Fic: Kings of Medicine (1/1)
Title: Kings of Medicine
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Word Count: 2,797
Summary: All good things come to an end. All paradises fail. For mga1999, who requested Kirk/McCoy, hurt/comfort, schmoopy, one of them injured for my help_chile Auction. Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title belongs to Placebo.
Author’s Notes: To the lovely mga1999: at the risk of sounding even more like an annoying broken record, I just want to say that again: I am SO INCREDIBLY SORRY that your auction fic has taken me so long. My Trek muse just... up and left me, and I’ve been wrestling with it since the auction so that this didn’t turn out absolutely terrible. I hope I managed at least that much for you -- even if it's a bit more dramatic and a bit less viscerally stream-of-consciousness-y than I'd hoped -- and that you enjoy the final product, belated as it is <3
Also, many thanks for the incomparable weepingnaiad, because without her, I’d probably still be hiding in the corner with a hundred words of thing, staring at it blankly without a clue as to what I was doing.
Kings of Medicine
In the end, they leave him; desert him in a place where no one will find him, a place no man could ever reach in time. In the end they always leave him. It’s inevitable. All good things come to an end. All paradises fail.
“But this one doesn’t have to,” Jim says, voice too soft, too unlike him; Leonard doesn’t know these hidden depths, can’t navigate theses waters -- Christ, but he wants to, though -- wants to fall rugged, shipwrecked on these shores that taste of salt and drag rough with stubble like sand as a tongue slips out and licks, too slow for coincidence -- deep like fathoms and wide.
Jim’s breath is heavy, hotter than the Georgia sun, and the shiver it leaves in its wake condenses, leaves its mark at Leonard’s jaw: “This one can last.”
Leonard doesn’t move, only clenches tight at the fabric of the sofa, white-knuckling the arm of the couch as he studies his hands, the creases in his palms -- tries not to think about the way that Jim’s mouth in the lines, tracing the veins might feel, what it might do to the pulse he imagines he can see at his wrists; knows close against the pads of his thumbs as he holds his hands together, keeps them steady where they want to shake.
Jim’s voice is a sigh, and it’s lighter than Leonard’s ever given his friend the credit for; and that, he thinks, in itself was a mistake. “I’m not her,” Jim says, leaning so that the bridge of his nose pushes hard, unmatched against the line of Leonard’s jaw, and they don’t fit so much as they pass at a crossroads; the universe doesn’t align for them, except in the steps they choose to take. “I will never be her.”
Jim’s lips are at the dip between his clavicles, are hovering so that the sharp stream, the gentle breeze of his words plays on the fierce way his heart pumps at the gap between his bones, hard enough that the skin taps frantic at the wet part of Jim’s mouth when he moves, forms the words murmured with so little sound, such vital force: “Trust me.”
Leonard doesn’t know what breaks him, what snaps him into enough pieces to be lost, to be put back together as something different and new; he doesn’t know it, but his hands are suddenly steadied at Jim’s hips, thumbs buried hard against the pulse point, just deep enough that he can envision the breaking of vessels, the softening of bruises and the sure rhythm under his touch. And he knows that Jim can feel him shaking, can tell in the way his fingers waver, the way his pull is too weak, too full -- Jim knows, and doesn’t send a smile his way, doesn’t placate or ease this thing, this shift when he settles close and leans in, pressing himself against Leonard and breathing deliberate, careful and full until Leonard knows the cadence, until Leonard can slip into time.
“I’m not going to leave you,” and it’s a rumble in Jim’s chest, so it’s a rumble in Leonard’s too; like it’s not a fear that stutters harsh through them both, blood in veins, and marrow. “Not ever.”
Leonard’s the one that presses their lips together, closed-mouthed and a little painful, a little too harsh; tastes darkness and doubt on top of the need and the want, and makes all kinds of promises that he doesn’t have the words for, that words won’t fit. He leans his head and inhales, lets his forehead fall under Jim’s chin and shapes himself to the unfamiliar gap.
It’s all as good as said, really.
There’s a gap in the stone, the wall of the place where his captors abandoned him, where he’s lost, and the dust inside it moves with more than just the glazing of his vision, the haze that clouds his mind; it shudders and falls in little gusts that suffocate and settle with every motion, every practiced crash from above, from below, from the sides and the floor and his chest against the ground. The thumping, the heavy beat: it’s too strong for him, too sure to be of his own making, not now -- he can hear the footsteps, throbbing low, but his own heart doesn’t pick up, doesn’t quiver; he’s not afraid of death, he finds, and it’s almost a surprise. He’s not ashamed to die alone.
“I’m not afraid,” Jim mutters, half-lost to something no one wants to name, because it’s too dire, too close -- it might hear and come too soon; “M’not afraid.”
There’s so much fucking blood that Leonard thinks he might choke on it, might lose his footing and fall and snap his goddamn neck for the river of it spreading out, for the way it gleams as Jim slips away atop it, saturated with a heart and depth and passion that’s seeping too fast, that turns Jim white with the abandonment, the loss, and Leonard -- there’s a part of him that wants to run, to hide from the way that Jim’s eyes stay clear and fever-bright as Leonard barks orders, as Jim watches him move with the practice of his trade, his skill, watches his hands press long and firm to Jim’s wounds, watches his features harden as he fights the sting behind his eyes, as he shuts himself down and makes himself to his job, makes himself avoid the stretch of muscle and flesh that he knows, desires deeper than the air in his lungs.
“Hold on, Jim,” Leonard hisses through clenched teeth as the blood flows faster, ever-more dire as they settle him into the biobed. The sensors spring to life as soon as his body -- too light, too frail -- makes contact, and his lips move with the same mantra -- ‘not afraid, m’not afraid, m’not afraid’ -- until his eyes roll back and the monitors flash angry, heart-stopping red and there’s movement everywhere except where there needs to be: except at Jim’s chest, where the blood’s not pouring, and Jim’s mouth, where the fears have turned too real.
It takes Leonard a second to process the reality of it, and another to realize that he will not accept it; he’ll be damned if he lets this go without a fight.
It takes Leonard a good ten hours before the sensors stop blaring in his ears, stop wailing loud enough and fast enough to drown the racing of his heart.
He’s slumped at Jim’s bedside, still covered in blood, hair hanging limp across his eyes where his head is bowed into the empty space, hanging by a thread. He reaches out, feels warmth against Jim’s palm as he tries to take comfort in the shape, the contact -- tries not to feel the slick heat of Jim’s blood, the still weight of Jim’s heart in his hands when he’d had to abandon convention and try something a little more daring, a little more than merely desperate in order to keep the Captain with them, to keep from losing the better half of everything he knows.
He sighs, tries not to think at all, except that it’s futile -- the thoughts, the worries and the fears and fuck all, but the hopes: they’re all he has; and he can hear it, soft like an echo: ‘I’m not afraid,’ the words heavy, haunting as he watches Jim’s chest rise and fall, mechanized with breaths that are only borrowed, not his own; ‘M’not afraid.’
“But I am, Jim,” Leonard whispers, and he wishes Jim could hear him, wishes he could say it, that he had the strength; he wraps his fingers, crooks them tight against Jim’s hand, feels hot life running beneath the skin, and that’s Jim’s -- that’s his Jim. “God help me, but I am.”
In retrospect, he wishes he hadn’t been so scared. He wishes he could have been strong enough to see the inevitable and embrace it, for all of its bottomless, fathomless abandon -- for the way it would consume him with a gravity all its own.
He suspects most people wish that, in the end. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.
He’s not so far gone that he can’t tell that something’s looming, that the end’s closer than any beginning left for him to find, to fail; his heart is heavy in his ears, against his lungs, the throb of it uneven, staggering on, and he knows what that means; knows from experience and training, and knows that even if he’s too stubborn to accept it, he’s not strong enough to fight it anymore.
He’s not strong enough to fight it, maybe he never was; but defeat’s been a long time in coming, now, and he’s ready -- no where near ready -- to give in.
It doesn’t take a drink, or a loss; it doesn’t take a dare or a bribe -- it’s frantic and needy because it was meant to be, because it was always going to be when it came to them, and they can recognize that, now. Pressed bare, chest to chest as Jim stretches him, as Jim feels him through and kills pieces of him he hadn’t known were alive to begin with; with Jim’s heart hammering just across from his own, the overlap like a flutter between the sweat that slips between -- it’s all so clear.
And that heart isn’t foreign to Leonard, isn’t unknown, but the sterile spike of it on his tricorder, its soft, undulating cadence against his fingertips in the field as he frantically checks his unconscious, idiot Captain’s pulse - it’s nothing compared to this, this feeling, the way that pounding beat fills him, drives him, washes over him and takes hold, as all of existence seems to melt into that frantic rhythm, warm like the throb of the sun.
It’s like nothing else; of that much, he’s painfully certain.
Jim rocks against him, chest heaving as he thrusts, as he runs hands over Leonard’s ribs and wraps a loose fist around Leonard’s length -- as he bites across Leonard’s shoulder blades and flicks the back of a fingernail over the wet tip of him as he sinks low and fills Leonard full, stretches him wide; as he lets an open palm splay firm over Leonard’s sternum, bringing them close enough that Leonard can feel the very thrumming, the very aching life of Jim against his spine, between his lungs; so that the stutter of his being is a tangible thing when Jim comes, when Leonard follows as soon as the world stops spinning and the rush lets him breathe.
And all he knows is heat and release, and he lets it crush him, lets it break the frame of him until he’s boneless, defenseless, until he’s senseless to the point of uselessness and freedom unbound -- he lets it redefine his boundaries, and hopes of forces larger than himself that, once he comes back up for air, he might be able to recognize what emerges from the fray.
Jim’s got him on his back, is covering him from the bottom up, chin propped at the center of his chest as he looks up beneath his lashes, the color of his eyes obscured in the dark; he’s breathing, just breathing, but his mouth is open against the bud of Leonard’s nipple, warm and damp; and it’s heaven, like the places he could never, ever go.
His skin feels cold, and he blinks like it’s the hardest thing in the world -- harder than living and dying and maybe even loving.
The blood is flowing too quickly, spilling out to fast; he knows that much, even as the thoughts in his head seem to stick, slow like molasses as they wade in the fog creeping up from the great beyond, waiting to block out all the hope that’s left in his world.
The gasps of air are getting shallower as they pass through burning lungs, like salt in his wounds as the oxygen seems to sear from the inside, stale and stagnant like the marrow in his bones -
“Bones,” he hears it like it’s always been there, whispered in his ear in the middle of the night like it holds the answers, like his name could open doors, could save the world.
“Bones,” between the quirk of a mouth Leonard doesn’t know except for the second-hand taste of it against the lip of his flask, the hard bite of his safety belt cutting into his collarbone as he turns and watches blue eyes dance with a mischief he finds he wants to have, wants to keep close, even if none of it makes any sense.
“Bones,” spoken like a rite, a plea, wretched, precious invocation against the skin of his back, the flesh of his neck, fading with the light and the glare of the moment before Jim falls back to the bed and drags Leonard down with him, never too far.
“Bones.” It’s far, forgotten, and it hurts that it’s almost gone, that it won’t come again...
“Bones!” And it’s too loud, too present, and he feels the shock of it try to stumble through him, try to spark his nerves, except that it can’t, it comes too late -- like the phantom touch of hands on his arms, his face, his chest. “Fuck.” And it’s broken, the curse of it, the feel of it; it’s all broken and it fits, in this. It fits.
“Bones, come on. Come on, open your eyes.” And Leonard, he knows who’s doing the asking, he knows what’s being asked -- isn’t sure if it’s here and now or then and there, but he knows, somewhere deeper than consciousness and life the way he understands it to be, the way he’s learned that it works.
“Jesus, Leonard, don’t do this,” and it’s desperate, it’s clinging and begging and Leonard knows the feeling, knows it like a second skin, and it stirs something too subtle to really matter inside of him -- inside of what’s left -- when he thinks of how he’s always managed to cheat for himself what his lover will now have to face on his own. “Don’t do this to me.”
He doesn’t want to, he realizes, only half aware but filled with it, filled with that want; it doesn’t matter if he could overflow with it, though, burst with it -- he’s falling, and there’s no way to get under him, now, to soften the blow.
“Christ,” and there are lips against his, and that’s real, because they taste of things that Leonard would never remember -- taste of stale air and dried blood, of salt and sour, angry hurt that’s too final, too sure to be recalled. “Wake up, Len,” comes the whisper, and Leonard aches to stir, to try. “Please.”
“Bones,” Jim exhales, and the name cracks between his breaths -- half-breaths -- and Leonard feels it like the last thing there will ever be; he feels it against his chest like a rush and in his veins like a prayer and on his skin like warmth and cold as he retreats, wants to stay. “I’m here, baby,” Jim says into the crook of his neck, and there’s wetness and fervor and anguish in it, against his flesh; he thinks that’s what it is as the words grow dim -- slur together before they stop: “I’m here.”
He slips into the darkness, and it’s arms are colder, the embrace of it empty in comparison to Jim’s hands against his shoulder blades, Jim’s chest crushed into his own, the speed of one heart hard, heavy against the lazily retreating beat of the other where they touch; and even as everything melts away, fades to black, those hands on him remain, never ceasing, never failing -- always, always there, and he can see the dawn at the end of boundless night, bright against his mind’s eye, and he can make it real, make it push and thrum in his veins like vibrant rays on morning dew. He can make it.
He can lose everything, so long as he doesn’t lose those hands.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Word Count: 2,797
Summary: All good things come to an end. All paradises fail. For mga1999, who requested Kirk/McCoy, hurt/comfort, schmoopy, one of them injured for my help_chile Auction. Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title belongs to Placebo.
Author’s Notes: To the lovely mga1999: at the risk of sounding even more like an annoying broken record, I just want to say that again: I am SO INCREDIBLY SORRY that your auction fic has taken me so long. My Trek muse just... up and left me, and I’ve been wrestling with it since the auction so that this didn’t turn out absolutely terrible. I hope I managed at least that much for you -- even if it's a bit more dramatic and a bit less viscerally stream-of-consciousness-y than I'd hoped -- and that you enjoy the final product, belated as it is <3
Also, many thanks for the incomparable weepingnaiad, because without her, I’d probably still be hiding in the corner with a hundred words of thing, staring at it blankly without a clue as to what I was doing.
Kings of Medicine
In the end, they leave him; desert him in a place where no one will find him, a place no man could ever reach in time. In the end they always leave him. It’s inevitable. All good things come to an end. All paradises fail.
“But this one doesn’t have to,” Jim says, voice too soft, too unlike him; Leonard doesn’t know these hidden depths, can’t navigate theses waters -- Christ, but he wants to, though -- wants to fall rugged, shipwrecked on these shores that taste of salt and drag rough with stubble like sand as a tongue slips out and licks, too slow for coincidence -- deep like fathoms and wide.
Jim’s breath is heavy, hotter than the Georgia sun, and the shiver it leaves in its wake condenses, leaves its mark at Leonard’s jaw: “This one can last.”
Leonard doesn’t move, only clenches tight at the fabric of the sofa, white-knuckling the arm of the couch as he studies his hands, the creases in his palms -- tries not to think about the way that Jim’s mouth in the lines, tracing the veins might feel, what it might do to the pulse he imagines he can see at his wrists; knows close against the pads of his thumbs as he holds his hands together, keeps them steady where they want to shake.
Jim’s voice is a sigh, and it’s lighter than Leonard’s ever given his friend the credit for; and that, he thinks, in itself was a mistake. “I’m not her,” Jim says, leaning so that the bridge of his nose pushes hard, unmatched against the line of Leonard’s jaw, and they don’t fit so much as they pass at a crossroads; the universe doesn’t align for them, except in the steps they choose to take. “I will never be her.”
Jim’s lips are at the dip between his clavicles, are hovering so that the sharp stream, the gentle breeze of his words plays on the fierce way his heart pumps at the gap between his bones, hard enough that the skin taps frantic at the wet part of Jim’s mouth when he moves, forms the words murmured with so little sound, such vital force: “Trust me.”
Leonard doesn’t know what breaks him, what snaps him into enough pieces to be lost, to be put back together as something different and new; he doesn’t know it, but his hands are suddenly steadied at Jim’s hips, thumbs buried hard against the pulse point, just deep enough that he can envision the breaking of vessels, the softening of bruises and the sure rhythm under his touch. And he knows that Jim can feel him shaking, can tell in the way his fingers waver, the way his pull is too weak, too full -- Jim knows, and doesn’t send a smile his way, doesn’t placate or ease this thing, this shift when he settles close and leans in, pressing himself against Leonard and breathing deliberate, careful and full until Leonard knows the cadence, until Leonard can slip into time.
“I’m not going to leave you,” and it’s a rumble in Jim’s chest, so it’s a rumble in Leonard’s too; like it’s not a fear that stutters harsh through them both, blood in veins, and marrow. “Not ever.”
Leonard’s the one that presses their lips together, closed-mouthed and a little painful, a little too harsh; tastes darkness and doubt on top of the need and the want, and makes all kinds of promises that he doesn’t have the words for, that words won’t fit. He leans his head and inhales, lets his forehead fall under Jim’s chin and shapes himself to the unfamiliar gap.
It’s all as good as said, really.
There’s a gap in the stone, the wall of the place where his captors abandoned him, where he’s lost, and the dust inside it moves with more than just the glazing of his vision, the haze that clouds his mind; it shudders and falls in little gusts that suffocate and settle with every motion, every practiced crash from above, from below, from the sides and the floor and his chest against the ground. The thumping, the heavy beat: it’s too strong for him, too sure to be of his own making, not now -- he can hear the footsteps, throbbing low, but his own heart doesn’t pick up, doesn’t quiver; he’s not afraid of death, he finds, and it’s almost a surprise. He’s not ashamed to die alone.
“I’m not afraid,” Jim mutters, half-lost to something no one wants to name, because it’s too dire, too close -- it might hear and come too soon; “M’not afraid.”
There’s so much fucking blood that Leonard thinks he might choke on it, might lose his footing and fall and snap his goddamn neck for the river of it spreading out, for the way it gleams as Jim slips away atop it, saturated with a heart and depth and passion that’s seeping too fast, that turns Jim white with the abandonment, the loss, and Leonard -- there’s a part of him that wants to run, to hide from the way that Jim’s eyes stay clear and fever-bright as Leonard barks orders, as Jim watches him move with the practice of his trade, his skill, watches his hands press long and firm to Jim’s wounds, watches his features harden as he fights the sting behind his eyes, as he shuts himself down and makes himself to his job, makes himself avoid the stretch of muscle and flesh that he knows, desires deeper than the air in his lungs.
“Hold on, Jim,” Leonard hisses through clenched teeth as the blood flows faster, ever-more dire as they settle him into the biobed. The sensors spring to life as soon as his body -- too light, too frail -- makes contact, and his lips move with the same mantra -- ‘not afraid, m’not afraid, m’not afraid’ -- until his eyes roll back and the monitors flash angry, heart-stopping red and there’s movement everywhere except where there needs to be: except at Jim’s chest, where the blood’s not pouring, and Jim’s mouth, where the fears have turned too real.
It takes Leonard a second to process the reality of it, and another to realize that he will not accept it; he’ll be damned if he lets this go without a fight.
It takes Leonard a good ten hours before the sensors stop blaring in his ears, stop wailing loud enough and fast enough to drown the racing of his heart.
He’s slumped at Jim’s bedside, still covered in blood, hair hanging limp across his eyes where his head is bowed into the empty space, hanging by a thread. He reaches out, feels warmth against Jim’s palm as he tries to take comfort in the shape, the contact -- tries not to feel the slick heat of Jim’s blood, the still weight of Jim’s heart in his hands when he’d had to abandon convention and try something a little more daring, a little more than merely desperate in order to keep the Captain with them, to keep from losing the better half of everything he knows.
He sighs, tries not to think at all, except that it’s futile -- the thoughts, the worries and the fears and fuck all, but the hopes: they’re all he has; and he can hear it, soft like an echo: ‘I’m not afraid,’ the words heavy, haunting as he watches Jim’s chest rise and fall, mechanized with breaths that are only borrowed, not his own; ‘M’not afraid.’
“But I am, Jim,” Leonard whispers, and he wishes Jim could hear him, wishes he could say it, that he had the strength; he wraps his fingers, crooks them tight against Jim’s hand, feels hot life running beneath the skin, and that’s Jim’s -- that’s his Jim. “God help me, but I am.”
In retrospect, he wishes he hadn’t been so scared. He wishes he could have been strong enough to see the inevitable and embrace it, for all of its bottomless, fathomless abandon -- for the way it would consume him with a gravity all its own.
He suspects most people wish that, in the end. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.
He’s not so far gone that he can’t tell that something’s looming, that the end’s closer than any beginning left for him to find, to fail; his heart is heavy in his ears, against his lungs, the throb of it uneven, staggering on, and he knows what that means; knows from experience and training, and knows that even if he’s too stubborn to accept it, he’s not strong enough to fight it anymore.
He’s not strong enough to fight it, maybe he never was; but defeat’s been a long time in coming, now, and he’s ready -- no where near ready -- to give in.
It doesn’t take a drink, or a loss; it doesn’t take a dare or a bribe -- it’s frantic and needy because it was meant to be, because it was always going to be when it came to them, and they can recognize that, now. Pressed bare, chest to chest as Jim stretches him, as Jim feels him through and kills pieces of him he hadn’t known were alive to begin with; with Jim’s heart hammering just across from his own, the overlap like a flutter between the sweat that slips between -- it’s all so clear.
And that heart isn’t foreign to Leonard, isn’t unknown, but the sterile spike of it on his tricorder, its soft, undulating cadence against his fingertips in the field as he frantically checks his unconscious, idiot Captain’s pulse - it’s nothing compared to this, this feeling, the way that pounding beat fills him, drives him, washes over him and takes hold, as all of existence seems to melt into that frantic rhythm, warm like the throb of the sun.
It’s like nothing else; of that much, he’s painfully certain.
Jim rocks against him, chest heaving as he thrusts, as he runs hands over Leonard’s ribs and wraps a loose fist around Leonard’s length -- as he bites across Leonard’s shoulder blades and flicks the back of a fingernail over the wet tip of him as he sinks low and fills Leonard full, stretches him wide; as he lets an open palm splay firm over Leonard’s sternum, bringing them close enough that Leonard can feel the very thrumming, the very aching life of Jim against his spine, between his lungs; so that the stutter of his being is a tangible thing when Jim comes, when Leonard follows as soon as the world stops spinning and the rush lets him breathe.
And all he knows is heat and release, and he lets it crush him, lets it break the frame of him until he’s boneless, defenseless, until he’s senseless to the point of uselessness and freedom unbound -- he lets it redefine his boundaries, and hopes of forces larger than himself that, once he comes back up for air, he might be able to recognize what emerges from the fray.
Jim’s got him on his back, is covering him from the bottom up, chin propped at the center of his chest as he looks up beneath his lashes, the color of his eyes obscured in the dark; he’s breathing, just breathing, but his mouth is open against the bud of Leonard’s nipple, warm and damp; and it’s heaven, like the places he could never, ever go.
His skin feels cold, and he blinks like it’s the hardest thing in the world -- harder than living and dying and maybe even loving.
The blood is flowing too quickly, spilling out to fast; he knows that much, even as the thoughts in his head seem to stick, slow like molasses as they wade in the fog creeping up from the great beyond, waiting to block out all the hope that’s left in his world.
The gasps of air are getting shallower as they pass through burning lungs, like salt in his wounds as the oxygen seems to sear from the inside, stale and stagnant like the marrow in his bones -
“Bones,” he hears it like it’s always been there, whispered in his ear in the middle of the night like it holds the answers, like his name could open doors, could save the world.
“Bones,” between the quirk of a mouth Leonard doesn’t know except for the second-hand taste of it against the lip of his flask, the hard bite of his safety belt cutting into his collarbone as he turns and watches blue eyes dance with a mischief he finds he wants to have, wants to keep close, even if none of it makes any sense.
“Bones,” spoken like a rite, a plea, wretched, precious invocation against the skin of his back, the flesh of his neck, fading with the light and the glare of the moment before Jim falls back to the bed and drags Leonard down with him, never too far.
“Bones.” It’s far, forgotten, and it hurts that it’s almost gone, that it won’t come again...
“Bones!” And it’s too loud, too present, and he feels the shock of it try to stumble through him, try to spark his nerves, except that it can’t, it comes too late -- like the phantom touch of hands on his arms, his face, his chest. “Fuck.” And it’s broken, the curse of it, the feel of it; it’s all broken and it fits, in this. It fits.
“Bones, come on. Come on, open your eyes.” And Leonard, he knows who’s doing the asking, he knows what’s being asked -- isn’t sure if it’s here and now or then and there, but he knows, somewhere deeper than consciousness and life the way he understands it to be, the way he’s learned that it works.
“Jesus, Leonard, don’t do this,” and it’s desperate, it’s clinging and begging and Leonard knows the feeling, knows it like a second skin, and it stirs something too subtle to really matter inside of him -- inside of what’s left -- when he thinks of how he’s always managed to cheat for himself what his lover will now have to face on his own. “Don’t do this to me.”
He doesn’t want to, he realizes, only half aware but filled with it, filled with that want; it doesn’t matter if he could overflow with it, though, burst with it -- he’s falling, and there’s no way to get under him, now, to soften the blow.
“Christ,” and there are lips against his, and that’s real, because they taste of things that Leonard would never remember -- taste of stale air and dried blood, of salt and sour, angry hurt that’s too final, too sure to be recalled. “Wake up, Len,” comes the whisper, and Leonard aches to stir, to try. “Please.”
“Bones,” Jim exhales, and the name cracks between his breaths -- half-breaths -- and Leonard feels it like the last thing there will ever be; he feels it against his chest like a rush and in his veins like a prayer and on his skin like warmth and cold as he retreats, wants to stay. “I’m here, baby,” Jim says into the crook of his neck, and there’s wetness and fervor and anguish in it, against his flesh; he thinks that’s what it is as the words grow dim -- slur together before they stop: “I’m here.”
He slips into the darkness, and it’s arms are colder, the embrace of it empty in comparison to Jim’s hands against his shoulder blades, Jim’s chest crushed into his own, the speed of one heart hard, heavy against the lazily retreating beat of the other where they touch; and even as everything melts away, fades to black, those hands on him remain, never ceasing, never failing -- always, always there, and he can see the dawn at the end of boundless night, bright against his mind’s eye, and he can make it real, make it push and thrum in his veins like vibrant rays on morning dew. He can make it.
He can lose everything, so long as he doesn’t lose those hands.