cupidandpsycho

Title: Second Son
Challenge: chronometric prompt, AU
Time Limit: 120 minutes
Characters: Leonard “Bones” McCoy, James T. Kirk, Christopher Pike, Gary Mitchell
Disclaimer: So not mine. No harm intended. Thanks to Roddenberry, Abrams, and Paramount.
Author Notes: Yeah, IDEK. The time limit killed me on this one. Not beta'd. There may be a continuation. *shrug* Cut text and title comes from "Second Son" by Elliott Brood.

~*~*~*~*~

The heat is smothering him, his sweat-and-blood-soaked shirt long since discarded and he just wants to sleep but, irony of ironies, it’s too hot. It’s too hot, he’s too exhausted and he doesn’t dare fall asleep now. Not with the young man cradled in his lap doing his damnedest to die on him.

“B-Bones?”

“What is it, Jim?” He asks softly, stroking matted hair from the boy’s forehead. “You don’t get a pain pill for another six hours. Can you hang on until then for me?”

Jim shakes his head, hand tightening on Leonard's thigh as much as his weakened state will allow. “Both know ‘m’not gonna make it tha’ long.”

Leonard opens his mouth to protest, the kid has three times longer than that but not much more unless they can find a hospital and Jim will actually go, only to find himself stopped by the look in Jim’s blue eyes. They’re the clearest Bones had ever seen them in the days since he’d met the kid.

If one could call being taken hostage at gunpoint a proper meeting.

~*~*~*~*~

He’d woken up in the car alone, the urgent need to piss warring with the hunger twisting his gut. Looking around, not seeing Gary anywhere, he clambered out of the car and walked through the hot, dusty parking lot up to the convenience store and pulled open the door. He had a moment to savor the blast of cold a/c against his skin before he saw the dark-haired guy frozen in the aisle with a box of Milkbone Dog Biscuits clutched in one hand, saw the clerk standing behind the counter with his hands up, saw the latest in the long line of cluster-fucks that have made up his life. Gary’s got a gun aimed at the clerk and all Jim can think to say is, “Dude.”

It’s enough to startle Gary, who turns the gun on Jim in misdirected self-preservation because the clerk pulls his own gun.

Jim sees Gary go down in slow motion, brain that Jim have never believed he had shot out of the back of his head, and Jim thinks he screams his name but he can’t be sure. All he knows is he throws himself over the counter as the clerk takes aim at him, tackling the guy. Somehow, he feels the searing pain in his side before he hears the shot and his vision starts to fade at the edges.

~*~*~*~*~

He’s in the bathroom crouched over the tub, filling their small supply of bottles (culled from the detritus he’d acquired living in his car for more than a week) with lukewarm, metallic-tasting water when the cell phone rings, nearly vibrating itself off the closed seat of the toilet before he manages to pick it up.

“What do you want?”

“One more day out there with Kirk, Leonard, and you become an accomplice.”

“Dammit, Pike, I’m a doctor, not an outlaw.”

He’d been in contact with FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge Christopher Pike almost since the start of his stint as Jim Kirk’s ‘hostage’.

“I know. And we both know that kid doesn’t have one more day unless he gets some real help. Are you really going to let him die just to keep him out of prison?”

He drops to the floor, suddenly so tired and, for the first time during the whole ordeal, fucking scared.

“He didn’t do those robberies, Pike. He didn’t even know. You gotta promise—“

“You’ve got no bargaining chip here, McCoy. I don’t have to promise you anything but I will."

~*~*~*~*~

Jim wakes with a start at the soft touch to his cheek.

“Hi Bones,” he garbles, trying and failing to grasp the hand petting his face. He’s cold. So cold. All he can feel is that spot of warmth, those five gentle fingers, the rest of his body blissfully and blessedly numb. All he can see are those hazel eyes as they fill his vision but they look right through him and he knows.

He knows.

~*~*~*~*~