In San Francisco, about a mile out from Starfleet there was a hill. It was almost like every other hill in San Francisco, except that this one was particularly twisty and particularly private (which is a certain Starship Captain and Chief Medical Officer bought up once dilapidated Victorian and redid it, before filling it with more kids than the house knew what to do with--and probably what the Captain and Doctor knew what to do with also).
On that same twisty hill, there happened to be a Victorian, one that was usually hidden by various plants and trees. (This offered even more privacy, and created, for the much-loved inhabitants, a closed in happy chaos)
In that once dilapidated, long suffering Victorian, was a Jim. But not just any Jim but a very important Jim--to his friends and family and the long suffering Doctor in the long suffering Victorian, especially.
But on the particular morning that was not quite Summer and no longer Spring, Jim was not the Jim that his husband and six children knew him as. Because something was wrong. Very wrong.
"Holy fuck." Maddy said around a yawn, that might have been a quiet scream. "Dad's like, our age."
“Language,” Joanna said, but didn’t really mean it.
Leonard McCoy, Bones to his husband, Papa to his kids, Doctor and exasperated spouse, stood between the threshold to his bedroom and the hallway, keeping his six children from seeing their dad-but-no-longer-the-dad-they-knew in nothing but his boxers on, the threadbare Starfleet shirt he stole back from Jo and mismatched socks.
He had a headache from whatever he drank last night and a hatred for his past self--who turned down the offer to let the brood stay Scotty and Jaylah (who were roommates, nothing more, he'd assured Davie and Chrissy who kept making googly eyes at the pair).
"Is Daddy going to be okay?" Abby said around a thumb--a habit that was usually saved for late night cuddles and the moments after loud noises.
"Alrighty, who wants pancakes? Let's go make pancakes!" Jo, firstborn, miracle of miracles, swept Abby up, pulled on Maddy's shirt and nudged Davie's butt with her toes.
Chrissy made a face, swinging under Jo's other arm and poked her head through Bones' unprotected side.
"Whoaaaa," she said, as George, bleary eyed and stumbling dragged his little sister back.
"Who the fuck are you?" Jim spit back.
Fuck, it was going to be a long morning.
~*~
Fortunately, but probably unfortunately, this was not the first time the Kirk-McCoys had been at Defcon 1. They had a neat system in place, now, after years of baptism by fire, which led to planning by fire, and afterwards, much tweaking of emergency systems.
Reinforcements were called in the form of their Bridge Family (Jo had explained once to her teacher that while she wasn't related to her Aunt Ny in the genetic way, she was a part of a large Bridge Family and so of course Auntie Ny could take her out of school, duh).
The Bridge Family was just as disgruntled this morning--having had way to much to drink at their annual Bridge Family Dinner at Spock and Nyota's and Bones still didn't know how they all got home tonight but by the way the hover car is parked, he assumes Jo drove--and yet they still manage to stumble in, graciously accepting mugs of steaming coffee and in the case of Spock, green tea.
Gray and Amanda arrive in the kids' War Room--also known as the Tent Room--just as Jim tries to make a break for it. The scuffle is heard throughout the house (Maddy has sequestered herself in the bathroom with a pile of books and her Comms becuase she gets stomach aches when she's nervous) and can hear through the radiators, the whole shouting match. She hasn't heard that many F-Bombs in one sentence since George let them watch an old Terran gang movie.
"Just calm down, DAMMNIT." Her Papa screams. She can imagine his red forehead and the vein popping out and probably a million more grey hairs turning stark white, as Papa says they always do when Daddy does something stupid--which, also according to Papa, is all the time.
"Fuck you, you fuck face. Where the fuck am I? I will fuck you up."
"I'm guessing," she hears George from across the hall in the Tent room (most of the walls haven't been reinforced in the house so you can usually hear everything that doesn't happen in a bedroom, thank the gods). "That this is dad post-Tarsus."
"Pre-Tarsus," Jo corrects. "He probably would have just stabbed us all with a a shoelace and left, if it was post."
"WHAT?" Davie yells over the yelling downstiars, a cacophony of the voices of their Bridge Family.
"Nothing, Davie Dave. Wanna play a game, I think we still have all the twister pieces in tact." George answers.
"We can probably escape to my house," Amanda answers and Maddy wishes she weren't stuck in the bathroom so she could join them.
"Sounds like a plan," Maddy can almost see her sister getting up and brushing herself off. "Through the window?"
Before she can get up, before she can ignore the way her stomach clenches painfully, she hears the window open. Hears the scuffle of feet over windowpane, the giggling of her younger siblings sneaking out of the house.
A knock. “Abs, you okay?”
Jo. Big sister to the rescue.
A loud bang downstairs reverberates up to the hallway. Maddy winces.
“I’m fine. Go ahead.”
“You’ll come find us when you’re ready?” Jo is talking over a series of raised voices, a cacophony of swear words and adult anxiety.
“Yep,” she gathers her hair up in a bun and settles back, stuck and feeling sorry for herself as Jo makes her way back to the tent room, over the window seat, out and down the trellises to join the rest of the Brood.
~*~
Two hours later, Maddy is staring at her lined ceiling, tracing the Enterprise’s shape with her eyes over and over, when a thump outside her door makes her bolt upright.
Situation one: It’s an intruder. Someone has incapacitated everyone downstairs and is on it’s way to come abduct her.
Situation two: It’s the Bridge Family wrestling her dad-turned-teenager as he makes his escape.
Situation three: Whoever turned Dad into a teenager has turned everyone else into a teenager and is coming to turn her into...an infant?
She has a huge Shakespeare’s collected works her dad found in a bookstore in Portland and a deadly swing that made her the star of her softball team before she quit.
She’s not expected him. But he’s not really expecting her either.
She swings and hits her dad, teenage version, smack in the face with Shakespeare’s tome.
“Holy shit, I’m so sorry.”
“Ah, fuck,” Her dad says, hands cupping his nose. He snorts and it actually sounds like a laugh. “Wow, that was a good hit.”
She’s handing him a scarf from her nightstand and maybe a pajama shirt or a band tee or something for his nose and now he’s laughing. And she’s laughing.
And she’s doubled over because how many times can you meet your dad when he’s your age?
Only in your life, Maddy Kirk-McCoy, only in your life.
When Jim (she can’t really think of him as dad anymore, it’s too weird) assures her it’s not broken, she doesn’t feel much better about hitting him. The way he wriggled his face and prodded at it gently spoke of experience. She’s heard about his reckless childhood, of Grandma’s long trips to the black and a step-dad who forgot that Uncle Sam and Jim existed most days. And that was before Tarsus. Paradigm shift, Dad once said about it.
“How’d you get away?” She thought Pop was going to sit on Jim until they figured out a way to fix this. Her Papa could be scary when she was worried, she thought teenage Jim didn’t have a chance.
“Ah, the Scottish dude? Scotty? Was supposed to be watching me and he’s kind of easy to sneak away from.”
Maddy knew this to be very true.
“Are you okay?” She asked, rubbing her arms.
“I guess. Are you? Did all the other stays abandon you?”
“Strays?”
“This is a home for like misfit kids or something, right? That’s why I’m here? Knew Frank would sell me out eventually.”
“What? No! Wait, no...no one told you?”
Jim’s head tilted to the side the way it did when Davie suggested breaking into their neighbor’s pool to go swimming at midnight or Chrissy announced that she decided to only talk in pig latin for a month. Her dad was in there somewhere, still. That was good.
“Um. Shit.” She expected a rebuke. None came. She remembered all the f-bombs from earlier.
She sighed. She needed to get out of the house. Jim grinned, like he was reading her mind. “Want to escape for a bit? I think I heard someone say the window was a good way out.”
****
End of Part one. Let me know if I should continue. This might get long!
It turned out that alternate universe him--if that's who owned the house-- had good taste. Like one of those lifestyle holo-magazines where they shared spreads of celebrity houses--the bathroom was about the size of his and Spock's quarters combined. The shower--well, Jim could have spent forever under the warm spray. He couldn't remember the last time he stood under scalding hot water, or under any shower for longer than 2 minutes and he felt his headache slowly recede along with the fog he felt wrapped in.
He breathed in the steam and scrubbed the towel over his face and hair. In the academy, they had a whole class dedicated to how to handle alternate universes, portals, waking up in unfamiliar territory. They didn't cover alternate world children or how to handle waking up next to your best friend.
He'd been meaning to have the talk with Bones. Desperate for it. But near-disastrous away mission after close call kept them from having any alone time that wasn't spent in the medbay with the other sitting vigil.
And now he was the Daddy to Bones' Papa--in some fucked up alternate universe where things were as close to perfect as Jim could ever imagine them? It was enough to bring the headache back.
And if the look of confusion and horror on Bones' face hadn't told Jim enough when they first woke up about the idea of them being domestic, then he didn't know what else would.
He padded down the hallway on bare-feet, feeling way too comfortable in the sweatpants and tee he found neatly rolled up in a drawers under the windows. Alternate universe Jim was too neat, too organized and he wondered if alternate universe Bones had anything to do with that.
He stopped on the stairs when laughter rang out from below.
"Papa! That looks nothing like Doodles!"
"Sorry, darlin'." Bones' voice answered back. Bones was apparently better at playing along with this than Jim could ever be.
He found Bones at the stove, pajama pants hanging low on his hip and worn grey Starfleet--apparently that still existed in this world-- shirt barely covering his stomach. His hair was still a mess but he looked more at ease than he did when they woke up.
. The kitchen was like their bedroom and bathroom had been--spacious and warm--forgoing the modern look that most houses on Earth boasted and going for a more traditional one. It reminded him of the kitchen he saw in Bones' grandmother's farmhouse where generations of McCoy's cooked and spent time together.
"Dad! Papa's making Doodle pancakes." The little girl told him when she noticed him, grinning from behind a massive PADD screen that had cheery music playing from it.
Jim shifted his gaze quick enough to catch Bones swallow, and hard enough throat bobbed with the movement.
"Doodle, is apparently, our dachshund and also very hard to shape into pancakes."
Jim smiled. "Always knew you'd have a wiener dog, Bones."
"Doodle's sleeping." the girl said seriously, pointing to a covered, fluffy dog bed. "Papa always says she's a lazy butt."
Jim snorted. "That sounds like him."
He walked around the kitchen, taking in the photos of the three of them (photos that didn't tell him what he already could guess).
The fridge was a collection of magnets from different worlds they visited--seriously Risa had a magnet--holding up colorful renderings of what Jim could only guess was supposed to be them and Doodle the dachshund.
Daddy and Papa and--
"Jo." Jim said, feeling the name on his tongue.
"Yeah?" The little girl answered.
Whatever Jim was about to say was swallowed by the tactical team bursting through the backdoor and into the kitchen.
One day, he would wake up and actually remember what led him to that point.
His head felt like he’d just emerged from a deep dive, his limbs felt as if he’d fallen asleep in his ready room again, arms and legs akimbo and neck at an odd angle as he tried (and failed) to finish all his paperwork.
“Fuck,” he muttered and stretched. He was never letting Scotty make his own brew again.
“Ow, jesus,” A voice--Bones, it sounded like--said as his hand connected with a stubbled chin.
He sat up, eyes adjusting to...actual sunlight? The fuck?
“Too fucking bright, Jim.” Bones said, pulling a pillow over his head. “Lights, fifteen percent.”
Nothing happened.
“Bones.”
“Go away.”
“Bones.” Jim shifted and nudged the other man’s shoulder.
Bones blinked up at him and made a grab for the pillow as Jim tugged it away, grumbling as he sat up.
“I’m still drunk, apparently.” Bones said around a yawn. “Because that looks like actually sunlight.”
Jim swung his legs to the ground and his feet landed on something soft--slippers? Seriously?
“What do you remember?”
“Not this. Not Earth.” Bones kicked the covers off and headed to the large window in front of them. An expansive green lawn spread out beyond a wooden deck. Trees surrounded the property, like sentries, what lay beyond them?
“Papa?” A small voice from outside the room called. “Daddy?”
“Who the-” Bones started and a freckled little girl bounded into the room in a nightie, her strawberry blonde hair as unruly as Jim’s as she jumped onto the bed. “You’re awake!”
