Tallulah Falls (Kirk/McCoy, NC-17) Part 1
Well, the AU big finally bit me (*rubs rear end*), and when that happens, the only sensible thing is to turn to the CMO and AU empress, jlh, whom you should thank for all-around wonderfulness and also for saving you from boring sex. Thanks also to the sweet little anonnymouse at buckleup_meme for the wonderful idea.
Summary: Modern day AU. Jim Kirk is an actor whose latest picture is filming in the North Georgia mountains when a whack on the head from a very prescient crate sends him into McCoy's emergency room. Jim instantly likes what he sees; McCoy has his usual issues, plus some extra.
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There’s exactly one good thing about having worked in the E.R. at Black Rock Medical Center for six straight years without a vacation: you can choose your own shifts.
Leonard has it down to a science. Mondays mornings are nothing but heart attacks, Saturday nights are when lives change for the worse. Weekday afternoons and evenings are wholesome: small children and high school athletes, headaches and household injuries, and--just when Leonard is getting bored--a spectacular accident involving farm equipment.
That’s why when Christine Chapel, the hospital administrator, calls him aside and says, “We have a situation,” it’s a sign that something in Leonard’s dull but well-ordered life is about to go terribly wrong.
Leonard and Chris get along well; she lets him do his job and she’s not drama-prone, which is why the hand on the shoulder and the sotto voce routine are a surprise.
“You know that movie they’re filming? Up on Oakey Mountain?”
“No.”
“The one that had Highway 118 shut down the other day? Come on, it’s been on the news every night.”
“I don’t own a TV.” Leonard tries not to sound smug.
“Right, I forgot.” She does him the courtesy of omitting the eye roll. “Well, they’re filming a movie, and the star got hurt. Head injury. They’re bringing him in, but it’ll be 20 minutes at least. Ambulance is going to have to meet them at the foot of the service road.” She absently touches her hair. “Leonard, it’s Jim Kirk.”
“Who?”
“You’re unreal, you know that?” Now he gets the eye roll. “He’s incredibly famous. Love Three Ways? The Enigma Redundancy? God, what do you do in your free time?”
“I don’t have any, and I read books.”
“Okay, well.” She clutches her laptop to her chest. “There’ll probably be press. It’s a good chance to test out our crisis management plan. Wait in the staff room; I’ll have you paged as soon as he arrives.”
“Right. You bet. I’ll do that,” Leonard says, and goes back to seeing patients, starting with a little girl who broke her arm playing soccer. He’s just sent her off for an X-ray with a promise to sign her cast when Chris grabs him, gives him a dirty look and the injunction to “Be nice,” and shoves him into Exam Room C.
Leonard wishes in retrospect that he’d sat in the staff room and stewed, because as it is, he hasn’t had enough time to build up resentment for the guy. Kirk is perched on the exam table, back hunched and head down in the classic I feel nauseous and my head hurts posture. He's wearing disarmingly ridiculous seersucker pants and saddle shoes instead of something more hate-worthy like a seal fur jacket.
“Hi. I’m Dr. McCoy.” Leonard sticks his hand out and gets a wet-noodle handshake along with a jolt of blue eyes. Kirk's face is vaguely familiar--Leonard associates it with the sides of bus shelters--but it’s blanched, at least around the eyes, where it’s not covered with bronze-tinted makeup. Still, Leonard can see how it all makes sense: the regular features, the dark lashes, the long, slim body that would probably look perfect with the canonical 10 pounds added by the camera.
“Hi,” Kirk rasps, letting his head drop again.
“All right, let’s take a look at that head.” Kirk points to a place a few inches behind his hairline and Leonard begins probing with his fingers. Kirk's dark blond hair is stiff and sticky with some kind of styling goo, but Leonard finds the lump easily enough.
“Is it right there?” He presses gently.
“Ow!”
“Apart from the headache and the nausea, how do you feel? Dizziness, fatigue, vomiting?”
“I feel kinda shaky, and I have the urge to kill my director.” Kirk stretches his jaw until it pops, and Leonard begins mandibular palpitation.
“What did he do, make you stop a runaway train with your teeth?”
“He let a big pile of crates fall on me, for comic effect. He thought the shot would look better with real crates.” Kirk probes at the tender spot like it’s bringing the memory back. “He nearly shit himself when that one hit my head.”
“But you weren’t unconscious? No? Okay, I’m going to examine the rest of your face and neck, so hold tight.” Leonard palpates his facial, jaw and neck bones, noting nothing clinically significant, just perfect bone structure.
The pen light gives him a good look at the probably very bankable blue eyes, which respond just fine and don’t look overly dilated. He pulls out the opthalmoscope.
“Are you wearing eyeliner?” Leonard also notices dark circles under his eyes.
“It helps with the--show up on camera--shit, that’s bright. Besides, I can totally see your nose hairs right now.”
Leonard helps him to his feet for the Romberg test; he sways a little but Leonard chalks that up to the fact that he seems tired as hell.
“Well,” Leonard says, steadying Kirk so he can sit back down, “you’ve got a simple concussion, but I’m going to order a CT scan because it will make my boss happy, and probably also that little guy in the baseball cap who’s making a fuss in the waiting room.” Leonard glances through the little window in the door at the commotion in the hallway and wonders how long he can draw out the exam.
“Is that Tony?” Kirk ducks his head to peer out the window. “Oh, shit. He's probably being an ass.”
“Then I won’t feel bad about the size of our bill.” Kirk smiles through a wince and lets Leonard help him with his jacket, which is an old-fashioned baseball-type number. “What’s this movie about, anyway?”
Kirk gives him a look like he just said something witty. “It’s a romantic comedy-heist movie set in a minor league baseball town in the 1920s. Tony calls it ‘O Brother Where Art Thou meets Ocean’s Eleven with a Bull Durham chaser.’”
“Sound awful,” Leonard says. “I’ll have them print out your discharge instructions, but basically, I want you to take it easy for at least the next 24 hours, take Tylenol for the pain, and come back if your symptoms don’t get better or you get any new ones. Oh, and someone should keep you under observation. I assume one of that entourage out there can handle it?”
Kirk doesn’t look pleased at the prospect. “I don’t suppose I could come home with you instead?” He raises his eyebrows and gives a little smirk, and Leonard gets a hint of what he’s probably like when he doesn’t feel like vomiting.
“Clarkesville may be the back of beyond, but we do have hotels, you know.” He asks Poole, who he knows has a teenage daughter, to take Kirk to Radiology and goes to talk to the short guy with the baseball cap. He listens anxiously to Leonard’s report with what could either be genuine concern or apprehension about a lawsuit.
“Oh. Oh, that’s good.” He takes off the baseball cap and runs a hand through his hair. “Shit. We’re behind schedule as it is. When will he be able to work again?”
“Another 24 hours.” Leonard thinks of the circles under Kirk's eyes. “Forty-eight to be on the safe side. You can bring him back here tomorrow afternoon, if you want; I’ll be on duty. And someone should stay with him tonight to keep an eye on him.”
“Yeah. Hey.” The director cups a hand around Leonard’s elbow, draws him close and lowers his voice. “Is there any way we might be able to engage your, uh, services for the next day or two? There’s already been one fuck-up today and I don’t want another. Just to keep an eye on him?”
Leonard snorts. “You don’t need a doctor, you need a babysitter. Watch him for neurological symptoms, that’s all.”
“Uh huh.” The director looks doubtful. “You know, sometimes we hire set doctors on dangerous shoots. We pay $1500 a day, plus expenses. For such short notice, I’d be happy to double it.”
Leonard blinks at the director; this does, of course, change matters. “I’ll have to clear it with my supervisor.”
“She’s fine with it. Ecstatic, even.” The director flashes him a quick, mirthless smile. “My assistant will bring you some paperwork. I’ll expect a report in the morning.”
Fifteen minutes later, a smiling Poole appears with Kirk, his CT scans in one hand, a pile of what look like autographs in the other.
“Change of plans,” Leonard says to Kirk, dangling his car keys. “Looks like I’m taking you home.”
The smile that sentence earns Leonard is enough to melt glass, and seems to make Poole weak at the knees. Leonard’s knees aren’t feeling too stable, either.
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Kirk is very persuasive--or, more precisely, very good at whining until he gets what he wants. That’s how he gets Leonard to agree to take him to his own home instead of Kirk's hotel, which, according to Kirk, is poorly soundproofed, overrun with tourists, and impossible to secure from paparazzi.
Paparazzi are a fixation of Kirk's, in spite of the fact that Leonard has yet to see one. Chris got her moment in the sun giving a press conference for a half-dozen reporters, even getting to cloak-and-dagger a little with the lie that the hospital was going to keep Kirk overnight for observation. An assistant had appeared with an overnight bag, and Kirk had emerged from Exam Room C wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt, a ball cap and sunglasses, looking less like a time traveler and more like a guy trying too hard not to be noticed.
“It’s the Lakers cap,” Leonard had said, though in truth it’s the jeans, which aren’t egregious, but a little too tight and too expensive-looking for local trade.
Now Kirk is leaning back in the passenger’s seat of Leonard’s eight-year-old Accord, eyes closed, giving Leonard ample time to fret about whether Kirk's going to sleep in Jo’s room or on the couch, how he can keep the guy entertained without a TV or even a pack of cards, and how much he’d rather be headed home alone after his shift like every other Wednesday night.
He’s brooding so hard about those things that he completely forgets to worry about how his house will look to Kirk until they’re winding up the long, private road. Like a shack, probably, and Leonard like some kind of hillbilly, even though he graduated with honors from Tulane Medical School, as he plans on telling Kirk if the subject comes up.
The terminal crunch of gravel wakes him. “We’re here.”
“What? Oh.” Kirk swabs a hand across his face.
“I’ll get your bag,” Leonard says, to let Kirk know he’s not the bag-carrying type, except that he’s supposed to be minding Kirk’s health.
“This is nice,” Kirk says, climbing the 30 stairs up the slope to where Leonard’s house perches like an owl above Whistler Creek. “Really nice. My house is on a hill, too.”
“As in, Hollywood Hills?”
Kirk turns to give him a nose-wrinkle of disgust. “Ew, no. Topanga Canyon." Leonard nods vaguely, having exhausted his knowledge of L.A. geography.
Once they’re inside the house, Kirk gives a cursory look around and makes straight for the framed photos on the mantelpiece.
“You’re married? With a kid?” He looks around in disbelief, as if defying either one to appear.
“Divorced.” The word usually has a lump-of-coal effect, but Kirk actually smiles.
“Oh. Well, your daughter’s super cute. Takes after her dad, although her mom is pretty hot, too. Shit, Southern women.” Kirk sighs.
“Yup. Known for their manners, too.”
Kirk takes the hint and pretends to look abashed. “Sorry. I think I have that disinhibition thing you mentioned before.” He points to his dented cranium.
“Right. Anyhow, you should take a nap. I’ll show you the bedroom.”
Leonard has to pick the best of limited options. There are two spare bedrooms: one he uses as a home office and the other is for Jo when she visits. It’s got a canopy and butterflies the two of them painted one sunny summer afternoon and a bed big enough for about half of Kirk's limbs. That just leaves the master bedroom, and Leonard doesn’t even have time to change the sheets.
“Uh...” Leonard picks up the shirt he changed his mind about this morning and throws it into the hamper. “If you’d rather--”
“This is perfect.” Kirk is standing a little too close, and giving him a more intimate version of the mind-wiping smile. Or maybe it only seems more intimate because he’s standing between Leonard and Leonard’s bed. “I’m sure I’ll have sweet dreams.”
Concussion, Leonard reminds himself, nodding stupidly, and closes the door and gets his ass downstairs as fast as he can without running.
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It takes Leonard 15 minutes to tidy up the mid-week mess and put some chicken in the oven, and he manages to resist his cell phone for 15 more before caving. Are you sure you want to connect to the Internet? it asks, and Leonard mentally answers No before typing Yes. He doesn’t use it often and isn’t sure where to look, but Jim Kirk is extremely easy to find.
Kirk irks Falls co-stars with on-set “diva” antics
You can stay at Jim Kirk ’s favorite Bali getaway...for just $5,000 a night!
Jen’s Tears as Jim Dumps Her...on Valentine’s Eve!!
Kirk's on the red carpet in some of the photos, wearing a tux that fits like a glove and with his arm around the waist of a beautiful, expensively thin woman. In others, he’s in jeans and a T-shirt--the same T-shirt he’s asleep in upstairs, maybe even the same jeans--crossing streets or eating on the patio at posh restaurants. He looks consistently and blazingly happy in all of them, except for the occasional one where he shows his middle finger to the photographer.
Leonard switches the phone off and stands at the foot of the stairwell long enough to hear Kirk’s even, slightly congested near-snoring, then wanders outside. The double front porch was one of the features that sold Leonard on the house, though it had taken Leonard months more to get over his terror that Jo would somehow squeeze through the slats and fling herself off into the creek below. In fine weather, he spends his evenings out here, surrounded with citronella candles like a virgin with garlic in a vampire movie. Now, in early spring, it’s too chilly for his Georgia blood, but he enjoys the damp, loamy smell, the rot of last year’s leaves and fresh, tender things stirring beneath them.
Leonard loves nature, but it tends to be too full of metaphors for the overthoughtful mind. His own spring is past, and he’ll spend his summer seeing Jo into adulthood. He can’t regret anything, because that would mean regretting Jo, but there are times when it doesn’t feel wholly like a choice.
Guiltily, he switches the phone on again.
Enigma Star Buys $6 Million Dream Villa in Topanga
Leonard has been to California once, to visit his ex-roommate in San Francisco. He supposes it was beautiful, but mostly remembers homeless teenagers and seedy bars and his buddy going all out to get them into some dance party in a warehouse where Leonard drank something blue and ended up in the emergency room. He’s never been to L.A., and it doesn't seem to have any connection to his life, any more than the starlet-chasing bad boy of the celeb sites has anything to do with the affable, exhausted man asleep in Leonard's bed.
He switches the phone off, goes inside, and slips into the inside pocket of his jacket, buttoning it in so he won’t be tempted again.
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Leonard hears the shower come on while he’s basting the chicken, and it stays on for a good, long while. As he puts the broccoli in the steamer, footsteps come pounding down the staircase.
“Holyfuck, that smells good!” Kirk appears in the door in a flannel shirt and seems about twice as big and twice as loud as before. This is, apparently, the high-definition Jim Kirk: cheeks pink, hair spiky and damp, eyes blazing like expensive Christmas ornaments. Leonard figures the next neurological exam can wait.
“Feeling better?”
“Fuck, yeah. I slept like a fucking log. What kind of mattress is that? I might have to get one.” Leonard shrugs, not really wanting to say The one that got me through five years of marriage and that the ex threatened to burn.
“So you cook, too? Damn. What are you making?” He’s in Leonard’s personal space again, cracking open the stove and peeking into the pots. “Awesome. Hey, the fireplace--can we build a fire? I mean, if it’s not too California of me to want one. I thought it would be warm in Georgia, you know? I’ve been freezing my ass off the last week. In the movie, it’s supposed to be summer.”
“Sure, if you want. See, the thing is, elevation--” But Kirk's already in the living room, throwing logs around and getting sawdust all over Leonard’s carpet. Leonard has his remaining brain cells occupied with not overcooking the broccoli.
If Leonard was expecting Hollywood hauteur, he gets quite the opposite. Kirk is noisily appreciative of everything, praising his chicken, finishing his vegetables, and practically setting fire to his chimney.
While they’re eating, and occasionally with his mouth open, Kirk details his problems with Tony, the director. The script is good, the cast is good, but Kirk is being driven crazy by a supporting actor, a college-circuit comedian Leonard has never heard of.
“It could be like one of those ‘70s period comedies with Robert Redford, you know? Popular, but smart. Instead, the studio’s been leaning on Tony to dumb it down. I’m dreading the promos: it’s going to be Dave getting a baseball in the nuts, then me putting my hand down Lara’s dress, and then probably that crate falling on me, because you know the son-of-a-bitch printed that shit. And teenagers will come the first weekend and be bored, and there’ll be a big drop in the second-weekend box office, and then a bunch of stories about how I’m overpaid.” Kirk stops shoving chicken into his mouth for a minute. “Sorry. I’m bitching to a guy who’s doing life-and-death stuff every day, and probably being paid jack shit for it. It’s not the money, seriously. God, I must sound like an asshole.”
“No, it’s interesting. I never think about the movie business being like any other job. And the scrutiny--” To a privacy-loving man like Leonard, it seems intolerable.
“Yeah.” Kirk's mouth twists into a wry smile. “Oh woe is me, listen to me bitch about how I hate the attention I practically drowned kittens for.”
"So if it isn't the money--why do you do it?"
Kirk puts down his fork. "Because performing--when it works, it's like flying. You can't do anything wrong. And once you have 100 people watching you in silence with their mouths hanging open, then you want 500 people, and then 5,000. I wish I could tell you I'd love it just as much if I were doing dinner theater productions of The Fantasticks, but it'd be a lie. I like knowing that the whole crazy machine, millions and millions of dollars, is riding on me. The risk makes it better."
Leonard looks at the fanatical gleam in his eyes, and tries to remember a time when he felt that passionate about anything.
"Have you seen any of my movies?" Kirk scrapes up the last of the mashed potatoes with his knife and licks it, and Leonard has to smile.
"I don't get out to the movies much." It's nicer than saying that 90 percent of what's on offer is irredeemable crap.
"Too bad. I'd like to know what you think." He gives Leonard a tilt of the eyebrow, as if he can already guess. "I'll send you some vouchers for Tallulah Falls. You can take your daughter, if Dave doesn't figure out some way to have me go full frontal before this thing is over."
When Leonard rises to clear the plates, Kirk stops him and shoos him toward the sofa, where he stares into the fire and listens to the guy who’s making $5 million for his latest picture wash his dishes, and what really touches him is how domestic it sounds. Pathetic, Leonard thinks. If he scrubbed your toilet you’d probably offer to--
He stops that thought in its tracks. If there’s one thing he’s resolved not to do, it’s let on that he finds Kirk shatteringly attractive, as much for his energy and enthusiasm as the way his slim hips and long legs look in the too-skinny jeans. Luckily, Leonard has plenty of experience keeping those particularly feelings locked up tight.
Kirk exits the kitchen and flips off the switch without looking, like he’s done it a hundred times.
“Lakers game is on.”
“I don’t own a TV.” For once, Leonard regrets it.
“I know. It was just an observation.”
It’s the last bit of dusk, the time when you can still make out the outlines of trees but not much else. Kirk goes around the first-floor windows and closes the curtains, like a CIA agent or somebody who’s been in a movie about one.
“In the unlikely event a photographer decides to drive up here,” Leonard says, “we’ll hear him on the gravel.”
“They could come through the woods,” Kirk says in a stagy whisper.
“Good luck to them, then. It’s spring turkey season.”
The fire is mature enough to be throwing off loads of infrared heat, but Kirk sits down not on the sofa but on the floor, back parallel to Leonard’s legs, and pats the rug next to him. Puzzled, Leonard slides off the couch and sits down.
“Where’d you go to med school?” Kirk asks.
“Tulane.” Leonard has no idea where this is going.
“Top of your class?”
“More or less.” Third in his graduating class, actually. He almost says so. But in the still, empty moments, Kirk staring at the fire and not him, Leonard sees what Kirk sees: the man, the child, solitary house, the lack of windows to the outside world. A life that’s more isolated than it needs to be, in a way that started as self pity but is now something else.
They sit in silence, shoulder to shoulder, staring into the fire, which Leonard finds more primally compelling than any television. He's increasingly aware of Kirk's physical proximity, something that in Leonard's limited experience often means mutual attraction, but tries to filter it out as so much noise generated by Kirk's charisma.
He's so successful that when, after a few minutes, Kirk wraps his fingers around Leonard’s own, he accepts it as simple companionship, doesn’t even think of how many ways it’s inappropriate. But when Kirk puts a hand on the back of Leonard’s head to turn it and then leans in to kiss him, Leonard’s heat-and-food-tranquilized brain goes into a full, nerve-jangling, five-alarm state of panic.
Kirk's lips are warm and full and he smells like wood smoke and expensive cologne. His shoulders, when Leonard shoves them away, are all lean muscle under the soft fabric of his shirt. Everything about him is temptation, including the baffled look he gives Leonard as Leonard scrambles to his feet as if the Devil himself had sent Jim Kirk, the same Devil that Leonard doesn’t believe in.
“Jesus!” Leonard half-shouts, terror passing reasonably well for indignation. “What the hell are you doing? Tell your director he didn’t pay for that.”
“Pay?” Kirk's still looking up at Leonard like Leonard’s the one who’s behaving irrationally. The fire alarm keeps going on and on in Leonard’s head: He could tell, could tell right away. Everyone can tell.
“Yeah,” Leonard wheezes, “that little pipsqueak paid me to take you off his hands for the evening. But Jesus, it was just to keep an eye on you. I fed you, I let you sleep in my bed, and now you--” He can’t finish the sentence.
“How much?” Kirk asks with interest.
“Three thousand,” Leonard says, feeling every inch the gigolo he’s swearing that he isn’t.
“Not bad.” Kirk seems mildly impressed. “I’m glad you’re getting something out of this.” A faint afterimage of the Kirk smile is back, and it’s enough to make Leonard genuinely pissed off.
“Apart from the cheap moves, you mean.”
“Len,” Kirk says, using his name for the first time. “You’re the loneliest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”
“And so, what--you’re going to give me a pity fuck? Is there some Hollywood charity for that?”
“No, but maybe I’ll put out a press release. I could use some good PR.” When Leonard doesn’t smile, Kirk huffs out a sigh. “For fuck’s sake, at least sit down. It’s making my neck hurt, looking up at you.”
Leonard does, not knowing what else to do, and a second later the hand is back, clasping his own tighter than before. For some reason he doesn’t question the logic of accepting consolation from the guy who made the incredibly rude, wrong-headed pass, in his own home no less.
He thinks of a dozen things to say, but there’s really nothing to lose, so he says the thing that’s foremost in his mind.
“Is it that obvious?”
“What?” Kirk says. “That you’re lonely and hard up? Totally. That you’re into dudes? I deal professionally in body language, so I’m probably not the best person to ask. Do you really care?”
“For God’s sake, of course I do.” Kirk isn’t wrong about the monastic existence. Georgia is a no-fault divorce state, and Jocelyn’s been incredibly generous, letting him see Jo every weekend and many times in between. But her parents hate Leonard down to the soles of his shoes, and the courts are conservative. Any hint that Leonard might be gay could transform him, through that inimitable Evangelical logic, into a Satanic pervert who invites goats and choir boys out to his lair deep in the woods and does horrible things to them.
“Is that what broke up your marriage?” Jesus, kid. But it’s undeniably liberating to be able to talk about it with an interested, non-judgmental stranger.
“Basically, yes. I knew, but I guess it wasn’t obvious, at least to my wife. I wanted things--those things--” he points at the photos on the mantel. “I thought I could control it. It was totally my fault. Only one good thing came out of it.”
“That sucks,” Kirk says, tightening his hand on Leonard’s for a second before releasing it. “But it’s the past. You don’t have to play pillar of society for me.” He gives Leonard a lopsided grin. “I have one of those travel chess sets in my bag, if you’d rather.”
The offer melts away Leonard’s defenses as easily as if it were the blast-furnace heat of the fire. Kirk’s a nice enough guy who just happens to have obscene good looks and an outlandish occupation, and he’s sitting in Leonard’s living room offering to have sex with him and then vanish the next day.
“Do you think about everything before you say it?” Kirk peers into his eyes like he’s trying to see behind them. “I’m not wrong about the hard-up part, am I? I’ve looked at your bookcase. Strindberg? Márquez? The Strindberg means you need to get laid, but the Márquez means you’ve given up hope.”
Leonard has to laugh at that. "College boy, huh?"
"Dropout, actually. Maybe that's why I go for the moody, intellectual types." He smirks at Leonard, who doesn't rise to the bait. "I played the valet in Miss Julie a while back, though, in New York. Do you at least approve of the legitimate theater?" he asks, the last part in a passable English accent.
"Sure, love it. Atlanta's got pretty good theater, you know. I always mean to go--"
"But let me guess," Kirk finishes. "You never do. You're an interesting puzzle, Len: this hot, smart guy who lives in the woods like a Russian hermit." He runs an experimental finger along the line of Leonard's jaw. "How far do you take the monk thing, anyway?"
“I’m not celibate, if that’s what you mean.” Once or twice a month, Leonard drives to Atlanta on a Friday night and stays with his high school friend Tomas. Tomas has a free-flowing circle of mostly younger acquaintances, and they go out to dinner, or to a club, or watch movies at his apartment. There’s nearly always someone who likes Leonard’s looks and the fact that he tops. Leonard always comes back afterward and crashes on Tomas’s sofa and leaves early in the morning, so he can shower and wash the smoke out of his clothes and otherwise purge himself of the experience before he picks up Jo in the afternoon. He never gives any of them his number, and he rarely hooks up with any of them twice.
"Good." Kirk leans in to kiss Leonard again and it's like a challenge, as if, in this short time, he's made a complete catalog of all Leonard's forms of cowardice and is daring him to do this one small thing. Leonard listens for the chorus of objections from inside his own head and, for once, hears nothing. Kirk is unencumbered, practically non-existent, or at least part of his reality.
And so, Leonard does it. He’s never kissed anyone in this house, and it’s like a magic spell breaking. His hands reach for Kirk's lean body, the thought it’s okay to touch making him feel light as a feather. Leonard’s caged, abused libido is a fearsome thing when released.
"Tell me," Kirk says into his ear. "What is it?"
“I want to go down on you,” he rasps.
Kirk's hands tighten on his biceps. "Good idea."
“I’m going to use a condom.” He makes it declarative, but still expects bitching.
“Sure. Fine.” Kirk makes a shooing motion with hands. “So, get one! Go! Run!”
Leonard takes the stairs two at a time and in a couple of seconds is rifling around in his travel bag. He makes his way back downstairs with a little more dignity than he went up and pauses at the bottom to look at Kirk, sitting with one leg cocked, his shirt half-open and his fly fully unzipped. Leonard frames the shot in his head like a director, because it’s perfect: the planes and angles of Kirk's face golden and shaded in the firelight, his body quiescent, a picture of relaxation, except for his eyes. They turn on Leonard with feral brightness as Leonard walks back into the room.
“Lie down,” Leonard orders, before he loses his nerve.
Kirk's like a buffet, like a table of gifts. Since Leonard has no real idea who he is, there’s no mental soundtrack of holy hell I’m about to go down on Jim Kirk, just the pleasure of a beautiful body ripe with possibilities.
Leonard pushes Kirk’s knees apart and kneels between them. Kirk leans back on his elbows and watches with bright interest as Leonard yanks his jeans down with care--extra care, since there’s a zipper involved.
The cock that now enters the picture causes Leonard’s eyebrows to go up to his hairline. It’s long and pale and perfect, with the humanizing detail that it curves slightly to the right. Leonard gives a little grunt of anticipation that makes Kirk chuckle. Leonard now wishes, hypocritically, that he could toss the condom into the fire and taste Kirk, feel the texture of skin against his lips.
Touching won’t hurt, though. Touching is fine. He wraps an assessing hand around the base and squeezes, feels the answering tremor. The skin is velvety and taut, his balls ample and heavy, and Leonard mentally maps an epic hand job that may or may never happen at another time. As he strokes, Kirk leans back with a sigh, folding the pillow so he can still watch but going supine as nature’s narcotics go to work on his brain.
He sets an almost-rhythm; he’s far from wanting to move Kirk toward climax, but he doesn’t want to strip the paint off Kirk's nervous system, either. The house is silent except for the background noise of the spring peepers, those tiny, horny little frogs calling out for mates. Leonard has found his mate for the night, and he’s laid out in front of the fire, warm and relaxed, and Leonard wants to bring him off without having to put stitches in his head after all.
He kind of expected Kirk to be vocal--the guy rarely shuts up and has no filter--but there’s plenty of feedback, anyway, in the way his balls are drawing taut, and the way his back arches and his hips wiggle as Leonard works him, looking for what it’s going to take to get him to pop, pressure or suction or hitting a certain spot.
“Tongue,” Kirk breathes, reading his mind. “Right under the head.”
Leonard flicks his tongue across the frenulum, frustrated by the microns of latex separating him from the flesh he aches to taste, but the sensation is apparently transmitted, and Kirk's hand clutches his hair. Leonard keeps it up, working the tiny cluster of nerve endings that for now control Kirk's body and brain, and he begins to grip the shaft rhythmically, with intent.
If Kirk wasn’t vocal before, he is now. He moans and sighs Yeah, yeah, louder and louder, and Leonard likes his voice, likes the feel of his flesh, likes the smell of his own soap on Kirk's skin, loves that of all the places in the world this is happening right here in front of his own fireplace, and tries to forget for the moment the family photos staring down at him. This isn’t wrong, he says to himself, holding on to the thought like a promise.
Kirk comes with a shout, without warning. It echoes off the flagstones and through Leonard’s skull, and he feels Kirk arch, and buck, and lose his grip on Leonard’s hair. Leonard applies moderate suction, still pumping, trying to pull every last sensation out of him, but Kirk's grunts of pleasure turn into oversensitivity and he begs Leonard to Stopstopstop, and Leonard does, pulling his mouth away, freeing his hands and stroking down Kirk's lean thighs, still sheathed in denim.
“C’mere,” Kirk says, raspy and hoarse. Leonard extracts himself from between Kirk's legs and lies down next to him, propped on one arm, looking at Kirk's face.
“Do you need me to tell you that was amazing?” Kirk's voice is lower than you’d expect. “Yeah, you probably do. Fucking fantastic, that’s how that was. I think you’ve given me a doctor fetish, because your hands--oh my God, and your lips.” He cups a hand under Leonard’s chin and brushes his thumb across Leonard’s mouth. “Holy fuck. They were the first thing I noticed when you walked into that exam room. Well, the second.”
Leonard waits for a punchline, but apparently there isn’t one, just Kirk tracing his facial features with a hint of professional interest but no detachment at all. It’s more intimate, somehow, than having Kirk's cock in his mouth and also worrisome, because it means when the coach turns back into a pumpkin there’s going to be a lot more to forget.
“Yeah, well,” Leonard says, to prevent Kirk from saying something more dire, “you’re not exactly hideous yourself.”
Kirk gives a chuckle that turns into a cough and pulls Leonard across him, a sprawl of body weight that must be half-crushing, but Kirk just tightens his arms across Leonard’s back. Leonard’s own erection, which has been causing him discomfort for the last 15 minutes, is wedged between them in an unhappy flux between too much friction and not enough pressure.
“I’m going to get rid of the condom and the clothes,” Kirk says, “and then I’d like you to fuck me.”
Part 2 >
Summary: Modern day AU. Jim Kirk is an actor whose latest picture is filming in the North Georgia mountains when a whack on the head from a very prescient crate sends him into McCoy's emergency room. Jim instantly likes what he sees; McCoy has his usual issues, plus some extra.
+++++
There’s exactly one good thing about having worked in the E.R. at Black Rock Medical Center for six straight years without a vacation: you can choose your own shifts.
Leonard has it down to a science. Mondays mornings are nothing but heart attacks, Saturday nights are when lives change for the worse. Weekday afternoons and evenings are wholesome: small children and high school athletes, headaches and household injuries, and--just when Leonard is getting bored--a spectacular accident involving farm equipment.
That’s why when Christine Chapel, the hospital administrator, calls him aside and says, “We have a situation,” it’s a sign that something in Leonard’s dull but well-ordered life is about to go terribly wrong.
Leonard and Chris get along well; she lets him do his job and she’s not drama-prone, which is why the hand on the shoulder and the sotto voce routine are a surprise.
“You know that movie they’re filming? Up on Oakey Mountain?”
“No.”
“The one that had Highway 118 shut down the other day? Come on, it’s been on the news every night.”
“I don’t own a TV.” Leonard tries not to sound smug.
“Right, I forgot.” She does him the courtesy of omitting the eye roll. “Well, they’re filming a movie, and the star got hurt. Head injury. They’re bringing him in, but it’ll be 20 minutes at least. Ambulance is going to have to meet them at the foot of the service road.” She absently touches her hair. “Leonard, it’s Jim Kirk.”
“Who?”
“You’re unreal, you know that?” Now he gets the eye roll. “He’s incredibly famous. Love Three Ways? The Enigma Redundancy? God, what do you do in your free time?”
“I don’t have any, and I read books.”
“Okay, well.” She clutches her laptop to her chest. “There’ll probably be press. It’s a good chance to test out our crisis management plan. Wait in the staff room; I’ll have you paged as soon as he arrives.”
“Right. You bet. I’ll do that,” Leonard says, and goes back to seeing patients, starting with a little girl who broke her arm playing soccer. He’s just sent her off for an X-ray with a promise to sign her cast when Chris grabs him, gives him a dirty look and the injunction to “Be nice,” and shoves him into Exam Room C.
Leonard wishes in retrospect that he’d sat in the staff room and stewed, because as it is, he hasn’t had enough time to build up resentment for the guy. Kirk is perched on the exam table, back hunched and head down in the classic I feel nauseous and my head hurts posture. He's wearing disarmingly ridiculous seersucker pants and saddle shoes instead of something more hate-worthy like a seal fur jacket.
“Hi. I’m Dr. McCoy.” Leonard sticks his hand out and gets a wet-noodle handshake along with a jolt of blue eyes. Kirk's face is vaguely familiar--Leonard associates it with the sides of bus shelters--but it’s blanched, at least around the eyes, where it’s not covered with bronze-tinted makeup. Still, Leonard can see how it all makes sense: the regular features, the dark lashes, the long, slim body that would probably look perfect with the canonical 10 pounds added by the camera.
“Hi,” Kirk rasps, letting his head drop again.
“All right, let’s take a look at that head.” Kirk points to a place a few inches behind his hairline and Leonard begins probing with his fingers. Kirk's dark blond hair is stiff and sticky with some kind of styling goo, but Leonard finds the lump easily enough.
“Is it right there?” He presses gently.
“Ow!”
“Apart from the headache and the nausea, how do you feel? Dizziness, fatigue, vomiting?”
“I feel kinda shaky, and I have the urge to kill my director.” Kirk stretches his jaw until it pops, and Leonard begins mandibular palpitation.
“What did he do, make you stop a runaway train with your teeth?”
“He let a big pile of crates fall on me, for comic effect. He thought the shot would look better with real crates.” Kirk probes at the tender spot like it’s bringing the memory back. “He nearly shit himself when that one hit my head.”
“But you weren’t unconscious? No? Okay, I’m going to examine the rest of your face and neck, so hold tight.” Leonard palpates his facial, jaw and neck bones, noting nothing clinically significant, just perfect bone structure.
The pen light gives him a good look at the probably very bankable blue eyes, which respond just fine and don’t look overly dilated. He pulls out the opthalmoscope.
“Are you wearing eyeliner?” Leonard also notices dark circles under his eyes.
“It helps with the--show up on camera--shit, that’s bright. Besides, I can totally see your nose hairs right now.”
Leonard helps him to his feet for the Romberg test; he sways a little but Leonard chalks that up to the fact that he seems tired as hell.
“Well,” Leonard says, steadying Kirk so he can sit back down, “you’ve got a simple concussion, but I’m going to order a CT scan because it will make my boss happy, and probably also that little guy in the baseball cap who’s making a fuss in the waiting room.” Leonard glances through the little window in the door at the commotion in the hallway and wonders how long he can draw out the exam.
“Is that Tony?” Kirk ducks his head to peer out the window. “Oh, shit. He's probably being an ass.”
“Then I won’t feel bad about the size of our bill.” Kirk smiles through a wince and lets Leonard help him with his jacket, which is an old-fashioned baseball-type number. “What’s this movie about, anyway?”
Kirk gives him a look like he just said something witty. “It’s a romantic comedy-heist movie set in a minor league baseball town in the 1920s. Tony calls it ‘O Brother Where Art Thou meets Ocean’s Eleven with a Bull Durham chaser.’”
“Sound awful,” Leonard says. “I’ll have them print out your discharge instructions, but basically, I want you to take it easy for at least the next 24 hours, take Tylenol for the pain, and come back if your symptoms don’t get better or you get any new ones. Oh, and someone should keep you under observation. I assume one of that entourage out there can handle it?”
Kirk doesn’t look pleased at the prospect. “I don’t suppose I could come home with you instead?” He raises his eyebrows and gives a little smirk, and Leonard gets a hint of what he’s probably like when he doesn’t feel like vomiting.
“Clarkesville may be the back of beyond, but we do have hotels, you know.” He asks Poole, who he knows has a teenage daughter, to take Kirk to Radiology and goes to talk to the short guy with the baseball cap. He listens anxiously to Leonard’s report with what could either be genuine concern or apprehension about a lawsuit.
“Oh. Oh, that’s good.” He takes off the baseball cap and runs a hand through his hair. “Shit. We’re behind schedule as it is. When will he be able to work again?”
“Another 24 hours.” Leonard thinks of the circles under Kirk's eyes. “Forty-eight to be on the safe side. You can bring him back here tomorrow afternoon, if you want; I’ll be on duty. And someone should stay with him tonight to keep an eye on him.”
“Yeah. Hey.” The director cups a hand around Leonard’s elbow, draws him close and lowers his voice. “Is there any way we might be able to engage your, uh, services for the next day or two? There’s already been one fuck-up today and I don’t want another. Just to keep an eye on him?”
Leonard snorts. “You don’t need a doctor, you need a babysitter. Watch him for neurological symptoms, that’s all.”
“Uh huh.” The director looks doubtful. “You know, sometimes we hire set doctors on dangerous shoots. We pay $1500 a day, plus expenses. For such short notice, I’d be happy to double it.”
Leonard blinks at the director; this does, of course, change matters. “I’ll have to clear it with my supervisor.”
“She’s fine with it. Ecstatic, even.” The director flashes him a quick, mirthless smile. “My assistant will bring you some paperwork. I’ll expect a report in the morning.”
Fifteen minutes later, a smiling Poole appears with Kirk, his CT scans in one hand, a pile of what look like autographs in the other.
“Change of plans,” Leonard says to Kirk, dangling his car keys. “Looks like I’m taking you home.”
The smile that sentence earns Leonard is enough to melt glass, and seems to make Poole weak at the knees. Leonard’s knees aren’t feeling too stable, either.
+++++
Kirk is very persuasive--or, more precisely, very good at whining until he gets what he wants. That’s how he gets Leonard to agree to take him to his own home instead of Kirk's hotel, which, according to Kirk, is poorly soundproofed, overrun with tourists, and impossible to secure from paparazzi.
Paparazzi are a fixation of Kirk's, in spite of the fact that Leonard has yet to see one. Chris got her moment in the sun giving a press conference for a half-dozen reporters, even getting to cloak-and-dagger a little with the lie that the hospital was going to keep Kirk overnight for observation. An assistant had appeared with an overnight bag, and Kirk had emerged from Exam Room C wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt, a ball cap and sunglasses, looking less like a time traveler and more like a guy trying too hard not to be noticed.
“It’s the Lakers cap,” Leonard had said, though in truth it’s the jeans, which aren’t egregious, but a little too tight and too expensive-looking for local trade.
Now Kirk is leaning back in the passenger’s seat of Leonard’s eight-year-old Accord, eyes closed, giving Leonard ample time to fret about whether Kirk's going to sleep in Jo’s room or on the couch, how he can keep the guy entertained without a TV or even a pack of cards, and how much he’d rather be headed home alone after his shift like every other Wednesday night.
He’s brooding so hard about those things that he completely forgets to worry about how his house will look to Kirk until they’re winding up the long, private road. Like a shack, probably, and Leonard like some kind of hillbilly, even though he graduated with honors from Tulane Medical School, as he plans on telling Kirk if the subject comes up.
The terminal crunch of gravel wakes him. “We’re here.”
“What? Oh.” Kirk swabs a hand across his face.
“I’ll get your bag,” Leonard says, to let Kirk know he’s not the bag-carrying type, except that he’s supposed to be minding Kirk’s health.
“This is nice,” Kirk says, climbing the 30 stairs up the slope to where Leonard’s house perches like an owl above Whistler Creek. “Really nice. My house is on a hill, too.”
“As in, Hollywood Hills?”
Kirk turns to give him a nose-wrinkle of disgust. “Ew, no. Topanga Canyon." Leonard nods vaguely, having exhausted his knowledge of L.A. geography.
Once they’re inside the house, Kirk gives a cursory look around and makes straight for the framed photos on the mantelpiece.
“You’re married? With a kid?” He looks around in disbelief, as if defying either one to appear.
“Divorced.” The word usually has a lump-of-coal effect, but Kirk actually smiles.
“Oh. Well, your daughter’s super cute. Takes after her dad, although her mom is pretty hot, too. Shit, Southern women.” Kirk sighs.
“Yup. Known for their manners, too.”
Kirk takes the hint and pretends to look abashed. “Sorry. I think I have that disinhibition thing you mentioned before.” He points to his dented cranium.
“Right. Anyhow, you should take a nap. I’ll show you the bedroom.”
Leonard has to pick the best of limited options. There are two spare bedrooms: one he uses as a home office and the other is for Jo when she visits. It’s got a canopy and butterflies the two of them painted one sunny summer afternoon and a bed big enough for about half of Kirk's limbs. That just leaves the master bedroom, and Leonard doesn’t even have time to change the sheets.
“Uh...” Leonard picks up the shirt he changed his mind about this morning and throws it into the hamper. “If you’d rather--”
“This is perfect.” Kirk is standing a little too close, and giving him a more intimate version of the mind-wiping smile. Or maybe it only seems more intimate because he’s standing between Leonard and Leonard’s bed. “I’m sure I’ll have sweet dreams.”
Concussion, Leonard reminds himself, nodding stupidly, and closes the door and gets his ass downstairs as fast as he can without running.
+++++
It takes Leonard 15 minutes to tidy up the mid-week mess and put some chicken in the oven, and he manages to resist his cell phone for 15 more before caving. Are you sure you want to connect to the Internet? it asks, and Leonard mentally answers No before typing Yes. He doesn’t use it often and isn’t sure where to look, but Jim Kirk is extremely easy to find.
Kirk irks Falls co-stars with on-set “diva” antics
You can stay at Jim Kirk ’s favorite Bali getaway...for just $5,000 a night!
Jen’s Tears as Jim Dumps Her...on Valentine’s Eve!!
Kirk's on the red carpet in some of the photos, wearing a tux that fits like a glove and with his arm around the waist of a beautiful, expensively thin woman. In others, he’s in jeans and a T-shirt--the same T-shirt he’s asleep in upstairs, maybe even the same jeans--crossing streets or eating on the patio at posh restaurants. He looks consistently and blazingly happy in all of them, except for the occasional one where he shows his middle finger to the photographer.
Leonard switches the phone off and stands at the foot of the stairwell long enough to hear Kirk’s even, slightly congested near-snoring, then wanders outside. The double front porch was one of the features that sold Leonard on the house, though it had taken Leonard months more to get over his terror that Jo would somehow squeeze through the slats and fling herself off into the creek below. In fine weather, he spends his evenings out here, surrounded with citronella candles like a virgin with garlic in a vampire movie. Now, in early spring, it’s too chilly for his Georgia blood, but he enjoys the damp, loamy smell, the rot of last year’s leaves and fresh, tender things stirring beneath them.
Leonard loves nature, but it tends to be too full of metaphors for the overthoughtful mind. His own spring is past, and he’ll spend his summer seeing Jo into adulthood. He can’t regret anything, because that would mean regretting Jo, but there are times when it doesn’t feel wholly like a choice.
Guiltily, he switches the phone on again.
Enigma Star Buys $6 Million Dream Villa in Topanga
Leonard has been to California once, to visit his ex-roommate in San Francisco. He supposes it was beautiful, but mostly remembers homeless teenagers and seedy bars and his buddy going all out to get them into some dance party in a warehouse where Leonard drank something blue and ended up in the emergency room. He’s never been to L.A., and it doesn't seem to have any connection to his life, any more than the starlet-chasing bad boy of the celeb sites has anything to do with the affable, exhausted man asleep in Leonard's bed.
He switches the phone off, goes inside, and slips into the inside pocket of his jacket, buttoning it in so he won’t be tempted again.
+++++
Leonard hears the shower come on while he’s basting the chicken, and it stays on for a good, long while. As he puts the broccoli in the steamer, footsteps come pounding down the staircase.
“Holyfuck, that smells good!” Kirk appears in the door in a flannel shirt and seems about twice as big and twice as loud as before. This is, apparently, the high-definition Jim Kirk: cheeks pink, hair spiky and damp, eyes blazing like expensive Christmas ornaments. Leonard figures the next neurological exam can wait.
“Feeling better?”
“Fuck, yeah. I slept like a fucking log. What kind of mattress is that? I might have to get one.” Leonard shrugs, not really wanting to say The one that got me through five years of marriage and that the ex threatened to burn.
“So you cook, too? Damn. What are you making?” He’s in Leonard’s personal space again, cracking open the stove and peeking into the pots. “Awesome. Hey, the fireplace--can we build a fire? I mean, if it’s not too California of me to want one. I thought it would be warm in Georgia, you know? I’ve been freezing my ass off the last week. In the movie, it’s supposed to be summer.”
“Sure, if you want. See, the thing is, elevation--” But Kirk's already in the living room, throwing logs around and getting sawdust all over Leonard’s carpet. Leonard has his remaining brain cells occupied with not overcooking the broccoli.
If Leonard was expecting Hollywood hauteur, he gets quite the opposite. Kirk is noisily appreciative of everything, praising his chicken, finishing his vegetables, and practically setting fire to his chimney.
While they’re eating, and occasionally with his mouth open, Kirk details his problems with Tony, the director. The script is good, the cast is good, but Kirk is being driven crazy by a supporting actor, a college-circuit comedian Leonard has never heard of.
“It could be like one of those ‘70s period comedies with Robert Redford, you know? Popular, but smart. Instead, the studio’s been leaning on Tony to dumb it down. I’m dreading the promos: it’s going to be Dave getting a baseball in the nuts, then me putting my hand down Lara’s dress, and then probably that crate falling on me, because you know the son-of-a-bitch printed that shit. And teenagers will come the first weekend and be bored, and there’ll be a big drop in the second-weekend box office, and then a bunch of stories about how I’m overpaid.” Kirk stops shoving chicken into his mouth for a minute. “Sorry. I’m bitching to a guy who’s doing life-and-death stuff every day, and probably being paid jack shit for it. It’s not the money, seriously. God, I must sound like an asshole.”
“No, it’s interesting. I never think about the movie business being like any other job. And the scrutiny--” To a privacy-loving man like Leonard, it seems intolerable.
“Yeah.” Kirk's mouth twists into a wry smile. “Oh woe is me, listen to me bitch about how I hate the attention I practically drowned kittens for.”
"So if it isn't the money--why do you do it?"
Kirk puts down his fork. "Because performing--when it works, it's like flying. You can't do anything wrong. And once you have 100 people watching you in silence with their mouths hanging open, then you want 500 people, and then 5,000. I wish I could tell you I'd love it just as much if I were doing dinner theater productions of The Fantasticks, but it'd be a lie. I like knowing that the whole crazy machine, millions and millions of dollars, is riding on me. The risk makes it better."
Leonard looks at the fanatical gleam in his eyes, and tries to remember a time when he felt that passionate about anything.
"Have you seen any of my movies?" Kirk scrapes up the last of the mashed potatoes with his knife and licks it, and Leonard has to smile.
"I don't get out to the movies much." It's nicer than saying that 90 percent of what's on offer is irredeemable crap.
"Too bad. I'd like to know what you think." He gives Leonard a tilt of the eyebrow, as if he can already guess. "I'll send you some vouchers for Tallulah Falls. You can take your daughter, if Dave doesn't figure out some way to have me go full frontal before this thing is over."
When Leonard rises to clear the plates, Kirk stops him and shoos him toward the sofa, where he stares into the fire and listens to the guy who’s making $5 million for his latest picture wash his dishes, and what really touches him is how domestic it sounds. Pathetic, Leonard thinks. If he scrubbed your toilet you’d probably offer to--
He stops that thought in its tracks. If there’s one thing he’s resolved not to do, it’s let on that he finds Kirk shatteringly attractive, as much for his energy and enthusiasm as the way his slim hips and long legs look in the too-skinny jeans. Luckily, Leonard has plenty of experience keeping those particularly feelings locked up tight.
Kirk exits the kitchen and flips off the switch without looking, like he’s done it a hundred times.
“Lakers game is on.”
“I don’t own a TV.” For once, Leonard regrets it.
“I know. It was just an observation.”
It’s the last bit of dusk, the time when you can still make out the outlines of trees but not much else. Kirk goes around the first-floor windows and closes the curtains, like a CIA agent or somebody who’s been in a movie about one.
“In the unlikely event a photographer decides to drive up here,” Leonard says, “we’ll hear him on the gravel.”
“They could come through the woods,” Kirk says in a stagy whisper.
“Good luck to them, then. It’s spring turkey season.”
The fire is mature enough to be throwing off loads of infrared heat, but Kirk sits down not on the sofa but on the floor, back parallel to Leonard’s legs, and pats the rug next to him. Puzzled, Leonard slides off the couch and sits down.
“Where’d you go to med school?” Kirk asks.
“Tulane.” Leonard has no idea where this is going.
“Top of your class?”
“More or less.” Third in his graduating class, actually. He almost says so. But in the still, empty moments, Kirk staring at the fire and not him, Leonard sees what Kirk sees: the man, the child, solitary house, the lack of windows to the outside world. A life that’s more isolated than it needs to be, in a way that started as self pity but is now something else.
They sit in silence, shoulder to shoulder, staring into the fire, which Leonard finds more primally compelling than any television. He's increasingly aware of Kirk's physical proximity, something that in Leonard's limited experience often means mutual attraction, but tries to filter it out as so much noise generated by Kirk's charisma.
He's so successful that when, after a few minutes, Kirk wraps his fingers around Leonard’s own, he accepts it as simple companionship, doesn’t even think of how many ways it’s inappropriate. But when Kirk puts a hand on the back of Leonard’s head to turn it and then leans in to kiss him, Leonard’s heat-and-food-tranquilized brain goes into a full, nerve-jangling, five-alarm state of panic.
Kirk's lips are warm and full and he smells like wood smoke and expensive cologne. His shoulders, when Leonard shoves them away, are all lean muscle under the soft fabric of his shirt. Everything about him is temptation, including the baffled look he gives Leonard as Leonard scrambles to his feet as if the Devil himself had sent Jim Kirk, the same Devil that Leonard doesn’t believe in.
“Jesus!” Leonard half-shouts, terror passing reasonably well for indignation. “What the hell are you doing? Tell your director he didn’t pay for that.”
“Pay?” Kirk's still looking up at Leonard like Leonard’s the one who’s behaving irrationally. The fire alarm keeps going on and on in Leonard’s head: He could tell, could tell right away. Everyone can tell.
“Yeah,” Leonard wheezes, “that little pipsqueak paid me to take you off his hands for the evening. But Jesus, it was just to keep an eye on you. I fed you, I let you sleep in my bed, and now you--” He can’t finish the sentence.
“How much?” Kirk asks with interest.
“Three thousand,” Leonard says, feeling every inch the gigolo he’s swearing that he isn’t.
“Not bad.” Kirk seems mildly impressed. “I’m glad you’re getting something out of this.” A faint afterimage of the Kirk smile is back, and it’s enough to make Leonard genuinely pissed off.
“Apart from the cheap moves, you mean.”
“Len,” Kirk says, using his name for the first time. “You’re the loneliest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”
“And so, what--you’re going to give me a pity fuck? Is there some Hollywood charity for that?”
“No, but maybe I’ll put out a press release. I could use some good PR.” When Leonard doesn’t smile, Kirk huffs out a sigh. “For fuck’s sake, at least sit down. It’s making my neck hurt, looking up at you.”
Leonard does, not knowing what else to do, and a second later the hand is back, clasping his own tighter than before. For some reason he doesn’t question the logic of accepting consolation from the guy who made the incredibly rude, wrong-headed pass, in his own home no less.
He thinks of a dozen things to say, but there’s really nothing to lose, so he says the thing that’s foremost in his mind.
“Is it that obvious?”
“What?” Kirk says. “That you’re lonely and hard up? Totally. That you’re into dudes? I deal professionally in body language, so I’m probably not the best person to ask. Do you really care?”
“For God’s sake, of course I do.” Kirk isn’t wrong about the monastic existence. Georgia is a no-fault divorce state, and Jocelyn’s been incredibly generous, letting him see Jo every weekend and many times in between. But her parents hate Leonard down to the soles of his shoes, and the courts are conservative. Any hint that Leonard might be gay could transform him, through that inimitable Evangelical logic, into a Satanic pervert who invites goats and choir boys out to his lair deep in the woods and does horrible things to them.
“Is that what broke up your marriage?” Jesus, kid. But it’s undeniably liberating to be able to talk about it with an interested, non-judgmental stranger.
“Basically, yes. I knew, but I guess it wasn’t obvious, at least to my wife. I wanted things--those things--” he points at the photos on the mantel. “I thought I could control it. It was totally my fault. Only one good thing came out of it.”
“That sucks,” Kirk says, tightening his hand on Leonard’s for a second before releasing it. “But it’s the past. You don’t have to play pillar of society for me.” He gives Leonard a lopsided grin. “I have one of those travel chess sets in my bag, if you’d rather.”
The offer melts away Leonard’s defenses as easily as if it were the blast-furnace heat of the fire. Kirk’s a nice enough guy who just happens to have obscene good looks and an outlandish occupation, and he’s sitting in Leonard’s living room offering to have sex with him and then vanish the next day.
“Do you think about everything before you say it?” Kirk peers into his eyes like he’s trying to see behind them. “I’m not wrong about the hard-up part, am I? I’ve looked at your bookcase. Strindberg? Márquez? The Strindberg means you need to get laid, but the Márquez means you’ve given up hope.”
Leonard has to laugh at that. "College boy, huh?"
"Dropout, actually. Maybe that's why I go for the moody, intellectual types." He smirks at Leonard, who doesn't rise to the bait. "I played the valet in Miss Julie a while back, though, in New York. Do you at least approve of the legitimate theater?" he asks, the last part in a passable English accent.
"Sure, love it. Atlanta's got pretty good theater, you know. I always mean to go--"
"But let me guess," Kirk finishes. "You never do. You're an interesting puzzle, Len: this hot, smart guy who lives in the woods like a Russian hermit." He runs an experimental finger along the line of Leonard's jaw. "How far do you take the monk thing, anyway?"
“I’m not celibate, if that’s what you mean.” Once or twice a month, Leonard drives to Atlanta on a Friday night and stays with his high school friend Tomas. Tomas has a free-flowing circle of mostly younger acquaintances, and they go out to dinner, or to a club, or watch movies at his apartment. There’s nearly always someone who likes Leonard’s looks and the fact that he tops. Leonard always comes back afterward and crashes on Tomas’s sofa and leaves early in the morning, so he can shower and wash the smoke out of his clothes and otherwise purge himself of the experience before he picks up Jo in the afternoon. He never gives any of them his number, and he rarely hooks up with any of them twice.
"Good." Kirk leans in to kiss Leonard again and it's like a challenge, as if, in this short time, he's made a complete catalog of all Leonard's forms of cowardice and is daring him to do this one small thing. Leonard listens for the chorus of objections from inside his own head and, for once, hears nothing. Kirk is unencumbered, practically non-existent, or at least part of his reality.
And so, Leonard does it. He’s never kissed anyone in this house, and it’s like a magic spell breaking. His hands reach for Kirk's lean body, the thought it’s okay to touch making him feel light as a feather. Leonard’s caged, abused libido is a fearsome thing when released.
"Tell me," Kirk says into his ear. "What is it?"
“I want to go down on you,” he rasps.
Kirk's hands tighten on his biceps. "Good idea."
“I’m going to use a condom.” He makes it declarative, but still expects bitching.
“Sure. Fine.” Kirk makes a shooing motion with hands. “So, get one! Go! Run!”
Leonard takes the stairs two at a time and in a couple of seconds is rifling around in his travel bag. He makes his way back downstairs with a little more dignity than he went up and pauses at the bottom to look at Kirk, sitting with one leg cocked, his shirt half-open and his fly fully unzipped. Leonard frames the shot in his head like a director, because it’s perfect: the planes and angles of Kirk's face golden and shaded in the firelight, his body quiescent, a picture of relaxation, except for his eyes. They turn on Leonard with feral brightness as Leonard walks back into the room.
“Lie down,” Leonard orders, before he loses his nerve.
Kirk's like a buffet, like a table of gifts. Since Leonard has no real idea who he is, there’s no mental soundtrack of holy hell I’m about to go down on Jim Kirk, just the pleasure of a beautiful body ripe with possibilities.
Leonard pushes Kirk’s knees apart and kneels between them. Kirk leans back on his elbows and watches with bright interest as Leonard yanks his jeans down with care--extra care, since there’s a zipper involved.
The cock that now enters the picture causes Leonard’s eyebrows to go up to his hairline. It’s long and pale and perfect, with the humanizing detail that it curves slightly to the right. Leonard gives a little grunt of anticipation that makes Kirk chuckle. Leonard now wishes, hypocritically, that he could toss the condom into the fire and taste Kirk, feel the texture of skin against his lips.
Touching won’t hurt, though. Touching is fine. He wraps an assessing hand around the base and squeezes, feels the answering tremor. The skin is velvety and taut, his balls ample and heavy, and Leonard mentally maps an epic hand job that may or may never happen at another time. As he strokes, Kirk leans back with a sigh, folding the pillow so he can still watch but going supine as nature’s narcotics go to work on his brain.
He sets an almost-rhythm; he’s far from wanting to move Kirk toward climax, but he doesn’t want to strip the paint off Kirk's nervous system, either. The house is silent except for the background noise of the spring peepers, those tiny, horny little frogs calling out for mates. Leonard has found his mate for the night, and he’s laid out in front of the fire, warm and relaxed, and Leonard wants to bring him off without having to put stitches in his head after all.
He kind of expected Kirk to be vocal--the guy rarely shuts up and has no filter--but there’s plenty of feedback, anyway, in the way his balls are drawing taut, and the way his back arches and his hips wiggle as Leonard works him, looking for what it’s going to take to get him to pop, pressure or suction or hitting a certain spot.
“Tongue,” Kirk breathes, reading his mind. “Right under the head.”
Leonard flicks his tongue across the frenulum, frustrated by the microns of latex separating him from the flesh he aches to taste, but the sensation is apparently transmitted, and Kirk's hand clutches his hair. Leonard keeps it up, working the tiny cluster of nerve endings that for now control Kirk's body and brain, and he begins to grip the shaft rhythmically, with intent.
If Kirk wasn’t vocal before, he is now. He moans and sighs Yeah, yeah, louder and louder, and Leonard likes his voice, likes the feel of his flesh, likes the smell of his own soap on Kirk's skin, loves that of all the places in the world this is happening right here in front of his own fireplace, and tries to forget for the moment the family photos staring down at him. This isn’t wrong, he says to himself, holding on to the thought like a promise.
Kirk comes with a shout, without warning. It echoes off the flagstones and through Leonard’s skull, and he feels Kirk arch, and buck, and lose his grip on Leonard’s hair. Leonard applies moderate suction, still pumping, trying to pull every last sensation out of him, but Kirk's grunts of pleasure turn into oversensitivity and he begs Leonard to Stopstopstop, and Leonard does, pulling his mouth away, freeing his hands and stroking down Kirk's lean thighs, still sheathed in denim.
“C’mere,” Kirk says, raspy and hoarse. Leonard extracts himself from between Kirk's legs and lies down next to him, propped on one arm, looking at Kirk's face.
“Do you need me to tell you that was amazing?” Kirk's voice is lower than you’d expect. “Yeah, you probably do. Fucking fantastic, that’s how that was. I think you’ve given me a doctor fetish, because your hands--oh my God, and your lips.” He cups a hand under Leonard’s chin and brushes his thumb across Leonard’s mouth. “Holy fuck. They were the first thing I noticed when you walked into that exam room. Well, the second.”
Leonard waits for a punchline, but apparently there isn’t one, just Kirk tracing his facial features with a hint of professional interest but no detachment at all. It’s more intimate, somehow, than having Kirk's cock in his mouth and also worrisome, because it means when the coach turns back into a pumpkin there’s going to be a lot more to forget.
“Yeah, well,” Leonard says, to prevent Kirk from saying something more dire, “you’re not exactly hideous yourself.”
Kirk gives a chuckle that turns into a cough and pulls Leonard across him, a sprawl of body weight that must be half-crushing, but Kirk just tightens his arms across Leonard’s back. Leonard’s own erection, which has been causing him discomfort for the last 15 minutes, is wedged between them in an unhappy flux between too much friction and not enough pressure.
“I’m going to get rid of the condom and the clothes,” Kirk says, “and then I’d like you to fuck me.”
Part 2 >