Title: For the Sake of Nothing, Part 15
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: A leap forward and a terrible backslide.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

Jim felt only half-conscious as he limped alongside Spock to his apartment. “You’re exhausted,” Spock was saying, or accusing him (Jim couldn’t tell the difference). “Have you eaten?”

Jim started to speak, aborted that, and settled on shaking his head no.

The stony silence which ensued was definitely an accusation. Spock seemed to think Jim was a complete idiot. He wasn’t necessarily wrong, Jim had to admit.

He fished a ring of keys out of his jeans and, because his fingers didn’t feel like cooperating further, fumbled and dropped it. Spock stooped down to pick the keys up. Jim took the opportunity to lean against the wall by his front door.

If Spock’s serious expression was any indication, his appearance must be terrible. To be honest, Jim considered himself lucky to have made it up four flights of stairs on his own two legs. (It would have been ridiculous if Spock had had to carry him. Jim was never above resorting to crawling.)

“I would like to take you to a doctor,” Spock confessed softly.

Mutely Jim shook his head. The matter was not pursued, which might have surprised Jim if he wasn’t so busy being grateful and lightheaded.

Inside his apartment, Jim let Spock guide him to his bed. He vetoed the man’s help to get undressed but did accept a glass of water and a pain pill. Once he had downed the medication and all of the water, Jim finally forced himself to look Spock in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“You left without an explanation.”

“I know.”

“You did not call me, Jim.”

“I know.”

A heavy silence enveloped the room. Jim eased onto his back and stared at the ceiling. The sheet he had hung over his window blocked out a majority of the sun but he could still make out orange streaks of light slowly creeping across his walls.

Eventually Spock spoke again, a voice out of a shadowed doorway. “I will return shortly. Is there anything you prefer to eat?”

“No,” Jim answered in a flat tone.

Spock left, taking the key to Jim’s apartment with him. Boneless against his mattress now, Jim touched the back of his hand to his mouth and let it linger there.

Spock had kissed him. Hadn’t he?

Was it in relief?

Was it in anger?

The man had certainly been vibrating with rage. Jim had never seen him so… uncontrolled.

It was only then, as he dozed on and off, that Jim realized he had done something terrible. In the instant before he took a nosedive toward the ground, he had tried to kiss Spock back.

McCoy was nearby. Shit, McCoy had come with Spock to look for him. Of all the ways to betray the two of them…

You make trouble wherever you go, boy, his grandfather had told him once. Even made trouble trying to come outta your mama too early and look what happened ’cause of that. I ain’t sorry for you. It’s your own damned fault you ain’t got no daddy.

Don’t, Jim thought. Don’t listen to him. Don’t listen.

Fighting the elusive beginnings of a nightmare, he came awake and sat up so quickly he cried out from the stab of pain in his side. Jim let himself pitch clumsily over the side of the bed and dragged his duffle bag into his arms. He had his emergency cash; he had everything he needed right here, waiting, ready, saying don’t listen to any of them, Jimmy, don’t listen and don’t look back.

Not far away there came the sound of a door opening and closing, his apartment door, perhaps what had really woken him. Jim’s head swung up at the noise and the footsteps that followed, and he dropped the duffle bag back to the floor, giving it a vicious shove under the bed. He pressed his face to the bed’s side, fought down the bile in his throat and climbed back into bed.

Spock checked on him, no doubt thinking Jim was asleep as he tucked Jim’s hand under the bed covers. Something with a good smell, probably food from the small diner down the street, tantalized Jim’s stomach as it was placed quietly on the bedside table.

Then Spock left again but not indefinitely, Jim knew.

That was the true problem.

Reconvening after an hour of fruitless searching, Leonard took one look at Spock’s face and said, “You found Jim.”

Spock nodded. “He’s upstairs now.”

Suddenly all of Leonard’s worry melted into another thing entirely, something which made him take a step backward even as he peered up at Kirk’s apartment building. He stared at the rows of windows as though he could delineate which window belonged to Jim’s unit. …Of course. He had known this was how things would play out even though he had made the decision to help Spock, had taken the chance he might be the one to find Jim. “That’s good—real good, Spock. Well.” He glanced first at the lunch-hour traffic then down the street. “I’ll catch the bus or something. You’ll want to stay here with him.”

A hand caught his shoulder before he could get too far away.

“Leonard,” Spock said, standing behind him, a quiet but solid presence, “I want…”

He waited but Spock did not finish. “What do you want?” McCoy asked, turning around. A thought occurred to him, made his heart pound awkwardly. “Do you want me to stay, Spock?”

Those dark eyes had too much in them; a lot of it was need. “Yes.”

“I—”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t stay and worse yet he shouldn’t have forced Spock to admit that desire because now he had to turn him down. You fucking bastard, Leonard, he accused himself.

“Spock, it’s not a good idea.”

What was—why was— Frozen, Leonard watched Spock’s hand in slow motion as it lifted toward his face. But Spock only rested his fingertips against Leonard’s cheek, just briefly. Such a simple gesture to initiate an intimate connection to him; it left Leonard unsteady and not knowing why. He fought to control the reaction of his body.

“I understand,” Spock told him sympathetically. “You have not seen Jim since that… moment. But you should not be afraid to face him, Leonard.”

“I’m not afraid of Jim.” The admission had the effect of quieting Leonard’s anxiety. “I’m afraid of me.”

“Why?”

“Because…” I’m starting to really want you and Jim, not to just appreciate you from afar. That thought made him wonder what happened to his dispassion with life. “…I’m good at breaking relationships, not fixing them. It’s just not going to work, Spock.”

“I will not believe that. If we tell Jim of our feelings—”

The revelation, when it came, startled Leonard. “…You’re ready.”

“Yes.”

He felt a moment of pride but it was short-lived. “I’m glad for you, Spock, but what now? You want to force Jim into choosing one of us? That’s not going to help anybody!”

“No,” Spock said sharply. “That is not my intention. I want—there has to be another way.”

“Again with the crazy talk!”

Spock seemed confused. “Why do you insist on questioning my sanity?”

Leonard asked the dear Lord for patience, literally. “Listen, this isn’t about your affinity for being out of your mind, this is about approaching a complex situation like sane people should. What good will it do to tell Jim you like him, and that I like him and you? What good, Spock? …Because I fail to see a future where that works out. Be honest. It’s better to leave me out of it… or let me tell Jim we don’t have a chance together.” The thought wasn’t a pleasant one but he would do it, regardless.

Spock stepped into his personal space until their breaths mingled. “I intend to explain that I want you both.“

Leonard needed a long moment to process that bold, somewhat mentally unhinged statement. He shook his head in disbelief and made the quiet exclamation, “You’re out of your mind!”

“You have already said that.”

“Spock, for god’s sake, you don’t want me.” Forget what happened to me—what happened to you? He almost voiced that, almost.

“How can I not when I am capable of little else except thinking about you? You make me angry, Leonard. I see what Jim wants in you. He recognizes something in you that he does not see in himself, something of worth. I thought this made you a better choice for Jim and I did not like it,” Spock lowered his voice, “not until I realized what makes you special is not suggestive of a lack on my part. You are, in fact, someone I should desire for myself. What you can give to Jim, you can give to me also. If you are willing.”

Leonard closed his eyes. “Is this the part where you tell me I make you a better man?”

“No.”

Leonard’s eyes flew open in indignation. “Excuse me?”

“You make me willing to share.”

Share… Jim? Share his own affection?

“Everything,” Spock clarified, as though he had read Leonard’s tumultuous thoughts.

“Damn it, Spock,” Leonard said, leaning into him instinctively, “you’re making this too hard for me.”

A hand snuck to the back of his neck and rested there, warm. “My life was not complicated before I met you,” the man countered.

Well, was Leonard supposed to swallow his comeback? He didn’t think so. “Not complicated, my ass. You were hiding.”

Spock pulled back slightly and observed Leonard’s face. “You have been hiding as well.” His question stretched between them, unspoken: are you still?

“You don’t know…” what I’ve been through, what I’ve lost. But he was going to tell Spock, wasn’t he? With the man looking at him like that, open and honest and, fuck, caring—Leonard felt words rise up from that bitter place inside him. But the words weren’t bitter themselves; painful, yes, and haunted but not bitter. Something had changed them.

Leonard swallowed hard. “Spock, if I tell you… but I can’t tell you and not tell him.”

“Then tell us both,” Spock said, as if the matter was that simple. “It may ease your burden.”

Leonard dropped his gaze and shook his head, his mind already whirling through scenarios. “You can’t pity me,” he said abruptly. “You can’t or I’ll walk away.” He did not consider whether or not he actually could turn his back on them, now that he was in so deep. He’d done it once before, with Jocelyn, and regretted that decision. But it would hurt him to stay and always wonder if he—the poor, pathetic orphan—was only accepted by them out of pity.

Comprehension dawned in Spock’s eyes then, that Leonard’s life was a tragedy.

Leonard put enough distance between them so his thinking wasn’t clouded or disturbed by Spock’s unpredictable touches. “Consider yourself warned, Spock. I’m not ‘special’ like you and Jim seem to think I am. I’m ordinary and miserable and even on my best day too pessimistic to see the cup as half full.”

Spock continued to watch him.

Leonard’s heart fluttered nervously, caught in his throat. “Do you still want me to stay?”

Spock reached out and silently offered his hand.

Leonard looked at Spock’s hand, cursed himself, and clasped it. This isn’t going to work, he reminded himself and followed Spock to the entrance of the tall building looming over them. But that reminder wasn’t as fierce as it might have once been.

Jim took the food. He put it in his duffle bag (he could eat it later) along with the last of his painkillers and a few other meager items.

He heard them coming. A murmur of a voice—McCoy’s. That very familiar baritone in reply, Spock’s. And Jim was ready. He was smiling when they came through the door, propped against the far wall with arms crossed and looking alert for all that his skin was as pale as the faded wallpaper.

“Bones,” Jim greeted the newcomer.

Leonard halted and looked him over. “You said he was half-dead,” the man muttered.

“Jim…” Spock began in that oh-so-menacing why are you vertical? way.

Jim raised a hand to stall any protest. He fixed his eyes on McCoy. “She’s nice—somewhat of an overly curious individual but nice,” he said by way of a conversation starter. At the question in Bones’ eyes, Jim amended: “Jocelyn.”

All expression dropped away from McCoy’s face, leaving it disturbingly blank.

Pain lanced through Jim but not of the physical kind. He ignored it and left the wall to casually cross the room, not limping, giving nothing away. “She told me everything.”

Leonard’s voice was oddly colorless. “Did she?”

Spock, who was smart enough to sense that Jim had done something unforgivable, moved between them.

Jim gave a slight shrug. “I feel sorry for you, man. It must—” He didn’t get to finish the rest of the bullshit he was inventing out of thin air because Leonard turned white, the kind of white that meant Jim might as well have stabbed him instead of spoken.

“Y-You asshole. Fuck you, Jim,” McCoy whispered and backed swiftly through the door. He was gone in the next second.

“Jim!” Spock was furious.

He swallowed and stared out into the empty hallway. “Go after him,” he ordered.

Spock did.

Jim couldn’t have planned his escape better.

Next Part

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