Title: Sticks and Stones (8/?)
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 | 5 | 6 | 7

Part Seven

The place smells sharply of strong liquor and stale smoke. Jim Kirk doesn’t acknowledge the waitress who replaces his empty bottle of beer with a full, cold bottle beginning to sweat from the room’s temperature. He pops its cap when she is gone but doesn’t drink, instead running his thumb along the edge of the slick label.

The other occupants of the bar have long since recognized his desire to be alone. Their voices are low murmurs in his ears, conversations he cares neither to hear nor join; nothing distracts him from his silent reverie.

As the hour closes in on midnight, the customers dwindle down to Jim and a half-asleep drunk at a booth in a dark corner. The waitress has already indicated to Jim he should pack up his brooding and move on. Just as Kirk is ready to leave, a familiar shadow falls across his table. He tightens his hold on his beer but doesn’t look up.

“How did you find me?” he asks, absently stirring the dust along the rim of a napkin holder with one finger. “You always find me.”

“Maybe I just know you, kid,” Leonard says as he drops heavily into an empty chair. He shakes his head at the bartender looking in their direction, declining the possibility of a drink before it can be offered. “Winona called. She wants you home. Don’t ask me why.”

“Why?”

“Why not? At least you can be miserable while she bakes you pie.”

“I can’t… see her right now,” Jim confesses. And when did things become so bad he abhors the thought of seeking comfort from his mother? He tries half-heartedly to filter out the semi-permanent hostility and disappointment from his tone of voice. “Go away, Bones.”

“When are you going to forgive me, Jim?”

His response is a hollow echo inside the bar. “I don’t know.”

“I won’t leave you.” Leonard’s words turn melancholy. “No matter what you may think.”

Jim laughs bitterly. “Maybe you should.” He pauses to contemplate his next thought and decides to give it the weight of sound. “Take Spock with you too.”

“Jim,” his boyfriend says, taken aback by the hard suggestion, “you can’t mean that.”

He stands up, angry, and digs money out of his pocket to toss onto the table. “I really fucking do, Bones. Don’t try to follow me this time.”

Outside of the bar is Spock waiting in his Corvette. He opens the car door when Jim steps onto the gravel parking lot but the man doesn’t get out, clearly uncertain if his intervention is welcome; Kirk pivots sharply in the opposite direction and walks away.

A day passes. Jim spends as little time in his apartment as possible and never when Bones is home. He forgoes Spock’s house altogether.

Often for Jim walking can be more cathartic than riding his motorcycle. Currently, Jim is pacing down a sidewalk, his hands stuffed into his jackets pockets. He doesn’t pay attention to what part of town he is in or what part of town he might be leaving. Location doesn’t matter because he has no destination, only this frustration which drives him into motion. It’s lingered with him for a couple of days now, and he has no idea how to make it go away. Moving makes it bearable.

As he strides past a weather-beaten bench, declared as a bus stop by an equally battered sign, he glances around. The woman standing beside the bench is smoking with her eyes fixed across the street and her foot tapping impatiently on the concrete. She is a familiar face but not someone Jim wants to chat with. He moves on, pretending not to have seen her.

“It feels shitty, doesn’t it?” the woman calls at his retreating back as she finishes her cigarette and flicks the butt to the ground, grinding it beneath her boot heel.

Jim halts mid-stride, caught by her question.

Marlena Moreau clarifies, “It’s shitty having no options.”

He turns around and stares pointedly at the suitcase resting against her legs. “It doesn’t seem like you’re out of options.”

He receives a sour look in return. “I don’t like the way things are here, or the way they’re going to be. So why stay?” she asks.

Jim turns away, certain he shouldn’t acknowledge that question, but Marlena calls him back before he manages three steps.

“You can come with me, Jim.”

That surprises him, and for a brief instant he imagines stepping onto a bus and never looking back. Jim shakes off the daydream. “You hate me,” he states. “Why do you care?”

There’s something in her eyes, something he can’t quite decipher. “I don’t care,” she admits, “but I thought somebody should remind you you can walk away. I don’t think your friends would tell you that.”

“Thanks,” Jim says after a moment of silence passes, “but no thanks. Things aren’t so simple for me.” As an afterthought, hearing the roar of an approaching Greyhound, he advises, “Make a better life for yourself, Marlena. It’s the only one you’ve got.”

He doesn’t know what her laughter means but he doesn’t wait around to find out, either.

The note on the refrigerator reads: I know you’re pissed at me but Spock didn’t do anything.

Jim crumples the paper in a fist and throws it away. After a quick and nasty debate with himself, he picks up the phone and calls Spock.

That the man answers on the first ring is alarmingly telling of his worry. “Jim.”

“Hey,” he says into the receiver. An apology blossoms on the tip of his tongue but he swallows it down. “How are you?”

“I miss you.”

That’s not fair. He shifts on his feet, uncomfortable. McCoy must have told Spock what to say to crack his defenses.

“Oh.” Then, “I’m fine” even though Spock hadn’t asked.

Seconds pass. “…You have no intention of returning.” Spock’s voice is too flat in quality, too much like his lawyer-at-trial voice.

“I—“ Jim grimaces. “I never said that.”

“You have said nothing of value, which limits my interpretation.” There is a pause. “Should I make arrangements to have your personal belongings returned to you?”

He isn’t aware of how hard his fingers clutch the phone. “Spock, we’re not breaking up.”

“Not at this juncture, no. We agreed it would be a mutual decision if a decision became necessary. Regardless of how you may feel at present, I will not decide on the fate of our relationship until you are prepared to discuss the matter in person. You owe both Leonard and I that much, Jim.”

“Spock,” he breathes, not liking the sudden shakiness of his voice.

“If you contact me again, I expect either an apology or a date and time to meet.”

Spock hangs up. Jim stares wonderingly at the phone, not really hearing the dial tone. He finds himself in another position he never imagined possible. With a gentleness indicative of his shock, he hangs up too.

He doesn’t call Spock back.

Bulldozers are breaking ground where a store used to be. Jim can hear it from Jose’s auto shop. By the time lunch comes, the noise of construction is a terrible throbbing in his ears. He un-grits his teeth and tells Jose when he returns from lunch, it will be with earplugs for them both.

Jim doesn’t go shopping for those ear plugs. Instead he slips into the back of the diner and finds Pavel Chekov checking food inventory in the store room. “Hey,” he says, “how’s it going, Pavel?”

“Jim!” The young man brightens upon sighting him. “It is good to see you!”

The smile on Kirk’s face isn’t nearly so forced as it has been in days past. He eyes the neatly arranged supplies on the shelves and labeled boxes along the room’s wall. “I think you like being a kitchen boy too much,” he jokes. “How did you manage to clean this area up?”

“Da,” Chekov agrees cheerfully, “it was wery unorganized. Sasha helped.” Pavel shoots a blatantly curious look in Jim’s direction. “You have not come to visit for days. You are… hiding?”

From what I have to do? Yes. “I… yeah, I guess so.” He scratches the back of his head and gives Pavel a pleading look. “Don’t tell Mom I’m here.”

Pavel hesitates before asking, “Can I tell Hikaru?”

“Only if you think he’ll make me lunch without telling Uhura or giving me away to Mom.” Jim’s stomach rumbles plaintively; he pats it. “Aww, she really misses Sulu’s food.”

Pavel looks at Jim’s stomach with an expression which most likely means Why are you personifying one of your organs? Americans are strange. He hands Jim the inventory list and shows him where to start from. Jim assures his friend that he can count. In return, Pavel goes to the kitchen to wheedle a chicken salad sandwich and fries out of Sulu for the stowaway Kirk.

When the door to the store room opens again, Jim says, “Hey, Pavel, do tomatoes go under fruits or vegetables?”

“What are you doing?”

Jim turns around to find Sulu depositing a plate of food on the corner of a table. Sulu repeats, “What are you doing, Jim?”

Jim snags a fry from the plate and pops it into his mouth while waving Chekov’s clipboard at the cook. “Inventory. So, tomatoes…?”

“I meant,” Sulu overrides him, “why are you acting like an asshole to your mother?”

Jim makes a rude noise and discards the clipboard on a shelf. “It’s not your business, Sulu.”

“When your family issues affect my job, it becomes my business,” the man counters in an implacable voice. “Tell me, or I’ll drop your sandwich on the floor.” He reaches out and tilts the plate at a precarious angle with one finger.

Jim freezes. “Not the chicken salad, man—it doesn’t deserve that!”

“I made it with a dab of cream cheese. No celery. No crust,” Sulu tacks on.

Jim’s stomach whimpers. Oh fuck, cream cheese. No celery or crust. He needs that. “Don’t kill my sandwich! What do you want?”

“Why are you avoiding Winona?”

“Pike,” he blurts out, because now that Jim thinks about it the real truth could hurt Sulu.

“I don’t believe you,” the cook growls. The sandwich slides downwards with the aid of gravity to the rim of the plate; a few fries fall onto the floor.

“Sulu,” Jim says, strangling over indecision, “I don’t think I should be the one to tell you.” Not about the restaurant. Would his mother have said anything yet? Jim doesn’t think so.

Sulu lets the plate drop back to the table. “I can handle whatever it is, Jim, but I don’t think you can—or are handling it well. If you talk to me, maybe I can give you another perspective on the problem.”

“I doubt that,” he mutters. At last Jim sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Mom is considering selling the Enterprise to Khan, courtesy of one double-crossing Christopher Pike.”

“Is that so?” Sulu doesn’t sound shocked or even worried.

Jim frowns. “Why are you cool with this?”

“If I believed it, I wouldn’t be.” Sulu offers one half of the chicken salad sandwich to Jim.

He takes it reluctantly, still mulling over Sulu’s confidence. “How can you not believe it?”

“Because your mother asked me if I wanted to become part-owner of the diner.”

Jim rocks back on his heels. “What?“

“I may or may not agree to it,” Sulu continues. “If Khan ends up shutting us down, it would be a short-lived and profitless venture. I don’t like instability or risk in my investments.”

“Mom wouldn’t propose the idea if she thought it would be a bust,” Jim realizes. He takes a bite of the sandwich and chews it slowly while he re-evaluates an assumption he had accepted days ago as fact. “What’s she thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Sulu says, “but I can tell you she isn’t going to turn the keys over to Khan. I don’t know why you think she would.”

The sandwich, as good as it tastes, sits like lead in his stomach. “I told you—because of Pike.”

Sulu nudges the plate towards Kirk, a silent invitation to finish the food, and pulls open the door to the store room. “Pike left,” he reveals without ceremony, and leaves Jim to consider another startling bit of news.

Later, over the vibrating noise of a pressured air pump Jim and Jose need to work on a Crown Victoria, he tells his boss and friend, “I think I screwed up, man.”

Jose flips the off-switch on the pump. “Screwing up makes you human. Have you apologized to your mother yet?”

Jim looks up from where he is kneeling beside a tire. “How did you know I meant my mom?”

“I told you a couple of days ago—she’s called looking for you. It sounded important.”

“I didn’t want to hear it,” Jim admits. “I was angry.”

A moment of silence stretches. Then Jose says quietly, heavily, “We’re all angry, Jim. Victims have a right to be angry. But because we are the victims—you, me, and Winona and almost everybody in this town—we can’t afford to take that anger out on each other. It compromises us.”

“We have to focus our anger on Khan,” Jim surmises. “How do we do that?”

“How does anybody win a war?”

Jim rotates the wrench in his hand, over and over again. “Exploiting their enemy’s weakness. Khan doesn’t have a weakness.” Hadn’t the man said as much? Jim has thought hard over this many times before now and found himself agreeing with the assessment. Jim sincerely believes Khan would not care what he tried to do to him; how could such a self-assured man, the kind who lacks a heart, know anything about fear?

Jose pulls a rag out of a back pocket and wipes at the black grease under his fingernails. “Maybe Eugenics has a weakness.”

Jim snorts as he remembers what Pike said to him once about Khan’s terrorist connections. “If it’s a cover to serve dirt bag dictators and militaristic regimes, I would bet it was built on dirty money.”

“Which isn’t a crime we have the power to address.” Jose tosses the rag on the garage floor in an uncharacteristic display of temper. “Damn.”

But for Jim the world tilts on its axis. His nerveless fingers let go of the wrench. It clatters to the ground next to Jose’s rag. “Say that again!”

“That we aren’t the feds?” his boss asks, bemused by Jim’s wide-eyed expression.

“Shit, yes!” Jim almost stumbles over a loose tire in his haste to get to his locker and his change of clothes.

“Kirk, it’s not closing time! Where the hell are you going?”

“Komack!” he shouts. “Gotta find the sheriff!”

Komack thinks Jim is crazy. “I don’t put civilians in danger.”

“We’re already in danger,” Jim retorts. He leans over the Sheriff’s desk and unrelentingly pushes into Komack’s personal space. “We catch these assholes, we catch Khan.”

“There’s no guarantee we can trace them back to Singh. I told you it was a theory.”

Jim beats the top of Komack’s desk with his fist. Komack grabs a stack of folders before they slide to the floor and matches Jim’s glare.

“If Khan hired them or found someone to hire them,” Jim insists, “there has to be connection leading back to him. Better yet, if he knows we have the men in custody, he will have to do something to ensure no one talks.”

Komack waves Jim back with one hand. “Get out of my face, Kirk. I’ll think about it.” His sharp eyes bore into the younger man. “However I would bet my badge you haven’t discussed this—insane—plan of yours with anybody else. Get those who need to know, who would be party to it, on board first and then we can talk.”

Jim nods. “I will. You can count on it.”

Komack’s sigh stops Jim at the door to his office. “You know this may go badly, don’t you? Last time, Trelane set fire to the diner and you almost died. What do you think Khan will do to it, if you invite his men inside?”

“They won’t have a chance to hurt the Enterprise—or my family,” Jim replies, “because I’ll be ready and waiting when they show up.”

A stifled noise. Then the Sheriff grunts, “You scare me, boy.”

Jim tilts his head, curious. “Why?”

“Because I think God forgot to give you a sense of self-preservation.”

To Jim, that’s entirely too funny to be true. He laughs and heads out of the police station to find his mother.

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