Fic: Shades of Grey, Chapter 6B
Author’s Note: No really! The need to split this into two separate parts is LJ’s fault! Not mine! No, it has nothing to do with the fact that I can’t do anything short. So yeah, blame LJ. *points* No? Nothing? No sympathy? Damn. Anyway, here’s the continuation of the end. I hope you all have enjoyed it as much as I’ve had fun writing it.
Chapter: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6A | 6B |
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…Woke up in his own bed in his room.
“Bones. Hey, Bones! Wake up!” Jim stood over McCoy and shook the man’s shoulder hard. Whatever he was dreaming about, it couldn’t have been pleasant. A half second later, two green-gray eyes snapped open and in that instant, Jim saw true, unadulterated terror running through them. Embarrassment followed shortly, and Kirk cocked his head to the side, stepping back and allowing his hand to fall from its former position affixed on the bare shoulder of his roommate. At the risk of asking a very stupid question, Jim carefully queried, “You okay, man? You’ve been muttering in your sleep for the last half hour. What’s going on?”
McCoy squinted, closing his left eye and dropping the right to half-mast. Jim Kirk’s worried face hovered above him. McCoy’s entire body shook once, the doctor’s eyes wide and frightened. He looked down at his hands, willing them to stop shaking. Saying nothing, he sat up in bed, threw the covers aside and staggered toward the bathroom. He made it to the toilet just in time to empty his entire dinner of coffee and pretzels from the night previous into the bowl, directly before his stomach decided that it wanted to turn itself inside out just for fun. He hit the flush button with his hand, and then leaned back, somehow wedging himself in the narrow recess of space that made up the area between the countertop, toilet and wall. McCoy’s head hit the sheet rock when he let it fall back, a dull, hollow sound echoing off the bare walls of the room.
Kirk could hear McCoy’s heart racing from down the hall. He was sure the rushing, pulsing blood coursing through the doctor’s body drowned out any sound Kirk made as he approached the bathroom, or so Jim hoped. He was honestly worried; in the fourteen months since they’d arrived at Starfleet Academy, Kirk had seen Bones in just about every state: angry, sad, melancholy, drunk (a lot of that one), proud, irritated, pleased, and on the rare occasion, happy. But he’d never seen him scared, which was the only way he could describe his roommate’s state at the present.
As he approached the doorway, Jim tried to make a sound so he wouldn’t completely startle his already flighty friend. Poking his head inside, the worry encompassing Kirk’s brain increased tenfold. McCoy was sitting, bent at the waist, left knee up against his chest and right stuck between the toilet and the countertop. His head was tilted back, eyes closed with both hands up shielding his face. Kirk asked tentatively, “Bones?”
For a few very long seconds, McCoy didn’t answer. He didn’t move, he didn’t blink, and Kirk wasn’t even sure if he was breathing he was so still. Finally, from behind the hands that shielded his face, Len said, “Jim. I think it’s time I learned how to fly a shuttle.”
Kirk was taken aback. Of all the things McCoy might have said, that was not even on the radar. But he also knew better than to push his best friend because Bones would just clam up if he did. He’d made the mistake of well-meaning meddling once before when he’d brought up Joanna and Jocelyn. He’d even gone so far as to comm the little girl on Bones’ birthday in hopes that she’d want to say hi to her father. Jocelyn was less than pleased, and though she didn’t go absolutely apeshit crazy on Jim, the look in her eyes as soon as she saw her ex in the background was enough for Kirk to know that he’d very much overstepped his bounds. One screaming, swearing argument later, McCoy stormed out the door sans comm, keys, and wallet. The result was a three day AWOL for McCoy and a frantic search by Jim and Pike to locate the doctor before he was either killed, arrested or deserted Starfleet completely. Bones eventually turned up, but to this day would not tell Kirk or Pike where he’d been or what he was doing.
Jim hated to be the guy that always stated the obvious, but when McCoy was in one of his funks, Kirk felt it was his civic duty as McCoy’s BFF to set the man straight. He took a seat next to the doorframe of the bathroom and rested one of his arms on his bent knee. With as much tact as a Kirk could manage (which was none), Jim said, “Bones, you hate to fly.”
McCoy’s head lolled slightly to the right, looking where he could see Jim from the corner of his vision. “I know that, infant.” He turned back toward the countertop. With a giant, put out sigh, Bones amended his statement. “I’ll always hate it. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t learn.”
“Not that I’m upset that you finally understand Starfleet operates in space, but this kind of sudden. What gives?” Jim replied, trying to keep the tone light. He could still see the visible lines of stress and worry pulling at his friend’s face.
“You might say it was a little bit of an epiphany,” McCoy answered cryptically. He pulled himself up off the floor of the bathroom, splashed some water on his face and made his way back to the shared living quarters. Bones sat down heavily on the bed and rolled his neck. He was still wound up and tense, and he knew Jim could see it. But there was nothing he could do about it, so he hoped the kid would at least have the common courtesy to leave it alone for the night. He activated the holo of Joanna he kept on the bookshelf next to his bed and stared at it, smiling ever so slightly.
Kirk wandered up and stood at the entrance to the main room. He leaned up against the door frame and watched as his roommate zapped the holo after a few long seconds and then retrieved the bottle of Kentucky bourbon from his desk. He set it next to Jo’s holo and stepped back.
“What’s that for?” Kirk asked when his curiosity couldn’t contain itself any longer.
McCoy shrugged. “It’s a reminder,” he said and then crawled back in bed.
Kirk furrowed his brows but did the same, ordering the lights off when he settled in. he laid awake the rest of the night, thinking about McCoy’s strange dream and even stranger reaction. Sometime just before sunrise, he grew frustrated, slipped silently out of bed, and threw on some PT clothes to go for a run. He passed McCoy’s bed on the way out the door. He was happy to see the older man was dead to the world, and quite a bit more at peace than he’d been a few hours earlier.
Using the miles to help sort out his thoughts, Jim wondered what exactly McCoy was dreaming about before he’d woken him. Kirk caught snippets of it; every once in a while, Bones would actually say something that was intelligible, but mostly it was just grunts and whines and small whimpers that came from the sleeping doctor. Jim knew it had to have something to do with Joanna, but he couldn’t quite figure out why McCoy had this sudden urge to learn to fly when the entire campus knew how terrified he was of shuttles. Nothing was meshing, and it was bothering him.
As the sun crested the horizon, Jim trudged up the stairs to his room, still no closer to finding the solution to his friend’s erratic behavior. He punched in his code and, waiting for the somewhat temperamental door to slide open, leaned against the frame. He nearly jumped in surprise when he saw McCoy was not only awake, but showered, dressed and on the desktop comm. Kirk checked his watch. 0600. McCoy was not a morning person, and usually would sleep until the very last second if allowed. The fact that he was up and at ‘em voluntarily spoke volumes about the importance of…whatever he was doing.
But as Jim looked closer, the reasoning for McCoy’s madness was clear. Kirk’s face broke out into broad smile as a five year old Joanna McCoy bounced happily in front of the viewscreen on the other end of the connection, babbling away to her dad about learning to ride a horse. In the background, Jocelyn Darnell watched carefully, a small smile tugging at her lips. Jim looked at the face of Bones’ ex. He could see that she wasn’t exactly pleased, but she wasn’t swearing at him, either. She looked almost…civil. And Bones. Kirk couldn’t wait to go to advanced tactics, if only to tell Pike of the new developments.
McCoy was smiling and laughing.
Jim tried to stay silent, but his shoulder accidentally bumped the whiteboard that hung next to the door, the one that housed the chore list for the room. McCoy swiveled around in his chair, eyebrow raised and amused smirk on his lips. He turned back toward the comm, said something to Jocelyn Kirk couldn’t hear, and then cut the connection.
Kirk took two steps into the room, feeling like an intruder in his own room. “Bones, I didn’t want to interrupt. I mean, you didn’t have to end the call.”
“It’s okay. She needed to get going anyway,” McCoy said with an air of nonchalance, gathering his books and preparing for the day ahead. He responded to Kirk’s question and his sudden comm of Jocelyn as if it were nothing, as if it weren’t a big deal.
“Okay, hold it. These last six hours have been really strange. You guys hated each other a few weeks ago. You thought she wanted to castrate you, and now you’re talking like nothing ever happened. Help a confused brother out,” Jim said dumbly. He could have slapped himself for being such an insensitive ass, but a highly developed brain to mouth filter wasn’t exactly a Kirk trait.
“No, we weren’t, but we both realized that it’s stupid for us to be fighting like we were when Jo’s stuck in the middle. We had to grow up, for her sake. I don’t want my kid growing up thinking she has to choose a side for which parent she hates less,” the doctor answered honestly.
Although Jim was happy that McCoy and Jocelyn were finally talking, it still didn’t add up. Kirk grabbed McCoy’s arm when his roommate tried to bustle past. He looked the man directly in the eyes, searching them for any type of reasoning for the sudden about face. “Bones, what’s really going on? What happened last night? Why the sudden civility? And what’s with your need to learn to fly? I mean, not that I won’t teach you, but you hate it! You hate everything about flying!”
McCoy sighed and then sat down on his unmade bed. “That was step one, talking to Joss. It was overdue, but you know that. We should have done this a long time ago.” He was silent for a couple of minutes, contemplating what to say. He yanked at a hangnail on his right thumb, wincing when he pulled the piece of skin free. The cut bubbled up with bright red blood, but Bones ignored it. Without looking at Kirk, McCoy asked, “What’s your biggest fear, Jim?” Before Kirk could answer the clearly rhetorical question, McCoy added, “Mine’s not being in control. Or being helpless. Take your pick. Probably a big reason why I’m a doctor.”
A thousand different thoughts converged in Jim’s brain all at once, each one fighting to be labeled and compartmentalized before heading off to be neatly packaged as the whole picture of the puzzle. Kirk forced his brain to slow down and slowly, the stream evened out which allowed he think clearly. As he went through the evidence piece by piece, the light bulbs started going off in his head. He knew what Bones was getting at, and how hard it was for him to admit it. Things were making a little bit more sense, but the picture was by no means completely clear. He needed just a little bit more. “And that dream last night? Was that about…” Jim trailed off, letting the sentence hang in the air. He hoped maybe an opened ended question would prompt McCoy to talk about whatever crawled under his saddle and died.
“Jo,” Bones replied tightly, still focused on nothing but his hands.
“Aha,” Kirk replied, sensing that he was going to get nothing more from his tight-lipped roommate. Jim nodded silently and patted McCoy on the shoulder. He took in the tense shoulder and clenched jaw, knowing that his friends needed a few minutes to compose himself. Kirk hopped off his bed and made his way to the bathroom to shower and change for the day. As he went through his morning routine, Jim thought about what McCoy just said and how it related to the incongruous event the night previous.
Whatever happened, Jim knew he wasn’t about to get the full story any time soon. He could probably take a few stabs at what happened in Bones’ stream of semi-consciousness and be reasonably close, but that wouldn’t be proper. All he knew was that McCoy had a dream about something, and if it scared him enough to want both mend his fractured relationship with his ex and learn to fly a shuttle, it had to be a hell of nightmare.
Jim was glad both his best friend and his best friend’s ex were finally pulling their heads out of their asses. Kirk wasn’t exactly annoyed per say, but the pattern was almost cyclical. McCoy, Jim thought, should consider a separate career in acting, because the man was damned good at pretending the lack of relationship with his only child didn’t bother him much at all. For a month or so, Bones would go about his life while pretending it didn’t hurt to leave Joanna behind in Georgia. He’d make his rounds, pull his shifts, do his coursework, and act like it was the most natural choice he’d made. But then, something would remind him of Jo and he’d crawl into a bottle for the night to forget the pain and hurt, even if it was only for a few hours. His hangover the next day was his punishment for his own perceived inadequacies as a husband and a father, and he accepted it as something that just happened.
The expectation, because of the established history, was that McCoy would reach straight for the bourbon on his desk as soon as Kirk woke him. Jim’s heart sank a bit when Bones beelined for it. But he couldn’t help the open shock when, instead of taking one long gulp straight from the bottle, he put it next to the holo of Jo instead. Jim was starting to understand what Bones meant by how it was, “Reminder.”
It was a reminder of what he’d lost, but also what he could still gain back.
His face covered in shaving cream, Jim laughed out loud. He got it. It made sense now. The twinkle in his eyes was obvious as he finished up his routine and then cleaned up the sink. He pulled on a fresh t-shirt and buckled his pants. Rounding the corner in their room on the way to the closet, Kirk vowed that he would do whatever he could to help facilitate some sort of reconciliation between Jocelyn and Bones. He would also put good credits that Captain Pike would stand right next to him on that.
Jim peeked out into the living area of their room. McCoy’s face would probably wear the perma-scowl for the entirety of his life, but his step had a lightness to it, an assuredness that it certainly lacked before. Jim knew it wouldn’t be an easy road; he had firsthand knowledge how hard it was to be inexorably tied to a military officer, but he thought McCoy would make it. He had friends and colleagues who supported him, and an entire network that would be willing to help. The only thing that could possibly derail a successful resolution was the literal end of the world, but that wasn’t bloody likely.
As he was throwing on his shoes and scrambling to find the Warp Theory PADD he’d tossed across the room the night before, Jim had a thought. He sincerely hoped that taking steps in the right direction to cure the absence of Joanna in his life meant Bones would get to see his daughter at some point during their stay at the Academy. Not only would it be good for the man, Kirk admitted to some slightly selfish urges to spoil the miniature McCoy as much as humanly possible. Not that he’d want a little bit of payback for all those uncomfortable physicals Bones always insisted he needed. No, not at all. Jim wasn’t the type of person to do something that underhanded.
Bones must have read his thoughts, which in Jim’s mind, was not necessarily a good thing. It meant that he and Bones were getting to know each other more they probably ought to. Right as Kirk was walking toward the door of their room to head off for class, a broad hand stopped him from exiting. When Jim looked into McCoy’s eyes, there was no trace of the earlier bit of melancholy, only a bit of playfulness that often lacked in Bones’ demeanor. In his most officious doctor voice, McCoy said, “Jim? If you ever meet my daughter, she’d better not learn a damned thing about sex from you. I’m her father, and I get to have the talk with her.” Grabbing his books from the desk, McCoy added, “When she’s forty.”
Jim smiled and picked up his PADD and comm from his desk. Kirk always wanted a younger sibling he could corrupt, and that thinly veiled threat from McCoy sounded distinctly like a challenge. Since he was a Kirk, he didn’t believe in no-win scenarios. He just hoped Bones was less lethal with his fists than he was with the damned hyposprays. Idly, Jim wondered just how many different vaccines were out there that McCoy could give him before he had a reaction to something. The answer was probably ‘a lot’ but it would be worth every single one of them just to spoil the hell out of Bones’ kid. It was bound to be a rough job, but someone had to do it.
--FIN--
Chapter: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6A | 6B |
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…Woke up in his own bed in his room.
“Bones. Hey, Bones! Wake up!” Jim stood over McCoy and shook the man’s shoulder hard. Whatever he was dreaming about, it couldn’t have been pleasant. A half second later, two green-gray eyes snapped open and in that instant, Jim saw true, unadulterated terror running through them. Embarrassment followed shortly, and Kirk cocked his head to the side, stepping back and allowing his hand to fall from its former position affixed on the bare shoulder of his roommate. At the risk of asking a very stupid question, Jim carefully queried, “You okay, man? You’ve been muttering in your sleep for the last half hour. What’s going on?”
McCoy squinted, closing his left eye and dropping the right to half-mast. Jim Kirk’s worried face hovered above him. McCoy’s entire body shook once, the doctor’s eyes wide and frightened. He looked down at his hands, willing them to stop shaking. Saying nothing, he sat up in bed, threw the covers aside and staggered toward the bathroom. He made it to the toilet just in time to empty his entire dinner of coffee and pretzels from the night previous into the bowl, directly before his stomach decided that it wanted to turn itself inside out just for fun. He hit the flush button with his hand, and then leaned back, somehow wedging himself in the narrow recess of space that made up the area between the countertop, toilet and wall. McCoy’s head hit the sheet rock when he let it fall back, a dull, hollow sound echoing off the bare walls of the room.
Kirk could hear McCoy’s heart racing from down the hall. He was sure the rushing, pulsing blood coursing through the doctor’s body drowned out any sound Kirk made as he approached the bathroom, or so Jim hoped. He was honestly worried; in the fourteen months since they’d arrived at Starfleet Academy, Kirk had seen Bones in just about every state: angry, sad, melancholy, drunk (a lot of that one), proud, irritated, pleased, and on the rare occasion, happy. But he’d never seen him scared, which was the only way he could describe his roommate’s state at the present.
As he approached the doorway, Jim tried to make a sound so he wouldn’t completely startle his already flighty friend. Poking his head inside, the worry encompassing Kirk’s brain increased tenfold. McCoy was sitting, bent at the waist, left knee up against his chest and right stuck between the toilet and the countertop. His head was tilted back, eyes closed with both hands up shielding his face. Kirk asked tentatively, “Bones?”
For a few very long seconds, McCoy didn’t answer. He didn’t move, he didn’t blink, and Kirk wasn’t even sure if he was breathing he was so still. Finally, from behind the hands that shielded his face, Len said, “Jim. I think it’s time I learned how to fly a shuttle.”
Kirk was taken aback. Of all the things McCoy might have said, that was not even on the radar. But he also knew better than to push his best friend because Bones would just clam up if he did. He’d made the mistake of well-meaning meddling once before when he’d brought up Joanna and Jocelyn. He’d even gone so far as to comm the little girl on Bones’ birthday in hopes that she’d want to say hi to her father. Jocelyn was less than pleased, and though she didn’t go absolutely apeshit crazy on Jim, the look in her eyes as soon as she saw her ex in the background was enough for Kirk to know that he’d very much overstepped his bounds. One screaming, swearing argument later, McCoy stormed out the door sans comm, keys, and wallet. The result was a three day AWOL for McCoy and a frantic search by Jim and Pike to locate the doctor before he was either killed, arrested or deserted Starfleet completely. Bones eventually turned up, but to this day would not tell Kirk or Pike where he’d been or what he was doing.
Jim hated to be the guy that always stated the obvious, but when McCoy was in one of his funks, Kirk felt it was his civic duty as McCoy’s BFF to set the man straight. He took a seat next to the doorframe of the bathroom and rested one of his arms on his bent knee. With as much tact as a Kirk could manage (which was none), Jim said, “Bones, you hate to fly.”
McCoy’s head lolled slightly to the right, looking where he could see Jim from the corner of his vision. “I know that, infant.” He turned back toward the countertop. With a giant, put out sigh, Bones amended his statement. “I’ll always hate it. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t learn.”
“Not that I’m upset that you finally understand Starfleet operates in space, but this kind of sudden. What gives?” Jim replied, trying to keep the tone light. He could still see the visible lines of stress and worry pulling at his friend’s face.
“You might say it was a little bit of an epiphany,” McCoy answered cryptically. He pulled himself up off the floor of the bathroom, splashed some water on his face and made his way back to the shared living quarters. Bones sat down heavily on the bed and rolled his neck. He was still wound up and tense, and he knew Jim could see it. But there was nothing he could do about it, so he hoped the kid would at least have the common courtesy to leave it alone for the night. He activated the holo of Joanna he kept on the bookshelf next to his bed and stared at it, smiling ever so slightly.
Kirk wandered up and stood at the entrance to the main room. He leaned up against the door frame and watched as his roommate zapped the holo after a few long seconds and then retrieved the bottle of Kentucky bourbon from his desk. He set it next to Jo’s holo and stepped back.
“What’s that for?” Kirk asked when his curiosity couldn’t contain itself any longer.
McCoy shrugged. “It’s a reminder,” he said and then crawled back in bed.
Kirk furrowed his brows but did the same, ordering the lights off when he settled in. he laid awake the rest of the night, thinking about McCoy’s strange dream and even stranger reaction. Sometime just before sunrise, he grew frustrated, slipped silently out of bed, and threw on some PT clothes to go for a run. He passed McCoy’s bed on the way out the door. He was happy to see the older man was dead to the world, and quite a bit more at peace than he’d been a few hours earlier.
Using the miles to help sort out his thoughts, Jim wondered what exactly McCoy was dreaming about before he’d woken him. Kirk caught snippets of it; every once in a while, Bones would actually say something that was intelligible, but mostly it was just grunts and whines and small whimpers that came from the sleeping doctor. Jim knew it had to have something to do with Joanna, but he couldn’t quite figure out why McCoy had this sudden urge to learn to fly when the entire campus knew how terrified he was of shuttles. Nothing was meshing, and it was bothering him.
As the sun crested the horizon, Jim trudged up the stairs to his room, still no closer to finding the solution to his friend’s erratic behavior. He punched in his code and, waiting for the somewhat temperamental door to slide open, leaned against the frame. He nearly jumped in surprise when he saw McCoy was not only awake, but showered, dressed and on the desktop comm. Kirk checked his watch. 0600. McCoy was not a morning person, and usually would sleep until the very last second if allowed. The fact that he was up and at ‘em voluntarily spoke volumes about the importance of…whatever he was doing.
But as Jim looked closer, the reasoning for McCoy’s madness was clear. Kirk’s face broke out into broad smile as a five year old Joanna McCoy bounced happily in front of the viewscreen on the other end of the connection, babbling away to her dad about learning to ride a horse. In the background, Jocelyn Darnell watched carefully, a small smile tugging at her lips. Jim looked at the face of Bones’ ex. He could see that she wasn’t exactly pleased, but she wasn’t swearing at him, either. She looked almost…civil. And Bones. Kirk couldn’t wait to go to advanced tactics, if only to tell Pike of the new developments.
McCoy was smiling and laughing.
Jim tried to stay silent, but his shoulder accidentally bumped the whiteboard that hung next to the door, the one that housed the chore list for the room. McCoy swiveled around in his chair, eyebrow raised and amused smirk on his lips. He turned back toward the comm, said something to Jocelyn Kirk couldn’t hear, and then cut the connection.
Kirk took two steps into the room, feeling like an intruder in his own room. “Bones, I didn’t want to interrupt. I mean, you didn’t have to end the call.”
“It’s okay. She needed to get going anyway,” McCoy said with an air of nonchalance, gathering his books and preparing for the day ahead. He responded to Kirk’s question and his sudden comm of Jocelyn as if it were nothing, as if it weren’t a big deal.
“Okay, hold it. These last six hours have been really strange. You guys hated each other a few weeks ago. You thought she wanted to castrate you, and now you’re talking like nothing ever happened. Help a confused brother out,” Jim said dumbly. He could have slapped himself for being such an insensitive ass, but a highly developed brain to mouth filter wasn’t exactly a Kirk trait.
“No, we weren’t, but we both realized that it’s stupid for us to be fighting like we were when Jo’s stuck in the middle. We had to grow up, for her sake. I don’t want my kid growing up thinking she has to choose a side for which parent she hates less,” the doctor answered honestly.
Although Jim was happy that McCoy and Jocelyn were finally talking, it still didn’t add up. Kirk grabbed McCoy’s arm when his roommate tried to bustle past. He looked the man directly in the eyes, searching them for any type of reasoning for the sudden about face. “Bones, what’s really going on? What happened last night? Why the sudden civility? And what’s with your need to learn to fly? I mean, not that I won’t teach you, but you hate it! You hate everything about flying!”
McCoy sighed and then sat down on his unmade bed. “That was step one, talking to Joss. It was overdue, but you know that. We should have done this a long time ago.” He was silent for a couple of minutes, contemplating what to say. He yanked at a hangnail on his right thumb, wincing when he pulled the piece of skin free. The cut bubbled up with bright red blood, but Bones ignored it. Without looking at Kirk, McCoy asked, “What’s your biggest fear, Jim?” Before Kirk could answer the clearly rhetorical question, McCoy added, “Mine’s not being in control. Or being helpless. Take your pick. Probably a big reason why I’m a doctor.”
A thousand different thoughts converged in Jim’s brain all at once, each one fighting to be labeled and compartmentalized before heading off to be neatly packaged as the whole picture of the puzzle. Kirk forced his brain to slow down and slowly, the stream evened out which allowed he think clearly. As he went through the evidence piece by piece, the light bulbs started going off in his head. He knew what Bones was getting at, and how hard it was for him to admit it. Things were making a little bit more sense, but the picture was by no means completely clear. He needed just a little bit more. “And that dream last night? Was that about…” Jim trailed off, letting the sentence hang in the air. He hoped maybe an opened ended question would prompt McCoy to talk about whatever crawled under his saddle and died.
“Jo,” Bones replied tightly, still focused on nothing but his hands.
“Aha,” Kirk replied, sensing that he was going to get nothing more from his tight-lipped roommate. Jim nodded silently and patted McCoy on the shoulder. He took in the tense shoulder and clenched jaw, knowing that his friends needed a few minutes to compose himself. Kirk hopped off his bed and made his way to the bathroom to shower and change for the day. As he went through his morning routine, Jim thought about what McCoy just said and how it related to the incongruous event the night previous.
Whatever happened, Jim knew he wasn’t about to get the full story any time soon. He could probably take a few stabs at what happened in Bones’ stream of semi-consciousness and be reasonably close, but that wouldn’t be proper. All he knew was that McCoy had a dream about something, and if it scared him enough to want both mend his fractured relationship with his ex and learn to fly a shuttle, it had to be a hell of nightmare.
Jim was glad both his best friend and his best friend’s ex were finally pulling their heads out of their asses. Kirk wasn’t exactly annoyed per say, but the pattern was almost cyclical. McCoy, Jim thought, should consider a separate career in acting, because the man was damned good at pretending the lack of relationship with his only child didn’t bother him much at all. For a month or so, Bones would go about his life while pretending it didn’t hurt to leave Joanna behind in Georgia. He’d make his rounds, pull his shifts, do his coursework, and act like it was the most natural choice he’d made. But then, something would remind him of Jo and he’d crawl into a bottle for the night to forget the pain and hurt, even if it was only for a few hours. His hangover the next day was his punishment for his own perceived inadequacies as a husband and a father, and he accepted it as something that just happened.
The expectation, because of the established history, was that McCoy would reach straight for the bourbon on his desk as soon as Kirk woke him. Jim’s heart sank a bit when Bones beelined for it. But he couldn’t help the open shock when, instead of taking one long gulp straight from the bottle, he put it next to the holo of Jo instead. Jim was starting to understand what Bones meant by how it was, “Reminder.”
It was a reminder of what he’d lost, but also what he could still gain back.
His face covered in shaving cream, Jim laughed out loud. He got it. It made sense now. The twinkle in his eyes was obvious as he finished up his routine and then cleaned up the sink. He pulled on a fresh t-shirt and buckled his pants. Rounding the corner in their room on the way to the closet, Kirk vowed that he would do whatever he could to help facilitate some sort of reconciliation between Jocelyn and Bones. He would also put good credits that Captain Pike would stand right next to him on that.
Jim peeked out into the living area of their room. McCoy’s face would probably wear the perma-scowl for the entirety of his life, but his step had a lightness to it, an assuredness that it certainly lacked before. Jim knew it wouldn’t be an easy road; he had firsthand knowledge how hard it was to be inexorably tied to a military officer, but he thought McCoy would make it. He had friends and colleagues who supported him, and an entire network that would be willing to help. The only thing that could possibly derail a successful resolution was the literal end of the world, but that wasn’t bloody likely.
As he was throwing on his shoes and scrambling to find the Warp Theory PADD he’d tossed across the room the night before, Jim had a thought. He sincerely hoped that taking steps in the right direction to cure the absence of Joanna in his life meant Bones would get to see his daughter at some point during their stay at the Academy. Not only would it be good for the man, Kirk admitted to some slightly selfish urges to spoil the miniature McCoy as much as humanly possible. Not that he’d want a little bit of payback for all those uncomfortable physicals Bones always insisted he needed. No, not at all. Jim wasn’t the type of person to do something that underhanded.
Bones must have read his thoughts, which in Jim’s mind, was not necessarily a good thing. It meant that he and Bones were getting to know each other more they probably ought to. Right as Kirk was walking toward the door of their room to head off for class, a broad hand stopped him from exiting. When Jim looked into McCoy’s eyes, there was no trace of the earlier bit of melancholy, only a bit of playfulness that often lacked in Bones’ demeanor. In his most officious doctor voice, McCoy said, “Jim? If you ever meet my daughter, she’d better not learn a damned thing about sex from you. I’m her father, and I get to have the talk with her.” Grabbing his books from the desk, McCoy added, “When she’s forty.”
Jim smiled and picked up his PADD and comm from his desk. Kirk always wanted a younger sibling he could corrupt, and that thinly veiled threat from McCoy sounded distinctly like a challenge. Since he was a Kirk, he didn’t believe in no-win scenarios. He just hoped Bones was less lethal with his fists than he was with the damned hyposprays. Idly, Jim wondered just how many different vaccines were out there that McCoy could give him before he had a reaction to something. The answer was probably ‘a lot’ but it would be worth every single one of them just to spoil the hell out of Bones’ kid. It was bound to be a rough job, but someone had to do it.
--FIN--