Celandine's Chronicle (celandineb) wrote in cels_fic_haven, @ 2009-06-17 08:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | star trek fic hotm, star trek fic kirk/mccoy |
Star Trek fic: Process of Deduction [Kirk/McCoy, general]
Title: Process of Deduction
Author: celandineb
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy (preslash)
Rating: general
Length: 2306 words
Summary: Kirk puts his mind to work to figure out who could possibly be the object of McCoy's affections.
Note: Fourth in the "Heart of the Matter" series.
Getting McCoy drunk hadn't loosened his tongue, was the problem. Kirk was still determined to find out just who it was that McCoy was interested in, however, and he thought that perhaps a different strategy might work. McCoy could stay quiet in a crowd at a bar, or when he had work to distract him, but alone with a silent Kirk – ah, then, he might talk just to avoid the silence.
Kirk had initially visited the site of the old baths during his first year as a cadet. One night in a bar he'd picked up a townie who had apparently always wanted to have sex there, and persuaded him to go along with the idea. She'd been very enthusiastic, and the experience was good enough that Kirk had returned several times since with other partners.
He wasn't interested in McCoy that way, but familiarity with the place had suggested to Kirk that his friend might like it – and he wanted somewhere quiet where they wouldn't be interrupted by other people. If anyone else turned up there, they would doubtless be looking for privacy themselves, pretend not to have seen, and slip away.
The plan hadn't worked though. McCoy seemed perfectly content to simply listen to the crashing surf. Kirk had spoken once, to say that he had guesses as to whom it was McCoy liked, but McCoy hadn't taken the bait – and Kirk didn't really have the guesses he'd pretended to have.
He wasn't sure why he was so determined to figure the answer out, except that it wasn't in him to walk away from a challenge.
Today, he decided, he would tackle it from a different angle, and try a little deduction and logic. McCoy must have dropped a few hints at some point, right? Kirk's impression was that this was not some new infatuation, and if that were true, then surely there had been clues and Kirk had simply never noticed them.
Known facts first. The person McCoy admired was a man, that was certain, since McCoy had actually admitted it. Presumably a man associated with Starfleet Academy, since McCoy never left the campus grounds unless someone – usually Kirk – dragged him into the rest of the city for some reason.
Could it be an officer, one of McCoy's cadet instructors perhaps? As he headed to class, Kirk considered the possibilities, which distracted him enough that he missed a vital portion of a lecture on Vulcan diplomatic methods and had to ask one of the other students if he could borrow her notes later.
Luanna didn't take much persuading, and after a mutually satisfactory encounter that afternoon Kirk had the notes and could return to wrestling with the problem of McCoy's infatuation.
Probably not an officer, he decided, although the fact that McCoy had said that Kirk couldn't help him meant that an officer wasn't totally out of the question, since he certainly didn't know any of them well enough to try to set up a date the way he might if it were a cadet. It just seemed out of character for McCoy to moon after one of his instructors; he wasn't the hero-worshiping type.
If it wasn't an officer, then it had to be one of the cadets. Kirk frowned. That wasn't a terribly helpful deduction. There were hundreds of cadets, so how could he narrow it down? He reached for his PADD.
"He says I can't help him with this," he murmured. "But I bet that I can... if I can figure out who."
Calling up a list of all cadets enrolled, Kirk eliminated first all the women, then – after a moment's hesitation – those who were still in their first year, who McCoy could only have known for a few months. He'd go with his impression that the person McCoy liked had been around longer than that.
It took substantially more effort to remove from the list all those with whom McCoy would almost certainly never have had any contact, such as cadets whose programs of study meant they'd never have had classes in common with McCoy. Kirk had to track down what each individual was studying and compare that to McCoy's classes... and even then he couldn't eliminate them without also first making sure that they'd always lived in different dormitories, so that McCoy wouldn't have gotten to know them through living in proximity, either.
He'd just finished that process when he realized something and smacked himself on the forehead. "Fuck." Any of the group he'd just eliminated could have been one of McCoy's patients at the clinic. There was no way to find out – Kirk didn't have the authorization to access those files, and he didn't want to risk being caught breaking into confidential data without a very good reason, something more than curiosity about his friend.
Now, wait; he had better think this through. Would McCoy fall in love, or whatever he wanted to call it, with a patient? It wasn't unheard-of, Kirk supposed, although he rather thought doctors were more likely to become attached to their nurses, since they worked so closely with them. A patient would normally only be seen for a few minutes, perhaps half an hour or an hour at most on one or two visits, unless he had some chronic illness – and Starfleet Academy didn't admit cadets with major physical disabilities or uncontrolled illnesses. So a patient was an unlikely candidate. McCoy simply wouldn't have the contact time. Somehow Kirk didn't see McCoy falling for anyone based solely on looks; personality would have to play a role. McCoy was too serious for anything else.
The list of possibilities was still far too long to do Kirk much good, though.
"Time to really get to work, Jim," he told himself. "Let's try another angle. Why would it be a problem for Bones to tell whoever it is that he's interested? Why the need for secrecy, not just from me but from that person himself?"
"Because he figures the man isn't going to be interested back," was the obvious answer. "That's the only thing that makes sense."
All right, why would someone be unalterably un-interested in McCoy? He could be rather a Debbie Downer at times, that was true, and he drank too much for his own good – but so did Kirk, and so did a lot of other cadets for that matter. Drinking was unlikely to be the deal-breaker. McCoy was pretty good-looking, Kirk supposed, and he was in surprisingly good shape for a man his age who spent most of his time in the clinic or the lab when he wasn't actually in classes; lack of physical attractiveness couldn't be the issue either.
Kirk leaned back and put his feet up on his desk, his chair tipping precariously. If it wasn't a problem with McCoy, maybe the issue was with the other man, then. If he was married, say, or permanently attached elsewhere, or completely heterosexual...
The chair hit the floor with a thump.
"Well, fuck me," Kirk whispered, sure now even without any definite evidence. McCoy was forever making those snide references to Kirk's conquests, though he wasn't interested in the women himself. The other day when McCoy had stormed out of the bar, he'd remembered that the woman Kirk had been flirting with had been blonde, when there'd been no reason why he should have noticed or recalled that. It was Kirk himself that McCoy was interested in, it had to be. Nothing else made any sense.
This was going to take some hard thinking. Not that he had any doubts about his conclusion, but what – if anything – was he going to do about it?
Well, what did he want to do? With a shock, Kirk realized that he was actually somewhat curious about what it would be like to be with McCoy, though the idea had never before crossed his mind. He'd slept with more women than he could conveniently count – really, he ought to keep a list, but it was probably too late to recreate one now. But he'd never been with another man, never even considered it. Probably that was why McCoy was so certain Kirk wouldn't be interested back... but he was wrong. Just because Kirk had never done something before didn't mean he wouldn't be game to try it. He'd have thought McCoy would have known that, in fact, from all his remarks on Kirk's reckless behavior.
On the other hand – McCoy was the sort to take things seriously. That had been clear since the day they'd met, and Kirk doubted that sex was an exception to that rule. Serious was not something Kirk looked for in his sexual encounters; at least not in the sense of having them turn into anything more. Taking pleasure itself seriously was just fine with him. But if he ever did anything with McCoy... Kirk rolled his eyes. He couldn't see that ending well. If they had sex – and he didn't let himself linger on the details of how, not yet – Kirk would probably be fine with once or even twice, as usual, before he moved on. A casual encounter would doubtless make McCoy unhappy though, and that would mess up their friendship. Then again, now that Kirk knew McCoy felt this way, he was bound to let the knowledge affect his behavior sooner or later, and that could be a problem too.
"Damn it, Bones, why'd you have to tell me anything?" he grumbled, even if honesty forced him to admit that he was the one who'd pushed McCoy about needing to get laid in the first place, without which none of this would have happened.
He cleared all the information from his PADD and stood up. It getting late, and he had an eight o'clock class tomorrow, but a walk might clear his head, help him decide what to do. His roommate Sidhu looked up and nodded as he left; he was used to Kirk going and coming at all sorts of odd hours.
The air was cool and damp as Kirk strode across campus. The paths were well-lighted but he didn't stick to them, preferring to cut across the grass when he could. As he walked, the possibilities roiled in his head, disturbing him. Figuring out whom McCoy liked had seemed like an interesting challenge. Dealing with the conclusions he'd reached was another matter. The two of them had a great friendship: Kirk supplied the optimism and energy, and McCoy the stabilizing influence. They complemented each other. But this – this could destroy the balance of that friendship. McCoy must think the same too, or he would have said something long ago.
Kirk skirted the old science building and headed back toward the dormitories.
Was he sure that he was the object of McCoy's affections, though? He didn't have any real proof, after all, just some circumstantial evidence and his own gut feeling, which, granted, had rarely steered him wrong in the past, but maybe it was his own ego operating here, leaping to conclusions without justification.
He looked up at the building he was passing. Without even thinking about it he located the window to McCoy's room; there was a light on there still. He could go and ask, couldn't he? It would bring things out in the open, which he'd find more comfortable than all this speculation and uncertainty. If things were going to be cocked up between them regardless, he'd rather know the facts.
Taking a deep breath, Kirk tapped in the code on the intercom and heard McCoy say in his grumpiest voice, "McCoy. Who the hell is it at this hour?"
"It's me. Jim. Can I come up?"
There was a long pause, and then the buzzer sounded. Kirk quickly pushed open the door and headed up the stairs to the third floor and McCoy's room.
"It's open," McCoy said when Kirk knocked, so he went in, realizing belatedly that if McCoy's roommate were there, it would be impossible to hold the conversation he wanted to have.
Luckily Matthews was nowhere in sight, and there was no telltale light from under the bathroom door to suggest he was showering or otherwise using the facilities. Probably away making some astronomical observations, Kirk figured.
Without asking, he threw himself onto McCoy's bed.
"Is something wrong?" Now McCoy sounded concerned, not annoyed, and looked at him intently. "You didn't get yourself into another fight, did you? Your face looks okay."
"No, I'm fine. I just wanted to talk," Kirk said. "Something important on my mind, bothering me."
McCoy's expression turned wary. "It couldn't wait till morning? Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a psychiatrist, and it's after midnight."
Kirk ignored the protest.
"Is it me?"
The words seemed to hang in the air. For a moment Kirk thought that McCoy might try to pretend he didn't know what Kirk meant, but instead he closed his eyes tiredly.
"Yes." McCoy's voice was even wearier than his expression. "I should've known you'd figure it out, genius kid like you."
"I'm not a kid," Kirk started to object automatically, but McCoy was still speaking.
"I'm sorry. I won't let it make a difference in how I behave toward you. Just pretend you don't know and it'll be fine."
The smile McCoy offered was merely a stretch of the mouth, and it slipped away immediately as he turned back toward his desk.
Kirk watched him for several minutes. McCoy's shoulders were hunched forward and he seemed smaller than he was, sitting there.
"Bones," he said. "I just needed to know for sure. We'll talk tomorrow."
"I'd rather not. It won't make any difference," said McCoy, half to Kirk and half to whatever he was studying.
"Tough. We're going to," Kirk said, and before McCoy could object again, he left.
#3: Resolved on Silence | #5: Under Quiet Attack