Star Trek/Pacific Rim AU: Marshall Christopher Pike recruits James Kirk for the last mission to save the world. He teams up with Leonard McCoy, with whom he’s Drift compatible, and falls in love along the way.
“Bones. He’s my copilot.”
People who don’t know them don’t understand how it is they work. How it is that he managed to drift with a doctor rather than the man they all thought he was perfect for.
Jim thinks it’s obvious. He’s a rule breaker. He reads the situation as it happens and he adapts to it. Spock, on the other hand, follows the rules. His skills are beyond compare, but he fights according to the manuals and his plays come right out Pike’s frontal lobe. Jim doesn’t think that way. Besides, it’s pretty fucking obvious that Spock will only ever drift with Uhura.
Leonard McCoy on the other hand. He’s temperamental, adaptable, and a rule breaker in his own right. That was how they ended up on the same chopper out to California. Maybe Jim had unconsciously decided during that flight that McCoy was going to be his co-pilot, but it doesn’t matter when he made his mind up, only that he knew he wasn’t going to drift with anyone else.
Because when you drift, you have to accept the other person without question; who they are, every perfection, every flaw, every shitty thing that has ever happened to them.
It was only going to be the man he now calls Bones. Because, besides Pike, Bones was the only person who accepted Jim from the start. He’s never had to prove himself. Bones calls him on his shit, but follows his lead when the time’s right, and he has enough of his own demons to not mention Jim’s.
Jim’s never been so close to anybody before. Yet it’s not enough, and despite his previous aversion to relationships, somehow he wants to be closer still. It’s a thought he’s desperate to keep from his co-pilot, from Bones, he’s just not sure how long he can manage that for, not when each drift takes them deeper into each other’s heads.