Title: Serenade (#21, J ‘N B Series)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Summary: Comment!fic inspired by this pic post at Jim-and-bones; there is a stranger outside Leonard’s window.
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 Case of the Mondays | Today’s Topic -Helmets! | The Case of the Mondays, Part 2 | Marked | Awesome Ideas Come from Awesome Brains | In the Keeping of a Spirit | The Case of the Mondays, Part 3 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 4 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 5 | Forewarned is Forearmed | The Case of the Mondays, Part 6 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 7 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 8 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 9

Leonard has never seen the man before in his life. “Look, kid,” and is that amusing? Why does the fellow smile at him like that? “I don’t know why you’re out here serenading the crows but some of us regular people want to sleep. So shut it.” Thinking the problem is taken care of, he pulls his head back inside his apartment to close and latch his window, lastly drawing the blinds to hide the offending sight of some punk strumming a guitar at the foot of his apartment building and wailing like an alley cat.

He grabs a beer from his small refrigerator and sinks into his living room’s sole piece of furniture—a cushy but threadbare armchair—and turns on the television, whose antennae droops like sad, tin-foiled rabbit ears. The news channel is full of crap, Leonard considers himself too old to watch a dancing banana-yellow sea sponge, and the couple having an affair on Lifetime reminds him too much of his ex-wife.

Plink.

Leonard takes a long swallow of beer and hates his monotonous life.

Plink. Plink.

Eventually he becomes aware of the repetitious noise and lowers the tv’s volume to listen.

Plink.

Some asshole is tossing rocks at his window! Leonard abandons a primetime cop drama to peer between two blinds. Another rock—no, not a rock, but something colorful and small like a bead—pings the window near his left eyeball. He jumps back in surprise.

Irritated now (who is the fool trying to give Leonard a heart attack on his night off?), he pulls up the blinds for a full view down the side of the building.

Below, guitar guy waves frantically at him.

Leonard really has nothing better to do. He opens the window again and shouts, “WHAT?”

Mr. Annoying asks, grinning broadly, “Can I come up?”

Long ago, Leonard accepted that city-living has its quirks; this isn’t the down-home of Georgia where the man asking you to invite him in is also the man you hit with a plastic frying pan in kindergarten. There are bonafide crazies here, and Leonard knew it was only a matter of time before he met one.

Which in no way means Leonard has to be hospitable or polite to him.

“Fuck off or I’ll call the cops,” he snaps.

The guy wheedles like a three year old. “Please, please, Bones! It’s cold outside!” The lanky fellow shivers for show, hugging his guitar and smiling ridiculously wide. Leonard thinks he can see the color of his eyes (a glowing blue, what the hell?), which is really unnerving since Leonard’s apartment is on the fifth floor and he hasn’t had his myopia fixed yet.

Bones?

He shuts the window without another word and hopes the lunatic goes away. After double-checking the lock on his apartment door, Leonard turns up the volume on his television again and pretends he isn’t worried he is going to be ax-murdered in his sleep. Why, oh why, didn’t he bring his father’s gun when he moved?

A few minutes pass with no other interruption. Leonard’s blood pressure eases back to normal levels, and he returns to nursing his lukewarm beer.

“Idiot,” he murmurs at the TV because the assailant is obviously the mother and the cops have yet to figure it out. He is contemplating discarding his half-empty beer for something colder when the sudden knock on the window scares the shit out of him. Leonard forgot to draw the blinds and a face appears at the bottom corner of a pane, blue eyes staring into Leonard’s apartment—and at Leonard.

Guitar guy is now literally outside his window, separated from Leonard only by glass. “Bones? Bones, can I come in?” When the man knocks imploringly on the window again, he almost unbalances from his perch and Leonard hears the rattle of metal.

Oh fuckity-fuck. The fire escape. How could Leonard have forgotten about the fire escape?

Then he realizes what else he forgot to do and dives for the window at the same time psycho-man-hanging-from-his-fire-escape discovers the window is not locked. Leonard doesn’t think, simply acts, and smashes his fist on top of the guy’s fingers grappling at the bottom of the window sill for a hold. Then he slams the window shut, locks it, and backs away, shaking from a powerful combination of adrenaline and fear.

Unfortunately, the crazy man doesn’t slip and fall, or even—if Leonard is to be truthful—look scared that he might hurt himself. His mouth curves at the corners like they are sharing a secret. “It’s me Jim,” he says to Leonard, loudly so his words echo through the glass. “Are you ready?”

“Ready?” Leonard squeaks. Then he thinks Phone! 911! NOW!

“To wake up,” explains Jim.

Leonard cannot contemplate a response to that. He scrambles after his cordless phone, ignoring the urgent knocking on the window and the stupid nickname “Bones!!”

He tells the 911 operator, “Somebody’s trying to break into my apartment.”

“Doctor McCoy,” the operator replies in a lovely woman’s voice (familiar maybe?), “where are you?”

“I’m at—wait, how do you know I’m a doctor?”

“Leonard, we miss you,” she says like he hasn’t said a word to her.

The man at the window calls, “Bones? C’mon, Bones, just let me in.”

The phone disconnects to a dial tone, an awful empty sound, and without warning terrible pain burns through Leonard’s head. He drops the phone. More urgent now is the stranger—no, it’s Jim, Leonard remembers out of the blue—calling him, asking him to please, please let him in. Saying things like I don’t want to be without you and you aren’t waking up.

Leonard’s head hurts so badly he thinks he is dying. He can’t figure out where he is. If only… The floor disappears into nothingness; the window, the man, clouds over. Leonard whimpers. Then the pain is gone.

~~~

The nurse lays a comforting hand on the visitor’s arm.

The visitor whispers, “Another seizure?”

“We had to sedate him. I’m sorry.”

He nods and sinks into the chair beside the bed. His question is a hollow one: “How much longer?”

Chapel tries to be gentle with her answer, particularly because it is an answer no one wants to hear. “We don’t know, Sir. His brain activity hasn’t changed since—since the coma.”

The man responds by reaching for Leonard’s hand, which is cold and slack between his own, and begs, “Bones.”

~~~

He wakes in his armchair, vaguely recalling a phantom headache, and grimaces as he rolls his stiff neck. His day off, thank God. Residency work might just kill him.

Leonard reaches for the television remote, already bored and somewhat lonely in his new apartment—but at least it’s safe, at least it’s a home, he assures himself—when the music begins. Then singing follows, a caterwail, horrifying in its uneven pitch.

What the hell?

Leonard walks to the window and pushes aside the blinds to investigate the disturbance. Oh. There’s some fool, some strange idiot outside with a guitar, serenading the crows. Nonplussed, Leonard jimmies open the window to yell at him to stop.

-Fini

Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 3

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