Fic: Experimental Methods in Diplomacy
So I get back from a foreign country and the first thing I did was dig out a silly WIP from last year and finished it off. What the hell is this crack, I don't even. Man, I'm sorry.
Title: Experimental Methods in Diplomacy
Author: feels_like_fire, but I blame canis_takahari for enabling me
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot
Rating: R
Warnings: Uhhh... terribleness. Also pot. And some bad words.
Relationships: Kirk/Spock/McCoy, Kirk/Drama, Spock/Disdain, McCoy/Long-suffering
Wordcount: 8k, what the sweet hell
Summary: Kirk always has to clean up other people's messes. Then someone brings the hot mess aboard his ship. Shenanigans.
Notes: I forced (asked) canis_takahari to read through this cheerful terribleness for me, and she gave it the stamp of approval, so basically: blame her. Also blame circ_bamboo for getting in on the action and offering suggestions. If you think the three musicians sound terribly familiar, you're not wrong.
Later, Kirk would remember their time spent in the orbit of Ordani V as one of the Enterprise's most memorable and worthwhile assignments. But at the time, he's pretty distracted by A) the fact that half of his ensigns keep showing up to their stations high, B) trying to keep Spock from stone-cold murdering Zehr Gut, and C) assigning cleaning crews to dispose of all the penises drawn on the walls in the fourth officer's rec room.
It starts the way these things always do, with some planetary leader or another managing to off himself by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and of course it threatens to turn into a Galactic Incident, and of course it requires Starfleet intervention to prevent a planet-wide war. And, predictably, instead of sending another, lesser vessel to do what amounts to political baby-sitting, Starfleet does the equivalent of cleaning a messy room with a flame-thrower, and sends the Fleet's flagship to do the job a vessel half her size could do. Deep down Kirk believes with his whole heart that Komack is trying to make Kirk quit the Fleet out of pure disgust, but it hasn't worked thus far and Kirk has no intention of ever giving him the satisfaction. So.
"So," Kirk says, eyeing the brief Starfleet Command sent to his personal PADD. "I could spend the next half-hour reading through this encyclopedia the Admiralty sent us, or I could just have you give me the Cliff Notes version and we could get this over with."
Spock clears his throat, clasps his hands behind his back, and straightens-something Kirk wouldn't even have believed possible, except that Spock takes good posture to a newer, scarier level than even flagpoles dream of. "At 0100 hours this morning, Robert Rae Jenkins, Simon Bayles, and Zehr Gut Jackson were apprehended by planetary authorities on Ordani VI-"
"Wait, wait," Kirk interrupts. "Zehr Gut? Is that a joke? I mean-like, I know you do secretly have a sense of humor, but Spock, German is pretty obscure, even for you."
Spock raises one eyebrow a few millimeters, clearly meant to indicate what he thinks of the situation in general and Kirk's inability to focus in particular. Kirk supposes it's his lot in life to be friends with spectacularly brilliant, competent people who all minored in emotional scarrification. He's pretty sure that, if the whole saving the galaxy and exploring the cosmos thing doesn't work out for the Enterprise's crew, they can all open up a little shop that sells lessons in soul-crushing irony and sarcasm. And fencing, because Sulu and Chekov are too nice for their own good and he wouldn't want them at the front desk doing reception-OKAY, KIRK, FOCUS.
"Negative, Captain," he says; the you idiot goes unspoken but still understood. "This individual's legal name is as I have just stated. He is one-third of a three-piece band."
"Oh, god, they're a band? Sulu wasn't fucking with me after all?" Kirk jumps up and grabs his PADD again, paging through the data until he finds what he's looking for. "You have got to be kidding me. We do not have Viridian Afternoon in our brig right now."
"Negative, Captain," Spock says again. "They are awaiting your attention in the guest quarters on Level 5. They do have a security contingent attending them, but they are not currently classified as prisoners."
"Jesus fuck me Christ," Kirk mutters. "And what, pray tell, are the chances of getting to off-load our 'guests' in the near future?"
"That, Captain, remains to be seen. It is dependent upon how speedily Starfleet can resolve the planetary governmental crisis on Ordani V."
"I hate politics so much," Kirk tells his PADD plaintively. "What did I do to deserve this?"
"According to my recollection-"
"Rhetorical question, Spock. Don't answer it."
"Affirmative, Captain."
* * * * *
By the time Kirk and Spock arrive on Level 5, Spock has brought Kirk up to speed on the trainwreck of a situation that's currently residing in their guest quarters. The aforementioned three men are indeed all members of the same band, but it's not the arrest itself that makes the situation volatile, although when Kirk hears their list of "accomplishments" (many of which have previously resulted in arrests) he finds his irritation shifting to a grudging respect. (This particular arrest was due to a feat of combined vandalism and rabble-rousing that even Kirk, who didn't exactly cover himself in glory as far as maturity goes during his Academy days, is forced to gaze upon with some admiration-it's not every day that you meet people inventive and capable enough to climb up on top of a government building for the express purpose of setting a giant pile of feces on fire.)
Turns out the lead singer, guitarist, and lyricist of the outfit, one Robert "Bobby" Rae Jenkins, is also the sole living offspring of the ruling family of the Ordani star system. It doesn't hurt that he's apparently a bastard son, the illegitimate child of a minor government official the recently-deceased king once slept with, a fact that only came to light in the days after the old king's death by poisonous mushroom in his evening soup.
("Who the hell still has actual kings and queens?" McCoy wonders aloud later. "What is this, Regency-era England? Haven't these assholes ever heard of democracy?" That's around the time Kirk tells him to stop being such a space-racist and to find better things to do with that mouth of his, like finishing sucking Jim's dick.)
"Our orders are to insure the safety of Jenkins and his two companions while the situation gets resolved," Spock concludes, as he and Kirk come to a halt outside the entrance to the guest quarters. "Additionally, we are instructed to aide in negotiations towards a peaceful and speedy resolution, as this star-system is a key stopping point on one of the Federation's trade-routes."
"Of course it is. And of course the Enterprise was the closest ship when the civil unrest broke out." Kirk rolls his eyes, nodding at the two ensigns on security detail. "At ease, gentlemen."
The doors open, and as Kirk and Spock step into a dimly-lit room, they are immediately hit by a cloud of faintly green-grey smoke that carries with it a strong, familiar scent. Kirk stops a few feet inside, struggling to keep his jaw from actually falling open at the sheer strength of the smell.
How have the smoke alarms not all gone off? "Are you smoking weed on my ship?" he demands, voice rising incredulously. Now he can make out three figures slumped in various poses over the couches in the center of the room, and at the question one of them raises a hand in a lazy wave.
"I believe I recognize the scent of the plant they are currently smoking, Captain," Spock says in Kirk's ear, but Kirk shakes his head, striding forward and grabbing up the pipe from the nearest somnolent figure, prompting a slurred "Hey!"
"Computer, lights to 100%," Kirk says, provoking a chorus of complaints as the lights adjust. Kirk finds himself face-to-face with three bleary, scruffily-dressed twenty-somethings that look more like the idiots Kirk used to knock elbows with in the Riverside drunk tank than the wildly successful rock trio they're supposed to be. The one whose pipe Kirk just grabbed sits up, eyeing Kirk with equal parts disdain and veiled apprehension that jolts Kirk when he realizes that he's used to being the one to level that look, not receive it himself. "Well," Kirk says, and feels abruptly older than his twenty-seven years, "I can tell having you aboard is going to be a real experience, gentlemen."
"Gee, thanks," drawls the scarecrow on the couch across from Kirk. Judging from the way the other two glanced at him, Kirk guesses this one's the frontman, Bobby Rae. "'Cause we're so fuckin' excited to be here in the first place." Bobby Rae crosses his own arms across his chest, slouching defiantly back against the couch. Like both of his bandmates, his arms are surprisingly muscular, and covered in bright splashes and swirls of ink that snake around biceps and wrists like living things. His hair is bright blue and gelled into unruly spikes, his tight black pants are faded and ripped in places but still doing better than the t-shirt he's wearing that looks as though its "better days" were spent wadded up under someone's head as an impromptu pillow. His dossier pins him at twenty-eight, older than Kirk is, but he doesn't look a day over twenty-one, from his baby face down to the metal nose ring in one nostril.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ on a cracker, says a voice in the back of Kirk's head that sounds suspiciously like Bones, this is the royal heir we're supposed to be protecting? The Ordanian people are all headed for a civil war.
"Mmm. About that..." Kirk smiles, adopting the tone Sulu says he uses when he's about to 'go bazoo' on someone. "I don't know what the authorities on your planet told you, or what anyone else has told you, for that matter, but right now you're on my ship. I don't actually care what you get up to while you're here, so long as you don't get in my crew's way or make trouble, but I'll be happy to have you spend the rest of the voyage in the brig if you give me a good reason."
In response, Bobby Rae raises his hand and gives Kirk one of humanity's oldest gestures, and then all three punks literally fall over into a fit of hysterical pot-fueled laughter. Kirk can hear Spock rolling his eyes hard enough to hurt himself, and settles for crossing his arms over his chest, wondering all the while if this is what Pike feels like whenever he has to comm Kirk to chew him out for yet another round of regulation-flouting escapades.
"Captain, may I recommend that we insure the health of our guests by sending them to Doctor McCoy for full medical work-ups?" Spock's cool, calm voice belies the utter malice of the suggestion, and Kirk lights up, turning to beam at the Fleet's most sadistically efficient First Officer. Now is one of those times when he's glad Spock is on his side. Behind him, the laughter subsides as the band members realize that something is up.
"I couldn't agree more, Mr. Spock." Kirk taps his comm. "Dr. McCoy, I'm sending our guests your way. They'll be needing a full medical check-up, the whole works. Kirk out." He closes the call before Bones can squawk a protest at him, and then turns a beatific smile at the now-apprehensive faces of Bobby Rae, Simon, and Zehr Gut, who are all looking at Kirk as though he's just sprouted another head. Their eyes only get wider as the door hisses open and four security guards troop in. "Welcome to the Enterprise, gentlemen," Kirk chirps maniacally, and then turns on his heel to walk out of the cabin, followed smartly by Spock.
It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks.
* * * * *
Kirk is in the doghouse with Bones for a couple of days after that, even after Kirk protests that it was Spock's idea ("Don't you think for a second I didn't give that pointy-eared hobgoblin a piece of my mind too, Jim," Bones growls, when Kirk tries to argue the situation with Bones into mid-shift nookie in his office), but it's totally worth it, because the make-up sex will be amazing. Kirk and Spock make a competition out of who can win Bones back over first-or rather, Spock tries to pretend he's above participating in any such bullshit, while Kirk makes all sorts of bets about what the loser will have to do whenever one of them manages to wheedle Bones into forgiving them.
Spock, being Spock, and also at this point having stolen a few pages out of the James Kirk Guidebook to Shameless Hustling despite all protestations to the contrary, completely rigs everything by managing to be off-shift when a report comes to the bridge of trouble down on the Engineering deck. Kirk has it on good authority that Spock has finagled McCoy into coming to Spock's quarters for dinner (that "authority" actually being "Kirk hacked into Spock's PADD when he was looking over the Horsehead Nebula report," which: Spock should know better than to think Kirk is above that shit), and Kirk had every intention of crashing their party because he hates being left out, but now he has to go make sure that these stupid goddamn punk kids aren't somehow going to detonate the warp core in a misguided attempt to make the biggest gravity bong ever.
He could just send a security team, but if they're messing with his girl then there will be hell to pay, and now Kirk wants to know where Scotty ran off to, because he sure as hell isn't answering his comm. So Kirk gets Cupcake (whose name is actually Matthews, but Kirk invents nicknames for a reason) and two other guards, and they all troop down to Engineering, and the minute they step off the lift Kirk can already smell the trouble. Or rather, he can smell the weed. Again.
Scotty is dead, Kirk vows silently. Even Bones won't be able to save him.
But Kirk's fiery vengeance is delayed for a good fifteen minutes while they try to find the source of the smell, which proves remarkably difficult. It's Keenser who gives the miscreants away, by stumbling out into the hallway down which Kirk and the crew are hunting and passing out spectacularly against a wall. Bobby Rae, Simon, Zehr Gut, and Kirk's chief engineer are all holed up in the Jeffries tube shooting off from said hallway, and when Kirk manages to work his way into it he almost goes blind from the accumulated smoke. Scotty's eyes are as red as a weasel's, and Simon (he's the bassist, Kirk thinks distractedly--purple hair, big arms) ceremoniously passes Kirk a large, elaborate glass pipe as Kirk tries and fails to glare them into submission.
They're hotboxing in the goddamn Jeffries tube. Doing a pretty fucking epic job of it, too.
Kirk ships them all off to sickbay, including Scotty, and then storms back to his room to try to go through some paperwork he has to do. He's met with a cool, blinking light on his PADD, indicating a message from Spock:
Jim. As per our wager, I request that you plan to spend our next shore leave traveling with me to the scientific colony on Phaedron Alpha XII to observe their unique preserve of self-sustaining fungi. I look forward to your company. Spock.
Kirk ends up spending the evening pummeling a punching bag into submission. It's just his luck that he's taught the ship's only Vulcan to gamble just in time for Kirk to lose their bet.
* * * * *
Gaila loves them, of course. Kirk should have known.
(If Gaila weren't also the most terrifyingly brilliant hacker the Federation has ever known, her tendency to get herself and all her associates into trouble would long ago have gotten her court-marshalled, but as it is, she eats encrypt codes for breakfast and follows it up with ...jail-breaking punk rockers, apparently. Between her and Chekov, the galaxy is doomed if the crew of Enterprise ever decides to turn pirate---anyway.)
"--And Zehr Gut isn't his real name, you know," she says brightly, beaming at Kirk over the cup of replicated coffee she's drinking. Her hair is shiny and clean, and she seems alert and full of energy, her usual bubbly self and not at all like a woman who spent the previous evening partying until 0400 hours in the morning.
Kirk looks up from his stack of neglected paperwork, raising his eyebrows in unconscious imitation of his First. "Is that so," he says, because he can't think of anything else to say, but it still sounds like Are You F*ing Kidding Me.
Gaila nods earnestly, red curls bouncing as she regales Kirk with an account of all the sexual positions she tried and the exact locations of all of her new shag's tattoos. The perkiness--it's the Orion hormonal response to sex, Kirk thinks distractedly, and is suddenly twice as annoyed as he was before. He hasn't even realized he's tuned out until suddenly Gaila's words cut back through his irritated fog: "...and the concert's going to be in the mess hall tomorrow night at 2000 hours--"
"Wait, what? Gaila. You did not promise them that they'd be able to have a concert in our mess hall."
Gaila blinks at him, the face of innocence. It's the face Agrippina might've made before giving her Imperial husband poisoned mushrooms. "Of course I did," she says severely. "There's nothing in the regulations about forbidding such a thing. I looked," she adds, as though Kirk would ever doubt that Gaila would look up every single rule for the sole purpose of discovering all of their loopholes. It's what she does.
Kirk groans. "Gaila," he says, and his voice is suspiciously close to a whine, "these--guests--have already gotten my Chief of Engineering so high that he's still sleeping it off in medical 30 hours later."
"It'll be good for crew morale!"
"It'll be bad for my sex life," Kirk says, making sure the level of tragedy here is perfectly clear. "Bones and Spock will break up with me and I'll die alone on an asteroid somewhere in Gamma quadrant and be eaten by intergalactic space ants."
"I'll help you pick out a blow-up doll," Gaila says kindly, reaching over to pat Kirk's shoulder in what she no doubts imagines is a conciliatory gesture. Kirk briefly contemplates the merits of just ejecting his unwanted guests out of airlock before deciding it isn't worth giving Komack something else to bitch at him about, no matter how satisfying it would be in the short term.
"Gaila, no," he says firmly. "This is not happening. This is not---" He's interrupted by a beep from the computer, and something about the way Gaila's face abruptly smoothes sends a little warning bell off in the back of his head. Kirk reaches over and presses the button. "Kirk here."
"Captain, did you authorize an informal performance by our... guests in the mess hall?" Spock's sonorous voice is calm and collected, but Kirk is well-versed enough in Vulcan vocal tones to recognize how severely Spock is judging him right now, even before he's heard Kirk's answer.
Kirk shoots Gaila a murderous look as he leans over. "No, I did not," he says, and Gaila pouts. "Is there a concert going on in our dining hall right now, Spock?"
"Yes Captain, there is. Additionally, a great number of the crew have assembled to watch, and many of them seem to have grown over-excited by the proceedings. I surmise that the situation will become unmanageable in five-point-three minutes and that minor damage to the furniture will ensue, if the performance is not halted ."
"Over-excited? Spock--" Kirk pauses, incredulity creeping into his voice. "Is there a mosh pit in the cafeteria right now?" At his words, Gaila bounces out of her seat with a look of pure glee, pulling on her uniform and boots at a speed Kirk wouldn't have believed possible.
"I am unaware of what a 'mosh pit' is, Captain, but I can assure you that there are no pits currently visible, however--"
"I'll be right down," Kirk says, and tears out of the room after Gaila so quickly he almost breaks the door.
* * * * *
The situation has moved straight past "unmanageable" and into "pandemonium" by the time Kirk and Gaila arrive on the scene. Spock is standing by the doors, his hands folded behind his back, somehow managing to have both no expression and one of extreme disapproval at the same time; next to him is a small security detail, their phasers in their hands, their postures a study in confusion. No doubt their training never covered what to do when a large number of your ship-mates have just decided to participate in thinly-controlled chaos.
Or not-so-thinly-controlled, Kirk thinks with a touch of grudging admiration. The entire mess hall has been converted into an impromptu concert space, with tables and chairs pushed hastily to either side of the hall, and in the center of the newly-created space a pulsing mass of humanity and aliens is thrashing and shoving and jumping around as though possessed. Obscured by what looks like half of the teaming crew of Enterprise is the band, down at the far end of the hall, and Kirk can hear them better than he can see them---where did they even get speakers, he wonders. Was it part of their cargo when they came aboard? And what about guitars?
"Captain," Spock says---shouts, really, because guitars and drums and screaming people are difficult to hear over, "how should we proceed?"
Before Kirk can answer, a green blur darts into the crowd of people--Gaila, who has evidently decided she's going to get her moshing in before the concert gets broken up. Kirk steals a glance at Spock's face, then looks back at the crowd. He surveys the red, delirious faces of the crew members nearest him; looks at the walls, which already have several disturbing-looking stains on the supposedly stainless polyplastic sides. And he thinks about the fact that his crew hasn't had any shore leave time in almost six months, because it doesn't matter how many new recruits they have back at the Academy---it's only been nine months since half the Fleet was decimated in the fiasco at Vulcan, and they're still under-prepared and spread too thin.
Fuck it, he thinks, and reaches out to slap Spock's arm as he has so many times. "We crowd-surf!" he shouts. "I'm putting you in charge for the moment, Spock!" And with that, he bounds into the whirling dervish of people in front of him, and is swallowed almost immediately by the crowd.
A mosh pit is a lot like being in a massive barroom brawl---except that instead of fists flying at his face, it's a lot of shoving and a lot of elbows, and every time Kirk is almost knocked to the ground, a half-dozen hands shoot out to grab him and haul him upright again, only to send him careening back into another dozen people, all shouting and laughing and sweaty and red in the face. He gets a glimpse of Sulu in the crush, doing some enthusiastic head-banging, and then someone goes by overhead, passed along hands and shoulders, and astonishment slices through the grind as Kirk realizes it's Chekov, his face lit up with glee. "CHEKOV!" shouts Kirk, but his navigator disappears almost immediately. He sends up a prayer that tiny Russian geniuses are more durable than they look, because at this point it's either shut down the concert altogether or just give up on any semblance of control and ride the wave.
Kirk's never met an adrenaline-high situation he didn't want to completely own, of course, so his choice is clear. What the hell, he's already not getting laid for the next two weeks---might as well make it worthwhile. He can always blame it on head-trauma later.
* * * * *
"I cannot believe you let that happen." McCoy pats his head gingerly, grimacing with what Kirk thinks is probably unnecessary gravitas.
"I can't believe you crowd-surfed," Kirk says cheerfully, tapping a file on his PADD with his index finger. "I mean, until you got dropped on your head, anyway. But it was still impressive!"
"I went in after you!" McCoy snaps, and okay, Kirk thinks he probably deserved that, but really, he can't be blamed: the sight of his Chief Medical Officer being hoisted atop the shoulders of his crew, shouting furiously to be put down (not that anyone could hear him, because: concert) rates as genuinely amazing, no matter what the rubric.
"Why?" asks Sulu, who is sporting at least as many bruises as McCoy but is considerably more cheerful about that fact. "It was a concert, Dr. McCoy, not a firefight."
"It was a goddamn shitshow, and you're all lucky you're in one piece," McCoy retorts. They're all gathered around one of the big round tables in the officer's conference room, ostensibly to discuss their operating procedure upon arriving at Ordani V, but Spock has gone to get the reluctant heir-apparent and hasn't returned yet, so the bridge crew is killing time until he does. Kirk should probably cut the gossip, but he's nursing a bit of a headache himself and can't really be bothered. Besides, it's fun.
"I could see you saying something," Gaila offers. As usual, she's the one exception to the rule, looking as sunny and put-together as she always does. Kirk is starting to think maybe Gaila (not all Orions, just Gaila) secretes some kind of rare and wonderful drug from her pores, and that if they could bottle it and sell it, they could all retire as hozillionaires to some far-flung peaceful little planet. "I tried to get close enough to hear, but the music was too loud."
"It was probably 'Get off my lawn,'" Kirk says, studiously focusing on his PADD. Next to him, Uhura discreetly hides her laughter behind her hand, but it's Kirk that McCoy focuses his glare upon.
"That was not music," McCoy growls. "And see if I bother stitching your arm back on next time you come back from an away mission with it half-removed, you ungrateful little shit."
"If I'd known you were going to wade in to the riff-raff, I would have left your cane with Spock so you could shake it at us from your wheelchair," Kirk observes. McCoy fixes him with a glare that could drop a flop-eared baby bunny at thirty paces, and Kirk pulls his best 'who, me?' expression into place.
He's saved from further verbal sparring by the appearance of Spock at the conference room entrance, and the look on Spock's face instantly kills the conversation. "Spock, report," Kirk says, straightening.
Spock stops at the edge of the table, standing stiffly even for him, hands locked behind his back. "Captain, Ordani V is currently under lockdown due to an insurgency by a rebel faction. Fighting broke out thirty-point-six minutes ago, and communication with the Starfleet representative and Prime Minister have been cut off."
"Have the rebels stated their grievances?" Kirk asks, though he has the sinking feeling that he already knows the answer.
Spock inclines his head slightly. "Affirmative. The insurgent faction has stated that Robert Rae Jenkins is unfit to rule Ordani V, and wish to institute a democracy that they may select a more fit ruler. The current Prime Minister has refused to step down, stating that he will not relinquish his position until the prince has taken up his position on the throne."
Kirk rises, gesturing at his bridge crew to remain seated even as they stand at the same time as him. "Right, it looks like we have a situation on our hands. Do you have any further data we should hear about?"
Spock hesitates; Kirk's eyebrow shoot up, and he waits until his First finishes having his private conversation with himself. "Captain," Spock says finally, "our orders state explicitly that we are not to interfere with the status quo of this system, beyond our directive of installing Mr. Jenkins on the throne, but--certain confident information has been sent to Enterprise that indicates the Prime Minister has no intention of relinquishing any actual power to Jenkins, and that it is likely he will be a puppet ruler, King in name only."
"How original of him," McCoy says darkly. "Not to be the one cynic in the room, but how bad would that be, exactly? Since this new kid doesn't exactly scream 'competent ruler' to me."
"He does yell a lot, Keptin, but I would not call it screaming," Chekov puts in.
"Aye," Scotty chimes in. "I don't imagine a lad with that much of a penchant for the green would be very good at politics."
Spock nods. "Affirmative; that was my initial reaction also. However, there have been a number of universal rights-violations on Ordani V in the past 6 months, most of which were carefully erased from the official record. They were only recently brought to light by an as-yet undisclosed source."
Kirk suffers a brief moment of wonder at the way his crew have started to work together so seamlessly. Not ten months ago, Spock's eyebrows would have climbed so far into his hairline they would be staking little flags on top of his scalp, while that throbby vein in McCoy's head would be ready to pop. (Though to be honest, Scotty is still on Kirk's shit-list for the incident in engineering, but he doesn't have Scotty on board because he's such a morally upright person; he has Scotty on board because the man's a fucking evil genius.) Abruptly, he realizes everyone is looking at him and he snaps to attention. "There must be an option that doesn't consist of leaving a corrupt politician in power, requiring an unwilling, unprepared rock star to be a capable leader, or leaving a star-system on the brink of civil war," Kirk says, because occasionally it's his job to be Captain of the Fucking Obvious as well as just Captain.
"I believe I have an idea, Captain," Spock says immediately. The sneaky fucker had probably just been waiting for that exact opening, Kirk thought.
"Well then, Mr. Spock," Kirk says, "Let's hear it."
* * * * *
Spock's plan is flawless and perfect, like so much of his strategy. It's the kind of plan that makes Kirk glad Spock is his First Officer, because if Spock weren't already on Kirk's ship, Kirk would probably have to resort to all kinds of illegal and unethical trickery in order to shanghai the Vulcan into being part of his crew.
Anyway, Spock's plan---everything goes exactly as it should, right up until the point when the Prime Minister does the political equivalent of flipping a table in a restaurant and holes up in the Capital building, and even then the situation is totally salvageable until a list of hostages' names are released and Robert Rae Jenkins has a full-blown panic attack in the conference room where Kirk and Spock and Viridian Afternoon are watching the shit hit the fan on real-time broadcast. Kirk might shout into the comm at Dr. McCoy more than is strictly necessary, but he's seen someone's face turn that exact shade of chalky grey before, and it didn't end so well.
"Bobby, you have to tell them," Simon says for the third time, and again Bobby shoves Simon's hand away and shakes his head with a violence that Kirk thinks isn't really warranted. Or actually, he doesn't know if it's warranted, and the not-knowing is really starting to piss him off. It's a sign of how much shit he's started to expect from dealing with these guys that he's more annoyed than actively concerned.
"Tell me what?" he asks, and Simon shoots him a helpless look before averting his eyes, focusing on Bobby Rae. Kirk's on his knees on the other side of the hyperventilating man, one steadying hand on Bobby's shoulder. Bobby wrenches away, curling awkwardly against the wall and burying his hands in his face with a choked-off little noise. "Hey," Kirk says, starting to actually get a little worried. "Hey, I'm here to help you, Bobby. We can handle this." He wonders for what feels like the hundredth time why McCoy isn't up here yet just as the door hisses open and McCoy hurries into the room, shoving Kirk unceremoniously out of the way as he settles next to Bobby Rae. McCoy grabs one of Bobby's trembling hands, yanks his arm out, and jabs him in the arm with a hypo he produced from thin air, apparently.
"OW!" Bobby yelps and yanks his arm away again, fixing McCoy with a glare. "FUCK! What the hell?" Kirk feels a stab of sympathy (how many times has he had that exact reaction?) immediately followed by the warm satisfaction of knowing that it's happening to someone else, for once.
"Look at me and breathe," McCoy says, not unkindly, grabbing for Bobby's wrist again and pulling it firmly away from his face. "I gave you a sedative to calm you down a little. Come on, kid, you're not gonna do anyone any good if you're having a melt-down."
"Fuck you," Bobby says, but there's not much venom behind it, and whatever was in that hypo seems to be working because at least he's not hyperventilating any more. He takes a deep, shaky breath, and swallows. "Okay, okay. I'm--I'm fine. Sorry."
"You wanna tell me what happened just now to bring that on?" McCoy asks, his voice gentler now. Kirk keeps quiet; behind him, he can feel Spock coming to stand next to him.
"Nothing," Bobby says, his eyes aimed resolutely at his lap. As liars go, he's a pretty bad one. "Just a stupid panic attack. It's nothing."
"Bobby, you are a piece of shit." Kirk turns towards Bobby's hitherto-silent third band member, surprised to see anger clouding the man's face as Zehr glares at Bobby. "Three of the hostages named in the broadcast are Bobby's wife and sons, Captain."
Bobby stares at his friend for a handful of seconds in stunned silence before scrambling to his feet. Suddenly, Dr. McCoy is having to pin a blue-haired, struggling manchild against the wall in order to keep Bobby from attempted murder.
"Hold still or I'm going to tranq your scrawny little ass," McCoy growls, and after a moment Bobby subsides, the panic that was previously inhabiting his person now replaced with mute fury. Kirk looks hard from Bobby to Zehr Gut to Simon, who looks visibly relieved. Now at least Kirk knows what the "tell them" comment was about.
"Computer, cease broadcast, record further transmissions," he says. "Dr. McCoy, please escort Mr. Bayles and Mr. Gut to their quarters," he says. "I need to have a word with Mr. Jenkins in private. Spock, please keep abreast of the situation on Ordani V. You have your orders, gentleman."
Whatever shit he might catch from Bones and Spock in private, neither of them bat an eyelash. In thirty seconds, Kirk is alone with Bobby, who takes the opportunity to go slouch into one of the chairs around the big conference room table and stare resolutely at the far wall. Yet again, Kirk finds himself feeling like the bad guy, and for a few moments all he can do is stand there, torn between twin impulses to shake Bobby Rae by his skinny shoulders until candy comes out, and getting them both stinking drunk.
Instead, he takes a deep breath, and then comes around the conference table to sit in the chair next to Bobby, who doesn't so much as look at him. In fact Bobby looks like he's trying to pretend Kirk doesn't exist.
He says nothing for a good 90 seconds, waiting until Bobby starts to fidget before he leans forward and places his hands flat on the table. "How old were you the first time you got arrested?" he asks. The question gets a quick side-eye from Bobby but no actual response, which Kirk fully expected. Kirk studies the tops of his hands, noting disinterestedly how the nail on his right forefinger still hasn't grown back completely from where it was torn out in the rock slide on Balmoral XI. "I was fourteen," Kirk says, when another thirty seconds have passed and Bobby still hasn't said anything.
Bobby looks at him sharply, but Kirk takes no notice. "Broke into my teacher's hovercar and poured deer urine all over the engine block. Smells fucking horrible when the car gets all heated up, and you can't get the smell out for love or money. I would've gotten away with it but I didn't know the car had an internal camera." Kirk smiles in remembrance of Mr. Ellison's furious, sputtering face, the way his stuck-up prick of a teacher had stormed into the classroom that morning late and smelling of piss and sweat. Petty? Sure. Satisfying? Oh hell yes.
Bobby is staring at Kirk now, having altogether given up the pretense of being the only person in the room. "I still probably would've gotten off with a warning and some community service, but my stepdad was still sore at me for totaling the Corvette two years before, so he asked the juvie judge to give me the maximum punishment. I spent three months working at the detention center after school."
"You totaled your stepdad's Corvette when you were twelve," Bobby repeats, his expression skeptical but his voice warmed with reluctant admiration. "How?"
"Drove it off a cliff." Kirk finally turns to look at Bobby, whose eyebrows are attempting a Spockian level of elevation.
"Bullshit!"
"Naw. But it wasn't my step-dad's, it was my dad's. Frank had no right to be driving it anyway." Kirk flashes a small grin. "It was a vintage Stingray Corvette, too. 1965." Bobby's jaw drops open before he can stop himself, and then his expression darkens again with mistrust as he seems to remember whom he's having this conversation with.
"Okay, so. You want a medal or something?" Bobby says, slouching down in his chair again-Kirk is starting to recognize the defensive posture for what it is, and is willing to bet Spock could dig up a study for him correlating lifetime levels of self-esteem and spinal compression, or something.
Kirk shakes his head. "Nope." Bobby looks long at him, like he's not really sure what to make of Kirk anymore. "You still haven't told me how old you were the first time you got arrested," Kirk points out mildly, when Bobby still hasn't said anything.
Bobby wrinkles his nose. It makes him look even younger than he already does, which puts the new estimation at around thirteen. He crosses his arms, hunching in on himself, and Kirk is starting to wonder if this really is a waste of time when Bobby bursts out, "Why do you care? Why am I in here? You're just going to ditch me and my friends when we get to the Ordani system anyway, so stop trying to act like you give a shit about me personally, okay?"
"I am not going to 'just ditch you,' and I'm not acting," Kirk says evenly. "And I care because it's the right thing to do." At one point, it would have galled him to be so ....earnest, about anything at all, but Kirk has discovered lately that calling a spade a spade has its uses, and what's more, he's almost 100% positive that Bobby Rae's bullshit detector is even better than his own. Bobby's face has a complicated, desperate quality to it, and Kirk continues, wishing like hell he had a map for this type of situation, "But I can't help you if you don't trust me. I can't put you or my crew in danger without all the information, it's asking for trouble."
Kirk knows what he's asking for instead---for this resentful, wary outcast to trust an authority figure after a lifetime of getting screwed over by them. And Kirk knows damn well why; he's met too many people, in Starfleet and out of it, who fail to understand that laws and rules were made by people in order to help protect other people, and when laws fail to do that, it's time to abandon them. But he can't say that. Not right now, anyway. And not to this---man, not kid, despite how immature he acts. Married man with two sons.
Bobby straightens, and Kirk focuses immediately. "Annemarie," Bobby says after a moment. He's studying the table-top like the key to personal happiness is contained within. "My wife's name is Annemarie Dugan. My kids are Aaron and Alex." He sinks lower into his seat, and then adds, his voice flat, "They were supposed to come on this tour, but... Alex was sick, and Annie thought it'd be safer for them to stay home."
"Not unreasonable," Kirk says, doing an admirable job sounding calm and not at all like he wants to torpedo some Klingon warbirds just to let off some of this impotent fury he's feeling right now. Bobby finally looks up at him again. For a long moment, Bobby just holds Kirk's gaze, neither of them saying anything. Then Bobby smiles faintly.
"No, Annie's pretty much always reasonable. She's also right all the time," he says. "It gets old, being the stupid one in this marriage."
Kirk feels himself grinning. "Boy, do I know how that feels," he says. "It's what you get for dating brilliant people, though." Bobby's eyebrows draw down together in confusion, and then suddenly go up.
"You and---?" Bobby hesitates, then guesses. "The Vulcan? Spock? Or wait, no... the doctor?" Kirk adopts a look of wounded innocence that would fool exactly no one, and Bobby's mouth falls open. "Nuh-uh!"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Kirk says. "I would never do something so unethical as to date my First Officer or my Chief Medical Officer, and certainly not at the same time."
"Dude." Kirk has never heard that word used to express that degree of admiration before; it's impressive. Bobby smirks at him. "You've totally been sleeping on the couch since the concert, haven't you."
"I cite chain of command and they just laugh at me," Kirk sighs. "It's so fucking unfair."
* * * * *
It turns out that Viridian Afternoon have sympathizers in the Capital building. Lots of sympathizers, actually, two of whom were schoolmates of Zehr Gut and who helpfully hack into Starfleet's private channel to inform them of an old underground back-entrance to the main compound, shut for years but still quite accessible to a team of men with blasters and insurrection on their minds. Kirk is almost starting to to feel irrelevant to the situation, until the Prime Minister's livid face appears in his private view-screen screaming about bombing civilians if Starfleet doesn't withdraw at almost the same time that the rebel faction comms the bridge, begging for reinforcements. The satisfaction present in Spock's voice when his First gives the order for the stealth teams to execute their back-up orders matches the (mostly) (okay, poorly) suppressed pleasure in Uhura's announcement 45 minutes later that the PM's forces have surrendered.
"Inform them of our terms, Lieutenant," Kirk says smoothly. The Prime Minister was sadly somehow killed in the cross-fire during the insurrection, but Kirk can't find the time to root around in his pocket for his spare tear at the moment. He'll have to do a full investigation once the chaos has died down, but it isn't exactly high on his priority list at the moment.
"Yes, Captain."
Privately, Kirk makes a mental note to ask Chekov and Gaila to come up with a new private encrypt code for Enterprise during one of their freaky programming/hacker dates. It didn't affect the proceedings this time around, but either the Prime Minister bribed a Starfleet official for the code to the Captain's direct line or it got hacked somehow, and either way they need a new encryption. If anyone can come up with one, though, it's Gaila, which will just give Chekov more reason to nurse his private, overwhelming crush on Kirk's Head of Intelligence.
Kirk and a team of selected officers beam down with an anxious Bobby Rae and his friends as soon as they have clearance, and it's a matter of minutes before they locate the newly-freed hostages, and then Kirk is fucking distracted by the pretty, dreadlocked girl who marches across the room and pulls Bobby Rae into a kiss that looks to be threatening his spinal integrity. The stunned silence that follows is the perfect backdrop for the chorus of "ewwwwwww"'s that erupt from a pair of dark-haired boys, whom Kirk correctly guesses to be Bobby's sons. A blood-spattered ensign edges over to Kirk and informs him, in a very nervous whisper, that Annemarie Dugan is the one who shot the Prime Minister after he threatened her and Bobby's sons. It's a high-level security risk if news of it gets out, and Kirk orders it treated as absolutely confidential.
Naturally, every news broadcast in the city has hold of it within hours.
* * * * *
Kirk leans forward, staring into the mirror and trying not to blink, not to move a muscle other than the hand guiding the instrument beneath his eye. Precision and subtlety isn't his area of expertise, and for a moment he wonders distractedly how Uhura does this so effortlessly. Almost done-
"Captain, if I may speak to you," comes Spock's voice through the door. Kirk's hand slips, and he jabs himself right in the eyeball with the tip of the pen. He stumbles back, cursing and dropping the little deathstrument, eyes watering furiously, and staggers into the closet behind him, nearly toppling over in his sudden flailing.
"COMING," he yells. Jesus, fuck, jesus, that hurts so bad, what is in this stuff, acid? Kirk grits his teeth and rallies, straightening and taking a deep breath before exiting into the Captain's quarters. It's only as he finds both Spock and McCoy staring at him that he realizes abruptly that he's still-
"Jim, are you wearing eyeliner?" McCoy demands.
Fuck.
"It's-I wasn't-okay, yes," he says, as Spock and McCoy stare at him as though he's grown an extra head. "Stop looking at me like that! I was just trying it."
"I see," Spock said, the tone of his voice clearly indicating his doubt at ever being able to understand anything Kirk does. It gives Kirk a perverse pleasure. "Very well. Captain, you wished to hear updates on the situation in the Ordani system as soon as they occurred."
"You're seriously in here calling me 'Captain' right now? Spock, I'm in my underwear," Kirk says, because he is. He's off-duty, after all. Which might have something to do with the way McCoy is smirking. Of course, that could also just be because both of Kirk's boyfriends are fucking dicks who don't appreciate how great he is. "Please. So, what's up?" He drapes his arm around McCoy's shoulders as he asks this, and while Bones huffs with the air of a man too much put-upon, he does also slide his arm around Jim's bared waist and hooks his thumb in the hem of Jim's boxers.
Spock clears his throat, doing an impressive job of pretending his eyes didn't just skate down to where McCoy's hand is curved over Jim's left hip-bone, and says, "The dismantling of the autocracy is proceeding according to schedule, Jim. Mr. Jenkins and his wife are still functioning in their official capacity as King and consort, but they have already given over executive power to the planet's Congressional body and are rulers in name only. It is unclear whether the populace will allow Jenkins to fully step down as ruler, as he and particularly his wife have proven quite popular since the civil uprising. The election of a new Prime Minister has been set for one planetary lunar month from today's Stardate." Spock stops, his pupils dilating as Kirk leans deliberately into McCoy and licks a stripe up McCoy's neck, McCoy's eyes hooding as he stiffens against Kirk.
"Sounds like everything's going just like it should, Spock." Kirk privately awards himself fifty points for sounding completely calm and in control and not like he's thirty seconds away from ripping McCoy's clothes off right here in front of Spock, because the only thing more fun than Vulcan-baiting is Vulcan-baiting when your Vulcan boyfriend will reward you by bending you in half and fucking you till you scream for mercy. "Was there anything else to report?"
"Just one thing, Jim." At those words, McCoy moves, maneuvering around behind Kirk and wrapping both of his arms around Jim from behind, Kirk's back against McCoy's broad chest. Kirk wriggles happily against McCoy, distracted for a few precious moments, just enough time for Spock to close the space between them and encircle both of Kirk's wrists with his own hands.
McCoy laughs into Kirk's ear, the warmth of his breath making all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "The three of us were all officially invited to the next Viridian Afternoon concert as VIP guests, Jim."
"We---wait, that's awesome!" Kirk flexes against Spock's hands and tries to twist around to see McCoy's face, too delighted to really bother testing how much stronger Spock is than him. "When is it?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Kirk sees Spock smile, and abruptly Kirk realizes he's fucked. "The concert commences in forty-six minutes, Jim," Spock says softly, pressing in yet closer against him even as McCoy's hands move higher on Kirk's torso, making it suddenly way fucking harder to think. "I regretfully informed Mr. Jenkins that we would be otherwise occupied."
"You fucking sneaky bastards! I can't believe you!" Kirk shoves at Spock's shoulders, or rather, he tries and fails spectacularly, his indignant noises cut off as McCoy and Spock stage a concerted attack against his neck. It's a fight he'd end up losing even if he were truly inclined to wage it, and Kirk quickly gives up pretending even that much. He's angry, of course he's angry, but just... not that angry.
Later (roughly fifty minutes into the concert, since Kirk's never been as precise as Spock), with McCoy's hand still settled lazily in Kirk's tousled hair, Kirk dozes on McCoy's chest and idly contemplates various ways to exact his revenge. Most of them are unnecessarily elaborate and involve large amounts of Kahlua Mudslides and brandy and itching powder, but then the bed sags as Spock settles onto it again, no doubt armed with a wet washcloth. Kirk allows himself to be rolled on his back, sprawling blissfully on the bed as McCoy steals the towel and starts cleaning Kirk off. "I'm still angry at both of you," Kirk announces, earning himself an eyebrow each from Spock and McCoy. "But I have tell you that after a performance like that, you have earned my forgiveness." He leers, losing exactly none of the effect despite being fucked-out and wrung dry, and McCoy rolls his eyes and swats him with the washcloth.
"How magnanimous of you," Spock says. "By the way, Jim, your eyeliner is smudged. I must re-evaluate my initial reaction to the look; I find at the moment that it suits you quite well."
"It makes you look like a used-up hooker, Jim," McCoy supplies helpfully, and Kirk smacks him.
"I bet none of the other Fleet Captains get disrespected like this," Kirk says mournfully.
Yeah, pretty much.
Title: Experimental Methods in Diplomacy
Author: feels_like_fire, but I blame canis_takahari for enabling me
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot
Rating: R
Warnings: Uhhh... terribleness. Also pot. And some bad words.
Relationships: Kirk/Spock/McCoy, Kirk/Drama, Spock/Disdain, McCoy/Long-suffering
Wordcount: 8k, what the sweet hell
Summary: Kirk always has to clean up other people's messes. Then someone brings the hot mess aboard his ship. Shenanigans.
Notes: I forced (asked) canis_takahari to read through this cheerful terribleness for me, and she gave it the stamp of approval, so basically: blame her. Also blame circ_bamboo for getting in on the action and offering suggestions. If you think the three musicians sound terribly familiar, you're not wrong.
Later, Kirk would remember their time spent in the orbit of Ordani V as one of the Enterprise's most memorable and worthwhile assignments. But at the time, he's pretty distracted by A) the fact that half of his ensigns keep showing up to their stations high, B) trying to keep Spock from stone-cold murdering Zehr Gut, and C) assigning cleaning crews to dispose of all the penises drawn on the walls in the fourth officer's rec room.
It starts the way these things always do, with some planetary leader or another managing to off himself by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and of course it threatens to turn into a Galactic Incident, and of course it requires Starfleet intervention to prevent a planet-wide war. And, predictably, instead of sending another, lesser vessel to do what amounts to political baby-sitting, Starfleet does the equivalent of cleaning a messy room with a flame-thrower, and sends the Fleet's flagship to do the job a vessel half her size could do. Deep down Kirk believes with his whole heart that Komack is trying to make Kirk quit the Fleet out of pure disgust, but it hasn't worked thus far and Kirk has no intention of ever giving him the satisfaction. So.
"So," Kirk says, eyeing the brief Starfleet Command sent to his personal PADD. "I could spend the next half-hour reading through this encyclopedia the Admiralty sent us, or I could just have you give me the Cliff Notes version and we could get this over with."
Spock clears his throat, clasps his hands behind his back, and straightens-something Kirk wouldn't even have believed possible, except that Spock takes good posture to a newer, scarier level than even flagpoles dream of. "At 0100 hours this morning, Robert Rae Jenkins, Simon Bayles, and Zehr Gut Jackson were apprehended by planetary authorities on Ordani VI-"
"Wait, wait," Kirk interrupts. "Zehr Gut? Is that a joke? I mean-like, I know you do secretly have a sense of humor, but Spock, German is pretty obscure, even for you."
Spock raises one eyebrow a few millimeters, clearly meant to indicate what he thinks of the situation in general and Kirk's inability to focus in particular. Kirk supposes it's his lot in life to be friends with spectacularly brilliant, competent people who all minored in emotional scarrification. He's pretty sure that, if the whole saving the galaxy and exploring the cosmos thing doesn't work out for the Enterprise's crew, they can all open up a little shop that sells lessons in soul-crushing irony and sarcasm. And fencing, because Sulu and Chekov are too nice for their own good and he wouldn't want them at the front desk doing reception-OKAY, KIRK, FOCUS.
"Negative, Captain," he says; the you idiot goes unspoken but still understood. "This individual's legal name is as I have just stated. He is one-third of a three-piece band."
"Oh, god, they're a band? Sulu wasn't fucking with me after all?" Kirk jumps up and grabs his PADD again, paging through the data until he finds what he's looking for. "You have got to be kidding me. We do not have Viridian Afternoon in our brig right now."
"Negative, Captain," Spock says again. "They are awaiting your attention in the guest quarters on Level 5. They do have a security contingent attending them, but they are not currently classified as prisoners."
"Jesus fuck me Christ," Kirk mutters. "And what, pray tell, are the chances of getting to off-load our 'guests' in the near future?"
"That, Captain, remains to be seen. It is dependent upon how speedily Starfleet can resolve the planetary governmental crisis on Ordani V."
"I hate politics so much," Kirk tells his PADD plaintively. "What did I do to deserve this?"
"According to my recollection-"
"Rhetorical question, Spock. Don't answer it."
"Affirmative, Captain."
* * * * *
By the time Kirk and Spock arrive on Level 5, Spock has brought Kirk up to speed on the trainwreck of a situation that's currently residing in their guest quarters. The aforementioned three men are indeed all members of the same band, but it's not the arrest itself that makes the situation volatile, although when Kirk hears their list of "accomplishments" (many of which have previously resulted in arrests) he finds his irritation shifting to a grudging respect. (This particular arrest was due to a feat of combined vandalism and rabble-rousing that even Kirk, who didn't exactly cover himself in glory as far as maturity goes during his Academy days, is forced to gaze upon with some admiration-it's not every day that you meet people inventive and capable enough to climb up on top of a government building for the express purpose of setting a giant pile of feces on fire.)
Turns out the lead singer, guitarist, and lyricist of the outfit, one Robert "Bobby" Rae Jenkins, is also the sole living offspring of the ruling family of the Ordani star system. It doesn't hurt that he's apparently a bastard son, the illegitimate child of a minor government official the recently-deceased king once slept with, a fact that only came to light in the days after the old king's death by poisonous mushroom in his evening soup.
("Who the hell still has actual kings and queens?" McCoy wonders aloud later. "What is this, Regency-era England? Haven't these assholes ever heard of democracy?" That's around the time Kirk tells him to stop being such a space-racist and to find better things to do with that mouth of his, like finishing sucking Jim's dick.)
"Our orders are to insure the safety of Jenkins and his two companions while the situation gets resolved," Spock concludes, as he and Kirk come to a halt outside the entrance to the guest quarters. "Additionally, we are instructed to aide in negotiations towards a peaceful and speedy resolution, as this star-system is a key stopping point on one of the Federation's trade-routes."
"Of course it is. And of course the Enterprise was the closest ship when the civil unrest broke out." Kirk rolls his eyes, nodding at the two ensigns on security detail. "At ease, gentlemen."
The doors open, and as Kirk and Spock step into a dimly-lit room, they are immediately hit by a cloud of faintly green-grey smoke that carries with it a strong, familiar scent. Kirk stops a few feet inside, struggling to keep his jaw from actually falling open at the sheer strength of the smell.
How have the smoke alarms not all gone off? "Are you smoking weed on my ship?" he demands, voice rising incredulously. Now he can make out three figures slumped in various poses over the couches in the center of the room, and at the question one of them raises a hand in a lazy wave.
"I believe I recognize the scent of the plant they are currently smoking, Captain," Spock says in Kirk's ear, but Kirk shakes his head, striding forward and grabbing up the pipe from the nearest somnolent figure, prompting a slurred "Hey!"
"Computer, lights to 100%," Kirk says, provoking a chorus of complaints as the lights adjust. Kirk finds himself face-to-face with three bleary, scruffily-dressed twenty-somethings that look more like the idiots Kirk used to knock elbows with in the Riverside drunk tank than the wildly successful rock trio they're supposed to be. The one whose pipe Kirk just grabbed sits up, eyeing Kirk with equal parts disdain and veiled apprehension that jolts Kirk when he realizes that he's used to being the one to level that look, not receive it himself. "Well," Kirk says, and feels abruptly older than his twenty-seven years, "I can tell having you aboard is going to be a real experience, gentlemen."
"Gee, thanks," drawls the scarecrow on the couch across from Kirk. Judging from the way the other two glanced at him, Kirk guesses this one's the frontman, Bobby Rae. "'Cause we're so fuckin' excited to be here in the first place." Bobby Rae crosses his own arms across his chest, slouching defiantly back against the couch. Like both of his bandmates, his arms are surprisingly muscular, and covered in bright splashes and swirls of ink that snake around biceps and wrists like living things. His hair is bright blue and gelled into unruly spikes, his tight black pants are faded and ripped in places but still doing better than the t-shirt he's wearing that looks as though its "better days" were spent wadded up under someone's head as an impromptu pillow. His dossier pins him at twenty-eight, older than Kirk is, but he doesn't look a day over twenty-one, from his baby face down to the metal nose ring in one nostril.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ on a cracker, says a voice in the back of Kirk's head that sounds suspiciously like Bones, this is the royal heir we're supposed to be protecting? The Ordanian people are all headed for a civil war.
"Mmm. About that..." Kirk smiles, adopting the tone Sulu says he uses when he's about to 'go bazoo' on someone. "I don't know what the authorities on your planet told you, or what anyone else has told you, for that matter, but right now you're on my ship. I don't actually care what you get up to while you're here, so long as you don't get in my crew's way or make trouble, but I'll be happy to have you spend the rest of the voyage in the brig if you give me a good reason."
In response, Bobby Rae raises his hand and gives Kirk one of humanity's oldest gestures, and then all three punks literally fall over into a fit of hysterical pot-fueled laughter. Kirk can hear Spock rolling his eyes hard enough to hurt himself, and settles for crossing his arms over his chest, wondering all the while if this is what Pike feels like whenever he has to comm Kirk to chew him out for yet another round of regulation-flouting escapades.
"Captain, may I recommend that we insure the health of our guests by sending them to Doctor McCoy for full medical work-ups?" Spock's cool, calm voice belies the utter malice of the suggestion, and Kirk lights up, turning to beam at the Fleet's most sadistically efficient First Officer. Now is one of those times when he's glad Spock is on his side. Behind him, the laughter subsides as the band members realize that something is up.
"I couldn't agree more, Mr. Spock." Kirk taps his comm. "Dr. McCoy, I'm sending our guests your way. They'll be needing a full medical check-up, the whole works. Kirk out." He closes the call before Bones can squawk a protest at him, and then turns a beatific smile at the now-apprehensive faces of Bobby Rae, Simon, and Zehr Gut, who are all looking at Kirk as though he's just sprouted another head. Their eyes only get wider as the door hisses open and four security guards troop in. "Welcome to the Enterprise, gentlemen," Kirk chirps maniacally, and then turns on his heel to walk out of the cabin, followed smartly by Spock.
It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks.
* * * * *
Kirk is in the doghouse with Bones for a couple of days after that, even after Kirk protests that it was Spock's idea ("Don't you think for a second I didn't give that pointy-eared hobgoblin a piece of my mind too, Jim," Bones growls, when Kirk tries to argue the situation with Bones into mid-shift nookie in his office), but it's totally worth it, because the make-up sex will be amazing. Kirk and Spock make a competition out of who can win Bones back over first-or rather, Spock tries to pretend he's above participating in any such bullshit, while Kirk makes all sorts of bets about what the loser will have to do whenever one of them manages to wheedle Bones into forgiving them.
Spock, being Spock, and also at this point having stolen a few pages out of the James Kirk Guidebook to Shameless Hustling despite all protestations to the contrary, completely rigs everything by managing to be off-shift when a report comes to the bridge of trouble down on the Engineering deck. Kirk has it on good authority that Spock has finagled McCoy into coming to Spock's quarters for dinner (that "authority" actually being "Kirk hacked into Spock's PADD when he was looking over the Horsehead Nebula report," which: Spock should know better than to think Kirk is above that shit), and Kirk had every intention of crashing their party because he hates being left out, but now he has to go make sure that these stupid goddamn punk kids aren't somehow going to detonate the warp core in a misguided attempt to make the biggest gravity bong ever.
He could just send a security team, but if they're messing with his girl then there will be hell to pay, and now Kirk wants to know where Scotty ran off to, because he sure as hell isn't answering his comm. So Kirk gets Cupcake (whose name is actually Matthews, but Kirk invents nicknames for a reason) and two other guards, and they all troop down to Engineering, and the minute they step off the lift Kirk can already smell the trouble. Or rather, he can smell the weed. Again.
Scotty is dead, Kirk vows silently. Even Bones won't be able to save him.
But Kirk's fiery vengeance is delayed for a good fifteen minutes while they try to find the source of the smell, which proves remarkably difficult. It's Keenser who gives the miscreants away, by stumbling out into the hallway down which Kirk and the crew are hunting and passing out spectacularly against a wall. Bobby Rae, Simon, Zehr Gut, and Kirk's chief engineer are all holed up in the Jeffries tube shooting off from said hallway, and when Kirk manages to work his way into it he almost goes blind from the accumulated smoke. Scotty's eyes are as red as a weasel's, and Simon (he's the bassist, Kirk thinks distractedly--purple hair, big arms) ceremoniously passes Kirk a large, elaborate glass pipe as Kirk tries and fails to glare them into submission.
They're hotboxing in the goddamn Jeffries tube. Doing a pretty fucking epic job of it, too.
Kirk ships them all off to sickbay, including Scotty, and then storms back to his room to try to go through some paperwork he has to do. He's met with a cool, blinking light on his PADD, indicating a message from Spock:
Jim. As per our wager, I request that you plan to spend our next shore leave traveling with me to the scientific colony on Phaedron Alpha XII to observe their unique preserve of self-sustaining fungi. I look forward to your company. Spock.
Kirk ends up spending the evening pummeling a punching bag into submission. It's just his luck that he's taught the ship's only Vulcan to gamble just in time for Kirk to lose their bet.
* * * * *
Gaila loves them, of course. Kirk should have known.
(If Gaila weren't also the most terrifyingly brilliant hacker the Federation has ever known, her tendency to get herself and all her associates into trouble would long ago have gotten her court-marshalled, but as it is, she eats encrypt codes for breakfast and follows it up with ...jail-breaking punk rockers, apparently. Between her and Chekov, the galaxy is doomed if the crew of Enterprise ever decides to turn pirate---anyway.)
"--And Zehr Gut isn't his real name, you know," she says brightly, beaming at Kirk over the cup of replicated coffee she's drinking. Her hair is shiny and clean, and she seems alert and full of energy, her usual bubbly self and not at all like a woman who spent the previous evening partying until 0400 hours in the morning.
Kirk looks up from his stack of neglected paperwork, raising his eyebrows in unconscious imitation of his First. "Is that so," he says, because he can't think of anything else to say, but it still sounds like Are You F*ing Kidding Me.
Gaila nods earnestly, red curls bouncing as she regales Kirk with an account of all the sexual positions she tried and the exact locations of all of her new shag's tattoos. The perkiness--it's the Orion hormonal response to sex, Kirk thinks distractedly, and is suddenly twice as annoyed as he was before. He hasn't even realized he's tuned out until suddenly Gaila's words cut back through his irritated fog: "...and the concert's going to be in the mess hall tomorrow night at 2000 hours--"
"Wait, what? Gaila. You did not promise them that they'd be able to have a concert in our mess hall."
Gaila blinks at him, the face of innocence. It's the face Agrippina might've made before giving her Imperial husband poisoned mushrooms. "Of course I did," she says severely. "There's nothing in the regulations about forbidding such a thing. I looked," she adds, as though Kirk would ever doubt that Gaila would look up every single rule for the sole purpose of discovering all of their loopholes. It's what she does.
Kirk groans. "Gaila," he says, and his voice is suspiciously close to a whine, "these--guests--have already gotten my Chief of Engineering so high that he's still sleeping it off in medical 30 hours later."
"It'll be good for crew morale!"
"It'll be bad for my sex life," Kirk says, making sure the level of tragedy here is perfectly clear. "Bones and Spock will break up with me and I'll die alone on an asteroid somewhere in Gamma quadrant and be eaten by intergalactic space ants."
"I'll help you pick out a blow-up doll," Gaila says kindly, reaching over to pat Kirk's shoulder in what she no doubts imagines is a conciliatory gesture. Kirk briefly contemplates the merits of just ejecting his unwanted guests out of airlock before deciding it isn't worth giving Komack something else to bitch at him about, no matter how satisfying it would be in the short term.
"Gaila, no," he says firmly. "This is not happening. This is not---" He's interrupted by a beep from the computer, and something about the way Gaila's face abruptly smoothes sends a little warning bell off in the back of his head. Kirk reaches over and presses the button. "Kirk here."
"Captain, did you authorize an informal performance by our... guests in the mess hall?" Spock's sonorous voice is calm and collected, but Kirk is well-versed enough in Vulcan vocal tones to recognize how severely Spock is judging him right now, even before he's heard Kirk's answer.
Kirk shoots Gaila a murderous look as he leans over. "No, I did not," he says, and Gaila pouts. "Is there a concert going on in our dining hall right now, Spock?"
"Yes Captain, there is. Additionally, a great number of the crew have assembled to watch, and many of them seem to have grown over-excited by the proceedings. I surmise that the situation will become unmanageable in five-point-three minutes and that minor damage to the furniture will ensue, if the performance is not halted ."
"Over-excited? Spock--" Kirk pauses, incredulity creeping into his voice. "Is there a mosh pit in the cafeteria right now?" At his words, Gaila bounces out of her seat with a look of pure glee, pulling on her uniform and boots at a speed Kirk wouldn't have believed possible.
"I am unaware of what a 'mosh pit' is, Captain, but I can assure you that there are no pits currently visible, however--"
"I'll be right down," Kirk says, and tears out of the room after Gaila so quickly he almost breaks the door.
* * * * *
The situation has moved straight past "unmanageable" and into "pandemonium" by the time Kirk and Gaila arrive on the scene. Spock is standing by the doors, his hands folded behind his back, somehow managing to have both no expression and one of extreme disapproval at the same time; next to him is a small security detail, their phasers in their hands, their postures a study in confusion. No doubt their training never covered what to do when a large number of your ship-mates have just decided to participate in thinly-controlled chaos.
Or not-so-thinly-controlled, Kirk thinks with a touch of grudging admiration. The entire mess hall has been converted into an impromptu concert space, with tables and chairs pushed hastily to either side of the hall, and in the center of the newly-created space a pulsing mass of humanity and aliens is thrashing and shoving and jumping around as though possessed. Obscured by what looks like half of the teaming crew of Enterprise is the band, down at the far end of the hall, and Kirk can hear them better than he can see them---where did they even get speakers, he wonders. Was it part of their cargo when they came aboard? And what about guitars?
"Captain," Spock says---shouts, really, because guitars and drums and screaming people are difficult to hear over, "how should we proceed?"
Before Kirk can answer, a green blur darts into the crowd of people--Gaila, who has evidently decided she's going to get her moshing in before the concert gets broken up. Kirk steals a glance at Spock's face, then looks back at the crowd. He surveys the red, delirious faces of the crew members nearest him; looks at the walls, which already have several disturbing-looking stains on the supposedly stainless polyplastic sides. And he thinks about the fact that his crew hasn't had any shore leave time in almost six months, because it doesn't matter how many new recruits they have back at the Academy---it's only been nine months since half the Fleet was decimated in the fiasco at Vulcan, and they're still under-prepared and spread too thin.
Fuck it, he thinks, and reaches out to slap Spock's arm as he has so many times. "We crowd-surf!" he shouts. "I'm putting you in charge for the moment, Spock!" And with that, he bounds into the whirling dervish of people in front of him, and is swallowed almost immediately by the crowd.
A mosh pit is a lot like being in a massive barroom brawl---except that instead of fists flying at his face, it's a lot of shoving and a lot of elbows, and every time Kirk is almost knocked to the ground, a half-dozen hands shoot out to grab him and haul him upright again, only to send him careening back into another dozen people, all shouting and laughing and sweaty and red in the face. He gets a glimpse of Sulu in the crush, doing some enthusiastic head-banging, and then someone goes by overhead, passed along hands and shoulders, and astonishment slices through the grind as Kirk realizes it's Chekov, his face lit up with glee. "CHEKOV!" shouts Kirk, but his navigator disappears almost immediately. He sends up a prayer that tiny Russian geniuses are more durable than they look, because at this point it's either shut down the concert altogether or just give up on any semblance of control and ride the wave.
Kirk's never met an adrenaline-high situation he didn't want to completely own, of course, so his choice is clear. What the hell, he's already not getting laid for the next two weeks---might as well make it worthwhile. He can always blame it on head-trauma later.
* * * * *
"I cannot believe you let that happen." McCoy pats his head gingerly, grimacing with what Kirk thinks is probably unnecessary gravitas.
"I can't believe you crowd-surfed," Kirk says cheerfully, tapping a file on his PADD with his index finger. "I mean, until you got dropped on your head, anyway. But it was still impressive!"
"I went in after you!" McCoy snaps, and okay, Kirk thinks he probably deserved that, but really, he can't be blamed: the sight of his Chief Medical Officer being hoisted atop the shoulders of his crew, shouting furiously to be put down (not that anyone could hear him, because: concert) rates as genuinely amazing, no matter what the rubric.
"Why?" asks Sulu, who is sporting at least as many bruises as McCoy but is considerably more cheerful about that fact. "It was a concert, Dr. McCoy, not a firefight."
"It was a goddamn shitshow, and you're all lucky you're in one piece," McCoy retorts. They're all gathered around one of the big round tables in the officer's conference room, ostensibly to discuss their operating procedure upon arriving at Ordani V, but Spock has gone to get the reluctant heir-apparent and hasn't returned yet, so the bridge crew is killing time until he does. Kirk should probably cut the gossip, but he's nursing a bit of a headache himself and can't really be bothered. Besides, it's fun.
"I could see you saying something," Gaila offers. As usual, she's the one exception to the rule, looking as sunny and put-together as she always does. Kirk is starting to think maybe Gaila (not all Orions, just Gaila) secretes some kind of rare and wonderful drug from her pores, and that if they could bottle it and sell it, they could all retire as hozillionaires to some far-flung peaceful little planet. "I tried to get close enough to hear, but the music was too loud."
"It was probably 'Get off my lawn,'" Kirk says, studiously focusing on his PADD. Next to him, Uhura discreetly hides her laughter behind her hand, but it's Kirk that McCoy focuses his glare upon.
"That was not music," McCoy growls. "And see if I bother stitching your arm back on next time you come back from an away mission with it half-removed, you ungrateful little shit."
"If I'd known you were going to wade in to the riff-raff, I would have left your cane with Spock so you could shake it at us from your wheelchair," Kirk observes. McCoy fixes him with a glare that could drop a flop-eared baby bunny at thirty paces, and Kirk pulls his best 'who, me?' expression into place.
He's saved from further verbal sparring by the appearance of Spock at the conference room entrance, and the look on Spock's face instantly kills the conversation. "Spock, report," Kirk says, straightening.
Spock stops at the edge of the table, standing stiffly even for him, hands locked behind his back. "Captain, Ordani V is currently under lockdown due to an insurgency by a rebel faction. Fighting broke out thirty-point-six minutes ago, and communication with the Starfleet representative and Prime Minister have been cut off."
"Have the rebels stated their grievances?" Kirk asks, though he has the sinking feeling that he already knows the answer.
Spock inclines his head slightly. "Affirmative. The insurgent faction has stated that Robert Rae Jenkins is unfit to rule Ordani V, and wish to institute a democracy that they may select a more fit ruler. The current Prime Minister has refused to step down, stating that he will not relinquish his position until the prince has taken up his position on the throne."
Kirk rises, gesturing at his bridge crew to remain seated even as they stand at the same time as him. "Right, it looks like we have a situation on our hands. Do you have any further data we should hear about?"
Spock hesitates; Kirk's eyebrow shoot up, and he waits until his First finishes having his private conversation with himself. "Captain," Spock says finally, "our orders state explicitly that we are not to interfere with the status quo of this system, beyond our directive of installing Mr. Jenkins on the throne, but--certain confident information has been sent to Enterprise that indicates the Prime Minister has no intention of relinquishing any actual power to Jenkins, and that it is likely he will be a puppet ruler, King in name only."
"How original of him," McCoy says darkly. "Not to be the one cynic in the room, but how bad would that be, exactly? Since this new kid doesn't exactly scream 'competent ruler' to me."
"He does yell a lot, Keptin, but I would not call it screaming," Chekov puts in.
"Aye," Scotty chimes in. "I don't imagine a lad with that much of a penchant for the green would be very good at politics."
Spock nods. "Affirmative; that was my initial reaction also. However, there have been a number of universal rights-violations on Ordani V in the past 6 months, most of which were carefully erased from the official record. They were only recently brought to light by an as-yet undisclosed source."
Kirk suffers a brief moment of wonder at the way his crew have started to work together so seamlessly. Not ten months ago, Spock's eyebrows would have climbed so far into his hairline they would be staking little flags on top of his scalp, while that throbby vein in McCoy's head would be ready to pop. (Though to be honest, Scotty is still on Kirk's shit-list for the incident in engineering, but he doesn't have Scotty on board because he's such a morally upright person; he has Scotty on board because the man's a fucking evil genius.) Abruptly, he realizes everyone is looking at him and he snaps to attention. "There must be an option that doesn't consist of leaving a corrupt politician in power, requiring an unwilling, unprepared rock star to be a capable leader, or leaving a star-system on the brink of civil war," Kirk says, because occasionally it's his job to be Captain of the Fucking Obvious as well as just Captain.
"I believe I have an idea, Captain," Spock says immediately. The sneaky fucker had probably just been waiting for that exact opening, Kirk thought.
"Well then, Mr. Spock," Kirk says, "Let's hear it."
* * * * *
Spock's plan is flawless and perfect, like so much of his strategy. It's the kind of plan that makes Kirk glad Spock is his First Officer, because if Spock weren't already on Kirk's ship, Kirk would probably have to resort to all kinds of illegal and unethical trickery in order to shanghai the Vulcan into being part of his crew.
Anyway, Spock's plan---everything goes exactly as it should, right up until the point when the Prime Minister does the political equivalent of flipping a table in a restaurant and holes up in the Capital building, and even then the situation is totally salvageable until a list of hostages' names are released and Robert Rae Jenkins has a full-blown panic attack in the conference room where Kirk and Spock and Viridian Afternoon are watching the shit hit the fan on real-time broadcast. Kirk might shout into the comm at Dr. McCoy more than is strictly necessary, but he's seen someone's face turn that exact shade of chalky grey before, and it didn't end so well.
"Bobby, you have to tell them," Simon says for the third time, and again Bobby shoves Simon's hand away and shakes his head with a violence that Kirk thinks isn't really warranted. Or actually, he doesn't know if it's warranted, and the not-knowing is really starting to piss him off. It's a sign of how much shit he's started to expect from dealing with these guys that he's more annoyed than actively concerned.
"Tell me what?" he asks, and Simon shoots him a helpless look before averting his eyes, focusing on Bobby Rae. Kirk's on his knees on the other side of the hyperventilating man, one steadying hand on Bobby's shoulder. Bobby wrenches away, curling awkwardly against the wall and burying his hands in his face with a choked-off little noise. "Hey," Kirk says, starting to actually get a little worried. "Hey, I'm here to help you, Bobby. We can handle this." He wonders for what feels like the hundredth time why McCoy isn't up here yet just as the door hisses open and McCoy hurries into the room, shoving Kirk unceremoniously out of the way as he settles next to Bobby Rae. McCoy grabs one of Bobby's trembling hands, yanks his arm out, and jabs him in the arm with a hypo he produced from thin air, apparently.
"OW!" Bobby yelps and yanks his arm away again, fixing McCoy with a glare. "FUCK! What the hell?" Kirk feels a stab of sympathy (how many times has he had that exact reaction?) immediately followed by the warm satisfaction of knowing that it's happening to someone else, for once.
"Look at me and breathe," McCoy says, not unkindly, grabbing for Bobby's wrist again and pulling it firmly away from his face. "I gave you a sedative to calm you down a little. Come on, kid, you're not gonna do anyone any good if you're having a melt-down."
"Fuck you," Bobby says, but there's not much venom behind it, and whatever was in that hypo seems to be working because at least he's not hyperventilating any more. He takes a deep, shaky breath, and swallows. "Okay, okay. I'm--I'm fine. Sorry."
"You wanna tell me what happened just now to bring that on?" McCoy asks, his voice gentler now. Kirk keeps quiet; behind him, he can feel Spock coming to stand next to him.
"Nothing," Bobby says, his eyes aimed resolutely at his lap. As liars go, he's a pretty bad one. "Just a stupid panic attack. It's nothing."
"Bobby, you are a piece of shit." Kirk turns towards Bobby's hitherto-silent third band member, surprised to see anger clouding the man's face as Zehr glares at Bobby. "Three of the hostages named in the broadcast are Bobby's wife and sons, Captain."
Bobby stares at his friend for a handful of seconds in stunned silence before scrambling to his feet. Suddenly, Dr. McCoy is having to pin a blue-haired, struggling manchild against the wall in order to keep Bobby from attempted murder.
"Hold still or I'm going to tranq your scrawny little ass," McCoy growls, and after a moment Bobby subsides, the panic that was previously inhabiting his person now replaced with mute fury. Kirk looks hard from Bobby to Zehr Gut to Simon, who looks visibly relieved. Now at least Kirk knows what the "tell them" comment was about.
"Computer, cease broadcast, record further transmissions," he says. "Dr. McCoy, please escort Mr. Bayles and Mr. Gut to their quarters," he says. "I need to have a word with Mr. Jenkins in private. Spock, please keep abreast of the situation on Ordani V. You have your orders, gentleman."
Whatever shit he might catch from Bones and Spock in private, neither of them bat an eyelash. In thirty seconds, Kirk is alone with Bobby, who takes the opportunity to go slouch into one of the chairs around the big conference room table and stare resolutely at the far wall. Yet again, Kirk finds himself feeling like the bad guy, and for a few moments all he can do is stand there, torn between twin impulses to shake Bobby Rae by his skinny shoulders until candy comes out, and getting them both stinking drunk.
Instead, he takes a deep breath, and then comes around the conference table to sit in the chair next to Bobby, who doesn't so much as look at him. In fact Bobby looks like he's trying to pretend Kirk doesn't exist.
He says nothing for a good 90 seconds, waiting until Bobby starts to fidget before he leans forward and places his hands flat on the table. "How old were you the first time you got arrested?" he asks. The question gets a quick side-eye from Bobby but no actual response, which Kirk fully expected. Kirk studies the tops of his hands, noting disinterestedly how the nail on his right forefinger still hasn't grown back completely from where it was torn out in the rock slide on Balmoral XI. "I was fourteen," Kirk says, when another thirty seconds have passed and Bobby still hasn't said anything.
Bobby looks at him sharply, but Kirk takes no notice. "Broke into my teacher's hovercar and poured deer urine all over the engine block. Smells fucking horrible when the car gets all heated up, and you can't get the smell out for love or money. I would've gotten away with it but I didn't know the car had an internal camera." Kirk smiles in remembrance of Mr. Ellison's furious, sputtering face, the way his stuck-up prick of a teacher had stormed into the classroom that morning late and smelling of piss and sweat. Petty? Sure. Satisfying? Oh hell yes.
Bobby is staring at Kirk now, having altogether given up the pretense of being the only person in the room. "I still probably would've gotten off with a warning and some community service, but my stepdad was still sore at me for totaling the Corvette two years before, so he asked the juvie judge to give me the maximum punishment. I spent three months working at the detention center after school."
"You totaled your stepdad's Corvette when you were twelve," Bobby repeats, his expression skeptical but his voice warmed with reluctant admiration. "How?"
"Drove it off a cliff." Kirk finally turns to look at Bobby, whose eyebrows are attempting a Spockian level of elevation.
"Bullshit!"
"Naw. But it wasn't my step-dad's, it was my dad's. Frank had no right to be driving it anyway." Kirk flashes a small grin. "It was a vintage Stingray Corvette, too. 1965." Bobby's jaw drops open before he can stop himself, and then his expression darkens again with mistrust as he seems to remember whom he's having this conversation with.
"Okay, so. You want a medal or something?" Bobby says, slouching down in his chair again-Kirk is starting to recognize the defensive posture for what it is, and is willing to bet Spock could dig up a study for him correlating lifetime levels of self-esteem and spinal compression, or something.
Kirk shakes his head. "Nope." Bobby looks long at him, like he's not really sure what to make of Kirk anymore. "You still haven't told me how old you were the first time you got arrested," Kirk points out mildly, when Bobby still hasn't said anything.
Bobby wrinkles his nose. It makes him look even younger than he already does, which puts the new estimation at around thirteen. He crosses his arms, hunching in on himself, and Kirk is starting to wonder if this really is a waste of time when Bobby bursts out, "Why do you care? Why am I in here? You're just going to ditch me and my friends when we get to the Ordani system anyway, so stop trying to act like you give a shit about me personally, okay?"
"I am not going to 'just ditch you,' and I'm not acting," Kirk says evenly. "And I care because it's the right thing to do." At one point, it would have galled him to be so ....earnest, about anything at all, but Kirk has discovered lately that calling a spade a spade has its uses, and what's more, he's almost 100% positive that Bobby Rae's bullshit detector is even better than his own. Bobby's face has a complicated, desperate quality to it, and Kirk continues, wishing like hell he had a map for this type of situation, "But I can't help you if you don't trust me. I can't put you or my crew in danger without all the information, it's asking for trouble."
Kirk knows what he's asking for instead---for this resentful, wary outcast to trust an authority figure after a lifetime of getting screwed over by them. And Kirk knows damn well why; he's met too many people, in Starfleet and out of it, who fail to understand that laws and rules were made by people in order to help protect other people, and when laws fail to do that, it's time to abandon them. But he can't say that. Not right now, anyway. And not to this---man, not kid, despite how immature he acts. Married man with two sons.
Bobby straightens, and Kirk focuses immediately. "Annemarie," Bobby says after a moment. He's studying the table-top like the key to personal happiness is contained within. "My wife's name is Annemarie Dugan. My kids are Aaron and Alex." He sinks lower into his seat, and then adds, his voice flat, "They were supposed to come on this tour, but... Alex was sick, and Annie thought it'd be safer for them to stay home."
"Not unreasonable," Kirk says, doing an admirable job sounding calm and not at all like he wants to torpedo some Klingon warbirds just to let off some of this impotent fury he's feeling right now. Bobby finally looks up at him again. For a long moment, Bobby just holds Kirk's gaze, neither of them saying anything. Then Bobby smiles faintly.
"No, Annie's pretty much always reasonable. She's also right all the time," he says. "It gets old, being the stupid one in this marriage."
Kirk feels himself grinning. "Boy, do I know how that feels," he says. "It's what you get for dating brilliant people, though." Bobby's eyebrows draw down together in confusion, and then suddenly go up.
"You and---?" Bobby hesitates, then guesses. "The Vulcan? Spock? Or wait, no... the doctor?" Kirk adopts a look of wounded innocence that would fool exactly no one, and Bobby's mouth falls open. "Nuh-uh!"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Kirk says. "I would never do something so unethical as to date my First Officer or my Chief Medical Officer, and certainly not at the same time."
"Dude." Kirk has never heard that word used to express that degree of admiration before; it's impressive. Bobby smirks at him. "You've totally been sleeping on the couch since the concert, haven't you."
"I cite chain of command and they just laugh at me," Kirk sighs. "It's so fucking unfair."
* * * * *
It turns out that Viridian Afternoon have sympathizers in the Capital building. Lots of sympathizers, actually, two of whom were schoolmates of Zehr Gut and who helpfully hack into Starfleet's private channel to inform them of an old underground back-entrance to the main compound, shut for years but still quite accessible to a team of men with blasters and insurrection on their minds. Kirk is almost starting to to feel irrelevant to the situation, until the Prime Minister's livid face appears in his private view-screen screaming about bombing civilians if Starfleet doesn't withdraw at almost the same time that the rebel faction comms the bridge, begging for reinforcements. The satisfaction present in Spock's voice when his First gives the order for the stealth teams to execute their back-up orders matches the (mostly) (okay, poorly) suppressed pleasure in Uhura's announcement 45 minutes later that the PM's forces have surrendered.
"Inform them of our terms, Lieutenant," Kirk says smoothly. The Prime Minister was sadly somehow killed in the cross-fire during the insurrection, but Kirk can't find the time to root around in his pocket for his spare tear at the moment. He'll have to do a full investigation once the chaos has died down, but it isn't exactly high on his priority list at the moment.
"Yes, Captain."
Privately, Kirk makes a mental note to ask Chekov and Gaila to come up with a new private encrypt code for Enterprise during one of their freaky programming/hacker dates. It didn't affect the proceedings this time around, but either the Prime Minister bribed a Starfleet official for the code to the Captain's direct line or it got hacked somehow, and either way they need a new encryption. If anyone can come up with one, though, it's Gaila, which will just give Chekov more reason to nurse his private, overwhelming crush on Kirk's Head of Intelligence.
Kirk and a team of selected officers beam down with an anxious Bobby Rae and his friends as soon as they have clearance, and it's a matter of minutes before they locate the newly-freed hostages, and then Kirk is fucking distracted by the pretty, dreadlocked girl who marches across the room and pulls Bobby Rae into a kiss that looks to be threatening his spinal integrity. The stunned silence that follows is the perfect backdrop for the chorus of "ewwwwwww"'s that erupt from a pair of dark-haired boys, whom Kirk correctly guesses to be Bobby's sons. A blood-spattered ensign edges over to Kirk and informs him, in a very nervous whisper, that Annemarie Dugan is the one who shot the Prime Minister after he threatened her and Bobby's sons. It's a high-level security risk if news of it gets out, and Kirk orders it treated as absolutely confidential.
Naturally, every news broadcast in the city has hold of it within hours.
* * * * *
Kirk leans forward, staring into the mirror and trying not to blink, not to move a muscle other than the hand guiding the instrument beneath his eye. Precision and subtlety isn't his area of expertise, and for a moment he wonders distractedly how Uhura does this so effortlessly. Almost done-
"Captain, if I may speak to you," comes Spock's voice through the door. Kirk's hand slips, and he jabs himself right in the eyeball with the tip of the pen. He stumbles back, cursing and dropping the little deathstrument, eyes watering furiously, and staggers into the closet behind him, nearly toppling over in his sudden flailing.
"COMING," he yells. Jesus, fuck, jesus, that hurts so bad, what is in this stuff, acid? Kirk grits his teeth and rallies, straightening and taking a deep breath before exiting into the Captain's quarters. It's only as he finds both Spock and McCoy staring at him that he realizes abruptly that he's still-
"Jim, are you wearing eyeliner?" McCoy demands.
Fuck.
"It's-I wasn't-okay, yes," he says, as Spock and McCoy stare at him as though he's grown an extra head. "Stop looking at me like that! I was just trying it."
"I see," Spock said, the tone of his voice clearly indicating his doubt at ever being able to understand anything Kirk does. It gives Kirk a perverse pleasure. "Very well. Captain, you wished to hear updates on the situation in the Ordani system as soon as they occurred."
"You're seriously in here calling me 'Captain' right now? Spock, I'm in my underwear," Kirk says, because he is. He's off-duty, after all. Which might have something to do with the way McCoy is smirking. Of course, that could also just be because both of Kirk's boyfriends are fucking dicks who don't appreciate how great he is. "Please. So, what's up?" He drapes his arm around McCoy's shoulders as he asks this, and while Bones huffs with the air of a man too much put-upon, he does also slide his arm around Jim's bared waist and hooks his thumb in the hem of Jim's boxers.
Spock clears his throat, doing an impressive job of pretending his eyes didn't just skate down to where McCoy's hand is curved over Jim's left hip-bone, and says, "The dismantling of the autocracy is proceeding according to schedule, Jim. Mr. Jenkins and his wife are still functioning in their official capacity as King and consort, but they have already given over executive power to the planet's Congressional body and are rulers in name only. It is unclear whether the populace will allow Jenkins to fully step down as ruler, as he and particularly his wife have proven quite popular since the civil uprising. The election of a new Prime Minister has been set for one planetary lunar month from today's Stardate." Spock stops, his pupils dilating as Kirk leans deliberately into McCoy and licks a stripe up McCoy's neck, McCoy's eyes hooding as he stiffens against Kirk.
"Sounds like everything's going just like it should, Spock." Kirk privately awards himself fifty points for sounding completely calm and in control and not like he's thirty seconds away from ripping McCoy's clothes off right here in front of Spock, because the only thing more fun than Vulcan-baiting is Vulcan-baiting when your Vulcan boyfriend will reward you by bending you in half and fucking you till you scream for mercy. "Was there anything else to report?"
"Just one thing, Jim." At those words, McCoy moves, maneuvering around behind Kirk and wrapping both of his arms around Jim from behind, Kirk's back against McCoy's broad chest. Kirk wriggles happily against McCoy, distracted for a few precious moments, just enough time for Spock to close the space between them and encircle both of Kirk's wrists with his own hands.
McCoy laughs into Kirk's ear, the warmth of his breath making all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "The three of us were all officially invited to the next Viridian Afternoon concert as VIP guests, Jim."
"We---wait, that's awesome!" Kirk flexes against Spock's hands and tries to twist around to see McCoy's face, too delighted to really bother testing how much stronger Spock is than him. "When is it?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Kirk sees Spock smile, and abruptly Kirk realizes he's fucked. "The concert commences in forty-six minutes, Jim," Spock says softly, pressing in yet closer against him even as McCoy's hands move higher on Kirk's torso, making it suddenly way fucking harder to think. "I regretfully informed Mr. Jenkins that we would be otherwise occupied."
"You fucking sneaky bastards! I can't believe you!" Kirk shoves at Spock's shoulders, or rather, he tries and fails spectacularly, his indignant noises cut off as McCoy and Spock stage a concerted attack against his neck. It's a fight he'd end up losing even if he were truly inclined to wage it, and Kirk quickly gives up pretending even that much. He's angry, of course he's angry, but just... not that angry.
Later (roughly fifty minutes into the concert, since Kirk's never been as precise as Spock), with McCoy's hand still settled lazily in Kirk's tousled hair, Kirk dozes on McCoy's chest and idly contemplates various ways to exact his revenge. Most of them are unnecessarily elaborate and involve large amounts of Kahlua Mudslides and brandy and itching powder, but then the bed sags as Spock settles onto it again, no doubt armed with a wet washcloth. Kirk allows himself to be rolled on his back, sprawling blissfully on the bed as McCoy steals the towel and starts cleaning Kirk off. "I'm still angry at both of you," Kirk announces, earning himself an eyebrow each from Spock and McCoy. "But I have tell you that after a performance like that, you have earned my forgiveness." He leers, losing exactly none of the effect despite being fucked-out and wrung dry, and McCoy rolls his eyes and swats him with the washcloth.
"How magnanimous of you," Spock says. "By the way, Jim, your eyeliner is smudged. I must re-evaluate my initial reaction to the look; I find at the moment that it suits you quite well."
"It makes you look like a used-up hooker, Jim," McCoy supplies helpfully, and Kirk smacks him.
"I bet none of the other Fleet Captains get disrespected like this," Kirk says mournfully.
Yeah, pretty much.
