Penultimate - Drabble (McCoy)
Title: Penultimate
Author: skylilies
Pairing: Leonard McCoy
Fandom: Star Trek: AOS
Word Count: 350
Genre: character study
Rating: pg-13
Disclaimer: Don't own the characters, just my interpretations of them.
Teaser: here in the bathroom with his face in his hands, his life feels like one big, dark hole and everything is massing into the silence at the center of it.
Notes: character study for mccoy, because he's my favorite from both TOS and AOS. slightly a hodgepodge of facts from both timelines, but set in the reboot verse. written while listening to obstacle 1 by interpol.
There was a girl in the bar who had purple eyes. She had matched Leonard shot for shot, and at the end of the night she kissed him hard against the wall of the bar, and he had fucked her right in the dingy stall, bacteria and chemicals and STIs be damned, and in the morning he had woken up in his rented bedroom without remembering how he got back. While he retches over the toilet, he thinks:
What am I doing with my life.
He thinks about baby Joanna right after she was born, her little body impossibly tiny and reddened, how she hadn’t opened her eyes for the longest time and he had counted all of her toes twice just to be sure they were there. How two hours after her labor his wife had said, “I hate you for this,” and in retrospect he realized she hadn’t been joking. He thinks of throwing up in between classes at med school because the night before had been wild, thinks how it’s a miracle he even survived the program with the little time he spent sober. He thinks he’s too old for this now, his hands sweaty and his mouth stale.
He thinks about his father begging, “Leonard, please” and how he was utterly helpless to heal his pain. The horror stories about old medicine, about saws and primitive anesthesia and how those doctors didn’t have a clue what they were doing but they did it anyway because they had to do something. He thinks about the nightmares he has: the recurring one where he’s cutting into his father’s sternum with a chain saw and there’s so much screaming.
Suddenly, here in the bathroom with his face in his hands, his life feels like one big, dark hole and everything is massing into the silence at the center of it. He presses thumbs against his eyelids, and white sparks flit across his vision. The silence is like space. Terrifying, deadly space. “Goddamn it,” he spits out, as the sensation twist in his gut. There is nothing left for him here.
Two days later, he signs up for Starfleet.
Author: skylilies
Pairing: Leonard McCoy
Fandom: Star Trek: AOS
Word Count: 350
Genre: character study
Rating: pg-13
Disclaimer: Don't own the characters, just my interpretations of them.
Teaser: here in the bathroom with his face in his hands, his life feels like one big, dark hole and everything is massing into the silence at the center of it.
Notes: character study for mccoy, because he's my favorite from both TOS and AOS. slightly a hodgepodge of facts from both timelines, but set in the reboot verse. written while listening to obstacle 1 by interpol.
There was a girl in the bar who had purple eyes. She had matched Leonard shot for shot, and at the end of the night she kissed him hard against the wall of the bar, and he had fucked her right in the dingy stall, bacteria and chemicals and STIs be damned, and in the morning he had woken up in his rented bedroom without remembering how he got back. While he retches over the toilet, he thinks:
What am I doing with my life.
He thinks about baby Joanna right after she was born, her little body impossibly tiny and reddened, how she hadn’t opened her eyes for the longest time and he had counted all of her toes twice just to be sure they were there. How two hours after her labor his wife had said, “I hate you for this,” and in retrospect he realized she hadn’t been joking. He thinks of throwing up in between classes at med school because the night before had been wild, thinks how it’s a miracle he even survived the program with the little time he spent sober. He thinks he’s too old for this now, his hands sweaty and his mouth stale.
He thinks about his father begging, “Leonard, please” and how he was utterly helpless to heal his pain. The horror stories about old medicine, about saws and primitive anesthesia and how those doctors didn’t have a clue what they were doing but they did it anyway because they had to do something. He thinks about the nightmares he has: the recurring one where he’s cutting into his father’s sternum with a chain saw and there’s so much screaming.
Suddenly, here in the bathroom with his face in his hands, his life feels like one big, dark hole and everything is massing into the silence at the center of it. He presses thumbs against his eyelids, and white sparks flit across his vision. The silence is like space. Terrifying, deadly space. “Goddamn it,” he spits out, as the sensation twist in his gut. There is nothing left for him here.
Two days later, he signs up for Starfleet.