Title: Forget Me Not (3/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: When Jim spends time with his First Officer and CMO, he seems sad. Neither Spock nor McCoy can figure out why.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2
Or read at AO3

So it begins again. I wish it had happened in any way but this; this I remember with awful clarity—the deep aching of the body and the unbearable dry heat. Other details, like the delirious dreams, are hazy given how close I was to death at the time. Bones wasn’t with me then, but he is now. Half of me hopes that makes all the difference.

The other half of me knows this is nothing except a cruel joke. I would gladly die. Instead, something much worse will happen…

They will want me.

Personal Log, James T. Kirk

“Vegan choriomeningitis,” Leonard says to the attentive officer next to him in a voice torn between disbelief and horror. His knuckles are bloodless where he is clutching a data padd.

Spock’s already tense posture grows more rigid. “Is it a reoccurrence of the disease?”

Leonard begins to shake his head. “…I don’t…Well, I guess anything’s possible, Mr. Spock, if unlikely. Meningitis isn’t a sickness that flares up every few years or so once it’s been introduced into the bloodstream. It either kills you the first time around, or it doesn’t. Jim survived. Frankly, he’s supposed to be immune to the damn thing by now!” McCoy looks down at the results of Kirk’s blood test like it has betrayed him.

“Regardless of the likelihood, you can treat the illness.” The concern is not phrased as a question.

This time Leonard nods with assurance. “Yes. Jim’s experiencing only the muscle pain at the moment. I’d say we caught it in plenty of time. If he’d been feverish…” But the doctor doesn’t finish that statement, just swallows hard. “The diagnosis may not make sense to me, but I can say his prognosis seems favorable. I’ve already started him on a similar kind of treatment to the one used to cure him last time ’round.”

“Why would you not implement an identical treatment, Doctor?”

“For a simple reason, Commander: according to the medical records, that treatment almost killed Jim in the process of making him better.” McCoy’s mouth twitches, then, as he voices an afterthought. “Should I be worried that you doubt my medical wisdom?”

“I apologize.”

His twitch of the mouth transforms into a faintly amused smile. “It’s all right. I’d question me too if I were in your shoes.” Leonard sobers, his visage becoming grim once again. “We enacted standard quarantine protocol, of course.”

“Understood.”

“…So Jim’s not allowed visitors.”

The Vulcan’s “Indeed” is quite equable.

“Damn it, Spock! You do realize I’m trying to boot you from my medical bay, right?”

“Affirmative.”

A long-suffering sigh explodes from the doctor. “Why do I even bother?” He waves halfheartedly at a vacant chair. “Fine, stay if you want. Just don’t get underfoot.” Turning away to leave, he is stopped short by an uncanny sensation shivering along his spine that Spock is about to touch him. He glances over his shoulder in time to catch the Vulcan quickly tucking one of his hands out of sight behind his back.

The Vulcan’s expression gives nothing away. “Thank you, Dr. McCoy.”

Leonard accepts the gratitude with a bemused nod.

What the devil is up with Spock? If he didn’t know better, he would think something other than Jim’s condition is preoccupying the Vulcan.

But that cannot matter right now. His hands are full enough with a sick captain. This episode of Kirk’s is very wrong, though Leonard is unable to pinpoint exactly why. It’s too spontaneous, too…

Leonard shakes his head to force away some of his confusion. If there is any place the unlikely is likely to happen, and to any particular person, it would be on this starship to Captain James Tiberius Kirk. That, the doctor can always feel certain of.

At this point, he only need do his job and put Jim on the path to recovery.

“Jim.”

The mouth piece attached to the protective gear distorts normal speech patterns into something vaguely computerized. Jim blinks open bleary eyes anyway, as though he recognizes the hint of McCoy in that distortion.

“…Bones?”

Kirk’s body temperature is surprisingly level at the moment (for which Leonard is immensely grateful) but his voice sounds horrid.

Leonard reaches down to gently ease his patient into an upright position. Then he fumbles for the water canteen on a side table, grasping it awkwardly in his gloved hands, and holds it to Jim’s mouth. Jim swallows a mouthful of water, giving a light cough afterwards.

“Dry,” Kirk rasps. “Thanks.”

“I know,” Leonard says soothingly.

His fingers spasm inside his gloves. If he could touch Jim, skin to skin, it would be so much better. The biobed’s monitoring system is calibrated to alert him at any small spike in body temperature, but an electronic device simply doesn’t grant Leonard the same comfort he would feel if he could lay his own hand upon Jim’s forehead.

“How’s the pain?” he asks.

“Three,” the captain responds slowly.

Hesitation means double the estimate. Six, then. That’s better than when Jim first came in, being half-dragged through the doors of Sickbay by his First Officer. It was clear to Leonard straight away the man was in such pain he could barely stand on his own two feet.

McCoy’s body aches sympathetically at the thought. Patting the hand hidden beneath a thermal blanket, Leonard offers, “I can increase the meds a little more.”

Jim gives an abbreviated shake of his head.

With a sudden swell of tenderness, Leonard brushes a short lock of hair away from his patient’s forehead. “It’s gonna be a’right, Jim-boy,” he murmurs. “I promise.”

Jim’s eyes, which had lowered at the touch, jerk open. He looks startled and, for a brief second, scared. But when Jim tries to speak, the dry state of his throat sends him into a coughing fit instead.

Leonard feels bad for upsetting the man even though he doesn’t know how he managed to do it. “Sorry,” he apologizes once, twice. “Here.” He thrusts the canteen bottle back into Jim’s free hand.

A last cough racks Kirk’s frame as he flops back onto his pillow with an air of defeat, eyes closed. McCoy catches the water bottle before it can tilt sideways to flood the bed and gently removes it from the limp grasp of Jim’s fingers. After setting the bottle aside, Leonard motions for the assistant who had entered the room with him to bring over the tray of hyposprays.

Jim has already had two injections; three are left to go through the next couple of days and then he should be over the onset of the choriomeningitis. As Leonard pushes up the sleeve of Kirk’s thin shirt to reveal a pale expanse of the man’s upper arm, he thinks it won’t matter too much if he stays on shift for the duration of those couple of days. Sleep seems far beyond his reach in the face of Jim’s misery.

It occurs to Leonard later that might be a thought he shares with Spock, who spends a very long time at the observation window of the Captain’s room while medical staff mill around his still form; Spock simply does little other than keep his eyes trained on Jim.

Leonard is given a shock during the start of gamma shift of the second day when the tall, thin shadow of the Vulcan appears silently at the edge of his office’s open doorway. He leaps to his feet in that instant, heart knocking against his ribcage.

“Jim?” the doctor questions, already reaching for the nearest tricorder and cursing the apparent fallibility of his medical equipment.

“The Captain is asleep. Other than a slight improvement in his respiratory function, there has been no change in his condition in the last four point twenty-two hours. I apologize, Doctor, for any undue grief the unexpectedness of my presence may have caused you.” Spock says this as he slips through the doorway into the office.

Leonard drops back into his chair, relieved, and huffs out a small laugh. “We’ve been doing that a lot lately, apologizin’ to each other.” He thinks absently he should feel alarm when Spock doesn’t come to a halt at the opposite side of his desk to gaze inscrutably at him (like he has been doing for over a day, as if Leonard would not notice) but circles it to stand very near to hand. Instead, Leonard is just baffled.

“Spock?”

“May I ask you a question, Leonard?”

Leonard. Leonard. He blinks, feeling the corners of his mouth turn up. So Spock isn’t too much of a stick in the mud to use his first name! “Shoot, Commander.”

Spock looks at him.

“Ask,” Leonard clarifies.

“Do you love James T. Kirk?”

Leonard has been floored by a few questions in his life, but none like the one that flows so easily out of Spock’s mouth. His brain needs a moment to make sense of it.

Perhaps it’s the noise Leonard makes that prompts Spock to repeat his inquiry: “Do you love James T. Kirk?”

“Do I love…?” Leonard fumbles. “Are you asking me if I love Jim, or if I’m in love with him?” In love, Leonard’s brain readily supplies. Maybe the choriomeningitis is catching; his mouth is suddenly as dry as a desert.

“Why,” Spock goes on to say, like Leonard had answered the question already, “do you love him?”

Leonard wonders if he looks as pale as he feels. “How can you ask me that question, Spock?”

Spock says nothing in response.

“I mean,” Leonard tries again, “how can you just come in here and ask… something so deeply personal of me? You wouldn’t…” Leonard slowly answers his own question. “…unless it’s relevant somehow to…”

“Doctor, I merely require your answer, not your hypothesis.”

It’s like a slap to the face. Leonard bristles without intending to. “Now wait a minute! I said you can’t expect me to answer that!”

All of a sudden Spock is looming over him, not just standing too close. Leonard watches with faint surprise as the Vulcan reaches down to take a hold of his bare wrist.

“I will know if you are lying to me,” Spock tells him with a studied quietness.

Leonard cannot tear his eyes away from the fingers wrapped around his wrist, elegantly long, nails blunt at the ends; such strength in those fingers, those hands, and yet they are not bearing down upon him in a way which hurts.

He asks without thinking, “Why are you doing this, Spock?”

A reply comes after a pause. “I am bound to an individual who loves another. It is… illogical. I must determine why.”

Leonard hears something resembling a plea beneath those words, and he doesn’t have it in him to deny Spock anything, not when Jim is lying nearby, sick and hurting.

The revelation following that astonishes him. “You’re in love with Jim!”

Spock stiffens and drops Leonard’s wrist. For a split second, Leonard thinks Spock is as equally astonished as he is.

For that reason, he doesn’t let the Vulcan retreat. “Spock!”

Leonard catches up to the Vulcan at the threshold of the door, moving too quickly and clumsily to be gentle as he takes a hold of Spock’s arm. “Don’t you dare run away!” The accusation sounds familiar, but he cannot recall having said it before now.

Spock looks at him, an odd sense of déjà-vu hanging eerily between them. Leonard finally shakes it off as he might a drop of water and shifts to position himself between Spock and the open doorway.

“Don’t go,” he says, lowering his voice so no one down the hall might catch the urgency of his tone and investigate. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You did not scare me.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, then.”

“Doctor…”

There is a war in Spock’s eyes—reluctance battling, of all things, wonder. Leonard can do nothing but wait to see which wins.

“Leonard,” Spock says at last, “I am not upset. I am… surprised because what you claimed holds truth I cannot deny. I regard the Captain as more than a friend.”

“You do,” Leonard agrees, and his tone is nowhere near damning. “Spock, I know you do. I can’t tell you how I know it, only that…”

“It is a knowledge your heart possesses.”

Leonard might not have put it quite so fancifully but he nods, daring to smile a little.

“Fascinating,” murmurs the Vulcan, glancing away. “I have the knowledge that you feel deeply for the Captain, as you have the same knowledge concerning myself and the Captain.”

Leonard lets go of Spock’s arm, stupefied. “Excuse me? Who said anything about Jim and me?”

Spock appears not to have heard him. “When coupled with the fact that the bond exists, my prior conclusion becomes false. Hm.”

Leonard’s brain gets stuck on one word. “What bond? Damn it, Spock, what bond!”

“Calm yourself,” the Vulcan says, a touch of serenity returning to his voice.

Leonard instantly feels himself engulfed in a wave of calm. He rocks back at the sensation because it feels real, like Spock had poured something over him, and it is now magically draining tension out of his muscles. To say Leonard is disconcerted is an understatement.

Spock’s gaze has returned to scrutinize him.

“Are you…?” Several questions burst out of him at once. “What are you doing? How are you doing it? My god, you’re in my mind, aren’t you! How in blazes did you sneak in there?!”

“I do not sneak, Doctor.”

Leonard shoves a finger under the Vulcan’s nose. “Leonard, dadgummit! We’re sharing brain-space, you pointy-eared hobgoblin, so you can damn well stop with that infernal Doctor-this, Doctor-that nonsense!” He is illogically incensed.

…And he just thought the word illogical.

No, no, no!

With a sharp intake of breath, Leonard gives Spock his fiercest glare. “I am not illogically incensed!”

One of Spock’s eyebrows hikes up. “That thought is your own.”

“No, it’s not! It’s yours, all yours, you walking computer—part of one of your evil, underhanded schemes to turn me into a scary replica of some Vulcan robot,” Leonard accuses in a single breath.

I understand now why the bond must be three-pronged, a thought, cooled by the logic inherent to a Vulcan, passes through Leonard’s mind. It would be difficult to endure the full extent of your exuberant paranoia without a buffer.

Leonard’s mouth clicks shut of its own accord.

Oh, he thinks. Spock is talking about Jim.

That is correct.

Stop talking my head!

“As you wish.”

Leonard leans back against the doorjamb, needing the support. He doesn’t know whether or not he wants to scowl at Spock. Would it make a difference?

“Have I distressed you?”

Leonard thinks about it. “…No. Though any sane person would be even a teensy bit disturbed.” He can interpret the look in Spock’s eyes easily enough. “Quit laughing at me. I am not calling myself insane!”

The amusement in Spock’s eyes softens to an undisguised affection. Upon seeing that, Leonard has to resist the urge to take the Vulcan’s hand. It’s a strange urge, that urge, just like days before when he imagined linking their fingers together.

Spock said something about a bond. Obviously he knows more than he is telling. Leonard crosses his arms and tries to gain that edge of demand Jim is so good at calling up at a moment’s notice. “Tell me about this bond, Spock.”

An unusual emotion flickers across the Vulcan’s face. “Perhaps the K’lthery are more observant than we think they are… They said we are partners.”

Leonard’s throat works for a moment while he deciphers what Spock isn’t saying outright. “You think we’re married? But you said bonded!”

“In some cultures, Doctor, the two terms embody the same ideology—that two or more individuals should be considered as one unit if they so choose.”

“I know that!” Leonard bursts out, face flushing. Then his face flushes further. “Good lord, you mean ‘bond’ as in the matrimonial bond of your people…”

Dark eyes pin Leonard to the door. “The matrimonial nature of the bond is only one component of what the union truly represents. Kashkau, whukuh eh teretuhr… Our minds, one and together. Estuhn wi ri estuhn. Touching, yet not touching…”

“K’whuli wi ri k’whuli,” Leonard finishes slowly, automatically, mindful of his pronunciation yet not questioning where it comes from.

“Apart, yet never apart,” Spock translates softly.

For a brief minute, they say nothing and simply regard one another.

Then Leonard releases a breath. “All right. I believe you.” He lets Spock hold on to his silence a moment longer before saying, “…But I have to know: how does Jim fit into all this?”

Spock lifts his hand toward Leonard’s face as if he might touch him but in the end, he does not. Instead, the hand lowers back to Spock’s side. “I do not know. Nor do I fully comprehend why the bond exists—”

“—and how we didn’t know a damn thing about it.” Leonard pushes away from the door. “Only I get this funny feeling, Spock, Jim knows exactly what we don’t.”

Spock considers him. “Explain.”

“It’s for same reason I look at him and think there’s got to be more. With you, I feel like I ought to get to know you better, as good as I can—” The color is undoubtedly high in his face at that admission, but luckily Spock isn’t one to tease him about it. “—but with Jim, when I see him, I feel either the same or like I ought to be mad about something. That feeling has just made no sense to me, until now.”

“It is not the opportune time to question him.” Spock sounds dismayed by this fact.

Leonard snorts. “Well, I swear by all I am that time will be soon, my little green-blooded hobgoblin.”

Spock does his impression of nonplussed, which amuses Leonard to no end. “Doctor, must you continually refer to me by that word?”

“What, ‘hobgoblin’?” Leonard purses his mouth. “But I like it.”

“I had noticed you did not use it until after the mind-meld.”

Leonard bounces slightly on the balls of his feet. “Well now, that means it’s important, Spock. Clearly,” he taps his forehead, “it’s a defining characteristic of what keeps us together!”

Spock’s eyebrows indicate his disbelief of this notion.

“…Unless you want me to call you ‘sweetpea’ or ‘sugarplum’,” the doctor adds mischievously.

“Your initial choice will suffice.”

Leonard smirks, says smugly, “Thought so,” and pokes his head into the hallway. “…I suppose we should check on Jim. Even when he’s sick he snores loud enough to beat the band. Some of the staff’ll be wanting their ten-minute break about now.”

As if he had sent this thought skittering ahead of them, his head nurse Christine Chapel turns the corner of the hallway, not quite in a rush but not walking in a relaxed manner either. “Dr. McCoy!” she calls out sharply.

“Chapel,” he says as he slips into the hallway in front of Spock. “What’s got you in a rush?”

“It’s the Captain, sir,” she says, mouth pressed thin. “Doctor, he wants out of quarantine immediately.”

“The man’s sick as a dog! He shouldn’t asking for anything except another dose of painkillers!”

“That’s just it, sir,” the nurse says, looking troubled. “Dr. M’ Benga ran a new culture on his blood, as scheduled, and the infection is… all but gone. And somehow the Captain knows it and is demanding we release him.”

Leonard quickens his pace at this news, certain Spock will have no trouble keeping up. In fact, he is rather grateful at the moment to have the Vulcan at his back.

How can be a disease as deadly as Vegan choriomeningitis simply appear and disappear like somebody’s magic trick?

Next Part

Related Posts:

• Forget Me Not (10/10) – from April 1, 2013
• Forget Me Not (9/10) – from April 1, 2013
• Forget Me Not (8/10) – from March 18, 2013
• Forget Me Not (7/?) – from March 12, 2013
• Forget Me Not (6/?) – from March 6, 2013