Title: The Beautiful Bay (#29, J ‘N B Series)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Summary: Comment!fic inspired by this pic post at jim_and_bones; beauty and love sometimes are the same thing, Leonard knows. A short drabble.
Previous Parts: Another Day, Another Dollar, and a Daily Show? | Fight the Good Fight | Don’t Touch the Rock | A Tear Worth Gold | Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 2 | Pirates Read Too | The Case of the Mondays | Today’s Topic -Helmets! | The Case of the Mondays, Part 2 | Marked | Awesome Ideas Come from Awesome Brains | In the Keeping of a Spirit | The Case of the Mondays, Part 3 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 4 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 5 | Forewarned is Forearmed | The Case of the Mondays, Part 6 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 7 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 8 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 9 | Serenade | Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 3 | Tied to You | The Amateur Pigeon-Catcher | The Amateur Pigeon-Catcher, Part 2 | The Art of Beginnings | The Amateur Pigeon-Catcher, Part 3 | Two Birds of a Feather

“Jim, surely you’re done now.”

“Just one more…” The young man adjusts the focus of his camera lens and the shutter clicks as he takes another picture of the San Francisco Bay.

McCoy huddles into his clothes for warmth and turns up the collar of his coat against the winds buffeting the bridge. He isn’t quite certain how he ended up here watching Jim snap photo after photo of the same still, morning-grey water, except that he had listened to his lover espouse the beauties of the bay until the only way to quiet Jim and turn his attention to love-making was to promise him a day trip to the bayside by the end of the week.

And here they are, standing so high above the tranquil water that Leonard can see sea birds pin-wheeling in the sky and old steamer ships sending up puffs of white, fog-like clouds as they cut silently through the bay. Jim is enthralled by the view, reduced to murmurs of boyish excitement while he expertly wields his grandfather’s camera. Leonard had offered to bring a newer digital cam, one he purchased less than a year ago, but Jim wouldn’t hear of it.

“One beauty deserves to be appreciated by another, Bones,” Jim had said, dropping a chaste kiss to McCoy’s mouth and pushing away from the kitchen table with the ancient camera lovingly cradled in his hands.

Jim Kirk sees beauty in old things. Classic things, he will say. Full of history. That’s what makes them beautiful.

Leonard idly wonders if this how Jim sees him, as classically aged and weathered with years upon years of history. It wouldn’t be untrue. He is the older man in their relationship by a full decade. Where Jim strides through life with his youth shining like a beacon, catching both the world’s envy and attention, Leonard walks his life’s path at a slower pace, his age secured about him like a mantle, soft, familiar, and comfortable.

The age difference has to be part of the attraction that brought them together.

Beauty, of course, is the rest of it. Leonard has never felt a love more beautiful than the one which fills him when he wakes up next to Jim. His deepest wish is that this feeling, this love of theirs, never fades, as many beautiful things are wont to do.

“Bones,” Jim asks, leaning into Leonard’s side at the bridge’s railing now that he has used the last of his film, “what are you thinking?”

“Nothing much,” Leonard says. His eyes track activity on a dock farther along the shoreline. The sailors look small but intent on their work.

Jim rubs a hand, fingers cold at the tips, against the back of Leonard’s neck. “You have that look, like you can’t decide if you should be happy or melancholy.”

“I must get it often, then, if you recognize it,” Leonard half-laughs, strangely touched.

“Sometimes,” Jim agrees. He tugs Leonard around to tuck the camera into its case hanging from McCoy’s shoulder and then to steal a kiss. “Want to go for a stroll on the docks?”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

Jim catches his hand and leads them to the path that will relinquish them from their tower to the busy world below.

“Jim,” Leonard asks on a whim as they walk, “what’s a young guy like you doing with an old man like me?”

Jim smiles. This isn’t the first time he has heard the question, though it’s been said in many ways before: tentatively, jokingly, angrily. “Only one reason applies, Bones” is the answer he gives, like always.

Leonard sighs noiselessly, heart lightened, and doesn’t need to hear more. They love the beauty within each other. What other reason should there be?

-Fini

The Man in the Shed

Related Posts:

• Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 4 (#40, J ‘N B Series) (40/40) – from March 29, 2013
• The Light In Which We’re Cast (#39, J ‘N B Series) – from March 20, 2013
• Playing Life to Win (#38, J ‘N B Series) – from March 14, 2013
• An Intergalactic Fandom (#37, J ‘N B Series) – from January 15, 2013
• We Fight to Win (#36, J ‘N B Series) – from January 4, 2013