childhood living is easy to do
Title: The green grass and blue southern sky
Author: eonism
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just here for the lulz.
Characters/Pairings: Kirk/McCoy (Star Trek XI)
Word Count: 2,484
Author's Notes: Betaed by tracker_lucifer, all other mistakes are my own.
Summary: They come back to Georgia in the summer, when they can spare the time. Right after Joanna gets out of school, just when the synthetic gravity begins to settle in Leonard’s joints enough for him to notice and Jim, for all his fussing about missing His Ship, could use some real earth under his boot heels and some fresh air for a change.
They come back to Georgia in the summer, when they can spare the time. Right after Joanna gets out of school, just when the synthetic gravity begins to settle in Leonard’s joints enough for him to notice and Jim, for all his fussing about missing His Ship, could use some real earth under his boot heels and some fresh air for a change. Leonard makes a habit of saving up a few breaks a year for this, when he and Jim can pack up to spend June at the family farmhouse, before the heat and humidity kicks up too much to make going outside unbearable in the height of summer.
They rent a car and drive halfway up to Savannah where Jocelyn meets them, a few miles from where she lives with her husband and their baby. Whatever hurt feelings that had filled Leonard and Jocelyn’s suitcases five years ago don’t make so much noise these days, and never when Joanna’s around. She’s all knobby knees and smiles now. Almost eight-years-old and still too small in the cowgirl boots she’d gotten for her last birthday, thrown around her father’s waist in a bear hug when he scoops to pick her up for the first time since Christmas. She’s grown since then, almost too heavy to carry around, but he doesn’t let it bother him, at least not in front of Joanna.
Jocelyn has Clay Treadway and a new son, and Leonard has Jim Kirk. Exchanging the familiar pleasantries, there’s nothing left to fight about when Joanna climbs into the back of their rented car and waves her mother goodbye.
The Enterprise is in dry-dock outside Earth’s orbit for bi-annual maintenance. Jim swears he can still find her in the sky when it gets dark enough, if he squints just so, to which Leonard always rolls his eyes and Joanna just squeaks a little and calls him a liar. He misses her but to his credit doesn’t say anything more of it once their suitcases hit the foot of the bed and they toe their boots off at the door. Their communicators stay in their bags, tucked under the bed, at least when Leonard’s around. It’s for Jim’s sake that he pretends not to notice when Jim sneaks off to the back porch after dinner every night, communicator hidden under his palm, talking quietly to Spock under a cupped hand like a teenager sneaking out past curfew.
Jim may know a thing or two about captaining a starship, but doesn’t know much about summers in Georgia. He still doesn’t know everything there is to know about little girls or scraped knees, or how to make tuna fish sandwiches the way you’re supposed to, or what to do about missing socks or jackets. But he tries. He always tries, and that’s what matters.
The summer is made for long days and lazy afternoons spent reading and playing in the yard. It’s for home-cooked meals on the old stove-top that Leonard’s mother cooked on. Like grilled cheese and banana pancakes, which they would eat every day if Joanna has her way about it, rather than that replicated mess Starfleet keeps calling food these days. It’s the simple things like that, like going to bed early and getting up late, and doing all the things a father ought to be doing for his daughter when he isn’t on a starship on the other side of the galaxy.
Leonard soon finds out it’s for sitting on the roof to watch the stars come out as well. He has no interest in stars these days, with green grass under his feet and blue sky over his head. Not like Jim and Joanna do, huddling together just above her bedroom window while Jim names off the planets and constellations like some old sailor, fresh to port, but Leonard lets them have it.
Jim traces them with the blades of his fingers, drawing Capricorn and Aries (and maybe a few others that Leonard hasn’t heard of, but he doesn’t say anything about that either) in the starlight. Beside him Joanna just sits on her knees and sucks in a breath, and when she asks how he knows all this, Jim’s suddenly all business.
“Because I’m a starship captain,” he tells her, a matter of fact, “We have to know all this stuff. How else can we find our way back home?”
“How do I know you’re not lying?” Joanna asks, always always asks, trying her best not to believe him.
“Because,” is all Jim ever says, and winks in a way the older McCoy would never buy, “captains don’t lie. It’s part of our job.”
It’s a Tuesday evening when it finally begins raining, breaking the heat that had Leonard hiding indoors with a book and a glass of iced tea while Joanna dragged Jim off to climb trees or wade in the creek to stay cool. The two of them have been outside for the last two hours, playing some complicated form of four-square that Joanna had invented, and Jim’s doing his best to keep up. It’s only a matter of time before the sky goes dark over their heads and opens up with a rumble. Already cooling off, the temperature drops another ten degrees in the storm, and in a hurry they come sloshing back to the house, soaked to the bone.
When he hears the tell-tale scrape of the storm door and the stomp of heavy booted feet, Leonard puts down his book. Coming down the hallway, he finds the two of them dripping all over the living room carpet, wet and about three shades of miserable.
“You look like a couple drowned cats.” It’s funny, even though it really isn’t.
“Shut up,” Jim says, although the chattering of his teeth betrays him.
“It started to rain,” Joanna explains, suddenly very professional for a seven-year-old, trembling in her too-big boots. “We decided to stop playing.”
“Oh, Jo.” Leonard sighs, bending down to scoop her up. “Let’s get this off of you and get you in the tub before you shake yourself outta those boots.”
Carrying her to the bathroom, he deposits Joanna on the bathmat to toe out of her soggy boots, ignoring his own wet shirt while he runs the not-too-hot bath. He stays long enough to help her out of her sodden sundress, now an awkward rumple of fabric sticking to her skin and under-clothes, and takes it along with the boots to dry over the kitchen sink. Leaving her to finish undressing he tells her, “No monkey-business,” leveling a frank look in her direction, to which she nods an assured “Uh-huh,” before closing the door.
Heading up the tired stairs Leonard goes to the bedroom to change his shirt, and to make sure Jim hasn’t managed to get mud all over the house while his back was turned. It’s in the bedroom that he finds Jim, sans boots, white t-shirt sticking translucently to his wet skin. Rubbing his hair dry under an old gray towel he smiles, small and just a little crooked. Jim looks at Leonard from across the room in such a way that he locks the door behind them without realizing.
“Jo’s in the tub,” he says, “which you should be too before you catch something, running around in the rain like an idiot.”
“That’s why God invented an immune system, Bones,” Jim smirks, tossing the towel over to the foot of the bed. “Besides, I can think of better ways to warm up.”
“Yeah well,” he snorts, “Good luck with that.” Leonard doesn’t argue, only grumbles good-naturedly on his way to the closet for a dry shirt. “At least change your clothes. You’re dripping all over the place.”
Passing Jim he catches Leonard by the wrists, pulling him in close, all bright eyes and Just come to bed, baby written on his face. Leonard sighs when Jim kisses him, a deep slow kiss that brings their chests together in the wet press of fabric. It makes Leonard say Yes, with his hands and his tongue and his lips, even when he means to say No.
“Jim,” he breathes, even as Jim lifts his shirt up over his head and tosses it to join the forgotten towel on the bed. Outside he can hear the storm rumble through the walls, growling softly through the trees and the rickety roof shingles over their heads. “Joanna’s downstairs.”
“Yeah, in the tub.” Angling his head with that clever little smile, Jim maneuvers them back in careful steps until his back bumps against the nearest window, far away from the door. “You know it takes her three days to take a bath.”
“No sex when the kid’s awake,” Leonard reminds him of the rule. The Cardinal Rule during these summers, even as he kisses and teethes a trail from Jim’s lips, to the scar on his cheek, then down to his jaw. “Especially since my daughter knows how to pick locks now, no thanks to you, Captain.”
“That was an emergency,” Jim says in his defense. “And just give me twenty minutes.”
Fingers begin to undo his jeans before Leonard can fend them off, opening his belt and fly with a low purr of a chuckle. The sound of it travels straight to his groin like the fire of starting pistol, earning a groan from him between their tongues and teeth.
“You get ten,” he concedes, if only just.
Stripping off his own shirt, Jim’s hands are immediately all over Leonard. Splayed fingers on his chest, gliding through the thin curl of hairs there, to run down his stomach and the dips of his ribcage with a promising bite of his bottom lip. It’s hard not to react to Jim like this, when his skin is as wet and hot as his mouth is open and soft, sighing into the kiss and licking the arch of his lip even when he knows he shouldn’t. Opening Jim’s fly Leonard presses him back firmly against the window’s heavy wooden frame, the glass cold to the touch when he puts a hand against it to balance himself as he licks and sucks the tender skin between Jim’s neck and shoulder from white to wine.
One arm around Leonard’s shoulder steadies them both as Jim takes them both in hand, erections rubbing together between his fingers with every slow, lazy stroke. Watching Jim’s fingers wrap around their shafts brings Leonard up short, sucking in a breath as he bucks up against him, seeking out the heat of familiarity or the familiarity of heat, or some combination of the two that has them both moaning. He grips Jim’s hip in one hand, his hair in another, panting out a breathless “Jim” against the crook of his neck, bodies rocking, flesh rubbing hotly, already slick.
They ride out the rhythm that Jim sets up, with licks and bites and slow rolls of his hips. Pressed back against the window he’s nearly naked, shameless and beautiful in a way that only Jim could be and only Leonard would appreciate. Jeans tugged down the tops of his thighs and skin warming the cool glass pane, hot and panting and flush all over. From the apples of his cheeks to his chest and throat as he strokes them both home in a see-saw of kisses and breaths, all Jim and Bones and Baby so good and I got you. Somewhere outside the storm calms to a slow pitter-patter against the windows and shingles, but they hear nothing of it.
One after the other they come, shuddering, panting into kisses that are open and wet and careless. It takes a few long, hard breaths before they can straighten themselves up again, pulling away with a reluctant sluggishness. With a final slow kiss of Jim’s still open mouth Leonard moves away, gathering up his discarded shirt and taking it with him to the closet for a clean shirt and jeans to replace his now ruined pair.
He doesn’t have to hear the pad of bare feet across the floor to know that Jim is close as he changes, arms circling his waist and the warmth of Jim’s chest at his back as he slips a sweater over his head and tugs it into place.
“It can be like this all the time.” When Jim speaks his voice is a little distant, cheek pressed to Leonard’s shoulder like a sleepy child. “You know. If you wanted it to.”
Leonard doesn’t entirely know what to make of it, closing a hand over the one on his stomach. “What can?” he asks, stroking his thumb along the skinny blue vein gently ridging the top of Jim’s hand.
“This. You and Joanna, I mean.” Angling his head, Jim presses a dry kiss to the back of Leonard’s neck. “We could figure something out, so you don’t just have to see her on shore leave. I can call in a few favors, and you can talk to Jocelyn about letting her stay with us. Maybe for a while in the summer or something.”
The thought of his daughter onboard anything space-worthy makes Leonard’s chest tighten. “Jim, no,” he says, and squeezes his hand reflexively. “You can’t raise a child on a starship. It’s too dangerous, and there are regulations -”
“It’s my ship.” When Jim speaks it’s almost defensive. “And she’s not just anybody’s kid, Bones. She’s your kid. It’s different.”
“It shouldn’t matter whose kid she is.” Leonard turns in Jim’s hold, leveling him a firm and honest look. “And she’s still not your kid, Jim.”
“You need her.” Jim’s looking entirely too earnest for Leonard to be trying to have this conversation. “And I need you.”
“Jim.” Leonard can’t help but sigh. “I know that you try to be there for Jo when you’re down here with me, and I appreciate it, but…it’s not the same as having her there every single day. You just get to do all the fun Uncle Jim-stuff - you don’t have to do the dad-stuff. That’s my job, not yours.”
“Well, maybe I can learn to do the dad-stuff, too,” Jim says, ducking his head, all big blue eyes and canine sincerity. “So you don’t have to do it all by yourself. Or at least like, help put her through college or something.”
It’s hard to say No to that look. For a moment, Leonard wonders if captains - or at least this one - really couldn’t tell lies. Despite himself, he sighs again.
“Well. If you wanted to put her through college, I certainly wouldn’t try to stop you,” he says, and leans forward to kiss Jim softly until their foreheads touch. “But we’ll see.”
Jim’s still learning, about little girls and summers in Georgia, and about their fathers, too. But for now and for the rest of the summer, he’s trying, and that’s what matters most.
Author: eonism
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just here for the lulz.
Characters/Pairings: Kirk/McCoy (Star Trek XI)
Word Count: 2,484
Author's Notes: Betaed by tracker_lucifer, all other mistakes are my own.
Summary: They come back to Georgia in the summer, when they can spare the time. Right after Joanna gets out of school, just when the synthetic gravity begins to settle in Leonard’s joints enough for him to notice and Jim, for all his fussing about missing His Ship, could use some real earth under his boot heels and some fresh air for a change.
They come back to Georgia in the summer, when they can spare the time. Right after Joanna gets out of school, just when the synthetic gravity begins to settle in Leonard’s joints enough for him to notice and Jim, for all his fussing about missing His Ship, could use some real earth under his boot heels and some fresh air for a change. Leonard makes a habit of saving up a few breaks a year for this, when he and Jim can pack up to spend June at the family farmhouse, before the heat and humidity kicks up too much to make going outside unbearable in the height of summer.
They rent a car and drive halfway up to Savannah where Jocelyn meets them, a few miles from where she lives with her husband and their baby. Whatever hurt feelings that had filled Leonard and Jocelyn’s suitcases five years ago don’t make so much noise these days, and never when Joanna’s around. She’s all knobby knees and smiles now. Almost eight-years-old and still too small in the cowgirl boots she’d gotten for her last birthday, thrown around her father’s waist in a bear hug when he scoops to pick her up for the first time since Christmas. She’s grown since then, almost too heavy to carry around, but he doesn’t let it bother him, at least not in front of Joanna.
Jocelyn has Clay Treadway and a new son, and Leonard has Jim Kirk. Exchanging the familiar pleasantries, there’s nothing left to fight about when Joanna climbs into the back of their rented car and waves her mother goodbye.
The Enterprise is in dry-dock outside Earth’s orbit for bi-annual maintenance. Jim swears he can still find her in the sky when it gets dark enough, if he squints just so, to which Leonard always rolls his eyes and Joanna just squeaks a little and calls him a liar. He misses her but to his credit doesn’t say anything more of it once their suitcases hit the foot of the bed and they toe their boots off at the door. Their communicators stay in their bags, tucked under the bed, at least when Leonard’s around. It’s for Jim’s sake that he pretends not to notice when Jim sneaks off to the back porch after dinner every night, communicator hidden under his palm, talking quietly to Spock under a cupped hand like a teenager sneaking out past curfew.
Jim may know a thing or two about captaining a starship, but doesn’t know much about summers in Georgia. He still doesn’t know everything there is to know about little girls or scraped knees, or how to make tuna fish sandwiches the way you’re supposed to, or what to do about missing socks or jackets. But he tries. He always tries, and that’s what matters.
The summer is made for long days and lazy afternoons spent reading and playing in the yard. It’s for home-cooked meals on the old stove-top that Leonard’s mother cooked on. Like grilled cheese and banana pancakes, which they would eat every day if Joanna has her way about it, rather than that replicated mess Starfleet keeps calling food these days. It’s the simple things like that, like going to bed early and getting up late, and doing all the things a father ought to be doing for his daughter when he isn’t on a starship on the other side of the galaxy.
Leonard soon finds out it’s for sitting on the roof to watch the stars come out as well. He has no interest in stars these days, with green grass under his feet and blue sky over his head. Not like Jim and Joanna do, huddling together just above her bedroom window while Jim names off the planets and constellations like some old sailor, fresh to port, but Leonard lets them have it.
Jim traces them with the blades of his fingers, drawing Capricorn and Aries (and maybe a few others that Leonard hasn’t heard of, but he doesn’t say anything about that either) in the starlight. Beside him Joanna just sits on her knees and sucks in a breath, and when she asks how he knows all this, Jim’s suddenly all business.
“Because I’m a starship captain,” he tells her, a matter of fact, “We have to know all this stuff. How else can we find our way back home?”
“How do I know you’re not lying?” Joanna asks, always always asks, trying her best not to believe him.
“Because,” is all Jim ever says, and winks in a way the older McCoy would never buy, “captains don’t lie. It’s part of our job.”
It’s a Tuesday evening when it finally begins raining, breaking the heat that had Leonard hiding indoors with a book and a glass of iced tea while Joanna dragged Jim off to climb trees or wade in the creek to stay cool. The two of them have been outside for the last two hours, playing some complicated form of four-square that Joanna had invented, and Jim’s doing his best to keep up. It’s only a matter of time before the sky goes dark over their heads and opens up with a rumble. Already cooling off, the temperature drops another ten degrees in the storm, and in a hurry they come sloshing back to the house, soaked to the bone.
When he hears the tell-tale scrape of the storm door and the stomp of heavy booted feet, Leonard puts down his book. Coming down the hallway, he finds the two of them dripping all over the living room carpet, wet and about three shades of miserable.
“You look like a couple drowned cats.” It’s funny, even though it really isn’t.
“Shut up,” Jim says, although the chattering of his teeth betrays him.
“It started to rain,” Joanna explains, suddenly very professional for a seven-year-old, trembling in her too-big boots. “We decided to stop playing.”
“Oh, Jo.” Leonard sighs, bending down to scoop her up. “Let’s get this off of you and get you in the tub before you shake yourself outta those boots.”
Carrying her to the bathroom, he deposits Joanna on the bathmat to toe out of her soggy boots, ignoring his own wet shirt while he runs the not-too-hot bath. He stays long enough to help her out of her sodden sundress, now an awkward rumple of fabric sticking to her skin and under-clothes, and takes it along with the boots to dry over the kitchen sink. Leaving her to finish undressing he tells her, “No monkey-business,” leveling a frank look in her direction, to which she nods an assured “Uh-huh,” before closing the door.
Heading up the tired stairs Leonard goes to the bedroom to change his shirt, and to make sure Jim hasn’t managed to get mud all over the house while his back was turned. It’s in the bedroom that he finds Jim, sans boots, white t-shirt sticking translucently to his wet skin. Rubbing his hair dry under an old gray towel he smiles, small and just a little crooked. Jim looks at Leonard from across the room in such a way that he locks the door behind them without realizing.
“Jo’s in the tub,” he says, “which you should be too before you catch something, running around in the rain like an idiot.”
“That’s why God invented an immune system, Bones,” Jim smirks, tossing the towel over to the foot of the bed. “Besides, I can think of better ways to warm up.”
“Yeah well,” he snorts, “Good luck with that.” Leonard doesn’t argue, only grumbles good-naturedly on his way to the closet for a dry shirt. “At least change your clothes. You’re dripping all over the place.”
Passing Jim he catches Leonard by the wrists, pulling him in close, all bright eyes and Just come to bed, baby written on his face. Leonard sighs when Jim kisses him, a deep slow kiss that brings their chests together in the wet press of fabric. It makes Leonard say Yes, with his hands and his tongue and his lips, even when he means to say No.
“Jim,” he breathes, even as Jim lifts his shirt up over his head and tosses it to join the forgotten towel on the bed. Outside he can hear the storm rumble through the walls, growling softly through the trees and the rickety roof shingles over their heads. “Joanna’s downstairs.”
“Yeah, in the tub.” Angling his head with that clever little smile, Jim maneuvers them back in careful steps until his back bumps against the nearest window, far away from the door. “You know it takes her three days to take a bath.”
“No sex when the kid’s awake,” Leonard reminds him of the rule. The Cardinal Rule during these summers, even as he kisses and teethes a trail from Jim’s lips, to the scar on his cheek, then down to his jaw. “Especially since my daughter knows how to pick locks now, no thanks to you, Captain.”
“That was an emergency,” Jim says in his defense. “And just give me twenty minutes.”
Fingers begin to undo his jeans before Leonard can fend them off, opening his belt and fly with a low purr of a chuckle. The sound of it travels straight to his groin like the fire of starting pistol, earning a groan from him between their tongues and teeth.
“You get ten,” he concedes, if only just.
Stripping off his own shirt, Jim’s hands are immediately all over Leonard. Splayed fingers on his chest, gliding through the thin curl of hairs there, to run down his stomach and the dips of his ribcage with a promising bite of his bottom lip. It’s hard not to react to Jim like this, when his skin is as wet and hot as his mouth is open and soft, sighing into the kiss and licking the arch of his lip even when he knows he shouldn’t. Opening Jim’s fly Leonard presses him back firmly against the window’s heavy wooden frame, the glass cold to the touch when he puts a hand against it to balance himself as he licks and sucks the tender skin between Jim’s neck and shoulder from white to wine.
One arm around Leonard’s shoulder steadies them both as Jim takes them both in hand, erections rubbing together between his fingers with every slow, lazy stroke. Watching Jim’s fingers wrap around their shafts brings Leonard up short, sucking in a breath as he bucks up against him, seeking out the heat of familiarity or the familiarity of heat, or some combination of the two that has them both moaning. He grips Jim’s hip in one hand, his hair in another, panting out a breathless “Jim” against the crook of his neck, bodies rocking, flesh rubbing hotly, already slick.
They ride out the rhythm that Jim sets up, with licks and bites and slow rolls of his hips. Pressed back against the window he’s nearly naked, shameless and beautiful in a way that only Jim could be and only Leonard would appreciate. Jeans tugged down the tops of his thighs and skin warming the cool glass pane, hot and panting and flush all over. From the apples of his cheeks to his chest and throat as he strokes them both home in a see-saw of kisses and breaths, all Jim and Bones and Baby so good and I got you. Somewhere outside the storm calms to a slow pitter-patter against the windows and shingles, but they hear nothing of it.
One after the other they come, shuddering, panting into kisses that are open and wet and careless. It takes a few long, hard breaths before they can straighten themselves up again, pulling away with a reluctant sluggishness. With a final slow kiss of Jim’s still open mouth Leonard moves away, gathering up his discarded shirt and taking it with him to the closet for a clean shirt and jeans to replace his now ruined pair.
He doesn’t have to hear the pad of bare feet across the floor to know that Jim is close as he changes, arms circling his waist and the warmth of Jim’s chest at his back as he slips a sweater over his head and tugs it into place.
“It can be like this all the time.” When Jim speaks his voice is a little distant, cheek pressed to Leonard’s shoulder like a sleepy child. “You know. If you wanted it to.”
Leonard doesn’t entirely know what to make of it, closing a hand over the one on his stomach. “What can?” he asks, stroking his thumb along the skinny blue vein gently ridging the top of Jim’s hand.
“This. You and Joanna, I mean.” Angling his head, Jim presses a dry kiss to the back of Leonard’s neck. “We could figure something out, so you don’t just have to see her on shore leave. I can call in a few favors, and you can talk to Jocelyn about letting her stay with us. Maybe for a while in the summer or something.”
The thought of his daughter onboard anything space-worthy makes Leonard’s chest tighten. “Jim, no,” he says, and squeezes his hand reflexively. “You can’t raise a child on a starship. It’s too dangerous, and there are regulations -”
“It’s my ship.” When Jim speaks it’s almost defensive. “And she’s not just anybody’s kid, Bones. She’s your kid. It’s different.”
“It shouldn’t matter whose kid she is.” Leonard turns in Jim’s hold, leveling him a firm and honest look. “And she’s still not your kid, Jim.”
“You need her.” Jim’s looking entirely too earnest for Leonard to be trying to have this conversation. “And I need you.”
“Jim.” Leonard can’t help but sigh. “I know that you try to be there for Jo when you’re down here with me, and I appreciate it, but…it’s not the same as having her there every single day. You just get to do all the fun Uncle Jim-stuff - you don’t have to do the dad-stuff. That’s my job, not yours.”
“Well, maybe I can learn to do the dad-stuff, too,” Jim says, ducking his head, all big blue eyes and canine sincerity. “So you don’t have to do it all by yourself. Or at least like, help put her through college or something.”
It’s hard to say No to that look. For a moment, Leonard wonders if captains - or at least this one - really couldn’t tell lies. Despite himself, he sighs again.
“Well. If you wanted to put her through college, I certainly wouldn’t try to stop you,” he says, and leans forward to kiss Jim softly until their foreheads touch. “But we’ll see.”
Jim’s still learning, about little girls and summers in Georgia, and about their fathers, too. But for now and for the rest of the summer, he’s trying, and that’s what matters most.