What kind of song is "Rape Me"?
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Summary: Jim likes to rock out and Bones...doesn't. Can love triumph over awful music taste?
A/N: This was written for the Star Trek 2009 kink meme. I'm not really writing Star Trek anymore, but I might get back into it someday.
It happened when Len was in the shower. One moment he was leisurely soaping up his hair, wondering if he had time to read the paper before heading down to sickbay, and the next he jerked bolt upright, his head throbbing after he cracked it on the low ceiling.
He yanked the shower curtain back, not bothering with a towel. Whatever was out there, it sounded like it was in a great deal of pain. Either that, or someone had managed to smuggle a bunch of randy tomcats onto the Enterprise.
“Jim?” he called, yanking the bathroom door open. “What in the hell is going on out here?”
Jim was lying on his back in bed, wearing nothing but regulation briefs and holding a portable music device. He removed his headphones and looked up, his gaze raking over Len’s dripping wet form.
“Well, good morning.” He smirked, stretching languidly. “Come out for a quickie before work?”
Awareness dawned over Len. He rolled his eyes, pulling a pillow from the foot of the bed to shield himself. “You were listening to that…stuff. I thought some freaky alien beast had snuck in here and was gutting you from head to toe. Or maybe it was letting out some weird mating call, and you were moments away from being raped. And when I run out in a panic to save you, what do I find?”
He picked up the music device, peering at the view screen. Sure enough, it was his nemesis that still blared from the headphones, loud enough to cause permanent damage. Not that he had to play it loudly to cause damage; Len could feel his eardrums scream in pain every time Jim played the blasted thing.
“What’ve you got against Alice In Chains?” Jim said, pouting as he grabbed the device back. He stuck the headphones back on and resumed his unholy caterwauling.
Len clamped hands over his ears, letting the pillow drop to the floor. Jim’s eyes widened, but he didn’t stop singing. Len rolled his eyes and headed back to the shower, letting Jim stare at his ass as he walked.
This time, he was locking the bathroom door.
* * *
Jim trudged down the hallway to Leonard’s room, despair and relief soaking into him in equal measure. They had lost a lot of crewmen, and Jim knew that he wasn’t the only one wracked with guilt as the reports of the death toll began coming in.
All the same, he couldn’t help but feel victorious. They’d made it out of the altercation with fewer deaths than expected, and Jim’s quick thinking had saved the Enterprise from capture and a tragic end in a scrap yard at the far edge of the galaxy.
Most importantly (although he felt plenty guilty about feeling so), Bones was alive. They would continue to talk, kiss, fight, and have scorching hot makeup sex.
The adrenaline still coursing through Jim made him agonizingly alert, and he knew he needed to either fight or fuck before he came apart at the seams. He pounded on the door.
“Bones! You in there?” He felt himself shake, all his senses focused on what he was going to do to Bones once he got inside that room.
There was a muffled grunt from the other side of the door, and Jim slowly pushed it open. Bones was leaning back in his desk chair, stripped to his undershirt and resting a washcloth over his eyes.
Jim barely had time to appreciate the sight when the audio player on Bones’ computer skipped to the next song. A wave of gentle plucking strings and soft female vocals poured from the speakers, sneaking insidiously into Jim’s ears and coaxing up images of rippling ponds and grass waving sleepily in the breeze.
“Jesus Christ, Bones, what are you listening to?” Jim stalked over to the bed, dropping down and pulling off his boots. The music was only making his state of mind worse. He needed something to get the blood pumping, something to send the testosterone searing through his body and burn it out of him before he collapsed in exhaustion. He didn’t need to feel like a kid being put down for a nap.
“I was trying to relax, before you came barging in here like a rhinoceros on a rampage.” Bones removed the cloth from his eyes, sitting up and glaring at Jim. “You’re not that big, Jim, so why do you stomp around like you weight eight hundred pounds?”
Jim tugged his shirt over his head, running a hand over his ruffled hair. “I came here because I thought we were going to have hot, frenzied, life-affirming sex. I wasn’t expecting you to be getting all meditative on me.”
Jim glared at the computer. The woman had begun singing in Gaelic. He shot Bones an accusatory glance, crossing his arms over his bare chest.
“I’m not having sex with someone who has the same music taste as my grandmother.”
It was a serious threat, judging by the way Bones let his eyes linger over Jim’s sweaty torso. Not taking his eyes off Jim, he reached around and powered the computer off.
* * *
It was another quiet night on the Enterprise. Len sat at the computer terminal, listening to Joanna relate an adventure from a school field trip. Her big blue eyes were all Jocelyn’s, but he could see himself in the way she pulled excitedly at her short hair. At ten years old she was quite the tomboy, dressing in boy’s jeans and summarily kicking the asses of every neighborhood baseball player in Georgia.
Something shifted in the corner of Len’s vision, and he glanced over. Jim sat on the bed in his pajamas, headphones on and the day’s reports propped up against his knees. While he had his lower lip caught between his teeth in concentration, one foot was tapping along to the music.
After a while, he began nodding his head lazily to the same rhythm. Len watched as Jim’s left hand came up to tap his collarbone, pausing every so often to rub his fingers over the abused spot. The sight was infuriatingly arousing, and it took all his effort to shift his focus back to Jo.
“I didn’t catch that, darlin’.”
Jo rolled her eyes (a gesture entirely taken from him). “I said, can you tell Jim that I got his music? I can’t call him cause Mom’s making me go to bed.”
Jim perked up, taking off his headphones. “Jim’s right here, Jo. Do you want to talk to him?”
Jo’s smile was almost as big as Jim’s. “Sure thing. Thanks, Daddy. I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.” He swung up out of the chair and made room for Jim, who slumped into it like an ill-postured teenager. Jim had said that Jo reminded him of himself as a kid. For the sake of his sexual well being, Len tried not to see the similarities.
“Hey, Jo. Did you like the stuff I sent you?”
“It was cool. Nirvana’s really good, but Audioslave is totally overrated.”
Len suppressed a groan. He waited until Jim had said goodnight to Jo before calling him on corrupting his daughter.
“Hey, I only sent her G rated stuff. It’s not like I’d play her ‘Rape Me,’ or anything.”
Len snorted. “Yeah, cause ‘Rape Me’ doesn’t rock hard enough for your tastes.”
He stripped down to his boxers and dropped his pants in the laundry basket. He was removing his socks when he noticed Jim staring at him, frozen in the process of pulling the bed covers back.
“What?” Len muttered, ignoring the way Jim’s blue gaze seemed to penetrate his skull.
“I think we should live together.”
Len’s stomach dropped slightly, but he snorted again and made his way towards the bed. “Jim, we rarely spend the night apart. We each have toothbrushes and underwear in the other’s quarters. What exactly makes you think we need to live together?”
He got into bed, watching a smirk grow on Jim’s face.
“Because you know that ‘Rape Me’ is light by Nirvana’s standards. You can name every Beastie Boys album. And you totally got hard watching me rock out to Nine Inch Nails.”
“Well,” Len said, a predatory smile moving across his lips, “It’s Nine Inch Nails. Just cause your music makes my eardrums bleed doesn’t mean I’m dead below the waist.”
* * *
The past month had been hell for everyone on the Enterprise. Her five year mission was over, and the crew was in the process of scattering across the galaxies. Having to say goodbye after goodbye was wearing everyone thin, and Jim found himself fighting needlessly just to avoid thinking about it.
“I swear to God, if you keep playing that Celtic Woman shit, I’m going to throw your computer through the wall.”
He saw Leonard’s neck tense. Leonard reached a hand up to rub it, ignoring him.
“I’m trying to get my ex-wife to give me a place to sleep so that I can see my daughter for the first time in three years. I need something that’s going to relax me.”
He fell silent, and immediately Jim felt guilty. He made his way into the kitchen (this apartment really was too small for the two of them), pouring himself a cup of coffee. Lord knows he didn’t need the caffeine making him anxious, but he couldn’t just stand there and watch Leonard make plans to leave him.
He understood it. Of course he understood it; the man hadn’t been a father to his daughter since she was six goddamn years old. Of course he wanted to go back and make up for lost time. Of course he wanted to leave the terrifying vastness of space behind, and set himself up as a quiet country doctor in a quiet country town.
Of course he wanted to leave Jim. Or was it Jim who wanted to leave?
“Jesus,” Jim muttered, burying his face in his hands and leaning back against the counter. He didn’t want to be away from Leonard, but being in this apartment was killing him.
“Something the matter, Jim?” He looked up from the computer screen, the corners of his eyes creased with weariness and concern. He was leaving Jim, and he had the nerve to be fucking concerned.
“Nothing,” Jim snapped. “I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.”
Leonard’s gaze was steady. “If something’s bothering you, Jim, spit it out. Nobody likes a passive aggressive bastard.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “Why would I be bothered, Len? I’m going back out into space. Just like I’ve always wanted. And you’re going back to your daughter, just like you’ve always wanted. There’s no reason why either one of us should be upset with the arrangement.”
He slammed the coffee cup on the counter, splashing coffee all over his hand. He swore, running cold water in the sink. He heard Leonard come up behind him, as he knew he would.
“Jim,” he said, reaching for his burned hand. Jim snatched it away, sticking it under the painfully cold water.
“I’m fine.” Leonard stood behind him for a moment, then walked back to the computer.
“Jim, I don’t like this any more than you do.”
“Then why are you doing it?” Jim spun around, his hand dripping water onto the dingy linoleum. “Why are you sitting here, saying how it’s all for the best, when it’s obviously tearing both of us to pieces? I know you can’t avoid doing this, but can you at least act like it hurts?”
Something crossed Leonard’s face, and he drew his mouth into a tight line. “If you need me to fall apart at the seams to make you feel okay with yourself, maybe you’ll be better off this way.”
Jim’s blood reached a boiling point. He stormed over to the door, yanking on his shoes and grabbing a coat from the rack.
“Don’t expect me back for a while,” he snapped.
Jim stormed down the street, shaking with fury and blinking the sting out of his eyes. He didn’t notice he was wearing Leonard’s coat until he jammed his hands in the pockets and found Leonard’s music player.
Still breathing hard, he pulled the device out and leaned against the wall of the nearest building. He inspected it carefully, seeing the spots where the varnish was chipping (and the scratched corner from the time Jim dropped it off the deck in the shuttle bay).
Leonard loved the thing, though Jim was at a loss to explain why. It wasn’t like he couldn’t access his library of shitty new age from every computer terminal in the ship, and yet he would always lock himself in his office or his bedroom, eyes closed and every device turned off except the music player. It’s not that Len was a technophobe; it’s just that the things he used music to escape from were the things he had to deal with every day on computer terminals and tricorders.
A sharp wind blew over from the harbor, and Jim tugged the edges of the coat across his body. He crouched down on his heels, slipping on the well worn earphones and pressing play.
The music that came out was the last thing he was expecting. He hadn’t known that Len liked any music that was sung in English, let alone classic soul. He especially hadn’t expected classic soul that burned with yearning passion, as this voice Jim had never heard before vocalized everything he was feeling but afraid to admit to himself.
Jim’s heart felt like it would swell right out of his chest, and hot tears burned behind his eyes. If this unknown woman from three centuries past could feel the same pain he felt, and bear that pain in order to follow her heart, why couldn’t Jim?
He burst out laughing. He was crouching in a San Francisco alley in an ill-fitting coat, crying and laughing and listening to twentieth century music on a stolen music player when he should be where his heart clearly belonged. He stood up, yanking out the earphones and stuffing the player back in his pocket as he jogged back to the apartment.
When Leonard opened the door, his shoulders were hunched and his hair stuck up where he’d clearly been pulling at it in frustration. His eyes were red-rimmed and shadowed with dark circles, and there was a look of such hopeless guilt in them that Jim almost started crying again.
“Look, Jim, I know you have no reason to listen to me, but I was an asshole earlier. We both said stuff we didn’t mean, and I think we should just try to move past it and act like adults instead of bratty, heartbroken fifteen-year-olds…Jim, are you crying? What’s wrong?”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, he looked so adorably concerned that Jim couldn’t help but laugh again. Leonard’s eyebrows raised in befuddlement, and Jim tackled him.
“Jesus, kid!” He was warm and solid under Jim’s arms, and he wondered how he could ever have thought leaving him would be a good idea.
“I’m doing it, Bones,” he said, his voice muffled in Leonard’s neck.
“You’re doing what?” His voice sounded warmer, and his brought his arms up to embrace Jim, one hand pulling distractingly through Jim’s hair.
“I’m boarding a midnight train to Georgia.”
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Summary: Jim likes to rock out and Bones...doesn't. Can love triumph over awful music taste?
A/N: This was written for the Star Trek 2009 kink meme. I'm not really writing Star Trek anymore, but I might get back into it someday.
It happened when Len was in the shower. One moment he was leisurely soaping up his hair, wondering if he had time to read the paper before heading down to sickbay, and the next he jerked bolt upright, his head throbbing after he cracked it on the low ceiling.
He yanked the shower curtain back, not bothering with a towel. Whatever was out there, it sounded like it was in a great deal of pain. Either that, or someone had managed to smuggle a bunch of randy tomcats onto the Enterprise.
“Jim?” he called, yanking the bathroom door open. “What in the hell is going on out here?”
Jim was lying on his back in bed, wearing nothing but regulation briefs and holding a portable music device. He removed his headphones and looked up, his gaze raking over Len’s dripping wet form.
“Well, good morning.” He smirked, stretching languidly. “Come out for a quickie before work?”
Awareness dawned over Len. He rolled his eyes, pulling a pillow from the foot of the bed to shield himself. “You were listening to that…stuff. I thought some freaky alien beast had snuck in here and was gutting you from head to toe. Or maybe it was letting out some weird mating call, and you were moments away from being raped. And when I run out in a panic to save you, what do I find?”
He picked up the music device, peering at the view screen. Sure enough, it was his nemesis that still blared from the headphones, loud enough to cause permanent damage. Not that he had to play it loudly to cause damage; Len could feel his eardrums scream in pain every time Jim played the blasted thing.
“What’ve you got against Alice In Chains?” Jim said, pouting as he grabbed the device back. He stuck the headphones back on and resumed his unholy caterwauling.
Len clamped hands over his ears, letting the pillow drop to the floor. Jim’s eyes widened, but he didn’t stop singing. Len rolled his eyes and headed back to the shower, letting Jim stare at his ass as he walked.
This time, he was locking the bathroom door.
* * *
Jim trudged down the hallway to Leonard’s room, despair and relief soaking into him in equal measure. They had lost a lot of crewmen, and Jim knew that he wasn’t the only one wracked with guilt as the reports of the death toll began coming in.
All the same, he couldn’t help but feel victorious. They’d made it out of the altercation with fewer deaths than expected, and Jim’s quick thinking had saved the Enterprise from capture and a tragic end in a scrap yard at the far edge of the galaxy.
Most importantly (although he felt plenty guilty about feeling so), Bones was alive. They would continue to talk, kiss, fight, and have scorching hot makeup sex.
The adrenaline still coursing through Jim made him agonizingly alert, and he knew he needed to either fight or fuck before he came apart at the seams. He pounded on the door.
“Bones! You in there?” He felt himself shake, all his senses focused on what he was going to do to Bones once he got inside that room.
There was a muffled grunt from the other side of the door, and Jim slowly pushed it open. Bones was leaning back in his desk chair, stripped to his undershirt and resting a washcloth over his eyes.
Jim barely had time to appreciate the sight when the audio player on Bones’ computer skipped to the next song. A wave of gentle plucking strings and soft female vocals poured from the speakers, sneaking insidiously into Jim’s ears and coaxing up images of rippling ponds and grass waving sleepily in the breeze.
“Jesus Christ, Bones, what are you listening to?” Jim stalked over to the bed, dropping down and pulling off his boots. The music was only making his state of mind worse. He needed something to get the blood pumping, something to send the testosterone searing through his body and burn it out of him before he collapsed in exhaustion. He didn’t need to feel like a kid being put down for a nap.
“I was trying to relax, before you came barging in here like a rhinoceros on a rampage.” Bones removed the cloth from his eyes, sitting up and glaring at Jim. “You’re not that big, Jim, so why do you stomp around like you weight eight hundred pounds?”
Jim tugged his shirt over his head, running a hand over his ruffled hair. “I came here because I thought we were going to have hot, frenzied, life-affirming sex. I wasn’t expecting you to be getting all meditative on me.”
Jim glared at the computer. The woman had begun singing in Gaelic. He shot Bones an accusatory glance, crossing his arms over his bare chest.
“I’m not having sex with someone who has the same music taste as my grandmother.”
It was a serious threat, judging by the way Bones let his eyes linger over Jim’s sweaty torso. Not taking his eyes off Jim, he reached around and powered the computer off.
* * *
It was another quiet night on the Enterprise. Len sat at the computer terminal, listening to Joanna relate an adventure from a school field trip. Her big blue eyes were all Jocelyn’s, but he could see himself in the way she pulled excitedly at her short hair. At ten years old she was quite the tomboy, dressing in boy’s jeans and summarily kicking the asses of every neighborhood baseball player in Georgia.
Something shifted in the corner of Len’s vision, and he glanced over. Jim sat on the bed in his pajamas, headphones on and the day’s reports propped up against his knees. While he had his lower lip caught between his teeth in concentration, one foot was tapping along to the music.
After a while, he began nodding his head lazily to the same rhythm. Len watched as Jim’s left hand came up to tap his collarbone, pausing every so often to rub his fingers over the abused spot. The sight was infuriatingly arousing, and it took all his effort to shift his focus back to Jo.
“I didn’t catch that, darlin’.”
Jo rolled her eyes (a gesture entirely taken from him). “I said, can you tell Jim that I got his music? I can’t call him cause Mom’s making me go to bed.”
Jim perked up, taking off his headphones. “Jim’s right here, Jo. Do you want to talk to him?”
Jo’s smile was almost as big as Jim’s. “Sure thing. Thanks, Daddy. I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.” He swung up out of the chair and made room for Jim, who slumped into it like an ill-postured teenager. Jim had said that Jo reminded him of himself as a kid. For the sake of his sexual well being, Len tried not to see the similarities.
“Hey, Jo. Did you like the stuff I sent you?”
“It was cool. Nirvana’s really good, but Audioslave is totally overrated.”
Len suppressed a groan. He waited until Jim had said goodnight to Jo before calling him on corrupting his daughter.
“Hey, I only sent her G rated stuff. It’s not like I’d play her ‘Rape Me,’ or anything.”
Len snorted. “Yeah, cause ‘Rape Me’ doesn’t rock hard enough for your tastes.”
He stripped down to his boxers and dropped his pants in the laundry basket. He was removing his socks when he noticed Jim staring at him, frozen in the process of pulling the bed covers back.
“What?” Len muttered, ignoring the way Jim’s blue gaze seemed to penetrate his skull.
“I think we should live together.”
Len’s stomach dropped slightly, but he snorted again and made his way towards the bed. “Jim, we rarely spend the night apart. We each have toothbrushes and underwear in the other’s quarters. What exactly makes you think we need to live together?”
He got into bed, watching a smirk grow on Jim’s face.
“Because you know that ‘Rape Me’ is light by Nirvana’s standards. You can name every Beastie Boys album. And you totally got hard watching me rock out to Nine Inch Nails.”
“Well,” Len said, a predatory smile moving across his lips, “It’s Nine Inch Nails. Just cause your music makes my eardrums bleed doesn’t mean I’m dead below the waist.”
* * *
The past month had been hell for everyone on the Enterprise. Her five year mission was over, and the crew was in the process of scattering across the galaxies. Having to say goodbye after goodbye was wearing everyone thin, and Jim found himself fighting needlessly just to avoid thinking about it.
“I swear to God, if you keep playing that Celtic Woman shit, I’m going to throw your computer through the wall.”
He saw Leonard’s neck tense. Leonard reached a hand up to rub it, ignoring him.
“I’m trying to get my ex-wife to give me a place to sleep so that I can see my daughter for the first time in three years. I need something that’s going to relax me.”
He fell silent, and immediately Jim felt guilty. He made his way into the kitchen (this apartment really was too small for the two of them), pouring himself a cup of coffee. Lord knows he didn’t need the caffeine making him anxious, but he couldn’t just stand there and watch Leonard make plans to leave him.
He understood it. Of course he understood it; the man hadn’t been a father to his daughter since she was six goddamn years old. Of course he wanted to go back and make up for lost time. Of course he wanted to leave the terrifying vastness of space behind, and set himself up as a quiet country doctor in a quiet country town.
Of course he wanted to leave Jim. Or was it Jim who wanted to leave?
“Jesus,” Jim muttered, burying his face in his hands and leaning back against the counter. He didn’t want to be away from Leonard, but being in this apartment was killing him.
“Something the matter, Jim?” He looked up from the computer screen, the corners of his eyes creased with weariness and concern. He was leaving Jim, and he had the nerve to be fucking concerned.
“Nothing,” Jim snapped. “I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.”
Leonard’s gaze was steady. “If something’s bothering you, Jim, spit it out. Nobody likes a passive aggressive bastard.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “Why would I be bothered, Len? I’m going back out into space. Just like I’ve always wanted. And you’re going back to your daughter, just like you’ve always wanted. There’s no reason why either one of us should be upset with the arrangement.”
He slammed the coffee cup on the counter, splashing coffee all over his hand. He swore, running cold water in the sink. He heard Leonard come up behind him, as he knew he would.
“Jim,” he said, reaching for his burned hand. Jim snatched it away, sticking it under the painfully cold water.
“I’m fine.” Leonard stood behind him for a moment, then walked back to the computer.
“Jim, I don’t like this any more than you do.”
“Then why are you doing it?” Jim spun around, his hand dripping water onto the dingy linoleum. “Why are you sitting here, saying how it’s all for the best, when it’s obviously tearing both of us to pieces? I know you can’t avoid doing this, but can you at least act like it hurts?”
Something crossed Leonard’s face, and he drew his mouth into a tight line. “If you need me to fall apart at the seams to make you feel okay with yourself, maybe you’ll be better off this way.”
Jim’s blood reached a boiling point. He stormed over to the door, yanking on his shoes and grabbing a coat from the rack.
“Don’t expect me back for a while,” he snapped.
Jim stormed down the street, shaking with fury and blinking the sting out of his eyes. He didn’t notice he was wearing Leonard’s coat until he jammed his hands in the pockets and found Leonard’s music player.
Still breathing hard, he pulled the device out and leaned against the wall of the nearest building. He inspected it carefully, seeing the spots where the varnish was chipping (and the scratched corner from the time Jim dropped it off the deck in the shuttle bay).
Leonard loved the thing, though Jim was at a loss to explain why. It wasn’t like he couldn’t access his library of shitty new age from every computer terminal in the ship, and yet he would always lock himself in his office or his bedroom, eyes closed and every device turned off except the music player. It’s not that Len was a technophobe; it’s just that the things he used music to escape from were the things he had to deal with every day on computer terminals and tricorders.
A sharp wind blew over from the harbor, and Jim tugged the edges of the coat across his body. He crouched down on his heels, slipping on the well worn earphones and pressing play.
The music that came out was the last thing he was expecting. He hadn’t known that Len liked any music that was sung in English, let alone classic soul. He especially hadn’t expected classic soul that burned with yearning passion, as this voice Jim had never heard before vocalized everything he was feeling but afraid to admit to himself.
Jim’s heart felt like it would swell right out of his chest, and hot tears burned behind his eyes. If this unknown woman from three centuries past could feel the same pain he felt, and bear that pain in order to follow her heart, why couldn’t Jim?
He burst out laughing. He was crouching in a San Francisco alley in an ill-fitting coat, crying and laughing and listening to twentieth century music on a stolen music player when he should be where his heart clearly belonged. He stood up, yanking out the earphones and stuffing the player back in his pocket as he jogged back to the apartment.
When Leonard opened the door, his shoulders were hunched and his hair stuck up where he’d clearly been pulling at it in frustration. His eyes were red-rimmed and shadowed with dark circles, and there was a look of such hopeless guilt in them that Jim almost started crying again.
“Look, Jim, I know you have no reason to listen to me, but I was an asshole earlier. We both said stuff we didn’t mean, and I think we should just try to move past it and act like adults instead of bratty, heartbroken fifteen-year-olds…Jim, are you crying? What’s wrong?”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, he looked so adorably concerned that Jim couldn’t help but laugh again. Leonard’s eyebrows raised in befuddlement, and Jim tackled him.
“Jesus, kid!” He was warm and solid under Jim’s arms, and he wondered how he could ever have thought leaving him would be a good idea.
“I’m doing it, Bones,” he said, his voice muffled in Leonard’s neck.
“You’re doing what?” His voice sounded warmer, and his brought his arms up to embrace Jim, one hand pulling distractingly through Jim’s hair.
“I’m boarding a midnight train to Georgia.”