For the Sake of Nothing, Part 7

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Title: For the Sake of Nothing, Part 7
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Leonard has a heart-to-heart with a friend.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6


“May I have a cup of water, please?”

Spock nodded slightly and filled a small paper cup. The woman smiled faintly at him as she accepted the water but there was hesitation in her eyes. Spock had more patience than most people so he waited to find out what it was she truly wanted from him.

Eventually the customer leaned forward and asked in a low tone, “Is… Does Leonard McCoy work here?” There was a slight twang to her voice, indicative that she may not have been born here.

“He does.”

She slipped the corner of a napkin, ragged on one edge from where it had been torn, across the counter. “Please, could you give this to him?” A phone number in blue ink had smeared slightly across the flimsy paper, as if she had handled it too long in indecision.

“Would it not be wise to provide him with a name as well?” Spock said, his first thought given voice.

Indignation quickly followed by a hint of humor flashed through her eyes. “Len’ll know what it means.” Seemingly satisfied now that she had completed her mission, the young woman tucked her purse against her side, thanked him, and left the establishment.

Spock had been arrested by the familiar, easy way she said ‘Len’. The nickname meant she was already acquainted with McCoy. This was not, then, an attempt by a stranger to woo one of his employees. Spock recalled with bright clarity the many times he had been asked to pass along a phone number to Jim. Unfortunately, those messages had never made it farther than Spock’s office trash can. He felt he had a duty, as an employer, to dispose of unwanted attention.

He would be obligated to do the same for Leonard.

Spock picked up the napkin and memorized the phone number by rout. In that moment, as he vacillated over what to do with it, the kitchen door slammed open, startling some customers as it cracked against the outer wall and Spock turned toward the sound, sliding the note into his pocket.

“Mr. McCoy,” he said sharply.

Leonard ignored him and scanned the room. But not seeing what—or who—he was looking for, the man pivoted on his heel and strode toward the shop’s entrance. Spock came around the counter in time to intersect his employee’s path. Something was wrong, that much was apparent. Leonard’s waist apron was gone; he had his heavy jacket in hand.

Mentally, Spock made a side note of the smell of cigarette smoke still clinging to McCoy’s clothes (as well as a future discussion concerning the serious health consequences of smoking) then focused on what distracted him more: the anger, like a heat, rolling off the man. Leonard skirted around him without a word and walked out. Spock followed him as far as he could without letting go of the door. “Leonard,” he said, not raising his voice but infusing it with an unspoken command only a fool would ignore. Several people paused on the sidewalk, afraid he might be talking to them.

McCoy stopped, turned, and simply looked at him. The intensity of his anger was palpable.

“Will you be coming back?”

For a moment, Spock thought he saw the answer he feared on Leonard’s face. But that glimpse of hatred, of resolution, was quickly shuttered.

“I’ll be back,” McCoy told him. “Just not today.”

Spock retreated into the shop but lingered by the glass window, watching Leonard until the man disappeared from sight. He would have moved away at that point to resume his duties if Jim, quite unexpectedly, hadn’t strolled toward the entrance from the street. He was not smiling, not until he saw Spock, and even when he did smile then—a flash of a grin—Spock knew the action was not motivated by a pleasant feeling.

Once Jim situated himself in front of a coffee-bean grinder Spock said, “Leonard has left for the day.”

“Did he?” Jim replied mildly, concentrating on his self-appointed task. “Must of had something important come up. I guess we’ll see him tomorrow?”

“We will,” Spock confirmed.

A few stray coffee beans scattered across the counter when Jim’s hands stuttered in their movement. Jim glanced at Spock, muttering “Sorry”, and swept the errant beans into the palm of his hand for disposal.

Spock spoke with deliberate slowness to allow Kirk time to process what he was saying. “If there is an issue—”

“It’s fine, Spock,” he was interrupted.

Spock gave his employee a long, considering look. “I am not certain I believe you, Jim.”

Jim laughed, a laugh low and deep and not at all born of amusement. “C’mon, have I ever lied to you?”

“Yes.”

That gaze on him darkened. “So I’m a liar.”

“I did not say that, Jim, nor would I label you as such. You do not always tell the truth but you do not lie with consistency. Therefore you do not qualify as a liar… at least, not as I define the word.” He observed Jim’s reaction, the slight mellowing of temper, and remarked more softly, “I do wish you would remember you may be truthful with me, regardless of circumstance.”

There came a sigh, bitten off. “Spock…” But Jim shook his head and mutely returned to filling the grinder with beans.

Spock stepped back, knowing he could not simultaneously pursue the subject of McCoy and convince Jim to speak of what was troubled him. Jim would need time and Spock, reminding himself that he was a patient, courteous person, could grant that time. As the shop’s owner returned to the small room which served as storage unit and office, he sincerely hoped Jim’s change of heart would not take long. Yet if he considered the level of intimacy he had with Jim, he could not be assured Jim would come to him at all. Since that train of thought was an unpleasant distraction from his work, Spock set it aside.

Only when Spock was engrossed in calculating the balance of the month’s inventory did he remember the napkin with the woman’s phone number. He removed it from his pants pocket and bookmarked the accounting ledger with it. He would decide what to do with it later. Perhaps, he told himself, after he discovered if that woman had been the person Leonard was seeking before he left.

Leonard would have headed home or wandered the city until most of his ire wore off, but he suddenly had a burning need to talk to someone. That someone in particular, he hoped, would be where he was headed. The small park was on the west side of the city, set at the center of a group of middle-class neighborhoods. He had dreamed some day that he would be the owner of one of those houses, with a lawn wide enough for children to play on.

The city bus rumbled to a stop. A wave of nostalgia hit Leonard hard as he stepped onto familiar, and old, territory. He lingered by the sign for a few minutes, watching passersby, until he found the courage to keep walking. It was afternoon, so the park was bustling. Leonard didn’t ask directions; his feet knew where to take him.

He saw her from a distance and stopped. His heart jumped in his chest. Of course she would be here. She would be feeling unsettled. When that happened, she did one of two things: come here to organize her thoughts (a leftover relic from the days she liked to study in this park) or go to her favorite ice cream parlor two blocks down and order a chocolate sundae.

Leonard would have gone to the parlor next. As it was, it looked like his first guess had been correct. He approached the bench where she was seated from behind. When he was close enough to cast a shadow over it, he remarked, somewhat softly, “You always did like this place.”

The woman on the bench froze in the act of digging through her purse and turned to look over her shoulder at him. “Len!”

Hands in his jacket pockets, he skirted around the bench but did not sit down. He didn’t know if she would welcome that. “Hello, Jocelyn.”

For a long moment they simply looked at one another. Then Jocelyn made room for him on the bench. He accepted the silent invitation, feeling an invisible weight lift from his shoulders. “Thanks.”

“You didn’t have to come all the way here to see me,” Jocelyn said quietly. “You could have called, Len.”

He didn’t know if she meant he should have called her, should have apologized long before now. He had tried to, once. “Couldn’t. You changed your number.”

“Oh but I—oh, never mind,” she concluded, as if she had solved a mystery. “Yes, I did change my number.”

He dared to glance at her. “Because of me?”

She bit her bottom lip in that way which meant she was contemplating lying. But what she said next he knew was true.

“I was upset, Len… and angry. I thought if I had to hear your voice one more time, I’d say something awful,” she confessed.

Leonard snorted lightly. “You’d probably have told me if I so much as uttered your name again, you’d hunt me down, tear my balls off and feed ’em to your mama’s pigs.”

He shocked a laugh out of her. “Oh, oh my god,” the woman said, trying to control herself, “I would have, wouldn’t I?” She touched the corner of her eye with a make-believe handkerchief, smiling. “You know it’s not my fault. My temper, I mean. It’s inherited.”

Now he chuckled. “Darling, that’s a load of bullhocky if I ever heard it.”

She shoved his arm, a gesture from a part of their past that had existed long before they started dating. Suddenly he felt an ache in his heart, not for the lover but for the best friend he had had. Perhaps Jocelyn felt some of that, because she touched the back of his hand gently, saying in a faint voice, “Oh, Len. Can’t we…?”

He twisted around to face her. “Joss,” he said, repeated. “Joss, I’m sorry. I’m just so fuckin’ sorry.”

She nodded, eyes full of tears, and hugged him. He could have cried. As he pressed his cheek to her hair, the smell of her shampoo—the lavender kind she loved, always used since high school—comforted him. He had made a bad mistake when he cut ties with her. When he had blamed her.

“Joss,” he whispered against her short hair, “what I said—I didn’t mean it. I’m so ashamed I even said it. It wasn’t your fault. I knew that.”

She pulled back slightly. “Len… I know. It’s okay.”

He let her go but kept talking, unable to stop now that he had a chance to speak of the regret which had haunted him. “I didn’t want to hear what you were sayin’. I didn’t—I didn’t want to talk about it.” While he still didn’t, he wanted to give Jocelyn some explanation for his behavior.

Her fingers brushed against his cheek, came back wet. “You were hurting, Leonard. You weren’t well.”

“I was a bastard,” he said viciously.

She hesitated, and he felt a slight withdrawal from her. Almost tentatively, Jocelyn asked him, “Did you talk to someone?”

He closed his eyes. So easy to lie. But he couldn’t because she hadn’t lied to him. “No.”

Her silence was the result of her disappointment. Yet when he opened his eyes again to look at her, it wasn’t disappointment shining in her face but pity.

Bitterness choked him. “Don’t,” he said roughly. “Don’t do that, Joss. Not you.” Even when he had been bombarded by pity on all sides, the townspeople talking about him in hushed voices at the funeral (oh that poor boy, lost his only family, what a tragedy!, holidays will be so hard for him) , she at least had never once shown pity for him.

“Leonard.”

He shook his head and wrapped a hand around the bench arm until his knuckles turned white. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me!” Leonard stood up.

“Don’t you dare leave!” Jocelyn snapped back. She grabbed his arm to prevent him from walking away.

“Let go.”

Her eyes lit with temper when he tried pulling her hand off his arm.

“Leonard Horatio McCoy, if you run away again…! I swear to God, adult or not, I’ll kick you right in front of that old couple!”

That gave Leonard pause. He turned to look at the elderly man and woman seated on a park bench a little farther away, who had ceased their conversation in order to watch the young people’s antics. Jocelyn gave his limb one warning tug. Wisely, he sat down. She folded her arms, a sign of how pissed she was.

“Well,” he drawled, “you certainly never did care about preserving my manhood.” His shin already ached from a long-ago memory.

Jocelyn glared at him. “Believe me, I’ve coddled your manhood more times than I care to count. Now stop acting the fool and listen to me for a minute.”

“Yes’am,” he murmured.

His ex-girlfriend squared her shoulders. “For one thing, yes I do pity you, Leonard. Stop glaring. You promised to listen, remember?”

He didn’t remember promising that.

Jocelyn rolled right over his protest. “But it’s not because you’re alone in the world, which by the way is your own damned fault.”

He paled at that.

She eased some of the sharpness from her tone. “I don’t mean the accident. You’re alone because you are an idiot. I tried my best to help you, Len, I did. You didn’t want my help—and for whatever reason, you didn’t want me either.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is,” she said solemnly. “I have had time to think about the way things happened. People grieve, Len, and you had more reason than most to grieve.” She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it.

He covered her hand with his and, startled, glanced down. Only then did Leonard see something he should have noticed earlier.

“Leonard,” Jocelyn called softly, regaining his attention. “Are you still listening?”

The side of his mouth lifted faintly. “Wouldn’t dare not to.”

“They say anger is one of the stages of grief.”

Leonard looked away.

“I think you were stuck in that stage, and I think,” she continued, worrying her lip again, “you knew it. You also knew you were hurting me.”

He said nothing.

“You aren’t a vain man, Leonard McCoy, except on one account. You never want anybody to see you out of control. I guess, looking back, I shouldn’t have been surprised you were pushing me away. For what it’s worth,” she added, “I’m sorry I gave up on you.”

“You didn’t,” Leonard replied with a sigh. “I left, remember?”

“And I let you go. You drove the knife in pretty deep when you said if I hadn’t convinced you to go to the same college as me, they—” She took a deep breath. “—they wouldn’t have been on that highway that day. Don’t you think I had accused myself of the same thing at one point?” Jocelyn fingered her purse strap with one hand, an old habit that meant she wasn’t sure of herself.

“Oh god, Joss,” he said with sincerity. “Please forgive me for that. I never believed it, not for a second.”

“Forgiven,” she said with a half-hearted smile, then tucked away her vulnerability again. “So you see it’s as much my fault as yours.” She squeezed his hand and said quickly, “Let’s just agree to disagree, okay?”

They sat in silence for a moment. Leonard broke it by saying, “You didn’t get to the part about why you really pity me.”

Her chin lifted slightly in warning. “I pity you because you’ve gotten so mule-headed you’re wasting your life.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I know you quit school. Your mother,” she said, leaning forward, “God rest her soul, would have beaten you black and blue for that.”

“No she wouldn’t’ve!” he argued.

“Oh, Leonard,” Jocelyn said, shaking her head in mock sadness, “the things you don’t know about women could fill a book.”

Leonard glared. “Mama never hurt a fly.”

Mama also never saved her pennies for eighteen years so a fly could go to college,” she retorted. “You remember how proud she was on your first day.”

His ears burned at the memory. “She made Dad drive her from their hotel to campus at seven o’clock in the morning so she could walk me to my first class. Jesus, was I ever embarrassed!”

Jocelyn’s eyes were tear-bright and her mouth stretched with restrained laughter. “I loved your mother. You know… I told her once when we had kids, we would name our daughter after her.”

“Joanne,” Leonard said, not quite certain how to address the fact Jocelyn had been discussing procreation with his mother.

She corrected sweetly, “Joanna, actually. Your mother said it would be close enough but still different so that she and Joanna wouldn’t answer the same summons when we called.”

He laughed without meaning to. His mother would have said exactly that. By the time his laughter had died down, Jocelyn was wiping at her eyes again. “Joss?” he questioned, alarmed.

“It’s nothing. I just—it’s good to hear you laughing.”

He brushed his thumb over the fingers wrapped around his and asked the question that had been scalding the back of his throat since he looked down. “Are you, I mean, who is…?”

She saved him from the painful fumbling. “I’m engaged.”

Leonard nodded.

Jocelyn studied him for a moment. “Does that upset you?”

He thought about it. “I guess… not? I am kind of upset, but only because I don’t even know who it is.” He frowned. “Is that weird?”

“Well I was hoping you wouldn’t say,” she deepened her voice in a funny imitation of Leonard’s, “‘if I can’t have you, no one can!‘”

“Yeah-huh,” he remarked dryly, “’cause I’m absolutely creepy like that.”

They grinned at each other.

Leonard sobered first. “Is he at least as good-looking as me?”

Jocelyn smacked his arm. “Oh shut up. Clay’s not only handsomer but he’s also a ton of things you aren’t!” She ticked off her fingers as she listed those things. “He’s rich…”

“Ouch,” Leonard said. “I’m offended for all the poor guys in this country that you’re so shallow.”

She ignored him. “…smart…”

“Are you saying I’m not smart?”

“Dumb as a brick. Oh, and he’s a med student.”

Leonard clutched at his abdomen. “Oh, right in the guts, Joss! Your grandmother always said you should marry a doctor. What a great disappointment I was on that score!”

“You,” she began pointedly, “would be a published author by now if you were smart.”

“And rich too,” he added. “Tuition at State has gone up about 3% every year.” He regretted that sentence the moment it left his mouth.

Jocelyn pounced, eyes alight. “You’ve been keeping track? When do you go back?”

“Whoa!” He raised a hand to stall the flood of questions. “I never said I was, Joss. I—” He grimaced. “—don’t think I am.”

“Stand up,” the woman demanded.

“Why?”

“Because I am going to kick you!”

He scooted to the end of the bench, which wasn’t far. “Now wait…”

“Ugh! Mule-headed, stupid male. You haven’t got the sense God gave a goat! You know what? On behalf of your mama, your daddy, AND your sweet little brother who thought you created the Earth, GET YOUR ASS BACK TO SCHOOL!”

“Are you finished? People are staring.” In fact, Leonard noted sourly, the elderly couple had doubled into two elderly couples, a kid eating an ice cream cone, and a small, brown dog.

She crossed her arms again. “I still want to kick you.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, you’d have to catch me first.”

“Like I have time, I—oh!” She looked at her wristwatch. “Oh damn! Leonard…” Jocelyn dug her hands into her purse, hesitating.

“You have somewhere to be,” he finished for her.

She nodded.

He stood up, but at a safe distance just in case she did decide to kick him. One never knew with Jocelyn and Leonard had known her for years. “Get going then.” Now it was his turn to hesitate. “Can we… see each other again?” He flushed. “I mean, I want to meet him, this Clay guy. Give ‘im the McCoy seal of approval.”

“I’d like that, Leonard. Call me, okay?”

“You changed your number, remember?” he pointed out.

“Oh, that’s right, you probably didn’t get it. I left a note with the guy behind the register at the coffee shop.”

Suddenly, Leonard’s thoughts clouded over at the reminder of what he had left behind. Jim. Of course. Jim probably threw it away, the asshole.

Eyeing him warily, no doubt because of his mood change, she said, “Here, give me your hand.” She wrote a phone number across his palm with a pen she had unearthed from her purse.

“Thanks,” Leonard said.

Jocelyn smiled at him, came forward and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Goodbye, Leonard.”

He caught her hand before she got too far away and pulled her into a tight hug. “Bye,” he said into her hair, almost afraid that this reconciliation wasn’t as real as it seemed.

Jocelyn hugged him back, which was answer enough that she had missed him too.

Next Part

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About KLMeri

Owner of SpaceTrio. Co-mod of McSpirk Holiday Fest. Fanfiction author of stories about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

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