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Kirk knew that from intense study at Starfleet Academy that human beings were essentially made up of stardust. He knew that his body contained three grams of iron, three grams of bright, silver-white magnesium and smaller amounts of copper and manganese. The weightiest atoms within the body, and they all came from the same source: a long ago star.
Of course there were pieces of stars in everyone; burning, dimming, sometimes even exploding, (which in Bones' case was more often than not), but Kirk found it captivating that he could practically see the stardust in Bones.
There was the iron in his blood that flowed through his veins, through his steady, beating heart when Jim slept with his head upon his chest, the calcium in the doctor’s teeth when he gave the rare flash of a white and pearly grin.
If the stardust theory was true, then Bones was essentially made up of the same things as everyone else.
But Kirk refused to believe that was true.
Bones was a cosmic being with constellations dotted on his shoulders in the form of freckles like they were stars begging to be charted, unreachable galaxies residing in the farthest reaches of the doctor's hazel eyes whist his bones were as strong and tough as the mountains themselves.
He was made up of the cosmos, of the several billion galaxies that spread through known space and the places where they could not yet reach.
Kirk had done the math a million times over; every human being was essentially 93% stardust, which meant Bones was also 93% stardust and perhaps 7% of a cat permanently having its fur stroked the wrong way.
And in the times when Kirk wasn't fascinated by all of the physics and all of the curiosity, he often wondered if Bones wished upon stars. And if he did, there was a bright and burning star within Jim Kirk that wanted to fulfill everything that Bones had ever wished for.