browngirl

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

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 challenged 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.