fic: Such A Lack of Diplomacy
Title: Such A Lack of Diplomacy (You Can’t Get Out)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Priorities, see, they and Leonard never really came to terms.
Warnings: Bad language, mostly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters from Star Trek, or anything cool like that. D:
Author Notes: For elise_the_great , because she’d finished a paper ahead of schedule and needed incentive. Her prompt was, Bones must choose between Jim and Joanna. D: Now, I feel like I should say I really don’t like how mean Jocelyn came out, I promise it wasn’t intentional. If anything, I don’t like when women are portrayed as evil in fic so as not to get in the way of twoo wuv, so I in no way mean for this to be a Jocelyn-bashing fic. ANYWAY.
Now with an amazing mini follow up from blcwriter , here.
When Leonard receives the message, it’s a damn good thing he’s already sitting down.
Leonard, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.
“How generous of you,” he says to the voice recording, like it means something.
Joanna’s getting older, old enough to think she has the right to know her real father. She’s alarmingly as stubborn, if not more, than you, and she’s not taking no for an answer. For the sake of her best interests, I think we should reconsider the custody arrangement.
Leonard snorts. Reconsider? How fucking generous, indeed, as the only consideration Leonard’s opinion had been given was a passing like fuck you’re getting her. Five years into a bitter divorce, and Jocelyn was still spreading him thin.
I’d appreciate you returning this call as soon as possible. She’s your daughter, too, after all. It’s time you started taking responsibility for her.
He listens to the message three more times, his heart a rock in his gut and a nasty taste coating the roof of his mouth. Jocelyn wrote the book on ‘bitch’, but her grip on his weakness was absolute iron.
Head in his hand, Leonard dials his lawyer.
--
“This is exactly what you wanted, right?” Jim says, bouncing on his heels as Leonard fastens a rumpled knot in his tie. “Think about it, you’ll finally be able to spend time with Joanna!”
Leonard frowns at his reflection. “If all goes well,” he mutters, pulling out the knot. “You don’t know how Jocelyn is.”
Jim grins, easy as always, and moves to knock Leonard’s hands out of the way. He’s a damn good surgeon, steady as they come, but he’s awful at ties. “No,” Jim admits, “but I know how much you love Joanna. How much you want to be in her life. Besides, you’ve certainly got a more solid background to work with. You’re the CMO of the Enterprise! If that doesn’t scream ‘responsibility’, I don’t know what does.”
Leonard rolls his eyes, but Jim pats his cheek and presses a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. “This is a good thing, Bones. This is what you want.”
Right, he thinks, an hour later as he takes a seat across the table from his ex-wife, this is what I want.
--
“This is what I want,” Jocelyn starts, because it’s always about what Jocelyn wants. “I want to be sure you can handle taking care of a seven year old girl for extended periods of time. For now, one or two weekends out of every month for visitation, and if all goes well, I’ll consider a week in the summer.”
Leonard hates that she’s making him seem incompetent, but he bites his tongue; she has all the cards.
“I’m confident that you have both the space and the salary to support her, and I’m pleased that you’ve kept up with child support all this time-”
“She’s my daughter,” Leonard interrupts, because it’s never occurred to him to do otherwise. “Of course I’m going to support her.”
Jocelyn’s eyes narrow. “Pardon me for taking into consideration your decision to up and enlist with no further notice,” she says, voice dripping with false politeness. “Your past behavior hasn’t exactly been the most reliable of arguments.”
“Please,” their justice says, glancing at them both over the rims of his glasses, “let’s try to keep this as civil as possible. Mr. McCoy, Ms. Treadway-”
“Mrs.,” she cuts in, because it really fucking matters.
“Mrs. Treadway,” he repeats, after a moment of incredulous silence, “has listed rather reasonable terms. As mentioned in the contract, your obligations are rather simple. She requests a clean upkeep, proper meals, and a typical social situation for when Joanna is in your custody. Nothing in your past suggests patterns of violent behavior; else we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.”
“I don’t disagree,” Leonard says, glance darting from Jocelyn and her lawyer to the justice. “I mean, I’m happy she’s even considering joint custody at all.”
Lie through your teeth if you have to, his lawyer had whispered to him in the few minutes before the meeting. Lie until the Devil makes you a diamond ring from his own shit.
“I have no complaints. I just want to know my daughter.”
Jocelyn’s smile is tight, but Leonard was married to her; it’s not entirely a fake one.
“With any luck, that will happen.”
Because in this situation, luck is pretty much all Leonard has to work with.
--
What bugs him, later, a sort of itch under his skin he can’t reach, is what exactly ‘typical social situation’ means. Nothing about their ‘situation’ is typical to begin with, so what could she possibly have in mind?
“Hello?”
“Joanna!” Leonard’s chest expands with warmth, the grin pulling at the aching lines of his face. “Sweetheart, it’s Daddy, how are you?”
“Daddy!” she yells, and it’s the only thing she says for the next five seconds, until he hears Jocelyn’s voice and a few rustling noises.
“Go play in your room for a while,” the muffled clip of her voice says, and Joanna’s audible protest follows. “Go.”
“Well, that was unnecessary,” Leonard says, when Jocelyn utters a terse greeting.
“Why are you calling?” Business, as usual.
“Oh, don’t be courteous for my benefit, please.”
“I’m hanging up, Leonard,” she snaps, and it’s a pleasure, really.
“What do you mean by ‘typical social situation’?” he blurts, lest she really do hang up. “Not to push buttons, but I’d hardly call our current situation typical.”
“I’ve seen interviews, Leonard, news clippings and photos,” and he’s sure they’re nowhere in the same book, let alone page. “You and your Captain are mighty close.”
“Jim?” Leonard says, and he blinks. “Jim is my best friend, of course we’re close.”
“And I’m not going to allow my daughter to be raised in a den of sin,” Jocelyn hisses. “Either you stop seeing that pretty-boy Kirk, or you stop seeing Joanna.”
“I never fucking see her in the first place,” he snaps back. Part of him can’t believe she has the gall to say such a thing, and the other part is mostly just furious. “And you’ve got some nerve, calling my life a den of sin, like you didn’t up and marry the man you goddamn cheated on me with.”
“Don’t talk to me like that, Leonard, or I’ll call the whole damn arrangement off. You’d better wise the hell up and think about your priorities.”
“Go to hell,” he says, and hangs up.
He doesn’t feel at all as satisfied as the gesture deserves.
--
“So?” Jim looks up from his news PADD, twirling the stylus between his fingers. “What’s the verdict?”
“Jocelyn’s still a vindictive harpy,” Leonard sighs, bracing himself on the back of the couch. “But it’s something. Possibly two weekends out of every month, maybe a week in the summer.”
Jim laughs, surprised and open just like every other reaction he ever has. “That’s amazing! I mean, going from nothing to two weekends? That’s-you’re-why do you not look as happy about this as you should be?”
Leonard hates the crease that forms in the middle of Jim’s eyebrows, and knows this is only going to get worse. “Because I’m turning it down.”
Jim’s face falls. “What? Bones, wh-”
“I already have extremely limited contact with Joanna, anyway. Birthdays and holidays, at most. What if a few months into this, Jocelyn changes her mind? I couldn’t do that to Joanna.” I couldn’t do that to myself, he doesn’t say.
“Bones, you’ve been wanting this chance forever,” Jim says, standing up now. He shakes his head. “I don’t get it, why would you let go of this kind of opportunity? You finally get to spend time with your daughter, your own flesh and blood. Why deny her the chance to know her father?”
And it scares Leonard, in that moment, how young Jim looks, his eyes sad and his mouth pursed. Of course it’s next to impossible for Jim to understand.
“Because it’s her, or you.”
The air between them is deadly silent. Jim stares. The stylus clatters abruptly to the floor.
“Jocelyn gave me an ultimatum. I either stop seeing you, or I don’t get custody. And I figure, what’s the point if it-”
“Fuck you,” Jim says, clipped. “How fucking dare you do that to your child, you selfish asshole.”
Leonard feels like staggering, but instead he snaps back, “I’m the asshole? I’m the asshole that kept my daughter away from me for five fucking years, when I’m not even the one that tore the family apart? You don’t know shit, Jim, so don’t call me an asshole for wanting to feel okay.”
Jim’s gaze hardens, and he sets down the PADD. Because he never, ever fails to push his limits, he crowds into Leonard’s space and enunciates each word like it’s everything. “Take it from somebody who never had the chance,” he mutters, nearly spitting, he’s so angry, “to know what it was like to have a father; I would have given anything to hear one fucking ‘Happy Birthday’ from my dad, so excuse me for thinking Joanna might want you in her life. That she’s worth more to you than some relationship.”
“You think this is just ‘some relationship’?” Leonard feels like hitting him. “Jim, you-”
“Will still be around in ten years, when Joanna’s old enough to make her own decisions. But if you don’t fix this now,” Jim pauses, and it aches all the way down in Leonard’s toes at how miserable he looks, “then she may make the same choice you’re making now. And then you won’t have either of us.”
He leaves, then, a slam of a door his only good bye, and Leonard finally allows his knees to buckle.
Figure out your priorities, Jocelyn had said.
Leonard hates her for telling him he probably wouldn’t make it as a doctor. He hates her for cheating on him, for breaking up their marriage and telling him he wouldn’t make it as a husband. He hates her for taking away Joanna, for telling him he wouldn’t make it as a father.
Mostly, he hates her for being right.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Priorities, see, they and Leonard never really came to terms.
Warnings: Bad language, mostly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters from Star Trek, or anything cool like that. D:
Author Notes: For elise_the_great , because she’d finished a paper ahead of schedule and needed incentive. Her prompt was, Bones must choose between Jim and Joanna. D: Now, I feel like I should say I really don’t like how mean Jocelyn came out, I promise it wasn’t intentional. If anything, I don’t like when women are portrayed as evil in fic so as not to get in the way of twoo wuv, so I in no way mean for this to be a Jocelyn-bashing fic. ANYWAY.
Now with an amazing mini follow up from blcwriter , here.
When Leonard receives the message, it’s a damn good thing he’s already sitting down.
Leonard, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.
“How generous of you,” he says to the voice recording, like it means something.
Joanna’s getting older, old enough to think she has the right to know her real father. She’s alarmingly as stubborn, if not more, than you, and she’s not taking no for an answer. For the sake of her best interests, I think we should reconsider the custody arrangement.
Leonard snorts. Reconsider? How fucking generous, indeed, as the only consideration Leonard’s opinion had been given was a passing like fuck you’re getting her. Five years into a bitter divorce, and Jocelyn was still spreading him thin.
I’d appreciate you returning this call as soon as possible. She’s your daughter, too, after all. It’s time you started taking responsibility for her.
He listens to the message three more times, his heart a rock in his gut and a nasty taste coating the roof of his mouth. Jocelyn wrote the book on ‘bitch’, but her grip on his weakness was absolute iron.
Head in his hand, Leonard dials his lawyer.
--
“This is exactly what you wanted, right?” Jim says, bouncing on his heels as Leonard fastens a rumpled knot in his tie. “Think about it, you’ll finally be able to spend time with Joanna!”
Leonard frowns at his reflection. “If all goes well,” he mutters, pulling out the knot. “You don’t know how Jocelyn is.”
Jim grins, easy as always, and moves to knock Leonard’s hands out of the way. He’s a damn good surgeon, steady as they come, but he’s awful at ties. “No,” Jim admits, “but I know how much you love Joanna. How much you want to be in her life. Besides, you’ve certainly got a more solid background to work with. You’re the CMO of the Enterprise! If that doesn’t scream ‘responsibility’, I don’t know what does.”
Leonard rolls his eyes, but Jim pats his cheek and presses a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. “This is a good thing, Bones. This is what you want.”
Right, he thinks, an hour later as he takes a seat across the table from his ex-wife, this is what I want.
--
“This is what I want,” Jocelyn starts, because it’s always about what Jocelyn wants. “I want to be sure you can handle taking care of a seven year old girl for extended periods of time. For now, one or two weekends out of every month for visitation, and if all goes well, I’ll consider a week in the summer.”
Leonard hates that she’s making him seem incompetent, but he bites his tongue; she has all the cards.
“I’m confident that you have both the space and the salary to support her, and I’m pleased that you’ve kept up with child support all this time-”
“She’s my daughter,” Leonard interrupts, because it’s never occurred to him to do otherwise. “Of course I’m going to support her.”
Jocelyn’s eyes narrow. “Pardon me for taking into consideration your decision to up and enlist with no further notice,” she says, voice dripping with false politeness. “Your past behavior hasn’t exactly been the most reliable of arguments.”
“Please,” their justice says, glancing at them both over the rims of his glasses, “let’s try to keep this as civil as possible. Mr. McCoy, Ms. Treadway-”
“Mrs.,” she cuts in, because it really fucking matters.
“Mrs. Treadway,” he repeats, after a moment of incredulous silence, “has listed rather reasonable terms. As mentioned in the contract, your obligations are rather simple. She requests a clean upkeep, proper meals, and a typical social situation for when Joanna is in your custody. Nothing in your past suggests patterns of violent behavior; else we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.”
“I don’t disagree,” Leonard says, glance darting from Jocelyn and her lawyer to the justice. “I mean, I’m happy she’s even considering joint custody at all.”
Lie through your teeth if you have to, his lawyer had whispered to him in the few minutes before the meeting. Lie until the Devil makes you a diamond ring from his own shit.
“I have no complaints. I just want to know my daughter.”
Jocelyn’s smile is tight, but Leonard was married to her; it’s not entirely a fake one.
“With any luck, that will happen.”
Because in this situation, luck is pretty much all Leonard has to work with.
--
What bugs him, later, a sort of itch under his skin he can’t reach, is what exactly ‘typical social situation’ means. Nothing about their ‘situation’ is typical to begin with, so what could she possibly have in mind?
“Hello?”
“Joanna!” Leonard’s chest expands with warmth, the grin pulling at the aching lines of his face. “Sweetheart, it’s Daddy, how are you?”
“Daddy!” she yells, and it’s the only thing she says for the next five seconds, until he hears Jocelyn’s voice and a few rustling noises.
“Go play in your room for a while,” the muffled clip of her voice says, and Joanna’s audible protest follows. “Go.”
“Well, that was unnecessary,” Leonard says, when Jocelyn utters a terse greeting.
“Why are you calling?” Business, as usual.
“Oh, don’t be courteous for my benefit, please.”
“I’m hanging up, Leonard,” she snaps, and it’s a pleasure, really.
“What do you mean by ‘typical social situation’?” he blurts, lest she really do hang up. “Not to push buttons, but I’d hardly call our current situation typical.”
“I’ve seen interviews, Leonard, news clippings and photos,” and he’s sure they’re nowhere in the same book, let alone page. “You and your Captain are mighty close.”
“Jim?” Leonard says, and he blinks. “Jim is my best friend, of course we’re close.”
“And I’m not going to allow my daughter to be raised in a den of sin,” Jocelyn hisses. “Either you stop seeing that pretty-boy Kirk, or you stop seeing Joanna.”
“I never fucking see her in the first place,” he snaps back. Part of him can’t believe she has the gall to say such a thing, and the other part is mostly just furious. “And you’ve got some nerve, calling my life a den of sin, like you didn’t up and marry the man you goddamn cheated on me with.”
“Don’t talk to me like that, Leonard, or I’ll call the whole damn arrangement off. You’d better wise the hell up and think about your priorities.”
“Go to hell,” he says, and hangs up.
He doesn’t feel at all as satisfied as the gesture deserves.
--
“So?” Jim looks up from his news PADD, twirling the stylus between his fingers. “What’s the verdict?”
“Jocelyn’s still a vindictive harpy,” Leonard sighs, bracing himself on the back of the couch. “But it’s something. Possibly two weekends out of every month, maybe a week in the summer.”
Jim laughs, surprised and open just like every other reaction he ever has. “That’s amazing! I mean, going from nothing to two weekends? That’s-you’re-why do you not look as happy about this as you should be?”
Leonard hates the crease that forms in the middle of Jim’s eyebrows, and knows this is only going to get worse. “Because I’m turning it down.”
Jim’s face falls. “What? Bones, wh-”
“I already have extremely limited contact with Joanna, anyway. Birthdays and holidays, at most. What if a few months into this, Jocelyn changes her mind? I couldn’t do that to Joanna.” I couldn’t do that to myself, he doesn’t say.
“Bones, you’ve been wanting this chance forever,” Jim says, standing up now. He shakes his head. “I don’t get it, why would you let go of this kind of opportunity? You finally get to spend time with your daughter, your own flesh and blood. Why deny her the chance to know her father?”
And it scares Leonard, in that moment, how young Jim looks, his eyes sad and his mouth pursed. Of course it’s next to impossible for Jim to understand.
“Because it’s her, or you.”
The air between them is deadly silent. Jim stares. The stylus clatters abruptly to the floor.
“Jocelyn gave me an ultimatum. I either stop seeing you, or I don’t get custody. And I figure, what’s the point if it-”
“Fuck you,” Jim says, clipped. “How fucking dare you do that to your child, you selfish asshole.”
Leonard feels like staggering, but instead he snaps back, “I’m the asshole? I’m the asshole that kept my daughter away from me for five fucking years, when I’m not even the one that tore the family apart? You don’t know shit, Jim, so don’t call me an asshole for wanting to feel okay.”
Jim’s gaze hardens, and he sets down the PADD. Because he never, ever fails to push his limits, he crowds into Leonard’s space and enunciates each word like it’s everything. “Take it from somebody who never had the chance,” he mutters, nearly spitting, he’s so angry, “to know what it was like to have a father; I would have given anything to hear one fucking ‘Happy Birthday’ from my dad, so excuse me for thinking Joanna might want you in her life. That she’s worth more to you than some relationship.”
“You think this is just ‘some relationship’?” Leonard feels like hitting him. “Jim, you-”
“Will still be around in ten years, when Joanna’s old enough to make her own decisions. But if you don’t fix this now,” Jim pauses, and it aches all the way down in Leonard’s toes at how miserable he looks, “then she may make the same choice you’re making now. And then you won’t have either of us.”
He leaves, then, a slam of a door his only good bye, and Leonard finally allows his knees to buckle.
Figure out your priorities, Jocelyn had said.
Leonard hates her for telling him he probably wouldn’t make it as a doctor. He hates her for cheating on him, for breaking up their marriage and telling him he wouldn’t make it as a husband. He hates her for taking away Joanna, for telling him he wouldn’t make it as a father.
Mostly, he hates her for being right.