Reminescence 1c
***
There are some mornings, when he looks at his reflection, that he wonders what the hell he is doing at Starfleet Academy. When he studies himself, wiping the steam away from the cool mirror, he notices that even if he doesn’t age properly, he has changed a bit. Frowning lines are a nearly permanent feature on his face, or maybe he’s just scowling again. He rarely relaxes, that much he knows. There are almost no scars on his body, besides faint pink lines from a time long gone, when he was still just a human. He shouldn’t be here; this place is for humans, like Jim.
But Jim makes him smile, makes him feel human.
A small smile tugs at his lips involuntarily, thinking about the idiot he has to patch up all the time, whining like a big baby because of a well-placed hypo. His first true, as much as John/Leonard can be honest, friend. He has to admit he hadn’t been at his best when he had met Jim. He had been fresh from the final blow of the divorce, making him all glares and giving undeserved barbs to his surroundings. There’s still some residual anger in him at Jocelyn for using him like this, taking everything he had from him.
Anger at himself for having let go so easily upon knowing Joanna didn’t have the C-24... the desperation of having to go away, for her good, mingled with the relief that she would live a normal life. He had been so happy for a moment, such a tiny blip in his lifespan where he had allowed himself to be selfish, to have a wife and a child. He glares at his reflection, mentally berating himself for reminiscing at a time like this. Apparently the story of his life is resentment against the universe at large.
He snaps out of it as he focuses on Jim, who was still snoring loudly (for him) in their shared room, so he was grateful that the blond bastard couldn’t complain about how “Bones” was hogging the bathroom. Jim had a tendency to bang on the door when he was shaving with his (old-fashioned) razor. He nicked himself every time and cursed angrily like a sailor even if the wound closed instantly.
And the nickname “Bones”...? Trust the kid to remember a word randomly and make a nickname out of it. At least it wasn’t as morbid as “Reaper”, but he wouldn’t tolerate anyone else calling him that, and Jim didn’t tolerate it either from what he’d understood; a few people had called him Bones at first and he had sighed but not minded too much, even if he had grumbled about it to Jim, thinking it was bound to happen with Jim knowing everyone and their grandmothers on the campus.
Then it had suddenly stopped and everyone was back to calling him McCoy, because Jim had apparently chewed out a couple of people for using *HIS* nickname. Jim could be a possessive bastard sometimes and had even rebuked people about the nickname thing in front of John. He was sure that Jim had arranged for them to be paired off. It was a little odd for a command-track cadet to room together with a medical-track cadet; his former roommate had been suddenly re-assigned due to an “error in the system”.
Either that or, as late arrivals, there wasn’t any place left besides putting them together, but it seemed unlikely, and yet it seemed also unlikely as to why someone as boisterous as Jim would want someone as bitter, grouchy and usually bad-tempered as Leonard/John for a roommate. If he thought that the kid’s survival instinct was dim at best, he now thought it must be practically non-existent.
He couldn’t help but scoff at the being a “cadet” part. Trained killer, ex-member of the RRTS and now exemplary trauma surgeon... demoted to “Cadet McCoy”. He could probably teach a thing or two to his professor, especially in combat class, even if he was failing it spectacularly on the basis that as a doctor, he would do no harm. It was also a way for Reaper to keep himself in check and the Hippocratic Oath was a convenient alibi, because he couldn’t quite explain why a simple country doctor’s well-aimed punch could crack bones ; in combat situations (real or faked) he couldn’t control his strength as well as he wished.
Jim insisted on trying to train him, but he flatly refused every single time. Eventually he gave up and had a one on one private fight with his instructor and bested him thoroughly; he wasn’t bothered to participate after that, because it was rather humiliating for the instructor to be beaten in five seconds by a cadet who supposedly didn’t know how to fight. After that he had passing grades and it was fine for him, he didn’t have to fight and the instructor could keep his pride.
There were some days when he didn’t really know if his real name was John Grimm or Leonard McCoy, but he always remembered that Mars was his childhood home, that his bunk with his platoon had been a home, and the flat he had shared with Sam had also been a place of solace for him.
When he had settled down in Georgia, had a baby and was married to the ex, it didn’t feel so much like a home... But this dorm room reminded him of bunking with the RRTS squad, which prompted good souvenirs of comradeship and sadness at them being long gone. He didn’t really keep track of time either. Jim was his personal calendar and clock, reminding him of everything without being asked, just for the sake of being obnoxious and a know-it-all perhaps.
Time felt so meaningless to him sometimes, when one was going on being three centuries old, most of those years spent alone living on autopilot. He didn’t know for sure how many months he had spent at Starfleet, but the weather had turned cold instead of foggy and the leaves were changing colors, so it must have been around four to six months now...maybe.
He blinked at his reflection before exiting the bathroom, shutting out his musings for another time. The day was starting and he had classes, even if he has aced them before at some point, besides xenobiology, his presence was required. And he had to wake up Jim. Otherwise the idiot would be late again.
***
He was lying on his bed, the PADDs that he had already finished reading strewn around him. Reading too fast left him too much time to think. He had kicked Jim out of the dorm for a couple of hours, to study. After that, he had said, Jim could bring him into the bar of his choice. The things he did for the kid, sometimes. He admitted he had grown attached, if a little protective from having to patch Jim up so many times. He enjoyed the quiet time he had bartered for himself, before having to dive into a bar too loud, too smelly and headache-inducing. Most of the time, everything felt too much for him, surreal, he missed having duller senses... even if they had saved his life a couple of times.
He was fond of Jim, more often than not. He liked him because he made John/Leonard lighten up, made him live a little. It reminded him a little of how Jocelyn had been in the beginning, but he hadn’t struck up any kind of relationship where Jim could use him, so he let the comparison slide; besides, he thought Jim was, deep down and most likely unassumingly, a better person than his ex could ever hope to be.
Jim frequently called him Old Man and told him he needed to go out and enjoy life. Jim didn’t know how much he hit the mark by calling him old. He always held back the snappy retort that since he had as much time as he liked, he would enjoy life on his own schedule. But for Jim’s sake, he followed, bitching and grumbling all the way, mostly for show, but that was how he and Jim worked, and it looked like a good team so far.
His time was up, and he heard Jim waltz into the room yelling, “Come on Bones! Time to hit the bar!” before being flung off of his bed unceremoniously by an over-enthusiastic blond chipmunk. He almost expected Jim to start speaking like one as well, like in those old movies. He could have stayed where he was, unmovable as a mountain, but for the sake of normalcy allowed himself to say hello to the floor. He got a hold of Jim’s foot and tugged slightly, bringing him down beside him, eliciting a small yelp.
“Don’t do that again to me, kid,” he said warningly with a touch of amusement, before going in the closet to fetch his boots. Once that was done, Jim cheerfully dragged him by the arm to the nearest bar that would fit his tastes for the night. He was still feeling quiet tonight, and said few words to Jim, not even grumbling much, which led Jim to inquire if he was feeling alright, because according to him : “A Bones who is not bitching just isn’t normal at all.”
He waved him off, saying he was a bit tired and lost in thought. Jim wasn’t the type to pry, so he left him to his musings, sitting side by side in silence during the tram ride. He became a little livelier, responding to Jim’s animated small talk, when they got to the bar. He took a small booth for the both of them and ordered his usual shots of Bourbon, while Jim was already flirting with the waitress, ordering a couple of shots of Tequila for himself, before heading off to the dance floor. Jim would always come back a few times, before deciding on his conquest of the night.
Jim seemed like he tried to split his time between the rest of the world and Bones. He had already insinuated that Bones was one of his few trusted friends, if perhaps the one who knew him the most. Then again, you had to trust your roommate, who was also the man who patched you up without reporting you when you got into fights or various embarrassing sexual predicaments.
He preferred Jim when he was sober, a loyal and genuine friend, if a little eccentric sometimes, joking and flirting harmlessly. He was even sometimes trying, being the keyword, to be helpful by hooking him up with girls. Once, he had brought him an armful of a dark-haired busty girl, who had suddenly become shy and nervous upon being thrust into the booth by his side, she had tried to initiate conversation but been quickly rebuffed by how moody he had been.
Jim had been puzzled beyond belief by how this (as he would later tell him) confident and brash girl, looking for a challenge, had turned into a meek little thing. Instinctively, she knew he wasn’t in the mood and that he could be dangerous if angered. He knew he gave off those odd little vibes when he was in a bad mood, even if Jim seemed to be completely immune by some odd quirk of nature, and he tried to gently send her off when he noticed how nervous she was.
He had glared at Jim and told him to never repeat the experience.
So instead, he had sent a guy.
With pretty much the same results and afterward he had refused to go out with Jim for three weeks after that, despite the blonde’s pouting and nagging.
***
When Jim was drunk, it made him uneasy; when in one of his down phases he started to say weird shit to McCoy. He never grasped fully what was being confessed to him and Jim never remembered or acted as if he didn‘t, so it was a moot point.
But Grimm remembered everything, to the point where Jim could restart a conversation held weeks before and he would instantly remember the full length of it, and it had been quite disturbing in the beginning. He had spent some nights thinking about what Jim had said to him, trying to piece it together. It wasn’t as if he actually needed to sleep as often as he did, but he felt better when he did sleep regularly. It would have been less awkward if John had actually been drunk as well. He had to fake feeling the alcohol he was ingesting, because he could probably drink everyone in the bar under the table; all of them added up against him.
But mostly, Jim was an overtly cheerful ( it seemed a little fake to him but nobody else seemed to notice) and flirting-with-a-purpose drunk that tended to ditch him in favour of something with legs and breasts and the occasional dick. Somehow, it usually brought a growl to the back of his throat, one that he never allowed out, when he saw Jim waving at him with a girl, giggling and clearly not sober, attached to his arm.
He went back to the dorm alone, projecting an aura of doom and gloom that kept everyone well away from him. Sometimes, if said-conquest caught him glaring, Jim’s date would cower and refuse to leave with him, making Jim go back home with Leonard supporting him. He couldn’t help feeling pleased when that happened. Jim would drag him out again, that was for sure, and he would go again, that was for sure... God help him, maybe he would follow the kid to the end of the world.
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