Title: That Something
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, McCoy, other
Summary: Normally I don’t write K/M or possible K/M without a prompt, but this sort of … happened. Three different possibilities, three different perspectives of what might or might not be between two people. Enjoy.

When he turns to look, he knows he shouldn’t be surprised at what he sees. He shouldn’t feel jealous either, but he does.

“Heeeey,” slurs Kirk, spotting him at the bar. Loudly, “Wha-whatcha doin’ over there?” The drunk man smacks the seat of the empty chair next to his in a show of come here, buddy, frowns at the sudden stinging of his palm, and chastises his hand for doing a dumb thing. A group of people near Kirk’s table laugh up their sleeves at such antics.

Sighing, he turns back to the bar and pretends the invitation was never issued and takes a healthy swallow of his beer. If he gives in to temptation, if he goes to Kirk, it’s all over. Life is pretty good right now—minus that one thing he wants but can’t have—and so he would be smart not to fuck anything up.

A good looking stranger sits down on his left, chats him up, and he allows it, all the while hearing the sound of Kirk’s voice behind him. Kirk is flirting with somebody and, unlike him, is genuine about it.

Drunk is as drunk does, he guesses.

When the stranger offers to buy him another drink, he stalls the bartender’s nod with “Make it a double scotch.”

Time to mean his flirting, too—otherwise he might leave the bar alone tonight.

When he turns to look, he knows he shouldn’t be surprised at what he sees. He shouldn’t feel jealous either, but he does.

“Hey, good lookin’,” says a sweet voice. He ignores the newcomer at his elbow, and the person gets up, disgusted at the outright rejection, and goes looking for other, more pliable company.

Someone is talking to McCoy, too, and for once McCoy isn’t shoving the company away. Maybe it’s because the man is drunk enough to miss his glass of dark, pungent liquor on the first try. Second time McCoy wraps his fingers around the glass and lifts it to his mouth. He licks his lips afterwards.

This is torture. Sheer torture.

How did he botch things up so badly that he can’t even sit across from McCoy and pretend not to stare at the delicious curve of the man’s jaw or the way McCoy bows his mouth when peeved? Shit, but he loves that mouth, even when it’s bitching.

He turns back to the bar and waits for an invitation that will never come. The beer in his hand is all he has, which has already lost its appeal. He waves down the bartender and asks for something stronger. “Doesn’t matter,” he replies when the guy questions what he likes. “I’ll drink it even if I hate it.”

With a shrug, the bartender makes a drink that will burn a hole in his gut.

If he’s drunk, he has that much more in common with McCoy. If he’s too drunk, someone will come along to collect him and take him back to the dorm and, hopefully, ignore his blabbering on about how love sucks.

McCoy’s company entices McCoy from his table and onto the dance floor. They lean into each other. Sadly, when the bartender sets down his new glass of kill brain cells by the thousands, it reflects the couple perfectly—so perfectly, in fact, that he abandons the drink untouched, pays his tab, and heads back to campus himself, sick and utterly sober.

When he turns to look, he knows he shouldn’t be surprised at what he sees. He shouldn’t feel jealous either, but he does.

They are together again, laughing, their bodies shifting with subtle signals of attraction. When they show up at his bar, sometimes individually (and so one comes looking for the other if necessary) or sometimes as a pair, they always leave with each other. The dark-haired one will order a bourbon and take his time nursing a glass of it, unless his eyes are sad—then it’s a drink every few minutes until the next drink is taken away and put back on the bar to be dumped down the drain. The blond-haired man will go through two beers on a slow night and close to four beers when he is wound tight with tension. During the times when one of them outdoes himself, the other hauls him out the back of the bar and, no doubt, holds him up while he pukes.

They are something, those two. In fact, he thinks they are something so special to one another, if they weren’t together he would never see either of them. Something worth holding onto.

And it makes him angry.

They brush arms or legs, oblivious, and he wants to yell in their faces Don’t you see what you’ve got? Don’t you damn well SEE? because he knows, too, that they don’t.

Instead he scours the bartop with a rag or fills the next order with more force than necessary to the keg taps or glassware. His clients think he is a gruff, unhappy man by nature. Truthfully he’s just a man that once lost someone special to him, being an idiot, and he hates seeing history repeat itself. Except he opened a bar, again being an idiot, and if a bar isn’t the best place to fuck up a relationship…

But they have that something between them. So he watches, and he hopes, and he slams down bottles when they act stupid. And one day, when they are gone—as all Academy students go eventually, getting their first assignments or getting married or dropping out or dying in the black—he will have to start watching another pair for the same raw, beautiful connection.

Yet out of the many kinds of people that have crowded this place over the years, they are the best ones he has seen. Yeah, he’ll be sad when they go but in the meantime, he thinks, those two had better not fuck love up while in his bar. He’s got a bottle of tequila just for that, and isn’t for drinking.

They push out their chairs and get up. One of them heads toward him while pulling out of a roll of credits. He notes the other moves to the door but doesn’t leave yet, not until his companion joins him.

“How much?” he is asked.

“Tonight?” he echoes, pretending to give it some thought. But he already knows what he’s going to say. “On the house.”

The other man grins, says “Wow, thanks, man!” and stuffs the money back into his pocket. “I can’t ever tell when you’re going to say that.”

When you don’t fuck up. He shrugs, turns his attention to a wet spot on the bar, and wipes it away. “Was just a couple of beers. Now get out.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be back,” the one named Jim promises as he strides away to join the one named Bones.

Good. He needs to see that they make a go of it. Such damn, real potential, those two.

-Fini

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