(no subject)

[homeostatic]

CHARACTERS: McCoy & Open
LOCATION: On E-23b for those three weeks & on the station
DATE: Variable; after the coup and once they've returned
CONTENT: Gen; will change if needed
WARNINGS: none atm

( lmk if you'd like a starter, or hmu with one of your own! )

Comments

[unclesam]

Yeah.

[ He's not gonna pretend different. But he is going to reach out, curl his hand over McCoy's. Sam's got a worker's hands made warm and soft with lotion. Good for comfort. ]

Talk to me.

[homeostatic]

He's fine.

( Leonard, however, does not sound fine, even as he very gently shifts so he can cover Sam's hand with his own. )

He's home. He's safe. What more could I ask for?

( Here, says the look on his face, He could still be here. )

[unclesam]

Time.

[ Softly. It's what Sam wanted most of when his mother wasted away to sickness slowly but surely. It's what he wanted more of when a car accident took his father.

It's what he needed to rewind and stop when he saw Riley light up in the sky like a shooting star. Falling and dying just as quickly. Kirk's not dead, sure, but... He's not here. Like your best friend gone time travelling and taking the long way back.

If only to have another moment's worth with someone you love. If only.

Sam squeezes McCoy's hand a little. Watches the man grasp him back. Wishes he could turn the clock for him. Give him just another moment. It's not always as painless as people think, to know someone you love is out there alive - but no longer with you. No longer within your reach. ]

He's your husband. There's nothing you couldn't ask for.

[ And they know, don't they. That back home, they don't remember. They know they're living on borrowed time here. With people long dead. Building relationships that will wink out like shooting stars, too, the moment they go home. ]

cw for terminal illness, death, assisted suicide

[homeostatic]

( Patients and their families always asked him for more time, as if he had it in his power to weave more hours from the ether with a hypospray, a laser scalpel, some cutting edge procedure he devised on the spot.

It was Time that he agonized over after his father's passing. His father hadn't asked for more time when he was the one in perpetual torment; he wanted to be done with it, to pass peacefully on his own terms, and trusted his son to see it done. When the cure was announced and his comm lit up with friends, colleagues, the second wave of sympathy choked him: I'm sorry; if only he hadn't passed so soon; if only you had more time.

He wove out time for Jim because of his father; demanded it from the universe when Jim was dead and all the light in his life threatened to wink out with him, because somewhere in the cosmos the scales were unbalanced and Leonard finally, finally had it in his power to correct them.

The Ximilia, too, has been time spun from nothing, something they never could have dreamed of, and all the heartache and stress and near-misses were surmountable because they were together.

Could Leonard really beg for more time, when he knows that Jim would have to watch him die? )

No.

( His hands are soft in Sam's, belied by their strength, by the indomitable will behind them, as Leonard is calm and resolute. )

If what we've had is all that we were meant to have, then I'm grateful for it. I've asked for enough.

[unclesam]

[ There's something here, in this moment between the two of them. With a quiet, simulated galaxy around them, and a vast one out there around the Ximilia too. Nearly 60 souls aboard, all a cosmos of stories and emotions of their own. And right here and now, it doesn't matter how vast all of it is. Sam feels like they're holding all that matters in the small spaces between their hands. The rest is distant.

And there's a beauty in that too, one that Sam knows well. In celebrating what you had even when you can't hold in. In watching shooting stars wink out, unable to hold them in the sky. Watching snow melt and watching the tide take sand castles.

Winking out of existence and missing five years.

What do they accept, and what do they fight for, whatever it takes? ]

Tell me what you're not telling me.

[ He can't shield McCoy from what he's lost and what he's carrying. But he can be here for him. He can share that time that's slipped away from his dear friend where it mattered oh so very much. ]

[homeostatic]

I'm dying, Sam.

( It's the first time he's said it out loud, having couched the truth before in the gentlest terms possible. Sam gets it bluntly delivered, straightforward, as if he's delivering the news to a colleague he wishes to consult. )

I found out back on E-23b, when I started getting sick. ( He shrugs, McCoy's back straight and his shoulders square in sheer defiance, his next remark unflinching: ) The upside of having your own clinic is you get to diagnose yourself with a terminal illness no one on that world's ever heard of before.

( Because he knows Sam will ask, McCoy continues, )

It's called Xenopolythycemia, it's an extremely rare genetic blood disease, with no known cure. Just palliative care, symptom management for the year or so it takes to runs its course.

[unclesam]

[ For a moment it feels like McCoy's next words just turn to static in Sam's mind, and he has trouble following. It's so much worse than if he'd said 'You're dying, Sam.' Because while Sam's absolutely not gonna make this about him, it hits that wound inside his chest that just never ever heals, the wound that holds Riley, Steve, Nat, Tony, and is already preparing to hold Bucky, too. Friends and partners he's lost. Some of them several times over.

McCoy is dying. McCoy lost his husband and McCoy is dying.

Sam's fingers prickle, go a little numb. He quietly rises from his seat, drops down beside McCoy instead and draws him closer, into a half-hug with one arm that allows him to keep holding onto McCoy's hand. ]

I'm sorry.

[ It goes without saying, but it's worth saying. Sam swallows. ]

What do you need?

[ Because he'll have it, whatever it is. For whatever exact time they have together... McCoy's got Sam in his corner for whatever it is he needs going forwards. ]