Title: Many Bells Down (8/12)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Sequel to Along Comes a Stranger; Riverside ‘verse. Dating Bones and Spock is wonderful, better than Jim imagined. Then Bones’ mother arrives, Spock receives the offer of a lifetime outside of Riverside, and Jim has to make a series of choices that could completely change his – and ultimately Riverside’s – future.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Part Eight

“I just don’t know, Mom.”

Winona reaches out and rubs her fingers against the back of her son’s neck. She would do this when he was fussy as an infant, she always says; and she has continued to use the same method over twenty years later because it still works.

Jim drops his head forward and absently picks at the kitchen table cloth under his fingertips. The calm atmosphere of the farm reminds him why he loves it here—and why it will always be home to him. He is comforted by its familiarity.

He thinks of earlier this morning and why, essentially, he is here seeking solace from someone other than Bones and Spock.

~~~

The three men had escorted Joanna and Eleanor to the airport terminal for the trip to Georgia. Rather than returning by bus as the grandmother and granddaughter originally arrived in Riverside, Spock was flying them back first-class. His personal gift, he had said, while casually placing the plane tickets in front of Mrs. McCoy at their final late-night adults-only dinner. (Saturday’s party had lingered well until dusk and Joanna was napping against her father.) When the woman tried to refuse the tickets, the lawyer had simply blinked at her and remarked, “You may discard them if you wish, Eleanor.” Of course Eleanor gasped at the idea of such wasteful spending; thereby Spock had circumvented an argument quite neatly and painlessly. Jim later gave Spock a kiss for being so brilliant.

There were tears on Leonard’s and Joanna’s part. The little girl clung to her father’s neck and said she didn’t want to leave. She pleaded, “I was good, Daddy. Why can’t I stay with you ‘n Prince Jim ‘n Uncle Spock? I was good!”

Leonard kissed both of her cheeks. “‘Course you were, JoJo, but we talked about this. How sad would your mama be if you didn’t come home?” His voice was meant to be soothing but Jim could hear the strain in it. That strain made Leonard’s boyfriend clench his fist and have to look away while tamping down on emotions out-of-place for the occasion. Jim remained where he was along the curb of the airport entrance standing next to Spock.

Joanna did not like the gentle question from her father and tucked her face into his shirt. She was smart for her age, Jim thought, and while she knew deep down no amount of begging or fussing would change her father’s mind, being a child, it still took longer for her to accept that fact.

Eventually Eleanor coaxed Joanna into letting Leonard go. Leonard rose from his kneeling position, and Joanna, holding her grandmother’s hand, said in a tiny voice, “Your pants are all dirty now, Daddy. Who’s gonna wash ’em if me and Granny leave?”

Leonard touched the top of her head with fondness, with love, but only murmured, “Don’t forget to say goodbye to Spock and Jim.”

She woefully turned away, trailed over to her father’s two companions, and opened her arms with a sad little “Uncle Spock?” The man picked her up without hesitation and let her hold onto him as if she were four or five. Jim was deeply touched by this because Spock had rarely made physical contact with Joanna (as was his nature, Jim had learned in good time, around children). Glancing at McCoy’s mother, Kirk could see tears in her eyes, too.

Leonard said “Ma” and hugged the woman hard. Her composure cracked for a split second and she clung to her son not unlike her granddaughter had. But Eleanor let him go of her own accord, dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief from her purse, and found the strength to square her shoulders. “We’ll be all right,” she told her son. Her face was soft as she first considered him then let her eyes skip over to Jim and Spock, who was still holding Joanna. “You’ll be all right too, I guess.”

Leonard agreed. “I’ve got plenty of people here who’ll look after me.”

The two McCoy’s exchanged something unspoken in that moment. Whatever it was, Jim thought, it was probably what prompted Eleanor to hug him goodbye. She actually patted his back a little as she did so. “You remember your promise now,” she said to Jim by way of conversation.

Jim nodded, suddenly ashamed a part of him was glad Bones’ mother was leaving.

The two people parted, no more words between them. Spock set Joanna down in order to accept Eleanor’s goodbye hug, and Jim squatted to the little girl’s level.

“Hey, Princess,” he said with a smile, “I hope you know I’m going to miss you.”

Joanna firmed her mouth up—identical to an expression of Bones’—and considered him with a gravity that tickled his throat. Calling up his iron will, Jim kept the tickle at bay, preventing it from turning into a laugh. Then Joanna leaned forward and placed a light, shy kiss on his cheek. “You haveta wait for me, Prince Jim,” said the girl in all seriousness as she pulled back to stare at him. “When I’m grown up, we’ll get married.”

Maybe it was her stare, maybe it was her sincere expectation, but somehow Jim found himself saying, “Okay.”

Joanna went to her grandmother’s side, and Leonard joined Jim at his. McCoy said, eyes fixed ahead, “You just keep in mind, Jim, I’ll kill you first before I let you marry my daughter.”

“Sure, Bones,” agreed Jim, undisturbed, “though I doubt that will be a problem. It’s her daddy I am after.”

Bones threaded his fingers through Jim’s, and Jim squeezed them. Watching Bones say goodbye to Joanna wasn’t the easiest thing Jim had ever witnessed but, knowing Leonard McCoy like he did, it was a reminder of why he loved the man so much. Bones would survive as, Jim hoped, they all would in the days to come.

~~~

“Are you jealous of Mr. Singh?” Winona wants to know.

Jim jerks his head up. His denial is a vehement “No!”

“Just checking,” replies his mother mildly. She folds her arms on the kitchen table. “Then why are you so set against Leonard and Spock associating with him?”

Jim gives her a funny look. “Mom, seriously, how can you ask that? The guy wants to turn the Enterprise back into an empty lot.”

“That’s my business, Jimmy,” she says rather sharply. “And it certainly isn’t a valid reason to tell your man you’ll leave him if he takes an opportunity you don’t approve of.”

He gapes. “Why are you fussing at me! I haven’t done anything—”

“Yet,” she interrupts.

He ignores that. “—and, shit, I wouldn’t leave Bones or Spock over Khan.” He says the name with contempt. No, he wouldn’t leave his partners—he’d pack them up along with the rest of his family and move them the hell away from Eugenics Corp.

“Don’t curse at the table,” she tells him, voice mild again. “Sweetie, I don’t why you are so worked up over this man. He isn’t after you in particular. It’s the town he wants,” she explains. Her eyes wander over the kitchen absently as she talks, a sign Winona is more worried than her tone implies. “We’re little fish, Jim. We’re nothing more than the name on a check from his bank account, and even then men like Mr. Singh never miss that money for long. We mean nothing to him, really, in the scheme of things.” She smiles, if somewhat sadly, at Jim. “It’s pointless to fret over somebody you can’t change.”

“I don’t want to change him,” he tells her ominously. “I want to get rid of him.“

Winona shakes her head. “I don’t see how you can.”

“I’ve been thinking—” Jim starts.

She sighs.

He continues stubbornly, “—what if the City Council refuses to approve Eugenics’ permit to build in Riverside?”

“Considering how much the city would profit from a new medical facility, what are the chances the permit wouldn’t be approved?”

Jim counters, “What were the chances you would get to build your dream business? Shit happens, Mom,” he says, thinking of Trelane and the fire which ruined Bob’s diner, “and sometimes we get something good out of it in the end. Maybe Khan being here is a catalyst.”

“What for, if not to up-end our lives?” It seems she agrees with him that Khan isn’t a good thing despite not fully exposing her feelings on the matter.

“To make us realize we have to protect what we care about.” Jim thumps his fist on the table softly then stands up. “Thanks, Mom.”

Winona looks bemused and slightly apprehensive. “Jimmy, last time you had that look you were planning to free the elephants from the zoo.”

“I was five,” he argued, “and the zoo was in Des Moines.”

“Sheriff Komack found you trying to board a Greyhound. I didn’t even know you had slipped out from under Bob’s nose.”

Jim grins. Komack had been a deputy back then. Apparently James T. Kirk’s career as a Riverside nuisance had started at a tender age; at least, Komack never fails to remind him of this whenever they meet as jailor and jailed. And Robert Wesley… “Bob was never good at babysitting.”

“Don’t pick on Bob,” Winona fusses.

Jim is really going to have to have a long chat with the mayor: first he needs to determine where Bob stands on the issue of Eugenics riding into town like an outlaw posse come to stir up trouble and, secondly, he wants to confirm his sneaking suspicion that Winona and Bob might be headed towards a serious romance. Frankly the thought of his mother and Bob as, well, anything other than platonic puts him on the awkward side of jumpy. So he’ll talk to Bob and also make it clear what happens to a man who breaks Winona Kirk’s heart—after his mother pulls out her shotgun, that is.

Winona walks over to a kitchen cabinet and removes a large bowl. “I know you’re determined to get started on whatever rebel-rousing you’ve decided on, but it’s Sunday. Sunday is for spending with family.”

Which is partly why he is here. Leonard had bowed out of the usual Sunday meal by saying he just wanted to nap (which in Bones’ language means he wants to hurt in private for a little while before he lets Jim knock some sense into him) and T’Pau claimed Spock on the pretense of a necessary work-related discussion. Jim doubts it’s pretense at all; he caught a glimpse of Spock and T’Pau in the study amidst a sea of paperwork. Hence why Jim came to the farm alone—and he is glad of it. Jim knows he needs time to put his thoughts into perspective. It doesn’t hurt to talk to his mother about those thoughts either, as their conversation has proved.

Jim plops back into his seat. “Is there cake?”

“There will be. You’re going to help me make it.”

“Only if I get to lick the icing spoon.”

“Since when,” she says, faking offense, “have I ever denied my boy that childish pleasure?”

“Childish, huh? Then what’s your excuse for doing it?”

She laughs. “I’m the mom. Do as I say, not as I do.”

She asks him to find the measuring cups. Jim obliges her, already anticipating the smell of a cake baking in the oven.

He gives no further thought to Khan or Bob or liberating captive elephants.

If Sunday is for relaxing, Monday is for disaster. Jose’s news could not be considered anything but such a thing.

Jim, in surprise, drops his wrench. The clatter of it is a startling echo in the silence of the garage. “You’re selling out? Fuck, no, you aren’t, Jose!”

“Don’t remember it being your choice, chico,” replies his boss, arms crossed.

“It,” he stresses, “directly affects my livelihood. How can you be so—” Jim stops himself, doesn’t finish that statement.

But he doesn’t need to.

“Callous?” Jose sighs. “Sometimes a man has to make choices that keep him up at night. Look, would this be any different if I wanted to retire?”

“But you hate that idea, Jose,” Jim tells him. “Why else would I have felt I could stay here forever? You loathe idleness as much as I do and we both love the work. I always thought they’d have to cart you out in a coffin, man, because you run this place until you fell over dead.”

“It’s good money,” Jose says more quietly. “The kind I can’t make doing tractor repairs and oil changes in a small town. I don’t want to be a fool, Jim, and let an opportunity like this go. I can tell you now, the chances it’ll happen again?” He shakes his head. “Near impossible.”

Jim turns away. He understands; he does. But he’s suffocating under the sudden certainty that Khan is going to take away everything he loves. “I need,” he begins but can’t say he wants to disappear. “Lunch,” Kirk finishes lamely. “I’ll see you in a while.”

Jose only says, “Don’t forget to come back, Jim.”

What is there to come back to? Jim nods half-heartedly. He sheds his overalls in the bathroom, folding the well-worn clothing carefully and setting it on a stool, then scrubs his face clear of grease marks, grabs his jacket, and walks out of the garage.

He doesn’t get far.

Jim pulls off to a side road and stops his motorcycle. The black car trailing him slows to a stop beside him.

His life has turned into a tv drama. Well, no more! he thinks fiercely. Jim tears off his helmet and chucks it at the roof of the car. It hits the edge with a thunk and bounces away into somebody’s rose bush. The window, which was in the process of rolling down, pauses.

Jim, hands fisted, dares, “What the fuck do you want?”

The window finally rolls down all the way. A small face peeks out at him from the dark interior of the car.

“James?” inquires Lady Q as dignified as a royal in her carriage. “You must be careful. I fear the acorns are rather large and deadly this time of year.”

Jim looks at the dent left behind from the impact of his helmet. He puts a hand to his face, shoves down an unexpected giddiness, and asks, “What do you want?”

“Do get in, dear.”

He looks at her from between his fingers. Her voice sounds odd. “Why?”

Lady Q is having none of that, apparently. “James! Please, get in. Hurry!”

He only obeys because she waves at him frantically with that awful fan and he fears she will come out of the vehicle, mad Victorian attire awhirl, and attract unwanted attention. Kirk gets a face full of lace ribbons when he tries to squeeze in beteeen her dress and the door. He holds a petticoat down with an arm so he can see her face. “Why are you away from the comp—campus?”

“I know! Isn’t it frightful?” Her fan snaps open and closed in clear agitation. “But I could not stay safely behind the walls of my castle while you were entrenched with the enemy, James. How fares the battle?”

Jim almost tells her to cut the crap, but her expression is strangely earnest. Some of his resistance melts away.

“Not good,” he admits. “Bones is going to work for Eugenics, Khan has hired Spock as his lawyer, and my boss just told me I’m out of a job.”

The next minute—and ensuing fit—finds Jim half-falling out of the car in order to avoid injury (or suffocation by petticoat). When Lady Q is no longer shrilling like a fire alarm, he looks at her from his sitting position on the ground and wants to know, “Can I have my foot back?”

Lady Q observes the tangle of his sneaker in the ribbons on her dress, calls for the driver Q, and says to her wide-eyed Captain, “Pardon my reaction. Your news was indeed ‘not good.'” To the driver who is suddenly looming over Jim, “Cut him free—but do not damage my attire. It is, after all, vintage.”

Since there is no way to remove the ribbons without damaging them, Jim fears for his limb and does the smart thing. He tugs his foot out of his shoe and backs away from the man with the pocket knife. Lady Q frowns at the sneaker still caught in her lace ribbons, no doubt disappointed her James won’t have a wooden peg for the lower half of his leg.

“I must speak with an acquaintance,” she tells Jim, seeming to switch topics. “Would you be available to meet with him tomorrow evening?”

He looks at her in disbelief. “You aren’t going to kidnap me?”

“I could never present you in your current state, James. Tell me, does your mother not darn your socks?”

He eyes the socked foot with a big toe peeking through a hole. The sock is still use-able, if slightly threadbare, so he doesn’t understand her issue with it. He answers instead, “Mom doesn’t darn.” Though she would have no doubt thrown the sock away—which is why Jim does his own laundry these days.

“Dress for a leisurely dinner,” Lady Q informs him. “The first course begins at seven o’clock.” Addressing the driver awaiting instruction, “To our next destination, if you please. Oh, and might you play some of that music our automobile-neighbors with the shiny wheels were enjoying at the stoplight around the corner? It sounded delightful!”

The Q blinks. “They call it rap, your Ladyship.”

Lady Q drags the end of her dress—sneaker, ribbons and all—back into the car. “Rap it is then!” she says, authority ringing in her voice.

Jim is not sad to see her go. Later, at the Enterprise Diner, he tries to think of a believable explanation when Pavel wants to know why he is missing a shoe, cannot, and simply summarizes, “An old lady took it.”

Next Part

Related Posts:

• Many Bells Down (12/12) – from November 9, 2011
• Many Bells Down (11/12) – from November 8, 2011
• Many Bells Down (10/12) – from November 6, 2011
• Many Bells Down (9/12) – from October 30, 2011
• Many Bells Down (7/12) – from October 12, 2011