[ST] Broken Folk 6/6
What We Were Created To Be
San Francisco - October 2272 to January 2273
Jim Kirk had never understood his limits. At best he acknowledged things his body felt from time to time, but even then they were more like suggestions than hard and fast rules or stop signs. However, at 39 regardless of what he thought his own limits were didn’t matter worth a damn when his body just said that was enough.
After months of barely sleeping and eating things he fought to keep down, his body just needed a few days, or even the weeks it took to get back to Earth, to recover some.
The problem was that once he got back to Earth, Starfleet Medical refused to clear him for any sort of active duty aboard a ship until he underwent at least two months of physical rehabilitation and his psych evaluations came back satisfactory. The only reason he didn’t put up more of a fuss about it was the simple fact that Enterprise wasn’t about to go anywhere with or without him. In fact the only thing that gave him pause when he got the news of his temporary grounding was the issue of where to stay because as far as Starfleet was concerned he had housing.
“Don’t be stupid, Jim, it’s as much your place as it is mine,” Bones had said before he could even ask. “And at least this way I won’t have to worry about what trouble your fool head can get you into when you don’t have death and danger staring you down in every direction.”
As much as Jim had said that he was coming for Bones, he really didn’t expect for it to be like this - for them to fall back into some sort of pattern without ever really needing to discuss it at great lengths. They had shared their lives before. It was too easy to do it again both of them busy teaching and Jim chasing after the status of his girl, which none of the Admirals wanted to tell him about one way or the other. The only noticeable difference between them was there wasn’t any sex involved, not that there wasn’t instances of supposedly harmless touching and the two of them spending far longer in the head than they strictly needed, but neither wanted to broach the topic first.
Not yet at least.
It was late in November just as the holiday season was starting to get into full swing, although few were sure exactly what they were celebrating anymore, when Bones decided it was time to cross that bridge. They were just sitting in the living room each focused on their PADDs rather than the drum of the holoscreen in front of them helping to fill the silence.
“You’re wearing our rings on your chain,” he said like it might have been a request to change the channel or an ask to go get another beer. Only that wasn’t how Jim heard it. Jim heard it like he was staring down the barrel of a phaser aimed right at him for a clean kill.
He set down his PADD and leaned back in the chair, trying to play it off. “Aren’t you asking me this question almost two months too late?”
Bones didn’t blink. He just looked at Jim, more than able to wait the other man out to get the answer he wanted or rather a real answer at all. He might have been out of practice, but it wasn’t a skill that he would forget.
Finally Jim sighed and tugged the chain out from under his shirt, allowing those rings to be on display for them and no one else - exactly as it should have been. “You always kept me grounded, Bones, gave me something to want to come home to. I don’t regret what we he had, but sometimes I do regret forcing you into the whole marriage thing. I just didn’t want to die alone and knowing that I would always have you, that I still do always have you...Well, it makes everything else a bit more bearable, even when you don’t like me.”
McCoy shook his head. “I may not like you all of the time, but I still love you, kid.” Where he once might have leaned over to kiss Jim, he simply bumped their shoulders together and stood up from the sofa. “I was thinking Thai for dinner tonight,” he said continuing like nothing had changed.
But as the chill of winter set in bringing them deeper into the spectacle of the holiday season, two men began to stitch their lives back together.
It had started simple with the two of them falling asleep on the sofa together one Monday evening a few weeks later, PADDs clattering to the floor. Of course, McCoy had woken up after an hour and dragged a still asleep Jim back to his bed so he wouldn’t have to deal with Jim’s complaining in the morning. And rather than return to his own bed that evening, Jim just pulled him into his and that was it. McCoy always found that his more restful nights were when someone else was in bed with him and he couldn’t imagine it being anyone else.
It was only a matter of a handful of conversations over whatever meal found them both in the same place at the same time for the second bedroom to go back to being the study as it had always meant to be. From that point their two lives became more and more intertwined in the privacy of their home, while the world continued on as it was.
It was nice to finally have a place where they could figure how to be Jim and Bones and nothing else before having to head out into the world where the things the defined them weren’t so clean and clear.
Then Jim received the official notification in the weeks leading up to the fortieth anniversary of the Kelvin’s destruction. Rather than a simple decommission, Starfleet wanted to retire Enterprise NCC-1701 and send her off to live out the rest of her days in a Federation museum. She was a historic vessel, who needed to be remembered for the generations to come. So that they might remember Captain James T. Kirk who would do anything for his crew despite the cards being stacked against him because for as much as he stuttered and stumbled he somehow managed to come out on top.
That was everyone’s dream, wasn’t it? To assure that long after your life was over, people remembered you. Only that wasn’t how Jim Kirk saw it as he sat on the edge of the unmade bed on the fourth of January. For Jim, it was just another day for him to put on the boots and play cowboy for the Federation.
Maybe the act would help him reclaim this day as Pike tried to assure him, but it wasn’t likely. Even forty years later it was still just the day his dad died to save him and his mom - the 800 other people only incidental to the two that mattered most. In his younger years it was the sort of day that might have caused him to disappear as the sun poked through the fog in the Bay trying to find some new way to un-write today’s pomp and circumstance. Instead this morning he woke up in a way he hadn’t for the most part of the past five years. It was to the feeling of Bones’s arms warm around his middle, lips pressing on his clothed shoulder comforting him even before his mind told him he needed it.
They had stayed that way for a long while, limbs slow to move content simply tangled together in their sheets with lips and hands free to move as they wanted. There had been nothing overtly sexual about it. Each time McCoy traced lines on his skin he was silently healing wounds and atoning for things that didn’t truly belong to either of them. It was safe in their bed, wrapped together with the sunlight barely poking through the blinds.
Despite the fact they may have wanted to, it wouldn’t be possible to stay in bed all day. There were ceremonies to attend, smiles to fake, and more than anything another remembrance day to live through.
Bones had left Jim in bed so that he could shower fifteen minutes ago with the stern warning that he better be out of bed and seriously moving toward getting dressed by the time he was out. As much as he didn’t like Bones leaving him alone in their bed before he felt he was ready, it was what he needed. Just a few minutes to lie in his bed and pretend that he wasn’t going to get up today so he could just feel down right sorry for himself. And maybe cry a little with no one to witness it.
He had done all that covered in the calming scent of Bones and the promise that whatever happened today he wouldn’t have to go through it alone. Jim scrubbed a hand through his hair, shaking off the last of his moroseness, but not quite ready to move.
But then the light peaking through the still drawn curtains glimmered off something on Bones’s nightstand catching his attention. Not one to let things lay, Jim slide across the bed to investigate.
“All right, Jim?” Bones asked, carding the towel through his hair as he walked back into the bedroom.
Jim looked up from his dead stare at the medal in his hand. It was his first, the very one that he received along with his commission. It felt like a lifetime ago.
“If you’re avoiding the dress golds because we both know you put on about twenty pounds since you came back, sitting there isn’t going to magically help you fit into them.” His voice stayed light as he pulled out his own dress uniform. McCoy still hated the thing, but today he wouldn’t make a fuss about it. Today he wanted to wear it and be able to stand with Jim as Enterprise was retired.
Bitch and moan as he did about the bucket of bolts, McCoy knew Enterprise was the closest thing he would have to a home that was a place and not a person. Even if he had only been there for about a fifth of his life, that ship was the world to Jim, which made it just a bit more important to him.
“Fuck you, Bones,” said Jim finally pulling himself out of his funk. McCoy could hear that it was forced, but right now he just needed to get them through this morning. He would properly tend to these wounds later when they had time. “I will have you know that I make forty look good, unlike some people.”
McCoy turned to just look at him for a long moment. It was the sort of look that Jim wasn’t sure what to make of because it put him on edge, yet filled him so completely. “Yeah, you do,” said McCoy letting his drawl come on a little bit thicker than normal. Later, he promised himself, he would properly worship each and every inch - all the scars he knew, the ones he missed out on and all of the memories of scars that never were because he had been good enough. “So, what are you waiting for, kid?”
And it was that endearment more than anything else he could have said that got an honest smile out of Jim and damn if he didn’t know it would.
The two dressed in a companionable silence. There were hands reaching out to straighten lines or to fix awards and recognitions that were nothing more than a road map that led them back to where they were now.
Just before Jim started to leave the bedroom, McCoy pulled on his shirt bringing the younger man back to him. His fingers ran over the oldest award on the other man’s chest. The touch saying more than his words could, but he offered them too. “He would have been proud of you.” Although they both knew he was saying that McCoy was proud of him. Jim didn’t say anything; there was nothing he could say - not with words. Instead he leaned forward and met half way for a quick kiss.
Once they appeared to be the respectable and well-put together officers that Starfleet expected them to be, it was off to meet Admiral Pike and Commander Kirk for a light breakfast. Not that Jim was going to eat anything, but that wasn’t a battle McCoy felt like waging this morning.
Breakfast was a quiet affair. Few words were spoken between them, but the silence was not suffocating. If anything it was more a requiem for everything this day was and soon what it would become.
Too soon there was nothing more to delay them and they were expected for their pre-ceremony meeting with public relations. It might have been annoying if it all didn’t feel like an old hat at this point. McCoy had even started to joke with the officer, if only to get Jim to laugh again, which seemed to break the last of the remaining tension Jim was carrying this morning as he tried to keep his emotions in check.
Despite any misgivings either of them might have had, Jim was a sight to behold as he was ushered up to the podium to share his remarks. He had never claimed to be a great orator, but he didn’t need fancy words to win over people. The fact that he cared and remembered who they were was enough for people to love him. Today would be no different.
“A lot of people look at a ship and they see the hull plating, the integrate design, and all the work that physically takes to build her and keep her in one piece that way.” This was not the speech he intended to make this morning, but as he approached the podium and looked over at the crowd there - seeing all of his friends, really his family, he found better words.
“When I look at Enterprise I have never seen an object. I have always seen a home.” Something he had never had or even knew he wanted until he sat down in that captain’s chair and fully understood what it meant. “I see the emergency plating that Commander Scott installed despite not having the materials to do so. I see a young Lieutenant Sulu and Ensign Chekov - now a Captain and Lieutenant Commander in their own right, at the helm getting us out of all sorts of improbable situations. I see Doctor McCoy and Nurse Chapel ruling over the sickbay and really the entire ship.”
And they were all there - his crew. The years had been kind to most of them, growing into something extraordinary that he had seen first planted. These men and women were his children in a ways. They were certainly far more his kin than David Marcus, who despite his mother’s protest and annoyance was standing off to the side looking up at him with a sort of awe.
“I have always looked at a ship and saw the people who keep her working. Their love and commitment is what keeps her afloat.” He paused to clear his throat, certainly not to blink away the tears that were threatening to come this moment. “Enterprise has had a long history. She was christened by fire along with her crew. She has been to the edge and back. There have been tragedies, but also great triumphs. When people hundreds of years from now look back at her history I hope it is one that inspires and launches a new generation to further explore the stars. I wish for this generation, the same thing I wish for the men and women I am proud to serve with today. I simply wish for a never sated sense of curiosity, an undefeatable spirit and the ability to love what they do.”
“I have never believed in a no win scenario. Today might mark the end of a great vessel, but in her passing others will rise to fill her role. New men and women will stand on the edge and not hesitate. And I wish them all long fulfilling careers and lives. Or in the words of a dear friend and best first officer I had the privilege of working with ‘live long and prosper.’”
The cameras flashed then with a new found ferocity. Jim could feel his resolve failing and while he might have wanted to cry he did not want to do it for the consumption of the masses. As the polite applause quieted, Jim felt a strong steady presence at his side. Bones. He knew that without looking.
“Come on,” Bones said so close to Jim that no one else could overhear, “It might be your party, but I don’t think you should cry, even if you want to in front of the wolves.”
A gentle smile fell across Jim’s face as he allowed himself to be escorted back to his seat with Bones at his side their hands casually intertwined. As he became aware of that gentle weight grounding him, he knew that pictures of this would be all of the news feeds tomorrow. Despite the speech and the importance of what was happening, there was something just a little bit more titillating about the relationship between the two handsome and decorated Starfleet officers - especially for all had they kept quiet about the whole affair to the general public.
The world didn’t know the half of it, but Jim and McCoy were happy to keep it that way. From now on this would always be theirs to hold and to cherish no matter what the world threw at them. The problem the first time was it wasn’t clear where the lines were drawn, but in the years apart there had been time to grow up and to finally finish baking.
The only issue left to be resolved was the setting of the next chapter of their lives.
A few days later, as they lay in their bed it was McCoy who once more broached the subject first. “You want to go back up there.” And it wasn’t a just question in the same way the remark about the rings wasn’t a question three months ago. It could have been easy to not discuss it, to not mention how at home McCoy had been feeling the past couple of months while he watched Jim squirm and search for something to sate him. And he could have made all sorts of excuses like he did with Jocelyn, but McCoy had been down that road too many times before.
“I do,” he said. In that moment Jim sounded more like that five year old kid who looked up at the sky in wonder as to what that darkness could hold rather than the man who has spent over fifteen years seeing first hand what was out there.
“So what’s keeping you?” McCoy asked the question because he felt like he had to, even if he knew the answer. And Jim knew that too, so he just looked at McCoy for a long moment every secret he tried to keep so clear in his too bright eyes.
“The same thing that kept you in space for so long.”
McCoy turned to fully face Jim. “You know I didn’t go to or stay up there just for you, ass.”
Jim smiled at the wild eyebrow and ran his fingers over its lines to sooth it. He allowed the space of a few exhales between them, gaze not moving away from Bones.
“You always think you’re going to have more time,” Jim started, his voice gentle, “but that’s not the case with the lives that we live. I’ve had some great adventures out in the black,” Jim shifted away from McCoy so he was seated up right, “but now I’m ready to try out some down here too, with you, if you’ll have me.”
The uncertainty was clear in McCoy’s expression. “You wouldn’t be happy with some desk job down here.”
Jim smiled slow, clearly the opening he was looking for. “Well, apparently some crazy doctor created a brilliant new training program that is working for the medical officers and the Academy wants to try something similar for Command students, because we can’t have our doctors knowing more than the people running the ship.”
If there were at any other time, McCoy might have grumbled muttered something about the benefit of medical having a constant edge over the over zealous idiots in command, but this wasn’t that sort of moment.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“It’s not exactly like you have a desk job, Bones. Normally you’re out in the black half the year. Besides the best part about being the captain isn’t the thrilling heroics, it was watching everyone reach their potentials and then working with them to go past them. Imagine if I could start doing that sooner - the universe wouldn’t know what hit her.”
McCoy studied Jim for a long moment, seeing the clear excitement in his eyes and for the first time able to really define that restlessness he had seen. Jim was taking the next step and unlike all the other ones he took he needed to know this was the right path to start down.
Rather than find some stupid words to say, McCoy smiled at Jim pulling the younger man closer to him. “Fine, but if we’re staying here for a while longer I want a better mattress,” he said before pulling Jim into a kiss.
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