A Study In Red(ding)- 'Free Me /from this/ Pain In My Heart'
Title: Free Me /from this/ Pain In My Heart
Pairing: Leonard/Jocelyn
Rating: PG 13
Word Count: ~1100
Summary: The beginning of the end.
Disclaimer: Well, of course I don't own the characters of Star Trek....or Otis Redding.
Related Stories: ** Masterpost**
Originally I was going to title the series 'A Study In Blues' a title that would definately suit this ficlet. I'm pretty darn sure that the next one that I write will be HAPPIER and a bit less serious. It's based on two songs this time 'Free Me' and 'Pain in My Heart' each song takes a viewpoint; Jocelyn the former and Leonard the latter. I've gotta say, I've been enjoying this far more than I thought I would have, taking the chance to develop my own theories on the backstory of Bones and, I'm no psychologist, but piecing through his emotional responses to things has been pretty interesting too. I'll probably post more about that later...
Side note - I need to let go of the circular plot, I don't even realise I'm doing it.
The lit displays of various electronic appliances in the living room smooth a cold glow of blue light across the surrounding surfaces, including Leonard. He's hunched onto the couch, sitting with his elbows resting on his knees and his head heavy between his palms, breathing deeply. Trying to shake off tonight’s fight.
It had been a lot less irrational and burning than its many predecessors; a release of emotion, not tension, and for this reason alone, it is easily their most serious. There was no sweeping this one under the rug, no letting go of what had been said.
He had endured an exhausting double shift, missing dinner and coming home to Jocelyn, sitting alone at the dinning table in silence. It wasn’t until they were getting ready for bed when she had let it out, starting with the usual; she didn’t feel that he was paying enough attention to her, wasn’t looking at her enough. This was a frequent focus of discontent on her part, despite the fact that it damn well wasn’t true. And maybe it made Leonard look like a bit of a fool, but despite the ongoing instability of their relationship, he still found himself stunned by her, still felt his heart catch and kick when she forgot herself and loosed a smile. He was still very much in love with his wife. But the ever growing rift between them was creating a Doppler Effect, slowly distorting her smiles and altering their frequency.
He told her that it wasn’t true, that he’d been paying her just as much attention. Truthfully he didn’t have as much spare time to do so as they both would have liked, what with the increased workload and responsibility that came hand in hand with the promotion that he had accepted four months ago, but it still didn’t change anything.
Shouldn’t change anything.
She’d latched onto that, about how she missed him, them, how his increased hours had left her lonely but didn’t seem to bother him (another lie). Their voices had boiled into a crescendo until she screamed “maybe I’m scared that you don’t love me so much anymore!”
At those words she seemed to deflate and he had reeled back a little; when had Jocelyn fallen to such depths of misery and paranoia? How had he not prevented this from happening? The tired circles around her desperate eyes suggested that she had been wondering similar things.
They stood either side of the bed, staring at each other and panting slightly into the smothering silence. Leonard had clenched and unclenched his fists, suddenly feeling overwhelmed and helpless. Out of control.
“You know that’s not true, I love you so much. I just can’t change the fact that work demands so much from me.” He had reasoned, reaching out to touch her arm.
Jocelyn had sighed, running a slender hand over her eyes and through her hair, and said, in a very small voice “other men look at me, Leonard.”
This in itself wasn’t news, Jocelyn was very attractive and confident, but the delivery of her words...
The deliberation and the implication behind them that she dared not voice aloud. It felt a lot like she’d been steeling herself to say this for a while, like it had been eating at her for too long.
Leonard had let out a choked gasp, struggling around a throat that was closed up in, what felt a lot like, panic. She was losing faith in them, she was giving up so soon.
“Don’t say that, Joce,” he’d whispered, “please don’t say that. Please.”
She’d said other things, about how she hadn’t acted upon anything, but thought about it all the time, and how she had a right to, how it was human and natural in response to the neglect that she had been subjected to. Measured, practised words.
Words that couldn’t break through the hurricane in his skull. He had dizzily stumbled to the darkness of the living room and collapsed onto the sofa.
He can hear her crying, gasping sobs that fill him with white hot, irrational anger. What right does she have to cry when she started the argument in the first place? His fingers, which are resting either side of his head grip and pull at his hair and ears, his mouth hisses out a long breath and his eyes screw up in frustration.
Leonard is, contrary to popular belief, an optimist; he may well prepare for the worst, but he always has positive hopes for the outcome and this is the case for his marriage. His brain tells him that things are unravelling too quickly for him to pick up in time, the negatives are beginning to overpower the positives, that every desperate attempt to bring them back together is pushing them farther apart; but his heart is telling him that it’ll be fine, it’s just a blip and that they’ll be able to get through it, they may even come out stronger.
But Leonard is an optimist, not an idiot.
Jocelyn is backing out and it takes two to save a marriage. He can’t do this by himself, not on his love alone. It would be so much easier, cleaner to part amicably, to cut off the limb to prevent the spread of infection. That doesn’t make it any less painful, however.
His heart is gripped by the stark clarity of the moment; this could well be it, he’s staring down the barrel of the end of his marriage. He sinks sideways, curling into a loose ball on the couch with his hands tucked under his chin, the blue light glaring into his eyes and he closes them against it. The ever present hope is beginning to crumble; a laugh that sounds more like a sob squeaks out.
His promotion was ending his marriage. The very promotion that he had taken to improve it.
They had been thinking about having a child, that maybe they were ready for it, and they certainly wanted one. A girl, they had been dreaming of a girl. The promotion was supposed to provide monetary security. Leonard had thought that they would be able to work around the extra time that he would have to put in, that it wouldn’t be too much of a big deal.
They were happy. He had had everything and now he was losing it.
The misery coils up through his abdomen and he brings his knees up, allowing the tears and the shaking and the gasping to take form and his left hand to curl into the fabric of the couch.
It had gone too far and now he couldn’t fix it.
A month later, Jocelyn admitts to an affair with a high school friend of hers; Clay Treadway.
Two months after that Leonard finds divorce papers on his desk.