21, Star Trek, or 15, Star Wars please (for the angsty prompt lists)!
I can't believe I haven't answered this unit now. Jfc Kat, you utter berk! Anyway, chose the first one because... Well... Spirk heh
21. “I need you to stay.” (Spirk)
"'bout damn time you showed your face here, goblin," Bones snapps, glaring at the green-blooded hobgoblin that walks into his sickbay.
"He's barely conscious anymore," he says, voice quieter, the snap bleeding out of his words, drained, suffocated, by the grief that washes through him.
Spock doesn't say anything. Leonard isn't sure the Vulcan could speak right now. This isn't something either of them had expected to happen.
The damned tests had lied to him! Leonard ground his teeth, biting and clawing anger rising up his throat that he ruthlessly shoves down.
His anger isn't going to help now. He sighs.
Spock's dark gaze flitters over Leonard's expression, reading the multitude of feelings that his face reveals with every muscle twitch.
"I-" Leonard has never seen the Vulcan speechless, lost for words, more than a handful of times throughout the time he'd known Spock. Most of those times, Spock had been distracted, weak, injured, or genuinely surprised by an unexpected turn of events.
He's never seen the Vulcan at a loss because of grief.
'How does one deal with a grieving Vulcan?' Bones wonders absently, moving across sickbay to stand in front of said Vulcan. 'How do I handle this when I can barely keep it together myself?'
"Just go to him, Spock," he says softly, resting a hand briefly on the Vulcan's shoulder; an echo of wrongness to the tone because Leonard shouldn't be the one comforting Spock like this. It's not his place. "Talk to him... While you still can."
Leonard's hand drops from the Vulcan's shoulder and it's like the movement is a signal. Spock moves slowly, almost reluctantly from what Leonard can tell, across the rest of sickbay towards one of the private rooms.
Leonard keeps them empty except in cases where the patient needs isolation to recover or... or won't be recovering at all.
Whatever happens between them in that room, Leonard will never ask, but he knows that Spock, for all that he's a Vulcan and has the emotional expression of a phaser, feels deeply and intensely to the point of self-destruction.
Leonard doubts Spock will ever be the same, and it seems unfair, cruel, mean and vicious of the universe to do this. To any of them. Leonard loses a best friend. The ship loses a captain without peer. And yet, somehow, Spock is the one who losing so much more.
He drops down behind his desk and tops up the glass of illegal brandy that will eat his liver if he drinks too much. Leonard kind of wishes it will. Raising the glass, he inclines his head.
"To James Tiberius Kirk," he croaks out before knocking the liquid back in a practiced move. The sting of the drink is nothing compared to the pain of losing a friend.
The doors to his room manage to drag him up from the aching rest he's been floating in for the past hour. Every nerve burns with a dull, liquid fire that Jim's become used to more and more even as his legs become unresponsive weights. There's a tingle in his spine, a spasm of something that could be signals from his brain trying in vain to make his legs work, but the change in air pressure in the room is more important.
His eyesight hasn't deteriorated just yet, though Bones said it would before the day's end. Jim hopes it's the last thing to go. He doesn't know how he'll handle his last few hours alive if he can't see those he loves.
He relies so much on what he sees to commit moments to memory that the idea terrifies him. His sense of touch is already on the fritz and Jim thinks his sense of taste and smell have already died a death. There's really only sight and hearing that still work right.
Seeing Spock standing, hovering, just inside the room makes Jim's heart stutter and a weak, half-smile form on his pale features.
"Sp'k." His voice sounds like a frog that's taken to eating sandpaper and Jim coughs to clear it. "Spock."
There's something wrong with spock's voice. Jim frowns.
"What's wrong?" Jim's frown colours with concern. "Is something happening to the ship?" He shifts in the biobed, tensing muscles as much as possible to try and sit up. If something is happening-
"No, Jim," Spock says, moving to the biobed and pressing a hand on Jim's arm, soothing and guiding at the same time. "The ship and the crew are not in danger. There is no risk."
Jim stares at Spock, eyes drinking in the sight of his First Officer with a hungry sort of desperation that he sees mirrored in spock's own eyes. The hand on his arm tightens; it aches but Jim can't do anything but stare at Spock.
Everything is inconsquetial to him as the fear he has bleeds away the longer he stares at his First Officer, committing the Vulcan's features to memory and hoping to sear them into his soul. Jim doesn't believe in a god or gods, in spirits or ghosts, but Jim is dying and he cannot bear the thought of ending and forgetting Spock in any way.
Finally there's a shift, he blinks, shivers, muscles twitching from the exertion of doing nothing but degrade, and Spock pulls back.
"I must go." The words are clipped, sudden, unexpected.
For a moment Jim thinks he'd imagined them but the expression on Spock's face, the way he moves to step away, drives it home that Spock is leaving, he's going, he's walking away and-
His hand latches onto a single finger, freezing his First Officer in his tracks. Jim has no doubt the pain he feels right now are a large part of why Spock has stopped. Pain has a way about it; it can shut the mind down and leave the body a limp ragdoll of agony.
Spock's head turns back, his eyes wide, pained, reflecting every feeling Jim has as they flow from him into his First Officer in a steady thrum.
"I need you to stay," Jim whispers, begs, and the grip he has on Spock's finger weakens.
It is replaced by two hands wrapping around his own and Spock setting himself down on the single chair beside Jim's bed.
"Of course," Spock's voice is a whisper, hushed and so, so soft it hurts to hear. The emotion his First Officer hides behind a calm exterior stretches out beyond that exterior, colouring his face and words with feeling. "Of course, T'hy'la. Always."
