A Wrong Turn at Albuquerque (Star Trek XI, Kirk/Spock, Spock/Uhura)
Slowly but surely clearing out the fic backlog! Oddly enough, having the House in My Head ficbits to play with is helping my focus rather than distracting from it, because they are quick and fun things I can write when I'm sick to death of a particular story, or of doing research.
...you know, I swear I didn't intend to write for Star Trek the first time I saw it. The second time, though, was with Mith.
I think that explains everything.
Title: A Wrong Turn at Albuquerque
Authors: mithrigil and puella_nerdii
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Characters: Ensemble, mostly Jim. Background Jim/Spock and Spock/Uhura.
Rating: PG-13 (for language and discussion of sex)
Summary: So you've fucked Spock. Now what? In which word travels at warp speed on the Enterprise, Spock ponders the intricacies of human humor, and Jim Kirk still doesn't know where his towel is. Follows the events of Similar Activities.
A Wrong Turn at Albuquerque
star trek xi
Mith and Puel in the Special Hell
Well, Jim thinks, that could have gone worse. She could have punched me in the balls.
His groin's glad to be spared. His cheek, though, is still smarting, and if he circles his fingers over the rising bruise, he can feel the imprints of Uhura's nails swelling on his skin. When she hits a guy, she hits a guy, he'll give her that. He'd respect it a lot, if it wasn't his face she'd just punched. He rubs his throbbing jaw and tries not to wince, at least not to the degree where she can see, though Jim's pretty sure Spock just raised his eyebrows in his direction. He works his jaw, says, "Now hold on a minute..."
"And what?" Uhura snaps through gritted white teeth, straightening up after the punch to just glare at him. "And let you explain? I don't think I want to hear you explain."
"How about if Spock explains, then?"
"The only reason I haven't punched him too is that his jaw might break my knuckles." But she turns to him, shoulders first, and doesn't smile. "How about it, Spock? You're going to speak for him?"
Well, if anyone can make this sound logical, Spock can. Right?
Spock's basically just standing there the way he does, neck stiff, arms locked at his sides. "You have proven receptive to rational explanations of irrational behavior in the past," he tells Uhura. "If you do not mind, I will endeavor to explain, as the Captain has requested."
Uhura rolls her eyes. "Go ahead."
Spock nods, eyes briefly closing, and does. "As I have said, what transpired between the Captain and myself was irrational. Nevertheless, there was discussion, during the preceding acts, to the effect that he was in no way exploiting his position nor taking advantage of mine -- "
He reached for my cock first, Jim doesn't say, but could.
"-- and as such, while saturated with emotional and physiological compromise, we meant no harm toward each other, or other relevant parties such as yourself."
"Nice to know I'm relevant, Spock," Uhura practically spits. She turns away, paces a couple of steps toward the chess table and leans on it once she turns around. It really highlights the line of her legs. Jim doesn't mention that, either, but he notes it. "Is your next excuse that I was relevant the entire time? Were you thinking of me when he -- did whatever he did?"
"Not during the act of manual stimulation itself, beyond comparison," Spock says. It sounds insensitive, but then again, that's Spock for you.
"It wasn't really about thinking," Jim adds.
"Of course not. If you'd been thinking, you wouldn't have done it," Uhura says. And that's still to Spock. She hasn't looked at Jim since socking him. Maybe he should be grateful for that, he can't tell. On the one hand, he likes not getting punched by his own lieutenants. On the other -- well, dammit, she's his lieutenant, and this isn't exactly the best way to kick off a mission where she's going to be serving under him.
Spock tilts his head and his eyebrows choke into a V. "I assure you that I had the capacity for reason at the time."
"Which means you just didn't care," Uhura says.
...Okay, that just might have thrown Spock, 'cause that's about how he looked before he punched Jim.
...why are so many members of his crew so eager to punch him, anyway?
"We did care," Jim says, "and we do care, or we wouldn't be telling you about this now."
Uhura's gripping the edge of the chess table with both hands, knuckles peaked. Looks like she has to look at Jim now, but when she does it's less like a glare, more...resignation? Steely but sad. He hopes he's not reading into that one.
"I can understand why you did it," she says. "Rationally, anyway. You've got the drive for it," she tells Spock, "I've seen it, and Captain? You like to see it too. So I understand why." She breathes. "And I can also understand why you wouldn't be considerate of my feelings, since one of you doesn't think about them at all and the other doesn't understand them."
"Now that's a little unfair."
"Is it, Captain?" She lifts one hand, the one with bangles on it, to shrug. "He doesn't. Do you, Spock?" It's patronizing.
It doesn't stop Spock from answering, calmly, "Affirmative. My understanding is insufficient."
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Which isn't strictly accurate, since Jim's pretty sure the Mars and Venus colonies have a good mix of men and women and several other Federation races thrown in there too for good measure, but that's beside the point. He clears his throat. "So maybe we don't all understand each other as well as we think we do, or as well as we want to. Story of the human race -- and probably the Vulcan one, too. That's why we're talking right now, isn't it? So we can -- reach some kind of understanding." That's what the Federation's about, he almost adds, but it's overkill. These aren't Klingon ambassadors, just his crew. His officers. His friends. His it's complicateds.
"And how long did you practice that one in front of the mirror, Captain?" Uhura asks.
"That, Lieutenant, was an original."
She rolls her eyes, but sinks a little more against the table and hangs her head after. "Fine. Fine, what kind of an understanding do we need?"
Spock, oddly enough, speaks first. "I do not wish to terminate our intercourse," he says, and it's like all the points on his body are angled towards her. "And I do wish to apologize for hurting you."
"I can accept your apology," she says, "but not if it's because of the first point."
"It is not." He's still inclined toward her, like he wants to move but--is he afraid? No, probably just trying to take it slow. "Regardless of your fulfillment of my request, I do not bear you ill will. In fact, the opposite is true."
"We know this is a lot," Jim says. "And it's your decision, there's no deadline or anything like that, and we'll respect whatever it is that you decide."
"What do you want, Captain?" She's glaring again, and her tone's pretty bitter.
"Not what you have with him," he says honestly enough. "You have your relationship, that's great, I think it's great. I have the ship. I can't handle too many other commitments." Nor does he want to, particularly. He's crap at remembering anniversaries, for one.
"Permission to speak freely on a matter of your character, Captain?"
"...granted," he tells Uhura, though he can't tell whether or not he's going to regret this later. Well, time to find out.
"No shit."
"Point taken. Is that it?"
She sighs, looks at Spock, looks at Jim, and sighs again but cuts off. Her nails tap on the chess table in ascending-descending sequence, one right after the other. "So you want to -- do whatever it is you do, together. Have your cake and eat it too."
The idiom seems to confuse Spock. "I assure you there was no consumption of --"
"Don't go into details, all right? I'm trying to keep at an arm's length from this and thinking about you two having sex isn't helping."
Well now that she mentions it, Jim's thinking about it: Spock's fingers searing his neck, gripping his groin, the thin tense noises he made in the back of his throat when Jim was about to bring him off --
Add that to the list of the things he's not talking about right now. What do you know, some of those lectures about discretion took somewhere along the line.
Uhura shuts her eyes, then opens them on Spock. "It's that good, is it."
For what might be the first time since...well, since Jim got punched, Spock is looking at him. He says nothing. Now, Jim knows it's not gentlemanly to brag about this kind of thing and that if you have to holler about how good you are to everyone you know, you're probably compensating for lack of skill, size, experience, or all three, but since Uhura asked, he lets himself smile and shrug a little. She's good with languages; let her interpret that one. He arches his eyebrows in Spock's direction, though the gesture looks a lot better on Vulcans, and Spock's demonstrating that right now, back at him.
Uhura makes this "hmph" sound, mostly air. "Spock, I need you to understand this: I'm not just hurt because it's him -- I'm hurt because, since you want both, it makes me out to be inadequate."
And now he does step toward her. "I assure you, you are in no way inadequate --"
"But that's what it feels like, Spock."
"Even if it is not the case?"
"Yes. That it's not true doesn't change how it feels. It's not something rational." She looks over her shoulder, like there should be a window or an answer there. "Give me time, all right? I'll think about it. I trust you." -- and then she quickly looks at Jim. "Not you. Not about something like this. But I probably should, if he does."
Jim holds up his hands, fingers spread. He surrenders, all right? And it's still better than her punching him again. The stinging in his cheek's subsided, he thinks.
Spock nods, and retreats a step as well. "Understood. I shall withdraw any pressure toward your decision."
"Spock, you do realize that's a kind of pressure?" Turns out Uhura's eyebrow-raises are pretty elegant too.
"Forgive me," he says.
This is, Jim thinks, probably a better example of a no-win scenario than the Kobayashi Maru ever was. But he's pretty sure he can wrangle a victory out of this one, somehow. What are the parameters for victory when you're trying to convince your lieutenant to...come to think of it, he's not sure what words to use to describe this thing with Spock, whatever it's turning into. If it's allowed to turn into something more than a few rough handjobs.
Jim's not averse to the idea, let's just say.
And thinking about that is better than just standing here being tense at each other.
"Right." He claps his hands together, rubs them briskly. "Spock, come on, let's check up on the bridge. We should be within hailing distance of Betelgeuse V in -- thirty minutes? Something like that?"
"That would be my job, Captain," Uhura says, pushing off the chess table and already going for the door. "I'll see you there."
"Dismissed," Jim calls after her, but she's out the door and rounding the corner before she acknowledges it. The doors hiss shut behind her, and Jim turns back to Spock, who's just standing there with his eyes closed and arms slack at his sides. Same as always. At least he's reliable. "Well."
"I do not think she will hit you again."
"That's -- good." He rubs his cheek, now that Spock's mentioned it; it's enough to renew the sting, just a little. "I should get Bones to fix this up before the swelling gets too bad."
"That would be wise, yes." He sounds flat, even for Spock. And he's not looking at Jim either, just...there.
"You can go too," he says, then thinks better of it -- "Spock."
"Captain."
"It was good," he says, and can't help the smirk.
Some of the tension evaporates out of Spock's shoulders, but he doesn't turn to Jim. "Affirmative, Captain."
"How long do you think it's going to take her?"
Spock considers, calculates. "With a margin of error contingent on our behavior and the general deportment of the Enterprise's activities, between three and four days."
"Three or four days," Jim repeats, and exhales, flexing his fingers. "I think I can keep my hands off you for three or four days." Despite what Uhura might think of him, he has some self-restraint, he's gone without sex for that long before. He thinks. And she's not telling him to swear off sex, just to swear off sex with Spock. Three or four days. He can do that. He glances at Spock again, who's still staring determinedly into the distance like he's trying to bore a hole through the walls of the Enterprise. Jim just looks at him, watches how his throat bobs up and down when he breathes --
-- dammit, why do things get so much more interesting when you're not allowed to have them?
-
"Well well, look what the smeerp dragged in."
"Do you see a smeerp around here?" Jim takes his palm away from his cheek, exposing the bruise. "I don't see a smeerp. All I see is this. Wouldn't be a big deal, normally, but apparently I'm supposed to look immaculate when we touch down planetside, and I don't think this counts as immaculate." He rolls his eyes at the word -- Federation's orders, of course, not his. Personally, Jim doubts that he'll be delivering a grave insult to their entire civilization if he sets foot on their planet and sports a nasty bruise on his cheek, but he understands the principle behind trying to look your best, and this bruise isn't a particularly dashing one, either.
Also, he does remember reading about two planets that went to war when an ambassador used the wrong fork at a state dinner, but that's neither here nor there.
"Not unless the Betelgueseans share any cultural similarities with Klingons, no." Bones pulls over a small cart with the standards on it, gives Jim's face a quick sonic wash first. "Hm. Too recent to be from that fight down in the rec room last night..."
Jim winces. "Lieutenant Uhura, actually."
Bones' expression freezes with a syringe cut diagonally across it so Jim can actually see what his mouth and eyes do, separately, when he's surprised. Eyes first. Huh. It's this big twisting production that takes up at least three seconds.
And then it looks like he's about to congratulate Jim. Well. He's never going to run short on surprises on this ship, that's for certain.
"Long story," Jim says.
"Every single word of which is none of my business," Bones says, and pinches Jim's chin to stick the bruise with something.
"Ow -- well, if you really want the details -- "
"Did she punch you or bang you or both, Jim?"
"Funny story behind that one, too," Jim says, leaning back against the examining table.
"And now you sound like you want to talk about it." The subdermal blood in Jim's cheek is swelling a little, then chilling. Bones wipes the area down with a peroxide cloth. It tingles, but in a good way, like entering a cold room after you've spent the afternoon lounging in the sun.
"She punched me. Spock banged me. Which is why she punched me."
Bones taps Jim on the cheek where it still hurts a little.
He suppresses the flinch. "What?"
"You're a slut, Jim."
" -- that's not fair."
"Glad that's clear. And it's not fair to Spock either."
"Hey, he grabbed my cock first."
-- Jim didn't intend to mention that part, actually, but come on, why does everyone on this ship assume he's some kind of sex-crazed predator and Spock's a helpless Capellan maiden without any say in all of this? It's not like Spock couldn't bench-press Jim if he wanted to.
Then again, it gets Bones to go a little white around the eyes. "Great, Jim. Just great. Now I'm picturing it."
Jim says, or coughs, "Green."
Bones cringes, grimaces, just plain screws up his face. "No wonder you like it."
"Now that's just a cheap shot," he says, but doesn't deny it.
Once he drops the cloth back on it, Bones pushes the tray away. He still hasn't let his hand off Jim's chin, which makes it pretty easy to turn and hold him for eye-contact. "Look, Jim. Either way, it's not fair to Spock, or Uhura, and I don't care how much you like it hot pissed and green, if there's one thing Spock doesn't like it's being confused. And this is gonna confuse the rock-hard shit out of him."
"Hadn't picked up on that one, thanks. Look, can we get back to fixing my face?"
Bones tilts his head and squints. "Oh, no, that was already larger than the other one. You're good to go. Don't shave tonight."
"I won't -- wait, what?"
"Your eyebrows. The left's bigger than the right."
"Bullshit," Jim says, reaching up to test that out. The left doesn't feel any thicker than the right...
Bones shrugs. "It might just be stimulated by the altazicort in that balm."
"I swear you do half this stuff on purpose."
"Half? You're too kind, Jim. I'd say at least two thirds."
Jim rolls his eyes and swats Bones's arm, hoists himself off the examining table, stretches. "Thanks. And I'm trying not to take advantage of anyone, here. That's why Spock and I decided to tell Uhura."
"And why she walloped you."
He shakes his head. "That's what you get for trying to do the right thing."
"Well, I venture if you'd done the wrong thing she'd have shoved her hand down your throat and ripped your balls off from the inside," Bones says with, well, utter calm. "Believe me, I know. They do that. Or they try."
" -- great, now I'm picturing that." Vividly. And in full color, too.
"Yeah, try having it pulled on you by someone even drunker than you are at the time." Bones winces.
"Explains a lot about you, my friend."
Bones pats Jim on the thigh, twice, maybe smiles a little (It's hard to tell with him, not in the Spock way but in the is that at me or at something stupid I've just done way). "So, they break up?"
"Not sure. She says she needs time to think. It's not like I want to get between them -- shut up, Bones, you know what I mean -- "
"You mean it both ways, Jim, I know you too well. One you want and one you don't."
He's right about that. Jim sighs. "This is all getting too complicated."
Bones claps his hands together once, loudly. "Good, Jim! That's progress! Next thing you know you'll be thinking about consequences."
Jim grins, cheeky as ever. "Consequences like when I got that Cygnian fungal infection on my -- "
"Yes, Jim, hell, I don't even want to think of what happens to a human asshole when you apply Vulcan strength to it."
Bones sure knows how to kill a grin, he'll give the man that. "You'd just have to phrase it like that, wouldn't you."
"I was on the Bridge when he snapped at you, Jim, and I patched you up after." Bones reminds him, shaking his head. "If that's what he did to your neck--and again the other night, looks like," he adds, tugging down Jim's collar, "that's still about a handprint-sized, wait, let me get something to take the contusions down --"
"Thanks," he says, rubbing those bruises absently. Touching them still makes little pulses of warmth flare up in him, course up and down his spine. It's enough to get a buzz going, just something humming under his nerves. Maybe he doesn't want Bones to take them away. "You don't have to, though."
"Dress collar'll hide them?" Bones smirks, and this one's definitely a smirk. "Does he hurt you because he loves you?"
"Screw you." Jim trails his thumb over the bruise that feels the most sore, right where his neck and shoulder join. "It doesn't feel all that bad."
"Your call, then. They're just bruises." He pushes the tray away again, looks at Jim with his eyebrows raised -- It doesn't look quite right on humans anymore. "You keep this up and land your ass here, though, whether it's because Uhura busts your balls or Spock -- hell, I don't know -- you keep this up and you get hurt, I will be laughing when I put you back together. If I can, that is."
Jim claps Bones on the shoulder. "I'd expect nothing less from my CMO."
Bones covers that hand with his own and pats it. "Remember. Don't shave today."
-
Uhura doesn't eat much for breakfast. Well, she doesn't eat much, she's got two cups of coffee and one of milk on her tray, to set off two pieces of something toasted. She takes them to a section of the board that no one else is at, sits, and starts eating -- drinking -- it.
Okay, fine. Jim knows when he's being ignored. He doesn't slide his tray next to hers, because contrary to what Bones and certain others might think he has some sense of self-preservation, but he does pass by her and clear his throat meaningfully.
"You can come out and ask me, Captain," she says. Her lipstick leaves a mark on the cup.
"Just checking in," he says.
"Glad you're being so conscientious."
"Hey, it's my job."
"I shouldn't be surprised that you're doing it." She takes a long sip of the coffee.
She hasn't tried to punch him again. It's progress, or he takes it as such. "Look, I think we both want what's best for -- the ship," he says, reverses course at the last minute.
It's hard to tell if that's a smile or a smirk, but when she puts the cup back down the corners of her mouth are turned up. "Good. Then you'll do what's best for the ship and let me decide what to do about you."
So she hasn't decided yet. And he didn't even have to ask. He'd hold up his hands again, but they're busy gripping the tray. "Of course, Lieutenant."
"Now if you'll excuse me, Captain, I like to eat quietly."
"Good to know some things never change," he says, more to the ceiling than to her.
-
"How's she running, Scotty?"
"Well we're still trying to get her used to the new core but she's warming up to him." He pats one of the nearby cooling pipes fondly, like he's scratching the ship behind its ears, or would be if the ship were a dog. "I think she's afraid of getting close to it after what we did to the last one."
"Can't say I blame her," Jim says, and rests his palm on another pipe nearby, strokes it, feels the thrum and rush of water inside. "We gave her a good workout. Nothing I should be worried about, though?"
"Ah, just give a lass time," Scott says, and reaches out like he's going to do to Jim's shoulder what he just did to the pipe. "And speaking of that, Captain..."
Jim's about to comment that whatever Ensign Hendrickson thinks, he hasn't been making eyes at her for the past week (well, not the entire past week), when he realizes.
Oh.
His mouth's hanging open; he realizes that, too. He should do something about it. He swallows, contorts his face in a way that would make Bones proud or envious or both, says, "How did you -- ?"
"I've got got ears, lad." Scott grins, tilts his head kinda like a bird. "There's only four hundred people on this ship and not many that wouldn't know a woman scorned when he heard it."
Damn, it's worse than Starfleet Academy, he decides, not quite shaking his head in disbelief, but he could if he wanted. He can't tell if it's better or worse than Iowa, though, in terms of that. If he wants any privacy on this ship, he's probably going to have to program the computer to run a white-noise filter any time he takes someone into his room. "How much do you know?" he asks. That's a more productive question.
"That you haven't had the pleasure," he says. "Well. Not with her."
-- figures, the ship picks up on his failures faster than his successes. Not that he's had too many -- or any -- of those lately, since he and Spock told Uhura. "Working on it," he says, grits his teeth. "So what else have they been saying, huh?"
Instead of answering, Scott turns from Jim to look at the walls of the Engineering bay, up and around until his eyes settle on the new warp core casing. "That she's apt to cockblock you, Captain. Got a few credits riding on it myself."
" -- they're placing bets?"
"Keenser's in charge if you want a st -- get down from there, no wonder the girl's not warming up to it, she probably thinks she's got to take you into the pipes!"
Jim's not sure what Keenser chirrs to that, but it sounds pretty obscene.
"Oh yeah, I'm sure she'll take it all."
Jim has to say, he associates some pretty interesting images with that phrase. He clears his throat, if not his head. "Pretty sure I can't actually place bets on myself."
"You've got a point there."
"...what else are we betting on?" he asks, out of curiosity. Might as well know what his crew's up to, right?
Scott's grin somehow takes up all of the lower half of his face. "Let's just start with the ones about wee Chekov..."
-
"So the humor of the situation derives from his failure to slay the rabbit." Spock considers this like it's a move in chess, they've only just stopped playing so the comparison's pretty easy. "Fascinating."
"Sort of." Jim rubs the back of his neck, stirring the fading bruises there. Explaining humor is like dissecting a frog; it just isn't funny after you've sliced it open and picked it apart. "A lot of it comes from the slapstick, too. Exaggeration. Parodies of people and events in the twentieth century, that kind of thing. I don't get all the references, but something about the humor translates."
Like the way Elmer Fudd's face colors bright red and steam whistles out of his ears after Bugs smooches him on the cheek and hops away. There's just something funny about anthropomorphic rabbits cross-dressing, and Jim would even go so far as to call it universal if it weren't for the way Spock's staring at the viewscreen. Jim thinks he recognizes that tilt of his head, that quirk of his eyebrows. Puzzlement.
"This is logical," he says. "To my understanding, human humor is derived from the principles of misfortune and failure to correctly assess the situation. It would make sense that physical comedy serve as a globally understood projection of the character's current state and thus become memetic."
Jim blinks. Well, it's an accurate enough analysis, just not a particularly funny one.
"The characters' exaggerated displays of emotion are also considered humorous, if I understand this correctly."
"You do," he says. "It's just funnier when it's implicit, that's all."
"Which explains why you are not laughing." Spock turns away from the monitor but that assessing expression on his face hasn't changed at all. "You believe that understanding diminishes humor."
"No, but stating the obvious does."
Spock raises an eyebrow. "It was not obvious to me."
"Obviously." He looks at the abandoned chessboard, wonders what his next move would have been and whether or not it would have mattered. "Do they -- did they -- have humor on Vulcan?"
...too soon?
Apparently not. "Vulcan humor is -- similar to Terran humor in that, situationally, many of the most amusing scenarios are also the most tragic. But where you find this particular parable --" onscreen, Bugs has just taken the wrong turn at Albuquerque, "-- amusing because of the bald hunter's failure, I find it amusing that the hunter has not sought other quarry and continues to bear a grudge at the hare rather than seek enlightenment. In a diversion intended for humor on Vulcan, the hunter would be attempting to operate within logical parameters in a situation to which logic does not apply."
"But either way, it's funny because it doesn't make sense. Right?"
"Affirmative."
Jim grins. "There, you see? Common ground." At least they've found some of that by now. More than some of it, he'd think, and while he's on that particular subject it's hard not to think about how they kissed the same way, fierce and hard and hungry. Watching Spock's lips while he waits for the man to answer isn't helping.
Spock doesn't nod or anything, but he blinks, slowly, and that's pretty close to agreement. But after that he turns back and focuses on the cartoon, eyebrows occasionally shifting. He looks the same way when he's describing spatial anomalies. "You assume that posture quite often," he says, indicating the screen. Bugs is leaning on his elbow on a tree -- no, a cactus? -- chewing a carrot, dropping his catchphrase.
"What, leaning against stuff?"
"Affirmative."
"You watch me a lot, don't you?" he asks, not that he's not doing the same to Spock right now. Spock doesn't pose all that obviously, but the way he's looking now -- eyebrows narrowing, chin angled forward, shoulders drawing together -- means interest, or so Jim thinks.
And shutting his eyes? That's what he'd call compromise. "I remind you that it was the act of watching you move that incited what -- transpired, two nights ago."
"Yeah, I remember," Jim says. Vividly, in fact. Like how he kept his eyes open when he was making Jim come --
-- this really isn't helping the "hands off Spock" promise he made. And Jim keeps his promises. Mostly.
"From that it is feasible to draw the conclusion that I do observe your behavior with frequency and intensity," he says. His eyes are open now, and he's leaning forward, and the light from the monitor is shining on half of his face and creating all these weird sharp shadows, making his ear look even pointier on that one side.
"Frequency and intensity," he repeats. "Right." He shifts his focus back to the screen; Bugs is singing, nasal and obnoxious, which is a different kind of frequency and intensity. Different from the way Spock's tongue was moving against his, or the way his hand -- dammit. Spock's hand is resting on the arm of the chair now, his fingers tented up, but at least it's still.
And the other is trapped between Spock's thigh and the cushion. "Should I desist?"
There are very good reasons to say yes and very good reasons to say no. The nos win out. "No."
Spock nods, and watches Jim instead of the end of the cartoon. His hands stay where they are, though the one on the arm of the chair lifts a little and his knuckles spread -- so do his eyes and mouth, after that, just watching. Evaluating maybe. Intense.
And now Jim's getting hard, or about to. Great. Look at Bugs, he reminds himself.
Bugs is in drag again, sashaying towards Elmer Fudd. This isn't hindering as much as it should be. Fuck.
"I find this story strangely progressive," Spock says, though he hasn't glanced at the monitor since Jim gave him permission to watch him instead.
"Progressive?" Look at Bugs. Keep looking at Bugs. Come on, man.
"Despite that the hunter will never succeed, it is not for lack of the hare tempting him."
Jim's eyebrows must be at least as furrowed as Spock's are, and he turns back towards Spock to check that. "How's that progressive?"
Another one of Spock's visual cues that Jim's picked up on by now is confusion. It's subtle but it's there, both eyebrows tilting in or just one stretching out. "It implies that on some level it wants to be caught."
"...we're speaking in metaphors, aren't we, Spock."
"Evidently you are speaking for me, as I intended nothing of the kind."
Jim remembers what Spock said about Vulcans not being a species above passive-aggression. Well, the evidence seems to bear that one out. New subject. "Do you want to keep watching this?"
Spock looks between Jim and the screen, and then to Jim again. "And resume our abandoned game of chess? I do not believe the conditions have changed sufficiently in your favor."
Chess, cartoons -- dammit, the Enterprise is one of the largest ships in Starfleet, there has to be something else the two of them can do that doesn't involve sex. Or paperwork. Jim amends that: there are lots of things -- they could go over the spectroscopic readings the Enterprise's sensors picked up a day back, they could study up on the Klingon delegation they're supposed to contact in two weeks, they could order a test of the Enterprise's shields to make sure Scotty worked out those bugs -- but right now, none of them are half so appealing as grabbing Spock by the neck and shoving him --
Damn. Jim's fairly certain that if Uhura hadn't expressly told him they couldn't, he wouldn't want to nearly as much as he does. (Which is considerable.) He rolls his shoulders back, cracks them. "Just give me time."
So Spock pulls up from the chair, goes to the chess table instead, and doesn't spare Jim as much as a glance before it's obscured by three levels of chesspieces. "Your move," he says.
-
Janice takes Uhura's place at the comm board, and Uhura stretches, puts her arms above her head and tilts side to side. Her earrings jingle, loud enough that Jim can hear them over everything else going on. And she doesn't look at him or anyone else on her way off the bridge.
Jim gives the bridge a once-over: everything looks in order, more or less. "Sulu," he says, "you have the conn," and walks over to the turbolift after her.
Her nail's right over the close button by the time he gets there.
"Mind holding the door for me, Lieutenant?"
She cocks her head, maybe sneers a little, but holds the open button down instead. "Something you need, Captain?"
"Just heading down to the labs to check the latest readings," he says, truthfully enough. "I like to feel like I'm doing something on my ship other than swiveling around in a chair all day." And paperwork, all the mountains of paperwork. Jim never knew that being a ship's captain involved this much bureaucracy.
She lets him step in, stands aside. She's still working out a cramp in her neck, but it turns into a shrug. "Don't let me stop you."
I won't might not be the best answer here, so he punches in the code for the labs, leans against the wall as the turbolift starts to whirr. "Picked up anything out of the ordinary lately?"
"And not reported it to you immediately?" She looks down her nose at him as the lift starts up. "What kind of officer do you think I am, sir?"
"A damn good one, which is why I wanted you on my ship." He crosses his arms. "I'm just trying to keep myself appraised of things."
The door opens in one sudden hiss. Uhura steps through it, turns back to him, and smiles. "No changes, Captain."
"Good to know."
You know, Jim likes it when people defy his expectations.
-
"Sulu, what's our heading?"
"Warp three, mark seven bearing five, en route to Centauri, sir."
Jim nods, hoists himself out of the chair -- if he doesn't stand soon, he's never going to be able to use his legs again. He paces a circuit around the bridge, doesn't quite look over his crewmembers' shoulders but does keep a running log in his head of what they're all calculating, monitoring. "No change, then?"
"Not since yesterday, sir." Sulu leans over the console, double-checks the duration. "The course that Chekov plotted for us puts us on this bearing for another eight hours."
"Right. Chekov, you have the conn, I'm going to find something to do." Bones called space a madness; more accurate to call it sheer black boredom. If there's any kind of insanity lurking out here, it's the kind you get from sharing the same space with the same people and waiting for the interesting parts to come along.
"--Before you go, Captain, a question?" Sulu doesn't quite turn around from his station, but the chair's shifting, side to side.
"Sure thing."
"Where is Commander Spock?"
'He was down in Engineering, last I heard." Jim pauses. "Why?"
"It's just I haven't seen you two on the bridge at the same time for two, three days."
-- and now the rest of the crew's looking his way, too. Wonderful. Jim sighs. "Sulu, with me for a moment?"
"Sure," he says, and hands the helm over to Riley.
Once the door to the bridge has sealed shut behind them, Jim explains -- well, sort of. "Commander Spock and I need to keep our distance for another day or two. Nothing to worry about, just a precaution."
"Oh," Sulu says, nodding and grinning like he knows exactly what Jim's talking about. "So it's true that Uhura's threatening to rip his ears off if he touches you?"
Jim's face cycles through at least five different expressions before he finally settles on irked. Well, irked crossed with flabbergasted, given how his jaw's refusing to stay shut. "Does everyone know?"
"I think we've got about two hundred in on the pool."
"The pool," Jim repeats, half-incredulous. It just goes to show how much he still doesn't know about his own ship -- and how fast news travels on it, apparently. If only Warp Ten were this quick. "The one Keenser's running?"
"One and the same, Captain." Sulu's still grinning, it's like his cheeks are permanently up around his eyes. "For the record, my bets are on you."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sulu." He shakes his head, asks the question that's really been bothering him: "How the hell did you all find out in the first place?"
"Well, I heard from Riley, who heard it from Zahra, who heard it from Harrison. I think Chapel started everything, though."
Chapel. Fuck. Did Bones tell -- would he even have to? She's in Sickbay all the time, she must hear everything that goes on in there. He might need to start having his heart-to-hearts with Bones somewhere else, at this rate.
Sulu goes on, "But it's probably because she wants his Vulcan butt anyway."
-- not that Jim minds the mental images associated with that, necessarily -- or at all -- but in between visions of Chapel and Spock he manages to choke out, "Is there a betting pool for that, too?"
"What, whether Nurse Chapel plays doctor with Spock if Uhura dumps him? Yeah. Smaller, though. I think Scotty's running that one."
"Don't we have anything better -- no, I know for a fact that we don't." Jim's starting to see why they had that seminar about discouraging excessive fraternization aboard ship. Too late for that now, though. "Carry on, Sulu."
Sulu salutes, maybe a bit jauntily, and turns back to the bridge. "Yes, sir -- ah, one more thing."
"Go ahead."
"Is one of your eyebrows larger than the other?"
-
"You know, I have no idea why Starfleet's scheduled me for these damn diplomatic missions if they don't want me to do anything during them." Technically the Klingon goodwill conference is an extension of the Betelgeusian trade talks, so it's all part of the same long ugly mission (and Jim isn't just talking about the Klingon ambassadors, though that remark's strictly off-the-record), but his point still stands. "I'm telling you, either I'm standing there looking pretty while the Betelgeusians and Klingons squabble about trade and pretending not to understand Klingon insults, because the Klingons can say whatever they want and it's excused because they're Klingons, but if I retaliate in kind, it's intergalactic war. Or I'm sitting on the bridge avoiding paperwork, watching the stars fly by as specialists run my ship for me. You know, space is a lot more exciting in the books and vids."
"Or you're complaining to me," Bones adds. "Which sounds like it's taking up all your free time these days."
"That, and not having sex."
"--at all?"
Jim rubs his neck and wonders if Bones has anything for tension headaches, because he swears his temples have been pounding since he walked off the bridge. "I don't want things to get more complicated than they are." Sex tends to do that, inevitably. Case in point: his current situation.
Bones gawks at him like he's grown another head, which Jim's fairly certain he hasn't, since his headache would be twice as bad. "You're not having sex. James Tiberius Kirk is not having sex."
And then he smiles.
"I think I just won fifteen hundred credits."
"Fuck you," Jim says, amiably.
Bones grins. "Not right now, I'd lose the bet."
"You know what I mean. I'm stuck between boredom and Klingons, Bones. It's worse than a rock and a hard place."
"If you want it to stop being a hard place, I can fix that--"
"You're on a roll tonight, aren't you?" One Jim really should stop before he can't get a word in edgewise anymore.
Bones does stop, though; he pulls up a chair and sits in it, near where Jim's legs are dangling off the table. "You know, she might be testing you to make sure you're serious."
"I've thought of that," he says.
"You don't think so?"
Jim shrugs. "It might be part of it. I don't really know what she wants, though. Leaving the obvious aside."
Nodding, Bones tilts back in the chair, folds his arms behind his head, and then apparently decides that that posture doesn't work and reverses it completely to lean on his knees. "And it's probably not a good idea to ask her."
"Very bad idea." Jim picks at a loose shaving of -- something -- dangling from the table's edge and hopes it's nothing too vile. "Well, whatever she wants, hopefully she'll make up her mind about it soon. I can deal with whatever her decision is -- I can, Bones, stop looking at me like that -- but I'd like her to make it."
"Yeah, I understand." And he sounds it, too, even if he's still looking at Jim like that. "And personally? I think she's being a bitch about how long it's taking -- but she's perfectly justified. You two hurt her."
"I know, I know -- " His fingers keep clenching and unclenching like they're just itching to rip out his hair out by the roots, and Jim would rather keep his hair where it is, thanks. "Look, can we talk about something else? Tri-D chess, politics, weird new diseases, anything that isn't my sex life."
"Weird new diseases," Bones repeats, raising an eyebrow. (A lot of people seem to do that to Jim, never quite in the same way.) "I don't think you want to know what's in the vaccine order I just got in from command."
"Is it something that's going to affect the general safety and well-being of my crew?" he says, which is either a direct quote from one of the exams he had to take to qualify for the Command track at the Academy or damn close to it.
"Only if I set it loose."
Jim pounds Bones on the back. "Then don't set it loose."
-
"Of course I am aware of the betting pool."
-- and why wouldn't he be, now that Jim thinks of it? Spock seems to know more about the Enterprise than Jim himself does, some days. He moves his knight up a level, capturing one of Spock's bishops, which nets him an arched eyebrow. Jim wonders if Vulcan eyebrow alignment works the way it does just so the pointy-eared bastards can raise them better than any other race can. "Don't tell me you put money down, too."
"It would be unethical," Spock says, "as I have a measure of agency in the outcome."
It's Jim's turn to raise an eyebrow. "The gambling's not the unethical part?" Granted, he doesn't know if there are any prohibitions of it on Vulcan -- or if there were, rather -- but throwing away so much money on such scant odds seems, well, illogical. If that's the way you think, and if logic's your ethos, well then.
Spock makes his next move -- rook down one level, check to the queen -- and explains, completely impassive, "It is unethical to cheat the odds. It is not unethical to apply your knowledge of those odds to contest them." He lets his hand off the chesspiece, taps the timer. "The act of profiting off one's own knowledge is so ancient as to be compulsory."
"So you're telling me that Vulcans count cards in poker?"
"Affirmative."
"Well then." If he takes the rook, Spock'll capture Jim's queen with his knight, and his pawn's still two squares away from getting promoted. He moves his queen back three squares diagonally, out of danger. Chess is good for the two of them, he decides. Chess is something Jim can throw himself into and use to shut off, or at least shut out, all the other trains of thought running on parallel tracks in his head. "Remind me to take you to a casino sometime."
"If it is a quiet one," Spock concedes, and chases down the queen with his other free bishop, checking her from above. "From what I have seen in your films that make use of the setting, they are excessively loud."
Determined, isn't he? Jim blocks that bishop's path with another one of his pawns. "You can't trust the movies," he says, and amends it. "Well, enough of them are loud, but firefights don't usually break out in them."
"Understood," he concedes, and takes the pawn. "But I would be amenable to going."
Which frees Jim up to take the bishop -- no, Spock's knight threatens that square, too. He moves his queen straight down a level, where she's in a position to take out one of Spock's rooks. "Good. It's a date."
-- should he have said date? This is weird.
"Pending the availability of an appropriate casino, yes," Spock agrees. He moves the rook up -- and fuck, there goes that little pawn's chance of making it to the far square. It's almost bullying.
Jim doesn't smile, studies the board instead and wonders what's in that Vulcan head of Spock's that lets him calculate the odds so -- not quickly, because Jim can do that too if he's pressed, but deliberately. Weighing everything before he draws his conclusions. "It's a big universe, I'm sure we'll find a place," he says, captures Spock's rook with one of his bishops.
-- and there goes his queen now, caught between that bishop and the knight. "I look forward to it," Spock says.
-
"...Captain?"
"What is it, Chekov?" Jim asks, and hopes this isn't like Ensign Zahra whispering "good luck" to him in the mess, or Harrison and Yeoman Rickard shaking their heads sadly when he walked by, or even Ensign Kim's knowing wink. He's sick of his crew knowing more about his sex life than he does, though he'd like to know where they're getting their information.
Chekov looks sheepishly at the floor, or his own boots, which aren't scuffing it but are pressed close together, inside toe to inside toe. "I do not know if you were already aware, but I thought you should know that people have been -- taking bets about you. It has only just come to my attention, and --"
"Chekov, it's all right," he says, before the kid gives himself a heart attack. "I know."
"-- oh," Chekov says. "Oh. Yes. All -- all right, then, Captain." He backs away, hands clasped behind him.
"Was that all?"
"Yes Captain! Only that!." He grimaces. It's cute. Jim can't keep the exasperation up.
"Thanks for coming to me," he says.
"Of course, Captain!" And he just keeps backing away. "I mean, I would not like if there are bets on me, so I would want to know as soon as possible, and I thought it might be the same for you."
Jim's not as good at the wide-eyed innocent look as Chekov is, is he? Damn. "Nothing to worry about," he says, and is half-surprised when a bolt of lightning doesn't descend from the ceiling and strike him down where he stands right there and then.
-
"Permission to speak freely, Captain?"
Nothing Uhura's prefaced with that phrase has ever turned out that well for him, but Jim says "Granted" anyway and tries to ignore the way the pit of his stomach twists.
"I still don't like it," Uhura says, "or you. But --" She breathes, shuts her eyes like it's going to take effort to say, and Jim starts to hope. "But it's really undignified to have the entire crew laying money on whether I'll let you fuck my boyfriend."
"You noticed that."
"It wasn't hard." She rolls her eyes, comes a step closer to him from the closed door of his room. "And it's not just humiliating, it's really bad for ship infrastructure."
"I'm not disagreeing." Don't push her, not now. Wait and see where she's going with this.
She gets up in his face, almost; she's at least as tall as he is anyway. "I have to work here. I have to work, with you." And it takes another deep breath for her to say, "And I can't do that if the entire ship is making it look like we're fighting."
"No," he agrees, "you can't, and neither can I. And I meant what I said the other day; you're the best at what you do, and I'd be an idiot not to have you on board." It's flattery, in part, but it's also true. "I want this to be the best ship in Starfleet, and I think we can make that happen."
"We can," she agrees. "And that requires you not being frustrated, and Spock not -- not repressing what he wants, and me letting whatever it is you're doing...happen."
"Uhura," he says, much as part of him wants to start doing a victory dance in the corridors right now, "if this -- if this is really going to jeapordize things, I'll call it off. Now I know you don't think much of my self-control," or my anything, "but I really am trying to make this all work. And you -- it looks like the two of you work, and I like that. Maybe not as much as you do, but there you have it. I don't want you to say yes just because you think I'll make your life hell if you don't, or because you think I need to get laid if I'm going to captain the ship right." His dick's going to kill him for this speech, he has a feeling. "I want you to say yes because you're as behind this as you can be, and you know I'm not going to fuck things up."
She shakes her head no. "I don't think you'd do that, not intentionally." And then she licks her lips. This really must be hard for her. "And that's why. You're not -- you're not stupid, and you're not malicious. You just want him. And as long as you don't resent that I do too, it's your and his decision as far as I'm concerned."
This might be the most complimentary thing she's ever said to him. He considers that for a while. "No, I don't resent it. Never been the jealous type," in part because he's never really stuck around long enough to get jealous, but he omits that last bit. "And -- thanks. For your trust."
"You're welcome, Captain." One last look in his eyes and she backs away. "Now, if that's it, I'll just return to my post."
"Go ahead."
She nods, and leaves him there without looking back -- or not. One turn. "Oh, and Captain?"
"Yes?" he says, glad he waited on punching his fist into the air in celebration.
"You might want to stop having your gripe sessions in sickbay. I know for a fact Nurse Chapel bet against you."
...well shit. "Duly noted."
"And one more thing."
"Yeah?"
All her linguistics training shows through on every enunciated phoneme, the same way her teeth do. "I do not want to hear about it."
"Not a word," he promises, and hopes the ship's rumor mill can at least keep quiet about that.
He'll just have to wait and see.
-
---
-
...you know, I swear I didn't intend to write for Star Trek the first time I saw it. The second time, though, was with Mith.
I think that explains everything.
Title: A Wrong Turn at Albuquerque
Authors: mithrigil and puella_nerdii
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Characters: Ensemble, mostly Jim. Background Jim/Spock and Spock/Uhura.
Rating: PG-13 (for language and discussion of sex)
Summary: So you've fucked Spock. Now what? In which word travels at warp speed on the Enterprise, Spock ponders the intricacies of human humor, and Jim Kirk still doesn't know where his towel is. Follows the events of Similar Activities.
A Wrong Turn at Albuquerque
star trek xi
Mith and Puel in the Special Hell
Well, Jim thinks, that could have gone worse. She could have punched me in the balls.
His groin's glad to be spared. His cheek, though, is still smarting, and if he circles his fingers over the rising bruise, he can feel the imprints of Uhura's nails swelling on his skin. When she hits a guy, she hits a guy, he'll give her that. He'd respect it a lot, if it wasn't his face she'd just punched. He rubs his throbbing jaw and tries not to wince, at least not to the degree where she can see, though Jim's pretty sure Spock just raised his eyebrows in his direction. He works his jaw, says, "Now hold on a minute..."
"And what?" Uhura snaps through gritted white teeth, straightening up after the punch to just glare at him. "And let you explain? I don't think I want to hear you explain."
"How about if Spock explains, then?"
"The only reason I haven't punched him too is that his jaw might break my knuckles." But she turns to him, shoulders first, and doesn't smile. "How about it, Spock? You're going to speak for him?"
Well, if anyone can make this sound logical, Spock can. Right?
Spock's basically just standing there the way he does, neck stiff, arms locked at his sides. "You have proven receptive to rational explanations of irrational behavior in the past," he tells Uhura. "If you do not mind, I will endeavor to explain, as the Captain has requested."
Uhura rolls her eyes. "Go ahead."
Spock nods, eyes briefly closing, and does. "As I have said, what transpired between the Captain and myself was irrational. Nevertheless, there was discussion, during the preceding acts, to the effect that he was in no way exploiting his position nor taking advantage of mine -- "
He reached for my cock first, Jim doesn't say, but could.
"-- and as such, while saturated with emotional and physiological compromise, we meant no harm toward each other, or other relevant parties such as yourself."
"Nice to know I'm relevant, Spock," Uhura practically spits. She turns away, paces a couple of steps toward the chess table and leans on it once she turns around. It really highlights the line of her legs. Jim doesn't mention that, either, but he notes it. "Is your next excuse that I was relevant the entire time? Were you thinking of me when he -- did whatever he did?"
"Not during the act of manual stimulation itself, beyond comparison," Spock says. It sounds insensitive, but then again, that's Spock for you.
"It wasn't really about thinking," Jim adds.
"Of course not. If you'd been thinking, you wouldn't have done it," Uhura says. And that's still to Spock. She hasn't looked at Jim since socking him. Maybe he should be grateful for that, he can't tell. On the one hand, he likes not getting punched by his own lieutenants. On the other -- well, dammit, she's his lieutenant, and this isn't exactly the best way to kick off a mission where she's going to be serving under him.
Spock tilts his head and his eyebrows choke into a V. "I assure you that I had the capacity for reason at the time."
"Which means you just didn't care," Uhura says.
...Okay, that just might have thrown Spock, 'cause that's about how he looked before he punched Jim.
...why are so many members of his crew so eager to punch him, anyway?
"We did care," Jim says, "and we do care, or we wouldn't be telling you about this now."
Uhura's gripping the edge of the chess table with both hands, knuckles peaked. Looks like she has to look at Jim now, but when she does it's less like a glare, more...resignation? Steely but sad. He hopes he's not reading into that one.
"I can understand why you did it," she says. "Rationally, anyway. You've got the drive for it," she tells Spock, "I've seen it, and Captain? You like to see it too. So I understand why." She breathes. "And I can also understand why you wouldn't be considerate of my feelings, since one of you doesn't think about them at all and the other doesn't understand them."
"Now that's a little unfair."
"Is it, Captain?" She lifts one hand, the one with bangles on it, to shrug. "He doesn't. Do you, Spock?" It's patronizing.
It doesn't stop Spock from answering, calmly, "Affirmative. My understanding is insufficient."
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Which isn't strictly accurate, since Jim's pretty sure the Mars and Venus colonies have a good mix of men and women and several other Federation races thrown in there too for good measure, but that's beside the point. He clears his throat. "So maybe we don't all understand each other as well as we think we do, or as well as we want to. Story of the human race -- and probably the Vulcan one, too. That's why we're talking right now, isn't it? So we can -- reach some kind of understanding." That's what the Federation's about, he almost adds, but it's overkill. These aren't Klingon ambassadors, just his crew. His officers. His friends. His it's complicateds.
"And how long did you practice that one in front of the mirror, Captain?" Uhura asks.
"That, Lieutenant, was an original."
She rolls her eyes, but sinks a little more against the table and hangs her head after. "Fine. Fine, what kind of an understanding do we need?"
Spock, oddly enough, speaks first. "I do not wish to terminate our intercourse," he says, and it's like all the points on his body are angled towards her. "And I do wish to apologize for hurting you."
"I can accept your apology," she says, "but not if it's because of the first point."
"It is not." He's still inclined toward her, like he wants to move but--is he afraid? No, probably just trying to take it slow. "Regardless of your fulfillment of my request, I do not bear you ill will. In fact, the opposite is true."
"We know this is a lot," Jim says. "And it's your decision, there's no deadline or anything like that, and we'll respect whatever it is that you decide."
"What do you want, Captain?" She's glaring again, and her tone's pretty bitter.
"Not what you have with him," he says honestly enough. "You have your relationship, that's great, I think it's great. I have the ship. I can't handle too many other commitments." Nor does he want to, particularly. He's crap at remembering anniversaries, for one.
"Permission to speak freely on a matter of your character, Captain?"
"...granted," he tells Uhura, though he can't tell whether or not he's going to regret this later. Well, time to find out.
"No shit."
"Point taken. Is that it?"
She sighs, looks at Spock, looks at Jim, and sighs again but cuts off. Her nails tap on the chess table in ascending-descending sequence, one right after the other. "So you want to -- do whatever it is you do, together. Have your cake and eat it too."
The idiom seems to confuse Spock. "I assure you there was no consumption of --"
"Don't go into details, all right? I'm trying to keep at an arm's length from this and thinking about you two having sex isn't helping."
Well now that she mentions it, Jim's thinking about it: Spock's fingers searing his neck, gripping his groin, the thin tense noises he made in the back of his throat when Jim was about to bring him off --
Add that to the list of the things he's not talking about right now. What do you know, some of those lectures about discretion took somewhere along the line.
Uhura shuts her eyes, then opens them on Spock. "It's that good, is it."
For what might be the first time since...well, since Jim got punched, Spock is looking at him. He says nothing. Now, Jim knows it's not gentlemanly to brag about this kind of thing and that if you have to holler about how good you are to everyone you know, you're probably compensating for lack of skill, size, experience, or all three, but since Uhura asked, he lets himself smile and shrug a little. She's good with languages; let her interpret that one. He arches his eyebrows in Spock's direction, though the gesture looks a lot better on Vulcans, and Spock's demonstrating that right now, back at him.
Uhura makes this "hmph" sound, mostly air. "Spock, I need you to understand this: I'm not just hurt because it's him -- I'm hurt because, since you want both, it makes me out to be inadequate."
And now he does step toward her. "I assure you, you are in no way inadequate --"
"But that's what it feels like, Spock."
"Even if it is not the case?"
"Yes. That it's not true doesn't change how it feels. It's not something rational." She looks over her shoulder, like there should be a window or an answer there. "Give me time, all right? I'll think about it. I trust you." -- and then she quickly looks at Jim. "Not you. Not about something like this. But I probably should, if he does."
Jim holds up his hands, fingers spread. He surrenders, all right? And it's still better than her punching him again. The stinging in his cheek's subsided, he thinks.
Spock nods, and retreats a step as well. "Understood. I shall withdraw any pressure toward your decision."
"Spock, you do realize that's a kind of pressure?" Turns out Uhura's eyebrow-raises are pretty elegant too.
"Forgive me," he says.
This is, Jim thinks, probably a better example of a no-win scenario than the Kobayashi Maru ever was. But he's pretty sure he can wrangle a victory out of this one, somehow. What are the parameters for victory when you're trying to convince your lieutenant to...come to think of it, he's not sure what words to use to describe this thing with Spock, whatever it's turning into. If it's allowed to turn into something more than a few rough handjobs.
Jim's not averse to the idea, let's just say.
And thinking about that is better than just standing here being tense at each other.
"Right." He claps his hands together, rubs them briskly. "Spock, come on, let's check up on the bridge. We should be within hailing distance of Betelgeuse V in -- thirty minutes? Something like that?"
"That would be my job, Captain," Uhura says, pushing off the chess table and already going for the door. "I'll see you there."
"Dismissed," Jim calls after her, but she's out the door and rounding the corner before she acknowledges it. The doors hiss shut behind her, and Jim turns back to Spock, who's just standing there with his eyes closed and arms slack at his sides. Same as always. At least he's reliable. "Well."
"I do not think she will hit you again."
"That's -- good." He rubs his cheek, now that Spock's mentioned it; it's enough to renew the sting, just a little. "I should get Bones to fix this up before the swelling gets too bad."
"That would be wise, yes." He sounds flat, even for Spock. And he's not looking at Jim either, just...there.
"You can go too," he says, then thinks better of it -- "Spock."
"Captain."
"It was good," he says, and can't help the smirk.
Some of the tension evaporates out of Spock's shoulders, but he doesn't turn to Jim. "Affirmative, Captain."
"How long do you think it's going to take her?"
Spock considers, calculates. "With a margin of error contingent on our behavior and the general deportment of the Enterprise's activities, between three and four days."
"Three or four days," Jim repeats, and exhales, flexing his fingers. "I think I can keep my hands off you for three or four days." Despite what Uhura might think of him, he has some self-restraint, he's gone without sex for that long before. He thinks. And she's not telling him to swear off sex, just to swear off sex with Spock. Three or four days. He can do that. He glances at Spock again, who's still staring determinedly into the distance like he's trying to bore a hole through the walls of the Enterprise. Jim just looks at him, watches how his throat bobs up and down when he breathes --
-- dammit, why do things get so much more interesting when you're not allowed to have them?
-
"Well well, look what the smeerp dragged in."
"Do you see a smeerp around here?" Jim takes his palm away from his cheek, exposing the bruise. "I don't see a smeerp. All I see is this. Wouldn't be a big deal, normally, but apparently I'm supposed to look immaculate when we touch down planetside, and I don't think this counts as immaculate." He rolls his eyes at the word -- Federation's orders, of course, not his. Personally, Jim doubts that he'll be delivering a grave insult to their entire civilization if he sets foot on their planet and sports a nasty bruise on his cheek, but he understands the principle behind trying to look your best, and this bruise isn't a particularly dashing one, either.
Also, he does remember reading about two planets that went to war when an ambassador used the wrong fork at a state dinner, but that's neither here nor there.
"Not unless the Betelgueseans share any cultural similarities with Klingons, no." Bones pulls over a small cart with the standards on it, gives Jim's face a quick sonic wash first. "Hm. Too recent to be from that fight down in the rec room last night..."
Jim winces. "Lieutenant Uhura, actually."
Bones' expression freezes with a syringe cut diagonally across it so Jim can actually see what his mouth and eyes do, separately, when he's surprised. Eyes first. Huh. It's this big twisting production that takes up at least three seconds.
And then it looks like he's about to congratulate Jim. Well. He's never going to run short on surprises on this ship, that's for certain.
"Long story," Jim says.
"Every single word of which is none of my business," Bones says, and pinches Jim's chin to stick the bruise with something.
"Ow -- well, if you really want the details -- "
"Did she punch you or bang you or both, Jim?"
"Funny story behind that one, too," Jim says, leaning back against the examining table.
"And now you sound like you want to talk about it." The subdermal blood in Jim's cheek is swelling a little, then chilling. Bones wipes the area down with a peroxide cloth. It tingles, but in a good way, like entering a cold room after you've spent the afternoon lounging in the sun.
"She punched me. Spock banged me. Which is why she punched me."
Bones taps Jim on the cheek where it still hurts a little.
He suppresses the flinch. "What?"
"You're a slut, Jim."
" -- that's not fair."
"Glad that's clear. And it's not fair to Spock either."
"Hey, he grabbed my cock first."
-- Jim didn't intend to mention that part, actually, but come on, why does everyone on this ship assume he's some kind of sex-crazed predator and Spock's a helpless Capellan maiden without any say in all of this? It's not like Spock couldn't bench-press Jim if he wanted to.
Then again, it gets Bones to go a little white around the eyes. "Great, Jim. Just great. Now I'm picturing it."
Jim says, or coughs, "Green."
Bones cringes, grimaces, just plain screws up his face. "No wonder you like it."
"Now that's just a cheap shot," he says, but doesn't deny it.
Once he drops the cloth back on it, Bones pushes the tray away. He still hasn't let his hand off Jim's chin, which makes it pretty easy to turn and hold him for eye-contact. "Look, Jim. Either way, it's not fair to Spock, or Uhura, and I don't care how much you like it hot pissed and green, if there's one thing Spock doesn't like it's being confused. And this is gonna confuse the rock-hard shit out of him."
"Hadn't picked up on that one, thanks. Look, can we get back to fixing my face?"
Bones tilts his head and squints. "Oh, no, that was already larger than the other one. You're good to go. Don't shave tonight."
"I won't -- wait, what?"
"Your eyebrows. The left's bigger than the right."
"Bullshit," Jim says, reaching up to test that out. The left doesn't feel any thicker than the right...
Bones shrugs. "It might just be stimulated by the altazicort in that balm."
"I swear you do half this stuff on purpose."
"Half? You're too kind, Jim. I'd say at least two thirds."
Jim rolls his eyes and swats Bones's arm, hoists himself off the examining table, stretches. "Thanks. And I'm trying not to take advantage of anyone, here. That's why Spock and I decided to tell Uhura."
"And why she walloped you."
He shakes his head. "That's what you get for trying to do the right thing."
"Well, I venture if you'd done the wrong thing she'd have shoved her hand down your throat and ripped your balls off from the inside," Bones says with, well, utter calm. "Believe me, I know. They do that. Or they try."
" -- great, now I'm picturing that." Vividly. And in full color, too.
"Yeah, try having it pulled on you by someone even drunker than you are at the time." Bones winces.
"Explains a lot about you, my friend."
Bones pats Jim on the thigh, twice, maybe smiles a little (It's hard to tell with him, not in the Spock way but in the is that at me or at something stupid I've just done way). "So, they break up?"
"Not sure. She says she needs time to think. It's not like I want to get between them -- shut up, Bones, you know what I mean -- "
"You mean it both ways, Jim, I know you too well. One you want and one you don't."
He's right about that. Jim sighs. "This is all getting too complicated."
Bones claps his hands together once, loudly. "Good, Jim! That's progress! Next thing you know you'll be thinking about consequences."
Jim grins, cheeky as ever. "Consequences like when I got that Cygnian fungal infection on my -- "
"Yes, Jim, hell, I don't even want to think of what happens to a human asshole when you apply Vulcan strength to it."
Bones sure knows how to kill a grin, he'll give the man that. "You'd just have to phrase it like that, wouldn't you."
"I was on the Bridge when he snapped at you, Jim, and I patched you up after." Bones reminds him, shaking his head. "If that's what he did to your neck--and again the other night, looks like," he adds, tugging down Jim's collar, "that's still about a handprint-sized, wait, let me get something to take the contusions down --"
"Thanks," he says, rubbing those bruises absently. Touching them still makes little pulses of warmth flare up in him, course up and down his spine. It's enough to get a buzz going, just something humming under his nerves. Maybe he doesn't want Bones to take them away. "You don't have to, though."
"Dress collar'll hide them?" Bones smirks, and this one's definitely a smirk. "Does he hurt you because he loves you?"
"Screw you." Jim trails his thumb over the bruise that feels the most sore, right where his neck and shoulder join. "It doesn't feel all that bad."
"Your call, then. They're just bruises." He pushes the tray away again, looks at Jim with his eyebrows raised -- It doesn't look quite right on humans anymore. "You keep this up and land your ass here, though, whether it's because Uhura busts your balls or Spock -- hell, I don't know -- you keep this up and you get hurt, I will be laughing when I put you back together. If I can, that is."
Jim claps Bones on the shoulder. "I'd expect nothing less from my CMO."
Bones covers that hand with his own and pats it. "Remember. Don't shave today."
-
Uhura doesn't eat much for breakfast. Well, she doesn't eat much, she's got two cups of coffee and one of milk on her tray, to set off two pieces of something toasted. She takes them to a section of the board that no one else is at, sits, and starts eating -- drinking -- it.
Okay, fine. Jim knows when he's being ignored. He doesn't slide his tray next to hers, because contrary to what Bones and certain others might think he has some sense of self-preservation, but he does pass by her and clear his throat meaningfully.
"You can come out and ask me, Captain," she says. Her lipstick leaves a mark on the cup.
"Just checking in," he says.
"Glad you're being so conscientious."
"Hey, it's my job."
"I shouldn't be surprised that you're doing it." She takes a long sip of the coffee.
She hasn't tried to punch him again. It's progress, or he takes it as such. "Look, I think we both want what's best for -- the ship," he says, reverses course at the last minute.
It's hard to tell if that's a smile or a smirk, but when she puts the cup back down the corners of her mouth are turned up. "Good. Then you'll do what's best for the ship and let me decide what to do about you."
So she hasn't decided yet. And he didn't even have to ask. He'd hold up his hands again, but they're busy gripping the tray. "Of course, Lieutenant."
"Now if you'll excuse me, Captain, I like to eat quietly."
"Good to know some things never change," he says, more to the ceiling than to her.
-
"How's she running, Scotty?"
"Well we're still trying to get her used to the new core but she's warming up to him." He pats one of the nearby cooling pipes fondly, like he's scratching the ship behind its ears, or would be if the ship were a dog. "I think she's afraid of getting close to it after what we did to the last one."
"Can't say I blame her," Jim says, and rests his palm on another pipe nearby, strokes it, feels the thrum and rush of water inside. "We gave her a good workout. Nothing I should be worried about, though?"
"Ah, just give a lass time," Scott says, and reaches out like he's going to do to Jim's shoulder what he just did to the pipe. "And speaking of that, Captain..."
Jim's about to comment that whatever Ensign Hendrickson thinks, he hasn't been making eyes at her for the past week (well, not the entire past week), when he realizes.
Oh.
His mouth's hanging open; he realizes that, too. He should do something about it. He swallows, contorts his face in a way that would make Bones proud or envious or both, says, "How did you -- ?"
"I've got got ears, lad." Scott grins, tilts his head kinda like a bird. "There's only four hundred people on this ship and not many that wouldn't know a woman scorned when he heard it."
Damn, it's worse than Starfleet Academy, he decides, not quite shaking his head in disbelief, but he could if he wanted. He can't tell if it's better or worse than Iowa, though, in terms of that. If he wants any privacy on this ship, he's probably going to have to program the computer to run a white-noise filter any time he takes someone into his room. "How much do you know?" he asks. That's a more productive question.
"That you haven't had the pleasure," he says. "Well. Not with her."
-- figures, the ship picks up on his failures faster than his successes. Not that he's had too many -- or any -- of those lately, since he and Spock told Uhura. "Working on it," he says, grits his teeth. "So what else have they been saying, huh?"
Instead of answering, Scott turns from Jim to look at the walls of the Engineering bay, up and around until his eyes settle on the new warp core casing. "That she's apt to cockblock you, Captain. Got a few credits riding on it myself."
" -- they're placing bets?"
"Keenser's in charge if you want a st -- get down from there, no wonder the girl's not warming up to it, she probably thinks she's got to take you into the pipes!"
Jim's not sure what Keenser chirrs to that, but it sounds pretty obscene.
"Oh yeah, I'm sure she'll take it all."
Jim has to say, he associates some pretty interesting images with that phrase. He clears his throat, if not his head. "Pretty sure I can't actually place bets on myself."
"You've got a point there."
"...what else are we betting on?" he asks, out of curiosity. Might as well know what his crew's up to, right?
Scott's grin somehow takes up all of the lower half of his face. "Let's just start with the ones about wee Chekov..."
-
"So the humor of the situation derives from his failure to slay the rabbit." Spock considers this like it's a move in chess, they've only just stopped playing so the comparison's pretty easy. "Fascinating."
"Sort of." Jim rubs the back of his neck, stirring the fading bruises there. Explaining humor is like dissecting a frog; it just isn't funny after you've sliced it open and picked it apart. "A lot of it comes from the slapstick, too. Exaggeration. Parodies of people and events in the twentieth century, that kind of thing. I don't get all the references, but something about the humor translates."
Like the way Elmer Fudd's face colors bright red and steam whistles out of his ears after Bugs smooches him on the cheek and hops away. There's just something funny about anthropomorphic rabbits cross-dressing, and Jim would even go so far as to call it universal if it weren't for the way Spock's staring at the viewscreen. Jim thinks he recognizes that tilt of his head, that quirk of his eyebrows. Puzzlement.
"This is logical," he says. "To my understanding, human humor is derived from the principles of misfortune and failure to correctly assess the situation. It would make sense that physical comedy serve as a globally understood projection of the character's current state and thus become memetic."
Jim blinks. Well, it's an accurate enough analysis, just not a particularly funny one.
"The characters' exaggerated displays of emotion are also considered humorous, if I understand this correctly."
"You do," he says. "It's just funnier when it's implicit, that's all."
"Which explains why you are not laughing." Spock turns away from the monitor but that assessing expression on his face hasn't changed at all. "You believe that understanding diminishes humor."
"No, but stating the obvious does."
Spock raises an eyebrow. "It was not obvious to me."
"Obviously." He looks at the abandoned chessboard, wonders what his next move would have been and whether or not it would have mattered. "Do they -- did they -- have humor on Vulcan?"
...too soon?
Apparently not. "Vulcan humor is -- similar to Terran humor in that, situationally, many of the most amusing scenarios are also the most tragic. But where you find this particular parable --" onscreen, Bugs has just taken the wrong turn at Albuquerque, "-- amusing because of the bald hunter's failure, I find it amusing that the hunter has not sought other quarry and continues to bear a grudge at the hare rather than seek enlightenment. In a diversion intended for humor on Vulcan, the hunter would be attempting to operate within logical parameters in a situation to which logic does not apply."
"But either way, it's funny because it doesn't make sense. Right?"
"Affirmative."
Jim grins. "There, you see? Common ground." At least they've found some of that by now. More than some of it, he'd think, and while he's on that particular subject it's hard not to think about how they kissed the same way, fierce and hard and hungry. Watching Spock's lips while he waits for the man to answer isn't helping.
Spock doesn't nod or anything, but he blinks, slowly, and that's pretty close to agreement. But after that he turns back and focuses on the cartoon, eyebrows occasionally shifting. He looks the same way when he's describing spatial anomalies. "You assume that posture quite often," he says, indicating the screen. Bugs is leaning on his elbow on a tree -- no, a cactus? -- chewing a carrot, dropping his catchphrase.
"What, leaning against stuff?"
"Affirmative."
"You watch me a lot, don't you?" he asks, not that he's not doing the same to Spock right now. Spock doesn't pose all that obviously, but the way he's looking now -- eyebrows narrowing, chin angled forward, shoulders drawing together -- means interest, or so Jim thinks.
And shutting his eyes? That's what he'd call compromise. "I remind you that it was the act of watching you move that incited what -- transpired, two nights ago."
"Yeah, I remember," Jim says. Vividly, in fact. Like how he kept his eyes open when he was making Jim come --
-- this really isn't helping the "hands off Spock" promise he made. And Jim keeps his promises. Mostly.
"From that it is feasible to draw the conclusion that I do observe your behavior with frequency and intensity," he says. His eyes are open now, and he's leaning forward, and the light from the monitor is shining on half of his face and creating all these weird sharp shadows, making his ear look even pointier on that one side.
"Frequency and intensity," he repeats. "Right." He shifts his focus back to the screen; Bugs is singing, nasal and obnoxious, which is a different kind of frequency and intensity. Different from the way Spock's tongue was moving against his, or the way his hand -- dammit. Spock's hand is resting on the arm of the chair now, his fingers tented up, but at least it's still.
And the other is trapped between Spock's thigh and the cushion. "Should I desist?"
There are very good reasons to say yes and very good reasons to say no. The nos win out. "No."
Spock nods, and watches Jim instead of the end of the cartoon. His hands stay where they are, though the one on the arm of the chair lifts a little and his knuckles spread -- so do his eyes and mouth, after that, just watching. Evaluating maybe. Intense.
And now Jim's getting hard, or about to. Great. Look at Bugs, he reminds himself.
Bugs is in drag again, sashaying towards Elmer Fudd. This isn't hindering as much as it should be. Fuck.
"I find this story strangely progressive," Spock says, though he hasn't glanced at the monitor since Jim gave him permission to watch him instead.
"Progressive?" Look at Bugs. Keep looking at Bugs. Come on, man.
"Despite that the hunter will never succeed, it is not for lack of the hare tempting him."
Jim's eyebrows must be at least as furrowed as Spock's are, and he turns back towards Spock to check that. "How's that progressive?"
Another one of Spock's visual cues that Jim's picked up on by now is confusion. It's subtle but it's there, both eyebrows tilting in or just one stretching out. "It implies that on some level it wants to be caught."
"...we're speaking in metaphors, aren't we, Spock."
"Evidently you are speaking for me, as I intended nothing of the kind."
Jim remembers what Spock said about Vulcans not being a species above passive-aggression. Well, the evidence seems to bear that one out. New subject. "Do you want to keep watching this?"
Spock looks between Jim and the screen, and then to Jim again. "And resume our abandoned game of chess? I do not believe the conditions have changed sufficiently in your favor."
Chess, cartoons -- dammit, the Enterprise is one of the largest ships in Starfleet, there has to be something else the two of them can do that doesn't involve sex. Or paperwork. Jim amends that: there are lots of things -- they could go over the spectroscopic readings the Enterprise's sensors picked up a day back, they could study up on the Klingon delegation they're supposed to contact in two weeks, they could order a test of the Enterprise's shields to make sure Scotty worked out those bugs -- but right now, none of them are half so appealing as grabbing Spock by the neck and shoving him --
Damn. Jim's fairly certain that if Uhura hadn't expressly told him they couldn't, he wouldn't want to nearly as much as he does. (Which is considerable.) He rolls his shoulders back, cracks them. "Just give me time."
So Spock pulls up from the chair, goes to the chess table instead, and doesn't spare Jim as much as a glance before it's obscured by three levels of chesspieces. "Your move," he says.
-
Janice takes Uhura's place at the comm board, and Uhura stretches, puts her arms above her head and tilts side to side. Her earrings jingle, loud enough that Jim can hear them over everything else going on. And she doesn't look at him or anyone else on her way off the bridge.
Jim gives the bridge a once-over: everything looks in order, more or less. "Sulu," he says, "you have the conn," and walks over to the turbolift after her.
Her nail's right over the close button by the time he gets there.
"Mind holding the door for me, Lieutenant?"
She cocks her head, maybe sneers a little, but holds the open button down instead. "Something you need, Captain?"
"Just heading down to the labs to check the latest readings," he says, truthfully enough. "I like to feel like I'm doing something on my ship other than swiveling around in a chair all day." And paperwork, all the mountains of paperwork. Jim never knew that being a ship's captain involved this much bureaucracy.
She lets him step in, stands aside. She's still working out a cramp in her neck, but it turns into a shrug. "Don't let me stop you."
I won't might not be the best answer here, so he punches in the code for the labs, leans against the wall as the turbolift starts to whirr. "Picked up anything out of the ordinary lately?"
"And not reported it to you immediately?" She looks down her nose at him as the lift starts up. "What kind of officer do you think I am, sir?"
"A damn good one, which is why I wanted you on my ship." He crosses his arms. "I'm just trying to keep myself appraised of things."
The door opens in one sudden hiss. Uhura steps through it, turns back to him, and smiles. "No changes, Captain."
"Good to know."
You know, Jim likes it when people defy his expectations.
-
"Sulu, what's our heading?"
"Warp three, mark seven bearing five, en route to Centauri, sir."
Jim nods, hoists himself out of the chair -- if he doesn't stand soon, he's never going to be able to use his legs again. He paces a circuit around the bridge, doesn't quite look over his crewmembers' shoulders but does keep a running log in his head of what they're all calculating, monitoring. "No change, then?"
"Not since yesterday, sir." Sulu leans over the console, double-checks the duration. "The course that Chekov plotted for us puts us on this bearing for another eight hours."
"Right. Chekov, you have the conn, I'm going to find something to do." Bones called space a madness; more accurate to call it sheer black boredom. If there's any kind of insanity lurking out here, it's the kind you get from sharing the same space with the same people and waiting for the interesting parts to come along.
"--Before you go, Captain, a question?" Sulu doesn't quite turn around from his station, but the chair's shifting, side to side.
"Sure thing."
"Where is Commander Spock?"
'He was down in Engineering, last I heard." Jim pauses. "Why?"
"It's just I haven't seen you two on the bridge at the same time for two, three days."
-- and now the rest of the crew's looking his way, too. Wonderful. Jim sighs. "Sulu, with me for a moment?"
"Sure," he says, and hands the helm over to Riley.
Once the door to the bridge has sealed shut behind them, Jim explains -- well, sort of. "Commander Spock and I need to keep our distance for another day or two. Nothing to worry about, just a precaution."
"Oh," Sulu says, nodding and grinning like he knows exactly what Jim's talking about. "So it's true that Uhura's threatening to rip his ears off if he touches you?"
Jim's face cycles through at least five different expressions before he finally settles on irked. Well, irked crossed with flabbergasted, given how his jaw's refusing to stay shut. "Does everyone know?"
"I think we've got about two hundred in on the pool."
"The pool," Jim repeats, half-incredulous. It just goes to show how much he still doesn't know about his own ship -- and how fast news travels on it, apparently. If only Warp Ten were this quick. "The one Keenser's running?"
"One and the same, Captain." Sulu's still grinning, it's like his cheeks are permanently up around his eyes. "For the record, my bets are on you."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sulu." He shakes his head, asks the question that's really been bothering him: "How the hell did you all find out in the first place?"
"Well, I heard from Riley, who heard it from Zahra, who heard it from Harrison. I think Chapel started everything, though."
Chapel. Fuck. Did Bones tell -- would he even have to? She's in Sickbay all the time, she must hear everything that goes on in there. He might need to start having his heart-to-hearts with Bones somewhere else, at this rate.
Sulu goes on, "But it's probably because she wants his Vulcan butt anyway."
-- not that Jim minds the mental images associated with that, necessarily -- or at all -- but in between visions of Chapel and Spock he manages to choke out, "Is there a betting pool for that, too?"
"What, whether Nurse Chapel plays doctor with Spock if Uhura dumps him? Yeah. Smaller, though. I think Scotty's running that one."
"Don't we have anything better -- no, I know for a fact that we don't." Jim's starting to see why they had that seminar about discouraging excessive fraternization aboard ship. Too late for that now, though. "Carry on, Sulu."
Sulu salutes, maybe a bit jauntily, and turns back to the bridge. "Yes, sir -- ah, one more thing."
"Go ahead."
"Is one of your eyebrows larger than the other?"
-
"You know, I have no idea why Starfleet's scheduled me for these damn diplomatic missions if they don't want me to do anything during them." Technically the Klingon goodwill conference is an extension of the Betelgeusian trade talks, so it's all part of the same long ugly mission (and Jim isn't just talking about the Klingon ambassadors, though that remark's strictly off-the-record), but his point still stands. "I'm telling you, either I'm standing there looking pretty while the Betelgeusians and Klingons squabble about trade and pretending not to understand Klingon insults, because the Klingons can say whatever they want and it's excused because they're Klingons, but if I retaliate in kind, it's intergalactic war. Or I'm sitting on the bridge avoiding paperwork, watching the stars fly by as specialists run my ship for me. You know, space is a lot more exciting in the books and vids."
"Or you're complaining to me," Bones adds. "Which sounds like it's taking up all your free time these days."
"That, and not having sex."
"--at all?"
Jim rubs his neck and wonders if Bones has anything for tension headaches, because he swears his temples have been pounding since he walked off the bridge. "I don't want things to get more complicated than they are." Sex tends to do that, inevitably. Case in point: his current situation.
Bones gawks at him like he's grown another head, which Jim's fairly certain he hasn't, since his headache would be twice as bad. "You're not having sex. James Tiberius Kirk is not having sex."
And then he smiles.
"I think I just won fifteen hundred credits."
"Fuck you," Jim says, amiably.
Bones grins. "Not right now, I'd lose the bet."
"You know what I mean. I'm stuck between boredom and Klingons, Bones. It's worse than a rock and a hard place."
"If you want it to stop being a hard place, I can fix that--"
"You're on a roll tonight, aren't you?" One Jim really should stop before he can't get a word in edgewise anymore.
Bones does stop, though; he pulls up a chair and sits in it, near where Jim's legs are dangling off the table. "You know, she might be testing you to make sure you're serious."
"I've thought of that," he says.
"You don't think so?"
Jim shrugs. "It might be part of it. I don't really know what she wants, though. Leaving the obvious aside."
Nodding, Bones tilts back in the chair, folds his arms behind his head, and then apparently decides that that posture doesn't work and reverses it completely to lean on his knees. "And it's probably not a good idea to ask her."
"Very bad idea." Jim picks at a loose shaving of -- something -- dangling from the table's edge and hopes it's nothing too vile. "Well, whatever she wants, hopefully she'll make up her mind about it soon. I can deal with whatever her decision is -- I can, Bones, stop looking at me like that -- but I'd like her to make it."
"Yeah, I understand." And he sounds it, too, even if he's still looking at Jim like that. "And personally? I think she's being a bitch about how long it's taking -- but she's perfectly justified. You two hurt her."
"I know, I know -- " His fingers keep clenching and unclenching like they're just itching to rip out his hair out by the roots, and Jim would rather keep his hair where it is, thanks. "Look, can we talk about something else? Tri-D chess, politics, weird new diseases, anything that isn't my sex life."
"Weird new diseases," Bones repeats, raising an eyebrow. (A lot of people seem to do that to Jim, never quite in the same way.) "I don't think you want to know what's in the vaccine order I just got in from command."
"Is it something that's going to affect the general safety and well-being of my crew?" he says, which is either a direct quote from one of the exams he had to take to qualify for the Command track at the Academy or damn close to it.
"Only if I set it loose."
Jim pounds Bones on the back. "Then don't set it loose."
-
"Of course I am aware of the betting pool."
-- and why wouldn't he be, now that Jim thinks of it? Spock seems to know more about the Enterprise than Jim himself does, some days. He moves his knight up a level, capturing one of Spock's bishops, which nets him an arched eyebrow. Jim wonders if Vulcan eyebrow alignment works the way it does just so the pointy-eared bastards can raise them better than any other race can. "Don't tell me you put money down, too."
"It would be unethical," Spock says, "as I have a measure of agency in the outcome."
It's Jim's turn to raise an eyebrow. "The gambling's not the unethical part?" Granted, he doesn't know if there are any prohibitions of it on Vulcan -- or if there were, rather -- but throwing away so much money on such scant odds seems, well, illogical. If that's the way you think, and if logic's your ethos, well then.
Spock makes his next move -- rook down one level, check to the queen -- and explains, completely impassive, "It is unethical to cheat the odds. It is not unethical to apply your knowledge of those odds to contest them." He lets his hand off the chesspiece, taps the timer. "The act of profiting off one's own knowledge is so ancient as to be compulsory."
"So you're telling me that Vulcans count cards in poker?"
"Affirmative."
"Well then." If he takes the rook, Spock'll capture Jim's queen with his knight, and his pawn's still two squares away from getting promoted. He moves his queen back three squares diagonally, out of danger. Chess is good for the two of them, he decides. Chess is something Jim can throw himself into and use to shut off, or at least shut out, all the other trains of thought running on parallel tracks in his head. "Remind me to take you to a casino sometime."
"If it is a quiet one," Spock concedes, and chases down the queen with his other free bishop, checking her from above. "From what I have seen in your films that make use of the setting, they are excessively loud."
Determined, isn't he? Jim blocks that bishop's path with another one of his pawns. "You can't trust the movies," he says, and amends it. "Well, enough of them are loud, but firefights don't usually break out in them."
"Understood," he concedes, and takes the pawn. "But I would be amenable to going."
Which frees Jim up to take the bishop -- no, Spock's knight threatens that square, too. He moves his queen straight down a level, where she's in a position to take out one of Spock's rooks. "Good. It's a date."
-- should he have said date? This is weird.
"Pending the availability of an appropriate casino, yes," Spock agrees. He moves the rook up -- and fuck, there goes that little pawn's chance of making it to the far square. It's almost bullying.
Jim doesn't smile, studies the board instead and wonders what's in that Vulcan head of Spock's that lets him calculate the odds so -- not quickly, because Jim can do that too if he's pressed, but deliberately. Weighing everything before he draws his conclusions. "It's a big universe, I'm sure we'll find a place," he says, captures Spock's rook with one of his bishops.
-- and there goes his queen now, caught between that bishop and the knight. "I look forward to it," Spock says.
-
"...Captain?"
"What is it, Chekov?" Jim asks, and hopes this isn't like Ensign Zahra whispering "good luck" to him in the mess, or Harrison and Yeoman Rickard shaking their heads sadly when he walked by, or even Ensign Kim's knowing wink. He's sick of his crew knowing more about his sex life than he does, though he'd like to know where they're getting their information.
Chekov looks sheepishly at the floor, or his own boots, which aren't scuffing it but are pressed close together, inside toe to inside toe. "I do not know if you were already aware, but I thought you should know that people have been -- taking bets about you. It has only just come to my attention, and --"
"Chekov, it's all right," he says, before the kid gives himself a heart attack. "I know."
"-- oh," Chekov says. "Oh. Yes. All -- all right, then, Captain." He backs away, hands clasped behind him.
"Was that all?"
"Yes Captain! Only that!." He grimaces. It's cute. Jim can't keep the exasperation up.
"Thanks for coming to me," he says.
"Of course, Captain!" And he just keeps backing away. "I mean, I would not like if there are bets on me, so I would want to know as soon as possible, and I thought it might be the same for you."
Jim's not as good at the wide-eyed innocent look as Chekov is, is he? Damn. "Nothing to worry about," he says, and is half-surprised when a bolt of lightning doesn't descend from the ceiling and strike him down where he stands right there and then.
-
"Permission to speak freely, Captain?"
Nothing Uhura's prefaced with that phrase has ever turned out that well for him, but Jim says "Granted" anyway and tries to ignore the way the pit of his stomach twists.
"I still don't like it," Uhura says, "or you. But --" She breathes, shuts her eyes like it's going to take effort to say, and Jim starts to hope. "But it's really undignified to have the entire crew laying money on whether I'll let you fuck my boyfriend."
"You noticed that."
"It wasn't hard." She rolls her eyes, comes a step closer to him from the closed door of his room. "And it's not just humiliating, it's really bad for ship infrastructure."
"I'm not disagreeing." Don't push her, not now. Wait and see where she's going with this.
She gets up in his face, almost; she's at least as tall as he is anyway. "I have to work here. I have to work, with you." And it takes another deep breath for her to say, "And I can't do that if the entire ship is making it look like we're fighting."
"No," he agrees, "you can't, and neither can I. And I meant what I said the other day; you're the best at what you do, and I'd be an idiot not to have you on board." It's flattery, in part, but it's also true. "I want this to be the best ship in Starfleet, and I think we can make that happen."
"We can," she agrees. "And that requires you not being frustrated, and Spock not -- not repressing what he wants, and me letting whatever it is you're doing...happen."
"Uhura," he says, much as part of him wants to start doing a victory dance in the corridors right now, "if this -- if this is really going to jeapordize things, I'll call it off. Now I know you don't think much of my self-control," or my anything, "but I really am trying to make this all work. And you -- it looks like the two of you work, and I like that. Maybe not as much as you do, but there you have it. I don't want you to say yes just because you think I'll make your life hell if you don't, or because you think I need to get laid if I'm going to captain the ship right." His dick's going to kill him for this speech, he has a feeling. "I want you to say yes because you're as behind this as you can be, and you know I'm not going to fuck things up."
She shakes her head no. "I don't think you'd do that, not intentionally." And then she licks her lips. This really must be hard for her. "And that's why. You're not -- you're not stupid, and you're not malicious. You just want him. And as long as you don't resent that I do too, it's your and his decision as far as I'm concerned."
This might be the most complimentary thing she's ever said to him. He considers that for a while. "No, I don't resent it. Never been the jealous type," in part because he's never really stuck around long enough to get jealous, but he omits that last bit. "And -- thanks. For your trust."
"You're welcome, Captain." One last look in his eyes and she backs away. "Now, if that's it, I'll just return to my post."
"Go ahead."
She nods, and leaves him there without looking back -- or not. One turn. "Oh, and Captain?"
"Yes?" he says, glad he waited on punching his fist into the air in celebration.
"You might want to stop having your gripe sessions in sickbay. I know for a fact Nurse Chapel bet against you."
...well shit. "Duly noted."
"And one more thing."
"Yeah?"
All her linguistics training shows through on every enunciated phoneme, the same way her teeth do. "I do not want to hear about it."
"Not a word," he promises, and hopes the ship's rumor mill can at least keep quiet about that.
He'll just have to wait and see.
-
---
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