may as well let the rain come down
When Jim finally settles into bed it's ten hours too late – he ran out of steam around seven hours ago but didn't stop. Couldn't, none of them could.
Bones' skin is warm and slightly damp from his quick shower as Jim shifts closer, one hand settling on his bare hip and the other moving up to tug gently at dark brown hair. Bones leans into his touch without opening his eyes and lets out a contented little grunt that makes something warm swell in Jim's heart, despite what they've all just been through.
"How long do you think it'll be before Scotty gets the Bridge functioning again?" he asks, more a breath than a whisper, and Bones heaves a shuddering sigh before answering.
"A few days. It'll have his complete focus, so not too long," he mutters, his voice already sleep-heavy even though he's only been waiting for Jim for a few minutes. "How's your head? And your arm?"
Jim wiggles his arm in response, and though it aches a bit, the break is healed and the swelling gone. It's the sort of ache that comes with an old wound, and it's barely even painful – it's just kind of there.
His face, on the other hand, hasn't healed properly because by that point Bones was running out of hands and hypos. The cut is clean and closed but by no means healed, and in the half-light of the moon and stars Bones reaches up to investigate his cheek. Jim tilts his head in silence, and the touch is both clinical and professional but at the same time gentle and concerned and so completely Bones that it makes his heart ache.
"Fucking Klingons," he mutters as he presses Bones onto his back and rolls into his side. "I swear I'm going as high up in the Federation as I can with this one."
"They were lucky to hit the Bridge, I'll give them that," Bones concedes as he pulls Jim into his arms, twining his fingers with Jim's where their hands meet over his stomach. "They must have developed some new weaponry too, to have taken us out like that with just two shots."
"It only took one with deck seven. The Bridge has twice the defences."
The screams had come through the comm while Jim had been leaning on the back of Sulu's chair, staring out at the warbirds as they attacked, and then the Bridge had been hit and Jim hadn't even thought about the people dying in the rest of the ship. All he'd been thinking, as he pulled himself from under the wreckage of his chair, had been BonesBonesBonesbesafeBonesbefinepleaseplease.
"Why were you even on the Bridge?" he asks suddenly, and Bones huffs over his hair.
"Because you were," he answers, simple and honest, and it's almost enough to dampen the guilt that he feels over all of those deaths – or rather, the guilt that he feels for not caring as much about their deaths as for Bones' life.
"You did really well today, you know. In the sickbay. You were brilliant," he says softly, tracing the white line that runs down Bones' side and shines in the faint light, the only reminder of the broken ribs that had been sticking out of his chest a few hours previously.
"Spock still hasn't left the sickbay yet, you know," Bones mumbles, shivering under the light touch, and Jim frowns.
"Why? I thought she was going to be fine, you were just keeping her in for observation? He needs to sleep."
"She is fine, I wasn't lying – he just wants to stay with her, and assured me that he would be ready for his next shift. You can order him to go to bed though, if you want."
Jim's tempted for a moment to say yeah, he will, because he's not going to have his First Officer too tired to function when they're down at least fifty crew members and the Bridge is destroyed, but he doesn't. Instead he just tightens his grip on Bones' ribs, their pulses flickering in time as his wrist lies over Bones' heart.
"No," he murmurs, closing his eyes and sliding one foot between Bones'. "If it was you down there then I'd want to stay with you."
He exhales as Bones presses a kiss to his hair, and swears that he can feel a smile through his lips. It's a tiny gesture but it's so familiar and warm and comforting that Jim doesn't want to have to wake up in the morning and be Captain James T Kirk. He doesn't want to have to face the deaths of the people that he couldn't save, no matter how fast he and his team worked to get them warping away from the Klingons. He doesn't want to have to face the damage that his ship has taken, his beautiful ship, and the repairs that she'll have to undergo. He doesn't want to have to be a Captain.
"Go to sleep, Jim," Bones rumbles, and pulls him in even closer as though he wants them to merge together and neither of them end of begin. The star that acts as the closest planet's sun is beginning to come into view, and it casts golden shadows over Bones' face. "I'll be here when you wake."
Jim wants to point out that Bones always is, it's been months since they stopped pretending that they weren't seeing each other and Bones moved into his quarters. But as Bones' hand slides down to rest on his waist, and he bends his head to press his lips to Jim's so softly and carefully that Jim barely responds, he realises that he means it in a different way.
And that's fine. Because as long as Bones is there, he can manage being Captain.
end.