Fic: Not the Maltese Falcon
Title: Not the Maltese Falcon
Betas: Many thanks to lesserpanda and selinamoonfire for the little spit and polish they gave this.
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,850
Pairings/Characters: Kirk/McCoy
Warnings: First person pov (it's Noir!), mentions of homophobia within a historical context
Disclaimer: Not mine, dammit!
Summary: Leonard McCoy stood outside the door, fighting a silent battle over what to tell the man on the other side.
A/N: This was written a little while ago for a lovely set of pictures over at jim_and_bones. I've had it sitting around for a bit as I worked on other things and as today is my birthday I thought I might as well share it with you all. ;) Also, it means I get to mark off the Noir entry on my au_abc bingo card. Yay! Another one bites the dust.
This is the part of the job I hate. Telling the client exactly what they want to hear and at the same time what they don’t want to hear. I’ve been doing this long enough now to know that they hire me to find the information and more often than not, they really don’t want to hear the truth. They still want to believe the lies they tell themselves each night just before sleep claims them. They are still loved, that money is coming their way, their boss isn’t sleeping with their wife...okay so that last one sure wasn’t gonna apply to the guy on the other side of the door. He was the boss and yeah, he has charm to spare. No wife, girlfriend, or daughter was safe. Shit, the man was apparently sleeping with that red haired firecracker of a mistress to the top Russian guy in this town. Right under his nose. The kid has balls.
The second one didn’t apply to him either. His family had money and he had gone and tripled it. Achieved all that in the three years since he had breezed into town and taken over the family business. Now the first one, ah that was the conundrum. Rumors had swept through San Fran the minute his shoes hit the pavement. The estrangement between mother and son, the heroic death of the father and the older brother gone missing.
I was good at ferreting the truth out of rumors and okay, maybe no one had paid me to look into it, but curiosity and the cat and all that. I couldn’t resist not knowing anything in this town. You never knew when you would need that information. My papa had always taught me to look below the surface and my mother had one of the best poker faces in the South. I might have left Georgia far behind that blustery autumn day, but I didn’t leave the lessons I learned behind.
Okay, so yeah, I was stalling, but I suspected what was gonna happen when I walked in that door. It wasn’t going to be good.
My parents didn’t raise no coward, so with a fortifying breath I moved my hand down to turn the knob on the door. The frosted glass hadn’t let me see in, but I bet he damn well knew I had been standing just outside. A game of cat and mouse we had been playing since he had walked into my office three weeks ago. Perched his ass on the corner of my desk, like some perky little secretary. That smile and confidence that said he knew he was always gonna get what he wanted, what he needed. I wanted to shove that smile right off his face and outta my office, but I needed the money and if I was honest with myself, (which normally only happened about two-thirds of a way through some smooth bourbon), I knew I needed to solve this mystery.
I pushed the door open and, just as I suspected, a flash of a red dress, spiked heels and flowing blonde tresses snuck out the other side of the room to head back to her desk. The kid was sitting on a cane chair he had pulled away from the wall, his head bowed down, some notes sitting next to him on a little side table. He seemed to have an aversion to sitting behind the desk that had been his father’s. Not once, in the four meetings I’d had in this room, had I found him sitting there.
No tie. An indication that things other than work might have been going on in here. Hands clasped tight together. Trying to appear calm and relaxed, but I knew him. Tension was there in every line of his long, lean body. I, at least, had tried to conform to the dress standards. Yeah, so Chapel had yelled at me to tighten the thing up when I left the office. Woman has one hell of a mouth on her. I had my tie on, but his was nowhere in sight.
He didn’t even look up as I closed the door with a loud click. So I stood there and waited, waited which was against all my own natural instincts. Eyeing his suit that cost more than I earn in a year. I’d felt what those suits feel like against your skin a few times before. Never again would I feel it, although I sorely wanted to reach out and touch...those are thoughts I needed to stop right now.
“Where is he?” Jim said, still looking down.
“Now, Mr. Kirk-” I started to say as I held a hand up. I really didn’t want to tell him. What stopped me continuing was those eyes being raised in my direction.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but if he only knew the power they had over me. I would be even more royally screwed than I was now.
“Don’t you ‘Mr. Kirk’ me, it’s Jim and you know it, Bones.” There was that ridiculous nickname he had given me after a late night meeting where he’d tried to give me information I already had. Things had been said and revealed that I really wish I could remember. An eighth of a way through my second bottle of the day, yeah, not gonna remember and that was why I had done it. Secrets, lies and truths I was the keeper of, and some of them I really wish I wasn’t their keeper.
“Mr. Kirk was my father. Now where is he?” Jim was standing now, bristling and looking for a fight. I had heard about his fists. The Irish brawler blood was strong in this one.
I started to form the word ‘Mister’ again, but at one look from him I snapped my mouth shut. I started again. “Jim, now promise me you won’t do nothing stupid?”
Up went that heavy eyebrow of his. “I pay you for information, Bones, and I know you’ve got it, so spill.”
I sighed again and braced myself as Jim did something that took me a little aback; he headed over to that oak desk. The monstrosity that screamed wealth and prosperity and don’t fuck with me, I have the power.
“Cat got your tongue?” Jim asked as he opened a drawer and then just stood there looking down at whatever was in it.
“Piers, he’s holed up down at the Piers,” I said quickly.
“Where?”
“Jim,” I tried for a placating tone.
“Where?” he repeated, that tone of command that came so natural to him out in full force.
“I, well, I-” I started to try to find a way out of telling him and then watched as he slowly reached into the drawer and pulled out a gun.
A colt. His daddy’s colt to be precise. There wasn’t a man, woman or child in the whole of the US of A. that didn’t know of that weapon.
“Jim, no!” I cried as I ran over to the desk and grabbed his hand.
Those blue eyes looked up at me in shock, his lips parted, seeming to want to form a word.
“Please, Jim, don’t,” I pleaded, knowing I sounded like those dames that came to me looking to have their theories proven wrong and more often it wasn’t so. They wanted their man back, to stay with them, to always want them. That is what I knew I sounded like.
“Bones,” such an odd name, but breathed out of those lips I wanted to hear it said forever.
He blinked twice and then grabbed my tie, pulled me close and kissed me. Oh God, whatever sin I had committed in the past, was nothing compared to this. In shock I felt the press of those lips, tasted cherry. From Jim or from his secretary who I knew had a weakness for cherry pop. The man used kisses as power and this was like a bomb going off and annihilating an entire building. There was a groan. I think it was me, as I grabbed onto his shirt and held on for the ride. If I was going to hell, I sure as shit was gonna make it the best ride of my life. I squeezed his wrist and I heard, in the distance the gun clatter onto the desk.
His body pressed up close and the heat, that suit, all $200 worth of it was divine.
“Bones, where is he?” Jim whispered into my lips.
Power, kisses, and knowledge. There is a reason James T. Kirk was so feared - from the City Council chambers, down to the docks and everywhere in between. There wasn’t a way the man didn’t know how to wield them to make people bend to his will, to his way of thinking.
“Jim,” I really needed to try and finish a sentence here, but my thinking was happening a little lower than my brain at the moment.
“I will get my answer, Bones, but the sooner you tell me, the sooner I can deal with it and be back to give you your final payment,” Jim said, his eyes staring resolutely into mine.
I know I flinched at the possible implications. He saw it. He never missed anything.
“You’ll get the money I promised you. Pike told me you were like a dog with a bone. Our business arrangement will come to an end, but you and I,” here he waved at the small space between our bodies. “This isn’t finished. Not by a long way. You stay right here and I’ll come back for you.”
“Jim-” there I went again, anyone listening to this would think I didn’t know what the English language was for. Mind you they would have some powerful ammunition to pull Kirk down. That’s when I realized it.
Jim hadn’t used the kisses to control me. In kissing me he had put a tremendous amount of power into my hands. I could bring him down if I ever revealed what had happened here.
I blinked in awe as to what all that might entail. I had power over James T. Kirk and he was about to head off into some stupid, misguided sense of responsibility to bring closure for his mother and leave me alone. I could run. I could make his life difficult with the suspicion of sodomy, I certainly had my own connections that would believe me, or at least not want me to reveal what I knew about them. None of those were things I wanted or even, I think, I could ever do to him. Jim had given me so much power, so I could and would wait for him.
“Make sure you take that damn automaton of yours. The man has a decent shot on him,” I ordered as I pressed the address into his hand.
There was that blinding smile. The one I had willingly followed into hell. Well, I was a Georgia boy at heart still.
I liked things hot.
Betas: Many thanks to lesserpanda and selinamoonfire for the little spit and polish they gave this.
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,850
Pairings/Characters: Kirk/McCoy
Warnings: First person pov (it's Noir!), mentions of homophobia within a historical context
Disclaimer: Not mine, dammit!
Summary: Leonard McCoy stood outside the door, fighting a silent battle over what to tell the man on the other side.
A/N: This was written a little while ago for a lovely set of pictures over at jim_and_bones. I've had it sitting around for a bit as I worked on other things and as today is my birthday I thought I might as well share it with you all. ;) Also, it means I get to mark off the Noir entry on my au_abc bingo card. Yay! Another one bites the dust.
This is the part of the job I hate. Telling the client exactly what they want to hear and at the same time what they don’t want to hear. I’ve been doing this long enough now to know that they hire me to find the information and more often than not, they really don’t want to hear the truth. They still want to believe the lies they tell themselves each night just before sleep claims them. They are still loved, that money is coming their way, their boss isn’t sleeping with their wife...okay so that last one sure wasn’t gonna apply to the guy on the other side of the door. He was the boss and yeah, he has charm to spare. No wife, girlfriend, or daughter was safe. Shit, the man was apparently sleeping with that red haired firecracker of a mistress to the top Russian guy in this town. Right under his nose. The kid has balls.
The second one didn’t apply to him either. His family had money and he had gone and tripled it. Achieved all that in the three years since he had breezed into town and taken over the family business. Now the first one, ah that was the conundrum. Rumors had swept through San Fran the minute his shoes hit the pavement. The estrangement between mother and son, the heroic death of the father and the older brother gone missing.
I was good at ferreting the truth out of rumors and okay, maybe no one had paid me to look into it, but curiosity and the cat and all that. I couldn’t resist not knowing anything in this town. You never knew when you would need that information. My papa had always taught me to look below the surface and my mother had one of the best poker faces in the South. I might have left Georgia far behind that blustery autumn day, but I didn’t leave the lessons I learned behind.
Okay, so yeah, I was stalling, but I suspected what was gonna happen when I walked in that door. It wasn’t going to be good.
My parents didn’t raise no coward, so with a fortifying breath I moved my hand down to turn the knob on the door. The frosted glass hadn’t let me see in, but I bet he damn well knew I had been standing just outside. A game of cat and mouse we had been playing since he had walked into my office three weeks ago. Perched his ass on the corner of my desk, like some perky little secretary. That smile and confidence that said he knew he was always gonna get what he wanted, what he needed. I wanted to shove that smile right off his face and outta my office, but I needed the money and if I was honest with myself, (which normally only happened about two-thirds of a way through some smooth bourbon), I knew I needed to solve this mystery.
I pushed the door open and, just as I suspected, a flash of a red dress, spiked heels and flowing blonde tresses snuck out the other side of the room to head back to her desk. The kid was sitting on a cane chair he had pulled away from the wall, his head bowed down, some notes sitting next to him on a little side table. He seemed to have an aversion to sitting behind the desk that had been his father’s. Not once, in the four meetings I’d had in this room, had I found him sitting there.
No tie. An indication that things other than work might have been going on in here. Hands clasped tight together. Trying to appear calm and relaxed, but I knew him. Tension was there in every line of his long, lean body. I, at least, had tried to conform to the dress standards. Yeah, so Chapel had yelled at me to tighten the thing up when I left the office. Woman has one hell of a mouth on her. I had my tie on, but his was nowhere in sight.
He didn’t even look up as I closed the door with a loud click. So I stood there and waited, waited which was against all my own natural instincts. Eyeing his suit that cost more than I earn in a year. I’d felt what those suits feel like against your skin a few times before. Never again would I feel it, although I sorely wanted to reach out and touch...those are thoughts I needed to stop right now.
“Where is he?” Jim said, still looking down.
“Now, Mr. Kirk-” I started to say as I held a hand up. I really didn’t want to tell him. What stopped me continuing was those eyes being raised in my direction.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but if he only knew the power they had over me. I would be even more royally screwed than I was now.
“Don’t you ‘Mr. Kirk’ me, it’s Jim and you know it, Bones.” There was that ridiculous nickname he had given me after a late night meeting where he’d tried to give me information I already had. Things had been said and revealed that I really wish I could remember. An eighth of a way through my second bottle of the day, yeah, not gonna remember and that was why I had done it. Secrets, lies and truths I was the keeper of, and some of them I really wish I wasn’t their keeper.
“Mr. Kirk was my father. Now where is he?” Jim was standing now, bristling and looking for a fight. I had heard about his fists. The Irish brawler blood was strong in this one.
I started to form the word ‘Mister’ again, but at one look from him I snapped my mouth shut. I started again. “Jim, now promise me you won’t do nothing stupid?”
Up went that heavy eyebrow of his. “I pay you for information, Bones, and I know you’ve got it, so spill.”
I sighed again and braced myself as Jim did something that took me a little aback; he headed over to that oak desk. The monstrosity that screamed wealth and prosperity and don’t fuck with me, I have the power.
“Cat got your tongue?” Jim asked as he opened a drawer and then just stood there looking down at whatever was in it.
“Piers, he’s holed up down at the Piers,” I said quickly.
“Where?”
“Jim,” I tried for a placating tone.
“Where?” he repeated, that tone of command that came so natural to him out in full force.
“I, well, I-” I started to try to find a way out of telling him and then watched as he slowly reached into the drawer and pulled out a gun.
A colt. His daddy’s colt to be precise. There wasn’t a man, woman or child in the whole of the US of A. that didn’t know of that weapon.
“Jim, no!” I cried as I ran over to the desk and grabbed his hand.
Those blue eyes looked up at me in shock, his lips parted, seeming to want to form a word.
“Please, Jim, don’t,” I pleaded, knowing I sounded like those dames that came to me looking to have their theories proven wrong and more often it wasn’t so. They wanted their man back, to stay with them, to always want them. That is what I knew I sounded like.
“Bones,” such an odd name, but breathed out of those lips I wanted to hear it said forever.
He blinked twice and then grabbed my tie, pulled me close and kissed me. Oh God, whatever sin I had committed in the past, was nothing compared to this. In shock I felt the press of those lips, tasted cherry. From Jim or from his secretary who I knew had a weakness for cherry pop. The man used kisses as power and this was like a bomb going off and annihilating an entire building. There was a groan. I think it was me, as I grabbed onto his shirt and held on for the ride. If I was going to hell, I sure as shit was gonna make it the best ride of my life. I squeezed his wrist and I heard, in the distance the gun clatter onto the desk.
His body pressed up close and the heat, that suit, all $200 worth of it was divine.
“Bones, where is he?” Jim whispered into my lips.
Power, kisses, and knowledge. There is a reason James T. Kirk was so feared - from the City Council chambers, down to the docks and everywhere in between. There wasn’t a way the man didn’t know how to wield them to make people bend to his will, to his way of thinking.
“Jim,” I really needed to try and finish a sentence here, but my thinking was happening a little lower than my brain at the moment.
“I will get my answer, Bones, but the sooner you tell me, the sooner I can deal with it and be back to give you your final payment,” Jim said, his eyes staring resolutely into mine.
I know I flinched at the possible implications. He saw it. He never missed anything.
“You’ll get the money I promised you. Pike told me you were like a dog with a bone. Our business arrangement will come to an end, but you and I,” here he waved at the small space between our bodies. “This isn’t finished. Not by a long way. You stay right here and I’ll come back for you.”
“Jim-” there I went again, anyone listening to this would think I didn’t know what the English language was for. Mind you they would have some powerful ammunition to pull Kirk down. That’s when I realized it.
Jim hadn’t used the kisses to control me. In kissing me he had put a tremendous amount of power into my hands. I could bring him down if I ever revealed what had happened here.
I blinked in awe as to what all that might entail. I had power over James T. Kirk and he was about to head off into some stupid, misguided sense of responsibility to bring closure for his mother and leave me alone. I could run. I could make his life difficult with the suspicion of sodomy, I certainly had my own connections that would believe me, or at least not want me to reveal what I knew about them. None of those were things I wanted or even, I think, I could ever do to him. Jim had given me so much power, so I could and would wait for him.
“Make sure you take that damn automaton of yours. The man has a decent shot on him,” I ordered as I pressed the address into his hand.
There was that blinding smile. The one I had willingly followed into hell. Well, I was a Georgia boy at heart still.
I liked things hot.