Entry tags:

fic post, star trek

Many thanks to iulia for excellent beta!


Star Trek: Reboot. McCoy, Kirk. PG. 2,018 words.
Jim could be fantastically thoughtless except when being thoughtful would embarrass McCoy more.




Ten Sessions

Jim was sitting outside on the edge of a fountain when McCoy walked out of the shuttleport. He was leaning on his hands, face up in the rare sunshine, not even flirting with anyone or pretending to be doing anything but waiting. It was just McCoy's luck. Jim could be fantastically thoughtless except when being thoughtful would embarrass McCoy more.

Almost as soon as he'd thought it, some part of McCoy's brain pointed out that that wasn't actually true, let alone fair. Jim had been waiting outside after every one of the first four sessions, for which McCoy had been embarrassingly grateful at the time. Jim had missed the fifth and sixth only because the command-track cadets had been taken off on some kind of detached training exercise for four days; even then, he'd probably have contrived some kind of show of support, if McCoy had told him they'd stepped up the session schedule from weekly to every other day.

But he hadn't told Jim about that, for the same reason he really didn't want to see Jim right now. He really could not bear anyone--let alone Jim--being thoughtful and supportive today. He'd just about bitten the head off the first therapist to congratulate him, and the last time Jim had seen him had been after session four, when he'd been a complete wreck. Jim had no idea.

McCoy just had time to consider slipping away before Jim saw him when Jim looked down and got to his feet all in one graceful motion. He came over to meet McCoy, wincing sympathetically when he got into range of McCoy's scowl. "Bad, huh? You wanna walk around a while before we get on the train?"

He hadn't even wanted to get on the monorail back to the Academy after the first two sessions, due mostly to the phobia being hyper-activated but also to his lingering determination to drug himself to the gills and board the first shuttle bound for anywhere that wasn't Starfleet Academy. Jim had been kind and patient and perfectly nonchalant about being kind and patient that day, allowing McCoy some dignity. Now, Jim's consideration made McCoy want to punch someone in the face--himself, mainly, but Jim would be easier to hit.

Jim probably wouldn't even hold it against him, which only made it worse.

"I'm fine," McCoy gritted out, looking away from Jim to check that no one else from the aviophobia sessions was around--the therapists wouldn't say anything about what had been going on during treatment, but his session-mates would rat him out in a second. "I don't want to talk about it. You didn't have to be here."

"Right," Jim said brightly. "No talking at all. I'll just remind you again that nobody's ever washed out of Starfleet Academy because of an identified phobia, not even that guy who wound up needing twenty-three sessions to overcome his paralyzing xenophobia, and then I'll stop talking."

The twenty-three sessions guy was legendary. You couldn't get away from stories about the twenty-three sessions guy if you were a cadet diagnosed with a phobia. After his second session McCoy had direly predicted that after this year they'd be telling stories about that aviophobic who took twenty-four sessions. What the hell had he been thinking, anyway? Who joined Starfleet when they were phobic about flying machines?

"Nobody washes out with a phobia because nobody's allowed to wash out with a phobia," McCoy muttered, instead. "It's a curable medical condition, it'd be prejudicial. And once you consent to the treatment and are cleared for it, you're required to finish."

"Exactly," Jim said, and smacked him encouragingly on the shoulder. "So it's going to be fine, Bones. I mean, it sucks now, but this is only session five. You're only halfway there. That's like a woman halfway through giving birth thinking it's never going to get any better, right?"

McCoy eyed Jim, who was looking inordinately, disgustingly pleased with that particular metaphor.

McCoy looked away, hunched his shoulders, and against his better judgment and the strong impulse to not talk about any of this ever, especially not to Jim, muttered, "Seven."

"Hm?" He glanced over at Jim, but the noise had been just an absentminded response to a conversational turn. Jim was avidly tracking the motion of a short-skirted cadet whose bright pink skin clashed pretty badly with cadet reds.

McCoy rolled his eyes. "I said, seven."

Jim still didn't look away from the cadet, who was awfully pretty. It did boggle the mind to think of what somebody with that many fingers could do in bed, but their reproductive biology was pretty thoroughly incompatible with humans. The cadet wasn't even female in a sense that mapped to human genders; most members of that species just preferred the skirt. McCoy didn't bother trying to enlighten Jim. He'd probably find a way, tell McCoy all about it, and then offer to introduce him to the cadet's crèche-mate.

Jim rubbed a knuckle against his ear and then said, "That's so weird, I could've sworn you just said it's your seventh session today, because your schedule got accelerated and you didn't even tell me about it."

McCoy stopped walking and folded his arms, sensing that he was already on the losing side of one of Jim's little ambushes. "I don't have any obligation to tell you everything, or anything, about my confidential medical treatment."

Jim turned on him then, throwing his hands in the air. "You could tell me when you're kicking ass, though! I heard you're acing this thing, you're practically done already, and they're hustling you through the sessions just to make sure you get your ten before you get bored and quit going."

McCoy stared at Jim and reconsidered his stance on punching him in the face, even as he realized that Jim was genuinely, if obnoxiously, happy for him--not teasing him at all, not bringing up the way they'd met to throw it in his face. Jim was happy for him, and there was no power on Earth that could stand in the way of Jim being proud of someone he cared about.

"Hey, no," Jim said. "It doesn't even matter how I found out, the point is, you're beating the hell out of this thing and you didn't tell me. We're friends, Bones! I tell you when I do something awesome!"

He did, too, with clockwork regularity, every time he got laid or stumped an instructor or tested out of yet another course that moved him one step closer to his plan for graduating a year early--which, as he was fond of pointing out and McCoy had begun to rely on, meant they would be eligible for their first assignments at the same time, right about the time the Enterprise was due to be launched. "So it's only fair if you tell me, so we can celebrate!"

McCoy took a step back, starting to hear all kinds of automated warning signals. Jim did not take celebrating lightly, and all McCoy wanted to do was go hide somewhere and forget that today's session had happened, and, in fact, that he had ever mentioned his fear of dying horribly in a shuttle crash to anyone at all.

"What do you mean? Jim, I'm not actually even done yet."

Jim got a stern look on his face, exactly the you've been holding out on me look he'd gotten when McCoy finally explained what kinds of practical information they were covering in the medical xenobiology courses. "I heard they put you in the co-pilot's chair when they broke atmosphere last time, and you helped the therapists when somebody else freaked out and needed to be restrained. Did they let you fly the shuttle today?"

McCoy opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. Finally he snapped his teeth shut and stared at Jim, caught between irritation and awe, thinking Have you been screened for telepathic abilities? as hard as he could.

Jim grinned. "One hundred percent standard human, Bones--I just pay attention. And people talk to me. And occasionally I snoop. Now come on, you're missing your own party."

The trick to dealing with Jim was to be both quick and unwavering in defending your own boundaries. It rarely worked, but it was the only thing that ever worked at all, and McCoy felt that he had to at least try to resist, even knowing that Jim knew.

"No," McCoy snapped, and turned to walk in the opposite direction. A party, of all damned things--even for Jim, that was going too far. In an entirely predictable and well-intentioned direction, but...

"Yes," Jim insisted, matching his stride easily. "Come on, I think Penny's making you a cake or something, you don't want to disappoint her."

"I don't--I am not--" For half a second, McCoy thought he might be able to legitimately claim a brand-new phobia of parties with himself as the guest of honor, but he couldn't get the words out.

"Wait," Jim's voice faltered a little, for the first time. "You're seriously not happy about this."

"Oh my God, he's a genius," McCoy snapped, and softened his voice when he spotted the genuine concern on Jim's face. He was really going to have to learn to resist the man at some point, or there'd be no end to the trouble he wound up in. "No, Jim, I'm not happy."

"But you're cured," Jim pointed out earnestly, if loudly. McCoy forced himself not to look around and see how many people were watching their little drama. "You're cured in half the time! You're the opposite of the twenty-three sessions guy! What's not to be excited about?"

"I'm not--it isn't--if they could cure me in five sessions maybe it wasn't a phobia at all," McCoy said finally, keeping his own voice low, his eyes fixed somewhere around Jim's shoulder. His face felt hot and his stomach was churning--basic physical manifestations of embarrassment, right on schedule. "Maybe it was just--I don't know, maybe I just didn't like flying. Maybe I was making a big deal out of nothing."

Jim didn't say anything for a while, and McCoy felt himself calming down. Jim hadn't called him a coward or hypochondriac any more than the therapists had, and Jim was honest even with his friends. His hand fell heavily on McCoy's shoulder. "Do I ever complain after you cure my hangover that it worked too fast and maybe I was just tired?"

McCoy exhaled. "That is not the same--"

He couldn't even finish the sentence. He was a doctor; he knew better. He'd been correctly diagnosed and skillfully treated, and now he was cured, and there was no point being embarrassed about any of it. He sighed, and rolled his shoulder a little under Jim's grip, moving into the touch more than pushing it away.

"All right, so who the hell is Penny and why is she making me a cake?"

Jim squeezed his shoulder and then turned him around toward the monorail station again. "Penny was sitting next to the guy you helped to restrain last time. She thinks you're a hero and she has this physical reaction to your voice which I know more about than I absolutely needed to, and she has promised to highly recommend me to her roommate if I get the two of you properly socially introduced."

McCoy glanced sideways at Jim, calculating. The first story Jim offered was never the whole story--and Jim wasn't the only observant one here, nor was he especially difficult to diagnose. "I am not sneaking you into my next session so you can fly the shuttle."

Jim's grin was incandescent. "Bones! Who's telepathic now? Anyway, I wouldn't--"

McCoy shook his head and gave up even trying to be irritated. There would be booze at the party, as well as cake; if he had enough he might forget that even if they offered a ten-session course to correct susceptibility to Jim Kirk, he'd never want to go.