The shoebox they had him in on Yorktown was better than this. Hell, his old room with Jim at the Academy was better than this, and that's saying something.

His room on the Franklin is a sardine tin, at best. There's not even enough space to satisfyingly toss his duffel on the bottom bunk, since he can't swing it wide enough. McCoy rubs the bridge of his nose, closes his eyes, and opens them again as if this time he'll see his own quarters with a bottle of bourbon waiting for him and his own bed. That regulation red quilt and the blue shine of the Enterprise's computer monitors, but no. It's the dull gray and green that everything on the Franklin is, scuffed and dinged with age.

"I need a drink," he announces to the closet of a room. It doesn't answer, but the door behind him slides open. "Oh. Great. Welcome."

Spock crowds in behind him, his own bag coming threateningly close to hitting McCoy in the leg.

"When I received my posting on board the Enterprise, Captain Pike informed me to be grateful it was the newest ship in the fleet," he says. "I suppose historical design such as this is what he was referring to."

"If your quarters were half the size of Jim's you had it good," McCoy says. They probably were, not that McCoy had ever been invited in here.

Nearly three years in and McCoy had long since gotten his rooms how he wanted them - a chair to read in picked up at a star base only a few months after leaving Earth, his bed shoved up against a bulkhead and well away from any windows. Here, he doesn't have to worry about that, some small grace, since there's only a single porthole set up high in the wall. Through it, the shine of Yorktown shimmers. They're still close enough to make out individual buildings and the rings they sit on. Likely, he should be glad it's not the nebula he's staring at yet, but mostly he's just wishing that if he's going to be seeing anything in the black of space, it would be Earth hanging there.

Spock's looking at it too, though if he's wishing it were Vulcan out there, McCoy's pretty sure that's somewhere clear past illogical.

"I agree this is less than ideal," Spock says.

"Beats a cave," McCoy says before he can think. He turns to face their beds instead of looking at Spock. He could do without the sudden memory of rough rock on his back and the claustrophobia that had risen high in his throat with Spock crowded so close in front of him. McCoy doesn't look over at him. Spock doesn't remember exactly what happened that morning, or he at least sure as hell hopes that's what the silence on the matter is. He's certainly not bringing it up. Better to let that be chalked up to blood loss and the wide cracks that had left in Spock's typical calm.

Spock's back to his version of normal now, silent and a complete pain in the ass in equal measures, and McCoy would far rather focus on that than the peculiar strangeness patients seem to gather around themselves when they're hurt and tired. He doesn't have the energy for this mission, another person in his space, and dealing with whatever brand of crazy Spock was aiming for that morning. This is enough as it is, Spock next to him, and damn bunk beds in front.

"Goddamnit," he says and grabs his bag from the bottom bunk. "You can't climb up there."

"I am perfectly capable of-"

"-I don't do redo's, Spock. One reconstructive surgery was plenty, I'm not exactly keen to go for another round. I'm not wasting the only hypos I have with me on you trying to haul yourself up onto the top bunk."

Not that McCoy isn't tempted. The ceiling isn't all that high and the ladder looks less than solid. It's ancient now, could have been built by his grandfather or great-grandfather. Still, it holds his weight as he levers his bag up there and then drops himself back down to the floor.

Spock has his shirt off. There are hollows of shadows in the muscles beneath his shoulder blades as he works his shirt off his arms.

McCoy drops his eyes. Too white skin is hardly his concern. That shine of tight green over Spock's ribs might be, but instead McCoy tugs at the zipper on his bag, busying himself with his spare uniforms, the book he likely won't get a chance to read, and the extra medkit he tucked in there.

"What?" he snaps when Spock just continues to stand there. "Casual Friday?"

"What is that?" Spock holds a fresh shirt in front of him, making no move to pull it on. He's thin. His pants rest too low on his hips, the ridge of his hip bones stark and the muscles in his stomach and sides flexing as he breathes.

"I'm pretty sure uniforms are still required, insane rescue mission or not."

"We are not on duty." It's a black undershirt that Spock has in his hands. It has a Starfleet emblem on the chest, but then again those crests are even on their socks. McCoy has had more than one bar of soap with that same insignia stamped on it.

"It's Alpha shift," McCoy says. Someone capable of calculating warp vectors in their head should probably know that.

"The ancillary crew has given us the time off."

"Who the hell is flying this thing, then?"

"We are still some ways from the nebula."

"Well, with this bucket of bolts, we might as well be walking." When Spock pulls his shirt over his head, the new skin over his ribs stretches taught. "Do you need something for that?"

Spock will say no and McCoy will ask again and Spock will refuse once more and it'll nearly be like they're back on the ship, except they're not - they're stuck in this tin can, hurdling back to the one place none of them want to go.

But Spock doesn't say anything, just watches him, and eventually McCoy lets out a breath and sticks a hand into his bag.

"When are we back on?" he asks the pants he pulls out.

"In the morning." Spock sets aside a handful of his own shirts, opening and closing drawers until he finds a suitably logical one to put his uniforms in. His science blues. McCoy's always hated that, science blues. Medic blues, too. They get their own insignia, they should have their own shirts, rather than have to share with the reams of science staff so that McCoy is often asking some geologist for a spare dermal regenerator only to find them wide eyed and shaking their heads.

"You should be thankful," Spock says as he adjusts his shirts in the drawer. "I was under the impression you wished for a respite from work."

"This," McCoy says and crosses his arms tight over his chest. If he moves at all, he'll bump up against Spock. "Is hardly relaxing."

On the Enterprise - their Enterprise - he would be in the middle of sickbay right now. On the way to Yorktown, there had been an ensign with a twisted ankle and a lieutenant with a case of Danubian flu. McCoy would look up their records now to see if they're on board, but the answer is most likely too depressing. He should be getting ready for the second half of his shift and then dinner after it, either with Jim if he weren't busy with Spock, or alone in his quarters, a finger of whiskey in his glass and nobody in his goddamn room with him, and certainly not Spock.

Spock leaves before McCoy does, the door sliding shut behind him. There's blessed silence left in his wake. McCoy would pretend he has the room to himself, except that Spock's bag is still there. Still, it's a nice thought - he's played house before. He knows how that ended, and has long since preferred his own damn space.

Later, when McCoy takes to wandering around this ship for lack of anything better to do, Spock isn't anywhere to be found, which he takes to be the only good sign of the day. The bridge is empty except for a skeleton beta shift crew, and sickbay is silent and dark, a lone nurse labeling hyposprays. In the rec room, Uhura has her padd on her lap and her cheek propped in her hand where she's curled on one of the low couches, and Chekov idly taps at a console on the wall, half turning when McCoy walks in.

"Where is everyone?" he asks.

"Scotty's watching over the ensigns' shoulders in Engineering, and Jaylah's watching over his. I think Sulu's on his comm," Uhura says. She sits up a bit and crosses her legs under her, leaning her side against the arm of the couch.

McCoy had heard about this, these old ships that combined their rec rooms with their mess halls. A far cry from the space they had on the Enterprise, with the officer's mess and the larger one for the crew, and a series of rec rooms that boasted far more than a cluster of couches and an old viewing screen. Still, that first dinner on board he had half wanted to take his replicated plate and replicated silverware and replicated food - or what passed for it - up to the observation deck, since the tables set together were cramped compared to the open and airy rooms of the Academy.

"Thrilling," McCoy says. "Where's Spock?"

Uhura looks up at him.

"With Jim?" she asks.

It doesn't even have to bother to be a question.

"Probably," McCoy says. Typical, isn't that. He didn't need to ask and now Uhura's watching him over the top of her padd. He shrugs it off and wanders over to Chekov. "What is this?"

"A stove," Chekov says and McCoy frowns. If it is, it's just barely one, some prototypical model that should belong in his grandparent's house.

"Does it work?" he asks.

"Aye, yes, Jaylah reconfigured it. Now it gets very, very hot." Chekov holds his hands towards it. "These old ships, they tried to make the crew comfortable, like they were back home."

"Home," McCoy mutters.

He's not exactly hungry, but he pokes at the antique replicator next to the stove all the same. He could eat now and go back to his quarters and have a few moments of peace and quiet. Get his book out. Which isn't what he was reading on the Enterprise, but he hadn't wanted to try to hunt down all the titles he had carefully amassed in his years aboard. The thought tugs at McCoy more than he wishes it would. Their ship was too bright, all polished white walls and tile and it was so sterile most of the time. Being away from it now, he's beginning to think even those overly lit halls would be a nice change from this dank dampness that clings to the Franklin.

The menu of available food isn't particularly appealing, and he's sure whatever the replicator would spit out would be the same. What he's seen so far of the meals here looks chalky. Though it at least wins out over the protein bars Ops at Yorktown sent them with. Just in case, they had said, though McCoy has long since learned not to be too optimistic. They're awful and Starfleet has never felt the need to improve the recipe. All these years later, whenever he's forced to peel one open, the taste reminds him of too many training drills, Jim eating a bar in quick bites and Uhura, when she was assigned to their same team, carefully and neatly working her way through her own. Once, Sulu had been there too. McCoy isn't sure they ever really talked, but Sulu and Jim had, a conversation quickly struck up and laughter soon to follow.

Spock was probably holed up in his office at the time, the rest of them sitting there with icy rain sliding down their collars, or he was standing in front of a lecture hall putting McCoy's fellow students through their paces. It's always strange to think of that, isn't it, Spock in those instructor blacks when the rest of them were muddling their way through drills and exams, no matter the stories Uhura sometimes tells about those days, Spock's stilted comments on her papers and the amount of reading he assigned.

"How are you holding up?" Uhura asks and McCoy turns to find her beside him, one hip leaning against the stove and her padd held over her stomach with crossed arms.

"Fine."

"We were thinking of putting on a movie." Her head tips towards Chekov. "The good news is that the library is full of ones we haven't seen."

"The bad news is that they're all a hundred and fifty years old?" McCoy asks. Uhura nods, her mouth lifting up in a resigned smile. "Isn't it a little strange to be moving in here? I feel like these are someone else's things."

"Jaylah is ok with it. Us being here, I mean, not the going back to Altamid part." Uhura tucks her hair behind her shoulder. "She let me have the bottom bunk, at least. Though she said something about the mattress that I didn't catch, and I'm not sure I want to ask her to clarify."

McCoy had meant the old crew, whoever had slept in his own bunk and Spock's below it, who had kept their clothes in the drawer where Spock had neatly set his uniforms, and who used their fresher every day of their mission. But he just nods.

"Popcorn?" he asks.

Uhura tries for a smile and that's something at least, out here heading back into the mess that started all of this.

"Only if we can make it the old fashioned way."

"Don't worry," he says. "Replicating it wasn't ever even a choice."

"You can smell it all over the ship," Jim announces when he arrives, Spock in tow. "We're going to have to grab some of those oxygen masks from sickbay, or make some for the bridge crew. That's just cruel, Bones."

"Get your own," he says, yanking the bowl away from Jim when his hand fishes into it. "And don't go near those masks, Jim. I don't need you poking around in my inventory."

He stashes the bowl safely on Uhura's lap and rather than try with her, Jim retreats to the replicator and the pot they left of the stove with its cooling, congealing butter lining the bottle.

Maybe that makes Spock a little nuts, dishes left out like that, but McCoy wouldn't know with how he just stands there. During poker night, he'd often do the same, hovering beside the table and often refusing when Jim kicked a chair out for him. Of course, they don't have cards here and if they did, a game seems a bit jovial for the mood, with Uhura's feet folded up under her again and even Chekov who won't quit most days slumped on the far end of the other couch.

They're out of energy, all of them. They need a rest, a real one, the type they hardly got even half of before their first trip to this damn nebula, and one they certainly haven't had since then. Maybe Jim is willing to push past it and maybe Spock doesn't see it, but McCoy was there in the quiet moments after the proverbial - and quite a bit of literal - dust settled, running his tricorder and then his hand over Uhura's back where the bruising was the worst, and sitting Chekov down on a biobed until his electrolytes were stable. Sulu had spent his last checkup with his heel drumming on the exam table and in the end, McCoy had let him go with a promise to get a decent meal and night's rest; he hardly had in that sterile room what Sulu really needed, the glass doors opening to his family waiting in the corridor just beyond.

The couch sinks as Spock sits next to him. McCoy looks up. There's space on Uhura's other side, but maybe Spock doesn't put much stock in popcorn.

Jim props himself on the arm of the couch next to Spock with a bowl of his own and the two of them are goddamn joined at the hip, aren't they, on this ship and any other.

"This is a classic," Jim says.

Uhura leans forward across Spock and McCoy both and says, "Of course you've seen this."

Jim grins at her. "I have good taste."

"But an inability to use a reasonable amount of butter," she says and McCoy would ignore the two of them - always does and always has for years now - but Uhura's still leaning across him and Spock's shoulder, what with how McCoy is shoved into it, is goddamn bony.

When Sulu gets there, he steps over Chekov's legs before Chekov can pull them back to make room and drops onto the couch. His eyes are red and he stares at the movie instead of any of them. The comm must be shut down, then. They'll be on duty soon enough if they're that close to the nebula, a few hours at the most. McCoy is sure he's not the only one imagining that the ship just got a bit quieter, even with the drone of the engines and the blare of the movie.

Spock stands the moment the credits roll and McCoy gets to his feet, his arm brushed with cool air where Spock's sleeve had been pressed to his own.

"Where are you two going?" Jim asks. "This is a trilogy."

"One was entirely sufficient," Spock says.

"You-" Jim points a fist of popcorn at McCoy. "Stay."

"Unlike the rest of you, I value my sleep," he says.

Jim just rolls his eyes, but Uhura glances up at McCoy. Maybe he could ask her for tips on dealing with Spock, since Jim has never been particularly helpful on that front. The two of them, really, him and Uhura. Like Spock's fan club, or the leaders of it at least, since McCoy has seen more than one science ensign trailing after their favorite commander, peppering him with questions. And Spock always makes time for them, whatever junior scientist it is that's having a Petri dish crisis, which just encourages the rest of his staff to do it all the more, enough so that McCoy isn't sure when the man ever sleeps. More than once, McCoy has come back from a late night in sickbay only to meet Spock in the halls, still in his uniform and not headed towards his quarters despite the ungodly hour. No wonder he's always got a quip at the ready, he's probably perpetually exhausted and that would make anyone as uncivil as Spock typically is.

Just in case the sad fact of the state of his room is all a terrible dream, McCoy scrubs at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. When he drops his hands, Spock is still there in his quarters with him, pulling back the sheets on his own bed, and the room is still tiny and McCoy still has to haul himself up to the top bunk.

The sheets are scratchy. He tries not to sigh, not with his very own audience of a roommate.

He's tired. Feels it as soon as Spock orders the lights down. Worn down and ready to be done with the day, though he doesn't exactly want to be wishing for tomorrow. No, rather that he'd blink and he'd be anywhere but stuck in this coffin of a bunk.

"Are you ok?" McCoy asks into the dark when Spock's breathing hasn't evened out.

"Yes."

He can't see anything - five percent lights isn't the twelve he finally settled on as damn near perfect - but he leans over the side of his bunk anyway.

"You sure?"

"While your tone indicates distrust in my assessment-"

"-You're shaking." His eyes are adjusting and Spock is a long curl beneath his blanket. "You're cold."

"The temperature is adequate."

"Oh, seriously." From the foot of his bed, McCoy strips off the blanket, a dense weave that is designed for the chill of space, and tosses it below him without bothering to see where it lands. If that's not enough, Spock can deal with it himself. McCoy is going to lay and wait to drift off, no matter how long it takes him with Spock there in the bed below his own.

…

"Spock," McCoy says into the quiet.

The shine of blue doesn't even move. "Are you not sleeping?"

"The room is lit up like it's goddamn high noon."

"That is entirely inaccurate."

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Reading." A pause. "That should be apparent."

"Can't you just do us all a favor and go to sleep?"

"No."

McCoy stares up at the ceiling. Then, with a push, he rolls far enough over to hang his head over the edge of the bed. Spock barely looks up. He's never seen Spock like this, the blanket tucked over his waist in the soft, quiet deep of the night. His elbow is bare where his t-shirt ends, lit with a blue that highlights how knobby and thin it is.

McCoy would tell him to lay down, that the scar tissue on his side is still healing, that he needs a night off from whatever he's working on and a hell of a lot more sleep than he's probably getting, but Spock isn't going to listen anyway, so McCoy just lays there, half off his bed as Spock's eyes track back and forth.

"Can't you put on another shirt if you're cold?" he finally asks.

"It is not necessary."

Or useful, maybe, not if he didn't get issued the same thermal uniforms from Yorktown that he'd had on the Enterprise. That thicker fabric sounded uncomfortable as all hell to McCoy, but then again there's a handful of Andorians on board who perpetually push up their sleeves up and snack on ice like it's going out of style.

Were on board. They weren't among the survivors and now that McCoy thinks about it, he's not sure he ever knew their names. Jim would have though, and Spock too.

"How's your side?" he asks.

"Healing."

"Can I see?"

"There is no issue."

"With the delay in proper medical-"

"-No."

McCoy rolls onto his back. Figures. Maybe Spock is always this cranky in the middle of the night. Though McCoy wouldn't know, Spock asleep against him in that cave while McCoy had stared into the dark.

"The injury is not painful." McCoy blinks at the ceiling. Softer, Spock says, "Your concern is noted."

"You should be sleeping," McCoy says.

"You should be as well." There's a pause. Then, "Thank you for the blanket."

McCoy turns on his side, imagining that beyond the darkness is the familiar shape of his bedroom on the Enterprise, that the blanket over him is the normal red synthetic cotton he finally got used to, and that when he opens his eyes, he'll be back up there, Jim bursting into the room with a grin, already talking before McCoy can ask him what he's doing there.

"Turn off your damn padd." He kicks at the mess he's made of his own bed, the sheets twisted where he's half tossed them off.

McCoy's just shutting his eyes against that blue glow when Spock finally says, "I am not looking forward to this mission any more than you are."

"The mission?" McCoy tips his head to the side like Spock is right there, not down below him. "I'm not looking forward to any of this. Ever. Never do. Hell, you might have had the right idea you know, clearing out of all of this. And that's the only time I'm ever saying that."

He must have shocked Spock into silence because there's no come back, just the silence of their room and the hum and creak of the ship around them.

The call for Alpha shift wakes McCoy up. It's a sound he's only heard in old documentaries, back when ship wide shift changes were the norm. On the Enterprise, the mess hall would be packed right now. Jim would be at their normal table and Spock would be sitting across from him, but as it is, he can hear Spock sitting up in his bed. McCoy should be looking forward to a plate of breakfast and a cup of hot coffee and there should be enough time to eat before he has to get to sickbay to hear the night's report from the on-duty nurse. It would be Wakeman today, McCoy's had the schedule set for months now. But he hasn't seen Wakeman in a while now, and he won't ever see her again.

He swings his feet over the side of his bunk, but closes his eyes rather than reach for the ladder, sure that when he opens them again, that nebula will be outside their porthole.