Chapter Text
There was no recruitment speech. No father figure plucking Jim Kirk out of obscurity by simply daring him to be better. When the wave of Starfleet personnel passed through the bar that night, Jim hated them for the same reason he wanted to be them: they got to leave. Take off from this shitty town and never look back.
There was music thumping, and the floor was sticky as he leaned over the bar into the personal space of one of the better-looking cadets. His smile was returned by a pointed look down the nose. No recognition passed through her eyes when he introduced himself – there never was.
Only the locals in Riverside remembered that his father was a Starfleet legend. And even then, they only bothered to mention it when making a point of just how he’d never live up to his Dad’s legacy. Strangers never seemed to be able to reconcile the delinquent Jim Kirk persona with the glory of a national hero in order to make the connection.
Jim was trashed, he knew he was, but it didn’t stop him from flirting. Anything to get his mind off of his life. The way that he’d wake up tomorrow and see the same scenery that he’d be stuck with forever if he couldn’t find a way out.
Uhura all but called him a farm animal, and he bit down a wash of familiar cold fury. A backwater hick, that’s all they’d ever see in him and it made him want to scream with rage. So, when another Starfleet cadet came over obviously itching to start something, Jim didn’t back down.
◦◦◦
That night, Jim didn’t sleep much. When he was that drunk, he always had weird dreams in a half-sleep that he woke too easily from. It was one of the more immediate downsides of drinking to forget that he wasn’t like them, that he’d never be like them. Plus, his face hurt like a motherfucker.
Usually he got by on nights like these by staying up, eyes glazed over, as he skimmed old tractor maintenance manuals that he dug out of storage from the attic one summer. The feel of the real paper under his fingers was soothing. And if he passed out with schematics in his mind, his dreams tended towards engine repair more often than not.
Tonight though, he was indignant. Not in the mood for even trying to be less in a mood, he paced across the chipped linoleum in the kitchen. But the movement just made him dizzy and slightly nauseous.
He didn’t even have the chance to prove that he was better than they thought he was – that he might even be better than them. Jim tried to enlist once, years ago. Walked into a recruiter’s office and jumped though their hoops for the chance to sign on the dotted line. A dark chuckle escaped him, as he thought about the rejection that landed in his inbox a week later. A deceptively neutral subject line, ‘Regarding the application of James T. Kirk’, for a single page document proudly emblazoned with the Starfleet logo at the top, which spouted advanced verbiage about how his ‘personality profile wasn’t consistent’ with top performers in Starfleet.
Apparently, they had gotten a look at his juvie arrest record and cut him loose before he even started. He could have given them a different name. A name that wasn’t so bogged down by a collated list of loitering, trespassing, speeding, destruction of property, and on and on. But after that first rejection something in him had soured and the idea of pretending to be a perfect little recruit turned his stomach.
It was a load of bullshit, the gatekeepers pushing you out if you didn’t have all the boxes ticked on their mandated forms. He just needed to show them. Warp mechanics probably wasn’t that hard. Jim already knew xeno-linguistics would be a piece of cake. The fantasy was all too easy to imagine. Strutting into one of the Starfleet Academy classes, plopping down in an open seat, breezing through a final on interstellar negotiation tactics and ethics. Just to see the look on their faces when they realized they had turned him down.
Jim stopped short in his pacing. His hands wavered in the air, just short of reaching out to grasp something, but there was nothing there. As much as he hated the figurative gatekeepers to Starfleet’s bureaucracy, it wasn’t like they had literal armed guards waiting at the entrance to every classroom. There was nothing stopping him from just showing up at the Academy to blow them out of the water.
It was a terrible idea, but once the thought came, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He had to at least try it. Worst comes to worse, he’d get tossed out on his ass and he could pick up the same shitty jobs that he would have ended up doing in Riverside.
It took Jim ten minutes to pack a bag, but an additional three hours doing little things around the old farmhouse to prepare it for a long period of sitting uninhabited. His mom was up in the black somewhere, Sam was who knew where, and dear old Uncle Frank had been dead for years. So, no one would be back for a good long while.
Dump everything from the fridge, lock up the barn, take out the trash, throw some old sheets on all the furniture. By the time he was finished, the sky was just beginning to lighten again through the windows. Jim caught a glance of himself in the mirror at the end of the hall. There was a huge bruise already purpling on the right side of his face. He shook his head at himself, there wasn’t much he could do for it now. He had to leave soon to make the walk into town to catch the transport if he didn’t want to have to ditch his bike at the terminal.
◦◦◦
Jim realized his mistake when he reached the landing strip. He had been planning to take a civilian transport shuttle out to San Francisco. But there was only one craft in sight, clearly marked as Starfleet. In the back of his mind, he knew it already, that the civilian transport out to San Francisco was next week. Just like he knew that he wanted them to turn him away. Tell him he couldn’t get on the shuttle, so that he’d have an excuse to turn around and go back to cowering in his old family home.
He took a step forward, and then another. Turned it into a confident stride as he approached. There was a guy with a PADD standing next to the open landing doors. It seemed like he was overseeing the boxes being dumped in the cargo hold more than he was watching the groups of Starfleet cadets and officers straggling in.
As Jim walked up, the guy’s eyes flicked up from his PADD and looked Jim up and down. Jim held his breath. This was it – the moment they turned him away – again. Then the guy just said,
“New recruit?”
And Jim said, “Yeah,” voice cracking a little, he covered it with a cough, nodding.
“Off you go then.” The guy said, already turning back to another set of boxes.
Jim was up the ramp before he could rethink it. A handful of open seats reassured him that he wasn’t literally taking someone’s spot. He slung his bag down under one of them, sitting down, only to look up and find Uhura from last night glaring at him.
It was on instinct that Jim smirked back at her. He was still too keyed up. Any second now the guy with the list was gonna look back at him and demand ID. All through buckling in and the mandatory safety check, Jim couldn’t get his heartrate to go down. It was really happening. He was leaving.
There was a commotion at the back of the craft near the bathrooms. Someone was trying to corral a man who looked surprisingly like he might be having as bad of a week as Jim into one of the open seats.
“I might throw up on you.” Was what the man said when he plopped down into the seat next to Jim.
It startled Jim into a laugh, and for the first time since Jim had this terrible idea, he relaxed.
◦◦◦
Jim fell into step with Bones as they left the shuttle. The man seemed reluctant to split up. Jim might’ve just been projecting.
Bones probably didn’t need Jim to come with him to Administration Building B for enlistment procedures. But Bones was also under the understandable and mistaken impression that Jim was a fellow recruit.
Jim should’ve corrected him, but he didn’t. Jim should’ve really been making an excuse to leave before they got to the Admin building and whoever was manning the desk there realized he wasn’t actually a recruit. But every time Jim glanced over and opened his mouth, ready to let whatever excuse lived under his tongue fall out, he just ended up closing his mouth and keeping pace.
The mutual companionship they’d carried over from the shuttle ride was their last line of defense before either of them committed to the life-changing decision known as Starfleet. A decision that could turn out to be a colossal mistake.
“This was a mistake.” Bones grumbled, echoing Jim’s thoughts almost exactly. “Why the fuck did I think Starfleet would be a good idea? I hate space!”
Bones’ constant refrain was familiar even after only a couple of hours of knowing the guy. Jim’d managed to divert their topic of conversation away from Starfleet, space, and their imminent future multiple times while aboard the shuttle. But, now that they were here, walking across Academy grounds, reality was staring them in the face. Jim’s reflexive consolation was practically habit, even if he didn’t totally feel the words.
“It’ll be fine, Bones. Come on, you probably won’t see space until you get out of the Academy. Even then you can request a dirt-side position.” Jim clapped him on the shoulder. Starfleet would bend over backwards to accommodate him, doctors were just that valuable. Unlike Jim.
“Oh God, the Academy. I forgot about the dorms.” Bones groaned and ran a hand through his hair, “I really can’t do this. There’s no goddamn way I am rooming with a literal teenager for four years. They’re imbeciles – you know that? Wouldn’t be able to tie their own shoes without help.”
Jim didn’t bother to point out that said teenager would at some point age into their twenties. He got it, it was the principle of the matter.
“Hey, if we got married, we could put in a request for family housing – get a whole apartment with a kitchen and a living room.” Jim laughed, swallowing back the memories of the sixth months following Tarsus that he’d lived on base in just such an apartment.
Jim meant it as a joke, but when he didn’t hear Bones laughing, he looked up and caught Bones staring at him seriously, considering.
“What, no, seriously?” Jim squawked.
“I ain’t living in a ten-foot by ten-foot rectangle with an infant who won’t pick up their own clothes.” Bones was still looking at him.
“There’s no way it would be legal. Is your divorce even finalized?”
“Last week.” Bones said this quieter than they had been speaking.
“And you’re honestly telling me you’re good to jump into another marriage. This isn’t some kind of rebound?” Jim pushed. They were getting closer to the admin building now. Jim recognized it across the quad from the map they’d consulted earlier before setting off from the shuttle.
Bones gave him a dismissive once-over. “You’re pretty, but not that pretty kid.”
“I’ll have you know that I’d be an amazing rebound.” Jim wiggled his eyebrows, but some of his concern must’ve leaked through into his expression, just a little something on his face showing he wasn’t serious about the offer because Bones stopped walking and grabbed Jim’s arm, pulling him off the path out of the way of anybody else oncoming.
“I’m fine Jim. Better than fine, actually. This way I won’t be some sob story whose wife left him. And I’m not looking to start anything, so it’ll keep any flirty nurses looking elsewhere for a hot doctor.”
“Hot doctor? Now who’s the one thinking highly of themselves?” Jim couldn’t keep the smile off his face when he added, “You think you’re the pretty one don’t you, Bones?”
Bones scoffed. “Seriously, I’d understand if you didn’t want to hitch yourself to some old man you just met. But if you’re in, I’m in. We’ve gotta do this now. Today, before we go through intake. Lord almighty, I know what bureaucracy does to a place, and if they assign me a dorm room, there’s no way I’ll get out of it.”
It was a terrible idea. But just another terrible idea in a long string of terrible ideas he managed to execute in the last day and a half that hadn’t ended terribly. Jim’s mind was racing. If he was married to Bones, he’d be legally entitled to share in the room and board granted to Bones as a Starfleet cadet. Jim wouldn’t have to worry about finding an apartment or paying for it. It made him feel a little dirty, thinking about using Bones like that. Honestly, though, it would be convenient, considering that he’d been planning on sneaking back to campus to sit in on course lectures anyways.
“They won’t have an open appointment at city hall. Aren’t those kinds of things usually scheduled weeks in advance?” Jim wouldn’t know. It’s not like he’d actually been married before. God, married. How could he even be thinking about going through with this?
Bones took Jim’s easy acquiescence in stride, pulling out his PADD and the city of San Francisco’s government page before Jim finished talking.
“They’ve got an opening in an hour. If we book it now, I think we can make it.” Bones looked up, and the corner of his mouth ticked up into a grin.
◦◦◦
In the ride uptown to City Hall, Bones started filling out the required forms for a marriage license. Jim took a surreptitious glance over to make sure he was occupied before double checking Starfleet regulations on his own PADD to ensure that the family housing did in fact apply to cadets.
When he was satisfied, he found Bones hovering over the section for the second spouse’s information. All that was filled in was the name, Jim Kirk.
“Give me that.” Jim grabbed the PADD and started correcting information. Jim became James, added Tiberius as a middle name even though he hated it. Might as well make this legal.
“Are we making a mistake? Probably should know more about a guy than his name before we get married.” Bones scowled.
“Getting cold feet on me already? We’ve only been engaged for twenty minutes.” Jim played it off, chuckling, trying to calm down. Bones didn’t want him. Of course, Bones didn’t want him, no one else had ever wanted him either.
Bones calmed immediately, nodding. “You’re right.” Jim did a double take, he had no clue what he was right about, but Bones continued, “There’s more to a man than the kinds of stuff they make you put on paper, and I already know you’re the good kind of man.”
Bones’ words sat heavy in the space between them, but City Hall rolled up ahead of them before Jim got a chance to respond. It was a stately building framed with arches and dark wood doors. They were out of the car, collecting bags that still hadn’t had the chance to be set down yet. Checking in at the front-desk for a last-minute wedding with a duffle slung over his shoulder made it feel like he was running away with Bones and it wasn’t entirely a bad feeling.
They were still twenty minutes early for the appointment. So, they sat on one of the benches built into the great slabs of marble that made up the walls in the hallway outside the courtroom, as Jim checked over the last of the forms.
When he handed the PADD back to Bones, he was startled by a set of hands coming up to grip his face. Tender and meticulous.
“Lemme fix your face, Jim.” Bones murmured as he started running a dermal regenerator pulled from seemingly nowhere over Jim’s skin. “Gotta look pretty for your wedding day.” Bones smirked.
“Shut up.” Jim shoved at Bones’ arms, but not hard enough to jolt the regenerator.
In the end, they spent more time waiting in the hallway than they did in the ceremony itself. It was perfunctory, the city clerk reading a standard statement. They both signed the marriage license before a witness and said their ‘I do’s’. There was a pause there at the end, for the couple to kiss. Apparently, some did, but a lot of the couples who skipped the traditional wedding for a smaller affair at city hall also skipped the kiss.
Bones turned to face him, arms crossed. The one raised eyebrow was what made Jim do it. Lean over into Bones’ space and press a short, sweet peck against his lips. Jim winked as he leaned back, and Bones sighed exasperatedly before pulling Jim back out the way they came.
“Come on then, husband. We’ve got things to do today.”