Switch 33/50
Oct. 20th, 2009 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceres_liberaTitle: "Switch" (33/50)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ceres_libera
Rating: R to NC-17
Summary: The life and times of Leonard H. McCoy MD/PhD … If Leonard McCoy's life could get any fucking weirder, it would be … Jesus, he didn't even want to think what that could possibly mean, because it's already been too fucking weird to make any kind of rational sense.
Canon: Based in the ST:XI universe, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses.
Characters: McCoy/Kirk, with eventual appearances by all other ST:XI characters.
Notes: Angst, but hopefulness. The course of true love, and all that ... but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
+
As the hours turned into days and then into weeks, Leo worked on convincing himself that he was all right, that he wasn’t suffering the kind of phantom pain that he’d read about in medical journals documenting a syndrome that was common among those who’d lost a limb. He’d known all along that Jim was stubborn, and he knew that the argument that Jim was having inside his own head was something that he’d have to resolve himself. He’d been a fucking fool to think that he’d be able to seduce Jim Kirk, the king of the one-night stand, into something that felt a lot like love. Jim didn’t want to be in love, he didn’t want to feel love – he’d said so from the very beginning, hadn’t he? – he should have just left well enough alone, should have pushed back against Jim when he’d kissed him that very first time in the meadow and asked him what the fuck he was playing at.
Because when all was said and done, Leo was the one with the broken heart, and probably alone in that, too, just like how he was the one all alone in the too big goddamned bed in his room.
+
He wasn’t going to spend his time pining for what he’d lost, or what he’d almost had to be accurate, but it was galling that he couldn’t even talk to his best friend about how he’d been burned. When he’d lost Joce, he’d been in a similar situation, but only because he’d lost his father in the weeks before, not because he and Jocelyn had been such great friends by the end of it all.
Actually, now that he contemplated it, they hadn’t been all that great friends to start with. And contemplating was what he was doing. He was not brooding.
Or being a moody bastard, as Gram would most likely say.
+
“You look like crap,” Patty said bluntly.
Leo scowled at her.
“OK, you look like very good crap, but you look like crap,” she paused, looking him right in the eye in her well-practiced psychiatric way. “What’s up?”
“The amount I’m lifting, by many kg,” Leo said smartly, raising his arm to show off his newly developed musculature. There was no need for him to cop to the fact that he was either working out or running himself ragged every damned night so that he could sleep for a few short hours – because he wasn’t going to resort to booze. And he wasn’t avoiding Jim by going to the Officer’s Gym, either. It was nicer, and the machines were in better shape. The fact that there was no chance that he was going to run into Jim there was simply coincidental.
“What happened?” Patty asked with warm sympathy, and Leo saw the sincerity in her eyes. “You were so happy for a while there.” Her tone was wistful.
Leo quirked an eyebrow at her words. He didn’t think he’d been particularly smiley, or anything, and said so.
“You looked relaxed,” Patty said. “There was a sparkle in your eye.” She looked at him. “Not that there isn’t something there now,” she said, “but it’s more like a flame, like a banked fire. You’re furious.”
“He walked out on me,” Leo said quietly. “Did what I was always afraid he was going to do, and pulled a runner.”
Patty nodded. “What happened?”
“Fuck if I know,” Leo said, dropping his voice so the nurses at the table next to them in the break room couldn’t overhear. He picked at the dinner he’d bought in the cafeteria with little appetite. “He flunked the fucking Maru again, got drunk off his ass and was spoiling for a bar fight, real old school destructive shit for him.”
Patty nodded, encouraging him. “And?”
Leo shrugged. “And nothing. First he surprised me by not getting into a fight with some shitheads – he actually put himself in the middle of a situation and tried to defuse it –" his voice still held wonder at that, and Patty smiled, “but one of the participants took umbrage at his peacemaking and well, we fought our way out of the bar.”
“We?” Patty’s eyes were wide.
“You think I was going to stand by and watch him get beaten?” Leo grumbled. “And it was fine. It was a garden-variety fight, nothing special, nobody got hurt bad, and I thought that he got it all out of his system. We went home, and it was fine, in fact, it was better than fine, and then … it wasn’t.”
Patty was watching Leo carefully. “Did you reject him sexually?”
“Me?” Leo asked. “No. I was worried that he was too drunk to really know what the hell he was doing, but he’d wrapped himself around me …” he trailed off. “Let’s just say I was willing to be convinced.” He blinked once or twice, and swiped at his bangs. “No. He was the one who changed his mind. Started acting like I was the one who’d been coming onto him, like I was the one who was pushing things forward.”
“And you hadn’t?”
“Nope,” Leo drawled, crossing his legs. “Well. My approach was different than his. He wanted to be like it always was for him, you know, hot and dirty, all the time – not that I object to hot and dirty, just that I wanted something real, something that connected.”
“Ah …” Patty said, breathing out.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “All right, maybe I was pushing, but I was being honest about what I wanted, OK? Because we both know that’s the only way things were ever going to work. If you lie from the beginning, well, eventually that’s all you get left with.” Patty’s eyes were troubled. “Patty?”
She looked up at him, and he could see the guilt in her eyes.
“Aw, fuck me,” he said. “Shohreh?”
“Don’t worry,” Patty said, “I’m not going to give you any advice about how to deal with Jim,” she laughed, but it was dry. “She called me a couple of weeks ago, all remorse. It was her anniversary, you know.”
Leo nodded. “And she’s miserable,” he said.
“Yep,” Patty answered brightly, but in a brittle tone. “She’s lying to herself every day, and she hates it and she just needed a friend she said, and … I’m an idiot.”
Leo sighed and covered her hand with his. “We’ll have an Idiots Club, you and me,” he said.
Patty smiled sadly. “Do you think he’s afraid of failing?”
“Huh?” Leo asked.
“I’d rather talk about your problems than think about my own,” Patty answered softly.
“I don’t think he ever failed at anything until the Maru,” Leo said. “He doesn’t believe in no-win situations, remember?”
Patty nodded, but her eyes were contemplative. “Everybody’s failed at something,” she said, “whether or not they’ve admitted it to themselves.”
Leo thought about Jim, about how he’d brought up his father just before the mood had abruptly changed. “Hmm …” He shook his head. “You know what, Patty? I’m tired of trying to figure other people out. I just … I can’t do it anymore.”
She was quiet, watching his face.
“I need to focus on something else,” he said. “What did you think about my idea?”
“The paper?” Patty asked, pulling out her PADD. “It looks great,” she said thoughtfully. “But I don’t think you should submit it as a paper.”
“Huh?”
“When I was reading it,” Patty murmured, “I thought that you should make this your dissertation, finish that degree in psych,” she smiled as Leo gaped. “Get some more initials, Leonard H. McCoy, M.D., PhD, FACS, Fellow, blah, blah, blah. You could just put a little squared sign after your M.D./Ph.D.”
“But …”
“It’s your choice,” Patty said, “but the truth is you’ve done all the coursework, and if you changed the paper’s focus to analyze methodology of treating astrophobia, and opened the door for longitudinal studies … you see what I’m saying?”
“Jesus, Patty,” Leo said. “I’m already doing the Path fellowship in combination with Xenoanatomy.”
Patty quirked an eyebrow. “Since when?”
“July,” Leo answered shortly.
“Why Pathology?” she asked, looking at him intently.
Leo sighed. “Because,” he said slowly, “if you’re going to be the CMO, you have to be qualified to perform autopsies.”
“Jim’s CMO,” Patty said quietly.
“I don’t need my follies pointed out, Patty,” Leo said lightly, but there was a hard edge to his tone.
“I wasn’t doing that, Grouchy,” Patty said, squeezing his hand. “So, that means that you’re going to be an M.D. to the third power?” she asked with a grin.
Leo rolled his eyes and ignored her. “You got any ideas about who would take me on at this late date?”
She looked at Leo speculatively. “You’re seriously thinking about doing it?”
“I’ve got nothing else to do,” Leo said with a tinge of acid.
Patty nodded sadly. “Yeah,” she said. “Let me see what I can do.”
Leo nodded and then swallowed the bitter dregs of his coffee.
+
Rank had its fucking privileges, and it was time that he availed himself of them. That’s what he told himself as he sat down to another relatively solitary dinner in the Officer’s Mess. It wasn’t that he’d seen Jim one too many times in the distance, hitting on some long-legged mini-skirt wearing classmate. He was being political, and prudent.
He was fucking growing up.
+
“Leo,” Gram’s voice on the comm reflected her concern. “You look so tired.”
He shrugged. “I’m not sleeping well, Gram,” he said. There was no point in lying to her about what was going on – if he’d kept it from her, she’d have just asked about Jim with a knowing smirk and he’d have blown a gasket at her innocent remark. “But I’m trying,” he emphasized. “I’m not running myself into the ground. I’m just …”
“Heart heavy,” she said, her eyes were troubled. “He hasn’t vidded me back, you know. He wrote me a note, but it’s so easy to be blithe in print. If he had to look me in the eye …”
“Don’t push him, Gram,” Leo said. “Whatever’s going on with him, he’s got to be the one to figure it out.”
Gram’s hand was resting at her neck, as she played with the pendant of her necklace. “And you haven’t seen him at all?”
“Not up close,” he admitted. “But … I’ve been going out of my way to make myself scarce.”
“Oh, Leo,” she said, “do you think it’s wise to make it so easy for him?”
He smiled bitterly. “I believe that I was thinking of myself, Gram,” he said. “I can’t watch him just work his way through the class list.”
“Oh,” Gram said with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Leo. I’m worried about you both, I admit.” She shook her head. “That boy.”
“That’s the problem right there, Gram,” Leo said. “He’s young.”
“Leo,” she said sharply. “He’s not a teenager. And it’s not his youth that’s the problem. He’s been on his own for a long damned time and he’s used to doing things the way he wants. He made decisions about how things were going to be and you shook him up.”
Leo stared at his grandmother through the vidscreen. “How do you know that?” he asked.
She shrugged her elegant shoulders. “McCoy men are true to type in many ways,” she said. “And that includes some of your choices. Let’s just say that based on a lifetime of knowing McCoy men, and having a passing familiarity with being the choice of a McCoy man, I can surmise without knowing the details. I just worry about you, Leo. I worry that you’ll be too proud and too angry to give a little.”
“Me?” Leo said. “I’ve been the one bending all along!”
Gram smiled sadly. “It’s never even, Leo mine,” she said. “Don’t be so angry that you miss your chance. He wouldn’t have fought you off so hard or run so far if you really hadn’t gotten inside his shell.” She looked at him steadily. “Trust me on that one, Leo.”
Leo sighed, knowing that she was right. Goddamnit.
+
Gram had been disappointed that he wasn’t coming to Georgia for Thanksgiving, but he couldn’t see himself enjoying the holiday with Ted. The problem was, he couldn’t see himself enjoying it with Jim, either. He ended up stopping in at the Officer’s Mess with a PADD full of data, to find himself being waved over to a table by Harrison Yu and Paul Barresi. Harry’s focus on him was entirely of a speculative, considering nature, so much so that Paul had elbowed him to get him to join the conversation.
They kept to professional or general topics after he was introduced to their friends, including a woman he recognized from the Psych Department. Eleanor wasn’t an officer, but she was back on track after taking a few years off. Like Leo, she was divorced and rather than spend the day alone had chosen to come to the Mess, although she was a guest. They chatted and it turned out that she knew Patty.
Their conversation was lively and interesting, not unlike his interactions with all of the members of the party. If it felt hollow to him, lacking in Jim's wit and easy brilliance, he knew that he was the only one feeling that way. Luckily, most of the group were scientists, and the conversation was technical and engrossing, requiring focus that kept other thoughts at bay. Eleanor was curious about his thesis, and he was grateful for her insight into his project as well as her assessments of his committee. She was farther into the process than he, and knew all of the players in the department in a different way than he did, since psych was her field.
He’d passed an enjoyable meal, thanked Eleanor for her time, and gone off to the gym to work off the food and the stupor, purposefully not thinking of Jim and how he’d spent the last couple of Thanksgivings, only returning to his room when it was full dark. His comm was silent and message-less, and he thought about sending a text to Jim, but passed on the idea again.
Jim knew where he was.
+
When his comm had gone off the next week with a ring that indicated a personal message, he couldn’t help the way his heart leapt up and then beat hard with worry at the unknown number. By the time he answered it, he’d convinced himself that Jim had done something foolish and that he was being called to pick up the pieces, but he was wrong on all points. It was Eleanor, asking him to coffee.
The truth was, he wasn’t much interested, but he couldn’t see the point in saying no, so he didn’t.
They met in an off-campus coffee bar, in a neighborhood that he didn’t typically frequent in his travels with Jim. He caught sight of himself in the window before he went in to meet her, and almost started at the image. He’d always been in good shape, but he was in the best shape of his life at the moment, looked broad-shouldered and small-waisted, fit. If only he could make himself smile, get the grooves of worry out from between his eyes, he’d look really good. He sighed, and swiped at the bangs that never seemed to stay put, and opened the door.
+
Ellie, as she preferred to be called, was the perfect mix of bitter and amenable. She’d been pretty clear with Leo from the beginning that she wasn’t interested in any kind of permanent relationship. She’d had that, and lost it, after a baby and infidelity. They talked through their histories from the vantage point of people who’d made the ultimate commitment and gotten burned, but unlike Leo, she wasn’t willing to try again.
He’d thought, at first, that it was just too soon for her. She’d only been divorced for a few months she’d told him, as she swept her long blonde hair back up into a tightly controlled chignon at the back of her head, sitting at the vanity in the hotel. She never took him to her apartment, where he might interact with her child, and at 35, she wasn’t going to come back to his dorm room with him –- which was fine, because if he’d had her in the bed that he’d shared with Jim and dreamed of Jim in still, he would have felt more like he was cheating than he already did. No, their assignations happened in hotel rooms, after dinner and drinks, very grown up, very holovidlike, very … businesslike.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t getting off, and not like she was shy about telling him what she wanted, but it was bloodless. He’d always had passion, even with Patty, when there hadn’t been real love. But this … this was about utility, about servicing the body’s needs in a calculated way, relieving tension, giving nothing.
He’d thought that he’d feel better, if not good, thought that he’d burn off some of the ache of the unrelieved want that he’d been feeling so long for Jim, that connecting to another person would be preferable to the dissatisfaction of his hand and his wistful imaginings of how things could have gone, but hadn’t. Besides, it wasn’t like Jim was holding himself back any, so why should he?
But the truth was that beyond the instant of oblivion that orgasm provided, the whole thing was far more hollow than masturbation in some ways. He’d pretty much decided to tell Ellie their arrangement was over one morning before Christmas when he came home and flopped down on his bed. He intended to rest before he started his day and figured out how to break up with a woman that he wasn’t really having a relationship with, when a familiar scent rose from the pillow he’d dropped his head down upon. He turned his nose to confirm the smell of Jim, to revel in the fact that he’d been by, and to hope that he’d felt a pang at the realization that Leo was out somewhere, in someone else’s bed. He had no doubt that Jim had figured that fact out. He might be keeping away from Leo, as much as Leo’d been keeping away from him, but he had no doubt that Jim knew exactly when every shift of his began and ended, when he was in class or not.
He ignored the pounding of his own foolish heart at the idea that Jim had been here waiting for him.
It didn’t mean that everything was all right.
+
He ended things with Ellie two days before Christmas, feeling equal parts the heel and relieved at her easy acceptance of the situation, coming home late that night after stopping by the gym and beating the crap out of the heavy bag. He'd shrugged out of his jacket and toed off his shoes, ordering the lights to 50% as the door whisked closed, only to turn towards his desk and find himself confronted with a red ribbon-bedecked bottle, next to the Christmas tree that he'd had to re-pot at the end of the summer, its nacelles gleaming red, mocking him. The tree usually resided on the windowsill next to the sink in his tiny kitchenette, where it could get the full benefit of the Western-facing windows, and it hadn't walked itself to his desk, or brought that bottle with it.
"Damn it, Jim," he uttered under his breath, helplessly searching the surface for the note that wasn’t there, nor on his comm. He sat in his desk chair and stared at the tree until it was time to go to work again, wondering what the fuck it all meant in the end. He was miserable, and alone, and goddamnit, he missed Jim more than anything, more than he had ever missed any other soul in this universe or in any other.
+
He scared a crapload of interns over the course of the next 24 hours, berating them for mistakes that any intern would make instead of teaching them what it meant to be a good doctor. Half the time he was looking over his shoulder for the blond head that he knew wouldn't be appearing.
Jim had already made his move, half-assed though it might be.
+
Christmas morning, after a night of restless sleep and dreams that he refused to contemplate much less recall, he packed the bottle of booze that he'd bought for Jim in a box, along with the last three of Horatio's journals that Jim had never gotten around to reading. He tucked a note under the flap of the top one that read simply:
Jim,
I thought that you might want to know the rest of Horatio's journey.
Always,
LHM
He refused to consider how many versions of the note that he'd written and discarded before he decided on that simple sentiment, and went by Jim's dorm on his way to work, and left the box with the RA on-call. She told him that she hadn't seen Jim for a couple of days, but she'd make sure that he got it, and the other box that was waiting for him.
Leo knew it was from Gram, and he nodded and thanked her around the sudden lump in his throat, wishing her a happy holiday before he walked away and went about his day.
He was not thinking about last Christmas, and how in retrospect, it seemed perfect in its imperfections.
+
It began the day after Christmas.
Traditionally, that was the day all the newsfeeds and the vid-mags began their drumbeat of the countdown to the New Year, endlessly rehashing the events of the ending year and making ridiculous predictions for the one not yet born. But 2258, it seemed, was a new year with Special Significance, so special that it stilled the desire to look back at the year just past.
It was just after the grey, dreary early winter dawn that Leo heard the first story. He was standing at the Nurse's Station making notes on post-surgical treatment for one of his patients when he heard a voice talking urgently and not quite making sense. The unctuous voice of the newscaster cut in while he wrote, only half-listening, to the breathless announcement that after 25 years, Starfleet was releasing some new audio of the Kelvin disaster, including some of the last known words of its hero, George Kirk.
Leo had swung around to look at the vidscreen in shock, his mouth dropping open as an Admiral appeared on the screen, fat and smug in his braided and ribboned dress uniform. "Many of us believe that the solemnity of the occasion, and its importance in our history, has been lost over the years," this Admiral Howlett opined. "So we felt that in recognition of this particular anniversary, a further reminder of what was lost by the acts of an unknown madman was appropriate. We need to be reminded that our freedom does not come without a price."
And Leo, knowing full well that the price that was exacted was not paid by anyone in Starfleet Fucking Command, felt himself suffused with rage and helplessness, realizing that what he'd just heard was George Kirk speaking to his wife about their newborn baby boy.
"Jim," he said, not even realizing until his lips had formed the word that he'd actually named one of those who'd paid. "God, Jim …" he breathed out, hoping against hope that wherever he fucking was, he was out of the reach of this travesty, of hearing his parents last, private communication with each other heartlessly broadcast to a universe always spoiling for gossip, especially if it was tragic.
+
He commed Jim that night, his voice tight with anxiety and gruff with care. "Jim," he said, "I know that we haven't spoken in a while, but I need you to call me. Call me, Jim."
The response from Jim's comm came immediately, but brought no relief.
Gone sightseeing. See you in 2258. JTK
"Damn it, Jim," Leo said, and it was a near thing to stop his hand from impulsively smashing his comm at the sight of his blithe away message.
+
He was deep in the midst of a troubled sleep when the bleep of his comm brought him sharply awake and he stumbled to his desk in the dark, ordering the lights on, momentarily blinded himself with the flare of lights from Jim's Christmas tree.
I'm OK, Bones was all it said.
+
The onslaught began the next day, as soon as Leo arose and keyed into to his fleet mail.
Lieutenant McCoy, Worldwide News understands that you're a very good friend of James T. Kirk's. We're interested in talking to him and getting his take on this important anniversary. If you'd be willing to connect us with him, we'd certainly make it worth your while …"
Doctor McCoy, the 'fleet Press Officer requests that you call him by 0900 to discuss the whereabouts of Cadet Kirk. We need him to be available for press opportunities as we get closer to Remembrance Day. If you are aware of his present location, you must disclose it to Commander Beardsley immediately …
Lieutenant McCoy, Time would like to talk to you about your friendship with James T. Kirk, the son of the Kelvin hero. Please contact our editor at …
And on, and on, and on. Leo had never been so happy to be unaware of where the fuck Jim actually was. Even if they shot him up with the most potent alien truth serum, he had no fucking idea, and for that he was actually grateful.
Amidst all the crap in his inbox, there was one comm, buried at the bottom.
Leo, I saw the news and my God, those vultures. Call me, Gram
That one call he returned, although he walked off campus and used a line at Finnegan's, while a glowering Liam stood behind the bar and watched the crowd. He'd already rousted three reporters before Leo'd shown up, and it was only 20:00 on a Sunday night.
+
"McCoy!" He was tensed and ready to swing before he turned around and saw that it was Harry Yu that was hailing him. "Those motherfuckers," Yu said when he got close to Leo, his black eyes snapping with rage. "Have you been getting press calls?"
"I'd like to know who the fuck set them on me," Leo growled.
"C'mon, man," Yu said, "it's not like it's a secret that you guys are close."
Leo nodded, hoping that he'd kept the flinch from being visible.
"Do you know where he is?" Yu asked bluntly.
"Nope," Leo said.
"Good," Yu said. "Expect a summons from Command, if you haven't already gotten one. Some fucker showed up at my office to interrogate me -– he denied that's what it was, but, bullshit –- about my Assistant Instructor's whereabouts. I told him that I had no idea where any of my staff went on their holidays, and he asked me for a list of people who might know."
Leo looked at him, lips pursed.
"I couldn't not say your name, man," Yu said apologetically. "He knew who you were, anyway."
Leo sighed and nodded, then clapped Harry on the back, turning around and heading to the hospital. With three days left until the New Year, the press calls were getting more frequent, more insistent. He'd not returned a fucking one.
Throughout the day, he found himself the subject of increased scrutiny, caught nurses and doctors whispering when they thought his head was turned. Surprisingly, it was Rick Jindal who told him that the staff had been questioned about when they'd last seen Jim at the hospital. There was something in the way Jindal hesitated when he said Jim's name that let Leo know that he'd figured out exactly whose name Leo had begun to say that night, nearly two years gone now -- but his eyes were compassionate when he said, "I told them that Jim hadn't been around for weeks now, and I know several others said the same. I can't say that they were happy to get that answer, Leonard."
Leo thanked him, offering his hand, and found himself pleased when Rick took it. He saw Patty from a distance, and her expression when she glanced his way was hot with anger. There was a way that she tilted her head that let him know that she, too, had received a visitor, and her eyes promised that she'd tell him all about it when she got the chance.
When he finally got the chance to leave the hospital, he found himself being pulled into stairwell. He'd hoped it was Jim, but it was Subie, Raji and Sen, all flushed with anger and worried about Jim.
"It's disgusting, man," Raji said, and it was clear that he was speaking for all of them. "I mean, who cares what I think about what Kirk might be thinking? It's totally ridiculous. They make it like they're all interested in Jim, when all they want is some dirt, some juicy story. Even Cupcake told them to fuck off and he can't stand Kirk."
Leo's eyes were at his hairline as he listened to Raji, usually the most quiet of the three friends, ranting.
"Anyway, McCoy," Raji said, "you tell Jim that nobody in the KFF is taking their bait, and that he should keep staying low until this blows over, but if he needs anything -- diversions, comm cover, anything –- we'll do it."
"That's a promise," Subie said solemnly, and Sen nodded. They all whacked Leo on the back like Jim always did to them, before they disappeared down the stairwell not even waiting for his response, trusting that whatever was going on, he was in cahoots with Jim, that they were in this together.
Leo sat down on the stairs and ground the heels of his hands against his stinging eyes, wishing that their innocent assumptions were at least a little true.
+
"Pike?" Leo was startled at the Captain's sudden appearance in the waiting room. No simple interrogation was to be his fate. He'd been summoned to appear in front of the Admiral himself.
"How's Jim?" Pike asked curtly. His eyes were snapping with anger, their grey sharp and incisive.
"I dunno," Leo said.
"Good man," Pike said. "Believability is important."
Leo raised his eyebrows at him, and Pike scrutinized him.
"Ah," he said. "Jim's learned that plausible deniability is best backed up with factual deniability, I see."
"One of your lessons?" Leo asked blandly.
"Too basic for my taste," Pike said, as a Lt. Commander appeared at the door to summon Leo. He looked as if he was about to protest when Pike moved with Leo, but a glance at the Captain's face stopped whatever protest he might have been going to utter. When Leo stepped into Admiral Howlett's office, Pike was right behind him.
+
The moon was dark, but the sky was clear the night of Remembrance Day, the air cold and crisp. For once, the ubiquitous winter fog had held off, and although Leo worried that it would make him too visible to whomever might have followed him, he hoped that the elaborate subterfuge that he'd planned with the assistance of Jim Kirk's few true friends would provide him the cover that he needed as he contemplated the hill in front of him.
After a day full of morbid spectacle that Leo had watched unfold with a thoroughly jaundiced eye, but a closed mouth and a hopefully neutral expression, he'd gone to Finnegan's for a drink, standing first at the bar where he was visible, before he moved into Liam's office to change into the clothing that Irina Federova had smuggled in via the oversized backpack that she always carried. Even with the 25th anniversary activities completed, and the hope that the spectacle surrounding it would ease off, Leo hadn't wanted to take any chances. Liam Finnegan had not only agreed, but been more than happy to provide the necessary cover. Anyone monitoring Leo's comm signal would believe that he was still in Liam's office, not that he'd ducked out the back door and into one of the recycling trucks that was hauling empties across the Bay Bridge. He'd been let off in the darkness long before that point, at one of the side entrances to Golden Gate Park. He'd started his long walk through the darkness, trusting that he was right, believing that he'd find Jim here, at the top of a hill that Jim had taken him to long ago, observing his own remembrance of the day.
He had nothing but instinct to guide him, the sense that Jim, wherever he'd disappeared to these past couple of weeks, had ended up here, not on the highest hill in the park, but the one farthest away from the city lights and with the best view of the stars. He pulled his dark watch cap down over his head, hoping that he wasn't going to end the evening bleeding out in San Francisco General, even as he trusted that Subie was watching the signal from the clean comm that he was carrying. Leo wound his way up the hill steadily, his apprehension gradually being outweighed by the sense of rightness that he felt before he actually was able to discern Jim's long form sitting on the hill, watching him, his bright head uncovered in the cold night air.
"Bones," he said, his voice gone raspy from the temperature, or disuse. He watched Leo quietly as he walked toward him. Jim was wearing jeans, and the leather jacket that had been his companion long before Leo, knees raised and arms braced over them, long fingers clasped loosely between. As Leo got closer, he could see that Jim was wearing the sweater that he'd knitted for Horatio more than a decade before, and the sight of it gave him an unexpected sweet surge of pleasure.
"Kid," he said, by way of greeting.
"You found me," Jim observed.
Leo flipped him one of the flasks from his pocket as he continued to approach him. "That was the plan, wasn't it?"
Jim caught it, watching him with his fathomless eyes, midnight blue in the low light, a mirror of the dark sky above them. "Wasn't sure you'd know the plan," Jim said, turning the flask over in his hands and looking at it before he looked up at Leo again. "Wasn't sure you'd care to figure it out."
Leo pulled his jacket down before he dropped down on the grass beside Jim. "You shouldn't underestimate me, kid," he said, and turned to look him in the eye.
The ghost of the smile that Jim had worn since Leo'd first been able to discern his lone figure on the hill caught fire and lit up softly, curving the lines of Jim's angular face. "No," he said quietly. "I guess I shouldn't." He leaned toward Leo, bumping his shoulder against Leo's broader one.
"You're welcome," Leo said to him. "Drink up."
Jim's smile bloomed even further.
"It's a long fucking walk home," Leo observed. He paused before he added, "Happy Birthday, Jim."
Jim nodded. He was still smiling, but his voice was tight when he said, "One for the history books, huh, Bones?"
"Fuck 'em, Jim," Leo said. He raised his flask, and waited until Jim did the same. "To writing our own history."
"Amen," Jim said wryly, tipping his flask up.
The bourbon warmed Leo's throat, and burned its way through the lump of unspoken words that had been caught there for weeks. When he dropped his chin back down, he felt Jim sling his arm over his shoulders like he always had, like the weeks of silence and strangeness had never happened. He turned his head and looked at Jim, who had tilted his face up to look at the stars with an expression of dreaming contentment. He sat there, with Jim's warmth next to him where it belonged, and watched the stars shine over the city.
+
Switch 34
Author:
ceres_liberaRating: R to NC-17
Summary: The life and times of Leonard H. McCoy MD/PhD … If Leonard McCoy's life could get any fucking weirder, it would be … Jesus, he didn't even want to think what that could possibly mean, because it's already been too fucking weird to make any kind of rational sense.
Canon: Based in the ST:XI universe, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses.
Characters: McCoy/Kirk, with eventual appearances by all other ST:XI characters.
Notes: Angst, but hopefulness. The course of true love, and all that ... but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
+
As the hours turned into days and then into weeks, Leo worked on convincing himself that he was all right, that he wasn’t suffering the kind of phantom pain that he’d read about in medical journals documenting a syndrome that was common among those who’d lost a limb. He’d known all along that Jim was stubborn, and he knew that the argument that Jim was having inside his own head was something that he’d have to resolve himself. He’d been a fucking fool to think that he’d be able to seduce Jim Kirk, the king of the one-night stand, into something that felt a lot like love. Jim didn’t want to be in love, he didn’t want to feel love – he’d said so from the very beginning, hadn’t he? – he should have just left well enough alone, should have pushed back against Jim when he’d kissed him that very first time in the meadow and asked him what the fuck he was playing at.
Because when all was said and done, Leo was the one with the broken heart, and probably alone in that, too, just like how he was the one all alone in the too big goddamned bed in his room.
+
He wasn’t going to spend his time pining for what he’d lost, or what he’d almost had to be accurate, but it was galling that he couldn’t even talk to his best friend about how he’d been burned. When he’d lost Joce, he’d been in a similar situation, but only because he’d lost his father in the weeks before, not because he and Jocelyn had been such great friends by the end of it all.
Actually, now that he contemplated it, they hadn’t been all that great friends to start with. And contemplating was what he was doing. He was not brooding.
Or being a moody bastard, as Gram would most likely say.
+
“You look like crap,” Patty said bluntly.
Leo scowled at her.
“OK, you look like very good crap, but you look like crap,” she paused, looking him right in the eye in her well-practiced psychiatric way. “What’s up?”
“The amount I’m lifting, by many kg,” Leo said smartly, raising his arm to show off his newly developed musculature. There was no need for him to cop to the fact that he was either working out or running himself ragged every damned night so that he could sleep for a few short hours – because he wasn’t going to resort to booze. And he wasn’t avoiding Jim by going to the Officer’s Gym, either. It was nicer, and the machines were in better shape. The fact that there was no chance that he was going to run into Jim there was simply coincidental.
“What happened?” Patty asked with warm sympathy, and Leo saw the sincerity in her eyes. “You were so happy for a while there.” Her tone was wistful.
Leo quirked an eyebrow at her words. He didn’t think he’d been particularly smiley, or anything, and said so.
“You looked relaxed,” Patty said. “There was a sparkle in your eye.” She looked at him. “Not that there isn’t something there now,” she said, “but it’s more like a flame, like a banked fire. You’re furious.”
“He walked out on me,” Leo said quietly. “Did what I was always afraid he was going to do, and pulled a runner.”
Patty nodded. “What happened?”
“Fuck if I know,” Leo said, dropping his voice so the nurses at the table next to them in the break room couldn’t overhear. He picked at the dinner he’d bought in the cafeteria with little appetite. “He flunked the fucking Maru again, got drunk off his ass and was spoiling for a bar fight, real old school destructive shit for him.”
Patty nodded, encouraging him. “And?”
Leo shrugged. “And nothing. First he surprised me by not getting into a fight with some shitheads – he actually put himself in the middle of a situation and tried to defuse it –" his voice still held wonder at that, and Patty smiled, “but one of the participants took umbrage at his peacemaking and well, we fought our way out of the bar.”
“We?” Patty’s eyes were wide.
“You think I was going to stand by and watch him get beaten?” Leo grumbled. “And it was fine. It was a garden-variety fight, nothing special, nobody got hurt bad, and I thought that he got it all out of his system. We went home, and it was fine, in fact, it was better than fine, and then … it wasn’t.”
Patty was watching Leo carefully. “Did you reject him sexually?”
“Me?” Leo asked. “No. I was worried that he was too drunk to really know what the hell he was doing, but he’d wrapped himself around me …” he trailed off. “Let’s just say I was willing to be convinced.” He blinked once or twice, and swiped at his bangs. “No. He was the one who changed his mind. Started acting like I was the one who’d been coming onto him, like I was the one who was pushing things forward.”
“And you hadn’t?”
“Nope,” Leo drawled, crossing his legs. “Well. My approach was different than his. He wanted to be like it always was for him, you know, hot and dirty, all the time – not that I object to hot and dirty, just that I wanted something real, something that connected.”
“Ah …” Patty said, breathing out.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “All right, maybe I was pushing, but I was being honest about what I wanted, OK? Because we both know that’s the only way things were ever going to work. If you lie from the beginning, well, eventually that’s all you get left with.” Patty’s eyes were troubled. “Patty?”
She looked up at him, and he could see the guilt in her eyes.
“Aw, fuck me,” he said. “Shohreh?”
“Don’t worry,” Patty said, “I’m not going to give you any advice about how to deal with Jim,” she laughed, but it was dry. “She called me a couple of weeks ago, all remorse. It was her anniversary, you know.”
Leo nodded. “And she’s miserable,” he said.
“Yep,” Patty answered brightly, but in a brittle tone. “She’s lying to herself every day, and she hates it and she just needed a friend she said, and … I’m an idiot.”
Leo sighed and covered her hand with his. “We’ll have an Idiots Club, you and me,” he said.
Patty smiled sadly. “Do you think he’s afraid of failing?”
“Huh?” Leo asked.
“I’d rather talk about your problems than think about my own,” Patty answered softly.
“I don’t think he ever failed at anything until the Maru,” Leo said. “He doesn’t believe in no-win situations, remember?”
Patty nodded, but her eyes were contemplative. “Everybody’s failed at something,” she said, “whether or not they’ve admitted it to themselves.”
Leo thought about Jim, about how he’d brought up his father just before the mood had abruptly changed. “Hmm …” He shook his head. “You know what, Patty? I’m tired of trying to figure other people out. I just … I can’t do it anymore.”
She was quiet, watching his face.
“I need to focus on something else,” he said. “What did you think about my idea?”
“The paper?” Patty asked, pulling out her PADD. “It looks great,” she said thoughtfully. “But I don’t think you should submit it as a paper.”
“Huh?”
“When I was reading it,” Patty murmured, “I thought that you should make this your dissertation, finish that degree in psych,” she smiled as Leo gaped. “Get some more initials, Leonard H. McCoy, M.D., PhD, FACS, Fellow, blah, blah, blah. You could just put a little squared sign after your M.D./Ph.D.”
“But …”
“It’s your choice,” Patty said, “but the truth is you’ve done all the coursework, and if you changed the paper’s focus to analyze methodology of treating astrophobia, and opened the door for longitudinal studies … you see what I’m saying?”
“Jesus, Patty,” Leo said. “I’m already doing the Path fellowship in combination with Xenoanatomy.”
Patty quirked an eyebrow. “Since when?”
“July,” Leo answered shortly.
“Why Pathology?” she asked, looking at him intently.
Leo sighed. “Because,” he said slowly, “if you’re going to be the CMO, you have to be qualified to perform autopsies.”
“Jim’s CMO,” Patty said quietly.
“I don’t need my follies pointed out, Patty,” Leo said lightly, but there was a hard edge to his tone.
“I wasn’t doing that, Grouchy,” Patty said, squeezing his hand. “So, that means that you’re going to be an M.D. to the third power?” she asked with a grin.
Leo rolled his eyes and ignored her. “You got any ideas about who would take me on at this late date?”
She looked at Leo speculatively. “You’re seriously thinking about doing it?”
“I’ve got nothing else to do,” Leo said with a tinge of acid.
Patty nodded sadly. “Yeah,” she said. “Let me see what I can do.”
Leo nodded and then swallowed the bitter dregs of his coffee.
+
Rank had its fucking privileges, and it was time that he availed himself of them. That’s what he told himself as he sat down to another relatively solitary dinner in the Officer’s Mess. It wasn’t that he’d seen Jim one too many times in the distance, hitting on some long-legged mini-skirt wearing classmate. He was being political, and prudent.
He was fucking growing up.
+
“Leo,” Gram’s voice on the comm reflected her concern. “You look so tired.”
He shrugged. “I’m not sleeping well, Gram,” he said. There was no point in lying to her about what was going on – if he’d kept it from her, she’d have just asked about Jim with a knowing smirk and he’d have blown a gasket at her innocent remark. “But I’m trying,” he emphasized. “I’m not running myself into the ground. I’m just …”
“Heart heavy,” she said, her eyes were troubled. “He hasn’t vidded me back, you know. He wrote me a note, but it’s so easy to be blithe in print. If he had to look me in the eye …”
“Don’t push him, Gram,” Leo said. “Whatever’s going on with him, he’s got to be the one to figure it out.”
Gram’s hand was resting at her neck, as she played with the pendant of her necklace. “And you haven’t seen him at all?”
“Not up close,” he admitted. “But … I’ve been going out of my way to make myself scarce.”
“Oh, Leo,” she said, “do you think it’s wise to make it so easy for him?”
He smiled bitterly. “I believe that I was thinking of myself, Gram,” he said. “I can’t watch him just work his way through the class list.”
“Oh,” Gram said with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Leo. I’m worried about you both, I admit.” She shook her head. “That boy.”
“That’s the problem right there, Gram,” Leo said. “He’s young.”
“Leo,” she said sharply. “He’s not a teenager. And it’s not his youth that’s the problem. He’s been on his own for a long damned time and he’s used to doing things the way he wants. He made decisions about how things were going to be and you shook him up.”
Leo stared at his grandmother through the vidscreen. “How do you know that?” he asked.
She shrugged her elegant shoulders. “McCoy men are true to type in many ways,” she said. “And that includes some of your choices. Let’s just say that based on a lifetime of knowing McCoy men, and having a passing familiarity with being the choice of a McCoy man, I can surmise without knowing the details. I just worry about you, Leo. I worry that you’ll be too proud and too angry to give a little.”
“Me?” Leo said. “I’ve been the one bending all along!”
Gram smiled sadly. “It’s never even, Leo mine,” she said. “Don’t be so angry that you miss your chance. He wouldn’t have fought you off so hard or run so far if you really hadn’t gotten inside his shell.” She looked at him steadily. “Trust me on that one, Leo.”
Leo sighed, knowing that she was right. Goddamnit.
+
Gram had been disappointed that he wasn’t coming to Georgia for Thanksgiving, but he couldn’t see himself enjoying the holiday with Ted. The problem was, he couldn’t see himself enjoying it with Jim, either. He ended up stopping in at the Officer’s Mess with a PADD full of data, to find himself being waved over to a table by Harrison Yu and Paul Barresi. Harry’s focus on him was entirely of a speculative, considering nature, so much so that Paul had elbowed him to get him to join the conversation.
They kept to professional or general topics after he was introduced to their friends, including a woman he recognized from the Psych Department. Eleanor wasn’t an officer, but she was back on track after taking a few years off. Like Leo, she was divorced and rather than spend the day alone had chosen to come to the Mess, although she was a guest. They chatted and it turned out that she knew Patty.
Their conversation was lively and interesting, not unlike his interactions with all of the members of the party. If it felt hollow to him, lacking in Jim's wit and easy brilliance, he knew that he was the only one feeling that way. Luckily, most of the group were scientists, and the conversation was technical and engrossing, requiring focus that kept other thoughts at bay. Eleanor was curious about his thesis, and he was grateful for her insight into his project as well as her assessments of his committee. She was farther into the process than he, and knew all of the players in the department in a different way than he did, since psych was her field.
He’d passed an enjoyable meal, thanked Eleanor for her time, and gone off to the gym to work off the food and the stupor, purposefully not thinking of Jim and how he’d spent the last couple of Thanksgivings, only returning to his room when it was full dark. His comm was silent and message-less, and he thought about sending a text to Jim, but passed on the idea again.
Jim knew where he was.
+
When his comm had gone off the next week with a ring that indicated a personal message, he couldn’t help the way his heart leapt up and then beat hard with worry at the unknown number. By the time he answered it, he’d convinced himself that Jim had done something foolish and that he was being called to pick up the pieces, but he was wrong on all points. It was Eleanor, asking him to coffee.
The truth was, he wasn’t much interested, but he couldn’t see the point in saying no, so he didn’t.
They met in an off-campus coffee bar, in a neighborhood that he didn’t typically frequent in his travels with Jim. He caught sight of himself in the window before he went in to meet her, and almost started at the image. He’d always been in good shape, but he was in the best shape of his life at the moment, looked broad-shouldered and small-waisted, fit. If only he could make himself smile, get the grooves of worry out from between his eyes, he’d look really good. He sighed, and swiped at the bangs that never seemed to stay put, and opened the door.
+
Ellie, as she preferred to be called, was the perfect mix of bitter and amenable. She’d been pretty clear with Leo from the beginning that she wasn’t interested in any kind of permanent relationship. She’d had that, and lost it, after a baby and infidelity. They talked through their histories from the vantage point of people who’d made the ultimate commitment and gotten burned, but unlike Leo, she wasn’t willing to try again.
He’d thought, at first, that it was just too soon for her. She’d only been divorced for a few months she’d told him, as she swept her long blonde hair back up into a tightly controlled chignon at the back of her head, sitting at the vanity in the hotel. She never took him to her apartment, where he might interact with her child, and at 35, she wasn’t going to come back to his dorm room with him –- which was fine, because if he’d had her in the bed that he’d shared with Jim and dreamed of Jim in still, he would have felt more like he was cheating than he already did. No, their assignations happened in hotel rooms, after dinner and drinks, very grown up, very holovidlike, very … businesslike.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t getting off, and not like she was shy about telling him what she wanted, but it was bloodless. He’d always had passion, even with Patty, when there hadn’t been real love. But this … this was about utility, about servicing the body’s needs in a calculated way, relieving tension, giving nothing.
He’d thought that he’d feel better, if not good, thought that he’d burn off some of the ache of the unrelieved want that he’d been feeling so long for Jim, that connecting to another person would be preferable to the dissatisfaction of his hand and his wistful imaginings of how things could have gone, but hadn’t. Besides, it wasn’t like Jim was holding himself back any, so why should he?
But the truth was that beyond the instant of oblivion that orgasm provided, the whole thing was far more hollow than masturbation in some ways. He’d pretty much decided to tell Ellie their arrangement was over one morning before Christmas when he came home and flopped down on his bed. He intended to rest before he started his day and figured out how to break up with a woman that he wasn’t really having a relationship with, when a familiar scent rose from the pillow he’d dropped his head down upon. He turned his nose to confirm the smell of Jim, to revel in the fact that he’d been by, and to hope that he’d felt a pang at the realization that Leo was out somewhere, in someone else’s bed. He had no doubt that Jim had figured that fact out. He might be keeping away from Leo, as much as Leo’d been keeping away from him, but he had no doubt that Jim knew exactly when every shift of his began and ended, when he was in class or not.
He ignored the pounding of his own foolish heart at the idea that Jim had been here waiting for him.
It didn’t mean that everything was all right.
+
He ended things with Ellie two days before Christmas, feeling equal parts the heel and relieved at her easy acceptance of the situation, coming home late that night after stopping by the gym and beating the crap out of the heavy bag. He'd shrugged out of his jacket and toed off his shoes, ordering the lights to 50% as the door whisked closed, only to turn towards his desk and find himself confronted with a red ribbon-bedecked bottle, next to the Christmas tree that he'd had to re-pot at the end of the summer, its nacelles gleaming red, mocking him. The tree usually resided on the windowsill next to the sink in his tiny kitchenette, where it could get the full benefit of the Western-facing windows, and it hadn't walked itself to his desk, or brought that bottle with it.
"Damn it, Jim," he uttered under his breath, helplessly searching the surface for the note that wasn’t there, nor on his comm. He sat in his desk chair and stared at the tree until it was time to go to work again, wondering what the fuck it all meant in the end. He was miserable, and alone, and goddamnit, he missed Jim more than anything, more than he had ever missed any other soul in this universe or in any other.
+
He scared a crapload of interns over the course of the next 24 hours, berating them for mistakes that any intern would make instead of teaching them what it meant to be a good doctor. Half the time he was looking over his shoulder for the blond head that he knew wouldn't be appearing.
Jim had already made his move, half-assed though it might be.
+
Christmas morning, after a night of restless sleep and dreams that he refused to contemplate much less recall, he packed the bottle of booze that he'd bought for Jim in a box, along with the last three of Horatio's journals that Jim had never gotten around to reading. He tucked a note under the flap of the top one that read simply:
Jim,
I thought that you might want to know the rest of Horatio's journey.
Always,
LHM
He refused to consider how many versions of the note that he'd written and discarded before he decided on that simple sentiment, and went by Jim's dorm on his way to work, and left the box with the RA on-call. She told him that she hadn't seen Jim for a couple of days, but she'd make sure that he got it, and the other box that was waiting for him.
Leo knew it was from Gram, and he nodded and thanked her around the sudden lump in his throat, wishing her a happy holiday before he walked away and went about his day.
He was not thinking about last Christmas, and how in retrospect, it seemed perfect in its imperfections.
+
It began the day after Christmas.
Traditionally, that was the day all the newsfeeds and the vid-mags began their drumbeat of the countdown to the New Year, endlessly rehashing the events of the ending year and making ridiculous predictions for the one not yet born. But 2258, it seemed, was a new year with Special Significance, so special that it stilled the desire to look back at the year just past.
It was just after the grey, dreary early winter dawn that Leo heard the first story. He was standing at the Nurse's Station making notes on post-surgical treatment for one of his patients when he heard a voice talking urgently and not quite making sense. The unctuous voice of the newscaster cut in while he wrote, only half-listening, to the breathless announcement that after 25 years, Starfleet was releasing some new audio of the Kelvin disaster, including some of the last known words of its hero, George Kirk.
Leo had swung around to look at the vidscreen in shock, his mouth dropping open as an Admiral appeared on the screen, fat and smug in his braided and ribboned dress uniform. "Many of us believe that the solemnity of the occasion, and its importance in our history, has been lost over the years," this Admiral Howlett opined. "So we felt that in recognition of this particular anniversary, a further reminder of what was lost by the acts of an unknown madman was appropriate. We need to be reminded that our freedom does not come without a price."
And Leo, knowing full well that the price that was exacted was not paid by anyone in Starfleet Fucking Command, felt himself suffused with rage and helplessness, realizing that what he'd just heard was George Kirk speaking to his wife about their newborn baby boy.
"Jim," he said, not even realizing until his lips had formed the word that he'd actually named one of those who'd paid. "God, Jim …" he breathed out, hoping against hope that wherever he fucking was, he was out of the reach of this travesty, of hearing his parents last, private communication with each other heartlessly broadcast to a universe always spoiling for gossip, especially if it was tragic.
+
He commed Jim that night, his voice tight with anxiety and gruff with care. "Jim," he said, "I know that we haven't spoken in a while, but I need you to call me. Call me, Jim."
The response from Jim's comm came immediately, but brought no relief.
Gone sightseeing. See you in 2258. JTK
"Damn it, Jim," Leo said, and it was a near thing to stop his hand from impulsively smashing his comm at the sight of his blithe away message.
+
He was deep in the midst of a troubled sleep when the bleep of his comm brought him sharply awake and he stumbled to his desk in the dark, ordering the lights on, momentarily blinded himself with the flare of lights from Jim's Christmas tree.
I'm OK, Bones was all it said.
+
The onslaught began the next day, as soon as Leo arose and keyed into to his fleet mail.
Lieutenant McCoy, Worldwide News understands that you're a very good friend of James T. Kirk's. We're interested in talking to him and getting his take on this important anniversary. If you'd be willing to connect us with him, we'd certainly make it worth your while …"
Doctor McCoy, the 'fleet Press Officer requests that you call him by 0900 to discuss the whereabouts of Cadet Kirk. We need him to be available for press opportunities as we get closer to Remembrance Day. If you are aware of his present location, you must disclose it to Commander Beardsley immediately …
Lieutenant McCoy, Time would like to talk to you about your friendship with James T. Kirk, the son of the Kelvin hero. Please contact our editor at …
And on, and on, and on. Leo had never been so happy to be unaware of where the fuck Jim actually was. Even if they shot him up with the most potent alien truth serum, he had no fucking idea, and for that he was actually grateful.
Amidst all the crap in his inbox, there was one comm, buried at the bottom.
Leo, I saw the news and my God, those vultures. Call me, Gram
That one call he returned, although he walked off campus and used a line at Finnegan's, while a glowering Liam stood behind the bar and watched the crowd. He'd already rousted three reporters before Leo'd shown up, and it was only 20:00 on a Sunday night.
+
"McCoy!" He was tensed and ready to swing before he turned around and saw that it was Harry Yu that was hailing him. "Those motherfuckers," Yu said when he got close to Leo, his black eyes snapping with rage. "Have you been getting press calls?"
"I'd like to know who the fuck set them on me," Leo growled.
"C'mon, man," Yu said, "it's not like it's a secret that you guys are close."
Leo nodded, hoping that he'd kept the flinch from being visible.
"Do you know where he is?" Yu asked bluntly.
"Nope," Leo said.
"Good," Yu said. "Expect a summons from Command, if you haven't already gotten one. Some fucker showed up at my office to interrogate me -– he denied that's what it was, but, bullshit –- about my Assistant Instructor's whereabouts. I told him that I had no idea where any of my staff went on their holidays, and he asked me for a list of people who might know."
Leo looked at him, lips pursed.
"I couldn't not say your name, man," Yu said apologetically. "He knew who you were, anyway."
Leo sighed and nodded, then clapped Harry on the back, turning around and heading to the hospital. With three days left until the New Year, the press calls were getting more frequent, more insistent. He'd not returned a fucking one.
Throughout the day, he found himself the subject of increased scrutiny, caught nurses and doctors whispering when they thought his head was turned. Surprisingly, it was Rick Jindal who told him that the staff had been questioned about when they'd last seen Jim at the hospital. There was something in the way Jindal hesitated when he said Jim's name that let Leo know that he'd figured out exactly whose name Leo had begun to say that night, nearly two years gone now -- but his eyes were compassionate when he said, "I told them that Jim hadn't been around for weeks now, and I know several others said the same. I can't say that they were happy to get that answer, Leonard."
Leo thanked him, offering his hand, and found himself pleased when Rick took it. He saw Patty from a distance, and her expression when she glanced his way was hot with anger. There was a way that she tilted her head that let him know that she, too, had received a visitor, and her eyes promised that she'd tell him all about it when she got the chance.
When he finally got the chance to leave the hospital, he found himself being pulled into stairwell. He'd hoped it was Jim, but it was Subie, Raji and Sen, all flushed with anger and worried about Jim.
"It's disgusting, man," Raji said, and it was clear that he was speaking for all of them. "I mean, who cares what I think about what Kirk might be thinking? It's totally ridiculous. They make it like they're all interested in Jim, when all they want is some dirt, some juicy story. Even Cupcake told them to fuck off and he can't stand Kirk."
Leo's eyes were at his hairline as he listened to Raji, usually the most quiet of the three friends, ranting.
"Anyway, McCoy," Raji said, "you tell Jim that nobody in the KFF is taking their bait, and that he should keep staying low until this blows over, but if he needs anything -- diversions, comm cover, anything –- we'll do it."
"That's a promise," Subie said solemnly, and Sen nodded. They all whacked Leo on the back like Jim always did to them, before they disappeared down the stairwell not even waiting for his response, trusting that whatever was going on, he was in cahoots with Jim, that they were in this together.
Leo sat down on the stairs and ground the heels of his hands against his stinging eyes, wishing that their innocent assumptions were at least a little true.
+
"Pike?" Leo was startled at the Captain's sudden appearance in the waiting room. No simple interrogation was to be his fate. He'd been summoned to appear in front of the Admiral himself.
"How's Jim?" Pike asked curtly. His eyes were snapping with anger, their grey sharp and incisive.
"I dunno," Leo said.
"Good man," Pike said. "Believability is important."
Leo raised his eyebrows at him, and Pike scrutinized him.
"Ah," he said. "Jim's learned that plausible deniability is best backed up with factual deniability, I see."
"One of your lessons?" Leo asked blandly.
"Too basic for my taste," Pike said, as a Lt. Commander appeared at the door to summon Leo. He looked as if he was about to protest when Pike moved with Leo, but a glance at the Captain's face stopped whatever protest he might have been going to utter. When Leo stepped into Admiral Howlett's office, Pike was right behind him.
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The moon was dark, but the sky was clear the night of Remembrance Day, the air cold and crisp. For once, the ubiquitous winter fog had held off, and although Leo worried that it would make him too visible to whomever might have followed him, he hoped that the elaborate subterfuge that he'd planned with the assistance of Jim Kirk's few true friends would provide him the cover that he needed as he contemplated the hill in front of him.
After a day full of morbid spectacle that Leo had watched unfold with a thoroughly jaundiced eye, but a closed mouth and a hopefully neutral expression, he'd gone to Finnegan's for a drink, standing first at the bar where he was visible, before he moved into Liam's office to change into the clothing that Irina Federova had smuggled in via the oversized backpack that she always carried. Even with the 25th anniversary activities completed, and the hope that the spectacle surrounding it would ease off, Leo hadn't wanted to take any chances. Liam Finnegan had not only agreed, but been more than happy to provide the necessary cover. Anyone monitoring Leo's comm signal would believe that he was still in Liam's office, not that he'd ducked out the back door and into one of the recycling trucks that was hauling empties across the Bay Bridge. He'd been let off in the darkness long before that point, at one of the side entrances to Golden Gate Park. He'd started his long walk through the darkness, trusting that he was right, believing that he'd find Jim here, at the top of a hill that Jim had taken him to long ago, observing his own remembrance of the day.
He had nothing but instinct to guide him, the sense that Jim, wherever he'd disappeared to these past couple of weeks, had ended up here, not on the highest hill in the park, but the one farthest away from the city lights and with the best view of the stars. He pulled his dark watch cap down over his head, hoping that he wasn't going to end the evening bleeding out in San Francisco General, even as he trusted that Subie was watching the signal from the clean comm that he was carrying. Leo wound his way up the hill steadily, his apprehension gradually being outweighed by the sense of rightness that he felt before he actually was able to discern Jim's long form sitting on the hill, watching him, his bright head uncovered in the cold night air.
"Bones," he said, his voice gone raspy from the temperature, or disuse. He watched Leo quietly as he walked toward him. Jim was wearing jeans, and the leather jacket that had been his companion long before Leo, knees raised and arms braced over them, long fingers clasped loosely between. As Leo got closer, he could see that Jim was wearing the sweater that he'd knitted for Horatio more than a decade before, and the sight of it gave him an unexpected sweet surge of pleasure.
"Kid," he said, by way of greeting.
"You found me," Jim observed.
Leo flipped him one of the flasks from his pocket as he continued to approach him. "That was the plan, wasn't it?"
Jim caught it, watching him with his fathomless eyes, midnight blue in the low light, a mirror of the dark sky above them. "Wasn't sure you'd know the plan," Jim said, turning the flask over in his hands and looking at it before he looked up at Leo again. "Wasn't sure you'd care to figure it out."
Leo pulled his jacket down before he dropped down on the grass beside Jim. "You shouldn't underestimate me, kid," he said, and turned to look him in the eye.
The ghost of the smile that Jim had worn since Leo'd first been able to discern his lone figure on the hill caught fire and lit up softly, curving the lines of Jim's angular face. "No," he said quietly. "I guess I shouldn't." He leaned toward Leo, bumping his shoulder against Leo's broader one.
"You're welcome," Leo said to him. "Drink up."
Jim's smile bloomed even further.
"It's a long fucking walk home," Leo observed. He paused before he added, "Happy Birthday, Jim."
Jim nodded. He was still smiling, but his voice was tight when he said, "One for the history books, huh, Bones?"
"Fuck 'em, Jim," Leo said. He raised his flask, and waited until Jim did the same. "To writing our own history."
"Amen," Jim said wryly, tipping his flask up.
The bourbon warmed Leo's throat, and burned its way through the lump of unspoken words that had been caught there for weeks. When he dropped his chin back down, he felt Jim sling his arm over his shoulders like he always had, like the weeks of silence and strangeness had never happened. He turned his head and looked at Jim, who had tilted his face up to look at the stars with an expression of dreaming contentment. He sat there, with Jim's warmth next to him where it belonged, and watched the stars shine over the city.
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Date: 2009-10-29 02:43 am (UTC)