Trek fic: Inside The Box, Pike/McCoy, PG
Title: Inside The Box
Series: A Mighty Fine Man 6/6
Pairing: Pike/McCoy
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Word count: around 7800
Beta: the always helpful imachar
Summary: When Leonard finds out Admiral Pike is resigning from Starfleet, he has to decide what to do about it.
“Fucking hell, Bones, our guests are due in five minutes. Why are you still skulking here?”
Leonard looked up with irritation at Jim, who was lounging carelessly against the doorframe of the CMO’s office. “You don’t need me, you and Spock will do. Only some of the senior crew have to turn up.”
Jim frowned at him. “Three Admirals, Bones. And one of them is the Surgeon-General and another is the deputy director-general of the Federation Health Organization. It’s going to look pretty odd if the CMO can’t be bothered to come out and greet them.”
“I’m damned well busy,” snapped Leonard. “We can’t all piss around making light chit-chat with idiots who have more titles than sense. Some of us have work to do!”
“Dr McCoy, get your ass out of that chair and down to the transporter room. Now!”
Leonard snuck a quick look at Jim. Damn, he had his I-am-a-serious-captain face on and Leonard knew better than to mess with that one. With a heavy sigh, just to make it very clear how martyred he was by this, he heaved himself out of his chair and accompanied Jim into the corridor.
“I don’t fucking understand why we have to do this anyhow,” grumbled Leonard. “I can vaguely see why Boyce and Turnbull might be attending a pan-Federation health conference but what the fuck is Barnett doing with them? And why do they need to whistle up the Enterprise, like we’re some fucking taxi service?”
Jim grinned. “I suspect Victoria may have called in a favor or two.”
“And isn’t that just like that damned bitch, abusing her power--”
“Fucking hell, Bones,” interrupted Jim. “You can’t talk about her like that! I thought you liked her.” Jim stared hard at Leonard for a long moment, in that disconcertingly insightful way he sometimes had. “Is this about her and Chris? That’s finished, isn’t it? And honestly, it’s got fuck all to do with you. You and him have been over for ages now.”
Leonard stared resentfully down at the floor. He shared a lot of shit with Jim, but Chris wasn’t included. There was no one he talked to about Chris, that hurt was buried very deep and some things would never be over. He was saved from having to reply by their arrival in the transporter room. He took his place by Spock’s side and and continued to focus on the floor in minute detail. The sooner this started, the sooner it would be over.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the blue beams flickered and the three Admirals materialized. Damn, even after all this time, watching a transporter at work still made him queasy.
Turnbull was - of course - the first down from the platform. “Jimmy!” she exclaimed, “my very favorite captain in the entire fleet.” She offered him a cheerful salute and then kissed him on both cheeks, with what Leonard considered was quite unseemly enthusiasm.
She moved on to Spock, whom she greeted with a proper Vulcan salute. And then she turned to Leonard. “Dr McCoy, with a face as long as a wet weekend in Wales. We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”
She swung back to Jim. “Jimmy, I know we’re too late for a meal, we’ve been handsomely fed at the starbase anyway. But let’s all retreat to my cabin for a quick drink while we swop some of the current gossip.”
“Let’s rather use my cabin, Victoria,” said Boyce, “that might work out better.” An odd look passed between the two of them, before she shrugged casually.
Leonard tried to slip away as they followed the Admirals down the corridor but found his elbow firmly grabbed by Boyce. Even he, with his disdain for the higher-ups, was hardly going to ignore an unspoken order from the newly appointed Surgeon-General. It looked like something was up and he had little choice about staying around to find out what it was.
Once they were in Boyce’s guest cabin, Turnbull poured everyone drinks with reckless generosity. Leonard managed to get his hands on a tumbler of rather good Saurian brandy and tried to fade into the background.
“Of course we’ll have an official exchange of news in the morning,” said Turnbull, “but for now let’s fill you in on some of the more interesting gossip. This one’s being kept very quiet by the Admiralty, as they’re hoping it can be changed. But it’s certainly the hottest piece of news in Starfleet right now.” She paused dramatically.
Damned show-off, who had to be the centre of every event, thought Leonard cynically.
“Chris Pike’s resigned from Starfleet.”
“What?! That’s complete bullshit, that’s not fucking possible.” Leonard realized the outburst had come from himself and every eye was now focused on him. Still he couldn’t stop himself. “Starfleet’s everything to him, he’d never give up on his duty. What the fuck’s gone wrong?”
Turnbull was watching him intently, her teasing and posing having abruptly vanished. “That’s pretty much the key question, Leonard. What the fuck has gone wrong and how can we fix it?”
“Well, don’t all look at me,” protested Leonard. “I’m just the lowest ranked person in this entire room. And I haven’t seen him for years.” He hated the hurt that crept into his voice as he said that and he lashed out at Turnbull again to hide it. “If he’s that unhappy, you might want to do something to fix it.”
“I did,” she replied. “Once I realized what was really going on, I got myself seconded to the FHO as deputy director-general. And despite what some people may think,” her eyes flicked across to Barnett for a moment, “it was the right thing to do.”
“If I didn’t agree with you, Victoria, I wouldn’t be here,” said Barnett, sounding tired and annoyed.
“So your visit to the Enterprise actually has nothing to do with that conference on Tellar Prime,” said Jim.
“Well spotted, Captain,” replied Turnbull with a grin. “The bigwigs upstairs have guilted Chris into working out six months of notice, and they’re trying to keep the news buried, in the hope he’ll change his mind. He’s highly thought of for the way he sorted out that smuggling problem that we all pretend we don’t know about and they’re desperate not to lose his tactical acumen and experience.”
She abruptly turned back to Leonard. “So what we need is for you to do something about it, instead of sitting here sulking on the flagship and drowning your sorrows in brandy!”
“Hey--” started Leonard.
“Victoria,” protested Boyce.
“Enough!” Barnett’s booming voice shut down the rest of them. “This is the most excruciatingly embarrassingly thing I’ve ever had to do as an Admiral and I’m not staying around for the details. Dr McCoy, much to my surprise, you’ve not only managed to stay in Starfleet, but somehow you’ve turned yourself into one of our better officers. Chris was right about you, I was wrong. I believe I was wrong about you and him too. Just--” Barnett hesitated, as if he couldn’t believe he was about to say this. “Just sort it out. Somehow. Now Mr Spock, please accompany me and talk to me about something nice and neutral and scientific.”
Barnett was up and out of the room, with Spock on his heels, before Leonard had managed to stop gaping at him. Behind him, Turnbull started to giggle. “Oh god, I can’t believe we persuaded him into this. He’s not bad, really, for such an old stick-in-the-mud.”
“He means well,” agreed Boyce. “Now Victoria, please fuck off and let me talk to Leonard. I’m not at all sure that your bull in a china shop approach is the right one.”
“Hang on,” said Jim, “so this really is about Chris and Bones? Bones, I thought this was all over, I thought you two had an amicable break-up?”
Leonard stared miserably at the floor. He should have known that lying to Jim would come back to bite him eventually. “He dumped me, it was never what I wanted.”
“It wasn’t what he wanted either,” said Victoria. “He was loopy with drugs and trauma, and holding himself together with some warped vision of his duty. I thought he was over you too, but the minute I got in close I realized how wrong I was. So you need to--”
“No Victoria,” interrupted Boyce firmly. “Leonard doesn’t have to do anything. This mess is about much more than just him and there are some things none of us can solve. Now get lost and let me do the talking.”
“Oh alright, fair enough,” said Turnbull. “We may as well leave them to it. So Jimmy...” She eyed the Enterprise captain in a speculative way. “Care to escort me back to my cabin?”
Jim grinned back at her. “Always a pleasure, ma’am.”
“Hey,” protested Leonard. “Jim, you can’t---”
“Oh, I assure you he can,” said Turnbull with a wink as Jim followed her out of the door.
Angry and confused and utterly bewildered, Leonard turned back to Boyce.
“What the fuck’s really going on? Chris would never just resign.”
Boyce sighed heavily. “Honestly? I’ve no idea. He’s not talking to anyone anymore, me included.”
“Starfleet’s got only themselves to blame,” fumed Leonard, “letting him get back to work that fast, making him shovel the shit of that smuggling cock-up.”
“You’re not wrong,” replied Boyce reflectively, “but what’s odd is that he’s giving up just as it’s getting better. He blazed through the smuggling investigation, driven I suspect by all-consuming anger at what they’d done to Starfleet, and he handled it with consummate skill. He could ask for any assignment he wanted at this point. Who’s knows what’s come to be the final straw for him. Perhaps the thing with his father.”
“What happened to his father?” Leonard asked. “We all heard the news about the fire-fight that brought down the last holdouts of the Terra Prime terrorists, but Josh Pike’s name was rather conspicuously absent.” The news vids of the Terra Prime leader, Trisha Paxton, setting herself alight rather than surrender to the Federation forces, had gone viral across the sector. Leonard had hunted for news of Chris’s father, who had become something of a spokesman for the movement but had found nothing.
“Yes, well, that’s because our special ops spirited him away and he’s now living in comfortable but very high security quarters, he’s pretty much off his head at this point, the Terra Prime bastards did a great job of manipulating his growing paranoia. I doubt he’s ever going to recover.”
“Still, I don’t see what I’m expected to do about it,” said Leonard, aware that he sounded sulky but unable to hide the hurt. “It’s not as if Chris has come knocking on my door anytime in the last two years.”
Boyce filled up both their glasses and then leant back in his chair, silent for a moment as if working out where to start. “You know, Leonard, even before the whole Narada crisis, Chris wasn’t one to talk about his feelings much, but insofar as he did, he talked to me. He once told me that, exasperating though you could be, the only thing that really annoyed him about your relationship was that when you fought, he was always the one who had to start a reconciliation.”
“But--”
Boyce lifted a hand to silence Leonard’s instinctive protest. “A few months later, he told me he’d changed his mind about that. He’d come to think that you never initiated, not because it was some giant sulk on your part or some kind of power play, but because you always thought any major fight meant the end. He said you never thought you deserved a second chance. He was the one who understood that things said in the heat of moment, aren’t necessarily unforgivable.”
Boyce paused, watching Leonard as if willing him to come to some conclusion from this.
“Oh dammit, you mean---”
Boyce waited as Leonard hesitated.
“This time he thinks he’s the one who’s done something unforgivable, who doesn’t deserve a second chance.”
“Exactly,” said Boyce. “So if you want something to change here, for once you’re the one who’ll have to act.” After a moment’s pause, Boyce continued, his voice very gentle. “I’m not saying you have to. Unlike Victoria, I don’t think you should be ordered to fix this. You may not be able to, hell, you may not want to. Relationships have a season, sometimes their moment has passed and you can’t go back. But if you do want something different, this may be your last chance to do it.”
* * *
Leonard was pacing up and down in Jim’s cabin. He’d been awake most of the night, mulling over Boyce’s words and had finally let himself into Jim’s cabin around 05.00. Of course Jim wasn’t there, the bastard, so Leonard had continued to stew in his own thoughts.
He’d always considered himself the initiator, he was the one who hunted Chris down at the start, he was the one who took control in the bedroom, but looking back he realized how wrong he’d been. Sure, he did the chasing, initially just to piss off the attractive, if rather pompous, Captain Pike, and then once he realized Pike sometimes responded to his flirting, to see how far he could go with it. Even once they’d become friends and he’d been pushing hard, he’d still never really expected Chris to take him up on it. It was Chris who decided to stop putting him off, and set up their first proper sexual encounter. It was Chris who made it an on-going relationship rather than the string of one-off encounters Leonard was expecting, and it was Chris who took it public.
He’d let Chris run their relationship - and he’d let Chris end it. After the debacle of his flight solo sim test, he’d promised himself he would never do anything to harm his lover’s career. But all that meant was that when he really needed to, he hadn’t fought back. He’d let Chris steamroller him with all that bullshit about duty, he’d wilted in the face of Chris’s pain and trauma, and in the name of his own pride, he’d walked away and stayed away.
Looking back now he could see how frightened he’d been by the events of the Battle of Vulcan and the defeat of the Narada, how worried he’d been by his own promotion and by Jim’s and by the horror that he was the one charged with trying to stop Jim’s promotion from destroying him. He’d hardly been in a place to fight through Chris’s tritanium wall of self-control. But if he’d been able to stay on Earth, they’d have found their way back to each other, he had to believe that. The love between them had been too strong not to - even if they’d never said the word.
But he hadn’t been able to stay, and he hadn’t tried to fight from a distance either. He’d just sat in the CMO’s office and stewed in his own misery, and never more so than when he’d heard the gossip about Chris and Victoria. He couldn’t believe he’d never actually told Chris that he loved him. He hated himself for that.
He was jerked out of the morass of his own thoughts by the cabin door sliding open. Jim strolled in, still in his uniform pants and shirt from the previous night, with his jacket slung over his arm.
“There you are, finally!” snapped Leonard. “Been enjoying yourself, have you, good to know you’re looking after our guests so nice and personal.”
“Bones, stop it,” said Jim flatly as he hung up his jacket. “I guess you’re wound up about all this, but don’t take it out on me. Or on Victoria. She means the world to me and I’ll not have you shitting on her.”
“Victoria? What’s she ever done for you, beside the same as a hundred other pretty girls filling up your bed for a few hours?” demanded Leonard incredulously.
“Fuck you, you know nothing about it. She kept me together through some of the very worst of the post-Narada shit and she’s here now to try and bang some sense into you and Chris. Give it up with your frothing jealousy act, it’s getting old.”
Leonard pushed aside his own churning stomach-ache of nerves to actually look closely at Jim and saw that his friend was deadly serious.
“What did she do for you after the Narada?” he asked curiously.
Jim extracted a cup of coffee from the food synthesizer and leaned back against the small food counter. “Believe it or not, it wasn’t much fun for me, once we all got back to Earth and our promotions got pushed through. I had Chris advising me on the preparation and outfitting of the Enterprise, knowing every moment how much of a sacrifice it had to be for him. And he wasn’t exactly in a great mood, I assumed that was all about his injuries and the crap with the smuggling ring, but now I’m guessing some of that was also about a messy breakup neither of you two were admitting to.
“And you were stressed as hell and pretty unhappy. Spock had fucked off, so I was having to do it all without a First Officer, while trying to earn the respect of my crew and all the support staff involved with the Enterprise. The Admirals weren’t exactly helping, they might have promoted me but plenty of them were only too happy to tell me privately that it was a last ditch measure and they expected me to fail. And then the rest of the fleet came back from the Laurentian system. Let me tell you, I didn’t exactly get a warm welcome from any of the captains the first time I walked into the officers’ club. None of those bastards had actually had to face Nero. To a man, they were convinced they could have done the same and saved Vulcan while they were at it, and who was I to have been handed the flagship straight out of the Academy?
“And then there was the media, crawling over my entire life history for interesting stories, interviewing every single person who’d ever had or even just thought of having sex with me. And everywhere there were damned disaster groupies, only too keen to show their gratitude with a bit of fucking and doubtless sell the story and the vid afterwards. Every single fucking night I woke up at four in the morning and lay there alone, staring at the ceiling, wondering if there was any way I could run away from it all.”
Leonard felt a creeping sense of shame as he listened to Jim’s matter-of-fact recital. He had indeed been so swamped in the misery of losing Chris, combined with the fear of being booted straight back into deep space as the CMO of the Enterprise, that he’d not put much effort into seeing past Jim’s facade of casually cocky competence. Frankly, he’d desperately needed Jim to be confident, to make up for his own worries.
“So how did Victoria fit in?” he asked.
“After a couple of weeks of this, she pulled me to one side, told me that I was young and fit and had just been handed Starfleet’s biggest and shiniest toy and I should get my head out of my ass and start enjoying myself. And then she took me back to her place, fucked me six ways from Sunday and in-between let me into a whole lot of dirty secrets about how power really works in the Starfleet hierarchy. She kept me thoroughly distracted until our launch, while never breathing a word about it to anyone, and then kept sending me stuff once we’d gone. I’d never have kept control of the Enterprise through that first year without her feeding me a lot of strategic information.”
“I thought Chris was doing that for you,” said Leonard, disconcerted to learn that he’d missed so much of the political backdrop to Jim’s command.
“Yeah, he was, he still does. But he’s basically an honorable man, he’ll take risks but he holds himself to certain codes. Victoria’s an utter pragmatist, only too happy to wheel and deal behind the scenes to get the results she wants.”
“So does that mean that you and she are a... you know...” Leonard stumbled into silence. He’d seen too many of Kirk’s casual flirtations and short-term conquests to believe the man could manage monogamy.
“It doesn’t work like that for us, Bones. I’m never going to be a one-woman guy, you know that. There are just too many lovely ladies out there for me to chose. I’d go to the ends of the universe for Victoria and I believe she’d do the same for me. We’ll always be friends and allies, when our paths cross we fuck too. But no one guy is ever going to tie that woman down. Now you, my friend, are completely different. You may not have talked much about him but I could see the way your face lit up when he came into a room.”
Jim threw his cup into the recycler and walked across to stand in front of Leonard. “You are made to be in love with one lucky man for all your life, so the question is: what are we going to do about it?”
Leonard ducked his head to stare down miserably at the floor. All through the night he’d tried to find a compromise between his commitment to the Enterprise and his loyalty to Jim, and his love for Chris and his yearning to be part of a couple. An unbridgeable abyss seemed to gape between the two. “I don’t know what to do,” he finally admitted unhappily.
“Okay, let’s think it through, short-term and long-term,” said Jim. “Short-term if Chris got his shit together and pulled in a few favors the way Victoria does, he could’ve seen quite a lot of you in the last two years. Between shore leaves, diplomatic missions and ship inspections, you’d have done okay. And the word is that Starfleet are desperate to keep him and are prepared to be pretty accommodating to make that happen.
“And long-term, Bones, awesome though my crew are and much as I wish I could keep you all forever, I know that’s not how it works. Spock may not want a command but Uhura does and she’ll be a kick-ass captain. Where she goes, he’ll go. Same with you. I won’t like having a new CMO but I’ll live. I’m a big boy, Bones, I can cope with not having my best friends by my side every single day. Especially if it makes two people as important to me as you and Chris are, really happy.”
Leonard thought back to stepping on that shuttle out of the Riverside shipyards all those years ago, convinced he’d reached the lowest point of his entire life. He’d thought that he’d find neither friends nor challenge in Starfleet, that his service would be no more than indefinite voluntary penance for all his failures up until then. He could not have been more wrong. He felt his eyes welling up as he reached out to pull his best friend into a tight hug.
“Go and hunt down your man, Bones,” said Jim, rubbing a hand gently up and down his back, “there’ll always be a place for you on the Enterprise.”
* * *
“Hi,” said Leonard, standing awkwardly just inside the door of Admiral Pike’s plush office.
“Leonard! Why are you here? Has something gone wrong on the Enterprise?”
“No, I have some leave, thought I’d swing by and see how you are,” replied Leonard, aware he sounded much too tense for the casual attitude he was trying to convey. He was trying to suppress his shock at how much older Chris looked. His hair was still thick but it had gone slate-grey and was in the severest of military cuts, every last one of the wayward curls Leonard had loved so much shorn off. There were more lines than before, but the worst was the settled grimness, as if every spark of Chris’s hidden lust for life had been extinguished. He looked disconcertingly like the media photos that Leonard had seen of Chris’s father, Josh Pike.
Chris looked at him cooly. “Let me guess, this is a last ditch attempt by the powers that be to persuade me not to resign?”
Leonard swallowed hard. It had all seemed perfectly reasonable on the Enterprise, with the Admirals all talking into one of his ears and Jim into the other. Of course all he had to do was shake a little sense into Chris and then it would all be okay, romantic reunion and riding off into the sunset and all that shit. Before he knew it Jim had got him leave and Boyce had decided to run his sickbay for a week in the name of getting in touch with frontline medical issues and Victoria had magicked up a ride on an ambassadorial shuttle back to Earth.
And now here he was and he had a horrible feeling that actually none of it made any sense. If Chris was unhappy enough to want to resign, the offer of a long-distance thing with a lover he’d dumped two years back didn’t sound like much of an incentive to change his mind. And what if he wasn’t unhappy? What if they’d all misunderstood and Chris was off to some great new job and exciting new relationship?
He’d already spent an anxious half an hour walking in circles on the lawn in front of Chris’s building, trying to come up with the perfect line of argument, calm, casual, persuasive without being overbearing but faced with this grey shell of the man he’d been in love with, he forgot everything that he’d so carefully prepared.
“Yeah, kinda, so about that, what the fuck are you thinking?” Leonard abandoned any pretense at keeping this low-key. In-your-face was his style, so he might as well stick to his strengths, such as they were. “You love Starfleet, you live for it. Where the hell are you gonna go?”
“I have offers from the private sector,” replied Pike, looking past him out of the window.
“Yeah? Of course you do, but I bet you’re not going to take them, you wouldn’t sell out to the money grabbers. What are you really going to do? Go and wallow in misery on your family’s Mojave ranch? Chris, after all you’ve survived, what the fuck makes you give up now?”
Chris smiled without humor. “You always were one for the direct question, tact’s a bit of a lost art with you.”
“Fuck tact, the rest of your friends may be too careful with you to call a spade a spade, I’m sure as hell not. All that fucking crap from you at our last go-round about duty to Starfleet, and loyalty to the Federation, doing what needed to be done, what’s happened to all of that?”
“I’m doing what needs to be done,” replied Chris, the sort of grim finality in his tone that would have shut down the conversation with almost any one else. But Leonard had come too far and survived too much to let Chris shut him out now.
“You think resigning is what needs to be done?” Leonard was trying to think through everything he knew about this man and how he looked at the world. “You’re still loyal-- you just wouldn’t be you if you weren’t--” He was missing something, he could feel it floating just out of his grasp. What had Boyce said about the final straw? Perhaps the thing with his father.
“Have you seen your father recently?”
Chris looked at him in surprise, and then answered warily, “Yes, I’ve visited him in his new-- accommodations.”
“Are you trying to protect Starfleet from yourself?” Leonard demanded abruptly.
Suddenly he had the full glare of Chris’s attention focused on him. Got you, he thought, I know you too fucking well for you to hide. “You think you’re going to turn into him, don’t you?”
“It runs in the genes, that kind of mental instability,” replied Chris grimly.
“Oh crap, you’re not the same man he is.”
“Aren’t I? I’ve got the same genetic makeup, I was brought up to see the world from his point of view, and I’ve had very similar experiences out in the black. The likelihood is pretty high.”
“Do you trust me?” Leonard asked.
“What? Yes, of course I do.” Chris answered without pausing for thought.
“Do you trust yourself?”
Chris ran a frustrated hand through his horribly short hair. “Not entirely, not given the--”
“And there you have it!” proclaimed Leonard triumphantly. “The reason why you’re not being careful about this, you’re just being an ass. Your old man trusted no one else. Everyone was out to betray him, the only thing he believed in was himself as the unsung prophet of his own lunatic world. You’re exactly the opposite, you trust me, you trust Starfleet, you’re afraid of yourself. It’s not the same thing at all. You could try for the rest of your misbegotten life to be like your old man and you won’t manage it.”
For all that it seemed such a simple statement to Leonard, Chris looked stunned. “You really think I’m not...” He trailed off.
“Oh fuck yeah. You’re nothing like him. Just look at the people fighting on your side. Starfleet’s desperate to keep you. An entire pom-pom squad of Admirals descended on the Enterprise to get me over here. Your ex-boyfriend, who you dumped like a piece of shit on your shoe, you asshole, still came halfway across the sector to shake some sense into you. To be blunt, I diagnose situational depression, made worse by over-work and isolation, plus being a fucking idiot. The first three are curable but I’m pretty sure the last one is chronic.”
“Right, and that’s your professional medical diagnosis, is it?” And there it was! Hidden deep under the sarcastic drawl of Chris’s reply was that flash of humor, that look where Chris was trying to be exasperated with Leonard but was in fact secretly amused.
Leonard could remember all too well the first time he’d seen it. Chris had been the one to to remember and celebrate formal anniversaries, but Leonard had always had a detailed list of their personal firsts in his head. On their first encounter, when he’d been berating Captain Pike over the injuries resulting from the combat classes he oversaw, Leonard had simply enjoyed the chance to piss off one of the officers.
But the next time, when he’d realized that Captain Pike was not going to report him for insubordination and had in fact made changes to the combat classes based on his untactful recommendations, he’d been trying to apologize and doing it very badly. And there it had been, Chris attempting to keep a poker face but those beautiful blue eyes had begun to crinkle at the corners and Leonard had suddenly had an overpowering urge to peel open the pompous shell of the oh-so-proper but nevertheless rather attractive Captain Pike and find a way in to those sparkling eyes and the smile that was threatening to break through like a ray of sunshine through storm clouds.
And the first time that he had-- God, it still took his breath away to remember Chris spread out below him, trusting Leonard to take him to a place he’d never dared to go before, and bitching all the while that he wasn’t fragile and Leonard should put his back into it. It was one of the treasured memories of Leonard’s life, a memory he kept packed away tight for the last two years. And damn, he was so tired of trying to get over it and move on and all that crap when all he really wanted was a do-over, a chance to fight for them in a way he’d been too hurt to do last time.
“Chris, isolating yourself makes no fucking sense. It’s not what your friends want and it’s not what you need. If you’re afraid you’re going to turn into your old man, trust the rest of us to stop that, don’t run away from us. You and me, we were better together. I wouldn’t have got through the Academy without you, and you, you were fucking better with me, you were less of a pompous ass, you were more fun, more compassionate, more fucking human with me. And that’s what you need now, not to lock yourself down in some tritanium box of self-control.
“I hate the fact that you dumped me, and that I let you. It was never what I wanted and I don’t fucking believe that it did you any favors either. Yeah, I know there was all the shit about the smuggling ring and the Enterprise and Jim, and all our options were bad ones but still, we should’ve fought through it together, not gone our separate ways.
“You’re the best damn thing that ever happened to me, and yeah, maybe I’m not as good as one of your beloved ships, maybe I’m not as important to you as Starfleet is, but still, I was good for you....”
Leonard came to a stuttering stop. All traces of humor had vanished from Chris’s face and he was locked down once more behind an impenetrable facade of grey grimness. Dammit, he’d been wrong about all of this. They’d all been wrong. Chris might have cared once but he’d clearly got over it. Leonard had just made a colossal fool of himself, laying out his heart in an utterly pathetic manner. Chris was probably trying to find just the right trite phrase to let him down and then get rid of him altogether. Goddamn, he couldn’t believe he’d put himself through this sort of hurt twice.
“Right. Sorry. My mistake. Overestimating my own importance here. I guess it didn’t mean that much to you after all. I’ll just get out of--”
“I want to show you something,” said Chris abruptly.
Leonard paused as Chris began to rummage through the drawers of his desk. “It’s here somewhere, I know it is,” muttered Chris as he looked increasingly frantically, haphazardly pulling out files and boxes and scattering them on the floor. Eventually he took out a small box and handed it to Leonard, without looking at him.
Leonard examined it curiously. It was a small box, covered in what must once have been plush blue faux-velvet, but the velvet had been crushed and torn where heavier things had been pushed up against it, and it was covered in crumbs and lint.
“Open it,” said Chris, his voice sounding oddly hoarse.
Leonard did, and found himself staring down at the two plain gold rings that sat nestled in white silk. He knew what they looked like and yet, it made no sense at all. He glanced across at Chris but the other man said nothing, just sat staring down at his hands, with his fingers tensely intertwined. Finally Leonard picked up one of the rings and turned it in his hand. There were words engraved on the inside and he peered curiously at them.
Leonard H. McCoy * Christopher R. Pike
“When was this?” he asked, when he could finally trust his voice not to waver.
“I was going to ask you immediately after you graduated,” replied Chris, so softly that Leonard had to strain to hear him. “That’s how much you meant to me.”
Leonard stared down at the rings and felt the world tilt around him. Suddenly it was perfectly clear to him what he needed to do. “You, Christopher Pike, are dumb as a box of rocks,” he declared. “Get up.” He started to haul Chris up out of his chair. “I’m gonna look you in the fucking eye while I explain this to you.”
Once he had a surprised Pike up on his feet and leaning back against the edge of his desk, Leonard stepped in close enough to be able to poke Chris in the chest with his finger.
“Before, I took charge in bed and let you take charge the rest of time, because I thought you knew what you were fucking doing. You were older than me, senior to me, you were supposed to be the not-fucked-up one. Well, that’s over. Clearly you hadn’t the faintest fucking idea what you were doing. So I’m standing you down. I’m in charge and you just get to do what you’re told. You see these.”
He held up the blue box with the two gold rings.
“I’m keeping these. We’re not going there yet. We’ve got to get to know each other again, and sort out our careers. But we will go there, I promise you. It’s not if, it’s when.”
Chris stared at him in shock for a minute before beginning to protest. “Leonard, be practical. We’ve been apart now for longer than we were ever together. And whatever I had to promise to you then, I’m only a shadow of it now. I’m as shabby as that box is. I may be back on my feet but they can still be shaky. And as you’ve just seen, I’m pretty clearly fucked in the head--”
“That’s bullshit!” interrupted McCoy. “Not that I don’t believe you, but that you think it’ll put me off. I let you talk me out of this last time. There is no way on God’s green earth that that’s happening again. You took up with me when I was about to be booted out of Starfleet for insubordination or for failing my flight sims, when I was still battling with alcohol and racked with guilt and grief over my Daddy and my marriage. You can’t seriously think I’m gonna be put off by some weird ideas and a few mood swings. It’s not about the box, you idiot, it’s about what’s inside it. Besides, if you’re doing less running these days, I’m not objecting, I always thought it was a damn fool pastime. We can stay in bed and fuck instead.”
Chris’s blank mask of control began to crack, the corners of his mouth rising as if against his will, and then his shoulders started to shake with laughter. “Damn, I missed your filthy mouth.” For a moment he just stood and stared at Leonard with a dazed smile, but then his eyes shadowed over once more. “Leonard, be reasonable, you’re still on duty on the Enterprise.”
“Darlin’, the one thing I’ve never been, and never intend to be, is reasonable. Now my captain will make allowances and your Admirals will do the same. D’you know Victoria, Phil and Richard Barnett all turned up on the Enterprise to stage an intervention? You have some mighty good friends, Chris.”
Chris smiled back at him. “We have some very good friends, Leonard, it’s not just about me.”
“But while we’re on the subject, I’ve got a few things to say to you yet. Remember all that crap you talked to me about how I’d find someone else out in the black? There hasn’t been a single other person since you, two year dry spell, longest of my adult life and you owe me. You owe me a lot of shit hot sex. No, no no,” he held up a warning finger as Pike began to protest. “I haven’t finished yet, not by a long shot. I’m not impressed that you dated Victoria, not damned impressed at all. It’s gonna take you years to earn forgiveness for that one.”
Pike looked sheepish. “She wasn’t the only one. Once I was off enough of the drugs for the equipment to start working again, I fucked around quite a lot.”
“Oh I don’t give a shit about that,” retorted Leonard. “That’s perfectly understandable. I cared about her because I could see the two of you actually making a pretty good couple. I could see you falling in love with her.”
“I did actually try to,” admitted Chris. “I was sick of being alone and so sick of mourning what I’d lost. I think Victoria thought she could have a fun rebound affair with me and then be on her way. But I’d made a whole fucking to-do list about how I was going to move on with my life, and that included a new relationship. She was closest thing to you I could find and I tried to force myself into being in love with her. The minute she realized what was going on, she was up and off to the FHO, and poor Phil found himself suddenly promoted to Surgeon-General. He still hasn’t forgiven me for that!”
“He’ll live,” said Leonard dismissively. “Being an Admiral looks good on him. Now, getting back to brass tacks, you and me, we do long-distance until my tour ends. You can fuck around here if you need to, but--”
“I don’t need to, I don’t want to. I’ve only ever wanted you. Oh hell, Leonard, I’ve missed you so badly.” Finally Chris’s hands were off his desk and on Leonard’s arms instead, running up and over his collar to cup the sensitive skin of his neck. Leonard reveled in the warm touch as skillful fingers pushed up into his hair and then slid round to explore the contours of his face. “I’ve thought about you so often,” whispered Chris. “I’m so sorry, for all of it.”
“Fuck that. No apologies, no recriminations. I’ve fucked up spectacularly in my time and you never held it against me. We did what we had to do and we’ve survived.” Leonard reached up and caught Chris’s hands in his own, turning them to drop kisses all the way along his knuckles. “My biggest regret was that I’d never actually said it. Just too damn scared that it would somehow jinx everything. But fuck that. I love you, Christopher Pike. Truly, madly, deeply and for the rest of my misbegotten life.”
Chris stared at him for a moment and then abruptly pulled Leonard close, hugging him tightly while he buried his face against Leonard’s neck. Leonard felt the shudders that were running through Chris’s body and said nothing, simply holding Chris close and carding his fingers gently through through thick grey hair, reveling in the warmth and the strength of the lean body pressed against his own.
When Chris finally stilled against him and his hands eased from their convulsive clinging, Leonard pulled back. Without comment, he gently wiped away the moisture below Chris’s eyes and then leaned in once more to catch Chris’s mouth with his own. It felt at the same time strangely exotic and yet achingly familiar and he was left trembling by the intensity of it, as if he’d only now really let himself feel how terribly lonely he’d been for the last two long years.
He lost himself in the slide of hot wet tongues and the rasp of stubbled cheeks, pulling Chris’s shirt out from his waistband and sliding his hands up the other man’s back. His doctor’s fingers could immediately recognize the faint scar lines from the operations and he caressed them gently, as badges of honor of all they’d survived. Chris had just started undoing the buttons of his shirt when the door to the office abruptly slammed open.
“What’s this bullshit about not being available, Pike? I’ll have you-- Oh!”
The two men swung round to find Admiral Komack glaring at them both. Chris immediately tried to pull away but Leonard instinctively clung on to him. Fuck that, now was the time to find out whether they would genuinely be supported by the Admiralty.
“You!” Komack pointed a pudgy finger at Leonard. “Aren’t you the Enterprise CMO?”
“Yes sir, Dr McCoy sir.”
Komack glared at him for a minute longer, as if doing some rapid mental arithmetic. Then he swung round to Chris. “Does this thing--” he waved petulantly at the two of them, “mean that you’ve given up on that ridiculous resignation idea?”
“Uh--” started Chris.
“Yes,” hissed Leonard, “it does, tell him it does.”
“Yes sir, it does.”
“Oh! Okay then.” Komack suddenly looked a whole lot more cheerful. “I’ll find someone else to dump this on.”
“I can do it, sir,” started Chris, clearly anxious to helpful.
“Hell no, it’s a crap job, I was only giving it to you because I was so annoyed with you.” Komack turned on his heel and then stopped again briefly in the doorway, looking back at them with a ghost of a smile. “As you were, men. Carry on.” And he was gone.
Leonard leaned his forehead against Chris’s and began to chuckle. “I think that may be the voice of approval from on-high.”
“Looks like it,” replied Chris, sounding somewhat stunned.
Leonard pulled back so he could look at Chris, cupping the other man’s face in his hands. “It’s going to get better, Chris, it really is. And even if it doesn’t, for better and for worse, we’re in it together. Now all you need to do is say: yes, Leonard.”
He watched Chris’s face carefully, noting all the ways in which the man seemed many more than just two years older than when they’d parted. His looked tired in ways that went right through to the marrow, but damn, he was handsome. Age suited him, just as authority always had.
Chris’s eyes were as blue as they’d ever been and Leonard watched as they lit up, powered by a generous smile from that beautiful, mobile mouth that he’d missed so much. Chris ducked his head and then looked at Leonard through his lashes, a delightful mockery of submissive obedience. “Yes, Leonard.”
Through his laughter, Leonard grabbed Chris’s mouth in a passionate kiss. Come what may, together they would make it better.
THE END -
Series: A Mighty Fine Man 6/6
Pairing: Pike/McCoy
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Word count: around 7800
Beta: the always helpful imachar
Summary: When Leonard finds out Admiral Pike is resigning from Starfleet, he has to decide what to do about it.
“Fucking hell, Bones, our guests are due in five minutes. Why are you still skulking here?”
Leonard looked up with irritation at Jim, who was lounging carelessly against the doorframe of the CMO’s office. “You don’t need me, you and Spock will do. Only some of the senior crew have to turn up.”
Jim frowned at him. “Three Admirals, Bones. And one of them is the Surgeon-General and another is the deputy director-general of the Federation Health Organization. It’s going to look pretty odd if the CMO can’t be bothered to come out and greet them.”
“I’m damned well busy,” snapped Leonard. “We can’t all piss around making light chit-chat with idiots who have more titles than sense. Some of us have work to do!”
“Dr McCoy, get your ass out of that chair and down to the transporter room. Now!”
Leonard snuck a quick look at Jim. Damn, he had his I-am-a-serious-captain face on and Leonard knew better than to mess with that one. With a heavy sigh, just to make it very clear how martyred he was by this, he heaved himself out of his chair and accompanied Jim into the corridor.
“I don’t fucking understand why we have to do this anyhow,” grumbled Leonard. “I can vaguely see why Boyce and Turnbull might be attending a pan-Federation health conference but what the fuck is Barnett doing with them? And why do they need to whistle up the Enterprise, like we’re some fucking taxi service?”
Jim grinned. “I suspect Victoria may have called in a favor or two.”
“And isn’t that just like that damned bitch, abusing her power--”
“Fucking hell, Bones,” interrupted Jim. “You can’t talk about her like that! I thought you liked her.” Jim stared hard at Leonard for a long moment, in that disconcertingly insightful way he sometimes had. “Is this about her and Chris? That’s finished, isn’t it? And honestly, it’s got fuck all to do with you. You and him have been over for ages now.”
Leonard stared resentfully down at the floor. He shared a lot of shit with Jim, but Chris wasn’t included. There was no one he talked to about Chris, that hurt was buried very deep and some things would never be over. He was saved from having to reply by their arrival in the transporter room. He took his place by Spock’s side and and continued to focus on the floor in minute detail. The sooner this started, the sooner it would be over.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the blue beams flickered and the three Admirals materialized. Damn, even after all this time, watching a transporter at work still made him queasy.
Turnbull was - of course - the first down from the platform. “Jimmy!” she exclaimed, “my very favorite captain in the entire fleet.” She offered him a cheerful salute and then kissed him on both cheeks, with what Leonard considered was quite unseemly enthusiasm.
She moved on to Spock, whom she greeted with a proper Vulcan salute. And then she turned to Leonard. “Dr McCoy, with a face as long as a wet weekend in Wales. We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”
She swung back to Jim. “Jimmy, I know we’re too late for a meal, we’ve been handsomely fed at the starbase anyway. But let’s all retreat to my cabin for a quick drink while we swop some of the current gossip.”
“Let’s rather use my cabin, Victoria,” said Boyce, “that might work out better.” An odd look passed between the two of them, before she shrugged casually.
Leonard tried to slip away as they followed the Admirals down the corridor but found his elbow firmly grabbed by Boyce. Even he, with his disdain for the higher-ups, was hardly going to ignore an unspoken order from the newly appointed Surgeon-General. It looked like something was up and he had little choice about staying around to find out what it was.
Once they were in Boyce’s guest cabin, Turnbull poured everyone drinks with reckless generosity. Leonard managed to get his hands on a tumbler of rather good Saurian brandy and tried to fade into the background.
“Of course we’ll have an official exchange of news in the morning,” said Turnbull, “but for now let’s fill you in on some of the more interesting gossip. This one’s being kept very quiet by the Admiralty, as they’re hoping it can be changed. But it’s certainly the hottest piece of news in Starfleet right now.” She paused dramatically.
Damned show-off, who had to be the centre of every event, thought Leonard cynically.
“Chris Pike’s resigned from Starfleet.”
“What?! That’s complete bullshit, that’s not fucking possible.” Leonard realized the outburst had come from himself and every eye was now focused on him. Still he couldn’t stop himself. “Starfleet’s everything to him, he’d never give up on his duty. What the fuck’s gone wrong?”
Turnbull was watching him intently, her teasing and posing having abruptly vanished. “That’s pretty much the key question, Leonard. What the fuck has gone wrong and how can we fix it?”
“Well, don’t all look at me,” protested Leonard. “I’m just the lowest ranked person in this entire room. And I haven’t seen him for years.” He hated the hurt that crept into his voice as he said that and he lashed out at Turnbull again to hide it. “If he’s that unhappy, you might want to do something to fix it.”
“I did,” she replied. “Once I realized what was really going on, I got myself seconded to the FHO as deputy director-general. And despite what some people may think,” her eyes flicked across to Barnett for a moment, “it was the right thing to do.”
“If I didn’t agree with you, Victoria, I wouldn’t be here,” said Barnett, sounding tired and annoyed.
“So your visit to the Enterprise actually has nothing to do with that conference on Tellar Prime,” said Jim.
“Well spotted, Captain,” replied Turnbull with a grin. “The bigwigs upstairs have guilted Chris into working out six months of notice, and they’re trying to keep the news buried, in the hope he’ll change his mind. He’s highly thought of for the way he sorted out that smuggling problem that we all pretend we don’t know about and they’re desperate not to lose his tactical acumen and experience.”
She abruptly turned back to Leonard. “So what we need is for you to do something about it, instead of sitting here sulking on the flagship and drowning your sorrows in brandy!”
“Hey--” started Leonard.
“Victoria,” protested Boyce.
“Enough!” Barnett’s booming voice shut down the rest of them. “This is the most excruciatingly embarrassingly thing I’ve ever had to do as an Admiral and I’m not staying around for the details. Dr McCoy, much to my surprise, you’ve not only managed to stay in Starfleet, but somehow you’ve turned yourself into one of our better officers. Chris was right about you, I was wrong. I believe I was wrong about you and him too. Just--” Barnett hesitated, as if he couldn’t believe he was about to say this. “Just sort it out. Somehow. Now Mr Spock, please accompany me and talk to me about something nice and neutral and scientific.”
Barnett was up and out of the room, with Spock on his heels, before Leonard had managed to stop gaping at him. Behind him, Turnbull started to giggle. “Oh god, I can’t believe we persuaded him into this. He’s not bad, really, for such an old stick-in-the-mud.”
“He means well,” agreed Boyce. “Now Victoria, please fuck off and let me talk to Leonard. I’m not at all sure that your bull in a china shop approach is the right one.”
“Hang on,” said Jim, “so this really is about Chris and Bones? Bones, I thought this was all over, I thought you two had an amicable break-up?”
Leonard stared miserably at the floor. He should have known that lying to Jim would come back to bite him eventually. “He dumped me, it was never what I wanted.”
“It wasn’t what he wanted either,” said Victoria. “He was loopy with drugs and trauma, and holding himself together with some warped vision of his duty. I thought he was over you too, but the minute I got in close I realized how wrong I was. So you need to--”
“No Victoria,” interrupted Boyce firmly. “Leonard doesn’t have to do anything. This mess is about much more than just him and there are some things none of us can solve. Now get lost and let me do the talking.”
“Oh alright, fair enough,” said Turnbull. “We may as well leave them to it. So Jimmy...” She eyed the Enterprise captain in a speculative way. “Care to escort me back to my cabin?”
Jim grinned back at her. “Always a pleasure, ma’am.”
“Hey,” protested Leonard. “Jim, you can’t---”
“Oh, I assure you he can,” said Turnbull with a wink as Jim followed her out of the door.
Angry and confused and utterly bewildered, Leonard turned back to Boyce.
“What the fuck’s really going on? Chris would never just resign.”
Boyce sighed heavily. “Honestly? I’ve no idea. He’s not talking to anyone anymore, me included.”
“Starfleet’s got only themselves to blame,” fumed Leonard, “letting him get back to work that fast, making him shovel the shit of that smuggling cock-up.”
“You’re not wrong,” replied Boyce reflectively, “but what’s odd is that he’s giving up just as it’s getting better. He blazed through the smuggling investigation, driven I suspect by all-consuming anger at what they’d done to Starfleet, and he handled it with consummate skill. He could ask for any assignment he wanted at this point. Who’s knows what’s come to be the final straw for him. Perhaps the thing with his father.”
“What happened to his father?” Leonard asked. “We all heard the news about the fire-fight that brought down the last holdouts of the Terra Prime terrorists, but Josh Pike’s name was rather conspicuously absent.” The news vids of the Terra Prime leader, Trisha Paxton, setting herself alight rather than surrender to the Federation forces, had gone viral across the sector. Leonard had hunted for news of Chris’s father, who had become something of a spokesman for the movement but had found nothing.
“Yes, well, that’s because our special ops spirited him away and he’s now living in comfortable but very high security quarters, he’s pretty much off his head at this point, the Terra Prime bastards did a great job of manipulating his growing paranoia. I doubt he’s ever going to recover.”
“Still, I don’t see what I’m expected to do about it,” said Leonard, aware that he sounded sulky but unable to hide the hurt. “It’s not as if Chris has come knocking on my door anytime in the last two years.”
Boyce filled up both their glasses and then leant back in his chair, silent for a moment as if working out where to start. “You know, Leonard, even before the whole Narada crisis, Chris wasn’t one to talk about his feelings much, but insofar as he did, he talked to me. He once told me that, exasperating though you could be, the only thing that really annoyed him about your relationship was that when you fought, he was always the one who had to start a reconciliation.”
“But--”
Boyce lifted a hand to silence Leonard’s instinctive protest. “A few months later, he told me he’d changed his mind about that. He’d come to think that you never initiated, not because it was some giant sulk on your part or some kind of power play, but because you always thought any major fight meant the end. He said you never thought you deserved a second chance. He was the one who understood that things said in the heat of moment, aren’t necessarily unforgivable.”
Boyce paused, watching Leonard as if willing him to come to some conclusion from this.
“Oh dammit, you mean---”
Boyce waited as Leonard hesitated.
“This time he thinks he’s the one who’s done something unforgivable, who doesn’t deserve a second chance.”
“Exactly,” said Boyce. “So if you want something to change here, for once you’re the one who’ll have to act.” After a moment’s pause, Boyce continued, his voice very gentle. “I’m not saying you have to. Unlike Victoria, I don’t think you should be ordered to fix this. You may not be able to, hell, you may not want to. Relationships have a season, sometimes their moment has passed and you can’t go back. But if you do want something different, this may be your last chance to do it.”
* * *
Leonard was pacing up and down in Jim’s cabin. He’d been awake most of the night, mulling over Boyce’s words and had finally let himself into Jim’s cabin around 05.00. Of course Jim wasn’t there, the bastard, so Leonard had continued to stew in his own thoughts.
He’d always considered himself the initiator, he was the one who hunted Chris down at the start, he was the one who took control in the bedroom, but looking back he realized how wrong he’d been. Sure, he did the chasing, initially just to piss off the attractive, if rather pompous, Captain Pike, and then once he realized Pike sometimes responded to his flirting, to see how far he could go with it. Even once they’d become friends and he’d been pushing hard, he’d still never really expected Chris to take him up on it. It was Chris who decided to stop putting him off, and set up their first proper sexual encounter. It was Chris who made it an on-going relationship rather than the string of one-off encounters Leonard was expecting, and it was Chris who took it public.
He’d let Chris run their relationship - and he’d let Chris end it. After the debacle of his flight solo sim test, he’d promised himself he would never do anything to harm his lover’s career. But all that meant was that when he really needed to, he hadn’t fought back. He’d let Chris steamroller him with all that bullshit about duty, he’d wilted in the face of Chris’s pain and trauma, and in the name of his own pride, he’d walked away and stayed away.
Looking back now he could see how frightened he’d been by the events of the Battle of Vulcan and the defeat of the Narada, how worried he’d been by his own promotion and by Jim’s and by the horror that he was the one charged with trying to stop Jim’s promotion from destroying him. He’d hardly been in a place to fight through Chris’s tritanium wall of self-control. But if he’d been able to stay on Earth, they’d have found their way back to each other, he had to believe that. The love between them had been too strong not to - even if they’d never said the word.
But he hadn’t been able to stay, and he hadn’t tried to fight from a distance either. He’d just sat in the CMO’s office and stewed in his own misery, and never more so than when he’d heard the gossip about Chris and Victoria. He couldn’t believe he’d never actually told Chris that he loved him. He hated himself for that.
He was jerked out of the morass of his own thoughts by the cabin door sliding open. Jim strolled in, still in his uniform pants and shirt from the previous night, with his jacket slung over his arm.
“There you are, finally!” snapped Leonard. “Been enjoying yourself, have you, good to know you’re looking after our guests so nice and personal.”
“Bones, stop it,” said Jim flatly as he hung up his jacket. “I guess you’re wound up about all this, but don’t take it out on me. Or on Victoria. She means the world to me and I’ll not have you shitting on her.”
“Victoria? What’s she ever done for you, beside the same as a hundred other pretty girls filling up your bed for a few hours?” demanded Leonard incredulously.
“Fuck you, you know nothing about it. She kept me together through some of the very worst of the post-Narada shit and she’s here now to try and bang some sense into you and Chris. Give it up with your frothing jealousy act, it’s getting old.”
Leonard pushed aside his own churning stomach-ache of nerves to actually look closely at Jim and saw that his friend was deadly serious.
“What did she do for you after the Narada?” he asked curiously.
Jim extracted a cup of coffee from the food synthesizer and leaned back against the small food counter. “Believe it or not, it wasn’t much fun for me, once we all got back to Earth and our promotions got pushed through. I had Chris advising me on the preparation and outfitting of the Enterprise, knowing every moment how much of a sacrifice it had to be for him. And he wasn’t exactly in a great mood, I assumed that was all about his injuries and the crap with the smuggling ring, but now I’m guessing some of that was also about a messy breakup neither of you two were admitting to.
“And you were stressed as hell and pretty unhappy. Spock had fucked off, so I was having to do it all without a First Officer, while trying to earn the respect of my crew and all the support staff involved with the Enterprise. The Admirals weren’t exactly helping, they might have promoted me but plenty of them were only too happy to tell me privately that it was a last ditch measure and they expected me to fail. And then the rest of the fleet came back from the Laurentian system. Let me tell you, I didn’t exactly get a warm welcome from any of the captains the first time I walked into the officers’ club. None of those bastards had actually had to face Nero. To a man, they were convinced they could have done the same and saved Vulcan while they were at it, and who was I to have been handed the flagship straight out of the Academy?
“And then there was the media, crawling over my entire life history for interesting stories, interviewing every single person who’d ever had or even just thought of having sex with me. And everywhere there were damned disaster groupies, only too keen to show their gratitude with a bit of fucking and doubtless sell the story and the vid afterwards. Every single fucking night I woke up at four in the morning and lay there alone, staring at the ceiling, wondering if there was any way I could run away from it all.”
Leonard felt a creeping sense of shame as he listened to Jim’s matter-of-fact recital. He had indeed been so swamped in the misery of losing Chris, combined with the fear of being booted straight back into deep space as the CMO of the Enterprise, that he’d not put much effort into seeing past Jim’s facade of casually cocky competence. Frankly, he’d desperately needed Jim to be confident, to make up for his own worries.
“So how did Victoria fit in?” he asked.
“After a couple of weeks of this, she pulled me to one side, told me that I was young and fit and had just been handed Starfleet’s biggest and shiniest toy and I should get my head out of my ass and start enjoying myself. And then she took me back to her place, fucked me six ways from Sunday and in-between let me into a whole lot of dirty secrets about how power really works in the Starfleet hierarchy. She kept me thoroughly distracted until our launch, while never breathing a word about it to anyone, and then kept sending me stuff once we’d gone. I’d never have kept control of the Enterprise through that first year without her feeding me a lot of strategic information.”
“I thought Chris was doing that for you,” said Leonard, disconcerted to learn that he’d missed so much of the political backdrop to Jim’s command.
“Yeah, he was, he still does. But he’s basically an honorable man, he’ll take risks but he holds himself to certain codes. Victoria’s an utter pragmatist, only too happy to wheel and deal behind the scenes to get the results she wants.”
“So does that mean that you and she are a... you know...” Leonard stumbled into silence. He’d seen too many of Kirk’s casual flirtations and short-term conquests to believe the man could manage monogamy.
“It doesn’t work like that for us, Bones. I’m never going to be a one-woman guy, you know that. There are just too many lovely ladies out there for me to chose. I’d go to the ends of the universe for Victoria and I believe she’d do the same for me. We’ll always be friends and allies, when our paths cross we fuck too. But no one guy is ever going to tie that woman down. Now you, my friend, are completely different. You may not have talked much about him but I could see the way your face lit up when he came into a room.”
Jim threw his cup into the recycler and walked across to stand in front of Leonard. “You are made to be in love with one lucky man for all your life, so the question is: what are we going to do about it?”
Leonard ducked his head to stare down miserably at the floor. All through the night he’d tried to find a compromise between his commitment to the Enterprise and his loyalty to Jim, and his love for Chris and his yearning to be part of a couple. An unbridgeable abyss seemed to gape between the two. “I don’t know what to do,” he finally admitted unhappily.
“Okay, let’s think it through, short-term and long-term,” said Jim. “Short-term if Chris got his shit together and pulled in a few favors the way Victoria does, he could’ve seen quite a lot of you in the last two years. Between shore leaves, diplomatic missions and ship inspections, you’d have done okay. And the word is that Starfleet are desperate to keep him and are prepared to be pretty accommodating to make that happen.
“And long-term, Bones, awesome though my crew are and much as I wish I could keep you all forever, I know that’s not how it works. Spock may not want a command but Uhura does and she’ll be a kick-ass captain. Where she goes, he’ll go. Same with you. I won’t like having a new CMO but I’ll live. I’m a big boy, Bones, I can cope with not having my best friends by my side every single day. Especially if it makes two people as important to me as you and Chris are, really happy.”
Leonard thought back to stepping on that shuttle out of the Riverside shipyards all those years ago, convinced he’d reached the lowest point of his entire life. He’d thought that he’d find neither friends nor challenge in Starfleet, that his service would be no more than indefinite voluntary penance for all his failures up until then. He could not have been more wrong. He felt his eyes welling up as he reached out to pull his best friend into a tight hug.
“Go and hunt down your man, Bones,” said Jim, rubbing a hand gently up and down his back, “there’ll always be a place for you on the Enterprise.”
* * *
“Hi,” said Leonard, standing awkwardly just inside the door of Admiral Pike’s plush office.
“Leonard! Why are you here? Has something gone wrong on the Enterprise?”
“No, I have some leave, thought I’d swing by and see how you are,” replied Leonard, aware he sounded much too tense for the casual attitude he was trying to convey. He was trying to suppress his shock at how much older Chris looked. His hair was still thick but it had gone slate-grey and was in the severest of military cuts, every last one of the wayward curls Leonard had loved so much shorn off. There were more lines than before, but the worst was the settled grimness, as if every spark of Chris’s hidden lust for life had been extinguished. He looked disconcertingly like the media photos that Leonard had seen of Chris’s father, Josh Pike.
Chris looked at him cooly. “Let me guess, this is a last ditch attempt by the powers that be to persuade me not to resign?”
Leonard swallowed hard. It had all seemed perfectly reasonable on the Enterprise, with the Admirals all talking into one of his ears and Jim into the other. Of course all he had to do was shake a little sense into Chris and then it would all be okay, romantic reunion and riding off into the sunset and all that shit. Before he knew it Jim had got him leave and Boyce had decided to run his sickbay for a week in the name of getting in touch with frontline medical issues and Victoria had magicked up a ride on an ambassadorial shuttle back to Earth.
And now here he was and he had a horrible feeling that actually none of it made any sense. If Chris was unhappy enough to want to resign, the offer of a long-distance thing with a lover he’d dumped two years back didn’t sound like much of an incentive to change his mind. And what if he wasn’t unhappy? What if they’d all misunderstood and Chris was off to some great new job and exciting new relationship?
He’d already spent an anxious half an hour walking in circles on the lawn in front of Chris’s building, trying to come up with the perfect line of argument, calm, casual, persuasive without being overbearing but faced with this grey shell of the man he’d been in love with, he forgot everything that he’d so carefully prepared.
“Yeah, kinda, so about that, what the fuck are you thinking?” Leonard abandoned any pretense at keeping this low-key. In-your-face was his style, so he might as well stick to his strengths, such as they were. “You love Starfleet, you live for it. Where the hell are you gonna go?”
“I have offers from the private sector,” replied Pike, looking past him out of the window.
“Yeah? Of course you do, but I bet you’re not going to take them, you wouldn’t sell out to the money grabbers. What are you really going to do? Go and wallow in misery on your family’s Mojave ranch? Chris, after all you’ve survived, what the fuck makes you give up now?”
Chris smiled without humor. “You always were one for the direct question, tact’s a bit of a lost art with you.”
“Fuck tact, the rest of your friends may be too careful with you to call a spade a spade, I’m sure as hell not. All that fucking crap from you at our last go-round about duty to Starfleet, and loyalty to the Federation, doing what needed to be done, what’s happened to all of that?”
“I’m doing what needs to be done,” replied Chris, the sort of grim finality in his tone that would have shut down the conversation with almost any one else. But Leonard had come too far and survived too much to let Chris shut him out now.
“You think resigning is what needs to be done?” Leonard was trying to think through everything he knew about this man and how he looked at the world. “You’re still loyal-- you just wouldn’t be you if you weren’t--” He was missing something, he could feel it floating just out of his grasp. What had Boyce said about the final straw? Perhaps the thing with his father.
“Have you seen your father recently?”
Chris looked at him in surprise, and then answered warily, “Yes, I’ve visited him in his new-- accommodations.”
“Are you trying to protect Starfleet from yourself?” Leonard demanded abruptly.
Suddenly he had the full glare of Chris’s attention focused on him. Got you, he thought, I know you too fucking well for you to hide. “You think you’re going to turn into him, don’t you?”
“It runs in the genes, that kind of mental instability,” replied Chris grimly.
“Oh crap, you’re not the same man he is.”
“Aren’t I? I’ve got the same genetic makeup, I was brought up to see the world from his point of view, and I’ve had very similar experiences out in the black. The likelihood is pretty high.”
“Do you trust me?” Leonard asked.
“What? Yes, of course I do.” Chris answered without pausing for thought.
“Do you trust yourself?”
Chris ran a frustrated hand through his horribly short hair. “Not entirely, not given the--”
“And there you have it!” proclaimed Leonard triumphantly. “The reason why you’re not being careful about this, you’re just being an ass. Your old man trusted no one else. Everyone was out to betray him, the only thing he believed in was himself as the unsung prophet of his own lunatic world. You’re exactly the opposite, you trust me, you trust Starfleet, you’re afraid of yourself. It’s not the same thing at all. You could try for the rest of your misbegotten life to be like your old man and you won’t manage it.”
For all that it seemed such a simple statement to Leonard, Chris looked stunned. “You really think I’m not...” He trailed off.
“Oh fuck yeah. You’re nothing like him. Just look at the people fighting on your side. Starfleet’s desperate to keep you. An entire pom-pom squad of Admirals descended on the Enterprise to get me over here. Your ex-boyfriend, who you dumped like a piece of shit on your shoe, you asshole, still came halfway across the sector to shake some sense into you. To be blunt, I diagnose situational depression, made worse by over-work and isolation, plus being a fucking idiot. The first three are curable but I’m pretty sure the last one is chronic.”
“Right, and that’s your professional medical diagnosis, is it?” And there it was! Hidden deep under the sarcastic drawl of Chris’s reply was that flash of humor, that look where Chris was trying to be exasperated with Leonard but was in fact secretly amused.
Leonard could remember all too well the first time he’d seen it. Chris had been the one to to remember and celebrate formal anniversaries, but Leonard had always had a detailed list of their personal firsts in his head. On their first encounter, when he’d been berating Captain Pike over the injuries resulting from the combat classes he oversaw, Leonard had simply enjoyed the chance to piss off one of the officers.
But the next time, when he’d realized that Captain Pike was not going to report him for insubordination and had in fact made changes to the combat classes based on his untactful recommendations, he’d been trying to apologize and doing it very badly. And there it had been, Chris attempting to keep a poker face but those beautiful blue eyes had begun to crinkle at the corners and Leonard had suddenly had an overpowering urge to peel open the pompous shell of the oh-so-proper but nevertheless rather attractive Captain Pike and find a way in to those sparkling eyes and the smile that was threatening to break through like a ray of sunshine through storm clouds.
And the first time that he had-- God, it still took his breath away to remember Chris spread out below him, trusting Leonard to take him to a place he’d never dared to go before, and bitching all the while that he wasn’t fragile and Leonard should put his back into it. It was one of the treasured memories of Leonard’s life, a memory he kept packed away tight for the last two years. And damn, he was so tired of trying to get over it and move on and all that crap when all he really wanted was a do-over, a chance to fight for them in a way he’d been too hurt to do last time.
“Chris, isolating yourself makes no fucking sense. It’s not what your friends want and it’s not what you need. If you’re afraid you’re going to turn into your old man, trust the rest of us to stop that, don’t run away from us. You and me, we were better together. I wouldn’t have got through the Academy without you, and you, you were fucking better with me, you were less of a pompous ass, you were more fun, more compassionate, more fucking human with me. And that’s what you need now, not to lock yourself down in some tritanium box of self-control.
“I hate the fact that you dumped me, and that I let you. It was never what I wanted and I don’t fucking believe that it did you any favors either. Yeah, I know there was all the shit about the smuggling ring and the Enterprise and Jim, and all our options were bad ones but still, we should’ve fought through it together, not gone our separate ways.
“You’re the best damn thing that ever happened to me, and yeah, maybe I’m not as good as one of your beloved ships, maybe I’m not as important to you as Starfleet is, but still, I was good for you....”
Leonard came to a stuttering stop. All traces of humor had vanished from Chris’s face and he was locked down once more behind an impenetrable facade of grey grimness. Dammit, he’d been wrong about all of this. They’d all been wrong. Chris might have cared once but he’d clearly got over it. Leonard had just made a colossal fool of himself, laying out his heart in an utterly pathetic manner. Chris was probably trying to find just the right trite phrase to let him down and then get rid of him altogether. Goddamn, he couldn’t believe he’d put himself through this sort of hurt twice.
“Right. Sorry. My mistake. Overestimating my own importance here. I guess it didn’t mean that much to you after all. I’ll just get out of--”
“I want to show you something,” said Chris abruptly.
Leonard paused as Chris began to rummage through the drawers of his desk. “It’s here somewhere, I know it is,” muttered Chris as he looked increasingly frantically, haphazardly pulling out files and boxes and scattering them on the floor. Eventually he took out a small box and handed it to Leonard, without looking at him.
Leonard examined it curiously. It was a small box, covered in what must once have been plush blue faux-velvet, but the velvet had been crushed and torn where heavier things had been pushed up against it, and it was covered in crumbs and lint.
“Open it,” said Chris, his voice sounding oddly hoarse.
Leonard did, and found himself staring down at the two plain gold rings that sat nestled in white silk. He knew what they looked like and yet, it made no sense at all. He glanced across at Chris but the other man said nothing, just sat staring down at his hands, with his fingers tensely intertwined. Finally Leonard picked up one of the rings and turned it in his hand. There were words engraved on the inside and he peered curiously at them.
Leonard H. McCoy * Christopher R. Pike
“When was this?” he asked, when he could finally trust his voice not to waver.
“I was going to ask you immediately after you graduated,” replied Chris, so softly that Leonard had to strain to hear him. “That’s how much you meant to me.”
Leonard stared down at the rings and felt the world tilt around him. Suddenly it was perfectly clear to him what he needed to do. “You, Christopher Pike, are dumb as a box of rocks,” he declared. “Get up.” He started to haul Chris up out of his chair. “I’m gonna look you in the fucking eye while I explain this to you.”
Once he had a surprised Pike up on his feet and leaning back against the edge of his desk, Leonard stepped in close enough to be able to poke Chris in the chest with his finger.
“Before, I took charge in bed and let you take charge the rest of time, because I thought you knew what you were fucking doing. You were older than me, senior to me, you were supposed to be the not-fucked-up one. Well, that’s over. Clearly you hadn’t the faintest fucking idea what you were doing. So I’m standing you down. I’m in charge and you just get to do what you’re told. You see these.”
He held up the blue box with the two gold rings.
“I’m keeping these. We’re not going there yet. We’ve got to get to know each other again, and sort out our careers. But we will go there, I promise you. It’s not if, it’s when.”
Chris stared at him in shock for a minute before beginning to protest. “Leonard, be practical. We’ve been apart now for longer than we were ever together. And whatever I had to promise to you then, I’m only a shadow of it now. I’m as shabby as that box is. I may be back on my feet but they can still be shaky. And as you’ve just seen, I’m pretty clearly fucked in the head--”
“That’s bullshit!” interrupted McCoy. “Not that I don’t believe you, but that you think it’ll put me off. I let you talk me out of this last time. There is no way on God’s green earth that that’s happening again. You took up with me when I was about to be booted out of Starfleet for insubordination or for failing my flight sims, when I was still battling with alcohol and racked with guilt and grief over my Daddy and my marriage. You can’t seriously think I’m gonna be put off by some weird ideas and a few mood swings. It’s not about the box, you idiot, it’s about what’s inside it. Besides, if you’re doing less running these days, I’m not objecting, I always thought it was a damn fool pastime. We can stay in bed and fuck instead.”
Chris’s blank mask of control began to crack, the corners of his mouth rising as if against his will, and then his shoulders started to shake with laughter. “Damn, I missed your filthy mouth.” For a moment he just stood and stared at Leonard with a dazed smile, but then his eyes shadowed over once more. “Leonard, be reasonable, you’re still on duty on the Enterprise.”
“Darlin’, the one thing I’ve never been, and never intend to be, is reasonable. Now my captain will make allowances and your Admirals will do the same. D’you know Victoria, Phil and Richard Barnett all turned up on the Enterprise to stage an intervention? You have some mighty good friends, Chris.”
Chris smiled back at him. “We have some very good friends, Leonard, it’s not just about me.”
“But while we’re on the subject, I’ve got a few things to say to you yet. Remember all that crap you talked to me about how I’d find someone else out in the black? There hasn’t been a single other person since you, two year dry spell, longest of my adult life and you owe me. You owe me a lot of shit hot sex. No, no no,” he held up a warning finger as Pike began to protest. “I haven’t finished yet, not by a long shot. I’m not impressed that you dated Victoria, not damned impressed at all. It’s gonna take you years to earn forgiveness for that one.”
Pike looked sheepish. “She wasn’t the only one. Once I was off enough of the drugs for the equipment to start working again, I fucked around quite a lot.”
“Oh I don’t give a shit about that,” retorted Leonard. “That’s perfectly understandable. I cared about her because I could see the two of you actually making a pretty good couple. I could see you falling in love with her.”
“I did actually try to,” admitted Chris. “I was sick of being alone and so sick of mourning what I’d lost. I think Victoria thought she could have a fun rebound affair with me and then be on her way. But I’d made a whole fucking to-do list about how I was going to move on with my life, and that included a new relationship. She was closest thing to you I could find and I tried to force myself into being in love with her. The minute she realized what was going on, she was up and off to the FHO, and poor Phil found himself suddenly promoted to Surgeon-General. He still hasn’t forgiven me for that!”
“He’ll live,” said Leonard dismissively. “Being an Admiral looks good on him. Now, getting back to brass tacks, you and me, we do long-distance until my tour ends. You can fuck around here if you need to, but--”
“I don’t need to, I don’t want to. I’ve only ever wanted you. Oh hell, Leonard, I’ve missed you so badly.” Finally Chris’s hands were off his desk and on Leonard’s arms instead, running up and over his collar to cup the sensitive skin of his neck. Leonard reveled in the warm touch as skillful fingers pushed up into his hair and then slid round to explore the contours of his face. “I’ve thought about you so often,” whispered Chris. “I’m so sorry, for all of it.”
“Fuck that. No apologies, no recriminations. I’ve fucked up spectacularly in my time and you never held it against me. We did what we had to do and we’ve survived.” Leonard reached up and caught Chris’s hands in his own, turning them to drop kisses all the way along his knuckles. “My biggest regret was that I’d never actually said it. Just too damn scared that it would somehow jinx everything. But fuck that. I love you, Christopher Pike. Truly, madly, deeply and for the rest of my misbegotten life.”
Chris stared at him for a moment and then abruptly pulled Leonard close, hugging him tightly while he buried his face against Leonard’s neck. Leonard felt the shudders that were running through Chris’s body and said nothing, simply holding Chris close and carding his fingers gently through through thick grey hair, reveling in the warmth and the strength of the lean body pressed against his own.
When Chris finally stilled against him and his hands eased from their convulsive clinging, Leonard pulled back. Without comment, he gently wiped away the moisture below Chris’s eyes and then leaned in once more to catch Chris’s mouth with his own. It felt at the same time strangely exotic and yet achingly familiar and he was left trembling by the intensity of it, as if he’d only now really let himself feel how terribly lonely he’d been for the last two long years.
He lost himself in the slide of hot wet tongues and the rasp of stubbled cheeks, pulling Chris’s shirt out from his waistband and sliding his hands up the other man’s back. His doctor’s fingers could immediately recognize the faint scar lines from the operations and he caressed them gently, as badges of honor of all they’d survived. Chris had just started undoing the buttons of his shirt when the door to the office abruptly slammed open.
“What’s this bullshit about not being available, Pike? I’ll have you-- Oh!”
The two men swung round to find Admiral Komack glaring at them both. Chris immediately tried to pull away but Leonard instinctively clung on to him. Fuck that, now was the time to find out whether they would genuinely be supported by the Admiralty.
“You!” Komack pointed a pudgy finger at Leonard. “Aren’t you the Enterprise CMO?”
“Yes sir, Dr McCoy sir.”
Komack glared at him for a minute longer, as if doing some rapid mental arithmetic. Then he swung round to Chris. “Does this thing--” he waved petulantly at the two of them, “mean that you’ve given up on that ridiculous resignation idea?”
“Uh--” started Chris.
“Yes,” hissed Leonard, “it does, tell him it does.”
“Yes sir, it does.”
“Oh! Okay then.” Komack suddenly looked a whole lot more cheerful. “I’ll find someone else to dump this on.”
“I can do it, sir,” started Chris, clearly anxious to helpful.
“Hell no, it’s a crap job, I was only giving it to you because I was so annoyed with you.” Komack turned on his heel and then stopped again briefly in the doorway, looking back at them with a ghost of a smile. “As you were, men. Carry on.” And he was gone.
Leonard leaned his forehead against Chris’s and began to chuckle. “I think that may be the voice of approval from on-high.”
“Looks like it,” replied Chris, sounding somewhat stunned.
Leonard pulled back so he could look at Chris, cupping the other man’s face in his hands. “It’s going to get better, Chris, it really is. And even if it doesn’t, for better and for worse, we’re in it together. Now all you need to do is say: yes, Leonard.”
He watched Chris’s face carefully, noting all the ways in which the man seemed many more than just two years older than when they’d parted. His looked tired in ways that went right through to the marrow, but damn, he was handsome. Age suited him, just as authority always had.
Chris’s eyes were as blue as they’d ever been and Leonard watched as they lit up, powered by a generous smile from that beautiful, mobile mouth that he’d missed so much. Chris ducked his head and then looked at Leonard through his lashes, a delightful mockery of submissive obedience. “Yes, Leonard.”
Through his laughter, Leonard grabbed Chris’s mouth in a passionate kiss. Come what may, together they would make it better.
THE END -