Of Consequences and Tacos

by mrasaki

Leonard doesn’t have time to regret, because he meets Jim and from then on his life ceases to make a lot of sense. This discombobulates him. But then, Jim has that effect on everybody. -Kirk/McCoy-

Of Consequences and Tacos by mrasaki
Fandom: Star Trek XI (Reboot)
Pairings: Kirk/McCoy
Rated: PG-13
Words: ~4186
Completed: 10/30/09
Notes: Written as a request fic of sorts for cedarrapidsgirl.

*************

Leonard's one of those people who likes to keep things within the confines of the known. He has little use for people in the humanities, with their long and varying arguments about the meanings of this painting, or the philosophies of that writer, or the veracity of a certain historical theory. The thing that bugs Leonard is, most of these don't have enough evidence to prove anything one way or the other, but that doesn't stop people from getting into endless debates about them. It's all a big waste of time.

Don't get him wrong; he has many friends in the humanities, several of whom are teaching at the most prestigious universities on Earth, but if he goes out drinking with them and they start debating the reasons why Alexander the Great's successors chose to use a certain image on their coinage, or what origin the school of Romanticism had in the Age of Enlightenment during the 18th century – well. He'll just have to be forgiven for tuning out and then coming to with a 'Whuh? I wasn't listening,' if his friends try to include him in the Great Debate.

He vastly prefers the sciences. There's always an answer to every question, complete with evidentiary proof and scientific method. One just has to look hard enough and if none can be found, one's simply not working hard enough. It's cut and dried, neat and orderly.

The same thing applies to his life, his morals, his university and med school work. Jocelyn complains about his rather black-and-white view of the world, about how work is more important than wife and family and his own health, and about how he doesn't understand that some situations are not black-and-white, they're gray. And not just gray, but varying shades of it.

When she leaves for good, it's simply easier to sign over most of his assets and enlist in Starfleet than to argue the gray whys and wherefores of their divorce and to really examine whether he perhaps isn't quite as right as he'd thought. Starfleet has the appeal of funding all his research and tuition and paying him a stipendand he can start a new life away from Jocelyn as a bonus ; all he has to do is sign over his soul for a five year tour of duty, and at that point he doesn't think it such a bad bargain despite the acrophobia. This assessment might've been a bit unwise, he decides later, because he's sloshed out of his head when he signs the articles, and the recruiter, ecstatic that such a M.D., Ph.D. plum dropped into his lap – or staggered, in this case – signs him up on the spot and drives him immediately to a transport base.

He has an entire hour and a half to repent, most of which is spent in the shuttle restroom, refusing to come out.

After that, he doesn't have time to regret, because he meets Jim and from then on his life ceases to make a lot of sense. This discombobulates him. But then, Jim has that effect on everybody.

Outwardly, nothing much changes; he still does his work, which includes research and the USF hospital and his Starfleet required courses; he goes to conferences and presents papers, publishes articles in the scientific and medical journals, oversees a number of terrorized interns, and even gives a lecture or two when invited.

But inwardly? Jim has a way of making constants seem…slippery. Like Jim will find him squinting over some samples in the lab one day, and with a charming grin and some well-timed goads in the form of snarky comments about Leonard's pasty skin and variations on the question 'Why not?' Leonard will find himself in an open-air transport next to him, presentation due the next week completely forgotten, traveling north to the Point Reyes lighthouse and then climbing out on the rocks to watch the migrating whales go by.

This sort of Dali-esque melting of his previously iron-clad work ethic and strictly defined world-view begins to occur even when Jim's not around. He'll be tramping about in the mountains somewhere, cursing under his breath and shaking his tricorder because he goddamn hates this field navigation course and it's feckin' ridiculous for a doctor who'll likely be stationed on a deep space research station – or, he secretly hopes, a research outpost right here on good ol' Earth – to be mucking about on an away mission alone, and then he'll stop, caught by the wild California beauty of rolling yellow hills dotted by scrubby trees and the glimmer of ocean far off in the distance. Then he'll sit for a while, enjoying the sight until a large ant goes trundling up his pant leg and drives him to his feet again, and he'll show up to the designated meeting point an hour late.

It's all Jim's fault, and he tells him so. Jim just laughs and jokes about melting the tree trunk that's up Leonard's ass, and Leonard rolls his eyes and throws an elbow into Jim's ribs where he knows Jim's ticklish. At least Jim's got his own set of strict values, and his own world-view — though vastly different from Leonard's — can be at times also very absolute, so Jim's not really like the classmate friend you wish your kid doesn't know. Jim has an existentialist philosophy to life, born out of some misguided response to the circumstances of his own birth, but Jim doesn't make Leonard betray his principles in any way, or even change them. They just seem to...expand, and he comes to realize that there's more to life than work and playing safe. That there are staggered hierarchies of priority, and sometimes just enjoying the sun on his face and the company of a good friend is more important than making it to the lab right on the dot.

It all comes to a head when Jim gets too smart for his own good, and he's grounded while the entire senior class is commissioned and mobilized to go to Vulcan. Leonard has to go too, his excellent scores at the top of his class – field nav scores notwithstanding – placing him on the Enterprise, and he doesn't want to be late.

Three steps away from where he leaves Jim, he stops. He can't do this. It's not right. It's also not right to be late reporting for his first duty and holding up the shuttle that's due to leave at any moment, not to mention subverting Starfleet dictums, but it's also not right to just leave Jim on the ground, leaning against a pillar like his legs won't hold him up and looking dazed like he just went ten rounds with a Klingon who also killed his puppy.

Pre-Jim, Leonard would have just gone on, his heart hurting but also knowing that regs are regs. You can't fight the system, especially Starfleet's system, because it's just bigger than you and will crush you without a thought, and there are rules for a reason. Jim's grounded for a reason too, a damn good one, but somehow that doesn't matter.

So instead of going off to do his duty, he whirls on his heel, dashes back, and seizes Jim by the arm. Jim's the one who says, "Whuh?" this time, and Leonard mutters at him, "Shut up and come on," and drags him away.

######

Leonard is doing busy-work in the hospital. They're all back on Earth, having spent the last few weeks limping back on impulse power until another ship came along and gave them a tow. It's only been a couple days since his feet touched ground again, and he could have opted to stay on leave like most of the surviving class, but staying busy and not thinking about the hundreds, if not thousands, of dead cadets and the millions of dead Vulcans has taken top priority. In light of that, worrying over the consequences of his actions during the Nero action seems petty and vulgar, but even so, filling in patients' charts and making sure every single relevant box is checked and every line is signed or initialed has never seemed so important before as now.

His hand trembles minutely and he finds himself grimly chewing on the inside of his lip as he works, but when the young underclassman walks briskly up to him and hands him a summons from Admiral Archer, that gnawing dread passes into a strange calm.

He passes Jim on the way into the administrative building. Jim's in his full reds and Leonard's still in his scrubs, and it occurs to him that maybe he should have changed as Jim gives him a once-over. Jim looks like hell, like stuffed-shirts have been reaming him for most of the morning, but he grins at Leonard's puke-green scrubs. "Hey," he says, and whistles mockingly. "Better not dress sexy like that in public, Bones, you might give people ideas about your virtue."

"If they wanted me to change they should've given me enough time to do it," Leonard snaps, self-consciously tugging off his staff badges and stuffing them into the pocket of his white coat. "You all right, Jim? I didn't know you were supposed to be called in too," concerned because he's noticing the haggard lines around Jim's eyes and the sallowness to his skin that Jim gets when he's not sleeping enough. "The hell they say to you?"

"Nothing much," Jim does that casually dismissive tossing away motion with his hand that means he's lying. "Just wanted a deposition, really. Investigation and full report pending, et cetera."

"Christ on a stick, you didn't argue with them, did you?"

"You're going to be late," Jim says, slapping his arm and moving away. "I'll talk to you later about it."

"Fuck 'em for five minutes," Leonard retorts. "Hey!" But Jim's already down the pathway, cadets going the opposite direction dodging around him, and he just calls back, "I'll wait for you in the cafeteria!"

Leonard mutters to himself for a moment, torn. He needs to go after Jim and make sure he's fine, because dammit, it looks like Jim's been told some real bad news, and Jim shuts down into cold and silence when he's upset unless someone like Leonard comes along and teases him out of it. But Leonard also needs to not shoot his career in the foot more than it already has been. A glance at his chrono decides him, and he firms his shoulders, swipes at the wrinkles in his shirt with a sigh, and goes inside.

He goes where the receptionist tells him to go, and finds himself in due course in front of Admiral Archer's office. He's a little surprised because this is hardly the place for a military tribunal, and he's even more surprised when he's called in and there're only three people there: the admirals Archer and Barnett, and Captain Pike, who's looking rather worse for the wear but still spry. Leonard should know; he'd been Pike's primary physician the entire way back to Earth.

He doesn't know what Jim said to them, or if Jim had yelled at them or argued with them, but he sure as hell is going to, because dammit, their solemn faces and Jim's reaction tell him something serious is going on. The first thing out of his mouth after he salutes and Captain Pike says calmly, "Sit down, please," is: "Look, with all due respect, sirs, I have something I've got to say before you start."

Archer frowns a little and motions at him to continue, and he takes a deep breath and plunges on. His stomach is in free-fall, that odd calm that'd gripped him earlier thoroughly banished by Jim's grim recalcitrance. It's the same feeling that accompanied the snap decision that landed him here in the first place, and god help him, he's just made another one. "The entire reason Cadet Kirk was on-board the Enterprise was because of me—my insubordination and my deliberate disregard of the rules. If you've got to court-martial someone, I'm the only one who should be on the chopping block, not him." Then even more vehemently, "So I'll be damned before any one else takes the blame." Then he claps his mouth shut and clenches his hands together behind his back, his heart doing a da-THUMP in alarm. He's never, ever, spoken like that to his superiors before, but dammit, Jim's too valuable for Starfleet to lose and damn them if they can't see that. Saving the Earth isn't enough to grant Jim immunity, apparently, and they need to be set straight.

All three men are studying him with weary amusement. "Well," Pike says after a glance at the admirals. "Even though this is an investigative committee making recommendations to Starfleet high command, we weren't planning on court-martialing anyone at all." A wry cock of his head and a smile is evident in his voice, "…But we can oblige you if you both are so strenuously volunteering."

This isn't quite the response he expected, and it takes him a moment to catch up. "Huh? Both, sir?"

"You and Cadet Kirk make quite a team," Archer observes with a half-smile. "He barged in here just now and demanded to be court-martialed in your place too. Almost verbatim."

"He did what?" Leonard is speechless, shock melting into fury heating his brain as the words sink in. Jim's entire life is Starfleet. To be ready to destroy his career just for Leonard's sake instead of throwing him under the proverbial bus like a sane person is so impulsively stupid, so noble, so…so…Jim that Leonard can't decide whether to curse or laugh incredulously. Never mind that he'd been ready to do the exact same thing because it's not the same thing, dammit. "That impulsive fool," he breathes.

"Exactly," Archer says. "Then before we could get a word in edgewise, he said that if we didn't see that and didn't throw him in the brig instead, we were, and I quote, 'a bunch of blind idiots.' No disrespect intended, of course. And then he asked to be dismissed." His tone gets drier and he leans forward, folding his wrinkled hands. "Your dedication to each other is highly commendable and is duly noted, but let's move on from all this melodramatic court-martialing talk, shall we? The both of you are going to give me an ulcer."

"But—"

So sit down," Archer snaps, the unspoken and shut up ringing clear in the room.

Leonard sits.

#####

Jim's not looking around, chewing on a taco meditatively and staring into space. Leonard comes up behind him and smacks him across the back of the head hard enough to nearly face-plant him into his plate. "What the hell?!" they both shout at the same time, Jim jerking around to face him. Jim's fist is up, ready to deck his assailant, but he lowers it when he sees Leonard.

Leonard points a threatening finger at him. "Don't you dare pull that shit ever again," he growls.

"God, ow, Bones, you pack helluva wallop," Jim complains, rubbing the back of his head, then, "What'd they say?"

"The hell you mean, 'what did they say'—they told me you demanded to be court-martialed in my place! What the fuck, Jim!" his voice is rising, and people glance over uneasily.

Jim drops his hand and glares right back, his face serious and intent. "Yeah, because it'd be my fault if you got your stupid self tossed in the brig and demoted or dishonorably discharged."

Leonard's practically in Jim's face now, Jim's stubbornness fueling his infuriation. "I'm six years older than you, I'll have you know, and I can make my own goddamn decisions! and surprise! I can resist that 'I'm an adorable fucking puppy, don't kick me' look that you think women like, and that you seem to think I fell for when I snuck you aboard the Enterprise! But guess what! They don't! I don't!"

Jim boggles at him comically for a second, then bursts into laughter.

"I don't know what the hell you're guffawing about," Leonard mutters, but he has to cover the beginnings of a twitchy smile by looking away and clearing his throat.

But when Jim shows no sign of stopping a full minute later, Leonard confiscates Jim's taco and heads off towards the quad.

He sits down in the grass and takes a savage bite out of it. "Hey," Jim protests, having followed and squatted next to him.

"Shut up. You don't deserve this taco," Leonard tells him, daring him with his eyes to try taking it back.

"I still don't see why you've got your panties in a bunch," Jim says. "Do you even know me? You really think I can just stand by and let my best friend take a rap he doesn't deserve?"

Leonard has his mouth full, so he can only roll his eyes and shake his head grimly. That's the thing. He does know Jim. He also knows Jim's suicidal willingness to throw himself into the line of fire for his friends and his sense of duty, even for something Jim doesn't deserve either. Abruptly the taco tastes like ashes in his mouth, and he shoves the rest of it back at him. "Here."

Jim stares at it. "…But you just took a bite out of it."

"I have news for you, Jim. Only girls have cooties, and if you're afraid of catching them, that ship sailed years ago." As Jim continues to stare at it, he shrugs and takes it back. "Fine. More for me."

"Hey, hey, I didn't say I didn't want it," Jim says quickly, reaching for it.

"Jim," he says quietly, watching as Jim chews and spills lettuce and meat onto the grass, "You really think I'd let you take the rap for me?" He sighs, and stretches his legs out. "It's appreciated, really, but that was the stupidest thing you've ever done." He thinks, then adds, "Even stupider than the time with the Andorian girls and the staff party punch bowl."

Jim only says, "Hmm," thoughtfully, like he's seriously considering the comparison. Then, "So what'd they say?"

"You idiot, you've got to be more careful with your life," Leonard grits, ignoring the question because he's almost suffocating in the urgency to get this fact through Jim's thick skull because the next time Jim might be too successful, and it'd be too late. "The hell were you going to do if they took you up on your offer? If you got kicked out of Starfleet? Go back to being the only genius-level offender in the Midwest?" He puts out a hand and grips the side of Jim's neck and shakes him a little to make him pay attention. Jim's eyes flick up to his, then slide away and he chews a little slower, thoughtfully, and Leonard has an abrupt hope that he's getting through. "You're too good for all that," he says more gently. "The fuck were you thinking?" Leonard has options; Jim doesn't. If Leonard got kicked out, he could go back to private practice or a university research position or even a consultancy in the private sector. Jim is made for Starfleet. He's bought into its mission, hook, line, and sinker, whether he'll admit it or not, and if he loses it, well. Jim has a barely-concealed self-destructive streak running deep in his makeup, intricately tangled up with his notions of honor, loyalty, and self-worth, and it would be so easy to lose Jim over a precipice from which he'd never recover.

"Well." Jim crumples the wrapper then lies back on the grass with him, and they stare at the blue sky and cypress trees down by the edge of the street, companionably shoulder to shoulder. "Considering that you're not in the campus pub doing shots of Jaeger, I'm assuming neither of us are on the way out."

Leonard snorts and smiles in spite of his morose thoughts. "Smart and pretty. Keep using those brains for the forces of good."

Jim laughs and turns his head enough to knock it against Leonard's, but then leaves it there, a heavy warmth against Leonard's temple. "I sort of escaped before they got over their surprise, so spill. What'd they say?"

"Eh." Leonard reluctantly shifts enough to pull his white coat off before it can get any grass stains on it, and stuffs it under their heads. "I'm on probation," he tells him, and Jim surges up in indignation instantly like a jack-in-the-box. He forces Jim back down with a firm hand and turns his head to stare into stormy blue eyes, forestalling a protest by saying firmly, "And they're right, Jim. I shouldn't have brought you aboard. You could have died, gotten in the way of operations, and otherwise compromised the ship. Yes, you saved the day, but what if you didn't?" He turns his gaze back to the sky. "And I lied. Technically, it didn't violate any regulations or my orders, but it was still a lie, and it was 'conduct unbecoming a Starfleet officer.' But it's just a slap on the wrist. I'm lucky I'm not getting court-martialed." He laughs suddenly. "Hell. You're a bad influence, James Tiberius Kirk, you know that? Because I'd do it all over again." Then, as an afterthought, "Wonder what Jocelyn would say 'bout that?"

Jim turns fully onto his side, propping his head on his hand, and studies him soberly. "Did I ever say thanks?"

"Between you busy getting numb-tongue and elephant mitts, and then fucking up the entire chain-of-command and making some Romulans' lives exponentially harder? I'd say no."

Jim's chuckle is low. The kiss is not entirely unexpected, Jim having hitched closer and closer during the entire exchange and smiling at him from under eyelashes tinged gold in the sunlight. It's slow and sweet, and Jim's lips are papery, like they were dry and chapped and he's been moistening them with his tongue, and he tastes faintly of salsa. Leonard lets it stay mostly chaste, a warm, leisurely touch of lips with just the beginning of heat and promise in moist breath and a flicker of tongue, then Jim rubs his nose along Leonard's rough cheek before he pulls away and props his chin on his hand again, smiling. Jim's true smile isn't just with his mouth; his whole face lights up and his eyes crinkle and seem even bluer than before, and Leonard is one of those lucky few who have ever seen it.

When Leonard finally speaks, he says lazily, "Well. They aren't displeased with me, either. I'm getting a commendation. For—what'd they call it?" He squints and tries to remember. "—'Leadership under pressure.'" He snorts. "Bullshit. Fancy phrase for 'doing my job'."

Jim nudges him in the ribs. "And that's why you're one of the best doctors and Starfleet officers I know."

Leonard cocks a skeptical eyebrow at him, hyper-aware that Jim's left his hand on his ribcage, and is running his thumb over the bumps meditatively. "And just how many doctors and officers do you know?"

"You think if I went charging in there and made demands again, they'd post us together?" Crazy bastard, he even looks half-serious.

"If they don't Section Eight you and discharge your crazy ass. And the hell you talking about? You'll make captain and then you can hand-pick your crew."

Jim sits up a little and grins down at him. "Then I'll make you my CMO." He leans down to kiss Leonard again, then as he lifts his head, he whispers, "In my pants."

"Holy god." Leonard tries to shove Jim off, and Jim drops his head into Leonard's shoulder and laughs helplessly. Eventually they lie there quietly, Leonard's hand stroking through Jim's soft curls, and he rumbles sleepily, "You owe me, y'know?"

Jim doesn't say anything for a long moment, and Leonard almost thinks he didn't hear him, when Jim answers softly, "Yeah, I know."

fin

*note: Section 8: a type of discharge from the US military for being mentally unfit for service.