Chris and Jon relocate to Archer’s office in the aftermath.

“Shit,” Jon curses for the umpteenth time, looking at Pike’s bloodied arm.

“It’s just a scratch,” Chris reassures him.

The older man is already reaching for his office phone. Chris crosses the room in two strides and rips the cord out of the back of the cradle. “No. I’m not leaving Jim.”

Archer looks at him askance, for clearly Pike has taken leave of his senses. “You’ve been shot, you dope!”

“Not my first time,” he mutters as he tentatively prods at the edges of the ripped fabric for a better look at the wound. He has been shot in the line of duty once before. The pain had been a bitch then, more like his flesh was being melted by hellfire than this unpleasant throb; given that the bullet had actually lodged in his body, the experience had ended in immediate surgery and weeks of damage control.

Chris remembers everything vividly. When he had awoken in a hospital room, having blacked out at some point during the ambulance ride, Jim had been in the chair next to his bed. At fourteen, the boy was underweight, thin enough to seem fragile no matter how many meals he ate; the chair engulfed his skinny frame. Pike saw the pale face watching him, Jim’s expression unmistakably frightened. It was a look he never saw often on Jim—or wasn’t allowed to see. Despite sluggish senses and the tangle of the IV in his arm, Chris had automatically reached for Jim, to let him know everything was all right. Jim hadn’t turned away from the comfort. Later, he had learned, the child had eluded an entire floor of nurses and cops (who were supposedly babysitting him) and snuck in to see Chris.

That day wasn’t only the first time Pike had been shot—it was also the first time Jim called him Dad.

“Of course you’re getting looked at,” Jon argues, bringing Pike’s attention sharply back to the present. “You’re bleeding on my floor.” Archer goes to the door where an anxious-looking deputy is waiting. “Bring McCoy.”

“Sir?”

“Now!” snaps the sheriff, overriding any protest from Pike. His words grow steadily testier. “You won’t go to the hospital? That’s fine, but somebody’s going to inspect that wound. So unless you want my tender attentions…”

Chris flinches.

Archer smiles mirthlessly. “Let the kid patch you up and don’t say a fucking word about it, Christopher.” Someone must have pissed in Jon’s coffee this morning. His temper is rarely so sour, at least from what Pike remembers.

Chris says, “McCoy’s just a second-year med student,” feeling that at least one of them ought to point out the obvious. “We’ve probably had more training in our first aid courses.”

“My only first aid trick is to stick a band-aid on it,” Archer replies gruffly, having turned away to dig through a drawer in his desk.

Chris is about to say fine with me when the door flies back on its hinges and Leonard McCoy is practically shoved into the room. He looks winded, like he was dragged at a run from his cell.

“What the—?” gasps the young man. His words die when he sees Pike—or more accurately, the blood on Pike’s shirt. “Oh, shit.”

“Fix him,” Jon orders McCoy and unceremoniously dumps a white first aid box on the top of his desk. Leonard simply holds out his handcuffed wrists in response. Jon removes the bonds and Leonard picks up the box with one hand and drags a wooden chair over to Pike with the other. Once settled, he removes a pair of scissors from the kit and starts cutting through the fabric of Pike’s shirt sleeve.

“What happened?” Leonard asks, directing the quiet question to Pike. Jon hovers nearby as though he is waiting for some kind of instruction from Leonard.

Chris stares at a spot above the sheriff’s shoulder. “What always happens. Some asshole takes an opportunity to shoot at a bunch of cops.”

McCoy releases a soft breath. “Jim’s going to go ballistic.”

“Don’t,” he warns, catching Leonard’s eyes and holding them. Don’t bring up Jim. Not even now. We can’t put him at risk, no matter the circumstances. He won’t say this in front of Jon, but he also knows he doesn’t need to. Leonard is smart, and he cares about Jim.

There is a sudden tick in McCoy’s jaw. He tells Jon, “I need a towel. Run it through hot water first.”

But Jon goes only as far as the open door, once again sending the young deputy scampering away to fulfill the request.

As Leonard angles Chris’s arm towards the light of a floor lamp Jon had obligingly turned on and squints at the wound, Chris murmurs, “It’s just a graze.” One that hurts like hell, though.

“Bleeding’s sluggish but I’ll put some stitches it in just in case.” Leonard glances sidelong at Pike. “Do they really think you’re impartial to all of this?”

Jonathan is the one who answers, before Pike can. “Officers have the law and when they don’t have that, they have their own personal code. Christopher’s always had the backbone to stick to his, come hell or high water. That’s why every boy in blue wants to be him and why no one ever will.”

To hear Jon speak so passionately takes Chris by surprise. But he can’t reply with more than a shocked “thank you” because, in his heart, Chris knows he isn’t the man from their youth Archer remembers. There’s Jim now, and Jim is a game changer for Pike. He is capable of things he might have never have considered doing in the past.

The wet towel is useful to clean up the mess of blood trickling down Pike’s arm, and after Leonard douses the wound with alcohol—which Pike grits his teeth through—and makes a neat row of five stitches in his flesh, Leonard strips open a wide pad of gauze and begins to bind the arm. He tells Pike to go to a hospital or a doctor as soon as possible for a legitimate check-up and a prescription of antibiotics. “The wound’s not life-threatening, obviously,” McCoy explains, “but an infection can be.”

Jon has settled into glaring at Christopher from over McCoy’s shoulder. Chris sighs, and imagines how pinched his expression must be. “I’ll have it looked at, I promise—once,” he stipulates, “we’re done here.”

Leonard sits back, voice tight. “Do you know how crazy you are?”

Pike is too tired to laugh. “Sorry, Leonard, that’s just the way things are.”

McCoy’s nostrils flare slightly. “Adoption, my ass. Jim learned his idiocy from you.”

“What?”

“Well, I’ve had enough!” hisses Leonard from between his teeth. He stands up and rounds on Jon. “Jim didn’t steal the stupid star. I did.”

“McCoy!” Pike barks out, alarmed. Ignoring the protest of his arm, he sits up straight and tries to reach for Leonard’s arm.

“Is that so?” the sheriff asks, eyes narrowed in consideration at McCoy.

“Yes” comes the flat reply. “So quit being a dick and let the others go, Sheriff. It’s Christmas, for god’s sake.” In an undertone, as though Chris won’t hear him, Leonard adds, “And get Mr. Pike to a hospital.”

“Shut up,” Chris snaps at Jim’s idiot of a friend, bracing one hand on the chair for leverage. Stupid wobbly legs. He may not be a spring chicken but there is no way he is too weak to stand on his own. Chris shrugs off Jon’s restraining hand on his shoulder and straightens to his full height. “This investigation isn’t done,” he tells the room at large. One laser glare at Leonard is enough to subdue the young man into momentary silence. “Jon, get Leonard out of here, then give me five minutes.”

Leonard braces himself for a fight.

“You heard the man,” Jon remarks mildly to the wide-eyed deputy lingering in the doorway.

Mouth gaping, Jim’s best friend argues, “But I said I did it!”

Archer snorts. “A confession only does me half-good, kid, unless you’re packing the stolen item in question under your shirt or down your pants.”

Chris is startled, and watches the sheriff, wondering at the kind of game he is playing. Then he realizes it’s a test to see how much Leonard really knows.

“But—” Leonard continues to protest, though he does not fight the deputy guiding him from the office.

A few moments later, Jon lifts his fingers to his mouth and whistles sharply. “Hey!” he calls to his deputy down the hallway and lifts the forgotten handcuffs for all to see.

The deputy comes back for the handcuffs, flushed and apologetic. Leonard stands forlornly by himself in the meantime, shoulders hunched and glaring at the floor. The fact that he isn’t raving mad or looking to cause a scene does not deter the curious on-looking from the other inhabitants of the station.

“Consider my thanks,” Jonathan calls to the sulking McCoy, “a trip to the restroom to wash your hands and pee.” Then Jon shuts the office door with a hearty slam and Chris can see no more of Leonard. “He isn’t the culprit.”

“I know.”

“What do you need?” his friend asks, watching Chris’s slow movements toward his discarded jacket across the room.

“Those five minutes,” Chris answers grimly, holding his arm to keep from jostling it overly much. “I need to think, Jon.”

Archer gives a short nod and leaves without another word. Chris sinks into the couch to contemplate his aches and pains. He has only rested his eyes for a few minutes when a faint buzzing fills the room. It takes a moment for him to pinpoint where the sound is coming from, which is the pocket of the jacket. Instantly he knows what is buzzing and why. Chris ignores the noise.

The cell phone vibrates again. It isn’t likely McCoy can keep a secret from Jim to save his life and is even less likely Leonard would consider ‘your dad got shot’ a secret worth keeping. The cell phone, however impossible, seems to rattle with a little more ferocity with each missed summons. It’s going off for the fifth time when Archer gives the doorframe of the office a token tap and comes back in.

Jon eyes the cell phone, which in the interim had migrated from the jacket to Pike’s hand. “You gonna answer that?”

Chris lies, “Just my crazy old aunt. She probably wants to know what time Jim and I are arriving for our family dinner.”

He receives a strange look from Jon, but the man doesn’t question him further. Instead Archer retrieves a manila folder from his desk, warning Pike as he leaves again, “Don’t go anywhere.”

Going somewhere would require moving. Pike isn’t moving until he has had half a bottle of ibuprofen. He finally, reluctant but driven by need, turns on the screen of the cell phone. His fingers seem to move of their own accord, pulling up one unread text after another.

r u ok

ans

The last text is one word, the kind of word to make Pike feel very guilty:

PLEASE

With his thumb he painstakingly punches out the letters S-T-O-P and presses the send button. This time the text doesn’t bounce back undelivered.

Ten minutes later, as Pike is seriously contemplating the pattern of the mold stain on the spackled ceiling above his head, Jonathan returns. Chris feels bad about the strain around Jon’s eyes and wordlessly accepts a proffered uniform shirt.

“Bathroom’s down the hall,” Jon informs him, leaning heavily against his desk. “Don’t let the newbies see you. Some of ’em still puke at the sight of blood.”

“There was a time when we were just as green.” Chris lumbers toward the door, suppressing a wince as he accidentally puts pressure on his bandaged arm. Injured nerves sing sweetly of pain. It would be nice if the aspirin he had discovered buried in the first aid kit would take effect soon, he thinks.

Archer looses a snort of genuine amusement. “Speak for yourself. I was raised on whiskey instead of breast-milk, and my Pap had me—”

“—skinning rabbits by the age of three and shooting cougars by five,” Chris finishes for him, unable to stop his grin. “I haven’t forgotten, and clearly you haven’t stopped bullshitting.”

Surprisingly, Jon relaxes. “Yeah, okay. Go change.”

In a ridiculous urge that dates back to his carefree twenties, Chris salutes Jon with his middle finger. He tries to save face by saying quickly, “Get your boys settled, Archer. When I come back, I want to see Nyota Uhura.”

Archer’s retaliation is a rude gesture of his own. “I’d ask if you’re up for that, but I doubt you’d be even if you weren’t shot full of holes.”

There are no holes, bullet-made or otherwise unnatural to Chris’s body. Jonathan is a complete idiot. “Fuck you.”

“Oops, did I say that out loud?” Jon smiles faintly.

The first part of the sheriff’s prior statement is what has Chris pausing on the threshold of the office. “Is there something I should know about Uhura?”

Jon gives him a pitying look, one that makes Pike nervous all of a sudden, and moves to the chair behind his desk, not answering. Chris is forced to leave on that note of mystery because he can feel unnerving stares at the back of his head, that of Archer’s deputies, who seem to expect him to expire at any second. So Chris makes a hasty retreat to the men’s bathroom to change his shirt.

Once he is safe from prying eyes, he pulls out his cell phone and inspects his inbox. No other messages from Jim. That’s just as well, Pike eventually decides as he carefully peels away his ruined clothing. One dumb mistake almost cost several lives today. None of them can afford another dumb mistake, least of all by pushing Kirk into one.

Chris can take bullets, and if it means his son stays safe, he will. But Jim has a tendency put himself into dangerous positions when Chris isn’t around and for less ridiculous reasons than somebody making him mad. So radio silence is the best option they have, until the threat in the station is neutralized or eliminated.

For Pike believes with every ounce of his being and his significantly honed detective skills that the gunman was not a random act of violence. Someone was meant to die earlier today, on purpose, and that means someone else had a reason to want the intended victim dead.

Hands visibly steady despite that he might be shaking apart on the inside, Chris finishes washing the blood from his skin. Part of the reason, he would bet, is tucked away in the back building, sending out frantic texts. And that, above all else, is what terrifies Chris to his very core.

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