“you can’t be here now.” Jim is hiding a secret & its making him distressed & lose sleep and pining!Bones tries to confront him
It’s rare that Leonard uses his medical override, but he hasit for a reason after all, and now seems as good a time to use it as any. “Jim-”he starts as soon as the door slides open.
Jim jumps up from his desk, his hair wild and his eyes neardesperate. “Bones!” he shouts. “You can’t be here now!”
Leonard crosses his arms over his chest and prepares tostare Jim down. He tries to ignore the way his heart squeezes painfully when helooks Jim over. His skin is pale, his cheeks a sallow, and the thick smudgesunder his eyes have gotten even more pronounced. From a medical position thingsdon’t look too great, as Jim’s boyfriend- “Jim,” he says slowly. “You look likeshit.” He’s tried tiptoeing around this already, and so far, Jim’s managed tobrush him off. But there’s only so much he can take.
“Gee, thanks, Bones,” Jim replies sarcastically.
Sighing softly, Leonard invites himself into Jim’s room. “Look,”Leonard says softly. “I don’t know what I did but…I understand if you want toend things between us. Normally I wouldn’t push, but it’s effecting your work.Hell, even Spock’s worried in his own Vulcan way.” Honestly, Leonard hadthought things were going well between them. After two years of being in asteady relationship, both on and off Earth, Leonard had been positive that theywere far beyond this.
But Jim hasn’t spoken to him for nearly two weeks now, and ‘shit’doesn’t even begin to cover how bad Jim looks. As Jim’s doctor, hell as hisfriend, Leonard knows he should just put Jim out of his misery.
“Consider us broken up. There, I did it for you, no need foryou to stress anymore,” he says softly, fighting down his own disappointmentthat it had apparently come to this. He doesn’t want to leave Jim but...if it’ll help Jim, if it will let him sleep and do the job he loves, Leonard is more than willing to make the sacrifice, make this as easy as possible for Jim. “If you want, I’ll even request anotherassignment I wouldn’t want-”
“Bones!” Jim interrupts him, if anything, looking even moreharried and desperate than before. “No, that’s not it at all. Don’t break upwith me, please. It’s just-” Jim drops his eyes and runs a hand through hishair, making it stand up even worse than before. “This isn’t how I wanted to doit,” he mutters, clearly more to himself than Leonard.
Taking a deep breath, Jim closes the distance between themand takes Leonard’s hands carefully into his own. “I’ve been planning this forweeks, but I haven’t gotten anywhere really, and I can’t stand not being ableto talk to you because I’m afraid I’ll spill the secret, or you thinking that Iwant us to break up. It’s…fuck. It’s the exact opposite!”
Leonard stares at Jim in confusion, not daring to hope thatJim’s saying what he thinks Jim issaying. Of all the ways he’d thought this conversation might go, this hadn’t even crossed his mind.
“Leonard Horatio McCoy…will you marry me?”
