Fic: A Real Shitfest of a Day
Title: A Real Shitfest of a Day
Author: laughter_now
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Star Trek, but I'm still hoping...
Summary: Answer to this prompt at the kink_meme. Bones has a really shitty day. Fortunately, Jim is there to pick up the pieces
This one is short, sorry. It's been a while, and I'm still trying to get out of the writing funk I've been in for a couple of weeks now. Enjoy.
A Real Shitfest of a Day
All Jim saw when the door to their quarters opened was the sight of a blue uniform moving past their desk and into the direction of the bedroom. There was a thudding sound, twice in quick succession, as if something had dropped to the floor, and then a soft thud and the creak of bedsprings under the sudden weight of a fully grown man.
Jim was surprised, to say the least. No matter his mood, it was unheard of that Bones passed him by without so much as a word. Jim immediately got up from his chair, a worried knot forming in the pit of his stomach. As he rounded the partition that separated their bedroom from the rest of their quarters, he was greeted by the sight of his husband sprawled out on the bed, on his stomach with a pillow pulled over his head. He had managed to pull off his boots before he collapsed on the bed, which would explain the earlier dull thuds, but else he was still fully dressed.
"Bones?"
The answer was muffled by the pillow and completely unintelligible, but the tone of his husband's voice only served to make Jim's worry rise. He sat down on the bed beside Bones' hip and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
A few moments passed, but then Bones rolled onto his side and the pillow was lifted to reveal Bones' tired and exhausted face.
"You're the Captain, right? Can't you just…I don't know, order for this day to be erased? Let's just start over tomorrow and pretend today never happened."
Bones' voice sounded just as exhausted as he looked, and normally the gravely tones would have done wonders for Jim's libido, but today the exhaustion that was overshadowing everything, and Jim couldn't help but worry about how untypical this was for Bones.
"Anything I should know about?"
Bones looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then he shook his head with a sigh. "As Captain? No, not really. It was just…" he sighed, "just a crappy day. A really crappy day."
Jim pulled the pillow away from his husband's face completely and leaned in to press a kiss against his cheek.
"I'm sorry. Come on, let's get you comfortable." He gently pulled Bones up into a sitting position, which was no small feat considering that the other man was mostly limp and pliant, and not of much help when it came to sitting up on his own. It felt as if all strength had left his husband where he normally would be grumbling and complaining about any ordinary shitty day, and Jim was getting more and more worried about that. Once he had managed to get Bones into a sitting position, he reached for the hem of Bones' blue uniform shirt and started to pull it up right along with the undershirt.
"Did you eat?"
Bones gave an affirmative grunt, and once Jim had pulled the shirts off, he tiredly leaned his head against Jim's shoulder. Jim wrapped an arm around him and pulled Bones' warm body close against his own.
"Get some rest, Bones."
Normally, Bones was one to protest just for the sake of it, but now he was unusually pliant as Jim pulled back the blankets and shifted them around until Bones was curled up under the covers. Actually, Jim still had work to do, reports to read and a few crew assignments that Spock wanted to discuss with him to deliberate, but he barely spent a thought on that before he kicked off his boots and shrugged out of his own shirt.
Bones had his eyes closed, but opened them to slits as Jim slid under the blanket beside him.
"What'cha doing?" He asked, in the same adorable voice he always got when he was really sleepy. Instead of giving an answer, Jim slid ever closer until they were lying skin to skin, with Bones' head pillowed on his arm and his free hand tangled in his husband's hair.
"Tell me what happened."
Bones shook his head, but at the same time pressed his face more tightly into Jim's shoulder.
"It's stupid."
Jim slid his hand from Bones' hair and down his back, feeling the tense muscles relax slightly under his touch.
"I'm sure it isn't. You grumble and gripe without end when stupid things happen, but you don't try to suffocate yourself with your own pillow."
"'t was your pillow," Bones mumbled, and Jim was sure that for a moment, he could hear a trace of amusement in his husband's voice. He pressed a kiss on top of Bones' hair and started to run his hand up and down his back in long, soothing strokes.
"Tell me," he repeated softly.
"It's…stupid little things. You know those days when everything seems to conspire against you?"
Jim had his fair share of those, but he waited for Bones to continue instead of saying anything.
"Christine called in sick this morning."
That was pretty much unheard of. "Anything serious?"
Bones shook his head against Jim's shoulder. "A flu bug, she'll be fine in a day or two, but today I really could have used her help. Instead two more of my staff were temporarily reassigned to the Science Department to oversee some experiments, we ended up seriously understaffed and I had to chase down half the Stellar Cartography department who conveniently forgot about their vaccination appointments."
Jim would have offered to give them all a stern talking to, but considering his own hesitation to keep his scheduled appointments for physicals, he figured that would be a little hypocritical.
Bones didn't seem discouraged by the lack of response from his husband. He shifted on the bed, moving yet a little bit closer, his arm wrapped firmly around Jim's waist as if he was worried Jim could decide that he had enough and just get up and leave any moment now.
"Then one of the technical assistants dropped a tray of cultures in the lab. Ruined a set of experiments that took two weeks to set up, and as if that wasn't enough, he nearly hit the biohazard alert and put the entire Medical Bay on lockdown because he thought the stuff might be infectious."
"It wasn't though, was it?"
Bones shook his head and exhaled a warm breath against Jim's skin. "No. It was a Tellarite fungus that we might use to synthesize some vaccine bases from. In two weeks, that is, because now I've got to set the whole damn panel up again. I even told the tech that the samples weren't infectious before I sent him in to handle them, but he was too busy ogling Nurse Alvarez' ass to listen to me, and as a result he nearly put all of us under lockdown. I wasn't even done yet giving him the riot act when one of the cooling units gave out, and according to Scotty it's going to take a day or two to get it fixed, so I had to rearrange the whole damn lab to fit everything into the three cooling units that still work."
"I'll tell him that repairs in Medical have priority."
Which they had, at least as far as all vital functions were concerned. Bones shook his head.
"No, he's doing what he can, and he probably has more important stuff on his plate. We'll manage. It wouldn't even have mattered if I hadn't just finished cleaning up the remains of my fungus cultures right before I had to turn the whole lab upside down again. And then, just as I was about to go on my lunch break, I received a video call from Starfleet Medical, in which some asshole Admiral thanked me oh-so-politely for my suggestions on how to update the standard emergency response protocols, and then politely told me that right now Starfleet neither had the time nor the resources to put them into practice. Which translates into we don't give a damn about what you think because there's no profit or glory in it, no matter that some protocols are way outdated. And by the time I was done with that pleasant conversation and finally got to the mess, they were out of both chicken and stew, so I had some disgusting concoction that called itself soup but tasted like someone threw the remains of my Tellarite fungus into yesterday's dishwater."
Bones was talking himself into a rant, though not one of his usual ones where he ranted and vented and once he was done, his world was spinning back on its axis. Right now, he only sounded resigned, rattling off an ever-growing list of things that had turned his day into a downright shitfest. Worrisomely, he didn't seem to be finished yet by a long shot.
"Once I got back from my lunch break, I tried to get started on the backlog of paperwork that keeps piling up on my desk, but the Botany lab decided today was as good a time as any to figure out that those specimen we picket up on the Bargallian moon last week cause extreme skin irritation once the blossoms release their spores. Apparently, they reached that part of their natural cycle today of all days. So I spent my next hour and a half treating so many rashes that we're running low on steroid creams, and I tell you that most little children are better at listening when you tell them to stop scratching than Starfleet Officers. I had half a mind to restrain the whole lot of them just to make sure they listened."
He gave a shaky sigh against Jim's shoulder and nuzzled his face against the skin of Jim's neck. When he spoke again, his breath was gushing across Jim's jaw in warm, moist puffs.
"And just as I was finally getting somewhere with my paperwork, the new edition of Genetic Science Quarterly arrived on my PADD."
Jim frowned, his hand stopping its soothing movement across Leonard's back.
"The one who refused your article a while back?"
Leonard nodded against Jim's skin. "The very one. They told me my research was too irrelevant to publish because there were too few people who'd ever profit from researching chronic genetic diseases only a small percentage of people could ever potentially suffer from. I give you three guesses as to what their entire latest edition is about."
"Assholes," Jim growled, suddenly feeling very protective of Bones even though his husband could normally take care of himself and his own interests. But right now, on a day when everything had gone wrong for Bones, he couldn't help the feeling that he wanted to blame someone and make them pay for what they had done to him.
"They didn't plagiarize your work, did they?"
Bones shook his head. "Nah. If they had, at least they'd have printed something worthwhile. Instead, they wasted publishing space on someone who probably never saw the inside of a lab, if his article is any indication. A guy who, by all accounts, is now claiming to be the one who raised public interest in those overlooked genetic diseases. I don't know what his angle is, because he's never going to win any scientific prizes with the pile of shit he calls his work, but apparently he's loaded enough to make significant donations to all the right places. Apparently, that's what it takes to get your work published these days."
"Oh, Bones."
His husband merely shrugged, though he burrowed yet another bit closer against Jim.
"At about that point I called it a day, but you were still busy, so I thought I could maybe go right to sleep and forget this day ever happened."
"Hey." Jim withdrew slightly and waited until Bones tiredly blinked up at him. "Work definitely isn't more important than you."
One eyebrow rose in silent challenge. "I was simply having a crappy day, Jim."
"Yes, and you're my husband, which makes crappy days fall right into my realm of responsibility. No matter if I have work to do or not. As long as the ship's not under fire or something, I want to know what's bothering you. That's part of the whole marriage package. I think it's in the fine print somewhere."
That did the trick and brought a small smile to Bones' face. Jim answered with a smile of his own and leaned in to press a kiss to his husband's lips.
"Now, is there anything you need? Do you want something to eat that doesn't taste like yesterday's dishwater?"
Bones shook his head and buried his neck against Jim's neck once more. "Nah, I ate a sandwich while I was doing my paperwork. I'm good."
"Considering what you just told me, I doubt that good is really the right word to describe how you're feeling."
"I'm getting there," Bones sighed. "This is already a lot better than I was half an hour ago."
And that was all Jim needed to hear. He pulled Bones closer against himself, until they were settled in a comfortable position, and resumed the gentle and soothing strokes of his hand thought his husband's hair and down his back. Bones sighed, and Jim felt some of the tension drain out of his body.
Jim pressed a gentle line of kisses along Bones' shoulder, not with intent, but simply for the sake of feeling his husband's skin, and to hear the small exhaled sigh that escaped Bones' lips.
It was still early, and they were both still wearing their uniform pants, but Jim slid one of his legs between his husband's and closed his eyes. Bones was warm and pliant against him, and Jim wanted nothing more than to gather him ever closer, until there was not the fragment of an inch of space between them.
"I could talk to Scotty, have him reprogram the ship's systems to turn the Stardate back one day come midnight. But I'm afraid it won't change anything about the fact that there's still a bunch of Botanists with an itchy rash running around on this ship."
Bones snorted. "I know. Wouldn't change a thing about the fact that Genetic Science Quarterly is run by morons, either. Or that some Admirals don't have the common sense of a Rigellian swamp frog. But thanks for the sentiment; I really appreciate it."
Jim probably couldn't change most of what was bothering his husband, and his influence certainly didn't stretch to the publishers who had screwed Bones over, but he did know a few people in Starfleet Admiralty, people who had influence. And maybe those people would listen to the concerns of a Starfleet Captain about outdated emergency response protocols, even when they wouldn't listen to a decorated Doctor. And maybe a drill or two over the next week would be in order, just to make sure that all Departments were kept on their toes.
He'd even show up for his next physical on time and completely voluntarily. Right now, with Bones a warm weight in his arms who was slowly but surely relaxing against him, Jim was ready to do a whole lot more than that to give his husband some peace of mind.
Bones shifted against him with a small, sleepy sigh. With a smile, Jim ran his hand through Bones' hair and along his neck.
"I promise tomorrow will be better," he whispered, thinking that his husband had already drifted off. Bones' arm tightened across his hip, fingers splayed against the small of his back.
"Thanks, Jim."
"You're welcome. Now, get some rest."
"I know you got work to do Jim. You don't need to stay."
"Nowhere I'd rather be, Bones."
And it was true. The administrative side of being Captain just didn't hold the same appeal as being with the man he loved.
It wasn't even in the same league.
So Jim closed his eyes, pressed his face into Bones hair and allowed himself to drift off.
The End
Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.
Author: laughter_now
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Star Trek, but I'm still hoping...
Summary: Answer to this prompt at the kink_meme. Bones has a really shitty day. Fortunately, Jim is there to pick up the pieces
This one is short, sorry. It's been a while, and I'm still trying to get out of the writing funk I've been in for a couple of weeks now. Enjoy.
A Real Shitfest of a Day
All Jim saw when the door to their quarters opened was the sight of a blue uniform moving past their desk and into the direction of the bedroom. There was a thudding sound, twice in quick succession, as if something had dropped to the floor, and then a soft thud and the creak of bedsprings under the sudden weight of a fully grown man.
Jim was surprised, to say the least. No matter his mood, it was unheard of that Bones passed him by without so much as a word. Jim immediately got up from his chair, a worried knot forming in the pit of his stomach. As he rounded the partition that separated their bedroom from the rest of their quarters, he was greeted by the sight of his husband sprawled out on the bed, on his stomach with a pillow pulled over his head. He had managed to pull off his boots before he collapsed on the bed, which would explain the earlier dull thuds, but else he was still fully dressed.
"Bones?"
The answer was muffled by the pillow and completely unintelligible, but the tone of his husband's voice only served to make Jim's worry rise. He sat down on the bed beside Bones' hip and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
A few moments passed, but then Bones rolled onto his side and the pillow was lifted to reveal Bones' tired and exhausted face.
"You're the Captain, right? Can't you just…I don't know, order for this day to be erased? Let's just start over tomorrow and pretend today never happened."
Bones' voice sounded just as exhausted as he looked, and normally the gravely tones would have done wonders for Jim's libido, but today the exhaustion that was overshadowing everything, and Jim couldn't help but worry about how untypical this was for Bones.
"Anything I should know about?"
Bones looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then he shook his head with a sigh. "As Captain? No, not really. It was just…" he sighed, "just a crappy day. A really crappy day."
Jim pulled the pillow away from his husband's face completely and leaned in to press a kiss against his cheek.
"I'm sorry. Come on, let's get you comfortable." He gently pulled Bones up into a sitting position, which was no small feat considering that the other man was mostly limp and pliant, and not of much help when it came to sitting up on his own. It felt as if all strength had left his husband where he normally would be grumbling and complaining about any ordinary shitty day, and Jim was getting more and more worried about that. Once he had managed to get Bones into a sitting position, he reached for the hem of Bones' blue uniform shirt and started to pull it up right along with the undershirt.
"Did you eat?"
Bones gave an affirmative grunt, and once Jim had pulled the shirts off, he tiredly leaned his head against Jim's shoulder. Jim wrapped an arm around him and pulled Bones' warm body close against his own.
"Get some rest, Bones."
Normally, Bones was one to protest just for the sake of it, but now he was unusually pliant as Jim pulled back the blankets and shifted them around until Bones was curled up under the covers. Actually, Jim still had work to do, reports to read and a few crew assignments that Spock wanted to discuss with him to deliberate, but he barely spent a thought on that before he kicked off his boots and shrugged out of his own shirt.
Bones had his eyes closed, but opened them to slits as Jim slid under the blanket beside him.
"What'cha doing?" He asked, in the same adorable voice he always got when he was really sleepy. Instead of giving an answer, Jim slid ever closer until they were lying skin to skin, with Bones' head pillowed on his arm and his free hand tangled in his husband's hair.
"Tell me what happened."
Bones shook his head, but at the same time pressed his face more tightly into Jim's shoulder.
"It's stupid."
Jim slid his hand from Bones' hair and down his back, feeling the tense muscles relax slightly under his touch.
"I'm sure it isn't. You grumble and gripe without end when stupid things happen, but you don't try to suffocate yourself with your own pillow."
"'t was your pillow," Bones mumbled, and Jim was sure that for a moment, he could hear a trace of amusement in his husband's voice. He pressed a kiss on top of Bones' hair and started to run his hand up and down his back in long, soothing strokes.
"Tell me," he repeated softly.
"It's…stupid little things. You know those days when everything seems to conspire against you?"
Jim had his fair share of those, but he waited for Bones to continue instead of saying anything.
"Christine called in sick this morning."
That was pretty much unheard of. "Anything serious?"
Bones shook his head against Jim's shoulder. "A flu bug, she'll be fine in a day or two, but today I really could have used her help. Instead two more of my staff were temporarily reassigned to the Science Department to oversee some experiments, we ended up seriously understaffed and I had to chase down half the Stellar Cartography department who conveniently forgot about their vaccination appointments."
Jim would have offered to give them all a stern talking to, but considering his own hesitation to keep his scheduled appointments for physicals, he figured that would be a little hypocritical.
Bones didn't seem discouraged by the lack of response from his husband. He shifted on the bed, moving yet a little bit closer, his arm wrapped firmly around Jim's waist as if he was worried Jim could decide that he had enough and just get up and leave any moment now.
"Then one of the technical assistants dropped a tray of cultures in the lab. Ruined a set of experiments that took two weeks to set up, and as if that wasn't enough, he nearly hit the biohazard alert and put the entire Medical Bay on lockdown because he thought the stuff might be infectious."
"It wasn't though, was it?"
Bones shook his head and exhaled a warm breath against Jim's skin. "No. It was a Tellarite fungus that we might use to synthesize some vaccine bases from. In two weeks, that is, because now I've got to set the whole damn panel up again. I even told the tech that the samples weren't infectious before I sent him in to handle them, but he was too busy ogling Nurse Alvarez' ass to listen to me, and as a result he nearly put all of us under lockdown. I wasn't even done yet giving him the riot act when one of the cooling units gave out, and according to Scotty it's going to take a day or two to get it fixed, so I had to rearrange the whole damn lab to fit everything into the three cooling units that still work."
"I'll tell him that repairs in Medical have priority."
Which they had, at least as far as all vital functions were concerned. Bones shook his head.
"No, he's doing what he can, and he probably has more important stuff on his plate. We'll manage. It wouldn't even have mattered if I hadn't just finished cleaning up the remains of my fungus cultures right before I had to turn the whole lab upside down again. And then, just as I was about to go on my lunch break, I received a video call from Starfleet Medical, in which some asshole Admiral thanked me oh-so-politely for my suggestions on how to update the standard emergency response protocols, and then politely told me that right now Starfleet neither had the time nor the resources to put them into practice. Which translates into we don't give a damn about what you think because there's no profit or glory in it, no matter that some protocols are way outdated. And by the time I was done with that pleasant conversation and finally got to the mess, they were out of both chicken and stew, so I had some disgusting concoction that called itself soup but tasted like someone threw the remains of my Tellarite fungus into yesterday's dishwater."
Bones was talking himself into a rant, though not one of his usual ones where he ranted and vented and once he was done, his world was spinning back on its axis. Right now, he only sounded resigned, rattling off an ever-growing list of things that had turned his day into a downright shitfest. Worrisomely, he didn't seem to be finished yet by a long shot.
"Once I got back from my lunch break, I tried to get started on the backlog of paperwork that keeps piling up on my desk, but the Botany lab decided today was as good a time as any to figure out that those specimen we picket up on the Bargallian moon last week cause extreme skin irritation once the blossoms release their spores. Apparently, they reached that part of their natural cycle today of all days. So I spent my next hour and a half treating so many rashes that we're running low on steroid creams, and I tell you that most little children are better at listening when you tell them to stop scratching than Starfleet Officers. I had half a mind to restrain the whole lot of them just to make sure they listened."
He gave a shaky sigh against Jim's shoulder and nuzzled his face against the skin of Jim's neck. When he spoke again, his breath was gushing across Jim's jaw in warm, moist puffs.
"And just as I was finally getting somewhere with my paperwork, the new edition of Genetic Science Quarterly arrived on my PADD."
Jim frowned, his hand stopping its soothing movement across Leonard's back.
"The one who refused your article a while back?"
Leonard nodded against Jim's skin. "The very one. They told me my research was too irrelevant to publish because there were too few people who'd ever profit from researching chronic genetic diseases only a small percentage of people could ever potentially suffer from. I give you three guesses as to what their entire latest edition is about."
"Assholes," Jim growled, suddenly feeling very protective of Bones even though his husband could normally take care of himself and his own interests. But right now, on a day when everything had gone wrong for Bones, he couldn't help the feeling that he wanted to blame someone and make them pay for what they had done to him.
"They didn't plagiarize your work, did they?"
Bones shook his head. "Nah. If they had, at least they'd have printed something worthwhile. Instead, they wasted publishing space on someone who probably never saw the inside of a lab, if his article is any indication. A guy who, by all accounts, is now claiming to be the one who raised public interest in those overlooked genetic diseases. I don't know what his angle is, because he's never going to win any scientific prizes with the pile of shit he calls his work, but apparently he's loaded enough to make significant donations to all the right places. Apparently, that's what it takes to get your work published these days."
"Oh, Bones."
His husband merely shrugged, though he burrowed yet another bit closer against Jim.
"At about that point I called it a day, but you were still busy, so I thought I could maybe go right to sleep and forget this day ever happened."
"Hey." Jim withdrew slightly and waited until Bones tiredly blinked up at him. "Work definitely isn't more important than you."
One eyebrow rose in silent challenge. "I was simply having a crappy day, Jim."
"Yes, and you're my husband, which makes crappy days fall right into my realm of responsibility. No matter if I have work to do or not. As long as the ship's not under fire or something, I want to know what's bothering you. That's part of the whole marriage package. I think it's in the fine print somewhere."
That did the trick and brought a small smile to Bones' face. Jim answered with a smile of his own and leaned in to press a kiss to his husband's lips.
"Now, is there anything you need? Do you want something to eat that doesn't taste like yesterday's dishwater?"
Bones shook his head and buried his neck against Jim's neck once more. "Nah, I ate a sandwich while I was doing my paperwork. I'm good."
"Considering what you just told me, I doubt that good is really the right word to describe how you're feeling."
"I'm getting there," Bones sighed. "This is already a lot better than I was half an hour ago."
And that was all Jim needed to hear. He pulled Bones closer against himself, until they were settled in a comfortable position, and resumed the gentle and soothing strokes of his hand thought his husband's hair and down his back. Bones sighed, and Jim felt some of the tension drain out of his body.
Jim pressed a gentle line of kisses along Bones' shoulder, not with intent, but simply for the sake of feeling his husband's skin, and to hear the small exhaled sigh that escaped Bones' lips.
It was still early, and they were both still wearing their uniform pants, but Jim slid one of his legs between his husband's and closed his eyes. Bones was warm and pliant against him, and Jim wanted nothing more than to gather him ever closer, until there was not the fragment of an inch of space between them.
"I could talk to Scotty, have him reprogram the ship's systems to turn the Stardate back one day come midnight. But I'm afraid it won't change anything about the fact that there's still a bunch of Botanists with an itchy rash running around on this ship."
Bones snorted. "I know. Wouldn't change a thing about the fact that Genetic Science Quarterly is run by morons, either. Or that some Admirals don't have the common sense of a Rigellian swamp frog. But thanks for the sentiment; I really appreciate it."
Jim probably couldn't change most of what was bothering his husband, and his influence certainly didn't stretch to the publishers who had screwed Bones over, but he did know a few people in Starfleet Admiralty, people who had influence. And maybe those people would listen to the concerns of a Starfleet Captain about outdated emergency response protocols, even when they wouldn't listen to a decorated Doctor. And maybe a drill or two over the next week would be in order, just to make sure that all Departments were kept on their toes.
He'd even show up for his next physical on time and completely voluntarily. Right now, with Bones a warm weight in his arms who was slowly but surely relaxing against him, Jim was ready to do a whole lot more than that to give his husband some peace of mind.
Bones shifted against him with a small, sleepy sigh. With a smile, Jim ran his hand through Bones' hair and along his neck.
"I promise tomorrow will be better," he whispered, thinking that his husband had already drifted off. Bones' arm tightened across his hip, fingers splayed against the small of his back.
"Thanks, Jim."
"You're welcome. Now, get some rest."
"I know you got work to do Jim. You don't need to stay."
"Nowhere I'd rather be, Bones."
And it was true. The administrative side of being Captain just didn't hold the same appeal as being with the man he loved.
It wasn't even in the same league.
So Jim closed his eyes, pressed his face into Bones hair and allowed himself to drift off.
The End
Thanks for reading. As always, please let me know what you think. Thanks a lot.