PART SIX [CLOSED]
PART ONE PART TWO
PART THREE PART FOUR HERE
PART FIVE HERE
PART SEVEN HERE
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN HERE
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"I don't want to talk about it."
"Well duh." He grins. "I kind of sort of figured that when you said--"
"Jim." Her voice was small to match how small she looked on her couch, blanket he brought in from the hall tucked tight around her like a bright, Starfleet-regulation red pea pod.
"Len."
"This is still my place, right?"
He has a toothbrush here because McCoy found him one morning passed out in her bath tub, her own tucked firmly in his mouth like he had fallen asleep mid swipe (which he had). He had some clothes in her closet because he really had no problem with women's underwear underwear when push came to I forgot them at, at wherever I was and McCoy tended towards the plain, white utilitarian anyway and was tired of finding out where they mysteriously got lost too and frogmarched him back to his dorm to stock her place up. He had some food here -- technically booze -- because, well. He doesn't have a key, but that's because McCoy's comm unit is a little in love with Jim, and tends to let him in with nary a warning after Jim jimmied a few sweet-nothing subroutines into its code.
"Technically."
"Get out."
He should. He's technically her friend, too, and he knows how to push her buttons so well because he's pretty good at reading people, contrary to popular (and immaculately maintained) belief. But he's not going to because she looks miserable and the grip on the bottle is bone-white around the knuckles and the skin under her eyes has darkened to bruise and--
"Give me that." He extricates the bottle from her fingers, peeling them off one by one, and settles beside her on the couch. She's still wrapped up tight so he lets his knees sprawl open as he pulls mouthful from the bottle and gets comfortable himself.
"Jocelyn?"
A sniff.
"What did she want this time?"
Another sniff, followed by Bones burying her head deeper into the pocket formed by her arms. It was, god help him, kind of adorable.
"What the hell does she--"
"Jim, stop it."
"Is it about Jo--"
"I said--"
"So it's about Jo. She not letting you see her again?"
"Give me back my fucking bottle." She doesn't make a move to grab for it, but her voice is venomous enough to make Jim consider it for a moment. He decides to take another pull instead, swirls it around with his tongue and determines, expert that he is, that Bones must really be fucked up about her ex to buy the cheap stuff and get half of what she did down before he got there. It's a little heartbreaking.
A sniff, a long pause, then: "She doesn't want me writing to her anymore. Says I'm not her biological mother and we never finished the guardianship papers so," She shifts and he still can't see her face, but the way her voice is just now, he can hear the grimace on her mouth, the way it filters her words, "she says Jo needs to move on."
Jim doesn't know what to say to that. If he was the introspective type -- and he's not, he makes a good-faith effort to do the exact goddamn opposite -- but if he was: who the fuck gets jealous over five year old kid? Because she's got someone in her life like Bones McCoy who gets this fucking wrecked over some little kid that's not even hers?
He's really glad he's not the introspective type, sometimes.
Smacking his lips a few times, he tries again, ticking off a finger for each: "She's a bitch, Jo knows you love her and you have any more of this you're going to hate yourself in the morning, doubled over in pain over your Xeno midterm, so--"
"Fuck you."
...and oh god Jim is so not good at this, he's not. His world tilts on its axis when Bones' voice is this empty of bite and piss and vinegar and is just. It's just so spare.
"So." He takes another long pull from her bottle, and swallows loudly so she can see how good of a friend he's being, "I'm going to drink the rest of this, for your own good."
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