Fic: This Boy Has Changed
Anon at ST XI kink meme said: “Kirk has a manwhore reputation - most of it deserved. When his ship gossips about a tryst that didn’t happen and no one believes him - Kirk gets offended and slightly depressed that his crew doesn’t respect him. He turns into strict!captain and closes himself off. McCoy braves the storm and reminds Kirk of his true friends.”
This is my take of the prompt.
It was well-known fact that James Tiberius Kirk enjoys attention of opposite sex.
It was well-known fact that should an opportunity arise, James Tiberius Kirk will most likely take it.
It was well-known fact that James Tiberius Kirk is one of the least formal people you meet in the Starfleet. No matter of your rank - once you were off duty, he would insist on you calling him Jim, instead of ‘sir’ or ‘captain’.
Looking at these facts it was difficult to believe that the straight-faced figure in golden shirt, currently sitting in the captain’s chair, is the very same person the before mentioned facts were about.
Ever since the Alpha shift started, Captain had yet to flash his typical smile, flirt with Uhura, tease Chekov about pronouncing some “v” word, ask Sulu jokingly if he knew that fencing is not a sport for real men and throw some casual remark about fun Spock’s way. The Alpha shift was almost at its end - and Jim had only came to his Delta shift replacement, officially relieved them, greeted everyone and then was just signing PADDs with reports brought to him by his Yeoman - without teasing her about that all the time - and talked only when situation demanded him to.
When their replacements came and he remained seated until Lieutenant Milo came over and officially relieved him, they knew something was not quite alright. Jim Kirk never had been much of a fan of protocol, as far as they knew. Deciding that it was probably just another of his pranks (he loved to see the Bridge crew squirming, as several previous Jim Kirk’s Shenanigans Extraordinaire showed), they all went after their business.
The next wave of rumours hits everyone as hard as started-off truck. Captain reprimanding Ensigns in Engineering. Captain doing all of the paperwork in time. Captain refusing a drink - saying that things like that should not even be on a spaceship, recommending Scotty to decompose his previously “secret” distillery before an inspection finds it and he finds himself back at Delta Vega.
And the worst - he had not corrected Spock when he called him ‘captain’ when off duty.
That finally rings an alarm in the heads of the entire crew. More than once someone finds himself or herself thinking ‘who are you and what have you done to the Captain’. No matter how much it irked Rand that she usually had to hunt Kirk down before he finally started to work on all the reports, no matter how much Uhura hated the constant flirting or how much sometimes Chekov found himself wishing for ability to shut Captain up… No matter how much all of them complained about lack of respect to Starfleet protocol their Captain was showing - this new, serious Captain who almost never broke a joke (who only remarked on things in a tone similar to Spock - dry and most sobering) and followed protocol like it was his life philosophy (while previously he mostly ignored or bended it as he saw fit, as if it was his life philosophy) was quite scaring them all.
Uhura was the first one to gather her courage and ask him, if he’s feeling alright. He didn’t even look up from the report he was reading. “Of course I’m alright, Lieutenant. Why shouldn’t I?”
When Uhura stammers - yes, stammers, because Kirk talking to her in such dispassionate tones is still to unusual for her - that he had been acting unlike himself, he finally looks up and pins her down with his eyes. “Interesting,” he says, “I would have thought that you would be the first one to celebrate that her Captain finally matured.” He doesn’t allow further discussion - closing with remark that he believes all of them have job to do, so they probably should return to it.
It’s no surprise that the entire crew is kept on their tiptoes, because they have no idea what to expect from their Captain now. There are only two similarly scary people aboard - Mr Spock and Doctor McCoy; one of them would give you an eyebrow move of doom and the other can hypo you in the next century. And Spock himself is at loss about what to do now.
Doctor McCoy himself hasn’t noticed anything out of line yet. Not for lack of trying - but when you have your hands full with crewmen sick from some kind of stomach bug, which makes the patient puke their innards out, you usually do not pay much attention to anything what happens out of sickbay. He also completely missed Captain getting his physical and vaccinations in time and without single complain - after several shifts spent by being covered in various body fluids he had been happily sleeping in his quarters, finally clean and in horizontal position, when that memorable moment occurred.
“What do you mean - Captain’s physical is already done?” he growls at the nurse who hands him the latest batch of reports. “Why was I not notified?”
“Captain insisted that you are to be left to your rest and that Doctor Davis is more than suited to do his physical this time,” told him Nurse Mara.
“Jim. Insisting on someone else doing his physical. On time. Pull the other one - this one is getting a bit too long.”
Speaking with Davis just confirmed what Mara was saying. Jim insisted on leaving the CMO to his hard earned rest (while usually he would create havoc and hell about having him, Bones, to do his physical), took all of the necessary hypos (without even a single blink or complaint) and didn’t even attempted to flirt with his nurses.
As classics used to say - “something rotten in the vicinity of Enterprise.”
He finds out that himself soon enough, when he brings the medbay reports with him up to the Bridge. The tension there is enough to choke a horse, in his honest opinion (and no, do not go there when it comes to horse-like analogy and idioms, damit!), Spock standing like he had that proverbial stick even further in his ass, and it was completely silent there. Spock did hushed, Uhura did hushed, Sulu and Chekov were slightly louder than hushed. Jim never did silent, never did hushed. When he entered the place, it was known not only by hearing his easy laughter, his very presence - it was also by the very essence of “tam-ta-da-da, I’m here you suckers!” attitude Jim had mastered long time ago and used it most of the time.
Jim himself had been sitting in the centre of it all, signing something on the PADD in his hands. Signing up one last form, he finally looked up. “Ah, Doctor - I did not expect to see you up here.” His voice sounded neutral, his eyes guarded.
McCoy stepped closer. “I brought the reports your Yeoman had been threatening me about, Captain,” he says, watching the reaction. There is but a flash of the humour he used to connect with Jim, only to be quickly burrowed in the depths of the crystal blue eyes. And he called him ‘doctor’, for goodness sake. He decided to leave it for the moment, his brain already working like crazy about possible hypothesis for why the hell is this happening.
Fact - the only times Jim behaves is:
- something didn’t go as good as Jim expected
- something from Jim’s past just showed its ugly head and proceeded to bite him in the ass
- both of the above
Fact - how Jim deals problems:
- if it’s certain someone who is a damn pain in the ass, Jim starts to be pain in the ass, too
- drinks huge amounts of alcohol
- he has no problem because he has sex with it
Since sex was off-limits (should it be member of the crew), drinking in bigger amounts than the glass before bed would be inappropriate (yes, Jim Kirk actually knew how to be appropriate, if he set his mind to it), so the option to be pain in the ass is the only he has left right now.
Now, what the hell could be the source of this?
McCoy was no stranger to just observe and draw his own conclusions. All it took was to sit in the recreation room, sip coffee and pretend to be busy reading a book, while looking as if he wasn’t listening to everything what was spoken around him.
“Man,” groaned an ensign from security, “what the hell did crawl up Captain’s ass and died? He had been grilling us in drills every day for almost a week now - I think I’m going to die.”
“Tell me about it,” grumbled another one, this time from engineering, “we got almost the same from him now, too - emergency drill about evacuation, since engineering is - according to the Starfleet manuals - the slowest in emergency evacuations, so he decided to improve our time. Scotty is ready to tear his hair out already.”
They were complaining for some time, when they finally said something of relevance - “one would have thought that after getting laid so recently he wouldn’t be such a dick.”
Now that picked his curiosity. Jim getting laid recently? When and where was that supposed to happen?
“Yeah - did you see that Nitizilian chick? She was - “ the ensign did 'some curves' gesture with his hands - “and mate, I bet that the night had to be really full of fun, if you get my meaning,” he finished, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
“I bet - it’s just that I heard that he was quite vehement that absolutely nothing happened that night…” replied the engineer. The security guy just rolled his eyes. “See if I believe a word of it after seeing how glowing he was the morning after.”
Leonard just sat in his corner and thought. ‘Jim, you idiot - I always told you so…’
“So, Uhura,” he started lightly the next day during breakfast in the mess hall, “I noticed the Bridge is full of sunshine when I ventured there lately. Care to tell me what the hell was happening while I was stuck in sickbay?”
And Uhura told him what happened. At least her version of the events. So Jim had an affair with the Nitizilian delegate and when admonished for being so unprofessional, he continued to declare that nothing happened - which, given his past, no one really believed him, especially after seeing his glow.
That’s when it clicks together in his head. No wonder Jim was acting strangely. He never lied, unlike popular belief. It quite surprised McCoy that people still didn’t get it drilled into their heads. Nothing flipped Jim off more than people doubting him. That was when all kinds of hell usually broke through.
It was later that day; much later than Bones would have liked - but he got quite stuck in sickbay; the drills may have been quite useful, so while the security guys got some additional training, it was the medics who took the brunt of it due to all pulled muscles they had to treat afterwards. He had a bottle of Saurian brandy (the finest of his whole collection) and two glasses, as he walked towards Captain’s quarters.
He found himself a bit at loss for words once he stood in front of the doors to Jim’s cabin. Who knows how long he would be standing there, if the doors didn’t open abruptly and Jim’s voice didn’t sound from the inside. “Anything I can do for you, Doctor? Or do you just plan to stand a hole in the floor there?”
The room looked different than he remembered it from before - most of the tokens he ever received were gone from the relatively public space of Jim’s quarters, leaving only working table, several bookshelves filled by various manuals and a big poster map of Federation space.
He decided to cut the long story short. “I came to ask what exactly is going on with you, Jim. This,” he showed around, “is not what I came to recognize as Jim space.”
“Isn’t it?” shoots Jim back. “Maybe I finally learnt how to organize my working space, Doctor.” The title is a bit like a slap to Leonard’s face, who had been Bones for so long it feels like his second name.
“Or maybe you should learn how to mask your bullshit better,” he snaps.
Jim immediately bristles to that. “Watch that, Doctor, or…”
“Or what, Jim?” he demands, setting the bottle and glasses on the desk. “You’ll have me thrown in the brig? Will have the medical run through the drills, too?”
Jim actually looks a bit ashamed at the mentions of the drill, but only a little. “I believe the crew had been complaining about lack of professionalism from my side…” he starts but Leonard interrupts him again.
“They didn’t believe you, did they?” he asks, voice quiet this time.
The silence is stunning in its intensity, just like the blue of Jim’s eyes. There had been silence between the two of them before, usually the comfortable silence of two people who are content in each other’s presence, while they were working on paperwork or doing homework, when still at Academy. Not this elephant-is-happily-jumping-in-the-middle-of-the-room silence. He proceeds to fill the silence by pouring some of the brandy into glasses, shoving one of them Jim's way while seating himself in the chair opposite Jim's.
At last, Jim finally breaks the silence. "They didn't."
Sipping the brandy, they eye each other. Silence is no longer so heavy; it's still not as comfortable as before but Leonard hopes he will lift the remaining height before the evening ends.
"So, I've heard some pretty wild stories about captain being pain in the ass so soon after getting laid. Care to tell me what did really happen?"
"Basically what the crew saw - I acccompanied the delegate Ultrinnan to her rooms and she invited me in. The thing is - unlike popular belief, it wasn't because she wanted to have some fun, but because she wanted to talk to me without who knows how many people around. You know," he pauses, "to catch up. We used to know each other when we were children, kept in touch for quite some time. And if that wouldn't be enough to stop me from fucking my childhood friend - man, she's going to be married soon. Do I look so desperate to nail a taken woman?"
The good doctor just shakes his head. "Not to me, kid, but the rest of the crew does not know you the way I do. I think I need to yell at them for a bit, before they finally get it through that thick skulls of theirs."
There is another short pause. "Well," Leonard grumbles in the end, placing his glass on the table and refilling it. "I hope the idiots like the drills, because they definitely deserved them. Planning to do some of these for the command crew, too?"
His response is a single chuckle and amused look in Jim's eyes. Things are still fucked up - but if nothing else, now Jim knows that at least one person on the whole ship knows how things are.
If there are several yellings by the scary CMO taking place at various places of the ship during next few day, no one ever mentions them. The fact that the command crew suddenly does not know where to look when Captain marches on the Bridge, tips of Spock's ears green whenever he looks Captain's way, or the way Chekov mouth opens only to shut it again when he notices the warning glare from Uhura, is ostensibly not noticed by the Captain himself (while he is full of glee at the notion "I have a scary CMO and am not afraid of using him!")
The drills continue some more days; security is able to dash to anywhere in matter of seconds, engineering has the best time for evacuation in the whole fleet and the medbay itself is the best synchronized medbay in the black.
And that is when Captain finally arrives to his shift, looks around, ogles Uhura legs shamelessly, pats Spock on the shoulder, flips himself on his chair, sprawling there like a small boy and says: "Sulu, take the lady to that star and then turn left."
The crew exchanges happy glances (well, as happy as Vulcan glance can be, in one instance). They all know they will be banging their heads over their consoles in no time over Captain's shenanigans in no time and will have to fight urges to smack him (because it's not proper to smack your superior officer).
But Jim being Jim is the best thing what could happen to this ship. They just had to learn the hard way that they can trust him to tell them the truth.