Title: For the Sake of Nothing, Part 16
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Straight from the pan and into the fire.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

Leonard swept Spock’s hand from his arm and kept walking. However, Spock would not be deterred. Eventually McCoy had to come to a halt to address the man’s annoying stalker-ish behavior. Didn’t he know how it was supposed to work when one of them was pissed?

“Stop following me,” he gritted out.

That seemed to have the opposite effect on Spock. Spock herded him to a sidewalk bench and pushed him into it.

Leonard folded his arms and let his displeasure show on his face.

Spock was like a tall, crook-necked bird, watching him with an intent gaze. The longer Spock observed him in silence, the taller he seemed to grow, until Leonard felt almost insignificantly small in comparison. He had to look away; yet that did nothing to help Leonard regain his balance.

“Go away,” he said weakly.

“I will leave once I am assured we will see one another again.”

That wasn’t something he could readily promise, as Spock probably knew by now. But like before, Leonard was excellent at being untruthful. “Sure,” he responded in a flippant tone.

“Liar,” Spock named him softly.

Leonard did not contradict him, only pressed his mouth into a thin, unhappy line.

“Leonard…”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I did not intend to ask about what you clearly cannot speak of.”

A bit of guilt touched Leonard’s heart. He ignored it and clung stubbornly to his glare. Spock wasn’t going to pry, thank god, but that didn’t mean Leonard had to offer anything. Never mind the fact he had felt ready to bare his soul only a short time ago. Jim had changed that feeling, destroyed it carelessly.

Spock hesitated long enough to make up his mind about something before he spoke over Leonard’s silence. “Jim acted strangely. I cannot comprehend what he meant to accomplish by antagonizing you.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Leonard snapped. “He was tryin’ to hurt me!” And succeeded. Leonard heard an echo of Jim’s words and loathed them.

“Yes,” Spock said calmly, “but why?”

“Because he’s an asshole?” But Leonard closed his mouth after he said that, some of his ire subsiding, and frowned.

“Ah, so you do recognize it. Jim was deliberately cruel. That is not…”

“…typical Jim,” Leonard finished. “Yeah, I know. But maybe we don’t know ‘typical Jim’ as well as we think we do, Spock. Has that occurred to you?”

Spock’s silence said he had considered the possibility—and likely dismissed it. The man really was a blockhead when in love. Leonard almost felt bad for him.

He stood up. “I get that you will always give Jim the benefit of doubt. I’m not going to condemn you for that, Spock. But you should know Jim warned me a few weeks ago he was goin’ to talk to Jocelyn so… I’m not really as surprised as you think. I just wish—” he hadn’t done it and said what he had said afterwards. He couldn’t say that, though, and had to look anywhere but at Spock in order to fight down his disappointment.

Wordlessly, Spock tugged him in close. “Jim has made a mistake. He should have trusted you to tell him.”

No apology. No excuse.

“I’m beginning to like you more ‘n more,” McCoy mumbled against Spock’s shoulder.

“You like me to the fullest of your capacity to like an individual. I suspect you even l—”

“Don’t say it,” Leonard warned him. He pulled back and eyed Spock warily. “You make a lot of assumptions.”

Something light and humorous danced through Spock’s eyes. “I assume nothing.”

“I don’t like you that much, now that I really think about.” And damn it, why was Spock so smug all of a sudden?

“Of course,” came the mild reply, which was meant Spock had disregarded Leonard’s statement as ridiculous.

Leonard laid his forehead against Spock’s shoulder again and relaxed, releasing a pent-up sigh. “Why isn’t Jim this easy to handle?”

“Jim has not spent the last month in a continuous state of confrontation with you.”

“No, that’s your specialty,” Leonard remarked dryly. “Though to be fair, Jim has pissed me off once or twice that was nearly on par with your annoying habit. In fact, when he makes me really mad, I want to take a crow bar to his head.”

There was a moment of silence, after which Spock said, “…Thank you for not assaulting me with a crow bar, Leonard.”

He smiled into the fabric of Spock’s coat. “How ’bout we agree to resolve all future disputes in a non-violent manner?”

Leonard could practically feel Spock lifting his eyebrow.

“What would you suggest?”

Several answers came to Leonard’s mind. He wondered if Spock could feel the way his face went hot. “…Never mind.” He doubted they were ready for an entirely different kind of bantering. It was damned odd that he had been on the verge of starting it.

Unfortunately, Spock seemed to realize his status as attractive had soared to a new level of super-super-attractiveness to Leonard.

“A-Are you nuzzling my hair?”

Spock sighed into said hair. “When you do not smoke, Leonard, your smell is very pleasant.”

Leonard’s hands clutched at random patches of Spock’s coat. “Spock,” he said, voice slightly strained, “this is not the best place…”

“Have I made you feel awkward?”

“Nooo, awkward’s not the word. But things’ll get awkward in about half a second. We’re in a public place.”

Spock’s body language changed. He must have forgotten they were on a city block in broad daylight at lunch-time; they had been close to groping each other in front of a bunch of school children. When Spock stepped back, releasing Leonard to stand on his own, Leonard instantly missed him. Then he cut his eyes to the gaggle of school children, of which two young girls were watching them raptly, and cleared his throat. “Maybe we ought to go back?”

Spock studiously ignored the schoolgirls, who had now multiplied to four and had camera phones in their hands. “That would be a wise course of action, Mr. McCoy.”

Leonard pivoted and led the way, only moving at a slower gait once they were safely around a street corner. Spock kept abreast of him.

“Do you wish to return to the apartment, or should I take you home?”

Gaze roaming ahead to a distant building, Leonard sighed internally and weighed his options. “The apartment.”

Silence. Then, “Are you certain?”

“He wins if I run away,” Leonard said. “‘Sides, I’d like to know what the hell Jim was thinking coming at me like that. You were right.” That last part he muttered, since inflating Spock’s ego would only be icing on the cake in light of Leonard’s body’s embarrassing eagerness.

“As would I.” But suddenly Spock stopped walking. “Unfortunately,” he added in an odd voice, “I fear we may not have the opportunity to ask Jim.”

Leonard looked around them. “What is it?”

Spock indicated a figure some distance away, slinking across a street with a single-minded purpose.

“Where the hell is he goin’?”

Spock’s face was pinched.

Leonard grabbed his arm and tugged him in Jim’s direction. “I bet the little bastard thinks he’s gettin’ away. The hell he isn’t!” McCoy said hotly. “C’mon.”

“Leonard…”

Leonard did not bother to look at the man he was towing to the opposite side of a cross-walk. “None of that, Spock,” he said firmly. “We’ve come too far.”

“If Jim doesn’t want us—”

Leonard snapped, “Jim doesn’t know what he wants! Jim’s the goddamn idiot between the three of us. Or the bigger idiot,” he corrected grimly. “He said he pitied me—which who the fuck is he to pity me? I’ve gotten this far without tossing myself off a building, I’ve fucking gotten this far and I’ve gotten—I’ve got—I’ve got you, don’t I?”

His words dried up all of a sudden, ending in an uncertain question, because he finally realized what he had been ranting about.

Yet Spock was right with him, not just walking at his side. “Yes, you have me.”

Leonard kept his eyes forward but let relief color his voice. “Thank you.”

“You can repay me by preventing Jim from catching that bus,” Spock said as he increased his stride.

“I’ll do you one better,” Leonard said, feeling grimly pleased in that moment just before he began to run and hollered down the block, “Thief! Somebody get ‘im!”

The cop munching on his fresh donut by the bus stop trash can looked up, startled, at Leonard’s yell. Leonard waved his arm wildly in the direction of Jim, who had frozen like a statue. Slowly—very, very slowly—Kirk turned around and looked.

“That’s him!” Leonard said for the courtesy of the policeman, “He stole my—” Jim had a duffle bag. “—bag, the sonuvabitch!”

The cop looked at his half-eaten donut, no doubt uttering a quiet, heartfelt “fuck my life” and tossed it into the trash can. Then he went for Kirk.

Jim (definitely the biggest idiot of the three of them as Leonard had suspected) paled and ran.

Shit, Leonard thought, having miscalculated Jim’s reaction. The kid should have faced his accuser with all of his bravado and charmed the cop into locking Leonard up for lying. Instead he ran like a criminal. Holy fuck.

Leonard broke into a real flat-out run then, very much aware that Spock had done the same.

Two hours later, after being jostled and pushed around and generally had his life made hell, Leonard dropped his head back against a cement wall and said, “Well that could have gone fucking better.”

Across the jail cell they shared, a prone Jim Kirk remained silent.

Leonard pinched the bridge of his nose and was exceedingly grateful for the first time that his mother wasn’t alive. This would have killed her—or had her kill him, quite gruesomely. “Shit. Why the hell did you have to hit the cop, Jim?”

The bench boards squeaked as Jim stirred and draped an arm over his eyes. “Not my fault,” he muttered. “He swung at you.”

“Because I swung at him!”

“Because he swung at me,” Kirk finished. “Seems fair.”

Leonard tried to make sense of that. His brain failed. He said again, with feeling, “Shit.”

“Don’t worry about it, Bones,” Jim murmured. “You didn’t really assault him… much. You’ll be out in the morning.”

On the other hand, Jim had hit the guy once, twice, and was about to keep at it like a wild man until Spock pried him off. Jim definitely wasn’t going anywhere soon.

Leonard stewed over that because he couldn’t very well say I don’t want to leave you here or sorry I sicced a policeman on you.

They sat in silence for the next thirty minutes. Leonard was almost used to the stench of urine wafting from the next cell when a shadow feel across their barred doorway and spoke.

“Woke up with a feeling this morning that I shouldn’t get out of bed. If only I’d stayed there.” The voice, somehow slightly amused but steel-coated too, said, “Kirk. Get over here.”

Jim, who had tensed, relaxed suddenly and sounded on the verge of petulant whining. “I need a wheelchair.”

“Now.” A command.

The door to the cell opened as Jim threw his arm off his eyes and sat up. A man in his mid-forties with hair graying at the temples and laugh lines embedded at the corners of his eyes did not step into the jail cell as Jim sullenly lumbered toward him. Instead he fixed Leonard with a hard stare.

“Who are you?”

Leonard had a feeling this man had already committed his name to memory. “Leonard McCoy, sir.”

“Friend of Kirk’s?”

“Nope,” he said immediately. “A writer. I invent Kirks. I don’t befriend them.”

Jim said, “Thanks, Bones.”

The man, clearly of an authority in the police department, looked Jim over. “You didn’t stay out of trouble.”

There, finally, was Jim’s grin, if only a flash of it. “No, Captain.”

“In fact, you punched a tooth out of one of my officers.” The man, the Captain, shook his head slightly. “Bad move, Jim.”

Jim’s shoulders hunched. Leonard stood up and positioned himself next to Jim. He crossed his arms and gave the Captain his best glare.

The man seemed amused again.

Jim’s shoulders straightened out as if he felt he had McCoy’s support. “Can I sit back down, sir?”

“No.”

Leonard was about to protest what the fuck right did this asshole Captain have to pick on an injured man like Kirk when, surprisingly, the man turned around and told them to follow him, walking away like he didn’t expect anything other than instant obedience.

Jim was already trotting out of the cell when Leonard caught a hold of his arm. “Who the hell is that?” he whispered fiercely to Kirk.

“Christopher Pike,” Jim said, not looking at McCoy.

“What’s his game?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you two know—”

Jim glanced at him then, said abruptly, “You shouldn’t have come after me, Bones.”

Leonard thought about what to say. He settled on, “Spock doesn’t like you running away.”

“Spock isn’t the one facing an arrest record.” Jim pulled his arm out of McCoy’s hand and walked down the hallway.

Leonard couldn’t argue with that. After a moment, he followed Jim and hoped this Captain Pike was a man with a soft heart. Unfortunately, Leonard had a feeling it was exactly the opposite kind of situation that they faced.

Until, that is, he caught sight of Spock standing in the police station, staring intently at them. Leonard almost forgot he was a newly branded criminal (right along with Kirk) and went to him. Then Pike crooked his finger at Spock and beckoned him to join their intimate little circle in his office.

The first thing that came out of Spock’s mouth was “Jim is injured.”

Pike did not bat an eye. “How surprising. Now, one of you is going to explain why the hell I am seeing your faces in my precinct. If I don’t receive an explanation, I will put you all in the drunk-tank overnight with Billy.”

Jim made a choking noise and looked very much like that would be an awful idea.

“It’s near the full moon so Billy’s probably feeling frisky.”

Leonard couldn’t decide between horror, curiosity, or disbelief.

Pike continued. “If I don’t like your explanation, I can guarantee you will be sitting in front of the meanest judge in the county come Monday morning. Your choice,” he ended, shut the door to the office and gave them his undivided attention.

To Leonard, the shutting of the door sounded exactly like the slam of their jail cell. He slumped into the nearest chair and put his head in his hands.

Well, um. No explanation. But I feel I must point out that this story is still labeled as pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy. I’m really not certain (was I ever?) how far this is going to go. Much love goes out to everyone who has been following along so far.

Next Part

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