Why Not?

Date:

6

Title: Why Not? (#2, You Have My Heart)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3860
POV: Jim’s
Summary: WHY NOT: During academy days, Jim and Leonard used to play a game they called “Why Not.” Some of the Why Nots were things like: fly a kite in the Golden Gate Park; climb the tree outside Captain Pike’s office and attach something silly to his window; order a different color drink in every bar on one block. Just silly, stupid stuff. Once aboard the Enterprise, the practice kind of dies out until one Valentine’s Day. And then what happens?
A/N: Read the companion piece to this from Bones’ POV here by sullcat!
Other Prompts: I’m Yours | Bonus
Or read at AO3


There have been a lot of why-nots in Jim Kirk’s life. Mostly, they make him look impulsive, reckless and often stupid; but his rule of thumb has always been: don’t give a flying fuck. So he doesn’t, not when he kisses Iowa goodbye at the age of seventeen, sending in the rest of his senior year testing (all completed and one-hundred percent accurate) as a message of ‘see, I don’t need to be here’ then taking off with a group of city-hoppers to see what life is all about, and not when he comes rolling back into Iowa at the age of twenty-three having seen too much of the underbelly of carefree living.

It isn’t until he joins Starfleet and meets Leonard McCoy (Bones, his Bones) that the why-nots settle down into something less harmful to himself and closer to mischievous and fun. He kind of wishes he had thought to use the why-nots that way in the first place. Maybe there is a reason, he sometimes thinks, that he had to experience the uglier side of his destiny first before he could live its better half.

Or maybe everything good about life is simply due to the arrival of Bones.

It occurs to Jim, then, that he needs to come up with the most important why-not of his life—and he has to get Leonard McCoy to agree to it. The trouble is that they haven’t made time for a why-not in so long Jim is uncertain if Leonard still appreciates the game.

Well, he decides, there is a way around that too.

~~~

Jim starts simple. He places an order with Botany. “This is a highly confidential matter,” he tells them.

“What do you need us to do, sir?” they ask, instantly snapping to attention, for it isn’t often that the Captain visits the department with such a solemn request.

“Flowers,” Jim says. “I need flowers.”

They blink.

“And I need them sent to the head of Sickbay anonymously—” He pauses to clear his throat. “—with this card.” Jim presents a small white square to the nearest botanist.

The woman takes it carefully and reads it aloud. “Why not accept a flower from an admirer?

All four botanists blush at the same time.

Jim straightens and locks his hands behind his back in an unconscious imitation of his First Officer and asks in his most serious tone, “Can you do it?”

“Oh yeah,” another botanists replies. “But only because you’re the captain, Captain. Now what kind of flowers do you want the, ah, recipient to get?”

Jim thinks for a moment. “Exotic,” he settles on.

The group nods as though Jim has made the best possible choice. Jim leaves them to the task, knowing he is in good hands.

~~~

Jim is alternating between bites of salad and dessert when the table at which he is sitting rattles to signify the arrival of his CMO, who drops heavily into the empty seat beside him.

Because Leonard looks harried, Jim comments, “I thought you were too busy to come to lunch.”

In response, Leonard slaps a palm down on the tabletop, startling several other people in the mess hall badly enough that they drop their utensils. When Leonard removes his hand, Jim is staring down at a white card with a familiar typeset.

Leonard’s harried expression turns into a glower. “Busy, Jim? I was in a war zone! Somebody thought it was a good idea to stick sentient plant life in my office.”

Jim swallows a mouthful of lettuce before he chokes on it. “So it wasn’t a good idea?”

“It, by which I mean Gertrude—that’s what Sulu crooned to the damn thing when I told him to come get it or I’d set it on fire—tried to bite me and ate all of my styluses. What do you think?”

“Uh, it’s the thought that counts?”

“When I find out who did this, I’ll show ’em what counts,” Leonard replies darkly.

Jim shifts uncomfortably in his seat and slides the rest of his dessert over to Leonard. “Sorry.”

Leonard looks at him strangely, as if to ask for what? but soon decides there is a much more interesting issue at hand. “Is this cake? How did you get this, Jim?”

“From the replicator?” Jim reaches out with his fork to scoop up some icing. Even replicator-made, it’s still plenty sweet.

“I was very specific with your meal card, Captain. It didn’t include chocolate cake.”

Red alert, Jim thinks.

“Spock?” he calls, craning his neck around to look behind him. “Would you look at that? I think my First is trying to tell me to get my ass to the Bridge. Gotta go!”

Leonard frowns and looks too. “I don’t see—”

But Jim is already well on his way to his escape, the last of the cake slice in his hand.

~~~

“This is important, Scotty.”

Jim’s Chief Engineer makes a noise of agreement but doesn’t look any less wary. “Aye, Captain,” he says. “When it comes to a man’s drink, it’s always important.”

Jim can guess where this conversation is headed. “Look, I’m not asking for details here. Whoever your supplier is, that’s between you and him. Just get me the good stuff.”

Behind Scotty lurks Keenser, whose unblinking stare has unnerved Jim since the beginning of their conversation. Now, as Jim brings up the subject of supplier, Keenser melts into a nearby shadow like he was never really there. Jim thinks he should be the one who proceeds with caution.

Scotty clears his throat and prompts, “The good stuff being?”

“Bourbon.”

The man’s eyes widen. “Is this for—?”

Yes,” Jim hisses, cutting him off. He pulls out a card. “Leave it in his quarters along with this, okay?”

As Scotty reads the message, his surprise morphs into a disturbing kind of amusement. The man tsks to himself.

Jim hopes they don’t have to drag this conversation out any more than necessary. He is now officially afraid of what else Scotty might say.

But all Scotty does is murmur, “Done,” and pocket the card.

“The price?” Jim wants to know.

“I’ll let you know,” Scotty assures him before walking away.

~~~

The difficult part is waiting because Jim is, in general, an impatient man once he has decided on a course of action. So he waits and waits, and when the expected call doesn’t come, he heads to McCoy’s quarters on his own.

Leonard is obviously startled to find Jim outside his quarters. “Something up, kid?” he asks when their eyes meet.

Jim shakes his head in the negative and smiles brightly. “Aren’t you going to invite me in, Bones?”

With a slight shrug, Leonard steps aside.

“I thought I would stop by to see how things are. We’ve both been too busy lately for our usual—” Jim stops talking almost immediately once he realizes Leonard is not alone.

“Greetings, Captain.”

“Spock,” Jim replies, slowly taking in the scene. Spock, seated at the only table in Leonard’s room, is nearest the bottle of bourbon which had cost Jim a five-year subscription to an exclusive engineering journal. There are also two shot glasses on the table, both of them full.

Jim sinks his teeth into his bottom lip to keep from saying something he shouldn’t.

“Want a drink?” Leonard offers, moving towards the table. “It’s good stuff.”

“I know,” Jim replies faintly. At Spock’s inquiring look, he indicates the label of the bottle. “That’s a rare brand—and not one I would have thought to see on a starship, Bones.”

“Ain’t it, though? It’s the darnedest thing… It was just waiting for me when I got off shift.”

Too casually, Jim circles the table and picks up a crinkled white card. He reads, “Why not share a drink with someone who cares? …I see. So you called Spock.”

Leonard bursts out laughing.

Spock does not look particularly perturbed by this amusement at his expense. “As I believe you are well-aware, Captain, I do not partake of such beverages.”

“I’ve been trying to get him to have a sip anyway. He’s damn stubborn.”

“It is not I who is persistent, Dr. McCoy. I believe, however, we have discussed all that was necessary. I shall take my leave now.” He stands up, locking his hands behind his back and moves toward the door.

Jim’s disappointment dissipates. “Spock, wait. Stay. Clearly I am the intruder here. I’ll go.”

“Captain, I would not seek to deprive you of your time with Dr. McCoy.”

“And you’re not,” Jim argues. “Finish your conversation with Bones. I can—”

“Oh, knock it off, both of you,” interrupts the man in question, who pulls out a chair and sits down. “Somebody help me finish this bottle.”

“On it,” Jim instantly nominates himself, finding himself a chair.

“Gentlemen, gift or not, is it wise to imbibe the entire contents of a highly alcoholic concoction before a shift change?”

“What’s the matter, Spock? Afraid we’ll get too drunk and embarrass ourselves?”

“You could keep an eye on us,” Jim points out.

For some reason, this makes Leonard snicker into his shot glass. “He’d never. Drunk humans offend his delicate sensibilities.”

Spock returns to his abandoned chair and sits down as well.

Jim declares on Spock’s behalf, “Challenge accepted!” Both he and Leonard laugh in delight.

There is a glimmer in Spock’s eyes which could be akin to amusement.

He’s finally loosening up, Jim thinks, pleased, and raises his shot glass in a toast. “To the Enterprise. To good times.”

“To friends,” Leonard adds.

They both down their shots, and Spock pours each of them a second round.

~~~

“I can do zat!” Pavel Chekov tells Jim earnestly, clutching a white card and a heart-shaped box filled with various delectable candies.

“Great, thank you!” Jim expresses with equal enthusiasm. “Just make certain he doesn’t see you.”

Da.” Chekov turns for the door but stops short. “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you not simply tell Dr. McCoy that you like him?”

Jim tries to explain his reasoning. “It’s… well, the card tells him.”

Chekov frowns at the card. “But it only has a question and no name.”

“It’s complicated,” Jim says, “and kind of… special. Just between Bones and me.”

Chekov doesn’t look entirely convinced but he does not ask any other questions. More importantly, as he goes, he seems willing enough to help Jim win Leonard over.

~~~

Pavel comes back less than an hour later, his distress palpable. “I’m sorry, Keptin,” he apologizes over and over again.

Jim, feeling terrible that his youngest officer and friend feels terrible, puts a comforting arm around the man’s narrow shoulders. “What happened?”

Pavel scratches at a red spot on his neck. He seems to be sweating, Jim notices.

To re-focus Chekov’s attention, Jim adds a tiny bit of steel to his voice. “What happened?”

“I got caught—I zink.”

“You think?”

“When ze doctor saw me putting ze box on his desk, I said I had just found zem and was curious.” Pavel scratches more furiously at his neck. “But, but I do not zink he believed me! Am I going to die?” He looks at Jim, his eyes round and questioning.

Pressing his mouth into a flat line, Jim pulls Pavel’s hand away from his neck. “Did he say what shot he gave you?”

“Witamins?”

Jim winces. “Yeah, okay. It’ll itch like hell for a few days.”

Pavel covers the spot again and looks more distressed. “About ze message, Keptin… He threw it away.”

Jim sighs soundlessly. “It’s okay,” he tells Chekov. “Thank you for trying.”

“But your question…”

Jim takes Chekov’s face between his hands. “You did what you could, Pavel. At ease.” He drops his hands. “Someone will cover your shift. I suspect you are going to feel sleepy in a few minutes anyway. Might as well go rest up.”

Pavel nods and, head bowed, accepts his dismissal.

Jim sighs again and murmurs to himself, “Ah, Bones…”

~~~

Over the next few days, Jim continues to drop hints with little white cards and various gifts. Leonard seems oblivious or just downright unaffected until the day he storms Jim’s quarters to announce, “I have a stalker.”

Jim pauses with his shirt around his head. “What?”

Stalker,” Leonard repeats. “At first I thought it was Pavel but he tucks his tail between his legs if I even glance in his direction. So it’s somebody sneakier… and somebody who knows me pretty well.”

Jim finishes pulling down his top. “Then it must be someone you know.”

“Maybe.” Leonard huffs and drags a hand through his hair. “I just don’t get what they want. I don’t need presents, and I sure as hell don’t need a person.”

Jim turns away. “Is that all you came to say? Because I was about to visit the gym.”

“Oh,” Leonard says, “sorry. I thought… never mind. See you later?” But he doesn’t wait for a response, instead moving toward the door through which he had just recently barrelled.

Jim turns and takes a hold of Leonard’s arm to stall him. “Bones, hold on a minute. It could just be an infatuation, you know. It’s that time of year.”

Leonard stares at him.

“Valentine’s,” Jim clarifies.

“Valen—oh. Well I guess. But you know I haven’t celebrated that since…” Looking uncomfortable, he doesn’t finish the sentence.

Bu then again he doesn’t have to finish it when speaking to Jim. Jim nods in understanding. “Sorry you’re having a time of it, Bones. I’ll see what I can do.”

“I doubt there is anything you can do, unless you know who wants to drive me crazy.”

Jim smiles slightly. “Never underestimate the power of a starship captain.”

Leonard covers Jim’s hand with his own, just briefly, before patting it. “Thanks, kid. Even if you can’t do much, thanks. I knew I could count on you.”

Jim lets him go. When the cabin door slides shut behind Leonard, Jim drops his chin to his chest and curses succinctly, “Shit.”

~~~

Why not? Jim ponders later that night, eyes closed. Why not me, Bones? He wishes he had an answer. He wishes even more he could ask the question.

Jim’s eyes fly open, and he sits up in bed. Simmering with excitement, he goes to his desk and opens a drawer, pulling out a small supply of cardstock he had recently acquired. Forgoing the computer altogether, he carries the stack back to his sleeping cabin. On a shelf by his bed is an unadorned box. Inside it he keeps small treasures—gifts and mementos from family and friends and long-ago adventures. Inside is something he has never used before out of fear he would never have another like it once it stopped working.

Now seems to be the appropriate time to take the risk. Jim retrieves the ball-point pen and, holding it carefully between forefinger and thumb, goes to work.

~~~

There are things to know about Leonard. One of them is that you don’t catch him unawares in public or shit hits the fan in a major way. (Jim doesn’t really want an audience, so he is okay with conceding this point.) The other thing is that you don’t come at him on his home ground. It makes Leonard McCoy very, very prickly and, as Pavel so unfortunately discovered, it makes him vengeful.

Thus, Jim asks his CMO to meet him in the Ready Room during the middle of a regular shift and promptly hands over the conn to Spock.

Though it takes merely minutes for Leonard to arrive, to Jim it feels like hours. He catches himself in three separate instances of starting to pace the length of the room and has to tell himself to calm down. To give nothing away. This is the confrontation where confidence matters most.

McCoy enters the Ready Room with a cautious “Captain?” Maybe Leonard expected a meeting to already be in progress; his expression is fairly surprised when he finds Jim standing alone.

Jim smiles and steps toward him. Wordlessly, he brings the stack of white cards out from behind his back and offers the topmost one to his friend.

“What’s this about?” Leonard wants to know as he takes the card. Once he glances down at it, the look on his face changes to one of recognition.

The simple question is: Why not?

“Jim… what is this?”

Jim hands him the second card.

Why not need someone who knows what you like?

Leonard opens his mouth, but makes no sound, then closes his mouth into a grim line when Jim offers him the next card.

Why not need someone who cares about you?

“…So it was you?” Leonard asks softly, meeting his eyes.

Jim gives him another one.

Why not need someone who can make you laugh?

A hint of something different, distraught, comes and goes in Leonard’s eyes.

Jim holds out the next card.

Why not need someone who needs you back?

Leonard snaps. “Enough already! Jim, I don’t—I didn’t—” The man takes a steadying breath, then mutters a curse as if Jim has proceeded to frustrate him beyond measure. “Damn.”

When Jim tries to give him yet another card, his friend refuses to take it. Closing the last of the distance between them, Jim concedes this part of the battle and instead lifts the card up for the man to see.

If someone can do all these things, why not? The two words are underlined twice.

Leonard pushes the card aside. “What are you really asking me?”

Jim’s next card has a smiley face and Isn’t it obvious?

Leonard glances down at the five cards in his hand before seeming to make up his mind. “You should have said something yesterday.”

I couldn’t say anything last time because you had it in your mind that you hated me.

“What?” The word is sharp. “My god, man, I don’t hate you.”

If you hate the admirer, you hate me.

“That’s the worst logic I’ve ever heard!”

Jim almost pulls out the card I am well-versed in logic but decides against it. With half the battle over, he tucks the remainder of the cards away and cocks his head like he expects Leonard to make the next move.

Bones is nervous, that much Jim can see. And he won’t make a move because he doesn’t think he has any to make.

Good.

“More one question,” Jim tells him, noticing that when he speaks, Leonard jumps a little. “Then you can go.”

“All right,” says Leonard.

“It’s a question I asked myself,” Jim adds.

“I said all right, Jim.”

Jim asks, “Why not fall in love with your best friend?”

“I do love you,” Leonard answers immediately, if quietly.

“There’s a difference, Bones.”

“I know that.” Because Jim is clearly waiting to hear the rest, Leonard goes on to say, “You said ‘why not’. Why-nots are a game. What am I supposed to think?”

“No,” Jim disagrees, “they were never just a game. Even back at the Academy, Bones. Everything we did together—I valued that. I value you. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

“Jim…”

“Let me finish, okay?”

Leonard closes his mouth and nods.

“I told you back then I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have just because I could.”

Leonard nods again.

“So you suggested we deliberately choose better from there on out, that we make silly, ridiculous, happy memories instead of ones we would regret.” Jim smiles at a particularly good memory. “Remember Barnett’s face when he believed there had been a cadet orgy in his office while he was on vacation?”

Leonard smiles too. “I thought he was gonna set a match to the whole building.”

“The man’s more of a germaphobe than you, Bones.”

“I’m a doctor, Jim. See if you don’t care about germs when you can’t sit comfortably in your captain’s chair because of genital warts.”

Jim holds up his hands. “Okay, okay.” He clears his throat. The mood turns somber again. “My point is… why not this, Bones? Why not us? We’re great friends. I think we would make each other happy as partners too.”

Leonard looks away. “And have you thought about what happens after?”

“You mean if we don’t work out?”

“Exactly. In my experience, great friends don’t stay great friends after they realize they make miserable lovers.” Leonard adds more quietly, “I wouldn’t want to lose you over something like that.”

“So don’t,” Jim tells him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s promise to be friends first—until, you know, we’re husbands.”

Leonard snorts. “You’re getting ahead of yourself there, kid. I’d have to be hopped up on crazy juice to marry you.”

Jim grins. “Is that a challenge, Dr. McCoy?”

No.

“I think that was a challenge.”

“Jim, no.”

“It was!” Jim pulls out a blank white card and scribbles on it, Why not marry Jim Kirk? He tucks the card under the collar of Leonard’s shirt.

“What is that?” Leonard asks, plucking the card out of his clothes and indicating the ball-point pen in Jim’s hand.

Jim puts the pen away with a wink, saying, “My secret weapon.”

Leonard looks dubious.

Jim takes the opportunity to throw an arm around the man’s shoulders. “So,” he asks, “are you in?”

Leonard cuts his eyes at his friend. “I know I’m going to regret this but… why not?”

Jim leans into him. “We don’t regret why-nots anymore, remember?”

To Jim’s surprise, Leonard says, “I guess that’s true,” and takes a hold of Jim’s chin to press a kiss to the side of Jim’s mouth. When he draws back, he looks contemplative.

Jim needs a second to catch his breath. Once he has, he declares, “Not bad but not great. Let’s try again. With tongue.”

“Nope,” Leonard replies, butting Jim away with his shoulder and heading for the door. “Spock was right. You need a firm hand. We can kiss after the second date.”

“Wait, what?” Jim says, hurrying after him. “What did Spock say about me? Why were you talking to him? We haven’t even been on a first date!”

Leonard turns on him abruptly, produces Jim’s pen (which Jim cannot fathom when Leonard got a hold of it), and flips the Why not marry Jim Kirk? card to its blank side to write out something. Once he is done, he hands the card to Jim along with the pen, bobbing his head politely with a “Later, Captain” just before he exits the Ready Room.

Jim looks down at the card and reads it once, twice. Then he laughs, says out loud, “You got it, Bones,” and pockets the card to be later stored inside his box of other treasures.

Leonard had written: Why not court a man properly if you want him to marry you?

That, Jim thinks, was most definitely a challenge.

And it’s a challenge he is convinced he can win.

-Fini

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About KLMeri

Owner of SpaceTrio. Co-mod of McSpirk Holiday Fest. Fanfiction author of stories about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

6 Comments

  1. taraxacumoff

    I think i’m a bad personn: this fic was very cute, and with good writing of Bones and Jim, but my favorite thing was poor Pavel ^________^ (And Gertrude, too. Gertrude and Sulu, that was wonderfully done)

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