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Jim was four years old when he first heard it. He’d been sitting in an uncomfortable chair too deep for his short legs, swinging them quietly and knocking his shoes together. His mother was up on stage at a podium in the Starfleet Academy Memorial Auditorium. He was waiting patiently in a stiff little suit and tie, hair brushed to the side and made to stay still with his mother’s magic hair cure of a wet comb and 20 minutes of persistence. She talked about his father while Jim, taking the day off from his first year of kindergarten to be there, sat staring at a thirty foot projection of his father’s face on the white screen behind his mom. He thought about how he’d never seen his father’s face before. Mom didn’t have any photos around the house, except for in That Room, and he wasn’t allowed in there. Sam, ten years old and angrily sitting beside him, kicked him in the shins and told him to stop swinging his legs.
His mother came back to their seats, her eyes red and cheeks damp. As she sat down beside him, he wrapped himself around her arm in a child’s attempt at comfort. She shrugged him off and wiped her eyes, leaving him feeling inadequate and apologetic.
“Do yourself a favour, boys,” she whispered, “and don’t fall in love.”
-
His mother had broken his four year old heart five years ago and he held onto it like an anchor. At nine years old, Jim was already on his sixth father figure of his short life and was reluctantly prepared to welcome an inevitable seventh on the day he heard it again. He’d been painting his model car – a tiny version of his father’s old red corvette – when Joe came storming into the house, cursing and slamming things around. Jim had considered hiding out under the table and waiting for him to go or calm down, even though Joe had never hit him – not like Brian or Lewis had. Instead, he waited nervously in his chair and tracked Joe’s every movement through the house with his ears.
When Joe came bursting into the kitchen and found Jim sitting silent and motionless at the table, he’d deflated with a sigh. Jim thought he muttered something like, “poor kids” and “barely even got a mother”. It made Jim frown, but then Joe had knelt down beside Jim and laid a hand on his shoulder. Jim’s face crumbled as he saw the same detachment on Joe’s face as he’d seen on five other men in his life.
“I have to go away now, Jimmy,” Joe had told him gently. “I’m not going to be around anymore.”
“Don’t go,” Jim begged in a tiny voice, ashamed of even asking. He knew Joe wasn’t changing his mind.
“I have to, buddy, I’m sorry. You know you’ll always be my favourite kid, right?” Jim nodded tearfully, flinging his arms around Joe’s solid neck and breathing in the scent of the man who’d been the only positive constant in his life for two years. “Oh, Jimmy. Do yourself a favour, kiddo. Don’t ever fall in love.”
And then Joe left him all alone at the table. Jim was starting to see a pattern.
-
At eleven, Jim was still bitterly angry about Joe and resentfully dismissive of Frank, his mom’s knew husband. Sure, over two years had passed, but Jim remembered what Joe had been like with crystal clarity. He remembered baseball and hugs and patient words when he acted out. Frank was none of those things and Jim was constantly aware of it. Frank shouted and swung at him when he was bad, sometimes even when he wasn’t. Frank tried to send Jim away all the time, to school or summer camp or his room, just so he didn’t have to spend time with him. Jim usually went quietly. He didn’t want to be around Frank, either.
Frank’s rage came to a head one day when he came home drunk to find Jim looking through his old box of military memorabilia. Jim was never supposed to touch that box, even though Frank left it in the corner of the living room and didn’t even tape it closed. He touched it anyways and took a thrill in the knowledge that he could get into serious trouble for it.
That day, Frank walked in with slurred words and clunking feet and Jim scurried away from the box at lightning speed. Frank saw him anyways and the smack of a grown man’s open fist on his ear was enough to knock Jim dizzy for a moment. When he gathered enough sense to scramble out of the house, cheek stinging and ears ringing, Frank shouted after him,
“Don’t you ever fall in love, kid! They always come with piece of shit kids in tow!”
Two hours later, Jim drove his father’s corvette into a canyon.
-
Nobody told Jim that love was toxic again until he was seventeen years old and dressed in ill-fitting worn out jeans and a t-shirt he’d stolen from the location of his latest hollow conquest. It was dirty, he thought, but his own had been torn and bloody and anything else had seemed like an improvement.
He’d been wandering aimlessly for an hour or so, killing time before heading home to an empty house after Frank left for the bar at his usual eleven o’clock. He’d stumbled upon his physics teacher from school, a pretty little woman with a shock of red hair that always swooped to the side and barely covered her ears. Her name was Josephine Belanger and she was the only teacher in his whole school not to look at his scruffy appearance, lack of effort, and poor attendance and decide he was just another good for nothing idiot without a drive for anything. She always spent extra time with him and talked him into attending class. He never missed a single one of hers.
She was the closest thing he had to a friend, he thought with a sour mouth. So when he’d found her crying on the curb outside an apartment complex downtown, surrounded by suitcases and a garbage bag of what looked like a collection of holoframes, PADDS, and various knickknacks, he’d stopped to help her. They went for coffee after loading her things into Jim’s beat up old pickup and he bought her a muffin as they sat awkwardly across from each other in a rundown café with watery lattes.
She’d explained how her girlfriend of thirteen years had come home and declared that she’d fallen in love with someone else and ordered her to leave their apartment, seeing as her name was on the lease. She’d shaken her head as she dabbed her eyes and Jim’s chest tightened as he prepared for the words he knew would be coming.
“Don’t ever fall in love, James,” she murmured, leaning in to kiss his cheek as she stood to leave. “They’ll leave you empty and alone and you’ll wind up regretting it.”
-
Five years of kicking around and breaking the law for a thrill later, Jim found himself on a shuttle of California in a seat beside a man who reeked of booze, cheap motels, and several months’ worth of bitterness. He’d taken the man’s flask and offered his name and his heart at the first look into his eyes. His stomach had knotted as the words he’d heard his whole life raced through his mind – don’t fall in love, don’t fall in love.
He wasn’t sure he hadn’t already.
Two years, a comfortable cohabitation, and a lifetime of confessions later, the man on the shuttle was Bones and he was Jimmy again, only on nights full of drink and honesty, and they were each other’s best friend. They spent their every waking moment together, save the time Jim spent trying to fuck away his growing adoration and Bones spent saving lives at the clinic. Bones was warm and funny and kind, everything Jim hadn’t had in his life before. He’d had glimpses of what this might be like, seen kindness in Miss Belanger and warm affection in Joe. He’d never had anyone worry constantly about him like Bones did.
Sometimes it felt like Bones loved him, too.
He was someone Jim was allowed to complain to, to seek comfort in, and to count on to be there. He was someone Jim was allowed to grow attached to and care for, which he did with fierce loyalty and dedication. Nobody messed with Bones and all of campus had learned that the day Jim had put a cadet in the emergency room following an insinuation that Bones was a washout drunk who wouldn’t make it past year one. Bones had ranted and yelled as he bandaged Jim’s knuckles, but he’d also squeezed the back of Jim’s neck when he was finished. To Jim, that was as good an indication of approval as he’d ever gotten. Bones cared about him.
And he was always there for Bones after difficult comm calls to his daughter and ex-wife. He always waited on the couch and listened only enough to catch tone and decide what the follow up to that particular conversation should be. Sometimes it was bourbon, sometimes it was a joke. But one day, Jim had listened and his stomach had tightened while his heart started to race. When Bones had first raised his voice, Jim’s heart had dropped out of his chest. Today wasn’t a joke day and he knew a drink wasn’t going to fix this one.
Bones had ended the comm call and stormed around their dorm, cursing about “full custody” and “no visitation” while Jim sank into panic silently on the couch, unable to move or speak for fear of crumbling to pieces.
Then Bones had turned to him and spat out bitterly, “Don’t ever fall in love, Jim. It’ll tear you apart.”
Jim closed his eyes over his tears and didn’t say a word.
Too late.