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Despite what one may expect (or, perhaps, exactly as one may expect), Jim Kirk had a therapist.
He probably didn't see her as often as he really ought to. He probably wasn't as honest with her as he should have been.
She probably knew that about him, too; she knew just about everything about him, even the things he didn't say, the things he didn't want to talk about. That's what happens when you have the same therapist for a decade.
In a perfect world...well, in a perfect world he wouldn't need a therapist in the first place, would he? Wouldn't have gone through hell as a kid and come out simultaneously feeling too young and too old. But, in a more perfect world than this one, where Tarsus still somehow happened but everything was ok after that, he'd keep seeing this specific therapist until the day he died.
She works with kids.
He's twenty three.
She normally would have let him go as a patient well before now, but his circumstances are unique enough that she pushed it, a little, and he's grateful. His first year at Starfleet Academy he talked to her more than he had in years.
He enrolled when he was twenty two. He hadn’t spoken to her in months at that point, and he should have instead of going out looking for sex or a fight to feel alive, but that dumb fight got him to Starfleet, so he’s not that upset. He talks to her for the first time in months from his dorm room, and she isn’t even surprised.
Now he’s twenty three.
She works with kids.
He's joining Starfleet.
Starfleet has counselors. Ships have counselors. He'll be expected to talk to one of them.
Jim is pretty sure he'd rather gnaw his own foot off than talk to anyone else about his brain, about his trauma, about all the ways he’s fucked up.
So.
He just sort of.
Doesn't.
She makes a plan with him to transition his care, and sends him a release form so she can send over his records to his new therapist, and he promises he'll fill it out and sign it, and then he doesn't.
And it's fine, at first. It really is. He's rooming with Bones. He's taking summer term and J term classes, to help his accelerated course load and to keep him in California as much as possible, because he'll drop dead before he sets foot back in Riverside where too many people know too much about him. Bones is just as loath to head back home as he is, because they're both running from something and decided space was the best place to do that, and San Francisco is just a layover.
Jim thinks he might be in love with him.
He's not sure how to tell if it's just because he doesn't beat the shit out of him, treats him gentle and kind and like a living, breathing person. He's not sure if it matters. He always fell in love too easily, and it always burned him, and he has no idea how to stop. But he does know Bones is still raw off the divorce, and Jim doesn't want to push and maybe lose the one good relationship he actually has. They have time to figure things out.
So. It’s good, at first. He’s rooming with his best friend-also his only friend, really, but that’s fine. He’s taking a stupid amount of classes, and he’s doing well in them, and he’s graduated from people spreading rumors of nepotism to people spreading rumors that he’s sleeping with professors for his grades, because no one wants to believe he’s actually just smart, just working hard, but he’s good at ignoring ignorant bullshit.
He has coping mechanisms. He’s been living with his own brain his entire life, and he knows what he needs, what helps him and hurts him.
He eats on a schedule.
He never regained the ability to accurately judge his body’s hunger cues. He spent too long hungry with no way to fix it, til his body realized it wasn’t getting anywhere by bothering him about it. So, he eats on a schedule. A schedule he made with his therapist, actually, that they’ve been slowly modifying to fit his needs as they change.
That’s how they spent their first session after he enrolled. He sent her his class schedule, and she helped him build in breaks for snacks and meals.
His class schedule is different now.
He’s never made a meal schedule by himself before. But he’s twenty three, he's an adult, he knows what he’s doing, knows how to take care of himself.
It works, at first.
It works, until it doesn’t.
He doesn't like eating in front of other people. He eats too fast, and people notice sometimes, say things about it, and laughing it off makes him feel cold inside. Bones never says anything, though. It's ok when he eats with Bones. Even when he gets hyper-aware of what everyone else is eating, the instincts that have long been hurting him instead of helping him but are impossible to excise kicking in, urging him to make sure everyone has enough, has something, he'll give them his to make sure they get something. It's ok with Bones, because he never says anything when Jim spaces out or stares at him, his plate. Just draws his attention to something else.
Jim thinks he might be in love with him.
It's hard to tell.
There's a kid he sees around campus sometimes.
He's wide-eyed and small and apparently a genius, and they don't take any classes together so he doesn't see him often, but everyone knows about the 14 year old that looks closer to 12, the baby on campus, and his age makes him stick out in a crowd.
Makes him stick out in the cafeteria.
He looks closer to 12. He's a kid. Jim looks out for kids, who can't look out for themselves, who can but shouldn't have to. He doesn't really look anything like his kids-Kev, maybe, just a little. A little like Kev, but he's older than Kev was then and younger than Kev is now, and he's built too delicately, and his hair is a mess of curls, but something about him reminds Jim of Kevin.
He's eating. He has enough. Something about that feels soothing.
He sees Jim staring at him. His face goes red, and he turns to the person next to him and whispers something, and then he looks back at Jim strangely, and Jim finally realizes that he's been staring at the teen eating his lunch for the past ten minutes.
Jim stops eating in the cafeteria.
Eventually, that just turns into not eating lunch.
It's easier, and he's busy, and he's eating breakfast and dinner and snacks in between and it's not like he ever feels hungry anyways, and eating in front of people is a minefield. He doesn't need more rumors, and being caught staring slack jawed at a 14 year old is a great way to start people talking about something disgusting.
So he eats breakfast and dinner in his and Bones’ apartment, and shoves protein bars and apples into his backpack to eat between classes, and tries very hard to think about food A Normal Amount despite having no idea what that actually is.
He sees the kid around campus still, sometimes.
He skips lunch, and doesn't feel hungry, because his ability to actually listen to his body was stripped from him when he was 12. But his body still knows it hasn't eaten. His nervous system still knows. His subconscious still knows.
Eating is hard, is the thing. It shouldn't be. It isn't for other people. But it's hard for him, and that's why he had a therapist, had a schedule, had a mental list of foods that felt safer to eat than others. He still has his list, and it's quickly turning into a list of the only things he's actually willing to eat. Survival food, mostly. Rations. Protein bars. Things that taste like they were engineered to put nutrition as joylessly and efficiently into your body as possible. His mind feels too tied up to feel comfortable eating for pleasure, right now. Taking joy in food makes him feel guilty and sick.
Food, in general, begins making him feel guilty and sick.
It's easier when he eats with Bones. He eats dinner most nights, because when Bones is home he cooks, and when he cooks he gives Jim a dish without even asking if he wants one, and once someone else has gone to the trouble of putting it in his hands actually eating it feels easier. Watching someone else eat makes it easier, too, when he isn't worried about being caught staring.
So. He eats dinner most nights. That's something. Unless Bones works late. He usually sends Jim a text when he does, telling him not to wait up, to have dinner without him, and Jim lies and says he will, and doesn’t eat until the next night when Bones is home.
Bones never used to remind him to eat. His PADD did, because he set reminders on it. It doesn't anymore. But Bones does.
Jim thinks he might be in love with him.
He feels loved, at the very least, and the feeling is prickling and unfamiliar.
He also realizes, eventually, that Bones probably has an idea of the fact that he's never had the best relationship with food.
He's already his primary care, and even with the details sealed, the treatment history isn't. Can't be. Spending over a year of your adolescence starving half to death and then recovering from being starved half to death has long term health consequences, apparently.
So. He's probably always known, actually, at least for as long as he's had access to his medical records.
Jim isn't sure how he feels about that.
But even if he's always known, it's obviously gotten worse lately, and Jim isn't so far gone that he can't realize how obvious it is. He's dropping weight, for one. Too much too fast for it to be anything remotely healthy. Bones starts handing him bowls of oatmeal in the morning, wordlessly. Doesn't tell him to eat. Doesn't ask why he isn't. Just makes him oatmeal and puts honey and nuts and berries in it and hands it to him to do whatever he wants with.
Jim thinks he loves him so much that it hurts.
The oatmeal is sweet. Too sweet, like someone dumped brown sugar and fruit and honey into it until it couldn’t hold anymore, and it’s not lost on him that Bones is probably trying to get calories into him however he can. Because sugar is better than nothing, and if he wasn’t eating too-sweet oatmeal his best friend practically shoved into his hands on his way out the door then he wouldn’t be eating anything.
So.
He’s eating breakfast, again. Most of the time. And if he cries while he eats it, well, no one is home to see.
He has a meal schedule again.
It’s not a very good one. Definitely not one his therapist would have approved, but she dropped him as a patient, and Jim knows she had to, but it’s feeling more and more like one more person in a long line of people who have abandoned him.
He eats breakfast after Bones leaves for the day, because the last thing he does before heading out the door is forcing the bowl into Jim’s hands. On good days he manages to make himself eat a protein bar, a bite at a time, over the course of the afternoon, shoving the rest into his pocket to save it. He doesn’t need to stretch food anymore, hasn’t needed to in a decade, but he’s half stuck in survival mode and can’t make himself stop. On bad days he eats nothing. He has more bad days than good. If Bones works late and eats at the hospital, Jim doesn’t eat again until the next morning. If he doesn’t, Jim eats dinner when he gets home from his last class, because Bones sits down and eats with him, and talks to him about the hospital, and prompts Jim to talk about class, and the distraction helps.
It’s unsustainable. He knows it’s unsustainable. Not least of all because of how dependent his ability to eat is on his roommate. It’s not sustainable, and it’s not fair to Bones, and Jim has no idea how to fix it.
It comes to a head during a long weekend.
Finally, fucking finally, Bones gets visitation time with his kid. It’s been a long time coming, his ex has been holding things up and putting things off and using their daughter as a bargaining chip in the divorce proceedings, and it’s been killing him. She spun up some story about his drinking, apparently, and the visitation is supervised, as if he’d ever even think about hurting a hair on Joanna’s head. He’d shoot himself with a phaser first. But he’s getting a chance to actually see her, hug her, and that means the world to him and then some.
So. Bones is leaving.
Just for a few days, just for the weekend, and it doesn’t even sting because he’s going to see his daughter , how could Jim begrudge him that? He’s happy for him, he tells him to spoil her rotten and send her home sugar high and with toys that make obnoxious sounds.
Bones makes him oatmeal before he leaves.
It’s almost too sweet to eat.
It’s the last thing Jim eats for three days.
And the thing is.
The thing is, his ability to read his own hunger cues is fucked. But he’s been eating enough, if just barely, to tide him over day to day.
Until suddenly, he isn’t.
And then he learns that he actually can read his own hunger cues, if they’re strong enough, insistent enough.
Familiar enough.
Bones left food in the kitchen. Things that are easy to prepare, things that don’t need preparation at all. Things Jim likes, or liked, back when he was eating. Probably hoping Jim would eat something while he was gone. He hasn’t said anything, still, and Jim is beyond grateful, because he has no idea what he would have said in response, would probably have deflected, panicked and started a fight. Probably ruined everything, shattered their friendship and his own mental health into a million pieces.
He hasn’t eaten in three days, has been eating far from enough for months leading up, and he remembers, acutely and terribly and all at once, exactly what it feels like to starve.
Bones left food for him. Hoping he would eat. Begging him with everything but words to eat.
He’s starving.
Not metaphorically, not hyperbolically.
Jim knows what starvation feels like.
He’s starving, and Bones left him food, and the next thing he knows he’s sobbing on the kitchen floor and eating ice cream until he feels sick. Until he makes himself sick, and then he’s sobbing even harder, and there’s vomit on the floor, and Bones comes home and finds him like that and Jim wants to curl up and die. He tries to apologize, at the very least, tries to crawl away to be an embarrassing wreck in private, and damn it all but Bones keeps being gentle and kind and perfect. He holds him and rocks him on the kitchen floor like he was a child, and he lets him cry and sob, ugly and snotty and reeking of sick, and he tells him that it’s going to be ok. That he’s here, and he’ll help, and Jim knows that he means every word, and he’s never felt so cared for in his shitty, miserable life, sobbing and sick on the linoleum floor of his tiny student apartment.
Bones rubs his back, and Jim is exhausted, and he passes out in his arms being hushed and comforted.
He wakes up on the couch. His mouth tastes like puke, still, but his face is clean and his shirt has been changed and the kitchen smells like bleach. There’s a glass of water on the table, and an apple sitting innocently next to it. An offer, not a demand. He takes the water and washes out the taste of old sick and sleep.
Bones keeps making him breakfast and dinner. Tells him, once, that whenever Jim is ready, they can talk about it.
Jim is pretty sure he’ll never feel ready.
He’s also pretty sure that if he doesn’t talk about this soon, it will quite literally kill him.
He doesn’t feel it, when he’s eating like this, eating just enough to string his body along day to day. He doesn’t feel it, but he knows now that he’s starving, slower than before but just as deadly, and with no one to blame but ghosts.
Finally, finally, he asks for help.
Bones tells him he can’t be his therapist. Shouldn’t be his therapist. It’s a conflict of interest, a breach in ethics, and he’s right, and Jim knows he’s right, but the idea of opening up to anyone else makes him feel sick. He wants the woman who put him back together when he was 13, or he wants Bones.
Bones relents.
It’s off the books, unofficial, in their living room in their pajamas, after dinner and homework. He splits himself open to his best friend, his roommate, his doctor, his unofficial therapist, his crush. He shows him his raw, bleeding edges, the places that his unkind life has left ragged and weeping and half-healed wrong, like a broken bone that was never set. And despite everything he knows about what a caring, empathetic, decent man Bones is, he still half expects him to be disgusted by what he sees.
Bones helps him make a meal schedule.
A real one, one he has half a chance of sticking to, one to help him get used to eating again.
He still makes dinner. Still hands him breakfast on his way out the door. Is much more insistent about him eating, now that he knows what exactly he’s dealing with, that they’re past the point where calling attention to it would make Jim shatter. They decide he can work on eating in front of people once he’s back on a schedule and his mental health isn’t being tanked by persistent hunger, and Bones gets him packing his lunch to eat in empty classrooms and corners of the library.
It’s slow going, of course. Of course it is. It’s slow and there are relapses and bad days and days where he thinks he’ll never be ok again. But it gets better, easier.
Graduation is a good deadline for him to work towards. He gets his weight back up in time for his last earthside physical, gets his shit together enough to pass his psych eval.
Bones still presses breakfast into his hands every morning. It’s not always oatmeal. It’s not loaded down with sugar in a desperate attempt to keep him from losing more weight. But it’s always warm, and filling, and Jim recognizes the gesture finally for what it is; not simply care, or concern, but love.
He kisses Bones one morning, during his usual hand off. Takes his meal and leans in and kisses him, right on the mouth, and Bones blinks at him, and he smiles, and he kisses him back.
Jim eats his breakfast crying.
They’re good tears.