fic - Something To Come Home To (13/15)
Title: Something To Come Home To
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy (slow building)
Warnings: Bones has a dirty mouth. So does Kirk.
Summary: A connection between two people forms by degrees. Love is measured by how much you can help a person and how much a person heals you in return.
Notes: AU! (I still don't have any idea what to call this verse) Takes place about 20 minutes into the future in San Francisco.
Chapter One: of Elbows and Burgers
Chapter Two: of Chinatown and Photographs
Chapter Three: of Lectures and Movies
Chapter Four: of Laundromats and Coffee
Chapter Five:of Carols and Kisses
Chapter Six: of Forts and Presents
Chapter Seven: of Little Girls and Older Women
Chapter Eight: of Post-its and Yellow Highlighters
Chapter Nine: of Sinatra and Beatles
Chapter Ten: of Daughters and Dancing (part one)
Chapter Ten: of Daughters and Dancing (part two)
Chapter Eleven: of Snoozes and Roommates
Chapter Twelve: of Groceries and Fights
Considering they lived in the same apartment, had rooms next to one another, and shared the television and kitchen appliances, McCoy and Jim were doing a remarkable job of avoiding one another.
Really, it was rather impressive. On particularly good days, they didn't see each other except for a glance when one of them came home from work and immediately hid inside their respective bedrooms. McCoy worked extra hours at the hospital, preferring to take evening and night shifts so that he worked while Jim slept and slept while Jim went to school and wandered around the apartment. Jim, on the other hand, spent more time outside of the apartment walking around the nearby park or heading over to some of the attractions in town.
On particularly bad days, they faced the awkwardness that hung between them with silence and cold shoulders. McCoy refused to talk to Jim and though Jim tried to initiate conversation at first, even he gave up after a few days. They had reached a precarious balance consisting of as few words as possible, no eyes lingering, and no physical contact.
The morning after their kiss (Or, if McCoy was honest, multiple kisses. Open-mouthed kisses, searing lips up and down the lengths of their necks, hands everywhere, and Jim's shirt lost somewhere on the floor between the kitchen and the couch.), they awoke on the couch, still draped over one another. McCoy had woken up first, but Jim soon followed as McCoy pushed the younger man's limbs off of his body.
McCoy had hastened to make breakfast for both of them, throwing Jim's shirt behind him without looking at Jim who kept trying to talk to him and get his attention.
"Bones, can we just talk about this?"
"Do you want scrambled eggs?" was all McCoy could say in return.
It was in that moment that McCoy had realized what a mistake he had made. That this was not supposed to happen between him and Jim. That he had just let himself get caught up in the whirlwind that seemed to follow Jim around. That the feelings didn't mean anything except strong friendship.
And it was that friendship, he informed Jim in the only conversation they shared following that night of kisses, that kept them from falling apart. You don't find friendships like that every day and McCoy would be damned if he lost one like that over something as stupid as a mistake.
Jim's featured hardened, his arms frozen by his sides where he had been straightening out his shirt. He looked like he wanted to deny that it was a mistake and McCoy knew that he would say the words. So McCoy spoke before Jim could get a word in.
"Let's just forget about it, alright?"
But they couldn't forget about it. The memory colored McCoy's thoughts, actions, movements, words and he wouldn't have been a bit surprised if it did the same to Jim. It was present like a third person in the room whenever Jim and McCoy found themselves alone together. It was there, nearly tangible and choking them with its presence.
But it would go away. It had to.
"Well, fuck, Leonard," came the irritated voice through the phone. McCoy grimaced as he listened to his ex-wife snap at him. "You make such a big deal about needing to see your daughter and now when she finally has some time off from school to visit you, you're telling me that she can't come?"
"I didn't say I didn't want her to come," he argued, his eyes screwed shut in frustration as he slumped further onto his bed. "I just don't know if now is such a good time."
"Yeah, well you should have thought of that before," Jocelyn chided huffily. "I already told Joanna that she could come visit you this week, seeing as you already agreed to it last month when I talked to you about it," she reminded him pointedly. He groaned inwardly as he remembered their previous conversation. He couldn't really tell Jocelyn why he had changed his mind.
She continued, this time with sugary venom laced in her voice. "If you want to break our daughter's heart, then you do it. I don't want to be the bad guy this time."
"Okay, fine," he relented through clenched teeth. "You know I want to see her."
"Wonderful," she deadpanned, the word not matching with the sarcastic twist of her voice. Then Jocelyn took a deep breath as though to steady herself before speaking again. "She'll be there in two days. Clay's cousin, Josiah, has some business up your way, so they are going to take a plane together. Their flight should be in around three, provided that it's not late."
"Right. Got it," McCoy muttered, hearing The Plan for what felt like the tenth time. It's not like he was going to forget when his daughter was coming.
"And then she's coming home with Josiah nine days later," she continued as though he hadn't said a word.
"Yeah. I remember the plan," he insisted, trying desperately to keep the anger out of his voice. The last thing he wanted was for Jocelyn to keep Joanna away from him out of spite.
"Just making sure," she said innocently, though he could hear her distrust beneath the honeyed tones. "I'll talk to you later."
"Wait, is Joanna there?"
"She's at a friend's house and can't talk to you right now. So bye."
"Bye. Tell Lorelei I said hi." The dial tone sounded in his ear even before he could finish speaking.
McCoy sat there on the edge of his bed, idly listening to the dial tone for a moment, thinking (not for the first time that day) how thankful he was to have divorced Jocelyn. At least now when she wanted to ignore him, she just hung up the phone. When they still lived together, she would have slammed the door so hard that he would have had to spend a few hours fixing it.
With a deep breath, he turned off the phone and let the now-silent device fall down onto the comforter beside him. He stared at it, wondering how long he could sit there, avoiding the next step that needed to happen.
Unable to postpone the inevitable, McCoy stood from the bed and headed towards the closed door. When it opened, he could hear the strains of the Beatles coming from the kitchen where he knew Jim sat at the table, studying for his upcoming exams.
With all the enthusiasm of a convict walking to the gallows, he headed towards the kitchen to talk to Jim about the matter at hand.
"We need to talk," he announced as soon as he crossed through the archway to their shared kitchen.
"Oh, so now you want to talk to me," Jim returned nastily, not looking up from his papers.
Well, he did sort of deserve that.
"Don't be like that," McCoy sighed, pleading only slightly.
"And why the hell not?" Jim challenged, finally looking up from his work to stare at McCoy without any amusement on his face.
"Because Joanna is coming to visit and I don't want her to witness us acting this way," McCoy explained, sitting down at the table across from Jim.
"She's visiting now?" Jim blinked, his anger subsiding with the new information. His thick eyebrows met together in concern. "Are you sure that's such a good idea?"
McCoy sighed again and shrugged his shoulders. "I want to see my daughter and now is the only time she has off from school."
"Fair enough," Jim mused, nodding slightly. He looked away from McCoy for a moment, staring off at something behind the doctor as though trying to come to terms with himself. After a second of thinking, he turned back to McCoy with a tiny, uneasy smile. "I'll be civil. You know, I'm not the one who has problems here."
McCoy noticed the smile right away and recognized it as Jim's way of trying to make amends in light of the given circumstances. It was bait and he sure as hell was going to bite.
"Is that your way of saying 'you started it'?" he joked carefully, not letting his hopes up that maybe things really could get better between them.
"Basically, yeah," Jim answered, the smile on his face appearing a bit more natural now.
McCoy chuckled quietly, his laugh barely more than a breath that escaped between his lips.
"See?" Jim commented encouragingly. "We can get back in the swing of things."
McCoy nodded and for a moment it was as though nothing had changed. But then they both realized in the same instant that the last time they had sat at the table together like this, Jim had confessed his feelings.
So McCoy immediately sprung to his feet and back to his bedroom and swore he could hear Jim sigh of relief behind him. Or was that regret?
SHIT SHIT SHIT.
That was more or less the only thing going through McCoy's thought process.
He had just gotten off the phone with his hospital's dean, who was personally asking him to come to the hospital to work out some issues that had arisen with one of McCoy's former patients. There was absolutely no getting out of the situation.
SHIT SHIT SHIT.
He had to talk to Jim. Admittedly, things had gotten a little better between them since their last talk in the kitchen. Hmm, apparently a lot of serious talks happened in the kitchen. McCoy was beginning to feel wary of the seemingly innocent room. Regardless, the tension had lessened between them and Jim had even taken to making light jokes either about the whole debacle or just about McCoy's reaction in general.
McCoy wasn't exactly thrilled with the jokes, but it was at least better than the bitter silence that had taken over them for the past week.
SHIT SHIT SHIT.
The doctor slammed the phone receiver back in its rightful place in the living room, which caused Jim to jump in surprise where he was standing in front of the stove, making himself a grilled cheese sandwich.
"Fuck, Bones. What the hell bit your ass?" he said in way of a polite greeting.
McCoy rolled his eyes, but otherwise did not respond to the comment. Instead, he barreled on with the reason he had run into the room. "Jim, I know you basically hate me right now, but I need to ask a favor."
"You've finally come to your senses and you want me to ravish you where you stand?"
His snarky comment was followed by a dead silence as McCoy stared unmoving at Jim's cocky expression. Jim's shiteating grin slid down his face and he made a more sympathetic look.
"Too soon?" he questioned with a jerk of his head.
"Yeah, maybe a little," McCoy answered shortly.
"Right," Jim nodded, biting the inside of his cheek. "Sorry," he offered as he wiped his hands on the towel next to the sink. "So what do you want? And don't say 'you' because that will just be corny. Appreciated, but corny."
"Seriously, Jim," McCoy trailed off, this time making no attempt to hide his rolling eyes, but ignoring the twist in his stomach that usually accompanying Jim's jokes of this flavor. "I need you to pick up Joanna from the airport later today. There's a problem at work and they need me there and-"
"Say no more, Bones," Jim assured him, turning back to his grilled cheese, checking the bottom of the sandwich to make sure nothing had burned during the short conversation.
The SHIT SHIT SHIT mantra ceased in McCoy's mind as he felt certain Jim would take care of his daughter.
Really, he didn't know what he'd do without Jim. Just as he had ignored the feeling in his stomach from Jim's joke, he ignored the guilt he suddenly felt from how he had treated his friend.
It was official. The clock had never moved so slowly before. Seriously, this had to be a record. Nurse Chapel winced sympathetically every time she eyed McCoy glancing at the clocks on the walls, waiting for when he could finally get home and see his daughter. When she walked past him, she would lay a comforting hand on his shoulder, her periwinkle-tipped fingers tapping lightly in a friendly fashion as his heartbeat raced nearly beyond control.
Fuck this shit. He wanted to go home.
The patient was concerned about some medication McCoy had prescribed and on any other reasonable day, McCoy would have understood the concern. Bloodthinners were not something to be taken lightly. However, this was not a reasonable day and the patient was doing nothing more than pissing him the fuck off. Still, he kept his temper and waited out until the dean released him once all the patient's questions had been answered.
"Have fun with your daughter!" Nurse Chapel yelled after him as he rushed out the hospital. He waved back in return, but he had already headed down another hallway towards the damn exit and wasn't sure if she had seen him. Oh well. He'd talk to her some other time. Some other time when his daughter wasn't waiting for him at home.
The streets between the hospital and their apartment were normally an acceptable distance and a fairly nice walk provided it wasn't raining. Even a grump like McCoy could appreciate it under other circumstances. But this day, this special day, the scenery was nothing more than a quickly forgotten blur as he rushed home, hurriedly brushing past people and accidently hitting a fair number of people with his medical bag. Oops. Oh well.
When he finally reached the apartment, he was heavily out of breath and rested his hands on his bent knees as he reached deep within his pockets for the keys. He twisted the key in the lock and instantly heard Joanna's laughter.
Joanna's laughter. Here. At his apartment. In his home.
"Sounds like your daddy's home," he could hear Jim say cheerfully.
The patter of little socked feet made him smile as he placed his medical bag in the closet and waited for his daughter to rush down the hallway.
"Daddy!" she cried ecstatically, arms outstretched, ready for a bear hug.
"Hi there, baby," he spoke into her hair as he pulled her tiny body tight to him. "How was your flight?"
"Fine, fine," she answered, pulling away from him just enough to face him with a huge smile on her face. "Airplane food tastes funny though."
McCoy chuckled and in his peripheral vision could see Jim standing at the mouth of the hallway. He glanced up at his friend who was nodding emphatically at Joanna's words.
"That's why we're making dinner now, right Miss Joanna?"
Joanna giggled at the formal name and nodded at her father. "We're makin' alfredo noodles, Daddy. Come see."
She scampered off towards the kitchen as though she had lived in the apartment her entire life, her sloppy brown ponytail following in her wake. The two men walked after her, both smiling at the small girl. McCoy caught up with Jim and grabbed his elbow briefly. Jim turned to him expectantly, the smile slipping from his lips.
"Hey, thanks for picking her up," McCoy gruffed, too happy that his daughter was here to be embarrassed by the physical contact he had initiated.
"No problem, Bones," Jim waved it off, his smile quickly returned.
The two men stood there for a moment smiling at each other before Joanna called out to them to hurry up. Chuckling, they walked into the kitchen where Joanna had dragged a chair over to the stove to mix the noodles.
The three of them set about getting dinner together. McCoy took over the noodles, which were nearly done and heated up some frozen corn while Jim boiled hotdogs and Joanna set the table. Once she was sure the napkins had been folded correctly, she poured the drinks and soon everyone was settled at the table.
For the first few minutes of dinner, Joanna gabbed about her plane ride and how Josiah hadn't been much fun since he just did his Sudoku puzzles the whole time. McCoy and Jim listened with interest, laughing at her impressions of the seemingly dull Josiah. Then Joanna lapsed into a moment of rare silence as she savored her noodles.
They flopped off of her fork and fell with an audible splat onto her plate which of course set her off in a fit of giggles.
"You know," Jim said conversationally around a mouthful of corn, "alfredo noodles are difficult."
"What do you mean?" Joanna asked curiously, her legs swinging under the table.
"I mean, they are very difficult to make correctly. If you use too much water, they are too, well, watery," he finished lamely, for lack of a better word. "Or if you don't use enough water, they are like paste. And then they fall down on your plate like school lunches back in Iowa. Like so." He gestured to her noodles which were still on the plate where they had fallen. He looked at her with a very serious expression. "It's a very painstaking process of using the right ratio of water and noodle sauce."
Jim broke his serious expression to wink at Joanna and then slurped up a noodle so quickly that the end of it smacked him in the nose.
"You're funny, Mr. Jim," Joanna informed him with a bright smile.
"I know," Jim shrugged off the compliment. Then he glanced over at McCoy with a sly look in his eyes.
Well, if that was a metaphor for something, that was the worst one McCoy ever heard.
"Alright, Momma. Good night. I love you," Joanna spoke into the telephone from her perch on the desk that held the telephone receiver.
McCoy could just hear the strains of "I love you, too, Joanna Monster" before Joanna hung up the phone and looked at her father as though waiting for him to tell her what to do.
The arrangement was that Joanna was supposed to go to bed after she spoke to her mother and with a quick glance at the clock (9:47), it was definitely time for her to go to sleep. It had certainly been a long day for her.
"Okay, Joanna-banana!" McCoy announced, clapping his hands together. "It's time for you to go to bed."
"Alright," she quickly relented, making McCoy wonder if she was really as awake as she had claimed to be just half an hour earlier when he first told her she needed to go to sleep soon. "But only if you read me a story."
"Fair enough. Say good night to Jim," he instructed gently.
"Night, Mister Jim!" Joanna called out to the man on the couch.
"Night, Miss Joanna," Jim returned, tousling her hair as she walked past him to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face.
McCoy walked into the spare bedroom that had been decorated according to Joanna's specifications (no polka dots, thank God, so he didn't have to owe Jim anything for that bet) and pulled out the pajamas from her suitcase. He slipped them into the bathroom and when she emerged fully ready for bed, she was quick to inform him that she wanted him to read her The Secret Garden.
"Auntie Lorelei says I'll love it," she informed him as she handed him the book from her Disney Princess backpack before snuggling under the butterfly sheets on her new bed.
McCoy thumbed through the book, seeing that there were twenty-five chapters, each of them relatively short.
"Okay. About three chapters a night then."
Joanna made a tiny squeal of contentment and moved over so that McCoy could lie beside her.
And for the first time in far too long a time, McCoy relaxed with his daughter and read her a bedtime story. She curled up beside him, her small head against his chest as he wrapped an arm around her and began to speak in a low voice.
When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
On the third day of Joanna's visit, she woke up later than the two men. They took advantage of this opportunity to make a big breakfast of pancakes to surprise her with when she got out of bed.
Jim, McCoy quickly learned, was especially apt at making pancakes shaped like different Disney characters. Mickey was easy enough, but Winnie the Pooh? The Beast from Beauty and the Beast? Yeah, that took talent.
Just as soon as they were finishing, Joanna emerged from her bedroom with bedhead, rubbing her eyes with her fist. Upon seeing the pancakes, she immediately perked up and sat down at the table, eyes wide as she recognized the different characters.
"Wow, that's cool!" she exclaimed, helping herself to a Tigger and an Ariel.
"I'm a Jack of all trades," Jim said, not at all quiet about his accomplishments.
McCoy shook his head in amusement as he poured his syrup over Simba.
"So, what do you want to do today, Joanna?"
She looked up innocently enough, but McCoy was familiar enough with his daughter to detect the spark in her eye.
Oh, this should be interesting.
A few hours later, McCoy found himself at Jim's pilot school for the first time since Jim had started classes. Joanna had been insistent about visiting the school after Jim had entertained her with stories of his classes. (Well, only the stories that McCoy deemed acceptable. The one about jumping out of the plane was something to hold back on, for reasons Jim pretended not to know.) It was early afternoon so the classes had all but ended. Jim had one more class at two, but he decided to skip it to spend some more time with Joanna.
"You really shouldn't be skipping classes," McCoy bickered with him in a low voice as they made their way down the entrance hall, Joanna happily humming between them.
"It's the only class I've missed," Jim responded with a snort and a wave of his hand. "And it's theory," he said as though that explained everything. "You have any idea how easy that class is? I barely even need to study."
"You're setting a bad example," McCoy hissed, glancing down at Joanna.
"Yes," Jim mockingly admitted as he headed them down another winding hallway, waving hello to some of the smiling classmates around them. "You're right. Because Joanna has seen me miss one class, this will undoubtedly put her on the wrong side of the tracks. From now on, she will fall in with the wrong crowd and end up ruining her life, working at a poor-quality nightclub to make the ends meet month to month. She'll take home her earnings to fat Ted who she lives with in sin at the trailer park, hoping that her day's pay will be enough to keep him from running off with her twelve-inch screen television. All from me skipping one class."
He looked at McCoy with a piteous look in his eyes before his usual spark reappeared and he stuck his tongue out at McCoy.
"You are incorrigible," McCoy snapped, not really amused by Jim's ridiculous claims. However, they did serve their purpose to make him stop bitching about Jim missing class.
"It's all part of my charm, Bones," Jim bragged as he opened a door to his right, leading the McCoys into a small room.
The room was narrow and long, a desk with some computers on one side and a lounge area on the other where a few men were sitting.
"You are cheating, Meester Scott. I do not appreciate it," said the slight man with an unbelievably thick Russian accent.
"I'm not cheating," the man across from him stated with an equally strong Scottish accent. "I'm playing like I should and you're just being a sore loser. And I'm telling you for the last time, it's Scotty."
"No. You are cheating," the first man insisted. "I do not like it and I do not like you. I will not play with you any longer."
"Hey guys!" Jim cut across the argument, stopping the Scottish man from responding.
The three men looked up from their card game, placing their cards face down on the table.
"Hello, Captain," they greeted in various levels of cheerfulness.
"Captain?" McCoy mouthed to Jim with a single raised eyebrow.
Jim just grinned and shrugged as if to say, I can't help it if I'm that good. McCoy shook his head good-naturedly. He was going to have to get Jim out of this place if there was any self-humility left to salvage in his friend.
"What's going on?" Jim questioned, gesturing between the three men as he moved ahead of McCoy and Joanna to greet his friends.
"Meester Scott is cheating," the Russian blurted out indignantly before anyone else could say anything.
"I am not cheating," the older man denied, an amused look on his face. "The little kid is just getting all bent out of shape about losing."
"I am not a little kid!" the younger man practically screeched, his gray eyes bulging out of his flushed face.
"Relax, Pavel," the Asian man sitting between the other two said, placing a comforting hand on the Russian's shoulder. "You're not a little kid.
"I know zat," he responded brusquely, his arms crossed. "I'm not the one who needs to be told zat."
"You guys are a mess," Jim chuckled, eyeing the expressions on everyone's faces. Joanna crept up behind Jim and took his hand in hers, curious as to what was going on. Jim looked down fondly at the little girl, a slight smile on his lips that made McCoy's heart skip a beat. Jim looked back up at the three men sitting at the table. "Anyway, I have some guests today. This is Bones and his daughter, Joanna," he introduced, pointing at each of them in turn. They all smiled at Joanna, but glanced up at McCoy with curiosity etched deeply in their faces.
Jim pointed to the first man. "This is Chekov."
"Hello," he muttered, staring at McCoy unabashedly.
Chekov looked younger than the others, his body slight and his hair a mess of tangled honey-brown curls. His face gave a hint of arrogance, but it wasn't the same wild streak as Jim's. It was more subdued and made him purse his lips occasionally. McCoy assumed the perceived arrogance was due to his younger age and willingness to assert his skills.
"And this is Sulu and Scotty," Jim finished pointing to the other two men.
"Hey!" Sulu greeted friendly, his face nearly splitting with a grin.
Sulu was tall and lean, something McCoy could tell even with him sitting down. His posture was relaxed, and his almond-shaped eyes were warm and fringed with long lashes. Scotty sported a ruddy face and a broad grin. He was clearly the oldest of the bunch, his russet hair thinning on the top of his round head.
"Afternoon, lass," he said, the first of the three to direct his attention to Joanna instead of watching McCoy intently. To be honest, the curious looks were starting to unnerve McCoy who wondered what exactly Jim had told these men about him.
"Good afternoon, Scotty," Joanna responded politely, clearly entertained by the nickname Scotty had given her.
"See, this girl is nine years old and she's already smarter than you," Scotty teased Chekov, winking at Joanna.
"I'm not nine!" she protested, laughing through her fingers. "I just turned eight."
"Really?" Scotty said, stressing out the word comically and stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Well, I could have sworn you were older. You look so mature."
Joanna giggled and blushed at the comment, clearly taken with the Scotsman. She turned towards Jim, burying her face into his hip in playful embarrassment. Jim chuckled and rested a hand on the top of her head, gently stroking her hair.
McCoy briefly wondered how he had gotten to be so good with kids when Chekov's accent broke through his thoughts.
"So you're Bones," he said bluntly, giving him a once over. His tone of voice suggested that it really wasn't a question. "We've heard a lot about you."
"Pavel!" Sulu groaned, glancing apologetically at McCoy who stood wary, rather unsure of what to say.
"What?" Chekov asked, his eyes wide and facing Sulu. "It's true."
"Now's not the time," he chided, rolling his dark eyes. With a shake of his head towards Chekov and a quick sigh, he turned to McCoy. "Sorry about that. His brain is still developing."
"Oh, now you, too?" Chekov pouted, his lower lip pushing out the slightest bit. "You hurt me, Hikaru."
"Whatever you say, Tenderfoot," Sulu chuckled. Everyone shared a laugh at Chekov's expense as the younger man huffed and blew a curl out of his eyes. Sulu turned his attention to Joanna who had turned away from Jim to pay attention to the others. "So what do you like to do, Joanna?"
Joanna paused to think about it as she sat down in the extra seat around the table, looking at the cards laid out from their forgotten game.
"I like to read," she finally answered. "Daddy's been reading The Secret Garden to me." She glanced back at her father to give him a glowing smile which he quickly returned.
"Really? I love gardens," Sulu responded, his voice perking up with interest. "I'm a botanist in my spare time. I like to grow lots of flowers," he added for her benefit when he saw her confusion towards the word botanist.
"I love flowers!" Joanna piped, tucking her legs under her to sit up higher in her seat.
McCoy and Jim shared an amused glance, knowing full well that she hadn't had any real interest in flowers until McCoy had reached the chapter in The Secret Garden where the Mary and Dickon started tending to the roses.
"I bet a bonny lass like you would look a treasure with some flowers in your hair," Scotty commented, ruffling Joanna's hair while she beamed at him.
"Thank you, Scotty!"
"Sure, you can be nice to her," Chekov commented, his annoyed tone belying the smile on his face as he watched Joanna preen under all the attention.
At this rate, she's going to have an ego like Jim's, McCoy thought to himself, chuckling.
Jim heard the chuckle and looked over curiously, but didn't react otherwise.
"C'mon, let's look around," Jim announced to Joanna and McCoy. "I just wanted to introduce you to my friends here and now we can take the full tour of the building."
"Sounds fun!" Joanna quipped, bounding from the chair to stand with her father, her tiny hand slipping into his as she looked up at him excitedly. "Can I fly an airplane?"
They all chuckled at her question as she continued to peer up at McCoy and Jim, waiting for a response.
"I don't think we have an airplane the right size for you, but let's see if we can sneak you into the flight simulator," Jim conceded, running a hand through his cropped hair.
"Sneak?" Joanna questioned, her face screwed up in confusion.
"Yep, that's right. Let's practice our spy moves," he suggested, moving down low to walk quietly in the room. Joanna laughed, trying to stifle the sound as she moved over to wall to walk along the edge in what she thought was a stealthy manner.
Everyone exchanged their good-byes and nice-to-meet-yous as Jim, McCoy, and Joanna started to walk away.
"Jim was right," McCoy could hear Chekov say before they walked out of the room. "He's wery good-looking."
"Pavel!" came the expected, exasperated cry from Sulu.
"What?"
Well, McCoy reasoned with himself, ignoring Jim's fleeting glances towards him, at least I met their approval.
McCoy had been working at the hospital for nearly a year and a half by now and that amount of time garnered him at least a few benefits. He was able to work his schedule around Jim's once more, this time to make sure that someone was always home with Joanna so that they never needed to hire a sitter or make her feel unwanted.
However, he had not worked at the hospital long enough to earn enough vacation days to take off the entire nine days his daughter would be visiting so there were some hours of the day where she only had Jim to entertain her.
It was one such day (the sixth day Joanna was visiting) and McCoy hadn't been home for a large portion of the day, having left in the morning before Joanna had even gotten out of bed yet. Thankfully, it was a Saturday and that meant Jim had the day off and could take care of Joanna while he was gone.
When McCoy's day had finally finished, it was after eight when he returned home. He idly wondered what Joanna and Jim had eaten for dinner and wondered how good it would taste heated up in the microwave when he heard the familiar noises of their voices in the kitchen.
McCoy smiled to himself. He had gotten used to the sound of them together whenever he came home from work.
However, when he entered the kitchen, he found a strange site. Joanna's face was flushed and blotchy red and white, and a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream (her favorite) sat in front of her. She picked at it morosely, looking up languidly at her father and giving him a listless wave with the hand that didn't hold her spoon.
"Hi, Daddy," she said quietly around the spoonful of ice cream in her mouth.
"Hi, baby." He looked around the room to find Jim washing bloodied rags in the sink. He opened his mouth to ask Jim what happened when Joanna started to explain.
"Mister Jim and I went to the park after dinner. We were at the swings and there were a couple other kids my age. Well, Abbie, she was one of the girls there, and I were pushing each other on the swing and it was my turn to push her on the swing and I got hit in the face with the swing and then my nose started bleeding so Mister Jim had to bring me back."
She said this all at once and the moment she finished speaking, she pushed another spoonful of ice cream between her lips and looked at her father with wide eyes.
"Oh, honey," he sighed, moving a chair around the table so that he could sit directly next to her. He ran his fingers through her hair a few times comfortingly as she finished her ice cream.
"Daddy? Can I watch some cartoons?" she asked, her spoon clanking against the bottom of her dish.
"Sure thing, Joanna," he agreed, moving out of his chair so that she could get up. She started to bring her dish over to the sink where Jim still stood, but he waved her off.
"I'll take care of it," he promised her with a gentle smile.
She nodded and walked off, settling herself on the couch as she turned on the television and looked for something to watch.
McCoy watched the back of her head for a moment before turning to Jim.
"Is she really okay?" he asked, for the first time letting a note of desperate concern color his inflection.
"Of course she is," Jim reassured him, wringing out the rags in the sink. "If it had been bad, I would have called you at the hospital."
McCoy stared at the younger man for a while, looking deep in the blue irises as though trying to find the truth. After a terse second, he sighed heavily and let his shoulders drop.
"I just worry too much," he gruffed, looking away from Jim.
Jim smiled and nodded sagely. "It's hard not to worry about her," he agreed. "But really, it's fine. She cried a little, but mostly because she was scared. I don't think it actually hurt her that much. She only bled for a little while. I just felt bad and gave her some ice cream."
"Yeah, that always made her feel better when she was younger," McCoy commented, grinning slightly at the memories.
He clapped Jim on the shoulder before walking over to the desk in the living room where his laptop sat.
Strange, he thought. I thought I left it in my room.
He ran a finger over the touchpad and the screensaver disappeared to show a WebMD website about concussions. There were several other windows open, some Google searches about head injuries and how to treat bloody noses.
McCoy glanced up to see Jim still moving around in the kitchen a calm expression on his face. The doctor smiled to himself, amused and a little touched by how concerned Jim was pretending not to be.
Flowers, McCoy decided, were overrated.
After two hours of walking through the San Francisco Botanical Garden, McCoy could no longer tell the difference between Downy-Thorn Apple and Nightfires or smell any change between the Jasmine and the Ylang Ylang.
Thankfully, Sulu had taken the brunt of Joanna's excitement, seemingly just as enthusiastic to have someone as interested in flowers as he was. He had been the one to suggest taking Joanna to the Garden and so the McCoys, Jim, Sulu, and Chekov (whom McCoy unsurprisedly learned was Sulu's boyfriend) wound their way between the masses of flowers and fountains.
Truthfully, it was a fairly enjoyable time. Joanna had been practically beside herself when they found the Children's Garden and spent a fair amount of time running around in the flower-shaped wading pools and racing through the flower maze. A few tiny houses had been constructed out of bare wood with ivy and tiny blossoms encircling the lumber. A few other children around Joanna's age all teamed together to play house.
The adults, meanwhile, all sat in a wrought iron gazebo on small concrete benches decorated with polished bumblebees.
McCoy watched with fondness as Joanna circled around the gardens, carefully reading each sign next to the flowers. Occasionally she would call out to her father and point out a flower that she particularly liked.
On his left, Chekov shuffled around in his seat, looking at the flowers that seemed to perpetually surround them. Finally, with his thin lips curved into a bright smile, he plucked a small stalk covered in yellow flowers. The lollipop flower, McCoy remembered Joanna informing him. Twisting the flower between his slim fingers, he slipped it behind Sulu's ear unexpectedly.
"You're giving me a flower?" Sulu asked, smiling gently at his boyfriend. "How sweet of you."
"Of course I'm sweet. All Russians are," Chekov scoffed as though unaffected by the comment, though the slight blush on his cheekbones suggested otherwise. "And you look best in yellow."
Sulu chuckled softly, letting his fingers trace Chekov's blush momentarily before adjusting the flower in his hair.
McCoy found his eyes falling to Jim who was watching Joanna skip with a tea rose in her pocket. His form was backlit with more lollipop flowers, the sun shining off his sandy hair.
"Sounds like someone else I know," he said without realizing it.
Jim glanced at him with raised eyebrows, his expression both surprised and welcoming. McCoy could feel himself flush with the realization of his words, but Jim just brushed it off.
"Actually, I look better in gold than in yellow," he informed McCoy with a chuckle in his throat. Then his eyes flickered for a moment, the blue suddenly highly apparent as his features softened and his voice lowered. "But thank you regardless."
The silence that followed was surprisingly comfortable as the breezes filtered through the iron bars, very welcome in the heat of the afternoon. The four men were content to sit, inhaling the delicate scent of the flowers around them.
Joanna came back to where they were all sitting, handing each one of them a flower chain that she had constructed out of the daisies children were allowed to pick. McCoy glanced over to the daisy bush and saw with amusement one section of the bush that was picked bare.
"Here you go, Daddy," Joanna said cheerfully as she placed the daisy chain precariously onto the top of his head.
"Nice look, Bones," Jim teased to his right.
McCoy shoved the younger man's shoulder in response. Everyone laughed, but when McCoy turned his head to look at his friend, his breath caught in his throat. The daisy chain looped over his hair, the gold glinting between the petals. One flower flopped down onto his forehead, covering the better part of his eyebrow and framing the corner of his eye.
Flowers, McCoy realized, were highly underrated.
It was the night before Joanna had to go back to Georgia and McCoy knew he needed to go to sleep, but he just wanted to cling to as many conscious minutes as possible, knowing that his daughter was sleeping only a few feet away in her bed. It was a comfort he had missed ever since he left Georgia months and months ago.
The television was playing softly in the background, the volume turned down so low that it was more or less silent. McCoy could hear the murmur of voices coming from the television, but could not distinguish any of the voices. The glow from the screen was the main source of light in the room, though the tiny lamp on the end table also lit up a small section of the room.
It was just enough light to see clearly the clothes on his lap. Joanna had ripped her shirt that day while on the monkey bars. Not a serious rip, just along the seam of her sleeve. McCoy held the soft purple material close to his eyes as he meticulously drew the needle in and out of the cloth, the small sewing kit beside him on the couch.
He was nearly done when he heard a door in the hallway open. He glanced up, worried that it was Joanna. She had been difficult to convince to go to sleep that night, not wanting to wake up in the morning only to leave her father again.
But instead, it was Jim who appeared in the room, his eyes dark with sleep and his sleep clothes rumpled around his body.
"Shit, Jim. I didn't mean to wake you up," McCoy apologized quietly.
"Bullshit," Jim yawned, scratching his stomach idly. McCoy let his eyes linger at the strip of taunt skin that appeared just above the waistband of his pants when Jim slid his hand up the bottom of the shirt. "More like you didn't want to wake up Joanna. You don't give a damn about me." That might have been wistfulness in his tone, but McCoy couldn't be sure. Jim might have just been tired.
"That's not true," he denied, quieter still.
They paused as the words settled in the air, and McCoy turned back to the shirt in his hands.
"What are you still doing up?" Jim asked, walking over to the kitchen sink to get himself a glass of water.
"Sewing Joanna's shirt," he responded. "I don't want Jocelyn to think I'm leaving a mess for her or any fucking nonsense like that."
He didn't turn around, but he could sense Jim nodding in understanding. More silence followed as Jim finished his drink and McCoy knotted the end of the thread and snipped it with the fabric scissors lying by his hip.
The unmistakable clink of glass could be heard as Jim placed the cup onto the counter by the sink. He walked out of the kitchen and from the corner of his eyes, McCoy watched him head back towards his bedroom. But then Jim hesitated and turned around again.
Curious, McCoy shifted in his seat to face his friend who walked up behind him.
"You're a good father," Jim mused, staring deeply at McCoy as he ran a hand tenderly through McCoy's hair.
And before McCoy could say even one word, Jim was walking away. McCoy continued to face in the general direction of Jim's bedroom until he could hear the quiet thud of the door shutting.
McCoy sighed. He just didn't understand sometimes.
"And I'll take lots of pictures of my garden, I promise!" Joanna promised, just barely containing the tears in her eyes.
"I can't wait to see them, baby," McCoy said, smiling from where he kneeled on the floor in front of his teary-eyed daughter.
Flight 147 is now boarding. Flight 147 is now boarding, came the cool female voice over the loudspeaker.
McCoy looked up at Josiah who nodded non-committedly, affirming that it was, indeed, time for Joanna to leave.
"Alright, well, it's time to go," he told her, his smile turning sad.
"I gonna miss you, Daddy," she cried, a few tears finally making their way down her cheeks, wetting her eyelashes.
"I'll miss you, too, darlin'. But we're going to see each other pretty soon. Your momma's makin' noise about you coming back here before Christmas," he told her excitedly, trying to cheer up the gloomy girl before him.
"That's so far away!" she pouted, placing her fists on her hips, her face twisted sadly.
"It'll be here before you realize," he promised, wiping away her tears with his thumb. "Now give me a hug good bye."
Without another word, she threw herself into her father's waiting arms and hugged him as tightly as she could. McCoy squeezed her for a moment, his eyes shut briefly as he tried to memorize this last moment he had with his daughter. When he let her go, she gave him a watery smile, but no more tears seemed to fall from her face.
"Can I have a hug, too, Miss Joanna?" Jim asked from where he stood a little way aways from the father-daughter pair.
"Of course," she grinned a little, her teeth barely showing. McCoy watched as Jim gathered her up in his arms and spun her around as she let out a peal of laughter. He settled her back on the floor and patted her hair softly.
"One more for your old dad?"
"Silly Daddy, you're not old," she scolded gently as she gave him another hug. He pressed a kiss to her cheek before letting go and handing her the pink backpack she had left on the floor.
He stood up as she walked over to Josiah who smiled in that cautious way people smile when they aren't really sure what they are supposed to do with a small child. Poor Joanna. She was in for another boring plane ride.
Josiah led her away to the gates, her hand firmly in his as she walked backwards, waving good bye to McCoy and Jim the whole way. They returned the wave until they could no longer see her.
The two men stood there, watching as crowds of people separated them from Joanna.
"So, you think she'll actually grow a garden?" Jim finally spoke up, a hint of laughter in his voice that McCoy was sure he was using as a cover for his disappointment that Joanna was leaving.
"Eh, probably not," McCoy answered with a shrug. "She'll plant the flowers and remember to water them for a few weeks, a month tops. But then she'll read A Little Princess and want to act out that story instead." He smiled at the thought, wondering if Joanna would read the story on her own or if Jocelyn would read it to her. Would Jocelyn make different voices for all the characters like he had? Probably not.
"Hmm, she'll need an Indian Prince," Jim commented with mock-seriousness as the two men headed towards the exit.
"Oh, haven't you heard? There's a bunch of them in Georgia," McCoy responded, playing along with Jim to avoid thinking of his daughter's departure.
"Really now? Never would have expected that," Jim smiled, the laughter in his voice an undertone for his words.
The two continued to talk of Indian Princes and the strangeness of Georgia the whole way back to the apartment, even if only to distract them from their sadness.
Still, in the back of his mind, McCoy wondered how things would be between them now that Joanna, their buffer, was gone.
They walked into the house wordlessly, though the silence was much more pleasant than it had been the last time they were alone together.
"You were really good with Joanna," McCoy commented, breaking through the companionable silence as they both sat down on the couch.
Jim picked up the remote and stared at it as though contemplating whether or not he truly wanted to turn the television on. One corner of his mouth lifted up at McCoy's words and he grinned crookedly at the doctor.
"It's easy when the kid's as great as she is," he commented, brushing aside the compliment in a shockingly atypical manner. "She must get that from you." He looked more seriously into McCoy's eyes which caused him to avert his gaze.
He was still getting used to this whole… whatever the fuck it was with Jim. He was unused to the gentle flirting and the tiny displays of emotion that Jim seemed to thrive on. Jim seemed to pick up on the awkwardness and, with a heavy sigh, placed the remote down on the couch beside him as he moved closer to McCoy.
"You know, I'm not going to bite you," Jim stated bluntly before his eyes twinkled devilishly. "That is, unless you're into that kind of thing."
Crude as the joke was, McCoy laughed and felt some of the pressure lift off of him. He rested his arms on the back of the couch, his left hand conveniently right behind Jim's head. McCoy gave in to his inner thoughts and stroked the golden hair with the tips of his fingers, a warmth radiating from the simple touch.
Jim smiled softly, a strong contrast to his usual snarky and bombastic approach. Yet, the moment called for this particular brand of softness.
"So, what are we now?" Jim asked, carefully approaching the subject.
"I have no fucking clue," McCoy admitted frankly, pulling his hand away to shrug. The two laughed for a moment in the quiet of their apartment before their amusement drifted off. Speaking more sincerely, McCoy continued. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for how I treated you before."
"I just don't get it," Jim responded, as he ran his fingers through his hair. Even after he had cut it short, he still kept that habit. "When we woke up on the couch together, why weren't you as happy as me?"
He wasn't angry or regretful or any of the emotions McCoy expected. Jim just sounded insatiably curious, as though he had pondered the question time and time again and could not find the answer.
"I just," he started, his own voice cutting out almost immediately as he realized he was not sure how to continue. His arms, which had involuntarily risen up parallel to his chest, slumped back down to his side. He sighed and looked away from Jim, taking a moment to speak while the younger man waited with barely concealed impatience. When McCoy spoke, his voice was quieter and guiltier than it had been before. "I thought I wasn't supposed to feel this way about men."
Jim nodded a few times slowly as he readjusted himself on the couch, his body language shutting him away from McCoy the slightest bit.
"You don't feel this way about men. You just feel this way about me," he said, trying to help McCoy come to a natural conclusion about his thoughts. McCoy could read better than anyone the slight amount of frustration that began to creep into the younger man's voice.
"That makes a difference?"
"It should to you. It's not like I'm just some guy you met at a bar and had a one night stand with," Jim scoffed with a bit of disdain as though McCoy would ever think of him that way. "I'm me. I'm Jim," he stressed, pressing a palm hard to his chest as he pleaded with McCoy to understand him. He paused as the gravity of his words took hold of McCoy. Jim moved forward on the couch so that his knees knocked into McCoy's thigh and when he opened his mouth to speak again, some of the mounting passion dissipated from his voice.
"Look, I won't push you into anything that you aren't ready for," Jim promised, causing McCoy to let out a sigh of relief he hadn't realized he had been holding. "But think about this. When it comes to love, what's more important? The parts they have or the personality they have? Because last time I checked, you married someone with the right parts and the wrong personality. And look where that left you."
Jim leaned forward and when McCoy didn't stop him, he placed a dry kiss to the corner of McCoy's lips, just a single, insistent press. And on that enigmatic note, Jim left the room and McCoy was alone with his thoughts.
I know a lot of you are probably wondering why I didn't just make them all "omg we kissed love 4 ever!" Personally, I'm not a big fan of stories. I wanted some more realism to it, especially after working so hard to keep this story as realistic as possible. So, please bear with me. Things will work out, but I'm not going to make things easy for them. :)
Not gonna lie. I feel sorta bad for using Joanna as solely a plot device. Oh well. Also, speaking of Joanna, she might seem a bit young for her age. I recently spent a lot of time with a six year old and quite honestly, I can't remember the last time I spoke to an eight year old. So, if Joanna seems a bit... off, I apologize.
The flowers in this story are all real. I recently went to Longwood Gardens over the weekend and used a lot of that to influence my story. Speaking of flowers, I hope everyone enjoyed Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty. I'm curious to know how you all felt about them. :)
Well, the story is starting to come to an end. There will be one more chapter after this one and then finally an epilogue. I'm really hoping to finish the story before I go back to college on the 24th.
As always, thank you everyone who reads, reviews, favorites, alerts this story. I really appreciate it more than you can imagine. This has been a pretty nasty summer and you guys are always there to cheer me up. Thank you.