Ficathon Fic: "Crush" for Gone_Ashore
Title: "Crush"
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,419
Summary: When your world caves in on you, you find your priorities in life very quickly.
Notes: This fic is written as a fill for gone_ashore, as part of my ficathon to raise money for the eye surgery I need if I want to join the fire department.
"Crush"
He shouldn’t have been able to hear it.
Between the deafening rumbling of the ground beneath his feet, the sharp cracks of trees snapping like toothpicks outside the walls of the research compound, and the sound of shattering glass, Leonard McCoy should not have been able to hear the tiny cry of pain, nor the one desperate word, whimpered breathlessly in the middle of the chaos.
"Bones."
He swore he felt his blood freeze in his veins, and he stepped out of the doorframe where he’d been riding out the quake.
“Jim.”
In half a heartbeat, he dropped the vital research supplies he’d been sent to retrieve, because screw this damned mission and mediocre research equipment and promises of several hours before the seismic activity became dangerous - something had happened to Jim. In the other half of a heartbeat, he was scrambling through the overturned furniture and scattered equipment and dust and debris, stumbling as the floor shook again, then running out of the room and down the corridor. He didn’t know where he was going, but his instinct seemed to lead him unerringly, over a fallen support beam, under sagging electrical conduits, through a cracked doorframe...
“Bones...”
Leonard didn’t see him at first, or maybe it was because his brain didn’t want to comprehend what his eyes were telling him.
The ceiling had collapsed. And in the middle of the mess, there was a support beam laying across the rubble. And under that support beam was Jim.
Legs askew, black pants almost gray from the thick coat of dust. One of Jim’s hands was on top of the beam, clawing at it weakly. Leonard couldn’t quite see his face from there, but it was Jim, and... good God.
“Bones... I can’t... breathe....”
It jolted Leonard into action like a shock. “Jim!” He climbed around the mess until he could see Jim’s face and hurried to kneel down next to him.
Jim’s face was already ghastly pale underneath the grime and dust, and there was a trickle of blood streaking across his temple from his hairline. He gasped, tried to cough, and moaned in pain.
“What happened?” Leonard asked as he pulled out his tricorder, even though he knew exactly what had happened. He needed to keep Jim talking until he could ascertain the damage.
“Roof... caved in... I was... looking... for the... official... research log... oh fuck... Bones...”
“I know, Jim, I know,” Leonard said as he quickly took in the readout from the tricorder. It was a mess. To his amazement, there was no sign of spinal damage, but he was looking at fractured ribs, moderate concussion, lacerated liver, and the most damning of all - rapidly dropping oxygen saturation. Jim could only expand his chest a couple of centimeters at most with that beam on top of him, and Leonard knew that the kid wouldn’t last long like that. He reached for his communicator on his belt, and came up empty-handed. A quick glance down showed that the strap that held it had been ripped away, probably caught on the corner of some piece of rubble in the damaged building. “Goddammit, my communicator is missing!” He looked around desperately, knowing that it could have been dropped anytime after the first big tremor, and that he’d probably never find it in all this rubble and dust. “Jim, I need to get help... I need -”
“Don’t leave... don’t... leave me, Bones...”
Leonard was going to say that the beam was too heavy to lift by himself, and even if he could, someone else would have needed to pull Jim out from underneath while he did... but he never got the chance. The ground shook again, and in front of his eyes, the beam shifted.
Jim’s mouth opened in what should have been an ear-splitting howl of pain, but the noise that came out was almost inaudible. Leonard knew that the beam was crushing Jim’s chest so much that he’d suffocate in seconds.
He didn’t even think. With the blood rushing in his ears and breath hot and tight in his throat, he suddenly had the end of the beam in his hands... and it was moving. Shifting... slowly... off of Jim... up... and...
With a furious growl, he heaved the beam off and shoved it to the side, where it landed harmlessly on the rubble. He didn’t pause to consider what he’d just done, and instead, he was back at Jim’s side in an instant. Instead of going for his tricorder, he grabbed his medkit and sliced Jim’s shirt open with his laser cutter. “Jim! Talk to me, kid. Can you hear me?”
Jim’s head was lolling to the side, but his eyes were screwed up in pain. He was making a pitiful, horrible whining sound with each shallow breath he took.
“Come on, Jim, open your eyes. Look at me,” he demanded as he quickly looked over Jim’s chest. Even from a cursory visual inspection, he could tell that almost all the ribs on the right-hand side were broken, and a horrific bruise was blossoming across Jim’s torso. “Jim... JIM.”
Bleary eyes peeked through strained features. “Bones... hurts...” He was pale... too pale, and his lips were starting to turn blue.
“I know it does, Jim. But you’ve gotta stay with me.” He glanced back at the doorway to the room. Almost everyone else had been in the main part of the research compound when the quake had struck. Only he and Jim had gone to search the administrative areas, and people were likely beaming up as quickly as possible with the unstable seismic activity. There was a good chance they were alone on the surface. “Where’s your communicator?”
“No... idea... Bones. I... I don’t...”
Leonard glanced around, and... of course. There was Jim’s communicator, or at least, what was left of it. Barely recognizable, but that was it. “Found it,” Leonard said flatly. “But I don’t think we’ll be phoning home with it anytime soon.”
“It... it figures,” Jim gasped.
It was obviously getting progressively harder for Jim to breathe, and something was starting to set off a whole new alarm in Leonard’s head. “Jim, wait a second -”
Leonard reached back for his tricorder, but before he could grab it, another aftershock hit. There was a grinding sound from above, and acting on pure instinct, Leonard threw himself over Jim’s head and torso. His mind was spinning with goddammit and fear for Jim and oh God, we need to get out of here as he spread himself as wide as he could over his captain and best friend and prayed to a God he didn’t believe in for some sort of salvation.
He felt a rain of dust and small debris hit his back, but when the shaking stopped - a minute or an hour later, Leonard had no idea - nothing large or heavy had struck either of them. Maybe there was a God listening, he thought vaguely as he cautiously pulled back and away from Jim...
… but that thought flew out the window when he saw what had developed during the tremor.
Jim was gasping for air, his chest heaving unevenly, and his lips were shockingly cyanotic. And there, screaming a diagnosis at him more clearly than any tricorder, was Jim’s trachea, clearly deviating to the left.
Tension pneumothorax, Leonard realized, eyes widening in horror.
“Bones,” Jim gasped, barely audible. “Help... Bones.”
Leonard lunged for his medkit. The communicator was useless because unless he found it in less than a minute and had Jim in surgery back in sickbay within two minutes, there was no point. He tore open his medkit, grabbing supplies as he talked.
“I’m gonna help you, Jim. Hang tight, kid. I know it hurts, and I know you can’t breathe, and I’m going to take care of it. You got that? I promise you, I’m going to fix it.” His hands were moving rapidly but surely over familiar equipment, pulling a decompression kit out of its sterile wrapper. He was flying on autopilot, unable to let himself think or feel beyond the immediate necessity of getting the air out of the space around Jim’s lungs. If he let himself think more than that, he might begin to panic at the idea that his best friend was suffocating right in front of him, and all he had was his damned medkit and no guaranteed way to get back to the ship. “You still with me, Jim?”
Jim’s eyes were becoming more and more bleary, but he managed to nod, chest still heaving ineffectively, weaker now than it had been only seconds ago.
“Good, Jim. That’s really good,” Leonard encouraged, not daring to say how bad it really was. He was pretty sure Jim knew anyway.
He quickly ran the sterilizer unit over the upper part of Jim’s right chest. “This is gonna hurt a bit, Jim, but it’s going to help you. I promise.” He positioned the decompression set over the site, between the second and third ribs, the sharp metal point of the thick needle peeking out at the end of the plastic catheter that would vent the air out of Jim’s pleural space... if he did it right. He hadn’t done a manual decompression in years, but it wasn’t that hard. There was no time for an anesthetic. There was no time to hesitate. He counted down, more for himself than for Jim.
“One... two... three!” He plunged the needle into Jim’s chest. Jim’s eyes went wide and his body jolted in response to the pain, but Leonard held him down with one hand while he held fast to the catheter with his other hand. At the same time, he was rewarded with the sound of air rapidly hissing out through the decompression set.
Jim sucked in a breath of air, accompanied by a moan of pain, but he was breathing, and that was good enough for the moment. His trachea began to drift back towards midline, and after a few desperate gasps, he looked down at Leonard. “You... are gonna... be the... death of me.”
The thin attempt at humor released something in Leonard, and he let himself take a breath as he pulled the needle out of the catheter and secured the catheter in place with a strip of adhesive. “You’re one to talk. And if anything, I’d say that earthquakes and rafters might be the death of you, if not Romulans and Klingons and several classes of antibiotics.”
“Heh.” Jim closed his eyes and moaned in pain. “What the hell... was that... anyway?”
“Chest decompression,” Leonard said, digging right back into his med kit. “You broke a bunch of your ribs, and at least one of those punctured your right lung. It’s leaking air into your chest cavity, which meant your lung couldn’t expand, and it was putting pressure on your heart and aorta, too. I needed to release the pressure the old-fashioned way.”
“So you... fixed it?”
Leonard frowned as he pulled out a pair of stabilizers from his kit. He couldn’t lie to Jim, even when he desperately wanted to give the guy nothing but reassurances. “It’s a patch job at best. I’m bailing out a sinking ship, but I didn’t plug the hole. Your lung is still leaking air into your chest cavity, and I have to get you back to sickbay to fix it.” He carefully fastened the stabilizers over Jim’s ribs. It was far from perfect, but it might help Jim breathe a little bit deeper.
“Right,” Jim said, his voice thin and shallow. “You need to... find your... your communicator.”
“One step at a time, kid,” Leonard said. “I’ve got to stabilize you as much as I can. And don’t you dare gripe at me about the hypospray.”
Jim made a weak attempt at a smile. “Not this time.”
Leonard nodded uneasily. Sure, he said he hated it when Jim complained about medical treatment, especially when it was obvious that the kid needed it, but Jim wasn’t even pretending to bitch about it... and that couldn’t be good. He ran a quick scan with the tricorder, confirming what he already knew. He focused the scan on the lungs, and he quickly saw why the tension pneumothorax had developed so rapidly. Jim’s ribs had punctured his lung in three separate places. He looked worriedly at the small decompression catheter. It was like trying to bail out the Titanic with a teaspoon. And then, there was that hepatic bleed... shit.
Clenching his jaw, Leonard grabbed a few vials and loaded the first into his hypospray. “Sorry for doing each of these separately, but I don’t have time to mix ‘em, and you need them all.” He pressed the device against Jim’s carotid as gently as possible. “Tri-ox, because your oxygen saturation is complete shit right now.”
“You say... the nicest things... Bones.”
“You bet I do.” He switched out the cartridges, watching as Jim’s cyanosis quickly improved, the sickly blue color of his lips turning an almost-human shade of flesh-tone. Still horribly pale, but not blue. Nodding to himself with grim satisfaction, he loaded a vasoconstrictor to help with the shock, administered it, and then the best painkiller he had in his kit. “This will help with the pain, kid.”
“I know.”
For some reason, Jim’s easy compliance was bothering Leonard more than anything. He grimaced and grabbed his tricorder again. The drugs were helping, but Jim couldn’t last long without real treatment. He hadn’t ruptured the largest blood vessels in his liver, but it wasn’t exactly a minor bleed, either... and the vascular stabilizers wouldn’t reach that deep.
“Listen, Jim... I need to find us some help. Sure, folks will be looking for us pretty quickly, but we can’t wait that long.” You can’t wait that long. “I’m going to look for my communicator in the other room, but if I can’t find it, I’m going to go to the main research complex and see if I can find anyone.”
“That makes... that makes sense,” Jim replied, and damn, he looked too tired... too complacent.
“Okay, I’ll be right back.”
Walking out of the room felt like the wrong thing to do, but what choice did he have? He was still feeling minor tremors rumbling through the floor, causing the damaged ceilings and walls to shiver around him, and he was shivering himself. No, he was shaking, and it was adrenaline and fear and... goddammit, why isn’t Jim fighting with me?
He walked through the corridor with its flickering lights, backtracking through the rubble, looking for any sign of his communicator. He pushed aside scraps of paneling and pieces of the ceiling. He turned the corner into the supply room where he’d been hunting for the gravimetric sensor prototype that the scientists swore was more important than life and limb - damn them all - and began sifting through overturned furniture and broken research equipment, hunting for the familiar shape and lifeline of his communicator. Without it, he couldn’t hail the ship for beamup. He couldn’t call anyone else in the landing party for help. God damn it, without the comm, he and Jim were alone.
His scrambling around the room became frantic, and every second felt like an eternity. The ground rumbled again in a brief tremor, but it stopped before Leonard could even begin to react, so he kept digging. His shirt caught on a jagged piece of metal, and he felt the sharp bite of the alloy against his skin, but he just growled at it and kept going. It was all he could do.
No, it wasn’t all he could do. The communicator was nowhere to be found, and Leonard didn’t have time to dick around, hunting for it... not when Jim was... when Jim was in the other room... in pain and... and yeah, the kid was dying, and Leonard knew it. He could stop it with the right tools - snatch Jim away from death’s door, just like he had so many times in the past, but not here. He had nothing. Just a damned med kit and a broken communicator and a dying man and... GODDAMMIT.
With a furious growl, Leonard threw aide a piece of equipment he couldn’t even identify, turned, and ran out the door. Down the hall, towards the front of the administrative building, through the front door. There had to be somebody there. Anybody.
He skidded to a halt in front of the admin building, looking across the large open area of the compound towards the main research structure. Smoke was rising from one corner of it, and the roof had caved in. There was nobody outdoors, and if Leonard had to take a guess, there was nobody inside that structure either, but... but there had to be, because Jim needed help, and there was nobody else. They were alone.
Leonard blinked.
Jim was already alone.
Leonard had left him alone.
Jim was in shock, with a head wound, a pneumothorax, internal bleeding, and...
FUCK.
Everything else could be damned, as far as Leonard was concerned, as he raced back to the room where he’d left Jim.
“Jim!” He scrambled over debris and rubble, almost losing his balance when a piece of a ceiling panel slipped under his foot, but quickly getting himself right back to Jim’s side. The man’s eyes were closed, skin ashen and clammy, and his chest was rising and falling too quickly, too shallowly. “Jim,” Leonard said again, grabbing Jim’s hand and squeezing hard. “Come on, kid, open your eyes for me.”
Jim moaned faintly, and dammit, Leonard never should have left him. He grabbed his hypospray and quickly administered another dose of tri-ox, but Jim was already in decompensated shock, and the drug wouldn’t hold him for long. A quick check with the tricorder only confirmed what Leonard could see by looking at him.
“Bones?” Jim said weakly, eyes flickering open.
“Jim! I... dammit, Jim, I’m sorry I left. I shouldn’t have gone. I promised you I’d never leave you alone like that, and I -”
“Bones... shut up... for a minute.” Despite his obvious weakness, Jim’s eyes focused on Leonard’s face, and Leonard felt his gut freeze, because he’d never seen a look like that on the kid. Jim finally gave a tiny nod. “They’ll send a... a party for us soon, Bones. You know... they will. But I... I don’t know... how long... I can last.”
“Jim, don’t you dare start talking like that, ya hear me? You are not going to die on me today!” Hot pressure was building behind Leonard’s eyes, and he was not going to cry because he was a Starfleet officer and a doctor, dammit, but he was also Jim’s best friend and this was just too much. He knew exactly where this was going.
And damn him, Jim actually managed an amused smirk. “That an order, captain?”
“Jim, please...”
“Bones. Don’t make me... waste my breath. Listen.” Jim’s voice was weak, but startlingly confident. It contrasted the dust caking his gray skin, the rivulets of sweat and blood from under his hairline, the rasping breaths, the glassy haze over his eyes.
“I’m listening.”
“Tell Spock to... keep the crew... together.”
“Jim, don’t say this...”
But Jim ignored him and kept talking. “You stay... with him, Bones. He needs you. Crew needs you.”
“Okay. Okay, Jim.” No, it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t anything close to okay.
“Back on the ship... in my desk... left top drawer... data chip. For you, Bones. Please... read it.”
“I will. God, Jim...” Unable to hold back any longer, and cursing himself for not having done it sooner, Leonard reached over and grabbed Jim’s hand.
At that, Jim actually smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Leonard gritted his teeth. “I’d be glad if we were back on this ship so I could patch you up and get on with yelling at you for getting yourself beat up again.”
“Maybe... you will. Can’t take... the chance.”
The ground rumbled again.
Leonard looked up at the ceiling warily. “They never should have sent us down here. They should have done a better seismic scan. Damn it all, they shouldn’t have bothered trying to retrieve the equipment! It’s just... stuff! It’s not worth risking human life! Nothing is worth that!” Tears were starting to squeeze out of his eyes, and he didn’t give a shit.
“Some things... are worth... the risk. Space... explore... exploration.” His eyes slowly closed and opened again, and it was obvious that he was fading, and fighting it with every breath. “Live with... no regrets, Bones. I have... no regrets...”
Jim’s eyes fluttered, and his head lolled to the side.
Leonard swore his own heart stopped beating. Not releasing Jim’s hand, which was now slack in his own, he pressed the fingers of his other hand against Jim’s neck. There was still a pulse, but it was too fast, too thready, too weak. He quickly administered another dose of tri-ox, but there wasn’t much else he could do until he got Jim to sickbay.
He looked down at Jim, and swallowed tightly before gently carding his hand through Jim’s filthy hair. “Maybe you have no regrets, kid... but I do. Lord above, I do.”
Another tremor rattled the building, and Leonard covered Jim with his body again, but the earthquake didn’t scare him. The only thing that scared him now was time... seconds ticking away like heartbeats... running out... time was running out...
The ground stopped rumbling, but there was a new noise. It was the sound of debris shifting, footsteps, and... voices.
“Captain Kirk! Doctor McCoy! Can you hear me?”
Leonard had never been so relieved to hear Spock’s voice in his life. “In here! Dammit man, hurry up! The captain is injured!”
Spock came through the doorway, followed by a security guard and a medic. “Why did you not comm the ship for beam out?”
“Use your damned logic, Spock! One of them got smashed, and we lost the other, and... forget it!” He grabbed the communicator out of Spock’s hand. “McCoy to Enterprise! Emergency transport, directly to sickbay.”
He had never been so relieved in his life to feel his body dissolve in the transporter beam.
*********
Jim’s first thought on regaining consciousness was to be surprised that he had regained consciousness. He was a bit fuzzy as to why that surprised him, but hey, consciousness was good, right? Then he realized that his chest felt like he’d been used as a trampoline by a elephant, and memory started to come back.
“Urgh...” He groaned and blinked a few times, taking in the too-familiar sight of the ceiling of sickbay. He hated that view, but at the moment, he’d take it. It was better than the alternative. For once, he has been sure that he was going to die. The sickening memory of that calm acceptance twisted something uncomfortably in his gut, but... that was neither here nor there. He was alive, and he had one man to thank for it. “Bones?”
“Captain Kirk, it’s good to see you awake.”
Jim blinked. That wasn’t Bones. “Nurse Chapel... good to see you, too. Where’s Doctor McCoy?”
She smiled at him, then looked to the side. Jim followed her gaze to the next biobed over, where Bones was out cold.
“What happened to him?” Jim asked in a rush. “Is he okay?”
Chapel walked over to him and quickly checked the readouts on the monitor as he patted his arm reassuringly. “He’ll be just fine. Crazy man had a grade two concussion and didn’t even realize he’d hit his head in the first place.” She fixed Jim with a look. “Probably too busy worrying about you to even notice. We didn’t even see it until he’d finished your surgery.”
“Oh, Bones,” Jim said softly to himself. He remembered Bones covering him with his body during a tremor, and wondered if something had hit him during that time. It was possible. But that was Bones... always putting himself in harm’s way for others, even as he chewed them out for doing the same thing.
Other disjointed memories swam around in his head. The impossible weight of the beam on his chest. The terrifying sensation of not being able to pull any air into his lungs. The searing stab of that needle Bones had driven into his chest. The sight of Bones hurrying out of the room to find the communicator. The moment Jim had been absolutely sure he was going to die. The look of denial on Bones’ face. But what stood out was the raw panic and holy shit, Bones really lifted that beam himself.
Jim had heard about feats of strength from people trying to save loved ones. He and Bones had been friends for a long time, but Jim still couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen. Bones was no slouch when it came to upper-body strength, but that had been unreal.
“How’s your pain level?” Chapel interrupted his thoughts as she fiddled with something on the control panel next to his bed.
“I feel like a Klingon was tap-dancing on my chest.”
She chuckled softly. “Well, if that isn’t an honest answer from Captain Kirk.”
He blinked slowly. “I’m too tired to protest.”
She glanced down sympathetically. “Well, you should be tired. You actually lost more blood than we should have been able to revive you from. McCoy and M’Benga worked on you for almost five hours, and we actually had to call for blood donors from the crew because blood replenishers are only effective if they’re less than fifteen percent of your total blood volume.”
“Shit.”
Chapel gave him an admonishing look. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, given the circumstances.”
“You’re so kind.” He yawned, grimacing at the ache that caused in his chest. “Sleepy.”
“Recovering makes you tired, Captain. Just rest.”
Jim thought he might have nodded, but he was too tired to be sure.
*********
It must be a hangover. That would be the only explanation for the splitting headache and the fact that the light in the room felt like daggers through his eyelids.
Leonard groaned to himself, grumbling, “Computer, lights off.”
“Unable to comply. Light levels must remain at 30% or higher in main sickbay facilities unless ordered by on-duty personnel.”
Sickbay? On-duty... shit.
“Oh, good, Doctor McCoy, you’re awake.” A hypospray connected with his neck without warning.
Leonard slapped a hand over the spot as his eyes flew open, and he cringed against the bright lights of sickbay. “Nurse Chapel, if you ever stealth-sedate me again, I will have your rank, and you’ll find yourself on delta shift for...” His tirade faded as the pain in his head likewise dissipated. He blinked. “Oh, that’s much better.”
“You’re welcome,” she said bluntly, twirling the hypospray in her fingers like a pro.
He swung his feet over the edge of the biobed and stood up. “Where’s Jim?”
“He’s back in the pulmonary bay for a treatment. Where do you think you’re going?”
Leonard was already halfway to the door of sickbay. “I’ve got something I need to find before Jim gets out of his treatment. I’ll be right back.”
“You haven’t been discharged!”
Leonard paused just inside the door of sickbay. “Computer, please note for the record that Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy, M.D. has discharged himself from medical care for a damned bump on the head, and will take responsibility for any consequences.”
“Doctor McCoy!”
But the door to sickbay was already hissing shut behind him. He plowed through the corridor, ignoring the curious and possibly concerned looks from the crewmen he passed until he got to the turbolift. “Deck six.”
A moment later, he had abused his medical override to get into the captain’s quarters, and was fishing through the socks in the top drawer of Jim’s dresser. His fingers brushed against something slim and hard, and he withdrew a data chip. On the casing, in Jim’s untidy scrawl, was written, Bones.
He knew full-well that Jim had meant for him to see this only if he’d died, but Leonard didn’t care right now. What the hell could be so important that Jim had to be sure Leonard would know it, but that he could only give the message from beyond the grave?
Settling himself at Jim’s desk, he popped the chip into Jim’s computer terminal, and watched in disbelief as the message played.
*********
Jim felt like a balloon that had been inflated and deflated too many times. The tech had insisted that it was necessary; chest trauma could lead to pneumonia because it hurt too much to breathe deeply, so they had to make sure he was working his lungs properly.
Bastards.
But really, it wasn’t too horrible. There had been pain meds, and they’d given him a sedative promptly after the breathing treatment so he could sleep it off. For once, he’d been grateful. And damn, he was tired.
Waking up this time was definitely less painful, though, courtesy of modern medicine and really good painkillers. But something else was different.
Jim shifted slightly and realize that there was something squeezing his hand. No... not something... someone.
“C’mon, Jim... open those peepers for me.”
Jim dutifully opened his eyes to see Bones staring back at him. The man had one hell of a five’o’clock shadow, and Jim also wasn’t going to call him on the fact that he might also have a case of bed-head, because the sight of him was like balm on a ragged wound. “Bones... you... I can’t believe it, but... you brought me back from that. I thought I was gone this time.” He swallowed thickly. “I really thought I was gone, but -”
Bones reached out and gently laid a finger over Jim’s lips, hushing him. The hand clasping his own squeezed a bit tighter. “I know ya did, Jim. But what did I tell you? Not on my watch, right?”
Jim nodded hesitantly.
“You do have a talent for getting yourself beat to a pulp.”
“Not my fault this time,” he said sheepishly.
Bones gave him a look of feigned exasperation, but it was full of a sort of warmth that he almost never showed. “Funny how that’s the exception and not the rule.”
“Hey, I can’t let your life get boring, can I?”
Bones expression morphed into something unreadable. “My life with you has never been boring, Jim.”
There was something about the way Bones had said that made Jim’s stomach twist oddly. “We’ve had a lot of adventures,” Jim said uneasily.
“Sure have.”
Bones was looking at him in a way that made Jim feel as though it was the first time he was seeing him, all over again. And suddenly... it clicked.
“You found the data chip.”
Bones gave him one steady nod.
“I didn’t... I mean... I didn’t mean for...” Jim squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pull his hand out of Bones’ grasp, but if anything, Bones held him tighter.
“You didn’t mean for me to know you felt like that until you were dead?” Bones asked in plain exasperation. “What do you take me for, Jim?”
Jim looked back at Bones. There was no reason to hide now, and to be honest, he didn't want to. “My best friend. My always-there. My partner-in-uniform and the guy who’s saved my life more times than I can count.” He swallowed thickly. “The person who means enough to me that I couldn’t risk driving you away.”
Bones shook his head and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. “Jim, you can be such an idiot sometimes.”
“I’m sorry, I should never have made that recording, and if you could just pretend you never saw it, I would -”
“Jim?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
In the next heartbeat, Bones was leaning forward, planting a gentle, chaste kiss on Jim’s lips. Jim, for his part, was too shocked to kiss back, but when Bones leaned away and looked down at him again, he was smiling.
Jim found himself just a bit breathless, and it had nothing to do with broken ribs or punctured lungs. “Really?”
“Yeah, kid. Really.”
*********
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,419
Summary: When your world caves in on you, you find your priorities in life very quickly.
Notes: This fic is written as a fill for gone_ashore, as part of my ficathon to raise money for the eye surgery I need if I want to join the fire department.
"Crush"
He shouldn’t have been able to hear it.
Between the deafening rumbling of the ground beneath his feet, the sharp cracks of trees snapping like toothpicks outside the walls of the research compound, and the sound of shattering glass, Leonard McCoy should not have been able to hear the tiny cry of pain, nor the one desperate word, whimpered breathlessly in the middle of the chaos.
"Bones."
He swore he felt his blood freeze in his veins, and he stepped out of the doorframe where he’d been riding out the quake.
“Jim.”
In half a heartbeat, he dropped the vital research supplies he’d been sent to retrieve, because screw this damned mission and mediocre research equipment and promises of several hours before the seismic activity became dangerous - something had happened to Jim. In the other half of a heartbeat, he was scrambling through the overturned furniture and scattered equipment and dust and debris, stumbling as the floor shook again, then running out of the room and down the corridor. He didn’t know where he was going, but his instinct seemed to lead him unerringly, over a fallen support beam, under sagging electrical conduits, through a cracked doorframe...
“Bones...”
Leonard didn’t see him at first, or maybe it was because his brain didn’t want to comprehend what his eyes were telling him.
The ceiling had collapsed. And in the middle of the mess, there was a support beam laying across the rubble. And under that support beam was Jim.
Legs askew, black pants almost gray from the thick coat of dust. One of Jim’s hands was on top of the beam, clawing at it weakly. Leonard couldn’t quite see his face from there, but it was Jim, and... good God.
“Bones... I can’t... breathe....”
It jolted Leonard into action like a shock. “Jim!” He climbed around the mess until he could see Jim’s face and hurried to kneel down next to him.
Jim’s face was already ghastly pale underneath the grime and dust, and there was a trickle of blood streaking across his temple from his hairline. He gasped, tried to cough, and moaned in pain.
“What happened?” Leonard asked as he pulled out his tricorder, even though he knew exactly what had happened. He needed to keep Jim talking until he could ascertain the damage.
“Roof... caved in... I was... looking... for the... official... research log... oh fuck... Bones...”
“I know, Jim, I know,” Leonard said as he quickly took in the readout from the tricorder. It was a mess. To his amazement, there was no sign of spinal damage, but he was looking at fractured ribs, moderate concussion, lacerated liver, and the most damning of all - rapidly dropping oxygen saturation. Jim could only expand his chest a couple of centimeters at most with that beam on top of him, and Leonard knew that the kid wouldn’t last long like that. He reached for his communicator on his belt, and came up empty-handed. A quick glance down showed that the strap that held it had been ripped away, probably caught on the corner of some piece of rubble in the damaged building. “Goddammit, my communicator is missing!” He looked around desperately, knowing that it could have been dropped anytime after the first big tremor, and that he’d probably never find it in all this rubble and dust. “Jim, I need to get help... I need -”
“Don’t leave... don’t... leave me, Bones...”
Leonard was going to say that the beam was too heavy to lift by himself, and even if he could, someone else would have needed to pull Jim out from underneath while he did... but he never got the chance. The ground shook again, and in front of his eyes, the beam shifted.
Jim’s mouth opened in what should have been an ear-splitting howl of pain, but the noise that came out was almost inaudible. Leonard knew that the beam was crushing Jim’s chest so much that he’d suffocate in seconds.
He didn’t even think. With the blood rushing in his ears and breath hot and tight in his throat, he suddenly had the end of the beam in his hands... and it was moving. Shifting... slowly... off of Jim... up... and...
With a furious growl, he heaved the beam off and shoved it to the side, where it landed harmlessly on the rubble. He didn’t pause to consider what he’d just done, and instead, he was back at Jim’s side in an instant. Instead of going for his tricorder, he grabbed his medkit and sliced Jim’s shirt open with his laser cutter. “Jim! Talk to me, kid. Can you hear me?”
Jim’s head was lolling to the side, but his eyes were screwed up in pain. He was making a pitiful, horrible whining sound with each shallow breath he took.
“Come on, Jim, open your eyes. Look at me,” he demanded as he quickly looked over Jim’s chest. Even from a cursory visual inspection, he could tell that almost all the ribs on the right-hand side were broken, and a horrific bruise was blossoming across Jim’s torso. “Jim... JIM.”
Bleary eyes peeked through strained features. “Bones... hurts...” He was pale... too pale, and his lips were starting to turn blue.
“I know it does, Jim. But you’ve gotta stay with me.” He glanced back at the doorway to the room. Almost everyone else had been in the main part of the research compound when the quake had struck. Only he and Jim had gone to search the administrative areas, and people were likely beaming up as quickly as possible with the unstable seismic activity. There was a good chance they were alone on the surface. “Where’s your communicator?”
“No... idea... Bones. I... I don’t...”
Leonard glanced around, and... of course. There was Jim’s communicator, or at least, what was left of it. Barely recognizable, but that was it. “Found it,” Leonard said flatly. “But I don’t think we’ll be phoning home with it anytime soon.”
“It... it figures,” Jim gasped.
It was obviously getting progressively harder for Jim to breathe, and something was starting to set off a whole new alarm in Leonard’s head. “Jim, wait a second -”
Leonard reached back for his tricorder, but before he could grab it, another aftershock hit. There was a grinding sound from above, and acting on pure instinct, Leonard threw himself over Jim’s head and torso. His mind was spinning with goddammit and fear for Jim and oh God, we need to get out of here as he spread himself as wide as he could over his captain and best friend and prayed to a God he didn’t believe in for some sort of salvation.
He felt a rain of dust and small debris hit his back, but when the shaking stopped - a minute or an hour later, Leonard had no idea - nothing large or heavy had struck either of them. Maybe there was a God listening, he thought vaguely as he cautiously pulled back and away from Jim...
… but that thought flew out the window when he saw what had developed during the tremor.
Jim was gasping for air, his chest heaving unevenly, and his lips were shockingly cyanotic. And there, screaming a diagnosis at him more clearly than any tricorder, was Jim’s trachea, clearly deviating to the left.
Tension pneumothorax, Leonard realized, eyes widening in horror.
“Bones,” Jim gasped, barely audible. “Help... Bones.”
Leonard lunged for his medkit. The communicator was useless because unless he found it in less than a minute and had Jim in surgery back in sickbay within two minutes, there was no point. He tore open his medkit, grabbing supplies as he talked.
“I’m gonna help you, Jim. Hang tight, kid. I know it hurts, and I know you can’t breathe, and I’m going to take care of it. You got that? I promise you, I’m going to fix it.” His hands were moving rapidly but surely over familiar equipment, pulling a decompression kit out of its sterile wrapper. He was flying on autopilot, unable to let himself think or feel beyond the immediate necessity of getting the air out of the space around Jim’s lungs. If he let himself think more than that, he might begin to panic at the idea that his best friend was suffocating right in front of him, and all he had was his damned medkit and no guaranteed way to get back to the ship. “You still with me, Jim?”
Jim’s eyes were becoming more and more bleary, but he managed to nod, chest still heaving ineffectively, weaker now than it had been only seconds ago.
“Good, Jim. That’s really good,” Leonard encouraged, not daring to say how bad it really was. He was pretty sure Jim knew anyway.
He quickly ran the sterilizer unit over the upper part of Jim’s right chest. “This is gonna hurt a bit, Jim, but it’s going to help you. I promise.” He positioned the decompression set over the site, between the second and third ribs, the sharp metal point of the thick needle peeking out at the end of the plastic catheter that would vent the air out of Jim’s pleural space... if he did it right. He hadn’t done a manual decompression in years, but it wasn’t that hard. There was no time for an anesthetic. There was no time to hesitate. He counted down, more for himself than for Jim.
“One... two... three!” He plunged the needle into Jim’s chest. Jim’s eyes went wide and his body jolted in response to the pain, but Leonard held him down with one hand while he held fast to the catheter with his other hand. At the same time, he was rewarded with the sound of air rapidly hissing out through the decompression set.
Jim sucked in a breath of air, accompanied by a moan of pain, but he was breathing, and that was good enough for the moment. His trachea began to drift back towards midline, and after a few desperate gasps, he looked down at Leonard. “You... are gonna... be the... death of me.”
The thin attempt at humor released something in Leonard, and he let himself take a breath as he pulled the needle out of the catheter and secured the catheter in place with a strip of adhesive. “You’re one to talk. And if anything, I’d say that earthquakes and rafters might be the death of you, if not Romulans and Klingons and several classes of antibiotics.”
“Heh.” Jim closed his eyes and moaned in pain. “What the hell... was that... anyway?”
“Chest decompression,” Leonard said, digging right back into his med kit. “You broke a bunch of your ribs, and at least one of those punctured your right lung. It’s leaking air into your chest cavity, which meant your lung couldn’t expand, and it was putting pressure on your heart and aorta, too. I needed to release the pressure the old-fashioned way.”
“So you... fixed it?”
Leonard frowned as he pulled out a pair of stabilizers from his kit. He couldn’t lie to Jim, even when he desperately wanted to give the guy nothing but reassurances. “It’s a patch job at best. I’m bailing out a sinking ship, but I didn’t plug the hole. Your lung is still leaking air into your chest cavity, and I have to get you back to sickbay to fix it.” He carefully fastened the stabilizers over Jim’s ribs. It was far from perfect, but it might help Jim breathe a little bit deeper.
“Right,” Jim said, his voice thin and shallow. “You need to... find your... your communicator.”
“One step at a time, kid,” Leonard said. “I’ve got to stabilize you as much as I can. And don’t you dare gripe at me about the hypospray.”
Jim made a weak attempt at a smile. “Not this time.”
Leonard nodded uneasily. Sure, he said he hated it when Jim complained about medical treatment, especially when it was obvious that the kid needed it, but Jim wasn’t even pretending to bitch about it... and that couldn’t be good. He ran a quick scan with the tricorder, confirming what he already knew. He focused the scan on the lungs, and he quickly saw why the tension pneumothorax had developed so rapidly. Jim’s ribs had punctured his lung in three separate places. He looked worriedly at the small decompression catheter. It was like trying to bail out the Titanic with a teaspoon. And then, there was that hepatic bleed... shit.
Clenching his jaw, Leonard grabbed a few vials and loaded the first into his hypospray. “Sorry for doing each of these separately, but I don’t have time to mix ‘em, and you need them all.” He pressed the device against Jim’s carotid as gently as possible. “Tri-ox, because your oxygen saturation is complete shit right now.”
“You say... the nicest things... Bones.”
“You bet I do.” He switched out the cartridges, watching as Jim’s cyanosis quickly improved, the sickly blue color of his lips turning an almost-human shade of flesh-tone. Still horribly pale, but not blue. Nodding to himself with grim satisfaction, he loaded a vasoconstrictor to help with the shock, administered it, and then the best painkiller he had in his kit. “This will help with the pain, kid.”
“I know.”
For some reason, Jim’s easy compliance was bothering Leonard more than anything. He grimaced and grabbed his tricorder again. The drugs were helping, but Jim couldn’t last long without real treatment. He hadn’t ruptured the largest blood vessels in his liver, but it wasn’t exactly a minor bleed, either... and the vascular stabilizers wouldn’t reach that deep.
“Listen, Jim... I need to find us some help. Sure, folks will be looking for us pretty quickly, but we can’t wait that long.” You can’t wait that long. “I’m going to look for my communicator in the other room, but if I can’t find it, I’m going to go to the main research complex and see if I can find anyone.”
“That makes... that makes sense,” Jim replied, and damn, he looked too tired... too complacent.
“Okay, I’ll be right back.”
Walking out of the room felt like the wrong thing to do, but what choice did he have? He was still feeling minor tremors rumbling through the floor, causing the damaged ceilings and walls to shiver around him, and he was shivering himself. No, he was shaking, and it was adrenaline and fear and... goddammit, why isn’t Jim fighting with me?
He walked through the corridor with its flickering lights, backtracking through the rubble, looking for any sign of his communicator. He pushed aside scraps of paneling and pieces of the ceiling. He turned the corner into the supply room where he’d been hunting for the gravimetric sensor prototype that the scientists swore was more important than life and limb - damn them all - and began sifting through overturned furniture and broken research equipment, hunting for the familiar shape and lifeline of his communicator. Without it, he couldn’t hail the ship for beamup. He couldn’t call anyone else in the landing party for help. God damn it, without the comm, he and Jim were alone.
His scrambling around the room became frantic, and every second felt like an eternity. The ground rumbled again in a brief tremor, but it stopped before Leonard could even begin to react, so he kept digging. His shirt caught on a jagged piece of metal, and he felt the sharp bite of the alloy against his skin, but he just growled at it and kept going. It was all he could do.
No, it wasn’t all he could do. The communicator was nowhere to be found, and Leonard didn’t have time to dick around, hunting for it... not when Jim was... when Jim was in the other room... in pain and... and yeah, the kid was dying, and Leonard knew it. He could stop it with the right tools - snatch Jim away from death’s door, just like he had so many times in the past, but not here. He had nothing. Just a damned med kit and a broken communicator and a dying man and... GODDAMMIT.
With a furious growl, Leonard threw aide a piece of equipment he couldn’t even identify, turned, and ran out the door. Down the hall, towards the front of the administrative building, through the front door. There had to be somebody there. Anybody.
He skidded to a halt in front of the admin building, looking across the large open area of the compound towards the main research structure. Smoke was rising from one corner of it, and the roof had caved in. There was nobody outdoors, and if Leonard had to take a guess, there was nobody inside that structure either, but... but there had to be, because Jim needed help, and there was nobody else. They were alone.
Leonard blinked.
Jim was already alone.
Leonard had left him alone.
Jim was in shock, with a head wound, a pneumothorax, internal bleeding, and...
FUCK.
Everything else could be damned, as far as Leonard was concerned, as he raced back to the room where he’d left Jim.
“Jim!” He scrambled over debris and rubble, almost losing his balance when a piece of a ceiling panel slipped under his foot, but quickly getting himself right back to Jim’s side. The man’s eyes were closed, skin ashen and clammy, and his chest was rising and falling too quickly, too shallowly. “Jim,” Leonard said again, grabbing Jim’s hand and squeezing hard. “Come on, kid, open your eyes for me.”
Jim moaned faintly, and dammit, Leonard never should have left him. He grabbed his hypospray and quickly administered another dose of tri-ox, but Jim was already in decompensated shock, and the drug wouldn’t hold him for long. A quick check with the tricorder only confirmed what Leonard could see by looking at him.
“Bones?” Jim said weakly, eyes flickering open.
“Jim! I... dammit, Jim, I’m sorry I left. I shouldn’t have gone. I promised you I’d never leave you alone like that, and I -”
“Bones... shut up... for a minute.” Despite his obvious weakness, Jim’s eyes focused on Leonard’s face, and Leonard felt his gut freeze, because he’d never seen a look like that on the kid. Jim finally gave a tiny nod. “They’ll send a... a party for us soon, Bones. You know... they will. But I... I don’t know... how long... I can last.”
“Jim, don’t you dare start talking like that, ya hear me? You are not going to die on me today!” Hot pressure was building behind Leonard’s eyes, and he was not going to cry because he was a Starfleet officer and a doctor, dammit, but he was also Jim’s best friend and this was just too much. He knew exactly where this was going.
And damn him, Jim actually managed an amused smirk. “That an order, captain?”
“Jim, please...”
“Bones. Don’t make me... waste my breath. Listen.” Jim’s voice was weak, but startlingly confident. It contrasted the dust caking his gray skin, the rivulets of sweat and blood from under his hairline, the rasping breaths, the glassy haze over his eyes.
“I’m listening.”
“Tell Spock to... keep the crew... together.”
“Jim, don’t say this...”
But Jim ignored him and kept talking. “You stay... with him, Bones. He needs you. Crew needs you.”
“Okay. Okay, Jim.” No, it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t anything close to okay.
“Back on the ship... in my desk... left top drawer... data chip. For you, Bones. Please... read it.”
“I will. God, Jim...” Unable to hold back any longer, and cursing himself for not having done it sooner, Leonard reached over and grabbed Jim’s hand.
At that, Jim actually smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Leonard gritted his teeth. “I’d be glad if we were back on this ship so I could patch you up and get on with yelling at you for getting yourself beat up again.”
“Maybe... you will. Can’t take... the chance.”
The ground rumbled again.
Leonard looked up at the ceiling warily. “They never should have sent us down here. They should have done a better seismic scan. Damn it all, they shouldn’t have bothered trying to retrieve the equipment! It’s just... stuff! It’s not worth risking human life! Nothing is worth that!” Tears were starting to squeeze out of his eyes, and he didn’t give a shit.
“Some things... are worth... the risk. Space... explore... exploration.” His eyes slowly closed and opened again, and it was obvious that he was fading, and fighting it with every breath. “Live with... no regrets, Bones. I have... no regrets...”
Jim’s eyes fluttered, and his head lolled to the side.
Leonard swore his own heart stopped beating. Not releasing Jim’s hand, which was now slack in his own, he pressed the fingers of his other hand against Jim’s neck. There was still a pulse, but it was too fast, too thready, too weak. He quickly administered another dose of tri-ox, but there wasn’t much else he could do until he got Jim to sickbay.
He looked down at Jim, and swallowed tightly before gently carding his hand through Jim’s filthy hair. “Maybe you have no regrets, kid... but I do. Lord above, I do.”
Another tremor rattled the building, and Leonard covered Jim with his body again, but the earthquake didn’t scare him. The only thing that scared him now was time... seconds ticking away like heartbeats... running out... time was running out...
The ground stopped rumbling, but there was a new noise. It was the sound of debris shifting, footsteps, and... voices.
“Captain Kirk! Doctor McCoy! Can you hear me?”
Leonard had never been so relieved to hear Spock’s voice in his life. “In here! Dammit man, hurry up! The captain is injured!”
Spock came through the doorway, followed by a security guard and a medic. “Why did you not comm the ship for beam out?”
“Use your damned logic, Spock! One of them got smashed, and we lost the other, and... forget it!” He grabbed the communicator out of Spock’s hand. “McCoy to Enterprise! Emergency transport, directly to sickbay.”
He had never been so relieved in his life to feel his body dissolve in the transporter beam.
*********
Jim’s first thought on regaining consciousness was to be surprised that he had regained consciousness. He was a bit fuzzy as to why that surprised him, but hey, consciousness was good, right? Then he realized that his chest felt like he’d been used as a trampoline by a elephant, and memory started to come back.
“Urgh...” He groaned and blinked a few times, taking in the too-familiar sight of the ceiling of sickbay. He hated that view, but at the moment, he’d take it. It was better than the alternative. For once, he has been sure that he was going to die. The sickening memory of that calm acceptance twisted something uncomfortably in his gut, but... that was neither here nor there. He was alive, and he had one man to thank for it. “Bones?”
“Captain Kirk, it’s good to see you awake.”
Jim blinked. That wasn’t Bones. “Nurse Chapel... good to see you, too. Where’s Doctor McCoy?”
She smiled at him, then looked to the side. Jim followed her gaze to the next biobed over, where Bones was out cold.
“What happened to him?” Jim asked in a rush. “Is he okay?”
Chapel walked over to him and quickly checked the readouts on the monitor as he patted his arm reassuringly. “He’ll be just fine. Crazy man had a grade two concussion and didn’t even realize he’d hit his head in the first place.” She fixed Jim with a look. “Probably too busy worrying about you to even notice. We didn’t even see it until he’d finished your surgery.”
“Oh, Bones,” Jim said softly to himself. He remembered Bones covering him with his body during a tremor, and wondered if something had hit him during that time. It was possible. But that was Bones... always putting himself in harm’s way for others, even as he chewed them out for doing the same thing.
Other disjointed memories swam around in his head. The impossible weight of the beam on his chest. The terrifying sensation of not being able to pull any air into his lungs. The searing stab of that needle Bones had driven into his chest. The sight of Bones hurrying out of the room to find the communicator. The moment Jim had been absolutely sure he was going to die. The look of denial on Bones’ face. But what stood out was the raw panic and holy shit, Bones really lifted that beam himself.
Jim had heard about feats of strength from people trying to save loved ones. He and Bones had been friends for a long time, but Jim still couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen. Bones was no slouch when it came to upper-body strength, but that had been unreal.
“How’s your pain level?” Chapel interrupted his thoughts as she fiddled with something on the control panel next to his bed.
“I feel like a Klingon was tap-dancing on my chest.”
She chuckled softly. “Well, if that isn’t an honest answer from Captain Kirk.”
He blinked slowly. “I’m too tired to protest.”
She glanced down sympathetically. “Well, you should be tired. You actually lost more blood than we should have been able to revive you from. McCoy and M’Benga worked on you for almost five hours, and we actually had to call for blood donors from the crew because blood replenishers are only effective if they’re less than fifteen percent of your total blood volume.”
“Shit.”
Chapel gave him an admonishing look. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, given the circumstances.”
“You’re so kind.” He yawned, grimacing at the ache that caused in his chest. “Sleepy.”
“Recovering makes you tired, Captain. Just rest.”
Jim thought he might have nodded, but he was too tired to be sure.
*********
It must be a hangover. That would be the only explanation for the splitting headache and the fact that the light in the room felt like daggers through his eyelids.
Leonard groaned to himself, grumbling, “Computer, lights off.”
“Unable to comply. Light levels must remain at 30% or higher in main sickbay facilities unless ordered by on-duty personnel.”
Sickbay? On-duty... shit.
“Oh, good, Doctor McCoy, you’re awake.” A hypospray connected with his neck without warning.
Leonard slapped a hand over the spot as his eyes flew open, and he cringed against the bright lights of sickbay. “Nurse Chapel, if you ever stealth-sedate me again, I will have your rank, and you’ll find yourself on delta shift for...” His tirade faded as the pain in his head likewise dissipated. He blinked. “Oh, that’s much better.”
“You’re welcome,” she said bluntly, twirling the hypospray in her fingers like a pro.
He swung his feet over the edge of the biobed and stood up. “Where’s Jim?”
“He’s back in the pulmonary bay for a treatment. Where do you think you’re going?”
Leonard was already halfway to the door of sickbay. “I’ve got something I need to find before Jim gets out of his treatment. I’ll be right back.”
“You haven’t been discharged!”
Leonard paused just inside the door of sickbay. “Computer, please note for the record that Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy, M.D. has discharged himself from medical care for a damned bump on the head, and will take responsibility for any consequences.”
“Doctor McCoy!”
But the door to sickbay was already hissing shut behind him. He plowed through the corridor, ignoring the curious and possibly concerned looks from the crewmen he passed until he got to the turbolift. “Deck six.”
A moment later, he had abused his medical override to get into the captain’s quarters, and was fishing through the socks in the top drawer of Jim’s dresser. His fingers brushed against something slim and hard, and he withdrew a data chip. On the casing, in Jim’s untidy scrawl, was written, Bones.
He knew full-well that Jim had meant for him to see this only if he’d died, but Leonard didn’t care right now. What the hell could be so important that Jim had to be sure Leonard would know it, but that he could only give the message from beyond the grave?
Settling himself at Jim’s desk, he popped the chip into Jim’s computer terminal, and watched in disbelief as the message played.
*********
Jim felt like a balloon that had been inflated and deflated too many times. The tech had insisted that it was necessary; chest trauma could lead to pneumonia because it hurt too much to breathe deeply, so they had to make sure he was working his lungs properly.
Bastards.
But really, it wasn’t too horrible. There had been pain meds, and they’d given him a sedative promptly after the breathing treatment so he could sleep it off. For once, he’d been grateful. And damn, he was tired.
Waking up this time was definitely less painful, though, courtesy of modern medicine and really good painkillers. But something else was different.
Jim shifted slightly and realize that there was something squeezing his hand. No... not something... someone.
“C’mon, Jim... open those peepers for me.”
Jim dutifully opened his eyes to see Bones staring back at him. The man had one hell of a five’o’clock shadow, and Jim also wasn’t going to call him on the fact that he might also have a case of bed-head, because the sight of him was like balm on a ragged wound. “Bones... you... I can’t believe it, but... you brought me back from that. I thought I was gone this time.” He swallowed thickly. “I really thought I was gone, but -”
Bones reached out and gently laid a finger over Jim’s lips, hushing him. The hand clasping his own squeezed a bit tighter. “I know ya did, Jim. But what did I tell you? Not on my watch, right?”
Jim nodded hesitantly.
“You do have a talent for getting yourself beat to a pulp.”
“Not my fault this time,” he said sheepishly.
Bones gave him a look of feigned exasperation, but it was full of a sort of warmth that he almost never showed. “Funny how that’s the exception and not the rule.”
“Hey, I can’t let your life get boring, can I?”
Bones expression morphed into something unreadable. “My life with you has never been boring, Jim.”
There was something about the way Bones had said that made Jim’s stomach twist oddly. “We’ve had a lot of adventures,” Jim said uneasily.
“Sure have.”
Bones was looking at him in a way that made Jim feel as though it was the first time he was seeing him, all over again. And suddenly... it clicked.
“You found the data chip.”
Bones gave him one steady nod.
“I didn’t... I mean... I didn’t mean for...” Jim squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pull his hand out of Bones’ grasp, but if anything, Bones held him tighter.
“You didn’t mean for me to know you felt like that until you were dead?” Bones asked in plain exasperation. “What do you take me for, Jim?”
Jim looked back at Bones. There was no reason to hide now, and to be honest, he didn't want to. “My best friend. My always-there. My partner-in-uniform and the guy who’s saved my life more times than I can count.” He swallowed thickly. “The person who means enough to me that I couldn’t risk driving you away.”
Bones shook his head and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. “Jim, you can be such an idiot sometimes.”
“I’m sorry, I should never have made that recording, and if you could just pretend you never saw it, I would -”
“Jim?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
In the next heartbeat, Bones was leaning forward, planting a gentle, chaste kiss on Jim’s lips. Jim, for his part, was too shocked to kiss back, but when Bones leaned away and looked down at him again, he was smiling.
Jim found himself just a bit breathless, and it had nothing to do with broken ribs or punctured lungs. “Really?”
“Yeah, kid. Really.”
*********