Author's Note: Here's a shoutout to my first three reviewers, Lyra Vega, kathrynw221291, and droopydog! You lot are amazing, and this chapter is dedicated to you guys.
Explanations
For all the time he regularly spends there, it is nevertheless a documented, well-known fact that Jim Kirk loathes sickbay. It is, conversely, an almost unknown fact as to why this is so, and Jim likes it that way, unknown, because some secrets are better off kept to yourself. He masks his unease at the shots and the sterilized instruments by putting on an air of long suffering (Bones tells him it makes him look like a lost Beagle) and by telling a slew of jokes to everyone present.
(Most people think he dislikes it just to irritate Bones, but it is so much more complicated than a game between friends. Bones knows, though. Sometimes when he's waiting there, on the edge of the bed with its crisp white sheets and he's turning his communicator over and over in his hands, Jim thinks he sees him glance his way. Sometimes his usually quick hands pause over a painful gash for a moment, and then he returns to cleaning it, but just a little bit gentler than before. Sometimes he sees an expression in his friend's eyes that says he understands that his protestations against treatment run a little deeper than a desire to needle his best friend. But Bones never asks him, never demands an explanation in his usual gruff way, and Jim is more grateful than words can describe.)
However, his utter hatred of the entire place still does not render him without need of its services, and so Sickbay is exactly where he gets dragged when he's broken another rib or strained his wrist or done whatever it is this time that has prompted Bones to drag him bodily through the halls and make him sit on one of those goddamn white beds. A few times Bones has even resorted to a soporific hypospray, that cheating bastard. Still, Bones is his best friend- a wry man with surgeon's hands, a hint of a beard, and a perpetual scowl, who underneath the rough exterior has a heart of gold. (Not that he won't deny it.) Bones was the only one at the academy who didn't give a damn who his father had been and also wouldn't put up with his shit. He tells it like it is and doesn't let him down easy when the truth is hard, but Bones's advice is always worth the good-natured sting that accompanies it, and Jim is a better Captain for listening. He values Bone's friendship more than almost anything in the world...
but he still fucking hates Sickbay.
And so, (before the events of That Night) exactly three months and nine days ago, after diplomatic efforts with the latest alien species were established after a grueling 72 hour meeting (the natives talked extremely slowly and had horrifying table manners), when he gets back to the Enterprise he refuses to leave the bridge and report to Sickbay. Arguing with Bones, he points out that if he skips the shift he agreed to work, one of the lead Gamma shift command track will be woken up early to take his shift because half of the Beta shift personnel have come down with Levodian flu, so he'll deprive that person of sleep and since Jim's already been awake for 70.3 hours, two more can't possibly hurt and isn't the sickbay pretty full already? His argument, while sound in theory, fails dismally when Kirk fails to muffle a yawn in the middle of it. And yet he still wins when in a strange sort of voice , McCoy, after five minutes of impassioned shouting, stops midsentence, face still flushed, and backs down. Kirk is so bitterly tired he doesn't notice the (rightfully terrifying) look in one Leonard McCoy's eyes. Pavel does though, and his thin shoulders tremble with the lightest of shivers before he turns in his chair and winks at Nyota across the Bridge. It seems, Pavel thinks gleefully to himself, that the good doctor is employing a new strategy.
"All right, Jim. Finish the shift, and then get some sleep," says the thing that has obviously taken over McCoy's brain (because when has he ever agreed to what Jim just proposed?) and the thing that was once Bones but now might secretly be an alien leaves the bridge and leaves Kirk to his command. Kirk sits down in the straight-backed chair and for eighteen truly impressive minutes, he manages to complete ten of the twelve holo files that require his signature, record his Captain's log (it doesn't count as off-topic if he happens to mention the scary, stunning spectacle that was the leader from the other planet slurping up something that looked like chunky gravy with its sucker-tentacle-thing, right?), and get started on the paperwork (well, the files are all on his PADD so technically they aren't paper but oh Gods now he's started arguing with himself and he wants to sleep more than anything in the world and why is Spock staring at him? He's talking to himself quietly.) For more than a quarter of an hour, Jim Kirk arduously maintains a state of semi-efficient, exhausted half-consciousness.
It doesn't last long.
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