d) all of the above
title: d) all of the above
wordcount: 2256
summary: From my meme that should have been done bloody ages ago. melmelchan asked for: "I loved that little piece you did for
slytherin_gypsy about Kirk and Spock and the Kobayashi Maru. So I'm requesting another piece as a follow-up, or even just one in that same universe." This ended up being a before rather than an after--how Spock and Kirk met in that AU. I hope it satisfies. ♥
-
Spock arrives twenty minutes early to his first class, as he planned. Although the door is not open, it is unlocked, and Spock hears no lecture noise, so he enters and taps on the lights. He is the first student to enter, and so gets a moment to himself to observe the room.
It is a small lecture hall, he notes--an amphitheater large enough to hold only one or two hundred, if his estimate is correct. About the number he expected, for a class like this. He notes the layout of the room, and carefully chooses a seat in the center of the second row. A prime location to see and hear the professor. He hooks his PADD into the Academy Network and sets about re-reading the chapters they are expected to cover today. He would like to be properly prepared, after all, and he is not quite certain of what to expect.
Other students trickle in slowly, filling up the seats behind him and spreading light chatter through the room. Spock tunes it out, with slight effort. It fascinates him how differently the human cadets appear to approach their education; on Vulcan, the space before a lecture would be filled with silence and study. Here, it's almost as if no one expects the learning to begin until a professor appears.
Complacent, he thinks, casting his gaze over the small sea of people. They expect someone else to take charge of their education entirely. It shall be interesting to observe how many of them will choose to take on the task themselves, and how they will fare against their classmates in space and battle.
His thought process is interrupted by a latecomer shoving himself into the seat beside Spock's. Spock blinks and observes the boy out of the corner of his eye, shifting subtly away to preserve his telepathic distance. The boy appears agitated, breathing heavily and pink with exertion. His uniform is slightly askew, as well; Spock deduces he must have woken late for class.
"Fuck fuck fuck," the boy mutters to himself, digging in his bag. He turns to Spock, suddenly, eyes wide. "Dude, I am so sorry to bother you, but do you have a stylus I could borrow? Mine uh, seems to've decided it wanted to walk off and fuck me over."
Spock raises an eyebrow. He pulls one of three extras from his bag, and holds it out without a word.
"Man, thank you," the boy says, reaching out to take it. "You're my hero. What's your name?"
Spock's eyebrow crawls higher on his forehead, but he is saved the decision of how to answer by the entrance of the professor, a tinyAndorian with silvery hair down to her waist. Finally, he does not let himself think.
"Welcome to Xenolinguistics 258, Non-Verbal Communication," she calls out, brightening the lights. "We'll begin with an assessment quiz. If you would be so good as to take out your PADD and a stylus, please . . . "
-
Spock spends the rest of the period completely focused on the lecture, and he and the cadet do not speak for the duration of the class. The professor goes over time by five minutes; when class lets out, the cadet takes one look at his chronometer and swears violently before rushing out the door without another word, Spock's stylus thrust hurriedly onto his desk.
Spock presses his lips together lightly and hopes the boy will be better prepared the next class, but that is all the thought he spares for the situation; his mind is taken up with a question he plans to ask the professor about a footnote in the chapter she did not cover in her lecture. He puts the boy out of his mind without much effort, and makes his way to the podium.
-
Xenolinguistics 258 is held twice weekly, on Mondays and Thursdays. Spock rather forgets entirely about the cadet in between the first Monday and the first Thursday--after all, there was no time to make a meaningful impression--and settles into the same seat without much thought, flicking through a fascinating 21st-century article on the Large Hadron Collider to pass the time.
He becomes engrossed in the article, and is mildly startled when a loud, unexpected "hey!" is thrown at him from the stairway.
He looks up. The boy from last week coming up to his row, smiling and looking much less out of breath than he was on Monday. Spock raises his eyebrows a fraction of a centimeter, but he is certain some sort of reply is expected of him, whether contact was solicited or not. He settles on a nod.
The boy must take that as an invitation, because he throws his body into the seat beside Spock's, letting loose a rather explosive sigh. "Man, lemme tell you, I am beat," he groans, tossing one of his feet up on the chair in front of him. "I dunno how they expect us to do all this work on time. My physics of weaponry class alone's killing me."
Spock blinks in surprise. "Indeed?" he murmurs noncommittally, fingers straying to the page-turn of the Collider article he was reading.
The boy quirks a smile at him. "You wouldn't believe it. I'm practically drowning in reading--I swear I'm never gonna make it outta here alive. I got like, two hours of sleep last night, max." He grimaces and rolls his shoulders until his back pops. Spock winces internally. "So, what about you?" the boy goes on, oblivious. "What're you taking?"
"Astrophysics 350, a seminar on experimental systems of propulsion, and a course on the programming pidgin Qued-Lostrin and its potential applications when combined with Starfleet weaponry."
The boy whistles, eyes wide. "Color me impressed," he says. "Science track, you gotta be."
Spock nods, wondering absently when the professor will arrive.
"I'm command track, myself."
"I see," says Spock.
"Yeah--besides the weaponry class, I've got a seminar on Xindi War ethics and a survival strategies. Along with your standard, uh, intro to command class. So, I never got your name, by the way."
"It is Spock," says Spock.
"Spock," the boy repeats, carefully. He grins. "Awesome. I'm--"
"Hello all," calls the professor, coming in through the door and dragging a huge projector through the door. "Could I request some assistance, please?"
The boy whips his head around, blinking, and shoves up from his seat when he realizes what's going on. "Sure, professor," he calls, and leaps down at least six stairs. Spock cannot help one eyebrow raising at the reckless action. He watches the cadet shoulder the projector into the classroom and its place, then watches as the teacher manoeuvres the cadet into assisting with the machinery during the lecture, a sort of assistant.
Interesting, Spock thinks.
The cadet is caught up at the end of class helping the professor put away the equipment, and there is no reason for Spock to stay, so he does not.
-
Thoughts of the boy surface unexpectedly that night during his meditation. Spock, distantly surprised, combs through them with his usual patience, trying to parse and diffuse any emotion that may be attached to them.
He finds himself pausing at what he finds. Emotions are not generally simple, of course, but he would not have thought he had any sort of confusion as to how he felt about the boy. If pressed, he would have said that he did not feel anything in particular about him. Examination proves him incorrect. A little knot tangles over thoughts of the cadet: light levels of annoyance, curiosity, and amusement are warring for dominance in Spock's mind.
Spock is not sure exactly which of these he is expected to feel, but it is of no consequence. He lets the emotions attached to thoughts of the boy fade and walls them under with mental fire, as he has always done, and moves on.
The thought seems not to want to let him alone, however; more than once during the following days, he finds himself pausing to consider the cadet.
-
He becomes aware that the boy's choice of seats is not temporary during the third class. The cadet is late again, so there is no time for him to attempt to begin a conversation, but he smiles familiarly at Spock as the professor begins the lecture. Spock nods, as he did the last time, though he is still unsure as to whether he wishes to further the acquaintance. It is not a decision he needs to make now, however. He listens to the lecture, instead--it is about modes of visual communication, more specifically types of sign language, and quite fascinating.
"How many times have you tried to communicate something without words?" the professor asks them. "More than once, I'm sure. But most likely for simple things, yes? Over there and come here--what about concepts? Have you ever tried to give someone a description of something without words?" She smirks into the answering silence. "Well today you shall. Turn to the person sitting next to you, and follow the directions that appear on your PADDs."
Spock flicks through the explanation, which is fairly simple--he is partner B, according to the screen, and therefore will watch partner A (the cadet) attempt to communicate a sentence. He turns to the cadet and sets his PADD down.
The boy sets his PADD down too, clearing his throat and keeping his eyes trained on the screen. Puzzlement is evident in the line of his brow. There is a long, silent moment, and then the cadet makes a hesitant, utterly jumbled hand motion.
Spock raises an eyebrow. The hand gesture has communicated nothing to him whatsoever, and he is sure--ironically--that the cadet can understand this without words by observing Spock's face. As if reading his mind, the boy shakes his head, a bright grin breaking spreading over his face. He glances at the PADD again and laughs silently, presumably at his inability, shaking and curled over himself with mirth.
It is rather startling. Spock has become accustomed to the human practice of wearing emotions "on one's sleeve," as it were, but he does not believe he has yet met a human as openly emotional as this one. It strikes him as sharply strange, like a lute string twanging unexpectedly up out of silence. He finds himself contrasting the boy's utter lack of suppression with his own species' customs, trying to wrap his mind around the reality of the gulf of differences between human and Vulcan.
The boy is thought-provoking, to say in the least. Spock wonders if he will gain further insight into the human's character, this curious boy who makes no attempt to hide himself.
We shall simply see how events play out, he thinks, and goes back to the assigned exercise.
-
In the end, the incident that decides the beginning of their friendship is nothing very dramatic.
He is making his way back to his room from his astrophysics class when he spots a familiar head of blond hair at the corner of the staircase. He does not stop or try to catch the cadet's attention--they are mere acquaintances, after all, and there is no logical reason for Spock to desire such--but he needs to use the stairs, so he continues to head in that direction. He finds himself watching the cadet as he approaches, wondering what has the boy so fascinated as to require him to read his PADD and walk, at the same time.
He has almost reached the staircase, the cadet still slowly and obliviously reading and walking, when someone in a distracted hurry knocks into the boy and sends him flying off his feet.
In the slow instant before impact, Spock finds he has calculated the boy's trajectory, which will bring his head into contact with the left railing. The impact at that speed could, potentially, crack his skull, and is very likely to give him a concussion--
Before he has quite realized it, Spock is reaching out to catch hold of the boy's uniform and yanking him around. His momentum is such that Spock cannot entirely prevent him from plowing into the ground--he manages, however, to ensure that the boy hits only the ground, and does not tumble down the stairs.
"Fuck," the boy exhales shakily, sprawled over. "Thank you, thank you thank you. Thought I was gonna fall down the stairs and break my neck for sure."
"It is almost certain you would have," agrees Spock. "Are you hurt, Cadet?"
"Kirk," the boy says with a crooked grin, "Jim Kirk. And no, thanks to you." He keeps smiling up at Spock, shaking his head. "Seems like you're always saving my ass, man."
"Yes," says Spock, truthfully, "well."
Kirk laughs--again, that surprising flash of bright, utterly alien openness across his face--and levers himself up off the ground, brushing his palms off on his trousers. He curls half his mouth up at Spock. "Look, can I make it up to you somehow? Drink? Dinner? Coffee?"
Spock tilts his head, considering. Kirk's body language reads as hopeful, though Spock could not make a guess as to why--the upturned face, the hands resting loosely at his sides. Spock recalls all he knows about Kirk so far: the way he chews on his thumbnail during class, the utter disarray of his handwriting, his seeming inability to think actions through before committing them. His exuberance.
"I would not be opposed to coffee," he says, finally.
Kirk smiles. "Awesome," he says.
-
wordcount: 2256
summary: From my meme that should have been done bloody ages ago. melmelchan asked for: "I loved that little piece you did for
slytherin_gypsy about Kirk and Spock and the Kobayashi Maru. So I'm requesting another piece as a follow-up, or even just one in that same universe." This ended up being a before rather than an after--how Spock and Kirk met in that AU. I hope it satisfies. ♥
-
Spock arrives twenty minutes early to his first class, as he planned. Although the door is not open, it is unlocked, and Spock hears no lecture noise, so he enters and taps on the lights. He is the first student to enter, and so gets a moment to himself to observe the room.
It is a small lecture hall, he notes--an amphitheater large enough to hold only one or two hundred, if his estimate is correct. About the number he expected, for a class like this. He notes the layout of the room, and carefully chooses a seat in the center of the second row. A prime location to see and hear the professor. He hooks his PADD into the Academy Network and sets about re-reading the chapters they are expected to cover today. He would like to be properly prepared, after all, and he is not quite certain of what to expect.
Other students trickle in slowly, filling up the seats behind him and spreading light chatter through the room. Spock tunes it out, with slight effort. It fascinates him how differently the human cadets appear to approach their education; on Vulcan, the space before a lecture would be filled with silence and study. Here, it's almost as if no one expects the learning to begin until a professor appears.
Complacent, he thinks, casting his gaze over the small sea of people. They expect someone else to take charge of their education entirely. It shall be interesting to observe how many of them will choose to take on the task themselves, and how they will fare against their classmates in space and battle.
His thought process is interrupted by a latecomer shoving himself into the seat beside Spock's. Spock blinks and observes the boy out of the corner of his eye, shifting subtly away to preserve his telepathic distance. The boy appears agitated, breathing heavily and pink with exertion. His uniform is slightly askew, as well; Spock deduces he must have woken late for class.
"Fuck fuck fuck," the boy mutters to himself, digging in his bag. He turns to Spock, suddenly, eyes wide. "Dude, I am so sorry to bother you, but do you have a stylus I could borrow? Mine uh, seems to've decided it wanted to walk off and fuck me over."
Spock raises an eyebrow. He pulls one of three extras from his bag, and holds it out without a word.
"Man, thank you," the boy says, reaching out to take it. "You're my hero. What's your name?"
Spock's eyebrow crawls higher on his forehead, but he is saved the decision of how to answer by the entrance of the professor, a tinyAndorian with silvery hair down to her waist. Finally, he does not let himself think.
"Welcome to Xenolinguistics 258, Non-Verbal Communication," she calls out, brightening the lights. "We'll begin with an assessment quiz. If you would be so good as to take out your PADD and a stylus, please . . . "
-
Spock spends the rest of the period completely focused on the lecture, and he and the cadet do not speak for the duration of the class. The professor goes over time by five minutes; when class lets out, the cadet takes one look at his chronometer and swears violently before rushing out the door without another word, Spock's stylus thrust hurriedly onto his desk.
Spock presses his lips together lightly and hopes the boy will be better prepared the next class, but that is all the thought he spares for the situation; his mind is taken up with a question he plans to ask the professor about a footnote in the chapter she did not cover in her lecture. He puts the boy out of his mind without much effort, and makes his way to the podium.
-
Xenolinguistics 258 is held twice weekly, on Mondays and Thursdays. Spock rather forgets entirely about the cadet in between the first Monday and the first Thursday--after all, there was no time to make a meaningful impression--and settles into the same seat without much thought, flicking through a fascinating 21st-century article on the Large Hadron Collider to pass the time.
He becomes engrossed in the article, and is mildly startled when a loud, unexpected "hey!" is thrown at him from the stairway.
He looks up. The boy from last week coming up to his row, smiling and looking much less out of breath than he was on Monday. Spock raises his eyebrows a fraction of a centimeter, but he is certain some sort of reply is expected of him, whether contact was solicited or not. He settles on a nod.
The boy must take that as an invitation, because he throws his body into the seat beside Spock's, letting loose a rather explosive sigh. "Man, lemme tell you, I am beat," he groans, tossing one of his feet up on the chair in front of him. "I dunno how they expect us to do all this work on time. My physics of weaponry class alone's killing me."
Spock blinks in surprise. "Indeed?" he murmurs noncommittally, fingers straying to the page-turn of the Collider article he was reading.
The boy quirks a smile at him. "You wouldn't believe it. I'm practically drowning in reading--I swear I'm never gonna make it outta here alive. I got like, two hours of sleep last night, max." He grimaces and rolls his shoulders until his back pops. Spock winces internally. "So, what about you?" the boy goes on, oblivious. "What're you taking?"
"Astrophysics 350, a seminar on experimental systems of propulsion, and a course on the programming pidgin Qued-Lostrin and its potential applications when combined with Starfleet weaponry."
The boy whistles, eyes wide. "Color me impressed," he says. "Science track, you gotta be."
Spock nods, wondering absently when the professor will arrive.
"I'm command track, myself."
"I see," says Spock.
"Yeah--besides the weaponry class, I've got a seminar on Xindi War ethics and a survival strategies. Along with your standard, uh, intro to command class. So, I never got your name, by the way."
"It is Spock," says Spock.
"Spock," the boy repeats, carefully. He grins. "Awesome. I'm--"
"Hello all," calls the professor, coming in through the door and dragging a huge projector through the door. "Could I request some assistance, please?"
The boy whips his head around, blinking, and shoves up from his seat when he realizes what's going on. "Sure, professor," he calls, and leaps down at least six stairs. Spock cannot help one eyebrow raising at the reckless action. He watches the cadet shoulder the projector into the classroom and its place, then watches as the teacher manoeuvres the cadet into assisting with the machinery during the lecture, a sort of assistant.
Interesting, Spock thinks.
The cadet is caught up at the end of class helping the professor put away the equipment, and there is no reason for Spock to stay, so he does not.
-
Thoughts of the boy surface unexpectedly that night during his meditation. Spock, distantly surprised, combs through them with his usual patience, trying to parse and diffuse any emotion that may be attached to them.
He finds himself pausing at what he finds. Emotions are not generally simple, of course, but he would not have thought he had any sort of confusion as to how he felt about the boy. If pressed, he would have said that he did not feel anything in particular about him. Examination proves him incorrect. A little knot tangles over thoughts of the cadet: light levels of annoyance, curiosity, and amusement are warring for dominance in Spock's mind.
Spock is not sure exactly which of these he is expected to feel, but it is of no consequence. He lets the emotions attached to thoughts of the boy fade and walls them under with mental fire, as he has always done, and moves on.
The thought seems not to want to let him alone, however; more than once during the following days, he finds himself pausing to consider the cadet.
-
He becomes aware that the boy's choice of seats is not temporary during the third class. The cadet is late again, so there is no time for him to attempt to begin a conversation, but he smiles familiarly at Spock as the professor begins the lecture. Spock nods, as he did the last time, though he is still unsure as to whether he wishes to further the acquaintance. It is not a decision he needs to make now, however. He listens to the lecture, instead--it is about modes of visual communication, more specifically types of sign language, and quite fascinating.
"How many times have you tried to communicate something without words?" the professor asks them. "More than once, I'm sure. But most likely for simple things, yes? Over there and come here--what about concepts? Have you ever tried to give someone a description of something without words?" She smirks into the answering silence. "Well today you shall. Turn to the person sitting next to you, and follow the directions that appear on your PADDs."
Spock flicks through the explanation, which is fairly simple--he is partner B, according to the screen, and therefore will watch partner A (the cadet) attempt to communicate a sentence. He turns to the cadet and sets his PADD down.
The boy sets his PADD down too, clearing his throat and keeping his eyes trained on the screen. Puzzlement is evident in the line of his brow. There is a long, silent moment, and then the cadet makes a hesitant, utterly jumbled hand motion.
Spock raises an eyebrow. The hand gesture has communicated nothing to him whatsoever, and he is sure--ironically--that the cadet can understand this without words by observing Spock's face. As if reading his mind, the boy shakes his head, a bright grin breaking spreading over his face. He glances at the PADD again and laughs silently, presumably at his inability, shaking and curled over himself with mirth.
It is rather startling. Spock has become accustomed to the human practice of wearing emotions "on one's sleeve," as it were, but he does not believe he has yet met a human as openly emotional as this one. It strikes him as sharply strange, like a lute string twanging unexpectedly up out of silence. He finds himself contrasting the boy's utter lack of suppression with his own species' customs, trying to wrap his mind around the reality of the gulf of differences between human and Vulcan.
The boy is thought-provoking, to say in the least. Spock wonders if he will gain further insight into the human's character, this curious boy who makes no attempt to hide himself.
We shall simply see how events play out, he thinks, and goes back to the assigned exercise.
-
In the end, the incident that decides the beginning of their friendship is nothing very dramatic.
He is making his way back to his room from his astrophysics class when he spots a familiar head of blond hair at the corner of the staircase. He does not stop or try to catch the cadet's attention--they are mere acquaintances, after all, and there is no logical reason for Spock to desire such--but he needs to use the stairs, so he continues to head in that direction. He finds himself watching the cadet as he approaches, wondering what has the boy so fascinated as to require him to read his PADD and walk, at the same time.
He has almost reached the staircase, the cadet still slowly and obliviously reading and walking, when someone in a distracted hurry knocks into the boy and sends him flying off his feet.
In the slow instant before impact, Spock finds he has calculated the boy's trajectory, which will bring his head into contact with the left railing. The impact at that speed could, potentially, crack his skull, and is very likely to give him a concussion--
Before he has quite realized it, Spock is reaching out to catch hold of the boy's uniform and yanking him around. His momentum is such that Spock cannot entirely prevent him from plowing into the ground--he manages, however, to ensure that the boy hits only the ground, and does not tumble down the stairs.
"Fuck," the boy exhales shakily, sprawled over. "Thank you, thank you thank you. Thought I was gonna fall down the stairs and break my neck for sure."
"It is almost certain you would have," agrees Spock. "Are you hurt, Cadet?"
"Kirk," the boy says with a crooked grin, "Jim Kirk. And no, thanks to you." He keeps smiling up at Spock, shaking his head. "Seems like you're always saving my ass, man."
"Yes," says Spock, truthfully, "well."
Kirk laughs--again, that surprising flash of bright, utterly alien openness across his face--and levers himself up off the ground, brushing his palms off on his trousers. He curls half his mouth up at Spock. "Look, can I make it up to you somehow? Drink? Dinner? Coffee?"
Spock tilts his head, considering. Kirk's body language reads as hopeful, though Spock could not make a guess as to why--the upturned face, the hands resting loosely at his sides. Spock recalls all he knows about Kirk so far: the way he chews on his thumbnail during class, the utter disarray of his handwriting, his seeming inability to think actions through before committing them. His exuberance.
"I would not be opposed to coffee," he says, finally.
Kirk smiles. "Awesome," he says.
-