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ONE.
“For the love of god, kid.”
“In my defense,” Jim starts, which isn’t a good sign at the best of times and is even less so when his eye is swollen and his lip cut, “you didn’t hear the way he was talking about her.”
Leonard shakes his head, looping at arm around Jim’s waist to support him out the student bar. Jim drops an arm around his shoulder in response, shooting him a smile that would be more likely to charm him if there wasn’t pink between his teeth, obvious remnants of blood mixed with spit. A year and a half into academy training, a year and four months into being roommates with the cocky piece of shit, and a year and three months and two and a half weeks into considering the guy his best friend, Leonard should probably be used to this level of personal disregard from James Tiberius Kirk. In some ways, he is, which makes something uncomfortable flare up his throat whenever he thinks it. He doesn’t want to be used to seeing Jim injured and in pain, even if the occasions are more often than not marked by an arrogant smile and a promise that it was worth it this time, Bones.
He sighs and shakes his head again, trying to dislodge his melancholic thoughts. Jim isn’t even drunk this time—they hadn’t gotten far enough into their evening for any real buzz to kick in—so maybe he’s right. Besides, Leonard has to admit, “Just because I couldn’t understand the bastard doesn’t mean I didn’t hear how he was talking about her. Any dumbass with a pair of ears could’ve put together that was harassment.”
“That’s xenophobic, Bones,” Jim tells him matter-of-factly. “Lots of species don’t have ‘a pair of ears’. If you’re going to be CMO one day, you’ll have to expand your thinking.”
“And since we all know Uhura is going to be a head communications officer almost as soon as graduation hits, maybe you should let her handle herself.” Leonard tells him pointedly, brushing past the implication of him taking up a position on a starship, as he always does. His aerophobia and astrophobia have hardly faded during his time at Starfleet Academy, and he’d be perfectly content hiding from his ex-wife on some out of the way base on some out of the way planet.
(He tries not to think about the future Jim paints for them: a starship with Jim at the helm and Leonard in the medbay, highest ranking officers on the ship, taking on the universe one day at a time and doing it together. He tries not to think about how most days, phobias aside, it doesn’t sound too bad.)
Jim shrugs, but his arm doesn’t leave Leonard’s shoulders. “She shouldn’t have to waste her valuable brain on translating that shit.”
“Maybe not, but I was looking forward to the asshole realizing she could understand him.” Leonard grins at the mental image. “Woulda put the fear o’ god in him.”
“Probably true,” Jim allows. His voice takes on a new, almost shiny quality. “She’s so cool.”
“Careful, Jimmy. Anyone would think you’re sweet on her.”
Jim snorts and drops his head to Leonard’s shoulder, then rolls so it’s more like his forehead to Leonard’s collarbone. His breath is hot against Leonard’s skin, just barley tinged with the smell of whiskey. They’d only had one drink before getting kicked out. That’s got to be a new record.
“You know I’m not,” Jim says, and Leonard takes a beat to re-find the thread of the conversation. “She’s so cool, of course, everyone knows that, but I’m not—” he snorts again— “sweet on her.”
“I know,” Leonard agrees, although he’s not sure that he does. “You just hate that she’s not interested in you .”
“Apparently she’s dating a professor,” Jim tells him in a stage whisper. “Or an academic advisor, or something. Faculty. What a scandal. No one would expect it from her. She’s so straight-laced she may as well be Vulcan.”
“That’s xenophobic,” he says, mostly to hear Jim laugh again. “Maybe once you’re a captain, she’ll be interested in you. Will that soothe your ego?”
“Nah. Don’t need her to like me.” Jim straightens back up and shifts as though to pull away. Leonard tightens his grip on his waist, ostensibly to help him keep his balance as they approach the front steps of their apartment building. Jim doesn’t protest, and stays close. “I think first impressions are very important to her. Didn’t make a great one.”
“Didn’t make a great one on me, either, and look at us now.”
Jim smiles, and this time Leonard does find himself somewhat charmed, even if his mouth is still slightly bloody. “You shared your drink.”
“If I’d known it would lead me here, I woulda downed it without a second thought,” Leonard grumbles, but they both know he’s lying. “Come on, dumbass. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“I love when we play doctor,” Jim says wistfully, turning his gaze towards the stars while Leonard unlocks their door.
“It’s not ‘playing doctor’ when I am actually fixing you up.”
Jim’s smile morphs into something more resembling a smirk. “Are you gonna kiss it better?”
Leonard rolls his eyes. “Shuddup. Keep being an idiot, and I’ll pull out the hypos.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would and you know it. Save your flirtin’ for Uhura and get inside.”
“I told you,” Jim says with an eye roll, while he obediently heads inside and takes a seat at Leonard’s desk, right next to his open medkit. “I’m not interested in Uhura.”
“You keep taking hits for her. Gives a girl a certain idea.”
“I’d take hits for anyone.”
“I know,” Leonard sighs. “I know you would.”
Jim sits quietly and mostly stops being an idiot. Leonard takes the opportunity to hypo him anyway.
In response to the betrayed, kicked-puppy look it gets him, he just shrugs. “You needed an allergen booster. Pollen count’s going up.”
“I hate you,” Jim tells him.
“The feeling’s mutual,” he replies, and doesn’t think about how it isn’t, not at all.
TWO.
Leonard soaks a rag in alcohol and presses it none-too-gently to Jim’s face, grimacing with some satisfaction when the captain hisses against the sting. It’s not that he enjoys causing Jim any discomfort—being relegated to such ancient medicinal practices is bad for his heart, all things told—but he also thinks that, maybe, Jim deserves it.
“That’s what you get,” he tells Jim grimly. “When you get into trouble on some backwater planet during an ion storm.”
“Would you rather I let the seventeen-year-old take the hit?” Jim demands, his words pointed but his voice low enough to avoid being overheard by the rest of their landing party, who are sitting a few meters away in a tight, uncomfortable clump in a vain attempt to avoid further upsetting their CMO.
Sometimes, Leonard regrets being so obviously disgruntled when he learned of Chekov’s age. He knows the kid’s a genius and genuinely incredible at the work he does aboard the Enterprise, but they’d met in a high stake circumstance and he’d already been a little pissy even before he learned that Starfleet was conscripting minors to fight in galactic wars. When they’d arrived to Vulcan and watched Romulan ships tear Federation vessels to shreds, watched a planet turn itself inside out and scatter bodies through the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space, he’d felt even more justified in his bitterness. Now, though, with Jim throwing his well-deserved distress back in his face in order to justify the blood slashes embedded into his fragile skin, Leonard wants to throttle his past self for speaking it out loud.
“Chekov is a Starfleet officer,” he says, but he can tell from Jim’s expression that his reluctance is well noted. Jim knows that he’s won, knows that Leonard would’ve done the same thing in order to keep the kid safe.
“An officer on my ship,” Jim says. “Under my protection.”
“Ours,” Leonard corrects.
When Jim smiles, sending a new trickle of blood down his cheek and around his jaw, Leonard scowls and presses the alcohol rag more firmly against the slashes. Jim curses, but doesn’t move to pull away.
“Do you think we should report the locals as ‘hostile’?” he asks. It’s not the first time that he’s come to Leonard with these sorts of questions, asking for his two cents on how best to approach his reports. Jim trusts himself to lead in a crisis, to make the tough calls and take the hardest hits, but his self confidence wavers in the minutia, and Leonard is always quietly pleased to be the wall Jim bounces his thoughts off of or the voice whose opinion he favours. “Like, did they really need to jump straight to corporal punishment just because a kid accidentally touched something he didn’t know not to touch?”
The rest of the landing party clearly aren’t sitting far enough away, because Leonard can hear Chekov muttering to himself in Russian and the not-Uhura communication officer who joined them replying with something that sounds almost soothing. Leonard shakes his head, a smile barely twisting on his face. He likes Chekov, would consider them friends after a year of deep space exploration on the same ship and a few off-duty drinking competitions that he’d lost terribly, but the kid is just that: a kid, and sometimes the reminders of it make him all the more endearing.
“Depends,” Leonard says, finally pulling the alcohol rag away from Jim’s face and beginning to affix haphazard bandages over the wounds. He owes Chekov for even this basic treatment. The kid had tripped over himself to unveil his little silver flask (“Never leave ze ship without it, sir!”) and to volunteer his uniform shirt to the cause as soon as they were safely away from the danger. Leonard has carefully ripped the yellow fabric into strips, soaking some of it in the vodka and, now, using the rest to poorly stopper the bleeding while they wait out the rest of the storm. The communications officer, a lower decks red shirt who keeps casting his eyes around like he’s expecting they’re going to be jumped again, is attempting to hail the Enterprise every twenty minutes precisely. Leonard hopes they make contact soon. He wants to get a dermal regenerator on Jim’s face sooner rather than later.
“On what?” Jim asks, furrowing his brow and then immediately forcing it to smooth out, doing his best not to wrinkle the macgyvered bandages.
“On how bad this scars,” Leonard jokes. It really depends on whether or not Jim thinks the locals can be reasoned and negotiated with, or if he thinks that they’re unreasonable. That’s his decision to make, as captain of a Federation ship, and it’s not a decision to make while he’s still freshly injured and cowering in what resembles a cornfield.
Jim’s eyes light up, as Leonard suspected they would. “Do you think it’ll scar? I think I’d look badass with a facial scar. I’d be the most rugged captain in the fleet, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I look cool, Bones?”
“No,” Leonard deadpans. “You’d look like an idiot.”
“You’re no fun,” Jim pouts. The puppy-dog effect is somewhat undermined by the command-gold bandages affixed to his face and tied around his head.
“You look ridiculous.”
“I’d look less ridiculous with facial scars.”
“You should be grateful they didn’t cut you deep enough for it to scar.” Leonard allows himself to touch Jim’s face one last time, pretending to check on one of the pieces of fabric. “If they had, I’d be a lot more panicked and cursing a hell of a lot more.”
“You cursed plenty while we were running,” Jim points out. “At them, but also at me. I might have to write you up for insubordination.”
Leonard rolls his eyes. “I’m the only son of a bitch on the whole ship who can pull rank on you, Jim. If you don’t like it, you shouldn’t have made me CMO.”
“I like you as my CMO,” Jim says plainly, shrugging. “You looked over Chekov? He’s definitely not hurt?”
“Yes, Jim,” Leonard says again. Only Jim, bleeding from his face, would demand that the others get assessed first. If they hadn’t been sitting in a cornfield, Leonard would’ve refused.
“We should find something to eat,” Jim says anxiously. It might make him sound disoriented to someone else, but Leonard knows how the thoughts are connected: Jim’s desire to protect people connected to his worries about food. Leonard might be the only person who knows. He’s never asked who else is on Jim Kirk’s Most Trusted People list. He’s just honoured to be on it himself.
“We will,” he says, gesturing to the stalks around them. “Looks like there’s plenty.”
“Good,” Jim says, closing his eyes and sighing through his nose. “And the ship is close.”
“Yup. Soon as the storm clears up, we’ll get home.”
“Thanks, Bones. Thanks for always fixing me up.”
Leonard shifts to sit next to him, pressing their shoulders together. “It’s what I’m here for. Wish you’d stop needing it, though.”
“Always gonna need you,” Jim replies, and Leonard makes a concerted effort not to read into that. “Who else’ll put up with me?”
“Think Chekov would.”
“Only out of guilt.”
“The kid admires you,” Leonard corrects. “They all do. I do.”
“You’re only saying that ‘cause I’m hurt.”
“I’m saying it ‘cause it’s true.”
Jim shrugs, but he’s smiling. Leonard counts that as a win, especially when the communications officers lets out a cheer and holds his comm aloft in victory.
They’ll be home soon.
THREE.
“What did I tell you before you went down there? Don’t even make eye contact with them, if you can help it.”
“Bones,” Jim says. His blue eyes, even under the medbay lights, still aren’t as bright as the laugh forming around his next words. “I went down there for diplomacy. I couldn’t not make eye contact.”
Leonard, long since accustomed to Jim Kirk and his many excuses to get into trouble, only scowls. “Let your staff look after you. It’s their job.”
Jim rolls his eyes. “I’m aware. But I’m their captain! It’s my job to look after them ”
Leonard stabs him, perhaps overly aggressively, with his next hypo.
“Ow!” Jim frowns and rubs his neck. “If you tell me that was an allergen booster, I will strangle you.”
Leonard isn’t known for his shit-eating grins, but when he pulls one out now, it’s satisfying to watch Jim recognise it and then proceed not to strangle him.
“I’m not even badly hurt,” Jim continues in a vain effort to dissolve Leonard’s anger. If he thinks that saying he’s not as injured as he could be is the way to go about doing that, he’s got another thing coming. “ And I wasn’t fighting this time!”
“Oh, well done, Jim,” Leonard says, his sarcasm biting. “I’m very proud.”
“It’s food poisoning, Bones. You can’t blame me for getting food poisoning.”
“I can and I will.” Leonard sighs. He’s one of the few people who knows Jim’s difficulties with food stem more from trauma than allergies (as most of the crew assume—and it’s an assumption that he and Jim both play into, talking loudly about allergen boosters and the few food allergies Jim does have often enough to create an impression) and he knows that Jim would’ve have eaten food served to one of his crew members without good reason. Usually, the captain finds comfort in watching his companions eat, so hearing that Jim had snatched the fruit off of the plate before it could make it to Sulu had Lenard on read alert immediately. Jim’s weak defenses and lack of explanations since have only heightened Leonard’s concern. “Sulu told me that the meal looked rotten. There was no reason for either of you to eat it.”
“I told you,” Jim says, in a tone of voice that suggests he thinks Leonard is being intentionally obtuse. “I went down there for diplomacy. Rejecting their offer would’ve been rude.”
“You could’ve explained that humans can’t eat spores like that.” It seems obvious to Leonard. “Or let Sulu explain that, since they were giving it to him . He’s a botanist. I trust his opinions on what is and isn’t safe to eat far more than I trust yours.”
Jim fixes him with a wounded look. “I’m not dead, am I?”
“Not yet, no thanks to you. I swear, one of these days, I’m gonna turn my back too long and you’ll get yourself killed protecting somebody on this fucking ship, and since I won’t be able to yell at you, I’ll yell at them! And you won’t be around to protect them from my wrath.”
“I’ll haunt you,” Jim says, like the matter is settled and not hypothetical. “You’re not getting rid of me. Not ever.”
“That’s very sweet o’ you, Jimmy.” Leonard shakes his head a few times, sighing through his nose. “You still haven’t told me when you didn’t just explain that. Instead of—”
“They’d prepared it for us!” Jim snaps. “You don’t waste food.”
“Jim.”
Leonard sighs again, putting away the last of his hypos and resting his hands on Jim’s shoulders. His captain doesn’t meet his eyes, but that’s okay. “You can if it’s rotten.”
Jim squirms under his hands, his eyes darting every which way without letting Leonard’s eyes.
“Jim,” he repeats. “We’ve got plenty of food. You don’t have to eat the rotten stuff.”
Jim relaxes slightly. “Your bedside manner is improving,” he comments, and he seems marginally less twitchy than when he first came in, so Leonard decides to allow the slight change of subject.
“Only for you, sweetheart,” he teases and is rewarded with a genuine, toothy smile for his efforts. “I don’t love that you’re in here enough to note my improvements.”
“Consider it a performance review,” Jim says back, still smiling.
It’s Leonard’s turn to roll his eyes. “I better be getting marked well.”
“Always,” Jim promises, hopping down from the biobed without being dismissed. “You’re my best crewmate.”
“Don’t let Spock hear you saying that.”
Jim laughs. “He knows it’s objectively true.”
“Well, I guess I don’t beat you at chess.”
“Maybe if you practiced more…”
Leonard gestures around the room. “When do I have the time to practice? Stop getting yourself hurt and maybe I will.”
“Not hurt—”
“Food poisoning counts.”
“Why?!” Jim whines.
Leonard pats his face patronizingly. “Because I say so.”
“You’re no fun,” Jim replies without any heat.
Leonard shakes his head. “I just want you safe and healthy and happy. Is that too much to ask for? For my best friend to stop jumping in front of bullets for people?”
“Bullets,” Jim repeats, rolling the word around in his mouth. “That’s vintage, old man.”
Leonard rolls his eyes again and points to the door. “Get out of here, kid.”
Jim scampers off, but not without one last toothy grin. He must make it halfway down the hall before turning back to poke his head into the medbay. “Thanks, Bones. For fixing me up—and helping fix me up here.” He taps the side of his skull. "Dunno what I’d be without you.”
Leonard watches him retreat again, and repeats the sentiment to the silent room.
FOUR.
“Do you think Scotty can’t take care of himself?”
Jim rolls his eyes hugely and winces in pain. The pain doesn’t come from the eye-roll, of course—that would be too easy. No, the pain comes from Leonard once again being relegated to antique methods of administering medical aid. He’s grateful that he took classes on this sort of thing, but it’s overshadowed by how genuinely pissed off he is at Jim for giving him the occasion to use it. He tugs the needle through Jim’s arm, binding the skin back together with admittedly haphazard stitches. Leonard’s let his certification in this particular skill lapse; working on the Enterprise, he’s hardly needed it. It’s been years since he’s even thought about this.
“Stay still,” he scolds.
“It hurts, Bones.” Jim’s voice wavers. Leonard knows him well enough to know that this isn’t him being playful or whining for the show it is. There’s a genuine crack in the familiar nickname falling from his lips, an uncharacteristic softness to his voice. It zaps any annoyance right out of Leonard. “I can see why we stopped doing this sort of thing. It’s archaic. It’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
Leonard frowns sympathetically, pausing to run a hand through Jim’s hair. He’s not sure why he thinks that will help, but Jim does relax, ever-so-slightly, at the touch. “Usually, there’d be anesthetics,” he says, and Jim hums to show he’s listening. “Of course, if I had access to those, I’d also have my other tools, and I wouldn’t need to do this. I’m sorry. I know it’s painful.”
Jim lets his eyes fall closed. Leonard, whose hand is still in his hair, forcibly shakes Jim’s head to stop that. “Ugh, Bones ,” he grumbles. “You just said they’d knock people out for this sort of thing!”
“That doesn’t mean I can let you sleep.” Leonard sighs. “I wish you’d stop getting into these situations.”
“I know.” Jim’s mumbles are barely discernible. “I don’t like getting hurt, you know. But it’s my job to keep my crew safe. Hate it when they get hurt. ‘Specially when I coulda stopped it.”
“No one expects you to take every hit. Well, no one but you , I guess.”
Jim huffs, too light to be a laugh. “I wanna go to sleep. Hurts.”
“I know,” Leonard says soothingly, even as he returns his attention to finishing the stitches. Jim sucks in a sharp breath as the needle goes through again. “I know, Jim.”
Jim goes quiet, but when Leonard glances at his face, he’s holding his eyes wide open and staring at Leonard’s hands. Leonard tries to work quickly. He’s grateful that he remembers how to do this and grateful that the people on this new, dangerous planet at least have some amount of medical know-how. That hasn’t been the case everywhere they’ve gone, and it stresses Leonard out to know end when he has to fight tooth and nail for the right to treat his patients. Here, their medicine might be old-fashioned, but they have a real respect for their healers and had been thrilled to learn that’s what Doctor Leonard McCoy was. For the first time in a while, Leonard had been involved in establishing diplomatic relations with a new species. He’d been pretty proud of the work he’d been doing, too. The elder, Hinnatel, had asked intelligent questions that required intelligent answers from him. His biggest concern had been hoping that Uhura found clever ways to translate some of his stumbling over his words.
Until Hinnatel’s aide took a firm disliking to the proceedings—for reasons Leonard hasn’t worked out and honestly doesn’t care to—and pulled a strange, dark knife on Scotty, seemingly under the impression that Scotty was in charge. Before the aide could do much more than shriek incoherently and brandish a weapon they clearly had no knowledge of wielding, Jim had sidled up between them and Scotty to attempt to diffuse the situation.
He had, obviously, failed.
“There,” Leonard says, wrapping the arm in a roll of bandages, kindly provided by their hosts. Jim smiles at him, grateful in an overwhelming way. “Shoulda let me take you back to the ship.”
“This is the best way to redeem the situation,” Jim insists. “Shows them that we still respect them and their ways, despite the situation.”
“Maybe we don’t,” Leonard mutters.
“Bones,” Jim says beseechingly. “This is my job. I let you do yours.”
“Barely.”
Jim’s face is still pale, his smile a little too thin to look cheeky, but he’s clearly aiming for humour when he says, “I let you fix me up, didn’t I? Didn’t even complain.”
“That doesn’t really count when it’s because you’re in no fit state to,” Leonard grumbles.
“Hey,” Jim says, suddenly serious. “Thank you for being my doctor. There’s no one else I would’ve trusted to sew my skin together. And I promise it’s helping our relations here. You’re doing a really good job.”
“Don’t patronise me, kid.” Leonard definitely isn’t hiding how touched he is by the compliment, but Jim lets him get away with it. Or maybe Jim is still a little out of sorts, and doesn’t notice. Either option seems likely. “Try not to get yourself any more injured before we finalise this treaty, okay?”
Jim smiles. Leonard fights the urge to run a hand through his hair again and fails. Jim’s smile gets both wider and softer in response. “I’ll do my best,” he promises, leaning into the touch. “Scotty’s okay?”
“Not a scratch on him,” Leonard confirms, not for the first time.
It seems to sink in, finally. Jim nods twice. “Good.”
“Next time, let me say the same of you.”
Jim’s smile takes on a funny edge. “Don’t ask me to make promises I can’t keep, Bones.”
Leonard heaves a sigh. “Promise me you’ll try to keep out of trouble.”
“Only if you promise to fix me up even if I break it.”
Leonard doesn’t have to think about agreeing to those terms. He just does.
FIVE.
When Jim wakes up, he thanks Spock.
Leonard cuts in with something snarky, too keyed up to be generous to Jim’s drug-addled brain. Spock behaves as graciously as he ever does and soon Leonard is alone with Jim, still pissed off and trying his best not to scream at his self-sacrificing, idiotic best friend, who has always and will always put everyone around him ahead of himself. Leonard isn’t stupid—he knows what Jim acts the way that he does. A terrifying cocktail of low self-worth, childhood abuse, and the sort of trauma at fourteen that even the most decorated Starfleet officers can’t quite comprehend, and what comes out is Jim fucking Kirk, a man who can’t conceptualise a no-win scenario even if the cost is literally his life.
Leonard didn’t even get to watch him die.
He’s been trying very hard not to think about watching his staff zip up a body bag, taking that very same Jim fucking Kirk away from him for what should’ve been forever.
Leonard can’t bring himself to regret playing god, not when Jim’s blue eyes are trained on him once again, not when he didn’t have to watch his best friend die but he did get to watch him take a second first breath.
“Are you mad at me?” Jim asks.
Leonard wants to say that he feels his anger dissipate at the question, but he doesn’t. Instead it flares up again, a sharp and devastating heat licking up her sternum. His fingers clench around his PADD. His shoulders hunch up towards his ears. He doesn’t turn around to face Jim as he answers, “Yes.”
“You told me you wouldn’t get mad if I didn’t stay out of trouble.”
“No,” Leonard corrects. “I told you I would fix you up.”
He doesn’t need to turn to picture the realisation forming on Jim’s face: the smoothing on his brow, the parting of his lips. He doesn’t need to turn, but he does anyway, and sees a wetness in Jim’s eyes that he didn’t expect. “You promised you’d fix me up.”
“I promised you that a long time ago, Jim.” Leonard collapses into a chair by Jim’s bedside. He’s been running himself off of his feet for the last two weeks, driving himself to the bone attempting to bring Jim back from the dead while hiding the fact that’s what he’s doing from everyone but the bridge crew. Now that Jim is awake, breathing, speaking , Leonard finally lets himself drop. He’d dropped into a chair in medbay, too, after they’d brought Jim to him. He hadn’t been able to hold himself up anymore. At least this time it’s relief, not grief, taking his legs out from under him. “I just didn’t say so out loud.”
“I died, didn’t I?” Jim’s voice is terrifyingly, uncharacteristically, small. “You brought me back.”
“Yeah. You did.” He pauses. “I did.”
“I was so scared, Bones.”
Leonard isn’t embarrassed to hold Jim’s hand, at least not right now. He’s been taking it intermittently over the last weeks, mostly to check his pulse but also to derive some small comfort from the feel of that familiar palm. He thinks the action might help Jim, too, and judging by the way he immediately links their fingers, holding on for dear life, Leonard thinks he’s right. “You’re okay.”
“It hurt,” Jim says, and Leonard doesn’t want to hear about it, doesn’t want to listen, doesn't want to imagine the not-so-final moments of Jim Kirk’s tumultuous life. “I didn’t think it would hurt.”
“You didn’t think absorbing that much radiation while physically exerting yourself and then falling down the reactor would hurt?” Leonard should probably be gentler, but Jim snorts something that might be laugh anyway.
“Alright, smartass.” Jim rolls his eyes. Leonard doesn’t want to listen, but he does. He can’t imagine that Jim will want to talk to anyone else about this. “I thought—I don’t know. I thought if it was going to be bad enough to kill me, it’d put me to sleep first, or something. But it didn’t. I think—I wanted to see that it was worth it. I needed to hear Spock say that everyone was safe. Then I knew it was okay to…”
“It wasn’t,” Leonard says sharply. “It wasn’t okay.”
Jim looks at him with wide eyes, still glassy even if no tears have fallen.
“You—none of us thought it was okay. You should’ve seen Spock. In any other context it would’ve been hilarious to see him so emotional. And Scotty, Uhura, they…both of them, so quiet. Chekov, Sulu, they weren’t right there, but that didn’t matter. You could still feel it, the way it…stuck.”
“What about you?”
Leonard fixes him with a look. “You don’t need me to tell you.”
Jim closes his eyes. “No, I don’t.”
“You saved us, and we’re grateful.”
“But I need to take better care of myself?”
Leonard squeezes his hand where their fingers are still interlaced. “I can’t keep asking you to stop taking hits for everyone else. You’ve just proven that nothing will stop you.”
“So what are you asking me?”
Leonard lets out a laugh: a short, wet, sad one. “I don’t know. To stop doing this to me, I guess.”
He can’t quite read the expression on Jim's face. After so many years of friendship, he finds that realisation unsettling.
“I’ll do my best, Bones.” And then, so quietly that Leonard isn’t sure he hears it properly: “I’m sorry.”
Leonard doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. He just sits there, hand in Jim’s, and watches him breathe.
+ONE.
Jim is alone in medbay, and it’s the most unsettled he’s ever been.
It’s not as though this is the first time he’s found himself in medbay without other patients present, or even the first time that he’s been totally by himself in the space for one reason or another. Jim Kirk probably spends more time, statistically, in medbay than most other captains in the fleet, but that’s just because he’s the sort of man who hits the ground running and believes he should lead by example. He’s a little bit reckless, sure, but it stems from a love of his crew and his doctor has always understood that.
His doctor had not been the one to treat him, this time, leaving him in the capable (if less familiar) hands of Christine Chapel, who was gentler with Jim than Bones ever is and had much better bedside manner and left him feeling like something had died in the pit of his stomach.
“Where’s Bones?” he asked, and Chapel had smiled at him without showing any of her teeth.
“Doctor McCoy is otherwise occupied,” she’d said, which was relieving (because it means Bones is alive) and confusing (because it means Bones doesn’t want to see him, and Bones always wants to see him, even when he’s mad). “You need to rest.”
Under normal circumstances, it would be Bones instructing him to take a shift or two off, to give himself time to recover, and Jim would push back and insist otherwise and tear off through the ship while Bones trailed behind, scanners and hypos at the ready. But it’s not Bones telling him. Jim stays put, even as Chapel makes her exit, and stares at nothing.
He understands that Bones must be mad at him—his doctor and best friend has made no secret of the fact that he hates how often Jim ends up in trouble—but he’s never been avoided like this before. Bones is usually the sort to yell and point fingers and make mostly empty threats about medication and bedrest and allergen boosters. Jim has been patched up by Leonard McCoy more times than he can count; he knows the drill by now. He could almost quote along to the lectures, he thinks, he’s been given them enough. Sitting alone in medbay now, he tries to conjure up Bones’s voice and comes up blank. He has, for the first time, no idea what Bones would say to him.
He sits in medbay for a long time, mulling over the events that led him here. It was a standard thing, really: not even an away mission, but shore leave, the crew scattering out across the city they’d docked on on Risa, searching for pleasure and trouble and fun. Jim had invited Bones to come out with him, slinging an arm over his shoulders and pressing a messy, playful kiss to his cheek when he accepted (and had not, not even a little, allowed himself to think about doing anything more—after so many years of friendship and so many stories between them, if Bones was interested, he thinks he’d know by now). They’d gone to dinner at a relatively quiet little place away from the main strip of bars and clubs, had shared each other’s entrees and split a dessert, bickering all the while, and then, since they were out already, Jim had dragged him out to dance. It was the first time since—since Khan where Jim had felt fully okay, playful and light and smiling, not worried about the blood in his veins or tension in Bones’s shoulders. They were both relaxed, laughing together like they were at the academy again, making fun of their crew when they ran into them (Spock with green-tinged ears, drinking chocolate, and Uhura, also flushed, wrapping her fingers around his and dragging them up to his palm even though they were in public; Chekov striking up conversations with pretty Orion girls who seemed charmed by his accent and his curls; Sulu surprised by the sight of Ben, who Jim had invited weeks in advance to ensure their schedules could align; Scotty and Keenser drunker than ever and talking loudly in languages that it’s possible neither of them understood). Bones had even held Jim’s hand, for a while, as they navigated crowds, and then rested a palm on the small of Jim’s back (ever the southern gentleman) to guide him to a table.
Then, of course, everything had gone to shit.
For once, there wasn’t anyone at fault. No one for Jim to fight, no one trying to cause problems, just something as simple as a broken fire alarm and an overheated light, sparkling wiring, and a chain reaction that led to a piece of equipment falling from the ceiling and directly at the two of them. It hadn’t even been a conscious choice to push Bones away. It was instinct, pure and simple, and Jim had acted on it.
He’s fine, obviously. Chapel had run all sorts of tests and asked him all sorts of questions, and he’s not even bruised anymore from the bump to his head. Chapel had cleared him from any sign of concussion, but he’s still confused. He’s not sure how long he’s been sitting here, and Bones is still nowhere to be seen.
Abruptly, Jim stands, heading to the CMO quarters. He and Bones rarely spend their off-duty time there, preferring the larger spaces in the captain’s suite, but it’s not a bad space at all. Jim has often remarked that Bones should have the larger space, given that he’s the one who really keeps the ship running. Bones usually snorts and tells him that the honour should go to Spock. Neither of them can argue with that, really.
He hovers in front of Bones’s door for a full twenty seconds before he knocks.
There’s no response.
He could use his override code (something all captains, first officers, and CMOs have, in case of emergency), but he thinks that would just make everyone more upset. “Bones,” he calls instead. Pleads, really. “Bones, c’mon, on you in there?”
He gets no response, but when he strains he can hear movement from beyond the door.
“Bones, please,” he says, a new panic settling in his chest. He’s not sure why, exactly, this is the straw that’s broken the camel's back, but he is suddenly taken with the thought that maybe this is it, that this is finally the moment that his best friends decides he’s not worth the trouble anymore (like Winona, like Sam, like Kodos) and walks away. Bones had followed him into space, but he’s never loved it the way Jim has, even years into the job. Bones had never planned to be here. If he gives up on Jim, if that’s what’s happened, then he’ll probably put in for a transfer to some base somewhere and Jim will have to sign the paperwork and that will be the end of that, the end of the most important and long-standing relationship he’s ever had.
“Leonard,” he tries, just to see if some distance will be better accepted. And then, because he’s incapable of distance, tries the nickname he knows Bones’s family uses, and says, “Len.”
He hears footsteps, though they stop before reaching the door. Jim sighs, blinks, swallows. “I’m sorry,” he says. He’s still in the corridor, very aware of the fact that a crewmate could walk by at any moment, and uncaring of that reality. He needs to get through to Bones. That’s priority number one. “I’m not—I know I said I’d try to stay out of trouble, and I know that you’re mad that I didn’t, and I’m sorry, but I—”
The door slides open, and Leonard McCoy’s tired, haunted face looks at him. “But you had to,” he grumbles, and at least he doesn’t sound quite as pissed as Jim was expecting. “I know. Get in here before someone sees you grovelling.”
“I wouldn’t care if they did,” Jim says, but he steps inside anyway before Bones can change his mind.
With the door closed, he opens his mouth to resume his apology, but Bones cuts him off. “First of all,” he says, “never call me Len again. That sounds bizarre coming out of your mouth.”
Jim’s face twitches into the ghost of a smile. “Noted.”
“Second of all,” Bones continues around a sigh. “I’m not mad at you.”
“You’re not?”
“I’m mad at me,” he says, crossing his arms. “Because I know you had to do this. I know it’s all but written into your DNA to take the hits so that other people don’t have to, and I swore I’d follow you around, patching you up, for as long as you needed. I promised myself that I’d always be there to patch you up, and I meant it. I’ve done it. I—I brought you back from the dead , Jim, because I couldn’t stand to think that I’d failed you.”
“Bones—”
“No, kid, let me finish.”
Jim nods once, not curt but understanding.
“You died, and I know we don’t talk about it even though I think you probably should. You died and I—and I latched onto the possibility of saving you because I can’t not do that. Except…”
“You didn’t patch me up this time,” Jim says quietly, when it becomes clear that, maybe, Bones can’t finish. “You weren’t there.”
Bones looks away.
“I thought you’d—I thought you were mad. I thought you’d realised it…I…”
“What?” Bones says sharply, his eyes snapping back to Jim’s. “That you weren’t worth it? Do you really think I’d’ve gone to all the effort of keeping you here if I wasn’t going to stay?”
Jim shrugs. “It was…illogical, maybe.”
“Don’t quote Spock to me right now,” he grouses. “Call it what it was: stupid.”
“Okay,” Jim says, chancing a small smile. “It was stupid.”
“Damn right,” Bones says with a pointedly look. “I couldn’t be there. You hadn’t been that still since you were dead. I…I can’t lose you, Jim, not again. Not after I challenged fucking God to bring you back. You’re supposed to stick around now.”
“I’m sorry,” Jim says again, and when Bones tries to open his mouth, he ploughs on. “I don’t want to–to leave, I promise. My self-sacrificing bullshit has never been suicidal, just. Reckless. And I don’t always think about how that’s going to affect people. I don’t often think about it at all. I just act . I’ve been trying to get better, I really have, because—because you asked me not to do this to you anymore, and I don’t ever want to hurt you, Bones.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Bones says. “I shoulda been.”
“You’re here.” Jim shrugs. “And I was fine, really. Chapel looked after me. And here you are, talking to me, telling me what’s what. I think that might be the more important part of fixing me up, this time.”
“Oh, yeah? You like it when I lecture you?”
Jim smiles. “Yeah. It’s how I know you love me.”
He means it teasing, but Bones’s face does something complicated that Jim can’t ignore. His brow furrows and he scans Bones’s face quickly, taking it in, thinking back to the times that Jim has taken a hit on someone’s behalf and Bones has been extra tender, extra soft, even if it wouldn’t seem that way to anyone else. “Oh,” he says, and he grins.
“Don’t take another hit for me,” Bones warns him. “You do what you have to do for your crew, I understand that, but me and you? I’m not under your protection, you’re under mine.”
“Now, Bones,” Jim says, “What have we said about asking me to make promises I can’t keep?”
He wants to tease further, but it’s Bones who kisses him first. “Promise me this one, anyway,” he directs. “I’ll lecture you about it next time I have to fix you up.”
“Deal,” Jim breathes. “You know I love you, too?”
“Yeah, Jim,” Bones says, pulling him further inside. Jim thinks that they’ll have much more to talk about, whether now or later, and that they’re heading the couch instead of the bed for just that reason, but Bones’s calloused hand is gentle where it rests against his and his face is soft on his lined face, and his voice is kind when he says, “I know.”
end.