Title: For the Sake of Nothing, Part 8
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Jim gets into trouble.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

And… cut to Act Two. I had no intention of returning so soon. The characters thought otherwise.

On a Tuesday Jim dropped a line rather carelessly to the wrong person. That person, though she was beautiful and clearly appreciative of his charm, had a boyfriend. Standing behind her.

As the guy surged over the counter and snagged the front of Jim’s shirt to haul him within fist-in-the-face range, Jim’s hands automatically went up in a gesture of calm down, buddy! I was just paying a compliment to the lady. In case the boyfriend was as dumb as he looked, Jim said the words aloud too, with fervor.

In return he got a derisive laugh. “Scared of me, buddy?” the big man snarled in Jim’s face.

Obviously he did not see the sudden, dark glint in Jim’s eyes. “Just trying to do the right thing, man,” Jim said. “People don’t come here to see a cockfight and blood all over the floor.”

The guy snorted. “Yeah, you’re scared, you little shit.” He shoved Jim away and grabbed his girlfriend’s arm, refocusing his anger. “You fucking look at him again…” he began to threaten her.

Jim would have let it go; he really would have. Spock had a distinct “no brawling in the workplace” policy. And what did this meathead’s insults mean anyway? But the way that guy dug bruises into the young woman’s arm, how he sneered at her, and the quick, almost resigned look of fear in her eyes before she tried to hide it?

Yeah. There was no way in hell Jim wasn’t going to turn a blind eye to that. He jumped over the counter and, smiling wickedly, gave the man’s broad shoulder a forceful shove. “You know what, asshole? Fuck you.”

Mean Guy turned on him, letting go of the girlfriend. “What’d you say?”

Jim dodged the swipe at him and backed towards the front door to the shop, cajoling, “I think you’re the one who’s scared. That explains why you pick on women.”

The man snorted like a bull; his face was reminiscent of one too. Jim barked out a laugh with the perfect mocking tone. Roaring in outrage, the guy took the bait and came after him. Kirk swung through the door, ignoring the way some people were rising in their seats to see what was happening. Once he had the guy on the street and in close range, he didn’t wait for the first punch. The man’s head whipped backwards, but the blow didn’t deter Jim’s opponent for long. The fight was slow at first, with them testing each other’s agility and strength; then it turned vicious.

The guy wasn’t as dumb as he looked—or he was a professional boxer. A quick kidney shot immediately followed by a clip to his jaw put Jim on the ground. He rolled onto his side and spit blood out of his mouth. The guy hauled him up by his shirt. Jim, who knew how to fight dirty, stomped on the man’s foot and staggered on his own feet for only a brief second when he was free of the hold. Then he launched himself forward, intent on breaking the man’s teeth since he’d already broken the man’s nose. He missed and clipped the guy’s cheekbone instead. For Jim’s efforts, Mean Guy battered on his ribs until one of them snapped.

The girlfriend had been standing to the side, screaming at her boyfriend to stop since the fight began. Distantly, as Jim hit the ground, he heard a siren. Well, if he was going to jail, he wasn’t going as a loser. Kirk kicked out, using up the rest of his adrenaline rush, and knocked the guy’s feet from under him. At that point he would have sat on the guy’s chest and beat that face until it was unrecognizable but somehow the guy flipped them and Jim ended up under a steady succession of blows.

The girlfriend was really screaming now, probably because of all the blood. Some older man tried to intervene and drag Mean Guy off of Jim but without success. Jim was pretty certain he was going to die, if only because nobody would be able to put his face back together again, when suddenly the man sitting on his chest was being lifted away. A second later, Mean Guy was face down on the pavement, gurgling. Spock had a knee in his back.

Jim blinked with his one good eye. “Spock?” That came out as a slur.

Shit, was he missing teeth?

Jim groaned and lifted himself on his elbows.

“Jim,” his boss said in a very frightening tone (and wow, how was the guy’s arm even attached with Spock twisting it like that?), “do not try to sit up.”

He checked his front teeth and was grateful they were still there. “M-m a’ight,” he managed, though his arms wobbled when he lifted himself up. Wow, why was the ground moving? Oh, that wasn’t the ground, that was him. Spock was moving him somewhere. A curb?

Jim’s eye widened. “Spock, w-what, yer not go’ng…?” To toss me into traffic? he didn’t finish.

Funny, Spock looked annoyed. Or furious. It was kind of hard to tell. Jim didn’t doubt if Spock was angry enough to throw Jim in front of a car, he would. He’d probably ruined the reputation of the business or something. People would say Spock hired thugs.

It turned out, Spock was putting him on the curb because the siren belonged to an ambulance, not a police car. He would have preferred the police. This was embarrassing, with a woman holding his head still with her latex-gloved hand while she shined a pen light in his eyes and asked him stupid questions.

Did he hurt anywhere?

Gee, no. He was Captain America. Punches bounced off him like jelly beans.

“Jim,” someone was saying—oh, it was Spock, with his dark eyes glaring at Jim over the EMT’s shoulder.

“Wassup?” He hiccupped. The hiccup tasted of blood. Maybe that was bad? Jim focused on something that mattered more. “Coulda won,” he told Spock.

Spock didn’t answer that. Instead he was saying something strange about regretting being unable to go with Jim. Jim tried to snort and ask go where?, but realized his nose was broken. He and Mean Guy were a matched pair then.

At that thought, he pulled away from the EMT, un-interested in her protests, to find out what had happened to the other guy. A hand planted itself against his shoulder to force him flat onto the gurney.

Jim sighed. “You’re no fun, Spock. Where’s Mean Guy?”

Spock’s eyebrows angled into a frown. He asked the medical tech, “Does he have a concussion?”

“It’s too early to tell but from the look of him,” here her once-over said what kind of idiot are you anyway, fighting a guy twice your weight and size? “I would think it’s a definite possibility.”

Jim had practiced his sheepish look as much as his innocent look. Unfortunately, from the way Spock and the EMT were looking at him, the contortion of his face probably resembled a lunatic’s rather than a contrite man’s. The blood wasn’t helping, he figured.

“Sir, if you will step back…” The EMT made a shooing motion at Spock.

Jim turned his head to apologize to Spock. “Sorry about the—”

He stopped short because it finally clicked in his brain what was happening. They were putting him into the ambulance. Not just keeping him close-by to look at his face and tell him to take some ibuprofen.

An ambulance ride meant a hospital.

Jim panicked. He tried to sit up but couldn’t. There were straps.

“Fuck!” he snapped.

“Sir, don’t move,” the EMT advised, alarmed by his squirming.

“Fuck,” he said again. “I’m not going to the hospital!”

She looked taken aback then grim. “I recommend the hospital, Sir. Your ribs are broken. Your head is possibly injured.”

“No,” Jim said, and tugged against the straps again.

Reluctantly, she reached out to undo them. Spock tried to intervene, saying, “Jim, you must go to the hospital.”

Jim sat up, intending to climb off the gurney now that he had been freed. But Spock moved in so close, Jim was boxed in.

“You will go to the hospital.”

Jim met Spock’s eyes. “No, I won’t.” The EMT had a clipboard in her hand, but she didn’t offer Jim the form to decline the ambulance service because she was looking between Kirk and Spock like they were a species unknown to her.

“That was not a request, Mr. Kirk,” Spock replied.

Jim’s fingers dug into the side of the gurney. “Unfortunately for you, Spock, you have no authority to command me.” He took the clipboard from the EMT, uncapped the ballpoint pen and signed his name without reading it. Dropping the clipboard to the gurney, he stood up, not caring if he ended up flush against Spock or falling sideways to the ground.

Neither happened. Spock stepped backwards as if touching Jim was the last thing he wanted to do. He said over Jim’s head to the EMT, “I will see to him from here. Thank you for your assistance.”

She may have muttered, “Good luck.”

Jim hobbled away from the ambulance as fast as he could. Spock, still pissed, took a hold of his elbow. When his boss steered him away from the shop, Jim said sharply, “Where are we going?”

“You,” the taller man answered flatly, “will sit in my car. I will close the shop.”

“I said I’m not going to the hospital!” Jim snapped. Did Spock not understand he was serious when he told the ambulance people to take a hike?

Spock frog-marched him to a dark-gray car. Jim had seen it parked on the street before but never, for some odd reason, connected it with Spock’s arrivals and departures. He almost touched it before he realized he might sully its shiny waxed gleam with fingerprints. “Is this an import?” he wanted to know, incredulous because it must have cost more money than he could make in five years.

Spock opened the car door silently.

Jim looked pained at the tan leather then down at his dirty, bloody self. He wanted confirmation from Spock. “You aren’t taking me to the hospital.”

Something unusual flickered through Spock’s eyes. “No.”

Jim relaxed (or maybe that was his adrenaline flagging all of a sudden) and eased himself into the passenger’s side. “Okay, Spock. I trust you.”

Spock shut the door and walked away.

Jim made good use of his time by poking at his sore spots and whimpering. He found a packet of Kleenexes and stuffed two up his nose since it was still trickling blood. By the time Spock came back, Jim was slumped against the door and fervently wishing for morphine. He fixed his good eye on Spock as the man started the car.

“So where’re we going?”

“It is obvious I cannot persuade you with common sense to take care of your injuries,” Spock said stiffly, somewhat coolly.

“I’ll heal. I always do.” He gently touched his nose, thinking, Except maybe with a crooked nose this time.

Spock ignored him. “Therefore I must find someone who can.”

Fifteen minutes later (and several suppressed groans from Jim as Spock hit every pothole on the way to their destination) they parked in front of a sad, ugly brick building. Spock went inside, Jim fiddled with the Kleenex sticking out of his nose and wondered if he should admit he had trouble breathing (or if that would be very, very bad to mention to Spock), and one or two people wandering by stopped to stare at his swollen, bruise-mottled face. A little girl with pigtails asked her mother, “Is he dying?”

The mother hurried her daughter across the street.

Jim should have known something was up but he couldn’t think beyond his pain or the fact that Spock had pulled some kind of awesome ninja move on Mean Guy and he had missed it while he was drooling cross-eyed on the ground. Who knew Spock could fight?

So when Spock came out of the building with somebody in tow, Jim was not prepared. Then again, neither was Spock’s companion.

McCoy and Kirk looked at each other, separated only by the glass of the car window, and respectively said, “Fuck.”

Spock handed his car keys to Leonard. “Jim, Leonard will take you to the hospital. My promise is not broken.” And with that announcement, Spock situated himself in the backseat of his own car and looked expectant.

Jim had never felt Spock was capable of deception until now. Yet, strangely enough, that lent Spock a brand-new appeal—though apparently not for McCoy. Leonard said darkly as he got behind the wheel of the car, “I’m going to get you for this, Spock.”

“I will be amendable to discussing your grievances with my person after Jim has had medical attention. Now please focus on the road, Mr. McCoy, and take care to avoid an accident. One disabled employee is quite enough.” Thereafter, Spock said no more.

Next Part

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