FIC: Call me Jim 2/4
Title: Call me Jim
Rating: Teen
Pairing: always-a-girlKirk/Spock
Warnings: teenagers, genderswap
Story: Spock meets Jaime "Jim" Kirk at a Starfleet Diplomatic Corps banquet, where there is banter, dancing, sexual harassment and pick-pocketing.
Beta: zjofierose (who quasi-wrote the story, I swear, she came up with so many great ideas)
A/N: inspired by a prompt that wanted dancing, and lurve, and another one about teen romance
Spock took public transportation to North Beach and got off at the Washington Square Park before crossing to the front of the church of Saints Peter and Paul. The sun was low on the horizon and the streets were washed in a comforting shade of burnished copper, reminding him of Vulcan. There was a small group of children playing a ball game across in the park. Spock watched them absently as he stood on the church steps to wait. When Jaime Kirk did not show up at the appointed time, Spock became concerned that she would not appear at all. But his concern proved groundless when a street bike screeched to a stop in front of the church steps, fishtailing lazily on the concrete. Miss Kirk beamed up at him from astride it.
“Hey, were you waiting long?” She asked, slightly breathless, and took off her safety helmet.
“Seventeen minutes and twenty-two seconds,” Spock said as he descended the steps swiftly, wishing the evening over. “Where do you wish to eat?”
Both frowning and smiling in a peculiar mix of expressions, Jaime Kirk shook her head and leaned back in the seat of her bike. “Whoa, whoa, hang on there a minute! How about we start hello, how are you, I’m well…” She gestured at him with one hand and waited expectantly.
“Good evening, Miss Kirk,” Spock said dryly, “Are you well?”
“I’m swell, thanks for asking, call me Jim, you?” Her hand gestured in his direction again, cuing him to respond. Spock wondered if the entire evening would be wasted on meaningless Terran pleasantries and small talk. The hand dropped back onto the handle of her bike when he remained silent and she shot him a lopsided grin. “I guess you’re hungry then. Okay, hop on, I know a place nearby.”
Spock glared at the back of the girl’s head as she turned away to adjust something on the bike and took the helmet being held out to him. It was uncomfortable, not constructed to allow for his Vulcanoid ears, but he endured it, reasoning that he would need to wear it for only a few minutes.
Spock decided to ride the bike as it was a faster mode of transport than walking and thus would help shorten the evening, but he quickly realized that it was a mistake. Jaime Kirk was wearing a black skirt, as revealing as the dress she had worn when they had met, with the same pair of boots. It left her legs bare and as Spock sat on the back of her bike, arms around her small waist, he found his legs pressed to her thighs in an intimate and rather inappropriate manner. When they finally parked in a nearby alleyway Spock got off as soon as they came to a stop.
“A place nearby” turned out to be a small restaurant serving Italian-style food, a pizzeria to be precise, with a quaint store front and old-fashioned lighting, meant to mimicking incandescent light bulbs which humans were fond of for their warm tones.
“Got any preferences?” She asked as she led the way into the small establishment, finding an empty booth and sliding in. Spock found himself looking away as she reorganized her short hem.
“Please order on my behalf.” He said, taking a seat from the other end of the C-shaped booth. He didn’t mention that he would not be partaking in any meat, deciding that if she did order something with meat, then he could simply decline. Besides, the girl spoke at least some Vulcan; it stood to reason that she knew of their dietary patterns.
“Half-half it is then,” she announced expansively and with a bright smile, enticed one of the women in a server’s apron to their table. “Hi, can we get a family size, half-half, House special with extra cheese and pepperoni, and a Vegetarian Special with extra tomatoes.”
“Sure thing,” the woman said, matching Jaime Kirk’s smile with a motherly one. “Anything I can get you kids to drink?”
“Lemonade and a…” She looked to him.
“Orange juice,” Spock supplied.
Silence descended upon the table as soon as the woman left with a promise to deliver their drinks soon. Drumming the tips of her fingers against the wooden tabletop, Jaime Kirk examined him, a smile stretched over her lips. He returned her regard coolly. “May I have -?”
“You may not.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You do not know what I was going to say.”
She gave a bark of laughter and propped an elbow on the tabletop, index finger curling in his direction. “You were going to ask for your library access key.” The girl slid all the way into the middle of the semi-circular seat and propped one leg up on the freed space, slouching out in an indolent posture. “You think that the terms are unfair and you’re probably thinking that this is a waste of time, you think that I’m deliberately antagonizing and it confuses the heck out of you why I am doing this.”
“You are correct.” Spock wondered if there was a point to this.
She gave him a look that said obviously, of course she was correct. “Okay…and you don’t see a problem with this picture?” At his perplexed silence, she reached out to prod his shoulder, causing him to shift a little in discomfort because she was behaving in a very familiar manner; not even his mother touched him so freely. “I know your motivations, I know your reasoning, but you don’t know mine. If this was a real negotiation, I’m pretty sure I have you beat.”
“That is not the point of this meeting,” Spock’s voice rose despite his better judgment. He was seriously starting to wonder if indeed he would ever see his library access key again. “I am not here to debate my understanding or lack of-”
“Hey, I still have your library access, don’t forget.” She said in warning, the persistent finger digging into his shoulder and staying there.
Do not remind me, Spock thought wearily. Their drinks came and he took a sip of the orange juice despite not being the least bit thirsty, grateful for the distraction.
“Look I’ll put in terms you can understand; I have something you want, you want it back and you have no idea why I won’t give it back.” Jaime Kirk continued, slouching back into the soft upholstery, drink in one hand. “I’m an obstacle to your object, but your usual method of relying on logic has failed.” She raised an eyebrow and gestured at him with her free hand, “If I operated under the same patterns as you do, you would not be in this situation. Thus it’s reasonable to say that you have to change the way you operate or otherwise,” she smiled brightly and tipped her glass at him, “You’re shit out of luck.”
There was, he grudgingly admitted, some form of logic to her statement. His father, a diplomat who had pursued a very successful career in acting as mediator and a broker of treaties, worked in a similarly methodical manner. The Ambassador collected intelligence on both parties, learning to understand the basics of the languages, nonverbal behaviors, values and decision-making processes that he would be working with. His father invested in personal relationships, understood the danger of generalizations and exploited differences to obtain what was important to both sides. Calmer, now that he had thought about it, Spock saw the adolescent with new eyes. She smiled at him invitingly. She was an alien, he realized with some astonishment, and she was different to him in ways he could not begin to imagine; nothing like his mother who adopted Vulcan ways and accepted Vulcan logic. Jaime Kirk was human, perhaps in a way he had never been confronted with.
“Do you have a solution?” He asked.
“Yeah, get to know me.”
Spock cocked an eyebrow. “Is that wise?”
The girl laughed, and a hand brushed his thigh under the table, making his entire body flinch in near-fright at the unexpected sensation. The food arrived, distracting them both and giving Spock an opportunity to regain his control. The smells were delicious, and he found himself taking a deep breath, curious as to the taste of the pizza here. He had tried it on Vulcan, at small eateries catering to the human residents with his mother as a youth, but never on Earth.
“Enjoy,” the woman said, placing an extra bundle of napkins on their table.
Jaime Kirk smiled her thanks, and then she was eating almost ravenously. Halfway through her first slice, she paused and looked at him, drink in hand. “Aren’t you going to eat?” She asked, swallowing in a hurry. “It’s vegetarian, that half there - go on, it’s good - oh here, let me…” Finishing off her slice quickly, she wiped her fingers crudely on a napkin and picked out a slice from the vegetarian portion. Spock took it with a murmur of thanks and ate slowly, more curious than truly hungry. It was delicious.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” She mumbled between another bite, then bumped their pizza slices together as if toasting.
It was good pizza, far better than what he had enjoyed on Vulcan. The flavor of the Earth vegetables was rich, and when he commented on the superior quality of the crust, Jaime Kirk moaned her happy agreement, informing him that this pizzeria made their own bread-bases. His mother would enjoy this place, Spock thought as he enjoyed his third slice and Jaime Kirk had sufficiently sated her hunger to slow down.
“You can order in, you know; they do take-out,” she informed him, after he expressed a wish for his mother to sample the pizzas here. “Hang on…” Getting up and wiping her fingers, she went to the counter, returning moments later flashing a slender plastic card. It was made to plug into the slot on the side of all communicators and terminals, to place a call to the business whose details it carried or download the information into a personal communicator. Spock took it with a murmur of thanks and Jaime Kirk smiled in pleasure.
He did not know how it happened, but soon they were discussing her work on postulating a theorem for the conversion of subspace radiation into transtator current, based on mass, density, irradiation levels, length of time and the purity of the rubindium crystals. By the time they had finished their meal, Spock had agreed to proofread her paper, and to show her his paper on micro-singularities, despite his increasing discomfort with her casual touches.
In the forty minutes they had been eating and conversing she had touched him no less than fifty-seven times. Each time his skin shivered just like it had when she had touched his chin that night as they danced, and even his thick, proper, long-sleeved tunic and pants were not enough to guard against her touch seeping through. Soon, Jaime Kirk was slumped against his shoulder, writing on his unused napkins with an ink-tipped stylus.
“See, in school they always taught up to do it this way,” she was saying, head tilting to the right and bumping against his shoulder, rubbing, nuzzling-
Spock stood abruptly, realizing the strange position they were in. Jaime Kirk gave a startled yelp at the disappearance of his form to lean against but, managed to grab onto the table.
“Miss Kirk,” he began, slightly agitated, “Explain your behavior.” At her blank stare, he continued. “You have touched me a total of fifty-eight times in the last forty two minutes - is it your intent to make me uncomfortable?”
“Nope - as a matter of fact, you’re the first guy to complain,” the girl gave him a long look, puzzled. Then sighed in exasperation, “And dammit, would you stop calling me that! My name’s Jim!”
Spock paused, uncertain how he was supposed to interpret her answer, and somewhat baffled by her obsession with being referred to as ‘Jim.’ Surely, for someone with knowledge of the Vulcan language and an awareness of Vulcan dietary preferences, she would know that Vulcans did not appreciate being casually touched except by those whom they were in close rapport. There was a silence where they regarded one another before Spock nodded, accepting her answer. She was human, he reasoned, and even if she knew the Vulcan dislike for being touched, she may not assign the same level of importance to the issue as he did.
“You’re a weird boy.” She told him bluntly.
“Under Vulcan law, I am a man.”
Jaime Kirk gave a loud bark of hilarity and looked to him in disbelief. He frowned at her reaction. Her laughs became soft, choked, her face pink as her hands clutched at her stomach. “Oh God,” she gasped between guffaws, “You’re serious aren’t you! Oh man…”
“I passed the rite of adulthood two human months prior,” he explained calmly in the face of her inexplicable mirth. “Under Vulcan law, I am an adult male.”
As soon as she calmed slightly, she gave him a broad grin and asked, “Are you gay?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you homosexual?”
The flush came without warning, heating his cheeks before he controlled his reaction. Spock had not expected the question. Upon his acceptance of Jaime Kirk’s innate humanness, that she wouldn’t behave or reason in a manner he was familiar with, Spock had slowly come to if not enjoy her company, recognize her intelligence. This was an uncomfortable reminder of the gap between them, and he wondered if Jaime Kirk knew how gravely her question violated Vulcan codes of privacy. “My sexual preferences are none of your business, Miss Kirk,” he said with great calm.
Turning away, Spock went stiffly to the main counter and paid for the meal before exiting. The door’s bells trilled as he stepped out. The nighttime air was cool and refreshing against his heated face, fragrant with the smell of herbs and spices from the various dining establishments that littered the area, plaques announcing their names brightly lit. Calling upon his memory of the area’s landmarks, he walked quickly in the direction they had come from, intending to use one of the public network terminals to find his way home.
The restaurant door opened with an abrupt clatter of the bells hanging over it and then Jaime Kirk was running after him, boots stomping on the pavement until they were shoulder to shoulder. Spock didn’t look at her.
“Hey, you forgot your library key,” she told him. Reaching into her leather jacket pocket, she withdrew the plug-in key and held it out to him. “You still want it or not?”
“You have made it very clear that I possess poor negotiation skills.”
Jaime Kirk shrugged, and took his hand. Spock came to an abrupt stop, disconcerted by the sensation. He was about to pull his hand from her grasp when she pushed the library access key into his palm and curled his fingers around it. An electric shiver ran down his spine. “You’re good at other things,” she replied, a familiar grin tugging at her lips, and then moved back to put a more appropriate distance between them. “I like you,” she announced with a kind of certainty that Spock seldom came across.
“Thank you,” he said, for the lack of anything else to say.
He was familiar with familial bonds of love, duty, devotion. He had also experienced the curiosity, prejudice, admiration, respect and disinterest of others. But like? It was such an imprecise term.
“I do not understand what you mean by that,” he told Jaime Kirk honestly, his slight frown as much confusion as denial that this girl could possibly mean what his mother had hinted at. Then almost compulsively he added, “I’m sorry,” though there was nothing to apologize for. If it had been someone else, a human adolescent other than Jaime Kirk, Spock suspected that he would have surely caused offence in some way at their initial meeting during the Starfleet Diplomatic Corps Gala.
“Well…” she shrugged and waved her hand in a vague gesture at him, brows furrowed even as her lips curved upwards. Her smiles were irrepressible, Spock decided wryly, not certain if he had seen her refrain from smiling for more than a minute in the entire time he had known her. “What’s not to like? You’re not older than warp drive, good-looking, even with that silly haircut…” Spock shrunk away from the hand that reached up towards his temple.
Jaime Kirk’s hand dropped back down by her side. “And you’re pretty smart - even if you can’t negotiate for peanuts. In short,” she smiled slowly, “I like you.”
Spock looked away, unable to meet her steady warm regard. “It is a relief that I am acceptable, despite being allegedly unable to ‘negotiate for peanuts.’”
Jaime Kirk laughed again, a light pleasant sound. “Hey, do you want a lift home?” She asked, gesturing to the alley where she had left her vehicle. “Bike’s just there.”
Spock breathed, “That would be acceptable.”
---
The trip back to the secured neighborhood where many Federation diplomats resided with their families seemed to go by quickly. Spock’s unease with the intimacy of being pressed against the girl’s back was mostly forgotten as he was swept up in the novelty of nighttime San Francisco’s streetscape. People were in the streets, walking together, smiling and laughing. There were alien tourists, cadets and officers, as well as civilians, young people and old people. Through the windows of eating and drinking establishments they passed he glimpsed people eating, debating and even engaged in amorous behavior. Even his growing irritation with the uncomfortable safety helmet did not dampen his fascination with all he had observed, but he did let out a grateful breath when they finally arrived and he was able to remove it.
“Um, your hair is kind of…” Jaime Kirk trailed off, hand reaching up towards his left ear uncertainly. She smiled impishly, and holding Spock’s gaze, gently smoothed down some errant strands of hair. Spock kept still until she was done, and then handed back the helmet.
“I appreciate your consideration in escorting me home.” He said quietly, glancing over at the front porch. The lights were not switched on, which Spock considered a good sign, as it meant that no one was expecting him. He had not told his parents where he was going tonight, only that he would not be dining at home.
“No problem, it was fun. So…see you around then?”
“Should I be checking my personal possessions for anything missing?”
“Oh, funny,” the girl snorted, but she smiled, fiddling with the vehicle’s controls. “I’ll call you, okay?”
Spock regarded her in the dim light from the far street lamp and wondered what else could be said. Farewells were simple affairs among Vulcans, but the process with humans was sometimes lengthy, filled with last minute anecdotes, information, requests and agreements to meet again. Her eyes were still hypnotically blue, he thought.
“I want to thank you once again for returning my library access key. I did not expect you to return it after the course our dinner had taken.” He would not have said anything at all, because it was his property she had stolen and so Jaime Kirk should have been apologizing to him, not receiving his thanks… but courtesy was never amiss.
The blue eyes narrowed slightly, and the smile became slightly questioning. “What? Did you think I’d keep it or something?”
“You had taken it without permission, and refused to return it to me when confronted. You then offered to trade my own stolen property to me,” Spock answered honestly. “From this, I realized that you do not differentiate between correct and incorrect behavior.”
Jaime Kirk gave him an incredulous look. “Hey, are you calling me a thief?”
Spock raised an eyebrow. “You did steal from me. You also expressed no remorse for the action.”
“Hey, I didn’t steal your library access key!” She countered sharply, “I borrowed it; if I was truly stealing something, would I be so stupid as to leave my number? Why would I even want your library access key? I’ve got my own!”
“Then why did you take it?”
She shrugged and threw a hand out to gesture at the sky. “Because it’s fun, because it was there, oh I don’t know; I gave it back, didn’t I?”
That was not an answer… “Based on your previous actions, there was a high possibility that you would dishonor the agreement to return my library access key after I had fulfilled my side of the terms,” Spock explained patiently. Then added, “I appreciate that you have kept the terms you set. Thank you.”
Jaime Kirk gave him an inscrutable look, and then looked away in irritation, dragging the back of her hand across her nose. She had stopped smiling. “You’ve got your library key back now - bye, then,” she said shortly, and, gripping the bike handles tightly, brought the vehicle around in a sharp turn and left.
Spock blinked at the abruptness of her departure, staring after the red tail lights. He had missed something in the complex interchange between them, something vital. The girl was not smiling when she left, and in all the time he had known her, Jaime Kirk always smiled. There was no anger in her parting farewell but… Spock started when the porch lights switched on, flooding the front steps with light. The door opened. Without even turning around, he knew that his mother was standing there.
“Mother,” he greeted flatly, turning to face her.
His mother wore a slightly pained look, her brows furrowed and her lips pinched in a small smile that Spock recognized as an expression of exasperation rather than pleasure or enjoyment. “Spock...” She said, the inflection in her voice a mix of disapproval and fondness. “You can’t call someone a thief and a cheat after meeting them only twice.”
Was she watching him the entire time? He was unable to suppress the small flinch of annoyance that accompanied the thought that she knew he had spent the evening with Jaime Kirk. No doubt she would tell his father - the Ambassador would probably be suitably horrified that Spock was spending his time with someone so utterly emotional.
“I was simply stating the truth,” he told her.
His mother’s smile turned wry. She gestured for him to come inside. “Sometimes, Spock, you need to lose in order to win.”
==
Jaime Kirk’s public records were complicated. Some of the records were sealed, others were incomplete. Her academic records, specifically her aptitude tests, placed her clearly at the top one percentile of human intelligence. Others who ranked in that category had either been recruited by Starfleet Academy under acceleration programs, or been enticed by the Academy of Sciences on Deneb IV and the University of Alpha Centauri. She was listed as having finished her mandatory education, with no mention of degrees or diplomas, but her residency records listed her at Dormitory Room No. 24 Beta, Corridor 11, Block 7, of the Regulus III Science Academy. Obviously that was incorrect as she was in San Francisco. Her medical records were equally perplexing - there was a period from Stardates 2246.07 to 2248.15.2 missing entirely.
Four days passed, and Spock began his internship at the Vulcan Embassy. Busy with memorizing the layout and the details of daily guests scheduled for appointments with various officials, he relegated Miss Kirk to the back of his mind. In his orientation, however, pouring over the standard dossier that all Embassy employees were required to read and understand on human customs, he couldn’t avoid the direction that his thoughts inevitably took; her actions that evening, his words, her reactions, the causality linking them all.
Spock was confused and uncertain. It was an unsatisfactory state of affairs. He had offended Miss Kirk by insisting that she was a dishonorable, untrustworthy individual who was disrespectful of personal property rights. According to his mother, this might have been an accurate impression based on his data; however, due to his use of Vulcan standards, the data was utterly invalid. Ultimately, it came back to the strange Terran metaphor that she had pulled his metaphorical pigtails, and he had spurned her cruelly.
Two weeks passed, and still he could not reconcile the idea that he had been wrong with his own analysis of the situation.
“Father,” he began tentatively as they were in the Embassy’s open grounds, the Aldebaran delegation walking ahead of them following the assigned guide. His father looked at him, waiting. Spock was tempted to look away and remark that it was nothing, like mother often did to avoid something which she both wanted and wanted to avoid speaking of, but he controlled the conflicting feelings and pushed on. “I have caused offence to a human due to my insistence of a logical interpretation of their actions. Your advice would be appreciated…”
Even as he said this, he felt a slight bristle of shame. His father handled all his interactions with ease, existed in cohesion with humans, adapting to their ways without being any less Vulcan, but Spock was the one whom was half-human.
His father looked at him then with an audible breath, directed his attention back to the visitors. “While we see emotion as separate to logic or an impediment to logic, humans harness it as a companion or proponent of logic. Many human behaviors which seem inherently illogical to us are in fact based upon logic that is simply foreign to us. One must not make the mistake of confusing what is logical with what is merely habit or social propriety.”
Spock frowned. “You recommend that I accept the actions as appropriate according to the social rules of humans.”
His father raised an eyebrow. “You are on Earth.”
Once again, the strange realization that Jaime Kirk was an alien, a revelation he had received that night at the pizzeria, went through him like a small electric charge. The Ambassador continued, voice softer now, a tone that Spock was well-familiar with from his childhood. “Breaking propriety deliberately to shock or discomfort is uncharitable, but with many humans, that proves to not be the case.” There was a break as his father nodded discretely to the guide, who directed the group to one of the secondary Embassy buildings.
“The treatment of us as if we were human is not meant an insult, nor is it meant to be presumptuous,” the Ambassador chided him, his eyes knowing. “It is to honor us, a sign of respect, acceptance and fellowship. We are more than mere visitors, more than friends - we are one of them.”
Spock gave a curt nod, his father’s words settling somewhere deep inside and making him once again ashamed, though for entirely different reasons. They walked inside and convened with the Aldebaran delegates. His father gave him a meaningful look. “We are far from Vulcan, Spock, and insisting upon a Vulcan standard of conduct from our hosts is uncharitable. A desire to think well of others, and a willingness to make them comfortable resolve most issues.”
Then the Ambassador inclined his head in dismissal, rejoined the delegation and led them into the museum wing of the building. Spock stared at the procession, taking note of his father’s expressions, the way he moved his hands, nodded, all superfluous actions upon Vulcan. He saw the positive response of the Aldebarans, the way that they relaxed with his father and spoke freely to him.
I like you, Jaime Kirk had said. Like could be used as an adverb, preposition, adjective, conjunction, noun, and as an interjection in human speech, but she had used it as a verb. It was a new experience, being liked. Spock thought that it was…agreeable.
It was evident, Spock thought, that he needed to apologize and to make amends for his uncharitable conduct. Yet, he was unsure of how he was to perform such social rituals. The crumpled slip of paper bearing her details rested next to his personal computer terminal, untouched, and remained there until a week later, when in the course of sorting through the various inquiries and notices sent to the Vulcan Embassy, he noticed an open invitation to the Aerospace Museum in Sacramento for a new exhibition - a retrospective on flight pioneers of Earth.
It was logical to forward the information. The message he sent with it was brief, a short inquiry after her wellbeing, and the statement that he would be attending the exhibit tomorrow at 1400 hours.
Across San Francisco, Jim Kirk had almost forgotten about the Vulcan boy who was kind of beautiful. She was in the middle of a rather involved make out session with a cadet with sultry green eyes that she’d been seeing on and off this week. She groped for her comm at the sound of the new incoming thinking it was her mother, or maybe Sam, and blinked in confusion at the terminal details before it clicked. She sat up, rolling off the bed despite the cadet’s complaints. Spock wanted her to know there was an exhibition of interest at the Aerospace Museum in Sacramento, and that he was going to be there tomorrow.
“Who is it?” The cadet asked.
Jim Kirk didn’t answer. “I got to go,” she said, a slow grin coming to her lips.
next
Rating: Teen
Pairing: always-a-girlKirk/Spock
Warnings: teenagers, genderswap
Story: Spock meets Jaime "Jim" Kirk at a Starfleet Diplomatic Corps banquet, where there is banter, dancing, sexual harassment and pick-pocketing.
Beta: zjofierose (who quasi-wrote the story, I swear, she came up with so many great ideas)
A/N: inspired by a prompt that wanted dancing, and lurve, and another one about teen romance
Spock took public transportation to North Beach and got off at the Washington Square Park before crossing to the front of the church of Saints Peter and Paul. The sun was low on the horizon and the streets were washed in a comforting shade of burnished copper, reminding him of Vulcan. There was a small group of children playing a ball game across in the park. Spock watched them absently as he stood on the church steps to wait. When Jaime Kirk did not show up at the appointed time, Spock became concerned that she would not appear at all. But his concern proved groundless when a street bike screeched to a stop in front of the church steps, fishtailing lazily on the concrete. Miss Kirk beamed up at him from astride it.
“Hey, were you waiting long?” She asked, slightly breathless, and took off her safety helmet.
“Seventeen minutes and twenty-two seconds,” Spock said as he descended the steps swiftly, wishing the evening over. “Where do you wish to eat?”
Both frowning and smiling in a peculiar mix of expressions, Jaime Kirk shook her head and leaned back in the seat of her bike. “Whoa, whoa, hang on there a minute! How about we start hello, how are you, I’m well…” She gestured at him with one hand and waited expectantly.
“Good evening, Miss Kirk,” Spock said dryly, “Are you well?”
“I’m swell, thanks for asking, call me Jim, you?” Her hand gestured in his direction again, cuing him to respond. Spock wondered if the entire evening would be wasted on meaningless Terran pleasantries and small talk. The hand dropped back onto the handle of her bike when he remained silent and she shot him a lopsided grin. “I guess you’re hungry then. Okay, hop on, I know a place nearby.”
Spock glared at the back of the girl’s head as she turned away to adjust something on the bike and took the helmet being held out to him. It was uncomfortable, not constructed to allow for his Vulcanoid ears, but he endured it, reasoning that he would need to wear it for only a few minutes.
Spock decided to ride the bike as it was a faster mode of transport than walking and thus would help shorten the evening, but he quickly realized that it was a mistake. Jaime Kirk was wearing a black skirt, as revealing as the dress she had worn when they had met, with the same pair of boots. It left her legs bare and as Spock sat on the back of her bike, arms around her small waist, he found his legs pressed to her thighs in an intimate and rather inappropriate manner. When they finally parked in a nearby alleyway Spock got off as soon as they came to a stop.
“A place nearby” turned out to be a small restaurant serving Italian-style food, a pizzeria to be precise, with a quaint store front and old-fashioned lighting, meant to mimicking incandescent light bulbs which humans were fond of for their warm tones.
“Got any preferences?” She asked as she led the way into the small establishment, finding an empty booth and sliding in. Spock found himself looking away as she reorganized her short hem.
“Please order on my behalf.” He said, taking a seat from the other end of the C-shaped booth. He didn’t mention that he would not be partaking in any meat, deciding that if she did order something with meat, then he could simply decline. Besides, the girl spoke at least some Vulcan; it stood to reason that she knew of their dietary patterns.
“Half-half it is then,” she announced expansively and with a bright smile, enticed one of the women in a server’s apron to their table. “Hi, can we get a family size, half-half, House special with extra cheese and pepperoni, and a Vegetarian Special with extra tomatoes.”
“Sure thing,” the woman said, matching Jaime Kirk’s smile with a motherly one. “Anything I can get you kids to drink?”
“Lemonade and a…” She looked to him.
“Orange juice,” Spock supplied.
Silence descended upon the table as soon as the woman left with a promise to deliver their drinks soon. Drumming the tips of her fingers against the wooden tabletop, Jaime Kirk examined him, a smile stretched over her lips. He returned her regard coolly. “May I have -?”
“You may not.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You do not know what I was going to say.”
She gave a bark of laughter and propped an elbow on the tabletop, index finger curling in his direction. “You were going to ask for your library access key.” The girl slid all the way into the middle of the semi-circular seat and propped one leg up on the freed space, slouching out in an indolent posture. “You think that the terms are unfair and you’re probably thinking that this is a waste of time, you think that I’m deliberately antagonizing and it confuses the heck out of you why I am doing this.”
“You are correct.” Spock wondered if there was a point to this.
She gave him a look that said obviously, of course she was correct. “Okay…and you don’t see a problem with this picture?” At his perplexed silence, she reached out to prod his shoulder, causing him to shift a little in discomfort because she was behaving in a very familiar manner; not even his mother touched him so freely. “I know your motivations, I know your reasoning, but you don’t know mine. If this was a real negotiation, I’m pretty sure I have you beat.”
“That is not the point of this meeting,” Spock’s voice rose despite his better judgment. He was seriously starting to wonder if indeed he would ever see his library access key again. “I am not here to debate my understanding or lack of-”
“Hey, I still have your library access, don’t forget.” She said in warning, the persistent finger digging into his shoulder and staying there.
Do not remind me, Spock thought wearily. Their drinks came and he took a sip of the orange juice despite not being the least bit thirsty, grateful for the distraction.
“Look I’ll put in terms you can understand; I have something you want, you want it back and you have no idea why I won’t give it back.” Jaime Kirk continued, slouching back into the soft upholstery, drink in one hand. “I’m an obstacle to your object, but your usual method of relying on logic has failed.” She raised an eyebrow and gestured at him with her free hand, “If I operated under the same patterns as you do, you would not be in this situation. Thus it’s reasonable to say that you have to change the way you operate or otherwise,” she smiled brightly and tipped her glass at him, “You’re shit out of luck.”
There was, he grudgingly admitted, some form of logic to her statement. His father, a diplomat who had pursued a very successful career in acting as mediator and a broker of treaties, worked in a similarly methodical manner. The Ambassador collected intelligence on both parties, learning to understand the basics of the languages, nonverbal behaviors, values and decision-making processes that he would be working with. His father invested in personal relationships, understood the danger of generalizations and exploited differences to obtain what was important to both sides. Calmer, now that he had thought about it, Spock saw the adolescent with new eyes. She smiled at him invitingly. She was an alien, he realized with some astonishment, and she was different to him in ways he could not begin to imagine; nothing like his mother who adopted Vulcan ways and accepted Vulcan logic. Jaime Kirk was human, perhaps in a way he had never been confronted with.
“Do you have a solution?” He asked.
“Yeah, get to know me.”
Spock cocked an eyebrow. “Is that wise?”
The girl laughed, and a hand brushed his thigh under the table, making his entire body flinch in near-fright at the unexpected sensation. The food arrived, distracting them both and giving Spock an opportunity to regain his control. The smells were delicious, and he found himself taking a deep breath, curious as to the taste of the pizza here. He had tried it on Vulcan, at small eateries catering to the human residents with his mother as a youth, but never on Earth.
“Enjoy,” the woman said, placing an extra bundle of napkins on their table.
Jaime Kirk smiled her thanks, and then she was eating almost ravenously. Halfway through her first slice, she paused and looked at him, drink in hand. “Aren’t you going to eat?” She asked, swallowing in a hurry. “It’s vegetarian, that half there - go on, it’s good - oh here, let me…” Finishing off her slice quickly, she wiped her fingers crudely on a napkin and picked out a slice from the vegetarian portion. Spock took it with a murmur of thanks and ate slowly, more curious than truly hungry. It was delicious.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” She mumbled between another bite, then bumped their pizza slices together as if toasting.
It was good pizza, far better than what he had enjoyed on Vulcan. The flavor of the Earth vegetables was rich, and when he commented on the superior quality of the crust, Jaime Kirk moaned her happy agreement, informing him that this pizzeria made their own bread-bases. His mother would enjoy this place, Spock thought as he enjoyed his third slice and Jaime Kirk had sufficiently sated her hunger to slow down.
“You can order in, you know; they do take-out,” she informed him, after he expressed a wish for his mother to sample the pizzas here. “Hang on…” Getting up and wiping her fingers, she went to the counter, returning moments later flashing a slender plastic card. It was made to plug into the slot on the side of all communicators and terminals, to place a call to the business whose details it carried or download the information into a personal communicator. Spock took it with a murmur of thanks and Jaime Kirk smiled in pleasure.
He did not know how it happened, but soon they were discussing her work on postulating a theorem for the conversion of subspace radiation into transtator current, based on mass, density, irradiation levels, length of time and the purity of the rubindium crystals. By the time they had finished their meal, Spock had agreed to proofread her paper, and to show her his paper on micro-singularities, despite his increasing discomfort with her casual touches.
In the forty minutes they had been eating and conversing she had touched him no less than fifty-seven times. Each time his skin shivered just like it had when she had touched his chin that night as they danced, and even his thick, proper, long-sleeved tunic and pants were not enough to guard against her touch seeping through. Soon, Jaime Kirk was slumped against his shoulder, writing on his unused napkins with an ink-tipped stylus.
“See, in school they always taught up to do it this way,” she was saying, head tilting to the right and bumping against his shoulder, rubbing, nuzzling-
Spock stood abruptly, realizing the strange position they were in. Jaime Kirk gave a startled yelp at the disappearance of his form to lean against but, managed to grab onto the table.
“Miss Kirk,” he began, slightly agitated, “Explain your behavior.” At her blank stare, he continued. “You have touched me a total of fifty-eight times in the last forty two minutes - is it your intent to make me uncomfortable?”
“Nope - as a matter of fact, you’re the first guy to complain,” the girl gave him a long look, puzzled. Then sighed in exasperation, “And dammit, would you stop calling me that! My name’s Jim!”
Spock paused, uncertain how he was supposed to interpret her answer, and somewhat baffled by her obsession with being referred to as ‘Jim.’ Surely, for someone with knowledge of the Vulcan language and an awareness of Vulcan dietary preferences, she would know that Vulcans did not appreciate being casually touched except by those whom they were in close rapport. There was a silence where they regarded one another before Spock nodded, accepting her answer. She was human, he reasoned, and even if she knew the Vulcan dislike for being touched, she may not assign the same level of importance to the issue as he did.
“You’re a weird boy.” She told him bluntly.
“Under Vulcan law, I am a man.”
Jaime Kirk gave a loud bark of hilarity and looked to him in disbelief. He frowned at her reaction. Her laughs became soft, choked, her face pink as her hands clutched at her stomach. “Oh God,” she gasped between guffaws, “You’re serious aren’t you! Oh man…”
“I passed the rite of adulthood two human months prior,” he explained calmly in the face of her inexplicable mirth. “Under Vulcan law, I am an adult male.”
As soon as she calmed slightly, she gave him a broad grin and asked, “Are you gay?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you homosexual?”
The flush came without warning, heating his cheeks before he controlled his reaction. Spock had not expected the question. Upon his acceptance of Jaime Kirk’s innate humanness, that she wouldn’t behave or reason in a manner he was familiar with, Spock had slowly come to if not enjoy her company, recognize her intelligence. This was an uncomfortable reminder of the gap between them, and he wondered if Jaime Kirk knew how gravely her question violated Vulcan codes of privacy. “My sexual preferences are none of your business, Miss Kirk,” he said with great calm.
Turning away, Spock went stiffly to the main counter and paid for the meal before exiting. The door’s bells trilled as he stepped out. The nighttime air was cool and refreshing against his heated face, fragrant with the smell of herbs and spices from the various dining establishments that littered the area, plaques announcing their names brightly lit. Calling upon his memory of the area’s landmarks, he walked quickly in the direction they had come from, intending to use one of the public network terminals to find his way home.
The restaurant door opened with an abrupt clatter of the bells hanging over it and then Jaime Kirk was running after him, boots stomping on the pavement until they were shoulder to shoulder. Spock didn’t look at her.
“Hey, you forgot your library key,” she told him. Reaching into her leather jacket pocket, she withdrew the plug-in key and held it out to him. “You still want it or not?”
“You have made it very clear that I possess poor negotiation skills.”
Jaime Kirk shrugged, and took his hand. Spock came to an abrupt stop, disconcerted by the sensation. He was about to pull his hand from her grasp when she pushed the library access key into his palm and curled his fingers around it. An electric shiver ran down his spine. “You’re good at other things,” she replied, a familiar grin tugging at her lips, and then moved back to put a more appropriate distance between them. “I like you,” she announced with a kind of certainty that Spock seldom came across.
“Thank you,” he said, for the lack of anything else to say.
He was familiar with familial bonds of love, duty, devotion. He had also experienced the curiosity, prejudice, admiration, respect and disinterest of others. But like? It was such an imprecise term.
“I do not understand what you mean by that,” he told Jaime Kirk honestly, his slight frown as much confusion as denial that this girl could possibly mean what his mother had hinted at. Then almost compulsively he added, “I’m sorry,” though there was nothing to apologize for. If it had been someone else, a human adolescent other than Jaime Kirk, Spock suspected that he would have surely caused offence in some way at their initial meeting during the Starfleet Diplomatic Corps Gala.
“Well…” she shrugged and waved her hand in a vague gesture at him, brows furrowed even as her lips curved upwards. Her smiles were irrepressible, Spock decided wryly, not certain if he had seen her refrain from smiling for more than a minute in the entire time he had known her. “What’s not to like? You’re not older than warp drive, good-looking, even with that silly haircut…” Spock shrunk away from the hand that reached up towards his temple.
Jaime Kirk’s hand dropped back down by her side. “And you’re pretty smart - even if you can’t negotiate for peanuts. In short,” she smiled slowly, “I like you.”
Spock looked away, unable to meet her steady warm regard. “It is a relief that I am acceptable, despite being allegedly unable to ‘negotiate for peanuts.’”
Jaime Kirk laughed again, a light pleasant sound. “Hey, do you want a lift home?” She asked, gesturing to the alley where she had left her vehicle. “Bike’s just there.”
Spock breathed, “That would be acceptable.”
---
The trip back to the secured neighborhood where many Federation diplomats resided with their families seemed to go by quickly. Spock’s unease with the intimacy of being pressed against the girl’s back was mostly forgotten as he was swept up in the novelty of nighttime San Francisco’s streetscape. People were in the streets, walking together, smiling and laughing. There were alien tourists, cadets and officers, as well as civilians, young people and old people. Through the windows of eating and drinking establishments they passed he glimpsed people eating, debating and even engaged in amorous behavior. Even his growing irritation with the uncomfortable safety helmet did not dampen his fascination with all he had observed, but he did let out a grateful breath when they finally arrived and he was able to remove it.
“Um, your hair is kind of…” Jaime Kirk trailed off, hand reaching up towards his left ear uncertainly. She smiled impishly, and holding Spock’s gaze, gently smoothed down some errant strands of hair. Spock kept still until she was done, and then handed back the helmet.
“I appreciate your consideration in escorting me home.” He said quietly, glancing over at the front porch. The lights were not switched on, which Spock considered a good sign, as it meant that no one was expecting him. He had not told his parents where he was going tonight, only that he would not be dining at home.
“No problem, it was fun. So…see you around then?”
“Should I be checking my personal possessions for anything missing?”
“Oh, funny,” the girl snorted, but she smiled, fiddling with the vehicle’s controls. “I’ll call you, okay?”
Spock regarded her in the dim light from the far street lamp and wondered what else could be said. Farewells were simple affairs among Vulcans, but the process with humans was sometimes lengthy, filled with last minute anecdotes, information, requests and agreements to meet again. Her eyes were still hypnotically blue, he thought.
“I want to thank you once again for returning my library access key. I did not expect you to return it after the course our dinner had taken.” He would not have said anything at all, because it was his property she had stolen and so Jaime Kirk should have been apologizing to him, not receiving his thanks… but courtesy was never amiss.
The blue eyes narrowed slightly, and the smile became slightly questioning. “What? Did you think I’d keep it or something?”
“You had taken it without permission, and refused to return it to me when confronted. You then offered to trade my own stolen property to me,” Spock answered honestly. “From this, I realized that you do not differentiate between correct and incorrect behavior.”
Jaime Kirk gave him an incredulous look. “Hey, are you calling me a thief?”
Spock raised an eyebrow. “You did steal from me. You also expressed no remorse for the action.”
“Hey, I didn’t steal your library access key!” She countered sharply, “I borrowed it; if I was truly stealing something, would I be so stupid as to leave my number? Why would I even want your library access key? I’ve got my own!”
“Then why did you take it?”
She shrugged and threw a hand out to gesture at the sky. “Because it’s fun, because it was there, oh I don’t know; I gave it back, didn’t I?”
That was not an answer… “Based on your previous actions, there was a high possibility that you would dishonor the agreement to return my library access key after I had fulfilled my side of the terms,” Spock explained patiently. Then added, “I appreciate that you have kept the terms you set. Thank you.”
Jaime Kirk gave him an inscrutable look, and then looked away in irritation, dragging the back of her hand across her nose. She had stopped smiling. “You’ve got your library key back now - bye, then,” she said shortly, and, gripping the bike handles tightly, brought the vehicle around in a sharp turn and left.
Spock blinked at the abruptness of her departure, staring after the red tail lights. He had missed something in the complex interchange between them, something vital. The girl was not smiling when she left, and in all the time he had known her, Jaime Kirk always smiled. There was no anger in her parting farewell but… Spock started when the porch lights switched on, flooding the front steps with light. The door opened. Without even turning around, he knew that his mother was standing there.
“Mother,” he greeted flatly, turning to face her.
His mother wore a slightly pained look, her brows furrowed and her lips pinched in a small smile that Spock recognized as an expression of exasperation rather than pleasure or enjoyment. “Spock...” She said, the inflection in her voice a mix of disapproval and fondness. “You can’t call someone a thief and a cheat after meeting them only twice.”
Was she watching him the entire time? He was unable to suppress the small flinch of annoyance that accompanied the thought that she knew he had spent the evening with Jaime Kirk. No doubt she would tell his father - the Ambassador would probably be suitably horrified that Spock was spending his time with someone so utterly emotional.
“I was simply stating the truth,” he told her.
His mother’s smile turned wry. She gestured for him to come inside. “Sometimes, Spock, you need to lose in order to win.”
==
Jaime Kirk’s public records were complicated. Some of the records were sealed, others were incomplete. Her academic records, specifically her aptitude tests, placed her clearly at the top one percentile of human intelligence. Others who ranked in that category had either been recruited by Starfleet Academy under acceleration programs, or been enticed by the Academy of Sciences on Deneb IV and the University of Alpha Centauri. She was listed as having finished her mandatory education, with no mention of degrees or diplomas, but her residency records listed her at Dormitory Room No. 24 Beta, Corridor 11, Block 7, of the Regulus III Science Academy. Obviously that was incorrect as she was in San Francisco. Her medical records were equally perplexing - there was a period from Stardates 2246.07 to 2248.15.2 missing entirely.
Four days passed, and Spock began his internship at the Vulcan Embassy. Busy with memorizing the layout and the details of daily guests scheduled for appointments with various officials, he relegated Miss Kirk to the back of his mind. In his orientation, however, pouring over the standard dossier that all Embassy employees were required to read and understand on human customs, he couldn’t avoid the direction that his thoughts inevitably took; her actions that evening, his words, her reactions, the causality linking them all.
Spock was confused and uncertain. It was an unsatisfactory state of affairs. He had offended Miss Kirk by insisting that she was a dishonorable, untrustworthy individual who was disrespectful of personal property rights. According to his mother, this might have been an accurate impression based on his data; however, due to his use of Vulcan standards, the data was utterly invalid. Ultimately, it came back to the strange Terran metaphor that she had pulled his metaphorical pigtails, and he had spurned her cruelly.
Two weeks passed, and still he could not reconcile the idea that he had been wrong with his own analysis of the situation.
“Father,” he began tentatively as they were in the Embassy’s open grounds, the Aldebaran delegation walking ahead of them following the assigned guide. His father looked at him, waiting. Spock was tempted to look away and remark that it was nothing, like mother often did to avoid something which she both wanted and wanted to avoid speaking of, but he controlled the conflicting feelings and pushed on. “I have caused offence to a human due to my insistence of a logical interpretation of their actions. Your advice would be appreciated…”
Even as he said this, he felt a slight bristle of shame. His father handled all his interactions with ease, existed in cohesion with humans, adapting to their ways without being any less Vulcan, but Spock was the one whom was half-human.
His father looked at him then with an audible breath, directed his attention back to the visitors. “While we see emotion as separate to logic or an impediment to logic, humans harness it as a companion or proponent of logic. Many human behaviors which seem inherently illogical to us are in fact based upon logic that is simply foreign to us. One must not make the mistake of confusing what is logical with what is merely habit or social propriety.”
Spock frowned. “You recommend that I accept the actions as appropriate according to the social rules of humans.”
His father raised an eyebrow. “You are on Earth.”
Once again, the strange realization that Jaime Kirk was an alien, a revelation he had received that night at the pizzeria, went through him like a small electric charge. The Ambassador continued, voice softer now, a tone that Spock was well-familiar with from his childhood. “Breaking propriety deliberately to shock or discomfort is uncharitable, but with many humans, that proves to not be the case.” There was a break as his father nodded discretely to the guide, who directed the group to one of the secondary Embassy buildings.
“The treatment of us as if we were human is not meant an insult, nor is it meant to be presumptuous,” the Ambassador chided him, his eyes knowing. “It is to honor us, a sign of respect, acceptance and fellowship. We are more than mere visitors, more than friends - we are one of them.”
Spock gave a curt nod, his father’s words settling somewhere deep inside and making him once again ashamed, though for entirely different reasons. They walked inside and convened with the Aldebaran delegates. His father gave him a meaningful look. “We are far from Vulcan, Spock, and insisting upon a Vulcan standard of conduct from our hosts is uncharitable. A desire to think well of others, and a willingness to make them comfortable resolve most issues.”
Then the Ambassador inclined his head in dismissal, rejoined the delegation and led them into the museum wing of the building. Spock stared at the procession, taking note of his father’s expressions, the way he moved his hands, nodded, all superfluous actions upon Vulcan. He saw the positive response of the Aldebarans, the way that they relaxed with his father and spoke freely to him.
I like you, Jaime Kirk had said. Like could be used as an adverb, preposition, adjective, conjunction, noun, and as an interjection in human speech, but she had used it as a verb. It was a new experience, being liked. Spock thought that it was…agreeable.
It was evident, Spock thought, that he needed to apologize and to make amends for his uncharitable conduct. Yet, he was unsure of how he was to perform such social rituals. The crumpled slip of paper bearing her details rested next to his personal computer terminal, untouched, and remained there until a week later, when in the course of sorting through the various inquiries and notices sent to the Vulcan Embassy, he noticed an open invitation to the Aerospace Museum in Sacramento for a new exhibition - a retrospective on flight pioneers of Earth.
It was logical to forward the information. The message he sent with it was brief, a short inquiry after her wellbeing, and the statement that he would be attending the exhibit tomorrow at 1400 hours.
Across San Francisco, Jim Kirk had almost forgotten about the Vulcan boy who was kind of beautiful. She was in the middle of a rather involved make out session with a cadet with sultry green eyes that she’d been seeing on and off this week. She groped for her comm at the sound of the new incoming thinking it was her mother, or maybe Sam, and blinked in confusion at the terminal details before it clicked. She sat up, rolling off the bed despite the cadet’s complaints. Spock wanted her to know there was an exhibition of interest at the Aerospace Museum in Sacramento, and that he was going to be there tomorrow.
“Who is it?” The cadet asked.
Jim Kirk didn’t answer. “I got to go,” she said, a slow grin coming to her lips.
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