It seems that wherever Leonard McCoy turns, Jim Kirk is there.
He’s doing a short temp shift at the library--he needs the extra credits stat--when Jim shows up at the reference desk, a pile of actual books nearly blocking his face.
He ignores the books--that’s the rare item librarian’s job and goes back to checking in the holo texts. “Don’t you have class or admirals to annoy?”
“I already stopped by Archer’s. Did you know his beagle had puppies?”
“You need to talk to L’tan if you want to check those out.” Leonard tells him.
“These are mine.” Jim’s almost constant open expression morphs into one of mock offense.
“Huh.” McCoy submits a few late charges for holos not turned in on time and sits back, happy to have finished before the end of his shift. “Let me guess? The karma sutra and Vulcan mating ritual guide?”
“No, smartass.”
Jim slides a book across the desk. It’s in good condition, with a protective wrapping around the hardcover, another surprise, and not a book on sex or eroticism.
“The House In The Cerulean Sea?”
“Seriously, one of the best books to come out of 21st century Terran literature. Followed closely--and by the same publisher!--” Jim slides another book.
“Gideon the Ninth?”
“Really fucking incredible. I’m writing a whole paper on it for a class right now on 21st Century Terran literature with a focus set in space.” At Leonard’s eyebrow lift, Jim shrugs. “It’s an elective.”
“And you’re showing them to me why?”
Jim makes a face at him, like a puppy denied a treat.
“Thought you might be interested. Never mind!”
Before he can say anything, he swipes the books, nearly dropping a few in the process and walks off. He leaves Gideon the Ninth. McCoy curses.
***
Two days later and he’s accosted by Gaila as he’s drinking shitty replicator coffee and the saddest cinnamon roll he’s ever tried to digest.
“Hello Leonard.” She says, stealing a chair across for him like they have a standing lunch.
“Hello, Gaila.”
He picks at the cinnamon roll before giving up entirely.
“You hurt his feelings.”
Leonard isn’t dumb, so of course he knows who she’s talking about. “Jim Kirk has more feelings than a Vulcan on opposite day.”
“He likes you.”
Leonard sputters on his tepid coffee. “We’re not in second grade, Gaila!”
“James is an awkward bean, Leonard. He is used to waggling his eyebrows for sex and if you’re well--you, that doesn’t seem to work.”
He considers this. “I thought he was having a fit.”
“And, he doesn’t just want sex from you. He wants friendship. More than that. You’re the first person--besides me and Captain Pike, of course, who doesn’t look at him and see his father, for better or worse.”
“The kid’s never around for me to really get to know. And when he does show up--I’m kind of busy.” Leonard admits. He shows up at all of Leonard’s shifts--the clinic with a broken nose, Admiral Archer’s office with random questions, the cafeteria when he doesn’t eat anything, his library shift--
“The books?”
“Do you know we met when he gave me a book--an Orion book of poetry, one of his favorites. It was the first physical thing I had of home since leaving.”
She looks over his shoulder for a moment, eyes tracking a memory but then she blinks, focusing back on Leonard.
“His Orion is a little rusty but we spent hours talking about it. It was lovely.” She smiles, content at this new memory, rewriting the one from before.\
He drums his hands on the table, thinking. “Okay.”
“You know what you need to do, yes?” Gaila says.
He does.
****
It takes him five hours, six bookstores and antique shops and one shady, alley dealing to find what he’s looking for.
And then another two hours, one embarrassing conversation with Archer’s assistant and getting lost in the Academy’s underground tunnels before he finds Jim.
“Sit! Sit. No, thank you for the kisses but no. Sit!”
The small basement space that was once a bunker for admirals in early Starfleet days now looks like a puppy daycare.
A long blue plastic tunnel bisects the space, with small hoops and a slide. In a pen sits Jim and around Jim are squirmy, tiny beagle puppies.
“Is this your repayment to Archer for making his last assistant quit?” Leonard asks.
Jim leans his head back to look at him upside down. A puppy takes this opportunity to bounce and Jim finds himself attacked by the cutest beagle army Starfleet has ever seen. Leonard is not as coldhearted as he thinks and reaches down to take one adorable puppy who yawns in Leonard’s face and then licks his chin.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” McCoy gestures to a bag he abandoned on the floor. “You forgot Gideon the Ninth.”
“Nah, you can keep it.” Jim tosses a training toy to the corner of the pen and the puppies fall over themselves to get to it.
“I can keep a 300 year old Terran book in pristine condition?”
“Just thought you might like it.”
Leonard rolls his eyes but can’t help but grinning. “Sorry bud.” He tells the puppy and puts him down among his litter-mates before reaching into the bag to pull out his offering.
He hands it to Jim.
“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in Vulcan. Bones, are you shitting me right now?”
“I am not.” Leonard doesn’t even try to hide his grin. He needs to send Gaila a thank you as soon as possible.
“And, holllllly shit, it’s signed by the translator.”
Jim is up and out of the pen, crashing him with a hug.
“My dad used to read me this book when I was a kid. Figured you could use a challenge.”
“Thank you.” Jim says, clutching the book to his chest like it was a missing piece of himself he didn’t know he had forgotten.
It doesn’t take them long after to become inseparable. They spend time down in the agility room with the puppies, reading to each other from their favorite books, spending free weekends tracking down obscure copies in bookstores along the coast. And it becomes a tradition on their anniversary. Bones--he becomes Bones pretty quickly--even proposes to Jim with a book, their love language becoming the physical print of words, the musky pages preserved over generations, a reminder of their beginning.
***
For @brevityis, who asked for fluff.
