Chapter One: I'm A Doctor, Not A Spaceman!

Leonard McCoy, M.D., sighed to himself.

It was a long-suffering sigh. The sort that's more habit than anything else, born of countless instances in which the sigh-er was, through no fault of their own, forced into such ridiculous circumstances that the sudden exhalation was not only expected, but damn near necessary to maintain a level of calm.

It was that, Leonard mused, or strangle Jim Kirk.

Joshua Fleet Behavioral Health Center (or, as Jim liked to call it, Starfleet) was not going to be on Leonard's top ten vacation spots. Ever. It wasn't the fault of the facility, really. It was clean, humane, and up-to-date, and employed some of the most effective psychologists and behavioral specialists in the world. It was, for a mental institution, very nice.

It was still a mental institution, though, no matter how they tried to phrase it. And Leonard, being a doctor, was fairly certain that he was required by cosmic law to be a terrible patient, complete with blatant condescension, refusal to accept medication, and at least one psychologist per day labelled a quack.

It wasn't Leonard's fault, really. It was all just part of being a doctor in the care of other doctors.

What he hated most about being there, though, wasn't the lack of privacy or the lack of dignity or the lack of shoelaces. No, what Leonard hated most was James T. Kirk (and crew).

The kid was nuts. Which, granted, wasn't a very politically correct thing for Leonard to think, but that didn't make it any less true.

"Mixed-type delusional disorder," the young man who simply went by 'Spock' had informed him quietly over breakfast that first morning. "Cause unknown."

Leonard had hummed to himself, feeling a tiny niggle of curiosity for the first time in a long time. It was pleasantly surprising, even if he hadn't had the motivation to follow through with it. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, he'd mused. Jim Kirk wasn't his responsibility, and even if he had been, Leonard wasn't a psychologist.

You fuck up enough as a physician, McCoy, he'd reminded himself as he poked at his tasteless eggs. Bad enough fucking up someone physically - that can sometimes heal. You really want to try your hand at leaving mental scars, too?

Jim Kirk was, Leonard thought, a very good example of why they should let Leonard leave. Here was a kid who was genuinely sick, who needed help, and they were wasting time and resources on Leonard. It was another unhappy reminder, every time he saw the guy, with his too-blue eyes and his genuinely-friendly smile.

'Bones'. He called Leonard 'Bones', said they were best friends, said they'd have all sorts of adventures in space. He was nice to Leonard, who wanted nothing more that to grab the idiot and shake him until he stopped wasting all that niceness on someone who didn't deserve it.

If you hadn't failed, nobody'd be wasting anything on you. Why are you even here? You managed just fine when you were killing other people - figures you'd screw up being a murderer when it might have actually done some good.

Spock - who, Leonard had discovered, was never very far from Jim - had made a point of cornering the older man at the cafeteria table and explaining Jim to him. Leonard hadn't wanted Jim to be explained. He had kind of hoped that whatever was scrambled in the kid's brain would erase their uncomfortable meeting the evening before from his memory, but apparently, he wasn't going to be that lucky.

"Jim likes people," Spock had stated simply, scooping eggs into his mouth and chewing methodically whenever he paused to think. "Especially people who are alone, as he regards himself to be. it comforts him somewhat, to draw us into his delusions."

Leonard had thought about asking why they played along, why they went to such lengths to enable his delusions, but he hadn't quite been able to bring himself to care. Really, he'd just wanted to be left in his room to sleep until the world stopped sucking, but apparently, that wasn't part of his 'treatment plan'.

Socialization, the orderly had called it, as though Leonard was a disobedient puppy that barked too much at the other dogs.

Spock had answered his unasked question, anyway, leaving Leonard to wonder just how transparent he was.

"I was the first of us to meet Jim. I have been here for several years, and when Jim was brought in, he immediately formed an attachment to me, saying that we were destined to be friends. When he found out the truth about me, I fear it may have only entrenched his delusions in his mind more deeply."

Off his bewildered expression, Spock had tilted his head. "I am not human, you see. Not entirely. I am half-Vulcan."

"Vulcan." Leonard had sat back, picking his biscuit into little pieces, crumbling some of them distractedly. "Okay, then."

"Vulcans are a race of aliens, Doctor. My father, upon visiting Earth to learn human ways, impregnated my mother shortly before he departed for the Vulcan homeworld."

"Makes sense," Leonard had offered, because to someone suffering from species dysphoria, it certainly would make sense. "Wasn't a nice thing to do, though."

"Perhaps not, but I'm certain there was a logical reason behind his decision to do so."

"What, to knock your mama up, or to leave?"

"Both," Spock had replied primly.

They had wandered the halls a bit after breakfast in silence, and Leonard has actually hoped that he might be able to return to his room without any further talk about Jim Kirk.

Alas.

"I believed for some time that he was mocking my predicament," Spock had explained. "Many before him have done so, and still more refused to believe me at all. I have never understood this aspect of the human mind - to so readily disbelieve the truth in favor of lies for the sake of convenience. To refuse to even entertain possibilities. It is illogical."

"Humans usually are," Leonard had muttered.

"But as I became better aquainted with him, I came to understand his mind, such as is possible. He is...complicated. And very human. And I suppose, having seen how distraught he becomes when his delusions are challenged, I simply felt it necessary to do what I could to assist him, and to prevent him from inflicting damage upon himself and others."

And that had been about when, leaping out from around a corner and tuck-and-rolling to a halt at Leonard's feet, Jim Kirk had grabbed hold of the doctor and dragged him into his world.

So far, Leonard thought sourly as the paper tricorn the Russian kid wore bobbed into view, breaking him from his thoughts, the bridge was Leonard's least favorite place in the entire facility. This was partly because the small room it was set in (usually used for group therapy, ironically enough, Leonard believed) was covered in the most cloyingly pathetic motivational posters known to man. Mostly, though, it was because there were never fewer than five people 'on the bridge' at any time when he was there, which meant he was surrounded by some of the most difficult people he'd ever known whenever he was around.

And he was around a lot. It didn't seem to matter where he holed up, Jim would find him and haul him, metaphorically kicking and screaming, on whatever adventures suited the younger man that day. On any given day, he spent probably ninety percent of his free time listening to Sulu sing to his gardenia and watching Scotty (who, he'd learned from Spock, was actually not Scottish, and no one was sure where the accent had come from) pull apart chairs and put the legs back on the wrong way around.

Today, they were allegedly circling an ice-covered proto-planet (whatever that was), trying to make contact with a Starfleet scientific outpost. Leonard had snarked harshly about studying alien penguins, which had backfired horribly because Jim had congratulated him on guessing right. The kid had then proceeded to outline the protocols for adopting alien life-forms as pets and had made Leonard draw an anatomical diagram of the alien penguin for the xenobiology database.

That might not have been so bad (it gave him something to do that would distract him from the way Sulu was caressing the gardenia), except then Spock had insisted on adjusting Leonard's design because "stalk-form optical structures would be highly unlikely to have evolved in this case, as they would be more susceptible to extreme cold temperatures and therefore a point of weakness".

Eventually, Leonard had given up on the alien penguin, allowing Spock to doodle over it and list its specifications while the doctor took up the orange crayon and proceeded to draw spaceships. For some reason, they'd been on his mind.

He was now moving on to drawing an alien robot that was mostly a giant gray globe with two long, thin legs, and the Russian kid, Pavel, leaned over to look at his drawing.

"You forgot ze lasers," he said in a regal sort of tone, pointing dramatically. "Zere must be lasers."

Rolling his eyes, Leonard plucked up the red crayon and drew thin red lines sparking out from its eyes. "Good enough?"

"Da. Lasers," the kid continued, lifting his chin and adjusting his hat, "vere inwented in Russia. I commissioned my secret sciences diwision to vork on zem to help prewent a rebellion."

Leonard considered telling the kid that pronouncing his vees as double-yous was more of a Polish thing than a Russian thing. He added a few more lasers instead, which made the young man grin.

"Hey," a soft voice spoke above Leonard's head. "That's really good!"

"Uh," Leonard glanced up at Jim, brow furrowing. "Thanks?"

"That's the most life-like drawing of the Enterprise ever!" The younger man leaned heavily on Leonard's shoulder and pointed. "I especially like how you put in the dorsal phaser array. I don't know if that's the right color, but it's closer than Scotty got. He drew them green once." Jim made a face at the man, who snorted and went back to trying to build a seven-legged chair.

Shrugging, Leonard gestured at Pavel with his crayon. "It was the kid's idea."

"That's because he's a genius," Jim whispered loudly, still draped over Leonard's shoulder. It was odd, the doctor mused, how very used to Jim's complete disregard for personal space he'd gotten in the span of a week. "Speaking of genius, Bones, how hard do you think it would be to mutate Phil into a more...uh...sentient life-form?"

Leonard sighed. "Can't be done."

"But-"

"Nope."

"Yeah, but-"

"Not happening." He poked Jim on the nose with the crayon before going back to signing his name to his masterpiece. "Leave Sulu and his plant alone."

"You're no fun, Bones," Jim whined, curling both arms around Leonard's shoulders and pressing his face against the older man's neck. "Why are you no fun?"

"Captain," Nyota interrupted, setting down her notepad and scanning what she'd written. "Contact."

When Jim had whirled away, leaving Leonard strangely chilled and not-so-strangely relieved, the woman had offered him a small grin. With a bit of effort, Leonard managed to return it.

He could not get out of this funny farm fast enough.