Work Text:
Jim had been acting off for the past week, but today was particularly noticeable.
He had barely eaten anything, for starters. And when Leonard had asked him about it on Sunday, he had shrugged him off and said that he just wasn’t hungry. But then that ‘not hungry’ had continued for the rest of the week.
It wasn’t exam season and Jim didn’t have any paper or project deadlines coming up.
Maybe he was coming down with something?
The physician in Leonard frowned at the thought but the friend and roommate part decided to leave it alone. If Jim was actually sick, he could handle himself.
He would worry more if whatever was going on with him turned out to be more serious than the common cold.
Jim continued to pick at his food if he even got any at mealtimes. And by Wednesday, he had stopped going with Leonard down to the dining hall at all, not being hungry turned into being busy with some assignment or another.
Leonard came out of the bathroom after his shower to hear Jim counting something quietly under his breath. The blond was kneeling by his bed with his back to him.
“…seven…eight…nine…”
“Jim? You good?” he asked.
The sound of Leonard’s voice made the Command track cadet startle…and quickly shove something under his bed before he jumped to his feet.
“Len!” Jim exclaimed. “I’m fine,” he said. “You done with the bathroom?”
Leonard frowned, he couldn’t see whatever it was that Jim had shoved underneath his bed from where he was standing.
“Yeah,” he said, crossing the room to where his desk was to check the pager he had brought back with him from the clinic.
His roommate disappeared into the bathroom to take a shower.
Leonard eyed Jim’s bed once he could hear the sound of the shower running. His curiosity urged him to snoop and find out what it was that he had been counting.
He abandoned the pager on his desk, it was quiet, kneeled down beside the bed much like Jim had been and tugged out a box.
It was a small cardboard one that was barely larger than an antique shoebox. Across the side was familiar flashy branding for some energy or protein bar. And there were only nine bars inside it, the exact number that he had counted out.
Jim had been counting these bars. Why? To keep track of how many he had left?
Leonard read over the label of one of the bars. It hit him why the branding looked familiar, these were the same high-protein high-energy bars that they kept in the Academy clinic for those who needed an energy boost quickly. They weren’t designed to be eaten for days on end.
Had Jim been eating these bars instead of proper meals this whole week? Was that why he said he hadn’t been hungry?
The shower stopped and Leonard shoved the box back underneath the bed and went back to his textbooks to study concepts that he had already taken exams on nearly a decade ago.
Leonard hadn’t meant to ask so directly about the box of protein bars, it just happened. The two of them were on their way back from a bar that Jim had dragged him to.
“Why do you have a box of protein bars under your bed?”
Jim, who had been a pace ahead, stopped dead in his tracks and whirled around to face him.
“How do you know about that?” he demanded. “You snooped, didn’t you?” he continued, not stopping long enough for Leonard to say anything.
“Yeah, I did. Jim, nearly all of those bars are nearly two years old,” Leonard said.
Instead of getting defensive, Jim shrunk back. “I know,” he said quietly.
Leonard frowned, worried. He was starting to get the idea that there was more to it than not being hungry and long-expired bars.
“Why do you even have them?” he asked.
“We should get back. I’ve got an exam early tomorrow I need to study for,” Jim said instead, dodging the question, before he continued walking down the alleyway towards the Academy.
Leonard followed suit a moment later.
They don’t speak about the bars again for the rest of the night, it’s late by the time they get back to their dorm room anyway.
The next day, Jim left early in the morning to take his exam while Leonard slept in longer than he did the rest of the week. Saturday was one of the few days where he didn’t have early morning or night clinic shifts.
When the blond got back at midday, three hours after he had left, he looked terrible. Far worse than he had on Sunday.
Something was really wong.
“I owe you an explanation about those energy bars,” Jim said. His blue eyes met Leonard’s brown.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me if you don’t wanna,” Leonard told him.
“I know but I want to,”
“Alright,” Leonard spun his chair around to face him.
“Okay,” Jim said. “What do you know about — about the Tarsus massacre?” he asked.
That question was so light when compared to what was to come.
The doctor had hoped that it was simply Jim doing some project or midterm on the massacre for a class. He never would have expected that it would lead into the reveal he’d been on Tarsus and hadn’t just been one of the Nine, but had been their leader.
Even without explicitly saying it, Jim had revealed the true reason he had that box of bars.
Years later, on the USS Enterprise.
Jim hadn’t shown up for his bi-annual physical. Again.
The Enterprise’s CMO sighed and set down a PADD on his desk.
There was no way that his captain physical was going to be done unless Leonard went to grab him off the bridge and dragged him down here to get it done.
As he stood up, the significance behind today’s date, the eighth of December, 2266, hit him.
Oh shit.
His heart sank into his shoes as he left sickbay in search of Jim.
“Computer, where’s Captain Kirk?” he asked.
‘Captain Kirk is in his quarters.’ the computer answered.
Well that saved him from wasting a trip up to the bridge.
Leonard reached Jim’s door and rang the chime.
No answer.
“Jim? It’s Len,” he announced.
Still nothing.
The door slid open. The room behind it was dimly lit. He stepped inside.
At first glance, he thought that the computer was wrong and that Jim wasn’t actually in here.
But then Leonard saw a figure bundled up on the bed with his back to him.
“Jim?” he called again.
The body on the bed didn’t move.
“Are you okay?” he asked. This time, Jim did move, he got up and turned around to face him. His hair was a mess, as if he just got up and hadn’t brushed it yet. And his uniform shirt was rumpled too.
“I’m fine, Bones. What do you need me for?” the captain asked.
“You didn’t show up in sickbay for your bi-annual physical,” he said. “So I figured I’d have to come get you if I wanted to get it done,”
Jim’s face lost some of its colour at the mention of a physical.
“Well you’ll have to come back another time, I’m just about to go on shift,” he said. He nudged something underneath his head and tried to slip past Leonard to get out of the door but the doctor blocked his way.
“No, you aren’t,” Leonard said. “Alpha Shift started two hours ago. And you told Uhura you were sick,”
Realising that he was caught, Jim stopped.
“Right…I did,” he said. “Look, Bones, I’m sorry about skipping out on the physical, can I just do it tomorrow? Please?”
That was as close to pleading as he had ever heard James T. Kirk got to, in all his years of being friends with him.
“Sure,” he agreed. At the blond’s shocked look he elaborated. “Usually I’d insist on it but I’m not going to today,” Leonard explained.
“What? Why?”
“Because I noticed the date. And officially your physical doesn’t have to be done until February,”
At that explanation and the reassurance that he wasn’t going to be forced to do it, the tension bled out of Jim’s shoulders.
“You noticed that it’s—?” Jim sat on his bed and Leonard took a seat on a nearby chair not long after.
“The anniversary? Yeah I did,” he finished. “Ten years today, isn’t it?”
Jim nodded, breathing slowly through his nose.
“Yep,”
He wasn’t looking at him anymore, instead he was staring at a spot on the bulkhead behind Leonard on the far side of his quarters.
“How are you doing?” he asked, trying not to go into Doctor Mode. Jim needed a friend right now, not a doctor.
A moment of silence passed. “I’ve been fine—“
Leonard frowned. “Truthfully, Jim. You don’t havta pretend you’re okay, not with me,”
“…I’m doing better than I thought I would’ve been,” he admitted. “Was counting the bars earlier, had to make sure that there were still nine,” he added quietly. So quietly it could definitely be considered a whisper.
His eyes darted down to where the box was undoubtedly hiding underneath his bed.
The protein bars he was referring to were different, newer ones, to the nine that Leonard had first caught him counting, all those years ago when they were at the Academy.
“Are there still nine?”
“Yeah,” Jim confirmed. “I tried not to count them but I did. Sorry,“ He ducked his head as he scrambled to explain. His eyes had glazed over.
“You don’t have to apologise. There’s nothing wrong with you counting them,” he said. “Have you been eating them?”
“Nah. I haven’t,” Jim answered. “But I shouldn’t need to count them as I know there’s always gonna be nine, and that number’s not gonna change because no one’s eating them,” he muttered.
“Well yes, but counting them is comforting, isn’t it?”
“Yeah…”
Their conversation didn’t last for much longer after that. Leonard did put Jim on medical leave for the next two days, despite his protests that he didn’t need that.
“Take those two days otherwise you’ll run yourself into the ground,” he told him. Jim had a habit of becoming even more of a workaholic than he already was when he was trying to distract himself. “Spock can handle the con for a bit longer,”
After their conversation was cut short by Leonard being called back to sickbay, Jim went to go find and check in with Kevin. And once he had, the two of them returned to the Captain’s quarters to call Thomas.