0Title: River Bound (3/4)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: AOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Warnings: Stalking, Mind Control, Non-consensual Kissing
Summary: AU. When Kirk begins to receive anonymous love letters, he assumes they’re coming from his partners, unaware that he has attracted some unwanted attention. The situation turns perilous once Kirk realizes his mistake, for he has been ensnared by someone who wants to keep him from Spock and McCoy at any cost.
Parts: 1 | 2
The rating has been raised from Teen to Mature out of caution. There may be a couple of parts early on this chapter which are uncomfortable or even triggery for the reader: non-consensual kissing and attempted molestation. In order to showcase the gravity of Kirk’s situation, I felt these parts were unavoidable; however, they are not the main theme of the chapter or written in prolonged, gruesome detail, and are primarily contained to two scenes. I have marked those scenes with an asterisk (*). If you wish to skip them, please look for the *~~~* at the start of the scene. Then scroll past that scene.
Jim dreams in fragments. Two dark-haired men, one with ears ending in delicate points, occupy a couch together, talking in the pre-dawn hours of the morning. After, the human paces an invisible track around the room, a cell phone against his ear. When one call ends, he immediately begins another. Elsewhere the elfin man cuts a solitary figure on the balcony, eyes closed, face uplifted to a starry sky.
The pieces of Jim’s dream shift into a reasonable order. The repeated phone calls and pacing of one lead to the contemplation of the sky by the other, which ends with the late-night conversation. Something obviously worries this pair.
While Jim Kirk dreams, Jan Lester unlocks the door to her small two-bedroom house and escorts her boyfriend inside, telling him to wait for her on the couch. When he complies, she goes to her kitchen to make them dinner, humming to herself.
There are apparent complications to placing a person under a spell. Even among magic users, the common expectation is that control is something one might try to exercise over a runaway train, not over a lover. The result of Kirk’s unnatural tether to Lester’s will comes at the price of his spirit. Jan had been warned about this, which she contemplates while preparing the first meal they will share together as a couple.
When the food is ready and Jan has beckoned Jim to the dining table, she lovingly feeds him his first bite of steak. He only chews and swallows it once she reminds him, “Eat.” Thereafter it becomes somewhat of a fascination for Jan to watch Kirk go through the motions of feeding himself. Everything about his movements, from wielding his fork and knife to drinking wine, is precise with little energy wasted; none of it is indicative of what the man might feel, like a hunger that needs satisfying or pleasure at a tasty meal. She is somewhat discomfited by the lacking of conversation from her dining companion, but the night is young yet for discovering all that the spell can do.
And, more than anything, Jan wants to find out what else she can make Jim do.
With Kirk’s meal gone and hers half-eaten, Jan leads Kirk back to the couch, where the true crux of the problem becomes obvious after a few fervent kisses. A spellbound body obeys only as best it can, but when the spirit inside the body is dampened, perhaps even missing, there are ways the body simply cannot respond.
She slides her thigh out from between her lover’s legs, where the lack of response is the most disappointing, and sits beside him on the couch with a resigned huff.
After a minute, she commands, “Hold me.”
Kirk wraps his arms around her. Jan settles against his chest with a small sigh. While this isn’t the intimate evening she imagined, there is a certain sense of contentment that comes from being in this particular man’s arms.
Jim, where are you?
Jim lunges out of sleep in an ink-dark room to the echo of a voice inside his head, sweating and making odd little noises as he breathes. The person who stirs beside him with a sleepy “Jim?” is not the owner of the voice that had woken him.
When Jan Lester pushes herself into a sitting position, one strap of her nightgown sliding off her shoulder, Jim remembers what happened.
The letters. Lester. Her spell.
He’s in a bed with her. Nausea rocks him.
Jan catches Jim by the arm before he can bolt out of bed. Her order to “Stay” kills his instinct to flee.
“Lay down, Jim,” she adds.
Jim’s body flops down across the bedcovers. He cannot seem to drag enough air into his lungs. Numbly, he thinks he has pajama bottoms and his underwear on. That little note of hysteria inside him builds.
It takes effort to find his voice, but when he does, he pleads, “Jan, this is wrong. Please, let me go.”
“Why is it wrong? I just want you to understand that I can be good to you.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because you needed me—and I love you.”
When Jan leans into his line of sight, Jim’s eyes slam shut. At the touch of her mouth, he falls, another dream rising up to catch him.
In Riverside’s shadowy slums, somewhere faintly recognizable from Jim’s past, a man in silver sunglasses has an arm pressed to a street kid’s throat. The man taps the top edge of a cell phone against the kid’s temple none-too-gently, the sticker on the back of the phone’s casing plainly visible. The sticker seems familiar.
“Where did you get this?”
“I didn’t steal it,” the kid insists. “I found it!”
The shadow stretched across the pair ripples. That darkness is not empty, belonging to a crook-necked man, who in a deep voice responds, “Where?”
“Behind The Lantern.” There is a slight wildness to the kid’s eyes now, the kind that usually accompanies fear. Something about this not-shadow is more frightening than the silver-eyed man cutting off his air supply.
A bright light blinks across the space unexpectedly, a car passing by with its high beams on. For the briefest second, the not-shadow gains a face—the same face from the first dream, the man who was star-gazing.
“Take me to The Lantern, Mr. Mitchell,” that man says now.
“Not a good idea,” Mitchell counters, starting to lift up his sunglasses. “The Pack catches wind of you being there, and you’re d—”
“Darling, wake up.”
The dream cannot withstand the voice, being made of power, and breaks apart like an old film strip dissolving under a hot light. In the real world, a rather terrifying reality, Jim Kirk obediently opens his eyes.
Jan brushes her lips against his cheek before bouncing out of bed. “Good morning! Would you like some breakfast?”
“Yes, please,” Jim’s mouth responds. That is the only acceptable answer she will have, and when Jan Lester wishes for something, her will becomes everything.
“Clean yourself up,” she tells him. “I bought you new clothes. Wear them. The clothes are on the end of the dresser.”
Jim levers himself out of bed to do as told.
With breakfast finished, Jan seems in no hurry to go anywhere. She chatters to fill an awkward silence, the sound of her voice a constant, throbbing beat against Kirk’s temples. Part of him absorbs what she is saying; another part is too detached to care. That latter half is seeking something else, a spark to ignite itself with, to escape. When sunlight catches on the spoon propped against an empty bowl in front of Jim, it sends Jan’s voice away completely.
“It looks bad for Kirk,” Mitchell is saying, squared off over a darkened computer screen with another person sans sunglasses. The look in his eyes is ruthless. “He left with company.”
Mitchell’s opponent looks haggard, his eyes seeming overly large in his pale, unshaven face. But there is a fire in those eyes to match the man’s fiery rebuff: “My god, are you blind? He was kidnapped!”
“Check again, McCoy. Kirk looks drunk off his ass. He kissed some chick behind the bar then strolled away with her. You know what the average guy calls that? A hook up.”
Mitchell dances out of range of McCoy’s fist, putting a suitable distance between them with the warning, “Try that again, and I’ll take you and Pointy Ears down to the station.”
“You bastard,” seethes the other man. “You said you’d help!”
McCoy’s partner comes into view, flanking McCoy and leveling an unimpressed stare at Mitchell, leaving no doubt which side he is on.
“I brought you this far!” Mitchell snaps back before flattening both his tone and expression. “Use your brain. What I just described is the normal explanation any cop would think after watching that video.”
“Then what would be the opinion of an officer who deals with the abnormal?” McCoy’s partner asks.
“Kirk was caught by some kind of compulsion spell and fighting it. He dropped his phone while running but kept going because he knew he needed to find a safe place, a public place. He must have been scared shitless.”
McCoy sways on his feet. He murmurs, “Spock,” when his partner steadies him with a hand to the small of his back.
Spock returns his attention to Mitchell. “How do we identify the person who ensorcelled Jim?”
“That bitch in the alley looks like the same one who was tailing Kirk a couple of days back. If she has a record, it’s possible to id her by a description—” The cop’s mouth presses flat. “—if you have the right resources and a department who cares.”
“Then—”
McCoy interrupts Spock, his throat working. “Jim didn’t tell us he was being followed.”
Mitchell offers up a humorless smile. “Kirk probably thought I was messing with him.” His smile fades, then, replaced by a sentiment much colder and more disinterested. “None of what I said means I can help you. My advice? File a missing person’s report in two days if your boyfriend doesn’t turn up.” He turns from the pair and walks away.
“That’s it?” yells McCoy, fury bringing back some color to his face. “You just turn your back when your friend’s in trouble?”
Mitchell stops but doesn’t turn around. “Ex-friend. I only helped you because, one, you begged me and, two, I owed Kirk. He and I—we’re square now, for good. Tell him that… if you manage to save him.”
After the cop is gone, McCoy looks to Spock. “What do we do now?”
The dream ends there. No, not a dream, Kirk realizes finally, a vision. About him.
As Jan’s kitchen comes back into focus, his ability to think does too. For some reason, with that final image of Spock and McCoy lingering in his mind’s eye, he can see past the haze long enough to grasp at fragments of knowledge and form one whole fact: those two men care about him. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, they believe Jim should be with them, instead of where he is now with Jan.
Something’s wrong, he thinks desperately. Why am I like this? It’s difficult for him to remember the reason.
Jim finds himself physically swaying in his seat, like a dowsing pendant stirred by the magnetic pull of particular kind of energy but not quite able to pinpoint the location of what has attracted it.
Jan must sense something about him, for she reaches across the table separating them and places a hand on his arm, which stills his movement. She watches him in part concern, part doubt. “Jim? It’s okay. I’m here.”
“But where am I?” he asks.
“Where you belong,” she replies. “By my side.” After a moment, the woman encourages him, “Don’t fight me, Jim. Don’t think. Just be with me.”
And so Jim has no choice but to let the door in his mind close upon him again.
Janice Lester has had many boyfriends, all of them falling short of her standards in some way, barring one. Though they may have been a very young couple, Jim was the best boyfriend Jan ever had, which is why it felt serendipitous that she ran into and recognized Winona Kirk. It seemed like the gods speaking in hopes to rekindle her faith in love after so many failed romances. She vividly remembers Jim Kirk as being kind and attentive. Jim, sweet in his caring, never one to ridicule a person for their ambitions. A man who treats a woman like an equal. She believes if her parents had not forced a school transfer after moving to the opposite side of the city, she and Jim would have been a couple for a long, long time—perhaps even married by now.
She made certain to educate herself on those lost years. She knew Jim always felt apart from his peers, given his innate gift to recognize the good fortune of others but people’s inability to accept that about him. She personally never drew attention to her family’s dabbling in magic, thinking people might treat her unkindly too, but that mindset changed when she was in college. Jan learned to appreciate the power that came with practicing magic, especially when it made her stand out among other classmates and other women. She should have realized then that she could never be satisfied with an ordinary man as a lover.
In becoming reacquainted with Jim Kirk, she discovered the man was stronger in spirit than the boy, making no apologies for his gift of magic and seeming quite comfortable, cocky even, with his existence. There was a period of time in his youth that Jim did use his foresight for personal gain, but then again Jan has been no saint herself. But most importantly, her quarry appeared to still care about people, even when they gave him no thought in return.
So Jan settled on having Kirk, and then it became a simple matter of sussing out his habits—and, of course, dealing with that slight problem of him being a taken man.
At first, she thought she might not be able to forgive him for loving someone else, but it turns out the odd arrangement between Kirk and his two live-in lovers could not be his fault. When the Blood start spending time with humans, most of whom are half in love with their arrogant race anyway, it becomes inevitable for a human to fall under the spell of one of them. According to Jan’s source, Kirk’s half-blood lover, Spock, is an extremely coldhearted bastard, is in fact so selfish that he doesn’t care if he prevents someone from finding their true love. For many Highborns, having one human fawn over them would be plenty of entertainment but, as her source insisted, Spock becomes bored very easily and therefore switches his affections between Kirk and the other human male at his leisure.
The mere thought of any person being used so ill makes Jan’s blood boil. Well, Jim is safe with her now.
She smiles to herself as she thinks this, barely engaged in the morning news report despite outward appearances. Next to her, Jim is the one who stares with blank persistence at the television, never stirring no matter the program or commercial. Jan wishes she could do something about that unfocused glaze to his eyes. When she touches his skin, she can feel that he isn’t an empty shell; but after a while, spurred by a mounting uneasiness, she has to check again to be certain nothing has changed.
The news report ends at the same time her cell phone rings. Jan answers the call with a cheerful “Hello!”
“Jan? This is Winona Kirk.”
Jan is unable to stop the sudden pounding of her heart. The fingers of her left hand tingle painfully as she twists them into the material of her skirt. Her voice doesn’t fail her, though, smoothing out to a calmer octave. “Good morning, Mrs. Kirk. It’s lovely to hear from you.”
“Jan, I’m really sorry to bother so early but—”
No, she thinks, followed by, of course.
“—have you heard from my son Jim?”
She draws a tiny breath, working to keep her voice pleasant. “Actually, I did. I owe you for passing along my number to him. We met for drinks for last night and, well—he’s here!” she ends brightly.
“Where?”
She doesn’t like the sharpness of the woman’s tone, but does not allow that dislike to show. “At my house.” She turns her head, looking directly at Kirk, as she raises her voice as if calling across the room. “Jim! Jim, your mother is on the phone. Just a moment,” she tells Winona, “I’ll put him on.” Then Jan mutes the phone.
“Look at me,” she commands Jim.
Kirk faces her.
“Take the phone and speak to your mother normally. Tell her everything’s fine.”
She transfers her unmuted phone to Kirk, who raises it to his ear. With the phone’s speaker on, nothing about the conversation can be hidden from her.
“Hello?” Kirk says.
“Jim?” Winona’s voice softens with obvious concern. “Jim, it’s Mom. Are you okay?”
“Everything’s fine, Mom.”
Jan’s heart jumps to her throat when Winona doesn’t respond right away. She leans forward but cannot make out the nature of the muffled sounds in the background.
Winona clears her throat suddenly. “Jimmy, I… was on my way to the supermarket. Do you need anything?”
“Everything’s fine, Mom.”
Jan jerks the phone out of Kirk’s hand and mutes it. “Tell her you don’t need anything! Tell her you’re with me. Tell her you’re happy here!” Then she shoves the phone back into his hand.
Kirk repeats obediently, “I don’t need anything. I am with Jan. I am happy here.”
Jan wrenches at her skirt, upset. How could he sound so bland? Didn’t she specify that he talk normally?
But Winona responds at length, with brisker regularity, “I’m glad to hear that, Jim. Would you like to bring her to dinner? I think she should meet the family.”
Jan releases her skirt, absently smoothing out the wrinkles she caused. It worked! Of course it worked.
She cannot help but smile as she retrieves her phone. “Mrs. Kirk, we would love to join you for dinner. What time?”
She and Winona Kirk discuss the matter calmly, and by the time they hang up, Jan is convinced she made the right choice to take Jim as hers. His mother is on their side.
She looks into Jim’s blank eyes, taking his hand. “I knew it. We’re meant to be.”
Jan Lester’s happiness is a distant thing to Kirk. In his latest vision, McCoy has found his way to the farmstead. Jim sees their family’s living room, where McCoy stands at the elbow of a woman. He recognizes her instantly—his mother. Something that feels like guilt overtakes Kirk for a moment.
Then McCoy says, “Do you believe us now?”
“I don’t know.” Winona drops her hands—and the cordless phone between them—to her lap.
“Jim sounded wrong. Don’t tell me he didn’t!”
“He never said ‘peanut butter’.” Winona Kirk’s jaw has a stubborn set to it as she stares up at the dark-haired man. “I told you, that’s been our code word since he was little. Jim uses it if he needs me to come get him.”
“A human under a compulsion spell only speaks as his master allows.”
The vision shifts to another man in the room, McCoy’s Spock.
Winona doesn’t look pleased to have him in her home. “Have you ever placed a human under such a spell, Mr. Spock?”
“Negative.”
“Then how would you know what the human can and cannot do?”
“I speak the truth. As you must be aware, telling a lie is difficult for one of my kind.”
“Stop it, both of you,” McCoy interrupts, crossing his arms over his chest. “Mrs. Kirk, before you start judging someone else, I suggest you take a long look at yourself. Janice Lester was your choice for Jim.”
“I only asked for her phone number!”
McCoy isn’t amused. “I don’t care. I want Jim out of that witch’s hands. Do you realize what she could do to him—or make him do—against his will?”
Jim’s mother blanches.
Spock steps forward. “To Leonard’s point, arguing amongst ourselves is futile. Your conversation with Miss Lester has confirmed where we suspected Jim to be. Now we must act.”
McCoy rakes a hand through his hair. “As much as the idea appeals to me, can we just bust down somebody’s door and accuse them of witchcraft without getting arrested?”
Winona shakes her head. “It wouldn’t matter if she has my son under a spell. He won’t leave her.”
“And if we antagonize her,” Spock adds, “she may remove Jim to another location, somewhere we would have more difficulty locating them.”
McCoy looks at Spock oddly. “Could she take Jim out of Riverside?”
Spock doesn’t answer that, continuing on as he returns McCoy’s stare, “Our most logical course of action is infiltration. However, entering another’s domain is not as simple as it seems, particularly when it is warded as Miss Lester’s residence appears to be.”
“Not for me, Spock.” McCoy closes his eyes. Jim’s heart aches for this man, for some reason. “I’ll go. Maybe I can… bargain with her. Make a trade.”
A new voice cuts in, then, as immediately recognizable as Winona’s. “You can’t bargain with a psycho. Besides, I have an idea.” Sam Kirk crosses the room to stand with the others. To Spock, he says, “First, breaking into Lester’s house? I can help with that.”
Jan must be running out of patience at having a zombie for a boyfriend, Jim decides, when the shroud over his mind retreats enough to allow him to think on his own again. While Jim covertly assesses his surroundings (mainly targeting and memorizing every potential escape route) and pretends to listen, Jan issues a long-winded warning that essentially boils down to “Don’t think about leaving, or I’ll lock you away permanently.”
Jim believes her, but that doesn’t prevent him informing her with as much arrogance as he can muster, “You’d regret it.”
Her face pinches. “What’s that mean?”
“It means I bet boy-toys aren’t as fun for you if they can’t cower at your feet.”
Lester’s face reddens. “H-How dare you! I’m not like that!”
“You mean like this?” Jim retorts, spreading his fingers wide to indicate their situation. “Not the kind of person who wants to control other people?”
“No!”
“Then why are you doing it to me!” he demands, bringing a fist down on the table in front of him.
Jan jumps away from the kitchen counter, where she had placed a mug of coffee in the microwave to be heated, and for a second, Jim cringes with the certainty that he is a great, big idiot who is about to become a mental vegetable thanks to his penchant for antagonizing an enemy with the upper hand.
In the next instant, he’s saved by the doorbell, quite literally, which would have been funny to Jim except that it occurs to him any distraction could work in his favor. He may be scared to his core that Jan can and will keep him locked up in her house, serving her for her amusement, but along with that fear, hot anger has finally surfaced. Lester doesn’t know it yet, doesn’t know the true Jim Kirk, or she wouldn’t play this game of roulette by continually bringing him back to consciousness. Maybe his acquiescence is somehow part of her grand delusion.
Jan orders, “Wait here,” which is unfortunate because then Jim finds himself glued to his seat without his expressly willing it so.
Damn. How is he going to get out of this? And what is that nagging feeling he’s forgotten something important to him?
All is quiet for a minute until Jim hears a voice—Jan’s—raised in the hallway beside the kitchen. Her cry of “What are you doing? Get out of my house!” is more than sufficient to catch and hold his attention.
Oh, right. She didn’t order him not to speak. “Hey you, in here!” he cries. “Help—”
The smell of ozone is barely sufficient warning before a storm of hot rage and wild magic slams through the house, into the kitchen then veers toward Jim, just ahead of the source fueling it. Jim nearly falls out of his chair, caught between the impact of that storm and Lester’s spell holding him in place, becoming no more significant than flotsam in a maelstrom. His body lurches alongside his brain, both left sizzling in the aftermath as if having been struck by lightning. His senses become all the more disoriented when he is physically is hauled upright by a pair of strong, angry hands and chucked neatly backward into the nearest wall.
The pain of connecting with the unforgiving surface is simultaneously bone-jarring and mentally clarifying, allowing Kirk immediately afterward to register the man now crowded into his personal space, pinning his upper torso to the wall.
“Sam?” he says, shocked.
“What the hell is wrong with you!” Sam Kirk roars.
As Jim opens his mouth again, intending to shout out his joy at his brother’s arrival, Sam yanks the younger Kirk from the wall, only to shove him right back into it, harder.
Jim is so stunned, all that comes out his mouth is “Ow!”
Which might have been the point of intercepting the happy exclamation, because Jan is suddenly there, trying to force her way in between the men, hitting and slapping at the arm of the intruder in her home.
“Get off him!” she yells. “Get off or I’ll call the cops!”
Sam doesn’t bother to spare the raging woman a glance, his gaze fixed entirely on Jim. “I should kick your ass, little brother,” the man growls, pressing down with the arm bracketing Jim to the wall. Magic is bearing down too, and building up, with intent.
The last time Sam was this pissed… Jim doesn’t finish that thought.
Jan had frozen at how Sam identified Jim, and now her gaze now darts uncertainly from one Kirk to the other.
“This the Lester girl?” Sam says, his voice no less menacing for having dropped an octave, as he tips his head at Jan, who flushes, releases Sam, and takes a long step back.
“I’m Jim’s girlfriend,” Jan answers defensively before Jim can.
“Don’t give two shits, sweetheart,” Sam counters with a slashing glance her way. “Whoever my baby bro shacks up with is his business.” Sam’s attention returns to Jim, who is gifted with one last hard shove at the wall. Then Sam backs off a few steps, watching Jim sag on his own two feet, expression settling into the usual impassivity.
The magic, though, is altogether different. It’s starting to choke Jim’s lungs as it gathers strength. Odd, but Jim doesn’t think Jan can sense it.
Sam goes on, “But it is my business when he freaks out Mom. She thinks you disappeared, asshole. Just like George.”
“Oh,” Jan says, then again more calmly, “oh.” Her eyes widen comically. “I’m so sorry, Sam—is it Sam, isn’t it?—I assumed Winona told her family that we talked this morning. Oh dear,” she goes on with sickening concern, “have you been looking for Jim all this time?”
“Yeah.” Sam eyes Jim. “You should have texted me.”
“Jim lost his cell phone,” Jan explains.
“No,” Jim croaks, “Sam, that’s not true. I’m not w—”
“Now, Jim,” Jan interrupts him, smiling despite the clear warning in her eyes, “do not upset your brother. Clearly there was a misunderstanding.”
The truth, which would certainly upset Sam, sticks in Jim’s throat. He tries in vain to make it come out but cannot, only able to repeat kind of mindlessly, “Sam—S-Sam—”
Sam’s gaze is dismissive of Jim as he turns back to Jan. “What did my mother say?”
Jan’s smile grows. “She invited us to dinner at the farm tomorrow.”
The older Kirk grunts, such a Sam thing to do that tears of frustration prick Jim’s eyes. He’s still fighting for words to make Sam understand he needs him when the magic reaches its saturation point.
Across the kitchen, Jan’s microwave flips on with a high-pitched whine. Jan and Jim start at the unexpectedness of it. Sam does not. Then the electrical whining turns frenetic, something inside the microwave starting to rattle. Jan hurries toward it.
“Suppose I’ll see you at the house,” Jim’s brother drawls, raising his voice slightly to carry over the screaming microwave.
“Yes, of course,” Jan acknowledges—just as the microwave door flies open of its own accord, spitting out the mug and glass plate in a spray of deadly shrapnel. The woman screams, flinging her arms at the last second to protect her face.
Jim leaps for his brother, grabbing onto Sam’s arm with the hiss, “Don’t blow us up!”
It’s weird but in that moment, despite years of witnessing similar incidents, Kirk finally comprehends Scotty’s perspective on the River’s effect on their city. Magic and mechanics simply don’t mesh, and most assuredly not around Sam. Sam only has to unleash a portion of the magic in him, always unreliable at best, and everything in the vicinity which cannot absorb it goes heartstoppingly BOOM.
Except, the targeting of the microwave? That’s pretty specific and new to Jim, and still very weird.
Jim realizes he is wasting time. He tells his brother in a rush while Jan is distracted, “Get me out of here. She has me under a—”
“Spell,” Sam finishes, finally meeting Jim’s gaze. “We know.”
Relief makes Jim weak in the knees.
“Oh my god,” Jan says in a shocked voice as she shakes the remaining dust from her kitchenware off her hair and clothes, “I don’t know what happened!”
“Probably an electrical surge,” Sam suggests. “City gets them all the time. Sorry about earlier. I’ll let myself out.”
Jan pauses to look at the man strangely.
Sam just cocks an eyebrow and heads for the archway and presumably the house’s front door.
Jim reacts on instinct, leaping forward far enough to grab onto his brother’s shirttail. The habit is ingrained from years of Sam instructing him to do exactly that when they were young kids and went places around town together and Sam had no hands free to keep a firm hold on his little brother. “Don’t let go no matter what,” Sam would always say. “We’ll look wherever you want, Jimmy. Just don’t let go.”
He’s desperately afraid to let go now.
Jim doesn’t know what he must look like, but he suspects the brief flash of anguish across his brother’s face is a mirror of his own expression.
“Let Sam go,” Jan commands, clearly annoyed by Jim’s attempt, however futile, to delay their guest’s leave-taking.
Kirk’s hand snaps open automatically, and word and image fail him. Frustration returns to knot his throat and wet his eyes. He shakes his head fiercely, more so to prevent himself from weeping in front of his brother than to deny Jan mastery over him.
Sam’s gaze darkens.
Yes, Jim thinks at his brother, just smite her.
But of course, it’s wishful thinking, is not going to happen, maybe cannot happen. For some reason Sam is not able to explain to him, now is not the time or place to deal with Jan Lester.
Jim trusts his brother—and so he offers a thin smile. “See you,” he says.
Jan looks pleased.
Sam inclines his head the tiniest bit, and then the man is gone. They hear Jan’s front door shut with an almost obscene lack of noise.
Jan turns to Jim. “You could have done better.”
A smartass remark sticks in Jim’s throat. He swallows it down. “I’m sorry.” Dear god, just let me survive whatever comes next.
After considering Jim, his captor sighs. “Jim, why are you making this difficult? If you would just be good to me, I wouldn’t have to—”
The microwave gives a last, dying belch and begins to smoke. Jan runs for a cabinet, probably to locate a fire extinguisher.
Jim just watches the microwave burn.
~~~
It starts with a framed portrait of Jan’s family falling off a wall. Jan stops stroking Jim’s arm to put it back up. Then Jan’s cell phone disappears, and they only find it because Jan orders Jim to help her search and Jim, opening and closing potential hidey-holes at random, pops up the kitchen trash can lid. Jan becomes angry when it glitches, her screen password (which she swears she never changed) failing after the third attempt and her phone officially locking her out. “It was brand new! I paid a lot of money for it!” she rages for a full minute before realizing how her tantrum must look to Jim.
She grabs Jim by the shirt collar, then, threatening, “We’ll just have to entertain ourselves another way,” and there comes the sound of something shattering in the next room. Jan throws her hands up in the air, snapping out the order to Jim, “Go take a fucking shower and brush your teeth!” before she stomps off to inspect what new pricey item has been destroyed in her home in under three hours.
Too bad she didn’t tell him to leave her alone. He would have gladly made a beeline right out of the house and the whole neighborhood. Instead, and most unfortunately it seems she is going to try to spend the night with him being conscious in his own body. That cannot mean anything good for Jim.
The bathroom feels cold and drafty, the tiles chilly beneath Jim’s bare feet as he pads inside and engages the doorknob’s lock behind him. He has the uncomfortable sensation of being watched despite being alone.
After Jim showers, he wipes himself off with one of the towels stacked beside the tub and quickly dresses himself out of a need to have the security of clothing around him than any urge to hurry back to Jan’s side. He brushes his teeth with the toothbrush Jan considerately thought to buy for him in advance of his kidnapping, then spends a while staring at himself in the fogged mirror above the sink, wondering if his worn-down appearance is his imagination or the result of her spell feeding off his energy.
That strangeness has apparently followed him into the bathroom because the billowing of steam behind him, leftover from the hot shower, is coalescing into a vaguely human-like shape in the mirror.
Jim leans forward to brace his hands against the sides of the sink, elbows locked, surprised by his body’s sudden quaking, like it senses something that his mind balks at recognizing. Then that something swipes the fogged glass in front of him, an invisible hand leaving behind a long, clear streak where his eyes are reflected. Below the streak, slowly, with deliberate care, letters take shape, one after the other. The word they make is his first name.
“Who are you?” he asks.
And at last, the illusion of being alone in the bathroom ends.
“So it wasn’t a ghost,” Jim says, staring into dark eyes through the mirror. “It was you.”
“Jim.”
Jim turns around with a tremulous smile. “Spock?”
Spock inspects Jim’s expression carefully, asking in a gentle voice, “You know my name, but do you know who I am?”
Jim suspects Spock will know if he’s lying. “Kind of. I dreamed about you. You’ve been looking for me… with McCoy?” The sadness in Spock’s eyes is, oddly, a relief to Jim. He steps toward Spock. “Can you help me remember you?”
“I would like to try.”
Jim tilts his chin up. “Then do it.”
The fingertips that rest against his cheek are cool. Jim relaxes into the touch on instinct. A frisson of warmth passes across his skin, soothing away his chill as if he has stepped into a spot of sunshine. “Mm, nice,” he murmurs. “I think I like you.”
A corner of Spock’s tips upward the tiniest bit. “That is hardly surprising.”
“Are we flirting? What would your boyfriend say about that, I wonder.”
“Leonard would join us—you know this, Jim.”
And Jim does, surprising himself. Whatever control Jan Lester has over his mind becomes weaker as Spock continues touching him, maybe because Jim likes Spock so much better. Loves him. As he loves Leonard—no, Bones.
“Aw, shit,” he says, suddenly blinking back tears. “What has she done to us, Spock?”
“To your mind, Jim,” Spock corrects, “but she has not and cannot do anything to change your heart. Thank you,” he says, removing his hand from Jim’s cheek, “for holding Leonard and I safely there.”
Jim is not an overly emotional man but he thinks he is allowed a moment of weakness or two, especially under current circumstances. He throws himself into Spock’s arms, who responds by holding on just as tightly. With his face pressed against Spock’s shoulder, he thanks Spock several times for coming after him.
“Gratitude is unnecessary. I could no more abide your loss than the absence of the sun.”
Jim laugh-chuckles into the man’s shoulder, wipes his eyes and pulls back. “Save the poetry for later. Spock, how did you manage to get in the house?”
Spock raises an eyebrow. “In the house or in the bathroom?” Before Jim can respond, Spock elaborates, “It would seem your brother has very strong magic.”
“Yeah, but Sam doesn’t like it so he bottles it up most of the time. When he does use it, it kind of… explodes.”
“For which I am very grateful. Samuel was able to disarm the house wards long enough for me to enter the premises.”
“I just thought he was pissed off when he fried the microwave.” Jim thinks more about that. “Has she warded the house against all Blood, or just you?”
“I am not certain.”
He meets and holds Spock’s gaze. “Spock, can you stop her?”
Spock stares at him silently for a little too long before saying, “Leonard has asked me not to.”
Jim inhales sharply, his grip on the man’s shoulders tightening. “Okay, good call. I’m not keen on having my boyfriend in prison for murder.”
“Destroying Janice Lester does not necessitate killing her.”
Even worse. “No, Spock.”
Spock exhales with slightly more force than normal. “Very well.”
Jim loves this over-protective half-human, half-elf. He really does. “So, tell me Plan B.”
“For the moment, Plan B is providing you with protection.”
There’s a crass joke in there somewhere, but Spock probably wouldn’t appreciate the humor behind it. Jim looks toward the door. “Why don’t we just leave?”
Spock’s tone sobers. “The spell affecting you is a powerful one. Jim, it is likely leaving will hinder you more than help you.”
Jim’s disgusted. “You mean Jan’s got me tied to her like a dog on a leash. If she calls me, I’ll go running back to her, won’t I?”
Spock’s lack of reply is answer enough.
“I hate this,” Jim says, dropping his head forward. “Spock, those letters, I should have kn—” He jerks his head up, eyes wide. “The letters!”
“Yes, the letters. We found two, in your room and in the bag you carry. Are there more?”
Jim runs fingers through his hair, realizing his mistake. “I threw the last one away at the men’s bathroom at The Lantern.” He makes a face. “She wrote it in blood.”
“Yes, a blood-spell would be required.” Spock tilts his head ever-so-slightly. “I understand now why the incantation felt incomplete. I will notify Leonard, Jim. Perhaps it is not too late to recover what was lost.” He pauses briefly before adding, “The spell does not feel like the work of a local mage. I suspect Miss Lester bartered for it with someone from the Realm.”
“I think she has some ability to use magic on her own.”
“Be that as it may, to control a person such that one takes possession of all but the spirit requires many decades of spellwork training and also a significant level of strength, of which I am not aware of occurring among humans.”
“Then who would—”
Jim is unable to finish his question, for Jan calls his name through the closed door. The mere sound of her voice makes his skin clammy and his senses stuffy. He closes his eyes, fighting against the pull to go to her with everything in him.
The woman’s voice rises to a demanding pitch. “Jim, get out here!”
Jim’s entire body jerks in the direction of the door.
Spock captures Jim long enough to press his mouth lightly to Jim’s forehead. The contact helps Jim last against the pull of the spell for a few more seconds, long enough to beg, “Don’t leave me.”
When Spock breaks away, he promises, “I will never leave you. You are safe.”
Having that assurance makes it less painful for Jim to let go. He unlocks the bathroom door and steps outside just as Spock vanishes from sight.
Jan fills Kirk’s vision, then, waiting with an impatient tapping of her foot in the middle of the master bedroom. She takes in his appearance from his wet hair and clean clothes to his bare feet, deciding, “That won’t do. Shirt off.”
When Jim tugs up the hem of his shirt, the lamp on the nightstand tilts over and hits the floor with a resounding crash.
Jan’s angry facade collapses, revealing how truly tense and unnerved she is. She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes as Jim deposits his shirt on the floor. He hears her mutter of “This isn’t working.”
Jim takes a risk, inquiring in an appropriately meek tone, “What would you like me to do now, Jan?”
Jan removes her hands to wrap her arms around herself and, for the first time, offers only a vague “I don’t know.”
“Sleep,” he suggests.
She presses her mouth flat for a time, then concedes. “Go to sleep, Jim.”
Jim walks to the bed and lays down, oddly relaxed about obeying the command. After all, he thinks, staring up at the ceiling for a couple of seconds before shutting his eyes, Jan is powerless now to stop what’s coming for her. Pity that she doesn’t know it yet.
Final chapter will be up this weekend. I didn’t mean for this story to be so long, but oh well! Priority One mission: Rescue Kirk.
Related Posts:
- River Bound (5/5) – from February 27, 2018
- River Bound (4/5) – from February 27, 2018
- River Bound (2/4) – from February 14, 2018
- River Bound (1/4) – from February 14, 2018
