"Lost your pancakes?"

Jim nodded weakly, but otherwise refrained from moving out of his spot on the floor of his bathroom. It was uncomfortable and hard, but blessedly cool and dark. Bones was hovering in the doorway that led back to Jim's bedroom. Jim kept his eyes squeezed shut, in anticipation of the light coming on so Bones could inspect him, but it didn't happen.

So there he lay, curled in a ball, breathing in for a count of five and out for a count of five. Not that it made a difference, since he'd been doing it on and off for the last two hours. At least it kept him from hyperventilating, but it didn't seem to calm the anxiety whatsoever. Bones had seen his records. He felt weak and nauseated still. It was well past lunchtime now, but Jim doubted if he would eat anything for the rest of the day.

This hadn't happened in years, literally. There had been a time, right after Tarsus IV, when it had been a weekly occurrence. Now he was a grown-up, dammit, and he had gotten a grip on himself. Right? Fuck, but Bones read his file, including the classified parts. Shit, shit shit. Tarsus IV. Frank. Suicide. Bulemia. Self-harm. God, it was fucked up. Clearly Starfleet thought he was fit, but Bones didn't need to deal with that kind of baggage.

Breathe. A few minutes went by, and Jim heard movement again in the doorway. Something ice cold and damp landed on the side of his head and he jerked in surprise.

"Listen," came Bones's voice, low and close to his face. Jim opened his eyes, made out the doctor's shape kneeling over him in the darkness that was still too bright. "I'm not making a thing out of it, but you had a serious cardiac event less than 48 hours ago. I need your heart rate to slow down soon, or you're going to wind up back at the hospital."

Now that Bones mentioned it, Jim became dimly aware of an urgent beeping coming from far away. The monitor bracelet's alarm was going off, but Bones must have left it in the other room. It would have been too loud in here. He opened his mouth to answer, but couldn't articulate anything intelligent so he shut it again. Bones was shushing him anyway.

"Don't talk, just keep breathing. Okay if I touch you?" Jim nodded, and then Bones was dragging him upright, stripping off his shirt. "We're gonna scoot over," he whispered, "but you don't worry 'bout anything but breathin', understand? You're doin' it just right, and that's your only job."

Jim did as he was told, and went where Bones pushed him. Fuck, Bones had read his files. He wanted to resist, out of embarrassment at the whole situation, but he knew from experience that attempting to do or say anything at this point would make things worse. He could only hope to stave off full blown panic by focusing carefully inward, because he did not want to wind up a shaking, sobbing mess in front of his roommate.

Jim yelped loudly when a spray of cold water came down on him, but Bones admonished him to keep breathing and so he did. He realized that Bones had manhandled him into the shower, that he was sitting there with his knees drawn up and his head between them, cool water falling gently over his head and bare shoulders. He breathed.

It seemed like a long time before his heart stopped pounding in his chest. It probably wasn't as long as he thought it was; he knew his sense of time skewed when this happened. He shifted, pressed his hands over his face, and finally stopped counting to see if he could breathe normally. He realized the water pouring down on him wasn't actually cold, it was lukewarm and comfortable. He must have been overheated for it to have felt so cold when it first started.

Jim pushed his wet hair back from his face and finally opened his eyes. Fuck. Bones was sitting there with him, cross legged, soaking wet. Fucking Bones was sitting there with him. In the floor of the shower stall in Jim's bathroom. In the dark. In sopping wet sweats.

"Better?" he drawled softly, gripping Jim's wrist and peering at the numbers flashing across the bracelet. Jim muttered an apology, but Bones quickly cut him off. "Don't be so dramatic, on the Richter Scale of panic attacks that was barely a three. I'm hardly impressed." Jim nodded dumbly. He moved to get up, but Bones tightened the grip around his wrist. "Just wait a few minutes. If you get dizzy and fall in here you could hurt yourself, everything is tile."

Fine, whatever. Jim sat obediently while Bones turned the water off and together they dripped dry for a few minutes. Glad that the episode hadn't turned into anything worse, Jim could feel his embarrassment fading. This kind of thing was rare enough these days that he didn't have to worry about it. Bones reading his files had been a powerful trigger, but now he found himself more annoyed than anything. He was wet and chafing, getting a little chilled, and he could feel the post-adrenaline headache beginning.

Bones finally stood up and squeezed out of the shower, throwing a towel back over Jim and ordering him to dry off and get dressed. Jim could hear him squelching across to the living room in his soaked sweats, and repressed a chuckle. He climbed out carefully, wary of vertigo, stripped his own sweats off and dried quickly. He wrestled himself into clean underwear and pajamas, already knowing that Bones wasn't going to let him out of the apartment.

Bones was already dried and dressed in the kitchenette when Jim slunk through his bedroom door. He pointed wordlessly at the couch and Jim threw himself at the blanket nest as theatrically as he could. His muscles felt weak and rubbery, and the ache in his head was steadily increasing. He tried not to flinch at a slight sting and hiss at the side of his neck, but rolled over to scowl at Bones, who was tossing one of the tri-ox hypos in the trash. He pressed a mug of something warm into Jim's hands.

Jim squinted at the golden liquid with suscipcion."What the hell is this, Bones?"

"Chicken broth, genius. It's hot, and you need to be hydrated but you don't need any caffeine."

Not to mention that it probably had a ton of calories. Yeah, Bones thought he was so smooth, but Jim was onto him. Sly bastard. Jim settled against the arm of the couch, just noticing that all the lights were off and the only illumination was from the sun shining through the windows. And Bones's monitor bracelet was lying on the table, because the doctor had known better than to take the noisy thing into the bathroom with Jim.

Ok fine, so Bones knew stuff about panic disorder and sensitivity to light and sound, big fucking deal.

Jim took a sip of the broth, which was pretty good, goddammit.

Bones was leaning over him again, pressing warm fingers to his forehead and throat.

"You feel any pain or pressure in your chest?"

Jim shook his head.

"Headache." Not a question.

"Shit, Bones, how do you even know that?" Jim almost moaned in frustration. Maybe Bones was a closet telepath.

"You're squinting at the broth, dumbass. Give me your left hand."

"No."

"I'm not going to stick you with anything, just give it here."

Jim stuck his hand out, trying to resent it as much as possible. He knew this was his moody teenager self coming out because he was tired and grouchy, but he was too wrung out to be an adult right now. Bones sighed in annoyance and flopped onto the couch next to Jim, dragging him closer and practically appropriating his whole left arm. Jim squinted studiously into his mug of broth.

"Kid. I realize I would have been your last choice, because who the fuck wants to live with their doctor?" he pinched Jim's hand, pressing into the soft flesh at the base of the thumb with almost bruising force. "But we're stuck like this, and I need you to trust that I'm not gonna do anything that's not strictly necessary, and I'm not gonna do anything you tell me not to do. In exchange, I will trust that you aren't being an asshole on purpose."

Fucking great, Mr. Psychiatrist here had already read the bits about Jim being restrained with a feeding tube after Tarsus IV. Hey, it wasn't his fault they'd wanted to feed him nasty nutritionally complete mush. Completely unappetizing, and to this day he maintained that having a feeding tube forced upon him had been un-called-for. It wasn't the original source of Jim's hatred of doctors, but it was definitely a contributing factor.

"Bullshit, you've already done plenty of stuff that wasn't strictly necessary." Jim wanted to yank his hand away, but frankly he didn't have much real anger behind his words. And he was kind of curious about what Bones was trying to accomplish with the thumb massage.

"Like what?"

"Like the laughing gas. The thing with the tape on my arms."

"Those were necessary. I did take oaths, you know, and I stick by them, unlike some people."

"Right, right, first do no harm."

"Actually, common misconception. The Hippocratic Oath never says that. Give me your other hand." Jim obeyed, setting the now-cold broth aside. Bones gripped his right hand in the same place, applying pressure between his thumb and palm. "What I actually swore was, with regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage."

"The best diet?" Jim raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, you're gonna have to lay off the beer and pizza. Sorry."

"Damn it!"

"That's not to say I've never... interpreted the rules loosely when it suited me, but my first concern, once a patient is out of mortal danger, is that the patient is no longer in pain or distress. That means the laughing gas was very strictly necessary."

Jim raised an eyebrow. "Interpreted loosely, you say?"

Bones looked away, letting go of his hand. "I'll tell you 'bout it sometime, when I'm drunk enough. Point is, first do no harm, second ease suffering. Head better?"

Jim blinked, then stared down at his hands stupidly. The headache was gone.

"... the fuck did you do?"

"Magic." Bones got up, snatching the cup of broth and carrying it back to the replicator.

"No, Bones, for serious." Jim got up to follow him, but was somehow tangled in the sneaky blanket nest and was still fighting for freedom when Bones returned with two glasses of ginger ale. Rolling his eyes, he helped Jim arrange himself comfortably on the couch.

"Acupressure," he finally said. "Practicing medicine ain't always about medicine, kid."

"I see. You really do have a lot of tricks up your sleeve, huh?"

Bones settled on the farther end of the couch couch with his glass of soda, facing Jim. "All the tricks. I come from a long line of doctors, and back when my ancestors were patchin' folks up they didn't have dermal regenerators and fancy antibiotics. They had to make do with what they did have, and they passed all that stuff down through the generations. Even in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in the deep south, there were places without real hospitals. So making do kinda became the family motto." he shrugged.

"Very old school." He took a sip of the ginger ale, which he'd never liked particularly but it wasn't bad.

"There's lots of stuff you can do without chemistry and equipment. For example," he held up his own glass, "ginger is mildly anti-emetic."

"It's what, now?"

"Anti-emetic. It stops you from vomiting. Not real effective, but better than placebo."

"Oh. That's why people drink it when they're sick?"

"Well, they drink it when they're sick because it's just what people drink when they're sick. Most folks don't know it was originally used because of the ginger. Somehow it became a cultural thing. Barf? Ginger ale. It's easier, safer cheaper and less invasive than meds."

"Weird." Jim said, and took another sip. The nausea had mostly passed, anyway. "I've never met a doctor who wouldn't rather stick me with a hypo."

"Once upon a time, the game was to use as little medication as you could get away with and still make the patient better. Doctors these days forget that, they go straight for what's quick and easy, which is synthesized drugs and technology. Judging by your records, I see you've run into plenty of those types."

"Yeah," Jim breathed out, looking away. "Sorry."

Bones raised an eyebrow. "What the fuck are you apologizing for?"

"I dunno. I'm difficult, I guess."

"Lots of people are difficult. Hell, doctors themselves make the worst patients out of any demographic. Being difficult ain't an excuse for half the shit in your files."

"But—"

"No buts, kid." Bones shook his head. "You were a minor, and you aren't responsible for anything that was done to you, no matter how much of a little shit you were."

Jim was too tired now to argue, and he really didn't want to talk about it anyway. But why...?

"Aren't you going to interrogate me about it?" he blurted out, then wished he hadn't. He blamed his sudden drowsiness for his lack of judgement.

Bones shook his head. "Assumed you didn't want to talk about it."

Jim nodded. "Right."

"I do have one, tangentally related question though. Why do you not wear one of those alert bracelets, or a necklace?"

Jim groaned. "I had one, when I was a kid. Never made a difference, nobody in the ER ever looks at it. Besides, by now the list is so long there's no way they could print all that stuff on one."

"If I ordered one for you that just said 'no drugs' on it, would you wear it?"

Jim considered it, but said "No." He wasn't sure why he didn't want to, or what it would hurt, or if he were subconsciously testing Bones to see what he would do.

"That's fine," Bones said smoothly, not missing a beat, "then would you do me a favor?"

"What?"

"I want you to carry your epi-pen in your boot, not your pockets."

Jim cocked his head to one side, wondering what difference it would make.

"You're a lot less likely to take your boots off when you're out than your jacket. I'll even order you one that's disguised as an ink pen, in case anybody sees it." Bones was peering at him now, and reached up to adjust the blankets. Jim wanted to protest, but couldn't bother. "It would make me feel better. Humor an old man, okay?"

There was exactly zero reason for Jim to argue this one, and he didn't have the energy anyway. And how did Bones know he didn't want anyone seeing his epi-pen? Oh, right, Mr. Psychiatrist. It was lucky that he'd avoided letting Bones himself see it for all this time.

"Okay." he agreed as resentfully as he could, and Bones patted his arm.

"Thanks, kid." Bones took the ginger ale out of his hand and set it on the table. "You look beat."

"... really sleepy all a' sudden," Jim managed, and Bones was standing and pressing him down into the pillows. "Sorry," he tried, but Bones just patted his head in amusement.

"Adrenaline crash, you're fine. Go ahead and take a nap, and we'll go get waffles for dinner when you wake up."

Jim shook his head, but then wasn't sure whether he'd actually managed to move it or not. He didn't want to eat. Thinking about Bones reading his files made him think about Tarsus IV, and as soon as food crossed his mind the smell of rotten grain reached his nose. It was only in his head, but it destroyed his appetite with a definitive swiftness.

"According to your oaths, are waffles the best diet for me?" Jim teased, even though his eyes were falling shut against his will.

"They are tonight. Lots of calories, and I know you'll eat them without whining."

"Not hungry," he slurred, and couldn't keep his eyes open. The blanket nest was undeniably cozy...

"That's okay," Bones answered, "We'll get them to go, and then you'll have some if you change your mind. But later. Go to sleep now, kid."

The order was unnecessary, because Jim was already gone.

A/N: So, I probably should have made this clear earlier, but I didn't think of it until somebody mentioned it on the reviews page. I'm working off the assumption that any hormone/vitamin/mineral that gets synthesized is free of dyes or fillers, and is chemically identical to anything produced by the human body. No allergens. If Bones gives Jim melatonin, it's exactly the same as the melatonin that his brain would produce. Because this is the future and stuff. And most people don't consider chemicals your brain naturally produces to be drugs, so I'm going with that terminology.

Also of note, I'm assuming that anything that comes out of the replicator is allergen-free. These foods are specifically programmed in, as I understand it from TNG, and it would be easy to program the allergens out of eggs, peanuts, or whatever. So pretend for a second that Jim is allergic to strawberries, but he can still eat replicated strawberry pancakes because they're essentially not real. They're programmed strawberries. On the other hand, he was getting real coffee and doughnuts in chapter one, so there could have been allergens. (Well, obviously there were allergens.)

Next chapter: waffles! Spock! Gary Mitchell!