Chapter Text
Jim Kirk was seated in the back row of the classroom, right up against the wall and furthest away from the door. The sky outside was just really beginning to darken, and from the window right next to him, he could see the gentle hues of purple and deep blue beginning to bleed into view. This was the perfect time of night to catch sight of the stars just as they began to peer out from their hiding place. It was times like this that he felt a familiar sort of ache within himself, a yearning in his soul; but for what, he wasn’t quite sure. He simply knew that he felt there was something more out there for him – that he was meant for something more.
He continued to stare as the sky darkened further, and his eyes were just tracing the faint glow of Orion’s belt when the professor’s voice snapped him out of his trance. “James.”
“Wh- mmf!” Startled out of his thoughts, the young blond tried and failed to muffle a yelp as he knocked his ankle against the wall. In an attempt to conceal the fact that he had once again let his mind wander, he offered a nonchalant glance at the disrupter. “Yes, sir?”
“Apologies for the disturbance, Mr. Kirk.” Jim flinched at the formality as the all-too-serious professor spun on his heel and walked towards the front of the room, his hands behind his back. The middle-aged man stopped near the large whiteboard, where Jim finally noticed several considerably complicated-looking equations that definitely weren’t there before. How long had he been zoned out? “Would you care to provide us with the answer?” The smug look on his face had the younger man biting back a smart-ass reply. He couldn’t stand people who found joy in bringing others down, but the words his mother told him on more than one occasion echoed in his mind. That mouth of yours is gonna land in you some serious trouble someday, Jim…
“Well, sir,” Jim stood up and addressed the man who had clear intent to humiliate him, “I couldn’t be more honored.” He knew that the smile he shot his professor easily passed for genuine and most likely filled the man with even more contempt. Shifting his attention to the board, his eyes flicked around, and his mind got to work.
Hardly twenty seconds passed, and he had an answer.
“I think the answer you’re looking for is 4872.2, Professor.” It was Jim’s turn to be smug.
There was a brief pause, and everyone sat in tense silence as the professor picked up his calculator and checked the math. The clicking of buttons stopped, and another few seconds passed where the lack of noise was almost deafening. Jim swore he could feel the older man trying desperately not to throw anything from across the room.
“That is… correct-” The last syllable was drowned out as he was cut off by the sound of his own alarm signaling the end of class. A prompt and uptight man, his classes began and ended on the dot, no excuses allowed. The room filled with the shuffling of a mass of students as everyone gathered their belongings, stacked up papers, zipped up their backpacks, and rushed to the door. The professor stood still, front and center, in what Jim could only assume to be stunned silence.
He grabbed his mostly-empty backpack and swung it up over his shoulder, clapping his now defeated-looking professor on the shoulder as he breezed by. “Good talk today.” There was no response.
He continued out the door and down the wide hallway of the university, glad to be free of his final class for the week. His feelings of joy only grew as he stepped out into the cool night air and looked up at the sky above him, now completely dark and freckled with gently glowing stars. Though the end of summer and resurface of college classes didn’t thrill him, he definitely enjoyed the nights that slowly grew longer later in the year. Mesmerized, he continued to walk the familiar path with his head tilted up toward the sky.
Then he collided with someone.
Or, as he saw it, someone collided with him. Not hard enough to knock him down, but hard enough to slip his bag from his grasp and stop him in his tracks, momentarily stunned.
He couldn’t see the culprit well in the darkness, and the cheap outdoor lighting didn’t do much, but he could just make out that it was a tall, thin man with dark hair in what looked like a… bowl cut maybe? Tacky, Jim thought.
“Oh- my apologies… but I would advise that you look where you’re headed in the future.” To Jim, the wording sounded passive aggressive, but the man’s tone betrayed this in favor of sincerity. It was confusing, but he realized that he was tired, and growing more so by the minute. He brushed it off.
“Yeah, no, uh- sorry about that. I was, uh… Just distracted.” Jim stumbled a bit over his words, his head suddenly full of fog and a desire to crawl under his covers for the next three days. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He picked his bag up and walked off, leaving the other man to ponder the odd interaction.
Fifteen minutes later, he threw open the door to the room he shared with his lifelong best friend and shut it behind him, leaning back against it with as much drama as he could muster.
Leonard McCoy didn’t even glance at his best friend before rolling his eyes and looking back down to the homework spread out across the desk where he sat. “Rough night?”
“Oh, y’know, just Professor Stick-Up-The-Butt giving me grief,” he tossed his belongings on the floor and pulled off his shirt, throwing it into the laundry basket at the foot of his bed. “Walked into some guy with a bad haircut on the way back. Same stuff as always.”
“Sounds like the ideal night, if you ask me,” Leonard chewed at the end of his pencil as he focused on the textbook in front of him. At the sound of his roommate shuffling objects around on his bedside table, he said, without looking up, “You left it on your desk.”
“Thanks, Bones.” Jim strode over to his desk and snatched up his toothbrush before taking a seat on the floor with a setup of multiple cups of water sitting before him.
His friend looked at him and shook his head, used to the antics by now. “You know there’s a bathroom right down the hall you could brush your teeth in like a normal person, right?”
“O’m tryin’ ‘o be quiot,” was Jim’s garbled response, his mouth full of toothpaste. He spat into a cup, “It’s either this or the shower.”
Ridiculous. Giving up, Leonard changed the subject. “Still having that meetin’ tomorrow?”
“Uh-huh,” Jim finished getting himself ready and sat down on top of his bed. “Reserved a room in the library. You coming?”
“Well, as you know, there’s nothing I love more than spending time with your ghost hunting club-“
“Paranormal Investigation Crew,” Jim corrected, looking at his friend in feigned offense. Well, partially feigned.
“Right, that.” Leonard shut the textbook in front him, satisfied with his progress for the night. “Regardless, I’ve got some important work to get done this weekend.”
“C’mon, Bones, it's the weekend!” Jim sighed as he laid back on his bed. “Can’t you just take a break once in a while? Have a little fun? Relax? The semester just started.”
“Bein’ a med student ain’t easy, Jim. Besides, the semester started almost a month ago. What have you been doing?”
“Taking a break,” Jim mumbled sleepily as he settled himself down. “Having a little fun. Relaxing.” He nestled himself into the covers as his friend did the same in the bed opposite his. The former decided that it would be better to try and convince his friend at a later time. Right now, all he wanted was to sleep for, oh, three days. Leonard clicked off the light and settled in. They laid in the darkness for a few minutes and Jim stared up at the ceiling in thought.
The silence was broken by his curiosity. “Have you seen a new guy around campus?”
It was a few seconds before he got a reply, but not quite an answer. A tired grumble from the other side of the room indicated that his friend was nearly asleep when he made his query. “I don’t know, Jim. ‘Least, I don’t think so.” A yawn interrupted his response. “But the campus is pretty big, ‘n there’s a lot of us. Hard to tell.” Jim figured the way his voice softly faded out meant that it was time to leave him alone to get some sleep. He spent several minutes staring up at the ceiling, thinking about anything and everything before sleep pulled him in as well.