Oct. 22nd, 2010 09:57 pm
I'll Fly Away 1/3
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lovely_ambitionTitle: I’ll Fly Away
Series: Star Trek Reboot
Characters/Pairings: Kirk/McCoy, Gaila, Jocelyn.
Warnings: AU.
Rating: R
Word Count: 24,785
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loveflyfree
Summary: Jim Kirk left behind his friends and the man he was supposed to marry when he ran away from that small town in Georgia to see the world. Eight years later, he comes home again.
Notes: Title comes from an Allison Krauss song. Thanks to everyone who listened to me rant on and on about this silly story!
In Montgomery, Georgia, every tree trunk boasts a truth that the town knows implicitly -- JTK loved LHM, etched in bark with deep conviction and devotion. They knew that while their small town could’ve dismissed the relationship as something ill-advised and sinful (despite the bounds of progress that had been made in the many years of the 21st century), Jim Kirk made it so that everyone looked up to him and admired his bravery. While his detractors let loose a dozen mud-slung words, there was a hint of respect that was grudgingly given, even if they couldn’t understand how Kirk and McCoy just kept going.
Jim Kirk was expected to marry Leo McCoy and they were supposed to make it through the good times and the bad. The whispers rattled around town telling that if they weren’t in love, then the whole concept of love had something lacking. You just had to see the way the two of them looked at each other to know they had some kind of permanence.
So that was why not a soul in town could explain it when Jim Kirk took off on his motorcycle three days after graduation, leaving a heartbroken LHM behind and a dozen tree trunks serving as painful reminder of what once was and wasn’t any longer.
Only Leo knew the real reason for Jim’s departure, but other than Gaila – best friend to both of the boys – he hadn’t shared the true nature of Jim’s disappearance from his life. Town rumors began, but Leo never found himself compelled to put the mystery to rest.
“He said the whole world was waiting for him,” Leo explained as Gaila poured him a glass topped full of wine and pulled him closer. Leo didn’t seem depressed or crushed or angry or anything that might have suggested he was coping with Jim’s departure. He just looked numb. “He said there had to be something out there for him, something more than this small town.”
Something more than me went unspoken.
The whole town watched Leo McCoy deal with the disappearance. Leo would inevitably recover and head to UMiss to attend pre-med and become a doctor at the young age of twenty-five. He would make his parents and the town proud (the community as a whole had firmly and staunchly taken his side when his high school sweetheart left him in the all-too-literal dust). Leo McCoy went on with his life until he had a house to call his own, a degree that made him the town’s youngest doctor, and a handsome face that had the neighbors talking.
As far as they were concerned, Jim Kirk was a blip on the radar of everyone’s memories – a brilliant flash of a talented boy who could have gone far if he had just played the game right. It wasn’t like Leo was doing so badly for himself and he hadn’t burned every last bridge he had ever crossed in order to get there. Whatever world wonders might be lurking out there, none of them compared to their small town, as far as its citizens were concerned.
They made sure to tell Leo this every time they bumped into him at the supermarket or in the park. For years, all Leo had heard was every last evil word possible rained down on Jim’s head and how it’s just the way some men are.
Leo tried to take it in stride and tried not to add fuel to their bitter fire. The truth was actually closer to the gossip than Leo would like. Deep down, he still wonders why Jim left him and he still loves him more than he thought possible to love an absent person in your life. He just wanted to be enough, but he wasn’t. He’d simply been a stepping stone on the path to Jim Kirk’s Real Life.
Leo tells himself that he’ll make do. After all, he has Jocelyn Darnell to keep him warm at night and that’s all more than enough until just after LH McCoy turns twenty-six years old and Jim Kirk comes back to town.
*
Jim Kirk has done it all. He’s twenty-six years old and he’s dived off the Victoria Falls, he’s climbed Ayers Rock, he’s taken a trip to the Antarctic and watched icebergs plunging into the sea below. He skydived above the Himalayas and has climbed most of the fourteeners in Colorado, but for one (which he had heli-skiied down). He’s swam with sharks near the Great Barrier Reef and motorcycled his way through the Andes to discover ancient civilizations and has trekked alongside slow-moving lava flows to watch the way the Earth is made. He works odd jobs every time he’s in a new country, though the money his father left him when he died has been more than enough to keep him well-fed and with a roof above his head at night. He’s seen the world so many times over and has basked in the thrill of adrenaline it gives to him.
Except that he’s always chasing a high that never lasts. He left the sleepy town that had given him a childhood in order to trade up for a more exciting adulthood in a chaotic world. He always gets the momentary rush and never the permanent one and so when he’s through exhausting what the world has to offer for him, he wonders if maybe he didn’t walk away from the one thing that would’ve given him a lifetime of ups and downs without needing to set foot on a roller coaster.
He’s back in Montgomery with his duffel slung over his shoulder and he’s gone straight to the one place he would go to in his sleep. He returns to a place he’d drift to if he was dying and he needed to find a place to spend his last days. He doesn’t even know if this house belongs to the McCoys anymore, but Jim’s there to find out. He lingers on the sidewalk for a moment when he sees a pair of long denim-clad legs from behind the white pick-up truck. The hood’s open and something’s steaming and Jim smiles ruefully as he sets his bag down.
No one in the McCoy family has ever been good with cars. Eleanor McCoy had all-too-often joked that it was a good thing Leo was dating someone who could distinguish between a car engine and the toaster – as she so eloquently put it.
Eight years have passed and standing here on the driveway of his ex-boyfriends’ home, he feels like he’s eighteen all over again.
“Hey, let me give you a hand,” he offers, figuring that whoever David McCoy has hired to fix the truck (Ol’ Bess as Jim had named her one makeout session in the backseat) isn’t having much luck.
Jim stops dead in his tracks when the mechanic pokes his head out from the hood of the truck, wiping his broad hands off with a spare towel lying around. He’s wearing a too-tight black t-shirt and ripped denim jeans that seem to go on forever and has got on a black baseball cap that makes dark hair stick out, frayed and in all directions at once. He’s got a good amount of stubble on his face and Jim is stuck staring at the broad shoulders that go with the broad chest and…
“Oh my god,” Jim exhales as his whole body seems to forget how to work. “Leo.”
Leo takes one long look at him as he slams the hood of the truck shut, wiping sweat from off his upper lip with the back of his still-greasy hand. “Jim,” he remarks without much civility. Then, of all things in the world that Leo could possibly say next, what he lets loose is a critical, “You lost your accent.”
“Yeah,” Jim says, mouth-dry and his heart beating too fast. “When you’re abroad and they hear the drawl, people tend to treat you like an idiot. Go figure.” Jim definitely feels like an idiot in this exact moment in the face of Leo’s honey-sweet drawl and doesn’t even want to retrieve those brain cells he’s just lost if he can just keep staring. “Look at you,” he says in amazement. “When did this happen?” he asks, gesturing to Leo.
“I grew up,” Leo replies, turning his attention back to the truck as he opens the driver’s door and hauls himself up into the seat, giving Jim a small glimpse of a flexed bicep. “You know,” he goes on, tone bitter, “right around the time you left me.”
It’s the kind of attack that Leo had always been good at. Jim remembers a time when those acidic words were directed away from him. Leo had always fought for him, defended him, made sure to cut anyone down with words alone if they deserved it and stood up for them if they didn’t deserve whatever malice was being pushed their way.
Now, though, Jim is the one who deserves words like that. He watches Leo jam ancient keys into the ignition and manages to get the car running, though it’s shaky and anything but smooth. The truck shudders and shakes and coughs up smoke from under the bonnet and Jim is itching to help, but he stays where he is – frozen and uninvited.
He knows that he ought to leave, but he can’t seem to move. His gaze drifts over to the house and he notices everything at once. The painting’s been done recently and there are curtains inside that look like a woman’s had her touch around. Jim’s not sure he wants to even think about anyone touching that house if not for Eleanor. When he’s done inspecting every gutter and window, he forces his feet to move.
It gets him as far as the passenger window of the truck and he pokes his head inside to take a look at the interior, cataloguing everything that’s changed in eight years.
“Do you need some help?” Jim offers. “I mean, I haven’t touched Bess in...”
“Stop it,” Leo commands, his gaze flicking to the side and shooting Jim a warning look.
It’s with a great deal of pain that Jim realizes that he can’t recognize every twitch and flinch of Leo’s facial expressions. He can’t read him any longer by the way he smiles, the way his gaze turns aside. He used to be able to know Leo’s mood based on a split-second’s glance at his face and now all he sees is frustration directed at him. Jim takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he had known that this was going to be difficult to come back.
It’s even more difficult because he’s not sure if he came back for the town or if he’s come back for Leo.
“Leo, unless you somehow got good at this...” Jim retorts back, unable to keep annoyance from his tone when he’s being spoken to in a way that implies he’s a good-for-nothing piece of shit. Which, again, maybe he’s earned. As he’s speaking, though, the rumble of the engine turns smooth and shuts up Jim’s offers to aid. “...ah.”
Leo presses his lips together and he gives Jim a tense smile, achieved by doing little more than extending the corners of his lips. He turns off the engine and uses his foot to kick the door open and hop back out of the truck, wiping his hands clean with the towel as he circles around the front of the truck and comes around to Jim’s side.
Whereas before, his heart couldn’t beat at all, now it won’t slow down. Every step Leo takes gets him closer and Jim doesn’t know whether he ought to be anticipating a punch or a kiss. He’s not sure why he’s even expecting the latter except that he’s dreamed about it, tried to use substitutes in wild places and always regretted it not being Leo.
Leo stops and hauls the hood of the car back down with a slam, leaning his elbow on the front end, prying off the baseball cap and setting it atop the machine. Jim studies his hair for all of a second before instinct kicks in and muscle memory long thought forgotten compels him to reach forward with a clean hand and push his hand through Leo’s mad mess of hair.
Leo flinches, but doesn’t pull away.
“You always used to keep this short,” Jim says, staring at a man and not the boy that he fell in love with the first week of tenth grade, transferred in from home schooling and all things shiny and new. “I like it,” he says, a lump developing in his throat as his thumb brushes against soft strands of hair.
“So do I.”
Jim jumps and withdraws his hand like a shot’s been fired and he has to react fast before he gets hit. He turns in the direction of the voice and finds Jocelyn Darnell standing on the front porch of the house, her arms crossed and an indescribable look on her face. At least, Jim thinks it is at first, but when he looks closer, he knows exactly what that look is.
It’s worry and fear tainted with relief. As if she’s glad that Jim’s come back, but at the same time, she wants him to go back to the far reaches of the Earth. Jim and Jocelyn had always gotten along back in high school. She’d never made a pass at Leo like the rumors always made it seem like she did. She had always liked Jim and respected his relationship with Leo.
Or, Jim supposes, she had until he didn’t respond to one of her letters demanding that he come back home or she wouldn’t be accountable for what Leo did next.
Jim understands those vague words a little better at the moment.
Jim gives her a guilty look of apology as he shoves both hands in his pockets and tries to let his body language do the reassuring for him. He’s not here to cause waves – not yet, at least, not until he figures out what he’s doing back. Jocelyn looks him over and comes down the front path to join Leo, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
She looks the same, but for new lines on her face. It’s nothing like the growing up that Leo’s done while he’s been away and Jim wonders if it’s because he left or in spite of it. Jim tries to ramp up his natural charm to a hundred as he greets her with a smile, trying to ignore the flickers of jealousy that strike when Jocelyn so easily slides her arm around Leo’s waist and he leans into her, like he’s been doing this for years.
-- come back, you idiot, or Leo’s going to do something you won’t like and I’m going to stop preventing it... makes so much more sense now and Jim forces an air of calm as he studies the both of them.
“How long?” he asks, finally.
“Three years,” Leo answers, giving Jocelyn an apologetic look as he presses a kiss to her reddish-blonde hair, brighter than Jim remembers, but not unnatural. It’s probably the result of the sun, which just brings to mind thoughts of Leo in the sun without his shirt, stretched out on those sandy beaches that are only a ten minute drive away. “I’m a mess, Joce,” he murmurs.
“You can go shower,” she assures. “I’ll talk to Jim.”
Leo takes one last look at Jim and Jim does as much looking back as he can afford, knowing that his goodwill in this situation is precariously low and he has to play by their rules. Jim rights his gaze when it descends to watch Leo’s ass as he goes inside to the pretty little decorated house, all because of Jocelyn.
He turns his attention back to her and finds her with arms crossed, staring at him with more anger than was there before.
“Joce, before you say anything...”
It’s pointless to try and argue and Jim should know better. “How dare you?” she snaps. “How dare you, Jim? I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised considering that you always seemed to live life like you were in a bubble of your own, but this takes the cake.” She shakes her head and lets out a sound that’s equal parts amazed and shocked. “Do you know how long it took for us to get him out of his funk? Do you know how long Gaila had to sit with him before he’d even come out of his room? Nothing got through to him. Nothing. And you...”
Jim closes his eyes momentarily, just long enough to brace for the next wave.
“You could have responded to a dozen letters. I sent you letters, Gaila sent you pictures, Scotty and Uhura tried to reason with you and I know, I know Hik made phone calls,” she accuses. “And now you just waltz back in with no prior notice? What’s the world like when you don’t have to answer to anyone?”
“Joce, listen, this wasn’t planned,” Jim tries to insist when she’s calm enough to interject. “I didn’t even know he was still here!”
“Jim, if you ever loved him at all, you would have found out and at least given him a warning,” she says quietly. “It took him years to accept that it wasn’t his fault that you left. And now you come back. I can’t run you out of town, much as I am thinking about it,” she warns. “But this is your warning. You hurt Leo McCoy again and we won’t be so kind in letting you off the hook.
She’s never been shy about speaking her mind and she’s never been a liar.
Jim stares her down for a good moment, as if somehow he’s going to get across his deepest of apologies through look alone. She doesn’t seem to be phased even the slightest of amounts and challenges him right back.
“Look, Joce, this is my hometown too,” he finally says, letting loose a long sigh and trying to force some of the tension out of his shoulders. “I’m not here to try and make Leo miserable and I’m not exactly sure how long I’m staying...”
“Do you want him back?” she interrupts him to ask.
She’s always been the blunt one, Jim recalls. Even back when he’d first met Leo, Joce had been the one to sidle up to him during third period and set her textbooks down beside him before demanding if he had his sights on the new boy and if she could have a run at him. Jim remembers his indignant reaction, insisting he didn’t like Leo McCoy that way.
That denial had lasted all of two days before he’d gone back to Jocelyn and begged to have a chance. His chance had lasted three years. It sounds like hers is lasting about the same time and so, on some level, they’re strangely even now. “Honestly, Joce? I don’t know,” Jim admits, trying to be just as honest so she can’t accuse him of being lying scum on top of the abandonment charges. “I don’t know anything. I just know I’m here and I’d like to be able to talk to him at some point without you hovering.”
“You might not get so lucky with that, especially as soon as everyone hears you’re back,” Jocelyn admits, her arms crossed over her torso. “Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know. Gaila’s place, maybe?” Jim says, shrugging his shoulders and trying to think of where he could stay without having to fork out money. His parents had moved out of Montgomery as soon as Jim had left, going back to Iowa in order to be closer to his mother’s parents.
There’s a long silence between them and something must happen in Jocelyn, because she softens, just so. Maybe she remembers that she had been Jim’s friend first before Leo had come along. Maybe she remembers some stupid joke they used to have or some idiotic thing they did together where they had fun. Maybe she just remembers that Jim isn’t actually an enemy. “Where were you? Before this? You stopped sending letters.”
“No one wanted to know about where I was,” Jim points out, his turn to be bitter. “Everyone just wanted to yank on a chain and bring me back here.” She raises a pointed brow, as if to point out that he has nothing to complain about, but also to serve as reminder that he hasn’t answered her question. “I was in the Galapagos. I caught a ferry over and spent a couple days trying to pick up residual trash from the oceans.”
She seems to process that and for the first time in their entire conversation, a smile hints around her lips as she steps forward and hugs Jim, out of nowhere. At first, he’s too shocked to actually react, but hugs her back, almost feeling like he’s going to be slapped the minute she pulls away.
“I love him, you know,” she says quietly, with her arms tightly around Jim.
“Yeah,” Jim agrees, feeling heartsick and stomach-sick at about the same time. “So do I.”
“I know,” she agrees sadly, easing back and looking him in the eye. “And he loves you.” Like she already knows how this is going to go, even though she’s wanted the story to go a different way for all these years.
“I didn’t say I wanted him back,” Jim reminds her, not sure he’s entitled to even ask for a chance, let alone sneak in and take one.
Jocelyn lets out an exasperated laugh and shakes her head. “Jim, I’ve known you since I was six and you sprinted into the sandbox and announced that you were King Jim, lord of all sand creatures. You don’t ever mean to be that way. You just...are. We all came to terms with having a leader like you to our merry band of brigands,” she says fondly. “We just never thought you were coming back.” She squeezes his shoulder lightly. “Don’t hurt him.”
“And you?”
“Some nights, I know that I’m just a placeholder for Leo,” she admits, staring to the side. “And I love him. Sometimes I’m his best friend, sometimes it’s more. Sometimes I pretend that I know he isn’t just waiting for something else. But I won’t let him be hurt again,” she warns. “You got it, Jim?”
“I got it,” he agrees, making his den and knowing he’s going to have to lie in it, no matter what he does now. He watches her go back inside the house and wishes that he could hear the conversation that they’re having. He wishes he could see Leo step out of the shower. He wishes – just some small part of him -- that he’d never left.
That wish dissipates quickly enough when he thinks about all the world wonders he’d have had to sacrifice in order for that to work. He leaves the McCoy driveway with heavy thoughts weighing on his mind and the hope that Gaila welcomes him back with at least the same amount of warmth that Jocelyn did.
As trapped as he’d always felt, he’d never felt unloved. And maybe he took that part for granted all this time.
*
“I heard a strange rumor just today at the grocery store,” Eleanor McCoy states as she sets down her world-famous sweet potato casserole on the table. Everyone in the family is in attendance. Leo’s come from the house, David’s home from work, Eleanor has put aside her latest quilting project, and Savannah has finished her homework. At twelve, she’s the baby of the family, though she’ll protest mightily if anyone dares call her that to her face. “Bev told me that she saw a young man talking to you today, said he looked awful familiar.”
Leo pokes away at the potatoes on his plate, already scowling heavily even though no one’s said anything accusatory just yet. “Of course he looked familiar, you only had him over for dinner nearly every night of my high school life,” he mutters.
That earns silence from everyone around the table and even a fork clattering onto a plate. Leo stares up to see his sister looking at him with wide eyes (the girl’s had a crush on Jim Kirk since the day she was born), his father looking displeased, and his mother furious.
“That boy ought to know better than to come back to this town,” she swears. “After what he did to you, I’ll garrotte him myself.”
“Ma!” Leo cuts her off sharply. “Leave it be. He helped with the car and Jocelyn scared him off when she came out to check on me.” He casts his gaze aside, spinning his fork on the plate, as if he’s trying to downplay the whole situation. “He looks good, not that you asked.” He turns his attention almost immediately to Savannah. “Not that you need to know anything about my ex-boyfriend.”
“Leo’s possessive,” Savvy sing-songs at him, smirking as she hides her giggle behind a glass of milk.
“Shut up,” Leo breathes out with irritation. At twenty-six, he shouldn’t be dealing with irritating infant siblings trying to turn things into something they’re not. Not that he wants to see Jim with anyone else. It’s not even the same as him and Jocelyn because they’re still only casually dating and besides, Jim had been the one to leave, not Leo. If Jim moves on, it’s the final nail in the coffin that Jim had hauled out when he first left town. He turns to see his parents looking at him expectantly. “Oh for...my heart is not spontaneously about to break again just because Jim came back to town!”
“Leo, you know we worry,” Eleanor murmurs, pursing her lips. “And you don’t have to pretend for us. We know what happened when he left.”
“Then why the hell do you think it’s a good idea to bring it up again?”
“Language, Leo,” David scolds. “Your mother is worried. And so am I. You put Jim behind you and moved onto your career, but there’s been something missing. I know you’ve been trying to figure things out with Jocelyn and she’s a good girl, but she still doesn’t make you come alive like Jim did. We’re just afraid,” he says, glancing over at Eleanor as if to verify that they’re on the same page, which she assures they are with a nod, “that you’re going to open yourself up to him and get hurt. For the second time.”
Leo isn’t exactly sure that they’re so wrong, which is what he hates more than anything in the world. “Pass the peas,” is all he says quietly, not even thinking about indulging their fears for more than a half-second, because if he gives into a lecture about all the dangers that could come his way, he’s going to start believing them.
They finish dinner in a fair amount of silence and there’s some mercy to be found. They switch topics and discuss Savannah’s latest project, the gossip from the hairdressers, and what Leo’s writing about to submit to the medical journals.
They don’t talk about Jim at all, even if Savannah opens her mouth at one point and Leo can swear he sees the name bubbling on her lips without a single vowel or syllable passing into sound.
He excuses himself from dinner hours later after they’ve all enjoyed Eleanor’s peach cobbler and Leo can’t bear to leave just yet.
Leo’s crawled up to the attic of the house after the disaster of a dinner is over, sitting on the bench-seat beneath the skylight. The sky’s fairly muted, stars peeking out from grey clouds here and there, but nothing to write home about. The thing he likes best about the attic, though, is how very old the stairs are.
This house used to belong to his grandparents, but when his Nana passed, his parents took over the house and he took over theirs. It’s just the circle of life.
The old stairs creak like mad, giving away any intruders long before they can sneak up on him. Leo’s had more than enough time to turn and anticipate whoever’s come to give him yet another lecture. Turns out, maybe the universe has a couple of favors up its sleeve when it comes to him seeing as it’s the one person who’s probably glad that Jim’s back. He smiles and shifts, patting the sofa next to him. “C’mon in, squirt,” he coaxes Savvy. “Couldn’t just leave me alone, could you?”
“They want me to do dishes,” she complains, wriggling as she pokes at Leo’s chest and shoves him off her when he tries to wrap an arm around her shoulder. “So I might have broken one. They said I was too clumsy to do dishes.”
“How lucky,” he deadpans.
“I’m a lucky girl,” she agrees cheerfully, reclining back on the opposite side of the couch, pushing her feet against his arm. “Is Jim really back?”
“Back and more attractive than ever.”
“So you do still want him?” Savvy wonders, furrowing her brow. “Does Jocelyn know?”
Leo’s fairly sure that the entire town knows that he never really got over Jim, but that doesn’t mean that it’s inevitable that he’s going to go running back into Jim’s arms. For one, Jim might not even want him, and for two, even if Jim does want him back, there’s no guaranteeing that Jim’s not about to do another runner the minute that Leo opens his heart and arms to a second chance.
“It’s not fair to Joce to talk about her like she doesn’t even matter,” is Leo’s opinion on the subject, not wanting someone he loves to get relegated to the sidelines because the town is just too invested in how an old fairytale is supposed to play out. “Look, Savvy, I...” he starts, stops, feels like he ought to know better than this, but he’s the stupidest intelligent man he’s ever known. “I don’t know. He left me and I’m not ready to forgive that so quickly.”
He plays around with her foot lightly, poking and prodding at ticklish toes, delighting in making Savannah laugh the way she does.
“If you don’t want him anymore, does that mean I can have him?”
Leo lets out a growl. “Savannah!”
“What!”
“You’re a kid!”
“I’d wait until I was eighteen!”
“Go away.”
“But..!”
“Now,” Leo announces, cutting off whatever intricate argument Savannah is likely planning in her head, because knowing a McCoy, there’s always something stubborn lurking around the corner, waiting to make trouble.
After she leaves, Leo turns his attention back to the window and the stars beyond. He’s been left to his own private thoughts and staring up at the constellations and the galaxies out there, he suddenly feels very small and uncertain. If he turns his thoughts to the future, he knows it will be assured to have some happiness because Jocelyn is reliable and he feels safe with her.
He’s just never felt as ecstatic and amazing as he did when he was with Jim. His happy past is lingering in his shadow and as much as he thinks he’s ready to shake it off his shoulders and move on with his life to bring on something new, he’s not entirely sure that it’ll be so easy to dismiss Jim when the man is responsible for some of the happiest days of Leo’s life.
And that, he knows, is a certainty. Jim makes him happy and he knows that much. He keeps his gaze starwards and wonders if that’s enough to put his heart on the line when all signs point to that being a magnificently stupid idea.
*
Three nights after Jim has returned to town, Leo sits at the dinner table with Jocelyn – halfway through a silent dinner – not sure which of them is more shaken up by the latest turn of events that have all the gossips in town in conniptions of joy. “He looks good,” Jocelyn finally speaks up, as if she already knows that they’re both thinking about Jim anyway and there’ll be no harm in talking about him.
Leo flushes hard at the thought of Jim. The tips of his ears go pink and he wets his lips, trying not to think about how Jim has filled out. How what used to be a scrawny kid, too tall for his own good, too brave for his brain, has become this gorgeous man that Leo knows he loves through and through. He’s slightly terrified that Jocelyn is all-too-aware as well of those feelings.
“Leo?”
Leo startles, his fork clanging against the plate as he finally looks up and catches Jocelyn looking pointedly at him. “What?”
“I said, Jim looks good, doesn’t he?”
Leo narrows his eyes, all but ready to grumble. “This is one of those women-traps, isn’t it?” he says suspiciously, as if he’s about to check for trap doors any moment now. “No answer is safe and then there’ll be poison darts coming out of the wall.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jocelyn replies sweetly. ...too sweetly. Leo’s going to have to check the paintings later for new grooves and holes. He may not have dated women all his life, but he’s trying to be a fast learner for Jocelyn’s sake, even if they still spend most of their nights as very close friends who like to make out and share a bed. They’re both trying, but there have been stumbling blocks and Leo’s lack of closure with Jim Kirk is like the Mount Everest of blocks. “I mean it. He looks good. But then, I think you looked good to him. He hasn’t seen you since...”
“...since the unfortunate teen years, yeah, I know,” Leo finishes her sentence, recalling too all vividly how skinny and awkward he had been. Really, he still thinks it’s a miracle that Jim ever decided that he wanted to take a single look at Leo, never mind a second, and never mind a relationship’s worth of looks.
They pick at chicken and spinach and Leo tries to figure out where this terrifying conversation is going to lead. They shouldn’t be talking about this because they’re already hinting at dangerous territory. Jim and Joce go back further than Leo does with either of them and he’s not sure what sort of secrets they may have been exchanging with each other when his back had been turned.
“Did he apologize?” asks Jocelyn, demurely.
Leo shakes his head and tries to ignore how much it stings that no, Jim hadn’t. “Don’t think he really had the time to. He’s still in shock that people can grow up,” he sardonically notes, more than willing to unleash an acidic barb here and there about Jim. “No apology.” And hell, but that shouldn’t hurt so much.
Jocelyn is the one who’s with him now. Jocelyn is the one who reaches over the table and lightly covers his hand with hers and smiles at him like she can make all the rain clouds go away. “I’m sorry, Leo,” she says, as if her apology will make up for Jim’s lack of one.
It doesn’t, but he’s grateful to her for trying.
They progress through dinner in silence and it’s not until she brings out dessert in the form of apple pie that they broach the subject again. “He’s staying with Gaila,” she provides, as if he’s wanted to ask, but couldn’t find the courage.
Leo arranges his features, making sure that he is the epitome of a man who doesn’t care at all, even if he’s secretly grateful for the information. “I’m not planning on visiting him,” he says. “I have work.” Besides that, Jim is the one who left for years and years. Leo thinks that avoiding him in turns for days to weeks is hardly a fair form of payback, but it’s the best one that he can muster up.
They return to their meals and the silence only grows awkward when they both finish the food on their plates and Leo knows that they have to talk about this.
“Did he say anything else to you?” Leo finally asks, indulging in his curiosity for the first time in days.
Jocelyn cradles her wine glass in her palm, relaxed in her chair and looking as if the situation isn’t strange and crazy to her at all. Leo knows that she must be feeling at odds and ends with Jim back because she and Jim go way back – they have a history that eclipses Leo and Jim’s, even if it’s not the same kind of history at all. “He’s confused,” she admits. “I don’t even think he knows why he’s back here. Though, and I’m sorry to tell you, Leo, I do think it’s partially for you.”
It’s absolutely crazy, Leo thinks, that Jocelyn can sound so calm and sweet as she announces that she’s the sorry one, when she ought to be the one who gets the apologies. She and Leo have slowly moved from friends to this strange place where they have no proper description for what they are, but Leo knows enough to know that Jim’s return throws a wrench in the works.
Though, trust a southern woman to deal with the situation with style, grace, and an ability to sound sweet even as she’s throwing around insults.
“If he wanted me, he’d have stopped trotting the damn globe and come back,” Leo mutters, standing up to collect the plates and turn his frustrations elsewhere, to scrubbing the dishes so hard that he might edge away a layer of china. “And not this many years later. I’m a different man now. I’m a doctor, damn it, not just some little boy waiting for him to come home to me.” He knows he’s being stubborn, but he’s more than earned the right to be. “Besides, it’s Jim. He’ll just leave again when we get too boring for him,” he says, trying not to wallow in that sad state of affairs.
He lingers by the sink, hands grasping the counter as he tries to shake the maudlin thoughts from his mind. Even Jocelyn’s supportive hand on his shoulder does little to bring him around from it -- that troubling little fact that’s been in his mind for years.
The fact (and the supposed truth) that Leo McCoy hadn’t been enough to make Jim stay.
He doesn’t even want to chance giving life to the thought that Leo’s the one that Jim came back for. It’d be beyond depressing to find out that the truth is otherwise and Leo hasn’t got near enough faith that the universe would ever be so kind to him.
part two
Series: Star Trek Reboot
Characters/Pairings: Kirk/McCoy, Gaila, Jocelyn.
Warnings: AU.
Rating: R
Word Count: 24,785
Beta:
loveflyfree Summary: Jim Kirk left behind his friends and the man he was supposed to marry when he ran away from that small town in Georgia to see the world. Eight years later, he comes home again.
Notes: Title comes from an Allison Krauss song. Thanks to everyone who listened to me rant on and on about this silly story!
In Montgomery, Georgia, every tree trunk boasts a truth that the town knows implicitly -- JTK loved LHM, etched in bark with deep conviction and devotion. They knew that while their small town could’ve dismissed the relationship as something ill-advised and sinful (despite the bounds of progress that had been made in the many years of the 21st century), Jim Kirk made it so that everyone looked up to him and admired his bravery. While his detractors let loose a dozen mud-slung words, there was a hint of respect that was grudgingly given, even if they couldn’t understand how Kirk and McCoy just kept going.
Jim Kirk was expected to marry Leo McCoy and they were supposed to make it through the good times and the bad. The whispers rattled around town telling that if they weren’t in love, then the whole concept of love had something lacking. You just had to see the way the two of them looked at each other to know they had some kind of permanence.
So that was why not a soul in town could explain it when Jim Kirk took off on his motorcycle three days after graduation, leaving a heartbroken LHM behind and a dozen tree trunks serving as painful reminder of what once was and wasn’t any longer.
Only Leo knew the real reason for Jim’s departure, but other than Gaila – best friend to both of the boys – he hadn’t shared the true nature of Jim’s disappearance from his life. Town rumors began, but Leo never found himself compelled to put the mystery to rest.
“He said the whole world was waiting for him,” Leo explained as Gaila poured him a glass topped full of wine and pulled him closer. Leo didn’t seem depressed or crushed or angry or anything that might have suggested he was coping with Jim’s departure. He just looked numb. “He said there had to be something out there for him, something more than this small town.”
Something more than me went unspoken.
The whole town watched Leo McCoy deal with the disappearance. Leo would inevitably recover and head to UMiss to attend pre-med and become a doctor at the young age of twenty-five. He would make his parents and the town proud (the community as a whole had firmly and staunchly taken his side when his high school sweetheart left him in the all-too-literal dust). Leo McCoy went on with his life until he had a house to call his own, a degree that made him the town’s youngest doctor, and a handsome face that had the neighbors talking.
As far as they were concerned, Jim Kirk was a blip on the radar of everyone’s memories – a brilliant flash of a talented boy who could have gone far if he had just played the game right. It wasn’t like Leo was doing so badly for himself and he hadn’t burned every last bridge he had ever crossed in order to get there. Whatever world wonders might be lurking out there, none of them compared to their small town, as far as its citizens were concerned.
They made sure to tell Leo this every time they bumped into him at the supermarket or in the park. For years, all Leo had heard was every last evil word possible rained down on Jim’s head and how it’s just the way some men are.
Leo tried to take it in stride and tried not to add fuel to their bitter fire. The truth was actually closer to the gossip than Leo would like. Deep down, he still wonders why Jim left him and he still loves him more than he thought possible to love an absent person in your life. He just wanted to be enough, but he wasn’t. He’d simply been a stepping stone on the path to Jim Kirk’s Real Life.
Leo tells himself that he’ll make do. After all, he has Jocelyn Darnell to keep him warm at night and that’s all more than enough until just after LH McCoy turns twenty-six years old and Jim Kirk comes back to town.
*
Jim Kirk has done it all. He’s twenty-six years old and he’s dived off the Victoria Falls, he’s climbed Ayers Rock, he’s taken a trip to the Antarctic and watched icebergs plunging into the sea below. He skydived above the Himalayas and has climbed most of the fourteeners in Colorado, but for one (which he had heli-skiied down). He’s swam with sharks near the Great Barrier Reef and motorcycled his way through the Andes to discover ancient civilizations and has trekked alongside slow-moving lava flows to watch the way the Earth is made. He works odd jobs every time he’s in a new country, though the money his father left him when he died has been more than enough to keep him well-fed and with a roof above his head at night. He’s seen the world so many times over and has basked in the thrill of adrenaline it gives to him.
Except that he’s always chasing a high that never lasts. He left the sleepy town that had given him a childhood in order to trade up for a more exciting adulthood in a chaotic world. He always gets the momentary rush and never the permanent one and so when he’s through exhausting what the world has to offer for him, he wonders if maybe he didn’t walk away from the one thing that would’ve given him a lifetime of ups and downs without needing to set foot on a roller coaster.
He’s back in Montgomery with his duffel slung over his shoulder and he’s gone straight to the one place he would go to in his sleep. He returns to a place he’d drift to if he was dying and he needed to find a place to spend his last days. He doesn’t even know if this house belongs to the McCoys anymore, but Jim’s there to find out. He lingers on the sidewalk for a moment when he sees a pair of long denim-clad legs from behind the white pick-up truck. The hood’s open and something’s steaming and Jim smiles ruefully as he sets his bag down.
No one in the McCoy family has ever been good with cars. Eleanor McCoy had all-too-often joked that it was a good thing Leo was dating someone who could distinguish between a car engine and the toaster – as she so eloquently put it.
Eight years have passed and standing here on the driveway of his ex-boyfriends’ home, he feels like he’s eighteen all over again.
“Hey, let me give you a hand,” he offers, figuring that whoever David McCoy has hired to fix the truck (Ol’ Bess as Jim had named her one makeout session in the backseat) isn’t having much luck.
Jim stops dead in his tracks when the mechanic pokes his head out from the hood of the truck, wiping his broad hands off with a spare towel lying around. He’s wearing a too-tight black t-shirt and ripped denim jeans that seem to go on forever and has got on a black baseball cap that makes dark hair stick out, frayed and in all directions at once. He’s got a good amount of stubble on his face and Jim is stuck staring at the broad shoulders that go with the broad chest and…
“Oh my god,” Jim exhales as his whole body seems to forget how to work. “Leo.”
Leo takes one long look at him as he slams the hood of the truck shut, wiping sweat from off his upper lip with the back of his still-greasy hand. “Jim,” he remarks without much civility. Then, of all things in the world that Leo could possibly say next, what he lets loose is a critical, “You lost your accent.”
“Yeah,” Jim says, mouth-dry and his heart beating too fast. “When you’re abroad and they hear the drawl, people tend to treat you like an idiot. Go figure.” Jim definitely feels like an idiot in this exact moment in the face of Leo’s honey-sweet drawl and doesn’t even want to retrieve those brain cells he’s just lost if he can just keep staring. “Look at you,” he says in amazement. “When did this happen?” he asks, gesturing to Leo.
“I grew up,” Leo replies, turning his attention back to the truck as he opens the driver’s door and hauls himself up into the seat, giving Jim a small glimpse of a flexed bicep. “You know,” he goes on, tone bitter, “right around the time you left me.”
It’s the kind of attack that Leo had always been good at. Jim remembers a time when those acidic words were directed away from him. Leo had always fought for him, defended him, made sure to cut anyone down with words alone if they deserved it and stood up for them if they didn’t deserve whatever malice was being pushed their way.
Now, though, Jim is the one who deserves words like that. He watches Leo jam ancient keys into the ignition and manages to get the car running, though it’s shaky and anything but smooth. The truck shudders and shakes and coughs up smoke from under the bonnet and Jim is itching to help, but he stays where he is – frozen and uninvited.
He knows that he ought to leave, but he can’t seem to move. His gaze drifts over to the house and he notices everything at once. The painting’s been done recently and there are curtains inside that look like a woman’s had her touch around. Jim’s not sure he wants to even think about anyone touching that house if not for Eleanor. When he’s done inspecting every gutter and window, he forces his feet to move.
It gets him as far as the passenger window of the truck and he pokes his head inside to take a look at the interior, cataloguing everything that’s changed in eight years.
“Do you need some help?” Jim offers. “I mean, I haven’t touched Bess in...”
“Stop it,” Leo commands, his gaze flicking to the side and shooting Jim a warning look.
It’s with a great deal of pain that Jim realizes that he can’t recognize every twitch and flinch of Leo’s facial expressions. He can’t read him any longer by the way he smiles, the way his gaze turns aside. He used to be able to know Leo’s mood based on a split-second’s glance at his face and now all he sees is frustration directed at him. Jim takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he had known that this was going to be difficult to come back.
It’s even more difficult because he’s not sure if he came back for the town or if he’s come back for Leo.
“Leo, unless you somehow got good at this...” Jim retorts back, unable to keep annoyance from his tone when he’s being spoken to in a way that implies he’s a good-for-nothing piece of shit. Which, again, maybe he’s earned. As he’s speaking, though, the rumble of the engine turns smooth and shuts up Jim’s offers to aid. “...ah.”
Leo presses his lips together and he gives Jim a tense smile, achieved by doing little more than extending the corners of his lips. He turns off the engine and uses his foot to kick the door open and hop back out of the truck, wiping his hands clean with the towel as he circles around the front of the truck and comes around to Jim’s side.
Whereas before, his heart couldn’t beat at all, now it won’t slow down. Every step Leo takes gets him closer and Jim doesn’t know whether he ought to be anticipating a punch or a kiss. He’s not sure why he’s even expecting the latter except that he’s dreamed about it, tried to use substitutes in wild places and always regretted it not being Leo.
Leo stops and hauls the hood of the car back down with a slam, leaning his elbow on the front end, prying off the baseball cap and setting it atop the machine. Jim studies his hair for all of a second before instinct kicks in and muscle memory long thought forgotten compels him to reach forward with a clean hand and push his hand through Leo’s mad mess of hair.
Leo flinches, but doesn’t pull away.
“You always used to keep this short,” Jim says, staring at a man and not the boy that he fell in love with the first week of tenth grade, transferred in from home schooling and all things shiny and new. “I like it,” he says, a lump developing in his throat as his thumb brushes against soft strands of hair.
“So do I.”
Jim jumps and withdraws his hand like a shot’s been fired and he has to react fast before he gets hit. He turns in the direction of the voice and finds Jocelyn Darnell standing on the front porch of the house, her arms crossed and an indescribable look on her face. At least, Jim thinks it is at first, but when he looks closer, he knows exactly what that look is.
It’s worry and fear tainted with relief. As if she’s glad that Jim’s come back, but at the same time, she wants him to go back to the far reaches of the Earth. Jim and Jocelyn had always gotten along back in high school. She’d never made a pass at Leo like the rumors always made it seem like she did. She had always liked Jim and respected his relationship with Leo.
Or, Jim supposes, she had until he didn’t respond to one of her letters demanding that he come back home or she wouldn’t be accountable for what Leo did next.
Jim understands those vague words a little better at the moment.
Jim gives her a guilty look of apology as he shoves both hands in his pockets and tries to let his body language do the reassuring for him. He’s not here to cause waves – not yet, at least, not until he figures out what he’s doing back. Jocelyn looks him over and comes down the front path to join Leo, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
She looks the same, but for new lines on her face. It’s nothing like the growing up that Leo’s done while he’s been away and Jim wonders if it’s because he left or in spite of it. Jim tries to ramp up his natural charm to a hundred as he greets her with a smile, trying to ignore the flickers of jealousy that strike when Jocelyn so easily slides her arm around Leo’s waist and he leans into her, like he’s been doing this for years.
-- come back, you idiot, or Leo’s going to do something you won’t like and I’m going to stop preventing it... makes so much more sense now and Jim forces an air of calm as he studies the both of them.
“How long?” he asks, finally.
“Three years,” Leo answers, giving Jocelyn an apologetic look as he presses a kiss to her reddish-blonde hair, brighter than Jim remembers, but not unnatural. It’s probably the result of the sun, which just brings to mind thoughts of Leo in the sun without his shirt, stretched out on those sandy beaches that are only a ten minute drive away. “I’m a mess, Joce,” he murmurs.
“You can go shower,” she assures. “I’ll talk to Jim.”
Leo takes one last look at Jim and Jim does as much looking back as he can afford, knowing that his goodwill in this situation is precariously low and he has to play by their rules. Jim rights his gaze when it descends to watch Leo’s ass as he goes inside to the pretty little decorated house, all because of Jocelyn.
He turns his attention back to her and finds her with arms crossed, staring at him with more anger than was there before.
“Joce, before you say anything...”
It’s pointless to try and argue and Jim should know better. “How dare you?” she snaps. “How dare you, Jim? I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised considering that you always seemed to live life like you were in a bubble of your own, but this takes the cake.” She shakes her head and lets out a sound that’s equal parts amazed and shocked. “Do you know how long it took for us to get him out of his funk? Do you know how long Gaila had to sit with him before he’d even come out of his room? Nothing got through to him. Nothing. And you...”
Jim closes his eyes momentarily, just long enough to brace for the next wave.
“You could have responded to a dozen letters. I sent you letters, Gaila sent you pictures, Scotty and Uhura tried to reason with you and I know, I know Hik made phone calls,” she accuses. “And now you just waltz back in with no prior notice? What’s the world like when you don’t have to answer to anyone?”
“Joce, listen, this wasn’t planned,” Jim tries to insist when she’s calm enough to interject. “I didn’t even know he was still here!”
“Jim, if you ever loved him at all, you would have found out and at least given him a warning,” she says quietly. “It took him years to accept that it wasn’t his fault that you left. And now you come back. I can’t run you out of town, much as I am thinking about it,” she warns. “But this is your warning. You hurt Leo McCoy again and we won’t be so kind in letting you off the hook.
She’s never been shy about speaking her mind and she’s never been a liar.
Jim stares her down for a good moment, as if somehow he’s going to get across his deepest of apologies through look alone. She doesn’t seem to be phased even the slightest of amounts and challenges him right back.
“Look, Joce, this is my hometown too,” he finally says, letting loose a long sigh and trying to force some of the tension out of his shoulders. “I’m not here to try and make Leo miserable and I’m not exactly sure how long I’m staying...”
“Do you want him back?” she interrupts him to ask.
She’s always been the blunt one, Jim recalls. Even back when he’d first met Leo, Joce had been the one to sidle up to him during third period and set her textbooks down beside him before demanding if he had his sights on the new boy and if she could have a run at him. Jim remembers his indignant reaction, insisting he didn’t like Leo McCoy that way.
That denial had lasted all of two days before he’d gone back to Jocelyn and begged to have a chance. His chance had lasted three years. It sounds like hers is lasting about the same time and so, on some level, they’re strangely even now. “Honestly, Joce? I don’t know,” Jim admits, trying to be just as honest so she can’t accuse him of being lying scum on top of the abandonment charges. “I don’t know anything. I just know I’m here and I’d like to be able to talk to him at some point without you hovering.”
“You might not get so lucky with that, especially as soon as everyone hears you’re back,” Jocelyn admits, her arms crossed over her torso. “Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know. Gaila’s place, maybe?” Jim says, shrugging his shoulders and trying to think of where he could stay without having to fork out money. His parents had moved out of Montgomery as soon as Jim had left, going back to Iowa in order to be closer to his mother’s parents.
There’s a long silence between them and something must happen in Jocelyn, because she softens, just so. Maybe she remembers that she had been Jim’s friend first before Leo had come along. Maybe she remembers some stupid joke they used to have or some idiotic thing they did together where they had fun. Maybe she just remembers that Jim isn’t actually an enemy. “Where were you? Before this? You stopped sending letters.”
“No one wanted to know about where I was,” Jim points out, his turn to be bitter. “Everyone just wanted to yank on a chain and bring me back here.” She raises a pointed brow, as if to point out that he has nothing to complain about, but also to serve as reminder that he hasn’t answered her question. “I was in the Galapagos. I caught a ferry over and spent a couple days trying to pick up residual trash from the oceans.”
She seems to process that and for the first time in their entire conversation, a smile hints around her lips as she steps forward and hugs Jim, out of nowhere. At first, he’s too shocked to actually react, but hugs her back, almost feeling like he’s going to be slapped the minute she pulls away.
“I love him, you know,” she says quietly, with her arms tightly around Jim.
“Yeah,” Jim agrees, feeling heartsick and stomach-sick at about the same time. “So do I.”
“I know,” she agrees sadly, easing back and looking him in the eye. “And he loves you.” Like she already knows how this is going to go, even though she’s wanted the story to go a different way for all these years.
“I didn’t say I wanted him back,” Jim reminds her, not sure he’s entitled to even ask for a chance, let alone sneak in and take one.
Jocelyn lets out an exasperated laugh and shakes her head. “Jim, I’ve known you since I was six and you sprinted into the sandbox and announced that you were King Jim, lord of all sand creatures. You don’t ever mean to be that way. You just...are. We all came to terms with having a leader like you to our merry band of brigands,” she says fondly. “We just never thought you were coming back.” She squeezes his shoulder lightly. “Don’t hurt him.”
“And you?”
“Some nights, I know that I’m just a placeholder for Leo,” she admits, staring to the side. “And I love him. Sometimes I’m his best friend, sometimes it’s more. Sometimes I pretend that I know he isn’t just waiting for something else. But I won’t let him be hurt again,” she warns. “You got it, Jim?”
“I got it,” he agrees, making his den and knowing he’s going to have to lie in it, no matter what he does now. He watches her go back inside the house and wishes that he could hear the conversation that they’re having. He wishes he could see Leo step out of the shower. He wishes – just some small part of him -- that he’d never left.
That wish dissipates quickly enough when he thinks about all the world wonders he’d have had to sacrifice in order for that to work. He leaves the McCoy driveway with heavy thoughts weighing on his mind and the hope that Gaila welcomes him back with at least the same amount of warmth that Jocelyn did.
As trapped as he’d always felt, he’d never felt unloved. And maybe he took that part for granted all this time.
*
“I heard a strange rumor just today at the grocery store,” Eleanor McCoy states as she sets down her world-famous sweet potato casserole on the table. Everyone in the family is in attendance. Leo’s come from the house, David’s home from work, Eleanor has put aside her latest quilting project, and Savannah has finished her homework. At twelve, she’s the baby of the family, though she’ll protest mightily if anyone dares call her that to her face. “Bev told me that she saw a young man talking to you today, said he looked awful familiar.”
Leo pokes away at the potatoes on his plate, already scowling heavily even though no one’s said anything accusatory just yet. “Of course he looked familiar, you only had him over for dinner nearly every night of my high school life,” he mutters.
That earns silence from everyone around the table and even a fork clattering onto a plate. Leo stares up to see his sister looking at him with wide eyes (the girl’s had a crush on Jim Kirk since the day she was born), his father looking displeased, and his mother furious.
“That boy ought to know better than to come back to this town,” she swears. “After what he did to you, I’ll garrotte him myself.”
“Ma!” Leo cuts her off sharply. “Leave it be. He helped with the car and Jocelyn scared him off when she came out to check on me.” He casts his gaze aside, spinning his fork on the plate, as if he’s trying to downplay the whole situation. “He looks good, not that you asked.” He turns his attention almost immediately to Savannah. “Not that you need to know anything about my ex-boyfriend.”
“Leo’s possessive,” Savvy sing-songs at him, smirking as she hides her giggle behind a glass of milk.
“Shut up,” Leo breathes out with irritation. At twenty-six, he shouldn’t be dealing with irritating infant siblings trying to turn things into something they’re not. Not that he wants to see Jim with anyone else. It’s not even the same as him and Jocelyn because they’re still only casually dating and besides, Jim had been the one to leave, not Leo. If Jim moves on, it’s the final nail in the coffin that Jim had hauled out when he first left town. He turns to see his parents looking at him expectantly. “Oh for...my heart is not spontaneously about to break again just because Jim came back to town!”
“Leo, you know we worry,” Eleanor murmurs, pursing her lips. “And you don’t have to pretend for us. We know what happened when he left.”
“Then why the hell do you think it’s a good idea to bring it up again?”
“Language, Leo,” David scolds. “Your mother is worried. And so am I. You put Jim behind you and moved onto your career, but there’s been something missing. I know you’ve been trying to figure things out with Jocelyn and she’s a good girl, but she still doesn’t make you come alive like Jim did. We’re just afraid,” he says, glancing over at Eleanor as if to verify that they’re on the same page, which she assures they are with a nod, “that you’re going to open yourself up to him and get hurt. For the second time.”
Leo isn’t exactly sure that they’re so wrong, which is what he hates more than anything in the world. “Pass the peas,” is all he says quietly, not even thinking about indulging their fears for more than a half-second, because if he gives into a lecture about all the dangers that could come his way, he’s going to start believing them.
They finish dinner in a fair amount of silence and there’s some mercy to be found. They switch topics and discuss Savannah’s latest project, the gossip from the hairdressers, and what Leo’s writing about to submit to the medical journals.
They don’t talk about Jim at all, even if Savannah opens her mouth at one point and Leo can swear he sees the name bubbling on her lips without a single vowel or syllable passing into sound.
He excuses himself from dinner hours later after they’ve all enjoyed Eleanor’s peach cobbler and Leo can’t bear to leave just yet.
Leo’s crawled up to the attic of the house after the disaster of a dinner is over, sitting on the bench-seat beneath the skylight. The sky’s fairly muted, stars peeking out from grey clouds here and there, but nothing to write home about. The thing he likes best about the attic, though, is how very old the stairs are.
This house used to belong to his grandparents, but when his Nana passed, his parents took over the house and he took over theirs. It’s just the circle of life.
The old stairs creak like mad, giving away any intruders long before they can sneak up on him. Leo’s had more than enough time to turn and anticipate whoever’s come to give him yet another lecture. Turns out, maybe the universe has a couple of favors up its sleeve when it comes to him seeing as it’s the one person who’s probably glad that Jim’s back. He smiles and shifts, patting the sofa next to him. “C’mon in, squirt,” he coaxes Savvy. “Couldn’t just leave me alone, could you?”
“They want me to do dishes,” she complains, wriggling as she pokes at Leo’s chest and shoves him off her when he tries to wrap an arm around her shoulder. “So I might have broken one. They said I was too clumsy to do dishes.”
“How lucky,” he deadpans.
“I’m a lucky girl,” she agrees cheerfully, reclining back on the opposite side of the couch, pushing her feet against his arm. “Is Jim really back?”
“Back and more attractive than ever.”
“So you do still want him?” Savvy wonders, furrowing her brow. “Does Jocelyn know?”
Leo’s fairly sure that the entire town knows that he never really got over Jim, but that doesn’t mean that it’s inevitable that he’s going to go running back into Jim’s arms. For one, Jim might not even want him, and for two, even if Jim does want him back, there’s no guaranteeing that Jim’s not about to do another runner the minute that Leo opens his heart and arms to a second chance.
“It’s not fair to Joce to talk about her like she doesn’t even matter,” is Leo’s opinion on the subject, not wanting someone he loves to get relegated to the sidelines because the town is just too invested in how an old fairytale is supposed to play out. “Look, Savvy, I...” he starts, stops, feels like he ought to know better than this, but he’s the stupidest intelligent man he’s ever known. “I don’t know. He left me and I’m not ready to forgive that so quickly.”
He plays around with her foot lightly, poking and prodding at ticklish toes, delighting in making Savannah laugh the way she does.
“If you don’t want him anymore, does that mean I can have him?”
Leo lets out a growl. “Savannah!”
“What!”
“You’re a kid!”
“I’d wait until I was eighteen!”
“Go away.”
“But..!”
“Now,” Leo announces, cutting off whatever intricate argument Savannah is likely planning in her head, because knowing a McCoy, there’s always something stubborn lurking around the corner, waiting to make trouble.
After she leaves, Leo turns his attention back to the window and the stars beyond. He’s been left to his own private thoughts and staring up at the constellations and the galaxies out there, he suddenly feels very small and uncertain. If he turns his thoughts to the future, he knows it will be assured to have some happiness because Jocelyn is reliable and he feels safe with her.
He’s just never felt as ecstatic and amazing as he did when he was with Jim. His happy past is lingering in his shadow and as much as he thinks he’s ready to shake it off his shoulders and move on with his life to bring on something new, he’s not entirely sure that it’ll be so easy to dismiss Jim when the man is responsible for some of the happiest days of Leo’s life.
And that, he knows, is a certainty. Jim makes him happy and he knows that much. He keeps his gaze starwards and wonders if that’s enough to put his heart on the line when all signs point to that being a magnificently stupid idea.
*
Three nights after Jim has returned to town, Leo sits at the dinner table with Jocelyn – halfway through a silent dinner – not sure which of them is more shaken up by the latest turn of events that have all the gossips in town in conniptions of joy. “He looks good,” Jocelyn finally speaks up, as if she already knows that they’re both thinking about Jim anyway and there’ll be no harm in talking about him.
Leo flushes hard at the thought of Jim. The tips of his ears go pink and he wets his lips, trying not to think about how Jim has filled out. How what used to be a scrawny kid, too tall for his own good, too brave for his brain, has become this gorgeous man that Leo knows he loves through and through. He’s slightly terrified that Jocelyn is all-too-aware as well of those feelings.
“Leo?”
Leo startles, his fork clanging against the plate as he finally looks up and catches Jocelyn looking pointedly at him. “What?”
“I said, Jim looks good, doesn’t he?”
Leo narrows his eyes, all but ready to grumble. “This is one of those women-traps, isn’t it?” he says suspiciously, as if he’s about to check for trap doors any moment now. “No answer is safe and then there’ll be poison darts coming out of the wall.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jocelyn replies sweetly. ...too sweetly. Leo’s going to have to check the paintings later for new grooves and holes. He may not have dated women all his life, but he’s trying to be a fast learner for Jocelyn’s sake, even if they still spend most of their nights as very close friends who like to make out and share a bed. They’re both trying, but there have been stumbling blocks and Leo’s lack of closure with Jim Kirk is like the Mount Everest of blocks. “I mean it. He looks good. But then, I think you looked good to him. He hasn’t seen you since...”
“...since the unfortunate teen years, yeah, I know,” Leo finishes her sentence, recalling too all vividly how skinny and awkward he had been. Really, he still thinks it’s a miracle that Jim ever decided that he wanted to take a single look at Leo, never mind a second, and never mind a relationship’s worth of looks.
They pick at chicken and spinach and Leo tries to figure out where this terrifying conversation is going to lead. They shouldn’t be talking about this because they’re already hinting at dangerous territory. Jim and Joce go back further than Leo does with either of them and he’s not sure what sort of secrets they may have been exchanging with each other when his back had been turned.
“Did he apologize?” asks Jocelyn, demurely.
Leo shakes his head and tries to ignore how much it stings that no, Jim hadn’t. “Don’t think he really had the time to. He’s still in shock that people can grow up,” he sardonically notes, more than willing to unleash an acidic barb here and there about Jim. “No apology.” And hell, but that shouldn’t hurt so much.
Jocelyn is the one who’s with him now. Jocelyn is the one who reaches over the table and lightly covers his hand with hers and smiles at him like she can make all the rain clouds go away. “I’m sorry, Leo,” she says, as if her apology will make up for Jim’s lack of one.
It doesn’t, but he’s grateful to her for trying.
They progress through dinner in silence and it’s not until she brings out dessert in the form of apple pie that they broach the subject again. “He’s staying with Gaila,” she provides, as if he’s wanted to ask, but couldn’t find the courage.
Leo arranges his features, making sure that he is the epitome of a man who doesn’t care at all, even if he’s secretly grateful for the information. “I’m not planning on visiting him,” he says. “I have work.” Besides that, Jim is the one who left for years and years. Leo thinks that avoiding him in turns for days to weeks is hardly a fair form of payback, but it’s the best one that he can muster up.
They return to their meals and the silence only grows awkward when they both finish the food on their plates and Leo knows that they have to talk about this.
“Did he say anything else to you?” Leo finally asks, indulging in his curiosity for the first time in days.
Jocelyn cradles her wine glass in her palm, relaxed in her chair and looking as if the situation isn’t strange and crazy to her at all. Leo knows that she must be feeling at odds and ends with Jim back because she and Jim go way back – they have a history that eclipses Leo and Jim’s, even if it’s not the same kind of history at all. “He’s confused,” she admits. “I don’t even think he knows why he’s back here. Though, and I’m sorry to tell you, Leo, I do think it’s partially for you.”
It’s absolutely crazy, Leo thinks, that Jocelyn can sound so calm and sweet as she announces that she’s the sorry one, when she ought to be the one who gets the apologies. She and Leo have slowly moved from friends to this strange place where they have no proper description for what they are, but Leo knows enough to know that Jim’s return throws a wrench in the works.
Though, trust a southern woman to deal with the situation with style, grace, and an ability to sound sweet even as she’s throwing around insults.
“If he wanted me, he’d have stopped trotting the damn globe and come back,” Leo mutters, standing up to collect the plates and turn his frustrations elsewhere, to scrubbing the dishes so hard that he might edge away a layer of china. “And not this many years later. I’m a different man now. I’m a doctor, damn it, not just some little boy waiting for him to come home to me.” He knows he’s being stubborn, but he’s more than earned the right to be. “Besides, it’s Jim. He’ll just leave again when we get too boring for him,” he says, trying not to wallow in that sad state of affairs.
He lingers by the sink, hands grasping the counter as he tries to shake the maudlin thoughts from his mind. Even Jocelyn’s supportive hand on his shoulder does little to bring him around from it -- that troubling little fact that’s been in his mind for years.
The fact (and the supposed truth) that Leo McCoy hadn’t been enough to make Jim stay.
He doesn’t even want to chance giving life to the thought that Leo’s the one that Jim came back for. It’d be beyond depressing to find out that the truth is otherwise and Leo hasn’t got near enough faith that the universe would ever be so kind to him.
part two
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