McCoy twists his arm away when Spock grabs at him.

"Get her down!" he shouts and reaches for her, ignoring how Spock manages to get a grip on his shoulder.

"Doctor-"

"-We need her in sickbay," McCoy says and again yanks his arm from Spock's hold.

"The readings are unclear," Spock says with all that calm of his and McCoy wants to rip the tricorder out of his hand.

"Spock-"

"-I believe prudence is in order," Spock says. His expression is too smooth. "This is quite a unique situation."

"Unique," McCoy echoes and shakes his head.

Chapel is too cool when McCoy touches her cheek. Not cold, though. And it's apparently not the ambient temperature of the cave keeping the chill of death from her skin.

He should have checked more thoroughly. This… Spock isn't supposed to be the one to catch things like this. Jim isn't the only one who's missing things and McCoy hates how his cheeks heat at the dim realization that had Spock not been there, had he not had his tricorder on, had they gotten any further in the day and started moving these bodies callously and casually…

"Prudence," he mutters.

"What do we do?" Jim asks him.

Think, McCoy tells himself. His neck is itchy. Grit has worked its way into his collar, the too stiff fabric of their uniforms catching it and grinding it into his skin. He wipes his forehead on his wrist and sweat darkens the fabric over his rank stripes.

"I need my medkit," McCoy says. No idea, he doesn't say. The burn of wanting something to do claws at him. "Spock's right. This isn't normal, Jim."

Jim's crack about McCoy agreeing with Spock doesn't come. Instead, he says, "I'll get it," and turns and jogs down the tunnel that leads outside.

Chapel's eyes are closed. But maybe she heard everything. McCoy certainly hopes not, because personnel issues are likely the least of what's gone on in here.

"Chapel," he says and smooths his palm over her forehead. Then, he remembers Spock is still there next to him. He straightens. "If you have some logical platitudes, now is the time."

But Spock is silently reading his tricorder and is focused on it with a bit too much attention. Thinking, clearly. Processing God knows what in that computer of his that he calls a brain. Once, McCoy might have thought that silence of Spock's would bend until it broke like storm clouds hanging on a summer's horizon, but Spock has changed in the past few years, a settling to him that McCoy once would never have thought to predict. Though it makes his quiet in the face of Jim wanting out that much worse. Heavier, like it sits deeper. Maybe it's some small comfort Spock didn't know about Jim either, though it hardly makes McCoy any closer to being happy. Mostly, he's just tired.

Which isn't all that helpful, Chapel swinging there and now McCoy distracted as all hell, right when he doesn't need to be.

"Spock?" he asks. He could use some of that laser-like focus Spock has in spades, which is normally so grating, and a helping of that type of pedantic logic he does so well. "Find anything?"

Spock blinks and raises his head.

"Unclear," he says and McCoy frowns.

It turns out Scotty hasn't seen anything like it either, and when Spock reboots back into being a useful science officer and not just hollowed out after the argument McCoy and Jim had, McCoy watches them have an ultimately useless conversation peppered with words he's sure he's never heard before. By the end of the afternoon, McCoy's neck is sore from craning over a padd with the two of them. His shirt is stuck to his back and he has half a mind to blame Spock for it, reading over his shoulder so that twice ended up elbowing him by accident. A third time wouldn't have been a mistake, but Spock hardly seemed inclined to give McCoy his damn space.

"Well," Scotty finally says. "The good news is that they're not getting any worse for being in here."

"Good news," Jim repeats, a breath huffed over the words. "What else do we have? Bones?"

McCoy's jaw aches and pressing his teeth together again at Jim's question just makes the pain jab at his forehead. He doesn't look at Jim.

"They're stable," he says. "That's something. We leave them like this and they're ok, or as ok as they are in here. But I don't know how long their bodies can take this and we don't know how long this-" he gestures "-thing is designed to keep them alive, if that's even what they really are. I can't get a good picture of their brain activity with all this interference, and without that… Jim, without that, we don't know if it's them that we're working to save, or just their bodies."

"We can reconfigure our tricorders," Jim says and puts his hands on his hips. "And keep trying for more information, right?"

"I'll pull Chekov if you can spare him, and we can take a look," Scotty says.

"Do it," Jim say. "Bones, if they're not- if they're really alive, what are our options?"

McCoy rubs his hand over his chin.

"If they're able to be brought around…" he starts. Spock could likely quote the odds. Maybe that would be better than just guessing. Take some of the pressure off the news McCoy has to give. "We can't know their brain activity until we can get them out of this cave, no matter what magic Chekov and Scotty might be able to work. Which we can't do without unhooking them from the one thing keeping them alive, and I'm not going to risk going in blind and just yanking those cords out. And even so, I'd need a way to work on them… regenerators, a real biobed. A sickbay, with trained staff, and even then I'm not sure what I'd be working with."

A sickbay with Chapel in it. Alive and handing him instruments before he even called for them. McCoy touches his fingers to his forehead. Just out of the corner of his eye, he can see Jim pacing.

"Can we transport them out of here?" Jim asks.

McCoy shakes his head at the thought.

"The mechanism to which they are attached is not mobile," Spock says, "and the same geological interference that affects our scanning systems stems from what appears to be a subterranean energy source that is keeping the mechanism operational. In all likelihood, it is the same substance that was once mined here. Krall has somehow rerouted it for this purpose, and to remove the crew from this cave would be, as Doctor McCoy has said, to sever them from the very thing that is keeping them stable."

"But they're ok for now," Jim says. "More or less."

McCoy's head throbs.

"It depends on your definition of 'ok'," he says. Like that it'd just be ok to leave them and the ship in Spock's hands while Jim jetted off for who the hell knows what. McCoy crosses his arms and his back aches in protest.

Spock's eyes narrow at his tricorder and his expression takes on that look of focus that McCoy is sure he'd never admit to.

"Those with stronger vitals are in the back of the cave," he says.

"How organized," McCoy says and wipes his palm over his face.

"Can we leave them here?" Scotty asks. Sweat darkens the collar of his uniform, staining the red a deeper dark like blood. "At least for the night?"

McCoy presses his teeth together again. "I don't like it."

"Theoretically, they would be unchanged," Spock says.

"Theoretically, that's our crew," McCoy says. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "What do you want to do, Jim, leave all of them here while we settle on the Franklin for the evening? Sit down for dinner and put our feet up for the day?"

"I'm open to suggestions," Jim says. Chekov is watching him as if at any moment Jim will come up with one of his own. Scotty is too though he has a lot less of that wide-eyed optimism that clings to Chekov whenever he's around Jim.

Spock is at least scanning the room, oblivious to the fact that it's him Jim's watching, like an idea will just pop out from between those pointed ears.

Great. Just like always, Jim has Spock there for him to rely on. How fitting that they would both come up with the brilliant idea to jump ship at the exact same time. A perfect pair they are.

"Where are you going?" Jim asks as McCoy starts to walk away.

He doesn't turn. "Maybe I need a bit of a break, too."

Outside, the sun is too hot. He hunts around for a bottle of water, drains it, and stares back at the cave mouth. His stomach turns against the water he just swallowed too fast. There's no hypo that he has that he can press into Chapel's neck, or the rest of them, and wake them up one by one. No vial of serum that he has stashed on the ship that he can duplicate until he has enough, and no surgery he can perform that would set this to rights. Sweat drips into his eyes and frustrated, he rubs at his forehead with the heel of his hand.

"So," Uhura says from next to his elbow and he lets his hand drop.

A goddamn minute, he'd tell her, but she doesn't deserve that. Instead, he just screws the lid back on the bottle. He's so tired of this, all of them living in each other's pockets. Never any privacy and no hope for it when all day every day it's the same handful of people he always sees.

"You all right?" she asks.

"Did you know?" McCoy asks her. "About Jim?"

At least she doesn't pretend to misunderstand. But she's good like that, Uhura is. Always has been.

"I did," she says.

"And Spock?"

She pushes her shoulder into his arm. She lived down the hall from his and Jim's room in that dorm of theirs, and it's years on now and he still hasn't quite adjusted to the reality that she's the same person who helped keep him from failing his xenoling requirements and now is next to him, squinting against Altamid's sun at this godforsaken mining camp they've once again found themselves in.

"You three aren't exactly subtle, you know," she says.

"Three?" he asks. "Don't lump me in with those two idiots."

Again, she lightly bounces her shoulder into his, and this time she leaves it there. He can feel it when she shrugs.

"Just saying."

"Now don't you leave, you hear." He shakes his head. "This whole damn thing would fall apart on all of us."

"No," she says, still leaning into him. "I don't think that's true."

Spock steps out of the mouth of the cave. McCoy doesn't bother watching the look that he trades with Uhura. They've always been fast friends, when even now it sometimes surprises McCoy that Spock's even capable of that.

Which is unfair, he's sure, but he's hot and that water bottle wasn't full enough, no matter how his stomach still hurts.

He lifts his eyes to the sky. It could be days that they're here. Weeks. Spock probably has an idea already. McCoy would really, really rather not know.

Jim appears a step behind him, bright gold against the blue gloom of the cave.

"We'll figure something out," Uhura says when McCoy turns away. He shrugs, dislodging how she's up against him. "We always do."

…

That night, the rec room is full of the this and that of a long away mission. Relay beacons, ship's logs, who's filing what report when, and the standard checks of the ship's system. It's the old routine of Starfleet procedures they could follow in their sleep, and McCoy shuts his eyes and tips his head against the back of the couch. Typically, these planetside jaunts end with a hot shower and a night in his own bed. He's not so much a fan of the ones that keep him stuck somewhere, and this one in particular will end in that glass ball of a space station. Just what he needs, an inverse funhouse mirror of a planet, after the horrors of this one.

"You hungry?" Jim asks. McCoy pries an eye open to look up at him and shakes his head. It doesn't exactly dissuade Jim, because he says, "We could whip up something good. I make a killer grilled cheese. Sulu?"

"Sure." Sulu sounds like he has a mouth full of marbles. When McCoy rolls his head along the back of the couch to look over, he finds him with his face pushed into his hands.

"Spock?" Jim asks.

"No."

"Right." Jim's eyes dart back to McCoy's. McCoy looks away. Any minute now, Jim should be coming up with some type of brilliant and insane plan to get them out of this, but instead he's just staring at McCoy. If Jim's waiting for him to do something, McCoy doesn't bother to even try.

"Ok, then," Jim finally says.

The stillness in the room is worse than even standing in the damp heat of the cave with all those bodies. At the stove, Uhura talks with Jim over a cutting board. It's not long before the smell of vegetables reaches McCoy, so she must be cooking too. Still, the snap of oil in the pan and their quiet conversation does little to fill the room. Twice, McCoy thinks about getting up and going back out there to the mine, but Sulu hasn't straightened up yet and Chekov is staring into some glassy eyed middle distance. He doesn't trust that they wouldn't follow him if he went.

His stomach starts to churn as the smell of food fills the room. It's the same roil as used to happen at the end of long shifts during his residency, a particular mixture of exhaustion and the horror of how broken bodies can be. Apparently the intervening years haven't been enough to settle his gut down. Today was just too much. His head hurts and he'd raise a hand to it, but his back aches, so he just sits where he is, the decking swimming before his stare.

"Sir?" Scotty asks. "Jaylah says there's a group north west of us, up in the mountains." McCoy doesn't have to look up to know that Scotty's shrugging. "Her sensors are a bit better than ours, Captain."

"Are they hostile?" Jim asks.

"She says everyone in these parts are hostile, but they're not moving any closer to our position. They seem to be settling in there."

"They can hear our transmission?"

"Aye, sir."

"Well, maybe they like the sound of it. Grilled cheese?"

The couch dips under Scotty as he settles himself near to McCoy. The plate on his lap smells like hot cheese and too much butter. Uhura's right, Jim doesn't know when enough is enough. Best captain in the 'Fleet, sidelined by hardened arteries. It'd figure, wouldn't it.

"You know, sir," Scotty says. "That tech there. Whoever once lived here was far more advanced than we initially gave them credit for. Those neural transmitters are old, but they're still impressive."

"So they took their ships and left." Jaylah's boots ring out loud on the deck. McCoy wonders what this looks like to her, all of them listlessly sitting around what was once her living room, wearing dirty boots and stained shirts. "They did not come back. Logical, yes?"

Uhura gives a quiet laugh. Maybe Spock has that tiny smile of his, but McCoy doesn't lever his eyes up from the spot he's found on the floor to check.

"This is incredibly unhealthy, Jaylah," Uhura says and there's a scrape of a spatula over a pan. "Jim highly recommends it."

"C'mere, lassie. Pull up a bit of bench and have dinner on us for dragging you back here," Scotty says.

"A suitable present would be to leave again," Jaylah says. "Not wet cheese."

"Melted," Jim says.

"It is not food." There's a pause. McCoy should get up and find himself a place to sit that isn't in the middle of all this chatter. "But it is not bad."

"One win for the day." Jim sounds like he's smiling. "Maybe tomorrow we'll do pizza."

McCoy rocks forward and braces his forearms on his thighs. "Tomorrow, we're getting Chapel down," he says.

"Yeah." Jim clears his throat. "I just meant. You know, food to fuel the whole operation."

"No, Jim, I don't know."

"Just… that she's ok, right? They all are, and we'll get them out."

"She's upside down in a cave with wires plugged into her neck," McCoy says. "I'd have thought you'd be a bit more sympathetic to crew stuck in stasis at the hands of even more Starfleet maniacs."

"Bones…"

"Reason enough to throw in the towel, isn't it," he says and heaves himself to his feet. The room spins in time to the throb in his head. "Enjoy your dinner."

In the corridor, Jim tries to get around him.

"C'mon, Bones," he says, his voice low and his arm held out. McCoy shoves it aside. "Can we just talk? Please?"

"I'm tired, Jim."

"And the crew- you don't need to say that in front of them. You don't need to let them know, ok? It's-"

"-Starfleet's best and brightest that you have working for you. I'm sure they'll figure it out in their own time."

"How can you even be this mad at me? Spock, he-"

The finger McCoy presses towards him makes Jim skip back against the bulkhead. "Spock at least told me."

"And can we talk about that? Right? Spock wanting to clear out?"

"No, we can't, Jim." McCoy doesn't let their shoulders hit as he pushes past, though it's tempting.

In his bathroom, he smacks on the sonics in the shower and turns them high enough that if anyone knocks at his room's door, he can't hear it over the whine of them. The shower is too small to comfortably raise his elbows, but it's fine because the back of his head hurts too bad to scrub at his hair for very long. He should get someone to look at it, but he doesn't particularly care to, and finally drops his half hearted attempts to actually clean himself and just turns his back to the rub of the sonics over his skin and lets them work off as much of the day's dirt and sweat as they can. It's getting dark, the blue light of evening glowing through the porthole. He braces his hands on the tile wall and tries to not think about Chapel and the rest of them, out there in the mine. The grout needs to be scrubbed. Idly, he scratches his thumbnail into it, where dirt has long ago wedged itself between two tiles. He used to spend hours scouring his old shower, in his house in Georgia. He blinks. He hasn't thought of that in a hell of a long time now, that bathroom with a window that looked over that tree in the backyard. Their house, until it's wasn't theirs anymore because there wasn't a them to own it, and then their home had just been hers.

The tap at the bathroom door is to quiet to be anyone else.

"Get out of here, Spock," he calls.

"Are you well?"

"Great," McCoy mutters and twists the sonics off.

The towel McCoy grabs is threadbare. And it has a damn Starfleet crest on it, there in the corner.

Spock steps backwards when McCoy pushes out of the bathroom.

"What the hell was Jim thinking?"

Spock's forehead creases. "You have been in there for some time."

"Taking some planetside job? Does he think that's some sort of joke?"

"In all likelihood, he was thinking that he did not wish to continue in his position as the Enterprise's captain."

"Sure he did." McCoy grabs a pair of boxers. He ignores the thought that Spock might care how he unwinds his towel and tosses it at the ladder to his bunk. He's too old to have a roommate, and the memory of the ease he'd gotten used to with Jim after years of tripping over each other at the Academy just makes him that much madder. What a mess their dorm had been, textbooks and uniforms everywhere. Spock would have had a very Vulcan cow if he'd seen it. McCoy yanks his boxers up to his waist.

"Did he say anything to you?" McCoy asks.

"No."

"Well, did you ask?"

"I did not."

What an utter ass Jim is, to want to quit on them all like that, when McCoy had signed half a decade away for the man. McCoy shakes out a shirt. His fingers feel heavy as he sorts out the front of it from the back.

"Figures," he says and tugs it on. It catches against the back of his head and he winces. The throb echoes through his whole skull. Drained, he sinks onto Spock's bunk and ignores the look he gets for it. The bed is deep with blankets and a hell of a lot softer than McCoy's is. "You two need to talk."

"The opportunity did not arise."

"I've heard that one before." The bed dips next to him. McCoy shuts his eyes so that he doesn't have to look at whatever expression is on Spock's face, written out in minute detail. "Are you upset?"

"Such an emotional reaction would-"

"-Oh, save it, Spock."

Spock lets out a breath. If McCoy were in a better mood, he'd accuse Spock of sighing.

"I am surprised," Spock finally says. The mattress shifts, but Spock doesn't get up. "Yes. I am… troubled by his decision."

"Well, that makes two of you."

"Did you speak with him?"

"It's fine," McCoy says. The wall their bunks are set against isn't that far behind him, not with how narrow the mattresses are, and he leans back until he can rest his shoulders against it. "Another one of Jim's crises. And resolved already and I didn't even have to do anything. I think that's a new record."

"You are distressed."

"Damn right I am." He knocks his knee none too gently into Spock's. "What the hell are the two of you getting at? Don't you think? Ever? With that brain of yours?"

"There was hardly any collusion."

"At least you had a better reason."

"Granted, neither of us have been informed of his." Spock frowns. Just a little, the corner of his mouth turned down. McCoy will never let slip how much he likes those tiny tells of Spock's, not now and not ever. He looks away before Spock catches him watching him. "Though I will elect to take that as a compliment."

"Don't."

"Thank you."

McCoy chuffs out a breath and closes his eyes. For what is probably too long, he keeps sitting there, his back braced in a way that's more or less comfortable, and his legs stretched out across Spock's bed. He should get up. Put on pants, find dinner, or at least climb up to his own bunk.

He rubs his hand over his forehead. His back pulls tight again with the motion.

"I should have known," he says.

He hears Spock turn towards him. "That Jim was planning to leave?"

"Chapel."

"Ah."

The mattress moves as Spock shifts backwards to adopt McCoy's own pose, though likely considerably more upright. McCoy could look and find out, but he's spent enough time shoulder to shoulder with Spock in this same position that he can see the two of them with his eyes still closed. At least this time it's the cool metal of the bulkhead against his back, not the scrape of rocks.

"Her life signs were only discernible after I adjusted the settings on the tricorder," Spock says.

"Still. It's logical, right? Keep them alive for as long as possible? Of course that would be Krall's plan. Stasis is the perfect solution to- to an unpredictable schedule of ships passing close by."

To an unpredictable feeding schedule, he doesn't say. Like goddamn protein bars. Isn't how to make rations last the first thing that Starfleet covers in their training. It would have been the same even all those years ago for Krall. Edison. Whatever. Stringing out supplies while marooned, counting out calories and ounces of water and calculating how long the team can survive. It's perfect preparation to be stranded out here, to take the type of resourcefulness that Starfleet installs in officers and apply it to decades stuck on this planet.

So briefly, McCoy was just a doctor. Of course, his life came crashing down around him and the world he knew along with it, but for a time his days were a flow of patients, diagnoses, and prescriptions. People came in to see him who were sick and injured, he fixed them, and sent them on their way, and each evening he drove home to the banality of dinner. Neat and pat, and his only concern was bad traffic during rush hour.

It didn't last, but it was so nice while it did.

He wakes up at the call for Gamma shift. His eyes are gummy and the overhead light is too bright and his neck hurts from how he's slumped to the side.

"Can't the goddamn first officer do something about that announcement?" he asks. He rubs the heel of his hand into his eye.

"Unlikely," Spock says from somewhere near him and McCoy sighs.

He's going to sit up. He yawns into his shoulder, crosses his arms over his chest, and when he opens his eyes again, the room is dark and there's a weight next to him in the bed, the long line of a body stretched out against his side.

He freezes. There's a pillow under his head. The metal slats of his own bunk are cast in grayscale above him and he can just make out the shape of them.

Next to him, Spock shifts. His foot bumps McCoy's ankle.

"Sorry," McCoy says, but it's too loud in the heavy quiet, and if Spock wasn't already awake, he is now. "I'll get up."

Spock clears his throat. McCoy's not sure he's ever heard him do that before.

"So you do realize that this is not your bed?" he asks.

"Funny," McCoy says. "You know, it's about ten degrees warmer up there."

Spock adjusts himself again and this time the blankets shift with him. Spock's under the sheets and McCoy isn't. The fabric pulls beneath his back when Spock moves.

"I am under medical restriction to the bottom bunk," Spock says.

"First time you've ever listened to a doctor's order," McCoy says. Exceptions, Spock, he thinks. "Maybe I'll put a note in your file."

The expected retort doesn't come and the silence is worse for it. McCoy scratches at his stomach. He'd have to climb over Spock to get up. Outside the porthole, the stars are shining and McCoy stares at them past the dark shape of Spock next to him.

"Think they're still ok out there?" he finally asks.

"The crew?" Spock asks like he doesn't know who's on McCoy's mind. "Logically, they would be unchanged from how we left them."

"I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse."

"They are not conscious," Spock says.

McCoy's throat hurts. Quickly, he scrubs the back of his hand under his nose. His elbow bumps Spock's ribs.

"Comforting," he mutters.

Spock's hair rustles against the pillows as he turns towards McCoy. "Comfort is hardly my expertise."

"Guess not," McCoy says. No, Jim is who McCoy goes to when the days get too long and hard. The thought of it just makes him lonely, and he's had enough of that for today.

He rolls over to face Spock. He can't see much in the dark. The curve of a pointed ear, Spock's pallor against the darker shade of gray of his pillowcase. If there's anything in his expression, McCoy can't make it out.

"You wanna give me some probability?" he asks but Spock stays quiet. McCoy taps his foot against Spock's leg. "C'mon, it's the middle of the night and you whacked my head today, I think you might owe me a little statistical peace of mind."

"I will interpret that as gratitude for ensuring you were not seriously injured."

"As long as it isn't retribution for using a superheated chunk of alien spaceship to cauterize your wound."

"The thought had occurred to me."

"Great."

His arm is going to go to sleep if he keeps laying on it. He should get up. This bed is too small for them both to be in it and he needs a decent night's sleep if he's going to deal with whatever the hell tomorrow will bring, and Jim Kirk along with it.

"Where is Jim's damn loyalty?" he asks. "And don't tell me that he didn't technically quit."

"I was not going to."

"What do you think he was planning to leave us for?"

"I can only guess."

"I don't want to know," McCoy says. "I knew he was-" He shakes his head against the pillow. "Getting contemplative. He always does, this time of year. But this?" He sighs. "Bad enough you had the same harebrained idea."

"I had not considered the likelihood that he would want to leave his position."

"Geniuses the two of you are." In the dark, McCoy frowns. "I don't mean that."

"Not all of us can be so fortunate to have your particular brand of intellect, Doctor."

"Well, thanks." McCoy shakes his head again, but it only makes the back of his head bump up against the wall behind him and he flinches. "Ow. Shit."

"You should consider having the ship's chief medical officer examine your head," Spock says.

The blankets rustle and then Spock is pushing them down. He's in a matching shirt to McCoy's own. What the hell is the point of them having their own clothes, their own drawers, their own bags if Starfleet's just going to stick them in twin outfits. McCoy shifts, but that wall is too close behind him and now he's thinking of his bare legs. Surely Spock wears pants to bed, though McCoy can't remember from last night.

Careful fingers probe over the back of McCoy's head. He can't pull backwards, and Spock's body hems him in from the front. How Spock could be cold here, he'll never know. He feels sticky with too much heat, up this close to Spock. Spock's wrist is pale in the gray half light. His forearm too, a milky sort of white. McCoy hisses when Spock finds a tender spot.

"Dammit. Stop that."

"I did not intend to injure you."

"Well, you did anyway." Spock doesn't pull his hand back, but he stops poking at the worst of it. "You still thinking about leaving us?"

"No." Spock's voice is quiet. Softer than it needs to be, given how close they're laying. His fingers are still in McCoy's hair.

"How unfortunate." McCoy grabs his wrist and tugs his hand away. The joint is thin and feels too delicate, a slim slip of tendon and bones under hot skin. "You're sure?"

"I am."

Carefully, Spock twists his wrist from McCoy's grip. Slow enough that if McCoy wanted to keep holding onto it, he could. He watches Spock tuck his hands up under his pillow, his wrists at his chin. They could be at some type of sleepover, on their sides like this, their knees nearly brushing, whispering late at night as they are.

Spock's shoulders draw up. "Have you considered leaving your position?"

"Me?" He shoves his face into the pillow. Spock is curled in on himself, his eyes wide and dark against the pale of his face. "Are you still cold? Didn't you eventually adapt to our climate?"

"As you should know, the diameter of Vulcan blood vessels dictate a heat loss that compared to humans-"

"-Oh, just stop. Here."

McCoy shoves his hands after Spock's, wedged up under the pillow. They're warm to the touch, but isn't that the point of it, a little pocket of heat under under the weight of their heads and the down of the pillow.

Spock pulls back, but not far enough to break McCoy's hold on him. Spock could. He doesn't, though, even though his body is suddenly signing with enough tension that McCoy lays there waiting for him to do so.

"You do understand the connotation of this gesture, correct?" Spock asks and his voice is strained. His eyes blink open from that late night droop to fix on McCoy.

McCoy rolls his own. Spock's knuckles are bony, the thin skin covering them softer than McCoy might have imagined.

"Don't flatter yourself," he says.

"As a human's basal body temperature is significantly lower than-"

"-I'm a doctor, Spock."

"Then you would know that any attempt to provide warmth through body heat violates immutable laws of-"

"-You're sleeping on the floor if you keep that up."

"This is my bed."

"And I want my blanket back."

McCoy should really be getting up. But slowly, Spock's hands unclench and the tipped up mess of McCoy's life these days or not, the facts of thermodynamics are alive and well here in the dark and quiet of Spock's bed. McCoy's hands grow warm. Across the pillow from him, Spock blinks.

"It would be unfortunate if you were to leave," Spock says.

"And here I thought you wanted your elbow room in your own bunk."

"I am serious."

McCoy sighs. "You always are."

His hand, where it's pressed to the back of Spock's own, is rapidly going numb from lying on his arm. His palms are starting to sweat a little. It's too warm down here and likely worse up in his own bed. He's not exactly looking forward to trying to fall asleep in the sweaty tangle of his own sheets. Already, he knows that the moment his eyes close, he'll be back in that mine, the winking lights shining into his closed eyes and the crew swaying before him.

"They will be fine," Spock says. "Nurse Chapel among them."

McCoy jumps.

"Don't do that." His lips are dry when he licks at them. "Can you-"

"Read your mind, as you call it? No."

McCoy rolls his eyes again. His heart is hammering. "Convincing, Spock. Really."

"It was the logical deduction that you were thinking of the crew."

"Well, shit."

"You were not angry, so you likely were not still considering Jim's absence."

"I'll get mad, just give me a second."

"And you were not asleep."

"I can be."

He should be. Middle of the night talks were for when he was younger. And that warmth of his hands is starting to pull at him. He needs to get up. This is a bad idea, jammed so close together like this.

"It is simple to presume that your concern for the crew would be forefront in your mind."

Spock probably can't see his expression, but he tips his eyes towards the ceiling again anyway. "How logical."

"It is. Your consideration for our shipmates and their well-being is always paramount." Spock pauses. "Despite your assertions to the contrary, that is."

Under McCoy's palms, Spock's hands shift. McCoy eyes him in the dark, wary, but he seems to only be adjusting himself.

"It is… appreciated," Spock says. "And admirable."

McCoy casts a look up at the slats of his bunk above him.

"Well, thanks," he says. "It's only my job. Maybe you can put it in my performance review."

"And as our highest ranking doctor, you should know that the heat loss of Vulcans is-"

"-Oh please. It's listed right next to where that heart of yours is." McCoy frowns against the pillow. "And your blood pressure. I don't know how don't pass out when you stand up. It's practically nonexistent."

Spock is closer than he should be. McCoy blinks. Closer than he was. McCoy needs to pull back, he can feel Spock's breath on his mouth. Spock… Spock always knows exactly what he's doing. This isn't some convenient mistake, him leaning in like that.

Spock does remember. That cave, that day. McCoy swallows.

He should tell him to stop, but when he opens his mouth, it's only to suck in air. His body feels too heavy to jerk away. That warmth of Spock's hands is too comforting, and to shift backwards, to clamber out over Spock and put the space between them that he needs to, would be to slip his hands from beneath the pillow and that flow of heat from Spock's skin to his own. Spock's right, because of course he is, that warmth is traveling from his hands to McCoy's, carried through that green blood of his. It was all over McCoy's palms, staining the beds of his nails no matter how he scrubbed at it. Spock was breathing so heavily as McCoy tried to clean up in that river. Around them, the rocks were as hot as the blood seeping from Spock's side. Hot like McCoy is now. His shirt is too tight. He needs some air and quickly, though the next breath he draws in is shared with Spock. Rough rock on his back, that shock of lips that had been pressed to his. In the dark, McCoy lays stock still.

Spock's nose touches his. And McCoy's hands are so warm, that trickle of energy from Spock's skin to his. Far warmer than when he reached over. He blinks. Shifts backs slightly, his mind working over a half formed thought.

But Spock doesn't notice. In a low voice, he says, "In fact, the dilation of blood vessels-"

"-Wait," McCoy says.

Spock jerks backwards. "I apologize."

"Those rocks, the energy signal is coming from them, right?"

"The rocks?" Spock repeats.

McCoy gets his elbow under himself. It's a tangle of limbs between the two of them. The bed's too small and they've slid too close together to break apart with any ease. That fumble of someone else against him is some long forgotten familiarity, a bump of a foot through the blankets and the heave of the mattress as Spock moves further away from him.

"Doctor?" Spock asks.

"So what's another rock that puts out an enormous amount of energy?" he asks. He's got it now, even if Spock is just staring at him.

"I am not certain."

"Dilithium, Spock."

"That is a crystal."

McCoy climbs over him, a hand on Spock's hard thigh and the other bracing his weight over the mattress. He has pants here somewhere.

"Whatever," he says. His boots are there where he kicked them off. "We need to- We need Jim. And Scotty. And probably Jaylah."

Spock props himself up on his elbows. McCoy orders the lights on and Spock blinks, squinting. McCoy could be there with him. In the dark still, their fingers threading and sharing a kiss the sort of which McCoy has worked so hard to forget.

Spock didn't. Apparently. Instead was sitting on that shared moment. Waiting. Goddamn.

"What are you doing?" Spock asks and McCoy makes himself move, fumbles for the latch on a drawer.

"Get up," he says and doesn't look back at the bunk again, not when he's bent over, forcing his feet into his pants. "We're going to get the crew out of there."