Leonard awoke to a small noise from the living room, estimating that it must be well past midnight. He hadn't been in a very deep sleep, even though after hardly having slept the night before he knew he should have been. Alas, his on-call habits had taken over, and he roused easily knowing that he had a patient only a few meters away in the other room. The readouts on Leonard's bracelet showed that Jim was fine and everything was within normal range, but he was definitely awake and moving around.

He lay in silence for a few minutes, hoping the kid would go back to bed. Jim had slept some while he was at the hospital all day, but he hadn't hit REM sleep for more than a few minutes. Hospitals were too noisy and busy for most patients to really get any rest, which was one reason Leonard avoided admitting them if at all possible. Forgetting surgery and drugs, the best healer out there in the universe was still a good, deep sleep. For those with human physiology, anyway.

Ten minutes passed. From the light creeping under the doorway, Leonard knew that Jim was still up.

Dammit. Time to go scold a brat.

He padded softly to the door and peeked out. Jim was still in regulation pajamas, wrapped up in one of the blankets from the couch. He sat slumped at the computer terminal, probably checking up on the lessons he'd missed that day and starting the assigned homework.

"Kid." he called. "You're supposed to be asleep."

Jim jumped, startled, then looked guilty.

"Sorry Bones." he answered softly. "Didn't mean to wake you up."

"S'fine." Leonard sidled over, shut off the terminal. "But go back to sleep. You have all weekend for homework."

"I know," Jim pulled the blanket closer around himself. "I slept for a while, but I woke up and now my brain won't shut off."

"I know the feelin', kid, but you can't stay up all night."

"I slept at the hospital all day, I'll be fine."

"You barely entered stage 2, and that's not good enough. Go lay down and count backwards from a million."

"I can't!" Jim burst out in frustration. "I've been starting at the chrono for an hour and a half. Don't you think I haven't tried?"

"Well staring at a lighted screen will trick your brain into thinking it's daytime, and screw up your circadian rhythm." Leonard headed toward the replicator. "You'll fuck up your sleep cycle and you'll suffer for it on Monday morning."

"Ya think I don't know that?" Jim stood, flopped into one of the recliners in despair. "Look, this is just... a thing. It happens after hospital stays, I can't wind down for more than a couple hours at a time. It's fucking annoying, but 'll be back to normal in a week."

Leonard punched up a small glass of chocolate milk in the replicator, modified to contain high levels of tryptophan and melatonin. Ah, it was good to be a grad student. He'd gotten permission to program in a few extra things the first week they'd stayed here. This was one of his favorite things for intermittent insomnia; the melatonin would induce sleep, the tryptophan would convert to serotonin within a few hours and help stabilize sleep patterns and mood. Best of all, neither of the two were drugs.

"Drink this, and then we'll shut your brain off." He handed the little glass to Jim, who squinted at it with suspicion. "No drugs, cross my heart. Drink it."

"I thought you were supposed to drink warm milk for sleeping, not chocolate milk." Jim sipped a little, then downed the whole six ounces quickly. Leonard took the glass back to the sink.

"That's a myth, and warm milk tastes nasty anyway."

"It really does. How do you think you're going to shut my brain off?"

"I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, in case you haven't figured that out." Leonard grabbed the remaining blanket from the couch and wrapped it around himself. "Scoot, kid."

Jim scrunched over, and Leonard plopped into the recliner with him. They both fit in fairly easily. Good to be a grad student, indeed.

"I'm not drunk enough to snuggle with you, Bones."

"Shut it. You're going to fall asleep in about ten minutes, so get cozy." Leonard reached down the side of the chair, feeling under the bottom edge until he found the lever he was looking for. The chair tipped backward when he found it, and Jim gasped in surprise. It rocked easily forward again with their combined weight.

"Don't get your hopes up." Jim squirmed a little, found a comfortable position. Leonard reclined the chair back some, so that they were halfway lying down.

"I don't need hopes, I have absolute certainty." Leonard put one foot down on the floor, to keep the chair rocking in a steady motion.

"Pfft."

"Don't pfft me. I'll even make a bet. If I win, you stay on that couch all day tomorrow without whining."

"And if I win?"

"If you win, we'll go out and get waffles at lunchtime."

"Fine, you're on. Ten minutes."

"Ten minutes." Leonard craned his head to look at the glowing chrono. "Computer, lights off. You better be prepared to keep your mouth shut for the next 24 hours, brat."

"Whatever, this is not going to work."

"Of course it will. People have been rocking babies to sleep for thousands of years, and they don't do it for fun, they do it because it works."

"I'm not a newborn."

"So? We stop rocking because they get too big, not because it stops working."

"Whatever, this is stupid."

"Your face is stupid."

"My face is gorgeous."

"You just keep on tellin' yourself that."

"Maybe I will."

Leonard took Jim's lack of a sufficiently witty retort as an indicator that his brain was, in fact, starting to slow down, in spite of the kid's earlier protest. There was silence for a couple of minutes, during which he could practically hear his reluctant new patient fighting sleep.

"Bonesss?"

"Hmmm?"

"The fuck did you do to me?"

Jim's speech was a little sloppy, as if he were forcing the words out through a haze. Which, in fact, he probably was. Leonard smiled smugly in the darkness.

"Just worked a little science on ya, kid. No worries."

Leonard listened as Jim's breath slowed and evened out, keeping the chair rocking steadily until he was sure he'd achieved stage two sleep. It was only then that he saw the flaw in his master plan; he couldn't get up from the chair without the possibility of waking Jim.

Crap.

His back wasn't going to thank him for this in the morning, but he would have to stay here. At least they would both get some sleep this way. On the bright side, studies had long proven that people slept longer and more deeply with another person than alone. Leonard called softly for the computer to turn off all the alarms and raise the apartment's temperature by a few degrees, then he let himself drift off.

He woke up again with sunlight shining in his face, Jim still dozing next to him in the chair. The chrono on the wall said that it was past nine hundred. Good lord, they both must have been exhausted. Leonard looked at the readout on his bracelet: everything normal, but Jim's oxygen saturation was lower than he wanted it to be. He scrunched over as best he could and wriggled out of the chair, letting Jim roll into the middle in a burrito of blankets.

He had enough hypos of tri-ox to last the weekend, which should cover Jim's needs. He pulled one out of the bag, released the safety and pulled the trigger gently against the exposed neck. Jim hummed softly but didn't wake, and Leonard left him there to sleep until he woke up on his own. It was past time for breakfast, so he dialed up coffee and eggs for himself and ate quickly before hitting the shower.

"How the fuck did you do that?" was the greeting he received upon exiting his room, now dressed in 'fleet sweats. Jim was still in the recliner, bundled up with a PADD in his hands.

"Like I said, being rocked puts people to sleep." Leonard dialed up another cup of coffee, and then one for Jim, as he spoke. "It isn't an old wives' tale or an urban legend, the motion actually alters your brain waves into a more regular pattern. Been well known for a few hundred years."

Jim just stared at him skeptically.

"Ok," he admitted, handing one of the coffees to Jim, "the chocolate milk might have been tainted. But it's drug free, non habit forming. Setting two-two-oh-nine. You can have a glass anytime you can't fall asleep."

"... what if I'm drunk?"

"Makes no difference." Leonard waved a hand absently. "There's nothing in it to interfere with the alcohol, although if you're drunk enough to puke I would advise against it, since you might suffocate."

"...right."

"You eaten anything yet?"

"No, I haven't been able to escape your blanket prison."

Leonard leaned back over the replicator and called up a plate of strawberry pancakes that he knew Jim liked. He handed the plate over, surreptitiously confiscating the PADD. While Jim ate, he went over to the terminal to check his messages. Admiral Marcus wanted a report detailing every nuance of Grady Ross Memorial's mistakes, including possible long-term repercussions on Jim's health.

Leonard would be only too happy to oblige, of course. The truth was that Grady Ross's EMTs had no way of knowing about Jim's allergies, even though they should have easily identified anaphylaxis and responded accordingly with epinephrine. Instead, they'd pumped him full of drugs he was allergic to, stopped his heart, then restarted it and let him spend a whole night strapped to a bed in a moderate state of allergic shock.

If the ER doctors had taken the kid's fingerprint they could have called up his (admittedly censored) medical records and seen the same short history and list of allergies that Leonard had been looking at yesterday. Even if, after that, they still hadn't recognized the initial allergic reaction, they could have avoided doing any further damage by putting him on a regular saline drip and contacting Starfleet. First do no harm, assholes. Even though Jim hadn't had ID on him, any idiot could recognize the casual cadet blacks he'd been wearing at the time.

Idiots, all of them. But speaking of Jim's medical records...

"Jim, we gotta talk."

"Damn it."

"Yeah, yeah," Leonard grumbled. Jim had made the pancakes disappear quickly and struggled out of the blankets to return the plate to the replicator. It would be dismantled on a molecular level and re-formed from new matter when more food was called for. He then flopped down onto the couch with a dramatic moan.

"Ok," he said finally. "What are we talking about?"

Leonard sat on the coffee table, facing Jim. "Pike seems to think there's some deep dark shit in your medical files."

"Mmm-hmmm."

"And since I've been officially ordered to be your doctor, I can't avoid reading your files."

"Mmm-hmmm."

"And I know you don't want me reading them, but if it makes you feel any better I've probably already guessed a lot of it based on your behavior and some stuff from the full tricorder scan I took last night."

Jim squinted at him, looking irritated. "Like, guessed what?"

Leonard raised an eyebrow at him, in challenge. "You really want to do this?"

"Do your worst," the kid replied, "You're going to see it all anyway."

"Fine." Leonard crossed his arms. "You're afraid of being alone. You probably get drunk so you can forget stuff, get in fights so you can feel like you're in control, and have sex because you like being touched. But of course, you can't just ask some girl at a bar to cuddle with you, because that would be an offense to your masculinity. At the same time you're afraid of getting attached to anyone, so you never find yourself in long-term relationships, and therefore anonymous sex remains your only option for prolonged physical contact with another person. How'm I doin' so far?"

Jim just moaned and covered his face with a throw pillow.

"You probably like to be touched because you didn't get enough physical affection from your parents when you were little, and that also explains the electronic cigarette we found in your jacket yesterday. Oral fixation can be a symptom of emotional neglect. You don't do drugs, even though your type usually does, because that would compromise your ability to remain in control of the situation and you can't stand to not be in control. I'll go ahead and guess domestic abuse, at the hands of someone other than your parents."

Jim didn't move or respond at all.

"You've also got some uncool stuff going on with your bone density, which could indicate serious disease, but I think that's unlikely since you haven't got any other long-term effects or immune indicators. You probably had a period of near-starvation sometime in the last ten years. That puts you at risk for eating disorders and bone fractures."

The silence hung in the air between them for several uncomfortable moments, but Leonard couldn't back out now. He didn't have anything reassuring to say about the contents of Jim's file, however...

"You understand that your bone density is fixable, right?" he reached out, tugged at the sleeve of Jim's sweats.

A muffled "No." came from under the throw pillow.

"It is. I can't make you, but if you'd put up with treatment it would probably save you a lot of broken bones in the future, and it'll save you from being treated for osteoporosis when you're old. Surely somebody has talked to you about this before."

Jim's face emerged from under the pillow, red with embarrassment.

"I don't want to be stuck in one of those giant osteo-tubes, and a regular bone knitter sucks enough without being subjected to a full body—"

"Nah, kid." Leonard waved the thought away with one hand, sliding off the table to sit on the floor next to the couch so that he was eye level with Jim. "You're young enough that your bones can still recover on their own. From your numbers, a monthly injection of cal-six with vitamin D would put you back on track within a year. Should'a been done already."

Jim stared at the ceiling. "Injections." he said.

"Once a month. You'd get a bone density scan in a year, just to make sure you're within a normal range. No drugs, no bone knitter cubicles, no down time."

Jim turned onto his side on the couch, facing Leonard. He wasn't exactly opening up, but at least he was talking, which was an improvement. Even so, this was unfamiliar territory for both of them, and Leonard wasn't sure how far he could press.

"You can think about it and we'll talk about it again sometime. It's not urgent, you won't be in any real danger for years."

Jim nodded thoughtfully, but didn't say anything. Damn, this was tricky. Leonard was willing to read the file and keep his professional opinions to himself—for a while. At some point they would have to talk about it, and every day they put it off increased the likelihood of a serious meltdown. The two didn't disagree often, beyond trivial things, but Leonard already knew that both of them had anger management problems.

Maybe the best thing he could do here, since Jim needed to be in control, was to give him control. Or at least the illusion of it, since at the end of the day neither of them had any choice anymore. Starfleet owned their asses.

"Why don't you go ahead and tell me what the worst thing in those files is, and then it'll be over with before I even start reading. Like ripping off a band-aid."

Jim pressed his lips together in thought. "The worst thing is debatable. Depends on which therapist you ask."

That was possibly the most perfect setup Leonard had ever heard.

"I ain't askin' a damn therapist, I'm askin' you." He put one hand firmly on Jim's forearm, which was squeezing the throw pillow to his chest. "This is your file. What do you think is the worst thing in there?"

Jim's arms tightened perceptibly around the pillow. Leonard didn't add any more pressure, but also didn't remove his hand.

And then Jim dropped the last bombshell he'd ever expected to land:

"I was on Tarsus IV."

For a second Leonard's whole consciousness zeroed in on those five words, until he realized that Jim was actually shaking him.

"Jesus fuck," he heard himself say.

"It's okay to react, Bones," Jim was saying, mock-seriously. "You're in a safe place."

"Shit," he cursed, letting go of Jim's arm. "Sorry. That uh, wasn't what I expected you to say."

"What were you expecting?"

"Hell, I don't know." Leonard stood up. He definitely needed a drink. "The way Pike talked, maybe a couple of years in a juvie offenders camp or something. Fuck." He found bourbon in one of the cabinets, poured a healthy measure out into a glass and downed it.

"Well it was meant to be punishment, so you were on the right track."

"Yeah, he said your mom had you sent away because you were wild. He didn't say where." Shit.

"I was a trainwreck, but I came back a lot worse."

"Ok." Leonard poured a full glass of bourbon, then poured a second one and brought it back to Jim. "We might need this. Any particular reason you were a trainwreck?"

"A few reasons. Don't want to talk about it." Jim threw back half the glass of bourbon. He could have grown up to be an accomplished alcoholic, if he had wanted to. "Let's just say I stopped talking for two years, set a barn on fire and drove my dad's antique car off a cliff."

"And I'm sure all of those things seemed like good ideas at the time."

"Exactly."

"All right. I'm going to go sit over there with my PADD and read your files and write some reports." Leonard dragged the blankets out of the recliner and threw them over Jim again, who flapped around in frustration before getting them organized. "You do some homework, or watch tv, and rest, for fuck's sake. If you decide you do want to talk about it, I'll be here all day."

"Ok, just..." Jim stopped.

"Just what?"

"Later. In a couple of hours." He stopped again, hugging that same pillow to his chest. "I might have a panic attack. Just don't make a thing out of it, ok? It'll be fine."

Leonard couldn't think of any answer except "Ok," and they both settled in to their respective tasks.