...So I did make it three for three ^^; My muse is ON FIRE!!! Everything I write triggers a new plot bunny to start gnawing on my mind :P

Disclaimer: Not mine. No money is being made.

The night before an exam McCoy realizes Jim Kirk makes a good friend.

All-Nighter

Leonard McCoy knew he had a good friend in Jim Kirk when the younger man stopped by his dorm the night before a big test and pulled an all-nighter right along with him. They both knew he didn't need to but McCoy wasn't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Until tonight McCoy had only considered Kirk as an acquaintance – someone to sit with in class and share notes with when the kid decided class was actually nap-time. McCoy would never say it aloud, but he was more than grateful for this unexpected gesture.

“Weren't you supposed to be seeing someone tonight?” He asked as he let Kirk into his dorm. Laila... Raila...”

“Gaila, and yeah, I was,” Kirk stepped in and the door swished shut behind him, “but then she got pre-midterm jitters and locked herself in her room so I figured I'd make sure you hadn't worked yourself up into an aneurysm. I hear those things are nasty.”

“Try lethal. But aneurysms I can deal with. Engineering never makes sense,” McCoy complained, downing the bitter dregs of what had to be his tenth coffee of the day. Whatever taste he may have enjoyed in the beverage at first was now just adding to the churning mess that was the pit of his stomach. “I'm a doctor, not an engineer! I work with bodies, not conduits, power relays or warp coils. When the hell will I ever need any of this useless knowledge? Never – that's when!” He glared once again at his computer screen that had the contents page of his assigned reading staring right back at him. A wave of irrational anger swept over him, joining the burning frustration that along with all the coffee was making him nauseous and jittery. “I'm gonna fail.”

“No, you're not. The idea of Basic Engineering is so that you can be...” Kirk paused, recalling the little motto their engineering professor loved to bat around. “Ah! 'Be prepared for the absolute worst so when the worst comes it won't feel so bad.' Or something like that.”

“Y'know doctors say the same thing,” McCoy said grimly, “but we keep to what we know. And I know jack about spaceships.”

“Look, it's really straight-forward,” Kirk said with a patience he rarely exhibited. “Watch, I'll show you. Ask me a question: something you really don't get.”

McCoy threw his hands in the air. “Try all of it.”

“Try specifics.”

“Fine. Let's start with the basics. Manual override controls: location and operation thereof.”

Nodding, Kirk reached across McCoy's desk and grabbed a datapad and a stylus. He sketched something on the blank screen and began explaining the basics. McCoy found Kirk's use of visuals extremely useful; dense, meaningless paragraphs becoming images that lived and worked. The night wore on, Kirk moving through numerous emergency procedures should any number of unpleasant scenarios happen aboard a vessel while it was deep in space. Some of it finally began to click for McCoy. Kirk was a surprisingly adept teacher, knowing how to break things down in a way that was easily digestible.

As things grew clearer in McCoy's mind, he couldn't help but feel a mild sense of wonder at the ease with which Kirk seemed to grasp all this. “How the hell do you get it?”

Kirk shrugged. “It just makes sense. Everything does if it's explained the right way.” He waved a hand at the computer screen. “You pick the section of the text book and I'll explain it.” Passionately, he then added: “You'd get it if the bastards writing these things didn't have their heads shoved up their own asses.”

And as the sun began to dawn over San Francisco, McCoy felt the familiar rush of adrenaline that always hit after the mind-numbing sludge of the morning's early hours. Kirk pushed himself away from the desk and tossed the datapad down. “That's it,” he said, stretching until every joint in his body popped and cracked. He gave McCoy a cocky smirk. “Now if you fail it's because you're a dumbass.”

McCoy cocked an eyebrow. “Thanks.”

“Don't mention it.”

Washing down the toothpaste with yet another coffee, McCoy gave himself just enough time to change into a fresh uniform before heading out the door. Kirk insisted McCoy had a head-start (“hey, I don't wanna have to beat people up 'cause they started rumours about us baby,” the kid said, prompting an eyeroll from McCoy that had only caused Kirk to snigger like a teenager), and by the time McCoy reached the exam hall he had an air about him that was almost confident.

And when he managed to scrape a passing mark (because McCoy would never be an engineer no matter how good a teacher Kirk turned out to be), that Saturday night Kirk made sure he was repaid in full...

“Seriously Jim, dislocated shoulders are no laughing matter...”