[fic]: in the direction of the moon (jim/bones)

[alice_1005]

Title: in the direction of the moon
Fandom: star trek AOS, jim/bones
Summary: The shared shuttle, and what followed. 

“This a regular occurrence?”

“What, me losing? Almost never.”

Jim Kirk smirks up at McCoy from where he’s sitting on his examination table. His face is bloody, from his nose dripping down to his lips, from the cut on his right cheekbone almost parallel to an old, thin scar, to the wet, open smear just under his hairline. His arm is relaxed in McCoy’s hold.

McCoy carefully splays Jim’s hand open with one of his. He touches each finger. The way Jim extends them in turn is almost politely obliging, or it might have been, if he didn’t look like he knew just what McCoy was going to tell him. McCoy bites his lip and fights the inclination to grip Jim’s arm a little harder than necessary.

Jim had shown up twenty minutes ago, just as McCoy’s shift at the Academy clinic was winding down. The sprawl of Jim’s voice, too-casually reassuring the receptionist it wasn’t as bad as it looked, carried down to the little room where McCoy had been working on paperwork. Had he not remembered Jim’s face from the shuttle, he might have recognised him from the pattern of blood on his shirt alone.

Despite Jim’s best efforts, he’s in fine shape. “Nothing’s broken, sprained, dislocated, even. Your nose will stop eventually.”

“I know.”

“Why come, then?” McCoy asks, irritated, dropping Jim’s arm unceremoniously.

Jim doesn’t flinch. “Thought I’d run into you.”

McCoy has seen Jim a few times since the shuttle. At first, in a mandatory lecture for all the new recruits, where he’d caught a glimpse of him shifting in his seat a few rows away. McCoy couldn’t stop staring, thinking stupidly that he’d never expected to see that face again. When Jim happened to look back in his direction, McCoy had looked away immediately, embarrassed even if he had no reason to be.

Then Jim had been in one of his classes. McCoy tried not to pay him much notice, but something kept drawing his attention. Amongst a sea of diligent, focused faces, clear in their intent and determination, Jim didn’t quite look the part. McCoy watched the way his eyes invariably scanned the room, the way he fiddled with his padd, the way he sometimes glanced up at the speaker so sharply, as though his own name had been spoken - only to look away again a few words later. When they were dismissed, Jim was the first to leave.

McCoy raises an eyebrow. “Well, good thing this is the only way to contact me.”

“Didn’t say that. Just seemed like a good opportunity. I should make use of those, or so they tell me.” Jim’s eyes are piercing, and his voice sounds anything but lazy to McCoy’s ears, despite however much he must have drank that night. “Bones. I was thinking we should get a drink together.”

“Bones?”

“Yeah. It’s what you said. It’s okay if you don’t remember. You were pretty out of it, man.” McCoy wants to bristle at the accusation, however justified, but it’s not cruel.

“I was, huh.”

“Yeah. I got you through it. Well, I guess I helped. You were getting yourself through it pretty fine on your own, though, ‘cause of that bourbon.” Jim’s smile isn't sincere, but it isn’t malicious. It looks like he’s trying to smile, but can’t quite finish it. “You’ve got good taste. Thought I’d give you a chance to demonstrate that again.”

“Are you serious?”

Jim’s expression drops completely, and McCoy suddenly feels oddly like he’s done something he’ll regret.

“Alright.” Jim drops off the table and turns to the office door. Sore as he must be, he’s moving easily, although McCoy thinks there’s an unnatural tightness to the line of his shoulders. “Forget I—”

“No, wait,” McCoy interrupts, more urgent than he meant to sound. “Jim.”

Jim turns around, his expression blank. He waits, and McCoy swallows.

“I… yeah. Fine. But not tonight. You’re going to bed.”

Jim doesn’t say anything for several moments. “That so?”

“Said so, didn’t I?”

Jim stares for a minute, nods just barely, ducks his head for only a moment. “Tomorrow. I can meet you by your dorm at 2100.”

“How do you know where I live?”

Jim shrugs. “All the med students are in that one building.”

They’ve been there less than a month; there’s been little specialisation yet, most recruits still taking a varied spread of mandatory lectures and seminars and practicals, very few assigned to such specific routes as medicine. McCoy doesn’t know how Jim would have met any others; he can barely remember the names of his peers himself. But Jim seems as casual about the knowledge as everything else.

“Alright.”

-

Jim had spoken to him the entirety of that ride on the shuttle. His conversation was quiet, almost idle, a steady pattern of words that was distracting, if not reassuring. Jim didn't ask about the divorce. He didn't ask McCoy to elaborate on his decision to join Starfleet, nor did he talk about his own. Most glaringly, he offered no immediate explanation for the dried blood on his shirt, the copper drops that caught McCoy's gaze periodically and obviously. Jim said nothing, nor did he look uncomfortable under McCoy's barely-hidden scrutiny, as though he was used to being the object of it.

But Jim talked. Jim told him a story. It might even have been a good one; McCoy couldn’t really pay attention to the words so much as their cadence, the shape Jim’s mouth made around them, wide and evocative. Jim's speech was both nonchalant and careful, something told a hundred times but never less aware of its audience for it. The looks Jim gave him were fleeting, confident that McCoy’s eyes would stay on him either way. And they did. Despite his better efforts. Despite the amount of times he caught himself staring too hard, too consideringly for a temporary seatmate.

McCoy caught details. Jim’s tendency to get himself into bar fights featured very prominently. He made allusions to family strife, which was hardly a surprise, given that McCoy knew all too well that no one with a decent place to call home winds up where they had: stragglers on a shuttle meant for people who had devoted their lives to getting a seat. Jim didn’t talk about what that felt like, either, although he must have noticed the mixture of confusion, judgement and aggravation in the looks they were getting. McCoy knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he should have given more thought to the glares, should have shrunk under them, maybe, made his misery a little less obvious— but the steady roll of Jim’s voice gave him something to focus on, something that blocked out everything else.

Eventually, McCoy realised they’d landed. This came as a shock; he’d spent the past forty-five minutes too wrapped up in his one-sided conversation to even notice the shuttle docking. The surprise must have shown on his face, because Jim smiled at him, almost proud. “Hey, you didn’t throw up.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem.” Jim stared more continuously than he had the entire ride, and he looked thoughtful, even intrigued. When he looked away again McCoy felt stupid, like he was missing something.

The shuttle was half-empty by then, everyone shuffling out, mostly silent save for an occasional hum of excited murmurs. Jim stood. “Thanks for the drink. I’ll see you around.”

-

McCoy spends the whole next day on edge. He shouldn’t be; it’s hardly an oddity to get a quick drink with a fellow cadet. McCoy’s older than Jim, sure, and he’s eclipsed in leaps and bounds by whatever it is that makes Jim stand out the way he does. But Jim seemed friendly enough, talkative enough, even with little invitation on McCoy’s part. Maybe their time on the shuttle amused him; maybe he’s curious now to ask the questions he didn’t—not that McCoy intends to let him. Maybe Jim’s just bored. Maybe McCoy’s an easy target.

“So, Bones.” They end up crammed in a booth somewhere marginally less divey than McCoy expected, though he tried not to expect anything. Jim’s grabbed the first round—just beer. He slumps against the table carelessly but focuses on McCoy with an intensity that’s becoming familiar when he asks, "What have you been up to, man?”

McCoy’s startled into laughter, because it suddenly sounds ridiculous. Jim doesn’t seem perturbed, if anything, he smiles.

“You’re going to keep calling me that?”

Jim shrugs, sips, glances around the crowded bar.

McCoy decides to drop it. “You’ve seen what I’ve been doing. Going to class. Taking shifts at the clinic.”

“Did you have to?”

McCoy shifts in his seat. He hasn’t touched his beer yet; Jim looks at it pointedly and he ignores him. “No, but it’s encouraged. They need the extra hands, and, well, I already have a medical degree and experience. There’s first-year med students there helping out, so.”

“What kinda experience?”

“I was a surgeon at a hospital, down in Atlanta, before I signed up.”

It seems Jim knows not to push too far, even if McCoy gets the idea that the kid’s spent a lifetime pushing. “Then I guess you’ve seen worse than me the other day.”

“Yeah, I have. Much, much worse.”

Jim grins at him. “Sounds like Starfleet are lucky to have you then, Bones.” He isn’t mocking, though McCoy doesn’t exactly catch a heartfelt embrace of the Academy ethos either. “Me, I don’t have those kinds of credentials. Any kind, really. You saw me on the shuttle. Pike picked me out of nowhere, just because my dad was a captain.”

McCoy freezes. Jim’s doesn’t sound especially deliberate, but McCoy can imagine for himself the myriad of ways that growing up in the shadow of a Starfleet captain might have pushed Jim as far away from here as he could get.

“That so. Well, Pike seems to know his stuff. Imagine he saw something more’n you than that.”

Jim’s quiet for a long moment, not drinking but not looking away. “Yeah,” he says at last. “He thought he did.” Something shifts in his expression and he leans closer, smirking, the abruptness of it making McCoy tighten with an odd anticipation.

“I told him I’d do better than he thought, even. Which means captaining my own ship in three years.”

As suddenly as it came, the moment breaks. Jim flops back, splays his shoulders up against the booth, wide open as if to survey McCoy’s reaction—but he doesn’t wait for it before he speaks again. “And I’ll do it. You'll see, Bones.”

-

Jim becomes something of a regularity in McCoy’s life. Usually at night, usually alongside alcohol. Sometimes he finds McCoy in broad daylight, on campus, in the library or the cafeteria, always with an almost unnerving precision. "Bones! I was looking for you," he'll say needlessly. McCoy can tell, already, that for all Jim seems directionless, someone who just stumbled into Starfleet, there's very little that he does without meaning to.

It bothers him: Jim's persistent interest, his unwavering attempts to be something approaching friends. McCoy's not deluded that he's the best candidate for that, or even a good one. The academy thrums with the energy of thousands of brillant, eager cadets that are surely more suited to Jim's company.

Over those early fall weeks, McCoy watches Jim's focus sharpen whenever their training aligns, no longer the first out of any room but often the first to accomplish a set goal. He figured that Jim's indulgence in courting the fellow melancholic stowaway on the shuttle was little more than an attempt to cement a distance between himself and Starfleet. To show anyone watching he might be there, might be part of it, but he didn’t belong. So McCoy is surprised, and a little suspicious, when Jim starts to concede that distance but not falter in his attempts with McCoy.

McCoy never quite manages to pull away. Certainly he tries, waves away some of Jim's more audacious late-night suggestions, tells him he needs to study, to work. But McCoy doesn't have a whole lot going on for him—something Jim assuredly knows. Yet it doesn't feel like Jim's exploiting that, the times he insists, negotiates, chips away at McCoy's excuses. It feels a bit like McCoy's a project for him, a nut he's as determined to crack as any of his loftier goals. It unsettles him more than a little, but he's as curious as he is confused.

Getting swept up in Jim’s whims can make him feel as powerless as he does over so much of his life now. But not unwanted.

-

“So you grew up in Atlanta, right?”

The kid says it casually enough, but it’s been long enough that McCoy knows the question isn’t really a question. There’s nothing he’s told Jim about himself that he hasn’t watched him file away, the act visible in the slight, tight nods and a wide-eyed stare he levels at McCoy any time he divulges.

“Yeah.” It’s the first time they’re just in McCoy’s room instead of somewhere in the city. He sets his beer can down, heedless of the way the condensation soaks into his carpet. Next to him, Jim’s lying on his stomach but propped up on his elbows, sipping his own beer in a way that looks a little uncomfortable, but mostly distracting, as it causes his shirt to lift slightly with each tilt of the can. McCoy glances at the wall for a moment. “Why?”

“I’m just thinking, that for all your ol’ Southern country boy shit— I’ve probably done a lot more.”

“Huh.”

If Jim was expecting a more vocal response, he seems undeterred. He sets his can down alongside McCoy’s and shifts so he’s stretched out on his side, arms loose. “Yeah. I haven’t told you—I grew up on a farm.”

Jim’s expression darkens almost too quickly to notice, but McCoy does. He hesitates to ask anything else. But Jim did bring it up—and he’s learning that Jim’s careful with his words, that he doesn’t put things out there unless he can handle them being addressed.

“You did, huh. What kinda livestock?”

Jim scrunches his nose. “We didn’t use it as a farm. It was just…a family thing, I guess.” He pauses. “I think there might have been chickens.”

“Clearly, they didn’t interest you much.”

“Guess not.”

Jim stretches slightly to grab his own beer and knocks back the remainder in one gulp. He sets the now-empty can down with a care that surprises McCoy, as though he’s wary McCoy might kick him out at any moment.

Devoid of a drink, Jim lies down completely, hand resting between the floor and the back of his skull. “I know—there was corn. A shitton of corn. But I never—if it was anyone in my family’s job to farm it, I don’t think we did a good job. Still,” he squints up at McCoy, moves so they’re slightly closer. “Bet you didn’t have any crops, Mr. Big City.”

McCoy can’t say he did, but he’s surprised by how much he wants to contradict Jim, even a little, to tell him he doesn’t have all the answers. Or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want Jim to stop asking questions.

“I rode horses,” he offers after long moments of Jim’s smug smile staring up at him. “Had a stable, in fact. They were mostly my dad’s. My mom had one that liked her better’n anyone else, but none of them were too fond of me.”

“Any of them kick you off?”

“No.” There was one that tried to kick him on the ground—anywhere, really, any time he was nearby—but he never dared try and ride it, so it’s the technical truth.

Jim watches him another moment. The protracted study should feel awkward, and in some ways it does, but it’s mostly—if not an endearing quality, an engaging one. It’s been a long time since McCoy felt like someone wanted to understand him.

-

For the first few months, Jim makes his presence unreliable but constant, just skirting the boundaries of solid. Jim flits in and out of his physical space, still visible only in the lingering sense of equal parts loss and foreboding for the next visit. If Jim crashes, he isn’t there in the morning. If he comes by with food and a movie, he gets bored halfway through. It’s obnoxious, and startling, leaving McCoy eternally caught between Jim as the paradigm of relaxation, satisfaction writ in limbs sprawled leisurely over his couch, slurred speech and eyes gazing with a weight at the screen—and the sudden, invariable thud of an empty can or bottle being knocked to the floor, the mumbled “Night, Bones” resounding as sharp and as striking as the door would have been if Jim had slammed it—though he never does. There’s never any anger, but there’s no warning, either. Jim used to mumble fragmented words about studying for classes they both knew he was in no danger of failing. McCoy is glad he doesn’t bother anymore.

It annoys him in a way that he can’t quite discard or contain. It’s an irrational, clawing feeling, one that hardens as a resolve not to open the door next time. But his determination dissolves, always, in the dark hours he spends unable to sleep, staring at the ceiling and trying fruitlessly not to think about this new and baffling presence in his life. McCoy decides Jim is simply hard to define. To be shown that so blatantly, he considers, is perhaps more of a privilege than anything else he could expect.

Bizarre but not entirely unpredictable, Jim’s visits follow patterns. Crashing drunk, crashing pretending to be drunk, bringing some maudlin excess of energy which fizzles out after an hour of trying to convince McCoy to come back out with him. Such attempts ring false; reliant on a perfunctory shield of recklessness, carelessness, boredom.

Sometimes, Jim stands in his doorway for an entire hour, arguing with less and less intensity. Sometimes, Jim’s eyes eventually cease to stay on McCoy’s face for longer than a few seconds: instead he surveys the room with what McCoy thinks is almost a hopefulness. Sometimes, he says “You might as well stay at this point,” grateful when Jim doesn’t point out it’s barely past midnight.

On those nights, Jim lies down obediently, easily, soberly, all that excess energy dissipating as he settles into McCoy’s couch cushions. And he would feel guilty for denying the kid a chance to have fun, if it wasn’t for the odd sensation that this is where he intended to be all along.

-

Winter sets in, and Jim stops with the pretences. He shows up with a bottle or two and McCoy doesn’t bother waiting to invite him to stay the night. In return, Jim’s usually there in the morning, something McCoy soon realises depends on what Jim said the night before.

Always, McCoy feels caught in the web of Jim’s needs, acting the role required of him. Some nights, that’s simply a drinking buddy, a fellow cadet to laze around with and neglect the constant pressures of their curriculum. McCoy has no illusions that Jim doesn’t have a whole host of people for that, although he never seems to mention any others.

Other nights, Jim wants something else.

“So, Bones.”

There’s a vid on that neither of them are watching, both slumped into their respective sides of the room’s deeply uncomfortable couch. They haven’t drunk much, although something about the night already feels unreal, blurred at the edges.

“You gonna ask me something?”

“Yeah, I just—gimmie a sec. This thing sucks, you know that?”

“Well it ain’t mine.”

Jim shuffles into an apparently more comfortable position, grunting a little too dramatically for McCoy to really take seriously. He rolls his eyes.

“I’m telling you man, you can do better than this crap. What, the Academy can’t shell out for their doctors to get anything but— “

“I’m not a doctor, dammit, not like that. Not here. Not anymore. Just a student, like you n’everyone else.”

He spoke with more ferocity than he’d intended, and Jim is silent in response, though McCoy can feel his stare as surely as any speech. He fixes his eyes on the screen.

“Bones, that’s not true. C’mon, you know it’s different. Your training—you’re on track to be medical, on a Starfleet ship. That isn't—that’s not nothing, Bones.”

McCoy snorts. “Yeah right. It ain’t happening, kid. Not least cause there’s no way in hell I’m going up there.”

“You’re not—what do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You saw me on the shuttle. Could barely last an hour.”

“Hey, it wasn’t like that.”

“It was, dammit. Forget it. I don’t know why I’m here, cause I sure won’t be going any further.”

For what feels like a long time, the muted sound from the screen in front of them is the only sound McCoy hears. Eventually, it’s punctuated by Jim’s sigh, then his voice, low and unbidden, impossible to ignore. Though he tries. “Bones—look at me.”

Inexorably, McCoy does. The intensity in Jim’s face startles him, because he’s seen it before. He’s seen how Jim can throw himself into a task undaunted, his stark, profound determination to measure up to what’s asked of him, to surpass it.

There’s something about him—his earnest questions and fierce reassurances, the palpable effort McCoy can feel whenever Jim puts a hand on his shoulder, like he has to steel himself through it but never falters—that wears down the threshold of McCoy’s resolve.

Jim isn’t touching him now, but McCoy can feel the pressure of every word when he asks, “Why are you here?”

“Didn’t have much of a choice.” His throat is so dry, he’s surprised he gets the words out.

“You had some.”

“Barely.”

“Bones, listen, you don’t have to tell me about it. But I know what it’s like. I’m not gonna judge you. I just want you to know—it’s not just you that feels like maybe you shouldn’t be here.”

McCoy doesn’t say anything more. And true to his word, Jim relents, and the night rolls on as the rules of McCoy’s world resume around them.

But there are other nights, and Jim keeps asking. And gradually, the sky lightens and the chill in the air abates and McCoy tells Jim everything he wants to know.

How he’d lived up to exactly what his father wanted, only for it to fall apart so catastrophically in the wake of the death that he couldn’t stop. How in the aftermath, his grief rendered him so unreliable and unpredictable that he’d just barely escaped being fired outright from the hospital, allowed to resign only by the grace of those indebted to his father. People whose main idea of comfort was telling McCoy countless times that his dad wouldn’t have wanted to see him like this. It didn’t matter how much time they’d offered him; he couldn’t ever walk those corridors again. It wasn’t that Jocelyn hadn’t tried to understand, but that he didn’t even let her, pushing her away as much as everything else.

When Jim learns about Joanna, his face is too sincere and his voice when he says Bones, I’m so sorry is almost reverent, hushed in that arresting way that makes anything McCoy can say in response seem pointless. But Jim listens. Jim listens to every word. It surprises McCoy, how many that ends up being, how easy it becomes to say things he’d promised himself he’d never voice to another soul. Maybe it’s because he knows, deep down in his bones, that Jim will keep them safe.

After all, safety is what Jim keeps promising, now—every time he talks about the stars, the inevitable and approaching future he knows terrifies McCoy. Jim insists, over and over, that he’ll be alright, and McCoy almost believes him.

-

McCoy tries to listen in return. He can tell, easily, that Jim doesn’t enjoy people’s attempts to understand him. But Jim doesn't seem to mind when McCoy tries. He feels like the edge of something is being shown to him, but that it’s up to him to go get it.

Jim sits with him under blooming trees and elaborates in bits and pieces the things he’d previously only sketched around. He talks about his mom, how she almost couldn’t bear to be around him, how he grew up with the weight of what she’d lost always pinning him down. He talks about how little he’d tried to do anything, how steadfast he’d been set against ever joining Starfleet. McCoy recognises some of the crushing guilt that he feels himself, and he doesn’t think it’s right. Jim’s not responsible like he is. He doesn’t deserve to have been left behind.

It's easy for McCoy, who needs distraction from his own demons, to borrow the weight of someone else's. It’s hard for McCoy, who has always known exactly who he is, to show those depths of himself to anyone. But he tries. Because for all the friends Jim must surely have, it’s obvious to McCoy that he doesn’t let himself reach for someone and expect to be able to touch them.

-

“Pike told me I must think—that maybe, I think—that I’m made for something special. A hero. Like my dad. And that’s why I’m here. But he doesn’t get it. I don’t.”

They’re lying on McCoy’s carpet, a mostly empty bottle of whiskey between them. He can just make out that his bedside table clock reads 03:26.

“Uh huh.” The words stick to the roof of his mouth.

“I don’t have to be a hero to be here. That’s not how it works. My dad - he didn’t sign up thinking, ‘I’m gonna get myself killed.’” Jim’s laugh is the most bitter sound McCoy’s ever heard, and for a moment, he thinks wildly of Jocelyn, the low, harsh timbre of her voice when it was all over. “He didn’t wanna die.”

“Jim...”

“No, Bones. I know. I know, okay? He didn’t want to do it. He just did what he had to. Thought he had to. Whatever.”

McCoy knows Jim’s dismissiveness isn’t entirely an act, but it isn’t the full reality either. He knows Jim is trying desperately not to embolden something that’s already crushing him, and McCoy aches to relieve him, any way he can. “That’s still—Jim, he still—”

“He died a hero. Yeah.”

“He was, dammit,” McCoy surprises himself by how feverent he sounds, as though the intensity of his conviction could spark Jim's own acceptance. “Listen to me, Jim, it doesn’t matter that he didn’t - that he didn’t mean to die.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he sure fucked that up.”

McCoy feels sick.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says, and it might seem pointless, but he knows it’s not. Anyone else would think so, think it wasn’t worth saying at all, that Jim wasn’t listening anymore. McCoy knows better. Jim’s always listening. There are some things he needs to be told.

He swallows. “You’re a good man, Jim.”

He knows Jim doesn’t have any interest in hearing that, even from him, but Jim’s body gets a little looser on the carpet as he breathes out, waits a long moment. McCoy’s heart pounds sluggishly as he lifts his head to get a better look at him.

“Yeah,” Jim finally replies with no feeling to it, “I’ll believe that about the same time you believe it about yourself.”

McCoy breathes in sharply. He knows he must fail to hide the shock on his face because Jim looks guilty when he glances over at him, unable to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean—you can deal with it however you want. I don’t have all the answers. Or any, really.”

Slowly, he scrambles to his feet, while McCoy sits and tries in vain to think of something to say. Jim looks down at him, then away, hand self-consciously rubbing the back of his neck. “I should go.” He turns around.

“Wait, Jim.” Jim pauses with his hand hovering above the door pad display. “I’m not—you didn’t offend me.”

“I know, Bones.” Jim sounds like it’s little comfort. “Go to sleep.”

It takes him hours.

-

All year, McCoy has dreaded the dawning of summer to the point of nausea. He’d done his best not to contemplate it. But he could swear that time moves faster the closer it gets.

While his co-workers in the clinic chat excitedly about the various illustrious placements they'll be taking up, McCoy feigns disinterest in the possibility, insisting only "Someone's gotta stay to look after this place." Such assertions ignore the fact that the clinic itself will be nearly devoid of visitors when the campus fully empties out, more than sufficiently seen to by the few remaining permanent staff, but it's a reasonable enough excuse.

Since the first semester, McCoy has spoken to his daughter only a handful of times. The Academy has some of the best commlink technology in the galaxy, but apparently not good enough. At least that's what Jocelyn always tells him, often while lamenting the unsurmountable 3 hour time difference. McCoy finds this more annoying for its obvious falsehood than anything else. But he's too tired, too ashamed to fight—nor does he really blame Joce for keeping her distance. He can’t imagine the things she sees in his face when they speak, but he doubts it’s anything good.

During those fleeting calls, he can barely speak. Sat transfixed by the happy babbling of his little girl, his throat seizes past the point of getting almost anything out. His words when they come sound weak and unconvincing to his own ears—a futile attempt to reinforce a connection he knows is slipping from his reach. It staggers him, how much it hurts. He doesn't want Jo to see him like that; he'd rather she didn't see him at all. He thinks Jocelyn might understand that. And while he'd do anything for more of those moments, the regret they fill him with is so profound as to blot everything else out, choking him, consigning him to lie in a dim and empty room for hours, feeling as lost and as hopeless as he did on the shuttle.

Like then, Jim seeks him out. He learns the signs, when a few days without any contact means McCoy's busy or avoiding him, and when it's this. He's long since bypassed McCoy's door padd; he doesn't even bother acting annoyed about it anymore. And when Jim stands up straight at the foot of his bed and hovers carefully above him, he doesn't say a word. There's something about him—the sureness of his spine, the way he looks at him unbrokenly, like he'll never stop—that tells McCoy all he needs to hear to climb out of the dark.

But he does ask Jocelyn about summer. Just once.

“I don’t know, Leonard. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Well, I’m asking you to think about it. I got six weeks off, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t spend at least one with her.”

Thousands of miles away, Jocelyn’s hesitation is clearly visible. “We were going to go to my parents in July. She hasn’t been all year. You know how she - well, they dote on her.”

“So that’s that, then.”

She sighs in a way that McCoy feels like a punch to the gut. For all that the slow collapse of their marriage had been painful to endure, there’s little that hurts more than the look she’s wearing now, the hopeless resignation of it. Joce looks at him like she knows with utter certainty that nothing will ever get better.

"Leonard, I'm not keeping her hidden from you. You're the one who walked away."

"You know it wasn't like that. I had nowhere else—"

"Save it. Look, I want her to have a relationship with her father. But you can't just—swoop back in like nothing's happened, just because you're on a break from the place you left her for.”

McCoy manages not to disconnect right then and there, but it’s a near thing.

It takes a long time—weeks—for him to get over that call, weeks Jim spends tip-toeing around him so blatantly he snaps at him repeatedly to get over himself. He’s short with fellow clinic staff. He turns down the few meagre socialisation opportunities he has otherwise.

It comes as a shock when Jocelyn writes to him with an invitation. Maybe a few weeks in late July would work, and he could take Jo some hours out of Atlanta to his parents’ old place. It’s not a place McCoy cares to visit too often, marred as it is by the depth of his loss—but he reasons it better than the bitter and still-sharp regret that soaks every corner of the home he shared with Joce.

So McCoy accepts, gladly. He doesn't ask Jim about his own plans. He feels weird about it, like he’s letting Jim down by making any move away from the solitude that’s defined him in Jim’s eyes up until now.

When the moment does come, the sincerity of Jim’s sudden, blazing grin makes McCoy curse his own foolishness. “Bones, that’s—that’s really great, man. I’m happy for you.”

“Yeah. Thanks. You uh—you planning something yourself, or—“

Jim waves him off. “Nah, I’m fine here. Got plenty here to keep me entertained, after all.” His smile is dimmer, but no less genuine as he adds, “Besides, I hear they’re gonna really start testing us soon. I gotta study.”

“Study, my ass,” McCoy remarks with all his usual derision. But he’s relieved.

-

There's nothing in the world that McCoy wanted more than time with his daughter, nothing that could make him happier than getting to hold her and make her laugh; reassure himself she isn't completely lost to him.

But it feels less like enfolding Joanna into what his life has become, and more like slipping awkwardly back into a role he knows he can't really resume. For all he delights in the days spent running around with her through nearby fields and creeks, cooking her favourite meals and reading to her or watching old holos in the evening, the dull ache of knowledge that this is only temporary never really goes away.

He doesn’t really expect to hear from Jim, but it’s odd adjusting to a life totally without him. During his second week with Jo, he's surprised, though not displeased, when his padd lights up with Jim's face.

“Bones! You look good. Wanna tell me about the weather over there?”

“Yeah, right. How much trouble are you getting into?”

“No more than usual.”

Jim sounds unbelievably breezy, the way he so often does. Thousands of miles away, McCoy fights against his learned suspicions as best he can. "I'll bet. You getting some time off?"

"Nah, I told you. I've got things to work on."

"What kind of things, exactly?"

“Oh, you know the drill. Lotta books to read. I should go, actually. Have fun out there, Bones.” He hesitates a moment, visible even through the screen and the miles between them. “Tell your kid your annoying friend says hi.”

“Yeah, I’ll tell her exactly that, Jim.”

-

The warmth of his little girl's tearful but promising goodbyes buoy McCoy through his returning shuttle journey better than any alcohol could. Still, he crashes hard when he makes it back to his room, intent on blocking out the rest of the world for however long it takes him to get over having left her again.

Jim doesn't let him. He hovers over McCoy the next morning as bright and inevitable as sunlight, babbling about something he has to show him with more determination than McCoy has the energy to fight. Which is how he finds himself trailing after Jim through long, winding and unfamiliar Academy corridors before the sun’s even really risen, unable to stop himself from nervously glancing around places he’s sure they’re not supposed to be, Jim heedless to his whispered protests.

“It’s fine.”

“It is not fine, dammit, you’re gonna get our asses suspended or worse—”

“Hey, I had the card to get in. If they want to keep better track of it, that’s their problem. Bones. Come on, when have I ever let you down?”

“That better be a rhetorical question.”

“You wound me.”

Despiste his complaints, he follows Jim’s lead, their surroundings still much more silent than McCoy feels at ease with.

“Here it is.” Jim stops suddenly in front of a metal door. It’s as indistinct as all the others, but the room it leads to has interior windows on both sides and McCoy’s breathing slows as he realises—

“Jim,” he hisses, “that’s where the examiners sit and watch for that test. It’s gotta be—”

“Locked, yeah.” Jim’s typing away at the door pad, voice neither hurried nor concerned. He paints a dismissive picture for someone currently breaking into a crucial stop on the trajectory of anyone hoping to make it to the stars under the banner of the Fleet. “I told you, it’s fine. I just wanted you to see me do this.”

McCoy’s horror notches up. “Is it the first time?!”

That gets Jim to stop in his tracks, huff a half-laugh and shoot a look at McCoy over his shoulder. The smile he cracks is slight, but unabashedly fond in a way that makes McCoy’s breath hitch. “Yeah. Knew I’d do it, though. Wanted you here.”

At that, McCoy has no retort, suddenly finding himself unable to speak or to look away from the solidness of Jim’s stare. The smile is gone, but in its place is an undeniable intent that McCoy has no words to meet.

Then Jim’s hand presses firmly over the pad and the door swings open.

It’s not a particularly impressive examination room. Small, really, merely the wings for the stage it looks over, the front wall of windows clearly meant for the judges to gather around and witness the spectacle on the stage below. As recreations of starship bridges go, McCoy’s sure they leave the more elaborate ones to the museums and the vids. But as they step inside, McCoy still following Jim’s lead, an awe settles over their silence.

Jim does nothing at first but look his fill, studying in every direction. When his gaze fixes, McCoy doesn’t need to follow to know it’s locked on the model captain’s chair at the centre.

“No one passes it. Not once, in the history of Starfleet.”

The finality of his own words surprises him. He’s used to shooting Jim down, of course, but mostly because the kid needs to be taken down a peg so obviously it’s almost a game to them both. But on this—McCoy doesn’t feel annoyed, or begrudgingly impressed, or disdainful, or like rolling his eyes. He feels afraid. He feels the old ache he first did the first time Jim let slip a little of his life before this. A desire to shield Jim, not from the consequences of his own actions, but from the inevitabilities he’s fighting so hard against.

“Yeah. I know. I’m gonna be the first.”

It should be impossible to believe him, and for the most part, it is. Standing there as early dawn light spreads down from the skylight above them, McCoy can only just make out the glow of determination on Jim’s face. He swallows past the sudden lump in his throat. He finds himself reaching for Jim, and he catches himself. He hesitates. He reaches again.

Jim doesn’t register when McCoy’s palm carefully grasps his shoulder. They don’t move or speak. But McCoy knows Jim hears him.

-

Jim doesn’t pass the test the first time. Or the second.

It’s a miracle he even got that second, McCoy tells him later. It’s only because Jim managed to take it so early in the first place. The Kobayashi Maru is intended for third year cadets, and they’re still only in their second. Jim wheedled his way into taking it in the fall semester, and again in the spring, half-bribing the academic staff on the strength of his admittedly stellar academic performance—not to mention a laser-focused application of charm, more than McCoy’s hardly ever seen him deploy outside of watching him pick up strangers in bars.

The first time he failed, Jim hardly seemed to care. A shrug, an “I’ll get ‘em next time, Bones,” an illustrious few hours spent in a cramped, dim bar, McCoy sat nursing a drink he’s unable to enjoy, alert as he is to Jim, waiting for him to snap. Jim makes little effort to spend any time with him that night. His drink long since downed, the empty glass sits mockingly across from McCoy as he fails to drink his own, watching the way Jim slides between various patrons like he’s hardly there at all. Often, he’s flirtatious as sin, trading low looks and promising smiles that stir something disquieting in McCoy, as distantly as he witnesses them—but it doesn’t seem like Jim’s really looking to close the deal. McCoy watches a string of people—women, men, aliens—go from interest to disdain; watches as they each in turn choose between polite excuses or open hostility. Jim never falters, backs away as easily as he came. He’s certainly not one to press where it’s clear he’s not wanted—at least in that regard—but he generally has a way with people that doesn’t seem on display tonight.

The night drags on, McCoy’s drink long forgotten. He feels caught in Jim’s web, a hapless voyeur to his determined path. But it’s different, too—different from when Jim was mostly a mystery, when his every action made McCoy wonder exactly what it is he was dealing with. Now, McCoy knows Jim. And that knowledge claws at him desperately, his own inevitability to overcome.

Jim isn’t going home with someone because he doesn’t want to go home with someone. No doubt it’s worked in the past, scratched an ever present itch if only for a few hours—but not tonight. Tonight, Jim doesn’t want to be here at all. And McCoy knows—he feels sick with how surely he knows—that Jim wants someone to hurt him.

As it turns out, he doesn’t need to try very hard. He needs only to pick a crowded spot to lean against, give the wrong smirk to the wrong person, a too-close touch, a lazy, increasingly careless rebuttal to increasingly angry threats. The guy finishes with a shove, and it would have ended there, maybe. But Jim’s gaze is sharper than it’s been since they heard the clear and resounding voice of an examiner saying “failure.” There’s no hesitation as he drawls his final invitation of the night.

McCoy feels transfixed by his horror as the first fist goes flying.

The guy knocks into Jim’s face with such force he slams back headfirst into the bar. Glass shatters as those standing nearby fumble their own drinks, backing away. There’s yelling—some for evidently unneeded backup; Jim, barely responsive to the first punch, suffers the second and third in quick succession.

McCoy snaps out of it. He tries to get closer, but a half circle has formed around him. Someone in a uniform is keeping onlookers at bay, while two others aim to penetrate it, to break it up. It doesn’t take long for the security to pull Jim’s assailants off of him and drag them away, but he still can’t see Jim. In the rush of frenzied voices, McCoy finds his own. “I’m his doctor, dammit.”

The look he’s levelled with is suitably unimpressed, but the woman in front of him nods reluctantly and moves aside.

Jim doesn’t seem to have fought back at all. It’s hard to believe they bothered to keep going beyond the first punch, but McCoy can guess that Jim’s expression has something to do with it. His nose is a mess of blood that leads down to his jaw, his forehead smeared with it near his hairline. Still, to look at him you wouldn’t know he’s in any pain, not with that tight, sharp grin still plastered on him, the mockery evident in every line not marred with blood. Whatever they saw in that face sent their fists into it over and over again— just as Jim surely intended.

It makes sense, then, that his look drops completely the moment his eyes lock on McCoy’s. Instead of merely letting slip a facade, Jim looks reinvigorated with new purpose, scanning over McCoy like he’s desperate to know what he’s thinking. He looks away after only a moment, but the pain in his eyes is more visible than it’s been all night.

-

Technically, Jim was a victim. Or at least enough of one to get him out of there quickly in the eyes of those that could’ve stopped him from leaving.

It’s a short walk to McCoy’s dorm, which Jim spends with his nose bleeding profusely into his own shirt, balled up and held tight. McCoy doesn’t want to spend a moment thinking of the picture they make. A shirtless and bloodied Jim Kirk following him home in the dark.

He can’t get Jim into his room fast enough, painfully aware of the long, slow stream of other cadets double-taking to stare as they pass. Once his door is shut firmly behind them, McCoy opens his mouth to order on the lights. Something stops him short. He realises it’s Jim, wincing in anticipation of a flood of brightness knocking against his already battered skull.

For a moment, McCoy almost thinks better of himself, thinks Jim deserves to sit and squirm while he cleans up his mess—but it passes as quickly as it came. He orders the lights on at a mere 40% capacity. Wordlessly, he gestures for Jim to sit himself down on the solitary plastic chair in what he calls a kitchen.

Jim does so obediently. McCoy’s already stumbling into his bathroom, allowing himself to mutter gruffly about that idiot kid as he fumbles through his medicine cabinet, caught off guard by the abnormal tremor to his always-steady hands.

It’s enough to stop him where he stands. All night, McCoy watched Jim from a knife’s edge, breath held in the suspension above the abyss. Now his blood is rushing back in at once, and he burns with a sudden onslaught of memories of how quickly he fell apart after his father. How useless he became. Not fit for anyone to rely on.

McCoy snaps out of it by grabbing what he needs and slamming the cabinet shut with a particular ferocity. Faced with his own reflection, he takes note of how manic he looks; breathes deep to try and calm his thundering heart.

Jim’s still waiting. Still silent. McCoy realises for the first time how exhausted he must be. After all, he knows it’s a slim chance Jim had slept a wink the night before the test. Not least because he woke McCoy up at 0500 hours about it.

McCoy is exhausted, too. If he’s calmer than he was when he was watching Jim and holding his breath, it’s only because he has the solution in sight, just out of reach. Jim bent in supplication, waiting for McCoy to ease the pain.

McCoy reaches him. Jim lifts his head up, tilts it back, bares his neck. It’s a concession if McCoy has ever seen one, and for a minute he stutters. Trapped by the openness of his jawline, the slump of his shoulders. Jim’s back is tense and his hands are dead still and when his mouth softly opens and words slip out, they’re not surprising in their weight.

“I’m sorry.”

It’s not the first time, McCoy knows, that Jim has felt the need to apologise. But he suspects it might be one of the few times he’s said it when he was actually at fault.

McCoy wants to ask about the other times. He wants to examine the scars. He wants to say that Jim doesn’t need to be sorry, not for being born, not for not being his father, not for squandering years in the wastelands of Iowa fighting against the tide of dreams for a dead man, and not for this. Jim should be sorry for hurting himself. But McCoy is sorry enough for the both of them that that’s not something Jim already knows.

McCoy doesn’t know how to say that. He doesn’t try. His hands are perfectly steady as he reaches out to grasp a blood-dotted jaw, forcibly tilts it to the side. He needn’t have bothered. Jim’s eyes are hooded and he acquiesces instantly, staring fixedly at stripped spills of moonlight on the hardwood, motionless when McCoys’s fingers start to trace the pattern of the beginnings of bruises where he’s going to have to regenerate the skin. Wordlessly, he picks up the regen and begins.

-

“You’re taking my bed,” McCoy says forcefully once he’s finished and his kit is packed away, almost missing the sharp and sudden way Jim looks up. “No fussing,” he gets out past the sudden dryness in his mouth.

“Your couch—”

“Not a word about the goddamned couch. I’ll be fine.”

McCoy doesn’t pay attention to the rest of Jim’s protests, feeble as they are around the blood in his mouth. He ignores, too, the slightly mocking undertone of the thanks that he murmurs when McCoy tosses him some clean pyjamas, as though it’s a stupid thing for him to care about. But he does. He cares about Jim, and he wants him safe and around where McCoy can keep an eye on him, wrapped up and held tight to where he can’t do any damage to anyone, not even himself.

The couch is as uncomfortable as it’s ever been, ill-improved by the thin blanket that’s the only sleeping gear McCoy has outside of the duvet Jim’s currently wrapped up in. McCoy’s heart hasn’t settled much, and he lies very still in the dark and tries to wrest away the tightness in his chest.

“Bones, what I said—”

As if Jim would allow him peace. “I know you’re sorry, kid. I know.”

That quiets him.

For a while, all McCoy hears is the sound of their breathing. Jim’s isn’t as harsh as he expected, and seems already to be slowing. He counts the time between each intake and exhale. He waits for exhaustion to take over them both.

When sleep comes, he dreams of an endless bright corridor he can’t stop following Jim down, always a step ahead.

-

The second failure starts off much less dramatic than the first.

McCoy’s sure he does little to mask his apprehension when it happens. Jim materialises by his side the moment it’s called and the doors swing open, clapping his shoulder like McCoy’s concern is just as outwardly obvious as it feels. “Relax, man, that was just a trial run. Gotta refine my strategy.”

“Jim, I’m telling you—”

“I know what you’re gonna say, Bones. But I’ll get it. I almost had it that time.”

McCoy looks at Jim warily, but his smile, though bland, bears no hint of insincerity—at least no more than normal.

Still, McCoy can’t resist the urge to try and restrain him, futile though he knows the words will be. “Jim, you don’t need to keep—”

“Yeah, I do.” Jim sounds much less breezy now; McCoy startles at the edge to his voice.

He decides not to say anything. He merely gives Jim a look he hopes reaffirms a silent protest, without pushing it to the point that Jim will press the issue.

Jim doesn’t. He keeps smiling at McCoy in that bland, unremarked way, as if this was all he expected all along. He jerks his head to the side. “Wanna go get drunk?”

“No.”

“I got it, man. It won’t be like last time.”

“I didn’t say that. I just said no.”

“Fine. What if I just came to yours?”

McCoy knows he should say no. For a start, Jim can certainly drink in his place, but there’s something about the idea of getting to keep an eye on him all night that gives McCoy pause.

“Alright. But only so I can make sure you don’t do something stupid.”

Jim keeps looking at him, but something changes in his face. For all the energy he spends aping at being aloof, all at once he looks as full of purpose as he always really is. McCoy’s not used to feeling as though that purpose rests on him.

The moment lasts a long time. McCoy prickles at being the subject of Jim’s undivided attention.

When Jim finally speaks, his words only deepen McCoy’s unease.

“Nothing stupid. Got it.”

-

As their nights go, this one starts off pretty mundane. Jim waves McCoy off after the third beer, which he feels relieved about, if tempered by a nagging sensation that something’s off.

It sits with him all evening. At first, Jim seems normal enough, relaxed enough about his latest failure. He won’t elaborate on how the next time will be different, but if he’s starting to doubt himself, it doesn’t come across in any dark comments or moments spent staring into the distance.

For hours, they sit cramped on McCoy’s shitty couch, talking about nothing at all. It’s something McCoy’s more used to than he ever thought he’d be—but it disquiets him, still, the way Jim’s maybe not meeting his eyes as much as he normally does, the way he occasionally taps his knee repetitively as his gaze flicks away, the way he won’t stop shifting in a futile pursuit of comfort, like he can’t bring himself to just sit still.

Then Jim kisses him.

It catches McCoy so off-guard that at first he can’t even feel it. His vision suddenly crowded out by Jim’s face, closer than he’s ever had the chance to see it. Too close to get a good look at him, to make out any detail beyond that Jim’s eyes are squeezed shut—while McCoy’s own stay wide open, seeing the press of lips that he can’t sense.

It takes McCoy’s brain a long time to catch up. The numbness drains away and he’s struck with a dizzying disbelief.

Jim’s already pulling away.

McCoy stares after him dumbly, incapably. He says Jim’s name without meaning to, unconscious of it having built in his mouth.

Jim doesn’t answer. He doesn’t say anything. He looks at McCoy like he’s trying to see something in his face.

Whatever Jim’s looking for, he doesn’t find it. He looks away. He moves to get up—to leave.

Something sharp builds in McCoy’s chest. It bristles against his ribcage and punctures his throat. Just like when he was consigned to watch Jim throw himself in front of a fist, he feels painfully, sickly aware of the present moment, of the chance already slipping away from him. He thinks wildly of the litany of people who have disappointed Jim and left him behind, who abandoned him, who let him down.

It’s not a list he wants to be a part of. He thinks, frantically, he’ll do anything not to be a part of it. Whatever Jim needs. Whatever McCoy can give him.

McCoy reaches for Jim. He holds onto the front of his shirt with his fist, bunches the fabric so he can’t move. Jim’s eyes go wide in response, when before, he hadn’t looked surprised at all. Like he expected to have to walk away from McCoy, but not this.

McCoy pulls him in, and stops short. Their faces hover just barely apart. At this distance, he can see every detail in Jim’s face; practically feel the jump of the jittering pulse in his neck, see the way his still-wide eyes are desperately scanning and measuring McCoy’s own expression, the way Jim’s lips are red from where he’s been biting them.

Jim’s mouth starts to open, but McCoy doesn’t want to hear whatever comes out. He kisses him again.

This time, Jim opens up to him. McCoy can’t breathe, suddenly, such is the fierceness of how Jim’s kissing back, all the energy he’s seen swept a thousand different ways, dedicated to a thousand different ends, concentrated in one unimaginable moment against McCoy’s mouth. It almost hurts him, and he wants it to; wants the awareness that this is real, the way Jim can only ever leave that certainty in the hurt he leaves behind.

McCoy feels possessed. Years and months aside and he never would’ve let himself—not consciously, not out loud, maybe in fits and starts in the dark at night but never when he could hear himself think. Now, there’s no room to think anything, just feel the way Jim’s hand is already at his back, pulling him impossibly closer despite the fact there’s no room between their chests anymore as Jim’s other hand is on his jaw, coaxing McCoy to deepen the kiss without any conscious effort on his part.

The noise Jim makes strips him of any coherent thought. Any awareness of anything else. McCoy can barely feel how fast his heart is racing; can’t hear the rush of blood in his ears but for the short, cut-off noises Jim is making from the back of his throat.

Dizzy, he breaks away. Jim’s mouth stays open: never one to let a moment rest, he’s immediately filling the air with the rush of his ragged voice. “Bones—Bones, fuck—”

It’s too much, hearing Jim say the name he chose like that. McCoy’s not yet willing to admit if he’d ever imagined it before, but he knows he never could have anticipated the reality of it. The wreck of him.

He doesn’t want to focus on anything else. He kisses Jim’s neck, gets a shaking hand up his shirt to feel the burning skin beneath.

Jim tilts his neck to make it easier, lets out a harsh breath, says his name again, an inconceivable awe in his voice. “Bones. Bones, I didn’t think—come on.”

Jim shifts a little, away from his reach, and McCoy lifts his head up, heart thudding with the echo of what he knows Jim is implying comes next. It stops him short, and he sits up a little, staring at the unbelievable sight of Jim flushed, his gaze lidded, his eyes as intent as McCoy’s ever seen them.

McCoy freezes like that, staring, and Jim seizes the moment to duck back in, starts pressing open-mouthed kisses to McCoy’s jaw, over and over again.

McCoy feels as though he can’t make any sound at all, but he breathes heavily until he finds his voice. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Jim murmurs, and tilts his face back up to meet his lips again.

This time, McCoy tries to slow them down. He manages to lift a trembling hand and cup Jim’s face with it, holding him in place, countering him and weighing him down. Jim doesn’t mind—just keeps kissing him with all the determination McCoy might have expected, if he let himself admit he’d expected anything.

Everything feels slowed down, unreal and unending. Jim’s splayed hand on McCoy’s hip burns right through him, a sharp and vivid contrast to the sluggishness of his mind, unable now to do anything but kiss Jim back and not think about it, feel it almost as though it’s not really happening to McCoy at all.

It might be hours before Jim breaks away again. “Come on,” he says a little more insistently than he did before, forcing McCoy back to the present as he opens his eyes.

Jim stares back at him. He bites his lip. His hand that isn’t on McCoy’s hip moves to grip his shoulder, like a brand through the thick fabric. For the first time since McCoy pulled him back in, he can see some hesitation in Jim’s face. McCoy watches him swallow. He listens to Jim say, finally, so quietly McCoy wouldn’t hear it but for how close they still are, “Unless…”

McCoy doesn’t want to hear it. Any uncertainty, any doubt, any fear. He wants Jim to know—to know how badly McCoy wants this. How long he’s spent, in vain, trying to get around it, trying not to think about what was always there, always present since that first shared shuttle. Jim is—beautiful, he thinks stupidly, and scared, and for all his shamelessness and bravado, for all the clearness of his intent and the effort he puts into voicing his desires—Jim’s afraid to ask, sometimes, for what he really wants.

McCoy won’t condemn him to that. Not with this. He grabs Jim’s hand, starts tugging them both to their feet. To his bed. He doesn’t miss Jim’s expression—the sheer amazement in it, still, like he never expects to get what he asks for. McCoy thinks again, not for the first time and not the last, he’ll give him anything he can.

-

In his bed, McCoy looms over Jim without being really conscious of where he’s touching him, too caught up in overwhelming sensation. But eventually he notices Jim's arching, spreading wider into McCoy’s hands where they’re curled around the backs of his thighs.

He breaks the kiss, but keeps their faces close together. He can feel the harshness of Jim’s stuttering breaths against his lips.

“Oh,” McCoy says, dumbly, without meaning to. Jim stares back at him, half-defiant.

“Yeah?” he half-asks, sounding, McCoy notes with some satisfaction, already breathless.

“Nothing. I just—come here.” McCoy brushes his mouth over Jim’s again. He tugs lightly at his bottom lip with his teeth, drawing out a soft sound that momentarily distracts them both until Jim pulls back, abrupt.

McCoy’s face warms under Jim's stare. He looks curious. He asks, “You thought I wouldn’t…” He waits.

McCoy huffs and looks away for a moment. “Yeah, I guess.”

Jim seems—contemplative. “Hmm,” he drapes his arm around McCoy’s shoulders, pulls him in lightly by the back of his neck. “You thought about it.”

McCoy huffs again, cheeks burning, turning more completely away this time. Immediately, Jim shifts closer still. “Bones…” his voice is low, so low McCoy feels more than hears it when Jim murmurs right under his ear, kissing wetly just underneath, pulling away only barely to murmur again, more insistent, “Bones.”

McCoy keeps his face turned away when he speaks, very quietly. “Yeah, Jim, I thought about it. I thought about it a lot.”

It shouldn’t feel so much like a confession; Jim’s no stranger to sex, after all, and certainly he’s well-acquainted with all the ways it can be meaningless. But Jim didn’t ask him idyly.

McCoy’s not sure what he was expecting when he works up the courage to turn back, but it wasn’t the wide-eyed, approaching incredulous look Jim is giving him now— like the idea of McCoy fantasising about him is unthinkable; like this is something Jim’s just stumbled into, or that Jim led him to. McCoy doesn’t know what to say to that, because it’s an impossibly incorrect assumption, but he doesn’t know how much he can admit, how much Jim even wants to hear. Jim has a habit of asking to hear things he knows will make him unhappy, and it’s not something McCoy wants to encourage.

More worrisome still is the idea Jim might want to hear it.

Jim answers that question for him. “Tell me.” His voice is rough.

McCoy does.

-

McCoy thought he might fall asleep right away afterwards, hoped for it in the back of his mind. But he should’ve known he wouldn’t be so lucky.

Jim does. Whatever force sent him here tonight, with his mind made up to do what he did, has clearly weighed on him: even if his intentions were a success, McCoy can see exhaustion writ in the slack lines of Jim’s face as he sprawls unerringly across McCoy’s pillows like there’s no reason he shouldn’t.

It’s dark. The lights are dimmed accordingly from McCoy’s earlier command, spoken half-muffled into Jim’s neck because he wasn’t sure how much he’d want to see. It’s not that the kid has any shame, any compunctions, but this is something—new, McCoy thinks. Uncharted territory for both of them, as unknowable as the terrible abyss above they’re both working their way towards.

More frightening, still. McCoy touches Jim’s shoulder like he thinks it won’t connect, that his hand will pass right through what can’t be real. Jim doesn’t stir.

If McCoy expected this moment to bring any kind of radical shift, some overwhelming clarity of thought that casts everything between them from the last two years in some different and undeniable light—he’s half-justified, half-disappointed. Whatever Jim’s intentions towards him have always been, whatever McCoy might have hoped for, he knows it’s not as simple as this being the only endpoint they were ever striving towards.

Far from it, even: McCoy feels dread pool thickly in his gut at how much this might only complicate a dynamic already far beyond what he could ever have expected or predicted. Jim feels innate to him now, an irrevocable part, enmeshed deeply in all of McCoy’s skin, even before he’d ever touched it like this. He doesn’t fool himself that this will make that easier or simpler.

It takes a long time for McCoy to sleep. He can’t stop staring at the sight of Jim in his bed. Jim’s face, open to him in sleep just like this so many times before, but never this close, never with this particular residue drying on the skin of his stomach. McCoy would have insisted on cleaning them both off—but he had found that he couldn’t move or speak at all. He felt balanced on a precipice even in the immediate moments after, any possibility of postcoital relief tempered by the growing waves of shock and fear for what would come next.

McCoy isn’t sure, when he eventually falls asleep, if he’s expecting Jim to still be there when he wakes up.

He isn’t. But he’s left a note.

McCoy stares at the familiar scribble of Jim’s handwriting, suddenly alien in this entirely new context. If Jim was gone, wordlessly, McCoy could have anticipated that. If he was still there, maybe he didn’t mean to be; maybe McCoy woke up before he could get away.

But a note is considered. Intent. Especially when it explains where Jim’s gone—to get bagels and coffee from a stall they like just off the campus.

McCoy doesn’t think Jim does something like that all that much. With him, certainly: Jim’s not immune to moments of more traditional friendship gestures, even if his presence is so generally distinct, so unique in McCoy’s world. But with the endless catalogue of beds Jim shares, McCoy doubts it’s something any of them get the next morning.

It makes McCoy feel sick to contemplate, so he doesn’t. He strips the sheets and goes to shower like maybe when he gets out, it’ll all be unremarked upon, swept away. Maybe that’s what Jim wants. Maybe that’s what’s best.

Jim’s back by the time he exits the shower. Initially, McCoy’s suspicions feel confirmed. Jim smiles as blandly and brazenly as he ever does. There’s no hint of anything new or different or unveiled. McCoy notes that Jim must have showered before he woke up, because his face is gleaming and sharp.

Jim slides a cardboard container of food across the same kitchen table where McCoy patched him up mere months ago. There’s still only one chair, and McCoy hovers awkwardly above it until Jim notices.

Jim laughs, startled. He waves dismissively. McCoy thinks he might smile, but Jim looks away before he can tell for sure.

McCoy feels more awkward than he has in a long time. For all the past few years have been humiliating: the remaking of himself he never anticipated, the coast he never expected to be banished to—he’s found something in it. Some role to fulfil, be it student or doctor or whatever it is Jim’s been making of him. Now he sits down stiffly in his own kitchen, suddenly flattened by how alien and unfamiliar it remains, really. Just a space he’s inhabiting because he has to.

He wonders if Jim still feels like that, too.

McCoy doesn’t think he can eat anything. He tilts the coffee Jim hands him a fraction forward in an acknowledgement of thanks, but he doesn’t speak.

For a few minutes, neither does Jim. It hits McCoy like a bolt when he does.

“I’m just saying, we don’t have to think about it.”

McCoy thinks for one wild moment of feigning that he doesn’t know exactly what Jim means, but he pushes past the urge. The taste of coffee is thick and acrid in his mouth, throat heavy with the burden of how to respond.

Like a coward, he deflects. “So your usual approach, you mean.”

Jim ignores him. He bites into a bagel smothered with a layer of cream cheese an inch thick. His speech is muffled and gluey; were it anyone else, McCoy probably wouldn’t understand the words. “I’ll keep doing—everything I’m doing, you know.”

“You mean women?”

With an effort, Jim swallows. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Hey, don’t limit me. I mean…this can just be something else. You don’t have to get all worked up about it.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“No. Bones, I didn’t mean—that came out wrong. I just mean you can—you can do whatever you want, man. You can feel—or not—you don’t have to—”

McCoy’s not the one getting worked up, but his heart pangs with the guilt of seeing Jim like this, of the reminder of how open he sometimes is with McCoy, how visibly he lets his mind beat furiously around whatever it is he’s trying to say.

Jim’s not eating anymore. He’s looking down, and his voice is arresting and quiet.

“I wasn’t sure if it was worth it, you know. Complicating things.”

The sincerity of Jim’s admission catches McCoy off balance. It leaves a space he doesn’t know how to fill. Room to admit something of his own, when he doesn’t know what he’s ready to confess in turn.

McCoy hedges. He keeps them on safer ground. “Yeah, well. You did.”

Jim’s eyes flick up, but only for a moment. Something like a laugh twists the corner of his mouth. “Technically, you’re the one who actually fucked me, so…”

“Jesus, Jim.”

At that, Jim looks at him head-on. “What, doing it’s okay, just not saying it?”

“No, that’s not what I—you can’t really think that. That it was all me.”

Jim seems bewildered they’re even labouring the point. “I wasn’t—I was kidding. I just—fuck, man, I don’t want to get weird about this.”

Jim runs a hand through his hair, turns half-away from McCoy, a negligible act of distancing that still makes McCoy’s throat a little tighter. Jim bites his lip.

“I thought about it a lot, too. I thought, what if we get up there and I never—I don’t know what it’s gonna be like up there. And there’s some things—that maybe I’d regret not doing, you know? Before I lost the chance.”

“Jim.” McCoy’s speechless, staggered back. His heart hammers in his chest.

“I’m not saying—I’m not saying anything. I just want you to know that—I’ll do whatever you want. We don’t need to—we can forget it happened, even—”

“Jim.”

“What?”

McCoy takes a deep breath and readies himself. “I don’t want to forget.”

He feels the weight of every word, slipping from his lips like anchors. It frightens him, nearly unbearably so, to voice it aloud, to so clearly and starkly lay out what he wants. What he’s wanted for a long time. But McCoy, still resounding in shock from what Jim’s admitted, figures he deserves to hear something in return. That McCoy can at least give him that much.

“Okay. That’s good. That’s fine.”

Jim’s voice is awash with naked relief.

“Look, Jim, I…”

Something in Jim shutters again. He stops looking at McCoy, waves a hand dismissively. It would be believable, were it not for the visible tightness in his shoulders, the way his other hand is gripping the side of the table between them so tightly his knuckles are white.

Still, his voice sounds calmer. “Forget it. Bones, you don’t have to say anything. Really. I don’t—I shouldn’t have brought it all up like that. ”

McCoy nods slowly. “Alright.”

Silence but for a moment. Jim breaks it.

“We’re good, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.”

-

The next few months aren’t all that different. Maybe they should be. Maybe they’re being cowards, to fold this into what’s already there instead of making anything new to accommodate it.

McCoy expects to see less of Jim. He thinks Jim might run away for a little, back to whatever it is he does when he’s not bothering McCoy. Some long litany of people McCoy finds himself wondering why he doesn’t know more about, faces he can’t name but is sure must exist, because they have to. It can’t really be what it seems: that in all these years, there’s no one else that Jim’s laid so much of a claim to.

But that's how it feels. He doesn’t see less of Jim, far from it. Now, McCoy sees Jim even where he isn’t: feels the phantom impressions of his clinging limbs and the hot, biting edge of his mouth whenever McCoy gets a moment to think about anything at all.

Always, Jim is something to remember. A thousand times, McCoy catches himself, feels himself transported to that darkness, to the quiet of it, the inevitability of the way Jim doesn’t need or ask for any permission, even now, even in this. The way he still hunts McCoy down across campus and through docking bays and into his bed, a presence that slides as easily though all the spaces of McCoy's life as it ever did. Always seemingly certain of his welcome—though in truth, McCoy knows it’s something Jim fears more than anything: that McCoy might join the long list of those who walked away from him. Who decided in the end that they’d had enough.

McCoy doesn’t feel like he ever could.

-

To his credit, Jim seems to respect McCoy’s space and increasingly theoretical patience enough not to barrage him with comms every single day.

Less to his credit, when he enters McCoy’s room the night before his third and would-be final attempt at the test, it’s 0100 hours and he’s wearing his uniform half inside-out. Jim immediately collapses on McCoy’s occupied bed with a feeble groan that, if McCoy knew him less, might actually suggest he willed those hours away hard at work in the Academy library.

McCoy pretends to be unconcerned. Or at least disinterested.

"How was studying?"

Jim toes off one boot uncaringly, lets it thump against the carpet, then the next. "She kicked me out."

"Hm, I didn't think I'd asked about a person."

Jim doesn’t look embarrassed—of course—but does grunt an admonishment while staring down at his still-clothed arm, noticing the unintentional inversion and opting to correct it by, unsurprisingly, stripping it off entirely.

"She made me put my clothes in in the hallway, Bones,” he mutters, “who does that?"

"Not many people, but it wouldn't be surprising that they'd all slept with you."

"Funny." Jim’s gazing intently at his lap, but seems to decide against taking off the rest of his uniform, instead glancing at and then lunging for McCoy’s alarm on his bedside table.

"What time's this set for?"

"7,” McCoy replies with as much open suspicion as he can muster.

Jim seems unfazed by his tone, setting it down and staring at him again. "7?"

"Yes, Jim, 0700 hours. A reasonable waking hour for people who don’t spend their nights getting thrown out of women’s dorm rooms."

Jim grins. “Their loss.” He stretches, eyes the clock again. “Huh. Early. Guess I assumed..." he turns back to McCoy, and his sudden and obvious confidence, the way he’s cornering in, makes something pool in McCoy’s stomach.

“Your shift at the clinic doesn't start until eleven."

"Not that the answer will bring me satisfaction—and let me be clear, it won't—but how exactly do you know my schedule for tomorrow?"

"Cause it's Thursday."

"Jim."

Jim rolls his eyes, like a constant awareness of McCoy' movements is just something he should have long since accepted. He taps his fingers impatiently against the arm that’s closest to him.

"I got a copy of the rota. Just being prepared. Needed to know if you were free."

"So you asked me knowing I wasn't?"

He shrugs. "Figured it wouldn't matter, anyway and apparently it didn't, considering—" and if McCoy felt pinned down before, the notion becomes overwhelming when Jim shifts to spread out his legs over McCoy’s own under the duvet, moving to lie mostly on top of him and pressing their faces too close together, "someone rearranged their shift."

"That's me. Early riser."

Jim's breath is hot against his mouth. His hands frame McCoy’s face, closing in. "What are you doing later that morning, Bones?"

"Sleeping. For an indefinite amount of time, and I'm changing the door code, so try not to make any disastrous attempts at 'studying' that afternoon.”

"Can't change it without my approval." McCoy mutters a curse as he remembers can’t, not anymore; since the last time he tried resulted in Jim reprogramming it to loudly play various medical-themed old love songs instead. They’d reached an agreement after that.

Jim doesn't let up. "What you can change, it seems, is your shift schedule so you can join me during—”

"I don't know what you're talking about."

McCoy isn’t even trying to sound sincere. He knows that his immediate acquiescence to what Jim’s implying will inspire the most satisfaction, and for once, he doesn’t feel like fighting to contain that.

His conviction is confirmed by the way Jim's face lights up, a fleeting, sharp moment that constricts McCoy’s chest.

There's a smudge of lip gloss on the corner of Jim's mouth. McCoy reaches up to rub it away with his thumb. His voice is careful when he asks, "Did you think I wouldn't?"

He’s curious about the answer. Jim asked him like it was already a foregone conclusion he’d be there if Jim wanted him to. But for all Jim treats McCoy like he’s a resolute certainty of his life, McCoy recognises that the effort that requires of Jim inherently belies such a conviction. The contradiction exposes the fragility of Jim’s ability to believe in people to be there for him, even McCoy.

All of that seems buried by Jim’s easy grin. "Nah. But I was prepared to throw in some perks to convince you."

McCoy rolls his eyes before he even fully registers that Jim’s leering. "I'm not blowing you in a fake captain's chair, Jim."

"See, Bones, the beauty of the Kobayashi Maru is that it feels completely real—"

McCoy snorts. "Yeah, including real security cameras."

Jim kisses his neck with an idleness that's disconcerting. His thumbs are still firm on McCoy's cheekbones. "I could hack them."

"They're part of the exam procedure. Security is pretty tight."

"Believe me, I could do it."

McCoy does believe him. Almost always. Believes him so much, in fact, that he finds himself stirring against the drowsy haze brought on by the press of Jim’s limbs. "Wait," he starts, pulling himself higher against the pillows, "Jim, that isn't...your plan."

"What plan?" Murmured into his collarbone, the words are temporarily distracting, more still when Jim’s tongue flicks lazily at the dip in his clavicle. But those words from Jim, who might exude an atmosphere of carelessness but who approaches every dilemma with intense focus and tactical preparation, are so stark in their absurdity it fills McCoy with annoyance. "Jim, I swear to God—"

“What?”

"That's your plan? You’re just going to—hack the test? Argue that the possibility of getting your entire crew killed is just a reality of the job, so it doesn't count as failure?"

Jim's mouth quirks. Wordlessly, he reaches for McCoy's palm where it's splayed on the mattress near his shoulder and brings it to his lips, pressing them to the pulse in McCoy’s wrist. He doesn't speak. The only sound is their breathing, McCoy's the harsher. He knows Jim can feel his heartbeat climb, even now.

Jim drops McCoy's hand and lets it rest instead on his neck, where McCoy could feel Jim's own pulse if he tried, as though conceding a turn. "Come on, Bones," he rasps, mouth loose now but eyes wide and focused, "you gotta have more faith in me than that."

"I do," McCoy relents. In the dark, in this bed, with Jim still touching him like he doesn’t want to let go, it carries more weight than he intended. McCoy doesn't miss the way Jim's eyes widen slightly, but he acts as though he did.

"Yeah?"

"Sometimes. Maybe. Against my better judgement." Jim’s grin is far less infectious than McCoy suspects he thinks it is. “Don’t push it, kid.”

“I won’t,” Jim promises, suddenly too sincere. "You gonna be there with me next time?"

"You mean tomorrow morning."

"Yeah. I'll show you the way."

"Oh, so you came over to give me directions I don't need?"

Jim’s grin seems impossibly bright in the dark. "No."

-

Jim was a sight to behold in the exam room. Annoying, certainly; his stunt with the apple was really pushing it, and McCoy did little to hide his irritation. Irrational as it might be, at the time he couldn’t shake some imagined sense of betrayal that Jim was playing a long joke that he hadn’t bothered to let McCoy in on.

The thought was irrational not because it wasn’t true—to an extent—but because it misses the point. Jim had a plan he didn’t share, yes, but what mattered wasn’t the finer details of his outsmarting the test but the space around it. The way Jim had told him, over and over, I want you there.

So McCoy went. He knew, by then—he always would.

He’d played his part well enough. Hard, with his limited knowledge: none, really of exactly what it was Jim was intending to pull off that day.

But his real purpose, McCoy thinks, was to bear witness. At the end, when Jim was completing a victory lap, McCoy sat centre stage. Jim’s palm clasped on his shoulder. Only a brief and fleeting touch. McCoy’s months of being the recipient of much firmer, more lingering ones can attest to that.

But those were private, and this—this was for all the world to see, and for McCoy to understand. The picture Jim made was buoyant and brazen, pleased with himself, but McCoy felt something skittering beneath that short-lived press of his palm. The reason he’d so insisted McCoy be there in the first place. Jim was taking a risk. A big one.

A consequential one, as it turns out. Now, McCoy stands with him in the hangar, at a crossroads: Jim was barred from the stars.

McCoy should leave it alone. He should walk away. Go where he’s expected. Do what’s expected of him.

He can’t.

He tries. He tells Jim he has to go, and there’s no malice or hurt in Jim’s eyes, not really. But the way he grasps McCoy’s hand to shake it is stiff and unfamiliar. Nothing like any other touch Jim’s given him, not just for these past few months but for all the years McCoy has known him, played spectator to Jim Kirk’s unapologetic existence. It feels like Jim’s only mimicking the gesture, like it’s something he learned from a book.

The perfunctory nature of it makes McCoy’s heart sink more than anything else, even as he scans Jim’s face for recrimination that isn’t there.

It weighs him down. He can turn away from Jim only slowly, holding his gaze as long as he can.

Merely steps away, he falters.

“Come with me.”

Jim’s not even looking at McCoy when he says it. Already, he’s turned his back to the sight of McCoy walking away from him.

It feels better than it should, to subvert that expectation. To break it. Because of the two of them, McCoy may be the one they’re calling up to the galaxies above now, but Jim’s the one who really belongs there.

McCoy knows he will never be comfortable in space, not really. Three years and the suffocating fear in him has only ever dimmed. Even now, even with Jim pressed warm and unresisting at his side as McCoy bundles them through the rush of moving bodies flooding through the hangar bay, he can hardly say he wants to fly up to what awaits them.

But there’s something else he can belong to. Some other guiding light to follow.

Jim offers no physical resistance, even if he questions where they’re going, where McCoy’s taking him. And McCoy doesn’t bother to explain, not really. All he needs Jim to hear is what he tells him—that he couldn’t just leave him there.

It’s a more meaningful sentiment than McCoy maybe means to put into words, and he tempers them. With a jab at Jim looking pathetic, with a jabbed hypo to his neck. Part of McCoy needs the distraction of a medical procedure to steady his hands. He’s caught himself off guard. He doesn’t know what he thought he might do in this situation, but what scares him is how he didn’t really have to think about it at all.

Beneath him, Jim’s fingers are scrabbling ineffectually at the painful spot in his neck, fingers digging into the blossoming mark while he watches McCoy evenly. “You call this a favour?”

McCoy doesn’t respond, busying himself with putting the hypo back in its drawer. Even turned away from Jim, he feels his stare bore into the back of his skull. “Bones.”

McCoy steels himself to look back. He doesn’t know what makes it so hard, suddenly, like he’s terrified of what Jim might be able to read in his face.

Jim looks somewhat mollified, at least. He’s no longer rubbing at his neck, eyeing McCoy curiously, expectantly. “So I guess you have a plan for this?”

“Something like that.”

“Alright, so I’m—ow—am I supposed to start getting a headache?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

McCoy doesn't sound like he means it.

Jim keeps staring at him. He nods, just slightly like he doesn’t realise he’s doing it. His eyes are wide open, his legs splayed out on the seat McCoy shoved him onto.

He says again, “Bones.”

It’s not a question; McCoy doesn’t respond.

Jim’s still studying his face. McCoy can see the burning edges of pain begin to flicker in his eyes. He feels a throb of some distant guilt for having caused it, but it’s measured, kept at bay by something even more prominent in Jim’s expression—gratitude.

Jim’s looking at McCoy like he trusts him. Like he knows he can. Even now, even sat cramped in a crowded medbay that’s little bigger than a trailer, a fresh recipient of a wound McCoy jammed into his neck with no prior warning or explanation, the effects of which are already beginning to dull Jim’s senses and blur his vision—Jim acquiesces, not because McCoy asked but because he didn’t need to.

It’s that, more than anything, that makes McCoy feel unbelievably, unspeakably grateful. The strength of Jim’s conviction in him. The steadiness he’ll let McCoy provide—as he urges Jim up, now, grips him by his bicep, anchors him tight to McCoy’s unwavering side.

“You owe me one,” he tells Jim, hardly hearing himself say the words against the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, climbing faster and faster as the delayed onset of panic and dread at the stunt he's pulling mounts in his chest. Jim too is starting to show discomfort: face twisted into a grimace as the pain really starts to take hold, and McCoy doubts he heard him, either. But it doesn’t matter. Jim leans against him more fully, and McCoy stays steadfast. He doesn’t let him go or let him down.

Their steps thus united, McCoy brings them both into the stars.