Fanfic: Saving a Life [ 1 / 1 ] McCoy / Chekov
Title: Saving a Life
Rating: M
Pairing: McCoy/Chekov
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Disclaimer: I own nothing! Seriously. I wish I did though. Anton Yelchin and Karl Urban would have been more likely to molest each other if I did.
Warnings: Mentions of prostitution of a minor, ANGST, non-graphic rape
Summary: Written for this prompt on the st_xi_ kink_meme:
Bones sees a young boy in a corner, in a need of a good meal, selling himself, he is reminded of all the things his BFF Kirk had to go trough when he was a teenager. McCoy decides to take care of the kid. It may evolve into something else or not, good all fashioned mother hen!Bones is great too
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Pavel shivered in the cold, wrapping his arms around himself as he curled up against the building he was sitting against, the street lamp’s light his only source of warmth. His clothes were nearly rags, everyone worn, dirty and too thin to be of any use against the snow. His stomach was empty, as it had been for nearly a week, but it was a pain he was getting used to. He had already lost some weight but he could hardly bring himself to care. He was much more likely to lose his fingers and toes in this eyes and snow than he was to die of utter starvation right now.
He turned his gaze towards the sky, ignoring the way his breath condensed just in front of his lips with every exhaled breath, just as the snow started falling lightly again. It reminded him of a life he once had, a life he could barely remember. “Kak uzor na onkne” he sang softly to himself, using his own soft voice to remind himself what his native language sounded like in this place where he was surrounded by English, “snova proshloe rjadom…” He turned his head and coughed into his arm, curling upon himself a little more. “Kto-to pel pesnju mne, v zimniy vecher kogda-to…”
“Hey kid!” A nearby voice called sharply, making him look up, startled from where he was curled, only to find an ugly man with a disfigured face and crooked, menacing looking smile, “How much for a sweet little thing like you?”
It took a second for the man’s question to translate. “Vhat do you mean sir?” Pavel answered just loudly enough to be heard. He understood there was money involved. Money meant he could buy food. He could find someplace warm to sleep tonight. “Vhat ees meant by ‘How much’?”
The man stepped closer, his smile seeming to grow even worse as he pulled the young man to his feet and got him to stand up straight. Pavel couldn’t help his shivering. He was much colder now. The way this man looked him over wasn’t exactly comforting either. “You a virgin, boy?”
A- Oh my! The young Russian couldn’t help but blush deeply at that question. “Ees none of your business!” he snapped but his words really lacked bite. He was too weak from hunger to put up much of an argument. His words, however, seemed to answer the man’s question just the same. Americans were such strange people.
The man walked around him again, as a judge would a dog at a dog show, large, rough hands touching places that embarrassed the teenager but was too afraid to pull away from. “I’ll pay you fifty, since it is your first time but I can promise you, that will be the one and only time you’ll get that kind of payment around here.” He walked around to face Pavel. “So what do you say, pretty boy? Fifty bucks good enough for you?”
Fifty dollars? That was enough for a cheap place to stay warm for the night and a decent meal in his belly. He still didn’t understand what he had to do but surely, for that kind of money, it wouldn’t be that bad. Still, this was America and many Americans were deceptive people -at least the ones he had met. “Da. Zat ees good.” He agreed. Anything to get out of this ice and snow. “Vhat do you vant me to do?”
The dark man grinned and wrapped an arm around Pavel’s thinner shoulders, bending him down and whispering in his ear exactly what they were going to do as he led the two of them into a grungy nearby apartment. By the time he understood what was going on, he tried to run but the door was already locked and the man already had what he needed to make his dark promises come true. During the event, no matter how much he cried and begged and pleaded, in English or in Russian, the song he had had been singing to himself earlier faded away on it’s last, haunting note . “Vnov’ so mnoj, dorogaja…”
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Leonard H. McCoy was cursing his luck. In fact, cursing was too light a word. He was downright tearing his luck a new in the least pleasant way possible. Why the hell, of all the other places to go for winter break, did James T. Kirk pick Riverside, Iowa, knowing full well his mom, step dad and maybe, if he was lucky, brother and his family, would be there and most likely want to interact with him? And, of course, let’s make this even more fun since the man apparently just had to drag him along in case he should be forced into a Christmas dinner with the family from hell. Oh Leonard wasn’t stupid. He knew Jim’s childhood was a hard one. He just really thought it was stupid to basically go back and ask for more.
And besides that, Iowa was really fuckin’ cold in winter! Dammit man, he was from Georgia. As in the state just north of Florida. As in several hundred miles to the south. It rarely snowed where he lived and when it did everything shut down real tight. Freezing temperatures to some of these Yanks meant nothing more than simply adding salt to their sidewalks to keep ice from forming there. Why anyone in their right mind would willing live up here, he had no idea.
But here he was. Walking through really cold snow on his way back to the hotel he was staying in (since Jim and him refused to stay with the family because that would have made damn sense), trying to avoid running into people as he kept his head down. It was hard to do since for a piece of shit town this one part down town was pretty crowded but still. He excused himself when he bumped into people, looking up at the briefly as he did so but not long enough to remember their faces. That was why he didn’t register right away when he bumped into a smaller body that there was something wrong with the person he bumped into.
“Excuse me,” he said and turned to continue on his way when thin hands grabbed his arms, making him stop for a second longer. At first he barely registered it until a body came in front to block his path as well. “What do you want?” It wasn’t so much that he was that unfriendly… he just really didn’t trust street urchins and this figure, this boy, certainly looked like one.
But it was only after he said that that he decided to look up and see with his own eyes the person who blocked his way. A boy. There was no other word in his mind that would fit better than “boy“. Not with grey eyes as wide as they were with such short, soft looking curls contrasting a lean but rather pale looking face and thin, blue tinged lips. Wait… blue tinged? All of a sudden, the hands that held onto his arms felt thinner and colder than they should be. “Jesus kid, what the hell are you doin’ out here not dressed for this weather?”
The boy shook his head and stepped closer. “I hawe no varmer clothes,” he said then looked up through his lashes, “nor do I hawe a home.” Judging from the state of the boy’s clothes and how thin he seemed to be, this wasn’t a lie but still. It could simply be a ploy to steal from him or maybe get those thin little hands on some cash for his drug habit. He didn’t show any signs of it but that didn’t mean a thing. Junkies were usually good about hiding that kind of thing after a couple of years.
“And what does this have to do with me?”
The boy looked up at him through lashes that were dusted with snowflakes and if the guy didn’t look half frozen and partly starved it might have come across as seductive. “I need money for food sir… and for this money I vill perform a serwice for you of some kind.” He leaned in so close he was very nearly pressed flush against the doctor as he whispered in his ear, “I can do for you anyzing you vant me to do.” Leonard shivered but it was far from the good way. This boy clearly had more experience with those words than he should.
“How old are you boy?” he found himself asking, his tone softer than it was before. He couldn’t help it. When some teenager was desperately trying to sell himself supposedly for food, using such a lame pick up line, he couldn’t help but have his heart strings tugged a little bit. It just reminds him of what Jim had to do at this age because Frank wouldn’t do it for him. Even now he hadn’t quite forgiven the man for forcing his step-son into prostitution just to feed himself during the high school years.
The boy leaned back and looked him in the eyes. “As old as you need me to be.” Fuck. A. Duck. Not one of those.
“That means you ain’t at the legal age for an old man like me.”
A flash of panic jumped across those eyes. The hands on his arms tightened a little bit. “Please sir,” he said, almost desperately, “ewen eef eet ees not sex, let me earn some pay from you! I can not do wery much but I can try! Please, just don’t turn me avay!”
Okay, that was more than suspicious. “And what would happen if I did?” Prostitutes, real ones, didn’t beg would be clients like this.
“I recognize you. You are doctor, da? You vill not hurt me so bad as my main client. He vill come find me soon eef I am not already hired for ze ewening.”
To be fair, he had somewhat seen that one coming but to hear it from the young man himself was just that much more devastating. Besides, if he took the kid in, he could use the medical shit he brought to take care of Jim to look this boy over and get him free from whatever drug addiction, if there was a drug addiction, that sucked him into this kind of lifestyle. At the very least he’d be able to soothe his conscience about letting his clearly freezing kid warm up for a bit. He sighed and pried the thin fingers off his arms. “Fine,” he said, keeping a hold of the hands for a second or two more to warm them before letting go and stuffing his own hands in his pockets, “I’ll hire you under two conditions. One, if you steal from me at any point, I reserve the right to report you to the police and get your scrawny ass in jail. Two; any time I ask you a question you’ll tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God. Are we clear?”
Hope lit up those grey eyes and for a minute, just a minute, they matched the age of the body. He looked as happy and hopeful as a kid should be rather than the beaten down, frightened creature he had become. “Yes sir!” he said happily, wrapping his arms around himself and stepping back, giving McCoy enough space to walk by. The doctor said nothing, feeling his inside grow a bit colder at just how hopeful and happy this child was at going home with a complete stranger rather than to face the streets this night. At least this one time he knew the kid was safe and sound.
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The hotel room they returned to was not the nicest hotel room in the small town but this particular hotel was privately owned by people who owed Jim Kirk a favor or two so gave him and his buddy the room for free during the duration of their stay in Riverside. It was dark and small, though fortunately there were two beds so they technically didn’t have to share though it might be a smart idea considering the chances of Jim molesting the poor kid if he found the boy sleeping in his bed. At the doorway to the hotel room, McCoy took off his boots and hung up his jacket and waited for the kid to do the same before leading him over to a bed and sitting him down on it. “I’m going to look you over,” he told the boy, “and I’m going to make sure you’re okay before I bring you something to eat.”
The boy said nothing, just nodded, and turned his gaze back to the decorations around the room, just looking as if to take it all in. His shivering at lessened and he looked a bit healthier now that he was out of the cold. He was still pretty thin looking in his clothes. The doctor noted, now that the light was better, how thin the kid’s hands were as he trembled where he had them resting between his knees. That was more than a couple of days of without food worth of damage.
Getting his tricorder from his back, he knelt in front of the teenager and swept it over his thin form, looking at the readout and frowning at what he saw. He saw traces of hypothermia still in the body and evidence of cracked bones that had already begun to heal on their own. He swept his tricorder over the boy’s lower back, adjusting the settings to get his rear end too and his frown deepened. Evidence of forced entry, multiple times. All healing, slowly, but there. But there were no signs of STDs or anything of the kind. It was a small miracle in and of itself.
“What’s your name boy?” He asked gruffly once he got all the information and stored it onto a flash disk before plugging it into the computer he brought with him from Starfleet. He worked on arranging a file on the boy, a file he was going to submit to the police in the morning. When he didn’t get an answer he looked up. The teenager was staring at him with curious eyes. “What?”
“You vant to know my name?”
Was that really so odd? “Yeah… helps to know the name of someone you’re talking it. Kind of makes it easier to communicate instead of through, ‘hey you’.”
It took the teenager a minute, as if he was trying to remember his name. “Eet ees Pavel. I am Pavel Andreievich Chekov.”
A dark eyebrow shot up. Okay, so that was where the accent came from. “Russian, I take it.” He typed in the name in the blanks. “How old are you? Do you remember your birthday?”
“I am sewenteen. I vill be eighteen next vednesday.”
Again McCoy put in the information but he saved the file and closed it after that. That much should be enough basic information for these people to correctly identify the boy. He doubted the kid had a social security number or anything along those lines. After making sure his computer was turned off and safely tucked away in his bag once more (and locked behind the closet door) he turned back to the boy, this time sitting next to him on the bed and looking him over again. The teenager stared at him, looking confused and a bit scared. Leonard had to admit, he could see why this Pavel was popular enough with the right crowd. That “innocent schoolboy” look of his was definitely a kink in and off itself for some sick fuckers out there.
“How many years have you been on the streets, Pavel?”
The boy didn’t move though a muscle in his cheek ticked. His eyes looked less confused. There was a touch of pride and anger in them. Good. So the boy had some soul left. “I hawe been liwing like zis for ze last four years.” Four years. He had barely been a kid for four long years.
“Did you ever think to take on legitimate work? Like working for a farmer around here or something?”
“I do not hawe a wisa here. Eef I am employed, the American government vill find me and ship me back to Russia.”
“And what, exactly, is so wrong with Russia?”
“I hawe nozing left zere.” His voice cracked. “ My parents are dead. I had heard I had family een America so I spend vhat money mama and papa gawe me to go find zem. I get here, only to find zat zey too hawe died. I had no money. Eweryzing but ze clozes on my back vere burned een ze fire zat killed zem…”
There was a hitch in the boy’s breathing and the odd tear but there was no sobbing. His voice was still pretty steady. For having lost everything and lived the way he had for this long, this kid was pretty strong in body and heart. It was hard to tell about the mind just yet. So, moving very slowly to avoid scaring him, McCoy rested a warm hand on the other’s back, rubbing soothing circles between the shoulder blades that stood out too far for his taste and feeling the processes of his vertebrae poking out just as much.
“You just sit here and relax, kid. I’m gonna go make us something to eat then I’m gonna put you to sleep while we wash those clothes and see about getting you to a shelter tomorrow.” He went to get up but his arm was caught by skinny hands and the unexpected pull on his arm made him turn to face Pavel again, almost falling against him. This close to the boy he could see the freckles that dusted his cheeks and the bridge of his nose that weren’t visible from too far away. Their eyes met and stayed there. There was fear still there but nearly everything else had been sealed away again. Leonard opened his mouth to say something but whatever his words would have been were cut off when the young man leaned forward and pressed a rough kiss to the doctor’s lips.
It took only a second or two for Leonard to connect his mind with the action and as soon as the thought occurred to him, he roughly pushed Pavel back onto the bed, pulling his arm free and took a few steps back, trying not to gag. It wasn’t that the boy wasn’t attractive. It was the fact that it was a boy, a teenager, had kissed him so desperately because he believed he had a debt to repay; that the food, shelter and warmth he was being given was something he had to earn, something he had to sell himself for. Jim had done something similar the first time McCoy had taken care of him after a particularly bad hang over and it had taken about a year to get him to learn that it was something he did for the kid out of the goodness of his heart, not for any kind of reward.
Pavel stayed where he was pushed, his hands on either side of his head, dark blond eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Doktor?” How the hell did the kid know he was a doctor to begin with? “Vhat ees vrong? Do I not please you?” He looked scared. Leonard knew the boy was expecting a beating for being so forward. The remains of broken bones his tricorder had shown him had all but screamed it had him.
McCoy went to the bathroom and wiped his mouth. While the kid may not be sick with anything, he was still a pretty heavy germ carrier if he lived in the fuckin’ streets. “No, you most certainly did not please me, kid,” he called somewhat angrily before walking out of the bathroom and to their small fridge where he could gather what he needed to make them both sandwiches, “but I’ll let it go this time because you honestly thought that was what I wanted. I am telling you now. I didn’t bring you here to have sex with you or for any kind of reward other than the satisfaction to take care of your tonight. Understand?”
He didn’t hear an answer right away but when he turned with the pair of sandwiches on plates in his hand he saw the teenager nod in the bed, looking about ready to cry. To be honest, McCoy thought he would cry too given the circumstances. This, from what he could tell, was the first time in four years someone had granted Pavel basic human necessities without demanding a piece of his innocence and very soul in return. “Here,” he said softly, setting one plate on the bedside table, “Eat up. But slowly. I don’t need you getting sick from eating too fast. The body’s gonna need time to recover.”
Pavel sat up quickly in the bed, almost startlingly so, and scrambled to the table, grabbing half a sandwich and tearing through it like a rabid animal. He barely chewed his food but by some miracle he didn’t choke. McCoy, who ate more slowly, watched these actions carefully. It was symptomatic of someone who took was robbed of food before he finished it. If the kid couldn’t finish it, the doctor was sure he’d find a way to hide the second half of the sandwich somewhere to eat later. It was a survival instinct amongst some species of animals but non-existent in healthy human beings; another sign of just how badly these past four years had damaged this child’s mind.
“How long?” He asked when the kid slowed down in his eating, as if realizing that his meal wasn’t about to be stolen away, “how long has it been since you’ve eaten something?” He waited patiently as Pavel finished chewing what was in his mouth and swallowed it. “Before this I mean.”
The Russian kid seemed to think about it for a second. “I zink eet vas… fiwe days? Maybe seex? I can not remember zough vhat I deed eat vas not so good as zis.” He took another bite of the sandwich, this time really savoring the flavor since his stomach was working on digesting what pieces he had already inhaled.
Five days without a decent meal… “Why did you go so long without eating?”
A shrug. Another swallowed mouthful. “I deed not vant to get seeck and most of ze food I found vas rotting already.”
“Food you found?”
“Een garbage.”
McCoy forced himself to finish the remaining half of his sandwich. “Doesn’t the money from your, eh, job, pay you enough to eat?” He couldn’t imagine Pavel being unwanted.
The teenager finished off the first half of the sandwich and picked up the second. “Eet does vhen I vork ze streets but zat ees not often.” He paused before he took a bite of it, looking over at the older man. “Not all my clients are as gentle or kind as you are.”
McCoy finished his own sandwich in silence after that, letting the boy take his time to finish his food before gathering the paper plates and putting them in the recycling bin. He retrieved a few plastic cups and poured them both filtered water from the faucet, watching the boy carefully as he drank it down. Good. It looked like his stomach was absorbing this meal nicely. It should stay down tonight. “If your stomach gets upset at any point, let me know. I got a few hypos for that and the bathroom is right here in case you need to make a run for it or answer mother nature’s call.”
“Yes sir.”
“It’s Leonard now, kid. Call me Leonard or Leo or any of the nicknames you can think of except Lenny.” It had been what his ex-wife had called him and he really didn’t want memories of her coming up right now. “How did you know I was a doctor anyway? I’m not from around here.”
“I took a friend to ze clinic a few days ago. I saw you zere vit Meester Kirk, taking care of heem instead of letting ze nurses do eet. You looked like you knew vhat you vere doing.”
Well that made sense. Kind of. “You know Jim Kirk?”
Pavel nodded and adjusted the way he sat. “Everyone knows of Meester Kirk een ze town. I overheard heem introducing heemself to vone of ze vomen ‘ho vork ze streets.”
Well that was a “go figure”. McCoy sighed and leaned forward, running his hands through his hair. Okay then time to think of something and quick. “I got a spare set of clothes for you to change into until we can get those rags of yours washed and I get the feelin’ you need a shower pretty bad.” Not so much for the dirt and grime as it was to warm him up a bit. “Let me grab ’em for ya and then you can go ahead and hop in the shower while I get them washed.” The laundry mat was right downstairs and he had been needing to do his laundry anyway.
So the doctor dug through his things until he found a pair of jeans that were a bit too small for his personal liking and a sweat shirt that he could stand to get dirty rather easily. He even found a pair of boxers that he had brought along -the pair having never been worn because they were absolutely hideous- and could stand burning also. He gave these clothes to Pavel and motioned towards the bathroom. “Whenever you’re ready just hop on into the shower and when you’re done and changed into these, bring me the dirty stuff. I gotta do some laundry also.”
The boy nodded and stepped around his host, muttering a thank you as he passed and stepped into the bathroom, not closing the door completely behind him, probably out of habit. McCoy didn’t care. He just had to avoid peeking in, which was simple enough considering he was pretty tired from his day. Perhaps a small nap was in order then…
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“Doktor.”
What was with that odd accent?
“Doktor.” A pair of warm hands shook his arm. He groaned and rolled away from it’s source. It didn’t give up.
“Doktor, I zink zat you should vake up.”
He curled up on himself a little more, the hand on his shoulder slipping down his arm a little. He didn’t notice all that much. “Why should I?”
There was nervousness in that accented voice now, nervousness that his half asleep brain sent up warning flags about. “Zere ees someone at your door zat may be Jim Kirk or eet could by my client. I do not know but seence eet ees not my room, I can not answer ze door.”
It took his brain a minute to register what the words meant but when it did the first thought that came to mind was “shit”. He rolled onto his back and tried to get his eyes to work open, inadvertently rolling so that he rested underneath the teenager who had been trying to wake him up. He didn’t notice until after the door was already open that the kid hadn’t dressed yet and was wearing only a towel around his too thin hips. His hair was still dripping a bit though it was fairly obvious he had tried to be some semblance of order to the curls. Now that he was without a shirt, Pavel’s ribs stood out against his skin far enough to make him seem sickly and even bent over him, McCoy could tell that if he were to look at the kid’s back he would see each and every vertebra poking from his thin skin.
He reached up, one hand cupping that delicate rib cage while the other brushed a thin cheek as if to get a better feel of just how little fat still remained on those features. Of course, though, that’s when Jim walked into the room, mostly sober, whistling to himself, and certainly not expecting to see a mostly naked young man hovering over his roommate who was touching him… even if the touch was innocent-ish looking. “Whoa… dude. What the fuck? Warning woulda been nice.”
“Jim!” McCoy sat up in he bed, his hands falling to balance himself but young, half naked Pavel didn’t move, leaving his forehead to lean against the doctor’s shoulder. As if the first position wasn’t compromising enough. “Seriously, it’s not what it looks like.”
Golden eyebrows shot up on his head. “Really now? Because it looks an awful lot like you have a nice piece of ass you were going to kiss and…”
“For god’s sake Jim, look at him! You think I’d be so desperate as to fuck a half-starved kid?”
The lack of response was all the answer McCoy needed. He sighed and flopped back on the bed, Pavel wisely standing up and moving away. “Eef you vill excuse me, I vill leawe you to yourselves.” The doctor didn’t need to see Jim’s expression to be able to tell the man was staring at the young man as he returned to the bathroom, presumably to get dressed. McCoy dared a peek and was angered by the scars he saw running along the kid’s back. Apparently some clients took S&M a bit too far with their little hired fuck.
Jim waited until the door to the bathroom was closed before taking a seat next to his buddy. “Bones, I never pegged you as the type to be into boys.” The words sounded oddly distant and when McCoy looked over to his friend, he froze at the dull look in them. “Just goes to show-”
“Jim, shut up.” His voice was low, his tone sharp. He didn’t miss the way his friend flinched. “You know I ain’t like that. I ran into the kid on the street, saw he was half frozen and hungry, and offered him to chill here for the night. He was scared one of his more regular clients would pick him up if I didn’t.”
Jim snorted. “As if I’d believe-”
“You’d honestly think I’d lie to you about this kind of shit?”
Blue eyes stared right at him, searching for something. Probably a hint of a lie. Well Jim wasn’t going to find one. Not in this matter. He was saying the honest to god truth.
The sound of the door creaking open made both of them look towards its source and when Pavel emerged, redressed in the same dirty clothes he had worn in the streets, Jim’s first reaction was to get up and look the kid over. He asked similar questions to McCoy’s and he got the same answers. Kirk looked to his friend at this and the doctor shrugged. Either the kid’s story was well rehearsed before they had met today or it was true. Jim didn’t pretend it was otherwise.
So the blond cadet turned to the younger man and said with a rather firm voice, “You’re lucky Bones here found you when he did. I remember doin’ something similar when I was your age and it certainly didn’t turn out so good for me.” Bones’ dark eyebrows jumped up at the mention of this. What had taken months for him to drag out of Jim he just spilled to a complete stranger. What the hell? “So I recommend you get dressed in the clothes Bones no doubt let you borrow and let us get those dirty ones of yours cleaned. You’re staying here tonight, free of charge.”
Pavel blinked at Jim, as if confused, then turned to McCoy who nodded in confirmation. Apparently there was no way he was getting out of this so he nodded and turned back into the bathroom to change again, more quickly this time. He handed them his dirty clothes upon emerging and Jim took them downstairs to be washed, claiming that at least there, there was a chance he could run into a cute girl that might catch his interest better than a puppy-boy. If Pavel took any kind of offense to that he didn’t show it but rather hugged himself, as if savoring the warm feeling of the sweatshirt he was in. Possibly the softness of it too.
McCoy felt kind of glad that they were alone. It made interacting with the kid less awkward. He stood up from his bed and pulled down the covers, patting the spot. “Now that you’re fed and cleaned up, I guess the next step for you is a decent night’s sleep. I’m going to warn you, I’ll be sleepin’ in the same bed but the worse that’ll possibly happen will be that you’ll suddenly become my teddy bear or something. I ain’t used to sleeping alone yet.” The clothes Pavel was wearing, now that he had gotten a good look at them, were far too big for the boy. They just made him look younger, more vulnerable. It made the father within McCoy happy to know he was the one caring for this child.
Pavel nodded and moved towards the bed, laying down on it and it seemed like he was surprised when the blankets were pulled over him and gently tucked around him. He wasn’t cold any more. In fact, he was pleasantly warm. He wasn’t hungry for once, or hurting. He was happy and felt almost loved by this man. “You are a good man, Leo,” he said, fighting the urge to call his rescuer by the Russian equivalent of the name, “I am glad to have met you.”
McCoy laughed softly and reached over, dimming the light down from “daylight” to “just light enough to see the room” before leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to the kid’s temple. It should have been odd doing this for a complete stranger but it strangely felt natural. As if he was doing the same thing for his daughter or even his wife -while she had still been beautiful in his eyes. “Sleep tight, Pavel,” he said quietly, “and don’t worry. Jim and I will make sure no one bothers you until morning.”
The doctor waited until Pavel was fast asleep before getting up and getting changed himself, finishing up his nightly routine just in time for Jim to come back and drop off the boy’s clothes. Kirk said that he was going back out and didn’t plan on coming back that night but they arranged to have breakfast in the morning and, from there, discuss exactly what they were going to do with young Chekov. Clearly he couldn’t stay here. Maybe it would be smarter to get him to enlist in Starfleet with them…
Rating: M
Pairing: McCoy/Chekov
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Disclaimer: I own nothing! Seriously. I wish I did though. Anton Yelchin and Karl Urban would have been more likely to molest each other if I did.
Warnings: Mentions of prostitution of a minor, ANGST, non-graphic rape
Summary: Written for this prompt on the st_xi_ kink_meme:
Bones sees a young boy in a corner, in a need of a good meal, selling himself, he is reminded of all the things his BFF Kirk had to go trough when he was a teenager. McCoy decides to take care of the kid. It may evolve into something else or not, good all fashioned mother hen!Bones is great too
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Pavel shivered in the cold, wrapping his arms around himself as he curled up against the building he was sitting against, the street lamp’s light his only source of warmth. His clothes were nearly rags, everyone worn, dirty and too thin to be of any use against the snow. His stomach was empty, as it had been for nearly a week, but it was a pain he was getting used to. He had already lost some weight but he could hardly bring himself to care. He was much more likely to lose his fingers and toes in this eyes and snow than he was to die of utter starvation right now.
He turned his gaze towards the sky, ignoring the way his breath condensed just in front of his lips with every exhaled breath, just as the snow started falling lightly again. It reminded him of a life he once had, a life he could barely remember. “Kak uzor na onkne” he sang softly to himself, using his own soft voice to remind himself what his native language sounded like in this place where he was surrounded by English, “snova proshloe rjadom…” He turned his head and coughed into his arm, curling upon himself a little more. “Kto-to pel pesnju mne, v zimniy vecher kogda-to…”
“Hey kid!” A nearby voice called sharply, making him look up, startled from where he was curled, only to find an ugly man with a disfigured face and crooked, menacing looking smile, “How much for a sweet little thing like you?”
It took a second for the man’s question to translate. “Vhat do you mean sir?” Pavel answered just loudly enough to be heard. He understood there was money involved. Money meant he could buy food. He could find someplace warm to sleep tonight. “Vhat ees meant by ‘How much’?”
The man stepped closer, his smile seeming to grow even worse as he pulled the young man to his feet and got him to stand up straight. Pavel couldn’t help his shivering. He was much colder now. The way this man looked him over wasn’t exactly comforting either. “You a virgin, boy?”
A- Oh my! The young Russian couldn’t help but blush deeply at that question. “Ees none of your business!” he snapped but his words really lacked bite. He was too weak from hunger to put up much of an argument. His words, however, seemed to answer the man’s question just the same. Americans were such strange people.
The man walked around him again, as a judge would a dog at a dog show, large, rough hands touching places that embarrassed the teenager but was too afraid to pull away from. “I’ll pay you fifty, since it is your first time but I can promise you, that will be the one and only time you’ll get that kind of payment around here.” He walked around to face Pavel. “So what do you say, pretty boy? Fifty bucks good enough for you?”
Fifty dollars? That was enough for a cheap place to stay warm for the night and a decent meal in his belly. He still didn’t understand what he had to do but surely, for that kind of money, it wouldn’t be that bad. Still, this was America and many Americans were deceptive people -at least the ones he had met. “Da. Zat ees good.” He agreed. Anything to get out of this ice and snow. “Vhat do you vant me to do?”
The dark man grinned and wrapped an arm around Pavel’s thinner shoulders, bending him down and whispering in his ear exactly what they were going to do as he led the two of them into a grungy nearby apartment. By the time he understood what was going on, he tried to run but the door was already locked and the man already had what he needed to make his dark promises come true. During the event, no matter how much he cried and begged and pleaded, in English or in Russian, the song he had had been singing to himself earlier faded away on it’s last, haunting note . “Vnov’ so mnoj, dorogaja…”
*********************************************************************
Leonard H. McCoy was cursing his luck. In fact, cursing was too light a word. He was downright tearing his luck a new in the least pleasant way possible. Why the hell, of all the other places to go for winter break, did James T. Kirk pick Riverside, Iowa, knowing full well his mom, step dad and maybe, if he was lucky, brother and his family, would be there and most likely want to interact with him? And, of course, let’s make this even more fun since the man apparently just had to drag him along in case he should be forced into a Christmas dinner with the family from hell. Oh Leonard wasn’t stupid. He knew Jim’s childhood was a hard one. He just really thought it was stupid to basically go back and ask for more.
And besides that, Iowa was really fuckin’ cold in winter! Dammit man, he was from Georgia. As in the state just north of Florida. As in several hundred miles to the south. It rarely snowed where he lived and when it did everything shut down real tight. Freezing temperatures to some of these Yanks meant nothing more than simply adding salt to their sidewalks to keep ice from forming there. Why anyone in their right mind would willing live up here, he had no idea.
But here he was. Walking through really cold snow on his way back to the hotel he was staying in (since Jim and him refused to stay with the family because that would have made damn sense), trying to avoid running into people as he kept his head down. It was hard to do since for a piece of shit town this one part down town was pretty crowded but still. He excused himself when he bumped into people, looking up at the briefly as he did so but not long enough to remember their faces. That was why he didn’t register right away when he bumped into a smaller body that there was something wrong with the person he bumped into.
“Excuse me,” he said and turned to continue on his way when thin hands grabbed his arms, making him stop for a second longer. At first he barely registered it until a body came in front to block his path as well. “What do you want?” It wasn’t so much that he was that unfriendly… he just really didn’t trust street urchins and this figure, this boy, certainly looked like one.
But it was only after he said that that he decided to look up and see with his own eyes the person who blocked his way. A boy. There was no other word in his mind that would fit better than “boy“. Not with grey eyes as wide as they were with such short, soft looking curls contrasting a lean but rather pale looking face and thin, blue tinged lips. Wait… blue tinged? All of a sudden, the hands that held onto his arms felt thinner and colder than they should be. “Jesus kid, what the hell are you doin’ out here not dressed for this weather?”
The boy shook his head and stepped closer. “I hawe no varmer clothes,” he said then looked up through his lashes, “nor do I hawe a home.” Judging from the state of the boy’s clothes and how thin he seemed to be, this wasn’t a lie but still. It could simply be a ploy to steal from him or maybe get those thin little hands on some cash for his drug habit. He didn’t show any signs of it but that didn’t mean a thing. Junkies were usually good about hiding that kind of thing after a couple of years.
“And what does this have to do with me?”
The boy looked up at him through lashes that were dusted with snowflakes and if the guy didn’t look half frozen and partly starved it might have come across as seductive. “I need money for food sir… and for this money I vill perform a serwice for you of some kind.” He leaned in so close he was very nearly pressed flush against the doctor as he whispered in his ear, “I can do for you anyzing you vant me to do.” Leonard shivered but it was far from the good way. This boy clearly had more experience with those words than he should.
“How old are you boy?” he found himself asking, his tone softer than it was before. He couldn’t help it. When some teenager was desperately trying to sell himself supposedly for food, using such a lame pick up line, he couldn’t help but have his heart strings tugged a little bit. It just reminds him of what Jim had to do at this age because Frank wouldn’t do it for him. Even now he hadn’t quite forgiven the man for forcing his step-son into prostitution just to feed himself during the high school years.
The boy leaned back and looked him in the eyes. “As old as you need me to be.” Fuck. A. Duck. Not one of those.
“That means you ain’t at the legal age for an old man like me.”
A flash of panic jumped across those eyes. The hands on his arms tightened a little bit. “Please sir,” he said, almost desperately, “ewen eef eet ees not sex, let me earn some pay from you! I can not do wery much but I can try! Please, just don’t turn me avay!”
Okay, that was more than suspicious. “And what would happen if I did?” Prostitutes, real ones, didn’t beg would be clients like this.
“I recognize you. You are doctor, da? You vill not hurt me so bad as my main client. He vill come find me soon eef I am not already hired for ze ewening.”
To be fair, he had somewhat seen that one coming but to hear it from the young man himself was just that much more devastating. Besides, if he took the kid in, he could use the medical shit he brought to take care of Jim to look this boy over and get him free from whatever drug addiction, if there was a drug addiction, that sucked him into this kind of lifestyle. At the very least he’d be able to soothe his conscience about letting his clearly freezing kid warm up for a bit. He sighed and pried the thin fingers off his arms. “Fine,” he said, keeping a hold of the hands for a second or two more to warm them before letting go and stuffing his own hands in his pockets, “I’ll hire you under two conditions. One, if you steal from me at any point, I reserve the right to report you to the police and get your scrawny ass in jail. Two; any time I ask you a question you’ll tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God. Are we clear?”
Hope lit up those grey eyes and for a minute, just a minute, they matched the age of the body. He looked as happy and hopeful as a kid should be rather than the beaten down, frightened creature he had become. “Yes sir!” he said happily, wrapping his arms around himself and stepping back, giving McCoy enough space to walk by. The doctor said nothing, feeling his inside grow a bit colder at just how hopeful and happy this child was at going home with a complete stranger rather than to face the streets this night. At least this one time he knew the kid was safe and sound.
********************************************
The hotel room they returned to was not the nicest hotel room in the small town but this particular hotel was privately owned by people who owed Jim Kirk a favor or two so gave him and his buddy the room for free during the duration of their stay in Riverside. It was dark and small, though fortunately there were two beds so they technically didn’t have to share though it might be a smart idea considering the chances of Jim molesting the poor kid if he found the boy sleeping in his bed. At the doorway to the hotel room, McCoy took off his boots and hung up his jacket and waited for the kid to do the same before leading him over to a bed and sitting him down on it. “I’m going to look you over,” he told the boy, “and I’m going to make sure you’re okay before I bring you something to eat.”
The boy said nothing, just nodded, and turned his gaze back to the decorations around the room, just looking as if to take it all in. His shivering at lessened and he looked a bit healthier now that he was out of the cold. He was still pretty thin looking in his clothes. The doctor noted, now that the light was better, how thin the kid’s hands were as he trembled where he had them resting between his knees. That was more than a couple of days of without food worth of damage.
Getting his tricorder from his back, he knelt in front of the teenager and swept it over his thin form, looking at the readout and frowning at what he saw. He saw traces of hypothermia still in the body and evidence of cracked bones that had already begun to heal on their own. He swept his tricorder over the boy’s lower back, adjusting the settings to get his rear end too and his frown deepened. Evidence of forced entry, multiple times. All healing, slowly, but there. But there were no signs of STDs or anything of the kind. It was a small miracle in and of itself.
“What’s your name boy?” He asked gruffly once he got all the information and stored it onto a flash disk before plugging it into the computer he brought with him from Starfleet. He worked on arranging a file on the boy, a file he was going to submit to the police in the morning. When he didn’t get an answer he looked up. The teenager was staring at him with curious eyes. “What?”
“You vant to know my name?”
Was that really so odd? “Yeah… helps to know the name of someone you’re talking it. Kind of makes it easier to communicate instead of through, ‘hey you’.”
It took the teenager a minute, as if he was trying to remember his name. “Eet ees Pavel. I am Pavel Andreievich Chekov.”
A dark eyebrow shot up. Okay, so that was where the accent came from. “Russian, I take it.” He typed in the name in the blanks. “How old are you? Do you remember your birthday?”
“I am sewenteen. I vill be eighteen next vednesday.”
Again McCoy put in the information but he saved the file and closed it after that. That much should be enough basic information for these people to correctly identify the boy. He doubted the kid had a social security number or anything along those lines. After making sure his computer was turned off and safely tucked away in his bag once more (and locked behind the closet door) he turned back to the boy, this time sitting next to him on the bed and looking him over again. The teenager stared at him, looking confused and a bit scared. Leonard had to admit, he could see why this Pavel was popular enough with the right crowd. That “innocent schoolboy” look of his was definitely a kink in and off itself for some sick fuckers out there.
“How many years have you been on the streets, Pavel?”
The boy didn’t move though a muscle in his cheek ticked. His eyes looked less confused. There was a touch of pride and anger in them. Good. So the boy had some soul left. “I hawe been liwing like zis for ze last four years.” Four years. He had barely been a kid for four long years.
“Did you ever think to take on legitimate work? Like working for a farmer around here or something?”
“I do not hawe a wisa here. Eef I am employed, the American government vill find me and ship me back to Russia.”
“And what, exactly, is so wrong with Russia?”
“I hawe nozing left zere.” His voice cracked. “ My parents are dead. I had heard I had family een America so I spend vhat money mama and papa gawe me to go find zem. I get here, only to find zat zey too hawe died. I had no money. Eweryzing but ze clozes on my back vere burned een ze fire zat killed zem…”
There was a hitch in the boy’s breathing and the odd tear but there was no sobbing. His voice was still pretty steady. For having lost everything and lived the way he had for this long, this kid was pretty strong in body and heart. It was hard to tell about the mind just yet. So, moving very slowly to avoid scaring him, McCoy rested a warm hand on the other’s back, rubbing soothing circles between the shoulder blades that stood out too far for his taste and feeling the processes of his vertebrae poking out just as much.
“You just sit here and relax, kid. I’m gonna go make us something to eat then I’m gonna put you to sleep while we wash those clothes and see about getting you to a shelter tomorrow.” He went to get up but his arm was caught by skinny hands and the unexpected pull on his arm made him turn to face Pavel again, almost falling against him. This close to the boy he could see the freckles that dusted his cheeks and the bridge of his nose that weren’t visible from too far away. Their eyes met and stayed there. There was fear still there but nearly everything else had been sealed away again. Leonard opened his mouth to say something but whatever his words would have been were cut off when the young man leaned forward and pressed a rough kiss to the doctor’s lips.
It took only a second or two for Leonard to connect his mind with the action and as soon as the thought occurred to him, he roughly pushed Pavel back onto the bed, pulling his arm free and took a few steps back, trying not to gag. It wasn’t that the boy wasn’t attractive. It was the fact that it was a boy, a teenager, had kissed him so desperately because he believed he had a debt to repay; that the food, shelter and warmth he was being given was something he had to earn, something he had to sell himself for. Jim had done something similar the first time McCoy had taken care of him after a particularly bad hang over and it had taken about a year to get him to learn that it was something he did for the kid out of the goodness of his heart, not for any kind of reward.
Pavel stayed where he was pushed, his hands on either side of his head, dark blond eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Doktor?” How the hell did the kid know he was a doctor to begin with? “Vhat ees vrong? Do I not please you?” He looked scared. Leonard knew the boy was expecting a beating for being so forward. The remains of broken bones his tricorder had shown him had all but screamed it had him.
McCoy went to the bathroom and wiped his mouth. While the kid may not be sick with anything, he was still a pretty heavy germ carrier if he lived in the fuckin’ streets. “No, you most certainly did not please me, kid,” he called somewhat angrily before walking out of the bathroom and to their small fridge where he could gather what he needed to make them both sandwiches, “but I’ll let it go this time because you honestly thought that was what I wanted. I am telling you now. I didn’t bring you here to have sex with you or for any kind of reward other than the satisfaction to take care of your tonight. Understand?”
He didn’t hear an answer right away but when he turned with the pair of sandwiches on plates in his hand he saw the teenager nod in the bed, looking about ready to cry. To be honest, McCoy thought he would cry too given the circumstances. This, from what he could tell, was the first time in four years someone had granted Pavel basic human necessities without demanding a piece of his innocence and very soul in return. “Here,” he said softly, setting one plate on the bedside table, “Eat up. But slowly. I don’t need you getting sick from eating too fast. The body’s gonna need time to recover.”
Pavel sat up quickly in the bed, almost startlingly so, and scrambled to the table, grabbing half a sandwich and tearing through it like a rabid animal. He barely chewed his food but by some miracle he didn’t choke. McCoy, who ate more slowly, watched these actions carefully. It was symptomatic of someone who took was robbed of food before he finished it. If the kid couldn’t finish it, the doctor was sure he’d find a way to hide the second half of the sandwich somewhere to eat later. It was a survival instinct amongst some species of animals but non-existent in healthy human beings; another sign of just how badly these past four years had damaged this child’s mind.
“How long?” He asked when the kid slowed down in his eating, as if realizing that his meal wasn’t about to be stolen away, “how long has it been since you’ve eaten something?” He waited patiently as Pavel finished chewing what was in his mouth and swallowed it. “Before this I mean.”
The Russian kid seemed to think about it for a second. “I zink eet vas… fiwe days? Maybe seex? I can not remember zough vhat I deed eat vas not so good as zis.” He took another bite of the sandwich, this time really savoring the flavor since his stomach was working on digesting what pieces he had already inhaled.
Five days without a decent meal… “Why did you go so long without eating?”
A shrug. Another swallowed mouthful. “I deed not vant to get seeck and most of ze food I found vas rotting already.”
“Food you found?”
“Een garbage.”
McCoy forced himself to finish the remaining half of his sandwich. “Doesn’t the money from your, eh, job, pay you enough to eat?” He couldn’t imagine Pavel being unwanted.
The teenager finished off the first half of the sandwich and picked up the second. “Eet does vhen I vork ze streets but zat ees not often.” He paused before he took a bite of it, looking over at the older man. “Not all my clients are as gentle or kind as you are.”
McCoy finished his own sandwich in silence after that, letting the boy take his time to finish his food before gathering the paper plates and putting them in the recycling bin. He retrieved a few plastic cups and poured them both filtered water from the faucet, watching the boy carefully as he drank it down. Good. It looked like his stomach was absorbing this meal nicely. It should stay down tonight. “If your stomach gets upset at any point, let me know. I got a few hypos for that and the bathroom is right here in case you need to make a run for it or answer mother nature’s call.”
“Yes sir.”
“It’s Leonard now, kid. Call me Leonard or Leo or any of the nicknames you can think of except Lenny.” It had been what his ex-wife had called him and he really didn’t want memories of her coming up right now. “How did you know I was a doctor anyway? I’m not from around here.”
“I took a friend to ze clinic a few days ago. I saw you zere vit Meester Kirk, taking care of heem instead of letting ze nurses do eet. You looked like you knew vhat you vere doing.”
Well that made sense. Kind of. “You know Jim Kirk?”
Pavel nodded and adjusted the way he sat. “Everyone knows of Meester Kirk een ze town. I overheard heem introducing heemself to vone of ze vomen ‘ho vork ze streets.”
Well that was a “go figure”. McCoy sighed and leaned forward, running his hands through his hair. Okay then time to think of something and quick. “I got a spare set of clothes for you to change into until we can get those rags of yours washed and I get the feelin’ you need a shower pretty bad.” Not so much for the dirt and grime as it was to warm him up a bit. “Let me grab ’em for ya and then you can go ahead and hop in the shower while I get them washed.” The laundry mat was right downstairs and he had been needing to do his laundry anyway.
So the doctor dug through his things until he found a pair of jeans that were a bit too small for his personal liking and a sweat shirt that he could stand to get dirty rather easily. He even found a pair of boxers that he had brought along -the pair having never been worn because they were absolutely hideous- and could stand burning also. He gave these clothes to Pavel and motioned towards the bathroom. “Whenever you’re ready just hop on into the shower and when you’re done and changed into these, bring me the dirty stuff. I gotta do some laundry also.”
The boy nodded and stepped around his host, muttering a thank you as he passed and stepped into the bathroom, not closing the door completely behind him, probably out of habit. McCoy didn’t care. He just had to avoid peeking in, which was simple enough considering he was pretty tired from his day. Perhaps a small nap was in order then…
********************************************************
“Doktor.”
What was with that odd accent?
“Doktor.” A pair of warm hands shook his arm. He groaned and rolled away from it’s source. It didn’t give up.
“Doktor, I zink zat you should vake up.”
He curled up on himself a little more, the hand on his shoulder slipping down his arm a little. He didn’t notice all that much. “Why should I?”
There was nervousness in that accented voice now, nervousness that his half asleep brain sent up warning flags about. “Zere ees someone at your door zat may be Jim Kirk or eet could by my client. I do not know but seence eet ees not my room, I can not answer ze door.”
It took his brain a minute to register what the words meant but when it did the first thought that came to mind was “shit”. He rolled onto his back and tried to get his eyes to work open, inadvertently rolling so that he rested underneath the teenager who had been trying to wake him up. He didn’t notice until after the door was already open that the kid hadn’t dressed yet and was wearing only a towel around his too thin hips. His hair was still dripping a bit though it was fairly obvious he had tried to be some semblance of order to the curls. Now that he was without a shirt, Pavel’s ribs stood out against his skin far enough to make him seem sickly and even bent over him, McCoy could tell that if he were to look at the kid’s back he would see each and every vertebra poking from his thin skin.
He reached up, one hand cupping that delicate rib cage while the other brushed a thin cheek as if to get a better feel of just how little fat still remained on those features. Of course, though, that’s when Jim walked into the room, mostly sober, whistling to himself, and certainly not expecting to see a mostly naked young man hovering over his roommate who was touching him… even if the touch was innocent-ish looking. “Whoa… dude. What the fuck? Warning woulda been nice.”
“Jim!” McCoy sat up in he bed, his hands falling to balance himself but young, half naked Pavel didn’t move, leaving his forehead to lean against the doctor’s shoulder. As if the first position wasn’t compromising enough. “Seriously, it’s not what it looks like.”
Golden eyebrows shot up on his head. “Really now? Because it looks an awful lot like you have a nice piece of ass you were going to kiss and…”
“For god’s sake Jim, look at him! You think I’d be so desperate as to fuck a half-starved kid?”
The lack of response was all the answer McCoy needed. He sighed and flopped back on the bed, Pavel wisely standing up and moving away. “Eef you vill excuse me, I vill leawe you to yourselves.” The doctor didn’t need to see Jim’s expression to be able to tell the man was staring at the young man as he returned to the bathroom, presumably to get dressed. McCoy dared a peek and was angered by the scars he saw running along the kid’s back. Apparently some clients took S&M a bit too far with their little hired fuck.
Jim waited until the door to the bathroom was closed before taking a seat next to his buddy. “Bones, I never pegged you as the type to be into boys.” The words sounded oddly distant and when McCoy looked over to his friend, he froze at the dull look in them. “Just goes to show-”
“Jim, shut up.” His voice was low, his tone sharp. He didn’t miss the way his friend flinched. “You know I ain’t like that. I ran into the kid on the street, saw he was half frozen and hungry, and offered him to chill here for the night. He was scared one of his more regular clients would pick him up if I didn’t.”
Jim snorted. “As if I’d believe-”
“You’d honestly think I’d lie to you about this kind of shit?”
Blue eyes stared right at him, searching for something. Probably a hint of a lie. Well Jim wasn’t going to find one. Not in this matter. He was saying the honest to god truth.
The sound of the door creaking open made both of them look towards its source and when Pavel emerged, redressed in the same dirty clothes he had worn in the streets, Jim’s first reaction was to get up and look the kid over. He asked similar questions to McCoy’s and he got the same answers. Kirk looked to his friend at this and the doctor shrugged. Either the kid’s story was well rehearsed before they had met today or it was true. Jim didn’t pretend it was otherwise.
So the blond cadet turned to the younger man and said with a rather firm voice, “You’re lucky Bones here found you when he did. I remember doin’ something similar when I was your age and it certainly didn’t turn out so good for me.” Bones’ dark eyebrows jumped up at the mention of this. What had taken months for him to drag out of Jim he just spilled to a complete stranger. What the hell? “So I recommend you get dressed in the clothes Bones no doubt let you borrow and let us get those dirty ones of yours cleaned. You’re staying here tonight, free of charge.”
Pavel blinked at Jim, as if confused, then turned to McCoy who nodded in confirmation. Apparently there was no way he was getting out of this so he nodded and turned back into the bathroom to change again, more quickly this time. He handed them his dirty clothes upon emerging and Jim took them downstairs to be washed, claiming that at least there, there was a chance he could run into a cute girl that might catch his interest better than a puppy-boy. If Pavel took any kind of offense to that he didn’t show it but rather hugged himself, as if savoring the warm feeling of the sweatshirt he was in. Possibly the softness of it too.
McCoy felt kind of glad that they were alone. It made interacting with the kid less awkward. He stood up from his bed and pulled down the covers, patting the spot. “Now that you’re fed and cleaned up, I guess the next step for you is a decent night’s sleep. I’m going to warn you, I’ll be sleepin’ in the same bed but the worse that’ll possibly happen will be that you’ll suddenly become my teddy bear or something. I ain’t used to sleeping alone yet.” The clothes Pavel was wearing, now that he had gotten a good look at them, were far too big for the boy. They just made him look younger, more vulnerable. It made the father within McCoy happy to know he was the one caring for this child.
Pavel nodded and moved towards the bed, laying down on it and it seemed like he was surprised when the blankets were pulled over him and gently tucked around him. He wasn’t cold any more. In fact, he was pleasantly warm. He wasn’t hungry for once, or hurting. He was happy and felt almost loved by this man. “You are a good man, Leo,” he said, fighting the urge to call his rescuer by the Russian equivalent of the name, “I am glad to have met you.”
McCoy laughed softly and reached over, dimming the light down from “daylight” to “just light enough to see the room” before leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to the kid’s temple. It should have been odd doing this for a complete stranger but it strangely felt natural. As if he was doing the same thing for his daughter or even his wife -while she had still been beautiful in his eyes. “Sleep tight, Pavel,” he said quietly, “and don’t worry. Jim and I will make sure no one bothers you until morning.”
The doctor waited until Pavel was fast asleep before getting up and getting changed himself, finishing up his nightly routine just in time for Jim to come back and drop off the boy’s clothes. Kirk said that he was going back out and didn’t plan on coming back that night but they arranged to have breakfast in the morning and, from there, discuss exactly what they were going to do with young Chekov. Clearly he couldn’t stay here. Maybe it would be smarter to get him to enlist in Starfleet with them…