Chapter Text
Year Ten - June 2268
He is a doctor, not a poet. In fact there probably isn’t a universe, parallel or otherwise, in which he is a poet because Leonard Horatio McCoy has always been a man of science. Although maybe there are a handful of universes where he was at least more inclined to read poetry. And perhaps in those universes where he reads poetry instead of medical journals Leonard McCoy knows that it would end not in a bang, but with a whimper. Then again, maybe in those universes he believes that he could be The Passionate Shepherd writing to his Love. Where they could have just lived together, taking delight in an expanding universe’s wealth of beauty, nothing but possibilities, excitement, and effortless comfort ahead of them.
But who is he kidding? He has always the cynical Nymph. Who doubts and knows that flowers fade and things don’t always work out. Hell, he lost the damn planet the first time around. Now he is losing the stars as well. The real irony is that rather than relief to soon be back on solid ground indefinitely, all he feels is a notable emptiness in the pit of his stomach.
There had been a note along with an unassuming ring, without its companion chain like it should have been, waiting for him in their quarters. Typically the ring is kept around Jim’s neck, tucked away under his tunic the same way soldiers centuries ago might have worn dog tags – although Jim has those too. It was never a shout from the rooftops sort of thing, Jim and Bones had never been into that sort of spectacle or even conventions for that matter. And yet, the damn fool actually left a pen and paper sort of note on the now empty night table next to the bed, which seems to have stopped being theirs.
It isn’t an uncommon sight. Jim Kirk liked the feel of parchment and the smell of ink for certain things. He had always said that data bytes left something to be wanting when it came to the big stuff. That it was more personal to see the familiar loops of his handwriting, knowing that thought and texture went into writing it rather than a few mashed keys. Of course Bones had always just grumbled about the absurdity of paper notes even as they filled him with a sort of unnamable joy – not because he didn’t know what it was called, but simply because naming things made them more real and more readily lost.
However, today it has a million names and pokes at still tender wounds.
This letter will be the last that Jim would ever write him. Even knowing it was coming the realization hits him like an elephant gun leaving the past decade splatter across a bedroom that has lost its meaning.
“It’s over,” he says. McCoy isn’t sure how often he has repeated those words in the past couple of days. If he were being more honest he would expand that to the past couple of months because maybe it had always been coming to this moment. They had been drifting apart. (And maybe he can name the moment it started, but he doesn’t want to. Not yet.)
It still doesn’t truly sink in until he feels the weight of parchment and ink in his hands. Jim Kirk has always been the black hole in their celestial pair. McCoy orbiting around at faster and faster speeds to stop from falling in as Jim expanded consuming more matter it would be inevitable, it had always been. He would be swallowed whole. On some level he knew it, even as he sat down next to him on the shuttle and threatened to throw up on him, and without a doubt when he snuck him onto Enterprise. (Only in those moments he thought that would be a good thing and maybe in some ways it was.)
The delicate paper wrinkles in his hand as he presses his fist against his chest to cover the scars there. Those are the ones no one will see, much less understand. His heart has always been fragile. How many times in the 13 damn years of knowing the man-child did he proclaim that he was a broken man? Or that he had been so careful because he didn’t want to go through it all again? Jim was the one who leapt without looking, who pushed Bones to do the same.
(“C’mon Bones, think what you could miss out on!”
“Years of heartache,” had been the bitter drunken answer when pressed. It wasn’t even ironically funny that he was right.)
He collapses into the chair across the room, the half-made bed – once their half-made bed – not quite out of sight. A bed that now smells of Jim and something not entirely unfamiliar, something a bit too flowerily to belong to either man, but it isn’t just the scent. It is the stack of lies that came with it.
And his heart breaks just a little more because there had been good memories in that bed that feel ruined now. Early mornings of matted bed sheets, keeping arms and legs stuck together, chests rising and falling in sync ,or of late nights after even longer days falling together in breathy laughter and a playful glint that no man in his thirties should have. Blue eyes blown wide with every single emotion coursing through his body.
“God he was beautiful then.” The words slip from him like a eulogy that he is far too sober to recite. It’s not for the man, but for the quiet, hidden moments that only exist between the two of them.
For a moment he allows his mind to wander and for his imagination to put all the pieces of them back in this room. The pictures of two idiots in cadet reds (even if they weren’t technically cadets at that moment) a bit less sober than they ought to be for nine in the morning or them down in Georgia on the rare leave where he actually got to see his baby. In those moments the emotions and love he so carefully guarded shines from him in big honest smiles because all the pieces of his life fit together.
Now that life is a million pieces. McCoy is retreating back to Earth, to a daughter who only knew him through semi-regular calls and the random shore leave spread throughout the years. A daughter, now an adult in her own right, who has no real need for a father and certainly not one who had missed out on all the big moments of her life because he always loved Jim just a bit more. It’s hardly a life, but it is all he has.
Jim, who he had seen only briefly last night when he stopped by sickbay to speak with Chapel about her new posting for the next tour. It was like nothing had happened. Captain James T. Kirk was already making plans for the ship’s retrofitting, dreaming of the next big adventure because it would always be another five years for Jim Kirk. He was born in the stars and he would die there as well.
What really hurt was seeing how Jim could go on so easily without him when he was barely keeping it together to finish inventory before they docked at the Jupiter Station. Their eyes had met briefly as the Captain was leaving. Instead of love or even teasing all McCoy could see were the secrets that had put miles between them. The miles would eventually become light years without any effort. Not that the distance would make it any easier.
Jim would have the stars, Jocelyn the damn planet, and through some clause in his contract and nowhere else to go, he would begrudgingly have San Francisco and soon impressionable fourth class cadets and young doctors to teach about the dangers and diseases of space, to mold into future starship doctors and nurses. Joanna would be among them. Not that it would be enough. Nothing would ever be enough to fill this hole and to fully recover from this loss.
“Transporter room to McCoy,” chirps the comm. at his side forcing him to pause the self-pity just a moment. At least he doesn’t have to blink back tears or try to compose himself because there’s simply nothing left.
“McCoy here.”
“We’re ready to transport.” He can hear the murmurs that go unspoken. Leonard McCoy is many things, but stupid or ignorant have never been one of them. He knows that the pointedly polite Scotsman on the other end had a sizeable pool over when the Captain and the Doctor would stop playing house after one too many fights in the ready room. (Hell, if he was smart, he would have got in on it and at least made it out with a few credits.)
At least from here on out he won’t have to wade through the turbulent waters of shipwide gossip. It will still go on, just like Jim will, with all of his adventures, but it won’t be his anymore.
“Yeah. I’m on my way.”
He takes one last look around the room. Even empty this place is haunted with their past. McCoy knows it always will be, at least in his mind where he’ll carry it around forever. Although he’s sure among Jim’s endless plans are ones to paint over the ghosts this room holds like he’s painted over all the others in his life (because that was how Jim survived and fond the strength to keep going).
Finally, he removes the class ring that has sat on his pinky finger for so long it might as well be an extension of his person. He sets it down on the nightstand right next to Jim’s ring. They are pair. They belong together even if the people who wore them don’t anymore. His next words slip out in one long exhale. “McCoy out.”