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wook77Title: Confession Is Always Weakness
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wook77
Fandom: Star Trek: XI (Reboot)
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~4500
Warnings: 2nd Person Narrative
Summary: In a moment of panic, words come out, confessions happen and result in ramifications that need to be dealt with.
A/N: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
space_married prompt of: Jim and Bones are trapped somewhere on an alien planet, unable to get back to the Enterprise and Jim is badly injured--of course. As Bones attempts to patch him back together, he tries to bribe Jim into staying awake and alive by asking him to marry him. He rambles about all the still domestic things he wants and explains that Jim has to survive so he can show him the rings he's been keeping by his bedside for months, etc. Many grateful thanks to lauriegilbert and elanorofcastile for the beta. All mistakes are, of course, my own. Title is taken from a bastardization of a quotation by Dorothy Dix.
You're in the middle of the canteen when the urge hits you. You want to touch him, just reach out a hand and feel his flesh under yours. You want to see if his hand is soft like a girl's or rough like a man's against your own bare flesh. You want to know more about him even though you already know more about him than anyone else. You want to touch intimately and be touched intimately. You want him.
It scares you because you don't know what to expect; where this is going and what you're doing. You don't have a fucking clue about any of this and not just because of him. Because of yourself, too. Your relationships always fail so you don't reach out, you don't touch him intimately. It's out of respect for his position, and yours. If you repeat it enough, you'll believe that that's the only reason, that it doesn't have a thing to do with your own fear of failure.
None of this stops the want and, before you realize, your hand is reaching out. Thankfully there's a napkin to snag and so you grab it instead of touching him and ruining the friendship. Any fool can see how much you had wanted to touch. After a moment spent dabbing at your lip as if you had something caught there, you look up and catch him staring at your hands. Your lips. You see the want on his face but you write it off as your own. After all, you feel such an overridingly strong need that it's sure to corrupt everyone around you and Jim's around more than most.
The next time the urge hits (or at least, hits stronger than usual), you're in a shuttle on your way to some remote, backwater planet in need. You watch his hands as they fly over the controls, the way that he steers the shuttle and you can't help but imagine the way that they'd feel on your body. You want those fingertips to dance across your chest, your back, your legs, instead of the control boards.
"Bones," he murmurs, low and sensual. You finally tear your gaze from his hands to see him staring at you. that same hunger you feel in his eyes.
After a long moment you respond, voice barely cracking, "Yeah?"
"Bones," he says again and you know what he's saying. You might not be as skilled at languages as Uhura but you're damn good at translating Jim-speak.
"How much longer are we going to be in this deathtrap?" you ask, instead of responding the way that you want.
"Bones," he repeats and it's obvious that your misdirection isn't going to cut it.
"If we have a few, I'm going to go check the supplies," you say back and then, before Jim can even respond, you slip into the cargo area. Once there, you put your head in your hands with elbows on your knees and you breathe, in and out, as you try to get control of yourself.
"We're going to be landing in a minute." Jim's voice crackles through the speaker.
"Fuck," you mutter as you stand up and make your way back to the co-pilot's seat and strap in.
"Everything good?" Jim asks. The shuttle bounces and Jim reaches out a hand to steady you. You don't know whether to flinch away or lean into it so you do both. "Bones."
"Don't, Jim, not right now," you say, low and needy because this isn't the time or the place. You've given up the secret, now, but you're still stuck with the denial.
"After this mission, Bones," he says and it's a promise.
For once, you're praying that one or the other of you gets injured so you can put that conversation off for just a while longer. You’re not asking for death, or even life-threatening. You just want a minor injury (you'll take a broken bone or a bruised face or anything of the sort) that will give you the opportunity to touch, but also to live in your own little world of denial for just a while longer. But of course, the universe hates Leonard Horatio McCoy.
You're barely strapped in when the shuttle suddenly gives a violent shudder before leaping further into the air and then plummeting.
"Goddammit," Jim mutters as his hands fly over the controls once more. He contorts to try to reach a panel just to his side and that's when the shuttle decides to give another violent shimmy. Jim bashes his head against the panel and with another shimmy Jim's head slams into the panel again. He turns to you and all you can see is the blood pouring down his face as he slurs out, "Sorry, Bones."
He passes out just as the shuttle plows into the ground. You're shaken, thrown into your safety harness. In the meantime, the rest of the safety equipment explodes into action and douses both of you with flame retardants while warning klaxons sound as if you hadn't realized that the shuttle crashed until just that moment. Muttering under your breath about the idiocy of klaxons post rather than pre-crash, you work at unfastening your harness and keeping yourself from falling into the cracked window of the front of the shuttle.
You're still muttering as you shimmy your way over to Jim. Once you reach him, you balance yourself in the awkward position of a foot partially on his seat while another one rests on the console. You don't really give two shits about the console right now, even as your foot hits something that starts another set of alarms ringing (a case of too little too late, you mutter to yourself). Bracing yourself, you unstrap Jim's harness and then grunt as his body falls onto your shoulder.
You struggle to leave the shuttle, the angle of the nose sticking into the ground isn't going to do anyone any favors. Jim doesn't wake up but you ignore that for now, pushing down the fear and the terror coursing through your body except for the adrenaline that it offers you. That adrenaline is the only reason you're able to get both of you out of the shuttle.
Once you're out and a safe distance away, just in case the shuttle decides to explode (and then warn you, of course, because that's the way that stupid piece of machinery works), you check Jim's vitals, scanning him with the tricorder. It goes crazy around Jim's head, telling you everything about the head injury that you'd suspected and even more.
It makes sense with that sort of damage that Jim would be out cold but you can't help but tap his cheek lightly and entreat him, "Wake up, Jim. Wake up."
He doesn't respond, of course, so you start to get him comfortable and protected. You treat what you can with the small bag attached to your waist. There's nothing in there to treat the worst of Jim's injuries and you look at the shuttle, back at Jim and then back at the shuttle once more.
"Jim, going to have to go back. Don't go anywhere," you say as you sigh heavily.
It's a quick walk back to the shuttle and you spend it muttering under your breath about the conversation you're planning with Jim about the idiocy of warnings after the emergency, cursing Jim and shuttles and space and Jim in space and your stupid infatuation and Jocelyn (because, dammit, it's her fault that you're out in space) and then you go right back to cursing Jim again.
Once you're inside the shuttle you start cursing even louder, so that you can hear yourself over the warning alarms still going off. You lift yourself up into the back part of the shuttle; most of your equipment is crushed against the doorways, falling out as you climb through. One box hits the control panel and the alarms stop long enough for you to breathe a sigh of relief before a new, louder and more obnoxious one starts.
"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not an acrobat. I shouldn't have to be swinging off of things just to treat your damned injuries on damned backwater planets."
Once you're finally in the storage area, you start digging through the crates and boxes still intact and find very few supplies to treat Jim. The inoculations and treatments are still intact but your equipment is mostly shattered against the pilot's seat and the control panel. Which, of fucking course, the proper equipment for current emergency is shattered. It wouldn't be a trip with Jim if something awful hadn't happened. Peaceful, humanitarian mission, your ass.
You at least find some things that you can make a quick shelter out of and, hopefully, enough water and energy bars to keep you alive until the planetary inhabitants can make their way from their settlements on horseback (horseback! No wonder they're succumbing to some awful disease and had acted like the Enterprise is peopled with gods) or the Enterprise can get down to them. Which brings your cursing back around to the atmosphere here that interferes with transporter signals. Hopefully it doesn't interfere with the distress beacon you're going to activate and the communicators but, at this rate, you're not holding out hope.
You slide everything into a pack and then swing back into the main compartment, activate the distress beacon and then try to raise the Enterprise. If they're responding, their responses are completely covered by the annoying alarms and you can't hear them. Then again, they probably can't hear you, either. You still shout, "Just get your asses down here, dammit" and then grab the pack and head back to Jim.
He's where you left him and you're still shocked at that turn of events. Even though he's got serious head trauma, you still expected him to move, just because you ordered him to stay where he was. The fact that he's there worries you more than you'd like to admit. You hide the worry under your ministrations as you clean the cuts on his face and scalp. Your hands are made all the more gentle as you work because they want to shake so badly that it transfers to your teeth until the grinding noise of them is the only thing in your ears.
When you're finished you sit Jim up, sitting behind him and letting his back rest against your chest as you try to get him to drink some of the water. He swallows reflexively as you massage his throat and jaw to get just a bit more into him. When that's finished, you lay him back down and then fix up a shelter. You're working by rote, completely fixated on each task at that moment because if you think of anything else, you'll go right back to the fact that Jim's more still than he's ever been in the years that you've known him.
As you work, the silence gets to be too much and you start muttering again, finding that it helps to keep your jaw from locking up due to the tension, nerves, and worry. You start out with your cursing, muttering about the grass and the trees that are too far in the distance to offer proper shade so you're stuck assembling this shade contraption. Then you move on to cursing Jim's apparent ability to crash them hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement and, after you've exhausted that topic, you start in on Jim himself.
"You're such a greedy bastard," you say as you finish the last of the shade and waterproofing structure. "You just had to push while we were in the shuttle instead of focusing on piloting. Maybe if you'd been concentrating on what you were doing instead of tormenting me, you wouldn't be passed out like you'd been on a week-long bender." It's unfair but it's keeping him from constantly checking on Jim's status.
Once you're assured that the damned thing is going to stay where you put it, you set up the beds and then transfer Jim onto one, slowly maneuvering his body. You debate going back to pick up a crate so you have something to lean against while you care for Jim but then decide that you'd be pushing fate by traveling back there again. At least this far out, you can't hear the alarms.
Which reminds you to try your communicator once more. Static greets you and you sigh again. Of course this is happening. Jim had better make it through this because you want to kill him yourself. You rig up Jim's communicator to broadcast the emergency beacon and keep yours handy in case someone tries to hail you. Once all that is done you go back to Jim, running your hands down his body and then back up, caressing his face lightly before pushing into his hairline and checking on the swelling.
"Dammit, Jim, you better make it through this. I had plans, you know, big plans for eventually," you whisper as you palpate the bruising that's coming up at the base of Jim's skull. "We never did make it to Georgia. I was planning, next time we had shore leave, to get you to Georgia. The ex said she'd let me have Joanna for a few days and I thought maybe all of us could go camping. I was going to show you that family isn't so scary, that you can care about others seriously instead of only in the now like you do. I was going to do this up all casual and slow, work my way around to getting you to see me as a man."
"See ya's a man," Jim mutters in response.
"You're awake," you say and then shine a light into Jim's eyes immediately.
He flinches and curses, "Na'now."
"Yes, now. You're concussed, Jim."
"Keep talking." Jim's hand flails until it rests against your thigh as you sit next to him. It tightens slightly and you give in, almost giving Jim what he wants.
"In addition to the concussion, you have a laceration along your hairline that's going to need a fair amount of time with the dermal regenerator and – "
"Not that. Tell me your plans."
"First, I plan on killing Scotty for not being able to beam us down here. Then I plan on kicking your ass for saying that that shuttle was perfectly safe. Then – "
"Bones," he says plainly and you give in to that, too.
"I thought maybe we could go riding while we were there," you start as you get more comfortable and entwine your fingers with his, pulling them away from your thigh to do so before resting them together back where his had been. "Start with little things, you know? Show you that we can be happy, just the two of us without the entire ship there demanding your attention all the time. I was thinking that I'd cook."
Jim makes an odd snorting noise that you know is a pained laugh and you shift so that he's resting against you once more. You reach for the water and dribble some into his mouth. It's only natural that, to help balance him, your hand rests on his stomach. It's less natural when his hand comes up and wraps around yours. You can't help the shiver that races up your spine as you absorb the intimacy of that touch.
"Have to go slow for my own benefit too, I'd be lying if I didn't admit it. So scared of fucking this up, Jim, fucking up the only person that can put up with me."
"Not true," he says and his hand squeezes yours.
"It is and that's all right."
You slide into silence, eventually putting the water down and checking his pulse.
"You still awake?" you ask against his ear, your lips tickling it and you shiver once more at the feel of him against your lips.
"Talk to me, almost passing out."
"I bought rings," you admit quietly. "Planning for the long term. I'm not a tactical genius like you but I thought maybe, well, I already got one person to marry me. Maybe I could do it again."
"Yes," Jim says, the word stronger than anything else he's said since the crash.
"Yes what?"
"I'd marry you."
"Not asking yet. Ain't time. Hell, we haven't even kissed."
"Eventually though, yes."
"All right. Not like you're going to remember this anyway."
"Tell me more."
"The place I was going to take you, it's got this beautiful river and this cove you wouldn't believe. The water's so clear and warm. Was going to take us for a picnic there. Once Joanna was in the pool swimming, I was going to sneak a kiss, just lean over and kiss you quick. Then you were going to look at me funny and…" Jim's pulse slows under your fingers and you stop talking to check him once more, scanning with the tricorder.
"Can't see anything," Jim says, the words slurring into one another.
If you hadn't had so much experience with a drunken Jim, you wouldn't have understood what he'd just said. As it is, though, you know exactly what he's saying and the fear that you've been pushing away comes screaming right back into the forefront of your brain. The loss of vision means the internal swelling has gone beyond just the back of his neck. You immediately start poking his fingers and his toes, testing for feeling.
"Jim? You feeling any of this?"
There isn't a response and you look up at his face where his eyes are closed. You resist slapping his face in a panicked attempt to elicit a response. Instead, you pull back his lid and shine a light into the eye again before loading up a hypospray with a cocktail of the few drugs that Jim can take for the symptoms. Hopefully, at the very least, they'll bring the swelling down and help Jim regain consciousness.
Once you've done everything you can, you sit back down next to him and try your communicator again. The static answers your hail. You switch channels and try again. And then again. And then again. By the sixth attempt, you're ready to throw the damned thing. You barely resist, something that doesn't help your need for calm, at all.
Eventually, you let go of Jim and check outside of the shelter, looking to see if there's a close source of water because your packs aren't going to last the time that it might take to get a rescue if you can't hail the Enterprise soon. With the way your luck's going, you'll be rescued by horseback long before the Enterprise finds you. And if that happens, you don't know what'll happen with Jim. The damage is severe enough that worry is clawing at your throat now, steadily sneaking out of your gut where you'd tamped it down to climb up into your throat and make straight for your imagination. Once you give in to the worry, you'll start talking about it and, dammit, you can't talk about this, you can't because that'll be like admitting that Jim might just be broken enough that you can't fix him.
It's almost worse that he's not bleeding from a thousand cuts, that it's all internal and that you can't see all the damage at a glance. It actually is worse because you know what the vision problems mean, what the slurred speech means, what Jim's brain probably looks like right now and what it means for future recovery without serious medical intervention.
"Well, looks like worry's got a hold of my head already," you mutter out loud as you walk back towards Jim.
You pick up the communicator and try again. This time, there's some sort of broken voice (you hope) and you shout into it, "This is Doctor McCoy. Get your asses down here. We need a rescue, stat."
More broken voices answer you but you can't make out a single word. "Dammit, get down here, Jim's injured!"
There's still broken words and then abrupt silence.
A day goes by. And then another. And another after that. The whole time, you babble on about everything. You tell Jim about the way that you'd dreamt about just holding his hand. You're drowning in sap and stupid, romantic bullshit that you want to kick your own ass for (so you're definitely going to blame Jim for kicking it if he remembers, which he won't considering that he's been passed out for the past few hours this time instead of just for a few minutes and you're worried. So fucking worried).
You move on to telling Jim about how you've thought of taking him to see the old McCoy house and how you'd wanted to wander around the woods you'd grown up in with him, maybe even play a version of hide-n-seek. Pretend that you're not a bitter divorcee and he's not a starship captain and that you're both not too old for that sort of childish nonsense. You tell him about the way that you've wanted to meet his mother, ask her permission to date her son in the sort of old-fashioned gesture that had gone out of fashion centuries earlier except in the deep of Georgia. You tell him about wanting him to ask Joanna for permission to date you, how you want Jim to have a relationship with your daughter. You tell him that you've loved him for too many years to count (though you know how long it's been down to almost the second when it comes to the realization but not for how long you've actually loved him).
The Enterprise doesn't respond more than broken voices every time you try to hail them. The shuttle quickly empties of food and water as you walk back and forth, climbing like a monkey back into the storage area to get what you can. The distress beacon's still active but, thankfully, the sirens and alarms have shut off. You figure if the damned thing hasn't exploded yet, it's not going to. The assumption keeps you focused on necessities rather than negative possibilities.
You're in the middle of telling him about your dog, Trip, from when you were five, on the third day you've been stuck here with his unconscious body when there's a familiar whine of a shuttle engine. You're gentle as you ease Jim's body to the bed that you both have been sharing before you hurry out of the shelter to find Spock and Sulu hurrying towards you. Relief spills through you as you hurry through getting Jim loaded into the shuttle though you're still gentle and cognizant of his injuries.
Within hours, the damage of the past few days are treated and you head back to the surface with Sulu piloting once more. You're a coward to leave Jim but now that you know that the swelling's gone down, the possibilities of brain damage are nil and that Jim will probably lose the memories since the accident, you gratefully flee to the surface. The plague has ravaged the planet, decimating the population to the point that you're there now as much to sign death certificates as you are to treat the inhabitants. Now that Jim's recovering under M'Benga's qualified gaze, you ignore the way that you'd bared your heart and, instead, you focus on the task that you'd been assigned. You know that M'Benga could've treated the planetary inhabitants while you'd stayed with Jim but you can't deal with the ramifications of what you'd finally broken and confessed. You're embarrassed and mortified and so very, very fearful.
Treating the plague sublimates that fear, though, to the point that you barely remember it (which is a lie, of course) as you enter back into the Enterprise. You breathe half a sigh of relief as you cross the hangar with no Jim anywhere around. There's no Jim in Sickbay, either, a fact that you're grateful for as you type up your report and then send it off to him. Maybe the written report will keep you from having to deliver it to him face to face.
It's only after you've finished everything that you reward yourself with what you've wanted to do from the time that you'd dropped Jim off into M'Benga's care. You look up Jim's chart and the treatment. You read M'Benga's report and you breathe a full sigh of relief as you take in the fact that Jim had been released from Sickbay yesterday while you'd been on the planet. Yet again, Jim's tough skull saves his ass.
Once you've reassured yourself, you try to figure out how to avoid Jim for just a bit longer. You figure you can duck into your quarters and lock the door, hide under the covers and pretend to your heart's content that you'd never told Jim about the rings in the bedside table.
Unfortunately, you don't even get the opportunity because he's already in there when you arrive. Cursing under your breath, you don't even greet him. Instead, you head straight for your bathroom and lock the door, taking the time to splash some water on your face. When you find yourself contemplating curling up in the miniscule shower, you pull yourself together and head back into the room.
"Thought maybe I'd imagined this," Jim says lightly as he tosses a small, white box between his hands while he sits on your bed like he belongs there.
"You went through my things."
"Not really, you told me where this was at and I thought I'd come see if they were really here." Jim doesn't stop tossing it back and forth.
"Doesn't give you the right to go looking through my things."
"One of these is mine anyway so, really, it's like you're keeping my stuff from me. Which isn't cool by the way, Bones," Jim says and the box stops flipping through the air.
You freeze at his words, your body just as still as the box in Jim's hands. You can't look at him. You refuse to look at him. You can't look but you do. And you see just how serious he is as he opens up the box and slides a ring onto his finger.
"I told you my answer was 'yes'."
"Haven't asked you yet."
"Well, I'll keep this safe until then. I know how you misplace things." Jim gets off the bed and then grabs your hand, putting it over his chest as he says, "Don't lose this, all right?"
"Jim…"
"I know, Bones, me too."
As always, I'd love to hear what you thought.
Author:
wook77Fandom: Star Trek: XI (Reboot)
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~4500
Warnings: 2nd Person Narrative
Summary: In a moment of panic, words come out, confessions happen and result in ramifications that need to be dealt with.
A/N: Written for the
space_married prompt of: Jim and Bones are trapped somewhere on an alien planet, unable to get back to the Enterprise and Jim is badly injured--of course. As Bones attempts to patch him back together, he tries to bribe Jim into staying awake and alive by asking him to marry him. He rambles about all the still domestic things he wants and explains that Jim has to survive so he can show him the rings he's been keeping by his bedside for months, etc. Many grateful thanks to lauriegilbert and elanorofcastile for the beta. All mistakes are, of course, my own. Title is taken from a bastardization of a quotation by Dorothy Dix. You're in the middle of the canteen when the urge hits you. You want to touch him, just reach out a hand and feel his flesh under yours. You want to see if his hand is soft like a girl's or rough like a man's against your own bare flesh. You want to know more about him even though you already know more about him than anyone else. You want to touch intimately and be touched intimately. You want him.
It scares you because you don't know what to expect; where this is going and what you're doing. You don't have a fucking clue about any of this and not just because of him. Because of yourself, too. Your relationships always fail so you don't reach out, you don't touch him intimately. It's out of respect for his position, and yours. If you repeat it enough, you'll believe that that's the only reason, that it doesn't have a thing to do with your own fear of failure.
None of this stops the want and, before you realize, your hand is reaching out. Thankfully there's a napkin to snag and so you grab it instead of touching him and ruining the friendship. Any fool can see how much you had wanted to touch. After a moment spent dabbing at your lip as if you had something caught there, you look up and catch him staring at your hands. Your lips. You see the want on his face but you write it off as your own. After all, you feel such an overridingly strong need that it's sure to corrupt everyone around you and Jim's around more than most.
The next time the urge hits (or at least, hits stronger than usual), you're in a shuttle on your way to some remote, backwater planet in need. You watch his hands as they fly over the controls, the way that he steers the shuttle and you can't help but imagine the way that they'd feel on your body. You want those fingertips to dance across your chest, your back, your legs, instead of the control boards.
"Bones," he murmurs, low and sensual. You finally tear your gaze from his hands to see him staring at you. that same hunger you feel in his eyes.
After a long moment you respond, voice barely cracking, "Yeah?"
"Bones," he says again and you know what he's saying. You might not be as skilled at languages as Uhura but you're damn good at translating Jim-speak.
"How much longer are we going to be in this deathtrap?" you ask, instead of responding the way that you want.
"Bones," he repeats and it's obvious that your misdirection isn't going to cut it.
"If we have a few, I'm going to go check the supplies," you say back and then, before Jim can even respond, you slip into the cargo area. Once there, you put your head in your hands with elbows on your knees and you breathe, in and out, as you try to get control of yourself.
"We're going to be landing in a minute." Jim's voice crackles through the speaker.
"Fuck," you mutter as you stand up and make your way back to the co-pilot's seat and strap in.
"Everything good?" Jim asks. The shuttle bounces and Jim reaches out a hand to steady you. You don't know whether to flinch away or lean into it so you do both. "Bones."
"Don't, Jim, not right now," you say, low and needy because this isn't the time or the place. You've given up the secret, now, but you're still stuck with the denial.
"After this mission, Bones," he says and it's a promise.
For once, you're praying that one or the other of you gets injured so you can put that conversation off for just a while longer. You’re not asking for death, or even life-threatening. You just want a minor injury (you'll take a broken bone or a bruised face or anything of the sort) that will give you the opportunity to touch, but also to live in your own little world of denial for just a while longer. But of course, the universe hates Leonard Horatio McCoy.
You're barely strapped in when the shuttle suddenly gives a violent shudder before leaping further into the air and then plummeting.
"Goddammit," Jim mutters as his hands fly over the controls once more. He contorts to try to reach a panel just to his side and that's when the shuttle decides to give another violent shimmy. Jim bashes his head against the panel and with another shimmy Jim's head slams into the panel again. He turns to you and all you can see is the blood pouring down his face as he slurs out, "Sorry, Bones."
He passes out just as the shuttle plows into the ground. You're shaken, thrown into your safety harness. In the meantime, the rest of the safety equipment explodes into action and douses both of you with flame retardants while warning klaxons sound as if you hadn't realized that the shuttle crashed until just that moment. Muttering under your breath about the idiocy of klaxons post rather than pre-crash, you work at unfastening your harness and keeping yourself from falling into the cracked window of the front of the shuttle.
You're still muttering as you shimmy your way over to Jim. Once you reach him, you balance yourself in the awkward position of a foot partially on his seat while another one rests on the console. You don't really give two shits about the console right now, even as your foot hits something that starts another set of alarms ringing (a case of too little too late, you mutter to yourself). Bracing yourself, you unstrap Jim's harness and then grunt as his body falls onto your shoulder.
You struggle to leave the shuttle, the angle of the nose sticking into the ground isn't going to do anyone any favors. Jim doesn't wake up but you ignore that for now, pushing down the fear and the terror coursing through your body except for the adrenaline that it offers you. That adrenaline is the only reason you're able to get both of you out of the shuttle.
Once you're out and a safe distance away, just in case the shuttle decides to explode (and then warn you, of course, because that's the way that stupid piece of machinery works), you check Jim's vitals, scanning him with the tricorder. It goes crazy around Jim's head, telling you everything about the head injury that you'd suspected and even more.
It makes sense with that sort of damage that Jim would be out cold but you can't help but tap his cheek lightly and entreat him, "Wake up, Jim. Wake up."
He doesn't respond, of course, so you start to get him comfortable and protected. You treat what you can with the small bag attached to your waist. There's nothing in there to treat the worst of Jim's injuries and you look at the shuttle, back at Jim and then back at the shuttle once more.
"Jim, going to have to go back. Don't go anywhere," you say as you sigh heavily.
It's a quick walk back to the shuttle and you spend it muttering under your breath about the conversation you're planning with Jim about the idiocy of warnings after the emergency, cursing Jim and shuttles and space and Jim in space and your stupid infatuation and Jocelyn (because, dammit, it's her fault that you're out in space) and then you go right back to cursing Jim again.
Once you're inside the shuttle you start cursing even louder, so that you can hear yourself over the warning alarms still going off. You lift yourself up into the back part of the shuttle; most of your equipment is crushed against the doorways, falling out as you climb through. One box hits the control panel and the alarms stop long enough for you to breathe a sigh of relief before a new, louder and more obnoxious one starts.
"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not an acrobat. I shouldn't have to be swinging off of things just to treat your damned injuries on damned backwater planets."
Once you're finally in the storage area, you start digging through the crates and boxes still intact and find very few supplies to treat Jim. The inoculations and treatments are still intact but your equipment is mostly shattered against the pilot's seat and the control panel. Which, of fucking course, the proper equipment for current emergency is shattered. It wouldn't be a trip with Jim if something awful hadn't happened. Peaceful, humanitarian mission, your ass.
You at least find some things that you can make a quick shelter out of and, hopefully, enough water and energy bars to keep you alive until the planetary inhabitants can make their way from their settlements on horseback (horseback! No wonder they're succumbing to some awful disease and had acted like the Enterprise is peopled with gods) or the Enterprise can get down to them. Which brings your cursing back around to the atmosphere here that interferes with transporter signals. Hopefully it doesn't interfere with the distress beacon you're going to activate and the communicators but, at this rate, you're not holding out hope.
You slide everything into a pack and then swing back into the main compartment, activate the distress beacon and then try to raise the Enterprise. If they're responding, their responses are completely covered by the annoying alarms and you can't hear them. Then again, they probably can't hear you, either. You still shout, "Just get your asses down here, dammit" and then grab the pack and head back to Jim.
He's where you left him and you're still shocked at that turn of events. Even though he's got serious head trauma, you still expected him to move, just because you ordered him to stay where he was. The fact that he's there worries you more than you'd like to admit. You hide the worry under your ministrations as you clean the cuts on his face and scalp. Your hands are made all the more gentle as you work because they want to shake so badly that it transfers to your teeth until the grinding noise of them is the only thing in your ears.
When you're finished you sit Jim up, sitting behind him and letting his back rest against your chest as you try to get him to drink some of the water. He swallows reflexively as you massage his throat and jaw to get just a bit more into him. When that's finished, you lay him back down and then fix up a shelter. You're working by rote, completely fixated on each task at that moment because if you think of anything else, you'll go right back to the fact that Jim's more still than he's ever been in the years that you've known him.
As you work, the silence gets to be too much and you start muttering again, finding that it helps to keep your jaw from locking up due to the tension, nerves, and worry. You start out with your cursing, muttering about the grass and the trees that are too far in the distance to offer proper shade so you're stuck assembling this shade contraption. Then you move on to cursing Jim's apparent ability to crash them hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement and, after you've exhausted that topic, you start in on Jim himself.
"You're such a greedy bastard," you say as you finish the last of the shade and waterproofing structure. "You just had to push while we were in the shuttle instead of focusing on piloting. Maybe if you'd been concentrating on what you were doing instead of tormenting me, you wouldn't be passed out like you'd been on a week-long bender." It's unfair but it's keeping him from constantly checking on Jim's status.
Once you're assured that the damned thing is going to stay where you put it, you set up the beds and then transfer Jim onto one, slowly maneuvering his body. You debate going back to pick up a crate so you have something to lean against while you care for Jim but then decide that you'd be pushing fate by traveling back there again. At least this far out, you can't hear the alarms.
Which reminds you to try your communicator once more. Static greets you and you sigh again. Of course this is happening. Jim had better make it through this because you want to kill him yourself. You rig up Jim's communicator to broadcast the emergency beacon and keep yours handy in case someone tries to hail you. Once all that is done you go back to Jim, running your hands down his body and then back up, caressing his face lightly before pushing into his hairline and checking on the swelling.
"Dammit, Jim, you better make it through this. I had plans, you know, big plans for eventually," you whisper as you palpate the bruising that's coming up at the base of Jim's skull. "We never did make it to Georgia. I was planning, next time we had shore leave, to get you to Georgia. The ex said she'd let me have Joanna for a few days and I thought maybe all of us could go camping. I was going to show you that family isn't so scary, that you can care about others seriously instead of only in the now like you do. I was going to do this up all casual and slow, work my way around to getting you to see me as a man."
"See ya's a man," Jim mutters in response.
"You're awake," you say and then shine a light into Jim's eyes immediately.
He flinches and curses, "Na'now."
"Yes, now. You're concussed, Jim."
"Keep talking." Jim's hand flails until it rests against your thigh as you sit next to him. It tightens slightly and you give in, almost giving Jim what he wants.
"In addition to the concussion, you have a laceration along your hairline that's going to need a fair amount of time with the dermal regenerator and – "
"Not that. Tell me your plans."
"First, I plan on killing Scotty for not being able to beam us down here. Then I plan on kicking your ass for saying that that shuttle was perfectly safe. Then – "
"Bones," he says plainly and you give in to that, too.
"I thought maybe we could go riding while we were there," you start as you get more comfortable and entwine your fingers with his, pulling them away from your thigh to do so before resting them together back where his had been. "Start with little things, you know? Show you that we can be happy, just the two of us without the entire ship there demanding your attention all the time. I was thinking that I'd cook."
Jim makes an odd snorting noise that you know is a pained laugh and you shift so that he's resting against you once more. You reach for the water and dribble some into his mouth. It's only natural that, to help balance him, your hand rests on his stomach. It's less natural when his hand comes up and wraps around yours. You can't help the shiver that races up your spine as you absorb the intimacy of that touch.
"Have to go slow for my own benefit too, I'd be lying if I didn't admit it. So scared of fucking this up, Jim, fucking up the only person that can put up with me."
"Not true," he says and his hand squeezes yours.
"It is and that's all right."
You slide into silence, eventually putting the water down and checking his pulse.
"You still awake?" you ask against his ear, your lips tickling it and you shiver once more at the feel of him against your lips.
"Talk to me, almost passing out."
"I bought rings," you admit quietly. "Planning for the long term. I'm not a tactical genius like you but I thought maybe, well, I already got one person to marry me. Maybe I could do it again."
"Yes," Jim says, the word stronger than anything else he's said since the crash.
"Yes what?"
"I'd marry you."
"Not asking yet. Ain't time. Hell, we haven't even kissed."
"Eventually though, yes."
"All right. Not like you're going to remember this anyway."
"Tell me more."
"The place I was going to take you, it's got this beautiful river and this cove you wouldn't believe. The water's so clear and warm. Was going to take us for a picnic there. Once Joanna was in the pool swimming, I was going to sneak a kiss, just lean over and kiss you quick. Then you were going to look at me funny and…" Jim's pulse slows under your fingers and you stop talking to check him once more, scanning with the tricorder.
"Can't see anything," Jim says, the words slurring into one another.
If you hadn't had so much experience with a drunken Jim, you wouldn't have understood what he'd just said. As it is, though, you know exactly what he's saying and the fear that you've been pushing away comes screaming right back into the forefront of your brain. The loss of vision means the internal swelling has gone beyond just the back of his neck. You immediately start poking his fingers and his toes, testing for feeling.
"Jim? You feeling any of this?"
There isn't a response and you look up at his face where his eyes are closed. You resist slapping his face in a panicked attempt to elicit a response. Instead, you pull back his lid and shine a light into the eye again before loading up a hypospray with a cocktail of the few drugs that Jim can take for the symptoms. Hopefully, at the very least, they'll bring the swelling down and help Jim regain consciousness.
Once you've done everything you can, you sit back down next to him and try your communicator again. The static answers your hail. You switch channels and try again. And then again. And then again. By the sixth attempt, you're ready to throw the damned thing. You barely resist, something that doesn't help your need for calm, at all.
Eventually, you let go of Jim and check outside of the shelter, looking to see if there's a close source of water because your packs aren't going to last the time that it might take to get a rescue if you can't hail the Enterprise soon. With the way your luck's going, you'll be rescued by horseback long before the Enterprise finds you. And if that happens, you don't know what'll happen with Jim. The damage is severe enough that worry is clawing at your throat now, steadily sneaking out of your gut where you'd tamped it down to climb up into your throat and make straight for your imagination. Once you give in to the worry, you'll start talking about it and, dammit, you can't talk about this, you can't because that'll be like admitting that Jim might just be broken enough that you can't fix him.
It's almost worse that he's not bleeding from a thousand cuts, that it's all internal and that you can't see all the damage at a glance. It actually is worse because you know what the vision problems mean, what the slurred speech means, what Jim's brain probably looks like right now and what it means for future recovery without serious medical intervention.
"Well, looks like worry's got a hold of my head already," you mutter out loud as you walk back towards Jim.
You pick up the communicator and try again. This time, there's some sort of broken voice (you hope) and you shout into it, "This is Doctor McCoy. Get your asses down here. We need a rescue, stat."
More broken voices answer you but you can't make out a single word. "Dammit, get down here, Jim's injured!"
There's still broken words and then abrupt silence.
A day goes by. And then another. And another after that. The whole time, you babble on about everything. You tell Jim about the way that you'd dreamt about just holding his hand. You're drowning in sap and stupid, romantic bullshit that you want to kick your own ass for (so you're definitely going to blame Jim for kicking it if he remembers, which he won't considering that he's been passed out for the past few hours this time instead of just for a few minutes and you're worried. So fucking worried).
You move on to telling Jim about how you've thought of taking him to see the old McCoy house and how you'd wanted to wander around the woods you'd grown up in with him, maybe even play a version of hide-n-seek. Pretend that you're not a bitter divorcee and he's not a starship captain and that you're both not too old for that sort of childish nonsense. You tell him about the way that you've wanted to meet his mother, ask her permission to date her son in the sort of old-fashioned gesture that had gone out of fashion centuries earlier except in the deep of Georgia. You tell him about wanting him to ask Joanna for permission to date you, how you want Jim to have a relationship with your daughter. You tell him that you've loved him for too many years to count (though you know how long it's been down to almost the second when it comes to the realization but not for how long you've actually loved him).
The Enterprise doesn't respond more than broken voices every time you try to hail them. The shuttle quickly empties of food and water as you walk back and forth, climbing like a monkey back into the storage area to get what you can. The distress beacon's still active but, thankfully, the sirens and alarms have shut off. You figure if the damned thing hasn't exploded yet, it's not going to. The assumption keeps you focused on necessities rather than negative possibilities.
You're in the middle of telling him about your dog, Trip, from when you were five, on the third day you've been stuck here with his unconscious body when there's a familiar whine of a shuttle engine. You're gentle as you ease Jim's body to the bed that you both have been sharing before you hurry out of the shelter to find Spock and Sulu hurrying towards you. Relief spills through you as you hurry through getting Jim loaded into the shuttle though you're still gentle and cognizant of his injuries.
Within hours, the damage of the past few days are treated and you head back to the surface with Sulu piloting once more. You're a coward to leave Jim but now that you know that the swelling's gone down, the possibilities of brain damage are nil and that Jim will probably lose the memories since the accident, you gratefully flee to the surface. The plague has ravaged the planet, decimating the population to the point that you're there now as much to sign death certificates as you are to treat the inhabitants. Now that Jim's recovering under M'Benga's qualified gaze, you ignore the way that you'd bared your heart and, instead, you focus on the task that you'd been assigned. You know that M'Benga could've treated the planetary inhabitants while you'd stayed with Jim but you can't deal with the ramifications of what you'd finally broken and confessed. You're embarrassed and mortified and so very, very fearful.
Treating the plague sublimates that fear, though, to the point that you barely remember it (which is a lie, of course) as you enter back into the Enterprise. You breathe half a sigh of relief as you cross the hangar with no Jim anywhere around. There's no Jim in Sickbay, either, a fact that you're grateful for as you type up your report and then send it off to him. Maybe the written report will keep you from having to deliver it to him face to face.
It's only after you've finished everything that you reward yourself with what you've wanted to do from the time that you'd dropped Jim off into M'Benga's care. You look up Jim's chart and the treatment. You read M'Benga's report and you breathe a full sigh of relief as you take in the fact that Jim had been released from Sickbay yesterday while you'd been on the planet. Yet again, Jim's tough skull saves his ass.
Once you've reassured yourself, you try to figure out how to avoid Jim for just a bit longer. You figure you can duck into your quarters and lock the door, hide under the covers and pretend to your heart's content that you'd never told Jim about the rings in the bedside table.
Unfortunately, you don't even get the opportunity because he's already in there when you arrive. Cursing under your breath, you don't even greet him. Instead, you head straight for your bathroom and lock the door, taking the time to splash some water on your face. When you find yourself contemplating curling up in the miniscule shower, you pull yourself together and head back into the room.
"Thought maybe I'd imagined this," Jim says lightly as he tosses a small, white box between his hands while he sits on your bed like he belongs there.
"You went through my things."
"Not really, you told me where this was at and I thought I'd come see if they were really here." Jim doesn't stop tossing it back and forth.
"Doesn't give you the right to go looking through my things."
"One of these is mine anyway so, really, it's like you're keeping my stuff from me. Which isn't cool by the way, Bones," Jim says and the box stops flipping through the air.
You freeze at his words, your body just as still as the box in Jim's hands. You can't look at him. You refuse to look at him. You can't look but you do. And you see just how serious he is as he opens up the box and slides a ring onto his finger.
"I told you my answer was 'yes'."
"Haven't asked you yet."
"Well, I'll keep this safe until then. I know how you misplace things." Jim gets off the bed and then grabs your hand, putting it over his chest as he says, "Don't lose this, all right?"
"Jim…"
"I know, Bones, me too."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2009-09-30 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 07:01 am (UTC)What an excellent job of showing McCoys fears. Sweet and achy.
And of course Kirk is waiting for him , and I just love this exchange:
"Thought maybe I'd imagined this," Jim says lightly as he tosses a small, white box between his hands while he sits on your bed like he belongs there.
"You went through my things."
"Not really, you told me where this was at and I thought I'd come see if they were really here." Jim doesn't stop tossing it back and forth.
"Doesn't give you the right to go looking through my things."
"One of these is mine anyway so, really, it's like you're keeping my stuff from me. Which isn't cool by the way, Bones," Jim says and the box stops flipping through the air.
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Date: 2009-09-30 08:32 am (UTC)Silly Bones, Jim wants just as much and has just as many issues. At least Jim is that little bit more willing to leap into the abyss, but this time he is going to take Bones with him.
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Date: 2009-09-30 12:54 pm (UTC)This was wonderful, dear. The ache of the grown and already broken adult, moved past the brashness of trying anything once, willing to put up with less because it's better than nothing. The frantic first moments after the crash, competent McCoy knowing his way with not just the medicine but the electronics and survival skills (I hate fics that have him limit his skills to the sickbay), the content of the confession.
Wonderful, all of it, plus the 2nd person POV, rare and hard to use but so effective-magnetic-perfect right here.
Thanks.
I know you've a job and all-- I just wish you could write all the time.
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Date: 2009-09-30 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-02 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-02 05:29 pm (UTC)One thing though: The next time the urge hits (or at least, hits stronger than usual, you're in a shuttle on your way to some remote (...) I think you lost a parenthesis in there. ;)
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Date: 2009-10-02 05:54 pm (UTC)So, thank you thank you thank you.
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Date: 2009-10-03 06:57 am (UTC)Lovely story. Esp the ending-it made me smile. :)
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Date: 2009-10-03 08:19 am (UTC)*flails some more*
they are both so squishable!
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Date: 2009-10-03 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-03 06:22 pm (UTC)This was like, angst-filled crack, and my inner-bones is doing backflips with anger at how on edge you kept it right up until random-rescue!Spock and Sulu. Goodness, this was amazing, and I can't wait to read more from you!
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Date: 2009-10-04 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 04:33 am (UTC)I appreciate your kind words! Thanks so much for letting me know what you thought!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:34 am (UTC)I'm very glad you enjoyed! Thanks so much for letting me know what you thought!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:35 am (UTC)I appreciate your kind words!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 04:37 am (UTC)I appreciate your kind words! Thanks for letting me know what you thought!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 04:38 am (UTC)I appreciate your kind words! Thank you for letting me know what you thought!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:40 am (UTC)I'm very glad that you enjoyed! I appreciate your kind words!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:43 am (UTC)I'm so very glad that you liked the second person thing. I tried my darnedest to get it into 3rd but that failed miserably. It didn't have nearly teh emotional impact that it should've.
I really wish I could write all the time, too. Work has eaten my brain for the last 6 weeks and I want my free time back. I used to be able to write at work every once in a while but, unfortunately, that's gone away.
I'm so happy that you enjoyed this. You've made my night, twice over, with your lovely comments!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 04:45 am (UTC)I'm very glad that you enjoyed! I appreciate your kind words!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:46 am (UTC)I appreciate your kind words! <3
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 04:48 am (UTC)I'm very glad that you enjoyed! Thanks for letting me know!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:50 am (UTC)I appreciate your kind words and I'm so very glad that I could brighten your day!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:51 am (UTC)I'm very glad that you enjoyed this! I appreciate your kind words!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 04:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 04:54 am (UTC)I'm very glad that you enjoyed this! I had a different ending but a friend kindly pointed out the entire point to the
I appreciate your kind words and I'm very glad that you kept reading even if the POV is so different.
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 04:55 am (UTC)I'm very glad that you enjoyed this! And, of course, Jim would just skip the courting because, in his opinion, what've they been doing for years anyway? It's time for the commitment and the srsbizness.
I appreciate your kind words, you are <3!
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Date: 2009-10-11 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 09:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-12 07:42 pm (UTC)it's spurring me on to stop procrastinating, no less :)
and no, no rings involved ;)