leftwithmybones | (no subject)

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Someone is breathing on him.

No. McCoy shifts slightly and tries to push the weight off him. He doesn't remember going out to the bar or talking to anyone last night that could've come home with him, so he amends that 'someone' into a something. Last he checked, Plum couldn't make this much of a dent (and didn't have breath half this bad), which means that something's gone wrong. The heat's changed, too, roiling into something that's a little different than the usual.

Once he's got his eyes open, it doesn't take him very long to realize what's going on. First of all, his home has got sunlight peeking in through the wooden beams -- that's definitely wrong -- and second, there is a dog curled up on his chest.

Naturally, McCoy does what a sane person would do in this situation: blame Jim. "Jim!" he shouts, voice still rough with sleep. "What'd I tell you about strays?"

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"What!" Jim shouts back, prompting Plum to launch from the end of his bed. He's barely awake himself, but after this long, he's conditioned to respond to Bones even in the deadest of sleeps, and Jim rolls, feet finding weirdly coarse floorboards as he pushes the sleep from his eyes.

Everything is off, but Jim's willing to chalk it up to the night he had before until he stumbles into Bones' dusty bedroom and spies a lump beneath the sheets. "Have you - " he says and stops, pitching his voice to a whisper, "Have you taken a lover?"

McCoy's busy trying to shove the sleeping lump of a dog off him when Jim comes in. He shoots him a disdainful look, finally tumbling out from under the pinned hold. Even his clothes aren't the same -- they look like the thing his great-granddaddy might've worn back in the day -- the fabric thin, but down to his wrists and all black. "Don't be an asshole," he mutters, even though it's extraneous. "I told you one pet's more than enough. What're you doing bringing dogs home?"

"I didn't bring a dog home," says Jim, distracted from the sight of the pup wriggling free of the sheets by his own pajamas. "I'm wearing a onesie!" he yelps, grabbing at his chest until the henley buttons snap free all at once.

"Who the hell dresses people in the middle of the night!" And he knows Bones didn't go to sleep in that getup either, because Jim would have remembered, and he would have laughed himself into a coma, and also, "Lesovik!" Jim exclaims. "That's Ishiah's dog!"

McCoy settles back on the bed, his fingers buried in the dog's fur. The truth is, he's always been more of a dog person than a cat one, which is why the island giving him a cat is just one more way in which McCoy figures they don't get along. "Jim, are you getting naked for me?" he drawls calmly. "I'm flattered, really, but I got company already."

He glances over his shoulder at the dog, then back at Jim. "Are you sure it's his?"

Jim clutches at his buttons - god, he thinks he feels more around his backside, like a...like a window or something - but his attention's on the dog.

"That's him," he says, "Leshy? Yeah, look!" He points at the pup's wagging tail. "He knows me!"

Sometimes, McCoy hates being the one who's been around long enough to know what things like this means. The door is closed -- latched shut -- and that means that the dog didn't get in that easily. His attention distracted from the environment outside, he focuses all his attention on Jim.

"Sit down, Jim."

"But," says Jim in protest, because...the buttons, it seems weird to sit on them, but Bones is looking at him in such a way that he obeys, heart sinking as steadily as the rest of him.

"What is it?" he asks, holding his fingers out for Lesh to sniff. "What's wrong?"

He's had to do this a dozen times over, more since joining up with Starfleet, but it's not easier to break the news to someone. "When people disappear from their island, their stuff has a tendency to turn up in other places or just vanish all-together. If Ishiah's dog is here..."

He trails off, letting Jim reach his own conclusions.

Jim stares at him, fingers sifting idly through the puppy's fur, and gradually, the stunned expression on his face begins to harden. "So you think he's, what? Just gone?"

Jim shakes his head. Whatever knowledge Bones might have on him, that's just not possible, it's just not thinkable, not to a stubborn heart like Jim's. "He's been here for years. He can't just be gone. Maybe he just brought the dog by when we were sleeping." Looking up, Jim takes in their altered home. "To explore. See what else changed."

"Jim," McCoy pleads, nothing more than a desperate exhalation of breath. This is going to be difficult because he has enough trouble convincing Jim to give up his cause at the best of times. He knows Jim's loyal to a goddamn fault, which is only going to make this harder. "Our door's latched shut from the inside."

It is, and Jim looks at it. He looks at the latch, then down at his own weird clothes, at the window whose light leaches in too red, at Plum in the doorway, tail wrapped calmly around his feet. He looks back at Bones, whose expression is kind enough to break his heart.

Jim's frown deepens, but it loses some of its edge. "We could look," he says. "While we're exploring. We could look, couldn't we, Bones?"

"We can look," he promises, giving Jim a light ruffle of his hair as he gets up, like he's petting the puppy but missed by a couple of inches. He curses as he looks at his clothes again, opening the drawers to find a wardrobe that he definitely would never have picked out. "I'm almost scared to open the doors and see what hell's out there."

Jim scratches behind Lesovik's ears, his eyes mournful, but apparently his mandate to explore extends even here, and at Bones' comment, he finds himself going boldly from the bed to the window.

It's latched, too, but Jim pries it open, throwing back wooden slats to reveal a broad expanse of baked red earth. He squints through the blast of hot air that rushes up to meet him. "Hot as fucking Vulcan out there."

McCoy comes up on Jim's shoulder to peer outside, making a face when he realizes that they're due for another round of the island fucking with them. As if he didn't have enough to worry about. He opens his drawer to check his supplies and gives a swift curse when he sees that they've somehow managed to regress back in time.

"Shit," he exhales. "Thought we were done with this."

"This is like the snow and all that Victorian London crap," Jim surmises, watching Bones root around behind him. "I've been here three months and seen three different terrains. This place has a worse attention span than I do."

Leaving the window, he comes to peer over Bones' shoulder. "Please tell me that little whirry thing isn't your tricorder."

He lets out a discontent sigh as he stares down at the machine. "I'm pretty sure it is, yeah," he agrees with a mutter, rubbing a hand through his hair. He feels like a mess, the heat is causing sticky sweat to cover his skin, and he wants a shower. The problem is that he doesn't know what kind of showers they've got if his technology is leapfrogging backwards, again.

He rouses, slapping a hand against the back of his thigh. "Hey, Lesovik, c'mere, boy, let's get you outside to do your business."

"Uh, Bones?" says Jim, watching the dog bound towards his friend. "Not that I wouldn't get a kick out of you going outside in a nightgown, as your friend I advise you to put something else on."

Reaching into the wardrobe, he pulls out a pair of honest to god chaps. The high-pitched sound that follows is definitely not a giggle.

"You have buttons covering a flap in your ass, do you really want to start having this argument?" McCoy retorts sharply, throwing the door open and whistling piercingly to get Lesovik out the door while he yanks the chaps out of Jim's hands, pulling out a plaid shirt, leather vest, and boxers to go with it (even if he's fairly sure they're long underwear that're just short) and slamming the bathroom door behind him as he changes, cursing all the while.

He's out in a minute, throwing the nightgown at Jim's face as he starts filling up some water for the dog -- something he's never done for the cat.

Jim peels the nightgown from his face. "I knew you were a nightsweater," he accuses, though to be fair, in the growing heat he's sweating himself. "Hey, you look just like Clint Eastwood," he calls after Bones' retreating back.

"I wonder what's in my closet."

"Fuck off," McCoy retorts with little heat, cuffing Jim lightly at the back of his head as he grabs one of the white hats sitting by the windowsill and resting it on his head. He doesn't say how it's a little bit like coming home or how the thrill of seeing horses waiting beside a trough outside sends a little bit of delight through him.

When the dog's done his business, he wanders back inside, realizing they're in deep shit. "Whole terrain's changed," he says. "It looks like one of the planets we might come across during the mission."

Sprawled now on Bones' bed, Jim frowns. "Does this happen a lot?" he asks, offering Lesh his fingers to sniff, lest the dog think he's become someone else in the few minutes he's been outside.

"I mean, we've been on some weird missions, but nothing like this. I'm still expecting to wake up in sick bay with the mother of all head wounds."

McCoy leans over to nudge at Jim's legs, ekeing out a place for him to sit down -- and he steadfastly ignores how annoying the way his pants creak is -- while leaning forward and contemplating the reality of the world outside. "Well, that whole icy London thing ran on for almost six weeks, by my count," he admits. "And the December before that, it was...terrifying," he says with a grimace, considering the children's paradise he'd wound up trapped in for a year. "Jim, I've been here over two years. It's easier to ask for a list of things I haven't' seen or done. Speaking of," he adds, not looking at Jim for this one. "You missed a preview of what's to come when I hit...oh, 60? 65?"

"Wait, what?" Jim asks, shoving one of Bones' flannel pillows beneath his head. "What's that mean? You got old? Are there pictures? Hey!"

Jim sits upright. "I read some records about everybody waking up with new parts. Have you been a girl?"

"No, there aren't any pictures of me being old," McCoy replies, rolling his eyes when Jim starts getting comfortable in his bed. He should be used to this, given their years together at the Academy, but he never gets over the 'my pillows' thing.

He was really, really bad at kindergarten, his Ma always said. "And no, I have never woken up a woman, thankfully."

"Thankfully?" Jim clutches his heart, spreading his fingers after to clutch at absent boobs. "I would kill to be a woman for a day, holy crap. I wouldn't even leave the house, and you're a doctor! Think of all you could learn! For science and other more fun things."

McCoy swats at Jim's hands. "First of all, if you ever wake up a woman, I'm tying you down so you don't sprain your wrist from self-abuse," he says, wanting Jim to have fair warning. "And second of all, I have enough weird shit that I get to study around here without needing to wonder if I'd have looked like my mother if I was born a girl."

"Okay," Jim groans, flopping back onto the pillows, "that started out good weird, and got bad weird in a hurry. Why would you bring our moms into it, man? It was such a beautiful idea before that."

"Because I live to ruin your dreams, Jimmy," McCoy replies cheerfully, swatting at the outside of his thigh. "Wasn't it your idea to start exploring the great Western wilds? Why am I the only one ready to get out there? And I'm not doing this on my own," he warns.

"I'm scared what's in my closet won't be as awesome as yours," quips Jim, but his eyes are on Lesovik. Bones wouldn't dick him around - if Bones thinks Ishiah's gone, he's probably gone. And as much as Jim wants to search, he's just as afraid of finding nothing as he is of letting Ishiah go unmourned.

He rolls off of Bones' bed with a sigh, putting on what some of the crew had come to call his Captain's face. "Back in a few," he says, disappearing into his room. Minutes later, he reemerges in dark trousers, a flannel top, a hat, a scarf...thing, and more leather than he knows what to do with.

"Do chaps come with an instructions manual? Do I even need chaps?"

McCoy presses his lips together as hard as he can, trying his damnedest not to laugh. He's gotten good at maintaining borders between him and Jim -- keeping their friendship secondary because Jim's his Captain and there are lines of authority he can't cross. Now, he just doesn't want to mock him.

"Unless you're riding, you don't really need the chaps," he admits. "You want to take the horses?" And yeah, he's not going to think too much on the fact that there's suddenly horses.

Horses.

They'd be faster than going on foot, though there's the small matter that Jim's never ridden one before. As is usual, he assumes he'll be awesome at it anyway.

"Hell yeah, we're taking horses. This is going to be awesome."

"I'm going to regret asking this," he says, mostly to himself, before he gives Jim an expectant look -- it's the one that demands only the truth be given in reply. "How many horses did you ride back in Iowa?"

"Well, no," says Jim, gazing back with some reluctance. "But I've ridden airbikes for years." He breaks into a sudden, lascivious smile. "And I rode a fair few species back at the Academy, so I bet I'm a natural."

He waits a few moments and debates the pros and cons of letting Jim ride a horse. Yeah, he'll probably be able to suture up any wounds, but he hasn't used any of this tech, which means that he might have have a bit of a mouthy pincushion. Still, he gestures outside, willing to let Jim ride the pony -- so to speak.

Jim beams and shoos Lesovik into his room with some water. Maybe the dog could help them sniff Ishiah out, but Jim's not willing to risk his little hide around horses, especially when he himself has so little idea how to control them.

Not that that stops him bounding outside in excitement. "Awesome," he says again, rubbing his hands together at Bones' side. "Which one's mine?"

Shit, Jim's probably going to get himself paralyzed. McCoy wanders to the horses that are lingering outside the house and he's assuming that they're theirs to use. That, or they're about to steal two horses from someone and they'll be real pissed. He takes a look at a couple of them, checking them at the mouth and searching the eyes.

When he thinks he's found the calmest of them all, he gives the horse a good pat on the hind leg, gesturing to it with his chin. "This one, saddle him up," he says. "And if you die, it's not my fault."

"I'll be fine," says Jim, who's watched the whole proceedings with a quiet smile. One only has to visit sickbay to see Bones in his element, but it's nice in a different way, watching him do something he's good at that doesn't require anyone to be bleeding out.

"You really know horses, huh? What's mine like? Did you get me the fastest?" Jim looks at the saddle splayed over a plank of wood. "Also how does this work?"

"The family's had a couple horses since ages back," McCoy says, arranging the saddle on his horse until he sees the trouble Jim's having. He sighs and wanders over to help, making sure that Jim's not going to get paralyzed because of one stupid mistake. "And I got you the safest one," he clarifies. "The last thing I need is to be worrying about you even more than I already do."

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