Chapter Text
Spock’s face twitched. The involuntary movement would have been imperceptible to most humans, but unfortunately for him, he was around one of the few who could read his every thought.
“Problem, Spock?”
He took a moment to formulate a reply that wouldn’t make him sound like a child and give his sister more ammunition against him. “The floor is sticky. I do not like it.” Unfortunately, he didn’t think he’d succeeded.
“Don’t tell me you’re having a feeling,” Michael said distractedly, scanning the dimly lit room for their target.
“It is not unreasonable for one to not want one’s shoes to stick to the ground with every step. In fact, it’s integral to our mission that we be able to make a quick getaway, something this… environment makes difficult.”
“Yes, I’ll be sure to log your complaint to Starfleet in the mission report. Maybe they’ll shut down this entire establishment just so that no one else will ever have to suffer like you again. You’re a brave, brave man.”
“First, all previous attempts made to shut down this establishment have failed, including the notable King Charles riot of 2111. Second, I do not appreciate your sarcasm.” Spock replied. “In fact, I believe that it is yet another indicator of your-”
“Look out!” Michael shouted, but it was too late. Fifty-six pounds of parental neglect crashed into Spock’s abdomen and bounced off onto the ground. Spock looked down at the child. The child stared back at him, wide-eyed, for half a second. Then, he began to cry.
Spock froze. He looked at Michael, but she seemed to have just as little idea as to how to deal with the situation. Spock had to quickly and calmly mitigate the problem so that they wouldn’t blow their cover.
He decided to approach the child the way he approached everything: logically.
“Human child,” he ordered, “Cease your crying. Based on the angle of impact and your short stature, there is less than a 0.7% chance that your fall injured you irreparably. Therefore, you have no reason to be this emotional.” To Spock’s surprise, the child spared a moment to glare at him balefully and then began crying even louder.
“Spock, you moron-” Michael began whispering furiously, but the rest of her speech was drowned out by a horrible screech.
“TIMMY? TIMMY, SWEETIE, ARE YOU OKAY?” Spock clapped his hands over his sensitive ears, afraid that the high-pitched sounds would injure him irreparably. A large, towering woman approaching the three of them seemed to be the source of the noise.
“I’m so sorry, Sir, but your child accidentally bumped into-”
“-Mommy, the weird-looking alien hit me!” Michael was interrupted yet again. Spock found himself more annoyed at that than the blatant xenophobia.
“That is factually incorrect.”
“That is not even remotely what happened.” Spock and Michael spoke in unison.
At this point, the few curious glances they had previously been getting had morphed into a burgeoning crowd. The hair on the back of Spock’s neck prickled at the unwanted attention.
The woman seemed unwilling to listen to either of them. She picked up the child and glared at Spock, red-faced. “You hit my baby? On his birthday? What’s wrong with you?”
“I did not hit your child; he ran into me. Furthermore, I see no relevance in the fact that it is his birthday. It is my birthday today, as well, yet I am not carelessly bumping into innocent strangers and accusing them of striking me. Have you considered teaching your child better manners?"
The lady turned an even brighter shade of red. Michael put her head into her hands and fell bodily into a nearby chair. Spock, used to her dramatics, ignored her.
“How dare you talk to me like that! Where’s the manager? I’m going to make sure you never, ever step foot in another Chuck E. Cheese ever again!”
“That would crush me.” Spock deadpanned. Michael made an odd, stifled, high-pitched noise. Spock could not tell if it was a positive or negative indicator of her mood. She had been making that noise around him a lot lately; he really must remind her to get her allergies checked.
“Good, it should!” The woman replied, clearly too unintelligent to notice his excellent use of sarcasm. “What kind of grown man goes to Chuck E. Cheese on his birthday, anyway?”
“I did not come here for my birthday,” Spock retorted. “I do not celebrate it as there is no logical reason to celebrate a day your planet is orbiting your sun in a similar position to the day of your birth. I came here for-” he cut himself off, not wanting to give away Federation secrets to a woman with hostile intentions.
“Oh yeah, for what?”
“People-watching,” Spock replied, proud of his quick thinking. “My sister and I wished to pass the time and decided to, as humans say, “check out” this establishment and its patrons.”
The woman’s jaw dropped. “You came in here to look at children?” She hugged her son closer to her chest. “I’m calling the police!”
Spock blinked. He opened his mouth to point out that she was mistaken, but was distracted by a thud. He turned to see that Michael had fallen off the chair and was now on the floor, shaking. For someone raised on Vulcan, she was disconcertingly awful at controlling her emotional outbursts.
He turned back to the woman, who had already pulled out her communicator. “Sir, I believe you are deliberately misconstruing-”
“Is there a problem here?” A blond man, slightly shorter than him, stepped smoothly in between Spock and the illogical woman. Spock had the errant thought that his hair resembled the sand found near the rare Vulcan oasis.
The woman pointed at Spock and shouted, “this man had the audacity to smack my child on his birthday and then he said he came here to prey on children! I’m calling the police so that they can throw him in jail where he clearly belongs.”
Spock opened his mouth to argue that jails hadn’t existed for over a hundred years and it was highly unlikely that he’d be sent to a penal colony for committing no crime, but one look from the newcomer, who seemed to know exactly what he was planning, stopped him in his tracks. He blinked again a couple times, trying to regain his bearings. No one, not even Captain Pike, was able to quiet him when he was determined to say something, not like this. Who was this human? Was he telepathic, to have this kind of influence over Spock?
“I’m so sorry, madam. I don’t think you should trouble yourself with this when you should be enjoying your son’s birthday,” the man said, gently closing her communicator. “I’m an officer and I’ll make sure he’s punished to the fullest extent of the law.” He turned back to Spock and winked, out of the woman’s line of sight. Spock narrowed his eyes and glared back. What was this man planning?
“Thank you, sir.” The woman looked at the officer from under her eyelashes, and then took an old-fashioned pen out of her pocket. She grabbed his hand and pulled it towards her. The man seemed bemused, but let it happen. The woman popped the cap off with her teeth and drew on his hand. “Here’s my number in case you need a statement. Or in case you desire anything else.” She blinked at him coquettishly and then walked away.
Spock couldn’t hide the mild expression of disgust that crossed his face. Yes, it was unbecoming of a Vulcan to show his emotions that easily, but so was the entire display he was just forced to witness.
“Are you okay, sir?” The officer asked, looking at Spock in concern.
“Spock,” he replied automatically. “My name is Spock.”
“Okay, hi, Spock,” the man replied with a good-natured smile. “The name’s Kirk. James Kirk.” He held out his hand for a second, thought better of it, and instead performed a passable version of the Ta’al. He looked at Spock hopefully, clearly waiting for something. Spock mirrored his hand, assuming that’s what he wanted. A few seconds passed and Jame’s smile faded. Spock felt somewhat despondent at the fact that he may have been the cause of his sudden lack of humor.
“Actually, I go by Jim, but I like doing the James Bond bit cause it makes people laugh.” He shook his head slightly. “Anyways, are you alright? You’re looking a bit green around the gills after talking to that Karen.”
“Karen?” Spock asked, and then inwardly sighed. He was capable of much more than monosyllabic speech, so he wasn’t sure what had come over him.
Jim waved a hand. “Sorry, that’s another twenty-first century Earth reference. I’ve been watching a lot of old holos and got the lingo stuck in my head.”
Spock refrained from asking Jim what the word “lingo” meant and instead inferred that it was a kind of twenty-first century speech from context clues. Why someone would willingly choose to subject themselves to that particular century’s culture and issues baffled him, but it was possible that Jim was a historian.
“Hi, Jim,” A voice piped up from behind Spock. He would have been startled if he hadn’t been subject to that annoying cadence for most of his childhood. “I’m Michael.” She held out her hand in the Ta’al as well. She seemed to have recovered quite well from her emotional outburst earlier. Jim glanced at her ears and raised an eyebrow at the lack of points, but gestured back without comment.
Spock instantly decided that Jim was acceptable. A surprising number of people chose to rudely comment on Michael’s incongruous appearance and behavior, so it was refreshing to meet a human with manners.
“Are you going to arrest us now?” Michael asked, with a surprising lack of tact, even for her. Spock turned to glare at her but, as usual, she didn’t even seem to register his disapproval.
The tips of Jim’s ears turned a pleasing shade of pink. “Yeah, about that…” he scratched at the back of his neck. “So, I’m technically an officer, but like a Starfleet officer, not a cop.” He made a face. “Cops are gross.”
Michael tilted her head and looked at Jim more closely. To an outsider, she merely seemed somewhat curious. To Spock, it was clear that she wanted to dissect Jim and figure out what made him tick. Spock didn’t like that.
“Then why did you imply you were a cop to the woman you spoke to earlier?” he asked, before Michael could ask him something inappropriate.
Jim laughed, high and warm. “Oh, I’d been watching the trainwreck for a while, and although it was very, very funny to witness, I didn’t want to see you actually get arrested over what was clearly a misunderstanding. And probably a spoonful of xenophobia.”
Spock wrinkled his eyebrows together. “I do not understand how prejudice can be quantified using spoons.”
Jim laughed again. Spock didn’t see the humor behind his simple question, but he was gratified to hear that sound again. It was surprisingly pleasant.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s just an expression. Anyways, you two are also clearly Starfleet, and although I’m not quite sure what kind of mission you would be on in a Chuck E. Cheese, I’ll let you get back to it.” Jim shrugged. “Or back to your free time. I don’t judge.”
“We are not Starfleet,” Spock replied automatically. “My name is Selek and the woman next to me is Adam. We’re people-watching in order to write a research paper on obscure human customs, such as birthdays.”
Jim had a concerned half-smile on his face. “Spock, you told me your real name like a minute ago. And you’ve been standing at parade rest this entire time.”
Spock stared back at him, feeling a rush of despair. He was not, to use a phrase Number One had taught him, “on his A-game” today. He turned to Michael. “I’m not functioning at ideal capacity today, and would like to take myself off the mission.”
Michael groaned. “Spock, there is no mission! Pike told me to tell you there was so that he could force you to take some time off for your birthday. You’ve been running yourself into the ground which is clearly obvious by how easily you fell for such a stupid lie.”
Spock looked affronted. “You were untruthful about Chuck E. Cheese being a front for a Klingon drug cartel?”
“Oh, come on, Spock, it obviously isn’t, which you’d know if you’d slept even once in the past month!”
Jim snorted. Both the siblings turned to look at him. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “But technically, Chuck E. Cheese is a front for a drug cartel. Just a regular human one, not a Klingon one.”
“You’re kidding,” Michael said flatly.
“Nope. I saw someone buying jet fuel like an hour ago.”
Spock opened his mouth but before he could get a word out, Michael turned on him and said, “No! No, I’m not letting you run around a fucking kid’s arcade sleep-deprived and busting a drug cartel. You’re not traumatizing any more children today.”
“But-”
“-No, you’re going to shut up, be a good Vulcan, and let us celebrate your birthday. That’s an order.”
“Technically, this mission was conducted under false pretenses, so you can no longer, in good conscience, call yourself my superior or issue any-”
“-Shut up! I’m older than you and am going to order you around as much as I want.”
“Michael, you are being-”
“-Pike, Number One, and your entire bridge crew have been waiting in a private room with an ice cream cake for over thirty minutes! Is the thought of Pike waiting for you with a half-melted chocolate ice cream cake not absolutely heart-breaking to you? Do you not care at all for your captain?” Michael had obviously resorted to emotional manipulation because she knew Spock was right.
“I would prefer not to eat ice-cream cake, especially chocolate considering the effect-”
“Well, this isn’t about you!”
“It’s apparently my birthday celebration, so I would argue-”
Jim cleared his throat loudly. When the two siblings turned to look at him, he smiled hopefully and said, “Someone mentioned an ice-cream cake?”
Michael and Spock stared at him.
He threw his hands up in the air defensively. “What, I have a sweet tooth, sue me!”
Spock drew his eyebrows down. “I intend to do no such thing-”
“-It was an expression. I meant that if there’s an ice cream cake, even a half-melted one, I would love to be in the room with it. And eat it. Just go absolutely ham on it.”
Spock raised an eyebrow, choosing to ignore the incomprehensible metaphor. “Are you inviting yourself to my birthday celebration?”
“Considering you yourself were invited just minutes ago, I assumed that there would still be a few seats left.”
Michael looked between Spock and Jim, a gleam forming in her eyes that made Spock afraid.
Spock spoke his next few words carefully. “Considering that you chose to help us in our altercation with that ‘Karen’, as you called her, I suppose it would be an equitable exchange to have you join us.”
Michael scoffed. “I thought you didn’t want to go in the first place? What made you change your mind?”
Spock glared. “I calculated the merits of strengthening the interpersonal relationships between the crew and I and found the benefits to be slightly higher than those in looking for a drug cartel without crucial information. I see no harm in delaying our mission for a day to give Jim time to provide us the necessary intel.” He also wanted to spend more time with Jim, but he wasn't going to admit that to Michael.
Jim clapped his hands together. “Awesome, let’s head out then!” He gestured for Michael to lead the way. She gave him an appraising look, but nodded at him and headed toward the back. Spock and Jim followed.
“I heard you mention Pike, and I really should warn you, that guy throws the absolute wildest parties. I know he looks all straight-laced and captainy but he knows how to let loose.”
Spock’s eyebrows came together. “Please do not slander my captain.”
“I’m not slandering him, it’s the truth! You’ll see for yourself soon enough.” Jim looked around with a dubious expression. “Although, I’ve never been to a Chuck E. Cheese party for anyone older than fourteen. Either of you know why he chose this venue?”
“Since I found out about this mere minutes ago and am choosing to attend reluctantly, I clearly would not know.”
Michael looked over her shoulder and gave Jim a sharp smile. “Pike has a vendetta against this place dating back to his academy days. I’m not sure of the details, but he thought it would be fun to let Spock loose in here to wreak some havoc.”
Jim eyed Spock. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d cause many problems. Outside of fighting little kids’ mothers, I guess.” Spock didn’t appreciate being talked about in the third person.
Michael laughed, a chilling sound that made Spock’s ears perk up with fear. “Vulcans are three times stronger than humans. Spock is very, very competitive, especially when it comes to stupid, frustrating little games he logically shouldn’t care about. Trust me, once we get some chocolate into him, we’re going to have some great entertainment tonight.”
Michael leaned closer to Jim and whispered conspiratorially, “Also, the servers typically cut adults off after two alcoholic beverages, but they’re not about to stop someone from eating chocolate. Why would they?”
Jim’s eyes widened. He looked Spock up and down again, as if seeing him in a new light. “Okay, so you’re telling me we’re actually getting banned from this place tonight.”
“My credits are on 8:24 PM.”
Jim gave Spock another appraising glance. “I think he could hold out until 9:00. 60 credits.”
Michael flashed him another smile, this one with teeth. “Oh, you’re on!”
Spock felt a rush of foreboding go through him and fought the irrational urge to want to run away. Michael grabbed his upper arm, as if she knew what he was thinking.
“You’re not getting out of this one, Spock. You’re going to have fun and then you’re going to get a full night’s sleep, even if I have to trick you into it.”
“Yeah, Spock.” In a blatant violation of his personal space, Jim grabbed his other arm, although Spock noted that he was careful not to touch any bare skin. He parroted Michael, “You’re not getting out of this.” Spock felt oddly betrayed at this new development.
Spock had been wrong about Jim. He was not pretty or nice or acceptable; he was evil and trying to ruin his life. Spock should have just let himself get arrested.
“I think this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship,” Michael whispered in his ear.
“Unlikely.” Spock replied back sullenly, and allowed himself to be led into the party room.