Title: Many Bells Down (10/12)
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 | 8 | 9

Part Ten

When Jim wakes up, he remembers nothing of getting drunk and of the ride from Cupcake’s bar with Khan. Leonard informs him of the event with alacrity—Kirk’s stumbling and bare lucidity, Khan’s kind assistance in helping Leonard drag his drunken boyfriend into the apartment and dump Jim on the couch.

“If your goal was to embarrass yourself, kid, you did a bang-up job.”

Jim spits mouthwash into the bathroom sink. He’s kind of groggy, his stomach unsettled, but nothing too awful that generally comes with a hangover. “I don’t remember any of it, Bones,” he insists. “We were talking, I got us a couple of drinks—but it wasn’t anything that would put me on the floor unless I drank half of the bottle.” He pauses, concedes, “Actually, half a bottle would have put me in the hospital.”

Jim doesn’t have turn around. He can hear the rolling of Leonard’s eyes.

Leonard says, “No more benders, Jim—not unless me or Spock is with you and we look like we’ll be happy to tend to your drunk ass afterward.”

Jim resents the word bender. He tosses aside a hand towel and elbows past Leonard standing in the doorway. “Whatever,” he calls over his shoulder, heading to his bedroom.

He smells like Khan. Or, to be more precise, like the cologne Khan apparently bathes in. It makes him feel gross and, more to the point, furious for no apparent reason.

Bones is stubbornly following Jim, however. And still talking.

Fuck. He thinks Leonard is getting some kind of perverse pleasure out of this.

“Jim! You didn’t hear a word of what I just said, did you?”

He sticks his head into his closet to simultaneously rummage for clean clothes and drown out his boyfriend’s voice. Somebody grabs the back of his shirt and drags him out.

“What!” Jim snaps.

Bones narrows his eyes. “Are you always this pissy when you have a hangover?”

“I don’t have a hangover,” he grates between clenched teeth.

The doctor lifts an eyebrow. “Really? No nausea?”

His temper subsides slightly. “I wouldn’t call it nausea. More like a sensitive stomach.”

“Headache?”

Only from listening to you bitch. Bones isn’t the source of his real anger, though. “No.”

Bones takes Jim’s head between his hands and peers intently into his eyes. “Do you fall at any time last night, Jim?”

He pulls away. “How the fuck would I know? I told you—I can’t remember anything that happened.”

His boyfriend frowns. “I thought you said you’re one of those people who has the misfortune of recalling every stupid thing you do while three sheets to the wind.”

Jim grimaces. “I am, Bones,” which is why he is silently freaking out. The panicking, in turn, comes out as anger.

Maybe Leonard finally catches on or hears something indicative of his unspoken fear in his voice. The man takes one of Jim’s wrists and feels for his pulse, asking, “What else is out of the ordinary?”

This side of Bones is not one Jim can win against. “It’s fine. I’m fine,” he says, backing up. “Let me get a shower and take stock of myself. Then I’ll make a report. Sound good?”

“If I let you shower, do you promise not to suddenly pass out and brain yourself on the toilet?”

Jim grins a little because he cannot help it. “You can offer to wash my back, Bones.”

The man snorts and crosses his arms, which isn’t a definite no in Jim’s opinion but more of a you might yet convince me if you keep blathering. Jim is about to engage in some playacting (even if he doesn’t have a bad hangover, he has enough experience to fake one) when the familiar sound of the apartment’s front door opening and closing alerts them to a visitor.

Actually, it’s the long yowl that gives Spock’s presence away. Bo Peep likes to make that noise when she is let out of her carrier, as if to announce (Bones theorizes) “I’m here!”

Jim thinks she is screaming, “What the fuck, why are we at Jim’s again?!”

Then Bo Peep will proceed to murder his socks. And Jim isn’t quite certain how she gets them out of his chest of drawers to do it but she does, and she kills them. Repeatedly.

Jim pretends not to see the relief in Leonard’s face now that Spock has arrived. As he rounds the corner of the hallway, Bones in close attendance, he says loudly, “She’s the only cat in the universe who enjoys riding in a crate.”

“You are incorrect,” replies Spock as he secures the climbing Bo Peep in his arms and allows her to happily knead the front of his sweater. “She does not have a fondness for enclosed spaces, but she is a very intelligent creature. I explained to her the necessity of traveling by pet carrier if she wished to come along on my excursions.”

Spock strokes Bo Peep under her chin. She purrs loudly and swishes her tail.

Jim mock-whispers to McCoy, “I think it’s Spock’s brain you need to look at, Bones.”

McCoy mutters something along the lines of how he always ends up dating the crazies.

As Bones retreats to the kitchen in search of something fresh and fishy to appease Bo Peep (maybe this is why she doesn’t attack Bones’ socks, Jim realizes suddenly), Jim is left to watch Spock cradle his cat like a baby.

“You know, you should invest in one of those purse-carriers.” He snickers, thinking of the three of them trying to eat in a restaurant with Bo Peep’s furry face peeking out of an oversized bag. She’d probably attack a croissant roll.

Spock gives him a disdainful look which reads your ridiculous statement does not warrant commenting upon. “You appear remarkably recovered from last night’s overindulgence, Jim.”

Funny how Spock doesn’t assume Leonard might have been lying about Jim’s condition.

Jim absently scratches at an itch on his shoulder blade. “I’m all good.”

Spock gives him a long once-over. “Leonard was insistent he could not ‘handle you’ without aid.”

“In Bones’ talk that means he wanted you to come over and help lecture me.”

“Yes, I know.”

Leonard comes out of the kitchen smiling and places a small dish of tuna on the counter. “Spock’s a smart man. I don’t have to tell him half of what I mean like I do for certain people.”

Bo Peep takes a flying leap out of Spock’s arms and dive bombs the tuna dish.

Jim is close to throwing his hands up in the air. He groans, “Could you guys not pick on me today?”

Bones and Spock just look at him.

Jim pivots and stalks toward the bathroom. “I’m going to shower now—alone.”

He hears from the living room Spock saying to Leonard, “Why does he always assume we wish to accompany him into the shower?”

Bones’ voice is dry. “He thinks he’s God’s gift to us.”

“Then it is most unfortunate for Jim I am nonreligious.”

Jim makes certain to slam the bathroom door shut but when he leans against it, he is grinning, all thoughts of an unpleasant morning gone.

Twenty minutes later, Kirk steps out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and his good mood completely restored. Hot water cleared away the last vestiges of his unease—that, and the time to plan how he is going to seduce his boyfriends.

But when Jim walks back into the living room, it’s to find Spock handing Gaila a steaming cup of tea. Leonard is stretched out in the recliner with a coffee mug in hand.

Jim is spotted immediately. Spock inquires if he would like something to drink. Jim cannot answer because Gaila starts to smile at him (rather wickedly, he imagines). He clutches at his too-small towel and backtracks to his bedroom to find a pair of pants. He thinks she is gaily saying something to Bones and Spock about, oh, did she interrupt their fun time and does Jim still find it erotic to have someone help shave his chest hair?

Jim is blushing to his roots and considering knocking his head on the wall until he is unconscious. The woman has no shame, as Jim’s mother would say.

What exactly did he do with Khan, Jim wonders as he steps into a pair of jeans, to prompt this embarrassing visit from Gaila?

He does not have to wonder long. The woman verbally jumps him the moment Jim reappears in the living room.

“Khan cancelled our date last night,” she accuses, “because of you.” She pauses to sip at her tea, murmurs to Spock that it has a pleasant flavor. Then she fixates on Kirk again. “Why is that?”

He hangs his head a little, hoping his boyish woeful look still has power over her. “Sorry, Gaila. I didn’t mean to spoil your time with Khan.”

She looks over to the lounging McCoy and they roll their eyes together.

Leonard explains with exasperation, “She doesn’t care about that, idiot. What was so important that you had to see Khan all of a sudden?”

He could lie. He could redirect the conversation.

But why bother?

“He offered me a job,” Jim answers.

Coffee slops over the edge of McCoy’s mug as it is tilted in surprise. The man leaps up from the recliner and shakes his coffee-covered hand with a curse. Then he demands, “Since when?”

Jim shrugs. “Since a couple of weeks ago.”

“Doing what?” Bones barrels on.

Jim isn’t appreciative of his boyfriend’s tone. “I don’t know!” he almost snaps. “As in a lab experiment or something.”

There is a heartbeat of silence. Then Spock breaks it with “You mean Khan wishes to hire you to help conduct research.”

“Definitely not. He phrased it more like I would be the experiment on which the research gets conducted.” Jim half-smirks. “Apparently Khan thinks I have the right qualities for the job. He says it’s legitimate work and pays great.”

The other people in the living room continue to stare at him.

Eventually Jim lifts a hand self-consciously to his head. “What?” He did finger-brush his hair. Spock doesn’t like that, insists the same amount of energy would be expended with a proper hairbrush.

At last Leonard explodes. “Are you out of your mind, Jim?! You signed up to be somebody’s Frankenstein? Oh my God.”

“Wait,” Kirk interrupts before Spock joins in on Leonard’s outrage of disbelief, which by the angle of the man’s eyebrows he is going to do. “What’s the problem here? We’ll all be working for the same company. For Khan.” To Spock, “You decided to take him on as a client.” It isn’t really a question because Jim had seen how pleased T’Pau looked yesterday.

“I… did not feel I could reject the opportunity.”

Jim nods, heart dropping at this news despite that he had guessed correctly.

“So Spock took the job. So I might work for Khan some day. So what?” Bones argues. “Are you saying you think if you work at Eugenics it will keep us together?”

McCoy doesn’t get it.

Jim folds his arms. “Is that a terrible thing to want, Bones? Because the way our relationship is now, if one of us doesn’t make some effort, we’ll be estranged by the end of the year. Probably living in three different cities.”

Leonard is taken aback. Spock grows too still.

No, Jim thinks with a pang of sadness, neither of them had been paying attention. Is it because their future together isn’t as important as their individual futures?

Gaila, clearly uncomfortable at this turn of conversation, rises from the couch. “I should go.” She thanks Spock for the tea as she sets her barely touched teacup on the table.

“Jim,” Leonard begins, glancing at Spock.

Jim’s mouth stretches in a smile even though he doesn’t feel happy. “I’ll walk Gaila out.” It isn’t an offer.

Outside at his ex’s car, Gaila bites her lip and reaches up to put a hand to the side of his face. “How bad is it?” she asks softly.

Jim removes her hand and opens the driver’s side door. Once the woman is settled inside the car, he leans his weight against his arm propped on the door and admits heavily, “Bad. I did want to blame Khan for everything but… honestly? Maybe Bones, Spock, and I were meant to fail from the beginning.”

“Oh, Jim,” she says with genuine sympathy. “Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem.”

“Or they’re worse,” he counters grimly. “Bye, Gaila. Sorry about your date.” He shuts her car door with a firm hand and turns back to the apartment. Once Gaila is out of sight, he decides to take a long walk instead.

His head is down and his feet are wandering an aimless path along the city sidewalk. Jim thinks of nothing since there is nothing pleasant to think of. Because he is so tuned out to his surroundings, it isn’t until somebody steps directly in his path that he realizes he is not alone.

“Kirk.”

Jim is almost literally face-to-face with Frank Rand. He jerks back on instinct and removes his hands from his pockets.

His mind is no longer blank. “Frank,” Jim acknowledges flatly. He hesitates then tries to move cautiously past the man.

Rand, however, does not approve of this idea. “When somebody speaks to you, you ought to answer back, boy.”

“I’m not a kid,” he answers coldly, “and you aren’t someone I want to speak to.”

“Maybe it woulda been better if I had minded my own business,” begins Rand, and Kirk is only half-listening.

Better to get this meet-and-greet over. “Do you want something, Frank, besides to irritate me?”

The man tugs up the collar of his hunter’s jacket and hunches into the thick material, his face sallow against its dark print. Jim cannot help but notice the unkempt state of Rand’s clothes and the wild growth of the man’s beard. Rand hasn’t looked well since the fiasco with Trelane.

“I saw you at the bar off 52,” he comments suddenly. “Does your wife know you’re wasting your savings to become a permanent drunk?”

Rand’s eyes cloud over with something close to hate. “Ain’t nobody’s damned business how I spend my days or my money.” He spits to the side like he has a bad taste in his mouth. “But you’re right about me being at that bar. Fact is, Kirk, I was there last night when you had your date with that fancy man.”

A muscle in Jim’s jaw ticks as he says roughly, “It wasn’t a date. I’d rather saw off my own arm.”

Frank eyes him with a new interest. “Then I guess we agree the foreigner’s trouble. At least, for you anyways.” He steps in close to Jim and looks him over. “You must have a hell of a hangover.”

Does everyone in this fucking town know about what he did except him?

“No,” Jim says. “Guess I didn’t drink as much as you think I did.”

“You didn’t drink much of nothing,” Frank states with chilling certainty.

“What?”

Frank’s eyes cut to the side and he seems to be eyeballing the neighborhood. For who though, Jim can’t fathom.

“I can spot a criminal easily enough,” Rand is saying, “and that Khan fellow stinks like one.”

At least Jim isn’t the only person who finds Khan’s cologne offensive.

Rand continues. “So I’ve been keeping a close watch on him.” Jim doesn’t imagine Rand has much else to do but stalk people now that he is unemployed—and un-hirable. “Did you know he paid a visit to the bar a couple of hours before you two met there?”

Jim stills. “Why would Khan do that?” he asks too softly.

“Seems he had some deal to make with the bartender—or rather, pay him off to turn a blind eye.”

Jim steps back, unable to deal with the words coming out of Rand’s mouth. “What do you get by making this shit up, Rand? A chance to watch me screw over my happy ending?”

“Fuck you, Kirk. I’m only telling you this because you’ve got a real case against him!”

“Why?” Jim insists, voice low and intense.

“’Cause what he did was illegal, no two ways about it. ‘N I swear to God I won’t let my girl work for a man who goes around slipping rufies into people’s drinks when their backs are turned.”

Jim’s mouth goes dry. Khan… drugged him? “Why would he do that, Frank? Why would he do that, and then hand me straight over to Bones?”

Rand is silent for a long minute. “He didn’t…? Well, guess there’s a silver lining to every fucking cloud, Kirk. Count yourself lucky. I’ve seen the bad shit that can happen to a person; rape’s one of the worst.”

Jim shivers, punches down a rise of bile in his throat. “I’d know if I was a rape victim.”

“Would you?” Rand asks bluntly.

Don’t throw up. He quells his urge to panic, and decides to ignore the buttons Frank is pushing. “I guess my well-being doesn’t matter much to you one way or the other. You obviously didn’t stop Khan’s nefarious plan.” He says this with as much of his usual cockiness as he can.

Frank almost sneers and folds his arms. “I’m not an officer of the law anymore.”

“So you aren’t a decent citizen either?”

“Look, I came by, okay! I told you about what he did. What more do you expect from me?”

“Nothing,” Jim assures him. His shoulder has a persistent itch so he rubs at it, thinking he would rather have the awkward company of his two boyfriends right now than Frank Rand’s. This just goes to show that running away always backfires.

He says in a sarcastic but clipped tone, “You checked on me, I’m not dead, woo, congratulations. Go home and sleep like a baby.”

That hate is back in Frank’s eyes. “You think you’re something, don’t you, Kirk? All you queers do. I saved your pathetic life once.”

“You saved yourself from a murder charge,” Kirk corrects. “I owe you nothing. Your miserable existence, Frank? That’s your fault and you know it.”

They are at a stand-off, neither willing to give ground. Jim is used to keeping him mouth shut about this particular kind of hatred, to just back away and not stoke the fire any further, but he has had his fill of Rand’s homophobia. It has led to too many dangerous and cruel situations, and not just for Jim.

There are so many things he wants to say, to rage about, and some of it bursts out of him: “I don’t get people like you. Why is who I want to be with such an issue? I feel the same thing everyone else in this town does: I love somebody and I want to make that person happy. How is what I do and what you do any different, except my somebody has a cock and balls while yours has breasts?”

“It’s unnatural,” is Frank’s stubborn growl.

Jim shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. “Love is the most natural thing in the world, Frank.” Which, really, he should be surprised the man knows what love is.

Jim decides to end this old and never-ending argument between them, knowing to continue with a backwards ass such as ex-deputy Rand is only likely to earn him a punch in the face.

“Your feelings on the matter mean nothing to me, and they won’t ever mean anything to me, Frank. So you should learn to save your breath for someone who gives a damn.” He pauses, adds, “Oh and this show of caring of yours? It leaves something to be desired. But thanks for the tip anyway.”

At least he now knows why he doesn’t have a hangover.

Frank makes a grab for his arm. Jim just looks at him, because they both know this is violating Komack’s orders to Rand to “never touch James Kirk again.”

Frank drops his hand back to this side. “What about Khan?” he asks doggedly.

“What about him?”

“Aren’t you going to stop the bastard?”

“How can I?” Jim asks with surprising bitterness. “I’m a small town nobody compared to him.”

Jim moves away and starts walking, taking Frank’s silence as agreement. But the man surprises him:

“Kirk!”

Jim pauses at the call but does not turn around.

Frank is saying, “You ain’t never been a quitter. That’s galled me on occasion, but now… Now’s the time you can’t quit.”

“Or?” he mutters, but somehow Frank hears it—or at least recognizes his disbelief.

“You need to do what’s right, Kirk, and get that SOB out of Riverside. I’ve lost my standing in society to say anything against anybody but you—you’re the fucking town hero. If you don’t think you can do it, the fight’s over before it begins.”

Jim turns around, caught off-guard, but Frank is already backing away and crossing the street. Kirk huffs out a breath, slightly amazed at what sounded like a sincere plea.

Either Rand has gone off the deep end, or he truly believes Jim can do something about Khan. Most days Jim would bet on Frank’s certifiable insanity. Still, the ex-deputy’s words nag Kirk all the way back to his apartment.

Jim leans forward, twists his arm behind him, and tries in vain to scratch the skin off of his back. He had secluded himself in his room the moment he returned from his outing and, so far, no one has tried to cajole him into coming out to “discuss things.” He gives Spock another five minutes before the man attempts to do so.

But this faint itch has gone from an annoyance to almost painful throb. He grimaces, not liking his options, but leaves his bedroom for McCoy’s, pushing in without bothering to knock.

Leonard looks up, startled, from his slump over a small desk pushed against the wall of the far side of the room. Spock is sitting on the edge of the bed, hands on his knees. They’ve been doing that discussion thing without him, it seems.

“Hey,” Leonard says softly.

It’s all Jim can do to keep from scrubbing his back furiously against the doorframe to ease his discomfort. “Bones, c’mere,” he says. He half-lifts up his shirt.

“Jim, I don’t think taking your shirt off—Jesus Christ.” Suddenly there are hands pressing tentatively along his back. “What happened?”

“I don’t know but it itches like crazy,” Jim complains. “Wasn’t this bad earlier.”

“Earlier?” A sigh. “I really have my head up my ass, don’t I, Jim? Here, hold this.” McCoy pulls the shirt all the way up and Jim grabs the back of it to hold it up. “You’ve got a serious rash. Did you eat something you are allergic to?”

“Oh yes,” he replies, annoyed, “I definitely did that. Because I love going to the hospital!”

“Leonard’s intention is not to offend you, Jim. Should I call the clinic to inform them of our arrival?”

Leonard replies, “Yeah, that’d be good. Thanks, Spock.”

Spock exits the room. Jim tries jerking away in a sudden panic but Bones’ hands catch his shoulders and hold him in place. “It’s just a rash,” Kirk insists. “We don’t need to go anywhere.”

“I say different, and I’m the doctor,” Jim is reminded. “If your body doesn’t like something, it will get worse.” His shirt is tugged down gently. “Jim, let’s not fight over this.”

He makes one last attempt. “But it’s your day off.”

Leonard turns him around so that they are facing one another. “I love you, Jim,” Leonard says seriously. “For you, I won’t ever take a day off.” McCoy captures his hands. “Don’t scratch at it.”

Jim tugs the man in until they bump foreheads. “Bones,” he asks, because his heart says he has to, “are you and Spock going to leave me some day?”

“We agree we’re going to try very hard not to—if that’s what you want.”

“It is,” he says but his throat is tight and the words don’t come out easily.

“Jim,” says McCoy in a strange voice, pulling back from their embrace. “Good God, man, your hands!”

“Um,” he responds, astonished. His hands are swelling like balloons. Come to think of it, his throat might not be tight from emotion after all. Jim sways slightly on his feet.

McCoy props him up and bellows, “Spock, get his Epipen out of his nightstand!”

I haven’t had anything this morning but mouthwash, his brain is thinking dumbly.

Bones has eased him down to the floor of the bedroom and is saying furiously to his face, “Damn it, breathe, Jim! Don’t make me put a hole in your windpipe!”

Jim flails his swollen hands. “No hole, no hole!” he rattles.

Something stabs his leg and he bites off a cry. Then he can get blissful air back into his lungs, and he drags it in gratefully. “Thanks,” he pants to McCoy and Spock alike when he can manage words.

“What has caused this episode?” Spock asks over Kirk’s head to the doctor, and there is a strain in the man’s voice Jim rarely hears.

“I don’t know,” McCoy says as he slides an arm under Jim to haul him up, “but let’s get him to the Derby hospital and find out.”

It dawns on Jim belatedly as he is manhandled into the backseat of Spock’s Corvette that Frank could have been telling the truth.

What, exactly, did Khan drug him with that is screwing up his body chemistry so badly?

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 (9/12) – from October 30, 2011
• Many Bells Down (8/12) – from October 28, 2011
• Many Bells Down (7/12) – from October 12, 2011

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