leftwithmybones | (no subject)

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Even though the commute from the country has come to be one of McCoy's least favorite things, he's not sure how ready he'd be to get back to the city. The countryside has a lot going for it between the quiet of the house, the large expanse of yard, and the porch he's genuinely come to love (given that he spends most of his free time on it, tinkering with his machines and research). There's all sorts of little things he's missed, too. Tending to the gardens and the land is one thing, but doing the chores involved in a house like this bring him enjoyment instead of irritation.

Which is why he's enjoying chopping the wood for the furnace. It's not that it's cold now, but it will be, and after getting off a double-shift and taking a nap, he needs a little something to burn through the adrenaline of the surgery he'd been in. This? This is perfect. This is exactly the kind of thing he needs.

He hauls off his shirt, prying at the tank top as he works on the newest pile, eager to create a good reserve in case something happens, and he's so far in to the cutting, he doesn't even notice that he has company.

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Jim has no idea what time it is when he emerges, scratchy eyed and wild of hair from the room that is his workshop (the very same one that Bones has taken to calling Jim's personal island of misfit toys). He discards the charred bowels of a new tricorder template and wanders into the kitchen for a drink, but Jim pauses when he catches the view through the kitchen window.

There's a hot guy in the back yard, and Jim's mouth is open to ask Bones who the hell that is when he realizes the guy sweating through his dirty tanktop is Bones.

Jim's just never looked at him like this before.

Drawn like a satellite towards the door, Jim lingers in the open frame, color rising slowly in his cheeks. "Isn't it kinda hot for a fire?"

McCoy grasps the next log, splitting it before he even considers answering. "It's too hot now, but you really want to be doing this in a few months when you could just pick one out of the pile?" he points out, rolling his shoulders back before he tosses half of the log over to the pile he's started. "Besides, I needed to do something with my hands and this makes me feel like I'm back home again," he drawls, his accent stronger like he actually is back there.

Jim's mouth quirks. "You sound like you're already there," he says, pushing the cold glass against the back of his neck while Bones can't see. "I could just - " Jim waves a hand. "Install radiant heat in the floors or something."

But then Bones wouldn't need to chop wood, and that would be a shame. Because it makes him happy, obviously, or so Jim tells himself, eyes tracking the pull of the tanktop against Bones' shoulder blades. "Aren't you gonna pull a neck muscle or something and get super cranky for days?"

"Don't you dare take away the things that make me like your little country house," McCoy warns, idly poking the sharp end of the axe in his direction. As if he's genuinely going to do it. "And while I might act like an old man, I'm still in decent shape. Someone in the Academy made me go to the gym with him enough that I picked up the habit." He shrugs. "Hospital's got a little gym I use, but it was closed for cleaning today. Had to find some other way to burn off the post-double adrenaline before I sleep for a day."

"Alright," Jim laughs for Bones' rant, "I didn't mean to give you a case of the vapors, swing on." He walks closer, feeling uncharacteristically awkward as he takes a seat in the grass, as if he's intruding somehow by being here. He's never felt uncomfortable watching Bones, but then, he's never quite let himself watch Bones this way, either.

Eyes aimed at the shift of Bones' feet in the grass, Jim rubs idly at the glass in his hands. "What would you be doing?" he asks. "If somehow, you were home in Georgia?"

McCoy gives Jim a dubious look, wondering if he really actually cares or is just asking. "If the ex ever lifted the ban on me going home?" he clarifies, because he knows plenty well that Jocelyn wouldn't allow him more than a weekend before the divorce agreement came out. "I don't know. Working like I'm doing now? Tending to the house. Being a father, that's the one I miss," he says, but tries not to focus on it because thinking about Joanna makes him ache in a way that's hard to come back from.

Jim nods, for that's what he'd meant - what would Bones be doing if he were home, and allowed to be happy. At the Academy and on the ship, Jim had done his best to fill that void in Bones' life with purpose, keep him busy and hope that he could find some kind of peace in it. He's done precious little of that in Darrow, even for the depressed shit that he is, and Jim looks guiltily away.

He can hardly offer Bones a kid, but the other things..."Looks a lot like what you're doing now," he agrees. "What else, Bones?" Now that he's thinking about it instead of his own broken heart, Jim could be doing so much more to make Bones happy. "What's the ideal?"

He shifts the weight of the axe so it's not slung in the air, grasping another block of wood to chop down into smaller pieces. "I don't know," he says, even though that's a lie. He knows plenty well what the happy space in his mind involves, because it's been there ever since those damned orbs showed him the possibility.

"I guess I miss having someone in my life," he says. "It's been ages since Jean and knowing I have someone to curl up with and take out on dates, someone to listen to all my crap, I guess I miss that, too."

Jim nods, wrestling the jealousy that surges instantly within him back into the deepest part of his heart. "I don't want you to be lonely," he says. "Especially not because of me." He drains the last of his glass and sets it aside. "You haven't been on another date since the whole - " Jim gives a guilty frown. "Small exploding wall thing."

"You noticed that, huh?" McCoy notes wryly. "It's not all you," he admits, though he has been a little wary to leave the house for too long while Jim's in the state he is, given that things tend to explode and McCoy isn't sure how to cope with that right now. "Look, I took years to get over my divorce and I was an active part of that."

"You lost your husband and you need a support system, the way you were there for me during the Academy," McCoy replies. "I'm just paying my dues."

Jim's frown deepens for Bones' phrasing, even if he's mostly sure that Bones doesn't mean it like that. "You don't owe me anything, Bones," he says. "I already feel like, in some crappy, cosmic way I marooned you in Darrow just by missing you. I don't want to trap you out in the country, too."

"I prefer the country and you know that," McCoy corrects Jim, before he can think that he's here out of a debt. "Yeah, the commute to work and back is awful, but there's been worse in the world," he acknowledges. He finishes chopping this block before setting it aside, perching on the log he's been using.

"You got it wrong, though. I owe you a lot," he says. "Or you don't realize exactly how low I was after the divorce. Whole reason I'm still ticking is you, kid."

"Bones," says Jim softly. He'd known in those early days that Bones was a hard case, but he was still reeling from the changes in his life too much himself to truly realize the depth of it. He rubs at his scratchy eyes. "Fuck."

He needed Bones, then. He needed him, so he kept at him, coming at Bones' shell like a photon torpedo until it finally broke, but Jim has never realized how lucky he'd been that it did. Nothing in his life would be what it is without Bones, even trapped here. "I didn't know that."

"What, you thought the alcoholic depression was just for show?" he dryly jokes, but he's glad to be away from that now, glad that he's managed to get himself back from that and he doesn't say that he's had another round it lately, on the island.

He's just really glad Rachel isn't here to tell on him. "Look, Jim, yeah, I want a relationship at some point again," he agrees. "But I'm starting to get too old to really want to bother unless it's gonna end up being something real. It's not that I miss physical affection. I just miss knowing my life's secure and that I've got someone who'll be with me when I'm seventy and even more crotchety."

Jim breathes out. "I know what you mean," and it still shocks him, that he can feel like the Jim that's been Bones' best friend and still feel this - flush with the desire to stay with just one person.

Jim picks at the grass beneath his fingers. "I keep going out." The words are slow to come, but Jim drags them forward, lost in the life he's made for himself. "Trying to pick someone up. And as soon as they seem interested, I just - " Jim shrugs. "I just want to come home."

While McCoy hadn't known that, he is a little grateful to hear that Jim's been doing that. The jealousy that simmers that it isn't him runs secondary to the relief that Jim is finally getting out there again. He knows that Jim is probably due a rebound and McCoy desperately doesn't want to be that. "No harm in that, just means you're getting tired of the one and done," he says with a shrug. "You think you'll ever settle down again?"

"I never thought I would the first time," Jim admits with a small, sad smile. "I knew he wanted a real bond, and after a while, I realized I didn't miss fooling around elsewhere. It just didn't feel like missing out, anymore. Maybe that was just Spock."

Jim shrugs again, shoulders rounding. "Somehow I'm still figuring out who I am." He looks up. He's been cocky and headstrong all his life, and Jim's never thought he didn't know exactly what was best for him, but maybe he knows nothing at all. "I really thought I knew before."

McCoy might be jealous of both the relationship and of missing out on things, but he's really grateful that Jim had someone to take care of him while McCoy couldn't. "Maybe we should go out sometime," he suggests, feeling like it couldn't hurt. "And not the usual kind of night where one of us ends up sobbing into a beer, usually me, but the kind with music and loud noise and filled with pretty people."

"I could find you someone to take your mind off all this? Maybe seal the deal?"

Jim surprises himself with a laugh, and he rubs at his cheeks, unused to smiling so huge of late. "Like old times? You wanna wingman for me, like back at the Academy?"

It could be fun, and, Jim allows himself to admit, it'd be fun to spend time with Bones that's not one or both of them moping around the house.

"Yeah, why not," he says, even though he knows it's probably a disaster waiting to happen. "I'm probably ten years too old to set foot into most of the places the hip young kids are at, but why not find a place that serves strong drinks and plays loud music and has a whole bunch of people in flimsy clothes?"

"Sounds like a party," says Jim with a grin, and fights away the feeling that maybe it's not quite his kind of party anymore. He stretches in the grass, trying to remember how the youth of Darrow even roll. They're a few centuries behind his experience, but he bets they're resourceful. Horny young things always are. "This weekend?"

"Sure," he agrees, even though he already fears the disaster that's waiting for them. But hell, what's the worst that could happen? One of them finds someone to take their mind off their solitude and the elephant in the room neither of them wants to talk about? It's probably for the best that they start to move on. "You don't get to dress me up," he warns.

Jim barks out a disappointed sound, even if he hadn't thought of the possibility until Bones snatched it away. "What about eyeliner?" he asks, eyes huge and innocent. "Can I do that? You've got great eyes, Bones."

"You really think I'm gonna let you get a sharp pencil near my eye? You're crazier than I thought," he deadpans, given that he plans to put on a nice t-shirt, pair of jeans, and maybe even comb his hair more than once. That's about as far as he'll go, especially when he's already thinking the night is more for Jim than himself.

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