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"I don't understand why you have to do this with me. I'm perfectly capable of buying things for my own dorm room."
"Yeah, but you have no style," Jim teased as he grabbed a cart from the array.
"I have style!" Leo protested indignantly, looking down at his clothes.
Jim rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but Bones, you can't decorate for crap. Remember last Christmas?"
Leo muttered something unintelligible about how it wasn't his fault that the tree ended up looking like a cluster of red when the ornaments all ended up too close together while Jim just smiled and started off towards the college section while Leo trailed grumpily.
"What colors do you want to go with for your room? It doesn't necessarily have to be like the school colors, and you said the rooms are white there."
"Uh- I guess blue?"
Jim rolled his eyes. "Blue. Okay, we'll find the blue. Let's get a comforter first and base everything around that." He pulled a checklist out of his back pocket and scanned it while steering the cart one handed. "Do you need a new pillow?"
"Couldn't hurt. My mom's buying, so might as well." Leo grinned as Jim looked back and grinned as well.
"That's the spirit! I told you this would be fun."
Leo groaned. Jim laughed and pulled him into the bedding aisle, capturing his lips in a kiss before he could protest.
"Maybe this isn't so bad after all," Leo murmured, pressing his forehead to Jim's. "Now, comforter?"
Jim nodded and cleared his throat. "Comforter."
"What about this one?" Leo held up a blue comforter with a grey stripe running up and one running perpendicular to meet it at the top.
"I like it," Jim said, slightly surprised as he took it from his boyfriend and dropped it in the cart. "Pillow?"
"Pillow," Leo agreed.
By the time they left the store almost two hours later, Leo had a full bed set, cups, plates, a lamp, enough pens and pencils to last him a lifetime, new slippers, a whiteboard/corkboard combo, three picture frames for his personal photos, a new mouse for his laptop, a new flash drive, and several other odds and ends that Jim had deemed necessary, including a coffeepot that Leo insisted he didn't need.
Jim had just rolled his eyes. "Bones, you're going to start med school in a few years. Coffee will be your best friend."
Leo had begrudgingly agreed, but he still hated the damn drink.
Jim whispered into Leo’s chest. “I’m gonna miss you so much, Bones.”
“You think I won’t miss you too?”
Jim snuggled closer to his boyfriend’s chest. “You’ll be so far away. What happens when I want to see you?”
Leo kissed the top of Jim’s blond head. “You can take the train to me anytime you want, and I’ll be home for every long weekend. Don’t forget that you’ll also spend your spring break with me.”
“That’s not often enough.”
Leo sighed. “I know. I hate it too.”
“Think about the great reunion sex we can have, though.”
“That’s very true. See, there’s an upside to this crappy situation.”
“It’s a very bittersweet upside.”
Leo wrapped his arms around Jim and pulled him even closer. “Get some sleep, kid. We’ve gotta be at the train station by eight.”
Jim didn’t cry at the train station the next morning. He plastered a smile on his face as he watched the love of his life go to one of the most prestigious pre-med programs in the country. He didn’t cry when Eleanora broke down next to him, but he squeezed her hand tightly in his. He didn’t cry when the McCoys pulled into their driveway and he walked home, just shrugging when his mother and stepfather asked him if he was alright. He didn’t cry when he got to his bedroom, closing the door behind him and sliding down onto the ground. He cried when he crawled over to the bag of clothes that he had retrieved from Bones’ bedroom still smelled like his boyfriend. He cried when he saw the discarded sleeping bag lying next to his bed. He cried when he thought about the past two years, and how much they had changed him. He stopped when his phone buzzed with a text from Bones saying he had arrived safely and missed Jim already. Jim’s wan smile as he read that was his first all day, and he texted back ‘Miss you too, babe’. He stopped crying when he realized that everything really, truly might be okay while Bones was away.
Jim’s laptop chirped that he had an incoming video call request on Skype from LMcCoy22 later that night, when he was surfing the web. Grinning, he clicked answer and saw his boyfriend sitting in a room over 100 miles away.
“Bones!”
“Hi, Jim. How’re you doing?”
“Awesome. My boyfriend’s away at college and I’m stuck at home,” Jim replied dryly. “How about you?”
Leo cracked a small smile and shrugged. “About the same. This room is smaller than I remember, but that comforter we picked out looks great here.”
Jim laughed. “Nice to know. What’s your class schedule like?”
Leo groaned. “Terrible. I’m being required to take anatomy again, and that’s at eight am Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I’ve got other basic classes, including biology,” Leo rolled his eyes, “College Algebra, a writing class that’s totally extraneous, psychology again, and my roommate’s a homophobe.”
“Next year,” Jim promised, “We’ll get an apartment on campus together. Just you and me. I’m gonna get a job at the diner or the theater, and I’ll save up so we can be ahead on the rent. No one would bother us, and we could be together.”
“We’ll have to tell our parents eventually, so I suppose moving in together would be the best time for it,” Leo said with a smile. “But, Jim- I don’t want you paying the rent by yourself. I’ll save up too, and we’ll pay together. My parents are going to send me money once a month, and I’ll get a work study, and-“
If Jim could have, he would have cut Leo’s rambling off with a kiss. Instead, he settled for shushing his boyfriend. “Bones! Relax, dude. It doesn’t matter who pays or how we split it or anything, as long as we’re together, I’ll be happy.”
“Me too, Jim,” Leo said softly, placing his hand against the laptop screen. “Me too.”