leftwithmybones | Homeplot

At her age, Jo's beginning to insist that she's too old for certain things. McCoy doesn't want to believe that's the truth, but he knows that she's going to slip away from him one day and he won't get her back. If that means he has to take advantage of these times while he can, then he'll do it, no matter what. It means that when they get back from the Iowa drydocks (and McCoy's over his last panic attack from the shuttle), he curls up with Jo in bed, the blankets tightly snug around them, and he reads to her from one of her favorite books -- Where the Wild Things Are.

Knowing Max as he does know, what that temper is like and the issues he has, it's a whole different experience, though he tries not to let it temper the story as he speaks. He tugs Jo even tighter to him, his gaze slipping to the door every now and again to check for Jim or his mother, wanting to know if this moment is privy to any witnesses.

"How you doing, Jo, baby?" he murmurs, taking a break as he turns the page.

Sleepily, she peers blearily up at him. "M'okay," she says quietly. "Keep going."

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"I don't know," says Jim, pushing a fitful hand through his hair. "I know you said you'd follow me back up, because you know I need it. But you need her."

Passing over the threshold of Bones' room, Jim turns. "You can't follow be back out there without leaving her for huge chunks at a time."

He follows, hands in his pockets as he eases his back against the door, leaning there as heavily as he can while he searches for the words. "Jim, I know you've seen the custody agreement because you had to wrestle it away from me before I spilled near a whole bottle of bourbon on it. You know what it says and that it says Joce gets her. If we were home? I wouldn't get her anyway and I'd sit around this damn house being depressed and drinking myself to an early grave."

"You'd be near enough to visit," Jim returns, sinking slowly onto the edge of Bones' bed. "Near enough that you could call her without me hijacking a subspace channel. Near enough to see her when we weren't on shoreleave in our own solar system. It'd be more, Bones. A lot more."

He makes sure to close and lock the door behind him in case his mother gets any funny ideas about waking him up in the middle of the night. "Jim. I can't. I couldn't. To be near her means not working and I wouldn't give that up, either. You can't make reality out of my fantasies. If you could, you'd be in a lot less clothes and have a mint julep in hand."

Jim laughs, but it's too high, nervous, and the hand Jim raises to feign holding a glass only ends up back in his hair. "How's it enough?" he asks. "Only seeing her on the occasional comm? How can that be enough when you feel like this?"

"It's not enough. It's never going to be enough," he replies, his words sharp but settled. He's had years to deal with this and sometimes it makes him ache with sadness down to his bones, but he's had time to settle it away. "Jocelyn got custody. She got everything. Starfleet was my only option and I'm allowed the rare phone call. You know what's enough, Jim? Knowing that when my baby girl turns eighteen, she makes her own decisions."

"What if," says Jim, looking down at his hands, then up at Bones, eyes bright, "What if I vouched for you? I'm the Captain of one of Starfleet's flagships, you're my Chief Medical Officer, for god's sake, not some deadbeat dad. We saved Earth, Bones. That's gotta count for something, there's gotta be - there's got to be some kind of appeal."

"And then what?" he asks, giving Jim a curious look. "I move back here and I live alone in this big and empty house except for the weekends I get Jo? You sail around in space and discover new worlds and I settle into being an old country doctor? Ten years'll pass and what, you'll have a political marriage that's dissolved and I'll probably be seeing a local schoolteacher. Maybe the mechanic. Jo's getting older and now she won't want anything to do with me, so I'll start drinking again. What solution are you looking for, Jim? It's not gonna be perfect, I fucked that up when I let my life go down the drain!"

"That wasn't your fault!" Jim barks back at him. "And it's bullshit that you just - keep getting punished for it! You'll be up in space with me while Joce fills her head with whatever nonsense convinced her to divorce you in the first place, and it's not fair, Bones."

He realizes, with a shock, that if they shout here, they might wake Jo up. He surges forward and presses a finger to Jim's lips to shut him up. "It's not fair, but it's life, so don't...don't take me from you!" he says, on the edge of panic. "I love you, why the hell are you trying to punish me worse, huh?"

"I'm not," Jim insists, but it comes out strangled, and his heart feels like there's something wrong with it, too big and heavy in his chest, aching like might be enough to make him weep if he were alone.

"I just want better for you. Better than you've got back home. You deserve better."

"And what makes you less than better, huh?" he demands, his voice rough and filled with the need that comes of being this much in love with someone. "Don't I deserve you?"

"Should be asking that the other way around," Jim murmurs, pulling him down onto the bed. "I want to make you happy, and I'm going to try like hell to, but there's no substitute for your kid." Jim cards his fingers through Bones' dark hair, expression so close to miserable that all it's lacking are tears. "And I hate that I can't change that."

"Jim," he breathes out reverently, giving him a fond look. "I love you and I know it's shit. I know that fact, but I can't change it, so can I please just enjoy this with you? Being with you? And hell, maybe one day we'll have a kid of our own."

"Missing some key parts for that," says Jim, quiet, but he doesn't deny the possibility. He closes his eyes and breathes, but he can't shake this feeling, this terrible sense of helplessness. He's not a man who sits by when others are suffering, and the fact that he can't do a damn thing to help Bones now doesn't make it any easier.

"How much longer you think we have here?"

"Don't know," he admits with a rueful grin. "Honestly, I don't know at all, wish I did, but I suppose we have to live things like every day is the end," he breathes out. "What do you want to do with the time?"

"Honestly? I'd like to watch you read to Jo for about five or six hours, then go push her on the tire swing for another two, then take her out for ice cream. But it's the middle of the night, and she's sleeping, so."

Jim shrugs. "I got nothing."

"Wanna watch me curled up with her in bed? Even though that's borderline strange," he points out with a soft laugh, giving Jim a fond smile and a slow kiss to his lips. "I'm not going to lose her. I know that now. Even if she's just in my heart and head, she's there with me."

"Borderline strange," Jim agrees, smiling softer for that kiss, and he reaches, spreading his fingers over Bones' heart. It's the only place he really gets to keep Jo, no matter where in the universe he is, and Jim leans forward, planting a kiss over the spot.

"It's your rodeo, Bones. What do you want to do with the time?"

It's sweet and it's fond and it's perfect. McCoy lets out a soft exhalation and leans over to curl closer to Jim, grateful to have him in his life. "I want to be with you and I want her to like you. In the event we ever do get home, that's what I want."

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