Thank you to everyone who has been gracious enough to understand that I am unable to update as often as I would like. To make up for the long wait, I wrote extra. This sucker is like twenty pages on Microsoft Word. Holler. Thank you so much for reading and enjoying this fic!
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: No Star Trek for me. But maybe I'll get it for my birthday? Y/Y?
And now... the moment you've all been waiting for... Jim's past!
McCoy had forgotten what taking fourteen (was it really that many?) shots of rum and other forms of alcohol could do to him the next morning. Afternoon.
He woke up around two in the afternoon with a headache that could wake the fucking dead and even though he couldn't understand that analogy, he thought that it was fitting, under the circumstances.
The bed was the only thing keeping him pinned to the world or else he felt as though he would have spun away out into the rainy day that seemed to exist just beyond his curtain-covered window. The light streaming in was weak and he was grateful for that because he felt that any more light might legitimately kill him.
Then like through a haze, he began to remember fragments of the night before. He couldn't remember much after the sixth or seventh shot (which was a mix of impressive and pathetic for him because he could usually drink anyone under the table on any given day) and wondered if Jim had let him pay the cab ride home.
There was something else he thought he might remember. Something about lights and singing and warmth in unfamiliar places. But the depths of his memory fell short of that particular incident and if it really mattered, Jim would fill him in.
Barely moving any more than necessary, he pulled the cell phone from his jean pockets that he apparently hadn't had the sense to remove last night before collapsing into bed. In this alcoholic mindset, he couldn't quite remember when Jim's number had been first on his speed dial, but was grateful for the ease of that moment.
"McCoy? Bones? McCoy?" came the startled answer.
McCoy couldn't understand why Jim had taken to calling him McCoy again. Had he asked him to do that sometime last night? He can't imagine that he would have done that, but it wouldn't be the first time he did something stupid under the influence.
"Jim, are you as hung-over as me?" he groaned into the phone.
Jim laughed slightly on the other end and if McCoy didn't know any better, he would have thought Jim sounded nervous. But this was James T. Kirk. He didn't do nervous.
"Probably not. I actually had a limit last night."
"Get your ass over here," McCoy muttered into the phone. Jim's laughter should have been murder on his throbbing head, but for some reason he found it soothing. Low and deep and soothing.
"Really?" Jim questioned, his voice rising at the end of the word in blatant curiosity.
Probably just ran his hand through his hair. Damn hippie, McCoy internally thought.
"Really."
They hung up and Jim must have been only a few blocks away because McCoy barely had time to drift off into a darker world with fewer lights before a soft knocking could be heard at his door.
Oh right. It was locked. Damn. He should have thought that one through.
Steeling himself against the forces of gravity and what it would do to his head's blood flow, he hoisted himself off of the bed and prepared himself for the overcoming sensation of nausea. Surprisingly, it was not as strong as he thought it would be and he managed to hobble over to the door to click the lock.
The door opened and McCoy's mouth dropped as he took in the sight.
"What the hell happened to you?"
Jim stood in the threshold, wearing a gray t-shirt that was covered with dried blood. It formed a triangle of sorts on the fabric, pointing downwards and McCoy could only assume it had been due to a nosebleed.
"You really don't remember?" Jim asked with an unleveled look in his narrowed eyes. The blue squinted out to McCoy in half-moon slivers under the hooded eyelids.
"No. What the hell did you do?" he prodded, clutching to the door like a safety preserver.
Jim noticed the white-clenched knuckles as McCoy gripped the door with practically inhuman strength. Without answering McCoy's questions, he gently moved McCoy's hands from the door and led him over to the bed so that McCoy could rest some more.
"Well, after you passed out from drunkenness, I brought you back to your apartment. I managed to wake you up when we got here and made you take some pills and drink a lot of water," he explained with a tiny shrug. "It's what I do to help ease the hangover."
McCoy tried to wonder what sort of agony he'd be in if Jim hadn't made him take those pills. It hurt to imagine it so he changed tracks.
"How'd you get in?" It wasn't necessarily suspicion, but he wouldn't put it past Jim to have made a spare key to the dingy apartment.
"I rummaged through your pants pockets until I found the keys. I swear, I wasn't trying to feel you up," he promised, holding his hands up in obvious defense.
"I know that," McCoy responded with a slight degree of surprise. Is that what Jim was so worried about?
"You didn't last night," Jim answered even more quietly than he had spoken before. His eyes looked away from McCoy at the closed curtains and a ghost of his old smirk crossed his face.
"Sorry," McCoy told him lamely. He leaned back against the old pillows on his bed, practically flattened from overuse. He'd have to buy more pillows soon.
"Don't be," Jim waved it off as he tore his eyes away from the green curtains. "It was… warranted, I guess." A ghost of his old smirk crossed his face as he crossed through the room, kicking off his shoes and gathering some pill bottles and a glass of water.
Wordlessly, he handed the supplies to McCoy who took the pain killers like a child ate candy. He wasn't about to swear off drinking forever, but today's hangover was enough to make him at least want to wait before he had another pity fest with a bottle (or two or three or eight).
The pills took a few minutes to take affect and he laid on his bed, too hot for the comforter. Jim sat backwards on the desk chair, his legs straddling the back as he faced McCoy.
"So, try to pick up some poor girl? Her boyfriend hit you?" McCoy asked, still wondering what had happened to Jim. He'd probably yell or tell him he was a goddamn fuck up when it came to women, but right now he was ready to worship Jim as the Bringer of Medication.
"Actually, there was no girl."
Well, that was a glimmer of shock through his body if McCoy ever knew one.
"Get hit over a game of pool or something? Did you piss off one of the band members?" McCoy questioned some more, the blurry memory of the musicians swarming in his mind.
"Hit on a guy this time," Jim answered with those same narrowed eyes he had possessed when McCoy first opened the door.
This wasn't the first time McCoy had heard about Jim's exploits with a man. Months ago, during one of Jim's stories of his latest conquests in Canada, he had mentioned something about a hockey player because "when you're in Canada, that's what you do. Or who you do, in this case."
"Gay? Straight? Bi? What are you?" McCoy asked with a fair amount of curiosity coloring his tone, much to Kirk's amusement.
"I am a lover of people," Kirk declared with grandeur as he spread his arms wide as though hugging the universe. "I like people. I make judgments, but not on gender."
"So, basically, your preference is human?" McCoy smirked, watching as Kirk placed his hands on his hips like the superhero of STDs.
"For now," Kirk conceded with that odd little half-shrug of his. That shit-eating grin grew to copious amounts of playfulness as it spread across his face. "I have a feeling that I'd bang an alien though if I ever met one."
"You know, I don't doubt that," McCoy answered with a hint of genuine laughter behind his usually gruff voice. The sound caused Kirk to smile even more broadly, if that was even possible.
They continued their walk through the tiny park next to McCoy's apartment, careful to avoid anything that looked like poison ivy.
"Does it bother you?" Kirk quipped suddenly, his voice turning into childish-seriousness.
"Not in the slightest. Can't be bothered by stuff like that in San Francisco," he replied with ease and honesty, much to the pleasure of Kirk if his broad smile was any indication.
But if McCoy was honest with himself, it wasn't because he was from San Francisco. He had a feeling he could have been from anywhere in the world and he would have been alright with anything Kirk told him. There are stupider things to lose a friendship over.
"Well, you're lucky he didn't hit you any harder," McCoy found himself saying as he was brought out of his summer-memory.
As Jim nodded in agreement, McCoy motioned to him to bring the chair closer to the bed so that he could examine the minor injury. Jim obliged and when McCoy gestured soundlessly to the closet, Jim knew immediately to fetch the medical bag.
A simple silence fell between them as Jim turned the chair around to sit normally and face McCoy, who sat on the edge of the bed. His head still pounded, but the sensation felt further away and less intense than it had when he first woke up.
He reached out slowly with practiced doctor-hands and Jim barely flinched from the touch. If anything, he leaned into it slightly. As McCoy's hands ran over the scrapes and discolored bumps on the warm skin, he had a sudden image of an even younger Jim. Too drunk for it to be fun and maybe on those drugs he confessed to have used before in the park.
There really wasn't much that McCoy could do but put a few salves on the cuts and make sure nothing was infected, but that image was too strong and too bitter in his mind, left an acidic taste in his mouth so he kept smoothing his hands over the broken and battered skin.
Damned if he didn't want to protect Jim. From drugs, being too drunk, getting hit. From everything that he seemed to thrive on.
Jim didn't seem to mind the gentle touches to his face. McCoy continued until Jim's eyes began to droop with sleepiness from the relaxing ministrations.
"Don't fall asleep on me now," McCoy warned. But his voice lacked its usual gruffness and Jim could only grin.
McCoy noticed the grin was lopsided as though a full grin would stretch out the bruises and semi-healed cuts on his face in a way that would irritate him. Once more, he felt another surge of desire for Jim to heal faster.
"It's New Years Eve," Jim reminded him as McCoy leaned away from of him. His realization of their sudden closeness was fucking unnerving as hell. "You want to go out?"
"I'm a doctor, not a party animal," he gruffed to Jim, careful not to look into those damn pleading eyes. He knew that once he looked at Jim's best puppy-dog face, he'd be a goner and off to some random party.
Jim laughed at the comment, careful not to let the sound omit too loudly out of respect for McCoy's deadly hangover. But he actually pressed a hand to his pink mouth to muffle the cheerful sounds.
"Oh, that was a good one, Bones."
McCoy couldn't help but feel glad that Jim was using his nickname for him again. Whatever he had been worried about before seemed to have dissipated.
It was a thank you for saving my pretty boy face and a if you ever fucking show up looking like that again, I won't help you, dammit before Jim finally exited the apartment to leave McCoy alone to sleep off the rest of his headache.
McCoy sat listlessly on his bed, staring at the closed door for a few moments. Jim never said good bye, but he knew that it would be a while, maybe months, until he saw Jim again.
He lay on the bed, ready to succumb to the blissful darkness known as sleep when the regret of declining Jim's invitation to go out began to fill him. His last thought before he slipped away to sleep was the image of Jim kissing someone at the stroke of midnight.
He would just blame that thought on the hangover.
McCoy was wrong. Somehow beyond what he ever expected, Jim showed up at the hospital the next day (during his busiest hours, of course) with a hickey the size of Texas decorating his neck just below the smooth line of his jaw.
"Fun night?" was the only comment McCoy could spare him as he bustled by with a clipboard in his hands.
"Like you wouldn't believe!" Jim called out after him as McCoy turned the corner to get some medication for one of his idiot patients who had been drunk enough the night before to smash a punch bowl over his head.
Minor stitches and a prescription for pain killers. Great. Goddamnfuckingmorons. Every damn one of them.
And Jim stayed in that seat for the remainder of McCoy's shift, always grinning and waving whenever McCoy had a spare second to come back and check to make sure he was still there. Just grinning and waving like a fucking loon.
Somehow, at the end of the shift, McCoy returned to the reception area in all its florescent lighted glory. The tiles were scuffed after a long day and he did not envy the janitors' work that night. It had been a long day and even the ninety degree corners between the wall and the floor were looking helter skelter.
He needed a beer. Or a nap. Mostly a nap because he was still feeling a little wary towards alcohol after that incident a few days ago.
But Jim just wouldn't allow that. He was still lounged in the seat like he had all the damn time in the world. Anyone else would have had an ass cramp from sitting in a shitty plastic chair for several hours, but no. Jim had a way of making everything look like a damn throne.
Then with the air and grandeur of royalty, he somehow convinced McCoy to come back to his hotel room.
"I have something to give you. A Christmas gift," he had explained in earnest. He blinked for the briefest second and, oh God, was he really batting his eyelashes at him?
Instead of snapping back with some biting comment or even giving him a suitable glare, McCoy's stomach just grumbled with obvious displeasure. Jim smiled with victory and leaned back into the chair, his chest puffed out like a peacock's under his bright green t-shirt.
"We'll go to your place so you can change out of those fucking ugly scrubs, then we can go to my hotel and order room service." He paused as he stood and that familiar glint returned to those vivid eyes of his. "I'm thinking burgers and coffee."
If there was food in this whole proposition, who was McCoy to say no?
So an hour later, a trip in and out of McCoy's apartment ("You were in and out so quickly. If the building were a woman, she'd be crying with disappointment right now."), and several half-hearted arguments about how gray scrubs were perfectly acceptable ("But Bones! They do nothing for your complexion!"), they ended up in front of the White Swan Inn.
McCoy actually snorted and looked over at Jim. He was about to make a comment about how the name was a bit gay, but there was an odd tension in Jim's face that seemed simultaneously wrong and out-of-place. The words twisted around in his mouth until finally he spoke.
"Not exactly the Ritz, kid," he ended up saying, shifting under the weak sunlight that shone down on the pair as they stood unmoving before the glass doors.
"Yeah, well," Jim said, hiding away that uncomfortable look with a flash of a grin that was only a few degrees fainter than his usual smirk. "Some old man once told me I was wasting my money."
"Sounds like a smart guy," McCoy muttered with a smirk of his own as Jim led the way into the building.
"Eh, he's alright," Jim brushed off the comment with a blasé glance towards McCoy before he fucking sauntered into the lobby of the hotel.
For a moment, for just one moment, McCoy almost allowed himself to indulge the childish urge to chase Jim into the elevator. Almost.
"Oh, wow," Jim chuckled as he ripped off the paper to the sloppily wrapped gift that McCoy had handed to him just moments before.
In his hands lay a still-packaged marshmallow gun with a bag of marshmallows tucked inside. Jim immediately began freeing the juvenile weapon from its cardboard confines.
"Well, I figured you seem to like defying all the rules. So this gives you a gun on a plane without actually being a threat," McCoy grinned, the side of his mouth pulled upwards as he leaned back into the chair.
"You don't think I'm a threat otherwise?" came Jim's reply as he raised an eyebrow with a knowing smile on his face.
"As far as I know, being an annoying bastard isn't against the law," McCoy paused for some theatrics before finishing, "yet."
Jim let out a bark of a laugh and rolled himself off of the bed James-Bond-Style to the mini-refrigerator a few feet away. Looking back and forth in an exaggerated spy mode, he threw the door open and tossed the back of marshmallows into the small freezer section of the appliance.
Then he spun on the tips of his feet as he rose up from the ground in a fluid movement. He faced McCoy with his head tipped towards his chest so he could stare at the older man from under his eyebrows.
"Call me Kirk. James Kirk."
The two men stood staring at each other before bursting into bouts of laughter and McCoy couldn't remember the last time he had felt this okay with his life.
Jim found himself back on the bed and the golden-and-ivory comforter crumbled under his laughing body. The incandescent light bulbs in the ceilings fixtures shone softly on his young features and glinted against those pearly white teeth and the flash of wet tongue that appeared between them.
It was a surprisingly sobering image and McCoy found himself catching his breath. Jim twisted himself on the bed, somewhat breathless with laughter. It was just a trick of the light, nothing substantial at all, but McCoy thought his eyes might have looked bluer.
"Why'd you put the marshmallows in the freezer?" he questioned, trying to distract himself from too much gold-and-blue.
"So that they are frozen when I put them in the gun," Jim explained with a damn patronizing tone as though McCoy were a fucking two-year-old.
McCoy resisted the urge to roll his eyes and instead tried to imagine being hit with a cold and probably fairly hard ball of fluff.
"Doesn't sound fair," he commented off-handedly, looking back over at Jim.
With a look that could kill, his eyes narrowed into devious slivers and his grin spread slowly across his boyish face.
"Oh, there are no rules in a marshmallow war."
Jim must have really been an infant because he even said he felt like a little kid and actually demanded that McCoy help him make a fort.
So with much grumbling and insincere insults, McCoy found himself settled between the edge of the bed and the chair with the comforter overhead like the world's softest ceiling. The light barely made its way through the fabric, and there was a yellow-ish tint to the light, colored by the golden threads.
The tiny room they had created for themselves was dimly lit, warm, comforting, and everything a fort should be for a child. And like one such child, Jim sat across from him, grinning gleefully.
"Open your gift!" he exclaimed, settling down more comfortably onto the pillow he had placed beneath him ("When your ass looks this good, you need to pamper it. …Want one, Bones?")
McCoy chuckled in his throat and ripped the cartoon-reindeer wrapping paper from the large, thin package that sat in his lap. Within seconds, he held a large nine-photo picture collage. It was wooden and simple, the empty frames were of different sizes and were both landscape and portrait.
"I noticed you had a few pictures of Joanna that were just loose in an envelope. I thought maybe you could frame a few," Jim explained with a delighted shrug, clearly proud of his gift-giving abilities.
McCoy could only smile, dragging a single finger down the edge of one frame. He could already picture which picture would go where. Right in the center would be the one from when he took her to the fish pond. She loved feeding the fish and geese.
"There's something else in the wrapping," Jim pointed out, gesticulating towards the crumpled wrapping paper.
McCoy searched through the paper only to find a pair of scissors. He looked up at Jim with a questioning look in his eyes.
"For all those pictures that have Jocelyn in them," Jim explained, smirking. "Sometimes you have to cut all the bad shit out of your life."
The chuckle resounded in his throat once more as he looked fondly at the gift. Then, a thought struck him.
"How did you know her name was Jocelyn?" he asked, pushing the gift out of the fort to focus more on Jim.
Jim shifted a little on his pillow and licked his lips briefly before he answered.
"You talked a lot when you were drunk," he finally said. His words were brief as though all the words he knew weren't enough to express everything he wanted to explain.
"What did I say?" McCoy asked gruffly, adding a sharper-than-usual edge to his voice to avoid any nervousness that might have otherwise crept in.
"Well, as far as I know, everything," Jim continued with a long sigh. He shrugged his shoulders and looked off unseeing to the left at the overhanging comforter. "Jocelyn and that guy, Clay or something. You kept saying that fucking Jocelyn sold your fucking house. You mentioned your father a few times, too." He paused his slow speech, averting his eyes to the hands folded loosely in his lap before looking up through his thick, dark lashes to stare at McCoy with sincere empathy. "I didn't know your father died."
"It never came up," McCoy half-answered, half-barked. He shifted uncomfortably under Jim's intense stare and wished he had taken Jim up on his offer for a pillow to sit on.
Jim just nodded steadily, his eyes unblinking as he continued to watch McCoy. Then he sighed again and unfolded his hands to let them lie hesitantly on his knees. His eyes did their usual dance around the surrounding area before settling once again on McCoy's face. This time, there was a determined, steely look to the usually gentle blue of his eyes.
"My father died, too."
The words hung in the air like a solid mass and McCoy stared into those eyes and tried to distinguish between the different shades of cerulean and azure. His hand might have twitched from where it rested on the ivory carpet beside him.
"C'mon, Bones," Jim chided lightly, with that barely-there tease in his voice. "You told me everything. You deserve to know about me."
It was an offer. A balance. One of those rare moments when Jim was letting down his damn defenses. McCoy felt as though he were staring at something strange and unnatural. He was staring down a lion's throat and if he wasn't careful, he knew he'd be swallowed up.
But he was beginning to see the shades of blue between the iris and the cerulean and he realized he was already too far gone to avoid Jim any longer.
"Dammit, Jim," he said quietly without his usual bite in his catchphrase.
"Don't tell me you weren't curious," Jim pushed, that teasing tone easing into something more genuine.
There was no denying it. He had been curious. Then, leaning in like a child in a tent about to hear a ghost story, McCoy shifted in his spot on the floor until every ounce of his attention was trained on Jim. He would hear every word, every catch, every nuance of emotion. He would see every twitch, every tell, every flash of Jim's eyes.
Satisfied that he was the center of McCoy's attention, Jim began.
The space between them lessened and lessened until their knees were touching, heat faintly radiating as McCoy provided the barest minimum of physical contact. But Jim seemed so far away that the small distance could have stretched for miles and it wouldn't have made a difference.
For all intents and purposes, Jim was lost to McCoy. His blue eyes were glazed over as he talked and talked and talked, his tongue slipping without fault over the words he spoke so quietly.
His father had died. The day he was born. Apparently, the great George Kirk had been a cargo pilot for years, carrying goods cross-country with only himself, a crew, and no passengers. Then one day in March, he received one of the most important transmissions of his life. McCoy, as a father himself, pictured a man who looked too much like Jim sitting behind the controls of a plane with the world's biggest smile on his face as an exhausted sigh of pain and happiness sounded through the headphones. That sigh coupled with the sounds of a baby's first cry and the mother's whispered words of "I wish you could be here." McCoy could imagine that happiness swelling within the man, maybe tears of happiness and regret as he drove the plane.
According to Jim, George was distracted and never saw them coming. He was too concerned with his new son to know that there was another plane just beyond the distance. Terrorists, some organization that called themselves Nero.
Jim never slipped in his words, kept speaking in a tone that border-lined between a history teacher and a man holding back a yell. He blinked once, twice in the golden light as he told McCoy how Nero tried to get his father to crash into some government buildings. Again, McCoy pictured the Jim-lookalike with a determined expression, hands gripping the controls as he crashed into a field to avoid the buildings.
Terrorists. Some organization named Nero. Nero tried to get Dad to crash into some government buildings, but he managed to just crash into some field. Dad wasn't a passenger pilot, he just carried goods across the country so only the crew died. George Kirk included.
"All that's left of him is a copy of the transmission my mom and he shared," Jim spoke in that low voice, his tone teetering between something soft and something bitter. His hands clenched and unclenched in his lap as though he wasn't sure what to do. "He told her he loved her and then there was the crash. He would have killed over eight-hundred people if he hadn't evaded Nero."
A pause.
"Twelve minutes after I was born, he died," he finally continued without a single catch in his voice. He was braver than McCoy ever realized. "And all he left behind was a twelve-minute-long transmission and a son who apparently looks like he did."
And then McCoy saw the guilt. He saw how it threatened to consume Jim, how it ate him from the inside out. Anyone else might have said they were sorry, might have held Jim's hand. But McCoy waited out the silence and allowed the moment to wash over both of them. Jim needed to do this on his own terms.
The quiet atmosphere deafened and Jim, scared as always of silence, spoke again. He spoke of "hey, your husband died! Here's a check to make you feel better" money that his mother accepted, probably with a sob. But she worked all the time, leaving Jim and her older son, Sam, at home with their grandparents. A young woman, suddenly widowed, feeling guilty with two little sons without an idea of what to do. The image was too clear and as a doctor, McCoy had seen a mother's fear too often.
Jim's voice made it too easy to see an image of two small, blonde boys stuck in an Iowa suburb with grandparents who tried to distract them from a dead father and a mother with her very own disappearing act.
"She was always busy, always moving around, always doing something," Jim said with an uncharacteristically ugly look on his face as he fisted his hands tighter and tighter. "She was never home. She couldn't sit still."
"Sounds like someone else I know," McCoy responded into the resulting silence, the words slipping away from him unbidden.
Jim's eyes flashed and his face hardened, the results of McCoy's words and the memory of his mother.
"No," he answered with a sense of finality. "I'm not like her. It's different."
When his hands finally unclenched, there were half-moons carved into the skin with red winking out at McCoy like a twisted illustration from a fairytale.
The story continued because it was too late for Jim to back out of the explanation now. The bitterness was clear in his face, his voice became more erratic, his breathing more intense as he described life in Iowa. Everyone in town knew who the Kirk boys where and "wasn't it a fucking shame that they didn't have a father?" Jim stressed that he wasn't made of fucking glass, that Sam wasn't made of fucking glass either and they. Would. Have. Been. Just. Fine. But no one seemed to realize that and everyone walked around like eggshells surrounded them every damn Father's Day.
Jim finally allowed his voice to crack when he mentioned his grandparents' deaths. McCoy gave him a moment of contemplative silence as he understood too well what it was like to lose yourself in memories of better times and horrible endings. But then he nudged Jim's knees with his own and wordlessly urged him to continue.
"For as long as I can remember, she always needed someone else to be the buffer in the room when it was just her, me, and Sam."
Then Jim explained how Frank came along right after his grandmother's funeral. His description of the man was sparse and all McCoy could picture was a tall, dark figure that Jim probably never really dealt with unless he had to. Apparently, he wasn't a bad guy, just a man who didn't understand or like children. Jim and Sam were just sorta there to him. Just existing on the periphery of his marriage to their mother.
"It's not Mom's fault that she fell in love with someone else," Jim shrugged with words that sounded rehearsed, as though he had told himself over and over that what he was saying was true. "Everyone deserves to be happy, I guess."
It was the look on his face, that look of total detachment that made McCoy want to grab Jim's hand. But he didn't know how to grasp the clenched hands that seemed so far away, so he just sat on his knuckles and fingers instead.
"It really wasn't anyone's fault. It's not her fault that she sent him the transmission and distracted him. It's not my fault that I was born at that moment. It's not my fault that I look like Dad. But we can't seem to get past that."
He was a runaway train and McCoy could do nothing but wait for the final impact. Jim's words kept going and going and he wasn't taking a breath, just spoke and spoke as though the words weren't even fully formed in his mind when he opened his mouth.
"She's not a bad mother," he stressed, finally slowing down his words and looking McCoy in the eye with a strained expression. "She just didn't know what to do. I don't blame her."
It would have been very convincing if he didn't use a tone that made McCoy think that, yeah actually, he did blame her.
And he blamed Sam, even if he didn't state it outright. He blamed Sam for running away when Jim was ten, just two years after Frank came around. He just said there was nothing to do when you're a kid stuck in Iowa who never wanted to stay home with your mom and reluctant step-dad. So Jim just started working to distract himself and keep himself out of the house. Odds and ends jobs, cleaning gutters, delivering newspapers. Anything he could get.
McCoy tried to picture a younger Jim with hair that still flopped in his face and a softer chin and less defined cheekbones. He tried to think of him growing up into an angry teenager with an awkward jaw that learned to work in the local auto shop. Coming home without saying a word to his mother who probably never asked any questions anyway. Or maybe never coming home at all, just working all day and losing himself to some girl at night.
But Jim, aside from the drinking and sex in high school, managed to graduate and work and save up enough money to add to the gee-sorry-your-dad-died inheritance he got when he was eighteen.
"Have you ever wanted to leave a place so badly that it actually hurt?" Jim asked, directly focusing his attentions on McCoy for the first time in almost ten minutes. Twenty minutes? Their fort was a vortex, swallowing up time as McCoy began to understand what made his friend tick.
"Yes," he answered as he realized that Jim was actually waiting for an answer.
Jim actually grinned a little, his face laced with sardonic appreciation. In the back of McCoy's mind, he remembered a moment between himself and Jim when Jim had said with a tone that matched his expression that they were both a little fucked-up.
"Iowa fucking sucked," he continued, breaking McCoy away from what he assumed was a drunken memory. "I bet I would still hate it if I ever went back there. There's nothing good left. Just a mom who doesn't like to look me in the eye and a step-dad who doesn't know what to fucking say to me."
So what does an eighteen year old kid with too much money end up doing? Moving to San Diego because that was where his father used to work and for some reason, he just thought "what the hell? Why not?" Jim got a job working at a motorcycle shop and within just a few months, ended up running it. He saved up his money and wanted to travel to China.
To visit Spock, McCoy concluded. Jim answered his questioning look with a silent nod and McCoy was suddenly surprised by this new form of non-verbal communication.
When the hell did that happen, he wondered for two seconds before Jim spoke again and broke through his distracted thoughts.
Apparently, the mysterious Pike Jim had mentioned a while ago (had they really been friends for half a year now?) was actually pilot Christopher Pike who had worked closely with his father. He had known Jim's mother of course and was probably a better parental figure than Jim's mother could ever claim to be (a thought that made McCoy practically growl and wish he could set Mrs. Kirk straight on a number of points) because he felt Jim might benefit from talking to kids outside of Iowa.
Spock's father was an ambassador, so that was how Pike knew him. It was a connection that McCoy didn't fully understand how a pilot and ambassador knew each other, but Jim was still talking and that was the important part. As long as Jim kept talking, McCoy would keep listening.
Spock was, in Jim's mind, pretty cool. Not in the traditional sense, but he was easy to talk to. Jim told McCoy about the letters he would send to China, saving up money to buy enough stamps and envelopes so that he could tell Spock all about the problems he had. Fighting in school, yelling at Frank, blaming his mother for everything. And Spock found a way to talk him out of a lot of the probably very sticky situations. McCoy made a mental note to send him a fruit basket or some other form of "good God, man, thank you" token because the intensity and gratitude on Jim's face made him pretty sure that Spock saved his life with those letters and written advice. According to Jim, he was a logical person and made too much sense sometimes.
After leaving Iowa, a much younger and angrier Jim realized he wanted some logic of his own. So barely out of his home state, he took a plane for the first time ever and wound up in China.
The muscles in Jim's face were lessening. It would have been overlooked by anyone else, but there was little else to focus on in the tiny fort and McCoy wouldn't have looked away for anything in the world. Jim was balancing on a thread, barely there, but something told McCoy that the story was taking a turn for the better. That it was coming to its inevitable conclusion.
"Did you find logic?" McCoy asked, starting to feel the initial bites of relief.
"Nah, that's Spock's area. Not mine," Jim answered with a small shake of his head. The strange smile was back on his face, but there was less of a twist this time. McCoy could see the hint of white teeth, just barely seen between lips too red from being bitten at so many times while he spoke.
Then the smile grew wider into almost a true grin and his eyes looked beyond McCoy as he thought back to when he met Spock.
"I found China instead. And I found new cultures and new experiences and everything that Iowa never was."
And McCoy could begin to understand what Jim could see and his own mind was filled with the colorful images of China that he had seen in movies and other propaganda. He could start to understand that thrill of learning something new and foreign and frighteningly larger than yourself.
"And for the first time, I understood why Mom didn't like to be in one place for too long," he continued, bringing his eyes back to McCoy's and the blue seemed to actually glow a little brighter in the faint light of their fort. "So I sold the motorcycle shop and with the money I had saved up, I started traveling. Anywhere. Everywhere."
Jim would have been a psychiatrist's wet dream because moments ago, he had been seething in a quiet anger and resentment that seemed to radiate off of him in nearly tangible waves. But now, he was smiling and grinning and the pain was nearly completely hidden as he thought back on all his travels.
"With the exception of Spock's hometown, San Francisco, and a few other cities here and there, I've never visited anywhere twice."
Pride. That was the only thing McCoy could decipher from his voice any longer. Pride that he had gotten away, had seen other countries. That he had done what his mother had never allowed him to do.
McCoy didn't answer right away and though Jim said nothing else, his face tightened the smallest amount and his eyes narrowed with suspicion as though waiting for McCoy to ask something too personal or to make some sort of unwelcome judgment.
McCoy wondered how he felt when sitting on a plane to visit a country overseas. Did he ever think of his father? And he burned to know the answer, but denied himself the chance to ask and settled for a different question.
"When did you start traveling?"
"About three years ago," Jim said, settling back into his pillow. His eyes lost that suspicious look and appeared almost languid after his emotional display and retelling. "I was twenty. Barely made a dent in the money from Dad's insurance."
"Doesn't mean you should waste it," McCoy shot back a little too quickly.
Maybe it was in the way that he was suddenly pretending that his father's insurance was nothing more than a convenience for him to see other cities. Maybe it was the way that he seemed to shut himself away from McCoy by pulling his knees away. Whatever it was, McCoy's lips pursed and he felt almost accusatory towards Jim.
"Hey, traveling and staying at nice hotels?" Jim answered back just as quickly, practically falling over himself to defend his way of life. "It keeps me happy. That's what counts. Being happy."
That damn look in his face, McCoy wasn't sure who he was really trying to convince. But Jim showed all the signs of someone just running away from everything in the world and McCoy wondered if he and Spock were the only two people keeping him grounded in the world.
"What about later, when the money runs out?" he stressed, growing deeply concerned for Jim. For his friend. For everything Jim was to him.
"I'm not worried about later," he told McCoy with all the expressions of a defiant child. "I'm focused on the right now."
"If you don't focus on what's coming up, you're going to mess everything up," McCoy warned him in a quiet voice. He was steadying himself against speaking too loudly because he was not going to chase Jim away from this. He couldn't. "You're going to lose everything."
"Yeah, well, I don't believe in no-win situations," Jim responded with that fucking defiance laced in his tone, coloring his facial expression.
It shouldn't have been enough to calm McCoy down, but it did. It calmed him down, it brought him back from the terrifying edge he had just been looking down from and he remembered that they were sitting in their golden fort, looking at each other like they were the last two people on earth.
"Sometimes you are such a fucking kid," McCoy informed him, drawing a weary hand down his face.
"Would you have me any other way, Bones?" Jim smirked with a flutter of his eyelashes.
"No," he relented with a roll of his eyes. Funny how often Jim made him do that.
Jim's smirk grew a little wider before the silence took over once more. The smirk faded away in slow degrees until they were both somber-faced and staring at each other.
"Why did you tell me all of this?" McCoy had to know. He just had to.
"Because you told me your whole life," Jim shrugged as though the answer was obvious. His eyes were doing that shifting thing again and there was a blur of blue as he avoided McCoy's gaze. "It's only fair."
Then blue met hazel and they looked at each other and McCoy was sure that his heart stopped. Or restarted. Or something. But Jim was looking at him and that mattered.
"Plus, I wanted to tell you," he answered with a look of self-clarification. "I've never wanted to tell that to anyone before."
McCoy wondered if he was actually informing McCoy or if he were just speaking his thoughts out loud.
"Why did you?" he pressed when he thought that Jim was slipping away from him once more.
"You're my friend," Jim answered in that it's-so-obvious voice again. His hands fell to his sides again and began picking at a loose thread on the carpet.
"Why?" For some reason, it was imperative that McCoy knew.
"This sounds so much like the conversation at the bar," Jim said with a hint of laughter in his voice.
With a distinct feeling that he was going to regret asking, he pushed his questions onto Jim.
"Oh yeah? How'd you answer at the bar?"
Something in Jim seemed to change as though he were somewhat surprised and taken aback by McCoy's question.
"I said a lot of things," he began slowly. "To recap, I said that I needed a hamburger, we're both fuck-ups, and that I don't want you to kill yourself working."
"Well, golly, thanks for caring," McCoy smirked sarcastically. He expected Jim to answer with some damn snarky comment. Then they could leave this strange cocoon of Jim's whispered life that defined him in ways that McCoy could only begin to understand.
The air seemed stale with all their talking, but Jim didn't appear to want to move away like McCoy did. The smirk dropped from his face as he peered more deeply into Jim's face. Jim seemed to grasp at words and finally when he spoke, it was halting and confusing and McCoy really didn't understand anything anymore.
"Hey, Bones?" he started with just the barest brush of tentativeness coating his words.
"Yeah?" he answered back, unsure of where this was going.
"I kissed you at the bar."
The tentativeness had disappeared from his voice and when he spoke, the words were solid and louder and much more dare-you-to-hit-me. He wasn't shrinking away, but he seemed to fall back into the golden shadows, allowing the gentle light to rest against his features.
McCoy should have been angry or felt violated. He should have yelled. Ran away. Left their fort, for God's sakes. He should have done a lot of things.
But he just lowered the shoulders that he hadn't realized were tensed and released the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.
All he focused on was the golden light on the golden boy in front of him who seemed more scared to tell him that he had kissed him than he had seemed about his father's death.
Something in the way that golden shadow hid him and illuminated him at the same time stopped McCoy's rising fear and anger and uncertainty.
"Why?"
He may have been beating the question to death, but he felt this irrepressible urge to know. To know everything. To understand what Jim had done and why-oh-fucking-why-did-he-pick-him?
Jim blinked in surprise and visibly flinched as though expecting the hit that never came his way.
"Because I was drunk. Not as drunk as you, but still drunk," he answered carefully, as though afraid that the wrong words would set McCoy off. "You were upset. You didn't understand why fucking Jocelyn had hurt you and you kept asking why I was your friend."
When the words did not shake McCoy and did not make him lash out against Jim, Jim relaxed a little and drew himself out of the shadows. He dragged a hand through his shaggy hair and shrugged.
"You were upset and I wanted to cheer you up," he said simply.
"It wasn't just some random guy who hit you. It was me."
It wasn't a question, just a statement. A clarification for his own sanctity of mind. He didn't understand why he wasn't shocked or upset, but things were off balance and maybe there are some things in life that just can't be explained.
Jim just nodded, his eyes never leaving McCoy's.
"I really am sorry about it. I don't know why I did it."
McCoy found himself staring at those lips and realizing that those lips had been on his, had touched his. And that was when he reacted. He rose abruptly from the floor, nearly dizzy from how quickly he stood up. The comforter was brusquely pushed aside from his head, mussing up his dark hair in the process.
The air outside their fort was a bit colder, fresher. The lights were brighter and harsher and then McCoy looked around at the hotel room and remembered that there was this whole world outside of the small one they had created for themselves.
Jim stood up just as quickly and seemed to hold a hand out as though he wanted to grip McCoy's shoulder or something. But he must have thought better of it because the hand drifted away and slid into his pocket awkwardly.
"It didn't mean anything to me. Just too much alcohol on my behalf and aren't you always telling me that I'm just a sex-crazed kid who never means anything? Not even a kiss?" he smiled with a hint of his usual charm, but it faltered just the tiniest bit.
McCoy managed a chuckle that sounded more like choking and avoided Jim's eyes.
"Clearly it doesn't mean anything to you," he replied, gesturing at the hickey still prominently displayed on the taunt skin of Jim's neck.
Jim's smirk appeared again and he waved the comment aside.
"Redhead. Named Gaila. I needed a kiss at midnight. It's tradition, Bones."
The nickname fell from his lips with ease and McCoy wondered why that felt so good and why the image of Jim attached at the lip to a redhead felt so wrong.
It was just a physical mark that the kiss between the two men meant nothing and really, that should have comforted him.
"I don't blame you," he told Jim sincerely. Everything was still off-balance and the two men were maneuvering themselves around each other like they were afraid to make the first move. "It's really okay."
Something invisible seemed to collide in the air and all at once, Jim was standing at the doorway, waving good bye to McCoy as he walked down the hallway to the elevator to go back to his apartment.
In his left hand, he held the picture collage. In his right hand, he held the scissors. In his mind, he held the promise that Jim would be back from visiting Spock in just a month or two.
"I told him I'd see him over the Christmas break."
"Sounds fun. Have a good time."
McCoy wondered how long the awkwardness would last between them. If it were anyone else in the world, he had a feeling the awkwardness would be permanent. But this was Jim and Jim seemed to pull off the impossible and unbelievable all the time.
He was counting on that.
The apartment was dark when he finally arrived home just minutes before midnight. He hadn't realized just how long he had been at Jim's hotel.
Placing the gifts gently on his unmade bed, he turned on a single desk lamp to dimly light up the room. He wasn't in the mood for overhead lights and total illumination. Jim's emotional rollercoaster had taken him for a right and he felt more than a little punch-drunk from the whole night.
The hamburgers at the hotel seemed so very far away and McCoy busied himself with grabbing some crackers before rustling through the closet for that envelope of Joanna's pictures.
He sat on the bed, crackers and envelope resting beside him on the pillow, and removed the cardboard backing from the collage. Something on the cardboard caught his attention. Frowning, he held it closer to the light. In blue ink, someone had scrawled a message to him.
Just call her.
I'll bet she misses you as much as you miss her.
Merry Christmas, Bones.
-J
Yeah, McCoy thought to himself as he smiled at the messy handwriting, things'll be fine between us.
So, what do you think? For everyone that was trying to guess his profession, did I surprise you? I think you guys should review. It would be a really awesome birthday gift for me because it is officially after midnight and today (the 29th) is my birthday!!!!!
I hope you all enjoyed it! Thanks again for reading. :)