wook77 | Fic: Going Home Again (Kirk/McCoy Rated: PG-13)

Title: Going Home Again
Author:

wook77
Fandom: Star Trek: XI
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Wordcount: ~2450
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minimal spoilers for Star Trek: XI
Summary: Leonard McCoy hates transporters, especially transporters that send him to alternate worlds where he's forced to live with his wife again.
A/N: Written for the prompt of McCoy from the movie universe crosses the dimensions and meets his alter ego which is still married to the wife... and finds out that the divorce and joining Starfleet were the best things that ever happened to him because his life is so much richer of everything. at

st_xi_kink meme at here. Beta'd by

why_me_why_not and

elanorofcastile. All remaining mistakes are my own.

It starts with a transporter accident. If he's told Scotty once, Bones has told him a thousand times, transporters are accidents waiting to happen and he'd much rather take a shuttle. Instead, Scotty had insisted that the dampeners or the alloys or whatever technobabble had been fixed and he'd be fine. Add in Jim's teasing and then the dare and here he sits, in a completely different place than aboard the USS Lincoln.

The place looks strangely familiar. He's been on the Enterprise for ten years now so Earth has had to change in that timeframe. Racking his memory, he can't quite figure out where he is until he sees the house and the little girl playing with a doll in front of it.

He's an awful parent because it's the house that cements his location and not the little girl.

"Daddy?" The girl sounds confused for a moment. "Daddy? Why're you back?"

He's utterly boggled because Joanna has to be almost eighteen now, not eight. So where the hell is he?

"Jojo?" he asks as he approaches. She's the spitting image of Joanna when he'd graduated from Starfleet.

"Daddy? You haven't called me that in years."

He's missed this, no matter what he's told Jim. He's missed his house and his daughter and his horses. He's missed his dog and his practice. He's missed the small town where everyone knows everyone else's business but they all care in such a good way that it's hard to begrudge the neighbor the knowledge that one eats dinner at five oh three every day.

"Mummy! Daddy's home!" Joanna yells as they enter the house.

"What the hell are you wearing?" Elizabeth asks as she exits the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel.

"It's for – " he doesn't get to continue because his ex-wife interrupts.

"Don't you have that conference?"

"Decided not to go."

"But you already paid for it. Can you get that money back?" Her tone switches from confused to argumentative.

"I'll have to check."

"You should've checked before you decided not to go. We could've used that money on fixing up the house. It's not like you're ever going to do it and we could finally hire somebody to at least paint the place."

"It's not that bad," he says, immediately on the defensive even if it's been thirteen years since he'd been in a similar position. He falls right back into the habits from before the divorce.

"It is. The paint's peeling and the sofa has holes in it. How're we supposed to have friends over if the sofa has holes in it?"

"It's comfortable and you put a blanket over it, no one notices."

"I notice, Leonard." He'd forgotten how she'd spit his name at him, the way her mouth would twist into a sneer as she made two syllables into four. Bowie chooses that moment to come sliding into the room, swinging around from the stairs leading upstairs to crash into his legs and beg for his attention.

"Hey, boy. Long time, no see," he says as he pets his dog. Right now, he doesn't care where he is. It's been too damned long since he's seen his dog and he's going to take the opportunity to visit.

"You just saw him yesterday. Since you're here, maybe you could go take care of your horses so I don't have to do that, too?"

"Sure thing. Jojo, you want to help?" he asks as he pets Bowie and gestures for her to follow him.

She scampers out the house with him, racing towards the barn while Bowie gives chase. Unable to resist, he laughs when Bowie turns and barks at him, almost as if he were demanding that Bones give chase, and he obeys. He races after them, catching up to Joanna as she reaches the first stall.

"Daddy? You're different," she says as he gives her a hug when he finally catches her.

"How's that?"

"You're happier."

"That's cause…" he lets his voice trail off. He can't tell her that he's happier because of something that had happened on the Enterprise nor can he tell her that he's happy because he's getting to spend some time with his daughter and his animals.

"It's cause I'm home," he finally decides as a good answer.

"Oh," she says and then runs to the back of the barn.

He's missed these sorts of chores, missed the smell of the earth around him, the sound of the crops blowing in the light breeze while his horses whinny. He's missed the way that his daughter used to run to greet him after a long day and the joy he would feel to have her arms around him.

Elizabeth's taken it all from him, left him with just his bones. The thought sobers him and reminds him that he doesn't belong here, that something's happened to him to get him here instead of there. He wonders how Jim's reacting to his disappearance, what discussions he's missing at the medical conference and how the Enterprise is doing. He wonders just what Jim's saying to Scotty right now, and he can only hope that it has something to do with Bones being right about the dangers of transporters.

By the time his brain stops wondering about the Enterprise, they've cleaned the stalls for his horses. Joanna heads back to the house without saying a word to him.

Elizabeth nags her way through dinner, complaining about having to cook extra that she hadn't planned on while Joanna excuses herself to go finish her homework. Bowie disappears out to the barn because Elizabeth hates having a dog in the house. Awkward isn't nearly sufficient enough of a word to describe the meal.

Nor does it begin to describe going to bed that night, sleeping beside his wife. He's missed the soft touch of a woman. Jim's brilliant, don't get him wrong, but he's missed the feel of breasts in his hands so he reaches over to his wife, touches her arm just above the elbow in the way that he remembers from the beginning of their marriage when they'd been deliriously happy. Instead of rolling towards him, pressing her lips to his and sliding her body over his, she turns from him, taking the blankets with her.

"Lizzie?" he says into the darkness.

"Don't call me that," she says back, voice quiet and vitriolic.

"When did we fall apart?" he asks without meaning to. It's something he'd wanted to ask his Elizabeth for years after the divorce, but they'd been too bitter for the question.

"What do you mean?"

"We're breaking apart. When did it start?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she says. "Now go to sleep."

~*~

He wakes in the middle of the night with Joanna screaming. Just after he soothes her back to sleep, the phone rings and a neighbor calls with the news that Bowie's got into their chicken coop.

His dad calls after that. He's sick, really sick. Bones packs up his medical bag quickly and heads to his dad's place down the road. By the time he gets there, his dad's curled into the fetal position and crying.

"Dad?" he asks softly.

His dad doesn't look up, just stops moaning, and Bones can't help but wonder what happened to him, how he'd gotten this bad. Back home, in his own world, his dad's fine. Old but fine. He calls emergency and they're quick to get his dad to the hospital.

By the time he gets home that evening, he's forgotten about the tension with his wife. Hell, he's forgotten about his wife entirely. It's been so long that he's had Jim that he doesn't think about Elizabeth waiting for him. It's not to say that he and Jim are perfect. They're not. Hell, they're not anything even close to being defined. They've never said the word 'love' between them. They're just them, and that's good enough because Bones knows that Jim loves him whether Jim says the words or not.

"Where the hell have you been?" Elizabeth demands as he walks through the door.

"Dad's sick," he says as he drops his bag by the door.

"Don't put that there. How many times have I told you that you have to keep it out of the way? What if a neighbor stops by? Do you want them seeing your mess everywhere?"

"It's a bag, Lizzie, just a bag. If they have a problem with it, then there's something else going on."

"You never listen to a word I say. I don't know why I even try anymore, Leonard." There's the way that she says his name, vitriolic and bitter. He misses hearing his name off Jim's lips, the hitch in his breath as he says it in the middle of sex, Bones plunging into his body or he's plunging into Bones's body.

"I don't either," Bones says and trudges upstairs.

"Leonard?"

"Yeah?"

"Your bag." He trudges back down the stairs, grabs the bag and then walks back up the stairs.

Dinner's the same, cold affair as the night before. Joanna's off to a friend's house and Elizabeth is distant, only speaking to berate him for not cleaning up after the horses today or disappearing in the middle of the night to take care of his father.

As they go to bed that night, he misses Jim. He's used to the small wuffle he makes as he breathes, the way that Jim's hand seeks his body out in the middle of the night, flopping onto his chest or stomach. Hell, he misses the way that Jim will press himself up against Bones just to steal the covers. He misses the way that he can tell if Jim's dreaming by his heart rate.

He misses the excitement and tedium of the ship. He misses everything about the Enterprise, and he has no idea how to get it back. He's stuck in a never-ending saga of "you can never go home again".

"You ever think about getting a divorce?" he asks because he knows that she's not asleep.

"Why would I want to do that?"

He wants to answer 'because you did it to me thirteen years ago' but he knows she'll think he's insane if he does. "We're miserable."

"You might be but I'm happy!" she yells, sitting up and turning to him to point a finger. "Don't you dare suppose to think that you know how I'm feeling. That's the problem. You're always so concerned with yourself that you think we all feel the same way that you do. I'm happy and if you're not, then that's too bad."

Well, that sums that up. He rolls over and goes to sleep. He's got to get back to the Enterprise.

~*~

A month goes by. A month of tedium, arguments, and a lack of touch. He's stuck here. He can't remember what it was that he missed from this time. It's self-defense to shut down – emotionally and mentally – entirely so he does within the first week.

He can't remember what it's like to feel.

~*~

When he returns from visiting his father at the hospital, he finds his Enterprise uniform washed and folded on the bed. His communicator is sitting on the top of it. Picking it up, he activates it and hears nothing back.

He's doomed to live out his failing marriage over and over. He hopes Scotty is happy with himself. Jim and his fucking dares. The bastard deserves to get the space clap and not have Bones there to cure him. Not that Bones has had to cure him of anything like that for years. Now that he thinks about it, he can't remember the last time Jim had strayed that he knows about. Considering how Jim likes to talk about his conquests, Bones would hear about it.

Dejected, he sits on the edge of the bed and picks up the uniform, hugging it to his chest with one hand while clenching the communicator in the other.

"You'll get him back if it's the last thing you do, Scotty. You only think I'm kidding. You'll be shoved back into those tubes so fast you won't know what the fuck has happened to you. Get. Him. Back. Now."

"Jim?" Bones looks up and around the room. That was definitely Jim's voice.

"Bones? Bones? You there?" Jim sounds frantic and worried and… and it's the best sound he's ever heard in his life.

"If you ever dare me to beam somewhere again, I'll kill you," Bones says, relief sweeping through him, replacing the dejection. Jim gives a weird laugh – half cough, half laugh – and Bones does the same.

"Where are you? We can't find you on the sensors."

"I'm in hell, Jim."

"Stop being so melodramatic and give us your location."

"I'm at my house with my ex-wife who thinks she's still my wife. I got beamed into some crazy twilight zone shit and you need to get me out of here."

"Stand by, Doctor McCoy," Scotty says and then he can feel the familiar fizzling apart and reassembly of being beamed. When he's fully back on the Enterprise, he doesn't have a second to think before Jim's wrapped around him, so close and comforting.

"Don't ever leave me like that again," Jim orders quietly, lips pressed against his ear.

"Not my fault I got beamed somewhere else."

"I'm not kidding. Don't do it again."

"All right," Bones says. Jim doesn't need to say 'I love you'. He shows it in a thousand ways, like holding on and not letting go no matter who is watching.

~*~

Scotty has Melvaran mud fleas. It's just too bad that he's been infected with that shortly after getting over a case of space clap, space shingles, and pink eye.

~*~

"Jojo?"

"Daddy? You haven't called me that in years."

"I know." He isn't sure how to say anything to her, how to tell her about the other world or the way that he's feeling towards her. "I love you, Jojo."

"I love you, too, Daddy." She grins at something off to the side and then leans in. "I got accepted to Georgetown."

"Really? That's great news."

"Yeah, I'm going for nursing. I think maybe Starfleet after that."

"Following in the old man's footsteps, eh?"

"Yeah, you could say that." She grins at him again and then cocks an eyebrow at him. "You all right with that?"

"Yeah." He pauses for a moment. "You ever think about what our life would be like if me and your mom had stayed together?"

"Hell?" she says it flippantly. "You guys always fought. It would've been awful. I like it this way better."

"Yeah, me too."

As always, I'd love to hear what you thought.