Angular Momentum (Kirk/McCoy, NC-17, ST:XI), 2/3
Jim Kirk looked into the dark nothingness outside the view screen and thought about Romulans.
Just hours from the start of a potentially risky (and at the very least logistically challenging) mission to the Neutral Zone, Kirk was locked in a low-key battle of wills with his first officer. Spock had requested a brief detour to a known but unstudied rotating black hole and the object had surpassed Spock’s expectations to the point that he had requested extra time to study it. Itching to be on their way, but hard pressed to refuse a direct request from a first officer who usually asked for so little, Kirk told Uhura to forward the request to Starfleet. When the reply came back in the affirmative, there was nothing for Kirk to do but give Spock the conn and make himself scarce.
He managed to kill a few hours at the gym and wandering the decks before realizing his unexpected appearances were needlessly distracting to the crew, who were already carrying out his orders with their usual efficiency. Short of holing up in his quarters, he did what he should have done in the first place, which was to find Bones.
While he was, by all appearances, busy sorting and testing medical supplies bound for the Federation outpost on Kalan Seven, it took Kirk only a few minutes and less sweet-talking than usual to persuade him to leave the chores to the capable Dr. M’Benga and go to one of his least favorite places on the ship. Wanting to reward his good sportsmanship, Kirk talked the mess chief into coaxing the makings of the picnic out of the replicators.
An hour later, Kirk and McCoy were lounging on a blanket on the floor in the dim light of the Warp Engineering observation platform, watching the stars whirl by. It felt good to do nothing in particular for a change, just share beers and chicken and talk about the usual things, bureaucratic absurdities and women and funny things that had happened on one planet or another.
“It’s nice up here. Peaceful,” Kirk said during a lull in the conversation. “How come you hate it so much?”
“I don’t like the engines. It’s like looking into the gears on a Ferris wheel; it’s just more than I want to know. Plus, it seems like every time you look at the stars long enough, you end up doing of those creepy monologues about space and time and our place in the big, meaningless universe.”
“Really?” Kirk turned to look at him, making out McCoy’s face clearly in the gloom, either because his eyes had adjusted or because he knew that face so well. “Do I ever come to any interesting conclusions? Because from where I’m sitting right now, space just seems like a good place to eat chicken.”
McCoy snorted. “I think you’ve concluded that space is big, time is relative, and command is lonely. You usually only do that last one when you’re sleep deprived.”
“God, I sound boring.” Kirk rolled to his side and propped himself on his elbow, so he could see McCoy better. “Sorry for making you my monologue victim.”
“Who else?” McCoy asked rhetorically. “I’m sure command is lonely. Surrounded by people every minute of the day, but every goddamn one wants something from you.”
“You make it sound worse than it is,” Kirk said. “But I won’t deny it’s been hard to meet…people.”
“People as in--?”
“Yes.” Kirk wiped his greasy fingers on his uniform pants, figuring the stains you couldn’t see didn’t count.
“You know, I admit I’ve been curious about how-“
“An archeologist we dropped off on Beta Anodia, the helmsman of the Zheng He, and a barmaid in that place on Starbase 114.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it,” Kirk said solemnly.
McCoy gave a little whistle of surprise. “And how does that make you feel?”
“What are you now, a counselor? It makes me feel…grown up, I guess. You can’t have everything you want, and you sure can’t have it all at the same time.”
“I suppose.” Kirk could hear the frown in McCoy’s voice. “’Ships in the night’ isn’t the only option, you know.”
“What’s the other option? A member of my crew?” The enjoyable buzz was fading; Kirk began fidgeting with cap from his beer bottle. “That’s a great idea. Until it doesn’t work out and my friends and their friends are sitting at separate tables in the mess. God, it would be like some nightmare version of high school, which was already a nightmare.”
“But maybe it would work out.” For someone who’d been so miserably disappointed in love, McCoy managed to retain equal and active portions of matchmaker and romantic.
“I doubt it,” Kirk said stiflingly. “The kind of person I might be able to have something long-term with isn’t the kind of person who’d join Starfleet.”
“Really?”
“Really. I mean, I’m not really supposed to be here. It was just a fluke. If Uhura had let me buy her a shot, I’d be a long-haul mag sled driver and Spock would be captain of the Enterprise. “
“And Earth would be blown up,” McCoy finished.
“Who knows? Maybe Pike would have made Sulu first officer, and he would have come up with an even better plan. Maybe if everyone hadn’t been so excited to see Spock roast me alive at that hearing, they would have figured out what the hell was going on around Vulcan, and saved it. We can’t know that. But we do know that I definitely wouldn’t be on this ship right now.” Kirk tossed the bottle cap in the air, watching it spin a few inches in front of his eyes, running lights glinting off its metal edges.
“So you don’t believe in fate and destiny and all that?” McCoy seemed borderline offended, but Kirk wasn’t in the business of encouraging superstitious nonsense, not on board his ship and certainly not in his best friend.
“Fuck no. The universe is a weird, random place and it’s a complete accident that there are sentient beings at all. Space itself-“
“Here we go.” McCoy tipped his head back against the wall in resignation, apparently settling in for the long haul.
“Oh.” Kirk stopped abruptly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to start ranting. If it makes you feel any better, I do believe that there are plenty of things in our control. That’s why we’re out here, right? To bring some order to chaos. I mean, right now, Spock is up on the Bridge probably making some huge contribution to astrophysics that I graciously allowed, and I hope he doesn’t forget that. Don’t you find that inspiring?”
“No,” Bones humphed. “The only way I stay sane out here is if I think things are the way they are for a reason, not because we’re stumbling around the universe just trying not to kill ourselves and sometimes we get lucky and do the right thing.”
McCoy seemed genuinely perturbed, which made Kirk feel a bit selfish for indulging in one of his occasional bouts of self-righteous conviction. An idea occurred to him. “That’s not the only other option. See that little shelf thing halfway up the viewport?”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding pouty.
“Say I could take this bottle cap and throw it so it landed up there perfectly. Would you say that was destiny?”
“I’d say that was drunken luck.”
“Drunken?” Kirk wrinkled his nose. “This is my second beer. It would be skill, maybe with some luck mixed in.”
“It doesn’t matter, because you could never do that in a million years.”
“Wanna bet?” Kirk made a fist and punched his shoulder softly, goading him on.
“Hell yes,” McCoy said, rising to the challenge. “If you can land that bottle cap, you can have anything you want.”
“Anything. Seriously?”
“Anything I have in my power to give,” McCoy said dramatically. “And if you lose, you have to admit that it was your destiny to become captain. And you have to ask Chapel out.”
“Chapel?”
“She’s a sweet kid, and she likes you, but she’s not infatuated. It would be good practice for you, having to make an effort for once.”
“Believe me, being an arrogant asshole is a lot harder than it looks. OK, you’re on.” Kirk estimated the mass and drag of the bottle cap, the shape of the parabola he would need to land the cap as near to a 90-degree angle as possible. With a lopsided grin at McCoy and a bit of I can do this swagger, he lofted the bottle cap and sent it sailing through the air. It swished past the shelf a few centimeters in front, a clean miss, and landed lightly, flat on the floor.
“Shit.” Kirk had been so sure he’d calculated everything perfectly; he felt as if he’d both lost and failed to make an important point, though he was no longer so sure what it was.
“Chapel likes dancing, Russian poetry, and guys who don’t tell her C.O. the gory details of her dates.”
“That should have worked,” Kirk said, refusing to let it go. “There was nothing wrong with my calculations. My elbow was probably stiff; I’ve been leaning on it so long, it’s half asleep. What do you say-best two out of three?”
“No. It’s a debt of honor, the kind a gentleman always pays.”
“Gentleman,” Kirk snorted. “If that’s what you think Chapel is getting, you-or she-is going to be sorely disappointed.”
“Jim,” McCoy said hotly, “I swear, if you-“
“Kidding. Ice cream sodas and a handshake at the door, I promise.” McCoy relaxed back against the wall, mollified.
“Aren’t you curious about what I would have asked you for if I’d won?” Kirk asked after a time.
McCoy took a pull from the beer, then held it up and turned it, as if seeing something in the dim light. “Doesn’t matter,” he drawled; alcohol tended to lubricate his accent. “Far as I can tell, you’ve got everything you want, and you’re pretty much lookin’ at everything I have.”
Part 3 >>