leonard mccoy (dammitjim) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2015-07-13 20:30:00 |
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"You dated a Disney Princess? Was she even legal?" McCoy sat across from his captain and, he supposed, his best friend, nursing a beer and giving him a look that managed to be both skeptical and mocking at the same time. He was partly surprised by the revelation that Jim had dated a bonafide Disney Princess. At the same time, he wasn't really shocked. It wasn't like his exploits at the Academy hadn't been common knowledge. Or that he didn't know a lot more about those exploits than he ever cared to. Still, a Disney Princess. He was almost impressed. Almost. The idea that someone from a damn movie was actually real here was enough to wrap his head around. Of course, he shouldn't have been surprised that a girl's supposed fictional status wouldn't be a deterrent. Age probably wouldn't be, either, so it wouldn't surprise him if the girl hadn't been legal. It probably wasn't what he should be focusing on, given everything he'd been told about Lawrence since his arrival only hours ago, but, honestly, it was easier to focus on something like this than the fact that, oh, the whole place could be sucked into hell any day now. Kirk rolled his eyes but bit back a grin. God, it was good that Bones was here. After all the crap the last few years, after losing so much between the Apocalypse and the earthquake and making new friends just to see the Seal take them away again, it was incredible someone he actually wanted from home would show up. “Yeah, Anna was legal. And just so you know, Elsa set us up. Neither of them cared about the age difference,” he said before taking a drink of his beer. “Did I mention there might have also been a witch, if things had worked out differently?” he said. “An honest to God, Hogwarts attended witch. Also legal. And closer to my age.” He took another drink. “But my dating life isn’t even the weirdest thing about this place, though I’m sure you’ll disagree.” "Your dating life is the weirdest thing about ANY place." McCoy snorted at the implication that it could be otherwise. That might have been an exaggeration, but he had to give Jim a hard time. It was in the friendship contract. "But humor me, Jim," he continued, taking a drink of the beer in front of him. 21st century beer was different, but it wasn't bad. "Tell me what's weirder about this place than your continued lack of taste in women." He had to do it. The jab at his taste in women, while true, would be nothing compared to the shocker that he wasn’t the only one from home who had been in a relationship while here. He had to tell him, but he had to time it just right. Like, right when Bones took another sip of his beer. Either he was going to choke on it or spit it out, but the reaction was going to be priceless. “Well, let’s see. There was the apocalypse we had in 2013,” he said thoughtfully. “There was the time I got sent to Middle Earth and was a Rider of Rohan for a while. There’s the fact we had the Sanderson sisters in town for a while. You know, from that kids movie. There was the time when a bunch of people in town got turned into kids and every woman I was friends with was young enough to be in elementary school or was a teenager who didn’t trust me.” Bones took a drink. “And there’s the fact Khan and I were actually kind of friendly while he was here, and his girlfriend is one of my good friends.” There. That should illicit a reaction of an amusing sort. If he was looking for a reaction, he definitely got one. Leonard McCoy took another drink of his beer just as his friend and Captain dropped his bomb and in the ensuing shock he managed to both choke and spew out the drink. He took no small amount of satisfaction in noting the way the amber liquid now covered Jim’s face, but the look on his face was still a mixture of incredulity and anger. “Dammit, Jim, don’t you think maybe you should have led with the news that Khan was here?!?!” The particular news completely trumped everything else he’d been told, including the impossibility of people from Harry Potter and children’s movies and whatever the hell else. Bones looked around nervously, missing the implication that Khan wasn’t here now. “Is that what happened to your arm?” he asked, nodding at the cast Jim wore. He’d noticed it immediately, but had gotten sidetracked from asking before thanks to the topic of Jim’s love life. “God no. He’s been back home since February,” Kirk said, wiping the beer off his face. “He showed up after I did, pretended to be one of the facetwins he has named Sherlock Holmes and got into some trouble doing that, and then ended up saving most of our asses by leading us in the apocalypse. After that he just kind of stayed in the shadows and only popped up to irritate me until Molly arrived and they became friendly.” When his face was cleaned off he leaned back to continue the story. “Molly is from the same world Sherlock is from, and I guess she and Khan hit it off based on the fact he looked like her friend from home. One thing led to another and I ended up spending a lot more time with both of them and the six-year-old girl that adopted him than I had ever planned on. Here he wasn’t this megalomaniacal, world conquering, homicidal jerk. I mean, he was still a jerk, just to me but not even all that often. Generally he was...decent, I guess. Bo adored him, and I think Molly ended up falling for him. She took the Seal taking him back pretty hard, harder than most people in town. It took a lot of people that time.” About half of what he was saying made sense. The rest just earned a look that plainly said are you out of your fucking mind. McCoy needed a drink. He had one right in front of him, but he thought he needed another. Possibly several more. God, this man was driving him to drink. Just when he thought there was no way Jim Kirk could keep surprising him - well, he was very clearly being proven wrong about that. He shook his head, taking another drink of the beer in front of him and wondering if he shouldn’t have ordered something stronger. This was all a lot to wrap his head around. “I’m just going to pretend even half of what you said made sense,” he decided out loud. He realized he hadn’t really gotten an answer about his friend’s obvious injury, though, so he asked again. “What did happen to your arm, then? You hit on the wrong girl and get your ass kicked again?” Kirk signaled the bartender as he watched his friend. Yeah, this called for whiskey. High proof and a lot of it. He signaled for the bartender and asked for two glasses and a bottle of 100 proof Jack Daniels which he knew the bar had and told the bartender to just leave the bottle. Once he had it he poured them each a shot. “It’s complicated being here,” he said with a shrug. He’d wait to tell him about the other versions of them a little later, after he had at least two shots in him. He grinned slightly and shook his head at the question. “Nah. I fell off some rubble of the apartment complex I owned and broke my arm. I’m lucky the broken arm was the worst of the damage, to be honest. It was a fifteen foot fall. Rose probably would have broken the other one, though, because I worried the hell out of her. She had no clue where I was, just that I was hurt.” He poured them each a shot when the bartender deposited the mostly full bottle and two glasses with ice. “You’ll meet her, by the way. Eventually.” “You fell off some rubble? Why in the hell were you standing on a pile of rubble?” Shaking his head, he rubbed at his temple with one hand and picked up the drink with the other. At least Jim had the sense to supply him with the good stuff. “Nevermind, I probably don’t want to know,” he said, taking a long drink. Of course, not wanting to know didn’t stop him from asking the inevitable question. “Are you out of your damn mind?” It was rhetorical, because he already knew the answer, of course. He made a noise that could have been one of approval when Jim mentioned this Rose person who would have broken the other arm for him. “Good. I like her already,” he said, finishing off the short in one swallow. “Sounds like she actually has some sense.” Maybe she’d be able to beat some of that into him. Lord knew McCoy had tried and failed over the last few years. “Well, I was on the rubble trying to see how much of my stuff from home I could salvage,” he said. “I think I managed to get a couple photocubes and one uniform to safety. Lost just about everything else I wished for,” he said, taking a drink of his own drink. “I actually had the entire contents of my apartment in San Francisco here. I guess I’m going to have to waste a wish wishing for it again.” Knowing this was going to confuse him he decided to explain. “Around Christmas, we get these things called wish baubles that let us wish for almost anything we want. First one I used to wish for the knowledge not to run a business into the ground. Second wish I wished for my stuff from home. Didn’t need to wish for money since I have plenty of that, so...” He shrugged slightly. He’d time the announcement he was a millionaire well too. Preferably when McCoy wasn’t looking directly at him. He poured himself some more whiskey. “She does, when she’s not being reckless herself,” he said. “But I think you’ll like her anyway. We started off as friends and things...happened...and we ended up dating. I didn’t actually plan to start dating her. I’ve had a rule in the two years I’ve been here not to date my female friends.” A rule he would admit he had gladly broken in Rose’s case, but it wouldn’t have been broken in the first place without Seal interference, so there was that. He picked up his drink and then paused. “Just don’t ride me too hard about the fact she’s younger than me, all right? She is legal, and I know you think that’s the important part.” “Are you out of your damn mind?” he repeated, because that seemed to be the only plausible explanation for why he’d been standing on rubble looking for things, no matter how much sentimental value those things held for him. He’d seen enough of the destruction around this place to have an idea of just how dangerous that would be. McCoy knew that Jim liked to take risks, so he shouldn’t have really been surprised he would do something so stupid. Talk shifted to Jim’s love life and he didn’t bother to muffle the snort of laughter at the idea that Jim had a rule about not dating his female friends. He wondered just how often that rule ended up broken. He wasn’t exactly known for being able to stay away from women. Hell, McCoy could probably count the number of women Jim knew and hadn’t tried to sleep with at least once on one hand. “How much younger?” he wondered out loud, knowing his friend wouldn’t have mentioned the aged difference if it wasn’t a big one. He shook his head as he anticipated the answer being that the girl was just barely legal. While it was good to know Jim wouldn’t get arrested to fooling around with her, he couldn’t help wondering why he couldn’t stick with women his own damn age. “Hey, I was also listening to two people give me estimates on how much it would cost to clear out the rubble and build a new building,” he said in his defense. “I mean, I inherited the place, there were people living there when it collapsed aside from me. I’m pretty sure they’d like to have apartments again at some point.” He took a drink. “She’s twenty,” he said. “Turned twenty in March, actually. So yes, I do realize I am eleven years older than her at this point because I got here when I was twenty-nine and I turned thirty-one in January. But it doesn’t bother her so it doesn’t bother me.” He grinned slightly. “Less of an age difference between me and the Disney princess, at least.” “While standing on a pile of rubble.” McCoy shook his head and muttered something that was definitely not complimentary. “You’re a damned idiot,” he said loudly enough to be heard more clearly. “You’re lucky you didn’t break your damned neck.” There was more muttering after that, some of it about being stuck in the dark ages where he couldn’t even treat him properly and some about how this man was going to be the death of him. Truthfully, he was just glad he’d gotten out of it was just a broken arm, He swore that sometimes it seemed like Jim actually had a deathwish. “Twenty.” He snorted again, pouring himself another glassful and taking a drink. “Well, that’s saying something, I suppose. You act like a damn teenager, anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter much.” His tone was gruff, but there was a certain affection and worry in it, too. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but he wasn’t actually judging the age gap that much if Jim was actually happy, which he seemed to be. He just couldn’t help giving him a hard time. “You know, when Molly and Jemma get the med centre back to it’s operational state and you can talk to someone like Zane about tech we have back home, there could be stuff that’s not from the dark ages for you to use,” Kirk said. “Also? I could always ask someone with magic to make it better if I absolutely have to. That is an option here in Lawrence.” He shook his head. “This coming from the man who spent some time on a deserted planetoid flirting with Carol while the whole bridge crew was listening in,” he said with a smirk. “And since Carol is younger than me and you’re older there’s an even bigger age gap there.” He looked at McCoy’s glass and filled it up some more before doing the same to his own. “But she’s a good person, and I do actually care about her. A lot, actually. I nearly lost my head when she was shot earlier this year, even though I knew it wouldn’t kill her.” “Carol isn’t that much younger than me,” he objected, shrugging. It was true, he had been flirting with her, but even if she was younger, she wasn’t more than a decade younger than him, unlike some people’s girlfriends. Despite giving Jim a hard time, though, he was actually glad to see him friend happy. He’d seen him chase after plenty of women, but this seemed to be different. “God help us all, is Jim Kirk actually settling down? Women all over the galaxy will weep.” There was a smile on his face as he took his next drink, but then he shifted the subject away from the woman who had apparently made Jim want to get halfway serious. “Fascinating as your love life is, Jim, I assume there’s a lot more to this place I should know. Like why in the hell I just randomly appeared in an ancient graveyard, of all places.” Kirk smirked when Bones protested, but it softened to a smile when it got back to Rose. “Well, I’m living with her so yeah, I guess I am settling down. This place will do that to you, if you’re here long enough. You kind of have to grow up, which is what people back home wanted me to do, but I was too busy relying on wit and charm to actually do it.” He got more serious after that and looked at the drink. How in the hell was he going to explain the apocalypse to Bones? Bones didn’t believe in that kind of crap, he didn’t think, but he’d lived through it and he knew angels and demon were real things here and serious threats to boot. “I guess you could say you ended up in the graveyard thanks to the apocalypse,” he said, lowering his voice. “Which we won thanks to Khan, by the way. But back in December of 2013 there was a huge fight involving a bunch of us who got pulled here from other worlds, a few locals who know the truth, and Lucifer Morningstar. It was why we were brought here in the first place, to help fight in it.” “What kind of drugs do they have you on?” Damn right, this was all pretty unbelievable. The idea of angels and demons were one thing. The idea of Khan fighting for the good guys? That was pretty much inconceivable given what he knew of him. Yeah, he didn’t believe in that kind of crap, but he could see that Jim was serious. That meant either that he was high or that the impossible was reality here. Then again, he’d traveled back two centuries into the past and showed up in a graveyard. He’d found himself in a reality where Disney Princesses were real, live people. He supposed maybe that meant he needed to start revising his idea of impossible, no matter how crazy it all sounded. “Not on any drugs, I swear. Nothing stronger than ibuprofen right now,” he said. “Look, it’s hard to believe. I get it. We used to have this huge post about how we all got dragged here and it explained it pretty well and people were still thinking it was bullshit, that we were lying. But just a couple weeks ago we had a bunch of people in the graveyard trying to break Lucifer free, so trust me when I say it’s all real and I’m not delusional.” He pulled out one of the amulets he’d managed to find. “Speaking of the weird stuff, put this on. It’ll keep you safe from any demons who want to possess you. I’ve seen what it can do to people, and it’s not pretty. I mean, I could do the exorcism spell on you no problem, but I’d rather not have you go through it in the first place.” "Demon possession, Disney Princesses, this place in insane." McCoy grumbled, but he took the amulet, anyway. A part of him thought Jim had to be delusional to believe in all of this, but he was also older than he remembered and it was obvious he'd been through something. There was a subtle change in him and McCoy thought back to what he had said about how Lawrence changed people, how it had forced him to grow up. Clearly, that was still a work in progress, but he couldn't see it as a bad thing. "That might be about the ugliest thing I've ever said," he grumbled as he slipped the amulet around his neck. Afterwards, he returned his attention to his drink. "If there's more insanity you have to tell me, you might as well be out with it," he added. He couldn't imagine it could get any more unbelievable. He shrugged slightly when Bones said that. He had a point. Lawrence and this world in general was pretty insane. “Well, I have a tattoo that does the same thing,” he said. “It’s probably a better idea, and there’s a few places that can do it. I can get the exact design from Dean or Sam if you want to do the same,” he said. “Hurts like a bitch but it’s better protection.” He thought for a moment. “There’s a bunch of classes we usually offer for new people, where they learn about all of the stuff in this world. There’s stuff on making deals with demons, dealing with angels, vampires, stuff like that.” He poured them both some more booze. “With the youth center and a lot of the other places we used ruined in the earthquake I don’t know when we’ll start them again. And then there’s some more insanity with me personally, like the fact I’m worth about nine million dollars at the moment and I ran a youth center here, but I’m not sure that’s the kind of insanity you want to hear about.” Okay, that might have actually impressed him. Nine million dollars was a lot of money. He filed the information on the classes and the tattoo away for future reference. He'd probably need to look into both or the classes, at least. "That's exactly the kind of insanity I want to hear about," he said rather than pushing for more answers about all the weird shit he didn't want to think about. "If you've gotten mature and respectable now, I want to hear about the details." "Not," he added a heartbeat later, "the details of your sex life, no matter how maturely settled down you are now." |