Title: For the Sake of Nothing
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: He had too much misery in his life to consider adding more.

He had wedged a tiny writing table under the single window in the room, a rickety affair from a nearby thrift shop, whose surface was riddled with grooves by some bored child with a penknife. From that table, elbows braced against its slick top, he looked out over the street, inspected the staggered high-rises of a distant metropolis, and shook his head at the small wares cart idling by a corner to catch customers. On a morning such as this one, with the fog stretched thin like a gossamer web over the neighborhood, he could almost pretend he loved his home.

But Leonard did not.

This one-room apartment—this hovel with its leaky bathroom pipes and crumbling brick-and-mortar walls—was nothing to be proud of. It was a shelter from a cold night or rainy afternoon. It was all he had to his name, and even then not in his name since the lease had belonged to a roommate who abandoned him halfway through the year. But the landlord only cared that Leonard fully paid the rent in cash; it mattered to no one but Leonard how he struggled to come up with that rent each month—working two jobs, slowly selling his collection of first edition books (many of them gifts from family members he had loved deeply), going so far as to pick up any forgotten pennies he spotted in the curb gutter.

The truth of the matter was no one was left to care about Leonard. To listen if he complained about the back-breaking work he did, or to say they want to come visit him even if he is far, far away from his roots. To make him laugh, like his father used to do with silly antics which his mother swore was the reason her hair was turning gray. In this world, filled by billions of people, Leonard McCoy was utterly alone.

He was bitter about that.

Picking up a worn pencil, the grim-faced man tried, unsuccessfully, for some time to write something that didn’t involve gloom and doom and miserable death. Frustrated, he snapped the pencil in two and tossed the pieces at the windowpane. They bounced back to his desktop, tumbled off its side and disappeared. It seemed his muse had deserted him too, like that asshole of a roommate, like his parents and brother in an interstate car pile-up on the way to see his new life in ‘the big city’, like his entire happy existence.

There was a bottle next to his chair, empty, overturned. Leonard rolled it away with his foot in disgust and pushed back his chair. Tucking himself into a coat that had once belonged to his father, he left his apartment and fished a cigarette out of his pocket once he was on the street. A perpetual curl of smoke followed him as he walked south, crossed against a traffic light and snarled back at an impatient driver shouting obscenities, and entered the one place that didn’t grate against his nerves.

A door bell jingled as he pushed his way inside. Across the room, a man glanced at Leonard standing on the threshold and somehow radiated disapproval without changing his expression. Leonard realized then the cigarette was still burning down to his fingertips, the smell of it obvious in the clean, fresh air of the coffee shop. He quickly leaned outside, dropped it to the sidewalk and ground it into ash and flattened paper beneath his shoe. Then he ducked back into the shop with a shrug that was meant to be an apology he was too stubborn to voice.

Leonard hadn’t been seated in a small two-person booth more than a minute when a mug of hot coffee (one packet of Splenda, no cream) was placed in front of him.

“Jim is not here,” the owner of the shop said without inflection.

Leonard snorted and leaned over the mug to enjoy the scent of a dark-roasted brew. He didn’t glance up at the man watching him. “I don’t come here for Jim.”

“…Indeed” was the owner’s singular response, notably full of disbelief.

Only when the man turned his back and walked away was Leonard able to look at him. He sipped at the coffee to quell the unusual reaction talking to Spock always caused. He figured the nervousness was standard (everybody who patron-ed this shop felt intimidated by Spock unless they were too stupid to live) but the rest of it—the slight anger, the curiosity, the hint of pleasure—made no sense to him. The owner both repelled and attracted him. It was “Spock’s unique talent,” Jim had said once.

Now Jim was a completely different creature. He made coffee that would have Leonard voluntarily crawling over broken glass for a cup. But the personality that came with the brew… Spock clearly only kept the annoying kid around because he seduced everybody who came into the coffee house, whether by his excellent barista skills or his ability to flirt with even the fly on the wall, to spend half their bank accounts in a single sitting. Certainly it wasn’t Spock’s coffee which brought people flocking here (the man was terrible at it and Leonard had had the misfortune of finding that out through first-hand experience) but he was a shrewd businessman, whereas Jim would give away the entire inventory free-of-charge to the downtown homeless shelter if they came by asking for donations.

Between Jim and Spock, this little niche was prosperous and people like Leonard (starving hopeful someday-professional writers) had somewhere to buy cheap, wonderful coffee.

Of course, Jim said Leonard came here to brood. If only Jim knew that half the reason Leonard brooded was because the idiot called him—

“Bones!”

Leonard groaned and hunkered into his seat. Speak of the Devil and he shall come, the man thought wryly.

Jim Kirk flipped a hand towel over his shoulder as he came around the side of the store-front counter and made a beeline for Leonard’s booth. With a grin, the man plopped down across from him. “You came early! Of course,” he added with knowing, which would be arrogance from anyone else, “you were waiting for me.”

Leonard rolled his eyes heavenward. When Kirk seemed to be settling himself in, letting one arm drape casually across the back of the booth, Leonard said sharply, “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“Oh, Spock’ll mind the store.”

“Really? You get paid to waste time by chatting up the customers?”

Jim’s blue eyes sparkled with amusement. “I thought that was exactly why I was hired.”

“Good Lord,” Leonard muttered, letting his natural Southern drawl slip out for a moment.

“Alabama!” Jim crowed suddenly.

“No.” Leonard bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling lest he ruin his ‘brooding’ image. He would never admit he liked this game between them.

Jim thumped his fist against the tabletop and guessed next, “South Carolina.”

“Nope.”

“Booones… Give me a break! I’ve covered the entire southern region of the United States by now!”

“Jim, obviously you sucked at geography in school. Since when is Idaho a Southern state?”

“But it’s the potato state.”

Leonard lifted his eyebrows as if to say and…?

“Aren’t potatoes a southern thing?”

“Jim,” Leonard said, struggling not to laugh, “stop yappin’ and go do something useful.”

Jim rubbed his cheek with his knuckles and gave Leonard a look that generally melted women into puddles of incoherent goo. “Do I have to?”

“Quit teasing me, kid, and scat.”

Jim slid out of the booth, saying with a touch of seriousness to his charm, “I’d never tease you, Bones. You can have whatever you want.” The lingering look he gave Leonard did not hide his desire at all.

Leonard shuddered slightly, told himself not to imagine the million things he could ask of Kirk, and pretended to stare out of a window instead. It was hard not to let Jim win. He might have, too, long before now if—

Spock passed by the table like a wave of frigid air, deftly and wordlessly stealing Leonard’s near-empty mug as he went. He would refill it and bring it back, Leonard knew, but only with the regular stuff. Not Jim’s house brew, unless Jim could sneak it past Spock or switch out the cups. (The owner usually was too observant for that.)

—if Spock wasn’t desperately in love with Jim Kirk.

He had seen it the first time he came here by accident while looking for a place to dry off from a downpour. Leonard was amazed Jim hadn’t noticed the way Spock’s eyes tracked him, or how perfectly polite (and frightening) the owner was to any customer he thought might seriously catch Jim’s interest. Then, of course, Jim had spotted Leonard and taken an immediate liking to him; therefore Spock had taken an immediate dislike to Leonard, which had only slightly mellowed since Leonard had not overtly tried to become involved with Jim.

Sometimes Leonard thought he and Spock might actually understand each other very well when they weren’t provoking one another. Jim made Leonard laugh; Spock made Leonard challenge himself. Both of them were able to make him feel lighter, less hopeless, even in the dourest mood.

Hence the problem was rather simple from Leonard’s viewpoint: Jim liked Leonard, Spock liked Jim, and Leonard kind of liked them both.

But his life was horrible enough without the complication of a love triangle, so he did what he always did when he had had his fill of good coffee and an atmosphere that didn’t want to make him want to put himself out of his misery—he paid his bill and left trouble alone.

Except sometimes, like today, trouble followed him.

“Bones!”

Leonard stopped and turned to look at Jim standing in the doorway of the shop, that earnest, almost too-unguarded expression on his face. People skirted around Leonard on the sidewalk, most of them barely sparing a glance for anything but their own worries.

“See you again?” Jim asked.

Leonard absently rolled an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “Yeah,” he said, wishing he was ignorant to the hope in Kirk’s voice. “…when I can manage it, kid.”

“Great! Bye, Bones.” Jim disappeared back into the shop, the door jingling shut.

The tall shadow on the other side of the window was Spock, returning to business.

Leonard sighed, put the cigarette in his mouth, and walked back to his wretched apartment alone.

Next Part

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