Star Trek reboot FF: Waiting for Someone to Shake Me [Kirk/McCoy, Spock/Uhura, OT4; R]
Title: Waiting for Someone to Shake Me
Fandom: Star Trek: Reboot
Pairings: Kirk/McCoy, Spock/Uhura, highlight: Kirk/McCoy/Spock/Uhura
Rating: R for language and sexual implication
Length: 5,300 words
Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to Paramount and Gene Roddenberry
Spoilers: General movie.
Warnings: None I can think of, let me know if you think something does need warned for.
Summary: The problem with winning your rank after a series of chance encounters is that when you forget them, you forget all the other important things too.
AN: Was for cliche_bingo before technical difficulties intervened. Cliche was amnesia. Title is from Amanda Palmer's 'Straight'.
Jim wakes with a pounding headache and thinks he must have fallen off his bike again. He’s trapped under hospital sheets, which doesn’t help the general impression. When he finally twitches his hands free, he realises the other problem. He’s on a ship.
Jim opens his eyes cautiously, testing the limits of his fragile hold on consciousness, and whether or not his keepers are watching him.
Someone ducks into view. “Oh thank God.” Older than Jim, dark hair and green-brown eyes. Starfleet uniform. Brown-eyes is frowning - laughter and relief and aggravation mingled in his expression. “Go on then. Name, rank and serial number.”
“James Tiberius Kirk,” he answers. “I don’t have the other stuff.”
Brown-eyes looks at him for a long moment, then jerks into action, swinging a tricorder over Jim. He’s a doctor, Jim realises.
It seems safe enough to ask, “How the hell did I get here?”
“Spock brought you back to the ship,” the doctor says, slowly, testing for a reaction.
“Which ship?”
“Well, you always say it’s the only ship that matters, Jim, so take a guess.”
Jim shrugs, as indolently as he can manage, what with the creeping sense that something’s gone very wrong here.
The doctor leans forward. “You know who I am?”
Jim shrugs again, but feels bad about it in the face of the guy’s desperation.
“Jesus Christ.” He turns away from Jim, towards the nurse who had been quiet in the background until now. “Page Spock, get him down here now.”
The doctor looks back at Jim. “Stardate? Though knowing you that might not help. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Jim thinks. “I was on my bike.”
“Okay. That’s a start. Where were you going? Starfleet, maybe? The docks?”
Jim blinks at him in shock. “What the hell would I be doing going there? Lunatics and authority fetishists - not for me, man.” He looks down at the doctor’s insignia. “No offence meant.”
The guy still looks stricken. He composes himself. “Where were you going, Jim?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “A bar.” He looks at the doctor’s expression and reacts. “Hey, I’m legal in Iowa. Graduated high school six months ago.”
The doctor curses. “You think you’re fucking eighteen?”
“Nineteen.” It seems important, not to be a child. He hasn’t been a child for years.
“You want a mirror?” the doctor mutters under his breath, before checking himself.
The door slides open, and another man in science blue walks in. Jim doesn’t think he’s seen a Vulcan in real life before. The Vulcan looks between them and says, “Captain. You’re awake.”
Jim chokes, and goes back to the ‘abducted by crazy people’ theory. His heart-rate jumps.
The scanner the doctor is holding screeches. He looks at it; the Vulcan doesn’t react.
“Doctor McCoy,” the Vulcan asks after a moment. “What seems to be the problem?”
* * * *
Spock is unhappy. Leonard can tell by the way his head is tilted down and his eyebrows are lowered. This only seems fair, as Leonard’s pretty damn unhappy himself, and misery like this should be spread around.
“An injury of this kind-” Spock says.
“We have no idea what kind of an injury it is,” Leonard says.
“He is clearly suffering from some form of post-traumatic retrograde amnesia. He did experience a quite severe blow to the to the head.”
“Do you know how many times Jim’s hit his head? That one shouldn’t even have registered.”
“Doctor,” Spock says, like Leonard doesn’t know that’s not how head injuries work.
“What?” Leonard spits.
Spock stands up. “I will notify Starfleet command immediately, and assume the Captain’s duties until he has recovered.”
“You sound very sure of that. Injuries of this kind are pretty goddamned unpredictable.”
“He will have the best possible care,” Spock says placidly and that is that.
* * * *
“No,” Jim says, for what feels like the hundredth time.
No way he’s going to stay in this supposed sickbay until his supposed memory supposedly returns.
“Jim,” McCoy says.
“No,” Jim says again. “Hey, aren’t I your commanding officer? Why aren’t you listening to me?”
“Because you’re medically incapacitated which makes me your God, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid.”
“Hey, you were five years my junior before you decided to lop another eight off.”
Jim considers the injustice of being labelled a kid at nineteen, and the suggestion that he chose this. He decides on a different tack. “How the hell am I supposed to remember anything when all I see is this damned sickbay?”
“You won’t.” A woman appears at the door and looks at McCoy. “Spock asked me to come and relieve you. We heard the Captain was causing you some problems.” She turns to Jim. “We’re going on a tour. Come on.”
Jim follows after her, nodding at McCoy on the way out.
She walks ahead of him, her long legs making a lovely picture as she strides down the corridors. She turns to face him when they reach the turbolift. She’s beautiful: creamy brown skin, warm eyes, and a silky dark ponytail hitting one shoulder.
“Aren’t you going to tell me your name?” he asks.
She is startled into laughter and he doesn’t know why. She opens the lift and waits until they are both inside before she answers. “You have something of a fixation, you know that?”
“With names? Well, forgetting eight years of your life will do that. Was it a really weird question? Do we usually hate each other or something?”
Her expression turns to something solemn. “We do argue occasionally. But you are the captain of this ship and I’m her communications officer.” She takes his hand - it’s soft in Jim’s grip. “Lieutenant Uhura.”
“No first name?”
She doesn’t let go of his hand. “Nyota.” He smiles at her and that’s when she pulls her hand away. “But you almost never call me that.”
“It’s a pretty name,” he protests.
“You said the same thing about Uhura, once.”
She leads him through the ship. The Enterprise (and Jim will admit it’s a beautiful name for a beautiful vessel) probably isn’t the largest in the fleet. Still, they seem to be travelling through a lot of hallway and none of it is familiar. Observation deck, rec room, mess. They stop in on engineering where a cheery Scot wishes him good health and offers him whisky to aid the healing process. Uhura refuses for him.
They try the quarters which are apparently his own, though he’s never had a room that tidy before.
Uhura seems to have a burst of inspiration and drags him into the lift. The doors open again on a round room full of people, with an expanse of space visible through the viewscreen. There is an empty chair in the centre, which Spock stands beside. People turn to look at him, in all their mingled gold, red and blue. Their expressions run the spectrum from thankful, through hopeful, and ending at concern.
Jim looks at the bridge of the Enterprise and then back at Uhura. “I’ve never been here before in my life.”
* * * *
His complete inability to remember anything scuppers their plans somewhat and Jim finds himself back in sickbay.
McCoy clearly doesn’t know what to do with him. He runs scans every half-hour, sends increasingly hysterical messages to Starfleet medical experts, and then disappears into his office.
Jim calls, “Doctor McCoy?”
McCoy drops something in the office.
Jim asks, “Everything okay?”
McCoy walks out into sickbay. “Fine,” he says shortly. “What do you want now?”
“Am I being a bad patient?” Jim asks.
“You’re always a bad patient, Jim, that’s nothing new.”
There’s something almost familiar - about the tone more than the words. It’s frustrating, like déjà vu but not enough to name it.
McCoy is looking at him. “Anything?”
“Nope,” Jim says. What else can he say? You’re pissed off with me fairly regularly, are you?
He pulls his shoulders in and sits against the head of the bed. It’s like being in detention. Or the drunk-tank, waiting for his mother to rescue him.
They had fought, the last time he remembers speaking to her. He had got on his bike and drove away. It’s been eight years from then and still, no one has suggested he contact her.
“Sam,” he says.
“What?”
“My- My brother. Older brother.”
McCoy’s voice is soft. “I know who he is.”
“Oh.”
“What about him?”
“Nothing.” Jim reaches for a datapad, scrolling through it idly.
McCoy sighs deeply. There’s something about the way he looks at Jim, like he’s measured him up and found him lacking. Jim’s used to the expression of disappointment but the way McCoy does it makes Jim squirm. Like he’s supposed to be better than this, and Jim can’t imagine how that ever got to be true.
* * * *
Uhura doesn’t know what to make of Kirk this way.
McCoy says, “This is him without the edges rubbed off.”
“You remember him being like this?” She doesn’t. Her first memory of James Kirk is of the sharp reckless edge in his smile, flirting with her and starting a fight. Not like this - withdrawn and sullen, a million miles from the man who would sit down in the captain’s chair, scared but doing it anyway.
McCoy shrugs. “He wasn’t nineteen then.”
“He keeps looking at Spock when he talks to me.”
“So maybe he remembers.”
“No. He’s just worried Spock’s going to punch him.”
“Like I said, maybe he remembers.”
* * * *
The guy looks at Jim nervously. “Captain.” It twists into e-sounds. He looks up from the transporter console.
“Pavel,” Jim says reassuringly.
“Dr McCoy has released you?”
“Pavel, I don’t know what kind of relationship McCoy and I had, but that sounds sort of dirty.”
“Captain.”
“Sssh. I’m hiding. You can keep a secret, can’t you?”
“Dr McCoy will-”
“Leave Dr McCoy to me.” It’s quiet here. Computers hum, and Pavel’s fingers slide over the controls, but it’s just them and the ship. He likes the transporter room.
Jim leans back in the chair and puts his hand behind his head.
Pavel eventually stops fidgeting and becomes fully immersed in the diagnostics.
After a while, Jim asks, “Should you really being doing this? Doesn’t seem under your purview.”
“Mr Scott and I have been working on a more efficient algorithm for-”
“Yeah, I can see. To reduce the effect of shifting gravitation fields, right? Doesn’t it slow down the calculations of the navigational plotting, though?”
Pavel blinks at him in a slow, helpless kind of way. Jim slumps back low in the chair.
Pavel coughs. “It does,” he offers. “But the-”
“No matter.”
“Captain.”
“They put me in charge of a ship and they still think I’m an idiot?”
“No, Captain! You are-”
“Brave but not smart,” Jim says. “Better than dumb and lucky to be alive, I guess.”
“You are much respected,” Pavel says. “For- for brilliance as well as courage.”
The problem is that Pavel seems, to Jim to be about his age. And that’s the kind of look he normally only gets when he’s about to get lucky. It’s just that Pavel clearly can’t mean it that way. Which just leaves respect. Admiration. Jim doesn’t have the first idea what to do with those.
Pavel doesn’t seem to be looking for a response anyway. He leans back over the console and after a moment music starts poring out of it.
“Pavel,” Jim says, “I don’t care if I’ve lost my memory or not. There’s no way I sit around listening to Russian pop music.”
“But how will you know, Captain, unless you try?” Pavel’s smile is not as wicked as he thinks it is. Jim laughs, and closes his eyes in the chair.
* * * *
Jim is sitting in the rec room with a coffee, watching the crew move around him. Pavel’s on duty, and no one else is especially inclined to talk to him. It’s not - he hopes - that he’s disliked as a captain. They just don’t know what to say. Jim doesn’t know what to say to them either, so it’s never going to be very successful.
So it takes him by surprise when he’s suddenly surrounded. Spock and Uhura sit opposite him, and McCoy drops into the nearest chair.
“Hey,” Jim tries.
“Captain,” Spock says, in that way he does that Jim is pretty sure is calculated to drive him mad. He doesn’t know whether or not this is new.
“Jim.” McCoy nods, but doesn’t say anything else. He’s been like this for all of the sixteen days that Jim remembers knowing him. Jim is uncommonly tempted to try and force a reaction out of him that isn’t distracted concern or distracted frustration. To punch him or kiss him and see which one was closer to whatever relationship they had back in the beginning.
Uhura smiles. “How are you feeling?”
“Other than the obvious? Peachy.”
That leaves them in another silence.
Scotty walks across the room and stops by their table. “Nice work, Captain.”
“Huh?”
“Pavel said you’d been giving him a hand with our little project. Not that the boy needs much help, but it can’t hurt, now, can it? I didn’t know you-”
“Yeah,” Jim says, “I gathered.”
“Anyway,” Scotty says, “it’s very impressive work.” He smiles and walks away.
McCoy looks at Jim incredulously.
“What?” Jim asks. “You’re surprised I know how to count too?”
McCoy says, “I’m surprised you told Chekov, that’s all.”
Jim wants to punch him or fuck him and he has no idea which. God but he hopes the other him isn’t this confused all the time. This angry.
* * * *
After that, Pavel and Hikaru engage in a joint effort. To cheer him up, even if it doesn’t help the memory issue. Which it doesn’t.
“It’s been three weeks,” Jim says, between crashes of blade. “Hey, Hikaru, was I ever any good at this, or is it just the amnesia?”
“You were never any good,” Hikaru quips in return. His blade forces Jim backwards. “And what’s the significance of three weeks?”
“Nothing. Just, you know, three weeks.”
“It’s a head injury.”
“And?” Jim asks.
“Patience.”
“You’re one of the least patient guys I’ve ever met.”
Hikaru grins. “And I learnt from the best.”
They’ve apparently been working together for two years. After Vulcan was destroyed - Jim hadn’t believed them the first time he heard that - and after the mission where he distinguished himself. But Jim doesn’t know how friendly they’re supposed to be.
That’s what gets to him. They can tell him their ranks and responsibilities easily enough. How the last ten missions went and how Jim won his commission. He’s picked up enough to know that nothing happened between him and Uhura in the academy, though he probably wanted it to. And that Spock is with her anyway. But they can’t, or won’t, tell him the other stuff. Why it’s weird that he gets along best with Pavel nowadays, or whether Spock ever scared him before this. What the hell is up with McCoy.
Jim says, “McCoy’s looking at me funny again. I think he’s been freaking out about the three weeks too.”
Hikaru laughs, a little strangely. “I don’t think that’s his only problem.”
“How do you-?”
Hikaru distracts him by pressing the attack again. They all do that - dance around subjects like Jim’s about to trip into a black hole. He doesn’t mind so much when it’s Hikaru; Jim’s never really objected to using a good fight to stop his mind working over something.
* * * *
“The Vulcan keeps-”
“I call him the Vulcan,” McCoy interrupts. “You call him Spock and threaten to punch me. You can’t go messing that up now.”
“We are friends, right?”
“You and Spock?” McCoy asks. “I don’t know, ask him. I’d hope so. He saves your life often enough.”
“Not- Not Spock. You and me. We’re friends.”
“We roomed together at the Academy - when you stayed in your own bed. You dragged me into your damn-fool escapade on this death-trap of a ship-”
“I thought she was the best ship in the fleet?”
“Don’t put your words in my mouth,” McCoy says absent-mindedly. “Anyway it doesn’t matter. I could be telling you anything, you wouldn’t know the difference.”
“It would matter to you,” Jim points out.
“Exactly,” McCoy says, “And that means less than nothing at all. Look, Jim, I’m busy - go find something else to occupy yourself, please.”
“Last week you tried to rip me a new one for leaving sickbay without permission, and today you want rid of me because I’m talking too much. I’d really-”
“What, Jim?” McCoy’s looking back at his tricorder.
“I’d have hoped in eight years I’d have developed a different taste in fucking people, that’s all.”
“Jim.”
“You’re as bad as my mom and her damn… You’re only interested when it’s-” He stops.
Jim nearly runs into Spock on his way to the turbolift.
“Captain.” Spock tilts his head gracefully and could mean anything.
“Get the hell away from me.”
* * * *
“He doesn’t remember anything.” Doctor McCoy is very agitated.
Spock answers, “On the contrary, he remembers a great deal. When contrasted with the damage which could have been done-”
“He can’t relearn this stuff. Not without going through it again. It was all… chance and luck and… He doesn’t remember why he joined Starfleet. Doesn’t remember why you and him are… why we are. Or were…”
“Perhaps.”
A silence.
“Well thanks,” McCoy says, although his tone is far from grateful, “for that tender consideration.”
“I remain confident that the damage will be repaired.”
“Oh, do you?”
“Yes.”
Some of McCoy’s passions seem to recede. He asks, “What are you doing down here anyway?”
“I came to return some property belonging to the captain, but he left in something of a hurry. Perhaps you will see that he gets it?”
Spock looks at the objects in his hands. Photographs removed from Jim’s quarters to aid his memory retrieval and then inadvertently left on the bridge.
Jim had said on more than one occasion that he hated photography - that anything which could not be remembered on its own merits was not worth holding onto. Granted this was during the period after his promotion, and the excess of media interest may have biased him, but patently the philosophy had been proven flawed.
One of the photographs is a concession to formality - the crew of the Enterprise ready to depart on her first mission under her new captain. Spock is not in this picture.
The other is also missing his presence, though he was the one to point the lens. It shows Jim, Leonard and Nyota, smiling through the camera at Spock, at Nyota’s urging. Jim stands between them, one arm on Uhura’s waist and the other resting against Leonard’s neck. It is a casual intimacy which Spock would never have permitted to be recorded.
McCoy takes it and laughs. “He claims to hate these things and then he makes love to the bloody camera.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. You took this one?”
“Yes.”
McCoy takes the other photograph as well. “I’ll drop them back in his quarters later.”
“Very well.”
* * * *
Uhura finds him. Jim doesn’t know if she has been sent or if she came on her own initiative, but she finds him on the observation deck.
She says, “The first time we met, you hit on me and got into a bar fight.”
Jim laughs, surprised at the way she jumps into the confidence. “That sounds more like me. Was this at the Academy?”
“Before, actually. Well, I was at the Academy, you hadn’t enrolled yet. You started a fight with four cadets. All of them bigger than you were. And probably less drunk as well.”
“And you still took a post on my ship?”
Uhura smiles. “You’re not quite as dumb as you were back then. Most of the time. And we had-”
“What?”
She leans quietly beside him for a long moment. “We had seen a lot together, by then. Trial by fire. Did you know the Enterprise crew has the youngest average officer age of any ship in the fleet?” She looks at him. “That’s why. You’re why.”
“I don’t remember any of it. The last thing I remember before this-”
“I know,” she says. She slips her hand into his again. “You will. I promise.” She only half-believes it herself now, Jim can tell.
* * * *
The ship is diverted from her route by a mild skirmish near the planet. It’s a conflict they’ve apparently already resolved once, not that Jim would know. And now the governments demand to speak to the captain. He, after all, was the one to broker the fragile peace in the first place.
McCoy flatly refuses. “He’d never pull it off.”
“We’ll be right here,” Uhura says. “We can tell him everything he needs to know.” They’ve already explained the basics of the diplomatic situation to him, as a memory aid before it was a military necessity. But he doesn’t know the details he would need to fake this.
“If diplomacy was as easy as that we’d all be at it,” McCoy says.
“I believe Lieutenant Uhura is correct,” Spock says.
“Of all the-” McCoy protests. “Where’s the ‘logic’ in that?”
“People are dying, Dr McCoy,” Spock says. “A minor deception is a small price to pay to put an end to the conflict.”
“It’s not the morality that gets me,” McCoy says. “He won’t-”
“I can’t do it,” Jim says.
They look at him, surprised. Apparently the man he was wouldn’t have turned away from the risk. Normally Jim wouldn’t either. But he has become quite protective of this other man, who has a built a life for himself that Jim would not have thought to grasp for. Wouldn’t have known what to do with it even if he had it.
“Captain,” Spock says.
“I’ll screw it up. Always do. And then-”
“We’ll be right here,” Uhura says. “You’ll be fine.”
Jim looks at McCoy for support. He uncurls his fingers in a plea for help.
McCoy shakes his head. No answers there.
Jim is pulled in front of the viewscreen. Spock stands at his elbow, turned slightly from the screen, towards Jim.
McCoy stays across the bridge, within shouting distance but out of view.
And Uhura sits down at her station and says, “We’re being hailed. Are you ready, Captain?”
* * * *
He’s trying to sleep. “Spock,” Jim asks wearily. “Were you in the habit of entering my quarters unannounced before this?”
Spock is looking around the room. “No, Captain.”
“No. And do you really think it’s appropriate to keep calling me ‘Captain’ even though I don’t remember the stuff that gave me the rank?”
“Yes.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“You are the same person. You will regain your memory and afterwards-”
“What?”
“I would not like you to believe that we had chosen to show you disrespect.”
“I wouldn’t- Spock?”
“Captain.”
“Why is it that no one’s willing to tell me whether we’re friends or not? They dodge around the question like it’s a goddamn explosion waiting to happen. I mean, is it so hard just to…?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“But?” Jim prods.
“I’m sorry?”
“Are we friends? Normally, I mean, not now.”
Spock considers the question for so long that Jim begins to doubt his wisdom in asking it. Eventually Spock nods. “I believe we will always be friends, Jim.”
“See?” Jim grins, trying for teasing, not sure if that’s appropriate or not for them. “Now what was that? ‘Jim’.”
Spock smiles: thin and not looking particularly mirthful, but a smile all the same. He says, “You have repeatedly asked me to call you Jim. But under the present circumstances it doesn’t seem appropriate. I apologise.”
“Don’t. Look, why did you come down here anyway?”
Spock pauses. “I came to congratulate you on the success of your mission today.”
“Even without the memory, huh?”
“On the contrary, I believe your approach was more ‘by the book’ than it has been for the entirety of your captaincy. Curious.”
Spock turns on his heel and just leaves, damn him. Jim walks around his quarters, ending up in the bathroom in front of the mirror. He’s been avoiding it recently; the dissonance between what it shows and how he pictures himself is too great. He can’t remember the last time he saw himself without a black eye or a bloody nose, some greening history of the trouble he walked into last. He’s looked up his records since he woke up - McCoy would probably say he still gets himself into enough trouble.
It’s not the same. Back then, the only person he could get hurt was himself. And whoever was stupid enough to let him pick a fight with him. Now there are too many people’s lives in his trembling beat-up hands. It can’t go on like this.
* * * *
After three solid days of disrupted sleep where planets explode and faces turn to him, Jim goes to the bridge. Near the end of beta shift and it will be quiet. Pavel’s on duty, but no other command crew on the bridge.
He walks from station to station, brushing his fingers over consoles and chairs, avoiding the curious gazes.
The captain’s chair sits in the middle. In the absence of any other suggestions, Jim walks towards it. The chair has been sitting empty for a month. Spock (is not superstitious, not over-sensitive) is never sitting in it when Jim walks in.
And it is what they look towards, when things are going wrong; they go unanswered.
Jim takes a breath and sits in the chair. He spins.
Curious, without knowing why, he opens the last thing he was working on before this happened.
Captain’s log, Stardate…
The document had been revised a number of times, by both his hand and Spock’s. Jim pages a revision back, then another two.
Commander Spock threatened to advised against this course of action… Lieutenant Uhura flipped her hair and did that frowny ‘you’re an idiot’ thing retranslated for greater accuracy… And then Bones.
That’s where his corrections stop. They had been hailed and asked to rush to the planet to aid the relief efforts.
Jim sits silently in the chair. Remembering.
Jim. Goddamnit, Jim, will you listen to me? / Captain. Jim. I really must- / Captain, if you think for one moment I’ll- / Listen, Bones (an arm over one shoulder, like he had done a hundred thousand times) when a beautiful woman asks you in, you go. / Even when’s she’s got a- / Well. He’s beautiful too.
Jim smiles. “Mr Chekov. A ship-wide page, if you will.”
“Captain,” Chekov says. He turns in his chair to smile brightly.
“The one and only,” Jim replies. “Now?”
Chekov grins wider and taps the controls. “Go ahead, Captain.”
Jim leans in. “Doctor McCoy, Lieutenant Uhura and Commander Spock to report to the captain’s quarters at their earliest convenience.” He pauses. “Bones, that means unless someone’s dying, get your ass over here.”
There’s a brief silence, then Jim has voices in his ear. Scotty: “Good to hear your voice, Captain.” Jim grins. “Commander Spock won’t approve my new modifications to the warp engines.”
Nice to have been missed. “Later, Scotty.”
Then Sulu: “This mean we’re off for fencing later?”
“Tomorrow,” Jim promises. “I’ll kick your ass tomorrow.”
Sulu laughs but Jim is already heading towards his quarters. He’s the last to arrive.
McCoy is sitting on the chair by the desk, and Nyota on the bed. Spock stands by the wall. They turn towards him.
Jim is suddenly furious. “You don’t think that would have helped? Might have made it easier to remember if you’d said that- I lied my way through a diplomatic situation that could have turned nasty and you three- You couldn’t have mentioned that Uhura’s thinks I’m an idiot for a solid half of the time we’re in the same room? That Spock tried to strangle me over a console on my own fucking bridge? It might,” and he takes a breath and turns, “might have helped if you’d mentioned that I’ve never called you Doctor fucking McCoy in my life. And it might have helped - just a suggestion - if you had reminded me that before we were dragged into earthquake relief and subsequent amnesia, we had spent the goddamn night together!”
Spock inclines his head. Grave and perfect and Jim knows with exquisite clarity what it means.
“Spock,” Jim asks, “are you laughing at me?”
“It is good to have you back, Captain.”
Jim believes it, actually. Or believes that Spock means it, anyway. Spock doesn’t do lies. Though he’s better at omissions than Jim had ever thought.
Bones stands up and walks to Jim. “One more time,” he says. “Name, rank and serial number.”
“Captain James T Kirk. Enterprise. Good enough?”
“And you know who I am?”
“We’ve been fucking on and off for three years now, Doctor McCoy. I think I can dredge your name up.” Jim looks him in the eye. “You miss me, sweetheart?”
Bones frowns under the endearment, however teasingly meant, and under the scrutiny. He lifts the scanner from the desk to give himself something else to do.
Jim catches his hand. “I’m fine.”
“I’d rather check that for myself, thanks.”
Jim shrugs, and stands at ease. He waits while Bones establishes Jim’s good health to his own satisfaction. Bones steps back from Jim to look at the readings.
Nyota looks at him behind Bones’ back. She smiles, nothing polite or strained in it right now. “Jim?” she asks. “Give me a hand?” Oh, he always knew they had more in common than she thought.
“Sure.” It’s been a month - a goddamn month - and if his nineteen-year-old memory didn’t know what he was missing, his twenty-seven year old body definitely does.
Her dress unzips at the back. He doesn’t delude himself into believing that she actually needs the helps to get out of it, but it’s a pleasant fiction. She shimmies her hips loose and by this point the two of them have Bones and Spock’s attention.
Jim says, “I’m still mad at you, you know.” He kisses the curve of Nyota’s shoulder.
“Mmm,” Bones says, “and what do you plan on doing about it?”
“Sit down,” Jim orders.
Bones laughs at him, but sits down on the edge of the bed. Jim looks pointedly at Spock until he sits too, with Nyota on his other side.
“Off,” Jim says.
They look at each other. “The bed?” Nyota asks.
Jim groans and steps forward. He has to do everything himself. He tugs at the edge of Bones’ shirt. “You weren’t always this slow,” he mouths to the soft skin below Bones’ ear.
Spock has removed his own clothing with his typical economy of motion. Jim struggles a little with getting Bones the rest of the way undressed. Then he looks at them again.
“Forgotten what comes next?” Bones asks with a wry twist of his mouth.
“No,” Jim says. “Just- forgotten.” He runs his fingers over Spock’s pale chest, the lines of his ribcage and the lower beat of his heart. Uhura still has her (white cotton) underwear on; Jim removes it gently. And then Bones-
Bones grabs Jim’s arm, and pulls him back onto the untidy heap on the bed. Spock make some mild but definite sound of protest. Uhura gracefully slips out from under the tangle of limbs, rolls onto her side, and watches them all with a knowing smile. Bones just says, “Jim,” and pretends like he isn’t relieved, or partway horrified with himself, or turned on beyond belief. But he has stopped pretending that they haven’t done this already. Stopped pretending that he and Jim ever managed to be casual about anything. Normal about anything. They’re crazy to be doing this, and Jim doesn’t care. He’s still not one hundred percent sure how he ended up here - how the four of them ended up here - but he knows why.
Jim says, “Yeah. I think I remember how this goes.”
FIN. Comments always welcome.
Fandom: Star Trek: Reboot
Pairings: Kirk/McCoy, Spock/Uhura, highlight: Kirk/McCoy/Spock/Uhura
Rating: R for language and sexual implication
Length: 5,300 words
Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to Paramount and Gene Roddenberry
Spoilers: General movie.
Warnings: None I can think of, let me know if you think something does need warned for.
Summary: The problem with winning your rank after a series of chance encounters is that when you forget them, you forget all the other important things too.
AN: Was for cliche_bingo before technical difficulties intervened. Cliche was amnesia. Title is from Amanda Palmer's 'Straight'.
Jim wakes with a pounding headache and thinks he must have fallen off his bike again. He’s trapped under hospital sheets, which doesn’t help the general impression. When he finally twitches his hands free, he realises the other problem. He’s on a ship.
Jim opens his eyes cautiously, testing the limits of his fragile hold on consciousness, and whether or not his keepers are watching him.
Someone ducks into view. “Oh thank God.” Older than Jim, dark hair and green-brown eyes. Starfleet uniform. Brown-eyes is frowning - laughter and relief and aggravation mingled in his expression. “Go on then. Name, rank and serial number.”
“James Tiberius Kirk,” he answers. “I don’t have the other stuff.”
Brown-eyes looks at him for a long moment, then jerks into action, swinging a tricorder over Jim. He’s a doctor, Jim realises.
It seems safe enough to ask, “How the hell did I get here?”
“Spock brought you back to the ship,” the doctor says, slowly, testing for a reaction.
“Which ship?”
“Well, you always say it’s the only ship that matters, Jim, so take a guess.”
Jim shrugs, as indolently as he can manage, what with the creeping sense that something’s gone very wrong here.
The doctor leans forward. “You know who I am?”
Jim shrugs again, but feels bad about it in the face of the guy’s desperation.
“Jesus Christ.” He turns away from Jim, towards the nurse who had been quiet in the background until now. “Page Spock, get him down here now.”
The doctor looks back at Jim. “Stardate? Though knowing you that might not help. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Jim thinks. “I was on my bike.”
“Okay. That’s a start. Where were you going? Starfleet, maybe? The docks?”
Jim blinks at him in shock. “What the hell would I be doing going there? Lunatics and authority fetishists - not for me, man.” He looks down at the doctor’s insignia. “No offence meant.”
The guy still looks stricken. He composes himself. “Where were you going, Jim?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “A bar.” He looks at the doctor’s expression and reacts. “Hey, I’m legal in Iowa. Graduated high school six months ago.”
The doctor curses. “You think you’re fucking eighteen?”
“Nineteen.” It seems important, not to be a child. He hasn’t been a child for years.
“You want a mirror?” the doctor mutters under his breath, before checking himself.
The door slides open, and another man in science blue walks in. Jim doesn’t think he’s seen a Vulcan in real life before. The Vulcan looks between them and says, “Captain. You’re awake.”
Jim chokes, and goes back to the ‘abducted by crazy people’ theory. His heart-rate jumps.
The scanner the doctor is holding screeches. He looks at it; the Vulcan doesn’t react.
“Doctor McCoy,” the Vulcan asks after a moment. “What seems to be the problem?”
* * * *
Spock is unhappy. Leonard can tell by the way his head is tilted down and his eyebrows are lowered. This only seems fair, as Leonard’s pretty damn unhappy himself, and misery like this should be spread around.
“An injury of this kind-” Spock says.
“We have no idea what kind of an injury it is,” Leonard says.
“He is clearly suffering from some form of post-traumatic retrograde amnesia. He did experience a quite severe blow to the to the head.”
“Do you know how many times Jim’s hit his head? That one shouldn’t even have registered.”
“Doctor,” Spock says, like Leonard doesn’t know that’s not how head injuries work.
“What?” Leonard spits.
Spock stands up. “I will notify Starfleet command immediately, and assume the Captain’s duties until he has recovered.”
“You sound very sure of that. Injuries of this kind are pretty goddamned unpredictable.”
“He will have the best possible care,” Spock says placidly and that is that.
* * * *
“No,” Jim says, for what feels like the hundredth time.
No way he’s going to stay in this supposed sickbay until his supposed memory supposedly returns.
“Jim,” McCoy says.
“No,” Jim says again. “Hey, aren’t I your commanding officer? Why aren’t you listening to me?”
“Because you’re medically incapacitated which makes me your God, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid.”
“Hey, you were five years my junior before you decided to lop another eight off.”
Jim considers the injustice of being labelled a kid at nineteen, and the suggestion that he chose this. He decides on a different tack. “How the hell am I supposed to remember anything when all I see is this damned sickbay?”
“You won’t.” A woman appears at the door and looks at McCoy. “Spock asked me to come and relieve you. We heard the Captain was causing you some problems.” She turns to Jim. “We’re going on a tour. Come on.”
Jim follows after her, nodding at McCoy on the way out.
She walks ahead of him, her long legs making a lovely picture as she strides down the corridors. She turns to face him when they reach the turbolift. She’s beautiful: creamy brown skin, warm eyes, and a silky dark ponytail hitting one shoulder.
“Aren’t you going to tell me your name?” he asks.
She is startled into laughter and he doesn’t know why. She opens the lift and waits until they are both inside before she answers. “You have something of a fixation, you know that?”
“With names? Well, forgetting eight years of your life will do that. Was it a really weird question? Do we usually hate each other or something?”
Her expression turns to something solemn. “We do argue occasionally. But you are the captain of this ship and I’m her communications officer.” She takes his hand - it’s soft in Jim’s grip. “Lieutenant Uhura.”
“No first name?”
She doesn’t let go of his hand. “Nyota.” He smiles at her and that’s when she pulls her hand away. “But you almost never call me that.”
“It’s a pretty name,” he protests.
“You said the same thing about Uhura, once.”
She leads him through the ship. The Enterprise (and Jim will admit it’s a beautiful name for a beautiful vessel) probably isn’t the largest in the fleet. Still, they seem to be travelling through a lot of hallway and none of it is familiar. Observation deck, rec room, mess. They stop in on engineering where a cheery Scot wishes him good health and offers him whisky to aid the healing process. Uhura refuses for him.
They try the quarters which are apparently his own, though he’s never had a room that tidy before.
Uhura seems to have a burst of inspiration and drags him into the lift. The doors open again on a round room full of people, with an expanse of space visible through the viewscreen. There is an empty chair in the centre, which Spock stands beside. People turn to look at him, in all their mingled gold, red and blue. Their expressions run the spectrum from thankful, through hopeful, and ending at concern.
Jim looks at the bridge of the Enterprise and then back at Uhura. “I’ve never been here before in my life.”
* * * *
His complete inability to remember anything scuppers their plans somewhat and Jim finds himself back in sickbay.
McCoy clearly doesn’t know what to do with him. He runs scans every half-hour, sends increasingly hysterical messages to Starfleet medical experts, and then disappears into his office.
Jim calls, “Doctor McCoy?”
McCoy drops something in the office.
Jim asks, “Everything okay?”
McCoy walks out into sickbay. “Fine,” he says shortly. “What do you want now?”
“Am I being a bad patient?” Jim asks.
“You’re always a bad patient, Jim, that’s nothing new.”
There’s something almost familiar - about the tone more than the words. It’s frustrating, like déjà vu but not enough to name it.
McCoy is looking at him. “Anything?”
“Nope,” Jim says. What else can he say? You’re pissed off with me fairly regularly, are you?
He pulls his shoulders in and sits against the head of the bed. It’s like being in detention. Or the drunk-tank, waiting for his mother to rescue him.
They had fought, the last time he remembers speaking to her. He had got on his bike and drove away. It’s been eight years from then and still, no one has suggested he contact her.
“Sam,” he says.
“What?”
“My- My brother. Older brother.”
McCoy’s voice is soft. “I know who he is.”
“Oh.”
“What about him?”
“Nothing.” Jim reaches for a datapad, scrolling through it idly.
McCoy sighs deeply. There’s something about the way he looks at Jim, like he’s measured him up and found him lacking. Jim’s used to the expression of disappointment but the way McCoy does it makes Jim squirm. Like he’s supposed to be better than this, and Jim can’t imagine how that ever got to be true.
* * * *
Uhura doesn’t know what to make of Kirk this way.
McCoy says, “This is him without the edges rubbed off.”
“You remember him being like this?” She doesn’t. Her first memory of James Kirk is of the sharp reckless edge in his smile, flirting with her and starting a fight. Not like this - withdrawn and sullen, a million miles from the man who would sit down in the captain’s chair, scared but doing it anyway.
McCoy shrugs. “He wasn’t nineteen then.”
“He keeps looking at Spock when he talks to me.”
“So maybe he remembers.”
“No. He’s just worried Spock’s going to punch him.”
“Like I said, maybe he remembers.”
* * * *
The guy looks at Jim nervously. “Captain.” It twists into e-sounds. He looks up from the transporter console.
“Pavel,” Jim says reassuringly.
“Dr McCoy has released you?”
“Pavel, I don’t know what kind of relationship McCoy and I had, but that sounds sort of dirty.”
“Captain.”
“Sssh. I’m hiding. You can keep a secret, can’t you?”
“Dr McCoy will-”
“Leave Dr McCoy to me.” It’s quiet here. Computers hum, and Pavel’s fingers slide over the controls, but it’s just them and the ship. He likes the transporter room.
Jim leans back in the chair and puts his hand behind his head.
Pavel eventually stops fidgeting and becomes fully immersed in the diagnostics.
After a while, Jim asks, “Should you really being doing this? Doesn’t seem under your purview.”
“Mr Scott and I have been working on a more efficient algorithm for-”
“Yeah, I can see. To reduce the effect of shifting gravitation fields, right? Doesn’t it slow down the calculations of the navigational plotting, though?”
Pavel blinks at him in a slow, helpless kind of way. Jim slumps back low in the chair.
Pavel coughs. “It does,” he offers. “But the-”
“No matter.”
“Captain.”
“They put me in charge of a ship and they still think I’m an idiot?”
“No, Captain! You are-”
“Brave but not smart,” Jim says. “Better than dumb and lucky to be alive, I guess.”
“You are much respected,” Pavel says. “For- for brilliance as well as courage.”
The problem is that Pavel seems, to Jim to be about his age. And that’s the kind of look he normally only gets when he’s about to get lucky. It’s just that Pavel clearly can’t mean it that way. Which just leaves respect. Admiration. Jim doesn’t have the first idea what to do with those.
Pavel doesn’t seem to be looking for a response anyway. He leans back over the console and after a moment music starts poring out of it.
“Pavel,” Jim says, “I don’t care if I’ve lost my memory or not. There’s no way I sit around listening to Russian pop music.”
“But how will you know, Captain, unless you try?” Pavel’s smile is not as wicked as he thinks it is. Jim laughs, and closes his eyes in the chair.
* * * *
Jim is sitting in the rec room with a coffee, watching the crew move around him. Pavel’s on duty, and no one else is especially inclined to talk to him. It’s not - he hopes - that he’s disliked as a captain. They just don’t know what to say. Jim doesn’t know what to say to them either, so it’s never going to be very successful.
So it takes him by surprise when he’s suddenly surrounded. Spock and Uhura sit opposite him, and McCoy drops into the nearest chair.
“Hey,” Jim tries.
“Captain,” Spock says, in that way he does that Jim is pretty sure is calculated to drive him mad. He doesn’t know whether or not this is new.
“Jim.” McCoy nods, but doesn’t say anything else. He’s been like this for all of the sixteen days that Jim remembers knowing him. Jim is uncommonly tempted to try and force a reaction out of him that isn’t distracted concern or distracted frustration. To punch him or kiss him and see which one was closer to whatever relationship they had back in the beginning.
Uhura smiles. “How are you feeling?”
“Other than the obvious? Peachy.”
That leaves them in another silence.
Scotty walks across the room and stops by their table. “Nice work, Captain.”
“Huh?”
“Pavel said you’d been giving him a hand with our little project. Not that the boy needs much help, but it can’t hurt, now, can it? I didn’t know you-”
“Yeah,” Jim says, “I gathered.”
“Anyway,” Scotty says, “it’s very impressive work.” He smiles and walks away.
McCoy looks at Jim incredulously.
“What?” Jim asks. “You’re surprised I know how to count too?”
McCoy says, “I’m surprised you told Chekov, that’s all.”
Jim wants to punch him or fuck him and he has no idea which. God but he hopes the other him isn’t this confused all the time. This angry.
* * * *
After that, Pavel and Hikaru engage in a joint effort. To cheer him up, even if it doesn’t help the memory issue. Which it doesn’t.
“It’s been three weeks,” Jim says, between crashes of blade. “Hey, Hikaru, was I ever any good at this, or is it just the amnesia?”
“You were never any good,” Hikaru quips in return. His blade forces Jim backwards. “And what’s the significance of three weeks?”
“Nothing. Just, you know, three weeks.”
“It’s a head injury.”
“And?” Jim asks.
“Patience.”
“You’re one of the least patient guys I’ve ever met.”
Hikaru grins. “And I learnt from the best.”
They’ve apparently been working together for two years. After Vulcan was destroyed - Jim hadn’t believed them the first time he heard that - and after the mission where he distinguished himself. But Jim doesn’t know how friendly they’re supposed to be.
That’s what gets to him. They can tell him their ranks and responsibilities easily enough. How the last ten missions went and how Jim won his commission. He’s picked up enough to know that nothing happened between him and Uhura in the academy, though he probably wanted it to. And that Spock is with her anyway. But they can’t, or won’t, tell him the other stuff. Why it’s weird that he gets along best with Pavel nowadays, or whether Spock ever scared him before this. What the hell is up with McCoy.
Jim says, “McCoy’s looking at me funny again. I think he’s been freaking out about the three weeks too.”
Hikaru laughs, a little strangely. “I don’t think that’s his only problem.”
“How do you-?”
Hikaru distracts him by pressing the attack again. They all do that - dance around subjects like Jim’s about to trip into a black hole. He doesn’t mind so much when it’s Hikaru; Jim’s never really objected to using a good fight to stop his mind working over something.
* * * *
“The Vulcan keeps-”
“I call him the Vulcan,” McCoy interrupts. “You call him Spock and threaten to punch me. You can’t go messing that up now.”
“We are friends, right?”
“You and Spock?” McCoy asks. “I don’t know, ask him. I’d hope so. He saves your life often enough.”
“Not- Not Spock. You and me. We’re friends.”
“We roomed together at the Academy - when you stayed in your own bed. You dragged me into your damn-fool escapade on this death-trap of a ship-”
“I thought she was the best ship in the fleet?”
“Don’t put your words in my mouth,” McCoy says absent-mindedly. “Anyway it doesn’t matter. I could be telling you anything, you wouldn’t know the difference.”
“It would matter to you,” Jim points out.
“Exactly,” McCoy says, “And that means less than nothing at all. Look, Jim, I’m busy - go find something else to occupy yourself, please.”
“Last week you tried to rip me a new one for leaving sickbay without permission, and today you want rid of me because I’m talking too much. I’d really-”
“What, Jim?” McCoy’s looking back at his tricorder.
“I’d have hoped in eight years I’d have developed a different taste in fucking people, that’s all.”
“Jim.”
“You’re as bad as my mom and her damn… You’re only interested when it’s-” He stops.
Jim nearly runs into Spock on his way to the turbolift.
“Captain.” Spock tilts his head gracefully and could mean anything.
“Get the hell away from me.”
* * * *
“He doesn’t remember anything.” Doctor McCoy is very agitated.
Spock answers, “On the contrary, he remembers a great deal. When contrasted with the damage which could have been done-”
“He can’t relearn this stuff. Not without going through it again. It was all… chance and luck and… He doesn’t remember why he joined Starfleet. Doesn’t remember why you and him are… why we are. Or were…”
“Perhaps.”
A silence.
“Well thanks,” McCoy says, although his tone is far from grateful, “for that tender consideration.”
“I remain confident that the damage will be repaired.”
“Oh, do you?”
“Yes.”
Some of McCoy’s passions seem to recede. He asks, “What are you doing down here anyway?”
“I came to return some property belonging to the captain, but he left in something of a hurry. Perhaps you will see that he gets it?”
Spock looks at the objects in his hands. Photographs removed from Jim’s quarters to aid his memory retrieval and then inadvertently left on the bridge.
Jim had said on more than one occasion that he hated photography - that anything which could not be remembered on its own merits was not worth holding onto. Granted this was during the period after his promotion, and the excess of media interest may have biased him, but patently the philosophy had been proven flawed.
One of the photographs is a concession to formality - the crew of the Enterprise ready to depart on her first mission under her new captain. Spock is not in this picture.
The other is also missing his presence, though he was the one to point the lens. It shows Jim, Leonard and Nyota, smiling through the camera at Spock, at Nyota’s urging. Jim stands between them, one arm on Uhura’s waist and the other resting against Leonard’s neck. It is a casual intimacy which Spock would never have permitted to be recorded.
McCoy takes it and laughs. “He claims to hate these things and then he makes love to the bloody camera.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. You took this one?”
“Yes.”
McCoy takes the other photograph as well. “I’ll drop them back in his quarters later.”
“Very well.”
* * * *
Uhura finds him. Jim doesn’t know if she has been sent or if she came on her own initiative, but she finds him on the observation deck.
She says, “The first time we met, you hit on me and got into a bar fight.”
Jim laughs, surprised at the way she jumps into the confidence. “That sounds more like me. Was this at the Academy?”
“Before, actually. Well, I was at the Academy, you hadn’t enrolled yet. You started a fight with four cadets. All of them bigger than you were. And probably less drunk as well.”
“And you still took a post on my ship?”
Uhura smiles. “You’re not quite as dumb as you were back then. Most of the time. And we had-”
“What?”
She leans quietly beside him for a long moment. “We had seen a lot together, by then. Trial by fire. Did you know the Enterprise crew has the youngest average officer age of any ship in the fleet?” She looks at him. “That’s why. You’re why.”
“I don’t remember any of it. The last thing I remember before this-”
“I know,” she says. She slips her hand into his again. “You will. I promise.” She only half-believes it herself now, Jim can tell.
* * * *
The ship is diverted from her route by a mild skirmish near the planet. It’s a conflict they’ve apparently already resolved once, not that Jim would know. And now the governments demand to speak to the captain. He, after all, was the one to broker the fragile peace in the first place.
McCoy flatly refuses. “He’d never pull it off.”
“We’ll be right here,” Uhura says. “We can tell him everything he needs to know.” They’ve already explained the basics of the diplomatic situation to him, as a memory aid before it was a military necessity. But he doesn’t know the details he would need to fake this.
“If diplomacy was as easy as that we’d all be at it,” McCoy says.
“I believe Lieutenant Uhura is correct,” Spock says.
“Of all the-” McCoy protests. “Where’s the ‘logic’ in that?”
“People are dying, Dr McCoy,” Spock says. “A minor deception is a small price to pay to put an end to the conflict.”
“It’s not the morality that gets me,” McCoy says. “He won’t-”
“I can’t do it,” Jim says.
They look at him, surprised. Apparently the man he was wouldn’t have turned away from the risk. Normally Jim wouldn’t either. But he has become quite protective of this other man, who has a built a life for himself that Jim would not have thought to grasp for. Wouldn’t have known what to do with it even if he had it.
“Captain,” Spock says.
“I’ll screw it up. Always do. And then-”
“We’ll be right here,” Uhura says. “You’ll be fine.”
Jim looks at McCoy for support. He uncurls his fingers in a plea for help.
McCoy shakes his head. No answers there.
Jim is pulled in front of the viewscreen. Spock stands at his elbow, turned slightly from the screen, towards Jim.
McCoy stays across the bridge, within shouting distance but out of view.
And Uhura sits down at her station and says, “We’re being hailed. Are you ready, Captain?”
* * * *
He’s trying to sleep. “Spock,” Jim asks wearily. “Were you in the habit of entering my quarters unannounced before this?”
Spock is looking around the room. “No, Captain.”
“No. And do you really think it’s appropriate to keep calling me ‘Captain’ even though I don’t remember the stuff that gave me the rank?”
“Yes.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“You are the same person. You will regain your memory and afterwards-”
“What?”
“I would not like you to believe that we had chosen to show you disrespect.”
“I wouldn’t- Spock?”
“Captain.”
“Why is it that no one’s willing to tell me whether we’re friends or not? They dodge around the question like it’s a goddamn explosion waiting to happen. I mean, is it so hard just to…?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“But?” Jim prods.
“I’m sorry?”
“Are we friends? Normally, I mean, not now.”
Spock considers the question for so long that Jim begins to doubt his wisdom in asking it. Eventually Spock nods. “I believe we will always be friends, Jim.”
“See?” Jim grins, trying for teasing, not sure if that’s appropriate or not for them. “Now what was that? ‘Jim’.”
Spock smiles: thin and not looking particularly mirthful, but a smile all the same. He says, “You have repeatedly asked me to call you Jim. But under the present circumstances it doesn’t seem appropriate. I apologise.”
“Don’t. Look, why did you come down here anyway?”
Spock pauses. “I came to congratulate you on the success of your mission today.”
“Even without the memory, huh?”
“On the contrary, I believe your approach was more ‘by the book’ than it has been for the entirety of your captaincy. Curious.”
Spock turns on his heel and just leaves, damn him. Jim walks around his quarters, ending up in the bathroom in front of the mirror. He’s been avoiding it recently; the dissonance between what it shows and how he pictures himself is too great. He can’t remember the last time he saw himself without a black eye or a bloody nose, some greening history of the trouble he walked into last. He’s looked up his records since he woke up - McCoy would probably say he still gets himself into enough trouble.
It’s not the same. Back then, the only person he could get hurt was himself. And whoever was stupid enough to let him pick a fight with him. Now there are too many people’s lives in his trembling beat-up hands. It can’t go on like this.
* * * *
After three solid days of disrupted sleep where planets explode and faces turn to him, Jim goes to the bridge. Near the end of beta shift and it will be quiet. Pavel’s on duty, but no other command crew on the bridge.
He walks from station to station, brushing his fingers over consoles and chairs, avoiding the curious gazes.
The captain’s chair sits in the middle. In the absence of any other suggestions, Jim walks towards it. The chair has been sitting empty for a month. Spock (is not superstitious, not over-sensitive) is never sitting in it when Jim walks in.
And it is what they look towards, when things are going wrong; they go unanswered.
Jim takes a breath and sits in the chair. He spins.
Curious, without knowing why, he opens the last thing he was working on before this happened.
Captain’s log, Stardate…
The document had been revised a number of times, by both his hand and Spock’s. Jim pages a revision back, then another two.
Commander Spock threatened to advised against this course of action… Lieutenant Uhura flipped her hair and did that frowny ‘you’re an idiot’ thing retranslated for greater accuracy… And then Bones.
That’s where his corrections stop. They had been hailed and asked to rush to the planet to aid the relief efforts.
Jim sits silently in the chair. Remembering.
Jim. Goddamnit, Jim, will you listen to me? / Captain. Jim. I really must- / Captain, if you think for one moment I’ll- / Listen, Bones (an arm over one shoulder, like he had done a hundred thousand times) when a beautiful woman asks you in, you go. / Even when’s she’s got a- / Well. He’s beautiful too.
Jim smiles. “Mr Chekov. A ship-wide page, if you will.”
“Captain,” Chekov says. He turns in his chair to smile brightly.
“The one and only,” Jim replies. “Now?”
Chekov grins wider and taps the controls. “Go ahead, Captain.”
Jim leans in. “Doctor McCoy, Lieutenant Uhura and Commander Spock to report to the captain’s quarters at their earliest convenience.” He pauses. “Bones, that means unless someone’s dying, get your ass over here.”
There’s a brief silence, then Jim has voices in his ear. Scotty: “Good to hear your voice, Captain.” Jim grins. “Commander Spock won’t approve my new modifications to the warp engines.”
Nice to have been missed. “Later, Scotty.”
Then Sulu: “This mean we’re off for fencing later?”
“Tomorrow,” Jim promises. “I’ll kick your ass tomorrow.”
Sulu laughs but Jim is already heading towards his quarters. He’s the last to arrive.
McCoy is sitting on the chair by the desk, and Nyota on the bed. Spock stands by the wall. They turn towards him.
Jim is suddenly furious. “You don’t think that would have helped? Might have made it easier to remember if you’d said that- I lied my way through a diplomatic situation that could have turned nasty and you three- You couldn’t have mentioned that Uhura’s thinks I’m an idiot for a solid half of the time we’re in the same room? That Spock tried to strangle me over a console on my own fucking bridge? It might,” and he takes a breath and turns, “might have helped if you’d mentioned that I’ve never called you Doctor fucking McCoy in my life. And it might have helped - just a suggestion - if you had reminded me that before we were dragged into earthquake relief and subsequent amnesia, we had spent the goddamn night together!”
Spock inclines his head. Grave and perfect and Jim knows with exquisite clarity what it means.
“Spock,” Jim asks, “are you laughing at me?”
“It is good to have you back, Captain.”
Jim believes it, actually. Or believes that Spock means it, anyway. Spock doesn’t do lies. Though he’s better at omissions than Jim had ever thought.
Bones stands up and walks to Jim. “One more time,” he says. “Name, rank and serial number.”
“Captain James T Kirk. Enterprise. Good enough?”
“And you know who I am?”
“We’ve been fucking on and off for three years now, Doctor McCoy. I think I can dredge your name up.” Jim looks him in the eye. “You miss me, sweetheart?”
Bones frowns under the endearment, however teasingly meant, and under the scrutiny. He lifts the scanner from the desk to give himself something else to do.
Jim catches his hand. “I’m fine.”
“I’d rather check that for myself, thanks.”
Jim shrugs, and stands at ease. He waits while Bones establishes Jim’s good health to his own satisfaction. Bones steps back from Jim to look at the readings.
Nyota looks at him behind Bones’ back. She smiles, nothing polite or strained in it right now. “Jim?” she asks. “Give me a hand?” Oh, he always knew they had more in common than she thought.
“Sure.” It’s been a month - a goddamn month - and if his nineteen-year-old memory didn’t know what he was missing, his twenty-seven year old body definitely does.
Her dress unzips at the back. He doesn’t delude himself into believing that she actually needs the helps to get out of it, but it’s a pleasant fiction. She shimmies her hips loose and by this point the two of them have Bones and Spock’s attention.
Jim says, “I’m still mad at you, you know.” He kisses the curve of Nyota’s shoulder.
“Mmm,” Bones says, “and what do you plan on doing about it?”
“Sit down,” Jim orders.
Bones laughs at him, but sits down on the edge of the bed. Jim looks pointedly at Spock until he sits too, with Nyota on his other side.
“Off,” Jim says.
They look at each other. “The bed?” Nyota asks.
Jim groans and steps forward. He has to do everything himself. He tugs at the edge of Bones’ shirt. “You weren’t always this slow,” he mouths to the soft skin below Bones’ ear.
Spock has removed his own clothing with his typical economy of motion. Jim struggles a little with getting Bones the rest of the way undressed. Then he looks at them again.
“Forgotten what comes next?” Bones asks with a wry twist of his mouth.
“No,” Jim says. “Just- forgotten.” He runs his fingers over Spock’s pale chest, the lines of his ribcage and the lower beat of his heart. Uhura still has her (white cotton) underwear on; Jim removes it gently. And then Bones-
Bones grabs Jim’s arm, and pulls him back onto the untidy heap on the bed. Spock make some mild but definite sound of protest. Uhura gracefully slips out from under the tangle of limbs, rolls onto her side, and watches them all with a knowing smile. Bones just says, “Jim,” and pretends like he isn’t relieved, or partway horrified with himself, or turned on beyond belief. But he has stopped pretending that they haven’t done this already. Stopped pretending that he and Jim ever managed to be casual about anything. Normal about anything. They’re crazy to be doing this, and Jim doesn’t care. He’s still not one hundred percent sure how he ended up here - how the four of them ended up here - but he knows why.
Jim says, “Yeah. I think I remember how this goes.”
FIN. Comments always welcome.