The Basics of Primary Ed Series by Caera1996

This series took over my life for two days. It kept me up til ridiculous o’clock because I could not put it down. It’s a long one and takes a little while to get into their relationship and their stories, but I quite like that. We see Jim as others see him at first, and as he and Bones grow to know and trust each other we peel back the layers. As is obvious from the summary, Joanna features prominently in this fic and she is just a cutie-pie. I loved her in it. Anyway, I recommend this one highly.

With thanks to winchesterassbut for the rec!

AO3

Author’s Summary

Leonard McCoy moves his life and his daughter across the country to San Francisco for a job opportunity that will allow him to pursue his research and raise Joanna. Fully immersed in his life as a single father, he’s not looking for, nor expecting, the interest and attention from his daughter’s kindergarten teacher, Jim Kirk. Jim offers Leonard a connection he’d been missing, and helps Joanna realize her potential. Together, they learn more about themselves and each other, developing and changing personally and as a couple, and over the course of their relationship their concept of “family” evolves.

Approx 351,000 words

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder by laughter_now

How have I not recced this yet?? It was one of the first I read in this fandom and it continues to be awesome. Are you a fan of a certain grumpy, straight-talking doctor? Are you a fan of BAMF!Bones? McKirk shipper? Then you have absolutely no excuse. Go. Read it now. Now! I mean it!

AO3 (links to the first and main story)
Series link

Author’s Summary

Why ever would Leonard want a boring day with nothing worse but a case of the sniffles to treat, when he could crawl through the maintenance shafts of a space station filled with Klingons instead? It’s an odd chain of events that lead him to this point, but when push comes to shove (and Klingons come knocking), someone’s gotta take charge and make sure they all survive until help arrives.

Main story approx 91,000 words
Series approx 135,000 words

Of Christmas Past by FairyNiamh

Short Kirk tells Bones about Tarsus fic, but with a twist. It’s not Tarsus he’s trying to explain, it’s where he got the badly carved wooden dinosaur that he’s playing with.

AO3

Author’s Summary

“Jim tells Bones about a Christmas past.”

Approx. 2000 words

Any Road series by shoreleave

Oh how I love this story, and pretty much anything by this author really.

AO3

Author’s Summary

Slow-developing K/M, beginning right after the shuttle ride and showing what happens the first year at the Academy. Told from McCoy’s POV.

KIRK: I know the feeling of being picked on very well. I had it at the Academy. An upperclassman there. One practical joke after another, and always on me. My own personal devil, a guy by the name of Finnegan… You never knew where he’d strike next.

FINNEGAN: You never know when I’m going to strike, huh, Jim? (hits him on the jaw) How’s this?

–From the TOS episode “Shore Leave”

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

–Lewis Carroll

approx 65,000 words

Little White Lines by winchesterandsons

“Bones finds out about Tarsus IV one night on the too small bed in the captains’ quarters.”

AO3

approx 700 words

Sing About Tragedy by dsudis

Spock Prime’s mind meld with Jim involved “emotional transference” but what exactly does that mean. This fic is Jim in the alcohol-hazed aftermath with Bones there to catch him, as always.

LJ

Author’s Summary

“All Vulcans are liars.”

Approx. 6000 words

CMO Confidential by shoreleave

Well this one packs quite the punch. The legacy of Jim’s childhood threatens his future and it’s up to Bones to make sure that doesn’t happen, but without much help from Jim. In fact with Jim actively stopping him from helping. Never makes it easy, does he?

AO3

LJ

McCoy becomes CMO and finds himself privy to confidential information in Jim’s medical file. Starts just after the movie leaves off and continues until just after the Enterprise docks again.

(approx. 55,000 words)

Not in Our Stars by emluv

This is a Tarsus fic, so really not a happy story. Please be aware normal Tarsus warnings apply and check fic notes for extra warnings. Nevertheless, it is Jim Kirk meeting Leonard McCoy and while it may not be the best of circumstances, it doesn’t stop their relationship from kicking off. I really wish there was more! I’d love to see this Kirk and this McCoy at Starfleet together.

AO3 LJ

Author’s Summary

Written for a prompt requesting a fic in which brilliant young medical student Leonard McCoy volunteers for a Doctors Without Borders-type organization and ends up helping with the rescue efforts on Tarsus IV, where he meets a teenage, traumatized Jim Kirk, who will, for whatever reason, allow only McCoy to treat him. I have played fast and loose with TOS information about Tarsus IV and its location, making it closer to Earth so that McCoy could feasibly make it there and back in one summer.

Title taken from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act I, scene ii: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in our selves…”

(approx. 36,000 words)

Switch by Ceres_Libera

Wow! Just wow! This is one of the tightest, most well-rounded fics I have read in any fandom. I got completely caught up in it to the point where sleep went out the window and essay marking got moved down the priority list! This is the story that made me a Kirk/Bones shipper. I can’t give it higher praise than that, I guess.

Summaries are the author’s, not mine.

1:Switch (approx. 231,000 words) AO3 LJ

The life and times of Leonard H. McCoy MD/PhD … If Leonard McCoy’s life could get any fucking weirder, it would be … Jesus, he didn’t even want to think what that could possibly mean, because it’s already been too fucking weird to make any kind of rational sense. A Starfleet Academy story, set in the ST:XI universe.

2: Touch (approx. 10,000 words) AO3 LJ

However, as far as touch was concerned? He was a connoisseur. In fact, in some circles, Jim Kirk was considered a bit of a savant on the subject … until he met the exception. Because there’s always an exception to prove the rule.

3: Family (approx. 8,000 words) AO3 LJ

Gaila has lost her family before. She will not lose another one, not without a fight.

4: Lazarus (approx. 17,000 words) AO3 LJ

The life and times of Leonard H. McCoy MD/PhD continues on, in ways he had never contemplated as remotely possible. Nearing the end of their first five year mission, Leo takes Jim home to Georgia for Christmas 2262 which falls just before Jim’s 30th birthday. Written for the Space_Wrapped 2011 Christmas challenge on Live Journal for prompt #46, which asked for Christmas at the McCoy family home, sap and lots of it.

The Academy Series by Mijan

This series is just indescribably awesome. It hits all the buttons for me: Academy Era, Tarsus IV references, a central Kirk & McCoy relationship and epically long! Well-written, complex and left me wanting more. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

3 parts and a prequel thus far. Story links and author’s summaries below.

Prequel: Convergence (approx. 20,000 words) AO3 LJ

Christopher Pike wasn’t supposed to be in Iowa, but there he was, weighing his future against scales that would never balance. Jim Kirk had given up on his future long ago. Leonard McCoy’s past had been pulled out from underneath him, and he was ready to let his future go with it. Paths converge in the least likely places as three people realize that their futures are what they make of them.

1: All The King’s Men (approx. 63,000 words) AO3 LJ

“How many times can you patch up something before you realize that it’s too fucking broken to fix, Bones?” When a training simulation uncovers something that Cadet Jim Kirk was never meant to remember, it breaks him. Leonard McCoy can’t sit by and watch Jim crumble. When asked what he’s willing to do to get the old Jim back, Leonard has only one answer. “Anything.”

2: Crossfire (approx. 140,000 words) AO3 LJ

Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy are on top of the world at the academy until it all comes crashing down around them. Trapped in their own mystery of politics, sabotage, and possible murder, it quickly becomes impossible to know who to trust. Worse, Jim might still be a target. With a dangerous criminal on the loose and Academy leadership not doing enough, Jim and Bones have to get their lives back together and find out what happened… before it happens again.

3: The Needs of the Few (approx. 174,000 words) AO3 LJ

As cadets on a summer internship, Kirk and McCoy are supposed to keep their eyes open and their mouths shut. As far as Bones is concerned, that’s just plain wrong on Jim Kirk, but Jim seems determined to follow orders and fall in line for a change. After all, they’ve both seen enough trouble in two years at the Academy, and this is the Peace Mission of Axanar. However, when a mystery starts to weave itself around the mission, and the senior officers don’t seem interested in investigating, how far can Kirk and McCoy let it go?