The injury would not scar, the doctor told Spock. The bone would take some time to heal, but it wouldn’t restrict his movements very long. His chest was immobilized, bandaged heavily – and he had to remind himself that it was for the best. Besides which, Jim seemed more relaxed with the knowledge that Spock would not be impeded in his recovery.
The barely audible whir of the machinery around him reverberated through his body, and despite how brief the scan itself was, it felt altogether too long before he was out of the scanner.
Jim immediately gripped his hand the moment he emerged, helping him into a sitting position. Once he was upright, Jim’s fingers pressed firmly against his, his slow pulse beating through his skin. They fixed their eyes on the screen as McCoy brought up the image from the scan. For a moment, the man just looked, brows furrowing with every passing second. Finally, after zooming in twice and changing his angle several times, he sighed.
“That explains a lot,” he muttered. Jim froze.
“What? Is—is there something wrong with the baby?” he asked, hand wrapping around Spock’s entirely. McCoy shook his head.
“Nothin’. ‘Cept it’s two.”
It took Spock a few seconds to begin interpreting the man’s statement, his shoulders suddenly feeling loose and weak. “That is highly unlikely,” he heard himself say. “Vulcans do not birth multiples. It is an event occurring only once in every 400,000 births. Aside from which, my implant releases only one ovum per fertility cycle. The likelihood that I would conceive twins—”
“—is made higher by your human DNA,” McCoy drawled. “Looks like you must’ve released two eggs this cycle; readings indicate the twins are fraternal.”
“Highly improbable.”
“But still way more likely for you than any other Vulcan, right? Besides, aren’t you hobgoblins all about repopulation? This is a two-for-one deal here. Be happy,” the doctor told him. Then, turning to Jim, he smirked. “You must be thrilled. More Kirks to dilute the gene pool.”
Spock turned to his bondmate, trying to sense anything through the bond – but all he could find was a buzzing, a hum of congealed thoughts, of integrated emotions so complex he was certain not even the strongest computers could have separated them, and more than anything, an all-encompassing and overwhelming sense of awe. “Jim?”
“Yeah,” he said softly, his grip going lax as Spock felt his mind struggle to calm itself, to reflect his intellect over his wonder. “I mean—Bones, you’re serious? We’re seriously having two?”
“You are,” the man agreed. “Give me a sec and I’ll pull up their genetic profiles. You do want to know, right?”
“Indeed,” Spock confirmed. “Sex, genetic makeup, developmental stage, any and all genetic abnormalities, and approximate date of viable delivery.”
McCoy snorted. “In other words, you wanna know everything I can tell you,” he said, reaching for his PADD. “Why wouldn’t you just say you wanted to know everything?”
Spock raised an eyebrow. “I am disinterested in the physical characteristics of the embryos unless they somehow relate to a disability or possible handicap.”
