Title: Damage Control
Characters: McCoy, Kirk, Spock
Word Count: 661
Rating: K+
Summary/Warning: Filler from end of This Side of Paradise, before the scene on the Enterprise Bridge.
He was tending the twenty-fourth black eye of the hour (while the method of the spores' destruction had been effective, the aftereffects of over four hundred crewmen at each others' throats in all-out brawling was considerably detrimental to his medical supplies) when the doors swished open to admit his Captain, swaying slightly on unsteady feet.
He shooed the groaning crewman into the next room to see Nurse Chapel, and turned just in time to catch Kirk as his legs buckled.
"Jim, what in blue blazes hit you, a shuttlecraft?" he demanded upon reading the scanner results.
"Try…one very angry Vulcan..." Kirk groaned, closing his eyes. "Bones, I tell you you're playing with fire, insulting him like you do all the time…trust me."
Ignoring both the attempted humor and the protests against a heavy painkiller, he administered the latter and glared down at his now-drowsy patient. "I can't believe you went all the way through beaming the whole crew aboard, as well as presiding over that conference, with a fractured collarbone and that much muscular tissue damage, not to mention –"
"Save it," Kirk muttered sleepily, waving him away with the hand not occupied by his angry grip.
"Does Spock have any idea about this?" he growled, eyes narrowed.
His patient blinked furiously out of a drug-induced haze and glared sternly. "No, and you're not going to tell him, either. That's an order."
"But –"
"Bones!" The protest was more a moan than a coherent word, and he couldn't find it in himself to object further. He nodded resignedly, and saw Kirk doze off, half-dead to the world within ten seconds.
He was surprised, but probably shouldn't have been, to hear his office communications unit buzzing him a moment later.
"Doctor, I regret interrupting you at your work, although I suspect your patients will be glad of the silence," the First Officer remarked, without more-than-usual acidic sarcasm. "But have you seen the Captain since you beamed back aboard?"
He debated for only a moment before admitting that the man was in the next room, asleep. He would have sworn that the channel picked up a small sigh, but the next moment he couldn't be sure. "Is he much injured, Doctor?" the Vulcan asked quietly.
"He'll live, and prob'ly be griping about it this time tomorrow," he replied lightly, in deference to Kirk's wishes on the subject's discussion. "The next time you two want to go throwing each other into walls, do it in the gymnasium where they're padded and save me the clean-up afterwards?"
"Doctor, there was no 'each other'; the Captain barely tried to defend himself," came the pained murmur.
"He wouldn't," the physician groused irritably.
The channel buzzed for an instant, and a sleepy "Shut up and let a guy sleep, you two" was muttered into it from the ward's communications unit.
"Eavesdropping is hardly a well-mannered action, Captain."
"Get your backside back in that bed, Jim!"
"Then you get yours out here and see t' my crew, Doctor," came the slightly slurred response, full of drowsy indignation.
He muttered something that must have caused the Vulcan's eyebrows to incline precariously – he could practically hear them. "I shall leave you to your torture of the innocents, Doctor," came coolly through the unit.
"You do that," he retorted. "And I'll expect you down here first thing tomorrow."
"Doctor, I have no need of your poking and prodding; I am in perfect health, as you no doubt have discovered the rest of the crew to be due to the influence of the spores."
"You're coming down here, and if you keep griping about it I swear I'll put the instruments in a refrigeration unit for a half-hour before you get here!"
It was Kirk's sleepy half-giggle that broke the stunned silence, as well as the tension and dread that had been present among them for the last few hours.
Listening gratefully, McCoy would have sworn even the Vulcan was smiling in relief.