Title: The Trouble with Jim
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: Per usual, a transporter malfunction leads to a not-so-typical situation. Gen.
Warning: …Crack, pure unadulterated crack. I’d apologize but what’s the point? I am probably going to do this again in the future anyway. XD

Leonard found the golden little creature magical in its own way; it recognized him, greeted him with rumbling purrs that made it tremble, and seemed to like the sound of his voice. His fingers brushed lightly against it for the umpteenth time, ruffling its short yet unexpectedly soft fur, and that made the creature tremble more in anticipation. It clearly wanted to be petted.

Leonard had been cradling it only for a minute or so, relaxed beyond imagining as it vibrated against his chest, when the laboratory door slid open.

“Doctor, I believe—”

Abruptly the newcomer fell silent. Leonard shifted his happy bundle of fur and looked up, expression gradually switching from embarrassment to wry acceptance at getting caught.

“Sorry,” he muttered, settling the tribble with gentleness back into its new cylindrical home of thick polythene on the lab counter. “I couldn’t help it.” His shoulders drew in slightly, anticipating a disparaging remark about human susceptibility to cuteness or a lecture on the impropriety of the situation—because, truly, wasn’t there something spectacularly improper about stroking a tribble that was in actuality your commanding officer?

Leonard almost winced.

But Spock surprised him by not commenting on the matter, instead delving straight to the heart of his visit to the biolab. “Doctor, I believe Mr. Scott is close to a solution concerning the Captain’s transformation.”

Inside its plastic housing, the tribble’s purring intensified.

“That’s great,” Leonard told Spock, relief coloring his voice. He snuck another glance at Science and Medical’s latest—and high-priority—joint project. “I can’t say it’s been particularly calming to see him like that.” Which was ironic, in Leonard’s opinion, given that the tribble’s sole purpose seemed to be de-stressing a frazzled McCoy with its warm, welcoming coos each time he was in arm’s length of it.

It, him.

Leonard put a hand to his forehead and massaged the lines which had formed there. Keeping his objectivity had become damned difficult in the last few days.

Spock’s “Indeed” echoed in the nearly empty room. Most of the lab workers had been relegated to their cabins to catch up on rest. No one had gainsaid Leonard or his strict orders. He suspected at least two-thirds of the staff were already asleep on their feet as they left.

Leonard sat down on a neighboring stool as the relentless monotony of inconclusive and generally useless tests (none of which had, thank goodness, affected the subject of the experimentation adversely) finally caught up to him and sapped the remnants of his dwindling energy. As Spock shifted in the doorway, Leonard didn’t dare look in that direction, afraid he would give away how truly compromised his physical state was with the tiredness bared so blatantly in his face.

As things stood, he had to muster up spare energy he didn’t really have to keep his vowels from dragging behind his consonants. “No surprise there, that it is gonna be the transporter which fixes this. Should’ve guessed.” Would that supposition have resulted in them doing less testing in the lab? Probably not.

The tribble made a wibbling noise.

“I know, I know,” Leonard murmured at it, tapping the side of the beaker-turned-tribble-cage. “We’re getting there. Just remember transporters are more trouble than they’re worth, and we gotta dot our i’s and cross our t’s if we don’t want you turning into a puddle of goo next.” The tribble’s fur stiffened as it wibbled a second time, then relaxed to its natural soft state again. The longer Leonard stayed with it, the more it developed interesting signals of self-awareness and, he dared to hope, comprehension. This particular noise, he felt, was the tribble’s way of expressing its impatience. He said as much to Spock, commenting thoughtfully at the end, “I think chances are he’s irritable because we haven’t feed ‘im.”

“Undoubtedly,” agreed the Vulcan as he came around the corner of the counter at a slow glide to join Leonard in tribble-gazing. “It would, of course, be unwise to initiate the reproduction process.”

“Not to mention awkward,” Leonard added. “Can you imagine you explaining to Jim when he’s human again about all the little Jims he birthed?”

“That would not fall under my purview as First Officer,” Spock quipped in his dry way.

Leonard gave a half-hearted snort. “Whatever you say, Spock… but you can’t tell me we aren’t gonna get at least a little blackmail out of this!” he teased.

“Your forward thinking is, as always, Doctor, disproportionate regarding its maturity and its practicality.”

One of his eyes closed in a partial squint. “Didn’t your mama ever tell you if you ain’t got something nice to say, it’s better to say nothing at all?”

Spock tilted his head to look down his nose at Leonard in a silent retort of did yours?

Leonard felt momentarily rejuvenated as the fire of an old debate kindled and warmed him from the inside out. Straight away a few smart remarks came to mind which would do nicely in response to that look, but before Leonard could lob his next verbal barb at the Vulcan watching him with a keen, almost expectant interest in those dark eyes, the tribble in the plastic beaker bounced with a loud purr-squeak, taking the two officers by surprise.

“Huh,” Leonard said, sliding off his stool to lean in closer to Jim the Tribble. “He’s never done that before.”

“Fascinating.”

Leonard tapped the beaker. “Hey there, Jim-boy. Can ya do that again?”

The tribble didn’t move.

“C’mon, now…” He tapped harder at the glass to communicate his insistence. “Let’s see you do it again! Jump, boy, jump!”

The room fell into dead silence. Odd, mused Leonard, that the tribble had quit purring.

“Doctor,” Leonard’s tapping ceased, struck as he was by the way Spock sounded a little bit pained, “I do not think the Captain appreciates the manner in which you have chosen to address him.” Like one of those canine mammals favored as pets by you Terrans, his tone implied.

Leonard straightened, his brows coming down at a sharp angle and his voice filling with annoyance. “Well, fine, you talk to him then!” The doctor reclaimed the stool and noisily dragged it a few feet away, plopping down upon it with a huff. He waved his arm with an imperious air at Spock to get on with things before crossing that arm with the other in front of his chest.

Spock simply blinked at him before turning somewhat slowly to face the silent tribble. His lips parted, only to automatically press together again in a thin line of dismay.

Suppressing a triumphant smile, Leonard settled in to wait. At great length, perhaps once Spock realized Leonard had every intention of staying right there, refusing to budge like the stubborn human the Vulcan surely believed him to be, Spock unlocked his hands from behind his back and let them hang lax at his sides. His voice was not entirely impassive (and most definitely containing a hint of exasperation, Leonard thought with glee) as he said, just once, to the tribble, “Jim.”

The stiff-looking tribble melted into a puddle of gold fur and began to purr.

Leonard found himself grinning unrepentantly as he uncrossed his arms. Spock’s eyebrow twitched but the Vulcan said nothing.

Taking pity on his uncomfortable friend, Leonard came back to the counter to extricate the tribble from its impromptu housing unit. It seemed natural to want to cuddle the creature again, now that it was making sweet little coos. If his grin turned slightly dopey, Leonard didn’t trouble himself over it.

“Cute little thing,” he said, a great deal of his irritability and weariness fading away without him noticing. “I gotta say, even though I’d prefer to have the old Jim back, this version’s not too bad. Not so worrying, you know. I really had a terrible moment there, when he wasn’t standing beside us on the pad.” He made a small noise at that memory, but it swiftly became an amused hmph under his breath. “It coulda been worse, I suppose. We could have all been turned into tribbles.”

“I find that scenario… quite disturbing, Doctor.”

“Yeah.” Scotty probably would have resigned right then and there if he had been faced with three purring furballs, one golden, one brown, and one black, in place of three of the Enterprise’s senior officers. Leonard tittered faintly at the image. In response, Jim the Tribble vibrated with more intensity in his hands, no doubt transmitting waves of pure happiness. Leonard stroked a hand lovingly over its fur. He didn’t remember Spock was watching them until the Vulcan shifted his weight ever-so-slightly on purpose.

“I see its restorative power is not to be underestimated,” the quiet observation was made. “Perhaps, given that the Captain appears to be healthy and in no danger, you would be willing to relinquish your… vigil to another at this time.”

Leonard glanced away from the tribble with a confused blink around the too-still room. “But no one’s…”

Wordlessly the Vulcan held out his hand.

Leonard transferred the tribble to Spock without really thinking about it, only to be bombarded by a striking sense of loss once his hands were empty. He didn’t know what to do with the feeling so he rubbed his palms along the fabric of his pants until they tingled. “You’re certain Scotty doesn’t need your help?” he questioned.

“Affirmative. Mr. Scott was emphatic that my presence was no longer required while he implemented the ‘finishing touches’, I believe he termed it, to the new protocol of the transporter.”

After a moment, Leonard nodded in agreement. “Sometimes it’s better if we don’t know what ingredients go in the pie, so to speak. Otherwise we might lose our appetites.”

Spock considered him. “…That expression is surprisingly apt.”

The smile curling Leonard’s mouth was brief and not sardonic. “Thanks,” he replied. The smile came back in full force when he realized what Spock was doing. “Addictively comforting, aren’t they, Commander?”

Spock’s hand stilled in the act of stroking the tribble, as he only then recognized too that he had been petting Jim without meaning to do so. Leonard cleared his throat and turned for the lab’s door, saying, “I’ll, uh, come back in a couple of hours.”

“It is my recommendation that you retire for, at minimum, a five-hour period,” the Vulcan said.

“Maybe” was all Leonard conceded rather than telling Spock only doctors ought to prescribe doctor-ly advice. “But if anything—”

Spock promised, not waiting for Leonard to finish, “You will be informed immediately should a significant event occur.”

The tribble’s purring, which had died down in the interim due to the lack of its newest caregiver’s affection, started up again. Spock must be unknowingly (or knowingly—wasn’t that a thought? Leonard told himself, amused) giving in to the magnetic pull of Tribble Jim again.

Leonard called out (so he could later claim he had said it), “Just be warned, Spock, he’s a needy little muff of fur!”

The door slid closed on the tribble’s amazingly loud, very adamant warble of coos and purrs and Spock’s dry “I am aware, Doctor.”

Leonard laughed despite the worry still lingering in the back of his mind and left his pair of comrades (a Vulcan and a tribble, who could have predicted that!) with a light heart. Sometime after, in his quarters as he dropped into his small bed, he imagined that he could still hear it—Jim, he meant—in the throes of ecstasy at being coddled by Spock. Would Spock ever admit to his secret delight at tribbles? No, of course not. The arrogant Vulcan would no doubt give the impression of gratification-is-not-an-emotion and deny bending to Jim’s charming influence like it was another normal day.

Maybe Jim would remember life as a tribble. Leonard grinned into his pillow at that thought.

If it can be managed, he decided, closing his eyes, he needs to sneak back into the laboratory when least expected (how distracted will the Vulcan be?) and capture evidence of this ‘bonding time’ between Jim and Spock. Won’t that be a fun thing to add to the slideshow at the next social mixer thrown by the Recreation department?

No, neither Spock nor Jim would be able to live this down for the next decade, not if Leonard Horatio McCoy had something to say about. And because of all things Jim was a tribble and Spock his tribble-keeper, Leonard did. He most certainly did!

-Fini

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