Ship Wars: Prompt 6 Entry: Team Jones
Title: The Things He Carried
Ship: Team Jones; reboot, with additional TOS and DS9 characters
Prompt 6: Jones - "Don't say we aren't right for each other, the way I see it is.. we aren't right for anyone else" -from the Cutting Edge
Authors/Artists: laughter_now, lindmere, hitlikehammers, sail_aweigh, acetamide, pixelmayhem
Vidder: lindmere
Beta: abigail89 the Great and Powerful
Rating: R for language and sexual situations
Word Count: 7,938
Summary: After Jim is reported missing, presumed dead, on a mission, Bones receives a box of his possessions that offer clues to their lives together and apart.
Warnings: Non-explicit m/m sex, m/f relationships, presumptive death!fic, angst, the boys with other people
Disclaimer: Everything herein belongs to Paramount, except what's in our hearts.
The Things He Carried
***Password for the Video is team_jones***
Shoebox Collective from Shoebox Collective on Vimeo
"Don't you want to open it?"
Joanna's voice startles Leonard out of his silent contemplation of the box on his coffee table. It had been delivered by a courier just a little while ago, and he has done his best to ignore it ever since then. Turning toward Jo, who's sitting on the sofa beside him, Leonard contemplates his answer for just a moment.
"No."
Except for the part where he really wants to. He's just not sure he can.
The statement earns him a silently raised eyebrow, and damn it, it's unfair to use that against him. Joanna leans over, as if a different angle might give her a better clue as to the box's contents.
"Which actually means yes," she answers in a voice that's far too serious, far too wise for a fifteen year old whose biggest problem up until this morning was whether Danny Carter was going to invite her to the upcoming school ball - and Leonard has quite a lot to say about that particular problem, and is going to make it the number one priority as soon as the unexpected arrival of the box is over and dealt with.
"You wanna know what I think, Dad?"
He does. Always, but not now. Not when it's about the damn box he should have just declined the moment the courier told him who it was from.
"Sure."
"I think he wanted you to have it for a reason." She looks at him as if trying to gauge his reaction, leaving him an opening to stop her now, before it gets out of hand. He doesn't. And he immediately regrets it.
"Not opening that box? It's not going to make him alive again. So you might as well go take a look at what he wanted you to see."
It hurts, nearly as bad as that late-night comm call had. And Leonard doesn't want to play along. He doesn't want to open the dratted thing and look inside just to join the club of mourners once he's done. If Jim's stupid enough to go out and get himself killed, Leonard isn't going to play along with any kind of script he wrote while still alive. Not like this.
"Maybe it's something good. You know, something that'll make this easier."
Leonard seriously doubts that anything holds the power to make this easier. Much less that it can fit into a box the size of an old-fashioned shoebox. But those are things Joanna can't understand yet, and he gets that to her, he's acting irrationally.
"Jo, it's not that…"
"Do you want me to leave?"
That definitely gets his attention.
"No. Why ever would you think that?"
She just shrugs. "I don't know. I just thought you…you were close, weren't you?"
Joanna knows how close they were at one point, but if she thinks that his hesitancy has any kind of romantic explanation, then she's wrong. And how could she understand, at her age?
With a long, drawn-out sigh he reaches for the box and opens it, even though he's still not sure it's the right thing to do. He hesitates only for a moment; then he lifts the lid and peers inside, acutely aware of Joanna's presence right beside him.
At first glance, the inside of the box is a mess, but Leonard knows that this random jumble of things made perfect sense to Jim when he put it together. As Leonard's eyes roam through the contents, noticing PADDs, data-chips, pictures, and other assorted objects, he unconsciously starts seeking out something known, something that might explain why Jim would send him a box of random items.
The first thing his eyes latch on to is something he hasn't seen in over five years.
He isn't even aware of the smile on his face as he pulls his old hip flask out of the box. Gently, he traces its smooth, cool outlines with his finger.
"What's that?" Jo asks, her voice tearing Leonard out of his thoughts of Iowa, and two rugged men on a shuttle who probably ended up sharing that drink with each other because they stood apart from everyone else.
"It was mine once. I had it with me on the shuttle when I first enlisted in Starfleet."
"When you met Uncle Jim."
Leonard smiles, remembering. "Yeah."
Jo looks at the flask, a slight frown on her face. "Why did you give it to him?"
The smile never leaves Leonard's face, the memory bittersweet because he never gave Jim that flask. Not willingly. Jim had taken it.
"You need a different crutch, Bones."
"They're going to kick you out if they catch you."
"You'll get it back, but only once you've found a different way of dealing with your problem with flying."
And damn, it had taken a lot of pestering and ass-kicking, but Leonard had found that different way. And who would have thought that there were enough people with the same problem in Starfleet to fill the first ever Starfleet Astrophobia Seminar? It took a while, but in the end Jim was right, like he so often was.
Jim never returned the flask, and Leonard never asked him for it.
"Who is Gaila?" Jo suddenly asks from beside him, her question about the flask forgotten over her curiosity about the other things in the box. She is holding a PADD in her hands, staring at the display with a slight frown. Leonard takes it out of her hands and looks at the display. It's a single communication, but Leonard immediately understands why Jim held on to it.
From: Lt. Gaila
To: Lt. Kirk, James T.
Stardate: 2258.104
I sent your program. You owe me one, Jim.
Something lodges itself in Leonard's throat, making it hard to answer. "Gaila went to the Academy with us. She died on the Farragut."
Jo frowns. "Why did Uncle Jim save that message?"
Because Gaila's death was one of the hardest lessons the young, cocky Jim Kirk had to learn about life, and using mutual attraction for his own ends.
He sighs. "Because it's a favor he never got to repay."
Gaila deserves better, but Leonard can't stand thinking about more deaths today. He presses another button on the PADD to see if Jim saved any more messages. A picture flashes onto the screen, and Leonard has to swallow hard against the sudden rush of emotions.
It's a crew picture, one that was taken shortly before Enterprise disembarked for its five year mission. Not the official picture that was broadcast all over the news, though, the one where they are all trying to look serious and dignified. It's from the same session, but a different shot.
Leonard still remembers that moment. Scotty just cracked a joke and is looking smug, Chekov is laughing and Leonard sees that even his own lips threaten to tug upwards into a smile as well. Spock is standing ramrod straight like he did during the entire session, but Nyota is leaning towards him, trying to nudge him out of his stoic posture while Sulu looks slightly confused. And Jim is sitting in front, looking proud and simply right that way, in his Captain's chair, surrounded by his senior crew.
They were good times, back then.
"Wow," Jo breathes in something like awe as she looks at the picture. "You all look so young."
Leonard playfully swats her shoulder. "Mind your tongue, young lady. That was just five years ago."
But she's right. They all look young. Way too young for the responsibility, for all that weight on their shoulders. Especially Jim's. But at that time they hadn't yet known what was still to come for them. Back then, it had still been good times, the start of one giant adventure.
"What's this?" Jo twirls the little glass fish between her slim fingers. It looks fragile and incongruous, cheerful and innocent. They had been all those things, however briefly.
"It's a souvenir. A thing for stirring drinks."
"On what planet?"
"Altria Prime. It's a water world, very popular with divers. Big, colorful fish." It also had sugar-white beaches and moist, persuasive air.
"It's a miracle it didn't break. Can you get me a cloth or something to wrap it with?"
It's probably not even glass, but Leonard needs a minute with this one, because the sweetest memories are turning out to be the most difficult.
+++++
“Two double Stardrifters,” Jim said the second the server arrived.
“You know, I just might like to order my own drink.”
“You need something with a lot of alcohol. You should be at least buzzed for what I’m going to say.”
This was headed nowhere good. Leonard stared at the ceiling, above which drifted sunset-colored fish of disturbing size. He wondered how much--
“About .42 newton meters.”
“Luckily, that means nothing to me. Also, stop it. And if you have something to tell me-“
“Not until the drinks arrive.” Now that Jim had the upper hand, he was maddeningly calm. Leonard’s gut clenched with annoyance and his brain roiled with possibilities. Promotion. Transfer. Secret mission.
Or maybe, just maybe, that thing they'd almost talked about the other night.
Leonard downed half his drink the minute it hit the table.
“All right, shoot.”
“Wait for the alcohol to kick in.”
“Oh, something will be kicking in a minute if-“
“Okay! Okay.” He clinked the drink stirrer against the glass in a nervous staccato. “Bones, I-You know, it’s weird. I prepared this whole big speech, but now that I’m actually saying it, I wonder-“
“Spit. It. Out.”
“Sure, I can do that.” Jim grabbed his hand and didn't let go. “Bones, I want to ask if you’ve considered the possibility that-“
“Yes.” Leonard didn't know he's going to say it until the word was out of his mouth.
Jim’s smiled, lightning quick and dazzling. “You don’t even know the question.”
“I’ve been thinking, and don't smirk. We don’t have a lot of options, either of us. And if they renew our commissions-the thought of another five years alone is frankly depressing. Even for me.”
“So that’s how grownups do it, huh? Let me ask you a question.” He leaned in close. “Are you attracted to me sexually?”
“Oh, for - That’s your number one question?”
“It’s the big thing that’s going to change, right? I can’t get too excited about sharing toothbrushes.”
“You really have no idea.” Leonard tried to look worldly and wise, but Jim was sucking on the end of the swizzle stick, giving him a look that for seven years Leonard had seen directed everywhere but at him.
“No, I really don’t. But I'd like to find out."
Later, they walked on the beach, and it was like something from a cheap holo: a couple of moons in the sky, sand and gentle waves, Jim’s hand in his.
Jim conjured a blanket from somewhere and they lay side by side. It was like a hundred other nights, until Jim rolled on his side and puts his hand, with purpose, on Leonard’s belly.
Jim’s body was the last mystery, and even that seemed familiar. Jim was a generous partner and came without effort, underneath him, eyes reflecting starlight. His lips curved, happy and a little smug, as if to say, This is another thing I can do easily. Leonard almost believed it.
"Who's that?" Jo stops wrapping and packing and steals a glance over his shoulder.
"Me."
"No way. That's - everything you hate."
"You never know what you can do 'til you try." It's a blatant Kirkism, one of those Boy Scout aphorisms he got away with, though God knew he was no Boy Scout.
++
“No. No, no, no. Hellno.” Leonard clutched the shuttle seat as if it were about to eject him. Jim stood above him, arms folded.
“But it’s the only way to get down to the planet.”
“Which you should have told me before we got on the goddamn shuttle.”
“We’re at 29,000 meters, holding above the drop zone, captain," Sulu said, fiddling with the controls.
“We’ll just be a minute.” Jim crouched and put a hand on Leonard’s knee, and he stiffened. There was a wind howling in his brain.
“You engineered this whole thing,” Leonard hissed. “You and your half-baked theories about exposure therapy."
"This is not a setup. It's impossible to transport or land a shuttle because of the ion storm, but it's perfectly safe to jump through. And I need my CMO to evaluate a potential humanitarian crisis."
"In other words, it's an order."
"It's a necessity. We can argue later, but right now I need you to grab your helmet. We'll go tandem. You don't have to do anything but stand on those drop doors over there."
Jim's eyes were dark-rimmed and resolute. If Leonard refused to do as he was told, he'd be implicitly asking Jim for special treatment. As Jim's friend, he might have done that, but now--
Jim must have seen something besides sheer terror in Leonard's eyes, because he gave him one of those too-hard smacks on the shoulder and jerked his head toward the bay doors.
"C'mon, stand up. I'll get your helmet."
Everything had turned to a screeching, nauseating blur of sound and color. Leonard tried to do as he'd been told but found he was literally paralyzed by fear.
"Jim," he whispered, humiliated, "I really can't move." He expected Jim to haul him to his feet. Instead, Jim gave him a look that was both considering and compassionate.
Then he leaned down and kissed him, hard, on the lips.
The surprise and familiarity of it were a tonic to his overwhelmed brain. It was both deeply generous and tactically sound, and Leonard had never been more aware that he was in love with the captain of the Enterprise.
Jim put out a hand and pulled him up effortlessly, a statue brought to life. Behind him, Sulu stared at them in poorly concealed wonder.
"Take a picture," he said hoarsely, as Jim started to harness them together. "It'll last longer."
"Don't worry, sir; you're 'diving with the best."
Leonard nodded, overcome by a calm sense of unreality. He was going to do this. He could do this. Jim checked and rechecked the harness before giving him a final pat. Jim's body was pressed tight against his back, blocky and stiff in the pressure suit.
"On my mark, Sulu."
"You're good to go, sir. Transporter room standing by."
"3...2...1..."
Leonard's eyes squeezed shut reflexively as he heard the grind of the bay doors and the hiss of depressurization, followed by silence. Jim's voice in his helmet seemed to be coming from inside his head.
"Let go," he said. "I've got you."
Such a simple thing to do, to release his death grip on the grab bar. The hardest thing he'd done in his life.
Now they were falling, and it was like the first drop in a turbolift, but it didn't stop, beause they were still accelerating. Leonard was grateful not to have Jim's gift for calculating in his head, so he didn't have to think about how fast.?
"I'm deploying the drag chute."
There was a sickening jerk and wrench, and then the feeling of Jim's body unfurling behind his.
"Check out the view."
Leonard cracked open his eyes to see the dusty pink surface of Gamelon Three, radiant in the light of its dual suns. It was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen, and he realized it wasn't death he'd really been afraid of, all this time.
++
The argument had started on the bridge -- the first mistake; escalating the disagreement into something searing, malicious; something that compromised them both not just to each other -- not just where they could stand it -- but with the crew as witnesses. They’d broken off as duty dictated, just short of Jim calling security on his own lover, his CMO; but by the time they crossed paths again -- sharing quarters had a funny way of making that inevitable -- the anger had been given time to fester, to ferment. It was dangerous at best, for men like them; explosive, lethal at worst.
They probably should have guessed where it was leading, long before it got there.
“It's not the first time, Jim,” he grated out, the gravel in his voice like bone and ash, aggrieved --entitled; but people had died. People had died, on their watch, again -- and Leonard wasn’t going to stand for it anymore. He couldn’t. In some ways, he was worse than Jim, really; he'd never learned to accept defeat, always let it tear him up from the inside, until its claws broke through and caught the ones nearest to him, closest to his heart, ripped them to shreds in the process.
“And it isn’t going to be the last, either.” Had there been something other than sanctimonious fury pumping through his veins, the emptiness in Jim’s eyes, his voice might have mattered, might have convinced him to take pause.
In the moment, though -- pulse racing and fists clenched -- his brow only furrowed, gaze narrowing until all he could see was an outline, something that resembled Jim, but that he didn’t know, couldn’t recognize; the man before him was a stranger.
“Don’t look at me that way." Jim turned violently away from him, dropping to the bed, fingers tangling in stray threads from the sheets. He quirked an eyebrow, and Jim knew what it meant before he had a chance to ask. “Like I’m a goddamn murderer. I’m not a monster.”
“Aren’t you?” And Leonard almost regretted it, for the way Jim’s eyes gaped, pupils contracting with the sting.
Almost.
“Jesus, you’re a fucking hypocrite,” Jim seethed, eyes sharp and lit with the fire of rage and indignation; “Sitting there on your high horse, judging me. What, you’ve never made a sacrifice, Bones?” He was on his feet, advancing on Leonard until the tremors of Jim's steps echoed in the soles of his boots, until his breath warmed hot, angry against his neck, until Jim's heartbeat almost resonated in the thick air between them; that heavy, frantic throb threatening to shatter the tension, and them along with it. “Never traded one life for a hundred, a thousand more? Spared a soul its suffering, the what-ifs be damned?”
“You know damn well that I know what that feels like,” and of course he did; of course he did; he’s a doctor, for fuck’s sake, death was his profession, one way or another -- and he saw crimson, because... goddamn.
“You’ve got no fucking right,” he started in, trembling with the slight, the nerve--
“Maybe that’s where we went wrong, Bones.” It cut him off, stopped him short, because it was almost sad, really; more bitter than vengeful, and hollow. It was more than the words that came out. “Because I should have the right.” His chest expanded as Leonard breathed out, and the balance was off; broken. “You share my bed. I trip over your shoes if the lights are off. I use your towel after my morning shower.” Jim’s eyes flashed, blinding, before he finished. “You swallow my fucking cum, Leonard McCoy, and that should give me the god damned right.”
And suddenly, this was about more than a dead planet, the littered corpses on the surface below. And that was saying something.
“Besides,” Jim tossed, and it fell flat, too weighty to fly; “if I’m the scum of the goddamn earth, why are we even bothering to fool ourselves? Why continue the charade?”
And that; that sounded too much like the quiet things, the treacherous voice that whispered in Leonard’s ear in the dark, sometimes; since the day this all began. “What the hell is that supposed to even mean?”
Leonard knew exactly what it meant; to him, at least.
“We both know I was just an easy way to get over your ex, a place to bury your cock and your wounded pride until you’d finally managed to get back onto your feet,” Jim almost sneered, almost sighed; Leonard knew him too well to overlook the emotion in it, the feeling. “Why drag this out longer than necessary?” It came out harder than it should, Leonard suspected, those fateful words; sharper, less forgiving. Another time, another place, he might have cared. It might have made a difference.
“Pot calling the goddamn kettle, Jim,” Leonard scoffed, the truth he’d long fought to ignore suddenly flaring, suddenly real again, eating at his gut. “Like I was your first choice out of spacedock. Just a coincidence that fraternization tends to be overlooked when it comes to taking your CMO to bed, right? Didn’t have much variety to chose from, did you? Guess I should be glad I beat out the pointy eared bastard, at least.”
Fucking cold comfort, that.
“You’re right,” Jim murmured, eyes open, pleading -- resolved; and Leonard wasn't quite expecting that, nor the plummeting feeling that shot through his chest. “Maybe I didn’t.”
He stepped back, and Leonard could already tell that it was only the beginning, the first gap placed between them; his own feet shuffled backwards, adding to the chasm, not to be outdone. “We’re not the same men who shared a room at the Academy, Bones. We’re not those drifters who ate burnt mac-n-cheese because you got commed for surgery and forgot to turn off the goddamn burner.”
The stringent tang of smoke and skinned-over cheddar filled his nostrils as he breathed, wondered if he’d gone into this knowing somehow, deep enough to deny, that this was how it would end. “No. We’re not.”
“We’ve changed,” Jim said, couldn’t meet his eyes. “I’ve changed.” Stared him down, squared and straight on. “And maybe we’ve outgrown this.” Jim’s eyes trailed down to his toes again, arms tightening around his torso as hugged himself where he’d once hugged Leonard, and suddenly, even though their gazes didn’t cross, even if he couldn’t read it, he heard the words unspoken, more honest than the rest: I’ve outgrown this.
“Maybe it was all a delusion, a fantasy,” he whispered, like lead. “Which means we’re better off ending it sooner than later, before it’s too late.”
He met Leonard’s eyes once more; the last time. “I've never been too good at living a lie.”
And that was the clincher; the shot through the heart. That was what moved them from ending to over.
After that, the words exchanged between them were few and far between, barely professional -- subdued, slow as if stunted, weighed down by some nameless burden they both knew closer than their skin, their bones, but that wouldn’t ever be said; too much pride and too many ways to avoid it, to hide in the frantic home stretch as the five-year mission drew to a close.
When Leonard stumbled across the listing for a position dirtside, based in his old stomping grounds, he spared a thought for fate. Maybe this was for the best.
When Jim's message came through, asking where his reenlistment docs had wandered off to, Leonard held his breath as he attached the job offer as an explanation. He knew Jim would understand what it meant, all of it: the position, his decision. Why there was nothing left to say.
Take care of yourself, the reply came back. The stars won’t shine quite the same without you.
Memory falls away to the present as he continues picking through the contents of the box. The next picture makes his throat tighten up; he remembers that look on Jim's face when they'd been in the first flush of uncovering their feelings for one another. That look of slight disbelief that reflected the joy and wonder you feel when the other person turns their full attention on you and you alone. Only now, he sees Jim looking at someone else like that. He knows he should feel happy that Jim's been able to find that, again, but there's a pang right under his sternum that tightens up in a knot the longer he looks at the picture. He takes stock quickly: tightness in chest, but no numbness in the arm or shoulder, nausea, or shortness of breath. He's fine; no heart attack, just a slightly dented heart that should know better by now.
Jo peers around his shoulder. "That's Carol Marcus. She's a microbiologist with Starfleet."
"I know who she is," he mumbles. "I'm not completely out of the loop." He thinks guiltily of the half dozen comms and texts from Uhura and Scotty; he owes them both responses. The group hasn't lost cohesion; even being planetside during the retrofit can't keep the Enterprise crew out of each other's pockets. They try to include him, but his frame of reference is so different, now. He's falling farther behind daily. It's his own damn fault, but it doesn't stop it from stinging.
"I heard that she and Uncle Jim were going to announce their engagement. Do you think it's true?" She looks up at him from the ticket stubs she's sorting through.
Leonard's return glance is sharp. "Where did you hear that?" If there had been one, wouldn't that have been among the saved articles on this PADD? Hell, wouldn't Jim have mentioned it in one of his sporadic comms? He scrolls through the PADD he's holding; it's all paparazzi photos. Jim and Carol are good looking, well known, the favorite fodder of the gossip rags. There's no formal announcement of an engagement in sight, not even rumors. He feels hurt that Jim hadn't confided in him. Maybe it's a sign they had been drifting even farther apart than distance had made them, the struggle to regain a friendly footing hadn't been going as well as he had thought despite the increasing frequency of comms from Jim.
Jo comes over to take the PADD from him. "Nyota texted me that Uncle Jim had been asking her for jewelry store recommendations. I think she was looking for me to confirm her suspicions, but you would have told me if you'd heard anything." She pages through the articles, stopping occasionally to study the pictures a little closer.
Leonard glares at his daughter. "You've become a right little gossip hound. Ever heard of butting out of other people's business?"
She rolls her eyes in a manner very reminiscent of her father. "He's your ex-honey, Dad, even if you don't talk about him much. If you insist on being close-mouthed, then we have to pool our resources to uncover the truth."
"The only thing you're going to uncover is my ability to take away your communicator! Your Uncle Jim's business is...was his business. He would have told us when he was ready." He feels a bit hypocritical saying that, because now his curiosity is piqued. How had it escaped him how close Jim and Carol had gotten during the Enterprise's downtime?
He watches in puzzlement as Jo starts matching up ticket stubs to glossy programs, one and sometimes two stubs to a program.
"What's so fascinating about those pieces of trash, sweetpea?" He picks up another PADD and powers it on. This one has pictures of Winona Kirk and what is most likely family. He identifies Sam and Aurelan Kirk easily. A birthday, it looks like. He can't help but smile at the toddler sitting in the place of pride, a cake-smeared face beaming ecstatically out at the camera.
"I didn't know Uncle Jim was such a fan of Shakespeare, Dad. Look, here's "Othello," "Lion in Winter," "Love's Labours Lost." There's plenty more. But only a few that have two ticket stubs. I guess he liked going to plays alone." Stubs all matched to programs, she's lining them up, but not alphabetically.
Leonard feels his throat close up a little more. "Actually, Jim hated going to plays alone, he had to drag me kicking my heels, when he could. Sitting in the dark to be shown how foolish and rotten to the core people are isn't my idea of fun."
The look from Jo's eyes should be licensed and a warning label placed on it. "I'd go if Danny asked me. It's called sharing. You'd go if I asked, wouldn't you?"
Leonard is struck dumb at her insight. He'd declined to go because he thought all the plays did was confirm that mankind was going to Hell. Jim retained an idealistic optimism, falsely in Leonard's opinion. He has a hard time finding any optimism in the wake of what he sees in the hospital on a daily basis. The ratio of help to harm is a crime. In Jim's world, doctors would outnumber patients in the emergency rooms, and wouldn't that be a fine thing for staying employed? He's sticking to research; disease isn't personal and carries no agenda. He finds hope in disease that he doesn't find in trauma surgery, despite his skills in that arena. Maybe Jim had been looking for that in him and he'd let him down. Hope sprang eternal and all that shit, only not for Jim, in this case.
He sets the PADD aside. The happiness in the photos is at odds with his current feelings; it makes his stomach churn.
A flash of white and blue in the box catches his eye. When he looks closer, he sees something that may answer their question on Jim's wedding intentions. It's a ring box. And not just any ring box, even he knows the significance of those colors; he'd gotten Joce a set of pearls for their wedding from Tiffany. The cost hadn't mattered, but where they had come from; that's what had caché in Atlanta society: important to her and, therefore, important to him whether he liked it or not. He smiles at the thought that Clay is the one playing those games now; he's well out of it. The smile fades, though, at the significance of the box. Suspicions confirmed, it looks like.
He sets the box back down, but not before Jo catches sight of it. The squeal that emerges from her mouth could bring stray dogs from five miles; her mother is training her well. Before he can say anything to the contrary, she snatches it up and flips it open. Her eyes get very wide at the contents. Leonard is about to turn away when Jo shoves the box right under his nose so he's looking at it cross-eyed.
"They're both men's rings, Daddy." She's right, they're both way too big for either one to belong on a woman's hand.
Leonard is what can only be described as pole-axed. Just what was going on in that pinhead of a brainbox that Jim Kirk owns?
Ever helpful, Jo points to one of the rings. "There's an inscription in this one. Do you want to know what it says?"
Before he can say no, she's picking it up and peering inside.
There's an indrawn breath and then she hands it to him, finally mute.
Inside the ring the inscription reads: Many are the stars I see but in my eye no star like thee. It's the words on the outside that almost break his heart.
++
“Why the hell did you leave him, Dad?” Jo asks quietly, handing him back the ring, and Leonard shifts uncomfortably. It’s not something that he really wants to talk about - hell, he’d never even properly sorted it with Jim, and now, the stupid kid’s gone and got himself killed and he never will. He’ll never be able to fix it.
“I don’t know,” he sighs after a moment, when Jo’s stare begins to burn a hole on the side of his face and it’s too quiet in the room,. He fiddles with the ring to avoid looking at her. “We were stubborn, and we didn’t try hard enough. We’d have these little arguments and always say that the other one couldn’t understand, or that we weren’t taking things seriously.”
“So you broke up with him because you didn’t agree with him?” Jo asks, eyebrows shooting into her hairline, and Leonard slants her an annoyed look.
“That’s not what I said and don’t you go twisting my words. And I didn’t so much break up with him as we drifted away from each other toward the end of the mission. I’m not sure that he didn’t outgrow me, you know. He didn’t need me towards the end and I’m not going to deny him growing up.”
“And then what happened?”
“I came home,” Leonard shrugs, and puts the ring down on the table with its counterpart. They clink quietly on the wood and glint there like a pair of accusing eyes. “I came back to Atlanta, and I found your mom and Clay, and they said that they knew of a little place that Mrs Campbell’s son was wanting to rent out just a few streets down. So I came on down and signed for it the same day.”
Jo picks up the picture of Jim with Carol again, a faraway sort of look in her eyes, like she’s trying to imagine Jim marrying this woman, and is failing. Leonard watches her until she puts it down and glances up at him.
“Tell me about your love life then, Dad. Jim’s had a fair few, you must have done as well,” she says eventually with a cheeky smile, and he nods slowly.
“Well, there was Emony, when I was at Ole Miss, before I married your mother. She was doing a gymnastics tour or something. We had a few flings, but it didn’t last,” he shrugs, and Jo’s eyes light up suddenly.
“Wait, Emony? Emony Dax?”
“Yeah, Emony Dax, why?”
“Dad, she’s famous! She came to our school and talked to us about gymnastics, you know. You should have told me that you’d gone out with her!”
“Jo, I just said, it didn’t last. We met up maybe five or six times. You know, the last thing that she said to me was that I should become a doctor?” he smiles, a little lopsided, and Jo pulls her knees up to her chest to listen. “She said that I had the hands of a surgeon.”
“So Emony Dax is the reason that you became CMO of the Enterprise? I guess you’ve got a lot to thank her for, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says, dragging the word out. “I should probably comm her at some point, see how she’s doing.”
“Later though,” Jo says firmly, poking his thigh with her toes. “So who else was there?”
“Well, your mother, and you know how that went down,” he says flatly, and Jo nods silently. “And when we got divorced, I just… ran. Jocelyn was the only woman I’d ever loved and I felt as though I’d lost everything, and I just ran.”
“Where?”
Leonard sighs and looks at her, taking hold of her chilly toes with one hand.
“To Jim, would you believe it. I ran straight to the goddamn Riverside Shipyard and told Jim Kirk that I might throw up on him.”
“But you didn’t start seeing Jim straight away, did you?” she asks, and he shakes his head. The rings are still glinting in the later afternoon sun.
“No, there was Nancy in the first year. Nancy Bierce. She was in a few of our basic classes, and I courted her for a while, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I don’t think she ever really liked Jim, though. She ended up getting married, in the end, to an archaeologist called Robert Crater. Last I heard of her, they’d moved out to a planet called M-113.”
“And then it was Jim?”
“And then it was Jim,” he agrees, and he doesn’t miss the grin that spreads across Jo’s face. She’d been… what, seven, eight years old when she’d first met Jim, and she’d loved him from the first moment that she spotted him shining brightly across the quad. And Jim had doted on her like she was actually related to him. He took her places and bought her presents and always, always asked after her and showered affection on her like he was trying to be the absolute best that he could be.
It wasn’t until six months after he’d introduced the two of them that Leonard finally read Jim’s psych file, and stopped telling Jim that he shouldn’t spoil her like he did.
“Dad?”
Leonard starts, and blinks - Jo’s looking at him expectantly as though she’s waiting for an answer, and he clears his throat awkwardly.
“Sorry, sweetheart, what did you say?”
“I said, what about after you guys broke up?”
“Well, nothing really,” he admits, thinking of the few months between the final throwdown and finally setting foot on Terran soil again. It had been messy - he’d been out of himself, and he knew that Jim had too, and everything had been strained and awkward and painful between them. And everybody knew, of course they did, which just made matters worse. He knew that the yeomen gossiped in the mess, and he knew that Spock was as concerned for Jim as Nyota was for him, and that they’d discuss it at night before settling down for bed. They didn’t mean any harm, he knew, but it still wasn’t any of their goddamn business.
“So that was it then, after Jim?” Jo prompts, and he shrugs. “Seriously, that was it?”
“Not really - I was seeing someone when I first came back home. A woman that I’d known from before, turns out she’s from nearby so we were spending some time together.”
“Oh wait, I remember her!” Jo exclaims, gesturing with her hands. “You took her out for dinner a few times. Tonia, right? She was really nice, and really pretty.”
“Tonia Barrows. She was a yeoman on the Enterprise, but she’s been promoted to lieutenant and she’s transferring to the Defiant. I thought it might be easier, seeing someone that wasn’t on the same ship as me.”
“But it didn’t work.”
“No, it didn’t work,” Leonard agrees, and Jo tilts her head to one side, pigtails swinging gently.
“Well, I’m glad. You’re too good for her. She may have been pretty but she was kinda stupid.”
“She was not stupid, Joanna,” he admonishes, but really, she’s right.
“Is that why you broke it off with her?” she asks, and Leonard’s head snaps up.
“I would never be that shallow and I hope you wouldn’t either, young lady,” he says, a warning low in his voice, but Jo cuts him off.
“I meant because she wasn’t smart like Jim.”
Leonard opens his mouth to defend himself, then finds that he has to close it. Nobody is smart like Jim, nobody ever could be because Jim’s not just smart. He’s violently intelligent, and he’s headstrong and determined and so fiercely loyal and brilliant and there’s nobody else like him at all. Nobody that Leonard’s ever met, anyway. He clears his throat, and finds that his mouth has gone dry.
“Sweetie, can you get me a glass of tea?” he asks, and if his voice cracks a little on the last word, then Jo doesn’t say anything about it as she unfolds herself from the couch and goes to the kitchen.
Leonard is just finishing his cup of coffee when he notices the lid of the box is ajar. Looking in, he sees that Joanna has once again put the holo-news article inside. He touches it with his fingertips, debating whether to take it out or leave it. They had disagreed on the subject; Joanna thought it was something Jim would want to save, and Leonard thought that it wasn’t their decision to make.
He closes the lid on the box, leaving the article where it is for now.
The news that Jim is alive has hit Leonard hard, more so, maybe, than the news of his death. He feels he understands Jim a little better now. Nothing has changed, and yet it has. Jim is alive and on Earth, and Leonard has his box.
A knock at the door pulls him out of his reverie and he's grateful for the interruption. That is, until he sees who's there.
“Hey. Bones,” says one very alive, very tired-looking starship captain.
Leonard knows he's staring. “What are you doing here?”
Jim shuffles his feet and tries on an innocent smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I was in the neighborhood?”
That startles a laugh out of Leonard, and pulls a real smile across Jim’s face. “Yeah, sure, San Francisco to Georgia. Leave it to you to travel cross country for a social visit with no prior warning.”
“I’m thoughtful like that. So, can I come in?” Jim says as he cranes his neck to peer into the room.
Leonard doesn't say anything, just holds open the door and stands aside; as Jim walks in, Leonard takes a moment to study him. Jim has dark circles under his eyes and his movements are slow and tired. He still walks with a youthful grace, but it seems subdued, and Leonard can tell that he’s lost some weight.
Jim turns and stares at him, and Leonard forces himself to act normally. He closes the door and leads Jim into the living room.
“Have a seat.” He gestures to the couch. Jim flops down, leaning his head back, and closes his eyes with a sigh. Leonard fidgets. “Would you like something to drink?”
Jim doesn't stir. “Nah, I’m good.”
“You look tired," Leonard blurts out.
Jim doesn't say anything. For a moment he tenses, his eyes opening to peer at Leonard, but then he relaxes and closes them again.
“Well, I know you didn’t come all the way out here to sleep on my couch.”
Jim shakes with silent laughter. “Maybe I did.”
“Why are you here?” Leonard says in a softer tone.
Jim grimaces but doesn't open his eyes. There's a long silence, during which Leonard thinks about the changes in Jim. Time had worn soft lines into his forehead and the corners of his eyes. But he still wears the same expression he always did when he wanted to speak and is taking a moment to compose his thoughts. Leonard knows he'll have his explanation soon enough.
“They captured me.” A bitter laugh escapes him. “I'm sure you know that by now. They captured me and they weren't happy. It was the usual rigmarole. Questions, punishments, and when I wouldn't talk...inducements.”
“Torture.”
Jim nods. His throat works in something like a swallow, and when he speaks again, his voice quavers. “I lost track of time, couldn’t tell how long it had been or how long I was there. It became a blur, until one day they realized they weren’t going to be getting anything useful out of me.”
“What happened then?”
“They decided to execute me.”
Now it was Leonard’s turn to swallow. “So what went wrong? How did you escape?”
Jim laughs hollowly, “I didn’t.”
“I don’t follow.”
“They executed me. Publicly. Lethal injection.”
Leonard feels his breath catch. “So how’re you alive?”
“R'yeet, the son of one of the leaders. We’d spent some time talking before they’d locked me up.”
“So he saved you? What did he do? Stop the execution? Rescue you at the last minute?”
Jim shakes his head. “I told you, they executed me publicly.”
"Damn it, Jim!" Leonard bursts out, sickened at the thought of it, and angry at Jim for his evasions.
Jim jumps up and starts pacing the room. “I remember the sharp sting of the needle, whatever they injected burning as it went in, and then everything went black. When I came to later R’yeet was there and explained everything. He’d lowered the dose of the injection enough so that it would appear that I was dead, but with the right combination of drugs, within the right time period, I could be revived again.”
"Why?"
Jim shrugs. "Because he was good. Because there were others like him who couldn't."
Reaching into his pocket, Jim pulls out what looked to Leonard like a burned and broken comm.
Quietly Jim says, “So where's my box?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Leonard shouts in exasperation. “Why the hell would you want to remember a time when you were tortured and executed?”
Jim considers Leonard for a moment and then he purses his lips and blows out a tired breath. “You know that cliché? The one about your life flashing before your eyes? I’ve had so many brushes with death, I always assumed it was all bullshit.”
He pauses and fiddles with the comm in his hand. “But this time was different. I really died and it was clear, so clear. Clearer than my memories of the planet, of escaping, of coming home. I saw my life-- the good, the bad, the close calls. But what really stood out were my regrets.”
Jim’s hand clenches around the device and Leonard can hear the broken pieces crunching from the pressure.
“Jim.”
Jim eases his white-knuckled grip.
“Bones. I saw my regrets and all I wanted was to talk to you just one more time, to let you know that I was sorry, and that I was wrong. I realized that I never really knew myself, let alone you, and most of all, I wanted to change that.”
Leonard feels like he's having an out-of-body experience. Jim can't possibly be saying this, not after all these years of bitter memories and might-have-beens.
Jim avoids Leonard’s gaze and his eyes focus on the box across the room.
“I should be going. I'll just take my box and be out of your hair.”
“Now, wait a second. I've grown partial to that box and I don't think I want to give it up.”
Jim swings around looking like he's been struck. “What?” he croaks.
“You sent it to me, to keep, and I intend to keep it.”
Leonard stands and walks toward him as Jim searches his face. “In fact, the only way I figure you'll get that box back is if we share it.”
A hopeful look spreads across Jim's features. “Bones?”
“Jim.” Leonard laces his fingers through Jim's and leans toward him so their foreheads touch. "You're not the only one who can't live a lie. Not anymore. Never again."
Jim lets out a shaky breath and begins to tremble, and then they're clinging to each other, Jim's face in his neck and Leonard's cheek on Jim's hair, and they breath each other in.
++
The box is the last thing Jo unpacks. In truth it might have been safer at home, but she doesn't trust it far from her sight. She runs her hands over the smooth wood and on impulse cracks it open, just to make sure nothing's broken.
On top is her father's note. He's a man of paper and ink, as surely as he's one of the most forward-thinking doctors in the Federation.
She doesn't mean to snoop, she really doesn't, but she's her mother's daughter, and she can't resist peeking one more time. It's what she doesn't find that surprises her.
Ship: Team Jones; reboot, with additional TOS and DS9 characters
Prompt 6: Jones - "Don't say we aren't right for each other, the way I see it is.. we aren't right for anyone else" -from the Cutting Edge
Authors/Artists: laughter_now, lindmere, hitlikehammers, sail_aweigh, acetamide, pixelmayhem
Vidder: lindmere
Beta: abigail89 the Great and Powerful
Rating: R for language and sexual situations
Word Count: 7,938
Summary: After Jim is reported missing, presumed dead, on a mission, Bones receives a box of his possessions that offer clues to their lives together and apart.
Warnings: Non-explicit m/m sex, m/f relationships, presumptive death!fic, angst, the boys with other people
Disclaimer: Everything herein belongs to Paramount, except what's in our hearts.
The Things He Carried
***Password for the Video is team_jones***
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
Shoebox Collective from Shoebox Collective on Vimeo
"Don't you want to open it?"
Joanna's voice startles Leonard out of his silent contemplation of the box on his coffee table. It had been delivered by a courier just a little while ago, and he has done his best to ignore it ever since then. Turning toward Jo, who's sitting on the sofa beside him, Leonard contemplates his answer for just a moment.
"No."
Except for the part where he really wants to. He's just not sure he can.
The statement earns him a silently raised eyebrow, and damn it, it's unfair to use that against him. Joanna leans over, as if a different angle might give her a better clue as to the box's contents.
"Which actually means yes," she answers in a voice that's far too serious, far too wise for a fifteen year old whose biggest problem up until this morning was whether Danny Carter was going to invite her to the upcoming school ball - and Leonard has quite a lot to say about that particular problem, and is going to make it the number one priority as soon as the unexpected arrival of the box is over and dealt with.
"You wanna know what I think, Dad?"
He does. Always, but not now. Not when it's about the damn box he should have just declined the moment the courier told him who it was from.
"Sure."
"I think he wanted you to have it for a reason." She looks at him as if trying to gauge his reaction, leaving him an opening to stop her now, before it gets out of hand. He doesn't. And he immediately regrets it.
"Not opening that box? It's not going to make him alive again. So you might as well go take a look at what he wanted you to see."
It hurts, nearly as bad as that late-night comm call had. And Leonard doesn't want to play along. He doesn't want to open the dratted thing and look inside just to join the club of mourners once he's done. If Jim's stupid enough to go out and get himself killed, Leonard isn't going to play along with any kind of script he wrote while still alive. Not like this.
"Maybe it's something good. You know, something that'll make this easier."
Leonard seriously doubts that anything holds the power to make this easier. Much less that it can fit into a box the size of an old-fashioned shoebox. But those are things Joanna can't understand yet, and he gets that to her, he's acting irrationally.
"Jo, it's not that…"
"Do you want me to leave?"
That definitely gets his attention.
"No. Why ever would you think that?"
She just shrugs. "I don't know. I just thought you…you were close, weren't you?"
Joanna knows how close they were at one point, but if she thinks that his hesitancy has any kind of romantic explanation, then she's wrong. And how could she understand, at her age?
With a long, drawn-out sigh he reaches for the box and opens it, even though he's still not sure it's the right thing to do. He hesitates only for a moment; then he lifts the lid and peers inside, acutely aware of Joanna's presence right beside him.
At first glance, the inside of the box is a mess, but Leonard knows that this random jumble of things made perfect sense to Jim when he put it together. As Leonard's eyes roam through the contents, noticing PADDs, data-chips, pictures, and other assorted objects, he unconsciously starts seeking out something known, something that might explain why Jim would send him a box of random items.
The first thing his eyes latch on to is something he hasn't seen in over five years.
He isn't even aware of the smile on his face as he pulls his old hip flask out of the box. Gently, he traces its smooth, cool outlines with his finger.
"What's that?" Jo asks, her voice tearing Leonard out of his thoughts of Iowa, and two rugged men on a shuttle who probably ended up sharing that drink with each other because they stood apart from everyone else.
"It was mine once. I had it with me on the shuttle when I first enlisted in Starfleet."
"When you met Uncle Jim."
Leonard smiles, remembering. "Yeah."
Jo looks at the flask, a slight frown on her face. "Why did you give it to him?"
The smile never leaves Leonard's face, the memory bittersweet because he never gave Jim that flask. Not willingly. Jim had taken it.
"You need a different crutch, Bones."
"They're going to kick you out if they catch you."
"You'll get it back, but only once you've found a different way of dealing with your problem with flying."
And damn, it had taken a lot of pestering and ass-kicking, but Leonard had found that different way. And who would have thought that there were enough people with the same problem in Starfleet to fill the first ever Starfleet Astrophobia Seminar? It took a while, but in the end Jim was right, like he so often was.
Jim never returned the flask, and Leonard never asked him for it.
"Who is Gaila?" Jo suddenly asks from beside him, her question about the flask forgotten over her curiosity about the other things in the box. She is holding a PADD in her hands, staring at the display with a slight frown. Leonard takes it out of her hands and looks at the display. It's a single communication, but Leonard immediately understands why Jim held on to it.
From: Lt. Gaila
To: Lt. Kirk, James T.
Stardate: 2258.104
I sent your program. You owe me one, Jim.
Something lodges itself in Leonard's throat, making it hard to answer. "Gaila went to the Academy with us. She died on the Farragut."
Jo frowns. "Why did Uncle Jim save that message?"
Because Gaila's death was one of the hardest lessons the young, cocky Jim Kirk had to learn about life, and using mutual attraction for his own ends.
He sighs. "Because it's a favor he never got to repay."
Gaila deserves better, but Leonard can't stand thinking about more deaths today. He presses another button on the PADD to see if Jim saved any more messages. A picture flashes onto the screen, and Leonard has to swallow hard against the sudden rush of emotions.
It's a crew picture, one that was taken shortly before Enterprise disembarked for its five year mission. Not the official picture that was broadcast all over the news, though, the one where they are all trying to look serious and dignified. It's from the same session, but a different shot.
Leonard still remembers that moment. Scotty just cracked a joke and is looking smug, Chekov is laughing and Leonard sees that even his own lips threaten to tug upwards into a smile as well. Spock is standing ramrod straight like he did during the entire session, but Nyota is leaning towards him, trying to nudge him out of his stoic posture while Sulu looks slightly confused. And Jim is sitting in front, looking proud and simply right that way, in his Captain's chair, surrounded by his senior crew.
They were good times, back then.
"Wow," Jo breathes in something like awe as she looks at the picture. "You all look so young."
Leonard playfully swats her shoulder. "Mind your tongue, young lady. That was just five years ago."
But she's right. They all look young. Way too young for the responsibility, for all that weight on their shoulders. Especially Jim's. But at that time they hadn't yet known what was still to come for them. Back then, it had still been good times, the start of one giant adventure.
"What's this?" Jo twirls the little glass fish between her slim fingers. It looks fragile and incongruous, cheerful and innocent. They had been all those things, however briefly.
"It's a souvenir. A thing for stirring drinks."
"On what planet?"
"Altria Prime. It's a water world, very popular with divers. Big, colorful fish." It also had sugar-white beaches and moist, persuasive air.
"It's a miracle it didn't break. Can you get me a cloth or something to wrap it with?"
It's probably not even glass, but Leonard needs a minute with this one, because the sweetest memories are turning out to be the most difficult.
+++++
“Two double Stardrifters,” Jim said the second the server arrived.
“You know, I just might like to order my own drink.”
“You need something with a lot of alcohol. You should be at least buzzed for what I’m going to say.”
This was headed nowhere good. Leonard stared at the ceiling, above which drifted sunset-colored fish of disturbing size. He wondered how much--
“About .42 newton meters.”
“Luckily, that means nothing to me. Also, stop it. And if you have something to tell me-“
“Not until the drinks arrive.” Now that Jim had the upper hand, he was maddeningly calm. Leonard’s gut clenched with annoyance and his brain roiled with possibilities. Promotion. Transfer. Secret mission.
Or maybe, just maybe, that thing they'd almost talked about the other night.
Leonard downed half his drink the minute it hit the table.
“All right, shoot.”
“Wait for the alcohol to kick in.”
“Oh, something will be kicking in a minute if-“
“Okay! Okay.” He clinked the drink stirrer against the glass in a nervous staccato. “Bones, I-You know, it’s weird. I prepared this whole big speech, but now that I’m actually saying it, I wonder-“
“Spit. It. Out.”
“Sure, I can do that.” Jim grabbed his hand and didn't let go. “Bones, I want to ask if you’ve considered the possibility that-“
“Yes.” Leonard didn't know he's going to say it until the word was out of his mouth.
Jim’s smiled, lightning quick and dazzling. “You don’t even know the question.”
“I’ve been thinking, and don't smirk. We don’t have a lot of options, either of us. And if they renew our commissions-the thought of another five years alone is frankly depressing. Even for me.”
“So that’s how grownups do it, huh? Let me ask you a question.” He leaned in close. “Are you attracted to me sexually?”
“Oh, for - That’s your number one question?”
“It’s the big thing that’s going to change, right? I can’t get too excited about sharing toothbrushes.”
“You really have no idea.” Leonard tried to look worldly and wise, but Jim was sucking on the end of the swizzle stick, giving him a look that for seven years Leonard had seen directed everywhere but at him.
“No, I really don’t. But I'd like to find out."
Later, they walked on the beach, and it was like something from a cheap holo: a couple of moons in the sky, sand and gentle waves, Jim’s hand in his.
Jim conjured a blanket from somewhere and they lay side by side. It was like a hundred other nights, until Jim rolled on his side and puts his hand, with purpose, on Leonard’s belly.
Jim’s body was the last mystery, and even that seemed familiar. Jim was a generous partner and came without effort, underneath him, eyes reflecting starlight. His lips curved, happy and a little smug, as if to say, This is another thing I can do easily. Leonard almost believed it.
"Who's that?" Jo stops wrapping and packing and steals a glance over his shoulder.
"Me."
"No way. That's - everything you hate."
"You never know what you can do 'til you try." It's a blatant Kirkism, one of those Boy Scout aphorisms he got away with, though God knew he was no Boy Scout.
++
“No. No, no, no. Hellno.” Leonard clutched the shuttle seat as if it were about to eject him. Jim stood above him, arms folded.
“But it’s the only way to get down to the planet.”
“Which you should have told me before we got on the goddamn shuttle.”
“We’re at 29,000 meters, holding above the drop zone, captain," Sulu said, fiddling with the controls.
“We’ll just be a minute.” Jim crouched and put a hand on Leonard’s knee, and he stiffened. There was a wind howling in his brain.
“You engineered this whole thing,” Leonard hissed. “You and your half-baked theories about exposure therapy."
"This is not a setup. It's impossible to transport or land a shuttle because of the ion storm, but it's perfectly safe to jump through. And I need my CMO to evaluate a potential humanitarian crisis."
"In other words, it's an order."
"It's a necessity. We can argue later, but right now I need you to grab your helmet. We'll go tandem. You don't have to do anything but stand on those drop doors over there."
Jim's eyes were dark-rimmed and resolute. If Leonard refused to do as he was told, he'd be implicitly asking Jim for special treatment. As Jim's friend, he might have done that, but now--
Jim must have seen something besides sheer terror in Leonard's eyes, because he gave him one of those too-hard smacks on the shoulder and jerked his head toward the bay doors.
"C'mon, stand up. I'll get your helmet."
Everything had turned to a screeching, nauseating blur of sound and color. Leonard tried to do as he'd been told but found he was literally paralyzed by fear.
"Jim," he whispered, humiliated, "I really can't move." He expected Jim to haul him to his feet. Instead, Jim gave him a look that was both considering and compassionate.
Then he leaned down and kissed him, hard, on the lips.
The surprise and familiarity of it were a tonic to his overwhelmed brain. It was both deeply generous and tactically sound, and Leonard had never been more aware that he was in love with the captain of the Enterprise.
Jim put out a hand and pulled him up effortlessly, a statue brought to life. Behind him, Sulu stared at them in poorly concealed wonder.
"Take a picture," he said hoarsely, as Jim started to harness them together. "It'll last longer."
"Don't worry, sir; you're 'diving with the best."
Leonard nodded, overcome by a calm sense of unreality. He was going to do this. He could do this. Jim checked and rechecked the harness before giving him a final pat. Jim's body was pressed tight against his back, blocky and stiff in the pressure suit.
"On my mark, Sulu."
"You're good to go, sir. Transporter room standing by."
"3...2...1..."
Leonard's eyes squeezed shut reflexively as he heard the grind of the bay doors and the hiss of depressurization, followed by silence. Jim's voice in his helmet seemed to be coming from inside his head.
"Let go," he said. "I've got you."
Such a simple thing to do, to release his death grip on the grab bar. The hardest thing he'd done in his life.
Now they were falling, and it was like the first drop in a turbolift, but it didn't stop, beause they were still accelerating. Leonard was grateful not to have Jim's gift for calculating in his head, so he didn't have to think about how fast.?
"I'm deploying the drag chute."
There was a sickening jerk and wrench, and then the feeling of Jim's body unfurling behind his.
"Check out the view."
Leonard cracked open his eyes to see the dusty pink surface of Gamelon Three, radiant in the light of its dual suns. It was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen, and he realized it wasn't death he'd really been afraid of, all this time.
++
The argument had started on the bridge -- the first mistake; escalating the disagreement into something searing, malicious; something that compromised them both not just to each other -- not just where they could stand it -- but with the crew as witnesses. They’d broken off as duty dictated, just short of Jim calling security on his own lover, his CMO; but by the time they crossed paths again -- sharing quarters had a funny way of making that inevitable -- the anger had been given time to fester, to ferment. It was dangerous at best, for men like them; explosive, lethal at worst.
They probably should have guessed where it was leading, long before it got there.
“It's not the first time, Jim,” he grated out, the gravel in his voice like bone and ash, aggrieved --entitled; but people had died. People had died, on their watch, again -- and Leonard wasn’t going to stand for it anymore. He couldn’t. In some ways, he was worse than Jim, really; he'd never learned to accept defeat, always let it tear him up from the inside, until its claws broke through and caught the ones nearest to him, closest to his heart, ripped them to shreds in the process.
“And it isn’t going to be the last, either.” Had there been something other than sanctimonious fury pumping through his veins, the emptiness in Jim’s eyes, his voice might have mattered, might have convinced him to take pause.
In the moment, though -- pulse racing and fists clenched -- his brow only furrowed, gaze narrowing until all he could see was an outline, something that resembled Jim, but that he didn’t know, couldn’t recognize; the man before him was a stranger.
“Don’t look at me that way." Jim turned violently away from him, dropping to the bed, fingers tangling in stray threads from the sheets. He quirked an eyebrow, and Jim knew what it meant before he had a chance to ask. “Like I’m a goddamn murderer. I’m not a monster.”
“Aren’t you?” And Leonard almost regretted it, for the way Jim’s eyes gaped, pupils contracting with the sting.
Almost.
“Jesus, you’re a fucking hypocrite,” Jim seethed, eyes sharp and lit with the fire of rage and indignation; “Sitting there on your high horse, judging me. What, you’ve never made a sacrifice, Bones?” He was on his feet, advancing on Leonard until the tremors of Jim's steps echoed in the soles of his boots, until his breath warmed hot, angry against his neck, until Jim's heartbeat almost resonated in the thick air between them; that heavy, frantic throb threatening to shatter the tension, and them along with it. “Never traded one life for a hundred, a thousand more? Spared a soul its suffering, the what-ifs be damned?”
“You know damn well that I know what that feels like,” and of course he did; of course he did; he’s a doctor, for fuck’s sake, death was his profession, one way or another -- and he saw crimson, because... goddamn.
“You’ve got no fucking right,” he started in, trembling with the slight, the nerve--
“Maybe that’s where we went wrong, Bones.” It cut him off, stopped him short, because it was almost sad, really; more bitter than vengeful, and hollow. It was more than the words that came out. “Because I should have the right.” His chest expanded as Leonard breathed out, and the balance was off; broken. “You share my bed. I trip over your shoes if the lights are off. I use your towel after my morning shower.” Jim’s eyes flashed, blinding, before he finished. “You swallow my fucking cum, Leonard McCoy, and that should give me the god damned right.”
And suddenly, this was about more than a dead planet, the littered corpses on the surface below. And that was saying something.
“Besides,” Jim tossed, and it fell flat, too weighty to fly; “if I’m the scum of the goddamn earth, why are we even bothering to fool ourselves? Why continue the charade?”
And that; that sounded too much like the quiet things, the treacherous voice that whispered in Leonard’s ear in the dark, sometimes; since the day this all began. “What the hell is that supposed to even mean?”
Leonard knew exactly what it meant; to him, at least.
“We both know I was just an easy way to get over your ex, a place to bury your cock and your wounded pride until you’d finally managed to get back onto your feet,” Jim almost sneered, almost sighed; Leonard knew him too well to overlook the emotion in it, the feeling. “Why drag this out longer than necessary?” It came out harder than it should, Leonard suspected, those fateful words; sharper, less forgiving. Another time, another place, he might have cared. It might have made a difference.
“Pot calling the goddamn kettle, Jim,” Leonard scoffed, the truth he’d long fought to ignore suddenly flaring, suddenly real again, eating at his gut. “Like I was your first choice out of spacedock. Just a coincidence that fraternization tends to be overlooked when it comes to taking your CMO to bed, right? Didn’t have much variety to chose from, did you? Guess I should be glad I beat out the pointy eared bastard, at least.”
Fucking cold comfort, that.
“You’re right,” Jim murmured, eyes open, pleading -- resolved; and Leonard wasn't quite expecting that, nor the plummeting feeling that shot through his chest. “Maybe I didn’t.”
He stepped back, and Leonard could already tell that it was only the beginning, the first gap placed between them; his own feet shuffled backwards, adding to the chasm, not to be outdone. “We’re not the same men who shared a room at the Academy, Bones. We’re not those drifters who ate burnt mac-n-cheese because you got commed for surgery and forgot to turn off the goddamn burner.”
The stringent tang of smoke and skinned-over cheddar filled his nostrils as he breathed, wondered if he’d gone into this knowing somehow, deep enough to deny, that this was how it would end. “No. We’re not.”
“We’ve changed,” Jim said, couldn’t meet his eyes. “I’ve changed.” Stared him down, squared and straight on. “And maybe we’ve outgrown this.” Jim’s eyes trailed down to his toes again, arms tightening around his torso as hugged himself where he’d once hugged Leonard, and suddenly, even though their gazes didn’t cross, even if he couldn’t read it, he heard the words unspoken, more honest than the rest: I’ve outgrown this.
“Maybe it was all a delusion, a fantasy,” he whispered, like lead. “Which means we’re better off ending it sooner than later, before it’s too late.”
He met Leonard’s eyes once more; the last time. “I've never been too good at living a lie.”
And that was the clincher; the shot through the heart. That was what moved them from ending to over.
After that, the words exchanged between them were few and far between, barely professional -- subdued, slow as if stunted, weighed down by some nameless burden they both knew closer than their skin, their bones, but that wouldn’t ever be said; too much pride and too many ways to avoid it, to hide in the frantic home stretch as the five-year mission drew to a close.
When Leonard stumbled across the listing for a position dirtside, based in his old stomping grounds, he spared a thought for fate. Maybe this was for the best.
When Jim's message came through, asking where his reenlistment docs had wandered off to, Leonard held his breath as he attached the job offer as an explanation. He knew Jim would understand what it meant, all of it: the position, his decision. Why there was nothing left to say.
Take care of yourself, the reply came back. The stars won’t shine quite the same without you.
Memory falls away to the present as he continues picking through the contents of the box. The next picture makes his throat tighten up; he remembers that look on Jim's face when they'd been in the first flush of uncovering their feelings for one another. That look of slight disbelief that reflected the joy and wonder you feel when the other person turns their full attention on you and you alone. Only now, he sees Jim looking at someone else like that. He knows he should feel happy that Jim's been able to find that, again, but there's a pang right under his sternum that tightens up in a knot the longer he looks at the picture. He takes stock quickly: tightness in chest, but no numbness in the arm or shoulder, nausea, or shortness of breath. He's fine; no heart attack, just a slightly dented heart that should know better by now.
Jo peers around his shoulder. "That's Carol Marcus. She's a microbiologist with Starfleet."
"I know who she is," he mumbles. "I'm not completely out of the loop." He thinks guiltily of the half dozen comms and texts from Uhura and Scotty; he owes them both responses. The group hasn't lost cohesion; even being planetside during the retrofit can't keep the Enterprise crew out of each other's pockets. They try to include him, but his frame of reference is so different, now. He's falling farther behind daily. It's his own damn fault, but it doesn't stop it from stinging.
"I heard that she and Uncle Jim were going to announce their engagement. Do you think it's true?" She looks up at him from the ticket stubs she's sorting through.
Leonard's return glance is sharp. "Where did you hear that?" If there had been one, wouldn't that have been among the saved articles on this PADD? Hell, wouldn't Jim have mentioned it in one of his sporadic comms? He scrolls through the PADD he's holding; it's all paparazzi photos. Jim and Carol are good looking, well known, the favorite fodder of the gossip rags. There's no formal announcement of an engagement in sight, not even rumors. He feels hurt that Jim hadn't confided in him. Maybe it's a sign they had been drifting even farther apart than distance had made them, the struggle to regain a friendly footing hadn't been going as well as he had thought despite the increasing frequency of comms from Jim.
Jo comes over to take the PADD from him. "Nyota texted me that Uncle Jim had been asking her for jewelry store recommendations. I think she was looking for me to confirm her suspicions, but you would have told me if you'd heard anything." She pages through the articles, stopping occasionally to study the pictures a little closer.
Leonard glares at his daughter. "You've become a right little gossip hound. Ever heard of butting out of other people's business?"
She rolls her eyes in a manner very reminiscent of her father. "He's your ex-honey, Dad, even if you don't talk about him much. If you insist on being close-mouthed, then we have to pool our resources to uncover the truth."
"The only thing you're going to uncover is my ability to take away your communicator! Your Uncle Jim's business is...was his business. He would have told us when he was ready." He feels a bit hypocritical saying that, because now his curiosity is piqued. How had it escaped him how close Jim and Carol had gotten during the Enterprise's downtime?
He watches in puzzlement as Jo starts matching up ticket stubs to glossy programs, one and sometimes two stubs to a program.
"What's so fascinating about those pieces of trash, sweetpea?" He picks up another PADD and powers it on. This one has pictures of Winona Kirk and what is most likely family. He identifies Sam and Aurelan Kirk easily. A birthday, it looks like. He can't help but smile at the toddler sitting in the place of pride, a cake-smeared face beaming ecstatically out at the camera.
"I didn't know Uncle Jim was such a fan of Shakespeare, Dad. Look, here's "Othello," "Lion in Winter," "Love's Labours Lost." There's plenty more. But only a few that have two ticket stubs. I guess he liked going to plays alone." Stubs all matched to programs, she's lining them up, but not alphabetically.
Leonard feels his throat close up a little more. "Actually, Jim hated going to plays alone, he had to drag me kicking my heels, when he could. Sitting in the dark to be shown how foolish and rotten to the core people are isn't my idea of fun."
The look from Jo's eyes should be licensed and a warning label placed on it. "I'd go if Danny asked me. It's called sharing. You'd go if I asked, wouldn't you?"
Leonard is struck dumb at her insight. He'd declined to go because he thought all the plays did was confirm that mankind was going to Hell. Jim retained an idealistic optimism, falsely in Leonard's opinion. He has a hard time finding any optimism in the wake of what he sees in the hospital on a daily basis. The ratio of help to harm is a crime. In Jim's world, doctors would outnumber patients in the emergency rooms, and wouldn't that be a fine thing for staying employed? He's sticking to research; disease isn't personal and carries no agenda. He finds hope in disease that he doesn't find in trauma surgery, despite his skills in that arena. Maybe Jim had been looking for that in him and he'd let him down. Hope sprang eternal and all that shit, only not for Jim, in this case.
He sets the PADD aside. The happiness in the photos is at odds with his current feelings; it makes his stomach churn.
A flash of white and blue in the box catches his eye. When he looks closer, he sees something that may answer their question on Jim's wedding intentions. It's a ring box. And not just any ring box, even he knows the significance of those colors; he'd gotten Joce a set of pearls for their wedding from Tiffany. The cost hadn't mattered, but where they had come from; that's what had caché in Atlanta society: important to her and, therefore, important to him whether he liked it or not. He smiles at the thought that Clay is the one playing those games now; he's well out of it. The smile fades, though, at the significance of the box. Suspicions confirmed, it looks like.
He sets the box back down, but not before Jo catches sight of it. The squeal that emerges from her mouth could bring stray dogs from five miles; her mother is training her well. Before he can say anything to the contrary, she snatches it up and flips it open. Her eyes get very wide at the contents. Leonard is about to turn away when Jo shoves the box right under his nose so he's looking at it cross-eyed.
"They're both men's rings, Daddy." She's right, they're both way too big for either one to belong on a woman's hand.
Leonard is what can only be described as pole-axed. Just what was going on in that pinhead of a brainbox that Jim Kirk owns?
Ever helpful, Jo points to one of the rings. "There's an inscription in this one. Do you want to know what it says?"
Before he can say no, she's picking it up and peering inside.
There's an indrawn breath and then she hands it to him, finally mute.
Inside the ring the inscription reads: Many are the stars I see but in my eye no star like thee. It's the words on the outside that almost break his heart.
++
“Why the hell did you leave him, Dad?” Jo asks quietly, handing him back the ring, and Leonard shifts uncomfortably. It’s not something that he really wants to talk about - hell, he’d never even properly sorted it with Jim, and now, the stupid kid’s gone and got himself killed and he never will. He’ll never be able to fix it.
“I don’t know,” he sighs after a moment, when Jo’s stare begins to burn a hole on the side of his face and it’s too quiet in the room,. He fiddles with the ring to avoid looking at her. “We were stubborn, and we didn’t try hard enough. We’d have these little arguments and always say that the other one couldn’t understand, or that we weren’t taking things seriously.”
“So you broke up with him because you didn’t agree with him?” Jo asks, eyebrows shooting into her hairline, and Leonard slants her an annoyed look.
“That’s not what I said and don’t you go twisting my words. And I didn’t so much break up with him as we drifted away from each other toward the end of the mission. I’m not sure that he didn’t outgrow me, you know. He didn’t need me towards the end and I’m not going to deny him growing up.”
“And then what happened?”
“I came home,” Leonard shrugs, and puts the ring down on the table with its counterpart. They clink quietly on the wood and glint there like a pair of accusing eyes. “I came back to Atlanta, and I found your mom and Clay, and they said that they knew of a little place that Mrs Campbell’s son was wanting to rent out just a few streets down. So I came on down and signed for it the same day.”
Jo picks up the picture of Jim with Carol again, a faraway sort of look in her eyes, like she’s trying to imagine Jim marrying this woman, and is failing. Leonard watches her until she puts it down and glances up at him.
“Tell me about your love life then, Dad. Jim’s had a fair few, you must have done as well,” she says eventually with a cheeky smile, and he nods slowly.
“Well, there was Emony, when I was at Ole Miss, before I married your mother. She was doing a gymnastics tour or something. We had a few flings, but it didn’t last,” he shrugs, and Jo’s eyes light up suddenly.
“Wait, Emony? Emony Dax?”
“Yeah, Emony Dax, why?”
“Dad, she’s famous! She came to our school and talked to us about gymnastics, you know. You should have told me that you’d gone out with her!”
“Jo, I just said, it didn’t last. We met up maybe five or six times. You know, the last thing that she said to me was that I should become a doctor?” he smiles, a little lopsided, and Jo pulls her knees up to her chest to listen. “She said that I had the hands of a surgeon.”
“So Emony Dax is the reason that you became CMO of the Enterprise? I guess you’ve got a lot to thank her for, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says, dragging the word out. “I should probably comm her at some point, see how she’s doing.”
“Later though,” Jo says firmly, poking his thigh with her toes. “So who else was there?”
“Well, your mother, and you know how that went down,” he says flatly, and Jo nods silently. “And when we got divorced, I just… ran. Jocelyn was the only woman I’d ever loved and I felt as though I’d lost everything, and I just ran.”
“Where?”
Leonard sighs and looks at her, taking hold of her chilly toes with one hand.
“To Jim, would you believe it. I ran straight to the goddamn Riverside Shipyard and told Jim Kirk that I might throw up on him.”
“But you didn’t start seeing Jim straight away, did you?” she asks, and he shakes his head. The rings are still glinting in the later afternoon sun.
“No, there was Nancy in the first year. Nancy Bierce. She was in a few of our basic classes, and I courted her for a while, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I don’t think she ever really liked Jim, though. She ended up getting married, in the end, to an archaeologist called Robert Crater. Last I heard of her, they’d moved out to a planet called M-113.”
“And then it was Jim?”
“And then it was Jim,” he agrees, and he doesn’t miss the grin that spreads across Jo’s face. She’d been… what, seven, eight years old when she’d first met Jim, and she’d loved him from the first moment that she spotted him shining brightly across the quad. And Jim had doted on her like she was actually related to him. He took her places and bought her presents and always, always asked after her and showered affection on her like he was trying to be the absolute best that he could be.
It wasn’t until six months after he’d introduced the two of them that Leonard finally read Jim’s psych file, and stopped telling Jim that he shouldn’t spoil her like he did.
“Dad?”
Leonard starts, and blinks - Jo’s looking at him expectantly as though she’s waiting for an answer, and he clears his throat awkwardly.
“Sorry, sweetheart, what did you say?”
“I said, what about after you guys broke up?”
“Well, nothing really,” he admits, thinking of the few months between the final throwdown and finally setting foot on Terran soil again. It had been messy - he’d been out of himself, and he knew that Jim had too, and everything had been strained and awkward and painful between them. And everybody knew, of course they did, which just made matters worse. He knew that the yeomen gossiped in the mess, and he knew that Spock was as concerned for Jim as Nyota was for him, and that they’d discuss it at night before settling down for bed. They didn’t mean any harm, he knew, but it still wasn’t any of their goddamn business.
“So that was it then, after Jim?” Jo prompts, and he shrugs. “Seriously, that was it?”
“Not really - I was seeing someone when I first came back home. A woman that I’d known from before, turns out she’s from nearby so we were spending some time together.”
“Oh wait, I remember her!” Jo exclaims, gesturing with her hands. “You took her out for dinner a few times. Tonia, right? She was really nice, and really pretty.”
“Tonia Barrows. She was a yeoman on the Enterprise, but she’s been promoted to lieutenant and she’s transferring to the Defiant. I thought it might be easier, seeing someone that wasn’t on the same ship as me.”
“But it didn’t work.”
“No, it didn’t work,” Leonard agrees, and Jo tilts her head to one side, pigtails swinging gently.
“Well, I’m glad. You’re too good for her. She may have been pretty but she was kinda stupid.”
“She was not stupid, Joanna,” he admonishes, but really, she’s right.
“Is that why you broke it off with her?” she asks, and Leonard’s head snaps up.
“I would never be that shallow and I hope you wouldn’t either, young lady,” he says, a warning low in his voice, but Jo cuts him off.
“I meant because she wasn’t smart like Jim.”
Leonard opens his mouth to defend himself, then finds that he has to close it. Nobody is smart like Jim, nobody ever could be because Jim’s not just smart. He’s violently intelligent, and he’s headstrong and determined and so fiercely loyal and brilliant and there’s nobody else like him at all. Nobody that Leonard’s ever met, anyway. He clears his throat, and finds that his mouth has gone dry.
“Sweetie, can you get me a glass of tea?” he asks, and if his voice cracks a little on the last word, then Jo doesn’t say anything about it as she unfolds herself from the couch and goes to the kitchen.
Leonard is just finishing his cup of coffee when he notices the lid of the box is ajar. Looking in, he sees that Joanna has once again put the holo-news article inside. He touches it with his fingertips, debating whether to take it out or leave it. They had disagreed on the subject; Joanna thought it was something Jim would want to save, and Leonard thought that it wasn’t their decision to make.
He closes the lid on the box, leaving the article where it is for now.
The news that Jim is alive has hit Leonard hard, more so, maybe, than the news of his death. He feels he understands Jim a little better now. Nothing has changed, and yet it has. Jim is alive and on Earth, and Leonard has his box.
A knock at the door pulls him out of his reverie and he's grateful for the interruption. That is, until he sees who's there.
“Hey. Bones,” says one very alive, very tired-looking starship captain.
Leonard knows he's staring. “What are you doing here?”
Jim shuffles his feet and tries on an innocent smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I was in the neighborhood?”
That startles a laugh out of Leonard, and pulls a real smile across Jim’s face. “Yeah, sure, San Francisco to Georgia. Leave it to you to travel cross country for a social visit with no prior warning.”
“I’m thoughtful like that. So, can I come in?” Jim says as he cranes his neck to peer into the room.
Leonard doesn't say anything, just holds open the door and stands aside; as Jim walks in, Leonard takes a moment to study him. Jim has dark circles under his eyes and his movements are slow and tired. He still walks with a youthful grace, but it seems subdued, and Leonard can tell that he’s lost some weight.
Jim turns and stares at him, and Leonard forces himself to act normally. He closes the door and leads Jim into the living room.
“Have a seat.” He gestures to the couch. Jim flops down, leaning his head back, and closes his eyes with a sigh. Leonard fidgets. “Would you like something to drink?”
Jim doesn't stir. “Nah, I’m good.”
“You look tired," Leonard blurts out.
Jim doesn't say anything. For a moment he tenses, his eyes opening to peer at Leonard, but then he relaxes and closes them again.
“Well, I know you didn’t come all the way out here to sleep on my couch.”
Jim shakes with silent laughter. “Maybe I did.”
“Why are you here?” Leonard says in a softer tone.
Jim grimaces but doesn't open his eyes. There's a long silence, during which Leonard thinks about the changes in Jim. Time had worn soft lines into his forehead and the corners of his eyes. But he still wears the same expression he always did when he wanted to speak and is taking a moment to compose his thoughts. Leonard knows he'll have his explanation soon enough.
“They captured me.” A bitter laugh escapes him. “I'm sure you know that by now. They captured me and they weren't happy. It was the usual rigmarole. Questions, punishments, and when I wouldn't talk...inducements.”
“Torture.”
Jim nods. His throat works in something like a swallow, and when he speaks again, his voice quavers. “I lost track of time, couldn’t tell how long it had been or how long I was there. It became a blur, until one day they realized they weren’t going to be getting anything useful out of me.”
“What happened then?”
“They decided to execute me.”
Now it was Leonard’s turn to swallow. “So what went wrong? How did you escape?”
Jim laughs hollowly, “I didn’t.”
“I don’t follow.”
“They executed me. Publicly. Lethal injection.”
Leonard feels his breath catch. “So how’re you alive?”
“R'yeet, the son of one of the leaders. We’d spent some time talking before they’d locked me up.”
“So he saved you? What did he do? Stop the execution? Rescue you at the last minute?”
Jim shakes his head. “I told you, they executed me publicly.”
"Damn it, Jim!" Leonard bursts out, sickened at the thought of it, and angry at Jim for his evasions.
Jim jumps up and starts pacing the room. “I remember the sharp sting of the needle, whatever they injected burning as it went in, and then everything went black. When I came to later R’yeet was there and explained everything. He’d lowered the dose of the injection enough so that it would appear that I was dead, but with the right combination of drugs, within the right time period, I could be revived again.”
"Why?"
Jim shrugs. "Because he was good. Because there were others like him who couldn't."
Reaching into his pocket, Jim pulls out what looked to Leonard like a burned and broken comm.
Quietly Jim says, “So where's my box?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Leonard shouts in exasperation. “Why the hell would you want to remember a time when you were tortured and executed?”
Jim considers Leonard for a moment and then he purses his lips and blows out a tired breath. “You know that cliché? The one about your life flashing before your eyes? I’ve had so many brushes with death, I always assumed it was all bullshit.”
He pauses and fiddles with the comm in his hand. “But this time was different. I really died and it was clear, so clear. Clearer than my memories of the planet, of escaping, of coming home. I saw my life-- the good, the bad, the close calls. But what really stood out were my regrets.”
Jim’s hand clenches around the device and Leonard can hear the broken pieces crunching from the pressure.
“Jim.”
Jim eases his white-knuckled grip.
“Bones. I saw my regrets and all I wanted was to talk to you just one more time, to let you know that I was sorry, and that I was wrong. I realized that I never really knew myself, let alone you, and most of all, I wanted to change that.”
Leonard feels like he's having an out-of-body experience. Jim can't possibly be saying this, not after all these years of bitter memories and might-have-beens.
Jim avoids Leonard’s gaze and his eyes focus on the box across the room.
“I should be going. I'll just take my box and be out of your hair.”
“Now, wait a second. I've grown partial to that box and I don't think I want to give it up.”
Jim swings around looking like he's been struck. “What?” he croaks.
“You sent it to me, to keep, and I intend to keep it.”
Leonard stands and walks toward him as Jim searches his face. “In fact, the only way I figure you'll get that box back is if we share it.”
A hopeful look spreads across Jim's features. “Bones?”
“Jim.” Leonard laces his fingers through Jim's and leans toward him so their foreheads touch. "You're not the only one who can't live a lie. Not anymore. Never again."
Jim lets out a shaky breath and begins to tremble, and then they're clinging to each other, Jim's face in his neck and Leonard's cheek on Jim's hair, and they breath each other in.
++
The box is the last thing Jo unpacks. In truth it might have been safer at home, but she doesn't trust it far from her sight. She runs her hands over the smooth wood and on impulse cracks it open, just to make sure nothing's broken.
On top is her father's note. He's a man of paper and ink, as surely as he's one of the most forward-thinking doctors in the Federation.
She doesn't mean to snoop, she really doesn't, but she's her mother's daughter, and she can't resist peeking one more time. It's what she doesn't find that surprises her.
