Daffodil Time, Part 11/17
Title: Daffodil Time
Author: ladyblahblah
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot . . . ish
Pairing: Spock/Kirk
Rating: PG
Warning: Jim's recurring nightmare.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. The title is from a William Carlos William poem. I can't even take full credit for the idea, and all of the adorable can be traced directly to momo_girlie and her painfully cute drawings. *fangirl flail*
Summary: Vague A/U. What would have happened if Kirk and Spock had known each other as children? Yes, another one of those.
Author's Note: A glorious return! \o/ For real, you guys, this chapter was a freaking albatross and I don't know why. >_< I had 90% of it planned and the ending already written; it should've been a cakewalk. WELL IT WAS NOT. Finally finished, though, so enjoy. ^_^ Those of you who remember last year's Ship Wars may recognize the end of this chapter, and those of you familiar with momo_girlie should recognize the drawings that I shamelessly ripped off used for inspiration. (Please ignore the discrepancy in ages between the picture and where they are now. It was cute, shush.) Finally, for those of you who didn't see it on my journal, there has been an announcement about the future of this fic (which explains why there is now an ending chapter in sight).
Part 1│Part 2│Part 3│Part 4│Part 5│Part 6│Part 7│Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
The cave is cold, and though it provides shelter it’s rained for so long that the air is saturated, and Jim feels soaked to the skin anyway. He doesn’t dare start a fire; the monsters that are hunting him aren’t frightened of fire, and it would only make him easier to find. Not that it matters, since there isn’t any dry wood in any case.
As if summoned by his thoughts, heavy footfalls begin to sound outside of the cave, accompanied by low, growling voices that Jim can’t understand. Jim’s heart leaps into his throat. Unable to force himself to his feet through the fear gripping him, he scoots backwards across the cave floor as quickly as he can. He can’t remember what the monsters look like, but it doesn’t matter; if they catch him they’ll carry him away just like they did the others. They’ve eaten all the food and now they’re eating the people and Jim is shaking from cold and from terror, fumbling blindly in the darkness that covers everything now.
As he skitters backwards, away from the monsters, he slowly begins to feel warmer. He doesn’t know its source, but he knows it must be better than what he’s fleeing. He struggles to his feet at last and slides into the crevice at the back of the cave. The walls are tight around him, but the farther he goes the warmer it gets, and the less his fear overwhelms him, until finally he tumbles into suddenly empty space and lands with a thump on the smooth tiled floor.
It’s bright here, and he blinks the last of the shadows from his eyes as he pushes himself to his feet. He’s come out between two giant computer banks, and a smile lights up his face when he sees the dark-haired figure standing nearby, bent studiously over one of the consoles.
“Spock!” Jim hurries over with a grin. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
Spock turns to regard him, and his eyes are warm despite the pointedly raised eyebrow. “I always come to visit you, Jim.”
“Yeah, I know.” Jim laughs. “I just forgot it was already that time of year already. Hey, do you-”
“Boys.” They both turn to see a pretty woman standing nearby, hands on her hips as she watches them. “I thought I told you not to wander off.”
“Sorry, Ms. Taggart.”
Despite her stern expression, her eyes are warm with humor as she gestures for them to precede her. “Come on, the rest of the class is waiting.”
“I’m glad I got to come after all,” Jim says happily as they join up with the others and begin to make their way through a twisting series of glass-lined tunnels. “I didn’t think I would, since I was only in Ms. Taggart’s class for the first month of school.”
“Where are we?” Spock asks, trying to peer through the glass, and Jim grins.
“The aquarium, duh. It’s our big end of the year trip, where you get to go to Des Moines for the whole day and go to the zoo or the aquarium or the planetarium. You’re not gonna see anything,” he adds impatiently, “this exhibit’s closed.”
“Why would you not be able to attend?” Spock asks, turning back to Jim.
“Um.” It strikes Jim quite suddenly that Spock has very pretty eyes, and it steals his concentration for a moment. “Like I said, I’m not in Ms. Taggart’s class anymore. I’m already in sixth grade, and this is supposed to be a celebration for kids going from fifth to sixth.”
Spock tilts his head slightly, the way he does when he’s just a little bit confused. “I must confess, I find the Human tradition of celebrating events that are both common and universally expected to be somewhat odd.”
“Don’t Vulcans celebrate anything?”
“No.” Spock pauses, considering. “We have rites of passage, but I doubt that they are terribly similar.”
“Well, just think of this like a rite of passage, only . . . you know, fun.”
Jim grins unrepentantly at the arch look that Spock shoots him. He feels light and happy, and when he takes Spock’s hand to pull him along he’s aware of the way it feels in his like he never has been before. His heart is racing the same way it did when he held Bryanna Rylant’s hand during the week that they were going out, and the realization startles him so much that he lets go before Spock can realize what he’s thinking.
The glass tunnel empties into a large open area, where an enormous tank stands uncovered beneath the sky. Large, oddly familiar creatures are moving through the water, and Jim drifts forward for a closer look. He’s sure he’s seen things like this before, though he can’t remember where. He reaches out again, searching for Spock, but his hand only finds empty air. He turns around, frowning.
Spock is gone.
Cries from his classmates send him spinning back to the tank, and his eyes go so wide that he thinks for a moment that they might fall right out of his head. There’s a pale shape in the water now, just the right size for a boy on the small side of eleven years old. Jim rushes forward, pressing his face to the glass as he stares.
Spock has shed most of his clothes; only his underwear and undershirt remain, both nearly the same color as his skin in the sunlit water. The people behind Jim are still crying out, panicking as Jim ignores them.
The animals are approaching Spock now as he floats serenely between them, and Jim finally tears himself away from the glass to pelt headlong up the staircase that runs up the side of the tank. Even as he runs he’s not sure if he’s hurrying to pull Spock out or jump in with him, but it turns out to be a moot point. By the time he makes it to the top of the tank Spock is already out, standing with a towel around his shoulders and the Vulcan version of a mutinous expression on his face.
“-extremely dangerous,” Ms. Taggart is saying furiously. “Those aren’t pets, Spock!”
“He wouldn’t have done it without a good reason,” Jim protests immediately, reaching out to take Spock’s hand again even as he moves to stand beside his friend.
Ms. Taggart turns her glare on Jim, but it’s his mother’s face scowling down at him now, and Jim can’t help but feel an instinctive surge of guilt.
“This is your bad influence, Jimmy. Spock never got into trouble like this before the two of you met.”
Jim feels hot tears sting his eyes at the accusation, but Spock’s hand tightens around his, steadying him. “I entered the tank of my own free will,” he says calmly. “Jim had nothing to do with it.”
“I doubt your mother will see things quite that way, Spock,” Jim’s mom chides. “Come with me, boys.”
She leads them across the deck to a small office that overlooks the large tank on one side and the rest of the aquarium on the other. Jim and Spock are ushered onto a couch that sits beneath a large digital display of tropical fish while Jim’s mom slips behind the desk where she begins making calls and filing reports.
“I apologize,” Spock says quietly, so that only Jim can hear. “It was not my intent to get you in trouble.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s okay.”
Jim looks over at his friend, and it hits him suddenly how very close Spock is sitting. The heat from his body hits Jim in a sudden rush, and he’s aware again of the feel of Spock’s hand in his. He’s close enough that Jim can see drops of water still clinging to Spock’s lashes. His eyes drop to Spock’s lips of their own accord. He is very abruptly aware of how easy it would be to simply lean forward and press his own lips against them. He’s already leaning forward by the time he realizes it, their lips almost touching, almost-
“Jim! Come on, you’re not going to be late on your last day. Time to get up, I mean it!”
Jim jerks awake, the stripes on his pillowcase swimming in his vision for a moment before his eyes manage to adjust to the bright morning light. His left hand is clutching a corner of the bedspread; he forces his fingers open, and the impression of Spock’s hand in his slowly begins to fade. His heart is racing, pounding in his chest like he’s just run a marathon. He sits up slowly, taking in the sight of his room around him, just a normal bedroom in his normal house in a normal Iowa town. He’s almost calmed down when he hears Frank shout up the stairs again.
“Jim! I’d better hear you moving around in the next ten seconds! Up!”
“Crap,” Jim mutters, adrenaline hitting him all over again as he throws off the covers and jumps out of bed.
He’s dressed and downstairs in record time, running out the front door with barely a pause to grab the lunch Frank packed for him last night and pretending not to hear when his stepfather calls after him to comb his hair before he gets to school. The ‘bus is just pulling away when he reaches the stop, but the driver sees him waving and waits for him to clamber on board.
Jim finds an empty seat and collapses into it, already rummaging in his lunch sack. He pulls out an apple and takes an enthusiastic bite. He usually spends the trip to school reading, but he left the PADD with his recreational reading on his nightstand in his rush. Some of his textbooks are interesting, but he’d learned early on that while the other kids might tolerate a scrawny ten-year-old on their bus, they wouldn’t overlook him actively doing schoolwork in their presence. So he makes a conscious effort to eat slowly enough that his apple will last the entire way to school, and watches the people around him.
There are two eighth-graders he doesn’t know by name sitting across the aisle from him, the boy twisted around to talk to the girl behind him over the back of his seat. Their hands are linked, and she’s playing with his fingers with a smug sort of smile on her face as he chatters on with an occasional pause to blush and grin. Jim looks away quickly, feeling a flush heat his own cheeks. He’s not going to think about that stupid dream, he tells himself sternly, and he’s not going to imagine what it would be like to have Spock sitting here next to him, to be able to simply reach down and link their hands together.
He’s not.
The school day, the last one of the year, seems to last forever. Jim is prepared to swear that there have never been this many couples in the school before, and he wonders if junior high is like this at the end of every school year. Though keeping his head down in the hallways lets him avoid witnessing most of the PDA going unnoticed by the staff, his luck runs out when he reaches his final class.
Like the rest of the school today, the Advanced Physics classroom is hovering somewhere just shy of total chaos. Exams are finished and the teachers seem just as eager as the students are for school to be over. With a few killjoy exceptions, the motto of the day has seemed to be don’t set anything on fire and we’ll all get along fine. Jim makes his way through the laughing, gossiping groups to his usual seat and finds his friend Katy waiting there for him.
“Hey,” he greets her, grateful for any sort of normality in an otherwise surreal day. He sets his PADDs on his desk and drops into the seat. “How do you think you did on the test?”
“Pretty well.” She opens her mouth to say something but closes it again without speaking, her mouth tilting up in a hint of a smile, and Jim’s stomach sinks a little. There’s hardly anything that can distract Katy from talking about academics. “There’s gonna be a party at Padisa Orningh’s house tonight,” she says at last. “Do you think your dad will let you go?”
“Stepdad,” Jim corrects automatically, raising his eyebrows. “And I doubt Padisa wants a little kid at her party.”
“That was at the beginning of the year, Jim, I’m sure she doesn’t think you’re just a little kid anymore. And even if she does, she’ll get over it. Besides.” Katy’s eyes are shining behind her glasses, and her cheeks are turning pink beneath her freckles. “It’s Ainsley’s party, too, and she said I should invite you.” She can’t hold back her grin any longer. “She said you should come, since you’re friends with her . . . girlfriend,” she finishes, grinning and blushing even harder.
“Wow. Um. Congrats, Katy.”
Jim hopes his smile doesn’t look as strained as it feels. He’s happy for Katy, he really is; her crush on Ainsley Ra has been epic and supposedly doomed to remain unrequited. The two of them have always seemed as different as two people could possibly be, despite Katy being right that Ainsley wasn’t the ditzy jock Jim used to think she was. She’s nicer than the rest of her friends, he has to admit, and if she makes Katy smile like this she can’t be all bad. On any other day Jim would be thrilled; today, though, he just doesn’t think he can take much more of this sudden explosion of romance.
Luckily Katy doesn’t seem to expect much more of a response, and when Jim says that he doesn’t think Frank would let him go to a party thrown by almost-eighth-graders-which is a convenient truth-she accepts it without too much fuss. They do discuss their final exams for the rest of the period after that, and Jim manages to pretend that there’s nothing too unusual about the day after all.
Jim cleans out his locker as quickly as he can after the final bell, eager to get away from the mass of happy couples and teary farewells. With no need to rush home he decides to walk instead of taking the ‘bus, though he regrets it after a block or two when the lack of distractions has his mind drifting back to his dream again.
He doesn’t really want to kiss Spock, did he? The very idea is ridiculous. Spock is . . . he’s Spock. He’s Jim’s best friend. It must have just been Jim’s brain being screwy, coming up with a weird situation from the fact that he’s excited over Spock’s arrival in a few days, that’s all. After all, last week Jim dreamed that he was hunting a monster through a whole maze of underground caves, and that doesn’t mean that Jim actually wants to kill rock-beasts or whatever. Dreaming something doesn’t make it true.
Given the sort of things Jim tends to dream of, he has to believe that.
He’s still reassuring himself by the time he gets home, so lost in his thoughts that he’s almost to the foot of the stairs by the time he registers Frank’s greeting. Jim turns to answer him, but the sight that meets him strikes him momentarily dumb. His eyebrows shoot straight up at the sight of Frank dressed like he’s going to a business meeting, pressed slacks and nice shoes and a button-down shirt.
“Do you have a meeting?” is Jim’s first question. It’s a strange time for one, but those are usually the only things that can Frank to dress up. Well, those and . . .
“No, I’m going to the P.T.A. mixer.” Frank is tugging at his shirt cuffs, trying to get them to stay straight, which Jim is pretty sure is a lost cause. He apparently decides the same thing, because he gives it up and looks back up at Jim. “The end-of-the-year thank you thing. It’s on the calendar.”
Jim hasn’t bothered to check today’s date on their family schedule calendar because he’d been sure he knew what it would say. Jim’s last day of school. There wouldn’t be a note about pizza and vids. It isn’t an official tradition or anything, just something he and Frank usually do; pizza with toppings that Jim gets to choose, two or three vids they can agree on because you don’t have to talk when a vid is on. Just something they usually do.
“Oh.” Jim shifts the strap of his bag still slung over his shoulder. “Is it gonna go late?”
“Probably until nine or so. Leo should be here soon. I’ll leave some credits for you guys to get pizza, and you can download a couple of vids off of the network if you feel like it. Just nothing violent, okay?”
Jim scowls out of habit more than anything. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m not a little kid.”
“Yeah, I know,” Frank snorts, and for a moment things feel like they did when he and Jim’s mom had first gotten married. “You’re practically an old man. But Leo’s coming over anyway.”
“Fine,” Jim groans, but doesn’t argue any more. The truth is that he’d rather have Bones babysitting him than be stuck in the house all by himself tonight, even if he won’t say so out loud. He stomps up the stairs on basic principle.
“Remember, your mom’s coming home tomorrow,” Frank calls after him. “I want your room cleaned up by then, understand?”
“Okay!” Jim yells back without turning around, so that he can’t get in trouble for rolling his eyes.
He stomps all the way to his room and glares around. It’s not that bad in here, he thinks, but he plucks a couple of pairs of underwear and a shirt off of the floor and tosses them towards the hamper before flopping down backwards onto his bed.
What he really wants to do, he thinks as he stares up at the ceiling, is to write to Spock. Not because of . . . of anything that may have happened at the end of the dream, Jim assures himself quickly, but because he’s wondering about the enormous things in the tank, the things that had been swimming towards Spock. As the details of the dream have faded during the day, Jim has become less and less sure that he has any idea what they were. All he’s sure of is that they were nothing he could find in a real aquarium. Something from Vulcan, maybe, though that feels wrong. But Vulcan has seas, Jim knows, so surely it has animals that live in them?
There’s a knock on his door and Jim, expecting Frank, quickly rolls onto his stomach, stretching across the bed as if to tug the far edge of the bedspread into place.
“Hey, kid,” Bones says as he opens the door to poke his head inside, and Jim immediately leaves off pretending to make the bed.
“I’m not a kid,” he grumbles, rolling back again and folding his hands over his stomach with a heavy sigh.
Bones just snorts the same way Frank did as he plops down on the edge of the bed. “Though you were supposed to be up here cleaning things up.”
“Didn’t feel like it.”
“Hmm.” Jim can feel Bones’s eyes on him, the same carefully measuring stare that he uses when he’s working out just how much trouble Jim’s gotten into when he wasn’t watching. “All right,” he says after a moment, brisk and demanding as ever. “What’s crawled up your ass and died?”
Jim sits up, his eyes going wide as they fly over to the older boy, and his lips twitch despite his determination to maintain his bad mood. Bones never swears in front of him. Maybe he’s taking Jim seriously after all. He could talk to Bones about it, he supposes. But if he laughs, Jim swears to himself he’ll hit him, even if Bones is bigger than he is.
“Have you ever had a friend, only you think you don’t want to be just friends anymore, but you don’t really know for sure and besides they probably don’t even like you like that but you sort of can’t stop thinking about them?” Jim blurts out in one long, explosive breath.
Bones blinks back at him.
“Forget it,” Jim mutters, and flops back down again. His face feels so hot he knows he must be blushing, and he wishes for one fierce moment that the floor would simply open up and swallow him whole.
“So.” Bones clears his throat. “You’ve got a crush on someone, is that it?”
“No.” Jim bites his lip. “Maybe. I don’t know. Bones,” he moans, twisting around until he’s sitting with his legs tucked under him. “How do you make someone like you back?”
Bones’s eyes go soft for a moment with something like pity. “You can’t make someone like you, Jimmy. Either they do or they don’t. Is this about Katy?”
“Huh?” It’s Jim’s turn to blink, unable for the life of him to figure out how Bones could have gotten that idea. “No! Katy’s just my friend. Besides, she’s got a girlfriend; I wouldn’t want to steal someone away from someone else.”
“Well, you’re young yet,” Bones mutters, but his gaze has gone shrewd now. “So who is this mystery crush, then?”
“No one,” Jim says defensively. “It’s hypothetical.”
“Sure it is.”
“Come on, Bones, you get girls to like you all the time! How do you do it?”
The older boy sighs and scrubs a hand over the back of his head. “You’re already friends with this hypothetical person, right?”
Jim’s eyes narrow at the obvious sarcasm, but he nods.
“Okay. Well, then you’ve gotta court ‘em so that they see you as something more than just a friend. Lay some groundwork, see, before you ask ‘em out.”
“Groundwork?”
“Yeah. You know, be considerate, take ‘em places you think they’d like to go. Maybe buy a little gift or two for ‘em.”
Jim’s fingers twitch with the urge to write all of this down, but he knows that if he goes for a PADD he’ll never hear the end of Bones’s teasing. “Gifts,” he repeats. “What sort of gifts?”
“Most girls seem to like flowers,” Bones offers. “That’ll tip your hand pretty clearly, though. Try to find something you think they’ll like, but that they’d never get themselves.”
“Okay.” Jim nods absently, his mind racing. “Right.”
“You’ll do fine,” Bones assures him. “You’ve got a natural silver tongue, Jimmy; if all else fails, you can always try just talkin’ ‘em into it.” He stands, stretches. “C’mon, you wanna order the pizza?”
“I want extra sausage,” Jim says automatically, and Bones makes a face.
“All that fatty meat’s not good for you, Jim.”
They bicker over pizza toppings until they place the call, and then over the movie choice until they agree to flip a coin. Even when Jim wins, however, he hardly pays attention to what’s on the screen. His thoughts are a jumble, torn between plans and doubts. He’s still not sure if he actually does have a crush on Spock. And even if he does, does he want to do anything about it? Spock is his very best friend, but he’s also awfully Vulcan. Do Vulcans have crushes? Do they court each other, or date, or do any of that stuff? Would Spock want to do that stuff with Jim even if he could? What if he says no when Jim asks him out? If he does. If he even wants to.
Jim thinks so hard that he gives himself a headache. Bones blames it on the pizza and the dessert Jim talked him into and hurries him off to bed before Frank even gets home, and Jim stares at the dark ceiling and worries about falling asleep. He’s sure that he’s going to dream about Spock again, maybe actually kiss him this time, and the idea is equal parts thrilling and terrifying. It only gets worse, too when it occurs to him to worry that Spock might realize what Jim has been dreaming about. Jim isn’t sure, but he’s willing to bet there’s at least one Vulcan cultural taboo against subconsciously kissing your friend without his consent.
In the end, though, the strain of the day is too much and he can’t manage to stay awake. He’s so tired, in fact, that he doesn’t dream at all; or if he does, it’s forgotten the moment his eyes open to the sound of a deafening crash downstairs. Jim’s out of bed and racing towards the noise before he’s even fully awake, and finds Frank in the laundry room, swearing a blue streak with packets of cleaning solvent scattered all over the floor and the wall shelf dangling from one weak bracket. He looks up when Jim appears in the doorway, something close to panic in his eyes.
“Your mom’s gonna be here in three hours.”
It’s all he needs to say.
The morning is a frenzy of last minute cleaning. Neither of them has a natural talent for neatness, and over the past several months the details of keeping the house clean and organized seem to have slipped away from them. Jim scrubs the bathrooms and packs the dishwasher as full as it can stand, while Frank empties load after load of their clothing into the washer and attacks a series of stains on the living room floor that neither of them remember making. Jim can’t help but smile a little, even elbow-deep in dirty dishes, because he knows things will be just the same with his mom the day before Frank comes home, if a little bit easier because Spock and his mother do know how to be neat.
Jim is standing on a kitchen chair, putting the last of the drinking glasses away, when he hears the familiar rumble of his mom’s ‘car pulling up out front. He jumps down and is running as soon as his feet hit the floor, tearing through the house and out the front door.
“Mom!” he shouts, hardly noticing the second ‘car pulling up behind hers as he throws himself into her arms.
“Oof! Hey there, Jimmy.” She bends down to hug him tight, and he breathes in the smell of her shampoo and the strange, recycled-air smell that always clings to her for a few days after she gets back from a mission. “I missed you, sweetie. Have you been good?”
“Uh-huh.” He hugs her tighter for just a moment, then lets go. “Did you see any Klingons?” he asks, as he always does, and she laughs as she stands up.
“Nope, no Klingons. But look who I did find at the shuttle port.”
Jim’s eyes go wide as the second ‘car finally registers and he sees two dark-haired figures climbing out. His mom steps aside to wrap Frank in another fierce hug, and Jim is left staring at their visitors, arrived two days earlier than planned.
“Jim.” Spock’s mom pulls him into an embrace just as firm as his own mother’s. “It’s so good to see you! I know you weren’t expecting us just yet. I swear, our ship’s pilot must have been trying to break a record; we’ve never made the trip so quickly.” She leans back to hold him at arm’s length and beams at him. “You’ve gotten so big! And so handsome, too. I’ll bet you’re already breaking hearts at your new school, aren’t you?”
Jim’s mom pulls her away a moment later, and Jim is left facing Spock at last. He looks the same as ever, with his shiny cap of hair and pale skin, his calm expression and dark eyes that warm as soon as they meet Jim’s. It’s the closest that Spock will get to a smile, Jim knows, for at least a week.
“Hello, James,” he says.
Jim’s heart gives a funny sort of twisting flip, and all the doubts he’s had over the past day and a half suddenly scatter like space dust. He knows his grin probably looks stupid, if not downright insane, but he can’t bring himself to care.
“Hey, Spock,” he says back, and his mind starts formulating plans as his palms begin to sweat.
****************
Three days later he’s pleading with Bones through the view screen. “Our moms keep saying that they won’t let us go without you with us. Please, you’ve gotta talk them out of it!”
“I’m a teenager, not a miracle-worker,” Bones gripes. “How am I supposed to convince them to let you two go to the city by yourselves when you’re only ten? And what in the world can possibly be so important that it’s this big a deal, anyway?”
“I told you, I want to take Spock somewhere, and it won’t be the same if you come with us!”
“Well why the hell not?”
Jim doesn’t answer, but he feels his face getting warmer. And the more he blushes, the wider Bones’s eyes get, until finally he bursts out laughing.
“Well I’ll be. Can’t believe I didn’t . . .” He breaks off, laughing again. “All right, Jimmy. But I want you to remember this, you understand? Because one day I’m going to be calling for some reciprocity.”
“What’s reciprocity?”
“Look it up,” Bones chuckles. “And put your mom back on.”
Half an hour later, Jim and Spock have permission to take the transit shuttle to Des Moines, and the very next day their mothers drop them off at the base with worried looks and demands that they keep themselves safe.
Jim isn’t nervous. Not at all.
It’s important that he continues to remind himself of that, because from the way his hands are shaking it’s clear that they think he is. It’s ridiculous. This isn’t even a date, not really. Probably not. He hasn’t talked to Spock about it, in any case, and even at just shy of eleven years old he’s pretty sure that both people have to agree before it counts as a date. Which isn’t to say that he’s about to ask Spock what he thinks. That could be . . . bad. Potentially, that could be very bad. Better to keep his mouth shut and dry his sweating palms on his jeans, and remind himself again that James Tiberius Kirk doesn’t get nervous over something that might not even be a date.
“James.” He looks over, resigned by now to the way his heart has decided to start doing girly little flips whenever Spock says his name like that. It used to annoy him, he knows, but he can’t quite remember why. “Do you intend to tell me where we are going?”
Jim’s grin is wide. “Nope.” The shuttle swerves to the left and they grip their seats tightly. “Wanna guess? You know, speculate?”
Spock tilts his head down a fraction in the Vulcan version of an exasperated sigh, and Jim has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at it. “I am well aware of the definition of the word ‘guess’, James. And no, I think that I would rather not. If you would just-”
He doesn’t get to finish his thought before the shuttle jostles again and an automated voice tells them to prepare for docking. Jim hates this part; public transport shuttles always feel like they’re on the verge of falling apart when they connect to port. This time is no exception and he’s feeling slightly queasy by the time they unfasten their seatbelts and file out of the cramped space with the others.
It’s only a short walk to their destination. The guard at the door makes them wait while he scans the tracking wristbands that-as Bones had reminded their mothers, who are probably checking their communicators for updates every thirty seconds-are required for all unaccompanied minors,. Then they’re inside, and Jim is nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet as they walk up to the front desk.
The woman sitting there looks impressively bored. She tells them that admission is five credits apiece for children twelve and under, takes the money and hands them a map along with a second set of wristbands without bothering to cast more than a cursory glance in their direction. Spock still looks skeptical until they pass through the double glass doors and they get their first good view of the aquarium.
Jim watches in delight as Spock’s eyes go wide as he tries to take everything in at once. Staircases climb in gradual spirals around enormous tanks of water that are filled with fish in all the colors of the rainbow. Paths branch off in several directions, signs at their junctures directing visitors towards particular attractions. Jim already has a mental list a mile long of all the sights he thinks that Spock will like. He looks through the map anyway, and the first thing he sees sends everything else tumbling out of his head.
“Sharks!” He is bouncing now, his excitement too great for his body to contain. He jabs a finger at the blurb at the side of the page. “They’re feeding them in five minutes, let’s go!” When Spock looks too overwhelmed to move on his own, Jim rolls his eyes and grabs his hand. “Come on!” he says, and sets off, tugging an astonished Vulcan along behind him.
Jim is pretty sure that the shark feeding is the coolest thing he’s ever seen, even if it makes him almost as queasy as the shuttle landing. After that, there’s the manta rays-they actually get to help feed those for a credit apiece, which is easily the best way Jim’s ever spent his allowance- and the Xenooceanus tour, and the penguin show, and the documentary on an extinct species of whales that Spock insists on watching, and by the time they’re standing in front of a display of tropical fish, Jim is willing to admit that okay, yes, this might maybe be a date after all.
And if this is a date, then it’s all right for Jim to reach out, with his heart racing and his palms threatening to start sweating again, to slowly link his fingers together with Spock’s. The hand in his jerks in surprise. Jim sneaks a glance over; Spock’s cheeks are flushed green, his eyes firmly fixed on the tank in front of them, but he doesn’t pull his hand away.
Someday soon, Jim thinks as he looks at Spock, he’ll work up the nerve to kiss him. But for now he turns back to the water, content to simply stand, holding Spock’s hand and watching the fish as they swim slowly by.
>>Part 12
Author: ladyblahblah
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot . . . ish
Pairing: Spock/Kirk
Rating: PG
Warning: Jim's recurring nightmare.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. The title is from a William Carlos William poem. I can't even take full credit for the idea, and all of the adorable can be traced directly to momo_girlie and her painfully cute drawings. *fangirl flail*
Summary: Vague A/U. What would have happened if Kirk and Spock had known each other as children? Yes, another one of those.
Author's Note: A glorious return! \o/ For real, you guys, this chapter was a freaking albatross and I don't know why. >_< I had 90% of it planned and the ending already written; it should've been a cakewalk. WELL IT WAS NOT. Finally finished, though, so enjoy. ^_^ Those of you who remember last year's Ship Wars may recognize the end of this chapter, and those of you familiar with momo_girlie should recognize the drawings that I shamelessly ripped off used for inspiration. (Please ignore the discrepancy in ages between the picture and where they are now. It was cute, shush.) Finally, for those of you who didn't see it on my journal, there has been an announcement about the future of this fic (which explains why there is now an ending chapter in sight).
Part 1│Part 2│Part 3│Part 4│Part 5│Part 6│Part 7│Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
The cave is cold, and though it provides shelter it’s rained for so long that the air is saturated, and Jim feels soaked to the skin anyway. He doesn’t dare start a fire; the monsters that are hunting him aren’t frightened of fire, and it would only make him easier to find. Not that it matters, since there isn’t any dry wood in any case.
As if summoned by his thoughts, heavy footfalls begin to sound outside of the cave, accompanied by low, growling voices that Jim can’t understand. Jim’s heart leaps into his throat. Unable to force himself to his feet through the fear gripping him, he scoots backwards across the cave floor as quickly as he can. He can’t remember what the monsters look like, but it doesn’t matter; if they catch him they’ll carry him away just like they did the others. They’ve eaten all the food and now they’re eating the people and Jim is shaking from cold and from terror, fumbling blindly in the darkness that covers everything now.
As he skitters backwards, away from the monsters, he slowly begins to feel warmer. He doesn’t know its source, but he knows it must be better than what he’s fleeing. He struggles to his feet at last and slides into the crevice at the back of the cave. The walls are tight around him, but the farther he goes the warmer it gets, and the less his fear overwhelms him, until finally he tumbles into suddenly empty space and lands with a thump on the smooth tiled floor.
It’s bright here, and he blinks the last of the shadows from his eyes as he pushes himself to his feet. He’s come out between two giant computer banks, and a smile lights up his face when he sees the dark-haired figure standing nearby, bent studiously over one of the consoles.
“Spock!” Jim hurries over with a grin. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
Spock turns to regard him, and his eyes are warm despite the pointedly raised eyebrow. “I always come to visit you, Jim.”
“Yeah, I know.” Jim laughs. “I just forgot it was already that time of year already. Hey, do you-”
“Boys.” They both turn to see a pretty woman standing nearby, hands on her hips as she watches them. “I thought I told you not to wander off.”
“Sorry, Ms. Taggart.”
Despite her stern expression, her eyes are warm with humor as she gestures for them to precede her. “Come on, the rest of the class is waiting.”
“I’m glad I got to come after all,” Jim says happily as they join up with the others and begin to make their way through a twisting series of glass-lined tunnels. “I didn’t think I would, since I was only in Ms. Taggart’s class for the first month of school.”
“Where are we?” Spock asks, trying to peer through the glass, and Jim grins.
“The aquarium, duh. It’s our big end of the year trip, where you get to go to Des Moines for the whole day and go to the zoo or the aquarium or the planetarium. You’re not gonna see anything,” he adds impatiently, “this exhibit’s closed.”
“Why would you not be able to attend?” Spock asks, turning back to Jim.
“Um.” It strikes Jim quite suddenly that Spock has very pretty eyes, and it steals his concentration for a moment. “Like I said, I’m not in Ms. Taggart’s class anymore. I’m already in sixth grade, and this is supposed to be a celebration for kids going from fifth to sixth.”
Spock tilts his head slightly, the way he does when he’s just a little bit confused. “I must confess, I find the Human tradition of celebrating events that are both common and universally expected to be somewhat odd.”
“Don’t Vulcans celebrate anything?”
“No.” Spock pauses, considering. “We have rites of passage, but I doubt that they are terribly similar.”
“Well, just think of this like a rite of passage, only . . . you know, fun.”
Jim grins unrepentantly at the arch look that Spock shoots him. He feels light and happy, and when he takes Spock’s hand to pull him along he’s aware of the way it feels in his like he never has been before. His heart is racing the same way it did when he held Bryanna Rylant’s hand during the week that they were going out, and the realization startles him so much that he lets go before Spock can realize what he’s thinking.
The glass tunnel empties into a large open area, where an enormous tank stands uncovered beneath the sky. Large, oddly familiar creatures are moving through the water, and Jim drifts forward for a closer look. He’s sure he’s seen things like this before, though he can’t remember where. He reaches out again, searching for Spock, but his hand only finds empty air. He turns around, frowning.
Spock is gone.
Cries from his classmates send him spinning back to the tank, and his eyes go so wide that he thinks for a moment that they might fall right out of his head. There’s a pale shape in the water now, just the right size for a boy on the small side of eleven years old. Jim rushes forward, pressing his face to the glass as he stares.
Spock has shed most of his clothes; only his underwear and undershirt remain, both nearly the same color as his skin in the sunlit water. The people behind Jim are still crying out, panicking as Jim ignores them.
The animals are approaching Spock now as he floats serenely between them, and Jim finally tears himself away from the glass to pelt headlong up the staircase that runs up the side of the tank. Even as he runs he’s not sure if he’s hurrying to pull Spock out or jump in with him, but it turns out to be a moot point. By the time he makes it to the top of the tank Spock is already out, standing with a towel around his shoulders and the Vulcan version of a mutinous expression on his face.
“-extremely dangerous,” Ms. Taggart is saying furiously. “Those aren’t pets, Spock!”
“He wouldn’t have done it without a good reason,” Jim protests immediately, reaching out to take Spock’s hand again even as he moves to stand beside his friend.
Ms. Taggart turns her glare on Jim, but it’s his mother’s face scowling down at him now, and Jim can’t help but feel an instinctive surge of guilt.
“This is your bad influence, Jimmy. Spock never got into trouble like this before the two of you met.”
Jim feels hot tears sting his eyes at the accusation, but Spock’s hand tightens around his, steadying him. “I entered the tank of my own free will,” he says calmly. “Jim had nothing to do with it.”
“I doubt your mother will see things quite that way, Spock,” Jim’s mom chides. “Come with me, boys.”
She leads them across the deck to a small office that overlooks the large tank on one side and the rest of the aquarium on the other. Jim and Spock are ushered onto a couch that sits beneath a large digital display of tropical fish while Jim’s mom slips behind the desk where she begins making calls and filing reports.
“I apologize,” Spock says quietly, so that only Jim can hear. “It was not my intent to get you in trouble.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s okay.”
Jim looks over at his friend, and it hits him suddenly how very close Spock is sitting. The heat from his body hits Jim in a sudden rush, and he’s aware again of the feel of Spock’s hand in his. He’s close enough that Jim can see drops of water still clinging to Spock’s lashes. His eyes drop to Spock’s lips of their own accord. He is very abruptly aware of how easy it would be to simply lean forward and press his own lips against them. He’s already leaning forward by the time he realizes it, their lips almost touching, almost-
“Jim! Come on, you’re not going to be late on your last day. Time to get up, I mean it!”
Jim jerks awake, the stripes on his pillowcase swimming in his vision for a moment before his eyes manage to adjust to the bright morning light. His left hand is clutching a corner of the bedspread; he forces his fingers open, and the impression of Spock’s hand in his slowly begins to fade. His heart is racing, pounding in his chest like he’s just run a marathon. He sits up slowly, taking in the sight of his room around him, just a normal bedroom in his normal house in a normal Iowa town. He’s almost calmed down when he hears Frank shout up the stairs again.
“Jim! I’d better hear you moving around in the next ten seconds! Up!”
“Crap,” Jim mutters, adrenaline hitting him all over again as he throws off the covers and jumps out of bed.
He’s dressed and downstairs in record time, running out the front door with barely a pause to grab the lunch Frank packed for him last night and pretending not to hear when his stepfather calls after him to comb his hair before he gets to school. The ‘bus is just pulling away when he reaches the stop, but the driver sees him waving and waits for him to clamber on board.
Jim finds an empty seat and collapses into it, already rummaging in his lunch sack. He pulls out an apple and takes an enthusiastic bite. He usually spends the trip to school reading, but he left the PADD with his recreational reading on his nightstand in his rush. Some of his textbooks are interesting, but he’d learned early on that while the other kids might tolerate a scrawny ten-year-old on their bus, they wouldn’t overlook him actively doing schoolwork in their presence. So he makes a conscious effort to eat slowly enough that his apple will last the entire way to school, and watches the people around him.
There are two eighth-graders he doesn’t know by name sitting across the aisle from him, the boy twisted around to talk to the girl behind him over the back of his seat. Their hands are linked, and she’s playing with his fingers with a smug sort of smile on her face as he chatters on with an occasional pause to blush and grin. Jim looks away quickly, feeling a flush heat his own cheeks. He’s not going to think about that stupid dream, he tells himself sternly, and he’s not going to imagine what it would be like to have Spock sitting here next to him, to be able to simply reach down and link their hands together.
He’s not.
The school day, the last one of the year, seems to last forever. Jim is prepared to swear that there have never been this many couples in the school before, and he wonders if junior high is like this at the end of every school year. Though keeping his head down in the hallways lets him avoid witnessing most of the PDA going unnoticed by the staff, his luck runs out when he reaches his final class.
Like the rest of the school today, the Advanced Physics classroom is hovering somewhere just shy of total chaos. Exams are finished and the teachers seem just as eager as the students are for school to be over. With a few killjoy exceptions, the motto of the day has seemed to be don’t set anything on fire and we’ll all get along fine. Jim makes his way through the laughing, gossiping groups to his usual seat and finds his friend Katy waiting there for him.
“Hey,” he greets her, grateful for any sort of normality in an otherwise surreal day. He sets his PADDs on his desk and drops into the seat. “How do you think you did on the test?”
“Pretty well.” She opens her mouth to say something but closes it again without speaking, her mouth tilting up in a hint of a smile, and Jim’s stomach sinks a little. There’s hardly anything that can distract Katy from talking about academics. “There’s gonna be a party at Padisa Orningh’s house tonight,” she says at last. “Do you think your dad will let you go?”
“Stepdad,” Jim corrects automatically, raising his eyebrows. “And I doubt Padisa wants a little kid at her party.”
“That was at the beginning of the year, Jim, I’m sure she doesn’t think you’re just a little kid anymore. And even if she does, she’ll get over it. Besides.” Katy’s eyes are shining behind her glasses, and her cheeks are turning pink beneath her freckles. “It’s Ainsley’s party, too, and she said I should invite you.” She can’t hold back her grin any longer. “She said you should come, since you’re friends with her . . . girlfriend,” she finishes, grinning and blushing even harder.
“Wow. Um. Congrats, Katy.”
Jim hopes his smile doesn’t look as strained as it feels. He’s happy for Katy, he really is; her crush on Ainsley Ra has been epic and supposedly doomed to remain unrequited. The two of them have always seemed as different as two people could possibly be, despite Katy being right that Ainsley wasn’t the ditzy jock Jim used to think she was. She’s nicer than the rest of her friends, he has to admit, and if she makes Katy smile like this she can’t be all bad. On any other day Jim would be thrilled; today, though, he just doesn’t think he can take much more of this sudden explosion of romance.
Luckily Katy doesn’t seem to expect much more of a response, and when Jim says that he doesn’t think Frank would let him go to a party thrown by almost-eighth-graders-which is a convenient truth-she accepts it without too much fuss. They do discuss their final exams for the rest of the period after that, and Jim manages to pretend that there’s nothing too unusual about the day after all.
Jim cleans out his locker as quickly as he can after the final bell, eager to get away from the mass of happy couples and teary farewells. With no need to rush home he decides to walk instead of taking the ‘bus, though he regrets it after a block or two when the lack of distractions has his mind drifting back to his dream again.
He doesn’t really want to kiss Spock, did he? The very idea is ridiculous. Spock is . . . he’s Spock. He’s Jim’s best friend. It must have just been Jim’s brain being screwy, coming up with a weird situation from the fact that he’s excited over Spock’s arrival in a few days, that’s all. After all, last week Jim dreamed that he was hunting a monster through a whole maze of underground caves, and that doesn’t mean that Jim actually wants to kill rock-beasts or whatever. Dreaming something doesn’t make it true.
Given the sort of things Jim tends to dream of, he has to believe that.
He’s still reassuring himself by the time he gets home, so lost in his thoughts that he’s almost to the foot of the stairs by the time he registers Frank’s greeting. Jim turns to answer him, but the sight that meets him strikes him momentarily dumb. His eyebrows shoot straight up at the sight of Frank dressed like he’s going to a business meeting, pressed slacks and nice shoes and a button-down shirt.
“Do you have a meeting?” is Jim’s first question. It’s a strange time for one, but those are usually the only things that can Frank to dress up. Well, those and . . .
“No, I’m going to the P.T.A. mixer.” Frank is tugging at his shirt cuffs, trying to get them to stay straight, which Jim is pretty sure is a lost cause. He apparently decides the same thing, because he gives it up and looks back up at Jim. “The end-of-the-year thank you thing. It’s on the calendar.”
Jim hasn’t bothered to check today’s date on their family schedule calendar because he’d been sure he knew what it would say. Jim’s last day of school. There wouldn’t be a note about pizza and vids. It isn’t an official tradition or anything, just something he and Frank usually do; pizza with toppings that Jim gets to choose, two or three vids they can agree on because you don’t have to talk when a vid is on. Just something they usually do.
“Oh.” Jim shifts the strap of his bag still slung over his shoulder. “Is it gonna go late?”
“Probably until nine or so. Leo should be here soon. I’ll leave some credits for you guys to get pizza, and you can download a couple of vids off of the network if you feel like it. Just nothing violent, okay?”
Jim scowls out of habit more than anything. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m not a little kid.”
“Yeah, I know,” Frank snorts, and for a moment things feel like they did when he and Jim’s mom had first gotten married. “You’re practically an old man. But Leo’s coming over anyway.”
“Fine,” Jim groans, but doesn’t argue any more. The truth is that he’d rather have Bones babysitting him than be stuck in the house all by himself tonight, even if he won’t say so out loud. He stomps up the stairs on basic principle.
“Remember, your mom’s coming home tomorrow,” Frank calls after him. “I want your room cleaned up by then, understand?”
“Okay!” Jim yells back without turning around, so that he can’t get in trouble for rolling his eyes.
He stomps all the way to his room and glares around. It’s not that bad in here, he thinks, but he plucks a couple of pairs of underwear and a shirt off of the floor and tosses them towards the hamper before flopping down backwards onto his bed.
What he really wants to do, he thinks as he stares up at the ceiling, is to write to Spock. Not because of . . . of anything that may have happened at the end of the dream, Jim assures himself quickly, but because he’s wondering about the enormous things in the tank, the things that had been swimming towards Spock. As the details of the dream have faded during the day, Jim has become less and less sure that he has any idea what they were. All he’s sure of is that they were nothing he could find in a real aquarium. Something from Vulcan, maybe, though that feels wrong. But Vulcan has seas, Jim knows, so surely it has animals that live in them?
There’s a knock on his door and Jim, expecting Frank, quickly rolls onto his stomach, stretching across the bed as if to tug the far edge of the bedspread into place.
“Hey, kid,” Bones says as he opens the door to poke his head inside, and Jim immediately leaves off pretending to make the bed.
“I’m not a kid,” he grumbles, rolling back again and folding his hands over his stomach with a heavy sigh.
Bones just snorts the same way Frank did as he plops down on the edge of the bed. “Though you were supposed to be up here cleaning things up.”
“Didn’t feel like it.”
“Hmm.” Jim can feel Bones’s eyes on him, the same carefully measuring stare that he uses when he’s working out just how much trouble Jim’s gotten into when he wasn’t watching. “All right,” he says after a moment, brisk and demanding as ever. “What’s crawled up your ass and died?”
Jim sits up, his eyes going wide as they fly over to the older boy, and his lips twitch despite his determination to maintain his bad mood. Bones never swears in front of him. Maybe he’s taking Jim seriously after all. He could talk to Bones about it, he supposes. But if he laughs, Jim swears to himself he’ll hit him, even if Bones is bigger than he is.
“Have you ever had a friend, only you think you don’t want to be just friends anymore, but you don’t really know for sure and besides they probably don’t even like you like that but you sort of can’t stop thinking about them?” Jim blurts out in one long, explosive breath.
Bones blinks back at him.
“Forget it,” Jim mutters, and flops back down again. His face feels so hot he knows he must be blushing, and he wishes for one fierce moment that the floor would simply open up and swallow him whole.
“So.” Bones clears his throat. “You’ve got a crush on someone, is that it?”
“No.” Jim bites his lip. “Maybe. I don’t know. Bones,” he moans, twisting around until he’s sitting with his legs tucked under him. “How do you make someone like you back?”
Bones’s eyes go soft for a moment with something like pity. “You can’t make someone like you, Jimmy. Either they do or they don’t. Is this about Katy?”
“Huh?” It’s Jim’s turn to blink, unable for the life of him to figure out how Bones could have gotten that idea. “No! Katy’s just my friend. Besides, she’s got a girlfriend; I wouldn’t want to steal someone away from someone else.”
“Well, you’re young yet,” Bones mutters, but his gaze has gone shrewd now. “So who is this mystery crush, then?”
“No one,” Jim says defensively. “It’s hypothetical.”
“Sure it is.”
“Come on, Bones, you get girls to like you all the time! How do you do it?”
The older boy sighs and scrubs a hand over the back of his head. “You’re already friends with this hypothetical person, right?”
Jim’s eyes narrow at the obvious sarcasm, but he nods.
“Okay. Well, then you’ve gotta court ‘em so that they see you as something more than just a friend. Lay some groundwork, see, before you ask ‘em out.”
“Groundwork?”
“Yeah. You know, be considerate, take ‘em places you think they’d like to go. Maybe buy a little gift or two for ‘em.”
Jim’s fingers twitch with the urge to write all of this down, but he knows that if he goes for a PADD he’ll never hear the end of Bones’s teasing. “Gifts,” he repeats. “What sort of gifts?”
“Most girls seem to like flowers,” Bones offers. “That’ll tip your hand pretty clearly, though. Try to find something you think they’ll like, but that they’d never get themselves.”
“Okay.” Jim nods absently, his mind racing. “Right.”
“You’ll do fine,” Bones assures him. “You’ve got a natural silver tongue, Jimmy; if all else fails, you can always try just talkin’ ‘em into it.” He stands, stretches. “C’mon, you wanna order the pizza?”
“I want extra sausage,” Jim says automatically, and Bones makes a face.
“All that fatty meat’s not good for you, Jim.”
They bicker over pizza toppings until they place the call, and then over the movie choice until they agree to flip a coin. Even when Jim wins, however, he hardly pays attention to what’s on the screen. His thoughts are a jumble, torn between plans and doubts. He’s still not sure if he actually does have a crush on Spock. And even if he does, does he want to do anything about it? Spock is his very best friend, but he’s also awfully Vulcan. Do Vulcans have crushes? Do they court each other, or date, or do any of that stuff? Would Spock want to do that stuff with Jim even if he could? What if he says no when Jim asks him out? If he does. If he even wants to.
Jim thinks so hard that he gives himself a headache. Bones blames it on the pizza and the dessert Jim talked him into and hurries him off to bed before Frank even gets home, and Jim stares at the dark ceiling and worries about falling asleep. He’s sure that he’s going to dream about Spock again, maybe actually kiss him this time, and the idea is equal parts thrilling and terrifying. It only gets worse, too when it occurs to him to worry that Spock might realize what Jim has been dreaming about. Jim isn’t sure, but he’s willing to bet there’s at least one Vulcan cultural taboo against subconsciously kissing your friend without his consent.
In the end, though, the strain of the day is too much and he can’t manage to stay awake. He’s so tired, in fact, that he doesn’t dream at all; or if he does, it’s forgotten the moment his eyes open to the sound of a deafening crash downstairs. Jim’s out of bed and racing towards the noise before he’s even fully awake, and finds Frank in the laundry room, swearing a blue streak with packets of cleaning solvent scattered all over the floor and the wall shelf dangling from one weak bracket. He looks up when Jim appears in the doorway, something close to panic in his eyes.
“Your mom’s gonna be here in three hours.”
It’s all he needs to say.
The morning is a frenzy of last minute cleaning. Neither of them has a natural talent for neatness, and over the past several months the details of keeping the house clean and organized seem to have slipped away from them. Jim scrubs the bathrooms and packs the dishwasher as full as it can stand, while Frank empties load after load of their clothing into the washer and attacks a series of stains on the living room floor that neither of them remember making. Jim can’t help but smile a little, even elbow-deep in dirty dishes, because he knows things will be just the same with his mom the day before Frank comes home, if a little bit easier because Spock and his mother do know how to be neat.
Jim is standing on a kitchen chair, putting the last of the drinking glasses away, when he hears the familiar rumble of his mom’s ‘car pulling up out front. He jumps down and is running as soon as his feet hit the floor, tearing through the house and out the front door.
“Mom!” he shouts, hardly noticing the second ‘car pulling up behind hers as he throws himself into her arms.
“Oof! Hey there, Jimmy.” She bends down to hug him tight, and he breathes in the smell of her shampoo and the strange, recycled-air smell that always clings to her for a few days after she gets back from a mission. “I missed you, sweetie. Have you been good?”
“Uh-huh.” He hugs her tighter for just a moment, then lets go. “Did you see any Klingons?” he asks, as he always does, and she laughs as she stands up.
“Nope, no Klingons. But look who I did find at the shuttle port.”
Jim’s eyes go wide as the second ‘car finally registers and he sees two dark-haired figures climbing out. His mom steps aside to wrap Frank in another fierce hug, and Jim is left staring at their visitors, arrived two days earlier than planned.
“Jim.” Spock’s mom pulls him into an embrace just as firm as his own mother’s. “It’s so good to see you! I know you weren’t expecting us just yet. I swear, our ship’s pilot must have been trying to break a record; we’ve never made the trip so quickly.” She leans back to hold him at arm’s length and beams at him. “You’ve gotten so big! And so handsome, too. I’ll bet you’re already breaking hearts at your new school, aren’t you?”
Jim’s mom pulls her away a moment later, and Jim is left facing Spock at last. He looks the same as ever, with his shiny cap of hair and pale skin, his calm expression and dark eyes that warm as soon as they meet Jim’s. It’s the closest that Spock will get to a smile, Jim knows, for at least a week.
“Hello, James,” he says.
Jim’s heart gives a funny sort of twisting flip, and all the doubts he’s had over the past day and a half suddenly scatter like space dust. He knows his grin probably looks stupid, if not downright insane, but he can’t bring himself to care.
“Hey, Spock,” he says back, and his mind starts formulating plans as his palms begin to sweat.
****************
Three days later he’s pleading with Bones through the view screen. “Our moms keep saying that they won’t let us go without you with us. Please, you’ve gotta talk them out of it!”
“I’m a teenager, not a miracle-worker,” Bones gripes. “How am I supposed to convince them to let you two go to the city by yourselves when you’re only ten? And what in the world can possibly be so important that it’s this big a deal, anyway?”
“I told you, I want to take Spock somewhere, and it won’t be the same if you come with us!”
“Well why the hell not?”
Jim doesn’t answer, but he feels his face getting warmer. And the more he blushes, the wider Bones’s eyes get, until finally he bursts out laughing.
“Well I’ll be. Can’t believe I didn’t . . .” He breaks off, laughing again. “All right, Jimmy. But I want you to remember this, you understand? Because one day I’m going to be calling for some reciprocity.”
“What’s reciprocity?”
“Look it up,” Bones chuckles. “And put your mom back on.”
Half an hour later, Jim and Spock have permission to take the transit shuttle to Des Moines, and the very next day their mothers drop them off at the base with worried looks and demands that they keep themselves safe.
Jim isn’t nervous. Not at all.
It’s important that he continues to remind himself of that, because from the way his hands are shaking it’s clear that they think he is. It’s ridiculous. This isn’t even a date, not really. Probably not. He hasn’t talked to Spock about it, in any case, and even at just shy of eleven years old he’s pretty sure that both people have to agree before it counts as a date. Which isn’t to say that he’s about to ask Spock what he thinks. That could be . . . bad. Potentially, that could be very bad. Better to keep his mouth shut and dry his sweating palms on his jeans, and remind himself again that James Tiberius Kirk doesn’t get nervous over something that might not even be a date.
“James.” He looks over, resigned by now to the way his heart has decided to start doing girly little flips whenever Spock says his name like that. It used to annoy him, he knows, but he can’t quite remember why. “Do you intend to tell me where we are going?”
Jim’s grin is wide. “Nope.” The shuttle swerves to the left and they grip their seats tightly. “Wanna guess? You know, speculate?”
Spock tilts his head down a fraction in the Vulcan version of an exasperated sigh, and Jim has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at it. “I am well aware of the definition of the word ‘guess’, James. And no, I think that I would rather not. If you would just-”
He doesn’t get to finish his thought before the shuttle jostles again and an automated voice tells them to prepare for docking. Jim hates this part; public transport shuttles always feel like they’re on the verge of falling apart when they connect to port. This time is no exception and he’s feeling slightly queasy by the time they unfasten their seatbelts and file out of the cramped space with the others.
It’s only a short walk to their destination. The guard at the door makes them wait while he scans the tracking wristbands that-as Bones had reminded their mothers, who are probably checking their communicators for updates every thirty seconds-are required for all unaccompanied minors,. Then they’re inside, and Jim is nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet as they walk up to the front desk.
The woman sitting there looks impressively bored. She tells them that admission is five credits apiece for children twelve and under, takes the money and hands them a map along with a second set of wristbands without bothering to cast more than a cursory glance in their direction. Spock still looks skeptical until they pass through the double glass doors and they get their first good view of the aquarium.
Jim watches in delight as Spock’s eyes go wide as he tries to take everything in at once. Staircases climb in gradual spirals around enormous tanks of water that are filled with fish in all the colors of the rainbow. Paths branch off in several directions, signs at their junctures directing visitors towards particular attractions. Jim already has a mental list a mile long of all the sights he thinks that Spock will like. He looks through the map anyway, and the first thing he sees sends everything else tumbling out of his head.
“Sharks!” He is bouncing now, his excitement too great for his body to contain. He jabs a finger at the blurb at the side of the page. “They’re feeding them in five minutes, let’s go!” When Spock looks too overwhelmed to move on his own, Jim rolls his eyes and grabs his hand. “Come on!” he says, and sets off, tugging an astonished Vulcan along behind him.
Jim is pretty sure that the shark feeding is the coolest thing he’s ever seen, even if it makes him almost as queasy as the shuttle landing. After that, there’s the manta rays-they actually get to help feed those for a credit apiece, which is easily the best way Jim’s ever spent his allowance- and the Xenooceanus tour, and the penguin show, and the documentary on an extinct species of whales that Spock insists on watching, and by the time they’re standing in front of a display of tropical fish, Jim is willing to admit that okay, yes, this might maybe be a date after all.
And if this is a date, then it’s all right for Jim to reach out, with his heart racing and his palms threatening to start sweating again, to slowly link his fingers together with Spock’s. The hand in his jerks in surprise. Jim sneaks a glance over; Spock’s cheeks are flushed green, his eyes firmly fixed on the tank in front of them, but he doesn’t pull his hand away.
Someday soon, Jim thinks as he looks at Spock, he’ll work up the nerve to kiss him. But for now he turns back to the water, content to simply stand, holding Spock’s hand and watching the fish as they swim slowly by.
>>Part 12