Jim snakes one foot out to shove at McCoy's knee, sending him a mock-offended look that probably counts as pouting. (It's a rough life with this cute face, insert terrible Captain Kirk joke here, etc.) "I think I do my best diplomacy while running from incoming fire," he says. "You, though. You're a doctor, not a politician."
EEEEYYY. Jim grins at him.
"Though I dunno, even the Klingons were eager to give you back that one time. Maybe you could just annoy everyone into getting along."
McCoy swats at the offending foot, grumbling under his breath at the idiocy of those comments. Diplomacy under fire, his ass. He's there for most of the shit Jim pulls and he'd hardly call much of that diplomacy. (He's also, to quote a passing comment he once overheard and didn't much appreciate, a "cranky old bastard" with a slightly cynical worldview, so Jim's attempts at diplomacy might not actually be so awful.)
He leans back in his chair and snorts -- and chooses to take that statement in the complimentary way in which it was obviously intended. "Klingons never knew what hit 'em."
Jim is, to collective bemusement (and sometimes horror), a pretty good diplomat. What he lacks in innate political finesse he makes up with social intuition and leech-like determination. But his kind of diplomacy is a particular invention of space exploration-- active, haphazard, often conducted while fleeing death. He doubts it would translate well to a more .. traditional setting.
"That I'll agree with." He mimes a very dramatic hypo-spray injection. You know, versus the imaginary Klingon warriors in the shuttle with them.
In other words, Jim's like a dog with a goddamn bone when he gets it in his head to do something, which can be a good thing. Earth's still around. Yorktown didn't implode. (Wonder of wonders there. Sometimes McCoy can't quite believe how that all turned out.) His particular brand of diplomacy nearly always hinges on Kirk not knowing how to give up.
Again, mostly a good thing -- until what Jim wants runs contrary to what McCoy is aiming for. (As in keeping himself in one piece. That usually helps.)
He stares at Jim, not quite appreciating the dramatic reenactment of a regular injection. "You're a child."
Jim is still oscillating between two extremes post-resurrection, but at least not so wildly as before. Sometimes he feels invincible - he was dead, then he wasn't; Bones fixed it. Bones fixed death. Is that going to happen again? Holy shit, hopefully not. He doesn't want to be in that position, and he doesn't want to put his best friend through it, but all the same, it's the definition of kicking a no-win scenario's ass.
Other times he feels a bleakness without end, dreading repeating the experience. He resents those times. Keeping himself in one piece can't be a priority above protecting his crew, and he can't hesitate.
Meanwhile: he smiles. "I'm a thirty year old captain," Jim corrects, as smug as can be. "And you're still here."
--Still sounds smug. But also very fond, because Bones is still here. After all these years and all the shit Jim's pulled. It's such a nice moment, until a warning beep from the console pulls his attention forward.
Yeah, thanks for making him feel old there, Captain. Thirty, ugh. Somehow, years had passed since that first meeting and, yeah, he's still here. There's no need to go all... mush on him, okay? Besides, Jim would be lost without him -- or, at least, he likes to believe that. McCoy shakes his head, ready to respond to that (with something cutting and completely in-character, because that's how these conversations go every time) when that 'beep' interrupts him.
He sits up, turning toward the controls. "'Huh' as in 'fascinating'," and, yeah, he's poking fun at Spock because he can, "or 'huh' as in 'we're all about to die'?"
He'd like to know the appropriate panic level here.
"Aaahhh... Well it could be fascinating," the last word said with a pretty good impression of Spock's spiteful deadpan, because tormenting his first officer in absentia is still something he indulged in even if he's grown enough to chastise people for doing it to the Vulcan's face, "It's an unknown energy pattern in our flight path. Huh."
Jim taps the controls and skims through a readout, shining displays rolling over equations. He opens a channel to their escort ship and chats about changing their course to skirt around it, though they agree to slowing down to get a look at the thing.
"Too bad we don't have a probe," Jim muses. "Though I bet we could pick one up on the station to drop on our way back."
"Unknown energy pattern," McCoy repeats in a deadpan almost to rival what Spock could pull off on a good day. (If there's anything to be said for one Leonard McCoy, it's that he can put a hell of a lot of inflection in his voice when he decides he needs it -- and the same holds true in reverse. Whatever tone he needs to convey an appropriate message in just a few words... It's a gift.) It doesn't sound like he's thrilled, to say the least.
He doesn't even bother looking over the readouts while Kirk makes plans with the other ship; that's not even close to his area of expertise. Sure, in a pinch, he could make more than just heads or tails of it, but Jim's already taken a look and decided on a course of action.
"It doesn't occur to you that maybe poking it with a stick is a bad idea?" Maybe it doesn't like probes, Jim. You ever thought of that? Huh?
"Who's got a stick?" Total innocence. "Come on, Bones. You're a scientist. Nobody ever found a new, better surgical technique without getting a look at anything." So what if they're in a tin can! Everything is fine.
They slow past the area marked for the reading, though like most energy disturbances, it doesn't look like much of anything. There's a kind of barely-there shimmer, like one of those magic eye posters from the ancient 20th century that briefly regained ironic popularity when Jim was in the fifth grade. The computer beeps at him and Jim leans over the panel.
"Huh." He doesn't say anything to McCoy, but flips the channel to the other shuttle open again. "Are you getting a reading like you're being scanned?" he asks, and the other pair confirms. Yep.
"That's weird," Jim says, conversational, to his companion.
He hates it when Jim has a point. Yes, yes, he's a scientist and he's damned good at what he does, too. Wouldn't be Chief Medical Officer of a starship if he wasn't and he can named a few times, right off-hand, when his, uh, scientific acumen (and other assorted medical tools) pulled their collective asses from the fire.
Except they're not on the Enterprise. They're in a glorified shuttle.
This time, he leans forward and does look at the readouts while Jim speaks to the kids in the other shuttle. Energy disturbance, check. Being scanned, double-check. Wonderful.
"Yeah, that's weird." There's a sort of resignation in his tone, because Jim and weird go hand and hand and there's no way in hell they're just going to back away now, is there? "I guess that means we're going to poke it."
Go for it, Captain. He updated his will after the whole blowing-up-the-ship-and-crash-landing-on-a-desolate-planet bit. He's good to go.
i am also jealous of past-me and would like to return
Jim makes a thoughtful noise, attention moving between the readout and the odd energy spot on the viewscreen. It's clear he wants to poke it.
"If we were in the Enterprise it'd be a no-brainer," he says after a moment of contemplation. "But this craft doesn't have the correct equipment to even record or monitor it properly. We'll see what we can cobble together on the research outpost and take another pass at it on the way back."
He relays this decision to the other team, and they map their flight paths around it at a staggered pace, expecting their limited sensors to lose it in short order. But. This does not happen.
The other shuttle opens a channel. "Captain, are you picking up the same thing? Is it.. following us?"
"Yes, Lieutenant, we're getting the same readings. Head about fifty meters out your starboard side away from us and go to maximum impulse, I want to see which of us it's latched onto."
"Aye sir."
i know the feeling; i did the same after my vacation
McCoy's hands hover above the control panel -- not that he'd do anything of any real purpose right now but it's better than sitting on his hands, right? -- while Jim contacts the other shuttle. Honestly, he agrees with his captain on this one. It does need some investigation but they're woefully under-equipped for it here. He nods, acknowledging the order silently, and does as asked -- for once not offering an opinion, if only because it aligns with exactly what they're doing.
But when the operations crew contacts them, McCoy's rather easy-going moment is immediately squashed. Too good to be true. He knew it. He double-checks the readings and just manages not to make a comment about their luck.
He doesn't want to jinx it in case that... thing... out there is following them.
It doesn't stop him from leveling A Look in Jim's direction. Who do you think it's following, huh? It would be just their luck.
Jim deliberately Does Not Look at Bones for a little while, moving the shuttle in a different heading, watching the readouts. Sttooop looking at him like that, for the love of god.
"It's not like I asked it to follow us," he blurts after a tense minute. Because yeah, it's definitely following their shuttle. Jim's hands fly smoothly over the controls, investigating. He sends another message to the ops shuttle before saying, "Hold on," to Bones, and then suddenly taking evasive maneuvers.
He'll look at Jim however he wants to look at Jim and right now, he's all about slightly disgusted and incredulous. This was supposed to be a milk run. Easy. Drop off supplies, check on a few scientists and operations crew at some outpost in not-hostile space. (All space is hostile, he reminds himself.)
"I'm never going anywhere with you again." He says it even as he starts working on the sensors, taking whatever readings he can come up with, and mostly just staring at this goddamn energy disturbance. Maybe it's not hostile. Maybe it's just... a whirlpool of energy in space, naturally occurring thing that isn't any danger to anyone... and who is he kidding? Maybe it just has a taste for good bourbon. Who doesn't? "I'm not picking up anything we haven't already seen yet." See? He's doing something. Scanning things. Failing at finding anything useful. That sort of thing.
He braces himself nicely, because when Jim goes for evasive maneuvers, he doesn't usually mess around. He could end up ass-over-kettle and sideways all in one shot.
"You've said that so many times it's lost all threat," Jim says, and no, he's not messing around-- but the internal gravity dampers are working, even if sci fi movie physics cause them to sway slightly this way and that within the cabin. Bones is very good at scanning things, also, good job, Bones.
Jim takes the shuttle in a full circle, putting them behind the phenomenon and coming to a full stop on a higher heading than they were previously. "Alright," he murmurs, watching the readouts. "Looks like it's stopped. We'll come around the long way and meet up with the other shuttle. Hopefully this thing won't move much before we can get back." But he's going to send a message about it back to Yorktown, anyway. Maybe they'll send somebody out to look at the thing right away, who knows.
One never knows when their luck might hold true; the dampers could decide to go just as Jim's trying to lose this thing. At least the scanners are still working and they still have an escort ship and they have the ability to communicate. Nothing has broken. (Yet.)
McCoy hums under his breath at that. Makes sense, all of that, and he's more than willing to follow Kirk's lead here. (If he hadn't been, he wouldn't be serving on his ship.) He's checking his own readouts, running new scans, and just generally confused... and curious. He's finally fallen on the side of curiosity. "So why'd it follow us in the first place?"
"Maybe it wants your bourbon," Jim says faux-thoughtfully, a moment that would be creepy if it wasn't born out of simply knowing each other for too long and having the same stupid sense of humor.
He speedily navigates them away from the anomaly, catching up and checking in with the other shuttle. They don't have any tag-alongs this time, too far away for the thing to lock onto them, apparently.
"It could just be lonely."
ah, the joys of tagging while Benadryl is kicking in...
He inclines his head and shrugs one shoulder. Who doesn't want some good bourbon? Maybe even creepy energy disturbances that like to follow shuttles around need a good drink now and again. They'd managed that sort of ridiculous same-thought-thing often enough that McCoy would have almost been alarmed had Jim not mentioned it sooner rather than later.
(And he knew that Jim knew it was there.)
"Lonely, my ass," he mutters as he turns to the readouts again. He's not actively scanning this time, but he is combing through whatever they picked up with a fine-tooth comb. Curiosity has finally won out over not poking things with sticks(and he would like to be as prepared as possible, should Jim decide to take a closer look on the way back. He's checking flight paths of both their own and the other shuttle, every sort of scan they conducted, and even idly pinging surrounding space, looking for anything out of place. "So why us?" He taps the console with one finger for a moment; he's almost talking to himself at this point. "The other shuttle was closer to it at one point than we were."
Jim's right about one thing: McCoy's also a researcher, a scientist, and when his curiosity is pinged for whatever reason, he doesn't let it go easily.
"Dunno," Jim says, glancing at the readings as he sets a new course back on their original heading. "It could have a certain area that serves as a.. head, or central perception hub, that 'saw' us first. It could be sensing energy-- we've definitely got different radiation footprints given the different things we've been exposed to out there."
(This many years in, Jim can say the word radiation without feeling like he has to brace himself against feeling weird. Three cheers for progress?)
"I like it. It's cute."
Jim, no.
i appreciate that, considering some of the weird punctuation that tag ended up with
McCoy is so used to bracing himself for any conversation that includes both Jim Kirk and the word 'radiation' that it's honestly good to see his captain (and friend) level out there. McCoy has his own odd trauma on that count; he remembers countless days trying to surreptitiously follow Jim around with a tricorder or con him into the odd check-up here and again just to make sure he wouldn't drop dead (again) mid-step somewhere. He's pretty sure Jim doesn't hold the smothering mother-henning against him -- he's never really mentioned it -- but it's not something he likes to remember.
So the two of them having a conversation that includes speculation about odd radioactive footprints without either of them flinching? Definitely progress.
He cants his head to acknowledge the point, then turns to stare, unimpressed, at Jim. "It's not cute."
It's potentially anything from world-ending to slightly troublesome, but nothing about that is cute. No, Jim. Bad Captain. No bourbon for him or the energy disturbance.
That smothering mother-henning, as much as he swatted it away here and there at the time, was a big part of how Jim stayed sane in early days post-resurrection. Was the serum going to hold? Would Jim just keel over one day, an irradiated husk? Would he develop terrifying side-effects? It's in his nature to just bulldoze forward without worry, and for the most part he did, but that was... something else. Having Bones hovering, knowing his friend would catch something wrong with him immediately, was a comfort.
"It is!" Jim protests. "It's like a... a duckling." A beat. "And now I feel bad for leaving it."
It's a potentially very dangerous duckling. Mildly frustrating at the absolute very least, of that McCoy is damned certain, and Jim decides to treat it like a lost puppy. Good God, it's not wonder they've fallen into some of the things they've done.
"We are not turning this shuttle around." He attempts to pin Jim with a look and it's almost his "I'm in charge of this shit and don't you forget it" voice. (Jim's heard it, in the midst of a crisis when things go sideways and casualties are pouring into the medbay.) "I will lock you out of these controls."
"I'm not turning the shuttle around," Jim says in a dramatic sigh. "But if it's mad at us for leaving it behind when we see it again, I'm reminding you of this moment."
Which is only fair.
The rest of the flight is uneventful, and they arrive more or less on time at the research outpost - the team is observing a race of beings that are just getting in gear to what amounts to their first industrial age. Small, soft-looking pink fuzzy creatures, putting together factories to build gem-hued mechanical parts. Jim's fascinated.
And McCoy will remind him of this if it's mad at them for disturbing it in the first place -- but they arrive at their destination without anything else distracting them. McCoy takes one look at the walking teddy bears the team is observing, looks at the utterly engrossed look on Jim's face, and decides that they may never leave. And if they do, he'll never hear the end of it. Dear Lord, if it's not lost puppy energy disturbances, it's walking pink stuffed animals. His captain is a child.
He's almost afraid he's going to have to dance a jig to get Jim's attention, but clapping his hand on Jim's shoulder seems to do the trick. The operations crew from the other shuttle has been offloading supplies and McCoy's done the prerequisite mental and physical health checks on the scientists. "I'm just about done with things here, if you are."
You know, if you've been doing anything else but staring at the planet's indigenous species. McCoy's been working and trying not to think about it.
Walking pink stuffed animals who are constructing buildings, come one Bones!! Jim's captivated by the long-range observation feeds, and looks over at his friend with a bright smile. "You don't think it's interesting? This is what happens eventually to all those early civ worlds we find after we leave. The reports exploratory captains send back are the guidelines for if Starfleet decides to send a crew out to observe, and how they handle it if they do."
When he first started out, Jim probably wouldn't have found this quite so enthralling. He might be proud in a smug, ha-ha-I'm-in-charge way, but something about the entire process has grown on him like mold. Weird, mature, humanitarian mold.
But he concedes to step back so they're out of the scientists' way, jostling the other man with his shoulder lightly.
"I dunno. I needed to see this, I think. I've been feeling so disconnected."
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EEEEYYY. Jim grins at him.
"Though I dunno, even the Klingons were eager to give you back that one time. Maybe you could just annoy everyone into getting along."
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He leans back in his chair and snorts -- and chooses to take that statement in the complimentary way in which it was obviously intended. "Klingons never knew what hit 'em."
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"That I'll agree with." He mimes a very dramatic hypo-spray injection. You know, versus the imaginary Klingon warriors in the shuttle with them.
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Again, mostly a good thing -- until what Jim wants runs contrary to what McCoy is aiming for. (As in keeping himself in one piece. That usually helps.)
He stares at Jim, not quite appreciating the dramatic reenactment of a regular injection. "You're a child."
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Other times he feels a bleakness without end, dreading repeating the experience. He resents those times. Keeping himself in one piece can't be a priority above protecting his crew, and he can't hesitate.
Meanwhile: he smiles. "I'm a thirty year old captain," Jim corrects, as smug as can be. "And you're still here."
--Still sounds smug. But also very fond, because Bones is still here. After all these years and all the shit Jim's pulled. It's such a nice moment, until a warning beep from the console pulls his attention forward.
"Huh."
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He sits up, turning toward the controls. "'Huh' as in 'fascinating'," and, yeah, he's poking fun at Spock because he can, "or 'huh' as in 'we're all about to die'?"
He'd like to know the appropriate panic level here.
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Jim taps the controls and skims through a readout, shining displays rolling over equations. He opens a channel to their escort ship and chats about changing their course to skirt around it, though they agree to slowing down to get a look at the thing.
"Too bad we don't have a probe," Jim muses. "Though I bet we could pick one up on the station to drop on our way back."
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He doesn't even bother looking over the readouts while Kirk makes plans with the other ship; that's not even close to his area of expertise. Sure, in a pinch, he could make more than just heads or tails of it, but Jim's already taken a look and decided on a course of action.
"It doesn't occur to you that maybe poking it with a stick is a bad idea?" Maybe it doesn't like probes, Jim. You ever thought of that? Huh?
back from vacation, travel killed me @_@
They slow past the area marked for the reading, though like most energy disturbances, it doesn't look like much of anything. There's a kind of barely-there shimmer, like one of those magic eye posters from the ancient 20th century that briefly regained ironic popularity when Jim was in the fifth grade. The computer beeps at him and Jim leans over the panel.
"Huh." He doesn't say anything to McCoy, but flips the channel to the other shuttle open again. "Are you getting a reading like you're being scanned?" he asks, and the other pair confirms. Yep.
"That's weird," Jim says, conversational, to his companion.
i'm jealous of your vacation, tho
Except they're not on the Enterprise. They're in a glorified shuttle.
This time, he leans forward and does look at the readouts while Jim speaks to the kids in the other shuttle. Energy disturbance, check. Being scanned, double-check. Wonderful.
"Yeah, that's weird." There's a sort of resignation in his tone, because Jim and weird go hand and hand and there's no way in hell they're just going to back away now, is there? "I guess that means we're going to poke it."
Go for it, Captain. He updated his will after the whole blowing-up-the-ship-and-crash-landing-on-a-desolate-planet bit. He's good to go.
i am also jealous of past-me and would like to return
"If we were in the Enterprise it'd be a no-brainer," he says after a moment of contemplation. "But this craft doesn't have the correct equipment to even record or monitor it properly. We'll see what we can cobble together on the research outpost and take another pass at it on the way back."
He relays this decision to the other team, and they map their flight paths around it at a staggered pace, expecting their limited sensors to lose it in short order. But. This does not happen.
The other shuttle opens a channel. "Captain, are you picking up the same thing? Is it.. following us?"
"Yes, Lieutenant, we're getting the same readings. Head about fifty meters out your starboard side away from us and go to maximum impulse, I want to see which of us it's latched onto."
"Aye sir."
i know the feeling; i did the same after my vacation
But when the operations crew contacts them, McCoy's rather easy-going moment is immediately squashed. Too good to be true. He knew it. He double-checks the readings and just manages not to make a comment about their luck.
He doesn't want to jinx it in case that... thing... out there is following them.
It doesn't stop him from leveling A Look in Jim's direction. Who do you think it's following, huh? It would be just their luck.
z_z
"It's not like I asked it to follow us," he blurts after a tense minute. Because yeah, it's definitely following their shuttle. Jim's hands fly smoothly over the controls, investigating. He sends another message to the ops shuttle before saying, "Hold on," to Bones, and then suddenly taking evasive maneuvers.
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"I'm never going anywhere with you again." He says it even as he starts working on the sensors, taking whatever readings he can come up with, and mostly just staring at this goddamn energy disturbance. Maybe it's not hostile. Maybe it's just... a whirlpool of energy in space, naturally occurring thing that isn't any danger to anyone... and who is he kidding? Maybe it just has a taste for good bourbon. Who doesn't? "I'm not picking up anything we haven't already seen yet." See? He's doing something. Scanning things. Failing at finding anything useful. That sort of thing.
He braces himself nicely, because when Jim goes for evasive maneuvers, he doesn't usually mess around. He could end up ass-over-kettle and sideways all in one shot.
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Jim takes the shuttle in a full circle, putting them behind the phenomenon and coming to a full stop on a higher heading than they were previously. "Alright," he murmurs, watching the readouts. "Looks like it's stopped. We'll come around the long way and meet up with the other shuttle. Hopefully this thing won't move much before we can get back." But he's going to send a message about it back to Yorktown, anyway. Maybe they'll send somebody out to look at the thing right away, who knows.
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McCoy hums under his breath at that. Makes sense, all of that, and he's more than willing to follow Kirk's lead here. (If he hadn't been, he wouldn't be serving on his ship.) He's checking his own readouts, running new scans, and just generally confused... and curious. He's finally fallen on the side of curiosity. "So why'd it follow us in the first place?"
Maybe it just likes good bourbon?
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He speedily navigates them away from the anomaly, catching up and checking in with the other shuttle. They don't have any tag-alongs this time, too far away for the thing to lock onto them, apparently.
"It could just be lonely."
ah, the joys of tagging while Benadryl is kicking in...
(And he knew that Jim knew it was there.)
"Lonely, my ass," he mutters as he turns to the readouts again. He's not actively scanning this time, but he is combing through whatever they picked up with a fine-tooth comb. Curiosity has finally won out over not poking things with sticks(and he would like to be as prepared as possible, should Jim decide to take a closer look on the way back. He's checking flight paths of both their own and the other shuttle, every sort of scan they conducted, and even idly pinging surrounding space, looking for anything out of place. "So why us?" He taps the console with one finger for a moment; he's almost talking to himself at this point. "The other shuttle was closer to it at one point than we were."
Jim's right about one thing: McCoy's also a researcher, a scientist, and when his curiosity is pinged for whatever reason, he doesn't let it go easily.
tbh that's impressive for benadryl
(This many years in, Jim can say the word radiation without feeling like he has to brace himself against feeling weird. Three cheers for progress?)
"I like it. It's cute."
Jim, no.
i appreciate that, considering some of the weird punctuation that tag ended up with
So the two of them having a conversation that includes speculation about odd radioactive footprints without either of them flinching? Definitely progress.
He cants his head to acknowledge the point, then turns to stare, unimpressed, at Jim. "It's not cute."
It's potentially anything from world-ending to slightly troublesome, but nothing about that is cute. No, Jim. Bad Captain. No bourbon for him or the energy disturbance.
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"It is!" Jim protests. "It's like a... a duckling." A beat. "And now I feel bad for leaving it."
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"We are not turning this shuttle around." He attempts to pin Jim with a look and it's almost his "I'm in charge of this shit and don't you forget it" voice. (Jim's heard it, in the midst of a crisis when things go sideways and casualties are pouring into the medbay.) "I will lock you out of these controls."
Don't think he won't try it.
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Which is only fair.
The rest of the flight is uneventful, and they arrive more or less on time at the research outpost - the team is observing a race of beings that are just getting in gear to what amounts to their first industrial age. Small, soft-looking pink fuzzy creatures, putting together factories to build gem-hued mechanical parts. Jim's fascinated.
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He's almost afraid he's going to have to dance a jig to get Jim's attention, but clapping his hand on Jim's shoulder seems to do the trick. The operations crew from the other shuttle has been offloading supplies and McCoy's done the prerequisite mental and physical health checks on the scientists. "I'm just about done with things here, if you are."
You know, if you've been doing anything else but staring at the planet's indigenous species. McCoy's been working and trying not to think about it.
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When he first started out, Jim probably wouldn't have found this quite so enthralling. He might be proud in a smug, ha-ha-I'm-in-charge way, but something about the entire process has grown on him like mold. Weird, mature, humanitarian mold.
But he concedes to step back so they're out of the scientists' way, jostling the other man with his shoulder lightly.
"I dunno. I needed to see this, I think. I've been feeling so disconnected."
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my dog 'helped' on this one; she sat on my shoulder and watched. this tag Molly-approved.
what a good doge
one of two best dogs. Gizmo and Molly: Best Dogs.
👍
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i'm alive
alive is good. i'm glad.