Series: Moments in Time
Characters: McCoy, Kirk, Spock
Rating: K+
Warnings/Spoilers: Return to Tomorrow
Summary: The captain of the Enterprise does not want to be bothered tonight. Fortunately for him, his direct subordinates never have been the best at taking that particular hint.
A/N: I could never remember this episode's title, so for people who don't want to Memory Alpha it – so in a very small nutshell it's the one with the glowing ball things that held an alien race's consciousness, who wanted to borrow the Enterprise's officers' bodies to build robot bodies, only to then decide they didn't want to give back Spock's body so Kirk had McCoy poison him. That one.

It was not an unusual thing for the Enterprise's chief medical officer to track down the captain after a tiring mission for one reason or another, usually to discuss the possible psychological ramification on the crew or to ensure that the man didn't have some undisclosed trauma he'd been carefully hiding. Kirk was usually tolerant enough of his overbearing medical concern, knowing it was born of compassion, and half the time they both needed the distraction from a tragic or traumatic away mission. The game was a familiar one, one which neither really played to win so much as to merely to pass the time.

So it was very unusual, very unusual indeed, for Doctor McCoy to find that he'd been locked out of the captain's quarters by a very specific, very high-level security code – obviously designed specifically to keep out not just him but Spock as well, given that they could override nearly every security clearance aboard ship with one or two exceptions (for extremely highly classified information).

"Not funny, Jim!" he called through the intercom, pounding on the door in irritation. A passing hydroponics lieutenant glanced his direction on her way to the turbolift, and then hastily scuttled around the corner at the look of death she received. "Don't make me bust this door down!"

The intercom finally crackled, the static itself almost snapping with irritation. "Your services are not needed tonight, Doctor. Please stop making a scene in the corridors and see to your patients in Sickbay."

"Not needed, my eye," he muttered, scowling at the blinking red light that was denying him entrance. It hadn't taken a licensed psychologist to figure out something was wrong, and what that something was, given the horrific events of the day – he still shuddered thinking about them himself – and if he hadn't had his hands full making sure Spock and Christine's brainwave scans were coming back normal he'd have been here long before now.

Well, two could play at this game. He wheeled about and charged through the adjoining door into the First Officer's quarters, vowing to apologize later for the invasion of Spock's privacy, and marched straight through the stiflingly hot room into the shared bathroom between the two cabins.

Triggered by the motion sensor, the door to the captain's cabin slid open at his approach, to an exclamation of outrage from the desk across the room.

"Bones, what the devil do you think you're doing?"

"Exercisin' my right as ship's chief medical officer to override a security lock you have no business putting on your door for anything less than a Priority One call with the admiralty, Captain," he retorted. "Regulations on the books for abuse of authority, aren't there?"

"And trespassing in Spock's room to get to mine isn't?"

"We're talking about you, not me."

"We are not talking at all, Doctor. Now, if you will excuse me." The desk chair whipped back toward the computer monitor, Kirk's angered eyes darting to the screens before him.

McCoy took the seat across the desk and waited.

Nervous typing filled the room for a full two minutes before a hand slammed down on the power button with enough force to set the wall artwork rattling in their magnetic frames. "What do you want, McCoy?" the captain finally exploded, gesticulating wildly with the stylus he'd been using to follow along on a data-padd corresponding to his typing. "Did you come to tell me a great big I-told-you-so? Because you were right, the risks were high – too high." His eyes darkened, anger and grief filling their depths. "Far too high. I should never have allowed any of it to happen."

McCoy regarded him for a moment, arms crossed. "You done?" he inquired calmly.

Kirk glared at him.

"Because no, that's not why I'm here; but since you mention it, I did tell you so, Captain. And you made a command decision despite the danger anyway – which everyone in the room unanimously backed you up on. So shove your pity party, sir."

Kirk's face was rapidly turning the color of a Security uniform.

"The mission had risks – and we all knew those risks when we began it. You sitting in here wallowing about the fact that you gave the hardest command order of your life so far isn't helping anyone, Jim."

The stylus fell from nerveless fingers. "How did you –"

"You say more than you intend to when you're under the good drugs, Jim – you really think I haven't heard you at some point in Sickbay, saying what one of your worst fears is as Captain?"

Kirk swallowed hard, slumping back in his chair. "I never really knew if I could give the order like that, if necessary. To order someone's death in cold blood to save a mission –"

"Not just anyone's, Jim."

"Even worse, Bones. What kind of man does that make me, that I could do something like that, and not even blink until now, after the fact?"

McCoy shrugged. "Makes you a darn good captain; there's a reason you're in command of this particular ship. And in this case, that's all that mattered."

"We were lucky this time."

"Maybe. But Spock would tell you there's no such thing, y'know."

Kirk smiled slightly. "We make our own luck?"

"Something like that."

"I appreciate the effort, Doctor. Now why are you really here?"

Not the subtlest change of subject, but if that's how he wanted to play it, McCoy could play along for now. "Just wanted to check on you, Captain. And tell you that Nurse Chapel and Spock both are showing perfectly normal brainwave and neural scans. No signs of any lingering mental anomalies or trauma from shared headspace. Spock even said he appreciated the fact that her mind is 'unusually ordered, for a human.'

"Quite the compliment."

"It is indeed." McCoy grinned evilly. "I seem to remember him describing yours as 'a study in unpredictable chaos,' don't I?"

The door to the bathroom opened again behind them.

"Captain, I find it highly illogical that you would see fit to use such a high security code in order to preclude access to your cabin, when it is perfectly accessible through – I see Doctor McCoy has already made use of the detour through my own living quarters. My apologies for interrupting."

"And mine for trespassing, Mr. Spock. I didn't touch anything, I promise," he replied, eyes twinkling at the captain's disgruntled expression.

Spock looked slightly mollified. "You had no alternative, Doctor; the intrusion was understandable."

"There was a reason for that code, gentlemen! Obviously, I –"

"Captain." Spock's patient sigh was audible even over the spluttering over being interrupted. "We are both aware you carry a Level Four computer programming certificate; it would have been far easier, and far more efficient, to simply disappear into the depths of the ship and wipe your bio-signature from the Enterprise's scanners."

"Maybe I thought I shouldn't have to disappear into the darkest corners of the ship in order to get a little privacy, gentlemen!"

"Funny, isn't he," McCoy drawled, leaning back in his chair.

"I do not comprehend Terran humor. However, if your meaning is that he should know better, then I concur, Doctor."

"I am sitting. Right. Here."

"So, that was a nasty little trick you played, Spock, making us all think your brain was kablooey and we had to poison your body."

"I assure you, Doctor, I was no more pleased about Sargon's plan than you; however, it was necessary." An eyebrow shrug. "Its implementation was unpleasant, for nearly every involved party. But then, as the captain said – we were aware of such risks when we embarked upon the mission, and we chose to undertake it despite them. To have a negative reaction to any command decisions based upon those risks would then be highly illogical."

"Oh, very highly, Commander." McCoy toasted him with the hypospray cartridge of headache reliever he was retrieving from the pocket of his scrubs. "Wouldn't it also be highly illogical to be second-guessing those command decisions over and over again when nothing can be done about them, Mr. Spock?"

"Naturally, Doctor. A quite foolhardy endeavor, and an unnecessary one, as no one else aboard certainly has need to do so."

"That's what I thought, Mr. Spock."

"I am alarmed to say that we agree, Doctor."

McCoy neatly dodged a flying stylus. "I can't even," the captain growled and stalked out of the cabin into the corridor, padd and snatched hypospray in hand.

"Think we pushed him too far?"

"Negative, Doctor. I would not be surprised to find him waiting outside the door for us to follow him."

"Well, we can't be predictable all the time, now can we? Where's that darn chess set of his…"

That same hydroponics lieutenant, now coming back from dinner at Officers' Mess, wondered why the captain was sitting in the corridor outside his own cabin door, calmly reading a book on his padd and grinning at something only he could hear.