tell me something i don't know.

independent aos leonard mccoy. mun/muse well over 18. read rules. under construction.

[trek-tracks]

My name is Bones

And wen its day

I jab you with

A hypospraey

Accept yur fate

With joy I lurk

I vaccinate

I stabb the Kirk

[medicalcode-blog]

hopeintheimpossible:

He’s done too much dwelling in his life, the short life it’s been. Jim knows this, but can’t make it stop, halt his brain from traipsing over the what-ifs. There’s no point to it, can’t go back and change it (not unless there’s another deep space anomaly involving black holes and red matter, but let’s not go through that again). 

Still, as he rests his elbows on the balcony, he wonders, not for the first, or hundredth time, how his dad would have done it. If he would have saved more, kept the ship intact, if he would have left Jaylah and her plight behind, if he would have avoided the whole mess at all. 

What sets his thoughts back into gear is the knowledge that they’re still here. His ship is just a place, a thing, and it can be rebuilt. The people on it are another story, and he’s lost too many already. 

Bones fills the empty space at his side like he was always meant to be there, and Jim looks over at him with a brow raised, grin pulling into a full smile, teeth and everything. “And here I was, expecting a piñata.”

Jim returns the gesture, watching his best friend’s still scraped knuckles, and his smile softens. “Me too.“ 

His gaze goes back to the sky, eyes following the panels separating them from oblivion, and he lets out a long breath. “You ever, uh,” and he falters, because he knows what he wants to ask, but he’s never put the errant thought into words, even though it’s one he’s had for years. 

“You ever wish you didn’t agree to smuggle me onto that shuttle? Just sent one more desperate lunatic on his way?”

   “Not a chance in hell.”

   The words are out before he’s had time to consider them, reckless and blunt in their truth. With Jim not looking at him, it’s both easier and harder to tell what he’s thinking; he can see the bob of his adam’s apple, the uncertainty before the uncharacteristic fumble, but without a good look at the kid’s eyes, it’s hard to tell exactly which way to sway on the fine line he knows he’ll be walking with this conversation.

   Kid, he thinks, like Jim hasn’t carried the weight of the damn galaxy on his shoulders since he slurred was it Romulan? around the numb tongue that he’d been so generously gifted by Leonard’s own temporary break in sanity. Kid, as though Jim weren’t older and wiser than even Leonard himself in some ways, and he shakes his head, his own gaze sliding away from Jim’s profile.

   “Jim,” he inhales on his name, brow furrowing as a shuttle glides against a backdrop of stars, smooth and steady. Like so many things, he knows that to be a damn lie, knows that the people strapped into it can all but feel their teeth rattle when the thing takes off and lands, but from here, it almost looks nice. “Smuggling your fool self onto that shuttle was probably the second-best decision I ever made.”

   The first, the one he never would have expected, was of course joining Starfleet itself. It’d thrown him into the path of the self-proclaimed desperate lunatic at his side, sure, but it had given him a purpose again, a reason to brush himself off and try -- and it’s put him well on his way to being a man Joanna would be proud to call her daddy, he hopes.

   “Saved a lot of lives,” he says unnecessarily, and he’s not sure if he means that first mission (where they lost a lot of lives, too, an entire planet; it’s a nightmare he can’t imagine, and one that he sees sometimes when they’re out in the black, only it’s Earth and Joanna and, hell, even Jocelyn lighting up memorial vids) or this last one, or any of the ones in between. 

   “Saved your life,” he adds, a little quieter, and refocuses on Jim’s face, the bruise still fading around his eye. He’s losing the thread of the conversation, incidents bleeding together until his words mean nothing and everything at the same time. “And like it or not, without you around, I’m the desperate lunatic.”

   The words are light and so is his smile, but he leans in nevertheless, bumping his shoulder against Jim’s and settling there, warm and solid. “So I’ve come to the conclusion I can’t leave you alone for a hot minute, when it comes down to it. I hope you’re looking forward to five solid years of me bitching about the trouble you get me into.”

   And yet it hadn’t even crossed his mind to request a transfer or even medical leave, which he’s sure would be granted without question after the circus of events they’d all been through recently. Fact is, the only thing that terrifies him more than the idea of hurtling into the unexplored reaches of space is the idea of Jim doing it with someone else as his CMO, and if that’s not a sign he’s gone batshit crazy, he doesn’t know what is.

   Hell, he’d piloted an enemy ship damn near straight into the deadliest ceiling fan he’s ever seen. He’d made a serum out of a supersoldier’s blood and brought his best friend back from the dead. He’s willingly signing more than just his life away to an organization he’d thought he’d just take a spin in, do the required service and take a nice commission somewhere on a base, and all so that he can keep an eye on Jim Kirk.

   He’s absolutely out of his mind, and he can’t help but smile about it.

[dubiousculturalartifact]

random observations from re-watching the first AOS Star Trek film:

people always characterize Kirk & McCoy’s dynamic as pure ‘IM GONNA DO THE THING, BONES” vs “DAMNIT JIM DONT DO THE THING”

but it’s incredibly significant to me, that it’s Bones who makes the decision to smuggle him onto the Enterprise.

Jim finds out that he’s under academic suspension, and can’t go with the rest of the fleet, and he doesn’t argue.

He stands there, looking a little bit lost, sure.

But he tells Bones to go without him, lies to Bones’ face and says that he’s fine, he’s ‘good’, even though it’s absolutely killing to say that.

Except he knows Bones’ needs that lie, that reassurance, because Bones is the one who is scared, not him, and if it’s the last thing they say to each other, Bones needs to know that Kirk will be okay.

And then Bones is the one who decides to say “screw regulations, screw the entire academic board of Starfleet and the Medical Code, I’m going to misappropriate medical supplies & inject you with them, to falsify a medical dispensation that will get you on board once I bullshit my way past security. Risking, if we get caught, at a minimum some form of academic penalty, and possibly the loss of my license. But I’m not doing this without my friend by my side.”

It’s then you remember that Kirk isn’t the only last-minute sign-up that day in Iowa.

Bones wasn’t at the bar with the rest of the cadets, or he would have probably met Kirk there, instead, & checked him over for a concussion, at the very least.

He was the only one other than Jim to show up for the shuttle without a uniform, which all of the rest of them had, at a minimum, the night before. 

Which means, given what we heard, Bones’ divorce proceedings finally went through, and the next day he woke up, started drinking, and thought to himself. ‘you know, I just got divorced, I’m flat broke, but hey, let’s sign up for STAR FLEET. Because it’s a new start! I’m definitely not signing up for an organization that operates almost exclusively in space, when I’m afraid of flying. that would be a terrible life choice, who would do that? Right. It’s settled, then. I’m gonna do that.”

tl:dr Bones isn’t impulsive as often as Kirk, but when he is:

A. it’s a doozy

B. it probably winds up saving the entire galaxy, somewhere along the way

[charliecox]

You like being the only genius level repeat offender in the midwest? Maybe I love it.

[hopeintheimpossible-blog]

@medicalcode

The party’d been a good touch. Not something he’s ever wanted, and if it had been just acquaintances it would have felt contrived, empty, but - 

These people are more than that. So it’d been good. A celebration of life, and not just his, and it’s good. 

Whiskey warming his skin, he leans on the thin rail and looks over the city they saved. This behemoth of a world, man-made and man-run, and they almost lost it. Gratitude swells in his chest, and he brings the glass up to his lips again, stuck in a spiral of melancholy that feels like something growing up his throat. It’s not bad, though. 

Another chime of laughter echoes from the room behind him, and yeah. It’s good. 

The door slides open on a quiet hiss, and Jim smiles down at the countless stories beneath them, held together by wire and concrete. “You made it work, Bones,” he says, turning to him and raising his glass. There’s another thought stuck in his mouth, but he drinks again instead. 

[medicalcode-blog]

  It had been a bit of a gamble, and he’d never been much one for the sport -- drank his fair share and then some, and had plenty of other vices, when it came down to it, but at least he'd never frittered away his and Joss' savings on a roll of the dice -- but he liked to think that he knew Jim well enough to know what note to strike on a surprise party. If the years they'd spent alternatively at each other's throats (mostly Bones, when it came down to it) and commiserating over Starfleet core educational classes hadn't been enough, then the years spent hurtling through deep space in a tin can against all reason damn well had better have been good for something.

  Sometimes, he still thinks that he's smack dab in the middle of his mid-life crisis still, or maybe a psychotic break. It's the only thing that would explain the fact that he not only committed himself to Starfleet, of all things, but has willingly hitched his wagon to the craziest bastard the Federation's spit out in the last decade. Don't get him wrong, he loves Jim to death, but this is not how he thought his life would pan out when he was a fresh-faced med student in Georgia.

  Then again, he hadn't exactly seen it coming when his marriage imploded, even if he should have. He also hadn't ever bargained on the notion that his world would start to feel so damn small and claustrophobic that he'd jettison himself off a goddamn planet to get away from his problems, but it just circles back around to one thing: mid-life crisis.

  Or psychotic break.

  For someone deep in the throes of mental illness, though, he's felt pretty damn good lately. He could do without the long, lonely stretches in the inky black, and he could definitely stand to have less of Jim Kirk's brand of personal excitement in his life, but he's... content. If he didn't think it would bring hellfire and damnation down on his head to admit it, he might even go so far as to say that he's been happy lately.

  "Begging for trouble," he mutters, tugging at his sleeves as he waits for the doors to whisper open before him.

  Jim's alone, which he expected, and it adds to that feeling of rightness that's settling somewhere in his solar plexus that he's come to know his best friend so well. Things are... settling.

  It's a little terrifying sometimes, and if you'd asked the Leonard McCoy of a few years ago where his life was headed, he would've said the bottom of a bottle and face-up in a ditch somewhere, probably. Space is a bit of an improvement on that, he supposes.

  He sidles up beside Jim, propping his elbows up on the rail and letting their shoulders brush. You made it work, Bones.

  Imagine that.

  Half his mouth tugging into a smile, he drawls, "Well, the last birthday party I planned was for a four year-old, so I figured I couldn't go too wrong."

  Lifting a hand, he mimes clinking a glass against Jim's. "Glad you had a good time, kid."

[harleyfloyd-blog]

I’m going to give you a mild sedative. I wish I didn’t know you.

[andrewminyadr]

you stood apart in my calloused heart and you taught me and here’s what i learned: that love is about all the changes you make and not just three small words (x)

[treksource]

You spend all this time trying to be your father.                Now you’re wondering just what it means to be you.

[drbonesmccoy]

To perfect eyesight and a full head of hair.

[poedamxron]

Dammit, man! I’m a doctor, not a physicist!

[leviathan]

I’m bracing for the pain and I am letting go (x)