fic: the one where they go to georgia (wip amnesty day)
I was out BBQing all afternoon and, on my return, noticed my flist had exploded in wip_amnesty - weird, since I had just been rereading the thing I'm about to post like, yesterday or earlier today and sighing at how it was never going to go anywhere. So - here we go.
Title: The One Where Kirk and Spock Visit Bones and Joanna in Georgia and Everything Goes to Hell
Fandom: ST (Reboot)
Rating: Language, mostly, w/e.
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, hints of Academy-era Kirk/McCoy (WHAT)
Word Count: ~3300
Summary/Notes: Actually supposed to be part of the series A Question of Science and set right after Spacedock -- basically, the Georgia part of Kirk and Spock's leave. Joanna's 11 here, figuring that she was about three when McCoy and his wife divorced (+3 Academy, +5 mission). Um. Hm. That it? That's it. Oh, and this has been a WIP since November, so bits and pieces might have made it into later fic? ANYWAY.
"Well, she's eleven," Kirk informed Spock, "And just about the smartest kid I've ever known. Ever. Including my brother's kids -- then again, I see her more often than I see them -- relatively, I mean, not that I've seen any of them in five fucking years but --"
They were walking down a road to the McCoy house -- the house Leonard McCoy had been raised in, inherited from his parents, began his family in, and lost in the divorce eight years prior. Spock saw the doctor himself and a young woman, approximately the age Kirk had stated, sitting on the trunk of a refashioned classic car that hovered 30 feet from them and an additional 100 feet from the house itself. The cerulean car stood out among the washed out landscape of the house and the grass experiencing a significant drought that season.
"Jim?!" the young woman shrieked. Spock noted she looked not unlike the doctor in that they had similarly colored hair and parted it on opposing sides. Their features could be better compared once the distance between the two groups had been closed.
"It's me!" Kirk yelled back.
Spock watched the young woman slide off the back of the car and begin sprinting towards them, while Kirk threw his bag on the ground and ran to meet her. Spock paused on the dirt road, picked up Kirk's bag, and continued walking at his steady pace.
Kirk's longer legs and far better trained physique allowed him to reach the young woman before she had run very far. Their collision resulted in yells, arms wrapped around each other, and Kirk eventually hoisting the young woman high for several quick half-turns before bringing her down to his eye level. She wrapped her arms around his neck, his arms were around her narrow body, and Spock paused when he reached them.
They were murmuring almost incoherently to each other, Kirk's mouth near her ear and the young woman's face buried in his shoulder. Spock noted her hand clasped around her forearm at Kirk's back, tightening around him until he laughed and began negotiations for her return to the ground.
"What's it gonna take, huh?"
"A contract, signed in blood, that you and Dad are never leaving for that long ever again," she said. "Nothing less."
"Man, you were so much easier to bribe when we left." He looked over her shoulder at McCoy, still on the trunk of the car. "What did it take to get her permission to leave last time? Half a banana split?"
"With sprinkles," McCoy clarified.
"You didn't tell me you'd be gone half my life," she said to Kirk as he set her back down. "I'm eleven now. You've been gone almost half my life."
"Okay, okay, I guess that calls for another hug," Kirk sighed. He crouched down slightly and Spock watched her throw her arms around his neck again. Kirk's eyes opened briefly and he looked to Spock with an inscrutable smile before looking to McCoy and beaming. "All right, come on, we're starving -- who gets shotgun?"
"Your friend can," she said.
"My friend can," Kirk repeated with a laugh. He pulled the young woman close and steered her to face Spock, an arm around her shoulders and firmly clasping the furthest one. "Ms. Joanna McCoy, this is Mr. Spock."
"A pleasure to meet you," she said. She did not extend her hand, and Spock nodded in acknowledgement. "You're quiet," she added.
"I am observing," he replied.
"Spock's a big shot scientist," Kirk bragged. "He's my --"
"I know who he is, Dad talks about you two all the time," she interrupted.
"Since you know everything," Kirk said, "How about where we're going for lunch, huh? What about the two-bit motel your dad's found for all of us? Come on, genius, come on!"
She shrieked and ran back to her father, who had finally slid off the hood and had an arm ready to embrace her when she collided with him.
"Let's just get the hell out of here, huh?" McCoy asked. "Spock, take shotgun."
"Why would we need firearms for this venture?" he asked.
"That means, Mr. Spock, that you sit up front with Dad, and Jim and I are going to sit in the backseat and gossip about you two -- especially you," she informed him.
"It was a joke," Kirk said. "He knows perfectly well what riding shotgun means."
"Wow," she said, then looked up at her father. "Dad, that is awful."
"Five years, baby girl -- I'm not sure how I didn't do myself an injury," McCoy replied dryly. Spock noted the slight drawl that had come into his voice, the deeper tone, and yet the warmth that had crept into his overall posture and presentation since their last days on the Enterprise.
Kirk suddenly dashed for the car and Joanna raced him. The race was apparently not complete until one party had reached the car and climbed into the backseat -- Joanna's thin frame allowed her to shave several seconds off her time by avoiding the need to push the seat forward and climb in. "Win!" she cried from inside the car while Kirk fought with the handle.
"Shit, Bones, when's the last time you oiled this damn thing!"
"The last time we were here," McCoy said.
"Right, right, that whole space thing, always making excuses, aren't you," Kirk laughed. The seat finally groaned forward and Kirk slid inside, pushing his way across the genuine leather seats to Joanna and pushing her into her corner of the car. "Make room, we've got big bags; we're travelers, you know."
"That's what the trunk is for, genius," she laughed.
"You don't say."
Eventually, the bags were in the trunk, Spock had fastened himself into the front passenger seat of the vehicle, and they were speeding to Atlanta for a meal before traveling to the lake where they would spend the next three weeks. Spock's eyes traveled occasionally to the passenger-side mirror where he saw Kirk, head turned to Joanna, conversing animatedly with her, their joint laughter floating around and out of the car. Spock occasionally looked to McCoy, who would meet his looks with smirks, eye rolls, and half-smiles that said, quite clearly, that there was no where else he would rather be at any given moment than in that car with these people.
Spock was unsure if he was included in the estimation.
"Jim's known me since I was four," Joanna informed Spock over lunch at the diner which formed a cornerstone of McCoy family tradition. "So Dad tells me, but I only really remember him from when I was six."
"Why that particular age?" Spock asked. "If I recall, humans begin to form memories as early as the fifth year."
"Maybe, but I remember six really well," she said. "Anyway, when I was six, Dad and Jim were about to start their last year at the Academy, and it was the first summer that I remember we spent at the lake, the three of us."
"Which doesn't mean much because we'd been doing summers there since I went to Starfleet," her father informed her.
"It does matter, Dad," she said almost solemnly. "Remembering's way more important than you telling me it happened. I remember you and Mom hating each other's guts and I see it all the time, but you tell me you loved each other once upon a time."
"She does have a point," Kirk said as he chewed on his straw.
"Anyway," Joanna continued, "The house is awesome, Jim, because Dad said with his 'saving your ass' bonus, we could get one of the lakeshore houses."
"Big spender," Kirk said with approval. "I can't wait, even if I'm going to kind of miss our shitty little bungalow."
"You and Spock have a whole half of the damn house to yourselves," McCoy informed them.
"Yeah, there's a whole swinging door keeping us apart," Joanna added. "But we're making breakfast every morning so don't think I won't stand at the door and holler at you until you both come down and help. It's real mid-20th century; there aren't even holes in the walls where replicators could go and we bought so much food."
"Doctor, I would be pleased to reimburse you for --"
"Shut up, Spock, I bought the damn house," McCoy said. "You and Jim are our guests, got it?"
Their food arrived: Spock and Joanna's massive salads, Joanna's side of French fries, and two massive cheeseburgers for the doctor and Kirk. Kirk raised his cheeseburger for a toast with McCoy, who laughed and had their sandwiches meet in mid-air.
"They are such boys," Joanna sighed to Spock, who raised an eyebrow at her. "Don't you think?"
"When last I checked, yes, they were males of your species," Spock said. "If there is an underlying meaning to your assessment, or additional context I am unfamiliar with, you will have to inform me of it."
"I love how you talk," she said breathlessly.
"Jo, seriously, Spock is --" Spock turned to glance at Kirk, who seemed to be taking him in as if for the first time, assessing and evaluating him with such open admiration that Spock had some trouble hiding his discomfort. "Spock's amazing. You get that, right?"
"Of course," she replied. Spock turned back to his salad and Joanna, who was looking at him with the same appraising/admiring glance Kirk had just given him. "You're a vegetarian, too, and that's already tops with me."
"Fucking shit, Bones!" Kirk yelled when they approached the house on the lake's shore. "You bought a fucking mansion!"
"So observant, as always," McCoy replied as he turned off the car.
"What the fuck!" Kirk looked at Joanna and put his arm around her shoulders. "Was this your idea? You know this means no presents ever again, right, because you have a fucking summer mansion outside Atlanta?"
"I told Dad not to," she protested, "I really did!"
"A little less shrieking from all of you and a little more unpacking the trunk, huh?" McCoy interrupted. "And Jo, you show Jim and Spock up to their room and where everything is, then you leave them alone, all right?"
"All right," Joanna sighed.
The four of them entered the house through the main entrance. McCoy went to his right and Joanna led Kirk and Spock through a door on her left to another wing of the house. "Dad and I spent the first week just decorating our half, but we left this kind of empty."
The ground floor was an expansive living room with a partitioned dining room, all startling white with gold accents. The floor was bare and the boards creaked gently under their steps (particularly Kirk's, who insisted on stomping everywhere he went). "All the cool stuff is on our half, you know, the vidscreen, the books Dad pulled out of storage and put on the shelves --"
"That he'll never ever read --"
"Exactly," she laughed. "Okay, upstairs! I picked out two different kinds of sheets for your room!"
"I will bet you a cannonball off the highest tree next to the lake that one set has ponies," Kirk said.
"Jim, I'm not a kid anymore," Joanna said, turning her head so they could see her rolling her eyes. "No ponies!"
"I'll believe that when I see it."
The wide staircase came to an end in a hallway with two bedrooms across from each other and what Joanna revealed as a linen closet large enough to be a bedroom of its own, and then led them to the bedroom. "I picked out the brightest room for you."
"The brightest?" Kirk asked with his eyebrows raised. "You know I'm not a morning person…"
Spock, too, had wondered at the wisdom of being put in a bright room when Kirk preferred to stay in bed for as long as possible during leave, but it would not be a problem in their room. An immense tree that had not been visible from the front of the house reached up to their bedroom window. Its leaves filtered what would be an oppressive amount of sunlight (to Kirk) and cooled the room immensely.
As if to coordinate with the tree (which Spock had to admit was the dominant decorating feature of the room, even from outside its technical parameters), the furniture was dark wood: the bureau that was almost the length of one wall with a dark-framed mirror attached to it, and the bed that also took up a large portion of the room. Where the ground floor had been almost too immaculate to touch, this was quite different.
"Jim!" Joanna shrieked. "You haven't said anything about the sheets!"
"Kid, hold on, this room is gorgeous," Kirk said. Spock watched him examine the surroundings, very much with genuine reverie, and felt Kirk's free hand travel to the small of his back. "Did you guys do this or --?"
"It pretty much looked like this when we got here," she said. "I just picked out the sheets. I thought you'd miss the ship, so I got ones to remind you of the Enterprise."
Kirk and Spock raised their eyebrows jointly and looked at the bed, which had a dark purple comforter. The comforter itself had the Enterprise printed on it in a haphazard pattern, and the word ENTERPRISE printed across the center of the comforter in letters large enough to see from spacedock.
"You're awful," Kirk laughed. He dropped his bag and put both arms around Joanna tightly, bending down to kiss the top of her head. "Now go find your dad, tell him you gave us the tour and you left us alone to recover."
"Okay, okay, jeez you're pushy," she sighed. "When you're done recovering, we're going to the lake, okay? And we've got lots of stuff planned, you'll see!"
She slipped from Kirk's arms, gave Spock a miniscule smile, and left the room. Spock stopped her at the doorway with a sharp "Joanna". She and Kirk both turned to look at him with startlingly similar expressions of disbelief.
"Thank you for allowing us to remain here during the latter part of your holiday with your father," Spock said.
Her eyes flew to Kirk and then back to Spock. "My pleasure," she replied with a remarkable quiet that rendered her somewhat awkward. "Um, come by our part of the house when you're ready, okay?"
"We will," Kirk said. He closed the door firmly behind her and leaned against it, his head thrown back, eyes on Spock. "Seriously, that kid," he said.
"Indeed."
"Okay, so day one: total success," Joanna informed Kirk.
"Well, more like day 1.5," he replied.
"Nerd."
"Damn right."
The four of them were walking along a system of paths after dinner the next evening. They had started out in a wide line, but paired off once Kirk and Joanna became engrossed in their conversation and began to walk faster than McCoy and Spock. Only the ones left behind noticed, and they preferred to see the two of them running off ahead and laughing loudly.
"Why didn't you tell me about Spock?" she asked when they were (hopefully) out of Spock's range of hearing. "Haven't you guys been together for years now?"
"Come on, kid, I didn't want to tell you over a fucking comm," Kirk replied. "'Hey, Joanna, how's school? Me? I'm good, oh, by the way, kind of got married, unofficially, sorry you weren't there but no one was'? Too awkward. Just not right."
"Wait, you're married?" she shrieked. Kirk's left arm was slung around her shoulder and she immediately grabbed for his hand -- ringless, of course, except for his Starfleet ring. "Dad didn't tell me you were married. Where's the ring?"
"We don't do rings," he replied. "Well. Right now we don't. And there's not exactly a jewelry outpost at every spacedock, is there? I mean, a good one. I'm not settling for anything less than latinum."
Kirk noticed that she didn't laugh, so he squeezed her shoulders. "Hey. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I wanted to, but -- well. Like I said."
"No, I mean, Spock seems great," she replied slowly, "I just -- I always thought you'd get together with Dad."
Kirk looked over his shoulder at McCoy, who was actually talking to Spock but took a second to glance over at him and flash him a wry smile.
"I'm sorry, Jo," he replied. "Just not in the cards."
"Been coming here since I was a kid," McCoy explained. "But I stopped when I got married -- wife had allergies as bad as Jim, except she gets congested the minute she steps out of her lab and Jim's only allergic to every compound in the galaxy." Spock watched the doctor dig his hands deeper into his pockets and then he sighed, though not out of his usual exasperation -- at least, it seemed less unhappy than his usual moans and groans aboard the ship. "Then when we split up and I went to the Academy, I got Joanna the whole summer. Jim had no where to go except Iowa with his asshole of a stepfather and flake of a mother -- so we came here with Joanna."
"You will forgive me if my comment seems to discount or doubt the potential of both of you caring for a very young child for a considerable length of time," Spock began, but McCoy interrupted.
"Now you sound like her mother -- less shrieking, so thanks for that."
They both looked ahead to Joanna and Kirk, still walking along with their arms slung around each other. Her hair was darker than her father's but razor straight and maintained at chin length ("but only for the summer" the doctor had informed Spock). Spock watched Kirk pull Joanna closer and then dig his knuckles into the top of her head while she shrieked and pushed him away.
"They're always like that," McCoy said.
"For twelve weeks every five years," Spock clarified.
"Thanks for rubbing that in," McCoy replied. "Don't know what we'd do without your precision, Spock."
"I merely state the facts, doctor," Spock said. "They are very attached to each other despite their infrequent interactions, and I --"
"Infrequent interactions?" McCoy asked. "The three of us talk every week on the ship; Joanna knew that every Thursday night, no matter where we were, we'd be on that vid with her."
"…your debriefing sessions?" he asked with some astonishment he could not disguise. "The captain led me to believe they were evenings revolving around a bottle of alcohol and discussions regarding crew members' personal lives."
"Sometimes they are, but -- dammit, Spock, I'm a doctor, not a bartender," McCoy snapped.
"You have rarely demonstrated otherwise, doctor," Spock said coolly.
"I mean, I know Dad's not gay," Joanna said.
"Man, that was a fun conversation," Kirk laughed.
"Ohmigosh yeah -- but that last summer we were all together, I mean, it felt -- right."
"Not to crush your entire sense of being or anything, but you were six, Jo. Things are going to get more… romanticized as you get older. I remember the time you almost drowned in the lake that summer and Bones didn't talk to me for what, a week?"
"I know that, but like, even when we talked when you two were on the ship. It just -- look, just tell me."
"Fuck, here we go," Kirk sighed.
"Who would you choose: Spock or my dad?"
"Are you kidding?" he asked.
"Totally not," she said, but it still sounded playful and she had to understand, had to, how many times Kirk had made that same decision on various murderous planets over the past five years.
"This actually comes up a lot," Kirk began. "We beam down to a planet, get kidnapped, and it's always the same game: we need one of you to stay. And I always, always pick me, and then Spock and your dad come get me."
"But if it was one or the other, who --"
"Jo," Kirk sighed again. "Running a starship isn't like that note you send around your classroom to a crush."
"Ooh, tell me something I don't know."
"Except you're asking me middle school questions!"
"I am in middle school."
"Fine," Kirk said. "Anyway, I pick your dad, and if it was Spock's choice, he'd pick your dad. Because --"
"He's a doctor," Joanna said. Her voice was tinged with some kind of realization, and Kirk put his arm around her shoulders again. "And then you two can die together and stuff. So romantic."
"Yeah, that's what it is. Fucking romantic."
"You know, it's pretty hilarious that the doctor among us is the least fit," Kirk called out from the front of the line.
"Jim, Jim," McCoy replied, "The next time you need some kind of treatment, see if I dole it out humanely or kindly."
"I believe we have all been waiting to observe that," Spock said.
Kirk, Joanna and McCoy all let out resounding "Whoaaaaaaaa"s that echoed around the forest they were hiking through.
"What is the precise translation of that sound?" Spock asked.
"It means Bones just got burned. Metaphorically speaking. By your sassy mouth," Kirk replied.
Title: The One Where Kirk and Spock Visit Bones and Joanna in Georgia and Everything Goes to Hell
Fandom: ST (Reboot)
Rating: Language, mostly, w/e.
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, hints of Academy-era Kirk/McCoy (WHAT)
Word Count: ~3300
Summary/Notes: Actually supposed to be part of the series A Question of Science and set right after Spacedock -- basically, the Georgia part of Kirk and Spock's leave. Joanna's 11 here, figuring that she was about three when McCoy and his wife divorced (+3 Academy, +5 mission). Um. Hm. That it? That's it. Oh, and this has been a WIP since November, so bits and pieces might have made it into later fic? ANYWAY.
"Well, she's eleven," Kirk informed Spock, "And just about the smartest kid I've ever known. Ever. Including my brother's kids -- then again, I see her more often than I see them -- relatively, I mean, not that I've seen any of them in five fucking years but --"
They were walking down a road to the McCoy house -- the house Leonard McCoy had been raised in, inherited from his parents, began his family in, and lost in the divorce eight years prior. Spock saw the doctor himself and a young woman, approximately the age Kirk had stated, sitting on the trunk of a refashioned classic car that hovered 30 feet from them and an additional 100 feet from the house itself. The cerulean car stood out among the washed out landscape of the house and the grass experiencing a significant drought that season.
"Jim?!" the young woman shrieked. Spock noted she looked not unlike the doctor in that they had similarly colored hair and parted it on opposing sides. Their features could be better compared once the distance between the two groups had been closed.
"It's me!" Kirk yelled back.
Spock watched the young woman slide off the back of the car and begin sprinting towards them, while Kirk threw his bag on the ground and ran to meet her. Spock paused on the dirt road, picked up Kirk's bag, and continued walking at his steady pace.
Kirk's longer legs and far better trained physique allowed him to reach the young woman before she had run very far. Their collision resulted in yells, arms wrapped around each other, and Kirk eventually hoisting the young woman high for several quick half-turns before bringing her down to his eye level. She wrapped her arms around his neck, his arms were around her narrow body, and Spock paused when he reached them.
They were murmuring almost incoherently to each other, Kirk's mouth near her ear and the young woman's face buried in his shoulder. Spock noted her hand clasped around her forearm at Kirk's back, tightening around him until he laughed and began negotiations for her return to the ground.
"What's it gonna take, huh?"
"A contract, signed in blood, that you and Dad are never leaving for that long ever again," she said. "Nothing less."
"Man, you were so much easier to bribe when we left." He looked over her shoulder at McCoy, still on the trunk of the car. "What did it take to get her permission to leave last time? Half a banana split?"
"With sprinkles," McCoy clarified.
"You didn't tell me you'd be gone half my life," she said to Kirk as he set her back down. "I'm eleven now. You've been gone almost half my life."
"Okay, okay, I guess that calls for another hug," Kirk sighed. He crouched down slightly and Spock watched her throw her arms around his neck again. Kirk's eyes opened briefly and he looked to Spock with an inscrutable smile before looking to McCoy and beaming. "All right, come on, we're starving -- who gets shotgun?"
"Your friend can," she said.
"My friend can," Kirk repeated with a laugh. He pulled the young woman close and steered her to face Spock, an arm around her shoulders and firmly clasping the furthest one. "Ms. Joanna McCoy, this is Mr. Spock."
"A pleasure to meet you," she said. She did not extend her hand, and Spock nodded in acknowledgement. "You're quiet," she added.
"I am observing," he replied.
"Spock's a big shot scientist," Kirk bragged. "He's my --"
"I know who he is, Dad talks about you two all the time," she interrupted.
"Since you know everything," Kirk said, "How about where we're going for lunch, huh? What about the two-bit motel your dad's found for all of us? Come on, genius, come on!"
She shrieked and ran back to her father, who had finally slid off the hood and had an arm ready to embrace her when she collided with him.
"Let's just get the hell out of here, huh?" McCoy asked. "Spock, take shotgun."
"Why would we need firearms for this venture?" he asked.
"That means, Mr. Spock, that you sit up front with Dad, and Jim and I are going to sit in the backseat and gossip about you two -- especially you," she informed him.
"It was a joke," Kirk said. "He knows perfectly well what riding shotgun means."
"Wow," she said, then looked up at her father. "Dad, that is awful."
"Five years, baby girl -- I'm not sure how I didn't do myself an injury," McCoy replied dryly. Spock noted the slight drawl that had come into his voice, the deeper tone, and yet the warmth that had crept into his overall posture and presentation since their last days on the Enterprise.
Kirk suddenly dashed for the car and Joanna raced him. The race was apparently not complete until one party had reached the car and climbed into the backseat -- Joanna's thin frame allowed her to shave several seconds off her time by avoiding the need to push the seat forward and climb in. "Win!" she cried from inside the car while Kirk fought with the handle.
"Shit, Bones, when's the last time you oiled this damn thing!"
"The last time we were here," McCoy said.
"Right, right, that whole space thing, always making excuses, aren't you," Kirk laughed. The seat finally groaned forward and Kirk slid inside, pushing his way across the genuine leather seats to Joanna and pushing her into her corner of the car. "Make room, we've got big bags; we're travelers, you know."
"That's what the trunk is for, genius," she laughed.
"You don't say."
Eventually, the bags were in the trunk, Spock had fastened himself into the front passenger seat of the vehicle, and they were speeding to Atlanta for a meal before traveling to the lake where they would spend the next three weeks. Spock's eyes traveled occasionally to the passenger-side mirror where he saw Kirk, head turned to Joanna, conversing animatedly with her, their joint laughter floating around and out of the car. Spock occasionally looked to McCoy, who would meet his looks with smirks, eye rolls, and half-smiles that said, quite clearly, that there was no where else he would rather be at any given moment than in that car with these people.
Spock was unsure if he was included in the estimation.
"Jim's known me since I was four," Joanna informed Spock over lunch at the diner which formed a cornerstone of McCoy family tradition. "So Dad tells me, but I only really remember him from when I was six."
"Why that particular age?" Spock asked. "If I recall, humans begin to form memories as early as the fifth year."
"Maybe, but I remember six really well," she said. "Anyway, when I was six, Dad and Jim were about to start their last year at the Academy, and it was the first summer that I remember we spent at the lake, the three of us."
"Which doesn't mean much because we'd been doing summers there since I went to Starfleet," her father informed her.
"It does matter, Dad," she said almost solemnly. "Remembering's way more important than you telling me it happened. I remember you and Mom hating each other's guts and I see it all the time, but you tell me you loved each other once upon a time."
"She does have a point," Kirk said as he chewed on his straw.
"Anyway," Joanna continued, "The house is awesome, Jim, because Dad said with his 'saving your ass' bonus, we could get one of the lakeshore houses."
"Big spender," Kirk said with approval. "I can't wait, even if I'm going to kind of miss our shitty little bungalow."
"You and Spock have a whole half of the damn house to yourselves," McCoy informed them.
"Yeah, there's a whole swinging door keeping us apart," Joanna added. "But we're making breakfast every morning so don't think I won't stand at the door and holler at you until you both come down and help. It's real mid-20th century; there aren't even holes in the walls where replicators could go and we bought so much food."
"Doctor, I would be pleased to reimburse you for --"
"Shut up, Spock, I bought the damn house," McCoy said. "You and Jim are our guests, got it?"
Their food arrived: Spock and Joanna's massive salads, Joanna's side of French fries, and two massive cheeseburgers for the doctor and Kirk. Kirk raised his cheeseburger for a toast with McCoy, who laughed and had their sandwiches meet in mid-air.
"They are such boys," Joanna sighed to Spock, who raised an eyebrow at her. "Don't you think?"
"When last I checked, yes, they were males of your species," Spock said. "If there is an underlying meaning to your assessment, or additional context I am unfamiliar with, you will have to inform me of it."
"I love how you talk," she said breathlessly.
"Jo, seriously, Spock is --" Spock turned to glance at Kirk, who seemed to be taking him in as if for the first time, assessing and evaluating him with such open admiration that Spock had some trouble hiding his discomfort. "Spock's amazing. You get that, right?"
"Of course," she replied. Spock turned back to his salad and Joanna, who was looking at him with the same appraising/admiring glance Kirk had just given him. "You're a vegetarian, too, and that's already tops with me."
"Fucking shit, Bones!" Kirk yelled when they approached the house on the lake's shore. "You bought a fucking mansion!"
"So observant, as always," McCoy replied as he turned off the car.
"What the fuck!" Kirk looked at Joanna and put his arm around her shoulders. "Was this your idea? You know this means no presents ever again, right, because you have a fucking summer mansion outside Atlanta?"
"I told Dad not to," she protested, "I really did!"
"A little less shrieking from all of you and a little more unpacking the trunk, huh?" McCoy interrupted. "And Jo, you show Jim and Spock up to their room and where everything is, then you leave them alone, all right?"
"All right," Joanna sighed.
The four of them entered the house through the main entrance. McCoy went to his right and Joanna led Kirk and Spock through a door on her left to another wing of the house. "Dad and I spent the first week just decorating our half, but we left this kind of empty."
The ground floor was an expansive living room with a partitioned dining room, all startling white with gold accents. The floor was bare and the boards creaked gently under their steps (particularly Kirk's, who insisted on stomping everywhere he went). "All the cool stuff is on our half, you know, the vidscreen, the books Dad pulled out of storage and put on the shelves --"
"That he'll never ever read --"
"Exactly," she laughed. "Okay, upstairs! I picked out two different kinds of sheets for your room!"
"I will bet you a cannonball off the highest tree next to the lake that one set has ponies," Kirk said.
"Jim, I'm not a kid anymore," Joanna said, turning her head so they could see her rolling her eyes. "No ponies!"
"I'll believe that when I see it."
The wide staircase came to an end in a hallway with two bedrooms across from each other and what Joanna revealed as a linen closet large enough to be a bedroom of its own, and then led them to the bedroom. "I picked out the brightest room for you."
"The brightest?" Kirk asked with his eyebrows raised. "You know I'm not a morning person…"
Spock, too, had wondered at the wisdom of being put in a bright room when Kirk preferred to stay in bed for as long as possible during leave, but it would not be a problem in their room. An immense tree that had not been visible from the front of the house reached up to their bedroom window. Its leaves filtered what would be an oppressive amount of sunlight (to Kirk) and cooled the room immensely.
As if to coordinate with the tree (which Spock had to admit was the dominant decorating feature of the room, even from outside its technical parameters), the furniture was dark wood: the bureau that was almost the length of one wall with a dark-framed mirror attached to it, and the bed that also took up a large portion of the room. Where the ground floor had been almost too immaculate to touch, this was quite different.
"Jim!" Joanna shrieked. "You haven't said anything about the sheets!"
"Kid, hold on, this room is gorgeous," Kirk said. Spock watched him examine the surroundings, very much with genuine reverie, and felt Kirk's free hand travel to the small of his back. "Did you guys do this or --?"
"It pretty much looked like this when we got here," she said. "I just picked out the sheets. I thought you'd miss the ship, so I got ones to remind you of the Enterprise."
Kirk and Spock raised their eyebrows jointly and looked at the bed, which had a dark purple comforter. The comforter itself had the Enterprise printed on it in a haphazard pattern, and the word ENTERPRISE printed across the center of the comforter in letters large enough to see from spacedock.
"You're awful," Kirk laughed. He dropped his bag and put both arms around Joanna tightly, bending down to kiss the top of her head. "Now go find your dad, tell him you gave us the tour and you left us alone to recover."
"Okay, okay, jeez you're pushy," she sighed. "When you're done recovering, we're going to the lake, okay? And we've got lots of stuff planned, you'll see!"
She slipped from Kirk's arms, gave Spock a miniscule smile, and left the room. Spock stopped her at the doorway with a sharp "Joanna". She and Kirk both turned to look at him with startlingly similar expressions of disbelief.
"Thank you for allowing us to remain here during the latter part of your holiday with your father," Spock said.
Her eyes flew to Kirk and then back to Spock. "My pleasure," she replied with a remarkable quiet that rendered her somewhat awkward. "Um, come by our part of the house when you're ready, okay?"
"We will," Kirk said. He closed the door firmly behind her and leaned against it, his head thrown back, eyes on Spock. "Seriously, that kid," he said.
"Indeed."
"Okay, so day one: total success," Joanna informed Kirk.
"Well, more like day 1.5," he replied.
"Nerd."
"Damn right."
The four of them were walking along a system of paths after dinner the next evening. They had started out in a wide line, but paired off once Kirk and Joanna became engrossed in their conversation and began to walk faster than McCoy and Spock. Only the ones left behind noticed, and they preferred to see the two of them running off ahead and laughing loudly.
"Why didn't you tell me about Spock?" she asked when they were (hopefully) out of Spock's range of hearing. "Haven't you guys been together for years now?"
"Come on, kid, I didn't want to tell you over a fucking comm," Kirk replied. "'Hey, Joanna, how's school? Me? I'm good, oh, by the way, kind of got married, unofficially, sorry you weren't there but no one was'? Too awkward. Just not right."
"Wait, you're married?" she shrieked. Kirk's left arm was slung around her shoulder and she immediately grabbed for his hand -- ringless, of course, except for his Starfleet ring. "Dad didn't tell me you were married. Where's the ring?"
"We don't do rings," he replied. "Well. Right now we don't. And there's not exactly a jewelry outpost at every spacedock, is there? I mean, a good one. I'm not settling for anything less than latinum."
Kirk noticed that she didn't laugh, so he squeezed her shoulders. "Hey. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I wanted to, but -- well. Like I said."
"No, I mean, Spock seems great," she replied slowly, "I just -- I always thought you'd get together with Dad."
Kirk looked over his shoulder at McCoy, who was actually talking to Spock but took a second to glance over at him and flash him a wry smile.
"I'm sorry, Jo," he replied. "Just not in the cards."
"Been coming here since I was a kid," McCoy explained. "But I stopped when I got married -- wife had allergies as bad as Jim, except she gets congested the minute she steps out of her lab and Jim's only allergic to every compound in the galaxy." Spock watched the doctor dig his hands deeper into his pockets and then he sighed, though not out of his usual exasperation -- at least, it seemed less unhappy than his usual moans and groans aboard the ship. "Then when we split up and I went to the Academy, I got Joanna the whole summer. Jim had no where to go except Iowa with his asshole of a stepfather and flake of a mother -- so we came here with Joanna."
"You will forgive me if my comment seems to discount or doubt the potential of both of you caring for a very young child for a considerable length of time," Spock began, but McCoy interrupted.
"Now you sound like her mother -- less shrieking, so thanks for that."
They both looked ahead to Joanna and Kirk, still walking along with their arms slung around each other. Her hair was darker than her father's but razor straight and maintained at chin length ("but only for the summer" the doctor had informed Spock). Spock watched Kirk pull Joanna closer and then dig his knuckles into the top of her head while she shrieked and pushed him away.
"They're always like that," McCoy said.
"For twelve weeks every five years," Spock clarified.
"Thanks for rubbing that in," McCoy replied. "Don't know what we'd do without your precision, Spock."
"I merely state the facts, doctor," Spock said. "They are very attached to each other despite their infrequent interactions, and I --"
"Infrequent interactions?" McCoy asked. "The three of us talk every week on the ship; Joanna knew that every Thursday night, no matter where we were, we'd be on that vid with her."
"…your debriefing sessions?" he asked with some astonishment he could not disguise. "The captain led me to believe they were evenings revolving around a bottle of alcohol and discussions regarding crew members' personal lives."
"Sometimes they are, but -- dammit, Spock, I'm a doctor, not a bartender," McCoy snapped.
"You have rarely demonstrated otherwise, doctor," Spock said coolly.
"I mean, I know Dad's not gay," Joanna said.
"Man, that was a fun conversation," Kirk laughed.
"Ohmigosh yeah -- but that last summer we were all together, I mean, it felt -- right."
"Not to crush your entire sense of being or anything, but you were six, Jo. Things are going to get more… romanticized as you get older. I remember the time you almost drowned in the lake that summer and Bones didn't talk to me for what, a week?"
"I know that, but like, even when we talked when you two were on the ship. It just -- look, just tell me."
"Fuck, here we go," Kirk sighed.
"Who would you choose: Spock or my dad?"
"Are you kidding?" he asked.
"Totally not," she said, but it still sounded playful and she had to understand, had to, how many times Kirk had made that same decision on various murderous planets over the past five years.
"This actually comes up a lot," Kirk began. "We beam down to a planet, get kidnapped, and it's always the same game: we need one of you to stay. And I always, always pick me, and then Spock and your dad come get me."
"But if it was one or the other, who --"
"Jo," Kirk sighed again. "Running a starship isn't like that note you send around your classroom to a crush."
"Ooh, tell me something I don't know."
"Except you're asking me middle school questions!"
"I am in middle school."
"Fine," Kirk said. "Anyway, I pick your dad, and if it was Spock's choice, he'd pick your dad. Because --"
"He's a doctor," Joanna said. Her voice was tinged with some kind of realization, and Kirk put his arm around her shoulders again. "And then you two can die together and stuff. So romantic."
"Yeah, that's what it is. Fucking romantic."
"You know, it's pretty hilarious that the doctor among us is the least fit," Kirk called out from the front of the line.
"Jim, Jim," McCoy replied, "The next time you need some kind of treatment, see if I dole it out humanely or kindly."
"I believe we have all been waiting to observe that," Spock said.
Kirk, Joanna and McCoy all let out resounding "Whoaaaaaaaa"s that echoed around the forest they were hiking through.
"What is the precise translation of that sound?" Spock asked.
"It means Bones just got burned. Metaphorically speaking. By your sassy mouth," Kirk replied.