Pike has seen Leonard McCoy in many states of mind but nothing that resembles the mood riding McCoy at present. Whereas Spock had not allowed a single emotion to be known, Leonard is jittery. His leg bounces in sporadic stops and starts beneath the table. Eyes ringed by dark circles track restlessly across the room and trace the edges of the mirror. With his mouth pressed in a painfully thin line, Leonard finally returns his attention to Pike.

It is easy to tell the young man has something to say—but he is afraid of saying it. Putting aside any personal feelings, Chris remains standing in the corner of the room, arms crossed, and lets his voice carry toward the table. “So Kirk took you to a Christmas party.”

“Yeah,” McCoy says, voice scratchy like it hasn’t been used in a while. “Some party.”

“Do you know the reason he wanted to be there tonight?”

“What do you mean?” Leonard’s eyes dart to the door then back to Pike. “It’s a party. Booze and girls and loud music.”

“From what I understand the manager only allowed beer—”

McCoy snorts.

“—and there was one girl. The music I don’t know about. How was it?” he inquires in a congenial tone.

“Boring,” Leonard answers instantly. “Spock chose the tunes as well as the drinks.” His mouth lifts briefly at some memory. “There was vodka, though, besides the beer. The Russian kid treats it like holy water.”

“Then I assume Chekov wasn’t the only one enjoying it.”

“All of us less boring people may have taken a shot or two. Except Jim. Jim doesn’t—shit. Never mind.”

Pike takes a step out of the corner. “I hope you weren’t going to say he doesn’t drink.”

“I wasn’t.” Leonard must remember who he is talking to (that is, Jim’s father) because he scrambles to correct himself. “I mean, not that Jim drinks too much. Sir.”

Chris lets his silence speak for itself.

“Shit.” McCoy raises a faintly trembling hand and pinches the bridge of his nose. Chris has to wonder how much caffeine the man has had up to this point. “I was trying to say Jim was in a mood. He didn’t touch anything at the party. I can vouch for that.”

“Then he must be holding up better than you. You look kind of green around the gills. Need a wastebasket?”

Dark humor flashes through McCoy’s eyes. “I’m not intoxicated, sir.”

“And if you had been at any point, getting arrested is enough to sober a man right up,” Chris finishes for him.

“Exactly.”

Pike takes another step toward the table, unfolding his arms and placing his hands in his pants pockets. “Were you with Kirk all night?”

“No, sir.”

Chris waits for the explanation.

Leonard makes a fist with the hand that is handcuffed to the table and studies it. “This thing is too tight.”

“I won’t remove it.”

“Wasn’t asking you too,” Leonard drawls. “Just keep ’em looser on the others, okay? Otherwise it hampers the blood flow to the hand.”

“Don’t avoid the question, McCoy.”

“I’m not. I’m just voicing a concern. You’re not out to torture us, are you?” The darkening of McCoy’s eyes makes Pike wonder if he is really thinks Pike is capable of torture.

Then again, given the right provocation, human beings are capable of almost anything. As a cop, Christopher has seen that time and time again.

“Let’s start with your arrival at the party. Was Jim with you then?”

“Yes. We drove over together. We picked up Scotty from his house on the way. He didn’t have a ride.”

“When did you lose track of Jim?”

“It wasn’t long after. I’d guess fifteen minutes or so? Spock and Pavel and Hikaru were already at the party. Nyota showed up after we did. Jim said something to her about fashionably late still being late, and she told him he could shove his criticism where the sun don’t shine.”

“Did you see Jim leave the room?”

McCoy bites at his bottom lip. “No, sir.”

It’s a lie but Pike doesn’t call him on it. Instead he diverts the conversation to a relatively easier route of questioning. He asks about the things Leonard did while in the company of the others. Did he notice anything unusual? People acting out of character? Who else left and when they came back.

Leonard responds to the questions reluctantly, not like he begrudges giving answers to a cop but as if he is terrified he is saying something he shouldn’t. Then he remarks, on the heels of explaining that Uhura tried to get him drunk so he wouldn’t fight with Spock anymore, “She said I was scaring poor Pavel—which ‘poor Pavel’, my ass. You ever seen Pavel break somebody’s nose? I have.”

Chris props his hip against the table, interested. “Did he?”

“Bunch of racist rednecks were making fun of Sulu in his elf costume. Then one of ’em called him ‘an Asian queer’ and Chekov pounced outta nowhere and broke the asshole’s teeth. I’d have done it myself but I was too busy holding Jim back from committing murder in front of five year-olds.”

How much, exactly, is going on in Jim’s life that Chris has never heard about through his son? Damn, he needs to set up a spy or two in this town. “When was this?”

McCoy shrugs. “Last week? No, week before last. I don’t know why but Jim likes hanging out around that place. You know how he is. Anyway, Spock threatened the asshole and his family with harassment charges and they fled. I think they realized not one of us would have claimed to have seen Chekov land that punch.”

Serves them right, Chris thinks. “How many times have you been to Santa’s Village, excluding tonight?”

“Not as many as Jim. Three that I can remember. With my school and work schedule, I don’t have much free time. Also, holiday cheer gives me a migraine.”

Well that makes two of us. “What’s your impression of the people Jim has been hanging out with there?” Okay, maybe this is edging into personal territory for Chris but, as a father, he feels he has to know. If Archer has something to say about the line of questioning, it still has enough connection to the investigation that Chris can be bullshit his way out of trouble for asking it.

“Scotty is the reason Jim started going, because Jim took him to work there one day. I don’t really know how he met the others. Then he dragged me out there and started introducing me to people. It was awkward for everybody but Jim.”

Chris almost smiles.

“I like ’em,” Leonard goes on to say. “Seem like decent folk. I kind of think Nyota and Jim are the same person, except she has breasts and a brain and Jim is perpetually stupid…” His mouth rises almost softly at one corner. “…but in an endearing way, I guess.” McCoy visibly shakes himself. “Hikaru, of course, is badass and Pavel is as kind as an old grandmother. I could see myself being friends with them,” he pauses, eyeing the mirror, and adds dryly, “if we don’t go to prison first.”

McCoy doesn’t mention one person. “You don’t like Spock,” Chris observes. …Interesting. Why is Leonard grinding his teeth?

“No, I don’t,” the young man answers shortly.

“Is there a particular reason?”

“Is it relevant to the case?”

“Of course,” Chris lies.

Leonard takes a deep breath. Then another. Then a third. “I just don’t.”

“Jim seems to like him.”

Leonard’s gaze drops to the table, and his mouth returns to being a thin, unhappy line. Fortunately for McCoy, Chris doesn’t have time to press the issue because there comes a solid rap on the door of the room. Chris goes to the door and opens it.

A fresh-faced deputy tells him, “Sheriff says to take a break.”

Chris looks over his shoulder at McCoy. He hates to stop now because Leonard is the one who will probably say the most of the others—and clearly there are things Leonard is hiding from Pike. Watching McCoy grimace as he rolls his neck, Chris reluctantly has to agree about the break. “Give the kid some coffee,” he instructs the deputy.

The naked gratitude in Leonard’s eyes when Chris tells him they will stop for a few minutes is almost heartbreaking. Chris leaves the room and is about to enter its adjacent counterpart when Archer appears from the direction of his office and snaps, “Pike!”

“What’s wrong?” Chris asks, hurrying to meet him. “I thought you were listening in.”

“Had to step out.” Archer rubs at his head, tufts of hair already sticking up to indicate this isn’t the first time he has performed the act. “I hate your son.”

Chris’s stomach sinks. It’s a phrase he has heard once too often in the past, and it usually means… “Please tell me there has been no property damage.”

Jonathan’s expression grows sourer. “He’s got the drunk tank Christmas caroling. It’s either revenge for taking McCoy or distraction. I don’t know which I’d rather it be.”

Chris’s sigh is full of relief. “I thought he’d set something on fire. Thank god.”

Jon looks vaguely alarmed. “Fire?” Then the sheriff pivots around and barks at the nearest deputy, “Did you check Kirk’s pockets? I told you to check his pockets!”

“Sir, we checked them four times already.”

“Well, goddamn it, do it again! Look for a lighter, or we’re all going to die!” The stricken deputy takes off for the cells at a run. Archer has the weary expression of man who can’t figure out how he is still standing. “Fuck. Why is this my life?”

“Aren’t you overreacting, Jon?”

Jonathan closes one eye and peers at Pike through the other, asking menacingly, “Am I?”

Chris doesn’t have to consider the answer. “No, I guess not. Just be grateful you didn’t have to raise him.”

“Yeah, small miracles. I need a drink. You want a drink?”

“We shouldn’t indulge while on the job,” comments Chris but he follows Archer to the office anyway, stopping just outside of it.

“Don’t tell me you’re still a goody two-shoes, Pike. Damn, I thought I put it in here.” Jonathan slams shut one desk drawer and opens another, rattling the desk and subsequently tipping a pile of abused legal pads and sticky notes onto the floor. Finding no liquor, it seems, he stalks back to the door of his office and bellows past Chris into the open area, “Who stole my whiskey?”

Now occupying one of the desks, the balding deputy plonks an empty bottle onto a stack of files by his arm. “It was either drink or shoot somebody,” he tells his boss without looking up from his paperwork, “and I don’t have a wife or a girlfriend to clean the blood out of my clothes.”

“Who the fuck does?” mutters Archer. His apology to Christopher is sincere. “Sorry, no whiskey… but I can send one of the boys on a run to get more.”

“Please don’t,” Pike replies as kindly as possible. “I like you better sober than drunk.”

A slow, genuine smile spreads across Archer’s face.

Chris looks away, saying as a reminder to them both, “I need to finish the talk with McCoy.”

The sheriff nods in agreement, and Chris walks to the interrogation room. He pauses next to the closed door when Jon calls his name.

“Small talk is okay when we have the time,” his friend tells him gently, “but not tonight.”

“Understood,” Pike says and returns to the task at hand.

“Did I hear someone say something about whiskey?” Leonard asks, hope evident in his eyes, as Chris takes a seat across from him. The coffee cup is empty, as though McCoy had downed it in one gulp.

“We ran out.”

“Damn.”

“The sheriff would agree with you.”

Leonard snorts. “Knew that man was a drunk.”

“He isn’t,” Chris responds, bristling before he can think better of it.

“Have you seen the color of his nail beds?” McCoy points out. “Either he likes whiskey with every meal, or he’s been beating his liver with a stick.”

Chris makes a note to have a conversation with Jonathan about his drinking habits ASAP. “We aren’t here to discuss him, Mr. McCoy.” The authority in his tone startles the young man. It seems Jon was right to call Pike out on the way he has been handling this interview. Chris can see now that Leonard clearly feels less threatened than he did at the beginning. He could continue to lie to Pike’s face and think he will be no worse off for it.

“Leonard,” Pike says, clasping his hands in front of him on the table and leaning forward, “as of now Jim is on his way to prison. You might be going with him as an accessory. I need the truth. What really happened tonight?”

“Mr. Pike…”

“Detective Pike,” Chris forcefully reminds him. “I may care for Jim but I won’t allow him to break the law without consequences.”

“But I can’t—” Leonard swallows, looking sick. “Jim did nothing wrong.”

“You’re lying. What does he gain by ruining the Christmas parade?”

“It’s not like that.”

Pike bangs his fist on the table and sits back. “McCoy, it’s a dead given by now that Kirk doesn’t have an alibi and, worse yet, he impeded the arrest of Montgomery Scott, thereby letting the man escape!”

Leonard is pale, so very pale.

“I think,” Chris continues in a lower voice, “you knew—all of you—what Jim was up to, if you didn’t help him outright. What I want to know is why. Help me understand,” he adds earnestly, “so I can help you.”

McCoy’s throat works. “Jim did what he had to… and that’s all I will tell you.” Then he closes his eyes.

It is an action with an intent that Pike recognizes well. Leonard is speaking the truth: he won’t say another word. With a muttered curse, Pike rises from the table and signals at an end to the conversation to the man behind the mirror.

He just lost his best chance to save Jim, and Leonard did too.

Christopher is brooding over his notes in Archer’s office when his cell phone vibrates in his pocket. Since he is alone, he checks the new message. It says, oddly, we’re sorry.

Why? Why apologize now? Chris curses the fact he cannot answer or demand answers.

The phone buzzes again.

singing b/c cupcake mean

That… takes a minute to digest. Jim’s ability to be confounding will never cease to amaze his father. What does a cupcake have to do with anything? Chris resists the urge to scratch his head. The office door opens, and he quickly pockets his phone. Archer takes a seat beside him on the old battered couch.

“They stopped that racket, thank god.”

“Oh?”

“I had to threaten Kirk with time in solitary confinement if he didn’t shut everyone up.”

“You don’t have a solitary confinement.”

“I’ve got a closet,” Jonathan says succinctly, “and I’m not afraid to use it.”

Chris finds himself massaging his temples.

Archer pokes him in the shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re surviving.”

“Barely,” he mutters.

“If you’re done here,” the sheriff goes on to say, standing then tugging Chris to his feet, “we can pull out the next hothead and get back to business. Let me find somebody to fetch him though. I removed Cupcake—” Jonathan flushes slightly. “—er, Matthews from guard-duty in the back.”

Chris grabs for Jon’s arm before the man can make a hasty exit. “What did you say?”

Jon flashes an unsure smile at Pike. “Cupcake—it’s the nickname your kid gave one of my men. It… stuck. Let’s just say those two haven’t gotten along since.”

Pike lets Jonathan go and remains in the office for some time, simply contemplating the wonder that is his son, James Tiberius Kirk.

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