The Days and Hours (Kirk/McCoy, PG-13)
Just so you know I'm not dead, but have been having Too Much Fun over st_respect ... I am proud to report this story was the jim_and_bones nominee and overall winner for this week's prompt, "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone." Warning: It is a killbot, designed to deliver maximum angst in 1,000 words with ruthless efficiency. (Neato banner by the multitalented hitlikehammers .)
If you were kind enough to read and comment over there, I don't expect you to do so again. Twice is enough, even for me.
1.001
The door closes without a sound, not to reopen. His meager needs will be met with a replicator. His heart thuds as he realizes he may not see another living being ever again.
1.156
Jim sits at the small desk staring at a blank wall, trying to imagine Leonard’s face. If he concentrates hard and keeps his eyes open until they water, he can almost think that face into being, the planes and angles, the heart-shaped face and perfect mouth.
It’s the eyes he can never get right. He thinks of all the time he spent looking at anything other than Leonard’s eyes, and regrets it.
1.255
He sleeps as much as he can, and because he sleeps so much, he dreams: ordinary dreams of life aboard his ship, walking the long corridors, sitting in his command chair looking out at endless night. When he wakes he keeps his eyes closed so he can imagine Leonard beside him, feel the dip in the bed, the gravitational pull of his body. He convinces himself that if he rolled over Leonard would be there, dense and solid, hooking an arm around his shoulder to pull him in for a kiss. He can’t recall any specific kiss except the first, a hot, sudden press of lips, the shock that ran through him, surprise and wonder and arousal. Because he has no others, every kiss he imagines is that first kiss.
2.014
He thinks of a walk they took by the Emrin River, Leonard complaining because he’d been perfectly happy back at the guest house and his new hiking boots hurt. When they reached Stala Falls he’d broken into a smile so beautiful Jim hadn’t seen the crashing turquoise water at all. That what he loved about Leonard: the joy of discovery may have been buried deep in him, but it was there. The Enterprise let Jim lay those discoveries at Leonard’s feet like jewels.
Now nothing new happens, and the conversations in Jim’s mind are running dry because there’s nothing to tell. Woke up today, ate, did a hundred push-ups, missed you.
5.116
He dreads anniversaries, and he loves them, because he thinks that somewhere, Leonard is remembering them too. Jim has a near-photographic memory for dates, and this one, seven years after the first night they spent together, makes him pound his pillow in frustration .
He can’t bring himself to wish for Leonard to be alone, but he hates the thought of him finding someone new, someone who will inevitably be better or worse for him than Jim. Jim is part of Leonard's past now, but Leonard is as new and as real to him as he always was. This must be how ghosts feel, he thinks, and laughs at his maudlin imagination. But he cries himself to sleep, the only day during the long year that he’ll allow himself that luxury.
10.67
Something happened when he reached 10 years: he realized that what he was enduring was finite and possible. He has given up hope for mercy and turned his mind to the future, to not wasting his life but preparing for the man he will be.
He thinks of Leonard often, but the sharp pain is replaced by a blunt-edged curiosity about whether he stayed in Starfleet or retired, remarried or had more children. The data he’s allowed to access is limited to academic topics. He has no idea what’s happening in the outside world. Sometimes he wonders if anything exists outside this room. But he thinks he’d know if Leonard died.
16.144
He’s over 40 now and hasn’t had a mirror to look in for more than 15 years, but he can see the creases in his skin, feel his thinning hair. Leonard is almost 50. Jim has made up his own stories to fill in the missing years, and in them Leonard is a teacher, the love and bane of his students, a painfully handsome man with black-and-silver hair and a service record blazing with achievement and honors.
The Leonard he talks to now is wise and considering. The heat of youth has left them both, along with the last image he had of Leonard when the door closed, his face drawn with grief and frustration, calling after him, I’ll be here when it’s over.
20.000
Jim wakes up to a brain-searing light and the elongated face of a Dalmarran. His shock at seeing another being is replaced by the thought that he must finally have finally gotten ill after years without so much as a toothache. He opens his mouth to speak; he has kept his voice in use, but the thoughts won’t form.
“Let me see him.” That voice, deep and harsh and urgent, sends a thrill through his body, and Leonard appears at his side holding a tricorder. Jim’s overwhelmed mind can make no sense of what he’s seeing: Leonard, jet-black hair falling into his eyes as he scans Jim.
“Am I dead?” It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Leonard glares at the Dalmarran. “You said he’d remember everything.”
“The effects of the simulation may take a few hours to wear off.” The Dalmarran’s voice is high and self-righteous. “I assure you his real memories will be restored.”
“It wasn’t real?”
“No, Jim. You violated a treaty with the Dalmarrans to help the people of a nearby planet. They sentenced you to 20 years in prison. But the Dalmarrans use simulators as a means of punishment, so it only lasted a few hours in real time. Starfleet thought it would easier if you just took it. Sons of bitches.”
He reaches up and strokes a hand through Jim’s hair, and it’s the best thing Jim has felt in 20 years. It is so far beyond the pale shadows of his memory that he could cry for the sad man in the cell and the years he wasted, trying to remember this. Jim catches Leonard’s hand.
“It was worth it.”