Title: Words for Pictures

Author: Gixxer Pilot

Summary: Cop!verse AU Halloween fic. If there really are pictures worth a thousand words, Pike finds out it's not wise to show Jim Kirk the cold, hard evidence. It's especially unwise when the subject of the picture is one Leonard McCoy.

Author's Notes: I'm wondering if it's wise to admit this, but I actually took time out of my life to watch Priest. I thought it felt a bit like jack-ten off suite in poker: it looked good, but did nothing, which was exactly what I expected from it. But, a few good things did come out of that eighty minutes, and it came in the form of inspiration for the first cop!verse Halloween fic. This is a flash-backy thing, so we're talking the span between 'present time' and 'several years earlier' of about a dozen years. Though it starts out in June, I promise. There's Halloween-y goodness all over in chapters two and three, along with devious!Kirk and an epically cranky McCoy who's ready to kill his partners, both past and present.

Disclaimer: If I owned them, do you all really think I'd be writing this as fiction? Hell to the no! But just in case, nothing's mine other than the ideas and the OCs, and I don't make Flanders (diddily) off what I write.

Chapter 1

When McCoy volunteered him into an afternoon of indentured servitude, Jim Kirk thought he'd spend it figuring out a new and ingenious way of making his partner's life positively miserable as payback. Really, there was a man law against what Bones had done. Interrupting sports was like taking the last beer without asking, not that the latter was a concern with Bones as a best friend. He certainly liked the Pike family and had no trouble whatsoever helping out when Chris needed a couple of extra sets of hands, but why, of all times, must it be during the Stanley Cup Finals?

As the department's anointed hockey nut, Kirk was the one who stayed abreast of news from the NHL, the one who made sure he caught all the big games on TV (he had satellite in his apartment just for NHL Center Ice), and the one who really enjoyed every single aspect of the game. McCoy – well, as much as Jim loved his partner, he also understood Bones couldn't tell the difference between the Habs and a hat trick.

Pike, in his defense, had been apologetic when he'd heard when exactly the deciding game of the series fell. He'd offered Kirk the chance to renege on the offer of help, but Jim believed in keeping his obligations. He and Chris came up with a fair compromise – Jim would come over early to do his part, which would, in turn, leave him free for the evening to watch the game. That left McCoy to show up whenever he was done doing…whatever the hell he did on his days off.

Kirk was understandably subdued while he worked to clean the garage in preparation for Ethan's high school graduation party. Once the garage floor was clear of various bits of automotive parts and tools, the pair wrestled the six folding tables together into devices that might actually be able to bear weight. Lynn did her part and brought the decorations for the festivities – tablecloths, confetti, napkins, plates, plastic flatware, all in Ethan's school colors of maroon and gold – which overflowed from the boxes she kept adding to the collection on the table.

Jim internalized a sigh and reached into the cooler Chris brought out for a beer. Popping the top, he stuck one lazy hand into the box closest to him and pulled out the first thing he touched. Ethan's high school varsity letter lay neatly in a frame, surrounded by all the sports and activities in which he'd earned varsity honors. Kirk smiled when he saw the captain's star next to the crossed hockey sticks. Jim set them down on the table and kept digging, pulling out old photos from when the youngest Pike was child, through his tween and teenage years, and finally, his senior class photo.

Draining his beer, Kirk picked up the box and gave it a shake to make sure it was empty. But the scratching sound of something scraping across the bottom of the cardboard caught his attention, and Jim set the box back down. Tossing his empty beer bottle across the garage and into the recycling bin, the patrol cop reached in and dislodged a picture frame from the flap of the box. Upside down, Jim didn't know what to make of the rather dated, antiquated, and beaten up frame at first.

And then he turned it over.

If a picture was worth a thousand words, Jim Kirk was convinced that he'd just stumbled right on to the holy grail of all things Leonard McCoy. He almost didn't believe what his eyes were most certainly telling him. Kirk pinched himself a couple of times just to be sure he wasn't dreaming before he truly let the image sink in.

The photo was probably just as old as the frame, given how much younger McCoy looked in it. Jim inspected his partner's face closely and noticed that almost all of the frown lines at the corners of his mouth and the dusting of crow's feet at his eyes were non-existent. His face was marginally slimmer, and his eyes didn't hold the jaded cynicism Kirk saw on a daily basis. It was odd; even though Jim saw the lighter side of his partner and he knew the man had a helluva sense of humor, it was still strange to look at such a young version of his friend. Hell, Kirk supposed that Bones wasn't much older in the picture than he was.

But it wasn't the youthful face of McCoy that surprised him, nor was it what drove him to silence. No, the picture itself was the most comical thing he'd seen in almost as long as he could remember, and Jim's brain was brought to an utter standstill when he tried to articulate his feelings. Trying and failing to start an appropriate sentence twice, Kirk eventually managed to squeak out, "Oh, my God. Is that Bones?"

Chris Pike stopped in mid-stride, spun on one heel and walked toward the incredulous man rooted in front of the table in the middle of the garage. He set the box he was carrying down on one of the adjacent folding chairs and peered over the younger man's shoulders. A chuckle floated from the lieutenant when Pike's sharp eyes registered the framed photo Kirk was clutching in his right hand. Motioning, Chris said, "That wasn't supposed to be in there, but yeah, the one and the only. Bet you never knew he was half vampire."

Kirk threw his head back and laughed, though Pike wasn't sure if it was because of what he said, or because of the picture in the younger man's hands. "My partner is a lot of things, but half vampire is not one of them. Where the hell did this come from, and how did you manage to get him to pose for it?"

"I don't know if it was so much posing, Kirk. I think it was more that Lynn caught him before he could react in a more dignified manner," Pike corrected, smiling fondly as he looked at the picture of his son and his former partner.

"That reminds me to never do anything stupid around your wife. She's deadly with a camera, and this is the proof," Jim snorted out in response. Kirk continued to stare at the image of McCoy and Ethan, the latter dressed up in a black worse-for-wear Wyatt Earp style hat, tattered black vest and distressed high collared western shirt. But the dental accessories gave Kirk pause, and silently, he had to give Ethan kudos for deploying proper, badass-looking fangs from his front K-9 teeth. The accompanying fake blood dripping off the little additions added just an extra little touch of pizazz. "Whose brilliant idea was this?"

"Oh, I don't remember. I think my son was about six or seven there, so I'd imagine that it was his. You know how insistent he gets," Pike replied, reaching into the cooler to grab a beer for himself.

"Yeah, Bones tells me that hasn't changed, though I can't imagine where Ethan got that trait from," Kirk replied while he shot a cocky glance toward his lieutenant.

"If you're talking about my wife, you'd be right."

Jim laughed. "I'm talking about both of you! I'm telling you man, Bones has told me stories!" Kirk insisted.

"Oh, I'm sure he has. The man has enough ammo on me to last a lifetime. Fortunately, tracers work both ways," Pike replied, using a favorite Marine Corps reference that earned a roll of Jim's eyes.

"True that," Kirk answered. "Now, speaking of my partner, what is the deal here?" Jim asked, tapping the glass of the photo with his fingers while he practically bounced in place.

Pike shrugged passively. He knew at the same time that the young cop was practically bursting at the seams to hear the story behind the world's best blackmail photograph, and since Chris did take a little pleasure in embarrassing his former partner, he was more than ready to give it. However, that willingness didn't transcend past the equally strong need to drag out the suspense just a little while longer at Jim's expense. Casually, the lieutenant replied, "That's a long story, Kirk. Knowledge can and will be hazardous to your health if McCoy finds out that I not only showed you the picture, but told you how we got it."

Jim looked back down at the object in his hands. "No way, man. You can't just put a picture like this out here and expect I'm going to leave without hearing the story behind it," he contended, rather more forcefully than he'd intended. Kirk felt a giggle bubbling up in his chest as he memorized every detail of the goldmine he held in his hands. Looking up at his boss, Jim opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again and dropped his gaze.

Quite honestly, the picture of Ethan alone with his getup would have been enough, especially next to an in-uniform McCoy. But clearly, someone in the Pike household took it a couple of miles farther. In the photo, Ethan was standing, just behind Bones' right shoulder. Len was seated on the couch, head back and tilted slightly to the left. Surprise and shock were evident all over his face, given the bulging eyes and flared nostrils as the fangs in Ethan's mouth made contact with the sensitive skin near the juncture of McCoy's neck and collarbone. Kirk didn't know whose idea it was, but he was ready to shake the professor's hand and congratulate them on a job well done.

However, minor details still had to be addressed, like obtaining the story first. Jim plastered the most pathetic expression he could muster all over his face and practically begged, "Come on, Lieu. I need to hear this story, and I'll go on record when I say I don't care how badly Bones murders me. I have to know."

Pike smirked and pulled up one of the chairs, motioning for Jim to do the same. "Sit down, Kirk, and get comfortable. Might as well be sitting when you hear how we got this picture. I'd hate to have to call EMS because you fell over laughing and smashed your head on my garage floor."

Kirk raised a contemplative eyebrow. Oh, this was going to be good.

Next Up: Pike tells Jim a whopper of a story, and it even turns out to be true.