it’s all there if you read the fine print by sans_pertinence (PG-13)

[aprilleigh24.livejournal.com]

Fandom: STAR TREK RPF
Pairing: William Shatner/Leonard Nimoy
Length: ~6,900
Author on LJ:sans_pertinence
Author Website:
Why this must be read: You weren’t friends. Not then. Not yet. I have a confession: I don't really like William Shatner. This is not saying anything bad about his talent, or intelligence, or integrity or anything like that. It's just- I know that if I knew him as a person he would drive me absolutely insane. This is a story that feels like it could be true because it so perfectly captures that 'Bill, you are driving me crazy!' exasperation that so many people around him express. This is a story about Leonard Nimoy hating William Shatner- until he doesn't, and it is brilliant.


“Has it ever occurred to you that not everything is about you?”

“No, just like it doesn’t occur to you.” He gives you the smile that’s half smirk, half self-deprecation. “We’re actors. If we didn’t believe it’s all about us we wouldn’t be here.”

You hate that he has a point. Whenever he bothers letting all those lesser creatures who are not Bill Shatner in on his reasoning, he usually does have a point, and maybe that’s the main reason you want to neck pinch him into oblivion half the time.

On the other hand, Bill’s flashes of insight are few and far between, and there are a million other ways for him to drive you insane.

“I lied, by the way.”

Oh, the irony. “Which time?”

He takes the cigarette you hold out to him, takes a deep drag and passes a smaller butt back to you. “I don’t accept you not liking me. Anyway,” he adds, casually like it’s an afterthought, “you don’t. Not really.”

It’s going to take you at least a week to work through all the negatives in those three short sentences, but that’s Bill for you.

Who is Bill Shatner, anyway? Does he even exist as a unique entity or is he just some half-imagined patchwork of a hundred different characters? How can he pretend to know things about you that you don’t even know yourself? Is he that arrogant?

“So, we’re okay,” he says, not a question, because yes, he really is that arrogant. But that’s not all he is, and you know it; you’re past the point of lying to yourself.


it’s all there if you read the fine print