can we please talk about how bones is sort ofbeing left behind u r the only one who understands me
omg can we just! It starts off slow because in the beginning bones doesn’t think jim has ever needed him more. The start of the five-year mission means that they both have little to do, no one has been stupid enough to get themselves injured and the crew are good enough to get on with their job seamlessly. So most evenings see them both in the captain’s quarters with jim just unloading all the pressure being a captain on bones who is more than wiling to carry it. He’s a regular sight on the bridge just to the left of the captain’s chair and is always greeted by a relieved smile and a holler of “bones!” which he rolls his eyes at on cue.
Then it’s the first proper mission and they finally get busy so their nights are cut down to three times a week but bones can still tell that jim needs someone to tell him he’s doing a good job. He starts to notice the inclusion of Spock more, which he is so relieved at. His biggest fear going into this whole thing was that jim and spock would never get on and no one would be there to stop spock the next time jim wound him up so bad that spock finished the job of throttling him. But that doesn’t mean that bones has to like the pointy-eared bastard though. Its awkward when the three of them are together off duty, most times ending up with arguments and one of them storming off (usually bones) so he mostly stays clear of jim when he’s with spock so their night together get cut to one or two a week.
When bones’ periods off are in sync with the bridge crew they have lunch together but those have begun to get tedious. Most of the discussion is taken up by work talk, science mumbo jumbo bones can’t wrap his head around or in jokes and references he wasn’t present for. At first he’d make them explain it but the time explaining wasn’t worth the pay off so he stops bothering. After an incident when bones nearly lost his head on a particularly messy away mission jim doesn’t like to take bones down with them unless he has to, so bones is only there at the end to bark out what happened as he patches them up.
After over a year, their evenings they can fit in together now feature spock and uhura too and bones doesn’t know when he started feeling like a spare part and someone jim doesn’t need anymore. There are a few less claps on the shoulder and grins and a few more “not now bones”. It starts to get easier in free periods to carry on his discussion with m’benga who he walked up from the med bay with and have lunch with him than sit through a conversation he wont be part of. Chapel is the person he’d prefer to sit back and have a drink with at the end of a stressful day and talk about how shitty it was than try and track down jim on his own. Bones doesn’t feel practically angry about it, these things happen. He was probably optimistic to think jim would have time for an old academy buddy when he had an entire crew to look out for. maybe he just hoped it’d last a little longer than it did.
ok i think i vented too much here but o h w e l l
