(no subject)

[amoray]

the picture prompt meme

1. comment with your character.
2. others will leave a picture (or two, or three...)
( 2a. if you like, link a visualosities post in your top level comment to give people material to work with! )
3. reply to them with a setting based on the picture.
4. for an idea of how this works, see bakerstreet, which is where i stole this meme from!
5. THIS IS A SLOW BURNING MEME IF YOU SAY YOU'RE LATE I'LL SLOW BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN

Comments

[bartalk]

this got embarrassingly long i am so sorry

[sufferably]

<sub>( The transition to life in the City hasn’t been easy, exactly. If asked, Bones would describe it as “as smooth as could be expected.” He would say that begrudgingly, rolling his eyes and thinking of the very many hiccups that only started with people commenting on Spock’s “prosthetics” and all of their “costumes.”

Even after a few weeks, it’s still goddamn strange to walk around in the twenty-first century. So Bones copes like he always copes, by overworking and then drinking when he can get away with it. The latter happens less often than one might think, because Bones has actually found a new hobby. He’s reading up on the century, on all of the prevalent diseases and popular treatments. He downloads articles and articles about HIV and swine flu, chemotherapy and triple bypass surgery. It’s horrifying, in most ways, but also something he can dig into and attack with the most curious parts of his brain. And he’s always been a little morbid, anyway. It’s part of what makes him a good doctor.

It’s also something to do, on nights when he gets home at two am and can’t fathom actually crawling into bed and going to sleep. He ends up on the couch, brand new utterly archaic iPad balanced on his knees as he sips coffee and reads, the backlight illuminating his face so he doesn’t have to turn on the lights and risk Uhura’s wrath or Spock’s questions.

That’s about where he’s at, tonight. There are dark circles under his eyes but he doesn’t want to sleep, so after ducking into his room to pull on an Ole Miss t-shirt—he’d ordered it online, looking for something familiar—and pajama pants he’s back out in the common area.

A confession, here—it’s been a year, but he still has nightmares. Tiring himself out and focusing on problems he can fix is so much easier than drifting off to sleep and seeing the Enterprise crashing and Jim Kirk dying along with it. )</sub>

no its perfect

[bartalk]

[ they say once you're bored of London New York, you're bored with life, but the saying was obviously invented before spacetravel and FTL were invented. The City is nice, but even after months of 'settling' he can't shake the thought of 'God, I should be in space'. There are worse places to be marooned, he supposes, but no evil AI worth their salt would even bother with sending people to Iowa. Or Texas. Or most of the deep south. Ahhh but that's not on topic.

The thought's always there at the back of his mind, and on long nights when it's too damn hot to sleep and there's no one to keep him company, he finds other ways to waste his time. Sleeping in until noon, as much of a novelty as it was, reminded him a little too much of his repeat offender days. Lying in bed in his boxers, watching the ceiling fan turn was mind-numblingly dull, so that was out too. So he found other ways. (None of them are a steady job.)

Tonight, it's a trip to the local bodega to stock up on instant coffee and 2% milk. 1% just tastes weird, man. It doesn't come as much of a surprise when he twists open the lock and finds Bones still up and on the couch; he'd stumbled in at 4 am countless times before to find Bones in the same position, still up and reading about the newest killer something flu. ]

You've got a seriously morbid reading list; it's gonna give you nightmares.

[ he says the moment he's back through the door, with his 'I am not a plastic bag' tote swung over his shoulder. And yes, this means he's picked up Bones's iPad and peeked at his browsing history. ]

<3!

[sufferably]

If I’m getting there anyway I might as well learn something as I go. _{( To the nightmares, he means. And he says that so idly it’s as though he doesn’t even register Jim’s actual presence, whether that’s because the sleep deprivation is numbing his sense or heart failure is just that engrossing. It’s a few moments later, when he’s reaching for his coffee mug—one of those bright blue ones from the Pottery Barn, everything in this apartment is newly bought and primary-colored, and Bones hates the fact that he and Spock have equal claim to everything blue—that he sees Jim standing in the entry and kind of jumps, just a bit. )}

…Jesus. What was so urgent you had to go out at four in the morning for it? _{( And now he’s clutching the iPad to his chest a bit defensively. Because if he wants to read all about the ways people can die that should be his prerogative. His private prerogative. )}

[bartalk]

[ Jim raises an eyebrow as he unloads the items from his bag: cans of Illy Issimo, packets of instant brew coffee, and a single, sweating, very beat up half-gallon of milk. He doesn't bother with putting them away in the fridge—that would be too responsible—but instead snaps the tab off a can, and saunters over to the couch, swinging over the back to land with a thump across from Bones. The couch wheezes in protest under him, but Ikea couches are built to last. Like Soviet Bloc furniture. ]

We were out of milk, and I don't like my mini-wheats with soy.

[ he has no idea why mini-wheats taste so damn good, they just do. He amuses himself with his drink for a moment, wiping the condensation off on the fabric and taking a long-ass sip, before turning his attention fully back to Bones ]

Don't tell me you're dreaming of the next ebola outbreak, because last time I looked [ at photos on your ipad ]? Nightmares for weeks.

[ joking about a very serious disease is obviously a great segue into the actual topic, which he jumps to with a far more serious tone. ]

But if work's putting you on the edge? I want you to quit.

[sufferably]

Then it’s your own damn fault. <sub>( For looking at the pictures! If Jim didn’t act like he owned everything he would not end up looking at pictures of ebola. This is just common sense.

But after that grumble Bones just hits the off button on the iPad and plunges the space into even more darkness. He puts the iPad down on the coffee table and runs both his hands through his hair, which makes him look ever more rumpled than he did a moment ago.

Bones rests his brow against one hand and then just sighs in the huffiest way. )</sub>

I’m always one edge. Work’s got nothing to do with it.

_{( Work is, quite possibly, the only thing that actually gets him to relax—which, yes, he realizes is ironic given that he literally holds the fate of people’s lives in his hands. Working in the twenty-first century is disheartening, to an extent, because there are so many things that people are wrong about, so many things that could be avoided. But he’s one guy, he can’t go about rewriting an entire world’s medical history. Even he realizes that’d be ambitious. )}

Maybe I just don’t like sleeping. And it’s not like you’ve got room to talk, Mr. Four AM.

[bartalk]

[ Jim's hand fumbles in the dark as he tries to find the lamp switch, sleepers in the other room be damned. His hand hits a decorative clock, knocking it off the end table and sending it spinning across the floor with a clatter. He mutters a low 'damn', looking over to Uhura's bedroom in case it woke her, before resuming his search. No lamp this round either, just a handful of old coffee left over in his mug from the morning. He's caused enough collateral damage for now, and he resorts to using the backlight of his phone to illuminate the room instead. No one can criticize him because he tried and that's all that matters. ]

Okay, not work. Then what?

[ he takes a sip from his can, staring curiously over at Bones from over the rim. Jim's own reasons for being up were far less academic; it was disdain at keeping a regular schedule that kept him awake at irregular hours, along with drinking. drinking was a big reason. ]

And I've got a great reason for being up. Maybe I really enjoy early morning talks with my best friend.

[sufferably]

<sub>( The lights are still annoying. It’s just particularly jarring to go from being able to vocalize a request—10%, 30%, 100%!—and then suddenly having these nonresponsive switches that are absolutely goddamn useless. It’s especially horrible for Bones, who likes doing five things at once and often uses his hands to work on something as he’s walking. First day in his new clinic? He’d walked in the door laden down with supplies and only then remembered that he couldn’t just ask the lights to turn on. Another strike against the twenty-first century.

All that being said, he doesn’t move to turn the lights on himself. Even if Jim’s cellphone casts the eeriest, barest glow across his face. The darkness is nice and still for a moment, and Bones doesn’t think to shift that. )</sub>

If you call this enjoyable I might have to give you an MRI. _{( It’s like a giant tricoder that you have to stick someone in and doesn’t give as accurate of readings! It’s horrible and the sadist in Bones might enjoy it more than a little. )}

And I don’t need a reason. I haven’t slept through the night in five years. Maybe more.

[bartalk]

[ the phone lights up with a received text, which occupies Jim's thoughts for a moment, even if only to grimace at the number and delete the offending message immediately. It obviously wasn't that important. Or perhaps it was from that one nurse at Bones's new place of work, who'd greatly enjoyed the stir fry Jim brought over one day: a lunch he'd conveniently forgot to give Bones. ]

You know, that timeframe lines up suspiciously with when we joined Starfleet.

[ he gives Bones a nudge with his shoe, which thankfully are new TOMS and not too covered with the scum of the streets. It's near impossible to imagine life without Bones or the Enterprise, and even after everything, he'd rather not. ]

Five years of great memories, and what's the worst that's happened?

[ bad question, he notes mentally and changes it to something with a less unhappy hypothetical answer ]

You mean you weren't born with dark circles?

[sufferably]

I can’t imagine why. <sub>( Bones drawls, though he supposes that isn’t entirely fair. He’d effectively been sleeping on the couch for six months before that, or on cots at the hospital. Starfleet might have been an improvement, at least during the academy days, though it couldn’t cure his insomnia completely. Being on the Enterprise was an exercise in tiring himself out so much that he couldn’t think about the face that he was floating in space every time he finally did lie down to get some rest.

He grimaces when Jim quips about the worst of it, pushes him away half-heartedly. Part of him is still angry—still really, really angry, and not just the kind of comfortable irritation he lives in daily—at Jim, for everything he’d done with regards to Khan. And Bones knows that illogical—hah!—and that he’s misplacing his feelings for Jim’s wellbeing, but it’s still a feeling he’s got, skimming beneath the surface.

He huffs. )</sub> That, too.