Fic: Slow Fade (1/1)
Title: Slow Fade
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Pike/McCoy
Word Count: 3,385
Summary: He never learned how to weather a storm like this. Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For the utterly-wonderful skyblue_reverie: my dear, I’m so sorry this is late, but I am hoping it’s to your liking. Alas -- I’m not sure I captured the dynamic of these two well (certainly not as well as you and mga1999 do, by any means), but I did want to try, because, well, it was for your birthday after all. It’s rather tropey, with a rather vague framing device, and the ending in particular is somewhat over-dramatic (but you DID say you wanted it to end happily!) so I’m hoping that you don’t mind a bit (read: a lot) of indulgence on those fronts ;) Also, since I wasn’t entirely sure if this was worthwhile or not, I spent a few minutes sketching out a bit of completely-unrelated art that I figured I could give you instead (which, unfortunately, didn't really go where I wanted it to). Then I thought I could probably manip the same thing I was trying to draw, because the references I was using were composites of photos, so I started to put something together, and then I realized your birthday was almost a week ago, and I should really stop stalling. So - accept these with my adoration, which will hopefully make up for any lacking quality that might pop up across the three <3
Slow Fade
“Goddamnit.” They’d all known this was dangerous, but they’d never dreamed it would end like this. Starfleet’s best and brightest had been diverted for the negotiations -- that should have been the first hint: so many of them in one place, a fucking tactical nightmare.
They should have known better.
“Zemnikas,” Pike growls, nearly screams over the crackle of flames and static, the roaring rain of debris from above, of adrenaline through his veins; “where the fuck is medical?”
<>, is what he gets in reply, barely audible, permeated by the angry throb against his ears, the reverberation as the pillars left standing start to creak and give way, tumbling to the ground. <>, and he feels the lick of cinders, of embers spat against his ankle, the burn sharp, cauterized blood throbbing at the angry red hole in his flesh. <>, and he coughs, wheezes through the smoke, the burn of something more sinister as he gets closer to the ground zero, the point of detonation. <>
Great. Fucking great.
“We’ve got casualties left and right down here,” he winces, the sole of his boot curled dangerously close to an arm -- just an arm, in science blues -- and he tries not to get ahead of himself, tries to calm the way his lungs seem to constrict, seem to ready themselves for possibilities -- likelihoods -- that he’s not yet ready to think about, that he’s not prepared to surrender to. “How many are still unaccounted for?”
<> and that’s all he hears, really; all that matters. Because of course that’s not what gets cut out, not what’s lost to the vast vacuum of space: the fate of a single soul in all of this bloodshed -- of course.
And ignorance may not be bliss, but he thinks that maybe it hurts less, has to -- figures it doesn’t wrap around his now-hammering heart with a vice-grip -- lukewarm noose; doesn’t press like the blunt edge of a knife slicing jagged, angry, tearing holes in his lungs.
“My god,” he chokes, fingers steady while his wrists tremble at the sleeves and he crouches, sickness writhing in his gut as he peers down at that lonely appendage, pulse shuddering, frantic with the need to know, to never know if this is the arm that wrapped around him in the evenings, held him close until sunrise; if those fingers were the ones that bruised against his hips when they moved to quick, too rough against one another, when they couldn’t get close enough, when the air between them was too far to bear.
The hand’s left pinkie is naked, though; no whitened band of skin beneath the blood and burn -- Chris breathes again, lifts his comm as he collects himself, hoping Zemnikas is still hearing him.
“We’re going to need every medical officer on the ground the minute you get that goddamn transporter working. There’s...” and as he looks around him, pauses in the eerie still to take it all in, he catches it; knows the line of that chest, the curves and the dips of the body sprawled just feet from him, caramel skin beneath torn sapphire -- he knows that man, and for the first time, he wishes he didn’t.
“Len,” he breathes, and his racing heart stills, grinds to a halt that shakes the bones of him, drops to his stomach as he drops to his knees, palms open as he cups his lover’s chin, strokes thumbs against the line of his jaw at either side. “Fuck, Len,” and his fingers slip automatic, reluctant against his carotid, fearing the worst.
“Chris?” he hears, like a voice in a dream -- almost unreal -- before he can curse the way his hands are shaking, the way he can’t feel anything but numb and fear and no and please.
“Thank god,” Chris breathes, taking Leonard’s face in his hands and watching as that perfect hazel stare focuses, loses him, sharpens and sees him; falters, stays strong. “What the hell happened?”
“Collapse,” and Chris curses himself, because... well, of course that’s what happened, and the way the muscles, the features of that face strain, stretch to breaking with just those two syllables; it knocks the wind out of him, stings against his retinas, and Jesus -- there’s a fucking spear of shining, blood-slick Areunian pearlstone sticking straight through his lover’s side, right between the ribs his fingers learned to dance between, just shy of the heart that taught him how to fly without wings, without a ship to sail through the stars; the heart he’d taught in return.
Jesus.
Everything in him twists -- arteries and capillaries, vessels and veins strangling themselves as they tangle, wrenching a gasp from his throat -- as he watches Leonard struggle, watches the heels of his palms slip against broken glass and charred floorboards as he fights to lift himself, to salvage some dignity at the end -- no, fuck, no; to get just a little closer as the edges blur and dim, a slow fade into the abyss.
“Stay still,” Chris hisses, voice strained, rasped with the smoke and the pain, the fear. He reaches a hand to ease Len back to the floor, resting the other palm against Leonard’s own and holding tight as if it matters, as if it’ll do him any good, collecting the cinders, shards stuck inside the blood slipping casual, careless from between the cracks in his skin. “Help’s coming,” Chris murmurs, tracing a fingertip just inside the trickle of red flowing below his hairline, a river running south toward his jaw: beautiful, terrible, inevitable.
“Just, hold still,” the breath catches in his chest, but he forces through it, around it, sends it out to the man below his touch, too broken, too precious for this -- already too still as it is.
“S’no good, Chris,” Leonard sighs, and Chris’s world narrows dizzyingly as Len’s chest expands a little, falls and stays down too long; he feels his own chest throb with the terror, the aftershocks, even as Leonard struggles to breathe in once more, after too long; too late.
“Don’t,” Chris hisses, demands; the force and venom in it like the bile in his throat, burning, meant for something other than the man before him. “Don’t.”
Leonard looks like he means to speak, means to say something that might change this, change anything -- make it better or worse, end it quicker, make it last; but it’s futile, because he’s coughing up blood, and it’s all Chris can to do try to calm him, to keep him still, to keep the debris lodged in his torso from moving too much, destroying anything further. Droplets like a starburst, scarlet like the sun fall from between those lips, land against the stretch of Chris’s palm -- gravity rending the both of them in two, and Chris has blood on his hands, so much blood on his hands, but he knows that this is a red that’ll never fade, bright and stark against the smear of ash, the white of his knuckles; it steals his breath and bears down on his chest, and he’ll never be rid of it -- never.
He fights a passing thought that, in mere moments, mere heartbeats, the shadow of that blood may be all he has left; swallows bile as he chokes on the fear, the racing terror lodging in his throat.
“What can I do?” he chokes, shivering finers threading through the sweat, the blood coagulating in Leonard’s hair; “What do you need?”
“S’alright,” he slurs, and Chris watches his lips pale, draw thin, colored only by the blood on his tongue. “S’almost over, now,” he trembles, stammers, hitches in the middle; “gettin’ cold.”
“Jesus, Leonard,” Chris exhales, his voice stolen in the face of reality, of what cannot be real. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t fucking do this.”
“Gonna,” and he coughs, violently; and it strikes something unforgiving in Chris that his chest heaves heavier, deeper as he chokes than it does when he breathes; “Gonna make that an order, Admiral?” And Chris can barely hear those words, so faint against the din of his heart, the blood in his veins; he knows that Leonard’s trying to smile, trying to offer him solace, even now -- but it’s pithy and futile, the weak curl of his lips, and it hurts more than it heals.
All he can do, though, is try his best to smile back.
“S’nothing else can be done, darlin,’” Leonard whispers, his voice a quiet rasp, a gentle gurgle when he breathes. “Only so far a man can reach against the universe, ‘fore it’s fate’s turn to,” and he coughs again, Chris’s hands at his shoulder and his waist to steady him; “to force his hand.”
And he wishes, not for the first time, that it was he who refused to believe in no-win scenarios; that his faith could be so sturdy, so unwavering -- that by will alone, he could stay this moment and keep them still, suspended; that he could stop time, and hold the heart he loved steady in the balance, far enough from the groping hands, the desperate claws of Death.
He watches Leonard watching him, watches as they both say things without words, because words don’t cover this, never could; watches as the silent pleas and confessions and understandings seep in and settle, daunting, drawing hairline fractures in the truths he’s given his whole heart to -- ready for the shattering he knows he won’t survive.
“I love you,” Chris breathes, so close that he can feel Len’s heat as it retreats, subsides.
“I know it,” is his answer, as shuddering hands reach out to run against his cheek, falling useless before they ever make it; Chris gathers them and holds them close against his face, closes his eyes and lets the creases in Leonard’s palms catch his tears as they leak out, betraying him -- giving everything away.
“Four years we’ve been together,” Chris starts, uncertain, desperate; the words springing up from his lungs with every labored breath, streaming from his eyes as the smog and the strain and the agony overtake him, wrack him from the soul. “Four years next month. I was gonna propose,” he watches, and the affection Len’s looks up at him with is tempered, tainted by the knowledge that he’ll never see that expression -- the curious surprise mingled with blossoming, unfettered joy; he’ll never see that again. “Wanted the timing to be perfect, to be just right.”
He runs the bridge of his nose against the bow of Leonard’s lips, breathing heavy below his chin, his own lips catching the stubble there, relishing its burn in time with the slow -- too goddamn slow -- wash of warmth, little springs of life escaping Len’s mouth every few seconds: “Shoulda known better than to wait.”
Leonard breathes out forever, it seems, eyes closed as he speaks, lips slow and just barely breaking against Chris’s skin. “I woulda worn your ring, you stubborn bastard,” he huffs, almost amused, and the pang of the tone hits raw in Chris’s chest. “But it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
And when they cross gazes once more, there’s only one thing that passes between them: the one thing they’ve never shied from saying, but that was never really enough.
“You’re mine, Chris,” Leonard wheezes, hoarse, but his eyes are still clear, lucid and certain for perhaps the last time; “deeper than you’ll ever know,” and Chris threads their fingers together, nearly sobs when Leonard squeezes his hand, the motion barely a wisp, a brush. “You’re more mine than my own fucking bones.”
And silence wells between them, until all Chris knows is his pulse and the breath in Leonard’s lungs nearer than his own; the sound of crackling flames around them, and the swell of something deeper, undeniable everywhere he turns.
“Not much longer,” Leonard’s voice cuts suddenly through the still, and Chris doesn’t know what they’re on the brink of, doesn’t want to know -- knows it closer to his heart than he thinks he’ll survive; “can you feel it?” No, yes; it feels empty, distant, suffocating -- like it’s coming for the both of them, and only one of them will get to sleep through the trial.
If it had to be one of them, though, Chris was glad, in a way, that Leonard’d wouldn’t hurt so long, so deep.
“S’close, now,” Len whispers, the hazel in his eyes dimmed to a soily brown, glassy, and his voice is faint, uneven; unfamiliar, even as it settles like home in his chest, and Chris understands what’s happening, grips the hand in his tighter, sucks a breath in harsh through clenched teeth as tears gather again in the corners of his eyes; “so close.”
Chris doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to say; doesn’t how to sit idly by amidst the lost and broken and watch death claim one more soul, the soul he loves more than his own -- he doesn’t know how to stand it, so he does the only thing he does know, and always has: he leans down and presses his lips against Leonard’s, drinking him in like there will be no tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe it’s selfish, maybe it’s fucking cruel, but he’s not a patient man, he doesn’t bow to the tides of fate and providence, of logic and law and life and death -- he doesn’t bow; he waits until it bowls him over without mercy or relent, until it breaks his legs and breaks his will, and breaks his fucking heart with the sheer force of the loss.
When they part, he can tell he’s bought them no time -- if anything, he’s rushed them closer to the end -- and it stings, but the ease, the softness in Leonard’s face when he looks up at him a little dazed, a little less pained, is worth it; worth anything.
“S’different, this side of it,” Leonard gasps, seeing things beyond Chris, now, beyond where they sit, waiting for the nameless fall; “s’not what I thought it’d be.” His eyes don’t shift, don’t move to focus back on Chris, but his hand gropes languidly, without finesse, and he waits until Chris captures it in his own before he speaks again; “It’s not so bad, not with you here.”
“Please,” Chris begs, sucks Len’s lower lip into his mouth, savors the blood that heralds the end with shame, desperate for all of him, anything he can get, hold on to. “Don’t. I,” and his tears drag the red lower, coax it down to the swell of Leonard’s chin, rivulets threatening to breach the edge, plummet down his neck; and Chris watches, cowardice mingling with fear, with heartache as he lets his gaze break from Len’s, lets the pads of his fingers search for a pulse there that he can’t see, can’t feel, almost gone. “I don’t,” he keens, nearly moans, “I can’t...” and it’s not strength or fortitude, not courage that lets him lock his gaze with Leonard’s failing one; it’s the need to see it, the need to be there until the bitter end: “not without you.”
Wasted words; wasted fucking words, and a blood-stained smile that breaks what’s left.
“You will.”
He can feel finality like the eye of the tempest, weighing in on all sides, death and hate and love pounding in him, around him, between them, and Chris knows the way that chest is meant to rise and fall, the ways those eyes are meant to shine; knows he’s slipping now, knows they’re on the brink.
He’s not a man who waits for fate.
So Chris leans in and presses their mouths together, breathes what life he has left into Lenoard, hopes that it brushes past his heart and buys him just a second, just a moment more; steals the breath left in Len’s lungs like their both drowning, dying, and fuck all, but they are. And iron burns, brands his tongue, searing with a thousand tomorrows, the promise of a meaningless eternity stretching out before his soul, damnation imminent because he wasn’t good enough, strong enough; because once again, he could not halt the storm.
And he didn’t deserve this, really, never had, godforsaken treasure that it is; hadn’t earned the right to love a man like this, to know his love like the end of the world and the beginning of everything else in return. Unworthy, unfit -- like the cosmos were setting things right now, by stealing away everything in him worth saving, worth living for.
He slides, boneless and shivering with a silent, endless grief too deep for words, for tears, sprawled across Len’s torso like a shield, the last protection, the last protest he can offer. His heart slams once, twice, shivers in the aftermath before the chest below him stills, the subtle swell of blood -- of life too fucking willful, too stubborn to flicker and fade -- finally quieting, finally gone.
And Chris doesn’t know what happens next, because it doesn’t matter anyway.
________________________________________
The thing is: sometimes Chris forgets that the man he loves breeds miracles, can make the broken world new. Forgets that it’s not just he and Len against the world, much as it often feels like it; that he has a crew more loyal to him than he can fathom, that can work wonders with enough provocation, defy gravity when the need arises. Forgets that as deep as he loves Leonard McCoy, there’s a man who loves him just as blindly, just a fully -- differently, but just as strong; a man who doesn’t believe in surrender, who doesn’t know how to fail. Sometimes he forgets that even out here in the black, with nothing under your feet and a prayer to keep you afloat, that the impossible sometimes happens -- maybe here more than anywhere else.
He won’t forget again.
Aboard the Enterprise, in a sickbay more familiar to him than it had any right to be, the biobed chirps and hums comfortingly next to him, and Chris has spent enough time in them himself to know that while Len’s not well, won’t be for a while yet, he’s not dead either.
The weight of the realization, the relief crushes harder than the fear of loss had, destroys him more fully, but the difference now as that he gives into it, lets himself crumble and break beneath the pressure, the impact; because he still has Leonard there to keep him together, to gather his pieces and make him new. Always.
He grasps his lover’s hand in his own, kissing the pulse in his wrist like it holds the world inside -- like it holds his own heart, too, and maybe it does -- and he knows, he knows.
The storm he could not stop alone, they’ll weather side by side.
- end -
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Pike/McCoy
Word Count: 3,385
Summary: He never learned how to weather a storm like this. Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For the utterly-wonderful skyblue_reverie: my dear, I’m so sorry this is late, but I am hoping it’s to your liking. Alas -- I’m not sure I captured the dynamic of these two well (certainly not as well as you and mga1999 do, by any means), but I did want to try, because, well, it was for your birthday after all. It’s rather tropey, with a rather vague framing device, and the ending in particular is somewhat over-dramatic (but you DID say you wanted it to end happily!) so I’m hoping that you don’t mind a bit (read: a lot) of indulgence on those fronts ;) Also, since I wasn’t entirely sure if this was worthwhile or not, I spent a few minutes sketching out a bit of completely-unrelated art that I figured I could give you instead (which, unfortunately, didn't really go where I wanted it to). Then I thought I could probably manip the same thing I was trying to draw, because the references I was using were composites of photos, so I started to put something together, and then I realized your birthday was almost a week ago, and I should really stop stalling. So - accept these with my adoration, which will hopefully make up for any lacking quality that might pop up across the three <3
Slow Fade
“Goddamnit.” They’d all known this was dangerous, but they’d never dreamed it would end like this. Starfleet’s best and brightest had been diverted for the negotiations -- that should have been the first hint: so many of them in one place, a fucking tactical nightmare.
They should have known better.
“Zemnikas,” Pike growls, nearly screams over the crackle of flames and static, the roaring rain of debris from above, of adrenaline through his veins; “where the fuck is medical?”
<
Great. Fucking great.
“We’ve got casualties left and right down here,” he winces, the sole of his boot curled dangerously close to an arm -- just an arm, in science blues -- and he tries not to get ahead of himself, tries to calm the way his lungs seem to constrict, seem to ready themselves for possibilities -- likelihoods -- that he’s not yet ready to think about, that he’s not prepared to surrender to. “How many are still unaccounted for?”
<
And ignorance may not be bliss, but he thinks that maybe it hurts less, has to -- figures it doesn’t wrap around his now-hammering heart with a vice-grip -- lukewarm noose; doesn’t press like the blunt edge of a knife slicing jagged, angry, tearing holes in his lungs.
“My god,” he chokes, fingers steady while his wrists tremble at the sleeves and he crouches, sickness writhing in his gut as he peers down at that lonely appendage, pulse shuddering, frantic with the need to know, to never know if this is the arm that wrapped around him in the evenings, held him close until sunrise; if those fingers were the ones that bruised against his hips when they moved to quick, too rough against one another, when they couldn’t get close enough, when the air between them was too far to bear.
The hand’s left pinkie is naked, though; no whitened band of skin beneath the blood and burn -- Chris breathes again, lifts his comm as he collects himself, hoping Zemnikas is still hearing him.
“We’re going to need every medical officer on the ground the minute you get that goddamn transporter working. There’s...” and as he looks around him, pauses in the eerie still to take it all in, he catches it; knows the line of that chest, the curves and the dips of the body sprawled just feet from him, caramel skin beneath torn sapphire -- he knows that man, and for the first time, he wishes he didn’t.
“Len,” he breathes, and his racing heart stills, grinds to a halt that shakes the bones of him, drops to his stomach as he drops to his knees, palms open as he cups his lover’s chin, strokes thumbs against the line of his jaw at either side. “Fuck, Len,” and his fingers slip automatic, reluctant against his carotid, fearing the worst.
“Chris?” he hears, like a voice in a dream -- almost unreal -- before he can curse the way his hands are shaking, the way he can’t feel anything but numb and fear and no and please.
“Thank god,” Chris breathes, taking Leonard’s face in his hands and watching as that perfect hazel stare focuses, loses him, sharpens and sees him; falters, stays strong. “What the hell happened?”
“Collapse,” and Chris curses himself, because... well, of course that’s what happened, and the way the muscles, the features of that face strain, stretch to breaking with just those two syllables; it knocks the wind out of him, stings against his retinas, and Jesus -- there’s a fucking spear of shining, blood-slick Areunian pearlstone sticking straight through his lover’s side, right between the ribs his fingers learned to dance between, just shy of the heart that taught him how to fly without wings, without a ship to sail through the stars; the heart he’d taught in return.
Jesus.
Everything in him twists -- arteries and capillaries, vessels and veins strangling themselves as they tangle, wrenching a gasp from his throat -- as he watches Leonard struggle, watches the heels of his palms slip against broken glass and charred floorboards as he fights to lift himself, to salvage some dignity at the end -- no, fuck, no; to get just a little closer as the edges blur and dim, a slow fade into the abyss.
“Stay still,” Chris hisses, voice strained, rasped with the smoke and the pain, the fear. He reaches a hand to ease Len back to the floor, resting the other palm against Leonard’s own and holding tight as if it matters, as if it’ll do him any good, collecting the cinders, shards stuck inside the blood slipping casual, careless from between the cracks in his skin. “Help’s coming,” Chris murmurs, tracing a fingertip just inside the trickle of red flowing below his hairline, a river running south toward his jaw: beautiful, terrible, inevitable.
“Just, hold still,” the breath catches in his chest, but he forces through it, around it, sends it out to the man below his touch, too broken, too precious for this -- already too still as it is.
“S’no good, Chris,” Leonard sighs, and Chris’s world narrows dizzyingly as Len’s chest expands a little, falls and stays down too long; he feels his own chest throb with the terror, the aftershocks, even as Leonard struggles to breathe in once more, after too long; too late.
“Don’t,” Chris hisses, demands; the force and venom in it like the bile in his throat, burning, meant for something other than the man before him. “Don’t.”
Leonard looks like he means to speak, means to say something that might change this, change anything -- make it better or worse, end it quicker, make it last; but it’s futile, because he’s coughing up blood, and it’s all Chris can to do try to calm him, to keep him still, to keep the debris lodged in his torso from moving too much, destroying anything further. Droplets like a starburst, scarlet like the sun fall from between those lips, land against the stretch of Chris’s palm -- gravity rending the both of them in two, and Chris has blood on his hands, so much blood on his hands, but he knows that this is a red that’ll never fade, bright and stark against the smear of ash, the white of his knuckles; it steals his breath and bears down on his chest, and he’ll never be rid of it -- never.
He fights a passing thought that, in mere moments, mere heartbeats, the shadow of that blood may be all he has left; swallows bile as he chokes on the fear, the racing terror lodging in his throat.
“What can I do?” he chokes, shivering finers threading through the sweat, the blood coagulating in Leonard’s hair; “What do you need?”
“S’alright,” he slurs, and Chris watches his lips pale, draw thin, colored only by the blood on his tongue. “S’almost over, now,” he trembles, stammers, hitches in the middle; “gettin’ cold.”
“Jesus, Leonard,” Chris exhales, his voice stolen in the face of reality, of what cannot be real. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t fucking do this.”
“Gonna,” and he coughs, violently; and it strikes something unforgiving in Chris that his chest heaves heavier, deeper as he chokes than it does when he breathes; “Gonna make that an order, Admiral?” And Chris can barely hear those words, so faint against the din of his heart, the blood in his veins; he knows that Leonard’s trying to smile, trying to offer him solace, even now -- but it’s pithy and futile, the weak curl of his lips, and it hurts more than it heals.
All he can do, though, is try his best to smile back.
“S’nothing else can be done, darlin,’” Leonard whispers, his voice a quiet rasp, a gentle gurgle when he breathes. “Only so far a man can reach against the universe, ‘fore it’s fate’s turn to,” and he coughs again, Chris’s hands at his shoulder and his waist to steady him; “to force his hand.”
And he wishes, not for the first time, that it was he who refused to believe in no-win scenarios; that his faith could be so sturdy, so unwavering -- that by will alone, he could stay this moment and keep them still, suspended; that he could stop time, and hold the heart he loved steady in the balance, far enough from the groping hands, the desperate claws of Death.
He watches Leonard watching him, watches as they both say things without words, because words don’t cover this, never could; watches as the silent pleas and confessions and understandings seep in and settle, daunting, drawing hairline fractures in the truths he’s given his whole heart to -- ready for the shattering he knows he won’t survive.
“I love you,” Chris breathes, so close that he can feel Len’s heat as it retreats, subsides.
“I know it,” is his answer, as shuddering hands reach out to run against his cheek, falling useless before they ever make it; Chris gathers them and holds them close against his face, closes his eyes and lets the creases in Leonard’s palms catch his tears as they leak out, betraying him -- giving everything away.
“Four years we’ve been together,” Chris starts, uncertain, desperate; the words springing up from his lungs with every labored breath, streaming from his eyes as the smog and the strain and the agony overtake him, wrack him from the soul. “Four years next month. I was gonna propose,” he watches, and the affection Len’s looks up at him with is tempered, tainted by the knowledge that he’ll never see that expression -- the curious surprise mingled with blossoming, unfettered joy; he’ll never see that again. “Wanted the timing to be perfect, to be just right.”
He runs the bridge of his nose against the bow of Leonard’s lips, breathing heavy below his chin, his own lips catching the stubble there, relishing its burn in time with the slow -- too goddamn slow -- wash of warmth, little springs of life escaping Len’s mouth every few seconds: “Shoulda known better than to wait.”
Leonard breathes out forever, it seems, eyes closed as he speaks, lips slow and just barely breaking against Chris’s skin. “I woulda worn your ring, you stubborn bastard,” he huffs, almost amused, and the pang of the tone hits raw in Chris’s chest. “But it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
And when they cross gazes once more, there’s only one thing that passes between them: the one thing they’ve never shied from saying, but that was never really enough.
“You’re mine, Chris,” Leonard wheezes, hoarse, but his eyes are still clear, lucid and certain for perhaps the last time; “deeper than you’ll ever know,” and Chris threads their fingers together, nearly sobs when Leonard squeezes his hand, the motion barely a wisp, a brush. “You’re more mine than my own fucking bones.”
And silence wells between them, until all Chris knows is his pulse and the breath in Leonard’s lungs nearer than his own; the sound of crackling flames around them, and the swell of something deeper, undeniable everywhere he turns.
“Not much longer,” Leonard’s voice cuts suddenly through the still, and Chris doesn’t know what they’re on the brink of, doesn’t want to know -- knows it closer to his heart than he thinks he’ll survive; “can you feel it?” No, yes; it feels empty, distant, suffocating -- like it’s coming for the both of them, and only one of them will get to sleep through the trial.
If it had to be one of them, though, Chris was glad, in a way, that Leonard’d wouldn’t hurt so long, so deep.
“S’close, now,” Len whispers, the hazel in his eyes dimmed to a soily brown, glassy, and his voice is faint, uneven; unfamiliar, even as it settles like home in his chest, and Chris understands what’s happening, grips the hand in his tighter, sucks a breath in harsh through clenched teeth as tears gather again in the corners of his eyes; “so close.”
Chris doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to say; doesn’t how to sit idly by amidst the lost and broken and watch death claim one more soul, the soul he loves more than his own -- he doesn’t know how to stand it, so he does the only thing he does know, and always has: he leans down and presses his lips against Leonard’s, drinking him in like there will be no tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe it’s selfish, maybe it’s fucking cruel, but he’s not a patient man, he doesn’t bow to the tides of fate and providence, of logic and law and life and death -- he doesn’t bow; he waits until it bowls him over without mercy or relent, until it breaks his legs and breaks his will, and breaks his fucking heart with the sheer force of the loss.
When they part, he can tell he’s bought them no time -- if anything, he’s rushed them closer to the end -- and it stings, but the ease, the softness in Leonard’s face when he looks up at him a little dazed, a little less pained, is worth it; worth anything.
“S’different, this side of it,” Leonard gasps, seeing things beyond Chris, now, beyond where they sit, waiting for the nameless fall; “s’not what I thought it’d be.” His eyes don’t shift, don’t move to focus back on Chris, but his hand gropes languidly, without finesse, and he waits until Chris captures it in his own before he speaks again; “It’s not so bad, not with you here.”
“Please,” Chris begs, sucks Len’s lower lip into his mouth, savors the blood that heralds the end with shame, desperate for all of him, anything he can get, hold on to. “Don’t. I,” and his tears drag the red lower, coax it down to the swell of Leonard’s chin, rivulets threatening to breach the edge, plummet down his neck; and Chris watches, cowardice mingling with fear, with heartache as he lets his gaze break from Len’s, lets the pads of his fingers search for a pulse there that he can’t see, can’t feel, almost gone. “I don’t,” he keens, nearly moans, “I can’t...” and it’s not strength or fortitude, not courage that lets him lock his gaze with Leonard’s failing one; it’s the need to see it, the need to be there until the bitter end: “not without you.”
Wasted words; wasted fucking words, and a blood-stained smile that breaks what’s left.
“You will.”
He can feel finality like the eye of the tempest, weighing in on all sides, death and hate and love pounding in him, around him, between them, and Chris knows the way that chest is meant to rise and fall, the ways those eyes are meant to shine; knows he’s slipping now, knows they’re on the brink.
He’s not a man who waits for fate.
So Chris leans in and presses their mouths together, breathes what life he has left into Lenoard, hopes that it brushes past his heart and buys him just a second, just a moment more; steals the breath left in Len’s lungs like their both drowning, dying, and fuck all, but they are. And iron burns, brands his tongue, searing with a thousand tomorrows, the promise of a meaningless eternity stretching out before his soul, damnation imminent because he wasn’t good enough, strong enough; because once again, he could not halt the storm.
And he didn’t deserve this, really, never had, godforsaken treasure that it is; hadn’t earned the right to love a man like this, to know his love like the end of the world and the beginning of everything else in return. Unworthy, unfit -- like the cosmos were setting things right now, by stealing away everything in him worth saving, worth living for.
He slides, boneless and shivering with a silent, endless grief too deep for words, for tears, sprawled across Len’s torso like a shield, the last protection, the last protest he can offer. His heart slams once, twice, shivers in the aftermath before the chest below him stills, the subtle swell of blood -- of life too fucking willful, too stubborn to flicker and fade -- finally quieting, finally gone.
And Chris doesn’t know what happens next, because it doesn’t matter anyway.
________________________________________
The thing is: sometimes Chris forgets that the man he loves breeds miracles, can make the broken world new. Forgets that it’s not just he and Len against the world, much as it often feels like it; that he has a crew more loyal to him than he can fathom, that can work wonders with enough provocation, defy gravity when the need arises. Forgets that as deep as he loves Leonard McCoy, there’s a man who loves him just as blindly, just a fully -- differently, but just as strong; a man who doesn’t believe in surrender, who doesn’t know how to fail. Sometimes he forgets that even out here in the black, with nothing under your feet and a prayer to keep you afloat, that the impossible sometimes happens -- maybe here more than anywhere else.
He won’t forget again.
Aboard the Enterprise, in a sickbay more familiar to him than it had any right to be, the biobed chirps and hums comfortingly next to him, and Chris has spent enough time in them himself to know that while Len’s not well, won’t be for a while yet, he’s not dead either.
The weight of the realization, the relief crushes harder than the fear of loss had, destroys him more fully, but the difference now as that he gives into it, lets himself crumble and break beneath the pressure, the impact; because he still has Leonard there to keep him together, to gather his pieces and make him new. Always.
He grasps his lover’s hand in his own, kissing the pulse in his wrist like it holds the world inside -- like it holds his own heart, too, and maybe it does -- and he knows, he knows.
The storm he could not stop alone, they’ll weather side by side.
- end -