Title: Surprise Meeting (#9, The Drabble Bin)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Summary: Leonard has an encounter with someone he didn’t anticipate seeing again.
Previous Drabbles: The Old Four | Those Neighborhood Hoodlums | Trapped | A Cage of His Own | Of Perky Starfleet Bottoms | An Hour Past | War of the Bots | The Best Substitute

“Miss me?”

Leonard stops walking and turns at the sultry question, accidentally jostling the papers in his arms. He has a few seconds of abject fear while he hastily shifts the slippery bundle to a less precarious position, afraid every last one of them will spill onto the floor. His response, therefore, is not as pleasant as might have otherwise been expected of him. “Motherfuck!“

Another set of hands is quick to help, scooping up a few fly-away papers and tucking them safely into the stack again for Leonard. Then the helper steps back, his expression both guilty and sheepish. “Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Leonard’s eyes snap up to meet guileless blue eyes. His heart jerks hard in his chest. “Jim?”

Jim smiles. “You remembered my name.”

Leonard’s arms have gone momentarily slack in his shock. The tower of papers tilts again. Jim steadies it without a word.

“I, uh—” What to say to a guy Leonard never thought he would see again… and in particular to a person he’d slept with on a whim? He feels his face grow hot as he flounders to respond like a suave human being. No, suave is beyond Leonard even at his best and brightest. He should try for some more mundane, like intelligible.

Instead, his brain fails him completely, and Leonard makes a stuttered noise. Jim’s smile deepens, showcasing a dimple on one side. Leonard has a vivid recollection of that mouth and what it can do, and has no doubt he is acutely tomato-red.

“McCoy!” someone barks farther along the hall. It’s Leonard’s supervisor, already dressed in faded medical scrubs, poking his head out of the staff lounge. “Get over here!”

“Leonard… McCoy,” murmurs Jim.

They hadn’t traded last names in the bar or after in bed. Leonard was Leonard—or Bones, a weird nickname a plastered Jim had given his newfound stranger-friend following a brief one-sided rant from Leonard about how terrible his divorce had been. Together, the two men had stumbled somewhere less than reputable, to a motel, and entertained each other for the rest of the night. Leonard remembers waking up the next morning alone; he had spent the better part of an hour puking into a toilet and suffering through the mother of all hangovers. Jim had, surprisingly, paid the motel bill before he had snuck out while Leonard was wrapped up in blissful sleep.

Which reminds Leonard… “I owe you for the, um, room,” he says.

Jim makes an aborted gesture, a little bit of a blush creeping across of his face. “Forget about it,” he replies.

Leonard will happily go along with that request, if only because arguing about who pays for a one-night stand in the middle a hospital hallway is beyond awkward. In fact, McCoy clears his throat, just lightly, and tips his head in the direction of the lounge. “Nice… to see you again, Jim,” he murmurs, voice dropping low as two nurses pass by in conversation. “I should get going.”

Oh, damn. The kid shouldn’t look so crestfallen. It’s not like—

Well, maybe it is more to Jim than Leonard. He hadn’t considered that.

Leonard asks politely, “Do you need directions?”

Jim opens his mouth, only to immediate close it again.

“I suppose,” Leonard guesses, “you aren’t sick?”

The corner of the other man’s mouth twitches. “It’s not an illness a doctor can cure.”

Leonard thinks he is missing the underlying meaning to that, not just the context, so he lets the comment slide past with a shrug of his shoulders. The supervisor—and, boy, can he yell like a foghorn, Leonard thinks—sticks his head into the hallway again, this time sounding much more than mildly irritated at his subordinate’s delay. “McCoy, stop dawdling! I need you in here, stat!”

“Asshole,” Leonard mutters under his breath, tottering down the hall with his heavy load of files.

“Hey—hey, Bones!” a voice says at his back.

He’d briefly forgotten about Jim. Leonard pauses, waits.

Jim gives him an imploring look, stance resolute but face uncertain. “Will we see each other again?”

“I…” The paper tower wobbles and Leonard lifts it slightly so he can stick his chin on top of it in an attempt to stabilize its swaying. “Okay!” he calls back, because the answer is the easy way out and if he doesn’t get this stuff inside that lounge in the next five seconds, the hallway is going to be decorated in a loose-leaf motif for the holiday season.

Grinning widely, Jim announces, “I’ll come back tonight!” Then he spins on his heel and takes off in the opposite direction.

Leonard blinks, not quite sure of what just happened. He too then proceeds to go on about his day.

-Fini

Little Help

Related Posts:

• Stay With Me (#29, The Drabble Bin) – from December 29, 2023
• An Ominous Setting (#28, The Drabble Bin) – from May 4, 2021
• Beyond the Call of Duty (#27, The Drabble Bin) – from September 24, 2020
• The Best Substitute – from August 3, 2012
• An Hour Past – from April 11, 2012