Headcanon meme. Bones is my one true saltmate, okay, it’s
like a soulmate but with bitterness about the world. Also, this is a little bit gonna be the Jim
& Bones Friendship Hour.
A: what I think realistically
Bones actually has a very real phobia of
space. Like, he manages it. He does a good job managing it. But.
Listen.
In order to successfully graduate
Starfleet Academy, every student must take and pass a shuttle piloting class. In case of emergency. Pass proficiently,
not just scrape by on a wing and a prayer.
Bones fails twice and scrapes that pass the third time and honestly he’s
thinking about just giving up. He knows
all the settings and controls—Jim drilled him silly after that first fail—but getting
into the simulator and seeing all that black, and the pressure, he just. He locks
up. It’s all he can do to control his
breathing, never mind controlling the shuttle.
He can’t go back to Georgia and he can’t do this and where does that leave him?
Jim finds Bones in a tiny-ass little bar
the day before his fourth retest date and drags him protesting out the door,
about eight whiskeys down, and bundles him into bed and listens to him mumble
about how he’s never going to pass and he’s never going to graduate and
honestly fucking good because space
is the worst and Jim’s crazy for wanting to go there but also Jim’s going to go
into space without him and Bones
doesn’t have anywhere else to go and it’s all just really awful, you know what
I mean, Jimmy?
“Sure, buddy,” Jim says, propping Bones
up and pushing a glass of water into his hands.
“Drink something, okay?”
The next day, at 1500 hours, Bones
stumbles into the simulator room with—well, not the worst hangover of his life, but probably top ten. And lo and fucking behold, instead of the usual gaggle of students looking to (re)test,
there’s James Goddamn Kirk, hands stuffed in his pockets and a sunny-ass smile
on his smart-ass face. James Goddamn
Kirk, who passed his pilot’s test with glowing
scores on the first try.
James Goddamn Kirk, who somehow lied and
cheated his way in here so that he could sit in the simulator while Bones
sweats his way through a passing grade.
It doesn’t cure his phobia, obviously,
but the first time Bones does
actually have to pilot a shuttle, it’s James Goddamn Kirk bleeding out in the copilot’s
seat and Bones barely even notices his heart race.
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
Leonard McCoy, day one of his term at
the Academy as he stumbles, shaking and panting, off the shuttle, swears to himself
that he’s going to pry this blue-eyed limpet off him on the spot and also
sedate anyone who addresses him as Bones.
Day one of his second year at the
Academy, Bones McCoy gets half-tackled by Jim, who’s already talking about this badass new Tactics class they’re
offering, I’m gonna take it and I’m gonna destroy everyone, it’s gonna be
awesome and he has no idea how this happened.
What would have been day one of his
fourth year, Bones is fuck knows how
far into the black of space, listening to his crew tattle on Jim’s delinquent
ass.
“Doc, I don’t think he’s taken an off
shift in, like, a couple days maybe,” Sulu says as he passes through for an
antihistamine.
“I’ll work on it,” Bones says, and jabs
Sulu with a hypo. “Stop poking plants
you don’t recognize.”
“Doctor McCoy, Alpha shift told me to
tell you that the captain forgot to eat today,” Chekov reports, sticking his
head inside. “Can I get another screen?”
“I’ll deal with that,” Bones says, and
waves the kid in. “Stop sleeping with
people you don’t know.”
“Doctor, I would appreciate it if you
intervened in the Captain’s opinion that holodeck safety protocols are
optional,” Spock says evenly as Chapel checks him for broken ribs.
“I’ll do my best,” Bones says, and gives
Spock a bitter wave with the medical tricorder.
“Stop getting in fistfights,
you have a damn phaser.”
“Doctor,” Uhura starts as Bones sprints
past her. “I think the Captain might be
allergic–”
“I’m on my way!” he yells back over his
shoulder. “Stop Spock from causing a
diplomatic incident!”
“Doc,” Scotty starts, leaning into the
medbay and squinting painfully.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Bones snarls,
and gives Scotty a vengeful jab with a hangover hypo (actually a calibrated mix
of thiamine, folic acid, and magnesium sulfate, but listen, it’s a hangover
hypo) as he marches past toward the bridge.
Bones has Regrets.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
Bones keeps expecting to get to a point
where he’s…like…past being horrified and shocked when one of the crew rolls in,
near death or already dead.
It wears on his soul like acid, every
time. He decides very early that he’s
going to leave Starfleet when Jim dies. The
longer he spends on the Enterprise, the more names he adds to that list (when
Spock dies, when Uhura dies, when Chekov-Sulu-Scotty dies).
Bones is a doctor, not an
adventurer. He’s not built to outlive
these people. When they are gone, he will never leave orbit again.
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is
shit so I believe it anyway
Read an AU once where Bones was a
humanitarian aid volunteer at like 21/22 who went to Tarsus IV and met furious,
half-starved, 13-year-old, fresh-off-a-genocide JT Kirk and it was my favorite
thing. It was also abandoned after like
two chapters. But like. Any intersection of my infinite feelings
about Tarsus IV and my infinite feelings about Bones & Jim (& Spock)
friendship is My Favorite Thing and I believe in my heart that this is true. Bones didn’t recognize him at the time and it
takes him years to connect the emaciated murderous kid with the electric blue
eyes to his buoyantly brilliant best friend, but he does, eventually. He asks Jim straight up, very late one night,
and they have one single conversation about it before they vow to never discuss
it again.
