SUMMARY: Being a doctor in medbay four on the USS Enterprise was never a bore. From smashed fingers in engineering to chemical burns from the blue-shirt scientists, the most amusing patient was always James Kirk. And today, he topped the charts after a stupid race against the young Russin whiz-kid.

WORD COUNT: 1,693 words

AUTHOR: Lydia

NOTES: okay so it’s way easier for me to write like it’s an OC instead of reader, so bare wih me! If you don’t like this, then coment or send me a message so I can edit the future ones to reader instead of OC. If you don’t like it but don’t speak up, I won’t change it! (Damayanti= duh-may-aun-tee, made up character) And this is for the “another James Kirk” anon, so enjoy hun!

She couldn’t remember how many times James Kirk had shown up in the medbay by now. She stopped counting after around fifteen, that case being from when he tripped while chasing Scotty around the boiler room for a keycard. At this point, she woke up every morning expecting to see the Starfleet captain, and went to bed at night exhausted from just that.

That’s actually how the two became familiar with each other. Of course her friend Leonard would always tell her about his crazy antics back at the academy, so she knew of him. But it wasn’t until he came in with a dislocated shoulder from a bad fall that Damayanti got to meet him. They became good friends, him immediately walking to her station every time he was injured, and she had a cart set up for him on the daily.

So when he hadn’t shown up for two days in a row, she became a little saddened. She was happy though- it meant he was out of trouble and staying together in one piece. But a part of her wanted him to stumble through with tangled hair and a torn yellow shirt, just so she could look at his glacial blue eyes that seemed to always bore into her head.

And, oh, how he made her laugh. When she felt down because a friend got ill, or someone died on her operating table, James T Kirk was somehow the only one among the USS Enterprise to pull her out of her mood. He could read her like a book, as she could to him, and knew when she needed space after a stressful day and when she needed to laugh after a long one.

A line ringed in through her comm, making her head spin to the wall. She rushed over and pressed the green button, and after a moment of static, a voice calls through clearly.

“Doctor Damayanti?” a Scottish voice says, and she sighs.

“Okay, Montgomery, who is it this time?” she asks in a bored tone. “Silva with another head injury, or Richie with more broken fingers?”

“Ha, very funny, lassie,” he snaps. “It’s the usual, but it’s pretty serious.”

Her face goes blank. “James?” she asks, and he hums a response. She hangs up before he can explain and takes off down the hall, her long braid rushing behind her as if it’s trying to keep up.

She makes it to engineering in just half a minute, looking around for Scotty. It’s busy as usual, crew members rushing with oil on their hands and faces, but among the crowd she spots a pale and frightened Chekov in a bright yellow shirt.

“Pavel!” she shouts, and he spins as she walks to him.

“Doctor, it’s the captain!” he says in a rushed voice that she can barely understand.

“Where is he at?” she asks, and he takes off up a flight of stairs. She is quick to catch up, coming to a halt when she sees James next to Scotty. He clutches his arm, a large gash going from his shoulder to his elbow as it bleeds heavily through his yellow shirt.

“Oh, hey doc,” he says coolly, gritting his teeth as Scotty helps him stand.

“What the hell happened?” she shouts, taking a rag from Chekov and pressing it to James’ arm. He yells in pain, and she presses down harder.

“The lad was messin’ around with ensign here and managed to slice his damn arm open on a piece of steel!” Scotty says, a parental tone to his voice (and that’s what it has come to most of the time- Scotty yelling at them when they fool around and Damayanti cleaning the mess up).

“Come on, Cap, to the medbay,” she huffs, wrapping an arm around his waist and helping him down the stairs. “Pavel, report to Sulu and Spock, tell them what’s happened.” The young ensign nods, running after they exit engineering to the bridge.

Damayanti presses to his arm still, blood dripping down to his fingertips and leaving a small trail behind them as they navigate the halls of the starship. When they finally make it to the medbay, her hand is covered in blood and his shirt sleeve is now engineering-red.

He sits with a low groan on the biobed and she rolls a cart over. “Mind telling me what you were doing with Pavel in engineering?” she asks, soaking up some blood with a rag.

“Oh, the usual,” he says casually, “just chasing him around after he dared me to a foot race.” He smiles down at her and she scoffs with the shake of her head.

“You’re supposed to set an example,” she scolds him.

“I think I set a good one,” he says in a fake-hurt voice. “I taught everyone not to run around in engineering.” She laughs slightly, and his smile only grows.

She sets the rag down after wiping her hands off. She grabs the hem of his shirt, slowly lifting it over his head. “Well, doctor, you could at least buy me dinner first,” he mutters, and she shoots him a look as he laughs. She sets his now-ruined shirt in the trash and turns back to him, trying her hardest to keep her eyes off his toned chest.

The gash on his arm is large, like she first thought. It spans from his shoulder to his elbow, a ragged line of split flesh and possibly torn muscles. She frowns deeply, scrunching her nose as she gently presses around the wound at the elbow. He gasps, pulling back, and she looks at him with soft eyes.

“You might have ruined the ligaments for now,” she tells him, and he sighs. She motions for him to scoot to the edge of the bio bed and he does. She turns the lights up above them and moves the cart to the bed, letting her sit next to him criss-crossed so she can stitch him up.

She grabs a hypospray, earning a groan from the captain. “Please, Damayanti, no hypo,” he begs, and she raises an eyebrow.

“Do you want me to pull a threaded needle through your arm over and over without a numbing agent, or would you like to shut up?” she snaps, and he purses his lips.

“You’re no fun,” he mumbles, and she chuckles as she shoots the hypo into his arm. He flinches and she rubs the spot gently, working the agent into his muscle and skin. He relaxes a little, watching her as she thread a needle. She’s a natural at her job, and he’s always known that. He loves watching her work- she seems to got lost in the art of healing people.

“Ready?” she asks, and he nods, resting his arm across her leg. She wipes up the blood again and begins to stitch, and James is glad he took the hypo, because even with it, it still hurts. But as he takes even breaths and keeps his eyes on her, he finds the pain to lessen a bit.

“This is a record for you, captain,” she says as she sets the needle down after a moment. “Twenty-seven stitches.” He laughs once and she grabs a small jar off the cart. “Just a healing agent- it’ll seep into the wound and help heal the ligaments underneath.” She opens it and smears some of the clear gel onto his arm.

“Wow, that’s cold,” he gasps, and she laughs a little.

“Yeah, should’ve warned you,” she says. She sets the jar down and he watches her yet again. He keeps his eyes on her freckles as she wraps a large bandage wrap around his arm, and he watches her eyes as they focus on his wound. He listens to her quiet breaths and the tapping her of her fingers as she presses around the wound to make sure it’s covered.

“You, James Kirk, have a bad habit of staring,” she says, smiling up at him and throwing him off. She looks back to his arm, tucking the wrap in and sliding off the bed. She stands in front of him, and gently takes his arm into her hand.

Grabbing a clean rag and dampening it with water, she begins to wipe the blood off him. He holds his arm out for her, the bed at the perfect height to where he is eye level with her, and she carefully cleans off his arm. Within a minute, his arm is clean and she moves to his torso where a smear of blood has dried on his skin. She leans over carefully wiping it off as he- you guessed it- watches her work silently.

“As fun as it is seeing you every other day,” she says after a moment, “try to stay out of harm’s way. Can’t have our captain broken.”

“Fun?” he asks, looking at her with his iconic, toothy smile. She laughs, throwing the rag away and pushing the cart over to the side.

“Interesting, actually,” she corrects herself. “You’re free to go, James.”

“Thank you, Doctor Damayanti,” he says as he slides off the bed, and he’s back to be taller than her as usual.

“Please, call me Demi,” she says with a smile, and he nods.

“Well, Demi, I’ll see you around,” he says. He begins walking out and she sighs as she watches him go, wiping up the biobed. But seconds later he walks back in.

“Actually, I hope to see you at dinner tomorrow,” he tells her, making her raise an eyebrow.

“Oh really?” she jokes, and he nods. “Go one week without an injury, and I’ll go out with you.”