thelawofaverages
The Law of Averages
"Don't give me any of that bonding crap! We both know that poor dumb fuck isn't going back to Vulcan to get married."
He was shaking with rage and he saw no reason why Kirk shouldn't get his share of it. It had taken four, increasingly infuriated, hours to find him at all. Four hours of frantic comm calls, four hours of nothing but "he isn't here" from every Starfleet office, friend, relative or bar he could think of. In the end he'd had to ask Scotty to crack the privacy seal on the transporter logs.
And here he was, in a poky little bar in Lisbon of all places, wearing civvies McCoy hadn't seen in the four and a half years they'd served together, a small pyramid of empty shot glasses on the table in front of him.
"What the hell is wrong with you two? I go home for a couple of days with my family and I get back to find you've disappeared and a message on my comm telling me Spock's gone back to Vulcan, live long and prosper."
He dropped into a chair, suddenly exhausted by his own anger. "He didn't even wait to say good-bye."
For the first time since McCoy had entered the bar, Kirk looked him in the eye. "I don't think he could, Bones," said softly. "You've seen his medical read-outs, you know what was happening."
"Damn right I do. So what the hell is he going back to Vulcan for? We both know who the only person he wants to bond with is." Oh shit, was that the problem? He leaned forward. "You do know, don't you?"
Kirk was wearing that weird no-expression he always got when something godawful happened. "Oh yes, I know," he said. "He told me." His eyes had gone out of focus again and he seemed to be looking at something far far off, something only he could see.
"And you turned the poor bastard down."
"No, no I didn't." Kirk wasn't offended or hurt. He didn't seem to be anything very much. His voice was a soft, even, monotone and it raised the hair on the back of McCoy's neck. "I told him I was honoured. I told him he was dearer to me than anyone in the Universe. I told him I'd never considered that kind of
relationship with him, or any other man but I was willing to try. I told him I'd do anything for him, anything at all." He took a deep shuddering breath and ground to a halt.
"So what happened?" Gently now, recognising at last the symptoms of shock.
"He said he was running out of time. That mess with T'Pring had fouled up his timing. He said he could feel it happening again, he only had a few weeks to sort something out. He apologised, oh god he apologised...."
A long pause and then, doggedly. "He said he had to know now whether we could... whether I could... whether it would work with us. That's all he wanted to know."
"So what happened, did you find out you couldn't?" Just a gentle push now to keep him moving.
"No, I found out I could. I could do it all. I could hold him and kiss him, I could extrapolate from my own experience and make it good for him." He laughed, an ugly mirthless bark. "I even blew him. Poor bastard came so hard he passed out. I could do that, I could do all that. I was going to let him fuck me if he wanted and I'd have made that good for him too." The wide amber eyes swung back to
McCoy and he knew they didn't see him. "There was only one thing I couldn't do. I couldn't get an erection."
Oh jesus, what the hell did he say now? "You could always ..."
"What? Fantasise he was someone else? Medicate myself? He's a touch- telepath for god's sake." Kirk shook his head violently, as though trying to shake his own thoughts free. "Everything I felt, everything I didn't feel -- all laid out for him. I offered to try again, I said I'd have therapy or treatment or training or whatever the hell it took to give him what he needed. He just shook his head. Told me he...... loved me for what I was, not .......not what I could contort myself into becoming. He left for Vulcan t the next day. He said he'd try for a bonding, apparently his parents have a whole list of eager Vulcan maidens, and you know what? I don't believe him either: he's gone to Gol."
"What's.."
"Look it up, Doctor. Look it up." Kirk leaned back on two legs of his chair and hailed the barkeep at the other end of the empty room in a scatter of syllables McCoy didn't understand. A bottle of something colourless and another glass arrived and Kirk poured them both hefty slugs.
"Do you remember your second grade tests? The state ones?"
It seemed like a complete non-sequitur but Kirk never said much without good reason, so he just said, "Yes," and left it at that.
"I had to retake mine, the computer rejected the results first time round, marked me as 'average'. Mom went down to the Principal's office like a heavy cruiser with its photons armed. I can hear her now, 'There's not a single damn thing that's average about my son!' I resat them that day and they reprogrammed the upper
limit on the computer." He drained his glass and poured himself another. "Hellova thing that, for a kid to hear from his mother. I loved it, thought it made me special. James T-not-at-all-average Kirk."
"Top marks in the State at the end of High School, top of my entry to the Academy, top of my graduating class, youngest captain in Starfleet history and the only man to bring a starship back intact after a five year mission, and now they want to promote me -- youngest Admiral since records began. Look what you get for not being average." He blew a mock fanfare on the side of his clenched fist and McCoy realised that shock was giving way to anger and what the hell was that about promotion?
"Jim...."
"Do you know what proportion of the human population is completely and exclusively heterosexual, Doctor?"
McCoy shook his head but he needn't have bothered, Kirk wasn't looking at him.
"Nine percent. That leaves ninety-one percent of the population who must or can have a sexual relationship with someone of the same gender. And I couldn't get into the ninety-one percent. I couldn't even be average about that." He sat for a long beat staring down into his glass, then drained it in a single swallow.
"The Greeks called it hubris, the arrogance that invites its own destruction." He was talking with the care of the very drunk now, each syllable carefully enunciated. "But nearly all cultures have the concept, the Andorians call it amal atek, I've forgotten what the Klingons call it, Spock would -- "
He couldn't go on, and after a moment McCoy came round to his side of the table and held him while he wept.
THE END
