Title: Fair and Forewarning
Series: Insontis II
Characters: bb!Spock, Kirk, McCoy, various
Word Count: (this bit) 1900
Rating: K+
Warnings/Spoilers: Lack of real plot, ghastly amounts of fluff, etc. If you're in search of story with depth and substance, this is not the universe you're looking for. *Jedi hand wave*
Summary: In which there is medical explanation, foreshadowing, and Spock is a bratty teenager, not necessarily in that order
A/N: Again, all subject matter here is my personal opinion and explanation for the sake of this storyline, not intended to be taken as die-hard canon, and will have a purpose at the end of this overall story. As always, it is meant to be gen as that's what I see on-screen in TOS, not to mention that would be just Not Okay in this storyline to be otherwise.
"Wait, wait. Run that by me again, you lost me." He drops the fork and scrubs both hands down his face, trying to focus. "Why did I let you give me that heavy of a sedative."
Looking pointedly over top of his fork, McCoy nods toward the youngster sitting a meter or so to Kirk's left, calmly poking through a replicated vegetable medley with all the picky disdain of any human teenager. "Because I didn't exactly have a lot of options when your blood pressure was fallin' through the warp core, thanks to junior genius there."
"I can't even focus on what you're saying, there's no way I'm going to be able to get through an entire day's worth of backlogged paperwork tonight. So you can't just keep doing that; we have to find a better solution, and fast."
"You think, Jim?"
The captain huffs out a frustrated breath, and picks his coffee cup back up, visibly restraining his frustration. "Never mind. Tell me again, what viable options are we looking at. Other than the obviously impractical solution of keeping me in a medical coma for the duration."
"That actually would be the most logical and indeed the simplest solution, were it not for the fact that you must at least put in an appearance once we reach Alba II, Captain," Spock interjects, with a pointed look his direction.
"That's a no, mister, and I don't think I asked your opinion on this particular proposal."
McCoy whistles under his breath, and at least is relieved to see Spock look more amused than offended by the words. Obviously, this bond is good for something, and the kid must be able to tell Jim's about to have a meltdown if he doesn't get answers and a solution. Captain James T. Kirk is unaccustomed to not being in control, and while he's handled this whole mess better than many would have, the lack of control and lack of sleep is obviously pushing him to the end of his endurance.
Spock's not quite good enough yet to, or maybe isn't really trying to, hide his near-teenage rebellion, however; and it isn't exactly his best tactical strategy. McCoy's no chessmaster, but even he knows that much.
"Did you seriously just roll your eyes at me?"
"The gesture was quite serious, if that is your inquiry."
He can't help it, he laughs. This kid's going to be a holy terror, and Jim looks equal parts flabbergasted and terrified at the clear indications.
"You did not just say that to me."
"I believe I did."
"All right, that's enough," he interjects calmly, before they can draw the attention of way too curious crewmen starting to fill up the nearby tables for early Evening Mess. "Both of y'all need to calm down. I wasn't asking," he adds sharply, when it looks like Spock's about to vocalize heaven-only-knows-what.
After eyeing him speculatively for a moment, the child seems to decide he means business, or more likely is simply not worth the trouble of argument, because he subsides into a petulant silence.
"Jim, you know sleep deprivation can wreck your emotional control, so take a breath, go spar with somebody in the gym, whatever you have to do, but you can't kill the kid before we turn him back or lose your precious command image in the middle of Officers' Mess. And you," he points his fork across the table, "should be able to pick up on the fact that he's exhausted almost to the limit of human endurance, so shame on you. You want to stop being treated like a child, then stop acting like one and take some responsibility for this thing."
Spock's pale face turns a light olive color.
"Bones, that's not really fair."
"It is fair," he says reasonably. "You've been having to hold up your end of the deal under physical ramifications that are now actually threatening your command. Fun-sized or not, it's his job as First Officer to make sure that doesn't happen."
Spock looks slightly annoyed at the diminutive, but nods readily enough. "The doctor is quite correct, Captain. I have been remiss in this duty until now, an error which I intend to rectify once I have determined the best methods by which to do so."
"…Thanks?"
McCoy snorts, and stabs back into his string beans. "But that doesn't really help with a long-term solution, to answer your question, Jim. I toyed with the idea of trying to narrow down the aging window somehow, pinpointing when it's likely to happen and then isolating you in a neural-dampening field while Spock goes through the process, but that's a hazy science at best."
"Not to mention highly impractical, as there is no way to predict such an occurrence," Spock points out.
"Since sometimes the aging spurts come out of nowhere, kid's right, Jim. It's not a very good solution. Might work as a triage method in an emergency, but it's not good preventative medicine."
"Did Doctor T'lar have any ideas?" Kirk asks, pushing away his half-eaten meal tray and eyeing with trepidation the impressively large stack of datapadds which has somehow been growing at the end of the table during dinner.
"Not regarding any professional topic," Spock mutters into his bowl of vegetables.
McCoy tries to extricate a bean from his windpipe as the captain pulls the stack of padds over toward him with a rattle of plasticine, totally oblivious.
"What'd you say, Spock?"
"He said you need to ask her yourself, Jim," he interjects, grinning, as he sees the woman in question entering the now busy Officers' Mess. She looks more like a being on a mission than like she's there for an evening meal, however, and loses no time in bypassing the replicating units entirely, making a beeline for their table.
"Doctor McCoy, your staff said you would be dining here," she states, without preamble.
"Considering it's dinnertime and this is Officers' Mess, that's no indication of their competence," he drawls, indicating the empty space beside him on the long bench. "Care to join us?"
"I am not in need of sustenance at this time."
"You can still sit down."
"I require your medical opinion on the results of the simulations we ran this afternoon."
"Then you'd better sit down, because I'm not gettin' up yet."
He hears a slight huff of what is decidedly unVulcan impatience, but she does at least sit, handing him a medical padd with the results of the dual brain-scan workups they'd done.
"Doctor T'lar, the Captain was only just speaking of you," Spock says in greeting from across the table, in the most innocent of tones.
The ornery little brat's too far away for him to kick, but Kirk is totally oblivious, already engrossed in trying to decipher Scotty's dubious-at-best calculations on the weekly Engineering energy output report, squinting at the padd under obvious post-sedation exasperation.
T'lar's eyebrow inclines. "Indeed?"
Even functioning considerably sub-par, it's obvious that the captain of the Enterprise's instincts are still fully functioning, because after only a moment he glances up warily, sensing a trap.
"Why do I have the feeling I'm being talked about, not even behind my back?"
Spock loudly crunches a carrot cube, all wide-eyed innocence.
Seriously, the little brat is lucky he's not within swatting distance.
"You appear in better condition than this morning, Captain," T'lar ventures, clinically enough. "I presume this is due to Doctor McCoy's eliminating some of the human factors from the equation."
"If you mean I forced him to sleep for six hours, you've got it in one." He finishes the last bite of beans, pointing the fork across the table good-naturedly. "Nothing I can do about that brain scramble you've got goin' on."
He's favored with three equally annoyed looks, and so raises his hands in a very out-numbered surrender.
"Yes, well. We're just going to have to deal with it. We have the pre-arrival briefing on the Alba mission first thing tomorrow and a preliminary report to the Admiralty that I can't miss without throwing up red flags about this mess to people we very much do not want looking too closely at our mission logs for the last month."
The declaration is not unexpected, nor is the almost visible re-donning of that ridiculous command façade that has propelled the man to fame far before his peers. That ability to smile and reassure in the face of the world burning is what keeps this ship alive, and while it never ceases to amaze it also never ceases to scare him, just a little. Because it also means if something ever happened, to either the ship or her captain, he has the feeling both might crash and burn together.
T'lar's expression is hilariously unimpressed.
"Your coping strategy of situational denial and human willpower, while not unimpressive for your species, will certainly not be sufficient to sustain your physical health through the next seven days, Captain," she states matter-of-factly. "In fact, it likely will serve only to hasten the complete collapse of the fragile balance achieved by the temporary acceptance of this rudimentary bond."
"Well aren't you just a happy little ball of sunshine," McCoy mutters, clicking the data-padd off and pushing it back toward her. The scans haven't given them any information they didn't already know, unfortunately.
"Your metaphor quite literally has no possible logical extrapolation, Doctor."
"That would be why it's called a metaphor, isn't it?"
"Technically, it would be a loose interpretation of metaphoric anthropomorphism, Bones," Kirk says absently, scribbling a signature on a report and clicking to the next without even looking up.
Three pairs of eyes blink at him for a few startled seconds, the silence broken only by the loud crrrrunch of another of Spock's carrot cubes.
McCoy glares at the child in consternation, trying not to laugh.
"Fascinating," T'lar murmurs.
"The Captain is quite well-versed in both Terran and Vulcan neo-classical literary themes," Spock interjects sagaciously. "A particular hobby of yours, I believe, Doctor T'lar?"
Seriously, he thought Jim was a pain in the neck as a sulky adolescent. What is he going to do with a bratty half-Vulcan teenager while this delegation is stuck planetside ironing out peace negotiations for two days?