(no subject)
This is my official first crackfic for the startrek_crack com. There will be more, but this one was the obvious choice for me. I'll take some prompts after this.
Joanna
"Captain's log, supplemental, well that went a lot worse than I expected. Imagine being on an entire planet of busy-body, matchmaking bozos and that's about what Thela Prime is. You'd think when you come right out and say no, we're already a bit of a item, or at least, you know, familish that would get the yentas off your back, but OH NO, that's not how this place works. Haven't been so glad to leave a planet in the dust since...I don't know, since a while..."
Jim doesn't embarrass easily. Hell, he thought he couldn't embarrass at all anymore, but being called to the mat on his relationship with Bones in front of the entire Away Team was bullshit. Jim's pretty ok with his sex life being right out there for scrutiny; it's Bones who likes to keep his private life private. The guy's wound tighter than a long tailed cat...ok, Jim's not going to appropriate that saying even in his own head. Bones is a prude and everyone knows it, having to watch him expose himself in front of coworkers wasn't pretty.
Oh well, Jim files his report and contemplates catching a bite.
*
"Starfleet Command confidential memo to Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise..." Kirk swirls around in his chair and watches the holoimage flicker in and out of his line of sight. "We have been contacted by representatives of the planet designated Thela Prime regarding what they term a 'grave family matter.'" The Intelligence Officer on the recording clears her throat meaningfully. "We at Starfleet Command couldn't ascertain what sort of grave family matter this would be." She pauses to let that one soak in.
"Suck on it, lady, I didn't tap any ass on that godforsaken planet." He makes a series of rude gestures as he spins.
"We would advise that you return to the Thela system and look into this matter. Thela Prime is in critical..."
Jim deletes the message. "Great."
*
"Yeah, I'm not exactly kickin' my heels up at the notion myself," Jim scowls at the back of Sulu's head. He's not scowling at Sulu, just in that direction since he has to look somewhere or close his eyes.
Spock's giving him a hard time about this, well his version of a hard time anyway.
"It is most unusual for Starfleet to redirect a ship in this manner. Are you certain of the quote 'we at Starfleet Command could not ascertain what sort of grave family matter this would be?" Spock stares at him with his usual impassive expression.
"It was couldn't, not could not, but otherwise, yeah, that's what the lady said."
"Most peculiar." Spock turns back to his computer. Jim has been dismissed.
"Yeah," Jim says to the back of Spock's head. "Totally weird, I know."
*
When they enter Thela Prime space and hail the planet, the cheerful, smiling face of a Thelan female greets them on the viewscreen. "Enterprise!" she exclaims and claps in pleasure. She smiles so hard her eyes close.
"Yeeeeeeeeeah, that's us!" Jim replies. "I hear we have some pressing business. I'm Captain..."
"JAMES KIRK! I know, I recognize the eyes. Come down, come down!" The first female is joined by a second who also claps her hands in pleasure. Thelans are various shades of brownish, some bronzy, some flecked with darker freckles. These two are both light brown with freckles spilling across their cheek bones.
Jim hits the "disconnect the sound link" button on his chair and Chekov smoothly does so. Jim shields his mouth with his hand. "Does it look like they're planning on eating me to anyone else?"
"They do seem a bit enthused, but to be fair they don't know you. Sir." Uhura responds causing a round of giggles throughout the bridge.
"True enough," he slaps the alert button again and Chekov reengages the sound link. "Ladies, I'll been down with my team immediately."
"Not without me, you won't," Bones is standing behind him when Jim spins around.
"Yeah, of course not, who said I was going without you?" Jim stands, approaches Bones, and slaps him on the back.
"Captain, perhaps a contingent of security personnel would be logical in this circumstance." Spock is already buttoning his equipment to his utility belt.
"Yeah, just what I was thinking, Mr. Spock." Jim grins at him. Spock just quirks the corner of his mouth minutely. "Ok then!" Jim slaps his hands together. "Let's see what those wacky Thelans have been up to since last we passed this way!"
*
They're met by what doesn't seem like a very official delegation. Thelan's are a chill people, mostly, besides the whole matchmaking thing. They all wear tunics that look like they're made by those LSD spiders that weave webs for cancer vaccines.
Jim generally lets Spock say his piece on Away Missions before Jim bothers to speak himself. Spock's going to get his say in no matter what, so Jim's learning to delegate after a fashion.
After Spock offers greetings and official Starfleet blahblah hopes for Thelan Prime to soon become a Federation planet and all that garbage, the head Thelan squeals in happiness and pats Jim on the cheek. The five security crewman let their hands fall to their weapons in unison.
Jim just waves a quelling hand. "It's nice to meet you, too. Do you have a peace pipe you want to smoke or can we get down to business?" Jim smiles the smile that got him off of disciplinary charges for blowing up Admiral Hawk's chambers.
"You must be very anxious to hurry this along, I can understand!" One of the Thelans exclaims.
"That makes two of us," Bones grumbles from right over Jim's left shoulder.
The head Thelan reaches for Bones and smiles in a way that sets Jim's hair on end. "Leonard McCoy, we have great affection for you as well."
Several Thelans clap their hands and a couple of them can't hold in their pleased squeals.
"I must admit to a lack of certainty as to what is transpiring amongst the Thelans," Spock murmurs.
*
"What is that?" Jim points at the squirming baby and only manages to control his tone at the beginning of the query.
Bones runs his tricorder over the figure with his eyebrows together, furiously tapping on it and swearing under his breath. "Goddamn it."
He stands up and looks over at Jim with an expression that Jim wishes he didn't understand. "No, nononononono!" Jim holds both hands out in front of him.
It's just the two of them in the cozy nursery decorated in zany Thelan style with random patterns and colors swirling together since the Thelans insisted they enter the room together without the rest of the team. Suspicious, of course, but not unprecedented. In the bassinet the baby makes a couple fussy noises then lets out a wail. Jim watches in what's almost stop-capture as Bones slides his tricorder into its holster and reaches out to pick the kid up. Jim's got an almost uncanny knack for gambling, and that's partially because he's a very clear thinker, he can assess a situation like no one's business--he recognizes Bones touching that squalling ball as Jim Kirk's firing squad.
Bones picks her up and holds her head up like a man who enjoyed his neonatal rotation, and, well, shit. "Bones, put it back down, we can't take the puppy home with us."
This doesn't earn him a half-smile or a small chuckle like he intends, instead he's greeted by Bones's death glare. "Jim, this is our baby. She's a DNA match for both of us, and fuck if I'm leaving my goddamned kid in the hands of space hippies."
"What do you think we can do with her? We're on an exploration mission on the other side of the damned quadrant from home!"
"We'll figure it out," Bones says, like he's already practiced at fatherly bullshitting.
"We'll figure it out? It's a kid, Bones! A kid!" Jim throws his hands up in the air. The Thelans are toast!
*
The Thelans twitter over Bones and the baby. They flutter around him, hands reaching out and touching Bones's hair and the baby's matching hair, touching his face in a series of motions that Jim recognizes as a ritual blessing or some other kind of meaningful motion.
"Captain," Spock says. That's all he has to say to indicate that he's taken in the situation and comprehends what's happened without words.
"What were you thinking?" Jim blurts at the Thelans. Jim points at Bones and the baby. "We're a military force..."
"We come in peace..." Spock interjects.
"We don't have berths for children!" Jim shouts.
"However we respect life in all its forms," Spock supplies.
"Your family was incomplete," one of the Thelans tilts her head and looks at him with a soft expression, maybe sympathy, maybe pity. Jim has an urge for violence.
"WHAT?" he shouts.
The baby makes hiccupping distress noises. "Jim," Bones glares at him. "Dial it back to six."
Jim subsides when he and Bones make eye contact.
"Your family is now complete," another Thelan intones.
Yeah, thanks, great.
*
"I don't even want to know why that machine can synthesize human breast milk...wait, no, I totally do, what's the deal on that?" Jim points to the bottle in Bones's hand.
"It's a medical application, you moron," Bones bites back.
"There's a medical application on a Constitution class starship for breast milk?" Jim scratches the back of his neck while Bones compresses his mouth together and glares at him.
"You were conceived on a Starfleet vessel, were you not, you bonehead?"
Bones has a point there. Jim's never asked the exact parameters on his own conception, but it's likely. "Thanks for that visual, by the way, I owe you one."
Bones looks away from Jim and back down at the baby nestled in his arms who is staring right back up at him. The whole situation is unnerving. Mostly the fact that Bones seems like a natural. "This is weirding me out," he blurts.
"That's good, that means the full implication of the situation has penetrated your concrete skull." Bones's eyes flutter back over Jim's face with an affectionate expression that softens his words. "In the long tradition of unexpected fatherhood, we got no say in this other than being in the wrong place at the right time. Sadly, we didn't get the usual requisite pleasure from being in that wrong place, but there you go."
"Are you making dirty jokes about our alien space baby?"
"Yes, Jim, I am."
They both laugh low with an edge to it, desperation, fear, the knowledge of being adrift.
"Do you want to feed her?" Bones's bangs fall in his eyes and he shifts his shoulder like he's going to hand it over.
"No way," Jim's so outta there.
*
"This is most unexpected," Spock muses. Jim's hiding in his ready room nursing his bruised feelings over Bones sucking with this whole lets totally be space dads together! situation.
"Yeah, what you said."
"Captain, it is most illogical to have an infant aboard a Starfleet vessel in this, or any, sector." Spock's tone doesn't fluctuate much, but Jim can read the "you completely irrational, incompetent human!" in the words.
"There's a whole movement agitating for 'Fleet personnel to be allowed to take their families with them on long missions, Spock, some people clearly disagree with you." Jim leans back in his chair. Jim hadn't, until forced to by obvious circumstances, given that family berthing situation any thought. Whatever people want to do, basically, he's cool with that. Now, hm, he can see why people might get worked up about it.
Spock watches him. His inhalation of breath is like a strongly worded essay from anyone else. "Be that as it may, Captain, the day has not yet dawned in which protocols are in place for the safe and efficient integration of civilians onto Starfleet vessels. No matter how much that would facilitate varied Federation goals. Good day." He turns and leaves.
How much Spock sacrificed to join the Enterprise's permanent crew suddenly strikes Jim again. Not the least of the things Spock gave up was helping to sustain the Vulcan race. "Poor bastard," Jim mutters. He knows he's an asshole for not be thrilled by the kid, and he knows further that he's been given an unwanted gift that many people suffer longing to acquire. "Thems the breaks," he says into his data console.
*
Bones is waiting on him in his quarters when Jim drags his sorry ass to bed for the cycle. "Hi," Jim says flinging himself into a chair to remove his boots. "Hi, baby, too," he sighs.
"Jim, have you really looked at this kid?" Bones is obtuse, because Jim's done everything possible to avoid looking at that kid.
"Are you going to make me?" Jim stands up and strips, flinging his uniform into the cleaner and grabbing a set of leisure fatigues.
"She has your goddamned eyes, Jim, will you come over here and look at this?"
"If I have to," Jim slithers over to Bones and baby. Bones's also in fatigues, black cloth bleaching him to a stark palate of white, black, and deep pink. "Hey there good lookin'," Jim says as he leans over Bones to peer at the baby's face. He's talking to Bones, but the comment is fitting for either of them.
The baby does have Jim's eyes. But she had Bones's eyebrows. Hard to tell on the other features since she has a clay-blob baby face of round cheeks and button nose. She looks up at him with his crazyass blue eyes and blinks before burbling, waving her fists in the air and blowing spit bubbles. "Oh god, what is this creature?" Jim reaches out to grasp her, Bones tutting and holding her head in his broad hand.
"Be careful, Jim! Dammit, she's fragile..."
Jim flashes him a smile and smoothes a hand over the tufts of dark baby hair. "You're fat enough to be good eating," Jim says to his daughter. His daughter, ladies and gentleman. And here he thought he'd gotten himself fixed. "You know this is why I got the snip. Thwarted in all ways."
"Yes, I'm all too familiar with your medical file." Bones sighs and cracks his neck, massages his forehead.
"I'll keep the baby tonight, you need some sleep. What if the ship comes down with a raging case of Romulan Clap?" Jim cradles the baby to his chest.
"Have to get up and feed her, so I'll just put her in bed with me," Bones replies. He doesn't even pretend to want Jim to keep the baby.
This is when Jim learns what co-sleeping is. Sounds like the end of Jim's world.
*
Jim lays awake that night considering the implications of Bones and that damned baby. Everyone has a skill-set--part of Jim's is his acumen in assessing other people. He can distill a person's essence with deft precision. That gives him an edge at leadership since he knows what his team needs and can swiftly assess whether one person's needs are at odds with another's and which should be paramount. Jim doesn't pretend to be a better person than he is within the confines of his own mind--the top of the food chain in this equation should be the baby's needs, but for Jim the most important person here is Bones. Jim cannot do his job without that guy. Maybe he could but he very much does not want to.
"Fuck," he says to himself.
How can he make this happen?
Since he's not sleeping, he pulls on a shirt and hits the lift for the bridge. Spock is there, naturally, computing something or running a sim, or who knows what that guy does at 0300.
"Captain," Pietro acknowledges him with a half salute. He waves at her.
"Captain," Spock turns and stands. "It is presumptuous of me, but I assume the matter which is occupying you at this hour is of a ...private nature."
"Yeah," Jim turns around and walks right back into the lift, Spock directly behind him. He rubs a hand over his face and doesn't try to fake it--he's in a bad place and Spock's the kind of person who can maybe figure out a way to fix this.
"You fear the loss of Doctor McCoy from the crew of the Enterprise." He doesn't make it a question.
Jim doesn't answer.
"Is this a...romantic matter or a matter of..."
"Spock, man, do I bust your balls about Nyota, no. I do not. So do me the same favor here."
Spock inclines his head as the lift doors open. "Your deft assessment of my misguided humorous conversational tactic is most pleasing to me, Captain."
"Well, I'm glad you're into me getting your jokes, but if you could be the guy who tells me what to do now, that would be great."
The door opens to the canteen, and Jim's happy that only a few stragglers hide in corners so he and Spock can park it by the window to confab.
"Captain, as per always, I am here to give you what little council I am able, but I find human familial relationships to be fraught with unseen emotional perils which I cannot offer council upon."
They perch on the settee and Jim blinks at Spock. "Spock, how do we make this work?"
"The most logical chain of events would be for the Doctor to resign his commission, return to Earth, and raise your child in the manner found most preferable to your people."
Jim snaps his fingers once. "Now that you've gotten that out of the way, how do I hide this kid from Starfleet Command?"
Spock's mouth quirks. "I must record my grave disapproval of this course of action."
"Okay, if someone's eavesdropping your ass is covered."
"Obviously, all communications between the Enterprise and Starfleet Command must be purged of references to your offspring..."
"Ok, so first order of business--banning people from mentioning the kid, yeah, ok, that's a good move."
"A simple line of computer code could accomplish this task..."
"Did you just volunteer to write a script to help me out here?"
Spock makes a noncommittal face. Jim wonders how he lived before he knew this guy.
*
Bones is the next hurdle.
"Jim," Bones whisper-hisses at him. "You dunderhead, we can't keep her on the ship. What happens when we're attacked by Klingons and half the ship's blown up and..."
"I've got that one worked out. We have a tactical strategy for baby management." Jim smiles.
"You're a complete moron." Bones crosses his arms over his chest and glares.
Bones has it in his head already that he's going to go back to BFE Mississippi and get a farm and a cow or whatever rednecks do and probably wrap the kid in bubblewrap and home school her. No. That is not the agenda. Jim gets what he wants when he decides what it is exactly that he wants. He wants Bones on the Enterprise--that is what is going to happen.
"She's my daughter, too, so this should be a fifty-fifty decision, right?" Jim counters.
"That's great." Bones is a couple seconds away from a major meltdown.
"What?" Jim pretends to be clueless.
"You're already using her as an emotional blackmail tool."
Sometimes Jim wishes Bones was just a little dumber. Not much, but enough to make Jim's life easier. The denial's resting on his tongue, but luckily the baby starts crying. Thanks kid!
Bones glares over his shoulder as he stomps over to tend to the baby. Jim uses this golden opportunity to find busy work in his Ready Room.
*
Bones names the baby Joanna without consulting Jim.
"Don't I get a say?" Jim's worked up to holding her without being forced to.
"No," Bones twirls around on his stool and starts bitching at the console in front of him.
"Jo-jo," Jim croons at the baby, she makes a cross face that can't possibly mean anything besides that she's having a BM, but it looks enough like her other dad that Jim laughs loud and hard.
"What?" Bones looks up at him suspiciously. "No, you can't draw on her with indelible markers."
"What?" Jim hadn't even thought of that! He could really do some serious mustache damage on the little face looking up at him.
"Jim, I swear," Bones grumbles, but he turns back to his work without demanding that Jim hand the kid back over. Jim makes a break for it out of Sickbay. "Don't damage her!" Bones calls to Jim's back.
*
"Joanna?" Gaila closes one eye. This is one of the alien expressions she makes that Jim's never deciphered. "She looks like congealed milk with black mold on the top."
"Do I make racist remarks about your green children?" Jim clutches Joanna to his chest and she struggles with a squawk.
"Your child rejects your affection." Gaila informs him.
"No she doesn't, she's just playing a game." Jim peels her off his chest and looks down into his own eyes.
Gaila closes her eye again. "Let me see her," she holds out her hands to him and Jim has his first moment of parental fear.
"Are you sure?" he doesn't think Gaila's a threat, but Orions don't have such a great rep when it comes to kids.
"I can hardly sell her as a slave while you're standing right here." Gaila makes her version of a joke and Jim hands over the baby.
Gaila studies her with one eye open and then the other, alternating in a way that Jim finds hypnotic.
"She will do," Gaila finally pronounces and hands Joanna back. Gaila's bright laughter is a shock in the stillness of the corridor and Joanna coughs like she might cry but falls immediately into a deep sleep.
"Did you do something to her?" Jim looks worriedly from the baby to Gaila.
"I only looked into her soul, Jim, it is still very new, so you'll have to nurture it in a way that it never dims." With that pronouncement, Gaila turns and walks away.
Aliens.
*
Pavel volunteers to baby-sit with the same infectious enthusiasm he brings to everything he does.
"Ah," he fusses with Joanna's blanket and cradles her to his side. "We will watch educational vids."
Bones narrows his eyes. "She doesn't need to get addicted to that junk," he grumps.
"Educational!" Pavel crows. Jim's learned to repress his laughter at Pavel's accent to the point where he's actually fond of it.
"Don't talk to her too much, she might..."
"Bones," Jim cuts him off before he can say anything too outrageous. "Pavel's gonna do great as a sitter, right?" Jim looks at Pavel who gives him two thumbs up.
"Ay ay, Captain, great!"
"Good lord," Bones grumbles. "Ok, hurry up, let's go eat so we can get back." He wipes a hand over his face and Jim presses a hand low on his back.
"Go eat? What?" Jim laughs into Bones's ear. The door opens and Bones and Jim tumble through it in a tangle of Bones's flying elbows and Jim's grabbing hands.
"Did you expect me to say hurry up so we can fuck real fast in front of our pubescent babysitter?" Bones shoves him a little, but there's not heart in it.
"I'm not sure Pavel knows the word fucking, Bones."
They both laugh.
*
"Goddamned Romulans!" Jim shouts as the ship's impacted for the third time. He's flung out of his chair and onto the deck. Sparks fly out of the Coms console and Sulu takes a stray tricorder to the head with grace.
"Captain, beginning evasive manuevers!" Sulu shouts.
"Captain," Spock offers a hand that Jim takes. "It is most likely this ship is part of..."
A larger armada, yeah, of course, and two of her sisters pop into their vicinity with a barrage of rapidly fired canons.
"Ensign Chekov, apprise the crew of the situation. Lieutenant Sulu, maximum warp!"
*
Jim finds Bones in Sickbay. Bones looks up from a bleeding crewman for a split second and Jim reads loud and clear that Jim's on daddy duty. As he makes his way down a corridor lit with sparking conduits, he berates himself for going to Sickbay first. Habit, but maybe one he's going to have to shake.
"Partridge," Jim says as he strides into the room where Crewman Partridge is holding Joanna. The baby's eerily quiet. "Is she..." Jim panics, grabs at the bundle. Joanna blinks startled eyes at him and kicks him in the chin.
"Ok, ok," he says to no one.
"Captain, she didn't even cry. Like she was born riding out Romulan attacks." Partridge seems proud.
Jim smiles at her. "She was, Crewman." Just like her daddy. He doesn't say that part out loud. It's pretty hokey even for him. He thinks it, though, proud all of sudden. He thinks of his own father and silently hopes, again, to live up to his sacrifice.
Jim murmurs to Joanna as he carries her to Sickbay. "Your daddy is worried, so just ignore the bleeding people and all the crazy mess down there, because he needs to see you're ok, ok? Then we'll go to the bridge and everyone else can see you and we'll make our report and..." he looks up to see Lt. Uhura standing in front of him with her hands on her hips.
"Captain, your coms are on." She doesn't even do him the favor of not laughing right in his damned face.
"Hey," he calls after her. "Just wait until you have a frowning, pointy-eared bundle of joy of your own, lady, it won't be so funny then."
Jim ignores her. It's hardly the most embarrassing situation the bridge crew has witnessed from James T. Kirk after all. Bones is elbow deep in gore on the other side of the door. Bones glances up at Jim holding the baby aloft and nods once. Jim strolls back out and to the bridge.
"Captain Daddy," Uhura says with a smile.
"That would be me," Jim responds. "Spock, report."
Joanna smiles at up at him and Jim smiles back.
*
The Joanna situation is something that just happens. The crew comes to see her as something of a mascot, and when Bones makes noises about retiring, it's not Jim who intercedes after a while.
Jim stumbles over an animated conversation between Scotty and Bones in the engine room quite by accident. Jim hides behind a computer console when he hears Bones's raised voice.
"This is no place for a child to grow up!"
"Ach, Doctor, don't be so constipated. Who could ask for a better environment than a loving home full of hundreds of parents?" Monty's got his argument voice going. He could talk the paint off a barn and have the building believing that's what it wanted in the first place with that voice.
"Don't think I don't see through your rhetoric, you bastard." Bones is sort of an asshole about Joanna. Jim loves the guy, but he's going to have a parenting-induced stroke any day now.
Keenser makes a disapproving noise. "Who asked you, you little kidnapping rock midget?"
So that explains what Bones is doing down here, Keenser absconded with Joanna again.
"Now doctor I will put up with your hasty imprecations about my own self, but you'd best be watching what you say to Keenser here."
"Get fucked, give me my kid."
"Since you put it so politely..."
Jim snickers. He chooses that moment to cough and make himself known. "Bones! And Mr. Scott, just the man I was..."
Bones glares at him, but Keenser holds Joanna out to him and she reaches for Bones and Bones forgets to be angry. Jim watches Bones out of the corner of his eye as he questions Scott about the dilithium situation and Bones is smiling, openly in front of people he thinks are morons. Jim feels light, like a bit of his composition is suddenly made of a noble gas.
"Come on, beautiful, let's see what fresh hell the medics have perpetrated," Bones says in a happy chirp. Joanna laughs and pats Bones's face.
When Bones disappears, Scott says "Ach, Captain, never thought I'd say this, but the Doctor's taken to fatherhood like a weasel to the hen house."
Jim agrees wholeheartedly. "Yup," he says.
"You, too," Scotty drops that one when Jim's blissfully not looking for the two-by-four to the face.
*
Bones gives up on the retirement plan when Jim bursts out crying when Joanna takes her first step. She releases Uhura's hand, reaches her chubby hands out to Jim, stumbles several steps while laughing, and tumbles right over onto her face. She immediately begins to scream. Jim doesn't know why he breaks out crying, but he does and Bones doesn't even bother to look angry or annoyed as he stands over Jim cradling Joanna, brushing her hair back apologizing for not being faster to catch her.
"Daddy's sorry, baby, shhh," Jim babbles. Her face reddens and she screams again. "It's ok, you just scared yourself, don't worry." Jim pats at her and brushes her off and wishes so hard he'd lunged for her before she toppled over. Stupid, so stupid--Jim's got the reflexes for that, why didn't he grab her?
"Oh boy," Bones sighs. "Alright, fine."
Jim looks up at him, and that's when he even realizes he is crying. "I'm crying," Jim says in wonderment. "Why am I crying?"
"Instinct, Jim, the same reason you jump off anything high you can climb onto in order to break your fool neck." Bones sighs again.
Jim starts to laugh. Joanna stops crying abruptly, too, and echoes his laughter. They look each other in the eye and laugh and laugh and Jim stands up and pulls her to her feet and begins to walk her down the corridor holding her hands over her head.
"Oh boy," Bones says again at Jim's back.
*
When she starts to talk, it happens all at once in long rambling babbles. Jim misses her first word, Scotty swears it was "Keenser" but Jim can't tell half the time when that guy's drunk or just having a laugh, so Jim assumes it was probably NO! or goddamnit like most kids.
She has a bit of a pottymouth problem, naturally. "Damn!" she shouts when she takes a tumble in the mess and Jim can't help the laughter even though he knows he's supposed to reprimand her or parent or whatever the fuck it is people do. Jim dusts her off and puts her back on her improvised booster seat. "Raccoon, watch out, if you hit your head, I'll be in big doodoo." She bobs her head and looks up at him with a smile. She doesn't mind falling down or getting banged up. As a matter of fact, she earned her nickname when she climbed up on some scaffolding and flung her self off, for reasons no one there at the time can explain, and acquired two black eyes. This was blamed on Jim, as is her reckless habit of sticking her fingers into conduit hubs and "experimenting" with flinging water into computer consoles.
Bones appears with a plate and sits next to Joannna. "What're you eating?" he touches the applesauce, tofu nuggets, and peas with his own fork. "I suppose this is acceptable. Did you get your vitamins today?"
"Daddy!" she shrieks and gets her knees under her to pat Bones on the face and climb in his lap.
"Hello, puddin'." Bones embraces her and kisses her on the face before turning her around to begin feeding her the spinach and chicken on his own plate.
Jim had a turbulent childhood. He never clamored into anyone's lap knowing that the grown up was just going to make room for his squirming body, that the adult was going to contort and conform to whatever shape he needed to in order to make room for him. He's proud that Joanna won't be able to say the same thing.
"Can I have your applesauce," he pretends like he's going to eat her food.
"Goddamn it, Jim!" she shouts. Bones tries to hide his smile, but he's not practiced at it anymore, and his dark, burnished laughter falls around the dinner table with a wistful kind of finality.
*
Spock pronounces Joanna Enterprise Child Prime when she's less than two. In the Telmar system they suddenly become acquainted with male pregnancy. This also never makes it into their correspondence with Starfleet Command.
***
Joanna is McCoy's daughter's name in original canon. Amber really really wanted her to still be real, but I just can't see it in Reboot canon for a variety of cracked out fannish reasons (boy howdy does my crazy already run deep in some regards with the Reboot canon), but that doesn't mean I couldn't write her back in. I have a whole further fleshing out on her and this timeline and what happens later, but this shit is already 16 pages long, so arg.
Also, the flavor of crackfic I'd write for this challenge was pre-determined by the fact that I am just that writer who writes this kind of story. Oh well, I own it.
Joanna
"Captain's log, supplemental, well that went a lot worse than I expected. Imagine being on an entire planet of busy-body, matchmaking bozos and that's about what Thela Prime is. You'd think when you come right out and say no, we're already a bit of a item, or at least, you know, familish that would get the yentas off your back, but OH NO, that's not how this place works. Haven't been so glad to leave a planet in the dust since...I don't know, since a while..."
Jim doesn't embarrass easily. Hell, he thought he couldn't embarrass at all anymore, but being called to the mat on his relationship with Bones in front of the entire Away Team was bullshit. Jim's pretty ok with his sex life being right out there for scrutiny; it's Bones who likes to keep his private life private. The guy's wound tighter than a long tailed cat...ok, Jim's not going to appropriate that saying even in his own head. Bones is a prude and everyone knows it, having to watch him expose himself in front of coworkers wasn't pretty.
Oh well, Jim files his report and contemplates catching a bite.
*
"Starfleet Command confidential memo to Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise..." Kirk swirls around in his chair and watches the holoimage flicker in and out of his line of sight. "We have been contacted by representatives of the planet designated Thela Prime regarding what they term a 'grave family matter.'" The Intelligence Officer on the recording clears her throat meaningfully. "We at Starfleet Command couldn't ascertain what sort of grave family matter this would be." She pauses to let that one soak in.
"Suck on it, lady, I didn't tap any ass on that godforsaken planet." He makes a series of rude gestures as he spins.
"We would advise that you return to the Thela system and look into this matter. Thela Prime is in critical..."
Jim deletes the message. "Great."
*
"Yeah, I'm not exactly kickin' my heels up at the notion myself," Jim scowls at the back of Sulu's head. He's not scowling at Sulu, just in that direction since he has to look somewhere or close his eyes.
Spock's giving him a hard time about this, well his version of a hard time anyway.
"It is most unusual for Starfleet to redirect a ship in this manner. Are you certain of the quote 'we at Starfleet Command could not ascertain what sort of grave family matter this would be?" Spock stares at him with his usual impassive expression.
"It was couldn't, not could not, but otherwise, yeah, that's what the lady said."
"Most peculiar." Spock turns back to his computer. Jim has been dismissed.
"Yeah," Jim says to the back of Spock's head. "Totally weird, I know."
*
When they enter Thela Prime space and hail the planet, the cheerful, smiling face of a Thelan female greets them on the viewscreen. "Enterprise!" she exclaims and claps in pleasure. She smiles so hard her eyes close.
"Yeeeeeeeeeah, that's us!" Jim replies. "I hear we have some pressing business. I'm Captain..."
"JAMES KIRK! I know, I recognize the eyes. Come down, come down!" The first female is joined by a second who also claps her hands in pleasure. Thelans are various shades of brownish, some bronzy, some flecked with darker freckles. These two are both light brown with freckles spilling across their cheek bones.
Jim hits the "disconnect the sound link" button on his chair and Chekov smoothly does so. Jim shields his mouth with his hand. "Does it look like they're planning on eating me to anyone else?"
"They do seem a bit enthused, but to be fair they don't know you. Sir." Uhura responds causing a round of giggles throughout the bridge.
"True enough," he slaps the alert button again and Chekov reengages the sound link. "Ladies, I'll been down with my team immediately."
"Not without me, you won't," Bones is standing behind him when Jim spins around.
"Yeah, of course not, who said I was going without you?" Jim stands, approaches Bones, and slaps him on the back.
"Captain, perhaps a contingent of security personnel would be logical in this circumstance." Spock is already buttoning his equipment to his utility belt.
"Yeah, just what I was thinking, Mr. Spock." Jim grins at him. Spock just quirks the corner of his mouth minutely. "Ok then!" Jim slaps his hands together. "Let's see what those wacky Thelans have been up to since last we passed this way!"
*
They're met by what doesn't seem like a very official delegation. Thelan's are a chill people, mostly, besides the whole matchmaking thing. They all wear tunics that look like they're made by those LSD spiders that weave webs for cancer vaccines.
Jim generally lets Spock say his piece on Away Missions before Jim bothers to speak himself. Spock's going to get his say in no matter what, so Jim's learning to delegate after a fashion.
After Spock offers greetings and official Starfleet blahblah hopes for Thelan Prime to soon become a Federation planet and all that garbage, the head Thelan squeals in happiness and pats Jim on the cheek. The five security crewman let their hands fall to their weapons in unison.
Jim just waves a quelling hand. "It's nice to meet you, too. Do you have a peace pipe you want to smoke or can we get down to business?" Jim smiles the smile that got him off of disciplinary charges for blowing up Admiral Hawk's chambers.
"You must be very anxious to hurry this along, I can understand!" One of the Thelans exclaims.
"That makes two of us," Bones grumbles from right over Jim's left shoulder.
The head Thelan reaches for Bones and smiles in a way that sets Jim's hair on end. "Leonard McCoy, we have great affection for you as well."
Several Thelans clap their hands and a couple of them can't hold in their pleased squeals.
"I must admit to a lack of certainty as to what is transpiring amongst the Thelans," Spock murmurs.
*
"What is that?" Jim points at the squirming baby and only manages to control his tone at the beginning of the query.
Bones runs his tricorder over the figure with his eyebrows together, furiously tapping on it and swearing under his breath. "Goddamn it."
He stands up and looks over at Jim with an expression that Jim wishes he didn't understand. "No, nononononono!" Jim holds both hands out in front of him.
It's just the two of them in the cozy nursery decorated in zany Thelan style with random patterns and colors swirling together since the Thelans insisted they enter the room together without the rest of the team. Suspicious, of course, but not unprecedented. In the bassinet the baby makes a couple fussy noises then lets out a wail. Jim watches in what's almost stop-capture as Bones slides his tricorder into its holster and reaches out to pick the kid up. Jim's got an almost uncanny knack for gambling, and that's partially because he's a very clear thinker, he can assess a situation like no one's business--he recognizes Bones touching that squalling ball as Jim Kirk's firing squad.
Bones picks her up and holds her head up like a man who enjoyed his neonatal rotation, and, well, shit. "Bones, put it back down, we can't take the puppy home with us."
This doesn't earn him a half-smile or a small chuckle like he intends, instead he's greeted by Bones's death glare. "Jim, this is our baby. She's a DNA match for both of us, and fuck if I'm leaving my goddamned kid in the hands of space hippies."
"What do you think we can do with her? We're on an exploration mission on the other side of the damned quadrant from home!"
"We'll figure it out," Bones says, like he's already practiced at fatherly bullshitting.
"We'll figure it out? It's a kid, Bones! A kid!" Jim throws his hands up in the air. The Thelans are toast!
*
The Thelans twitter over Bones and the baby. They flutter around him, hands reaching out and touching Bones's hair and the baby's matching hair, touching his face in a series of motions that Jim recognizes as a ritual blessing or some other kind of meaningful motion.
"Captain," Spock says. That's all he has to say to indicate that he's taken in the situation and comprehends what's happened without words.
"What were you thinking?" Jim blurts at the Thelans. Jim points at Bones and the baby. "We're a military force..."
"We come in peace..." Spock interjects.
"We don't have berths for children!" Jim shouts.
"However we respect life in all its forms," Spock supplies.
"Your family was incomplete," one of the Thelans tilts her head and looks at him with a soft expression, maybe sympathy, maybe pity. Jim has an urge for violence.
"WHAT?" he shouts.
The baby makes hiccupping distress noises. "Jim," Bones glares at him. "Dial it back to six."
Jim subsides when he and Bones make eye contact.
"Your family is now complete," another Thelan intones.
Yeah, thanks, great.
*
"I don't even want to know why that machine can synthesize human breast milk...wait, no, I totally do, what's the deal on that?" Jim points to the bottle in Bones's hand.
"It's a medical application, you moron," Bones bites back.
"There's a medical application on a Constitution class starship for breast milk?" Jim scratches the back of his neck while Bones compresses his mouth together and glares at him.
"You were conceived on a Starfleet vessel, were you not, you bonehead?"
Bones has a point there. Jim's never asked the exact parameters on his own conception, but it's likely. "Thanks for that visual, by the way, I owe you one."
Bones looks away from Jim and back down at the baby nestled in his arms who is staring right back up at him. The whole situation is unnerving. Mostly the fact that Bones seems like a natural. "This is weirding me out," he blurts.
"That's good, that means the full implication of the situation has penetrated your concrete skull." Bones's eyes flutter back over Jim's face with an affectionate expression that softens his words. "In the long tradition of unexpected fatherhood, we got no say in this other than being in the wrong place at the right time. Sadly, we didn't get the usual requisite pleasure from being in that wrong place, but there you go."
"Are you making dirty jokes about our alien space baby?"
"Yes, Jim, I am."
They both laugh low with an edge to it, desperation, fear, the knowledge of being adrift.
"Do you want to feed her?" Bones's bangs fall in his eyes and he shifts his shoulder like he's going to hand it over.
"No way," Jim's so outta there.
*
"This is most unexpected," Spock muses. Jim's hiding in his ready room nursing his bruised feelings over Bones sucking with this whole lets totally be space dads together! situation.
"Yeah, what you said."
"Captain, it is most illogical to have an infant aboard a Starfleet vessel in this, or any, sector." Spock's tone doesn't fluctuate much, but Jim can read the "you completely irrational, incompetent human!" in the words.
"There's a whole movement agitating for 'Fleet personnel to be allowed to take their families with them on long missions, Spock, some people clearly disagree with you." Jim leans back in his chair. Jim hadn't, until forced to by obvious circumstances, given that family berthing situation any thought. Whatever people want to do, basically, he's cool with that. Now, hm, he can see why people might get worked up about it.
Spock watches him. His inhalation of breath is like a strongly worded essay from anyone else. "Be that as it may, Captain, the day has not yet dawned in which protocols are in place for the safe and efficient integration of civilians onto Starfleet vessels. No matter how much that would facilitate varied Federation goals. Good day." He turns and leaves.
How much Spock sacrificed to join the Enterprise's permanent crew suddenly strikes Jim again. Not the least of the things Spock gave up was helping to sustain the Vulcan race. "Poor bastard," Jim mutters. He knows he's an asshole for not be thrilled by the kid, and he knows further that he's been given an unwanted gift that many people suffer longing to acquire. "Thems the breaks," he says into his data console.
*
Bones is waiting on him in his quarters when Jim drags his sorry ass to bed for the cycle. "Hi," Jim says flinging himself into a chair to remove his boots. "Hi, baby, too," he sighs.
"Jim, have you really looked at this kid?" Bones is obtuse, because Jim's done everything possible to avoid looking at that kid.
"Are you going to make me?" Jim stands up and strips, flinging his uniform into the cleaner and grabbing a set of leisure fatigues.
"She has your goddamned eyes, Jim, will you come over here and look at this?"
"If I have to," Jim slithers over to Bones and baby. Bones's also in fatigues, black cloth bleaching him to a stark palate of white, black, and deep pink. "Hey there good lookin'," Jim says as he leans over Bones to peer at the baby's face. He's talking to Bones, but the comment is fitting for either of them.
The baby does have Jim's eyes. But she had Bones's eyebrows. Hard to tell on the other features since she has a clay-blob baby face of round cheeks and button nose. She looks up at him with his crazyass blue eyes and blinks before burbling, waving her fists in the air and blowing spit bubbles. "Oh god, what is this creature?" Jim reaches out to grasp her, Bones tutting and holding her head in his broad hand.
"Be careful, Jim! Dammit, she's fragile..."
Jim flashes him a smile and smoothes a hand over the tufts of dark baby hair. "You're fat enough to be good eating," Jim says to his daughter. His daughter, ladies and gentleman. And here he thought he'd gotten himself fixed. "You know this is why I got the snip. Thwarted in all ways."
"Yes, I'm all too familiar with your medical file." Bones sighs and cracks his neck, massages his forehead.
"I'll keep the baby tonight, you need some sleep. What if the ship comes down with a raging case of Romulan Clap?" Jim cradles the baby to his chest.
"Have to get up and feed her, so I'll just put her in bed with me," Bones replies. He doesn't even pretend to want Jim to keep the baby.
This is when Jim learns what co-sleeping is. Sounds like the end of Jim's world.
*
Jim lays awake that night considering the implications of Bones and that damned baby. Everyone has a skill-set--part of Jim's is his acumen in assessing other people. He can distill a person's essence with deft precision. That gives him an edge at leadership since he knows what his team needs and can swiftly assess whether one person's needs are at odds with another's and which should be paramount. Jim doesn't pretend to be a better person than he is within the confines of his own mind--the top of the food chain in this equation should be the baby's needs, but for Jim the most important person here is Bones. Jim cannot do his job without that guy. Maybe he could but he very much does not want to.
"Fuck," he says to himself.
How can he make this happen?
Since he's not sleeping, he pulls on a shirt and hits the lift for the bridge. Spock is there, naturally, computing something or running a sim, or who knows what that guy does at 0300.
"Captain," Pietro acknowledges him with a half salute. He waves at her.
"Captain," Spock turns and stands. "It is presumptuous of me, but I assume the matter which is occupying you at this hour is of a ...private nature."
"Yeah," Jim turns around and walks right back into the lift, Spock directly behind him. He rubs a hand over his face and doesn't try to fake it--he's in a bad place and Spock's the kind of person who can maybe figure out a way to fix this.
"You fear the loss of Doctor McCoy from the crew of the Enterprise." He doesn't make it a question.
Jim doesn't answer.
"Is this a...romantic matter or a matter of..."
"Spock, man, do I bust your balls about Nyota, no. I do not. So do me the same favor here."
Spock inclines his head as the lift doors open. "Your deft assessment of my misguided humorous conversational tactic is most pleasing to me, Captain."
"Well, I'm glad you're into me getting your jokes, but if you could be the guy who tells me what to do now, that would be great."
The door opens to the canteen, and Jim's happy that only a few stragglers hide in corners so he and Spock can park it by the window to confab.
"Captain, as per always, I am here to give you what little council I am able, but I find human familial relationships to be fraught with unseen emotional perils which I cannot offer council upon."
They perch on the settee and Jim blinks at Spock. "Spock, how do we make this work?"
"The most logical chain of events would be for the Doctor to resign his commission, return to Earth, and raise your child in the manner found most preferable to your people."
Jim snaps his fingers once. "Now that you've gotten that out of the way, how do I hide this kid from Starfleet Command?"
Spock's mouth quirks. "I must record my grave disapproval of this course of action."
"Okay, if someone's eavesdropping your ass is covered."
"Obviously, all communications between the Enterprise and Starfleet Command must be purged of references to your offspring..."
"Ok, so first order of business--banning people from mentioning the kid, yeah, ok, that's a good move."
"A simple line of computer code could accomplish this task..."
"Did you just volunteer to write a script to help me out here?"
Spock makes a noncommittal face. Jim wonders how he lived before he knew this guy.
*
Bones is the next hurdle.
"Jim," Bones whisper-hisses at him. "You dunderhead, we can't keep her on the ship. What happens when we're attacked by Klingons and half the ship's blown up and..."
"I've got that one worked out. We have a tactical strategy for baby management." Jim smiles.
"You're a complete moron." Bones crosses his arms over his chest and glares.
Bones has it in his head already that he's going to go back to BFE Mississippi and get a farm and a cow or whatever rednecks do and probably wrap the kid in bubblewrap and home school her. No. That is not the agenda. Jim gets what he wants when he decides what it is exactly that he wants. He wants Bones on the Enterprise--that is what is going to happen.
"She's my daughter, too, so this should be a fifty-fifty decision, right?" Jim counters.
"That's great." Bones is a couple seconds away from a major meltdown.
"What?" Jim pretends to be clueless.
"You're already using her as an emotional blackmail tool."
Sometimes Jim wishes Bones was just a little dumber. Not much, but enough to make Jim's life easier. The denial's resting on his tongue, but luckily the baby starts crying. Thanks kid!
Bones glares over his shoulder as he stomps over to tend to the baby. Jim uses this golden opportunity to find busy work in his Ready Room.
*
Bones names the baby Joanna without consulting Jim.
"Don't I get a say?" Jim's worked up to holding her without being forced to.
"No," Bones twirls around on his stool and starts bitching at the console in front of him.
"Jo-jo," Jim croons at the baby, she makes a cross face that can't possibly mean anything besides that she's having a BM, but it looks enough like her other dad that Jim laughs loud and hard.
"What?" Bones looks up at him suspiciously. "No, you can't draw on her with indelible markers."
"What?" Jim hadn't even thought of that! He could really do some serious mustache damage on the little face looking up at him.
"Jim, I swear," Bones grumbles, but he turns back to his work without demanding that Jim hand the kid back over. Jim makes a break for it out of Sickbay. "Don't damage her!" Bones calls to Jim's back.
*
"Joanna?" Gaila closes one eye. This is one of the alien expressions she makes that Jim's never deciphered. "She looks like congealed milk with black mold on the top."
"Do I make racist remarks about your green children?" Jim clutches Joanna to his chest and she struggles with a squawk.
"Your child rejects your affection." Gaila informs him.
"No she doesn't, she's just playing a game." Jim peels her off his chest and looks down into his own eyes.
Gaila closes her eye again. "Let me see her," she holds out her hands to him and Jim has his first moment of parental fear.
"Are you sure?" he doesn't think Gaila's a threat, but Orions don't have such a great rep when it comes to kids.
"I can hardly sell her as a slave while you're standing right here." Gaila makes her version of a joke and Jim hands over the baby.
Gaila studies her with one eye open and then the other, alternating in a way that Jim finds hypnotic.
"She will do," Gaila finally pronounces and hands Joanna back. Gaila's bright laughter is a shock in the stillness of the corridor and Joanna coughs like she might cry but falls immediately into a deep sleep.
"Did you do something to her?" Jim looks worriedly from the baby to Gaila.
"I only looked into her soul, Jim, it is still very new, so you'll have to nurture it in a way that it never dims." With that pronouncement, Gaila turns and walks away.
Aliens.
*
Pavel volunteers to baby-sit with the same infectious enthusiasm he brings to everything he does.
"Ah," he fusses with Joanna's blanket and cradles her to his side. "We will watch educational vids."
Bones narrows his eyes. "She doesn't need to get addicted to that junk," he grumps.
"Educational!" Pavel crows. Jim's learned to repress his laughter at Pavel's accent to the point where he's actually fond of it.
"Don't talk to her too much, she might..."
"Bones," Jim cuts him off before he can say anything too outrageous. "Pavel's gonna do great as a sitter, right?" Jim looks at Pavel who gives him two thumbs up.
"Ay ay, Captain, great!"
"Good lord," Bones grumbles. "Ok, hurry up, let's go eat so we can get back." He wipes a hand over his face and Jim presses a hand low on his back.
"Go eat? What?" Jim laughs into Bones's ear. The door opens and Bones and Jim tumble through it in a tangle of Bones's flying elbows and Jim's grabbing hands.
"Did you expect me to say hurry up so we can fuck real fast in front of our pubescent babysitter?" Bones shoves him a little, but there's not heart in it.
"I'm not sure Pavel knows the word fucking, Bones."
They both laugh.
*
"Goddamned Romulans!" Jim shouts as the ship's impacted for the third time. He's flung out of his chair and onto the deck. Sparks fly out of the Coms console and Sulu takes a stray tricorder to the head with grace.
"Captain, beginning evasive manuevers!" Sulu shouts.
"Captain," Spock offers a hand that Jim takes. "It is most likely this ship is part of..."
A larger armada, yeah, of course, and two of her sisters pop into their vicinity with a barrage of rapidly fired canons.
"Ensign Chekov, apprise the crew of the situation. Lieutenant Sulu, maximum warp!"
*
Jim finds Bones in Sickbay. Bones looks up from a bleeding crewman for a split second and Jim reads loud and clear that Jim's on daddy duty. As he makes his way down a corridor lit with sparking conduits, he berates himself for going to Sickbay first. Habit, but maybe one he's going to have to shake.
"Partridge," Jim says as he strides into the room where Crewman Partridge is holding Joanna. The baby's eerily quiet. "Is she..." Jim panics, grabs at the bundle. Joanna blinks startled eyes at him and kicks him in the chin.
"Ok, ok," he says to no one.
"Captain, she didn't even cry. Like she was born riding out Romulan attacks." Partridge seems proud.
Jim smiles at her. "She was, Crewman." Just like her daddy. He doesn't say that part out loud. It's pretty hokey even for him. He thinks it, though, proud all of sudden. He thinks of his own father and silently hopes, again, to live up to his sacrifice.
Jim murmurs to Joanna as he carries her to Sickbay. "Your daddy is worried, so just ignore the bleeding people and all the crazy mess down there, because he needs to see you're ok, ok? Then we'll go to the bridge and everyone else can see you and we'll make our report and..." he looks up to see Lt. Uhura standing in front of him with her hands on her hips.
"Captain, your coms are on." She doesn't even do him the favor of not laughing right in his damned face.
"Hey," he calls after her. "Just wait until you have a frowning, pointy-eared bundle of joy of your own, lady, it won't be so funny then."
Jim ignores her. It's hardly the most embarrassing situation the bridge crew has witnessed from James T. Kirk after all. Bones is elbow deep in gore on the other side of the door. Bones glances up at Jim holding the baby aloft and nods once. Jim strolls back out and to the bridge.
"Captain Daddy," Uhura says with a smile.
"That would be me," Jim responds. "Spock, report."
Joanna smiles at up at him and Jim smiles back.
*
The Joanna situation is something that just happens. The crew comes to see her as something of a mascot, and when Bones makes noises about retiring, it's not Jim who intercedes after a while.
Jim stumbles over an animated conversation between Scotty and Bones in the engine room quite by accident. Jim hides behind a computer console when he hears Bones's raised voice.
"This is no place for a child to grow up!"
"Ach, Doctor, don't be so constipated. Who could ask for a better environment than a loving home full of hundreds of parents?" Monty's got his argument voice going. He could talk the paint off a barn and have the building believing that's what it wanted in the first place with that voice.
"Don't think I don't see through your rhetoric, you bastard." Bones is sort of an asshole about Joanna. Jim loves the guy, but he's going to have a parenting-induced stroke any day now.
Keenser makes a disapproving noise. "Who asked you, you little kidnapping rock midget?"
So that explains what Bones is doing down here, Keenser absconded with Joanna again.
"Now doctor I will put up with your hasty imprecations about my own self, but you'd best be watching what you say to Keenser here."
"Get fucked, give me my kid."
"Since you put it so politely..."
Jim snickers. He chooses that moment to cough and make himself known. "Bones! And Mr. Scott, just the man I was..."
Bones glares at him, but Keenser holds Joanna out to him and she reaches for Bones and Bones forgets to be angry. Jim watches Bones out of the corner of his eye as he questions Scott about the dilithium situation and Bones is smiling, openly in front of people he thinks are morons. Jim feels light, like a bit of his composition is suddenly made of a noble gas.
"Come on, beautiful, let's see what fresh hell the medics have perpetrated," Bones says in a happy chirp. Joanna laughs and pats Bones's face.
When Bones disappears, Scott says "Ach, Captain, never thought I'd say this, but the Doctor's taken to fatherhood like a weasel to the hen house."
Jim agrees wholeheartedly. "Yup," he says.
"You, too," Scotty drops that one when Jim's blissfully not looking for the two-by-four to the face.
*
Bones gives up on the retirement plan when Jim bursts out crying when Joanna takes her first step. She releases Uhura's hand, reaches her chubby hands out to Jim, stumbles several steps while laughing, and tumbles right over onto her face. She immediately begins to scream. Jim doesn't know why he breaks out crying, but he does and Bones doesn't even bother to look angry or annoyed as he stands over Jim cradling Joanna, brushing her hair back apologizing for not being faster to catch her.
"Daddy's sorry, baby, shhh," Jim babbles. Her face reddens and she screams again. "It's ok, you just scared yourself, don't worry." Jim pats at her and brushes her off and wishes so hard he'd lunged for her before she toppled over. Stupid, so stupid--Jim's got the reflexes for that, why didn't he grab her?
"Oh boy," Bones sighs. "Alright, fine."
Jim looks up at him, and that's when he even realizes he is crying. "I'm crying," Jim says in wonderment. "Why am I crying?"
"Instinct, Jim, the same reason you jump off anything high you can climb onto in order to break your fool neck." Bones sighs again.
Jim starts to laugh. Joanna stops crying abruptly, too, and echoes his laughter. They look each other in the eye and laugh and laugh and Jim stands up and pulls her to her feet and begins to walk her down the corridor holding her hands over her head.
"Oh boy," Bones says again at Jim's back.
*
When she starts to talk, it happens all at once in long rambling babbles. Jim misses her first word, Scotty swears it was "Keenser" but Jim can't tell half the time when that guy's drunk or just having a laugh, so Jim assumes it was probably NO! or goddamnit like most kids.
She has a bit of a pottymouth problem, naturally. "Damn!" she shouts when she takes a tumble in the mess and Jim can't help the laughter even though he knows he's supposed to reprimand her or parent or whatever the fuck it is people do. Jim dusts her off and puts her back on her improvised booster seat. "Raccoon, watch out, if you hit your head, I'll be in big doodoo." She bobs her head and looks up at him with a smile. She doesn't mind falling down or getting banged up. As a matter of fact, she earned her nickname when she climbed up on some scaffolding and flung her self off, for reasons no one there at the time can explain, and acquired two black eyes. This was blamed on Jim, as is her reckless habit of sticking her fingers into conduit hubs and "experimenting" with flinging water into computer consoles.
Bones appears with a plate and sits next to Joannna. "What're you eating?" he touches the applesauce, tofu nuggets, and peas with his own fork. "I suppose this is acceptable. Did you get your vitamins today?"
"Daddy!" she shrieks and gets her knees under her to pat Bones on the face and climb in his lap.
"Hello, puddin'." Bones embraces her and kisses her on the face before turning her around to begin feeding her the spinach and chicken on his own plate.
Jim had a turbulent childhood. He never clamored into anyone's lap knowing that the grown up was just going to make room for his squirming body, that the adult was going to contort and conform to whatever shape he needed to in order to make room for him. He's proud that Joanna won't be able to say the same thing.
"Can I have your applesauce," he pretends like he's going to eat her food.
"Goddamn it, Jim!" she shouts. Bones tries to hide his smile, but he's not practiced at it anymore, and his dark, burnished laughter falls around the dinner table with a wistful kind of finality.
*
Spock pronounces Joanna Enterprise Child Prime when she's less than two. In the Telmar system they suddenly become acquainted with male pregnancy. This also never makes it into their correspondence with Starfleet Command.
***
Joanna is McCoy's daughter's name in original canon. Amber really really wanted her to still be real, but I just can't see it in Reboot canon for a variety of cracked out fannish reasons (boy howdy does my crazy already run deep in some regards with the Reboot canon), but that doesn't mean I couldn't write her back in. I have a whole further fleshing out on her and this timeline and what happens later, but this shit is already 16 pages long, so arg.
Also, the flavor of crackfic I'd write for this challenge was pre-determined by the fact that I am just that writer who writes this kind of story. Oh well, I own it.