Chapter Text
The game of Kolinahr was named after a Vulcan discipline of purging emotion.
Also called the Discipline of Contradiction, it was a formalized exercise in paradoxical logic, developed by post-Surak rationalists to expose latent cognitive bias. The goal was to navigate contradiction under pressure without repetition, fallacy, or emotional interference.
Each round began with a proposition, typically an aphorism, axiom, or logical tenet. The player had exactly sixty seconds to refute it with reason alone. Violations could be called “Fracture” by the opponent, and a neutral arbiter – usually, an AI – ruled on the validity of the contradiction. If it held –
“A point is awarded,” said T’Pau.
McCoy grinned and nudged one of his symbolic tokens across the holographic battlefield. T’Pau’s tokens were almost surrounding the hologram of his le’matya, predatory desert beasts symbolic of unrestrained emotion.
Being so far from Vulcan, with the Enterprise out of reach, it had been a long while since the two of them had been able to play.
"Loyalty, rightly directed, is not given to persons, but to principle. Logic demands constancy, not the chaos of personal affection or momentary impulse.”
On one side of the screen, Spock’s godmother sat like a monolith in a high-backed chair that looked like it had been designed to punish indulgence. Her layered robes had the structural complexity of heat-shield insulation, dense enough to survive atmospheric re-entry or crush a shuttlepod. The fabric draped around her in flawless geometric folds, like someone had starched them using a protractor and a plasma iron. Her expression was the same it had been for the past thirty minutes – a still, sculpted mask of Vulcan calm.
Behind her loomed what looked like a temple of some kind, though it might’ve just as easily been a mausoleum. The walls were matte black, etched with symbols that crawled across the stone like fossilized roots or neural pathways. Firelight flickered from tall sconces. The place looked ancient and somehow unimpressed by his entire existence.
“In part, I guess,” said McCoy, slouching in his desk chair, thinking of Spock and Jim. “But where I come from, loyalty starts with trust between people. You don’t really pledge yourself to a principle until you’ve had to live it – shoulder to shoulder, in the dirt, with someone who holds you to it. Loyalty is forged in trust. In failure and in forgiveness. Without that, it’s just obedience to an idea.”
"Trust is a derivative of reason,” said T’Pau, “subordinate to principle. Emotional loyalty impedes rational thought."
"Emotions aren’t always a glitch. They reinforce bonds that keep societies intact. Without feeling, loyalty’s just a contract."
"Loyalty without rational justification is illogical and unstable.”
"Yet,” said McCoy, scratching his temple, rumpled in a Starfleet Academy tee and flannel pajama pants, bare feet propped on the desk, “people change loyalties all the time when their values shift. That flexibility, that’s human logic in action."
"Loyalty must be constant when grounded in immutable logic, not transient sentiment.”
"Constant like a star?” McCoy drawled. “Or constant like a stubborn mule? Sometimes loyalty to a flawed cause is worse than no loyalty at all."
T’Pau inclined her head slightly. “Misplaced loyalty is a failure of mental discipline and must be corrected."
"And sometimes that correction is painful, like surgery. But you don’t cut without cause, and you don’t abandon loyalty lightly."
“All truths are conditional.”
McCoy lounged back in his chair, trimming his nails with a compact file from the medkit he kept in his quarters. If he looked like a man who’d just gotten off a double shift and hadn’t quite made it to bed, well… that would have been it.
“If what you just said is true, it must also be false under some conditions. Therefore, it’s not reliably true at all.”
She said nothing for a long moment, as if recalibrating her expectations. Then, with the smallest incline of her head, she spoke.
“One point to you.”
Even after all of T’Pau’s training, McCoy still didn’t know the rules fully. He played with what she called “a naturalistic contrarian style,” which was apparently a form of intuitive rebuttal typically only employed by Vulcan philosophers trained in abstract dialectics. Considered a difficult technique, it tended to throw Vulcan opponents off-balance.
Basically, he was just being himself.
“In what manner does loyalty bear witness within you, Doctor McCoy?”
Someone else might have expected T’Pau to launch into another round of Kolinahr, but McCoy was accustomed to her questions. She always asked him a variety of personal questions between the rounds. Do you honor obligations in the face of conflict with your own desires? Will you interpose yourself on behalf of the vulnerable, even at risk to your station or security? Can you withstand scrutiny without faltering, maintain discretion without error, and act in the enduring interest of a lineage that spans generations? That sort of thing.
She was likely assessing whether he was indeed suitable company for Spock, or perhaps she was merely probing the nature of humans. Either way, McCoy did his best to indulge her, answering with as much candor as he could muster.
In a way, she reminded him of his own grandmother. Stern, perceptive, unyielding in her principles.
Except, no one in the universe could ever replicate the pancakes Grandma McCoy had made, long ago and far away.
Jim fell in love.
It happened during an eighteen-day time loop.
Upon his release – stumbling back into real, linear time – he seized McCoy by both arms. He declared this was it, this was everything, his heart was finally full, he had found the one.
Well. The ones, plural.
They were conjoined twins – Hilda and Helga – sharing one body and two souls, or possibly three depending on how one counted the extra-dimensional metaphysics. They had looped through the same hellish days with Jim, and without McCoy there to monitor, sedate, or physically drag him away from the ancient entities dressed like ballerinas, he had – of course – fallen heart-first.
“Right,” said McCoy, grim, and pressed his thumb to Jim’s lower eyelid to check pupillary response, fingers finding the pulse at his wrist. “Name, ship, date – give me all three, please.”
Jim rattled it off with a dreamy little smile. McCoy followed his line of sight to where the twins stood with Uhura and Spock. With all that bare blue skin, they were dazzling, but something about them made the fine hairs at the back of his neck stand on end. There was no rational basis for it, but he felt it all the same, a cold certainty settling deep in his gut:
It would not last.
They would break Jim’s heart.
And no matter how tightly he gritted his teeth, or how many lectures he might give, there was nothing McCoy could do to shield him from it.
Gently, with a weight in his chest, he took Jim by the fingers to test the fine motor response. “Squeeze my hand.”
Jim’s dimples appeared, and he turned his twinkling eyes toward McCoy.
“There’s nothing wrong with me, and you’re being a worrywart for no reason. I’m just a man in love – if a bit tired, granted. I haven’t slept in three loops. Oh, come on now, don’t scowl like that. You’ve chewed me out about it on all three loops already.”
His skin was cool, breath a touch too fast. McCoy took in the slight sway in his stance. Dehydration, adrenaline crash, and early signs of Chrono-Somatic Desynchronization.
He snatched the tricorder off his belt and snapped it open one-handed.
“Just making sure you didn’t bring home any time-parasites,” he muttered, running the scanner over Jim’s chest. Scotty always seemed to pick up a parasite or two whenever he got stuck in a loop. It was an unfortunate quirk of his genetics, entirely beyond his control.
Jim sighed. “You’ve checked me for parasites every loop when I told you I was stuck. Well, except for that one time I took that blasted tricorder and banged it against the bulkhead because it wouldn’t stop singing. I swear it had vocal cords. You said I was hallucinating from lack of sleep, which – okay, fair enough – but it was trying to harmonize.”
Again, his eyes found Hilda and Helga. His fingers eased their grip on McCoy’s sleeve, and a small, wistful smile tugged at his lips. “Nothing in the universe as beautiful as us, my love – the two galaxies colliding and becoming one.”
The weight in McCoy’s chest grew. He recognized the poem, penned by G’dishahel, the famed Andorian poet of the late 23rd century.
“And in our core,” he quoted, sliding the tricorder back into its holster at his belt, “the black hole that pulls all matter in, until there is nothing left, not even light. I long for the journey to our destruction.”
Jim had a habit of throwing himself headlong into impossible romances. There had been Vira Senn, T’Lara Kesh, Lyra Vonn, and a half-dozen others whose names McCoy remembered only because each had held a piece of Jim’s heart, the most notable among them being Carol Marcus. The latest was Donna-Lisa Efrikson, a Starfleet diplomat with a flair for danger, whom Jim had fallen for during a mission to the Epicholan system – only for them to discover, three weeks later, that she was married. The revelation had shattered Jim so completely that he’d come perilously close to losing his career. And yet, as always, he had leapt straight into the next impossible love, heart unguarded, willing to risk everything all over again.
McCoy rested a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said quietly. “Please take it slow.”
A line appeared between Jim’s brows, and some of the usual sparkle in his eyes dimmed. His small smile lingered for a moment longer, then vanished entirely.
“Ever the cynic, aren’t you? You never like the women I fall for.”
He didn’t say it unkindly, but McCoy’s hand tightened on his shoulder nonetheless before he could stop himself. A hell of a captain he may have been, but when it came to his personal relationships, Jim had a way of smiling right past the warning signs. As his friend, McCoy had learned to be the one who pointed to the blade before Jim could walk straight into it, the friend who watched for the cut Jim never felt until it was already too deep.
“Just be careful,” he said, his hand lingering a moment too long before Jim shrugged him off and went to Hilda and Helga.
Jim’s poetic declarations lasted precisely until that afternoon, when the Science department came to the conclusion that Hilda and Helga – time spirits – had initiated the loop to keep Jim for themselves. When questioned, they only shrugged, unrepentant. They had been bored, they said. They had wanted to spy on Starfleet, just for the fun of it, to see how long it would take before someone noticed.
After escorting them to the brig – where Forrester, jaw set like a guillotine, sealed the time-restricted cell with a snap that very clearly said try looping now, you bastards – Jim walked to his quarters without a word. McCoy and Spock followed a few paces behind. He made it past the bedroom door, then collapsed face-first onto the bed, boots still on, the weight of eighteen days and a broken heart finally catching up with him all at once.
Jim’s breathing hitched once, then evened out into something shallow and stubbornly controlled. One hand curled into the bedspread, knuckles whitening.
“Oh hell,” muttered McCoy.
In part, he knew this was his fault. He should have known. He should have stopped it. A version of him had been there in each loop, and he should have dragged Jim kicking and screaming away from those twins before it ever got this far. He should have sedated him, argued harder. He should have done something. He had failed to protect his oldest friend, and the thought sat heavy and poisonous in his chest.
Jim always gave everything he had, and this was what the universe handed back to him?
“Hell,” McCoy said again, voice rough, anger flaring uselessly at the twins, at himself, at the universe itself, as he crossed the room.
He knelt and tugged the boots off Jim’s feet. Jim didn’t react. He just lay there, limp and unresisting, as if the fight had drained out of him all at once. McCoy slid the uniform jacket off next, and shoved it in Spock’s general direction without looking.
Jim had always loved with a kind of reckless, all-consuming intensity. His friendships were no different – he would have given everything for Spock and for McCoy himself. And now, after only eighteen days, his love had bloomed into this. Of course, it was entirely possible that the twins had somehow amplified it, whether through subtle biochemical influence or some other, stranger temporal effect, even if McCoy’s careful examinations had so far revealed nothing of the sort.
“We’ve got you,” McCoy promised, as he threw a quilt over Jim. “You’re home, and we’ve got you. You just rest now.”
After a moment, Spock said quietly from where he was still holding Jim’s jacket, “Captain. You are no longer required to maintain composure.”
Jim let out a humorless huff into the bedspread. “Funny,” he murmured. “Could’ve sworn that was kind of the job description.”
“It is,” Spock agreed. “However, you are off duty. And… you are among friends.”
That did it.
Jim’s shoulders shook. Then the sound slipped free of him, rough and broken, more breath than sob.
McCoy felt something twist hard and vicious in his chest.
“Aw, hell.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and set a hand between Jim’s shoulder blades. He moved it in slow, uneven circles. “Go on. Don’t bottle it up now. Let it out.”
Jim turned his face just enough for McCoy to see the wet sheen at the corner of his eye. His voice came out hoarse. “They said they loved me.”
McCoy closed his eyes for half a second.
“I know,” he said softly.
Those goddamn ballerinas.
As always when Jim had gotten his heart broken, Spock was out of sorts. He ran diagnostic routines twice, recalibrated instruments that didn’t need it, and kept asking McCoy whether the captain had eaten. Seven times, McCoy caught him lingering in the corridor outside Jim’s quarters, hands folded behind his back, staring at the door like it might start lecturing him on statistical probability if he waited long enough.
It was such a pitiful sight that McCoy couldn’t resist sliding a hand along Spock’s back, the pad of his fingers lingering over the rigid line of muscle. “He’ll bounce back. He just needs some time.”
Spock didn’t look at him. “It is unfortunate that the human capacity for attachment allows heartbreak to render one so undone, whereas a Vulcan, in comparable circumstances, would continue to function with minimal disruption.”
McCoy’s temper flared, and he jerked his hand back. “Minimal disruption! Spock, the man just spent eighteen days in a time loop being toyed with by literal ballerina demons, and you’re acting like he should just shrug it off?”
“There is no need to display such emotional volatility, Doctor.”
McCoy’s hands shot to his hips as he leaned just a fraction closer, chest nearly brushing Spock’s, eyes blazing up into those dark ones. “Oh, pardon me for having a heart! Some of us actually feel it when someone we love gets hurt.”
He drove the point home, jabbing a finger against Spock’s chest.
Spock caught the finger, holding it gently between his own. “You would act with greater efficiency if you permitted yourself to suffer in silence.”
McCoy’s scowl deepened. “Is that how you Vulcans handle it when you pine for someone who doesn’t reciprocate your goddamn feelings?”
Spock raised an eyebrow. “Indeed.”
He let McCoy’s finger slide free, yet remained a heartbeat closer than necessary. Then, with a calm inclination of his head, he turned and walked down the corridor, leaving McCoy fuming in his wake.
“Unbelievable…” McCoy glared after the bastard. Damn Vulcan logic.
A strange unease settled in his chest, as if he had missed something vital.
Jim got back to his feet gradually.
As a captain, his performance remained exemplary, but privately, it took a while for the sparkle to return to his eyes. McCoy and Spock did all they could to help, with McCoy offering quiet reassurance, a steady presence at his side, and the occasional sarcastic quip just to make him smile. Spock, for his part, was always there, sometimes with his lyre, sometimes in companionable silence.
Jim took long walks on the observation deck beneath the drifting stars. He played game after game of sonic lacrosse with his rec team. He sparred with Spock while McCoy, muttering about bruises and concussions, hovered nervously nearby with his medkit, and he spent hours in conversation with the crew, listening, joking, and sometimes just sitting quietly while the others worked around him. He revisited favorite poems, hums from old songs, and the odd holodeck simulation.
One afternoon, when Chekov accidentally launched a ball too hard during practice, sending it ricocheting off a wall and straight into Jim’s chest, Jim burst out laughing, eyes glinting like the stars outside the deck windows. McCoy, who had been watching from the sidelines with his heart in his throat, released a soft exhale.
In that moment, he realized Jim was as close to being fine as he ever got.
And thus, when Jim suggested a shore leave, he agreed.
In hindsight, McCoy should have – of course – known better.
”I can’t believe you did this to me.”
It was a betrayal, plain and simple.
McCoy tried to push himself upright, but his boots slid away from him like they’d developed a personal grudge against both him and one another. One ski caught, the other didn’t, and his center of gravity made a brief, optimistic attempt at existence before abandoning him entirely. The skis slipped from beneath him and he pitched forward again, tumbling face-first into the snow with all the grace and dignity of a cadet discovering alcohol for the very first time.
The snow exploded around him in a fine cloud that immediately worked its way into everything. The coldness poured down his collar, packed itself under his chin, and invaded his mittens. Its freezing touch stole his breath and left him gasping.
“…son of a bitch. Goddammit…”
It was treacherous, wet nonsense that refused to compact, squeaking and shifting under his weight.
“Goddammit, Jim! I hate snow. I feel like a steak dredged in potato flour! This is all your fault!”
With an infuriating whoosh, Jim slid to a graceful stop beside him, skis carving a neat arc in the snow, thin bands of blue light flickering along the runners as their stabilizers engaged. He wasn’t even breathing hard, all rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed, and glowing with happiness, wrapped in his Starfleet-issued scarf.
The bastard.
“You know, Bones,” Jim said cheerfully, resting on his poles, the shafts humming softly as their adaptive tips stabilized on the slope, “you could enjoy this if you gave it a chance. Skiing is all about having the right attitude.”
Shivering, McCoy glared up at him from the ground level, mittens tossed aside as he clawed at the snow that had burrowed into his collar, each icy flake working with malicious intent to suck every scrap of warmth from his body. His skis were crossed at an impossible angle, one knee twisted in a way that promised legendary back pain, while a calm, disembodied voice from somewhere near his boots chimed, “Warning: balance deviation detected. Please realign lower limbs to prevent further instability.”
Gritting his teeth, he put on the mittens and tried to get up again, planting his poles for leverage. One sank straight through the powder and vanished. The other skittered sideways, yanking his arm out from under him. His skis obligingly crossed themselves tighter, locking his legs into an ungainly sprawl.
“I hate the right attitude!”
He flailed uselessly as the snow collapsed beneath his elbows and crept up his collar again, leaving him gasping, teeth chattering, and wishing for anything that could thaw his freezing spine.
“And I hate shore leaves that require me to have ‘the right attitude!’”
“Stability correction engaged. Please remain calm.”
McCoy tried to locate the AI control on his skis to silence the thing, but wherever it had been thoughtfully installed, it remained utterly inaccessible to a man facedown in the snow. He did his best to roll onto his back and cursed when the skis chirped, “Fall detected. Recalibrating balance assistance.”
“I could be on a beach somewhere warm,” he muttered into the snow, “drink in my hand, sand between my toes, absolutely not risking spinal injury, but no. ‘Let’s go together, just the three of us,’ you said. ‘Let me make the plans,’ you said. ‘It’ll be great,’ you said. ‘We’ll go while the Enterprise is tied up in repairs. I know just the place, I’ll take care of everything – trust me, Bones,’ you said.”
Jim laughed, full-bodied and utterly unrepentant. “C’mon, Leonard, enough whining. Fresh air! Nature! Exercise! And look at that view. Half the Enterprise followed our example and decided this was the place to take shore leave, and even you have to admit it’s breathtaking.”
McCoy raised his head just enough to see what Jim was gesturing at. Endless white slopes stretched beneath a low, clouded sky, broken by clusters of dark, spruce-like trees and jagged ice ridges that glittered in the distance.
“Beautiful,” sighed Jim in that wistful way he got when he was either feeling sentimental or hopelessly romantic.
“Desolate and awful,” decided McCoy, stubbornly. “Murderous.”
The wind howled across the slope, flinging snow into his face in stinging little lashes. Tiny whips, each one snapping against his cheeks. Shore leave, his ass. There would be three more days of this hell? The Enterprise was laid up in spacedock, half her systems torn open. Scotty wasn’t even going to consider coming to retrieve them until she was spaceworthy again, which meant that the better part of the crew – including Chapel, Kwan, and Nolan from McCoy’s own personnel – would be scattered across this frozen rock until then.
“Do you know what I see?” he said, scowling up at Jim. “I see frostbite, hypothermia, and a captain who’s gonna need a new CMO if I lose circulation in my fingers. I see tissue damage, nerve death, and a very long lecture from Starfleet Medical about why I signed off on recreational activities for half the staff that involve cryogenic exposure. I hate this! I hate ice planets!”
Further up the gentle rise, where the trail narrowed between scattered spruce-like trees, Spock waited on his cross-country skis, all graceful and patient. Behind him, the tracks ran straight and parallel, as though the snow itself had been reasoned into cooperation. He looked at McCoy over his shoulder, one eyebrow raising with mild interest beneath the woolly cap.
“Jämtale-III,” Spock said evenly, “is not an ice planet, Doctor, but a world with seventeen distinct seasons. You are currently experiencing the ever-mild palehold. Your dramatic assessment of the environment is therefore exaggerated.”
“Exaggerated?” McCoy wheezed, getting the poles stuck with the skis when he tried to scramble up out of pure spite – Spock just had to go and make everything worse. “Exaggerated! Spock, we are literally surrounded by frozen death! This planet is actively hostile, these skis are instruments of torture, and the snow is some kind of sadistic infiltrator that waits until you’re helpless, melts just enough to soak your clothes, and then freezes again. My mittens are wet! My boots are wet! My damned nostrils are freezing!”
“And you,” he jabbed a mitten blindly in Jim’s direction, “you promised to take care of everything. Care of everything does not include forcing your friend up a hillside strapped to two chirping planks.”
“As for you, you goddamn son of a bitch,” he added, craning his neck just enough to glare uphill at Spock, “I don’t care how many seasons this place has. You could divide it into milliseconds and it would still be too damn cold! Logic be damned, the snow is melting down my back while my knees are pointed in opposite directions. I want a hot bath, a warm fire, and a decent meal that doesn’t involve freeze-dried slop! I want brandy! Hell, I deserve a whiskey!”
He scowled, remembering the infuriatingly snarky reply he’d gotten in his own office the last time he’d dared to slouch. “And I want an office chair that doesn’t talk back to me! Why the hell is Stanley going through puberty anyway? He’s a goddamn chair!”
Jim had the gall to laugh, even as he drew his water bottle from his belt and took a leisurely swig, eyeing the desolate landscape with a small smile.
Spock glided closer, skis carving precise arcs in the snow. He came to a halt by McCoy who glared up at him best he could from his sprawl. What right did Spock have to be so tall and graceful?
“Your perception is influenced by excessive emotional response. The environment is objectively within survivable parameters. There is a fully staffed alpine resort on the other side of the hill within audible range, and emergency response drones patrol the area continuously.”
McCoy could hear them. On the far side of the hill, beyond the rise of snow and trees, people were – somehow – enjoying themselves. Laughter carried over the slope. People there were sipping their hot drinks, no doubt. Above it all, high against the clouded sky, an emergency drone traced a slow circuit, its navigation lights blinking a steady red-white pulse.
“As a Vulcan,” said Spock, “I find the temperature manageable, despite being cooler than my preferred range.”
McCoy turned his scowl from the drone to the idiot. “You can shove your preferred range up my ass! And my emotional response is perfectly suitable for the situation, thank you very much.”
“I advise you to calm yourself. I calculate a fifty-three-point-seven percent probability that continued thrashing will increase your exposure to hypothermia. It would be more efficient to cease flailing immediately.”
“Fifty-three-point-seven percent of my ass is about to freeze off, and the rest is catching up fast. My emotional response is the only thing keeping me from becoming a goddamn popsicle!”
“That is – ”
“I do not care if I’m being illogical!” McCoy tried to shove himself upright again, only to collapse deeper into the powder. “Has it ever crossed your mind, Spock, that I might enjoy being illogical? Maybe being illogical gives me joy!”
Spock’s brows knit in a Vulcan approximation of a scowl. He lifted one ski, cleared a dusting of snow, and set it down in exact alignment with the other. “Continued thrashing is statistically counterproductive. I advise regaining an upright position before hypothermia progresses.”
McCoy pointed at him with a pole, breath fogging the air. “You are the worst, Spock. And I’m the doctor here, so you can just – ”
“Gentlemen, please.” Jim sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and jammed his poles into the snow. “Truce. Spock – could you give us a hand?”
After another few seconds of McCoy’s futile scrabbling, Spock did, and then they were there, flanking him on either side. Jim caught him under one arm, Spock the other, and together they hauled him upright, lifting him clear of the snow.
McCoy’s exhale came out shaky and loud, pure relief. He latched onto both Jim and Spock by the sleeves, clamping down with more desperation than dignity, completely ignoring the poles dangling uselessly from his wrists by their loops. He would not let go until they were off this godforsaken hill.
Jim shifted his grip to steady him and gave McCoy a smile that was equal amounts fond and amused.
“There you go, Bones,” he said, lightly. “See? Not so bad when you’ve got help. Besides, I know you secretly like a challenge.”
“I hate you both,” McCoy said, hanging on for dear life. “But don’t even think about letting go.”
“I will not,” said Spock. And indeed, he did not.
The marker glided against the smooth tiles, and McCoy dragged chemical chains up against electrical schematics.
Targeted vasodilation… enhancement of axonal conduction velocity… perhaps a nitric-oxide analog or localized peptide-mediated vascular trigger to maintain microcirculatory support…
This – this – was the breakthrough for Cryo-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy. This would improve the quality of life for colonists on godforsaken ice worlds, for every poor soul who came home from a sub-zero shift with chronic fine motor deficits and partial nerve degeneration.
The marker squeaked, leaving thick black strokes, as diagrams sprawled outward in spirals. A crude nerve bundle was drawn like a branching tree, a shaded coil sketched in fits and starts to represent the stimulator housing.
Finally, McCoy stilled, elbows braced on the porcelain as he studied the scrawled equations closely. Frowning, he swiped wet curls off his forehead so he could see the flaw beginning to glare at him from the vascular flow diagram. Annoyed with himself, he dragged a sharp line through the faulty artery-branch symbol and rewrote the correction above it in tighter, more controlled script.
This would improve the quality of life for many people – well, once he managed to transcribe all of this into a medical proposal, get Starfleet Medical to stop dragging their collective ass, pass xenophysiology review, secure funding for a controlled in vitro trial using neural organoids or engineered tissue, and convince Jim not to demonstrate it on his own damn skin, then maybe – maybe – he would finally have an effective treatment.
“I am pleased to see you have regained adequate circulation, Doctor.”
The voice was unexpected.
It had been ages since Spock had crossed the threshold of any bathroom McCoy happened to occupy. He had been careful to give McCoy space, no matter how many times McCoy had ensured him it was fine, that Spock was nothing like his counterpart, that Spock wouldn’t cause him to relapse. The simple fact that Spock stepped inside now – that he allowed himself to – felt like the smallest shift in tectonic plates, deep in the uncharted region they grudgingly acknowledged as friendship.
McCoy let out a breath through his nose. “Well, congratulations, Spock. I’m warm, pink, and still cursed with a pulse. Jim’s grand plan to get me killed fizzled like a damp firecracker.”
He did not look up from where he was still in the bathtub, steam curling around the edges.
“I do not believe the captain intended physical harm,” said Spock, and McCoy felt the shift in the air as he drew nearer.
The warmth of his presence made McCoy’s pulse thrum faster. He took a lazy, half-lidded look at the bastard. Spock wore a soft-knit tunic in muted gray, the sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, and dark trousers tucked into woolly socks. Jim had knitted them years ago, back when he had dated Vira Senn, a yarn enthusiast. McCoy had a similar pair somewhere. The three of them still agreed that Vira had been nice enough, apart from being a Gilpoan priestess sent to assassinate Scotty as a favor to the gods. She still sent McCoy the occasional nose warmer, carefully hand-crocheted by herself, from Ashforge Detention Center.
With the solemn focus of a Prinbulian monk and the posture of a Grichol gremlin, McCoy twisted sideways – water sloshing dangerously around his ribs – and went back to sketching out a variable-temperature dermal stimulator prototype on the tiles beside the tub with the Starfleet-issued marker.
A ripple of air stirred the steam, and a shadow stretched across the wet tiles, its edges sharp against the glistening surface. McCoy didn’t need to look to know that Spock was leaning over to study the equations more closely.
“You appear to be addressing cold-induced peripheral neural degeneration using combined vascular and electrophysiological strategies. Though I confess I cannot yet determine the exact mechanism.”
McCoy carefully traced a looping feedback path along the diagram, adding tiny arrows to indicate current flow and annotating the stimulator contacts with proposed thermal modulation ranges.
“Of course you can’t determine the mechanism,” he muttered. “If I actually had one, I wouldn’t be drawing like a lunatic.” He tapped his chin with the marker, thoughtful. “Right now it’s a prototype stimulator designed to support axonal regrowth and functional recovery in vitro. Mechanisms and optimization come after coffee, Spock – I’m still at the ‘don’t lose the thought’ stage.’”
Spock’s shadow stretched closer to the curves of McCoy’s arm. McCoy could feel the faint heat of him, the almost imperceptible brush of air shifting as Spock leaned in, close enough that if he moved an inch, they would touch, yet still just beyond the line of contact.
“A revolutionary medical discovery, created in a bathtub,” Spock murmured. “Your methodology remains characteristically human.”
Focused on his equations, McCoy twisted just enough, then let himself fall back, water surging over the tub’s edge. Satisfied, he watched Spock step back as the splash hit his woolly socks.
The idiot retreated, and McCoy was left alone with his diagrams and the lazy curl of steam rising around him. He allowed himself a smug grin.
“Go fascinate someone else,” he said, gently, and let the water claim him again.
Spock inclined his head and folded his hands behind his back. “The captain is preparing ulbaya. Given your tendency to forgo nourishment during periods of fixation, I am obligated to inform you it is best consumed immediately. You may join us once you have… concluded splashing.”
McCoy tapped the tub’s porcelain rim with the butt of the marker, thoughtfully. Then he slid lower, letting his shoulders disappear beneath the surface.
Maybe this shore leave wasn’t too damn bad after all.
Just then, the door slammed open, and Jim breezed in, his apron dusted with flecks of hyjta and kardminna. He brought with him the rich aroma of roasted tubers and spiced broth, and McCoy perked up.
“Dinner’s ready! Hot and fragrant, just the way you like it. Bones, you need to get out of the bath, so it won’t – ”
Jim froze mid-step, staring at the mathematical hieroglyphs sprawled across the tiles. His grin faltered, then vanished entirely.
“What… in the universe… is this?”
“The doctor has designed a variable-temperature dermal stimulator capable of supporting axonal regeneration in vitro, employing combined vascular and electrophysiological strategies to mitigate cryo-induced peripheral neuropathy,” said Spock.
McCoy scowled from among the bubbles and pointed Jim accusingly with the marker. “All of this came to me in a flash of near-panic over the possibility of frostbitten digits. I thought my career as a surgeon would be over, all thanks to you.”
Jim’s jaw worked. “That’s really – truly– wonderful, and let me be the first to congratulate you.”
He marched forward and snatched the marker out of McCoy’s hand.
“But this – ” he brandished it, “ – is a Starfleet-issue PermaTech Dermal-Resistant Marker. The kind designed to survive plasma fires, emergency coolant leaks, transporter misfires, and antimatter containment breaches. It will take industrial-grade nanolaser abrasion and three separate forms of chemical solvent to get it off those tiles. Insurance won’t cover it – we’ll have to pay for the cleaning out of our own pockets. And worst of all – I signed the waiver promising to do no harm to the premises. I gave them my word!”
Grimacing, McCoy tried to smear away the less crucial parts of the equation with his soapy hand, but the ink stubbornly refused to fade. Heat prickled at his ears, and he rubbed at the back of his neck, a familiar knot of guilt tightening in his chest.
“Sorry, Jim… I didn’t mean… I just– I got carried away with the prototype… The inspiration hit me, and I didn’t think about the tiles, or how it would affect you.”
He sank back into the water, letting it swallow him half again, hoping the warmth might hide the rush of shame and exhilaration swirling inside him. Pride, excitement, guilt – all of it at once.
When he emerged again, Jim was regarding the wall with his hands on his hips, the look on his face one of resigned fondness. Spock looked away sharply when McCoy met his gaze as though he had been caught staring.
“I’ll, of course, pay for the damage in full,” said McCoy.
Jim sighed and handed the capped marker to Spock. “I’m the captain, and I should have known to stop you when I saw you grab that marker from the little utility pouch Spock keeps with his things. I suppose this is the downside of having a genius for a friend. You’re brilliant, but you also need someone to keep an eye on you for situations like… this.”
“I will pay a third,” said Spock, evenly. “Seeing as my marker was used.”
“Agreed,” said Jim, nodding at Spock. Then his gaze shifted, sharp and mischievous. “And you – ” He scowled at McCoy. “ – will just accept our generosity and not say a single word.”
With great difficulty, McCoy clamped his mouth shut and forced himself to stay silent, every fiber of him itching to argue.
The fire spat sparks, almost like it was angry with itself.
Jim’s soft snores rumbled against McCoy’s thigh, one foot lazily draped over his lap, a thin ribbon of drool tracing the curve of his jaw. In his armchair by the fire, Spock was playing his lyre, the notes curling around the flicker of the flames and the faint scent of spruce from the logs.
McCoy tilted the brandy from his place on the sofa, letting it coat his tongue, amber heat spreading through his chest. His gaze lifted, catching Spock’s eyes.
Something in the way Spock was looking back at him, shoulders relaxed yet poised, made McCoy’s pulse stutter. The heat from the fire mingled with… something – an awareness of proximity, maybe – that made the hair on his arms stand on end.
Jim shifted, murmuring something unintelligible, a tiny snore, and McCoy absently brushed his fingers against the wool of his socks, tracing the knitting pattern.
“The baby's sleeping,” he murmured.
Spock’s melody dipped lower, settling somewhere deep and dangerous in his chest.
Leaning back, brandy glass cradled in one hand, McCoy let himself exhale, aware of Spock’s shadow stretching closer across the floor, a breath away. The warmth of the fire, the soft weight of Jim, the music, the quiet presence of Spock – it all left him dizzy and content.
McCoy thought, as he lifted his glass in a silent, private toast, that he’d never wanted shore leave to last longer.
Very early – unreasonably early – the next morning, Jim and Spock went out skiing. Jim made a valiant effort to recruit McCoy, complete with optimism and far too much cheer, but McCoy merely rolled onto his side, dragged the blanket over his head, and answered with his middle finger, extended from beneath the covers. Jim lingered a moment longer, hopeful in the way only Jim could be, before finally accepting the inevitable.
There was simply no universe in which McCoy would abandon a perfectly warm, perfectly comfortable bed for the chance to sustain a tibial fracture before breakfast.
When he eventually did get up, he took his time. A quick visit to the lavatory, then a slow shuffle to the stove, bare feet skimming the cool planks. He brewed the coffee strong and unapologetically bitter, the way it was meant to be. Mug cradled between his hands, he lingered by the window, steam curling past his knuckles as he watched the forest lie still beneath its blanket of snow, as if this damned, godforsaken ice world itself had decided to sleep in.
It wasn’t until the smell hit him – charred grain and bitter sugar – and black smoke began to curl out of the oven vents that he realized he had forgotten the breakfast rolls inside. Since the cabin lacked a standard atmospheric scrubber or any kind of automatic smoke reclamation system, he yanked open a few windows, coughing as cold air rushed in, and hauled the ruined tray outside onto the narrow wooden terrace to cool.
The whole time, the fire alarm shrieked its outrage. It took McCoy an eternity of waving a dish towel, swearing under his breath, and jabbing at the control panel before it finally fell silent. By then, the cabin had gone cold, standing wide open to the winter air.
Somehow, McCoy decided, it was all Jim’s fault.
Once he had restocked the fire and cleaned up the small kitchenette, McCoy’s mood had begun to improve. In the bathroom, he leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on his face, hoping to wash away the lingering smell of smoke.
As he reached for a towel, he caught sight of the equations sprawled across the tiles, reflected in the mirror. Absently, and with a twinge of shame, he traced the jagged lines and looping arrows of the scribbles, the marker’s glossy black clinging stubbornly to the tiles. He imagined the harsh chemical rubs and endless scrubbing it would take, the cost and time bleeding into his thoughts – when suddenly his heart skipped a beat. He froze.
There, in the upper corner, above the diagrams for nerve-bundle conduction pathways, new words had appeared. He had not written them, and he was certain they had not been there when he’d visited the bathroom shortly after getting up.
Slowly, he turned around to read them properly.
Think you’re safe, Doctor McCoy?
His heart leapt and then plummeted. Shock morphed quickly into anger, a tight coil of fury knotting in his chest. It hit him, the realization that someone must have slipped in while he had opened the windows – and the door – to air out the smoke. While he had wrestled with the fire alarm, someone had been here, to leave a message for him.
And just as fast, the chilling truth settled in: whoever had written it could still be in the cabin.
This could be a prank, he reasoned. Or it could not.
Quietly, McCoy put the towel away. The medkit was in the cabinet under the sink, and he was quick to load a hypo with a strong sedative cocktail – midazolam and a mild neuromuscular relaxant – keeping a close eye on the door. Armed with the possibility of temporarily incapacitating anyone who tried to force entry, he went to the door and took a peek into the corridor.
Jim would have gone through the cabin corner by corner, ready for a confrontation. Spock wouldn’t have let an intruder in in the first place. But McCoy was a doctor, not a damned security officer or starship tactician, and instead of investigating, he relied on common sense. He moved swiftly and silently into his bedroom. Once positive there was no one else in there, he locked the door, bolted it, and reinforced the latch as best he could.
He fetched the communicator from among his things and snapped it open.
“McCoy to Forrester. We may have a bit of a situation here.”
While “Think you’re safe, Doctor McCoy?” maybe wasn’t a direct threat, the threat was nonetheless implied. It hit Jim’s protective instincts like a flashing red alert and had Spock glue himself to McCoy’s side.
Red shirts covered every corridor, checking every corner, every ventilation shaft, even the spaces between structural panels. Whatever tracks there may have been were long gone, erased by the steady snowfall. The cabin’s security cameras had been tampered with, as if someone had deployed a phased-quantum cloaking algorithm to ensure nothing of the intrusion could be recorded. The intruder could also have been invisible, Greg Braddock pointed out, glancing at McCoy with a blush before looking over at Spock, paling and wide-eyed, as though recalling the lecture Spock had given him after the whole shower incident.
Contingency plans were considered. Observation protocols were immediately enacted, which meant a bodyguard at his side wherever McCoy went. Every red shirt, including Forrester himself, volunteered. Even so, it was Spock who took it upon himself, citing his duties as First Officer.
Together Jim, Spock, and Forrester decided that relocating McCoy was necessary – McCoy agreed enthusiastically, suggesting a relocation to somewhere warm, possibly Argentine or Spain. Disappointingly, Jim reserved another cabin for the three of them on the other side of the planet, and thus, the icy shore leave continued – with Forrester’s team in the cabin next to theirs.
Light-based life forms were always a challenge.
McCoy leaned over the console, studying the rippling data across the display. The tricorder’s readout cascaded in restless color, the analysis struggling to keep pace with whatever counted as signs of life in the luminous being before him. He thumbed the controls, isolated wavelengths, and jotted quick notes.
The Inglonian monk looked over at him, his yellow robes hanging loose on his thin frame, sleeves twisted from where he had been clutching them in his fists.
“Vat… you do… to help… my huzzband?” His accent was so thick it was clear the universal translator was straining to smooth it out.
The biobed chamber hummed softly with the containment field, and within it shimmered Ambassador Glkjn of Amdoliaria: a rippling column of light, colors folding and unfolding into each other like a living aurora. The ambassador had no physical body. He consisted mostly of light. Bands of gold rippled into violet, green bled into a pale white, and the whole mass seemed to contract and swell, as if some instinctive rhythm was forcing it to mimic breathing, though no lungs could be found within that luminous light beam.
McCoy let out a slow breath, and clicked the scanner to his belt. The ambassador’s form pulsed weakly, the edges of light flickering in and out of coherence.
The monk, Hinksoint sat motionless on the duraplast chair beside his shimmering husband, hands twisting together in silent prayer.
“We will do everything we can,” McCoy promised and put a reassuring hand on the monk’s hunched shoulder. “His energy field is unstable. We’re going to start by mapping the fluctuations to detect a dominant frequency. Then we’ll try to stabilize him with a feedback field tuned to that frequency.”
“May Barag bless us,” Hinksoint said in a thin voice, bowing his head. “He wouldn’t abandon his most loyal servant.”
McCoy had treated light-based life forms before, but each case was unique. Ambassador Glkjn emitted a subtle, iridescent resonance that shifted in both wavelength and intensity unpredictably, as if each color carried its own tiny pulse of consciousness. Pretty different from other light-based life forms, which usually maintained a steady core frequency and only fluctuated in response to external stimuli. In comparison, Glkjn’s light seemed to have an internal rhythm of its own.
Tossing his biowaste gloves in the bin, McCoy stepped quietly across the medical bay, letting the partitioned alcove shield him from both Hinksoint’s gaze and the pulsing luminescence. Nurse Tanaka was already at the monitors, tracing the streams of color and waveforms with a finger as if she could coax coherence from the shifting patterns.
“There’s no detectable pulse,” she reported. “I can’t identify any circulatory system or cellular structures. The ambassador appears to be composed entirely of energy fluctuations.”
“Sounds about right,” said McCoy. “He is a self-organizing photonic entity, after all. Type four, to be precise.”
McCoy examined the shifting patterns. The graphs jittered like an arrhythmic heartbeat, but in colors and harmonics instead of spikes and dips. He adjusted the input filters, narrowing the noise and isolating the ambassador’s field. The computer chirped as it locked in the parameters, and McCoy set up a secondary monitor to highlight repeating patterns automatically.
“Doctor Rao,” McCoy said, stepping up beside her as she adjusted the sensor arrays on her console, “you have primary oversight on Ambassador Glkjn. Track all energy fluctuations and report anomalies immediately. Nurse Tanaka, run a full spectral analysis. Layer the sensor arrays into a single feed and flag anything unusual. Alert me if any anomaly repeats at intervals shorter than ten seconds. Keep the containment field baseline in mind, but don’t let minor noise trigger alerts.”
“Yes, Doctor McCoy,” Rao said, saving the data from her ongoing analysis on the long-term cardiac monitoring of Lieutenant R’khal and closing the research files before turning her full attention to the ambassador’s readings.
“Yes, Doctor McCoy,” Tanaka echoed, and McCoy stepped aside, as she pivoted to the console and keyed in the spectral analysis protocols, layering multiple sensor arrays into a single feed. One screen began filling with rolling bands of color and harmonics, the raw fluctuations translated into data they could track.
McCoy turned to the wallcom and jabbed the comm switch.
“Sickbay to Engineering.”
The reply came but a moment later.
”Engineering here. Whit’s the matter noo, Doctor?” Scotty’s thick accent came sharp through the comm, the background thrum of the warp core underscored by the hiss of coolant and a sharp metallic clang. Someone shouted in the distance – “Mind the plasma relay, Timothy!” – followed by the muffled curse of the junior engineer.
“Careful wi’ the udjulators – use the FIL-33 instead, ye daftie!” Scotty barked away from the receiver, then came back on, breath a little short. “Sorry, Doc. We’re knee-deep doon here. Runnin’ a full calibration on the secondary power transfer conduits. Routine work, aye, but the lads’ve got half the access panels ripped open an’ it sounds like a bleedin’ forge o’ Tellarite smithies. Nothin’ critical, mind. Just keepin’ the auld lass steady. She’s a willful lady at the best o’ times, and her – ”
“Scotty,” McCoy cut in before Scotty could launch into another hymn about his blessed warp engines or, worse yet, the cursed transporters. “We need a portable resonance stabilizer for as soon as possible. Your prototype will do if ours can’t hit variable output. Tune it for microsecond modulation.”
“Whit’s the output range ye’ll be needin’? Are we talkin’ the full twelve-point calibration, or just a wee slice?”
McCoy studied the shifting bands of color and harmonic spikes on Tanaka’s screens. “Just a narrow sweep, please, enough to track subtle fluctuations. Nothing extreme, just precise enough to lock onto a stable frequency.”
“Aye, Doctor. Ah’ll bring it tae Sickbay maself an’ tune it for the wee sweep ye asked for. Should hae it ready in aboot ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Scotty. McCoy out.”
McCoy clicked the comm off.
Once satisfied the team had oversight, he walked through Sickbay, checking equipment and other patients while keeping a mental tally of Glkjn’s shimmering form. He inspected the infusion lines for proper flow on Lieutenant Joran, tapped the glass of a hypospray chamber above Ensign Marla to ensure it was primed, adjusted the holo-displays monitoring Yeoman Alistair’s recovery, scanned the oxygen saturation readouts of young Tellarite cadet Rellin, and double-checked the containment protocols on K’voro, a small, quivering plasma-based life form in a secure field.
With the more pressing duties taken care of, he fetched a comfortable armchair from the visitors’ lounge and brought it over for Hinksoint.
“We’re mapping him carefully,” he said, helping the monk settle into it. “We’ll do everything we can to bring your husband back to coherence.”
The monk nodded, gripping McCoy’s hand.
When his shift finally drew to a close, Spock appeared in the doorway of McCoy’s office, perfectly poised, as if he had materialized out of the very shadows. McCoy glared up at him from behind the cluttered stack of PADDs that littered his desk, fingers still hovering over schematics and notes he hadn’t yet finished.
“I have come to escort you safely to your quarters,” Spock said, voice calm, steady, and utterly lacking any trace of emotion.
McCoy snorted, shaking his head as he reluctantly set aside the PADDs. “We’re aboard the Enterprise,” he muttered. “Nothing bad is going to happen to me here.”
Well, at least not in this universe.
He rose slowly, stretching his shoulders, already feeling the familiar weight of Spock’s presence close at his side.
This – he decided, thinking back to his latest game of Kolinahr with T’Pau – was what loyalty looked like.
With a resigned sigh, he allowed himself to be led, half-grumbling, half-relieved, down the corridor by the ever-watchful First Officer.