leftwithmybones | (no subject)

(no subject)

Eight o'clock comes.

Eight o'clock arrives and McCoy's body's protesting the whole damn idea of it. He doesn't want to get up and his limbs are in full agreement, worn and weary. Instead of getting up to go over the samples for the day, he grabs whole bunches of the covers away from Jim and the cat, writhing his way to the corner of the bed so he can curl up and try to ward off the chill. He stays that way for a couple more hours.

And then it's ten. Ten in the morning and he's too damn hot. His skin's starting to burn up and he grumbles, kicking off the majority of the blankets in an effort to school his temperature back to normal, even though it feels like it's so damn hot that he might have to take a look at the AC unit to see if it's on the fritz.

Later. Later, though. Because it's ten-thirty and he's sore and he's tired and he wants to do nothing more than sleep and he's too damn hot, but then it's cold and he needs those blankets back.

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"Yeah, I'm still in bed," he mutters, the languid laziness in his bones convincing him not to move a single damn inch if he gets his way. He breathes in and out sharply, rolling over and letting his head hit the pillow as he pushes hair off his sweaty forehead. "Look at the air-con unit, would you? Shouldn't be fritzing out this much."

"Yeah, no machine upon which I have laid hands is ever on the fritz," Jim replies, crawling further up the bed to peel the sheets away from him. "You are sick. Tell me - okay, tell you your symptoms and we'll go from there."

He grumbles and manages to sit his way up long enough to grab the sheet right back, glaring at Jim in the international 'you do not fuck with my sheets' sign. "I'm cold, don't you take those away from me," he mutters, pulling them back as he slumps back against the pillow. "It's just a cold. Maybe a flu," he sighs. "No reason to get up in arms. I've been running ragged."

"I said list of symptoms, not list of reasons why you got sick in the first place," says Jim, but he gives him his sheet back with a raised brow. "Thought you were hot. Bones, I need to take your temperature. Where's your thingy?"

"I am hot, it's called having a fever," he snaps back, annoyed that Jim looks so damn perfect with his flushed perfect hair and his stupidly perfect luminescent blue eyes and all that skin he wants to touch. Perfect, stupid idiot. "Tricorder's in the bedtable, next to the books."

"Good." Jim gets up, calling as he rummages through the dresser, "Stop hating me with your eyeballs, you need to conserve your strength." The tricorder is, in fact, in Bones' bag beneath the bedtable, and Jim marks with some distress that the fever's high enough to addle him a bit.

"Now." Sitting back next to Bones, Jim points it at him. It's been a long time since he's had to use a tricorder, and it's only due to a rare illness or two during academy that Bones ever taught him to use one at all, but Jim at least remembers how to turn it on. "How do I read it?"

McCoy tries to swat it away, but in the end, he reaches out to grab hold and claim it, sighing as he reads off the number through bleary and hot eyes. "Oh, good," he mutters, the same way he starts when he's got an idiot on his rotation. "A hundred and one." He flops back down on the bed, staring ceilingwards as he runs through the symptoms. So far, he's got exhaustion and fever.

It's like a needle in a haystack full of sickness.

"It's got to say more than that," Jim insists, resisting the urge to snatch it out of Bones' hands. It's possible that he has an even worse bedside manner than Bones, but Jim doesn't like this. Bones with a fever is not right, and he looks miserable, and Jim needs to make it stop.

"What's the cause? How do we fix it?"

He lets his gaze flutter downwards, staring at the bed as he will his body to offer him some energy, but he can't even muster that. Instead, he collapses back against the bed a little harder with a groan. "Honestly? Exhaustion and fever? That could be over a dozen things, Jim. Until something else hits, all I got as an option is resting."

"It has to say more than that," Jim replies, and this time he does snatch it back. He can't read it, but Jim is nothing if not adaptive, and he passes the tricorder first over himself, and then Bones, studying the differences.

"You're all fucked up here," he says, gesturing at his own chest. "What is that, your lungs? It's not your heart - " Another pass confirms it, the angry reading definitely encompass both sides of Bones' chest. "Chest cold? Bones, these are really off from a healthy person's."

McCoy shifts in bed to look over to the readings, worried for a second until he sees what Jim's reading off the tricorder. "Nah," he drawls, sighing as he taps his palm against his chest. "Hate to say, but that's normal. Jessica and I had a bit of an accident in the lab ten months back, fucked up our lungs." Hers more than his, but she already had some damage. "Pre-existing condition, don't worry about the lungs."

"Don't worry about your pre-existing condition?" If Jim pointed the tricorder at himself right now, the readings would say apoplectic. "Which is lung damage? Bones! What the hell! Why didn't you tell me? What's wrong? Is it serious? Is it going to get better?"

"We were working in the lab and one of the samples went into a gaseous state," he grumbles, turning his hot cheek against the coolness of the pillow below him. "Probably won't regain the use of that chunk of lung, but Jess is in worse shape. Hasn't really affected me, honestly, didn't think I ought to bring it up during pillow talk," he adds, wryly.

"We talk without pillows," Jim snarls, eyes on the tricorder like it will make more sense to him, and damn if it isn't starting to seem to. Numbers are the same in any language, and Jim knows too high from too goddamn low. "You're not getting as much oxygen as you should be," he says, turning it around to show Bones. "Look. Is that the damage - which we will be getting back to - or something else?"

God help him for finding this sort of behavior any kind of attractive. It's got to be the fever talking for him. He sighs and turns his attention up to Jim, peering at the tricorder and taking a long look at the levels. "No, s'not normal," he admits. "Not the pre-existing damage. It's probably a cold, I'll come down with the sore throat and the cough in a few days. Means I ought to start bunking in my old room."

"You're not going anywhere." Jim realizes he has both hands up as if to hold Bones down and lowers them. "You're - okay, I might roll you over long enough to change the sheets, but you're staying where you are, and you're resting. Who am I contacting at the clinic to take your shifts?"

"You're allergic to half the stuff in my medkit, what the hell makes you think you won't get whatever germ it is I've got?" he challenges, letting his head fall back against the pillow. "You can tell Rollie about the clinic, Jess about the lab," he says. "And you can promise me that you're going to stay away from me."

"No," says Jim at once. "No way am I staying away from you, you're sick, you've got - " He waves the tricorder at him. "A high fever. I'm making you some food, something nice and smooth that your throat won't protest, and then I'm going to sit and stare at you for a long time. There will probably be spongebaths and lots of fretting, so whatever peace you need to make with whatever gods about that, you just do that right now, because this is happening."

Jim leans in. "Nurse Jim is happening."

McCoy swats at Jim's cheek to get his face out of the way, grimacing when he seems to want to get up close and personal. "Great, so you can get sick and I can lie up at night worried that you're going to keel over and die because I don't have specific antibiotics for everything for you yet!" he mutters irritably. "Swear to god, I swear to god, Jim, just let me get through this."

"If you're contagious, I already have it," Jim replies, undeterred, "or was that not your tongue down my throat last night?"

He gets up, staring through the bedroom door at the kitchen while he decides what they have he can make soup out of. Thank fuck they have juice. "Okay, first bit of business, stuffing you with vitamin C."

"If my evil twin is starting to tongue you, you need to start warning me about that shit," he grumbles, turning back against the pillow to try and let the bedsheets devour him whole as he crawls under them, a whine of protest lodged in the back of his throat. He hates everything right now, more than usual. "M'going back to sleep," he says, officiously. "You can do whatever you do, like you do."

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