Title: A Celebration in Infinite Combinations
Characters: (this chapter) McCoy, Spock, Kirk, Nurse Chapel
Pairings: hints of Scotty/Uhura and unrequited Chapel/Spock, but nothing overt - you know me
Rating: K+ for violence, etc.
Summary: The first year of the five-year mission is a critical time for the crew of the starship Enterprise. A new chain of command, a new crew; and a new captain who must prove himself to both - all must work together and learn to function, not as a crew, but as a family.
Warnings/Spoilers: Liberties with early TOS canon, nothing beyond the usual. Spoilers and specifics are footnoted.
A/N: Twelve mini story arcs revolving around twelve sets of characters, all converging in the last chapter. Holiday and gift-giving themed story; every even chapter containing main characters and odd containing minor characters with nods at main characters. This is definitely a character exploration piece, with a holiday flavor - because we all need more holiday fluff and hope this time of year.
Chapter Two
The third day after he'd come aboard as Chief Medical Officer, Leonard McCoy had informed his new Captain in no uncertain terms that he expected to have access to the Bridge whenever and whyever he wanted, and if the captain didn't like it then he could transfer him at the next Starbase. Sir.
It had been a gamble, but a calculated one – he was nobody's fool and had studied the psych profiles of his young CO in detail before coming aboard. Kirk's had intrigued, horrified, and amused him in turns, and one thing he had to do first and foremost was learn how to act with the man to accomplish both what he wanted, and what was best for the captain.
He wasn't in error in his evaluation. After an initial incredulous look, Kirk had laughed aloud at his mild insolence and agreed with no real argument. He had gone on to add with a smirk that he could see why the physician's previous captain had been over-eager to be rid of his meddling, and then warned the physician to not overstep himself in the presence of his subordinates or get in the way of the workings of his ship.
He and Kirk developed something of an odd relationship almost immediately upon his replacing Mark Piper as Chief Medical Officer (1). He'd heard about the tragedy at the Galactic Barrier, and saw its ramifications ripple outward through the crew's psych profiles – including that of her captain, who by reports had been one of Mitchell's closest friends. Kirk appeared to be dealing with the loss fairly well, but McCoy made it a point to keep a close eye upon the man: for a happy crew required a happy captain. And besides, McCoy liked the younger man quite a bit; he was a refreshing change from the usual starship captain in the physician's experience; one who could give as good as he got, and in fact excelled the most brilliantly when he was relentlessly challenged.
Lieutenant-Commander Spock (2) was an entirely different story. McCoy disliked him instantly upon their first meeting. Granted, that first meeting was during a space battle, when Vulcan calm and disregard for human emotional loss was at its most irritating, as hell broke loose around them – but still, the Vulcan grated on his nerves like no one else aboard. That supercilious expression, the constant vocalization of superiority, the unruffled and therefore inhuman face upon things which would make any sane man cringe – it was just downright unnatural, and despite the fact that he was anything but xenophobic it still rubbed him the wrong way. It wasn't that Spock was Vulcan, or even that he was alien; that wasn't the issue.
McCoy just flat didn't like Commander Spock as a person, and that's all there was to it.
That was, until one evening in Sickbay, when he realized something very important. As Chief Medical Officer, he'd been charting the mental conditions of the command chain, noting when their moods spiked and then investigating possible causes and effects, so as to counter-balance them properly in eating and recreational habits.
And he found something very interesting.
Kirk's psyche profile had crashed after the death/execution of Gary Mitchell. The whole crew had reeled from that, partly because the dynamic First Officer had been well-liked by everyone and partly because Dr. Dehner and Lee Kelso had also been key figures in ship's interactions. They were the first three deaths they had had aboard, on a shakedown which should have had no casualties at all; and that fact alone was cause for stress and distress in the chain of command.
But Mitchell had been one of Kirk's best friends, and the man would understandably take many weeks to fully assimilate and get over the loss of such a friend. The captain's mental indications showed that for at least twenty-four hours he was incapable of command based upon emotional compromise, after which he showed steady improvement. This indicated a strong mind, one that recognized and responded to the call of duty far more readily than that of emotion – a crucial trait in a commanding officer, and one that McCoy knew had to be a key factor in Kirk's success as captain. But that wasn't what interested him about Kirk's mental scans.
The captain's mental signatures, prior to the incident at the Barrier, had been quite interesting. Furiously racing highs and dangerously depressed lows seemed to be periodic during the mood map he compiled from the shakedown cruise. Both those and other indications indicated some past trauma, something serious enough to cause drastic mood swings in an otherwise fairly normally-balanced personality. Whatever that trauma had been, it must be either too personal for record or else classified, for McCoy could find no indicators in his files about it – but it was there nonetheless, and he kept an eye on the possibilities the scans indicated. (3)
This was one reason he began to covertly snipe at the captain, teasing him and coaxing him and provoking him by turns, to release some of that stress that would weigh on any man, especially Starfleet's youngest starship commander. Kirk responded beautifully to his advances, both the friendly ones and the therapeutic ones, and if the man was going to snap at someone it would be better off being his chief medical officer than some poor unsuspecting crewman. McCoy had a thick skin, and he could take it, especially during those crucial first few months of their five-year mission, in which the whole galaxy was watching the Enterprise and her new, brilliant crew, scrutinizing them publicly as the flagship of the Federation.
And then, about six months into the voyage, McCoy began to notice a change.
Kirk's stress indicators began to decline and drop, to a point where they had never been so low, even before the business with Mitchell. The man's moods leveled even more than they had been, his psyche profile dropping into an almost perfect range, the only aberrations in it being those intensely stressful moments where the ship and her crew were in danger. Kirk's tact, diplomacy, ability to think under fire – all of them grew more pronounced, and McCoy simply couldn't quite figure out how and why.
Then, one morning, he suddenly realized why.
And here my staff say I'm cranky when I don't get enough sleep, he thought as James T. Kirk entered Officers' Mess with don't-even-talk-to-me-until-after-my-coffee written all over his grumpy countenance.
The sole yeoman who was brave enough to chirp a cheery good-morning to his captain was somewhat mystified to receive only a glare in return as the man slumped into the chair next to his Chief Medical Officer. Luckily, the young man was good-natured himself and only refrained from laughing at the captain's mood, rather than taking offense at it.
McCoy had no such restrictions, and chuckled into his heavily-sweetened tea.
"Mornin', Captain Sunshine," he drawled, spooning artificial sweetener over his oatmeal.
He received a one-eyed glare over the rim of the coffee cup, and hastily turned his attention back to his eggs.
A moment (and half the coffee cup) later, he tried again. "Not a morning person, then?"
"Very observant, Doctor," was the clipped reply.
After greeting Lieutenant Sulu, who settled in the seat across from them with a nod, he paused for a moment to take in the dark circles under the captain's eyes, and then remembered the trouble they'd had after those pirates had nicked the hull in the Engineering section; they'd not only lost five good engineers, but the repairs had already been underway for forty-eight hours and were likely to continue for another forty-eight. Kirk had engineering experience, and it was common knowledge that he was fond of working with the mechanics on his ship rather than sitting by and watching the repairs. No doubt he'd been at it again last night.
"You should be eating something more solid than that sludge you call coffee, Jim," he observed mildly, nudging a plate of toast toward the exhausted-looking man.
The captain eyed the plate with distaste, looking slightly nauseated. "You should talk; just how much sugar do you people put in that 'sweet tea', anyway?"
Sulu was not doing a very good job of hiding his laughter behind his napkin.
Indignant, he was about to defend the properties of the sacred beverage when a clunk drew his attention to the captain's other side.
"Spock?"
"Good morning, Captain, Lieutenant, Doctor McCoy." The Vulcan calmly shoved a tray in front of his captain. Kirk looked blankly down at the plate of waffles, fruit, and bacon.
"Your breakfast, Captain." A second clunk followed the first, and two data-padds were placed in position. "Your notes from last night's briefing with Admiral Komack, and the extra fuel requisitions to ensure repairs continue on schedule. Your signature is required on lines three, seven, and thirteen; your initials on the bottom left of the next three pages." A clink, and Spock deftly removed the empty coffee cup, replacing it with a full one. "You are due on the Bridge in precisely twenty-three-point five minutes, sir, at which time you asked I remind you of the conference call to Starfleet Headquarters regarding the Huraon pirate incident. Do you require anything else at this time?"
"Um," was the captain's bewildered response. "I didn't require this much? Thank you?"
Spock inclined his head in gracious acceptance. "If you will excuse me, gentlemen. You as well, Doctor."
"Hey!" he spluttered as the door closed behind the Vulcan, his befuddled mind belatedly registering the insult.
The captain was still staring down at the perfectly symmetrical tray, blinking cluelessly at the whipped cream-topped waffles and three flawless strips of replicated bacon. "What on earth?"
"I think he likes you, Captain," Sulu offered helpfully, digging cheerfully into his cereal.
"I think he's out of his Vulcan mind," McCoy retorted, snagging a slice of peach (or pseudo-peach, as the selectors could never get the texture and flavor quite right).
He chewed it slowly, wishing for the true melty goodness of a real Georgia peach, and watched as the captain signed off on his requisitions and then turned his attention to the meal at hand. Kirk surveyed the tray again in disbelief, but wasn't but a few minutes later that a slow smile began to work its way across the man's face – and suddenly McCoy realized just who it was that had been the cause of the minute changes he'd seen take place in the captain's psychological profile.
Whether he saw eye-to-eye with Commander Spock or not, it was a proven medical fact that he was good for Captain James T. Kirk – and that was good enough in his book.
Didn't mean he would ever like the hobgoblin.
McCoy was never one to wait until an emergency popped up to prepare for one, and so he had, during his first week aboard, begun to go through the medical records for all personnel aboard, noting any allergies or unusual conditions which might crop up unexpectedly (the last thing he needed was to administer an antibiotic in the chaos of field triage and have the patient go into shock because he didn't have the anomalies memorized). It was in this process that he noticed some slight aberrations in the captain's eating habits – nothing which warranted dieting yet, but a definite fluctuation that indicated an extremely fast metabolism and a tendency to literally forget to eat until the body demanded it – and it was in this process that he also noticed one significant fact: that the Enterprise medical records had basically nothing regarding Vulcan physiology.
The Starfleet medical database was of little help, as there were few Vulcans serving in Starfleet and apparently the species had some incredible self-healing powers of their own. He could find little besides basic anatomy charts and pharmaceutical information in circulation about the species, and that simply would not do.
Commander Spock was thoroughly not happy to be called down to Sickbay for a mandatory physical McCoy's seventh week aboard.
And he said so, in entirely unemotional terms, of course.
"I'm not happy with the state of Dr. Piper's files regarding your health and treatment parameters, Mr. Spock," he retorted after the Vulcan had finished telling him quite logically why he was wasting both their times. "If you go and nearly die on us, I wouldn't have the faintest clue how to save your life – there's nothing in here even to indicate what bio-bed readings are usual for you – and that's unacceptable for the First Officer of a starship!"
"Doctor, I assure you, were I in fact dying your attempts to save my life would most likely be superfluous. In other instances, the anatomical knowledge you have should suffice to allow treatment for injury."
"And just what am I supposed to do if you come down with the flu or something?" he demanded irritably, waving an empty hypospray case in the stubborn Vulcan's general direction.
"Vulcans do not 'come down' with any of your human ailments, Doctor; our immune systems are far superior. This is the primary reason why your records appear to you to be inconclusive; in reality, they are simply not necessary. During my eleven years as Science Officer under Captain Pike, I rarely was in need of medical attention and then only under extreme circumstances."
"Mr. Spock. In the seven weeks Jim Kirk has been captain of this flyin' tin can, y'all have been shot at three times by natives with spears and/or dart guns, fallen off a cliff at least once, been thrown across the Bridge in a battle twice, been infected with radiation or poison from plants on uncharted planets three times. I think the stats are changin' in favor of you needing medical attention a little bit more often than you did under Captain Pike," he replied dryly.
The Vulcan did not look amused, and was less than gracious during the brief examination he basically bullied the First into performing, by threatening to tell the Captain that Spock was unfit for duty due to being so illogical as to refuse something that might mean the difference between life and death for an officer of the Enterprise. Kirk would never tolerate an officer doing anything which might in future endanger the ship or her crew, and they both knew it.
Note to self, he thought with grim glee, playing the Jim card apparently was always a trump.
Quite logical, really.
His short examination of the Enterprise's resident walking database was less than satisfactory, though he couldn't in good faith blame Spock for that. That hybrid physiology would just require as much experimentation as anything else, and that was one thing he didn't like; experimentation should be done in a controlled environment in a laboratory, not in a Sickbay operating room with a man's life on the line.
Be that as it may, it was as good as he was going to get, and he set about adding what information he could to the Enterprise's medical banks. Then he proceeded to set his head nurse to scouring the intranets and databases of the galaxy in an effort to ascertain anything reliable (meaning from the Vulcan Science Academy itself, probably) regarding the health and physiology of the Vulcan race.
Chapel was a good researcher, and a decent scientist, but she turned up nothing except (to his horrified regret, because he probably started it) one illogical Vulcan-sized crush on the patient in question.
He'd opened a can of worms there, no mistake, and it came back to bite him hard during the Psi2000 crisis, when instead of helping him synthesize an antivirus for the malady sweeping the ship, Chapel was mooning in Sickbay over a man who would never even dream of returning the emotion. Someday he might laugh about it, but during those tense hours it was so not amusing.
He did remember the incident well, though, not really for the amazing way his lab teams functioned to do the impossible and produce an antivirus before the whole crew went to hell, but because it gave him the first glimpse he'd had in those months aboard of the fact that their stolidly Vulcan First Officer wasn't just a machine, as he sometimes half-believed the man was.
It was just a sentence, uttered when the Vulcan returned to the Bridge; a quick, low-voiced "Are you all right, Jim?" (4) – but he heard the lack of title plainly, and saw the open concern spilling out of the dark eyes. He knew the two of them had both been infected, and as CMO he'd been sent Security reports of a violent altercation going on in one of the Enterprise's briefing rooms minutes before; he also knew that bruise on the side of Jim's face hadn't come from walking into an automatic door.
But it was none of his business unless the aftershocks affected either of his superiors' performances, and honestly he probably didn't want to know anyway. But what mattered, was that the virus stripped a man down to his raw, human emotions; his basest fears, his deepest regrets – and this one evidently caused a Vulcan to express concern openly for his human captain.
It was the first time he'd ever seen Spock look anything but bored with humanity in general, and that one glimpse was enough to curb his harsh tongue toward the Vulcan for a few days afterward.
It still didn't mean he liked Spock, though.
What Christine saw in him, he'd never be able to figure out.
He was glad Spock's computerized program for the captain's whatever-they-were-supposed-to-call-it gift exchange was sufficiently detailed to pair up people aboard who would never choose each other in any different circumstances, because he was well aware his Head Nurse was hoping to draw the First Officer's name and if he could read unspoken Vulcan at all, he was quite sure Spock had definitely programmed the computer script for that eventuality to never, ever, ever happen.
Poor Christine would be sadly disappointed, but he really couldn't blame Spock for freaking out around her, in his own logical Vulcan way, because the woman's infatuation was teetering between sweet and slightly disturbing. After the Psi2000 incident, she was professional enough to never say or do anything which would be inappropriate or even uncomfortable by Vulcan standards; but the damage had been done, and Spock was more skittish around Sickbay for months afterwards than a cat in a roomful of rocking-chairs. The whole thing was just awkward, and he could only hope that time would smooth over the discomfort and they could go back to being amicable science colleagues again. He was just glad Spock had no doubt programmed the computer to definitely not match Christine up with the First Officer.
He was not glad, that apparently the blasted Vulcan's beloved computer program decided the least likely person to give Spock a gift would be him.
"What?" his dismal wail had echoed across Sickbay, seriously disturbing his medical staff, four of whom poked their heads into his office to ascertain the status of his volatile sanity.
Christine was very disappointed, but soon found great pleasure in informing him of all the things she had thought of he could get Spock for Christmas, half of which were pretty weird coming from him and the other half he had no idea what they even were, Vulcan somethings-or-other that she'd been researching apparently.
Oh heck no, he was not getting the First Officer singing fire-stones from the canyons at the base of Mount Seleya, meditation-enhancing properties or whatever Vulcan mystic mumbo-jumbo they were reputed to possess or no.
Not happening.
He briefly contemplated introducing a virus into Spock's computer program, forcing him to repeal it and thus start the exchange over, but decided against it mainly because it would too easily be traced to his computer terminal in the lab. He would just have to act as if nothing was wrong; grin and bear it or die in the process (which might actually be preferable, now that he thought about it).
The hobgoblin was so getting the tackiest present he could find at the next tourist trap they came across before the holidays began.
(1) While McCoy's history pre-The Man Trap is debatable by canon standards, it is a canonical fact that he succeeded the Mark Piper we see in Where No Man Has Gone Before. There's a fanon theory out there that McCoy knew Kirk prior to the five-year mission, but for sake of my story I'm going with the theory that he'd never met Kirk before.
(2) According to TOS canon, Spock was at first in the series seen as a Lieutenant-Commander (see the braid on the sleeves), later in the series receiving a full Commander's status and the stripes to go with it.
(3) Because McCoy found out about Tarsus IV in the episode Conscience of the King, I tend to think the issue was one of two things: either, it didn't damage Kirk's psyche as much as one would think (unlikely, in my opinion), or else the incident was classified by Starfleet even from a ship's Chief Medical Officer, to protect the identity of the people involved. You don't just overlook something like that if you're responsible for the health of a ship's captain, and so I tend to think the incident was classified and indications of any type of ptsd, etc., were just minimal.
(4) One of my favorite moments in TOS canon; watch it and the other events mentioned in The Naked Time.
