ceres_libera | Switch 22/50

Title: "Switch" (22/50)
Author:

ceres_libera
Rating: R to NC-17
Summary: The life and times of Leonard H. McCoy MD/PhD … If Leonard McCoy's life could get any fucking weirder, it would be … Jesus, he didn't even want to think what that could possibly mean, because it's already been too fucking weird to make any kind of rational sense.
Canon: Based in the ST:XI universe, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses.
Characters: McCoy/Kirk, with eventual appearances by all other ST:XI characters.
Notes: AU is as AU does. Gram McCoy continues to stir the pot. As always ... slow burn is slow, also ... cracky.

+

The next days passed in a haze of sleep and the gradual recovery of his strength. Leo was surprised to realize that despite their vaunted ability to keep muscle tissue from wasting away, the biobed had not helped him retain any kind of endurance nor flexibility. It was ridiculously easy to tire him out, and although he was assured that he'd be able to fully participate in the second term that would begin a couple of day after Jim's birthday, that sometimes seemed impossible to him. Especially when he found himself practically staggering after walking a circuit of the ID unit only twice, a distance he knew could not be more than a third of a kilometer.

He had groused in irritation when Jim had found him leaning heavily against one of the railings, resting. Jim's face had the pinched look of worry on it that Leo had come to detest, the one that he took pains to discharge by assuring Jim that he was just fine in his own particular way: by complaining. When he asserted that he was tired but not relapsing and that Jim needed to stop being such a mother hen, Jim's expression had eased before he rolled his eyes and slung one of Leo's arms across his shoulder, heaving him up so that Leo's weight was resting on him.

"Why does this feel so familiar?" Jim asked.

"Yeah, well, where's the booze?" Leo grumped. "If I'm gonna be staggering, I'd prefer to have gotten some pleasure out of it." He paused. "You could sneak me in something," he said.

Jim's laugh was immediate. "Dude, your gram would kick my ass," he said surely.

"I never thought I'd see the day when Jim Kirk would admit that he was frightened of an old woman," Leo said solemnly. "We'll have to mark this day down so that it's recorded properly."

"Go right ahead," Jim said sarcastically. "But first, why don't you ask Miss Elizabeth for some booze? But comm me first. I wanna witness your evisceration."

Leo was totally bemused by Jim's easy use of Miss Elizabeth, and the fact that he'd pronounced it 'Miz' as was right and proper for a woman of her heritage. Gram had finally gotten her way. "What'd she do the last time you called her Mrs. McCoy?" he asked.

"She pinched me!" Jim said in an outraged tone. "I thought she was kidding when she said she would do it."

Leo smiled, wondering if this was a technique he should adopt. "Where?" he asked.

Jim stared at him. "My bicep," he said slowly. "Which really hurt, by the way. Does that mean something?"

"It means she likes you, idiot," Leo said.

The only sound was them shuffling, well, Leo shuffling, down the hall.

"You know," Jim said casually. "I really thought my family was strange before I started meeting yours."

Leo laughed out loud. "Infant." As if any blue-eyed, cornfed Iowans could possibly contend with generations of McCoys, bred in a culture that fucking cherished eccentricity. "Strange don't even get 'show' at the county fair."

+

Leo's exciting day had been comprised of a stress test, some disgusting strained mash that was supposed to be turkey, and the nap he was currently being roused from. The source of his awakening was sitting in the chair next to his bed rustling some sort of wrapper and crunching on some oddly spiced snack that was wholly unrecognizable, at least by smell. He opened his eyes to see a young man in reds with a mop of black hair munching on a long, thin stick as he bent forward over a PADD. He squinted. The kid was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place him. "Hello?" he asked, wondering, not for the first time, how young the interns were allowed to be these days.

"McCoy!" the kid said enthusiastically, looking up.

Leo could see the telltale wisps of the sad adolescent attempt at a mustache, and squinted harder. "Subie?" he said disbelievingly.

The kid jumped up, wiping his hand on his trousers. "Yeah, it’s me," he said. "Long time no see."

"Holy crap, Subie," Leo said, shaking his hand. "You grew a ton."

Subie shrugged nonchalantly, but he was preening just a bit as he nodded. "Better late than never, huh? Griffin and Cupcake pretty much leave me alone these days," he said. "But how're you, man? I heard what you did – stupid, but awesome."

Leo sighed. "Yeah, pretty stupid. I'm lucky to be alive." He thought of La'an morosely, still comatose and likely to remain that way, and then made an effort to shake off his dark mood. "What the hell are you eating?"

"Pocky," Subie answered, sitting back down and holding out the bag. "You want some?"

Leo passed with a shake of his head.

"Anyway, I'd hoped that you'd be out of here today to eat with us at Thanksgiving, but …" Subie trailed off. "I thought I'd stop by – when are they springing you?"

They passed a pleasant few minutes before other members of the KFF began to filter in, all their enthusiastic, bright young energy filling the room with talking and laughter. Leo hadn't seen most of them for months, and found himself surprised over and over again by the changes that had taken place in the time he'd not been paying attention. All of them had grown, transitioning into young men and women, but it was more than the physical changes – they all seemed to be more confident and sure of themselves. They'd still likely be described as the nerds by Cupcake and his ilk, but they none of them would be disturbed by that the way they might have been a year ago.

"Happy Thanksgiving!" That particular greeting, from Irina Federova, was most welcome. She'd walked into the room quietly, but had hugged and been hugged by a number of Cadets as she made her way through the crowd.

"How are you, darlin'?" Leo asked her.

"I'm good," she said to him, and the way her eyes were shining, he didn't doubt it. She'd walked into the room holding the hand of a tall, skinny kid that Leo didn't recognize, but who seemed to be well-known to the other members of the KFF. "You're the one who needs to take better care of yourself."

"Yeah, I know," Leo drawled. Being told off by a bunch of children was a bit humiliating, frankly. He was used to thinking of himself as a loner, but it was clear to him that this ragtag bunch of kids was sincerely concerned about him. "I'll be good."

"You do that," she said sternly, squeezing his hand, and moving away to be replaced by the next enthusiastic kid.

He'd dozed off at some point, despite the incredible level of noise, rousing once to see Gram in a sea of red uniforms, holding onto the arm of Harry Yu while she declaimed enthusiastically, her hand waving in the air. Jim had been in the middle of another knot of kids who had their heads together, no doubt planning some form of universal domination that he was better off not knowing about.

When he woke the next time, Gram was sitting next to his bed. A number of chairs had been dragged in from the hallway to form a loose circle. Jim, Bet Wah and Paul Barresi were filling some of them at the moment.

"Oh, but you don't have to!" Bet Wah was saying to Gram.

Gram shook her head, shaking off Bet Wah's objections as she exclaimed over the blanket that Gram was almost finished with. "There's no obligation here, only desire," she said. "Besides, knitting is good for these old joints – it keeps them supple."

"It's something I always wanted to learn," Paul said.

Jim laughed a little.

"What?" Paul said snidely. "Not manly enough for you, Kirk?"

Before Jim could answer, Gram cut in smoothly. "Traditionally, sailors knitted on long journeys," she said. Jim raised his eyebrows. "Where do you think the nets came from, young man? Or those fantastic sweaters?"

Jim closed his mouth. After a beat, he said, "I kinda thought the sailor's wives made them."

"Jim," Gram said in her teaching voice. "Those journeys were years-long, like the ones you all go on in the stars." Jim considered what she said. "Look it up, young man," she ordered, then added. "Leo knits."

Jim had been taking a drink, which he mostly inhaled. "Bullshit," he croaked. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize, dear," Gram said placidly. "Swearing well is an acquired skill that increases with age. Just keep practicing and you'll do better next time." She patted Jim on the back. "As for knitting? It requires a type of manual dexterity that Leo excels at," Gram smiled sweetly and drawled out the next bit. "He's a surgeon, you know. Very good with his hands."

Jim goggled at Gram. He looked slightly flushed and confused, like he couldn't believe that Gram had been implying something sexual, but couldn't quite discount it, either.

"Gram, you're bragging again," Leo said, using an admonishing tone.

Jim started, not having realized that Leo was awake.

"If I were bragging, I would show them the holos of the beautiful sweaters you made that fall," she said tartly. "The other boys on the football team were very impressed."

Jim's mouth was now hanging open. Paul tipped back his chair and grinned, while Bet Wah looked amused.

Leo's rejoinder was cut short when the door to his room opened again, and Patty slipped through it, tiptoeing in an exaggerated fashion. She uncovered an aromatic, delicious smelling box that had been ill-concealed by her coat. "I smuggled in pie!" she said in a dramatic whisper. She was followed by a pretty brunette who Leo didn't recognize; the brunette was carrying a picnic basket.

"Thank God," he muttered. "Somebody cut me a piece, stat."

Gram merely raised an eyebrow in a way that led him to believe that she was far from done, and finished her row.

+

When he was finally released from the hospital, it wasn't to return to his dorm.

"Do I want to know how you were able to get a suite in the housing reserved for admirals and visiting dignitaries?" Leo had asked his grandmother as he dropped down onto the couch in the two bedroom suite.

Gram put on her most innocent expression. "Your implication seems slightly salacious," she said, "which I don't appreciate at all, Leo." She paused. "However, I will tell you that in an uncanny coincidence, Admiral Barnett is a lifelong fan of dance. He was gracious enough to suggest that this would be an appropriate setting for your recovery when I happened to run into him at the San Francisco Ballet's premiere of the Nutcracker."

Leo rolled his eyes. Admirals could learn strategy from his Gram, that was for sure. "You detest The Nutcracker," he pointed out.

Gram merely smiled. "I may also have promised to analyze some of the fight training sims for how rhythmic movement instruction could be utilized to maximize efficiency."

"I'll just bet you did," Leo had drawled.

Between the replicators and the 24-hour room service, Gram had done her level best to tempt Leo's taste buds and to restore the weight that he had lost. It had been a source of contention between them, Leo's continuing lack of appetite, and Leo knew that Gram was worried that he was punishing himself for La'an's death, or that he was not recovering from his illness. The truth was that neither of those were the truth. He was guilty and depressed that the decision to sever La'an from life support had to have been made, but mostly, his lack of appetite was due to the slow pace of his recovery. He ate well enough in the early part of the day, but by nightfall, after physical therapy and playing catch up with his classwork, he was often too exhausted to do more than eat a small portion of dinner. He absolutely hated having Jim be present to see him leaving food on his plate, but no amount of arguing with Gram would get her to cut down the portion size she insisted on giving him.

The thing was, it wasn't like there was a timeline for recovery that he could point to – even from Capella IV, where there were a few cases each year of those who got CHFIII and survived the infection, reinforcing their Darwinian beliefs about illness. Coupled with a lack of medical tradition on the planet as a whole, the accounts of these recoveries were neither trustworthy nor appropriately documented. Any ideas that Starfleet Medical had about Leo's recovery time was just prediction based upon like disease paths. Basically, Leo just had to muddle along as best he could, pushing a little more each day. By the time that Gram was slated to go back to Georgia, Leo was capable of walking, slowly but steadily, across the campus. He was determined that he'd be able to return to the Med/Grad dorms, which were a bit farther from campus than the undergrad dorms. Gram had been equally determined that he remain in the hotel-like environment of the visiting dignitary's quarters, but he'd finally won her over. Actually, it was Jim who'd won her over, by promising that he'd make sure that Leo was eating and taking care of himself through the holidays.

He'd restrained himself from asking why Jim would forego sightseeing when Gram had asked if he wouldn't miss being home for the holidays.

"I'd be the only one there, Miss Elizabeth," he said quietly, and she'd nodded sadly.

"Well," she began, "you could come home with Leo …"

"Gram," Leo interrupted. "We both know that's the last thing Ted wants."

"You are just as stubborn and ridiculous as your grandfather," she said sternly. "And I don't recall you having been given leave to address him so familiarly."

Leo suppressed the eyeroll that wanted to come, reaching across the table to his grandmother. "It's not the time, Gram," he said. "I just … I couldn't stand to hear it from him again, not right now."

Jim was very still in his chair, listening, while Gram's eyes filled with tears.

She sniffed once, and straightened her shoulders, grasping his hand. "Promise you'll come home sometime," she said. Her eyes had cleared of the tears that had gathered there. "Your demon horse misses you terribly, boy."

Leo smiled. "He does now, does he? Does he tell you so?"

"You know damned well that horse only whispers his secrets to you," she snapped. "By the by, he dumped your grandfather on his ass again the week before I left."

"And you only tell me now!" Leo said with a smile. "Knowing full well that would have aided my recovery far earlier? Damn, Gram!"

Gram tossed his hand aside in disgust and turned to Jim. "Do you ride, Jim?"

Jim shrugged. "Not really. I mean, I've ridden, but not the way I saw Bones," he gestured with a thumb in Leo's direction, "do in those holos."

Gram rolled her eyes at Jim's nickname for Leo, and Jim smirked. "So, horse is not one of the many languages you speak?"

Jim laughed. "No," he said, with a smile. "I can't say that my teacher cracked the code for animal languages, well … at least not that I know of."

"Was she a linguacode specialist, this teacher?" Gram asked pleasantly, beginning to pick up plates.

Without thinking, Leo must have shifted in his seat at her innocent question, although for the life of him, he couldn't recall having done so. Suddenly, however, he'd drawn both of their attention, although Gram's eyes on him were far more benign.

"Leo, please eat some more food," she ordered, pointing at his still half-full plate as she picked up Jim's totally clean plate.

Jim's incisive blue gaze pinned Leo from across the table, "You might say that, Miss Elizabeth," Jim said carefully, watching Leo all the while. "She invented the linguacode."

"How fascinating!" Gram said. "How lucky you were to have her as a teacher!"

"Yes, I was," Jim said, never once dropping his eyes from Leo's. "Very lucky."

+

Leo knew that the reckoning would be coming sooner rather than later, but also knew Jim Kirk well enough to know that not only would he wait until Gram had left town, but that he'd also never approach the subject the way that Leo would expect him to. Part of him supposed that he should just grab the bull by the horns and introduce the topic himself, but he honestly didn't know how to start it off. About the only thing that he'd resolved was not to be defensive and combative about it. That would only make it worse.

Not that it was gonna be good, whenever it happened.

+

"I really, really wish that you would change your mind, Leo," Gram said, as she hovered near the door of his long-deserted dorm room. Jim had gone downstairs to arrange for her luggage to be transported to Atlanta.

"Not gonna happen, Gram," Leo said, settling himself into his desk chair. He reached out a finger and spun one of the starships on his Christmas tree. Jim must have reactivated the program, because the nacelles on the little ships gleamed red, except for the one.

"That's a lovely, tiny tree," she observed.

"Jim gave it to me last year," he said.

Gram pursed her lips, "Did he now?" She looked at Leo with her bright eyes. "What's going on, Leo?"

"'bout what?" he asked, looking up and trying to look innocent.

"Don't give me those eyes, Leo," she said. "They're mine, which makes me immune to them. And you damned well know what – there's been tension between you and Jim for days now."

Leo considered denying it, but just gave up. "I believe," he said, "that Jim has realized that I know something about his past that he does not want to discuss or have be common knowledge."

"Is this an important secret?" Gram asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"And how did you find it out?"

"It was in his medical records," Leo said, and at her raised eyebrows, he continued, "which I had access to because I am his doctor."

"I see," she said slowly. She walked back and forth in the small space, thinking. "Did you ever consider that he must have known, even on a subconscious level, that by making you his doctor that you'd discover this information?"

"No," he said quietly, startled. "I hadn't."

"Well," she said, "I told you he was gonna set up more traps and tests than Saturn ever did for you, Leo – you just have to be smart enough to give him what he needs, not what he thinks he wants."

Leo blinked.

She came over and stood in front of him, bending down to look him in the eye. "Luckily, you know how to do that already. That's what doctors do, isn't it? You'll figure it out." She kissed him on the forehead. "And you'll wait him out." She shook her head. "It's the McCoy in you, you know, that can wait like that for the big pay-off. I'd have jumped him already."

"Gram!" Leo protested loudly.

"Oh, please," she said, rolling her eyes. "You may look like me, but you are a McCoy man through and through, Leo. Why do you think that Jessica was after you when you were all of 15, and she was almost four years older? There's something about you McCoy men that says 'Nobody'll ever love you better than me'."

Leo laughed bitterly. "Right. Clearly, Jocelyn got that message."

"I never liked that woman, Leo," she said tartly, and he grunted. She'd certainly said so at the time.

"And I maintain now, as I did then, that she was not the one for you, because when you find the right person, Leo, you will not let go." She stared at him. "That is McCoy nature. Horatio waited all of those years for Susannah. And your father? He had to work to win over Renee, that's for sure. But McCoy men make good on their promises. They're all about determination and staking a claim and keeping their beloved satisfied. Why else do you think I've stayed with that stubborn cuss of your granddaddy all these years?"

"Oh my God, Gram," Leo said, truly horrified. "Please do not talk to me about your sex life with Ted! I am begging you!"

The door to his room had opened just as he made his heartfelt appeal to his grandmother. Jim stood there, the foot he'd raised to cross the threshold hanging in the air. "Oh," he said, wide-eyed. "I'm ah … I'll be out …"

"I'll be right there, Jim," Gram said with a bright smile. "And don't be vulgar, Leo," she said in an entirely different tone. "And stop being such an infant! Now, stand up and give me a proper hug!" She kissed him on the cheek when he closed his arms around her. "I do not want to receive any comms from Jim about you misbehaving in 2257, you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Leo said, giving her a big squeeze and tipping forward to kiss her cheek.

She fixed him with a long assessing stare before she let him go.

"And as for that other thing, Leo" she said over her shoulder as she walked toward Jim. "You can deny it all you like, but I've known that you were cut from the same cloth as your daddy and grandaddy for years now." She paused, picking up her coat, which Jim stepped forward to help her into.

"Thank you, dear," she said to Jim, buttoning her coat and picking up her gloves before she casually said, "Why else would those Andorians have wanted to marry you when you were all of 22?"

Jim's expression was absolutely priceless.

Leo just shook his head. "You are completely incorrigible," he said.

"And that," she said sweetly, "you got from me. Remember, baby, use what you got. C'mon, Jim dear," she said, handing him her carry-on bag.

"Andorians?" Jim said aloud.

"Well, that is how they bond, Jim dear," Gram said, stepping through the door. "For a while there, I thought I'd be having little blue great-grandbabies." She tugged on Jim's arm when he simply stood there, blinking. "Leo hasn't told you about them?"

Jim shook his head wordlessly.

"Well …" she drawled, "he is modest, but … he is a McCoy, so their pursuit of him is really no surprise. I'll comm you when I arrive," she said to Leo, as the door began to whisk closed. She waved gaily, dragging a still poleaxed Jim Kirk alongside her.

Leo stood there for a moment, looking at the closed door before the laugh erupted from him. Goddamnit, but it was going to be an interesting Christmas.

+

Switch 23/?