leftwithmybones | Dated July 4th

Dated July 4th

The truth is, the last week has been one of the roughest that McCoy's ever had to deal with. He's been worried about Jason and Bucky in the Clinic for one, not to mention the part where Jim not only forgot everything, but has started to get a slideshow of the bad shit he's dealt with during his time. It's probably a slideshow of horrors in his head. He thinks he ought to be forgiven for the way he's thrown himself into work, trying his best not to think about Jim.

Still, he's not completely himself. His jeans and polo shirt are wrinkled and he hasn't bothered with the lab coat, strewing it over the nearest desk. His eyes are tired and every sample he looks at strains him to the point of exhaustion. He'd contemplate giving up, but then he'd have to head back home and wonder what new terror Jim's going to remember today.

He really doesn't want to do that.

So he works. He works because it's the best alternative, right now.

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His feet hurt.

It's a pain Jim notes with some detachment. He's been walking for hours, away from home and into the unknown, around the island and across, and more than once. Jim had known it was futile when he set out - he can't escape the memories flooding in no matter where he goes, but neither can he be still.

Maybe if he'd never stopped to speak with Kate things would be different, but standing in the lab door, feet aching and heart a sore and swollen thing in his chest, Jim can't decide which is worse. Knowing what he knows today, or knowing nothing at all.

In the lab, Bones is working, coat discarded, hair a mess and eyes bruised with blue. Mine, Jim thinks.

But is he?

McCoy keeps working, the samples on the slides in front of him yielding a couple new results as far as his tomato-medicine plants are going. When he looks up to record those findings, he jumps when he sees Jim standing in the doorway. "Jesus christ," he hisses out, heart rabbiting a pace too quickly. "How long have you been standing there?"

Jim's too dirty for the lab. Dust on his boots, dirt on his arms and maybe his cheeks, he should have showered first, as much to cool off as anything. But once he knew, once he knew - there'd been nowhere to go but wherever Bones was.

Jim shoves off from the door frame, walks to Bones' side and keeps going, pinning him between his body and the table. "It's you," he says, lifting dirty hands to frame Bones' face. "She said it's you. Why didn't you tell me?"

"You're filthy, what the hell have you been doing?" is his first response, knee-jerk when Jim places dirty hands on his face, but he doesn't move away. His hands are shaking, the barest of quivers telling him that his nerves are getting the best of him.

It's been a long time since he's succumbed to a real good panic attack, but there's a chance this'll bring one on like nothing. "Who's she?" he demands, grunting out the words. "And what's me?"

Bones looks as shaken as Jim feels, and Jim should examine that, slow down and have some pity on both their overloaded systems, but what he does is fist his hands in that fucking polo shirt. It's too much, it's just too much - waking up every morning in a bed that feels too empty, and Bones has been there the whole time and never said a word, has even taken to sleeping at the Compound where Jim can't get to him.

With a half-angry sound, Jim yanks him closer, pulls him down to fit their mouths together in a kiss.

It's a sign of how tired he is, how weary he is of lying, that he practically stumbles forward when Jim kisses him with all the determination that he's grown used to expecting out of James T. Kirk. He slides his shaking fingers reverently through Jim's hair, but ten seconds later, sense kicks in and he uses the grip on Jim to pull him lightly away.

"Hey," he says, sharp and hoarse. "Why the hell are you such a mess? What were you doing?"

Bones kisses him back, slides his fingers over Jim's aching scalp and Jim thinks, see? See? You're mine. But Bones pulls away again, talks to him like Jim's the one that's done something wrong.

"Walking," he answers, leaning in to kiss him again, because there's no more hiding this, goddammit. "Can't sit still, Bones. Why did you lie to me? Why didn't you just tell me my mysterious boyfriend was you?"

Every kiss feels like it ought to burn, like an accusation, like he's doing something wrong by doing this while Jim's not fully aware of everything. "Stop it," he growls. "I'm not lying to you, I'm trying not to overwhelm you by telling you the details of your life. You think I want you to be doing this all because some mysterious 'she' told you about it? No. Damn it, Jim," he hisses. "I want you to want this and to understand why it happened, which means your memory better be slotted back into place!"

That makes sense. In the part of him that still cares about rational, Jim knows that makes sense, but that doesn't make his grip on Bones any less tight, Jim still convinced that if he lets go, Bones will wriggle away again.

"Somebody was bound to tell me," he says. "I mean we live together. Or we did before you started sleeping here all the time." Jim's face becomes imploring, and he drifts closer again, one inch away from kissing Bones just as he's been asked not to. "Will you come home now? It's easier when you're around."

"We lived together before we started doing this," McCoy says pedantically, gesturing between them with a loose gesture of his fingers. "And half the reason I'm here is because I do have patients in the clinic and not that you remember, but about a week and a half ago, you brought me a woman riddled with the black plague. Yeah, I'm sleeping here to avoid conflict, but it's not the only goddamn reason," he snaps, the anger at the situation bubbling up within him and he wants to lash out.

He sighs, heavily. "I mean it, Jim. I didn't want to coerce you into anything. Are you doing this because you remember us? Or are you doing this because someone told you that you should." He'd been there during the Academy and he'd watched Jim make his way through people's beds -- sometimes for the sex and sometimes for whatever he felt he needed to make up for, time or experience or something.

"Nobody told me to do anything," Jim snaps back, flying right there onto the edge with Bones, trapped painfully between screaming his head off or falling over into whatever madness lies beyond. "You told me I had a boyfriend, and Kate told me it was you, and I can't - "

Throwing both hands in the air, Jim spins away. "I feel like I'm going crazy, I got a - a fucking massacre beating at the back of my eyeballs every time I close my eyes, and you're all I've got, Bones. This whole island, and you're the only place that feels like home, and you don't want to be around me."

He sighs. None of this is what he wanted, this is ridiculous, but it's also not unexpected given the shit he's had to cope with before. "I was waiting for you to remember on your own. When you started remembering Frank, I figured it was only a matter of time," he says, sinking back into a stool as he stares at Jim.

"I'm exhausted, Jim. I hate lying to you, but I'd rather lie than feel like I was the asshole who took advantage of you," he says.

"You wouldn't. You'd tell me, and then I'd try to kiss you, because, Jesus, just." Jim waves a hand. "Look at you. And then you'd tell me not until I remembered, and I'd try anyway, and you'd say no, and that'd be that."

Jim smiles, just the smallest bit. "I know that much. But I know now, Bones. Please come home. I can tell you're exhausted, and so am I. You'll sleep better in your own bed."

McCoy scrubs a hand through his hair. He's still unsure, but he's not really alert enough to come up with a good enough argument as to why he'd keep away. All he really knows is that Jim's starting to remember and people are telling him the rest. "Jim, I'll make you a deal," he says. "You tell me why we got together and I'll come home."

And just like that, that tiny smile is gone. "I can't," Jim says, "Not exactly, I don't know what this other Jim said or did. I know what I'd say. For all intents and purposes, I only met you a few days ago, and you're still all I think about. All I want to be around. I mean, I think I - "

Jim stops, pushing a frustrated hand through his hair. "I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you."

Jim's not making this any easier, that's for damn sure. McCoy closes his eyes and feels the exhaustion pinching, the tension behind his eyes clear as day. "Kid, I love you, that's not a mystery, it shouldn't ever be, at least not when this place isn't screwing around with us." He opens his eyes and wearily stands, advancing enough to wrap his hands around Jim's wrists to hold him in place. "We roomed together in the Academy. Three years. Couple months back, I found a tape of you confessing your sexual history. I mean, all of it. All of it. So, yeah, I held off. I held off and I'll hold off now because I don't think it's right for anyone to push you into anything."

"I'm sorry if you don't like that," he says hoarsely.

"Then don't push." Jim can't help the catch in his breath when Bones comes closer, and though his entire body sings to feel that gentle grip around his wrists, Jim doesn't try for more.

"Come home and be my friend. Please." He's one step away from begging. "All I got are bad memories rolling in. Please just be my friend, in our house, until it's over."

He nods. Before he's even aware of what he's doing, he's nodding, because he can give Jim that much. "Okay," he says. He can only imagine how this might go in reverse, with McCoy remembering in fits and starts all the bad shit that had happened to him right before Starfleet. "Jim, you have to know. There's some bad memories coming," he warns.

Jim all but deflates with relief, tugging his arms free to throw them around Bones' instead, face pressed hard to his shoulder. "Whatever's coming, it can't be any worse than today," he exhales, squeezing tight. And whatever else comes, he's not going to have to do it alone. "Thank you."

This could be a grand mistake, but it's too late for McCoy to take it back now. He resigns himself to holding Jim as best as he can, one hand on his shoulder. "Remember you said that, at some point," is all he says mildly, easing back. "Now get, scootch, I really do have to work."

"It can wait," Jim replies. "If the circles under your eyes get any darker you're gonna look like you got punched. Can you even see for squinting anymore? You're a wreck."

Jim steps in again, chaste but cajoling. "You need some sleep. And a shower, you smell like a lab."

"I smell like the lab a whole lot of the time," he admits, but Jim's not wrong. McCoy's absolutely exhausted and there's very little that he can do except give in to what's the best logic for the moment. He sighs and starts collecting his files, not intending to sit at home and slack when there are things to analyze.

"Let me," says Jim, because today sucks, but he's pretty sure he's not the one asleep on his feet. He pulls the papers into his arms, privately deciding that if Bones tries looking at them once they're home, he's going to find one of those sedatives he loves threatening Jim with and use it on its maker.

"Don't..." He hisses when he thinks that Jim's about to drop one of the vials, which ends up with McCoy pinching the bridge of his nose. "Swear to god, Jim, if you make me lose my research, you're going to start remembering a whole lot of why you don't piss me off."

"I'm not gonna drop it, Jesus," Jim grunts, eyeballing Bones over his armful. He looks like one of the island boars about to paw up the ground. "Are you always this cranky? Is this something new I forgot?"

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