Fic: Observations, Ch 33
“Bones just gets stressed out when shit happens to me. I mean, his best idea to get me on the Enterprise was to jab me with a hypospray ten thousand times.” The captain rolled his eyes.
“Be that as it may-“
“C’mon, Spock. He’s human-we all deal with emergencies differently. You go all rigid and logical-“
“Captain, I am always logical.”
“Yeah, well, when shit hits the fan, it’s like you’ve replaced your brain with a whole bunch of quantum quad processors,” he grinned. “No one does parallel computing better than you, Spock.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“Anyway, Bones panics sometimes. He’s already terrified of space-“
“Then perhaps he should have chosen a more suitable location to practice his profession.”
“He’s not going anywhere, so you guys’ll have to learn to like each other.” The captain was running out of patience. “I wouldn’t even think of going into space without Bones not because he’s my best friend, which he is and you just have to accept that, but because he’s a fucking medical genius. I’d be dead a billion times over if it weren’t for him and you know it. So get used to his freak outs and irrationality and rampant emotionalism. You’re both part of my command crew and I won’t have it any other way.”
“Is that an order, captain.”
“Does it have to be? Damnit, why can’t you-and Bones for that matter-see that I need both of you,” the captain said, frustration mounting. “Is it that hard for you to for once get over yourselves and try to, I don’t know, make my life a little easier? It’s always ‘captain, Dr. McCoy is acting shit illogical’ or ‘Jim, Spock’s a hobgoblin who can’t feel,’” he said in a peculiar falsetto.
“If I may speak, captain-“
“What now?? I’m not a fucking ping pong ball.”
I raised my eyebrow. “Indeed, you are not a hollow orb used for the sport of table tennis.”
The captain snorted. “Damn straight,” he mumbled.
“Have you finished your outpouring of frustration?”
“Hey, don’t you do that to me too-“
“I do not know to what you are referring, captain.”
“That ‘don’t be such an infantile idiot, Jim’ tone. I get enough of that from Bones. And you already filet me open every time we argue with that whole ‘I can run circles around your brain so fast you’re already so dizzy you’re about to hurl.’ Ugh.”
The best course of action when the captain, or any human for that matter, is agitated to the point they are speaking unqualified nonsense is simply to leave. If they are able to recover their rational faculties at a later time, one may choose to resume communication with them.
If the captain were not the captain, I’m not certain that I would take the trouble to do so.
“Hey, where’re you going? It was just getting fun!”
As Dr. McCoy says, ‘unbelievable.’