What Remains
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot (AU)
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, Kirk/Mitchell
Rating:R
Warnings: None
Summary: In answer to Eimeo's challenge. - An AU K/S fic based on the film "Truly, Madly, Deeply." Basically, Kirk's lover, Gary Mitchell, has recently - and unexpectedly - died and he's having a hard time getting past his grief. While Kirk hovers on the verge of despair, Gary comes back to haunt him benignly and, surreptitiously, to help him move on. Because Kirk has just met a mysterious man named Spock, who could be so much more to him if he can just let go of Gary's memory and fact up to a future without him..."
Chapter Three
Jim reluctantly invites Bones over the next evening, mainly to make amends, but also because he enjoys the man’s company. They sit on either end of the small, tired sofa in the gloomy living room as night falls over the city.
The moon, framed by the window as it watches over the twinkling lights of the street below, hangs full and silver. With no classes tomorrow they are slowly leaving sobriety behind as they trade a bottle of whiskey back and forth, making small talk between brief periods of companionable silence.
Jim is acutely aware that he’s not very good company, and hasn’t been for the last ten months. The old Jim would have been first in line for Uhura’s party, now he doesn’t even want to socialise.
“How ya doing, kid?” Bones suddenly asks, breaking in on Jim’s internal pity party.
“Huh? Okay, I guess.” He can see that he must not have made a very convincing case, because Bones looks far from reassured.
“And I’m supposed to buy that crock of nonsense? With the way you acted yesterday?”
“It’s not a crock of nonsense,” he says defensively, because he really doesn’t feel like dredging this up now.
But Bones just fixes him with the glare which tells Jim he isn’t going to let this drop, so Jim just better man up.
“All right, all right. I’m not doing so well,” he admits reluctantly.
He sees that Bones is clearly waiting for elaboration, as he takes his feet off the low coffee table and leans closer to look at Jim intently. “Out with it.”
He takes a deep breath, turns to look out the window at the brightly lit street beyond. He doesn’t want to look at Bones, not if he’s going to be baring his soul. “I’m jealous, I guess. Jealous that everyone else’s life is carrying on, that other people can laugh and smile and be happy, when I’m not. Petty, isn’t it?”
He’s not sure what made him confess this. Too much liquor probably. He takes another swig of the whiskey.
But Bones is simply nodding. “Yeah, I kinda felt like that after my divorce,” he says. “You know, hated everyone else who was happy and in love.”
“Yeah, but Bones,” Jim says forcing a small grin, “grumpy is your default.”
Bones sighs and rolls his eyes before continuing. “We just got married too quickly, too young. Everyone said I was making a huge mistake. They were right, too. Of course it was!
“Jocelyn and I…well, we bickered from the get-go, but in the beginning it was kinda fun. All the fighting just seemed like part of the relationship, I guess.” He stops and looks out the window.
“Finally the time came for both of us to say that enough was enough, there was nothing left of the relationship to save. Once the damn lawyers got involved, all hell broke loose.” He takes the whiskey from Jim and sits back on the sofa. “Looking back now, it’s a damn sight easier to enter a marriage than to leave one.”
They both lapse back into silence as Bones sighs and takes a drink from the bottle. Jim turns again to look out the window. Beyond the immediate neighborhood nothing can be seen, only inky blackness as Pacific meets night sky. He can see, out of the corner of his eye, that Bones keeps shooting him glances.
He owes Bones big time. It is Bones, after all, who has attempted to hold him together these past ten months or so. It was Bones who stayed with him in the first weeks after the loss, when Jim was in a state of numb shock and denial. Shock so deep that Jim had insisted on carrying on as if nothing had happened.
Bones was still there when that initial shock wore off and Jim was overwhelmed with a pain so excruciating that it was almost unbearable. When anger came, and Jim lashed out at everyone around him, Bones had taken the brunt of it. When Jim had embarked on a self-destructive phrase, turning up late regularly at the dorms after yet another drunken fight in a seedy bar, Bones had patched him up, no complaints and no questions asked.
Now he’s hit despair, sunk in a long period of depression and self-imposed isolation. Bones is still here, and though people often don’t understand, Bones will just say, “The way you feel is normal kid, and if they don’t get it, well who gives a damn about them anyway.”
However, opening up and discussing things is not something he really wants to do. At all. But knowing he owes Bones some reciprocation and aided by the liquor warming him from within, Jim starts talking. Falteringly and so quietly his voice is almost a hoarse whisper, and before he knows what he is doing, he’s spilling the beans about hearing Gary’s voice on an almost daily basis.
“…He mostly talks when I’m alone, or doing stuff. He’ll talk about what I’m doing, you know. Give some advice. It’s all ‘go to bed, brush your teeth up and down, lock the back door’.
“He’s always upfront...well, he was always upfront.” Jim pauses and then with a frown he adds. “He’ll also speak to me in Vulcan, which is odd, because he didn’t speak Vulcan.”
He pauses in embarrassment before continuing in a small voice. “He’s just suddenly there and everything’s okay….”
Bones makes no comment on the fact that Jim is confessing to hearing a dead man talk, for which Jim is thankful. Though he still curses himself for raising the subject; it’s probably the kind of confession, drunk or not, that could lead straight to a psychiatric evaluation.
“Does it bother you?” Bones asks instead.
“No…I just feel cared for, I guess. He never says anything profound.”
“When did Gary ever say anything profound?” Bones scoffs.
Jim huffs a brief laugh. “No, you’re right.”
He can’t believe he’s saying any of this to Bones, to anyone. He reaches to take the bottle back from his friend, because damn it, he needs some more to justify the blabbermouth.
“It’s not uncommon for people to hear things after a loved one dies,” Bones says quietly. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much. But you should still try and get out more, Jim. It’s not good for you, hell for anyone, to just sit at home all the time.”
Jim nods slowly and decides not to tell Bones just how vivid Gary’s voice can be.
Silence descends on the room like a thick blanket. Jim looks down at the bottle he is holding and feels embarrassment warm his cheeks. Eyes casting around for a distraction, he spots a paperback book on the small coffee table in front of them. The cover is a little bleached and dog-eared, its spine cracked, a testament to its great age.
Passing the bottle back to Bones, he reaches for the book and begins to idly flip through its yellowing pages.
“Maybe it’s time to start expanding my book collection. That could get me out of the house.”
“To dusty old antique shops? Not much of a step up.” Bones sees the distraction for what it is and plays along, to Jim’s relief. “Impractical if you ask me. You can store thousands of books on a PADD or data chip. Who needs paper and ink?”
“But Bones, there’s nothing like a real book,” he says, putting his nose to the faded grainy paper and inhaling deeply.
“Plus, where will you put them? Especially when you’re in space. Those starship quarters are no bigger than a damn broom cupboard,” Bones grouses. “And as an Ensign you’ll be sharing with someone else, don’t forget. You’ll be sitting on each other’s knees as it is and that’s without books cluttering up the place.”
“You get bigger quarters if you’re a Captain.”
“You won’t make Captain straight out of the Academy though, will ya? Who would be stupid enough to promote a Cadet straight to Captain?” says Bones incredulously. He shakes his head. “Forget I said that, there’s probably some moron in the admiralty stupid enough to do just that. I wouldn’t put anything past Starfleet.”
Jim rolls his eyes. Now Bones is just being silly. A Cadet promoted straight to Captain, as if.
Bones is warming to his theme. “At least four hundred people squashed together like sardines in a tin can, can you believe it, with only a metal hull between them and the vacuum of space.” He waves his hand around for emphasis, causing the amber liquid to slosh violently in the bottle. “I keep telling people, there’s nothing but disease and death in space.” He shudders.
“Geez, you’re a little ray of sunshine.”
“I aim to please. It’s my sunny disposition.” He glances slyly at Jim. “Goes with my excellent bedside manner.”
Jim scoffs. “I’ve seen your bedside manner, and sunny is not the word I would use.”
“That’s because you’re such an infant when it comes to any kind of medical intervention!” Bones retorts. “Not my fault if the damn patient’s whiny.”
“Hey!”
“So, how did it go with Chekov this morning?” Bones says, wisely changing the subject.
Jim grimaces. “Top tip, don’t sit a flight test with a navigator who’s suffering from a hangover.”
Bones chuckles.
“I’m probably giving myself one right now,” Jim adds quietly. “I think I’ve had too much.”
“You’re such a lightweight,” scoffs Bones.
Jim smiles softly and they lapse into comfortable silence.
“Thanks Bones,” he murmurs awkwardly.
“For what?”
“For this,” he answers, waving a hand between them both to indicate what he means. His eyes do not quite manage to reach Bones’ gaze. But he hears Bones give a non-committal grunt, which to Jim ears, conveys much affection.
****
After Bones has finally gone back to the campus dorms, Jim decides to try and get some sleep. He retires to the small untidy bathroom to change into an old pair of boxers, and then stands in front of the mirror to brush his teeth.
Gary’s voice interrupts his thoughts, speaking clearly in the cramped room. “Ki’ tu klacha svep?”
“I did,” responds Jim with a small genuine smile, his mouth white and frothy with toothpaste.
His spirits lift, and it’s not just the whiskey causing a warm glow now. Gary is back with him again, and briefly everything is right with the world.
When Gary first started speaking with him a few weeks ago, it was a huge shock to say the least. It unnerved him and, if he was honest, scared him. He began to doubt his own sanity.
Upon hearing the beloved voice he would turn around quickly, expecting to see Gary standing there, as if the previous months had been a nightmare from which he had awoken. When he didn’t find Gary there he would often go look in the next room, thinking he might be there instead.
But it was amazing how quickly he adjusted to this new reality, how soon he came to look forward to Gary’s ‘visits’, to accept them as normal.
He hears the voice almost daily now, and it’s comforting, like Gary is still with him. He no longer stops to wonder if he is losing his mind, though he does cringe inwardly as he remembers confessing this to Bones earlier. Although Bones didn’t seem too concerned, so maybe he’s fine after all.
“Bolau tu shom.” Gary admonishes.
“Yes mother!” He grins as he makes his way back into the bedroom. “I’m going to bed right now.”
He does as he promised, a small smile on his face, warmed by the fact Gary is still with him in some form. He falls asleep to the distant sounds of city life, but it’s never quite the same without Gary. The bed is just too large and empty.
Sometime in the night he wakes up, and for a moment he is confused, wondering what has awoken him. As his eyes focus he sees a shape before him on the pillow. A brown and furry shape, with a long hairless tail and, to Jim’s imagination, malicious dark eyes, quietly sitting just inches from his face.
“Fuck…oh God, oh God.” He jumps up like he’s been scalded, falling out of bed in his haste, his body tangled in the sheets.
Bolau tu shom – You need to rest
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, Kirk/Mitchell
Rating:R
Warnings: None
Summary: In answer to Eimeo's challenge. - An AU K/S fic based on the film "Truly, Madly, Deeply." Basically, Kirk's lover, Gary Mitchell, has recently - and unexpectedly - died and he's having a hard time getting past his grief. While Kirk hovers on the verge of despair, Gary comes back to haunt him benignly and, surreptitiously, to help him move on. Because Kirk has just met a mysterious man named Spock, who could be so much more to him if he can just let go of Gary's memory and fact up to a future without him..."
Chapter Three
Jim reluctantly invites Bones over the next evening, mainly to make amends, but also because he enjoys the man’s company. They sit on either end of the small, tired sofa in the gloomy living room as night falls over the city.
The moon, framed by the window as it watches over the twinkling lights of the street below, hangs full and silver. With no classes tomorrow they are slowly leaving sobriety behind as they trade a bottle of whiskey back and forth, making small talk between brief periods of companionable silence.
Jim is acutely aware that he’s not very good company, and hasn’t been for the last ten months. The old Jim would have been first in line for Uhura’s party, now he doesn’t even want to socialise.
“How ya doing, kid?” Bones suddenly asks, breaking in on Jim’s internal pity party.
“Huh? Okay, I guess.” He can see that he must not have made a very convincing case, because Bones looks far from reassured.
“And I’m supposed to buy that crock of nonsense? With the way you acted yesterday?”
“It’s not a crock of nonsense,” he says defensively, because he really doesn’t feel like dredging this up now.
But Bones just fixes him with the glare which tells Jim he isn’t going to let this drop, so Jim just better man up.
“All right, all right. I’m not doing so well,” he admits reluctantly.
He sees that Bones is clearly waiting for elaboration, as he takes his feet off the low coffee table and leans closer to look at Jim intently. “Out with it.”
He takes a deep breath, turns to look out the window at the brightly lit street beyond. He doesn’t want to look at Bones, not if he’s going to be baring his soul. “I’m jealous, I guess. Jealous that everyone else’s life is carrying on, that other people can laugh and smile and be happy, when I’m not. Petty, isn’t it?”
He’s not sure what made him confess this. Too much liquor probably. He takes another swig of the whiskey.
But Bones is simply nodding. “Yeah, I kinda felt like that after my divorce,” he says. “You know, hated everyone else who was happy and in love.”
“Yeah, but Bones,” Jim says forcing a small grin, “grumpy is your default.”
Bones sighs and rolls his eyes before continuing. “We just got married too quickly, too young. Everyone said I was making a huge mistake. They were right, too. Of course it was!
“Jocelyn and I…well, we bickered from the get-go, but in the beginning it was kinda fun. All the fighting just seemed like part of the relationship, I guess.” He stops and looks out the window.
“Finally the time came for both of us to say that enough was enough, there was nothing left of the relationship to save. Once the damn lawyers got involved, all hell broke loose.” He takes the whiskey from Jim and sits back on the sofa. “Looking back now, it’s a damn sight easier to enter a marriage than to leave one.”
They both lapse back into silence as Bones sighs and takes a drink from the bottle. Jim turns again to look out the window. Beyond the immediate neighborhood nothing can be seen, only inky blackness as Pacific meets night sky. He can see, out of the corner of his eye, that Bones keeps shooting him glances.
He owes Bones big time. It is Bones, after all, who has attempted to hold him together these past ten months or so. It was Bones who stayed with him in the first weeks after the loss, when Jim was in a state of numb shock and denial. Shock so deep that Jim had insisted on carrying on as if nothing had happened.
Bones was still there when that initial shock wore off and Jim was overwhelmed with a pain so excruciating that it was almost unbearable. When anger came, and Jim lashed out at everyone around him, Bones had taken the brunt of it. When Jim had embarked on a self-destructive phrase, turning up late regularly at the dorms after yet another drunken fight in a seedy bar, Bones had patched him up, no complaints and no questions asked.
Now he’s hit despair, sunk in a long period of depression and self-imposed isolation. Bones is still here, and though people often don’t understand, Bones will just say, “The way you feel is normal kid, and if they don’t get it, well who gives a damn about them anyway.”
However, opening up and discussing things is not something he really wants to do. At all. But knowing he owes Bones some reciprocation and aided by the liquor warming him from within, Jim starts talking. Falteringly and so quietly his voice is almost a hoarse whisper, and before he knows what he is doing, he’s spilling the beans about hearing Gary’s voice on an almost daily basis.
“…He mostly talks when I’m alone, or doing stuff. He’ll talk about what I’m doing, you know. Give some advice. It’s all ‘go to bed, brush your teeth up and down, lock the back door’.
“He’s always upfront...well, he was always upfront.” Jim pauses and then with a frown he adds. “He’ll also speak to me in Vulcan, which is odd, because he didn’t speak Vulcan.”
He pauses in embarrassment before continuing in a small voice. “He’s just suddenly there and everything’s okay….”
Bones makes no comment on the fact that Jim is confessing to hearing a dead man talk, for which Jim is thankful. Though he still curses himself for raising the subject; it’s probably the kind of confession, drunk or not, that could lead straight to a psychiatric evaluation.
“Does it bother you?” Bones asks instead.
“No…I just feel cared for, I guess. He never says anything profound.”
“When did Gary ever say anything profound?” Bones scoffs.
Jim huffs a brief laugh. “No, you’re right.”
He can’t believe he’s saying any of this to Bones, to anyone. He reaches to take the bottle back from his friend, because damn it, he needs some more to justify the blabbermouth.
“It’s not uncommon for people to hear things after a loved one dies,” Bones says quietly. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much. But you should still try and get out more, Jim. It’s not good for you, hell for anyone, to just sit at home all the time.”
Jim nods slowly and decides not to tell Bones just how vivid Gary’s voice can be.
Silence descends on the room like a thick blanket. Jim looks down at the bottle he is holding and feels embarrassment warm his cheeks. Eyes casting around for a distraction, he spots a paperback book on the small coffee table in front of them. The cover is a little bleached and dog-eared, its spine cracked, a testament to its great age.
Passing the bottle back to Bones, he reaches for the book and begins to idly flip through its yellowing pages.
“Maybe it’s time to start expanding my book collection. That could get me out of the house.”
“To dusty old antique shops? Not much of a step up.” Bones sees the distraction for what it is and plays along, to Jim’s relief. “Impractical if you ask me. You can store thousands of books on a PADD or data chip. Who needs paper and ink?”
“But Bones, there’s nothing like a real book,” he says, putting his nose to the faded grainy paper and inhaling deeply.
“Plus, where will you put them? Especially when you’re in space. Those starship quarters are no bigger than a damn broom cupboard,” Bones grouses. “And as an Ensign you’ll be sharing with someone else, don’t forget. You’ll be sitting on each other’s knees as it is and that’s without books cluttering up the place.”
“You get bigger quarters if you’re a Captain.”
“You won’t make Captain straight out of the Academy though, will ya? Who would be stupid enough to promote a Cadet straight to Captain?” says Bones incredulously. He shakes his head. “Forget I said that, there’s probably some moron in the admiralty stupid enough to do just that. I wouldn’t put anything past Starfleet.”
Jim rolls his eyes. Now Bones is just being silly. A Cadet promoted straight to Captain, as if.
Bones is warming to his theme. “At least four hundred people squashed together like sardines in a tin can, can you believe it, with only a metal hull between them and the vacuum of space.” He waves his hand around for emphasis, causing the amber liquid to slosh violently in the bottle. “I keep telling people, there’s nothing but disease and death in space.” He shudders.
“Geez, you’re a little ray of sunshine.”
“I aim to please. It’s my sunny disposition.” He glances slyly at Jim. “Goes with my excellent bedside manner.”
Jim scoffs. “I’ve seen your bedside manner, and sunny is not the word I would use.”
“That’s because you’re such an infant when it comes to any kind of medical intervention!” Bones retorts. “Not my fault if the damn patient’s whiny.”
“Hey!”
“So, how did it go with Chekov this morning?” Bones says, wisely changing the subject.
Jim grimaces. “Top tip, don’t sit a flight test with a navigator who’s suffering from a hangover.”
Bones chuckles.
“I’m probably giving myself one right now,” Jim adds quietly. “I think I’ve had too much.”
“You’re such a lightweight,” scoffs Bones.
Jim smiles softly and they lapse into comfortable silence.
“Thanks Bones,” he murmurs awkwardly.
“For what?”
“For this,” he answers, waving a hand between them both to indicate what he means. His eyes do not quite manage to reach Bones’ gaze. But he hears Bones give a non-committal grunt, which to Jim ears, conveys much affection.
****
After Bones has finally gone back to the campus dorms, Jim decides to try and get some sleep. He retires to the small untidy bathroom to change into an old pair of boxers, and then stands in front of the mirror to brush his teeth.
Gary’s voice interrupts his thoughts, speaking clearly in the cramped room. “Ki’ tu klacha svep?”
“I did,” responds Jim with a small genuine smile, his mouth white and frothy with toothpaste.
His spirits lift, and it’s not just the whiskey causing a warm glow now. Gary is back with him again, and briefly everything is right with the world.
When Gary first started speaking with him a few weeks ago, it was a huge shock to say the least. It unnerved him and, if he was honest, scared him. He began to doubt his own sanity.
Upon hearing the beloved voice he would turn around quickly, expecting to see Gary standing there, as if the previous months had been a nightmare from which he had awoken. When he didn’t find Gary there he would often go look in the next room, thinking he might be there instead.
But it was amazing how quickly he adjusted to this new reality, how soon he came to look forward to Gary’s ‘visits’, to accept them as normal.
He hears the voice almost daily now, and it’s comforting, like Gary is still with him. He no longer stops to wonder if he is losing his mind, though he does cringe inwardly as he remembers confessing this to Bones earlier. Although Bones didn’t seem too concerned, so maybe he’s fine after all.
“Bolau tu shom.” Gary admonishes.
“Yes mother!” He grins as he makes his way back into the bedroom. “I’m going to bed right now.”
He does as he promised, a small smile on his face, warmed by the fact Gary is still with him in some form. He falls asleep to the distant sounds of city life, but it’s never quite the same without Gary. The bed is just too large and empty.
Sometime in the night he wakes up, and for a moment he is confused, wondering what has awoken him. As his eyes focus he sees a shape before him on the pillow. A brown and furry shape, with a long hairless tail and, to Jim’s imagination, malicious dark eyes, quietly sitting just inches from his face.
“Fuck…oh God, oh God.” He jumps up like he’s been scalded, falling out of bed in his haste, his body tangled in the sheets.
Desperately he untangles himself and grabs a blanket that was lying at the bottom of the bed. He hurriedly wraps it around his shoulders. The rat has disappeared in the commotion, but he doesn’t want to go back to bed. Not that he’s scared of rats, because he’s Jim Kirk, and he’s totally not, but still he finds, almost without conscious thought, his feet taking him into the living room. There he lies on the sofa, still wrapped in the blanket, and eventually falls into an uneasy sleep.
Ki’ tu klacha svep? – Did you lock the door?Bolau tu shom – You need to rest