McCoy didn't return until noon the next day. Kirk gave him until fifteen hundred, ship's time. He stood outside McCoy's cabin door, holding a case containing two snifters and a bottle of decidedly non-regulation Saurian brandy. McCoy had done this exact same thing earlier, when he'd come to console his captain after Wesley's "Captain Dunsel" crack. He'd provided a similar liquid remedy, as well; the universal panacea for Starship captains and CMOs.

The big difference now, of course, was that McCoy had brazenly barged in where angels would have feared to tread, while Kirk was having trouble just making himself press the door buzzer.

Coward, he told himself. How did McCoy do it? Kirk always felt uncomfortable and awkward when he found himself in these kinds of situations. He wasn't much of a counselor, and here he was about to inflict the touchy-feely "How are you doing? Want to talk about it?" conversation on the man who usually counseled him and the rest of the crew.

Interesting, that. Who counsels the counselor?

The captain, obviously. Kirk pushed the buzzer.

There was a pause, then a very tired "Come" responded. Even muffled through the door, McCoy sounded exhausted. Kirk frowned, but entered the cabin.

It was dark inside. "Lights, full," Kirk called, and the room brightened. Still in his uniform, McCoy was lying on his bunk, stretched out flat on his back with one arm thrown over his eyes.

The doctor groaned and complained, "Ye gods, Jim, don't you ever sleep?"

"It's the middle of the day shift," Kirk returned mildly.

"No consideration at all. Do you have any idea how long I've been forced to stay conscious?"

"Why'd it take so long, anyway? Just to get Daystrom transferred?"

"No," McCoy said. He hadn't bothered to get up or to remove his arm from his face. "Starfleet Security also grabbed me for a debriefing about that godforsaken debacle with the M5. That took hours. And those charming souls left me with the promise of more to come." His voice was heavy with irony.

Kirk felt a twinge of guilt. McCoy had gotten even less rest than he'd realized since Daystrom'd had his breakdown. "Yes," he said. "They're getting to everyone who was on board during that catastrophe pretty quickly. I had my first debriefing early this morning. The process is going to take some time. I'm afraid we're going to be here for a while."

"A lot of people died, Jim," McCoy pointed out unnecessarily.

Kirk stole a quick glance at him. He sounded terrible, his voice filled with regret, anger, frustration, bone-deep weariness–a whole gamut of negative emotions. Kirk pushed away his sense of guilt at interrupting McCoy's overdue rest break. McCoy clearly needed a drink–maybe more than one–and a venting session more than he needed a nap. This was for his own good.

Deliberately, Kirk walked over to the desk, opened up the case, and set out the glasses and brandy bottle.

McCoy sighed and finally sat up. He looked only mildly interested. "What's that for, Jim?"

"You."

"Me?"

"I think maybe you need a little something."

"You've got that backwards. I'm not the one Starfleet tried to replace with a machine."

"But they didn't replace me. And they clearly won't for the foreseeable future."

"Maybe even the unforeseeable future," McCoy agreed. "So if you're not upset, why the liquid anesthetic?"

"What with the Daystrom situation, I figured you needed to talk. And sometimes," Kirk said, unknowingly paraphrasing something another ship's surgeon had once said to an Enterprise captain, "a doctor will tell his bartender things he'd never tell his captain." He poured out two glasses of brandy, crossed the room and handed one to McCoy. "Not as potent as one of your Finagle's Follies, but hopefully just as therapeutic."

"I think you've got your wires crossed somewhere," McCoy said, mystified. "I really don't know what you're getting at."

"You and Daystrom," Kirk said. "Or rather, the similarities in your professional histories."

"Now you've really lost me." But Kirk thought that maybe he looked just a little bit wary.

Deceptively casual, Kirk said, "It must've been pretty rough watching Daystrom fall apart. Analyzing him, and seeing how you yourself might have turned out, if things had been a little different."

McCoy stared into the glass in his hand. He said quietly, "You're crossing a line, Jim."

"I know." Kirk shrugged helplessly. He pulled up a chair across from McCoy. "But if friends can't cross those kinds of lines, who can?"

"When did you figure this out?"

"I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't. Spock did."

McCoy raised his brows. "Oh?"

"He was of the opinion that you had considerable insight into Daystrom's situation. He told me to review your record, especially the year 2253. I found out Daystrom wasn't the only boy genius aboard."

"God, I hate that term." McCoy took a swig from his glass and gave a self-deprecating snort. He swirled his remaining brandy, regarding it absently. "That Vulcan is a nosy, pain-in-the-ass busybody."

"He's your friend, too."

McCoy crossed his legs and, surprisingly, relaxed. "Well, at least now I know what this is all about," he drawled. "You two are fretting about nothing."

"Hardly nothing, Bones," Kirk said gently. "That neural grafting procedure–from everything I read, it's still a big deal."

"This is nothing to worry about," McCoy insisted. "That was a long time ago. You don't really think I've spent my life obsessed with the past like Daystrom, do you?"

"I didn't say that. Obviously you haven't. But I wondered if maybe this whole experience didn't open up some old wounds. Looking back on it, it was scary the way you understood exactly what was driving him before his actual breakdown."

"Look, Jim–"

"Are you going to keep stalling, or are you going to tell me about it?"

"There's really nothing to tell."

Kirk leaned back in his chair and regarded his friend with exasperation. He'd been right, this was like pulling teeth. Without anesthetic. For himself. "You once told me that Spock was as tight-lipped as an Aldebaran shellmouth. I think that's an even better description of you. I know more about Spock's past than I do about yours, and that's saying something."

"You only know about Spock's past because he didn't have any control over how it all came out," McCoy snapped back. When Kirk just stared at him, he growled, "Fine. You want to hear it? Yes, I recognized what was eating at him and what was causing his problems. Daystrom stayed in the same line of research and spent his life trying to top what he'd done before. I didn't. I knew back then I didn't want to spend my life giving lectures and trying to recapture past glory. So instead of continuing with the same work, I took a different career turn and that's why I'm not neurotic like him."

"Just neurotic in your own inestimable way."

"Can't do anything about that."

Kirk took a sip of brandy to hide his smile. He should have taken a page from Spock's book right from the beginning of this little tête-à-tête he'd forced on Bones. Goading got results that sympathy didn't. And an unfavorable comparison to Spock was surely the ultimate goad. "So no old wounds at all?"

McCoy sighed. "I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't thought about it. 'There but for the grace of God go I,' and all that. But even back then, I knew I couldn't top myself in neural research. Oh, sure, all the kudos and grants were fun for a while, but after a couple years I finally saw where it was leading. If I'd let it go on, I would have been stuck in retread mode forever."

"Just like Daystrom," Kirk said.

"Yeah, like that. I wasn't going to let that happen to myself. So I found new mountains to climb instead." He raised his glass in a mock toast. "Here's to outer space. May it never get dull."

"An unlikely prospect," Kirk said, clinking his glass with McCoy's. "So you decided to go space adventuring?"

"I wouldn't put it that way..."

"I would." Kirk hesitated, then said, "I always thought you joined the Service for, um, reasons of a more personal nature." He kept the mention of McCoy's divorce oblique, although the doctor had intimated before that that was the reason he'd signed on with Starfleet so many years ago.

McCoy wrapped both hands around his glass and stared at the amber liquid. "Yes, well, that's true. You might say there was a perfect storm in my life at just the right time. Or the wrong time. Depends on your point of view."

"Hmmm," said Kirk.

"A new career direction didn't necessarily mean Starfleet, you know," McCoy said, a little irritably. "There were a lot of different options I considered pursuing; space medicine was just one of many possibilities–and pretty far down on the list, at that. But then when everything else went to hell..." he licked his lips and moved on quickly, "Well, Starfleet just seemed like the best solution available at the time."

"As far as I'm concerned," Kirk said sincerely, "it was the best possible decision you could have made."

"Thanks, Jim."

"No regrets?"

"This is really bugging you, isn't it?" McCoy looked at him clinically.

Kirk knew that look. "Don't try to make this about me. It's about you."

"I don't do me very often."

"I know. Are you going to answer the question?"

"You're pushing pretty hard, Jim. Psychology isn't your forte. Don't give up your day job." At Kirk's silence, McCoy sighed. "Do I have regrets about signing up? You've got to be kidding." Then he grinned. "Sometimes I absolutely hate being out in space. The things we run into–there are times when I've never felt so ineffectual and incompetent."

"Well, Bones, you just got through telling me you were after new challenges. I'd say you got them."

"And then some," McCoy agreed a little ruefully. "It can be pretty humbling. But I gotta tell you, I'm never bored. And I never, ever have to resort to recapturing old glory to fill my life, not when there are so many surprises constantly smacking me in the face. There are a million new things to investigate, and only one lifetime to cram them all in."

"I think I understand," Kirk said. "I can't imagine doing anything else, but then every day is a new adventure. I don't need to consider doing anything else."

"I can't imagine being anything but a doctor, either."

"It's an amazing life we've got, with such infinite variety no matter what our specialities."

"Not to mention infinite adversaries, like Klingons, Romulans, Orions, and Vulcans."

"Vulcans, too?" Kirk teased.

"Especially Vulcans, bless their pointed ears," McCoy said amiably. "Another reason why I'm never bored. So you can tell Spock to stop worrying that I'm gonna pull a Daystrom on you two."

"Spock will be relieved to hear it," Kirk said with a small smile. "His captain is as well. Neither of us was really concerned about that, you know. Just that you might be feeling, well, like you needed to talk a few things out."

"I rarely need to," McCoy stated. "That's not who I am."

"And yet you inflict it on me so often."

"That's part of my job description. Someone's got to keep you sane, and you do need it."

Kirk couldn't deny that. Talking over his problems with McCoy always helped him see things more clearly. He found it hard to believe that McCoy might not reap the same benefits, yet here he was denying it. "But now that you have talked it over?" Kirk pressed him. "Do you feel better?"

"Not really. But as long as the captain feels better, this chat has accomplished its purpose."

Kirk snorted. "So let me get this straight. You consider a conversation about your past to be therapeutic for me? You don't think it did you any good at all?"

"Jim, dredging up the past is never good for me. I'm just not wired that way. However, since it seems to have set the captain's mind at rest I consider it time well spent and misery well endured."

Kirk chuckled at that. It figured that McCoy had turned this conversation back onto him. He considered calling the doctor on his tactics, then decided to just give in gracefully. Raising his glass in another toast, he said in an arch tone, "Well then, here's to shared misery."

"Amen," said McCoy.

And they both finished their brandy.

~ end ~

August, 2010