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bandearg_rois ([personal profile] bandearg_rois) wrote2010-12-24 08:56 pm

Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

Title: Christmas This Year
Author: [livejournal.com profile] bandearg_rois  
Pairing: Jim/Bones... ish
Summary: Leonard McCoy has never been particularly fond of Christmas, but he longs for it to be the way it used to be, even through war and diplomacy and time.
A/N: One last fic before Christmas... Halfway taken from [livejournal.com profile] space_wrapped prompt 82, a lyrics prompt for the song Christmas This Year, and also from my medley of Christmas songs on my Pandora Radio, most notably Happy Xmas (War is Over) by John Lennon. Yes, weird eclectic mix of songs, but I hope it all works out.


I don't want a brand new toy
But if you can hear
I just need a little joy
For Christmas this year

Feels like something's missing
Like my heart's not in this thing
Are you listening
Cause if you're listening

Take me back to when
It really meant something

~'Christmas This Year'

Leonard McCoy wasn't a Scrooge by any means, but it had been a long time since he'd actually celebrated Christmas with anything approaching enthusiasm. In fact, the last time he had, his daughter was barely out of diapers and completely unable to remember the time as anything but pictures in a holoframe. But he didn't even have her anymore, just sporadic pictures whenever her mother decided that he was deserving of an update, or more rarely, when Jojo herself wanted to send him something.

So holidays at the Academy became a black hole of work and more work, topped off either by nearly 24 hours of sleep or a bottle of bourbon, mostly the former, especially when he couldn't afford the latter. Even with Jim Kirk as his best friend and grudging roommate (the grudge was entirely one-sided, Leonard had to admit, that side being his own), he usually managed to get at least 18 of those 24 hours to himself, plus the bottle of bourbon, especially after the first disastrous Christmas when he'd foolishly thought he'd at least get to watch his daughter open the presents he'd sent through his mother. That had ended in a way that neither he nor Jim could have anticipated.

In a bid to cheer him up, Jim had dragged him to a bar and bought his drinks for him, citing it as his 'present for being the most accommodating roommate ever.' Usually, at the end of one of these nights of drunkenness, he'd be the one dragging a bloodied Jim back to their room to patch him up. That Christmas night it had been Jim, mostly sober, dragging his drunk, beligerent ass back to the dorms after he'd started a fight with some pissant 3rd year who had probably just come out of diapers when he'd gotten out of Ole Miss. After that, they drank in the room on those kind of nights, and the cadet miraculously never pressed charges.

But Christmas was really just another day, something to be avoided, the cheer to be sneered at for the most part. And then the Narada had happened, and the resulting skirmishes with everyone from the Klingons to the Cardassians, had meant that Christmas came and went without most of the ship noticing, same for the New Year, beyond the ticking over to a new Stardate Year, and more fighting. Finally though, the Fleet had built back up, in the following years, so that by the 4th year of their mission, they were back at full strength, an entire ship of the Fleet being manned completely by Vulcans, who needed something in the absence of their home planet.

Of course, over those years, things had settled enough that the holidays were coming back into style, and for some reason, Leonard needed that, the normalcy of everyone else celebrating while he watched a holovid of his daughter opening her presents, sent the day after Christmas and not arriving until well after the New Year. He knew Jim was trying everything he could to get them back to Earth, even for a few days, but as the flagship, the Enterprise was vital both to the war and to ongoing diplomatic endeavors, most of them to create solid trade agreements for the dilithium that was now even more precious than before, with the Universe at war with each other.

He could have gone home to Georgia at the end of their first mission, but when Jim looked at him and asked him what he was going to do, some part of him decided that no one else could keep these crazy idiot geniuses he called his crewmates and friends from dying at the drop of a hat. So he stayed on, finally got home to see Jo, though nowhere near Christmas, and came back to the ship with new holovids and a direct line to keep an eye on Jo's grades, graciously awarded to him by Jocelyn for his connection to one of the most politically sought-after figures in the Federation.

And still Christmas meant nothing, and still Jim was looking at him, giving him a feeling that he was missing something important. And then, halfway through the 3rd year of their second mission, they managed to chase the Romulans and Klingons back across the Neutral Zone and make them stay on their side, the Cardassians having given up due to boredom years before. And it was coming up on Christmas, the first one without war in almost 10 years.

And Leonard was astounded when they found themselves on their way back to Earth, in time for a deserved 3 month stay, for repairs and shore leave, neither of which had been in good supply for them. He stepped off the transporter pad in his father's old office, Jim behind him, to be nearly bowled over by Jo, who was now nearly to his shoulder and long like a colt. His mother was there, too, and all the aunts and uncles, with Jocelyn standing far behind, something like wistful affection in her eyes. He found that he'd missed her, too, but not in the way he had when they'd first parted all those years before.

And Christmas that year wasn't perfect, but finally, after over a decade, it actually meant something, which was more than he could have hoped for. And when on Christmas Day he led the singing of the horrifically old but still very apt 'Happy Xmas (War is Over)' and Jim's hand settled in his, it was about the most perfect one he'd ever had.

And so this is Xmas (war is over)
And what have we done (if you want it)
Another year over (war is over)
A new one just begun (if you want it)
And so happy Xmas (war is over)
We hope you have fun (if you want it)
The near and the dear one (war is over)
The old and the young (now)

A very Merry Xmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

War is over, if you want it
War is over now


-FIN-


A/N2: Also dedicated for our troops everywhere, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and stay safe and warm, wherever you are (and also personally to my husband and his fellows in Korea, wishing that NK wouldn't be such utter dicks) Merry Christmas to everyone! Or Happy Holidays, whatever you celebrate!

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