Title: Sobriety
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/McCoy
Summary: Academy days; why Leonard is used to waking up drunk.

Something has died in Leonard’s mouth. It is so nauseatingly bad—the taste, the smell, oh fuck why is there a smell?—his brain is trying to leak out of his eyeballs in an effort to escape. He resolutely keeps his eyes squeezed shut to preserve what little wits he has left.

…Not that having a brain did him any good last night when he started in on his third glass of whateveritwas the grinning Orion poured him.

“Mornin’, sunshine!” a voice interrupts what is undoubtedly Leonard’s last hour on Earth, shouting amidst a god-awful racket of noise. (Who in their right mind enters a room like they’re ambushing Klingons?) The overly merry words are like an elephant stomping repeatedly on Leonard’s head.

Fuuuck. Somebody needs to die this morning. If Leonard wasn’t so certain he was currently doing the dying bit himself, he would gladly kill the owner of that cheerful voice.

Instead he gropes for the bedcovers about his shoulders and drags them over his head with a groan. The pillow mashed into his face would be a perfect missile for the annoying morning pest he can hear buzzing about the room but Leonard’s arm can’t be bothered to lift itself up more than an inch or two. He lets his arm flop back onto the mattress and proceeds to curl into a fetal position.

If he has to wake up, fuck, let alone acknowledge he still exists…

“BONES! Booones.”

Leonard makes a sound between a whimper and a plea of “Uugghh, dyyyin’, let me DIE”. The bed sinks on one side.

His bedcovers begin to gently move away from his body. Leonard rolls against them, determined to become a man-sized caterpillar, but they disagree—or someone jerks them out of his grasp. Eventually his efforts to stay secure and warm while he expires from a hangover the size of Delta Vega is thwarted sufficiently enough that Leonard snarls “Get away from me, asshole!”

His snarl sounds less like actual language and more like an unhappy gurgle of a warning that he may throw up.

Which doesn’t deter his roommate Jim. It never has.

“Somebody’s grumpy today,” Cadet-of-the-fucking-Obvious says sweetly, and Leonard’s right ear gets patted because Jim is probably aiming for the top of his head and misjudges the lump that is McCoy under the covers.

He would hope Jim has the sense to leave him alone but past experience has only proven the opposite. Knowing that if he doesn’t reassure the kid he is just-hungover-not-actually-dying then Jim will drag him out of the bed and threaten to call in his doctor-colleagues, possibly his superiors at Medical to come treat him for alcohol-poisoning (and shit, Jim knows how embarrassing that would be for Leonard, the little fuck), he unearths one of his hands—it’s the best he can do because anything else requires movement that might jar what remains of his liquified brain—from the bedcovers and flaps it in a gesture of move along, nothing to see.

“‘M fine,” he mutters.

…And what the hell? Is Jim head-butting him?

Oh, no. Probably just one of Kirk’s bony knees digging into his back.

The bedcovers are peeled away from his head and something ghosts over his short hair (it must be in a horrible disarray of bed head, Leonard realizes in embarrassment). Then his ear. It’s Jim’s mouth, whispering “Need anything?”

Thank God Jim can’t see his face. He’d probably be worried about the dilation of Leonard’s pupils—which isn’t the result of any medical condition Leonard would readily diagnose because it’s nowhere near medical in nature. And fuck, what is his drunk-stupid body doing? he thinks as his heart picks up pace.

No, he agonizes. No no no. This is why he got shitfaced with some Orion he didn’t really know in somebody’s basement-turned-free-bar.

Jim must think his roommate has fallen asleep again because why else would the fool be stroking his arm through the covers? It sets Leonard’s nerves on fire, waking them like an electric shock from their alcohol-induced stupor. He bites down hard on his lip in an effort to remain silent.

Apparently drunk love is the same as sober love. That would be Leonard’s luck.

Not a word, he warns himself. Not an utterance, a sound, anything.

But he wants to, badly; wouldn’t it be easier to confess to Jim, to yell at the kid “see what you’ve reduced me to, you cruel gorgeous wonderful son-of-a-bitch”?

Confession’d ruin everything, of course, because Leonard is forever-single, and Jim is dating Gaila, and it would be a clusterfuck to be in-love with the man he’ll serve with some day. Starfleet doesn’t have regulations concerning shipside romances without good reason—and he and Kirk don’t have that long until they are in space anyway.

The hand on his arm stops its soothing rub, pulls away, and Leonard misses the presence, suddenly feeling more sober than he was moments ago.

A wondering murmur of his name. Not Bones but… “Leonard?“

Oh. How that hurts.

From Jim, a nickname is intimate enough. Hearing his first name from Jim’s mouth feels deeply, achingly personal. It crawls beneath Leonard’s skin and roots itself there like it wants to grow.

Leonard swallows a sigh and a hundred or so words and holds his breath. Eventually Jim does decide to leave, convinced Leonard is asleep or intuitively knowing Leonard doesn’t want him to stay (which is the worst lie Leonard has ever pretended is a truth). The bed returns to its normally level surface as Jim moves away. Leonard can hear him quietly gathering his school gear, and strains to catch the near-silent whisk of their room’s automated door opening and closing. He tries sleeping then, somewhat depressed, but ends up crawling out of bed an hour later, brushing his teeth and pulling on a sweatshirt. A quick injection of a hangover cure takes care of his headache and queasy stomach while a thorough rationalization convinces him emotional sobriety is better than this horrid lovesickness he suffers each day.

If only reality was as easy as wanting, one such as Leonard might wish.

Later, after a cup of terrible replicated coffee and an afternoon alone, Leonard imagines he is his usual cynical, irritable self when Jim returns from class. If Jim sees an inkling of anything else—like pain or desperation—beneath the sharp twist of Leonard’s mouth or behind his dry sarcasm, Leonard’s roommate says nothing of it. And Leonard knows with certainty he would drown any kind of confession in a bottle of something strong and potent before he said a word to Jim of it either.

This is how they have to be, he consoles himself, so far beyond stupidly-in-love he can only feel gratefulness as Jim casually slings an arm about his shoulders and smiles at him.

Leonard returns the smile tightly, unable to confess even to himself that he wouldn’t mind if, some day, he is proven wrong and somehow, miraculously, Jim wants him in return.

-Fini

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