0Title: Have You Heard…? (#26, The Drabble Bin)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: There is no such thing as a baseless rumor on the starship Enterprise. Coda to “Tomorrow is Yesterday”.
Previous Drabbles: The Old Four | Those Neighborhood Hoodlums | Trapped | A Cage of His Own | Of Perky Starfleet Bottoms | An Hour Past | War of the Bots | The Best Substitute | Surprise Meeting | Little Help | Dreaming | The Tower | Brother | It’s Complicated | With Close Friends | Not As It Seems | Vulcans Can Be Grumpy Too | Upsetting the CMO | A Romantic Venture | When Your Blues Have a Gold | Show Me the Money (or Not) | Feed the Flame | Shift Change | A Tale of Some Debate | Who Wants to Be a Doctor?
Later they reported it was an accident, that a circuit had caught fire and set the whole thing ablaze, but everyone knows better. Rumors are going around, consuming the ship far quicker than the speed at which the supercomputer had been taken out. They are of the most entertaining and creative variety: someone had finally gotten fed up with the computer’s flirting; the data banks had contained incriminating evidence of the liaisons; no, no, it was just that someone had accidentally rolled onto the record button during a heavier makeout session; maybe the fire started from a candle during one of those romantic dinners everyone was supposed to be unaware of; or—a popular favorite, though actually quite silly—the sheer intensity of the perpetrators’ combined chemistry had caused their surroundings to combust into flames.
“And listen to this one!” scoffs one perpetrator. “The computer felt jilted and destroyed itself out of despair!”
“It could be possible,” muses the taller of the two companions, both of whom are attentively following the wild gestures and heated delivery punctuating this news. “The computer did display an unusual fondness for Jim.”
The man in question interjects sourly, “I tried to make it stop.”
“No one’s pointing their fingers here, Jim.”
Kirk rubs a hand against his mouth and uncrosses his legs to stretch one of them out. “Why is it so difficult to believe the truth?”
McCoy offers, “Because the truth isn’t as flashy?”
“I believe,” Spock decides, “Leonard means the truth is not as appealing as what the imagination can supply.”
Kirk simply stares at them.
McCoy’s ire seems to have settled down, a hint of a smile now playing about his mouth. “You can’t discipline anybody else until you discipline yourself first.”
“Bones.” Kirk chokes back a laugh. “It wasn’t my fault.”
McCoy turns to the Vulcan next to him on the couch. Spock says, “It was his fault.” The pair looks to Kirk.
“That’s the last time we let you try to out-logic a computer,” McCoy finally chuckles before pausing consideringly. “Although maybe it did malfunction out of jealousy.”
“I wanted it to know I was taken,” mutters the captain. “I didn’t want either of you to wonder why I let someone else—or something else—talk to me the way you do.”
McCoy drops a hand to Spock’s knee and reaches for Kirk’s hand, asking innocently, “Do we?”
“If you haven’t,” Kirk quips back, “well, gentlemen, there is no time like the present.”
“Of course, dear,” Kirk’s companions intone together, and the hum of their happiness is nearly a palatable thing.
Beyond their cabin and that intimate little world they have created just for each other, the rumors are still free-flowing: the fire was a well-planned assassination of a potential rival in love; somebody accidentally spilled wine on the conductor; certain acrobatics of an intimate nature resulted in damage that had to be covered up; or one of them decided the supercomputer was a nuisance and of course his two companions who obviously adore him more than life itself simply destroyed the damn thing to make him happy.
Rationally speaking, any of these rumors could be true.
-Fini
Related Posts:
- Stay With Me (#29, The Drabble Bin) – from December 29, 2023
- An Ominous Setting (#28, The Drabble Bin) – from May 4, 2021
- Beyond the Call of Duty (#27, The Drabble Bin) – from September 24, 2020
- Who Wants to be a Doctor? (#25, The Drabble Bin) – from May 13, 2019
- A Tale of Some Debate (#24, The Drabble Bin) – from February 25, 2019
