Author’s Notes: I would have posted this yesterday, but the season finales of NCIS and NCIS: LA shot that plan straight to hell. (Gix’s sidenote rant: WTF is with all the explosions in season finales this year? Like, do we have to blow up everything in all the procedurals? Come on. I am nothing but a lowly fan fiction writer, but I dare say I could find something more original than that. Okay. I’m done. Hopping down off my soapbox now.)
Anyway, apologies for the teaser I posted on Monday. I don’t normally do stuff like that (you all know how long my chapters usually are), but I couldn’t help crawling around in Kirk’s head like that. The rest of the story is much more full-bodied, so hopefully it makes up for it. Here’s chapter two. As always, comments are loved. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I only wish I owned them. Sadly, I do not and make no monetary profit from this fic.
Chapter |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4A |
4B |
========
Chapter 2
“Bones. Bones. Bones.”
“For Chrissake, kid. I’m busy.” McCoy rolled his eyes behind his newspaper. He was tempted to roll it up and use it to smack Jim upside the head, but in the end, that would be a waste of perfectly good paper.
Besides which, there had to be a man law somewhere that expressly forbade half of what Jim did on a regular basis. Among other things, there was no way any self respecting adult male should be allowed to carry out a conversation through a flimsy metal bathroom stall door while still maintaining his dignity. Shaking his head, McCoy glared through the tiny gap between the door and the wall while he tried not to dwell on just how absurd his life had become.
Outside the door, Jim sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. “Clearly. Man, that’s rank. What the hell did you eat?”
“Football chili. And you’re the one standing there, idiot,” McCoy retorted, disappointed that the growly death stares had no visible effect on Jim whatsoever.
“Well, do me a favor and take care of that before you get in the car,” Kirk replied, waving a hand in front of his face. “God, that’s so bad it should be illegal.”
“I’ll get right on that as soon as I’ve got some privacy. That means you leave. Now.” He looked back down at his paper, and then up again at Jim when he realized the kid hadn’t moved. With a dramatic sigh, McCoy hissed out an irritated, “What?”
“You will not believe what I found,” Kirk whispered conspiratorially, even though executing a private conversation in a room with the acoustics of a high-ceiling cave was nigh on impossible.
Annoyed, McCoy swore. “If you’re not going to tell me that you finally found maturity, fuck off for the next ten minutes and leave me in peace. You’re weirding me out standing there.”
“But Bones! You won’t believe--” Jim started, only to be cut off by his partner.
“I don’t care! Go away. Go sign out a couple of radios and then go run in your hamster wheel to burn off all that excess energy I know you have. It wouldn’t be proper if I shot you because you’re an annoying little shit,” McCoy said with a flourish of his hand. He focused back down on his paper, effectively ending the conversation.
Kirk knew when he was being dismissed, but he’d gotten his partner’s attention. With a shrug, Jim executed a perfect about face and strode out of the locker room. He did as McCoy asked; he signed out a couple of radios, stopped by the break room to grab some terrible coffee, and then wandered aimlessly around the station house for a few minutes while he waited for McCoy to finish up.
He had never been so excited to report to work, save for maybe his first day. Jim hit the jackpot of all things unconventional when he started exploring his lieutenant’s iPod. Granted, Kirk thought that Pike’s musical selection would consist of Boring Old Man garbage, which meant country, country and some more very old country. But when he powered the thing on, he was pleasantly surprised (and a more than a little shocked) at what he found. Not only was it organized by playlists and genres, but Pike’s selection was vast and eclectic.
The slim device turned out to be about six gigabytes deep, which, for someone who claimed that the extent of his technical expertise was making a bullet fly straight, that fact in itself was impressive. Chris (not that Jim would ever call the man that to his face because he wasn’t that stupid) apparently concentrated most of his musical taste in the classic rock and country genres, but next to four or five Montgomery Gentry songs sat a healthy selection of early-ish Metallica. (As a self-proclaimed metal head, Kirk was silently relieved to see nothing from the atrocity that was St. Anger on his lieutenant’s iPod, thereby forgoing the metal intervention that would have otherwise been necessary.)
Kirk snagged the keys to their assigned cruiser and walked to the car. He unlocked the door and settled into the passenger’s seat, propping one foot up on the dash before sticking the key in the ignition. McCoy was certainly taking his sweet-ass time today, and Kirk’s impatience was starting to get the better of him. Jim had a laundry list of things he wanted to follow up on from the day previous, but he couldn’t go anywhere without his partner. While he wiated, Jim let his mind wander as he tried to make heads or tails of the data he’d accidentally discovered.
He always thought that a person’s taste in music said a lot about their personality. Usually, Kirk was right on the nose with what he could see the people around him listening to, and it helped solidified his people radar’s accuracy. But the fact that Jim could have misread Pike so badly both intrigued and troubled him. On one hand, Kirk was glad to know that there were apparently way more layers to Christopher Pike that he’d initially thought. But, if he couldn’t even read a man whom he saw nearly every day of his professional existence correctly, that didn’t quite bode well for correctly deciphering the complexities of the criminal element.
“Finally,” Jim muttered when he saw McCoy approaching, shaking off the rare, self-depreciating thoughts on his own competency. He checked his watch as Bones opened the door and settled inside. “What, were you trying to set a record in there? Are we going to have to fumigate the locker room?”
Out of the corner of his eye, the sergeant shot Jim a look and rolled his eyes. He reached for the keys he knew would be in the ignition and turned them, allowing the car to rumble to life. McCoy shifted out of park and into drive and accelerated smoothly out of the parking lot and on to the street. They drove in silence for a few miles, making their way toward the assigned patrol area. At a stoplight, McCoy turned in his seat and asked Kirk, “Now, what the hell was so important this morning?”
“Did you ever get the feeling you were wrong about something?” Kirk asked, flipping through his notebook. He pulled the pen from the pocket of his shirt and scribbled a few more words on the already cluttered sheet, circling and underlining as he went.
McCoy snorted. “Every damned day, kid.” Easing the car through the green light, Bones chanced a peek over toward Kirk. Jim’s head was still down, face knit in concentration as he tapped the pen against the pad. McCoy sighed, knowing he was about to take the bait. “What’s got that brain of yours going this time?”
“Pike.”
Lifting a contemplative eyebrow, McCoy parroted, “Pike?”
“Yeah, Lieutenant Pike. Our fearless leader,” Jim responded as innocently as he dared. Too much sweetness and Bones would instantly put the kibosh on anything he might say; too nonchalant and McCoy would think he was joking.
Giant, red, flashing lights started circling McCoy’s vision, accompanied by the rather annoying ringing of warning sirens in his head. Kirk’s face had that poorly disguised mischievous look plastered all over it, his eyes twinkling in delight. The kid tried in vain to sit still, even though the only result was that Jim looked just that side of devilish. Len narrowed his eyes. Something felt terribly off, and the last time McCoy got a similar feeling in his gut, he wound up babysitting intake for a week while the chief contemplated the future of his job. “Jim,” Bones warned, drawing out the vowel of Kirk’s first name. “You’ve got that look again.”
“What look?” Jim asked, doing his level best to look completely innocent.
“The look you get when you’re about to tell me you did something stupid, which is the moment right before you suck me into whatever bullshit you managed to get yourself into this time,” McCoy retorted at Jim, even thought the lecture was directed as much at himself as it was towards his partner.
“Yeah, whatever. You over exaggerate.”
McCoy muttered something rude under his breath.
“Come on, man! I’m not in trouble, no one wants to beat me up, and that stuffy bastard from IA still thinks I broke the chief’s windshield with the potato bazooka, not you. But really, Bones. Do you ever wonder what Pike is like away from the job?” Kirk asked while neatly sidestepping McCoy’s semi-heartfelt rant.
“No. I rode with the guy for long enough, and I know what he’s like.” Bones glanced over at Jim, all the pieces of the mental puzzle sliding into place. Face twisting in honest horror, McCoy said, “Oh, no. No, no, no. Leave him alone. There are rules, Jim, and part of those rules usually mean lieutenants are off limits. Whatever it is, I want nothing to do with it. Don’t even think about it.”
“Too late,” Jim replied, holding up the misappropriated iPod that he produced from the cargo pocket of his pants. Kirk was practically bouncing in his seat, showing off his prize with pride as if he’d invaded a Spanish galleon alone and stolen it from the clutches of a ruthless, famed pirate.
McCoy gaped. At least to the sergeant, it was a well-known fact that Lt. Pike rarely went anywhere without some form of music. When they rode together, he was always tapping out some sort of rhythm on the steering wheel as he drove, or humming something random in the car. It shouldn’t have surprised Len that Pike was more than a proficient guitarist, but it did surprise him that Chris never mentioned the fact that he played. Pike was the opposite of his trainee in almost every conceivable way, so where McCoy was happy to keep his musical talents to himself, he never thought Chris would have done the same. When the two men literally ran into each other at a bar during open mic night, McCoy had been too shocked to even formulate a correctly punctuated insult. The then-sergeant beat him to it, Chris saying that it wasn’t a secret if Leonard never asked.
McCoy sighed. He often wondered why Jim chose law enforcement as a career when he was clearly an expert at finding trouble. As a recovering juvenile delinquent, Len figured maybe Jim knew he’d be a good cop because he would know what to look for in the ‘been there, done that,’ sense of the phrase. It didn’t help him now and with how pissed Chris would be when he discovered his missing iPod, but the thought was at least there. Raising one effortless eyebrow, McCoy asked, “You stole Pike’s iPod?”
Jim shrugged. “Well, I didn’t really steal it as much as I grabbed the wrong one.”
“Semantics, Jim. You stole the thing. You also know how much Pike loves it. And now, you want my help in covering it up,” McCoy scolded. The pessimistic part of his brain dived right for the worst case scenario, because it was Kirk. Nothing good came of Jim Kirk’s bad behavior. With an emphatic shake of his head, Len said, “Not gonna happen.” He contemplated turning the car straight around to go back to the station to personally hand the Lieutenant his property, if only to keep his ass out of hot water. He certainly wasn’t afraid of Pike; he’d known the man for ten years and considered him a friend, but as the lieutenant held the duty roster, McCoy didn’t want to push his luck with the man who could literally make his life a living hell with one swipe of a pen.
Kirk waved his hand, effectively cutting through McCoy’s bullshit. “Would you relax, old man? Pike is not going to ground us for misbehaving, and I don’t need your help with this. Your poker face is about as good as my grandma’s, which is a nice way of saying that it sucks. I’d be better off on my own. Besides, this time, it was an honest mistake. Remember that scuffle down at intake on Friday?”
McCoy nodded. “Sure do. Damn drunk wedding party.”
“That’s the one. I was spotting for the lieutenant in the weight room right before that whole thing erupted, and I dropped my iPod on his desk when we ran down there to help out,” Jim explained. “When I left, I took his by mistake. We have the same one, and they were lying side by side. I picked up his instead of mine. Simple as that.”
Len eyed his partner warily. It sounded like a plausible story, and he was well aware that both Kirk and Pike were dressed in workout shorts and t-shirts when they sprinted into the jail intake area. He also knew that both his current partner and his former partner had black iPod classics, the same generation and about the same general age. For once, McCoy was forced to conclude that Jim’s explanation wasn’t full of shit with enough holes to sink the Titanic. He found himself looking for a calendar to write the date down for posterity’s sake.
Contemplating Kirk’s account silently, Len looked around and made sure no cars were approaching in either direction of the two-lane road. In the middle of the street, he threw the Charger into reverse and hopped the curb about twenty feet from the apex of a large, curving turn. Tucking the car between a road construction sign and a big tree, the only thing that was visible from around the bend was the car’s push bars, and even then, it was debatable if every driver would see him. Kirk let out a low, appreciative whistle of their hiding spot. “Not bad, Bones.”
“I really wish you would stop calling me that,” McCoy replied, grimacing when Kirk applied his nickname for his partner.
Jim shrugged. “What? It’s fitting for you. No one knows the real story, so would you just pull that stick out of your ass for five minutes and lighten up? It’s good fun!”
McCoy grunted, rolling his eyes in the process. He shot one more glare in Kirk’s direction, wondering for the thousandth time if Jim’s loads of good cheer was some sort of a mental deficiency or if he really was that happy all the damned time. “Did you forget to take your medication this morning? You’re more annoying than usual, and I don’t mean that in a good way.”
“I was complimenting your skill as a police officer. This is a damned good hiding spot, if I do say so myself. That’s all I was doing,” Jim said innocently. His mega-watt smile, the one that had women cooing and fawning all over themselves during traffic stops, was plastered all over his face. He knew it annoyed the shit out of his partner, and did it just because he could.
McCoy ignored Kirk, instead pulling out his notepad to address a couple of the items he’d written down to check out when he went back on duty after the weekend. On his to-do list for the week was, among other things, to slow down some of the traffic near a particularly troublesome intersection located in one of the working class neighborhoods of Iowa City. The four-way stop was at the end of a large curve of a blind intersection, and drivers always came around the corner too quickly and rear-ended each other or blew the stop sign completely. With the presence of an elementary school three blocks away and a new school year starting, McCoy thought some monetary reminders would be well served to get people to slow down.
Killing the engine, Bones got out of the car, popping the trunk as he stepped clear. He rummaged around in the back through the gear and eventually came up with the radar gun. He plopped back into driver’s seat and aimed the device out his open window. Zeroing in on an approaching motorist, he said to Jim, “Now, about this iPod you stole from Pike.”
“Borrowed,” Kirk fired back.
“Stole.”
“Took by mistake,” Jim argued.
“Stole,” McCoy repeated, this time with more ferocity in his voice.
“Whatever, Bones. I know you believe me. I saw the wheels in your head turning. You think so loudly, no one can miss it.” Kirk didn’t give McCoy any time to object, instead diving right into the whole reason he was so damned giddy. “So do you want to know what was on it?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on! I know you do!” Kirk said as he jotted down the approximate year, make and model of the car Bones was radaring.
McCoy pressed the button to activate the laser on the gun. The reading flashed back at him as the silver Audi drove past. A couple of miles over the limit, the driver was within acceptable ranges of the posted speed. Len sighed and waited for the next car to approach. Without looking back, Len said, “Look kid, what the man listens to is his business. I rode with him long enough to know he likes classic rock and can do a mean impression of Bon Scott. Anything beyond that, I don’t really care.”
Kirk dangled a printed piece of paper in front of Bones’ face. “Even if I have screenshots of the playlists? I was shocked that Lieu’s musical tastes aren’t as old as he is, and I think you’d want the dirt on him, too,” Kirk said. Shifting in his seat, he tossed in a nonchalant, “If you cared. But you don’t. And if you’re going to be holier than thou about it, I’m not going to tell you his most played songs because I have that, too.”
“I could just order you,” McCoy tossed out.
Jim didn’t miss a beat. “Well, then I’ll go to Pike.”
McCoy laughed a short, sarcastic bark that caught Jim by surprise. “And tell him what, exactly? That you stole his iPod, took the damned thing home for the night, and instead of doing the right thing and just giving it back, you hacked it to see what he listens to the most?"
“I didn’t steal it,” Jim mumbled, though without any real gusto. He turned to face his partner as McCoy zapped another car with the laser speed detector. Kirk caught a glimpse at the driver’s recorded speed, and both decided to let the car go. Forty three in a forty mile per hour zone was still acceptable, at least in their minds. Kirk said his partner after Len reset the laser device, “Cut the bullshit, Bones. I know you want to see this list just as much as I did."
Under his breath, Len swore. He knew he should have just left well enough alone, but he had to bite. He cursed himself stupid for taking the bait with Jim, because now, damn it all, he was curious. He set his jaw and grumbled out, “No, Jim. I don’t care. Put the damn thing away and concentrate on your job.”
Len turned his eyes back to the road, concentrating on catching speeders and nothing else. There were times when McCoy really hated being the senior man, and this definitely qualified as one. As Pike once told him, sergeant stripes came with a heaping ton of extra responsibilities (none of which were that glamorous) to go along with a microscopically higher paycheck. At the time, Len thought Chris was bullshitting him. But experience really was the best teacher, and he was seeing more and more that his lieutenant had a point.
McCoy was also was experiencing life from the other side of the training spectrum. At that moment, he surmised if Pike had told him that the main chunk of his additional duties were to be filed under the subcategory of babysitting, he might have reconsidered the logic of taking the sergeant’s exam in the first place. No, it was his job to keep Jim out of trouble and to teach the kid what Chris managed to drill into his rather dense skull. If that meant being the buzzkill from time to time, so be it.
It was just that, deep down, he really, really did want to know what was on that iPod. But it also pained him like nothing else to admit that, especially to an infant like Kirk.
Jim could practically see the parade of logic marching through his partner’s head. It was almost comical the way McCoy analyzed and overanalyzed every situation. Woe would be the day that Leonard would do sometime totally spontaneous or, god forbid, fun. Kirk was wondering if ‘fun’ was a four letter word in the McCoy household. Come to think of it, he didn’t know what the adult McCoy did when he wanted to kick back and relax. ‘Probably sits around at his house, watching History Channel for hours on end or something like that,’ Jim thought with a snort. Out loud, he said, “Come on, McCoy. Don’t be such a hypocrite. You’re really going to sit there and berate me for caving when you would do the same damned thing? Not cool, man. Not cool.”
“And, what exactly would be ‘cool’, Jim? A week’s worth of shit desk duty? Believe me - I have no intention of being handcuffed to you or to a desk for that long ever again, and if Pike were to pull us off patrol, that’s exactly where we’d both be. I’m thinking of my sanity, thank you very much.”
Kirk studied his partner’s partial reflection given off by the windshield of the car. McCoy did have a point, but to Jim, the risk certainly didn’t even come close to eclipsing the reward. But before he could respond, a black BMW raced around the corner at well more than the posted limit. Neither cop needed the radar gun to prove that. Kirk was already buckling his seat belt before McCoy, who barely had time to hit the button to grab an accurate speed for court later on, turned the keys in the ignition and gunned the engine.
“Whoa!” Kirk exclaimed. “Got one!”
“No shit.” Len tossed the radar gun into Kirk’s lap. The rear-wheel drive Charger’s tires spun, laying down a nice patch of rubber on the sidewalk that McCoy was sure he’d catch hell for later. But, the dark flash of M5 was flying so quickly that use of the Charger’s ample horsepower was required, if not a little bit fun. Len hopped the curb with the car, cranked the wheel hard right while power sliding just a teensy, tiny bit, and took off in pursuit.
Kirk dropped the pieces of printed out screen capture from Pike’s iPod onto the floor of the car and called into dispatch to alert the controllers of their location and signal. Luckily, the flashing lights and sirens were enough to deter the driver of the speedy sports sedan, and he wisely pulled over and stopped as soon as he was able. Both cops exhaled a sigh of relief, as neither wanted to be involved in drawn out chase. Though Jim was an adrenaline junkie extraordinaire, the supreme mountain of paperwork involved in chasing a suspect through the city was staggering. And vast. And annoying. And ridiculous. It was the downside of police work that no one really bothered to mention until it had to be done. With Kirk being the new guy, most of if McCoy delegated to him with barely concealed glee. The older man claimed it was so Jim could learn the ropes, but Kirk knew that Bones simply didn’t want to do it.
Though McCoy constantly preached to his wet-behind-the-ears probie that there, “Was no such thing as routine traffic stop,” Jim thought the ticket given to the driver of the M5 was terribly…routine. Contrite and probably more afraid of what he’d face from his parents when he got home, the seventeen year old driver of the car was contrite and apologetic through the entire procedure, even going as far as volunteering up information before it was asked.
As it was a beautiful fall day, Kirk decided that sitting inside the car while he finished up the post-stop paperwork would be a crime nice weather. Winters in the Midwest were long enough, and Jim did all he could to soak up the rays when he could. Jim laid the report on the hood of the car and dragged out the process as long as he dared. He enjoyed being outside far too much to sit cooped up in a police car all day. Glancing over the tops of his aviator sunglasses, it looked like McCoy was doing the same. His partner was standing directly to his left, the sergeant leaning casually up against the passenger side front quarter panel of the issued Charger. His face was angled up toward the sky slightly, hands resting on the top of his duty rig.
Jim reread the contents of his report for accuracy. He gave Bones a hard nudge with his left elbow and handed the piece of paper over for inspection. McCoy read it and was about to open his mouth to say something when the radio on his shoulder crackled to life.
“Dispatch to six-two.”
McCoy reached up, hit the transmit button, and answered Serdeski’s call. “Six-two here.”
“Six-two, are you clear of that traffic stop yet?”
Kirk signed off on the report, affixing his non-descript John Hancock next to McCoy’s illegible, looping scribble. He reached up and grabbed the mic. “We’re clear, dispatch. What do you have for us now?”
“Emergency just got a report of a purse snatching outside Savers. RP states that suspect description is a white male, about six feet tall, dark brown hair, mid thirties, wearing a dark blue sweatshirt and blue jeans. Other witnesses said he took off north on a yellow bicycle.”
“Was the suspect armed?” McCoy asked, picking the speeding report up off the hood of the car before he started striding toward the driver’s side.
“RP said that the man claimed he had a gun. She felt something pressed into her back, but never saw the weapon. Proceed with caution and advise once on scene.”
Kirk and McCoy were running to their respective sides of the car. Bones was in and ready to go, buckling his seat belt at the same time he reached for the radio mic tucked under the dash of the car. “Understood, dispatch. Six-two, fourteen fifty-five Round Lake Boulevard.”
As was customary in their squad, Kirk reached for the lights and sirens, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He took a quick peek over at McCoy to find the sergeant’s jaw clenched, eyes focused and determined on the task ahead. Jim sighed. “So much for a routine afternoon.”
McCoy’s eyes flicked right quickly and then turned back to focus on the road. He swerved past a slow moving Saab that felt it wasn’t appropriate to pull over for the flashing lights and sirens with a curse before he said to Kirk, “What do I keep telling you about that shit?”
Jim nearly rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know. There is no such thing. I get it,” he agreed, though he knew McCoy could tell he thought anything but.
Snorting, Leonard replied, “Some days, kid, I’m really not sure you do.”
========
Next Up: Sometimes, the right answer is not always the most obvious. Other times, it’s plain as day. Kirk discovers both in the course of one shift.