
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/48878.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Star_Trek_XI
  Relationship:
      Kirk/McCoy
  Character:
      James_T._Kirk, Leonard_McCoy
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe, Alternate_Universe_-_Prostitute, Prostitution
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-01-10 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 2918
****** Recognize This Compromise ******
by Rubynye
Summary
     McCoy always feeds the kid first.
***** Chapter 1 *****
Title: Recognize This Compromise
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Rating: NC-17 with warnings.
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy, AU
Summary/Prompt: "So,_McCoy_is_a_sex_crimes_detective..._Jim_is_an_underaged
hooker_with_a_brutal_childhood._McCoy_picks_him_up_in_a_bust_and_Jim_will_offer
him_anything_not_to_get_his_name_in_the_system..." From, where else, THE KINK
MEME.
Content Advisory: AU setting. Underage sex, prostitution, violence alluded to.
All Thanks To: The prompter *waves* and
[[info]]
lomedet, for encouraging me to make art out of my insanity. Author's note in
first comment.
Disclaimer: None of these characters or their settings belong to me.
Title from "Sin" by Nine Inch Nails, since it's on the mix I listen to when I
write idfic stuff like this.
 
McCoy always feeds the kid first.
Jim laughs at him for it, and says, "Oh, man, I'll have the worst gas, it'll
totally stink up your car," shit like that between bites of hamburger or
burrito or greasy Chinese. Sometimes they go around the corner from Boy Toy
Alley, sometimes McCoy drives Jim halfway across town to whole new
neighborhoods. On days when he's seen too many other young faces he drives by
schools, takes Jim to nice wholesome mall food courts in the suburbs, talks
about families and normal lives. On those days Jim slouches in poses of studied
boredom, because he knows he looks good sulky with his pillowy lower lip puffed
out, and later in the evening he uses his teeth.
When Jim has too many fresh bruises showing on his face and throat and arms,
McCoy sometimes takes him home right then. He can cook enough to keep from
starving, keeps boxed dinners in the freezer, scoffs when the boy asks for a
beer and hands him the carton of orange juice. Wherever they are he just
watches Jim eat, his smile as he chews, the still-strong line of his throat,
his broadening shoulders, his pink tongue curling along his fingers when he
licks them. Fourteen months of this life, at least, if he wasn't lying when
they met, and Jim still looks like a sunny-haired all-American teenager, all
white teeth and cheerfulness.
He sucks cock just like a pro, though, and moans like he's in ecstasy. McCoy
was already going to Hell before he ever met Jim, but he deserves it for
knowing that, for fucking this boy every other Tuesday when he knows all too
well how he lives and how old he isn't. The first two times he swore they were
the last, but now he knows better. Every other week he lays Jim a trail of
breadcrumbs, and when the boy finds him McCoy feeds him, and then he takes him
home.
The first time, McCoy didn't take Jim home. The first time he'd left his car a
long damp walk from the liquor store because parking's shitty in this town, and
cut through a couple of alleys to shorten the trudge from eight blocks to four,
realizing belatedly that his planned path took him through the charming patch
nicknamed Boy Toy Alley. Which was unforgivably stupid of anyone who wasn't a
tourist and twice over for a fucking officer in the sex crimes unit, but there
he was, striding past the skimpily dressed kids who'd turn up all too soon pale
in hospital rooms or paler in the morgue. So he hunched his shoulders, thought
longingly of bourbon, and walked faster.
Until a strong young hand caught his arm. "Where's the fire?" asked a husky
voice, and McCoy spun on his heel and made the even more fatal mistake of
looking. The blue-eyed boy was nearly his height, blond and incongruously
wholesome-looking in a battered leather jacket, snug dark tee and decent jeans,
and it wasn't till the second glance that McCoy noticed the damp dirty knees,
the pale yellow of a mostly-healed black eye, the puffiness of those fuckable-
looking lips even when stretched in a wide smile. "Got five minutes?" the boy
asked, tilting his head a little. "I can make it worth your while."
"Still got your milk teeth?" McCoy asked, because the kid couldn't be eighteen
yet, and the boy just smiled wider, brashly taking it for encouragement.
"You like that?" the kid asked, shifting closer, looking up out of blue eyes a
man could drown in. "I'm however old you want me to be."
McCoy knew where boys like this had been, where they were going, but his dick
was actually throbbing against his fly. He jerked out his badge, saying,
"You're going in," as he grabbed the kid's bicep, and the blue eyes flared wide
and hardened fast as McCoy turned back the way he'd come.
The kid hit him, in the solar plexus, knocking out his breath. The kid fucking
hit a police officer, and really, why was McCoy surprised? But for some reason
he hadn't thought this kid had it in him. Boy would've gotten away, too, if he
hadn't tripped on something; just dumb shitty luck drove him to his knees, let
McCoy get a hand on his T-shirt collar and drag him up. McCoy slammed him
against the alley wall, cuffed him, and hauled him off as all the others tried
to melt out of sight.
He kept his badge ready in the other hand, but it really was a sign of
everything wrong with this city that no one looked twice at an angry man
dragging a handcuffed kid through the streets. At first the boy was sullenly
silent, which suited McCoy fine; he could get his i.d. when they ran his prints
at the nearest police station, and he really didn't need to hear another word
from that too-pretty mouth.
Except, it turned out the kid was just waiting for privacy. The moment McCoy
threw him into the back seat the kid said, "Please put me in the front, I get
carsick." McCoy looked at him, and the boy looked up sideways, pale and
pitiful, cheek bruised from the alley wall, and said, "really, sir, you don't
want me to puke all over your car, do you?"
No one who'd been a cop for one day should've fallen for that, let alone six
years. But McCoy did. He put the kid in the front seat, buckled him in, started
the car, and the boy's mouth fell right open around begging. The usual sort of
story: a terrible life at home, abusive stepfather, mother dead in the
military, father dead forever ago, and the shitty bit was that McCoy didn't
doubt it was all true, except for the name, because no way was this kid named
'Gary Pike.' But when 'Gary' said, "if you bring me in he'll find me," all flat
and final like that, McCoy pulled over in another alley, telling himself it was
to talk to the kid a bit.
Then the boy reached over -- the boy got out of his cuffs somehow, and at least
McCoy grabbed his wrists by pure reflex and pinned him back against his seat,
their faces too close, those blue eyes filling his vision when the boy grinned
and said, "Let me go and I'll make it worth your while."
And he tipped his chin up and swallowed McCoy's 'no' in a pouty-lipped kiss.
McCoy felt those sinewy wrists twisting in his grip, saw his career flash
across his memory, and told himself to pull away. And kissed back.
He was lost then. He always knew he'd lost by then. The way those lips felt on
his jaw, the way his hands fell away from those wrists, the tight heat of that
mouth on his dick? Those were all just the details of damnation. The kid sucked
his orgasm out of him like he was sucking out his soul, and McCoy blinked up
out of the sweeping rush feeling like he'd been unbaptized, did nothing but
blink as the boy smiled at him with wet red lips, said, "thanks, man," and
stepped right out of his car.
The little shit even took the cuffs with him.
What was McCoy gonna do, try to find the kid, one needle in a very grimy
haystack? Report the whole incident, including the part where he let himself be
bribed with a sex act? He found another liquor store, bought something cheap,
went home and got really, really drunk.
Two weeks later, though, he was stepping out of the first store, because it
sold the brand of bourbon his father had liked, damn hard to find up North,
when a hand closed on his arm and he recognized that husky "Got a minute?"
Which was fortunate, because when he turned he barely recognized the kid, beat
all to hell, both eyes black this time, lip busted, every bit of visible skin
bruised and scabbed down to his split knuckles and purpled fingers.
"Shit," said McCoy, and took the boy home.
He believed the name 'Jim', from the way the boy's eyes flickered as he gave
it. He believed the age he was told, because of the way the boy puffed up his
chest even though it made him wince. He believed Jim when he apologized for
hitting him, grin wide and lopsided even though the lip started oozing blood
again, "but I just couldn't go back, not to Frank and his buddies, you know? If
I'm gonna be a whore I'm working for myself." McCoy couldn't've said why, but
he smudged antibiotic ointment over the busted-open skin on Jim's cheekbone and
leaned in to kiss his forehead. He didn't even think he could save this one,
but something in him wanted to try.
When he gave Jim a pillow and a blanket the boy stared at him. "You're really
letting me stay on the couch?"
McCoy rolled his eyes. "I'm not giving you my bed, dumbass. This old thing
makes my damn bones ache. You're young, you'll be fine."
Right around when McCoy realized he'd just explained why he wasn't giving up
his own bed, the boy started to grin impishly. "You sure your stuff'll still be
here in the morning?"
"That's up to you," McCoy said gruffly, because he believed Jim on that score
too. "Get some sleep." Besides, it wasn't like he had much worth stealing, even
three years after the divorce.
McCoy's stuff was all there in the morning. So was Jim, in McCoy's bed. When he
rolled over to find a warm naked person tucked in with him he muttered
'goddammit' and rough young hands settled over his eyes. Jim just shushed him,
and kissed him, and he tasted like McCoy's toothpaste and felt like a dream,
even his bruises beautiful in the low morning light. McCoy couldn't've been
awake or he never would've pressed himself to that warm young body, kissed the
boy gently over and over even though Jim grinned at him between them like he
was an idiot, which he was. A fool for this boy who stroked them together with
broad calloused hands while McCoy just squeezed him in his arms, hanging on
like anything could keep him there.
He held on afterwards, too, and Jim let him, just lay there half atop him,
sticky and warm, their legs tangled. McCoy petted him, running his hand the
length of the boy's spine, feeling the sharpness of his shoulderblades and the
still-sturdy musculature of his back, and finally said, "Kid, you've gotta get
off the street."
And Jim tensed.
McCoy knew how that chat would go like he had a fucking crystal ball, but he
tried anyway. He begged Jim to go back to school, offered help, social workers
he could talk to, programs he could join, and Jim shook his head, scrambled out
of McCoy's hold, ran through the apartment snatching up his stuff as he said he
was doing fine, he was taking care of himself, he didn't need help. "Hustling
isn't a long term plan!" McCoy finally shouted, standing naked in his own
goddamn bedroom doorway, watching Jim shrug his jacket on.
"It's worked for half a year!" Jim shot back, then looked back, and his racoon-
ringed eyes were so blue McCoy couldn't breathe. "Really, thanks, Bones," he
said, and grinned when McCoy blinked at the nickname. "Thank you." McCoy
thought the boy might kiss him then, give him one more chance to grab hold, but
Jim just turned and left, carefully shutting the door behind him.
McCoy didn't expect to see him again, not then, not the next day, not in every
case that came across his desk, and definitely not two weeks later as he sat in
a pizza shop up the street from that liquor store, a sack of purchases under
his seat and two slices of plain in front of him. Not until a broad young hand
snagged one as Jim sat down across the little table from him, said, "What, no
pepperoni?" and shoved half the slice into his grin.
McCoy took him home that night, forgetting his sack of liquid groceries, and
rained kisses over the boy's shoulders as he fucked him using an ancient
expired condom that mercifully didn't break. "You're going to the free clinic
tomorrow," he said afterwards into Jim's hair, and Jim just snorted and pressed
back against him, nestled under his arm. He was gone in the morning, but a week
later McCoy got a postcard of the city skyline with a minus sign and a smiley
face on it.
Eight months on, now, the length of a school year, and while McCoy's seen too
many kids cross his desk in various states of alive and dead, he keeps feeding
this particular boy biweekly dinners and letting himself take advantage. He
thinks about that sometimes, as he grills the SOBs who make life so bad these
kids choose hooking instead, yelling louder to cover his hypocrisy. He thinks
about it when he looks at himself in the mirror as he shaves, when he sips his
dad's bourbon, whenever he wakes up sticky from a dream lit by that grin and
those blue eyes. He thinks about it as he waits and worries, wondering if this
is the time the kid won't show because he's jailed or hospitalized or in
trouble or dead, and he swears to himself just one more meal together and he'll
get the boy to come in, to stop hustling, even if he has to arrest him. But he
doesn't.
McCoy thinks about that now, lying on his back as he listens to Jim singing
some ridiculous thing in the shower, accompanying himself by drumming on the
wall. Jim finishes and comes back, naked and wet and cheerful, and yes, McCoy
likes what he's seeing, too much, too damn much. But he closes his fists in the
sheets and says, "Kid..."
"Oh, I forgot," Jim says with bright insincerity. "I've got news." He sits
down, his back to McCoy in full expectation that McCoy will sit up and lean
into him, which he does. "I went by that Wilkins Vo-Tech place." One of the
programs McCoy told him about, eight months ago. His heart hitches faster, but
he just grunts and nods encouragingly on Jim's shoulder. "Those idiots couldn't
fix a mousetrap let alone an engine, but they seem to agree they can use my
help. I applied for a work scholarship."
McCoy thinks grateful curses as he says, "Good job, Jim. Good job."
Jim doesn't turn, but his back straightens a little. "They wanted an address,
of course. I told them I was between places, but I'd be moving in two weeks."
McCoy's gut does a little flop of realization. "You gave 'em my address."
Jim's back has gone from straight to tense. "I can always say it fell through."
Shacked up with a jailbait ex-hooker. McCoy's heart lurches into flight and
jams in his throat; his career unspools behind his eyes again, like a home
movie playing while people talk over it, and he can just see his Captain's face
when she hears about this. "What happens in two weeks?"
"I wake up from whatever I'm gonna do to celebrate my eighteenth birthday," Jim
says, still looking straight ahead.
McCoy rumbles as all his parts align, and he grabs Jim's shoulders and shoves
him flat on the bed, straddling him, watching his grin and eyes flare wide.
"Then you're staying off the street. No more hustling. You're staying here."
"That's the plan, Bones," Jim says, all sunny cheer, and McCoy gives in and
kisses him.
***** Alternate Ending to "Recognize This Compromise" *****
Chapter Summary
     Warning: Character Death
Two weeks later, it's raining again but McCoy stands right out on the sidewalk,
not wanting to chance being missed. He stands there dripping cold rain, and
stands there until the last light fails, and stands there until the traffic
thins and the dirty pretty boys and girls spill from their alleys to take over
the sidewalks.
For the first time Jim doesn't show up, and none of the kids have seen him. It
takes McCoy two full and sleepless days to find him, and when he does it's in
the city morgue, the ring of purple bruises around the boy's wax-white throat
as clear as any report.
McCoy looks at Jim for the last time, and when he can't look anymore he folds
onto the floor, his head in his hands, too gutted for tears or words. He always
knew, as if he's a goddamn psychic, because he's a fucking cop. He always knew.
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