Morgue Files

The recycled air of the sickbay triggers a series of sense memories like lacerations, and Jim winces as he dodges nurses and doctors and crewmembers.  There's a knot of tension on the Enterprise, the worst of it clustered around the private chamber Bones had assigned for Spock, where everyone has taken to treading carefully.  Spock's been too almost dead for visitors, but it hasn't stopped the entire bridge crew from walking past on tiptoe, from touching the tips of their fingers to the edge of the door, like a kiss once-removed, and Jim thinks that if Spock could see it he would let out one of those short, long-suffering sighs Jim pushes out of him, like Jim's the hands and Spock's the bellows and this — whatever this is in between them — is a fire gagging for air.

Outside the door Chapel and Bones are frowning at one another in one of those lingering moments of community sympathy Jim steers clear of if at all possible.  It's terrible for everybody when Chapel and Bones argue — it's worse when they're on the same side.

"Nurse Chapel, Bones," he says, pulling to a stop.

Spock's door is closed tight, and the biometric monitor alongside it darkened.  Jim has a captain's override for that sort of thing if he wants to be really invasive, but Spock always finds out about Jim's more heinous breeches of medical privacy and it usually isn't worth the snit his first officer would climb into and make cozy in.

"Captain," Chapel says, tense, the same time Bones hisses, "Ambassador Sarek is asking we release Spock into his custody."

"Obviously, that's not going to happen," Jim answers, reflexive, pitching his voice low even though he knows Spock's asleep behind a soundproofed door; he can understand Sarek wants his son close at hand, but Jim wants Spock where Jim can keep an eye on him, where he can call Bones at 2 am and demand a second opinion.  "I'll deal with it."

Chapel stares at him, doleful.  "I hope you can.  He's in no condition for the travel required to reach New Vulcan."

"In the meantime," Jim says, changing the subject because he's lost the ability to be objective about New Vulcan, about Spock and the tiny handful of his people that remain, about the huge and deep dark measures of space that will grow between them soon enough, "Sulu reports to me we've settled into our moorings and we're going to be cleared for disembarkation in an hour — thoughts?"

"Yeah, that you morons should get shot less," Bones sighs.

"I'll take that under advisement and ask Commander Spock to make a note of it," Jim tells him, because there wasn't much else he could say.

Bones has said — over and over again — that Spock will be fine, caveat: eventually.  The bones and organs and sinew underneath Spock's skin are terrifyingly delicate, and Jim had seen too much of all of it as he'd wrapped pressure bandages around Spock's chest that day, trying to keep his insides on the inside, green pouring out of Spock with every gasping thud of his heart, pouring over Jim's fingers, numb and slick with Spock's blood.  Jim's felt Spock's skin go from feverish against his own to cool, felt his stomach sink and his eyes get wet and burn and heard himself gasping horrible, desperate, embarrassing shit, rocked Spock back and forth and begged nobody and everybody and it still comes to him sometimes in flashes during the Enterprise's artificial night.  So he walks by Spock's private room at night just like everybody else does and watches his crew touch fingers to the door, affectionate, tender, and wishes it would be okay if he did the same thing, but he thinks he'd be obvious about it, that Spock might feel whatever Jim's not thinking through the metal and upholstery and cloth and the lightyears between them.

He clears his throat.  "I'm having medical shuttle 2 prepped — if you get him ready to be moved I'll fly him into SUMC myself."

Chapel actually smirks, and Bones sighs, "Oh, Jesus, that'll go well."

"It's my responsibility," Jim says, since he knows about how well that will go, too, and all the inevitable diplomatic furor it will stir, but it's the sort of thing you do when you're captain — and when you've held Spock in the searing hot desert of a mostly-deserted planet and watched him bleeding to death under your hands.

***

Disembarkation always turns out to be an epic, irredeemable shitshow, and Jim has no idea why.  People always fucking get their mooring number wrong or their order of arrival incorrect and then Sulu starts swearing at people in Japanese about having to back up a fucking spaceship the size of a continent and Chekov makes that God damn face because he hates yelling.

Jim's ability to be a pain in the ass is instinctive, but he had to earn his masters degree in being scary as fuck through a hands-on correspondence program with Spock — who has all of these things going for his general ability to make people shit bricks.

Spock hates people who waste his time because Spock's time is important and nobody's ever questioned that; Spock is always right because he is, and nobody will ever convince him that might have something to do with his being ridiculously spoiled; Spock has plenty of respect for his elders and his betters — but they have to earn it first, which is one of those things that makes Jim have to bite back inappropriate laughter all the time.

Anyway, Jim makes it a point not to be a bully or a dick most of the time, but sometimes if being captain means making a few ensigns at HQ cry, so be it, and he channels Spock.

"That's amazing," Bones says later, when they're on the medical transport pad along with Spock's biobed and Spock, still asleep, at whom Jim is assiduously not looking.  "I think I've actually seen the green-blooded hobgoblin's version of that exact same tantrum before."

Jim winces.  Green blood.  "Shut up, Bones."

"It's like listening to the cover of a deeply annoying song," Bones continues, not shutting up.