[NVC Day 18] -- [Silence Amidst the Chaos] -- [Kirk/Bones]

[kirktastic]

The parts that came first, those were no problem. He had told the story before, complete and whole, during the single interview he had granted after the Narada incident. A hunk of that, a little more than half, had gone to purchasing the house on Risa. It would have been a better place to be, and Jim tried to keep the calm and peace of it in his

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[dctr_mccoy]

Bones had left the courthouse, like he told Jim he would.

Then later, he came back.

Back through the rear entrance, still in his civilian clothing so no one would bother him. He'd hoped the testimony would be done around lunchtime. A vain hope, he knew, but one he clung to.

Two hours turned into three, then four, then more. Bones sat on a bench at the end of a hallway, staring at the floor. He hasn't in the room with Jim, but he was reliving it all himself - the day Vulcan was destroyed and their lives changed, when he thought he'd lost Jim to Delta Vega, and worse. Then the kidnapping, the dream of him, finding him, working on his broken body. Things about that time that Jim himself would never know, how stupid Bones was, how ruined he was by Jim's absence.

Footsteps in the hall broke his concentration, and he looked up, seeing a familiar form heading toward him.

[kirktastic]

It was both a surprise... and not a surprise... to see Bones there.

Bones sat alone in the empty hall except for the Vulcan guards, hands wringing together between his knees in concentrated worry. How long had Bones been sitting there?

Yet... it was just sort of a coldness. No. No. Numbness. He wasn't feeling anything at all. "Bones."

[dctr_mccoy]

He looked up and sighed. Jim looked about as bad as he expected. Fuck. He stood slow, eyes level at Jim's. There wasn't a way they could be closer, not even here, alone in the hallway. He couldn't hold Jim like he wanted to.

But they could get the hell out of there, and get home. "C'mon," he nodded his head in the direction of the rear entrance to the building. No way they were dealing with reporters right now.

[kirktastic]

Jim followed, a guidance where he had been short circuited by the sight of Bones. His mind had been focused on getting back to the hotel room as he'd promised, needing that something to focus on. Now, instead, it was focused on Bones.

The walk back was more of a blur than anything. There was no defined edges, just memories he was trying to place back behind the locked doors of his mind where they had been hours ago. His hand throbbed with every step, though the memory of warm fingers slid between his own kept some of the worst of the pain at bay. Spock had been watching, or feeling, or whatever the bond did. Even though Jim hadn't said a word to him properly in days and days, Spock had reached out and helped him.

When they got back to the room, he had just enough focus left to sit down on the edge of the bed before his hands started to shake.

[dctr_mccoy]

The walk back to the hotel had been wordless and hurried, Jim not even noticing the friends and colleagues who were looking at him with curiosity and worry. For this Bones was grateful - Jim would hate to know people were concerned about him, so he acknowledged them for the both of them, a small tight smile.

Once inside, Bones watched Jim perch nervously on the bed, still in shock, and he headed toward the table where he kept his bourbon. He poured two glasses, and silently handed one to Jim. "Drink it," he told him.

[kirktastic]

Doctor's orders and all. Jim wrapped his fingers around the glass, and quickly had to do the same with his other hand to keep it from shaking. He swallowed most of it in a heavy, burning, eye-watering gulp. He lowered the glass back down to his lap and stared at it. He felt so tired, numb down to his bones like talking about everything he had been hiding had leeched everything out of him and not in a good way.

[dctr_mccoy]

Bones took his a little slower, sipping at it as he watched Jim. He looked like shit, but medically speaking Jim was okay. Nothing that was so bad that he needed to be sedated or medicated or anything else like that. What Jim needed was to rest and let what happened today go.

Sitting down next to Jim, Bones wanted to just let the other man know he was there. They'd been through a lot together, the two of them, and because of that Bones felt he could read Jim pretty well. Knew when he could push him, knew when Jim might need to get something off his chest.

Right now, Bones could see that tonight was different, and he wasn't quite sure what he needed to do. Tonight it was whatever Jim needed, so Bones sat and waited. Jim would let him know, and in the mean time, he was here.

[kirktastic]

The silence between them stretched on for a while, until the glass in Jim's hands was empty. Finally, Jim said very quietly, "...I wish we were back on Earth. Back at the Academy. I'd go find some bar where no one knew my face, where I could get so drunk the world spun and I forgot everything down to my own name." Probably cause a fight, just to get some of this out of him. Before he and Bones had gotten together, gotten laid by someone who wouldn't care a damn thing about him except how good he was with his hands and mouth and cock.

He didn't want to be a Captain of Starfleet right now, a golden boy, or maybe even Jim Kirk.

[dctr_mccoy]

Bones watched Jim carefully as he spoke. Jim wasn't complaining, wasn't whining. Wasn't feeling sorry for himself, no matter what it might have sounded like to someone who didn't know what was going on. He stood and walked back to the table, picked up the bottle and brought it back to the bed.

Holding the amber liquid in his hand, he tilted his head at Jim. "You got anything else to do tonight? Got plans to go anywhere?"

[kirktastic]

"...isn't getting drunk in your hotel room a sign of being pathetic?" It was almost like a joke, something other than the strange coldness starting to come back through. "Or is that only if it's when you're alone?" A Jim that felt sorry for himself was a very different sounding Jim, who did want to be alone - sometimes completely alone - instead of going out and being with people.

[dctr_mccoy]

Bones just watched him talk. He knew a lot about being drunk, pathetic or otherwise, but Jim didn't want to listen to that.

He poured some more liquid into each other their glasses. "I'm gonna order some food up here," he told Jim, standing as he headed to the computer terminal. "Take off your boots."

[kirktastic]

"...something good." Jim murmured, toeing off his boots before stripping off the gold command shirt and letting it fall somewhere to the side of the bed. He laid back, drink held precariously in his right hand. His left still ached.

"Hey, Bones? ...Why does it still hurt?" He waved his tattooed hand in emphasis.

[dctr_mccoy]

He didn't answer, couldn't until he'd finished placing their food order. Sandwiches, fruit, nuts - things they could snack on, nothing too heavy.

Kicking off his own shoes, he sat on the edge of the bed, one hand falling on Jim's leg. He traced a little pattern on the fabric before he spoke. "That hand's been through a lot, Jim, even before what happened to it." Understatement. "The bones there are small -phalanges," he turned Jim's hand in his own, tracing up a finger as he spoke. "Phalanx, metacarpals," he murmured looking at the pattern. "There was a lotta damage done, Jim. A lotta damage. It should get better, as the bones get stronger, as your own cells take over and replace the regenerated ones." The medical record was still hard to read, what had happened to Jim's hand, even before the tattooing began. "You want something for the pain right now?"

[kirktastic]

Jim hadn't read the reports that had been so carefully documented about all of his injuries when he had come back from the Narada. He wasn't sure he would be able to take reading it, and lived with the aches and scars of things he could only half-remember in his nightmares.

"No." The response wasn't a big surprise; rarely did Jim ever ask for anything to deal with pain and when asked he usually lied about it. He hated that feeling of being drugged up, floating and filmy and fake and falling.

[dctr_mccoy]

It was the answer Bones expected. "Food'll be here in twenty minutes."  Scooting up on the bed to sit next to Jim, he took the inked hand back in his own, carefully massaging the palm. Jim said it felt better sometimes when he rubbed it.

"May have found us a Healer," he said, not exactly changing the subject, but letting Jim know that there was no pressure to talk about it right now. Had all night. Hell, had forever, really.  

[kirktastic]

It did feel better. At least, the heat of it did. The memory of Spock doing the same thing, there but not... "Yea? Think we can trust them?" That was most of his worry. A Healer that would answer them, two outsiders now part of something so very Vulcan. A Healer that wouldn't spread word of what they asked.