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Jim doesn’t remember their first meeting. What he remembers is waking up, his mouth dry and every part of him aching. His vision doesn’t work right, at first, but it doesn’t matter.
He’s never met the person holding his hand, but he’s not a stranger. “Hi,” he says. “I think I want to marry you.”
“Okay,” the not-stranger says. “Now rest, k’diwa.”
Jim obeys.
“My name is Spock. You are on Vulcan. You are safe.”
“Okay.” Jim doesn’t bother opening his eyes. “I love you. How?”
“We were inadvertently linked, which led to you falling into a healing trance. Our minds stayed touching for approximately three weeks. While no memories or other direct information was shared, it has let us with a deep familiarity with one another.” Spock pauses. His hand squeezes Jim’s forearm, warmth radiating all the way to Jim’s heart. “I cherish you.”
Jim understands: he is loved.
Several things make themselves clear by the next time Jim wakes. He wants to stay with Spock. Jim cannot stay on Vulcan without citizenship. A marriage would solve both problems.
He pulls Spock’s hand to his face. It is an instinct he can’t explain, but Spock splays his fingers, and warmth floods Jim’s whole body.
“Marry me,” Jim says.
“Anything,” Spock says, and Jim knows he means it. Knows, in that moment, that Spock would bring him the moon if he asked. “Sleep, ashaya. I will be here when you wake.”
Over the next few days, Spock is there for Jim’s every need. He lets Jim slump against him in a slow shuffle to the bathroom, lets Jim bitch endlessly about not being allowed to eat, holds his hand every time the doctors need to do another scan or test.
They don’t bring up their engagement. They don’t need to. This is the most sure of anything Jim has ever been.
“It has been a week since you first woke. I have gotten permission to take you on a short trip, provided you do not overexert yourself.”
Jim grins. He lets Spock help him out of bed, lets Spock support his weight as he shuffles out of the room.
“It will not be a traditional wedding,” Spock warns. “But I have arrange the closest thing I could. You will rest on the way there.”
If Vulcan has seatbelt laws, Spock doesn’t enforce them, because he lets Jim lie across the back seats, his head in Spock’s lap. Spock’s fingers brush against Jim’s forehead, pushing calm and rest. He doesn’t — wouldn’t — force Jim to sleep, just gives him the peace of mind to try.
“Love you,” he murmurs. If Spock responds, Jim doesn’t hear it.
Amanda is waiting for them when they get back. Her hands are on her hips, and she frowns, although it’s clear that’s directed at Spock.
“Mother—”
“Don’t start. When James is safe in his hospital room, we will discuss whatever possessed the both of you to run off and get bonded.”
Spock dips his head and Jim is really, really tired. Spock knows this, and he scoops Jim up, cradling him like something fragile and worthy of protection. Through every point of contact, love-warmth-safe flows, and Jim falls asleep before they’re even inside.
Spock is gone when Jim wakes. Jim would panic, but he can feel the place their minds were stitched together, draws comfort from it.
“I’ve told your husband that if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll give us space to talk,” Amanda says. “Now. Please explain.”
“I woke up. He was safe. I asked him to marry me. He said yes.”
Amanda sighs. She doesn’t seem surprised. “Vulcans have a tendency to do that,” she murmurs. “Well. Spock has said you were motivated more by desire to stay together?”
Jim nods. He blames the cocktail of drugs they must be pushing through him that he didn’t realize what marriage is.
“Spock is nineteen,” he observes.
“Mm. He will not move beyond a friendship with you yet.”
Jim nods. That’s all he wants. Spock, at his side. Spock is soft and warm and home, and he wants it to surround him forever. As long as they are together, he is whole. Amanda must see that, must understand what it is to feel that.
“Sarek proposed a week after meeting me,” she says. “And I said yes, and we were married in less than a month.” There’s a twitch of a laugh to her. “I don’t know if all Vulcans are like that, but my boys are. And I suppose you’re one of my boys, now.”
Jim grins. “I knew what I wanted, and I took it.”
“May it bring you joy.”
Winona Kirk is not pleased to learn her fifteen year old — nearly sixteen! — son has married an adult — barely — Vulcan without so much as consulting her.
“I love you, Jimmy, but I was informed you suggested this.”
Jim shrugs. If he knew what to say, he’d say it. (He suspects a pattern. He will be failing to explain his decision his entire life. He does not regret a thing.)
“And you! What business did you have saying yes?”
“Ma’am,” Spock says. “It is common for Vulcans to form bonds many years before they are…intended to be realized. Your son was motivate to ensure the link that had formed between us would be preserved.”
“A link?” Winona’s brow furrows, and Jim can read the alarm in her face. He can hear her thoughts, about how a link was formed, wondering what influence that must have had over him, and a million other things.
“It’s not like that, Ma. It’s a long story, Spock can tell you it. But it’s like I’ve known him my whole life.”
“As he says,” Spock verifies.
Winona sighs. “I’ll be there soon, Jim. Don’t marry anyone else before I get there.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he grins.
“And James Tiberius, don’t think I’m not paying attention to what’s on the screen. You two are far too close.”
“We’re fully dressed, Ma. Skin contact feels nice. Safe.”
He yawns, tucking his head against Spock’s chest. One hand clutches at Spock’s shirt instinctively, and Winona can say nothing to object, because it’s the most peaceful she’s seen him ever since she got the first photo of him after rescue from Tarsus IV.
“I intend to take care of him,” Spock assures her. “And I will be who he needs me to be. For now, that means being his friend and caretaker, roles which both honor me.”
Winona just nods in response, ending the call as she does.
Spock lets Jim lay on him when he’s studying. Jim curls up against his chest, and Spock’s hand strokes his hair. Not being able to hear a heartbeat is strange, but not bothersome. Jim needs rest. Spock is a source of rest. It is logical.
When his parents do arrive, Jim pretends he isn’t leaning on Spock. He is, he totally is, his arm is tight against Spock’s waist to keep himself upright, Spock’s hand a steadying force between his shoulders. The look doesn’t please his parents, but he wanted to be standing for this. Amanda stands behind them, and although Sarek is off-world, Jim can feel the space he would take up.
(That part is probably from Spock.)
As soon as his parents are close enough, Jim lets go of Spock and steps-falls into his mother’s arms. His father clasps him tight, and although he’s shaking and every muscle demands he rest, he stays there until his mother stops crying. She lets go, gripping his shoulders.
“I’m gonna pass out,” he warns. “Or maybe throw up. Not sure.”
She makes a face he can’t decipher an he’s gonna do both, he thinks. Spock is there — of course Spock is there — rubbing Jim’s back and snaking his arm around Jim’s waist so he doesn’t fall straight into his own vomit.
All in all, Jim calls it a successful reunion.
He’s inside when he wakes, his head on Spock’s lap. He hears his parents’ voices, questioning, being uncertain, being worried.
“The heat and atmosphere on Vulcan are a strain on Jim’s system,” Spock says. He can’t have been out for too long, then. “Against medical advice, he chose to greet you outside, standing.”
“You are not a doctor. Your advice is not medical advice.”
Jim lets his eyes open. His parents sit across from them, and that’s the reason Spock’s hand isn’t in his hair. Shame. He’s fond of the sensation.
“Jimmy! Spock was just explaining—”
“He heard. He was also already aware.” Oh, Winona will not like that. Jim should’ve given him more human parent lessons.
“I’m okay, Ma. It turns out people aren’t designed to go into a three-week-long coma—”
“Healing trance.”
“—and get right back on their feet. They’ve got me going through a PT program, but it takes a lot longer to build up muscle than lose it.”
“I apologize. Had I been more aware of this, I would have endeavored to preserve your conditioning.”
“It’s good to see you properly,” George says. “We’re sorry—”
“Don’t.” Jim pushes himself upright, even though slumped against the couch, panting, isn’t a much better look. “If we’re gonna do that, it’s gonna wait until I can stay awake for more than half an hour.”
(Almost dying takes a lot out of you. Who would’ve thought?)
Things are not easier after that, but they are, at least, smoother. Spock gets a crash course in human parents — facilitated by Amanda, when Jim’s parents are alone with him — and mostly stays quiet when they’re around Jim, because it’s the only course he’s ever failed. Amanda explains more about Vulcan bonds to them — Jim knows, deep in his soul, what they have, but he has no words for it — and they seem to accept it.
Mostly, though, he sees his parents. They tell him about things that happened at home, what Sam is up to, pass on messages from his Earth friends. (He hasn’t reached out to any of them. He doesn’t plan to. The Jim Kirk they knew died on Tarsus IV.)
He grips tight to them. His mother crawls in his bed the first few nights, as if to make sure Jim is still really there. She doesn’t comment on the way he’s just barely past starved and not even close to just-skinny, or the way Spock sits beside the bed and holds Jim’s hand. His father takes him to his PT, cheering Jim on like it’s a soccer match and Jim has a chance to score the game winning goal. He has a knack for predicting when Jim will need a nap, and the number of times Jim unexpectedly passes out decreases to almost never.
They don’t talk about why they’re here. Jim left Earth when he was twelve, following his father and brother to a colony while his mom took a posting on a starship. His brother stayed behind, and Jim went to a new colony, one that had a school for kids like him. (So smart they’re pure trouble is what they say, at school. It’s a small class and all of them are on the edge of delinquents when they get there, but they shape up when they have something to actually do.) He was thirteen and his father left him, ruffling his hair and promising to visit as soon as he could.
As soon as he could ended up being almost three years, but who’s counting?
In a rare moment, Jim wakes and Spock isn’t there. His father is the one holding his hand, the one watching his face for every twitch.
“Hey, Jimmy. Your ma’s getting something to eat. Amanda convinced Spock to go shopping with her. I’m here.”
It’s a litany of everyone he cares about, an before he’s even properly awake, he’s crying because his father is here and he knows what Jim needs and he’s holding his hand and he used to dream of this.
George pulls him into his lap, as though Jim were a small child again, cradling Jim’s head to his chest. “We tried so hard to find you, Jimmy. As soon as communications were down, we were trying. We sent letters, kept a comm line open; hell, I must’ve driven all my Captain friends crazy begging them to swing by Tarsus.”
“I missed you, Daddy,” Jim cries, and he’d feel embarrassed, because he hasn’t called his father that since before his two front teeth got knocked out when Suzie Adams thought he wouldn’t fight back because she was a girl, but it doesn’t matter.
“I’m sorry,” George says. “We’ll talk later, I haven’t forgotten what you sai, but — dammit James, you need to know that I’m sorry. Your ma an I, we’re going to — you’ll get through this, we promise.”
Jim realizes his father is scared, and for some reason, this makes him cry harder. “I missed you and Ma so much. They didn’t tell us communications were down, at first. I thought you just stopped responding. That you—”
“We should’ve tried harder, James. We should’ve done more.”
“Starfleet told you—”
“To hell with Starfleet. We are your parents. We should’ve done something.”
His parents apologize over and over again for leaving, but they’re not Vulcan citizens, they can’t stay here forever. (The application for becoming a Vulcan citizen is an excessively difficult process, unless you’re willing to find a healer to sew your brain to a Vulcan. In that case, it’s conferred very swiftly.)
Jim goes with them all the way to the base of the shuttle. They’ve been here three weeks, and he can stay awake for an hour, standing on his feet for a fair amount of that time. They both squeeze him.
“You’ll call us every day,” Winona says. “I mean it. Every day, or I steal a shuttlecraft and fly back here myself.” She strokes his hand over his cheek — it’s Spock that finds it strange, the contact of a parent’s palm, not the knuckles — looking like she’s trying very hard not to cry. “I love you, Jim.”
“I love you too, Ma.”
George gives him a firm squeeze. “You look after him, Spock,” he says. “And Jimmy, you let him.”
“I will, Dad.”
“Good. I love you, son.”
“I love you,” he agrees.
They both look at him for a long moment. Spock pulls Jim to his side, his arm across Jim’s back. Warmth and love flows through the contact, mixed with Jim’s sadness at seeing his parents leave.
“They will return, k’diwa,” Spock says.
“I know.” He takes a breath, pulling at the strength Spock imbibes him with. “Let’s go home.”
They don’t talk about before. As far as Jim is concerned, life began when his hands connected with Spock’s. Nothing before that is real.
Yet—
It is not undone. Because Spock might not know, but he does understand.
George calls, telling Jim he was offered a place on a ship. “‘Course, I won’t be taking it, but it’s always nice to know you’re still in the running for these things.”
Jim shakes his head. His parents have both remained grounded for the past few months, but they both belong to the stars. “You should take it. Dad, I’m not going anywhere. You’ll probably end up seeing me just as much, and you know you aren’t meant to be grounded.”
“James, your Ma and I aren’t going to abandon you again.”
“You didn’t. You found—” He can’t say it, can’t think about what Tarsus was meant to be. “This is different. You can’t move to Vulcan, but I’m safe, on a stable planet. I’m pretty sure Sarek’s way too big a deal for anyone to try anything. So if you can’t be with me, and I’m safe, you should be where you belong.”
“You kids grow up too fast,” George mutters. “Alright, alright. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it out to Vulcan for your sixteenth, but we just mailed your presents, so that will be there. And call your mom, she’s been bugging me.”
“Has she got a placement?”
“Pike’s been begging her to come serve as her Chief Engineer. I assume I can tell her she has your blessing?”
Jim grins. “I’ll tell her myself. Love you, Dad.”
“Love you too, kiddo.”
“Ashaya, you seem uniquely fascinated with sleeping on me.”
Jim reaches out for Spock’s face, pressing his palm against his cheek. It’s the gentle suggestion of a kash-nohv. “You’re warm.”
“The internal body temperature of a Vulcan is higher than a human.”
“Yes, but…it’s more than that. You’re warm. You make me feel warm. Before, I was always cold.”
Spock brushes a kiss over Jim’s forehead. “As long as I am here, I will keep you warm.”
Vulcans don’t celebrate birthdays, but Jim isn’t Vulcan. It’s his sixteenth birthday, and the first one in a long time he’s spending surrounded by family, filled with food. Spock is kind of giddy about it: Jim has been having dreams about dancing, gift-wrapped presents. He’d love to open them, but the dreams never let him.
His parents can’t make it, but Amanda and Sarek set up a big screen for them to vidcall on, and they sing Happy Birthday, all together. Amanda made two cupcakes, one for him and one for her, because Vulcans don’t like that much sugar, and they tap them together and say, “Cheers!” as though they are champaign glasses.
It’s chocolate with vanilla frosting and he swallows it down in three bites. (His therapists would be proud of him. It would’ve been a single bite, not that long ago.)
Later that evening, when presents are opened and his parents have said goodnight, and it’s just Spock and Jim on the couch, the familiar sounds of some twenty-second century holo a quiet background noise, Spock’s hand stills in Jim’s hair.
“I have news, ashaya.”
“Good news, I hope.”
Spock’s hand does not start moving again. “It is news. It is neither good nor bad.”
“You’re stalling.” Jim pulls himself up, resting his head on Spock’s shoulder, soaking in the familiar scent of incense and desert.
“I applied to Starfleet Academy,” Spock says, his words slow. “I was accepted, but…it was just before I met you, James. I deferred enrollment, and intended to discuss it with you over the summer.”
“An opportunity has come up, and it would be good for your education, but you don’t want to leave me.”
Spock doesn’t even seem surprised. “Yes.”
“Take it.”
“Are you certain?”
Jim smiles. “Trust me, I’ll be joining you soon.”
“I have no doubt that you will, James. I would expect nothing less.”
Saying goodbye to Spock is the hardest thing he’s had to do. He knew it would be, but on the day Spock leaves for Earth, Jim is sorely tempted to beg him to change his mind and stay.
(He doesn’t, because Spock would give in, and Jim doesn’t want that, not really. He wants to be spared the pain of saying goodbye.)
Spock holds Jim’s hand the entire ride to the shuttlebase, and holds Jim tight to him, cupping Jim’s head in one hand, fingers splayed to push them together one last time.
(Love does not adequately describe what passes between them, Jim thinks. It is insufficient.)
Jim can’t say anything, can’t force anything out, so he just smiles at Spock.
“I will return, k’diwa,” Spock promises, pressing one last kiss to Jim’s forehead. “I will always return to you.”
Amanda tries to make things feel like Earth for him, when she can. “Spock will follow you anywhere,” she says. “But the healers want you to make sure they understand you a little more first.”
So she makes things feel like Earth. She puts the radio on, Earth music flowing to keep things from getting too quiet (in a silent house, Jim finds he panics), makes familiar food (she lets him watch, because he needs to know it’s safe), and finds him holofilms to watch when Spock visits (an indulgence, but Spock won’t mind because it makes Jim happy).
It’s home, he thinks. Spock will always be his true home, but that does not stop him from calling this his home as well. Amanda is a familiar face, one he is eager to see in the morning. Sarek is a rare sighting, left sweeping up the diplomatic mess of Tarsus IV, but he is predictable, and therefore welcome, at least in Jim’s mind. He’s got a stern face, sure, but he reacts the same, every time.
It’s home. He has a room he doesn’t sleep in, but he sets it up for school work, and Amanda helps him order some posters to be brought in on a cargo ship. He left Tarsus with nothing, and now he has a collection of human and Vulcan clothing, stashed between Spock’s dresser and his closet. There’s a pack of emergency rations just about anywhere he can fit one, and no one says anything.
It’s home.
They end up deciding he has to stay on Vulcan, because no one has any idea what the long term effects of a Vulcan healing trance will be on a human, but Vulcan healers are probably the best equipt to handle it.
He has a whole team of doctors dedicated to making sure he’s still recovering and to take extensive notes.
“I’m an anonymous patient in a case study,” Jim says, while they’re waiting for some test to finish running. Spock would know — Spock could recite his medical history from memory.
“Ashaya, I do not understand your pride in this.”
Jim smiles. Spock isn’t even with him — not physically, anyway. But even from Earth, even though time differences must make it the middle of his sleep/meditation block, Spock insists on calling into appointments. Possibly because Jim might forget relevant information. It’s happened before.
“I’m just looking for the silver lining. It’s cooler than, ‘I stayed awake for three consecutive hours yesterday.’”
“James”—oh, Spock is serious. He only calls him James when he’s struggling to rely on logic—“every aspect of your recovery is worthy of admiration. I need not remind you of the statistics.”
“Yes, I know. Of the initial 129 survivors, only 53 were able to be stabilized and enter recovery. Of those 53 survivors, I was one of the poorest outlooks. Therefore my survival is unexpected, I’m a miracle, your life changed the day you met me, I became the light of your life, etc. You’ve told me before.”
Spock says nothing, but Jim knows there is so much warmth between them.
“You will be pleased to know I will be returning to Vulcan soon, k’diwa.”
“My parents are coming too,” Jim says. “Just so you know.”
Jim learns Golic. He’s always been pretty good with languages, and Amanda is an excellent tutor. Almost everyone on Vulcan speaks Standard, but it marks him an outsider, and Vulcan is home.
“T’Khasi,” Amanda teaches him. “It means the planet of Vulcan, but it’s not a word we use with offworlders. It means place-that-is-our-home.”
He takes what she offers with grateful hands, and when Jim greets Spock in Golic, saying he’s calling in from T’Khasi, Spock’s mouth twitches, which is Spock for grinning so wide his face is splitting open.
S’Chn T’gai-Kirk tensions are as high as ever, come Spock’s winter holidays and Jim’s parents’ visit. His parents arrive first, and then take Jim to the shuttle base to pick Spock up, so Winona is there as Jim flings himself at Spock, literally leaping, knowing Spock will catch him. He can hear her unhappy sound, the same one she always makes.
“They are married,” George says. This does not help, because Jim is burying his face in Spock’s neck, pressing one hand to Spock’s heart, babbling about how much he missed him.
“And our son is still sixteen.”
“I’m sure we both got up to more than that when we were sixteen.”
“Hmph.” Winona is watching them closely. Spock’s pressing his cheek against Jim’s, breathing deep, saying things in Golic Jim’s parents can’t understand. One of his hands presses to Jim’s psi points, making them warm and together and safe and dissolving the difference between Jim and Spock.
“James,” Spock says. “We are making a scene.”
“Shut up. I haven’t seen you in months.” Still, Jim forces himself to unwrap his legs from Spock, move away so there is space between them.
When they get back to the car, George looks very pointedly at Spock and the passenger seat.
“He wants you to sit there,” Jim translates.
“I like you, Spock. From what I’ve seen and from what I understand, you’ve been nothing but good for my boy. But if you think I’m going to leave the two of you alone in the backseat—”
“Dad!” Jim’s face is so, so red, and he can’t even pretend it’s from Vulcan anymore. He’s fully acclimatized. “It’s not like that, we’ve been over this.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Jim shrugs. He can’t show his parents the way things light up when they touch. The way he understands why Vulcans use cherish instead of love when Spock pulls their minds closer together.
Jim’s seventeenth birthday is unlike his sixteenth, but it is absent of nothing. Sarek is on his way to a conference, but he takes the time to find the wordiest way to say “happy birthday” possible.
(James— celebrating the anniversary of one’s birth is illogical, as it is nothing but an arbitrary day. That said, I have found you are a beneficial addition to our household, and am pleased you have spent the past year with us.)
His parents are on two different ships, and his mom’s dealing with an emergency, so George calls for both of them, promising that gifts will get there as soon as they stop at a starbase. “Or, Jimmy, I might just show up with them myself. You never know when we might get shore leave.”
“Please don’t show up unexpectedly,” Jim says. “It would be illogical to prevent us from preparing for your visit.”
George laughs at the joke. “Alright, alright. But I’ll be seeing you soon, Jimmy. Promise.”
He means it. Jim has no doubt he’ll keep it.
Amanda makes dinner for the two of them, pours him a glass of champagne, and they both smile. “I’ve been talking to the healers for you,” she says. “Your scans are stabilizing. Slowly, but still — it looks like things are settling in. This time next year, you could be preparing to head off world.”
It’s the best present she could have given him.
Not the best present anyone could give him, as that honor belongs to Spock. He shows up two days after Jim’s birthday, sweaty and still in fatigues, but there. Jim hadn’t expected to even hear from him, knowing Spock was on a survival training exercise, but here he is, pulling Jim against him, pressing their minds together, radiating love love love.
Jim calls Spock when the healers deem him stable enough to go off world. Spock has let go of attending every appointment, and Jim has gotten better about not forgetting to mention relevant information. The healers meld with him this time, and Jim sees his bond from a new perspective.
He is proud of it, proud of the tightness, how close Spock is to him, even from lightyears away.
“So I’ll probably need nine hours of sleep for the rest of my life,” Jim pauses, knowing Spock will interject.
“Sleep is very important to your well-being, Jim. You do not need to sound so put out by it.”
“Right. But other than that? I’m a normal 17.56 year old.” Minus the permanent changes surviving a famine as an adolescent does to you, of course, but they don’t speak about those.
“I am gratified, adun.” Spock presses two fingers to the screen, and Jim copies. The survival has ended. He gets to live, now. Just live.
Jim doesn’t celebrate his eighteenth birthday, because it’s hard enough to gather his family in one place, and he wants to save that for when Starfleet announces acceptances of this year’s class of cadets. Spock is home for the summer; Winona can bribe Pike into just about anything, she’s saved his ship so many times; George calls it personal leave. (Sarek doesn’t explain it, but he is still there.)
They all stare at the screen, waiting for Jim to open his letter, and he has to read it three times to understand.
Welcome to Starfleet, Cadet James T Kirk.