Title: Bad Business (#31, J ‘N B Series)
Author: klmeri
Rating: R
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, McCoy
Summary: Comment!fic inspired by this pic post at jim_and_bones; car chases almost always end badly. Leonard learns this the unfortunate way.
Warnings: ample swear words, murder
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 | Two Birds of a Feather | The Beautiful Bay | The Man in the Shed

Leonard checks his rearview mirror for the third time in two minutes. Same black sedan. Tinted windows and Jersey Devils plate on the front.

Fuck.

His fingers drum nervously on his steering wheel as he decides what he is going to do. I’m just an accountant at a small town corp, the man thinks. This isn’t supposed to happen to me!

His conscience flings back, Yeah? And how may accountants have a bookie they owe a couple of grand to?

He tells the common sense part of his brain to fuck off and, spying an exit three lanes over, performs the antics of a crazy stunt driver. Horns blare in the wake of his last-minute spin of the wheel, when he cuts in front of a soccer mom minivan, U-Haul, and an eight-wheeler to get to the interstate exit just before his front bumper can clip the orange road divider. Leonard’s heart is pounding as he fights his car down to a speed that won’t tip him over on the twenty mph ramp. The air vents pump in the smell of burning rubber a split second before Leonard successfully merges onto a partly deserted highway. Luckily, though, his wheels are still intact.

The first chance the man gets, he swerves into a side street and parks between two restaurant dumpsters. He has lost police cruisers this way, and in this state cops can be fucking crazier than race-car drivers. Surely that sedan didn’t have the time to follow him or, he hopes, the balls to commit vehicular suicide.

“That’s what desperate people do,” Leonard mutters to himself. Switching off his car, he tips his head backward with a sigh and closes his eyes.

Of all the ways to start a Monday morning…

“You’re late, McCoy.”

Silently, Leonard dips his head in acknowledgement of his boss and skirts past the pot-bellied man.

Said man snags his arm, delaying his slinking away in shame. The receptionist, watching them, lifts the phone to her ear to pretend there is something other than a dial tone on the other end and she isn’t, in fact, eavesdropping.

“This is the third fucking time!” Leonard’s boss snarls. “I pay you to get your ass to work at eight – not a half past ten!”

“I’ll make it up.”

His boss snorts derisively, his eyes dark and mean. “Yeah-fucking-right.”

Leonard tugs against the man’s fingers digging in his arm. Damn it, he thinks, let go, you ugly little slug. He can feel his blood pressure rising.

The man snorts again and flings Leonard’s arm away like it burns him. “Get to work, McCoy—and forget lunch today.”

A punishment which violates some kind of work law, McCoy would bet. But Leonard only nods, swallowing a nasty rebuttal that sours his mouth, and goes to his desk.

The receptionist returns the phone to its cradle, shaking her head.

It’s past 7 o’clock when Leonard finally decides he might as well face his crappy predicament. He is alone in the office building, having watched all of his co-workers head home at a quarter ’til 5. The boss, of course, had left at three in the afternoon because that’s what bosses—and company owners—apparently do. A vending machine danish wrapper crinkles under the wheels of Leonard’s office chair as he pushes back from his desk to stand up. Legs stiff from hours of sitting, Leonard moves with a slight limp to the copier and retrieves the last document he had printed and forgotten. Some days he imagines a fire taking the entire building out. God knows, they have enough faulty wiring and old wood paneling from the early ’70s to make this place go up in flames like a tinderbox.

But then he’d be out of a job, and fat chance ever finding another one in this shitty economy.

He’d also have his bookie crawling up his ass to scavenge his intestines for payment. No loan shark likes an unemployed gimp writing IOUs to cover his debts.

Leonard turns off the office lights, locks the main door, and drives to an ATM to check his bank account balance. He withdraws his last two hundred dollars in hopes a small bit of cash is better than no payment at all.

Leonard goes home first to change out his suit jacket. He hasn’t found a trick yet that can disguise blood stains, and it’s his only suit jacket left.

Going home is the worst mistake he could have made.

The lights are out. Literally. He flips a switch and nothing happens.

Leonard stands one foot within the doorway of his cheap, one-bedroom apartment, frozen like a deer that has suddenly seen a hunter and a rifle in the bushes. His stomach cramps with nerves. Following his instinct, he backs through the open door.

But Leonard McCoy doesn’t make it far.

Someone shoves him from behind. He stumbles into a side table, causing the small cigarette dish he uses to toss his keys into to crash to the floor and shatter. Leonard grabs the first thing to hand and swings it as he turns around.

The assailant ducks. Leonard smells an aftershave he almost recognizes.

“Fuckfuckfuck,” he says, breathing rapidly. Leonard swings the lamp again, rather wildly in the dark. “Stay back, motherfucker!”

The shadow of a man crosses the window, and the streetlight from between the blinds catches on the plane of a hard jaw and short, spiky hair.

And a gun.

Leonard’s fingers go numb. He doesn’t realize how terrified he is until his back hits a wall and his legs start to tremble.

“I got the money,” he says quickly.

The shadow has completely stilled now, just behind the couch. There is enough light to tell the man’s mouth is smiling at Leonard. “Who says it’s money that I want?” comes a silky baritone.

“B-But the—”

“Fuck your bookie,” the shadow man barks out, laughing lowly. “What the fuck do I care about that? My car, man,” he says. “‘Cause of you, I fucked up my car.”

Leonard swallows hard. He reminds his shaking hands not to let go of the lamp. “Listen,” he begins, wetting his lips nervously, “I’m sorry about that.” Then his stupid mouth, which seems completely detached from his brain, adds, “Maybe you shouldn’t have followed me.”

“What did you say?” The laughter this time isn’t mocking, it’s angry. “You know what? Doesn’t matter. My job is to collect from the little pissants who try to cheat my boss outta his due, and generally I have to fuck a man up first before I can get to the collecting part. But I don’t think I’m gonna bother pussy-footing around with you,” Leonard is told.

He hears a click of the safety on the gun, presumably to an off position.

“I can pay for it!”

There is a pause. “I said I didn’t want money.”

Leonard transfers the lamp to one hand and shoves the other hand into his pants pocket, revealing a wad of crushed, sweaty bills. “Take it!”

“How much?”

He could lie… but not with a gun pointed at his head. “Two hundred.”

“I’ll need two thousand.”

His throat works for a moment. “I-I don’t have that. Fuck, this is all I got until my next payday!”

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m fucking sure!” he screams. “I got nothing but this and my bones. What the fuck else can I give you?”

“Not a damn thing, Bones,” the man says, stepping out of the shadows, “except my revenge.”

Leonard’s mouth goes dry in the instant before the gun fires. “Jim?”

~~~

Jim rolls the dead man face-up on the floor. “Sorry, Bones,” he says, reaching down to touch the white skin now empty of Leonard’s horrified expression, “but you know I don’t make friends. Bad business and all.” He tucks the two hundred dollars into his jacket pocket, wipes down the fingerprints on the apartment door knob and strolls out.

-Fini

A Fortunate Friend

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