Title: Remember When
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: McCoy [Pairing McCoy/? – reader can decide the partner]
Summary: AU-ish. Healing happens at its own pace. McCoy is reminded of this in the oddest way possible.

Two days into visiting his hometown for a week after nearly an eon of hiatus, and Leonard McCoy is at a bar past midnight, drinking alone. The whiskey isn’t to kill the pain; it’s just to numb him a bit so the heated words exchanged merely hours ago don’t nip at him as hard. There’s a difference, right?

He may have muttered this to the bartender because the next thing Leonard knows, his supply of whiskey—and every other alcoholic beverage—has been cut off. Geez, and he’s not even to the point of losing his words or acting downright belligerent!

He pays off the tab and declines a gruff offer from the bartender to call a taxi, heading through the empty downtown at a snail’s pace. After all, snails are less prone to listing.

Apparently they can still run into things, though. Leonard goes down; the trash bin does not. It has the good fortune of being bolted firmly to the sidewalk. Thank god there’s no one around at this ungodly hour to witness his floundering.

“Are you all right?” a startled female voice interrupts that thought.

…Or not. Leonard mashes his face to the concrete in despair (Fate shouldn’t be so cruel to a man already impaired), then drags his feet under him, muttering, “Good, good, tripped is all.”

The woman who grabs his arm to assist him becomes too still when he straightens up. Then she sucks in a breath and says, “Leonard?”

Leonard freezes too. He knows that voice. God help him, he knows it. His body turns to face her of its own accord despite the balking of his mind.

In silence, Leonard McCoy and his ex-wife Jocelyn stare at one another.

Jocelyn doesn’t say much after the initial shock passes. She simply tucks a hand under one of his arms and guides him away from the trashcan, a bench and other objects Leonard might have had the misfortune of knocking into or falling over. There’s a kind of deja-vu to their careful journey along the sidewalk that, once his brain finally acknowledges it, jerks him back to reality.

She stops walking when he removes her hold on his arm to study his expression. Then she resumes the journey on her own.

Still feeling like he is standing on a clear patch of ground surrounded by fog, Leonard follows her, using his long legs to catch up. As they travel the city’s main street with a distinct lack of conversation, vaguely he thinks he must be in a bad way to continue following someone who hasn’t been in his life for a very long time. If anything, he should be embarrassed.

He imagines some part of him instinctively senses the cusp of something momentous about to happen—and for Leonard, curiosity has always been a sly little thing.

The silence thickens beyond uncomfortableness. Every few seconds or so, Leonard veers away, seeming to lose his balance, eyeing the closed stores they pass as if window shopping. He doesn’t have to look at Jocelyn to know her eyes are damp with sympathy. They don’t love each other the way they used to but it’s difficult not to care, or remember what it felt like to care, and his ex-wife knows better than anyone that he doesn’t fall apart easily.

He can’t tell her why he’s like this, and she won’t ask.

They reach the closest bus stop, where he leans against the side of the awning in hopes of appearing soberer than he actually is while she watches the intersection up ahead for a bus which has likely stopped its run for the night. It’s a blast from the past, standing there together. A memory comes unbidden: their younger selves, Leonard struggling to get off the bus in his usual partially asleep state while Jocelyn tries to force her way inside before the bus can leave the curb. That was merely the first collision in a series for them. Jocelyn had lived in an apartment nearby while Leonard interned at a company in the plaza next to the parking garage still in use across the street. At this same bus stop, for nearly two years, they met for their dates.

She retrieves a phone from the purse hanging from her shoulder with a soft sigh. “Cab?”

Since the pavement has a restless quality to it, Leonard half sits, half falls onto the bench under the awning. His elbow lands in something sticky like gum. “No thanks,” he grunts.

Jocelyn turns around to face him. “You can’t sleep there.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

She sighs again, no doubt sensing the lie. “Who should I call?”

He closes his eyes, irritated, and says nothing.

“Fine,” the woman decides, “I’ll call your mother.”

McCoy’s eyes pop open. “What?” He struggles upright, gasping at her mainly out of shock, “You can’t do that!”

Jocelyn shows him the screen of her phone which in fact has Leonard’s mother’s first name and home phone number on it. “Try me,” she dares him.

“Cab,” he growls then because Jocelyn doesn’t bluff.

Something pangs inside him, ever painful, and he shuts down that line of thinking before it breaks the surface.

But now she wants to know, “Can you afford one?” and that—combined with his personal pain—pushes McCoy’s temper from simmering to a boil.

“Being drunk doesn’t make me destitute!” he snarls.

“Then why are you doing your best to look the part?” she fires back, her eyes filling with tears and anger at the same time. “I know we haven’t seen each other in god knows how long, but I thought—” Her free hand curls into a fist. “Damn you, Leonard, you were supposed to take care of yourself!”

Leonard scrubs his hair, then his face, the knot of anger in him receding. “I am okay, Jocelyn, I am. This is just… oh hell,” he curses. His stomach drops when Jocelyn swipes at her eyes. “Don’t cry.”

The woman gives him a wet glare before taking a seat too. Leonard shifts sideways so they don’t accidentally brush against each other. However, the years-long taboo of casual touching seems to have come to a quiet end, for Jocelyn closes that small distance to take his hand in hers. No more tears are falling from her eyes, but they look so sad.

She says, “We weren’t good partners but that doesn’t make us bad people.”

“I know that.”

“I didn’t.”

A lump forms in his throat.

“Seeing you like this hurts,” Jocelyn goes on. “I always felt guilty. I wondered if I made you feel like you weren’t worth being loved. Tell me I didn’t,” she begs, but when he opens his mouth, her quick amendment is, “No, sorry, that’s not—just tell me the truth, okay?”

“I could never lie to you anyway,” he jokes.

Her gaze drops.

Leonard squeezes her fingers. “I meant what I said, Jocelyn. I’m okay. I had a few drinks because—” I had a fight with my lover, “—there’s something botherin’ me, yes, but this is the first time in a long time. Years, in fact,” he remarks when her eyes catch his once again. He huffs quietly. “I only stayed drunk for four months after our split, you know. I wasn’t a complete mess.”

“Oh,” she replies, and Leonard almost sighs with relief when her expression clears a little.

“You caught me at a bad time,” he insists.

“I always could.”

They not-quite-smile at each other at that private joke, a remnant of happier times. Jocelyn releases his hand, and Leonard tucks it away under his leg. His other leg has started to bounce, this chat having quickly sobered him. Or maybe he wasn’t as inebriated as he wished he was, after all.

Leonard pats his jacket pockets, frowning when he doesn’t feel his cellphone. “I’ll take that cab,” he reminds her, relieved when he does find his wallet. He checks the amount of cash inside before handing her some of it. “This is for yours, too.” She shakes her head but he challenges lightly, “Consider it payment for peeling me off the sidewalk.”

Jocelyn chokes on a laugh, accepting one of the smaller bills. “Maybe we should find you a keeper.”

He opens his mouth to retort but ends up hesitating.

Her gaze widens. “Oh. You have one.”

Leonard looks away, embarrassed, and clears his throat.

In the next instant, Jocelyn is using her phone to request two cabs at their location. When she is finished, he thanks her and stands up, proud to only wobble a little bit. The cold night air seems to be waking up his senses as well. Tucking his hands into his armpits, he watches a car pass by.

Jocelyn’s voice cuts into the return of awkward silence. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” He doesn’t wholeheartedly mean that—some parts of his life, himself, he doesn’t want to share—but it also feels wrong to say no to her.

When Jocelyn doesn’t immediately speak again, he twists around from the waist to see her. She picks up her purse then and moves to stand next to him as if that action is tacit permission to join him.

“Do you remember how we started dating?”

“We kept running into each other.”

“And we thought it was coincidental until suddenly we didn’t.”

“Maybe we were both looking for love,” he points out softly.

Jocelyn considers him for a while, then says, “I think by trying to be your girlfriend first and then your wife, I missed out on being your friend. If we run into each other again…” She doesn’t finish that sentence, but then she doesn’t have to.

Leonard nods. “We could try.”

Jocelyn offers him a faint smile as a taxi pulls up to the curb. “I would like to.”

He jerks his chin toward the taxi. “Ladies first.”

In response, her eyes dance for the briefest second. “Ever the gentleman, Mr. McCoy.”

“Can’t help what I am, darlin’.”

Jocelyn opens a passenger door, pausing long enough to look over her shoulder and say, “Next time, coffee.”

“Definitely nothing stronger.”

She nods. “Take care, Leonard.”

“You too, Jocelyn.”

The car door shuts with a click, its window framing his ex-wife’s face, like his, not as youthful as it once was but seeming somehow wiser from the time that had passed, before the taxi pulls away. Leonard watches it until the taillights disappear. Then he moves his hands to his jacket pockets, faces the opposite way, waiting for his ride home, reminded that the least he can do is to not repeat history.

-Fini

Related Posts:

• Follow Me Dark – from November 30, 2023
• Say a Little Prayer – from November 10, 2021
• Twist and Take – from October 31, 2021
• Clear from the Battle (But Not the War) – from October 11, 2021
• Consider Me Accounted For – from October 3, 2021