Title: Sticks and Stones (5/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Sequel to Many Bells Down; Riverside ‘verse AU. Khan is hell-bent on destroying everything and everyone James Kirk cares about until Jim surrenders the most important person of all—himself.
Previous Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Part Three was posted yesterday. Please read it first if you have not.

Part Four

The hour is late, and they are in bed. Well, to be precise, Spock and Jim are in bed; Leonard is staying in Derby for the night after making a round of visits in Doctor Piper’s stead. Tomorrow afternoon, they will ride to Derby to pick McCoy up. Jim loathes those trips, not because of his boyfriend, because of Khan and the fact it is obvious the hospital is slowly coming under the employ of Eugenics Corporation. Rumor has it that Khan will convert the building into a business unit once his own hospital is running effectively, but until that time it is guaranteed the executive will want full control of his closest rival medical center in this region of Iowa.

All of these thoughts leave Jim restless, and sleep has eluded him for the better part of the last hour. Spock is not asleep next to him, he surmises, because the soft glow of a bedside lamp casts shadows upon the portion of the room he can see. He can also hear Spock quietly turning the pages of the book he had been reading when Jim climbed into bed with the wistful hope of pleasant dreams. Kirk sighs almost soundlessly and wills himself not to fidget beneath the sheet covering him from the torso down.

A voice makes a quiet offer. “If the light troubles you, I will turn it off.”

Crap, it’s too late to pretend he is asleep. Spock has an innate sense for that sort of trickery. He replies, equally quiet, “No, it’s fine.” The ensuing silence lures him into thinking Spock has returned to his book.

“Do you wish to discuss it?” comes the solemn question.

Jim clutches at his pillow. “Discuss what?”

“The reason you are unable to sleep.”

This time he doesn’t bother to stifle his sigh. Jim rolls onto his back and frowns at the ceiling for a few seconds. There are plenty of issues affecting his sleep tonight. He picks the most prevalent one. “Do you think we’ll become complacent?”

He feels Spock shift position. Jim turns to look at him in time to see the edge of Spock’s reading glasses flash with a reflection of the lamplight silhouetting the man’s figure. Spock sounds mildly interested as he speaks while removing his eyeglasses. ” I gather you do not refer to the word in an endearing capacity. Is there a particular reason you are concerned?”

Jim flushes. His hands automatically reach out to play with the fabric of the bedsheet; it is a nervous habit, like the methodical shredding of paper napkins, and an action he barely registers doing.

It takes two attempts for Jim to begin his response. He settles on another question: “Do you think Bones will—I don’t know—get bored with this?”

“Will you become bored, Jim?”

“No!” His temper flares before he can punch it down. “Will you?” he tosses back, sitting up in bed, then mentally slaps himself for the unjust retaliation.

But before he can work his way around an apology, Spock replies, “I may.”

The answer surprises Jim. “What?”

“One day, I may feel dissatisfied. The possibilities are infinite, Jim, so we cannot discount them entirely. Yet, at the moment? No, I am not tired of or disillusioned with the relationship between you, Leonard, and myself. Nor do I wish to be.”

How does Spock always knows the right thing to say? Jim relaxes and braces his arms on the bed so he can lean over and give Spock a light kiss on the mouth. “Me either,” he agrees softly, pulling back. “Maybe it shouldn’t make sense, what we’re trying to have, but it does for me—here.” He taps the center of his chest with a finger for emphasis. “I really don’t want to give us up—or give up on us, Spock, not ever.”

Spock is smiling at him in that understated but beautiful way. “Your sentiment is admirable, Jim.” The smile fades slightly. “But I must ask, why are questioning Leonard’s feelings?”

Jim’s grimace clearly alarms Spock to some degree, so Kirk tries to backtrack as quickly as possible to assure him nothing is wrong (though it is, isn’t it? he chastises himself silently). “I can’t help it, Spock—geez, don’t look like that. Every time I think about it, I realize that of the three of us Bones has the most to lose.”

Spock’s expression could be interpreted as I fail to understand why you frequently contemplate such dismal thoughts but he says instead, “Jim, you are not considering the facts correctly. Leonard, in essence, has the least to lose because he has offspring and family in Georgia—as you have your family and friends in Riverside. I however entered this relationship with the fewest attachments; therefore I am the most vulnerable, should our relationship come to an end.”

Spock, surprised by Jim’s swift reaction, lets Jim take the book out of his hands. Jim places the book with care on the night stand before making use of the improved access to his boyfriend to plaster himself chest-to-hip against Spock.

“Don’t ever worry about being alone, Spock,” Jim tells him. “You will always have me as a friend, if not as a lover. I promise.”

His friendship with Gaila is a testament to the fact it can be done.

Spock runs his fingers gently along the curve of Jim’s jaw. “You remind me, Jim, precisely why I am convinced it is impossible to stop caring for you. Your heart is remarkably generous.”

Jim hides his pleased blush by turning his attention to the outer shell of Spock’s ear, which he traces his mouth. He murmurs against it, after a tiny nip with teeth, “I can be generous in other ways too.”

“As I am aware…” Spock’s hands anchor his hips in place.

Tiring his body out so that he can sleep is, it seems, a very pleasant exercise—one which Spock is dedicated to. And Jim loves him for it.

Jim uses his hip to prop himself against a nurses’ station inside the Derby hospital and grins guilelessly at the lady behind it. “Hey there, gorgeous, would you mind paging Doctor McCoy?”

She looks him up and down, and definitely not in a checking-for-weapons kind of way. Jim is on the verge of saying “Like what you see?” (because, really, what else is a guy like him supposed to say if somebody appreciates his assets?) when a familiar voice says, “Stop flirting with the staff, Jim. They’re busy.”

“Bones!” Jim’s grin grows as he turns around. “Jealous?”

McCoy gives him a dark look but nonetheless pulls Jim away from the nurse and leaves his hand possessively on Jim’s arm. The nurse, Jim spies over his shoulder as he is escorted down the hall, looks somewhat depressed. She mutters something to a passing female colleague and they both turn to stare in his direction, shaking their heads.

If he weren’t being shoved into an elevator, he would have called out, “I know, life’s not fair, ladies!”
Jim snickers to himself.

“Why do you do that?” Bones growls at him as soon as the door closes. The doctor gives one of the elevator buttons a vicious jab.

“Do what?” Jim wants to know, not quite understanding what Leonard is asking him. “Bones, quit attacking the button. I think the elevator got the message.”

McCoy rolls his eyes but drops his hand to his side. After a second or two, he rocks back on his heels and demands, “That, Jim—flirting. When you know you shouldn’t lead them on!”

“Who says I was leading anybody anywhere? Besides, I’m good-looking, really really good-looking. It’s a code or something; I have to flirt.”

“Don’t know how I’m going to get you outta this elevator, your ego’s so damned big,” mutters his boyfriend. Then Leonard sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. Where’d you hide Spock?”

Jim nudges McCoy until they are facing each other. “Spock hides himself. You know how much he loves hospitals.”

“There’s something wrong with both of you,” Leonard tells him. “A hospital is a safe place.” The hard line of his mouth softens after Jim kisses it twice in a row. “Okay, Jim, that’s enough.”

“Hmmm?” Jim is going for a record. How long can they make out before the elevator stops to let somebody on?

Ding.

Jim pulls away, annoyed, as the elevator grinds to a halt. Leonard smirks at him knowingly when two elderly ladies scurry into the elevator, forcing the two men to separate to make room for their gigantic hats, and begin to gossip about their knitting circle. “Can you believe she went on a date at her age?” one of them crows to the other.

Jim sulks against the wall of the elevator and doesn’t bother to hide his staring at (or longing for) Leonard’s kissable mouth. He isn’t certain if, when the women exit on the seventh floor, one of them intentionally hits him with her purse on the way out. His balls definitely say yes.

Leonard is laughing at him and does not seem inclined to stop any time soon. Jim limps out of the elevator and automatically heads to the Children’s Ward, ignoring his boyfriend trailing behind him. Leonard catches his arm just before Jim reaches a set of double doors and halts him to say, “I’ll be back in an hour. Stay put.”

“Bones, I’m not a kid.”

“Says the man about to walk into a playroom.”

“You’re the one who brought me up here!”

“Which is where you were gonna head to the moment I turned my back. I’m just skipping the hunt and treeing the prey, darlin’. Now be a good boy, play nice with the other children, ‘n Daddy’ll be back in an hour to get you.”

Jim watches Bones walk away and spends a long five minutes fighting off all of the hundreds of dirty fantasies his mind dredged up at Bones’ “daddy talk”. Finding a bathroom to wash his face with cold water helps immensely. Once less flustered, he enters the playroom, pretends not to see the stiffening of the attendant—Gilda, oh crap, why did she have to be the one on duty?—and Bones must have known that, the bastard!—and cries, “Air hockey! Hey, Davey, wanna play?”

A young boy in a wheelchair perks up at the sound of his voice. “Mr. Jim! You came back!”

“I always come back,” Jim says sagely as he wheels the boy over to the air hockey table. “I promised you a rematch, didn’t I?”

The child’s delighted face, transforming from a wan paleness to a proper pink, is worth all of the fear and anxiety Jim suffered on the road to the Derby hospital—which is exactly why he never says no when Spock asks him if he wants to tag along to pick up Bones.

Leonard and Jim, per usual, find Spock hiding in the hospital cafeteria. Today, rather than working on legal documents, the man is reading the book Jim prevented him from finishing the previous night. Spock lowers the hard-back as they approach his table in a secluded corner of the cafeteria. Bones takes one look at its titled cover and says, “How can you read that crap?”

“I highly doubt ‘crap’ is the public opinion of this biography. It is enlightening.”

Jim doesn’t like the challenging sparkle in Bones’ eyes, nor the amusement in Spock’s. He cuts in blithely, pointing at the picture of the man on the cover of the book, “Who’s George Stephanopoulos?”

Leonard says “One of those crazy kingmakers” at the same time Spock explains “A journalist and former political advisor.”

“Sooo…” Jim blinks. “He’s Greek?”

And that, effectively, is the end of the conversation (much to Jim’s delight) as Spock and McCoy come to a silent agreement to withhold their “discussion” until their audience is able to appreciate the subject matter. There is something to be said for pretending political ignorance, Jim has always thought, and this simply validates his beliefs.

Pleased with himself, Jim wheedles money for food out of Spock and goes to the cafeteria line with a joyful bounce to his step.

“Doctor McCoy!” A young woman in business suit and low heels flags down Bones as she hurries past security and through the main entrance of the hospital.

Leonard asks Jim and Spock to “Hang on a sec” and meets her halfway. They speak in low tones for a long minute; Jim not-so-subtly strains to catch any part of the conversation he can mainly because the woman’s face looks familiar, though he cannot place it in his memory. At last Leonard nods, thanks her, and they part ways.

Jim asks curiously when McCoy rejoins them in their trek to the parking lot, “What was that about?”

“Mmm,” the dark-haired man says, lengthening his stride toward Spock’s Corvette. “Just confirmation of a meeting I requested.” He glances at Spock. “I’ll need to come back here on Thursday morning, if you don’t mind.”

“I do not,” Spock replies graciously.

Jim pokes Bones in the shoulder. “What kind of meeting?”

Leonard frowns at him. “Department. Why?”

“Since when are you part of the hospital staff, Bones?”

“I have patients here, you know.”

“Yeah but with a visitor’s restrictions. You’re not on Derby payroll,” Jim argues.

“What’s that matter, Jim? Maybe somebody here thinks my opinion counts. Have you considered that?” McCoy snaps in return.

Stung, Jim climbs into the backseat of the Corvette with a flippant “Whatever.”

Leonard sinks into the passenger seat after shooting Jim an unreadable look. His silence hangs like a cloud over their drive back to Riverside. Not that Jim notices this, because he is too busy sorting through what he had overheard of the conversation between Leonard and that woman, obviously employed as administrative personnel to someone important.

She had said to McCoy, “He sends his regards, Doctor, and wishes you to know he is pleased you have reconsidered his offer. He will meet with you at 9 a.m. on the tenth.”

The nervous curdling in Jim’s stomach has nothing to do with Leonard’s glower in the rearview mirror; Jim tries to justify his suspicions of what Bones might be planning but instead finds himself imagining something he had thought impossible turning very probable.

But Bones wouldn’t betray him.

Would he?

Next Part

Related Posts:

• Sticks and Stones (18/18) – from April 19, 2012
• Sticks and Stones (17/18) – from April 17, 2012
• Emotional Much? – from April 17, 2012
• Sticks and Stones (16/17) – from April 13, 2012
• Sticks and Stones (15/17) – from April 11, 2012