Chapter Text
Day 90
“Aren’t you like excited or something?”
“Yes, of course.” McCoy rolls his eyes. He sits at his desk while Jim lays sprawled out lazily on his bed, arms crossed behind his head. And he’s totally not working at his assignment as he should be. Lazy bastard. “I can’t positively imagine anything better than to crawl for hours through sand and dirt on a god forsaken planet with more vermin than people. Lucky me.”
“Best thing ever,” Jim agrees dreamily. McCoy shakes his head. Jim is actually looking forward to tomorrow. He’s a complete lunatic, that’s what he is. “It sucks that we can’t go together though,” Jim adds, looking decidedly unhappy all of a sudden. “We should be at the same team. We’d have so much fun.”
“I’m sure, we’d have,” McCoy murmurs, not really listening and tries to get back to his assignment for Xenobiology. “I really don’t know how to handle so much fun on my own.”
For seconds it’s eerily quiet on the other side of his room, but then he hears the sound of soft footfalls. “Bones?”
“Hm?”
“Just … promise you’ll be careful, all right?”
That grabs his attention. Slowly he turns around and frowns at the oddly serious undertone to Jim’s voice. “What?”
Jim shrugs, not quite meeting his eyes. “I just have … this weird feeling.”
“A weird feeling?” he echoes, because … really? “It’s just survival training, man. There are going to be Instructors and stuff. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Look, I’m not gonna be there to have your back,” Jim continues as if he hadn’t said anything. “And I don’t like it. So you need to look after yourself.”
“Jim … I’m not the one who’s an almost constant visitor to the hospital this year, in case you’ve forgotten your disturbing track record.”
“Just promise me, Bones.” He sounds so sincere that McCoy feels himself soften almost against his will. Jim has the uncanny ability to melt the sarcasm right out of him.
“Yeah, fine. I promise.”
Day 91
His trainings mission lasts about half a day, which he spends mostly crawling through coppice and a desert, fighting of insects and quicksand and weird little alien life-forms, just as expected. When McCoy comes back into his quarters he’s dirty and exhausted and there’s sand in places that were never ever designed for sand. He takes a long, hot shower and contemplates if he should order pizza. Jim is ridiculously fond of pizza.
It’s almost 8 pm when he gets THE call. In his head it’s always going to be THE call. It deserves capital letter, even though at this moment it’s just one of many calls during one day.
“Dr. Leonard McCoy?”
He sighs. He’s so not doing the nightshift today. Not again. “What is it?” He grumbles, decidedly unhappy.
Someone clears his throat. The voice that follows sounds formal and stiff. “This is Lieutenant Wojczek speaking, doctor. You are listed as emergency contact of James Tiberius Kirk, is that correct?”
Strangely the second thing in his mind is instant denial closely followed by ‘What the fucking hell are you talking about?’ Somehow he manages to say neither. “Yes,” he breathes, feeling as if someone had sucker punched the air right out of his lungs. “Yes, I am! What happened to him?”
“On behalf of Starfleet Academy I regret to inform you that survival group 89-delta-X07 is considered missing at this moment.”
“Missing? What do you mean, missing?” Not dead, not dead. Jim is not dead. He wasn’t even consciously aware of that thought until he realizes it had been the very first thing in his mind. He feels sick.
“We … we lost contact three hours ago, doctor.” For the first time the prim voice loses some of its coolness and it starts to sound a little reluctant. “We ask you not to worry though. This call is just part of the standard procedure. Please be assured …”
“ASSURED?” McCoy roars. “Assured, my ass! You tell me right now what the fucking hell happened or I’ll show where you can stuff your damn standard procedure!”
“Sir, I beg your pardon, but …”
“What. Happened?” he clenches his teeth, trying his best not to scream at the bastard, knowing it won’t do him or Jim any good. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“It was an unfortunate and completely unforeseen accident, Sir. The shuttle shut down on the way back …”
“Shut DOWN? What that supposed to mean? Your frigging shuttles aren’t supposed to shut down!” His heart beats a mile per second. Shuttle accident. Jim has been in a shuttle accident. How many people survive a fucking shuttle accident?!
“It was an accident. It crashed. Probably an electric storm … lost voice contact and then … search party is already on its way … haven’t been able to re-establish contact … no need to worry though … height wasn’t …”
The rest of his words disappear under the white noise in his head.
The one thing he can hear is Jim’s voice, as loud and clear as if he’d be standing right next to him.
‘I just have … this weird feeling.‘
‘Just promise me, Bones …’
Day 92
Minutes turn into hours turn into a day turns into a nightmare.
They send search party after search party. They find nothing. Not even a wreckage or debris. It’s as if the whole team … as if Jim … as if they’re just gone. Disappeared. Lost on a planet with a less than friendly environment. Stranded with broken equipment and rationed food and water supplies, maybe injured …
‘I just have … this weird feeling. ‘
He needs to stop thinking.
‘Just promise me, Bones …’
He needs his brain to stop conjuring up images of Jim’s bloody and mangled, unrecognizable body, blue eyes starring unseeingly up at the merciless sun …
Jim is fine. Jim is always fine … except for when he’s not.
Yeah, that sure is helping.
He hangs around the office waiting for news. He lies on his bed, stars at the ceiling. He ditches courses and doesn’t even feel bad about it.
Within hours the news are all over the campus. Nobody pays attention anymore in class, and even the instructors and professors look subdued and nervous.
Nothing like this ever happened before, Lieutenant Wojczek informs him with proper regret. He keeps on calling the bastard every few minutes just to annoy the hell out of him. It’s the only thing that prevents him from going stir crazy.
That and punching the Lieutenant that tells him cadets aren’t allowed on board with a search party. He’s too involved emotionally, he says.
McCoy is so close to punching him again, but his sight has become inexplicably blurry, so he doesn’t.
Day 93
Jim is the only friend he ever had.
Which is a very sad track record if you consider his age and how much he’s been around so far. He knows that. He’s just not the type for friends. Hell, he doesn’t even like people. He likes patients. There’s a subtle but important difference that most people just don’t get. Patients are subjects. Patients don’t expect anything of you except that you try to heal them and that’s a least something he knows how to do.
And then there’s Jim.
Who is neither people and even when he’s injured he’s not a patient. He’s just … Jim. And there’s nothing ‘just’ about it.
They start to inform the families. Just to make sure. Everything is fine. It’s just standard procedure.
He starts to think he might kill someone if he hears that phrase one more time.
He spends hours starring at the com console, because he doesn’t want to miss it when they call. He keeps bugging Wojczek just to do something. He plans to hijack a shuttle.
He takes shift after shit in the hospital in the slight hope that they’re going to be the first ones to get notified when they come back. He doesn’t dare to sleep, because he might miss the moment when they come back.
When. Not if.
He holds on. Because he doesn’t know what else to do and he doesn’t know what happens when he lets go.
Day 94
The doorbell rings.
He jerks and can literally feel his heart stopping. He hadn’t expected this. Not this. Calls might mean anything, but visits … visits are bad. Everybody knows that. They only ever tell you in person when … when it’s bad.
He races to the door and stops right in front of it. Presses his forehead against the door. Breathes. Steals himself. He needs to know. He’s a doctor for god’s sake, he can take it. He rips the door open and barks: “What?” Words catching in his throat. He had expected some unknown face, some official looking guy or girl with serious expression and the “I wish I wasn’t here right now”-look in their eyes. He thought he’d be prepared, but nothing prepares him for the sight in front of him.
It’s Jim.
“Hey Bones …” He leans heavily at the door frame, pale and dirty, looking as he’s about to keel over any minute now. He’s a ghost, a hallucination, he has to be. His mind is playing tricks on him, way too little sleep and too much stress and … “Missed me?” There’s so much dirt and grime on his face that McCoy almost doesn’t see the soft, relieved smile playing around his lips.
He’s real and he’s a mess, bloody and bruised, but alive and breathing. And he’s the best thing McCoy has ever seen.
“Bones?” Jim sounds a little insecure now and he realizes he hasn’t even dared to breathe. “Say something?”
He doesn’t, he can’t. But then Jim kind of forces him to act when his knees decide to buckle.
“Jim… ,” he breathes and jumps forward, catching him around the waist. He feels thin and fragile in his arms, which is absurd, because Jim is the most not-fragile thing he ever came across.
“Sorry, I’m …” he stops and coughs. It’s a rattling sound that tears at McCoy’s heart.
“Jim,” he repeats stupidly, because it really is the only thing on his mind.
He hugs Jim and buries his face into his neck, feels like suffocating and breathing all at the same time. Some weird bittersweet feeling is unfurling in his stomach, sharp and aching like shards of glass. And it’s stupid, it’s girly, because suddenly he feels as if deep down he had always, always known that Jim would be all right.
Only he hasn’t. For three days he hasn’t.
“Sorry,” Jim murmurs again.
“Jim, god …” Breathing never felt like so much work before. He can’t stop running his hands over the dirty and blood-stained uniform and he can’t stop touching him. He needs to feel something solid, something real. He swallows and forces himself to calm down. “What happened? And what the hell are you sorry for?”
“Sorry, I’m late. Didn’t mean …” Jim lets his head rest on his shoulder. “Didn’t mean to make you wait. Bet you ordered pizza and it got cold. Thought of it all the time. Pizza. And you.” The last few words are almost inaudible and all jumbled together. He sounds exhausted and almost delirious and that’s the moment when all of McCoy’s doctor-instincts go into overdrive.
“Damnit, Jim!” He barks. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in a hospital?” He’s so close to shaking him (irresponsible, stupid, careless brat!) and only his professional ethics prevent him from doing so. Anxiously he steps back, tries to gauge Jim’s condition. Concussion, he thinks, seeing the way Jim’s eyes don’t quite focus. Dehydrated. Exhausted.
“Why didn’t those brainless dumb bastards take you to the hospital?” He demands, feeling angrier with the second now. Anger has always been the easiest emotion. Easier than all the other things he feels which he can’t even name and which threatens to drown him if he stops just for one second to think about them. “I’m going to kill those stupid, incompetent, lazy fuckers! You need to be under medical observation. Damnit, Jim …!”
“Didn’t want to.” Jim shakes his head and even this small movement seems to make him feel dizzy. His hand shoots out and he grabs the doorframe to steady himself. “Don’t need a hospital.”
“Damn straight you do, your irresponsible little …brat! We need to check you for a concussion and inner bleedings and the way you’re holding yourself, probably for broken ribs, too,” McCoy lists, hovering at Jim’s side because the kid looks as if he’s about to keel over any second now. “And God knows what kind of space germs and viruses you brought along! I’ll better give you another tetanus shot and …”
The smile catches him completely off-guard. Jim is so … pale and bruised and dirty and he’s obviously injured, but right now, smiling like this, he looks almost happy. “Don’t need a hospital”, he slurs, sounding loopy and completely wiped out. “Because I’ve got you.”
And suddenly everything looks slightly blurry and McCoy forces himself to blink and swallow. Because damnit, he’s a doctor, not a crybaby.
“Yeah, you got me”, he says softly. Not waiting for an answer he reaches for Jim’s arm and gently steer him toward the bed.
Because Jim is right. He doesn’t need them. Those stupid military doctors don’t know shit about Jim and all the things he doesn’t like and the things he can’t handle, like the way he freaks when people touch him without forewarning and explaining what they’re going to do now.
But he does. That’s why he’s going to take care of him.
And then he’s going to kill him for scaring him like that.
Day 95
Jim is sleeping on McCoy’s couch, even though McCoy had insisted he should take McCoy’s bed with all the bruised skin and cracked bones he’s suffered from that cursed mission, for which McCoy still wants to kick every ass at Starfleet Command.
McCoy is angry, which is why he can’t get his brain to shut up and he lies awake, listening to Jim’s deep breathing and he never thought that he would find this particular sound as reassuring as he does. His eyes finally slide close and he can feel his thoughts slipping, when he hears it. It’s only a faint sound, he nearly can’t make out the word, but then Jim repeats it and its 'Maja' and McCoy’s stomach clenches. That’s the poor girl that died on the mission and for whose death Jim blames himself. McCoy knows that’s utter nonsense, but Jim always takes way too much responsibility on himself as if it isn’t his own well-being or security he should be worried about.
McCoy’s eyes are still closed when he hears the rustling of the blanket. He waits for the sound of footsteps, but it never comes. Curious he opens his eyes a bit and sees Jim, knees drawn up to his chest, elbows draped over them, looking utterly forlorn in the pale moonlight shining through the window.
McCoy can’t stand that look, but providing outright comfort never works too well with Jim, so he decides on a different course of action. He jolts in an upright position and pants a little, eyes rapidly blinking. In an instant Jim is on his feet and by his side.
“Bones? Everything okay?”
McCoy shudders. “Nightmare. Purple aliens and tentacles and … gaaah … “
Jim puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s not real. Just a nightmare.”
“Yeah … still don’t think I can go back to sleep now.” McCoy looks at Jim and tries to ignore the lines of pain and stress engraved in his face. “Wanna bake muffins with me?”
“Mu … muffins? Now?”
“It usually helps.” He scrambles free of his blanket and sets on for the killing blow. “Please?”
Jim still looks dumbfounded, but also a little bit relieved at not being the only one awake anymore; try as he might hide it. “Okay, sure … if it helps.”
McCoy gets out of bed, slaps Jim on the shoulder and smiles the whole nine yards. “Thanks.”
Day 96
They sit in their favorite bar, half hidden in the shadows. It’s not what McCoy had in mind when Jim had said he wanted a change of scenery. McCoy had thought they’d go to the beach and watch the sunset or something similar sappy, but Jim had wanted to come here. And right now McCoy is inclined to do anything Jim wants him to do, just so he can keep close by and make sure that Jim’s still alive and breathing. Which doesn’t mean he lets Jim drink any alcohol. He’s a doctor, not a maniac.
So, they sit here, not really talking, until McCoy just can’t keep his thoughts to himself any longer. “Why me?”
At first he doesn’t think Jim is going to answer him. It wouldn’t be the first time he chooses to ignore one of McCoy’s inquiries.
Jim takes a long sip from his beer-without-alcohol and finally answers with an authority as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Because you said you’re in for the big stuff as well.”
Day 97
‘You’re in for the big stuff as well.’
That sentence stays with McCoy the whole day and it makes his stomach queasy and his hands nervous. After he messes up his dissection in his Autopsy class for the third time, his teacher takes him to the side.
“What’s up with you, McCoy?” Twinings asks. “Normally you need only five seconds for this and now your hands are shaking as if it’s your first date.”
“I’m …, “McCoy starts, but there’s nothing to say, is there? Because he can’t tell Twinings that he feels like the biggest hypocrite in the world right now. That Jim trusts him and put him as his goddamn emergency contact, while he went around his back and abused his medical privileges to spy on him.
“Go and do whatever you have to do. You’re no use for me if you screw up and I can’t present you any longer as the fine example the rest of the class has to aspire after.” Twinings says these words without any heat, he just seems concerned. McCoy nods and leaves the class in search for Jim.
He finds him as he’s coming out of Interspecies Protocol with a bulk of other students. Apparently they’re in the middle of a heated discussion if it causes an intergalactic incident would a starship captain refuse a Risan mai-tai while on duty down on Risa. Of course Jim is arguing for drinking as many mai-tais as he’s offered.
Jim wants to start in yet another argument for his side when he spots McCoy. “Hey, Bones!” He exclaims and with a wave of his hand leaves the other students behind to walk to McCoy. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have your Autopsy class right now?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Jim actually takes a step back at his words. “Uh … nothing good ever came out of a talk that started with these words.” He tilts his head. “You’re not going to break up with me, are you?”
McCoy can’t help but laugh at his words, yet he sobers up really quickly when he thinks that it is Jim who is likely to break up whatever they have after this conversation.
“I … damn it,” he runs a hand through his hair.
“Bones? You’re scaring me here, man.”
“After the kitchen went up in flames I used my medical privileges to look at your personal file.”
“You … what?” Jim stares at him and it’s not a nice stare.
“I only read about the Kelvin and your aptitude test and that Pike is your advisor. Nothing else, I swear. I’m sorry,” McCoy says in a rush.
“You … “ Jim blinks and takes yet another step back.
“Jim – “
“No … I … just … see you, Bones.” Jim turns on his heel and all but runs down the corridor, away from McCoy who leans against the wall and feels like the worst person on earth.
Day 98
Jim doesn’t show up that day. McCoy is tempted to call him, to make sure he’s okay and probably apologize again, but he doesn’t do any of these.
Jim had called him Bones and that’s as good as any promise that Jim will be back.
Day 99
“Why did you read it?” That’s the first question out of Jim’s mouth when he enters McCoy’s dorm room in the evening.
“I just … I wanted to understand, you know?” He looks up to Jim from where he’s sitting at the couch. Jim leans against the doorframe, a puzzled look on his face. “There I was, a grumpy old doctor and you took to me like I’m the only shovel in the sandbox. And then you were so worried about me being angry at you after the fire, as if I’d care about things when you could have been hurt.” He runs a hand over his face, willing Jim to understand what he’s saying here. “I never wanted to betray your trust, I … damn it, Jim. I care about you, okay? I just wanted to know if there was anything I could help with.” McCoy feels exhausted after this and for the longest time Jim just stands there, as if he lost his ability to speak. Then he sits down next to McCoy, their knees just about touching.
“You do, Bones, you do,” Jim says quietly, sinking back into the couch and it feels like McCoy can breathe for the first time in two days.
Day 100
McCoy is not nervous. He’s a doctor, not some overprotective mother hen. Which is exactly why he isn’t looking at his watch every ten seconds and doesn’t pace the space of his room … apart from the fact that he is. Damn it. He groans and rubs his hands over his face and ultimately succumbs to his fate.
“Computer, locate Cadet Kirk.”
“Cadet Kirk is currently in the Cochrane-Library.”
“You gotta be kidding me. At this time in the Library? My Ass.”
“Couldn’t process the request, please repeat – “
“Shut up.”
For a moment, McCoy doesn’t know what to do. They hadn’t talked about today, hadn’t agreed on any form of conduct. He had just assumed Jim would swing by, McCoy would congratulate him, they would get sufficiently plastered somewhere in a bar and wake up sometime tomorrow with a hangover from hell. Guess he was wrong, but he just can’t leave Jim alone. Not today. Maybe not ever.
He finds Jim in a remote corner of the library, after nearly stumbling over him in the dimly lit room. Of course Jim wouldn’t sit on a chair like every normal person, but prefer the carpet as his resting place. Yet McCoy doesn’t mutter angry words, Jim looks way too unhappy for his birthday to do that.
Jim acknowledges his presence with a nod, but they don’t talk. Sometimes, they don’t need to, they just click. And so McCoy sits down next to him, leaning his back against the shelf and takes in all the datapads and books and pictures surrounding them both on the ground. They’re all about the Kelvin.
“Every year at this time I go through everything I can find on the ship,” Jim doesn’t look at him when he speaks in a low voice and McCoy knows that by the ship he actually means his dad. He swallows and doesn’t know what to say, how to make it better, if that’s even possible. “That,” Jim points to a datapad lying innocently between them and takes it into his hands, “is the recording of the last communication from,” his voice crumbles for a second, “from my dad.” McCoy feels sucker punched.
“You can hear me wail and they decide on my name and …,” Jim voice gets lost again in the room full of shadows and McCoy thinks he’s a hypocrite for wanting Jim to stop telling him these things. It hurts to hear his best friend sounding so broken, so raw, and being unable to help. “He tells my mom he loves her – I wonder … I wonder if he would’ve loved me, too.”
McCoy closes his eyes for a second and trying his best not to break as well in front of all this anguish. Jim is clenching the datapad so hard his knuckles have gone white. McCoy leans over and gently retrieves it from his fingers before laying it down on the ground again. Jim looks at him, his blue eyes standing out even in the half-light of the deserted room and McCoy says the first thing that comes to his mind.
“I brought jello.”
Jim blinks at him and at the same moment that McCoy is trying to find the fastest way to vanish from the face of earth, Jim begins to smile.
“The red one?”
“Of course.” McCoy reaches behind him and pushes the jello and a spoon over the carpet to Jim, who picks it up and stares incredulously at McCoy.
“You smuggled it past the librarian? I’m impressed.”
McCoy wants to say that he’d do a lot more than just smuggling food into a library for Jim, but here is neither the time nor the place for such a speech. Instead he spends a few minutes watching Jim happily devouring his jello, before he gathers the courage to speak again. “From what I heard about your dad I bet he would have loved you more than anything else and he’d be damn proud, too.”
Jim doesn’t say anything, but he leans against McCoy’s shoulder and silently eats the rest of his jello. McCoy doesn’t know if what he had said holds any weight with Jim, if the jello was the right gesture, but for the moment Jim’s warmth rests against McCoy’s body and that’s enough.
Everything else they will see.
- fin