Leonard McCoy is under no such obligations to spare his captain’s puny dignity, however, as is indicated by the fact that the man is sprawled back in his chair, head tipped toward the ceiling, cackling like a hyena. “I hate you,” he growls, flinging himself into the other chair and daring Spock to make any further comment about the phaser lying on the table between them. “It was HUGE, I tell you.” “It was barely seven centimeters in diameter, Captain.” “Who asked you?” “I was merely observing, sir; you did say you were ‘counting on my scientific knowledge,’ did you not?” He scowls. “Nobody likes a smart-aleck, Spock.” And there it goes, the eyebrow of I-know-everything-fear-me-ye-mortals. He ignores his far too smug First in favor of trying to get Bones to stop hiccupping. Serves the guy right for laughing like that. “Bones, breathe.” “The whole wall!” the doctor manages between gasps for breath. “You took out the whole wall!” “I hate them!” he protests feebly, knowing even as he says it that he’s not going to be able to get out of this with his dignity in any way intact. “They’re creepy and disgusting and they’ve got way too many legs and they JUMP AT YOU and –“ “And they are perfectly harmless, sir; I believe the phrase told to schoolchildren is, they are more scared of you than you are of them?” Ok, Spock was dead when they got back on board. He’s already writing the replicator script coding in his head to turn plomeek soup purple and chunky. “I’m not scared of them,” he says, squirming in his chair. “Just…I don’t like them. Really don’t.” “Not scared, my sainted aunt,” Bones snorts. “You shrieked like a girl, Jim.” “Did not.” “You so did. Shrieked. Like. A. Big. Girl. It was gorgeous, darlin’.” The blush has now spread all the way down his neck, he’s pretty sure. “I didn’t shriek…I just yelled,” he tries, and knows he’s failed miserably when Spock doesn’t even deign to give him an eyebrow. “I did. Yell, not shriek. A very masculine, dignified yell.” “Let us hypothesize for the moment that that is correct, Captain,” Spock begins, and in that condescending tone that only a Vulcan can pull off without getting decked just on general principle. “I daresay that firing a phaser at it, multiple times, does constitute a slight over-reaction to a mere arachnid in your shower stall.” “It was friggin’ huge,” he mutters gracelessly. “Like, big as my head huge.” “Jim, you blew a hole the size of a tractor in your bathroom wall!” Bones explodes with another fit of laughter, and he starts plotting how to lock his not-best-friend-any-more in the transparent observation dome. “All right, so I’m scared of them!” he snaps finally, really and truly embarrassed now. “Sam used to wait until I was asleep and then drop them on my head in the dark, okay?” Even now he shivers, remembering the feeling of scratchy legs scrabbling over his face, eyes, lips (ugh that was the worst), in the darkness of an Iowa spring night. Now God (and he’d bet not even Him) only knows where in the universe Sam is, and the thought must show on his face, because Bones stops laughing, and looks at him with something that’s too close to concern for him to really enjoy; he’d rather have the mockery, because it takes less explaining. But he’s totally shocked when the older man says nothing about any of it, just pats his hand a few times where it rests twitching on the old table, and suggests they call the Security men back for a round of poker before the Enterprise is due to beam them back up from a slightly-aborted shore leave. Jim’s not sure how the doctor coerced (read: blackmailed) Cupcake into not saying anything about his captain’s little girly panic attack, but somehow he did, because word never gets out, and he’s pretty grateful about the fact. McCoy’s a heck of a lot more scary than a five-inch spider in his shower, and he loves that.