He ducked his head as another hard slap landed on his shoulder and cringed at the loud laugh being barked out next to him. He wholeheartedly wished that Bones hadn't left him totally alone at this party. He was not used to this sort of attention. Not praise. Not acknowledgement for a job very well done. No he was used to being snidely called out for being charmingly chauvinistic, cockily baiting people into fights that usually led to breaking someone's bar or being incredibly reckless, like driving vehicles off cliffs.
He was used to being talked down to – a constant that had been with him his whole life.
He smiled grimly at the portly Admiral talking loudly next to him, his hand never leaving Jim's shoulder as he continued to clap that meaty fist against him. The Admiral was tipping his drink and sloshing its contents dangerously, a few drops landing on one of the Admiraltys wives' expensively sheer dress, as he recounted how he had had the most faith in the troubled cadet and just knew that James T. Kirk was going places.
Jim couldn't help but sneer internally. This Admiral was one of the first to demand his expulsion following his hacking of the Kobayashi Maru.
He extracted himself from the circle of upper echelon Starfleet commanders and bid them goodnight, thanking them for the party.
He was tired of rubbing elbows with these people but the pomp and circumstance revolving around his actions on the Enterprise, you know stopping Nero and saving Earth,and then the glowing praise from his commandeered crew had led to it.
The same crew that had scrambled to pull strings and probably bribed, possibly blackmailed to retain their positions under his command.
And that was the most ironic thing because he had fully expected to be court-marshalled and thrown in jail – which was a huge reason he hadn't made his move on Bones yet – not given the ship he mutinied on. Especially after being almost strangled by his then Captain. Spock surely hadn't spoken in favor of him, had he? Jim rubbed his throat, the ghost of Vulcan fingers tight and unyielding lingering there.
He sighed as he walked back to his quarters. Tired and sore from the month's events. Delta Vega had left its marks as had Nero and his ilk, despite Bones' expert healing. He shivered remembering how easily the Romulan had tossed him around.
He stumbled into his room and extricated his limbs from his uniform in a tangle of trips and curses before he fell to his bed, ready to begin his five year mission. Ready to tackle the mess that was Bones.
But it wouldn't come to pass because Spock, both old and new, would get in the way.
/
Jim had always been fickle but Bones had hoped beyond hope that having been his friend for almost four years would have exempted him from that particular Kirkism. And to an extent, he was.
Jim had badgered and cajoled him into returning to work, as CMO no less, on the Enterprise. Apparently he had been one of the few that hadn't slithered in on their bellies demanding to keep their positions under the twenty-five year old captain. Turns out that once he had begrudgingly accepted the role Kirk deemed necessary for him, he had all but dropped from his life in favor of perusing the Vulcan doggedly.
Bones wasn't the jealous type because he knew that Kirk needed all the support and friends he could grab. He had known that something like this, this complete drop from of his life, would have happened eventually and he had guarded and prepared himself for it steadfastly. But he'd be lying if he said that it didn't hurt, because it did, it fucking hurt.
They were both broken, and broken people never lasted, he knew that and it had been sugared lies that he had kept telling himself that made him last this long. Sure, they had lots in common, drinking their woes away, snapping at each other, passive aggressively stealing each other's toiletries, but that's what was wrong with broken people. They enabled each other. They didn't heal from the drunken stupors or the bar fights or the angry, heat of the moment slurs that kept them from talking to each other for days or had them curled up in bed with each other afterwards.
It wasn't healing, no matter how much Jim said otherwise.
But there were times that it was so damn good and, goddammit, when it was good, and God only knows how many times he'd done the same for Jim, it was amazing. Especially when it was Jim, in a moment of selflessness, picking up his pieces and gluing him back together with haphazard care. Bones had never been more content.
Never more content to feel Jim's roughed hands on either side of his head when Bones couldn't bring himself to look Kirk in the eyes as he whispered soothing words to ease the pain of something callous his seven year old daughter let slip from her mouth. Or when Jocelyn couldn't quite keep the smugness oozing from her every orifice when she told him that Jo would eventually see him for what he was.
But McCoy could see, after his final voluntary appearance on the bridge, that he had been shouldered aside… and that he would never see eye to eye with the man, and he used that term loosely, that had tried to kill his best friend.
He had excused himself after a rather venomous spew of profanities that Spock had provoked from him. The Vulcan had a natural aptitude for getting under McCoy's skin, unfortunately. In short, Spock had said Bones would die alone and miserable because that's all he knew how to be.
And Bones had retaliated with slurred anger and aching pride, "No, that would be you. You unfeeling bastard." He left shortly after that last word tore from of his mouth, numb and dazed because the Vulcan had found the chink in his armor and executed his attack ruthlessly.
When Jim hadn't come looking for him after that exchange on the bridge, McCoy knew he had fallen from Jim's graces, especially when word that the Captain had went to console the Vulcan reached him. He didn't know how even begin to bury the roiling hole of stinging hurt and betrayal in his chest.
Because they had been so close to something amazing.
/FOUR MONTHS INTO THE FIVE YEAR MISSION/
It was happening again, but this time, he really felt like he was floundering because he had become used to Chapel and M'Benga and the rest of the nurses picking up what he could let go from his lists.
But being in combat with a conglomerate of pirates, supposedly made up of more than just Klingons and Romulans, usually led to major injuries and bits and pieces of the ship floating off into space.
This was the case now.
Bones was elbow deep in Giotto trying to untangle his intestines from his ribcage while Chapel was bleeding out on the bio-bed next to him.
M'Benga wasn't much better, hobbling around with a hand pressed against his side to staunch blood flow and mumbling under his breath about not being able to save so and so down in security.
The rest of his nurses were god knows where. Probably hiding, possibly floating off into space from that last blast that ripped into floors 8 and 9C, but most likely running around like chickens with their heads cut off because they had no one there to hold their hand and tell them what to do.
And he was stuck performing delicate surgeries in the main room of sickbay because the doors to the OR had been locked down for safety reasons.
The ship rocked as a phaser cannon hit what was left of the shields and McCoy cursed as a piece of Giotto's guts nicked against a broken rib. He grabbed up a cauterizing tool and began to fix the hole in the small intestine, hoping that none of the bacteria from inside had leaked out into the abdominal cavity.
He knew better though and wanted to scream in frustration. Instead he took a breath, gritted his teeth and put metaphorical blinders on himself. Only Giotto mattered, nothing else. The hole fixed, he began the process of re-attaching his guts to the inside walls of his cavity, set his broken rib with a bone bonding agent and stitched him up.
He ripped the latex gloves off and grabbed a few antibiotics from the surgery table and depressed them into Giotto's neck before wiping the surgery site, bruised and swollen, with a cocktail of iodine, trip-antibio ointment and pain reliever.
He turned to Chapel and began to hurriedly stabilize her. Concussion and mostly superficial wounds save for a piece of shrapnel lodged in her shoulder. He frowned and ran the tricorder over it, trying to discern if a major artery had been nicked because Chapel had a couple pints of blood pooling under her.
He swallowed hard and realized that this wasn't a wound he would normally treat without assistance because without one the risks skyrocketed and Chapel could very well bleed out before he even got the clamps in if he was even the littlest bit too slow.
"M'Benga!" He barked and the dazed man swung around, mouth fishing and eyes wide, "Get over here and help me save Chapel!"
He nodded and hobbled over, face pale and skin slick with sweat. M'Benga worked shakily to put his gloves on and Bones just watched him with a sinking heart, feeling the woman's life before him slipping through his fingers because the other Doctor would hurt more than help.
He groaned and looked down at Chapel's pale face, her eyes rapidly moving beneath her lids, "I'm sorry Chris."
A shaky smile wound on her face, "D-did y-you just a-apologize?"
Bones recoiled in horror, "You're still awake?"
"Not b-by ch-ch-oooice," she moaned and her face screwed up in pain, "Take it out," she demanded through gritted teeth, saliva and blood foaming between her usually pearly smile and he had to press a hypo full of painkillers into her to quash the guilt eating at his insides for not checking her sooner.
He eyed M'Benga who was still working on getting his gloves and fingers to cooperate and looked back at Chapel, "You know the risks if I don't get to the artery in time," he reminded her softly.
She dipped her head curtly, teeth still clenched shut as she ground out, "You're the only one I'd trust to do this," and Bones sighed, because he would never get used to everyone being so absolute in their belief of him and turned his focus to the man behind her, snapping, "M'Benga, sit down before you hurt yourself!"
Said Doctor stared dumbly at his wiggling fingers and then at Bones and then back at the twisted and holey glove halfway on his hand. McCoy wiped his hand over his face, smearing Chapel's blood simultaneously across his tightly pinched scowl, and strode around the bio-bed Chapel was in to push M'Benga smoothly onto the one behind him.
"I said, sit down," he growled and prodded at the other Doctor's side, earning a startled hiss and whine. He ran the tricorder and discerned nothing was lodged in the shallow puncture and set the dermal regenerator to it, pumping M'Benga full of antibio's and fluids to counteract the shock he was clearly in.
He halfway wanted to sedate him.
He turned back to Chapel to sedate her instead because she was priority now, nothing could interrupt him. After a hurried hook up of her vitals to the bio-bed, he rummaged through the cooler for a couple bags of synth-blood, readying it to use at the drop of a hat, because he knew he'd need it.
A clamp in his left and right hand on the shard of metal, he took a deep breath and leaned the shrapnel to the side, opening the wound to give him access to the damaged artery.
It took him back to when he was a kid, mixing baking soda and vinegar and food coloring to make lava for his school project, watching it boil up from the chemical reaction, that's what the inside of the wound looked like now. Red and full and getting fuller, to the point of welling up and rolling down Chapel's pale chest.
He couldn't see the artery without suction and worked quickly, fishing around beside the shrapnel and pinching it between forefinger and thumb, working the clamp in with the other hand. He repeated it on the other side and slid the sharp piece of metal, the only thing that was keeping her from bleeding out completely, out.
He used suction, clearing the blood, and could finally see the damage, the torn muscles and ravaged brachial artery, sitting there pumping futilely against the pressure of the clamps and knew then and there that Chapel would need weeks of physical therapy. He rubbed his forehead, overwhelmed, neck deep in blood and exhausted,
Determination set in his jaw and he focused all he had into repairing the blood flow to Chapel's arm.
/
It had taken longer than anticipated because M'Benga had decided that he could totally help halfway through the procedure. Why he thought his latex gloves served him better tucked into his shirt like a makeshift bib, he didn't know and had to sedate the man.
Then another blast, mercifully after he finished closing up Chapels wound, had rocked the Enterprise and he was sure that any minute he'd be sucked through a hole and into space.
Instead he fell and knocked his head against the unforgiving floor and his shoulder caught the corner of the counter on his way down. He laid there for longer than he'd ever care to admit, wallowing in the radiating pain shooting from his head, lighting up his already flaming shoulder, to the end of his toes.
Unfortunately, Spock had brought Uhura in and in Spock fashion, asked why he felt it necessary at this time to lay on the ground. Clearly insinuating that McCoy was just lazing about and hadn't just completed almost twenty-two hours of surgery and rounds.
McCoy closed his eyes and prayed to something, anything, to give him the strength to strangle Spock. His eyes popped open and he turned to the Vulcan who was now hovering above him and growled, "Move."
The Vulcan it seemed, didn't understand McCoy speak and its nuances, because if he did, he'd know that the underlying snarl and red creeping up his neck meant that he was going to do something that went against his Hippocratic Oath.
Instead Spock attempted a peace offering, he extended his arm to help the Doctor up and a gleefully evil thought, regarding ripping the hobgoblin's arm off and using it to beat him to death, raced through McCoy's head before he could quash it.
He begrudgingly accepted the assistance and swayed precariously when Spock finally settled him on his feet, because anything the Vulcan did was never in halves and that included yanking injured humans off the ground with an incredible force that would have had NASA excited.
"Are you capable of continuing your work, Doctor?"
"'M fine, Spock. Just went down a little hard during that last blast." He murmured, turning a worried glance towards Uhura, ignoring the queasy churning in his stomach and throbbing in his head, "What happened?"
Spock's eyes, dark and always calculating, swept over the Doctor once more before turning his gaze to Uhura, "There was a surge in electrical power at the communications center."
Bones nodded and set to work, steadfastly ignoring the flare of searing agony in his shoulder when he tried to move it.
"Doctor, you are bleeding."
Was he? He eyed his front dumbly, trying to take stock of what exactly hurt before working his hand around to the back of his head and tenderly sweeping over the sticky wetness there, pulling back and revealing a thick coating of blood on his fingers, "Huh."
"Doctor, you must get that seen to."
Duh.
"Can't, Chapel and M'Benga are down. Not sure where the rest of the nurses are." He added as he snapped another set of gloves over his blood smeared hands before poking at Uhura. Her hair wasn't as smooth as usual thanks to that nasty little shock she got, but all her vitals were normal and everything might taste like metal for a few days afterwards but she was fine.
"The rest of the nurses are in engineering. They have been trapped down there since Scotty sealed the doors to prevent fire from spreading." Spock informed.
"And why the hell were they down in engineering to begin with?" McCoy snarled.
"There seems to have been a party," Spock not-frowned, clearly upset by Bones' lack of leases used on his underlings, "When the first blast happened, a control panel blew up, resulting in the fire."
Bones tuned him out and was cheerfully thinking about how he was going to ring some fucking necks when this was all over with, but first… "Jim ain't hurt, is he?"
And he couldn't help the swell of pain, momentarily eclipsing the demons tangoing in his head, that came when thinking about his errant friend.
"He is not. It seems to be located to Medical this time, ironically."
Ironically. McCoy chuckled darkly because Spock using that word was ridiculous. He regretted the humor instantly when the sharp pain, of what he was certain a hot iron felt like, pierced through his skull.
"Are you alright, Doctor?"
"Peachy," he replied acidly, turning the tricorder on himself. Mild concussion, superficial wound to the back of skull, and a tad bit of swelling that explained the headache from the fifth circle of hell. Lovely, just fucking lovely.
"Doctor?"
He relaxed his face and eyed Spock, "Nothing serious." Which was true. Kinda.
Spock's brows lowered minutely in tandem with his eyes narrowing ever so slightly, "I do not believe you."
"Cookie for you," he groused as edges of the room began darkening and spinning precariously, "I'd suggest you get back to the bridge before Jim blows us up."
Spock looked affronted, if raising his eyebrows could be called that, apparently off McCoy's case now that Jim had been so callously insulted, "I have every faith in the Captain."
Of course Spock would jump to Jim's defense, the two were inseparable now, playing their chess games and exchanging their witty banter. McCoy was not bitter. He wanted to roll his eyes. He really did. Refraining, because he really needed to collapse, he shooed the Vulcan out, "Just trying to get rid of you."
Spock sighed in the form a small puff of air passing through his parted lips, "Gladly," and departed shortly after.
McCoy leaned against Uhura's bio-bed with hands pressed against his temples before he decided that putting himself in the bed next door to hers was absolutely necessary.
/
He should have known it was too easy, just falling into bed and sleeping off the worst of his injuries and exhaustion.
It never was.
Because when he was jolted awake by a dose of 'get the fuck up' juice that he had been concocting – and hadn't gotten around to testing yet, goddammit – for patients suffering from comas, he knew right then and there that that shit was going to be retired and chunked out the airlock.
No one deserved to get woken like this.
His body felt both light and heavy, skin tight and muscles shaky, heart beating so rapidly he thought it was going to explode. And judging by the look of abject horror making its way through the nurses hovering above him, it was a real possibility.
Maybe this is what it felt like to be disembodied, feeling but not really feeling, if you could imagine that. It was all numb but he could feel ghosting hands prodding at his body, feel the achingly tight way someone's fingers were wrapped around his wrist and how the faint, commanding voice of M'Benga roared, like sound under water, in his ears.
"He's coding! What the hell did you give him Foster?"
"He wouldn't respond to anything!" The woman defended herself and Bones knew that she was so gone, possibly through the airlock with the shit he gave him, as soon as he could get reattach himself to his body.
"So you gave him something untested?" M'Benga thundered and pointed to the door, "Get out!"
A thought occurred to him as the Doctor's arm shot out above him. M'Benga's gloves were on his hands, straight and impeccable.
"You better hope he pulls through this!" he yelled after her, "Who's his emergency contact?"
Jim. His heart lurched with a jolt, whether it was from the paddles or the thought that Jim was still noted down as the person who would always be there from him, he didn't know.
"The Captain."
His eyes rolled back in head as the second jolt ran through his body, singeing away feeling while simultaneously lighting up his nerve endings in the aftershocks.
He wanted to mercifully drown in the darkness waiting in the wings but the feeling in his body was becoming more intense, more incredibly raw with each roiling shock, that he couldn't slip under. What kind of cruel monster kept someone awake through this?
Someone was slapping his face, minutes, maybe hours later – his name loud and panicked on their lips, "Doctor McCoy! Leonard!"
He drew a breath, loud and long and he couldn't help but feel and voice in a choked moan the searing agony in his chest.
"McCoy?"
Nothing wanted to work, synapsis were shot and he was twitching but he managed to get a whispered and hoarse, "How many fuckin' time didya shock me?" out.
The laugh, rich and deep and relieved, reached his ears, "Enough to make sure you couldn't leave us," a rough hand landed on his shoulder, squeezing, "Glad you're back."
"Did I leave?" He peeled his lids up and eyed M'Benga, neck protesting in agony at the movement.
The other Doctor's lips thinned and he spoke softly, "A few times." He cleared his throat and patted Bones' shoulder and smiled shakily, "Get some rest. The next time you wake up you won't be hurting so badly, promise."
/
And he kept that promise, because when Bones next woke, he felt better than he had in a while, with the exception of a ghost of an ache rippling in his chest; the only reminder of what had occurred.
He eyed his hands, thoughts jumbled and murmured, "Did one of my nurses really just try to kill me?"
"Not on purpose."
The voice startled him and he looked up at the source. At the end of his bed was Jim, dressed in his regs and arms crossed over his chest. McCoy's mouth dried up at the sight because he wasn't sure how to take that set of his jaw or the forlorn expression taking up residence on Jim's face.
"You did it again, you know." He said, brows scrunched together and the corners of his mouth tugged down.
"Did what?" Bones asked, honestly confused. He eyed the IV's surreptitiously, itching to remove them.
"Conveniently neglected to take care of yourself. You let yourself fall asleep with a concussion. Sleep they couldn't wake you from." He explained, mouth pinched in anger.
Bones sighed in agitation because he had been so blinded with pain at the time, he wasn't thinking straight, "And what was I supposed to do? There was no one –," Jim cut him off, "You could have let Spock help you! That's what!" The Captain breathed deeply and pushed himself up from his chair, rubbing his face with his hands, "I can't do this anymore, Bones."
That sobered him, woke him more forcefully than that concoction that had nearly killed him, because Jim had not been there enough for him to ever think he had the right to say that to him.
He eyed him disbelievingly, because it had always been him that put Jim back together. He was the one that was always torn apart and always felt like he wouldn't be able to do it again, always felt like it was the last time his heart could handle restarting Jim's battered body, but he did it and never regretted it. He chuckled breathily, "After everything you've put me through, you have the nerve to say that to me?"
It came out shaky and teeming with some repressed emotion, one he'd be damned he'd ever admit to now, that had Jim blinking owlishly at him, mouth parted in surprise and face riddled with guilt, "Bones –," but he cut himself off when McCoy ripped the first of his IVs out and was over by his side, trying to keep the Doctor from finishing what he started.
"Thought you couldn't do this anymore, Jim?" He snapped and yanked his arm from his Captain's hands and hunched over, chest aching and head pounding, he needed to escape. He was confined to the bed by his quivering legs and had just enough strength left to eye Jim and tell him in a broken voice to, "Just, leave,"
He'd be damned if said he did want Jim to leave. He would forever deny that he had begged him silently with his aching heart and glassy eyes to stay.
But Jim did leave, ignoring how well he knew Bones and how he knew leaving had nearly killed him all over again.
/3 MONTHS LATER/
He took Jim off as his emergency contact and gave his mother's name in its place. He glared at the PADD and realized that he might as well have left it blank for all that she cared.
Brilliant son or no, he hadn't been able to save his father and shamed their family with his divorce and his drinking.
He sighed and checked the time from the corner of his eye, it was nearly time for Chapel's physical therapy. Rubbing his face and laying the PADD on his desk, he sank down into his chair before forcing himself out of it.
Bleary eyed, he traipsed over to the replicator, pretty sure Scotty still hadn't swung by to fix the flavor issues, to make a cup of coffee. He eyed the liquid suspiciously and sniffed tentatively. Smelled like coffee. Looked like coffee. Sadly, it didn't make him less paranoid about its dubious taste.
Spock still hadn't changed the eggs back to tasting faintly like eggs and he was fairly certain Jim had plied Scotty with booze to push replicator repairs to the backburner.
He took a sip and promptly spit it back out, groaning.
Because the fucking coffee from the replicator in his office, his lifeblood, still fucking tasted like feet.
He cursed Jim, Scotty, the gods and whatever else he could think of while he strode to his desk to pop himself with a highly restrictive, thanks to Chapel, stimulant hypo.
Because, between Chapel's PT and teaching M'Benga the ins and outs of Jim's allergies and proclivity to injure himself and simultaneously agonizing over his decision to hand him over to the other Doctor's care, he was running on the bare minimum of what was considered a healthy amount of sleep.
He ran a hand through his hair and walked into the PT room, just to the left of his office and greeted Chapel with a tired smile.
She frowned and reached out to grab his forearm, "You really need to take better care of yourself."
He quirked a brow and smirked lightly, "I must really look like shit for you to be showin' such concern."
She smacked him and stood hastily, moving into his space and ignoring the twinge in her shoulder from her injury. She batted his hand away and chided him, "You listen here, Leonard. Just because you've quarantined yourself away from everyone doesn't mean that everyone's stopped caring."
He wanted to argue but he deflated instead, "Sorry, Chris." He grabbed her good shoulder and steered her back to her seat and settled in the chair stationed slightly to the side of hers, "Let's get started, I'm now woefully and painfully aware of how badly I depend on you know that you're outta commission."
She snorted, "Of course," then she sobered, "Why are you handing the Captain's care to M'Benga?"
McCoy fumbled a little as he was rotating her shoulder. He cleared his throat, "Compromised."
Chapel looked thoroughly confused, "Compromised? Len, I don't understand, you two are thick of as thieves," and she bit her lip because that hadn't been true since they had all been reassigned, "Well, you were."
He nodded, "Were, Chris, were." He sighed and for a moment his frustration flared and his mouth let out more than he was prepared to say, "I don't know what's happened. We've just drifted."
Chapel's face softened and she did something that most people didn't dare even think about doing to the acerbic Doctor.
She hugged him.
/
He was in his quarters, swirling a tumbler of bourbon in his less than comfortable chair, when Jim stormed through his door.
McCoy eyed the man and recognized the 'absolutely pissed off, I'm going to rip you a new asshole face' immediately. Jim was gripping a PADD in his left hand and was pointing a shaky finger at Bones with the other, "What the hell is this?" He waved the PADD at him.
Halfheartedly, McCoy waved him over and skimmed the face of the document that had been pulled up, "It's a reminder for your physical, Jim."
He could practically hear Kirk's teeth grinding together, "Not that, smartass. This." He pointed at the top right-hand side.
McCoy swallowed a mouthful of liquor, "That, Jim, is your physician."
His nose flared, "And who does it say it is?"
Bones cleared his throat and tossed the PADD to the desk before taking another swig of bourbon so he could compose himself, "M'Benga."
"Yes," Jim hissed and slammed his hands down on the desktop, "Explain to me why my Doctor, the one person in the world that knows me inside and out better than I do myself, hands me off to some fumbling oaf?"
McCoy glared and jumped to defend his colleague, "M'Benga is a very goo –," Jim interrupted, "I don't care how good you think he is, he isn't you!"
Slack-jawed, Bones set his tumbler down and eyed his Captain, speaking softly as he explained, "I thought it would be easier for you. I would not have handed you over to him if I didn't personally feel like he could handle it."
"Easier for me?"
The way he said it made McCoy's heart thump painfully in his chest. He looked away because now he wasn't sure who was the bigger, more selfish ass of the two of them, "The last time we spoke," he grimaced as the statement passed his lips, "it didn't seem like you would mind your care being handed over."
Jim sat heavily on the edge of the desk, arms crossed and head bowed, "Bones," he started softly, pained, "don't think I haven't realized how big of jerk I've been to you."
McCoy's head rose and met Jim's burning eyes. Bones exhaled sharply, tapping his fingers against the bourbon glass and swept his eyes across the desk, studiously gazing at the PADD, "Jim, I don't expect to be anything other than your CMO. You're my Captain."
The corners of Jim's mouth pulled down, "Bones, we're friends."
McCoy blinked hard, chancing a glance at his Captain and asked hoarsely, "Are we?"
Jim looked like he'd been slapped, "You – of course we are," he fumbled.
Bones looked away again and took a deep breath, nodding slightly, "Of course." He turned away from the desk and ran his hands over his face before leaning over and propping his elbows on his knees to cradle his head in his hands, "What happened between us, Jim?"
He refused to look up because he couldn't face his Captain at this moment.
He heard Jim shifting, "Would you believe that I met an alternate reality Spock on Delta Vega?"
/
A/N: One more chapter to go because it didn't feel right having them make up and suck face after the way this ended, which is completely and wildly off from what I had planned, but eh, I like this better. Anyway, yes, Spock seems like he's an ass, but well, if you guys hadn't noticed, he was a pretty big ass during the first film and half of the next one.
Medical crap is me using my vast (*laughs* I only watched to S4 and haven't seen it in many, many yearrs) knowledge of Grey's Anatomy (the one where the two people are stuck together on a pole, the only thing keeping them from bleeding out and her from dying) for Chapel's injury.
Bones being neglectful of himself seems par for the course with most Doctor's (he also hates Spock at the moment so of course he isn't going to let the hobgoblin fix him up) who are so obsessed with getting everyone else fixed up before themselves.
Jim being absentminded in his relationship with Bones is something I could see happening. New to captaincy, trying to fulfil Spock Prime's advice for being friends with Spock, being plain busy and not noticing how little they actually talk. Time has a way of getting away from you when you're up to your neck in work.
Also, I have to fuckin' post this now. I've picked at it and picked at it and if I don't post now, I never will.