Title: A Plot Above All Others (#35, J ‘N B Series)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/McCoy, hints of pre-K/S/M
Summary: Comment!fic inspired by this pic post at jim_and_bones; boys toting guns and romance – it’s all part of a very good tale.
Previous Parts: Another Day, Another Dollar, and a Daily Show? | Fight the Good Fight | Don’t Touch the Rock | A Tear Worth Gold | Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 2 | Pirates Read Too | The Case of the Mondays | Today’s Topic -Helmets! | The Case of the Mondays, Part 2 | Marked | Awesome Ideas Come from Awesome Brains | In the Keeping of a Spirit | The Case of the Mondays, Part 3 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 4 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 5 | Forewarned is Forearmed | The Case of the Mondays, Part 6 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 7 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 8 | The Case of the Mondays, Part 9 | Serenade | Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 3 | Tied to You | The Amateur Pigeon-Catcher | The Amateur Pigeon-Catcher, Part 2 | The Art of Beginnings | The Amateur Pigeon-Catcher, Part 3 | Two Birds of a Feather | The Beautiful Bay | The Man in the Shed | Bad Business | A Fortunate Friend | Blind to Love | The Westerner

“…and then he took the shot and the tank blew—”

Sulu interrupted Chekov’s fervent re-telling of the adventure (or what Hikaru Sulu considered a mis-adventure). “He missed, Pavel. The bullet ricocheted off the handle of the SUV and hit the pump. “

“No, the Captain—but, that vas not a mistake!” Pavel was indignant on behalf of his beloved hero.

Sulu tried to put the story back into realistic context. “So Kirk fired his gun and the gas station blew up. BOOM! Huge ball of fire! Debris everywhere!” He flung his hands into the air to encompass the enormity of the explosion.

“Did he die?” a member of the audience asked, a young female assistant who worked with Gaila in the weapons department.

Gaila rolled her eyes. “Of course not. Jim’s like the cat that came back the very next day. I stabbed him once. It didn’t take.”

Her co-worker gaped.

“Accidentally.” Gaila’s expression might have implied otherwise.

“He did not die,” Sulu agreed solemnly, “but for a moment we thought he had. McCoy had been in the van when the operation went south, because you know how Pike feels about Kirk and McCoy working together.”

“Disaster in the making,” Nyota Uhura confirmed, her chin propped in her hand. Until now she had been listening silently to the recounting of events.

Sulu nodded wisely. “Next thing I knew McCoy was halfway across the parking lot screaming Kirk’s name.”

Gaila clapped her hands gleefully. “It’s a love story!” When a newcomer entered the employee lounge, she twisted in her seat to see the door, calling happily, “Scotty, come hear this!”

A short man trundled over and sat down. “Is this about the Op yesterday?” He peeled back the foil from a sandwich and took a healthy bite of his lunch. “They broke my new communicators.”

“Sorry about that, Scotty,” Sulu and Chekov chorused, as if they had actually done the breaking of the communicators themselves.

The engineer shrugged. “I’ll just make ’em unbreakable next time.”

Uhura smirked, no doubt thinking Scotty was going to be unpleasantly surprised. Equipment—even the awesome kind of high-tech equipment Scotty could invent for their operations—was not immune to the inherently destructive nature of James T. Kirk. If anything, it might be Jim’s goal in life to break all of the new toys as quickly as possible, and creatively too.

Gaila peremptorily silenced everyone and demanded, “Continue!”

Chekov picked up the story again at Sulu’s nod. “The Doctor vas distraught. I believe he shot two menacing individuals in passing as he ran to the Captain and did not blink.”

The women looked surprised. It wasn’t that Leonard McCoy refused to kill, he simply did his level best not to take lives unless he absolutely had to. Since Jim was kind of wild with a gun, the two men balanced each other out well.

(When it came to protecting each other, though, neither Kirk nor McCoy held back. That was a fact.)

Chekov was starting in on the part where McCoy lifted half of an exploded car off of Kirk in a moment of Hulk-ish strength (which wasn’t exactly the way it happened, but Pavel had always been a bit of an embellisher) when the lounge door swung open again. One look at the lounge’s newest occupant and Pavel paled, quickly shutting his mouth.

Mr. Spock’s eyes roamed over the huddle of people before zeroing in on the coffee percolator. He began to fix a cup of coffee.

Sulu hunched a little in his seat. He wasn’t afraid of Spock (not overly much) but the senior agent was not likely to be in the best of moods. Kirk was down for the count with head trauma in the medical unit.

Gaila, as a weapons master and a black belt in every martial art, had no fear of anyone. “Did they finally express their undying love for another one?”

Mr. Spock’s back had stiffened in that tell-tale way.

“Nooo,” Sulu said slowly, eyeing the rigid line of Mr. Spock’s shoulders.

She thumped her fist on the tabletop. “What the hell? I thought you said this was a love story, Sulu!”

Sulu had said nothing about love; that was Gaila herself—which clearly was not something he would dare call her on.

A ceramic mug made an ominous thunk as it hit the counter. Mr. Spock turned on their group. But before he could speak (and berate them for their irrational penchant to gossip in the workplace), Uhura waved a hand, dismissing his unspoken, undoubtedly testy words.

“Spock,” she said in a sweet voice that boded ill for the agent, “you skipped your debriefing this morning.”

Awkward silence filtered through the room as most of the employees tried to look anywhere but at Mr. Spock and Pike’s right-hand woman, Nyota Uhura. She knew everyone, everything, and every secret a person tried to keep from her. Pike called her his Number One.

“Affirmative,” Spock admitted at last.

“Did you have somewhere more important to be?”

“I was in Medical.”

She turned to look at him then, smiling in a very scary way. Even Spock looked scared, if the subtle flexing of his arms was any indication, meaning he had tightened the clasp of his hands behind his back.

“I wasn’t aware you were injured.”

“…I was not.” Spock paused. “Captain Kirk was the only individual who required the attention of the medical staff.”

The fact that he hadn’t been able to prevent the danger to Kirk was always a mood-killer for Spock.

Gaila subtly poked at Uhura’s thigh. “Look at the poor man. He’s exhausted. I bet he paced the unit all night.”

Uhura resumed her previous position. “Gaila has a point. You look like shit. Go to bed, Mr. Spock. Pike can wait a few hours to hear your report.”

Scotty was staring at the senior agent while munching on his sandwich like this was the most fascinating confrontation he had been privy to in a long time. It probably was. He didn’t leave his hidey-hole of engineering bliss very often. (It was also universally understood that the entire infrastructure of their covert intelligence agency would most likely collapse without his brilliance and his ability to invent miracles on short notice. Nobody bothered Montgomery Scott, not even Pike, for that reason.)

Undoubtedly peeved that he had been told what to do with himself, Spock said, “I am obliged to inform you that Mr. McCoy has had as little rest as I.”

“Then make him nap with you.”

Scotty choked on his sandwich.

Pavel and Gaila shared a brilliant grin.

Sulu did his best to seem unaffected, but it was difficult and he had to grip the sides of his chair.

Spock pivoted and exited the lounge swiftly, but not before he retrieved his cup of coffee.

The young woman—what was her name? nobody really remembered that, only the fact she liked to wear red—tossed out an observation with curiosity once Spock was gone. “I didn’t know he drank coffee.”

“Spock doesn’t,” Nyota said, “but Leonard does.” She reached out and rapped the table with her nail to gain Chekov and Sulu’s attention. “You didn’t finish the story.”

“The Captain was trapped under the wreckage, unconscious, bloody,” Chekov began excitedly, “and when McCoy found him, he dropped to his knees and begged his god to spare the Captain’s life—”

“Ah, Pavel,” Sulu said rather mournfully, “not so much. Spock and McCoy found Kirk at the same time. I think they argued over who would rescue him. Pavel and I were betting on who would shoot who first for the opportunity when Kirk woke up—I don’t think he had been out the whole time—and complained that he was bleeding to death while they bickered and—”

Chekov snickered.

“—it didn’t matter who had the bigger gun, all size guns made him happy, and would someone get him out already?“

Gaila was smiling, her chin propped on her hand to mirror Uhura. “This is a better story. How does it end?”

The two younger agents exchanged a glance. “We’re working on that part,” Sulu said as Chekov nodded.

Nyota checked her watch and sighed. “Damn, break’s over.” She stood up, brushed off her uniform and told them all, “I expect a new chapter by next month. The ending… is negotiable, since these things take time.”

Sulu acknowledged the deadline with a “Yes, ma’am.”

Pike was in charge but that didn’t mean Uhura had no agendas of her own. Apparently Gaila was in agreement with Uhura’s plotting as she stood up and announced, “If you make it to the sexy-times by then, I’ll give each of you a free lesson in the weapon of your choice.”

“Deal,” Sulu said immediately. Sword-fighting was a long-awaited dream of his.

Gaila, Uhura, and the nameless red-shirt left the lounge, saying something akin to “Rookies make the best henchmen.”

Sulu pretended not to hear that. Scotty examined his empty sandwich foil with sadness. Pavel wanted to know, “Vhat do we do now, Hikaru?”

Sulu thought about it for a long moment and said, “We switch to Plan B.”

“Plan B?”

His mouth curved wickedly. “The Kidnapping.”

“Oooh. Da, the kidnapping!“

“Now which of our enemies is going to want to kidnap Kirk?”

“All of them. But I think,” Chekov said, “it should be the two other who are kidnapped.”

Sulu was already nodding. That would work well. That would work very well indeed.

-Fini

We Fight to Win

Related Posts:

• Another Day, Another Dollar, Part 4 (#40, J ‘N B Series) (40/40) – from March 29, 2013
• The Light In Which We’re Cast (#39, J ‘N B Series) – from March 20, 2013
• Playing Life to Win (#38, J ‘N B Series) – from March 14, 2013
• An Intergalactic Fandom (#37, J ‘N B Series) – from January 15, 2013
• We Fight to Win (#36, J ‘N B Series) – from January 4, 2013