Chapter 34- Two to Tango
The alarm woke me with it's escalating pinging that I found to be like nails on a chalkboard at 1100. I slowly picked my head up off the pillow and looked around with blurry eyes. Oh right, McCoy drugged me last night, or yesterday afternoon…whenever. Whatever he gave me, it resembled a state closer to death than sleep. Absolute darkness that you knew lasted for hours, but seemed more like a blink because you were so out you really had no idea how much time had passed. If it was now 1100, it would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of…16 hours. Good God! It was bad enough he sneak attacked me, but did he have to use a horse tranquilizer? I couldn't be too mad at him, he put me out deep enough so I wouldn't dream. He also took my shoes off, covered me up, and set my alarm before he left so I wouldn't miss my appointment with Jim. At least he had attention to detail.
Like any drug induced sleep, you wake up feeling so tired you just want to sleep more. I pulled myself out of bed and showered, and even had two cups of coffee rather than my usual one but it didn't really help. I had to face it: I wasn't going to have my full faculties to talk to Jim and this caused just a little bit of anxiety for me.
I felt at a disadvantage because despite his carefree and playful disposition, Jim was actually quite astute and he was very good at sidestepping and deflecting. Like a skilled dancer, if you weren't careful he would take the lead and spin you across the floor of a conversation in the speed and direction of his choosing. Like Spock, he chose to hide his true abilities behind an affable exterior and an easy, disarming smile that made you lower your guard. Jim was at the core a very smart man who knew how to read the temperature of the room and adapt accordingly; he could be the 'aw shucks' Iowa farm boy if that was what you wanted, or if a slightly harder edged bar brawling, Romulan ass kicking starship Captain was more your thing he could do that too.
'Social chameleons' we psychologists call people like him. The question was: why? It takes a lot of sustained effort to read and maintain an image for someone, it is not something the average person learns to do with a great deal of skill unless they have to. In general, people who became experts at this were at some time in a prolonged situation of extreme uncertainty and they learned to anticipate the reactions of others to secure what they needed- be it safety, food, or some other resource they could not obtain on their own. People who learned how to manipulate others in this way usually went on to become sociopaths…or used car salesmen. There was a small chance that it could just be an innate ability, but seemed more like he was forced to learn it. I filed it in his mental chart in the back of my mind and swung by the cafeteria for a quick bite before facing destiny.
As promised, he was in his quarters at the time he agreed to meet me. His smile wavered just a bit like the ship's forward shields under heavy fire because despite his best effort to play it cool, he was nervous and I smiled. I was something of an enigma to him because he didn't know how exactly to handle the situation. He couldn't really pull rank because I wasn't in Starfleet. He couldn't blow me off like he sometimes did McCoy. He gestured for me to sit at the table that held McCoy's toys the night before and I smiled at yet another tactic: he had a beer for himself and Bailey's for me. Was he just trying to be a good host, or was he counting on the booze as a way of loosening the steering so to speak?
"Thank you." I smiled taking my appointed seat across from him at the table. "But I don't think drinking is advised. You really shouldn't mix alcohol and sedatives."
"Right." He laughed pushing the drink away from me, but still within reach should I change my mind. "So you got a little taste of Bones' medicine. Now you see what I have to put up with. I knew you bought the farm the minute I saw him holding the hypo behind his back." He took a drink of his beer and mused, "Sneaky bastard."
"You are looking better." I complimented. "The bruises are starting to fade." I gestured to the area around my eye to mirror his.
"Yeah. Nothing I haven't had before. I'll be back to my handsome self in no time." He smiled. At least he had no problems with his self-esteem. "Now if I can just avoid leaving the ship or having to talk to anyone on a subspace channel until my hair grows out again. I look like one of your 21rst century Army recruits with…what did you call them? Buzz cuts?"
"Didn't you have to do that when you enlisted?" I asked laughing.
"No. They stopped the wholesale humiliation of shearing you bald sometime around the middle of the 22nd century. We had to keep it short, but you could wear it pretty much however you wanted."
"So, Jim, I know this is uncomfortable for you. But keep in mind that I am not here to make you feel bad. I promise I won't push you further than you can go. I just want to make sure that you are alright." I stated calmly.
His eyes fell to the table and he turned his beer bottle in circles with his right hand. It made an irritating scraping noise. "As a Captain?" He asked bleakly.
"As a person." I gently corrected. "As a fellow human being."
He sighed and frowned. "I just want you to know that I am not good at this kind of stuff."
I had to figure out a way to make this less stressful for him. "At talking?" I softly smiled. "I know you are par excellence at that."
His eyes were the darkest blue I had ever seen them. "What do you want me to say? I can't emote the way others do. I just can't."
"Then don't." I said simply.
He looked up at me astonished that I would tell him not to talk about his feelings. "Do you want me to cry for you then? Sob about how I fucked up?"
I chuckled and replied, "Coming from you it would be disingenuous at best. Crocodile tears don't impress or fool me. Why don't you just start by telling me what you were thinking when you got to the surface?" Men often found the word 'think' easier to deal with than 'feel' although the two were often interchangeable. It was all about semantics….
He swallowed hard and began, "Well, I thought we were going down there to offer assistance. My plan was to get down there, talk to the Queen to see what she needed as well as a list of supplies for Bones once he was able to assess the situation from his end. Then Sulu and I would return to the ship to gather everything and bring it back. I thought we might be there a few days and then we would be off again. Yeah, I might have some explaining to do to Starfleet, but it just didn't seem right to sit up there in the ship and watch people fall apart from hunger and disease when we could help."
"Makes sense." I commented. "How would it occur to anyone that being a humanitarian would be a bad thing?"
"It did to Spock." He said bitterly rolling his eyes. "He had it from the get go. If I just would have listened to him, none of this would have happened."
"Let's be clear about this." I challenged. "Spock's concern was with protocol, not rendering aid. He may seem cold, but I don't think he is fundamentally opposed to helping others in need. If the orders would have allowed for it, he would have done the same."
"They didn't, he wouldn't, and I shouldn't." He concluded with a huff. "But I did, and I put three of my crewmembers in danger by not following orders. Four if I count you." He took another drink and let the bottle fall back to the table with a ringing thud. "I fuck up from time to time, but I am ok with that because nobody is perfect, right? And I have gotten myself into some pretty tight jams, sometimes with others, but every time it somehow magically works out in the end with only minor damage to the crew. But once in awhile it all really goes to hell and the shit is more serious. It is those times that I realize how much responsibility I have to the people that work on this ship." He sighed and looked at his bottle. "I don't really give a damn about myself. I can take just about whatever people dish out, I have had enough practice at it that it really doesn't bother me anymore. That's kinda fucked up, I know, but I can deal." He stopped to lean forward and look me in the eye with such intensity I wanted to back away. "Do you know what that felt like for me to watch those chicks with dicks hold down my best friend like he was some common criminal and burn him like that, knowing it was because of me it was all happening?"
I took a small breath and whispered, "No."
He sat back in his chair with a thud. "I wish I didn't." He mumbled somberly again spinning his bottle. "But you know what is the worst part? He doesn't hate me for it. He is pissed about being fucked up and off duty, but he doesn't blame me when he should. And Sulu? He is bouncing along like the whole damn thing never happened. I don't deserve to have people like that working for me."
"You want people to crucify you for making a bad decision." I clarified. "Would that be more comfortable for you?" He didn't answer, so I prodded. "Has that been your past experience?" I suspected this was a pattern for him and I remembered the last conversation we had and the smell of blood in Iowa along with his reluctance to talk about his parents. It was all starting to coalesce…
He gave me a dead smile and said, "Maybe next time, Doc."
I nodded. He had already given me more than I thought he would and I did promise him I wouldn't push too hard if he wasn't ready. "Making mistakes or failing in and of itself is not a bad thing." I offered. "The only tragedy that comes from them is when you can't be bothered to learn anything. So in your own words, you fucked up. Fine. What are you going to take away from it?"
He paused and looked at the table, deep in concentration. "Probably to try and be a little more Vulcan and actually listen to Spock once in awhile. He is there for a reason, and it is not to give me meaningless reports and be the butt of ridicule when I get bored with ripping on Chekov. He actually has good ideas once in awhile, but I don't know about the last one. He must have been out of his pointed skull to let you come down there and get in that mess."
"It wasn't his idea, it was mine." I corrected. "And he didn't want me to go, but I convinced him. I had skills that I thought would help. A guy once told me that when you see a break in the clouds you had to go for it or miss your chance."
Jim smiled and answered, "You shouldn't listen to him. He sounds like a crazy bastard."
"He might be. He isn't always right, but he has had a pretty good run with that philosophy." I smirked. Jim may have been good at shifting to blend in, but he had shown his true colors. It was a tremendous thing for him to admit to self doubt and culpability, but he managed and I hoped I had at least made enough concessions to make him feel less hesitant in the future. After all, in order to dance fluidly each partner had to compromise just a little and Jim was a very good dancer.