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It started with Bones declaring that, “despite all of our society’s amazing technological progress,” the food synthesizer in the recreation room couldn’t make decent sweet tea. Six months into the Enterprise’s five year mission and he was starting to miss it, but after searching for more than a few minutes to find the food card labeled “sweet tea” (as if no Southern people had ever joined Starfleet before), the cup the synthesizer produced contained already cold iced tea mixed with sugar.
“I don’t see the problem,” Scotty said, coming over to him, taking his glass, and swirling around the contents a little. “Looks like tea to me.”
“Taste it,” Bones said.
So, Scotty did. He took a large sip, shrugged, and handed the cup back to Dr. McCoy.
“Tastes like tea, too. Isn’t tea and sugar basically ‘sweet tea?’ I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“That’s because this isn’t actual sweet tea,” Bones said. He took the glass and set it down on a counter to be cleaned, still mostly full of a poor imitation of sweet tea, then walked over to the table where he’d been previously sitting. Scotty joined him, Uhura, and Sulu right after giving the tea another quick glance and then letting the matter go.
However, Bones wasn’t finished with it. He turned to the small computer console sitting on the table and pushed the button for a voice command.
“Computer,” he said, “This is McCoy, Leonard H. Access my personal files.”
“Accessing…” the computer responded. It took a second to load before it chirped again, letting McCoy know it was ready.
“Display photo from June 14th, 2232.”
After a moment, a photo came up on the screen. It captured a dark, curly haired woman leaning with her back against a cloth-covered picnic table in what looked like a backyard. Her smile was wide, and behind her on the table were plates of food and a large pitcher of what the group assumed was sweet tea. At the table her sat four children, two boys and two girls, all in various stages of eating, and all ignoring the camera.
“You see that?” Bones asked. “That’s my mom, and that,” he moved his finger so it was pointing to the pitcher, “is the best sweet tea in Georgia. No one made it like her. She’s probably rolling in her grave knowing that her son is up in space without access to a decent Southern meal.”
“Is one of those kids you?” Sulu asked, pointing to the four children at the picnic table.
McCoy nodded.
“That one,” he said, pointing to a small boy who was very determinedly munching on a corn cob too large for his mouth. His bangs were flopping in his eyes and his shirt had a small stain on it.
“You’re adorable!” Uhura said with a grin. “Just look at your focus.”
“And that haircut,” Scotty chimed in.
The three of them laughed, and though Bones put on a face of annoyance, he was having trouble hiding his smile.
“I can one up you on the haircut, though,” Sulu said before turning to the computer. “Access personal files: Sulu, Hikaru. Pull up the photo marked with the date December 2nd, 2241.”
Up on the screen came a four-year-old Sulu fast asleep in a bed, lying next to a woman the group presumed to be his mother. She was smiling happily at the camera, and Sulu was huddled tightly under the blanket, only his head and a bit of his neck poking out from under it. He had a longer version of a bowl cut, and his hair was flopping in his eyes.
“I don’t see what the big deal is, Sulu,” Scotty said. “Sure, it’s not the best, but it’s not awful.”
“This is the before picture,” Sulu said. “A few days after this, I got it into my head that my hair was getting too long, so instead of waiting for my mom to cut it-”
He pressed a button on the console and skipped to the next photo. In it, was a sulking Sulu strapped into a carseat, headed to what all of them hoped was a hair salon that could salvage the damage. Half of his bangs were gone, one side of his head had hair two inches shorter than the other, and Uhura though she saw a spot where the hair was gone completely.
Bones laughed.
“A true visionary,” he said. “We have an artist in our midst. Bravo, Mr. Sulu.”
“I told you I could one up you,” Sulu said, looking very pleased with himself.
“Alright boys, my turn,” Uhura said. “Computer, access personal files: Uhura, Nyota. Show us the photo dated October 24th, 2246. My sixth birthday.”
The photo came up on the screen, and there in front of them was a small Uhura, sitting on the floor and holding a wrapped present in her lap that was half her size. Her curly hair practically made a halo around her face, and her smile was beaming and toothy, with one of her incisors missing completely.
“That’s not fair,” Sulu said. “There’s nothing embarrassing about this photo.”
“I know,” Uhura teased. “But my photogenic nature is hardly my fault.”
Bones and Sulu were about to protest further, when the doors to the recreation room opened, and in walked the captain. He was about to make his way over to the food synthesizer when Scotty called him over.
“Captain!” he said. “Take a look at this.”
Kirk came to the table where the four of them were sitting and saw the picture of the young Uhura on the screen. He looked at it for a moment before saying, “that’s Uhura, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Uhura said. “How’d you guess?”
“I’d recognize that smile anywhere,” Kirk said.
“We’re swapping embarrassing childhood photos,” Sulu said.
“Why don’t you pull one up, captain?” Scotty said. “Let’s see what you looked like as a wee lad.”
Kirk was a man used to keeping his composure, and though this request caught him off guard, he was able to hide the fact that his heart rate had just picked up a bit. Without looking, he felt that Bones, the only person besides himself who knew the reason for the captain’s hesitation, had given him a quick glance.
“Maybe some other time,” Kirk said quickly.
“Aw, the captain’s a little worried, eh?” Scotty asked.
“Maybe he has Uhura’s problem and can’t find anything embarrassing,” Sulu joked.
“Oh, I bet the captain got into a lot of trouble as a boy, didn’t you, captain?” Uhura asked.
“More than you can imagine,” Kirk said, consciously making his expression more lighthearted, “but really, I can’t stay. I just came here for something quick to eat.”
“Don’t drink the sweet tea!” Scotty teased. Bones shook his head.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Kirk said. He then walked away from the table, put the closest food card he could grab into the synthesizer. When it was done, he took what he now knew was a container of mashed potatoes out of the machine, grabbed a fork, and left the recreation room.
***
When someone chimed at his door a few hours later, Kirk wasn’t surprised. He was practically expecting Bones to come calling, and when he told the visitor to enter and saw the good doctor step into his quarters, Kirk when back to reading over the day’s logs.
“Not even a hello?” Bones joked. He walked over to the free chair at the table Kirk was sitting at and took a seat. There was a moment’s pause, where Kirk kept his eyes trained on the screen in front of him, and Bones never let his gaze drop from the captain. Then, finally, “something on your mind, captain?”
“Spare me the small talk, Bones,” Kirk said. “We both know why you’re here.”
Bones shook his head.
“If it makes you feel any better, no one thought twice about it after you left,” he said.
“Good,” Kirk replied, still not looking at Bones. “Neither did I.”
“You sure about that?” Bones asked. “You seem awfully preoccupied for someone not giving the matter a second thought.”
“Maybe I’m preoccupied with something else.”
“Now it’s my turn to ask you to spare me the bullshit.”
Kirk sighed, shutting off the computer console and finally turning to look at his friend.
“Y’know, if Spock were sitting at this table, he’d tell me that all this second guessing is illogical.”
“He’d say that about a lot of things,” Bones said.
“No, not about second guessing my actions,” Kirk continued. “What I mean is, he’d tell me that it’s illogical to not want to show those pictures, because it won’t affect the crew’s view of me. They won’t think lesser of me, they’ll definitely accept me. It’s just… that little moment of shock. That little moment where everyone fights the urge to go ‘ohhh’, that’s the moment I can’t stand. When they say that I’m not different, but their expression gives it away.”
“Gives what away?” Bones asked, leaning into the captain. “You said yourself that they’ll accept you, that they won’t think differently or lesser of you, so what’s to give away? That you’ll never be a ‘real man?’ That you’ve been conning them this whole time? We both know neither of those things are true.”
Kirk stood up from the table, running a hand through his hair as he paced around his quarters for a moment. He tried to start his sentence a few times, stopping after the first syllable each time, until he finally got out, “it gives away the fact that I never got my boyhood.”
Bones sat at the table, still looking at Kirk with a neutral face, and said nothing.
“Not to them, they’re probably not even thinking about it, but to me. It reminds me that, despite having a good childhood, it wasn’t the right childhood. And I know, it’s a ridiculous thing to complain about-”
“It’s not ridiculous,” Bones said. “Your feelings are not ridiculous, but you can’t change the past, Jim.” He also stood up from the table and walked over to his friend, standing in front of him to force him to stop pacing.
“Your childhood made you who you are,” Bones continued, “and I know that sometimes that doesn’t make it better, but that’s a fact. That childhood made you a damn good captain, and an even better man.”
Kirk let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, looking at Bones as he felt the composure he’d tried to maintain all day finally breaking.
“No one will force you to share any childhood photos with the crew, least of all me, and honestly? No one should. That’s your business, and if you want to keep them private for the rest of your life, that’s your right. But being at peace with those photos, that’s something that you need to reconcile.”
He gave his friend a warm smile, pat him on the arm, and walked out of his quarters, leaving Kirk once again, alone in his room. As he sat back down at the table, the familiar hum of the Enterprise in flight was drowned out by the buzzing of his own thoughts.
***
Two days later, Kirk walked back into the recreation room to see Uhura, Scotty, Sulu, and Bones, once again around a table, laughing at something on the computer console. When he walked over, he saw them looking at a picture of Scotty sitting in a large armchair, blowing into a set of bagpipes that were much too large for his three-year-old self.
“I wish my parents had taken a video,” Scotty said, “but they told me the sound was just too much for their ears.”
It was then that they noticed that Kirk was looking over Uhura’s shoulder at the screen.
“Are you in a rush today, Captain?” Sulu asked. “Or would you like to be next?”
Kirk looked at the computer, and then to Bones, who gave him a small shrug, as if to say, “up to you.” As a captain, Kirk had been trained to make split-second decisions that should’ve been puzzled over for minutes, and yet, right now, he felt like an altercation with the Klingons would’ve been an easier situation to navigate than the position he was currently in. But, after a moment’s consideration, something in his gut told him that, deep down, he came back into this recreation room because he knew this was something he wanted to do.
“Computer,” he said, “access personal files: Kirk, James T. Pull up the photo dated July 4th, 2240.”
The moment the computer took to process the request felt like a lifetime, and yet, Kirk could’ve sworn his heart didn’t beat once in that span. Then, finally, on the screen came a photo of a seven-year-old girl. Her light hair was up in pigtails and shoved under a baseball cap, and in her hand she held a chocolate-vanilla swirl soft serve ice cream cone. Most of the ice cream, however, was smothered across her mouth and cheeks, and she was smiling proudly at the camera.
“The annual Fourth of July picnic,” Kirk said with a smile and a confident voice, as if finally overcoming his anticipation and pulling up the photo had completely calmed his nerves. “Every year, my dad used to say that I’d get more food on my face than in my stomach.”
There was a beat of silence before Scotty chimed in.
“I don’t think he’s wrong,” the engineer said with a laugh. “Just look at ya.”
“What a sweet photo,” Uhura said.
“Not nearly embarrassing enough, though,” Sulu teased.
“I’m just getting warmed up,” Kirk said. He grabbed a chair from a nearby table and pulled it up next to Uhura before saying, “computer, next photo, April 18th, 2237. Now here’s a good one.”