FIC: To Know One's Part (Kirk/McCoy, PG)

[the_water_clock]

Author: Clio
Title: To Know One's Part
Pairing: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Rating: PG
Summary: Christmas, 1938, and Leo is wondering what on earth a research scientist with a modest stipend can give to a best-selling author. (From the same 'verse as the 20s-in-Paris story April Is Over.)
Warning: (skip) None.
Length: 900 words
Notes: Written for space_wrapped prompt 144:

In the bleak midwinter frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone
Snow had fallen, snow on snow
Snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter, long long ago

What then can I give him, empty as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb
If I were a Wise Man I would know my part
What then can I give him?
I must give my heart.

Thanks to the lovely ladies who make space_wrapped run, and in particular to weepingnaiad for giving this the once-over.

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Leo wasn't made for weather like this. Paris might drizzle, but it never piled snow on top of snow from sometime in late October on, the way that New York had that year. Christine said it was unusually snowy but Leo wasn't interested in snow at all, and neither were his aging bones. He wasn't twenty anymore.

Of course Jim was like a pig in shit about it, insisting on going to the park as soon as the first snow fell, building snow forts and snow men and having snowball fights as often as possible. You wouldn't know he was also on the north side of fifty by the way he was behaving. You also, for that matter, wouldn't know that he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning best-selling novelist.

They'd fled Paris late compared to the other ex-pats, not coming back to New York until early 1938. Jim and Leo and Christine and Janice had settled into two adjoining townhouses in Greenwich Village, where Christine immediately began to insinuate herself into the artistic community just as much as she ever had in Paris. Her reputation as an artistic salon hostess had preceded her, as had Jim's as a writer and Jan's as a painter.

But Leo? Leo was just the sarcastic doctor who sat in the background. Sure, those who'd read Jim's books might realize Leo figured in all of them somehow, but New York literary culture was no different than Paris for no one actually reading any of the books they were endlessly discussing. Well, Leo did, and so did the folks Christine invited to her place, but as for the others, he was about as unimpressed with them as they seemed to be with him.

Leo's walk from the IRT took him past the shops on Seventh Avenue South, which were all dressed up for the holiday. The merchants who had survived nine long years of Depression were pinning their hopes on Christmas gift-giving to put them in the black. Leo was more than happy to help, buying New York trinkets and sending them off to friends and the family that still talked to him.

But as for Jim himself—well, what do you buy the man who has everything, or at least, everything he needs? What do you get a man who loves to read but has any book he wants immediately sent to him in hopes of a blurb or a mention in a radio or magazine interview when they ask James T. Kirk the inevitable, "We all read your books, but what do you read?" Especially when, at the end of the day, you're a research scientist with a modest stipend?

Leo walked into the house, glad to be out of the wet, and pulled off his galoshes. Jim must have heard him, for he was leaping down the stairs.

"Bones!" he called out. "You're home early!" He grinned, giving Leo a bear hug as soon as he'd shrugged off his overcoat.

"Am I?" Leo asked, looking at his watch. "It's dinner time."

"It's a treat to be able to eat dinner with you these days," Jim replied. "You've been at the lab such late hours. I miss you."

Leo bit his lip. He did tend to lose track of time up there. And he had been thinking earlier about how much work he could get done during the Christmas recess, when there were no students to wrangle. He tried to tell himself it was just to get out from underfoot when Jim was writing, have a little something of his own, but the truth was that he was just as likely to bury himself in work as Jim was. Maybe that was why they worked so well together.

But seeing Jim being this excited just about dinner was as warming to his heart as the coziness of their house was to his old, snow-chilled bones. Maybe, on the matter of gift-giving, he needed to change his thinking.

"Say, any deadlines looming?" Leo asked. "I know the new book is finished—"

"Resting," Jim corrected, because he had a whole thing about not looking at his books for a few weeks after they were completed.

"—but any short stories, essays, reviews or what not?"

"Not right now, no," Jim said, then cocked his head. "Why?"

"I've got a four-week break coming," Leo replied. "Thought we might get away for a while."

Jim grinned so wide his face might have split open. "You mean that?" he asked. "You'll leave your lab and come out here with the living?"

"Never say what I don't mean, Jim. As long as you're willing to leave the literati behind in Manhattan."

"Brother, just ask me," Jim replied. "So, can we go someplace warm, where I can show off those legs of yours?"

Leo raised his eyebrows. "You mean, these pale legs covered in hair going grey? No thank you!"

"But you do want to get out of the snow," Jim said, laughing. "I know you."

"True," Leo said.

"Well, Nyota and Spock and Pavel and Hikaru are out in Los Angeles. Plenty of beach and sunshine there."

"Yes, but let's make sure we have time for just us two, all right?"

"Definitely," Jim said, and pulled Leo close again. "Wow, a few weeks of nothing to do in a warm place with my fella? Best Christmas present ever!"

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