Thin Walls
Summary: There's something enticing about him, his eyes make promises, his body speaks in volumes about adventure and danger and love of life, but his mouth has a split lip. Leonard offers to fix it up for him but his neighbour shrugs him off instead. Leonard barely has time to fling his name at the other, like a lifeline, before his neighbour has disappeared into his house.
Notes: Prompt for iamnumberseventythree: AU where McCoy and Kirk are neighbors in a kind of shitty apartment complex meant for divorcees and people who can't afford anything else.
(See the end of the work for more notes)
The walls are thin and Leonard is sure that the guy next door has had three different women (and at least one man) round in the last week. He knows that this place is for the down and outs, for the people who can't afford any place else, but he expected at least some common decency. Like not having loud, over the top sex against the wardrobe at 3am on a work night.
He finally meets his neighbour two weeks after he's moved in. He's completely what Leonard expected and yet completely different at the same time. There's something enticing about him, his eyes make promises, his body speaks in volumes about adventure and danger and love of life, but his mouth has a split lip. Leonard offers to fix it up for him but his neighbour shrugs him off instead. Leonard barely has time to fling his name at the other, like a lifeline, before his neighbour has disappeared into his house.
The next week is mercifully silent. Either his neighbour hasn't had anyone round, or he's taken to entertaining when Leonard's at work. He finally meets the guy again at the end of the week. He's just returning from work, his key on the door already and a bag of groceries in his hand.
A head pops out of the door next to him and Leonard is staring at the bright smile of his neighbour. He looks younger than he had seemed before, his lip healed now with only a faint redness where the injury used to be.
"I realised I never introduced myself last time. I'm James Kirk, friends call me Jim," he says. Leonard nods and nearly drops his groceries as he tries to get his own door open with his hip. Jim moves forward to stop it from falling and the sound of the click behind him seems loud in the concrete shell of a corridor outside their apartments.
"Tell me you have a key kid," Leonard says but he can tell by the angry, embarrassed panic on Jim's face that he doesn't. He gets his own door wedged open.
"I'm going to have to call the lock smith and shit, there goes my deposit again. Fucking shit ass motherfucker-" The litany of curses is impressive and Leonard waits it out. He can tell that Jim is angry with himself, but the way that his eyes are shining with all that negativity. It calls out to Leonard, who is broken himself in more than enough ways. Misery enjoys company, and Leonard can't help but notice that he's found at least someone who might understand his viewpoint in Jim.
"Want to come inside and wait for the 'smith?" he asks, gesturing to his apartment. It's not exactly clean inside, but it's better than waiting out in a corridor that smells like someone pissed in it when they were drunk. Jim nods, his mouth a thin line.
"Can I borrow your cell phone as well? I'm going to need to make the call," he says. Leonard nods and steps aside so that Jim can come in. His apartment is one room. The bathroom is separated off by a sliding door, the kitchen is just a counter with a sink and a stove on either side of it, the unmade bed is the only thing to sit on in the place and the TV is old and deep and Leonard refuses to upgrade to a flatscreen because of some perceived increase in picture quality.
"Love what you've done with the place," Jim says, and Leonard knows it's sarcasm but doesn't rise to it. He begins to shove food into cupboards. Nothing fresh because there's no room in this cramped space for something as godly as a fridge.
Leonard can't wait for the divorce to be finalised so he can get his half of the money and upgrade from this stinking hell hole.
"Here's my cell. Knock yourself out," Leonard says, throwing the phone over to Jim. The other quickly makes the call, and Leonard wonders how often he's locked himself out if he knows the locksmith's number off by heart.
"Hey, are these medical textbooks?"
Leonard didn't even realise that Jim was off the phone and he jumps, smacking his head on the top of a cupboard as he puts the last can of chopped tomatoes into the back of his cupboard.
"Yeah. I'm a surgeon," Leonard replies, standing up and rubbing the back of his head. Jim whistles, clearly impressed.
"What are you doing in a dump like this then?" he asks. Leonard raises an eyebrow at that, sitting on his bed. Jim sits next to him, seeing as there's nowhere else for him to sit in any case.
"My wife cheated on me. Now she's trying to take everything she can. She literally just left me with my bones to my name. It's been a rough few months," he said, shrugging. Jim's eyes become somewhat sad, and he looks around the apartment instead of at Leonard as he thinks of something to say.
"We should go out drinking when it's all finalised, Doc… No Doc isn't right…" Jim runs a hand through his hair and Leonard thinks it's a rather childish, self-conscious gesture.
"We can go for drinks if you want. Though I gotta say, if you're going to pick up some girl or guy, can you wait until I've gone off on my shift before having sex with them? It's rather loud," he says, allowing his lips to curl. Jim looks at him and turns a little pink, but he still laughs.
"Oh sure thing, Bones," he says. Leonard raises an eyebrow at the nickname but he doesn't complain. Five minutes of small talk about football and then the locksmith is there and Jim waves his goodbye.
Leonard doesn't see him for a month after that.
It's a month where a lot happens. He has a nervous breakdown at work and gets sent home, to take a few days to just get used to things, they say. He loses track of days. They blend into just work days and days where he sits in his bedsit and drinks, staring at the peeling wallpaper and what he thinks might be mould growing in the corner.
The divorce is painful and Leonard watches as they take his little girl from him. She screams and cries in the court and Leonard feels like his heart is being ripped out of his chest. He doesn't know why Jocelyn brought her along. There's no reason for her to be there and she's just old enough to understand what the judge means when he says 'no contact'.
He hugs her one last time, pressing a kiss to her forehead, and telling her to be good. He wipes her cheeks with his thumbs and takes her hand, pressing kisses over her knuckles. Eventually Jocelyn pulls Joanna away, flipping hair over her shoulder, dismissing him like they hadn't been a part of each other's lives since high school and taking the one thing that Leonard was most proud of in the world away from him.
He called in sick and spent the rest of the week at the bottom of a bottle.
Jim finds him on the concrete stairs (the elevator never works). He is wiping vomit from the corner of his mouth and is clutching a brown paper bag with another bottle of bourbon in it. Jim sidesteps around the vomit. He stinks of cigarettes and booze himself, but he doesn't seem unsteady as he lifts Bones from where he's curled up on himself.
Jim's apartment isn't as dire as Leonard's. It looks like someone who has accepted that their life has been reduced to twenty square feet of space and built a home in it. He's deposited on Jim's couch while the other pours him coffee and offers him a toothbrush. He passes out before he drinks the cup and wakes up with the toothbrush tucked under his arm.
Jim is nowhere to be seen and Leonard lets himself out, his head pounding and eyes protesting against the light.
The next day Jim is knocking on his door. He has a bag of greasy takeaway food and he doesn't say anything as he does Leonard's dishes and then serves it up for them. They eat for a few minutes in silence before Jim finally decides to speak.
"You know, I ran away from home when I was sixteen and I've only ever lived in dives like this. Going from cardboard box apartment to cardboard box apartment, but you don't have to you know. You've got a good job. You could build a life again," he says and Leonard looks over at him. He knows that Jim genuinely believes he can, but he's not sure and he doesn't know how to tell the kid that he just doesn't have any reason to build a new life.
"Hm," he replies. Jim is staring at him with eyes that seem to know too much. He picks at his fries for a moment then seems to come to a decision.
"Come out with me tonight," he says. Leonard raises his eyebrow and Jim cracks a genuine smile.
"Come on Bones, we'll get drunk, pick up women and get out of these four walls," he says, gesturing to the apartment. Leonard considers it, but then shakes his head. Jim leaves half an hour later, a half smile on his lips that seems sad, but he doesn't pester.
Twenty minutes after, Leonard is staring at his phone and wishing he'd got Jim's number.
It becomes a regular thing for Jim to turn up on his doorstep with food. He seems to learn Leonard's shift patterns and is always there either with breakfast or dinner. Sometimes he gets it wrong and wakes Leonard up, but after the initial grouchiness, Leonard can't deny that he enjoys his company.
Leonard stops drinking.
It is seven months since Leonard moved in when he finally caves and goes out with Jim. The bar is dark and claustrophobic. He sets himself up at the bar and the music vibrates through his teeth. He gets in a drink for himself and Jim, but Jim is gone already, flirting with a startling redhead in the corner.
Leonard watches them, watches the way Jim's hand slides down her arm, how he smiles at her, the tilt of his mouth when he says things that are goddamn filthy is something Leonard recognises. He sees the way Jim's hips tilt a little, the way his shoulders are straight, confidence oozing from him in waves. He leads her to the dance floor and she moves against Jim and Leonard forces himself to look away.
He wishes he had ordered alcohol, wishes he had bourbon right now, because he can't cope with all the things he has just realised. That he's clearly rebounding onto his neighbour, that he's rebounding onto his male neighbour, and that he's picked possible the worse neighbour to rebound onto in the history of his love life.
He leaves half way through the night when it's clear that Jim isn't going to join him at the bar and spends the night awake listening to Jim making the most of that delightful redhead he'd met.
Leonard avoids him for a week afterwards, pretending his shifts have changed at work and ignoring Jim knocking on his door.
It comes as a shock when he's promoted and his pay jumps up accordingly. He stares at his paycheque and knows he can move somewhere else now. Away from the death trap hallways and peeling walls, from the noise of his neighbours… From Jim.
He stops avoiding the other. Figures it's best to rip the scab off quickly rather than pick at it until he moves out. He hands in his notice and finds an apartment that is much better. It's painted 'magnolia' and is furnished with spotless, masculine coloured furniture. It has separate rooms for things like the bathroom and there is not only a bedroom but a spare one too and Leonard puts the deposit down immediately.
He doesn't tell Jim until a few days before he's due to move, when he's putting all his things into boxes and the other just walks in, not even bothering to knock. He tells Jim about the promotion and how he's moving across town and Jim smiles and congratulates him and slaps him on the back. If he hasn't become somewhat obsessed with watching Jim, he wouldn't have noticed the echoing despair and loneliness in those eyes as he wishes him all the best.
"You know, there's a spare room… we could, er, split the bills or something?" he offers. Jim laughs like it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard and shakes his head.
"Nah, you bolt. I belong in… in a place like this," he says, gesturing around. It occurs to Leonard that he never asked Jim what he did for his job, that he doesn't know why Jim ran away from home, that he barely knows anything about him and yet he just asked him to come with him. Jim looks grateful, he looks happy, but he looks sad at the same time and Leonard doesn't know how to take that sadness away. He pauses, wrapping newspaper around a cup.
"You ever feel like escaping here though, you'll know where I am," he says, seriously. Jim looks at him, like he's seeing him for the first time, and Leonard tries not to squirm because maybe Jim can see him as he is, a lonely divorcee who has latched onto the first person to make him feel wanted. Maybe he can see the crush Leonard has? Maybe he can see the longing inside him that only Jim Kirk seems to be able to cure?
But then Jim is grabbing newspaper and a mug and wrapping it up and chatting about nonsense like what was on television and the book he just read and how much he's looking forward to the next Marvel movie that's coming out, because it's going to be so awesome and Leonard lets it go. He has to. He's asked twice now, and he knows that a third time would be begging.
He leaves when Jim isn't there. He isn't good at saying goodbyes and he knows that Jim isn't keen on them either. He steps into his new apartment alone and starts unpacking. Neighbours come and greet him and bring round food that he thanks them for and puts in his fridge with a kind of relish.
It takes him about two hours before he's staring upwards, at the perfectly straight lines of the magnolia as it gives way to the white of the ceiling. He wonders what Jim is doing.
A year passes and Leonard gets his life together. He does well at work. He's respected and other surgeons start to come to him with their problems. He manages to get Jocelyn to agree to one weekend a month with Joanna and they go to the park and eat ice cream and talk about what she's going to be in the future.
This time, Joanna wants to be an astronaut so Leonard decides to take her to the observatory to show her the stars. She's excited and talks the whole car ride there, babbling about everything, from school to the rudimentary physics she knows. She tells him that Pluto isn't really a planet anymore, but she thinks it should be because it is in Sailor Moon. Leonard is surprised that Jocelyn has even let her watch the cartoon that he remembers more from his late teenage years and for an entirely different reason to his daughter.
They get out at the observatory and Leonard pays for the guided tour. He gives Joanna the guidebook without sparing it a glance. Space has never really been his thing in any case. They are guided into the dark space and Leonard feels Joanna press against him.
It takes him less than ten seconds to identify their guide. Jim looks the same as ever, light bright in his eyes as he talks about space, about what they know and all the things they don't yet. He describes constellations and how they were named and takes questions from the children at the front about various things.
Leonard takes the guidebook from Joanna and glances through it. Sure enough, at the back, was Jim's photo and short blurb about his credentials.
Professor James T. Kirk has worked at the Observatory for the last five years. Professor Kirk trained at NASA, but unfortunately sustained an injury making it impossible to go into space. Luckily for us, Professor Kirk came to our Observatory to teach future astronauts about the cosmos and inspire a younger generation!
Leonard folds the guidebook into his pocket and when the tour is over, steps blinking into the light. Jim is talking to some parents and Leonard feels his heart beating hard in his chest. He has convinced himself that it was just rebound, that it had been nothing but a short thing for him, but he can't deny it now.
Jim sees him and he sees his face go blank with shock. He watches as the other excuses himself from the other parents and walks over to greet him. He smiles so widely that Leonard can barely hold back his own returning smile. He feels Jim take his hand, clap him on the shoulder.
He can't remember the conversation, not entirely, but he knows he's invited Jim over to his place for dinner later that week and had definitelyintoned it was a date. Jim had given him one of those smiles, when he knows what he's saying is a little risqué but can't help himself, and agreed so long as he didn't have to drive back the following morning.
"We need to catch up, Bones!" he says. Leonard nods, still not quite sure if he's really just had the guts to ask Jim out on a date.
"Did you move out of that old box of an apartment?" he asks. Jim looks a little uncomfortable.
"I, er, I got evicted actually. Ended up taking a much nicer place close to the river though," he says, shrugging slightly. Leonard doesn't ask now, not with Joanna there, but he knows there's a story. There's so much to find out about Jim, so much to discover and now they're over the worst points in their lives, perhaps it won't be as painful to share it.
Perhaps.
"I'll see you Friday then?" Leonard asks, and he can't help the hope in his voice. Jim reaches out, squeezes his hand in a way that isn't casual or the usual kind of touch between men. It makes Leonard's throat feel tight.
"Depends. How offended are your neighbours going to be by noise?" he asks, his tone innocent but Leonard feels his face heat. He looks down at Joanna, who is holding his hand and then back at Jim to see the mischief in those eyes. Jim knows what he's doing goddamnit.
"Well, I have thicker walls these days," he says, wondering if he's going to have to cover his little girl's ears. Jim's smile widens and he takes a few steps backwards towards the observatory.
"I'll see you Friday, Bones," he says, waving and then disappearing into the building. Leonard stares after him, the realisation hitting him that he's about to become the worst neighbour his apartment block as ever had.
Notes: [[Might do another from Jim's POV, but for now, this is what I got and it got WAAAAAAY too long.]]