FIC : Crash and Burn, 'The Faculty' AU, Part 1 of 2
Title : Crash and Burn (part 1 of 2)
Fandom : Star Trek XI
Characters/Pairing : Kirk, McCoy, Spock, Chekov, Uhura, Pike, Chapel; McCoy/Chapel, Kirk/Spock, Chekov/Uhura
Rating : R
Warnings : aliens, nudity, buckets of UST and angst, teenage melodrama and a whole lotta swear words.
Word Count : around 22,000 (!!!)
Summary : My remix of The Faculty for reel_startrek. Something's rotten in the city of San Francisco; the teachers are acting funny and a mismatched handful of students think they've figured out why.
A/Ns :Section headers from "New Skin" by Incubus, "Forty-Six and 2" by Tool, and "Black Bomb" and "The Great Destroyer" by Nine Inch Nails. Thanks ever so much to mirorelle and mutantjules for enabling and sharing in the flail, to raindissolved and usually9_15 for reading and encouraging, and to vellum without whose beta skillz I would literally be sitting weeping in a corner right now.
For the record, I could've used another month to edit this and really whip it into shape, but I hope you guys like it as it is! Also for the record, I am well aware how much of this story is silly and clichéd; it's a teen movie from the 90s, I'd be paying it poor homage it if it weren't cheesy as fuck. XD
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Say your name.
Try to speak as clearly as you can.
You know everything gets written down.
Nod your head.
Tires screech as the old car peels around the corner and into the parking lot, leaving a white cloud and the smell of scorched rubber in its wake. It whips past the security officer directing buses with a bored pre-coffee glaze in his eyes, and past two teachers chatting beside a beat-up green Pinto. It veers into a sharp curve and comes to a stop, perpendicular across three parking spaces.
The door opens and the driver gets out, squinting into the early morning sun. Faded jeans hang a little loose on his hips, the layers of his t-shirts peeking here and there underneath one another, dark hair hanging in his eyes. He goes to the trunk of the car, long fingers trailing across the red stripe lining the side panel, and reaches in deep, pockets a handful of padd pens, long and silver-bright. No book bag; why bother?
Len McCoy crosses the parking lot empty-handed and ducks into the side door of the school, mostly unnoticed.
The quad out front is full of students killing time before homeroom. Pavel Chekov-- Pavel, but he goes by Paul here, not that anyone really knows the difference-- slouches off the bus, thin shoulders hunching into his backpack. His gaze lingers on her as he passes; impossible, for him, not to look at Nyota Uhura where she stands holding court in the shadow of the flagpole.
It's that moment, that stolen glance, that dooms him; he turns too late as an elbow slams into his face, and he sits down hard, warm rush of blood in one nostril. "Sorry," he grits out, sarcasm flooding his mouth like bile. Perhaps something is lost in translation; his assailant, whoever they are, moves on without a word.
"Alert as ever, Chekov," comes the wry voice from above him. He glares up at Spock as he passes, the Vulcan boy's dark eyes bemused, but not unsympathetic.
Spock moves on toward the building; there is no reason to be late for homeroom, his dread of the forthcoming day's tedium notwithstanding. At times he thinks he would give anything for someone-- anyone, one person-- with whom he could carry on an intelligent conversation at this school. Intelligent conversation would even take a back seat to not being treated like the carrier of an infectious pathogen. In his reading he has discovered that centuries ago outcasts would at times refer to themselves as being treated like aliens. On Earth, Spock is an alien; he is not the only one, but at the Academy, he often feels that way.
His thoughts are interrupted by a shoulder slamming into his. He draws himself up straight, lip curling in disgust. The shoulder, clad in the red leather of the school's varsity football jackets, belongs to none other than Jim Kirk, someone who could not be less like Spock if he tried.
"Are you capable of walking, Kirk, or do you need remedial classes in that as well?" A pointless remark (Spock knows Kirk did not need remedial classes last summer, given that he tutored three of them himself and had access to the rosters) yet one he cannot seem to help making.
"You walked into me, elf boy," Kirk replies, sneering before turning quickly away, senses already back on the alert for any sign of his girlfriend.
Down another hallway Nyota Uhura stands surrounded by her faithful followers, her subordinates on the cheerleading squad, the school newspaper-- hell, they're all dancing to her tune no matter what club they're part of. Uhura doesn't join anything she's not going to end up leading sooner or later.
"Come on, T'Lira, you know better than to bring me crap like this," she says scornfully, tossing a notebook back at the slim Vulcan girl who'd handed it to her. "We'd be better off running 'Teachers Possessed by Aliens' than this." Shaking her head, she turns to the blonde beside her. "Answer's still no, Sierra, you can't top the pyramid. Maybe when you lose ten pounds, but as it stands Mdracha and Norn couldn't hold you up. Get out of here, see you this afternoon." The blonde scurries away and Nyota pulls out her mini datapad and checks the time.
"I'm going to be late for chem," she announces, pushing away from her locker and leaving the girls behind without another word. She weaves easily through the halls, showing only the barest hint of surprise as an arm is slung abruptly about her shoulders.
"Morning," Jim drawls against her ear. "How're you doing?"
Suppressing a sigh, she shifts her shoulders enough to swing her hair out from under his arm, and gives him a slight smile. "Jim. I'm a little busy today."
"Too busy for your devoted boyfriend?" He actually sounds hurt. "I really need to talk to you about something."
"You were too busy for me last night," she retorts. "I had time for you then. Today, I'm busy. Really."
He moves to kiss her and she ducks it easily, sliding out from under his arm with a placating smile. "Come on, took me half an hour to do these lips. I'll see you at lunch, Jim. Bye!" Without waiting for an answer, she's gone.
"Well that's awesome," Jim mutters to himself, turning to head back in the direction of his English class, shoving his hands in his pockets. Another body crowds up against him, bumping shoulders, and he turns to see Matthews. "What's up, man," he mutters. Matthews starts in on some tirade, but Jim really isn't listening. Too much else on his mind-- the decision he'd made, the restlessness crawling under his skin urging him to talk to someone about it-- too bad his goddamn girlfriend's unavailable for comment. He walks through the main door of the school, barely sparing a glance for the skinny nerd (the Russian kid, Chankov or something) getting shoved into a storage closet.
The storage closet door bangs open after they're gone and Pavel hops out, meeting the level glance of the blonde girl trailing alone after the main group of kids moving toward homeroom. Abruptly she cuts toward him, her expression shifting toward a smile. "Hi," she says sweetly, her Southern accent lilting over the vowels. "D'you know where the office is, it's my first day here."
He sniffs, still tasting blood, and points up the hall. "Second on the left."
She bobs her head in thanks. "Thank you so much. I'm Nancy Crater, I'm new."
Chekov thinks, No really, I would never have guessed, but what he says is, "Good luck with that."
Listen to the shit they pump into your head,
Filling you with apathy.
Hold your breath.
Around ten o'clock McCoy saunters out to his car again, furtively followed by two sophomores who keep looking behind them at the school. McCoy resists- barely- the urge to roll his eyes.
"This is for real?" one kid asks as McCoy pops the trunk and reaches in back, grabbing a pair of padd pens with purple caps on the ends.
"Guaranteed to jack you up," McCoy says smoothly, holding them up then jerking them back as the other hand goes out, palm up. "Ten credits apiece, boys." Their eyes widen and he sighs, leaning back into the trunk and coming up with a pair of pink lollipops on plastic rings. "Throw in these for free-- first time customer benefit," he says, snide, but they don't get that they're being mocked. They fork over the money and McCoy pockets it, waving with a grin as they vanish.
"Ugh," he mutters, sitting for a second on the lip of his trunk, shaking his head. "Even the shit I do to make life interesting isn't very."
A voice comes from over his shoulder and he gets abruptly to his feet. "Leonard."
His grin is wider, wilder, suddenly. "Miss Chapel. What can I do for you?" It's stupid, he thinks, how this is actually going to be one of the high points of his day. Chapel's one of the only teachers at this school who still bothers with him, one of the only people who tries to see him as anything but the loser delinquent with a reputation he doesn't deserve, which has nothing to do with how much he enjoys prodding her like a specimen til he gets under her skin.
Her arms cross defensively over her chest, her voice practically quavering. "You can stop conducting personal business on school property."
McCoy grins, green eyes sparking. "Well Miss Chapel, I'm not sure I can do that. See, I'm sitting on my car, which is my property." He's never been so glad to be eighteen before.
Chapel shakes her head, timid eyes sad. Cry me a goddamn river, he thinks. Maybe if she were more than three years older than him he might be able to take her even a little bit seriously. She sighs softly and says, "I've had complaints from several students that you've sold them mind-altering substances. Care to tell me about it... or would you like to take it up with the principal?"
He laughs, and doesn't bother answering. She huffs a little; he gets the sense she's resisting the urge to stamp her foot. "Leonard, I'm the authority figure here, it's time you--" But she seems to know immediately that needing to say it means she isn't, so she interrupts herself mid-sentence and tries a different tack. "If you'd apply just five percent of that intellect to your studies--"
Now this isn't anything he hasn't heard a hundred times before, and she's way more interesting when she's riled up, so he talks over her, reaching down into the trunk. "Miss Chapel, I appreciate the concern, but I think you need to lighten up. I know just the thing."
He rummages in the trunk as she continues, "You didn't have to repeat your senior year, Leonard. You could've finished during the summer--"
She stops as he holds out a white paper bag from a pharmacy, grinning as he shakes his hair back out of his eyes. "Here you go. No charge." If she takes it, he might actually consider giving up selling kids ground-up caffeine pills at ten times the cost-- it might be worth it just to see her face when she opens the bag and sees what's actually in it.
But she doesn't take it, just does exactly what he expects her to do-- looks at the bag like there might be a snake inside, the set of her shoulders visibly wilting. "Oh, Leonard," she whispers, full of disappointment, and shakes her head at him before she walks away.
McCoy turns so he can't see her in his peripheral vision anymore. He bends his neck, leaning his forehead against the raised trunk of the car, warm metal against his skin. Dammit.
On his way back inside he's blocked by Jim Kirk sitting on the steps, leaned back on his elbows staring off into space. McCoy stops in front of him, waiting for the guy to move. After a moment Kirk shakes his head and shifts over. "Sorry," he mutters, sounding distracted.
McCoy moves past him and is almost in the door when Kirk hops to his feet. "Hey, McCoy, wait a sec," he calls, and Len stops with his hand on the door, turns, waits for Kirk to say what he wants.
He and Kirk have a weird sort-of-not-really-friendship. They're not friends, but they've been in school together for years; and then there was that party sophomore year where Kirk went into a seizure from one of his seven million allergies and McCoy happened to have the right hypo in his car. Kirk kind of owed him one after that, and they've traded favors ever since without actually getting to know each other more than absolutely necessary. McCoy thinks it's the perfect setup.
"I'm cutting gym," Kirk says, looking uncomfortable. "I uh. I quit football yesterday, and I think if Nero sees me he might burst a blood vessel or something. So if you can just tell him you saw me puking in the bathroom or something..." he trails off and McCoy shrugs, a smirk tugging up one side of his mouth.
"You're asking me to make excuses for you cutting gym," he repeats, shaking his head. "Jesus, you jocks are something else." Kirk looks about to protest, but McCoy cuts him off. "Yeah, I'll tell him you're dying or whatever."
Kirk relaxes visibly. "Thanks." There's a beat, then he asks, "You're not gonna ask why I quit?"
McCoy shrugs. "Couldn't really say I give a good goddamn why." He grins and adds, "I'm not so bad at football myself, you know-- could be this is my big break, my chance to make the team."
Kirk snorts, rolling his eyes a little. "Yeah, okay. Thanks."
"Yeah," McCoy mutters, yanking open the door as Kirk goes back to sprawling on the steps. "No problem."
Between classes Jim finds Nyota again, falls into step beside her and guides her swiftly toward the door of an empty classroom. In the alcove he turns her to face him and says honestly, "I really gotta talk to you."
"What is it, Jim?" she asks, impatient. She's always impatient with him lately, never has time for anything. She's so set in her ways, he thinks, so sure of herself; he wonders when they stopped being best friends, stopped really knowing each other at all.
Well, he's about to give their little snow globe a shake. She's not gonna like it, he knows; he's just betting (hoping, really) that the past they've shared is enough to carry them on. "I quit football."
Her head tosses back as she laughs, bright and sweet. "You're funny, Jim."
"I'm not joking, Nyota," he grits out.
"You're serious?" Her chin is up, her eyes narrow, incredulous. She's not exactly making this easy on him.
"I've been weighing the importance of being a jock against my impending future and decided, well-- I talked to Coach already." And God, had that been a weird fucking conversation. Jim had literally expected Nero to inflict physical harm on him when he'd turned in his jersey-- instead he'd just gotten a weird smile and a frank admission of anger-- no yelling, no screaming, nothing.
What am I supposed to say, Jim? the man had asked, tucking his hands into his pockets, eyes framed by those weird tattoos boring right through his head. Do what you have to do. Just don't expect me to be happy about it. He'd practically fled the locker room, sure it was a hoax and the guy was about to drag him to the pool and drown him.
"How do you expect to get to college without the football scholarship?" Uhura asks, tucking a strand of her long hair behind her ear. "How do you expect to get anywhere? You're not good at studying, Jim, you're good at football."
His teeth bare in something not quite a smile. "Yeah, and baseball and basketball and every other sport I've tried. I just figured--" his breath whooshes out through his teeth, and he shakes his head. "Maybe it's time I tried something I'm not so good at for a change."
She starts walking with her arms folded tight across her chest, obviously too angry to speak, and he follows her. "Look, if I start studying now I've got the rest of this year to pull up my grades, that's enough to get me into college, and I can take it from there. I'm not an idiot, Nyota." He's been content to surf by on what's easy til now. Not anymore.
"And what am I supposed to do while you're off on your yellow brick road quest for a brain?"
Nyota turns to him, dark eyes wide and intent on his, and Jim sees she's actually rattled. Good, he thinks, uncharitably. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he prompts. He feels like he's reading from a script; he doesn't actually want to have the rest of this talk, but he does want to make Nyota own up to what's in her head, no matter how ugly it is.
The way she glances to the side, teeth catching on her lower lip before she replies, says she knows exactly how ugly it is. "The accepted social order is that cheerleaders date football players, not academic wannabes."
"Don't be so superficial," he snaps, but the punch isn't packing; he's more hurt by her shallow offhandedness than anything else, and she sees it.
Sees it, and twists it. "Superficial-- four syllables, Jim, you're on your way to a Nobel prize. Let me know how the cure for Melvaran mud fleas goes."
She stalks off into the crowd, leaving Jim standing there practically openmouthed in surprise. He closes it with a snap and turns on his heel, heading for his first class, thinking, Thanks for living up to my low expectations, Nyota. At least now I know where we stand... and this'll be the last time you let me down.
He stomps through the corridor and walks right past his math classroom; he doesn't want to go, but after what he just told Nyota about pulling up his grades it's not like he can afford to skip class. He goes in and instead of taking his usual seat toward the back, slides into a chair halfway down the second row, slapping his padd down on the desk and slouching back in the seat with what he knows is a petulant expression.
Spock sits down next to him, barely sparing him a glance. Jim knows it's stupid, but the guy's unruffled calm pisses him off. It doesn't do much for his mood, sitting next to that impenetrable quiet for the next hour, and by the time class gets out Jim's decided to spend lunch jogging around the track. If he doesn't take this formless rage out on something, he's going to get himself in trouble-- which would only show Nyota she's right about his inability to change.
Look closely at the open wound, see past what covers the surface
Underneath chaotic catastrophe, creation takes stage.
At lunch Spock sits alone at a table in the shade, a paperback flattened against the rough wood with one hand, picking his fork absentmindedly through a salad with the other. He is so surprised when someone sits down next to him that he is speechless, and stares up at her (it is a girl, and even more unlikely, a pretty one) with a look of dumbfounded curiosity.
"Mind if I sit down?" she asks, her smile genuine and sweet. He has never seen her before; she must be new. She must not know any better. He shrugs, and she takes that for assent, swinging her leg over the seat beside him. "I'm Nancy Crater, I'm new here."
Spock glances at her, one eyebrow raised, taking in her floral dress and plain shoes. "That is apparent," he says, and she flushes. "I am Spock."
She nods toward his book. "What are you reading?" He is, illogically, loath to show her.
"Why are you attempting to engage me in conversation?" he asks instead, eyes slanting sharply toward her.
Her smile has an edge to it this time. "Because I don't have any friends. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to have one less than that."
He cannot argue her logic; it still does not incline him to participate in her conversation. He is spared the choice, however, by the sudden appearance of Nyota Uhura, whose hand on Spock's shoulder is tight as a vise.
"Terrorizing the new girl already, Spock? I don't think she's interested in joining your little cult. You wanna watch out for him," she says conversationally to Nancy, her smile poisonously sweet. "Spock's a militant hippie socialist-- meat is murder, capitalism is the root of all evil, et cetera et cetera. You sit still long enough he'll start trying to convert you."
Spock suppresses the vicious flash of anger, the brief image that flies through his head of what would happen if he used his superior strength to show her just how incorrect her perception of Vulcan pacifism is.
Instead he gets to his feet, his height requiring her to take her hand off him, at least, and shoves his book into his back pocket. "Your cruelty makes you hideous," he bites out; a poor insult, but he has never been good at them. It is part of what makes him such an easy target. He grabs his salad, though he no longer has any desire to finish eating it, and takes off through the trees back toward the school, shoulders hunched, pulling out his book again to read as he walks.
Outside biology he pauses at the water fountain; as he straightens he is once again struck from behind, square in the shoulder. Stumbling forward a step, he drops his book and straightens from retrieving it to see Kirk behind him, looking bored.
"Get a retinal transplant," Spock snarls, shifting out of Kirk's way.
He barely registers the other boy mutter, "Maybe if you didn't have your head up a textbook's ass all the fucking time," as he crosses the hall toward the lab.
Inside, he sits in his customary seat and is surprised a moment later to see Nancy standing over him again, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear with a shy smile. "Wanna be lab partners?" She sits down without waiting for him to reply. "I didn't know you were a socialist," she continues. "That's so interesting-- I thought the philosophy had disappeared entirely during the twenty-first century. How did you come by it?"
Spock stirs restlessly. "I am not-- Uhura does not know what she is talking about."
Nancy looks taken aback. "Oh. Then why does she--"
"I allow the talk to persist, it is a useful assumption."
Nancy's brow puckers slightly. "Useful for what?"
Spock straightens in his chair as Mr. Pike enters the room. "For keeping away people who ask too many questions."
Mr. Pike has barely taken his seat before Chekov approaches the desk, dropping a hard brown object onto the tray in front of him. Pike looks up with a quizzical expression, and Pavel shrugs. "I found it outside on the football field," he says awkwardly. "Do you know what it is?"
Pike pulls his glasses out of his pocket and puts them on, peering down at whatever it is with curious interest. "Hmm," he murmurs, taking his glasses back off and rolling his chair over to the haemonetic microscope. The tray with its strange ossified occupant slides into the appropriate slot and Pike presses a few buttons, adjusting the settings and sitting back to watch the magnification come up on the suspended screen.
Pavel is not a biologist; math and physics are his true academic loves, and so he cannot say for certain what he sees as Pike's hands manipulate the image on the glass in front of him. Certainly Pike is seeing something, something that does not make sense. "Some mesozoan forms," he mutters, "only exist in the kidney organs of certain squid and octopi... some aliens like the Sulamid and the Bezeri... but that doesn't make any sense," he says, turning back to Pavel and the crowd of students that's gathered around them.
"Because squid do not walk out of the ocean to drop organisms on football fields," Pavel says, a slight grin curving his mouth.
"Well, yes," says Pike, mirroring his smile. He turns back to the microscope, pulling back the zoom so the screen displays the organism entire. "See, it's a pelagic organism-- sea-dwelling," he adds before anyone can ask. "But I don't recognize this surface tissue at all." His head swivels back and he grins, adding, "I know it's a little premature, Paul, but I think you might've discovered a new species."
"Yeah right," someone scoffs, but Pike shakes his head, pushing his chair back over to the lab desk with the tray and the potential discovery in his hand.
"No, it can happen. Even now, new species are discovered here on Earth almost every day." Pike stands, his hip jostling the desk, and his glass of water tips and floods the tray.
The reaction when water touches the strange organism is instantaneous; it twitches, one end curling upward, moving around like a dog hunting a scent. Gasps echo from voice to voice, including Mr. Pike's, and Pavel sees the excitement of discovery stamped large and bright on his teacher's face.
Everyone is on their feet, and they press in around Pike as he carries the tray to the fish tank at the back of the room, full of water but no fish, and gently dumps the tray and its tenant inside.
The transformation is astounding; instantly the creature jackknifes, swimming toward the bottom, thin red tendrils sprouting and streaming behind it like a banner. Pavel has one hand on the lip of the tank, watching the thing cut a smooth course through the water. "What is it?" he murmurs softly, finally dragging his head up and around to look at Pike.
"I don't know, Paul," the teacher says honestly, running a hand through his greying hair. "I'll have to send it to the lab at the university, they have more equipment to test this sort of thing."
Pavel glances at Spock, whose eyebrow is up, impressed and interested. He grins at the Vulcan, who shrugs one shoulder, nodding toward the tank amid more awed gasps as Pavel turns and sees not one strange organism but two. It replicates, he thinks, his thought echoed aloud by Mr. Pike. There is chatter all around him, but Pavel is not listening; his eyes stay fixed on the tank, mesmerized, his pulse racing.
He wonders what he has discovered, and if it is jarring to the creature to be found, poked and prodded; if it is a shock to find itself swimming suddenly in a new and bounded habitat. At least it is not alone, he thinks, watching Spock press his hand to the tank, the twin creatures crowding toward him, their tendrils reaching out to map the shape of his hand through the glass.
I wanna feel the changes coming down
I wanna know what I've been hiding in
After school Pavel unloads his books into his locker, mentally reviewing his to-do list for the school paper, most of which he has to get done this afternoon. He's not a bad photographer, actually, though he never expected even to be decent at it when he used it as an excuse to join. He doesn't need the paper on his activity resume, but no one's bothered asking him why he still works for it. Anyone who knows him well enough to ask probably knows the answer already; it's not like it's that much of a secret.
His locker door is pushed shut, interrupting his thoughts, and he looks up to see Uhura standing there, looking impatient. "Well, what have you got?"
He grins, only a little nervous. When there's no one else around, she's actually pretty alright to him, and he's never not glad to see her. "Nothing but time," he says, "all afternoon if you need." He reaches deep into his backpack and pulls out his camera, slinging it around his neck as he closes his locker.
"Yeah, come on," she says, starting down the hall without looking behind to see if he's following. "Seriously, nothing?" she goes on, talking over her shoulder. "I need a lead story and a good headline image."
"We found a new phylum in biology," he offers. "Mr. Pike thinks it might be a new species."
"Ooh, let me race to the stands for that issue," she sighs, shaking her head.
It stings, and he hates that it does-- hates himself, and her, but only a little bit. He can't help wondering, always, and so he asks, "Why do you pick on me so? What have I done to offend you?"
She shrugs, genuinely nonplussed. "Nothing, Paul, it's just your lot in life. You're that geeky Stephen King kid, there's one of you in every school." He does not need another reminder that she is so far out of his league as to be in another galaxy; and yet, he cannot help but be impressed by her referencing an author three centuries dead. He wonders which is her favorite of King's works; not the Dark Tower with its epic battles, nor the quietly creepy Lisey's Story. Uhura, he thinks, prefers something with flash-- Misery, probably, or Cell.
He's broken from his reverie as she pauses, her back to the door of the teachers' lounge, and Pavel stops a little breathless behind her; her legs are longer than his even without the three inch heels, and she walks fast. "We can't go in there," he protests, but she cuts him off.
"Come on, Paul, you're with me. Be brave," Uhura says with a little leer, pushing open the door and slipping inside. He follows, as she knew (and he did too) he would.
"What do you even think you are going to find?" he asks, nerves and slight frustration thickening his accent. He watches her go to a cabinet and start rummaging, and can't help pointing out, "We shouldn't be here."
"Miss Rand's medicated," she snorts by way of an answer, tossing a few hypos back into a large green purse. "You really never know, do you. What?" she snaps, accusing and defensive as she catches the look he's giving her.
"Nothing," he says with a shrug. "It is just-- you can be sort of cool sometimes." Her look sharpens and he feels compelled to add, "Times when you are not being a first-class grade-A bitch."
She sneers. "Is that a come-on, Paul?"
"No," he blurts, though he knows it will sound like protesting too much. "I only mean you are nice to be around sometimes. This not being one of them," he adds deliberately. He is not trying to hurt her, only trying to prove he is not as vulnerable to her charms as he actually is.
"Well how nice of-- what was that," she cuts herself off as footsteps near the door; she moves fast, grabbing him by the collar and tugging him into the closet with her.
"Uhura!" he protests, and she claps a hand over his mouth. "Shut. Up." she breathes in his ear. Pavel's glad it's dark enough to hide the flush that creeps up his neck as her lips brush his ear. But she turns quickly away and pressing her cheek against the slats of the closet door, waiting to see who comes in.
The door handle turns and in come Coach Nero and Mrs. Blackwell, which is enough to make Pavel pause; normally those two can barely contain their mutual animosity, the football team perpetually taking money away from the ever-dwindling art department-- yet here they are, talking in soft murmurs, almost companionable, but too low to hear. A few words echoed-- too old... the faculty converted... about the students... Just as they move toward the table in the center of the room, the door opens again and Miss Rand comes in, sneezing copiously into a tissue.
"What are you two still doing here? I thought I was the only one left," she sighs, going toward the green purse Nyota had been rifling through earlier. "There are not enough drugs in the world," she adds vehemently, uncapping a bottle and tossing back a pair of red pills.
When she goes toward the refrigerator for a bottle of water, Mrs. Blackwell moves toward the door of the lounge and shuts it. Pavel tries not to think it sounds ominous, but as Coach Nero walks purposefully up behind Miss Rand, he's finding it hard not to wonder what the fuck he's about to witness.
They corner her as easy as two cats with a sniffly mouse. Before Pavel can process how it happened, Nero's pressing Miss Rand into the couch, his hands on either side of her face, ignoring her flailing hands as if they weren't even there. Mrs. Blackwell is standing over them, her face impassive, cold as if she were watching paint dry, and Chekov is being torn apart by the side of him that knows if he's discovered he's dead, and the side of him that wants to run screaming from the room. There's a splattering sound and Miss Rand shrieks, and then goes silent.
Behind him, Uhura is struggling to run; he doesn't even realize he's grabbed her wrists and is holding her back until he tears his gaze from the door to meet her wide eyes with his own. A look of pure anguish crosses her face and he looks back; Coach has backed away and he can see Miss Rand's head lolling to the side, blood running thick and red down her neck, her cheek, into the crease of her eyelid.
Pavel can’t help it; he's never seen blood like that before, had never wanted to see it on himself or anyone else, and before he stuffs his fist in his mouth he lets out a gasp.
Normally he would've sworn Coach Nero wouldn't hear anything that wasn't yelled in his ear, but his tattooed face swings sharply toward the closet and Pavel swears, now, that the man is looking right through the slats and into his eyes. Coach straightens, stepping slowly toward the closet, and Uhura lets out a faint whimper. That galvanizes Pavel into action; he grabs the nearest thing to hand, a broom, and backs up, putting himself between Uhura and the door.
Coach's hand closes on the knob and slowly turns. Pavel watches it move as if in slow motion, the scratch on one side glinting off the light as it rotates. Then the door is yanked open and he moves, giving Coach the business end of the broom handle in the gut and bursting out into the room with Uhura's hand clenched in his, while Mrs. Blackwell shrieks and the Coach flails, groaning and trying to get to his feet. But Pavel and Uhura are too fast; they're out the door in a second, fleeing for the courtyard and freedom.
They don't get far before two figures round the corner toward them-- Principal Robau and Vice-Principal Nogura. Robau's hands are in his trouser pockets and he gives the teenagers a genial smile just this side of a grimace.
"What's going on?" he asks, and right away Pavel knows this isn't going to go well.
Uhura's too scared to think before she talks, and as she's babbling out their story he can see, he simply knows that whatever's wrong with Coach and Mrs. Blackwell is wrong with the principal too. "Forget it, Uhura, hurry the fuck up," he blurts, lapsing into Russian as he grabs her wrist and makes a break for it.
Incredibly, the teachers don't seem to care. No one chases them, but that doesn't stop them running. They skid around another corner and Pavel goes down, the worn soles of his sneakers slipping and sending him sprawling. "Uhura!" he chokes, and she halts with an athlete's grace, pivots and grabs him by the arm. "Come the fuck on, Paul," she says, and there are tears on her cheeks that glint in the sun as they burst out of the building.
She drops Paul off at home and somehow makes it to her own house, where she sits in the driveway willing her hands to stop shaking before she goes in. She brushes her hair and checks her makeup; her eyes are puffy but she can't help that, she's just going to have to make the best of it.
She lets herself in the back door, shutting it quietly, but not quiet enough. "Nyota!" She cringes. "Nyota where in God's name have you been? Jim came here looking for you and I had to tell him I had no idea where you-- my God, what happened to your face?"
Her mother appears in the doorway, hands on the hips of her designer jeans. "Have you been crying?"
She shakes her head. "No." But it's a vain attempt; her mother's gold-shadowed eyes narrow, her lips pursed.
"What were you crying about? Couldn't have been anything important-- Nyota, how many times do I have to remind you not to get so caught up in other people? You have everything you could ever want-- looks, money, the best boyfriend that school could possibly offer you-- I mean do I have to keep going?"
Nyota shakes her head. "No, Mother."
She keeps going anyway. By the time Nyota escapes upstairs she's wrapped herself in iron, willing herself to forget everything she and Paul Chekov saw in the teacher's lounge, determined to focus on nothing but her homework.
Later, almost eleven o'clock, she looks out her window and sees three silhouettes, three people standing on the sidewalk outside her yard. Adults. Teachers, a voice whispers in the back of her mind. Cold fingers of dread creep through the small of her back and wrap around her stomach; she pulls the shade down, pressing her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.
She knows she doesn't actually hear Coach Nero's laugh echoing in her spacious bedroom, but her skin crawls and she jumps into bed fully clothed, turning off the lights and pulling a pillow over her head.
Her communicator rings moments later, and she's almost too afraid to reach out to the bedside table to bring it under the covers with her. Paul's number flashes across the screen, and she presses the comm to her ear and tries to compose herself, tries to sound less like she's huddled under her blankets like a frightened child. "Hello?"
"Did you see them too?" Paul sounds breathless, his accent sharpened by emotion. She doesn't answer, and he elaborates impatiently, "Nero and the others, were they outside your house at all tonight?"
"Yes," she says simply, and hears her voice tremble. "They might still be out there, I don't know."
"This is a big problem, Uhura. Whatever that was we saw, we were not supposed to see it."
"What did they do to her? To Miss Rand?" Her voice is tinged with desperation; she does not actually want to know what was done to Miss Rand this afternoon, but the question has been beating at the back of her mind like a trapped bird since they left the parking lot behind in a cloud of dust.
"I don't know. Uhura--" he stops, and she can hear him moving around, a sound like a door shutting. "They will not come after us at home, they will wait until tomorrow." There's a pause, and he says softly, "We are safe for now."
She wonders if he even believes himself. But she takes a shaky breath and lets it out slow, lets herself be soothed while trying not to acknowledge the thought that there is no one who understands her so well as he does. "Okay. Okay," she repeats. "I'm going to get some sleep-- you should too."
"Okay. See you in school."
"Yeah, see you." Paul hangs up and Nyota forces herself to get out of bed, put on her pajamas and get back in. The shadows of her teachers are gone from outside the house, and whether she intended it or not, Paul's words have eased her mind enough that she feels suddenly certain that she will sleep like a rock tonight.
She gets into bed and refuses to let herself think on what might happen when she gets to school in the morning.
I hope they cannot see
The limitless potential living inside of me
I hope they cannot see
I am the great destroyer
Friday morning looks just like Thursday morning in the quad before homeroom. Chekov's being chased by two football players trying to shove the head of the school mascot costume on him, Uhura's standing with her gaggle of girls working hard at looking fabulous, Kirk and company tossing the football around, laughing.
Nancy stands on the steps surveying everything with a tiny smile. She likes it here; it's written all over her face. There's a step behind her and she turns, knowing somehow who it's going to be.
"Len," she says, smiling up into his shocked face. "I wondered when I'd see you."
He's gaping; he shakes his head and shuts his mouth, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I... didn't even know you were here. Back here."
Her shoulders hunch up and her hands go out, a child's sheepish shrug, but her grin is guilty as sin. "I didn't want to warn you-- thought maybe you'd find a reason not to be here if you knew I was gonna be."
He'd like to think he's not like that, but he knows he is. He knows he's still in shock from seeing her; his reflexes haven't kicked in yet, the ones that'll eventually remind him she's got no business hanging around a guy like him. They didn't work out two years ago because of it-- because they may be from the same hometown, but really, they're from different worlds.
But she's different now, he can see it in her face, in the way she's looking at him like she remembers everything they did (and everything they didn't) back when they knew each other before, and wants to make up for lost time. If McCoy's being totally honest with himself, he wouldn't mind a chance at that either.
So when she nods toward the table under the dogwood tree and suggests they cut homeroom to catch up on what they've missed, he says yes. He could do worse things with the next half-hour, anyway, and when he looks at her and meets her eyes, he remembers what it felt like to fall for her the first time, and finds he couldn't say no if he wanted to.
It's only later, after he's skipped homeroom and one class and spent another lost in thought, that McCoy snaps out of it enough to notice that things are a little weird. And not weird in a way he can put his finger on, but eerie and creepy and subtle. He doesn't figure it out until it's so obvious he can't ignore, and by then it's way too late to avoid.
It's a gorgeous day. Stepping out of the school and into the sun, Christine feels like a new-made woman. She almost laughs at the irony; she is a new-made woman, and it's bursting out of her skin like fireworks. At first she'd been afraid-- oh yes, terrified, she'd screamed herself hoarse, but it was no good, the Coach's hand on the back of her neck, the weight of him pressing her into the table as the Principal leaned over as if to whisper in her ear-- and it had hurt like the worst migraine she'd ever had.
She'd blacked out from the pain, and when she woke up, she was floating in happiness. Clarity, for the first time in her life, had settled around her like her favorite sweater, and she was free.
Today she's different-- she's special. She deserves better than she gets from everyone around her-- colleagues, superiors, and especially the students. And it's about time, she thinks, that she lets them know exactly how sick she is of being everybody's punching bag.
Her first target is hardly a surprise. She sees him in conference with two sophomores and heads toward him, her steps slow and deliberate. There's a murmur as she passes through the students and Len McCoy hears it, turns toward her, surprise painting his face as he registers who it is stepping up into his personal space. And she's in it, alright, inches away so he barely has room to take in the rest of her; he manages, though, catching sight of her dress, red as sin with a neckline that leads the eye places his have no business going (she can read it on his face, he knows he shouldn’t look, can't help it though) especially on a teacher.
"I'm really not in the mood, Miss Chapel," he groans with a roll of his eyes, thinking (how sweet) to cover how he'd been staring. "I'm clean," he adds, moving to brush past her. Her hand presses flat against his chest, drawing him up short, and he looks down at her with widening eyes. Anger, fear, lust-- everything rolling off him in waves, the smell of him is intoxicating, and her new self isn't bothered by the revelation. "Not today," he growls, not backing down in the least. "It's too damn hot and I'm runnin' low on tolerance."
"Eat me, you asshole," she snaps, suppressing the wild urge to laugh, and McCoy's eyebrows threaten to leap off his face. "I'm the one with no tolerance. Pathetic runt," she sneers, giving him the once-over with eyes that burn. Oh yes, it's time he learned his lesson; he's lucky she doesn't put him over her knee right here.
"What are you gonna do," he asks, drawling the vowels out as long as he can make them. "You gonna call my mama on me?"
"Well how am I supposed to do that, little Lenny boy? Do you even know where she is? Europe? Risa? The Neutral Zone? I wonder what remote location she went to this week to hide from her great big bastard mistake." The words roll out of her from a place she didn't know she had, a fierce sort of calm deep inside her where there are no emotions at all, a voice that is not her own.
If she were her old self still, she'd be afraid of this, of the words she's so easily spitting out, and the way she knows somehow that they're not actually coming from her. Christine Chapel doesn't talk like this.
Didn't talk like this, she reminds herself, the inner voice mingling with her thoughts until they're indistinguishable.
"I've taken your shit for too fucking long," she seethes, "you dickless, drug-induced excuse for a human being--"
This, this, is clearly more than he can take, and he blurts out incredulous, "Whoa, listen, lady, I don't know what you're--"
"Listen? Did you just tell me to listen?" McCoy has oh shit written all over his face as she shoves him in the chest again, following him as he steps back. "I'm sick of you, little boy," she gloats, her hand suddenly at the nape of his neck, leaning up real close-- and Len is only eighteen, poor baby, and his body's telling him it's a great idea that she's about to kiss him, even as his brain is obviously telling him to look for the nearest exit.
"If I see you peddling your little wonderdust again," she seethes, and God, it should not be as hot as it is, seeing his scared green eyes less than two inches from hers, "I’m gonna shove my foot so far up your ass you'll be sucking my toes till graduation." And just as fast as she'd grabbed him, she lets him go, shoving through the crowd that's gathered behind them, vanishing.
Christine is dimly shocked at what she's just done; very dim, and fading fast. Her newfound confidence pulses beneath her skin, twisting like an animal begging to be unleashed, and as she dances toward her car she can barely keep from laughing.
Stunned, his stomach burning with anger and shame, McCoy turns away from her with a sneer twisting his features. "She got some bad shit," he mutters, shoving his hands back into his pockets.
Nancy's just coming out of class, and meets him as he heads up the stairs back into the school. "I need a smoke," he murmurs, catching her hand and dragging her into the empty storage classroom.
"Aren't those supposed to be bad for you?" she asks, grinning shyly as she presses the door closed with her shoulders.
"Maybe," he replies with a shrug, bending his head to light the cigarette. "You always make that joke."
"I know," she says, one finger trailing along a dusty shelf. "So how've you been, Len?" They spent two periods talking earlier, but they didn't quite get around to recent history, and he knows the questions he's got coming. Too bad right now thanks to Miss Chapel he's even less in the mood to talk about himself than usual; he's half in shock, still a little turned on and annoyed about it, and none of those things make for good conversation.
"Let's not, shall we?" he retorts, a little sharp. "I've been. You've been. Now you're here again and I'm here too and do we really need to go through the exposition all over again?"
She laughs. "Exposition, huh. Someone's actually been going to English class." He rolls his eyes, takes another drag on the cigarette, and doesn't answer. "Alright. Have it your way. I've been doing well, it's weird being back but I like it. And I don't feel the need to be shy in saying you're one of the best parts of being back at all."
McCoy smirks. "Way I remember it you were never really shy about anything, Nancy."
She grins, coming closer with a little sway to her walk, reaching out with one hand to catch his wrist. "Your memory's as good as ever." He drops the cigarette into a jar and bends his head to hers. Her lips are soft just like he remembers, and when she kisses back he smiles against her mouth.
Then they hear noises. Voices. It takes them a second to realize where they're coming from; the vent that connects this room to the classroom next door. "..not weird, that's fucking psychotic," comes a guy's voice, "aliens?" They share a secret smile, and McCoy presses a finger to her lips as he draws her toward the door.
See my shadow changing, stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor, hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow, coming out the other side.
As unlikely as it seems, all four of them have arrived at the same impossible conclusion. Chekov was the one brave enough to put a name to it; Spock is still having difficulty believing he is living the kind of story he has spent his whole life reading. He does not like that Uhura and Kirk must be involved, but if Chekov is correct then they will need all the help they can rely on. What exactly they plan to do, Spock is unsure; he knows they ought at least to try and do something.
Inside the science classroom they're grouped around Mr. Pike's tenantless fish tank, glaring at each other like testy dogs. Kirk has the floor, his face a mask of incredulity. "Okay, Paul, let's go alien for a second," he says, gesturing expansively before folding his arms over his chest. "Why here? Why San Francisco?"
Spock wishes he could answer this question himself; even for all his reading both fiction and nonfiction, he has no answer for how or why an alien species might choose a place from which to take over a planet. Paul shrugs. "If you were gonna take over the world, would you blow up all the Colonies, Battlestar Galactica style, or sneak in through the back door?"
Spock finds his eyes drawn back to Kirk's face; the other boy is impassive, but Spock can read trouble there, the first stirring of fear. "Contemplating how an alien race might go about taking over this planet is likely a futile exercise," he says. "Let us instead attempt--"
Then the door bursts open and someone stumbles in, clutching their stomach and retching. Uhura jumps with a little scream, and as the intruder straightens, Spock recognizes Leonard McCoy. Surprisingly, it is Nancy who follows him, laughing, and the two of them meander towards the group at the fish tank.
"Come on, Spock, you should know by now-- the only one who's an alien at this school is you." Spock slits his eyes and resists giving the other boy the finger. McCoy's xenophobia is well-documented-- T'Lira asked him to the prom last year just to watch him turn red and stammer. She had made sure to do it where Spock could see; he knows it was deliberate though she never said so.
He is spared the indignity of responding when a new voice speaks. "What's going on in here?" It is Mr. Pike, hands stuck in the pockets of his lab coat, his face hinting more at bemusement than at the trouble they all might be in. "Shouldn't you people be in class?"
"Well it's like this, Mr. Pike," McCoy says, his voice barely containing a laugh. "Chekov here thinks you're an alien."
Spock is watching Pike's face carefully; the expression barely flickers, a mere tightening around the eyebrows, but to a Vulcan the sign is clear as day, and Spock feels his adrenaline begin to rise.
"Is that so?" Pike asks, almost casual as he turns toward the classroom door, drawing the shade down over the window.
"The whole faculty, actually," says Kirk from behind him, and Spock wishes he did not feel the urge to turn and look at him. He sounds relieved to be talking to someone, to be telling an adult. But Spock has had more time to think about this than Kirk, has been thinking of little else since Chekov began whispering to him in the library, and he knows in his gut that the likelihood they are wrong is diminishing with every second Pike stands there unmoving.
Pike's silence draws out the tension between the six teenagers who stand facing him until Spock feels ready to snap. McCoy breaks first, however, muttering something under his breath as he heads toward the door. Pike's hand becomes a vise around his bicep and McCoy goes utterly still; Spock can see the whites of his eyes from where he stands two tables away, Kirk suddenly not breathing behind him.
"Please take your seats," Pike says softly. "This will all be over quite quickly." But of course all it does is make everyone move at once. McCoy tries to break free of Pike's grasp and is tossed back like a rag doll; in an effort to avoid being caught under his flailing limbs, Spock stumbles back into Kirk, the other boy's hands on his elbows.
There is a span of seconds where Kirk's chest is against his back and he can hear the rasp of Kirk's breathing, quick and panicked, can sense the terror coursing through him almost strong enough to taste. Part of him is steeped in panic and desperate to get away lest Kirk's fear serve to amplify his own-- part of him is fascinated that even in the midst of mind-boggling danger, he can spare the attention to notice how little he minds being shoved back against Kirk like this.
Then Chekov attempts a run for the door and gets Pike's hand around his throat for his troubles, and Uhura rushes him but he sweeps his arm out and she goes flying back over one of the lab tables, and everyone is moving and yelling. Nancy backs toward him and Spock gets out of her way, looks up in time to see McCoy with one knee bent, foot braced on the lab's laser cutter. The handle comes off with a few twists (the energy blade flickers but still functions, resembling nothing so much as a small lightsaber from those classic sci-fi vids) and it becomes a weapon in his hand, held with the easy grace of a player stepping up to bat.
"Put him the fuck down, Pike," McCoy growls, and Pike gives him a withering look before shoving the shorter boy forward. Kirk darts out just in time to catch Chekov before he hits the ground, and McCoy swings the cutter with a grunt.
Pike's fingers sever below the second knuckle, and one of the girls is screaming now, but what has Spock's gaze fixed, glued on Mr. Pike is how little pain he seems to feel. He glares at McCoy as he might if McCoy dumped hot coffee on him or rammed into him in the hallway-- not the way anyone would when half their hand is now on the floor.
And then, as Spock's gaze drops to Pike's severed fingers, he sees they are moving.
He barely registers the crash as McCoy is thrown into the fish tank, falling on the ground on top of its shattered remains. He does not see Pike leaning over McCoy on the floor, does not see the horrible tentacular thing his tongue has become. He is mesmerized, watching the four swollen things that are most certainly no longer fingers moving of their own volition, swerving blindly towards the two girls, both shrieking in panic and fear. They succeed in flinging the small fleshy things away from them; Spock sees one crushed beneath Uhura's heel, hears the cracking sound, not bone, but chitin, the carapace of some unknown insect.
Pike stands up with a padd stylus piercing his left eyeball, and the room goes silent.
McCoy lurches to his feet, disbelieving horror written all over his face, and that's when Pike starts shaking. His body goes stiff and his eyes unfocus and his limbs begin to twitch and jitter like someone in the throes of a seizure. With the crystal clarity that is a side effect of panic and shock, Spock hears the man's teeth clacking together, louder than the girls' shrieks or Kirk and Chekov's yells.
White foam begins to pour from around the place where the stylus enters his eyesocket, and Pike stumbles backwards and crashes into a lab table, falls back over the top of it, collapsing to the ground. Spock's heart seems to still in his abdomen as McCoy starts forward, pulling the end off another padd pen with his teeth, and he sees out of the corner of his eye Kirk bending to pick up the fallen laser cutter.
"McCoy," Kirk says roughly, tossing him the handle. The other boy catches it one-handed, switches it on and holds it up ready to slice down in an instant if Pike moves-- but he does not, and inch by inch the rest of them crowd closer to see what has become of their teacher. His chest does not move; he is dead, and whatever had been inside of him is either dead or dormant.
McCoy's arm drops to his side and the six teenagers stare dumbly down at the mess that was once a man. They have killed someone, a teacher, and though Spock knows without even a shred of doubt that they were right to do so, he also knows the likelihood of anyone believing their story is so small as to be nonexistent.
He hears himself speak from far away. "I believe now would be the appropriate time for one of you to say 'Let's get the fuck out of here'," he says, and he hears his voice shake, too.
Kirk catches his eye and the grimness in his look appeases something in Spock. He feels even better when Kirk is the first to declare vehemently, "Let's get the fuck out of here."
"My car," says McCoy as they head for the door. "Nice and easy." None of them even think of protesting. With Kirk close behind him and Chekov barely keeping himself from trembling at his side, Spock is slightly less full of dread than he had been a moment before; but he thinks of Pike's fingers crawling on the floor, and of the sound of his teeth chattering, and finds he must suppress a shudder of his own.
on to part two
Fandom : Star Trek XI
Characters/Pairing : Kirk, McCoy, Spock, Chekov, Uhura, Pike, Chapel; McCoy/Chapel, Kirk/Spock, Chekov/Uhura
Rating : R
Warnings : aliens, nudity, buckets of UST and angst, teenage melodrama and a whole lotta swear words.
Word Count : around 22,000 (!!!)
Summary : My remix of The Faculty for reel_startrek. Something's rotten in the city of San Francisco; the teachers are acting funny and a mismatched handful of students think they've figured out why.
A/Ns :Section headers from "New Skin" by Incubus, "Forty-Six and 2" by Tool, and "Black Bomb" and "The Great Destroyer" by Nine Inch Nails. Thanks ever so much to mirorelle and mutantjules for enabling and sharing in the flail, to raindissolved and usually9_15 for reading and encouraging, and to vellum without whose beta skillz I would literally be sitting weeping in a corner right now.
For the record, I could've used another month to edit this and really whip it into shape, but I hope you guys like it as it is! Also for the record, I am well aware how much of this story is silly and clichéd; it's a teen movie from the 90s, I'd be paying it poor homage it if it weren't cheesy as fuck. XD
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Say your name.
Try to speak as clearly as you can.
You know everything gets written down.
Nod your head.
Tires screech as the old car peels around the corner and into the parking lot, leaving a white cloud and the smell of scorched rubber in its wake. It whips past the security officer directing buses with a bored pre-coffee glaze in his eyes, and past two teachers chatting beside a beat-up green Pinto. It veers into a sharp curve and comes to a stop, perpendicular across three parking spaces.
The door opens and the driver gets out, squinting into the early morning sun. Faded jeans hang a little loose on his hips, the layers of his t-shirts peeking here and there underneath one another, dark hair hanging in his eyes. He goes to the trunk of the car, long fingers trailing across the red stripe lining the side panel, and reaches in deep, pockets a handful of padd pens, long and silver-bright. No book bag; why bother?
Len McCoy crosses the parking lot empty-handed and ducks into the side door of the school, mostly unnoticed.
The quad out front is full of students killing time before homeroom. Pavel Chekov-- Pavel, but he goes by Paul here, not that anyone really knows the difference-- slouches off the bus, thin shoulders hunching into his backpack. His gaze lingers on her as he passes; impossible, for him, not to look at Nyota Uhura where she stands holding court in the shadow of the flagpole.
It's that moment, that stolen glance, that dooms him; he turns too late as an elbow slams into his face, and he sits down hard, warm rush of blood in one nostril. "Sorry," he grits out, sarcasm flooding his mouth like bile. Perhaps something is lost in translation; his assailant, whoever they are, moves on without a word.
"Alert as ever, Chekov," comes the wry voice from above him. He glares up at Spock as he passes, the Vulcan boy's dark eyes bemused, but not unsympathetic.
Spock moves on toward the building; there is no reason to be late for homeroom, his dread of the forthcoming day's tedium notwithstanding. At times he thinks he would give anything for someone-- anyone, one person-- with whom he could carry on an intelligent conversation at this school. Intelligent conversation would even take a back seat to not being treated like the carrier of an infectious pathogen. In his reading he has discovered that centuries ago outcasts would at times refer to themselves as being treated like aliens. On Earth, Spock is an alien; he is not the only one, but at the Academy, he often feels that way.
His thoughts are interrupted by a shoulder slamming into his. He draws himself up straight, lip curling in disgust. The shoulder, clad in the red leather of the school's varsity football jackets, belongs to none other than Jim Kirk, someone who could not be less like Spock if he tried.
"Are you capable of walking, Kirk, or do you need remedial classes in that as well?" A pointless remark (Spock knows Kirk did not need remedial classes last summer, given that he tutored three of them himself and had access to the rosters) yet one he cannot seem to help making.
"You walked into me, elf boy," Kirk replies, sneering before turning quickly away, senses already back on the alert for any sign of his girlfriend.
Down another hallway Nyota Uhura stands surrounded by her faithful followers, her subordinates on the cheerleading squad, the school newspaper-- hell, they're all dancing to her tune no matter what club they're part of. Uhura doesn't join anything she's not going to end up leading sooner or later.
"Come on, T'Lira, you know better than to bring me crap like this," she says scornfully, tossing a notebook back at the slim Vulcan girl who'd handed it to her. "We'd be better off running 'Teachers Possessed by Aliens' than this." Shaking her head, she turns to the blonde beside her. "Answer's still no, Sierra, you can't top the pyramid. Maybe when you lose ten pounds, but as it stands Mdracha and Norn couldn't hold you up. Get out of here, see you this afternoon." The blonde scurries away and Nyota pulls out her mini datapad and checks the time.
"I'm going to be late for chem," she announces, pushing away from her locker and leaving the girls behind without another word. She weaves easily through the halls, showing only the barest hint of surprise as an arm is slung abruptly about her shoulders.
"Morning," Jim drawls against her ear. "How're you doing?"
Suppressing a sigh, she shifts her shoulders enough to swing her hair out from under his arm, and gives him a slight smile. "Jim. I'm a little busy today."
"Too busy for your devoted boyfriend?" He actually sounds hurt. "I really need to talk to you about something."
"You were too busy for me last night," she retorts. "I had time for you then. Today, I'm busy. Really."
He moves to kiss her and she ducks it easily, sliding out from under his arm with a placating smile. "Come on, took me half an hour to do these lips. I'll see you at lunch, Jim. Bye!" Without waiting for an answer, she's gone.
"Well that's awesome," Jim mutters to himself, turning to head back in the direction of his English class, shoving his hands in his pockets. Another body crowds up against him, bumping shoulders, and he turns to see Matthews. "What's up, man," he mutters. Matthews starts in on some tirade, but Jim really isn't listening. Too much else on his mind-- the decision he'd made, the restlessness crawling under his skin urging him to talk to someone about it-- too bad his goddamn girlfriend's unavailable for comment. He walks through the main door of the school, barely sparing a glance for the skinny nerd (the Russian kid, Chankov or something) getting shoved into a storage closet.
The storage closet door bangs open after they're gone and Pavel hops out, meeting the level glance of the blonde girl trailing alone after the main group of kids moving toward homeroom. Abruptly she cuts toward him, her expression shifting toward a smile. "Hi," she says sweetly, her Southern accent lilting over the vowels. "D'you know where the office is, it's my first day here."
He sniffs, still tasting blood, and points up the hall. "Second on the left."
She bobs her head in thanks. "Thank you so much. I'm Nancy Crater, I'm new."
Chekov thinks, No really, I would never have guessed, but what he says is, "Good luck with that."
Listen to the shit they pump into your head,
Filling you with apathy.
Hold your breath.
Around ten o'clock McCoy saunters out to his car again, furtively followed by two sophomores who keep looking behind them at the school. McCoy resists- barely- the urge to roll his eyes.
"This is for real?" one kid asks as McCoy pops the trunk and reaches in back, grabbing a pair of padd pens with purple caps on the ends.
"Guaranteed to jack you up," McCoy says smoothly, holding them up then jerking them back as the other hand goes out, palm up. "Ten credits apiece, boys." Their eyes widen and he sighs, leaning back into the trunk and coming up with a pair of pink lollipops on plastic rings. "Throw in these for free-- first time customer benefit," he says, snide, but they don't get that they're being mocked. They fork over the money and McCoy pockets it, waving with a grin as they vanish.
"Ugh," he mutters, sitting for a second on the lip of his trunk, shaking his head. "Even the shit I do to make life interesting isn't very."
A voice comes from over his shoulder and he gets abruptly to his feet. "Leonard."
His grin is wider, wilder, suddenly. "Miss Chapel. What can I do for you?" It's stupid, he thinks, how this is actually going to be one of the high points of his day. Chapel's one of the only teachers at this school who still bothers with him, one of the only people who tries to see him as anything but the loser delinquent with a reputation he doesn't deserve, which has nothing to do with how much he enjoys prodding her like a specimen til he gets under her skin.
Her arms cross defensively over her chest, her voice practically quavering. "You can stop conducting personal business on school property."
McCoy grins, green eyes sparking. "Well Miss Chapel, I'm not sure I can do that. See, I'm sitting on my car, which is my property." He's never been so glad to be eighteen before.
Chapel shakes her head, timid eyes sad. Cry me a goddamn river, he thinks. Maybe if she were more than three years older than him he might be able to take her even a little bit seriously. She sighs softly and says, "I've had complaints from several students that you've sold them mind-altering substances. Care to tell me about it... or would you like to take it up with the principal?"
He laughs, and doesn't bother answering. She huffs a little; he gets the sense she's resisting the urge to stamp her foot. "Leonard, I'm the authority figure here, it's time you--" But she seems to know immediately that needing to say it means she isn't, so she interrupts herself mid-sentence and tries a different tack. "If you'd apply just five percent of that intellect to your studies--"
Now this isn't anything he hasn't heard a hundred times before, and she's way more interesting when she's riled up, so he talks over her, reaching down into the trunk. "Miss Chapel, I appreciate the concern, but I think you need to lighten up. I know just the thing."
He rummages in the trunk as she continues, "You didn't have to repeat your senior year, Leonard. You could've finished during the summer--"
She stops as he holds out a white paper bag from a pharmacy, grinning as he shakes his hair back out of his eyes. "Here you go. No charge." If she takes it, he might actually consider giving up selling kids ground-up caffeine pills at ten times the cost-- it might be worth it just to see her face when she opens the bag and sees what's actually in it.
But she doesn't take it, just does exactly what he expects her to do-- looks at the bag like there might be a snake inside, the set of her shoulders visibly wilting. "Oh, Leonard," she whispers, full of disappointment, and shakes her head at him before she walks away.
McCoy turns so he can't see her in his peripheral vision anymore. He bends his neck, leaning his forehead against the raised trunk of the car, warm metal against his skin. Dammit.
On his way back inside he's blocked by Jim Kirk sitting on the steps, leaned back on his elbows staring off into space. McCoy stops in front of him, waiting for the guy to move. After a moment Kirk shakes his head and shifts over. "Sorry," he mutters, sounding distracted.
McCoy moves past him and is almost in the door when Kirk hops to his feet. "Hey, McCoy, wait a sec," he calls, and Len stops with his hand on the door, turns, waits for Kirk to say what he wants.
He and Kirk have a weird sort-of-not-really-friendship. They're not friends, but they've been in school together for years; and then there was that party sophomore year where Kirk went into a seizure from one of his seven million allergies and McCoy happened to have the right hypo in his car. Kirk kind of owed him one after that, and they've traded favors ever since without actually getting to know each other more than absolutely necessary. McCoy thinks it's the perfect setup.
"I'm cutting gym," Kirk says, looking uncomfortable. "I uh. I quit football yesterday, and I think if Nero sees me he might burst a blood vessel or something. So if you can just tell him you saw me puking in the bathroom or something..." he trails off and McCoy shrugs, a smirk tugging up one side of his mouth.
"You're asking me to make excuses for you cutting gym," he repeats, shaking his head. "Jesus, you jocks are something else." Kirk looks about to protest, but McCoy cuts him off. "Yeah, I'll tell him you're dying or whatever."
Kirk relaxes visibly. "Thanks." There's a beat, then he asks, "You're not gonna ask why I quit?"
McCoy shrugs. "Couldn't really say I give a good goddamn why." He grins and adds, "I'm not so bad at football myself, you know-- could be this is my big break, my chance to make the team."
Kirk snorts, rolling his eyes a little. "Yeah, okay. Thanks."
"Yeah," McCoy mutters, yanking open the door as Kirk goes back to sprawling on the steps. "No problem."
Between classes Jim finds Nyota again, falls into step beside her and guides her swiftly toward the door of an empty classroom. In the alcove he turns her to face him and says honestly, "I really gotta talk to you."
"What is it, Jim?" she asks, impatient. She's always impatient with him lately, never has time for anything. She's so set in her ways, he thinks, so sure of herself; he wonders when they stopped being best friends, stopped really knowing each other at all.
Well, he's about to give their little snow globe a shake. She's not gonna like it, he knows; he's just betting (hoping, really) that the past they've shared is enough to carry them on. "I quit football."
Her head tosses back as she laughs, bright and sweet. "You're funny, Jim."
"I'm not joking, Nyota," he grits out.
"You're serious?" Her chin is up, her eyes narrow, incredulous. She's not exactly making this easy on him.
"I've been weighing the importance of being a jock against my impending future and decided, well-- I talked to Coach already." And God, had that been a weird fucking conversation. Jim had literally expected Nero to inflict physical harm on him when he'd turned in his jersey-- instead he'd just gotten a weird smile and a frank admission of anger-- no yelling, no screaming, nothing.
What am I supposed to say, Jim? the man had asked, tucking his hands into his pockets, eyes framed by those weird tattoos boring right through his head. Do what you have to do. Just don't expect me to be happy about it. He'd practically fled the locker room, sure it was a hoax and the guy was about to drag him to the pool and drown him.
"How do you expect to get to college without the football scholarship?" Uhura asks, tucking a strand of her long hair behind her ear. "How do you expect to get anywhere? You're not good at studying, Jim, you're good at football."
His teeth bare in something not quite a smile. "Yeah, and baseball and basketball and every other sport I've tried. I just figured--" his breath whooshes out through his teeth, and he shakes his head. "Maybe it's time I tried something I'm not so good at for a change."
She starts walking with her arms folded tight across her chest, obviously too angry to speak, and he follows her. "Look, if I start studying now I've got the rest of this year to pull up my grades, that's enough to get me into college, and I can take it from there. I'm not an idiot, Nyota." He's been content to surf by on what's easy til now. Not anymore.
"And what am I supposed to do while you're off on your yellow brick road quest for a brain?"
Nyota turns to him, dark eyes wide and intent on his, and Jim sees she's actually rattled. Good, he thinks, uncharitably. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he prompts. He feels like he's reading from a script; he doesn't actually want to have the rest of this talk, but he does want to make Nyota own up to what's in her head, no matter how ugly it is.
The way she glances to the side, teeth catching on her lower lip before she replies, says she knows exactly how ugly it is. "The accepted social order is that cheerleaders date football players, not academic wannabes."
"Don't be so superficial," he snaps, but the punch isn't packing; he's more hurt by her shallow offhandedness than anything else, and she sees it.
Sees it, and twists it. "Superficial-- four syllables, Jim, you're on your way to a Nobel prize. Let me know how the cure for Melvaran mud fleas goes."
She stalks off into the crowd, leaving Jim standing there practically openmouthed in surprise. He closes it with a snap and turns on his heel, heading for his first class, thinking, Thanks for living up to my low expectations, Nyota. At least now I know where we stand... and this'll be the last time you let me down.
He stomps through the corridor and walks right past his math classroom; he doesn't want to go, but after what he just told Nyota about pulling up his grades it's not like he can afford to skip class. He goes in and instead of taking his usual seat toward the back, slides into a chair halfway down the second row, slapping his padd down on the desk and slouching back in the seat with what he knows is a petulant expression.
Spock sits down next to him, barely sparing him a glance. Jim knows it's stupid, but the guy's unruffled calm pisses him off. It doesn't do much for his mood, sitting next to that impenetrable quiet for the next hour, and by the time class gets out Jim's decided to spend lunch jogging around the track. If he doesn't take this formless rage out on something, he's going to get himself in trouble-- which would only show Nyota she's right about his inability to change.
Look closely at the open wound, see past what covers the surface
Underneath chaotic catastrophe, creation takes stage.
At lunch Spock sits alone at a table in the shade, a paperback flattened against the rough wood with one hand, picking his fork absentmindedly through a salad with the other. He is so surprised when someone sits down next to him that he is speechless, and stares up at her (it is a girl, and even more unlikely, a pretty one) with a look of dumbfounded curiosity.
"Mind if I sit down?" she asks, her smile genuine and sweet. He has never seen her before; she must be new. She must not know any better. He shrugs, and she takes that for assent, swinging her leg over the seat beside him. "I'm Nancy Crater, I'm new here."
Spock glances at her, one eyebrow raised, taking in her floral dress and plain shoes. "That is apparent," he says, and she flushes. "I am Spock."
She nods toward his book. "What are you reading?" He is, illogically, loath to show her.
"Why are you attempting to engage me in conversation?" he asks instead, eyes slanting sharply toward her.
Her smile has an edge to it this time. "Because I don't have any friends. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to have one less than that."
He cannot argue her logic; it still does not incline him to participate in her conversation. He is spared the choice, however, by the sudden appearance of Nyota Uhura, whose hand on Spock's shoulder is tight as a vise.
"Terrorizing the new girl already, Spock? I don't think she's interested in joining your little cult. You wanna watch out for him," she says conversationally to Nancy, her smile poisonously sweet. "Spock's a militant hippie socialist-- meat is murder, capitalism is the root of all evil, et cetera et cetera. You sit still long enough he'll start trying to convert you."
Spock suppresses the vicious flash of anger, the brief image that flies through his head of what would happen if he used his superior strength to show her just how incorrect her perception of Vulcan pacifism is.
Instead he gets to his feet, his height requiring her to take her hand off him, at least, and shoves his book into his back pocket. "Your cruelty makes you hideous," he bites out; a poor insult, but he has never been good at them. It is part of what makes him such an easy target. He grabs his salad, though he no longer has any desire to finish eating it, and takes off through the trees back toward the school, shoulders hunched, pulling out his book again to read as he walks.
Outside biology he pauses at the water fountain; as he straightens he is once again struck from behind, square in the shoulder. Stumbling forward a step, he drops his book and straightens from retrieving it to see Kirk behind him, looking bored.
"Get a retinal transplant," Spock snarls, shifting out of Kirk's way.
He barely registers the other boy mutter, "Maybe if you didn't have your head up a textbook's ass all the fucking time," as he crosses the hall toward the lab.
Inside, he sits in his customary seat and is surprised a moment later to see Nancy standing over him again, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear with a shy smile. "Wanna be lab partners?" She sits down without waiting for him to reply. "I didn't know you were a socialist," she continues. "That's so interesting-- I thought the philosophy had disappeared entirely during the twenty-first century. How did you come by it?"
Spock stirs restlessly. "I am not-- Uhura does not know what she is talking about."
Nancy looks taken aback. "Oh. Then why does she--"
"I allow the talk to persist, it is a useful assumption."
Nancy's brow puckers slightly. "Useful for what?"
Spock straightens in his chair as Mr. Pike enters the room. "For keeping away people who ask too many questions."
Mr. Pike has barely taken his seat before Chekov approaches the desk, dropping a hard brown object onto the tray in front of him. Pike looks up with a quizzical expression, and Pavel shrugs. "I found it outside on the football field," he says awkwardly. "Do you know what it is?"
Pike pulls his glasses out of his pocket and puts them on, peering down at whatever it is with curious interest. "Hmm," he murmurs, taking his glasses back off and rolling his chair over to the haemonetic microscope. The tray with its strange ossified occupant slides into the appropriate slot and Pike presses a few buttons, adjusting the settings and sitting back to watch the magnification come up on the suspended screen.
Pavel is not a biologist; math and physics are his true academic loves, and so he cannot say for certain what he sees as Pike's hands manipulate the image on the glass in front of him. Certainly Pike is seeing something, something that does not make sense. "Some mesozoan forms," he mutters, "only exist in the kidney organs of certain squid and octopi... some aliens like the Sulamid and the Bezeri... but that doesn't make any sense," he says, turning back to Pavel and the crowd of students that's gathered around them.
"Because squid do not walk out of the ocean to drop organisms on football fields," Pavel says, a slight grin curving his mouth.
"Well, yes," says Pike, mirroring his smile. He turns back to the microscope, pulling back the zoom so the screen displays the organism entire. "See, it's a pelagic organism-- sea-dwelling," he adds before anyone can ask. "But I don't recognize this surface tissue at all." His head swivels back and he grins, adding, "I know it's a little premature, Paul, but I think you might've discovered a new species."
"Yeah right," someone scoffs, but Pike shakes his head, pushing his chair back over to the lab desk with the tray and the potential discovery in his hand.
"No, it can happen. Even now, new species are discovered here on Earth almost every day." Pike stands, his hip jostling the desk, and his glass of water tips and floods the tray.
The reaction when water touches the strange organism is instantaneous; it twitches, one end curling upward, moving around like a dog hunting a scent. Gasps echo from voice to voice, including Mr. Pike's, and Pavel sees the excitement of discovery stamped large and bright on his teacher's face.
Everyone is on their feet, and they press in around Pike as he carries the tray to the fish tank at the back of the room, full of water but no fish, and gently dumps the tray and its tenant inside.
The transformation is astounding; instantly the creature jackknifes, swimming toward the bottom, thin red tendrils sprouting and streaming behind it like a banner. Pavel has one hand on the lip of the tank, watching the thing cut a smooth course through the water. "What is it?" he murmurs softly, finally dragging his head up and around to look at Pike.
"I don't know, Paul," the teacher says honestly, running a hand through his greying hair. "I'll have to send it to the lab at the university, they have more equipment to test this sort of thing."
Pavel glances at Spock, whose eyebrow is up, impressed and interested. He grins at the Vulcan, who shrugs one shoulder, nodding toward the tank amid more awed gasps as Pavel turns and sees not one strange organism but two. It replicates, he thinks, his thought echoed aloud by Mr. Pike. There is chatter all around him, but Pavel is not listening; his eyes stay fixed on the tank, mesmerized, his pulse racing.
He wonders what he has discovered, and if it is jarring to the creature to be found, poked and prodded; if it is a shock to find itself swimming suddenly in a new and bounded habitat. At least it is not alone, he thinks, watching Spock press his hand to the tank, the twin creatures crowding toward him, their tendrils reaching out to map the shape of his hand through the glass.
I wanna feel the changes coming down
I wanna know what I've been hiding in
After school Pavel unloads his books into his locker, mentally reviewing his to-do list for the school paper, most of which he has to get done this afternoon. He's not a bad photographer, actually, though he never expected even to be decent at it when he used it as an excuse to join. He doesn't need the paper on his activity resume, but no one's bothered asking him why he still works for it. Anyone who knows him well enough to ask probably knows the answer already; it's not like it's that much of a secret.
His locker door is pushed shut, interrupting his thoughts, and he looks up to see Uhura standing there, looking impatient. "Well, what have you got?"
He grins, only a little nervous. When there's no one else around, she's actually pretty alright to him, and he's never not glad to see her. "Nothing but time," he says, "all afternoon if you need." He reaches deep into his backpack and pulls out his camera, slinging it around his neck as he closes his locker.
"Yeah, come on," she says, starting down the hall without looking behind to see if he's following. "Seriously, nothing?" she goes on, talking over her shoulder. "I need a lead story and a good headline image."
"We found a new phylum in biology," he offers. "Mr. Pike thinks it might be a new species."
"Ooh, let me race to the stands for that issue," she sighs, shaking her head.
It stings, and he hates that it does-- hates himself, and her, but only a little bit. He can't help wondering, always, and so he asks, "Why do you pick on me so? What have I done to offend you?"
She shrugs, genuinely nonplussed. "Nothing, Paul, it's just your lot in life. You're that geeky Stephen King kid, there's one of you in every school." He does not need another reminder that she is so far out of his league as to be in another galaxy; and yet, he cannot help but be impressed by her referencing an author three centuries dead. He wonders which is her favorite of King's works; not the Dark Tower with its epic battles, nor the quietly creepy Lisey's Story. Uhura, he thinks, prefers something with flash-- Misery, probably, or Cell.
He's broken from his reverie as she pauses, her back to the door of the teachers' lounge, and Pavel stops a little breathless behind her; her legs are longer than his even without the three inch heels, and she walks fast. "We can't go in there," he protests, but she cuts him off.
"Come on, Paul, you're with me. Be brave," Uhura says with a little leer, pushing open the door and slipping inside. He follows, as she knew (and he did too) he would.
"What do you even think you are going to find?" he asks, nerves and slight frustration thickening his accent. He watches her go to a cabinet and start rummaging, and can't help pointing out, "We shouldn't be here."
"Miss Rand's medicated," she snorts by way of an answer, tossing a few hypos back into a large green purse. "You really never know, do you. What?" she snaps, accusing and defensive as she catches the look he's giving her.
"Nothing," he says with a shrug. "It is just-- you can be sort of cool sometimes." Her look sharpens and he feels compelled to add, "Times when you are not being a first-class grade-A bitch."
She sneers. "Is that a come-on, Paul?"
"No," he blurts, though he knows it will sound like protesting too much. "I only mean you are nice to be around sometimes. This not being one of them," he adds deliberately. He is not trying to hurt her, only trying to prove he is not as vulnerable to her charms as he actually is.
"Well how nice of-- what was that," she cuts herself off as footsteps near the door; she moves fast, grabbing him by the collar and tugging him into the closet with her.
"Uhura!" he protests, and she claps a hand over his mouth. "Shut. Up." she breathes in his ear. Pavel's glad it's dark enough to hide the flush that creeps up his neck as her lips brush his ear. But she turns quickly away and pressing her cheek against the slats of the closet door, waiting to see who comes in.
The door handle turns and in come Coach Nero and Mrs. Blackwell, which is enough to make Pavel pause; normally those two can barely contain their mutual animosity, the football team perpetually taking money away from the ever-dwindling art department-- yet here they are, talking in soft murmurs, almost companionable, but too low to hear. A few words echoed-- too old... the faculty converted... about the students... Just as they move toward the table in the center of the room, the door opens again and Miss Rand comes in, sneezing copiously into a tissue.
"What are you two still doing here? I thought I was the only one left," she sighs, going toward the green purse Nyota had been rifling through earlier. "There are not enough drugs in the world," she adds vehemently, uncapping a bottle and tossing back a pair of red pills.
When she goes toward the refrigerator for a bottle of water, Mrs. Blackwell moves toward the door of the lounge and shuts it. Pavel tries not to think it sounds ominous, but as Coach Nero walks purposefully up behind Miss Rand, he's finding it hard not to wonder what the fuck he's about to witness.
They corner her as easy as two cats with a sniffly mouse. Before Pavel can process how it happened, Nero's pressing Miss Rand into the couch, his hands on either side of her face, ignoring her flailing hands as if they weren't even there. Mrs. Blackwell is standing over them, her face impassive, cold as if she were watching paint dry, and Chekov is being torn apart by the side of him that knows if he's discovered he's dead, and the side of him that wants to run screaming from the room. There's a splattering sound and Miss Rand shrieks, and then goes silent.
Behind him, Uhura is struggling to run; he doesn't even realize he's grabbed her wrists and is holding her back until he tears his gaze from the door to meet her wide eyes with his own. A look of pure anguish crosses her face and he looks back; Coach has backed away and he can see Miss Rand's head lolling to the side, blood running thick and red down her neck, her cheek, into the crease of her eyelid.
Pavel can’t help it; he's never seen blood like that before, had never wanted to see it on himself or anyone else, and before he stuffs his fist in his mouth he lets out a gasp.
Normally he would've sworn Coach Nero wouldn't hear anything that wasn't yelled in his ear, but his tattooed face swings sharply toward the closet and Pavel swears, now, that the man is looking right through the slats and into his eyes. Coach straightens, stepping slowly toward the closet, and Uhura lets out a faint whimper. That galvanizes Pavel into action; he grabs the nearest thing to hand, a broom, and backs up, putting himself between Uhura and the door.
Coach's hand closes on the knob and slowly turns. Pavel watches it move as if in slow motion, the scratch on one side glinting off the light as it rotates. Then the door is yanked open and he moves, giving Coach the business end of the broom handle in the gut and bursting out into the room with Uhura's hand clenched in his, while Mrs. Blackwell shrieks and the Coach flails, groaning and trying to get to his feet. But Pavel and Uhura are too fast; they're out the door in a second, fleeing for the courtyard and freedom.
They don't get far before two figures round the corner toward them-- Principal Robau and Vice-Principal Nogura. Robau's hands are in his trouser pockets and he gives the teenagers a genial smile just this side of a grimace.
"What's going on?" he asks, and right away Pavel knows this isn't going to go well.
Uhura's too scared to think before she talks, and as she's babbling out their story he can see, he simply knows that whatever's wrong with Coach and Mrs. Blackwell is wrong with the principal too. "Forget it, Uhura, hurry the fuck up," he blurts, lapsing into Russian as he grabs her wrist and makes a break for it.
Incredibly, the teachers don't seem to care. No one chases them, but that doesn't stop them running. They skid around another corner and Pavel goes down, the worn soles of his sneakers slipping and sending him sprawling. "Uhura!" he chokes, and she halts with an athlete's grace, pivots and grabs him by the arm. "Come the fuck on, Paul," she says, and there are tears on her cheeks that glint in the sun as they burst out of the building.
She drops Paul off at home and somehow makes it to her own house, where she sits in the driveway willing her hands to stop shaking before she goes in. She brushes her hair and checks her makeup; her eyes are puffy but she can't help that, she's just going to have to make the best of it.
She lets herself in the back door, shutting it quietly, but not quiet enough. "Nyota!" She cringes. "Nyota where in God's name have you been? Jim came here looking for you and I had to tell him I had no idea where you-- my God, what happened to your face?"
Her mother appears in the doorway, hands on the hips of her designer jeans. "Have you been crying?"
She shakes her head. "No." But it's a vain attempt; her mother's gold-shadowed eyes narrow, her lips pursed.
"What were you crying about? Couldn't have been anything important-- Nyota, how many times do I have to remind you not to get so caught up in other people? You have everything you could ever want-- looks, money, the best boyfriend that school could possibly offer you-- I mean do I have to keep going?"
Nyota shakes her head. "No, Mother."
She keeps going anyway. By the time Nyota escapes upstairs she's wrapped herself in iron, willing herself to forget everything she and Paul Chekov saw in the teacher's lounge, determined to focus on nothing but her homework.
Later, almost eleven o'clock, she looks out her window and sees three silhouettes, three people standing on the sidewalk outside her yard. Adults. Teachers, a voice whispers in the back of her mind. Cold fingers of dread creep through the small of her back and wrap around her stomach; she pulls the shade down, pressing her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.
She knows she doesn't actually hear Coach Nero's laugh echoing in her spacious bedroom, but her skin crawls and she jumps into bed fully clothed, turning off the lights and pulling a pillow over her head.
Her communicator rings moments later, and she's almost too afraid to reach out to the bedside table to bring it under the covers with her. Paul's number flashes across the screen, and she presses the comm to her ear and tries to compose herself, tries to sound less like she's huddled under her blankets like a frightened child. "Hello?"
"Did you see them too?" Paul sounds breathless, his accent sharpened by emotion. She doesn't answer, and he elaborates impatiently, "Nero and the others, were they outside your house at all tonight?"
"Yes," she says simply, and hears her voice tremble. "They might still be out there, I don't know."
"This is a big problem, Uhura. Whatever that was we saw, we were not supposed to see it."
"What did they do to her? To Miss Rand?" Her voice is tinged with desperation; she does not actually want to know what was done to Miss Rand this afternoon, but the question has been beating at the back of her mind like a trapped bird since they left the parking lot behind in a cloud of dust.
"I don't know. Uhura--" he stops, and she can hear him moving around, a sound like a door shutting. "They will not come after us at home, they will wait until tomorrow." There's a pause, and he says softly, "We are safe for now."
She wonders if he even believes himself. But she takes a shaky breath and lets it out slow, lets herself be soothed while trying not to acknowledge the thought that there is no one who understands her so well as he does. "Okay. Okay," she repeats. "I'm going to get some sleep-- you should too."
"Okay. See you in school."
"Yeah, see you." Paul hangs up and Nyota forces herself to get out of bed, put on her pajamas and get back in. The shadows of her teachers are gone from outside the house, and whether she intended it or not, Paul's words have eased her mind enough that she feels suddenly certain that she will sleep like a rock tonight.
She gets into bed and refuses to let herself think on what might happen when she gets to school in the morning.
I hope they cannot see
The limitless potential living inside of me
I hope they cannot see
I am the great destroyer
Friday morning looks just like Thursday morning in the quad before homeroom. Chekov's being chased by two football players trying to shove the head of the school mascot costume on him, Uhura's standing with her gaggle of girls working hard at looking fabulous, Kirk and company tossing the football around, laughing.
Nancy stands on the steps surveying everything with a tiny smile. She likes it here; it's written all over her face. There's a step behind her and she turns, knowing somehow who it's going to be.
"Len," she says, smiling up into his shocked face. "I wondered when I'd see you."
He's gaping; he shakes his head and shuts his mouth, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I... didn't even know you were here. Back here."
Her shoulders hunch up and her hands go out, a child's sheepish shrug, but her grin is guilty as sin. "I didn't want to warn you-- thought maybe you'd find a reason not to be here if you knew I was gonna be."
He'd like to think he's not like that, but he knows he is. He knows he's still in shock from seeing her; his reflexes haven't kicked in yet, the ones that'll eventually remind him she's got no business hanging around a guy like him. They didn't work out two years ago because of it-- because they may be from the same hometown, but really, they're from different worlds.
But she's different now, he can see it in her face, in the way she's looking at him like she remembers everything they did (and everything they didn't) back when they knew each other before, and wants to make up for lost time. If McCoy's being totally honest with himself, he wouldn't mind a chance at that either.
So when she nods toward the table under the dogwood tree and suggests they cut homeroom to catch up on what they've missed, he says yes. He could do worse things with the next half-hour, anyway, and when he looks at her and meets her eyes, he remembers what it felt like to fall for her the first time, and finds he couldn't say no if he wanted to.
It's only later, after he's skipped homeroom and one class and spent another lost in thought, that McCoy snaps out of it enough to notice that things are a little weird. And not weird in a way he can put his finger on, but eerie and creepy and subtle. He doesn't figure it out until it's so obvious he can't ignore, and by then it's way too late to avoid.
It's a gorgeous day. Stepping out of the school and into the sun, Christine feels like a new-made woman. She almost laughs at the irony; she is a new-made woman, and it's bursting out of her skin like fireworks. At first she'd been afraid-- oh yes, terrified, she'd screamed herself hoarse, but it was no good, the Coach's hand on the back of her neck, the weight of him pressing her into the table as the Principal leaned over as if to whisper in her ear-- and it had hurt like the worst migraine she'd ever had.
She'd blacked out from the pain, and when she woke up, she was floating in happiness. Clarity, for the first time in her life, had settled around her like her favorite sweater, and she was free.
Today she's different-- she's special. She deserves better than she gets from everyone around her-- colleagues, superiors, and especially the students. And it's about time, she thinks, that she lets them know exactly how sick she is of being everybody's punching bag.
Her first target is hardly a surprise. She sees him in conference with two sophomores and heads toward him, her steps slow and deliberate. There's a murmur as she passes through the students and Len McCoy hears it, turns toward her, surprise painting his face as he registers who it is stepping up into his personal space. And she's in it, alright, inches away so he barely has room to take in the rest of her; he manages, though, catching sight of her dress, red as sin with a neckline that leads the eye places his have no business going (she can read it on his face, he knows he shouldn’t look, can't help it though) especially on a teacher.
"I'm really not in the mood, Miss Chapel," he groans with a roll of his eyes, thinking (how sweet) to cover how he'd been staring. "I'm clean," he adds, moving to brush past her. Her hand presses flat against his chest, drawing him up short, and he looks down at her with widening eyes. Anger, fear, lust-- everything rolling off him in waves, the smell of him is intoxicating, and her new self isn't bothered by the revelation. "Not today," he growls, not backing down in the least. "It's too damn hot and I'm runnin' low on tolerance."
"Eat me, you asshole," she snaps, suppressing the wild urge to laugh, and McCoy's eyebrows threaten to leap off his face. "I'm the one with no tolerance. Pathetic runt," she sneers, giving him the once-over with eyes that burn. Oh yes, it's time he learned his lesson; he's lucky she doesn't put him over her knee right here.
"What are you gonna do," he asks, drawling the vowels out as long as he can make them. "You gonna call my mama on me?"
"Well how am I supposed to do that, little Lenny boy? Do you even know where she is? Europe? Risa? The Neutral Zone? I wonder what remote location she went to this week to hide from her great big bastard mistake." The words roll out of her from a place she didn't know she had, a fierce sort of calm deep inside her where there are no emotions at all, a voice that is not her own.
If she were her old self still, she'd be afraid of this, of the words she's so easily spitting out, and the way she knows somehow that they're not actually coming from her. Christine Chapel doesn't talk like this.
Didn't talk like this, she reminds herself, the inner voice mingling with her thoughts until they're indistinguishable.
"I've taken your shit for too fucking long," she seethes, "you dickless, drug-induced excuse for a human being--"
This, this, is clearly more than he can take, and he blurts out incredulous, "Whoa, listen, lady, I don't know what you're--"
"Listen? Did you just tell me to listen?" McCoy has oh shit written all over his face as she shoves him in the chest again, following him as he steps back. "I'm sick of you, little boy," she gloats, her hand suddenly at the nape of his neck, leaning up real close-- and Len is only eighteen, poor baby, and his body's telling him it's a great idea that she's about to kiss him, even as his brain is obviously telling him to look for the nearest exit.
"If I see you peddling your little wonderdust again," she seethes, and God, it should not be as hot as it is, seeing his scared green eyes less than two inches from hers, "I’m gonna shove my foot so far up your ass you'll be sucking my toes till graduation." And just as fast as she'd grabbed him, she lets him go, shoving through the crowd that's gathered behind them, vanishing.
Christine is dimly shocked at what she's just done; very dim, and fading fast. Her newfound confidence pulses beneath her skin, twisting like an animal begging to be unleashed, and as she dances toward her car she can barely keep from laughing.
Stunned, his stomach burning with anger and shame, McCoy turns away from her with a sneer twisting his features. "She got some bad shit," he mutters, shoving his hands back into his pockets.
Nancy's just coming out of class, and meets him as he heads up the stairs back into the school. "I need a smoke," he murmurs, catching her hand and dragging her into the empty storage classroom.
"Aren't those supposed to be bad for you?" she asks, grinning shyly as she presses the door closed with her shoulders.
"Maybe," he replies with a shrug, bending his head to light the cigarette. "You always make that joke."
"I know," she says, one finger trailing along a dusty shelf. "So how've you been, Len?" They spent two periods talking earlier, but they didn't quite get around to recent history, and he knows the questions he's got coming. Too bad right now thanks to Miss Chapel he's even less in the mood to talk about himself than usual; he's half in shock, still a little turned on and annoyed about it, and none of those things make for good conversation.
"Let's not, shall we?" he retorts, a little sharp. "I've been. You've been. Now you're here again and I'm here too and do we really need to go through the exposition all over again?"
She laughs. "Exposition, huh. Someone's actually been going to English class." He rolls his eyes, takes another drag on the cigarette, and doesn't answer. "Alright. Have it your way. I've been doing well, it's weird being back but I like it. And I don't feel the need to be shy in saying you're one of the best parts of being back at all."
McCoy smirks. "Way I remember it you were never really shy about anything, Nancy."
She grins, coming closer with a little sway to her walk, reaching out with one hand to catch his wrist. "Your memory's as good as ever." He drops the cigarette into a jar and bends his head to hers. Her lips are soft just like he remembers, and when she kisses back he smiles against her mouth.
Then they hear noises. Voices. It takes them a second to realize where they're coming from; the vent that connects this room to the classroom next door. "..not weird, that's fucking psychotic," comes a guy's voice, "aliens?" They share a secret smile, and McCoy presses a finger to her lips as he draws her toward the door.
See my shadow changing, stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor, hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow, coming out the other side.
As unlikely as it seems, all four of them have arrived at the same impossible conclusion. Chekov was the one brave enough to put a name to it; Spock is still having difficulty believing he is living the kind of story he has spent his whole life reading. He does not like that Uhura and Kirk must be involved, but if Chekov is correct then they will need all the help they can rely on. What exactly they plan to do, Spock is unsure; he knows they ought at least to try and do something.
Inside the science classroom they're grouped around Mr. Pike's tenantless fish tank, glaring at each other like testy dogs. Kirk has the floor, his face a mask of incredulity. "Okay, Paul, let's go alien for a second," he says, gesturing expansively before folding his arms over his chest. "Why here? Why San Francisco?"
Spock wishes he could answer this question himself; even for all his reading both fiction and nonfiction, he has no answer for how or why an alien species might choose a place from which to take over a planet. Paul shrugs. "If you were gonna take over the world, would you blow up all the Colonies, Battlestar Galactica style, or sneak in through the back door?"
Spock finds his eyes drawn back to Kirk's face; the other boy is impassive, but Spock can read trouble there, the first stirring of fear. "Contemplating how an alien race might go about taking over this planet is likely a futile exercise," he says. "Let us instead attempt--"
Then the door bursts open and someone stumbles in, clutching their stomach and retching. Uhura jumps with a little scream, and as the intruder straightens, Spock recognizes Leonard McCoy. Surprisingly, it is Nancy who follows him, laughing, and the two of them meander towards the group at the fish tank.
"Come on, Spock, you should know by now-- the only one who's an alien at this school is you." Spock slits his eyes and resists giving the other boy the finger. McCoy's xenophobia is well-documented-- T'Lira asked him to the prom last year just to watch him turn red and stammer. She had made sure to do it where Spock could see; he knows it was deliberate though she never said so.
He is spared the indignity of responding when a new voice speaks. "What's going on in here?" It is Mr. Pike, hands stuck in the pockets of his lab coat, his face hinting more at bemusement than at the trouble they all might be in. "Shouldn't you people be in class?"
"Well it's like this, Mr. Pike," McCoy says, his voice barely containing a laugh. "Chekov here thinks you're an alien."
Spock is watching Pike's face carefully; the expression barely flickers, a mere tightening around the eyebrows, but to a Vulcan the sign is clear as day, and Spock feels his adrenaline begin to rise.
"Is that so?" Pike asks, almost casual as he turns toward the classroom door, drawing the shade down over the window.
"The whole faculty, actually," says Kirk from behind him, and Spock wishes he did not feel the urge to turn and look at him. He sounds relieved to be talking to someone, to be telling an adult. But Spock has had more time to think about this than Kirk, has been thinking of little else since Chekov began whispering to him in the library, and he knows in his gut that the likelihood they are wrong is diminishing with every second Pike stands there unmoving.
Pike's silence draws out the tension between the six teenagers who stand facing him until Spock feels ready to snap. McCoy breaks first, however, muttering something under his breath as he heads toward the door. Pike's hand becomes a vise around his bicep and McCoy goes utterly still; Spock can see the whites of his eyes from where he stands two tables away, Kirk suddenly not breathing behind him.
"Please take your seats," Pike says softly. "This will all be over quite quickly." But of course all it does is make everyone move at once. McCoy tries to break free of Pike's grasp and is tossed back like a rag doll; in an effort to avoid being caught under his flailing limbs, Spock stumbles back into Kirk, the other boy's hands on his elbows.
There is a span of seconds where Kirk's chest is against his back and he can hear the rasp of Kirk's breathing, quick and panicked, can sense the terror coursing through him almost strong enough to taste. Part of him is steeped in panic and desperate to get away lest Kirk's fear serve to amplify his own-- part of him is fascinated that even in the midst of mind-boggling danger, he can spare the attention to notice how little he minds being shoved back against Kirk like this.
Then Chekov attempts a run for the door and gets Pike's hand around his throat for his troubles, and Uhura rushes him but he sweeps his arm out and she goes flying back over one of the lab tables, and everyone is moving and yelling. Nancy backs toward him and Spock gets out of her way, looks up in time to see McCoy with one knee bent, foot braced on the lab's laser cutter. The handle comes off with a few twists (the energy blade flickers but still functions, resembling nothing so much as a small lightsaber from those classic sci-fi vids) and it becomes a weapon in his hand, held with the easy grace of a player stepping up to bat.
"Put him the fuck down, Pike," McCoy growls, and Pike gives him a withering look before shoving the shorter boy forward. Kirk darts out just in time to catch Chekov before he hits the ground, and McCoy swings the cutter with a grunt.
Pike's fingers sever below the second knuckle, and one of the girls is screaming now, but what has Spock's gaze fixed, glued on Mr. Pike is how little pain he seems to feel. He glares at McCoy as he might if McCoy dumped hot coffee on him or rammed into him in the hallway-- not the way anyone would when half their hand is now on the floor.
And then, as Spock's gaze drops to Pike's severed fingers, he sees they are moving.
He barely registers the crash as McCoy is thrown into the fish tank, falling on the ground on top of its shattered remains. He does not see Pike leaning over McCoy on the floor, does not see the horrible tentacular thing his tongue has become. He is mesmerized, watching the four swollen things that are most certainly no longer fingers moving of their own volition, swerving blindly towards the two girls, both shrieking in panic and fear. They succeed in flinging the small fleshy things away from them; Spock sees one crushed beneath Uhura's heel, hears the cracking sound, not bone, but chitin, the carapace of some unknown insect.
Pike stands up with a padd stylus piercing his left eyeball, and the room goes silent.
McCoy lurches to his feet, disbelieving horror written all over his face, and that's when Pike starts shaking. His body goes stiff and his eyes unfocus and his limbs begin to twitch and jitter like someone in the throes of a seizure. With the crystal clarity that is a side effect of panic and shock, Spock hears the man's teeth clacking together, louder than the girls' shrieks or Kirk and Chekov's yells.
White foam begins to pour from around the place where the stylus enters his eyesocket, and Pike stumbles backwards and crashes into a lab table, falls back over the top of it, collapsing to the ground. Spock's heart seems to still in his abdomen as McCoy starts forward, pulling the end off another padd pen with his teeth, and he sees out of the corner of his eye Kirk bending to pick up the fallen laser cutter.
"McCoy," Kirk says roughly, tossing him the handle. The other boy catches it one-handed, switches it on and holds it up ready to slice down in an instant if Pike moves-- but he does not, and inch by inch the rest of them crowd closer to see what has become of their teacher. His chest does not move; he is dead, and whatever had been inside of him is either dead or dormant.
McCoy's arm drops to his side and the six teenagers stare dumbly down at the mess that was once a man. They have killed someone, a teacher, and though Spock knows without even a shred of doubt that they were right to do so, he also knows the likelihood of anyone believing their story is so small as to be nonexistent.
He hears himself speak from far away. "I believe now would be the appropriate time for one of you to say 'Let's get the fuck out of here'," he says, and he hears his voice shake, too.
Kirk catches his eye and the grimness in his look appeases something in Spock. He feels even better when Kirk is the first to declare vehemently, "Let's get the fuck out of here."
"My car," says McCoy as they head for the door. "Nice and easy." None of them even think of protesting. With Kirk close behind him and Chekov barely keeping himself from trembling at his side, Spock is slightly less full of dread than he had been a moment before; but he thinks of Pike's fingers crawling on the floor, and of the sound of his teeth chattering, and finds he must suppress a shudder of his own.
on to part two