Heal Over (1/3)
Title: Heal Over
Artist: ataratah
Author: paracaerouvoar
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Star Trek: 2009
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy (primary), past Sulu/Chekov, past Kirk/Pike, past Kirk/Sulu (spoilers, highlight to read: Chekov/Spock, Kirk/McCoy/Sulu)
Word count: 16, 000~
Warning: Sex, death, angst… more sex?
Summary: Len McCoy’s life went from good to bad to worse and he ends up working two jobs to pay the bills. Enter Jim Kirk, who knows more than he lets on, and just might make Len’s life a little better, if he doesn’t end up killing him along the way.
Notes: This is AU. Way, way AU. Set in an unspecified time period, but I like to think it’s some time in the 22nd century. It’s not quite the future of the films, but it’s more advanced than now. Also, it took me an embarassing amount of time to get the spoiler bar up there working please don't judge me
Masterpost
It’s three in the fucking afternoon, and the drunks are rolling in from the streets. They’ve broken their hands, or said something to the wrong person and been knifed, or glassed, or what the fuck ever. People who were drunk yesterday are stumbling in with twisted knees, sprained ankles, dislocated thumbs, because they were so drunk they couldn’t see, or thought they could fly. Len’s past the point of caring, and is starting to think he needs a drink. Every so often though, he gets a real case. Appendicitis, or the start of a chest infection, and while it’s nasty [potentially fatal], it’s a welcome change from the self or alcohol induced injuries he usually treats. At half four, just before the end of his shift, there’s a lull in between patients, and he throws himself into the chair in the corner of the room, resting his head in his hands, because he’s so goddamned tired of doing this. Tired of working for three fifty an hour, eight hours a day. Tired of knowing that as soon as he finishes his shift here, he has less than an hour to change clothes and grab something to eat before he needs to be at the bar, where he’ll serve beer to the same people he treated hours earlier. Tired of living in a two room apartment above a scum coated bar and below a crack den. Sometimes, he’s just so fucking tired of being Leonard McCoy. He sighs and looks up around the room, at the cracked, yellowing paint on the walls. It was white when he started, fresh and clean, but now it’s three years later and there’s smears on the wall of blood and dirt, the lino on the floor is cracked and grey, scuffed from the hundreds of feet that kick at it day in, day out.
He matches the room, he knows he does, with his four day stubble, holey trainers and crumpled scrubs shirt, but it’s been so long since he cared that he’s all but forgotten how to give a fuck. He smells of smoke and cheap aftershave, and he’s in desperate need of a haircut, but he honest to god just doesn’t care anymore, hasn’t since Joanna.
He hears the click of heels outside the thin plywood door, and the thunk of forms for new patients hitting the slot outside, and he groans, heaves himself off the chair and winces as his joints click. He’s too goddamned young to be getting arthritis, he’s barely thirty five, but God just loves piling shit on top of one Leonard H McCoy, doesn’t he? He kicks the door to open it [it sticks in the heat, always has] and grabs the forms, tossing them inelegantly on the desk in the corner of the cramped room, reading name and ailment off the top form as he swigs from a bottle of water. Warm, of course, because it’s one hundred damned degrees out there.
Len fucking hates Iowa in the summer.
He kicks the door again and stumps into the tiny waiting room, full of drunks and colic-y babies, and kids with bloody noses, or missing teeth. ‘Hikaru Sulu?’ he growls out, and a handsome Asian guy in a beat to hell leather jacket stands up, pressing a towel to his temple with gritted teeth. He sways slightly, and the guy next to him is on his feet quicker than Len’s seen someone move in a while, one hand at his elbow and another on his shoulder. He helps him across the room slowly, and when he gets closer Len can see the glazed look in his eyes, the purpling bruise streaked across one side of his face, disappearing under the towel, which Len guesses must have been white once, but is now pink spattered. Hikaru throws him a lopsided smile, but Len just looks at him before turning on his heel and doesn’t wait for them to follow him down the hall into his examination room. The guy helping him shuts the door once they’re in and supports Hikaru as he settles onto the table. ‘You can go now, kid,’ Len says as he consults the form again and pulls on a pair of gloves, white and sterile, like the room used to be.
‘I’d rather stay, thanks,’ the guy says, and flashes him a distracted smile. He’s watching Hikaru like a hawk, standing just barely out of the guy’s personal space, and Len knows if that were him he’d be pushing the kid away fast as humanly possible.
‘I don’t mind him staying,’ Hikaru offers, but he’s blinking hard and he’s gone a shade paler, so Len just waves the other guy away from the table and grabs Hikaru’s chin gently, pulling the towel away with his free hand. It’s tacky, strings of drying blood clinging to the fabric, but Len pretends he doesn’t see the patient wincing, and presses at the temple cautiously. There’s too much blood to see anything, but when he probes a certain spot Hikaru hisses in pain.
‘Christ, kid, I hope the other guy looks worse,’ Len offers, tilting Hikaru’s head slightly.
He smiles lopsidedly and throws one shoulder up and down. ‘Walked into a door,’ he says, and Len doesn’t miss the glance he gives to the kid standing behind him. Len chews his lip absent mindedly. He doesn’t care what stupid shit the kid was pulling, and what does it matter if he lies? Hundreds of people come through here lying, saying they fell, or walked into something, anything but the fist they actually walked into. It’s all part of the not caring, he reminds himself. Sitting at the stool next to the table, he reaches out blindly and hooks a foot around the wheeled cart a foot or so away and drags it towards him. He grabs the antiseptic wipes and cleans the side of his head gently but efficiently, revealing a gash about an inch and a half long running down his temple. It’s not deep, but it could use a couple of stitches, so he presses onto the cut with gauze and reaches back over to the cart and grabs packets with sterilised needles and tiny spools of thread. He rips one open with the un bloodied hand, but realises he’s not going to be able to thread the needle one handed, so he looks behind him and finds helper guy hovering. He’s calm on the outside, mostly, but Len can make out the tensed muscles in his jaw, the worry in his blue eyes.
‘Hey kid,’ he growls, and the guy jumps, eyes flickering to Len. ‘Hold this here, and be gentle, damn it.’ The kid does so, and he threads the needle quickly, taking the gauze off the wound. Blood beads along it slowly, so he wipes it off before tossing the gauze aside and tilting Hikaru’s head slightly so the angle it right. ‘This is gonna hurt like a bitch, Mr Sulu,’ he says, before he presses the needles into the skin and Hikaru jumps in shock, Len jerking the needle back to stop it going into his eye, adjusting his grip on the kids cheek as he apologises dully. He sees the kids hands tighten into fists and he takes a deep breath, before looking up at Len and nodding slightly. Len presses down on the skin with the needle again, and Hikaru releases a shuddering breath. Len stitches quickly, neat little black lines bisecting the temple, and it only takes him a couple of minutes. He takes more gauze and wipes the blood away again, and then wipes it with alcohol soaked gauze, taping a small bandage over the stitches. Bleeding taken care of, he checks the kids eyes and concludes he probably has a mild concussion, and some damned nasty bruising around his eye. ‘That is gonna hurt in the morning,’ he says, scribbling out a prescription for weak painkillers.
‘Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?’ the kid asks from behind him, and Len tosses him a glare as he strips off his gloves and throws the bloody gauze and the used needle into the medical waste bin by the side of his desk. He gives Hikaru the piece of paper and tells him to fill it as soon as possible.
‘Do you have someone who can ring you, or wake you up every hour, on the hour, Mr Sulu?’ he asks as he scribbles information onto the form and slides it into the completed paperwork folder on the desk.
‘I can do it,’ the kid says from behind him, as he helps Hikaru off the table and steadies him as he takes a wobbly step. Len nods, and busies himself reading the next form on the pile. One more patient, and then his shift ends. Len’s gut tells him it’s going to be a difficult patient.
He’s not wrong.
--
Len finally escapes into the rush hour clogged streets of Riverside, Iowa, and walks the three blocks to his apartment. He’s toeing off his sneakers and pulling the scrub shirt over his head as the door shuts, and he throws it on the pile designated for laundry. He pulls a white t-shirt over his head and shrugs on an old plaid shirt, kicking his scrub pants into the laundry pile as well and rooting around for a pair of jeans. He eats standing up, a can of some nondescript mush he guesses used to be beans of some kind, and then he’s back out the door, shoving his feet back into three year old sneakers and jogging down the stairs and heading for his second work shift of the day.
The Frog and Nightgown is a shithole. There are no other words for it, Len thinks, as he shoulders the door open and nods a greeting to Chris, the woman cleaning the bar, before he ducks under the partition and grabbing a rolled up apron from under the bar. He’s just tying it on as a group of guys barrel through the door, loud and lairy and demanding more alcohol like they haven’t had enough yet. Len’s pretty sure one of them was someone he treated for a wrenched knee two days ago. Nevertheless, he serves them all beer and retreats to the other end of the bar, watching as they slop it all over themselves, each other, and the bar top. He sighs, and serves the two women in low cut tops and non-existent skirts, tripping over their skyscraper heels to flash their tits at him. He very determinedly doesn’t look at either of them as he gives them their wine and, sulking, they retreat to a table in the corner to eye up the men at the bar. And so the pattern continues for four hours or so, only broken by his smoke breaks and when Chris recruits him to carry a new keg of beer up from the basement. He’s slotting it in under the bar when someone starts drumming on the top of it, and he stands up, scowling down at the kid from earlier, in the clinic. He’s wearing an ox blood leather jacket and a grey t-shirt, loose at the neck, and his hair is brassy and short, sticking up in random tufts. He smiles when he sees Len, which only causes the older man’s scowl to deepen. ‘So,’ he starts, leaning over the bar to look Len in the eye. ‘I’ll have a beer… doctor.’ He sounds smug, and it kind of makes Len want to punch him, but he gets him a beer and then vanishes for another smoke break, figuring by the time he’s done the kid’ll either be gone, or he’ll have found someone to hit on.
No such luck. He gets back to the bar and he’s sitting in exactly the same place, still sipping on the same beer. Len decides to ignore him, and serves more drinks easily, pouring shots on autopilot. In an hours’ time the bar’s beginning to thin out as they all leave in search of better digs, or cheaper booze. Len doesn’t care either way, except that now it makes it all the more obvious the kid’s still sitting there, watching him, still sipping on the same beer. He cleans the bar slowly, watching as the kid takes another miniscule sip, and when Chris disappear out the back to wash glasses, he drops the rag in front of the kid and leans on the bar. ‘Look, kid, I don’t know what you want, but drink your damn beer and stop staring, or get out.’
The kid smiles, slowly. ‘Is that anyway to talk to your new boss, Bones?’
Len blinks, and holds up a hand. ‘OK, two things, kid. Number one, new boss? And number two, which is far more pressing, Bones?’
The kid shrugs. ‘I don’t know your real name. All I know is that you’re a damned good sawbones.’
Sawbones. Len mulls the word over. That’s what his daddy used to call doctors, back when Len was in med school, back before his daddy died. ‘McCoy,’ he says eventually, when he realises the kid’s waiting for an answer, and he figures a name’ll get him off his back. ‘My name’s McCoy.’
The kid chews his lip for a second, takes another swallow of beer. ‘I like Bones better,’ he says finally, and Len glares.
‘I don’t give a damn, kid. Finish your beer and fuck off.’
The kid grins and leans forwards again. ‘I have a business proposition for you.’
Len leans back, against the counter behind the bar. ‘Do you now?’
He nods. ‘You did a good job fixing Sulu up today. I could use a doctor like that.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I have a job,’ Len says coolly. ‘Two, in fact. Looks like you’re outta luck, kid.’
‘Jim,’ the kid says suddenly, so quickly Len doesn’t quite hear.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Jim,’ he says again. ‘‘S my name,’ he says, and takes another gulp of beer. ‘and I wanna hire you. I need a medic.’ The bottle’s finished now, and he wiggles it at Len, throwing more money on the bar in front of him. Len sighs, and reaches down for another bottle.
‘A medic,’ he repeats. ‘What do you need a medic for?’ He twists the cap off the beer and hands it over.
Jim wiggles his eyebrows, and accepts the beer. ‘Several morally grey, but totally acceptable purposes.’
‘Legal purposes?’ Len asks, pinching the bridge of his nose because it’s been a long day and he does not want to deal with cocky kids telling big stories.
Jim grimaces, but covers it well with another swig of the bottle. ‘Not strictly,’ he tries, twisting his mouth as he stretches the last word out.
‘Not interested,’ Len says, turning away, and it’s actually true.
‘But-’ he hears from behind him, and he interrupts with another not interested before vanishing out the back, passing Chris on the way.
When he ventures out half an hour later, he sees the kid slumped in one of the booths in the shadows, surrounded by an impressive number of empty beer bottles and shot glasses. There’s a phone on the table next to him, and when Len approaches to clear up, it starts buzzing and flashing, some tinny ring-tone playing loudly. He scowls at it, but apart from one lonely drunk at the bar, he’s the only person in the place, Chris having finished her shift ten minutes later and vanished upstairs to her apartment. Sighing, he looks at the call ID. Mom is scrolling across the screen, and his scowl deepens. He hates dealing with mothers. One missed call flashes up on the screen, and he sighs again, makes to put the phone down and it rings again, Mom flashing up once more. Glaring at the kid, who appears to be completely out cold, he answers the phone gingerly.
‘Hello?’
’James Kirk, I swear to God if you hang up on me one more time, I’ll… I’ll-’
Len feels this is a good time to interrupt the woman’s tirade as she stumbles over a threat. ‘Ma’am, my name is Leonard McC-’
‘What the hell did he do now?’ she asks, cutting him off. ’Do I need to come down there and get him?’
‘I think that would be wise, ma’am,’ Len says. ‘He’s at The Frog and Nightgown.’
She hisses down the phone and hangs up, muttering. Len shrugs, puts the phone back down on the table and keeps clearing up the empty glasses and bottles, waiting for one very pissed off woman to come barrelling in through the doors. He wonders idly whether it would be cowardly to make a strategic exit when she does.
He’s surprised when a red head with emerald skin enters the bar, and he looks at the clock, because it’s pretty much closing time, and she’s alone and sober, and none of this is adding up. He watches her look around, see Jim and make a beeline for him, slapping him on the side of the head when she reaches him. He wakes with a start and looks up at her, bleary, blinking tears of pain out of his eyes. When he sees her, he smiles, goofy. ‘Hey Gailaaaa…’ he trails off, slurring his words, and Len shakes his head, keeps cleaning the bar.
She hits him again, gentler, and then bends over, hooks her head under his arm and lifts him out of the booth, supporting his weight. She half drags, half leads him over the bar and deposits him on a stool. He clings to the bar top, barely swaying. She pulls a purse out of her bag, and flicks through a few notes. ‘How much does he owe?’ she asks, and she sounds older than she is, because at that moment he looks at her, really looks at her, and there is no way in hell she’s Jim Kirk’s mother, because she isn’t a day over twenty five.
‘I think he’s all paid up, actually,’ Len says, before changing the subject, raising one eyebrow. ‘You’re mom? Really?’
‘He calls me mom ‘cause I’m the only one that looks after his sorry ass. They all do. I’m Gaila.’ She laughs quietly, and puts twenty dollars on the table before putting her purse away. ‘That’s for stopping him from doing anything stupid.’
Len takes the money and shoves it into his back pocket, because he doesn’t have enough pride left to care that this feels like charity, and laughs with her. ‘At this point, I think he’s drunk too much to know which way is up.’
‘Trust me, that won’t stop him,’ she confides, and ducks her head under his arm again. ‘Thanks for letting me know where he is.’ She pulls him off the stool and makes her to the door, slowly. Len watches them go for a few minutes before jumping the bar and catching up to them.
‘You have a car, ma’am?’
‘Gaila,’ she corrects. ‘and yes, I do. It’s just outside.’ Len turns and bends over, hooking one arm under Jim’s knees and lifting him up. He’s a complete dead weight, and his head lolls, but he doesn’t weight that much, and so Gaila holds the door open and leads Len to her car, opening the back door and helping him slide Jim in. He snores gently, rolling until he’s facing the upholstery, and Len knows he’s out for the count, and on the way to a god-awful handover the next morning. Len opens the door for her, just like his daddy taught him, and then watches her drive away, shaking his head at Kirk and his not “strictly legal purposes” before going back inside and cleaning up the rest of the bar. At this rate, he thinks, he just might get home before two in the morning. Might.
--
It’s been a crappy day at the clinic, worse than usual, and Len is dangerously close to going to the bar and drinking himself under the table, but as he’s just leaving the medical centre, someone falls into step beside him.
‘Hey Bones,’ Jim says, looking decidedly too chipper for someone who was passed out drunk about sixteen hours previously.
‘The answer’s still no, kid,’ Len says, not even turning to look at him. ‘And my name is not Bones.’
‘Y’know, Bones, I didn’t want to have to use plan B, because I think it’s low and underhanded, but you leave me no choice.’
‘Please go away, Jim.’ Maybe using the kid’s name will encourage him to use Len’s. ‘I’m not interested in your business proposition, and it doesn’t matter whether you use plan A, B, C or fucking Z, the answer is still no.’
There’s silence next to him, apart from the sound of Jim’s slightly quicker footsteps to keep up with Len’s longer legs. ‘People are gonna die if you don’t help me,’ he says eventually, and he sounds so damned sad that Len stops walking and turns to face the kid.
‘People are gonna die, huh?’ he asks, and Jim nods, and Len suddenly gets the feeling people have already died for this kid. ‘What exactly do you do, kid?’
Jim shakes his head. ‘I can’t tell you, not in public. But I have a team, and we need a medic, and I hear you’re the best, Leonard.’
Len knows he’s staring, but he just can’t seem to stop. ‘Ex…excuse me?’
‘That’s your name, isn’t it? I looked you up this morning, wanted to know what a guy like you was doing working two jobs when you could easily make enough working in a hospital somewhere. Y’know, I didn’t realise you were one of those McCoys.’ Jim keeps talking, but Len’s stopped listening. Those McCoys. He’d spent so much time running from those McCoys that he’d almost forgotten he used to be one of them. Used to be Dr Leonard McCoy, his family’s golden boy. Until his daughter died, and his father died, and his wife left him and then, suddenly, his family didn’t want to know him, all because he helped stop his father’s pain, helped his father regain just a little bit of the dignity he had before the illness. Len refuses to apologise for it, but there’s a small part of him that whispers you killed a man, Len, your own father at night, and there are times where he’s not sure he’ll ever forgive himself. Not sure he wants to forgive himself.
He realises Jim’s still talking, rambling on, and he puts up a hand to cut him off. Jim stops talking, blue eyes wide. ‘Who’d ya lose, kid?’ Len says, changing the subject to something, anything but himself and the past he’s spent three years outrunning.
The kid’s mouth opens and closes slightly, lips parting, but saying nothing, until he licks them, and says, ‘Scotty. He was our tech guy, he wasn’t even supposed to be in the field, but he insisted on coming, in case something malfunctioned, or we broke something, I dunno. He was always going on about how clumsy me and Sulu were, didn’t trust us with anything more technologically advanced than our cells, so he told us he had to be there. I figured it was just gonna be surveillance, we’d be there ten, twenty minutes at most.’ He tugs on the cuff of his long sleeved shirt, pulling it over his wrist and hand. ‘We got the info we needed, and we were on the way out of there when they caught us. Sulu got out easily, and me, but Scotty, he didn’t know what to do. He was better behind the computer screen, not with a gun in his hand. He was running as fast as he could, and he was almost out when they shot him, right in the gut. We couldn’t go to the hospital, they’d have called the police, so we just took him home, cleaned the wound, tried to get the bullet out, but we didn’t know what we were doing. We couldn’t stop the bleeding, and he died about six hours after he was shot, back at the base.’ Jim’s eyes shone with old tears. ‘You know as well as I do that if you treat a gut shot as soon as possible, it doesn’t have to be fatal, but we had no one to treat it. We need you, Bones. You’re the best at what you do, and you have nothing to lose, I know you don’t. Please.’
Len looks at him for a long time, looks at the honest emotion in the kid’s eyes, sees just how much of a kid he really is, too young to have that sort of pain on his conscience, and Len knows what his answer’s going to be, knew what it was always going to be as soon as Jim told him people would die otherwise. ‘I want to know exactly what sort of thing your group does before I agree to anything,’ he says, but Jim’s eyes light up, and he grabs Len’s elbow and starts dragging him in the opposite direction of his apartment. Len casts a baleful look over his shoulder, and knows that for whatever reason, he won’t be going home for a while.
--
Apparently Jim’s base of operations is hiding in plain sight, because he takes Len to a small house just outside of the town limits. There’s a garden flourishing front and back, and Len swears he can smell cake. This is a little too Stepford for him, so he’s relieved when Jim leads him round the back of the house and down into the cellar, talking all the while. ‘Me and Sulu spent eighteen months digging out from under the house, in each direction, making sure we had escape routes and everything built into the base. Inside everything is chrome and concrete, shiny and silver and reflective everywhere. The first room is filled with a bank of computers, beeping away happily, and Gaila, along with a dark skinned woman are typing away, wearing those wireless headsets and muttering away. Perched on the desk next to Gaila’s computer, Sulu’s wrapping fighting bandages around his hands, chewing on what Len guesses is gum and talking to Gaila, who’s smiling, but not really concentrating as she starts frowning at the screen in front of her. Sulu looks up as the door opens, but his eyes flash at Len and harden slightly. The bruise on his cheek has turned greenish yellow, darker around the edge of the stitches. ‘Everyone, this is Dr McCoy. Dr McCoy, this is everyone. You know Sulu and Gaila, and this lovely lady, who for reasons unknown, still refuses to sleep with me, is Uhura. Dr McCoy is our new sawbones. Call him Bones.’
‘Call me Len,’ he corrects, glaring at Jim. Uhura smiles, but then turns back to her computer as something starts beeping. Gaila gets up from her desk and shakes Len’s hand with a genuine smile, welcoming him to the crèche, a word Jim balks at, before Sulu takes him by the shoulder and steers him into the corridor, leaving Len with the women. He feels he should make small talk, but an alarm sounds, and they both turn all their attention the computers, and he decides against it, standing there like a third wheel until Sulu and Jim return, Jim looking smug and Sulu looking slightly less annoyed. He shakes Len’s hand with a nod of recognition, and then retreats to where he was sitting previously, wrapping his other hand in the strips of cream fabric. ‘Keeping your stitches clean, I hope,’ Len adds, and Sulu smiles and bobs his head up and down.
‘Uhura insists on it,’ he says, rubbing the back of his neck idly. ‘She stops me scratching at them as well.’
‘I should hope so,’ Len says, and is quite happy to continue the conversation until they’re interrupted.
‘So, welcome to my humble abode. Lemme give you the grand tour, Bones.’ Jim announces , and Len sees Sulu smiling wryly at the nickname. He catches the other man’s eye and rolls his own eyes, eliciting a smirk from the Asian before Len’s dragged out of the room by a far too enthusiastic Jim.
‘So, this place is all new and shiny and all, but I still don’t have a clue what exactly you need a doctor for. Who are you? Len asks, following the younger man down the endless silver.
In truth, Len’s surprised by the vastness of the underground rooms and what’s in them. Apart from the corridor of bedrooms, and the kitchen with an oversized dining table in, there’s a library, a gym, and even a room stocked with enough medical supplies to bring the dead back to life, as Jim so eloquently puts it. It smells brand new, like a toy just rescued from the packaging, and Len guesses Jim and Sulu built this after Scotty’s demise. ‘This must have set you back a few thousand dollars,’ Len remarks on the way back to the kitchen. Jim had insisted on making dinner to celebrate the new recruit, and it has to be said, Len’s looking forward to eating something that doesn’t come out of a can that’s been sitting in a cupboard for three weeks.
Jim just shrugs, and says nothing, so Len doesn’t ask.
--
All through dinner, Len can feel Jim’s eyes burning into him, but he keeps his gaze on his plate determinedly. He doesn’t know what he’s eating, pasta in some kind of sauce, but it tastes good and he’s starving, so he lets the food take priority, feeling the conversation wash over him. Apparently Jim doesn’t cook much, according to Sulu, who acted concerned, pressing the back of his hand to Jim’s forehead until he got a swipe across the back of his head from Uhura and he sat down, pouting at her. She ignored him and helped herself, sliding into the seat next to Len and introducing herself properly, apologising for her distant attitude earlier. He likes Uhura, she seems friendly, but blunt, and he thinks that he’ll get along with her just fine.
After dinner, they play rock paper scissors to choose who has to do the dishes, and Len and Jim lose. Jim protests, claiming that he cooked, and that Len’s still technically a guest, but Sulu just grins and vanished out the door, followed by Uhura and Gaila, who are planning something to do with nail varnish and movies, as far as Len can tell. Len says he doesn’t mind washing up, and begins stacking plates. Jim sulks for a while, but then joins the older man at the sink, and he’s still staring at Len. He can feel him, and it’s making him feel uncomfortable. He endures it until the last plate has been dried, and he’s turned away from the sink, putting it in the cupboard, and Jim is still staring, so he turns around so tell him to fucking stop staring, kid, but he doesn’t get past the first syllable before Jim’s lips are on his, and Jim’s hands are on his hips and back and neck and he’s pulling Len flush against him. Kid’s a world class kisser, but it’s been a long time since Len’s kissed someone like this, and even longer since he’s been kissed [no matter what Jocelyn says, the two things are very different], so he braces himself against the counter with one hand, but the other one is splayed across Jim’s chest, able to feel how thin the cheap cotton t-shirt is between them. He can feel Jim’s tongue pressing against his lips, so he parts them and Jim licks his way into Len’s mouth, completely in control of the kiss, and then suddenly, Jim’s gone, letting go of Len and vanishing out the door before Len’s even aware the kiss has stopped. He opens his eyes to an empty kitchen and thinks was his kissing really that bad? He shrugs, and presses a thumb to tingling lips, watching the door that Jim left through, before turning to see the soapy water still in the sink, and the cupboard wipe open. He pours out the water and shuts the door, drying the wet surfaces with a towel, very deliberately not looking at the door until he has to leave, at which point he heads for the library, figuring it’ll be deserted. Jim’ll be in his room, and Uhura and Gaila’ll be wherever there’s a TV, and Sulu’ll be in the gym punching the shit of something ‘cause that’s what boxers do, apparently. Even when they’re not boxing, they like to punch shit. Len now has an explanation for why Sulu looks so beat-up, and has a feeling he’ll be spending a lot of time treating Sulu in the brand new sickbay they conjured up, seemingly out of thin air.
Either way, Len’s planning to lay low until he figures out just what the hell happened between him and Kirk.
--
It’s been three weeks since Kirk kissed Len in the kitchen, and Len’s still confused as all get out about it.
It’s not that it hasn’t happened since then; it has, half a dozen times, always when they’re alone, and always somewhere Jim can make a quick getaway. Six times he’s been kissed by Jim Kirk, and he hasn’t got a fucking clue about how to change things between them. The kid acts exactly the same as he always has when they’re around other people, and every time Len’s approached him to ask, essentially, what the fuck? it always ends up in more kissing, and more vanishing Kirk.
And it’s not like he’s not enjoying it, either. It’s been over ten years since he last kissed a guy, and if he’s honest, he’s always leant that way anyway, so really, the only thing preventing him from throwing Jim Kirk down onto a table and having his way with him is that the kid runs like a skittish horse and about as fast as one too, so Len has absolutely no idea how to proceed here. Some days, he feels like searching the whole goddamned library for a book called something like How to deal with James T Kirk or 101 ways to control a Kirk or something, because Len’s drawing a blank here, and short of sneaking up on the bastard, which, by the way is almost impossible, kid’s got ears like a bat, Len has no idea how to catch him.
But hey, Len’ll try anything once, so when it’s Kirk and Sulu’s turn to wash up, he lurks until he sees Sulu sauntering away from the kitchen and he knows Uhura and Gaila are dealing with some new information in the computer room, so he slides into the kitchen, where Jim’s up to his elbows in scummy, foamy water, and walks up behind him, almost silent on his battered to hell sneakers.
Of course, almost silent just isn’t quiet enough, and Jim hears him and turns around, slips his hands out of the water and dries them slowly, as Len stands there, watching him. Kirk licks his lips, and opens his mouth as if he’s trying to say something, and Len takes the two steps forward and cuts him off, role reversal of their first kiss, three weeks ago, fingers pressing on hip bones, pushing him backwards until he’s backed against the counter, and his hands slide down and round, until they’re cupping Jim’s ass, and he lifts him onto the counter so they’re on more of an even level. Kirk wraps his legs around Len’s waist and pulls him closer, wrapping his arms around his neck and pushing his tongue into the older man’s mouth, tangling it with Len’s own tongue. Len trails his fingers along the hem of the forest green tee Jim’s wearing, pushing a hand up his stomach to reveal a toned stomach, tight muscles, tanned skin. Jim breaks the kiss and pushes his face into the joint where Len’s shoulder meets his neck, and Len’s breath stutters as he sucks at the skin there, leaving wet marks in a trail up Len’s neck, biting at the soft flap of skin below his jaw. Len gasps, and pulls away to look Jim in the eye. The pupils are blown, his hair is rumpled from where Len ran his hands through it, and his lips are kiss-swollen. He might just be the most beautiful thing Len’s ever seen. ‘Why’d you keep running, kid?’ Len asks, voice rough, like he’s been screaming.
Jim shrugs in that lopsided way Len’s noticed he does, just heaving one shoulder up and down. ‘Didn’t know if you’d kiss me back, or hit me in the face.’
Len processes the information. ‘Then why’d you keep doing it?’
He grins, feral. ‘Cause you weren’t fast enough to stop me.’ At this he hooks a hand around the nape of Len’s neck and pulls him back into a slow kiss, one that leaves his pulse racing and his head fuzzy. They don’t need to hurry, and so they don’t, taking their time to explore each other’s mouths, and Jim pushes one hair up the back of Len’s neck into his hair, fisting into the too-long strands. He’s shaved since he started living here, but he has yet to have a haircut, and as a result his hair is nearly down to his shoulders, and always falling in his eyes.
They’re interrupted by a shocked and slightly disgusted ‘Oh god,’ coming from the doorway, and they separate, guilty. Len leaps away from Jim like he’s been electrocuted, and looks guiltily at Sulu, who’s just shaking his head as he crosses the room to fill the kettle. ‘Now, I understand your libido means you absolutely had to fuck the new guy, but must you do it in the kitchen? That’s fucking unsanitary, Kirk.’
Jim grins, lewd, and hops down from the counter lithely. ‘Come on, McCoy,’ he says, lips curling around the words obscenely and grabbing Len by the hand, and somewhere in his lust foggy brain it registers that it’s the first time Jim’s ever not called him Bones. He just barely registers the miniscule smile of Sulu’s face as he shakes his head, reaching up for a mug. He doesn’t register the sadness in the young boxer’s face.
Chapter Two
Artist: ataratah
Author: paracaerouvoar
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Star Trek: 2009
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy (primary), past Sulu/Chekov, past Kirk/Pike, past Kirk/Sulu (spoilers, highlight to read: Chekov/Spock, Kirk/McCoy/Sulu)
Word count: 16, 000~
Warning: Sex, death, angst… more sex?
Summary: Len McCoy’s life went from good to bad to worse and he ends up working two jobs to pay the bills. Enter Jim Kirk, who knows more than he lets on, and just might make Len’s life a little better, if he doesn’t end up killing him along the way.
Notes: This is AU. Way, way AU. Set in an unspecified time period, but I like to think it’s some time in the 22nd century. It’s not quite the future of the films, but it’s more advanced than now. Also, it took me an embarassing amount of time to get the spoiler bar up there working please don't judge me
Masterpost
It’s three in the fucking afternoon, and the drunks are rolling in from the streets. They’ve broken their hands, or said something to the wrong person and been knifed, or glassed, or what the fuck ever. People who were drunk yesterday are stumbling in with twisted knees, sprained ankles, dislocated thumbs, because they were so drunk they couldn’t see, or thought they could fly. Len’s past the point of caring, and is starting to think he needs a drink. Every so often though, he gets a real case. Appendicitis, or the start of a chest infection, and while it’s nasty [potentially fatal], it’s a welcome change from the self or alcohol induced injuries he usually treats. At half four, just before the end of his shift, there’s a lull in between patients, and he throws himself into the chair in the corner of the room, resting his head in his hands, because he’s so goddamned tired of doing this. Tired of working for three fifty an hour, eight hours a day. Tired of knowing that as soon as he finishes his shift here, he has less than an hour to change clothes and grab something to eat before he needs to be at the bar, where he’ll serve beer to the same people he treated hours earlier. Tired of living in a two room apartment above a scum coated bar and below a crack den. Sometimes, he’s just so fucking tired of being Leonard McCoy. He sighs and looks up around the room, at the cracked, yellowing paint on the walls. It was white when he started, fresh and clean, but now it’s three years later and there’s smears on the wall of blood and dirt, the lino on the floor is cracked and grey, scuffed from the hundreds of feet that kick at it day in, day out.
He matches the room, he knows he does, with his four day stubble, holey trainers and crumpled scrubs shirt, but it’s been so long since he cared that he’s all but forgotten how to give a fuck. He smells of smoke and cheap aftershave, and he’s in desperate need of a haircut, but he honest to god just doesn’t care anymore, hasn’t since Joanna.
He hears the click of heels outside the thin plywood door, and the thunk of forms for new patients hitting the slot outside, and he groans, heaves himself off the chair and winces as his joints click. He’s too goddamned young to be getting arthritis, he’s barely thirty five, but God just loves piling shit on top of one Leonard H McCoy, doesn’t he? He kicks the door to open it [it sticks in the heat, always has] and grabs the forms, tossing them inelegantly on the desk in the corner of the cramped room, reading name and ailment off the top form as he swigs from a bottle of water. Warm, of course, because it’s one hundred damned degrees out there.
Len fucking hates Iowa in the summer.
He kicks the door again and stumps into the tiny waiting room, full of drunks and colic-y babies, and kids with bloody noses, or missing teeth. ‘Hikaru Sulu?’ he growls out, and a handsome Asian guy in a beat to hell leather jacket stands up, pressing a towel to his temple with gritted teeth. He sways slightly, and the guy next to him is on his feet quicker than Len’s seen someone move in a while, one hand at his elbow and another on his shoulder. He helps him across the room slowly, and when he gets closer Len can see the glazed look in his eyes, the purpling bruise streaked across one side of his face, disappearing under the towel, which Len guesses must have been white once, but is now pink spattered. Hikaru throws him a lopsided smile, but Len just looks at him before turning on his heel and doesn’t wait for them to follow him down the hall into his examination room. The guy helping him shuts the door once they’re in and supports Hikaru as he settles onto the table. ‘You can go now, kid,’ Len says as he consults the form again and pulls on a pair of gloves, white and sterile, like the room used to be.
‘I’d rather stay, thanks,’ the guy says, and flashes him a distracted smile. He’s watching Hikaru like a hawk, standing just barely out of the guy’s personal space, and Len knows if that were him he’d be pushing the kid away fast as humanly possible.
‘I don’t mind him staying,’ Hikaru offers, but he’s blinking hard and he’s gone a shade paler, so Len just waves the other guy away from the table and grabs Hikaru’s chin gently, pulling the towel away with his free hand. It’s tacky, strings of drying blood clinging to the fabric, but Len pretends he doesn’t see the patient wincing, and presses at the temple cautiously. There’s too much blood to see anything, but when he probes a certain spot Hikaru hisses in pain.
‘Christ, kid, I hope the other guy looks worse,’ Len offers, tilting Hikaru’s head slightly.
He smiles lopsidedly and throws one shoulder up and down. ‘Walked into a door,’ he says, and Len doesn’t miss the glance he gives to the kid standing behind him. Len chews his lip absent mindedly. He doesn’t care what stupid shit the kid was pulling, and what does it matter if he lies? Hundreds of people come through here lying, saying they fell, or walked into something, anything but the fist they actually walked into. It’s all part of the not caring, he reminds himself. Sitting at the stool next to the table, he reaches out blindly and hooks a foot around the wheeled cart a foot or so away and drags it towards him. He grabs the antiseptic wipes and cleans the side of his head gently but efficiently, revealing a gash about an inch and a half long running down his temple. It’s not deep, but it could use a couple of stitches, so he presses onto the cut with gauze and reaches back over to the cart and grabs packets with sterilised needles and tiny spools of thread. He rips one open with the un bloodied hand, but realises he’s not going to be able to thread the needle one handed, so he looks behind him and finds helper guy hovering. He’s calm on the outside, mostly, but Len can make out the tensed muscles in his jaw, the worry in his blue eyes.
‘Hey kid,’ he growls, and the guy jumps, eyes flickering to Len. ‘Hold this here, and be gentle, damn it.’ The kid does so, and he threads the needle quickly, taking the gauze off the wound. Blood beads along it slowly, so he wipes it off before tossing the gauze aside and tilting Hikaru’s head slightly so the angle it right. ‘This is gonna hurt like a bitch, Mr Sulu,’ he says, before he presses the needles into the skin and Hikaru jumps in shock, Len jerking the needle back to stop it going into his eye, adjusting his grip on the kids cheek as he apologises dully. He sees the kids hands tighten into fists and he takes a deep breath, before looking up at Len and nodding slightly. Len presses down on the skin with the needle again, and Hikaru releases a shuddering breath. Len stitches quickly, neat little black lines bisecting the temple, and it only takes him a couple of minutes. He takes more gauze and wipes the blood away again, and then wipes it with alcohol soaked gauze, taping a small bandage over the stitches. Bleeding taken care of, he checks the kids eyes and concludes he probably has a mild concussion, and some damned nasty bruising around his eye. ‘That is gonna hurt in the morning,’ he says, scribbling out a prescription for weak painkillers.
‘Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?’ the kid asks from behind him, and Len tosses him a glare as he strips off his gloves and throws the bloody gauze and the used needle into the medical waste bin by the side of his desk. He gives Hikaru the piece of paper and tells him to fill it as soon as possible.
‘Do you have someone who can ring you, or wake you up every hour, on the hour, Mr Sulu?’ he asks as he scribbles information onto the form and slides it into the completed paperwork folder on the desk.
‘I can do it,’ the kid says from behind him, as he helps Hikaru off the table and steadies him as he takes a wobbly step. Len nods, and busies himself reading the next form on the pile. One more patient, and then his shift ends. Len’s gut tells him it’s going to be a difficult patient.
He’s not wrong.
--
Len finally escapes into the rush hour clogged streets of Riverside, Iowa, and walks the three blocks to his apartment. He’s toeing off his sneakers and pulling the scrub shirt over his head as the door shuts, and he throws it on the pile designated for laundry. He pulls a white t-shirt over his head and shrugs on an old plaid shirt, kicking his scrub pants into the laundry pile as well and rooting around for a pair of jeans. He eats standing up, a can of some nondescript mush he guesses used to be beans of some kind, and then he’s back out the door, shoving his feet back into three year old sneakers and jogging down the stairs and heading for his second work shift of the day.
The Frog and Nightgown is a shithole. There are no other words for it, Len thinks, as he shoulders the door open and nods a greeting to Chris, the woman cleaning the bar, before he ducks under the partition and grabbing a rolled up apron from under the bar. He’s just tying it on as a group of guys barrel through the door, loud and lairy and demanding more alcohol like they haven’t had enough yet. Len’s pretty sure one of them was someone he treated for a wrenched knee two days ago. Nevertheless, he serves them all beer and retreats to the other end of the bar, watching as they slop it all over themselves, each other, and the bar top. He sighs, and serves the two women in low cut tops and non-existent skirts, tripping over their skyscraper heels to flash their tits at him. He very determinedly doesn’t look at either of them as he gives them their wine and, sulking, they retreat to a table in the corner to eye up the men at the bar. And so the pattern continues for four hours or so, only broken by his smoke breaks and when Chris recruits him to carry a new keg of beer up from the basement. He’s slotting it in under the bar when someone starts drumming on the top of it, and he stands up, scowling down at the kid from earlier, in the clinic. He’s wearing an ox blood leather jacket and a grey t-shirt, loose at the neck, and his hair is brassy and short, sticking up in random tufts. He smiles when he sees Len, which only causes the older man’s scowl to deepen. ‘So,’ he starts, leaning over the bar to look Len in the eye. ‘I’ll have a beer… doctor.’ He sounds smug, and it kind of makes Len want to punch him, but he gets him a beer and then vanishes for another smoke break, figuring by the time he’s done the kid’ll either be gone, or he’ll have found someone to hit on.
No such luck. He gets back to the bar and he’s sitting in exactly the same place, still sipping on the same beer. Len decides to ignore him, and serves more drinks easily, pouring shots on autopilot. In an hours’ time the bar’s beginning to thin out as they all leave in search of better digs, or cheaper booze. Len doesn’t care either way, except that now it makes it all the more obvious the kid’s still sitting there, watching him, still sipping on the same beer. He cleans the bar slowly, watching as the kid takes another miniscule sip, and when Chris disappear out the back to wash glasses, he drops the rag in front of the kid and leans on the bar. ‘Look, kid, I don’t know what you want, but drink your damn beer and stop staring, or get out.’
The kid smiles, slowly. ‘Is that anyway to talk to your new boss, Bones?’
Len blinks, and holds up a hand. ‘OK, two things, kid. Number one, new boss? And number two, which is far more pressing, Bones?’
The kid shrugs. ‘I don’t know your real name. All I know is that you’re a damned good sawbones.’
Sawbones. Len mulls the word over. That’s what his daddy used to call doctors, back when Len was in med school, back before his daddy died. ‘McCoy,’ he says eventually, when he realises the kid’s waiting for an answer, and he figures a name’ll get him off his back. ‘My name’s McCoy.’
The kid chews his lip for a second, takes another swallow of beer. ‘I like Bones better,’ he says finally, and Len glares.
‘I don’t give a damn, kid. Finish your beer and fuck off.’
The kid grins and leans forwards again. ‘I have a business proposition for you.’
Len leans back, against the counter behind the bar. ‘Do you now?’
He nods. ‘You did a good job fixing Sulu up today. I could use a doctor like that.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I have a job,’ Len says coolly. ‘Two, in fact. Looks like you’re outta luck, kid.’
‘Jim,’ the kid says suddenly, so quickly Len doesn’t quite hear.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Jim,’ he says again. ‘‘S my name,’ he says, and takes another gulp of beer. ‘and I wanna hire you. I need a medic.’ The bottle’s finished now, and he wiggles it at Len, throwing more money on the bar in front of him. Len sighs, and reaches down for another bottle.
‘A medic,’ he repeats. ‘What do you need a medic for?’ He twists the cap off the beer and hands it over.
Jim wiggles his eyebrows, and accepts the beer. ‘Several morally grey, but totally acceptable purposes.’
‘Legal purposes?’ Len asks, pinching the bridge of his nose because it’s been a long day and he does not want to deal with cocky kids telling big stories.
Jim grimaces, but covers it well with another swig of the bottle. ‘Not strictly,’ he tries, twisting his mouth as he stretches the last word out.
‘Not interested,’ Len says, turning away, and it’s actually true.
‘But-’ he hears from behind him, and he interrupts with another not interested before vanishing out the back, passing Chris on the way.
When he ventures out half an hour later, he sees the kid slumped in one of the booths in the shadows, surrounded by an impressive number of empty beer bottles and shot glasses. There’s a phone on the table next to him, and when Len approaches to clear up, it starts buzzing and flashing, some tinny ring-tone playing loudly. He scowls at it, but apart from one lonely drunk at the bar, he’s the only person in the place, Chris having finished her shift ten minutes later and vanished upstairs to her apartment. Sighing, he looks at the call ID. Mom is scrolling across the screen, and his scowl deepens. He hates dealing with mothers. One missed call flashes up on the screen, and he sighs again, makes to put the phone down and it rings again, Mom flashing up once more. Glaring at the kid, who appears to be completely out cold, he answers the phone gingerly.
‘Hello?’
’James Kirk, I swear to God if you hang up on me one more time, I’ll… I’ll-’
Len feels this is a good time to interrupt the woman’s tirade as she stumbles over a threat. ‘Ma’am, my name is Leonard McC-’
‘What the hell did he do now?’ she asks, cutting him off. ’Do I need to come down there and get him?’
‘I think that would be wise, ma’am,’ Len says. ‘He’s at The Frog and Nightgown.’
She hisses down the phone and hangs up, muttering. Len shrugs, puts the phone back down on the table and keeps clearing up the empty glasses and bottles, waiting for one very pissed off woman to come barrelling in through the doors. He wonders idly whether it would be cowardly to make a strategic exit when she does.
He’s surprised when a red head with emerald skin enters the bar, and he looks at the clock, because it’s pretty much closing time, and she’s alone and sober, and none of this is adding up. He watches her look around, see Jim and make a beeline for him, slapping him on the side of the head when she reaches him. He wakes with a start and looks up at her, bleary, blinking tears of pain out of his eyes. When he sees her, he smiles, goofy. ‘Hey Gailaaaa…’ he trails off, slurring his words, and Len shakes his head, keeps cleaning the bar.
She hits him again, gentler, and then bends over, hooks her head under his arm and lifts him out of the booth, supporting his weight. She half drags, half leads him over the bar and deposits him on a stool. He clings to the bar top, barely swaying. She pulls a purse out of her bag, and flicks through a few notes. ‘How much does he owe?’ she asks, and she sounds older than she is, because at that moment he looks at her, really looks at her, and there is no way in hell she’s Jim Kirk’s mother, because she isn’t a day over twenty five.
‘I think he’s all paid up, actually,’ Len says, before changing the subject, raising one eyebrow. ‘You’re mom? Really?’
‘He calls me mom ‘cause I’m the only one that looks after his sorry ass. They all do. I’m Gaila.’ She laughs quietly, and puts twenty dollars on the table before putting her purse away. ‘That’s for stopping him from doing anything stupid.’
Len takes the money and shoves it into his back pocket, because he doesn’t have enough pride left to care that this feels like charity, and laughs with her. ‘At this point, I think he’s drunk too much to know which way is up.’
‘Trust me, that won’t stop him,’ she confides, and ducks her head under his arm again. ‘Thanks for letting me know where he is.’ She pulls him off the stool and makes her to the door, slowly. Len watches them go for a few minutes before jumping the bar and catching up to them.
‘You have a car, ma’am?’
‘Gaila,’ she corrects. ‘and yes, I do. It’s just outside.’ Len turns and bends over, hooking one arm under Jim’s knees and lifting him up. He’s a complete dead weight, and his head lolls, but he doesn’t weight that much, and so Gaila holds the door open and leads Len to her car, opening the back door and helping him slide Jim in. He snores gently, rolling until he’s facing the upholstery, and Len knows he’s out for the count, and on the way to a god-awful handover the next morning. Len opens the door for her, just like his daddy taught him, and then watches her drive away, shaking his head at Kirk and his not “strictly legal purposes” before going back inside and cleaning up the rest of the bar. At this rate, he thinks, he just might get home before two in the morning. Might.
--
It’s been a crappy day at the clinic, worse than usual, and Len is dangerously close to going to the bar and drinking himself under the table, but as he’s just leaving the medical centre, someone falls into step beside him.
‘Hey Bones,’ Jim says, looking decidedly too chipper for someone who was passed out drunk about sixteen hours previously.
‘The answer’s still no, kid,’ Len says, not even turning to look at him. ‘And my name is not Bones.’
‘Y’know, Bones, I didn’t want to have to use plan B, because I think it’s low and underhanded, but you leave me no choice.’
‘Please go away, Jim.’ Maybe using the kid’s name will encourage him to use Len’s. ‘I’m not interested in your business proposition, and it doesn’t matter whether you use plan A, B, C or fucking Z, the answer is still no.’
There’s silence next to him, apart from the sound of Jim’s slightly quicker footsteps to keep up with Len’s longer legs. ‘People are gonna die if you don’t help me,’ he says eventually, and he sounds so damned sad that Len stops walking and turns to face the kid.
‘People are gonna die, huh?’ he asks, and Jim nods, and Len suddenly gets the feeling people have already died for this kid. ‘What exactly do you do, kid?’
Jim shakes his head. ‘I can’t tell you, not in public. But I have a team, and we need a medic, and I hear you’re the best, Leonard.’
Len knows he’s staring, but he just can’t seem to stop. ‘Ex…excuse me?’
‘That’s your name, isn’t it? I looked you up this morning, wanted to know what a guy like you was doing working two jobs when you could easily make enough working in a hospital somewhere. Y’know, I didn’t realise you were one of those McCoys.’ Jim keeps talking, but Len’s stopped listening. Those McCoys. He’d spent so much time running from those McCoys that he’d almost forgotten he used to be one of them. Used to be Dr Leonard McCoy, his family’s golden boy. Until his daughter died, and his father died, and his wife left him and then, suddenly, his family didn’t want to know him, all because he helped stop his father’s pain, helped his father regain just a little bit of the dignity he had before the illness. Len refuses to apologise for it, but there’s a small part of him that whispers you killed a man, Len, your own father at night, and there are times where he’s not sure he’ll ever forgive himself. Not sure he wants to forgive himself.
He realises Jim’s still talking, rambling on, and he puts up a hand to cut him off. Jim stops talking, blue eyes wide. ‘Who’d ya lose, kid?’ Len says, changing the subject to something, anything but himself and the past he’s spent three years outrunning.
The kid’s mouth opens and closes slightly, lips parting, but saying nothing, until he licks them, and says, ‘Scotty. He was our tech guy, he wasn’t even supposed to be in the field, but he insisted on coming, in case something malfunctioned, or we broke something, I dunno. He was always going on about how clumsy me and Sulu were, didn’t trust us with anything more technologically advanced than our cells, so he told us he had to be there. I figured it was just gonna be surveillance, we’d be there ten, twenty minutes at most.’ He tugs on the cuff of his long sleeved shirt, pulling it over his wrist and hand. ‘We got the info we needed, and we were on the way out of there when they caught us. Sulu got out easily, and me, but Scotty, he didn’t know what to do. He was better behind the computer screen, not with a gun in his hand. He was running as fast as he could, and he was almost out when they shot him, right in the gut. We couldn’t go to the hospital, they’d have called the police, so we just took him home, cleaned the wound, tried to get the bullet out, but we didn’t know what we were doing. We couldn’t stop the bleeding, and he died about six hours after he was shot, back at the base.’ Jim’s eyes shone with old tears. ‘You know as well as I do that if you treat a gut shot as soon as possible, it doesn’t have to be fatal, but we had no one to treat it. We need you, Bones. You’re the best at what you do, and you have nothing to lose, I know you don’t. Please.’
Len looks at him for a long time, looks at the honest emotion in the kid’s eyes, sees just how much of a kid he really is, too young to have that sort of pain on his conscience, and Len knows what his answer’s going to be, knew what it was always going to be as soon as Jim told him people would die otherwise. ‘I want to know exactly what sort of thing your group does before I agree to anything,’ he says, but Jim’s eyes light up, and he grabs Len’s elbow and starts dragging him in the opposite direction of his apartment. Len casts a baleful look over his shoulder, and knows that for whatever reason, he won’t be going home for a while.
--
Apparently Jim’s base of operations is hiding in plain sight, because he takes Len to a small house just outside of the town limits. There’s a garden flourishing front and back, and Len swears he can smell cake. This is a little too Stepford for him, so he’s relieved when Jim leads him round the back of the house and down into the cellar, talking all the while. ‘Me and Sulu spent eighteen months digging out from under the house, in each direction, making sure we had escape routes and everything built into the base. Inside everything is chrome and concrete, shiny and silver and reflective everywhere. The first room is filled with a bank of computers, beeping away happily, and Gaila, along with a dark skinned woman are typing away, wearing those wireless headsets and muttering away. Perched on the desk next to Gaila’s computer, Sulu’s wrapping fighting bandages around his hands, chewing on what Len guesses is gum and talking to Gaila, who’s smiling, but not really concentrating as she starts frowning at the screen in front of her. Sulu looks up as the door opens, but his eyes flash at Len and harden slightly. The bruise on his cheek has turned greenish yellow, darker around the edge of the stitches. ‘Everyone, this is Dr McCoy. Dr McCoy, this is everyone. You know Sulu and Gaila, and this lovely lady, who for reasons unknown, still refuses to sleep with me, is Uhura. Dr McCoy is our new sawbones. Call him Bones.’
‘Call me Len,’ he corrects, glaring at Jim. Uhura smiles, but then turns back to her computer as something starts beeping. Gaila gets up from her desk and shakes Len’s hand with a genuine smile, welcoming him to the crèche, a word Jim balks at, before Sulu takes him by the shoulder and steers him into the corridor, leaving Len with the women. He feels he should make small talk, but an alarm sounds, and they both turn all their attention the computers, and he decides against it, standing there like a third wheel until Sulu and Jim return, Jim looking smug and Sulu looking slightly less annoyed. He shakes Len’s hand with a nod of recognition, and then retreats to where he was sitting previously, wrapping his other hand in the strips of cream fabric. ‘Keeping your stitches clean, I hope,’ Len adds, and Sulu smiles and bobs his head up and down.
‘Uhura insists on it,’ he says, rubbing the back of his neck idly. ‘She stops me scratching at them as well.’
‘I should hope so,’ Len says, and is quite happy to continue the conversation until they’re interrupted.
‘So, welcome to my humble abode. Lemme give you the grand tour, Bones.’ Jim announces , and Len sees Sulu smiling wryly at the nickname. He catches the other man’s eye and rolls his own eyes, eliciting a smirk from the Asian before Len’s dragged out of the room by a far too enthusiastic Jim.
‘So, this place is all new and shiny and all, but I still don’t have a clue what exactly you need a doctor for. Who are you? Len asks, following the younger man down the endless silver.
In truth, Len’s surprised by the vastness of the underground rooms and what’s in them. Apart from the corridor of bedrooms, and the kitchen with an oversized dining table in, there’s a library, a gym, and even a room stocked with enough medical supplies to bring the dead back to life, as Jim so eloquently puts it. It smells brand new, like a toy just rescued from the packaging, and Len guesses Jim and Sulu built this after Scotty’s demise. ‘This must have set you back a few thousand dollars,’ Len remarks on the way back to the kitchen. Jim had insisted on making dinner to celebrate the new recruit, and it has to be said, Len’s looking forward to eating something that doesn’t come out of a can that’s been sitting in a cupboard for three weeks.
Jim just shrugs, and says nothing, so Len doesn’t ask.
--
All through dinner, Len can feel Jim’s eyes burning into him, but he keeps his gaze on his plate determinedly. He doesn’t know what he’s eating, pasta in some kind of sauce, but it tastes good and he’s starving, so he lets the food take priority, feeling the conversation wash over him. Apparently Jim doesn’t cook much, according to Sulu, who acted concerned, pressing the back of his hand to Jim’s forehead until he got a swipe across the back of his head from Uhura and he sat down, pouting at her. She ignored him and helped herself, sliding into the seat next to Len and introducing herself properly, apologising for her distant attitude earlier. He likes Uhura, she seems friendly, but blunt, and he thinks that he’ll get along with her just fine.
After dinner, they play rock paper scissors to choose who has to do the dishes, and Len and Jim lose. Jim protests, claiming that he cooked, and that Len’s still technically a guest, but Sulu just grins and vanished out the door, followed by Uhura and Gaila, who are planning something to do with nail varnish and movies, as far as Len can tell. Len says he doesn’t mind washing up, and begins stacking plates. Jim sulks for a while, but then joins the older man at the sink, and he’s still staring at Len. He can feel him, and it’s making him feel uncomfortable. He endures it until the last plate has been dried, and he’s turned away from the sink, putting it in the cupboard, and Jim is still staring, so he turns around so tell him to fucking stop staring, kid, but he doesn’t get past the first syllable before Jim’s lips are on his, and Jim’s hands are on his hips and back and neck and he’s pulling Len flush against him. Kid’s a world class kisser, but it’s been a long time since Len’s kissed someone like this, and even longer since he’s been kissed [no matter what Jocelyn says, the two things are very different], so he braces himself against the counter with one hand, but the other one is splayed across Jim’s chest, able to feel how thin the cheap cotton t-shirt is between them. He can feel Jim’s tongue pressing against his lips, so he parts them and Jim licks his way into Len’s mouth, completely in control of the kiss, and then suddenly, Jim’s gone, letting go of Len and vanishing out the door before Len’s even aware the kiss has stopped. He opens his eyes to an empty kitchen and thinks was his kissing really that bad? He shrugs, and presses a thumb to tingling lips, watching the door that Jim left through, before turning to see the soapy water still in the sink, and the cupboard wipe open. He pours out the water and shuts the door, drying the wet surfaces with a towel, very deliberately not looking at the door until he has to leave, at which point he heads for the library, figuring it’ll be deserted. Jim’ll be in his room, and Uhura and Gaila’ll be wherever there’s a TV, and Sulu’ll be in the gym punching the shit of something ‘cause that’s what boxers do, apparently. Even when they’re not boxing, they like to punch shit. Len now has an explanation for why Sulu looks so beat-up, and has a feeling he’ll be spending a lot of time treating Sulu in the brand new sickbay they conjured up, seemingly out of thin air.
Either way, Len’s planning to lay low until he figures out just what the hell happened between him and Kirk.
--
It’s been three weeks since Kirk kissed Len in the kitchen, and Len’s still confused as all get out about it.
It’s not that it hasn’t happened since then; it has, half a dozen times, always when they’re alone, and always somewhere Jim can make a quick getaway. Six times he’s been kissed by Jim Kirk, and he hasn’t got a fucking clue about how to change things between them. The kid acts exactly the same as he always has when they’re around other people, and every time Len’s approached him to ask, essentially, what the fuck? it always ends up in more kissing, and more vanishing Kirk.
And it’s not like he’s not enjoying it, either. It’s been over ten years since he last kissed a guy, and if he’s honest, he’s always leant that way anyway, so really, the only thing preventing him from throwing Jim Kirk down onto a table and having his way with him is that the kid runs like a skittish horse and about as fast as one too, so Len has absolutely no idea how to proceed here. Some days, he feels like searching the whole goddamned library for a book called something like How to deal with James T Kirk or 101 ways to control a Kirk or something, because Len’s drawing a blank here, and short of sneaking up on the bastard, which, by the way is almost impossible, kid’s got ears like a bat, Len has no idea how to catch him.
But hey, Len’ll try anything once, so when it’s Kirk and Sulu’s turn to wash up, he lurks until he sees Sulu sauntering away from the kitchen and he knows Uhura and Gaila are dealing with some new information in the computer room, so he slides into the kitchen, where Jim’s up to his elbows in scummy, foamy water, and walks up behind him, almost silent on his battered to hell sneakers.
Of course, almost silent just isn’t quiet enough, and Jim hears him and turns around, slips his hands out of the water and dries them slowly, as Len stands there, watching him. Kirk licks his lips, and opens his mouth as if he’s trying to say something, and Len takes the two steps forward and cuts him off, role reversal of their first kiss, three weeks ago, fingers pressing on hip bones, pushing him backwards until he’s backed against the counter, and his hands slide down and round, until they’re cupping Jim’s ass, and he lifts him onto the counter so they’re on more of an even level. Kirk wraps his legs around Len’s waist and pulls him closer, wrapping his arms around his neck and pushing his tongue into the older man’s mouth, tangling it with Len’s own tongue. Len trails his fingers along the hem of the forest green tee Jim’s wearing, pushing a hand up his stomach to reveal a toned stomach, tight muscles, tanned skin. Jim breaks the kiss and pushes his face into the joint where Len’s shoulder meets his neck, and Len’s breath stutters as he sucks at the skin there, leaving wet marks in a trail up Len’s neck, biting at the soft flap of skin below his jaw. Len gasps, and pulls away to look Jim in the eye. The pupils are blown, his hair is rumpled from where Len ran his hands through it, and his lips are kiss-swollen. He might just be the most beautiful thing Len’s ever seen. ‘Why’d you keep running, kid?’ Len asks, voice rough, like he’s been screaming.
Jim shrugs in that lopsided way Len’s noticed he does, just heaving one shoulder up and down. ‘Didn’t know if you’d kiss me back, or hit me in the face.’
Len processes the information. ‘Then why’d you keep doing it?’
He grins, feral. ‘Cause you weren’t fast enough to stop me.’ At this he hooks a hand around the nape of Len’s neck and pulls him back into a slow kiss, one that leaves his pulse racing and his head fuzzy. They don’t need to hurry, and so they don’t, taking their time to explore each other’s mouths, and Jim pushes one hair up the back of Len’s neck into his hair, fisting into the too-long strands. He’s shaved since he started living here, but he has yet to have a haircut, and as a result his hair is nearly down to his shoulders, and always falling in his eyes.
They’re interrupted by a shocked and slightly disgusted ‘Oh god,’ coming from the doorway, and they separate, guilty. Len leaps away from Jim like he’s been electrocuted, and looks guiltily at Sulu, who’s just shaking his head as he crosses the room to fill the kettle. ‘Now, I understand your libido means you absolutely had to fuck the new guy, but must you do it in the kitchen? That’s fucking unsanitary, Kirk.’
Jim grins, lewd, and hops down from the counter lithely. ‘Come on, McCoy,’ he says, lips curling around the words obscenely and grabbing Len by the hand, and somewhere in his lust foggy brain it registers that it’s the first time Jim’s ever not called him Bones. He just barely registers the miniscule smile of Sulu’s face as he shakes his head, reaching up for a mug. He doesn’t register the sadness in the young boxer’s face.
Chapter Two