Title: Two Birds of a Feather (#28, 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; pure crack (Karl wearing a white jacket = wings? IDEK!), , and really no explanation for it. Read at your own risk.
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 | Serenade | Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 3 | Tied to You | The Amateur Pigeon-Catcher | The Amateur Pigeon-Catcher, Part 2 | The Art of Beginnings | The Amateur Pigeon-Catcher, Part 3

At the third tug on his wings in less than a minute, Leonard spins around and snarls at the tiny toddler, “Stop it!”

The boy, clutching a fistful of white feathers, pokes out his bottom lip in protest. His mother drags her ear away from a cell phone to say to her son, “Don’t bother the angel, hon.”

The child declares “Mine!” and grasps the tip of Leonard’s left wing, which is about as high up as he can reach due to his short stature.

Leonard jerks his wing out of the grubby hand and puts his back to the couple in front of him in a line of people.

Having the object of his interest taken away—that is, the worst thing Leonard could have done to a three year-old—the boy wails his dismay for the entire grocery store to hear. “My bird! MY BIRD!”

This is the moment at which Jim returns from his self-appointed errand, saying, “I found the beer!”

Leonard glares at the cardboard box encasing six beer cans because he would have to rip open the case in order to get at a drink. And he direly needs one after this fifteen-minute wait for a turn at the register while a woman holds up the line because she decides she doesn’t want every other item after it’s been rung-up, thereby causing the cashier to void the transaction and start over on her one-hundred and fifty-two item purchase. Drinking in public, however, particularly inside a store full of humans younger than the legal drinking age (i.e. Mr. Crying His Pants Off Because He Can’t Pluck Leonard into Baldness), is a no-no in any rule book.

Jim, as if sensing his partner’s urge to becoming stinking drunk in the middle of the day, neatly sets the case of beer on the floor. He places his hands on Leonard’s shoulders and massages them. “Don’t worry, I think we have everything on the list now.”

“F—screw the list,” Leonard snarls, only pausing to glance at the mother and child in close proximity. “I want to go home.”

“But the party…”

“Screw the party too!” he rages as quietly as possible, though people still eye him with curiosity or a significant lack of amusement. Leaning in to Kirk, Leonard drops his voice to a whisper. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t like being in public?”

“Because of the wings?” Jim asks softly.

“No, Jim, ’cause of my squirrel eyes,” he deadpans. Unfortunately, Jim’s laughter does not alleviate Leonard’s foul mood.

Wiping a tear from his eye, Jim says cheekily, “Red Bull gives you wings.”

“What?”

“That was the company’s motto before, you know, they ditched their caffeine addicts and cornered the market by engineering wing grafts.”

“Oh God,” Leonard groans, “you mean people seriously want a pair of wings?” He glares over his shoulder at the unnatural protrusions from his back.

Jim stares at him. “Where have you been for the last decade, Bones?”

“With my head stuck in a damn hole, I guess,” the man mutters, shifting to place Jim between him and the thumb-sucking, sniffling toddler.

Jim has an affinity for history lectures, particularly of those Leonard doesn’t care to hear. “It’s like, fashionable or some shit… A neo-Christian leader – Joseph, or Job, or something – started the craze when he declared himself a real winged Angel of the Lord. Of course the tabloids caught wind of his plastic surgery, and that was the end of his career, but the beginning of a fad. I hear Vogue only accepts applications from winged models nowadays. ” He looks fondly at Leonard’s wings. “I used to think it would be awesome to fly.”

“I can’t fly, you moron. Whoever believes it’s anatomically sufficient to give a two-hundred pound man a pair of hollow-boned wings and expect him to fly is a damned fool.”

Jim shuffles closer, until they are touching chests, and purrs, “But we have fun with them anyway, don’t we, Bones?”

As the mother lifts her son into her arms, who is now trying to pick his nose with one of his prized angel feathers, she smirks at the blushing Leonard.

“Jim,” Leonard warns, “let’s…let’s not discuss that here.”

Jim strokes the curve of a wing, and Leonard shivers. “‘K, Bones,” he agrees easily, then steps back, putting a couple of inches between them for decency’s sake. “Oh, look! The line’s moving!” He gleefully shoves the case of beer across the floor with his foot. Leonard takes the two steps closer to the register which is the result of someone giving up their spot in line out of frustration.

He grumbles under his breath, “We’re going to be here forever.”

Jim shoves his hands into his pockets and smiles placidly at the people jostling items in their arms ahead of them. “That’s cool.”

Leonard sighs and rustles one of his wings when a particular sensation he has come to utterly loathe begins to annoy him. After a pause, in which he tries to ignore it (yet caves almost immediately), he tells Jim, “Itch.”

“Ah,” Jim says knowingly. He obliges Leonard by scratching the itch at a place beneath McCoy’s shoulder blades where the wings’ bones break through the skin. “Better?”

“A little more.”

Several seconds later. “How about now?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Oh, that’s right!” Jim pulls an object out of the beer case which Leonard, in his ire, had failed to notice was there. “I’m buying you a back-scratcher, Bones.”

Didn’t I agree to date you so you could be my back-scratcher?

Huh, maybe that wouldn’t be the best thing to say, Leonard decides. A quick test proves that the plastic back-scratcher is surprisingly very useful and satisfying. Leonard scrubs at that one spot which drives him nuts, mainly because he cannot reach it, until his skin threatens to start peeling. He waits impatiently then starts scratching his back again as soon as the discomfort fades. “When I find out who’s responsible for these things,” the winged man complains even though his face is a mask of bliss, “they’re dead. A very, non-refundable kind of dead.”

Suddenly Jim’s interested in the miserable-looking cashier far, far away. He mumbles, “But wings aren’t so bad, right?”

“They itch and mottle and I can’t stand up straight in the bathroom or sit down comfortably on the crapper. What do you think?” Leonard stuffs the back-scratcher into the case of beer again, finally somewhat content. This is when he notices his companion’s unusual silence. “Jim?”

Jim turns, smiles too brightly at him, if not a little nervously. “Line’s moving again!”

They shuffle two more steps toward the register.

Leonard returns to sighing. “Once I’ve figured out how to get rid of the wings without damaging my nervous system, we can go back to Risa. “

“But isn’t that where… you got them? You said you never wanted to see Risa again.”

“Somebody there has to know the responsible party… Jim, what’s the matter with you?”

The hint of panic in Jim’s face melts away. “Nothing!”

Leonard looks at his partner for a long, long moment. “You know who did this to me, don’t you?”

Jim takes on an expression which normally precedes a very big lie. “No, of course not, Bones!”

“Was it you?” McCoy growls.

“No, no,” Jim laughs, an almost cackle, as he waves away the idea as ludicrous. Then, as an afterthought, he adds, “Maybe it was Spock.”

Leonard, who doesn’t like to picture Jim as a devious man, considers the suggestion. “You know,” he begins slowly, imagining Spock with a scalpel and a wicked grin (never mind that it’s incongruous to reality), “I bet it was him!”

“He is the mad scientist type,” Jim points out.

“That—that HOBGOBLIN!”

An overhead voice on the store comm system interrupts Leonard’s rant before it can begin. “Ladies and gentlemen… and angels, due to a register malfunction, Line 3 is now closed.”

Jim’s mouth turns to an O of surprise. Leonard instantly forgets about Spock and tries to spot the cashier, who slinks off to hide behind a rack of Klingon-advertised bubblegum. The toddler boy giggles at his cursing mother and leans out of her arms to pluck another feather from a distracted Leonard. “Mine!” he crows. “Birdie, mine!”

“Fuck,” Leonard says succinctly, twitching away from the toddler. They can’t escape until they’ve paid for the party goods.

A sign lights up at Line 5, and suddenly there is no more time for swearing, snarling, screaming, or swatting at baby humans. Leonard snakes out an arm, grabs a hold of Jim, and tows them through the mad rush to the next checkout line, where, sadly, they end up tenth in line behind an old man who starts counting (ancient) copper pennies to buy a five-dollar bottle of water.

-Fini

The Beautiful Bay

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