fic: What you eat, 1/4
It is delighter's birthday today, everyone. AND OH BOY IS SHE GETTING OLD. To celebrate, I have here the first third of a story just for her. It is not Eric/Godric, but that's only because Eric the saucy waiter and Godric the philosopher chef did not occur to me in time. Instead, you get our favourite starfleet crew being badass cooks who drink and bang their way through their youth. Or not, maybe they're mostly moping through it. But hopefully banging, too. Regardless! Happy Birthday, my friend. I wish I had it together enough to offer you the finished product, with all three parts together. But I am an ass, so instead you'll have to spend the weekend chasing me off the beach and back to the keyboard. :/
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: eventual McCoy/Chekov ; mentions of past McCoy/Kirk
Notes: Thanks go to estei for her super-secret part in birthing this monster, she deserves awards for her indulgence, and patience, and impressive ability to not make fun of me no matter how much I deserve it. I'll have part II up by Monday for sure, and part III by Friday.
Words: 5230.
Summary: The restaurant AU: Enterprise is a haute cuisine upstart in San Francisco, owned and operated by one, Chef James T. Kirk.
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV
Tell me what you eat,
and I will tell you what you are.
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)
PART I.
McCoy is sitting on the back step of Enterprise at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, drinking a screwdriver, watching seagulls fight for garbage in the alley and half-listening to Kirk cursing a blue streak through the kitchen about the day’s seafood order.
Namely that it’s not here yet, and either is the production guy, McKenna. The latter is four hours late, in fact, which means he’d better be dead or in jail: the only two places that can protect him from Kirk’s wrath.
McCoy’s not late. He’s four hours early, in fact. Which is pretty much the definition of unnecessary, considering the only prep work he does these days is slice the odd lime and polish glasses. Kirk hired a barback a few months ago, but Christine is so good that she handles the ordering and the liquor specials and makes all the cocktails, so now McCoy spends all his downtime reading the propaganda that vintners send to him, tinkering with the wine menu and rearranging the thousand-bottle cellar to make room for the fifteen hundred they have. Most days, he could walk in with the servers in the late afternoon with no repercussions except some silent contempt from the kitchen crew.
And so that’s what he does. Spends the morning working out his hangover, the afternoon reading true crime novels, and the evening wearing a tailored suit and mindreading the secret desires of every over-moneyed, under-educated egoist in San Francisco. The only reason he’s here this morning - and not even here, but out back where the shouting is slightly muffled - is because he figures he owes it to Jim to provide some moral support on days like today. Weeks like this week. Months like this month.
Spock shows up at quarter after, houndstooth slacks and double-breasted jacket immaculate, like he just stepped out of a Le Creuset catalog. “Mr. McCoy,” he acknowledges McCoy where he’s seated, and pauses. Whether it’s to wait for McCoy to get out of his way or to try to gauge the atmosphere inside is a mystery.
McCoy intends on helping him with neither. He tips his flask at the sous-chef and takes another swallow out of it. Orange juice is like breakfast, he figures. And the vodka takes the edge off of his headache.
Spock gazes at the flask with what looks like mild interest, but is actually the precursor to imminent doom for almost any line cook or server at Enterprise, if only they had the sense to realize it. Fortunately, McCoy is not a line cook or a server. He’s the sommelier, and Kirk likes him at least twice as much as he likes Spock. Or at least, that’s how McCoy likes to figure it. All evidence aside.
“Need a drop?” he asks, pleasant.
Spock opens his mouth to say something, but forgets himself as soon as Uhura brushes by McCoy’s shoulder out into the alleyway. “Shit,” she says grimly, stopping to fan herself and lean against the dirty brick wall. “The bastard is ruining my crusts with that verbiage of his.”
Spock raises an interested eyebrow at her. She grimaces as she beats flour off her apron and rubs her bandana up off her sweaty forehead.
“No oysters,” she says, answering his unspoken question. “Or sablefish. Or yellowfin. Or McKenna, actually.”
“You don’t say,” says McCoy, as Kirk shouts something incoherent, voice muffled. He’s probably in the walk-in. McCoy catches puree wand and his cheap ass.
Uhura shakes her head. “It’s that spread in the Chronicle. He saw it this morning and now he’s pissed. It’s a jerkoff fluff piece. It’s insulting.”
“And now we’re going to be slammed for a month solid while every asshole with a food blog and a digital camera books a table.” McCoy responds. He saw the article this morning. And he understands Kirk’s irritation: any press is good press, but some press makes you look like a dumbass prettyboy chef with no chops and no sense. And that’s the kind of press that’s just humiliating.
Spock seems to ignore most of what they’re saying in favor of yet another problem: “Have we received any further applicants for the garde manger position?”
Uhura snorts. “Tons. But they’re all show ponies from Bar Tartine and Delfina who aren’t going to want to make salads for more than three days before they start pushing for a promotion. Looks like we’re going to be down a hand for at least a week.”
Spock nods in agreement without making any of his usual demands for more minute details, or other contextual information. He just takes Uhura at her word. Like he trusts her judgement. Or something.
“Alright, boys,” Uhura scrubs at her face with her bandana one more time, then puts it back on her head. She smacks McCoy on the shoulder as she goes by him again and says, “McCoy, are you planning on sitting here drinking all day, or are you going to help us catch up on the prep?”
“Do I look like a damn kitchen boy to you?” McCoy retorts, but then stands up, feeling creaky. He gives Spock his most irritating smirk, and then follows Uhura into the kitchen.
Kirk has stopped ranting about Marty the fish guy, or McKenna the dead man, and is now grilling the saucier, Sulu, about his choice of wine for the day’s bourguignon. He turns to McCoy, looking wild-eyed. “He used the Chambertin,” is all he says, gesturing vaguely at a stainless steel vat that smells so good McCoy could’ve probably guessed on his own.
McCoy squints at Sulu, who is looking like he kind of wants to eat his own workboots right now. He keeps his voice neutral: “How traditional of you.”
Kirk says, “Yeah, and maybe if we were serving it to Napoleon Bonaparte it would’ve been a good idea.”
“I used the 2006,” Sulu supplies, and Kirk glares at McCoy, as if to say see?.
“Good kid,” says McCoy, and shrugs at Kirk, “At least he had the sense not to use the 2005, let alone the ’85.” He wants to say, cut the kid some slack but backtalking the chef in front of his crew is pretty much mutiny, and not even McCoy can get away with that shit.
Still, Kirk seems to realize it on his own, and he takes a closer look at the stew with an almost meditative frown on his face. There is a long pause wherein a lot of the clatter around them dies down: Uhura and Spock don’t even pretend they aren’t listening. Last thing anyone here wants is another on-the-spot firing. Eventually, Kirk says: “Hundred and fifty dollar bottles of wine aside, you did an excellent job here.”
“Thank you, Chef,” Sulu looks genuinely relieved.
Kirk nods, almost manages a smile, but still looks distracted. “Bones, can I see you in my office?”
McCoy - who at least had the good sense to catch the lemons Uhura had tossed at him for zesting - says, “Sure thing,” and abandons his task without compunction. He follows Kirk down a crevice near the dish pit that is barely well-lit enough to pass as a hallway.
Inside his cramped little closet, Kirk nods for McCoy to close the door behind him, but doesn’t sit down on the pile of milk crates in front of a battered laptop that serves as his administrative hub. He just kind of occupies the middle of the floor, which is packed full of miscellaneous boxes of bulk dry goods and piles of invoices and tax records and the odd burnt-out pot, looking like he wants to pace, but unable to without running straight into McCoy and knocking them both into stacked bags of flour.
He laces his fingers behind his head, stretches his spine convex and hisses out, “I’m going insane. Is that your professional opinion? That I need to be medicated? Put down, maybe?”
McCoy does not have a professional opinion. He lost his license to practice having one a nearly five years ago, and Kirk damn well knows it. He was there to see it. The man still keeps bringing it up, though. Like McCoy’s been doing him a favor working his bar and drinking his booze when he could be cutting people open at St. Luke’s, and not the other way around.
But as always, McCoy ignores the reference to a past he can’t acknowledge, and says, “No, Jim, my professional opinion is that you need a bottle of cheap beer and an afternoon nap.”
Kirk sits down on his milk crates. Nods at McCoy to take the flour. He frowns at the wall, totally ignoring McCoy’s advice. “I don’t even know what I’m saying half the time,” he says. “When I fired the garde manger - what’s his name. Olson. What was that? He was a decent cook. And we’re screwed without him.”
“Sure,” says McCoy. “He was decent except when he came in drunk.”
“Yeah, but that was once. And I fire him the first time? I can’t count how many times I went in drunk when I was at Avenue. Pike always just put me in the dish pit till I sobered up.”
“That’s an exaggeration.” McCoy says, and he would know, because the years when Kirk was working at Avenue were the years they were sleeping in the same bed.
“My point is that not even a hard-ass like Pike would fire someone for it. Punish him, sure, but fire him?”
“Olson was a lazy prick.” McCoy says, flat. “Sulu was picking up the slack on his prep. And he was talking shit to Uhura until she got sick of it. And then he started in on the servers. No one wanted him around.”
Kirk doesn’t seem to hear or care about Olson’s various flaws. His stare is now focused somewhere beyond the closet wall, way out in the Pacific. “I’m beyond being just a hard-ass at this point. This morning with the seafood order. And you saw me just now. Sulu didn’t even make a mistake, he just made a decision when I wasn’t around to hold his hand and then I cursed him out for a perfectly reasonable decision.”
“You’re under stress,” McCoy says. “They know it. They’re stressed too.”
“Yeah, because of me.” Kirk’s voice is edging closer to self-pity and McCoy doesn’t like it. Kirk says: “I don’t want to be that kind of chef. I’ve worked for guys like that before and it’s insane, it’s stupid to do that to your crew. It’s like kicking a dog.”
“You aren’t kicking any dogs.” McCoy snaps.
There is a part of him that wants to go over to Kirk and put his arms around him and say the words gently into his ear. It’s a part of himself - another part of himself - that he’s been ignoring for five long years now.
So McCoy keeps his voice brusque: “You’re not that kind of chef. You’ll just have to trust me on that one, Jim. And I’m not saying the crew wouldn’t mind if you toned down the screaming a little, but-”
“Screaming?” Kirk looks up, horrified.
“Would calling them tantrums make you feel better?” McCoy returns, irritated. “Because that’s what they look like.”
Kirk scowls at the floor, “Yeah, you’re right.”
McCoy knows he should say something uplifting to take the sting off that last bit. But he doesn’t want to. They trust you, or You have nothing to worry about tastes sour on his tongue. Why should he spend all this time playing confidante, tending to Kirk’s feelings while his own get left in the dust? Working for Jim Kirk is not the same as living with him, or loving him. McCoy keeps forgetting that, keeps getting reminded of it in damn unpleasant ways.
So instead of saying anything, he opens the door and leaves Kirk to sort out his problems on his own. McCoy has his own wounds to tend.
He cuts straight through the kitchen, ignoring Uhura’s pointed reminder about the lemons, and heads for the bar. The dining room at Enterprise is direct and elegant in a retro-futurist kind of way, but when the sun starts its midday glare through the ten-foot windows, all the white and chrome can get to you. At least the bar is tucked towards the back of the space, closer to the kitchen and alley and farther from the windows looking out onto Polk Street.
McCoy pours himself another screwdriver, thinking that he really needs to quit this co-dependant bullshit with a man who said it was over years ago, and start living his goddamn life again.
He lifts the drink to his reflection in the mirror - a grim old specter salutes him back - and tosses it down his throat.
A kid walks through the front door.
“I’m sorry,” McCoy says, instantly professional, “We don’t open for dinner until five.”
“I see,” says the kid, who makes his way across the room anyway, weaving around tables with sneakers scuffling on the polished wood floors. “But I am here to apply for the garde manger position. Is Chef Kirk in?”
He has a thick Russian accent, and wide blue eyes, and he looks all of seventeen in a blazer that’s too wide across the shoulders and a dowdy tie that looks like it was picked out by someone’s grandmother. His hair curls around his head in a tangle that makes McCoy want to put a comb through it.
He must be getting old.
“He’s busy at the moment,” McCoy says. It’s true enough. “Do you have a resume?”
“Yes, of course.” The kid bends to scrabble through the dirty canvas messenger bag he has hanging across his shoulder. A clipboard manifests, and a page of pristine white paper with sparse black text. “Would you give it to him?”
McCoy can’t help but scan the page. Chekov. Le Cordon Bleu, Paris, 2009. That is pretty much all he needs to know. And it’s pretty much all that’s on the resume. Still, McCoy pries: “Have you worked anywhere? Do you have references?”
“Only my instructors in France. Chef Anton in St. Petersburg does not speak English enough to provide a reference.” Chekov says, apologetic. “And I am new to this country.”
Of course he is. McCoy resumes staring at the piece of paper in his hand, already knowing that Kirk needs to hire this kid. Fresh out of training, no bad habits to break, no ego to grind down or win over. When he glances up, Chekov is scanning the labels of the liquor displayed on the shelf behind the bar, looking quiet and intent, like he’s already memorizing the selection for future reference.
McCoy says, “It says here you did the Grande Diplome. You’re aware you’d be making salads and cold apps, here, right? Nothing fancy like you’re used to.”
Chekov smiles. “It would be my privilege, sir.”
“Yeah, sure,” says McCoy.
“I’m not hyperbolizing.” It takes McCoy all of ten seconds to figure out what word the kid meant, it came out so badly mangled. But Chekov is babbling eagerly: “This year’s Beard award for best new restaurant - and Chef Uhura won outstanding pastry chef when she was at Gitane - and number three in Gourmet, and number two in Gayot, and just this morning I saw that the Chronicle published a feature interview with-”
“It’s true, we’re very illustrious,” McCoy cuts him off because he doesn’t want to hear anything else about Enterprise’s parade of successes. They’ve only been open a year, for chrissakes. This is why Kirk is giving himself an ulcer trying to live up to the hype. “Let’s just take you back into the kitchen, alright? Maybe the chef has some time to see you.”
Chekov looks so ecstatic at the thought that McCoy thinks he might jump over the bar and hug him.
“Right,” McCoy says, scowling to discourage the thought, and leads the way back through the stainless steel swinging doors.
Kirk’s still in his office, so McCoy gives Sulu the resume and makes him go fetch Kirk while Uhura gives the kid a once over and Spock stands utterly silent at the salad station beside her.
“Chef Uhura, it is an honor,” Chekov insists on shaking her hand, obviously enchanted with the scattered beginnings of her dessert special on the counter. “You are making gelato? Citrus?”
“No,” Uhura surveys her work. “It’s going to be buttermilk. Or rice custard, I haven’t decided. The lemon is for the lemon mint sorbet.”
“You do a new flavor every night, yes?” Chekov presses, “I read that the rhubarb is especially delightful.”
Uhura smirks, and casts a wry glance over her shoulder at Spock, like check this kid out. “Maybe you’ll try it one day,” she says to the kid.
Kirk emerges from his cave with Sulu in tow. He nods at Chekov. “So you’re the wiz kid from Paris, huh?”
Chekov’s spine straightens visibly. “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”
“You graduated in February,” Kirk says, glancing at the paper in his hand. “Where’ve you been for the past six months?”
“I have been visiting my family in St. Petersburg,” Chekov reports. “I arrived in America last week. My grandmother came with me.”
“So you haven’t been cooking,” Kirk prods. He doesn’t even fake a polite interest in Chekov’s family life.
“Dinner service for Chef Anton at Shatyor,” Chekov says, “Traditional Russian cuisine, nothing French.”
“What position?”
“When he was present, I was entremetier. When he was not, which was often, I acted as the sous chef.”
Kirk grunts. “So this will be a step down for you.”
“I consider it a step up,” Chekov corrects in a quiet voice.
Kirk raises his eyebrows at what should sound like shameless ass-kissing, but comes out dignified and sincere. Kirk doesn’t give up, though, he just pries in a different direction: “Why didn’t you stay in Paris after you graduated? Couldn’t you find work?”
Chekov’s mouth twists, and he admits: “I missed my family, sir. Three years I hadn’t seen them.”
Kirk glances up at McCoy, very briefly. Back when they’d first met in New England, they’d both been homesick transplants who hated east coast weather. It had been their commonality, that constant threat of dropping out, going home to family and failure. McCoy hated med school, and Kirk was cutting a swath through teachers and administrators at the Culinary Institute of America, staid and traditional as it was. They’d been miserable. Even having each other had been the smallest and rarest of comforts, with their schedules and seventy-five miles of highway between them.
But Kirk doesn’t acknowledge any of this. He just frowns at Chekov: “So will you be quitting this position as soon as you get homesick again?”
McCoy winces, but Chekov shakes his head, solemn. “No sir. Nothing is more important to me than working for you.”
“For chrissakes, Jim, just give the kid the job already,” McCoy finally burst out, sick of the abuse, the standard posturing. He knows Kirk is better than that - it’s sure as hell not how he hired Spock - and he knows the kid doesn’t deserve it.
McCoy glares at all of their raised eyebrows, hackles raised stubbornly even though he knows that he’s committed a serious infraction. The mild bemusement on Spock’s face alone reminds him that in a true brigade system - the kind of kitchen that Chekov’s come up in, the kind where Spock earned his reputation as the most exacting and brilliant of minds - he would’ve been out the door on his ass five seconds ago.
Kirk doesn’t even bat an eye at McCoy, he just ignores him altogether. To Chekov, he says: “You can work tonight, and we’ll re-evaluate after.”
“Thank you, Chef,” Chekov says it quietly and fervently.
Even as Kirk turns away - Marty the sea food guy is buzzing at the back door - Chekov is turning to examine the salad station, and pulling his knife roll out of his bag.
Smoothly, Spock steps over to stand with him, and says, “I will instruct you on the menu for the evening.”
McCoy already feels sorry for the kid.
The rest of the crew turns back to their own work, leaving McCoy to send a glance after Kirk’s back before abandoning Chekov to his fate, and heading back to the bar, half-wondering what the hell just went down between him and Kirk, and half not even caring.
Exactly as predicted, the evening brings a first-class shitstorm of covers. The house is full from 5:30 on, and it’s a Saturday night so McCoy is run off his feet in his polished black wingtips. His job is not to recommend wine, it’s to help kids impress their dates and businessmen impress their clients so that none of the servers are boned out of a tip at the end of the meal. It’s a subtle thing, what impresses people. Sometimes the atmosphere of the place and the price they’re paying means that diners want to be talked down to and have their wine chosen for them. More often they want to show him up with their googled research and a brief glance at the price list, and so they just push and push him until they find a crack that they can declare victory over. Very seldom do they want his advice, which means that McCoy very seldom gives his honest opinion.
McCoy has few excuses to duck into the kitchen - a pair of new goblets for the Texan who gets even more of a thrill from a man running errands for him than a female server - but when he does get the opportunity, he does his best to gauge the clockwork machinations back there. Spock announcing orders down the line, Kirk tossing entrees on his six-burner range while Sulu supports with hot apps. A handful of assistants scurry between them, broiling and grilling. Chekov is still there in the back plating side salads while Uhura keeps an eye on him over her shoulder, and in the end all their work comes back to Spock for a hawk-eyed quality check before going out into the neighboring chaos of the house in the hands of the wait staff.
Yet, for all that they’re slammed, and the moon is full, and the customers are a seventy-thirty split of asshole to decent tonight, no one is in the weeds. At his station at the front, the maitre d’, Scotty, is keeping people pampered and entertained from the sidewalk to their table. Maybe it’s the accent, but he’s always mentioned in every review Enterprise gets: the flamboyant host; quite a character; get him to tell you the one about the Ukrainian princess and the ship’s captain. The servers all respect him, though, which is really all that matters. He keeps the front of house in step with the kitchen, and somehow it’s all just working.
McCoy checks in with Christine at the bar, where she has her runner pouring the microbrews while she mixes cocktails. Ten months ago, McCoy was doing all three of their jobs, but then business picked up so fast he told Kirk he’d quit if he didn’t get a barback. Thank god Kirk hired her. In her little black dress and flat boots she looks like a socialite and moves like a ninja.
“Christine,” he says as it occurs to him, “Is Kirk still paying you minimum wage?”
“Yup,” she says. “I’m barback one, Curly over there is barback two.”
“You were supposed to get a raise.”
“Yup.” She angles a look at him over her shoulder as she wrenches open a bottle of crème liqueur, “Compared to these tips, do you really think the dollar an hour makes a difference to me?”
“He owes you backpay for about four months. You could buy yourself some health insurance.”
“Ha.” Christine does not laugh at his unfunny joke. “I’d rather he hire me another runner, or at least get Scott to pay a server to help me out during rushes. Like right now.” She reaches over him to grab the vermouth. “Speaking of, how about you get out of my bar?”
“I’ll harass him,” McCoy promises, grabbing the bottle of whisky he came for and scooting.
It dies down around midnight, one last table of ten making themselves obnoxious while Scott starts counting out the servers and sending them home. A few of the staff opt to hang around, and Scott sends them into the back to wait out that last goddamn table.
Sometime around one, McCoy runs out of counters to wipe and gives up on being polite and unobtrusive and takes a seat at the bar while Scott goes to clear them out. The table’s server, Janice, hovers behind the counter in a way that betrays her anxiety about her tip.
“I busted my balls for those fuckers,” she says in a low voice, watching. “There’s a reason I don’t date realtors.”
“Don’t worry,” Christine tells her, “They won’t even notice that he’s kicking them out.”
Sure enough, the table roars with laughter at the culmination of one of Scotty’s nonchalant anecdotes, and he comes back to the bar with a nod at Janice. “Give them five minutes, then the bill.”
Janice makes a face: she’s new, fresh over from Bar Tartine, where the chefs like to showboat and the clientele tends a little more towards the semi-famous and semi-important. She picked up some weird habits from there, McCoy’s noticed. “Should we comp them a round?” she asks.
“Lord, girl, you want them here all night?” Scott waves her towards the touch screen, “They’ll be ready in five.”
The table of realtors clears out just as the crew starts trickling out of the kitchen. Chekov is last out of the swinging doors, bag over his shoulder, blinking owlishly and damp with sweat. Someone’s replaced his blazer with an old, spectacularly dirty chef’s jacket that McCoy suspects is one of Kirk’s. The kid looks like he’s going to head straight out onto the street, so McCoy calls his name and pats the stool next to him. Chekov hesitates, and sits down, loose-limbed and sagging and looking dull askance at the crowd gathered at the gleaming countertop.
Christine slides a shot of Stoli in front of him with a wordless wink.
“Make that a round, Christine,” Scott says from his end of the bar, tossing down the pile of bills that got slipped to him earlier in the night. Seating bribes. Totally unnecessary, but they’ve kept the whole crew in booze for months on end so no one’s all that concerned about the ethics of it.
“Make that two,” says Kirk, coming around the bar to pull out a few fresh bottles and to help her pour.
This is pretty much how it goes every Saturday night.
Several hours later, McCoy is leaning against a dirty wall waiting for the first streetcar of the morning to pick his drunk ass up and deposit him somewhere closer to his trashy little apartment in the Tenderloin. Even slightly closer than he is right now would be okay. McCoy isn’t picky, just dead tired and drunk as hell.
As if to prove that point, Chekov is leaning with him, looking dazed but with this fixed smile on his face that seems to be etched in permanently. He’s grinning at the outdated movie posters across the street. “My grandmother is going to be very, very disappointed in me,” he declares happily. “Or possibly she will be very proud. It is difficult to tell, sometimes.”
“When you’re rolling in at 6:00 a.m., I think it’s safe to say she’s gonna be pissed.”
“She sleeps deeply,” Chekov assures him.
McCoy shrugs, it’s not his problem. He hasn’t lived with his family since he was probably Chekov’s age anyway. “How old are you?” he asks, knowing he’s asked twice already and has forgotten the answer somewhere in between brooding about how Kirk ignored him all fucking night and trying to figure out how the hell he’s going to get this adolescent from Pacific Heights all the way down to South San Francisco. He’s lived here for eight years and he’s never bothered going past Cesar Chavez Street. Or if he has, he’s forgotten about it. Two hours at least on transit, he bets.
“Twenty-one,” Chekov says, still smiling.
McCoy decides he should forget that number because it’s probably a lie. Not that the kid seems dishonest, but just that there’s no way it’s true. McCoy is sticking with seventeen in his head.
The streetcar pulls up, and the driver barely glances at them as they drop their payment and make their way to the back. “So what do you do when you get to Civic Center?” McCoy feels the need to quiz the kid. It’s his head on the block if he loses Kirk’s prize Russian after just one stellar performance at the salad station. Kirk made it very clear tonight that Chekov is staying. There was a lot of drunken shit-talking, as always, but only praise for the new kid. Even Spock had something specifically nice to say: his sense of scale and proportion is certainly above average. Which - yeah. Chekov had eaten it all up, heart on his sleeve.
“I get on Bart,” Chekov replies, leaning back into his seat. He closes his eyes and shrugs, still smiling sunnily.
“Okay, obviously. Which one?” McCoy asks.
Chekov replies without opening his eyes. “The one traveling south.”
McCoy is pretty sure he’s going to lose the kid, and then Kirk will be even angrier at him. He doesn’t like where this is going.
The streetcar is pulling up to his stop, and McCoy fidgets, “Look,” he says.
But Chekov interrupts him. He looks over with shining eyes. “I wish to thank you for your help today, Mr. McCoy. This is the job that I came to America for.”
McCoy shakes his head.“I didn’t do anything to help you out. Kirk would’ve hired you anyway.”
Chekov is still gazing at him with that earnestness in his face: “I will find a way to repay you.”
“Yeah, sure.” McCoy is standing up, not listening, one hand gripping the rail. “Kid, I figure you have two options - take transit for another two hours and hope to god you make it home, or crash on my floor and call your grandma in the morning. What’s it gonna be?”
“Oh,” says Chekov, looking for all the world like he’s been asked to decide the fate of a small nation. “But I do not have a toothbrush.”
“I’m sure you’ll make do,” says McCoy, taking that as a yes and hauling the kid down the lurching steps to the sidewalk.
McCoy is very careful: he puts a sheet over his couch and finds a fresh pillowcase for Chekov’s disaster of curls. But he doesn’t say a word to him. He knows how this seems - how it would seem to Jim, if he heard about it. McCoy doesn’t need that kind of anxiety in his life.
That said, there’s not a lot to worry about, because the kid is passed out, dead to the world, before McCoy can find a spare toothbrush for him.
(Part II)
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: eventual McCoy/Chekov ; mentions of past McCoy/Kirk
Notes: Thanks go to estei for her super-secret part in birthing this monster, she deserves awards for her indulgence, and patience, and impressive ability to not make fun of me no matter how much I deserve it. I'll have part II up by Monday for sure, and part III by Friday.
Words: 5230.
Summary: The restaurant AU: Enterprise is a haute cuisine upstart in San Francisco, owned and operated by one, Chef James T. Kirk.
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV
Tell me what you eat,
and I will tell you what you are.
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)
PART I.
McCoy is sitting on the back step of Enterprise at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, drinking a screwdriver, watching seagulls fight for garbage in the alley and half-listening to Kirk cursing a blue streak through the kitchen about the day’s seafood order.
Namely that it’s not here yet, and either is the production guy, McKenna. The latter is four hours late, in fact, which means he’d better be dead or in jail: the only two places that can protect him from Kirk’s wrath.
McCoy’s not late. He’s four hours early, in fact. Which is pretty much the definition of unnecessary, considering the only prep work he does these days is slice the odd lime and polish glasses. Kirk hired a barback a few months ago, but Christine is so good that she handles the ordering and the liquor specials and makes all the cocktails, so now McCoy spends all his downtime reading the propaganda that vintners send to him, tinkering with the wine menu and rearranging the thousand-bottle cellar to make room for the fifteen hundred they have. Most days, he could walk in with the servers in the late afternoon with no repercussions except some silent contempt from the kitchen crew.
And so that’s what he does. Spends the morning working out his hangover, the afternoon reading true crime novels, and the evening wearing a tailored suit and mindreading the secret desires of every over-moneyed, under-educated egoist in San Francisco. The only reason he’s here this morning - and not even here, but out back where the shouting is slightly muffled - is because he figures he owes it to Jim to provide some moral support on days like today. Weeks like this week. Months like this month.
Spock shows up at quarter after, houndstooth slacks and double-breasted jacket immaculate, like he just stepped out of a Le Creuset catalog. “Mr. McCoy,” he acknowledges McCoy where he’s seated, and pauses. Whether it’s to wait for McCoy to get out of his way or to try to gauge the atmosphere inside is a mystery.
McCoy intends on helping him with neither. He tips his flask at the sous-chef and takes another swallow out of it. Orange juice is like breakfast, he figures. And the vodka takes the edge off of his headache.
Spock gazes at the flask with what looks like mild interest, but is actually the precursor to imminent doom for almost any line cook or server at Enterprise, if only they had the sense to realize it. Fortunately, McCoy is not a line cook or a server. He’s the sommelier, and Kirk likes him at least twice as much as he likes Spock. Or at least, that’s how McCoy likes to figure it. All evidence aside.
“Need a drop?” he asks, pleasant.
Spock opens his mouth to say something, but forgets himself as soon as Uhura brushes by McCoy’s shoulder out into the alleyway. “Shit,” she says grimly, stopping to fan herself and lean against the dirty brick wall. “The bastard is ruining my crusts with that verbiage of his.”
Spock raises an interested eyebrow at her. She grimaces as she beats flour off her apron and rubs her bandana up off her sweaty forehead.
“No oysters,” she says, answering his unspoken question. “Or sablefish. Or yellowfin. Or McKenna, actually.”
“You don’t say,” says McCoy, as Kirk shouts something incoherent, voice muffled. He’s probably in the walk-in. McCoy catches puree wand and his cheap ass.
Uhura shakes her head. “It’s that spread in the Chronicle. He saw it this morning and now he’s pissed. It’s a jerkoff fluff piece. It’s insulting.”
“And now we’re going to be slammed for a month solid while every asshole with a food blog and a digital camera books a table.” McCoy responds. He saw the article this morning. And he understands Kirk’s irritation: any press is good press, but some press makes you look like a dumbass prettyboy chef with no chops and no sense. And that’s the kind of press that’s just humiliating.
Spock seems to ignore most of what they’re saying in favor of yet another problem: “Have we received any further applicants for the garde manger position?”
Uhura snorts. “Tons. But they’re all show ponies from Bar Tartine and Delfina who aren’t going to want to make salads for more than three days before they start pushing for a promotion. Looks like we’re going to be down a hand for at least a week.”
Spock nods in agreement without making any of his usual demands for more minute details, or other contextual information. He just takes Uhura at her word. Like he trusts her judgement. Or something.
“Alright, boys,” Uhura scrubs at her face with her bandana one more time, then puts it back on her head. She smacks McCoy on the shoulder as she goes by him again and says, “McCoy, are you planning on sitting here drinking all day, or are you going to help us catch up on the prep?”
“Do I look like a damn kitchen boy to you?” McCoy retorts, but then stands up, feeling creaky. He gives Spock his most irritating smirk, and then follows Uhura into the kitchen.
Kirk has stopped ranting about Marty the fish guy, or McKenna the dead man, and is now grilling the saucier, Sulu, about his choice of wine for the day’s bourguignon. He turns to McCoy, looking wild-eyed. “He used the Chambertin,” is all he says, gesturing vaguely at a stainless steel vat that smells so good McCoy could’ve probably guessed on his own.
McCoy squints at Sulu, who is looking like he kind of wants to eat his own workboots right now. He keeps his voice neutral: “How traditional of you.”
Kirk says, “Yeah, and maybe if we were serving it to Napoleon Bonaparte it would’ve been a good idea.”
“I used the 2006,” Sulu supplies, and Kirk glares at McCoy, as if to say see?.
“Good kid,” says McCoy, and shrugs at Kirk, “At least he had the sense not to use the 2005, let alone the ’85.” He wants to say, cut the kid some slack but backtalking the chef in front of his crew is pretty much mutiny, and not even McCoy can get away with that shit.
Still, Kirk seems to realize it on his own, and he takes a closer look at the stew with an almost meditative frown on his face. There is a long pause wherein a lot of the clatter around them dies down: Uhura and Spock don’t even pretend they aren’t listening. Last thing anyone here wants is another on-the-spot firing. Eventually, Kirk says: “Hundred and fifty dollar bottles of wine aside, you did an excellent job here.”
“Thank you, Chef,” Sulu looks genuinely relieved.
Kirk nods, almost manages a smile, but still looks distracted. “Bones, can I see you in my office?”
McCoy - who at least had the good sense to catch the lemons Uhura had tossed at him for zesting - says, “Sure thing,” and abandons his task without compunction. He follows Kirk down a crevice near the dish pit that is barely well-lit enough to pass as a hallway.
Inside his cramped little closet, Kirk nods for McCoy to close the door behind him, but doesn’t sit down on the pile of milk crates in front of a battered laptop that serves as his administrative hub. He just kind of occupies the middle of the floor, which is packed full of miscellaneous boxes of bulk dry goods and piles of invoices and tax records and the odd burnt-out pot, looking like he wants to pace, but unable to without running straight into McCoy and knocking them both into stacked bags of flour.
He laces his fingers behind his head, stretches his spine convex and hisses out, “I’m going insane. Is that your professional opinion? That I need to be medicated? Put down, maybe?”
McCoy does not have a professional opinion. He lost his license to practice having one a nearly five years ago, and Kirk damn well knows it. He was there to see it. The man still keeps bringing it up, though. Like McCoy’s been doing him a favor working his bar and drinking his booze when he could be cutting people open at St. Luke’s, and not the other way around.
But as always, McCoy ignores the reference to a past he can’t acknowledge, and says, “No, Jim, my professional opinion is that you need a bottle of cheap beer and an afternoon nap.”
Kirk sits down on his milk crates. Nods at McCoy to take the flour. He frowns at the wall, totally ignoring McCoy’s advice. “I don’t even know what I’m saying half the time,” he says. “When I fired the garde manger - what’s his name. Olson. What was that? He was a decent cook. And we’re screwed without him.”
“Sure,” says McCoy. “He was decent except when he came in drunk.”
“Yeah, but that was once. And I fire him the first time? I can’t count how many times I went in drunk when I was at Avenue. Pike always just put me in the dish pit till I sobered up.”
“That’s an exaggeration.” McCoy says, and he would know, because the years when Kirk was working at Avenue were the years they were sleeping in the same bed.
“My point is that not even a hard-ass like Pike would fire someone for it. Punish him, sure, but fire him?”
“Olson was a lazy prick.” McCoy says, flat. “Sulu was picking up the slack on his prep. And he was talking shit to Uhura until she got sick of it. And then he started in on the servers. No one wanted him around.”
Kirk doesn’t seem to hear or care about Olson’s various flaws. His stare is now focused somewhere beyond the closet wall, way out in the Pacific. “I’m beyond being just a hard-ass at this point. This morning with the seafood order. And you saw me just now. Sulu didn’t even make a mistake, he just made a decision when I wasn’t around to hold his hand and then I cursed him out for a perfectly reasonable decision.”
“You’re under stress,” McCoy says. “They know it. They’re stressed too.”
“Yeah, because of me.” Kirk’s voice is edging closer to self-pity and McCoy doesn’t like it. Kirk says: “I don’t want to be that kind of chef. I’ve worked for guys like that before and it’s insane, it’s stupid to do that to your crew. It’s like kicking a dog.”
“You aren’t kicking any dogs.” McCoy snaps.
There is a part of him that wants to go over to Kirk and put his arms around him and say the words gently into his ear. It’s a part of himself - another part of himself - that he’s been ignoring for five long years now.
So McCoy keeps his voice brusque: “You’re not that kind of chef. You’ll just have to trust me on that one, Jim. And I’m not saying the crew wouldn’t mind if you toned down the screaming a little, but-”
“Screaming?” Kirk looks up, horrified.
“Would calling them tantrums make you feel better?” McCoy returns, irritated. “Because that’s what they look like.”
Kirk scowls at the floor, “Yeah, you’re right.”
McCoy knows he should say something uplifting to take the sting off that last bit. But he doesn’t want to. They trust you, or You have nothing to worry about tastes sour on his tongue. Why should he spend all this time playing confidante, tending to Kirk’s feelings while his own get left in the dust? Working for Jim Kirk is not the same as living with him, or loving him. McCoy keeps forgetting that, keeps getting reminded of it in damn unpleasant ways.
So instead of saying anything, he opens the door and leaves Kirk to sort out his problems on his own. McCoy has his own wounds to tend.
He cuts straight through the kitchen, ignoring Uhura’s pointed reminder about the lemons, and heads for the bar. The dining room at Enterprise is direct and elegant in a retro-futurist kind of way, but when the sun starts its midday glare through the ten-foot windows, all the white and chrome can get to you. At least the bar is tucked towards the back of the space, closer to the kitchen and alley and farther from the windows looking out onto Polk Street.
McCoy pours himself another screwdriver, thinking that he really needs to quit this co-dependant bullshit with a man who said it was over years ago, and start living his goddamn life again.
He lifts the drink to his reflection in the mirror - a grim old specter salutes him back - and tosses it down his throat.
A kid walks through the front door.
“I’m sorry,” McCoy says, instantly professional, “We don’t open for dinner until five.”
“I see,” says the kid, who makes his way across the room anyway, weaving around tables with sneakers scuffling on the polished wood floors. “But I am here to apply for the garde manger position. Is Chef Kirk in?”
He has a thick Russian accent, and wide blue eyes, and he looks all of seventeen in a blazer that’s too wide across the shoulders and a dowdy tie that looks like it was picked out by someone’s grandmother. His hair curls around his head in a tangle that makes McCoy want to put a comb through it.
He must be getting old.
“He’s busy at the moment,” McCoy says. It’s true enough. “Do you have a resume?”
“Yes, of course.” The kid bends to scrabble through the dirty canvas messenger bag he has hanging across his shoulder. A clipboard manifests, and a page of pristine white paper with sparse black text. “Would you give it to him?”
McCoy can’t help but scan the page. Chekov. Le Cordon Bleu, Paris, 2009. That is pretty much all he needs to know. And it’s pretty much all that’s on the resume. Still, McCoy pries: “Have you worked anywhere? Do you have references?”
“Only my instructors in France. Chef Anton in St. Petersburg does not speak English enough to provide a reference.” Chekov says, apologetic. “And I am new to this country.”
Of course he is. McCoy resumes staring at the piece of paper in his hand, already knowing that Kirk needs to hire this kid. Fresh out of training, no bad habits to break, no ego to grind down or win over. When he glances up, Chekov is scanning the labels of the liquor displayed on the shelf behind the bar, looking quiet and intent, like he’s already memorizing the selection for future reference.
McCoy says, “It says here you did the Grande Diplome. You’re aware you’d be making salads and cold apps, here, right? Nothing fancy like you’re used to.”
Chekov smiles. “It would be my privilege, sir.”
“Yeah, sure,” says McCoy.
“I’m not hyperbolizing.” It takes McCoy all of ten seconds to figure out what word the kid meant, it came out so badly mangled. But Chekov is babbling eagerly: “This year’s Beard award for best new restaurant - and Chef Uhura won outstanding pastry chef when she was at Gitane - and number three in Gourmet, and number two in Gayot, and just this morning I saw that the Chronicle published a feature interview with-”
“It’s true, we’re very illustrious,” McCoy cuts him off because he doesn’t want to hear anything else about Enterprise’s parade of successes. They’ve only been open a year, for chrissakes. This is why Kirk is giving himself an ulcer trying to live up to the hype. “Let’s just take you back into the kitchen, alright? Maybe the chef has some time to see you.”
Chekov looks so ecstatic at the thought that McCoy thinks he might jump over the bar and hug him.
“Right,” McCoy says, scowling to discourage the thought, and leads the way back through the stainless steel swinging doors.
Kirk’s still in his office, so McCoy gives Sulu the resume and makes him go fetch Kirk while Uhura gives the kid a once over and Spock stands utterly silent at the salad station beside her.
“Chef Uhura, it is an honor,” Chekov insists on shaking her hand, obviously enchanted with the scattered beginnings of her dessert special on the counter. “You are making gelato? Citrus?”
“No,” Uhura surveys her work. “It’s going to be buttermilk. Or rice custard, I haven’t decided. The lemon is for the lemon mint sorbet.”
“You do a new flavor every night, yes?” Chekov presses, “I read that the rhubarb is especially delightful.”
Uhura smirks, and casts a wry glance over her shoulder at Spock, like check this kid out. “Maybe you’ll try it one day,” she says to the kid.
Kirk emerges from his cave with Sulu in tow. He nods at Chekov. “So you’re the wiz kid from Paris, huh?”
Chekov’s spine straightens visibly. “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”
“You graduated in February,” Kirk says, glancing at the paper in his hand. “Where’ve you been for the past six months?”
“I have been visiting my family in St. Petersburg,” Chekov reports. “I arrived in America last week. My grandmother came with me.”
“So you haven’t been cooking,” Kirk prods. He doesn’t even fake a polite interest in Chekov’s family life.
“Dinner service for Chef Anton at Shatyor,” Chekov says, “Traditional Russian cuisine, nothing French.”
“What position?”
“When he was present, I was entremetier. When he was not, which was often, I acted as the sous chef.”
Kirk grunts. “So this will be a step down for you.”
“I consider it a step up,” Chekov corrects in a quiet voice.
Kirk raises his eyebrows at what should sound like shameless ass-kissing, but comes out dignified and sincere. Kirk doesn’t give up, though, he just pries in a different direction: “Why didn’t you stay in Paris after you graduated? Couldn’t you find work?”
Chekov’s mouth twists, and he admits: “I missed my family, sir. Three years I hadn’t seen them.”
Kirk glances up at McCoy, very briefly. Back when they’d first met in New England, they’d both been homesick transplants who hated east coast weather. It had been their commonality, that constant threat of dropping out, going home to family and failure. McCoy hated med school, and Kirk was cutting a swath through teachers and administrators at the Culinary Institute of America, staid and traditional as it was. They’d been miserable. Even having each other had been the smallest and rarest of comforts, with their schedules and seventy-five miles of highway between them.
But Kirk doesn’t acknowledge any of this. He just frowns at Chekov: “So will you be quitting this position as soon as you get homesick again?”
McCoy winces, but Chekov shakes his head, solemn. “No sir. Nothing is more important to me than working for you.”
“For chrissakes, Jim, just give the kid the job already,” McCoy finally burst out, sick of the abuse, the standard posturing. He knows Kirk is better than that - it’s sure as hell not how he hired Spock - and he knows the kid doesn’t deserve it.
McCoy glares at all of their raised eyebrows, hackles raised stubbornly even though he knows that he’s committed a serious infraction. The mild bemusement on Spock’s face alone reminds him that in a true brigade system - the kind of kitchen that Chekov’s come up in, the kind where Spock earned his reputation as the most exacting and brilliant of minds - he would’ve been out the door on his ass five seconds ago.
Kirk doesn’t even bat an eye at McCoy, he just ignores him altogether. To Chekov, he says: “You can work tonight, and we’ll re-evaluate after.”
“Thank you, Chef,” Chekov says it quietly and fervently.
Even as Kirk turns away - Marty the sea food guy is buzzing at the back door - Chekov is turning to examine the salad station, and pulling his knife roll out of his bag.
Smoothly, Spock steps over to stand with him, and says, “I will instruct you on the menu for the evening.”
McCoy already feels sorry for the kid.
The rest of the crew turns back to their own work, leaving McCoy to send a glance after Kirk’s back before abandoning Chekov to his fate, and heading back to the bar, half-wondering what the hell just went down between him and Kirk, and half not even caring.
Exactly as predicted, the evening brings a first-class shitstorm of covers. The house is full from 5:30 on, and it’s a Saturday night so McCoy is run off his feet in his polished black wingtips. His job is not to recommend wine, it’s to help kids impress their dates and businessmen impress their clients so that none of the servers are boned out of a tip at the end of the meal. It’s a subtle thing, what impresses people. Sometimes the atmosphere of the place and the price they’re paying means that diners want to be talked down to and have their wine chosen for them. More often they want to show him up with their googled research and a brief glance at the price list, and so they just push and push him until they find a crack that they can declare victory over. Very seldom do they want his advice, which means that McCoy very seldom gives his honest opinion.
McCoy has few excuses to duck into the kitchen - a pair of new goblets for the Texan who gets even more of a thrill from a man running errands for him than a female server - but when he does get the opportunity, he does his best to gauge the clockwork machinations back there. Spock announcing orders down the line, Kirk tossing entrees on his six-burner range while Sulu supports with hot apps. A handful of assistants scurry between them, broiling and grilling. Chekov is still there in the back plating side salads while Uhura keeps an eye on him over her shoulder, and in the end all their work comes back to Spock for a hawk-eyed quality check before going out into the neighboring chaos of the house in the hands of the wait staff.
Yet, for all that they’re slammed, and the moon is full, and the customers are a seventy-thirty split of asshole to decent tonight, no one is in the weeds. At his station at the front, the maitre d’, Scotty, is keeping people pampered and entertained from the sidewalk to their table. Maybe it’s the accent, but he’s always mentioned in every review Enterprise gets: the flamboyant host; quite a character; get him to tell you the one about the Ukrainian princess and the ship’s captain. The servers all respect him, though, which is really all that matters. He keeps the front of house in step with the kitchen, and somehow it’s all just working.
McCoy checks in with Christine at the bar, where she has her runner pouring the microbrews while she mixes cocktails. Ten months ago, McCoy was doing all three of their jobs, but then business picked up so fast he told Kirk he’d quit if he didn’t get a barback. Thank god Kirk hired her. In her little black dress and flat boots she looks like a socialite and moves like a ninja.
“Christine,” he says as it occurs to him, “Is Kirk still paying you minimum wage?”
“Yup,” she says. “I’m barback one, Curly over there is barback two.”
“You were supposed to get a raise.”
“Yup.” She angles a look at him over her shoulder as she wrenches open a bottle of crème liqueur, “Compared to these tips, do you really think the dollar an hour makes a difference to me?”
“He owes you backpay for about four months. You could buy yourself some health insurance.”
“Ha.” Christine does not laugh at his unfunny joke. “I’d rather he hire me another runner, or at least get Scott to pay a server to help me out during rushes. Like right now.” She reaches over him to grab the vermouth. “Speaking of, how about you get out of my bar?”
“I’ll harass him,” McCoy promises, grabbing the bottle of whisky he came for and scooting.
It dies down around midnight, one last table of ten making themselves obnoxious while Scott starts counting out the servers and sending them home. A few of the staff opt to hang around, and Scott sends them into the back to wait out that last goddamn table.
Sometime around one, McCoy runs out of counters to wipe and gives up on being polite and unobtrusive and takes a seat at the bar while Scott goes to clear them out. The table’s server, Janice, hovers behind the counter in a way that betrays her anxiety about her tip.
“I busted my balls for those fuckers,” she says in a low voice, watching. “There’s a reason I don’t date realtors.”
“Don’t worry,” Christine tells her, “They won’t even notice that he’s kicking them out.”
Sure enough, the table roars with laughter at the culmination of one of Scotty’s nonchalant anecdotes, and he comes back to the bar with a nod at Janice. “Give them five minutes, then the bill.”
Janice makes a face: she’s new, fresh over from Bar Tartine, where the chefs like to showboat and the clientele tends a little more towards the semi-famous and semi-important. She picked up some weird habits from there, McCoy’s noticed. “Should we comp them a round?” she asks.
“Lord, girl, you want them here all night?” Scott waves her towards the touch screen, “They’ll be ready in five.”
The table of realtors clears out just as the crew starts trickling out of the kitchen. Chekov is last out of the swinging doors, bag over his shoulder, blinking owlishly and damp with sweat. Someone’s replaced his blazer with an old, spectacularly dirty chef’s jacket that McCoy suspects is one of Kirk’s. The kid looks like he’s going to head straight out onto the street, so McCoy calls his name and pats the stool next to him. Chekov hesitates, and sits down, loose-limbed and sagging and looking dull askance at the crowd gathered at the gleaming countertop.
Christine slides a shot of Stoli in front of him with a wordless wink.
“Make that a round, Christine,” Scott says from his end of the bar, tossing down the pile of bills that got slipped to him earlier in the night. Seating bribes. Totally unnecessary, but they’ve kept the whole crew in booze for months on end so no one’s all that concerned about the ethics of it.
“Make that two,” says Kirk, coming around the bar to pull out a few fresh bottles and to help her pour.
This is pretty much how it goes every Saturday night.
Several hours later, McCoy is leaning against a dirty wall waiting for the first streetcar of the morning to pick his drunk ass up and deposit him somewhere closer to his trashy little apartment in the Tenderloin. Even slightly closer than he is right now would be okay. McCoy isn’t picky, just dead tired and drunk as hell.
As if to prove that point, Chekov is leaning with him, looking dazed but with this fixed smile on his face that seems to be etched in permanently. He’s grinning at the outdated movie posters across the street. “My grandmother is going to be very, very disappointed in me,” he declares happily. “Or possibly she will be very proud. It is difficult to tell, sometimes.”
“When you’re rolling in at 6:00 a.m., I think it’s safe to say she’s gonna be pissed.”
“She sleeps deeply,” Chekov assures him.
McCoy shrugs, it’s not his problem. He hasn’t lived with his family since he was probably Chekov’s age anyway. “How old are you?” he asks, knowing he’s asked twice already and has forgotten the answer somewhere in between brooding about how Kirk ignored him all fucking night and trying to figure out how the hell he’s going to get this adolescent from Pacific Heights all the way down to South San Francisco. He’s lived here for eight years and he’s never bothered going past Cesar Chavez Street. Or if he has, he’s forgotten about it. Two hours at least on transit, he bets.
“Twenty-one,” Chekov says, still smiling.
McCoy decides he should forget that number because it’s probably a lie. Not that the kid seems dishonest, but just that there’s no way it’s true. McCoy is sticking with seventeen in his head.
The streetcar pulls up, and the driver barely glances at them as they drop their payment and make their way to the back. “So what do you do when you get to Civic Center?” McCoy feels the need to quiz the kid. It’s his head on the block if he loses Kirk’s prize Russian after just one stellar performance at the salad station. Kirk made it very clear tonight that Chekov is staying. There was a lot of drunken shit-talking, as always, but only praise for the new kid. Even Spock had something specifically nice to say: his sense of scale and proportion is certainly above average. Which - yeah. Chekov had eaten it all up, heart on his sleeve.
“I get on Bart,” Chekov replies, leaning back into his seat. He closes his eyes and shrugs, still smiling sunnily.
“Okay, obviously. Which one?” McCoy asks.
Chekov replies without opening his eyes. “The one traveling south.”
McCoy is pretty sure he’s going to lose the kid, and then Kirk will be even angrier at him. He doesn’t like where this is going.
The streetcar is pulling up to his stop, and McCoy fidgets, “Look,” he says.
But Chekov interrupts him. He looks over with shining eyes. “I wish to thank you for your help today, Mr. McCoy. This is the job that I came to America for.”
McCoy shakes his head.“I didn’t do anything to help you out. Kirk would’ve hired you anyway.”
Chekov is still gazing at him with that earnestness in his face: “I will find a way to repay you.”
“Yeah, sure.” McCoy is standing up, not listening, one hand gripping the rail. “Kid, I figure you have two options - take transit for another two hours and hope to god you make it home, or crash on my floor and call your grandma in the morning. What’s it gonna be?”
“Oh,” says Chekov, looking for all the world like he’s been asked to decide the fate of a small nation. “But I do not have a toothbrush.”
“I’m sure you’ll make do,” says McCoy, taking that as a yes and hauling the kid down the lurching steps to the sidewalk.
McCoy is very careful: he puts a sheet over his couch and finds a fresh pillowcase for Chekov’s disaster of curls. But he doesn’t say a word to him. He knows how this seems - how it would seem to Jim, if he heard about it. McCoy doesn’t need that kind of anxiety in his life.
That said, there’s not a lot to worry about, because the kid is passed out, dead to the world, before McCoy can find a spare toothbrush for him.
(Part II)