starlogs | ( closed ) and I'm floating in the most peculiar way

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( closed ) and I'm floating in the most peculiar way

WHO: James T. Kirk & Leonard McCoy
WHERE: Enterprise
WHEN: February 14th (+ another thread later on)
WHAT: Waking up with no power and zero gravity isn't their idea of fun.
WARNINGS: Nothing aside from Bones panicking and Jim hating himself a little later on. Possible mentions of death too.

When things actually started going down, Jim was too fast asleep to realize. Even the faint glow filtering through the windows as the nearest ship blew up wasn't enough to wake him, eyes shut for a while longer. The fifteen minutes of peace that followed would be the last bit of decent and unhindered rest he'd likely get in a while.

It started with a strange tingling sensation, at first. As the systems started malfunctioning, it was the engines shutting down completely and the whole ship going dead silent that had him waking up. His heart thrummed to the beat of the engines and the warp core, and suddenly everything felt... misaligned.

He nearly startled awake at that, shoving the blankets off of him in one sudden move as he got to his feet. Except his feet touched the ground for about a second or two before his whole body started to float, as if weightless, and the more he struggled to reach the ground, the farther away he got from it.

"What the fuck—" he looked over sharply, seeing Bones's silhouette starting to lift from the bed even in the dark of the room. Despite the evident lack of gravity, he tried to glide over to him. "Bones. Wake up, wake up— Bones!"

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What got him to stir was that sickening feeling of no gravity. The weightless churn in his stomach as his body no longer seemed to touch the bed any longer. But what made him truly move was the sound of Jim's voice in the room. A little too edged in a frantic yell for Leonard to ignore.

Yet, the instant he 'rolled' to his back, he felt like he drifted off to the side and slid like butter on a skillet through the air. What the hell?!

Blinking his eyes open, he righted himself just slightly and instantly felt like he was going to throw up. "What the hell is goin' on, Jim?!" He wasn't awake enough and he sure as hell wasn't calm enough neither. "What happened to the gravity--" He drifted off as other details started to come into focus. No hum of the engines and not a single light on any console in the room. And if he felt like he might throw up before, now he had a feeling it might just happen.

"Jim..."

Jim wasn't feeling especially calm himself right now, having already connected the dots and knowing that right now the ship was in complete shutdown. He'd experienced it before and the mere memory had his heart racing in mild panic.

Yet seeing Bones's reaction, he knew he had to stay calm, for both their sakes if nothing else. Also it would be disgusting if he were to actually throw up when there was no gravity.

"Hey. It's fine. We're fine, okay? Just need to figure out what happened and make it right." He reached out, his arm and body stretched out the best he could towards Bones, beckoning him to do the same and meet him halfway. "Give me your hand. Come on, I've got you."

He never liked zero-g training. Moving anywhere without gravity was the worst feeling he could imagine and to be honest, he had too many bad memories tied to watching things floating lifeless in space. Right, too many bodies. Closing his eyes for a moment, he focused on calming the fuck down.

Jim's voice pulled him out of it enough to turn his head and look at the blonde silently. Turning in the air, he reached out to catch Jim's hand. Where the contact calmed his nerves considerably, he still had a terrible feeling about the entire freaking situation.

"The hell happened? Did those bastards mess with the ship?" He didn't trust them. Never had. But he couldn't imagine what they could be trying to accomplish with this. But he also knew asking Jim all these questions was not gonna help any of them.

Jim was trying really hard not to focus on bad memories or less than pleasant experiences right now. There were a myriad of reasons why he should be panicking right now, but that wasn't going to help them any. What he needed to do was calm down, get Bones to calm down too, then find a way out of the room so he could at least activate auxiliary power so he could figure out what was happening.

"Got you," he said finally as his hand caught Bones's, fingers curling tight. He tugged hard and pulled Bones closer, until he could wrap his arm around his waist instead. Not that it helped, but at least the contact had them both floating slowly towards the door.

"I doubt it," he muttered, looking around the room. What would the purpose of completely shutting down the power be, after all? It just made no sense. "Won't find out from in here. We need to... come on."

Free hand reaching up to the ceiling, he pushed hard against it, propelling them closer to the door.

He grabbed on to Jim's hand tight, the contact cooled some of that burning fear racing along his spine. Breathing in slowly, he moved closer with the force of the pull and couldn't help but curl his other arm about Jim's neck. The race of his pulse stuttered oddly in his chest as he pressed into Jim's space in this strange weightless scenario.

And maybe he didn't want to admit it, but he ducked his head to press his face into Jim's neck as he bit into his lip. Being close to Jim kept his mind from flying off the handle and going overboard.

Focusing on breathing slowly, he let his fingers curl into Jim's shoulder. It took a lot of effort to remove himself from being pressed so completely against the blonde. "We don't have any tools in here... the hell are you planning to do?" He knew they needed to get out of the enclosed room. If it was total power failure, a larger space with more air would be better...

But doing that could be dangerous. Though, so were the calculations he was doing in his head about how long it would take for them to run out of air here.

Jim didn't mind being close in the least but it did help to have a little more freedom to move, so when Bones eased his hold on him, he let him, though his arm stayed where it was, curled around Bones's waist. Looking around them more than at the doctor, he didn't notice any changes in his expression, though he took the lack of yelling as a good sign.

Even if the lack of yelling should probably worry him even more, but anyway. At least he could focus more clearly like this.

"Don't know. Manual override? There's got to be a way to bypass the door's mechanism," he said, gripping at the wall once they were close enough. Using a groove on the wall, he tugged and boosted the both of them towards the door, holding onto the edge until they slowed to a near halt of sorts. "Can you hold onto my shoulders from the back? Kinda need my arms free for this."

At first, he disliked pulling away. He knew damn well that just being in contact with Jim was keeping him calmer, but he shouldn't be such an infant. And that point became infinitely clear when Jim told him to move to grab his shoulders cause he was... well... in the way.

He looked away at that and slowly pried his own grip away from the blonde and moved just enough to press his hand to the wall. "Just let go." He said the words almost to forcefully to be considered calm like he was aimin' for. Closing his eyes, he felt that shaking panic clawing it's way back into the pit of his stomach. Goddamnit, why was he being such a child?

"Don't get yourself hurt." He pointed out as solidly as his quivering insides would let him. "Can't do any real first aid in zero gravity." Most of the color was bleeding out of his face and a shiver ran up his spine. He knew the tell-tale signs of the onset of shock, but he also knew how to distract himself. Mostly. And Jim's well being... he could focus on that before his own while not being a damn bother to him.

To be honest, Jim didn't want to let go of Bones any more than he did, if nothing else because he worried that Bones might end up floating too far away from him. Jim had done pretty great during his zero gravity training but simulations weren't the same as it happening in real life without any warning or preparation, in a room clearly not designed for it.

Well at least the furniture was attached to the floor and walls, so aside from shoes, a few clothes and small decorative items, there was nothing else floating around mid-air. Small blessings.

"I won't," he promised even though he technically shouldn't (or couldn't). He did let go of Bones finally, reaching for his hand and squeezing it just once before moving to the door's control panel. It was completely dead so inputting any codes wouldn't work, so instead he felt around the edge and tried to pry it off of the wall so he could take a look behind it. "We'll be fine, Bones. Gotten us out of worse, haven't I?"

Looking for any hold he could get on the wall, he tried to keep his body as stationary as possible. But it didn't matter how hard he tried not to think about this shit, he still did. His mouth felt dry and well, he could blame the lack of gravity for making everything feel like it was sitting in his throat. Turning his head, he pressed his forehead into the metal wall closing his eyes.

He was no engineer. He really couldn't offer anything useful to Jim right now. Hell, at best he was a liability in the situation. So best to bite his tongue and stay out of the way.

Which wasn't that hard when he felt like he might shake out of his skin at this point. Turning his head just a little he could feel the cold sweat at his temple and hairline while setting his jaw to watch Jim work. "Yeah. You have." If anything he did know that. But Jim had a whole crew backing him then. Now he was stuck with just him.

For Jim it was easier not to focus on the more harrowing details for now, since he was currently getting busy messing with the control panel. Everything seemed to be in order with the wiring, nothing cut, frayed or burnt— though that didn't surprise Jim all that much. He had heard the very engines turn off, after all. It was a ship-wide problem.

Unfortunately that meant they were stuck in here. The doors could be pried open if only he were strong enough, but he wasn't, and he had no tools here that could help him with that. The air vents leading to his own room were also too small for any human to crawl into them, so that wasn't an option either.

Just for good measure, he disconnected a couple of the wires and tapped them together. But there was no spark, no energy of any source flowing through them. He didn't even have a phaser here, or he might've shot the panel in an attempt to get enough energy into it to get the door to open. No such luck, though.

Sighing quietly, he glanced towards Bones, pressing his lips together. "Power's down. Everything... I'm guessing you don't have anything lying around that can help us open the door by force," he tried, just a little hopeful, but he was pretty sure he knew what the answer would be.

Evening out his breaths, he knew that hyperventilating was a bad idea. Also knew that air would be scarce and him freaking out would only use up what air they had left. Of course his brain would work that way. Turning in that sickeningly weightless way, he leaned back against the wall and held himself there as best he could. At least that was some sort of grounding in this scenario.

Closing his eyes, he tried not to look to closely at the current situation. Not if he wanted to stay mostly calm. Then Jim spoke and he forced his eyes open. God, it was dark in there. Fucking black of space.

Breathing in a little deeper this time, he turned his head to look at the blonde. His mind shifted gears a little at Jim's question then he finally shook his head. Not that Jim would see that too well in the black of space. Goddamn space.

"None of my tools in my medkit are strong enough to cut through alloy or metals. Unless you want to find a way to disassemble the furniture." His voice was oddly quiet, losing a lot of the edge to them that usually came with his grouching or sarcasm. But then, it could be because his head felt like it was spinning and he couldn't even sit down.

Jim looked down and away for a moment, not even disappointed by the answer when he'd known from the start that there was very little chance Bones would have a solution to offer. Well, the furniture suggestion wasn't bad per se, but it would be more doable if they had gravity, at the very least. As it was, it was unmanageable.

"Alright," he took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. Shoving the panel back into the wall so it didn't just float around, he moved so he slotted himself under the door frame next to Bones, reaching for his hand and holding it tightly in his own. As much for Leonard's sake as for his own, honestly.

"Okay. Good thing right now is we don't have to worry about air. There's enough for us to last a few days, if not over a week if we keep ourselves calm. So that's good." They were much likelier to suffer the effects of the cold or to feel thirst or hunger long before they ran out of air, though Jim wasn't about to point that out to Bones right now.

The lack of light he could live with. Although... now he had the time to, he looked out the window to spot where the faint glow from outside came from. Not any nearby planet or a distant sun somewhere, no— looking more attentively, he realized it was one of the ships on the fleet. Or it had been... before it blew up.

"That's a ship," he blurted out before he thought twice of it. "Shit. What the hell is happening?"

"Guess that panel is no use?" He offered quieter, watching Jim as still as he could be. When Jim went to take his hand, he had to unclench it from his palm and curl his fingers about Jim's. He didn't even realize when he slipped his fingers through Jim's and closed his eyes again.

"The rooms are just as air tight, Jim. They're made that way for a reason." For hull breaches and the like. And where the vent would not have shut off from loss of power. But with no circulation, there was no guarantee that oxygen would move this way. But he decided he didn't want to think about that.

He was content to sit there with his eyes closed and fight his own thoughts until Jim's outburst had him looking up. Staring at the window, he blinked a few times and thought that maybe he should be thankful they didn't blow up like that. Just a split second of thought before he frowned. "I hope no one was on it..."

His back stiffened as he turned his head to look at Jim. "You don't think whatever happened to those ships will happen here, do ya?"

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— february 27th

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