Title: Pirates Read Too (#6, J ‘N B Series)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk
Summary: Comment!fic for this picture post at jim_and_bones of Karl in a badass outfit reading a book. An obsession can start at a young age.
Previous Parts: Another Day, Another Dollar, and a Daily Show? | Fight the Good Fight | Don’t Touch the Rock | A Tear Worth Gold | Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 2

PIRATES READ TOO!

The small boy pauses in his toddling along to slowly lip-sync the print on a peeling poster slapped haphazardly against the dingy terminal wall. His mother—in a hurry to catch the shuttle before all of the double seats are taken—tugs urgently at his hand and coaxes, “Walk with Mommy, sweetie. Don’t you want to ride the shuttle?” But the child ignores her, his baby blue eyes meandering from the bold block letters of the SF Book Club’s holiday promotional poster (it’s near Halloween but he is too young to make the connection with the patch-eyed pirate snarling jovially and waving a digital book pad at his audience of unseen children) to an occupied bench lining the wall some feet away. He widens his eyes and sticks a finger in his mouth, making a soundless noise of surprise. Impatient, the woman slings him up onto her hip, re-shoulders her purse and marches on determinedly.

The child is unappreciative of this interruption of events. He plops his finger out of his mouth, fingernail wetly chewed upon, and points imperatively at the person who has caught his attention. “Momma!” his young voice insists. “MOMMA!”

She glances at the object of his fascination and, not understanding said fascination, says, “What, baby? Yes, I see him.”

“Pirate,” announces the boy.

“No, Jimmy. There are no pirates today.”

Jimmy leans in counterpoint to her body, as far as he can reach, and points more furiously, first at the man then at the poster. “Pirate!”

The dark-haired man on the bench looks up, realizing the shout is aimed in his direction. He spies the little boy’s gesturing and comprehends that he has been identified by a precocious five-year old. The stranger closes the open book on his knee, lifts his eyebrows comically, and grins at the blond child. His thumbs-up is confirmation: oh yes, I am a pirate. A reading pirate.

The boy laughs to himself, satisfied. The harried mother shifts the weight of her son absently while digging in her purse for their shuttle tokens. Once she finds the tokens, she hands them to the attendant and only then notices her boy is gleefully cheerful, more so than before. “What’s so funny?” she asks. “Want to share the joke with Mommy?”

Jimmy nods judiciously, though his mother is once again preoccupied, attempting to safely board herself and her child onto the shuttle-craft headed for the outskirts of San Francisco. Next month, they will leave the city altogether for Iowa but she hasn’t tried explaining that to him yet.

“Pirate man,” Jimmy informs her.

“Mmm, pirates,” she concedes without thought, stroking a hand across the crown of his head.

“Pirates rwead!”

When they are settled in their seats, she leans over to kiss his forehead. “Of course pirates read, darling.” Winona Kirk smiles down at her bouncy child.

He kicks his legs in agreement, then turns his attention to demolishing the seatbelt preventing him from a few fun minutes of exploration of the shuttle and its other occupants.

Twenty years later…

“What the hell is this?”

“Pants.”

McCoy rolls his eyes. “I know what they are, Jim. I mean, why are you shoving them at me? They’re… black,” he says with a hint of disapproval.

“And have lots of pockets for your knives,” James T. Kirk informs his companion.

“Knives are barbaric,” remarks the doctor pointedly, eyeing the pants more warily, no doubt wondering if Jim has stowed uncouth things in its many pockets.

“A scalpel isn’t a knife?”

“Shut up.”

“Booones,” says Jim in a half-whine, “put them on. And here!” He tosses another article of clothing at the man. “This one, too!”

McCoy holds up the thin mesh top and makes an unhappy face. “It’s ripped, kid.” Jim stares at McCoy until he caves. “Why do I have to wear it?”

The young Kirk asks with a sad shake of his head, “When’s the last time you looked at a calendar?”

“I know what day it is! It’s—”

“Halloween. And you’re a pirate. Put it on.”

Leonard immediately drops the clothes in a pile on the floor like they are burning hot. “What are we, five? Idiot.”

“Nooo, but we’re going to Gaila’s Monster Bash. It’s costume only.” Jim crowds McCoy, resolutely stuffs the pants and shirt back into the man’s arms, and herds him toward the bathroom. “If we’re late, we miss the good booze!”

“I’m not going!” comes the loud complaint, muffled only by the slamming of the bathroom door.

Jim just grins. When Leonard returns to the room dressed in the outfit Jim swindled from an actual space pirate (he has great connections but Bones refuses to believe this), Jim gives the good-looking man an appreciative once-over and says, eyes bright, “Almost.”

McCoy looks nonplussed. “Almost? I look like a damn vagabond!”

After a moment of shoving aside various items near the foot of his bed (PADDS, a toothbrush, that one sock which has been missing forever, and a half-eaten apple) Jim finds what he is looking for and tenderly tucks the small object into Bones’ hand.

McCoy looks at it, bemused. “A book?”

Jim slides his arm over McCoy’s shoulders, surreptitiously leaning into his fantasy come to life. “Don’t you know, Bones? Pirates read too.”

His Bones, it seems, isn’t going to waste breath arguing the point. Thus Jimmy, as anticipated, wins his very own reading pirate.

-Fini

The Case of the Mondays

Related Posts:

• Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 4 (#40, J ‘N B Series) (40/40) – from March 29, 2013
• The Light In Which We’re Cast (#39, J ‘N B Series) – from March 20, 2013
• Playing Life to Win (#38, J ‘N B Series) – from March 14, 2013
• An Intergalactic Fandom (#37, J ‘N B Series) – from January 15, 2013
• We Fight to Win (#36, J ‘N B Series) – from January 4, 2013