1Jim changes from a once-and-a-while nuisance to a regular nuisance, as though by joking with (or rather, at) Leonard in the break room is permission to direct all his Kirkian charm at his designated victim.
And, yes, Leonard is definitely feeling like a victim at the moment, if he is to be honest. While Jim has withheld from stirring up the Santa Line crowd (although he has in fact photo-bombed it, which is only discovered after the fact when a customer returns with a complaint that there is a strange blond man in the background of her child’s portrait making bunny ears behind Santa’s head), in a way that actually causes Leonard to become more paranoid that the man is after him.
So he starts looking for Kirk to beat him at his own game.
The weird thing is, once Leonard has an inkling of where Jim might be, he arrives at the destination only to find that Jim has disappeared. It is like a game of cat-and-mouse, except that the mouse has gotten confused and begun to follow the cat. Yet when Leonard stops actively seeking him out, Jim then pops up in his peripheral vision or across the table at his lunch break.
It’s enough to drive a man crazy.
One of those ‘lunch dates’ is happening right now. Leonard has not looked for Jim in twenty-five minutes and now Jim is pulling out a chair and helping himself to Leonard’s bag of potato chips.
“You’re smelling better today,” he says in greeting.
“You’re a creep, Kirk.”
“I’m just being honest. Kentucky Blue is a distinct odor. Difficult to cover up.”
Leonard takes a vicious bite of his fast food burrito because he can’t disagree with that remark.
Jim continues to eat Leonard’s chips while watching his reactions.
Inevitably, Leonard has to put his food down and say, “Stop that.”
Kirk cocks his head. “What?”
“Stop staring!” He pushes away his paper plate, crosses his arms, and mutters, “Damn it, now I’ve lost my appetite.”
Immediately Jim drags the plate to his side of the table and picks up the burrito.
“Are you too poor to afford a meal?” Leonard shoots at him. “Is that why you’re always hanging around the Department Store From Hell?”
“Nope,” Jim replies between bites. “I’m paid a lot of money.”
“Really? Then why is it that you don’t actually seem to do anything?”
“I do plenty,” counters Jim, clearly offended.
Leonard ticks off his fingers one-by-one. “You mop, you fold clothes, you flirt with elderly ladies, you stack boxes, you fix broken doors—which isn’t that Monty’s job, by the way?”
“Scotty?”
“Who?” Leonard questions, having never heard of a Scotty. Then he shakes his head and goes on: “You hide behind racks, you upset Christine’s makeup displays, which by the way really pisses her off—”
Jim gives him a quick grin.
“—you avoid Nyota, and you always vanish when you think I’m on to you.”
“Huh,” Jim says, impressed. “You’re more observant than I anticipated.” Then he reaches for Leonard’s drink.
“For Christ’s sake!” Leonard puts his precious sweet tea out of reach. “You can’t drink after me!”
“But I’m thirsty.”
“You’ve probably got some disease!”
“Hey, c’mon, really—” Jim makes a pleading face and coughs pathetically.
“Yeah, right. Find another sucker, kid.”
Jim’s coughs turn into a kind of choking sound. When the man starts thumping his chest, Leonard realizes Jim might actually be choking. He shoves the tea into Jim’s outstretched hand.
All signs of choking instantly stop. Leonard can only gape as Jim smiles at him and proceeds to finish off the tea.
It is a rather amusing sight, some would later claim, to see a man dressed as Santa Claus chasing another man through the mall while screaming obscenities. The Youtube video becomes very popular.
~~~
“What’s this about?” he asks, turning to the manager.
Mr. Spock, standing stiffly behind his desk rather than sitting at it, clasps his hands behind his back and offers Leonard an unreadable expression. Leonard thinks he looks like a schoolmarm about to deliver a lecture to unruly children.
Perhaps the person next to Leonard thinks so as well, for he slouches into his seat like he wishes he could melt through it.
“It has come to my attention,” Mr. Spock begins in his normal inflection-less tone, “that you, Mr. McCoy, have been showing up in the mornings—for lack of a simpler term—drunk.”
“I didn’t tell anybody, I swear!” cries Monty.
Leonard hardly spares the man a glance. “So what?” he challenges.
“Mr. McCoy, I may be lenient on occasion but do not think I am easily cowed. There are rules in your contract, and in particular there is one rule that matters more than others: you must not place this store or its employees in jeopardy with thoughtless actions. Mr. Scott has conspired with you, therefore he is equally guiltily of breaking this rule. That is why I have asked him to join us here this afternoon.”
Spock turns his gaze on Monty, and Monty squeezes his eyes shut like he expects physical abuse.
Leonard can’t take it. He simply can’t.
He pushes out of his chair and plants his hands on top of Spock’s pristine desk. “If you’ll blame a man for trying to help, then this isn’t a place I want to work! I quit, Mr. Spock. Find yourself another chump to fool your kids. Monty,” he says, turning his head towards the other man, “I never did thank you properly. You’ve been nice to me even when I have been a dick to you. Thank you. If you want my advice, get away from this guy too. He’s more of a dick than I am.”
Monty stares at Leonard with wide eyes—until he suddenly starts grinning.
“Jim was right!” he crows. “This one’ll do!”
Spock looks nonplussed to hear this.
Leonard is just plain confused. “What?”
Monty abandons his chair to give Leonard a hearty handshake. “I knew you could do it!”
“What?” Leonard repeats, watching his hand go up and down, up and down.
Their boss sighs so softly that the sigh is almost noiseless. “There is still the matter of his disorderly conduct.”
“Oh, pfft,” says the resident engineer. “You’ve been worse, Mr. Spock.”
Leonard’s head snaps to Spock to find that the man is actually blushing.
Spock clears his throat and says without preamble, “Dismissed.”
“What?” Leonard questions for the third time. “Did I miss something? Weren’t you going to fire me?”
“You quit,” Spock replies solemnly, “but I am told selective hearing is an attribute of a good supervisor. Good day, Mr. McCoy.”
Monty drags Leonard away before Leonard can think up a reply.
Once outside the office, Leonard runs a hand through his hair. “I have no idea what just happened, Monty.”
“Thanks for being angry on my behalf. You warmed my wee heart!” Monty gives Leonard’s shoulder a happy pat before he turns away.
“Wait,” Leonard calls, “do you know Jim?”
Monty turns back, seeming confused. “Everybody knows Jim.”
“I mean, are you friends with him?”
“Of course! If it weren’t for Jim, I wouldn’t be here. Nobody would, except Mr. Spock.”
Monty provides no further explanation than that, leaving Leonard even more lost than he was before.
~~~
An hour later, everyone is congratulating Leonard like he has won some sort of grand prize. Leonard begins to itch to get out of the store, just to clear his head and return to his little world where he knows what he is troubles are. He doesn’t want to these people to like him; and he doesn’t want to like them in return.
Of course, to prove that there really is something to celebrate, Jim goes back to his old ways.
“Not again,” mutters Leonard when a familiar figure twines through the line of parents and children.
“Santa!”
“Don’t you dare,” he growls at the approaching man.
“Santa,” Jim says again, eyes sparkling, “I’m so happy for you!” Then he takes a seat in Leonard’s lap. “Let me ask you a question.”
“No.”
“Just one.”
“Why do you do this to me?”
“Why is Christmas special?”
“Damn it, Jim, you asked that before!”
“Yeah but this time you might have a different answer. So, why is Christmas special?”
It isn’t! Leonard wants to cry out.
Then something miraculous happens. Over Jim’s shoulder, Leonard sees a man weaving his way through the line to the platform, which he then mounts and comes over to them. Leonard’s eyes go wide, followed a moment later by Jim’s when Jim is grabbed by his ear from behind.
“Up,” demands the man in a firm tone.
The encounter grows more interesting once Jim sees the identity of his assailant because he promptly falls off Leonard’s lap. Then with haste Jim scuttles to a safe distance across the stage, looking simultaneously horrified and embarrassed.
“Wow, thanks,” Leonard says with genuine gratitude. “Are you his parent?”
“No he’s not!” cries Jim, who protectively covers over his abused ear like it might be in danger again.
The man standing in front of Leonard tucks his hands into his khaki pants’ pockets. He sounds like he’s trying to withhold laughter even as he delivers the admonishment, “You’re too old for Santa’s lap, Jim.”
“And too damn big,” mutters Santa.
The man turns his gaze upon Leonard. “Thank you for not having him arrested.”
“I’m leaving now,” Jim declares loudly, backing down the platform steps without taking his eyes off of the stranger.
“Wait,” the man says simply.
Jim freezes.
“You forgot your lunchbox this morning.”
Leonard’s mouth twitches.
Jim’s face turns red.
The man adds innocently, “I left it with Spock.”
Jim mumbles something and wastes no time in making a swift exit.
Leonard can’t help himself. He grins. “I’m not a very religious man, sir, but I’m inclined to think you might be an angel.” He offers a hand in introduction. “McCoy, Leonard McCoy.”
“Christopher Pike.”
They shake hands.
Pike says, “It’s unfortunate that we had to meet under these circumstances.”
“Yeah, well, your kid’s annoying.”
“I know.”
Leonard has no qualms about tattling on an enemy. “It’s nice of you to remember his lunch, but you didn’t have to worry. He ate mine.”
Pike sighs while drawing out a billfold. “How much?”
Leonard doesn’t want the money. “Forget about it. Just make sure you have a talk with him about the dangers of sitting on strangers’ laps.”
“You got it,” agrees Pike. He takes his leave shortly thereafter, and for the first time in a week Leonard is genuinely tickled by his strange situation.
~~~
But he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the man since the encounter with Christopher Pike. Jim is clearly hiding but not as part of a catch-me-if-you-can game.
That amuses Leonard and lightens his step.
He wanders through the different sections of the department store, asking the employees who haven’t left yet if they’ve seen a crazy blond-haired man. Someone directs him to Customer Service, and Customer Service directs him to a small storage area designated for damaged items and returns. Leonard has never been in this area before and thus enters it with caution. Moving quietly turns to work out in his favor as he doesn’t give his presence away when he spies Jim.
Thinking he sneak up and scare the guy further improves his mood.
With his back to Leonard, Jim is writing industriously on a yellow legal pad at a old, cluttered desk. One leg is stretched, and the other is tucked under him.
Leonard starts forward.
“Fzzzzt,” he hears, “…Sir?“
Jim picks up a walkie-talkie to his right and clicks it on. “Kirk here.”
The static doesn’t quite disguise Sulu’s voice. “We’re shutting down in ten.“
Jim looks at a sports watch on his wrist. “Roger that. It’s been quiet today, so let’s call it a Priority Two. Even if Scotty complains about it, do a walk-through of the shop.”
“Already on it, sir.”
“Good man, Sulu.” Jim clicks off like he’s done talking but a moment later lifts the speaker back to his mouth. “Hey, what’s the status on our St. Nick?”
Leonard freezes on the spot.
“Lost him between the break room and the office.” Sulu sounds like he hates to admit that. “I can check the cameras if you want.”
“No problem,” Jim replies in an unruffled tone. “I can find him.”
“Can you now?” Leonard asks too softly.
Jim half-falls, half-leaps out of his chair, dropping his walkie-talkie to the floor in the process. “H-Hey? McCoy?”
Leonard picks up the radio, so furious that he can hardly thinks. He pitches the thing back at Kirk, who catches it and holds it to his chest. Then he stalks forward until he take a hold of Jim by the shirt collar and bring them nose-to-nose.
“I get it now,” he says, shaking Jim into silence when Jim tries to speak. “You were literally on my tail this whole time. Why, Jim? What do you think I’m going to do?”
“It’s not like that,” Jim starts to say.
“Save the lie for someone who’ll believe,” he snarls. “Let me lay it out for you plain, Kirk: I’m not a criminal, and I don’t like being treated like one. If you don’t trust me enough that you’ve got the whole damn store keeping their eyes on me, then I don’t need to be here.” He lets Jim go and backs up. “Tell Spock—or whoever it is that’s actually calling the shots—that I quit. This time, it’s for fucking real.”
He doesn’t stick around to find out what Jim thinks about that.
~~~
He takes out his token and sets it next to him.
The bartender is smart enough not question if Leonard should or should not be there. “What’s your poison?”
“Beer to start.” He has a credit card in his back pocket that he can use for tonight.
Two beers and a gin-and-tonic later, Leonard is contemplating his ring finger with the mellow buzz of someone who has spent years perfecting his tolerance level. The evidence of his marriage is long gone. What Jocelyn did with her ring, he will never know; his is in a small wooden box in his childhood home, hidden in the back of a closet somewhere along with other remnants of the past. Some things he could not bring himself to give away. There is an ancient chest filled with toys, gathering dust. If he was a stronger man, he would have let it all go, as she tried to do. He wouldn’t still be running away years and years down the road, always so close to drowning himself.
“Whiskey,” he calls to the bartender when his thoughts get too heavy. Then, “Are you going to stand there or take a seat?”
Jim slips onto the unoccupied stool beside Leonard.
“How’d you find me?”
“I’m good at that, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” The kid is also good at lying.
Neither man says anything until Leonard’s whiskey arrives. Jim orders a beer. Then Jim picks up Leonard’s forgotten token as if it is his own and sets it to spinning on the countertop like a coin.
“Aren’t you are going to ask?” Leonard presses when silence follows, already prepared with a snide comeback to a dumb question.
“No.”
Nonplussed, Leonard drains his glass and smacks it down on the counter with a thunk. “Why not? You’re so invested in my business anyway.”
“Not for the reason that you think,” Jim replies. He catches the token as it spins and lays it flat, seeming to mull over something. Eventually he says, “Don’t quit.”
Leonard turns to stare at him. With the whiskey and its predecessors running through his system, Kirk looks strangely young and ill-at-ease to him. That makes a part of Leonard meanly glad.
“Don’t quit,” Jim says again.
“Buy me a drink and I’ll think about it.
The man nods. Leonard orders more whiskey.
“Don’t you feel guilty,” he asks later, his words starting to slur together, “buying an alcoholic a drink?
“A recovering alcoholic,” Jim adds, tapping the token. “120 Days,” he reads. “That’s a long time.”
“Not really,” Leonard admits. “I do it once a year.”
“Do what?”
He hmphs and fumbles with a napkin stuck to the countertop. “Sober up.”
Jim murmurs, “Weird. Does that have anything to do with the gig?”
“What?”
“Playing Santa Claus.”
“Oh, that.” Leonard runs a hand over his face. “I guess. This time of year. It sucks.” He can hear himself talking too much but cannot seem to stop.
Is this what Jim was waiting for? The answer eludes him.
Jim isn’t looking at him. “So, the Christmas season makes you drink. That is pretty bad. Maybe you should consider a career change.”
“My little girl loved Santa Claus,” Leonard blurts out.
Jim is just a glimpse in the corner of his eye, growing smaller. Maybe it is because the guy does not say anything that Leonard lowers his guard. Or maybe it is the alcohol doing that for him. He finds he doesn’t care.
“I’d take her to see him every year, but even at home she’d climb into my lap and make me pretend to be him. She had the funniest laugh.” Leonard tips his head forward. “Like mine.” His laugh doesn’t sound funny at all, just then. He sounds like he is choking to death.
A hand starts to pat his back. Jim offers the sage advice, “Maybe you should stop drinking now.”
“Why?” Leonard questions belligerently, wiping at his tears and snot. “I ain’t got nothin’ left, Jim. Nothing but my bones—” He lifts his hand. “—and this drink.”
Once again, Jim says nothing.
Leonard swallows what’s left in the glass. “Why’d you follow me?”
“Because I messed up.”
“You did,” Leonard agrees. “My daughter… my daughter, Joanna…” The words can’t escape him.
Maybe Jim takes pity on him because he says, “Playing Santa Claus seems like a good way to honor her.”
Leonard’s eyes well. “I don’t do it to honor her. I do it to see her again.”
The hand slides off his back. Jim is growing small again. “For how long?”
Leonard squeezes his eyes shut against the dancing lights above the bar and rubs at his forehead with the back of a hand. “How long, what?”
“How long have you been… like this?”
“Nine years.” He slumps in his chair. “Almost nine years, in six more days.”
“Then wouldn’t she be too old for Santa?”
It’s an innocent question, yet it stops Leonard cold.
He can’t imagine it, his little Jo, old enough to no longer believe in Santa Claus. Because he can’t imagine it, he hates himself just a little bit more.
Once again, he has been left behind, even in a such a small way. He has been trying to hold on to six year-old who left him a long time ago. Does it never end, the pain? And if it could end, what would he do with himself then?
Leonard shakes himself free of his stupor and reaches blindly for his token, knocking over several beer bottles in the process.
“Leave me alone,” he tells Jim Kirk when the man tries to clean up the mess Leonard made. “I don’t want you here.”
Jim says something, then, but the world is darkening at the edges. How much he did have to drink? Leonard can’t remember now.
Someone grasps his shoulders, rights him like another beer bottle.
“I may throw up on you,” he warns that person, and then does.
~~~
“Ow, ow, ow,” he hears. “That’s my head!”
The violence doesn’t have the intended effect. Leonard is bumping along worse than ever and really, really doesn’t like it. He whacks at whatever is within reach to make his point. “Potholes,” he slurs. “Avoid the damn potholes!”
He swerves sideways, and that’s when Leonard finds himself upended. When he cracks an eye open, it is to find Jim bent over him, panting.
“You’re awake,” Jim says unnecessarily. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
He sees three melt into one then become three again. That’s a no-brainer. “Three-one-three.”
“Good enough for me. Get up. You’re walking.” For some reason, Jim rubs at the back of his head.
Leonard groans. “Leave me here.”
Jim sighs long and loud, then reaches down to grab Leonard’s arm and yank at it.
Leonard lets that arm flop back to the pavement. “Leave me here to die.”
The mutter under Jim’s breath sounds suspiciously like drama queen.
Is Kirk making fun of him? Leonard doesn’t appreciate that. He rolls over and manages to sit up after the second try.
Jim congratulates him with “Good job,” only to take no pity on him whatsoever and haul him up to his feet by the armpits.
Leonard wobbles for a moment on his own two feet.
“It’s not that far,” Jim promises him.
“I don’t want to do this,” Leonard complains.
“I can’t take you home,” Jim replies. “C’mon.”
“Where’re we going?”
Jim doesn’t answer.
If Leonard had had any presence of mind at all, he would have figured that answer out very quickly.
~~~
“Not my fault,” claims the man who abandoned Leonard at the dock door.
Jim told him to stay there like he’s a dog and now is talking to Monty like Leonard isn’t within arm’s reach, waiting patiently to throw up on someone again.
“I kinda heard it was,” Monty counters. “Did he quit?”
“No, I bought him a drink.”
“Or ten, by the looks of the lad. Unfortunately my tonic doesn’t work on the newly drunk.”
“I have a plan.”
“Is Mr. Spock going to like it?”
“He’ll never know, Scotty. We just have get Bones changed and settled somewhere out of sight.”
“I don’t know…”
“Aw, c’mon, man.. look at him!”
“Yeah, he’s pretty pathetic.”
“Hey,” interrupts Leonard, “I have ears, you dimwits.”
“Three sheets to the wind and yet he can still cuss. I knew I liked him. All right, Jim. Let’s get the man inside.”
“Wait,” Leonard tries to protest when both of his arms are grabbed. “Wait a minute!”
“It’s okay,” Jim assures him. “We’ve done this before.”
Leonard stares at the two men, bug-eyed, while they haul him into the department store.
~~~
“Oh sweet Jesus,” he says. He feels up his backside and finds a tag on the jeans as well. It’s best to draw the inspection at his underwear, he decides. It’s already uncomfortable enough thinking that either Monty or Jim dressed him.
Or both of them.
“Sweet Jesus,” he says again and rolls off the flimsy cot into which he had been bundled at some point with a ridiculous number of blankets. Leonard is not certain if it’s normal to have a long blackout period followed by very strong lucidity. Exactly how much did he have to drink in that bar?
He vaguely recalls Jim dragging him part of the way once they reached the parking lot of the mall. He sort of recalls being sick, and he thinks Monty is conspiring to hide him from…
Oh, dear god.
They’re all going to get fired, but him especially.
“Kind of hard to do that when you already quit,” says a voice behind him.
Leonard turns, finding Jim leaning in an open doorway. A faint light can be seen down the hallway behind Jim, and it casts Jim’s features into something slightly unearthly.
“Er,” Leonard begins, not having exactly been observant about Jim’s clothes but thinking that they look new, “did I throw up on you?”
“Oh yes. On my favorite t-shirt too,” Jim tells him, sounding aggrieved.
Leonard scrubs his fingertips against his forehead. “Sorry.”
Jim drops his head to his chin, snorts and looks up again. He’s grinning. “Bones, I like you. It’s going to work out.”
Leonard looks around for this Bones person until it occurs to him that Jim is calling him that. “Why are you calling me Bones?”
“Because you sounded so serious about it.”
About what? Leonard doesn’t remember half of the things he said at the bar. Maybe he didn’t say much of anything. It’s likely Jim is operating in a fantasy world all his own.
“Okay, whatever,” he decides. “Listen, kid… I need to—well, first I need my own damn clothes. This is stealing. And second, I need to go home.”
“Do you have a home?” Jim asks in a tone that implies he is actually wondering that.
“Christ, of course I do! I’m not some hobo who sleeps under a bridge.”
“Just curious.” Jim pushes away from the doorframe. “Follow me.”
This is a strange turn of events, Leonard thinks, as he keeps pace with Jim through a short hallway that leads to a side of the warehouse he has never seen before.
There comes the sound of clanking and clacking, somebody working on something metal. It turns out to be Monty, who is halfway inside a forklift with its guts spread out around him.
“Oh, he’s awake!” calls the man when he spies Leonard. “Hand me that oil can, Jim. Aye, that one.”
Leonard recoils at the state of the workshop. “My god, what is this place?”
“It’s me own junkyard,” Monty says gleefully.
“Aren’t we in the store?”
Monty rubs his nose with the back of his hand, spreading engine grease across it. “Yes?”
Leonard looks to Jim.
Jim shrugs. “He’s special.”
Monty goes back to his self-designated task. Leonard thinks it might be safer not to ask what he’s doing to the forklift.
Jim wants to know if Leonard is hungry, pointing out that a liquid diet of the kind they recently indulged in doesn’t qualify as sustenance for the body.
“And just where will we get food, Jim?” Leonard asks, once again following the man into another part of the store. “It’s not like—”
Jim throws him a bag.
Leonard raises an eyebrow at the label. “Candy?”
Jim beams and shakes a bag of Swedish fish. “Sure!”
“First, we’re wearing merchandise and now we’re eating it?” When Jim opens his mouth to respond, Leonard cuts in, “And don’t say it’s free.”
Jim makes a face. “No wonder you don’t get along with Spock.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” says Jim much too innocently as he pops Swedish fish into his mouth.
“This is fantastical,” Leonard concludes.
“Fantastic?”
“No, numb-nuts. Fantas—never mind.”
Jim just continues to chew and stare so Leonard trades his Swedish fish for Sour Patch Kids and heads off in a different direction. Jim comes along behind him without making a fuss.
“Are we going to get arrested?” Leonard asks.
“For what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Breaking and entering. Vandalism. Theft.”
“Monty invited us in, I didn’t puke on Nyota’s mannequins—”
“WHAT?”
“—and we can have anything we use deducted from our paychecks, plus with the employee discount that makes stuff cheaper than at other places.”
“What was that again about Nyota’s mannequins?”
Jim looks elsewhere and whistles.
Leonard can picture himself throttling Jim but resists the urge for the time-being. Although he hasn’t made a conscious decision about his destination, they end up at the Santa Line.
Viewing it as an outsider would, Leonard supposes it is a tastefully decorated set. It has an elegance to satisfy the upper-class and enough free-form to entice the eager children.
And at the center of it all should be someone who brings the set to life.
Leonard winces. He truly is terrible at his job, but the job is not something he can give up.
Wanting to take his mind off that train of thought, his eyes scrutinize the set for flaws rather than perfection. In doing so, he finally sees something he hasn’t noticed before.
“Are those Pavel’s reindeer?” he questions, stepping up to one of the life-size models.
“Oh, yeah!” says Jim, like he hasn’t seen them before, coming around to the other side. “Awesome, aren’t they?”
They are as big as the horses on a carousel. Leonard has a horrible thought just then. “Jim, he’s not going to let the kids sit on these, is he?”
“Sure, why not?” Jim pushes at one. “The kids will love it. They’re sturdy, see?”
“Like hell!” Leonard bursts out. “This is an accident waiting to happen! Y’all must be crazy. No, you can’t.”
Jim blinks at him. “Are you Southern?”
“I won’t let you,” Leonard says stubbornly. “I’ll talk to Spock.”
Jim sniffs. “Spock listens to me.”
“Uh-huh,” says Leonard. “Be that as it may, the last thing he’ll want is a lawsuit and bad publicity. So he’ll listen to me for a change.”
Jim’s eyebrows come down. “Are you insinuating I have bad ideas, Bones?”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t know a good one if it bit you on the ass.”
With a scoffing sound, Jim throws his bag of Swedish fish at Leonard’s chest and slings a leg over one of the reindeer. “It’s totally safe. See,” when he’s fully seated, he bounces a little on its back, “totally—”
The reindeer statue makes a cracking sound.
“—safe,” Jim finishes just before the thing snaps off at the hooves and tilts over sideways.
Leonard drops the bag of candy with a cry of “Jim!”
Jim literally ends up with his head over his heels, which is unfortunately right at the edge of the stage.
“I’m perfectly fine,” he calls out weakly once he is laid out flat on the floor below.
Leonard nearly breaks his own neck in trying to jump off the stage after the fool. Of course, that might be more due to the fact that a string of Christmas lights running along the stage’s perimeter tangles up his feet. Amid the sounds of bulbs popping, fabric ripping, and delicate things breaking, Leonard lands with an oof beside Kirk.
“…Pavel’s going to kill us,” Jim remarks.
“Am I dead?” Leonard responds.
“Not yet.”
“Damn.”
They lay there in silence for a long minute.
“Question,” Jim murmurs at last.
“Shoot.”
“Why is Christmas special?”
Leonard answers without much though, “Because it makes you miss the people you want to celebrate it with.”
“Because it reminds you why you can’t celebrate with them.”
It takes Leonard a moment to realize that Jim is talking about himself.
He turns his head to Jim. “Yeah?”
Jim’s head turns to Leonard. “Yeah.”
“Is that why you kept bothering me?”
“Maybe.” Kirk pauses. “You looked like you knew the answer to my question.”
Leonard ponders that. Jim could be a little less crazy than he originally suspected.
“…Bones.”
“Don’t call me that.” Then, “What?”
“Is something burning?”
“What?”
Leonard sniffs the air, then sits up with haste.
Hell yes, something is burning. The Santa stage. It’s on fire.
“Shit!”
“Uh-oh,” agrees Jim, also sitting up to look at what Leonard is seeing, which namely is a red velour coverlet ablaze. “Bones, how fast can you run?”
Leonard is halfway to the nearest fire extinguisher by the time the built-in smoke detection system lights up the store with red sirens and ringing alarms. From there on out, the night is positively chaotic.
[ Previous Part | Master Post | Epilogue ]
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- An Idiot’s Guide to Christmas (4/4) – from December 11, 2014
- An Idiot’s Guide to Christmas (2/4) – from December 11, 2014
- An Idiot’s Guide to Christmas (1/4) – from December 11, 2014
Dear god….dammit I’m a reader not a mind reader…..this is the best and wow kudos to you for how skillfully you weave the sadness within the humor. Love how there are so many levels of meanings buried in each conversation that Jim and bones have…… I used to wonder if all versions/universes of Jim and bones ended up being so important to each other………meeting up at the low point of their lives……. As I thought, Jim and bones always manage to find each other ……..no matter the universe………….destined to meet at pivotal moments in their lives………… KUDOS