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The pretty blond wakes with a start, and Leonard is very stubbornly not impressed.
He’s not impressed by the blueness of the eyes, or the softness of the gaze when it lands on him.
He’s not impressed by the way the blond—Jim Kirk, his Starfleet ID had said—is giving him bedroom eyes while in a hospital bed in broad daylight.
“So. You wanna play doctor?” Jim asks him, flirting with an absurd amount of confidence. “I bet you’re super good at it.”
“I don’t have to play, Mr. Kirk, seeing as how I’m the real thing.” Leonard tries to keep his voice professional, light, but it comes out a little lower than he’d anticipated, a little rougher, and suddenly it sounds filthy too, as if he’s actually engaging with this reprobate—
Jim looks Leonard up and down. “Oh, I bet you are.” His voice is dripping innuendo, all low and sultry.
“This isn’t a tv drama, kid,” Leonard mutters, “out here, there’s a little thing called professional ethics.”
“I feel pretty good,” Jim retorts, “I believe I can be discharged effective immediately. And that, of course, would mean that I’m no longer a patient of yours.”
Leonard grabs onto the lifeline that he’s almost certain Kirk didn’t mean to throw him. “I’m sure you feel good now, Mr. Kirk, but that’s because you’re on a number of painkillers. If you were to discharge yourself, you’d feel all the pain that the medication is blocking right now.”
“But you could always kiss it better,” Jim proposes, hopeful and bold and completely unable (or unwilling) to take a polite hint.
Leonard exhales slowly, through his nose. “See, that’s the thing about professional ethics, kid. I really can’t kiss it better, get it?”
“You can’t,” Jim repeats, eyes narrowing, “because of professional ethics.”
“Correct. Good to know your brain’s still working up there.”
“But you want to.”
Leonard’s hands are sweating. “What makes you think that?”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“I think a better question here is are you concussed?” Leonard manages to make that last word seem like an insult instead of a simple head injury. He’s not too upset about it.
“I don’t know, Doctor,” Jim Kirk says, looking at him with wide eyes—perfectly symmetrical pupils, no slurring of the speech, no signs of concussion that Leonard can see—
Leonard badly wants for him to be concussed, for all of this to mean nothing because his brain is damaged and his thinking’s all screwed up.
“Not that I can tell,” he says quietly, “a few cognitive function tests and you’ll be fine.”
“Maybe if I was released into the care of a capable physician, who could look after me and make sure I’m okay…” Jim says, looking up at him through his lashes.
“Tough luck, kid, I don’t take in strays, and I’ve got six hours left of this shift.”
“What if the stray takes you in?” The kid’s voice is so damn lascivious that his meaning is impossible to miss, even if the innuendo is a bit clumsy.
“Look, kid, I’m flattered, honestly. But you’re all done here, I think, and now you’re free to go back out there and find someone younger and prettier.”
“That’s just not possible.”
“I assure you, Mr. Kirk, there are plenty of people in San Francisco who are younger than me and just as attractive, if not more so. You could start at Starfleet Academy, the galaxy’s best and brightest young people. Now go on, the next piece of advice costs money.”
“Could you be persuaded to take sexual favors as payment?”
“Shoo, kid.” Leonard rolls his eyes.
Jim pouts at him, but Leonard just turns and leaves the room.
He’s got other patients to attend to, after all.
---
“Jim?”
“Yes?” The innocence in Jim’s voice is a dead giveaway of shenanigans of some sort.
“This is red marker.”
“Oh, is it? But it looked so like blood!” His eyes are all wide, as if he’s actually surprised, looking down at the finger that’s covered in red marker.
“Get out.”
“Will you kiss it bet—“
“No.”
“Okay, fair enough. Will you go out with—“
“Get. Out.”
Jim gets out.
---
Leonard is a good doctor. He makes it a point to be the best goddamn doctor he can be, and that means reading up on medical innovations during his off hours, keeping up with research about different therapies, and giving each patient his full attention.
And then Jim Kirk shows up again. Leonard’s not even at the hospital this time, just doing a shift at the Academy clinic, where all they get are routine colds, the odd fracture, bumps and bruises and minor cuts from culinary disasters, and a rather appalling number of STDs.
It’s a change from the last time, the way Leonard walks in only to be struck dumb by the sight of Jim Kirk in possibly the tiniest briefs humankind had ever invented, and frankly, Leonard suspects they’re originally Orion design—easy to work around, when the mood comes.
That’s not to say that he’s thinking about Jim Kirk having sex, of course, because he certainly is not, because that would mean that Jim is winning this little something between them.
“What are you in here for?”
Jim just glances down at his briefs sheepishly.
“Okay, but please tell me you’re not in here with an STD and planning to ask me out while I treat it—“
“What?! It’s not an STD! I’m clean, thanks very much. And if I had sex with even half the people that like to say they’ve had sex with me, I’d spend my entire life hopping from bed to bed like some sort of sex-Tarzan.”
“Sex-Tarzan?”
“He swings from tree to tree with the vines, y’know? I thought it would work with the going from bed to bed metaphor, but eh, maybe not.”
“Right. So why are you here then?”
“I have this weird growth—“
“If the next words out of your mouth are it swells up when I touch it but it feels so good, I’m going to cut it off with a pair of rusty scissors.”
Jim cups his genitals protectively. “No! Jesus, it’s just this little bump here, it’s just the one—“
Leonard looks at the inguinal crease, ignoring the lascivious but medically necessary spread of Jim’s thighs and the completely unnecessary accompanying grin. He finds the small growth that Jims eems to be so upset about.
“This is harmless,” Leonard says, “It’s a skin tag, just snip it off.”
“I tried that, and it started pouring blood, and then the damn thing healed back over!”
“I operate on people’s brains,” Leonard says, a little exasperated.
“Yeah, that’s why I trust you with a knife so close to my junk!”
“A scalpel is not a—you know what, never mind. Let’s take a look.”
Jim doesn’t take off his briefs, just pulls them a little bit so they’re out of Leonard’s way, and he notes the wiry dark blond pubic hair in a purely clinical fashion.
He glances up at Jim, who looks a little uncomfortable.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Leonard says, “I’m gonna numb it up a little bit, then I’ll just snip it, and I’ll cauterize it. You don’t have to look, okay? If you’d rather put up a video on a PADD or something, try to distract yourself, that’s okay.”
Jim nods, carefully nudging the bulge away from Leonard’s gloved hands.
He doesn’t look away, though, keeps his eyes on Leonard’s hands as he carefully pulls on the skin tag, tugging the round little growth taut until he can see the skin that attaches it to Jim. He injects a little bit of local anesthetic, waiting a minute for it to take effect.
“Okay, Jim, now’s the time to look away if you want to.” He takes the scissors and snips the skin clean through, following with a quick touch of the cauterizer.
Jim stays perfectly still the whole time.
“Okay, ki—Jim, you’re done. I’m gonna cover it really quickly with a little bandage. Keep this on for a few hours, don’t shower again until tomorrow unless you absolutely have to, and if you do, then cover it up again. It could come back, I guess, but you should be good.”
“So,” Jim says quietly, looking down at Leonard, “gonna kiss it better for me?”
Leonard looks up at him, at his eyes, and then quickly, before he can second-guess himself, he leans down and presses a kiss to the fabric of the bandage. “There,” he murmurs, voice lower and huskier than he wants it to be.
Jim is staring at him, almost in wonder.
“I think I have a cut on my lip,” he offers with a little smile.
Leonard laughs. “Put your pants on, Jim.”
Leonard steps back and does his absolute best not to stare at Jim’s erection.
“Can I come back? If I have any issues with it?”
“Don’t have any issues,” Leonard says bluntly, but he can feel himself smiling faintly. “Go home, kid. Now your next one night stand won’t have any complaints.”
“Hey Bones? You wanna grab some dinner sometime?”
“You know I can’t do that, kid.” Leonard’s only mildly horrified to hear the regret in his voice.
“I don’t give up easy, Bones,” Jim says with a faint little smile, “see you next time.”
“Yeah. Wait, next time? No, don’t get hurt and come back!” Leonard calls after him.
---
Leonard’s just lost a patient. The young woman was too far gone well before he’d even gotten his gloves on, long before she’d even been wheeled through the doors, the EMT speaking in that rushed, urgent tone that meant that there was real trouble.
It wasn’t until he’d pulled his hands from her chest cavity that he’d noticed the bump in her belly, and then—
And then Leonard had gone to the bathroom, breathing slowly and clenching and unclenching his fists. He knows firsthand the injustice that life has to offer, but sometimes, at times like this, it still seems such an outrage, such a crime against humanity’s most innocent and most deserving—
He swallows past the lump in his throat and blinks away the tears that are gathering at the corners of his eyes.
He splashes cold water onto his face, rinsing out his mouth to get rid of the stale taste.
He heads into the next room, because he’d learned a long time ago that doctors didn’t get to just give up and go home after they’d lost someone.
“Hi, I’m Dr. McCoy, what’s going on today?” he asks flatly, barely a questioning inflection in his voice.
He turns to look at the patient, and it’s Jim Kirk, smile rapidly fading from his face.
“Whoa. Bones, what happened? Are you okay? You look awful—“
“Do you think it’s funny to waste hospital resources?” Leonard bites out.
“What? No!”
“Do you think it’s funny to waste my time in particular? What the hell did I do to you? I’m actually supposed to help people for a living, and if you’re wasting my time, I can’t do that, so can you just fuck off?”
“Come here,” Jim says quietly, “sit down. You need a minute.”
“Why don’t you just leave me alone, Kirk?”
“Is that what you really want?” There’s something to Jim’s voice, a tenderness, a vulnerability, and Leonard doesn’t look up at his face, afraid of what he might see.
He ignores the question, trusting that he’ll know what silence means.
“Sit down,” Jim says again, after giving Leonard more than enough time to answer the question. Jim hops off the bed and repeats the instruction, slipping into Leonard’s office chair.
It’s not a good idea to sit, not when it might lead to a reversal of authority. There are a number of other objections Leonard’s clinical psychology training is raising.
But the dominant thought is still of the injustice of it, of the cruelty of it, a small tangent during which Leonard ponders the existence of God, wondering if perhaps there is one, and it is simply not a benevolent Being.
“Talk to me, Bones.” Jim’s voice is quiet, but firm, and Leonard looks up at his face, taking in what it looks like when he’s not laughing or smiling or flirting.
“Lost a patient,” he says roughly, “it—it wasn’t my fault, there was nothing I could’ve done. But she was pregnant.”
Jim wheels closer in his chair and reaches out, laying his hand on Leonard’s knee. “I’m so sad for you. I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he says, and Leonard thinks about him, about his voice, and how terribly sincere it is in its sympathy.
“It’s not about me,” Leonard says quietly, but in a way, in an awful, sick sort of way, it kind of is. It’s about the woman, certainly, and the little one who never got to see the world, but it’s also about Leonard, the stranger who will carry around the weight of their memories, the man who held her life in his hands, the bloody, beating heart of her pulsing against him, separated only by thin latex—
“It is to me,” Jim says softly. Leonard puts his hand down on top of Jim’s, glad that he gets this small comfort.
Jim clears his throat after five minutes have passed. It’s not nearly enough time to forget, but Leonard doesn’t want to forget anyway. He just wants to be able to breathe without having to think about it, and he’s nearly there.
“Today sucks,” Jim says to him as he stands up, “but next time, I’m still going to ask you to go out with me, Bones.”
“Where did you get that anyway? Bones, what is that from?”
“From when we met on the shuttle,” Jim says with a smile that’s almost shy, “you said your ex took everything from you but your bones. I thought it suited you. More than Leonard, anyway.”
Leonard watches him go, and then realizes—
“Hey, what did you come in here for?” he calls down the hallway, “come back here, let me fix it—“
Jim just shakes his head, a little regret slipping into his expression. “I think I got a pretty good dose of what I came in here looking for, Bones. See you around.”
---
Leonard’s actually having a good day. He’d spoken to Jocelyn in the morning, she’s mentioned maybe having him over for Thanksgiving, so Joanna could have both her parents around.
“I won’t invite Clay,” she’d promised him, “just you, me, and Jojo. It’ll be nice, to have it just be our family.”
Our family, he’d marveled, hearing it, remembering how madly in love with her he’d been, once upon a time.
When he walks in, he barely recognizes him, the way his eyes are swollen shut and one of his lips is big and puffy. It’s the slit of pupil that he can see, the neat, short hair that’s probably covering a lump or two on his head.
“Hey, Bones.” Jim just about manages to eke out the words past his swollen lips.
“What the hell happened to you?” Leonard snaps, anger covering the worry in the way it has done for years now. He starts scanning Jim’s head first, to check if his brain (the scan confirms the existence of this mythical organ) is still there or if it’s just a puddle.
He applies a few regens, careful because he doesn’t want to fuse Jim’s upper and lower eyelids together. He gives him an injection of an ant-inflammatory and slaps a few ice packs against his face, holding them there until the regen is ready to move around.
It takes two hours for the swelling to go down enough for Jim to look him in both eyes.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“There was a girl,” Jim starts.
“And you didn’t know she had a boyfriend? Or that the boyfriend had loads of frineds?”
Jim frowns at him. “Not exactly. There was this guy bothering her and he wouldn’t leave her alone, not even after she asked. So I made sure his attention was elsewhere, that’s all.”
Leonard feels like complete and utter shit. He look at Jim again, and wonders how long he’s just been superimposing what he believes onto him. Jim has a reputation as a playboy, and he’d already mentioned that that reputation is maybe a little exaggerated, and yet here Leonard is, still pinning it to him and looking like a goddamn fool while he does.
“Shit, kid. I’m sorry. I bet she was really glad to have your help, man. Honestly.”
Jim shrugs. “She called the ambulance for me, at least,” he says with a little rueful smile, “and then she ran. Can’t blame her, she was still shaking with fear and approaching a strange man in an alley couldn’t have been easy on her.”
Leonard grimaces. “Still, somebody should’ve come down, to be here with you,” he says, a little cautious, “I heard you and Christopher Pike are real close?”
“Oh, please don’t tell me you buy into the rumors that the only reason I’m still here is because I’m fucking my advisor! That’s below you, Bones, honestly.”
Leonard holds up his hands. He’s stupid, and he had wondered, but he doesn’t believe the rumor now, at least, and maybe that still counts for something. “I just thought he’d care to know you were in the hospital.”
Jim shakes his head. “Don’t tell him I was here. Please. I don’t want him to worry about me, and I’m supposed to stop fighting. I promised him I’d stop fighting, but then today—I couldn’t just do nothing—“
“I know, Jim,” Leonard says quietly, and he takes Jim’s hand in his own, carefully cleaning up the abraded knuckles.
“Do you wanna go and get some coffee, sometime?” Jim asks him, eyes still hopeful, even after all these times.
“I can’t, kid. But you’re a really good man. You’re smart, handsome, just good, down to your bones. Go look for someone else, okay? Someone who makes you better.”
Jim just looks at him and shrugs one shoulder, breaking eye contact. “You make me better, Bones,” he says simply, “and I don’t want anybody else.”
Leonard swallows against a suddenly dry throat and mutters something about another patient before he flees, like the coward he is.
---
There’s been a shuttle accident. Leonard’s the surgeon on call, and he moves quickly and calmly, getting his team in place. The EMTs bring in the ambulance, and they wheel the gurney down and bring it into the hospital.
Leonard looks at the mop of blond hair and the straight nose that’s all crooked and covered in blood, and his own veins start to run with ice.
He can hardly move at all for a second, and then he’s back, snapping out orders for orthopedics consults for the fractures, neuro for a consult (that one’s just a formality, because he’s just as good at neuro as anybody, and probably better, but this is Jim, and his heart isn’t working right, all of a sudden—)
Once they come out of the OR, he hears the story in snatches from his nurses, who heard it from the EMTs.
The shuttle was on fire, he kept going back in to check for survivors. Brought out two little girls, an elderly man, and a baby before he passed out from smoke inhalation, covered in second degree burns and with a broken nose from a piece of debris—
“Oh, Jim,” Leonard whispers, heart aching in his chest.
Jim opens his eyes.
Leonard catches him the moment he does it, and he sits up on the stiff hospital chair, cracking his back because he’s really too old to be spending the night in a chair. He rubs at his eyes, tired because he’s hardly slept all night, catching a few winks here and there, but that was hardly restorative.
“Hospi’al?”
“Yeah.” Leonard can hear the grit in his own voice, the resignation.
“Will ya—“
“Yes.” His voice creaks on the word. “Yes, fine, I’ll go out with you. But you have to promise not to get yourself killed, or I swear to god, I’ll never speak to you again. I won’t treat you, I won’t talk to you, I won’t listen to your stupid come-ons, I won’t even look at you if you land in here again.”
Jim looks at him and nods, the motion slight to spare his brain the movement.
“Will ya gimme some water, Bonesy?” he asks softly.
Leonard flushes, thinking that maybe Jim doesn’t want to go out with him after all, that this was all a fucked-up game—He rises to his feet and fills a cup with ice chips.
“Only a few of these at a time,” he tells Jim, though he takes the spoon and dips it into the ice himself, parts Jim’s lips with the edge of the spoon and drops the ice into his mouth himself. He didn’t need to tell him at all, he realizes, as he stands there next to Jim, who opens his mouth a minute later.
Leonard looks at him for a moment, but carefully fills the spoon up again and puts it into Jim’s mouth.
It’s on the fourth spoonful that Leonard can’t quite take the silence.
“Sorry about that. I shouldn’t have assumed that you’d want me.”
“I do want you,” Jim whispers, his voice no longer as raspy now that he’s had the ice.
“But the fun’s in the chase,” Leonard says with a sad little smile, “so we can date, go on dinners and stuff, maybe fuck for a couple of weeks, and then you can move on, okay? No hard feelings, Jim. But your promise holds. I swear I won’t even look at you again for the rest of my life if you end up in the hospital again.”
Jim looks a little hurt. “You honestly think I went to all this trouble just to have sex a few times? You know what, Bones, maybe you’re right, maybe it won’t work out—“
Leonard squeezes his eyes shut. “I honestly don’t know what you see in me, kid. I know you’re a good guy, and you’re young, and brilliant, and you don’t need to be with me, I just don’t understand—“
“You’re hot and brilliant, too! And you’re a good person, too! Okay, yeah, the first time it was just that you were hot and you were a little uncomfortable with the flirting, and I thought you were cute when you blushed. And maybe it was fun, that little game when I ask you out and you tell me to fuck off, but then—you tell me, Bones, how the hell am I not supposed to fall for you when you’re so fucking kind to people? When you take their loss so fucking personally even when it wasn’t your fault? How am I supposed to not fall for you when you smile when you’re thinking about your kid? If you know, then tell me, please, because I’m just a little too far gone at this point—“
Leonard shakes his head. “I don’t know either,” he says quietly, “but maybe we can figure it out over dinner, Jim.”
Jim smiles just the slightest bit, and he leans back against his pillows, exhausted. “Kiss it all better?” he asks playfully.
Leonard looks him straight in the eyes and then he leans down and kisses his arm, where some of the worst of the burns had been. He lays another kiss on his bicep, and one on his shoulder. He kisses Jim’s neck, a soft chaste brush of lips against skin that’s still healing.
He pulls away and looks at Jim, who’s looking at him with so much tenderness, so much care, and yet so much caution, it makes something in Leonard twist up.
“I have a cut on my l—“ he starts, and that’s when Leonard kisses him.
When he pulls away, Jim looks a little confused, but he’s happy too, the corners of his eyes crinkling as his lips pull into a smile.
“I thought you couldn’t date a patient? Professional ethics and all that?”
“I’m not your doctor right now,” Leonard says with a shrug, “I got off shift last night. It’s officially my day off.”