A/N - Kirk and McCoy.
How much cuter can you get?
Don't answer that.
This is my first Star Trek fic, considering I feel like I don't belong in the area of writing….I've only seen most of The Next Generation, some of Voyager, a lot of TOS, the old movies and the new movie (squeeeeeee).
I'm sorry XD the name is cheesy. But it's like, the last song I heard before editing…. *bricked*
I'm super-duper into slash and gay couples XD and I have two favorite pairings in the whole (Star Trek) world: Spock and Kirk, and Bones and Kirk. YAY!
The room I'm sitting in is dark; I'm not afraid of the dark (that would just be girly, and I'm most definitely not a 12 year old girl. Sitting in the dark on my bed is bracing and manly. I promise). My legs had kicked off my thin covers, as the heat on my body had grown to be unbearable. What had shaken me into the world of the waking? I start to go over the possibilities.
My body is aching. I'm sick, I remember slowly. Looking around, I realize I'm in my own room in the sickbay. My throat is burning with the Strep I know I have. I recollect with a feeble smile that I wouldn't let Bones hypo me. I don't have to wonder this reason. I know exactly why I did what I did. First of all, I'm not a 12 year old girl, and sometimes to increase my immunity, I have to be sick for an amount of time, so suffering with a throat burning like I was in the desert and a body so hot it wouldn't allow me to sleep was a good thing. I think.
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I sit there for a moment, feeling the cool floor beneath my toes. I also know the other reason that I stayed sick. It's a reason I won't disclose. I won't even let myself know the reason I'm sick, but it's painfully obvious, it's….
"Bones…." I croak, looking over at the door, hoping he had heard. But why did I have to hope? I was monitored by the good doctor, and I knew he slept lightly when he did sleep. The door quietly slides open and he steps in, looking at me with something that can be described as a quiet determination laced with annoyance. There's a hypo in his hand.
"You done acting the hero?" he growls softly, walking over to where I'm sitting. He sets the hypo on the table, pulling a tricorder out of his pocket and lightly running it over my skin I already know is too hot. He tsks in an annoyed way, setting the tricorder down on the table beside the bed and walking over to the replicator in the room. He looks back at me, and I'm a little confused. Something changed in those eyes in the two to three seconds it took to walk over to the replicator.
"Are you thirsty?" he asks softly even as he replicates water for me. I nod, my hand rising to my throat. I can feel my eyes start to prickle and burn and I fight it as hard as I can. I close my eyes tight, counting to ten, and it's no use. I feel the hot tears trickling down my cheeks and I can't hold it back anymore. I open my (manly!) eyes and let the tears come.
He comes back to my side, setting the water down. I can't help but look away in shame. Bones was always so much stronger than I…. I wonder if he's had to fight tears in the supply closet as I did in the turbolift, if he's had nightmares about saving people's lives as I had nightmares about protecting my crew….
I feel a weight slip around my shoulders, and my heart nearly bursts. I can't help myself. Leaning over, I bury my face in my best friend's chest as if I am a child, and I cry.
"It's all right, Jim." His voice is soft, and it's like a silken blanket to my hot skin, a balm to my unseen wounds. He's rubbing the side of my neck gently, and I know what he's going to do before I even feel the cool tip of the hypo against my skin. His arms tighten around me just before…
Kshtt. I wince in pain, but suddenly there's ice in my veins, ice water shooting through my blood, into my burning throat, across my overheated brain, finally to the tips of my fingers that were numb before.
Numb to the feeling of being clenched tight around the front of Bones' shirt.
But I don't let go, and neither does he. My tears don't cease, and I never expected them to. They seem to come harder now, in fact, as the symptoms ebb away, giving me more strength to devote to the current task at hand: unleashing an emotional torrent held back so long, I fear I will be washed away with it….
And Bones is my anchor, my ground, and I'm clinging desperately to him. My life is depending on this, it seems.
"Shh, Jim…. It's all right. Just let it go. Let it go." His fingers are slipping down my back, rubbing comforting circles on my skin.
But it isn't all right. How are you so strong, Bones? Do you cry at night when no one can see? Do you desperately hope that one day your eyes will be opened to the secret, the fountain of perpetual youth, and the elixir of how to keep every damn officer on this vessel alive and performing at peak? How can you just go hypo-ing people all day with a straight face, and never wonder if you're not doing it right, if you're giving them something that could potentially kill them?
I'm not sure when I start talking and when I stop. All I know is that when I look up at Bones' face, there's something there that's so heartbreakingly rare, but familiar in a way, and I love it.
I love it.
For, as I look up into the eyes of my best friend, he is smiling.
He simply shakes his head in the silence, standing and gently directing me to lie back down, giving me my water before covering me up, leaving the room without another word.
Through the smell of the immaculate sickbay, Bones' scent still lingers comfortingly in the air, and as I drift back to sleep, less warm and more comfortable than I was earlier, I smile to the darkness because I can't recall a time someone had made me feel so simple and clean in my life.