Chapter Text
Leonard’s riding north in the Potrero Avenue bike lane, tired from an overnight shift at San Francisco General. He coasts down the gentle decline, thinking about the drink he’ll fix himself once he gets home before he falls asleep reading, when he catches someone in his rearview mirror pedaling hard and coming up fast on him.
No helmet, messenger bag on his back, cut-off shorts, all on a brakeless fixed gear.
Leonard had nicknamed him Bike Messenger Asshole after seeing him once or twice a month along his commute. That day, Bike Messenger Asshole, in an eponymous maneuver, passes Leonard by cutting across two lanes of traffic and rides in the middle of the street along the double yellow line. Leonard comes up to the red light just in time to watch him fly through it and veer back over into the bike lane amid honking horns.
Leonard grits his teeth and feels his heart rate rising. Bad drivers get him going too, but sh*tty cyclists are just as bad in his eyes. They’re going to get hurt and are giving every other cyclist a bad name in the process. Leonard wears a helmet, stays in his lane, stops at red lights and stop signs, but drivers still think he shouldn’t be on the road because of people like Bike Messenger Asshole.
When the light turns green, Leonard pedals harder than he is really prepared to at that hour, intent on finally catching Bike Messenger Asshole. He’s delighted when he pulls up behind him at the next red light. First, he’s just proven that daredevil antics don’t get anyone anywhere. Second, it means Bike Messenger Asshole is just an asshole and not completely deranged - there is too much cross traffic to try and cross without it being suicidal. Third, and most gratifyingly, now he has a chance to tell Bike Messenger Asshole exactly what he thinks.
“You’re gonna break all the goddamn bones in your body if you keep riding like that.”
“What’s it to you?” Bike Messenger Asshole turns to ask.
Leonard loses the self-righteous lecture he had prepared with one good look at Bike Messenger Asshole. As it turns out, Bike Messenger Asshole is pretty young, a little scrawny, and looks as tired as Leonard feels, but with bright blue eyes and a halo of blond hair on his helmetless head, catching the morning sun.
“I’m a doctor, damn it!” is all Leonard manages to get out.
“Catch you later, Bones,” Bike Messenger Asshole calls as he capitalizes on a break in the cross-traffic and runs the red light before Leonard can ask who the hell Bones was.
“Unbelievable.”
It’s a few weeks before Leonard sees the kid up close again. He’s just switched back to days in the ED so stops in for an extra cup of coffee at one of the hipster coffee shops that’d popped up in his neighborhood. “Large coffee with cream, please,” he orders, handing over his thermos for the barista to fill.
“Drip coffee, a pour over, or an espresso drink?” the barista asks.
“Coffee, just regular coffee,” McCoy clarifies, annoyed that he has to do so with such a simple order.
“Soy, almond, skim, 2 percent, or half and half?”
“I ordered coffee with cream. I’m not sure what’s so hard to understand.”
“Have you seen a doctor about that irritability? Seems like it might be chronic,” he hears from behind him.
“I don’t need a doctor, I am a doctor,” Leonard says, turning around to find Bike Messenger Asshole standing behind him. “Which is lucky for idiots like you, so somebody can save the life you seem so intent on losing.”
Bike Messenger Asshole rolls his eyes with a smirk. “Did your grandma get run over by a bike messenger or something?”
Leonard works hard to ignore the quick lick of pink lips that follows the smirk, and continues with the lecture he thinks about every time he sees the kid. “You’re pointlessly making a dangerous job even more dangerous. It’s not like people, hell, even doctors at Harvard, haven’t looked at this. You’re thirteen times more likely to get injured on the job than most people. You’re better off working in meatpacking than doing this!”
“I can tell you from experience it’s not nearly as fun.”
That isn't the answer Leonard was expecting and he’s interrupted by the walkie-talkie on the shoulder strap holster of Bike Messenger Asshole’s bag before he can conjure a response. “Kirk, come in. Double rush at Pike Law Offices, get on it.”
“I gotta go. See ya, Bones.”
The kid is out the door, on his bike, and heading the wrong way down the one way street, squeezing between parked cars and oncoming traffic before Leonard can even ask him to be safe out there. Leonard’s left holding his thermos and wondering why this kid, out of all the messengers in this city, bothers him so much.
Leonard shouldn’t have been surprised when Bike Messenger Asshole lands himself at San Francisco General later that spring. Almost all of the patients he sees there are uninsured or on Medicaid, which Leonard likes. He’d taken this job mostly because his program director at Emory had connections there and it wasn’t Georgia, but he had also wanted to work somewhere he could help those who would otherwise slip through the cracks. Some of his co-workers complain about patients using the ED like their primary care, showing up for refills, back pain, or sore throats, but Leonard can deal with them, most didn’t have anywhere else to go.
What he doesn’t like are kids who could be working real jobs if they had their heads on right taking resources from people that genuinely need help.
He enters the exam room flipping through the kid’s file, trying to get caught up after taking over at the shift change. Definitely not his first time in. James T. Kirk, twenty-two years old, uninsured, multiple allergy flags, and in following a run-in with a car.
“Awfully kind of you to pay me a visit, James,” McCoy drawls, barely looking up from the paperwork. “Date of birth?”
“January 4, 1983, and it’s Jim. I didn’t want to but SFPD made me since the asshole who hit me insisted on calling the cops, like that’s ever helped anything. What’s the damage?”
“It’s a broken wrist, you’ll be fine. By the looks of it, this isn’t your first break, so I assume you know the drill.”
“I thought this is when you’re supposed to lecture me about how dangerous this is, and how I won’t be fine, Bones.”
“Stop calling me that,” Leonard snaps. “You’ve made it clear you’re not the listening type, and, more importantly, I’ve got other patients waiting who aren’t here because they’ve been risking their lives for some bullsh*t macho stunt of a job instead of a real paycheck.”
“I don’t know why you think you know anything about me.”
“Dr. Patel’s a resident here.” Leonard tries to stay focused on the clinical details. “She’s going to reduce the fracture and get you in a splint. Lucky for you, it’s minimally displaced so you shouldn’t need surgery but she’ll let you know about aftercare and follow-up visits. But for the love of god, stay off the damn bike until it heals.”
Leonard makes a quick exit, not giving Jim a chance to reply, but out of the corner of his eye he catches Jim watching him leave the room, with a look on his face that almost, just almost, makes Leonard feel a little guilty for being so short-tempered with the kid.
June in the Bay Area seems like a miracle to Leonard. Plenty of sunshine once the morning fog burned off, but without the humidity that came with summer in Atlanta. Even on nights like tonight, when he didn’t get out of work until close to 2000, there’s still almost an hour before sunset. Intent on making the most of the good weather, he’d snagged a patio seat at his favorite restaurant and planned on lingering with a drink or two and a book after dinner.
Just as Leonard contemplates his next drink, there’s some commotion at the dive bar next door. He watches Bike Messenger Asshole — James, no Jim, he reminds himself — hop off his bike, grab a can of beer from the pyramid of them on the patio table, and start chugging it. Conspicuously absent is the cast Leonard’s damn sure Patel put on three weeks back.
Leonard’s over there grabbing Jim by his good arm just as Jim reaches the end of his beer, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Where’s the cast Patel put on you?”
“Hey, Bones! Turns out riding one handed all the time is kind of hard, my arm’s been feeling pretty good, and it’s the Solstice Alleycat. I came in second last year, so I’m going for first this year. Not that you’re really helping my cause at the moment.”
As if to prove Jim’s point, another rider pulls up just then and starts in on a beer, though he isn’t able to get it down in one go like Jim did.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind? How did you even get the cast off? Do you want that arm of yours to heal or not?”
“Whatever, I have to go. Come on, Bones, stop it.”
Leonard realizes he’s still gripping the kid’s arm. “I’m gonna let you go, but you’re going to come in tomorrow so someone can take a look at that again. Okay?”
“Are you working tomorrow?”
“Yes, but I can’t guarantee you’ll see me. There’s plenty of good doctors there who can help.”
“Fine.” Jim draws the word out with an exasperated sigh.
“Good.”
Leonard releases his grasp, but instead of pulling back Jim leans forward and plants a kiss on Leonard’s lips. It’s quick and smells like cheap beer and cigarettes, but Jim’s lips are warm and soft.
It isn’t the worst kiss Leonard has ever had.
“What the hell was that?”
“Dunno,” Jim says as he gets on his bike, “maybe kissing a cute doctor’s on the checklist, just like the beer.”
“Checklist, my ass,” Leonard mutters to himself as he watches Jim ride off.
Leonard is wrapping up charts from his shift, but he still hasn’t seen Jim, or even his name on the board. The registration staff has changed shifts already so he figures he won't raise any eyebrows asking again. He’s not entirely sure he wants to treat Jim himself, but he did hope he’d get his wrist checked out.
“Evening, Claudia. Has a James T. Kirk been in at all?”
“Let me check, Dr. McCoy.” Claudia clicks through the outdated computer system that looks exactly like what Leonard saw when he would shadow his father at Piedmont Regional. “No, sorry, doesn’t seem like he’s been in since the beginning of the month. Somebody special?”
Claudia’s from Georgia too, so she’s developed a soft spot for Leonard. It seems like everyday she’s offering him either her homemade pimento cheese or to set him up with her friend’s cousin.
“Ha,” Leonard snorts a little too hard. “No, just some dumbass bike messenger who’s intent on ignoring medical advice but told me he’d come in.”
“Oh, the bike guy with blue eyes and blond hair? Tina and the other girls haven’t stopped talking about how cute he is. Tina swears he winked at her.”
“I didn’t really notice what he looked like, more concerned about his arm,” Leonard lies, knowing damn well how blue Jim’s eyes are and how sun-kissed his hair is. “But that could be him.”
“Well, I’ll let you know if I see him, Doctor McCoy,” Claudia says, giving Leonard a look that lets him know she knew he was bullsh*tting her and she wasn’t having any of it.
At the end of his shift, Leonard heads out, slowing as he walks past the registration desk but Claudia just gives him a sad headshake. Probably for the better. The kid was exactly the kind of trouble he didn’t need.
Leonard’s at the bike rack packing his gear into his panniers, when Jim comes up behind him, “Bones!”
“Why the hell do you keep on calling me that?”
“You’re gonna break all the bones in your body,” Jim quotes in an accent that makes him sound like a TV actor playing a small-town Southern sheriff.
“Well, you are, and speaking of bones, let’s see what’s going on with your wrist.”
“Nah, it can wait. You look like you’re ready to leave and you’re probably hungry. Do you want to go grab some dinner? I know this great burrito place not too far.”
“Hold your horses, kid. You’re here now, we’ll go in for the x-ray real quick, and then we’ll see about getting some food. Deal?”
“Deal,” Jim agrees, but not without a petulant eye roll.
“Come with me.”
Back inside, Leonard gives a sheepish wave to Claudia who returns his wave with a small smile before she turns to whisper something in a nearby nurse’s ear.
“What was that about?”
“So how in God’s name did you get that cast off?” Leonard asks, ignoring Jim’s question.
“My roommate’s buddy has a Dremel and we used that and some garden shears. I’ve had casts taken off before by doctors, and that seems to be all they do.”
“I can see how you might think that.” Jim must take this as a sign of approval because he gives a half-smile before Leonard finishes, “If you were an idiot.”
Leonard leads Jim down to radiology, where thankfully the tech doesn’t question what Leonard is doing back at work and personally accompanying a patient who isn't checked in. It may have something to do with Leonard chewing the tech out, but not reporting him, the week before for ignoring a patient who didn’t speak English but was pretty clearly trying to communicate he was about to image the wrong side.
“You haven’t asked me how the race went.” Jim prompts as slides the lead vest on.
“That’s because I don’t care.”
“Rude. Well, I didn’t win.”
“What a shame. All that work cutting the cast off for nothing.”
After finishing the x-rays, Leonard takes Jim to the small office he shared with a couple of other physicians. While they wait, Leonard has Jim try a couple of movements with his wrist. “That hurt at all?”
“It’s fine, Bones.”
“Yeah, right. You definitely have a limited range of motion. Was it like that before?”
Jim doesn’t answer, ignoring Leonard and pretending to be focused on studying the office, though there isn’t much to see. The only thing Leonard has brought in is his medical degree from University of Mississippi and other than that there’s just a mess of papers. “I always imagined a doctor’s actual office would be more glamorous than this.”
“Nope. Not like we spend a lot of time here anyway. Usually out with patients on the floor.” Leonard’s pager pings. “Looks like your x-rays are back.”
“Mississippi, huh? I was trying to guess.”
“Georgia, really. That’s where I grew up, then I went to med school at Ole Miss, then back to Atlanta for a residency at Emory,” Leonard explains as he pulls up the x-rays.
“How long you been in San Francisco for?”
“About a year. Radiology will need to review the results, but between the loss of range of motion and these images, it seems likely you’ve got malunion. It was a clean break and Dr. Patel’s a great doctor, so this is probably because you insisted on being an idiot about it. I’m going to refer you to an orthopedic surgeon here, but what I reckon’ll happen is you're going to need a corrective osteotomy, a surgery where they’ll reset the bone, probably with a few pins, maybe a plate, for good measure. And then you will really need to stay off of it for a couple of months while it heals.”
“Even if I had enough money to pay for the surgery, which I don’t, I can’t not work for that long.”
“Jim, there are options. I can get you connected with one of our social workers here and they can help you get signed up for Medi-Cal and we’ve got financial assistance programs on top of that. The alternative, of course, is you don’t—”
“It’ll be f*cked up forever. I get it,” Jim says, interrupting Leonard’s speech on increasing loss of function and pain. “Can we go now? I’ve been thinking about those burritos.”
“Fine, let’s go.” He can’t say he knows Jim particularly well, but he has enough sense to recognize that his pigheadedness, probably combined with some anxiety around doctors or medical treatment, means that pushing Jim on this now isn’t going to get him any closer to getting the kid to take it seriously.
Jim swears he knows where the best burritos were over in the Mission, so Leonard lets him lead the way, but not only after Jim promises he wouldn't go too fast and would stop at all red lights.
The line is out the door when they get there.
“That took forever,” Jim groans. “How can someone as paranoid as you ride your bike everywhere?”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I have a lot of other options. I don’t have a license and I don’t like relying on the Muni with my schedule.”
“Really? You lived in Atlanta without ever learning how to drive?”
“No, I had it. But I lost it.”
Jim’s eyes go wide, filling in the gaps. “Oh, sh*t.”
Leonard figures he’s not getting anything past this kid so goes on. “Yeah. Somewhere between my father dying and my ex leaving me, I got pulled over after having a few too many, well, a lot too many. The medical board let me keep my medical license though, ‘in light of recent hardships,’ as they put it, which was more important to me than a damn driver’s license anyway.”
Jim’s quiet just long enough to make Leonard nervous.
This isn’t something Leonard has told anyone else. The few people back home who still talked to him after the divorce just assumed he was moving for a fresh start, and all he ever told anyone out here was he wanted to try something new. Leonard’s fine with this. It means people don’t ask the questions that would have ended up with him telling his sad sack story, and he definitely doesn’t want his new colleagues to know about the DUI. It was worse than dumb and irresponsible. He’d endangered other people and he couldn’t forgive himself for that.
He can’t explain why he just laid it all out for Jim.
“Well, it’s nice to know someone can be a f*ck-up like me and still make it as a doctor at one of the busiest Level I trauma centers in the country.”
Leonard let out a barking laugh in relief. “That’s me, Dr. Leonard McCoy, inspiration story for f*ck-ups the world around.”
At the counter, Jim gives his slightly complicated order in Spanish, with some additional chit-chat that makes Leonard think he’s a regular there. Leonard tries to stumble through in high school Spanish before the person behind the counter makes it clear English is fine, even preferable in Leonard’s case, directing an eye roll for Jim to see.
The three tables in the restaurant are taken by the time they get their food, so Jim suggests riding over to Mission Dolores Park to eat. It’s a mile away, but Leonard can’t complain too much, the temperature is perfect out and he has to admit that there is some pleasure in watching Jim ride when he isn’t playing chicken with traffic. Yes, he’s got a good view of Jim's ass and muscled calves and the golden hour sun in his hair, but it is more than that. With the recklessness stripped away for Leonard’s benefit, there is just a relaxed confidence with Jim fully present, anticipating and responding, slowing down to avoid a right hook seemingly even before the driver even realizes they are going to turn right onto the side street.
The park is packed, they weren’t the only ones with this idea. As they navigate through the groups of people lounging on the grass, Jim doesn’t try to hide that he is eyeing up a couple of other guys. And it’s clear Leonard isn’t the only one paying attention to Jim either.
Jim leads them to an open spot on a slope at the back corner of the park. Plopping down, he toes off his beat-up tennis shoes, and pulls out two tallboys of slightly warm Miller High Life out of his messenger bag, still wrapped in brown paper bags.
“Planning ahead?”
“I like to be prepared.”
“A regular Boy Scout, huh?” Leonard teases before raising his beer in a mock toast, “Cheers.”
Jim tears into his burrito and doesn't stop until he’s half-way through, when he pauses to reach into his pocket and pulls something out.
“What you got there?” Leonard asks, eyeing Jim’s closed fist.
Jim opens it to reveal six red tablets. “Just Advil, Bones.”
“Good god, how often are you taking that much?”
“I dunno, a couple times a day.”
“What, a broken wrist’s not enough, you want a perforated stomach too? Jesus, that’s a maximum daily dose right there. Take two of them. It’s because your wrist is bugging you, isn’t it?”
“I’m fine, Bones. Eat your burrito.”
“Well, at least you're taking it with food,” Leonard mutters before returning to his burrito. It’s good and he was hungry. There had never been a great moment to grab lunch during his shift.
They eat in silence until all Jim has left is the foil wrapper, and he takes a pack of cigarettes out from his messenger bag.
“Oh good, you smoke too,” says Leonard.
Jim puts the cigarettes away and lays back on the grass, hands under his head. “Man, you doctors are no fun. Is this why your ex left you?”
“Yes, exactly,” Leonard answers dryly. Give this kid an inch and he’d take a mile. “How’d you guess?”
“So ex, what, anyway? Wife? Husband? Girlfriend?”
Leonard can’t tell if Jim has the sharpest gaydar west of the Mississippi or if he just gets off on being rejected.
Atlanta proper is pretty gay-friendly, but most Californians seem to have written off the entire South as a backwater, and his accent is enough for most people to place him unquestionably into the straight white guy category even before they heard about the ex-wife. He had already surprised a few people in the Bay Area as living proof that, yes, there are queer men in Georgia.
“What are you actually trying to ask, kid?”
“Well…” Jim trails off, and Leonard raises an eyebrow, never having seen the kid remotely tongue-tied. “I like girls,” Jim begins to explain, “but mostly guys, and I was just wondering…”
“You this forward with all your conquests?”
Jim rolls to his side, propping his head up on his hand to look at Leonard, and gives him that smirk again. “Sorry, forgot you were some innocent Southern belle. Didn’t mean to offend your sensibilities.”
“Fine. Since you asked, ex-wife. We were together for six years.” Leonard swears Jim’s eyes dim a little just then. “But I like and have been with men, too.”
“Fascinating. So maybe San Francisco wasn’t an entirely random choice?”
“Maybe not. But I’m not interested in anything at the moment, and I definitely don’t see patients. Hell, I feel weird about even being here right now.”
“What if I’m not your patient anymore?”
“Still not happening, kid.” Technically if the patient-physician relationship was terminated, it wouldn’t be a violation, but it still doesn’t sit right with Leonard. And he knows from his dad and Jocelyn that things didn’t turn out well when he’s involved in the medical care of people close to him. “Just a minefield of ethical issues and unavoidable power dynamics. Besides that’d involve your fool ass staying out of my ED, which I don’t see happening anytime soon.”
“Don’t know if you know this, Bones, but some people are into having power dynamics in their relationships,” Jim replies with an eyebrow waggle.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“So are you getting laid at all?”
“I don’t see how your doctor’s sex life is any of your business. Besides, I've told you plenty. What about you? What are you doing riding around San Francisco like a goddamn maniac?”
“Moved here a couple of years ago from Iowa. Needed to get out of Riverside and even without Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell there was no way I was enlisting and getting shipped off to whatever country Bush had decided to invade that week, which was the only way anyone else ever left. And then I needed a job I could get with a GED and a few priors.”
“Iowa? Seriously? I had you pegged as some California surfer kid.” Somehow this surprised Leonard more than the GED or the rap sheet.
“Technically I’m a California native. I was born out here while my parents were visiting, but I grew up in Iowa. Never even saw the ocean until I came out here, at least that I remember. When I started I was quick but had no idea where anything was. Got fired from my first job after two weeks. I know all the shortcuts now though. Where do you live? Bet I can get there faster than you.”
“I’m sure you can, so it doesn’t seem like much of a bet. Nice try trying to get me to invite you back.” Jim just smirks at him again. “I should get home though, I’m beat and have another shift in the morning.”
It isn't until he’s back at his apartment that Leonard realizes Jim wasn’t trying to get invited back, or at least not only. It was a bit of misdirection to keep Leonard from digging in further. Jim would happily share he was a high school dropout with a criminal record, that fit with whatever facade was trying to keep up. There’s more to Jim than that, he can tell, but nothing good could come with knowing. After the last few years, Leonard needs his life easy and uncomplicated, with only himself to look after, and there’s no doubt Jim would happily upend all of that if given the opportunity.
