Title: Rain Check (Young Men's Fancies #2)
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: jat_sapphire@femail.org
Series: pre-TOS
Rating: [PG]
Codes: pre-K/MSummary: Kirk's adventures, junior year at Starfleet Academy, making friends with Gary Mitchell. Second in "Young Men's Fancies" series.
Archive: Yes, please. Keep headings and disclaimers and what-not.
Disclaimer: Star Trek and most of the characters here are Paramount's. I invented some koi, a few cadets in the background, and a nasty bar drink. I don't make money at this.
Series Notes:
This is a series of stories about Kirk's early sexual and emotional life. He's bisexual here - just a warning. The first story in the series is titled "That Fairness Thing."
Young Men's Fancies
#2, Rain Check
*****
October, Jim's Junior Year, continued
***Jim's office/carrel was already small, and when Mitchell swaggered in for the appointment about his Ethics paper, it suddenly seemed much smaller. Jim realized that if he didn't seize control instantly, this could be an all-around ugly experience. "Ensign Mitchell," he said crisply. "Sit down. I'll just be a moment."
Mitchell dropped into the chair as if by reflex, then crossed his legs and leaned back in it, a good trick considering that in fact it was impossible to sit comfortably there.
Jim made him wait while he finished writing a note about something he wanted to point out in the next class. Then he looked up and found Mitchell smiling at him with a kind of pure pleasure he found disconcerting.
Somehow Jim couldn't play games. He decided to take a leaf from Ben Finney's book - something like what he'd said when Jim had asked him for advice. "What would you say is the purpose of the Ethics class?"
Mitchell hesitated. Then he grinned and opened his mouth, but evidently thought twice and shut it again without making whatever crack he had planned.
"Thank you," Jim said, not pretending he hadn't seen it. "I'm serious. If you tease me in one paper, that's not important; but if you miss what the class is meant to give you, it's my failure as well as yours. So if you really think Ethics is a joke, tell me why."
Mitchell sat forward now, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking at his hands clasped between them. "It's so abstract," he said soberly. "I can't think like that."
"Well, I'm sure you can," said Jim, "but anyway it doesn't have to be abstract, that's why we're applying it to specific decisions."
"So years from now, I'm looking down the nose of a Klingon cruiser, and I'm supposed to think about Spinoza before I fire the phasers?"
"Transform passion into action," Jim said, a paraphrase, and smiled in spite of himself.
Mitchell shook his head. "Sorry, Captain Kolonik, I realize now that my sadness is not externally caused and that you are as much a part of the great God/Nature as I am, so go right on raiding the outpost."
"Captain Colonic?" Jim laughed. Then got hold of himself. "No. Look. Ethics isn't being all passive and goody-goody. I'm doing it wrong if I've made you think that. But . . . " He thought of Kolos and turned his mind away, but the memory lent passion to his voice as he spoke. "You've got to have reasons for action. You can't just act out of whatever's floating around in your mind; you can't pretend you've got a real philosophy if it's just prejudice; you can't just follow orders mindlessly. I don't believe that's what they want from us. I won't believe that."
"No," said Mitchell almost fondly, "you wouldn't. You're an idealist."
Jim started to object and then stopped. Anyway this wasn't about him. "So write about that," he said. "Tell me - listen, forget philosophizing a common decision. Tell me about the way you really do make decisions. The practical way. Explain it to me."
He'd been really communicating with Gary - with Mitchell. He knew it. ; But now Mitchell's expression changed, and it was like a door slamming in Jim's face. "The way I make decisions," he said in a bleak voice. "You mean, the way the other other half lives. The unidealistic half."
Now what? Jim didn't know. He could only go on being honest and hope that would get through. "You know I didn't mean to denigrate you. I need a paper from you that shows you've been thinking about these issues, that demonstrates practical ethics. Decision making. Because that's what the class is about."
"Does it have to be a decision I make?"
"What, are you going to analyze one of mine?" Jim smiled, but felt very little humor. That idea was more unpleasant the longer it was in his mind.
But, "No," Mitchell said, seeming a little startled. "No, I wanted to . . . do some research. I'm not exactly sure yet - can I tell you later?"
"Not much later, please."
It was the same afternoon. Jim got a text message from Mitchell, proposing a research paper on the equitable scoring of Starfleet Academy entrance exams. Jim agreed to the topic and a week later the paper was in his hands. And it was entirely serious, and very good.
"I learned from this," Jim told Mitchell when he handed it back.
"So did I," said Mitchell simply. "I hadn't thought about scoring as a system. What you were saying, right?" When Jim smiled, Mitchell did too. "Uh-huh." Then he sobered, looking away. "I only wish I'd known about it before - before I got here. I'd have . . . made some different decisions. Known who to trust." Jim didn't know what he meant, and Mitchell obviously wasn't going to explain, but when he looked up again, there was at least humor there. "Hey, I'm trying to say you're a good teacher. And I learned something."
"My pleasure," said Jim.
"Hope so," said Mitchell, smiling, meeting Jim's eyes again.
Time didn't stop. The class period went on normally, and Mitchell didn't suddenly turn into the perfect student, either. But weeks later, whenever he thought of Mitchell, it was that unguarded smile Jim saw in his mind, like a reference picture in a database.
*****
December, Jim's Junior Year
***Jim saw Ruth when their schedules allowed - not much during the last month of the semester. When he thought of her, which was often, especially when he lay in bed at night or in the morning, he had dozens of little glimpses of her in his mind: her face in repose and amusement and arousal, the back of her neck when she wore her hair pulled up, the shape of her body against the light, her gesture as she pushed her hair back or reached for his hand or came close and looked up for a kiss. The way she let her arms and legs go just anywhere when he was finger-fucking her. The way her throat looked, stretched out, when he glanced up from licking her. The way her face changed while he rode her to orgasm.
Yet - it was strange - he kept thinking of Mitchell at odd times, laughing at something and wondering if Gary would think it was funny, hearing a Garylike tone in someone's voice, walking on the Academy grounds and catching a glimpse of someone that might be Gary, but wasn't. Once the resemblance was so close Jim caught up with the other cadet before he realized he was looking at a stranger. And even off campus - in a restaurant or on the street - suddenly Jim thought he saw Mitchell and turned and looked, and it never was, and Jim never learned.
It was going to be a relief to go home for the winter break, if he could leave that behind, though it was hard to go away from Ruth when they'd had so few weeks as a couple and so little time together lately. He called her the night before the flight to Iowa was scheduled; his suitcases were already sitting by the door of his dorm room. After some chat, Jim said, "I'll miss you. I'll call you from home, OK?"
"I'm staying with some relatives for the holidays," she said. She pulled a long curl that lay over her shoulder, and let it spring back, and then did it again.
"For how long, which days?" He was leaning toward the screen, he realized, and sat back. "Call me on Christmas Day? Or anytime."
"I'll call," she smiled. "And I got your present. Thank you, I love them. Lilac and rose! My favorite scents. I'll burn them and think of you."
"Well, they're not very seasonal, I guess. But as long as you're thinking of me." He grinned at her, thought of holding her, said, "I'd rather remind you personally."
She reached out and put just the tips of her fingers on the screen. "When you get back," she said softly.
He'd barely cut the connection when he got an incoming call, and it was his mother. "Jim," she said, half distracted, "Jim, honey, I have bad news."
He swallowed, mind racing, and said, "What?"
"Mom," she said, "my mother, Grandma, she's been working at the Seattle Cultural Exchange, you know, and she got some weird fever thing, and she didn't even tell me right away! I didn't know 'til now and she might have died!"
"Mom," he said. "Mom."
She closed her mouth and took a deep breath. "OK." Another one. "Sorry, honey. She's been really sick. They had to bring in somebody from Starfleet, actually: it's one of those offworld things. And she and practically everyone she's ever met was in quarantine. But now that's over. She's still weak, though. She shouldn't be by herself . . . she needs me. And, honey, it's awful, you'll be alone . . . "
"Don't worry about me, Mom. Really. I'll call the dorm people. I'll just stay here."
"Would you rather? You could come home anyway, would you like that?"
Jim thought about kicking around the empty farmhouse, practically snowed in, alone. "I'd rather stay here," he said honestly, "since Sam and Aurelan aren't there either, but what about the horses?"
"Kevin will board them for us. He's got space now."
"And he'd do anything for you, Mom," he teased. Their neighbor's crush on his mother was a running joke in the family.
She just wrinkled her nose at him and then frowned anxiously again. "I wish there was room for you in the Seattle house."
"There's not. I understand. Hey, I can get really caught up, staying here."
Her eyes narrowed. "You're not really caught up? Oh, Jim, I don't believe you."
He grinned. "You're right." She rolled her eyes. "Um, I can get started early. I can - " he told her the real reason - "I can spend some serious time with my girlfriend. Ruth."
"Ruth." A patented Mom moment. She meant, 'who is this person? Are you serious about her? Why haven't I heard her name before? Will I like her?'
"Yeah." He smiled. "Ruth." He wasn't ready to answer those questions yet.
And twenty minutes later, when he had talked to Ruth again, he was less ready to answer them than ever. Ruth had been standoffish. No, she couldn't see him tomorrow: she was working late. No, she was leaving town herself in only a few days, and would be away until New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. "You didn't say it was such a long visit," Jim said. But now he came to think of it, she hadn't said it was a short one.
"Well, that's how long it is," she answered, sounding a little irritated. "It's all arranged." Then, just as he was feeling like a teenaged fool, tagging after an older woman, she sighed and softened. "Jim, darling, I'm just so frustrated. I want to see you more. I wish I was going to be in town. Look, I'll call. I'll call every night."
The whole conversation left an odd taste in his mouth. Afterwards he sat looking at the suitcases, knowing he should unpack them but not very interested in doing it. But if he didn't, what would he do?
He went for a walk.
There was practically no one around. He supposed a lot of people had left already, or were just indoors. Digging his hands into the pockets of his jacket, he walked through the Academy gardens as if he were doing some sort of assignment, stalking along the paths and across the little footbridge, in and out of the pools of light left by the big Japanese lanterns hovering over the bushes and pruned-down trees. It was just barely foggy, and every lantern had a shimmering halo around it. He slowed down. It really was pretty. On the second footbridge, he stopped altogether and looked for the koi, but they must have been asleep. He stood for a while, watching the light dance on the surface of the water as the breeze moved it.
Then the movement of the water changed, and he heard a pattering on the leaves of the trees, and then felt the same rhythm on his head, the nape of his neck, and the backs of his hands. It was raining.
He still didn't want to go back to the dorm, and didn't want to think about what a bad omen that was for the rest of the break.
The campus pub was closer anyway.
It rained harder and harder, stroking the hair down against his scalp, tapping his shoulders through his shirt and jacket. He ran for a while, but then walked again, realizing that no matter what he did he was basically going to end up wringing wet. Scents rose from every bank of greenery he passed, evergreen here and some green spice there, and petunias, and marigolds, and wet cedar chips. In Iowa, he'd only smell the humidity in the air like this in summertime, or anyway no earlier than March or April. He enjoyed the smells, but the wind struck cold once he was wet. And he was soaked through by the time he reached the pub. As he stood dripping inside the door he found that the bartender had put out a stack of soft recycled-fiber towels for people to use. He wiped down his hair and face and, once his jacket was hung up, squeezed as much water as he could out of the shoulders of his shirt, then tossed the towel into the barrel with the other used ones and went to the bar.
The wind had chilled him so that he ordered the seasonal special, called wassail but basically a hot fruit punch, no alcohol. He got the tall glass mug, garnished with a Christmassy-looking green sprig of something he hoped wasn't poisonous - so few people knew this stuff and somebody might think eating it was funny - and carried it away from the bar. The pub wasn't crowded but it was busy enough to have a comfortable hum of voices and occasionally laughter in the background, which beat being alone. A couple of people he knew looked up as he passed and waved or smiled, but they were all involved in the groups or couples they'd come in. He stopped at the jukebox on his way to the booth near the door where he liked to sit, especially when he was here alone, and chose a couple of recordings with nice saxophone riffs in them.
About to sit down, he reached up to change the angle of the lampshade so the light wouldn't glare in his eyes, when he heard a familiar voice saying, "Whoa, huh," and looked up to see that yes, this time it really was Gary Mitchell. He was as wringing wet as Jim had been, and now stood shaking his head and his hands to scatter the water everywhere. Had the rain stood out in beads in Jim's hair too, or was it the spiky shortness of Gary's that let it do that? And on his face. And - Gary looked down at his wet shirt, then up at the bar - raindrops spangled in his eyelashes, catching the light like glitter. Jim was frozen, body suspended above the table, for the time it took Gary to wipe his eyes, then down his face, then see the towels and reach for them. Jim wanted to tell him to let the rain stay, but smiled to himself instead and sat.
Perhaps it was the movement that caught Gary's eye: when he had dried himself and come in, he stopped beside Jim's booth. "Lieutenant Kirk," he said.
"Oh, the class is over," said Jim. "Don't call me Lieutenant."
"What then? Cadet? James?"
"Not if you're being friendly. Jim."
"Jim." He smiled. "I see you got caught in the rain too."
"Oh, yeah. I'm just sitting here dripping and trying to warm up."
Gary gestured toward Jim's wassail, an unusual sideways swipe of his whole hand that Jim didn't remember seeing before. "That help?"
"I don't know," Jim said. "I just got here, so I haven't tried it yet."
Gary examined it critically. "I think I'll let you make this experiment."
Jim looked again. The liquid was cherry-candy red, an unlikely enough color even without the green sprig to set it off. "The plant life is probably synthesized," he said.
"Oh, good," Gary said. "Now I'm completely reassured." And then he paused just long enough, so that Jim had summoned up his bravado and picked up the mug to take a sip, and then Gary said, "Uh, Jim? You don't drink the plant life part."
Jim snorted, and set the mug down with a thud, and snatched his hand away as the punch splashed onto his knuckles. It was still hot. He was sure he wasn't really burned, but he shook his hand and glared at Gary anyway.
"Look, are you at least going to sit down?" Jim asked, and immediately wondered if it was the right thing to do. It was only a couple of days ago he'd still been Gary's instructor, after all.
"Yes, sir," said Gary, dropping onto the opposite seat at once. "Seated, sir!"
"Rub it in," Jim said, not stopping to wonder whether Gary would know what he was talking about. Gary's grin said Jim was right to take understanding for granted.
It had been quite a while since Jim had had a friend like that, not counting Lillian. And that was more important, surely, than the way the rain had hung on Gary's eyelashes, especially since Jim had a girlfriend.
Some time later, Gary was still on the other side of the table, both of them dry now and in the middle of a fairly intense discussion of commercial-release holovids, of which Gary seemed to have encyclopedic knowledge and for which he apparently felt nothing but contempt.
"OK, OK," Jim said at last, "But tell me, if Heintz and Mori and Patel are all so god-awful, why have you seen all their vids?"
Gary hesitated, then smiled slowly, and Jim's breath caught a little but he didn't really think about it. "Got to have something to talk to people about," he said at last.
"Right," said Jim. "Sure."
"Sure," Gary agreed. "Because, after all . . . if we weren't talking about vids, what would we be doing?"
For a moment, the conversation could have turned, was about to be a pick-up, and Jim took a quicker breath and then sat back and got hold of himself. He still couldn't allow himself to flirt with Gary Mitchell. Bad idea. Very bad.
"Playing cards," he said firmly.
Gary answered easily, "OK, right," as if he really had been asking for suggestions. "Piquet? Mao? Centaurus? Pinochle? Tarock? Cribbage?"
Jim chose, "Cribbage, if there's a board."
There was, of course, at the bar. Gary was an uncanny card-player. He shuffled with fancy bridges, the cards seeming to leap from hand to hand, and what he didn't plan for in the play wasn't worth scoring on.
Jim needed some points badly, or he was going to be skunked, and he didn't want to let that happen. He frowned down at his hand. A four, a five, a six, a seven, an eight, and a jack. Gary's crib. Jim picked out two cards and counted; a different two cards and counted; stared at the whole hand again.
"Hullo? Jim?" asked Gary at last. "Um, the whole fate of the universe doesn't exactly hang on what you throw into my crib."
"Uh-huh," Jim said absently. But it was time to give up; there was no really good throw; he put in the seven and the eight, giving Gary two points.
He thought. When Jim had counted his hand (and gotten past the skunk hole, thank goodness) and Gary came to count the crib, he turned over the cards and had two sevens and two eights. Twelve points.
"It's like you knew what I would put into it," Jim said.
Gary shrugged. "I’m good at guessing that kind of thing. Fat lot of good it's ever done me."
"You mean you don’t play for money?"
"Oh, that, yeah, sometimes. Poker." He pushed the cards together, tapped the deck on the table to even out the edges. His hands were graceful. "Poker's work, not play." He pushed the deck across the table for Jim.
"You've been playing with the wrong crowd." Jim took the deck and shuffled it, just for the feel of the cards since the cribbage game was over.
"What do you mean?" Gary's voice was sharp; Jim realized he'd done it again, sounded like the Ben Finneys of the Academy. The wrong crowd. He could have kicked himself.
"I mean if you play with people who take it too seriously, it's not fun." He made his voice ordinary, just answering the question.
"Oh," said Gary. He was watching Jim shuffle. Jim was watching him watch.
This, it dawned on him, was a mistake. He put the cards down, surprising himself with the sharp sound they made hitting the table. Gary's eyes flicked up. "Well, are we playing again?" asked Jim.
"Don't you want to win one?"
Nobody had ever had to ask Jim Kirk that twice. "Sure," he said. He shuffled again and dealt, eyes on his own fingers and the cards, glancing only when he really couldn't help it at the broad strong hands moving the pegs back to the beginning of the board, adjusting its position, resetting its timer, picking up the cards as Jim tossed them to him.
"Why are you still here?" asked Gary as he moved cards around his hand.
"Family thing," said Jim, "No room at the inn this year."
Gary just looked, but Jim didn't want to explain. "Sorry," Gary said, his voice the gentlest Jim had ever heard it.
"You?" asked Jim. They cut the cards.
"I'm living near here." Gary paused, then played. "Eight."
"Fifteen two," said Jim, and moved his peg.
"Lucky seven."
Something in Gary's voice alerted Jim, and he stared, and then said, "You knew I had it."
Gary shrugged. "Just a guess."
"But you said you could guess things like that. I bet you trust your guesses. You gave me those points."
Gary looked away.
"Don't do it."
Gary laughed a little, still looking out of the booth. "I'm not very good at doing favors."
"Do me this one," said Jim. "Don't hand me stuff."
"OK," said Gary, and paused, and then changed his tone. "You know what I really can't guess at all? Darts."
"Let's do it, then." And Jim reached over and took the cards from Gary's hand, pulled the ones lying on the table in toward him and pushed them together. Gary took care of the board again, turning off the timer and pushing the pegs into their separate crannies. They walked together to the bar and got the darts. And Jim did win that game - fairly, he thought.
Being carefully fair to each other was not the brightest prospect Jim could think of. On the other hand, the semester break was certainly looking less bleak.
**end of "Rain Check" **
Continued in "Party Like it's 1999"