Time After Time (Kirk/McCoy, R)
Summary: Jim has trouble remembering anniversaries, especially when they don't involve him.
Warnings: Not a song fic and not really an AU, either.
This was my entry for the "In the Doghouse" Round 4 prompt for st_respect. The round winner is canis_takahari's beautifully understated " The Inescapable Us." As always, if you commented on this elsewhere, I am not quite greedy enough to expect you to do so again. (Wicked cool banner by the multi-talented hitlikehammers). Check out what fancy awesome betas I have: skyblue_reverie and thalialunacy. Am I ever going to get to the story? Yes.
“You're playing that again? Jesus, buddy, are you trying to kill us?”
“Is it my fault this ol' jukebox only has three songs? No, it damn well isn’t.” Leonard knows that he’s slurring, but in his own mind his voice cuts with devastating precision. The guy who complained rolls his eyes and Leonard drawls, “Moron.”
He hooks a finger in the direction of the bartender. “Set me up again, Pete.”
“You sure, doc?” Leonard remembers that Pete’s husband is Jocelyn’s dentist and smells conspiracy.
“You fill up this glass or so help me god I’ll-“
“Hey.” A light touch on his shoulder stops him from lurching over the bar, but not as effectively as the smoky voice of the stranger who’s appeared next to him.
He’s about Leonard’s height and age, and from what he can make out in the dim light, has bright blue eyes, precision-cut blond hair, and a lean build under his loose bomber jacket. Pilot? Maybe from the 'Fleet spaceflight center in Huntsville; they’ve been known to get loose and wander up here.
“Seven and seven for me, and a Knob Creek straight up for my friend. I’ll see that he gets home.”
Pete slides the drinks in front of them, eying the stranger. “You might want to stand a foot or two back. Doc has a weak stomach.”
Leonard raises his glass in a wavering toast. “You know your bourbon. How come you drink that sweet crap?”
“Just don’t care for neat whiskey. It tastes like burnt toast.”
“That’s because you’ve never tried the good stuff.” Leonard feels suddenly generous, especially since the stranger’s buying. He hands the guy his glass and watches him touch full, pink lips to the rim.
“Aaagh.” The guy gives a little dog-shake. “Sorry.” He passes the glass back to Leonard and their fingertips brush. “So, what are we celebrating?”
“Divorce was finalized today. I’m a free man.” He tries a laugh, which comes out between a hiccup and a cough, and sticks out his hand. “Leonard McCoy. The former Mr. Jocelyn Taylor and future shining light of the Northern Piedmont Medical Center.”
The man takes his hand in a firm, dry grip and holds it a little longer than Leonard expects.
“You can call me Ty.” A flyboy name for sure.
“What brings you to our little neck of the woods, Ty?”
“Visiting family.”
“Family. Well, aren’t you lucky.” The guy says nothing. “That’s your cue to console me with platitudes. Tell me she didn’t deserve me, or I’ll meet someone better.”
Ty shrugs. “For all I know you had it coming and you’ll never meet anyone as good again.”
“Some counselor you are. C’mon, give me something to work with.”
“Okay.” Ty picks up the now-empty shot glass, flips it over, and squints down at it, as if looking through a jeweler’s loupe. “You’re going to meet a handsome stranger. You'll avoid throwing up on him and offer him a drink. You'll say crazy things to him but he’ll like you anyway.”
“Wait. That’s what happened tonight.”
“Damn, you’re sharp. You should think about applying to Starfleet instead of that second-rate medical center.”
Leonard feels the floor lurch a little under him. “All I’m thinking about right now is getting into bed.”
When Ty raises an eyebrow, Leonard flushes, as much as he’s capable of when his face is already red. “Sorry, I wasn’t propositioning you.”
“If you were, I’d ask for a do-over. That was weak.” To Leonard’s surprise, Ty wraps an arm around his shoulders, as if they’ve known each other for years. “I’d take you home, but I don’t want you barfing in the rental. How about I take you to my place? I’m staying at the Magnolia Inn.”
“Shelby Atwater’s place? Kinda frou-frou for a guy like you, isn't it?”
“Chintz everywhere but the ceiling, but it’s close by, and it’s got a bed.” There’s no mistaking the sudden brightness in Ty’s blue eyes, and at that point Leonard decides to quit questioning. It’s more than an opportunity, it’s a gift.
“Well, this should be a memorable evening.”
“Not too memorable, I hope.”
The night air feels fantastic-brisk like late winter but with a damp hint of spring. Leonard thinks that in a few weeks he’ll be hearing the peepers in the little pond behind his house, until he remembers that he’ll be in a studio apartment twelve floors up.
Still, it’s hard not to be hopeful walking next to Ty, his easy, rolling gait exuding confidence, one hand tucked into the pocket of his jeans, the other reaching out to grab Leonard’s arm when he wanders off course.
The inn is redolent of generations of a certain type of Southern woman. Leonard remembers coming here with Jocelyn for an anniversary.
“Jocelyn-“
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
Ty shuts the door and pushes Leonard in the direction of the four-poster bed.
The world tilts as he sinks into the musty duvet. Ty strips him with a kind of amused tolerance. His long fingers run up Leonard’s sides, raising goose bumps.
He straddles Leonard’s hips and it seems familiar--comfortable, not dominating. When he unbuttons his own shirt and shrugs it off, Leonard’s blurred vision makes out a lean and beautiful torso, strong arms, a flat belly and fair skin. He wishes his motor skills were up to more than just clutching the man’s waist and pulling him down, but he’s rewarded with a kiss.
Ty tastes like lemons and midnight. It feels so good to touch human flesh again.
“I don’t get it,” Leonard says between kisses. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because self-indulgent misery doesn’t suit you. You’re at your best when you direct the anger outward.”
It makes no sense, but then the trousers come off and he rediscovers what it’s like to wrap his hands around a hardness that isn’t his own. He's too dizzy to give it its due, his body too uncooperative to make it anything but a chore for Ty, so they just indulge in lazy groping, saving the artfulness for their tongues.
When Leonard comes it’s as if everything that’s been festering inside him for months is released, and he shouts, thinking a second too late about Mrs. Atwater.
+
Leonard wakes up with the merciless sun of mid-morning dagger-sharp in his eyes. For a minute all he can see is clouds of white lace, and he thinks he’s died and gone to his grandmother’s version of heaven.
He can’t remember much from last night-getting the call from his lawyer, going to Stoney’s, meeting…someone? There may have been a mouth, and hands. Good hands, he remembers that. The details have been smudged out.
But Someone has left a note on the dresser in the classic manner.
I had to go but you should stay for breakfast. Mrs. Atwater is making waffles.
+
Leonard listens to Jim move around their quarters, able to identify every sound without looking: sit on the bed, boots off, trousers off, clothes in the laundry chute. Jim turns down the brightness on the telemetry display because he knows the light bothers Leonard, who stiffens his body and hardens his heart in response.
Leonard is slumped deep in one of the two easy chairs, nose down in his padd so Jim will know he’s being ignored. Unfortunately for Leonard, stony silences are de rigeur for him, so it isn’t until Jim slides between the sheets with a sigh that he finally notices.
“You coming to bed, or are you just going to sit there putting a knot in your back?”
“Since when do you give a damn what I’m feeling?”
It comes out toneless and cold. Jim, who’s made a career of not being surprised by anything, shakes his head a little, as if he’s been slapped.
“Okay, what did I do?”
“It’s what you didn’t do.”
“Fine. What didn’t I do?”
“Do you remember what today is?”
Jim’s smooth forehead furrows a little as his brain spins the calendar of their lives: birthdays, anniversaries, Earth and Federation holidays. They celebrate randomly, according to location and availability; neither of them fetishizes dates. But this one-
“It’s the anniversary of your divorce being finalized. God, Bones, I’m sorry.”
He looks genuinely regretful, and also like he’s going to get out of bed and come over. Leonard knows that once Jim touches him, the game is up, so he huffs, “That gets less convincing every year.”
In fact, it’s the third year running that Jim’s forgotten, and for someone with a near-Vulcan memory, that’s significant.
“What can I say? I’m terrible with dates. Converting from Gregorian to stellar-I suck at it.”
“Jim, it’s simple math.”
“I don’t like thinking about things that hurt you.”
That deflects Leonard for a minute, but he fights back on course. “I don’t have that luxury.”
Jim’s sitting up, hands helpless in his lap. “Well, I’m not a total fuck-up. I may have blown the date, but I got you something.”
“You got me a divorce-anniversary gift?”
“Kind of. Do you remember what you did that night? When you went down to Smokey’s?”
“Stoney’s. Not much. I’d had a few.”
“You were completely shitfaced. Fortunately, you were able to depend on the kindness of a stranger. A very good-looking stranger.”
Leonard flushes. “There was a guy. He let me crash at his place. I don’t remember if he was good-looking or not.”
“He was stunning. And you did a little more than crash.”
“Have I told you about this?”
“You didn’t need to.”
Leonard considers Jim’s expression, which has gone from contrite to slightly smug. He thinks back to the guy at the bar, to vague impressions of height and slimness, of amused tolerance and kind hands. From the haze of memory he salvages the recollection of a touch, now familiar to him as his own.
“Son of a bitch, Jim. He was you.”
“Happy anniversary.”
“But that’s impossible. You’d never been anywhere near Georgia until I took you there.”
“Oh, it’s possible. Remember those intradimensional beings we met a few months ago, the ones who wanted me to be their ambassador?”
“Vaguely.”
“When they-folded space or whatever it was, to show me how they live, there were no restrictions. I could see everything, in every part of the universe, at every time. I could interact with anything I wanted.”
“And you’re telling me that instead of using that awesome power to save Vulcan, or find out what killed the dinosaurs, you went back in time to fuck me while I was drunk? You know, that’s pretty spectacularly low, even for you.”
“I couldn’t do any of those other things because-come on, you took Professor Qua’s Temporal Dynamics class. I couldn’t do anything to seriously change the timeline. So I did something small. Something you probably wouldn’t even remember unless I reminded you of it. Fucking not included.”
“And what was the point of that? To retroactively inflate your glorious sexual history?”
“To give you something else to remember. Now it’s not just the anniversary of your divorce, Bones.”
Leonard’s mouth hangs open like a fish’s. Jim is giving him one of those uncomplicated Christmas morning smiles, and it’s a gift, for sure. It’s not the first time Jim has wrapped the universe up, handed it to him, and said, Do you like it?
“So,” Jim says, flopping back against the pillow. “You coming to bed?”
“Sure, sure.” Still stiff with shock, Leonard sets the padd down where he’ll be certain to step on it in the morning.
He climbs into bed and the memory is suddenly alive within him: a cool cotton duvet, the smell of dust and rosewater, the feeling of a lean, dense body above him. This body, the one that’s pushing him onto his side so it can wrap long arms around him. This same body, because after all, it was only a few months ago.
Jim’s voice in his ear is already raspy with sleep. “You know, if I had fucked you, you’d remember it.”