FIC: Future Imperfect (11/16) (Kirk/McCoy, dystopic AU)
Title: Future Imperfect (11/16)
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: Mature (this part)
Word count: 3,239
Warnings: Extensive but non-explicit discussion of past child sexual and emotional abuse; slavery "light"
Thanks: To cordelianne, who is a faithful partner in a stressful time.
Notes: This story takes place in the same time period as the 2009 movie (and will roughly follow its events), but imagines the future as a eugenic dystopia. (We'll pretend this has nothing to do with my academic study of human enhancement technologies and eugenics and that I didn't steal the title from a library book sitting on my shelf.) Technically unbeta'd, so feel free to point out typos. Sorry (again) for the major delays, being on the academic job market has a tendency to consume one's life, and the particular content of this chapter didn't make it a fun escape into writing.
Summary: Leonard wins the kid in a hand of poker. A hand of poker he plays in the dirty back room of a dive bar in East Bumfuck, Iowa, two weeks after his humiliating divorce is finalized, and on the sixth day of a bourbon-fueled bender that’s somehow taken him from his high-rise loft in Atlanta to a fleabag motel in the middle of nowhere.
Previous parts here.
The revelation lies heavy in the air between them.
“Jesus, Jim.”
Bones looks stricken, but Jim doesn’t want pity. He shrugs, not making eye contact as he finally steps out of the doorway and moves toward the bed.
“Thought I was so clever. Only I stuck myself with Frank and Alicia, and Sam never spoke to me again. Guess I learned my lesson.”
He starts to pull off his shirt.
“Don’t do that,” Bones snaps.
“What? Take off my shirt?” Jim quips, but he lets his hands drop to his sides.
Bones doesn’t laugh. “Don’t shrug off what you did,” he says, “what you sacrificed for your brother.”
Jim sits down on the bed, keeping his back to Bones. “Yeah, well, what am I supposed to do instead? Celebrate handing myself over to a pedophile?”
“Of course not,” Bones mutters and Jim can feel the warmth of Bones’ hand hovering over his shoulder, but it doesn’t come to rest.
Bones probably doesn’t want to touch him anymore. Jim understands.
“Or maybe I should wallow in it?” Jim suggests. “My huge, stupid sacrifice. Make my whole life about how I’m some kind of tragic victim.”
“You’d have the right,” Bones says softly. “But I don’t think those are the only options. Just because you acknowledge your past doesn’t mean you have to define yourself by it. Hell, I destroyed a perfectly good career trying to save a completely hopeless marriage and fell in love with a daughter who was never mine in the first place and I’ll probably never see again.”
Jim feels his lips twitch into a small and brief, but genuine smile. “Yeah,” he says, “I guess you did.”
“And now look at me - I’m an upstanding member of Starfleet.”
“Guess you are,” Jim says.
The hand is back over Jim’s shoulder, and this time it lands lightly, squeezes slightly, makes Jim feel steadier.
“I owe a lot of that to you, you know,” Bones says. “Telling you about it helped.”
Jim nods, still looking away across the room.
“You can finish the story. If you want to.”
Something about the simple invitation tugs at Jim. Maybe he can do this, though he’s not sure he can turn around. He nods again, and takes a deep breath.
“Getting Frank to change his mind wasn’t hard. I knew what he wanted, and I knew with guys like him, the younger the better. So when he and Alicia came back to finalize things, I pulled him aside and let him know I was available. I told him I’d be a much better ‘son’ than Sam. Of course, when he told the director he wanted me instead, she immediately upped the price. Four more years don’t come cheap. Alicia was pissed, but Frank was practically salivating, so she gave in. She’d find ways to get back at me later.”
Jim can still picture the cold, hard set of her face. The way she would always look at him, except for those rare times she let her real disgust seep through.
“That part was easy. The hard part was when I looked at Sam - when I saw the betrayal in his eyes, the defeat in his body. He didn’t see a rescue or a sacrifice. He saw his little brother stealing his family - the family he was so convinced would be our family one day - right out from under him.”
That look, too, is burned in Jim’s memory, chased him for years in his dreams.
“Everything went pretty quickly after that. Sam was sent out of the room, credits changed hands, and pretty soon I was sent after him to get my things. I knew I didn’t have long and I wanted - needed - to explain, but Sam wouldn’t even look at me. I had a small emergency fund stashed away on an untraceable credit chip. I tried to tell him about it, whispered the hiding place, how to get to it, but I couldn’t even tell if he was hearing me. I promised I would come back for him.”
It’s these last moments with Sam that haunt Jim most. He can’t help thinking there must have been something he could have said to make things different, to make Sam wait for him.
Then again, maybe he just took too long.
“Anyway, the director was there, snapping at me to get downstairs and get in the car. It was only an hour’s drive from the orphanage to my new ‘home,’ but it might as well have been Mars for all the means I’d have to sneak back there. No one spoke. Alicia was driving. Frank was watching me. I was thinking, trying to make plans.”
Jim thinks there was someone talking on the radio - maybe about food or music - it was nothing Jim had ever had time to care about.
“I knew I couldn’t just run away. They’d have sent someone after me. I couldn’t just be awful, either. I didn’t want them going back to the orphanage and demanding Sam in my place. I’d have to play nice and bide my time, figure out how things worked, get inside their heads. Anyway, I’m not sure what I was expecting from their home, but the really fucked up thing was how perfectly normal they were. Pretty neighborhood, clean house, cute kids. Andrew, age seven, and Beth, age four, fresh faced and smiling in all the family holos hanging all over the walls. Sam would have fucking loved it - at least at first sight.”
All Jim remembers feeling was out of place, dirty, like some kind of mark that ought to be wiped up, swept away and carried off with the trash.
“I guess it wasn’t all bad, though. For the first time, I had my own room. And I got enough to eat, every day. Alicia kept me busy around the house with cooking and cleaning and babysitting, but even she couldn’t do as much as she wanted to make my life as miserable. This was an ‘adoption,’ after all, and we had to keep up appearances. Especially for the kids, who were so excited to have a big brother around.”
Not that Jim knew anything about being a big brother in a place like that.
“And then there was Frank.” Without thinking about it, Jim finds himself back on his feet, arms wrapped around his own body. “Would you believe he actually courted me? There I was, holding my breath at night, just waiting for him to walk through the door, and instead he starts leaving me gifts. Clothes, candy, a PADD with all these games and books. Things a real kid would get. Things Alicia didn’t think were necessary for keeping up appearances.”
Jim’s half aware that he’s taken up an erratic sort of pacing, but he doesn’t know how to stop it.
“And I would tell myself I didn’t need anything from him, that I’d never had any of this stuff before and I didn’t need any of it now, but I just couldn’t make myself throw it all away. Mostly I ended up stuffing the things in the back of my closet. It’s like…growing up the way Sam and I did, you never had anything of your own. Books, toys - when we had them at all they were always shared with a bunch of other kids and usually came in second hand in the first place. Things real kids didn’t want or need anymore. And, you know, you start to hoard little things - it didn’t even matter what they were - you just want something to be yours.”
Jim stops in his tracks for a second, shakes his head. “God, that must sound so stupid to you…”
“Jim, no…” Bones says, sounding so sad. He looks like maybe he wants to stand up, but he doesn’t. There’s a short silence and then Bones must figure out where the story is going because his next words are stronger, more insistent. “Jim, whatever he did to you, it’s not your fault. I don’t care how you think you acted, or reacted, it’s all on him.”
Jim can’t meet Bones’ eyes. “I could have said ‘no.’ I could have made him force me. I didn’t have to give him what he wanted, especially not for a few stupid toys.”
“You had to do the best you could to survive.”
“That’s what I told myself,” Jim agrees, though he’s not sure he believes it, even now. “I figured he was going to get what he wanted either way, so why shouldn’t I get something out of it, too? And what did it matter, right? It was all just an act.”
The restless pacing resumes.
“Only it wasn’t enough just to find me when no one else was home or to sneak into my room at night. He wanted to talk, too. To confide in me. He’d tell me how much he hated his job, how his boss was a dick and his coworkers were snobs, how Alicia never really listened to him and she didn’t understand him, and the only good things in his life were me and his kids because weren’t they so beautiful and brilliant and perfect?”
Jim feels the resentment rising in his throat like bile.
“And yeah, I guess they were good kids. Shit, I know they were. Only I could hardly stand to look at them anymore. They loved having me around, begged me to play with them and read them stories with funny voices and things. And Andrew was smart, and so sensitive, and innocent, and he looked up to his father. And sometimes I actually thought, ‘Better me than him,’ you know? Just like, Better me than Sam.’ Because Andrew and Sam wouldn’t be able to take it, but I could.”
Jim thinks he might be talking too fast now, or too loud.
“Except other times I would look see Andrew and be filled with rage. Sometimes I fucking hated him because Frank was his fucking father and I didn’t even have one, so how come I was the one who had to shield everybody from everything?”
“You shouldn’t have had to do any of that,” Bones whispers, or maybe it’s just a normal voice. Jim’s lost perspective.
“But then I thought maybe there was some reason, you know? I mean, there I was letting Frank pay me off. Maybe I was just born to be a whore.”
Bones draws a sharp breath, but Jim pushes on before he can register a protest.
“But, hey, why fight it, right? I could use it. It was all supposed to be about Sam in the first place, and I was supposed to be getting back to him. It had only been a few months, so I wasn’t going to be able to get away for good yet, but I thought maybe I could convince Frank just to take me back for a visit. I could wait until he wanted something…special from me and then trade for it. Only the first time I tried to ask, Frank put me off. I waited a couple of weeks and tried again, but that time he got really pissed off.”
Jim remembers the shock of Frank’s sudden and sharp anger, so different from the solicitous seduction.
“I mean, I knew he wasn’t a great guy, but I’d never seen him like that before. And it scared me. So I just…stopped asking.”
The admission brings the worst of the guilt flooding back, and Jim knows Bones can hear it in his voice.
“You were just trying to survive,” Bones repeats, like he knows anything about it.
Jim shakes his head. “You don’t get it. I didn’t have any way to communicate with Sam. Convincing Frank was my only shot and I just gave up. It took me almost a year to figure out how to actually get out of that house for good, and by then it was too late. When I finally made it back to the orphanage, Sam was long gone. He’d taken off a few months earlier. I spent years trying to find him, but I never could. I haven’t seen him since.”
This shocks Bones into a short silence.
“Maybe he found a good life somewhere,” he says at last, but Jim can hear the doubt behind the words.
Jim doesn’t allow himself false hope. “He wasn’t ready to go out on his own. He didn’t know enough about the world. I mean, fuck, he didn’t even take the credits I left him. I found them, still in the same hiding place. Obviously, he was still pissed at me for ‘betraying’ him and didn’t want to take anything from me, but principles like that don’t get you shit on the streets.” Jim looks down at the floor. “The last thing he said to me before I left was that he’d never forgive me. I guess he kept his promise.”
Another moment passes. “God, Jim, I’m so sorry.”
“You said you wanted to know,” Jim reminds him, finally turning to look at Bones, who’s still sitting on the bed.
“I’m sorry you had to live through it,” Bones says, “but I’m not sorry you told me.”
Bones looks very intent, intense, and suddenly Jim feels deeply exposed. There will be emotional fallout here, but Jim isn’t sure what it will be, the bitter confidence that he knows people’s actions and reactions all too well suddenly replaced by almost unbearable uncertainty.
“Yeah, okay, thanks,” Jim says, nodding, backing towards the door. “I…um…maybe I should sleep in my own room tonight.”
Even with his desire…need…to escape, Jim half expects Bones to ask him to stay.
Maybe more than half, because it comes as a shock when Bones just nods back and says, “Yeah, I guess that’s probably best.”
But, then, of course Bones would say that. He knows now that Jim is a whore, and not just his personal whore like so many men fantasize about. No, just a dirty, used-up kid who left his brother to die on the streets.
“Right,” Jim says, “yeah.”
He’s almost through the door when Bones says: “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” Jim says without turning around, “I got that.”
“No,” Bones says, “I mean I’m sorry for taking advantage of you.”
Jim turns around at that. “What?”
“I told myself it was okay, that I wasn’t forcing you, but who am I kidding? You had nowhere else to go and didn’t I just jump on that? Buying you gifts, giving you things you could only get through me - I’m no better than Frank.”
Jim started shaking his head halfway through Bones’ lament and he hasn’t stopped. “No, Bones, you’re nothing like him.”
Bones scowls. “Aren’t I?”
“No! You’re a good guy. A little naïve sometimes, but you care about people. You want to fix things.”
“I’m in a position of power. You’re dependent on me. You said it yourself, you have no place else to go.”
“Oh, please, I knew within a week of us getting here that you’d never kick me out. I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to. And besides, I fucking threw myself at you. Not like I gave you much choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Bones mutters, looking down.
And of course Jim knows what Bones is talking about himself, but it feels like he’s talking about Jim. “I chose Frank,” Jim whispers.
“What?”
“I chose Frank,” Jim repeats. “I could have pushed him to try to get back to Sam, but I didn’t.”
“Jim, you can’t blame yourself for that. You were young and scared and you had every reason to be. You didn’t know what Frank was capable of.”
“No, see, that’s just it,” Jim whispers, pushing the words past his tight throat, “I wasn’t afraid of what Frank was capable of. I wasn’t worried about what he would do to me. I was afraid he’d get mad and stop paying attention to me. Alicia hated me. She never spoke to me except to give me orders. She didn’t care about how I was doing. She didn’t want to know me.” Jim stops and swallows. “But Frank did. And I was afraid to lose that. I was afraid to be alone.”
“Jesus Christ, Jim…”
“I know,” Jim says. “I don’t know what was wrong with me. How could I choose a monster like Frank over my own brother?”
“You didn’t, Jim. You chose survival.”
“But how do you know that?” Jim blurts. “Maybe I did it on purpose. I was so angry at Sam for making me take his place with Frank. For getting off scot-free while I was.... Which doesn’t even make sense because Sam didn’t make me - he didn’t even know - and if I hated Frank so much then how come I didn’t want him to stop talking to me?”
Jim looks at Bones and he thinks he must look wild-eyed, desperate, and suddenly Bones is standing up and opening his arms.
“Jim, come here.”
Jim steps forward and the moment Bones’ arms close around him, the tears start to fall.
He starts to pull away, embarrassed, but Bones holds tight and eventually Jim just gives in.
Time passes.
Eventually the tears dry up.
“You were isolated and abused,” Bones says softly. “Not just by Frank; by Alicia, too. Alicia blamed you for the faults of her husband, and Frank took advantage of your vulnerability to make himself the most important person in your life so he could take what he wanted and you wouldn’t be able to say no. And with all that, you did the best you could to survive long enough to get away. And you did.”
“But Sam…”
“Sam was your older brother. Anything you knew and understood about the world, he could have known and understood, too. He let you shield him. He let himself not know. And he let you pay a terrible price for his ignorance. Maybe what you did was a shock to him, but he must have woken up after that. And whatever he did then, that was his choice. You gave up your choices so he could have his. And he made them.”
Jim shakes his head against Bones’ shoulder. “You don’t know what it was like for us growing up...”
“You’re right - I don’t. But I know that whatever he had to live through, you had to live through it, too. And you were younger and you were braver and you did everything for him that you possibly could. It’s not your fault.”
“But I-”
“It’s not your fault,” Bones repeats. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but maybe you can just trust me on that for now?”
Jim doesn’t answer but he doesn’t try to object either.
He stands in the circle of Bones’ arms for long minutes.
Finally, he moves, but not for the door. He takes Bones’ hand and pulls him toward the bed.
They lie down together, but Jim can feel the tension in Bones’ body that tells him Bones is having trouble letting go of his guilt, too.
“I chose to be with you,” Jim says softly. “Not because I had to. Not because I wanted something. Not because I’m damaged. Because of you. Can you trust me on that? For now?”
After a few seconds, he feels Bones relax ever-so-slightly against him.
Jim lets himself relax, too. Just a little.
On to Part Twelve...
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: Mature (this part)
Word count: 3,239
Warnings: Extensive but non-explicit discussion of past child sexual and emotional abuse; slavery "light"
Thanks: To cordelianne, who is a faithful partner in a stressful time.
Notes: This story takes place in the same time period as the 2009 movie (and will roughly follow its events), but imagines the future as a eugenic dystopia. (We'll pretend this has nothing to do with my academic study of human enhancement technologies and eugenics and that I didn't steal the title from a library book sitting on my shelf.) Technically unbeta'd, so feel free to point out typos. Sorry (again) for the major delays, being on the academic job market has a tendency to consume one's life, and the particular content of this chapter didn't make it a fun escape into writing.
Summary: Leonard wins the kid in a hand of poker. A hand of poker he plays in the dirty back room of a dive bar in East Bumfuck, Iowa, two weeks after his humiliating divorce is finalized, and on the sixth day of a bourbon-fueled bender that’s somehow taken him from his high-rise loft in Atlanta to a fleabag motel in the middle of nowhere.
Previous parts here.
The revelation lies heavy in the air between them.
“Jesus, Jim.”
Bones looks stricken, but Jim doesn’t want pity. He shrugs, not making eye contact as he finally steps out of the doorway and moves toward the bed.
“Thought I was so clever. Only I stuck myself with Frank and Alicia, and Sam never spoke to me again. Guess I learned my lesson.”
He starts to pull off his shirt.
“Don’t do that,” Bones snaps.
“What? Take off my shirt?” Jim quips, but he lets his hands drop to his sides.
Bones doesn’t laugh. “Don’t shrug off what you did,” he says, “what you sacrificed for your brother.”
Jim sits down on the bed, keeping his back to Bones. “Yeah, well, what am I supposed to do instead? Celebrate handing myself over to a pedophile?”
“Of course not,” Bones mutters and Jim can feel the warmth of Bones’ hand hovering over his shoulder, but it doesn’t come to rest.
Bones probably doesn’t want to touch him anymore. Jim understands.
“Or maybe I should wallow in it?” Jim suggests. “My huge, stupid sacrifice. Make my whole life about how I’m some kind of tragic victim.”
“You’d have the right,” Bones says softly. “But I don’t think those are the only options. Just because you acknowledge your past doesn’t mean you have to define yourself by it. Hell, I destroyed a perfectly good career trying to save a completely hopeless marriage and fell in love with a daughter who was never mine in the first place and I’ll probably never see again.”
Jim feels his lips twitch into a small and brief, but genuine smile. “Yeah,” he says, “I guess you did.”
“And now look at me - I’m an upstanding member of Starfleet.”
“Guess you are,” Jim says.
The hand is back over Jim’s shoulder, and this time it lands lightly, squeezes slightly, makes Jim feel steadier.
“I owe a lot of that to you, you know,” Bones says. “Telling you about it helped.”
Jim nods, still looking away across the room.
“You can finish the story. If you want to.”
Something about the simple invitation tugs at Jim. Maybe he can do this, though he’s not sure he can turn around. He nods again, and takes a deep breath.
“Getting Frank to change his mind wasn’t hard. I knew what he wanted, and I knew with guys like him, the younger the better. So when he and Alicia came back to finalize things, I pulled him aside and let him know I was available. I told him I’d be a much better ‘son’ than Sam. Of course, when he told the director he wanted me instead, she immediately upped the price. Four more years don’t come cheap. Alicia was pissed, but Frank was practically salivating, so she gave in. She’d find ways to get back at me later.”
Jim can still picture the cold, hard set of her face. The way she would always look at him, except for those rare times she let her real disgust seep through.
“That part was easy. The hard part was when I looked at Sam - when I saw the betrayal in his eyes, the defeat in his body. He didn’t see a rescue or a sacrifice. He saw his little brother stealing his family - the family he was so convinced would be our family one day - right out from under him.”
That look, too, is burned in Jim’s memory, chased him for years in his dreams.
“Everything went pretty quickly after that. Sam was sent out of the room, credits changed hands, and pretty soon I was sent after him to get my things. I knew I didn’t have long and I wanted - needed - to explain, but Sam wouldn’t even look at me. I had a small emergency fund stashed away on an untraceable credit chip. I tried to tell him about it, whispered the hiding place, how to get to it, but I couldn’t even tell if he was hearing me. I promised I would come back for him.”
It’s these last moments with Sam that haunt Jim most. He can’t help thinking there must have been something he could have said to make things different, to make Sam wait for him.
Then again, maybe he just took too long.
“Anyway, the director was there, snapping at me to get downstairs and get in the car. It was only an hour’s drive from the orphanage to my new ‘home,’ but it might as well have been Mars for all the means I’d have to sneak back there. No one spoke. Alicia was driving. Frank was watching me. I was thinking, trying to make plans.”
Jim thinks there was someone talking on the radio - maybe about food or music - it was nothing Jim had ever had time to care about.
“I knew I couldn’t just run away. They’d have sent someone after me. I couldn’t just be awful, either. I didn’t want them going back to the orphanage and demanding Sam in my place. I’d have to play nice and bide my time, figure out how things worked, get inside their heads. Anyway, I’m not sure what I was expecting from their home, but the really fucked up thing was how perfectly normal they were. Pretty neighborhood, clean house, cute kids. Andrew, age seven, and Beth, age four, fresh faced and smiling in all the family holos hanging all over the walls. Sam would have fucking loved it - at least at first sight.”
All Jim remembers feeling was out of place, dirty, like some kind of mark that ought to be wiped up, swept away and carried off with the trash.
“I guess it wasn’t all bad, though. For the first time, I had my own room. And I got enough to eat, every day. Alicia kept me busy around the house with cooking and cleaning and babysitting, but even she couldn’t do as much as she wanted to make my life as miserable. This was an ‘adoption,’ after all, and we had to keep up appearances. Especially for the kids, who were so excited to have a big brother around.”
Not that Jim knew anything about being a big brother in a place like that.
“And then there was Frank.” Without thinking about it, Jim finds himself back on his feet, arms wrapped around his own body. “Would you believe he actually courted me? There I was, holding my breath at night, just waiting for him to walk through the door, and instead he starts leaving me gifts. Clothes, candy, a PADD with all these games and books. Things a real kid would get. Things Alicia didn’t think were necessary for keeping up appearances.”
Jim’s half aware that he’s taken up an erratic sort of pacing, but he doesn’t know how to stop it.
“And I would tell myself I didn’t need anything from him, that I’d never had any of this stuff before and I didn’t need any of it now, but I just couldn’t make myself throw it all away. Mostly I ended up stuffing the things in the back of my closet. It’s like…growing up the way Sam and I did, you never had anything of your own. Books, toys - when we had them at all they were always shared with a bunch of other kids and usually came in second hand in the first place. Things real kids didn’t want or need anymore. And, you know, you start to hoard little things - it didn’t even matter what they were - you just want something to be yours.”
Jim stops in his tracks for a second, shakes his head. “God, that must sound so stupid to you…”
“Jim, no…” Bones says, sounding so sad. He looks like maybe he wants to stand up, but he doesn’t. There’s a short silence and then Bones must figure out where the story is going because his next words are stronger, more insistent. “Jim, whatever he did to you, it’s not your fault. I don’t care how you think you acted, or reacted, it’s all on him.”
Jim can’t meet Bones’ eyes. “I could have said ‘no.’ I could have made him force me. I didn’t have to give him what he wanted, especially not for a few stupid toys.”
“You had to do the best you could to survive.”
“That’s what I told myself,” Jim agrees, though he’s not sure he believes it, even now. “I figured he was going to get what he wanted either way, so why shouldn’t I get something out of it, too? And what did it matter, right? It was all just an act.”
The restless pacing resumes.
“Only it wasn’t enough just to find me when no one else was home or to sneak into my room at night. He wanted to talk, too. To confide in me. He’d tell me how much he hated his job, how his boss was a dick and his coworkers were snobs, how Alicia never really listened to him and she didn’t understand him, and the only good things in his life were me and his kids because weren’t they so beautiful and brilliant and perfect?”
Jim feels the resentment rising in his throat like bile.
“And yeah, I guess they were good kids. Shit, I know they were. Only I could hardly stand to look at them anymore. They loved having me around, begged me to play with them and read them stories with funny voices and things. And Andrew was smart, and so sensitive, and innocent, and he looked up to his father. And sometimes I actually thought, ‘Better me than him,’ you know? Just like, Better me than Sam.’ Because Andrew and Sam wouldn’t be able to take it, but I could.”
Jim thinks he might be talking too fast now, or too loud.
“Except other times I would look see Andrew and be filled with rage. Sometimes I fucking hated him because Frank was his fucking father and I didn’t even have one, so how come I was the one who had to shield everybody from everything?”
“You shouldn’t have had to do any of that,” Bones whispers, or maybe it’s just a normal voice. Jim’s lost perspective.
“But then I thought maybe there was some reason, you know? I mean, there I was letting Frank pay me off. Maybe I was just born to be a whore.”
Bones draws a sharp breath, but Jim pushes on before he can register a protest.
“But, hey, why fight it, right? I could use it. It was all supposed to be about Sam in the first place, and I was supposed to be getting back to him. It had only been a few months, so I wasn’t going to be able to get away for good yet, but I thought maybe I could convince Frank just to take me back for a visit. I could wait until he wanted something…special from me and then trade for it. Only the first time I tried to ask, Frank put me off. I waited a couple of weeks and tried again, but that time he got really pissed off.”
Jim remembers the shock of Frank’s sudden and sharp anger, so different from the solicitous seduction.
“I mean, I knew he wasn’t a great guy, but I’d never seen him like that before. And it scared me. So I just…stopped asking.”
The admission brings the worst of the guilt flooding back, and Jim knows Bones can hear it in his voice.
“You were just trying to survive,” Bones repeats, like he knows anything about it.
Jim shakes his head. “You don’t get it. I didn’t have any way to communicate with Sam. Convincing Frank was my only shot and I just gave up. It took me almost a year to figure out how to actually get out of that house for good, and by then it was too late. When I finally made it back to the orphanage, Sam was long gone. He’d taken off a few months earlier. I spent years trying to find him, but I never could. I haven’t seen him since.”
This shocks Bones into a short silence.
“Maybe he found a good life somewhere,” he says at last, but Jim can hear the doubt behind the words.
Jim doesn’t allow himself false hope. “He wasn’t ready to go out on his own. He didn’t know enough about the world. I mean, fuck, he didn’t even take the credits I left him. I found them, still in the same hiding place. Obviously, he was still pissed at me for ‘betraying’ him and didn’t want to take anything from me, but principles like that don’t get you shit on the streets.” Jim looks down at the floor. “The last thing he said to me before I left was that he’d never forgive me. I guess he kept his promise.”
Another moment passes. “God, Jim, I’m so sorry.”
“You said you wanted to know,” Jim reminds him, finally turning to look at Bones, who’s still sitting on the bed.
“I’m sorry you had to live through it,” Bones says, “but I’m not sorry you told me.”
Bones looks very intent, intense, and suddenly Jim feels deeply exposed. There will be emotional fallout here, but Jim isn’t sure what it will be, the bitter confidence that he knows people’s actions and reactions all too well suddenly replaced by almost unbearable uncertainty.
“Yeah, okay, thanks,” Jim says, nodding, backing towards the door. “I…um…maybe I should sleep in my own room tonight.”
Even with his desire…need…to escape, Jim half expects Bones to ask him to stay.
Maybe more than half, because it comes as a shock when Bones just nods back and says, “Yeah, I guess that’s probably best.”
But, then, of course Bones would say that. He knows now that Jim is a whore, and not just his personal whore like so many men fantasize about. No, just a dirty, used-up kid who left his brother to die on the streets.
“Right,” Jim says, “yeah.”
He’s almost through the door when Bones says: “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” Jim says without turning around, “I got that.”
“No,” Bones says, “I mean I’m sorry for taking advantage of you.”
Jim turns around at that. “What?”
“I told myself it was okay, that I wasn’t forcing you, but who am I kidding? You had nowhere else to go and didn’t I just jump on that? Buying you gifts, giving you things you could only get through me - I’m no better than Frank.”
Jim started shaking his head halfway through Bones’ lament and he hasn’t stopped. “No, Bones, you’re nothing like him.”
Bones scowls. “Aren’t I?”
“No! You’re a good guy. A little naïve sometimes, but you care about people. You want to fix things.”
“I’m in a position of power. You’re dependent on me. You said it yourself, you have no place else to go.”
“Oh, please, I knew within a week of us getting here that you’d never kick me out. I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to. And besides, I fucking threw myself at you. Not like I gave you much choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Bones mutters, looking down.
And of course Jim knows what Bones is talking about himself, but it feels like he’s talking about Jim. “I chose Frank,” Jim whispers.
“What?”
“I chose Frank,” Jim repeats. “I could have pushed him to try to get back to Sam, but I didn’t.”
“Jim, you can’t blame yourself for that. You were young and scared and you had every reason to be. You didn’t know what Frank was capable of.”
“No, see, that’s just it,” Jim whispers, pushing the words past his tight throat, “I wasn’t afraid of what Frank was capable of. I wasn’t worried about what he would do to me. I was afraid he’d get mad and stop paying attention to me. Alicia hated me. She never spoke to me except to give me orders. She didn’t care about how I was doing. She didn’t want to know me.” Jim stops and swallows. “But Frank did. And I was afraid to lose that. I was afraid to be alone.”
“Jesus Christ, Jim…”
“I know,” Jim says. “I don’t know what was wrong with me. How could I choose a monster like Frank over my own brother?”
“You didn’t, Jim. You chose survival.”
“But how do you know that?” Jim blurts. “Maybe I did it on purpose. I was so angry at Sam for making me take his place with Frank. For getting off scot-free while I was.... Which doesn’t even make sense because Sam didn’t make me - he didn’t even know - and if I hated Frank so much then how come I didn’t want him to stop talking to me?”
Jim looks at Bones and he thinks he must look wild-eyed, desperate, and suddenly Bones is standing up and opening his arms.
“Jim, come here.”
Jim steps forward and the moment Bones’ arms close around him, the tears start to fall.
He starts to pull away, embarrassed, but Bones holds tight and eventually Jim just gives in.
Time passes.
Eventually the tears dry up.
“You were isolated and abused,” Bones says softly. “Not just by Frank; by Alicia, too. Alicia blamed you for the faults of her husband, and Frank took advantage of your vulnerability to make himself the most important person in your life so he could take what he wanted and you wouldn’t be able to say no. And with all that, you did the best you could to survive long enough to get away. And you did.”
“But Sam…”
“Sam was your older brother. Anything you knew and understood about the world, he could have known and understood, too. He let you shield him. He let himself not know. And he let you pay a terrible price for his ignorance. Maybe what you did was a shock to him, but he must have woken up after that. And whatever he did then, that was his choice. You gave up your choices so he could have his. And he made them.”
Jim shakes his head against Bones’ shoulder. “You don’t know what it was like for us growing up...”
“You’re right - I don’t. But I know that whatever he had to live through, you had to live through it, too. And you were younger and you were braver and you did everything for him that you possibly could. It’s not your fault.”
“But I-”
“It’s not your fault,” Bones repeats. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but maybe you can just trust me on that for now?”
Jim doesn’t answer but he doesn’t try to object either.
He stands in the circle of Bones’ arms for long minutes.
Finally, he moves, but not for the door. He takes Bones’ hand and pulls him toward the bed.
They lie down together, but Jim can feel the tension in Bones’ body that tells him Bones is having trouble letting go of his guilt, too.
“I chose to be with you,” Jim says softly. “Not because I had to. Not because I wanted something. Not because I’m damaged. Because of you. Can you trust me on that? For now?”
After a few seconds, he feels Bones relax ever-so-slightly against him.
Jim lets himself relax, too. Just a little.
On to Part Twelve...