Rumors - Chapter I
Title: Rumors
Author: Sally Daer (sallydaer@hotmail.com)
Fandom: Star Trek reboot
Characters: James Kirk, Leonard McCoy
Rating: NC-17 .)
Disclaimer: They're not mine. I'm only playing with them for a while.
Artist: zhie thanks so much for helping me with this.
Beta:
alluranna who was amazingly suportive and helpful. Thanks a lot. All the remaining mistakes are mine.
Summary: Jim always thought that he knew all there was to know about his best friend,. Now he's not so sure.
Written for the 2014 oeam bigbang
Most people would never consider the rec rooms in the Enterprise as a good place to work. In a starship of her size, with more than five hundred crewmen on board, with people coming and going at any time of day and night, enjoying their time off duty, they were too noisy. It wasn't easy to focus on anything with all the voices and the laughs in the background. Everybody knew, however, that it was in the rec rooms where the Captain caught up on his paperwork.
James Kirk liked to feel his crew around him. He maintained the theory that a good Captain needed to know what was happening between his people almost as well as he knew the condition of his warp engines, and he couldn't do that if he spent all his time between his senior officers, in his ready room, or locked in his cabin. Most of the best rumors never made their way to the bridge.
He liked to think that his crew trusted him enough to go to him with whatever crazy plot that had crossed their minds. He had a crew of geniuses, after all, and he didn't want any good idea wasted because he wasn't available to listen to them. Comfortably settled in a couch in one of the rec rooms, he was much more approachable than shut away in his office. And if that meant that the paperwork didn't progress as fast as it would have in some other place... Well, he'd always have time enough to finish it in his cabin later at night, or in the bridge the next morning.
That night, however, nothing threatened his concentration. By some strange miracle, rec room three had been empty and silent for a long while. Jim had finished reviewing and signing some reports from Engineering a few minutes before and now he was simply sprawled on a couch, sipping his cappuccino, and enjoying the sight of the stars on the other side of the window considering his day done.
He had to wake up early the next morning. He probably should not wait to return to his cabin and go to bed, but he felt so comfortable that he didn't even shift when he heard the soft hiss of a door opening and the sound of feminine laughter entering the room. Jim distinguished at least three different voices moving toward the replicator in the other end of the hall and asking for coffee before sitting at a table in the corner.
“That's not fair and you know it.” One of the women complained, obviously picking up a conversation they had started before. “If she's going to abandon us for a man, the least she could do is tell us who he is.”
“You kidding me? You know her,” another one replied. “She never tells the guy's name until she's sure that things are going to be serious between them.”
“And she never stays more than one or two weeks with any of them, so we never get to know who she is dating. But this time must be different. They've been together for more than a month,” the first woman insisted.
“Even so, if she prefers not to speak about it...”
“Forget what Cass may want, Jen. You should remember that it was Cass who didn't stop poking her nose in your business when you were flirting with Sulu. And we all know how well that went.”
Jim almost rose up when he heard that, but he instantly dropped again on the coach, trusting that his movement had gone unnoticed. That was interesting. Sulu? And a Jen? Flirting? Seriously? He didn't remember Sulu flirting with anyone in the ship. As far as he knew, the pilot spent all his free time playing with his sword or in the botany lab with some new bunch of alien plants. It wasn't usual to see him around of women out of work.
“Don't speak about that.” Jen replied. “I could have killed her.”
“Well, telling us who's she dating now wouldn't be half as bad as that was,” the third girl pressed, speaking for first time. “And is not as if Alex and I were going to speak about that with someone.”
“Of course not,” Alex reassured her. “But these last five weeks Cass has spent all her free time locked in that stallion's cabin. Damn it! It seems that she only goes out of there to work and to brag about how awesome he is in the bed. We need to know his name. If they break up sometime, Lyss and I may be interested.”
They roared with laughter, but Jim wasn't listening any more. During his first weeks on the Enterprise, he had made a very serious effort to memorize the names and faces of his crew, and he had an outstanding memory. He usually had at least a good idea of who was working with whom or who was spending time together in the rec rooms, but he didn't remember any Cass that he could match with a Jen, an Alex or a Lyss. He felt really tempted to stick his head out and look at them. Damn it! Who had Sulu been flirting with?
“All right.” Jen finally gave up. “But if she ever finds out that you know it, it was not from me.”
“Of course not.”
“You have our word. You can trust us.”
Jim wouldn't have trusted them at all, but it was obvious that, deep down, Jen wanted to tell her friends about Cass' lover. Maybe he'd have to find out who she was and what sort of job she was doing in the ship. Just to be sure that she was not in charge of something confidential, he thought sipping his coffee. It could be a problem if she sometimes had something important in her hands.
The girl dithered as long as she could, enjoying the moment, the expectation, and then dropped the bomb. “McCoy,” she said finally. “Cass is having a fling with Doctor McCoy.”
It was good that the news caused a burst of gasps and comments around the table, because Jim choked on his coffee and, in the almost empty room, without doubt, the women would have heard him. That is impossible. Absolutely impossible. He could accept that Sulu would have an affair without him finding out about it. The pilot was a very private person, after all, and didn't speak often about his personal life. But, Bones? No. Not Bones. Again, it was impossible.
All right. Maybe impossible was not the right word. After all, to be fair, Bones was a handsome man. If he wanted, he could seduce anyone. In fact, Jim had seen him do it; use his southern gentleman manners, whisper with that voice of his, sexy as hell, give a hint of a smile, and get women that would have made Jim sweat blood before speaking to him on their knees.
The real matter was that usually Bones didn't want too. He didn't like one night flings and hated the casual sex on board the Enterprise. Everybody was a possible future patient and he knew a little too much about them to feel really comfortable with it. Of course, he could have changed his mind, but he'd have told Jim about it, wouldn't he? He was his best friend, after all.
“Mmmmm, Jen. Are you sure about that?” Alex's cautious voice attracted Jim's attention to the conversation again.
“Very sure. Why?”
“Because I thought that McCoy was having an... affair with Matthews.”
“Matthews? Who's Matthews?”
“Matthews? That hot guy from Engineering?”
Lyss and Jen spoke at the same time and Jim's eyebrows arched in a way that would have made Spock proud.
“That one,” Alex replied right away. “You have to know him Jen. Tall, dark, with beautiful gray eyes, and a body to die for. He's always in the movie night when they show those horrible mystery holos from XXI century.”
“Yes, I know him.” Jim too. Lieutenant Christopher Matthews was one of the brightest and youngest officers in Engineering, but he didn't know that Bones had ever met him. What the hell? He didn't know that Bones had friends in Engineering, besides Scotty. “Are you sure?”
Jim nodded to himself. That was the question he wanted answered too, because it wasn't possible. Bones locked in his cabin, having wild sex with a hot girl? Not probable, but credible. Bones with another man? Difficult. He had been married and he had a daughter. Jim had never seen him checking any guy's backside, damn it! He was almost sure that the man was straight but he had to admit that it wasn't impossible. Bones with an engineer? Definitely not. Bones hated the idea of living in a starship. He avoided news of possible malfunctions of the engines as much as he could and he wouldn't be able to do that if he was dating with someone who worked in engineering on daily basis.
“I am. I've been working in Bio Lab Two for the last two weeks and you can see the doors of Sickbay from there. I've seen them together. A lot.” Jim snorted silently. That didn't mean anything. “They always walk very close, almost touching each other. McCoy is very focused on him and has that half smile... Do you know which one I mean?” The answer was probably positive, because Alex continued speaking only a moment later. “Matthews looks like... flushed, I'd say, and I'm not sure but I think that once or twice he was walkingfunny. I don't know what are those two doing together, but I can say that they are not speaking about programming the vaccines synthesizers.”
Someone whistled and, when Jim heard Lyss' voice, he sank a little deeper in the sofa and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, what happened with Yeoman Lane?”
“With Deb? No idea. Why?” But Jen seemed more than happy to hear about it. Jim definitely had to know in what track that woman was working in. “What do you know that we don't?”
“I'm not sure, but she and doctor McCoy were getting out of the turbolift on deck three yesterday when I was going in.” Lyss said excitedly. “Her hair was all disheveled, her uniform wrinkled, and he had his hand in her back.”
“Oh, my god!” Jen exclaimed. “It seems that the good doctor has been busy. Who would have believed it?”
“Everybody,” said Alex. “Have you looked at that man? Really looked at him? Have you ever seen him working out in the gym? He has the broadest shoulders ever and the most perfect ass. I can tell you,” she sighed happily, “sometimes I have to make a very hard effort to not reach out and slap it when he walks next to me.”
“And his hands,” Lyss added. “Have you noticed his hands? He has perfect, strong hands. With such long fingers...”
“Yes,” Alex interrupted again. “You only can dream about all the things that those fingers can do to a woman's body.”
“Are you kidding me?” It seemed that Jen was the only member of the group that couldn't see Bones' charms, and Jim couldn't decide if that was a good or a bad thing. “That man only opens his mouth to grumble or to make sarcastic remarks.”
“So?” Jim had the clear idea that Lyss would be more than happy to join Bones' harem. He still couldn't believe what he was hearing. “You don't need to speak with him. I'm sure that you could convince him to do much more interesting things than speak with that mouth of his. Think about those gorgeous lips...”
It was good that they chose that moment to put their mugs back in the replicator and go out of the room, because Jim didn't know for how long he could remain silent.
“Ohhhh, that bottom lip... Perfect to nibble”
“That's the right word. Perfect.” That was the last thing that Jim listened before the door closed behind the three women.
For a long while, he didn't move, too busy trying to assimilate what he had just heard. It was fucking disconcerting. The Doctor McCoy those women were talking about didn't look like the Doctor McCoy he knew. At all. Or, by some strange reason he didn't know, he had fallen in an alternative universe where his CMO was the official Casanova in the ship, or Bones had a wicked twin in the Enterprise and nobody had bothered to inform him. Or maybe Bones had been hiding a lot of things from him.
Truth be said, it was almost insulting, because Jim had been telling him each and every one of the details of his sex life for years. That weekend in the beach with Pike's niece and the Andorian cadet in their second year that Jim really hoped the admiral would never find out included. Right, since he was captain of the Enterprise his chances had been drastic and sadly, limited; but even so, Bones still had all the details. It was true that, if you asked him, McCoy would say that he was not interested in what was happening in Jim's bed, but even so...
It was so not fair. Now that Jim didn’t have his own sexual life, the least that Bones could do was share his. He didn't believe that everything the women had said was true. If Bones had been doing all of that, he hardly would have time to fulfill his shifts in Sickbay, and Jim knew that Bones was never late for work. He knew, from his own experience, that rumors were prone to get out of control on board the Enterprise, but there usually was a trace of truth in them. And if there was one here, Bones was going to tell him, without excuses, tomorrow morning.
Chapter II