For all my wonderful readers, THANK YOU. You all mean so much to me. Thank you!
Unfortunately, I have some bad news. This weekend was really busy (In a good way. I got a lot of work done and went to the art museum for my design class. Fun!) and so I wasn't able to write as much as I would have liked. So, the next chapter is not ready to be posted yet. What does that mean, you ask? It means that I might not be updating for a few more days longer than usual. I hope you all don't mind!
Notes: This AU takes place about 20 minutes in the future in San Francisco. I'm not sure what sort of "verse" it is yet, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know! Also, I rated this T because there's nothing too bad except for McCoy and Kirk's language. I don't think it's strong enough to warrant an M rating, but if anyone has a problem with it, I will up the rating.
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek. Or the American Girl Company (I love the American Girl Dolls/Books. I learned more history and female empowerment from those books than nearly anything else.). I also do not own any Christmas songs included in this chapter. (Lots of disclaimers!)
Thanksgiving had come and gone and Kirk wasn't there for the holiday. He never said he'd be there, never said he'd share a turkey burger with McCoy, but McCoy had begun to expect and maybe even hope for Kirk's presence.
But it was the fourth Thursday of the month and McCoy ate alone in his apartment. He had purchased a turkey at the local market on a whim, in case Kirk showed up out of nowhere and expected a meal. There was even a can of cranberries because it had been on sale and seeing the label immediately sent McCoy back to memories of when his mother used to let him pour it out. He had always been so amused that it came out in such a cylindrical shape.
Kirk never showed up and the canned cranberries just weren't as good as McCoy remembered them to be. He prepared the turkey and it tasted a little overdone and dry, no matter how much juice he tried to inject it with.
The cell phone was left on the desk just next to him, in case Kirk got his days confused and called too late at night to tell McCoy that he would be there the next day for Thanksgiving. And McCoy would tell him he was a damn idiot (which Kirk would disprove with a bountiful amount of knowledge about the origins of Thanksgiving that little kids in elementary school never get to learn) and invite him over for a Friday celebration with leftover turkey sandwiches.
No phone calls. No texts. No spontaneous knocks on the door with a blonde-haired daredevil with a toothy smile.
It was turkey and medical journals instead of alcohol and medical journals, but the feeling was the same. There was just no slow burn afterwards.
Chapel and her nurses decided the hospital needed a bit of holiday cheer.
"It's bad enough having to work here around the holidays. It's even worse to be a hospital patient or visiting a loved one around the holidays."
Anyone in the hospital would have expected to be bundled in scarves and thick coats, walking outside only to be met with snow and that winter wonderland everyone seemed to be so damn fond of. But San Francisco only went down to the high forties in December so really, no one needed much more than a jacket at most.
Still, Chapel could not be dissuaded from her holiday cheer and even went so far as to wear Christmas pins on her red-and-green scrubs.
There were baubles and tinsel and politically correct "Happy Holidays!" signs hanging from strings on the ceiling. In the nurses' station, softly played carols could be heard and it was only because Chapel had a pretty soprano voice that McCoy didn't yell at her for singing quietly under her breath whenever Silent Night floated out from the radio.
December twentieth rolled around pretty quickly in a rushed blur of endless days and snowman cookies. There had been no phone call from Kirk about when he'd be back from wherever the hell he was these days. There had, however, been a message left on his machine from the ex telling him not to bother visiting Joanna for Christmas because she was too busy with family.
At that point, there wasn't much to do but place his request in to work December twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth. Considering how things were looking, he couldn't even consider them holidays. Just more days in the year. Just because they were holidays filled with fucking cheer and damn good tidings didn't mean idiots didn't get hurt or sick.
So he took over Chapel's previously scheduled shift and watched her green eyes sparkle with excitement ("Oh, thank you, Doctor! Mom's coming to visit from New Orleans and I just wanted to spend the whole holiday with her now that Dad's gone.") when she saw her replacement.
Christmas Eve came too soon and Chapel was packing up from the end of her morning shift. That gleam in her eyes was a bit too familiar and he wasn't able to dart around the desk quickly enough to avoid her tight hug.
"Dammit, Chapel," he hissed through his teeth as her slim arms tightened around his waist.
"Oh, just let me enjoy this," she chided in her motherly tone. She pulled away and tucked the loose strands of shining white-blonde hair away from her pale face. "Remove the scowl and actually try to enjoy the holiday."
He brushed her aside, grunting unintelligibly in response. Avoiding her eyes, he gathered up the manila folders and looked down at them, shifting through the papers to see what cases he had to deal with before the afternoon was over.
"Is Jim coming to visit?" she asked innocently, still standing nearby despite his obvious ignorance towards her.
"Dammit, Chapel!" he snapped again with more of a bite to his voice. "I'm fucking sick and tired of you trying to butt into my personal life. Leave Kirk out of this."
She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes narrowing in his direction before her mouth softened into a more sympathetic gaze. He willed the gods above them that she wouldn't say she felt sorry for him or anything else like that Hallmark crap.
Instead, she turned away and opened the drawer of her station to pull out a thin envelope.
"Tickets to the American Girl Place in Atlanta. I thought you might want to take Joanna. The tickets are good for a year, so there's no time limit to convince that ex of yours that you need to see your daughter."
The envelope was slipped into his hand and with a final wave and a "Merry Christmas," she walked away. He didn't feel guilty for the taken aback look on her face after he yelled at her until she was already gone.
McCoy stared at the envelope for a hard moment before he slipped it into the inside pocket of his medical jacket.
He had a gift for her, too. A book on Edgar Degas to feed her obsession with ballet and fine art. He'd give it to her when she came back to work in a few days. It was in his closet in the apartment next to the gift he had gotten for Kirk if he ever showed up.
He'd thought maybe he'd run into some luck when he wandered into the bookstore and found the full set of Samantha the American Girl books (according to the ex, Joanna had gotten the matching doll for her birthday). But good luck seemed to repel against him like water on oil.
The cardboard box sat like an atomic bomb on the floor outside his apartment door. How long he stood there staring at it, he wasn't sure. Like an atomic bomb, it could go off at any second and he sure as hell did not want to be the catalyst to the explosion. It wasn't until Mrs. Whatsername next door walked down the hallway and gave him a peculiar look that McCoy kicked the box back into his studio apartment.
Taped on the top of the box over the send to address was a blue slip.
PACKAGE RETURNED TO SENDER.
ADDRESS NO LONGER VALID.
He doubled checked the address he sent it to just to make sure he hadn't miswritten or wrote something too sloppily to be deciphered. But no, that wasn't the case. The address was the same one he had known since kindergarten when he was required to know his address and phone number as part of his homework. The handwriting was definitely a man's handwriting, but it was clearly scripted.
Miss Joanna McCoy
124 Stony Lane
Daisydale, GA 02820
Not a damn thing wrong.
So he called the ex and that was just a fucking pleasant conversation. It was only minutes long because she screamed at him, hung up the phone, and then disconnected the line so he couldn't even call the bitch back to yell at her.
Yell. Rant. Shout. Bellow.
If he were a weaker man, he'd beg.
He'd beg for her to buy the house back. The house he had grown up in, gotten married in the backyard, brought Joanna home to from the maternity wing. He'd put more elbow grease into repairs and renovations starting from the age of five when he wanted to help his father paint the kitchen. There wasn't a creak on the stairs that he didn't know, not a crack on the doors that he didn't know the story behind.
Brimmed full of memories, and she had sold it. Sold the farmhouse (his farmhouse until she stole it from him in the divorce) to move in with Clay Treadway. Sold it and didn't even think to fucking tell him about it.
"Clay Treadway?! From high school?!"
"Well, I've been seeing him for years while you were too busy with your damn hospital! He never left me for a late-night shift! He never forgot my birthday because of a surgery!"
"Fuck you, Jocelyn!"
"Go to hell, Leonard!"
There was no alcohol this time because he knew if he put the bottle to his lips, he wouldn't be able to stop. It might have been a perfect time for liver-failure related death, but he wouldn't give goddamnfuckingJocelyn the satisfaction.
McCoy just pulled the shades down low to make the room as dark as possible as he tried to sleep through the remainder of December. The shapeless shadows stretched along the floor as he slumped onto the bed, rustling around in the comforter. The buzz in his ears was mostly imaginary as the silence pressed in around him. He shut his eyes to avoid looking at the damn atomic bomb box sitting like a fucking menace on the thin carpet.
"Go to hell, Leonard!"
He was already in hell. Merry Christmas.
Two days later and the room hadn't changed at all except for the rising and falling degrees of sunlight as the hours move by slowly. Hygiene was optional in solitude and the roughness on his face was a bit too long to be considered just stubble. In the spare moments when he wasn't sleeping or watching old Christmas movies on the television, he laid on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
In his mind, he pictured Joanna in a pretty green Christmas dress, opening her gifts and dancing around her cousins as they all gathered around to take family photos. She was smiling and laughing and spinning and was more beautiful than he could ever imagine a little girl could be.
But the image was hazy in the background because he wasn't sure where the tree would be in the new house or where the stockings would hang because he didn't know if there would be a fireplace in the Treadway home.
His mind filled in the blanks when it could, coloring the walls of the family room where the tree always stood, organizing the layout of the first floor. All the details were supplied until he realized he wasn't imagining Joanna's new life. He was replaying the memories of Christmases from years past when he had been the one holding the camcorder while she opened her gifts.
He imagined her turning, as she always did, to face the camera and tell him "Merry Christmas, Daddy! I love you!" just before she would blow him a sloppy kiss.
A Christmas Carol played in the background and he felt like a Scrooge who didn't want the Ghost of Christmas Past to haunt him any longer. He tried to roll over and will away the images as he fell into blissful unconsciousness when he heard a knock on the door.
McCoy laid perfectly still in the chances that whoever it was would just go away and leave him the hell alone because he didn't feel like fucking dealing with people. But the person didn't go away and he could see feet under the door breaking up the sliver of light from the hallway.
"Bones! You're not at the hospital. I know you're in there."
If it had been anyone else, McCoy wouldn't have gotten out of bed to open the door.
The taxi cab drove away because Kirk didn't feel like walking to the bar and neither of them had cars. (Kirk said he used to have a motorcycle, but that didn't travel well. And it was San Francisco so no one who lived and worked there had a car, especially doctors with alimony to pay.) Kirk had paid, completely ignoring McCoy's snapping comments that they could split the money. With an airy wave of his hand, Kirk just promised to let McCoy pay on the way back.
Fair enough.
"Remind me why we're here again?" McCoy muttered as they entered the little bar. It was off the side of the road in a part of town that he didn't usually frequent. This was reserved for more tourists, younger people who all seemed to look good in fashionably ripped clothing.
"Because there was a stink in your room and if you stayed there for much longer, I think the stink was going to consume you," Kirk said in an annoying know-it-all tone, flashing an ID at the bouncer before they entered.
"Kirk, I don't—"
McCoy paused and looked down at the ID still dangling in Kirk's hand before he placed it back in his wallet.
"Is that a fake ID?" he gaped, staring at the same card.
Kirk beamed gleefully with all the excitement of a kid with ADHD. He handed the card to McCoy as they maneuvered their way to a small table for two off to the side. They sat down and McCoy was barely aware of the smoky lights and the jazz-Christmas music playing in the background.
"You're over twenty-one. Why the fuck do you need a fake ID?" he hissed between his teeth as his eyebrows made a dash for his hairline.
"I like to think of everything as a challenge," Kirk answered with that goddamned smirk on his clean-shaven face. He flickered his blue eyes across the room and with a backwards sweep of his hair, a waitress immediately found her way over to their table.
They ordered some drinks and sat there, listening to the saxophone blare out the melody to Carol of the Bells.
"Christmas is here, bringing good cheer to young and old, meek and the bold…" Kirk trailed off, his voice low as he sang softly in time to the music.
When he caught McCoy staring at him, he stopped altogether. If McCoy didn't know better, he'd think Kirk looked a bit abashed from his singing. He grinned with just a touch of sheepishness and then ran his fingers through his hair, averting his eyes briefly before meeting McCoy's gaze again.
"How'd you even hear about this place?" McCoy said abruptly. Kirk's mannerisms, his stare, his presence was unnerving to McCoy. Something was too comfortable between them. "Doubt it was a Zagat."
Kirk gave one of his open mouthed laughs that seemed to suit Carol of the Bells quite nicely. The band and his laughter seemed to blend together imperceptibly. A few women and even a man or two turned to glance at the impossible man, but McCoy ignored everyone but Kirk.
"Uhura told me," he finally answered. The laughter had ended, but the smile could still been seen on his face and heard in his voice. "She's been here a few times on vacation and business. She told me about it."
The waitress came with their drinks and Kirk looked a bit impressed when McCoy downed his beer in a matter of seconds.
"Another round," Kirk ordered, "keep them coming." He winked at the waitress and she blushed a bit while smiling like an adolescent girl who just got asked to the dance.
There was a bowl of peanuts in the center of the table that Kirk picked at a few times, but McCoy ignored them. Eating food would only delay the inevitable weightless feeling of drunkenness. And tonight, he wanted nothing more than to forget the world and drink until he couldn't feel anything anymore.
He drummed his fingers on the table and glanced around the room as he waited for the waitress to come back with more glasses. The atmosphere was probably a bit calmer than it normally would be considering it was still just a few days after Christmas and everyone still had their damn holiday cheer. It seemed to shine off of people like a physical adornment.
The lights were low and atmospheric with Christmas lights strewn around the ornamental bottles above the bar. The different colored lights ricocheted off the glass of the bottles, making the liquid inside glow in shades of red, green, pink, and blue.
The jazz band played in the corner to a small audience gathered around them. The low notes seemed float through the air, almost tangible with their holiday sound. There was a heavy-set woman who seemed to be all curves swaddled in floating red fabric standing off to the side of the band and McCoy assumed she would be singing every now and then.
His assumption proved correct when Carol of the Bells finally ended and she walked up to the microphone. There was a slight pause of music while the band situated themselves, and in the relative silence, McCoy could hear the other bar-goers around him in their various conversations. It seemed gaudy and unnecessary to speak because Kirk and he were silent at their tiny table and that seemed to suit him just fine.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know.
The woman began crooning into the microphone with her deep, rich voice floating out to the crowd. The pair of men listened for a moment and McCoy turned his head to face Kirk as he watched the woman with an easy smile on his face.
The buzz of the alcohol was beginning to set in because he was starting to think that Kirk looked pretty damn good in those low lights.
Kirk caught his eye and waggled his eyebrows. He began to talk about how the singer reminded him of a girl he had been with in college. ("She had that same sort of smoky voice.") McCoy could only roll his eyes and listen with half-interest.
The waitress returned to replace his empty glass with a new, full glass. The liquid appeared a deep amber color that seemed to fit the mood of the bar very nicely.
"You know what I want for Christmas?" Kirk asked out of the blue as the waitress walked away. He kept his eyes trained on her ass as she sashayed away.
"Apparently new STDs," McCoy answered, taking a swig of his drink. Around them, the song changed.
"You're a doctor. I've got you to cure me," Kirk answered gaily as he brushed his hair out of his forehead. McCoy rolled his eyes and was about to hand back a quick remark about how Kirk shouldn't depend on him, dammit, when Kirk began speaking again. "Anyway, you know what I want for Christmas?"
McCoy would have given another sarcastic answer, but Kirk's eyes appeared even bluer than usual after a glass and a half of really fucking amazing beer. Those eyes seemed rounder than usual, more earnest than usual. He seemed to genuinely want McCoy to ask, to know what he wanted.
"I don't know, Kirk," he finally responded. He took another deep drink of his beverage and was saddened when he could see the clear bottom of the glass. "What do you want for Christmas?"
"I want you to call me Jim."
Blue. Round. Earnest. Genuine.
"Alright," McCoy conceded. "Jim."
He tested the word on his tongue and decided he liked that more than the feel of the burning liquid in his mouth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
The waitress and Kirk (Jim) were starting to stare at him in shock and worry, respectively. But his skin was too warm and his face too rough against his hands for him to care about much else. His peripheral vision was shot to hell, too fuzzy to make out anything other than basic colors. Jim was the only thing in the room he could visually focus on and even then, the image seemed to be spinning.
He hadn't stood up since they had gotten there, but he knew with practiced experience that the floor was probably dancing under his feet and standing from his seat would only end up with him falling on the floor and drooling on the tile.
"Unsanitary," he mumbled (slurred), thinking about drool and dirty floors that he didn't know who had walked on it. Who? Whom? English classes had been a long time ago.
"It's who," Kirk (Jim, he needed to started remembering Jim.) answered with raised eyebrows.
"Oh," McCoy commented. He hadn't realized he had spoken that last part aloud.
Jim started to pull the (tenth? Eleventh?) glass away from McCoy, but he held it closer to his body. He started swirling the liquid around in the glass and from a far way away, he heard the beginning strains of Winter Wonderland from the instruments. He hated that song.
He tossed the drink into the back of his mouth and relished that even if he couldn't physically feel anything else, he could feel that burn. Jim looked as though he was about to force the drink away from McCoy, but McCoy had to stop him. He couldn't give up the drink, dammit. He did the only thing he could think of and opened his mouth.
"Why'd you come back?"
Kirk (JIM) seemed a bit taken aback by the harsh and pained tone of McCoy's voice. McCoy was pretty sure he was taken aback by how he felt and how his voice sounded, but he wasn't entirely sure. Maybe.
"I'm sorry I wasn't here for Christmas," Jim answered quietly, moving his eyes to a long ago stain on the table. His fingers traced the outline of it in rapid succession. "I thought you'd be with your daughter."
McCoy wanted to tell him to stop sounding so guilty because, hell, it wasn't his fault. But somehow, the words changed in his throat and when he started speaking, it was a hell of a lot different than what he had expected.
"Fucking Jocelyn. It's her fault. I would have been there with Joanna," McCoy swore loudly, catching the attention of several customers at the bar. Dimly, he was aware that he was probably a terrifying sight with his several-day-old beard and drunken, blood-shot eyes.
"But fucking Jocelyn moved," he pressed on in a quieter voice. It wasn't quieter to be more polite, but because he couldn't control his anger except in smaller doses. "Out of my house. My goddamn house."
The waitress appeared as though out of nowhere beside them and started taking the empty glasses away. McCoy had seen this sight so many times, it was like a broken record. He waited for Jim to flirt with her, to give her a flash of those goddamnpiercingfucking blue eyes. But Jim only waved her away, a silent signal to not bring back any more drinks.
"I grew up there," he slurred, not caring anymore that Jim wouldn't let him drink anything else. All he could see in his mind was that old farmhouse. Two stories high. Narrow stairs. A barn in the back, he had painted it a fresh coat of red just a few years ago. "I got married there. Joanna was going to grow up there. My father grew up there, married there, died there."
Jim disappeared from before him and all he could see were dancing images of Joanna at various stages of her life, Jocelyn smiling as she walked down the alter. His father. His father as he lay dying on the old, creaking bed. The sound of his father's voice as he asked McCoy to just pull the damn plug already roared over the jazz singer in the distant background.
"My grandfather lived there. My great-grandfather fucking built that house. It was my house. She fucking sold it. Fucking Jocelyn fucking sold it," he continued with bitter acid practically tangible in the air in front of him.
His chest was starting to hurt underneath the numbness and his eyes blurred even more as the image of the house washed away from his mind. But Jim was still sitting there. Still watching. Still listening. And the jazz singer was still singing. And the lights were still dim.
So McCoy kept talking because there was a constant. He could see it. It was Jim.
"Moved in with goddamn motherfucking asshole Treadway." He could barely even remember what Treadway looked like. "That damn son of a bitch has my daughter." He missed Joanna. "I don't give a damn who the hell Jocelyn decides she wants to fuck, but Joanna is my daughter. I don't even know where Treadway fucking lives."
He really missed Joanna.
Jim sat across from him, his hands moving back and forth over the table, unsure of where to land. On McCoy's crumbled hand on the table? On McCoy's shoulder? He settled on inches away from McCoy's hand, resting on the wooden surface.
"This is the first Christmas without Joanna. Without fucking Jocelyn," he babbled on. He briefly wondered if Jim could even understand him with all the slurring and his accent really was more pronounced when he was drunk. But he needed to tell Jim. Because Jim was still sitting there and that counted for something. "And I hate her. I hate her so much, but I would be with her right now just to see Joanna."
Joanna with her dark hair and her smiling face. Those smiles and dimples and laughter and everything that made her adorable and his.
"Fucking Jocelyn," he whispered, more to himself than to anyone else. He wanted another drink. He wanted to black out.
There was a long pause and the singer began to chant out the old lyrics of Let it Snow. It was too cheerful and something seemed so surreal, but he blamed that on the alcohol.
"She shouldn't have taken your daughter away from you," Jim said unexpectedly. McCoy raised his head (oh, it was already starting to ache) to see Jim looking off in the distance of a darkened corner of the bar. He pulled his hand away to cross his arms across his chest defensively. "Kids need their dads."
McCoy didn't understand. Anything.
"Why the hell are you here?"
The words seemed almost physical in the air in front of him. They carved a path to Jim's face, his features in sharp focus before McCoy's bloodshot eyes.
"You're my friend," Jim answered. There was a catch in his voice, and his eyes flickered around the room before settling just to the left of McCoy's face.
"But why are you here?" McCoy wanted Jim to look at him. Couldn't understand why he was looking again. Why were his arms tightening against his chest so hard that the veins were popping out? "Why'd you come back? I fucking elbowed you in the eye. Why did you follow me on the street?"
"I needed a hamburger," Jim answered again without skipping a beat. His eyes weren't leaving the side of McCoy's face.
The alcohol rushed through his blood and into his head. There was a sudden surge of dizziness as McCoy placed his weight thickly on his legs, his calves straining as he leaned heavily against the table to take Jim's face into his hands.
"Why me? You said you never visit the same place twice. But you came back."
The world was spinning, but Jim was still in sharp vision. Too sharp.
"I wanted to see you again," Jim half-spoke, half-whispered. His breath might have brushed against McCoy's wrists, but that wasn't why he pulled away.
The seat was hard against his ass when he fell back into his seat. All of a sudden, the distance between himself and Jim seemed very far away. Didn't make sense. Should have been a short distance. What changed?
"Why?"
That single question. It slipped out, unbidden. It fell sloppily from his mouth and landed on the table, in the air for everyone to see.
"I fucking elbowed you in the goddamn eye and didn't apologize. I'm cranky and grumpy and can-cantankerous or whatever the hell you said I was."
He was rambling. He didn't know where he was going and the room was spinning and the music was almost deafening and too quiet at the same time. And Jim. He couldn't describe Jim to himself.
"I don't go to bars or meet women," he continued because really, he couldn't think of anything else to do. There was this fucking intense look in Jim's eyes as he finally stared at his face. His mouth was slack and pink and McCoy could see the hint of a wet tongue in the small cavity. "You're good-looking as hell and you know it. You're fun and could have so much more fun without me."
He never meant to say anything.
"I'm nothing like you. I'm a fucked up old man," he finished. He had no more words. They were used up, shriveled in his mind. Everything. Gone. Alcohol left him heavy and warm and unsure what to do next.
Jim's voice hollowed out the blackness that was starting to creep back into McCoy's life. Funny, Jim always got rid of the blackness. When he called, when he texted, when he randomly showed up. It was no surprise that when he spoke, his voice seemed to reach a part of McCoy that he thought he had lost to the demons of alcohol.
"You're not old. But we are alike," he spoke so slowly. He was underwater. He had to be, his voice was so wavery and slow. "We're both fucked up."
The screech of the chair legs against the floor should have grated against McCoy's ears, but he paid no attention as Jim readjusted his chair to bring himself closer.
"Bones, I'm here because…" he paused, his eyes darting around the room as he looked for something to magically appear. To tell him what to say. McCoy knew that look. It was the look he wore when he had to tell family members at the hospital that their loved one didn't make it out of surgery. When he had to tell them that things weren't looking up. It was the look he wore when Joanna had asked why he was leaving home.
Scared. Sorry. Hopeful for someone to save him. Jim embodied these looks with those blue eyes.
"Well, because you let me call you Bones. And you let me see pictures of Joanna," he said in a low voice. It was a revelation in the making, as though he were just figuring things out. McCoy would have been more appreciative of this personal growth if the room didn't seem to be spinning out of control. "And you work too hard and for some reason, I don't want you to kill yourself working."
His voice picked up speed and he leaned forward in his seat, his hands on McCoy's thighs. McCoy's mind was too thick with haze and alcohol and Christmas lights in the background to move the heated hands from his legs. The tone in Jim's deep voice was indefinable, McCoy wasn't sure if he could describe it even if he wasn't drunk off his ass and actually could remember his full vocabulary. That tongue just kept darting out pink and flashing as Jim licked his lips over and over again.
"For some reason, I just like spending time with you because you're making me see things a little differently."
And then the distance closed.
All McCoy could feel was pressure on his legs, heat against his chest, something wet against his lips. There was tongue and teeth in a whirlwind of taste and sensation as everything in the world seemed to expand and implode in his mouth at the same time. The pressure on his legs drifted to his arms as Jim leaned in further, his chest nearly parallel to McCoy's. He wondered whose heart he could feel as the pulse raced against his body.
Before he could even begin to understand, to comprehend, to really feel his world shake, it was over. Somewhat. The tongue was retreating and the air of the bar suddenly seemed cold against the wetness left on his mouth.
Jim lessened the pressure on McCoy's arms, though still held him as though he were afraid to let go. His fingers seemed to dance an erratic rhythm against the long-sleeves of McCoy's shirt and Jim let his forehead rest against McCoy's. He dipped his head just so and McCoy could feel the whisper of eyelashes against his temple.
I'll be home for Christmas. If only in my dreams.
Jim wanted to speak, McCoy could feel those swollen lips move soundlessly as though trying to search for the missing words between them.
But no. This was wrong. This wasn't right. This was alcohol and Christmas music and loneliness speaking, holding them together.
McCoy pulled away, pushed at Jim. If Jim stumbled, if McCoy stumbled when he stood, then it was only part of the strange dance that had started between them. A choreographed set of awkward footings and Jim's hands were everywhere at once, holding McCoy up so that he wouldn't fall. And then the punch.
Their strange, unspoken two-step ended with a messy hit across Jim's flushed face. It wasn't a hard hit because McCoy saw three spinning Jims in front of him and could only hit one of them. He aimed for the one in the center and must have at least somewhat hit his target because Jim was on the floor, holding his face.
"You shouldn't have done that, Jim. It'll ruin everything."
He couldn't understand his words. Or his meaning. Or why his voice was so broken. Or why the words seemed so wrong. Or why Jim didn't hit him back or run away.
"I know. I shouldn't have," was all Jim could say as he stood like a statue from hell.
McCoy wanted to yell and fight and fucking hit him some more, but Jim wouldn't give him the goddamn satisfaction. Jim stood (swayed) quietly with his face full of something that McCoy couldn't decipher behind the blood.
He thought he might have said he was sorry, but it really wasn't clear to him anymore. Soon, all he could see was the blackness as it finally took over his vision and all he could feel was the faintest memory and trace of something warm, wet, and sweet against his mouth.
Though it's been said many times, many ways, a very Merry Christmas to you.
...so what did you think? In all honesty, I think that might be the best kiss scene I have ever written. (I'm not trying to brag, honest.) Anyway, I'm very curious to know what you all think. Please review!