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[fic] Literary Criticism - parts 1-4
Title: Literary Criticism [working title]
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
akainagi
Rating/Warnings/Spoilers: PG-13 / no warnings / no spoilers
Fandom/Pairing/Prompt: Star Trek AOS AU, Kirk/McCoy
Disclaimer: Alas, I do not own Star Trek.
Summary: Started as comment!porn over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
jim_and_bones. Jim Kirk is a bestselling author. When he meets Leonard McCoy, he falls into a love story of his own.
[CHAPTER 1]
“Next question. Third row from the back. In the checked shirt.” The scruffy-looking one in the jeans that were just the right kind of tight.
“Leonard McCoy. I have a question.”
Jim put on his winning-est best-selling-author smile and tried not to think about running his hands through the guy’s soft-looking, over-long hair. God, Jim's ex was right. He really didn’t think about anything but sex. “Fire away,” he replied gamely.
“Don’t you think the relationship between the characters in your latest book is a breach of ethics?” The man’s southern drawl spawned a minute thrill down the author’s spine. Jim seriously needed to do more book tours in Georgia. Damn.
“How so?”
The man named McCoy arched an eyebrow in a how the fuck do you think? expression. “On the one side, a doctor is sleeping with his patient. On the other side, a captain is sleeping with his subordinate. Doesn’t take a genius to see the conflict there.”
It wasn’t like Jim hadn’t heard this particular piece of criticism before. “You have to take into account that the novel is set in the 23rd century. Not all of our current social mores necessarily apply.”
“Ethics are still ethics,” the seemingly older man fired back stubbornly.
Jim’s smile widened, which seemed to have an inverse effect on the other man’s expression. “Tell me, mister McCoy.”
“Doctor.”
“Doctor McCoy,” he amended. “Haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?”
The scowl on the man – correction, the doctor’s – face deepened to the degree that creases appeared in his brow. “There’s a difference between stupid and unethical,” he fired back before sitting down. The man’s frown was still in place, but he looked slightly unsettled. The assembled crowd tittered in the fallout of the exchange. Jim was feeling a different kind of fallout himself.
The severe woman next to Jim put a hand over his microphone and hissed, “You know that mouthy bastard?”
Jim fought to keep the grin off his face. He only partly succeeded. “Nope,” he replied sotto voce to his glowering publicist. “But I like him.”
[CHAPTER 2]
Haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?
In the wake of his public criticism of the author, Leonard keenly felt the gaze of at least a dozen vengeful Jim Kirk fangirls (and quite a few fanboys, actually). They seemed to be doing their level best to incinerate Leonard with their eyes. He hadn’t meant to be quite so vocal in his criticism. But something about the author’s easy assurance and cocky attitude set the doctor’s teeth on edge.
Haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?
Leonard shifted in his seat and thought of Jocelyn. He thought of falling into marriage at 18. He thought of being so in love he couldn’t imagine ever wanting anything more than her. He thought about waking up one morning to freshly –brewed coffee and freshly-drawn divorce papers. And he remembered the feeling of resignation and the perverse sensation of relief, because now no one had to pretend it was working anymore, if it ever really had.
Leonard cursed the whim that had led him to attend this damned thing in the first place. He felt the keen desire to flee.
But his momma had raised him with manners. And it would be rude to sneak out in the middle of the event. So he sat back and watched Jim Kirk’s responses to his fawning public. The author’s looks were wasted on the printed page, that was for sure. Black-and-white dust jacket photos did not do the man justice. He was all smiles and animated gestures and enthusiasm that seemed, at least from this distance, to be genuine. For a man whose prose was so escapist on its face, Kirk cut a thoroughly charismatic figure in the real world.
Haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?
Jocelyn had always said he was a closet romantic at heart. Leonard’s enjoyment of Kirk’s novels was an offering to that part of his nature he had tried so hard to bury after his marriage went spectacularly south. They were a guilty pleasure. And no matter how vociferously he criticized certain aspects of the works, he would probably still be in line to buy the next one when the time came.
There was a noticeable stirring all around Leonard as an end was called to the Q&A proceedings. People began to gravitate with urgency towards the author’s table, everyone eager for autographs and pictures. Everyone except Leonard. He made his way to the back exit. It must have been his deeply-ingrained masochistic streak that caused him to shoot one last glance back at the man ensconced behind the head table. One gaze cut across and another drew up, and there they were, locked in some clichéd wordless exchange from across the crowded room. Leonard would have expected the icy glare of an artist toward a harsh critic, but Jim Kirk’s expression, set over a slight smile, was open and amused.
Kirk raised an eyebrow in Leonard’s direction. Not to be outdone, Leonard returned the favor. The other man’s face broke into a grin that lit up his features. The expression was cocksure and thoroughly appealing and the doctor’s breath stuttered only very slightly in his chest. He ducked quickly out of the room before anyone could notice the flush that was most definitely not creeping its way up from his neck.
Leonard spent the ride home contemplating who was staffing his ER tomorrow, trying to remember if he had returned M’Benga’s copies of the AMA Journal, and idly wondering – he had been too far away to tell – what color Kirk’s eyes were. And then grumbling to his own pathetic self for that last thought.
The man’s eyes were blue, the doctor would find out less than 24 hours later. Wide and startlingly blue and terrified. Right before Jim T. Kirk (breathe, goddamnit, breathe) coded in the middle of Leonard McCoy’s ER.
[CHAPTER 3]
Epi-pens are funny things, Jim Kirk discovered much to his annoyance. They only work if you actually take them to the restaurant with you.
One moment he was having a pleasant lunch with his editor – and by pleasant he meant amusing and caustic – the next moment he felt the telltale beginnings of a progressively worsening wheeze. This was followed closely by everyone in the general vicinity throwing themselves into a blind panic.
Except for Nyota. That woman could be calm from the epicenter of an earthquake. Through Jim’s own (air - not enough fucking air!) panic he made out her blurry form barking instructions and firmly dissuading (back off!) spectators, all while loosening Jim’s collar and searching his person for the epi-pen he supposedly had with him at all times. He couldn’t be sure through the haze of his own ongoing trauma, but he thought he heard the words “moron” and “quitting” when Nyota realized he didn’t have one. He hoped she didn’t quit. She was a goddamn good editor. And he was good friends with her husband, so that would be kinda awkward if she actually quit.
By the time the EMT’s arrived, Jim had progressed to the full-blown anaphylaxis stage, and the lack of oxygen to his brain was taking every previously panic-sharpened edge and dulling it with a confused haze. He was being hefted, carried, and he felt various pokes and prods. Even if it all felt as if his body and mind currently inhabited different time zones. He tried to say something, but that was the moment where they decided that it would be a good idea to try to shove a tube down his throat. Fuck try, they just did it. Jim had only gone through intubation a few times in his life, despite a list of allergies that bordered on novel-length. Very few times had he put hismelf in a position for things to go so very wrong.
At least the tube alleviated some of the air hunger currently squeezing the life out of him. He came back to awareness in time to feel himself being hauled off the ambulance and wheeled into a brightly lit (hospital?) space. Uniformed medical staff flitted back and forth like blue-clad flies. Their voices all drowned into a background hum until a single, barking, authoritative voice cut through everything with the finesse of a blunt knife.
Through the violent convulsing in his airway and the squeezing of his chest, Jim barely recognized the white-coated figure that appeared over him, backlit by what could only be the luminary equivalent of a thousand suns. It was the doc from last night – the grumpy one with the drawl and the scowl. Jim could just barely make out that singular scowl – which intensified severalfold right before Jim’s chest seized in abject agony and the spots crowded his vision to black.
[CHAPTER 4]
This was why Leonard worked emergency medicine, he thought to himself as he stalked through the halls of University Hospital. It was easier to see a snapshot of trauma when it was out of context. Easier to see someone at their worst when you never saw them at their best. Leonard didn’t usually have to see people vibrant and perfectly healthy one moment and coding in his ER the next moment. He didn’t have to run the code and bark out med orders and intubate someone who he had been (albeit politely) bitching out less than 48 hours before.
Turns out it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Leonard stuck his head into the CCU with uncharacteristic hesitancy, expecting to have it chewed off by whatever nurse was staffing the overnight. Instead he got Christine.
“’Evening Len. What brings you out of your little self-contained trauma-filled universe this evening?”
Trauma-filled was right. Not really wanting to explain why he was skulking around the famous author’s room like a fanboy with a crush (or a critic with a guilty conscience), he answered Christine’s question with a, “and what the hell are you doing on the overnight?”
“No fair answering a question with a question.” She looked at him with a sneaking smile. “You here to check up on our celebrity, huh?”
“I’m here to check on my patient.”
Christine’s smile grew as she shook her head. “Not your patient anymore. He’s Doctor Komak’s patient now.”
Leonard scowled so hard divots appeared in his brow. “Komak couldn’t find his own ass with both hands.”
The nurse barked out a laugh. “Just between us, the rest of the nursing staff agrees with you on that count. Why don’t you go check on ‘your’ patient, since you’ve apparently adopted him,” Christine teased. “I have to check on bed two.” She glided off, leaving Leonard standing in front of the only room with an empty nameplate. It was kept that way to discourage gawkers or anyone ballsy enough to sneak past security with the intention of getting a glimpse of a celebrity patient.
The doctor moved quietly over the threshold.
Hospital beds had a tendency to reduce even the most solid physique to an appearance of almost child-like frailty. This figure was so many miles away from the Jim Kirk he had faced off against in a lecture hall that Leonard might not have recognized him. The vibrant personality was gone, replaced instead by a form that had been exhausted into a unconsiousness. According to his chart, Kirk had passed his spontaneous breathing trials with flying colors, though he remained inubated. The small room was filled with the even beeping of a cheery and regular sinus rhythm.
Leonard suddenly felt transported back to the sound of flatlining monitors and the obscene grimace of a man in the midst of a cardiac arrest. He couldn’t reconcile that memory with this sad current visage. Could reconcile it even less with Kirk’s animated countenance from their first encounter. The Doctor in him knew how slim the young man's chances had been. How close Jim Kirk had come to slipping under, down and away. Leonard felt a slight squeezing in his own chest. Christ. This was why he never followed-up with his patients up on the floors. He invested himself far too easily.
“He had breathing trials this afternoon,” Christine offered from his right shoulder.
“Yeah, I know. I wrote the orders.”
“Yeah? I thought that was your illegible handwriting.”
Leonard snorted. “You’re such a harpy.”
“And you’re a grump,” the nurse shot back good-naturedly. She nudged him in the side. “Tube's supposed to come out this evening." She didn't point out that they were rapidly running out of evening. "Feel like doing some extubating?”
Leonard raised one expressive eyebrow. “As you pointed out, he’s Doctor Komak’s patient.”
“Yeah. But that lazy so-and-so will probably push it off ‘till tomorrow. Give plenty of time for a nice pneumonia to set in. I can page him and tell him you’re doing the honors. He’d be thrilled to get out of actual work.”
Leonard shouldn’t. The words "overinvested" and "boundaries" floated through his head, doing battle with more grim terms like "bacterial colonization." In a fit of characteristic obstinacy, he pushed them aside and went with his gut. In the event the extubation failed, he’d rather it be him taking care of Jim Kirk than Komak. He stubbornly chose not to examine why that conviction was so strong.
“I’ll make the call to Komak. You’ll probably say something insubordinate.”
Chris grinned, her expression clearly saying she was unsurprised at the decision. “Yeah, I probably would.”
[MORE TO COME...]
Author:
akainagiRating/Warnings/Spoilers: PG-13 / no warnings / no spoilers
Fandom/Pairing/Prompt: Star Trek AOS AU, Kirk/McCoy
Disclaimer: Alas, I do not own Star Trek.
Summary: Started as comment!porn over at
jim_and_bones. Jim Kirk is a bestselling author. When he meets Leonard McCoy, he falls into a love story of his own.“Next question. Third row from the back. In the checked shirt.” The scruffy-looking one in the jeans that were just the right kind of tight.
“Leonard McCoy. I have a question.”
Jim put on his winning-est best-selling-author smile and tried not to think about running his hands through the guy’s soft-looking, over-long hair. God, Jim's ex was right. He really didn’t think about anything but sex. “Fire away,” he replied gamely.
“Don’t you think the relationship between the characters in your latest book is a breach of ethics?” The man’s southern drawl spawned a minute thrill down the author’s spine. Jim seriously needed to do more book tours in Georgia. Damn.
“How so?”
The man named McCoy arched an eyebrow in a how the fuck do you think? expression. “On the one side, a doctor is sleeping with his patient. On the other side, a captain is sleeping with his subordinate. Doesn’t take a genius to see the conflict there.”
It wasn’t like Jim hadn’t heard this particular piece of criticism before. “You have to take into account that the novel is set in the 23rd century. Not all of our current social mores necessarily apply.”
“Ethics are still ethics,” the seemingly older man fired back stubbornly.
Jim’s smile widened, which seemed to have an inverse effect on the other man’s expression. “Tell me, mister McCoy.”
“Doctor.”
“Doctor McCoy,” he amended. “Haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?”
The scowl on the man – correction, the doctor’s – face deepened to the degree that creases appeared in his brow. “There’s a difference between stupid and unethical,” he fired back before sitting down. The man’s frown was still in place, but he looked slightly unsettled. The assembled crowd tittered in the fallout of the exchange. Jim was feeling a different kind of fallout himself.
The severe woman next to Jim put a hand over his microphone and hissed, “You know that mouthy bastard?”
Jim fought to keep the grin off his face. He only partly succeeded. “Nope,” he replied sotto voce to his glowering publicist. “But I like him.”
Haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?
In the wake of his public criticism of the author, Leonard keenly felt the gaze of at least a dozen vengeful Jim Kirk fangirls (and quite a few fanboys, actually). They seemed to be doing their level best to incinerate Leonard with their eyes. He hadn’t meant to be quite so vocal in his criticism. But something about the author’s easy assurance and cocky attitude set the doctor’s teeth on edge.
Haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?
Leonard shifted in his seat and thought of Jocelyn. He thought of falling into marriage at 18. He thought of being so in love he couldn’t imagine ever wanting anything more than her. He thought about waking up one morning to freshly –brewed coffee and freshly-drawn divorce papers. And he remembered the feeling of resignation and the perverse sensation of relief, because now no one had to pretend it was working anymore, if it ever really had.
Leonard cursed the whim that had led him to attend this damned thing in the first place. He felt the keen desire to flee.
But his momma had raised him with manners. And it would be rude to sneak out in the middle of the event. So he sat back and watched Jim Kirk’s responses to his fawning public. The author’s looks were wasted on the printed page, that was for sure. Black-and-white dust jacket photos did not do the man justice. He was all smiles and animated gestures and enthusiasm that seemed, at least from this distance, to be genuine. For a man whose prose was so escapist on its face, Kirk cut a thoroughly charismatic figure in the real world.
Haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?
Jocelyn had always said he was a closet romantic at heart. Leonard’s enjoyment of Kirk’s novels was an offering to that part of his nature he had tried so hard to bury after his marriage went spectacularly south. They were a guilty pleasure. And no matter how vociferously he criticized certain aspects of the works, he would probably still be in line to buy the next one when the time came.
There was a noticeable stirring all around Leonard as an end was called to the Q&A proceedings. People began to gravitate with urgency towards the author’s table, everyone eager for autographs and pictures. Everyone except Leonard. He made his way to the back exit. It must have been his deeply-ingrained masochistic streak that caused him to shoot one last glance back at the man ensconced behind the head table. One gaze cut across and another drew up, and there they were, locked in some clichéd wordless exchange from across the crowded room. Leonard would have expected the icy glare of an artist toward a harsh critic, but Jim Kirk’s expression, set over a slight smile, was open and amused.
Kirk raised an eyebrow in Leonard’s direction. Not to be outdone, Leonard returned the favor. The other man’s face broke into a grin that lit up his features. The expression was cocksure and thoroughly appealing and the doctor’s breath stuttered only very slightly in his chest. He ducked quickly out of the room before anyone could notice the flush that was most definitely not creeping its way up from his neck.
Leonard spent the ride home contemplating who was staffing his ER tomorrow, trying to remember if he had returned M’Benga’s copies of the AMA Journal, and idly wondering – he had been too far away to tell – what color Kirk’s eyes were. And then grumbling to his own pathetic self for that last thought.
The man’s eyes were blue, the doctor would find out less than 24 hours later. Wide and startlingly blue and terrified. Right before Jim T. Kirk (breathe, goddamnit, breathe) coded in the middle of Leonard McCoy’s ER.
Epi-pens are funny things, Jim Kirk discovered much to his annoyance. They only work if you actually take them to the restaurant with you.
One moment he was having a pleasant lunch with his editor – and by pleasant he meant amusing and caustic – the next moment he felt the telltale beginnings of a progressively worsening wheeze. This was followed closely by everyone in the general vicinity throwing themselves into a blind panic.
Except for Nyota. That woman could be calm from the epicenter of an earthquake. Through Jim’s own (air - not enough fucking air!) panic he made out her blurry form barking instructions and firmly dissuading (back off!) spectators, all while loosening Jim’s collar and searching his person for the epi-pen he supposedly had with him at all times. He couldn’t be sure through the haze of his own ongoing trauma, but he thought he heard the words “moron” and “quitting” when Nyota realized he didn’t have one. He hoped she didn’t quit. She was a goddamn good editor. And he was good friends with her husband, so that would be kinda awkward if she actually quit.
By the time the EMT’s arrived, Jim had progressed to the full-blown anaphylaxis stage, and the lack of oxygen to his brain was taking every previously panic-sharpened edge and dulling it with a confused haze. He was being hefted, carried, and he felt various pokes and prods. Even if it all felt as if his body and mind currently inhabited different time zones. He tried to say something, but that was the moment where they decided that it would be a good idea to try to shove a tube down his throat. Fuck try, they just did it. Jim had only gone through intubation a few times in his life, despite a list of allergies that bordered on novel-length. Very few times had he put hismelf in a position for things to go so very wrong.
At least the tube alleviated some of the air hunger currently squeezing the life out of him. He came back to awareness in time to feel himself being hauled off the ambulance and wheeled into a brightly lit (hospital?) space. Uniformed medical staff flitted back and forth like blue-clad flies. Their voices all drowned into a background hum until a single, barking, authoritative voice cut through everything with the finesse of a blunt knife.
Through the violent convulsing in his airway and the squeezing of his chest, Jim barely recognized the white-coated figure that appeared over him, backlit by what could only be the luminary equivalent of a thousand suns. It was the doc from last night – the grumpy one with the drawl and the scowl. Jim could just barely make out that singular scowl – which intensified severalfold right before Jim’s chest seized in abject agony and the spots crowded his vision to black.
This was why Leonard worked emergency medicine, he thought to himself as he stalked through the halls of University Hospital. It was easier to see a snapshot of trauma when it was out of context. Easier to see someone at their worst when you never saw them at their best. Leonard didn’t usually have to see people vibrant and perfectly healthy one moment and coding in his ER the next moment. He didn’t have to run the code and bark out med orders and intubate someone who he had been (albeit politely) bitching out less than 48 hours before.
Turns out it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Leonard stuck his head into the CCU with uncharacteristic hesitancy, expecting to have it chewed off by whatever nurse was staffing the overnight. Instead he got Christine.
“’Evening Len. What brings you out of your little self-contained trauma-filled universe this evening?”
Trauma-filled was right. Not really wanting to explain why he was skulking around the famous author’s room like a fanboy with a crush (or a critic with a guilty conscience), he answered Christine’s question with a, “and what the hell are you doing on the overnight?”
“No fair answering a question with a question.” She looked at him with a sneaking smile. “You here to check up on our celebrity, huh?”
“I’m here to check on my patient.”
Christine’s smile grew as she shook her head. “Not your patient anymore. He’s Doctor Komak’s patient now.”
Leonard scowled so hard divots appeared in his brow. “Komak couldn’t find his own ass with both hands.”
The nurse barked out a laugh. “Just between us, the rest of the nursing staff agrees with you on that count. Why don’t you go check on ‘your’ patient, since you’ve apparently adopted him,” Christine teased. “I have to check on bed two.” She glided off, leaving Leonard standing in front of the only room with an empty nameplate. It was kept that way to discourage gawkers or anyone ballsy enough to sneak past security with the intention of getting a glimpse of a celebrity patient.
The doctor moved quietly over the threshold.
Hospital beds had a tendency to reduce even the most solid physique to an appearance of almost child-like frailty. This figure was so many miles away from the Jim Kirk he had faced off against in a lecture hall that Leonard might not have recognized him. The vibrant personality was gone, replaced instead by a form that had been exhausted into a unconsiousness. According to his chart, Kirk had passed his spontaneous breathing trials with flying colors, though he remained inubated. The small room was filled with the even beeping of a cheery and regular sinus rhythm.
Leonard suddenly felt transported back to the sound of flatlining monitors and the obscene grimace of a man in the midst of a cardiac arrest. He couldn’t reconcile that memory with this sad current visage. Could reconcile it even less with Kirk’s animated countenance from their first encounter. The Doctor in him knew how slim the young man's chances had been. How close Jim Kirk had come to slipping under, down and away. Leonard felt a slight squeezing in his own chest. Christ. This was why he never followed-up with his patients up on the floors. He invested himself far too easily.
“He had breathing trials this afternoon,” Christine offered from his right shoulder.
“Yeah, I know. I wrote the orders.”
“Yeah? I thought that was your illegible handwriting.”
Leonard snorted. “You’re such a harpy.”
“And you’re a grump,” the nurse shot back good-naturedly. She nudged him in the side. “Tube's supposed to come out this evening." She didn't point out that they were rapidly running out of evening. "Feel like doing some extubating?”
Leonard raised one expressive eyebrow. “As you pointed out, he’s Doctor Komak’s patient.”
“Yeah. But that lazy so-and-so will probably push it off ‘till tomorrow. Give plenty of time for a nice pneumonia to set in. I can page him and tell him you’re doing the honors. He’d be thrilled to get out of actual work.”
Leonard shouldn’t. The words "overinvested" and "boundaries" floated through his head, doing battle with more grim terms like "bacterial colonization." In a fit of characteristic obstinacy, he pushed them aside and went with his gut. In the event the extubation failed, he’d rather it be him taking care of Jim Kirk than Komak. He stubbornly chose not to examine why that conviction was so strong.
“I’ll make the call to Komak. You’ll probably say something insubordinate.”
Chris grinned, her expression clearly saying she was unsurprised at the decision. “Yeah, I probably would.”