Title: Many Bells Down (11/12)
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 | 10

Part Eleven

Jim is not exactly sneaking away from his own personal urgent-care room where the nurses only stop by with the intention of taking several vials of his blood. No, he is attempting to find the cafeteria because he is hungry and he is being denied sustenance. Okay that’s a sort of lie, really, since he has had several “visits” to the Derby hospital in the past and the cafeteria hasn’t changed location in over two decades. He’ll say it’s the elevator’s fault. It gets its floor numbers mixed up (must be an ancient elevator, he jokes to himself) and that’s how Jim ends up nowhere near the cafeteria and hiding in the Children’s Ward playroom.

It’s also not his fault this one kid looks so depressed Jim feels obliged to offer him a game of air hockey; and then two other boys need a hand in building Sauron’s tower out of multicolored Legos. Or there’s a cute little girl with pigtails who cajoles Jim into face-painting.

By the time somebody realizes James T. Kirk is AWOL—namely Bones who returns from chatting with a doctor about Jim’s blood work, discovers an empty bed, and sounds the alarm (thereby frightening several nurses half to death by saying Jim could be dead in a stairwell and aren’t they paid to keep an eye on sick people?!)—Jim is ensconced in a sea of rapt faces as he mimics the Big Bad Wolf trying to huff and puff and blow the Three Little Pigs’ brick house down. Of course, when the faux-Big Bad Wolf spots the angry face of his doctor boyfriend storming through the playroom doors (somebody must have snitched; maybe it was the playroom attendant who keeps trying to kick him out), he doesn’t so much as huff and puff as fall over and cause the kids to shriek with glee because they think Jim’s wolf version is having an unheard-of fairy tale heart-attack.

“It’s the Evil Queen!” Jim cries as he points at McCoy and tosses his arms over his head, cowering with exaggerated fright.

The children turn as one, spot McCoy’s thunderous expression (and his visiting doctor’s badge), and the shrieking of the littlest ones intensifies. Some of them crawl up next to Jim and put their arms over their heads too. But Jim’s storytelling assistant (a child of ten) remarks loudly, “He’s a boy, Mr. Jim! He can’t be a Queen!”

Kirk has an awesome comeback for that, he really does, but Bones cuts in with a warning “Not a word, Jim.”

So he mock-whispers to the child, “Bonesie’s a Queen in his heart, Charley. That’s what counts.”

Hence James Kirk is subsequently taken into custody by an eye-twitching McCoy and a surprisingly well-muscled attendant. He waves a sad goodbye to his young friends, hangs his head and shuffles his feet until a small voice protests and then another and another. Jim sneaks a shit-eating grin at his boyfriend when small hands clutch at Leonard’s pants and ask the doctor not to take Jim away.

Leonard grimaces, caught between a rock and a hard place—that is, the pleading faces of sick children and his common sense. Finally, with a look of long-suffering, the doctor eases his grip on the back of Jim’s shirt.

“Go on then, you big baby,” he drawls at Kirk. “Ten more minutes. Then we’re going back downstairs.”

Jim grins. “C’mon, fifteen!” he wheedles. When that earns only a glare, he adds slyly, “Just because I’m the fairest in all the land doesn’t mean you need to get your undies in a twist.”

Leonard’s glare deepens into a scowl as somebody at knee-height giggles.

“I said ten minutes, Jim! ‘Cause that’s how long it’ll take me to get back to the ER, find Spock wondering where the hell we both disappeared to, and send him up here to deal with your stubborn a—self!” corrects the man grudgingly at the attendant’s sharp elbow prod. Then Leonard turns and stalks away. He pauses long enough in the doorway to threaten, “Oh and that candy bar you sent Spock to get that I wasn’t supposed to know about? Trash can, Jim—TRASH CAN.”

Jim bites his lip with a moment’s indecision. Save the candy bar or stay with the kids? He whimpers a little but decides to stay. Besides, Bones wouldn’t actually make good on that threat.

Would he?

Perhaps sensing Kirk’s slight despondency, Charley tugs on his oversized friend’s sleeve. “Mr. Jim, don’t worry. We get plenty of candy on account of us being sick!” He skips over to a toy chest and returns with a partially eaten Milky Way, offering it to Jim shyly.

Jim ruffles the boy’s hair with affection. “Naw, I’m good. So what part were we at?”

“NOT BY THE HAIR OF MY CHINNY-CHIN CHIN!” choruses several voices.

Jim clears his throat then growls, “Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!”

Bones doesn’t return a while, not until lunchtime is long past and Jim has taken the time to escort each child back to his or her room for a nap. When he does finally locate Bones (via describing him as tall, dark, and of the brooding anger variety to several medical personnel), the doctor is in the cafeteria nursing a cup of coffee and talking with Spock. Jim shuffles sheepishly over to the pair and wedges himself into the booth on Spock’s side.

One of Leonard’s eyebrows goes up. “Afraid of me, Jim?” the man asks mildly.

His reply is too bright. “Of course not!” Leaning over to Spock, he whispers, “You can take him, right?”

Leonard’s hand whips out and whacks Jim with a plastic fork. “Idiot!”

Jim hisses, “Did you see that! He attacked me!”

Spock admonishes McCoy, “Violence is not the answer.”

With a mischievous look, Jim kicks at Bones’ shin under the table. The man yelps.

“Jim, enough,” Spock in turn admonishes Kirk.

Leonard casually moves his coffee cup out of Jim’s reach and remarks, “You may think you’re the mature one here, Spock, but just you wait. One day you’ll be slapping ‘n kicking ‘n biting with the best of us.”

“It is my sincerest hope, Leonard, I never lose my presence of mind to act in such a childish manner.”

Leonard looks to Jim, who understands perfectly what McCoy isn’t saying. Jim nods slightly.

Challenged accepted.

Spock is going down. The poor man just doesn’t know it yet.

“Do you want some water?” Bones asks.

Jim shakes his head. “I had some grape juice already.”

“I can tell,” replies the doctor dryly.

Jim scrubs at his mouth with the back of his hand. Damn, where’s a mirror when he needs one? He then sticks out his tongue and tries to get a good look at it.

Leonard bursts out laughing. “Oh God, your face, Jim! Didn’t your mama ever tell you if you cross your eyes they’ll get stuck that way?”

He stops the somewhat dizzying facial contortion. “Mom’s told me a lot of stuff over the years. Mainly that it’s possible I was a circus baby she adopted.”

Leonard laughs once more and agrees, “I’d believe that.” He stands up, saying not to Kirk but to Spock, “Make sure he stays put.”

Spock nods solemnly.

Jim props his elbows on the table and leans on them. He gives Spock his best expectant look.

Spock returns a measuring look. “I do not read minds, Jim.”

Pointing at his own sad face, Jim says, “Can you at least read this?”

Spock’s eyes track over to McCoy, who is standing in one of the cafeteria lines with his back to them. He slips a hand inside his wool coat, and produces a Hershey’s bar for Jim. “Leonard confiscated two,” explains the lawyer, “but I had the foresight to buy in bulk.”

Jim places one hand over Spock’s and the other works its way between Spock’s collar and his neck. He pulls the man in close and murmurs, “I’m going to kiss you for a job well done, okay?”

Spock seems to have no objection to this. The man’s thumb strokes the curve of Jim’s cheekbone as their mouths touch lightly. They pull apart before McCoy returns, Jim re-hiding the chocolate bar in the inside pocket of Spock’s coat as a treat to savor later.

Leonard slides a cafeteria tray under Jim’s nose. “Eat,” orders the doctor.

Jim’s stomach rumbles in happy agreement as he takes in the sight of a huge mound of mashed potatoes. “Bones, jeez, I love you!” He grabs a fork and makes a crater in the mound’s center in which to pour gravy.

“Yeah, well,” Leonard says as he reseats himself, “I know you must be starving.”

He licks his fork. “I figured you’re the one who told that mean woman not to feed me.”

“Her name is Gilda, Jim, and she isn’t mean, otherwise she couldn’t work successfully around kids. You’re just extra trying on nice people.”

“Mmph,” Jim disagrees around a mouthful. He remembers her hard stare when he’d asked politely for a snack like the other children. He had gotten a pathetic little juice box instead.

Leonard waits until Jim is scraping his plate clean to say, “I called Winona.”

Jim loses his grip on his fork and it clatters on the plate. He gapes at the man.

“She’s your mother,” says the doctor mildly in response to Jim’s unspoken disbelief. “And I seem to remember promising to keep her informed of any accidents you have.”

“I didn’t have an accident,” Jim mutters at his abandoned eating utensil. Bones owes him another plate of mashed potatoes for this bombshell. He sighs. “How long do I have?”

Leonard looks at Spock. Spock estimates, “Ten minutes—if one assumes she adheres to the speed limit.”

Jim half-falls out of the booth in his scramble. “You tell me now! Holy shit, which way is the ER?!” He whirls on the surprised men and demands, “How sick do I look?”

“As ill as you are currently behaving” and “Not very, considering your God-awful appearance when we got here” he is told by Spock and McCoy, respectively.

He hurries from the cafeteria, not checking to see if they are following but talking to them nonetheless. “We need blankets—lots of blankets. And a thermometer. Maybe an ice pack? Fuck, I don’t know, Mom expects a lot.”

“Jim! Hey, hold the damn elevator!”

He is tapping his foot impatiently as McCoy and Spock hustle into the elevator before the doors close.

Spock is fairly composed; Bones is panting. “Shit, kid, how do you move that fast?”

“There’s no time, Bones,” Kirk says grimly. “You called Mom. What do you think will happen if I’m not laid up in bed surrounded by ten doctors and nurses? Or if I’m not in the ER at all?”

Spock surreptitiously re-pokes the button for the ground floor. Sadly, the elevator goes no faster.

When the doors do finally open, Leonard grabs Jim’s wrist and pulls him towards the ER at a near-run. They only pause when McCoy spies an empty gurney being wheeled down the hallway. The doctor flashes his badge at a gaping medical intern as he jerks it away with “Sorry, we need this! It’s an emergency!” Jim climbs onto it and attempts to look like he’s dying.

He is dumped into his hospital bed and hidden under three blankets just in time for Winona Kirk’s voice to be heard at the nearby nurse’s station. This time when he cowers, he isn’t faking his wide-eyed fear.

“What’s wrong with my son?” Winona asks of the attending ER doctor as she clutches one of Jim’s hands.

The young man (Dr. Campbell something-or-other, Jim thinks) replies, “We are still testing his blood work in the lab for anomalies. At this point, it’s hard to say what caused his allergic reaction.”

Winona stares at Dr. Campbell for a long minute. Then she turns to McCoy. “What’s wrong with my son?” she repeats.

Jim is very glad he is the sick person. His mother doesn’t beat up sick people. Usually.

“We don’t know yet, Winona,” Leonard tells her. “But I promise you I’ll find out.”

She seems satisfied with this answer. “I just hope it isn’t a new allergy. He has so many.” Jim’s hand is patted and tucked back under a blanket.

Jim sinks into his bed and contemplates pulling the covers over his head. Now wouldn’t be the best time to mention he thinks he was drugged.

The Campbell guy is saying, “I doubt this is a new allergy, Mrs. Kirk. It’s likely once we identify the compounds of the—”

“Hey! Look at that!” bellows Kirk, sitting up and flinging his bed clothes every which way.

Everybody in the room turns and stares at the closed door.

“I, uh, I mean,” he hedges, “look at that—the door’s closed. Is it stuffy in here to you? I think it’s stuffy. Could somebody open the door?”

As Spock obligingly opens the door, Jim is calculating his plan of action for a quick escape: tangle Bones up in the blankets, do a fly-tackle into the idiot Campbell, thereby knocking the man into Spock, and… He eyes his mother but he is at a loss on how to overcome the obstacle that is Winona Kirk.

Crap.

It is easier, then, to inform the babbling ER physician, “I know you are busy, man. We’ll be here when you have something concrete to tell us.” He smiles with a benign air.

Dr. Campbell looks at him strangely, undoubtedly having never before been told by a patient to stop talking and go away.

Maybe Jim had made a mistake by admitting there might be drugs in his system, if taken involuntarily. (The ER doctor had given him a skeptical look at that last part.) But this patient-doctor confidentiality thing ought to ensure that conversation remains private. And hadn’t he specifically said “Let’s keep this between us for now, doc.”

Of course the doctor had argued, “Dr. McCoy states he is your physician of record. If the police are brought in, all medical parties of the victim will automatically be informed of the circumstances.”

“He’s also my boyfriend.”

The man had simply looked at him for a long moment, then handed him a cup to pee in. “When—if we determine the presence of something unusual in your system, Mr. Kirk, we can discuss how you would like to proceed. I will leave you the option of informing your significant others until that time.”

He had thought that was a tacit agreement to keep mum on the subject. But Dr. Campbell obviously has a short memory, or thinks Jim did the smart thing and told to his companions there is a possibility of a criminal case to be reported.

Jim cannot figure out how to tell them.

That isn’t quite true.

He cannot figure out how they are going to take the news. Will they think he’s making it up to be spiteful? To be honest, Jim isn’t certain if it is a real story himself. He knows how he feels, how his body feels, yes, and he thinks Rand wouldn’t seek him out just to feed him a bold-faced lie. But accusing Khan?

It could backfire badly; it really could.

On the other hand, if the hospital finds no evidence to support his theory, Jim doesn’t know how he is going to cope. It would mean even if Khan did drug him, nothing can done about it. Jim hates that thought, utterly hates it. He will have to continue on his mission to infiltrate Eugenics while knowing what an utter bastard Khan really is but pretending otherwise.

“Jimmy?” asks his mother, “what’s the matter?”

He quits staring at the wall and smiles at her then resumes his prone position. “I’m just sick of being here, Mom.”

Winona kisses his forehead. “I know, baby. Let’s hope you can go home soon.”

“Yeah,” he agrees blankly, “hope on, hope ever.”

In the end, the preliminary toxicology report comes back negative and since his breathing is recovered and the rash and swelling under control, Jim is discharged with a warning to watch what he eats. His mother is relieved. Jim is not.

Bones puts an arm around his shoulders as they walk to the parking garage. “I’ll have ’em send a copy of the paperwork to the clinic. Don’t worry, Jim, I will look it over. Asshats probably couldn’t find a red-blood cell count with a map.”

Jim is about to reply when a man passes by their group. Jim stops to stare after him, struck by the man’s seemingly familiar face. But he cannot quite place it.

Winona says, “Jimmy?”

He shrugs off the alert at the back of his neck. “Sorry. I thought I saw somebody I knew.”

“I hope not,” she replies. “The hospital isn’t the best place to greet friends.”

He wakes up at a pre-dawn hour, his memory finally supplying an answer.

Khan’s driver—the man from the parking lot is Khan’s driver.

Sleep eludes Jim for the rest of the night.

A day later, Bones complains during a shared lunch at Spock’s that the hospital administration somehow misplaced Jim’s records from Tuesday’s visit. “I checked in because Christine said she hadn’t seen them come through. The whole kit-and-caboodle, Jim, gone. Goddamn idiots! Only good thing to come out of their incompetence is you can’t be billed for a non-existent trip to the ER.”

What are the odds of that happening? Jim thinks. An uneasy feeling crawls along his spine that he doesn’t like at all.

“Are you sure, Jan?” Jim inches the phone back up to his ear from where it had slipped. Jose pokes his head into the office and gives his employee a long-suffering look. Jim signals two more minutes, I swear!

She sounds bemused. “I haven’t seen him since last week. Jim, why are you looking for my dad anyway? He was so… awful to you.”

Jim has quick and nasty debate with himself. “Look, I don’t want to freak you out but I think he could be in trouble.” Jim is almost certain of it since he cannot locate Frank at any of the man’s usual hang-outs. Kirk even braved Cupcake’s, though he went there on the pretense of looking for a lost pair of sunglasses. Cupcake hadn’t been thrilled to see him, had shooed Jim out with “If you left ’em, they probably belong to a biker chick by now. I don’t keep a lost and found, Kirk.”

Maybe Rand used common sense and has gone to ground.

Somehow, he doubts so.

After a short silence, Janice asks in a smaller voice, “What are you talking about? Jim?”

“I don’t know, Jan. I saw him a couple of days ago and he mentioned he might have seen something he shouldn’t have. I wanted to check in, that’s all.”

“Seen something where?” she wants to know. “What’s he done?” Then, “Please don’t do this to me, Jim. It was hard enough accepting that he could—” Her voice wobbles, breaks, and she whispers to someone off-line, “Kevin, can you—?”

“Hey, Jim,” comes Riley’s voice over the phone. “What’s going on?”

Jim feels terrible. “Tell her not to cry, man. I—“ What can he say now that he’s made a mess of things? “Just call me if you hear from Frank, okay? There’s nothing worry about.”

Kevin agrees, confused, and Jim hangs up.

Jose says, “We done yet, Jim?”

“One more call,” he says as he pulls out a piece of paper and dials the phone number on it.

A man picks up; the line is noisy. “Pike speaking.”

“It’s Jim Kirk.”

“Jim. Can you hold on?” The noise in the background dies down. “I’m out at a base, sorry. Did he take the bait? Where are we? “

“In a nutshell? Shit city,” he summarizes.

Pike switches to formal command tone. “Tell me.”

“I’m in a public place, sir.”

“Say what you can.”

“I think he slipped me something and whatever it was didn’t agree with me so I spent a couple of hours in the ER. But the toxicology report turned up nada. Then disappeared altogether.”

“Understood. What else?”

No sentimental clap-trap. Jim is grateful. He continues, “Somebody might be a witness but I cannot find him.”

The silence stretches for so long that Jim is afraid Pike has hung up. “Chris?”

“Give me a name, Jim.”

He almost whispers, back turned to Jose, “Frank Rand. Ex-cop, discharged a few months ago. He should be easy to find on the books.”

“If this is the Rand you tangled with before, I already know plenty about him. Let me see what I can do. And Jim? Listen carefully. If Khan found out about Rand, the man’s already dead—which means you’re next. The game is only fun until Singh’s opponent figures him out, and he never chances losing, not with a billion-dollar empire. Drop what you’re doing and go to Bella’s.”

Fuck.

Jim agrees readily enough. Immediately after he hangs up the telephone, he has to wipe his sweaty palms on his overalls. Should he let Bones and Spock know where he is going? Would that jeopardize them?

Fuck. He thinks he knows Pike well enough to know the man would not joke around about any of this. How did things suddenly become so complicated?

“Jim!” snaps his boss, exasperated.

Jim plants a hand to steady himself as he turns around. But his fake smile turns sickly when Jose tosses him a clipboard and Jim sees the name on it.

“Mr. Singh says there is knocking in the motor but I’ll be damned if I can locate it.”

The ring of the bell announces someone stepping into the front office. “Perhaps if Mr. Kirk drove the vehicle around the block and back, he would better be able to delineate the issue.” Khan smiles, his dark shades reflecting the overhead light and concealing the gleam of his eyes.

Jose shrugs and collects the clipboard from Jim, handing him car keys in its place. “You know the drill, Jim,” his boss reminds him. “If it breaks down, give me a call ‘n I’ll come get you.”

But Jim isn’t paying any attention to Jose. He is watching Khan, who in turn is watching him.

“Well, Mr. Kirk?” questions the man, voice silky. “Shall we?”

Next Part

Related Posts:

• Many Bells Down (12/12) – from November 9, 2011
• Many Bells Down (10/12) – from November 6, 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