Pansexual fun seeker & Mr. Sensitive

The town of Enterprise was buzzing with the news of Kirk’s arrest and impending trial, whispers that ranged from possible murder charges, to a mere three year sentence. Old men gathered around Barnett’s Barbershop shook their heads and said it was a good thing George didn’t have to see his son turn to the bad.

Ladies gossiped around dinner tables, discussing what a brilliant sheriff Pike was to have caught the wily outlaw at last and what a shame Kirk had fallen so far into depravity.

Young men secretly admired Kirk’s guts and survival skills, puzzling over how he’d gotten away with the Pacific Line Robbery for five years!!

Young ladies sighed over his photograph and declared his good looks had gone to his head and how terrible he’d used them to destroy women’s reputations and how they themselves would never fall prey.

Lenora heard plenty of this talk over the next week and it saddened her. She didn’t know enough of his personal experience to be able to really declare him incapable of being rehabilitated, but people didn’t get that bitter and cynical for no reason.

She wondered if James had had any real friends in his town or if his associates, like him, lived on the other side of the law.

It was a week before she headed black to the jail for a checkup of the infamous Gentleman Jim. As she was walking in, a tall, dark, stiff man was walking out, lips pressed together as if he’d just had his patience sorely tested.

“Morning, Mr. Spock,” she greeted genially, wondering who had managed to rile up the very even tempered lawyer so much.

“Good Morning, Doctor McCoy,” Spock responded politely, taking off his bowler hat and inclining his head respectfully as their paths crossed.

He didn’t seem in the mood for conversation and Lenora perfectly understood, not given to much idle chatter herself and guessing the reason behind Spock’s annoyance.

It was confirmed when she was escorted to Jim’s cell and he looked surprised.

“Wow! Another visitor already this morning? I feel so loved. To what do I owe the honor of your regal presence, Doctor?”

Lenora gritted her teeth at the mocking remark. Jim would be so much easier to put up with if he kept his insolent mouth shut. Poor Spock Trying to defend Jim without wanting to kill him in the process would be a miracle.

“To the fact you’re a patient, Kirk. I honestly don’t know how the guards put up with you, kid. You are certainly not helping your case right now,” she sighed, rolling up the leg of his tattered trousers to change the bandage.

“That’s what the lawyer they gave me said,” Kirk shrugged. “I liked him, though. Seemed like a genuine fellow.”

“I passed Mr. Spock on his way out of here and he looked ten years older already. I assumed that was your doing.”

Jim grinned at her again, stubby white teeth showing under thick chapped lips.

“Likely so, Ma'am. I am good at making people run.”

She raised a questioning brow at this odd statement, but he did not elaborate.

“If you don’t mind me asking, doc, how long have you been in town? Last time I snuck back, old Boyce was still saw bones in Enterprise.”

“Nearly six years, kid,” she answered briefly. “Came here in ‘80 fresh from Georgia after they put my husband in the ground.”

“Oh.” That shut up Jim for a while, a flush of shame creeping up his cheeks, showing he wasn’t completely callous yet.

Lenora decided not to let him off the hook entirely, because really, he should have guessed from her black dress, but she wasn’t going to hold a grudge for not knowing. It wasn’t something she really talked about, especially to near strangers.

“You came out here by yourself all alone, then? That takes tremendous courage, leaving everything you know and making your home in the uncivilized west.”

Kirk’s tone sounded almost respectful and downright curious.

“I needed a fresh start and had a severe disagreement with my family and in-laws. Heard from Boyce who offered me a position here and I took it.”

“Family can be a sore trial, indeed.” Kirk agreed with a grimace. “I have much experience in that area. My own mother didn’t want me and dumped me off at the nearest orphanage.”

She glanced at Pike for confirmation and he nodded with a grimace.

“Winona Kirk went a bit….unstable after George’s death, I’m afraid. No one’s seen hide nor hair of her since she left him as an infant.”

“Life stinks, kid. I do not believe, however, that that alone caused you to just start robbing trains all of a sudden. There’s got to be a story there.”

“Oh, there is,” Kirk confirmed with a sly smile. “Don’t think it’s quite appropriate to be telling a fine lady like yourself.”

His bruises had faded to a murky purplish-yellow and made him look rather ghastly.

Lenora rolled her eyes at the impudent brat.

“I’m not THAT delicate, kid. I’m a doctor, not a swooning maiden who’s going to fall at your grubby feet.”

this did not end up short or quick. i went overboard with this but it was so much fun to write. hope you like it!!!! also this is sorta pre-slashy but also not. i guess it can be read either way

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It’s something of a tradition between them, all at once sickeningly sweet, ridiculously dorky, and at times distressingly morbid. 

during one of jim’s many shirt-ripping incidents on the enterprise, uhura spies the inky lines revealed by the torn fabric, tells sulu and scotty and all the rest, and soon all of them are speculating about when he got it and what it means, since it’s so obviously emblematic of some form of sentiment

but they never get an answer, not til years later, when those dancing whorls of ink are all but entirely forgotten, and they’re all off on shore leave

on a day where the california heat is particularly unbearable, jim’s dragged them all to the beach for a day of “team bonding”, a proposal agreed to by all for the promise of the ocean’s cool relief, with each crew member contributing a dish for the picnic - sulu’s homegrown salad, scotty’s scotch (well ye’ did ask me ta bring drinks laddie), bones’ peach pies - and just as they’re settling down to eat lunch, when the sun has reached its apex in a cloudless sky, bones finally surrenders and takes off his shirt, and that’s when they all see it -

there, revealed on his hip, sits an exact copy of jim’s tattoo spied so long ago, the lines of ink a little faded, but unmistakable nonetheless

uhura almost drops her drink in shock, sharing frantic looks with the others, all of them momentarily stunned into silence (in hindsight, they’ll wonder how they never suspected, never figured it out, when it was so glaringly obvious of course it was about leonard)

Graduating is great. Bones gets to call himself a medical practitioner, and Jim graduates criminal psychology almost at the same time. The days that follow their graduation is a blur of alcohol, different pubs and clubs, and many different partners (mostly on Jim’s side, but Bones has definitely gotten his share of one night stands, too). After their celebration week(s) ended, they road trip from San Francisco to Iowa, and then Georgia, to visit their families. They get mistaken as partners on both occasions, but really, they’re just friends. They’re drinking together as friends. They’re road tripping as friends. They sleep in shady motels as friends. They bicker and make up as friends. There’s a night where they’re both drunk and making out in one of those motels, ending in a mutual handjob - but they’re still just friends, because they never mention any of that happening ever again. 

But then that prolonged graduation celebration comes to an end, and they need to get their lives together before they run out of savings. Rather than actually finding an apartment, though, both of them just end up sharing a room in a hostel for a while. Bones works as a medical practitioner during the day. Jim is archiving in a high security psychiatric hospital during the day, and he’s a bartender two nights a week  just because he can. Also because then Bones comes in for cheap drinks and they end up chatting most of the night while Jim’s serving drinks to customers. It’s expensive to live in a hostel, but it works so far. Because the room is cleaned for them and they don’t have to do groceries. Most nights they either heat up their food in the kitchen microwaves, or they eat Chinese or pizza in nearby fast food restaurants. It works, but they end up spending more than they’re earning, so eventually, they’re gonna have to find a real place to live. 

Bones isn’t there when Jim visits multiple flats they can rent. Two bedroom ones. There are multiple furnished apartments ready to move in, but Jim picks the one that has absolutely zero furniture and isn’t even in the best neighborhood. To be fair, the main reason he picked it was because it’s immediately above the best pizza place in town, and it’s the one they would often visit back in college. Bones is less than pleased when he finds out their apartment has absolutely zero furniture, and neither have a lot of funds available to buy them because they spent a lot of it in their hostel days.

“I wonder what that stain on the ceiling is,” Bones says when Jim returns from his dinner run. He was supposed to do groceries, but he doesn’t have more than beer and pizza from the restaurant downstairs. And cereal, but no milk. Jim slides down against the wall, sitting down on the floor next to Bones and hands him his pizza box and a beer. “Who cares? We have our own place, Bones. We made it. We’re adults now. We have food, we have jobs, and we have internet. What else do we need?” “Shower gel, furniture, breakfast-” Bones starts, but Jim pats Bones’ shoulder and grins. “We’ll be fine, Bones. I’ll go to a thrift store after work tomorrow and find cheap furniture.”

And so when Bones returns home from work, he does find a bunch of furniture lying around. One queen sized mattress is dumped in the living room (which beats sleeping on the floor like they did last night). There’s the ugliest brown chair Bones has ever seen, and a messy assortment of cutlery and plates are all thrown on that mattress. “What is this shit?” Bones calls out. Jim walks out of their tiny kitchen in a tank top and his old baggy jeans, and that shouldn’t look as good as it does. “It’s furniture.” Jim says. “This isn’t furniture,” Bones says. “Sure it is. We have one bed, a chair, and plates. What else do we need?” Jim asks. Bones grits his teeth, vouching to go out himself come weekend.

He does, and Bones has a surprising good eye for style. Bones makes Jim carry up most of the furniture he finds. It’s all second hand stuff, but by Sunday, they have a comfortable black couch and a recliner chair Jim immediately claims as his (mostly because he spills spaghetti on it on day one). There’s a coffee table that quickly becomes a storage of old plates, magazines, and other trash because neither of them clean up at first. There’s a dining table and enough chairs to have some friends over for dinner if either of them ever bothered cooking, but so far most their meals are microwave dishes straight from the supermarket, or pizza from downstairs. There’s still only one mattress, and both sleep on it together.

Jim wakes up on a Saturday to a sound that feels unfamiliar, but it turns out Bones is just vacuuming. He’s not wearing any more than his underwear, and there’s something oddly attractive about him being strangely… domestic. “What are you doing?” Jim asks. “Cleaning,” Bones says, “we haven’t done the dishes once since we moved in. Go do them.” Normally, Jim would protest, but he climbs up from their shared mattress and does as he’s told.

After cleaning up the entire (tiny) flat, they have lunch outside on their tiny balcony. They can barely squeeze on that balcony together, but it works. Bones has warmed up their last night’s pasta and they eat it while watching people pass by. “D'you sometimes think it’s odd, that we live together?” Jim asks. “No, what I think is odd is that you haven’t brought home a one night stand since we moved in,” Bones says, and Jim laughs. “We only have one bed. I’m not gonna do the dirty on our bed,” Jim says. He leans back against the glass door, plate on his lap. “I also haven’t really found anyone, as of late…” Jim admits, and Bones raises an eyebrow. “Are you sick?” He asks, “because remember what I told you about leaving that itch untreated-” “No, Bones. Jesus,” Jim laughs, “I’m not sick or anything, I don’t think.” “Good,” Bones says, resting his hand on Jim’s leg, “because I need you healthy. We’re painting the ceiling tonight.” “What? It’s perfect as it is.” “There’s a leak stain. We’re painting.” Bones says, ignoring Jim’s groans of protest.

It ends up not being such a bad thing at all, because Jim gets to watch Bones in sweatpants and his tight Starfleet Academy shirt. It’s always been a nice sight, but somehow better when he’s balancing on a ladder and straining his arms while painting the ceiling. Jim doesn’t actually do anything himself until Bones makes him paint the walls of their living room in a clean white color, to get rid of those old smoke stains from previous tenants. Their cramped apartment smells like paint for three days, but slowly but surely, this place starts feeling like home. Especially when Uhura and Sulu come over and they bring stuff like plants and a modern bookcase for in the living room. They don’t have many books at all, but at least two shelves are filled with Bones’ DVDs.

This annoys Jim to no end. He’s usually pretty calm and collected. He doesn’t often yell, even if he does get a bit intense. Bones is the one who gets worked up over even the smallest injustice, storming around with his hands thrown in the air.