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Leonard tells himself it's nothing to worry about, and for a while he almost believes it, too.
He's never really hungry, these days, can't even remember how long it's been like that. Just that every time he's sitting down to eat he ends up staring listlessly at his tray. He thinks better get a sandwich to take back with me or I won't make it through gamma shift, but when it's time for bed the sandwich is forgotten, just like last time he had gamma shift, and the time before that.
He doesn't sleep well, of course. That goes with being CMO on this goddamn tincan, with a captain who hasn't met a toxic spore or unknown source of radiation he doesn't want to get up close and personal with, and a chief engineer whose instinct always seems to tell him to get as close as possible to whatever's exploding in engineering this time. Flying out of bed to the sound of the comm blaring sickbay to dr McCoy, please respond has become a regular occurrence, as has never-ending shifts standing over whoever-it-is-this-week mumbling don't you give up on me, don't you fucking dare. That sort of stuff would mess with anyone's sleep, really.
He's kind of cold, too, most of the time. No surprise, going on too little sleep. Nothing he hasn't done before, he cut his teeth in countryside emergency rooms with no back-up after all.
It's been going on for weeks when he gets out of bed in the middle of the night, shivering.
While he's waiting for the replicator to spit out another blanket he catches sight of his reflection in the mirror over his dresser. His eyes are shiny and suddenly he's drawn into memory where Dad's eyes are feverish and he'd just nodded off a little while and Dad's hoarse when he asks "Len, give me another blanket, will you" and Dad just wants for Len to help him, but neither of them know how. And then he's thirty-five again and it's been going on for weeks now and he can't kid himself any longer.
He still waits a few days before he goes to see Geoff. Tells himself that he knows damn well what's wrong with him, knows there's not a thing to be done about it. Then he realizes he's got people depending on him now and pretending nothing's wrong isn't gonna cut it. They have had a few quiet days after a drawn-out firefight with the Sargolians left them limping back to Earth for repairs.
If Geoff thinks it's odd that his superior abruptly asks for a scan he doesn't show it. He takes a long look at the first tricorder reading and immediately does another one. It's only when Leonard feels himself go cold that he realizes he had actually hoped that Geoff would find another explanation.
Geoff doesn't take a third reading.
"Well, from what I can tell it seems to be consistent with Xeno-"
Leonard cuts him off "Xenopolycythemia, yeah I know." All these years he'd been scared to end up like Dad, seems there's other things out there he forgot to worry about.
Geoff nods and puts his tricorder on the desk.
"How long's it been? It' just, your blood count isn't looking too good and as far as your weight's concerned ..."
"Don't. Please, I already know I've been fucking stupid about this. It's been way too long, can we leave it at that?"
"Sure. Sure, sorry." Geoff waves him over to a biobed and goes to get a hypo. "Timing's not so bad, after all. I mean, we'll be dirtside in two weeks and then we can see what Starfleet Medical has to say about it, huh."
There's an awkward moment when Geoff approaches with the hypospray and Leonard just stands in front of the biobed. It's just. He knew this would happen but a part of him is still protesting that he's not sick.
He actually flinches after he's had the shot and he's immediately ashamed of it, Geoff is always so careful with his patients.
He kind of doesn't feel like getting up, afterwards, it's like the fight's gone out of him now. Chapel materializes with a blanket and he's ridiculously grateful, finally almost warm as Geoff does this thing when he calculates aloud when Leonard should be due for his next shot, as a way of checking if Leonard's ok with it without actually asking him.
"You, ah, you want me to inform the Captain?" Geoff says and it's so, so tempting to leave him to deal with it, but the Captain is still Jim, and Jim with his abandonment issues and bone-deep loyalty is sort of Leonard's responsibility.
"Nah, I'll handle it, don't worry," he says, and Geoff looks so relieved it's
almost comical.
He tries to keeps it professional, asks Jim for a moment on the bridge and goes with 'medical issue, dr M'Benga will be taking over as CMO until we reach earth'. He tries to make a clean getaway while Jim is still processing, but the kid is fast and before he knows it Jim is gripping his arm and Leonard almost can't look at him, he's gone pale and wide-eyed as he says "Bones, what the hell?"
And yeah, he had been kind of stupid to assume there was any way to do this that wouldn't leave Jim worried out of his mind.
#
Earth is more or less as he remembered it, though it's as if everything is duller, the colors muted now that he's back with nothing to look forward to but suffering and likely ineffective treatments. Leonard looks at the sky and the sea and feels the earth beneath his feet and tries to tell himself to enjoy it. It doesn't work at all.
Calling Jocelyn is hard. After he's told her she goes quiet and does that thing where she pushes her hair behind her ears that she always did when she was worried. It's hard to think there was a time when he wouldn't have cared if he was hurting her, but they've reached a truce over the last few years and neither feels the need to pretend they don't care about each other any longer.
"Oh, Len," she says, after a while.
He feels his throat go tight. "Hey, no. Don't be nice to me."
That gets him a quick, quiet laugh. "Yeah, ok. Will you come here? To see Jo?"
Not when I'm ill, he thinks. I won't do that to her. "Sure, just. After I'm done with treatment, y'know."
Jocelyn looks like she wants to disagree, but she doesn't say anything.
After they say goodbye he sits in front of the monitor, a different contact info on the screen and his finger hovering over the button. It would be the right thing to do, but he can't bring himself to make the call. He tries to imagine saying the words and fails, argues with himself that Jim will probably spill his secrets to the admiralty anyway and ends up ashamed of his own cowardice. It's evening, and the room gets darker and Leonard just sits there. Then the damn shivering starts up again and he goes to bed.
He hides away in his Starfleet-assigned quarters and does something even a first-year medical student would realize is damn stupid, he types xenopolycythemia into the medical database and skims through the results. Turns out, there hasn't been much progress. He'd figured as much (if there has been any sort of positive findings Geoff would have found out already), and he's pissed at himself for feeling panicked about it.
#
He's not surprised when his next check-up reveals that the experimental treatment hasn't had any effect. Part of it is because it's Geoff evaluating him and Leonard can read him like an open book.
They go back to Starfleet Medical track, him and Geoff. They were often thrown together for lab assignments but kept their distance at first. Thinking back, Leonard knows he played up his country doc background, feeling ridiculously old and out of place among the young, hungry cadets on the med track. He had felt uprooted, a failure at life like he'd failed at marriage and fatherhood. During the winter break after their third term they both volunteered for a relief mission to Debnara V, where there was a nasty outbreak of Teralian flu, compounded by warring factions each trying to keep even basic resources from their enemies.
He knows now that it wasn't more than the usual clusterfuck, but at the time he was freaked out enough to question if he could keep doing this. Almost two weeks of mostly waiting around because it wasn't deemed safe enough to approach the affected areas, and when they finally got there the supplies weren't enough. The flu hit the kids hardest and he went from feeling hit by wave after wave of pain to wondering if he would ever care about a living being again.
When things had calmed down the medical cadets were given an extra weekend of leave which is how he and Geoff found themselves in the tourist quarters on Gardet V, weaving between bars and strip joints among crowds that seemed too cheerful to be real. Leonard found the noise too much and at the same time not enough to drown out the wails of the Debnaran parents that seemed to follow him from parsecs away.
He was thinking of how he could give Geoff the slip without seeming rude when Geoff pushed him into a bar and told him they were having gin.
The gin tasted foul but at least Geoff didn't seem to expect him to talk. They were both staring into their drinks when it struck Leonard that Geoff was just the sort of guy who took stuff like this too hard, kept it with him when the day was over. He'd had enough to drink that it seemed like a great idea to tell Geoff this, since he was a decent (ok, actually really good) doctor and it would be a damn shame if he ended up burnt-out.
He had ended up staring at Geoff while he worked out what to say and it took a while for him to realize that Geoff was talking, his accent more pronounced that usual.
"... but you have to let stuff go, you know. You're brilliant in the field, Leonard, you can do a lot of good in the fleet, but you can't keep taking things so bloody hard, you know. Things like, you know, when you" he swallowed and looked intently at his glass "when you lose people."
And before he could tell Geoff that he had it all wrong there was some sort of bar-fight and they were drunk enough to almost get lost on their way back to the hotel. They never talked about it again and though Geoff did a stint at the VSA they both stayed in Starfleet after all, and they did a lot of good, and if he's being honest with himself Leonard knows that they've both kept taking things too hard.
"We'll try something else, then," Geoff says and there's the hypospray again. It should all be so familiar, but it's as if Leonard's world has tilted and he tenses before having the shot. Jim would laugh his ass off. Or maybe not.
#
There's no immediate effect on his symptoms from the new treatment, though it brings a few unpleasant side-effects. Leonard doesn't tell anyone, which is of course monumentally stupid, but he just wants to be left alone.
That's when Jim comes to see him, of course. Leonard knows he must look terrible and sure enough, Jim pauses a second before greeting him, but thankfully he doesn't comment on it, just grins a little too wide and invites himself in.
Jim looks even younger out of uniform and he seems a little lost without his ship. He's grown as a captain, quickly and by necessity, but on this enforced shore-leave he seems restless and there's something of the old wild-child ways about him again.
"Scotty's working fast, man," he says, fiddling first with Leonard's book, then a PADD, then almost spilling his coffee. "They're calibrating the new warp-core, now, him and Spock. I'm thinking we'll be good to go in three weeks. Or, maybe four, Spock's real uptight about stuff like that." And just as Leonard expects Jim to launch into an entertaining impression of Spock faced with mr Scott's own particular brand of engineering on the go Jim is suddenly looking at him intently, every bit the captain once again.
"You'll be ok to go by then, won't you? M'Benga won't tell me if you're making any progress and I. Just, you'll be alright, huh?"
Three weeks until deep space. Leonard hasn't been outside in days. He makes sure to take a shower every day, and every day he's a little more exhausted afterwards.
He tries to muster the energy to play along, but he really can't. He leaves it too long and there's a look of pure, raw pain on Jim's face when he understands.
"Yeah, I'll be ready," he says because he's not ready for this and Jim just nods, clearly not believing a word. It hurts so fucking much, he always promised himself that he would be the one who didn't hurt the kid by leaving.
#
There's someone at his door the next day and he only answers because Geoff and Chapel would throw a fit if they thought he was incapacitated and force him to stay in the ward at Medical. He expects it to be Jim again, and ends up just standing in his doorway, staring incredulously at Admiral Pike. Christopher. Chris.
There's a lot of awkward shuffling before they end up seated on opposite sides of the coffee table, and the conversation goes in stops and starts. He can't help notice that Chris still favors his left leg, and stops himself just in time before he asks about it. At least Chris doesn't try to hide that Jim's already told him and Leonard feels at the same time stupidly grateful and ashamed.
"I was gonna comm you," he says, squirming under the calm, piercing gaze. He has no clue how to interact with Chris in this kind of situation. Over the years they have known each other as captain and cadet and, very infrequently, as two horny guys fumbling in the dark, both a little more desperate for touch than they wanted to let on. This is new, just sitting together in the daylight.
He knows why he never made the call, of course. Knows he couldn't bear repeating it again. He could never weasel out of telling Jim, his captain and friend, no more than he could hide it from Jocelyn and, by extension, Joanna. With Chris, he could allow himself to pretend that he could get away with it, make a clean break. Maybe it had been just him thinking they were on the way to something. Maybe to Chris the loss wouldn't hit so hard.
"Any progress? With the treatment, I mean," Chris asks, not quite able to keep it casual.
"Not really." It's almost a relief to admit it, but the feeling quickly evaporates as he sees Chris' face fall and Leonard is getting really tired of hurting people. People he loves.
Chris looks down at the table as if it holds the secrets of the universe.
"Can I stay?" he says at last.
Leonard's fairly sure that's a terrible idea. Better for them both to leave things here, give Chris a chance to get on with his life.
"Well, I had plans to spend the whole day sleeping and then throwing up for most of the night."
Chris just blinks, looking oddly vulnerable, though that's probably Leonard's exhaustion playing tricks on him.
"But yeah, you can stay." A small part of his good manners manages to fight its way through his fatigue and remind him how to treat his ... friends. "Uh, thanks. For offering."
As predicted, he does end up puking his guts out throughout the night. Accepting help gracefully has never really been one of his skills and by morning he's fairly sure he's driven Chris away for good with his bad temper. Except apparently not, because he's still there, making up the bed with fresh sheets when the old ones are sweat-soaked and settling in next to Leonard with a PADD full of messages from the admiralty. Leonard finds himself burrowing into Chris' side, trying to soak up some of his warmth. He can't even find the strength to be embarrassed and Chris makes no comment, just shifts his PADD to one hand and curls his arm around Leonard's shoulders.
#
At his next check-up, Geoff bites his lip as he sets the tricorder down and doesn't look at Leonard for a long while.
"I put in a call to the VSA," he says finally, as he gets the hypospray. "They've made a lot of progress on autoimmune stuff, so I figured it wouldn't hurt."
Leonard just nods, pressing his hand to his neck, where there's a tiny trickle of blood after the injection. He decides not to bring up the fact that the VSA is hardly back to its former glory only three years after losing their entire planet.
"You, ah, you planning on going down to visit Jo?" Geoff asks, carefully not looking at him and Leonard gets it immediately, this is Geoff's way of saying there's nothing more he can do.
"Yeah, sure," Leonard says.
They shake hands and Geoff promises to let him know the moment he hears from the VSA. He doesn't say he's sorry and Leonard finds he's grateful for that.
#
That night, after dinner that neither of them feels like eating, they end up sitting on the floor by the window in Leonard's apartment where you can see a tiny glimpse of the bay. Chris is leaning against the wall and Leonard in turn leaning against him. It's kind of uncomfortable but he can't bring himself to care.
"I have to go see Jo."
Chris just tightens his arms around Leonard. "Ok."
"This. I won't come back, I ..."
Chris draws a shuddering breath. "Don't say it."
#
They don't sleep much the night before he leaves for Georgia. Leonard sleeps in fits and starts and wakes just before dawn to find that they have both turned to lie on their sides, facing each other. Chris is looking at him, his face unreadable in the shadows as he runs his hand slowly along Leonard's side. Leonard shifts closer until their foreheads touch and for once he has enough sense to stay quiet. They stay like that until the sunrise lights the room and it's time to say goodbye.
#
It's early evening when he knocks on Jocelyn's door. That time of day there's a certain quality to the sunlight that instantly takes him back to being thirteen and allowed to stay out on his own a little longer. Leonard is sure there's no place in the galaxy, in the universe where the light is soft like on this road. Like it was all those years ago when he rode his bike to the lake with Jocelyn, all the time shivering although it wasn't very cold, almost afraid of the way he felt, being close to her.
And now he's back for the last time, because he promised. He's called to let her know he's coming, relieved she understood without him having to explain why.
She lets him in, just touches his cheek for a moment, runs her fingers lightly along the curve of his jaw like she always did before.
"Jo's still out," she says, and it's comforting to Leonard, that Jo gets her chance at this, staying out late, down at the lake or in the old bookshop in town, looking for the latest holocomics.
He's following Jocelyn into the kitchen, his legs like lead and the fever starting up again.
"You hungry?" Jocelyn asks and he can only shake his head, too wrung out to speak, to make up his mind whether he wants to sit down or crawl into bed.
Jocelyn's hand is at his cheek again and it's oddly comforting now, where just a few years ago the touch would have been painful, a reminder of hurt and loss.
"Go to bed, Len!" she says, and of course it's bed he needs, there's no way he can hope to stay upright on a chair.
He turns in the doorway, his mind already foggy but there's something he needs to ask of her.
"I'll tell her to wake you when she comes home. Seriously, Len, you're dead on your feet." He always knew he could count on Jocelyn to understand, she was there, after all, with his dad. From now on every moment with Jo matters. That's the way it is, towards the end.
#
He spends most of his days on Jocelyn's couch, spending as much time with Jo as possible, though he can't make himself tell her how bad things really are with him, and she eventually wants to go off with her friends. They have a good time, all things considered, watching holovids together while he listens to her stories about friends and school and swimming in the lake. He reads to her sometimes, she's too old for it, really, but she senses that it's something he wants and indulges him. Of course, he tends to fall asleep mid-chapter, but she stays with him and he'll wake with her beside him and whisper "love you, baby girl."
"M'not a baby, dad," she'll say but his girl is smart enough to know that something is wrong and she lets him hug her.
#
He's dozing when the doorbell rings, real sleep having become increasingly difficult over the last few days. The voices drift through the house and at first he doesn't react, just thinking that it's probably Angela and Lucia, come to lure Jo away for ice-cream. It's only after a while that he realizes the voices are too grown-up, too dark and - is that Jim?
He stumbles into the kitchen and sure enough, there's Jim, listening intently at something Jo is telling him. And Geoff and Chapel, both of them grinning like loons, and Chris, who's making small talk with Jocelyn who looks extremely bewildered. Probably due to the very ancient-looking Vulcan who sits calmly at the kitchen table. Leonard's starting to feel pretty bewildered himself.
"Leonard," Geoff says, and if Leonard didn't know better he'd say Geoff is on the verge of giggling and there's something profoundly disturbing about that. "Leonard, this is ambassador Selek of New Vulcan, and he has some very interesting news for you."
"Ok," he says with all the dignity he can muster given the fact that his legs are about to give out on him and he has to sit down rather abruptly. "Ok, someone tell me what's going on right this minute, dammit."
For years to come, several of the people closest to Leonard will tease him mercilessly over the fact that when rescue came, he was extremely grouchy about it.
#
Leonard spends most of his remaining shore-leave taking Jo on a trip, trying to store up as many moments with her as possible to last him through the remaining mission. She's a little clingy, now that everything is over, and he lets her. Hell, he's a little clingy himself.
He only sees Chris the last night before the Enterprise is due to take off. They have dinner and he ends up feeling awkward all over again. Afterwards they go for a walk by the sea. They don't talk much and they stay quiet after they've found a place to sit on rocks near the edge of the water. The water's dark but they pretend to watch it and just sit for a long time, shoulder to shoulder.
"I'm sorry," Leonard says. "Sorry I was a pain in the ass, before."
He feels Chris shrug. "Nah, you weren't that bad."
Leonard knows he was, really, but he's not about to argue.
"Two more years on the mission, huh," Chris' voice is completely neutral. He'll never say he misses space, he doesn't need to. It's in his eyes every time Jim talks about the ship.
"If we're lucky, yeah."
"You'll be lucky." It's not wishful thinking, and the way he says it, Leonard almost believes that Chris is able to bestow luck or its opposite on Starfleet's flagship. Bastard's got that commanding air about him.
"Let's head back," Leonard says. "Rock's making my ass numb."
Chris laughs quietly, but he gets up and extends his hand to Leonard. He misjudges the distance in the dark and ends up stumbling towards Chris and sort of leaning into him. When Chris presses a kiss on his temple it's so soft and quick he nearly doesn't feel it.
Leonard wants to say something, but can't for the life of him figure out what. They head back towards the city in silence, and it feels enough. He will leave for space and Chris will stay. They've been lucky so far and he'll take what he can get.
End