A/N: Star Trek. Because we all know I don't obsess over Karl Urban enough. Bones/OC, some Kirk/Spock. Spoiler: warnings for suicide attempts, depression and self-harm. And it's long.
I can't seem to write fanfiction where all the characters are happy and go on adventures, can I?
He finds Kepton on the Observatory Deck, alone. The lights are dim, but he can still see a silhouetted form lying on his back, looking up, out at the stars streaking past. He's lying perfectly still, almost unnaturally so. Most people would shuffle or fidget, but Alex's current posture bears an unsettling resemblance to a corpse. Vulcan control, he presumes.
"Kepton?" Then, more softly, "Alex?"
The silhouette moves a little and looks at him. "Leonard?"
Leonard walks over, carefully, trying to stay silent. It seems unwise to disturb the younger man's concentrated stillness. Not quite sure what to do, he sits cross-legged next to him on the floor.
"Alex, what's wrong?" he asks. Close to, he can see the faint tear-tracks on the younger man's face in the starlight.
"With Vulcan gone…"
Alex's fists clench as he tries to hold back more tears. Something twists in Leonard's chest.
"At least I could say I had family there. I belonged. Even if I wasn't Vulcan, I had people there who cared about me. Now…" Another pause, another moment of tense silence stretching out and then breaking. "Now there is no-one."
Hesitantly, unsure, Leonard reaches out and gently runs his fingers down over the back of his hand, pausing briefly against his knuckles before he pulls his hand back. Alex's fists are still curled, clenched and white, but speckled with red from self-inflicted cuts and bruises. The wounds are from where he's been punching the walls – in rage, in sorrow, perhaps in self-disgust. He is loath to admit it, but his emotions still hold power over him.
Even in that brief touch, he can feel the raised scars; the split knuckles from punching a wall, the long narrow scratches from the nails of the other hand digging in and tearing skin. He's been treating them himself, refused to let anyone else near him. Until now, anyway.
He knows perfectly well how dangerous this is. Alex is a touch-telepath. The odds are good that he knows from that brief touch – from the brush of Leonard's fingers over his wounds – exactly what the doctor is thinking.
"That's not true," he says softly. "It's not true and you know it."
Alex's eyes open and look at him. Even now, he's watchful, wary. But he turns his hand over and lightly touches his fingers to the back of Leonard's hand. Thoughts skitter across the link, skating on the surface.
It hurts. It hurts. They are … gone. There is a… a void where they should be.
I know. I know. But you're not alone in this. He tried to send whatever feelings of comfort, friendship, help he could over the tenuous link between them. Please, Alex. Stop hurting yourself.
Why? It helps me.
But it hurts me. Watching you do this to yourself.
There was a shocked silence for a moment.
Didn't know you cared. It sounded almost flippant; sarcastic as a defence mechanism.
Of course I care. For God's sake, you're my friend. Of course I don't want you to hurt.
At some point, he must have closed his eyes. He opens them now to find Alex watching him, wearing a look that's somewhere between shock and hope.
"Don't give me that look," he says quietly. "Don't look like you can only hope. It's real, I'm real, and I'm not going anywhere, damn it."
Alex pulls his hand back as another tense silence hangs in the air between them. For a few seconds he's absolutely sure that he has completely misinterpreted Alexis Kepton; that he's about to get his nose broken, or, more likely, thrown across the room into a bulkhead. The man can rival Spock when he's angry.
Why wouldn't he? Grew up on Vulcan, Leonard thinks. Had to be able to keep up with the hobgoblins.
That does not mean that I am like Spock. In case it has escaped your attention, he is handling this far better than I am, despite the fact that his loss is more painful and more immediate.
He's half-Vulcan, and you're pure-blood human. Grief and loss are not a competition, man. Your pain is no less raw and no less agonising than his.
I'm not about to attack you, Leonard. You are my friend. I do not want to hurt you any more than I already have.
Alex shuffles a little closer to him, curling against him like a child, and for a long time there are no more words.
As luck and timing would have it, Jim is awake, having just come off shift. On his way back to his quarters, he decides, on a whim, to spend a couple of minutes on the Observatory Deck. It hasn't been the best of days, fraught with minor arguments and mild irritations, and watching the stars always calms him. It brings him back to why he's here at all.
He sees Bones and his deputy, Kepton, sat together, through the glass in the door. Bones is cradling Kepton in his arms, murmuring something he doesn't catch. Kepton is either crying, or has recently ceased doing so. Whatever's going on, the captain decides not to interrupt, but instead opts to go and find Spock.
The Vulcan nods calmly when Jim tells him what he's seen.
"You knew?" Jim splutters in shock.
Spock looks at him and inclines his head slightly. This particular look translates roughly as: I wasn't certain, but I thought it was likely. He's getting almost fluent in the language of Spock.
"How? How can you know when I didn't? Or at least, how can you have known for years when I only just worked it out?"
"I may not always understand humans, Jim, but I understand Alex. He was raised Vulcan, after all. And I have known him far longer than you; you could not be expected to pick up his cues."
"And?"
Spock gives him a small smile. "He looks at Leonard in much the same way as I look at you."
