Chapter Text
Laughter drifted out of The Motherland Bar over the dimly lit street. This particular bar housed two very drunk patrons and one just as amused bartender. Jim and Bones frequented ‘The Motherland’ quite often, both for the company and the spirits, but they stayed especially late after long days. The pair had just completed this semester’s bout of exams at Starfleet Academy and were far worse for wear than they were at the beginning of the week. At least it was over. Unfortunately, not only had Jim lost a bet that day, but he also suffered through a particularly difficult Intergalactic Comparative Politics final, and while he complained all through the all-nighter he pulled with his good doctor and study buddy, he knew he aced it. Jim was what people described as a “stack of books with legs”, and many of his professors and peers said it was a damn shame that he was only ever able to take limited night courses. When Jim had first wanted to join Starfleet, his sight was set on finishing the command track in three years. Now, two years and so much debt later, it just didn’t seem like his life would allow it.
After the death of his father, Jim’s mom wanted nothing more than to live a quiet life far, far away from space or anything affiliated, and that included Starfleet. So Jim grew up on Iowa soil, as far away from the stars as Winona could get. She dealt with the loss in many ways, one of which including opening the godforsaken flower shop. Not the most common coping mechanism, but self-sacrifice via Romulan was not the most common way for someone’s husband to die, either. Winona Kirk wanted to have as many roots in Terran ground as she could manage, and for her, that applied literally. Jim always joked that she should have become an arborist, that flowers actually had quite weak roots compared to trees, but his mother would just laugh and smile sadly. Her flowers kept her grounded, and she hoped the same applied to her two sons.
When Jim had proposed that they start franchising Kirk Florals, she was delighted to hear that he was finally taking interest in the family business. She was less delighted to hear that what he had in mind was a storefront in San Francisco, almost 2,000 miles from home. Winona knew that if she didn’t loosen her grip and let him go somewhere soon on Earth, he may start looking for answers from the stars. What she didn’t know was that keeping Jim out of space had been a lost cause since before he even knew what the word meant. Space was his birthright, and James Kirk was determined to claim it.
Whether Winona simply forgot that Starfleet Academy was in the very same city Jim wanted to go, or was caught in purposeful ignorance, trying to will the fact out of existence, Jim didn’t care. He thought that running away to San Francisco and into the arms of Starfleet would finally bring him one step closer to his dream. But yet again, his flowers and his family held him down. He spent his entire life itching to get out of Iowa, and now that he actually was, he somehow ended up in another goddamned flower shop. He knew that when he said he wanted to open his own storefront, that meant, you know, actually doing it, but being a florist was so much more time-consuming than he planned for. He barely had time for classes between trying to run a store all on his own and keeping his mother in the dark about the real reason he was in San Francisco. Jim’s grandiose scheme of running away from home under the guise of continuing the family business and attending classes by the cover of night was damn tiring.
So here he was again, drinking it away with his best friend. One of the few highlights of the flower shop was getting to meet the proprietor of the adjacent medical practice, Leonard “Bones” McCoy. Bones was the first person on Enterprise Street to welcome him, and they quickly bonded over late nights in the academy’s library and early mornings in the shop. Now, they sat beside one another sharing a terrible bottle of whiskey. The bartender and owner, Pavel Chekov, poured them each another glass and listened to Jim lament.
“I can’t believe I lost,” his words were slurred.
Bones giggled, “Look, when you said you could get Nyota to go on a date with you by the end of exams and I said you couldn’t, I didn’t expect you to keep ‘double or nothing’-ing my bet!”
“Chekov, there’s gotta be something wrong with your whiskey. It sounds like Bones is spouting nonsense about me losing a bet or not being charming enough,” Jim pouted.
“Jim, are you insulting my fine establishment? In my opinion, there's gotta be something wrong with your methods. Definitely not charming enough,” Chekov retorted with an accented laugh.
Bones smiled devilishly, “And if I remember correctly, this loss means you owe me a tattoo! Not only that, but the design is completely up to the artist.”
Jim groaned. How had his life come to this? He’d had his run-ins with ink before, thanks to his high school flirtations with stick-and-pokes, but who knows what tortures this random artist would inflict upon him. He wasn’t all too torn up at the prospect of getting romantically rejected by Nyota, he knew she wasn't that into him and the feeling was mutual, but Jim hated to lose a bet. The blonde groaned dramatically and settled his tab before rising to his feet, only to immediately get dragged out of the bar by Bones while Chekov cheered him on.
Bones giggled all the way up the street until they reached their destination: Moon and Stars Ink. It was late in the evening by now, but the tattoo parlor was known for never turning out its lights. Bones was confident the place wouldn’t be all too busy at one in the morning and would be willing to take a walk-in. They had so many employees that the owner, Christopher Pike, rarely tattooed anymore. Over time, Moon and Stars became less strictly a tattoo parlor and more of a place where Pike took in rag-tag and broken kids looking for work or someplace safe to stay. His employees learned new skills and the values of a steady job, all the while staying in an environment that was still free and fun. In another life, Moon and Stars would have been somewhere Jim would have applied after escaping Iowa.
But in this life, he held onto the door frame for support, his head softly pounding. He would regret the hangover in the morning, but chances were he’d regret this stupid bet even more. Jim could hear Bones calling for Pike as his friend entered the establishment, leaving Jim on the stoop to gather himself. Cool autumn air drifted towards him as he took a deep breath and followed Bones inside.
Instead of the familiar face of Christopher Pike emerging from the back of the shop, the pair was met with a strange sight. In front of them stood a tall, muscular Vulcan. The deep black of his shiny hair was equaled only by the darkness of the various black tattoos scattered across his body. Every tattoo was huge, each one interconnected in some way, and fully black in color. Cyberpunk designs centered on the joints of his shoulders, arms, wrists, knuckles, and neck, and they made him seem almost part machine. It reminded Jim of some kind of gothic circuit board. The robotic look combined with pointy Vulcan ears made for quite a breathtaking sight and Jim had to stop himself from gasping at the peculiar, gorgeous man before him.
“Greetings. Mr. Pike is not available right now. Is there something I can do for you, gentlemen?”
McCoy’s face somehow cracked into an even wider grin as he quickly looked between his breathless friend and attractive newcomer. “Why, yes! My dear friend here has just recently lost a bet and is now inquiring upon your tattooing services. Isn’t that right, Jim?”
Jim grumbled, “Yes.”
“Now the way the bet was set up, you see, meant that if he lost, he would have to receive a tattoo completely up to the artist I brought him to. And now that he has lost aforementioned bet, here we are!”
Bones was practically beaming as Jim took it upon himself to walk up to a wall and start lightly banging his head on it, repeatedly. Something about making the booze pass faster.
“So, Mr…” Bones inquired.
“Spock.”
“Mr. Spock! Lovely name! Whaddya say? You up to the challenge? I give you full creative reign and artistic liberty.”
“Your friend is inebriated.”
“Yep!”
“And you took him to get a tattoo.”
“Yep!”
“That he doesn’t want.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say he doesn’t ‘want’ it per say, it’s more like-”
Jim took this moment to interrupt, he may have hated losing but he was never going to go back on his word, “Nope, I am totally down Mr. Spock, let’s roll.” Jim avoided looking at the Vulcan, but he could feel brown eyes burrowing into him with the intensity of a thousand suns. It was bad enough to get tattooed drunk, in the middle of the night, but it was even worse to know that someone so pretty would be staring at him like that the whole time he did it. If he were a little more sober, Jim may have had an easier time deciphering what looked like uncertainty in the Vulcan’s eyes once he finally met them, but for now, he was just so caught up in the way he seemed to get lost in them.
“Are you quite certain you want to do this, sir? I would not inflict something as permanent as a tattoo, or anything else for that matter, on one who is opposed or unsure. Not to mention the fact that you are giving me the right to impose whatever I may wish upon your skin permanently. That is quite serious.”
“I’ve done stupider things. Just don’t make it something ugly, okay? Let’s get this over with.” Part of Jim was worried that the strange man would give him a tattoo as intense as his own, and while the Vulcan could most certainly pull it off, Jim didn’t want matching tattoos with him quite yet.
Spock quirked an eyebrow and Jim stalked over to a station, rolled up a sleeve, and offered his forearm to the man before him. Stars, his head hurt.
“Hold on just a minute there, mister! No one ever said you got to choose where it’s going! I’ve made the noble decision to let myself determine tattoo placement. Take off your shirt.”
Jim could only stare at him in disbelief. That conniving little devil was trying to rattle him. “Bones, I swear to whatever Gods are up there, I am going to kill you, resurrect you with those fucking hypos you use on me constantly, and kill you again.”
“I would prefer it if you refrained from killing anyone, especially here,” Spock commented in a tone that Jim could’ve sworn was amusement, but Vulcans were emotionless, so that must’ve just been the alcohol talking.
Jim begrudgingly took off his shirt to reveal a few smatterings of faded stick-and-pokes. On his right bicep was a cluster of gooseberry flowers, fleetingly done in a fit of anger on a sticky Iowa night. Peeking out from the top of his jeans on his left hip was a cluster of stars an old friend from back home did for him before Jim left for the academy. There were a few other small ones scattered around his skin, but none as large or compelling as the flowers and the stars.
Jim eyed his Vulcan tattoo artist curiously, as he seemed to let his gaze linger on the shirtless man in front of him longer than was probably necessary. Unceremoniously, Jim cleared his throat and the Vulcan snapped back up to attention and crossed the room to don a pair of worn leather gloves. Almost as if he could sense the question on Jim’s mind, Spock spoke up, “Vulcans are touch telepaths. As I engage in a profession that often calls for the need for me to touch the skin of others, I elect to preserve the privacy of my clients by reducing skin-to-skin contact.”
The blonde just nodded dumbly, vaguely recalling Vulcans’ touch-telepathy from a xenobiology course he took a few semesters ago. Had he been a little more sound of mind, he probably would’ve responded with some flirty little comment about the sensitivities of Vulcan hands, but the liquor coursing through his veins had other plans for him. Jim just needed to get through the night. “Do you know what you’re going to do? Like do you have a design in mind?” he spluttered.
“Oh, it has to be a surprise! C’mon Jimmy, where’s your sense of adventure?” Bones butted in. The doctor knew that James T. Kirk had enough sense of adventure to make up for a thousand tattoos and then some, but that wasn’t going to stop him from teasing his friend.
Yet again, Spock raised an eyebrow as he looked between the two men. “The two of you seem to be… good friends. As I do not want to disappoint, I’ll check the validity of my design with Mr. Bones.”
The pair shared a perfunctory glance and started to howl with laughter. Jim got a little teary-eyed and Spock gained a horrified look on his face.
“I’m sorry, I did not mean to misstep. I am new to Earth and it seems I have reached a social incongruence, if you’ll excuse-”
“No, no, no, Spock you’re totally fine. This is Dr. Leonard McCoy and I am James Kirk, but my friends call me Jim. I’m so sorry we completely spaced on properly introducing ourselves. Bones isn’t his actual name.”
Spock looked more confused than ever but simply nodded and crossed to Dr. McCoy to confirm the design. Jim couldn’t hear what they were saying as they conspired, but he feared the worst when he saw McCoy’s devious grin. “Oh you’re gonna love it, Jim, trust me.” Jim did not trust him. But time marched on and eventually Jim was placed on a reclined parlor chair while Spock gathered his instruments and set to work.
The Vulcan did not use a stencil and began to simply free hand a design directly under one of the large, aged, twin scars under his pec. Jim began to lose count over just how many times he winced in pain as the needle traveled down his ribs, imparting inky secrets only to be revealed once the art was finished. If he were in a different setting, Jim may have enjoyed it, watching the heavily tattooed and very attractive Vulcan hunch over him in concentration. Every so often his leather gloves hitched somewhere on his skin, leaving Jim with the faintest ghost of intimacy. But no, this was a professional setting, it was getting to be the very early hours of the morning, and no matter how striking the man in front of him was, it would be beyond inappropriate to hit on him now. Maybe later though, Jim’s thoughts wandered and he mentally smacked himself. Now was not the time to get all hot and bothered over the Vulcan whose hands were currently stretched over a piece of skin, trying to angle it just right so that he could continue his work. Jim hadn’t even noticed he had stopped breathing until the Vulcan suddenly looked up at him, directly into his eyes.
“You’re going to need to breathe for this to work, Mr. Kirk. It is generally frowned upon for clients to pass out in the middle of a session.”
“I said it was Jim to my friends,” he suddenly squirmed in response as the needle hit a particularly painful spot.
“I will hold you down, if necessary.”
Jim could only blush as he stared at the Vulcans muscular arms, ending in gloved hands that lightly pinned him down. The statement did not so much sound like a threat, but an invitation. Spock’s mouth turned up ever so slightly into what was barely a smile as he watched the blonde’s reaction, and somehow Jim could tell he was amused.
｡･*:･ﾟ★,｡:*･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*･ﾟ★,｡･:*･ﾟ☆
It was almost four in the morning by the time Spock was satisfied with his work. He did a final once-over with the tattoo gun, cleaned up a few messy edges, and stood up triumphantly. Picking up some solvent and a towel, he wiped Jim’s side clean from stray ink and hummed with approval.
“How the fuck are you not tired? The sun’s nearly up!” Despite the pain, Jim could’ve sworn he dozed off at least a few times during the session, leaning into the man next to him. Even Bones was snoring in a chair in the corner. Once the initial excitement of his friend’s surprise tattoo had worn off, his sleepiness had set in. “
Vulcans require less sleep than humans. This factor allows Mr. Pike to keep the shop open at night more often and for me to gain practice on late-night clients such as yourself.”
“Wait a second, practice? Are you an apprentice or something?” Horrified, Jim sat up.
“Yes? It says so on my name tag, I thought you were aware.”
“Oh my stars.” He put his head in his hands, terrified to look at the very permanent tattoo some rookie had just given him because of some stupid bet. His mind was racing, how could he have been so stupid? Not only to agree to such an idiotic bet but also to not even look at the artist’s name tag for crying out loud. His stupid biceps were far too distracting, and Jim had decided that they were the root of all evil.
“I assure you my work should be satisfactory. If that is not the case, I can arrange a cover-up with someone more qualified. Free of charge.” Spock looked so downcast all of the sudden, obviously able to see Jim’s despondency.
Jim didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, and after looking at that sorrowful face that tried so hard to stay composed, he got up and walked to one of the wall-length mirrors. “No, I’m sure it’s great, Spock,” he tried not to let the anxiety creep into his voice.
Jim took one more deep breath and looked into the mirror. Starting right below his top scars and dancing down his ribs was a sleek line of Vulcan script. It was beautifully done, the curves and flicks of the calligraphy seemed to twist and pirouette in the light, almost as if it were moving. Before he knew it, his breath was hitched in his throat yet again.
“Spock… This is gorgeous. How are you still an apprentice? What does it say?” Jim recognized the writing from his xenolinguistics class but was far from being able to translate it.
“I appreciate the sentiment, Jim. I believe my apprenticeship is directly correlated to the fact that I have only resided on Earth for approximately one week. As for the meaning, I will refer to the human colloquialism that it is ‘for me to know and you to find out’.”
“Holy shit, it totally says like ‘dumbass’ or ‘alcoholic’ or something doesn’t it? How could you do this to me? I thought we had something!” Jim feigned despair and Spock looked on with amusement in his eyes.
“I assure you it is nothing of the sort.”
“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, you sneaky Vulcan. But the whole one-week thing really explains why I haven’t seen you around before. I knew I wouldn’t be able to forget a face as lovely as yours.” He winked and wiggled his eyebrows.
“I see the alcohol is yet to have worn off.”
“Aw, Spock, you’re no fun.”
A few beats passed as the two men looked in each other’s eyes, both seeming as if they wanted to say something but neither taking the leap. They stood in comfortable silence for a moment, simply taking each other in, until Bones made a rather loud snort in his sleep and broke the spell.
“Ahem. Excuse me, I-”
“Ah yes, Mr. Spock, I’m sorry-”
They both fumbled over their words, stuttering, and Jim blushed furiously, looking away. He unceremoniously gathered his shirt and put it back on, trying to distract himself from his quickened heart rate. Then, he snatched his sleeping friend’s wallet and turned to Spock, “How much do I owe you?”
The taller man looked around the room uncomfortably, like he didn’t want to say. “A tattoo of that size… it would run you two hundred dollars. I’m sorry for the imposition, I should have checked-” For such a large and intimidating man, he seemed quite sheepish in the moment.
“Spock, really, it’s okay. Don’t apologize for doing your job. I’m not the one paying anyway.” Jim laughed as Bones mumbled something about Jim being a terrible patient in his sleep.
“Are you sure your friend would be amenable to such a price? I-”
“Spock. He already agreed. There’s no way in hell I would’ve made the bet if I knew I had to pay extra for losing.” Jim rooted through McCoy’s wallet until he scrounged up enough cash to pay the bill, then took out his own wallet and procured fifty dollars and a piece of paper. He took a moment to grab a pen and write something on the paper, then handed Spock his earnings, his tip, and the mysterious note.
Spock could only stare at him as he proceeded to gather the rest of his and McCoy’s belongings and scoop up his sleeping friend, bridal carrying him out the door.
“Thanks for the tattoo, Spock! Maybe I can get you to explain it to me one of these days!” The blonde shouted behind him as he exited, leaving Spock with nothing but a final wink and a strange fluttering in his side.