Title: Close Calls
Characters: Spock, McCoy, bit of Kirk
Rating: K
Word Count: 1538
Summary: The usual fluff-insanity, barely edited and just for fun. Fill for the STTOS kink meme prompt (thread link) I want genfic of McCoy and Spock secretly biffling over some kind of science project or something. Have someone walk in on them as they're being friends and be shocked and scandalized, with the two quickly trying to hide their BFF status with their usual banter.
Warnings: Spoilers for one of my fave episodes, The Immunity Syndrome. Blatant lack of sound scientific knowledge; I'm an English teacher, not a scientist. I did my best to bluff my way through (to quote the Flash in JL: Crisis on Two Earths) 'speaking Star Trek', but then again half of Star Trek was utter baloney so I'm in good company, y/y? :P

"Wait, let me get this straight." 'Cause he sure as heck isn't getting it; Spock doesn't speak to him without taunting his humanity, doesn't share his scientific data or discoveries with him, doesn't even agree with his conclusions on the odd occasions Medical has to work directly under Life Sciences aboard the Enterprise.

And the pointy-eared hobgoblin definitely doesn't compliment him.

He's just beginning to wonder if he could discreetly run the Pon Farr psyche scan on the Vulcan without being noticed when the timer chirps for the (corrected and re-run, based upon the data collected on the organism) acetycholine test.

"Get what 'straight,' Doctor?" Spock peers into the scanner, assimilating data at a speed that reminds him of his nights spent cramming for Starfleet xenobio exams. "As we suspected, the organism's membrane did contain a high concentration of what resembles acetylcholinesterase. Our method of, quite literally, blasting the organism into pieces with antimatter was rather crude; a synthesized negative antitoxin designed to attack this enzyme might have yielded the same results of destruction, over a short space of time. Paralysis and eventual death."

"But it's not acetylcholinesterase, and that's why your first calibrations were off in the test," he points out, jabbing a finger at the many lines of genetic code. "Just the fact that a one-celled organism can have its own central and peripheral nervous system tosses all our scientific knowledge about eukaryotes out the airlock right off the bat. And did you just compliment me, Mr. Spock?"

"I stated facts, Doctor. How you choose to interpret them according to your whims is your own prerogative."

"And besides, we didn't have time to wait for an antitoxin to attack the enzyme and break it down," he points out, furiously scrolling through the genetic code and marking the major differences between their known data on typical single-celled organisms. "Also, this still doesn't explain how it feeds off both the energy of the Enterprise's fuel cells as well as our own nervous energy. And I suppose that's as close as I'll ever get to a compliment, from you at least."

He rolls his eyes at Spock's bent back, though he can't really put any annoyance into the gesture. After all, it isn't every day that a Vulcan informs you that the Vulcan Science Academy has already asked that you (along with Spock, naturally) attend a week-long lecture tour in ShiKahr to present your findings on the organism that killed the Intrepid and her Vulcan crew.

Spock makes a gesture that is undoubtedly a well-bred shush, you illogical human motion, as he pulls up the results of the energy signatures emitted from the 'space amoeba,' as Jim had slurringly dubbed it in his log before keeling over from stimulant withdrawal twelve hours ago. McCoy had pumped him as full of stims as he'd dared, and he hadn't found out until two hours after they left the system after destroying the organism that the resourceful captain had 'found' several more to keep him on his feet far longer than he should have been. He'd crashed for now in a private cubicle behind their small research lab.

"What is of greater interest, is the method this organism used to convert our positive energy into usable fuel for its sustenance and reproduction," Spock says at last, and he tries to not laugh as the Vulcan begins rummaging through the stack of PADDs on the research table, flinging the irrelevant ones haphazardly into a pile underneath. "No one-celled organism should be able to absorb and convert fuel without physically engulfing it, and yet this was obviously feeding off our nervous energy long before we would have been absorbed through its outer membrane."

He yawns, and hopes Jim and Scotty will be awake and back on duty soon so that he can sleep too, sometime this week. Then he waves a hand, wanting to get back to the (now not-botched, thanks very much) acetycholine test results. "So it's a galactic energy-sucking leech-amoeba then. But one thing at a time, Spock, for the love of Pete."

"I would suggest we come up with a more scientifically precise name for the organism before we present this data to the Board of Life Sciences on Vulcan, Doctor." And darned if the Vulcan isn't smirking at him, with his eyes of course, but their twinkling is obvious enough that any full Vulcan would have died of horror on the spot.

He would stick his tongue out at the Vulcan except even he thinks that's a little juvenile. Maturity uses hand gestures, of course.

Spock does not roll his eyes at the crudity, but the patiently longsuffering look he gets is just as good a reaction. He grins and bends back over the tests Spock performed regarding the reproductive processes of the organism. "Can you imagine what would have happened if there had been two of those things?" he asks conversationally, shuddering at the very thought, though he isn't really sure why he's asking such speculation of a Vulcan.

"I find myself unwilling to contemplate it, Doctor. I am far more interested in your postulations about the organism's systemic structure being so vastly different from what we know of eukaryotes. Our primary hypothesis to research must be: can this creature, by definition, be classified as one such eukaryote, according to what we know of single-celled organisms?"

"Not by our classifications, no. It had a nucleus all right, the proper chromosome combinations, protective membrane, organelles…everything a eukaryote has, but then there is all this extra data here," he punches a series of tests into view on the PADD, and they both bend over it, heads almost touching, "that indicate a complex nervous system."

"A nervous system, but no central processing unit."

"Nerves, synapses, ganglia, everything – but no brain to process and define the impulses," he finishes, and they both raise identical eyebrows at each other.

Spock looks back down at the PADD, eyebrows drawn, and opens his mouth.

"Don't even say it's 'fascinating,' Spock, or so help me I'll make you babysit the Captain when those withdrawal symptoms start after he wakes up," he warns, and means it completely.

Spock spares him an indifferent glance, and it's an empty threat anyhow because they both know he will hover like a worried mother over the captain regardless, and the Vulcan pushes a secondary PADD toward him. "Have you reviewed the individual chromosomes and how the genetic code differs from what we are accustomed to seeing in such organisms?"

"Yeah, and I've got a theory about that, Spock," he begins, scribbling out strings of DNA sequence beside the test results. Spock bends over the table, watching his swiftly-moving stylus with complete, almost unnervingly so, attention. "It might just be that –"

He never finishes, because he hears a dull thud behind him, and they both turn to see that the fearless captain of the Enterprise has just walked straight into the wall.

Spock's lips twitch suspiciously un-Vulcanly, as the still-groggy James Kirk glares at the spotless durasteel and aims a retaliatory – and quite wobbly – kick at its pristine expanse before turning to eye both his friends suspiciously. And drunkenly, because the stimulants are nearly out of his system now and he's about to crash. Hard.

"Nice to see you two working together for a change, without being threatened," Kirk mutters, rubbing his eyes with both sets of knuckles and weaving on his feet. "Been listening to you for ten minutes," he adds, all the while beaming hazily in their general direction.

Aghast, they trade glances, and he tries not to laugh at Spock's horrified expression.

"Don't trust what you hear under the influence of those stims, Jim boy," he drawls, and tosses the stylus down on the table. "All you heard was Spock givin' me the run-around because he survived that space amoeba and I wouldn't've."

"And you no doubt overheard Dr. McCoy's incessant drone regarding my one test out of thirty-six which did not meet his exact specifications. He was growing to be quite a minor annoyance." Spock adds, and Jim is too far gone to do more than blink suspiciously at the innocent tone.

"Minor annoyance!"

"I would have said major, Doctor, but unfortunately your limited human scope in these areas is barely worth recognizing as more than a minor irritation."

"I'll show you irritation, the next time you're in here for a physical," he threatens with a feral smirk, and imitates a hypospray depressing directly into the Vulcan-sensitive palm of the hand.

The Captain's head is bobbing back and forth, trying to follow the dialogue like a cat trying to catch a table-tennis ball, but finally he gives up the battle for both his comprehension and his consciousness, and passes out neatly into their combined arms.

"That was a close one," he grunts as they shove their fearless leader back into the bed he vacated minutes before, and if Spock's eyebrows grin at him over Jim's head the hobgoblin definitely won't ever admit to doing it.

Nobody would ever believe him, anyway; everyone knows he and Spock repel each other like matter and antimatter, complete with the usual explosions.

They both conveniently ignore the scientific fact that opposites attract.