au crossover: lost & star trek tos (general), prompt #10
Title: Gone, Not Gone
Fandom: Crossover: Lost & Star Trek: The Original Series (AU)
Pairing/Characters: Hurley, Leonard McCoy, Spock/McCoy, Shannon & Boone, Eko, Charlie, Hurley/Libby
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: 10-I’m broken
Summary: Hurley saw many dead people, but Leonard McCoy just heard one.
Disclaimer: Lost, Star Trek TOS, and their characters do not belong to me.
Warnings: Deals with death, M/M relationship
A/N: Contains lots of damns and lots of dudes. Writing McCoy is wonderfully familiar territory, and writing Hurley was a lot of fun.
When Hugo Reyes met him, he said, “You don’t really look like someone who’s gone nuts, dude.”
“I keep telling myself that, but somehow I’m still here.” Leonard McCoy rubbed at his brow; his head was aching, always. He gave the other man a look-not unkindly, curious. “You see dead people.”
“Yeah,” he said, with the voice of someone who’s used to not being believed. “Like that little kid in that movie with Bruce Willis. Just…bigger.”
Leonard smiled. “I never saw that movie.”
“Dude, how can you have not seen that movie?”
“I’m a-” He paused, frowned. “I was a busy man.”
“I gotcha. So…”
Leonard found himself arching an eyebrow; he quickly lowered it. “So…?”
“So, are you crazy?”
Leonard considered this for a moment. “Only if you are.”
Hurley’s eyes got wide and dark and serious. “You see dead people, too?”
“No.” Leonard shook his head. “I hear one. All the goddamn time.”
“…Whoa.”
“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
[-]
At night, Leonard lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling. He wished he could have a drink.
It is doubtful that the consumption of alcohol would make the situation more tolerable.
He snorted. “Shows what you know.” He scowled. “Dammit.” He was doing it again, talking back to a voice he wasn’t supposed to be hearing. Spock was dead. And when people were dead, they were gone. Gone, not hanging out in someone else’s head like a party guest who’s overstayed their welcome.
No…no, that wasn’t fair. He couldn’t compare Spock to something like that. Spock is…Spock was… Aw, hell, he hardly knew anymore. He hardly knew anything anymore. His head was so damn full it was slowly driving him…
Crazy, Leonard?
…Well, at least he was in the right place.
[-]
Hurley was winning at checkers, but Leonard didn’t seem to mind very much. He was grimacing, pinching at the bridge of his nose. He was vaguely concerned, but mostly understanding, when he asked, “Getting some, uh, interference? Up there?” He gestured to his forehead.
Leonard waved his free hand dismissively. “He’s just annoyed I didn’t take his advice on playing the game.”
Hurley just looked at him for a moment, and then burst into laughter so sudden and loud it made Leonard jump in his seat.
“Dude, that’s hilarious!”
“Well, as long as someone finds it amusing…”
[-]
“Great.” Shannon pushed strands of blonde hair out of her face to glare out the window at the steadily falling drops of rain. “I was looking forward to getting some sun.”
Hurley was sitting on his bed, not really meaning to ignore her, but not really wanting to talk about the weather. “I don’t know if he belongs here.”
“Who?” Boone asked from where he leaned against the wall. “Your friend with the headaches?”
“He’s not like everyone else here,” Hurley said. “He just seems so…sane.”
“Except for the dead guy he listens to,” Boone muttered. “Shannon, stop sulking.”
“I’m not sulking, Boone.”
“Yeah, but what about you guys?” Hurley looked from Boone, to Shannon, and back. “You’re dead. I’m listening to you.”
“And what does that say about you?” Boone asked, all seriousness.
Hurley hands fisted at his bed sheets. He said nothing for a moment or two and Boone looked at him while Shannon looked at the rain.
“I’m not crazy,” he said, finally.
Boone didn’t agree or disagree, raising and lowering one shoulder.
“No offense, but you guys aren’t very helpful ghosts.”
Shannon just sighed and sulked.
[-]
Leonard barely acknowledged the nurse as she set down two little cups with pills in them. He shot the medicine a disdainful look while Hurley swallowed his without flinching.
“Dude, trust me, it’s best to just take it.”
“It isn’t working,” he grumbled, “so what’s the point?”
Hurley didn’t have an answer for that, but Leonard took the pills anyway.
“So I guess your therapy sessions aren’t going so well, either.”
“I’ll be stuck here for the rest of my life at this rate.” Leonard sighed, shuddered. “A terrifying prospect.”
Sometimes, Hurley thought, this place was better than out there. But he decided to keep that to himself.
“A wise choice,” said a deep, familiar voice. “Something tells me he is not ready for such a discussion.”
“Yeah, me too,” Hurley agreed, earning a questioning glance from his companion. “Sorry, I was talking to Mr. Eko.”
“Mr. Eko?”
“Yeah.” Hurley nodded toward a nearby empty (in Leonard’s eyes, anyway) chair. “The big, shirtless African dude with a stick.”
“…Fascinating.”
And Hurley didn’t know why, but Leonard suddenly buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking, either laughing or crying or both, Hurley couldn’t tell.
[-]
I find your attempts to ignore me quite-
“Don’t you dare.”
-interesting.
Leonard struggled to not listen. He’d been struggling to not listen for two days now and it wasn’t working as well as he wanted it to. He just thought that maybe-just maybe-if he could learn to ignore Spock, he could at least pretend that he was getting better.
But he wasn’t fooling that voice in his head. That calm, collected, logical-always so damn logical-scientist voice in his head. How many times had he’d told himself it’d been a bad decision to get involved with a scientist? No matter how handsome he’d looked at that white lab coat…it’d been the most infuriating relationship Leonard had ever had.
The most infuriating…and the most real, and the most stimulating, and the most wonderful, and the most satisfying…until it had ended. Suddenly. So suddenly. He hadn’t seen it coming; he hadn’t known…
No one could have known, Leonard.
Of course not. No one had gone to work that day expecting it, expecting to find a bomb. Just like no one had expected Spock to stay behind when everyone else was panicking and escaping, to stay behind and try to defuse it himself. No one had expected him to be so damn selfless. So damn stupid.
The needs of the many-
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
[-]
“Hey…you don’t look so good.”
Leonard chuckled humorlessly and said nothing.
“Dude, I’m serious.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Is he, uh-” Hurley tapped at his own forehead. “-keeping you up?”
Leonard hesitated, visibly, and Hurley worried, briefly. “You could say that.”
[-]
Charlie strummed his ghost guitar in what Hurley considered to be a thoughtful manner. “He wants the voice gone, then? Is that such a bad thing? I imagine it would be bloody annoying…”
“Yeah, but it’s not that bad,” Hurley said. “You know, the dead people thing. I mean, it’s like…you never lost them.”
Charlie shrugged, hummed a little. “Not everyone’s like you, Hurley.”
“Like me?” Hurley looked at him, not really annoyed, not really hurt, but sounding like he could be, eventually. “What, a…fat, lonely loser?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.” He set the guitar down and it vanished somewhere. He propped his elbows on his knees and held his chin in his hands. “Nevermind that. I don’t know what I meant, buddy. Dying doesn’t turn you into a sage or anything.”
“It’s cool, man.”
Hurley didn’t know what his life would be like without his friends, and he didn’t want to know. They were dead, sure, he wouldn’t deny that; but they were there. If they went away…if they went away for real, for good…he didn’t know if he’d be able to stand it. People might think he was crazy; he considered himself lucky.
He had a feeling Leonard McCoy didn’t feel the same way.
[-]
“He wasn’t supposed to be there, when it happened.”
Leonard didn’t like to talk about this; it left a bad taste in his mouth. But he’d just told the doctor and if he could tell him, he could-and should, he felt, for some indefinable reason-tell Hurley.
“We’d had plans to meet for lunch, but he called to cancel on me. I was so…so angry. I hated when he chose work over me, even though, of course, I understood. Maybe I was feeling especially ornery on that day, I don’t know. Anyway, I went off on him. He tried to take it back, to appease me, I guess…but I was stubborn as a mule and I wouldn’t let him. I hung up on him. When the phone rang an hour later, I thought it was him, but…” He is voice trailed off and Hurley opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. After a moment, Leonard continued, “They told me he was dead and I knew I would never hear his voice again. A few days later, I’m sitting around, contemplating the idea of drinking myself into an early grave and there he was, telling me how illogical I was being. I damn near had a heart attack.”
Hurley smiled a little; he could relate. He could still remember the spectacular Freak Out he’d had when Charlie had first shown up. But his smile faded quickly; he could tell the other man was in so much pain. He wished he knew what to say. He wished he understood.
[-]
Leonard wished Spock would stay dead.
He loved him; he would always love him. But this just wasn’t fair. How was he supposed to move on? How was he supposed to continue living with the dead holding him back?
He tried asking nicely-nothing else was working. Not the medicine, not the doctor, not Hurley, not being left alone in a room with nothing to do but talk to the voice he’s supposed to be getting rid of. So he asked nicely. Spock was quiet for the rest of the night, but Leonard wasn’t surprised when he spoke again in the morning.
It was time for a different approach.
“Why are you doing this to me? Why…why won’t you stay away? Don’t you know how overemotional, how ridiculously sentimental, how illogical all this is? Don’t you know that you’re dead? I’m not supposed to hear you; I can’t hear you, and-and, dammit, I don’t want to hear you! So why don’t you just shut up?!”
Spock was quiet for the rest of the night. And Leonard found himself surprised-unpleasantly so, for whatever reason-when he didn’t speak again in the morning.
[-]
“The medicine might be helping,” Leonard told him, rather sedately.
“Really? So there was something wrong with you? Like, mentally?”
“I-I suppose.”
Hurley’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and Leonard didn’t look at him. “I don’t believe you.”
“What?”
“I think you’re lying. It’s not the medicine. You scared him away, didn’t you?”
“Hurley, don’t be insane.”
“I’m not.” And he knew that. Hurley knew that he knew that.
[-]
“Well, let me ask you something.” Libby eyed him with a look that made him think she already knew the answer to whatever she was going to ask; that made him a little nervous. “Is it harder for you to talk to me than it is for you to talk to the others? Ana Lucia, for example?”
“That may be a bad example…Ana Lucia scares me.”
Libby smiled. “You know what I mean, Hurley.”
He did know what she meant, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to admit that if she was the one ghost that didn’t visit him, he’d be all right. He’d be sad; he’d miss her. But he’d be all right. Because it was hard-seeing her. Seeing her and listening to her and sort of being able to touch her but not in the way he really wanted to.
It was hard. But he wouldn’t want to lose it. He’d be all right, but he didn’t want to be. Not if it meant being without her.
“And I love you for that,” she said, and he wanted to kiss her, and it was hard.
[-]
When Leonard told him he was getting out, Hurley didn’t know if he was happy for him, sad that he was losing a friend, or angry that his friend was denying something he held so dear.
“Spock’s voice wasn’t real,” he said in a voice that sounded pained and almost rehearsed. “It was a…figment of my imagination created by my…misguided guilt.”
“Dude, that’s a load of crap.” He refused to believe it. And he refused to believe that he believed it.
Leonard sighed, looked down, and said again, “Spock’s voice wasn’t real. It was a figment of my-”
“No!” He nearly shouted, but Leonard kept his eyes trained on the floor, even as a couple of orderlies came in their direction. “That’s not true and you know it!”
“Hurley. He’s dead. And so are your friends. They’re dead and they’re gone.”
“He’ll never be gone,” Hurley insisted, rising and pounding his fist on the table; one of the orderlies called out his name, but he ignored him. “He’s always going to be there. Maybe he’s not right now, and maybe you’re scared about that.” Leonard looked up at him, his blue eyes a little wide and a little vulnerable. “Maybe you’re scared he’s not coming back. But he’ll be back. He’ll be back, you’ll see! You’ll hear!” One of the orderlies took him by the arm, and he let him lead him to his room, silent, satisfied.
Leonard watched him go with his blue-wide-vulnerable eyes and that was the last time he saw Hugo Reyes. And if Spock’s voice ever did come back, he kept it to himself.
Fandom: Crossover: Lost & Star Trek: The Original Series (AU)
Pairing/Characters: Hurley, Leonard McCoy, Spock/McCoy, Shannon & Boone, Eko, Charlie, Hurley/Libby
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: 10-I’m broken
Summary: Hurley saw many dead people, but Leonard McCoy just heard one.
Disclaimer: Lost, Star Trek TOS, and their characters do not belong to me.
Warnings: Deals with death, M/M relationship
A/N: Contains lots of damns and lots of dudes. Writing McCoy is wonderfully familiar territory, and writing Hurley was a lot of fun.
When Hugo Reyes met him, he said, “You don’t really look like someone who’s gone nuts, dude.”
“I keep telling myself that, but somehow I’m still here.” Leonard McCoy rubbed at his brow; his head was aching, always. He gave the other man a look-not unkindly, curious. “You see dead people.”
“Yeah,” he said, with the voice of someone who’s used to not being believed. “Like that little kid in that movie with Bruce Willis. Just…bigger.”
Leonard smiled. “I never saw that movie.”
“Dude, how can you have not seen that movie?”
“I’m a-” He paused, frowned. “I was a busy man.”
“I gotcha. So…”
Leonard found himself arching an eyebrow; he quickly lowered it. “So…?”
“So, are you crazy?”
Leonard considered this for a moment. “Only if you are.”
Hurley’s eyes got wide and dark and serious. “You see dead people, too?”
“No.” Leonard shook his head. “I hear one. All the goddamn time.”
“…Whoa.”
“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
[-]
At night, Leonard lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling. He wished he could have a drink.
It is doubtful that the consumption of alcohol would make the situation more tolerable.
He snorted. “Shows what you know.” He scowled. “Dammit.” He was doing it again, talking back to a voice he wasn’t supposed to be hearing. Spock was dead. And when people were dead, they were gone. Gone, not hanging out in someone else’s head like a party guest who’s overstayed their welcome.
No…no, that wasn’t fair. He couldn’t compare Spock to something like that. Spock is…Spock was… Aw, hell, he hardly knew anymore. He hardly knew anything anymore. His head was so damn full it was slowly driving him…
Crazy, Leonard?
…Well, at least he was in the right place.
[-]
Hurley was winning at checkers, but Leonard didn’t seem to mind very much. He was grimacing, pinching at the bridge of his nose. He was vaguely concerned, but mostly understanding, when he asked, “Getting some, uh, interference? Up there?” He gestured to his forehead.
Leonard waved his free hand dismissively. “He’s just annoyed I didn’t take his advice on playing the game.”
Hurley just looked at him for a moment, and then burst into laughter so sudden and loud it made Leonard jump in his seat.
“Dude, that’s hilarious!”
“Well, as long as someone finds it amusing…”
[-]
“Great.” Shannon pushed strands of blonde hair out of her face to glare out the window at the steadily falling drops of rain. “I was looking forward to getting some sun.”
Hurley was sitting on his bed, not really meaning to ignore her, but not really wanting to talk about the weather. “I don’t know if he belongs here.”
“Who?” Boone asked from where he leaned against the wall. “Your friend with the headaches?”
“He’s not like everyone else here,” Hurley said. “He just seems so…sane.”
“Except for the dead guy he listens to,” Boone muttered. “Shannon, stop sulking.”
“I’m not sulking, Boone.”
“Yeah, but what about you guys?” Hurley looked from Boone, to Shannon, and back. “You’re dead. I’m listening to you.”
“And what does that say about you?” Boone asked, all seriousness.
Hurley hands fisted at his bed sheets. He said nothing for a moment or two and Boone looked at him while Shannon looked at the rain.
“I’m not crazy,” he said, finally.
Boone didn’t agree or disagree, raising and lowering one shoulder.
“No offense, but you guys aren’t very helpful ghosts.”
Shannon just sighed and sulked.
[-]
Leonard barely acknowledged the nurse as she set down two little cups with pills in them. He shot the medicine a disdainful look while Hurley swallowed his without flinching.
“Dude, trust me, it’s best to just take it.”
“It isn’t working,” he grumbled, “so what’s the point?”
Hurley didn’t have an answer for that, but Leonard took the pills anyway.
“So I guess your therapy sessions aren’t going so well, either.”
“I’ll be stuck here for the rest of my life at this rate.” Leonard sighed, shuddered. “A terrifying prospect.”
Sometimes, Hurley thought, this place was better than out there. But he decided to keep that to himself.
“A wise choice,” said a deep, familiar voice. “Something tells me he is not ready for such a discussion.”
“Yeah, me too,” Hurley agreed, earning a questioning glance from his companion. “Sorry, I was talking to Mr. Eko.”
“Mr. Eko?”
“Yeah.” Hurley nodded toward a nearby empty (in Leonard’s eyes, anyway) chair. “The big, shirtless African dude with a stick.”
“…Fascinating.”
And Hurley didn’t know why, but Leonard suddenly buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking, either laughing or crying or both, Hurley couldn’t tell.
[-]
I find your attempts to ignore me quite-
“Don’t you dare.”
-interesting.
Leonard struggled to not listen. He’d been struggling to not listen for two days now and it wasn’t working as well as he wanted it to. He just thought that maybe-just maybe-if he could learn to ignore Spock, he could at least pretend that he was getting better.
But he wasn’t fooling that voice in his head. That calm, collected, logical-always so damn logical-scientist voice in his head. How many times had he’d told himself it’d been a bad decision to get involved with a scientist? No matter how handsome he’d looked at that white lab coat…it’d been the most infuriating relationship Leonard had ever had.
The most infuriating…and the most real, and the most stimulating, and the most wonderful, and the most satisfying…until it had ended. Suddenly. So suddenly. He hadn’t seen it coming; he hadn’t known…
No one could have known, Leonard.
Of course not. No one had gone to work that day expecting it, expecting to find a bomb. Just like no one had expected Spock to stay behind when everyone else was panicking and escaping, to stay behind and try to defuse it himself. No one had expected him to be so damn selfless. So damn stupid.
The needs of the many-
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
[-]
“Hey…you don’t look so good.”
Leonard chuckled humorlessly and said nothing.
“Dude, I’m serious.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Is he, uh-” Hurley tapped at his own forehead. “-keeping you up?”
Leonard hesitated, visibly, and Hurley worried, briefly. “You could say that.”
[-]
Charlie strummed his ghost guitar in what Hurley considered to be a thoughtful manner. “He wants the voice gone, then? Is that such a bad thing? I imagine it would be bloody annoying…”
“Yeah, but it’s not that bad,” Hurley said. “You know, the dead people thing. I mean, it’s like…you never lost them.”
Charlie shrugged, hummed a little. “Not everyone’s like you, Hurley.”
“Like me?” Hurley looked at him, not really annoyed, not really hurt, but sounding like he could be, eventually. “What, a…fat, lonely loser?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.” He set the guitar down and it vanished somewhere. He propped his elbows on his knees and held his chin in his hands. “Nevermind that. I don’t know what I meant, buddy. Dying doesn’t turn you into a sage or anything.”
“It’s cool, man.”
Hurley didn’t know what his life would be like without his friends, and he didn’t want to know. They were dead, sure, he wouldn’t deny that; but they were there. If they went away…if they went away for real, for good…he didn’t know if he’d be able to stand it. People might think he was crazy; he considered himself lucky.
He had a feeling Leonard McCoy didn’t feel the same way.
[-]
“He wasn’t supposed to be there, when it happened.”
Leonard didn’t like to talk about this; it left a bad taste in his mouth. But he’d just told the doctor and if he could tell him, he could-and should, he felt, for some indefinable reason-tell Hurley.
“We’d had plans to meet for lunch, but he called to cancel on me. I was so…so angry. I hated when he chose work over me, even though, of course, I understood. Maybe I was feeling especially ornery on that day, I don’t know. Anyway, I went off on him. He tried to take it back, to appease me, I guess…but I was stubborn as a mule and I wouldn’t let him. I hung up on him. When the phone rang an hour later, I thought it was him, but…” He is voice trailed off and Hurley opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. After a moment, Leonard continued, “They told me he was dead and I knew I would never hear his voice again. A few days later, I’m sitting around, contemplating the idea of drinking myself into an early grave and there he was, telling me how illogical I was being. I damn near had a heart attack.”
Hurley smiled a little; he could relate. He could still remember the spectacular Freak Out he’d had when Charlie had first shown up. But his smile faded quickly; he could tell the other man was in so much pain. He wished he knew what to say. He wished he understood.
[-]
Leonard wished Spock would stay dead.
He loved him; he would always love him. But this just wasn’t fair. How was he supposed to move on? How was he supposed to continue living with the dead holding him back?
He tried asking nicely-nothing else was working. Not the medicine, not the doctor, not Hurley, not being left alone in a room with nothing to do but talk to the voice he’s supposed to be getting rid of. So he asked nicely. Spock was quiet for the rest of the night, but Leonard wasn’t surprised when he spoke again in the morning.
It was time for a different approach.
“Why are you doing this to me? Why…why won’t you stay away? Don’t you know how overemotional, how ridiculously sentimental, how illogical all this is? Don’t you know that you’re dead? I’m not supposed to hear you; I can’t hear you, and-and, dammit, I don’t want to hear you! So why don’t you just shut up?!”
Spock was quiet for the rest of the night. And Leonard found himself surprised-unpleasantly so, for whatever reason-when he didn’t speak again in the morning.
[-]
“The medicine might be helping,” Leonard told him, rather sedately.
“Really? So there was something wrong with you? Like, mentally?”
“I-I suppose.”
Hurley’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and Leonard didn’t look at him. “I don’t believe you.”
“What?”
“I think you’re lying. It’s not the medicine. You scared him away, didn’t you?”
“Hurley, don’t be insane.”
“I’m not.” And he knew that. Hurley knew that he knew that.
[-]
“Well, let me ask you something.” Libby eyed him with a look that made him think she already knew the answer to whatever she was going to ask; that made him a little nervous. “Is it harder for you to talk to me than it is for you to talk to the others? Ana Lucia, for example?”
“That may be a bad example…Ana Lucia scares me.”
Libby smiled. “You know what I mean, Hurley.”
He did know what she meant, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to admit that if she was the one ghost that didn’t visit him, he’d be all right. He’d be sad; he’d miss her. But he’d be all right. Because it was hard-seeing her. Seeing her and listening to her and sort of being able to touch her but not in the way he really wanted to.
It was hard. But he wouldn’t want to lose it. He’d be all right, but he didn’t want to be. Not if it meant being without her.
“And I love you for that,” she said, and he wanted to kiss her, and it was hard.
[-]
When Leonard told him he was getting out, Hurley didn’t know if he was happy for him, sad that he was losing a friend, or angry that his friend was denying something he held so dear.
“Spock’s voice wasn’t real,” he said in a voice that sounded pained and almost rehearsed. “It was a…figment of my imagination created by my…misguided guilt.”
“Dude, that’s a load of crap.” He refused to believe it. And he refused to believe that he believed it.
Leonard sighed, looked down, and said again, “Spock’s voice wasn’t real. It was a figment of my-”
“No!” He nearly shouted, but Leonard kept his eyes trained on the floor, even as a couple of orderlies came in their direction. “That’s not true and you know it!”
“Hurley. He’s dead. And so are your friends. They’re dead and they’re gone.”
“He’ll never be gone,” Hurley insisted, rising and pounding his fist on the table; one of the orderlies called out his name, but he ignored him. “He’s always going to be there. Maybe he’s not right now, and maybe you’re scared about that.” Leonard looked up at him, his blue eyes a little wide and a little vulnerable. “Maybe you’re scared he’s not coming back. But he’ll be back. He’ll be back, you’ll see! You’ll hear!” One of the orderlies took him by the arm, and he let him lead him to his room, silent, satisfied.
Leonard watched him go with his blue-wide-vulnerable eyes and that was the last time he saw Hugo Reyes. And if Spock’s voice ever did come back, he kept it to himself.