Chapter Text
All these damn years later and he was still not used to the situations the places he ended up put him in. Granted, he’d ended up at the tail end of some weird stuff in Lawrence, hadn’t seen half the weird things some of the other people he knew had, but he’d seen his own fair share in New Orleans and that was bad enough.
But this? This took the cake.
He stared at the Jim he’d gotten used to, the one who, first off, wasn’t blonde, who kept his hair short and dark brown and wore glasses (he really still hadn’t gotten used to it, and he’d been staring at a four-eyed Jim for years now) and had a platinum wedding ring on his left hand and wore business suits sometimes and did he forget to the goddamned wedding ring? This was the Jim that looked a whole damn more like the actor facetwin than the James Tiberius Kirk he knew in Starfleet. This was the one he’d been teasing the hell out of in this weird alternate dimension he’d been pulled to by the Seal and then tossed around in like a kid tosses around his favorite ball among his friends.
Then he turned in his stool and looked at the other Jim.
The Jim that was a damn carbon copy for the one in the movies.
He looked like he could have just waltzed off the screen at some point in during the second one. Probably during some point when Khan was in the med bay (he hated thinking about that egotistical homicidal maniac, he really did…couldn’t stand the sight of Benedict Whatshisname, just like Molly, though for completely different reasons, and if he started thinking about those reasons he’d get irritated because it all led back to Khan and how in the hell could someone actually—
You know what? Just because she had God awful taste in men before him doesn’t mean she’s a bad person. No. She was married to him now. He had to remember that. She’d chosen him and moved on from the genocidal maniac.
Back to the subject at hand.)
He sighed and drug a hand across his face. “Jim? Why are there two of you?”
“Don’t know,” they chorused, and he groaned. He could hear Molly stifle a laugh from across the medical center and he lifted his head up to glare at her. She pretended not to notice and gave him a grin. Typical British cheekiness. He intensified his glare and she just grinned more. Good thing John wasn’t around. If he got wind of it that’d be worse. Those two were thick as thieves sometimes, which considering they came from the same universe he supposed was typical. After a moment he turned back to his dilemma of two Kirks before zeroing in on the Sealified Kirk. “Are you going to take him back to Casa de Kirk-Hathaway?”
“Not sure,” he said. “I mean, there’s the twins, and while I’m sure Rose would get a kick out of there being two of us, she’s used to…me, and not old me. She’s only dealt with a taste of old me once.”
McCoy narrowed his eyes. “Wasn’t old you what she was dealing with when the two of you got together?” he asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Which is kind of why I don’t want old me around my wife.”
“I may be a flirt, but I don’t cheat,” the other Kirk said. “I do have some standards. Especially with my wife.” He paused. “My other me’s wife. Damn, that’s going to get confusing.”
“You could always have one be Alpha James and the other be Beta James,” Molly suggested as she kept checking the supplies.
“Yeah, but who would be who?” McCoy said. “I mean, technically it could go either way. The Jim we’re all used to could be Alpha Jim because he’s our baseline and the interloper could be Beta Jim—”
“Hey, I’m not an interloper!” the blonde Kirk said, straightening up.
“Yeah, you kind of are,” the brunette Kirk said.
McCoy turned from Molly to the two of them, glaring, and they both shut up. “Or, we could go on apparent timeline, where…” McCoy focused on the blonde Kirk. “What’s the last thing that happened to you, Jim?”
“Pike died,” he said. “We’re going after Harrison.”
Brunette Kirk shrugged, getting annoyed. “Then I’m still Alpha Kirk since I was six months into the five year mission in deep space when the Seal yanked me out and dumped me in Lawrence,” he said. “And then there’s the fact I’m older, I’m wiser, I’m richer, and I lived through a fucking Apocalypse.”
“Language,” Molly said absently.
“Sorry,” brunette Kirk said, appearing mollified. “Look, it’s been a long day, I want to get home to Rose and the kids…can you take him for the night?”
McCoy’s eyes widened and stood up, moving over and grabbing brunette Kirk’s shoulder and moving then away from blonde Kirk. “No. Jim…no. You are not dumping the reckless cowboy, still hadn’t had his ass kicked by you-know-who, still hadn’t found out the truth, still hadn’t died you on me.”
“I’ll watch him tonight,” Molly said as she approached him. Both men stared. “Leonard, I can watch him tonight, if he needs to stay here. We can keep him in the med centre, and I’ll tell John to stay home tonight, just in case, and…it will be fine. It’s not as though we had any grand plans this evening, nothing that can’t be postponed, and you have plans for tomorrow that you can’t postpone. You need to rest.”
McCoy looked over at the Kirk he had been living with since landing in Lawrence and now, again, in New Orleans, and then over at Molly, and then finally nodded. “Fine. But…don’t be surprised if I come in and check on you tonight, okay? Kirk’s a handful. Any of them.”
“Nice to know you really care,” brunette Kirk said. “Come on. Have dinner with me and Rose. Molly’s got it handled.”
“I do,” Molly said. “It will be fine, promise.”
McCoy looked back at the other Kirk, and then slowly let out a breath and then nodded. “Fine, fine. But if you have trouble, you call me, understand?”
“Understood,” she said. He turned away and then went and grabbed his coat, following Kirk out. He really hoped he wasn’t making a horrible horrible mistake.