Title: The White Horse (10/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: Jim Kirk was a strange man. A silent man. No one knew much about him or, if they did, were not willing to say what they did know, especially to the town’s newest magical occupant. Not that Leonard McCoy cared. He had an old curse to track down and unravel by the year’s end. Meanwhile a killer was tracking him. AU.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
or at AO3

Leonard had turned the slip of paper over enough times in his hand that it began to curl at the edges and the ink smeared. He thought about what he really wanted and if helping Pike was his best option. In the end it proved to be the only option he had.

The house had seen better days. One of its shutters hung crookedly; another was missing. The once-baby-blue paint was grey with dirt; in some places, it had been peeled away in long strips like giant claw marks. The front yard, which Leonard pretended to have no interest in as he walked by, was a garden of dandelions, chickweeds, and twisted scraps of metal which might have once been lawn decorations.

Leonard tugged the hood of his jacket farther down towards his nose, wondering if the owner was a shut-in or simply a lazy son-of-a-bitch. People who were fortunate enough to own their houses tended to take care of them, rather than let them rot.

He took in the rest of the property as he circled the street corner and paused near a wooden mailbox to light a cigarette. The home was modeled after a farmhouse (if on the small side) which made it seem out of place in a suburban neighborhood. With the way it was going to shit, it could easily be the creepiest residence on the block. All it lacked was a border of tall, unruly hedges and a Keep Out sign.

Some people, Leonard acknowledged, did ruin their property on purpose. An old derelict farm in Iowa? In a heartbeat, it could be flipped from worthless to prime supernatural realty. Hauntings were money-makers these days. Leonard had earned his share from that in the past, before the feds had cracked down on the scammers, helping clueless homeowners turn ugly three-bedroom houses into ugly three-bedroom houses with ghosts. It was all an illusion of course, built on lies and tricks, but if the illusion held up to the entertainment industry’s standards, it became a profitable business for everyone involved.

He finished his cigarette and crushed it beneath his shoe, then picked up what was left of the butt and pocketed it. As his fingers absently skimmed over the cell phone inside his pocket, he came very close to pulling it out to snap a photo of the house to send to Scotty.

Look what I have to deal with, he imagined typing below the picture.

Scotty would probably text back, Definitely a hoarder. Or a serial killer. Either way my condolences, lad. The guy thought that kind of shit was funny.

On the second story, a gauze-thin curtain moved behind the shutter-less window. Leonard’s humor dissipated and was replaced with the cold certainty he was being watched. He put his back to the house and resumed walking. Ten steps along the cracked sidewalk, a fat raindrop hit his shoulder. Seconds later, the sky opened up. Leonard huddled into his jacket and kept his pace steady, figuring he already looked suspicious and, rain or not, running was bound to draw yet more attention to himself. He plodded through the rain for the next three blocks until he came to a lone bench marking a bus stop. He sat down, hoping no one nearby had called the cops based on the assumption he was casing the neighborhood.

Although… breaking into the Kirk house had its appeal. From what he had learned, James Kirk (Crazy Kirk, that’s what a convenience store attendant had called Winona’s son) wasn’t likely to offer up any personal information to strangers.

“Fella don’t talk anyway,” the attendant had said. “Ask him a question ‘n he’ll probably punch you in the face a’fore you can ‘pologize for asking.”

Leonard still didn’t know what that quite meant, because who would apologize for asking a question unless it was an unforgivably rude one?

He blew out a breath in exasperation and tried to think of other things besides the rain soaking his back.

Okay, if breaking in was the plan, he needed a crowbar and a guarantee Kirk or anyone else wasn’t going to be home. Probably Pike could help with the latter given Leonard didn’t fuck things up by giving away that he was going to commit a crime. Once he was inside, he ruminated, he had to find something helpful, if not about Kirk’s past then about Kirk himself. Leonard could con him into a friendly conversation about, say, a shared hobby; then he would have a better chance of getting around whatever defense mechanism it was the kid used to protect his secrets.

Especially if that mechanism was a fist, Leonard thought a touch sourly. He had had his fill of violence as of late.

He heard the bus coming before he saw it and rose from the bench with impatience, stomping his feet to wake them up. When he blew out a breath, to his surprise it came out cloudy and white. The temperature had dropped incredibly fast for a little bit of rain. Leonard shivered.

Across the intersection, a car rolled to a stop and sat there, idling. When the bus finally pulled up, Leonard had to drag his attention away from trying to separate the hazy outline of the driver from the opaqueness of the windshield. He didn’t know why but he had the feeling he’d seen that car before. Where, though, didn’t come to him no matter how hard he thought about it. Once Leonard had checked to make certain it wasn’t following the bus, he slumped comfortably in his seat and breathed in the sticky, saturated air around him. It was easy enough to let the mystery go.

Nothing was on the radio: no news, no ambulance calls, no police chatter. A world plunged into darkness stayed silent out of fear. He circled the street once, twice, looking for what was relevant to McCoy. He didn’t see it—or it didn’t see him.

A fog had settled over the street which didn’t seem natural. He put his hand out the window to see if it felt as icy and unfriendly as it looked.

It was warm.

He drew his hand back in and wiped the palm on his pants.

After circling the street a third time, he had to reluctantly give up as an elderly woman had opened her front door to peer long and hard at him. Welcome overstayed, he thought, dismayed and kept on driving until he caught up to his quarry.

The day had lifted to its zenith and nearly folded away. At the west end, the sky was a lazy paintwork of amber and golden sienna. Darkness began to stir in the east. Leonard felt tired without knowing why, then felt hungry when he recalled he hadn’t eaten. An hour on the bus had done very little except to agitate both the tiredness and the hunger.

He trudged down a sidewalk which had become very familiar to him by now, perhaps so familiar on principle he knew he ought to move on. Falling into routine was dangerous on the best of days.

Leonard contemplated this thought as he stepped onto the grounds of the motel. When he passed by the office, the white, uneven blinds covering the length of the door moved with much the same surreptitiousness as the curtain at Kirk’s house had. A finger of cold traced the length of Leonard’s spine and lingered like a warning. He purposefully paused in his trek in order to dismiss the feeling and to debate if he should go into the office to discover if the clerk had simply been dusting the blinds, not spying.

Every floodlight attached to the building flickered and dimmed.

Leonard blinked, stepping backwards on instinct—and straight into a puddle hiding a deep pothole, which nearly turned his ankle. He caught himself in mid-lurch before he could fall down and dragged his foot out of the water with a heartfelt goddamn. The afternoon rain had stopped some time during the bus ride across town, but it had left behind plenty of misery. He had already been splashed with the rain-soaked filth from the street by a speeding motorist. Now, as he eyed his muddy shoe, he wondered if the world simply had it out for him.

Pissed, Leonard jerked a key out of his pocket and went on to his room. He wanted nothing more than to be out of these damp clothes, to warm his bones before he set about finding a solid meal. But as he stepped inside, the uneasiness which had been stalking him all day returned and scattered his plans. The walls were strung with an abundance of shadows, some of them writhing, others quiescent, and others still curling like slow flame. Leonard laid down his wallet on the nightstand with care, examining all that he saw but found nothing amiss.

What was it about today that had him so paranoid? he wondered. It was hard to know.

Sighing, he sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged off his wet sneaker, followed it up with his wet sock and tossed both aside. He bent down to deal with the other foot and, in doing so, caught the noiseless glide of an opening door out of the corner of his eye.

Times like this, self-preservation made it less important to think. Leonard didn’t bother to give sound to his alarm; he simply dropped to the floor and reached up to the underside of the box springs to find the small firearm he had stowed there.

The spot where it should have been was empty.

“Shit!” he cursed, then froze as a pair of polished black shoes rounded the corner of the bed. Leonard’s heart thumped hard in his chest.

Flee or fight?

“Mr. McCoy,” came the voice Leonard had been dreading to hear, “you are under arrest.”

Flee, Leonard decided on in that instant, and kicked Spock in the shin before crawling the rest of the way under the bed. He wasn’t a small man by any means. It was a tight squeeze.

No point in going out the other side, he thought, not when the fed would be on him in a second.

The polished shoes backed up several steps. Then their owner squatted down, long coat pooling around him. Leonard could barely see the tip of Spock’s chin, but he could hear him well enough.

“Is that wise?” Spock asked.

Leonard tucked his hands in close to his body. “Fuck you. ‘S the best option I got.”

He heard a soft exhale and the warning beneath. “Mr. McCoy…”

“What’re you gonna do, Agent? Shoot me while I’m under here? I think that’d be messier than you’re interested in.” Leonard swallowed, glad Spock couldn’t see the stark fear on his face and prayed the bluff was on the mark.

“Do not be childish.”

“Well, considering I don’t wanna be dead… Tell you what, you go back in the bathroom ‘n then I’ll come out.”

Spock stood up, which Leonard half-expected, but the man did not move otherwise. Nor did he speak. Leonard stared intently at Spock’s shoes, wondering what the hell the guy was up to by doing nothing.

Then he felt it: the thrum of power, a skittering of energy along the surface of the threadbare carpet, which manifested and made the bed above him suddenly jolt on its feet. The whole ensemble—mattress, box springs, and frame—shot up then sideways as if it had been thrown. It crash-landed into the dresser against the opposite wall, knocking a lamp and other oddments to the floor.

Leonard turned his head to look at the mess then looked back at Spock, who was in the process of lowering his arms. “That…” Leonard said, after a moment of silence, “…was weird. And kinda impressive.”

“The noise will have attracted attention. I suggest you get up.”

Already Spock was next to Leonard, bending down to take a hold of his forearm. Leonard remembered at the last second he wasn’t supposed to let the agent have it and scrambled away to put distance between them.

True to form, Leonard’s luck was really the worst. Spock effectively blocked the only exit, and his stance said he was prepared to keep Leonard from it. Leonard cast about hastily for a weapon, contemplated going for the broken lamp but didn’t for a second dare take his eyes off Spock. A mix of light and shadow played across the man’s skin, painting an illusion of amusement on an otherwise expressionless face.

“I have followed you one thousand, two hundred and fifty-eight miles,” Spock said, matter-of-fact. “Whatever you attempt to do next will be irrelevant to this outcome, Mr. McCoy.”

“Is that right?” retorted Leonard, backing up until his legs met with crumpled frame of the bed. “You think just because you can toss furniture around like a poltergeist that your magic’s more powerful than mine?” He lifted his hands slightly, as if he was about to start an incantation, in warning. “Let’s find out!”

Spock only stared at him.

Leonard’s shirt clung to his lower back from rain and sweat. He felt it drag against his skin as he raised his hands higher, turning the palms outward. He growled, “I’m not bluffing!”

Spock shifted, then, and clasped his empty hands behind his back. “On the contrary, I believe you are. But if you wish to prove me wrong, by all means, recite a spell.”

Leonard didn’t know any spells which weren’t part of a con. His kind of magic required no spell work. And, fuck, it seemed like Spock knew that.

One of the man’s eyebrows twitched briefly, as if it had to abort a natural inclination to react to Leonard’s guilty silence. There was something smug about the polite way Spock asked, “Shall I recite one for you?”

“Damn you,” he said and dropped his arms to his sides. He was such a goddamn idiot anyway for coming in here when he had seen the signs of trouble. Such an idiot. Spock might as well—

“—shoot me,” the words burst out of Leonard.

This time Spock’s eyebrows flew up to his hairline. “Excuse me?”

Leonard looked pointedly at the gun holster not completely hidden by the coat. “Just shoot me, and let’s get this over with. I really don’t have all day.”

“The feeling is mutual. It seems most unfortunate that I spent a majority of my time on a stakeout here, although the effort has clearly born fruit,” Spock replied, like that made perfect sense in light of Leonard’s belligerence. The agent unclasped his hands and reached for his holster. “The owner had no qualms about identifying you. You did not pay him enough for his silence.”

“Secrecy is expensive these days.”

There was the barest of lifts to Spock’s mouth, there and gone. “Indeed.” Removing his gun, Spock made a show of checking if the clip was full.

Leonard’s eyes narrowed. Was this an act to stall for time? He looked past the man’s shoulder to the parted curtains and the outline of the cars in the parking lot beyond. Nothing unusual, nothing—no, wait. That one. Shit. Leonard muttered under his breath, “I’m definitely not going to like this…”

“Like what?” inquired Spock.

“Whatever your reason is for not killing me yet. You got a partner out there, Spock?”

Spock’s eyebrows came down. “I believe you aware that I do not.”

“Then who’s the guy that just passed by here twice?” Another bluff, because if the car didn’t belong to a fed on surveillance…

Leonard sucked in a sharp breath as a quick blur did skim past the window like it had been conjured by a mere mentioning. There was something familiar about the outline through the curtains, something Leonard could almost put his finger on. It made the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach intensify. He pointed, saying, “There, just there I saw—”

Spock stiffened. “If this is an attempt to make me turn around, it will not work.”

The outline of the man came back by, this time quickly enough to be alarming. In the instant he passed between the part in the curtains, Leonard caught sight of the rim of a cap tilted low over the eyes and a dark swarthy mass that had to be a beard.

The connection was instantaneous and horrifying. Leonard had a half-second to think for fuck’s sake before he cried, “Down!” and dropped to the floor for the second time in less than fifteen minutes. As if that had been the cue, the flimsy motel door splintered under buckshot.

Spock twisted at the waist and fired his gun as the door caved in. The shot hit the doorframe, blowing off a chunk of wood. Somebody leaned around the door and took his turn at discharging his weapon. The shot should have had a blind trajectory but it didn’t. Leonard saw the force from the bullet drive Spock into a backward stumble; he saw a spray of blood hit the back wall. But being shot didn’t deter Spock. He fired again, this time as the double barrel of a shotgun came back around the corner of the doorframe for a second round and the shot was deadly accurate: it hit close enough to the trigger finger that the intruder dropped his weapon with a yelp.

Leonard watched it fall just inside the doorway as its owner, the shadow man, fled. Leonard crawled toward the abandoned shotgun. He had almost reached it when he heard a ragged gasp and “Don’t.”

The simple contraction didn’t sound right coming from Spock. Leonard turned around.

Spock was still on his feet, one hand clamped against the flesh of his shoulder. The other hand still held his gun, aimed directly at Leonard’s head, and the agent’s grip was eerily steady, despite the tight paleness of his face which implied he felt great pain.

“Now you’re gonna shoot me?” Leonard questioned gently.

“I am considering it,” Spock said, voice cold. “You know who that was.” It wasn’t a question.

Leonard sat back on his heels and lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I do, and believe me it wasn’t a friend of mine.” He eyed the blood dripping from between Spock’s fingers. “Okay. How about we make a deal? You know what I can do.”

“Negative. I will be at greater disadvantage if I allow it. You will no doubt require that I relinquish my gun. Once I am weakened and disoriented by the healing, you will then likely strip me of all weapons, identification—” Spock eyed Leonard’s one bare foot, “—and possibly my shoes, and leave me here or take me hostage in my own vehicle for future leverage.”

Leonard felt grim amusement. “You know, that last option didn’t cross my mind. It’s a good idea, though. Thanks.”

Spock’s mouth pressed into a thin line, and he came very close, in Leonard’s opinion, to swaying on his feet.

Leonard took pity on him. “It seems like you’ve been trained very well to assess a situation, Mr. Spock, but let me point out a few extra things. First, I don’t think you are going to shoot me—though damned if I know why—and that either means you make the conscious choice now to let me help you or you pass out from blood loss and then I just do what I’m going to do anyway. Second, I wouldn’t put it past Psycho to come back and try shooting us up again—”

“He only aimed for me,” Spock pointed out.

“—which,” Leonard finished slowly, “regardless of who he was trying to kill is a scenario neither of us wants.”

“I…” Spock began, and this time the man did sway noticeably on his feet.

Leonard stood up and held out his hand. “Enough.”

The gun in Spock’s hand lowered one inch. Leonard took a step forward. The gun drooped another inch, and a tremor ran up Spock’s arm. Leonard moved forward again.

“I cannot,” Spock said haltingly, “in good conscience… hand you my weapon. You are… a criminal.”

“It’s okay,” Leonard agreed and took that last step to close the distance between them. “I’m taking it from you,” he said, and did.

Apparently it wasn’t a moment too soon. Spock’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled at Leonard’s feet.

He was afraid to look down. So afraid.

Fucking Fed pigs and their fucking guns.

His finger. He clutched at it and, distracted, ran full tilt into the side of his car. The blood on his hands made it hard to keep a grip on the door handle but he managed eventually and ripped open the door.

It was better inside. He had another gun, smaller caliber, stashed in the glove box.

His finger.

He hunched against the steering wheel and took a chance.

Despite the pain, it was still there.

He flushed with relief and then anger. That son of a fucking bitch had nearly shot his finger off! He reached for the glove box but saw, just glancing about, the door to the motel office edging open.

Damn it, witnesses. It was time to go, although he hadn’t done what he was supposed to. Shit shit shit.

The boss wasn’t going to be happy.

“Fucking heavy,” snarled Leonard as he unceremoniously shoved the dead weight of his burden into the passenger seat of a scrupulously clean car. He had some concern the wound was going to pop open again because even though the bullet had only carved through the flesh of Spock’s arm, Leonard had done a quick patch job on it. He had coaxed the blood vessels to seal up in order to stop the bleeding but there had been no time make the muscle and flesh knit itself back together. This minor healing was akin to duct tape bandaging a leaky faucet.

He grabbed the leg still dangling out of the vehicle and tucked it inside, then slammed the car door shut. As Leonard came around the front of Spock’s dark sedan, he saw the motel clerk peeking through the half-open office door, a phone cradled to his ear. The young man had watched Leonard drag an unconscious United States federal agent across the parking lot like a sack of potatoes but had given no inclination he had the courage to interrupt an in-progress kidnapping—beyond, of course, calling the police. Leonard couldn’t blame him. If the state of the motel room, with its upended bed, various bullet holes and decimated door was any indication, some serious shit was going down. Only a fool ran headlong into that.

He jerked open the driver-side door and slid in behind the wheel. The car cranked without a problem (not surprising since it had to be the latest make and model of the brand favored by the government). Leonard peeled the duffel bag he had haphazardly packed off his shoulder and dropped into the backseat as he put the car into drive. In minutes, they were away from the downtown area and heading south on a busy highway to who-knows-where. Leonard checked to make certain he hadn’t been tagged by any of Pike’s people (shit, what had Pike’s brain-addled pet been thinking anyway?) and fifteen miles out pulled around to the back of a gas station. He covered up Spock’s front with his jacket to hide the bloodstains from plain sight and went inside to fetch a cheap first aid kit, ibuprofen, and some bottles of water. Spock, it seemed, had been paying cash on his cross-country excursion because his wallet held a hell of a lot of it. A silver lining to every cloud, Leonard thought wryly, and helped himself to the money.

When he got back to the car, Spock’s eyes were open, his gaze lucid. He accused Leonard, “You handcuffed me.”

“Yup,” Leonard agreed. He pulled out of the gas station parking lot after studying the built-in GPS map on the dashboard and turned off onto a less-traveled, better-paved highway. He didn’t stop checking the kind of traffic behind him, though, in the rearview mirror.

Spock twitched in such a way that Leonard’s jacket slid off his shoulders. The agent stared down at his exposed, handcuffed wrists like they were at fault for his predicament. After a while he said in the same accusatory tone, “You did not heal my shoulder.”

“I sorta fixed it.” Leonard glanced at his passenger. “It’s not bleeding again, is it?”

“I cannot tell, as I cannot see it or feel the inflicted area.”

“So it’s numb. That’s good. Otherwise you’d crying right now, I imagine.”

Spock turned to look at him, the non-expression on his face bordering insulted.

Leonard ignored the silent disdain. “Let me know if you need to throw up.” He tapped a finger on the steering wheel and read off a road sign in passing, “Twelve more miles ’til Iowa City.”

Spock swung his head around to look out the side window. “We have left Riverside?”

“Had to,” Leonard explained. “The local authorities have us on the radar.” In more ways than you know, he didn’t add, thinking of Decker. What the hell had the bastard been thinking to start a gunfight in populated area? When Spock stayed silent, Leonard reached around to his back pocket and drew something out. “Also, you’re going to tell me about this.” He held up the McCoy family journal he had discovered inside a pocket of Spock’s trench coat.

“I believe that is my question.”

Leonard jerked the car off to the shoulder of the highway and the fed gave his fiercest glare. “Where the fuck did you get it?”

Something hardened in Spock’s eyes. “Where you left it, Mr. McCoy—in my father’s private study.”

Leonard’s fingers clenched around the journal; its old leather binding bent pliantly under the force. He didn’t say anything, but he knew he didn’t need to. He had taken Spock’s measure, and this guy wasn’t the type to beat around the bush about the cold, hard facts.

Spock did not disappoint him. “I buried my remaining parent over forty-one days and nine hours ago. I know you did not kill him, but you brought death into his house and for that, I do not intend to forgive you.”

Leonard took the deep cut of the words in stride. “So why come after me, if you think I’m not the guy who did it?”

“Because you will lead me to the one responsible.”

Leonard sat back in his seat. That made too much sense. Of course, it did. Spock probably thought it was his purpose in life to make sense. Leonard looked down at the journal in his hand. “I gotta tell you, this is still a crap way to spend your bereavement leave.”

Spock fixed his gaze straight ahead and said nothing. After the silence grew to be too much, Leonard pulled the car back onto the highway.

A mile along, Spock said abruptly, “My shoulder is no longer numb.”

“Eleven miles,” Leonard reminded him. “Then I’ll fix it for good. I promise.”

“I find no value in the promise of a felon.”

“From where I’m sitting, I wouldn’t believe a promise from you either. We aren’t meant to because we’re enemies.”

“Then I do not understand,” Spock murmured so softly that Leonard almost could not hear the words.

But he recognized the confusion and thus asked, “Understand what?”

Spock fell silent again, which Leonard accepted as a hint to quit prying. He wasn’t certain he wanted to know what Spock had meant anyway.

The man surprised him for the umpteenth time that day. Spock released a small, nearly noiseless breath and said, “Sarek managed to leave behind a message in the moment before his death.”

Leonard bit into his lip, wishing he could close his ears, thinking, This is personal, Spock, too damn personal. Why would you tell me this? He was ashamed to realize he was also curious to hear the rest of the explanation.

Spock continued, “He had hidden it—just a singular thought buoyed by the power of dying man, in what was left of the roots of his favorite tree. I almost did not find it in my grief, and even then I nearly destroyed it, afraid that his last words would make the pain unbearable. In the end, I had to know.”

Leonard felt a tension rising between them. “Did he say who—” He stopped himself from finishing that, a desperate question about the curse, because it was a selfish assumption. He swallowed with some difficulty and guessed instead, “It was a goodbye?”

“No,” Spock responded flatly. “He said to help you.”

Some things, Leonard learned in that moment, still had the power to shock him. He turned to look at Spock but anything he might have said dried up in his mouth at the cold hatred reflected back in Spock’s dark eyes. Leonard returned to watching the road.

He said to help you.

No “I love you” from a father to a son. No “I’m proud of you”, “I believe in you”, “It’ll be okay” or any of the reassurances children want to hear from the people they love most when their fear ran deep.

He said to help you.

The sun had disappeared completely by the time they reached Iowa City. Spock’s profile looked no different in the lack of light. It was an unforgiving relief of angles and shadows.

Better to have been in the presence of a cold-blooded killer, the realization came to Leonard. This man Leonard had taken, this Spock, son of Sarek who was bound to him through vengeance and a dead man’s promise, would dog him until the very end; and even then Spock had no intentions of granting Leonard a merciful death.

As with Pike, Leonard was left with little-to-no option. He had to wonder if, in truth, he had been set on this dangerous path to save his daughter at the cost of his own utter destruction.

Oddly enough, he found he could not feel morose about it. Destruction was a step in the right direction, a key in his hand.

Sarek had sent his son to Leonard: a man who had the authority to go anywhere yet was set apart from all the rest; who was implacable, iron-strong and rarely bent to any form but his own; who was, for all that he seemed ordinary at first appearance, a mystery.

The palm of Leonard’s hand itched fiercely. He scrubbed at the skin, laughing softly for no good reason. After everything, maybe he was losing his mind. That must be it.

He snuck a glance at the thin-lipped passenger in the seat beside him.

Truly, how was there anything about Spock which screamed blessing in disguise? Leonard would eat that ugly rain hat he’d spied earlier upon the backseat floorboard if it turned out to be true. And then, of course, he would have to have Scotty check him over to make certain he had not been possessed along the way.

“Thanks, I guess,” Leonard murmured, in case the spirit of Spock’s father was eavesdropping. “But just for the record, I knew you were a crazy old man.”

A voice, very much alive, intruded into Leonard’s wandering thoughts. “If you are done conversing with yourself, Mr. McCoy, I require the use of the nearest facilities.”

Leonard pulled himself together and cut his eyes at Spock. “Is that so?”

Spock went on to elaborate, rather too calmly, “Also, I daresay I need not remind you to remove this impediment to my hands, otherwise you will be joining me in performing a very intimate bodily function.”

An image was in Leonard’s head before he could stop it. He vowed to bleach his brain by any means possible at the earliest opportunity. “Can’t you hold it?”

Spock added, “Once I use the facilities, I wish to eat. I have no known food allergies; however I am strictly vegetarian. I also do not partake of gluten, dairy, soy, sugar, peanut, corn or eggs.”

Leonard felt a pain start behind his left eye.

“In addition, there are certain basic standards to be met for our overnight arrangements. As I assume I am funding this venture, you will not choose an establishment with less than a four star rating. Please refer to the GPS recommendations—”

Leonard gritted his teeth. “Shut up, Spock.”

“—not your cell phone. A bed-and-breakfast is preferable to a chain hotel. Optimally, for a proper night’s rest, the sheet thread count should be—”

Leonard told the asshole to shut up three more times, each instance involving an increase in the spittle flying out of his mouth. Finally, when Leonard was on the verge of shoving his first-ever kidnapping victim out of a moving vehicle, Spock’s list of ways to stay hygienic while traveling ended abruptly.

He turned to look at Leonard. “I will settle, of course, for just the removal of my handcuffs.”

“You fuckin’ bastard,” Leonard said, “you sat quietly for twenty minutes to plan that entire monologue, didn’t you?” He had already fished the key out of his pocket.

Spock reached over and plucked the key away, his movement mindful of his recent injury. “It was summarily planned and memorized in five. The additional fifteen minutes were needed to allow you to fall into an unsuspecting frame of mind.”

“Just shut up,” Leonard repeated, meaning it, as Spock unlocked the metal around his wrists.

“Certainly,” replied the federal agent, pocketing the handcuffs and the key. “You realize, of course, without the handcuffs, we may officially be considered partners in crime.”

Leonard scowled and turned into the parking lot of a Marriott. “Now I really wish you’d shot me.”

That not-smile was back, just for the briefest of seconds. Leonard caught a glimpse of it in the reflective pane of the windshield.

Then Spock said, “Agreed, Mr. McCoy. I wish I had, too,” and they were back to something much less strange.

Next Part

Related Posts:

• The White Horse (18/18) – from May 12, 2014
• The White Horse (17/18) – from May 10, 2014
• The White Horse (16/18) – from May 10, 2014
• The White Horse (15/16) – from April 4, 2014
• The White Horse (14/16) – from March 7, 2014