His new cup of coffee burning uncomfortably hot in his hand, and him not caring, Leonard walked back. He didn't notice that there was someone else there until he nearly bumped into them, eliciting a surprised chuckle.
"Jesus, Bones! If you keep that up, someone's gonna give you a taste of your own medicine and sedate you."
Leonard briefly stared into Jim's face before scowling and sidestepping him with a sort of rugged dexterity that belied his exhaustion. He sank back into his chair.
For a moment, silence stretched on. The smile on Jim's face faded out of his eyes and then his lips followed suit, relaxing into a more solemn expression. He looked at the prone figure on the biobed, then at the readings.
"How is he?"
Leonard sighed. "He's lost a lot of blood, and I had to operate on top of that, but he's stable, and he's doing his Vulcan healing voodoo trance thing. He'll live."
Another moment passed by. Jim looked at Leonard with what he probably liked to think as his analytical face. Leonard glared back with irritation.
"So why are you still here?" Jim asked casually.
"Don't you have someplace to be, Captain?" Leonard growled.
"Alpha shift ended ten minutes ago," Jim replied cheerfully. "And I don't have anything better to do than sit here and bother you."
With the slump of his shoulders Leonard silently conceded defeat. He shrugged. "I'm just enjoying this whole thing here. God knows I've been looking for an excuse to shoot him full of hypos for months."
"As long as you're happy, Bones," Jim's arms spread out in a placative gesture that clearly added 'And as long as it's not me for a change'.
Leonard grinned somewhat darkly at that, then lost himself in thought for a moment staring at the Vulcan. His voice low, he added in a different tone, "It was worse than it looked, you know."
Jim's eyes momentarily widened in surprise, caught off guard. "It was worse than it looked?" he blanched, then laughed nervously, "We are talking about the pointy-eared bastard who got beamed up from a freaking lake of his own blood, aren't we?"
Leonard stared at him with his somber medic look. "Jim, the bullet he got hit with burst to pieces, or something. I spent three hours just fishing pieces of shrapnel out of various parts of his chest. Not to mention having to pump what's left of his lungs for blood twice."
Jim didn't say anything to that, just staring at the still form of his first officer again with newfound concern. Spock didn't look nearly that much like a corpse anymore, and the big bandage around his chest hid what traces there still were of the grisly wound, but he was still completely out of it.
Leonard winced slightly as he rubbed at his sore shoulder again. Struck with a sudden suspicion, he briefly lifted his sleeve. There was a cluster of deep bruises on his shoulder where Spock's fingers had dug in.
Leonard laughed gruffly. Leave it to the Vulcan to make things difficult for him, even when he's trying to be a human shield. It was almost like he couldn't stand doing Leonard a favour without making up for it with some other small aggravation.
Jesus Christ, the Vulcan bastard had taken a bullet for him – an actual freaking bullet. He had to keep making attempts to register it.
Something about his expression must have betrayed his thought process, because understanding suddenly flashed through Jim's face before shifting to mocking curiosity again. "So...." the Captain probed lazily. "...Feeling any guilt, Bones?" he asked, a twinkle in his eye.
Leonard snapped around to give him the glare. "Dammit, Jim, you making psych profiles now? What the hell are you talking about?"
"Oh, sorry there, Doctor. I just thought it was common for people – you know, humans, sentient organisms with feelings – to maybe experience some complicated emotional responses when someone they hate literally takes a bullet for them."
"I don't hate him," Leonard muttered under his breath.
"Oh, so you just act like it, is that it?" Jim drawled, taunting, sarcastic.
"He just aggravates the hell out of me, fine?" Leonard snapped, looking at the limp cold-hearted hobgoblin once again, and sure enough, the complicated emotional response was there, and he pushed it away much as he was loath to act a bit more like him. "Him and his logic. You heard him. Protecting the medic, my ass."
"So it's an ego thing?" Jim's eyebrow quirked up in a poor imitation of what Spock was capable of. "You can't take it when someone risks their life for you for entirely clinical, professional reasons. It has to be personal with you, doesn't it?"
Leonard's eyebrows knitted together. "Leave me alone, Jim, you're talking bullshit again."
"I'm talking bullshit? I'm just trying to figure out why the hell my best friend and my first officer have been at each other's throats since day one-"
"At least not literally," Leonard noted smugly, earning himself a mock glare.
"Touché, Bones. But yes, exactly. If there's anyone he shouldn't be getting along with, it's me, and we get on just fine."
Leonard gruffed his acknowledgement of that. He couldn't quite wrap his mind around that, either.
"You know what I think, Bones? I think you do actually like him. You like how reliable he is, and how he keeps calm when things literally come crashing down on us, and how good he is to have at your back in a fight, too, as I'm sure you've noticed. And I think you want him to like you back, for all the fine personality traits you're distinguished by, so that's why it annoys you when he only ever cites the medical training you and a whole bunch of other people received at the Academy."
"You're wrong, Jim," Leonard glowered. "I don't like him because he's not reliable. His highest ideal is logic, for Chrissakes!" he gestured exasperatedly at the unconscious Vulcan. "What's logical and what's right tend to be really at odds, Jim, if you haven't noticed. You were there. He wanted to leave Nero and run back to Starfleet because it was the logical thing to do-"
"And regrets it."
"He's the sort to abandon a person just because it would speed up the others' progress by some bullshitting percentage number!"
"He wanted us to leave him behind, Bones," Jim's voice was harder now, and he hoped the Vulcan couldn't hear all of this through the trance. That would be awkward.
"You're saying that he'd all of sudden stop thinking it was logical if it were someone else?" Leonard challenged.
"Jesus, Bones, that's exactly what I'm saying! You wouldn't think it, but logic is relative, and I don't know if you've noticed – okay, actually, I now know that you haven't noticed – but Spock's gotten pretty good at twisting logic to his own ends. His idea of logic is just this... whatever self-destructive thing he can come up with that might marginally help anyone else." Jim gestured evocatively, staring levelly at Leonard, who just looked sceptical. "Sure, he saved you because you're a medic," Jim shrugged. "So what? He would have saved you even if you weren't. He would have come up with something. Hell, if you were a brain-dead shriveled old cripple with Alzheimer's in a freaking coma and no living relatives and of no possible use to anyone, he would have just said it was his duty as a Starfleet officer or even just as a sentient being and he would have taken that bullet for you anyway, Bones, because that's the kind of person he is."
Jim stared at him in silence for a moment. A sort of faint, fond smile had crept into his face as he ranted about the Vulcan. Then, he asked softly, "Am I still talking bullshit, Bones?"
Leonard couldn't help but laugh sarcastically. "You just described the symptoms of a few severe self worth-related mental disorders and that's supposed to endear him to me?"
"Oh lighten up, Bones," Jim smacked him on the shoulder with a smile and this time Leonard did spill his coffee. He hissed angrily, shaking his fingers clean of the scalding liquid.
"That is it," Leonard growled, rising out of his chair. "I'm hospitalizing you." He took a menacing step towards Jim, who stepped backwards, holding his hands up.
"'Fraid not, Bones, I'm healthy as a horse," he grinned.
"You tried to single-handedly turn the previous first contact mission into an orgy, Captain, I'm sure I'll find one thing or another to keep you off the bridge until I start feeling slightly less vindictive." As a hypo appeared nearly magically in Leonard's hand, Jim's stance changed instantly and his eyes went wide as he vaulted several steps backwards.
"Whoa there, Bones! No hypos, and that's an order, understood?" And let it never be said that Jim Kirk was a coward or a traitor, but anyone who knows Leonard would be terrified of hypos by now, so he wasn't too surprised when the good Captain hurriedly gestured to the still form of their first officer, instead. "There's your Vulcan pincushion right there, Bones! Have fun, okay?" he backed away quickly as Leonard glared at him, a hypo in one hand and a dripping cup of coffee in the other. He watched silently as Jim fled the sickbay.
A step short of the door, Jim turned on his heel and called to Leonard. "I am glad you've decided to work things out with him, by the way!"
With that, Jim disappeared from sight.
Leonard glanced sideways at the Vulcan and tucked away the hypo with a sigh. He sank back into his chair, going over the readings once more.
It was another four hours later that the Vulcan finally did wake up. Leonard promptly became aware of this just as he realized that he had, in fact, fallen asleep in spite of the coffee. And so it happened that when Leonard welded his eyes open and tried to blink the fuzz out of his brain, he found he'd been sleeping slumped forward in his chair with his head and arms resting almost cozily on top of a blanket.
His patient's blanket.
"...Doctor McCoy?" While still decidedly neutral, the pointy-eared devil's voice sounded as close to befuddled confusion as he'd ever heard.
Blinking awake, Leonard looked up groggily to meet the liquid black stare of the Vulcan gazing down on him and blinking slowly, the oddest (lack of) expression on his blank face.
"...Doctor, you appear to be... in need of rest, and the bed in your quarters provides a recovery rate that is sixty-five point three two percent higher than in the uncomfortable position you appear to have fallen asleep in. May I inquire as to why you have opted for this highly illogical option of restoring energy?"
It took the hobgoblin's bloody monotone voice to fully shake him awake. Leonard hastily pushed himself up, glaring furiously at the Vulcan. He could practically see the gears turning behind those dark eyes. It took the worst kind of a screwed up personality to awake to someone literally asleep at your bedside and start analyzing rather than just feeling flustered and embarrassed.
"None of your damn business, you green-blooded hobgoblin. Just a long day in the sickbay," Leonard grumbled, looking away from the Vulcan and turning to fuss over the tricorder readings.
"Doctor, that is not a logical response to my inquiry. The fact that you were able to fall asleep undisturbed indicates that your presence is not currently needed in the medical bay, therefore your response does not answer-"
"Goddammit, Spock, just forget it, okay?!" Leonard gestured wildly.
"I am not certain as to how that can be a viable-"
"Stop talking about it, you green-blooded calculator." Leonard sighed in exasperation and leaned forward in his chair. "You want to know why I was sleeping here? Because I fell asleep. You want to know why I stayed in this chair until I fell asleep? That's because I was monitoring your readings. On top of that, I've got a bone to pick with you, Spock, and after you've woken up is as good a time as any."
"...A... bone to... pick with me, Doctor?" Now the Vulcan looked somewhat apprehensive. "...Does this relate to my injuries?"
Too edgy with lack of sleep to be able to help himself, Leonard actually laughed. He laughed somewhat hysterically for a good several seconds. When he regained his composure, the Vulcan was staring at him blankly. Leonard shook his head.
"Yeah, Spock. It relates to your injuries. I thought you might want to know just how close you'd come to snuffing it, so you'd avoid doing that again."
Spock blinked. "Doing what again, Doctor?"
"Getting yourself injured, that's what," Leonard said sharply.
"Suffering injury was not an intended outcome on my part."
"Yeah, merely a foreseeable consequence, is that right?"
"That would be correct, Doctor."
Leonard sighed.
"Why?"
"I do not know to what you are referring."
"Then let me spell it out for you. Why did you try to get yourself killed?"
"Rather than suicide, my objective was to prevent injury to yourself."
"Why?"
Spock seemed taken aback. When Leonard just glared at him insistently, Spock spoke slowly, "It was... logical, Doctor."
"Logical, huh?" Leonard nearly sneered.
"Quite, yes - from multiple angles."
"Shed a little light on them for me, will you? And before you give me that confused look, it's a figure of speech and means you have to elaborate on it."
"Of course, Doctor. As a Starfleet officer, I am obliged to protect the members of my crew. As someone with medical training, you are capable of treating another person's injuries but cannot do the same for yourself if you are incapacitated, therefore risking injury to keep you uninjured is logical, as it would leave you in position to deal with the repercussions thereof."
"So what, just pulling me down out of the way wasn't dramatic enough for you?"
"There was insufficient time to respond in a manner that would be safe for both of us, Doctor."
"So you decided to let yourself get blown to bits, is that it?"
"That did not happen."
"It did happen, Spock, you're just such a tough green-blooded bastard that you managed to live through it," Leonard snapped angrily, leaning forward to glare at the Vulcan. "That bullet exploded into bits of shrapnel after it hit your chest. You had internal bleeding in a dozen places! That's not something you just shrug off, even a Vulcan half-breed like yourself."
Spock stared levelly at him. "Doctor, I am having difficulty understanding the reasons for your extreme agitation over this subject."
Leonard laughed gruffly. He shook his head. "Yeah, so am I. Not all of us are walking calculators, you know."
Something indiscernible flashed through Spock's eyes. After a moment of silence, he said tentatively, "Doctor McCoy, I have not finished. Your safety was a high priority for less... professional reasons, as well. As you are a friend of the Captain, I wished to keep you safe on his behalf. Also, for my part, in spite of our consistent disagreements..." he frowned briefly, looking away, "...I consider you a valuable and important member of this ship's crew and, much as your illogical behaviour puzzles me at times, I still admire your zeal in fulfilling what you see as your personal and professional obligations." He paused, eyes unfocused. "It is logical to protect those one appreciates or admires."
Leonard stared in surprise for a moment, for this was as close to a confession of affection as he had ever gotten, and was ever likely to get, from the dysfunctional Vulcan. Then he snorted.
"No, you constipated hobgoblin, it's emotional to protect people just because you like them a little," he pointed out, his voice scolding. "Look it up sometime, you tend to get those two mixed up." When the Vulcan frowned slightly, not looking at him but staring into space in thought, Leonard sighed. "Anyway, I guess there's no getting around the fact that I really owe you one." Spock turned to look at him, eyebrow raised. "I'm trying to thank you for saving my life, you green-blooded bastard," Leonard hissed.
"Technically, I merely saved you from an injury."
Leonard rolled his eyes. "Goddammit, Spock! If the shock of the impact alone or the ensuing blood loss didn't kill me, the shrapnel would have. I dug those pieces of metal out of you, Spock, and you're damn lucky your heart's not where a human's would be, because if it were, you'd have been killed instantly."
Spock stared at him with no expression. "As the distribution of metal shards is ruled by pure chance, it is not a given that the same would have happened to you, Doctor."
"Ugh!" Leonard jumped out of the chair and began to pace in exasperation. "I wish I could say that I can't believe we're arguing about this, except you've always loved to make things difficult." He rubbed a hand over his face, then stepped close to the bed and leaned toward the Vulcan menacingly. "Tell you what – if it makes you so damn happy, then fine. You didn't save my life, you just saved me from a very serious injury that merely had a very high chance of being fatal to me. If you absolutely have to be such an anal, pedantic bastard about everything, then I'll play it your way just this once, since I do owe you one. But I want you to know that if you go hiding behind those ridiculous excuses for logical arguments all your life, then you'll never be happy, and don't even try to tell me that Vulcans don't strive to be happy. And even if they don't, you're still half-human, and you can't be happy if you keep denying your own nature."
"I have... never denied my heritage, Doctor." Spock's head dipped slightly, his eyes impenetrable and his voice low but firm. He looked up to meet Leonard's eyes and his voice rose slightly, "In any case, your... advice is... acknowledged. I am... grateful for your concern," he said carefully. When Leonard didn't say anything, Spock's solemness shifted to his usual blank, professional guise. "If that is all, Doctor, then I shall be returning to my duties." Thus saying, he pushed himself up carefully and the blanket slipped off his bandaged chest.
"Like hell you are," Leonard hissed and rushed over to his side, reaching over to grab Spock's bare shoulders and try to push him back down, making Spock flinch violently at the touch, his head jerking up to stare at Leonard, startled. "You're not going anywhere until I declare you fit for duty, Commander, and that won't be happening for the next day or so. You've lost way too much blood to be back in the thick of things on the bridge now, your freaky Vulcan healing trance notwithstanding," he growled, trying to push Spock back down, who effortlessly resisted the pressure.
"Doctor, your reasoning is flawed on several levels. If a situation indeed arises that would put me in danger now, I would likely not be able to escape its effects in the medical bay any better than on the bridge. In addition to that, my usual work as science officer can hardly be considered a physically strenuous activity. Besides which, you underestimate the restorative quality of a healing trance that I as a Vulcan am capable of engaging in. I am also more likely to rest fitfully in the familiar and private surroundings of my own quarters. And finally..." Spock's blankness slipped a bit, and he actually looked slightly uncomfortable as he deftly grabbed Leonard's wrist when the doctor tried to stealthily jab a hypo full of sedative at the Vulcan's neck, "...I am not fully comfortable remaining in your custody for any longer than is absolutely necessary," Spock admitted, carefully but firmly pushing Leonard back into the chair as he rose out of the bed and pulled on a loose shirt before the doctor could collect himself.
As Leonard jumped to his feet again and advanced, his hypo held out like a weapon, the damn Vulcan carefully stepped out of reach, his posture apprehensive. "Please refrain from touching me, Doctor," he insisted, frowning slightly. "As a touch telepath, I am forced to apply effort to prevent an involuntary intrusion into your mind whenever skin-on-skin contact is established. Besides, there is a considerable difference in body temperature between us and your hands register as unpleasantly cold to me."
Leonard stopped his attempt to advance – he knew better than most that if the Vulcan didn't want to get sprayed with a hypo, then he wouldn't get sprayed with a hypo – but glowered at him in irritation. "I'm Chief Medical Officer, it's up to me to decide when you're allowed to leave the sickbay, Spock."
Spock nodded. "A measure that is only in effect if the patient is experiencing incapacitating problems with their health, as you can plainly see is not the case."
"You damn stubborn pointy-eared bastard-"
"Since 'bastard' is an entirely legitimate biological term for an individual of mixed genetic composition such as myself, your use of it as an insult and gesture of agitation is highly illogical, Doctor."
"I'll give you illogical, you green-blooded son of an encyclopedia!"
"Then I shall remove myself before your volatile emotions enforce an attempt to execute your threat." Spock inclined his head respectfully. "Consider it a commendation of your medical skills that I have regained my functionality so soon after such a serious injury, Doctor. I bid you a good day."
The Vulcan turned on his heel and walked briskly towards the exit. The door closed behind him.
Leonard stared at it, the hypo still in his hand. When it was clear the Vulcan wasn't coming back – why would he be, exactly? - Leonard slowly forced himself to relax his tense posture. He sighed, looked at the hypo, shoved it into his pocket. His gaze wandered over the now unoccupied biobed.
Several minutes later, Leonard had left the sickbay – finally – and was stepping into his quarters. As the door shut behind him he stood still for a moment and adjusted to the silence.
Without bothering to take off his clothes, he fell into the bed.
Jesus, he was tired. Between the demanding mission, his frantic efforts to deal with its consequences, his vigil over his patient and the uncomfortable, interrupted nap that had only served to make his exhaustion more palpable, Leonard now just felt like shit.
Burying himself into the tangle of sheets, Leonard closed his eyes.
He'd done what Jim wanted, and to be honest, he'd done what he'd been itching to do for these past four months, ever since the Kobayoshi Maru and especially since Delta Vega. He'd reached an understanding. He'd worked things out.
The damn frigid pointy-eared green-blooded hobgoblin still aggravated the hell out of him, and he was now confident that it would always be that way.
But as Leonard drifted asleep, he remembered the twinkle in those dark eyes as the Vulcan had thanked him and turned to leave.
And somehow, that made it okay.