Fic: The Plebe, Chapter 3

[elliewood]

The Plebe, Chapter 3
Confession -- The Plan -- The Ice Man Cometh

 

“Damn, I love Tuesdays. Doughnut Day.” Mitchell elbowed Jim in the shoulder and squeezed in next to him at the mess table. “Eat up so we can get on over to the gym and get some sets in.”

Jim tightened his fingers around his coffee cup and didn't answer. Mitchell looked hard at him, taking an impressive bite out of one of the stack of doughnuts on his tray. “The hell is wrong with you? You look like your fucking dog just died.” He waved at Jim’s tray. “Look, man, you haven’t even touched your sandwich. You fucking love chicken salad. What’s up?”

Jim had kept a few of the details of his previous week’s meeting with Spock to himself, and he felt a sudden tautness high on his cheeks at the thought that it was likely time to come clean. Mitch deserved to know he’d soon be welcoming a new roommate.

“You remember my first day here, when Mr. Spock asked me to stay after class?”

“Yeah. When he told you to show your work. So?”

“He also said…” Jim finally took a sip of his coffee and pressed his lips together for a moment before finishing his answer. “He said I’m going to fail the test tomorrow.”

“What?” The genuine disbelief in Mitchell’s rounded eyes was oddly cheering, the incredulity in his hushed voice even more so. He leaned in. “You listen to me,” he said slowly, emphasizing his words with multiple gentle pokes to Jim’s left pectoral. “There is no way you’ll fail. You’re about the smartest guy I've ever met. Spock should know that.”

Jim smiled weakly, grateful for Mitchell’s championship. “He does. At least I think he does. He knows I understand the material. But he said I have to show my work because I have to be able to justify myself to my CO. If I ever get that far.” He pushed away the tray, the chicken salad sandwich still untouched. “He told me to go find a tutor. To help me figure out how to, you know, demonstrate my process.”

Mitchell snorted. “’Demonstrate your process.’ Jesus, what a douche canoe. He’s probably just pissed that you’re smarter than him.” He tossed the remainder of his doughnut on the table and dusted off his hands. “Listen, don’t worry. I’ll help you. We’ll practice all that shit tonight. You’re a lock for tomorrow if all you need is to write out the mental math you already do.”

Jim’s shoulders slumped. “Thanks, but it’s not going to be that easy,” he sighed.

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because I, uh…I don’t know how to write it out. ‘All that shit.’” Mitchell smirked at the unaccustomed use of profanity but kept quiet as Jim continued. “He asked me to do it, to show him in his office, and I couldn't. I didn't even know where to begin.” He slurped the now cold coffee glumly. “I felt like a total idiot. Still do.”

“I don’t get it.” Mitchell leaned back in his seat and folded his arms, his forehead wrinkling. “Can’t you…I mean, are you telling me you don’t know how to write?”

“No, I do, I mean, my handwriting’s not great, but I can do it as long as it’s just words. And I’m good with keyboarding. But he asked me to do numbers, you know, equations. I can do them in my head but I don’t know how to take what’s in my head and put it on a screen.”

“How…how can you…gahhhh.” Mitchell shook his head rapidly from side to side, then pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes briefly. “Let’s go to the gym, man. I need to think. I can’t think sitting on my ass.” He rose and swung his bag over one shoulder before hefting both of their trays in a single fluid motion. “Come on.”

The coolness of the cloudy afternoon air was welcomingly refreshing after the crush and din of the mess hall. Mitchell strode slightly ahead of Jim, his brow furrowed as he gazed ahead at the athletic facility across the campus. After several moments he spoke up.

“So tell me this. How the hell did you get through high school without writing any math? Once you get to, like, geometry, you have to write a crap-load of proofs and shit.”

“I never had to.” Jim drove his hands deeper into his pockets as they walked. “All the tests I took just required keyboard entries.”

“Dude. Seriously? That’s dumb. You could cheat your way through if you hacked the lockdown. What kind of bullshit high school lets you take nothing but electronic tests?”

“I, uh, didn't actually go to a high school. I did the curriculum at home.”

Mitchell halted so suddenly that Jim ran into him from behind. He turned and glared.

“Wait…you were homeschooled?” He barked out a laugh at Jim’s abashed nod. “Fuck, that explains a lot about you.”

“It made the most sense. There’s a lot of work to do on a farm, so I’d have chores during the day and do my classes at night.”

“So you seriously never had an actual teacher. Before you came here, I mean. No, wait, don’t answer that.” Mitchell turned and resumed a brisk pace toward the athletics building, Jim following behind. “I don’t wanna hear about whatever your hillbilly girlfriend taught you behind the cowshed.”

“I didn't…”

“Shut up, shitkicker.”

They continued their trek in silence until they reached the doors of the athletic facility, where Mitchell turned and raised one hand to point an accusatory finger at Jim’s nose. “One thing. Just don't tell me it was your mom who homeschooled you. Do not tell me that, you big bleeding pussy.”

A genuine grin crinkled the corners of Jim’s eyes; Mitch was the big brother he would have had in Sam, if Sam had stayed. “I did most of it on my own. But, yeah, my mom helped. She has a degree in engineering physics and another in astrobiology.”

Mitchell rolled his eyes skyward. “Figures.”

 

***

 

Mitchell scowled as he sprawled on the locker room bench. Physical activity usually fostered his creative streak, but despite over an hour of training, he felt no closer to a solution for Jim’s predicament, and the unit test in astrophysics was now only twenty hours away. He wiped off the sweat running down his neck and chest and flung the towel on the floor in frustration.

“There’s a shit-ton of brainiacs at the AEC,” he panted, “and you couldn't find a single tutor there?”

“No,” Jim replied miserably from the bench opposite as he pulled off his socks. “Not one of them would help me. They all said I didn't need a tutor.” He didn't relate the details of the most hurtful of these rejections, that of one steel-haired woman who had squinted at him over the rims of her old-fashioned eyeglasses and told him, bluntly to the point of rudeness, that he was wasting her time. Which would be better spent, she had added acerbically, with students who genuinely need help, not grade-grubbers just looking to bump an A into an A+.

He sighed and dropped his face into his hands. “The exam is tomorrow. And I can’t show Mr. Spock how I solve problems,” he mumbled through his fingers. “I’m going to fail, my first test at the Academy and I’m going to fail.”

Mitchell’s expression hardened. “You’re not gonna fail, my man. That’s not gonna happen.” He studied the despondent figure in front of him in the almost angry silence that followed until a sudden light appeared in his eyes. “Wait, I got it, I got it!”

“What?”

Mitchell ignored Jim’s hopeless tone and sprang up to pace the short length of the bench. “AEC tutors are either instructors who teach the class or older cadets who've already taken it and done really well. Right?”

Jim shrugged. “I guess.”

“So of course they’re not gonna be any help. You don’t need help understanding it!” Mitchell quit his pacing and planted his hands on his naked hips, beaming triumphantly as he gazed down at Jim.

Confused at his obvious elation, Jim shook his head. “I don’t see where you’re going with this. I mean, who else could help me with what I do need? Aside from a tutor?”

“That’s just it. Listen, we've been looking in the wrong place. We need to find you someone who's not just book-smart like a tutor, but someone who's a fucking genius like you.” The pacing resumed. “You guys think alike, you know, you understand your own kind.”

The gloom lightened, a little. “You think so? That we could find someone who thinks like me?”

“Yeah, but we won’t find them in the AEC. We gotta smoke them out, you know what I’m saying?”

“You mean, go where people like me spend their time?”

“Exactly.”

Jim could feel his own excitement growing. “So we hit the library? Or maybe a theoretical physics lab?”

“No, you fucktard. The game room.”

Jim was stunned into silence, the look of dismay on his face wringing a cackle from Mitchell. “Come on, don’t be pissed,” he laughed, pleased with the brilliance of his plan. “Gamers are like you. That's why they're fucking gamers. Their minds are too weird live in the real world like the rest of us, so they spend all their time in fake ones.”

“Mitch, listen. I don’t think…” Jim took a breath, fearful of offending his friend, but certain that he was on the wrong scent. “I think it’d be a waste of time to go wait around the game room. I really don’t think there’s going to be someone there who has a lot in common with me.”

“Why not, Einstein?”

“I, uh…I don’t play games. I never have.”

“Let me guess. No time because of all your pussy farm chores.”

“Yeah, mostly. And reading.”

Gary Mitchell was not a complicated man, and Jim was, despite his roommate’s recently voiced opinion, not a fucktard, so the fist that swung toward him with the intent to further bruise his shoulder was entirely expected. The reflexive contraction of his obliques to avoid the punch, however, was not. Mitchell missed, his momentum pitching him off balance; he skidded slightly on the wet tile floor, twisting in the direction of his swing as he fell, the back of his head making shockingly loud contact with the edge of Jim’s bench.

“Ow, fuck!” Mitchell glared up accusingly at Jim from his awkward position on the floor. “You should be a gamer, you asshole. You wouldn't be wound up so tight if you played now and then.”

Jim snickered into his fist, amused at the sight of Mitchell’s genitalia flopping dramatically as his ass hit the floor. The grin vanished a moment later; Mitchell noticed the amber eyes widening. “What is it?”

“Mitch…you’re hurt.” He gestured to the back of his own head, and Mitchell mirrored his pantomime to draw back a bloodied hand.

“Oh, great.” He looked over his shoulder to the drops of blood that merged together to form an alarmingly large and still-growing pool. He paled slightly. “Help me up.”

Jim stood and hauled Mitchell to his feet before retrieving the discarded towel to press it against the back of his head. The thin fabric darkened immediately, an escaping trickle of red snaking its way down the back of Mitchell’s neck. He removed the towel, folded it into a tight pad, and re-positioned it against the now sticky hair.

“We should get you over to the clinic. It’s a pretty big gash.”

“You’re a pretty big gash. Grab me another towel; I don’t want the whole campus seeing my junk.”

Jim doubted there was much mystery surrounding Mitchell’s junk, but complied.

 

***

 

Leonard Horatio McCoy had left an established medical practice to join Starfleet, so aside from being older than most recruits, he had already accumulated several years of clinical experience before being assigned to the Academy Student Health Center. To say he had seen it all, at this point in his career, would be an overstatement, but his expertise being far beyond that of a mere stitcher and ditcher, he gave the two barefoot and nearly naked young men that entered the clinic only a cursory glance before returning to the focus of his attention, the compound fracture of the lower leg of a grey-faced girl still in her lacrosse jersey and pads.

“Chris!” he shouted over his shoulder. “You got customers.” He gestured with his head to the newcomers: “Station two. Over there.”

Jim recognized the willowy blond woman who appeared in the clinic doorway from his arrival on campus the previous week; he also recognized the sour expression that he now tried to dispel with a polite nod. “Ma’am. My friend hit his head.”

“I can see that.” She elbowed him out of the way and pulled the towel off; Mitchell yelped as it stretched the raw edges of the wound, bringing a fresh spurt of blood. “I’ll need the glue gun and a cc of lidocaine,” she said to herself, then looked sharply at Jim. “Hold that towel back on there. I’ll be right back.”

Glue gun? Mitchell mouthed to Jim, and despite his concern at the additional bleeding, Jim gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. It wasn't long before Christine re-entered the room bearing a tray that held a small gun-like instrument and a tiny hypospray resting on an impressive bed of cotton gauze.

“Oh, shit,” moaned Mitchell. “I hate shots. I fucking hate them.” He twisted his face up to look imploringly at Christine as she dabbed at his leaking head. “Can’t you do it without a shot?”

“If I do, you’ll be off this table screaming,” she said crisply. “I don’t have the manpower to hold you down.” She pushed his chin away from her with one finger, rotating his face back toward Jim, and directed the hypospray at the back of his head. “Now keep still.”

A squeaking whimper escaped him at the hypospray’s first gentle hiss. Jim leaned in, making sure the anxious brown eyes were fixed on him and that Christine’s were not.

“Now who’s the big bleeding pussy?” he whispered into Mitchell’s ear.

Mitch gaped at him for a moment, disbelieving, before breaking into a roar of laughter. Christine frowned slightly but took advantage of his distraction to complete the desensitization, then started to close the wound with careful, efficient sweeps of the tissue fuser. By the time Mitchell’s mirth had died down into the occasional chuckle and a swipe of his knuckles across his tearing eyes, she was packing the sealed wound with gauze. “Good job,” she said as she dropped the tissue fuser on the waiting tray and stripped off her gloves. “Overnight observation for you, mister. You can go back to business as usual in the morning if you check out all right. Until then, peace and quiet. And some clothes, please.” She pulled a stack of scrubs from a drawer under the biobed and tossed them onto Mitchell’s crotch. “You, too," she said archly to Jim. "That towel’s not hiding much.”

Jim gratefully slid into a pair of scrub bottoms before helping Mitchell pull a shirt over his bandaged head. When his friend offered neither verbal nor physical resistance to his awkward attempt at tugging the pants over his legs, Jim knew that Mitch wasn’t himself. He perched on the edge of the biobed and grasped Mitchell’s hand.

“Are you going to be all right? I could stay here with you if you want.”

“No, no, that’s dumb. I’ll be fine. Go ahead and check out the game room like I said.” He groaned as Christine guided him downward to lie on the biobed, his head sinking into the pillow. “Find yourself a genius. Or a shrink.” He yawned as his eyelids fluttered closed.

Across the room, Dr. McCoy’s other patient was also dosing, her broken leg now encased in a plasticast. He caught Mitchell’s sleepy pronouncement and raised an eyebrow, then moved toward them as he wiped his hands with a surgical towel. “Saw you drive up last Tuesday,” he said pleasantly to Jim. “How’s your first week been?”

Jim looked up into the steady blue gaze, and the polite lie he had been about to deliver evaporated. “Not that good. I’m about to fail my first astrophysics test.” He glanced at a lightly snoring Mitchell before continuing. “Mitch was going to help me find a tutor.”

“Or a psychiatrist,” Christine interjected as she dumped a mound of bloody gauze into an orange biohazard bag. Her tone was tart but the expression on her face was noticeably more pleasant than when they had entered the clinic. Jim felt a tug of hope.

“That’s right. Someone who can help me get what’s in my head down in writing.”

McCoy pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Son, we’re clinicians, not astrophysicists. But we do have someone here who might be able to point you in the right direction.” He moved to the door and called down the corridor beyond. “Finn! You got a minute?”

 

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