There’s a surreal quality to exam season. Look back, and Len was living the steady, married life. Look forward, and he’ll be an idiot traipsing gaily about the vacuum as if the singular purpose of space is not to murder any man fool enough to venture anywhere near it. But now he’s got his nose in the latest chapter of Advanced Xenomed and the last dull traces of a whiskey headache pounding behind his eyes, and it’s like the past twenty years of life outside this dorm room just never existed.
Having Jim Kirk for a roommate doesn’t help. Len’s knees creak, for Christ’s sakes, and that makes him officially too old to have some damned troublemaker golden boy following him around, leaning too close over his shoulder in a cloud of the kind of cologne that college kids wear when they’ve got someone to impress.
“Me and Gaila stole the codes to get up to the science building’s roof,” he says, because of course they did. “I thought we could catch the sunset from up there.”
If Len turned around, he’d see a wide smile, half-innocence and half-trickery, impossible to say no to, so he shrugs Jim’s hand from his shoulder and says, “Look, kid, not all of us can scan this bullshit once and then regurgitate it.”
And — Hell. It’s not bullshit, is the thing. He’ll need it to save lives, but that feels too big to say, when he failed so miserably before. Passing a test is simpler, comfortingly unreal.
“Half an hour?” Jim says, “C’mon. You already know that stuff in your bones. Might be five years before you see a sunset again.”
Might be never. Jim knows how dangerous the cosmos can be, even if his way of dealing with it is to fly into the lightning and not look back. Maybe that means he’s right about watching the night fall one last time, not from the planet’s surface but somewhere high above it, between the earth and their destination. Len can take the PADD with him, maybe, study as the wind sweeps out to sea and the stars come out one by one.
“Fine,” he hears himself mutter, like the fool he is. “It’s a date.”
“I’ll bring the wine, you bring the roses?”
And fuck, he’s not joking — or he is, but it’s the kind of joke Len’s heard him make before, talking like it’s nothing just to cover up how much he means it. The safer thing would be to let it go, but then Jim’s hand is back — is warm, and Len oughta be telling him to cut that out, but the words won’t leave his throat. He’s too close to middle age for this giddy high school crush feeling, but time’s turned backwards and he can’t help it.
To hell with the safer thing. Len doesn’t know where he’s going to find roses between now and sunset, but maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe all he needs to bring is himself.
Prompt fill: Jim/Bones, Academy Era, 500 words, rating T
Having Jim Kirk for a roommate doesn’t help. Len’s knees creak, for Christ’s sakes, and that makes him officially too old to have some damned troublemaker golden boy following him around, leaning too close over his shoulder in a cloud of the kind of cologne that college kids wear when they’ve got someone to impress.
“Me and Gaila stole the codes to get up to the science building’s roof,” he says, because of course they did. “I thought we could catch the sunset from up there.”
If Len turned around, he’d see a wide smile, half-innocence and half-trickery, impossible to say no to, so he shrugs Jim’s hand from his shoulder and says, “Look, kid, not all of us can scan this bullshit once and then regurgitate it.”
And — Hell. It’s not bullshit, is the thing. He’ll need it to save lives, but that feels too big to say, when he failed so miserably before. Passing a test is simpler, comfortingly unreal.
“Half an hour?” Jim says, “C’mon. You already know that stuff in your bones. Might be five years before you see a sunset again.”
Might be never. Jim knows how dangerous the cosmos can be, even if his way of dealing with it is to fly into the lightning and not look back. Maybe that means he’s right about watching the night fall one last time, not from the planet’s surface but somewhere high above it, between the earth and their destination. Len can take the PADD with him, maybe, study as the wind sweeps out to sea and the stars come out one by one.
“Fine,” he hears himself mutter, like the fool he is. “It’s a date.”
“I’ll bring the wine, you bring the roses?”
And fuck, he’s not joking — or he is, but it’s the kind of joke Len’s heard him make before, talking like it’s nothing just to cover up how much he means it. The safer thing would be to let it go, but then Jim’s hand is back — is warm, and Len oughta be telling him to cut that out, but the words won’t leave his throat. He’s too close to middle age for this giddy high school crush feeling, but time’s turned backwards and he can’t help it.
To hell with the safer thing. Len doesn’t know where he’s going to find roses between now and sunset, but maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe all he needs to bring is himself.