the Dalaverse

Fic for the jim_and_bones Sweethearts Challenge!

Title: I'll Go Braving Everything
It wasn’t a fight, or a rift, it was just...it had been so long since they’d talked. Really talked, the way they used to.
Author: Dala
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: standard applies; title from The National's "Runaway"
Word Count: 2125
Written for: the Sweethearts Challenge at jim_and_bones
Prompt: After STID, Jim is wrapped up in his issues over Pike and Spock and so on, and is convinced that he has grown up, that he's the new improved, responsible Captain Kirk. But he also hasn't really talked to his best friend in ages. Can the new, grown-up Captain Kirk manage to get his friend back (and maybe a little more~), and give Bones' issues a little airtime to get sorted out? (Jim's POV)


I'll Go Braving Everything


Days passed on Earth, then weeks, and finally it had been over a month before Jim realized this thing with Bones wasn’t going to fix itself.

It wasn’t a fight, or a rift, it was just...it had been so long since they’d talked. Really talked, the way they used to when they shared a dorm room and classes and countless bottles of bourbon. Jim didn’t even remember telling Bones half the things he’d probably told him over the years. But he remembered the night Bones broke down about what had happened to his father and his marriage, having carried that burden for so long Jim could actually see the weight of it lifting, feel his shoulders growing straighter under Jim’s arm. And he remembered every apple or protein bar Bones thrust under his nose when he hadn’t eaten in too long, every clandestine drill in the shuttle bay until Bones’ hands stopped shaking on the controls, every late night at Flanagan’s after an exam or a long shift at the clinic. He hadn’t enlisted in Starfleet expecting to make friends, so ending up with Bones was kind of a miracle.

Then something had shifted after what happened with the Narada, just slightly, just enough for Jim to see it around the periphery. There weren’t any outward signs; he made sure of that. He kept Bones close as he’d always done, even while developing ties with a group of people who were brilliant and competent and sometimes a little scary - but he kept him safe. For the first time in a long time, Jim shied away from a risk. It was better for everyone if things stayed as they were.

As things were, he expected righteous fury and a storm of curses when he woke up in Starfleet Medical two weeks after being declared dead. It had become a familiar sight, after all: Bones standing over him with shoulders braced like a bear, Jim’s chart clutched in one fist, nurses scurrying away from his ire. But he instead he smiled down at Jim and quickly handed him off to Spock (whose claim that Vulcans did not hover was clearly specious).

Jim had figured it as a relief, when in fact it should have been the first sign that something was wrong.

He’d told himself a lot of things over those weeks, none of them false. Everyone from command on down to plebes was busy dealing with a different facet of the aftermath: meetings, hearings, repairs, interplanetary negotiations. Jim couldn’t go ten minutes without his comm firing off one demand or another on his time. And Bones, of course, had thrown himself into treating the injured, ‘Fleet and civilian alike.

It hadn’t been an uncommon result of their heavy workloads at the Academy. Back then they’d usually managed to get together to relieve some of the stress, but for some reason it wasn’t working out this time. Jim would stop by Bones’ apartment to find he’d taken an extra shift, or they’d plan to meet for a late dinner in the Castro and something would come up an hour beforehand.

A rumor, of all things, became the catalyst in this unspoken detente. Jim heard it from an apologetic Chekov, who’d gotten it from Admiral Nogura’s secretary, whose girlfriend was a surgery resident or a xenobiology fellow or something.

He considered hitting the bottle before confronting his nominal Chief Medical Officer, but decided against it. That was something Cadet Kirk would have done. Captain Kirk could be an adult about it; they both could.

“What is this I’m hearing about you seeking a transfer?”

Bones sighed, his gaze darting to the doorway of the on-call room where Jim had tracked him down. It was in the med center’s tiny maternity ward and seemed to be mostly abandoned, judging by the empty shelves and stale, musty air.

“It was just a thought, okay?” His voice was hoarse the way it got when he hadn’t been sleeping properly. “I haven’t submitted anything.”

“But you might.” Jim realized his hands were clenching into fists and he forced himself to relax. What was he going to do, take a swing at his best friend? Even if said best friend had gone behind his back to find a posting on another goddamned ship.

Bones raked a hand through his hair. Jim hadn’t noticed that it was getting long again. “Look, Jim, let’s just forget about it.”

“Like hell I will,” Jim shot back. Bones pressed his lips together with that stubborn tilt to his chin, and Jim tried to make his tone more even. “Come on, Bones. Why won’t you talk to me about this?”

“Why won’t I talk --” His eyebrows nearly leaping off his skull, Bones broke off into a short laugh. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know that?”

Jim began to feel like he’d taken a misstep, somehow, but he had no idea where. “What?”

Bones leaned back against a supply cart hosting a single lonely roll of gauze. “You’ve been avoiding me for weeks.”

“You’ve been avoiding me!” Jim exclaimed.

Fixing him with a gimlet eye, Bones said, “For every plan I’ve canceled, you’ve canceled three, or come up with some bullshit excuse my seven-year-old could see through.”

Jim felt a flush beginning to break out on the back of his neck.

“I have not.” Had he? Even if that were the case, it certainly wasn’t intentional. There had just been so much going on, and he’d never had to worry about Bones in the past. Not like this. “You know how busy I am.”

Bones snorted. “Oh yeah, everyone wants a piece of the great James T. Kirk. Never mind that this all started awhile ago.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Before we lost Pike,” Bones said quietly.

Jim flinched, tried to hide it, and knew he’d been unsuccessful. He swallowed hard past the knot in his throat.

“I don’t want to talk about Pike.”

Shrugging one shoulder, Bones replied, “All right. Should we talk about the fact that you fucking died on me, instead?”

Jim closed his eyes to break Bones’ unwavering gaze. For a moment he felt it again - the fade, the fear, his pulse speeding up with a spike of adrenaline before slowing down and down and down…

He spread his arms wide. There was a brief, bitter moment of pride when his voice didn’t shake. “Hey, I got better.”

Bones crossed the room in two long strides, raising his index finger in front of Jim’s face. His expression was so fierce that Jim took an involuntary step back.

“Don’t you dare,” he bit out. “Not this time. You were dead, Jim. Not just shot or stabbed or unconscious, dead. By the time I got to you, there was nothing…” He breathed in sharply through his nose, the green of his eyes shining through a corona of pain and anger. “Nothing left.” His hand opened and then closed, reaching.

Somehow, when Jim had decided to corner Bones here, he hadn’t given any thought to getting himself out. His legs twitched with the desire to turn for the door. He could do that; he could make a strategic retreat, come back when they’d both had a chance to sleep on it. But he knew that if he bailed now, the fault line running through their relationship would crack it open like a stone. Even if Bones stayed, even if Jim apologized, it would never be the same.

Bones let his arm fall to the side, looking not quite at Jim but past him.

“A corpse. They brought a corpse up to my sickbay instead of calling me down to that chamber.”

Jim’s back had met the door. He pressed against it for whatever small measure of strength it could give..

“Bones, it wasn’t...personal -”

Bones raised his eyes again and the look on his face would have felled a more robust protest than the one Jim had managed to raise.

“Grow up, Jim,” he said, enunciating each word very clearly. “I know you had a crappy childhood and you’ve never been one to talk about your feelings, but not calling me when you were dying was beyond the pale. And us not talking about it, not once? That’s…” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Jim’s shoulders were starting to ache with tension. “Don’t know what?”

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” Bones said softly. He didn’t look angry now; he looked sad. “Can you give me something, here? Anything?”

He could say he’d thought Bones was busy with the cryotubes, or that calling Spock was Scotty’s doing, or that he’d been disoriented with radiation poisoning. They were lies, but comforting lies - maybe comforting enough to allow Bones to pretend to believe them.

And if he told the truth?

“I -”

Bones watched his nerve fail, nodding faintly as though he wasn’t surprised. He moved for the door and Jim let him go.

It was nearly midnight when he found his way through the halls to the open air. He started in the direction of his quarters but ended up walking around the grounds for hours, skirting areas that were still cordoned off for repairs.

He sent the message at 02:00 three days later and waited, dozing on the couch, until his door chimed just before dawn.

“This is classified,” Bones said by way of greeting, holding up a padd. His hair was sticking up and his t-shirt had some kind of mystery stain on the hem. Jim would bet a lot of credits that his socks were mismatched as well. “I assume you have clearance by now but I don’t, and I know they put all kinds of security measures on those top-level command files to keep them from getting out. When did you hack it?”

Jim crossed his arms over his chest. He was ready for this - he’d never have sent the file otherwise - but his hands weren’t entirely steady.

“I didn’t. Mom did. Years ago, when Starfleet refused to give her a copy.”

Both of them watched Bones’ thumb run along the edge of the screen.

“And you sent it to me.” His voice was flat, lacking its usual color. Jim should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

He curled his toes into the rug. “You wanted to know why I didn’t ask to see you - why I couldn’t.”

Bones held the padd at his waist, tucked into his broad palm, and waited.

“Because I didn’t know if you would let me make that choice. Because I didn’t know if I could, with you on the other side of the door. Because…” Jim breathed in slowly. “Because I had so much to say to you and no right to say any of it, not like that. Not when I was leaving you.”

For a couple of beats Bones was still. Then his face crumpled up into something Jim couldn’t read.

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” he said thickly. And he bent forward, catching Jim’s jaw in his free hand. Jim was kissing him back before he realized they had crossed the threshold and the door was trying to shut itself.

He pulled Bones in by the hips, imagining he could hear circuits tutting in admonition. Where the padd got to he didn’t know and didn’t much care, since Bones was sliding one hand down his spine and curling the other around the back of his neck. To Jim’s disappointment he broke the kiss, but only just.

“I want you to promise me something,” Bones said, his breath warm against Jim’s lips.

Jim bit his lip. “Bones, you know I can’t -”

Bones brushed his fingertips through Jim’s hair. “I’m not talking about dying, Jim. I know that’s not fair. Just promise me that when we go back out there -”

“When?”

Bones acknowledged this with a bob of his head.

“That you won’t shut me out because you’re afraid, or you think I can’t handle something, or out of some damn fool idea that you have to go it alone.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of Jim’s mouth. “Five years is too long for that kind of nonsense.”

The last thread of anxiety - that this could still backfire on him, that he’d lose something irreplaceable - started to settle down in the pit of his stomach.

“Deal.”

Bones regarded him with the fond exasperation he’d been missing lately. “God, this is gonna make your ego even more insufferable, isn’t it?”

Jim dipped his head to hide a grin against his shoulder. “Yeah, probably.”

“Wonderful,” Bones drawled, and kissed him again.