sighed at McCoy's image in the small viewscreen next to his door, and called "Come."

McCoy entered. The door swished shut. He pointedly took the seat that was the farthest away from the chess set that was still set up on Kirk's former nightstand.

"Jim." He said slowly, an artificial calm in his voice. "Have you been tampering with the security footage?"

"No Bones, I have not." He answered his friend evenly.

"Has Spock been tampering?"

"No, he has not."

McCoy's lips thinned. "You gotta help me here, kid. I don't see why you're making a game out of this. Whatever happened, you can tell me. I can help you find a way out of whatever you're mixed up in. You just need to trust me, Jim."

Kirk sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. "You have to understand. This is something that's been happening to me for as long as I can remember. I'm used to it; it's almost normal. At the same time, I've never told anyone about it. I've always thought that…I've never met another person who goes through the same thing I do. Before this most recent time, I wouldn't have even considered telling you what I'm about to, because the thought's always been lurking around that maybe I'm just very, very crazy."

"You're not crazy, Kid. That's what psych evaluations are for." McCoy smiled gently.

"Hah, you don't think I'm smart enough to fake my way through those? Don't give me that look. Anyway, there's this thing that happens. It's sort of…a state of being. The world freezes. I'm the only thing that's alive and moving. And even I'm not really alive. I don't get hungry or tired. I can't even injure myself. Electronics don't work, I think because just about any electronic has a sense of time. And in this state, time's stopped. The ship doesn't move, the Earth doesn't turn, nothing. No breeze, no hot, no cold, no sound except what I make myself. Nothing."

McCoy's eyebrows had drawn together in consternation. "I don't understand, Jim. Is this a dream? Some sort of messed-up Zen thing?"

"No it's not. It's real. If it were a dream, I wouldn't've been able to read the entire works of Shakespeare. And trust me, that's the only time I've voluntarily picked up Shakespeare. I can't describe what it's like. At all. I have no control over when it happens. One time I was sitting in school and, in the blink of an eye, everyone froze. It happened a number of times when I was younger, different places, different times, different dates. And apparently, it can happen in space, too."

"You're saying that this…thing…is why you've been acting so weird?"

"Yep. What did you see when you looked at the security footage?"

"I thought I'd look at the corridor where your quarters are. Maybe see what happened to get you to move your furniture around." Kirk nodded. "Except…one second the hall was empty, and the next it wasn't." McCoy peered suspiciously at him. "Wait, you said that Spock helped you…."

"He helped me move the stuff into the hall in the first place, yup. That's what's changed. I've found someone else who doesn't stay frozen."

"But…but why? Why move your furniture around? And how would any of this make you forget that I'm your friend?"

"You misunderstood. I didn't forget you're my friend. I'd only forgotten that I spent so much time with you. You know what the one driving force is? When everything's frozen, I mean? Boredom, Bones. You're lonely and so very bored. And there's no way to measure time there, no change of state or feeling. It feels like forever. Forever with no goals or drives or companionship. Nothing to feel, nothing to do." McCoy's eyes widened at the despair he heard in his friend's voice.

"Jim…." He breathed, walking over to his friend and clasping his shoulder.

"But it's fine now." Kirk offered him a small but sincere smile. "It's not lonely anymore. That's why Spock and I have been so inseparable. We spent the whole freeze together. We moved my furniture into the hall because the lights in my quarters were stuck at 20%, and that wasn't enough light to play chess by."

The doctor laughed. "You and Spock, chess? Really?"

"Among other things. I think, in the beginning at least, he was just doing it to humor me. I'd bug him and complain about how utterly bored I was, and he'd tell me that what I wanted to do was illogical, and I'd say that resigning yourself to boredom is more illogical than anything, and then he'd say something snarky about human mental capabilities. But after a while I could tell he didn't really mean it, and he'd always say yes in the end. You really have no idea how much time we spent together. And…we've gotten to know each other really well." Kirk finished, realizing how much an understatement that was.

"And the Jeffries tubes?"

"Really, Bones. Chess and bickering can only keep us occupied for so long."

McCoy snorted. "Coulda fooled me."

Silence fell, and it was both awkward and not, all at the same time. The doctor sighed. "Kid, I'm not sure what to tell you. I'm not sure I can say I believe you, but at the same time I'm feel pretty sure that you're telling the truth as far as you see it. Remember that time—I think we'd been on the Enterprise just short of a month—and you were refusing to sleep in your quarters so I broke the booze out? We got drunk, but you were much further gone than I was. And you kept talking about quiet and loneliness and how terrified you were that your door would stop working and you'd be stuck in your room forever. You made me put on some music, any music, and whenever there was silence during track changes you'd poke me to make sure I was still alive.

"What I'm saying is, I know these things you're telling me do have some truth because I've seen their effects on you. But kid? I'm going to have to think about what you've told me." He reached out and casually ruffled his friend's hair. Kirk made an annoyed sound and tried to pat it back down. "You know I'm going to have to ask Spock about this, right? It'd be great if you could make sure he'll talk to me."

Kirk chewed on his lip. "I can't make any promises, but I'll write you a note."

McCoy rolled his eyes as Kirk hunted for a piece of paper and an old fashioned pen. "I'll never understand your fascination with stuff that's older than even your great-grandfather."

Kirk looked up at him with an odd expression on his face. "After all I just told you, you really should."

XXXXXX

The next alpha shift, it was Spock's turn to corner the captain at lunch.

"I was handed an interesting note by a certain doctor with whom we are reluctant acquaintances." Spock began.

"You realize," Kirk said, mouth half full of chicken parmesan and fork waving in the air, "that the only people who follow that rule are the ones who were taught English by a librarian from the 19th century, right?"

Spock watched in fascinated horror as a glob of spaghetti sauce flew off the mobile fork and splattered on the table. "To what rule do you refer, Captain?"

"The preposition one! One of the PMs of Britain…a 20th century one, I think, once said, 'This is the sort of rubbish up with which I will not put.'" He grinned, proud of remembering the quote.

"I believe you are in error. No one has been able to reliably attribute that quotation to Sir Churchill, and the variations in both the wording and the supposed situation in which the quotation occurred indicate that, in all probability, every one of the anecdotes are apocryphal."

"So, I'm wrong about who the quote came from, but I'm still right about my original grammatical point?" Kirk suggested hopefully.

"If one wishes to practice correct grammar, one would best phrase your previous utterance as 'I am wrong about from whom the quotation came."

Kirk gave up. The half-Vulcan loved his rules, even the proscriptive ones, and this was getting patently ridiculous. Not even Spock generally spoke like that. He settled for rolling his eyes, to make sure Spock didn't think his arguments had been enough to convince him.

They ate in silence for a beat.

"Captain," Spock said as he daintily carved up an alien vegetable he'd charmed out of the replicator, "I had a purpose for initiating this conversation, and it did not involve librarians."

"Shoot." Said Kirk. Spock raised an eyebrow. Kirk sighed and waved his fork at his first officer. "You know what I mean."

"I can, using my considerable deductive skills, just about ascertain your meaning." Said Spock, using his Smug Bastard voice. "I will take your colloquialism as an invitation to speak. Did you truly fear that Doctor McCoy would put you on psychological observation if I did not, and I quote, 'back you up'? I also doubt that he exerted any force in obtaining that information from you."

Kirk smothered a smile. He'd scribbled 'Spock, Bones made me tell him about Safe Mode. Back me up, else he'll put me on psych watch.'

"No physical force, but he's been feeling jilted because I've been spending so much time with you. And anyway, he's my friend, and he honestly thought that something was wrong with me. Even suggested that you had something to do with it. I was pleasantly surprised when he took it that well."

"I am not sure I could in good conscious describe the way he responded to your revelation as 'well.' Perhaps he practiced some form of hitherto undemonstrated emotional control while conversing with you. I was not so fortunate. He was unnecessarily loud and inflammatory when he spoke to me." Spock frowned minutely. "I do not think whatever you told him succeeded in assuaging any doubts he had as to your mental state or to my innocence."

"Well," Kirk said, leaning back in his chair, "if he keeps bugging you, let me know. Otherwise, I'll let it simmer. I'd rather not give him any excuses to talk to me about it."