Well... questions, more like?

He can do this. He has to do this. leaves me intrigued. I wonder if you're doing the David McCoy/guilt trip route or thinking of playing around with the issue of divorce and whether in this 'verse there is/ever was a Joanna (oooh, kill the kid! lots of mangst and h/c there!) that Bones "failed" to save. (Also, is he a pediatric surgeon? A general surgeon? Thoracic/cardiac? Trauma? Inquiring minds want to do research!)

And then the Y is for Yuppies prompt. I wonder if you'd be interested in/think about the potential issue of class clash between Doctor McCoy/Pilot Kirk, since Pilot Kirk has the potential to be ex-military/working class background and therefore challenge some of the doctor's bourgeois assumptions and (perhaps even) whatever psychological wallow he's in, much less other issues of his everyday life where he thinks he's only got "basic needs" until he meets Kirk and learns otherwise.

I'm reading "Appetites" by Caroline Knapp, and she talks about how excess shopping/overeating/anorexia and other female compulsions are often diseases of privilege, because the sufferer has time to worry about something besides mere survival. It makes me wonder if you have some thoughts about Kirk's particular background/damage (if any) to contrast with McCoy's, and what is driving McCoy's issues.

Is there going to be the white, gentle knight coaxing McCoy back into normal life, or the "snap out of it, you could be in Kabul" kind of confrontation, and how would McCoy respond? Does Jim have his own issues that he lets slip during some more stressful, less blue-skies flight (and gee, won't that be a test for poor Leonard-- or ooh, shootout in the E.R. and Jim freaks out, maybe triggers/goes catatonic and McCoy has to figure it out for them both, and that's the point at which he realizes he has been self-indulgent, and this pilot he hates with a hatey-hate passion but gets him where he needs to go has been right all along?)

The way you've written them here (the world's out to get McCoy and he knows it, Jim's seeming amusement at McCoy's sickness/discomfort and McCoy's responding by feeling more ill) it seems like there's a few ways McCoy could respond. They could really dislike each other at first because McCoy lets his resentment/shame at his reaction simmer and build and Jim has no patience for people who don't just get on with their lives because there's something more important than looking at your belly button all the damned time (even if you build in some issues that he hasn't resolved and is stolidly ignoring until they snap to)-- or Jim's seeming amusement could be sympathy that McCoy failed to discern, and over the course of their working relationship, McCoy slowly works the stick out of his ass.

And I'm a sucker for they're on the verge of getting it all together until one of them really puts their foot in it, somehow, and nearly ruins it all stories. The make up sex is just awesome.

Also, supply closet sex.

And Janice Rand as Kirk's snarky but knowing and soothing dispatcher (eep, maybe she talks Kirk down during the bad flight and McCoy's just sitting there helpless, all WTF?) and/or next door neighbor with Chapel/Rand bonus pairing. Because this fandom needs more lesbian sex.

Ok. So. Maybe that was more than a couple of questions.

ETA: Also, for some reason, this cries out for Moonlighting-type banter, complete with "Fine!"/"FINE!" level door-slamming.

With Bones as Maddie and Jim as David. But not Janice Rand as Agnes Depesto-- just as Janice Rand a la yeomanrand and shinychimera, and Chris Chapel as the BAMF-iest lipstick dyke ER-nurse-in-charge you ever did see. Dunno why, but I would love Chris to tell raunchy, filthy jokes and constantly sexually harass everyone while looking FANTASTIC and completely embarrass McCoy while making Jim giggle with glee.

/shutting up now.

Edited 2011-01-17 09:06 pm (UTC)

is for something really bad and traumatic to have happened to him, and even then he'd be on reserve because it's wicked expensive to train helicopter pilots, so they wouldn't just let him go.

V. says he would/could get a medical discharge assuming some Really Big Trauma. I dunno, shot out of the skies and held captive? Head trauma? PTSD? There are/were criteria for medical discharge that can probably be found online, there's percentages of injury, etc., beyond which you just get released (or at least there were when V. was in), which would/could also be honorable so long as it had nothing to do with teh Gay, in which case the discharges used to be straight medical for suspected cases of eeeewww teh Gay, and dishonorable if you got your red little hands caught down someone's pants. Of course, that's all based on 10+ years' ago knowledge.

But the damage hasn't happened yet. So like this fic is more of a prologue when they meet and then Jim goes away, whatever happens that he's discharged or put on reserve, and then him and Bones meet again with marked changes.

OH. OOOH. YEAH, BABY, GIVE IT TO ME. You could do a bit more with Jim's apparent cockiness and/or Bones' divorce and/or however you choose to display Jim's amusement/sympathy/mockery and Bones' reaction/misery/self and other-awareness while Jim's in the reserves but working as a medevac pilot. (Hello, class issues, some people needed to enroll in the military if they wanted to pay for their college... Y is for Yuppies and Not!Yuppies fighting, hooray!!!) They could be at cats and dogs and yet really successful professionally over a number of encounters, etc., with all of McCoy's divorce shit in the background either writ in at that point or as fade up from black from the end of the prologue when we see them in the new section-- and then when Jim's off to war, McCoy hates the replacement guy even more, "never thought he'd miss Kirk" or however/whatever you want to foreshadow the fact that they have a connection, despite how McCoy's tried to ignore it.

And then Jim comes back and McCoy's changed but then again, so is Jim ("standard" deployment (although it gets stretched) in Iraq/Afghanistan combat these days is 18 months so maybe Jim's already battle-worn and almost done with his duty when the Big Trauma happens?) and then they have to Heal Each Other! With Lots of Cock-Rubbing Action! and Hot, Fraught, Emotionally Confrontational Bantery Fights! after one or the other of them makes the first step. Maybe Kirk flies too conservatively/slowly and they don't make it in time? Or whatever.

Eeep. Kinda sounds like a big bang. And like I have too many opinions.

V. says full-boat ROTC (i.e., they paid for all of your education) for college include(d) a 5 year post-college active duty commitment plus 4 years in the Reserves, though you might want to check. You're basically treated like you've gone to one of the service academies, and you're an officer going in, including a month of summer training each year during college in addition to ROTC duties during the school year.

You're right, though-- while you're active, you can't have another job beyond your assigned duty post. So this would involve Jim either just starting his post-active duty "real world job" as a Medevac pilot and entering into his reserve duty (26'd put him at about the right age, assuming graduation from college at 21)-- and he'd be subject while in the Reserves to reactivation and the afore-discussed Really Big Trauma.

It'd be interesting if he was in law school at night in between Medevac flights. Overachieving, Jim, much? ETA: And if they weren't paying for his law school because he didn't want to be in the Navy forever-- or wanted to do JAG, but only stay in as long as he wanted to stay in, not because of some service commitment, and so he wanted to pay for it on his own... OH, Yuppie Bones! making all kinds of get-you-in-trouble assumptions. *g*

Edited 2011-01-18 03:07 am (UTC)