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d8rkmessngrJust a tiny fic, to keep mommy from getting rusty. Yes, still writing, still sweating over posting here. LOL.
Title: Objects in Warp
Fandom: Star Trek XI/Reboot
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy, pre-slash, first time
Rating: PG-13, hurt-comfort, angst
Words: 3800+ complete, betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
soullessminion
Summary: Despite what Jim Kirk may believe, objects in motion do not necessarily have to stay in motion.
Warning: violence, death (non-major characters)
Author's Notes: Goodness! It feels like ages since I posted. Hopefully, that doesn't show. LOL.
Master Fic List: here
There was a time when unexpected hands grabbing him would have had him waking up swinging. Still could sometimes. Except Jim's body knew the hands loosely placed on his shoulders, even as he recognized the sigh of exasperation by his ear.
"Figured you would still be up."
"Mm," Jim mumbled. He doubted it translated easily to "You confined me to rest in my quarters" or "Two weeks worth of reports attacked me" but Bones was a smart guy.
A touch ghosted his brow and he surprised himself by not flinching away at the familiarity probably because he'd had plenty of time to get used to it over the past two weeks of drifting in and out. The contact was a solid anchor in the confused muddle of what was dream and what was reality.
Knuckles brushed briefly across his cheekbone—yet another strangely familiar sensation—and Jim leaned into it. Stupid head. His reports had jumped him and made his head too heavy now.
"Okay, time’s up."
Jim frowned mildly to himself and he opened his eyes to glare up at Bones. Obviously, his universal Kirk translator that had worked so well during the Academy was failing here.
"Reports," Jim rasped, his voice sounding like he'd been practicing Klingon all night over bad coffee with Uhura and Gaila again.
"No reports." Bones understood that one just fine. Huh, apparently his Kirk translator only worked selectively.
"Rest. You've got to give your body a chance to flush out the rest of those toxins from those arrows. It can't if you're constantly moving around or working on stuff, keeping your heart rate and blood pressure up."
"Boring's restful," he slurred out and then blinked for a moment. Okay, maybe that wasn't exactly a coherent defense. Technically, he knew he was confined to the chair until the toxins stopped frying his nervous system from the inside out and walking didn't feel like glass shards on his bare feet. He stared at the stack of PADDs and hard copies and pointed out earnestly in case Bones had missed it, "Reports are very boring." He added helpfully, "Have you seen what Spock writes?" So, ergo and therefore—see how he was drawing conclusions like a Vulcan too—he concluded, "'m totally fine."
"Right, feel free to try that one on someone who doesn't actually know you." Jim muttered a protest as he felt Bones grip the handles of his wheelchair and start pulling him away from his work.
Jim frowned in consternation and gripped the edge of the desk. "No," he protested. "Gotta do 'em." They were waiting for him to do something stupid. Like not reading all the boring restful pages. He blinked and hung on tighter. So many data PADDs and they were kind of swimming in front of his eyes now. Lots of correlation data on atmospheric aerosol dispersal of veggie…vegan…vegetative...Whatever. Stupid stuff. No one actually cared about those reports but a bunch of admirals waiting to pounce on him. Just them in their frowny-faced frownyness and a few bored blue shirts down in Agro desperate for alien algae.
"Jim?" A fuzzy-looking Bones crouched in front of him. Wait, that couldn't be right. Bones wasn't a fuzzy kind of guy. He was grouchy. He was cranky. Jim would punch anyone who said Bones was warm and fuzzy because Bones was his friend. That's what you did for friends, right? You punched people for them. He wasn't sure, but he thought so. Bones was the only guy who seemed to tolerate Jim well past any expiration date. And there were those rare smiles he gave when he thought no one was looking. It made Jim feel warm. Like having his forehead touched. Warm, but not fuzzy because fuzzy was not allowed and he'd have to punch himself for wanting Bones to be fuzzy with him which would probably hurt a lot…
"Jim?" Bones drew closer, close enough that Jim could smell the strange mix that always said Bones to him – partly the no-smell Sickbay sterilization spray and partly the heady spice of old-fashioned aftershave. He was the only guy Jim knew who still used sharpened metal rather than eat 'those chalky unnatural beard suppressants'.
"Computer. Raise room temperature five degrees."
Jim grimaced at the sound of nails clawing down hull plating as his hearing cycled back to hyper sensitive when the computer beeped back. Damn xenophobic arrow wielding natives. Couldn't they have just said, "Excuse us, this is our moon. We got here first, would you mind leaving, please?" instead of shooting arrows tipped with nerve toxins into his chest? Into Harding's heart? Or Garmond. Or Stev—God, Stevens. She was blonde, looked a little like his mom and had wistfully showed him a holo of her three-year-old daughter in the Mess before the beam down. Her little girl who she confided was being watched by her grandmother. Staring down at the picture of the gap-toothed grin, it had vaguely occurred to him to wonder if his own mom had ever shown his holo to her captains on the many 'Just one short trip, Jimmy' tours she'd taken. Stevens had wistfully confessed how her little girl looked just like her dead father at which point Jim had shut down all thoughts about his own mother and any mental comparisons of how he might or might not have looked exactly like his own father at age five and started gathering the team together to beam down.
Jim'd been told that she'd thrown herself over him after the welcome committee had shot him. He'd listened to her soft motherly voice on playback screaming into her communicator as she'd tried to raise the Enterprise while Sulu had returned fire. She'd died even as the pinprick sparkles of the transporter she'd called in had saved them, or so he'd been informed upon waking up in Sickbay.
The PADDs blurred in front of him. Sulu's report was still there amongst them somewhere. Mocking him with the details of how he'd been unconscious even as three of his crewmembers had died around him. Now there was a report the admirals could use if they ever wanted to show what a mistake he was.
Large hands gripped his forearms and rubbed them vigorously up and down. Jim squinted at Bones—still fuzzy, but only just—as he bowed his head in front of Jim and concentrated on massaging tingling, burning, hurting muscles back from their gray-white, blue veined hue. Bones'd been rubbing Jim's arms and hands when he'd woken up too. He'd been even fuzzier then. He'd been saying weird non-medical things like he had been praying and swearing at the same time. And that's when Jim realized he was hearing his own voice crying from the pain. Jim stared at him now with the image of Bones trying to rub out the pain making a lump of something lodge in Jim's throat.
"Better?" Bones asked quietly. Thankfully, he raised his eyes, breaking the memory. And Jim hated himself a little bit for wanting that look back. Nerve toxins clearly made you stupid.
"Yeah," Jim croaked. He raised his right hand, reaching for the next report. Dumb nerve toxin, messing with his head. First his mom, now Bones. He had work to do.
"No," Bones caught his hand.
"No work," Bones said quietly. Weird because his voice was hushed, not Bones-like at all. Not normal and growly and familiar and safe and irritated with him. Jim got distracted when Bones sandwiched his captured hand between both of his and squeezed no doubt to get the heat thrumming back into his numb fingers. Jim couldn't tell if it was the lingering toxins or Bones' touch that was making his arm tingle. It hurt yet it also didn't.
"You need rest, Jim. This is one time you can't…" Bones swallowed hard, his Adam's apple did a funny bob before he continued. "Jim, just no, okay? Listen to your doctor, to me, for once."
Not fair, it wasn't like he never listened to Bones—okay …sometimes he didn't—but this time he had work to do. Admirals with boatloads of algae data. And…Jim blinked past Bones' shoulder to his desk and swallowed.
"They're not all reports," Jim whispered, his throat working.
Bones sighed, "I know." Another hand rested on Jim's head then moved to rest on the back of his neck. "But those letters don't need to be written to the families right now, not with you fighting sleep at your desk."
Jim protested pointedly, not commenting on whether any of the four data PADDs he'd started were addressed to anyone except cranky admirals who might or might not have it in for him rather than a little girl who would now learn everything about her mother the way he had about his father through hushed whispers and Federation case reports. "I was not fighting off the pain killers. Or being drugged into a coma by Spock's obvious lust for algae bloom predictions. I was just resting my eyes."
"Uh-huh. Right."
Jim glowered. He tracked Bones as he made his way to the bed, turned down the covers and—you’ve got to be kidding—fluffed his pillows.
"Shouldn't you be in Sickbay, harassing someone else? I hear there are actual sick people down there." Jim grumbled as he pushed up from his armrests. "I don't need you here. I don't need you telling me to not do my work or tuck me in. Don't you have a medical staff you can go boss around now?" The room wobbled. Fine, maybe a nap. An hour. Okay. Two hours, tops. Then back to the reports. Definitely the reports.
"For your information, I just got off eight hours of duty and my med team thinks I'm a—No, Jim, don't get up!"
Pain.
Jim felt his arms go rigid and his legs do the opposite when he levered himself up. Something ignited in his chest, liquefying the bones down his legs. White fire flared behind his eyes and suddenly he couldn't breathe.
Jim choked.
Then he fell.
"Christ." Arms wrapped around his shoulders, pressing his face to a rough jaw and there was a brief moment where it felt like Jim was neither sitting nor standing. He hung there, listening to Bones pant above him like he'd been running around Deck Nine full tilt.
Jim closed his eyes, letting Bones' fists bunch the back of his shirt to hold him up. Bones gulped hard. Jim could feel the gasping under his cheek. "Just breathe slowly. I got you."
His hearing was messed up again and Bones sounded a tad high-pitched (but that could also just be the sudden shrieking in his ears that was leaving a metallic taste in his mouth) as he hugged Jim to his chest. He grunted as he eased Jim down on the bed.
"Hold on, hold on," Bones whispered. He kept one hand on Jim's thigh while he slipped an arm under Jim's knees. Carefully, as his voice dropped the occasional hushed "almost there", "slow breaths, Jim" and "I gotcha", Bones eased Jim's legs onto the bed.
Blearily, Jim watched Bones tuck the blankets around him, tsking when he discovered Jim only had one sock on, and then waved the scanner wand from his tricorder over Jim's body.
The low humming whirred above Jim. He’d grown to associate the sound with Bones too, a humming lilt just behind the sometimes thick, rolling Georgian accent that thickened when he was tired or drunk or irritated or, well, not feeling Bones-like. He watched with his eyes half-mast as Bones stared intently into his tricorder like it was a stellar chart showing him the way to Antarian buried treasure.
"Dammit, Jim," Bones muttered under his breath. He glanced over, his lips pressed together and eyes dark. He reached over and settled a palm over Jim’s brow.
That was the weird thing about Bones. He'd complain about stuff like the archaic medical practices of centuries past, but he'd still double-check for fever by touch. Bones was like that. He'd complain about something, but still maybe keep it around despite everything.
"You're running a slight fever again." Bones looked pissed as if Jim was hanging onto the toxins' effects just to mess with him. Jim grimaced. Not that messing with Bones wasn't fun sometimes, but this was definitely…he flinched as another spasm shot through one of his legs…not one of the ways he'd recommend.
"Does that hurt? Well, that's what you get for going down to a planet and allowing the natives to shoot you full of holes." Grumbling inaudibly, Bones rummaged around in the medical kit slung across his shoulder—whatever happened to off-duty?—and fished out a vial of pills.
Old fashioned medicine. At least it wasn't hyposprays. Now if his legs would just stop spasming. "I win." Jim groaned to Bones, as he gulped the water to wash the pills down, trying to force his body back under control.
Hyposprays and Jim Kirk never had a good relationship, but the toxin had ratcheted things up to a whole new level of colorful swearing. He woke to a tang of ozone and blood just as the pressurized hiss of a hypo seemed to ignite his body on contact. Everything had seized into a supernova that blew behind his eyes, down his limbs and ripped at his heart. He came to on the floor, Nurse Chapel bent over him with actual tears running down her ashen face as she apologized to Bones over and over as she held him down, while Bones swore at her, at Jim, at the damn medic who was handing him another damn hypospray that he didn't ask for, and shouting for someone over his shoulder as Jim slowly suffocated.
"Yeah, you win." Bones choked, maybe laughed, because some of Jim's relief must have shown. "No more hyposprays for you for a while."
Jim blinked blearily up at him and tried to smirk. "Told ya, persistence always wins."
Bones' face twisted briefly into…something Jim couldn't identify before he stooped down to settle Jim back onto the bed and rearrange the blankets. There was a brief second, when Bones was close enough that Jim could feel his breath against his hair and Jim felt cocooned, painless and floating in zero gravity.
Then Bones straightened and Jim's body felt leaden and sunken again.
Maybe that was why when Bones twisted around to lever off the bed, Jim felt something cold curdle in his belly.
And maybe that was why when Jim thought Bones was leaving, he reached out and grabbed the edge of a blue sleeve.
Bones froze.
"Jim?"
Then again maybe it was the nerve toxin just making him stupid.
His grip was weak; three fingers loosely wound around blue fabric that Bones could easily yank free. Any words were caught in his throat.
Bones sat down on the edge of the bed again; his torso turned away, his face hidden from Jim. He didn't pull his arm back though. He just sat there, waiting, with his back to Jim.
Jim's fingers clenched. He stared at them like he'd never seen them before. Hell, alien nerve toxin didn't make you stupid, it made you suicidal. What the hell was he doing?
Begging your mom all the way to the shuttle port to not leave for one more tour when you were five was one thing. Pleading with your brother to not run away without you might be brushed off as just needing someone who could reach the brakes of the stolen car. Bargaining with Kodos’ guards to leave him with his condemned aunt and uncle in the gas chambers might be acceptable. Death by starvation or death by gas chamber made very little difference, dead was dead after all, and so what if you didn't want to die alone.
But this…this was obvious evidence that he had had one too many hyposprays of happy juice. He had fried his brains on alien nerve toxin. Spock could do a field study on how Telurite flowering plants had a stronger intelligence reading.
What they had was fine. It was enough. Asking for more gained you an empty shuttle port window, a deserted Iowa road, a chamber full of ashes. It gained you nothing.
He had one person in the universe. One Bones. One. You did not play no-win scenarios with that. Especially and most particularly when you already knew through trial and error that you could not win.
Jim's hand dropped to the bed.
Bones stayed where he was though, his arm still pulled back as if Jim had never let go.
"It's okay," Bones said quietly, to Jim, to no one in particular. "It's okay to ask me to stay, Jim."
Jim closed his eyes, but he was breathing too hard to feign sleep. He tried to concentrate on the pain.
"I'd stay if you just ask." Bones told the wall in front of him. His shoulders stiffened as if bracing to be shot in the back. "You can ask me, Jim."
There was a bitterness rising up in his throat, a lurch in his stomach that wasn't toxin-related. Jim stared straight ahead—if you didn't ask it didn't count and he wasn't asking.
Bones turned around completely to consider him. His expression was blank, but there were shadows that darkened his eyes again. He bent down, his arms on either side of Jim. Bones looked freaked, just as freaked as when Chapel was apologizing and Bones was yelling and Jim was trying to reassure him only to end up splattering Bones' face with his blood.
"Jim," Bones breathed, cupping Jim’s jaw with a shaky hand. "Ask me to stay."
There was a band that wound around Jim's chest. His lungs burned. That was why his eyes burned as well. Jim set his jaw. He squeezed his eyes tight when he felt Bones' thumb trace his lower lip.
"Ask me to stay," Bones whispered and even with his eyes closed, Jim could see him.
"I swear," Bones murmured as he stroked Jim's lips and his chin with blunt fingers, "I'm not like them; the ones you couldn't tell me about. I'll stay if you ask me to." Both hands framed Jim's face. A soft kiss brushed the top of his head. "Hell, I followed you into space, Jim." Another kiss, now on his shut left eye. "Where else would I want to go?" Now one on his right. Thumbs soothed circles under Jim's eyes.
"I nearly lost you so many times these past weeks," Bones croaked, "Otherwise I was willing to wait for as long as it took until you felt ready. Dammit, Jim, ask me to stay. I swear to God, I will."
The no-win scenario, it only made the disappointment more cutting, slashing bone deep, half-healed until he was stupid enough to ask for more again. He took a breath and breathed in no-smell sanitizer and old-spice. If you didn't risk, then you didn't lose.
Jim opened his eyes and Bones stilled, his own unwavering gaze glued to Jim's face.
Or if you risked all, you could save the Kobayashi Maru and become Captain.
Bones had been willing to stand by him on all three tests of the no-win scenario, even after the first two hadn't turned out. He'd been there. Every time.
He swallowed and it still hurt.
"Stay," Jim rasped. He weakly reached up and snagged the hem of Bones' uniform. "Stay here." With me, Jim wished he could say.
Bones heard it anyway. The gloom that hung over him peeled away and there was that rare smile again, this time openly for Jim to see. Bones nodded. "Okay." He toed off his boots, set his medical kit by the headboard and eased himself to lie on his side between Jim and the bulkhead.
There was a floaty sensation as Jim felt himself being pulled to lie partially against Bones. Absolutely the alien nerve toxin. Jim exhaled slowly as a careful arm wrapped around his chest and held him close. Jim closed his eyes, listened for that heartbeat and felt Bones' hand go up and down his chest.
Slowly, the painkillers finally kicked in.
Jim blinked lethargically against Bones as he drifted under the rhythmic motion of Bones’ breathing against his ear. Jim raised a hand to touch the arm around him. Just to feel if it was really there.
"Thank you," Bones whispered by his ear before his other arm circled around, completing the embrace.
Funny, Jim thought, resting his face over Bones' heart and his eyes sliding shut; he was going to say the same thing.
The heat of another body pressed against him was a familiar sensation.
The content feeling was not.
Jim stirred and opened gritty eyes to consider the port window and the dots of light that flickered and streamed past in ribbons of colored light. The sight coaxed him further into waking. The Enterprise hummed around him, reminding him where he was. He felt a hand loosely settle over his heart and the slow realization that there still was a body beside him unfurled the tightly coiled, barbed wire feeling that had nothing to do with alien nerve toxin.
The hand over his heart flattened and rubbed a slow circle across his chest, neatly avoiding the barely healed scars there. They would never fully go away. Jim thought it was fine, because things in life should leave something behind.
"Stop it." Bones rumbled low in a sleepy burr by his ear. His hand continued to skim up and down Jim's chest; all that was missing was the hum of a tricorder.
"What?" Jim yawned. He closed his eyes so he could memorize the feel of bristly skin rubbing against his jaw. He opened his eyes at the brush of lips on his temple.
"You're supposed to be resting, not thinking," Bones grumbled. He shifted a leg and lined up his foot to press against Jim's calf. "I can smell the wood burning. Usually it means it's time to start running for the hills."
Jim tried to ignore the knotting in his chest. "Well," he said as casual as he could, "guess you better start running then."
There was a pause, as if Bones was coming to his senses when abruptly he straddled Jim, careful not to put his weight on him.
Bones cradled his shoulders, made like he was going to shake Jim. He studied Jim for a long time before his mouth eased into a lazy smirk.
"Hell no," Bones drawled. "You asked me to stay." He rested his forehead lightly on Jim's. "I'm staying put."
Jim's mouth twitched at the corners. "Oh yeah. Forgot."
"Got a problem with that?"
Jim reached up and touched the smile that he could feel against him, felt it broadening against his fingertips.
"No," Jim murmured, "No problem at all."
The End
Author's Acknowledgment: Tosoullessminion because she never says no when I throw another fic at her, to my shy co-conspirator Ellie who always refuses credit she deserves, to inell because she's been swamped and needs a Bones nagging her, to bakaknight because she lets me rant to her, to gingerlr because I can't be there to make sure she sleeps, eat, and rest properly. –glower-
Title: Objects in Warp
Fandom: Star Trek XI/Reboot
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy, pre-slash, first time
Rating: PG-13, hurt-comfort, angst
Words: 3800+ complete, betaed by
soullessminion Summary: Despite what Jim Kirk may believe, objects in motion do not necessarily have to stay in motion.
Warning: violence, death (non-major characters)
Author's Notes: Goodness! It feels like ages since I posted. Hopefully, that doesn't show. LOL.
Master Fic List: here
There was a time when unexpected hands grabbing him would have had him waking up swinging. Still could sometimes. Except Jim's body knew the hands loosely placed on his shoulders, even as he recognized the sigh of exasperation by his ear.
"Figured you would still be up."
"Mm," Jim mumbled. He doubted it translated easily to "You confined me to rest in my quarters" or "Two weeks worth of reports attacked me" but Bones was a smart guy.
A touch ghosted his brow and he surprised himself by not flinching away at the familiarity probably because he'd had plenty of time to get used to it over the past two weeks of drifting in and out. The contact was a solid anchor in the confused muddle of what was dream and what was reality.
Knuckles brushed briefly across his cheekbone—yet another strangely familiar sensation—and Jim leaned into it. Stupid head. His reports had jumped him and made his head too heavy now.
"Okay, time’s up."
Jim frowned mildly to himself and he opened his eyes to glare up at Bones. Obviously, his universal Kirk translator that had worked so well during the Academy was failing here.
"Reports," Jim rasped, his voice sounding like he'd been practicing Klingon all night over bad coffee with Uhura and Gaila again.
"No reports." Bones understood that one just fine. Huh, apparently his Kirk translator only worked selectively.
"Rest. You've got to give your body a chance to flush out the rest of those toxins from those arrows. It can't if you're constantly moving around or working on stuff, keeping your heart rate and blood pressure up."
"Boring's restful," he slurred out and then blinked for a moment. Okay, maybe that wasn't exactly a coherent defense. Technically, he knew he was confined to the chair until the toxins stopped frying his nervous system from the inside out and walking didn't feel like glass shards on his bare feet. He stared at the stack of PADDs and hard copies and pointed out earnestly in case Bones had missed it, "Reports are very boring." He added helpfully, "Have you seen what Spock writes?" So, ergo and therefore—see how he was drawing conclusions like a Vulcan too—he concluded, "'m totally fine."
"Right, feel free to try that one on someone who doesn't actually know you." Jim muttered a protest as he felt Bones grip the handles of his wheelchair and start pulling him away from his work.
Jim frowned in consternation and gripped the edge of the desk. "No," he protested. "Gotta do 'em." They were waiting for him to do something stupid. Like not reading all the boring restful pages. He blinked and hung on tighter. So many data PADDs and they were kind of swimming in front of his eyes now. Lots of correlation data on atmospheric aerosol dispersal of veggie…vegan…vegetative...Whatever. Stupid stuff. No one actually cared about those reports but a bunch of admirals waiting to pounce on him. Just them in their frowny-faced frownyness and a few bored blue shirts down in Agro desperate for alien algae.
"Jim?" A fuzzy-looking Bones crouched in front of him. Wait, that couldn't be right. Bones wasn't a fuzzy kind of guy. He was grouchy. He was cranky. Jim would punch anyone who said Bones was warm and fuzzy because Bones was his friend. That's what you did for friends, right? You punched people for them. He wasn't sure, but he thought so. Bones was the only guy who seemed to tolerate Jim well past any expiration date. And there were those rare smiles he gave when he thought no one was looking. It made Jim feel warm. Like having his forehead touched. Warm, but not fuzzy because fuzzy was not allowed and he'd have to punch himself for wanting Bones to be fuzzy with him which would probably hurt a lot…
"Jim?" Bones drew closer, close enough that Jim could smell the strange mix that always said Bones to him – partly the no-smell Sickbay sterilization spray and partly the heady spice of old-fashioned aftershave. He was the only guy Jim knew who still used sharpened metal rather than eat 'those chalky unnatural beard suppressants'.
"Computer. Raise room temperature five degrees."
Jim grimaced at the sound of nails clawing down hull plating as his hearing cycled back to hyper sensitive when the computer beeped back. Damn xenophobic arrow wielding natives. Couldn't they have just said, "Excuse us, this is our moon. We got here first, would you mind leaving, please?" instead of shooting arrows tipped with nerve toxins into his chest? Into Harding's heart? Or Garmond. Or Stev—God, Stevens. She was blonde, looked a little like his mom and had wistfully showed him a holo of her three-year-old daughter in the Mess before the beam down. Her little girl who she confided was being watched by her grandmother. Staring down at the picture of the gap-toothed grin, it had vaguely occurred to him to wonder if his own mom had ever shown his holo to her captains on the many 'Just one short trip, Jimmy' tours she'd taken. Stevens had wistfully confessed how her little girl looked just like her dead father at which point Jim had shut down all thoughts about his own mother and any mental comparisons of how he might or might not have looked exactly like his own father at age five and started gathering the team together to beam down.
Jim'd been told that she'd thrown herself over him after the welcome committee had shot him. He'd listened to her soft motherly voice on playback screaming into her communicator as she'd tried to raise the Enterprise while Sulu had returned fire. She'd died even as the pinprick sparkles of the transporter she'd called in had saved them, or so he'd been informed upon waking up in Sickbay.
The PADDs blurred in front of him. Sulu's report was still there amongst them somewhere. Mocking him with the details of how he'd been unconscious even as three of his crewmembers had died around him. Now there was a report the admirals could use if they ever wanted to show what a mistake he was.
Large hands gripped his forearms and rubbed them vigorously up and down. Jim squinted at Bones—still fuzzy, but only just—as he bowed his head in front of Jim and concentrated on massaging tingling, burning, hurting muscles back from their gray-white, blue veined hue. Bones'd been rubbing Jim's arms and hands when he'd woken up too. He'd been even fuzzier then. He'd been saying weird non-medical things like he had been praying and swearing at the same time. And that's when Jim realized he was hearing his own voice crying from the pain. Jim stared at him now with the image of Bones trying to rub out the pain making a lump of something lodge in Jim's throat.
"Better?" Bones asked quietly. Thankfully, he raised his eyes, breaking the memory. And Jim hated himself a little bit for wanting that look back. Nerve toxins clearly made you stupid.
"Yeah," Jim croaked. He raised his right hand, reaching for the next report. Dumb nerve toxin, messing with his head. First his mom, now Bones. He had work to do.
"No," Bones caught his hand.
"No work," Bones said quietly. Weird because his voice was hushed, not Bones-like at all. Not normal and growly and familiar and safe and irritated with him. Jim got distracted when Bones sandwiched his captured hand between both of his and squeezed no doubt to get the heat thrumming back into his numb fingers. Jim couldn't tell if it was the lingering toxins or Bones' touch that was making his arm tingle. It hurt yet it also didn't.
"You need rest, Jim. This is one time you can't…" Bones swallowed hard, his Adam's apple did a funny bob before he continued. "Jim, just no, okay? Listen to your doctor, to me, for once."
Not fair, it wasn't like he never listened to Bones—okay …sometimes he didn't—but this time he had work to do. Admirals with boatloads of algae data. And…Jim blinked past Bones' shoulder to his desk and swallowed.
"They're not all reports," Jim whispered, his throat working.
Bones sighed, "I know." Another hand rested on Jim's head then moved to rest on the back of his neck. "But those letters don't need to be written to the families right now, not with you fighting sleep at your desk."
Jim protested pointedly, not commenting on whether any of the four data PADDs he'd started were addressed to anyone except cranky admirals who might or might not have it in for him rather than a little girl who would now learn everything about her mother the way he had about his father through hushed whispers and Federation case reports. "I was not fighting off the pain killers. Or being drugged into a coma by Spock's obvious lust for algae bloom predictions. I was just resting my eyes."
"Uh-huh. Right."
Jim glowered. He tracked Bones as he made his way to the bed, turned down the covers and—you’ve got to be kidding—fluffed his pillows.
"Shouldn't you be in Sickbay, harassing someone else? I hear there are actual sick people down there." Jim grumbled as he pushed up from his armrests. "I don't need you here. I don't need you telling me to not do my work or tuck me in. Don't you have a medical staff you can go boss around now?" The room wobbled. Fine, maybe a nap. An hour. Okay. Two hours, tops. Then back to the reports. Definitely the reports.
"For your information, I just got off eight hours of duty and my med team thinks I'm a—No, Jim, don't get up!"
Pain.
Jim felt his arms go rigid and his legs do the opposite when he levered himself up. Something ignited in his chest, liquefying the bones down his legs. White fire flared behind his eyes and suddenly he couldn't breathe.
Jim choked.
Then he fell.
"Christ." Arms wrapped around his shoulders, pressing his face to a rough jaw and there was a brief moment where it felt like Jim was neither sitting nor standing. He hung there, listening to Bones pant above him like he'd been running around Deck Nine full tilt.
Jim closed his eyes, letting Bones' fists bunch the back of his shirt to hold him up. Bones gulped hard. Jim could feel the gasping under his cheek. "Just breathe slowly. I got you."
His hearing was messed up again and Bones sounded a tad high-pitched (but that could also just be the sudden shrieking in his ears that was leaving a metallic taste in his mouth) as he hugged Jim to his chest. He grunted as he eased Jim down on the bed.
"Hold on, hold on," Bones whispered. He kept one hand on Jim's thigh while he slipped an arm under Jim's knees. Carefully, as his voice dropped the occasional hushed "almost there", "slow breaths, Jim" and "I gotcha", Bones eased Jim's legs onto the bed.
Blearily, Jim watched Bones tuck the blankets around him, tsking when he discovered Jim only had one sock on, and then waved the scanner wand from his tricorder over Jim's body.
The low humming whirred above Jim. He’d grown to associate the sound with Bones too, a humming lilt just behind the sometimes thick, rolling Georgian accent that thickened when he was tired or drunk or irritated or, well, not feeling Bones-like. He watched with his eyes half-mast as Bones stared intently into his tricorder like it was a stellar chart showing him the way to Antarian buried treasure.
"Dammit, Jim," Bones muttered under his breath. He glanced over, his lips pressed together and eyes dark. He reached over and settled a palm over Jim’s brow.
That was the weird thing about Bones. He'd complain about stuff like the archaic medical practices of centuries past, but he'd still double-check for fever by touch. Bones was like that. He'd complain about something, but still maybe keep it around despite everything.
"You're running a slight fever again." Bones looked pissed as if Jim was hanging onto the toxins' effects just to mess with him. Jim grimaced. Not that messing with Bones wasn't fun sometimes, but this was definitely…he flinched as another spasm shot through one of his legs…not one of the ways he'd recommend.
"Does that hurt? Well, that's what you get for going down to a planet and allowing the natives to shoot you full of holes." Grumbling inaudibly, Bones rummaged around in the medical kit slung across his shoulder—whatever happened to off-duty?—and fished out a vial of pills.
Old fashioned medicine. At least it wasn't hyposprays. Now if his legs would just stop spasming. "I win." Jim groaned to Bones, as he gulped the water to wash the pills down, trying to force his body back under control.
Hyposprays and Jim Kirk never had a good relationship, but the toxin had ratcheted things up to a whole new level of colorful swearing. He woke to a tang of ozone and blood just as the pressurized hiss of a hypo seemed to ignite his body on contact. Everything had seized into a supernova that blew behind his eyes, down his limbs and ripped at his heart. He came to on the floor, Nurse Chapel bent over him with actual tears running down her ashen face as she apologized to Bones over and over as she held him down, while Bones swore at her, at Jim, at the damn medic who was handing him another damn hypospray that he didn't ask for, and shouting for someone over his shoulder as Jim slowly suffocated.
"Yeah, you win." Bones choked, maybe laughed, because some of Jim's relief must have shown. "No more hyposprays for you for a while."
Jim blinked blearily up at him and tried to smirk. "Told ya, persistence always wins."
Bones' face twisted briefly into…something Jim couldn't identify before he stooped down to settle Jim back onto the bed and rearrange the blankets. There was a brief second, when Bones was close enough that Jim could feel his breath against his hair and Jim felt cocooned, painless and floating in zero gravity.
Then Bones straightened and Jim's body felt leaden and sunken again.
Maybe that was why when Bones twisted around to lever off the bed, Jim felt something cold curdle in his belly.
And maybe that was why when Jim thought Bones was leaving, he reached out and grabbed the edge of a blue sleeve.
Bones froze.
"Jim?"
Then again maybe it was the nerve toxin just making him stupid.
His grip was weak; three fingers loosely wound around blue fabric that Bones could easily yank free. Any words were caught in his throat.
Bones sat down on the edge of the bed again; his torso turned away, his face hidden from Jim. He didn't pull his arm back though. He just sat there, waiting, with his back to Jim.
Jim's fingers clenched. He stared at them like he'd never seen them before. Hell, alien nerve toxin didn't make you stupid, it made you suicidal. What the hell was he doing?
Begging your mom all the way to the shuttle port to not leave for one more tour when you were five was one thing. Pleading with your brother to not run away without you might be brushed off as just needing someone who could reach the brakes of the stolen car. Bargaining with Kodos’ guards to leave him with his condemned aunt and uncle in the gas chambers might be acceptable. Death by starvation or death by gas chamber made very little difference, dead was dead after all, and so what if you didn't want to die alone.
But this…this was obvious evidence that he had had one too many hyposprays of happy juice. He had fried his brains on alien nerve toxin. Spock could do a field study on how Telurite flowering plants had a stronger intelligence reading.
What they had was fine. It was enough. Asking for more gained you an empty shuttle port window, a deserted Iowa road, a chamber full of ashes. It gained you nothing.
He had one person in the universe. One Bones. One. You did not play no-win scenarios with that. Especially and most particularly when you already knew through trial and error that you could not win.
Jim's hand dropped to the bed.
Bones stayed where he was though, his arm still pulled back as if Jim had never let go.
"It's okay," Bones said quietly, to Jim, to no one in particular. "It's okay to ask me to stay, Jim."
Jim closed his eyes, but he was breathing too hard to feign sleep. He tried to concentrate on the pain.
"I'd stay if you just ask." Bones told the wall in front of him. His shoulders stiffened as if bracing to be shot in the back. "You can ask me, Jim."
There was a bitterness rising up in his throat, a lurch in his stomach that wasn't toxin-related. Jim stared straight ahead—if you didn't ask it didn't count and he wasn't asking.
Bones turned around completely to consider him. His expression was blank, but there were shadows that darkened his eyes again. He bent down, his arms on either side of Jim. Bones looked freaked, just as freaked as when Chapel was apologizing and Bones was yelling and Jim was trying to reassure him only to end up splattering Bones' face with his blood.
"Jim," Bones breathed, cupping Jim’s jaw with a shaky hand. "Ask me to stay."
There was a band that wound around Jim's chest. His lungs burned. That was why his eyes burned as well. Jim set his jaw. He squeezed his eyes tight when he felt Bones' thumb trace his lower lip.
"Ask me to stay," Bones whispered and even with his eyes closed, Jim could see him.
"I swear," Bones murmured as he stroked Jim's lips and his chin with blunt fingers, "I'm not like them; the ones you couldn't tell me about. I'll stay if you ask me to." Both hands framed Jim's face. A soft kiss brushed the top of his head. "Hell, I followed you into space, Jim." Another kiss, now on his shut left eye. "Where else would I want to go?" Now one on his right. Thumbs soothed circles under Jim's eyes.
"I nearly lost you so many times these past weeks," Bones croaked, "Otherwise I was willing to wait for as long as it took until you felt ready. Dammit, Jim, ask me to stay. I swear to God, I will."
The no-win scenario, it only made the disappointment more cutting, slashing bone deep, half-healed until he was stupid enough to ask for more again. He took a breath and breathed in no-smell sanitizer and old-spice. If you didn't risk, then you didn't lose.
Jim opened his eyes and Bones stilled, his own unwavering gaze glued to Jim's face.
Or if you risked all, you could save the Kobayashi Maru and become Captain.
Bones had been willing to stand by him on all three tests of the no-win scenario, even after the first two hadn't turned out. He'd been there. Every time.
He swallowed and it still hurt.
"Stay," Jim rasped. He weakly reached up and snagged the hem of Bones' uniform. "Stay here." With me, Jim wished he could say.
Bones heard it anyway. The gloom that hung over him peeled away and there was that rare smile again, this time openly for Jim to see. Bones nodded. "Okay." He toed off his boots, set his medical kit by the headboard and eased himself to lie on his side between Jim and the bulkhead.
There was a floaty sensation as Jim felt himself being pulled to lie partially against Bones. Absolutely the alien nerve toxin. Jim exhaled slowly as a careful arm wrapped around his chest and held him close. Jim closed his eyes, listened for that heartbeat and felt Bones' hand go up and down his chest.
Slowly, the painkillers finally kicked in.
Jim blinked lethargically against Bones as he drifted under the rhythmic motion of Bones’ breathing against his ear. Jim raised a hand to touch the arm around him. Just to feel if it was really there.
"Thank you," Bones whispered by his ear before his other arm circled around, completing the embrace.
Funny, Jim thought, resting his face over Bones' heart and his eyes sliding shut; he was going to say the same thing.
The heat of another body pressed against him was a familiar sensation.
The content feeling was not.
Jim stirred and opened gritty eyes to consider the port window and the dots of light that flickered and streamed past in ribbons of colored light. The sight coaxed him further into waking. The Enterprise hummed around him, reminding him where he was. He felt a hand loosely settle over his heart and the slow realization that there still was a body beside him unfurled the tightly coiled, barbed wire feeling that had nothing to do with alien nerve toxin.
The hand over his heart flattened and rubbed a slow circle across his chest, neatly avoiding the barely healed scars there. They would never fully go away. Jim thought it was fine, because things in life should leave something behind.
"Stop it." Bones rumbled low in a sleepy burr by his ear. His hand continued to skim up and down Jim's chest; all that was missing was the hum of a tricorder.
"What?" Jim yawned. He closed his eyes so he could memorize the feel of bristly skin rubbing against his jaw. He opened his eyes at the brush of lips on his temple.
"You're supposed to be resting, not thinking," Bones grumbled. He shifted a leg and lined up his foot to press against Jim's calf. "I can smell the wood burning. Usually it means it's time to start running for the hills."
Jim tried to ignore the knotting in his chest. "Well," he said as casual as he could, "guess you better start running then."
There was a pause, as if Bones was coming to his senses when abruptly he straddled Jim, careful not to put his weight on him.
Bones cradled his shoulders, made like he was going to shake Jim. He studied Jim for a long time before his mouth eased into a lazy smirk.
"Hell no," Bones drawled. "You asked me to stay." He rested his forehead lightly on Jim's. "I'm staying put."
Jim's mouth twitched at the corners. "Oh yeah. Forgot."
"Got a problem with that?"
Jim reached up and touched the smile that he could feel against him, felt it broadening against his fingertips.
"No," Jim murmured, "No problem at all."
The End
Author's Acknowledgment: To
soullessminion because she never says no when I throw another fic at her, to my shy co-conspirator Ellie who always refuses credit she deserves, to inell because she's been swamped and needs a Bones nagging her, to bakaknight because she lets me rant to her, to gingerlr because I can't be there to make sure she sleeps, eat, and rest properly. –glower-