if I or she should chance to be - act two, part one
McCoy has done his best to settle into his new life. The first appointment he’d made had been with a psychologist and then the family doctor. After those surreal appointments, the first place he lands is on a doorstep he hasn’t seen in almost four years. He’s not sure exactly what’s going to happen, but he has to try. His hair is curled with the humidity of the countryside and he’s got a single bag in his hand.
The door is opened and she stares at him with faint curiosity.
“It’s Leonard and it’s a long story,” is all he says quietly.
“Come in.”
She says it without hesitation or resistance and McCoy has never been more in love with her than he is in that moment. She surrounds him in a tight hug and brushes a stray lock of hair back over her ear. Like this, McCoy is small. Like this, Jocelyn’s arms surround McCoy and make him feel safe and at home.
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here,” is McCoy’s next request and it takes no time at all for her to agree. “Thank you.”
*
They arrive at the family house at one in the morning. Cinderella has long been gone from her ball and McCoy is feeling far too similar for her liking. She’s in a dress that she actually likes and had been having a good night of it until she had sighted Spock and Uhura. And because she knows her Captain, she’d known that Jim wouldn’t be far away.
McCoy had crouched near Joanna as soon as she’d seen him through the crowd shining like a small sun with a universe just waiting to fall into place around him. “Be good for me, okay, kidbit? I’ll be right back and we’ll go home just as soon as I dance with an old friend.”
Joanna barely restrains her yawn. “Kay, Daddy,” she says and lets herself be led to the waiting area before McCoy crosses the crowd and asks for a dance under the guise of anonymity. It’s the second time that McCoy is using this tactic to be with Jim, but it’s the first time she’s doing it on purpose.
And so they’d danced around each other like McCoy had danced around Jim in order to stay away from him. Jim, being James T. Kirk still manages to find his way back into McCoy’s heart and home and so this is how McCoy finds herself staring at Jim at her breakfast counter - well, hers and Jocelyn’s, being that this is their marriage-house. McCoy is still in the makeup and the dress, though the mask has long since been left behind and her curls fall in haphazard patterns against her face while she makes pancakes for the both of them.
She’s hard pressed to explain why pancakes except that McCoy had wanted something comforting and pancakes with thick syrup and sugary heavy cream to dip them in is the best thing she can go for right now.
Jim looks tousled. It’s the best word for it. His clothes are rumpled and his eyes have a drowsy quality to them that makes him look both pensive and magical at once. McCoy scratches one hand through her hair, sending curls scattering, and turns her back on him to flip the pancakes. The only sound between them is the sizzle.
She can feel Jim’s eyes on her back.
“Sam,” Jim gently reproaches.
“Don’t call me that, Jim, don’t you dare,” McCoy warns, her voice low and steady. That’s fairly admirable considering that she feels as if she’s going to fall apart any second. It’s even worse when McCoy realizes that Jim’s up from his seat and is brushing two fingers against the skin of her back - revealed by a square cut of the dress. “Jim,” McCoy heavily warns. “Stop it. It’s Leonard McCoy.”
Never mind that the legal documents list her as Leonard Horatio Samantha McCoy. Never mind that small truth.
“Fine. Leonard McCoy,” Jim heavily remarks and his hands have gravitated lower to rest on McCoy’s waist as he presses his nose to McCoy’s shoulder and kisses there lightly. “You left me,” he says, his tone wounded and small. “Eighteen months you were gone. You left me for eighteen months. I ...shit, Bones,” he hisses out the words in frustration. “I didn’t even know what I was feeling, but it was something. And besides that, you’re my best friend and you left me.” McCoy can feel Jim closing his eyes and drawing closer. “I need you, Bones. I need you to not just vanish from my life.”
McCoy thinks about giving in. She thinks about turning around and telling Jim that now that she remembers it all, she knows that it hadn’t been unrequited and that days-turned-weeks in Jim’s company (and his bed) had resulted in her falling for him.
She might even say all this except the soft whish of a bag landing on the counter interrupts them. McCoy glances past Jim’s shoulder and sees Jocelyn looking more than amused.
“I didn’t know we had company,” Jocelyn remarks as she crosses the kitchen and presses a fond kiss to McCoy’s cheek. “Heya Peaches,” she teases lightly. “You’re looking good. I bet you had every man, woman, and Orion at the dance hot and bothered.” She starts to unload her single bag of groceries as if Jim isn’t there, though she’s well-aware of whom he is. McCoy takes the opportunity to slide away and help her, shoulder-to-shoulder and basking in the familiarity of Joce’s scent. “Captain Kirk, turn the pancakes before they burn,” Jocelyn warns and takes a long look at McCoy, her fingers busy reaching over to slowly pry the earrings off as well as the necklace. “How was it?” she asks, softer than before.
“Jim was there. Obviously.”
They both turn and look over their shoulder as Jim attempts to flip the pancakes with grace and ease. He doesn’t really have either, so instead of looking like a master chef, he’s left trying to pry one of the pancakes from the gas flame, burning his fingertips in the process.
“What happened?”
“We danced,” McCoy notes with a passive shrug. “He crashed his way into the car. Waited until I put Joanna to bed and then sat with me.”
“You okay, Peaches?”
“Been better,” McCoy grunts. “Please don’t call me Peaches in front of Jim. You’re going to give him ideas.”
“The man’s nickname for you is Bones,” Jocelyn points out heavily, handing her a can of condensed milk. “How is my nickname any worse than that?” They unpack groceries as Jim does his best to prepare food for them, catching McCoy’s eye every now and again as they work. He inevitably comes over with a plate and slides his way in between Jocelyn and McCoy as if he’s been practicing that little bump and groove for months. “Hey lover-boy,” Jocelyn greets perkily. “Did you get to cop a good feel?”
“She wouldn’t let me,” Jim maligns his fate as he leans his hip against the counter, only having eyes for McCoy as he tucks her hair behind her ear. “But we danced. And I’m not losing her ever again.”
McCoy watches as Jocelyn taps Jim lightly on the shoulder and he spins around just in time to get slapped. McCoy hisses, Jocelyn looks pleased, and Jim lets out a quiet yelp.
“Ow! Damn it, Jocelyn, what the hell was that for?”
“I don’t know,” Jocelyn admits after a beat. “But you put Leonard in one hell of a bad mood that lasted a very long time and since I don’t want to blame her for it, you get to reap the results.” She punctuates this with a nod and presses her lips together tightly. “I’m going to bed. Peaches, do you need me…?”
“I can handle one Jim Kirk,” McCoy deadpans and arches a brow. It’s all one big lie because she can hardly handle Jim at the best of times and she’s definitely suffering through the lowest of times rather than the buoyed memories of a happy life.
Jocelyn’s gone for all of two minutes before Jim turns a chaotic and beautiful smile on her. It shouldn’t make McCoy weak in the knees, but she blames the champagne from earlier that’s already rendering her judgment poor. “Peaches?” Jim echoes curiously, brows knitted together.
“Long story.”
“Try me,” Jim coaxes, an undercurrent of anxiety and nerves in his voice as if he’s not entirely sure of things between them at this point. McCoy doesn’t blame him. She’s feeling as if she’s constantly ready to run away. Maybe it won’t be a shuttle to the stars, but it’ll be somewhere else, that’s for sure.
McCoy draws forks out of the drawer and twirls hers while looking at Jim. “She thinks my skin feels like the fuzz of a peach when she kisses my cheek, now, instead of the razorburn she used to get,” she sighs to explain. “That and her peach cobbler’s the best goddamn thing I’ve ever had in my life. So, Peaches. And it’s not a name for you to use,” McCoy says sharply, using the fork to make this point with as much emphasis as possible.
Jim settles down on a stool at the breakfast bar and leans over his plate of pancakes, never taking his eyes off of McCoy. She’s starting to regret telling Jocelyn that she could handle this on her own.
McCoy knows Jim inside and out and knows very well that asking Jim to leave isn’t going to be an easy task. “Jim, what’s it going to take to get you to go back to the Enterprise?” McCoy asks, getting right down to business.
McCoy should have seen this answer coming because as well as she knows Jim, she also knows that once Jim’s sunk his teeth into something like this, he’s not going to let go until he fully gets his way. “Sorry, Bones, but nothing will manage that except you coming with me,” is his almost-innocent reply, a half-smile on his face as he digs into his pancakes. “Come here, you have to try this. I’m a cooking genius,” he says, coaxing her closer and extending the fork to McCoy.
She regards him warily, but leans in and takes a taste.
She also should know that Jim doesn’t work without ulterior motives because as soon as she swallows, Jim’s up close and kissing her again, urging McCoy forward to deepen the kiss because instinct tells her to. It’s a short and sweet kiss, just enough that McCoy has time to remember what the press of Jim’s lips on hers feels like. “You just had some syrup right…there,” he murmurs, voice husky.
“What am I going to do with you?” McCoy wonders aloud, already on the brink of breaking.
“Let me love you, Bones. Just let me start with that and we’ll go from there.”
McCoy doesn’t dwell on those words and instead leaves Jim to his pancakes and thinks that maybe if she goes to sleep, she’ll wake up and this wonderful dream of a nightmare will be over.
When she first wakes up to the light of a new day, she instead hears innocent and buoyant laughter from a room over in two different timbres. It’s a young girl and a grown man and it wouldn’t take a genius to realize that Jim’s already decided to move forward and try and get in tight with Joanna.
McCoy’s daughter is four years and five months old. She’s the product of the last throes of a much-fought-for divorce, but is as loved as a little girl can get. Jim’s well aware of how much McCoy adores her and how upset he’d been when Jocelyn had been awarded near-full custody by the courts when they had finalized everything during his third year of the Academy (something that Jocelyn herself had reversed within weeks of it happening, citing that she was firing her divorce lawyer for being such a shark).
McCoy turns in bed and grimaces as she presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose and tries to let her anger subside at the fact that Jim’s gone for the jugular (so to speak).
She lies there for another long moment before yanking for her robe and cinching it tightly around her waist. “Unbelievable,” she mutters as she kicks off the covers and stalks down the hall, hands deep in her pockets as she stares at Jim with a displeased look on her face. They’re doing no more than playing with blocks and trains, but it’s seven in the morning and Jim’s not even supposed to be there.
“Morning, Mom,” Jim teases, lifting Joanna’s hand and waving it. Joanna is far more concerned about finishing one of the stations for the train and mumbles a distracted ‘morning,’ to her as she leans down and starts babbling to herself about architectural standards while Jim pushes to his feet and bounds over. He’s in his black undershirt and a pair of McCoy’s old flannel pants and looks like he’s just spent the night on the couch, but looks well-rested as ever. He leans in and presses a kiss to her cheek. “Jo woke me up at six, wanted to watch television, so I told her we’d play instead,” he admits quietly. “Figured we’d keep the noise down.”
McCoy’s lips twist up, wondering if Jim’s actually telling the truth, but Jo looks settled, the television isn’t blaring and Jim keeps looking at her like he’s a stunted-puppy. “Stop it,” she accuses.
“Stop what?”
“Stop looking at me like you want to slobber all over my face.”
Instead of slobbering, Jim leans in for a playful peck of a kiss on her lips and McCoy rolls her eyes. It’s not as if she’s displeased with the affection, but she thinks that Jim’s taking some awfully long strides assuming that she’s okay with this just because once upon a time, amnesia had let Jim get as far as he did. McCoy steps back out of his range and gives him a stern look.
Jim doesn’t seem to be phased by it in the least.
“Pancakes for breakfast, Peaches?”
“I hate you so much right now,” McCoy grumbles, reserving a small amount of hate for Jocelyn for encouraging this in the first place.
Jim just blows her a kiss from where he’s walking backwards to join Joanna. “We love you too, Mommy.”
Absolute, full-on, force of a Rigellian black hole hate.
*
McCoy knows that they shouldn’t be leading Jim on by letting him remain. Then again, McCoy also knows that he’s staying around because she wants him there and Jocelyn knows this, so she keeps thinking up reasons for him to remain. First it had been the painting that needed doing and now he’s been sent out on errands that the both of them have been putting off. In the meantime, they’ve found themselves on Jocelyn’s master-bed, legs tangled together and McCoy’s head on Jocelyn’s shoulder. It’s a strange echo of their marriage, but it feels more intimate now that they’ve found a new level to exist on.
McCoy loves Jocelyn, she really does, but now it feels more like a caring sister and a best friend with fond affection lingering at the outset. She doesn’t remember the lust or the hate or the anger, though she knows it’d been there before.
Jocelyn is currently toying with McCoy’s fingers, brushing her own fingers up and down them and marvelling for what is most certainly not the first time.
“They’re so slim. I really can’t get over the small changes,” she murmurs as McCoy shifts her head on Jocelyn’s shoulder, her cheek brushing the soft cotton of her t-shirt. “Honestly, Leonard, I still remember our honeymoon when you carried me so effortlessly. You were that typical southern male my Mama always wanted me to marry and now look at you,” she teases, poking McCoy lightly in the side.
They sit quietly for a while after that, listening for the screen door and to Joanna’s humming down the hall as she colors her pictures.
“You want him to go, don’t you?”
“No. Yes. The both, really,” McCoy sighs. It’s obvious that Jim’s the topic because Jim’s been the hot topic of conversation ever since he followed McCoy and Joanna back home that one late night. He refuses to leave and McCoy doesn’t have the will or the heart to kick him out. She can all-too-easily see a future in which Jim’s moved himself into the guest room because of his fear of turning his back long enough so that McCoy can sprint off somewhere new.
McCoy lets out a long sigh as she turns her head and rests a cheek on Jocelyn’s collarbone, eyelids half-shut, lashes fluttering over her cheek.
She feels Jocelyn’s fingers twining through her hair as she murmurs softly and gives her a quiet reprieve from her thoughts by humming the old lullaby they used to sing to Joanna every night. They’re not newlyweds anymore and their baby girl is grown from that tiny child, but they still have these memories to tether them to their life.
“Jocelyn?” Jim’s voice echoes through the house and through McCoy’s landscape of mental confusion. “Bones? Anyone home?”
“Upstairs, Jim!” Joanna calls happily.
McCoy groans slightly and grapples for the blankets to tug them over her head, wanting pure whim and wishery to push Jim very far away from them. Jocelyn just laughs and tugs the blankets back down over her head (leaving McCoy tousled and a frizzy mess) as she gives an agreeing call out to the hallway. “She’s in here, lover-boy,” Jocelyn says with an evil smirk.
Maybe McCoy should be considering lingering resentment from the divorce still, because that little move there is nothing short of pure evil.
She jabs Jocelyn in the calf with a well-placed heel and sighs, fingers skimming the clothed stomach that Jocelyn has to offer while shifting her bedhead from Joce’s shoulder to inches lower, where there is far more cushioning and a possible mistaken situation. Jim falters in the doorway as he stares at the both of them with open-mouthed confusion.
“Am I interrupting something?”
“Get in here,” McCoy orders gruffly, shifting to make room for him, parting the two women as if they’re nothing more than the Red Sea and Jim’s raised a single hand to command their separation. He makes sure that he’s facing McCoy, though, and for a minute, Jocelyn almost seems to shuffle until she’s ready to leave. She’s only stopped because McCoy reaches over Jim’s waist and keeps her there. McCoy may be Jim’s best friend and they may go back a very long time, but right now, she needs the support.
Jim’s hands are curious wayfarers as they lightly ghost McCoy’s hips, skirting up her sides and down again as he studies her with half-lidded eyes, shadowing those gorgeous baby-blues from the world.
“I finished replacing your fenceposts,” he murmurs in a way that makes it sound like he had been doing something a little more illicit than that. “Got the hoe out, dug the holes, drove the posts down into them.” He keeps talking, voice dropping an octave lower and growing rougher. McCoy thinks it’s absolutely fucking unfair that her breath is growing shallower by the second as she listens to him. “Made sure they were deep as they could go.”
“Yeah?” McCoy asks, breathless and still coming to terms with the sensation of warmth and wetness between her legs.
“Yeah,” Jim agrees, brushing back hair from McCoy’s face. “Oh yeah.”
“Children! I’d offer you two a room, but I’m in it,” Jocelyn pipes up from behind Jim.
The blood in McCoy’s system decides to make a break for it. Half of it continues a southern dash, but the other half is ready to light up her cheeks like a Christmas tree. She smacks Jim’s wrist and offers him a stern look. Jim just grins right back at McCoy and suddenly it feels like they’re back in the Academy and they’re sitting in the psychology lecture while Doctor Amandine prattles on about Freud and Jim keeps making little oral sucking noises. McCoy laughs at the memory and thinks about asking Jocelyn to go so she and Jim can catch up and talk.
Of course, that’s too dangerous. Talking leads to looking which leads to touching which leads to… a place that McCoy isn’t ready to think about.
“What do you think, Joce, what else have we got for the Boy Wonder?” McCoy pipes up. If one person is going to leave the bed, it’s not going to be either of the women, she thinks. “I’m pretty sure we wanted the trellis-work painted out back.”
“Hmm, yeah,” Jocelyn murmurs an agreement. “What color was that we’d decided on?”
“I think it was…”
“I think it was Blushing Beige.”
“Blushing Beige does sound right,” McCoy concurs, tipping her head to look expectantly at Jim, her eyebrow shooting up on her forehead. “Well, Jim? We’ve got a job for you and if you’re a real good boy about it, I’ll even feed you dinner tonight in thanks for the work. There’s the trellis, the lattices, and don’t forget the swing. Joanna wants to draw flower decals on it, but it needs a good base.”
Jim looks between McCoy and Jocelyn as if he’s deliberating how serious they are about this. “Bones, since when are you Miss Interior Decorating?”
“Since my little girl wants to paint flower decals, you cretin,” McCoy snaps back at him. “She needs a base and that base is Blushing Beige. And yes, I’m very serious. Haul ass and get it done before I think up something a lot less appetizing for you to do.” McCoy doesn’t need to look over her shoulder to see Jocelyn’s smile of solidarity. She knows that no matter what happens, unless Jim earns some serious ground, it’s going to be the two of them against Jim (possibly the three if Joanna is feeling loyal to her mothers).
Jim takes one last long considerate look at McCoy and gives a slow nod of his head. “Blushing Beige?”
“The brushes are in the garage,” Jocelyn adds helpfully, draping her arm around McCoy’s waist - and she absolutely does not miss the twinge of envy and irritation that flickers over Jim’s face. “We’ll be here still when you’re done.”
“Bones?”
“Jim, go paint,” McCoy says gruffly, inclining her head lower so she doesn’t have to look him in the eye. It seems to do the trick to get him to go because the bed shifts and the weight redistributes as Jim pushes himself off and away muttering ‘your wish, my command’ under his breath and slamming the door shut behind him.
McCoy remembers how to exhale around that point in time.
“Leonard,” Jocelyn quietly murmurs, placing her hand on her shoulder.
McCoy shakes her head, trying to dislodge the feeling that she’s leading Jim on by simply letting him stay. She tries to dissuade the notion that his mere presence is going to undo eighteen months of progress in accepting the change that had been forced on her. McCoy needs to tell herself that just because Jim is there, eighteen months of progress isn’t going to go away.
“Do you want me to tell him to leave?”
“No.”
She knows this. She knows that now that Jim is back in her life, McCoy doesn’t want him out. He’s been there for all the rough times and now he’s here for her rough patch and he doesn’t want to leave her be.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“That is the last goddamn thing on earth I want to do,” McCoy mutters and drags the covers up to try and make the world vanish. “Let me be, Joce. Just for a little while.”
“If you need anything, you holler.”
What McCoy needs right then and there is some kind of understanding of how this is all going to play out. She has the feeling that Jocelyn doesn’t exactly have that tucked away in any of her sock or underwear drawers.
*
They’re in the grocery store when it happens. More specifically, the dairy aisle, but none of them are prone to remembering that small detail when they recall the event. Jim’s putting food in the cart and Jocelyn’s taking it right back out without even consulting him. Somehow, the conversation has drifted around to McCoy. She’s drifting behind them by about three feet and idly trying to ignore the both of them while searching for the ingredients to a peach cobbler that Jocelyn had first made for McCoy back when they were going steady.
“She’s beautiful, all right,” Jim’s agreeing, casting a glance over his shoulder. “Though, I haven’t exactly seen her with all the clothes off to get the full picture.”
“I have.”
Well, shit, Jocelyn, McCoy thinks and shoots her ex-wife a dirty look of bitterness. It’s the truth, but McCoy isn’t exactly intent on Jim finding out about this.
Jim falls to a stop, his face a painted portrait of shock and displeasure as he throws a wild glance back at her and grasps her lightly by the arm to lead her away to the baking items-aisle while Jocelyn pushes on slowly.
“Bones, what the hell?” Jim demands, but there’s no genuine anger in his voice. All McCoy hears is shock and hurt, as if somehow she’s betrayed Jim. The only thing that had happened in the first six months of McCoy’s return was that every conversation had been charged into an argument and had become some desperate fight to find old emotions that had long been buried. “You slept with Jocelyn?”
“Always jumping to that conclusion,” McCoy mutters, shaking her head. “Does it always have to be sex with you, Jim?” she hisses, voice lowering in volume when a shopper passes them by with their cart.
His hand is still on her wrist (light, never intruding with any kind of force) and McCoy is glaring at him to let Jim know that if he continues much longer along this avenue of questioning, he’s going to have a certain part of his anatomy cut off.
“Did you?” he asks, more stringent and panicked than before. “Bones, are you and Jocelyn back together? Should I even be here?”
“We’re not having this fight in the fucking baking aisle, Jim,” McCoy grunts, tearing herself away from Jim’s grasp, ready to march right back to Jocelyn and tear her a new one for telling Jim any of this in the first place.
Jim’s staring after her, lost, looking all parts pathetic and disappointed.
“At home, Jim,” McCoy finally says under her breath, looking to join up Jocelyn before she gets back to the meat-aisle and buys too much as she has a tendency to do. “We’ll talk about this at home.” For the moment, she’s going to let him think that it’s partially his home as well because there’s no harm in it.
They manage to go through the motions of finishing up. Jim sulks as they bag groceries and McCoy complains every mile of the drive home and Jocelyn sighs heavily and mouths apologies at McCoy every step of the way.
The one dignified fact is that they at least get back to the house and manage to put everything away before the fight really starts. Part of McCoy had thought maybe Jim would ignore it and would just stew about the revelation for days. McCoy really should have seen it coming, but things have a habit of sneaking up on her these days. Everything is terrifying and new at once, everything keeps coming without fail. “You and Jocelyn,” Jim says with disbelief, pain painted in his eyes. “You both…”
“No,” McCoy drawls heavily and sharply. “No, Jim, we didn’t. We made a try of it, but it never happened. It was after the fourth goddamn article of you and one of your little blonde beauties came out,” she accuses with a look like daggers in her eyes. “Every time Joce would show me those articles, I knew you had just no trouble moving on from your plain best friend and back onto the stunners you met. So we tried and nothing came of it because we’re exes and we just don’t see each other like that anymore.”
“You…you think I was sleeping my way through the galaxy?”
“Well, I wasn’t the one whoring around with every pair of double-D’s in plain sight,” McCoy snaps sarcastically. “Jim, I know your type, I know those girls were exactly what you wanted and you kept bringing them in shreds of clothing to public events. What else were you doing if you weren’t fucking them over every last damn bed in the universe?”
Jim actually staggers backward with the force of McCoy’s accusation, face going drawn and pale. “Bones, I was just trying to get through the days. Do you know that Pike had to visit and forcibly drag me out of bed to get back on the bridge? Why would you!” he shouts at the top of his lungs, ignoring McCoy’s hiss for him to shut up before Joanna hears. “You just vanished and took off and refused to let Jocelyn tell me where you were. You left and you never even sent a communication! Why would you know how I was feeling, how would you know that your best friend had to attend those events and Scotty and Chekov would arrange for these women to join me so I didn’t look pathetic mourning and longing for my best friend, the one I had pretty much decided was the love of my goddamn life! I wanted you there with me!”
It’s McCoy’s turn to be taken aback by the news and she blinks rapidly, breath caught in her throat as she stares at Jim and tries to reconcile this with her fury at seeing him in new pictures with new women, looking at them with fondness and longing.
“I needed time to myself,” McCoy finally spits out.
“But you weren’t even by yourself, you were with your ex-wife,” Jim accuses heatedly.
“And we argued for four months straight!” she pitches right back at him. “We goddamn well hated each other for four months, did you really want to be the one to pick up my pieces and walk out of it hating me? Because Jim, I didn’t want that. I wanted to come back to you when I was ready, but I wasn’t ready.”
“So cuddling up with Jocelyn in the middle of the night, letting her lead you on with articles and pictures, you were ready for that,” Jim says, his voice hoarse and low.
“Jim, what else was I supposed to think looking at those pictures? You looked like you had moved on.”
“Well, I hadn’t,” Jim says softly. “Ask Spock or Uhura. Ask Pike. Ask Janice, who literally had to drag and dress me on more than one occasion. The fact that I managed to keep breathing most days is a pretty big accomplishment.”
“Don’t be such a drama queen, Jim,” McCoy mutters.
There’s a long pause between them while they stare at each other, having drifted perilously close in the guest bedroom and every time Jim exhales, the breath finds its way and falls to McCoy’s forehead, ghosting past to remind her that another step forward could turn this argument into something else entirely.
“Remember all those times in the Academy when you told me that I would understand your divorce when I really fell in love and someone parted ways with me that I wanted at my side more than anything?” Jim asks, his voice low. “Bones, I didn’t even have my body left when you left. I couldn’t figure out what to do when I just wanted to get you back to my side. First you were missing, then you were gone. I needed you.”
“Jim, we could argue about the past all day,” McCoy points out, feeling the stabs of guilt and regret pushing at her. “But look at now. I haven’t slept with Jocelyn and I don’t intend to get back together with her. You’re here.”
“What if it’s too late?”
“Does it feel like it’s too late?” McCoy says pointedly. Her rapidly beating heart and the shivers down her back making the hair on her arms stand on end, the way her breath catches when she looks at Jim, the way it feels like he could protect them from the universe tells McCoy that it’s not even close to too-late in the least.
Jim seems to get that, too. He steps forward and wraps his arms snugly around McCoy, pressing his lips to the top of her head and bringing their bodies close enough so that there’s no telling where Jim ends and she begins.
“I know,” he agrees quietly, his voice barely audible. “I’m sorry. And I know.”
“I’m...sorry, too,” McCoy manages to get out with some mild difficulty. “For assuming the worst of you, Jim, I’m sorry.”
“Not like I gave you anything but cause, considering the Academy.”
“The Academy was a long time ago, so accept the damn apology,” she mumbles, her words muffled by the fact that she’s speaking them right into Jim’s neck the way she is. “I’m sorry, Jim. Let’s just move on from here. Can we do that?”
“Yeah,” Jim agrees, his words filled with levity and relief. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Jocelyn is the one who finds them later in that same embrace, Jim pressing light kisses to McCoy’s hair and her arms as snug as they can be wound around his waist. They’re swaying just barely without any music to drift to and Jocelyn has a knowing look on her face.
“Dinnertime, kids,” she says softly. “I can save you a couple of plates, though.”
“Thanks, Jocelyn,” Jim murmurs. He tightens his arms around McCoy, holding on as if that’s somehow going to make everything better.
She doesn’t say aloud that she has high hopes in the impossible Captain Kirk managing to do just that.
act two, part two of four