Work Text:
Jim slumps backwards on the least rickety chair, suddenly exhausted. It’s not from packing his meager belongings into boxes, or from the fight with his roommates. No, the exhaustion is from the need to leave again. To leave yet another place he doesn’t belong; to leave yet another group of people who he just can’t understand. He’s so tired of being the outsider, the rebel, the misfit, but he doesn’t know any other way to be.
After hearing a door slam and angry voices buzz down the hallway, Jim sighs and stands. Time to go find another place to stay. Maybe this time he’ll fit.
~O~
Leonard slumps, dejected and exhausted, on a chair and watches through the window as his soon-to-be ex-wife throws belongings into bags. The last words she’d flung at him sting: Don’t call me your wife. I’m not your wife. Medicine is your wife and research is your mistress. I’m just someone you used as a bed warmer, and I’m done. It isn’t true; he loves her even now, but he’s failed. Failed at juggling school and family, then failed at balancing patients and wife. He’s never managed to set aside the one to let the other take precedence and now he is losing everything.
He watches as her friends whirl in, glaring tornadoes of efficiency and recrimination, to sweep her from their home and life. The sun glints off the pool as he contemplates the near future: the patients he will lose, the upcoming divorce, the sale of their house, the division of their earthly goods. Maybe after that he’ll find a place with people and work he can balance into a harmonious whole. Maybe he’ll find a future.
~O~
Jim and Bones slump together on the couch in Jim’s cabin. They are exhausted from the drawn out festivities on Drella, celebrating the treaty giving the Drells a prosperous future in the Federation. As Jim’s head slowly tilts to rest on Bones’ shoulder, he sighs. “I’m so glad we’re back here.” For once, Bones doesn’t have a comeback. He just nods in agreement before tugging Jim up to share the bed where they fit, in the life where they belong, together.