(no subject)
This ficlet is for the insmallpackages gift exchange.
ficlet, Star Trek XI, Kirk/McCoy, crack!AU- make them professional tennis players or musicians or lawyers or whatever crazy thing you can come up with!
Kirk/McCoy, just under 1000 words
“Dammit, Jim, I’m a cellist not a car mechanic!”
Kirk looked up from where he was slumped, head resting on his trumpet case. McCoy was standing in front of his clapped-out old motor with his eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. “Hit it with a hammer, wait ten seconds, hit it again, wait twenty then turn the key in the ignition,” he said, closing his eyes again. He knew exactly how McCoy was looking at him, knew the exact expression on his face. He also knew that it would work, just as he knew he could hit top c pianissimo without breaking into a sweat, that Spock could play the violin so it sounded like it was crying (but not in public, which was why he would always get inside player first desk, every audition), that Sulu and Chekov were damn good percussionists, but one day they’d be too busy looking at each other to get the cymbal clash in the right place, that Scotty had a tuba in his kitchen that he’d modified into a playable distillery, that Gaila could flutter tongue in a variety of situations, and that Uhura sometimes slept with her oboe case under her pillow. He just knew.
McCoy, with much muttering, hit the engine with a hammer, waited ten seconds, hit it again, waited twenty seconds, then turned the key in the ignition. There was a rumbling, choking roar, an ominous clattering sound and then the car’s engine sputtered into life. Kirk, taking care not to gloat, got up and sauntered round to the passenger door, ignoring McCoy’s glare. He waited until they’d been driving for five minutes before the shit-eating grin he’d been suppressing spread across his face. McCoy, by now in his bizarre driving trance, didn’t notice.
They were only five minutes late for rehearsals. Today it was sectionals before lunch, then full orchestra until six. The Academy was a vast and sprawling music college, imposing, with clean lines and soaring buildings, concert halls and amphitheatres for every sort of music. The Ballet academy shared some of the performance venues; professional opera companies would stage operas with the Academy musicians playing. It was an interdisciplinary hub, with all sorts of music and all styles of dance, and for Kirk, it was home. He’d fought coming here, but when Pike had tracked him down to a bar where he was playing Sweet Georgia Brown on a trumpet with more dents than McCoy’s car, told him he was playing on the wrong size mouthpiece, then later broken up a bar fight that had broken his nose and dented his trumpet into being unplayable, he had felt like he had no choice.
Then there was McCoy. Too old, really, for the Academy, but he’d given up doctoring after…well, he’d given it up, and a wife, and a little girl, and come to San Francisco with the most beautiful cello Kirk had ever seen, the clothes on his back and an alcohol habit that made even the brass section take a step back sometimes. He’d started over, with discipline and determination, working harder than anyone he knew. Even if they hadn’t gotten blind drunk together on the first night, they would have ended up friends on the basis of McCoy’s gruff bravery alone. Kirk looked over to him and grinned. McCoy smiled back, ruffled his hair with his free hand. Walking together like this, they automatically transferred their instruments their outside hands, bumping hips and shoulders as they walked in step, brushing hands whenever they could. Kirk sneaked a kiss in the atrium when McCoy wasn’t expecting it, a chaste brush of lips that made his eyes soften and the left side of his mouth quirk up in a smile. He kissed him again, then strolled off to his brass sectional, brushing the ball of each foot to make an extra beat as he walked.
He still played in bars with his beat up old trumpet. It’s extra money and a different sort of performance, loose and languid, low notes winding through the room like smoke, each little break between notes a sounding heartbreak, each chord change an answer and a question. He played in the bar where most of their year go to drink, huddled up in corners, leaning into each other as they talk and laugh and listen. Chapel played bass, hidden behind her instrument, hair glowing in the dim light, and Sulu played drums, easily leading them through complex time changes and speed changes, sometimes letting his alarmingly cavalier attitude to soloing have full rein. McCoy listened, leant back in his chair, eyes closed, a smile sometimes flitting across his face. Kirk played for him, sometimes only him.
There was a pattern to what McCoy played in their music room. Bach when he was puzzling something out, Haydn when he was relaxed, affable, Pärt in sadness, Debussy with his head tilted back and the notes ripped out of him, the pierrot crying out to the moon as Kirk listened, dry-mouthed with arousal, nerves thrumming, a heavy weight in his limbs and the pit of his stomach. They would kiss in the hallway like they were drowning after Debussy, desperate with want, a need to drive away the demons that gave Kirk insomnia and McCoy an occasional drink problem, to seek refuge and solace in each other, then lie entwined, their breaths slow and deep and together, listening to the rhythm of each other's hearts.