Jim and Monty

Jim wasn't thinking about how he'd been stupid. About how he'd been reckless. About how Len—and Frank—had been right all along, except that right now he wasn't the one lying on the ground with his arm at a funny angle. He wasn't thinking about how that was messed up and wrong and how his friends shouldn't have to pay for his mistakes. Jim wasn't thinking about any of that.

Jim was running.

Mud and dirt were flying up in his wake as he tore down Derby Drive, because Len's grandparents were out, and Hikaru's mom was out, and where the hell were grown-ups when you actually needed them? Screw that—he needed a phone.

They were poor, he and his mother. He knew that. As a result, the old farmhouse didn't have call consoles, nothing wired to the network. But Frank had a personal cell, and Jim was going to find it—even if it'd get him smacked later, even if he had to rip it out of Frank's stupid, ugly fingers and run for it. The house came into view behind the tall fence next to the garage and Jim flew up the front steps, yanking open the screen door and shoving his way inside.

Then he stopped, because there was no yelling, no lumbering footsteps in the kitchen, no keep it the down, ya little bastard!

He nearly tripped on the broom and dustpan in the hall—right where he'd left them after cleaning up the broken glass earlier that morning. He ran into the kitchen, then through the living room, then up the stairs and back down again before realizing Frank was gone. Then he remembered Frank snapping at him after lunch on his way out the door. I'm going to work; I'll be back late. There's pizza in the fridge. Don't do anything stupid.

No Frank, no phone.

All at once, it hit him that he should have just run to Len's grandparents', or Hikaru should have just run back to his house, and he'd been so goddamn stupid to forget that Frank was leaving for the afternoon.

Jim shook the thought from his head, because back at the abandoned lot Len was lying on the ground, stunned and scared and hurt. He'd wasted precious time. He ran back out the front door.

If he hadn't looked to his right while flying back down the steps, Jim might never have seen him: another kid, a boy from the look of it, with buzzed red-brown hair, ten yards out and walking east down Derby Drive.

"Hey!" Jim yelled.

The kid jumped and whipped around. Even at a distance Jim could see he was surprised and a little scared. He started backing away, and Jim started running toward him.

"Wait! I need your help! HEY!"

"Where the bloody hell did you come from?" the kid blurted out.

He had to be a Starfleet kid, because he had an accent and Jim had never seen him before at school. But there was no time to ask.

"My best friend just fell out of a tree and he's hurt," Jim said, "I need a phone."

The kid was staring at him like he'd grown an extra head.

"Please!" he yelled, anger mixing with fear and guilt. "He's hurt and I need your help!"

The kid blinked at him, and for a moment Jim thought maybe he wasn't all there, but then he spoke: "You need a grown-up. C'mon, mate!" He started running down Derby Drive, motioning for Jim to follow.

"Where are we going?" Jim shouted after him. Derby Drive was a long road. It stretched out for at least half an hour on foot, all the way past the Archer farm, before it dead-ended.

"My house!" the kid yelled back. "My parents aren't home but my brother is!"

Monty had determined that he needed a new name.

Nothing totally out of the blue, mind—he wasn't one of those kids who wanted something weird and flashy and ultimately stupid. But he was the new kid, or he was about to be, and "Montgomery Scott" had always been long and unwieldy, even for him.

That, and he was sick of the nicknames. Monty was all right, sure, but nobody at home actually called him that. His mum's voice, cloyingly sweet over the video feed earlier that morning, had been the last straw: Gummy, love, be good for your brother, all right? Your dad and I will be back with Katharine and the twins this time tomorrow.

They were in Glasgow, finishing up packing for the move. Katharine was with them because she and Greg would've torn each other limb from limb the moment Mum and Dad were out of the house, and the twins were with them because they were too little for Greg to look after on his own. But Monty was old enough to know not to run with scissors or mess with the stove when no one was looking, and therefore not too much for Greg to handle by himself for a weekend.

Not that that made his mood any less foul.

Greg was eighteen and blinkered, as their mum had explained to Monty, the day their dad had announced they were moving to some obscure town in the 'States called Riverside, Iowa. Greg and his dad had gotten into a shouting match about it, in which Greg had yelled something about how if Starfleet was gonna string him along to the other side of the planet, he should at least have a bloody commission instead of being Christopher Pike's glorified mechanic.

"It's a good job and a shot at something better for Katharine and Gum and the twins and you, so I'll thank you to keep your moaning to yourself," their dad had retorted, effectively ending the discussion.

As usual, Monty thought, Greg was being an arse. Who actually got to build starships for a living, whether or not they had a stupid commission?

Of course, Greg didn't see it that way. All he saw was a dusty, unpaved road in the middle of nowhere, with none of his friends and nothing familiar, and nobody he knew except his folks, who drove him up the bloody wall. He'd said as much as he'd shoved a cheese and tomato sandwich at Monty during lunch. Monty didn't like cheese and tomato. He'd said so and Greg had snapped at him, so he'd gone out for a walk on the aforementioned unpaved road, which was muddy from the recent rain.

As much as he hated to admit it, his brother was right about one thing: there wasn't really much to see on their new street. Just another tiny, run-down farmhouse—possibly vacant—and a bunch of corn. And despite himself, he was hungry. So he'd started heading back.

"Hey!"

The shout came out of nowhere and made him jump. He spun around and saw another boy: dirty jeans, blond, floppy hair. Running at him full tilt.

Monty took an instinctive step backward, his heart starting to pound. In his earth sciences class back at home, he'd once come across a little paragraph on rabies and how animals that had it went completely mad, losing all sense of fear and gaining absurd strength because of all the adrenaline in their blood. He knew if people got it and weren't treated they eventually died, but he couldn't remember whether they went crazy too.

Why hadn't he brought a bloody comm? His mum had left him with hers for a reason—this just might be it.

But then the boy hollered at him again and made him hesitate:

"Wait, I need your help! Hey!"

The boy skidded to a halt in front of him, wide-eyed and breathing hard.

"Where the bloody hell did you come from?" was all Monty could think to say.

The boy ignored him. "My best friend just fell out of a tree and he's hurt," he said. "I need a phone."

Monty blinked as he processed this information. Tree. Hurt. Phone.

"Please!" the boy shouted, and Monty realized he wasn't angry, just scared and desperate. "He's hurt and I need your help!"

His stomach gave a sickening lurch. Hurt could mean anything from I-need-a-bandage to I-need-an-ambulance, and he'd never actually known anyone who'd fallen out of a tree before, and bloody hell, he was just a kid without a comm—

Greg.

Of course. Stupid.

The boy was still staring at him, so Monty started back down the road, motioning for him to follow. Words were tumbling out of his mouth: "You need a grown-up." And: "C'mon, mate!"

They were running.

He'd never run so fast in his life, but the other boy was still faster. Whether that was because he was scared or because he was actually just that fast, Monty didn't know. All he knew was that when he rounded the corner to his house and sprinted into the kitchen through the side door, his eyes were watering and his lungs were burning like fire.

Greg was still at the kitchen counter where Monty had left him, and at the sound of the screen door banging shut he whipped around. "Gum—what the—for God's sake you just tracked mud all over the bloody kitchen!" he shouted. "And who the hell's this?"

Between huge, gasping breaths, together Monty and the other boy managed to explain:

"He says—"

"My friend—"

"Out of a tree—"

"Think he—broke his arm—"

Greg's eyes went wide. He looked from Monty to the other boy, then back to Monty. Then he nodded and snatched up the keys to their dad's car.

"Show me."