In the morning when McCoy wakes up, Spock's bed is empty. Neatly made, to boot. It's either good news or not that the the impressions they left in the blankets from sitting there side by side are smoothed out and gone, but he wouldn't exactly know which one it is and alone in their room, he isn't about to try to take a stab at guessing.

Though he's not above checking if Spock's toothbrush has shifted position, but staring at it, it might well have been in the same spot the night before.

In the mess hall, his stomach growls, an unhelpful reminder him that he never managed to make it to dinner. He jabs at the buttons on the replicator and frowns at the coffee that materializes, as if weren't exactly what he ordered.

His breakfast is worse and he pokes his fork at eggs that bounce back into their original shape before he chucks the mess of it into the recycler and follows it down with a splash of tepid coffee. This morning's not exactly the poor night's sleep to blame, though wouldn't that be nice. He always was good at ruining everything and now he's gone and dragged Spock down with him.

In sickbay, he runs a scanner over Manas like the banality of a checkup will cure the tenor of the day's start, but all it gets him is confirmation he clocked the man too hard, and that years of xenomedicine or no, he doesn't have a magic wand that will wake Manas up from whatever sleep he's settled into, nor Chapel to boot - and that the tricorders still don't work worth a damn.

He leans his hip against the table and lets it take up the slump of his weight, sighing. What a day, and he hasn't even done anything yet.

He will, though. He'll finish up here, find Chekov, and work through what those abnormal brainwaves mean, which hopefully won't just resolve itself into some odd but ultimately meaningless fluke. And then he's going to eat a square meal even if he has to force it down, and he's going to find Spock and… talk. Somehow. A hell of a lot of good dodging the man has done him. He sighs again.

He has to close his eyes against a sudden swell inside of him, one that aches for home. A simpler place and time than this. Pine scented forests and the right color of sunlight, the stars where they should be, each of them arranged in their proper constellations. Real food and real coffee and the crunch of his own planet beneath his boots.

Except that Earth worked out just about as well as Altamid has.

He clears his throat. Opens his eyes and pretends to not notice the security guards watching him.

Outside the Franklin, he finds humidity, dust that eagerly coats his clothes, and Jaylah standing in the shade of the ship, her arms crossed.

"Hey," he says. She doesn't back away so he walks over to her.

"Yesterday… Your leg," he starts. She walks fine, stands upright, and her shoulders are square and firm, no damage to her left side that he can see. Though she's struck up quite the friendship with Scotty, so there might be something to that head wound. "Is it all right?"

Jaylah looks down at herself. "I am standing."

"I just meant…" He shakes his head. He's not entirely sure he has the energy for this. But her unknown physiology or no, this is a hell of a lot easier than picking through the mess he created with Spock. He casts a look towards the mouth of the cave. There's only so many places in this damn mine camp to go, and the ship is good and empty of wayward Vulcans. Half Vulcans. Whatever. "I'm happy to take a look at it for you, if it's still bothering you."

"Bothering?"

"If it's sore, ever. Or your back, too. Do you get headaches?"

She blinks at him. He gestures to her forehead.

"My head does not ache."

"Ok." Maybe he can just get back into bed. Pull the sheets up over his head, enjoy a solitude that is too scarce these days, and pretend this morning hadn't ever started. "I just thought that maybe it hadn't healed right. But suit yourself."

He waves a hand at her and remembers too late that he should listen to Uhura more often than he does, all those intercultural competencies she's always on about. His own damn fault it's in one ear and out the other. Untranslatable gestures, or something of the like. Jaylah just stares at the air his hand swept through.

"I healed right," she finally says.

"Ok," he agrees.

"I could not walk and now I can."

"Great."

"I carried deck plates. I carried conduit tubes. I rebuild your bridge, where your Captain sits in my chair."

"I got it." McCoy squints up at the sky. The clouds aren't as puffy here as they would be at home.

"I survived out here. Alone."

"I know." He lets out a slow, measured breath. "I was just trying to help."

"Help," she says, the word short and harsh. "Manas captures your crew. You help them and you help him too."

"Unfortunately, I'm not doing much helping of anyone," McCoy says. "Would that I could."

"He attacked you too, and now you fix him."

"I try not to think about that too hard."

"If I hit you with my staff, do you still help me?" she asks.

"I'd really rather prefer you didn't," he says. Though hell if he doesn't probably deserve a solid whack or two. "But yes."

"Why?"

"It's the right thing to do." He shakes his head. "Not hitting me with your staff. I could really live without that, you hear."

"And if Manas killed James T?"

"Is this the third degree?" he asks. "Thanks, but I don't enjoy spending my mornings thinking about my friends being offed."

"Or your Mr. Spock?"

"Jesus," McCoy mutters.

"You would help Manas even then," Jaylah says.

McCoy needs a moratorium on all things Spock. And Altamid. And Starfleet, with its goddamn associated chats about morality.

"I took an oath, Jaylah."

Her eyes are narrow. "You think it is right."

McCoy braces his hand against the Franklin's hull. Leans into it, arm locked and his traitorous back refusing to ache. For a long moment, he closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, he nods. There's a reason he went into medicine, and all the years - and lightyears - he's travelled since then hasn't changed that. "Yes. I do."

She blinks and looks away.

"Montgomery Scotty said you were a 'good person'. Is this what that means?"

"He did?" McCoy frowns.

"My knee." Her fingers tap over her left thigh. "When I climb, it hurts."

"Always?" he asks slowly. Her jaw is set in a tight line. "Or when you've been using it for a while."

"Always."

"Anything else?"

Her eyes close on her inhale. There's a pause before they open again. "My… my ribs, you call them. I cannot breathe deeply."

"We can take care of that," he says. This, at least, he can do. "Your knee as well."

"I have killed."

He presses his lips together. "It's ok."

"Many times. You would still treat me?"

"I'm not here to ask questions, Jaylah. I'm not passing judgement, I signed up to - well, to lend a hand in anyway I can. Whoever it is." And to get the hell out of dodge and away from the ruin of his old life as fast as he could. Convenient, then, that Starfleet always needs doctors, and he'd needed a place to run to. Though look where that ended up for him, here on this hellhole of a planet, mired in yet another mess. He jerks his head towards the hatch. "It'll be easier if we go inside. All my instruments are in there."

But she only straightens and pushes her shoulders back.

"No," she says.

"We can do it out here, but frankly ma'am-"

"-You want to help your crew.

McCoy frowns. "Well of course I do."

"In the mountains, there is a woman who woke up."

McCoy turns the words over in his head. And then he feels his lips part as he understands them.

"What do you mean 'woke up'?" he asks. He pushes off from his lean against the hull. "From those stasis systems? The ones in the cave?"

"That is what I said."

He can't be hearing this right. He shakes his head, squinting at her. "Were you going to bother to tell us this?"

"If I tell you, you will go, and she will try to kill you. Then, I never leave here." Jaylah puts her hands on her hips. "But you and your helping - we will not leave without your shipmates, will we?"

"Jim," McCoy calls out but Jim's not there, not Sulu, not Uhura, not even Spock. He grabs at the comm on his belt. This damn ship is the size of a shoebox and of course now is the time he's not tripping over half of the crew. "McCoy to Captain Kirk."

"She will succeed, most likely," Jaylah says. "She does not care about 'good.' And she does not like help."

"Should have let me do your leg first, then." He smacks his thumb at the priority button. "McCoy to Kirk!"

A crackle of static, and then, "What'd'ya got for me, Bones?"

"Jim, you're going to want to hear this."

…

"I can't let you go, Bones."

McCoy takes three steps across the bridge, a finger held up in front of him. "I don't know if you need your ears cleaned out, Jim, but if you weren't listening, Jaylah said there's a woman who can help us."

Jim shakes his head. He's wearing his Captain face. How he ever grew up from that wet behind the ears kid who drank half of McCoy's whiskey on that goddamn shuttle, McCoy will never know.

"We need you here," Jim says, hands braced on the back of his chair and his jaw firm.

"Need me here?" McCoy parrots back. He laughs. It's not even remotely funny, the harshness echoed back to him in the wide eyes of Chekov and how Uhura has her arms crossed over her chest. "There's not a damn thing for me to do here, Jim, not if we can't get the crew up and at 'em."

"You're the only senior medical staff member we have."

McCoy throws his hands up. "You're the only captain we have and I'm betting that's not going to stop you from hightailing it out there."

"I will go," Chekov says. He looks at Jim. "Where is it that we are going?"

"I'll go too," Sulu says.

"I'm in." Uhura sits up straighter in her chair. "I doubt that whatever it is that this woman speaks, our UTs are up to the task."

"See, Bones?" Jim grins. McCoy scowls at that smile and paces over to Sulu, hands on his hips. "We're good. You and Spock stay here. Keep an eye on the crew and just sit tight until we're back."

"No," McCoy says.

"Doctor McCoy is correct that it is inadvisable for you to leave the relative safety of the Franklin, Captain," Spock says and McCoy nearly jumps at the sound of his voice, his fists falling from his hips and turning quicker than he meant to. Spock was supposed to be rerouting power conduits with Scotty, not apparently lurking in the shadows.

"Glad you could join us, Mr. Spock," Jim says. "And thanks but no thanks for the advice."

"Captain, I respectfully disagree."

"I'm not sending anyone else out there to do this," Jim says. He straightens from his lean on the chair as if he's already moving to the door.

"I'm still coming," Uhura says and stands too.

"Lieutenant…"

"Nice try, Kirk," she says. "We both know I'm the better shot. And you're not going alone."

"You are not going, Captain" Spock says.

"I'm going," McCoy says. "Nobody else here even begins to know the questions to ask."

"An issue that is avoidable by simply retrieving the woman in question and bringing her here," Spock says and McCoy opens his mouth in a retort, except Spock is watching Jim, his shoulder angled like McCoy isn't in the room at all.

Another day and he'd grab for Spock's arm, get in the man's face and argue, irritation borne forth by all the times Jim has listened to Spock and not him. Now, he rocks back on his heels, his molars pressed together and his glare useless against the fact Spock won't look at him.

"That's a lot of ifs, Spock," McCoy says anyway. "I know what information we need, and I'm going. There's no other way to get the hell off this rock."

"Fine." Jim rubs at the bridge of his nose. There's some logic working there, some voice of reason that is sifting its way through Jim. McCoy would put a hell of a lot of money on that voice sounding exactly like Spock. "You and me, Bones. The rest of you are sitting this one out. You'll have to have our backs from here."

"You need a map," Uhura says. She always was sensible, that one. And Spock is just standing there, silent. McCoy frowns at the back of his head. "A direction to head in. Jaylah, what can you tell us?"

McCoy hates this rush of preparation. As if they can possibly equip themselves for everything that waits out there. He paces across the bridge to the view screen and its picture of the mine camp around them. A couple hours, he tells himself, and they'll be heading back. It's no so far, Jim will work that diplomatic magic of his talking to this woman, and they'll be back on the ship. Maybe on their way to getting out of here. Tomorrow, even. Or sooner.

Jim catches him there at the edge of the room.

"Excited?" he asks.

"Good God," McCoy says. "A hike through mountains lousy with - what did Jaylah call them? Vermin? Comms that barely work? Sensors that are gummed up with goddamn alien rocks?"

"Thought so," Jim says. "It'll be ok, Bones."

"You always say that."

"It always is," Jim says and McCoy walks off with a huff. Oh, to forget all the times it isn't, or so conveniently brush them aside with that confidence Jim wears so well.

In sickbay, McCoy stuffs med supplies into a pack. Chapel used to do this for him. Hell, most of the time she'd have supplies set to go in crates to be beamed down before Jim had finished the mission briefing. He'd gotten so used to how she arranged everything that once it had been M'Benga doing it and he'd searched for ten minutes for a scalpel, cursing the entire time. God does he miss her.

"Sir?" he hears. Lavigne, with a padd and a tricorder. "Any orders?"

"Keep them alive," he says and adds four rolls of gauze to what he already has. "Hell, wake them up if you can."

"Yes, sir."

He glances up. "You'll be fine, Nurse."

She licks at her lips. "Of course."

He grabs a stack of hypos. He needs pressure bandages, wrappings for a splint, antihistamines, tricorders calibrated for the unknown, electrolyte supplements, thermal blankets, plasma packs - human only, no need for the half-Vulcan ones, carefully crafted from the blood McCoy has eked out of Spock over the years, badgered at him to stockpile for what if.

"Dermal regenerators?" he asks.

"Here's two," Lavigne says.

"Make it three," he says.

This is not his first rodeo, not on some hellish planet and not with Jim in tow. There's always a crazed sort of hope, heading out for something like this, and today is no different. Now with him and Jim up on two feet, all limbs working and accounted for, blood firmly where it should be, pumping through them and not soaking into bandages. It's a macabre vision that floats across McCoy's mind but hardly unfounded with the times he's sent off crews whole and healthy and gotten them back on his surgery table, mouths gasping like fish and their eyes blown wide.

"Be careful around here," he tells Lavigne. She nods and gives him a small wave as he shoulders his pack and walks out.

There's an envirosuit hanging in his quarters. One for Spock too, but McCoy's careful to grab his own, medical insignia and all. He was proud of that once he's sure, even though he can barely remember that feeling now, being handed his insignia and rank stripes at a long ago ceremony he had found himself caring about despite his best intentions. Now, he chucks his uniform up on his bed and shakes out the undershirt that Starfleet has deemed most likely to keep him breathing and conscious out in the thick of things.

He yanks the shirt over his head. When he reemerges, Spock is in the doorway.

He draws up short. McCoy slowly settles the shirt over his stomach.

"I thought you had already left," Spock says.

"Can't be quick about anything when Starfleet issues forty seven different uniforms, all to be worn at overly specific times." McCoy jams his shirt into his waistband, then stops. He needs to change his pants too. "I thought you'd enjoy the particularity of it all."

McCoy doesn't think he's imagining that backwards lean Spock has. He should get on then, Spock should, if he can't bear to be in here. It's McCoy's room too, and he's the one who's supposed to be pulling on boots so he can tramp out into this world he doesn't want to be on.

He sighs.

He doesn't need to put Spock through anything more, now does he, not even that snap at him in his own mind.

"Listen," McCoy starts.

"If you do not have any questions regarding the tricorder calibration, then our business here is concluded."

McCoy frowns. Spock is the one who walked in here, after all.

"Hey," he says, his own voice so soft he's not sure that the word has even come out. Except that Spock searches out any part of the room that doesn't have him him in it, which isn't a whole hell of a lot.

Then, Spock does step backwards. It triggers the door to open.

"Stay safe," McCoy offers though it falls hollow. Not nearly enough, except he hardly knows what would be.

And Spock doesn't apparently want to hear it, because he only peers at him.

"I mean it," McCoy says.

And then Spock walking away, a clip of a boot heel on the decking and then another, that even rhythm across the floor that carries Spock down the hall.

The door shuts again before McCoy is done listening.

…

There was a thrill to this back in those early days, one that even McCoy could admit to when they had just left Earth and these missions were new enough to taste. And earlier still, back at the Academy, when following Jim through training exercises was novel, out in Yellowstone, Yosemite, that week they spent in Alaska, all mosquitos and long nights of sunlight.

But that was their sun, the bright yellow shine of it, and the air had been sweet with the smell of summer.

Jaylah's right, this planet feels wrong. Pricks at him, like a deep crawl over his skin.

As dusk settles over the mountain, Jim rests his hands on his hips. Sweat dampens his hair to brown, and McCoy feels an answering stick to his own shirt beneath his unzipped jacket.

"Camp here?" Jim asks.

"Camping involves s'mores," McCoy says and dumps his jacket on the ground next to his pack. "And a guitar and a cooler of beer."

"When we get home," Jim says and points a finger at McCoy. A grin spreads over his face. "We're doing that."

"When we get home," McCoy says, "I have no intention of ever sleeping on the ground again."

"C'mon, we'll roast weenies. And we'll make Spock come, right? I'd pay money to see it. Him and marshmallows- he'd probably dissect them and declare them illogical."

McCoy squints out at the hills around them. "What'd we bring to eat?"

"What? Oh. Protein bars." From his hip pouch, Jim produces a foil wrapped package. McCoy should have known. His stomach clenches at the thought of them. "The good kind though. Chocolate chip."

"There is no good kind," McCoy says.

It's synthesized, all of it. There's no real chocolate in space. He drops down onto a rock and lets his boots splay out wide into the loose gravel they've been hiking through.

After a moment, Jim sits across from him. With two hands, Jim scrubs his palms over his face, and then into his hair, making it stick up. For a moment, McCoy seizes on the memory of their old dorm room, early mornings with Jim bleary eyed and blinking, pillow creases over his cheek. Then, he lets the image float away again. McCoy's not sure he'd recognize that kid anymore. Of course, he's not sure he'd know himself, either. Too much has come into their lives since then, that day he found the hulking silhouette of the Enterprise rising out of Iowa's cornfields. The shape of it had seemed auspicious. A portent, for better or worse.

Crazy to think that it's as good as gone now. Black and burnt, never to fly again.

He tips his face up towards the sky, eyes closed against the setting sun. When he opens them again, Jim has his lips pressed together and his expression is a bit too soft.

"Are you really thinking of leaving?" Jim asks. In his hands, he turns the bar over and around, the foil crinkling.

"You were," McCoy says and wipes sweat from his face off onto his sleeve. A day of hiking doesn't leave him particularly charitable, with sore heels and a wet shirt drying on him. He'd had a shower with real water on the ship. The privileges of rank, dispensed in paperwork, too long shifts, and the chance to fill his bathroom with steam.

"Yeah." Jim ducks his head down. His hair is still a mess. McCoy watches him peel open the bar and then hold it out so hopefully that McCoy sighs and takes it.

"This mission is even worse than what I thought it'd be," McCoy says, two bites in and wishing even for the Franklin's antique replicator. That food is warm at least, and with the sun settling behind the hills for the night, the chill of evening isn't so far off.

"Is that enough to throw in the towel?"

"Jesus, Jim, I don't know." McCoy digs his thumb and forefinger into the corner of his eyes. "I want to go home."

"I thought you did, hightailing it back to the ship."

Georgia, McCoy doesn't say. Swampy heat and lightning bugs. He swallows another bite. These bars are always too chalky. Get in his molars and stick there.

"Sorry 'bout that," he says and shoves the rest of the bar in his mouth. He stands and brushes his hands off on his thighs. Around them, the mountainside is descending into blue shadows, and the sky is tinting yellow, a poor approximation of a true sunset. He scratches his fingers through his hair. It's crusty with drying sweat. "I am, you know."

Jim sighs. When his eyes dip closed, there are lines on his face that weren't always there.

"Listen," Jim says. "If you're sitting here, looking at your life and wondering if you're going to be doing this job until you retire, I can relate." He holds his hands up, palms out. "Just don't start yelling again, ok?"

McCoy is standing. Even in his head, that distinction sounds too much like something Spock would point out. Pedantic and unhelpful, at best. He presses his lips together, gravel grinding under the heel of his boot.

Jim's watching him. Not the way that Spock does sometimes, that McCoy can feel skitter across his entire body, but with the corners of his eyes folded up and his eyebrows raised. He looks so unsure and isn't that the hell of it, their intrepid captain who used to run out of matching sets of socks 'cause for all his brilliance, he had never quite mastered laundry.

McCoy lets out a long breath. His head is starting to hurt, a dull pound of a too long hike on a too hot day. Never did scan his own skull after Spock whacked him into the dirt. He should have had Lavigne do it while he had the chance.

"I thought this is what you wanted," McCoy says. "A ship. Your own crew." He waves towards the mountains around them. "Deadly planets to explore"

"It is. It was." Jim looks up at him. "I just had a- a momentary lapse."

"That's a hell of a midlife crises, Jim. Giving up on everything you've worked so hard for."

"Yeah." Jim leans forward, his elbows on his knees. "I know."

McCoy stares out at the sunset. Damn Jim and damn Starfleet for getting him here. Himself too, he should add to that list, but isn't it always easier to lay the blame at someone else's feet, unfair as it is.

"Jim," he says softly and waits till Jim looks up at him. "What brought this about?"

"I don't know," Jim says. His hands hang limp between his knees. "I guess I just thought that… I thought that if this is what I'm doing for the rest of my life, I should maybe reevaluate. My- my dad was married with a second kid on the way at my age. And I don't even have-" Jim looks over at him. His eyes are soft. Sad. "It's all great, up until you realize nobody's going to be there next to you at night, you know?"

"That's what all this was?" McCoy asks. Good God, there must be something in the air these days. Though trust Spock and Jim to independently arrive at the destination of not just cutting out of Starfleet, but that their beds were too big and too empty. McCoy grimaces. Geniuses, the two of them are. He would smack some sense into them both, given the chance.

Jim sighs. "Is it such a bad reason?"

McCoy watches him, that hang to his head.

"Carol?" he finally asks.

"Aw hell, Bones, I don't want to talk about Carol."

"You were really going to leave because you're not picking out china sets?" McCoy shakes his head. He's been there, and he's the first to tell anyone it's sure as hell not what it's cracked up to be. "Really?"

"When you say it like that, it doesn't sound as good," Jim says. He rubs his hand up the back of his neck. "But two more years out here, a debrief on Earth, maybe a rotation through a teaching position - God help me - and then back out again? And then again after that? I started counting years, Bones, and they add up."

"You're trying to tell me this?" McCoy asks.

"I know." The smile Jim offers him is weak. "I should have- I should have told you."

"You told Uhura," McCoy says. He doesn't have enough energy to pretend that doesn't sting.

"Spock told you," Jim says. Then he sighs again, his shoulders slumping. "She worked it out. All those transmissions."

"Your own damn fault for hiring a genius for a comms officer."

"Figures, doesn't it," Jim says, easy and light until the expression slips, the brightness of it falling from his face like he can't quite hold onto it for any longer. He fumbles with his utility belt and fishes out a second protein bar, fiddling with it, his head bent forward. "Five years is longer than I thought'd be."

"I've been telling you that for ages, Jim." McCoy waves towards the mountains, their rather lacking dinner, the ground that they'll be sleeping on, hard, rocky, and likely damp once evening settles and with it the night's dew. "Why would anyone want to do this for very long? So far from home and our families?"

"I wasn't-" Jim scratches the back of his neck. "I wasn't really thinking of going home."

McCoy turns. "You weren't."

"I don't know. Iowa? What the hell is even back there. At least Spock…" Jim shakes his head. "He'd have a reason to go- well, not home, exactly, is it. But me? Hell, you?"

"Speak for yourself," McCoy says.

"C'mon, Bones, what would we do back on Earth?" Jim asks. "Isn't it one of those things, the thought of it is better than being there?"

But McCoy can't answer that, so he doesn't try. Instead, he crumples the wrapper of his bar in his hand, the foil wrinkling. When Jim opens his, McCoy sits back down and tugs off his boots. He won't get any decent sleep tonight and breakfast will be no better than dinner was, but he can at least put on clean socks.

That night, already cold as soon as he settles himself down on the ground even with his jacket zipped to his chin, McCoy tries to drive Jim's question out of his mind, but it's stuck there like a chorus of a bad song. He worries at it, turning it over and around again in his head, annoyed at himself for even wondering. He's wanted to go home since he left, now hasn't he. Hasn't done shit about that want, but it's lingered all the same. Gnawed at him until he ignores it most of the time. And thinking about it now will just make it yet another night of tossing and turning, this time on the poor comfort of gravel. Though yesterday at this hour it was the hard slats of his bunk through a too thin mattress and that wasn't much better, now was it. He closes his eyes, like blocking out the foreign stars above him will also blot that memory, the too quiet room and how he strained to listen for the door.

"Jim," he finally whispers.

"Huh?"

"Do you really want to be with someone?" McCoy asks. In the blue black of night, Jim turns to look at him. "That badly?"

"I dunno." There's a long pause. "Yeah. I do."

"It's the Enterprise."

"I'm staying, Bones. But it's- I still want that."

"Jim Kirk," McCoy says. "Settling down."

Jim huffs out a quiet laugh at that and for some time, McCoy stares up at the stars. Then, he rolls his head over to look at Jim again. "And after the mission? Does it- does wanting that change what you'll do?"

"I don't know what I'll end up doing." Jim palms his face. "You?"

"Dunno."

"Would you be up for another one?" Jim asks. "Another five years after this?"

"I don't want to finish this one," McCoy says to the sky above them, but there's no heart in it and when he blows out a frosty breath, it's resigned.

Still, Jim looks over at him. "I wouldn't want to do this without you."

"Cause it'd take you all of three minutes to end up back on a biobed." McCoy frowns at the night sky. "How the hell do you think we feel, you wanting to cut loose?"

"Aww, Bones, I love you too," Jim offers, easy as can be and with a note of lightness that tells McCoy everything he needs to know about how little Jim wants to keep talking about this.

Whatever, he can suit himself. And McCoy can play ball, if Jim wants to pull back into himself.

"This conversation isn't going to end up with you thinking we're going to cuddle tonight, Jim."

"C'mon, I'll let you be little spoon."

McCoy rolls his eyes. In the dark, Jim had better not be wagging his eyebrows.

He doesn't turn to check. Instead, he studies the moon, just peeking up above a hill. It's still too large. It throws the shadows of rocks around them into strange shapes, the inky black far darker than McCoy would like to peer into.

"Uhura had a date," Jim suddenly says.

Gravel crunches beneath McCoy's head as he turns quickly to look at him. Jim's staring straight up. McCoy eyes him.

"Did she," he finally says.

"At Yorktown." McCoy can just make out his grimace. "She was telling me about it before we got there. And Sulu- he and Ben are thinking about having another kid."

"Good for them," McCoy says. "Uhura, too."

"Yeah."

"Did she go?" McCoy asks when Jim just keeps laying there.

"Oh. I don't know." Jim crosses his arms over his chest. "I think so."

"Is that-" McCoy licks at his lips for a moment to pause. "Is that what this is about?"

"The Hood wants Chekov. Badly. I was just… being preemptive, I guess."

So it wouldn't hurt so bad when the crew drifted away from him. He doesn't have to say it, cause McCoy can hear it loud and clear. Get the hell out of dodge now, and Jim wouldn't have to face the end of the mission, his crew straying away from him for their own lives.

"Jim…"

"Forget it. It was just a long couple months." Jim covers his eyes with his palm. "I'm fine. I'm over it."

"Hey," McCoy says. Jim wipes at his nose with the back of his hand.

"What if Spock really resigned?" Jim asks.

"He says he's not going to," McCoy says. Which means two more years of the man. On the ship - their ship - his and Spock's quarters were across the hall from each other. How many mornings McCoy would walk out into the corridor bleary eyed and interrupted on his way for coffee by Spock standing there in his own doorway, he'll never know. Too many for it to be anything but commonplace, Spock the first person he saw when he woke up most days, heading off to some lab somewhere before his shift started, or trailing McCoy to the mess hall, silent beside him in the turbolift.

Maybe McCoy will be on a different deck on the new ship. He hadn't bothered to look at the designs Jim had sent around, though now it seems like it'd pay to be prepared. Know what he's getting into when they board that damn thing.

If he goes. Which he sure as shit doesn't want to.

Jim chews on his lip long enough that McCoy wants to tell him to stop. Or deal with it himself when it ends up raw and in need of a dermal regenerator. But McCoy would do it anyway, he knows. Hunt through his pack and lean over Jim until he was patched back up.

"Uhura seeing someone doesn't mean she's transferring her commission," McCoy says. "And Sulu was with us when Demora was born."

"Yeah. But now you." Jim's so quiet that McCoy can hear the details of the night, a low rush of the breeze. Somewhere near them, a stick snaps. Back on Yorktown when none of them thought they would ever be here again, Jaylah had told them about the large herbivores she used to hunt. Now, McCoy just hopes the thing is well fed and not interested in investigating if humans resemble roughage in any way.

Two more years of this. Cold nights and sounds from the dark, following Jim out into the unknown. Of Spock there at every turn, and McCoy living full well with the memory of what they did.

Though there's shuttles from Yorktown. Not direct, but a few connections and he'd be back. A transfer at Andoria's spaceport, he's pretty sure, and another not far from Risa.

Vulcan would have been one. It was such a huge transport hub in this section of the quadrant, not that McCoy had ever been there before… before. He never had been much for interstellar flight, not in those days. Jocelyn had wanted to go to Aldebaran for their honeymoon. He had thought Europe sounded nice, and in the end they spent ten days on Io. He had a nice time, he thinks, though neither of them had been particularly satisfied with the compromise. She had asked again, later, some anniversary or birthday, to go to Procyon. Or Capella Prime, maybe it was. He remembers the fight even if the planet slips away from him.

He had visited the moon once, with his dad. How far away that had seemed, Earth blue and white and green hanging beyond his outstretched fingers.

"If-" Jim clears his throat. "-If you want to go, you should." He's blinking up at the sky. "I won't give you a hard time about it."

McCoy wants to laugh at that, the idea of Jim Kirk letting him slip out of his life quietly, but the noise sticks in his throat. After too long of working his tongue through his mouth, Jim turns towards him.

"If you want something else out of life than this, I get it," Jim says and hell if he doesn't sound serious now, moonlight cutting over his face. Around them, the dark feels pressing, too close. It makes McCoy want to scratch at the back of his neck, like he can itch away the press of this planet. "A house. A dog. All… that."

McCoy had a dog. For a long time, that click of nails over the floor and the thump of a tail against his legs when he eased the door open after a too long hospital shift was what he missed the most.

Illogical, his mind supplies. He frowns. It was hardly his greatest loss.

He'd roll onto his side away from Jim, but surely the gravel would only be harder like that, would jut into his shoulder and poke at him worse than it's doing now. As it is, he's already put in mind of another night on this planet, spent shivering and sleepless, and it's not one he wants to think of.

"I don't know what I want," he says instead and hears the truth in the words as soon as they're out there in the night, hanging silver and frigid between them, a warm puff of air.

And hasn't it been years of that, really. Flying away from what had been at warp speed, Jim Kirk beside him the entire way, and the rest of them too for most of it. Uhura, down the hall in their dorm and then on the ship, Sulu in half of his classes, and Chekov tagging along anywhere and everywhere Jim was. Spock too of course, ubiquitous at Jim's side as soon as they'd met. This cadre, motley as they are, privy to so much of the distance McCoy had put between himself and all that he had come from.

But getting the hell out of dodge at a sprint isn't exactly the same as going towards something, a fact he spends a lot of time ignoring. Which is easier to do with the regularity of shift changes and annual vaccinations and checkups of a crew of hundreds. Less so with the quiet of the night around him.

He closes his eyes. He can't exactly blame Jim for trying to stack the blocks of his life up into a resemblance of normalcy. Any of them would do the same. Are doing the same maybe, if Sulu growing his family is any indication, and Uhura too, looking beyond the banality of ship life.

Spock as well. Apparently. If that's what that was. Though hell if McCoy knows, since that man hasn't ever made any sense and as if the last days haven't been the worst of that. Ever since that cave, a delirium to Spock that McCoy had been glad to chalk up to his wound.

It'll settle back down, he knows. There will be a day that all of this has faded and God willing, he and Spock can slip by this, leave it buried down deep in a past that McCoy doesn't need to think about. Until then, he'll keep his head down and wait for Spock's frostiness to thaw. And keep his hands to himself, because Jim isn't wrong about a warm body at night, someone to be there at the end of a shift, and Spock is as warm as they come. That shape of him. How he felt under McCoy's hands, and that's without taking the time to really explore. He grits his teeth before his mind can wander like his fingers wanted to.

But it's the thought of that which is tempting, not the actuality. Jim's right about that. McCoy has been there before, that allure of opening his life up to someone, and he doesn't need to walk that path again. Some doors once shut are better left to lie.

He rubs his finger and thumb into his eyes, his sigh blowing onto his wrist where his jacket sleeve pulls back. Move on and along, a well worn mantra in his life.

He should ask Jim to change rooms with him when they get back to the Franklin. Put some space between himself and Spock. It'd be better than living together with Spock, what with all of this hanging between them. McCoy doesn't need to be there as a constant reminder, not if he doesn't want what Spock so apparently does. He can spare him that at least, a too close roommate when it'd be best if they could both get some distance.

Though asking Jim for that would mean at least some sort of reason he'd have to furnish. And Spock… Spock'll likely never tell Jim. McCoy can't imagine that he would, what with how tight the man can clam up. Though the idea of years ticking past and Jim not knowing is all too odd. Makes the silence that much heavier, like it's too clandestine to speak aloud. And maybe… maybe if Jim knew, he could talk to Spock. Do it in a way that McCoy can't. Find out what's going on with the man.

McCoy licks at his lips. He shouldn't, probably. But he does anyway, the jitter inside of him building into how he drops his hand and turns his head on the crunch of the gravel. He wants it out, this jump inside of him at the thought of Spock, wants it worked free and unknotted until it finally leaves him the hell alone.

"Jim," he says. "There's something-"

Another stick snaps. Closer this time.

"Hmm?" Jim asks. His eyes are on the dark, peering at the night around them and he's half upright. When nothing happens, he lays back down, and McCoy finds his attention on him again.

It's harder the second time.

"Spock," he starts.

"Yeah?" Jim asks when McCoy stops there.

McCoy draws in a breath but he doesn't have to push it out with words formed around it, because there's another crack and this time, the shadows move.

One, two, a dozen figures step out. McCoy makes out the shape of a phaser rifle. Beside him, Jim's already crouching and McCoy scrambles to sit upright too.

A silhouette detaches from the group, the shine of the moon throwing her features into stark silver and shadows.

"You have Manas," the woman says. She's holding a phaser too. "You will take us to him."