Notes: You don't have to have read 'The Oar' to understand this. I call it, 'Seven-Year Itch To The Stars.' ^_^
Yeoman McLaughlin followed her gaze to the ship's second in command, who was plowing through his lunch break. No one had ever seen him eat alone, exactly, but some days he seemed to prefer the company of a padd to other people. He ate more quickly on those days, and this was one of them.
"Say what?" McLaughlin asked.
"About the Lieutenant and Naoko Lowell."
"You know what I heard? From Gorman, in Personnel?"
"No, what?"
"That her real name is Noel, and she changed it to sound exotic."
"Noel Lowell." Harlan tried the name out, and decided, "I'd change it, too. And you're changing the subject."
"Not really."
Harlan slapped his arm. "Phil! You don't blame Naoko, do you?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Her and the Lieutenant!"
"Of course I blame Lowell. Two guys get a good, stable relationship, some woman comes along and breaks it up. Perfectly normal, happens all the time." After a moment, he added, "Of course, usually the guys aren't sleeping together. But it's still normal."
Harlan rolled her eyes. "You would think that. But I know for a fact that Naoko never made a move on him."
"I suppose she told you that?"
"As a matter of fact, she did--don't you snerk at me! Besides, I was around most of the time when he was flirting with her. And let me tell you something, Mr. Cynic."
"I'm all antennae."
"You aren't even Andorian."
He sighed. "So, what are you telling me?"
"That she ignored him for a whole month before she gave up."
"Oh, come on! She flirted right back."
"Who says?"
"Gorman. Says she was shameless."
"She was just being nice. I mean, what're you gonna do, a guy like the Lieutenant flirting with you like he means it? Spit at him? And a whole month, Phil! I sure wouldn't ignore the Lieutenant for that long."
"But you think somebody should tell him."
"Well, it's not like it's Naoko's fault, Phil."
"Did I ever tell you about that incident in the medical labs?"
"No. Is it relevant?"
"Yeah, it's relevant. See, a couple of months ago, Benedict was running an experiment for the Doc, something about a new drug Doc was on the trail of. The Lieutenant was doing a routine inspection, and he startled Benedict when he asked how things were going. A couple of vials got knocked over, and there was a little explosion. Lieutenant started spraying fire retardant on it, and it must have set off something in the experiment, 'cause then there was a big explosion. So, then, at the inquiry, Benedict flared up and said the Lieutenant should have known better than to spray chemicals on other chemicals without knowing what was in them. The Commander had to physically tackle the Lieutenant to keep him from going after her."
"Hmmm," she said dreamily. "You think he enjoyed it?"
"Probably. Which one?"
"Both, I guess. Didn't Benedict transfer out?"
"Wouldn't you?"
"Well, what does Benedict have to do with Naoko?"
"Nothing, just--forget it. Look, Jen, nobody likes to hear about these things from a third party. I mean, would you?"
She sighed. "I guess not. I just think it's a shame. And I think Lieutenant Mitchell's a bloodworm."
"I realize you're off duty, Ensign Harlan," the commander said mildly, without looking up from his padd, "but you really shouldn't call your superiors names. Not in public, anyway."
"Nossir! Sorry, sir."
"Of course," he added, fixing thoughtful hazel eyes on them, "You really ought to be apologizing to Lt. Mitchell. But I think I'll let you off, since it's a first offence. It is a first offence?" They nodded vigorously. "Good," he smiled, rising and picking up his half-full tray. "Now, if you'll excuse me, gentles, I'm due on the bridge."
They watched him leave. When he had gone, McLaughlin said, "I give it a week, tops."
She ignored that. "How much do you think he heard?"
"Everything after 'Lieutenant Mitchell,' most likely," McLaughlin sighed.
"Well," Harlan said judiciously, "he is a very decorative bloodworm."
The ship's XO shrugged, stepping down to the command deck and standing next to him. "I made some headway on the requisition list, anyway."
"What, you didn't finish it? Unlike you, Jim."
Kirk smiled crookedly. "There were some crewmen talking about me behind my back, and I thought having to do it to my face was crimping their style. So I left."
"Did you at least finish your lunch?"
"No, but I made a brilliant discovery."
"What's that?"
"The crew thinks I'm a nitwit."
The Captain blinked. "What makes you say that?"
"Just some things they said."
"Hmm. It's not good when a crew doesn't respect its commanders, Jim. If you want that promotion--"
"Oh, no, sir, they weren't showing disrespect, exactly. They weren't talking about anything professional. They just think I have the vision of a mole and the common sense of a house fly. I think I may be the only person on the whole damn ship with any sense of discretion whatever."
"I see." They pondered the starfield for a long moment, and then Captain Wesley delicately inquired, "Mitch?"
Jim swore.
This would not have been important, except that her boyfriend had somehow found out about it, and had apparently memorized the damn poem between lunch and dinner. He had been taking great delight in harping on her 'lovely face' all evening. She wondered how many of his working hours were taken up by work.
If he didn't shut up soon she was going to start quoting the tail end of Tam Lin at him, the part about taking out the knights grey eyes. He'd always called her Elaine; he believed in calling people by their given names. But this was ridiculous. The Commander was obviously a saint.
Which reminded her.
"Mitch?"
"Lady?"
"Cut it out, okay? I need to talk to you."
He flopped obligingly next to her on the bed, crossing his arms behind his head and blinking up at her with a show of innocence they both knew was bull. "What about?"
"About what are you going to do about Commander Kirk?"
He eyeballed her, and she wondered fleetingly what color her nose had turned. "Why should I do anything about James?"
"He has to know something. And if he doesn't, he will soon. We won't be able to just get away with us like this for much longer."
He grinned up at her. "James grew up in this tiny little town where the only way to survive was by only seeing what you're supposed to see. Don't worry about him."
"But everybody knows, Mitch," she objected. "Gorman gave me the nastiest look when I reported for duty this morning."
He laughed. "James hasn't gossiped since he was a midshipman. Besides, do you really think anybody would tell him?"
Looking down at his steel eyes, she had to admit that that would be a phenomenally stupid and possibly suicidal thing to do. "You're right," she said. "That would be a phenomenally stupid and possibly suicidal thing to do. But so would refusing. I've seen people he's wanted information from, Mitch."
He laughed again, this time affectionately. She didn't think the affection was for her. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. "He doesn't pull that shit with his crew, Elaine. The only reason he was never a boy scout is that they have no sense of humor."
Naoko Lowell did not ordinarily work in Personnel. She was there on light duty that week, after having taken a disrupter blast to the hip on her last mission. She was technically healed, but Doc said her bones needed some time to strengthen before she started throwing herself around again like the rest of the Security goons. She would be back in Security the next day, doing her own job. In the course of that job, she had witnessed a number of interrogations.
She had also not witnessed a number of interrogations. Those were the ones where Commander Kirk took the suspect into a very small room with no monitor, closed the door, and came out again three hours later looking grim and grey. This was her cue to go into the room.
Sometimes the suspect would pronounce willingness to confess. Sometimes she would have been given orders to escort the suspect to the mess and stuff them full of chicken soup, or their cultural equivalent. Regardless of their guilt or innocence, they always needed the soup.
Once, the Chief of Security had gotten fed up, and asked if the Commander would please stop terrorizing the prisoners and just let her do her job. She had been told, "I do. You're a military man. I'm a cop."
The Commander's refusal to tell the difference between uniformed men and women, except for Mitch, was legendary, although off-duty he was as appreciative of a low neckline as the next guy. There was a joke going around that the new miniskirt uniforms HQ was considering were his fault.
He explained that away, along with the rocky pattern of his speech, by saying that gendered words made him nervous, because Standard was his absolutely worst language except for English. The worst part was that he seemed to be serious. This made the Communications officer nervous. Many things about the Commander made Naoko nervous.
"I think you're underestimating him," she said. She said he was complacent because the Commander loved him. She didn't say what she needed to say, because that would be prying, which she had agreed not to do, and confirmation, which she didn't want. If she got it, she'd have to admit to herself that Mitch wasn't here because of her.
He scoffed. "Lady, I know the kid upside down. Believe me, you don't have to worry about him."
"Oh, no?"
"No. What you need to worry about is whether Doc's going to see you in the rec room five minutes from now, and how badly I'm going to beat you at tennis."
"Oh, ick. Tennis, Mitch? Really?"
"It'll be good for your hip."
She made a face at him. "Only if you'll take a water shower with me afterwards. I have this new soap I want to try out. Jasmine."
He squnched his nose right back at her. "All right, but I have to get back to my quarters by twenty-one-hundred."
"You say that every night," she complained. "I don't see why you can't let the Commander go to sleep by himself. He's a big boy. Why don't you just stay over?"
Grey eyes widened, honestly appalled. She could tell the difference by now. "I couldn't do that!"
Wesley had told him later that the kid had woken himself and everybody else up screaming in the middle of the first night, which had been less than helpful, and since then he'd simply kept the watches. All of them.
If it had been anybody else, Mitchell would have called, "Foul! Emotional blackmail!" But Kirk, although he probably did have the self-discipline to stay up for five nights to teach Mitchell a lesson, would never have considered it an option. Not under ordinary circumstances, and certainly not an a mission that had gone fubar.
And he did have nightmares, Mitchell knew he did. At the academy, no one had been willing to room with him because of them. People had tried. They had all stayed friends with him, but one of his nicknames for a while had been 'Worse Than Snores.'
This name had faded out of use once Mitchell had, of necessity, bought a pair of earplugs and moved in. He had only needed them for the first week. After the second, he had thrown them away.
They had been assigned to different ships, for a while. Mitchell had asked, joking around, how the kid had survived without him. The kid, not joking at all, had gone to the shelf above his bed and tossed over a wholesale-sized bottle of really strong sleeping medication. It was empty, except for the three lonely pills rattling around on the bottom.
He had asked, once, why the nightmares never seemed to pop up around him anymore. James had thought about it for a minute. Then he had shrugged his eyebrows, and smiled, and said, "Guess I must trust you. Pretty dumb, right?" And Mitchell had laughed, and agreed, and kissed him thoroughly.
When he thought about it now, he thought it was worse than pretty dumb. He thought it was awful. Everything he'd told Elaine was true, but all of his nice, rational reasons were swallowed up in the greater truth. James still slept around him, therefore James still trusted him. Simple as that. Equally simple was the fact that Mitchell could not bear to break that trust.
Of course, it could be argued that he was doing that by seeing Elaine at all. But that was okay. James understood cheating; did it himself all the time. Ask the review board of his Kobayashi Maru. And they'd had periods of mutual infidelity before, although those had been agreed on in advance, and mostly occasioned by absence. But he would not understand being abandoned, and Mitchell didn't intend to teach him.
Their little ritual was getting more painful every night.
It had started a few weeks ago, when the Engineering Chief had gotten his fool self killed playing around with some alien technology and there had been a resultant explosion of paperwork with a deadline attached. As long as Mitchell had known James, the kid had carried a padd under his arm so that he could work on his homework, and later his paperwork, at odd moments. Mitchell preferred to just sit down in the evenings and get it all out of the way. The result of this was that he often ended up staying awake later than James strictly had to.
James usually waited up for him when this happened. He'd sit up at his desk, studying Xenophon and snickering over Suetonius, or reading his mail, or writing yet another mysterious something that he wouldn't tell Mitchell about, or talking to people in the electronic Common Room, and then they'd go to bed together.
By the time of the transfer, however, Mitchell had started seeing Elaine, and in an attempt to keep his beta shifts free he'd gotten started later than usual. James had played a game of chess with himself, book in hand, and chatted in the ship-net Common Room until the stylus kept sliding from his hand, and finally slipped into bed with his book of old Roman gossip. He knew better than to offer help; knew how defensive Mitchell got about how much smaller his own workload was, and how much longer it seemed to take him.
When Mitchell had looked over at him he was, judging from the thickness of the unread pages, at the part about Caligula, which usually invited suppressed hilarity, but he was only smiling a little in between yawns. He'd looked up, and seen Mitchell watching him. "Gary," he'd said, "I'm bushed. You about done over there?"
"Wish I was," he'd said with regret, bone tired and aching with it, and just wanting to curl up on one of the James' broad shoulders. "But I've got this whole stack to get done so you and Wesley can talk it over tomorrow."
James had yawned again, and grimaced. "I'd love to tell you to do it in the morning, but Captain really does need it stat."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it. You do what needs doing. Just turn out the main light, all right?"
"Sure, kid. You gonna be okay?"
James had tilted his head quizzically. "Depends. Going somewhere?"
"To the com-unit later, maybe, get some coffee."
"I'll be fine. Just don't take a shower when I'm in REM sleep, okay?"
He'd laughed. "Not a problem. Want my shirt to shnuggle?" James had grinned, and thrown a pillow at him, and said he'd outgrown make-believe years ago.
This had been, he was pretty sure, after he'd fallen out of love, since he had already been chasing Elaine. But he hadn't known it at the time, which made a difference. He was still doing the same thing, but now it was out of avoidance rather than necessity.
James, who was a lot sharper than Mitchell would ever admit to giving him credit for, had picked up on this at some level. The waiting while he did his paperwork was getting grimmer, and his wit was starting to bite, and little glints of steel kept showing up in the hazel eyes at unexpected moments. He was, Mitchell suspected, starting to exercise the discipline that had kept him up for five nights in a row. And he didn't like that at all, for more reasons than one.
He couldn't pinpoint the shift in his feelings. It wasn't James, he knew it wasn't. The kid had said nothing, done nothing, thought nothing to put him off.
Maybe it was when there had started to be rumors about a possible promotion for a certain very young commander, and he had realized that he was always going to be the professional second to a farm boy several years his junior who had had, when they met, all the social graces of a mocked Vulcan. He hadn't thought it mattered at the time; he had realized it, and sighed, and thought he had accepted it. Maybe he had. Maybe it was just one of those things.
He had just started thinking things that hadn't occurred to him since Janice Lester. For example, when a landing party had left him behind again, he had thought, 'Won't it be fun to watch him gape at the mess when he gets back' instead of 'Goddammit, two whole days,' and when it was Jim's turn to mind the ship he'd grumbled to himself, 'I bet he cleans up my side of the room again.' He had stopped trying to find out what it was James wrote at night, and what language it was written in--dismissing it, for the first time in eight years, as just one of the kid's many secrets, and none of his business.
James was still the only man he'd been attracted to since he was a plebe, and still attractive, but he'd started noticing women again. Not the way James noticed animals and oceans and skies, either, not as something to point out and share for aesthetic value.
It wasn't that he was less proud of the kid than he had been. It wasn't every ship whose exec did triple duty as helmsman and tactical officer and still found time to keep a thumb on the pulse of morale, although he'd heard that one of the Constitution-class starships had a second officer who doubled as Chief Science Officer. James did more work than any four people he knew, but he still had time for a social life as well as time for Mitchell, time to read his old books, and time to sleep. And he still complained about being underutilized, although much less with Wesley than he had under Komack. It was just that it was... odd, when he thought about it, and he hadn't thought about it before.
He certainly didn't respect him any less. James knew people and power like no one else he knew, besides the Captain, and he was nice about it. Even when he was seriously pissed off he never yelled at anybody or made outright threats (he was more likely to do that with a big, manic grin on his face, and those were more absurd than practical), and his occasional temper blizzards were mostly well deserved and always terrifying.
But then he'd go down to the gym, refuse all workout partners, and pound the stuffing out of some defenseless bag until his face was red and his hands were bleeding. Eventually, Mitchell had realized that he was so controlled, not because he was naturally cold-blooded, but because he had figured out, somewhere along the line, that it worked better. But apart from the occasional deep-throated snarl at bigots when they'd been at the Academy, he'd always been like that.
And that was wrong, wasn't it? He had been, and still was, too young for that kind of applied calculation. After all, they were Fleet, not the Marines.
And there had been times when the kid had mock-threatened someone and his smile looked very sharp, and his chin slid into determination, and his eyes got this calculating gleam like he'd actually thought about his imprecation and was perfectly capable of carrying it out, go ahead, make his day. And that was even scarier than the blizzards, because you never knew what was going to set it off, or even what had, most of the time.
Lately Mitchell had found himself, instead of hoping that the unfortunate would push too far so they could all watch the fireworks (which they never did; in the face of a smile like that, pushing was practically an application for the Darwin award), feeling very, very nervous.
He liked James as much as ever. That wasn't even in question. They spent nearly as much time just hanging out as they ever had. Well, proportionately, anyway, when you considered that James was obviously snatching hours out of thin air. Mitchell had never been anything but glad of it. Except when he'd done something the kid considered amoral, that is.
They certainly hadn't run out of things to say. The kid was an explorer serving on an exploratory vessel, and he could turn work into personal philosophy in three seconds flat. They still made jokes about things nobody else considered amusing in the slightest.
They were still each other's best workout partners, although James had recently started advantage of the new double-gravity setting for the gym, which meant Mitchell was having to work harder to keep up with him. He was still the only one on board who could beat the kid at poker on a regular basis, and the only one who could make him work for his chess victories. And nobody, but nobody, could poke fun at old holovids as effectively as James T. Kirk. Except for one Gareth Mitchell, of course.
He even loved him as much as ever. He was fairly sure about that. There were still times when he'd look up on the bridge, catch the kid's eye, exchange smiles, think, 'What the hell does he see in me,' and have to pretend to pay very close attention to his work for a while. He'd still wake up hours before alpha shift, and look at the innocence lying next to him, and remember the nightmares and think, fiercely, 'Not while I'm alive.' And they were still sweet together, and comforting, and everything that meant home.
It was just that--well, the attraction between them had never been feigned, but lately Mitchell felt like he had to force it. He'd look at James's face and he wouldn't see the straight nose, or the bright eyes, or the soft brows, or the high forehead, not the mouth that was really more his than James', not the jaw that was fey and solid by turns as its owner felt like an Aries or a Pisces, or the eyelids that were curiously Asian for someone so obviously Occidental--or Accidental, as James would say, with that lopsided smile.
He'd look at James's face and just see 'James' face,' a whole entity, a mask he couldn't see through without effort, without thinking about it. He never had that spontaneous urge to grab the kid and run away with him anymore, and when James came to him it was--different. More and more often, he would sidle up hesitantly, as though he expected to get kicked for his trouble. It was annoying as hell. Mitchell wouldn't say anything, but it did irritate him, and then James would suddenly be several feet away, as though he actually had been kicked, and Mitchell never saw him jump. This was even worse. In fact, it was becoming intolerable.
He was starting to wonder if James, with his easy way with people and his reliable hunches, wasn't a bit more of a sensitive than anyone suspected. He knew for a fact that James had barely squeaked by on a number of tests he knew damn well that the kid could have aced easily. He also knew that James had done this deliberately, to keep from getting shunted into some division other than command.
None of this was incriminating evidence, exactly. But James was disturbingly good at innocently flubbing tests and playing dumb; he had a real knack for it. Mitchell was starting to wonder if maybe he'd somehow managed to flub his psi-tests as well.
It really bothered him that one day, out of the blue, he had realized that he was taking James for granted, except when the kid was scaring the hell out of him. That was the day after he had stopped flirting with Elaine, and started actively pursuing her. Winning her over hadn't taken long. It bothered him that he seemed to be essentially monogamous, because he hadn't been able to touch James since that day. It bothered him that he couldn't be effectively monogamous as well, because what he saw right now when he looked at James bothered him more than anything else.
The kid was hunched over his book, scowling at it. It was the Xenophon; the Suetonius hadn't made an appearance in days, and Mitchell suspected that it was collecting dust. The versatile chin was definitely in Aries mode; beyond stubbornness even though it was only late evening. The eyes were somewhere between bewildered child, teenager in a snit, and traumatized POW. James had a very useful whipped-puppy look.
This wasn't it. This was the expression of a kitten whose trusted person had taken it to the vet to be declawed, of a very young tom who was going to be a long time trusting anybody again, and who was going to hurt someone if he could only figure out how, and who to blame.
This was not ignorable. As Mitch saw it, he had three choices. He could try to talk it out, he could leave the room, or he could climb into bed.
He turned off his padd and started changing. James looked up warily, and when he checked the chronometer his eyes flashed wide, and then his face went frighteningly blank. His lips parted.
"Don't talk," said Gary.