The Immeasurable In-Between (Kirk/McCoy, R) part 2
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Day 5
McCoy’s developed a sixth sense for when Spock is lurking behind him, maybe because he frequently is. Most of the bridge crew have cycled through during visiting hours--Jim’s bedside table holds a plant with orange leaves left by Sulu, and the remains of a sandwich Uhura brought McCoy from the commissary--but Spock’s presence is a nagging near-constant.
“Dr. Boyce informs me that Jim’s condition has stabilized to the point where his status is no longer considered ‘critical’,” Spock says, addressing the space to the left of McCoy’s ear.
“Oh, does he? That’s interesting, he hasn’t told me. Maybe he’s been too busy fielding questions from random commanders.”
“I did not mean to intrude on your area of professional expertise,” Spock says huffily. “I saw him at this morning’s meeting of the Commission of Inquiry. Jim’s outcome has many strategic implications.”
“No doubt. I’m glad the Admiralty isn’t letting a little thing like the destruction of San Francisco get in the way of their long-term planning.” McCoy’s well aware that his prickles are intended to deflect, but the topic of the Admiralty makes him uneasy. If they’re probing into Jim’s medical condition, it can’t be long before they’ll want to inquire into certain ethical violations committed by the CMO. It’s not that he fears the Admiralty--post-Marcus, and with the exception of Pike, he’s very much feeling that the Admiralty can go hang itself--it’s that he has no idea what he’s going to say.
“You may also wish to know that they also expressed their hopes for Jim’s speedy recovery,” Spock continues. “Ensign Chekov and Lieutenant Commander Scott also wanted me to convey these sentiments, as they have not seen you for several days.”
“Yeah, well I’ve been busy.” McCoy, aware that he’s mumbling, tries again with more conviction. “I’ve had a few more things than bullpucky Starfleet inquiries to attend to.”
“I see.” Spock does a flyby of Jim’s bed, dark eyes sweeping over the biodisplays that ring him as if he’s some great ship at spacedock. “It was my understanding that your credentials with the hospital had not yet been reinstated. Therefore I do not believe that you are busy with your medical practice. I also do not believe that Jim would want you to spend so much of your time at his bedside when it serves no practical purpose.”
“Oh, yeah? That’s something you’d know, wouldn’t you, since you’ve been his best friend since the day before yesterday.” McCoy is taken aback by his own anger, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to back down, not with Spock giving him that look of bemused surprise, better suited to a grant review board than a formerly dead friend’s bedside.
“I do not believe I have not tried to claim that status.”
“You--” McCoy clenches his fists to keep himself from sputtering. “I don’t think you really even liked him, before or after he saved your life.”
“My liking him was immaterial; he is my commanding officer. However, I admit that the prospect of his imminent death caused me to reconsider his many fine qualities.” Spock pauses, and frowns. “That was a failure of logic on my part.”
“A failure of--” McCoy feels like a phaser set on overload. But there’s something in Spock’s face, as he looks at Jim’s, maybe a wonder at how a brittle working relationship had turned into friendship and then into something McCoy and maybe even Spock can’t put a name to. And he remembers that Spock cried.
“Yeah, well,” McCoy says, releasing a breath. “I call that regret, and it’s pretty common. That’s why it’s better to get everything in the open while someone’s still alive. Dead is too late.”
There’s a long pause where they both turn to contemplate Jim’s still body. McCoy is reminded of the barbaric old custom of viewing preserved dead bodies and feels a chill across his neck.
“Both Nyota and Jim were angry at me for my willingness to sacrifice my life to save the Nibirans,” Spock says unexpectedly into the silence. “I admit I do not understand this, as I thought humans acknowledge the evolutionary benefits of altruism. And that such a death may be considered good, as Khan said.”
“Don’t quote that bastard to me,” McCoy snaps. “There’s no such thing as a good death.” Seeing Spock’s almost imperceptible flinch, he adds, “Like most human things, it’s complicated. Society may say you’re very noble; everybody loves a hero. But the people close to you may disagree.”
“Surak teaches the logic of the greatest good for the greatest number. If more lives than one can be saved by one’s own death, then it is one’s obligation to give it up. But you are suggesting that the value of my life to Nyota and Jim should have been given greater weight.”
“Because they had to live with the consequences. Choices like that aren’t independent variables. Now, I’m not saying you made a wrong decision--I’m one of those folks who happens to believe self-sacrifice is admirable--but people may not appreciate it if you act like the choice was easy.”
Spock cocks his head, considering. “Therefore, the socially acceptable behavior was for me to perform the same action, but with a greater appearance of regret?”
“Oh, you’re hopeless,” McCoy says, surrendering to his annoyance. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Maybe you can arrange to be gone when I get back.”
Day 6
Jim sits in the command chair, leaning forward in tense expectancy, gripping the arms. The viewscreen is black; McCoy can’t see whatever threat has riveted Jim’s attention, but his scan shows the effects on Jim’s vitals: elevated heart rate, increased oxygen absorption. McCoy drops a hand onto his shoulder but Jim shrugs it off; he’s coiled like a snake, waiting to strike.
When Jim’s in the chair, McCoy is never sure whether to be scared for him or of him. He’s got all the power of the great ship at his fingertips, but the thought doesn’t calm McCoy the way it did with Pike. Jim’s unpredictability may be his greatest strength but it’s scary as hell, and McCoy watches Jim’s eyes go cold and his jaw tighten with stomach-clenching expectation of the myriad horrors that lurk in the darkness...
It’s later, and the Thing, whatever it was, is defeated. The lights are low in Jim’s cabin and he strips slowly, letting the gold tunic fall to the floor. McCoy is in bed already, naked, the non-dream part of his brain wondering why he doesn’t go to help Jim, undress him and kiss him and run his hands over Jim’s tired body. But his dream-self just waits, watches with jaded appreciation at each swath of pale flesh being revealed, the sturdy polyx fabric of Jim’s uniform trousers sliding over smooth muscle as the captain of the Enterprise does, indeed, take his pants off one leg at a time.
Jim half-slides, half crawls into his own bed while McCoy relaxes, expansive, hands behind his head, erection complacent, secure in the knowledge it’s about to get some attention. And Jim wastes no time, going down on him with enthusiastic obedience as McCoy, from his impossible dream-vantage point, contemplates his ass and what he plans to do with it.
“Suck harder. No hands, just your mouth.” McCoy doesn’t have to say it, he just thinks it, and Jim is pulling him into a vortex of wet bliss, golden head bobbing up and down, pink lips warm and stretched wide. He feels like he could stay hard forever, feels with a surge of giddy power that he never has to come, that as long as he stays in Jim’s mouth everything will be perfect and unchanging.
McCoy wakes with a dry mouth, a guilty conscience, and a raging hard-on. Bad enough that he dreamed about sex with Jim, but the way he treated him--like some empty vessel for his pleasure--makes him want to take the ancient copy of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams that his daddy gave him for a graduation present and drive a stake through its heart.
He’d had sex with Jim, of that there was no doubt, but it was something they’d given each other, out of desperation and exhaustion and limited options. A gift, freely shared, not just taken for pleasure. But it had been pleasure, a lot of it, as McCoy’s assertive cock reminds him when he gets up and tries to take a piss. Maybe it’s a gift or a curse from Jim’s bed, whose durable foam has bounced back, resilient, from how many nights of lusty play McCoy can only guess, and whose cool sheets (in his imagination, anyway) still smell like Jim.
McCoy drinks a glass of water, tells the thermostat to drop another degree, and flops back against the pillows, wide awake. In resignation more than anticipation he wraps his right hand around his cock, squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to summon an appropriate image--Jocelyn, naked and laughing; an ensign from the Tripoli, giving him a good-natured hand job in a fresher on Starbase 37; a stranger of indeterminate gender who’d smelled like lilacs on Klidos IV. His sexual experiences in space have been infrequent, but not so much that he should feel this hard up, in the midst of a tragedy that should be draining his libido along with his energy. But nothing will satisfy his stubborn erection but the thought of Jim, the way he was in his quarters in orbit above Anatereon.
For 30 hours the Anatereons kept them in fear for their ship, their lives; through endless negotiation and threats, demonstrations of power followed at neck-cracking speed with gifts and promises of friendship, illusions and headgames, McCoy filling his hypo while Scotty filled the torpedo bays, with stimulants and sedatives and anti-psychotics. In the end, the Anatereons let let them fly free, alive but with no satisfactory conclusion, no contact and nothing to report except that there was another powerful race out there that didn’t seem to like them.
McCoy follows Jim to his quarters, worried about Jim’s mental state when he probably should be be worried about his own. Jim’s face is ashen, slack with exhaustion; there are dark circles under his eyes and darker ones ringing his irises, usually so blue but now as faded as the rest of him. McCoy’s exhausted brain has a strange idea that that’s what the Anatereons wanted from them: their color, their vitality.
He makes a move to scan Jim, but Jim catches his wrist, twitches the beginnings of a smile that collapses in on itself. A moment later Jim is crying in his arms, quiet and miserable, hopeless of relief. All he can do is stroke Jim’s back, shaking and damp with sweat; all he thinks he can do, until Jim begins to kiss him.
There’s no surprise to it; it feels right, and comfortable, Jim’s lips so warm and soft it couldn’t be anything but easy. The way to bed is like a garden path at twilight, calm and gentle, their bodies already familiar to each other. This is what McCoy craves, not mystery and passion, but the comfort of intimate knowledge. They know how to take care of each other, and what they don’t know, they can guess. When McCoy falls asleep that night in Jim’s bed, with Jim’s lax arm across his chest and Jim’s soft, regular breaths inches away, he knows he’s done something good and right. And then morning comes, and the day after, and the Enterprise flies off to its next adventure, and McCoy, from a failure of courage or imagination, never follows up, but lets them both relapse back into a friendship that’s close and valuable and still only a shadow of what he wants.
McCoy grips himself tight and finishes with a stuttering cry that there’s no one there to hear.
Day 7
McCoy wakes up, sweaty and cotton-mouthed, to find his father standing over him.
It takes a moment to realize that he’s not dreaming, and another to register that he’s naked and pull the covers over himself. He should be surprised, but what he mostly feels is an echo of adolescent shame. His first words--”How did you find me?” don’t help.
“Wasn’t so difficult,” David McCoy says, perching on the bed and oblivious to his discomfort. “I told Starfleet I was next-of-kin and they have you chipped, I guess. The building manager let me in when I showed him my medical credentials. For the record, in case he asks, I am worried about your mental health.”
“I’m fine,” McCoy protests. “I sent you messages saying so.”
“Two whole text messages, when the Enterprise came home looking like Swiss cheese and half the city’s a smoking ruin. And then you don’t answer your comm.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Oh, yes, I can see that.” David’s dark eyes rake over the tangled sheets, and McCoy takes a moment to actually look at him. The shock of white hair is as thick as ever, but his father looks thinner than when he last saw him, more than a year ago. The McCoy side of the family runs to tall and rangy, but there’s an unfamiliar spareness about him, and circles under his eyes that McCoy hopes he didn’t put there.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” he says. “If I worried you, I mean. I should have thought about it, but things have been just so--I don’t know, so strange, and I kind of forgot anything was happening outside of--”
“I know,” David says, stopping him with a hand on his knee. “That’s why I’m here. Now can you make me a cup of coffee? I saw two patients first thing this morning and I couldn’t sleep a wink on that blasted pneumorail.”
McCoy can, and even manages to scrounge up day-old sourdough and butter and set it on the glass table in Jim’s dining nook. The view is decidedly stormy; the slice of ocean he can see is iron gray with angry white foam, and rain dashes against the window in hard, cold drops. At least it will help settle the dust, he thinks.
“Nice place,” David says. “Do you live here?”
“No, it’s Jim’s.”
“I know.” David takes the time to level a teaspoon of sugar before dumping it in his cup. “The super told me. I meant, do you live here, too? I don’t see your books.”
McCoy shifts uncomfortably. “No, I don’t have a place of my own, not while I’m supposed to be on active duty. I left my things here, and Jim--why do you think I’d be living with Jim, anyway?”
“No special reason.” David blows on his coffee. “Just thought that you and I were of a mind about living alone.”
McCoy’s grabs at the excuse for a diversion. “How is mom, anyway? You heard from her lately?”
“Climbing in the Himalayas, last I heard. I left her a message that you were alright, but she’ll probably get it before she gets the news about this whole mess.”
“Must be nice to be somewhere you don’t have to deal with it.”
“Oh, now, sonny boy, don’t be mean. She didn’t go there to get away from us. Not from you, anyway. Getting away from me was just a bonus.”
Leonard marvels at how David can say it without bitterness. Leonard’s own divorce is almost as old as his father’s, and he has decades less to show for his marriage. But David stayed in the same house with the same dog, and Leonard joined the Foreign Legion to escape the constant reminders of his failure. His parents’ divorce wasn’t over anything in particular except his mother getting tired of being in one place with David, a lovable, immovable post.
“Yeah, well, I don’t see it myself,” Leonard says, clearing his throat. “Running all over the galaxy hasn’t bought me anything but trouble. Maybe I should have just stayed home.”
It could be the last word that does it, or maybe the thought that David had left his beloved wingback chair to come across a continent to make sure his wayward son is alright. Or maybe it’s just the sight of those fine-boned doctor’s hands stirring too much sugar his coffee, the way they had so many quiet evenings, when McCoy’s worst problem was a bad grade or a pretty girl making fun of him. Whatever it is, he feels a tight ball of something dark and hard unwind in his chest, more than he can pass off with a laugh or a sigh, and so there’s nothing for him to do but begin to weep.
He hides his face in his arms, out of shame or some childish habit, and hears David’s spoon drop on the glass table with a metallic clink. Trying to stop so as not to alarm his father only makes it worse, and he ends up choking out muffled sobs into the elbow of his uniform shirt. It feels terrible and like a wonderful luxury at the same time.
“Oh, son,” David says, patting his arm, and when McCoy raises his head to try to reassure him, David pulls him into his arms in an awkward screech of chairs and arrangement of bony limbs.
McCoy rests his hot, tear-streaked face against his father’s shoulder and feels calm and sane for the first time in a week.
“That’s good, that’s good,” David says, unembarrassed. He’s a practical man but a kind one, and tears are the last bodily fluid that would disturb him. When McCoy raises his head at last, David pulls a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to him.
“You should come home,” he says. “This has been sheer hell for you. I don’t just mean the business with the city blowing up, I mean the whole thing, ever since you shipped out. I know why you wanted to get away, but that’s over now; Jocelyn’s in Chicago and that high school buddy of yours, Kyle Wilmer--wasn’t he studying to be an architect?--he bought the Simms place and is moving back. There are at least a dozen new kids in walking distance, and I can’t keep up this pace forever. Come home and take over the practice.”
“I can’t, Dad. You know that.” McCoy rubs his wet face with the sleeve of his shirt and feels 12 years old. “You may find it hard to believe, but I like what I’m doing. It’s not just all the travel, it’s the people. They’re the best in the world at what they do. This is where I want to be.” He hopes it sounds convincing, even if his voice is rough with tears. It’s not the truth--the truth is that he’s here because of Jim, doomed to follow him across the galaxy, the hopeless way he’d chased Jocelyn; caught up to her, and lost her again. Jim had tried to escape him through the gates of death itself, and McCoy had refused to give up. He’s not sure if his tenacity is noble or pathetic, but he gets a hint from the resigned half-smile on his father’s face.
“Alright, then,” David says, collecting their coffee cups and giving his son a final squeeze of the shoulder. “I just hope he’s worth it.”
Part 3 >>
<< Part 1
Day 5
McCoy’s developed a sixth sense for when Spock is lurking behind him, maybe because he frequently is. Most of the bridge crew have cycled through during visiting hours--Jim’s bedside table holds a plant with orange leaves left by Sulu, and the remains of a sandwich Uhura brought McCoy from the commissary--but Spock’s presence is a nagging near-constant.
“Dr. Boyce informs me that Jim’s condition has stabilized to the point where his status is no longer considered ‘critical’,” Spock says, addressing the space to the left of McCoy’s ear.
“Oh, does he? That’s interesting, he hasn’t told me. Maybe he’s been too busy fielding questions from random commanders.”
“I did not mean to intrude on your area of professional expertise,” Spock says huffily. “I saw him at this morning’s meeting of the Commission of Inquiry. Jim’s outcome has many strategic implications.”
“No doubt. I’m glad the Admiralty isn’t letting a little thing like the destruction of San Francisco get in the way of their long-term planning.” McCoy’s well aware that his prickles are intended to deflect, but the topic of the Admiralty makes him uneasy. If they’re probing into Jim’s medical condition, it can’t be long before they’ll want to inquire into certain ethical violations committed by the CMO. It’s not that he fears the Admiralty--post-Marcus, and with the exception of Pike, he’s very much feeling that the Admiralty can go hang itself--it’s that he has no idea what he’s going to say.
“You may also wish to know that they also expressed their hopes for Jim’s speedy recovery,” Spock continues. “Ensign Chekov and Lieutenant Commander Scott also wanted me to convey these sentiments, as they have not seen you for several days.”
“Yeah, well I’ve been busy.” McCoy, aware that he’s mumbling, tries again with more conviction. “I’ve had a few more things than bullpucky Starfleet inquiries to attend to.”
“I see.” Spock does a flyby of Jim’s bed, dark eyes sweeping over the biodisplays that ring him as if he’s some great ship at spacedock. “It was my understanding that your credentials with the hospital had not yet been reinstated. Therefore I do not believe that you are busy with your medical practice. I also do not believe that Jim would want you to spend so much of your time at his bedside when it serves no practical purpose.”
“Oh, yeah? That’s something you’d know, wouldn’t you, since you’ve been his best friend since the day before yesterday.” McCoy is taken aback by his own anger, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to back down, not with Spock giving him that look of bemused surprise, better suited to a grant review board than a formerly dead friend’s bedside.
“I do not believe I have not tried to claim that status.”
“You--” McCoy clenches his fists to keep himself from sputtering. “I don’t think you really even liked him, before or after he saved your life.”
“My liking him was immaterial; he is my commanding officer. However, I admit that the prospect of his imminent death caused me to reconsider his many fine qualities.” Spock pauses, and frowns. “That was a failure of logic on my part.”
“A failure of--” McCoy feels like a phaser set on overload. But there’s something in Spock’s face, as he looks at Jim’s, maybe a wonder at how a brittle working relationship had turned into friendship and then into something McCoy and maybe even Spock can’t put a name to. And he remembers that Spock cried.
“Yeah, well,” McCoy says, releasing a breath. “I call that regret, and it’s pretty common. That’s why it’s better to get everything in the open while someone’s still alive. Dead is too late.”
There’s a long pause where they both turn to contemplate Jim’s still body. McCoy is reminded of the barbaric old custom of viewing preserved dead bodies and feels a chill across his neck.
“Both Nyota and Jim were angry at me for my willingness to sacrifice my life to save the Nibirans,” Spock says unexpectedly into the silence. “I admit I do not understand this, as I thought humans acknowledge the evolutionary benefits of altruism. And that such a death may be considered good, as Khan said.”
“Don’t quote that bastard to me,” McCoy snaps. “There’s no such thing as a good death.” Seeing Spock’s almost imperceptible flinch, he adds, “Like most human things, it’s complicated. Society may say you’re very noble; everybody loves a hero. But the people close to you may disagree.”
“Surak teaches the logic of the greatest good for the greatest number. If more lives than one can be saved by one’s own death, then it is one’s obligation to give it up. But you are suggesting that the value of my life to Nyota and Jim should have been given greater weight.”
“Because they had to live with the consequences. Choices like that aren’t independent variables. Now, I’m not saying you made a wrong decision--I’m one of those folks who happens to believe self-sacrifice is admirable--but people may not appreciate it if you act like the choice was easy.”
Spock cocks his head, considering. “Therefore, the socially acceptable behavior was for me to perform the same action, but with a greater appearance of regret?”
“Oh, you’re hopeless,” McCoy says, surrendering to his annoyance. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Maybe you can arrange to be gone when I get back.”
Day 6
Jim sits in the command chair, leaning forward in tense expectancy, gripping the arms. The viewscreen is black; McCoy can’t see whatever threat has riveted Jim’s attention, but his scan shows the effects on Jim’s vitals: elevated heart rate, increased oxygen absorption. McCoy drops a hand onto his shoulder but Jim shrugs it off; he’s coiled like a snake, waiting to strike.
When Jim’s in the chair, McCoy is never sure whether to be scared for him or of him. He’s got all the power of the great ship at his fingertips, but the thought doesn’t calm McCoy the way it did with Pike. Jim’s unpredictability may be his greatest strength but it’s scary as hell, and McCoy watches Jim’s eyes go cold and his jaw tighten with stomach-clenching expectation of the myriad horrors that lurk in the darkness...
It’s later, and the Thing, whatever it was, is defeated. The lights are low in Jim’s cabin and he strips slowly, letting the gold tunic fall to the floor. McCoy is in bed already, naked, the non-dream part of his brain wondering why he doesn’t go to help Jim, undress him and kiss him and run his hands over Jim’s tired body. But his dream-self just waits, watches with jaded appreciation at each swath of pale flesh being revealed, the sturdy polyx fabric of Jim’s uniform trousers sliding over smooth muscle as the captain of the Enterprise does, indeed, take his pants off one leg at a time.
Jim half-slides, half crawls into his own bed while McCoy relaxes, expansive, hands behind his head, erection complacent, secure in the knowledge it’s about to get some attention. And Jim wastes no time, going down on him with enthusiastic obedience as McCoy, from his impossible dream-vantage point, contemplates his ass and what he plans to do with it.
“Suck harder. No hands, just your mouth.” McCoy doesn’t have to say it, he just thinks it, and Jim is pulling him into a vortex of wet bliss, golden head bobbing up and down, pink lips warm and stretched wide. He feels like he could stay hard forever, feels with a surge of giddy power that he never has to come, that as long as he stays in Jim’s mouth everything will be perfect and unchanging.
McCoy wakes with a dry mouth, a guilty conscience, and a raging hard-on. Bad enough that he dreamed about sex with Jim, but the way he treated him--like some empty vessel for his pleasure--makes him want to take the ancient copy of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams that his daddy gave him for a graduation present and drive a stake through its heart.
He’d had sex with Jim, of that there was no doubt, but it was something they’d given each other, out of desperation and exhaustion and limited options. A gift, freely shared, not just taken for pleasure. But it had been pleasure, a lot of it, as McCoy’s assertive cock reminds him when he gets up and tries to take a piss. Maybe it’s a gift or a curse from Jim’s bed, whose durable foam has bounced back, resilient, from how many nights of lusty play McCoy can only guess, and whose cool sheets (in his imagination, anyway) still smell like Jim.
McCoy drinks a glass of water, tells the thermostat to drop another degree, and flops back against the pillows, wide awake. In resignation more than anticipation he wraps his right hand around his cock, squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to summon an appropriate image--Jocelyn, naked and laughing; an ensign from the Tripoli, giving him a good-natured hand job in a fresher on Starbase 37; a stranger of indeterminate gender who’d smelled like lilacs on Klidos IV. His sexual experiences in space have been infrequent, but not so much that he should feel this hard up, in the midst of a tragedy that should be draining his libido along with his energy. But nothing will satisfy his stubborn erection but the thought of Jim, the way he was in his quarters in orbit above Anatereon.
For 30 hours the Anatereons kept them in fear for their ship, their lives; through endless negotiation and threats, demonstrations of power followed at neck-cracking speed with gifts and promises of friendship, illusions and headgames, McCoy filling his hypo while Scotty filled the torpedo bays, with stimulants and sedatives and anti-psychotics. In the end, the Anatereons let let them fly free, alive but with no satisfactory conclusion, no contact and nothing to report except that there was another powerful race out there that didn’t seem to like them.
McCoy follows Jim to his quarters, worried about Jim’s mental state when he probably should be be worried about his own. Jim’s face is ashen, slack with exhaustion; there are dark circles under his eyes and darker ones ringing his irises, usually so blue but now as faded as the rest of him. McCoy’s exhausted brain has a strange idea that that’s what the Anatereons wanted from them: their color, their vitality.
He makes a move to scan Jim, but Jim catches his wrist, twitches the beginnings of a smile that collapses in on itself. A moment later Jim is crying in his arms, quiet and miserable, hopeless of relief. All he can do is stroke Jim’s back, shaking and damp with sweat; all he thinks he can do, until Jim begins to kiss him.
There’s no surprise to it; it feels right, and comfortable, Jim’s lips so warm and soft it couldn’t be anything but easy. The way to bed is like a garden path at twilight, calm and gentle, their bodies already familiar to each other. This is what McCoy craves, not mystery and passion, but the comfort of intimate knowledge. They know how to take care of each other, and what they don’t know, they can guess. When McCoy falls asleep that night in Jim’s bed, with Jim’s lax arm across his chest and Jim’s soft, regular breaths inches away, he knows he’s done something good and right. And then morning comes, and the day after, and the Enterprise flies off to its next adventure, and McCoy, from a failure of courage or imagination, never follows up, but lets them both relapse back into a friendship that’s close and valuable and still only a shadow of what he wants.
McCoy grips himself tight and finishes with a stuttering cry that there’s no one there to hear.
Day 7
McCoy wakes up, sweaty and cotton-mouthed, to find his father standing over him.
It takes a moment to realize that he’s not dreaming, and another to register that he’s naked and pull the covers over himself. He should be surprised, but what he mostly feels is an echo of adolescent shame. His first words--”How did you find me?” don’t help.
“Wasn’t so difficult,” David McCoy says, perching on the bed and oblivious to his discomfort. “I told Starfleet I was next-of-kin and they have you chipped, I guess. The building manager let me in when I showed him my medical credentials. For the record, in case he asks, I am worried about your mental health.”
“I’m fine,” McCoy protests. “I sent you messages saying so.”
“Two whole text messages, when the Enterprise came home looking like Swiss cheese and half the city’s a smoking ruin. And then you don’t answer your comm.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Oh, yes, I can see that.” David’s dark eyes rake over the tangled sheets, and McCoy takes a moment to actually look at him. The shock of white hair is as thick as ever, but his father looks thinner than when he last saw him, more than a year ago. The McCoy side of the family runs to tall and rangy, but there’s an unfamiliar spareness about him, and circles under his eyes that McCoy hopes he didn’t put there.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” he says. “If I worried you, I mean. I should have thought about it, but things have been just so--I don’t know, so strange, and I kind of forgot anything was happening outside of--”
“I know,” David says, stopping him with a hand on his knee. “That’s why I’m here. Now can you make me a cup of coffee? I saw two patients first thing this morning and I couldn’t sleep a wink on that blasted pneumorail.”
McCoy can, and even manages to scrounge up day-old sourdough and butter and set it on the glass table in Jim’s dining nook. The view is decidedly stormy; the slice of ocean he can see is iron gray with angry white foam, and rain dashes against the window in hard, cold drops. At least it will help settle the dust, he thinks.
“Nice place,” David says. “Do you live here?”
“No, it’s Jim’s.”
“I know.” David takes the time to level a teaspoon of sugar before dumping it in his cup. “The super told me. I meant, do you live here, too? I don’t see your books.”
McCoy shifts uncomfortably. “No, I don’t have a place of my own, not while I’m supposed to be on active duty. I left my things here, and Jim--why do you think I’d be living with Jim, anyway?”
“No special reason.” David blows on his coffee. “Just thought that you and I were of a mind about living alone.”
McCoy’s grabs at the excuse for a diversion. “How is mom, anyway? You heard from her lately?”
“Climbing in the Himalayas, last I heard. I left her a message that you were alright, but she’ll probably get it before she gets the news about this whole mess.”
“Must be nice to be somewhere you don’t have to deal with it.”
“Oh, now, sonny boy, don’t be mean. She didn’t go there to get away from us. Not from you, anyway. Getting away from me was just a bonus.”
Leonard marvels at how David can say it without bitterness. Leonard’s own divorce is almost as old as his father’s, and he has decades less to show for his marriage. But David stayed in the same house with the same dog, and Leonard joined the Foreign Legion to escape the constant reminders of his failure. His parents’ divorce wasn’t over anything in particular except his mother getting tired of being in one place with David, a lovable, immovable post.
“Yeah, well, I don’t see it myself,” Leonard says, clearing his throat. “Running all over the galaxy hasn’t bought me anything but trouble. Maybe I should have just stayed home.”
It could be the last word that does it, or maybe the thought that David had left his beloved wingback chair to come across a continent to make sure his wayward son is alright. Or maybe it’s just the sight of those fine-boned doctor’s hands stirring too much sugar his coffee, the way they had so many quiet evenings, when McCoy’s worst problem was a bad grade or a pretty girl making fun of him. Whatever it is, he feels a tight ball of something dark and hard unwind in his chest, more than he can pass off with a laugh or a sigh, and so there’s nothing for him to do but begin to weep.
He hides his face in his arms, out of shame or some childish habit, and hears David’s spoon drop on the glass table with a metallic clink. Trying to stop so as not to alarm his father only makes it worse, and he ends up choking out muffled sobs into the elbow of his uniform shirt. It feels terrible and like a wonderful luxury at the same time.
“Oh, son,” David says, patting his arm, and when McCoy raises his head to try to reassure him, David pulls him into his arms in an awkward screech of chairs and arrangement of bony limbs.
McCoy rests his hot, tear-streaked face against his father’s shoulder and feels calm and sane for the first time in a week.
“That’s good, that’s good,” David says, unembarrassed. He’s a practical man but a kind one, and tears are the last bodily fluid that would disturb him. When McCoy raises his head at last, David pulls a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to him.
“You should come home,” he says. “This has been sheer hell for you. I don’t just mean the business with the city blowing up, I mean the whole thing, ever since you shipped out. I know why you wanted to get away, but that’s over now; Jocelyn’s in Chicago and that high school buddy of yours, Kyle Wilmer--wasn’t he studying to be an architect?--he bought the Simms place and is moving back. There are at least a dozen new kids in walking distance, and I can’t keep up this pace forever. Come home and take over the practice.”
“I can’t, Dad. You know that.” McCoy rubs his wet face with the sleeve of his shirt and feels 12 years old. “You may find it hard to believe, but I like what I’m doing. It’s not just all the travel, it’s the people. They’re the best in the world at what they do. This is where I want to be.” He hopes it sounds convincing, even if his voice is rough with tears. It’s not the truth--the truth is that he’s here because of Jim, doomed to follow him across the galaxy, the hopeless way he’d chased Jocelyn; caught up to her, and lost her again. Jim had tried to escape him through the gates of death itself, and McCoy had refused to give up. He’s not sure if his tenacity is noble or pathetic, but he gets a hint from the resigned half-smile on his father’s face.
“Alright, then,” David says, collecting their coffee cups and giving his son a final squeeze of the shoulder. “I just hope he’s worth it.”
Part 3 >>