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“Trust me,” Jim Kirk says on a lazy afternoon in August.
The sun is setting. It is a golden red, shining and radiating warmth even as it heads just behind the craggy mountains. Don’t worry, it tells the two boys. I’ll be right back.
The birds sing the nearby star a serenade as it prepares itself for sleep -- just a single note echoing in the small valley. Other than that, the air is still and quiet. The only motion is a small breeze ghosting over the surface of the lake, which glitters in the setting sun. It's like liquid fire; it tempts the boys and calls them further into the lake.
“Trust me,” Jim Kirk tells his best friend on a lazy afternoon in August, right before school goes back in session. He holds out a hand and promises, “It’ll be fun.”
Jim Kirk promises a lot of things: Jim Kirk’s smile promises joy, Jim Kirk’s laugh promises life, and Jim Kirk’s radiance promises infinity. It is a promise he never fails to keep.
“Trust me,” Jim Kirk says as he takes his best friend’s hand and leads him to the center of the liquid-fire lake.
Spock met Jim Kirk three years ago. He had followed his parents on a diplomatic mission to Earth; his mother had suggested he come along to explore his human roots.
Spock had found this logical. He would stay with them at the Vulcan Embassy in San Francisco, and perhaps take day trips to explore the city and any surrounding areas. He had not worried.
It was only when they’d arrived on Earth that Spock had learned precisely how different Earth was from Vulcan.
It was almost difficult to stand on heady dirt mixed with scraps of bark while surrounded by the foreign, exotic scent of pine, shielded from the light sun by thick canopies of living green. Unseen birds cooed from the branches while lizards and rodents scrambled underfoot. Unlike the city, whose actions were so human and predictable, the forest was positively overwhelming.
For a rare, brief moment in his life, Spock hadn't known what to do.
“It's a really nice day. I'm glad we came out.”
“Yes,” Spock replies, leaning slightly over the edge of the simple sailboat. It tilts a little with his weight, but it holds, and he is able to catch his rippling reflection on the water’s surface.
The Earth is so clean. Vulcan feels dirty in comparison. Its coarse sands and unrelenting heat are so harsh to its inhabitants -- even with double eyelids and green blood, it is not an easy life.
Vulcans have had to adapt to their environment. Humans, it seems, have an environment perfectly happy to adapt to them.
Jim Kirk continues speaking while Spock dwells in his thoughts. “You know, I've still got another year before I've gotta start at the Academy. We should hang out more. Outside of the preserve, you know.”
Spock looks up sharply from the lake’s surface.
“Whoa, whoa,” Jim Kirk says, laughing and turning his cheek the other way. Spock cannot read him. “The preserve is totally fine. It's a good place. If you'd rather be here –”
Spock sat down on a log, dirt and dust clinging to his Vulcan robes. They had been made to reject the dry sands of his home planet, not the damp dirt that covered this forest. His communicator was at his side; he could use it at any time to contact his mother and father and request that they help him find a way out of the forest.
He could have. He did not.
Spock instead took in his surroundings. He had accidentally strayed from the correct path through the forest some time earlier, and unfortunately had not noticed until this time. The forest was so repetitive – there was nothing to variably differentiate one foreign plant from another.
But he was a Vulcan, and Vulcans did not experience panic. Therefore, Spock remained calm and collected and attempted to recall his memory of the past few minutes.
It should not have been difficult, but Spock was only 15 years old and he was in an alien environment.
He took a deep breath, and he closed his eyes. He would meditate on this problem until his body ceased betraying him.
The birds’ songs and squirrels’ chirps blended into one solid noise, feeding into the symphony of the forest. Everything was both so minutely subtle and so roaringly loud -- the forest was nothing and everything, all at once. He had joined the music hall in his own way. Yes, there was a whispering lake 0.53 kilometers ahead, and a family of deer with their thick hooves 0.23 kilometers behind. A family of humans off to his left by 15.4 meters –
Yes! There he would go. He could ask for directions to the entrance of the preserve, where he would find transportation back to San Francisco.
Relieved, Spock quickly got to his feet and dusted off his robes. It would not do to be unpresentable.
However, Spock had also made a far graver mistake – in this small distraction, he had allowed himself to be caught unawares.
“Hey! Who’re you? What’s your name? What’re you doin’ out here?”
Spock turned around with all the calm he could muster, willing his heart rate to return to its normal frequency. “Excuse me,” he managed, taking in the human’s messy yellow hair and dirt-streaked cheeks. Perhaps the child lived out here. “I did not mean to intrude –”
“You’re not intruding,” the human boy said, mouth spread out in a smile. Unused to seeing a mouth do that with such… force, Spock took an involuntary step backward. “C’mon, I don’t bite. Usually.”
The boy chuckled at that, but Spock found that the ‘joke’ (if it could be called that – Spock was only fairly certain that humans did not bite strangers) was more morbid than amusing.
The human boy was absolutely unfazed. “Anyway, I’m Jim Kirk. You still haven’t told me your name,” he accused Spock, pointing a sharp stick in Spock’s direction.
Spock found that he did not enjoy getting pointed at by weapons. “I do not wish to hurt you,” he informed ‘Jim Kirk’. “But I will use force if you intend to.”
Jim Kirk looked down at his stick in surprise. “Oh, sorry! This is my walking stick, not a sword,” he informed Spock, cheeks tinged red in what Spock assumed to be embarrassment.
“Your leg is uninjured,” Spock said.
“Yeah, but y’know, it’s for fun. What’s your name?”
Spock frowned, aware that he would not be getting out of conversation that easily. Surrendering to the inevitable, he told the other boy, “I am Spock.”
“Well, Spock, whaddaya think of going swimming?”
The liquid-fire lake glows with the last rays of sunlight.
Jim Kirk holds out his hand, and Spock hesitates only a second before he takes it. He does not mention what his fingers mean; this is his friend, Jim Kirk, and the hand he offers is only a courteous one. Spock takes it, and he is lead, almost gently, into the sailboat.
Or rather, Jim Kirk calls the boat a sailboat. In reality, it is a rowboat, and not nearly as impressive as a sailboat.
Spock gives the small boat its due admiration, and finds it more than adequate.
Spock thinks of offering to row the boat – his strength far surpasses that of Jim Kirk's, and therefore it would be more logical for him to do the rowing. But Spock has known Jim Kirk for three years, and he knows that Jim Kirk’s mind has already been completely set on the task.
So he sits in the rowboat, lowering his weight carefully onto the wooden bench across from Jim Kirk. He trains his eyes on the patterns of water leaning off the sides of the boat. They add flames to the liquid-fire of the lake, causing the glittering, shimmering effect.
Jim Kirk asks Spock if he wants to meet up off the preserve.
“If you'd rather be here –”
Spock takes 0.43 minutes to formulate a proper reply.
“Do I know you?”
Spock turned around, and quickly smothered the genuine surprise that arose at meeting Jim Kirk's wide blue eyes.
“Jim Kirk,” Spock said. He raised the customary ta’al in greeting, figuring that even if Jim Kirk did not understand it, they were close enough acquaintances that he should.
Jim Kirk hurried over, an enthusiastic grin overtaking his face. “Spock! Long time no see! How was Vulcan? And Vulcan school? Also, check it out –” He skidded to a stop suddenly, rummaging around in his gray and tattered Starfleet backpack. Curious, Spock leaned closer to see Jim Kirk dig out a shining metal badge that said 'Jr. Ranger’.
“Guess what my summer job is!” Jim Kirk exclaimed, waving the badge around in an erratic fashion.
Spock briefly wondered if Jim Kirk was aware that the answer was written directly on the badge. Still, he humored him. “I presume that you are a 'Junior Ranger’.”
“Yeah! I get to lead nature hikes and stuff, it's so cool!” He was still grinning wildly.
“Fascinating,” Spock said. He thought of what his mother might say in the situation, then decided upon, “I hope that you have an amusing time.”
“I already am!” Jim Kirk said brightly, stuffing the badge back into his backpack. “Anyway, want to head over to the lake again? I know it was cold last year, but that's 'cause it was late summer. It should be warmer now.”
His studies of Terran culture had told him that Jim Kirk was inviting him to 'hang out’, an action typical between friends. Though Spock neither had a deep appreciation nor deep dislike for the lake, he did wish to spend more time with his friend. “That would be acceptable.”
“So your dad’s the Vulcan ambassador,” Jim Kirk says, pushing off from shore with his oar. The boat barely budges, and so he tries again. Spock notes with some amusement that it still remains largely in place.
“Yes,” Spock agrees.
“So, then,” Jim Kirk grunts, finally having managed enough force to push off the rocky sand, “shouldn't you be in San Fran' instead of way out here, unattended?” He turns around to wiggle his eyebrows at Spock, who merely raises an eyebrow in return.
“I have told my parents that I wish to study the flora native to California, and that this preserve is among the best for doing so.”
Jim Kirk glances around, pausing in his fervent rowing. (Or, rather, water splashing. He is not very good at this task.) “I dunno, all I see are trees. And grass. Isn't it boring?”
“Are you bored?”
“No,” Jim Kirk amends, sitting down on the boat’s other wooden bench. The boat shifts with his weight, a gentle rocking. “But I'm actually doing stuff. I lead tours and clean boats, and that's enough labor to keep me busy. But aren't you just, like, cataloging plants?”
Spock nods. “We must have varying definitions for the word ‘fun’.”
“There’s one way to put it,” Jim Kirk says. He lays the oars across his lap, letting the boat drift in the water. Ripples cease to spread out from the boat, and Jim Kirk leans forward conspiratorially.
“You know,” he says, almost giddy, “sometimes I like to pretend I’m a ship’s captain. And I’ll just row out here, in the middle of the lake, and the water makes it feel like zero-gravity -- like space, y’know, and all these huge trees are like an alien planet, and me and my crew are scouting out the area and cataloging plants and stuff, and it’s just really peaceful. Y’know?”
“You cannot be both on a ship in zero-gravity and on an alien planet,” Spock informs him quizzically.
Jim Kirk huffs a laugh, moving the oars off his lap. They dip awkwardly back into the water. “Anyway, you can be my First Mate – First Officer. Same difference. And you can be the one cataloging plants.”
Spock finds that he is not averse to this imagining. Studying the universe while serving on a starship under the command of the dynamic Jim Kirk would not be too terrible a future. “I would like that,” Spock says honestly.
Jim Kirk looks up from his oars, something indiscernible setting his eyes aglow. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” Spock says firmly.
"Spock,” Amanda said. “Where are you going?”
Spock looked over at her and tried to keep the guilt as far off his face as possible. “I am going to the nature preserve I told you about last year.”
“You were there last year, and the year before,” she said, frowning slightly. Spock can see it in her eyebrow crease. She gets to her feet and joins him at the doorway, arms crossed. “Why do you keep going back? And don’t give me that nonsense about plant cataloging; we both know that it shouldn’t take as long as it has.”
Spock has long admired his mother’s intellect and intuition, but in that moment it was a curse. “I am happy there,” he answered honestly.
Her eyebrow creased further. “Are you not happy here with us in the city?”
Spock looked around the embassy room, taking in the pristine white of the walls and dustless floors and furniture and is hit suddenly with a strange sense of dread. “I am happy with you,” he answered, again honestly.
“But not here,” Amanda finished for him, placing a warm hand on his shoulder. Spock did not shy away from her touch this time. “You prefer the forest for some reason – because it is so different from Vulcan?”
In many more ways that you know, Spock thought. “Yes.”
Amanda took back her hand and nodded. “Stay safe, Spock. I love you.”
She already knew that he felt the same. “Thank you, Mother. Live long and prosper,” he said, raising a hand in the ta’al.
Amanda smiled. It was not Jim Kirk’s blinding sun, but a warm fire on a cold evening.
“The preserve is totally fine. It's a good place. If you'd rather be here –”
Their conversation has long shifted from talk of Captains and First Officers.
0.43 minutes. That’s how long he has until Jim Kirk considers his silence a peculiar one; it is an average taken from the past times that Jim Kirk has presented him with a difficult question.
0.25 minutes. Jim Kirk’s oars have slowed, simply trailing through the water. The sun is still reflecting wildly off the lake’s surface. Jim Kirk is treading through molten glass.
“I mean, if it’s inconvenient… You know. It’s fine.”
0.12 minutes. Spock will be leaving Earth in eight of their days. He must find a solution to this as well – although the solution is quite simple, and he briefly wonders why he had not attempted this earlier.
0.00 minutes.
Jim sets his oars to the side of the boat, dripping water all over the inside. Spock knows that he will now attempt to initiate the conversation – Spock cannot allow this, as he must explain himself first.
“I do wish to see you more often. You are a good friend, Jim Kirk, and I find that I am content in your company. I implore you to come to the San Francisco Vulcan Embassy one day, preferably this summer, where I could give you a tour of the facilities. Also, I wish to exchange contact information so that we might communicate when I am off-planet. I have never known anyone quite like you, Jim Kirk, and I hope that our –” Spock hesitates only a second, the word illogically getting caught in his throat, “— friendship might continue for many more years.”
Satisfied with his reply, Spock sits back.
But for once, Jim Kirk is speechless. He opens his mouth a total of four times, each time attempting to say something, and Spock almost becomes concerned when Jim Kirk finally says, “Have you always called me ‘Jim Kirk’?”
Spock blinks once. “That is how you introduced yourself.”
“But my name is Jim!” he laughs, burying his face in his hands. He seems to be attempting to muffle his laughs, though Spock sees no logic in trying to hide so melodious a sound. “Call me Jim, Spock!”
“But –”
“Trust me,” Jim assures him, uncovering his face to lean over and pat Spock’s hand. (Spock valiantly fights down his blush. He should really tell Jim soon.) “Humans do not go by first and last name.”
“I have heard that using last names is more appropriate for those who do not know each other well,” Spock says.
Jim gives him one of his indecipherable looks. “Sure, but we’re friends, aren’t we? You gave your whole speech just now.”
“Ah,” Spock says, “I see. My mistake. I assumed that, because we’d only seen each other once every three years, that –”
“That’s my mistake!” Jim blurts out, cheeks suddenly burning bright red. “I meant to ask you for your contact info last year but, uh, I was afraid you’d say no, and I only came back here to work because I wanted to see you again, and. I’m really dumb. I’m sorry.”
Spock starts at this emotional reaction. “It is no matter. I must apologize as well, then; as a Vulcan, I should have ensured that we exchange contact information after our first meeting. It seemed to have slipped my mind. A very rare occurrence,” Spock adds.
Jim smiles, his shoulders slumping forward. He is relaxed, leaning forward, and this makes Spock feel better. A breeze ruffles his golden hair, messing it out of his usual hair-parting. No doubt, Spock realizes, his own hair has not fared much better.
“You know, I really would like to visit the city sometime,” Jim says, still smiling softly.
“I would not be adverse to a visit,” Spock says, “seeing as typically it is I who visit you.”
Jim laughs, the brilliant sound echoing across the liquid-fire lake.