"honey and strawberries"
Title: honey and strawberries
Fandom: Star Trek XI.
Characters: Jim, Bones, and a dash of Spock.
Word Count: 5302
Rating: 12
Summary: Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy are competent, calm Starfleet officers - but when the monsters under the bed of the latest strange new world work their magic, that calm and that competence doesn’t last more than a moment. Kirk/McCoy.
Warnings: fairly graphic violence, a lot of language
Notes: Written for hc_bingo, (my bingo card is lurking here) for the prompt experiments by evil scientists. (mijan told me to. :D ♥)
honey and strawberries
“Next time,” Jim says, levering himself up from the cold, wet stone with a voiceless groan, “keep me away from shore leave.”
Bones is already up and about, sitting on the stone bench that’s so helpfully provided at the corner of the room-Cell, Jim corrects himself, because they may as well be realistic here.-and he doesn’t move, watching Jim with a laconically worried gaze. “You always say that,” the doctor observes, pointedly, and then he falters, his gaze slips away. “Most of the time it’s because you’re workin’ on a hangover, though, not locked up - although you do that often enough.”
His accent is thicker. That’s never a good sign.
“True,” Jim says, and stretches back, muscles cramping from what must’ve been a long period of unconsciousness in the same floor-bound position. His body language is aiming for relaxed and easy-going as he sits on the floor-sort of, oh-no-an-alien-jail-cell (in a deadpan monotone)-but he thinks he might be hitting tense and damn-near scared, instead, because the floor is wet under his hands, yeah, but it’s not smooth-wet: it’s sticky-wet. When he glances back, his palms are smeared with red.
Bones is watching him, intense. “Yeah,” he says, and his gaze flickers to Jim’s hands. “Wondered when you’d see that.”
Jim scrubs his hands off against his thighs, and he feels his breath rush faster, because there’s nothing like coming to in a cell full of blood to get the heart pounding. “Where are we?” he asks, lowly. “What do you remember?” And he pushes himself to his feet, with blood not quite scrubbed free from his skin, and he paces, looking for weakness - a crack in the wall, a dent in the door. (He finds fuck all.)
Bones’ shoulders smooth out of their hunched position, and Jim can half-tell that the authority in his voice is soothing, almost. Someone else is here, someone will take control. (Not that Bones needs to be taken control of, but Jim can already feel something strange in his heart, something pounding faster, angrier.)
“Not much,” Bones answers, in the monotone he uses when he’s trying not to think about something. “The bar, on Kalii. We went outside, and it was freezin’ compared to inside. Then-”
“A sharp pain in the back of the head?” Jim asks, dryly, and he sees Bones’ eyebrow quirk in sardonic confirmation. “Yeah, me too.” And he sits back, and surveys the cell: four bare walls, smooth as polished glass, with a door hewn into the smoothness; a blood-spattered ceiling that’s a different tint to the walls (and that just makes Jim’s stomach turn); a bench clinging to one wall, which is taken up by Bones; and a smell, a strange smell, a smell that smells sweet, like honey.
“Jim,” Bones says, and he’s leaning forward, fingers working around each other in tandem, “I don’t think we’re in jail.” And he licks his lips, and says, “For one thing, you didn’t drink nearly enough last night to have done anything stupid enough to get us locked-” (Which Jim will let slide.) “-and besides.” And he pauses, the sharp tang of fear in his voice. “I think I know where we are.”
Jim doesn’t speak - just waits. (The honey-smell is stronger, now.)
“I heard voices, outside,” Bones starts. “They thought I was still out, I think. Didn’t come in.” His speech is pausy, almost stuttered, and there’s fear in his eyes, stark and obvious. “We’re under the government buildings. Jim, you know what that means - you read the-”
“No,” Jim interrupts, firmly. “That’s a myth, Bones - nothing more than an urban legend. And Spock agreed with me on that, so I must be right.” (It’s a joke, but Bones ignores it.)
“The Kra’ktor,” Bones says, and his eyes just dare Jim to interrupt. “Urban legends always come from somewhere, Jim. And it would just be our goddamn luck to get caught up in this one.”
“Bones,” Jim says, and his voice is calm (even though he can feel anger thrumming up in his chest - this is ridiculous, he’s not listening to this). “The Kra’ktor are the Kalii’s bogeyman. They don’t exist - and anyway, there are a hundred planets with conspiracy theories about secret government agencies. Earth has its fair share. Why is this one true?”
“Because we’re sittin’ here?” Bones asks, with a pale echo of his usual sarcasm. “Because you’re walkin’ around in blood that’s damn well not ours?”
“It’s just a cell,” Jim answers, and he is angry, now - and he tries to tamp it down, to suppress it, but fuck, Bones is being a coward, and that’s not acceptable, not now, because he needs to think-
“It’s not a cell,” Bones says, and breaks Jim out of his fury. “It’s not.”
“What is it, then?” Jim snaps, and his foot sticks to the floor.
A muscle jumps in Bones’ jaw, and he looks hunted. His hands curl around the edge of the bench. “It’s an observation chamber,” he says, quietly. “The walls aren’t stone. They’re windows. And, Jim-” And he pauses, and bites his tongue, but then he’s standing, levering himself up, and they’re toe to toe, suddenly. Bones’ pupils are shot wide, and there’s blood edging its way from one nostril. Fuck, Jim thinks. Fuck fuck fuck he’s right damnit.
“Damnit, Jim,” Bones appeals, “you smell that too.” (And it rams it home that Bones is appealing, because Leonard McCoy does not appeal to anyone unless something is really goddamn wrong.)
The room smells like a fucking beehive.
“Okay, Kra’ktor,” Jim says, heavily, but he can’t stop the anger from screwing with his tone - and then, “We’re drugged.”
“I’m guessin’ so,” Bones answers, hands fisted in his shirt. “I found a puncture mark on my arm, and I’m goddamn scared, Jim, and it’s like I can’t stop it. And ever since this place started smelling like goddamn strawberries it’s gotten even worse. Fuck it, Jim, I want to curl up in that corner.” And he’s shaking, trembling.
But Jim’s barely listening to that last part. “Wait,” he says, sharply, like he’s talking to some ensign who’s just taken the piss out of the local leader’s funny hat. “Strawberries?”
Bones blanches, visibly. (Jim’s just about ready to try and beat the fear out of Bones’ system, because it’s really not helping his calm.) “Yeah, it smells like strawberries,” he answers. “Why?”
“I don’t smell strawberries,” Jim answers, perfunctorily, and decides not to reflect on the morals of scientists who make chemicals smell like sugar and fruit. “Honey.”
“We can’t be smelling different substances,” Bones reasons, and his voice is skittish, like a startled horse. “It must be the same one in the air, which means that it’s reactin’ differently in us.” He chews his lips - and it fascinates Jim, because Bones’ lips flush redder after he’s bitten them, and he can almost feel the blood pulsing to and fro from the skin surface. (Jim wants to see that blood, wants to feel it spread across his knuckles.) “What do you feel?” Bones asks.
It takes a moment for Jim to realise what he’s thinking about, and then a second longer for him to realise that he’s being spoken to. His hands are fisted, and he determinedly uncurls them. No, he spits at himself, and says, “Anger. And the urge to punch someone in the face.”
Jim imagines that didn’t do much for Bones’ fear.
He watches as Bones breathes, and the bob of the doctor’s Adam’s apple catches his gaze, holds it. “Okay,” Bones says, and there’s desperation in his eyes. “We can’t’ve been here long, and you were due back on the ship in the mornin’, so, Spock will notice you’re missin’ and will figure somethin’s wrong, and then they’ll pull of the whole dramatic rescue thing, and we’ll be back on the ship before you have a chance to rip my throat out. Stop starin’.”
“Fuck, sorry,” Jim bites off, and he turns away, because if he has his back to Bones, then he can’t think about how good he’d look with a bruise purpling his cheek.
The only sound, for a moment, is them breathing, and Jim can almost feel the hidden masses watching around them. He wonders, for a second, if this is something different - if instead of being an experiment, instead of being the guinea-pigs for the evil Kaliian bogeymen, they’re in some kind of arena, and this is entertainment: if they’re drugged up gladiators, paraded in front of the masses, instead of intensely observed research specimens.
What’s the fucking difference? he thinks, bitterly, angrily.
“Come on,” Jim says, and he pushes the anger down, because he’s not going to give these bastards what they want. “What can we do? What do we have?”
“Communicators are gone,” Bones answers, “obviously. Credits, too. I didn’t have anything else with me.”
Jim chances a glance at him, and he notices the way there’s a tear in Bones’ dark shirt and a scuff to the knee of his pants, even as hands are patting pockets. “Yeah,” he says, darkly. “Me too.” And he breathes-Just breathe, Jim. This anger, it’s not you.-and it’s loud in his ears. “What now?” he says. “I’m not just going to wait here for Spock to come and play the prince. We’ve got to do something.” And he doesn’t wait for Bones’ approval or Bones’ disagreement, but he paces to the door, boots ripping off the bloody floor - and he touches it, palms flat against the rough surface, and he feels it and smells it (honey, always fucking honey, stronger and stronger) and he’d lick it if he didn’t think it’d taste like sweat and blood. But he gets nowhere, even as he digs his fingers into the grooves and shakes, digs his fingers in until they bleed, and then he’s hurling himself at it, driving his shoulder into its infuriating blankness, because it has to break, it has to, and it’s better that he’s hurting himself than he’s hurting Bones-
“Jim.”
Shaking hands tug him away from the door, and then he’s pressed up against Bones with the fierceness of Bones’ grip holding him still, with the rapid breathing of the terrified rushing in his ear.
“Stop it, Jim,” Bones says, and his voice is tight and thin. “That won’t help. We have to wait. We can’t do anything except try not to let them win.”
“I’m not a coward,” Jim snarls - and he does snarl, and he feels like an animal, like his blood is on fire. “You sit and wait, and curl up in your corner. Let me go.” And he twists against Bones’ grip, because he can’t just sit still, it’s not in him - and if he’s got this anger in him, too, from some fucking drug that makes the air taste like honey, then it’s best that he let it out, but not on Bones, anywhere but Bones. (He’s the captain. He has to do something.)
“All you’re gonna do is hurt yourself,” Bones says, and his voice is a rumble of thunder over the hills. Except, scared thunder. “I need you to keep it together, Jim - because I’m sure as hell not.”
That makes his heart ache, just a little - and that ache is enough to overwhelm the anger; just. He forced himself to calm.
“Kra’ktor,” he says. “You’re the expert; talk to me. What do they want from us?”
(It’s a lifeline. He can hide in facts and speculation.) (That’s something Bones knows, better than most.)
Bones’ grip doesn’t lessen, not really, but his palm is splayed across Jim’s stomach, and it’s like they’re dancing. Through their clothes and through their flesh, Jim swears he can feel the hammering of Bones’ heart - and he forces himself to relax, even if his body is wired in lightning. “They want us,” Bones says, and yeah, that can’t be helping the fear, either, because Bones in his perpetual paranoia will have read up on everything bad about this supposed-vacation. “The Kra’ktor are a myth, somethin’ shouted about by the opposition to the government. They have no boundaries, no barriers under Kaliian law - and they’re a bunch of xenophobic bastards.”
“They always are,” Jim answers, and Bones’ fingers tighten at his voice. (Fear, Jim reflects, wryly.)
“Yeah,” Bones says. “The legends say that they experiment on alien species, lookin’ for the best way to knock each one out when it comes to war.”
The honey-smell is so strong now that Jim breathes through his mouth in far-spaced, huffing breaths. “It always has to be war,” he says, and he’s trying to quip - trying and failing, he thinks. “They can never just live and let live, can they?”
When Bones speaks, it’s quiet: “Considerin’ how you’re tryin’ to get away from me, Jim, I think with these bastards war is pretty much inevitable.”
Jim hadn’t even noticed that he was straining, pulling against the muscles of Bones’ arms with all the strength in his body. (It’s like he’s losing control, slipping out of what makes him human.) He breathes faster, and the honey-smell floods his mind, golden fuzz slipping everywhere. Bones’ grip is tight, tighter, and it hurts - Jim can see the finger-bruises already, almost, in his mind, because that’s Bones all over, isn’t it: he has to keep his hold over things, he has to be in control, even though Jim’s the fucking captain.
No, something snaps at him, inside his head, and he thinks it might be himself. That’s not you. Cut it out.
Bones must take his quiet as acquiescence, because he’s talking again, his voice shaking in the underlay. “The rumours are inconsistent-they’re goddamn rumours, of course they are-but there are a few things we can be sure about.”
Jim doesn’t need a fucking lecture to know what’s happening to them. He strains against Bones’ arms, but the doctor’s grip is stronger than he’s used to - he must be rushing on a hell of an adrenaline high. (Fear. It does things.)
“Goddamn experiments,” Bones says, and it’s like he’s wrapping himself around Jim, not just holding him. His breath is warm, fierce. “And they had to pick us, had to find us.”
“Well then they picked the wrong people,” Jim says, and he says it louder - he’s angry, yeah, so angry he’s just clinging on to control, but these scientist bastards can hear him, through the glass, he’s sure, and if they can hear him he can scare them. “Because the crew will come looking for us, and you know what Spock’s like when he’s pissed. And they’ll find us, because that’s what they do - and they’ll find us, and they’ll kick your asses.”
There’s silence, for a moment-quiet in the honeyed air-and then there’s a hiss, a rush, that’s barely audible over the thickness of the smell.
They’re gassing us, Jim thinks, instinctively, but then he remembers that they’re already gassed, and that he can just smell more and more bee-shit, so it’s not like they’re being slaughtered just yet. Bones whimpers, almost-a choked yelp that he’s trying to suppress but can’t keep down-and that pathetic, infantile whine just grates on Jim’s already frayed nerves. “Shut the fuck up, McCoy,” he snaps. “That’ll help no one.”
“But-”
“I said, shut up.” And Jim pulls forward, for the last time - pulls forward and pulls away and he’s out of Bones’ failing grasp. (He lurches towards the door, off-balance from the lack of strong-Bones holding him back, and he thinks he hears, just for a moment, a whiff of raised voices and panicked footsteps and - phaser fire? But his head is screwed up right now, quite a lot, and considering he keeps imagining bloody knuckles and the thrill of winning, he’s not trusting most of what he hears.)
“Jim, please, I can’t-”
(Pathetic and mewling and so unlike his goddamn Bones that Jim wants to scream.)
“Shut up!” he yells, and then he’s rounding on Bones, not-Bones, and he’s only a footstep away and he can’t help himself: he punches him, fist colliding with nose, and a spray of blood and fear-induced watery phlegm spatters across his wrist and the arm of his shirt.
Shit, he thinks, quite consciously, quite clearly. That’s going to be hell to get out.
And then he can’t stop.
Like he threw himself at the door, he throws himself at Bones - and Bones gives considerably easier. The confusion and terror in Bones’ eyes stamps itself across Jim’s mind, but all it does it make him angrier, because who the fuck is this scared little boy, pretending to be Jim’s world?
And so he finds himself: he’s sitting astride Bones’ waist in a parody of intimacy, and he’s smashing punches into his face, and Bones isn’t resisting, seems to be frozen, and that just makes Jim angrier and angrier (and there’s blood on his pants and blood across the floor, but the floor was sticky already, so that hardly counts). Jim’s always figured, before, that a bloodlust was just a metaphor, just an excuse for when you just want to hurt someone - but now, here and now, it’s like he can’t see for the haze in his vision.
(Haze and warmth and the strange gurgle that’s coming from Bones’ mashed face - and there’s a scuffle, a rattle, a whisper of a shout from outside.)
“Captain.”
And it’s a shout that’s full of calmness, paradoxically, and there’s only one person Jim knows who can make calm and angry so inexplicably enmeshed - but he’s not stopping, not for Spock, not for anyone (because he doesn’t think he can). He screams, almost-a guttural roar that seems to come from somewhere inside him he’s never seen before-and he punches the man he shares his bed with, once more, and he hears fingerbones snap (but barely feels it).
“Jim!”
(My name. Someone else’s name.)
Hands grasp his shoulders, wrenching him backwards - and he bucks against them, fighting back: he lashes out, and feels his uncurled fist connect with flesh, but he’s not released, far from it.
His mind is a rush-just a mess of emotion and sensation, but none of the sensations that he doesn’t want to feel, like pain-and he barely notices as he hits the floor, but he snarls and spits up at some bastard’s faintly-perturbed pointy-eared visage, and he doesn’t think about what he looks like, because why should he? He’s above that.
“Sedate him,” the pointy-eared bastard says, levelly, and if Jim could remember much about himself, he’d remember that that’s a bad thing.
As it is, there’s a sting in the side of his neck and he slaps a hand out to drive the fucking insect away - and then the fuzz that’s clouding his vision becomes more like a blur, a peaceable blur, and it’s peaceable so he wants to rip it to shreds, but it’s also pretty overpowering.
He’s unconscious in seconds.
§§§
Jim wakes up in Sickbay, with bright lights around him and a head that feels like it’s been drenched in rotten honey. His mouth is dry and he feels stiff, like he’s been sleeping on a boarded floor - so, all the usual symptoms. (He spends far too much time waking up in Sickbay, and so it takes him a moment to remember exactly what he’s done this time.)
Honey and strawberries.
Oh fuck, he thinks, and he’s trying to sit up, because there’s panic worming its way into his heart.
“Captain,” Spock says, with one hand on his shoulder, and Jim’s got no idea where he came from, but he’s half grateful, “please desist from attempting to leave the biobed. I believe Nurse Chapel would be most unimpressed, were you to damage her good work.”
“Bones,” Jim says, insistently. “Spock, is he okay?”
Spock is inscrutable, as ever. “Doctor McCoy is recovering admirably,” he answers. “Most of the damage was superficial.”
“Superficial,” Jim says, and remembers a hell of a lot of blood. He doesn’t relax, because all of a sudden he’s tense as a wire, but he does let Spock firmly guide him back down to the horizontal. “You found us.”
Spock’s eyebrow quirks, just a little. “Evidently so,” he answers. “Your captors removed you from Kalii in a transport ship with a warp trail significantly distinct from the majority of the traffic in orbit. Once we had discerned this, we were able to follow said trail to a starbase approximately twelve lightyears away, located on a moon in the orbit of a gas giant.”
Jim’s head is spinning, and not just because he’s fairly certain he’s still doped up on Starfleet’s finest sedatives. “Wait,” he says. “We weren’t on Kalii?”
“Indeed not.”
“But Bones said he heard people saying that we were underneath the government building,” Jim insists. “We thought it was the Kra’ktor-”
And there’s a faint trace of amusement in the line of Spock’s eyebrow. “The Kra’ktor, Captain,” he interrupts, “are a myth. There is no such organisation. And Doctor McCoy’s judgement was more than impaired: if I was to be pressed for a conclusion, I would suggest that the doctor, in his fragile state, heard what he wanted to hear.”
(Jim can accept that, he guesses, because the Kra’ktor? Really? But then, that just raises a whole other issue.) “Then who were they?” Jim asks. “The bastards who had us. They certainly seemed to fit the Kra’ktor profile.”
The humour is gone in a second.
Spock’s expression is horribly blank. “A group declaring themselves a think-tank,” he says, icily. “The scientists-” (And Jim can hear the derision in that word, because Spock is a scientist, too.) “-were mercenaries, simply willing to sell their conclusions to the highest bidder - that was the excuse that they used for inflicting pain on innocent Federation citizens.” And Spock’s lip curls.
(Jim’s never seen that before.)
“They drugged us,” he says. “We figured that out. It triggered extreme emotion, in both of us - which caused problems.” (And he figures Spock already knows what emotion it triggered in him. Vaguely, he wonders if bloody wrath is an emotion Vulcans acknowledge.)
“From data recovered from the base,” Spock says, “this group had abducted pairs of at least seven different species, including human, Vulcans, and Kaliians. They were testing two chemicals. The same dosage of each was injected into one half of each pair, regardless of species, and then a further activating compound was fed into the observation chambers - and the results were observed.”
Jim licks his lips, because, somehow, he knows they were lucky. “Regardless of species,” he repeats. (Drugs don’t work the same on all physiologies, and ones that screw with Andorian mating cycles are wholly lethal to humans.)
Spock’s eyes are like flint. “Indeed,” he says. “It appears the Kaliian pair died minutes after the initial injections.”
And there’s quiet, for a moment, and Jim looks out of the window of the private room he’s always stashed in (jokingly dubbed ‘the captain’s quarters’ by the medical staff, he knows) and sees Bones, sleeping on a biobed, lifesigns steady and features relaxed. (Of course, Jim hasn’t been searching for a sight of Bones - but he appreciates it when he gets it, nonetheless.) “And the others?” he asks.
Spock straightens, just a fraction. “The most violent emotional reactions,” he begins, “occurred in the human and Vulcan pairs. You are aware of the occurrences between yourself and Doctor McCoy.”
“And the Vulcans?” Jim says, even though the way Spock doesn’t look at him (with hands tight behind his back and spine like the straightness of a ladder) is an answer itself.
Spock blinks, once. “The Enterprise away team failed to reach that particular observation chamber in time,” he answers, flatly.
(And that stings just that little more, Jim knows, because, unlike Earth, New Vulcan cannot afford death or disease, not with so few left. Not that Earth will stand for the wanton destruction of her people, but still - the hole where Vulcan once was has left a black mark on the heart of each one of her children.)
He looks to Bones, and sees that he is sleeping.
That’s calming, somehow - but it still makes Jim’s stomach turn over when he thinks about what he did, and how he did it, and how it felt good.
§§§
Bones stands in front of the door to the captain’s quarters (that are his as well, really, in all but name), his touch hovering over the door release, and he finds that he’s not scared. He thought he would be. When he woke up in Sickbay to find Jim already gone and the bloody mess of his face just a memory, he was scared, still - whether an aftershock of that damn drug or some feeling of his own, he’s still not sure. But he felt it, rich and thick in his veins.
(He hates that he lets some fucked up alien experiment change what he feels for Jim, his captain, even if just for a moment.)
He presses the door release, firmly.
It’s bright as he steps inside, bright like Kalii’s twin suns, and Jim’s working, at the desk (which has been twisted so that it gazes out of the window at the stars as long as he’s had these quarters), shoulders hunched and head bent. Bones knows that his presence has been recognised-of course it has, this is Jim-but he stands, and waits, and watches. Jim toys with a padd, flicking through some report or another, and his other arm lies immobile, fingers splayed. Bones just looks, and reminds himself that this is what Jim is - calm and focused, not vicious with a song of rage on his tongue.
“I didn’t think you’d be dropping by,” Jim says, and there’s a mutedness to his voice. Bones can hear the blame and the disgust.
He smiles, and he means it. “I live here, Jim,” he answers.
Jim moves, fractionally - he straightens, but he’s still angled away from Bones and towards the milky streaks of warp. “Wouldn’t think you’d still want to.”
Bones snorts, elegantly. “What, after some goddamn mindfuck that’s more than over?”
“Hardly a mindfuck,” Jim answers, and he drops the padd and turns around, tight in his chair. “I smashed your face in, Bones, because you wouldn’t stop whimpering.” And the last is startlingly matter-of-fact, so much so that it reignites that fear in Bones’ belly, just for a second.
He tamps it down. “Then I shouldn’t’ve been whimpering, should I?”
“Bones,” Jim says, sharply. (It’s a very bad joke.)
Bones steps forward, half-tentatively. “Space is a big place, Jim,” he says, “and not everyone wants to be our friend. You know that. So we can’t beat ourselves up over this. That’s what they want us to do, right?” He pauses, and studies the reluctance in Jim’s eyes. (He cares for his crew too much - and that’s what Bones is, right now, he realises: he’s less Bones, Academy roommate and grumpy boyfriend, and more Doctor McCoy, CMO, valued member of the crew.) “You got angry, I got terrified,” he says, softly. “Those damn drugs were designed to play off each other, to make things worse. So, it worked. It was meant to. Not your fault.”
Jim stands, slowly, and he’s pale and washed out in the brightness. His eyes are bright.
“I’d say that I forgave you,” Bones says, simply, “if I thought there was anything that needed forgiveness.”
(Jim works best in facts, he’s found. Emotions can be explained away; facts can be hidden behind. There’s nothing wrong with that - and emotions stated as facts tend to work just as well.)
And Jim nods, slowly. “Okay,” he says, and then, “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Yeah,” Bones answers. “I’ll be here.”
Jim heads to the bathroom, and he might shed clothes as he goes, but Bones isn’t looking, not really. (He’s seen it all before, anyway, and no matter what he might say, there’s a ghost of pain across his face - just a memory, but the mind is a goddamn powerful thing.) Bones pads through to the bedroom, and he regards the bed with a quirked eyebrow - because it’s just as messy as they left it, two days ago, to head down to a bar on the south side of Kalii, for an evening’s R&R.
The irony, he thinks, sharply, and straightens the covers.
He’s resigned himself to space, now-realised that being anywhere on the medical staff of the Enterprise means emergency surgery and doctoring in war zones and a bucketload of other responsibilities that leave a bad taste in his mouth, including occasionally getting beaten up by the captain hopped up on near-lethal doses of alien hormones-but he thinks Jim’s never going to get used to it, not really. The kid acts like a captain, and is a captain - and that’s the problem. Captains take every strike at their crew as a strike to their heart.
Jim’s too much a captain, maybe.
“Lights, thirty percent,” Bones says, and shucks the ill-fitting shirt from his shoulders. (The one he wore to Kalii is ruined, now - stained and torn. The quartermaster tossed it while he was sleeping.) He goes to bed, rumpling the sheets once more, and he lies back, eyes closed, listening to the shower.
He’s in a half-doze when Jim emerges-he thinks he might still have traces of Starfleet meds chasing each other around his system, not that he’s complaining-and he watches sleepily as Jim potters, folding his clothes, and then Bones’, and stacking them in a precarious pile at the edge of a chair that’s already full of old-fashioned hardback books. (It’s Bones guilty hobby, but he’s discovered that Jim, for all his extolling of the virtues of digital media, is a fan, too.) In the end, with nothing left to potter, Jim turns to him, looks to him.
Bones drags up Jim’s side of the covers, and there’s something almost like relief in Jim’s expression.
“You look like I was gonna kick you outta your own quarters,” Bones says, voice fogged in sleep.
Jim tugs the covers away from him, just a little, and wriggles until he’s comfortable. (He’s curved to Bones’ shape, but not touching, because they’re both warm and Bones doesn’t like to be smothered, not that Jim usually notices - but then again, Bones remembers observation chambers and a frantic attempt to stop Jim’s rampage: bodies plastered against each other, and palms splayed across a heaving stomach.) “Your quarters, too,” he answers. “Lights, five percent.”
Near-darkness wraps its velvet touch around them, and it’s the starlight more than anything else that illuminates the wet hair sticking to Jim’s forehead.
“Shit happens, kid,” Bones says. “That ain’t likely to change.”
“Go to sleep,” Jim says.
(Bones didn’t miss that Jim’s fingers are splinted. There are osteostimulators galore in Sickbay, he knows, and he really ought to drag Jim’s sorry ass down there and get those broken fingers fixed properly, and then ask why his people didn’t fix them in the first place-although it was probably Jim that told them not to-but he’s not going to say anything. It’ll take more than words for Jim to forgive himself - in his head, he has to suffer a little. And, if Bones is honest with himself, he wants Jim to have that reminder, for a while: every time there’s a twitch of pain in those knitting bones, Jim will remember the punches and the blood, and Bones doesn’t think that’s something he’s going to forget very soon.)
“Stupid, masochistic son of a bitch,” he mutters, and doesn’t know which one of them he’s referring to.
Jim smiles in the darkness.
finis
Fandom: Star Trek XI.
Characters: Jim, Bones, and a dash of Spock.
Word Count: 5302
Rating: 12
Summary: Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy are competent, calm Starfleet officers - but when the monsters under the bed of the latest strange new world work their magic, that calm and that competence doesn’t last more than a moment. Kirk/McCoy.
Warnings: fairly graphic violence, a lot of language
Notes: Written for hc_bingo, (my bingo card is lurking here) for the prompt experiments by evil scientists. (mijan told me to. :D ♥)
honey and strawberries
“Next time,” Jim says, levering himself up from the cold, wet stone with a voiceless groan, “keep me away from shore leave.”
Bones is already up and about, sitting on the stone bench that’s so helpfully provided at the corner of the room-Cell, Jim corrects himself, because they may as well be realistic here.-and he doesn’t move, watching Jim with a laconically worried gaze. “You always say that,” the doctor observes, pointedly, and then he falters, his gaze slips away. “Most of the time it’s because you’re workin’ on a hangover, though, not locked up - although you do that often enough.”
His accent is thicker. That’s never a good sign.
“True,” Jim says, and stretches back, muscles cramping from what must’ve been a long period of unconsciousness in the same floor-bound position. His body language is aiming for relaxed and easy-going as he sits on the floor-sort of, oh-no-an-alien-jail-cell (in a deadpan monotone)-but he thinks he might be hitting tense and damn-near scared, instead, because the floor is wet under his hands, yeah, but it’s not smooth-wet: it’s sticky-wet. When he glances back, his palms are smeared with red.
Bones is watching him, intense. “Yeah,” he says, and his gaze flickers to Jim’s hands. “Wondered when you’d see that.”
Jim scrubs his hands off against his thighs, and he feels his breath rush faster, because there’s nothing like coming to in a cell full of blood to get the heart pounding. “Where are we?” he asks, lowly. “What do you remember?” And he pushes himself to his feet, with blood not quite scrubbed free from his skin, and he paces, looking for weakness - a crack in the wall, a dent in the door. (He finds fuck all.)
Bones’ shoulders smooth out of their hunched position, and Jim can half-tell that the authority in his voice is soothing, almost. Someone else is here, someone will take control. (Not that Bones needs to be taken control of, but Jim can already feel something strange in his heart, something pounding faster, angrier.)
“Not much,” Bones answers, in the monotone he uses when he’s trying not to think about something. “The bar, on Kalii. We went outside, and it was freezin’ compared to inside. Then-”
“A sharp pain in the back of the head?” Jim asks, dryly, and he sees Bones’ eyebrow quirk in sardonic confirmation. “Yeah, me too.” And he sits back, and surveys the cell: four bare walls, smooth as polished glass, with a door hewn into the smoothness; a blood-spattered ceiling that’s a different tint to the walls (and that just makes Jim’s stomach turn); a bench clinging to one wall, which is taken up by Bones; and a smell, a strange smell, a smell that smells sweet, like honey.
“Jim,” Bones says, and he’s leaning forward, fingers working around each other in tandem, “I don’t think we’re in jail.” And he licks his lips, and says, “For one thing, you didn’t drink nearly enough last night to have done anything stupid enough to get us locked-” (Which Jim will let slide.) “-and besides.” And he pauses, the sharp tang of fear in his voice. “I think I know where we are.”
Jim doesn’t speak - just waits. (The honey-smell is stronger, now.)
“I heard voices, outside,” Bones starts. “They thought I was still out, I think. Didn’t come in.” His speech is pausy, almost stuttered, and there’s fear in his eyes, stark and obvious. “We’re under the government buildings. Jim, you know what that means - you read the-”
“No,” Jim interrupts, firmly. “That’s a myth, Bones - nothing more than an urban legend. And Spock agreed with me on that, so I must be right.” (It’s a joke, but Bones ignores it.)
“The Kra’ktor,” Bones says, and his eyes just dare Jim to interrupt. “Urban legends always come from somewhere, Jim. And it would just be our goddamn luck to get caught up in this one.”
“Bones,” Jim says, and his voice is calm (even though he can feel anger thrumming up in his chest - this is ridiculous, he’s not listening to this). “The Kra’ktor are the Kalii’s bogeyman. They don’t exist - and anyway, there are a hundred planets with conspiracy theories about secret government agencies. Earth has its fair share. Why is this one true?”
“Because we’re sittin’ here?” Bones asks, with a pale echo of his usual sarcasm. “Because you’re walkin’ around in blood that’s damn well not ours?”
“It’s just a cell,” Jim answers, and he is angry, now - and he tries to tamp it down, to suppress it, but fuck, Bones is being a coward, and that’s not acceptable, not now, because he needs to think-
“It’s not a cell,” Bones says, and breaks Jim out of his fury. “It’s not.”
“What is it, then?” Jim snaps, and his foot sticks to the floor.
A muscle jumps in Bones’ jaw, and he looks hunted. His hands curl around the edge of the bench. “It’s an observation chamber,” he says, quietly. “The walls aren’t stone. They’re windows. And, Jim-” And he pauses, and bites his tongue, but then he’s standing, levering himself up, and they’re toe to toe, suddenly. Bones’ pupils are shot wide, and there’s blood edging its way from one nostril. Fuck, Jim thinks. Fuck fuck fuck he’s right damnit.
“Damnit, Jim,” Bones appeals, “you smell that too.” (And it rams it home that Bones is appealing, because Leonard McCoy does not appeal to anyone unless something is really goddamn wrong.)
The room smells like a fucking beehive.
“Okay, Kra’ktor,” Jim says, heavily, but he can’t stop the anger from screwing with his tone - and then, “We’re drugged.”
“I’m guessin’ so,” Bones answers, hands fisted in his shirt. “I found a puncture mark on my arm, and I’m goddamn scared, Jim, and it’s like I can’t stop it. And ever since this place started smelling like goddamn strawberries it’s gotten even worse. Fuck it, Jim, I want to curl up in that corner.” And he’s shaking, trembling.
But Jim’s barely listening to that last part. “Wait,” he says, sharply, like he’s talking to some ensign who’s just taken the piss out of the local leader’s funny hat. “Strawberries?”
Bones blanches, visibly. (Jim’s just about ready to try and beat the fear out of Bones’ system, because it’s really not helping his calm.) “Yeah, it smells like strawberries,” he answers. “Why?”
“I don’t smell strawberries,” Jim answers, perfunctorily, and decides not to reflect on the morals of scientists who make chemicals smell like sugar and fruit. “Honey.”
“We can’t be smelling different substances,” Bones reasons, and his voice is skittish, like a startled horse. “It must be the same one in the air, which means that it’s reactin’ differently in us.” He chews his lips - and it fascinates Jim, because Bones’ lips flush redder after he’s bitten them, and he can almost feel the blood pulsing to and fro from the skin surface. (Jim wants to see that blood, wants to feel it spread across his knuckles.) “What do you feel?” Bones asks.
It takes a moment for Jim to realise what he’s thinking about, and then a second longer for him to realise that he’s being spoken to. His hands are fisted, and he determinedly uncurls them. No, he spits at himself, and says, “Anger. And the urge to punch someone in the face.”
Jim imagines that didn’t do much for Bones’ fear.
He watches as Bones breathes, and the bob of the doctor’s Adam’s apple catches his gaze, holds it. “Okay,” Bones says, and there’s desperation in his eyes. “We can’t’ve been here long, and you were due back on the ship in the mornin’, so, Spock will notice you’re missin’ and will figure somethin’s wrong, and then they’ll pull of the whole dramatic rescue thing, and we’ll be back on the ship before you have a chance to rip my throat out. Stop starin’.”
“Fuck, sorry,” Jim bites off, and he turns away, because if he has his back to Bones, then he can’t think about how good he’d look with a bruise purpling his cheek.
The only sound, for a moment, is them breathing, and Jim can almost feel the hidden masses watching around them. He wonders, for a second, if this is something different - if instead of being an experiment, instead of being the guinea-pigs for the evil Kaliian bogeymen, they’re in some kind of arena, and this is entertainment: if they’re drugged up gladiators, paraded in front of the masses, instead of intensely observed research specimens.
What’s the fucking difference? he thinks, bitterly, angrily.
“Come on,” Jim says, and he pushes the anger down, because he’s not going to give these bastards what they want. “What can we do? What do we have?”
“Communicators are gone,” Bones answers, “obviously. Credits, too. I didn’t have anything else with me.”
Jim chances a glance at him, and he notices the way there’s a tear in Bones’ dark shirt and a scuff to the knee of his pants, even as hands are patting pockets. “Yeah,” he says, darkly. “Me too.” And he breathes-Just breathe, Jim. This anger, it’s not you.-and it’s loud in his ears. “What now?” he says. “I’m not just going to wait here for Spock to come and play the prince. We’ve got to do something.” And he doesn’t wait for Bones’ approval or Bones’ disagreement, but he paces to the door, boots ripping off the bloody floor - and he touches it, palms flat against the rough surface, and he feels it and smells it (honey, always fucking honey, stronger and stronger) and he’d lick it if he didn’t think it’d taste like sweat and blood. But he gets nowhere, even as he digs his fingers into the grooves and shakes, digs his fingers in until they bleed, and then he’s hurling himself at it, driving his shoulder into its infuriating blankness, because it has to break, it has to, and it’s better that he’s hurting himself than he’s hurting Bones-
“Jim.”
Shaking hands tug him away from the door, and then he’s pressed up against Bones with the fierceness of Bones’ grip holding him still, with the rapid breathing of the terrified rushing in his ear.
“Stop it, Jim,” Bones says, and his voice is tight and thin. “That won’t help. We have to wait. We can’t do anything except try not to let them win.”
“I’m not a coward,” Jim snarls - and he does snarl, and he feels like an animal, like his blood is on fire. “You sit and wait, and curl up in your corner. Let me go.” And he twists against Bones’ grip, because he can’t just sit still, it’s not in him - and if he’s got this anger in him, too, from some fucking drug that makes the air taste like honey, then it’s best that he let it out, but not on Bones, anywhere but Bones. (He’s the captain. He has to do something.)
“All you’re gonna do is hurt yourself,” Bones says, and his voice is a rumble of thunder over the hills. Except, scared thunder. “I need you to keep it together, Jim - because I’m sure as hell not.”
That makes his heart ache, just a little - and that ache is enough to overwhelm the anger; just. He forced himself to calm.
“Kra’ktor,” he says. “You’re the expert; talk to me. What do they want from us?”
(It’s a lifeline. He can hide in facts and speculation.) (That’s something Bones knows, better than most.)
Bones’ grip doesn’t lessen, not really, but his palm is splayed across Jim’s stomach, and it’s like they’re dancing. Through their clothes and through their flesh, Jim swears he can feel the hammering of Bones’ heart - and he forces himself to relax, even if his body is wired in lightning. “They want us,” Bones says, and yeah, that can’t be helping the fear, either, because Bones in his perpetual paranoia will have read up on everything bad about this supposed-vacation. “The Kra’ktor are a myth, somethin’ shouted about by the opposition to the government. They have no boundaries, no barriers under Kaliian law - and they’re a bunch of xenophobic bastards.”
“They always are,” Jim answers, and Bones’ fingers tighten at his voice. (Fear, Jim reflects, wryly.)
“Yeah,” Bones says. “The legends say that they experiment on alien species, lookin’ for the best way to knock each one out when it comes to war.”
The honey-smell is so strong now that Jim breathes through his mouth in far-spaced, huffing breaths. “It always has to be war,” he says, and he’s trying to quip - trying and failing, he thinks. “They can never just live and let live, can they?”
When Bones speaks, it’s quiet: “Considerin’ how you’re tryin’ to get away from me, Jim, I think with these bastards war is pretty much inevitable.”
Jim hadn’t even noticed that he was straining, pulling against the muscles of Bones’ arms with all the strength in his body. (It’s like he’s losing control, slipping out of what makes him human.) He breathes faster, and the honey-smell floods his mind, golden fuzz slipping everywhere. Bones’ grip is tight, tighter, and it hurts - Jim can see the finger-bruises already, almost, in his mind, because that’s Bones all over, isn’t it: he has to keep his hold over things, he has to be in control, even though Jim’s the fucking captain.
No, something snaps at him, inside his head, and he thinks it might be himself. That’s not you. Cut it out.
Bones must take his quiet as acquiescence, because he’s talking again, his voice shaking in the underlay. “The rumours are inconsistent-they’re goddamn rumours, of course they are-but there are a few things we can be sure about.”
Jim doesn’t need a fucking lecture to know what’s happening to them. He strains against Bones’ arms, but the doctor’s grip is stronger than he’s used to - he must be rushing on a hell of an adrenaline high. (Fear. It does things.)
“Goddamn experiments,” Bones says, and it’s like he’s wrapping himself around Jim, not just holding him. His breath is warm, fierce. “And they had to pick us, had to find us.”
“Well then they picked the wrong people,” Jim says, and he says it louder - he’s angry, yeah, so angry he’s just clinging on to control, but these scientist bastards can hear him, through the glass, he’s sure, and if they can hear him he can scare them. “Because the crew will come looking for us, and you know what Spock’s like when he’s pissed. And they’ll find us, because that’s what they do - and they’ll find us, and they’ll kick your asses.”
There’s silence, for a moment-quiet in the honeyed air-and then there’s a hiss, a rush, that’s barely audible over the thickness of the smell.
They’re gassing us, Jim thinks, instinctively, but then he remembers that they’re already gassed, and that he can just smell more and more bee-shit, so it’s not like they’re being slaughtered just yet. Bones whimpers, almost-a choked yelp that he’s trying to suppress but can’t keep down-and that pathetic, infantile whine just grates on Jim’s already frayed nerves. “Shut the fuck up, McCoy,” he snaps. “That’ll help no one.”
“But-”
“I said, shut up.” And Jim pulls forward, for the last time - pulls forward and pulls away and he’s out of Bones’ failing grasp. (He lurches towards the door, off-balance from the lack of strong-Bones holding him back, and he thinks he hears, just for a moment, a whiff of raised voices and panicked footsteps and - phaser fire? But his head is screwed up right now, quite a lot, and considering he keeps imagining bloody knuckles and the thrill of winning, he’s not trusting most of what he hears.)
“Jim, please, I can’t-”
(Pathetic and mewling and so unlike his goddamn Bones that Jim wants to scream.)
“Shut up!” he yells, and then he’s rounding on Bones, not-Bones, and he’s only a footstep away and he can’t help himself: he punches him, fist colliding with nose, and a spray of blood and fear-induced watery phlegm spatters across his wrist and the arm of his shirt.
Shit, he thinks, quite consciously, quite clearly. That’s going to be hell to get out.
And then he can’t stop.
Like he threw himself at the door, he throws himself at Bones - and Bones gives considerably easier. The confusion and terror in Bones’ eyes stamps itself across Jim’s mind, but all it does it make him angrier, because who the fuck is this scared little boy, pretending to be Jim’s world?
And so he finds himself: he’s sitting astride Bones’ waist in a parody of intimacy, and he’s smashing punches into his face, and Bones isn’t resisting, seems to be frozen, and that just makes Jim angrier and angrier (and there’s blood on his pants and blood across the floor, but the floor was sticky already, so that hardly counts). Jim’s always figured, before, that a bloodlust was just a metaphor, just an excuse for when you just want to hurt someone - but now, here and now, it’s like he can’t see for the haze in his vision.
(Haze and warmth and the strange gurgle that’s coming from Bones’ mashed face - and there’s a scuffle, a rattle, a whisper of a shout from outside.)
“Captain.”
And it’s a shout that’s full of calmness, paradoxically, and there’s only one person Jim knows who can make calm and angry so inexplicably enmeshed - but he’s not stopping, not for Spock, not for anyone (because he doesn’t think he can). He screams, almost-a guttural roar that seems to come from somewhere inside him he’s never seen before-and he punches the man he shares his bed with, once more, and he hears fingerbones snap (but barely feels it).
“Jim!”
(My name. Someone else’s name.)
Hands grasp his shoulders, wrenching him backwards - and he bucks against them, fighting back: he lashes out, and feels his uncurled fist connect with flesh, but he’s not released, far from it.
His mind is a rush-just a mess of emotion and sensation, but none of the sensations that he doesn’t want to feel, like pain-and he barely notices as he hits the floor, but he snarls and spits up at some bastard’s faintly-perturbed pointy-eared visage, and he doesn’t think about what he looks like, because why should he? He’s above that.
“Sedate him,” the pointy-eared bastard says, levelly, and if Jim could remember much about himself, he’d remember that that’s a bad thing.
As it is, there’s a sting in the side of his neck and he slaps a hand out to drive the fucking insect away - and then the fuzz that’s clouding his vision becomes more like a blur, a peaceable blur, and it’s peaceable so he wants to rip it to shreds, but it’s also pretty overpowering.
He’s unconscious in seconds.
§§§
Jim wakes up in Sickbay, with bright lights around him and a head that feels like it’s been drenched in rotten honey. His mouth is dry and he feels stiff, like he’s been sleeping on a boarded floor - so, all the usual symptoms. (He spends far too much time waking up in Sickbay, and so it takes him a moment to remember exactly what he’s done this time.)
Honey and strawberries.
Oh fuck, he thinks, and he’s trying to sit up, because there’s panic worming its way into his heart.
“Captain,” Spock says, with one hand on his shoulder, and Jim’s got no idea where he came from, but he’s half grateful, “please desist from attempting to leave the biobed. I believe Nurse Chapel would be most unimpressed, were you to damage her good work.”
“Bones,” Jim says, insistently. “Spock, is he okay?”
Spock is inscrutable, as ever. “Doctor McCoy is recovering admirably,” he answers. “Most of the damage was superficial.”
“Superficial,” Jim says, and remembers a hell of a lot of blood. He doesn’t relax, because all of a sudden he’s tense as a wire, but he does let Spock firmly guide him back down to the horizontal. “You found us.”
Spock’s eyebrow quirks, just a little. “Evidently so,” he answers. “Your captors removed you from Kalii in a transport ship with a warp trail significantly distinct from the majority of the traffic in orbit. Once we had discerned this, we were able to follow said trail to a starbase approximately twelve lightyears away, located on a moon in the orbit of a gas giant.”
Jim’s head is spinning, and not just because he’s fairly certain he’s still doped up on Starfleet’s finest sedatives. “Wait,” he says. “We weren’t on Kalii?”
“Indeed not.”
“But Bones said he heard people saying that we were underneath the government building,” Jim insists. “We thought it was the Kra’ktor-”
And there’s a faint trace of amusement in the line of Spock’s eyebrow. “The Kra’ktor, Captain,” he interrupts, “are a myth. There is no such organisation. And Doctor McCoy’s judgement was more than impaired: if I was to be pressed for a conclusion, I would suggest that the doctor, in his fragile state, heard what he wanted to hear.”
(Jim can accept that, he guesses, because the Kra’ktor? Really? But then, that just raises a whole other issue.) “Then who were they?” Jim asks. “The bastards who had us. They certainly seemed to fit the Kra’ktor profile.”
The humour is gone in a second.
Spock’s expression is horribly blank. “A group declaring themselves a think-tank,” he says, icily. “The scientists-” (And Jim can hear the derision in that word, because Spock is a scientist, too.) “-were mercenaries, simply willing to sell their conclusions to the highest bidder - that was the excuse that they used for inflicting pain on innocent Federation citizens.” And Spock’s lip curls.
(Jim’s never seen that before.)
“They drugged us,” he says. “We figured that out. It triggered extreme emotion, in both of us - which caused problems.” (And he figures Spock already knows what emotion it triggered in him. Vaguely, he wonders if bloody wrath is an emotion Vulcans acknowledge.)
“From data recovered from the base,” Spock says, “this group had abducted pairs of at least seven different species, including human, Vulcans, and Kaliians. They were testing two chemicals. The same dosage of each was injected into one half of each pair, regardless of species, and then a further activating compound was fed into the observation chambers - and the results were observed.”
Jim licks his lips, because, somehow, he knows they were lucky. “Regardless of species,” he repeats. (Drugs don’t work the same on all physiologies, and ones that screw with Andorian mating cycles are wholly lethal to humans.)
Spock’s eyes are like flint. “Indeed,” he says. “It appears the Kaliian pair died minutes after the initial injections.”
And there’s quiet, for a moment, and Jim looks out of the window of the private room he’s always stashed in (jokingly dubbed ‘the captain’s quarters’ by the medical staff, he knows) and sees Bones, sleeping on a biobed, lifesigns steady and features relaxed. (Of course, Jim hasn’t been searching for a sight of Bones - but he appreciates it when he gets it, nonetheless.) “And the others?” he asks.
Spock straightens, just a fraction. “The most violent emotional reactions,” he begins, “occurred in the human and Vulcan pairs. You are aware of the occurrences between yourself and Doctor McCoy.”
“And the Vulcans?” Jim says, even though the way Spock doesn’t look at him (with hands tight behind his back and spine like the straightness of a ladder) is an answer itself.
Spock blinks, once. “The Enterprise away team failed to reach that particular observation chamber in time,” he answers, flatly.
(And that stings just that little more, Jim knows, because, unlike Earth, New Vulcan cannot afford death or disease, not with so few left. Not that Earth will stand for the wanton destruction of her people, but still - the hole where Vulcan once was has left a black mark on the heart of each one of her children.)
He looks to Bones, and sees that he is sleeping.
That’s calming, somehow - but it still makes Jim’s stomach turn over when he thinks about what he did, and how he did it, and how it felt good.
§§§
Bones stands in front of the door to the captain’s quarters (that are his as well, really, in all but name), his touch hovering over the door release, and he finds that he’s not scared. He thought he would be. When he woke up in Sickbay to find Jim already gone and the bloody mess of his face just a memory, he was scared, still - whether an aftershock of that damn drug or some feeling of his own, he’s still not sure. But he felt it, rich and thick in his veins.
(He hates that he lets some fucked up alien experiment change what he feels for Jim, his captain, even if just for a moment.)
He presses the door release, firmly.
It’s bright as he steps inside, bright like Kalii’s twin suns, and Jim’s working, at the desk (which has been twisted so that it gazes out of the window at the stars as long as he’s had these quarters), shoulders hunched and head bent. Bones knows that his presence has been recognised-of course it has, this is Jim-but he stands, and waits, and watches. Jim toys with a padd, flicking through some report or another, and his other arm lies immobile, fingers splayed. Bones just looks, and reminds himself that this is what Jim is - calm and focused, not vicious with a song of rage on his tongue.
“I didn’t think you’d be dropping by,” Jim says, and there’s a mutedness to his voice. Bones can hear the blame and the disgust.
He smiles, and he means it. “I live here, Jim,” he answers.
Jim moves, fractionally - he straightens, but he’s still angled away from Bones and towards the milky streaks of warp. “Wouldn’t think you’d still want to.”
Bones snorts, elegantly. “What, after some goddamn mindfuck that’s more than over?”
“Hardly a mindfuck,” Jim answers, and he drops the padd and turns around, tight in his chair. “I smashed your face in, Bones, because you wouldn’t stop whimpering.” And the last is startlingly matter-of-fact, so much so that it reignites that fear in Bones’ belly, just for a second.
He tamps it down. “Then I shouldn’t’ve been whimpering, should I?”
“Bones,” Jim says, sharply. (It’s a very bad joke.)
Bones steps forward, half-tentatively. “Space is a big place, Jim,” he says, “and not everyone wants to be our friend. You know that. So we can’t beat ourselves up over this. That’s what they want us to do, right?” He pauses, and studies the reluctance in Jim’s eyes. (He cares for his crew too much - and that’s what Bones is, right now, he realises: he’s less Bones, Academy roommate and grumpy boyfriend, and more Doctor McCoy, CMO, valued member of the crew.) “You got angry, I got terrified,” he says, softly. “Those damn drugs were designed to play off each other, to make things worse. So, it worked. It was meant to. Not your fault.”
Jim stands, slowly, and he’s pale and washed out in the brightness. His eyes are bright.
“I’d say that I forgave you,” Bones says, simply, “if I thought there was anything that needed forgiveness.”
(Jim works best in facts, he’s found. Emotions can be explained away; facts can be hidden behind. There’s nothing wrong with that - and emotions stated as facts tend to work just as well.)
And Jim nods, slowly. “Okay,” he says, and then, “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Yeah,” Bones answers. “I’ll be here.”
Jim heads to the bathroom, and he might shed clothes as he goes, but Bones isn’t looking, not really. (He’s seen it all before, anyway, and no matter what he might say, there’s a ghost of pain across his face - just a memory, but the mind is a goddamn powerful thing.) Bones pads through to the bedroom, and he regards the bed with a quirked eyebrow - because it’s just as messy as they left it, two days ago, to head down to a bar on the south side of Kalii, for an evening’s R&R.
The irony, he thinks, sharply, and straightens the covers.
He’s resigned himself to space, now-realised that being anywhere on the medical staff of the Enterprise means emergency surgery and doctoring in war zones and a bucketload of other responsibilities that leave a bad taste in his mouth, including occasionally getting beaten up by the captain hopped up on near-lethal doses of alien hormones-but he thinks Jim’s never going to get used to it, not really. The kid acts like a captain, and is a captain - and that’s the problem. Captains take every strike at their crew as a strike to their heart.
Jim’s too much a captain, maybe.
“Lights, thirty percent,” Bones says, and shucks the ill-fitting shirt from his shoulders. (The one he wore to Kalii is ruined, now - stained and torn. The quartermaster tossed it while he was sleeping.) He goes to bed, rumpling the sheets once more, and he lies back, eyes closed, listening to the shower.
He’s in a half-doze when Jim emerges-he thinks he might still have traces of Starfleet meds chasing each other around his system, not that he’s complaining-and he watches sleepily as Jim potters, folding his clothes, and then Bones’, and stacking them in a precarious pile at the edge of a chair that’s already full of old-fashioned hardback books. (It’s Bones guilty hobby, but he’s discovered that Jim, for all his extolling of the virtues of digital media, is a fan, too.) In the end, with nothing left to potter, Jim turns to him, looks to him.
Bones drags up Jim’s side of the covers, and there’s something almost like relief in Jim’s expression.
“You look like I was gonna kick you outta your own quarters,” Bones says, voice fogged in sleep.
Jim tugs the covers away from him, just a little, and wriggles until he’s comfortable. (He’s curved to Bones’ shape, but not touching, because they’re both warm and Bones doesn’t like to be smothered, not that Jim usually notices - but then again, Bones remembers observation chambers and a frantic attempt to stop Jim’s rampage: bodies plastered against each other, and palms splayed across a heaving stomach.) “Your quarters, too,” he answers. “Lights, five percent.”
Near-darkness wraps its velvet touch around them, and it’s the starlight more than anything else that illuminates the wet hair sticking to Jim’s forehead.
“Shit happens, kid,” Bones says. “That ain’t likely to change.”
“Go to sleep,” Jim says.
(Bones didn’t miss that Jim’s fingers are splinted. There are osteostimulators galore in Sickbay, he knows, and he really ought to drag Jim’s sorry ass down there and get those broken fingers fixed properly, and then ask why his people didn’t fix them in the first place-although it was probably Jim that told them not to-but he’s not going to say anything. It’ll take more than words for Jim to forgive himself - in his head, he has to suffer a little. And, if Bones is honest with himself, he wants Jim to have that reminder, for a while: every time there’s a twitch of pain in those knitting bones, Jim will remember the punches and the blood, and Bones doesn’t think that’s something he’s going to forget very soon.)
“Stupid, masochistic son of a bitch,” he mutters, and doesn’t know which one of them he’s referring to.
Jim smiles in the darkness.
finis