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The doors of the turbolift slide open to reveal the bridge, the main viewer displaying the beautiful planet they’re orbiting above, a world that’s a swirl of blues and greens and purples from up high. The crew works in quiet excitement, maintaining their professionalism for the few more minutes they’ll have to be on shift before their shore leave begins.
McCoy whistles in appreciation as he makes his way to Jim’s captain chair. “That’s a damn pretty sight.”
“Once the landing party gives the okay, you’ll be able to see it up close,” Jim says, face tilting up towards him in greeting.
“They’ve said it’s lovely down there,” Uhura relays to him. If there’s enough of a lull for it, she tends to be the one to fill him in on information he’s missed before arriving; McCoy is endlessly grateful for it with Jim and Spock’s tendencies to refuse providing context.
Leaning back against the railing, he chats with her about her plans for shore leave and then his as they wait, Sulu and Chekhov chiming in with their own as well. It’s been a rough few weeks and everyone seems eager to soothe it with some days relaxing in the sun.
“How about you, Jim?” McCoy asks after Chekhov very unsubtly announces his intentions of finding multiple women to have sex with—a topic that need not be expanded on. “You don’t have the Vulcan excuse for avoiding shore leave.”
Spock raises his head for the first time since he’s arrived to pin him with a look of disapproval. “It is not an ‘excuse,’ Doctor. If anything, the human insistence on—”
“Bah!” McCoy interrupts, secretly pleased that Spock responded to the goad as he intended. “I don’t want to hear your lecture about how recreation isn’t rest a second time. But I’ll be checking your logs, Mr. Spock,” he warns, wagging his finger at him. “You better be doing that Vulcan resting properly in your quarters, not working the whole time I’m not looking.”
They stare at each other for several seconds, a silent battle that ends with Spock inclining his head. “Very well, Doctor.”
McCoy grins in triumph. One stubborn ass down, one to go. “Jim? Don’t tell me you’re going to make me drag you down there.”
“Hm?” The response comes absentmindedly, but Jim straightens in his chair at attention a moment later. “No, no… In fact, I think I’ll accompany you.”
“Really?” McCoy eyes him suspiciously. “I don’t even have to pull rank?”
Jim shrugs, a smile playing on his lips. “I have been known to enjoy the outdoors before.”
He scoffs, recalling their last shore leave where both he and Spock had to corner Jim into getting off the ship. Still, he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Alright, then. The suns’ll do you good.”
The grass is the same green of Earth, but the sky is full of pink clouds and the soil is a rich purple that McCoy bends down to examine the second they’ve finished transporting, hand at his tricorder on his hip immediately. The landing party has already taken all the samples needed, he’s sure, but he likes getting his own cultures when he can.
“Oh, I know that face,” Jim says from somewhere above him. “You’re not going to make me stand here watching you play with dirt for thirty minutes, are you?”
McCoy smiles at the ground, but forces it into a frown by the time he looks up. “This is my shore leave too, you know.”
Jim huffs in half impatience and half amusement. “And this is your idea of fun?”
Sighing, he drags his hand through the dirt one last time, crumbling the soft purple in his fingers before deciding to show mercy. “Alright, alright,” he says as he stands, dusting his hands off. “I’m done.”
They’re one of the first parties to land, though McCoy is sure the landscape will be crawling with Starfleet uniforms soon. Jim smiles and jerks his head towards a nearby hill covered in trees; it’ll certainly be a good refuge from frolicking off-duty ensigns. “Walk with me?”
“Yeah,” McCoy agrees, already in step with him. “‘Course.”
The day is pleasantly cool even with the two suns bright in the sky, and the walk is an easy one with a gentle incline and Jim leading the way. McCoy hums to himself and gazes at the wildlife they pass, catching glimpses of small teal birds in the sky and brushing his palms over the light lavender bark on the trees, pointing out interesting things idly in the companionable tranquility. Often—too often, really—things go wrong on planets they’re visiting before he can sightsee properly.
“Nice to be enjoying the outdoors instead of running for our lives through it for a change,” McCoy muses out loud, mirth in his tone. “You ever get tired of how much damn running we do?”
“Don’t jinx it, Bones.” He can hear Jim’s smile even though he’s a few feet ahead; McCoy can only see the back of his head. “You’re going to get us attacked by a bear or some other wild beast lurking in the woods.”
McCoy sputters. “Well, now that you’ve said that, you’ll jinx it!”
Jim slows enough for them to be side by side, his revealed profile showing his amusement. “You’re right, you’re right. Here”—he stops to rap the back of his hand against a nearby tree—“knock on wood.”
Jim waits expectantly. Rolling his eyes, McCoy knocks too with a rather put upon sigh. “I don’t even think this is wood.”
“It counts,” he insists, and McCoy can no longer fight back a smile of his own.
Jim doesn’t move to start walking again, his face slowly growing serious as they look at each other. Abruptly, he clears his throat and averts his gaze. “Listen,” he starts, still not meeting his eyes, “I did have my reasons for coming down here today. I wanted to talk to you. Privately.”
McCoy raises his eyebrows, smile fading. They talk privately at least once a day on the ship, and it’s never accompanied with this much fanfare. Jim has never had trouble looking him in the eyes before. It’s strange. Concerning. “Okay,” he says slowly. “What about?”
The answer doesn’t come right away, silence stretching long enough that McCoy is just opening his mouth to prompt him again when—
“I’m in love with you, Bones.”
He says it—declares it, really—so gravely, jaw set, shoulders tense, hands clasped behind his back, that McCoy steamrolls right past the confession into catastrophe.
“What the hell, Jim?” he demands.
McCoy is well versed in how Jim communicates. He’s the kind of man who says things like You, uh, in the mood for an apology? when he really means sorry. He always talks around and under and over what he’s saying, teasing out what he means in pointed questions and vague comments, never outright showing his hand…
…unless, that is, the situation seems particularly serious or hopeless. He looks absolutely resigned, an expression McCoy has rarely seen on him even when they’re in the tightest of spots or the battle already seems lost, which is what leads him to ask, alarmed and disturbed: “Are you dying?!”
Jim’s mouth parts in surprise. “…Bones?”
Because it would make sense then, why he’s said it so gravely, as if the future has already been set in stone and his love has no place in it. As if his declaration of love had already been rejected before it’d been said.
If Jim had thought this could go somewhere, he would’ve kissed him while the suns set on this beautiful planet without a word, a dramatic romantic overture that’d be more show than tell. And if they worked out, if neither of them got themselves killed and McCoy didn’t end up ruining it, Jim would continue declaring it nonverbally through his actions every day before finally slipping his sentiments into casual conversation five years down the line as mild confirmation of what McCoy would’ve already known inside and out by then.
So, why doesn’t he think this can go anywhere when McCoy can already see it so clearly?
“Is it illness or recklessness?” McCoy continues because it only makes sense if Jim’s dying, but Jim dying will never make any kind of sense—not to him. “If it’s illness, Spock and I will find a cure. If it’s recklessness, a ridiculous self-sacrificial act or some nonsense, I’ll kill you before you can kill yourself.”
Technically, he’s already done that once before. On Vulcan.
His mind roars with a plan for a problem he doesn’t have the full picture of yet. Regardless, he’ll need to loop Spock in immediately, the two of them ganging up on Jim is always more effective than just the one, and whatever it is—
“Bones!” Jim doesn’t yell, but it’s a near thing. “I’m not dying.”
“Oh.” McCoy frowns, and, for one hysterical moment, almost follows up with, Am I dying? before realizing he’d probably know that himself before Jim did.
He simply can’t figure it out.
“Well, good god, man!” he exclaims finally, still baffled with a pounding heart not quite convinced to stop worrying. “Why’d you say it like that then? Sounded like a deathbed confession!”
“No! I just—” Jim cuts himself off with a noise, sounding half-hysterical himself. He sighs and retreats into his more formal way of acting, but a mask of professional composure cannot detach the intimacy from those five words said only moments earlier.
“I know that you and Spock are…” He waves his hand vaguely in the air rather theatrically in place of words. “I’m not trying to impose on that, but I had to tell you before you found out on your own. Honestly, I’m sure Spock already knows and last month with the Vians, my—my emotionalism was so on display…”
He holds McCoy’s gaze now, intense and determined. McCoy knows he’s still angry at him for what he did on the mission even though he doesn’t say so, knows how Jim always needs things to happen on his terms and no one else’s. “I realized I’d rather you know now, from me.”
And, finally, everything starts to make sense. And when it all clicks into place, McCoy suddenly registers the one thing he should’ve been focused on this whole time:
Jim is in love with him.
“I mean,” McCoy says, stomach fluttery and voice hoarse, “yeah, Spock and I are”—he copies Jim’s bobbing hand motion—“whatever the hell we are.” (Nobody knows what Spock and McCoy are, least of all Spock and McCoy themselves.) “But,” and, here, he has to wet his lips, pausing to gather himself, “I was in love with you long before I fell in love with him.”
Jim blinks at him. For a few long seconds, he doesn’t move and McCoy freezes under his stare. It’s almost hard to believe that years of friendship have come so naturally to the both of them when they’ve been left wide-eyed and wrong-footed in the wake of a single conversation.
But then Jim smirks, mischievous and confident, and McCoy relaxes underneath the familiarity of it, flusters at the intent of it. “Then, I suppose, we should start making up for lost time.”
And as two suns set on a beautiful planet of purple soil, long-lived loves twist into new confessions and breathless first kisses, a day ending as a future begins.