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Jim hadn’t drank like this in a long time. Not since he’d met Bones, really. Since after the first few times he found his way, absolutely plastered and stumbling, to Bones’ doorstep, because it was almost morning and his apartment was closer, or Jim had lost his keys, or he didn’t want to wake his roommate, or whatever excuse his fucked-up brain would come up with to cover up the fact that he felt safe with Bones, plain and simple. That was one of the first things Jim knew about him, that he was safe.
Safe, and kind, and maybe a little bit gullible, and easy to manipulate sometimes, but he always covered it up with a few layers of sarcasm. He was strong, too, determined and driven and smart and trustworthy. And he never lied to Jim, not even once. So when he woke up that morning sprawled out in Bones’ bed, so hungover that it felt like he’d crawled up from hell, to the sound and smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen, and sat down at the table and heard Bones tell him that he was drinking himself to death, he actually listened. It sure wasn’t the first time someone in Jim’s life had told him that, but it was the first time he’d listened. They hadn’t even known each other for a year by then.
“I know how to handle myself,” Jim had protested, weakly. They both knew it was just for show. He’d been gripping the edge of the table until his knuckles went white as his head throbbed and a wave of nausea rolled through him.
“I’m sure that’s what Icarus thought too,” Bones said back. Aspirin appeared from--somewhere? And a glass of water, and a steady hand supporting his neck while he swallowed the pills. “Except he didn’t know how hot the sun could burn and how easy the wax could melt.”
“God, enough with the metaphors,” Jim gritted out, but he felt warm, underneath it all. Safe at this table, in this kitchen, like he always did with Bones. Taken care of. So he listened.
But Bones wasn’t taking care of him, now. He was here, of course, it was his damn wedding, and Jim was his best man and he was four years older and he certainly didn’t need looking after . Bones was supposed to move on, now. He’d have someone else to take care of, to live with, and maybe they’d start a family, and Jim would move on too. He would be fine. They would become friends who didn’t live together anymore, who didn’t hang out so much because he and Jocelyn didn’t have enough in common, who gradually stopped replying to text messages because they got too busy. And Jim would be fine. He’d have to be.
That could wait until tomorrow, though, because thirty minutes into the wedding reception Jim realized that he could definitely start his journey with being fine by first being drunk, and then by being hungover. And Bones would be too busy with the love of his life, going on his honeymoon and living happily ever after, to tell Jim he was acting reckless or pull out that fucking Icarus metaphor again. It was the perfect plan.
Jim vaguely remembered camping out at the open bar, feeling stiff and hot and like his suit was too tight, and making excruciating small talk with McCoy relatives who pretended to recognize him, coworkers from the hospital who only remembered him from years ago when he used to show up post-bar-fight to the ER so Bones could patch him up (or sit by his bedside once he clocked out, if he’d been too busy that night to oversee Jim’s injuries himself). The realization dawned on him, winded him so bad he felt like he needed to chase it down with a shot of something, that the only person he really knew here was Bones, and that he didn’t belong here.
After that he took two shots in a row and said to hell with small talk, and the only thing he remembered in between then and when dinner started was telling Bones’ great-aunt about the last one night stand he’d had with some guy who had a thing for feet.
And then it was time for dinner. And then it was time for Jim, the best man--at this wedding that he’d intentionally drank enough to forget he was the best man--to get up and give a speech.
Jim was an idiot.
A big, huge, reckless, stupid, irresponsible, damn fucking idiot.
He gulped down half of the glass of water in front of him as he watched the microphone get passed his way, hoping to god that the cold water would at least help him to sober up, like, a fraction . It didn’t, really. And then he was standing, and he didn’t remember when he stood up, or who had passed him the mic, finally, and he was standing above a sea of Bones’ polite southern relatives and well-to-do coworkers and healthy, stable friends who were about to see just how much of a fuckup the so-called best man was. They would probably all leave the wedding wondering why the hell Bones had picked him, Jim thought. And he turned, and saw Bones, sitting at the long table at the end of the hall, flanked by his loving mother and gorgeous, perfect bride and a million flowers and twinkling lights.
He looked...happy. His face was flushed and he was smiling so easy, like he was drunk, too, except Jim knew he probably hadn’t had a sip of anything all night. That was just what happy people with good lives and a good family and good friends looked like, without needing to drink.
Jim swallowed hard, and lifted the mic to his face.
“You’re probably wondering why I gathered you all here today,” he started, and this was fine, this was going to be fine, it was the kind of dumb joke everyone had been expecting, even Bones, who rolled his eyes and sighed and smiled in a way that made Jim’s chest feel tight and his suit feel tighter. The laughter settled and Jim felt terrified knowing that he had to keep talking.
“It’s to talk about Bones, obviously--I mean--Leonard.”
The name felt weird and foreign on his tongue.
“That’s how the rest of you know him, anyway. Leonard McCoy, or Doctor McCoy, or, as his lovely great-aunt was explaining to me just now, Lenny .”
Jim watched as Bones flushed just a little bit darker, embarrassed but laughing as Jocelyn nudged his shoulder and wiggled her eyebrows. God, she was so beautiful, and perfect for him. She was fierce and loyal and hardworking, and she worked crazy hours at the courthouse like Bones did at the hospital, and they loved each other, and her blonde hair shined and her eyes sparkled under the lights.
This was fine. Jim could do this.
He was too drunk to remember if he’d even planned out what he was going to say. He couldn’t even remember how long these speeches were supposed to be, but he’d probably googled it earlier, when he was sober and determined to do a good job and pretending that the dread in his stomach was about Bones’ big wedding uncovering his own family trauma, and not about Bones’ big wedding, period.
“Bones is just...what I call him. And he hates it, but I trained him to respond to it anyway. It’s kind of a long story, which we don’t need to get into right now.”
Jim could feel the judgement started to cloud the air around him, like someone had turned on a smoke machine. He was already fucking it up, wasn’t he. Three sentences in and he’d fucked it up.
He tugged at his tie to get the collar loose around his neck before he choked to death.
“But what we can get into is...Bones and Jocelyn. That’s what best man speeches are about anyway, right? I’m supposed to get up and say all this bullshit about how Jocelyn was the woman who finally tamed my crazy dudebro womanizing best friend, and then everybody laughs. I think that’s how it goes in the movies.”
People laughed, then, like they were supposed to, but Jim couldn’t help but feel like it was coming from the wrong place, that their smiles towards him were all fake, that Bones was mad at him, even though on the outside he looked relaxed and happy.
“But the truth is: Jocelyn didn’t have to tame him. Bones was already perfect when she found him. They’re two perfect people who found each other, I mean look at them!”
More laughter, as Jim gestured towards them in a way that definitely revealed (if everybody didn’t know by now) that he was really, really drunk.
“That’s how it’s supposed to be, you know? You can’t love anyone until you love yourself. Bones told me that, and I was like, bull- shit , you know, but he proved it. He went and found somebody who didn’t hate herself, and now they’re getting married. That’s what love’s about, I guess.”
Now everyone definitely knew he was drunk. Even Bones started watching him with less amusement in his expression and way more concern. It made Jim sick to his stomach. Here was Bones on his day when he was supposed to have the time of his life with the love of his life , and he was forced to worry about Jim again. What he needed to do was end this fucking speech before it got any worse.
What he did, in reality, was keep talking. Stupid, heavy, inappropriate words that came out like vomit and hurt his throat twice as bad. His voice started to get shaky as he said,
“I know it sounds like I still think love is bullshit, but I don’t. I just make these jokes to cover up the reality that maybe it’s not for me. I mean, if you have to love yourself first, then it’s definitely not for me.” Jim tried to laugh and it came out almost as pathetic as his words. “Because I hate myself. And maybe Bones is right, and I can’t love people the same because I hate myself, but I still tried my best.”
Jim couldn’t stop staring at Jocelyn, at this perfect human, with her hand resting gently over Bones’, her eyes full of kindness, her heart full of love. All of these things Jim would never have.
“Jocelyn,” he started, trying to find that comedic edge he’d had in his voice when he started, and failing, “You hit the jackpot, you know. I hope I can be like you. Not a lawyer, obviously, I’m too stupid for that, but I mean--I hope that if I ever get the chance, like you had, with someone like him , that I don’t fuck it up next time and end up giving the speech that I’d rather be the subject of.”
Jim was hit with another realization that almost made his legs give out, the kind that there was no chaser in the world for. And he froze. He stood completely still, trapped in a room full of people he didn’t know, so terrified that his blood ran cold, or maybe stopped running at all, because he was in love with his best friend.
Most everyone in the room just looked confused, like they didn’t know what this drunk man was babbling on about. Jocelyn’s forehead creased in concern, and her hand tightened on Bones’, whose face held only the same fear that Jim felt. His eyes completely wide, mouth hanging open, that happy flush in his cheeks gone, because he knew exactly what Jim had been trying to say.
In a second Jim felt his eyes well up with tears, and even though every word he said only seemed to make it all that much worse, he still brought the mic back to his mouth to say,
“I have to go.”
And he went. Out of the banquet hall and back to their apartment where he could rip off his stupid tux that felt too tight, the one Bones had bought him because he’d just been fired and couldn’t afford it, another testament to the fact that Bones was Jim’s best friend , and Jim was just Bones’ problem.
He packed whatever he bothered to remember, which wasn’t much, considering he was drunk and crying and hardly coherent when he’d done it, and he forgot his toothbrush and he’d accidentally packed Bones’ leather jacket, and not his own, but once he slammed the door behind him he couldn’t bear to turn back again. He kept going, wherever his feet would take him, as far as possible from the wedding he’d just ruined, from the best friend he’d just lost, from the love he never even knew he had. The love he’d probably never feel again, if he was being realistic.
He ended up at the bus station, and then on a bus, and when he stumbled out in the morning, squinting in the light, as hungover as he deserved to be, after what he’d done, and entirely overwhelmed by the heat and the newness and the crowd of people around him, he wasn’t even able to think straight enough to promise himself that he’d never go back. It just became a fact of life from that point on.
-
Jim and Bones had never dated. There was never anything romantic between the two of them, unless Jim was overthinking it and reading between the lines of all of his memories, looking for whatever it was that had made him fall so hard without knowing it. That train of thought usually happened between the hours of midnight and four am.
He started going to bed earlier.
It was the intimacy, he decided. Because friends could be intimate without being romantic or sexual. Friends could sleep in bed next to each other and it wasn’t romantic, it was because Bones always complained about his back when he tried to sleep on Jim’s couch, or because he worked so much that his apartment didn’t even have a couch, and when they had moved in together, well, it was normal enough that they didn’t need to make excuses for crashing in each other’s beds every so often. There had been nothing romantic about those nights, especially when they turned into mornings where Bones woke up to Jim’s elbow in his side and promptly kicked him to the floor, or Jim’s first words of the morning in his sleep-heavy voice were god, take a shower, you smell like a hospital and not in a clean way.
Friends could be intimate, Jim just had never known that before he met Bones. Friends could spend hours talking, late into the night until the sun came up, saying all the things they’d never told anyone else. They could carry each other home after one of Jim’s ridiculous night-out plans that inevitably ended with the words never again (and then happened a few more times). They could pass entire days together, separating only to shower or sleep before inevitably ending up at each other’s side again. They could get confused for a couple, while shopping or eating out or traveling together, and instead of freezing up, wiggle their eyebrows at each other and lock elbows and dissolve into laughter. Friends did all of those things, Jim just didn’t know because he’d never really had a friend before Bones.
But Bones was good, and healthy, and normal, and he had definitely had best friends before Jim and would probably have them after. Better friends, even. Friends who wouldn’t ruin his wedding day with their broken heart and fucked up feelings and stupid, drunken tears.
Treating what happened like a breakup turned out to be the best thing, though, even though they had never dated. Jim removed Bones from all of his social media, before just deleting his accounts, because without Bones messaging him or tagging him in posts there was really nothing to do on those websites, anyway. He got rid of all the clothes that he’d bought with Bones, or that Bones had bought for him, which turned out to be almost everything he’d packed when he left Atlanta. So he went out and bought new clothes by himself like an adult. The only thing he couldn’t get rid of was Bones’ jacket, taken by accident. He let it sit in the bag with everything else, bound for Goodwill, and assumed that after enough mornings and evenings walking past it and seeing the sleeve of Bones’ leather jacket hanging out it would stop hurting him so bad to remember that he’d never see that sleeve again, that some stranger would buy it for 16.99 and the memory of the man who wore it so often would be gone.
He pulled the jacket out, finally, and hung it up in the back of his tiny closet, in his tiny apartment, with the rest of his pitiful clothes, and immediately felt better.
It took months before he actually wore it, partly because he’d moved to Tucson, Arizona on a drunken, emotionally-charged whim and it was hot as shit out here, but mostly because it smelled like Bones and it was worn to the shape of Bones’ shoulders and somewhere, a couple states away, Bones had packed up his apartment after the honeymoon and definitely noticed his jacket missing, along with Jim’s duffel bag and a strange assortment of his stuff. When he finally did, a couple days into his first Arizona winter, he felt stupid and pathetic and desperate because putting it on made him feel calm and safe in the way only Bones ever could.
The feeling was dulled by his second Arizona winter, and by the third, sometimes he made it hours into the day before he remembered that the jacket wasn’t actually his, when he took a break during work and stood outside and pulled it tighter around himself and felt the way the shoulders still fit a little too loose.
But the memory didn’t always make him sad. Sometimes it just made him a little bit nostalgic, or a little bit reflective, and sometimes he felt nothing at all.
Today was a more reflective day, apparently, because he remembered that Bones used to wear this jacket and he could almost remember the scent of the cologne he used to wear too, mixed with the shampoo he used, and that hospital-glove smell, and all of a sudden he was spaced out staring up at the clear afternoon sky and somewhere, someone was calling his name.
“Jim. Wake up, kid.”
Jim blinked and shook his head a little bit, turned over his shoulder to see Pike leaning against the frame of the back door, a grease stain on his cheek that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago when Jim stepped out for a break. Or maybe it had been a little longer than a few minutes already. He was wiping his hands with one of those little red towels he ordered for the shop in bulk and shoved it in his back pocket so he could cross his arms over his chest.
“Where were you just now?”
“Nowhere,” Jim said, turning around completely. Pike raised his eyebrows, but he was more understanding than his body language gave off. He always was. It was like he’d taken one look at Jim when he’d walked into his auto repair shop with an ever-broken motorcycle, bought with the savings from 6 months of soul-sucking temp jobs, and knew exactly what was going on in his head.
He’d fixed it for free and then, when he came back a few weeks later with another problem, taught him how to fix it himself, and then walked out with him to the curb and offered him a job.
“Yeah, I can tell. You don’t have to turn your brain back on yet, just come hold the wrench for me a sec.”
Jim nodded, already coming back to the real world, and followed him inside where it smelled like oil and metal and it was warm enough that he could leave Bones’ jacket on a hook in his locker for the rest of the day.
He liked the work. More than he’d liked engineering school, or the series of jobs that had followed where he inevitably ended up pissing off one of his superiors and getting fired, or being pissed off by one of his superiors and quitting. By the time he made it to Tucson and sobered up enough to remember that he couldn’t stay in a Motel 6 forever and he had to get a job, he wondered if he had just chosen the wrong profession, back in Georgia.
He’d been at least half-right, though, it turned out.
A few hours later he was lost again, in an entirely different place, staring up into the underside of someone’s Volvo, when one of his two coworkers (probably Scotty) kicked his leg.
Jim grabbed the fender and wheeled himself out from under the car to glare at--yep, it was Scotty.
“Can I help you,” Jim deadpanned, and Scotty just smiled down at him, hands on his hips, covered in enough dark grease stains on his face and hands that he could have passed for a coal miner.
“Somebody’s here to see you, if you can bear the thought of me taking over.”
Jim looked past Scotty, then, to the visitor in question, and felt a grin breaking out over his face. He pushed himself up to his feet fast enough that he almost hit his head against the fender.
“Be my guest,” he threw over his shoulder and crossed the shop in a manner of seconds, vaguely hearing Nyota saying hi, Jim from where she was standing talking to Pike before he was face to face with her cherry-red Porsche. He wiped his hands on his jeans so he could slide them across the hood, as reverently as the first time she’d driven it into the shop.
“I think he’s the only man I’ve met who would go straight for the car instead of saying some cheesy line to me first.”
Jim turned over his shoulder to stick his tongue out at her.
“Hey, you’re not allowed to complain about that,” Pike cut in, “we work hard to make women feel comfortable here. Speaking of which, you want a soda?”
Nyota smiled, shrugged her blazer off and sat down at one of the chairs Pike kept dirt-and-grease-free for clients. She must have come straight from the office, although she looked no more powerful in a skirt and heels than she did in the skinny jeans she usually showed up in.
“Diet Coke, please,” she told Pike, and he gave her a thumbs up and ducked into the office.
“I was just too distracted by your car when you first came in, you know. I was ready to shoot my shot when you came back except the car pulled into the garage and your terrifying boyfriend stepped out of it instead.”
She leaned forward, propping her elbow on her crossed knees and her chin on her hand. At no point did she try to argue with the word terrifying being used to describe her boyfriend.
“You should have seen the look on his face!” Scotty shouted from underneath the Volvo, “It was like he’d thought the man had come to kill him!”
“Too bad I missed it.” She accepted the soda--poured into a glass, no less--from Pike, who shifted his focus, then, to her car. He clapped his hands together.
“Let’s get that oil changed, shall we, Jim?”
Jim winked at Nyota just to see her elegant eye-roll in response. And then he turned back to the car. God, he really loved this car.
“It would be my pleasure.”
And it was, but not in a weird way, or anything. Nyota came in every three months, like clockwork, to get the oil changed, and sometimes in between for small fixes, and it never failed to cheer him up. Working on her Porsche felt like Christmas morning, to begin with, but he also enjoyed the way she sat in one of the nice chairs at the back of the shop, instead of leaving and coming back, and joked around with the three of them, talked about her job, sipped leisurely on her Diet Coke. Sometimes they would finish up and she’d stick around just a little longer anyway, keeping the conversation going. Once she brought donuts.
It was the kind of thing Jim would have missed out on, in his old life. Back when he was miserable all the time and so preoccupied with his own self-hatred that he passed up perfectly good opportunities to get to know people. He’d really only had Bones, in Atlanta. That was why he felt so utterly alone at his wedding. He only had one friend in the world, and he’d been forced to watch him choose someone else.
But Jim was trying to stop thinking pitiful shit like that about himself. He was trying to stop thinking about himself, in general. As soon as he did, it was like a switch was flipped, and all of a sudden he started making friends. First Pike, who wasn’t so different from Bones in the beginning, and had probably been drawn to Jim out of humanitarian obligation more than anything else. Then Scotty, who had been easy to befriend, all it took was trying (and failing) to drink him under the table one night after hours in the half-lit shop, with the garage door open to the busy street. The embarrassment alone from how drunk Jim got, and then how hungover he was, was apparently enough to solidify a bond with his crazy Scottish coworker one week after they’d met.
Nyota he only saw sporadically, but she counted, too. Jim was learning that friends could come in lots of different forms, and they still mattered even if they didn’t devote their whole lives to helping you. And they still made you feel better at the end of a long day.
Jim rode home on his now functional (and only sometimes unpredictable) motorcycle, feeling okay and almost forgetting how much he missed Bones. Maybe their relationship hadn’t been the healthiest, maybe Jim had relied on him too much and didn’t bother finding a support system outside of him, maybe he’d set himself up to fail as soon as Bones met the person he actually wanted to spend his life with.
Icarus , Jim thought. That was who Bones used to compare him to. He couldn’t seem to get it out of his head, both the metaphor and the feeling that morning of his strong, steady hand against the back of his neck as he helped him swallow an Advil. As he took care of him, like he always did.
He drove a little faster and felt the collar of his jacket fly up against his neck and jaw and wondered if it was time to buy a new jacket.
The street of his apartment building--and the building itself--was crowded and busy when he got there. It was a Friday night, after all, and as much as Jim didn’t miss his corporate engineering jobs he used to work in Georgia, working at a body shop had the kind of salary that landed him in college-student apartments. At least it wasn’t a dorm, even though some of the students still treated it like a dorm.
Jim caught Pavel in the stairwell (which was only a little quieter than the hallways were at this time of night), textbook open in his lap, staring at the concrete wall in front of him.
“Doing alright, there, buddy?”
“I want to die,” he said neatly, in his very thick Russian accent, with his consistently unsettling level of nihilism even though he was only nineteen, and working on his Master’s.
“I thought your last final was today.”
“It was supposed to be,” Pavel groaned, rubbing his eyes, “Except that the professor could not make it, and had to reschedule for Monday, but my brain was already prepared to forget everything at three pm, and now I forgot everything.”
“Ah.”
“And I want to die.”
Jim squatted down next to him, the two of them taking up most of the space on the landing, and patted him on the shoulder. He groaned again.
“Does studying in the stairwell help you remember, or something?”
“My flatmates are partying. Because none of them have an exam on Monday which they are going to fail.”
“Hey, I’m sure you won’t fail it, the information is probably still in your brain somewhere if you just relax.” Jim had gotten pretty good at talking the kid through his more dramatic moods, which happened pretty rarely. More often than not Pavel was extremely chipper and ready to talk Jim’s ear off about his studies as soon as he spotted him in the hallway, or the stairs, or that one time when they ran into each other at the pharmacy. A lot of his pep talks were ripped from the first year he’d known Bones, when he was finishing his bachelor's degree at Georgia Tech, but with less idioms and metaphors and less bad words.
“You can come over to my place to study whenever you need to, you know, even though it probably won’t be that quiet. It’s more comfortable than the stairs, at least.”
Pavel sighed a little bit and dropped his hands from his face, leaned back to rest his head against the wall. He stared up at the banister for a second before finally closing his eyes, looking very tired and maybe even younger than 19.
“I did go to wait by your door for you, but someone is already there. I thought you would be busy.”
“What.”
“With him. The guy you’re expecting.”
“Who’s him?”
“I don’t know, he didn’t talk to me.”
“I’m not expecting anyone.”
“Well maybe he left already, he was in a bad mood. I thought he was going to yell at me. That’s why I had to escape to the stairs.”
Jim’s first thought was Pike , except Pike wouldn’t have yelled at Pavel, he probably would have invited him inside Jim’s apartment for him, cooked him dinner, and maybe for good measure he would have adopted Pavel, too. His second thought was Scotty, who had probably never been in a bad mood in his life. And that was pretty much all the men Jim knew in the city of Tucson. He supposed that somehow, it could have been Nyota’s terrifying boyfriend, except never in a million years was Jim going to tell that man where he lived .
And then he had another thought that made his blood run cold.
“Pavel what...what did he look like.”
“Brown hair, kind of muscle-y, tall I guess but I don’t know . I wasn’t there to study this man. He had a suitcase--”
Jim jumped to his feet so fast his vision went spotty, and he couldn’t even wait for it to clear again before he was climbing the rest of the stairs to his floor, as if on autopilot, as if his body found out that Bones was here and decided to go find him before Jim had even made his mind up about it yet. His mind was completely blank, actually, and maybe he was going into shock, or having a stroke, he didn’t fucking know. All he knew was that he couldn’t hear anything over the pounding in his ears and he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking and still, still , his feet kept going.
Jim had imagined, a few times, when he was really spiraling, what it would be like to see Bones again. More than a few times. He knew the worst-case and the best-case and the impossible scenarios, one of which was the idea that Bones would come to him , let alone bother to find out where he was.
Nothing could have prepared him for the second when he turned the corner and saw him, still there, sitting against the wall between Jim’s door and a suitcase. It was like Bones’ body could sense him there, too, or maybe he was breathing so heavy or shaking so hard that it caught his attention even over the noise of a dozen different college parties. He lifted his head up from the slouch he was in, arms crossed over his bent knees like he was trying not to take up too much space.
The two of them had been in this position before, but the roles were always reversed. It was always Jim who waited outside his door for Bones to come home, and Bones who came to pick up the pieces and put out the fires and make everything right again, even if he’d just gotten off a 48 hour shift.
Jim didn’t even know what to do. They met eyes and it pulled at his heart in all the wrong ways. So he just stared back at Bones, who looked tired and determined all at once, whose eyes betrayed him a little bit with the sadness and the nervousness they held. It was like Bones had come all this way and was still worried Jim wasn’t going to let him in. And then Jim remembered the fact that Bones hadn’t even tried to talk to him in almost three years, not once, and he wasn’t so sure if he was going to let Bones in, either. He swallowed hard and reached for his keys.
Bones watched him carefully as he walked towards the door.
“I think I might throw up,” Jim said as he turned the lock, and then he walked inside and left the door open behind him.
-
He didn’t throw up, but he took a shower, and lingered in the bathroom, staring down at the sink and trying to stop his heart from beating so fast. Nothing seemed to help. Finally Jim just gave up and went to find a pair of sweatpants and maybe find Bones, if he’d followed him inside after all.
Bones was in the kitchen, sitting at Jim’s tiny two-chair table. His suitcase was on the floor next to his feet. He still had his shoes on. They locked eyes again, for a moment, and Jim waited again for Bones to say something. When he didn’t, he just let out a long exhale and went to the fridge to reheat some leftovers.
“I had to ask your mom where you were,” Bones said over the sounds of tupperware and dishes and the microwave running. Jim let out a pathetic little huff of a laugh.
“Could’ve asked me.”
“Didn’t know if you were going to respond.”
Jim pressed his palms against the cool countertop, steadying himself, and looked over his shoulder at Bones. He had his arms crossed. Jim almost wanted to laugh at that too, legitimately, because Bones was acting like he was about to deliver a lecture to him, when this was Jim’s apartment, Jim had let him inside, and this time it was Bones who had showed up without warning looking like he’d been to hell and back.
“I don’t like being ambushed.”
“Consider it payback.”
The microwave beeped and Jim was saved from having to spend too much time thinking about all of the times he had ambushed Bones, way back when. Instead he angrily stirred his 3-day-old pasta, standing in the middle of the kitchen in his sweatpants, too stubborn to sit down to eat at his too-small table where he would have no choice but to look at Bones and feel their knees knocking together every few seconds.
“I think we’ve already established that our friendship wasn’t healthy.”
“Oh did we establish that, Jim? Because all I remember is you running off before we even got the chance to have that conversation.”
Jim scoffed and shoved a forkful of pasta in his mouth.
“You could sit to eat, you know.”
“This is my house. I’ll eat how I want.”
Bones raised both hands in surrender, and there, in his face, he was almost smiling that same fond little smile. Jim had forgotten about it, the face he made when Jim was being stubborn and Bones refused to admit that he found it endearing. Just seeing it was like a punch to the gut. All of a sudden Jim knew that he either needed answers or he needed Bones to get the hell out, as fast as possible.
“Why did you come here,” he asked, and that little bit of a smile was gone from Bones’ face in a second. “If you wanted to bitch at me for ruining your wedding you could’ve come sooner than three years after the fact.”
“I don’t know why I assumed you were gonna be happy to see me.”
“Well shit, I’m sorry Bones, maybe if I knew you were coming,” Jim said flatly, punctuated it by taking another bite. “You haven’t said shit to me in three years,” he said with his mouth full.
“Yeah, neither have you. It works both ways, you know.”
“You wanted me to call first?”
“You sure as hell could have.”
“Am I supposed to believe,” Jim started, and he couldn’t decide if he was mad at himself or mad at Bones, “that you were waiting by the phone this whole time for me to call you? I know you’re not stupid, you think I was gonna reach out to you after what I did?”
Bones tilted his head to the side, analyzing him.
“After what you did? Fine, you keep bringing it up, you wanna talk about what you did? You told me you were in love with me during your best man speech at my wedding, ” Bones deadpanned, and his voice was so flat he may as well have been bringing up any of Jim’s past mistakes, like the time he’d left the refrigerator door open in their apartment for an entire workday. “How did you think I was going to react to that?”
“I don’t know,” Jim spat out, “And it doesn’t matter, anyway, because you didn’t react, and you didn’t talk to me for--”
“You ran away !” He raised his voice. The sound of it made something in Jim break open, not because he was being yelled at, but because he could hear, below the anger, that Bones was hurt. Jim had hurt him.
“You ran away without saying goodbye! You didn’t give me a chance to react, Jim, you didn’t give me a chance to do fucking anything !”
They had to take a break, then, for a few seconds. Jim tried to take a breath, to stop clenching his hands into fists. He looked at Bones, red in the face, who immediately darted his eyes away to stare holes into the table. It was weird, to fight like this. Not just because they hadn’t fought--or spoken --in years, but to have Bones sitting at the table, still, lower than him, a guest in his apartment; Jim felt an odd sort of satisfaction that this was actually a fair fight, not just a lecture from Bones where he snapped back every few sentences.
“What would you have done,” Jim finally asked, voice low so it wouldn’t tremble, and Bones looked up at him with something like shock in his expression, like he hadn’t even considered that question himself. “If I had stayed, what would you have done. What would’ve happened to us.”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck you.”
“I don’t know, Jim, FUCK !”
Bones looked like he was about to slam his hand against the table until he thought better of it, covered his face with his palm for a second, and then looked back at Jim. He stood up.
“What was I supposed to do? It was my wedding day . You literally waited to tell me until my wedding day.”
“Look, I didn’t--” Jim sighed, “I didn’t wait to tell you, okay, I--I didn’t know. I didn’t know until I said it.”
He watched Bones’ face change little by little. His eyebrows drew together as he watched Jim from the other side of his tiny college-student kitchen, but it wasn’t out of anger. Jim couldn’t help the little self-deprecating laugh he let out as soon as Bones started to look concerned for him.
“If I knew before then I’m sure I would have ruined our friendship sooner.”
Bones thought about that for a second, and nodded.
“You would have.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“Cause you would have run away, too. That’s how you do things, isn’t it? Drop your emotional bomb on someone and run away without giving them a chance to react?”
“Alright, fine , yes that’s what I do! Can you really blame me? Was I supposed to expect you to leave your wife that fucking day for your fucked-up best man?”
Bones blinked at him, as if Jim was being so ridiculous about this, which he obviously wasn’t. And maybe he had a history of running away from things as soon as they got hard, which would explain his string of weeks-long jobs and messy relationships that never explicitly ended and, well, everything to do with his family, but Jim felt like in this case he had made a pretty reasonable choice.
“You were supposed to give me a chance,” Bones said slowly, “to react to it. We could have talked about it, and worked through it, and you didn’t have to leave.”
Jim scoffed.
“I didn’t want you to leave,” Bones clarified.
“You wanted me to stay and ruin your marriage a little more?”
Bones just shrugged.
“My marriage didn’t need your help getting ruined, it turns out. I can’t even blame you, she had no idea what you were babbling on about during that speech.”
The realization hit Jim even harder than just the fact that his running away had hurt Bones, which he should’ve already known, but this--Bones was getting divorced. Less than three years after that stupid god damn wedding, and he was getting divorced. The suitcase made a lot more sense, now.
“Bones...god...I’m sorry.”
“I just told you it wasn’t your little love confession that did it.”
“I wasn’t talking about that.” Jim backed up against the counter, pushed his plate away and slumped. “Shit.”
As if the last half hour--and the last three years--hadn’t happened, Bones walked over and joined him. They leaned against the counter side by side, shoulders almost touching, looking out through the window over Jim’s kitchen sink. At this angle all they could see was the brick wall of the building next door, but it was still better than looking at each other, even though all that tension was diffusing fast and leaving them in awkward silence.
Jim glanced at Bones out of the corner of his eye. He was staring down at his hands while he twisted them together, face still flushed on the edges of his cheeks and the tips of his ears. He was here, more importantly. Bones was here . Wasn’t that all Jim could have hoped for, anyway, after what he did? Just to see Bones again?
He nudged Bones’ shoulder with his own, causing him to look up.
“What, Jim.”
“Next time, you should lead with the my-wife-kicked-me-out part, maybe it’ll save us a whole fight.”
Bones breathed out a laugh, letting his eyes fall somewhere past Jim’s shoulder.
“If Jocelyn and I knew how to fight like that, we’d probably still be together.”
Well Jim had no fucking clue how he was supposed to take that . He already felt like he was getting some sort of emotional whiplash with how fast he’d gone from terrified to numb to angry to--whatever this was, right now, standing shoulder to shoulder after three years and a confession of love and a screaming match, feeling like maybe they were going to turn out alright, after all. He settled for a sort of half-shrug and then pushed off the counter towards the fridge.
“Hungry again already?” Bones asked, and Jim turned to look at him over the refrigerator door. He lifted a can of beer into view.
“Figured these could come in handy while we talk about how your marriage went to shit.”
And that’s when Jim knew that they were going to be alright, because instead of shutting down, getting angry again, putting distance between the two of them like he did when Jim struck an emotional cord before they’d known each other long enough, Bones just nodded thoughtfully, and smiled a little bit as he reached for a beer.
-
“You two never fought?” Jim asked, cracking open another can of beer. They were back at the kitchen table, Bones had taken his shoes off, Jim had finally stopped being petty and made him something to eat. The light in the kitchen was the same dim, yellow-y color as it always was but Jim felt like there was actually life in his home, now, with Bones here. The two of them together, again, laughing over beer and leftovers in Jim’s shitty little apartment where music echoed through the walls from his twenty-year-old neighbors.
“She fought--well, she yelled at me when she was mad about something--I just waited until she quieted down long enough so I could say sorry.”
Jim squinted at him and leaned back in his chair.
“Sounds like you got a taste of your own medicine.”
“That ain’t true. You always yelled back at me.” Bones moved to take a sip of his beer, before he paused to add, “If you were sober enough to form a sentence.”
“Oh, ha ha,” Jim deadpanned, and watched Bones snicker into his beer can, light shining playfully in his eyes. God, he had missed this so much. “I can’t imagine you not having anything to say in an argument.”
“I had things to say, I just never said them.”
“Can’t imagine that either.”
“Look, I…” Bones pushed his hair away from his forehead. It was a little longer, on top, than it used to be, and there was a shadow of facial hair on his cheeks and neck that Jim wasn’t used to seeing except for a handful of times when Bones had a day or two off from being a fresh-faced surgical resident. He looked a little older, too, and a little more tired and a little more sad. “You don’t get it because you’re the only person who really knew me, but I’m not like this with other people.”
“Like what,” Jim asked.
“Like...myself. My whole self. The asshole self.”
“I’m sure plenty of people think you’re an asshole,” Jim said comfortingly, and he would have reached out to place his hand over Bones’ wrist but he knew he shouldn’t take the joke too far, that whatever Bones was saying now was something he needed to get out.
“I mean it. I mean, I bitch at my interns at the hospital, and sometimes I get too sharp with patients, but the way I was with you,” he paused, watching Jim closely, “nobody else saw that side of me. People tend to leave before they get that close.”
Jim thought about that, partly because he had to, and partly because speaking right away would have made it seem like he didn’t understand how serious that was, what Bones had just told him. Serious enough that it made Jim’s heart beat a little too fast, to think after all this time, that he had been just as important to Bones, too.
“You never let Jocelyn get that close, did you,” Jim concluded, because the further he kept this conversation away from his own feelings the better. Even though he wanted to say that he’d always thought Jocelyn was his replacement, on account of being better than him in every way.
“I didn’t even let her try. I didn’t want to, anyway. I knew she had this...idea of me, that wasn’t really true, and I wanted to be that man she thought I was. But she’s smart, you know. She could tell I was always holding back.”
“Bet that pissed her off.”
“Oh yeah.” Bones took a long sip of his beer. Jim mirrored him, slouched in his chair a little and held out the can to rest on top of his knee, feeling the cold of the aluminum seep through the fabric of his sweats. He watched the kitchen light shine off of the smooth can, and thought about what Bones had said a few minutes earlier. Everything Bones had said, really. The idea that Jim had been the only one who knew him. The idea that the grouchy, bitchy, petty, lovable Leonard McCoy he knew was his , and his alone. He still loved him, probably, even when he wasn’t perfect, even when he showed up without warning after ignoring him for years. If Jim still felt that way, he didn’t understand how Bones could ever think that someone else wouldn’t love his whole self if they got the chance.
The first time, three years ago, when he’d realized he was in love with his best friend, it made him terrified, and ashamed, and sick to his stomach. Now he was just kind of annoyed.
He knew he should have kept steering the conversation towards Bones, and his marriage, and his divorce, anything to avoid the topic of Jim Kirk’s fucked up emotions, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“Were you telling the truth, just now,” Jim said quietly, staring at the can of beer as he spun it around on his knee, “when you said I was the only one who really knew you.”
“Have I ever lied to you?” Bones asked, but he didn’t give Jim the chance to answer. “You are the only one who really knows me. Nobody took your place. Nobody could.”
“How can that be true,” Jim snapped. He flicked his eyes up to Bones, sitting across the table, looking so apologetic it was as if Jim was the one trying to divorce him right now. “I haven’t seen you in years, Bones. I left right as you were getting married and moving out and getting promoted. I don’t know what your life is like anymore. And you don’t know anything about my life, either.”
“I don’t,” Bones admitted. “I want to.”
Jim scoffed.
“I mean it. Here you are on your own, with a job you’ve kept for more than two years, an apartment with furniture in it, a fridge that actually contains food--”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, I grew up.”
“--that kid who came looking for you while I was waiting in the hallway, he said he was just seeing if you were home because he needed a place to study. He counts on you, Jim. I want to know this version of you, the guy who helps people.”
“Pavel,” Jim said. “You scared the shit out of him, you know.”
“I bet I did.”
“See, I told you I’m not the only one who sees your bad side.”
“You’re not. You’re just the only one who’s seen it and loves me anyway.” Bones froze for a second, eyes widening a tiny bit, like he hadn’t planned the last sentence to come out like that. “Loved,” he corrected.
“Loves,” Jim said quietly, and he would have felt dumb for the way his face heated up if he couldn’t see the color rising in Bones’ cheeks, too.
“That was the part that surprised me the most, in your speech,” Bones continued, saving Jim from having to explain himself, “not the part where you admitted you were in love with me, but when you called me perfect. If it had been someone else who said that, someone who only knew me as the man I try to be at work, or whatever, I would have shrugged it off. But you knew what I was really like, how shitty I could be, and you called me perfect, anyway.”
“I was drunk.”
“You were.”
“I said a lot of stupid things.”
“You did.”
Jim scrubbed his face with his hands. God, what was he doing? What the fuck were either of them doing? He didn’t even know what he wanted out of this conversation anymore, what he wanted to happen when he straight up admitted to Bones that he was still in love with him. It wasn’t like everything was going to be perfect, now. Like Bones was going to love him back and move to Tucson and nothing would be hard again and nothing would make Jim want to run away again. No matter what, Bones probably had a limited number of vacation days from the hospital, and he was going to be headed back when those days ran out whether Jim told him he loved him or not. So why the fuck had he said that?
“Jim,” Bones said, pulling Jim out of what was probably a few seconds away from a spiral, “Will you do me a favor.”
Jim gave him a flat look.
“I already let you in here.”
“I wasn’t going to ask you to let me stay,” Bones replied, already getting flippant again, and Jim really could not picture him being passive in an argument, ever . It just didn’t compute.
“Then what do you want.”
“I want…” Bones let out a long exhale, “I want you to give me a chance.”
“A chance to what ,” Jim asked, even though he could figure out what Bones was saying on his own. He wanted to hear him say it more clearly than that. Bones blinked at him, like he knew Jim didn’t actually need confirmation, like he had the audacity to be annoyed at Jim even as he begged for a second chance.
“Tell me you love me,” Bones said slowly, “And give me a chance to respond this time.”
And that was clear. Crystal clear. Jim couldn’t have asked for him to be more direct, and he shouldn’t have, he realized, because hearing those words come out of Bones’ mouth was too fucking much. He slammed his beer can on the table and stood up a little too fast.
“You know what,” Jim slapped his hands against his thighs as he stood up, for no reason at all except to maybe break this terrible silence he’d gotten himself into. “I don’t think I can take any more of this right now. You can have the couch, I’m going to bed.”
“Jim.”
Jim carried their dishes to the sink, pointedly not looking in Bones’ direction, dropped them in and tried to decide if he should wash them now or just leave it for the morning. And then he heard Bones getting up out of his chair, walking over, and had to suppress the urge to run to the bedroom. He stared down at the sink, gripping the edge of the counter with both hands.
“I mean it, I don’t want to talk about this right now, okay?”
“ Jim, ” Bones said again, more stern this time, and Jim was too tired to fight again, he was too god damn tired . He slumped, pressed the heel of his hands against his eyes until he saw stars.
“I don’t want to fight anymore.” Jim’s voice nearly broke at the end. He felt trapped at his stupid sink, too grown up now to run away and too childish to open his eyes again and look at Bones. Bones who was closer now, right next to him, close enough that Jim could sense it without seeing him and even without touching him.
“Me neither,” Bones said quietly.
Jim took a deep breath. He dropped his hands from his face and stared down at the dishes in the sink, feeling like a stupid, lovesick teenager. Still so full of emotions after all this time. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, though. It really wouldn’t have been possible to get through their conversation, their argument, the entire damn night with Bones here, without something hurting.
“I already told you I loved you,” Jim said to the sink, “twice.”
“You’re right.”
Jim grunted. He could see Bones out of the corner of his eye, watching him. He wondered if this is what would have happened if he hadn’t left, after the first time he’d said it. If Bones would have stayed to talk through it like this. He really would never know.
“Why don’t I tell you that I love you.” The words cut straight through his thoughts and Jim felt his eyes go wide. “And it can be your turn to react however you want.”
Bones smiled when Jim finally lifted his head to look at him, just a small, private sort of smile. Jim felt like his entire body was shaking when he pushed against the counter, turning his body to face him. Bones just watched him all the while, and when they met eyes again and the air was tense between them in a way it had never been before. Tense and heavy and--nervous, somewhere underneath it all.
“What am I supposed to think, now?” Jim asked, nearly whispered, “Am I supposed to believe that we’re gonna imagine some future together? Go back to Atlanta?”
“I’m not asking you to think about any of that. Not right now.”
Jim held tightly to the sides of his thighs, clutching the fabric of his sweatpants, because he had no idea what he would have done with his hands otherwise, between gripping the counter again or worse, reaching for Bones.
“I’m telling you I love you too, and all I’m asking is that you do whatever you want with that information. You can still go to bed, if you--”
Jim’s hands picked themselves up on their own, it felt like, and from one second to the next they were on Bones, wrapping around the width of his shoulders, pulling him flush against his chest.
“Or that. You can do that, too.”
“Please shut up,” Jim said softly, pressing his face into the fabric that covered Bones' shoulder, breathing in the smell of him, that smell that Jim had mourned when it finally faded from the jacket he stole. Bones wrapped his arms around his back and held tighter, enveloping Jim in the warmth and the strength and the safety of his arms. Jim had no idea how much he needed just this, just being held by Bones, after everything that happened, until his next breath caught in his throat and then he tried as hard as he could not to cry into the leather of Bones’ new jacket, and--
“Wait, is this my jacket.”
“Well you stole mine, so--”
Jim pulled back a few inches, even as Bones kept his hold around his back, and every part of his skin that wasn’t covered by Bones’ arms and hands or pressed against his chest suddenly felt freezing.
“You kept this?”
Bones looked into his eyes, carefully, like he knew the question might be about more than just a damn jacket mix-up. Like all of this meant more than they knew.
“Yes.”
Jim took Bones’ face in both hands, feeling the shape of his cheeks, the rough stubble against his palms, taking in the uncertainty and the exhaustion and the love in his eyes. He pulled him forward and kissed him, and they both sighed, softly, into the kiss, taking a breath as if they’d been lost for years until this very second. As if they’d both finally found their way home.
end.