Fic: Shades of Grey, Chapter 2
Author's Note: So, I admit writing a six year old has been way more fun than I originally anticipated. This chapter is pretty much an excuse to scratch that itch.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Please don't sue me.
Chapter: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6A | 6B |
Chapter 2
"Where are we going, Daddy?"
McCoy rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "I told you before, Jo. We're going to my room to see Jim, my friend."
"But we're staying over there!" she said, pointing back toward the family wing of the campus. Jo's face was scrunched up in confusion, a slightly pouty look worming its way across her face.
"We're only in there because you're here. Otherwise, I live in a little room with Jim. Remember? I told you that while you were eating your snack, or were you just concentrating on your food?" McCoy replied, smiling. He held his daughter's hand as they walked through the quad area of the school, the spring air carrying in a light smelling breeze from the bay.
"Oh. Yeah." Joanna was proving her age, her attention span lasting a couple of minutes at most. Her head was on a swivel, taking in everything about the expansive campus. Suddenly, she stopped, pulling Len off balance with her. Hands on her hips, Joanna asked seriously, "Why is everyone dressed in red? And why aren't you in red?"
"Well, I normally am, but because you're so special to come here, I got excused from work and school for a few days." McCoy said as the pair hit the front steps of the dorm. With his key card, the doctor deactivated the lock and lead Joanna up the stairs, ignoring the pointed, shocked stares of his dorm mates. Len scowled when he stopped outside his shared room; after living with Jim for almost two years, he shouldn't have been surprised at the message that greeted his eyes. On the whiteboard hanging on the outside of the door, Kirk wrote, 'Giving head. Cum back in ten.' With his shirtsleeve, McCoy reached up, erased the lewd message and opened the door. "Jim! You'd better be wearing clothes, because we're coming in!"
The young girl's eyes roamed around the new surroundings. Way smaller than her temporary home on the other side of campus, the new place was just one room. The door opened to the right side of the room, with a half dresser supporting a mini-fridge directly in front of the door, leaning against the wall. In front of that was a set of bunk beds, which were surprisingly both made. A vidscreen was directly to Jo's left, adjacent to the closet. On the opposite wall from the beds sat Kirk and McCoy's desks. Kirk's was cluttered with various trinkets and PADDs, while McCoy's was much neater. The bookshelf on the wall directly opposite the vidscreen and next to the bunk beds held a plethora of eclectic titles, and as Jo noticed, a holo of her. She wandered over to it and fingered it gently. Pointing, she exclaimed, "That's me!"
"It is you," McCoy said, a little self-conscious that the first thing she gravitated towards was her own picture. At least he'd remembered to stow the extra large bottle of bourbon before she arrived. He walked over and sat down on the bed, lifting Jo in his lap.
Kirk shifted in the upper bunk, the springs squeaking under his weight as he sat up. Two feet and a set of legs appeared over the side, and before Jo realized it, another person was standing in front of her. Jim's feet landed with a graceful thud on the carpet and he turned around to greet her. The blonde man knelt down and peered through to where Joanna was hiding. He gave her his best smile and said, "I'm Jim. What's your name?"
Suddenly shy, Joanna wrapped herself around the backside of her father's torso when she realized there was another person in the room. She hadn't seen Jim upon their entrance, and her excitement over the new surroundings distracted her from noticing him. With trepidation in her eyes, she asked a hesitant, "Daddy?"
"Remember what I said before, Jo?" Len asked with a weary sigh, recounting the six times he told her that she'd be meeting his roommate today. "That's Jim, my friend."
"Oh." Her face visibly relaxed when McCoy said 'friend' in reference to Kirk, but she said nothing more. Though she seemed more curious and less afraid, she still wouldn't look Kirk in the eye.
Tilting his head to the side and laying on the charm which was way over the line of totally cheesy, he said, "I heard there was a pretty little girl visiting us tonight, but I never realized she'd be this beautiful." Kirk cracked a grin when he could practically hear his roommate rolling his eyes.
Before Joanna could formulate an answer, McCoy grumbled, "She's six. Your infantile charms won't work on her."
Just because her sole purpose in life was to prove her father wrong, Joanna squeezed her way past McCoy's chest and the headboard of the bed and stopped right in front of Jim. Giving him the once over, she gave Kirk a shy smile and responded with a simple, "Hi."
Jim smirked. Still squatting, he angled his face up toward McCoy, a triumphant expression dancing in his eyes.
McCoy growled. "Not a word, Jim. Not a goddamned word."
Joanna gasped. "Daddy! You said a bad word!"
Closing his eyes, Len went through in his head every dirty and lascivious phrase he'd ever heard, cursing Jim to the high reaches of heaven. Trust his daughter to form an almost instantaneous bond with Kirk and for the two of them to be making his life miserable five minutes in. Looking down at Jo, McCoy said, "I'm sorry, darlin'. It slipped out and you know it's not good to swear. I know that, too, but Mr. Jim here isn't behaving himself like he should." The doctor threw a glare of warning toward his roommate, the latter still silently guffawing.
"Hey! I'm doing just fine over here. It's the cursing doctor who can't control his mouth," Kirk said after he was able to stem his laughter to a manageable level.
Joanna dissolved into a fit of giggles. "You're funny!" She looked behind her to McCoy. "Daddy, Mr. Jim is funny!"
"Of course. Of all the people, you latch onto my roommate. God help me," McCoy muttered. Perhaps a change of subject and a change of venue would be in order and would help distract Jo. "I thought someone was hungry. Who wants spaghetti?"
Two hands instantly shot up, one adult and one child. "I do!" Kirk and Jo exclaimed simultaneously
.
"Figures."
The walk to the restaurant was blissfully short, and Jo chatted liberally with Kirk as they went. McCoy could clearly see that she was relaxing in Jim's presence, something he wasn't sure should worry him or make him happy. Upon entering the little Italian place across from campus, they were able to secure a table in the back of the party room where the helpful server set Jo up with a PADD and some colored pens. She drew away happily while the two men chatted amongst themselves.
"So how'd you pull this off, Bones? I want to know how you got Starfleet to excuse you from two days' worth of classes without failing you," Kirk asked when the server delivered their drinks.
"Pike, actually. He's taken to meddling in my personal life as some type of sport, since lord knows that running Starfleet Academy isn't enough for him to do," McCoy replied, taking sip of his water. "He said he thought it would be good for me to see my kid every once in a while, and that he felt it might make me less of an a-" He abruptly cut himself off, remembering Jo's presence and corrected it to, "less of a jerk if I saw her more than just over a comm line."
"Jocelyn was okay with it?" Jim asked hesitantly. Though he knew things had improved significantly, it was still odd to him, after all the screaming and swearing, that one call from a Starfleet captain could change Jocelyn Darnell's perception of Leonard McCoy.
Taking a deep breath, McCoy rotated the glass around a fixed point on the table and stared into it, as if it was a magical crystal ball with all the answers to his somewhat fucked up life. "I don't know. I think she was nervous about it. Hell, I was nervous about Jo even coming. What if she hated me? What if she cried the whole time? I don't blame Joss for having reservations, especially given my history."
Kirk read between the lines. McCoy's 'history' was that of an unofficial alcoholic, and a snarky, irresponsible drunk at that. Jocelyn had plenty of ammunition to fire salvo after salvo at her ex in divorce and family court, and she'd pulled out all the stops. Jim was thrilled to see that Bones and Jocelyn managed to move on from all the hate and bitterness, but it still made him cringe to think about just how low his best friend fell in the immediate aftermath of his divorce. "Yeah, all that crap was to make you the stunning person you are today," Jim said, giving Bones a manly shove to the shoulder.
"Thanks." McCoy smirked, lifting up his water glass and taking another sip. He'd not, by a long shot, quit drinking, but his paranoia over keeping Jo safe while she was in his charge precluded any type of alcoholic beverage from entering his system for the duration of her stay. He'd come this far with Jocelyn, and he wasn't about to screw himself out of what was likely his one and only chance to get it right. His ex was willing to work with him, but her message was loud and clear: put one toe out of line, and she would not hesitate to cut his balls off with a dull, rusty saw.
Their food arrived as McCoy finished talking. Len helped Jo cut up her spaghetti. He gave it a stir so she wouldn't burn her mouth before digging into his own plate. For a few minutes, a blissful silence descended upon the table; the only sounds made were the ones that came from three hungry, happy people satisfying their need for good company and good food. But trouble, whether minor or major, tended to follow Jim, and the current outing was no exception.
Joanna set her fork down, a serious expression on her face. With the same bunched up eyebrows and creased forehead she'd used earlier when she woke up in the Starfleet apartment, the little girl pondered her words carefully. Jo looked her father in the eye, and in the instant he shoveled a gigantic forkful of lasagna in his mouth, she asked, "Daddy, what's giving head?"
With an epic clatter of dishes, Kirk's hands banged down on the table, a loud, long belly laugh making its way from the younger man. Jim quickly grabbed some water to wash down his spaghetti as to avoid choking on it, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. Wheezing pathetically, Kirk couldn't even speak, let alone form a coherent thought. He settled for clapping Bones on the shoulder and pounding his fist a couple of times on the table while he rested his forehead just to the right of his plate.
In a totally opposite reaction, McCoy spit his lasagna all over the table. His eyes bulged so wide Joanna was momentarily frightened that something was wrong with her father. The fork he was holding pinged innocently off the dish where the doctor dropped it while McCoy's jaw nearly hit the floor. Gasping for air, he reached for his napkin to wipe his face from the sauce that dribbled down his chin. "Joanna Lynn McCoy! Where in god's creation did you hear that?"
"I read it! It was on your door, where Mr. Jim was," she answered matter of factly. Totally unaware of the ruckus she'd caused, Jo picked away at her child's portion of spaghetti. "Why? Is it bad?"
McCoy looked over at Jim with a perfectly murderous expression on his face. In Kirk's defense, Len himself didn't think Joanna got a good enough look at the message scrawled on their door, but apparently he'd been wrong. He'd never admit that to Jim, but the thought was at least there. In a deep, dark tone, McCoy stared right at Kirk and warned, "Jim…"
Kirk put his hands defensively, doing his best to hold in any remaining laughter from bubbling to the surface. His success was varied, the entire booth shaking as Jim fought not to make a sound. "What? I didn't know she could read like that! What is she, six? Most six year olds can't read full sentences, let alone remember what they said a half hour later!" Trust Bones to have a kid who was not only adorable, but also brilliant to boot. Had he known how smart Joanna truly was, Kirk probably would have written something more PG on the board, but it was rather amusing to see McCoy seven shades of red while he tried not to rant.
Joanna piped up, insistent. "Daddy! Tell me what it means!"
Len let out a strange noise of frustration, wishing a hole would open up under the table so he could crawl in it. For once in his life, he wished Jocelyn were here to help him out. She'd know what to say, and how to answer Jo's question without really answering it. Women were much better at things such as that, as most of the female species developed something that his instructors labeled as 'tact'. It was a newly discovered skill he clearly lacked, and even with his brilliant brain, he had positively no clue what to say. Sighing, McCoy took the coward's way out and settled on, "Baby, I can't tell you what it means. It's a grown-up thing."
Jo crossed her arms over her chest and literally pouted. The expression on her face and her body language sent Kirk into an entirely new fit of giggles, since Jo's pose matched exactly to McCoy's when he was pissed off. The only difference was that she wasn't cursing him out, calling him every name under the sun and then some, or jabbing a hypo rudely into his neck. Puffing out her lower lip, Jo practically whined, "That's not fair, Daddy."
"I know, Jo. But sometimes life isn't fair. You'll have plenty of time for grown up things when you're older. For now you don't need to know what that is," McCoy said as gently as he could. Under the table, he stomped as hard as he could on Jim's shin, hoping it'd leave a nice heel impression. Len took a bit of sick, twisted pleasure in the muted squeak of pain that emanated from Kirk, and the glare he received in return.
"God! Stop it, Bones!"
Len leaned over and laid his open palm on Jim's shoulder. In a harsh whisper directly into Kirk's ear, McCoy hissed, "Jim, you can thank whatever deity you pray to that my daughter is sitting in front of you. I'm trying to raise her to be a lady, so killing you with my bare hands wouldn't be very appropriate for her to see."
Jim wasn't sure if the correct response was to laugh or to be afraid. He settled eventually on laughter, letting his mischievous nature shine straight through. "You'd have to catch me first."
"Don't tempt me," McCoy said, low and deadly.
Jim shuddered at the feral look in McCoy's eyes. He scooted back as far as he could in the booth, wondering if it would be appropriate to hop over the table and sprint out the door. Normally, Bones was totally harmless; he was a doctor, not a brawler, and he showed it every time he was forced to do anything that resembled hand-to-hand combat. Kirk always soundly whipped him, and did so without ever once breaking a sweat. For all of eternity, Jim would always be the superior fighter, the one who would take down the threat while McCoy mumbled about unnecessary risks. But apparently, accidental teaching something lascivious to his best friend's daughter totally changed the course of the game.
Maybe Bones wasn't so harmless after all.
Next Up: Joanna meets Captain Christopher Pike.