If Scotty believed in omens, he'd have never crawled out of bed today. The ship's been victim to random power surges compliments of the special anomaly they're observing which puts out bursts energy that overload random ship systems. It's nothing they can't stay on top of but priorities being what they are, things like personal alarms and functioning sonic showers are at the bottom of the list. Scotty knows, because his alarm failed to wake him on time, and insult to injury, his shower isn't working.
Neither is the replicator in his quarters apparently. He lets out a dejected sigh as he stares at the empty coffee mug. Engineering is hopping and now he's so behind, he can't stop at the cafeteria to grab a coffee and maybe a piece of toast.
He's in such a hurry he trips over his own feet trying to not step on something someone has carelessly left in front of his door. It's not the most graceful landing; he sticks it though.
"What the ...?" shouts Scotty. Someone's about to have as bad a day as he is.
He bends down and picks up the slightly familiar item. It's a sonic driver, though not standard issue. Someone's been messing with it. He examines the device as he heads to engineering. The modifications are well done, a little homemade in execution, but an ingenuity he'd love to see in some of his first year engineers.
Scotty asks around the department but no one knows anything about the sonic driver. Whoever was tinkering with it increased the precision by thirty-seven percent and the power and range by fifty-eight percent.
It definitely comes in handy with all the repairs today. He wishes he knew who to thank.
'Cadet Kirk to Starfleet. Held captive aboard Romulan ship under Nero. They stranded someone on Delta Vega. Nero has a weapon and he plans to lure the fleet into a trap at Vulcan. Of forty-eight survivors of the Troubadour, twenty-two are left.'
It's after midnight, so whoever's at Uhura's door better be three seconds away from death or they will be when she gets through with them. She throws her robe on and stumbles towards the door. The lights are up just enough to make out shadows of furniture because she's not committing to being up unless she absolutely has to.
The doors part and Leonard is standing there awkwardly with a pillow clutched tightly in his hand. "Normally I'd grab a hotel but..." He shrugs shoulders. One downside of being on a starship besides everyone knowing your business is there aren't a lot of places to go when you're in the dog house with your partner.
Uhura feels for Leonard. She had her fair share of fights with Spock when they were together that had them sleeping in separate locations. The plus side of keeping their relationship a secret was they both had their own quarters, even if normally they stayed in his. Leonard has no place to go, confined on a ship. She steps to the side to allow him entry. "Does he do this often?"
Any fight that escalates to this point feel like one too often. "It's not a regular occurrence but this isn't the first time. Sometimes Jim just needs some space."
Leonard sits on the couch while Uhura makes them some tea. He feels bad just showing up at her door in the middle of the night but there really isn't anywhere else to go. He hasn't exactly prioritised making friends on this ship and it would be kind of weird and slightly unprofessional to have your boss show up at your door so that leaves exactly Uhura.
The other option would be to have Jim storm out in a dramatic huff and that never ends well.
"Want to talk about it?" she asks, the china cups clinking as they're set on the table.
"Not much to talk about. It's the same record we seem to play. He'll cool off by tomorrow morning and I'll be out of your hair." This fight is as predictable as the seasons. It's part of Jim's emotional rollercoaster ride. Leonard's long since stopped taking it personally. He'd be just as frustrated as Jim if he were in Jim's shoes. Leonard's just the safest metaphorical punching bag that Jim can unleash on and still feel safe and certain Leonard won't give up on him.
"With all that you do for him, he doesn't have the right to treat you like this," says Uhura. "He's lucky you put up with any of it." It's no secret she isn't Jim's biggest fan. Frankly, she always thought Leonard could do better than Jim for a friend. Now that she knows they're married, she fears Jim doesn't appreciate the clear devotion Leonard has for him. Leonard is loyal and caring; kind, in his own way. She can't fathom what Leonard sees in Jim but she can see the hurt broken look in his eyes as he's sitting on her couch at two in the morning instead of being in bed with his husband.
"It's not like that," says Leonard. "Jim doesn't want pity and I don't need any. Jim took the brunt of things with Nero because he was protecting me. Hell, he's the only reason I made it out of there alive. It's something I can never pay him back for even if I spend the rest of my days trying. But I don't stay because I owe him. I stay because I want to. Because any day without him is a million times worse than any fight or bad day we have."
"That doesn't mean this relationship is healthy, Leonard. You've given up everything for him," says Uhura. She's not trying to be cruel. Who is she to give advice on love when hers walked away out of duty to his species. As much as it hurts her to know she wasn't enough for Spock to choose her, she also knows if he had, the relationship would still have been doomed under a mountain of resentment and inadequacy.
Leonard rests his hand on to top of Uhura's. Neither or their lives turned out the way they imagined they would. Hope is a cruel mistress.
"I left him once," says Leonard, low like he's exposing a shameful dirty secret.
That gives Uhura pause. She hadn't heard that from anyone she talked to when she was trying to figure out who Leonard had brought onboard with him. The revelation is actually kind of surprising.
"It was about two years after Nero and a year after Starfleet had come to the conclusion that Jim was never really fit for duty let alone command. They wished him well and showed him the door. Hell of a thank you for saving their collective asses. Jim was miserable and it was makin' me miserable. It just seemed like everything I tried to do to make him happy just made things worse. I turned down commissions and he'd get mad that I was ruining my career. I'd go to medical conferences on other planets and he'd be bitter that I still had a career. He kept telling me to leave over and over again. He even filed separation papers. So one day I did." Leonard's head drops like he revealed his greatest shame.
"I thought that if I did what he asked, that if having me around was too painful for him, then maybe he'd be better off if I left. It could be a fresh start for him, without the constant reminder that he sacrificed his whole life for me. I was wrong. So very wrong."
Leonard stares at the wall, looking so far way. "Maybe we were both right, maybe we were both wrong. Somewhere in the middle of all those good intentions we found hell. I can handle being thrown out from time to time. It's better than the alternative."
Leonard's heart feels like it's going to rip through his chest. The pounding of his feet against the tacky linoleum flooring is the only thing that reminds him this isn't some horrible nightmare, as he races down the only wing of a hospital in bumfuck Iowa. Even Starfleet had to double check the coordinates for this nonexistent blip on the map. Trust Jim to be able to find some backwoods one horse town to get into trouble. At least they have some kind of medical facility, even if it's something out of the prehistoric age.
A pair of nurses stop his panicked dash to get to Jim. He can barely hear them over his racing heart and the words that are making it through don't make any sense. What they're describing doesn't sound like Jim at all. Jim wouldn't do that- not that. He's reckless and self sacrificing but not...
"You've got it wrong," chokes out Leonard.
There's nothing but pity on their faces and an incessant insistence that that is exactly what happened.
It doesn't sink in, really sink in, until he's staring at Jim asleep on a hospital bed hooked up to IVs with his left arm wrapped up in stark white bandages that scream 'yes he did' louder than anything Leonard's ever heard.
Leonard doesn't move, he's frozen in place standing in the door way to Jim's room watching the rise and fall of his chest. Each breath which was a gift before is even more precious now in the shadow of death. The room slowly begins to brighten from night to morning, spilling all the colors of sunrise against the dull beige walls. It doesn't change what he sees lying in that bed.
He thought Jim was doing better, that maybe his constant presence was just a reminder when Jim needed a fresh start. He thought leaving like Jim asked was the correct thing to do. It was a mistake.
Jim starts to stir, his face pinching and twitching in minute movements. Slowly his eyes start to flutter until they open sleepily and land on Leonard. "Oh hey," he hums with a casualness that makes Leonard want to scream. If Jim thinks he can just sweep this aside like it was all some sort of misunderstanding, he's got another think coming.
"What did you do, Jim?" asks Leonard, strict, direct and almost cold. This is the manifestation of everything he's feared since surviving Nero.
"It's not a big deal," sighs Jim, pulling his bandaged arm under the blanket. The morning innocence that Leonard loved waking up next to disappears under a mask of sorrow and dejection.
"What did you do, Jim?" repeats Leonard. He wants to be mad- at Jim- Nero- the universe. Mostly he just wants to know why, so he can warp Jim in bubble wrap and make sure that whatever it is that pushed Jim to this point, never hurts him again.
"I was taking care of a problem," confesses Jim, his voice breaking on the last word. "This isn't going to get better and I can't... People around me... I couldn't live with myself if that curse hurt you worse than it already has. I can't do that to you and I can't live without you."
Leonard feels like he's been gut punched. "But I'm supposed to live without you?"
"At least then you'd be living," snaps Jim, agitation setting in. "You're just in limbo now, babysitting someone and forfeiting your dreams to do it." Last night was a revelation. He finally saw the world clearly and all the little details that he'd been missing, like the slow withering of Leonard's soul.
"There's no dream without you in it." The distance between the door and Jim's bed could be the Grand Canyon, it wouldn't matter, he's propelled to Jim's side with a desperate ache to just hold him. He wraps Jim up in his arms and makes silent promises to never let go again as he frantically kisses every inch of the kids head.
He can smell the lingering traces of alcohol on Jim's breath and it make him want to scream. Jim's a fighter and this was an alcohol fuelled decision complicated with the volatile mix of prescribed medication and a sharp object.
"You're the only reason I ever wanted to be on a damn starship. I don't want that kind of life without you. I don't want any life without you in it. If that means living in some rehab facility and sharing a medical cot or living in a yurt on some swamp planet because you like the shade of the water, then I'm there. Because I want to be, not because I feel I have to be. You don't need to protect me anymore, Jim. And I'm sorry you ever felt like this was the only answer."
"It's not your fault, Bones. It's just sometimes... this isn't how I pictured things turning out. I finally had something with Starfleet and now that's all gone. Nero's taken damn near everything from me. I don't want to be the one to take everything from you," sobs Jim, his face buried in Leonard's shoulder.
"You're not taking anything. In fact you gave me everything. I was an empty shell after my divorce, drowning in a sea of misery and then this smartass kid saw fit to pull me up from the depths and make this world shine again. You saved me, Jim and you keep doing it every day just by being you," assures Leonard, because god damn it, it's true. Jim's his wings not his ball and chain.
Jim grabs on tighter to the back of Leonard's shirt, the tears seeming endless. "And I ruined that too," he whispers. He thought filing an official notice of separation might be the thing that severed the tether between them that's been holding Leonard next to him. Being selfless and freeing Leonard from the dark hole that Jim now permanently resides was supposed to make him feel better, be the one good thing that he could do since he's no longer fit to do anything else. It didn't. It felt like removing one of the base blocks in a jenga tower and watching it go tumbling down.
"Paper or not, you're not getting rid of me that easily Jim Kirk."
It takes three days to piece together Jim's alcohol fuelled trek across three states, culminating in a speck of a town no one's heard of in a dirty motel room that charges by the hour. The thought of Jim meeting his end beside some anonymous blood stain and a discarded pair of a previous prostitute's fishnet stockings makes Leonard's stomach turn.
Jim's tight lipped about most of the details. The toxicity report and the bright pink line of skin held together with good ole fashioned stitches says more than Jim needs to. He's sullen, combative and just plain uncooperative with everything going on around him to the point that Leonard's sure the hospital staff (more like a clinic in Leonard's opinion) are happy to send him out the door. The relieved to be alive bliss wore off with Jim's pain meds. Now he's back to hating the world.
Jim's even thinner than he was when Leonard left. The baggy sweatshirt he's thrown on doesn't improve the look of his stature. His glower grows deeper as Leonard pushes the wheelchair into Jim's room.
"Check out time," says Leonard, as he physically puts Jim in the chair. Jim could probably walk and given the choice would opt to crawl out if he had to but policy says if he's wheeled in, he's wheeled out. He's not talking to Leonard today but at least he isn't actively working against him the way he did the nurses this morning. Small miracles. Leonard will take them where he can get them.
Jim's sleeves get pushed up during the transfer from his bed to the wheel chair. Leonard notices first. The arm's been butchered, first by Jim and then by the man claiming to be the town surgeon. Stitches were put to rest in favor of dermal regenerators and nano sutures decades ago but facilities with little funding have to resort to old methods sometimes.
Leonard tires to look at it with clinical detachment, assessing what's been done and what he can do now to try and remove the blemish of that night that now mars Jim's skin like a coiling snake. It doesn't work. Every detail brings him back to the fact that it's Jim's skin on his arm covering his veins. Leonard's kind of relieved the kid didn't pay that much attention in biology class or Leonard could be here to claim a corpse. Jim's sheer dumb luck worked over time this week to see him through this mess despite the kid's rather thorough attempt otherwise.
It's one more scar on a body riddled with dozens of others and even more invisible ones.
Jim's quick to push his sleeve down.
"I can run a regenerator of that, try and lessen it for you, but a cosmetic surgeon is the only one that can erase it completely now," offers Leonard, trying to tread lightly.
"No," is all Jim says.
Leonard's not sure what Jim's angle is in regards to the scar. It's not something they have to address right this moment anyways. "I've booked a hotel in Sioux City for a couple of days, then we can catch a shuttle back home to San Francisco." There about two hours away, trapped in the confined space of a rental car before extracting themselves to the gilded cage of a hotel room.