FIC: Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
Title: Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: R
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me.
Word Count: 5,747
Summary: Joanna needs from answers during family week and it doesn't matter which Kirk they come from.
Notes: Okay, so I changed the series name to the 'Hard-Earned Rights' series. It's just easier that way. There is a planned fic after this one. It all began when Jim was in a shuttle crash and he met a strange girl.
Hard-Earned Rights // Just About Time // The Graceful Waltz // One // The Grave Memorial Of A Life Unlived // Houses & Heartwarmings // Guess Who's Coming To Dinner // Enterprise On My Mind // Your Fate's Not In The Stars // A World of Solemn Thought // Time Can Never Kill The True Heart
They’ve been rearranging cushions, blankets, and pillows for the last hour and every time that they seem to have succeeded in focusing on their task, something interrupts and they’re back to Square One. That or Jim keeps pelting Bones with the pillows and that gets them into a petty argument about who’s more immature before Bones tackles Jim onto one of the makeshift cots and starts kissing him on every available surface of skin.
That takes up about thirty minutes of their time, each time it happens. Jim’s straightening up his shirt as they slowly get back to their feet and rearrange the pillows along with their appearances.
“So, we need...do we need any more?” Three beds are already set up in the room serving as Jim’s living room - and just as he thinks that, he has to correct it and then re-correct himself as he remembers that it’s not theirs, exactly. They’re still not living together because they haven’t exactly reached that point just yet. Jim’s over all the moons in the Milky Way over the fact they’ve hurdled past their issues, but he’s not about to ask for the sun. “One for Sam, one for his wife, one for his kid...”
“And one for Jo, though I think we’ll keep her in my quarters.”
Jim’s world immediately is shaken with the joy of the good news and he levels a look of sheer delight Bones’ way. “Jo’s coming for family week?” He hadn’t known and he wonders how long that’s been kept from him. By the look on Bones’ face, this is a long-time coming kind of surprise and Jim’s elated to hear it. Sure, he’d gotten her pleased reply to Uhura’s memo, but he hasn’t seen her face-to-face since before he’d finally made things stick with her father.
Of course, that also means they’re likely to have to have a talk about exactly what this ‘thing’ is. The problem is, Jim’s not sure he could coherently put it into words if he tried, so he hopes Bones has a script tucked away somewhere with all of Jim’s lines highlighted.
Bones is grinning up at him from where he’s tucking in the sheets to the cot. If it takes a relationship to get Bones to smile like that, well, that’s reason enough for Jim to secure him away forever and a day. He looks five years younger and so good that Jim’s just glad no one else is around to see what’s been hiding under all the grief and grime of the days of McCoy’s past. Jim’s heart beats idiosyncratically and he takes a long moment to absorb a smile like that.
Jim’s mouth feels dry and his tongue feels numb, but he doesn’t need a hypospray to cure this one.
Bones has been talking while Jim’s in this daze and Jim does his best to tune the channel back in so he doesn’t fully miss out on the conversation. “…so I figure we can all sit down and attempt a family dinner, even if your Mom and Joce couldn’t make it.”
“Yeah, anything you want,” Jim easily agrees.
Family dinners ought to scare Jim, but the truth is that he doesn’t face them with trepidation these days. He’s not sixteen anymore. Back then, Sam hadn’t been around and had been spending alternating nights on cold streets and in dirty motels to try and be anywhere but home. Sam remembered their father, which sometimes Jim envied and sometimes Jim was glad it hadn’t been him. Sam actually knew what it was like when George Kirk came home for the day and kissed his wife, laughed with his baby boy, and sang him a song. There weren’t many memories for Sam Kirk to stow away, but there had been enough that when the Kelvin went down and George Kirk with it, a wound had opened that couldn’t be closed for the weight of the memories keeping it wedged open. Sam had avoided Starfleet like the plague and Jim likes to think that maybe he did the same for a while because of his older brother’s influence.
Then Sam had met Laura and his back didn’t know cold concrete for a bed anymore. He took a job as a teacher and called Jim every week to make sure he was alright. Jim had told Bones one night that Sam started that first conversation with fierce apology and a desperate plea for Jim to forgive him.
Jim hadn’t, at first. Jim had been nineteen and was still blaming Frank for his misery, his mother for her neglect, and Sam for his loneliness. Every problem in the world was someone else’s fault and Jim understands that he’d expanded the issues until they were a melodramatic explosion of their original being. And he’s not sixteen anymore and he wants to find that semblance of family and it’s going to be found with his mother and with Frank and with his brother’s family. And it’s going to be with Bones’ family, too.
Some days, Jim wishes that there could be a temporary black hole somewhere on the edge of space that they could come back through. He just wants to meet Bones’ father for one moment, to see the man that had reared such a good Doctor and a great man. He wants to promise that even though Bones can’t save the senior McCoy, he’ll save so many lives in the days to come that it might just balance out on the scales of the universe.
Now, at thirty-one, the thought of a family dinner makes Jim grin a smile as sweet as Georgia Peaches and Apple Pies as he looks fondly at Bones. “You’re cooking, right, honey?”
“I never should have baked for you,” Bones grumbles as he tosses the last pillow Jim’s way. “It’s only been a world of trouble.”
His complaints don’t exactly have a way of stopping him from dragging Jim over to the sparse bed and pinning him to it only to show him the various other talents he possesses besides cooking and baking.
They have to be fast seeing as visitors are starting to trickle aboard and Jim’s insisted that he wants to greet the crew’s family members and meet the men and women who reared his unbeatable crew, his officers who would (and could) do anything. He wants to hear the stories about where they came from and what their childhoods were like. And he wants to hear more stories about Spock’s pet sehlat from Ambassador Sarek because that image is never going to be anything but amazing.
Bones had agreed to that with his howls of laughter for approximately two hours after he had discovered the information. Of course, that time of whimsy and easy laughter had been before Ambassador Spock had shown him…but Jim doesn’t want to focus on that when it’s in the past (and the future).
Bones knows all about their time constraints and somehow seems to find a creative solution by trying to make Jim come from a kiss alone before pushing his fingers down his pants and adding a little tactile pleasure to go along with that. Jim doesn’t know where to focus. He moans and then Bones’ tongue does a tricky little curve and his teeth nip Jim’s lower lip gently. Jim hisses and thrusts his hips forward and he can feel the slide of the calluses on Bones’ fingers brushing against the head of his cock.
The world goes white approximately at the same moment that Jim yelps out ‘Jesus fucking Leonard!’ and apparently that’s enough to get a husky laugh from Bones. It comes from so deep in his throat that for a second, Jim’s cock twitches with envy because it wants to be there and wants to drag forward all those noises and sounds - all dark and dusky groans and growls.
He stumbles back from the straddle he’s in atop Bones and collapses on threadbare sheets, licking his lips and fully aware that his cheek is on Bones’ hip and that he is staring at a very problematic erection.
“Well, hello, sacrum. How are the coccyx and the innominata today?” Jim lazily murmurs before mouthing the fabric of Bones’ pants and exhaling hot breath against what he knows is beneath. He doesn’t intend to even let Bones out of his trousers and his under…
Wait.
Jim’s fingers brush under the fabric of pants in search of the outline of something that ought to be there and yet… “You aren’t wearing underwear today?” Jim asks, eyes wide with consternation. “You bent over on the bridge earlier and you weren’t wearing underwear at all?” It’s a good thing that Jim’s just come because that knowledge alone would have put him at half-tent any other time.
He has to focus. He has a task at hand and he presses his lips back against Bones’ erection and brushes his kiss-swollen pink lips up and down the fabric, finding the head and applying a small suck of pressure through the smooth fabric of uniform pants. It’s an exercise in teasing and Jim can’t help but grin when he can hear Bones’ ragged breath from all the way down here.
Then it’s fumbling fingers and Bones is shoving his pants down. Jim takes a cue easily as anything and takes Bones just deep enough so that when he comes, it’s not in his pants like a teenager. Seeing as Bones loathes the sonic showers and the families are bound to start arriving within the hour, him coming in his pants is probably not the best course of action.
Sure, it’s hot as anything, but not the best course.
Jim swallows and licks his lips as he slowly (bonelessly, he thinks bemusedly) slides off of Bones and sprawls on the base of the bed, grinning up at Bones and brushing his fingers idly against Bones’ inner thighs.
“Last time for a week,” Bones reminds him, seeing as with Sam and his family in Jim’s room and Jo in the other, there’s going to be very little time for stowaway moments of intimacy. Jim pushes himself up on all fours and presses a lengthy kiss to Bones’ lips while letting loose an ambivalent and pleased sound.
It doesn’t really matter so much because they can still share a bed and Jim can go seven days without. “Just means on day eight, there’ll be fireworks,” Jim promises and gives Bones a smack of a kiss to his cheek before he’s up and bounding around the room to get himself presentable for the delegates coming aboard the ship. Bones is tucking the bed back into place while Jim glances at his reflection in the mirror to ensure he doesn’t have that ‘Just-Ravished-By-My-CMO’ look to him. Not that he thinks people can tell that by the way his hair looks, but Uhura just might speak the language of post-coital, so he can’t be too careful.
Bones nods at the door, still fidgeting with the blanket in some misguided and unneeded attempt for everything to be perfect. If Jim didn’t know any better, he’d think that Bones is almost anxious to please Sam Kirk.
“You go on ahead,” Bones insists. “I’ve got a couple things I was going to bring up for Sam’s wife. Vase of flowers, couple toys for the kid, that sort of thing.”
Jim can’t help but grin as he lingers in the doorway. “Bones,” he chides lightly. “Sam can’t make this,” he says and gestures between the two of them, “stop happening. And even if he wants to try, I really don’t think a couple of flowers are going to change that.” Seems, though, that isn’t enough to dissuade Bones from what he’s doing. For some reason, Jim finds that absolutely beyond endearing. He grins warmly at Bones and surges back into the room to press one last long kiss to his lips because he can.
As he drifts back to the door, he grins at Bones and doesn’t even bother to mask the dazed grin on his lips.
“You’re going to be late,” Bones points out as he starts digging through a bag of things they’d picked up on their last shore leave. He’s barely looking at Jim so much as he’s shooting him bemused half-glances, but there’s this fondness to them that makes Jim feel a spark of pleasure in all his joints. Bones may have only ever said it while under the influence of strong drinks, but he doesn’t have to say it.
Looks like that tell Jim that Bones loves him as much as he loves anything in the world.
That thought sends Jim on his way, whistling down the corridors and greeting every ensign and lieutenant that passes with a cheerful wave, salute, and he even stops to ask the majority of them about their day before wishing them well. He sprawls over Scotty’s back when he reaches the transporter room and smiles warmly as he watches families start to come aboard the Enterprise, greeted by their nearest and dearest.
He straightens for Ambassador Sarek and Uhura’s parents because the three of them terrify him the likes of which only monsters on Delta Vega have the ability. “Sirs. Ma’am,” he greets politely with a demure nod. Uhura and Spock lead them away, but he doesn’t miss the mischievous grin on Mrs. Uhura’s face. He also won’t let it go so easily when Nyota tells him later that her mother has something of a crush on him.
Jim is, quite honestly, a little eager to get things with Bones really official. He’s been dying to let it slip in some kind of interview that he is taken (once and for all) so the grabby hands of dissatisfied wives and ambitious girls will stop. He has to be patient, though.
The families come quickly after that. Janice’s sister, Riley’s cousins, mothers and fathers of all nationalities and species. Keenser’s even got some…well, Jim doesn’t exactly know what they are to him and he’d be hard-pressed to actually describe them, so he’s going to leave it at ‘twins’ and move on from there.
Chekov doesn’t waste a moment before he immediately starts babbling excitedly to Sulu’s mother and Chekov’s parents are inquiring as to their son’s health from Sulu.
It takes nearly an hour for the visitors to trickle aboard and be led to their temporary quarters and while Jim has the best of intentions when it comes to greeting them, it starts to wear on him. Rather than standing at attention like he had at the beginning, he’s starting to use the wall to support himself. He’s started to play a guessing game as to who’s coming next and as the light from the transporter fades, he knows he’s lost this round of the game, but he can’t find it in him to be upset.
“Jim!” she announces excitedly, her eyes lit up like somehow he of all people is the entire world. She drops that ratty and torn knapsack of hers to the ground and nearly leaps off the pad and into his arms for a hug. The shyness and reserve she first exhibited is gone now and she’s laughing warmly as he spins her. “Did you know I was coming?” she asks as he sets her on the ground and she pushes her hair out of her face, staring up at him eagerly. “We wanted to surprise you.”
“Your Dad fessed up,” Jim admits, crouching over to pick up her bag and hand it to her. “You keep this thing?”
“I wanted to remember something about the crash.”
“And contusions weren’t good enough?” Jim asks dubiously.
“It’s where we met,” she says, suddenly that serious girl again, and leans against him as he drapes an arm over her shoulders. She retaliates with an arm snuck around his waist and they stay like that until the very last of the passengers are beamed aboard.
Jim smiles fondly, even if memories from the past are trying to dredge themselves out of buried trenches in order to open old wounds.
“Sam,” Jim greets him warmly when the last of the lights fade away. “Your wife’s hot as ever. Seriously, how the hell did you manage that?”
“Same deal with the devil you made to get a ship this nice, Jimmy,” Sam promises. “Sorry Trent couldn’t make it. Home with the pox, Mom’s taking care of him.” He clambers down the steps and draws Jim into a tight hug, taking him away from Joanna. Joanna drifts to the side and when no one’s looking, disappears down the halls to find her father - or so Jim assumes, or else he’s in for an earful later on.
Jim’s too busy dealing with a brother he hasn’t seen in person for almost two years now. “Thank you for coming,” he says seriously, voice sounding dangerously hoarse with emotion.
“You’re in a serious relationship for the first time in your life?” Sam points out with a wry grin. “I had to see this one to believe it. Mom doesn’t have pictorial proof and I don’t believe it until my eyes see it.”
“Bones is anxious to meet you,” Jim promises, stepping past Sam to embrace Laura. “I think he’s picked you a field’s worth of flowers,” he informs her, hugging her just as tight. “Thank you for coming. And tell Trent that we missed having him here, will you?”
“He’s fussing that he didn’t get to come up,” Laura assures. “We’ll try and make sure he doesn’t stay too jealous of us. I’m thinking some vids and letters from his favorite uncle will do.”
Jim doesn’t point out that he’s the only uncle because his ego is still preening from being someone’s favorite something. “Come on, I’ve got beds ready for you and there’s a lot to talk about,” he says eagerly. “Bones is cooking dinner, so we’ll have plenty of time.” He’s already moving down the halls on the well-weathered paths that he’s taken so many times before. This time, he’s consciously aware of the fact that he’s taking his brother and showing off a home that isn’t decorated with bruises or breaks, where each door isn’t adorned with emotional anguish and physical pain.
Jim’s made himself a home here that is safe. He intends to keep it that way.
*
Dinner goes well and all parties at the table seem more than satisfied with the meal. No one’s been injured, no one’s had an allergic reaction - which apparently is a Kirk thing and not just a Jim thing - and everyone’s laughed at stories told of embarrassing childhoods - somehow, and Joanna thinks it’s unfair, hers has been the focus of the evening.
Jim, McCoy, and Laura Kirk have gone to procure the dessert for the evening and a bottle of Saurian brandy owed to them from Engineering and this has left Joanna and Sam Kirk to clear and re-set the table together.
“I’m sorry my boy wasn’t able to come,” Sam offers as he hands Joanna cutlery and they got the table ready for dessert. “He’s just a little younger than you. Ten years old, though sometimes Laura says that he’s earned his Uncle Jim’s hellraising talents through some hidden Kirk gene.”
Joanna listens carefully as she straightens each piece of cutlery, needing them to be perfectly aligned to her standards. “I’ll get to meet him at some point, right?” she asks quietly, some shyness still lingering around the edges when it comes to strangers, even though the two of them have suddenly been thrust together in this strange new family. “I mean, assuming my Dad and your brother still...” She makes a light gesture to imply ‘together’ and glances up as she offers a faint smile. Sam has the same color eyes as Jim, but his hair is curled and he wears thick-rimmed glasses. He dresses like a father and Joanna wonders, briefly, if that’s what Jim will look like after ten years of acting like a step-father to her. “But I’d like to meet him.”
“We’d like the same,” Sam insists, handing her the folded napkins and twitching miniature-swan-like-napkins at her with a teasing grin on his face. “I’ve heard about you, you know. Jim sent messages home to keep in contact and your name keeps coming up lately. Apparently you saved my baby brother’s life?”
Joanna glances down at the table as she skirts around it, smoothing out her hand on her denim skirt. “Dad taught me how to help people. I didn’t exactly know who he was, so I just...helped,” she offers simply and looks up again, letting out a nervous laugh when she finds Sam staring at her. “What?” she asks, brushing her hair back over her shoulder - a nervous tic she can’t quite shake.
“Nothing,” Sam admits, grinning right back at her. “I’m just imagining my little brother being your stepfather. I left home ...” He pauses, his smile falling away as grief slowly seeps in like the ebb of the tide. “I left home when I was really young because I thought there was a life out there for me beyond the one I had. There was one. It just wasn’t a very good life for the first bit of it. Eventually, I found what I was looking for, but it was hard for a while and it was hard on Jim because he was alone with our stepfather when Mom was up in the black.”
Joanna clenches the napkin in her hand tighter and it unravels the intricate design that Sam had worked so hard on.
“I’m not going to give him a hard time,” Joanna promises as earnestly as she can, her forehead knit with a furrow and the look on her face mirroring that of her father. “And I know it was a long time ago, but...I’m still sorry that you had to go through that.” She sets the napkin down on the table. “Can you teach me the trick with the swan?”
“Sure,” Sam agrees and drifts to her side before he’s even finished saying it. His hands are nimble and quick, as fast as Jack with the candlestick and it isn’t long before he’s regaling Joanna in stories of Jim from when he was just a little child and had a penchant for smearing anything he could on his face. Joanna laughs easily and the grief of the passing moments dissipates as quickly as the smoke from a candle just put-out.
She makes an effort to quell her laughter until it’s soft and presses the back of her hand to her lips to stop the snorts coming from her mouth. “You think this is going to last forever?”
“They haven’t sat you down yet for that talk?”
“I’m fourteen, it’s not like I need the talk,” Joanna points out. “And no. They haven’t. They set aside some time tomorrow for dinner for just the three of us, so I’m preparing for the big discussion.
Sam offers her a sympathetic look as he tops up the last of the glasses with water and he slides back into his seat. Joanna follows suit and they’re sitting at two spots at an otherwise empty table and Joanna still doesn’t feel comfortable enough to share things about herself or to talk about what her mother’s been doing. She doesn’t know exactly if she’s supposed to start opening up or whether she should be wary. When she’d asked her mother for advice before she had left, her mother had been taken gently by the shoulders and said, ‘This is a new start to your Dad’s life. Just treat the situation with respect,’ firmly.
She thinks that respect in this situation goes as far as being polite at dinner and minding her manners. She’s not sure if it extends to asking questions of her father’s new beau’s brother. Except that this is probably the only opportunity she’ll have.
“Jim was in the news a lot after the Narada,” she starts with a goal in mind, analytical blue eyes tracked on Sam. “And the magazines picked up on the incident too. He had an interview with one of the more respected magazines and he admitted to ‘tomcatting’ around the Academy a lot,” she continues, watching Sam wince heavily. She’s not blaming him for it, but she wants to know. “I need to know that my Dad isn’t a conquest for him like the Kobiyashi Maru or the Enterprise or escaping from home or those girls and guys.” Though her family might be expanding, she really only has her parents at the end of the day. They had spent so long not knowing how to function that they had put themselves through hell only to barely surface on the other side. “My Dad had his heart broken once and he nearly didn’t come out that intact.” She sets her jaw tightly, even as hot tears prickle at her eyes at even the hypothetical thought. “What do you think it would do to him if it happened again?”
Sam lets out a wary laugh. “Joanna, if I had the answers for my brother, I would have told Mom how to solve him when he was sixteen,” he admits. “But if you’re asking me whether I think he’s going to screw this up, then I say no. I say no because he worked hard for the things you mentioned, but he never got bored with them after. I mean, even those girls and guys. Some of them are logically here on this ship, right? So whatever he did with them, they’re able to work together.”
She nods, though she doesn’t exactly stop to mentally picture any of it.
“Besides, if he does something stupid, I’ll be here first thing to knock sense into him. And I mean something big. Humans, we just screw up sometimes,” Sam admits. “I did when I was a kid and so did Jim and I bet you have and sure, your Dad too.”
Joanna keeps quiet because she knows that’s true in more ways than Sam Kirk probably understands. There’s a grandfather she’s never met and whenever she brings him up, her mother and father exchange an awkward look and the subject moves on. She thinks something must have happened, something bad.
She nods and brushes at her eyes, even though she hasn’t shed any tears. “I just want him to be happy.”
“I think Jim does, too.”
And that’s good because Joanna likes Jim, she does. She likes his spirit and bravery and the way he makes her laugh. He likes that he’ll play any game with her and pretends to lose because she’s better than him. She loves the way he makes her father light up and she positively adores the fact that he’s so stubborn and stupid and headstrong because it means that if any harm ever stumbles her father’s way, he’s going to be first in line to make sure that Leonard McCoy gets out okay.
The door slides open as Joanna is patting down her cheeks with her napkin.
“We’ve got brandy!” Jim announces, shooting Joanna an awkward and slightly embarrassed look. “Er…for the adults.”
She feels her father’s warm hands slide over her and he hugs her from behind, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You okay?” he whispers quietly, concern greatly evident in his tone. Her eyes must look red or her cheeks must flush pink or maybe he just has his father-sense on high and knows that something is wrong. She tips her head back up to him and nods, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Jo…”
“Dad,” she protests weakly. “I’m fine. Really,” she insists. “Sam and I were just talking. It’s okay,” she promises.
“Okay.” He trusts her and lets his protective grip slide away as he resumes his place at the head of the table, stopping only the once to press an absentminded kiss to Jim’s lips before doling out too-generous portions of a peach cheesecake that Joanna recognizes from her childhood.
Somehow, it’s the perfect end to the night.
*
Joanna has been watching both McCoy and Jim with wary eyes while they buzzed around her like she’s the eye of the storm. She’s been sitting patiently on the couch since dinner had been cleared away and watches with thinly veiled bemusement as the two of them swirl around each other like the minute and second hands of a clock - occasionally meeting, but twirling around the other more often than not and working off of one constant base.
She can sense in the air that The Talk is coming.
She’s beginning to think that she’s going to be the one that bites the bullet and invite them to sit down so they can have a serious conversation about things. Jim’s all anxious glances and her father won’t even look her way, which is the biggest indicator that something big is about to go down. Leonard McCoy could face the end of the world and glare it into submission and he’s too afraid to look at his little girl - even if she’d argue that she isn’t so little anymore.
Twenty more minutes pass and Joanna sighs heavily. It’s the only outward indication of her frustration, but it brings both men down on her in an instant.
“What? What is it?” Jim’s crowing with sudden worry. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m here for five more days,” Joanna says patiently, reclining back into the heavy pillows of the couch. “Can we please have the talk now so I’m not on edge for the rest of the time?” Her eyes bug out slightly as if she’s trying to get across how important it is that they deal with this, if only for her sanity. Her words take an edge off Jim, who just laughs slightly, but her Dad looks concerned as he sits down beside her.
He looks up at Jim. “I didn’t really think we needed a talk. I mean, you clearly know that your mother and I have moved on being as she remarried,” he points out.
“You moved on with a guy, Dad.”
“A guy you were slightly manipulating me into being with, Joanna,” he mimics her speech-pattern and even the ‘oh, please’ expression she’s giving him.
Jim’s hovering around the both of them with as much energy as hummingbirds can ever hope to have. Joanna pats the couch beside her and he sinks down into it, making it so that one of them is flanking each side. She’s protected by them, safely encased, and she doesn’t need a talk for this to work so much as she needs answers.
“Dad,” she says sternly. “Jim.” She looks his way, levelling the same stern look upon that otherwise-innocent face. “Jim, promise me that this isn’t a flash in the pan and Dad?” she continues, turning his way. “Promise me that you won’t keep me out of your life even though you’re a thousand-million lightyears away,” she says, not even caring about her exaggeration. “Is this…is this for good?”
She watches them both carefully and doesn’t miss the fact that her father glances warily to Jim and pointedly doesn’t answer. So she takes his cue and looks at Jim, searching his face for tics or markers or anything that might show that he’s lying when he inevitably gives his response.
Jim shifts and smiles gently at Joanna. “I’ve screwed up a lot in the past. And screwed a lot, sure,” he admits, earning himself a warning growl from over Joanna’s shoulder. “But…that life led me nowhere. It meant that at the end of a five-year mission, my best friend hadn’t cared to introduce me to his daughter because I was just the guy who slept and ran,” he points out. “I knew you in the abstract, just like I knew everyone’s lives in the abstract. They were too worried to let me in because I was that guy. I don’t want to be that guy, Jo,” he says, forehead furrowed and a disbelieving sound stuck in his throat. “I want to be the guy that your Dad loves,” he says, almost like he isn’t sure of what he’s saying. “I want to be there at your wedding because honestly, you are so incredibly hot from your McCoy and Darnell genetics that you’ll pull all the guys and girls you’ll want and get your pick of them. And I’m going to dance with them and be incredibly gorgeous myself,” Jim says with a preening grin. “And when your Dad is grumpy and sixty and grey and…” Something he must have been about to say catches McCoy’s attention and Jim suddenly shuts up.
It’s suspicious, but Joanna saves that for later.
“…well, I want to be the guy in your Dad’s life when he’s that old and cantankerous because the kids on the lawn are going to need someone to calm him down. And I’m good for his blood pressure,” Jim jokes. “I know, I know how I used to be, Jo, I know that. You have to give me a chance to screw up. I might, I can’t predict the future, but I have to get the chance.”
It’s an impassioned argument and Joanna looks at him for a long moment before she contorts her body to clamber into his personal space and hug him tightly, burying her face in his neck. They’ve come a long way since that desert in New Mexico and she holds on as if he’s died on her again and this is the only way to bring him back.
She eases back and wipes away at the tears that have fallen down her cheeks, laughing when Jim brushes them away with steady hands and she feels her Dad hugging her tightly from behind.
“So you’re my family,” Joanna admits what all this means and she beams at Jim, feeling like she’s gotten the answer that she needs to hear. Maybe it’s not what she wanted to hear, but it’s put her at ease. “Jim,” she breathes his name out, but it doesn’t sound like all the other times.
It sounds, just faintly, like Dad.
Her father hugs her tighter at that and presses a kiss to her messy brown hair. She closes her eyes and imagines the future that Jim’s talked about. They’ll get there. She’s just not in a rush just yet.
THE END
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: R
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me.
Word Count: 5,747
Summary: Joanna needs from answers during family week and it doesn't matter which Kirk they come from.
Notes: Okay, so I changed the series name to the 'Hard-Earned Rights' series. It's just easier that way. There is a planned fic after this one. It all began when Jim was in a shuttle crash and he met a strange girl.
Hard-Earned Rights // Just About Time // The Graceful Waltz // One // The Grave Memorial Of A Life Unlived // Houses & Heartwarmings // Guess Who's Coming To Dinner // Enterprise On My Mind // Your Fate's Not In The Stars // A World of Solemn Thought // Time Can Never Kill The True Heart
They’ve been rearranging cushions, blankets, and pillows for the last hour and every time that they seem to have succeeded in focusing on their task, something interrupts and they’re back to Square One. That or Jim keeps pelting Bones with the pillows and that gets them into a petty argument about who’s more immature before Bones tackles Jim onto one of the makeshift cots and starts kissing him on every available surface of skin.
That takes up about thirty minutes of their time, each time it happens. Jim’s straightening up his shirt as they slowly get back to their feet and rearrange the pillows along with their appearances.
“So, we need...do we need any more?” Three beds are already set up in the room serving as Jim’s living room - and just as he thinks that, he has to correct it and then re-correct himself as he remembers that it’s not theirs, exactly. They’re still not living together because they haven’t exactly reached that point just yet. Jim’s over all the moons in the Milky Way over the fact they’ve hurdled past their issues, but he’s not about to ask for the sun. “One for Sam, one for his wife, one for his kid...”
“And one for Jo, though I think we’ll keep her in my quarters.”
Jim’s world immediately is shaken with the joy of the good news and he levels a look of sheer delight Bones’ way. “Jo’s coming for family week?” He hadn’t known and he wonders how long that’s been kept from him. By the look on Bones’ face, this is a long-time coming kind of surprise and Jim’s elated to hear it. Sure, he’d gotten her pleased reply to Uhura’s memo, but he hasn’t seen her face-to-face since before he’d finally made things stick with her father.
Of course, that also means they’re likely to have to have a talk about exactly what this ‘thing’ is. The problem is, Jim’s not sure he could coherently put it into words if he tried, so he hopes Bones has a script tucked away somewhere with all of Jim’s lines highlighted.
Bones is grinning up at him from where he’s tucking in the sheets to the cot. If it takes a relationship to get Bones to smile like that, well, that’s reason enough for Jim to secure him away forever and a day. He looks five years younger and so good that Jim’s just glad no one else is around to see what’s been hiding under all the grief and grime of the days of McCoy’s past. Jim’s heart beats idiosyncratically and he takes a long moment to absorb a smile like that.
Jim’s mouth feels dry and his tongue feels numb, but he doesn’t need a hypospray to cure this one.
Bones has been talking while Jim’s in this daze and Jim does his best to tune the channel back in so he doesn’t fully miss out on the conversation. “…so I figure we can all sit down and attempt a family dinner, even if your Mom and Joce couldn’t make it.”
“Yeah, anything you want,” Jim easily agrees.
Family dinners ought to scare Jim, but the truth is that he doesn’t face them with trepidation these days. He’s not sixteen anymore. Back then, Sam hadn’t been around and had been spending alternating nights on cold streets and in dirty motels to try and be anywhere but home. Sam remembered their father, which sometimes Jim envied and sometimes Jim was glad it hadn’t been him. Sam actually knew what it was like when George Kirk came home for the day and kissed his wife, laughed with his baby boy, and sang him a song. There weren’t many memories for Sam Kirk to stow away, but there had been enough that when the Kelvin went down and George Kirk with it, a wound had opened that couldn’t be closed for the weight of the memories keeping it wedged open. Sam had avoided Starfleet like the plague and Jim likes to think that maybe he did the same for a while because of his older brother’s influence.
Then Sam had met Laura and his back didn’t know cold concrete for a bed anymore. He took a job as a teacher and called Jim every week to make sure he was alright. Jim had told Bones one night that Sam started that first conversation with fierce apology and a desperate plea for Jim to forgive him.
Jim hadn’t, at first. Jim had been nineteen and was still blaming Frank for his misery, his mother for her neglect, and Sam for his loneliness. Every problem in the world was someone else’s fault and Jim understands that he’d expanded the issues until they were a melodramatic explosion of their original being. And he’s not sixteen anymore and he wants to find that semblance of family and it’s going to be found with his mother and with Frank and with his brother’s family. And it’s going to be with Bones’ family, too.
Some days, Jim wishes that there could be a temporary black hole somewhere on the edge of space that they could come back through. He just wants to meet Bones’ father for one moment, to see the man that had reared such a good Doctor and a great man. He wants to promise that even though Bones can’t save the senior McCoy, he’ll save so many lives in the days to come that it might just balance out on the scales of the universe.
Now, at thirty-one, the thought of a family dinner makes Jim grin a smile as sweet as Georgia Peaches and Apple Pies as he looks fondly at Bones. “You’re cooking, right, honey?”
“I never should have baked for you,” Bones grumbles as he tosses the last pillow Jim’s way. “It’s only been a world of trouble.”
His complaints don’t exactly have a way of stopping him from dragging Jim over to the sparse bed and pinning him to it only to show him the various other talents he possesses besides cooking and baking.
They have to be fast seeing as visitors are starting to trickle aboard and Jim’s insisted that he wants to greet the crew’s family members and meet the men and women who reared his unbeatable crew, his officers who would (and could) do anything. He wants to hear the stories about where they came from and what their childhoods were like. And he wants to hear more stories about Spock’s pet sehlat from Ambassador Sarek because that image is never going to be anything but amazing.
Bones had agreed to that with his howls of laughter for approximately two hours after he had discovered the information. Of course, that time of whimsy and easy laughter had been before Ambassador Spock had shown him…but Jim doesn’t want to focus on that when it’s in the past (and the future).
Bones knows all about their time constraints and somehow seems to find a creative solution by trying to make Jim come from a kiss alone before pushing his fingers down his pants and adding a little tactile pleasure to go along with that. Jim doesn’t know where to focus. He moans and then Bones’ tongue does a tricky little curve and his teeth nip Jim’s lower lip gently. Jim hisses and thrusts his hips forward and he can feel the slide of the calluses on Bones’ fingers brushing against the head of his cock.
The world goes white approximately at the same moment that Jim yelps out ‘Jesus fucking Leonard!’ and apparently that’s enough to get a husky laugh from Bones. It comes from so deep in his throat that for a second, Jim’s cock twitches with envy because it wants to be there and wants to drag forward all those noises and sounds - all dark and dusky groans and growls.
He stumbles back from the straddle he’s in atop Bones and collapses on threadbare sheets, licking his lips and fully aware that his cheek is on Bones’ hip and that he is staring at a very problematic erection.
“Well, hello, sacrum. How are the coccyx and the innominata today?” Jim lazily murmurs before mouthing the fabric of Bones’ pants and exhaling hot breath against what he knows is beneath. He doesn’t intend to even let Bones out of his trousers and his under…
Wait.
Jim’s fingers brush under the fabric of pants in search of the outline of something that ought to be there and yet… “You aren’t wearing underwear today?” Jim asks, eyes wide with consternation. “You bent over on the bridge earlier and you weren’t wearing underwear at all?” It’s a good thing that Jim’s just come because that knowledge alone would have put him at half-tent any other time.
He has to focus. He has a task at hand and he presses his lips back against Bones’ erection and brushes his kiss-swollen pink lips up and down the fabric, finding the head and applying a small suck of pressure through the smooth fabric of uniform pants. It’s an exercise in teasing and Jim can’t help but grin when he can hear Bones’ ragged breath from all the way down here.
Then it’s fumbling fingers and Bones is shoving his pants down. Jim takes a cue easily as anything and takes Bones just deep enough so that when he comes, it’s not in his pants like a teenager. Seeing as Bones loathes the sonic showers and the families are bound to start arriving within the hour, him coming in his pants is probably not the best course of action.
Sure, it’s hot as anything, but not the best course.
Jim swallows and licks his lips as he slowly (bonelessly, he thinks bemusedly) slides off of Bones and sprawls on the base of the bed, grinning up at Bones and brushing his fingers idly against Bones’ inner thighs.
“Last time for a week,” Bones reminds him, seeing as with Sam and his family in Jim’s room and Jo in the other, there’s going to be very little time for stowaway moments of intimacy. Jim pushes himself up on all fours and presses a lengthy kiss to Bones’ lips while letting loose an ambivalent and pleased sound.
It doesn’t really matter so much because they can still share a bed and Jim can go seven days without. “Just means on day eight, there’ll be fireworks,” Jim promises and gives Bones a smack of a kiss to his cheek before he’s up and bounding around the room to get himself presentable for the delegates coming aboard the ship. Bones is tucking the bed back into place while Jim glances at his reflection in the mirror to ensure he doesn’t have that ‘Just-Ravished-By-My-CMO’ look to him. Not that he thinks people can tell that by the way his hair looks, but Uhura just might speak the language of post-coital, so he can’t be too careful.
Bones nods at the door, still fidgeting with the blanket in some misguided and unneeded attempt for everything to be perfect. If Jim didn’t know any better, he’d think that Bones is almost anxious to please Sam Kirk.
“You go on ahead,” Bones insists. “I’ve got a couple things I was going to bring up for Sam’s wife. Vase of flowers, couple toys for the kid, that sort of thing.”
Jim can’t help but grin as he lingers in the doorway. “Bones,” he chides lightly. “Sam can’t make this,” he says and gestures between the two of them, “stop happening. And even if he wants to try, I really don’t think a couple of flowers are going to change that.” Seems, though, that isn’t enough to dissuade Bones from what he’s doing. For some reason, Jim finds that absolutely beyond endearing. He grins warmly at Bones and surges back into the room to press one last long kiss to his lips because he can.
As he drifts back to the door, he grins at Bones and doesn’t even bother to mask the dazed grin on his lips.
“You’re going to be late,” Bones points out as he starts digging through a bag of things they’d picked up on their last shore leave. He’s barely looking at Jim so much as he’s shooting him bemused half-glances, but there’s this fondness to them that makes Jim feel a spark of pleasure in all his joints. Bones may have only ever said it while under the influence of strong drinks, but he doesn’t have to say it.
Looks like that tell Jim that Bones loves him as much as he loves anything in the world.
That thought sends Jim on his way, whistling down the corridors and greeting every ensign and lieutenant that passes with a cheerful wave, salute, and he even stops to ask the majority of them about their day before wishing them well. He sprawls over Scotty’s back when he reaches the transporter room and smiles warmly as he watches families start to come aboard the Enterprise, greeted by their nearest and dearest.
He straightens for Ambassador Sarek and Uhura’s parents because the three of them terrify him the likes of which only monsters on Delta Vega have the ability. “Sirs. Ma’am,” he greets politely with a demure nod. Uhura and Spock lead them away, but he doesn’t miss the mischievous grin on Mrs. Uhura’s face. He also won’t let it go so easily when Nyota tells him later that her mother has something of a crush on him.
Jim is, quite honestly, a little eager to get things with Bones really official. He’s been dying to let it slip in some kind of interview that he is taken (once and for all) so the grabby hands of dissatisfied wives and ambitious girls will stop. He has to be patient, though.
The families come quickly after that. Janice’s sister, Riley’s cousins, mothers and fathers of all nationalities and species. Keenser’s even got some…well, Jim doesn’t exactly know what they are to him and he’d be hard-pressed to actually describe them, so he’s going to leave it at ‘twins’ and move on from there.
Chekov doesn’t waste a moment before he immediately starts babbling excitedly to Sulu’s mother and Chekov’s parents are inquiring as to their son’s health from Sulu.
It takes nearly an hour for the visitors to trickle aboard and be led to their temporary quarters and while Jim has the best of intentions when it comes to greeting them, it starts to wear on him. Rather than standing at attention like he had at the beginning, he’s starting to use the wall to support himself. He’s started to play a guessing game as to who’s coming next and as the light from the transporter fades, he knows he’s lost this round of the game, but he can’t find it in him to be upset.
“Jim!” she announces excitedly, her eyes lit up like somehow he of all people is the entire world. She drops that ratty and torn knapsack of hers to the ground and nearly leaps off the pad and into his arms for a hug. The shyness and reserve she first exhibited is gone now and she’s laughing warmly as he spins her. “Did you know I was coming?” she asks as he sets her on the ground and she pushes her hair out of her face, staring up at him eagerly. “We wanted to surprise you.”
“Your Dad fessed up,” Jim admits, crouching over to pick up her bag and hand it to her. “You keep this thing?”
“I wanted to remember something about the crash.”
“And contusions weren’t good enough?” Jim asks dubiously.
“It’s where we met,” she says, suddenly that serious girl again, and leans against him as he drapes an arm over her shoulders. She retaliates with an arm snuck around his waist and they stay like that until the very last of the passengers are beamed aboard.
Jim smiles fondly, even if memories from the past are trying to dredge themselves out of buried trenches in order to open old wounds.
“Sam,” Jim greets him warmly when the last of the lights fade away. “Your wife’s hot as ever. Seriously, how the hell did you manage that?”
“Same deal with the devil you made to get a ship this nice, Jimmy,” Sam promises. “Sorry Trent couldn’t make it. Home with the pox, Mom’s taking care of him.” He clambers down the steps and draws Jim into a tight hug, taking him away from Joanna. Joanna drifts to the side and when no one’s looking, disappears down the halls to find her father - or so Jim assumes, or else he’s in for an earful later on.
Jim’s too busy dealing with a brother he hasn’t seen in person for almost two years now. “Thank you for coming,” he says seriously, voice sounding dangerously hoarse with emotion.
“You’re in a serious relationship for the first time in your life?” Sam points out with a wry grin. “I had to see this one to believe it. Mom doesn’t have pictorial proof and I don’t believe it until my eyes see it.”
“Bones is anxious to meet you,” Jim promises, stepping past Sam to embrace Laura. “I think he’s picked you a field’s worth of flowers,” he informs her, hugging her just as tight. “Thank you for coming. And tell Trent that we missed having him here, will you?”
“He’s fussing that he didn’t get to come up,” Laura assures. “We’ll try and make sure he doesn’t stay too jealous of us. I’m thinking some vids and letters from his favorite uncle will do.”
Jim doesn’t point out that he’s the only uncle because his ego is still preening from being someone’s favorite something. “Come on, I’ve got beds ready for you and there’s a lot to talk about,” he says eagerly. “Bones is cooking dinner, so we’ll have plenty of time.” He’s already moving down the halls on the well-weathered paths that he’s taken so many times before. This time, he’s consciously aware of the fact that he’s taking his brother and showing off a home that isn’t decorated with bruises or breaks, where each door isn’t adorned with emotional anguish and physical pain.
Jim’s made himself a home here that is safe. He intends to keep it that way.
*
Dinner goes well and all parties at the table seem more than satisfied with the meal. No one’s been injured, no one’s had an allergic reaction - which apparently is a Kirk thing and not just a Jim thing - and everyone’s laughed at stories told of embarrassing childhoods - somehow, and Joanna thinks it’s unfair, hers has been the focus of the evening.
Jim, McCoy, and Laura Kirk have gone to procure the dessert for the evening and a bottle of Saurian brandy owed to them from Engineering and this has left Joanna and Sam Kirk to clear and re-set the table together.
“I’m sorry my boy wasn’t able to come,” Sam offers as he hands Joanna cutlery and they got the table ready for dessert. “He’s just a little younger than you. Ten years old, though sometimes Laura says that he’s earned his Uncle Jim’s hellraising talents through some hidden Kirk gene.”
Joanna listens carefully as she straightens each piece of cutlery, needing them to be perfectly aligned to her standards. “I’ll get to meet him at some point, right?” she asks quietly, some shyness still lingering around the edges when it comes to strangers, even though the two of them have suddenly been thrust together in this strange new family. “I mean, assuming my Dad and your brother still...” She makes a light gesture to imply ‘together’ and glances up as she offers a faint smile. Sam has the same color eyes as Jim, but his hair is curled and he wears thick-rimmed glasses. He dresses like a father and Joanna wonders, briefly, if that’s what Jim will look like after ten years of acting like a step-father to her. “But I’d like to meet him.”
“We’d like the same,” Sam insists, handing her the folded napkins and twitching miniature-swan-like-napkins at her with a teasing grin on his face. “I’ve heard about you, you know. Jim sent messages home to keep in contact and your name keeps coming up lately. Apparently you saved my baby brother’s life?”
Joanna glances down at the table as she skirts around it, smoothing out her hand on her denim skirt. “Dad taught me how to help people. I didn’t exactly know who he was, so I just...helped,” she offers simply and looks up again, letting out a nervous laugh when she finds Sam staring at her. “What?” she asks, brushing her hair back over her shoulder - a nervous tic she can’t quite shake.
“Nothing,” Sam admits, grinning right back at her. “I’m just imagining my little brother being your stepfather. I left home ...” He pauses, his smile falling away as grief slowly seeps in like the ebb of the tide. “I left home when I was really young because I thought there was a life out there for me beyond the one I had. There was one. It just wasn’t a very good life for the first bit of it. Eventually, I found what I was looking for, but it was hard for a while and it was hard on Jim because he was alone with our stepfather when Mom was up in the black.”
Joanna clenches the napkin in her hand tighter and it unravels the intricate design that Sam had worked so hard on.
“I’m not going to give him a hard time,” Joanna promises as earnestly as she can, her forehead knit with a furrow and the look on her face mirroring that of her father. “And I know it was a long time ago, but...I’m still sorry that you had to go through that.” She sets the napkin down on the table. “Can you teach me the trick with the swan?”
“Sure,” Sam agrees and drifts to her side before he’s even finished saying it. His hands are nimble and quick, as fast as Jack with the candlestick and it isn’t long before he’s regaling Joanna in stories of Jim from when he was just a little child and had a penchant for smearing anything he could on his face. Joanna laughs easily and the grief of the passing moments dissipates as quickly as the smoke from a candle just put-out.
She makes an effort to quell her laughter until it’s soft and presses the back of her hand to her lips to stop the snorts coming from her mouth. “You think this is going to last forever?”
“They haven’t sat you down yet for that talk?”
“I’m fourteen, it’s not like I need the talk,” Joanna points out. “And no. They haven’t. They set aside some time tomorrow for dinner for just the three of us, so I’m preparing for the big discussion.
Sam offers her a sympathetic look as he tops up the last of the glasses with water and he slides back into his seat. Joanna follows suit and they’re sitting at two spots at an otherwise empty table and Joanna still doesn’t feel comfortable enough to share things about herself or to talk about what her mother’s been doing. She doesn’t know exactly if she’s supposed to start opening up or whether she should be wary. When she’d asked her mother for advice before she had left, her mother had been taken gently by the shoulders and said, ‘This is a new start to your Dad’s life. Just treat the situation with respect,’ firmly.
She thinks that respect in this situation goes as far as being polite at dinner and minding her manners. She’s not sure if it extends to asking questions of her father’s new beau’s brother. Except that this is probably the only opportunity she’ll have.
“Jim was in the news a lot after the Narada,” she starts with a goal in mind, analytical blue eyes tracked on Sam. “And the magazines picked up on the incident too. He had an interview with one of the more respected magazines and he admitted to ‘tomcatting’ around the Academy a lot,” she continues, watching Sam wince heavily. She’s not blaming him for it, but she wants to know. “I need to know that my Dad isn’t a conquest for him like the Kobiyashi Maru or the Enterprise or escaping from home or those girls and guys.” Though her family might be expanding, she really only has her parents at the end of the day. They had spent so long not knowing how to function that they had put themselves through hell only to barely surface on the other side. “My Dad had his heart broken once and he nearly didn’t come out that intact.” She sets her jaw tightly, even as hot tears prickle at her eyes at even the hypothetical thought. “What do you think it would do to him if it happened again?”
Sam lets out a wary laugh. “Joanna, if I had the answers for my brother, I would have told Mom how to solve him when he was sixteen,” he admits. “But if you’re asking me whether I think he’s going to screw this up, then I say no. I say no because he worked hard for the things you mentioned, but he never got bored with them after. I mean, even those girls and guys. Some of them are logically here on this ship, right? So whatever he did with them, they’re able to work together.”
She nods, though she doesn’t exactly stop to mentally picture any of it.
“Besides, if he does something stupid, I’ll be here first thing to knock sense into him. And I mean something big. Humans, we just screw up sometimes,” Sam admits. “I did when I was a kid and so did Jim and I bet you have and sure, your Dad too.”
Joanna keeps quiet because she knows that’s true in more ways than Sam Kirk probably understands. There’s a grandfather she’s never met and whenever she brings him up, her mother and father exchange an awkward look and the subject moves on. She thinks something must have happened, something bad.
She nods and brushes at her eyes, even though she hasn’t shed any tears. “I just want him to be happy.”
“I think Jim does, too.”
And that’s good because Joanna likes Jim, she does. She likes his spirit and bravery and the way he makes her laugh. He likes that he’ll play any game with her and pretends to lose because she’s better than him. She loves the way he makes her father light up and she positively adores the fact that he’s so stubborn and stupid and headstrong because it means that if any harm ever stumbles her father’s way, he’s going to be first in line to make sure that Leonard McCoy gets out okay.
The door slides open as Joanna is patting down her cheeks with her napkin.
“We’ve got brandy!” Jim announces, shooting Joanna an awkward and slightly embarrassed look. “Er…for the adults.”
She feels her father’s warm hands slide over her and he hugs her from behind, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You okay?” he whispers quietly, concern greatly evident in his tone. Her eyes must look red or her cheeks must flush pink or maybe he just has his father-sense on high and knows that something is wrong. She tips her head back up to him and nods, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Jo…”
“Dad,” she protests weakly. “I’m fine. Really,” she insists. “Sam and I were just talking. It’s okay,” she promises.
“Okay.” He trusts her and lets his protective grip slide away as he resumes his place at the head of the table, stopping only the once to press an absentminded kiss to Jim’s lips before doling out too-generous portions of a peach cheesecake that Joanna recognizes from her childhood.
Somehow, it’s the perfect end to the night.
*
Joanna has been watching both McCoy and Jim with wary eyes while they buzzed around her like she’s the eye of the storm. She’s been sitting patiently on the couch since dinner had been cleared away and watches with thinly veiled bemusement as the two of them swirl around each other like the minute and second hands of a clock - occasionally meeting, but twirling around the other more often than not and working off of one constant base.
She can sense in the air that The Talk is coming.
She’s beginning to think that she’s going to be the one that bites the bullet and invite them to sit down so they can have a serious conversation about things. Jim’s all anxious glances and her father won’t even look her way, which is the biggest indicator that something big is about to go down. Leonard McCoy could face the end of the world and glare it into submission and he’s too afraid to look at his little girl - even if she’d argue that she isn’t so little anymore.
Twenty more minutes pass and Joanna sighs heavily. It’s the only outward indication of her frustration, but it brings both men down on her in an instant.
“What? What is it?” Jim’s crowing with sudden worry. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m here for five more days,” Joanna says patiently, reclining back into the heavy pillows of the couch. “Can we please have the talk now so I’m not on edge for the rest of the time?” Her eyes bug out slightly as if she’s trying to get across how important it is that they deal with this, if only for her sanity. Her words take an edge off Jim, who just laughs slightly, but her Dad looks concerned as he sits down beside her.
He looks up at Jim. “I didn’t really think we needed a talk. I mean, you clearly know that your mother and I have moved on being as she remarried,” he points out.
“You moved on with a guy, Dad.”
“A guy you were slightly manipulating me into being with, Joanna,” he mimics her speech-pattern and even the ‘oh, please’ expression she’s giving him.
Jim’s hovering around the both of them with as much energy as hummingbirds can ever hope to have. Joanna pats the couch beside her and he sinks down into it, making it so that one of them is flanking each side. She’s protected by them, safely encased, and she doesn’t need a talk for this to work so much as she needs answers.
“Dad,” she says sternly. “Jim.” She looks his way, levelling the same stern look upon that otherwise-innocent face. “Jim, promise me that this isn’t a flash in the pan and Dad?” she continues, turning his way. “Promise me that you won’t keep me out of your life even though you’re a thousand-million lightyears away,” she says, not even caring about her exaggeration. “Is this…is this for good?”
She watches them both carefully and doesn’t miss the fact that her father glances warily to Jim and pointedly doesn’t answer. So she takes his cue and looks at Jim, searching his face for tics or markers or anything that might show that he’s lying when he inevitably gives his response.
Jim shifts and smiles gently at Joanna. “I’ve screwed up a lot in the past. And screwed a lot, sure,” he admits, earning himself a warning growl from over Joanna’s shoulder. “But…that life led me nowhere. It meant that at the end of a five-year mission, my best friend hadn’t cared to introduce me to his daughter because I was just the guy who slept and ran,” he points out. “I knew you in the abstract, just like I knew everyone’s lives in the abstract. They were too worried to let me in because I was that guy. I don’t want to be that guy, Jo,” he says, forehead furrowed and a disbelieving sound stuck in his throat. “I want to be the guy that your Dad loves,” he says, almost like he isn’t sure of what he’s saying. “I want to be there at your wedding because honestly, you are so incredibly hot from your McCoy and Darnell genetics that you’ll pull all the guys and girls you’ll want and get your pick of them. And I’m going to dance with them and be incredibly gorgeous myself,” Jim says with a preening grin. “And when your Dad is grumpy and sixty and grey and…” Something he must have been about to say catches McCoy’s attention and Jim suddenly shuts up.
It’s suspicious, but Joanna saves that for later.
“…well, I want to be the guy in your Dad’s life when he’s that old and cantankerous because the kids on the lawn are going to need someone to calm him down. And I’m good for his blood pressure,” Jim jokes. “I know, I know how I used to be, Jo, I know that. You have to give me a chance to screw up. I might, I can’t predict the future, but I have to get the chance.”
It’s an impassioned argument and Joanna looks at him for a long moment before she contorts her body to clamber into his personal space and hug him tightly, burying her face in his neck. They’ve come a long way since that desert in New Mexico and she holds on as if he’s died on her again and this is the only way to bring him back.
She eases back and wipes away at the tears that have fallen down her cheeks, laughing when Jim brushes them away with steady hands and she feels her Dad hugging her tightly from behind.
“So you’re my family,” Joanna admits what all this means and she beams at Jim, feeling like she’s gotten the answer that she needs to hear. Maybe it’s not what she wanted to hear, but it’s put her at ease. “Jim,” she breathes his name out, but it doesn’t sound like all the other times.
It sounds, just faintly, like Dad.
Her father hugs her tighter at that and presses a kiss to her messy brown hair. She closes her eyes and imagines the future that Jim’s talked about. They’ll get there. She’s just not in a rush just yet.
THE END