Fanfiction: Shipping Wars (RPF, Shatner/Nimoy), PG-13
Title: Shipping Wars
Fandom: TOS RPF
Characters: Shatner/Nimoy, DeForest Kelley
Rating: PG-13 (for four f words!)
Words: 4,211
Warnings: Shatner being ridiculous. That is basically all this is.
Summary: From this ancient prompt: Shatnoy, with someone on the cast (awesome if it were De, but anyone is fair game!) successfully playing gay enabler. Presumably in an effort to resolve the TOTALLY OBVIOUS crushing that is going on all over the place.
Notes: This bit of absurd fluff was written for the above but most especially also for starcrossedgirl, whose awesomeness and support are eternally appreciated.
“It's just so obvious,” Bill was saying. He gazed at De earnestly, knowing he must be getting through--he had his totally serious face on.
“I don't see it,” said De, crossing his arms. Bill's huff made his hair puff up gently off his forehead for a moment.
“You. And Spock. Are totally. Doing it.”
“Two things: by 'me' you mean...?”
“You. McCoy.”
De seemed to need a moment; Bill had no idea what the eye-roll was for. “And by 'doing it'...?”
“IT. Sex.”
“Bill.” Oh. Bill knew that tone. It was De's schoolteacher voice, the one that got deceptively low and slow and gentle. He knew from experience that it only meant the man was going to explode. Any moment. First, though, De placed his hands on Bill's' shoulders and gazed into his eyes. De's eyes were very, very blue. Bill had noticed this. He suspected that was why the medical officers wore blue. De certainly wasn't getting any help anywhere else in wardrobe, not that his scrawny ass was much to work with. “Bill. Are you twelve?”
“No, no. When I was twelve, I didn't even say 'it.'” Nice Jewish boys didn't talk about sex.
“Repeat after me: having sex. Making love. If you're with a lady of the evening, or out with the boys, you can call it fucking, but not in front of my wife, and I didn't say that if anyone asks.”
Bill giggled. He couldn't help it. “I got you to say 'fucking,'” he smirked, and kissed De right on the lips, a big ripe smack. In his surprise De let go and Bill sauntered away.
“You... Canadian imbecile!” De cried after him. Uncreatively, Bill thought. “That's just not fair!”
Bill's eyes widened as he turned. “Oh my god. You and Spock are doing it! Do you think he'll be jealous?”
As he walked away again, he heard De mutter something behind him, but it wasn't loud enough for him to hear more than a few words. Those words, “do something,” didn't mean anything to him beyond the notion that he should be on the lookout for pranks. Actors were nasty, nasty people.
So he waited, uneasily, for the anvil to drop. He checked the captain's chair before sitting down, so obviously that he ruined several takes. He didn't leave his food alone. He made sure one of the dogs was in his dressing room when he wasn't, in case someone tried to put a pail of water over the door or something. This did not stop him, however, from smirking off camera every time Len and De had a scene together, and suggesting helpful ad-libs for them between takes.
Bill could not, for the life of him, understand people who did not think that “why don't you just kiss me, you Vulcan fool!” was funny.
“I got it,” he said at lunch one day. “It's because I'm hitting too close to the mark, isn't it? I mean you're suppressing your feelings for each other, because you're married and all that. No one cares about that now! And you're not really gay, you're experimenting. It's the sixties! The sixties are almost over! Get with it!”
De was staring at him again, and Bill decided it was because he was just too right for him to handle. He couldn’t see Len's face, because Len was sitting next to him on a rock, close enough to touch. That gave Bill an idea.
“It's nothing to be ashamed about,” he said. “I see how you two look at each other. And all that banter? Purely sexual. It's like when you liked a girl in grade school, and, I don't know, kept hiding her pencils and stuff.”
“Or her bicycle?” De said flatly.
“Sure, whatever. Anyway, you're grown men! We're in Hollywood, and no one will even notice if, say, you do this.” He reached over, put an arm around Len, and kissed him. He tasted like baked beans. Which was weird, because Bill had been eating them too so it shouldn't have been quite so apparent. When Len finally pushed him away, his fake eyebrows threatening to disappear into that silly bowl cut, Bill realized that the truly strange thing was that he'd been given the chance to taste him.
Maybe Len really was gay, he thought. And felt sorry, because he was probably making De jealous. It was bad enough, them being married, and having this secret love they felt they had to hide from the world.
Len got up and, without saying a word, stalked off toward the set, his back hunched and his hands clenched at his sides. Bill turned back to De, confused and sorry and hurt.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I was only...”
“You're a fucking idiot, Shatner,” De said, rising, and Bill didn't even laugh at the fact De had cussed. De went off after Len, and Bill sat there, dumbfounded and guilty and not even knowing what he felt guilty about. Maybe it had something to do with kissing Len. But he wasn't quite sure what. Maybe it wasn't right because he wasn't gay.
“Hey, George,” he said a few minutes later, jogging to catch up as Takei made his way to wardrobe for something or other. George glanced at him warily, then offered a polite smile.
“What's up, Bill?” he asked. Bill got the impression George was very careful around him. He wasn't sure why. He wasn't the one with the sword.
“I have a question,” he said. “Is it wrong to kiss gay people when you're not gay? On the mouth, I mean, not like you're from French Canada and it's just your culture.”
Bill decided that George's dumbstruck look was surprise and delight at Bill's sensible request for information. At this sign that Bill was growing as a person and taking an interest in the feelings of others. Then he remembered that the same look on De's face had preceded information that he was a “fucking idiot,” and realized he didn't have enough information.
“I don't think I want to be involved,” George said slowly. “You and Leonard need to work this out on your own. Just because I'm the only gay man you think you know does not make me the ambassador of Homotown.”
“So is that a yes it's wrong, or no?” Bill called after him, but he received no answer. He wasn't sure why people were so weird about these things. If De and Len loved each other, that was a beautiful thing. Also, he needed to find out where this Homotown was, so he could take them. Maybe then they'd see the truth, and know it was okay, and he wouldn't judge them for it.
Len didn't talk to him the rest of the week.
“Maybe he thought I was being, I don't know, flippant,” he said to Nichelle on Friday, after several days of the silent treatment. “I wasn't. I really thought I could help.”
“Hold on, Bill,” she said. “What makes you think De and Leonard are... involved?”
“I don't think they're involved,” Bill explained patiently. “I think they want to be, only maybe they don't know it yet.”
Nichelle bit her lip. “Okay, let me rephrase the question: what makes you think De and Leonard want to be involved?”
“It's obvious,” Bill said, wanting very much for her to understand. “Haven't you seen the way they look at each other? They're always trading glances, when they think I'm not looking. And they get really into that whole Spock/McCoy thing.”
“You mean their jobs?” she asked wonderingly.
“Sure. But it's more than that! I mean, don't you think McCoy has it bad for Spock?”
Nichelle sighed. “I think I'm in over my head,” she said, and Bill wondered why no one would talk about this. Were they all homophobic? “Bill, if Leonard and De are exchanging glances when you're around, I don't think it has anything to do with them wanting to have sex with each other.”
“What does it have to do with?”
“Well, maybe it has to do with you going around kissing everyone.”
Bill frowned. “I don't kiss everyone,” he said. “I haven't kissed you in over a year.”
“Because I slapped you,” she said. Bill liked how forthright Nichelle was. A real lady.
“Well, if they don't like it, they can slap me, too,” Bill said. “It worked, didn't it?”
“It did,” Nichelle agreed, and after a moment, placed a hand on his arm. “I think you need to talk to Leonard,” she said. “Apologize. It doesn't matter if you don't know what for yet. You'll figure it out.”
“De,” Bill said on the phone the next morning. “Nichelle thinks I should talk to Len about kissing people. Or about the way you guys look at each other. I was a little confused.”
“Good lord, Bill, what time is it?” De sounded grumpy and hoarse.
“Um, 9:03. I've been up since 6, De. You're wasting your morning.”
“I am now, anyway.” Bill heard a rustle of sheets, and a murmured voice telling someone to go back to sleep. “Hold on, I'm gonna switch phones.”
Bill waited, doodling on a little pad he kept by the phone. He didn't have anyone to tell to go back to sleep anymore. It made him wonder about De and Len, and if he was doing the right thing, by pushing them in that direction.
“Okay, what's going on?” De sounded a little more awake, but no less grumpy. But he hadn't hung up, which Bill counted as a positive thing. If De and Len got together, they could tell each other to go back to sleep.
“Len hasn't spoken to me since I kissed him,” Bill said.
“Did you apologize?”
“Well, no, De, he hasn't spoken to me so how could I? I don't even know what I did wrong. Did I screw things up between you two, or something?” Bill drew a little Doberman on the pad. Or tried to. It sort of looked like a horse. Or maybe a deer.
There was a sigh on the other end of the phone. “Bill. There is nothing between me and Leonard. There's nothing, for that matter, between Spock and McCoy.”
“Because I screwed it up.”
“No, because there is nothing between us. Ever. I like Leonard a lot. He's a great guy. But I'm not gay, and I'm married, and I'm happy that way.”
Bill moved on from the dog-horse thing. He wasn't sure what he was drawing now, just lines and angles. “I don't get it,” he said. “Len's... he's great. Like you said. He's smart, and talented, and maybe he's not that funny but there are other things that are just as important.”
“I think you missed an important part of the equation,” De said. “Me. I'm not interested. Neither is McCoy, if that makes it easier for you. Look... I think we need to talk. Leonard sure as hell isn't gonna say anything, so I guess I have to or there'll be no peace to be had.”
“I am utterly at peace,” Bill said, as an angry cartoon cat formed under his pen. Or maybe it was a badger.
“As much as I believe that's not humanly possible,” De said, “it's not actually you I'm worried about. It's the effect you have on everyone else.”
“My charisma, you mean, is disrupting the normal working environment.”
“I think we have different definitions of charisma,” De said, “by which I mean opposite. Come over this afternoon. Three or so. And don't bring your dogs.”
Bill dutifully arrived a little after three, assuring De that the dog would remain outside. Which it did, by staring intently through the glass door at the little fuzzy thing De called his dog from a distance of six inches. Carolyn greeted him, served them both coffee, and retreated with a look at De and a mouthed, “good luck.” Bill frowned.
“I don’t think Carolyn likes me very much,” Bill said.
“Aw, Carolyn loves you,” De said, smiling fondly after her. “But that’s the problem, Bill. Everyone likes you fine. But you’ve been makin’ it damn hard for anyone to stand you, lately. So what’s goin’ on?”
Bill took a sip of coffee, wincing at the heat of it and adding cream to stall for time. He glanced up at De, trying to determine how serious this was, ranging from “you only get half a donut this morning, Desilu’s cutting back” to “alimony.” He decided it was more like “Bill, we’ve got a new shirt for you, it won’t even show” and tried to prepare himself. “What do you mean?” he asked innocently.
De took a deep breath. “I mean, Bill, that you've been all over the place lately. Is everything okay?”
Bill frowned. He didn't really like talking about stuff like this. Mostly because it meant thinking about it. “Of course,” he said. “Don't I act okay?” He looked back at his recent behavior. He came to work prepared, performed his job well, enjoyed the camaraderie of his co-workers, and did his best to relieve the tensions mounting on the set.
“Not really. Frankly, you're acting like a kid on a sugar high, 24/7. It's weird, and it's annoying, and everyone's afraid you'll get in a snit if they mention it to you.”
“I'm never snitty,” Bill pouted.
“What's up with the Spock and McCoy business?” De took a sip of coffee, looking calm and cool and wearing one of those stupid scarves. Did he think he was French?
“Am I seriously the only one who sees it?” Bill exclaimed. De eyed the cup in his hand. Well, it was too late to worry about giving him caffeine. Which, by the way, had no effect on him whatsoever. “You're always going off together, having little secret pow-wows, acting like I can't tell you're looking at each other, wearing that scarf--”
“What's wrong with my scarf?” De said irritably. “When did this become about my sense of style?”
“That's just it! You can''t like girls and dress like that.”
“Bill, it's the 60's. Everyone dresses like this. Do you think everyone with long hair is a homosexual?”
Bill thought. “No,” he said. “Not the girls. But they all do drugs.”
“We're getting off the point,” De said, putting his cup down. Oh good, Bill thought, there was a point. He was tired of points. He was an adult, a leading man, captain of the starship. Why was everyone trying to teach him stuff all the time? “The point being, you need to stop saying this stuff around Leonard.”
“Are you telling me hates the gays?” Bill asked with blatant disbelief. “I don't believe it. Though now that you say that, he is from Massachusetts. Puritans, you know.” He paused. “Puritan Jews.”
“Bill.” De was holding onto the arms of his own chair now, which looked awkward and uncomfortable. “Len doesn't hate gay people. Though I'm considering it, in a specific instance. Just listen to me. Stop making jokes about me and Leonard. OR me and Spock,” he added, seeing Bill's mouth open. De was psychic, it was amazing. He thought he should tell Len, but then remembered Len wasn't speaking to him. “Above all, either stop flirting with him or finish the job and put everyone out of your misery.”
Bill cast about for something to say to that. “I'm not flirting with him,” he settled on. “I'm not even talking to him.”
“No, Bill, he's not talking to you, because you won't leave him alone and you seem to have no idea what you're doing. My god, man, has no one ever had a crush on you?”
“Sure,” he said. “Lots of girls have. And there was this old actor once who chased me around a bed. You wouldn't believe me if I told you who it was. It was--”
“Oh for Pete's sake, Bill, shut up!”
Bill shut. For about two seconds. “I'm sorry, who has a crush on me?”
“Shut up!”
Bill's mouth snapped shut and he glared at De. But he was silent. He hoped there was a good reason. He had a lot of questions. De passed a hand across his forehead and took a deep breath.
“Why I'm even bothering, I don't know. But someone has to do something, and as usual it's going to be me. Bill. Have you really, honestly, never considered that Leonard has a crush on you that you're only exacerbating with the way you hang off him all the time?” Bill waited. De rolled his eyes. “Go ahead.”
“No?” he offered, as if worried it was the wrong answer.
“Well, I'm telling you now. Considering how thick you are, I'm going to assume your behavior isn't meant to be mocking or provocative but it's certainly inappropriate. Unless you're going to follow through, in which case, the sooner the better.”
“But I'm not gay,” Bill scoffed. “I have nothing against them. Lovely people. But, I mean, obviously I'm not.” He still wasn't sure what De was trying to tell him. He seemed to be telling him that it was wrong to think De and Len should get together, and that he was gay, but that made no sense.
“Bill, in the week before Leonard stopped talking to you, you kissed him, on the lips, no less than five times.”
“Well, sure,” Bill said easily, knowing the answer to this. “That's what I do.”
“Lately, just to Len,” De pointed out patiently. But it was the sort of patient that begged you to notice how very patient he was being. “Not to me, or Nichelle--”
“She hit me.”
“--or God forbid, George. Just Len. So let me ask you: Did you like it?”
Bill's brow furrowed. There was no more coffee. “Five times?” he asked. “Are you counting?”
“Everyone is,” De mumbled. “Look, maybe this will make more sense: Spock isn't in love with McCoy. Spock and McCoy are not compatible. Spock and Kirk, on the other hand...” De trailed off, pressing a hand to his temple. Bill wondered if he should get Carolyn. De was old. Maybe he was having an aneurysm. “Spock and Kirk, um, they go together. You know. Like peanut butter and chocolate.”
“Which one am I?”
“Peanut butter. Obviously.” De waited now, with an indignant, expectant stare. Bill thought he'd best try to string together the nonsense De so clearly wished him to understand.
“So you're saying,” Bill said slowly, “that Spock wants Kirk. As in, wants him.” He didn't know why De had to look so grateful he'd understood. It seemed simple, if you put it like that. Everyone wanted him.
“How do you feel?” De prodded. Bill did not think he meant just in general, or about the coffee, or the conflict in Vietnam.
“Not gay,” Bill said, “for one thing.”
“Forget about that.” De waved his hand. “God knows what you think that means. Do you have feelings for Len that aren't strictly platonic in nature?” He looked like the coffee had not agreed with him, but that was no reason to glare so.
“Are you trying to fix us up?” Bill asked. “De, that's weird.”
De stared at him. “Yeah, Carolyn and I have a dinner thing I'd better get ready for,” he said finally. “You just... think about what I said, all right?”
Bill was going to ask which part, but he figured he'd get the glare again, and he knew that look. It was the look of De having had enough of him. So he got up, thanked him for the coffee, and left, dog in tow.
He had some thinking to do.
Of course, Bill didn't like thinking so much. It wasn't, he told himself, that he was unintelligent. It wasn't even the thinking that was the problem. He just had his own way of doing things. And that way involved his mind drifting off into other regions whenever he sat (in front of the tv, outside with the dogs, over dinner in some greasy spoon down the street where he had indiscriminately charmed every waitress from 16 to 63) and told himself he was going to solve this problem of De Thinking He and Len Were Gay. He would start thinking about what sort of underwear they wore in space, or which crappy motel had the least annoying showers, or how one day he was going to write a book about being him and it was going to be amazing.
So by the time Monday morning rolled around and he arrived at the set bright and early, he'd come to exactly no conclusions and told himself that he would handle this as he handled most crises in his life, and that was with the power of his intuition and will. It was a good system, because his plans usually failed disastrously but his life, on the whole, was okay. Eventually. The one thing he did know was that he had to make it so Len spoke to him again, because the weekend had been boring without him and the prolonged silence was uncomfortable and unaccustomed.
“Leonard!” Bill said too loudly when he came in and plunked down in his chair. Len didn't even turn his head. “Good morning,” he tried again.
“I'm not speaking to you, Bill,” Len said, staring straight at the mirror.
“Yes, yes you are. You're speaking to me this very minute and sometime when we're not surrounded by make-up people we're going to speak more. Man to man.”
Len rolled his eyes. “No. Not until you grow up.”
“I'm sorry,” Bill tried. Now he had Len's attention: he was blinking at him sort of slowly, disbelievingly. “I'm sorry for being insensitive and immature.” That was safe-he'd been told enough times that he could be fairly certain either or both was true on any given day. Len was still staring. “Now will you talk to me?”
“I'm going to regret this, aren't I?” Len said to the guy putting on his ears, who just shrugged, which Bill thought very diplomatic of him and befitting the guy who put the ears on. Finally he turned to Bill, his expression neutral and Spocklike. “Okay,” he said. “If you're serious about talking, and not just saying what you think I want to hear, we can talk. Otherwise I'll get over it in another 8 days.”
“You won't need to,” Bills aid confidently, even though he had no idea yet what he was going to say. But it was going to be brilliant.
He had to wait awhile, though. Len was very professional, and though De kept glaring at him and making motions that Bill didn't understand because he didn't speak baseball they got through that morning's scenes and broke for lunch. Bill nodded Len aside and Len followed, hanging back like he wasn't sure he wanted to. Like he was afraid Bill would bite. But that was his dogs, and they only bit if he told them. Besides, he'd left them in his dressing room, just in case.
“So,” Len began dryly. Bill had missed that voice. “What did De tell you to tell me?” He was leaning against the outside wall of the studio, where Bill used to go out for smoke breaks when he still smoked, his arms crossed and his expression weird and blank.
“Nothing!” Bill insisted. “He just explained to me about how Kirk and Spock want to do it and gay people and something about Plato.”
“Bill,” said Len, sighing and shaking his head, “I have no idea what you're saying.”
“I'm saying,” said Bill with a well of infinite patience backing him up, “kiss me, you Vulcan fool!”
Before Len could protest-but really, why should he?--Bill was kissing him, backing him up against the wall and putting his best into it. This wasn't French Canadian kissing. This was like kissing a girl. A tall girl with stubble and no tits, but whatever-the mechanism was the same and Bill found he was enjoying it. A lot. And Len was kissing him back. And this, Bill realized, was his great plan-to find out if he liked Len by doing the thing he'd supposedly been doing all along but meaning it.
Naturally, he thought later, and Len agreed with a rueful shake of his head, this might have backfired terribly had he determined that he did not like kissing Len at all and was not, in fact, gay. But he did, and he was, and life on the set got a lot more pleasant after that because most of Bill's energy got funneled into Len, who somehow inexplicably liked it, and everyone else got to breathe a little easier. Everyone except George, who got asked frequently about how to be gay, and De, who would shake his head and mumble under his breath about creating a monster.
There was just no satisfying some people. Maybe, Bill thought, De really was gay. He'd have to ask Len what he thought.
Fandom: TOS RPF
Characters: Shatner/Nimoy, DeForest Kelley
Rating: PG-13 (for four f words!)
Words: 4,211
Warnings: Shatner being ridiculous. That is basically all this is.
Summary: From this ancient prompt: Shatnoy, with someone on the cast (awesome if it were De, but anyone is fair game!) successfully playing gay enabler. Presumably in an effort to resolve the TOTALLY OBVIOUS crushing that is going on all over the place.
Notes: This bit of absurd fluff was written for the above but most especially also for starcrossedgirl, whose awesomeness and support are eternally appreciated.
“It's just so obvious,” Bill was saying. He gazed at De earnestly, knowing he must be getting through--he had his totally serious face on.
“I don't see it,” said De, crossing his arms. Bill's huff made his hair puff up gently off his forehead for a moment.
“You. And Spock. Are totally. Doing it.”
“Two things: by 'me' you mean...?”
“You. McCoy.”
De seemed to need a moment; Bill had no idea what the eye-roll was for. “And by 'doing it'...?”
“IT. Sex.”
“Bill.” Oh. Bill knew that tone. It was De's schoolteacher voice, the one that got deceptively low and slow and gentle. He knew from experience that it only meant the man was going to explode. Any moment. First, though, De placed his hands on Bill's' shoulders and gazed into his eyes. De's eyes were very, very blue. Bill had noticed this. He suspected that was why the medical officers wore blue. De certainly wasn't getting any help anywhere else in wardrobe, not that his scrawny ass was much to work with. “Bill. Are you twelve?”
“No, no. When I was twelve, I didn't even say 'it.'” Nice Jewish boys didn't talk about sex.
“Repeat after me: having sex. Making love. If you're with a lady of the evening, or out with the boys, you can call it fucking, but not in front of my wife, and I didn't say that if anyone asks.”
Bill giggled. He couldn't help it. “I got you to say 'fucking,'” he smirked, and kissed De right on the lips, a big ripe smack. In his surprise De let go and Bill sauntered away.
“You... Canadian imbecile!” De cried after him. Uncreatively, Bill thought. “That's just not fair!”
Bill's eyes widened as he turned. “Oh my god. You and Spock are doing it! Do you think he'll be jealous?”
As he walked away again, he heard De mutter something behind him, but it wasn't loud enough for him to hear more than a few words. Those words, “do something,” didn't mean anything to him beyond the notion that he should be on the lookout for pranks. Actors were nasty, nasty people.
So he waited, uneasily, for the anvil to drop. He checked the captain's chair before sitting down, so obviously that he ruined several takes. He didn't leave his food alone. He made sure one of the dogs was in his dressing room when he wasn't, in case someone tried to put a pail of water over the door or something. This did not stop him, however, from smirking off camera every time Len and De had a scene together, and suggesting helpful ad-libs for them between takes.
Bill could not, for the life of him, understand people who did not think that “why don't you just kiss me, you Vulcan fool!” was funny.
“I got it,” he said at lunch one day. “It's because I'm hitting too close to the mark, isn't it? I mean you're suppressing your feelings for each other, because you're married and all that. No one cares about that now! And you're not really gay, you're experimenting. It's the sixties! The sixties are almost over! Get with it!”
De was staring at him again, and Bill decided it was because he was just too right for him to handle. He couldn’t see Len's face, because Len was sitting next to him on a rock, close enough to touch. That gave Bill an idea.
“It's nothing to be ashamed about,” he said. “I see how you two look at each other. And all that banter? Purely sexual. It's like when you liked a girl in grade school, and, I don't know, kept hiding her pencils and stuff.”
“Or her bicycle?” De said flatly.
“Sure, whatever. Anyway, you're grown men! We're in Hollywood, and no one will even notice if, say, you do this.” He reached over, put an arm around Len, and kissed him. He tasted like baked beans. Which was weird, because Bill had been eating them too so it shouldn't have been quite so apparent. When Len finally pushed him away, his fake eyebrows threatening to disappear into that silly bowl cut, Bill realized that the truly strange thing was that he'd been given the chance to taste him.
Maybe Len really was gay, he thought. And felt sorry, because he was probably making De jealous. It was bad enough, them being married, and having this secret love they felt they had to hide from the world.
Len got up and, without saying a word, stalked off toward the set, his back hunched and his hands clenched at his sides. Bill turned back to De, confused and sorry and hurt.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I was only...”
“You're a fucking idiot, Shatner,” De said, rising, and Bill didn't even laugh at the fact De had cussed. De went off after Len, and Bill sat there, dumbfounded and guilty and not even knowing what he felt guilty about. Maybe it had something to do with kissing Len. But he wasn't quite sure what. Maybe it wasn't right because he wasn't gay.
“Hey, George,” he said a few minutes later, jogging to catch up as Takei made his way to wardrobe for something or other. George glanced at him warily, then offered a polite smile.
“What's up, Bill?” he asked. Bill got the impression George was very careful around him. He wasn't sure why. He wasn't the one with the sword.
“I have a question,” he said. “Is it wrong to kiss gay people when you're not gay? On the mouth, I mean, not like you're from French Canada and it's just your culture.”
Bill decided that George's dumbstruck look was surprise and delight at Bill's sensible request for information. At this sign that Bill was growing as a person and taking an interest in the feelings of others. Then he remembered that the same look on De's face had preceded information that he was a “fucking idiot,” and realized he didn't have enough information.
“I don't think I want to be involved,” George said slowly. “You and Leonard need to work this out on your own. Just because I'm the only gay man you think you know does not make me the ambassador of Homotown.”
“So is that a yes it's wrong, or no?” Bill called after him, but he received no answer. He wasn't sure why people were so weird about these things. If De and Len loved each other, that was a beautiful thing. Also, he needed to find out where this Homotown was, so he could take them. Maybe then they'd see the truth, and know it was okay, and he wouldn't judge them for it.
Len didn't talk to him the rest of the week.
“Maybe he thought I was being, I don't know, flippant,” he said to Nichelle on Friday, after several days of the silent treatment. “I wasn't. I really thought I could help.”
“Hold on, Bill,” she said. “What makes you think De and Leonard are... involved?”
“I don't think they're involved,” Bill explained patiently. “I think they want to be, only maybe they don't know it yet.”
Nichelle bit her lip. “Okay, let me rephrase the question: what makes you think De and Leonard want to be involved?”
“It's obvious,” Bill said, wanting very much for her to understand. “Haven't you seen the way they look at each other? They're always trading glances, when they think I'm not looking. And they get really into that whole Spock/McCoy thing.”
“You mean their jobs?” she asked wonderingly.
“Sure. But it's more than that! I mean, don't you think McCoy has it bad for Spock?”
Nichelle sighed. “I think I'm in over my head,” she said, and Bill wondered why no one would talk about this. Were they all homophobic? “Bill, if Leonard and De are exchanging glances when you're around, I don't think it has anything to do with them wanting to have sex with each other.”
“What does it have to do with?”
“Well, maybe it has to do with you going around kissing everyone.”
Bill frowned. “I don't kiss everyone,” he said. “I haven't kissed you in over a year.”
“Because I slapped you,” she said. Bill liked how forthright Nichelle was. A real lady.
“Well, if they don't like it, they can slap me, too,” Bill said. “It worked, didn't it?”
“It did,” Nichelle agreed, and after a moment, placed a hand on his arm. “I think you need to talk to Leonard,” she said. “Apologize. It doesn't matter if you don't know what for yet. You'll figure it out.”
“De,” Bill said on the phone the next morning. “Nichelle thinks I should talk to Len about kissing people. Or about the way you guys look at each other. I was a little confused.”
“Good lord, Bill, what time is it?” De sounded grumpy and hoarse.
“Um, 9:03. I've been up since 6, De. You're wasting your morning.”
“I am now, anyway.” Bill heard a rustle of sheets, and a murmured voice telling someone to go back to sleep. “Hold on, I'm gonna switch phones.”
Bill waited, doodling on a little pad he kept by the phone. He didn't have anyone to tell to go back to sleep anymore. It made him wonder about De and Len, and if he was doing the right thing, by pushing them in that direction.
“Okay, what's going on?” De sounded a little more awake, but no less grumpy. But he hadn't hung up, which Bill counted as a positive thing. If De and Len got together, they could tell each other to go back to sleep.
“Len hasn't spoken to me since I kissed him,” Bill said.
“Did you apologize?”
“Well, no, De, he hasn't spoken to me so how could I? I don't even know what I did wrong. Did I screw things up between you two, or something?” Bill drew a little Doberman on the pad. Or tried to. It sort of looked like a horse. Or maybe a deer.
There was a sigh on the other end of the phone. “Bill. There is nothing between me and Leonard. There's nothing, for that matter, between Spock and McCoy.”
“Because I screwed it up.”
“No, because there is nothing between us. Ever. I like Leonard a lot. He's a great guy. But I'm not gay, and I'm married, and I'm happy that way.”
Bill moved on from the dog-horse thing. He wasn't sure what he was drawing now, just lines and angles. “I don't get it,” he said. “Len's... he's great. Like you said. He's smart, and talented, and maybe he's not that funny but there are other things that are just as important.”
“I think you missed an important part of the equation,” De said. “Me. I'm not interested. Neither is McCoy, if that makes it easier for you. Look... I think we need to talk. Leonard sure as hell isn't gonna say anything, so I guess I have to or there'll be no peace to be had.”
“I am utterly at peace,” Bill said, as an angry cartoon cat formed under his pen. Or maybe it was a badger.
“As much as I believe that's not humanly possible,” De said, “it's not actually you I'm worried about. It's the effect you have on everyone else.”
“My charisma, you mean, is disrupting the normal working environment.”
“I think we have different definitions of charisma,” De said, “by which I mean opposite. Come over this afternoon. Three or so. And don't bring your dogs.”
Bill dutifully arrived a little after three, assuring De that the dog would remain outside. Which it did, by staring intently through the glass door at the little fuzzy thing De called his dog from a distance of six inches. Carolyn greeted him, served them both coffee, and retreated with a look at De and a mouthed, “good luck.” Bill frowned.
“I don’t think Carolyn likes me very much,” Bill said.
“Aw, Carolyn loves you,” De said, smiling fondly after her. “But that’s the problem, Bill. Everyone likes you fine. But you’ve been makin’ it damn hard for anyone to stand you, lately. So what’s goin’ on?”
Bill took a sip of coffee, wincing at the heat of it and adding cream to stall for time. He glanced up at De, trying to determine how serious this was, ranging from “you only get half a donut this morning, Desilu’s cutting back” to “alimony.” He decided it was more like “Bill, we’ve got a new shirt for you, it won’t even show” and tried to prepare himself. “What do you mean?” he asked innocently.
De took a deep breath. “I mean, Bill, that you've been all over the place lately. Is everything okay?”
Bill frowned. He didn't really like talking about stuff like this. Mostly because it meant thinking about it. “Of course,” he said. “Don't I act okay?” He looked back at his recent behavior. He came to work prepared, performed his job well, enjoyed the camaraderie of his co-workers, and did his best to relieve the tensions mounting on the set.
“Not really. Frankly, you're acting like a kid on a sugar high, 24/7. It's weird, and it's annoying, and everyone's afraid you'll get in a snit if they mention it to you.”
“I'm never snitty,” Bill pouted.
“What's up with the Spock and McCoy business?” De took a sip of coffee, looking calm and cool and wearing one of those stupid scarves. Did he think he was French?
“Am I seriously the only one who sees it?” Bill exclaimed. De eyed the cup in his hand. Well, it was too late to worry about giving him caffeine. Which, by the way, had no effect on him whatsoever. “You're always going off together, having little secret pow-wows, acting like I can't tell you're looking at each other, wearing that scarf--”
“What's wrong with my scarf?” De said irritably. “When did this become about my sense of style?”
“That's just it! You can''t like girls and dress like that.”
“Bill, it's the 60's. Everyone dresses like this. Do you think everyone with long hair is a homosexual?”
Bill thought. “No,” he said. “Not the girls. But they all do drugs.”
“We're getting off the point,” De said, putting his cup down. Oh good, Bill thought, there was a point. He was tired of points. He was an adult, a leading man, captain of the starship. Why was everyone trying to teach him stuff all the time? “The point being, you need to stop saying this stuff around Leonard.”
“Are you telling me hates the gays?” Bill asked with blatant disbelief. “I don't believe it. Though now that you say that, he is from Massachusetts. Puritans, you know.” He paused. “Puritan Jews.”
“Bill.” De was holding onto the arms of his own chair now, which looked awkward and uncomfortable. “Len doesn't hate gay people. Though I'm considering it, in a specific instance. Just listen to me. Stop making jokes about me and Leonard. OR me and Spock,” he added, seeing Bill's mouth open. De was psychic, it was amazing. He thought he should tell Len, but then remembered Len wasn't speaking to him. “Above all, either stop flirting with him or finish the job and put everyone out of your misery.”
Bill cast about for something to say to that. “I'm not flirting with him,” he settled on. “I'm not even talking to him.”
“No, Bill, he's not talking to you, because you won't leave him alone and you seem to have no idea what you're doing. My god, man, has no one ever had a crush on you?”
“Sure,” he said. “Lots of girls have. And there was this old actor once who chased me around a bed. You wouldn't believe me if I told you who it was. It was--”
“Oh for Pete's sake, Bill, shut up!”
Bill shut. For about two seconds. “I'm sorry, who has a crush on me?”
“Shut up!”
Bill's mouth snapped shut and he glared at De. But he was silent. He hoped there was a good reason. He had a lot of questions. De passed a hand across his forehead and took a deep breath.
“Why I'm even bothering, I don't know. But someone has to do something, and as usual it's going to be me. Bill. Have you really, honestly, never considered that Leonard has a crush on you that you're only exacerbating with the way you hang off him all the time?” Bill waited. De rolled his eyes. “Go ahead.”
“No?” he offered, as if worried it was the wrong answer.
“Well, I'm telling you now. Considering how thick you are, I'm going to assume your behavior isn't meant to be mocking or provocative but it's certainly inappropriate. Unless you're going to follow through, in which case, the sooner the better.”
“But I'm not gay,” Bill scoffed. “I have nothing against them. Lovely people. But, I mean, obviously I'm not.” He still wasn't sure what De was trying to tell him. He seemed to be telling him that it was wrong to think De and Len should get together, and that he was gay, but that made no sense.
“Bill, in the week before Leonard stopped talking to you, you kissed him, on the lips, no less than five times.”
“Well, sure,” Bill said easily, knowing the answer to this. “That's what I do.”
“Lately, just to Len,” De pointed out patiently. But it was the sort of patient that begged you to notice how very patient he was being. “Not to me, or Nichelle--”
“She hit me.”
“--or God forbid, George. Just Len. So let me ask you: Did you like it?”
Bill's brow furrowed. There was no more coffee. “Five times?” he asked. “Are you counting?”
“Everyone is,” De mumbled. “Look, maybe this will make more sense: Spock isn't in love with McCoy. Spock and McCoy are not compatible. Spock and Kirk, on the other hand...” De trailed off, pressing a hand to his temple. Bill wondered if he should get Carolyn. De was old. Maybe he was having an aneurysm. “Spock and Kirk, um, they go together. You know. Like peanut butter and chocolate.”
“Which one am I?”
“Peanut butter. Obviously.” De waited now, with an indignant, expectant stare. Bill thought he'd best try to string together the nonsense De so clearly wished him to understand.
“So you're saying,” Bill said slowly, “that Spock wants Kirk. As in, wants him.” He didn't know why De had to look so grateful he'd understood. It seemed simple, if you put it like that. Everyone wanted him.
“How do you feel?” De prodded. Bill did not think he meant just in general, or about the coffee, or the conflict in Vietnam.
“Not gay,” Bill said, “for one thing.”
“Forget about that.” De waved his hand. “God knows what you think that means. Do you have feelings for Len that aren't strictly platonic in nature?” He looked like the coffee had not agreed with him, but that was no reason to glare so.
“Are you trying to fix us up?” Bill asked. “De, that's weird.”
De stared at him. “Yeah, Carolyn and I have a dinner thing I'd better get ready for,” he said finally. “You just... think about what I said, all right?”
Bill was going to ask which part, but he figured he'd get the glare again, and he knew that look. It was the look of De having had enough of him. So he got up, thanked him for the coffee, and left, dog in tow.
He had some thinking to do.
Of course, Bill didn't like thinking so much. It wasn't, he told himself, that he was unintelligent. It wasn't even the thinking that was the problem. He just had his own way of doing things. And that way involved his mind drifting off into other regions whenever he sat (in front of the tv, outside with the dogs, over dinner in some greasy spoon down the street where he had indiscriminately charmed every waitress from 16 to 63) and told himself he was going to solve this problem of De Thinking He and Len Were Gay. He would start thinking about what sort of underwear they wore in space, or which crappy motel had the least annoying showers, or how one day he was going to write a book about being him and it was going to be amazing.
So by the time Monday morning rolled around and he arrived at the set bright and early, he'd come to exactly no conclusions and told himself that he would handle this as he handled most crises in his life, and that was with the power of his intuition and will. It was a good system, because his plans usually failed disastrously but his life, on the whole, was okay. Eventually. The one thing he did know was that he had to make it so Len spoke to him again, because the weekend had been boring without him and the prolonged silence was uncomfortable and unaccustomed.
“Leonard!” Bill said too loudly when he came in and plunked down in his chair. Len didn't even turn his head. “Good morning,” he tried again.
“I'm not speaking to you, Bill,” Len said, staring straight at the mirror.
“Yes, yes you are. You're speaking to me this very minute and sometime when we're not surrounded by make-up people we're going to speak more. Man to man.”
Len rolled his eyes. “No. Not until you grow up.”
“I'm sorry,” Bill tried. Now he had Len's attention: he was blinking at him sort of slowly, disbelievingly. “I'm sorry for being insensitive and immature.” That was safe-he'd been told enough times that he could be fairly certain either or both was true on any given day. Len was still staring. “Now will you talk to me?”
“I'm going to regret this, aren't I?” Len said to the guy putting on his ears, who just shrugged, which Bill thought very diplomatic of him and befitting the guy who put the ears on. Finally he turned to Bill, his expression neutral and Spocklike. “Okay,” he said. “If you're serious about talking, and not just saying what you think I want to hear, we can talk. Otherwise I'll get over it in another 8 days.”
“You won't need to,” Bills aid confidently, even though he had no idea yet what he was going to say. But it was going to be brilliant.
He had to wait awhile, though. Len was very professional, and though De kept glaring at him and making motions that Bill didn't understand because he didn't speak baseball they got through that morning's scenes and broke for lunch. Bill nodded Len aside and Len followed, hanging back like he wasn't sure he wanted to. Like he was afraid Bill would bite. But that was his dogs, and they only bit if he told them. Besides, he'd left them in his dressing room, just in case.
“So,” Len began dryly. Bill had missed that voice. “What did De tell you to tell me?” He was leaning against the outside wall of the studio, where Bill used to go out for smoke breaks when he still smoked, his arms crossed and his expression weird and blank.
“Nothing!” Bill insisted. “He just explained to me about how Kirk and Spock want to do it and gay people and something about Plato.”
“Bill,” said Len, sighing and shaking his head, “I have no idea what you're saying.”
“I'm saying,” said Bill with a well of infinite patience backing him up, “kiss me, you Vulcan fool!”
Before Len could protest-but really, why should he?--Bill was kissing him, backing him up against the wall and putting his best into it. This wasn't French Canadian kissing. This was like kissing a girl. A tall girl with stubble and no tits, but whatever-the mechanism was the same and Bill found he was enjoying it. A lot. And Len was kissing him back. And this, Bill realized, was his great plan-to find out if he liked Len by doing the thing he'd supposedly been doing all along but meaning it.
Naturally, he thought later, and Len agreed with a rueful shake of his head, this might have backfired terribly had he determined that he did not like kissing Len at all and was not, in fact, gay. But he did, and he was, and life on the set got a lot more pleasant after that because most of Bill's energy got funneled into Len, who somehow inexplicably liked it, and everyone else got to breathe a little easier. Everyone except George, who got asked frequently about how to be gay, and De, who would shake his head and mumble under his breath about creating a monster.
There was just no satisfying some people. Maybe, Bill thought, De really was gay. He'd have to ask Len what he thought.