Chapter Text
It’s a three-hour long ride from Riverside to San Fran. Three hours in which Leonard’s heart hammers, his hands shake, his stomach rolls, and the hip flask doesn’t seem nearly deep enough.
And in that time, this kid, Jim Kirk….talks. Not in an animated, overly cheerful way. Just in a vague, continual, pleasant sort of way that Leonard knows is precisely meant to distract him.
It’s working. And Leonard is grateful. Actually, very grateful for this roughed-around, lonely-looking kid who’s clearly in the midst of his own issues, but has enough heart to ignore them in favour of showing kindness to the washed-up alcoholic he’s accidentally been landed with. Leonard watches his mouth, his hands, the light in his eyes despite what he’s obviously recently been through, the evidence of that in the bruises and bloodstains written across his face, the intelligence in his expression. Listens to the clarity in his words, although now Jim’s onto some nonsense story from a son of an old neighbour. Leonard suspects it never happened, and Jim never heard this story. But it doesn’t matter. What does matter, to Leonard, right then, is the simple presence of this beaten-up boy, who’s taken to talking to him like they’ve been friends all their lives. He has a natural ease that calms something in Leonard he hadn’t known was screaming. Everything in him is screaming all the time at the moment, his heart, body, and mind reeling, and he’s not coping, by any means (this is not the first time the flask has been emptied today)….but the part Jim reaches? The part that seems to still, stop growling, pacing, arming itself…that part of his self is new to Leonard, he thinks.
And so is the quieting of it.
For his part, Leonard clamps down on the need to incessantly grumble, shuts up and focuses on the talking, responds in the right places, and shares the hipflask.
And tries not to think too much about the inviting shape Jim’s mouth forms when it slows to form the next sentence.
******
Goddamn finally, the shuttle reaches San Francisco.
Jim gives him a knowing, sideways smile as they reach the hangar.
'There you go,' he says. 'And not an Andorian shingle in sight.'
Leonard grunts as he shoves the flask into his jacket pocket out of sight. Wouldn’t particularly do to have that as a first impression, however reluctant he is to be here in the first place. Give it time.
As they step off to the ground, and stand shoulder to shoulder in the chaos milling around them, neither can tell who moves first, with the other following. It somehow comes naturally to them both, despite their despondent states. And in the same way, blindly going with this quiet kind of cohesion between them, they find themselves standing at one of a line of registration desks, beneath a sign reading ‘Recent Enrolments’.
For those who didn’t study all their lives to get here. For those who hadn’t had their sights set on Starfleet, an illustrious career full of accolades and honours and accomplishments. For those who have washed up here, for one reason or another, mistakenly, unintentionally, reluctantly…
…for those who have nowhere else to go.
There’s ten of them in this line. Just ten. Among thousands of starry-eyed cadets who have finally made it into their lifelong dream. Ten of them who have just stepped out of their own personal nightmares.
He sees Jim eye the sign with the same thought.
They don’t say much to each other as they wait, both watching with a wary fascination the scenes unfolding around them, although they do exchange a brief hidden grin when the Ferengi in front of them gives his name as Moogie.
And then they’re at the front. Jim looks at Leonard, who jerks his head. After you. He is a southern gentleman, after all.
Jim steps up to the desk, where a tired-looking ensign looks up at him.
'Welcome to Starfleet. Name?'
'Kirk,' Jim says. 'James T.'
He says it quietly. Before he clears his throat and deliberately does not cast the somewhat furtive glance around that’s trying to leap from him. Nonetheless, neither of them miss the ensign’s reaction, however much she tries to hide it. She stares sharply for a second, going still, eyes wide. Then she looks hastily back down again, as if embarrassed. Leonard watches Jim. The kid waits, impassive.
And it’s at that moment that Leonard realises.
Kirk. James T. James Tiberius.
Son of a bitch. This is George Kirk’s son.
The Kelvin baby.
He hasn’t mentioned it, didn’t allude to it or anything like it once in that three-hour chat marathon he managed to produce on the shuttle. And as Leonard glances at his face, he looks distinctly uncomfortable.
Well shit. Poor kid. If it’s not something he admits to and uses, not something he wants people to know about, that’s a helluva weight to have dragged around all his life. Definitely a weight to have brought to Starfleet, of all places. Leonard’s always had his presumptions about the Kelvin baby, whoever and wherever he might have been. One hundred percent, he would have had James T. Kirk pegged as one of the intentional Starfleet cadets, finally here to take on his destiny of continuing his father’s legend.
But this James T. Kirk, Jim, looks tense and edgy and self-conscious, and tattered around the edges, not like he just stepped out of a hero’s home bearing the same name. He doesn’t match any of the things Leonard had always vaguely imagined the Kelvin baby to be, now aged twenty.
He looks lost.
He looks….well he looks abandoned.
The ensign recovers herself.
'Fast-track?' She says, looking down at her list.
'Yes,' Jim confirms quickly, clearly relieved that the topic is moving on.
'That entitles you to a room in the quiet zone.' She looks up at them. 'Are you together?'
'Er, we just met today,' Jim says, looking to Leonard.
'Name, please?', the ensign requests of Leonard.
'McCoy. Leonard.'
She looks down at the list again.
'Doctor McCoy, is it?'
'Yes.'
'Well, medical and fasttrack both qualify for the quiet zone. But they’re all double rooms. I can pair you together, if you want.'
In the moment’s silence that follows, Leonard subtly gives James Tiberius Kirk a proper look up and down. Sure he may look a bit out of his depth now, but he’s probably the party-boy type. If for no other reason than his looks - why wouldn’t a guy be, when he looks like that?? And he’s young. Literally, at twenty, he’s just a kid. He’s clearly recently been in a fight. He’d rocked up on a motorbike, which Leonard had watched him dismount and walk away from, casually tossing the keys to a stranger. Leonard sees that he’s likely got a certain swagger that can rub people up the wrong way (or maybe exactly how Jim intends, whichever).
However…
There’s something undeniably vulnerable about him. Almost sweet. And he’d been kind on the shuttle. He hadn’t scorned this drunk, disorderly, and complaining-loudly stranger like everyone else had. Hadn’t just looked away, embarrassed, or pretended to be absorbed in something else. He’d engaged. Listened. Responded. Accepted. Met his eye. Clearly a little taken aback, but not disdainful, or dismissive. He wasn’t afraid of someone else’s pain. And he’d actually paid Leonard attention. Probably the most attention he’d been paid in a long while by someone that wasn’t a divorce lawyer or his hellcat of an ex-wife coming for yet more signatures, yet more of the meagre amount of his life he had left. Leonard hadn’t been expecting that. Not from this devastatingly good-looking, slightly defeated loner kid who’d clearly had seven bells knocked out of him just last night.
Not from anyone, anymore, to be honest.
Nor had he been expecting that thump of desire.
Again, he hadn’t been expecting anyone, ever again, to be able to create that reaction in him. Thought it had been killed off in the fire of the divorce. Leonard is not one of those people who can continue to trust no matter what. He is, in fact, very much the opposite, everything that had happened between himself and Jocelyn feeding heavily into his extant natural streak of cynicism and distrust of the world. But this kid, Jim….Jim fired it up within minutes. That insane blue of his eyes, visible even in the dim light of the tin can. His full mouth, below the bottom lip of which Leonard could just see the line of perfect, even white teeth. The rough around the edges, jaw-jutting, 'I can handle myself' energy that didn’t quite hide a certain frailty. It had touched something in Leonard emotional as well as physical…had made him wonder what it would be like to hold him. He looks like he could do with it.
He specifically had not let himself wonder what it would be like to fuck him. Even though Leonard can see it. He can see Jim’s hiding things. He can see the struggle to be sure of himself, confident, cool and in control, no matter what…
…And Leonard can see what it would be like to take that control away from him. Make him put it in Leonard’s hands for a while.
It’s part of who he is as a natural Dom, his ability to sense the vulnerability that’s masquerading as strength. A show of strength that needs to be turned into something else, given over into someone else’s hands…His, preferably, in this case. His deft mental summarising of exactly what they’d need to give it all over. When he runs scenes, decides on props, handles subs in their subspace, manages drops, it’s just another form of prescription.
But, anyway. Anyway. No matter his surprise at his reaction to this boy, he can’t let that be a factor. He can’t. Not so soon after…. If ever. Not to mention the fact Leonard is almost ten years older than him, and Jim, despite being twenty, looks barely eighteen. Which, Leonard is slightly ashamed to admit, does nothing to assuage the desire. He shakes it away.
But all that aside, Jim’s looking at him now, standing there at the Starfleet registration desk, with an obvious question on his young but tired face. Jim’s on his own too. And with someone whose name he knows, hell, just whose face he now recognises, it’s a damned sight more than it looks like Jim had expected. It’s certainly more than Leonard expected.
It looks like Jim’s in.
The trace of hope in his features touches something deep in Leonard’s core. God help him.
He makes a decision.
'Fine with me.'
'Great.' The ensign looks relieved to be bringing the interaction to a close. 'You’ll be in building D41, room 70. It’s well signposted. Matriculation is 11am tomorrow morning. You can collect your uniforms from 9am.'
Jim takes his information pack and thanks the ensign, and gives Leonard a cautious little smile as he stands aside to wait for Leonard to collect his. Then they fall into step together towards the hall's exit.
It’s a smile that does nothing to quell the turmoil that’s beginning in Leonard’s gut, as he sees the oncoming of a fight between head and heart. Already. God. However wounded he is, however bitter and angry and….and just…just fucking sad, he is, he’s had his head turned by pretty eyes, blonde hair, and a cute smile within ten minutes of making this rash, end-of-the-road decision because he had nowhere else to go.
It’s also a smile that Leonard has a feeling he’ll be following pretty much anywhere. At this rate, he’s going to end up in fucking space.