Chapter Text
James T. Kirk wanted to be an astronaut. As a kid he had told everyone who was (or wasn’t) willing to listen. People told him to follow his dreams, because that’s what you tell a kid. Once you grow up, however, life becomes a little less forgiving when it comes to your dreams and aspirations. People slowly started growing wary when his will to go to space didn’t leave. He was a genius, he could be the most successful scientist, doctor- anything he wanted. That’s what they desperately told him. But not an astronaut. He was never going to be an astronaut. Did Jim listen? No, of course he didn’t listen. He specialized in science, astronomy, biology- any field that could get him into space. He tried internships at NASA, he worked hard on building connections. Despite everyone screaming for him to please give up before it was too late he kept pushing, he kept pushing and pushing.
He was rejected the first time he applied, and the second. When he showed up for the third time they told him it wasn’t going to happen. He had too many allergies, the results of his psychological evaluation weren’t stable enough; he was not fit for space travel. The realization he was never going to be able to go to space downed on him that night, as he looked at the glow in the dark stars on his ceiling. The green stars blurred into one glowing blob as he felt his eyes tear up. He was 25, he had worked for this for 15 years, wanted this for 20. Of course he hadn’t listened when everyone told him. He didn’t know his chest could hurt so much, didn’t know it was possible for someone to feel this angry, lonely and disappointed. Space was where he belonged, he could feel the pull of his heart, could feel it in his veins.
And that’s how he became Jim, the neighborhood failure. His optimism had made the crash all that harsher. Everyone knew of his dream, he had broadcasted it, all of Iowa was aware that the weird Kirk guy wanted to be an astronaut. And now all Iowa was aware his plan had crashed and burned. The amount of ‘I told you so’ he heard the following weeks were nearly too much to handle. He couldn’t count all the bar fights he’d gotten into on two hands, or even four. He had to leave, he couldn’t handle the stares and the whispers. He packed up his stuff, ripped the stars off his ceiling and chucked them in the bin with a bitter curl of his lips as he remembered all the sleepless nights he had spent looking up at them. He left for Washington, D.C. The plan being that he’d work for NASA as an astronomer. Except he never applied, his heart ached every time he opened the website, his chest constricted painfully every time he looked up at the sky. He couldn’t bear to be reminded of the vast space above his head anymore, it hurt to love something you could never reach.
Man, did he love space. He loved the stars, the planets, he loved the unknown, the things they hadn’t discovered yet. He loved the science behind it, he loved the way it took his breath away every time he looked up at the night sky. He loved the possibility of others being out there, other beings. He loved. He loved so much, so often and so intensely. But with every wave of affection came a sharp stab of pain, and he couldn’t look up at the sky anymore.
He got a roommate after a while because he couldn’t pay rent on his own; he still hadn’t applied for the job. His name was Leonard, a man who was just as heartbroken as he was. They fit together well, both miserable from the lovers that had betrayed them. Leonard’s wife had taken everything in the divorce, and NASA had taken space from him by turning him down. They drank together a lot, but the man was a doctor so it was alright. He also helped him pay rent sometimes, when he came home dunk instead of with a job. Jim didn’t know what to do. He didn’t search for a therapist either, he couldn’t do it, couldn’t own up to having wasted 20 years of his life on a dream. He did to Leonard, though, told him everything after the man had told him about the divorce. He remembered clearly how the doctor had put a drunken hand on his shoulder. He’d said: ‘Kid, those people wish they loved something as much as you love space.’
There was no day that went by that he didn’t ache, but eventually he had to put a stop to his ‘sex, beer, cigarettes’ lifestyle, his debts were only growing and if he kept it up he would find no way out anymore. And so he took off his leather jacket and threw it out of the widow- which was probably illegal, seeing as their apartment was on the 10th floor. He also remembered his phone had still been in that jacket a minute or two later. He applied for the job, got it quickly of course, he was a genius, after all. A job behind a desk suited him best, even NASA thought so. He thought the pain would fade over time, but every time he looked at the stars his throat would tighten. He longed for the warm summer nights he had spent sitting on the roof of his old house as a teenager. Life was simple then, he only had to believe in himself. He only had to believe he would get what he deserved if he just worked for it hard enough. He would stare up at the stars and constellations for entire nights, breathless and in love.
But he learned to cope, or rather, pretend he was happy with how his life was going, fool himself into thinking so even though he still felt alien among his own kind, on this earth. He drank with Leonard, grinded away days at his desk, he mostly did the dirty work of the senior astronomer he was still working under. The team he worked in was nice, however, he like his colleagues, they quickly became his friends, along with some people from other departments. It seemed NASA had wanted to hire as many young geniuses as they could. The youngest intern was seventeen years old, a cute Russian named Chekov. As he was putting calculations in the computer he wondered if he would ever get used to the idea that this would become where he’d spend his life.
“Hey, gloomy face, want to come to the club with us later?” Jim looked up to see Uhura, face breaking into a grin. “Is that a date proposal?”
Jim always wondered just how Uhura could roll her eyes like that and not lose them in the back of her head.
“If your dates consist of five people and a bunch of sweaty dancing strangers, then sure, that is a date proposal,” Uhura’s voice was dripping with sarcasm, and Jim laughed.
“Still waiting on that date, then,” he finished up the program after looking at the clock, his shift was almost over. Uhura had already started to walk away, “in your dreams, Kirk.”
In his dreams, indeed. He sighed, getting up and stretching, he hated all the sitting he had to do. He hated that the most of all about this job, the endless sitting. He went back to the apartment to change for the night out, and wondered if he could drag Leonard out with him. “Doc, you home?” He didn’t get a response and sighed, figuring he was at the hospital.
His phone rang in his pocket and he took it out to see it was his mom, he sighed softly and answered. “Hey, mom.”
“Hey Jimmy, are you visiting soon? I kind of miss you, you know.” She sounded tired, she always sounded tired. He’d been putting off his trip home, but he knew he had to visit again soon, he hadn’t seen his mom for two years, not since leaving Iowa.
“I’ll visit as soon as I can get time off from work, alright?” He leaned against the wall, staring into the apartment. He listened to her excited talking before telling her he had to go, hanging up the phone. It would be a pain to see all those people again. They would make snide comments, twist the knife a little deeper. Or even worse; they’d look at him with pity. God, if there’s anything he hated it was pity.
He went into his bedroom to change for the night out, wondering if life was going to get any easier anytime soon.
He took the train back to Iowa, not wanting to bother driving for 16 hours straight. He wondered if the motorcycle he’d left behind at the train station when he left was still there. It was, actually, but it was covered in rust. He tried to get it to work, and eventually succeeded. It probably wasn’t safe to use anymore, but he’d deal with problems when they’d arise.
“Alright you old rust bucket, let’s get you home.” He murmured, before heading to his childhood home. He’d missed his motorcycle, crossing down the country roads, the speed limit something that only occupied the back of his mind. Once home his mom hugged him tightly, and he couldn’t help but smile. He and his mom had always been on a rocky foundation, but all the fights and stepdads aside, he knew she loved him no matter how much of a fuckup he was. He’d left home when he was nineteen, so he was wary of stepping into his old room, probably still plastered with space. It hurt to see his dreams stalled out around him, to open the curtain and look at the familiar view of the sky.
His visit filled him with nostalgia that tasted bittersweet, and during his last night there, looking up at the old glow of the dark stars on his ceiling, he couldn’t take the weight on his chest anymore. He sighed, getting up and dressing himself. He silently left the house and walked along the road, the silence of the night comforting him. The moon casted a comforting glow on the scenery around him, but it was incredibly dark otherwise. He could see the sky above like he used to when he was a kid and teenager. It was nothing like the light polluted sky in the city he now lived. It filled him with that silent sense of hope, body reaching for how he had felt when he was younger. His heart ached with love for the constellations he could see, and his lips twitched when he saw a falling star. He felt his eyes burn and sighed. “Take me with you.” He whispered to the star, as a final plea. He’d wished to a hundred stars in his lifetime, they hadn’t helped his cause. But still, he couldn’t help hope that maybe this was the one that would fix everything. He wandered away from the road and into the fields, searching for the spot in the high grass he used to stargaze in.
He sat down with a groan and leaned back on his hands before looking back up at the sky.
Wait, shouldn’t that shooting star have passed by now? Why the fuck was it growing bigger?
“What thE FUCK-” He scrambled to his feet, nearly falling over in his haste to move out of its path. Was this the way he died? At least it was at the hands of space. The meteor (he thought that was what it was at least) passed by several feel above his head, he could feel the heat radiating off of it, and he only then noticed his mouth was open.
The ball of fire landed probably half a mile from him, crashing into the trees there. He could only see huge plumes of smoke rise from between the trees, and he really hoped they wouldn’t catch fire. His feet started carrying him towards the smoke, slowly, first, before he started running. He ran like he’d never ran before. “I said take me with you not nearly kill me by falling on my head.” He breathed as he ran, mind buzzing with the samples he could take, the experiments he could do and the calculations. This wasn’t a predicted meteor crash- he would have known. They hadn’t even seen this one coming, the area would have been cleared.
When he finally arrived he had to gulp in air to catch his breath, not a good combo with the fumes still coming off of the meteor- except that was a really weird shape for a meteor. He looked on with wide eyes as it cooled off, revealing something that was definitely not a rock. He fumbled for his phone to turn on the flashlight, not able to see clearly in the dark. The light shook as his hands did as well. He couldn’t quite tell from the wreck but it seemed to be some kind of rocket? No, definitely not, he just didn’t know what it could be. It wasn’t bigger than a bus, but he’d never seen this kind of space craft before. His brain was running so quickly it felt like his thoughts were stumbling over themselves. His heart jumped into his throat when he saw what he assumed to be a door open. Before his brain could catch up with what was happening a figure stumbled out, coughing.
Something inside the craft exploded, leaving the wreck in flames. His hand fell to his side, the flames illuminated the surroundings enough. His eyes fixed on the person that had stumbled out of whatever this was, his brain felt like it had short-circuited. “Uh, what the fuck?” He heard himself say.
Very eloquent, Jim, good job.
The stranger looked up in shock, and Jim thought he was going to faint. Said stranger had a rather ridiculous bowl cut and pointy ears. He was dressed in robes of a kind he had never seen before, but they shimmered in the glow of the fire.
“Oh my god, what the fuck.” He murmured, as the- whatever it was stared at him with no discernable emotion on their face. “Who are you!? Is this a joke, because this is not funny.”
No response.
“Okay listen here you- you look like you had a mechanical rice picker accident as a child and If this is a joke I will personally see to it that you end up under several more. You can’t just do this to me when I’ve given up on ever coming in contact with space.” His mind was racing a thousand miles per hour and he just.. Couldn’t grasp any of this.
The stranger opened his mouth to talk, but the language that came out was not one he’d ever heard. It was a male voice, at least he now knew the stranger’s gender. He was sure his face read absolute shock and confusion.
Okay, think rationally. This alien looking guy fell from space in a space craft of which the design was not one he had ever seen before- he knew every design of space craft ever made on earth. They couldn’t understand each other- maybe it was just a strange Russian dialect? He opened google translate, and strode up to the guy, who’s face still did not betray anything. He shoved his phone in front of his face, and watched him flinch and look at him with what he assumed to be confusion. He nodded to the device and the man said something again. He looked at his phone and sighed when the ‘language not detected’ popped up.
He pocketed his phone and frowned at the guy in front of him, who looked back at him. He then pointed at the person’s chest, and then up at the sky, looking at him questioningly. The pointy eared man seemed to understand, and nodded.
Jim couldn’t believe it, his head had trouble keeping up with his heart, which was already beating faster with the possibility. Just one more thing before this was actually legit. Just one more thing. He reached up to touch the stranger’s ear. He just had to see if it was real. The man flinched, stepping away, but not before he’d been able to lightly tug on it.
It was definitely a real ear.
He was freaking out as the stranger turned back to assess the damage of his craft, of which the flames had sort of gone down by now. He didn’t know how long he stood there as the stranger went over the craft damage.
Jim was definitely not a comfortable silence kind of guy. “Okay, so, you’re an alien. You’re a fucking alien. And I can’t understand you and you can’t understand me.” The guy ignored him as he started salvaging parts and things from the ship. “I can’t ask you where you’re from, I can’t ask you to take me with you- but I wished on a fucking star and I got an alien in a spaceship dressed in some sparkly robes so for fucks sake if that’s a thing that happens then I get to go to space.”
He took a deep breath, and was about to continue his rambling when the stranger opened a panel and switched something on. Jim frowned in confusion as the man walked up to him, and let out a yelp as he got lifted onto the alien’s shoulder- with ease, he might add. He didn’t bother struggling, he was not going to let this guy go. He could carry him to his secret underground lab and he wouldn’t mind. But when he started running Jim wondered why exactly. When they were a few hundred yards away an explosion had him covering his ears, muttering a Jesus under his breath. He watched the trees surrounding the now destroyed craft catch fire. He could only assume the man had destroyed the evidence of his crash.
The alien put him down once they were near the spot he had sat down to stargaze, and he looked up at the stranger. “Okay, I’m taking you home.” He murmured, grabbing the alien by his sleeve and heading back to the road with him. Someone would probably call the police if they saw him in the morning. He’d have to put him in some normal clothes and figure out how they could communicate. Maybe he should call NASA to tell them he found one of the most important things to have happened to humanity to date, but he didn’t really want to. Maybe later. Maybe.
The walk back consisted mostly of him filling up the silence with his rambling, with the guy next to him looking progressively more amused, or agitated, he couldn’t really tell which. His heart was beating so loud he could hear it in his ears, and when they arrived at his home he made a shushing motion, even though the stranger hadn’t said a word since he’d made him talk into his phone.
He lead them inside and up to his old room, where the alien looked around, intrigued. Or he thought, at least, you really didn’t know with this guy. They stood across from each other for a while, and Jim really didn’t know what to say, he eventually pointed at himself. “Jim.”
The alien seemed to understand. “Jim,” he repeated.
Jim grinned, nodding in affirmation. The stranger then pointed at himself. “Spock,” he said, voice clear as he regarded him with brown eyes.
“Spock,” he repeated, and the guy nodded, though his face remained the same. Finally a name to the face, he supposed. Spock clasped his hands behind his back and studied the space posters in his room, as Jim sat down on his bed. Well, shit, now he had an alien in his room.
Once Spock had satisfied his curiosity concerning the interior of his bedroom he sat down behind his desk and got what seemed to be a little device out of his robe, along with a case full of tiny tools. He started working on the device, which earned him plenty of curious glances from Jim.
He was frustrated he couldn’t communicate with Spock, knowing how much the guy could tell him. They sat there for maybe an hour or two before Spock’s device did something, a hologram appeared from what seemed to be the handle, making for a.. He supposed it was a tablet of sorts. He gasped, standing up to walk up to Spock and look at it more closely. The guy looked up as he leaned over his shoulder, looking at the screen. It seemed to all be in a foreign language, probably the same unknown language that Spock had spoken.
He couldn’t take it anymore, he wanted answers, he wanted to talk to Spock. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, drawing a stick figure with pointed ears and a planet with a question mark, hoping he would get it. Spock stared at it for a while, seemingly amused, before he picked up the pen and drew a planet, with under it a desert, and a big sun. Jim’s skin buzzed with excitement, and he grinned at Spock. He pointed at the device in Spock’s hand, before taking out his phone and taking a picture of the edge of the desk. He pointed at the picture, then at Spock’s drawing, before pointing at the device again. Spock’s eyebrow raised, and he looked like he wasn’t going to comply, or didn’t understand, but when Jim clasped his hands together and sent him a desperate look he exhaled in a louder manner than before, almost like a sigh. His fingers flew across the screen until a picture appeared of red sands, as far as you could look, and what looked like a very hot sun. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before, and his eyes widened as he glanced up at Spock.
His excitement must have been apparent, because Spock scrolled to another picture showing a city, in the midst of the red desert. A grin broke out on his face, and he could barely keep from bouncing around. This was out there, this place with other beings was out there, what other planets could there be? Were there even more kinds of beings that this species knew of? How long had they been able to space travel- and how did they get from their planet to Earth? Their planet definitely had to be far away if they had never seen it, were they just really old? Or did they invent a way to travel faster than light? The questions bounced around in his head until they blended together in a big mess. Spock had turned back to his device and seemed to be typing something, though he wasn’t sure. A while later Spock held it closer to his face and gestured for him to talk.
“Um, what are you trying to do?” He said, and watched as big letters appeared on the screen. ‘ENGLISH’ they said, with a bunch of other words in the unfamiliar language behind it. Spock pushed a few more buttons before standing up to put an earpiece in his ear before doing the same to himself.
“You should now be able to understand me.”
“Holy shit, what is this!?” He was sure his eyes were wide as he looked back at Spock, who now seemed to speak English.
“It is a universal translator.” Damn, Spock’s voice was nice, now he could actually understand what he was saying.
“That, is really cool,” he breathed, which made Spock raise an eyebrow. “The universal translator is a technical program, it cannot have a certain temperature.” He said, which made Jim laugh. “It’s another word for exciting.”
“Fascinating,” Spock said with the tilt of his head.
Jim had to sit down again for a little as he tried to wrap his head around this situation, but Spock seemed to not be very fazed by all this. “I sent a priority signal for help, but it will probably take about-” Jim looked up when Spock’s voice went back to the incomprehensible language from earlier. He noticed the guy’s tablet had stopped working again and assumed this was the reason. Spock eventually noticed he wasn’t responding and looked down to see his broken device.
Spock frowned, as if looking at it in a stubborn manner would make it work again, before taking a loud breath and sitting down to work on it again. Jim glanced at the clock and noticed it was already four in the morning. He yawned, which made Spock look up, seemingly startled. “I’m fucking tired, how are you so awake?” He said, not even caring Spock couldn’t understand him.
The alien, tilted his head, and Jim decided to just lay down. But how could he ever hope to fall asleep? There was someone of another species inside his room, there were other beings out there, that could travel space in a much more efficient way than they could. He was afraid that if he closed his eyes the stranger would vanish, that this was just a dream or that he would simply leave.
Jim decided his guest should sleep, as well- he didn’t even know if he needed to sleep at all, but he decided he didn’t care. A groan left him as he got up, tugging on Spock’s robe and ushering him to the bed. The man seemed incredibly reluctant but didn’t resist, simply sitting on the bed when Jim pushed him onto it. He then made a sleeping motion with his hands, making Spock take another one of those loud breaths. At this point he didn’t know if he even had emotions, but he assumed so, judging from the sighs and eyebrow raises.
Spock lied down on his back, near the wall, and looked at Jim incredulously when he lied down next to him. “What, do I look like have an extra bed in here?” He then realized he knew nothing of this guy’s culture and that he might have initiated some kind of weird mating ritual.
But Spock simply turned his eyes back to the ceiling and Jim turned off the lights, hyperaware of the alien next to him. Eventually his heart slowed down and he grew sleepy, hope still keeping a flame alive in his chest. He begged to whatever deity was up there this wasn’t some hyper realistic dream before falling into a dreamless sleep.