Author's Note: For those of you who are also reading A Friend in Need, this fic occurs in the same universe and, chronologically, occurs after chapter four of that story, but not necessarily before or after the fifth or sixth chapters, which are, as of yet, unposted. Those of you who have not read that fanfic yet may gather some enjoyment from it.

This story is not completely written yet, but everything is planned out and it is simply waiting for me to have time enough to work on it. It will not be overly long, and my updates should be no longer than a month apart, but I plan to have them closer together than that, am I able.

I obviously do not own Star Trek, but I'm seriously hoping Abrams blows all of our minds with the upcoming movie, and that things work out as... well. I suppose if you want to know how I hope things'll work out, you'll just have to keep reading my fanfiction. ;)

There is one small note I would like to make. I enjoy reading Star Trek fanfiction immensely, and I had planned to continue reading it but post none of my own, for the longest time. There are two fanfiction authors who changed this. Lyricoloratura is an incredible author who writes some truly amazing fanfiction. Reading her work, particularly Christmas With the Family and Sestina truly made me fall in love with Star Trek fanfiction. It was when I read And All the King's Men, by Mijan, that I could no longer resist the pull of the fandom and was forced to put my imaginations to paper. I highly suggest you look up both of these authors and read their incredible work. I would like to thank both of them here for being so amazing, and dedicate this fic to Mijan, for pulling me into the author's side of the fandom with such an amazing and heart-wrenching piece of fanfiction.

Live long. Live well. Write.

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

I

"Come on, Bones, you know you want to." Jim Kirk grinned at the older man as he latched onto his arm and began to haul him out of the desk chair.

Leonard McCoy released a sound quite reminiscent of a growl, jerking his arm out of Jim's grasp. "Goddammit, Jim! I have an exam to study for!"

"Study later. Get drunk now. Or, when we get to the bar. Come on, Bones! Beer! Food! Hot Orion chicks!"

"Go bug Gaila, Jim. Not all of us can ace our Finals on a ten minute cramming session."

"Flattery, Bones? And we're not even drunk, yet." Jim waggled his eyebrows at the glowering man. "Don't tell me you've been hiding your true feelings all along. Let 'em out. We'll get funky."

"Funky, Jim? What era is that from?" He shoved Jim away from him, turning back to the computer.

"Twenty-first century… I think." Jim was relentless, latching onto Leonard's arm again. "Come on, Lenny… baby…"

"I swear to God, Jim, if you call me that one more time-"

"Come get drunk with me and I swear I'll never say it again."

Leonard turned to look at the younger man manhandling him. It wasn't so much that he needed to get drunk with Jim in order to end the use of that insufferable nickname. Leonard was honestly sure that he could stop that himself by one well-placed hypospray. Jim just couldn't understand when someone was joking or telling the truth. All Leonard would really have to do is prove exactly how serious he was about the matter, and that would be the end of it. It might even get the damn kid to leave him alone for once.

So, no, it wasn't the prospect of that miserable nickname being done with that made him give in to Jim's request. It was more the cumulative hours of studying he had done over the course of the past week, along with the hours spent working in the clinic, and the stress of the date coming up that really made him realize that getting drunk sounded positively fabulous.

Sometimes Leonard wished he was as smart as his Ph. D claimed he was.

"The Gilded Shuttle, Jim?" Leonard raised a condescending eyebrow at the bar before them. The building was narrow in a way that made it appear to be squeezed in between the buildings on either side of it, but was only one story, which was an odd fashion in comparison to the predominantly two- and three-story buildings on the street. The front was rather bland, as well – no flashing neon signs or glimmering screens declaring the name triumphantly. "The Gilded Shuttle" was written in dark red ink on a wooden plaque above the door, the image of a golden shuttlecraft zooming behind the letters. The steps up into the bar were bordered by old-fashioned wrought iron railings, and the outside of the building itself was, no shitting you, brick. The whole appearance of the bar screamed old, outdated, and cheap.

"Ah, come on, Bonesy – don't judge a bar by its name." Jim seemed to take his thoughts in from his expression alone – something Leonard had noticed the kid did an awful lot, much to his consternation.

"Jim." Leonard leveled the kid with a patronizing glare.

"All right, so it's the only bar on this block that I haven't been banned from this month." Jim gave him one of his so sue me grins and shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "But seriously, Bones, I hear it's not that bad. And the waitresses – they're topless." He flashed his I'm-A-Sex-Maniac grin at Leonard and pushed through the door to the bar.

Leonard hesitated outside just a moment, before rolling his eyes. "Damnit – if I didn't want a beer so goddamn bad-" But no one was listening to him bitch, so he cut himself off and shoved after Jim, ignoring the look that the bouncer – yes, the bar had an honest-to-god human bouncer standing at the door – gave him as he stalked through the door.

Leonard pushed through a crowd of people, grimacing at the level of noise. It was different from some of the other bars that Jim dragged him to. People weren't jumping around wildly in a rave fashion here, and the music wasn't even loud enough to give him a headache, though it could be easily heard in the background of voices. Surprisingly, though, the majority of sound came from the quantity of people in the bar, which was odd, really, because Jim always seemed to Leonard to be the person that sought out places that were loud to be loud. This seemed… unlike him, and Leonard briefly wondered if something was bothering the kid, or if, perhaps, Leonard didn't understand the kid quite as well as he thought he did.

Leonard cast that thought aside, however, in favor of grimacing as an Andorian sashayed by him with a cigarette sticking out of her mouth. He tried not to breathe deeply until she had passed him, but it didn't help a great deal. The smell of smoke overwhelmed even the briefest whiffs of alcohol, making Leonard scowl further in distaste. He always loved to step into a bar and get tipsy on the fumes before he even had a chance to order. The way The Gilded Shuttle smelled, he was more likely to sidle up to the bar with Lung Cancer and Smoker's Cough.

Jim had already seated himself on a stool at the bar and was swiveling back and forth while the bartender had his back turned. Leonard assumed the man was getting Jim's drink ready for him. Moving to the bar, Leonard sat on the stool next to Jim as the other man removed his foot from the bottom rung.

"Worried I'll sit somewhere else?"

Jim grinned at him, blue eyes like roaming hands. "I can't have you sitting by any piece of ass," he said, tongue running over his top teeth.

"You're disgusting."

"I'm awesome," Jim said, correcting him. A second guy behind the bar – apparently, The Gilded Shuttle was a popular enough place to require two bartenders – came over to stand before Leonard. He had just opened his mouth to order himself a drink when Jim leaned over in front of him, completely crowding Leonard's personal space, and waved the guy off with a wink. The bartender, younger than his coworker, with olive skin and thin, sleek black hair, grinned back at Jim in a way that could never be misinterpreted as innocent, and wandered off.

"What the hell, Jim?" Leonard focused one of his more ferocious glares on his companion, fueled partly by the fact that the kid didn't even react. "Ya know the only reason I came with ya was to pollute my bloodstream with more alcohol than a goddamn still!" Leonard tried to keep his accent from rolling off his tongue thicker than usual. The fact that he was pissed always seemed to make Jim all the happier, but it was a futile effort. The damn kid just gave him this fucking shit-eating grin and winked. Leonard considered punching him in the head. He really did. He was tired, and cranky, and fucking needed a drink, and Jim was just fucking annoying – dragging him out here and then not letting him order a goddamn-

"Chillax, Bones, before you have an aneurism." Definitely punching the goddamn self-righteous, egocentric idiot in the head- "I ordered you a double shot of whiskey." Jim grinned at him, clearly pleased with himself.

When Leonard continued to glare, however, the grin thinned a little and Leonard actually saw Jim's eyes flit over toward the bartender for a second, his back still turned. "I can call him back if you wanted something different," he said, the bright blue of his eyes dimming to a slightly more normal color. "You always get the double-shot first…"

"You're a pain in the ass, kid." And Leonard did cuff him, just lightly, on the head. He refused to tell himself that he had initially intended to smack the kid a little harder, but simply couldn't bring himself to… for some reason.

He received a grin for his effort – a full-fledged, lecherous smile, complete with flirtatious wink. "You know you like it."

And then the bartender handed them their drinks – finally. How slow was the service here? – and Jim had turned to his beer with happy exuberance, swigging down half the bottle with little acclaim. Leonard, too, turned to his drink, the whiskey glass cupped between his fingers, but his mind was on Jim, on that fading smile.

Not for the first time, he had to pull away the part of his brain wired to psycho-analyze, keep himself from taking everything he knew about Jim Kirk and discerning why he threw himself upon the world like a whorish ringmaster commanding a circus of body parts all willing to fuck anything breathing within sight, and possibly a few inanimate objects on hand. And he had to dodge his brain's immediate pitches of ideas, like baseballs at his face, that it could be any number of psychoses or disorders.

Unfortunately, Leonard's attempts at the self-preservation of his mentality usually fell against the force of his own mind and his inherent curiosity. Like many and most times before, the pitches against his mind's eye came hard and fast, slamming into him and bringing with them thoughts that he did not wish to think, and yet could not stop considering.

Kalvin Winsome was Jim's roommate. He was also, much to Leonard's displeasure, a medical student. Unlike Leonard, he wasn't a doctor before he joined Starfleet, but he was determined to become one. Leonard didn't precisely know why. Winsome didn't exactly have a caring disposition toward people. Especially Jim Kirk.

Winsome and Leonard were not friends. Leonard didn't exactly have friends. He had Jim, who was more of a tagalong – some dumb kid from Nowhere, Iowa, who decided that getting puked on meant you were now connected at the hip, or some such nonsense. But no, Leonard wasn't friends with Winsome, so the boy didn't talk to him about Jim, but when one didn't have anyone to talk to, they overheard a lot. It was a rare and quiet day in classes when Winsome wasn't whining to one of his buddies about Jim-fucking-Kirk.

Bibliomania. The compulsive collection of books. Leonard had heard, on many a frequent and loud occasion, that Jim Kirk had a collection of books. And not the PADD novels or the comm. disks. Books – with hardback covers and paper pages. Winsome whined and bitched about the musty smell that was now a permanent feature of the dorm room he shared with Jim. About the sound of fluttering pages whenever Jim read casually (that little tidbit of information had been a hard one to swallow – casual reading?). The fact that Jim's half of the room was filled with books. Piled on the desk, stacked in the corners, tossed across the bed – the damn kid slept on them, and Leonard wondered more than once if he didn't live in them, at least more than he did in reality. Escapism.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. When Winsome wasn't bitching about Jim owning tons of smelly, noisy books, he was whining about Jim stacking them. Rearranging them. Moving them. And never just a few, but all of them, spending hours on any given day, confined to his room, rearranging his books. Moving some from the bed to the desk, from the desk to the floor, from the closet to the bed, from the floor to the boxes he had under his bed. Moving, rearranging, aligning, so that they sat perfectly straight, never a crack between them. Leonard had never been in Jim's room before. Jim didn't invite him over, and if he ever showed up, Jim would always leave with him – "Let's go for a walk, Bones! You're getting a beer gut!" – slipping out of the door before Leonard could force his way inside and see what Jim's room looked like, see these books for himself. And not a variety, Winsome always complained, but every single one looked the same. Not that he'd ever read any of them, or looked at the titles. Once he'd knocked one off the desk by accident and Jim had suffered a complete fit, apparently – skipping classes that day to stay in his dorm and rearrange his books, fitting them together, making sure pages were creased, moving, aligning, perfecting…

Atychiphobic. Fear of failure. Jim used to play MeteorTennis. Leonard remembered. When they'd first started, he joined the team, regaling Leonard with tales of their practices, play games, and competitions. He'd never gone to one, the games always scheduled when he was working at the Hospital, or doing homework, or studying for an exam. He knew that the excuses he gave Jim for not coming were always that – excuses. And he knew that Jim had always had that ridiculous pout on his face when he realized that Leonard really didn't care about the game. Though really, why would he want to go see a bunch of people on rocket skates fly around and try to hit a meteor at each other, ultimately slamming into each other and causing all sorts of injuries, which he would end up having to treat anyway when he was at the hospital? But Jim had always gotten over Leonard's rejection, the prospect of the game too exciting, and gone to play.

It was really not so much an actual failure as the captain of the team throwing the game for some ulterior purpose. They never actually did find out what that was, but Jim and Leonard both had their suspicions (and Leonard remembered those nine stitches he had to give the captain the next day. He could have done the gash up in seven, really, but he added two, just for the way that Jim acted that day, after the game, when he'd been kicked off the team. He'd looked more like someone had run over his damn puppy). But Jim had thrown a fit when they lost. The anger had only come later, as one of his teammates told Leonard while he watched over Jim in the hospital, the kid unconscious from the sedative Leonard had pumped into his system. The first emotion the damn kid had reacted with was complete and utter panic, though no one had quite understood why at the time, but he'd had a fit, going into "total freakout mode" as his loyal teammate (what was his name? Tom? Tim? Jim had always referred to him as Tinhead) named it. Tinhead had been the one to calm down the panic, going so far as to walk a stiff and hyperventilating Jim through the team roster until he'd assured the kid that every one of the teammates was still kicking and, asides from the captain, as pissed off as he was. The anger had come, then, of course, and then the sedation at the hospital, so Leonard could use the dermal regenerator to heal the burnt flesh on Jim's hands from when he'd grabbed that damn meteor to throw it at the captain's head.

Fear of failure. Authority issues, too, whether it was fear or hatred, the line was fine and, sometimes, Leonard thought, nonexistent.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was a definite possibility, though some people really did think that the disorder was more of a fall-back for whatever problems people didn't have a sure-fire diagnosis for. Still, it had some merit, and in some cases, it encapsulated a lot of Jim's issues, much like one of the symptoms of OCD in some cases was Bibliomania, though they were also separate, though clearly connected in this instant, and Leonard really wondered, sometimes, what book it was that Jim was so determined to collect, apparently, every copy of, even though actual books were hard to find and damn expensive.

Jim didn't exactly strike Leonard as a collector of intellectual things, but he knew that Jim was a lot smarter than he let on. He hid himself behind his arrogant attitude, though, and those lecherous looks and sometimes damn-good pickup lines, and that brought up the issue of his sexual appetite, or rather, an addiction to sex, which was incredibly unhealthy and really something that ought to be stopped before Jim's list of issues also included Gonorrhea, Syphilis, or fucking AIDS, though no one had AIDS anymore. It really wouldn't surprise Leonard at all. Honestly, Jim was more like a cat than any man Leonard had ever met before, determined to fuck any piece of ass remotely willing, regardless of sex or species. If anyone could possibly get a disease that had long since been driven to the brink of extinction, it would be James-T-fucking—

"Bones!"

Leonard snapped his head up and around to stare at Jim, who was sitting on the stool next to him, watching him with an amused smile that just didn't quite reach his eyes.

"What?" he asked, because clearly Jim had been expecting a response prior to his snapping that damn nickname, but he had been too wrapped up in his thoughts to hear him.

"I asked if you were going to actually drink your whiskey tonight," Jim said, and he laughed at Leonard, pointing unnecessarily at the shot glass still cupped between his hands. His fingers had left smeary marks on the glass, and he pulled his hands away to wipe them on his jeans, before picking up the shot glass and tossing it back in one go. Setting it back on the bar, he pushed it toward the bartender, who refilled it quickly, while Leonard glanced over at Jim's alcoholic arsenal. The kid was on his third beer, so either Jim was drinking like a camel, or Leonard had been lost for a while.

"Sorry," he murmured, grabbing the refilled shot and tossing it back quickly. The thoughts were trying to resurface, the symptoms of PTSD – excitability, insomnia – beating their way to the forefront – night terrors, difficulty concentrating – of his mind and – angry outbursts, headaches – he had to fight to contain them. He quickly swallowed a third shot, his brain hating him for it as a heavy buzzing lit up in his head, making it difficult to think, but the thoughts simmered to a low burn until he could barely hear them, hardly feel their clawing for his attention, and he could ignore that they existed.

"You okay, Bones?" Leonard could see the actual concern in Jim's eyes and he knew it wasn't put on – knew the wrinkle between Jim's eyebrows was real worry for him – and he knew that meant something. He wasn't going to think, though. He wasn't. He was happily buzzing and he planned to get shit-faced drunk until he couldn't see straight and get exams, hospital hours, his upcoming birthday, and Jim-fucking-Kirk off of his overloaded mind.

"As I'm still sober, no." Leonard tapped the shot glass against the bar to signify he needed a refill, and looked back at Jim. There was still a frown between his eyebrows, a concerned gleam in his eyes that Leonard would like very much to ignore, thank you.

"Your face is goin' t' stick like that." Oh look, slurring. That meant the drunkenness was coming, it was coming, she's coming – coming 'round the mountain when she comes, ho ditty…

"Argh, Bones – quit singing!"

Oh… that was out loud? Oops. Leonard downed another shot to shut himself up. Mm. Whiskey. Hooray!

"I'm not singing for ya anymore."

"Good. You suck at it."

"Shuddup. I ain't drunk enough for ya t' be comin' ont' me."

"Well, then – bottom's up, Bonesy!" Jim clinked his bottle of beer against Leonard's shot glass and both of them finished the drink in one go. "I think this is my new favorite bar."

"Meaning ya' goin' t' get kicked out soon, yeah?"

"Oh ye of little faith." Jim's eyes strayed from Leonard's face to somewhere behind him and then he grinned that wide, lecherous grin that held just a hint of some true happiness in it – a look that Leonard only ever saw when Jim caught sight of one person. "Oi, Bones, I'll be right back. I gotta check with my other doctor about a treatment." He flashed his Sexy-Is-My-First-Middle-and-Last-Name grin, winked, and damn near bolted off of his stool and across the bar.

Leonard sniffed his shot glass – it even smelled empty, goddamnit – and swiveled on the stool to find Jim. It wasn't hard. Leonard liked to keep something of a low profile when he went out, which meant dressing casual, but Jim seemed to think that the ladies loved Starfleet Red, or so he said. Leonard thought the color was ludicrously obvious – a lot like the British's uniforms some centuries back. He couldn't remember the date. There was some war, lots of people died, and all that shit. Medics were a lot better now. Still not good enough sometimes, though. Sometimes – a lot of times – people still got hurt too bad. People still died.

"Fuck." Leonard considered throwing his shot glass, but he decided not to. "Can I git another one o' these. Ya' slow."

The bartender just nodded at him and filled his glass and another, setting both before him. Leonard may have nodded at him, drunkenly or otherwise, he wasn't quite sure, but the bartender wandered over to another patron, and Leonard tried to decide which to drink first.

"S'hard choice," he murmured. His eyes sought out Jim again. He'd spotted that Orion girl he liked to spend nights with. Gaila, Leonard remembered her name was. She was pretty, he had to admit, if you could look past the green skin. He'd always had a bit of a problem with it. He wasn't a xenophobe, he just liked things homegrown. Homegrown peaches. Homegrown hamburger. Homegrown human.

But there was Jim, his arms around Gaila, hands wandering, lips moving right next to her ear, and she with her hands shamelessly cupping his ass, grinning that too-white smile, laughing, red curls tossing-

"I have to wonder which one you're jealous of."

Leonard jumped, damn near falling off his stool in the process, and turned to find that someone had taken Jim's seat. Greenish-brown skin and eyes with filmy horizontal eyelids that were half-closed around dark, dark eyes – no iris, he remembered, just big pupils. Nautiliad. From the planet Nautilon VII. His brain struggled to function beyond the haze of alcohol. The woman… female… the Nautiliad was smiling at him, though he remembered that their expressions always contained lips that curved upward. What was it that he'd learned in Xenobiology? Nautiliad's smiled with their… their hair, that's right. He remembered.

Nautiliad's always looked like they had thick brown dreadlocks – some species style or some such, a lot of people had thought. The "hair" was actually a series of tentacles. If he remembered, there were twenty-seven tentacles in total. Twenty of them reached the maximum length of two and a half feet, two on the sides of their head reaching two and a quarter, and four of them reaching no more than an inch, like bangs on their forehead. The twenty-seventh tentacle was in the middle of their head and connected to all of them. It contained their brain, while their cranium actually held the natural evolutionary apparatus by which they breathed through the tentacles, which were each hollow, but with the exception of the protected twenty-seventh, as hard as steel.

The tentacles moved depending on the mood of the Nautiliad. Pulling backward when angry or afraid, pushing forward when pleased or aroused. As the Nautiliad before Leonard was continually reaching up to push her tentacles out of her face, he had to assume she was as horny as Jim after watching three consecutive porno films.

"Excuse me?" Leonard asked. Hadn't she accused him of being jealous of Jim or something? His brain hurt.

She smiled at him… with her hair. At least he thought so. Maybe she was actually hitting on him… or something. "You look lonely." Oh, definitely hitting on him, with that airy tone of voice. "If you tell me your name, I'll let you scream mine."

Leonard resisted the urge to leave. He wasn't sure why. Jim would probably go home with Gaila and forget all about him, except that Jim never forgot about Leonard. He always let him know if he was leaving and, even if Leonard got left behind at the bar, at least he knew Jim didn't get carted off to an alley and murdered if he was at someone's house having sex and doing whatever unspeakable things Leonard did not want to know about.

"I'll pass, thanks," he said instead, deciding that the original glass was clearly a loyal companion, and he tossed that bit of whiskey back first. He kept it company with the newer glass right after.

"I'm Z'hani." Leonard clicked his teeth together and tried to ignore the Nautiliad. He was feeling less social by the minute. "Come on. At least tell me what you do for a living."

Leonard grimaced and then sighed. "I'm a medic."

"A medic? Sexy. I love a man with a tricorder." Her tentacles had to be blinding her. Maybe he could slip away while she was buried in her hair. "Think I could get a free exam? I have an itch."

"'fraid I'm not on duty, ma'am."

"Aw, that's all right. I don't really want to pay the hospital." She was leaning in real close – too close. "I'm good for it, though, if I can just pay you, Lieutenant."

"Cadet." Damn, if she was going after him because he was a high-ranking officer, maybe it would get him off his back if she knew how low on the chain he was.

"Cadet? You are Starfleet, though?"

Fuck. "I'm a medic."

"For Starfleet." When her tongue flicked out to lick his ear, Leonard had had enough. He was out of his seat and stepping away from the freaky alien chick with the mud-mold skin, when he caught sight of her hands. Even webbed fingers could hold a phaser confidently, and if the rolling of her hair was any indication, she was damn-fucking-excited to have it pointed right at Leonard's chest.

"How about that exam, Doctor?"

"You smell amazing."

"Don't I always?" Gaila asked, her voice little more than a breathy whisper in his ear. She giggled as he nuzzled into the place where her shoulder met her neck, lightly nipping at dark green skin. And she did smell amazing, like always. Hot spices and peppers and something else that he didn't have a name for and he was sure could never be found anywhere except on her homeworld, and Gaila. She smelled just like Gaila, and it was an intoxicating familiarity that drew him in.

Gaila wrapped her arms around his back, holding him in a tight embrace. She kept her voice low so no one else could overhear them. "Why are you worried, Jimmy?"

Accepting the nickname she gave him – that only she could use – as the norm, Jim chuffed against her throat. His arms were loosely encircled around her waist, and though his lips were at her neck, he was doing nothing more than breathing against her skin and taking solace in the fact that she was there.

Jim had heard her question easily, recognized the tone of her voice that told him she was both slightly concerned and somewhat reproachful about his worries. His lips puckered to kiss her throat softly, and he felt her body move beneath him, hips rolling in that manner she knew he found exceedingly attractive. Her arms tightened around him, though, squeezing to draw his attention and make a point that she expected him to pay her some mind. He sighed softly.

"Jimmy?" Her tone, so gentle and full of that strange, unfamiliar concern, could so easily break him. She was something that he had no experience with. In her movements, there was a gentleness that transcended the normal seductive touches of sexual beings. In her eyes, there was a tender kindness he did not understand. It broke him in the same instant that it built him up, terrified him as it made him braver than any man alive, and silenced him in stunned confusion, even as it propelled him to speak.

Jim exhaled softly against her throat, hot breath seeming to make her spicy scent drift around him, but for a moment, he ignored the draw of it. Instead, his mind replayed her question in his head, bringing to the forefront of his mind the worries that he had been trying, unsuccessfully, to quell. "What if he doesn't like it?"

The sound she made wasn't quite a laugh, but there was a reproving note in it that told him that she felt he was being foolish. He hoped she was right, but in the same moment, he dreaded and feared the idea that his concerns would be justified.

"He's your friend, Jimmy." Her whisper was meant to be reassuring, he knew, but there was a truth in her words that was directly contested by the truth in what she didn't seem to understand, or simply couldn't see.

"But I'm not his." And therein lay the crux of the problem. Jim liked Bones – Leonard McCoy. He liked the man who was sarcastic and grumpy and who had no qualms about telling you exactly what he thought, and damn the consequences. Jim knew quite well that the world, with very, very few exceptions, was made up of liars and people that wandered around wearing masks to hide their true natures. He knew this about the world, just as he knew that he was one of those people wearing the masks – wearing a number of masks, each with its own purpose, carefully crafted to achieve any number of things. But Bones…

Dr. Leonard McCoy was a man of blunt and forceful truths. He was who he was, and you had only to look at him to see it. His was a rare breed of person, and Jim, who had only managed to survive so long by hiding, was drawn to this human creature who was so… aware of himself. In a way that Jim wasn't sure he ever could be aware of himself. He knew there was a darkness within him, and he feared it, and he didn't think he could ever bring himself to face that monster that lay inside.

But here was Leonard McCoy, a knight if ever one existed, conqueror of the demons of himself to the point that he was… at peace with who he was. And Jim, who had so few constants in his life, so few things that were true, wanted this man, this creature of blunt and callous honesty, to be a part of his life. And so Jim would call the man his buddy, his pal, his friend, his Bones, but he was not so foolish as to think the man requited the gesture. Bones barely tolerated this annoying kid, hardly more than a teenager and far more immature than himself. Bones didn't like having Jim around, pestering him, butting into his life, dragging him off to get drunk and flirt with overzealous women, shameless men, and the occasional tentacled alien. Jim was little more than an aggravating tag-a-long – a cheeky child who decided to impose himself upon Leonard McCoy's existence after one chance meeting in a shuttle and one unfortunate and embarrassing incident wherein the good doctor was sobered abruptly by the oral ejection of all alcohol and everything he had recently eaten, much thanks to an undefeatable phobia.

So, no, Jim was not foolish enough to think that his regard for Leonard McCoy as a friend was a reciprocated gesture, and that's what worried him. The fact that he knew Bones' birthday was coming up – just five days away – was not something that he had broadcast to the doctor. So, Jim's plans to get Bones a present that had taken a great deal of time, planning, and shameless manipulation to execute was not something that the man was likely to suspect, at all. Ever.

And if it was something that would come as a complete surprise, and be something so completely personal as what Jim had planned – and only came to know from hacking Bones' files – could he really expect that the doctor would be appreciative of what amounted to a complete breach of privacy?

Jim closed his eyes and sighed again. He could feel Gaila's fingers moving in gentle circles on his back, trying to ease out the tension that had built there. They'd had this discussion before, and Jim knew her stance on this. More than once, she had commented upon what she referred to as his "swan dive into love," claiming that he was not one who loved cautiously, though Jim had fought her presumptions viciously, that he in any way, shape, or form loved Leonard McCoy.

He did, though. He loved the man who was so blunt and callous in his words as to make professors cringe. It wasn't a romantic type of love, he recognized, and he knew that Gaila hadn't meant it as such. Love was, Jim understood, a caring that transcended the basic acquaintances that he normally filled his life with. Love was more in its simple, solitary existence than any number of sexual encounters could be. It was something that James T. Kirk fought to keep well and truly out of his life.

And it was something that he failed miserably at avoiding.

"Give it time, Jimmy," Gaila whispered gently into his ear, and there was no sexual rise from what would normally be a sensual gesture, the feel of her warm breath ghosting over his skin. Her words were meant to calm and reassure, and he took strength from them, as she had hoped and intended. "Few love so easily as you." The words were familiar – uttered times before when he had revealed his concerns and his heart to her, in a way that he had to no other. It came easily, this ability to talk to her, and it hadn't taken him long to understand why. He and Gaila were very much alike.

They knew each other because they knew themselves, at least some part of themselves, and it was this easy understanding of pain and surviving when one had every reason to give up that made them so close, and made her words so precious to him, and him so willing to hear them.

Jim opened his mouth to say something to her – perhaps to thank her for her patient understanding, as he had done before – when he was interrupted. The sounds, at first, didn't register to him in the setting. Only the screams of frightened people and the clamor that arose from rushing feet and glass that broke in chaos made its way through his mind to some form of comprehension. He could feel Gaila's fingers, digging into the flesh of his arms in fear, as they both looked around in confusion, and then the other sounds that had eluded him, the cause of the chaos, suddenly registered.

The rushing snap and sizzle of phaser fire was out of place in the bar. It didn't belong, just like the explosive echo of sound and the flames that burst forth from the far corner of the bar, when the bomb went off.

Jim and Gaila were thrown apart, arms ripped from around the others body by the concussive force of the eruption and the table, which slammed hard into the both of them. Jim rolled initially, on reflex, catching his feet again, lights dancing wildly in his eyes as he sought of Gaila's green form in the growing insanity. The pain that exploded in his right side, however, carried his staggering movement to his feet too far over, and he found himself hitting the ground with a grunt of pain, balance lost.

He rolled over onto his stomach, blue eyes instinctively scanning the chaos for signs of what had precipitated this insanity. He could not find Gaila amidst the flicker of lights and the battered bar lit by flames, but his eyes did settle on someone else who meant a great deal to him.

Across the bar, Jim caught sight of Leonard McCoy, as the man put up a vicious fight. An alien hand was wrapped around his stomach, the other holding his arms behind his back, and Jim could see the tentacles of the Nautiliad's head pulled back taut in what he might assume was aggravation. Bones was struggling fiercely, kicking wildly and jerking against the alien's hold. Jim had a brief moment of thought where he could see how Bones might be likened to a stallion – unbreakable and wild. Then that thought was gone, as it became clear that however much he fought, Bones couldn't win against the Nautiliad's hold.

Jim tried to force himself to his feet, pushing off of the ground and ignoring the scratches across his arms or the way his grimace pulled strangely at his face. He managed to make it to his feet and staggered forward a step before the pain in his right shoulder exploded like a firecracker, making its disapproval with his current actions absolutely clear. Jim couldn't hold back the cry of pain that pulled from his throat, this type of pain familiar in the way that all pain was, but new in a fashion that told him that whatever he had done, this was a first.

Jim's knees buckled at the onslaught that tore through him and he hit down hard on his knees, catching himself on his left arm before he could slam fully into the ground. He breathed in smoke-filled, sucking gasps of air through his teeth as he looked up to find Bones, hoping the man had managed to fight off the alien stealing him away.

He managed the briefest of glimpses toward the duo, as the Nautiliad successfully managed to pull Bones out the door, clearly refusing any idea of releasing him. Jim had the smallest of moments in which he was able to wonder where she intended to take his friend, what she intended to do to him, and how he could possibly get Bones out of it.

Then he realized, with some belated discomfort, that he wouldn't be saving anyone, least of all Bones.

And then the pain, which he had managed to push off just briefly, flared again, and the strength in Jim's arm failed him. He crumbled beneath himself, collapsing flat to the floor with a cry as his shoulder burned with agony, and let darkness steal him away with a sob of relief.

Author's Note: Much thanks for reading. I look forward to any and all comments and questions. The second chapter should be up soon. As always,

Live long. Live well. Write. Read. Dream.