Title: A Piece of Reaction
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov
Rating: K
Word Count: 2348
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers. Warning for crack fic. Definitely crack fic. And food fights.
Summary: The Triumvirate are fighting again. Hikaru Sulu intervenes with a unique form of stress relief therapy.
A/N: Yes, this is crack, so you have been warned. My brain needed a break from LJ's StarTrekBigBang (which is currently at 22,000 words and counting, deadline Wednesday). I have not forgotten my WIPs, including Insontis, but I have to focus on the STBB until it's done. I will return. This is just a cracky interlude written for a friend and because my brain was saying it had had quite enough angst for one month, thx. You have been duly warned about the crack. :P
Mom and Dad were fighting again.
Well, they were. And he'd made the colossal mistake of saying so in an undertoned mutter, mostly to warn Chekov that his chirpiness on an already strained alpha shift was, if not toned down, going to become the shatterpoint for a fragile but at least bearable silence.
He hadn't forgotten about Vulcan hearing, either, exactly…but he could pretend that so as to avoid verbal evisceration while still getting his point across. Unfortunately, he had forgotten just how close the command chair was to the navigation console, and how in the deathly stillness which palled the bridge the captain had nothing else to do but listen to the noises which broke said stillness.
His friends, including a nervous-looking Chekov, had promptly thrown him under the bus when the captain's sharp "Something you'd like to share with the class, Mr. Sulu?" had cracked across the bridge like glass shattering, and so no one could blame him for feeling a little sorry for himself when he was finally able to escape the Bridge for midday meal just ahead of his superiors.
No one really knew how it had started. And it wasn't anyone's business – as long as it didn't affect crew morale. Once it started to, then in Sulu's frank opinion it was fair game for ship's gossip and crewman interference. If any more ice-daggers flew across the Bridge, they were going to have to thaw out the motherboards and break out thermal wear for anyone within three decks of the cross-fire.
Perhaps, he mused thoughtfully as he settled into an empty table for lunch (they were a bit late for the midday rush; only a few tables were occupied), he could enlist the help of Dr. McCoy, seeing that the guy was the only person aboard who could – in fact, at some point had thumped both his COs upside the head and gotten away with it…
He blinked as a stone-faced Spock seated himself at one end of a small table, ignoring the small, pitiful glance the captain flung after him before the man plopped himself grumpily into a corner with his back to the wall and a plate of what looked suspiciously like comfort foods in his hands. At the other end of Spock's table, the physician in question shot the Vulcan a look of venom before sliding to his feet and moving to the next to sit with Christine Chapel.
Okay, so Mom and Dad and…the scary uncle were fighting.
He watched McCoy harass a yeoman for pushing aside his pile of mashed carrots.
Nah, Moms and Dad.
Sulu rubbed the bridge of his nose. Honestly. He should write a psychology treatise for Starfleet Medical; he was sure of its potential acclaim among the Admiralty at least. The COs of the starship Enterprise were a bunch of teenage girls.
He was too tired to still be irritated with Chekov, only glad to have someone to metaphorically watch his back, when the young Russian slid into the chair next to him.
"Chyort, this is bordering on ridiculous," the navigator muttered, peevishly attacking his sandwich with a destructive zeal which slightly creeped him out.
"You're telling me. What's it been, three days now?"
"Three, da. And not an end in sight. I am this close to requesting temporary transfer to Tactical," was the doleful reply.
He shot the younger man a commiserating look. "Yeah, Spock's been a little hard on you lately, hasn't he?"
Chekov shrugged, carefully not accusing his beloved mentor of anything. It was kind of adorable, Sulu thought. "He is…very intense, Meester Spock. Science is exact; must be done just so, or it is not science."
"Nurse Anya says Medical's about to throw their CMO out on his ear if something doesn't snap, he's driving everyone up the wall," Sulu said, finishing off his vegetable medley. Somehow, in food cube form, though the cubes provided proper nutrition and proteins, they really didn't do the trick of making you feel full, only like you'd been nibbling on polystyrene foam for a half-hour. He regretted wasting his week's allotment of 'real' replicated food early in the week instead of saving some of it – rationing it, since they were in the middle of the Second Cold War apparently – for now.
"Ve could get Mr. Scott to lock them in a turbolift," Chekov suggested.
"Didn't you and Uhura do that last time?"
"Ah. Vell…"
He sighed and pushed away the rest of his meal, if it could be called that, and absently toyed with one of the brightly-colored objects. "D'you think I could hit the Commander with one of these from here?" he asked idly, picking up one of them and piloting an imaginary trajectory.
Chekov's horrified look made him burst into laughter, which sounded odd in the eerie quiet rattle of the room; the rest of them were busy trying to fly cloaked under the scan of Vulcan/human mutual cold-fury.
His eyes idled across the moping figure of their stubborn captain, who was scrawling his signature across a padd with far more force than necessary, over to their placid Vulcan who was radiating do-not-so-much-as-look-at-me as clearly as the fact that he was unhappy about the whole thing, and finally to their irascible CMO, who had been dumped by Chapel and the other occupants of the table as quickly as politeness would allow.
In fact, Sulu just noticed that there were only a few odd crewmen dotted about the place and those were in the process of leaving; this was more of a problem than he'd thought.
"Maybe zhey are just having a bad day," Chekov finally offered feebly.
He caught himself in time to not raise a Spock-like eyebrow, cocking his head instead. "For three days?"
"Stress vill do that."
"We've been star-charting, Pavel, not ferrying ambassadors or negotiating with volatile alien species."
"Boredom, then."
Now that was actually a possibility. Crew morale as a whole dipped steadily when there was nothing going on; with nothing to occupy or relax the mind, the vastness of space began to wear on the emotions and health of a crew in general.
"Maybe," he pondered aloud. "But we're still stuck in this milk run for two more weeks – do you want two weeks of tolerating this until they kiss and make up?"
"Nyet!" The young Russian's hair flew wildly with the force of his head-shaking. "Vhat are you going to do, then, Hikaru?" he asked warily, no doubt seeing the evil glint which suddenly had filled his weird brain, and by extension, his expression.
"Boredom and stress relief therapy. It's a very old principle, Pavel –"
"I know. Stress relief therapy vas invented in Russia, everyone knows that."
He rolled his eyes, not bothering to respond, and picked up the biggest of the inedible food cubes; then he sized up the room and its occupants. Hmm…no, he'd need more power behind it. He reached over and appropriated Chekov's unused spork.
"Vhat are you –"
"Psychology says that releasing your inner child is supposed to be good for stress relief," he told the young navigator, whose eyes were wide as lunch plates themselves.
He took careful aim, calculating the trajectory and tiny variations of the artificial gravity, and used the spork to catapult the food cube straight into the captain's half-eaten mashed potatoes.
It landed with a wet splat, spraying gravy all over the data-padd the man was so moodily attacking. Kirk dropped the stylus in shock, staring at the food cube half-buried in his uneaten meal.
Sulu hastily shoved his own plate onto the seat beside him, elbowing Chekov to keep his mouth shut and head low so that they could remain invisible, acting as if they were deep in conversation. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the captain's gaze narrow, flitting to Spock who was calmly dissecting some freaky-looking-green-tuberlike-thing into exact and equal proportions…over to McCoy.
Whose plate was still half-full of unappetizing food cubes.
"You are evil," Chekov whispered, unashamedly admiring.
"I know."
"I love it."
"I know."
A disgusted yelp drew their attention to the CMO's nearly-empty table, where he was currently staring downward in utter shock, where a half-eaten dinner roll now sat plastered via brown gravy onto his plate.
Sulu saw one of Spock's eyebrows perk in disinterest and then return to its position, obviously ignoring whatever idiocy the humans were up to this time.
Two seconds and another well-placed shot later, the eyebrow was back in the air and stayed there, as a food cube bounced off the side of the Vulcan's head with perfect accuracy.
"Really, Doctor McCoy," the First intoned severely, turning and sending the CMO a look that would have made Sulu wet his pants.
"What'd I do?" the doctor demanded hotly.
Spock clearly did not believe the man's apparent innocence, and turned back to his meal, disgust evident in every pore.
Sulu had to be more careful with the next food cube, as Kirk kept flicking half-interested glances at his two temporarily-not-anymore-BFFs. Taking advantage of a lull, he let fly with another cube each, one bouncing off the table two inches from the captain and the other skimming the Vulcan's plate before skittering across the floor.
Hazel eyes met dark Vulcan ones. Spock's eyebrow inched to half-mast; Kirk nodded in silent answer.
Well, Sulu thought, at least they were communicating again, even if that wordless I'm-on-the-same-creepy-wavelength thing they did always weirded him out.
McCoy suddenly quailed, uneasy under twin looks of Impending Epic Ganging-Up Upon Chief Medical Officers.
"I didn't do anything!" the man yelped, literally having no idea what the heck was going on.
"Hmm, really?" Kirk held up the now soggy food cube. "I suppose it was Spock chucking these at me? When he isn't using a cube ration today?"
"Chucking…those aren't mine! You may delight in actin' like you're twelve, but I've dead sure got better things to do with my time than start a – a food fight!"
"Oh no?"
"I believe, Doctor, what the Captain means to say is that you should not begin that which you are unwilling to continue or incapable of finishing," Spock picked that moment to interject helpfully, all the while removing himself subtly from the immediate line of fire.
Sulu stifled a flood of laughter in his sleeve.
Ice-blue eyes narrowed, gleamed. "Oh, I didn't start anything, Jim-boy."
The captain decided wisely, if belatedly, to form a better strategy than hide-behind-Spock-because-who-would-dare-t
o-mess-up-that-immaculate-hair, and began edging backward toward the nearest food replicator.
McCoy grinned wolfishly. "But you can bet your bottom credit I'm 'willing to continue and capable of finishing,'" he said, grabbing the nearest food item – which happened to be a large and sticky portion of Spock's gods-knew-what-alien-vegetable – and flinging it at his superior's head as Kirk tripped over a chair.
The not-precisely-masculine shriek of sheer disgust as the object impacted the captain's head, sticking briefly in his hair before squelching to the floor, sent a shell-shocked Chekov into a fit of giggles. Sulu hastily clamped a hand over the younger man's mouth before he gave away both their presence and their duplicity.
McCoy's cackle of evil laughter (Sulu was receiving the mad scientist vibe loud and clear) was cut short when he flung himself downward to avoid a hurtling chicken leg.
"That's a waste of good Southern food, Jim!" he hollered, chucking it back at his superior.
"Your good Southern self can have this too, then!"
Sulu's eyes widened as the captain launched an enormous sporkful of mashed potatoes at the physician, who was struggling back to his feet on a greasy floor, arm flailing for ammunition which would do more damage than a food cube. Unfortunately, Kirk's aim with a soppy projectile was considerably poorer than with a phaser or other weapon.
Spock had not quite gotten out of the way, and his uniform became the first collateral damage.
The captain's look of sheer uh-oh-I-am-so-dead was priceless.
Kirk made the executive decision to retreat toward the replicators. McCoy's jeers followed him. "What'sa matter, Jim, where d'you think you're going?"
"To get ammunition!" The captain began punching an override code into the nearest replicator, casting uneasy glances over his shoulder all the while.
McCoy's eyes followed the drip of gravy as it meandered down Spock's Science blues, finally plopping onto the floor. "You gonna let him get away with that?" he asked cordially.
Sulu shivered at the gleam of dark, Vulcan humor which sent life back into Spock's eyes. Vulcans don't do humor. Which is why Spock was just flat scary when he did. It made him want to curl into a ball and suck his thumb until it was all over.
"Negative, Doctor. Need I inquire, upon whose side lie your loyalties?"
"Uhhhh…" The physician gulped, eyes flitting to his captain, who was now stalking back toward them, hands full of… "Please tell me those aren't Brussels sprouts and blocks of cream cheese?"
"Yup," Kirk called, grinning.
"I'm on yours, Mr. Spock," the doctor said hastily, scuttling around the table.
"Traitor!" the captain gibed cheerfully, as he methodically constructed a small catapult from a discarded tray and various odds and ends of eating utensils.
"I belief the expression is, you have created a monster," Chekov observed, just before they both were forced to dive for cover from a flying banana and crawl unnoticed to the far set of doors, beating a hasty retreat before being spotted by the three combatants.
They needn't have worried; last thing they saw before scurrying out was McCoy trying to empty a glass of lemonade over their captain's head, while Kirk himself was in the process of calculating the trajectories of a fusillade of cream-cheese chunks aimed over the top of his First Officer's makeshift shield.
Over dinner that evening, a puzzled Lieutenant Kyle said he'd run into his three COs earlier in the afternoon when he was coming in for a mid-afternoon snack, all three of them in dirty uniforms and carrying various cleaning supplies from the direction of Officers' Mess. As if that wasn't weird enough, the captain had been all smiles and sunshine, elbowing both his smug-looking subordinates and going off into a hoot of laughter just before the turbolift doors had closed on the odd trio.
No one believed poor Kyle, of course.
And Sulu wasn't about to ask if Kirk had mentioned who won.