the Dalaverse

Was working on other things, but then I was combing through old fic notes and discovered this ancient prompt from the kink meme and had to finally, finally write it. I wrote so much ghostfic for PotC, I'm kind of amazed it took me this long to get to it for Trek. About 3000 words, sort of pre-Kirk/McCoy more than explicit OTP. I mean I suppose it could be friendship gen if you swing that way, but I...so do not, and am therefore a poor judge of such things.

Hi, 3:00 in the morning! I missed you!


Title: More Things In Heaven and Earth
Jim notices a strange man following McCoy around campus.
Author: Dala
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy (kind of pre-ship)
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: standard applies; title cribbed from Shakespeare
Notes: written for this prompt on the old kink meme



More Things In Heaven and Earth


Jim‘s not paying much attention the first time he sees the man, due to having his nose buried in a Starfleet Academy campus map. Coming out of the student center, he has to perform an awkward sidestep to avoid a collision. He gets a brief impression - tall, late middle age, sharp brown eyes - as he stumbles through a hasty apology. But the other man takes no notice, continuing on his way with nary a pause. Jim narrows his eyes at the retreating wool-clad back and mutters about asshole instructors under his breath.

“Might want to stow that until after orientation, kid.”

He turns toward the dry voice and has to blink a few times before recognition sets in. Freshly shaven in crisp cadet reds, Leonard McCoy bears only a superficial resemblance to the whiskey-soaked doctor with an advanced case of the crazy eyes Jim’d met on the shuttle.

“McCoy, Leonard McCoy,” Jim says, offering him a salute with the map. McCoy's attention is caught by the red light blinking over a building in the northeast quadrant.

“You’re in Stevenson too, huh? Guess that makes sense, what with us being late recruits and all.” McCoy hitches his duffel bag up on his shoulder and sets off, not bothering to look back to see if Jim is following and thus missing the fact that Jim is blatantly ogling his ass. How come he's never gotten a doctor who looks like this when he lands in the ER?

Turns out they’re assigned not only to the same residence hall but to the same room. It’s clear that McCoy, with his advanced years and multiple degrees, was hoping for a single, but to his credit he shrugs it off and asks if Jim wants to grab dinner someplace that isn’t the questionable-looking cafeteria. Eventually they decide on a little hole-in-the-wall with a surprising selection of imported beers. Bones calls Jim a provincial idiot for his taste in beer and Jim steals fat steamed dumplings off his plate. By the time they finally make it back to their new domicile after getting lost three times, they're both mildly soused and tired enough for some confusion over who claimed which bed. Jim falls asleep with his face tucked into a flat standard-issue pillow, listening to McCoy grumble about his lumpy mattress and concluding that he could’ve done a lot worse, all things considered.

The man he ran into that first day doesn't reappear until late in the semester. Jim keeps an eye out in case the guy turns up leading one of his lectures, ready to flunk Jim before he's even opened his mouth. But in the end it's just a series of glimpses out of the corner of his eye - a tall form with thick graying hair rounding the corner of the library or passing under the window of the classroom where Jim takes Field Medicine/First Aid (with Bones glowering from the corner after the head of the department talks him into accepting a TA position in the second week of the course). If he's part of Medical, that would explain why Jim never runs into him.

It does not, however, explain what he's doing lurking outside the sim gallery while Bones is taking his flight exam.

Jim's too distracted by Bones’ ashen face and shaking hands to pay much attention to anything else. The guy is gone by the time he's gotten Bones to sit down in the grass and put his head between his knees, narrowly avoiding a redux of their first meeting. It's only later that he realizes it's kind of shitty for the faculty to keep tabs on one of their best and brightest recruits like that.

"What's shitty?" Bones mutters, pursing his lips at the row of empty shot glasses on the bar. "'Sides this tequila, I mean."

Jim rolls his eyes and gestures to the barkeep. "More limes, please!" The pretty blonde two stools to his left glances up through her lashes as he orders another round of shots. Jim flashes her a grin. He'd only planned on getting Bones drunk, but maybe drunk and laid is finally on the table tonight. And she's with a friend, so he doesn't even have to waste valuable time playing wingman. When Bones gracefully declines Mandy-or-possibly-Brandy's invitation back to their place, it's not due to any failing of Jim's. He mitigates the nagging feeling of guilt by stopping at Bones' favorite bakery for pastries and coffee in the morning.

The next time it happens he's flat on his back and there are alarms blaring and lights doing their level best to render him blind. Beyond the bright corona he can just make out a familiar figure.

"Hey Bones, it's that weird old guy again," Jim says, pointing. "Looks like he's found himself a hat somewhere."

At least that's what he means to say. What actually comes out is some garbled nonsense that sounds like "Bones, guy...look - hat!" The effort of speaking makes his whole body ache and he doesn't point so much as flail ineffectually until his fingers close over Bones' forearm, slippery with blood.

Bones bends over him, eyes wide and anxious above his scrub mask. They're more green than brown in the too-bright light and the color reminds Jim of the way the sky over the prairie used to look just before a tornado rolled through. Storm-cellar sky, his mother used to call it. Jim found it eerie but fascinating, and Sam always had to tug him back inside when he lingered on the porch to watch the storm.

He can't feel his left leg from the hip down. He's pretty sure that's not good.

"It's okay, Jim," Bones is saying in a low, steady voice. He squeezes Jim's hand before letting go to grab something from a nurse outside Jim's field of vision. "You're gonna be okay." A hypospray hisses, stings and Jim blinks once, his eyelids growing heavy. Just before he lets them slide shut, he sees the man over Bones' shoulder take off his old-fashioned felt hat and bow his head.

The first thing Jim does when he wakes up is give the small recovery room a once-over and ask Bones if he saw the man.

The first thing Bones does when Jim wakes up is inform him, through tightly clenched teeth, that he’s getting rid of that fucking bike.

Jim thinks maybe the guy was involved in the accident but Bones assures him that no one else was hurt, and furthermore there was no one else in the room with them except the nurse and the other doctor prepping Jim for surgery. When Jim insists he saw this same mysterious man who’s been popping up all over campus, his blood pressure spikes and Bones promptly sedates him. He decides not to bring it up next time he wakes, mostly because Bones is stretched out in the chair beside his bed, holding tight to Jim’s uninjured hand in his sleep.

As soon as he’s out of the infirmary, Jim hacks into their database to scan staff files. When his stalker fails to turn up there he moves on to the general Academy directory, Starfleet’s comprehensive listing of medical officers, and the personnel records for both the UCSF Medical Center and San Francisco General Hospital. Nothing. By the time Bones returns he’s developed a vicious headache and is too frustrated to protest Bones scolding him for overdoing it (“Goddammit, Jim, how many times do I have to tell you that nerve damage is no joke?“) and bullying him back into bed. He doesn’t follow through on his plan to exercise his nonexistent artistic abilities and wander around with a sketch, asking random passersby if they’ve seen this man, but it’s a near thing.

Jim comes home from his tactics seminar a few weeks after his recovery to find Bones unpacking a bedraggled shipping box. There’s some tension in his face overlaid by cautious happiness, an expression Jim has come to associate with calls to Atlanta where he’s never sure if his ex-wife will agree to let him speak to his daughter.

“Jocelyn’s been hanging onto this stuff for months. I may’ve had to ask ten or twenty times, but at least she’s finally sent it.”

Jim smiles at the care with which he tugs aside the wrappings. It looks like your typical box of stuff left up in the attic - some knickknacks, a few books, a colorful worn-out quilt, a collection of holos and vids labeled in familiar surgeon’s scrawl. His eyes light up when he finds a folder stuffed with crayon drawings. Jim peruses them at Bones’ invitation and selects their mutual favorite - stick-figure Bones in a lab coat, stick-figure Joanna in pigtails and a turquoise dress, and her pet turtle Eugene frolicking outside a little red house - to hang on the mini-fridge.

Bones rubs the back of his neck, flushing a little. “Jim, you don’t have to -”

“It looks awesome,” Jim insists, sitting back on his heels to admire his handiwork. Well, Joanna’s handiwork really, but he picked out the magnet.

A corner of Bones’ mouth twists up and he reaches out to lay his hand over Jim’s wrist. “Thanks,” he says quietly, and Jim feels an odd pressure in his chest.

He picks up one of the scattered holos. Bones shoots him a curious look upon hearing his sharp intake of breath.

It’s a casual shot from a family cook-out, or at least what Jim would assume a family cook-out looks like since he‘s never been to one. Bones sits at a picnic table with toddler Joanna on his knee, laughing as she bites into a piece of watermelon the size of her head, her eyes nearly crossed with excitement. A blond woman who must be Jocelyn in happier times watches them fondly, a sweating glass of lemonade in her hand. And across from them is the older man - sans hat and jacket, looking a little thinner, but there’s no mistaking that it’s him.

Bones leans over his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, Jim sees a shadow pass over his face.

“That’s from Easter a coupla years ago,” he says with a bit of a rough edge to his voice, touching a corner with a fingertip. “Everyone kept feeding Jo watermelon because it was so cute the way she nibbled on it like a hamster. She ate so much she got sick, then wouldn’t touch it for the rest of the summer.”

Jim clears his throat, brain whirling. He wants to smack himself for never having placed the strange man‘s dark hair and stubborn chin, but the resemblance is patently obvious when he’s holding three generations of McCoys in his hands. “That your dad?”

“Yeah.” Bones takes the holo from him, rubs the frame with the hem of his t-shirt. He doesn’t meet Jim’s eyes. Jim doesn‘t have to wonder why, because maybe he’s never seen a picture and Bones has never elaborated on the when or how but Jim picked up along the way that both his parents are dead. Judging by this image, the elder Dr. McCoy’s death was more recent than he’d thought. And apparently less…definitive.

Bones frowns at him, brows drawing down over his eyes. “You all right, Jim? You look a little pale. If it’s your leg -”

“No, I’m fine,” Jim says hastily, getting up and crossing to his side of the room before Bones takes note of the goosebumps on his arms and cranks up the heat.

Now that he recognizes what he’s been seeing, even if he doesn’t entirely understand it, Jim expects to run into his best friend’s dead father at every turn. He starts to feel an increasing degree of protectiveness; after some leading questions he’s sure that Bones has never seen a thing, and for some reason that makes him stick close when they’re walking across campus late at night. But maybe it’s different now that he knows, or ghosts grow less friendly as the days grow longer, because he doesn’t see anything for nearly two months.

One evening in early May, a rainstorm moves in from the coast even though the forecast that morning was clear. Jim hunches under his thin coat on his way back from a Xenolinguistics Club meeting, still smirking over the consternation on Uhura’s face when he’d nominated himself for treasurer. He ducks under the overhang to shake off a little before he goes inside, and that’s when he happens to glance up at the big elm by the southeast corner of the building. Jim’s very fond of that tree because it blocks the sunlight in the morning; he‘s climbed it a couple of times when he‘s been out past curfew and missed a change in the door code. Bones snickers at him when he calls it ‘our tree’ and worries about squirrel infestations.

David McCoy is standing beneath it.

Jim feels his pulse quicken. This mist would make any corporeal being look insubstantial, but it’s evident even from here that the rain’s passing right through him. He has his head tipped back, gaze fixed on the third-floor window where a desk light is shining. His is a face that wears any expression subtly; it took Jim several peeks at the cook-out holo to determine that he was smiling, as it had more to do with his eyes than with the position of his mouth. Now, staring up at his son’s room, he looks troubled and sad.

The rain seems to worsen as he walks toward the elm, his shoes squelching in the mud. For a moment they stand frozen, David looking up at the room, Jim shivering with his hands jammed in his pockets.

“It was bad, wasn’t it?” he says, not really surprised when the figure under the tree doesn’t look at him. “He won’t talk about you, so it must’ve been pretty bad. I get that. But listen, you don’t have to worry about Bo - about Leonard. I’m taking care of him. Well, mostly he takes care of me since he says I can’t be trusted to do that myself, but…we take care of each other, I guess. So if you need to, you know, move on or something, you should know that he's okay. Uh, sir.” It occurs to Jim that he’s rambling to a dead guy who hasn’t acknowledged his presence and could very well be evidence of some buried psychosis rather than an actual supernatural entity, but that’s no excuse to be impolite.

For all that, he nearly jumps out of his skin when David turns to regard him. Slowly his expression eases from sorrow to distant curiosity. Jim feels as if he’s being weighed and measured, and he stands straighter in reflex. Finally David raises his hand to touch the brim of his hat. Jim nods in return, puzzled by the look the old man gives him. There’s the same warmth from the holo but also a hint of self-satisfied humor, as though he knows something Jim doesn’t know. No doubt he knows a lot of things Jim doesn’t know, being older and wiser and dead and all, but Jim doesn’t see why that should amuse him. In any case, he seems to accept Jim’s words at face value.

They both glance up as the dorm window suddenly goes dark. When Jim looks back, blinking drops of rain out of his eyes, he’s alone beneath the elm.

The room is illuminated by dim twilight filtered through the branches outside the window, giving everything a faint greenish cast. Jim lets his vision adjust as he shrugs his coat off and tosses it over his desk.

“Hey,” he says softly, running a hand through his wet hair.

Bones is sitting on the floor against the foot of Jim’s bed, one leg stretched out before him and one tucked up to his chest, arms laid across his knee. A nearly empty bottle dangles from his fingertips. It lands on the rug with a dull thunk as Jim drops down beside him.

He raises his head, looks at Jim through eyes rimmed in red and shot through with hurt.

“My…” Bones shudders as Jim slips an arm around his shoulders, but he doesn’t pull away. “My daddy died, a year ago today.”

“I know.” Jim’s grip tightens, his other arm closing around Bones’ bent leg. Bones shakes his head and swallows hard.

“No, you don’t. Jim, if you - if you knew -”

“So tell me,” Jim says, resting his cheek against the bed.

And Bones does. He tells Jim about the disease, about how he worked himself to the bone trying to find some shred of hope as it ravaged his father’s body. About how David McCoy finally begged him to end the pain, to give him peace. About the cure that crossed his desk twenty-three days later, and the way he disappeared into himself until everything - his career, his marriage, his baby girl - was lost as surely as he’d lost all the rest of his family.

When it’s finished his voice is hoarse and Jim is wrapped around him in the gathering dark. He can feel Bones waiting for him to let go, all his muscles tensed. When Jim doesn’t, Bones sighs against his neck and closes his eyes.

“Just - just let me rest f’r a minute,” he whispers, long fingers flexing on Jim’s bicep.

Jim listens to the rain and Bones’ breathing slow down while his own heart thunders against his ribcage. He kisses the top of Bones’ head, wonders just what the hell he‘s gotten himself into, and knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that it doesn’t matter. He made a promise and he intends to keep it.