Fic: One Little White Lie (12/12 + Epilogue)
Title: One Little White Lie (12/12)
Author: laughter_now
Rating: strong PG-13 (lots of bad words), tending towards R later
Pairing: Jim/Bones
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to the Star Trek Franchise. *sigh* Sadly.
Summary: One little white lie never hurt anybody, that's what they say. But apparently they are wrong, because even one small lie can spin out of control and change a life forever. Jim only wanted to be by his best friend's side after an accident. Nobody could have known that the lie he told to make that possible was going to come back to haunt him.
In response to a prompt on space_married.
Sorry for the delay, but I hope I can make up for it with a very long last part.
Thank you all so much for following through this story with me, and for all the comments and encouragements you left me. I didn't get around to answering the comments for the last chapter individually, but I appreciated every single one of them. So thank you so much.
Here's the final installment for you.
Enjoy!
Previous Part
Chapter 12
It was weird, how easy it was to fall back into normal habits, and how well-known yet at the same time completely different everything turned out to be. It felt a little as if Jim was wearing the wrong glasses - everything seemed perfectly normal upon first glance, but all the things he thought he knew so well seemed slightly wrong and out of focus upon closer inspection.
That Bones wanted space apparently meant that he needed physical space above all. Of course there was no way for a Captain and his CMO aboard a starship to avoid each other completely, but what this enforced separation cut down on most was the time they spent alone together. Aside from the weekly meeting that Captain and CMO were obliged to have, there was not a single instance during the first two weeks after that give-me-space-conversation when they were alone together.
Up until all this had happened, Jim had never consciously noticed how much time he and Bones spent together, just the two of them. It was something that rooted way back to their first semester at the Academy, and it was so deeply ingrained in Jim's daily routines that he only noticed the sheer amount of his time that was taken up by Bones now that it was taken from him.
Of course their duties had demanded more time ever since they had boarded Enterprise, but still. They had made time for one another, and it hadn't even been a conscious effort, at least not on Jim's part. He simply had found ways to incorporate alone time with Bones into his daily routines, no matter if it was just five minutes here or ten minutes there.
They always had breakfast together if their shifts allowed it. And everyday Bones grumbled about how Jim needed to eat more fruit and no, grapefruit didn't count if he buried it under a mount of sugar. And once a week, mostly the evening after their weekly obligatory meeting, they hung out and spent the evening either in Bones' quarters or his own, watching old holo-vids or simply talking half the night away. It was never something obligatory, no fixed dates or appointments. It were small rituals they simply had developed and followed without question. And that didn't even include all the times that Jim went to Sickbay while Bones was on duty, or the times Bones came the bridge without any apparent reason.
And those were the things that Jim missed more than he could have imagined. It wasn't even that Bones was giving him the cold shoulder. It just…Jim himself didn't know how to describe it. Maybe it was because they had both agreed to this whole giving-space idea, but they were no longer seeking each other out. There were always others around, so it was easier to put it down to that and not to being a deliberate act when Bones was suddenly having breakfast with Chapel, or when Jim found that he was glad when Scotty wanted to talk with him about some engine upgrades and gave him a valid excuse to not even contemplate sliding into the empty seat next to Bones.
Still, Jim missed it. He missed having Bones in his life the way he had always been, and he couldn't help the sinking feeling that the longer they were keeping this whole idea of giving it space up, the farther they were drifting apart.
He knew that for Bones, it was a matter of trust. Not so much trust in Jim, though that was a part of it. The fact that Jim had lied to Bones was a breach of trust that was still standing between them, no matter how much Bones claimed that it wasn't the main reason for his anger. It was still there. But even more than that, for Bones it was a matter of trust in himself. For as long as he didn't trust that his feelings were real, and that he wanted to spend time with Jim out of his own volition and not because he had spent nearly an entire week convincing himself that he was supposed to feel this way, Bones was going to keep his distance.
What was weird was that Jim could understand that reasoning, and at the same time didn't want to accept it for what it was. It hurt, in a place somewhere deep in his chest where Jim had never felt that kind of hurt before. Maybe that was the reason why he didn't really know how to deal with that feeling.
The cut was abrupt, but what allowed Jim to keep his sanity during that time was that it wasn't complete or final. The change was slow, but it was there. Things didn't come to a standstill entirely, and admittedly Jim was fascinated by how much he learned to appreciate all the small things as they came back.
The first time they ended up eating a meal together at the same table, admittedly with Sulu and Chapel between them and the main reason why they had ended up at this arrangement in the first place. Yet all Jim could think about during that breakfast was that it was closer than he had been to Bones outside of their weekly meetings in a long time.
It was a strange dance of give and take in which Jim was constantly trying to gauge how close he could go without overstepping the whole concept of giving space. He didn't want to pressure Bones and make him withdraw again, yet at the same time he was completely incapable of not being around the other man in some way.
It worked. Somehow, subtly, things shifted back into a more normal pattern between them. There had never been any hostility in their distance, just…distance. And it dissolved only slowly, but the main thing was that it did dissolve. It started with conversations over meals whenever they ended up in the mess hall at the same time. First with the buffer of other people between them and as the focal point of the conversation. But they talked with each other, too, and slowly but surely mealtimes turned into something that Jim found himself looking forward to again.
In fact, it took Jim completely by surprise when one morning he found himself on the receiving end of a minor tirade about pork and why it was not a good idea to deep-fry stripes of it, and an even worse idea to then eat the end result. Not the tirade as such came as a surprise, but the fact that when Jim looked up, he realized for the first time that he and Bones were sitting alone at one of the small tables near the back of the room. Nobody else was sitting there with them, in fact it would have been a tight squeeze trying to fit somebody else at their table at all.
It was a little disconcerting that Jim hadn't even noticed the fact that they were alone before, when all he had been bemoaning in the past weeks was that he had too little time with his friend. And it was such a pleasant surprise that Jim, after the first moment of stunned paralysis wore off, pushed away his plate with bacon and got up to get himself a bowl of cereal. And an apple. Just to have the small satisfaction of seeing Bones' eyes widen slightly and his fingers twitch into the direction of his ever-present tricorder at the sight of comparatively healthy food on Jim's plate.
It was like putting on a comfortable old pair of shoes, although Jim would never tell Bones about that particular comparison. But it was a good feeling to come into the mess hall to find Bones already sitting there, the chair opposite of him empty, or to see Bones slide into the seat next to Jim on the rare occasions when Jim was the first to be up and about. It was the resurrection of one of their traditions, silently and without much ado, and Jim was unspeakably glad to have it back.
Of course life on the ship didn't stop while Jim watched whether or not his friendship with Bones was going to piece itself back together. Negotiations with the Nibilians stretched on for another week after the giving-space conversation until all questions were cleared up and the Nibilian High Senate agreed to further communication with Starfleet Admiralty about the bureaucratic details. After weeks in stationary orbit, it felt like freedom to finally go back to warp and take Enterprise back into deep space, towards the next mission Starfleet Command deigned to assign them.
And leaving orbit also meant that Jim's life as Captain grew increasingly more busy, and he no longer had a lot of time to spare in between his regular duties. Jim found himself looking forward to those few minutes over breakfast every morning. They didn't talk about any profound revelations, but the main thing was that they talked. About ordinary, everyday things.
Three weeks after they broke orbit of Nibilia II, during alpha shift, Bones came to the Bridge for the first time since this whole mess had started. There was no reason for him to come to the Bridge other than that they were passing a binary pulsar that was absolutely breathtaking to watch, and - far more importantly to Jim - because Bones coming to the Bridge for no apparent reason at all was normal. It was what Bones did, just dropping by for a few moments, standing to Jim's right for a little while before he went back to Medical.
Only, he hadn't done so in a long while, and as he stepped out of the turbolift and onto the Bridge that day, all eyes were on him. If Bones noticed, he didn't let it on. He merely stepped up to his customary position somewhere to the right of Jim's chair and watched the pulsar for a few long minutes before he turned around and left again just as wordlessly as he had come.
Nobody said anything about the incident, not to Jim at least and he guessed nobody would dare mention it to Bones, either, but Jim had a hard time keeping the smile off his face for a long while afterwards.
Jim had never experienced a friendship like the one with Bones before. That wasn't to say that he never had a friend before the other man, just never a friendship like this one. Everything before had been more distant, and far more superficial. That fact might be one reason why Jim was so surprised that this careful equilibrium between him and Bones didn't feel strained. After a little while, when they were making the first careful steps back towards normalcy, Jim slowly realized that just because they didn't quite know what to do with and about each other right now, the foundation of their friendship was still there. The trust might have gotten a little scratched, but not on the level that truly mattered. It was weird yet at the same time a comfortable feeling to know that not all was lost, even if some things were going to take some time to earn them back.
That realization was one Jim had when what would have been his father's 60th birthday rolled around, and some higher ups in Starfleet thought it would be a brilliant idea to ask Jim for a few statements and commentaries they wanted to work into a holo-vid to commemorate the hero-figure George Kirk which Starfleet Admiralty still clung to almost desperately. Not even Pike had been able to get Jim out of the assigned task, no matter that the other man knew how much Jim hated that particular kind of spotlight, and for a couple of days Jim had seriously considered whether he should comply with Starfleet's wishes or if he should just tell them to go put their holo where the sun don't shine and see if they were going to relieve him of command while Enterprise was somewhere in deep space.
It was Bones who figured out that something was going on with Jim during that time, and Bones who cornered him, sat him down and made him talk about what was going on. And it was Bones who sat there while Jim ranted on about the fuckers at Starfleet who didn't know when to leave someone be, about duties as a Captain and playing marionette for someone else's PR stunts. And even though Bones couldn't take this obligation away from Jim, but after spending his entire evening just letting go all his pent-up frustration about being used like this, Jim felt better.
Also, it was the first time Bones stuck around after their weekly meeting as Captain and CMO.
And so they settled into a slow rhythm back to normalcy. Things were looking better and better with each passing day - they shared meals during which Bones' grumbled about Jim's food choices, they talked, there was the banter and the grumbling the crew was used to hearing from them. Jim had to admit that their relationship seemed just like it always had for anyone who might be looking at them more closely. Only Jim still had the feeling that despite all their usual routines, something still wasn't right between them. Not entirely. Not the way it should be.
And maybe that was because for all the talking they did, they never once mentioned what had happened when Bones had lost his memory.
Not once, even though it was definitely still on Jim's mind, and he doubted that Bones had forgotten about it, either. Jim for one had definitely forgotten about it, even though he would never tell anybody that sometimes he'd still wake up with his face pressed into what had been Bones' pillow, as if he could still smell the other man even though the sheets had been changed a number of times since then. And if he woke up occasionally with the memory of what it had felt like to feel Bones' lips on his, he most certainly wasn't going to tell anybody about that, either.
They had agreed to do the whole giving space thing, after all, and no matter how much Jim had resented that idea at first, he had to admit that in a way it had worked out. Bones was still just as integral a part of Jim's life as he had been before. He wasn't going to get greedy when he should be grateful that he had his friend back.
A friend who was currently seated on the sofa beside Jim, staring at the vid-screen from unseeing eyes as the movie played before them, his glass of beer (replicated and with the Starfleet guarantee that it didn't contain any trace of alcohol) going stale in front of him. Bones had been like this all evening long - distracted, as if he had other things going on in his head than their weekly meeting and the subsequent movie night at Jim's.
Jim admitted that the movie wasn't the best thing he had ever seen, but when even the spectacular shuttle crash towards the end failed in provoking any kind of reaction from the other man, Jim knew that something was up.
"Computer, pause playback."
The movie stopped on an image of the hero sprinting through an alley in the 22nd century New York, the abrupt ending of the sounds of a battle and chase leaving the room in silence, yet still it took Bones a second or two too long to react to the interruption. With a frown on his face, he turned around."
"Jim?"
Jim drew a breath, pushing away the nagging thought that if Bones had wanted to talk to him, he'd have started talking already, and that he might be overstepping the boundaries of giving each other space, which as far as he knew was still in full force as a rule.
"What's going on?"
Bones frowned, but it was unconvincing.
"What do you mean?"
"You've been distracted all evening. And I know the requisition forms we had to go through earlier weren't exactly entertaining, but I bet you don't even know what the movie is about even though we've been watching for over an hour now."
Bones tiredly ran a hand over his face. "Sorry, Jim."
"You wanna talk about it?"
And that was the clearest sign that something between them was still out of synch in a pivotal way. Normally, Jim wouldn't have had to ask. Normally, Bones would have covered up what was worrying him in a rant about something else, yet in a way that Jim would be bound to notice what the whole thing was really about. This whole situation was forcing them into a different dynamic, one Jim wasn't exactly sure he knew how to navigate without overstepping his boundaries.
Bones only shrugged.
"There's nothing much to talk about. It's nothing, really."
"This 'nothing' kept you occupied well enough so that it kept you from even noticing the fiery shuttle crash that happened a minute ago. I picked the movie because I was looking forward to the tirade that was going to follow that particular scene." Jim pointed at the screen. "And if not even something like that can tear you out of your thoughts, then I'd say it bothers you pretty damn much."
Another shrug, and Bones started picking at the knee of his pants as if he was worrying a loose thread.
"I talked to Jo this afternoon."
"Is everything all right?" Jim asked, unable to keep the note of concern out of his voice.
Bones nodded quickly. "Sure. Yeah, Jo is fine. She likes her new school, and she's doing good."
"So…if she's doing good, then why has that call to her worked you up like that?"
Bones drew a deep breath. "I told, you, it's nothing. I just…I couldn't remember something."
Something lurched inside of Jim's gut even though he knew that Bones was all right, wouldn't be sitting here beside him if he suspected anything more sinister to be going on than a lapse of memory for some reason.
"What was it?"
"Jo was telling me about a trip she and Jocelyn took, to a lake about two hours south of Atlanta. She kept telling me that I had taken her there once, and I didn't believe her because I couldn't remember ever taking her there. I didn't even remember that I've ever even been there. She kept insisting, and only when she mentioned trying to surf on her floatable mattress and going under did I remember that she was right."
He looked up at Jim, finally, and there was a notion of raw pain in his eyes as he leveled them on Jim.
"I didn't remember anything about it, Jim. And I can't help but think…I thought it was all back. But I can't help but think that I won't notice if there's something I don't remember. What if there's more memories that didn't come back? What if there's things that I forgot during the amnesia and never got back? I'll never know, because it's not as if I'll notice that something is gone permanently. And nobody else can tell me."
It was a question Jim had honestly never considered before, and one he didn't have an immediate answer to. So far, Jim's concern had always been about the memories that were coming back, not about ones that might stay lost forever. Was that even possible? But Bones was the doctor, surely he wouldn't worry about something like that if it was completely impossible.
"Is that likely?"
Bones shrugged with a sigh, and leaned forward to take a long sip of his stale beer.
"Hell if I know, Jim. It's a bit hard to do case studies on memories amnesiac patients forgot forever."
Jim leaned back and let that thought settle for a long moment. He knew that he should say something, something profound enough to assuage Bones' worries, but he wasn't an expert on that kind of thing. He longed to assure, but he also knew that picking the wrong words right now was going to do more harm than good.
"I don't know what to say, Bones." He eventually settled for honesty. Bones always appreciated honesty, and Jim still had quite a lot to make up on as far as that was concerned. "I'm not an expert on that kind of stuff, and you know more about all the medical things than I do. But I don't know if forgetting about one thing that happened a few years to go means that you have to worry about what else you might have forgotten."
Bones shook his head. "It's not as if worrying about it is going to help, anyway, because I wouldn't even know if I had forgotten anything else."
Jim knew the signs only too well. This was Bones talking himself into something until he firmly believed it, and he had to stop that right now before the idea took a firm hold in Bones' head.
"And there's no way of knowing, Bones. I mean, in the end all you can do is think about all those hallmark moments, the things you're sure you'd never forget - Jo's birth, her first word, all those other things parents go absolutely crazy over. And the things about your own life that should be too important to ever forget. And if that's all there, you just have to rely on your memory, and that everything you lost after the accident has come back."
Bones snorted. "So what, I randomly forgot the time I took my daughter out on a day trip, but it's not that bad because I still remember her first steps?"
Jim shook his head. "No. But sometimes you just forget things. Everyone does, even without amnesia. It's normal. Well, maybe not for Spock, but it's human. And sometimes you forget things that were actually good and you'd want to remember, and then there's stuff that you'd want to forget but can't. So maybe you just forgot the daytrip with Joanna, not because you got a blow to the head but because it happened over five years ago, when you were still leading a completely different life. These things just happen. Maybe at some point you'll find a drawing of hers that you don't remember, or a paper from med school that you don't remember writing, or whatever the hell else, but that doesn't mean you forgot because of the amnesia. Sometimes we just forget things."
Bones ran a hand over his face with a weary sigh.
"Maybe. And I wouldn't think twice about it if I didn't remember so well what it felt like to not remember anything. I just don't want to find out that I've lost anything else."
"There'll always be things you don't remember." Jim thought his words sounded far more wise than he felt. "Or stuff you forget. Or feelings that you're not even aware of. Sometimes the brain just needs a little trigger to remember something, or for you to realize something. That's just the way it is."
Bones' right eyebrow rose silently, and Jim had the sudden feeling that he was talking about more than one single forgotten memory, and wasn't even consciously aware of it. Which was another case for potentially putting his foot in his mouth, but it was too late to take the words back now.
"What do you mean?"
Jim tried to shrug nonchalantly, but couldn't say if he succeeded.
"That sometimes the brain needs a trigger, nothing else. So maybe you needed to hear Joanna talk about that daytrip before you remembered it, but that doesn't mean the memory wasn't there before. Just like…"
The foot had already been raised, but Jim stopped himself just before he had the chance to put it into his mouth quite spectacularly.
"Just like what?"
Or maybe not quite just in time.
He could talk himself out of this, Jim knew. And in the light of this whole giving each other space-concept it might be better if he did, if he gave Bones a lame explanation for what he had been about to say, but fact was Jim was tired. He was tired of hiding what was going on inside of him. He was tired of not mentioning certain things in front of Bones in order to keep that careful equilibrium between them. Most of all, though, he was tired of giving space when all he wanted was to get back to being close to Bones. He had kept his distance for weeks now, and enough was enough.
It was probably selfish, but Jim couldn't help himself. The words came out before he even had the chance to make up his mind about whether or not he really wanted to say them.
"Just like other things sometimes need a trigger, even though they're there for quite a while already." For a moment he hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he drew a deep breath and decided to put all his cards on the table. "When we were in that hospital on Nibilia II after you were in that shuttle crash, they didn't let me in to see you right after I told them that we were married."
"Jim…"
"I didn't think much of it at the time," Jim continued, not leaving Bones any time or space to get a word in. "I barely noticed that the Rash'Tar was doing anything else but put his hand to my forehead, but later on Spock told me that he read my mind, and that he wouldn't have let me in to see you if he hadn't found some sort of confirmation for what I told him. I didn't think much about it, but then we were living this pretend-marriage and I realized that I liked it, that I liked living with you like that, I can't help but think that's what Rash'Tar saw when he read my mind. That those feelings had been there for quite a while but I only became aware of them when the situation forced us to live like that."
Bones looked at Jim for a long moment, his face looking torn between the desire for Jim to shut up, and the curiosity about what Jim was going to say next.
"There must have been something there Rash'Tar saw when he read my mind, and Spock told me that it's pretty damn unlikely he mistook friendship for love. But I never…not consciously, not until we were living like that and I had to pretend to be married to you and realized that I didn't have to do much pretending at all."
Bones shook his head with a tired sigh. "Jim, I don't know if we should talk about this."
"But I do. And I think that I'd have never admitted anything to myself, or to anybody else, if it hadn't been for the situation my lie forced us into. And I can't help but thinking that maybe it was similar for you."
A frown showed on Bones' face. "What do you mean?"
Jim nervously rubbed his suddenly clammy hands against his thighs.
"That night we kissed…it felt real. It felt like something I wanted for a long time, and I had the feeling that it was real for you, too. Not because you thought you had to live up to any of my expectations, but because it was something you really wanted to do, too. You told me that you didn't know if what you were feeling was real or something you thought you had to feel because you couldn't remember the truth. But if it's still there…I know that doesn't sound right, but if those feelings didn't go away during those past weeks, then maybe the fact that you started feeling this way didn't have anything to do with the lies I told you. Maybe the amnesia and the pretence of being married were the trigger your mind needed to admit to what you were feeling."
Again, Bones looked at Jim for a few long moments, and Jim couldn't help the worried feeling that Bones was going to blow a fuse about this whole thing any second now. Bones kept staring for a few seconds longer, brows drawn together in thought.
"So basically you're saying that we've been in love with each other for a long time, but that our brains didn't let us realize it?"
Jim didn't know if there was indignation, ridicule, or something else entirely in the other man's voice, all he knew was that he had already said far too much to stop now or take anything back.
"What I'm saying is that it was like that for me. Those feelings didn't come out of the blue just because I had to pretend to be married to you for a while. There was definitely something there before that. But you were my friend first, and that friendship wasn't something I ever wanted to risk, so I guess I never contemplated the depth of my feelings until I really had to. And I can't just stop feeling the way I do. I'm sorry, but I can't. And if you say that you were only confused about your feelings because you no longer knew what was real and what not, and that I'll never be more than a friend for you, then that's okay, but I don't want to ruin any chance we might have for more because we're both too stuck on our insecurities or past hang-ups or whatever else…"
"Jim…"
"I get that you need time, I really do. I agreed to give you space and I stand by that. If you think you can't ever be more than my friend then I can live with that. It won't stop how I feel, but I can learn to live with it. But there was something between us that night, and I can't believe that it was all just because you thought you had to act and feel that way."
"Jim, would you listen to me for a second?"
Jim drew a deep breath, realizing only now that he had been babbling without pause or without giving Bones even the chance to get a word in between. Slowly, hesitantly, he looked up at Bones and tried to gauge what the other man was thinking from the expression on his face. He couldn't quite place it, but he had definitely dug himself in too deep by now to stop anything even if Bones was going to shoot him down now once and for all.
Next Part
Author: laughter_now
Rating: strong PG-13 (lots of bad words), tending towards R later
Pairing: Jim/Bones
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to the Star Trek Franchise. *sigh* Sadly.
Summary: One little white lie never hurt anybody, that's what they say. But apparently they are wrong, because even one small lie can spin out of control and change a life forever. Jim only wanted to be by his best friend's side after an accident. Nobody could have known that the lie he told to make that possible was going to come back to haunt him.
In response to a prompt on space_married.
Sorry for the delay, but I hope I can make up for it with a very long last part.
Thank you all so much for following through this story with me, and for all the comments and encouragements you left me. I didn't get around to answering the comments for the last chapter individually, but I appreciated every single one of them. So thank you so much.
Here's the final installment for you.
Enjoy!
Previous Part
Chapter 12
It was weird, how easy it was to fall back into normal habits, and how well-known yet at the same time completely different everything turned out to be. It felt a little as if Jim was wearing the wrong glasses - everything seemed perfectly normal upon first glance, but all the things he thought he knew so well seemed slightly wrong and out of focus upon closer inspection.
That Bones wanted space apparently meant that he needed physical space above all. Of course there was no way for a Captain and his CMO aboard a starship to avoid each other completely, but what this enforced separation cut down on most was the time they spent alone together. Aside from the weekly meeting that Captain and CMO were obliged to have, there was not a single instance during the first two weeks after that give-me-space-conversation when they were alone together.
Up until all this had happened, Jim had never consciously noticed how much time he and Bones spent together, just the two of them. It was something that rooted way back to their first semester at the Academy, and it was so deeply ingrained in Jim's daily routines that he only noticed the sheer amount of his time that was taken up by Bones now that it was taken from him.
Of course their duties had demanded more time ever since they had boarded Enterprise, but still. They had made time for one another, and it hadn't even been a conscious effort, at least not on Jim's part. He simply had found ways to incorporate alone time with Bones into his daily routines, no matter if it was just five minutes here or ten minutes there.
They always had breakfast together if their shifts allowed it. And everyday Bones grumbled about how Jim needed to eat more fruit and no, grapefruit didn't count if he buried it under a mount of sugar. And once a week, mostly the evening after their weekly obligatory meeting, they hung out and spent the evening either in Bones' quarters or his own, watching old holo-vids or simply talking half the night away. It was never something obligatory, no fixed dates or appointments. It were small rituals they simply had developed and followed without question. And that didn't even include all the times that Jim went to Sickbay while Bones was on duty, or the times Bones came the bridge without any apparent reason.
And those were the things that Jim missed more than he could have imagined. It wasn't even that Bones was giving him the cold shoulder. It just…Jim himself didn't know how to describe it. Maybe it was because they had both agreed to this whole giving-space idea, but they were no longer seeking each other out. There were always others around, so it was easier to put it down to that and not to being a deliberate act when Bones was suddenly having breakfast with Chapel, or when Jim found that he was glad when Scotty wanted to talk with him about some engine upgrades and gave him a valid excuse to not even contemplate sliding into the empty seat next to Bones.
Still, Jim missed it. He missed having Bones in his life the way he had always been, and he couldn't help the sinking feeling that the longer they were keeping this whole idea of giving it space up, the farther they were drifting apart.
He knew that for Bones, it was a matter of trust. Not so much trust in Jim, though that was a part of it. The fact that Jim had lied to Bones was a breach of trust that was still standing between them, no matter how much Bones claimed that it wasn't the main reason for his anger. It was still there. But even more than that, for Bones it was a matter of trust in himself. For as long as he didn't trust that his feelings were real, and that he wanted to spend time with Jim out of his own volition and not because he had spent nearly an entire week convincing himself that he was supposed to feel this way, Bones was going to keep his distance.
What was weird was that Jim could understand that reasoning, and at the same time didn't want to accept it for what it was. It hurt, in a place somewhere deep in his chest where Jim had never felt that kind of hurt before. Maybe that was the reason why he didn't really know how to deal with that feeling.
The cut was abrupt, but what allowed Jim to keep his sanity during that time was that it wasn't complete or final. The change was slow, but it was there. Things didn't come to a standstill entirely, and admittedly Jim was fascinated by how much he learned to appreciate all the small things as they came back.
The first time they ended up eating a meal together at the same table, admittedly with Sulu and Chapel between them and the main reason why they had ended up at this arrangement in the first place. Yet all Jim could think about during that breakfast was that it was closer than he had been to Bones outside of their weekly meetings in a long time.
It was a strange dance of give and take in which Jim was constantly trying to gauge how close he could go without overstepping the whole concept of giving space. He didn't want to pressure Bones and make him withdraw again, yet at the same time he was completely incapable of not being around the other man in some way.
It worked. Somehow, subtly, things shifted back into a more normal pattern between them. There had never been any hostility in their distance, just…distance. And it dissolved only slowly, but the main thing was that it did dissolve. It started with conversations over meals whenever they ended up in the mess hall at the same time. First with the buffer of other people between them and as the focal point of the conversation. But they talked with each other, too, and slowly but surely mealtimes turned into something that Jim found himself looking forward to again.
In fact, it took Jim completely by surprise when one morning he found himself on the receiving end of a minor tirade about pork and why it was not a good idea to deep-fry stripes of it, and an even worse idea to then eat the end result. Not the tirade as such came as a surprise, but the fact that when Jim looked up, he realized for the first time that he and Bones were sitting alone at one of the small tables near the back of the room. Nobody else was sitting there with them, in fact it would have been a tight squeeze trying to fit somebody else at their table at all.
It was a little disconcerting that Jim hadn't even noticed the fact that they were alone before, when all he had been bemoaning in the past weeks was that he had too little time with his friend. And it was such a pleasant surprise that Jim, after the first moment of stunned paralysis wore off, pushed away his plate with bacon and got up to get himself a bowl of cereal. And an apple. Just to have the small satisfaction of seeing Bones' eyes widen slightly and his fingers twitch into the direction of his ever-present tricorder at the sight of comparatively healthy food on Jim's plate.
It was like putting on a comfortable old pair of shoes, although Jim would never tell Bones about that particular comparison. But it was a good feeling to come into the mess hall to find Bones already sitting there, the chair opposite of him empty, or to see Bones slide into the seat next to Jim on the rare occasions when Jim was the first to be up and about. It was the resurrection of one of their traditions, silently and without much ado, and Jim was unspeakably glad to have it back.
Of course life on the ship didn't stop while Jim watched whether or not his friendship with Bones was going to piece itself back together. Negotiations with the Nibilians stretched on for another week after the giving-space conversation until all questions were cleared up and the Nibilian High Senate agreed to further communication with Starfleet Admiralty about the bureaucratic details. After weeks in stationary orbit, it felt like freedom to finally go back to warp and take Enterprise back into deep space, towards the next mission Starfleet Command deigned to assign them.
And leaving orbit also meant that Jim's life as Captain grew increasingly more busy, and he no longer had a lot of time to spare in between his regular duties. Jim found himself looking forward to those few minutes over breakfast every morning. They didn't talk about any profound revelations, but the main thing was that they talked. About ordinary, everyday things.
Three weeks after they broke orbit of Nibilia II, during alpha shift, Bones came to the Bridge for the first time since this whole mess had started. There was no reason for him to come to the Bridge other than that they were passing a binary pulsar that was absolutely breathtaking to watch, and - far more importantly to Jim - because Bones coming to the Bridge for no apparent reason at all was normal. It was what Bones did, just dropping by for a few moments, standing to Jim's right for a little while before he went back to Medical.
Only, he hadn't done so in a long while, and as he stepped out of the turbolift and onto the Bridge that day, all eyes were on him. If Bones noticed, he didn't let it on. He merely stepped up to his customary position somewhere to the right of Jim's chair and watched the pulsar for a few long minutes before he turned around and left again just as wordlessly as he had come.
Nobody said anything about the incident, not to Jim at least and he guessed nobody would dare mention it to Bones, either, but Jim had a hard time keeping the smile off his face for a long while afterwards.
Jim had never experienced a friendship like the one with Bones before. That wasn't to say that he never had a friend before the other man, just never a friendship like this one. Everything before had been more distant, and far more superficial. That fact might be one reason why Jim was so surprised that this careful equilibrium between him and Bones didn't feel strained. After a little while, when they were making the first careful steps back towards normalcy, Jim slowly realized that just because they didn't quite know what to do with and about each other right now, the foundation of their friendship was still there. The trust might have gotten a little scratched, but not on the level that truly mattered. It was weird yet at the same time a comfortable feeling to know that not all was lost, even if some things were going to take some time to earn them back.
That realization was one Jim had when what would have been his father's 60th birthday rolled around, and some higher ups in Starfleet thought it would be a brilliant idea to ask Jim for a few statements and commentaries they wanted to work into a holo-vid to commemorate the hero-figure George Kirk which Starfleet Admiralty still clung to almost desperately. Not even Pike had been able to get Jim out of the assigned task, no matter that the other man knew how much Jim hated that particular kind of spotlight, and for a couple of days Jim had seriously considered whether he should comply with Starfleet's wishes or if he should just tell them to go put their holo where the sun don't shine and see if they were going to relieve him of command while Enterprise was somewhere in deep space.
It was Bones who figured out that something was going on with Jim during that time, and Bones who cornered him, sat him down and made him talk about what was going on. And it was Bones who sat there while Jim ranted on about the fuckers at Starfleet who didn't know when to leave someone be, about duties as a Captain and playing marionette for someone else's PR stunts. And even though Bones couldn't take this obligation away from Jim, but after spending his entire evening just letting go all his pent-up frustration about being used like this, Jim felt better.
Also, it was the first time Bones stuck around after their weekly meeting as Captain and CMO.
And so they settled into a slow rhythm back to normalcy. Things were looking better and better with each passing day - they shared meals during which Bones' grumbled about Jim's food choices, they talked, there was the banter and the grumbling the crew was used to hearing from them. Jim had to admit that their relationship seemed just like it always had for anyone who might be looking at them more closely. Only Jim still had the feeling that despite all their usual routines, something still wasn't right between them. Not entirely. Not the way it should be.
And maybe that was because for all the talking they did, they never once mentioned what had happened when Bones had lost his memory.
Not once, even though it was definitely still on Jim's mind, and he doubted that Bones had forgotten about it, either. Jim for one had definitely forgotten about it, even though he would never tell anybody that sometimes he'd still wake up with his face pressed into what had been Bones' pillow, as if he could still smell the other man even though the sheets had been changed a number of times since then. And if he woke up occasionally with the memory of what it had felt like to feel Bones' lips on his, he most certainly wasn't going to tell anybody about that, either.
They had agreed to do the whole giving space thing, after all, and no matter how much Jim had resented that idea at first, he had to admit that in a way it had worked out. Bones was still just as integral a part of Jim's life as he had been before. He wasn't going to get greedy when he should be grateful that he had his friend back.
A friend who was currently seated on the sofa beside Jim, staring at the vid-screen from unseeing eyes as the movie played before them, his glass of beer (replicated and with the Starfleet guarantee that it didn't contain any trace of alcohol) going stale in front of him. Bones had been like this all evening long - distracted, as if he had other things going on in his head than their weekly meeting and the subsequent movie night at Jim's.
Jim admitted that the movie wasn't the best thing he had ever seen, but when even the spectacular shuttle crash towards the end failed in provoking any kind of reaction from the other man, Jim knew that something was up.
"Computer, pause playback."
The movie stopped on an image of the hero sprinting through an alley in the 22nd century New York, the abrupt ending of the sounds of a battle and chase leaving the room in silence, yet still it took Bones a second or two too long to react to the interruption. With a frown on his face, he turned around."
"Jim?"
Jim drew a breath, pushing away the nagging thought that if Bones had wanted to talk to him, he'd have started talking already, and that he might be overstepping the boundaries of giving each other space, which as far as he knew was still in full force as a rule.
"What's going on?"
Bones frowned, but it was unconvincing.
"What do you mean?"
"You've been distracted all evening. And I know the requisition forms we had to go through earlier weren't exactly entertaining, but I bet you don't even know what the movie is about even though we've been watching for over an hour now."
Bones tiredly ran a hand over his face. "Sorry, Jim."
"You wanna talk about it?"
And that was the clearest sign that something between them was still out of synch in a pivotal way. Normally, Jim wouldn't have had to ask. Normally, Bones would have covered up what was worrying him in a rant about something else, yet in a way that Jim would be bound to notice what the whole thing was really about. This whole situation was forcing them into a different dynamic, one Jim wasn't exactly sure he knew how to navigate without overstepping his boundaries.
Bones only shrugged.
"There's nothing much to talk about. It's nothing, really."
"This 'nothing' kept you occupied well enough so that it kept you from even noticing the fiery shuttle crash that happened a minute ago. I picked the movie because I was looking forward to the tirade that was going to follow that particular scene." Jim pointed at the screen. "And if not even something like that can tear you out of your thoughts, then I'd say it bothers you pretty damn much."
Another shrug, and Bones started picking at the knee of his pants as if he was worrying a loose thread.
"I talked to Jo this afternoon."
"Is everything all right?" Jim asked, unable to keep the note of concern out of his voice.
Bones nodded quickly. "Sure. Yeah, Jo is fine. She likes her new school, and she's doing good."
"So…if she's doing good, then why has that call to her worked you up like that?"
Bones drew a deep breath. "I told, you, it's nothing. I just…I couldn't remember something."
Something lurched inside of Jim's gut even though he knew that Bones was all right, wouldn't be sitting here beside him if he suspected anything more sinister to be going on than a lapse of memory for some reason.
"What was it?"
"Jo was telling me about a trip she and Jocelyn took, to a lake about two hours south of Atlanta. She kept telling me that I had taken her there once, and I didn't believe her because I couldn't remember ever taking her there. I didn't even remember that I've ever even been there. She kept insisting, and only when she mentioned trying to surf on her floatable mattress and going under did I remember that she was right."
He looked up at Jim, finally, and there was a notion of raw pain in his eyes as he leveled them on Jim.
"I didn't remember anything about it, Jim. And I can't help but think…I thought it was all back. But I can't help but think that I won't notice if there's something I don't remember. What if there's more memories that didn't come back? What if there's things that I forgot during the amnesia and never got back? I'll never know, because it's not as if I'll notice that something is gone permanently. And nobody else can tell me."
It was a question Jim had honestly never considered before, and one he didn't have an immediate answer to. So far, Jim's concern had always been about the memories that were coming back, not about ones that might stay lost forever. Was that even possible? But Bones was the doctor, surely he wouldn't worry about something like that if it was completely impossible.
"Is that likely?"
Bones shrugged with a sigh, and leaned forward to take a long sip of his stale beer.
"Hell if I know, Jim. It's a bit hard to do case studies on memories amnesiac patients forgot forever."
Jim leaned back and let that thought settle for a long moment. He knew that he should say something, something profound enough to assuage Bones' worries, but he wasn't an expert on that kind of thing. He longed to assure, but he also knew that picking the wrong words right now was going to do more harm than good.
"I don't know what to say, Bones." He eventually settled for honesty. Bones always appreciated honesty, and Jim still had quite a lot to make up on as far as that was concerned. "I'm not an expert on that kind of stuff, and you know more about all the medical things than I do. But I don't know if forgetting about one thing that happened a few years to go means that you have to worry about what else you might have forgotten."
Bones shook his head. "It's not as if worrying about it is going to help, anyway, because I wouldn't even know if I had forgotten anything else."
Jim knew the signs only too well. This was Bones talking himself into something until he firmly believed it, and he had to stop that right now before the idea took a firm hold in Bones' head.
"And there's no way of knowing, Bones. I mean, in the end all you can do is think about all those hallmark moments, the things you're sure you'd never forget - Jo's birth, her first word, all those other things parents go absolutely crazy over. And the things about your own life that should be too important to ever forget. And if that's all there, you just have to rely on your memory, and that everything you lost after the accident has come back."
Bones snorted. "So what, I randomly forgot the time I took my daughter out on a day trip, but it's not that bad because I still remember her first steps?"
Jim shook his head. "No. But sometimes you just forget things. Everyone does, even without amnesia. It's normal. Well, maybe not for Spock, but it's human. And sometimes you forget things that were actually good and you'd want to remember, and then there's stuff that you'd want to forget but can't. So maybe you just forgot the daytrip with Joanna, not because you got a blow to the head but because it happened over five years ago, when you were still leading a completely different life. These things just happen. Maybe at some point you'll find a drawing of hers that you don't remember, or a paper from med school that you don't remember writing, or whatever the hell else, but that doesn't mean you forgot because of the amnesia. Sometimes we just forget things."
Bones ran a hand over his face with a weary sigh.
"Maybe. And I wouldn't think twice about it if I didn't remember so well what it felt like to not remember anything. I just don't want to find out that I've lost anything else."
"There'll always be things you don't remember." Jim thought his words sounded far more wise than he felt. "Or stuff you forget. Or feelings that you're not even aware of. Sometimes the brain just needs a little trigger to remember something, or for you to realize something. That's just the way it is."
Bones' right eyebrow rose silently, and Jim had the sudden feeling that he was talking about more than one single forgotten memory, and wasn't even consciously aware of it. Which was another case for potentially putting his foot in his mouth, but it was too late to take the words back now.
"What do you mean?"
Jim tried to shrug nonchalantly, but couldn't say if he succeeded.
"That sometimes the brain needs a trigger, nothing else. So maybe you needed to hear Joanna talk about that daytrip before you remembered it, but that doesn't mean the memory wasn't there before. Just like…"
The foot had already been raised, but Jim stopped himself just before he had the chance to put it into his mouth quite spectacularly.
"Just like what?"
Or maybe not quite just in time.
He could talk himself out of this, Jim knew. And in the light of this whole giving each other space-concept it might be better if he did, if he gave Bones a lame explanation for what he had been about to say, but fact was Jim was tired. He was tired of hiding what was going on inside of him. He was tired of not mentioning certain things in front of Bones in order to keep that careful equilibrium between them. Most of all, though, he was tired of giving space when all he wanted was to get back to being close to Bones. He had kept his distance for weeks now, and enough was enough.
It was probably selfish, but Jim couldn't help himself. The words came out before he even had the chance to make up his mind about whether or not he really wanted to say them.
"Just like other things sometimes need a trigger, even though they're there for quite a while already." For a moment he hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he drew a deep breath and decided to put all his cards on the table. "When we were in that hospital on Nibilia II after you were in that shuttle crash, they didn't let me in to see you right after I told them that we were married."
"Jim…"
"I didn't think much of it at the time," Jim continued, not leaving Bones any time or space to get a word in. "I barely noticed that the Rash'Tar was doing anything else but put his hand to my forehead, but later on Spock told me that he read my mind, and that he wouldn't have let me in to see you if he hadn't found some sort of confirmation for what I told him. I didn't think much about it, but then we were living this pretend-marriage and I realized that I liked it, that I liked living with you like that, I can't help but think that's what Rash'Tar saw when he read my mind. That those feelings had been there for quite a while but I only became aware of them when the situation forced us to live like that."
Bones looked at Jim for a long moment, his face looking torn between the desire for Jim to shut up, and the curiosity about what Jim was going to say next.
"There must have been something there Rash'Tar saw when he read my mind, and Spock told me that it's pretty damn unlikely he mistook friendship for love. But I never…not consciously, not until we were living like that and I had to pretend to be married to you and realized that I didn't have to do much pretending at all."
Bones shook his head with a tired sigh. "Jim, I don't know if we should talk about this."
"But I do. And I think that I'd have never admitted anything to myself, or to anybody else, if it hadn't been for the situation my lie forced us into. And I can't help but thinking that maybe it was similar for you."
A frown showed on Bones' face. "What do you mean?"
Jim nervously rubbed his suddenly clammy hands against his thighs.
"That night we kissed…it felt real. It felt like something I wanted for a long time, and I had the feeling that it was real for you, too. Not because you thought you had to live up to any of my expectations, but because it was something you really wanted to do, too. You told me that you didn't know if what you were feeling was real or something you thought you had to feel because you couldn't remember the truth. But if it's still there…I know that doesn't sound right, but if those feelings didn't go away during those past weeks, then maybe the fact that you started feeling this way didn't have anything to do with the lies I told you. Maybe the amnesia and the pretence of being married were the trigger your mind needed to admit to what you were feeling."
Again, Bones looked at Jim for a few long moments, and Jim couldn't help the worried feeling that Bones was going to blow a fuse about this whole thing any second now. Bones kept staring for a few seconds longer, brows drawn together in thought.
"So basically you're saying that we've been in love with each other for a long time, but that our brains didn't let us realize it?"
Jim didn't know if there was indignation, ridicule, or something else entirely in the other man's voice, all he knew was that he had already said far too much to stop now or take anything back.
"What I'm saying is that it was like that for me. Those feelings didn't come out of the blue just because I had to pretend to be married to you for a while. There was definitely something there before that. But you were my friend first, and that friendship wasn't something I ever wanted to risk, so I guess I never contemplated the depth of my feelings until I really had to. And I can't just stop feeling the way I do. I'm sorry, but I can't. And if you say that you were only confused about your feelings because you no longer knew what was real and what not, and that I'll never be more than a friend for you, then that's okay, but I don't want to ruin any chance we might have for more because we're both too stuck on our insecurities or past hang-ups or whatever else…"
"Jim…"
"I get that you need time, I really do. I agreed to give you space and I stand by that. If you think you can't ever be more than my friend then I can live with that. It won't stop how I feel, but I can learn to live with it. But there was something between us that night, and I can't believe that it was all just because you thought you had to act and feel that way."
"Jim, would you listen to me for a second?"
Jim drew a deep breath, realizing only now that he had been babbling without pause or without giving Bones even the chance to get a word in between. Slowly, hesitantly, he looked up at Bones and tried to gauge what the other man was thinking from the expression on his face. He couldn't quite place it, but he had definitely dug himself in too deep by now to stop anything even if Bones was going to shoot him down now once and for all.
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