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This was definitely new, Jim Kirk decided, and he took a bold step forward with unbridled enthusiasm and interest. He was young, yes, and he had seen many things (including things that he shouldn't have, or at least that was what they'd told him), but one thing that he had never before come across in his life was a child with such an unfortunately severe haircut. Being raised on a farm, it wasn't surprising that he had never met anyone from the Vulcan race.
"James Tiberius Kirk!" He thrust out his hand in greeting, expecting it to be met with the strange kid's own and duly shaken. He wanted to know why the other had pointy ears, and introductions had to be made before questions could be asked.
The other child did not move from where he was standing, hands tucked stiffly behind his back. He did not speak either, choosing to regard Jim with a steely gaze that calmly swept across the region between his outstretched hand and a point somewhere slightly above his head.
Jim took the silence as an opportunity to scrutinize his potential new friend, deciding with glee that his eyebrows were about as unfortunate as the severity of his bangs. In the absence of a response from the other, he was getting restless, head tilting as he fidgeted and bit his lip and shuffled his feet in the dirt, as he tried to deal with what seemed to his childish perception to be an awkward moment. He wasn't a shy child, but he sure as hell knew how and when to be a polite and charming one.
He was saved by the woman standing beside the strange kid. Not the kid's mother, surely, for she had rounded ears just like Jim's own, and a warm smile that was probably half the reason why he was currently on his best behaviour. She had laid a hand on the young Vulcan's shoulder, easily, like she was used to touching children who did not physically shrug her hand off, yet managed to convey an aversion to touch with a simple twitch of the mouth.
"Mother." The child all but berated the adult, and Jim made no attempt to pick his jaw off the floor or decrease the intensity of his stare at this unexpected revelation. The woman simply gave a kind of laugh and lifted her hand from her son's shoulder.
Amanda Grayson was used to this, and in the way she usually did, met her son's apparent stoicism with her own brand of affection. "I know," she said in a voice which made Jim swear that all she wanted to do was ruffle the strange kid's hair. "Physical contact is unnecessary and therefore illogical in situations where it would be significantly less complicated to convey a similar sentiment with words."
Now she turned to Jim, who, while still staring open-mouthed, had unconsciously mimicked the other child's body language and was standing stock-still with arms locked stiffly behind his back.
"This is Spock," Amanda said with a smile, gesturing to the young Vulcan. "And he would like to know if you've washed your hands before he even thinks of shaking them."
Jim turned sheepish. He might juuuust have been scooping up piles of dirt to make pretend Klingon pastries: food fit for the most ruthless of Klingon warships captains. It was entirely possible that both Spock and his mother had seen how grimy his hands were before he'd gotten them out of sight. "I live there," he said, pointing to a distant farmhouse with a dirt-covered finger and then hastily retracting his hand from sight again. "Waaay over there."
It didn't even take Vulcan logic to know that Jim was innocently citing a perfectly good excuse for having unwashed hands. For more than one reason, the logical Vulcan child was simply relieved that his own hands would not have to come into contact with Jim's. Amanda laughed softly; it was too easy to tell what both children were thinking, and she was glad that there would be no disagreements over handshaking at least. "Go have fun," she said, bending down just a bit to look into Spock's impassive little face. He gave her the barest of nods, knowing full well that his mother was only teasing him again.
"When will you return, Mother?" There was a touch of anxiety in his voice, and he wanted to cringe as he dared to allow himself a moment to feel dismayed.
Amanda smiled at both the question and at the hint of internal struggle. She felt glad and perhaps faintly wistful at her son's inadvertent reminder that he was indeed her child, that he was indeed half-human. "Your father and I should be done with the preliminary meetings by five." Her eyes twinkled. "Or six." She knew how it vexed him when she was being 'human and imprecise'. She moved to leave then, and the hand which reached out in affection landed on Jim's head and ran lightly through his mop of dirty blond hair.
"Your mom is nice." The human boy declared. Her smile and soft fingers were reminiscent of Winona's, and they lingered in his mind like a code he was bound to honor. It was there and then that he decided that her pointy-eared son would be his friend, and to hell with the usual initiation rites that had to be completed by the brave few who sought his friendship. Before Spock had a chance to respond (beyond fixing Jim with a laser-like glare), the human had spoken again. "Are you a mama's boy, Spock?" he blurted out rudely, eager for an answer.
"I am unfamiliar with Terran colloquialisms."
Not being quite out of earshot yet, Amanda heard it all, but she would never have admitted to snorting softly at Jim's question. "What it means," she called out to her son without turning back or looking over her shoulder, "Is that you are completely devoted to me."
Spock gave his reply, pride shining right through in his voice which was raised, but not so much as to be considered impolite. "In that case, Mother, I fail to understand how that could be construed as a taunt or an insult."
Jim shrugged as he stuck a hand into a seemingly bottomless pocket and pulled a toy phaser from it. "She'll be back. Now help me make Klingon pastries to lure the Klingons to Earth!"
"Your methods are..." Spock was feeling uncomfortably human, even as his Vulcan sensibilities were able to target and pinpoint the primary emotion. "Illogical."
Happiness. He was happy to find that James Tiberius Kirk was offering him acceptance.
*
It turned out that Jim did all the manual labour. He moved the tiny model starships around (as per Spock's casual instructions, ignoring the long-winded and insightful explanations), and did re-enactments of hand-to-hand combat scenes when he felt that they were required, valiantly taking on all the roles that were needed. He whirled about and hit out at invisible enemies, then moved into their places and retaliated with guttural and unintelligible insults.
Understandably, it was getting increasingly difficult for Spock to hold down his dissatisfaction with the overall lack of accuracy in the entire scenario. For one thing, Klingons had a language that did not involve merely communicating in grunts and gurgling sounds. Additionally, a diplomatic starship captain would not have hurled himself recklessly at his enemies with a cry of "You're going down, you mangy bastards!"
And yet, there was something compelling about Jim, haughty and vivacious like no other child Spock had ever met. Even the way Jim yelled his name seemed to call out to whatever was swirling about right under the results of the strict Vulcan upbringing he'd had. A number of people addressed him by name on a regular basis, but none of them did so in such a careless manner which might have been brash but was backed by sincerity. It seemed to give him a desire to let loose and shout, play and run about and toss all logic aside.
...But he could not, as it would be dishonorable to his father, and the entire Vulcan race. Besides, he was unsure of the multitude of things which he might have... felt, as they were things he was afraid to acknowledge or confront.
"Spock!"
The Vulcan child regarded Jim with a cold eye, eyebrows seeming to speak his annoyance at having his thoughts interrupted. "You require something of me?"
Jim was not deterred as he let out a whoop of joy. "We won! I got them good!" he yelled, and Spock instinctively flinched and prepared to defend himself as Jim appeared to be coming at him with a hand raised and ready to strike. The confusion was plain on Jim's face as the child completely stopped in his tracks and let his arm fall to his side. "You don't know high-fives?"
"I presumed that... the move was an attempt to attack me."
"Oh." Kicking at the dirt and averting his eyes and looking sullen, Jim Kirk inexplicably thought of all the times his step-father had struck out at him in impatience or anger. He tried to explain anyway, oddly subdued. "It's like... you slap your hand against mine. 'Cause we're happy that we won."
There were so many problems with that explanation, Spock mused. It had been assumed that he was experiencing happiness, that human emotion, and... a part of him did want to give it a try, even if meant falsely acknowledging a success that had been achieved on some very biased terms. Vulcans did not lie. "There are no casual gestures in my culture which involve bodily contact. Indeed, there are no gestures in Vulcan culture which are casual."
"Does that mean we don't get to high-five, ever?" Jim was disappointed; Spock simply relieved that there was a lowered chance of coming into contact with anything too overwhelming via unstable control of his own touch-telepathy.
"It is simply not our custom."
Spock was expecting Jim to insist that he learn how to 'high-five', but the other had already moved on to the next point of interest: "What's a Vulcan?"
"You seem to be familiar with Klingons, and yet you do not know of the Vulcans?" Had Spock let his human side completely take over, he would have sounded offended.
"Everyone knows about Klingons! They're badass!" Jim was defensive, partly feeling that his mother was being faulted for his limited knowledge of alien races. "...and bad too, of course," he added hastily.
"'Bad' is a word which is rather subjective." And by deduction, based on Jim's tendencies towards subjective speech, so was 'badass'.
Jim shrugged when Spock's words went over his head, disinterested. What life had taught him so far was that complicated words were what adults used only amongst themselves, and to him, represented exclusion. No friend of his was ever as serious and unexcited about things as Spock was, and Jim pondered over whether he should mock the other for being strange, or to be proud that he knew such a 'grown up' child. "Teach me about Vulcans," he said impulsively, crouching down to gather up the model starships which lay scattered on the ground.
It wasn't quite a challenge, but Spock rose to it effortlessly. "You may have concluded from my previous question that the Vulcans are a race."
"You're Vulcan?" An eyebrow was inexpertly raised with a slight twist of the mouth as Jim made a show of pretending to exaggerate his indifference.
"Indeed, I am."
The admission had no effect on Jim's indifference, and what descended on the two children was nothing less than an awkward silence. It didn't last long, however, with Spock predictably identifying the break in conversation as something that might be perceived to be socially unacceptable.
"Would you like to learn a gesture from my culture? It involves the raising of one's hand, not unlike the 'high-five'." And his voice seemed strange and just a little higher in pitch, while his heart seemed to beat just a little faster as he tentatively lifted his hand, just letting it hover in an almost uncharacteristically hesitant way. Before he realized that he was alarmed to be feeling just so, Spock was alarmed to realize that he was... nervous, fearful of rejection.
"Yeah, alri-" Jim started, but he was interrupted when the other child suddenly raised his hand completely to perform an unnaturally stiff version of the Vulcan salute.
Unacceptable, Spock thought. His own impulsive and unanticipated movement was unacceptable. His eyes were wide, human half struggling to express a craving for acceptance as the Vulcan one tried and failed to kick it back into submitting to the logical repression of emotion.
Jim had practically missed the conflicted expression on Spock's face in his eagerness to imitate the salute, and his chief concern had been getting his pinkie to behave and not stick out like a rebellious teen. "Got it!" He yelled as he did, and then lunged forwards and pressed his palm flat against Spock's.
"No!" Spock withdrew his hand, not before a split-second's worth of confusion jolted through his mind. It had to be impossible to feel that many things at once. His mind tried to process them, analyse them objectively, but the most potent of them all seemed to float right to the top of his thoughts and demand his attention. Dislike. No, analyzing should not be of concern for the moment.
"I... apologize." He said to Jim's frowning face, composure regained. "Physical contact is not part of the gesture. There was no need for you to touch me."
"Sorry," Jim offered as he backed away slowly, unable to understand why Spock had reacted so adversely. "No harm trying something new, you know... I just thought..." He had the guilty expression of one who had just cheated death while leaving a dozen of his own comrades lost in his place; it was an expression far too heavy for his young face. He drew a clumsy parallel to help alleviate the guilt, and in it, Spock was like the kid whose parents never allowed out of the house to roam about and play. It might have been easier to tease or to just turn on his heel and leave, but Jim Kirk didn't know what to do with the unfamiliar feeling of pity.
The silence was broken by the Vulcan child again. Under that expressionless facade was the sick, desperate need to know that the negativity he had detected earlier had not been directed at him. Aside from his mother, no one had been so easy with showing their acceptance before. It was nothing he'd had to prove himself for, but nevertheless, he did not want to lose it. "There is something I must ask. It is a personal... question," he said, making some conscious effort to simplify his speech in hopes that Jim would forgive him for his previously shocking behavior. "Is that permissible?"
"Sure," Jim said without looking at him.
"I would like to know if there is anyone you happen to dislike," Spock said, noting the increase in his own heart rate again - it was an increase of approximately thirty-two percent.
Apprehension. "It's a secret." And apparently, Jim was not good at keeping them, because it took only eight seconds before he relented. "Oh alright. I'll tell you," he said, sauntering back and planting himself at Spock's side, pouting mutinously as if bothered by the inability to keep his own secrets. As he moved closer, he was distracted. "Your ears are pointy."
The Vulcan child raised an eyebrow carefully, but he doubted that the human one noticed. "Are you implying that I should take offense to your pointing out of obvious differences in our physical appearances?"
Jim just looked confused. "Naw, they're cool!" he proclaimed, leaning in again to whisper.
Spock was uneasy, although it did not show as he did not move at all. When other children had the intention of getting this close to him, they tended to approach in groups so as to crowd him, trying to provoke and intimidate. While it had been a long time since he had last risen to the bait, he was usually content with assuring himself that they were nothing less than predictable, that their intentions were far too transparent and simple to be of any real danger. Jim Kirk, however, was simply a hazard to the drawing of logical conclusions where intent and motivation were concerned. Spontaneous, unpredictable, brimming with the bluntness of unrefined childish emotions... he was just so, so very human.
Like Amanda, Jim seemed to think that proximity and understanding were an inseparable pair. The closer you were to the other party while attempting to convey a highly confidential matter ("Can't you just call it a secret!?" Jim would possibly have said, incredulous) of great importance, the better. But Spock was prepared to listen, instead of pointing out that there was no need to speak in lowered tones as there were no life-forms in possession of an auditory canal or anything even vaguely resembling one nearby.
Jim's hands were curved around his mouth to supposedly muffle sound, and his fingers were mere millimeters from the tip of Spock's pointed ear. "Don't tell this to my mom. If you ever meet her, I mean," he whispered, eyes round and frightened.
For some reason, Spock found the method of delivery a little distressing. It had nothing to do with the volume of Jim's voice, but rather the slightly ticklish brush of warm air. Heart rate elevating, he thought, as his ears turned faintly green. He attempted to remedy this by regulating his own breathing, nodding slightly as he said, "I understand that the information is confidential... secret."
"It's my step-father." There was a pause, and because of how close Jim was, Spock could hear every unsteady breath as well as his own voice in his head, It's not me. "He's a bastard and I hate him."
Jim drew away almost as soon as he was done with whispered speech, then proceeded to pace around a shrub while rambling to himself angrily. His spontaneous use of gestures increases by approximately forty-six percent when frustrated or agitated, Spock noted with little surprise. But the Vulcan child left the more extensive calculating for later because it still amused him a bit (though he calmly refused to let this show) to watch his companion stomping about as though in pursuit of an imaginary tail.
He found it troubling that he had given himself no chances to contend with the information he had just been entrusted with, and had instead allowed himself the frivolity of thoughts such as this: Like a certain domesticated species native to this planet, he should be kept on a leash.
"Hey!" Jim yelled suddenly, interrupting Spock's train of thought once again. His voice was cheerful and exuberant once more, almost as if he had forgotten all previous agitation. "Now you have to tell me a secret too!"
Spock was taken aback, but the only evidence was a brief flicker of his eyes. Secrets? He had none. He answered anything he was asked with an astounding degree of honesty and objectivity just like he had been taught to, didn't he? There was nothing he was hiding, nothing he would be reluctant to voice, nothing except for one... Perhaps... There was something he might have been reluctant to admit to if asked after all.
"Is it necessary?" He asked as Jim returned to his side and looked at him in expectation, already listening intently to nothing.
"...Yep."
Hesitation. "...I, too, agree that it is only fair that I share a piece of confidential information with you." He then awkwardly shuffled closer, cupping his hands around his mouth like Jim had done, slowly beginning to understand the workings of human nature and the curious rituals of secrecy. 'Here goes', he might have said, but like the child of the planet Vulcan he was, he simply leaned in and said exactly what he wished to convey. "It is illogical for a Vulcan to shed tears, for reasons both biological and-"
"That's not a good secret!" Jim blurted out indignantly as he turned away, and Spock was taken aback again, forced to admit to himself that he had in fact been engaging in sneaky avoidance tactics. Vulcans did not lie.
"No, it is not," he finally said, then dropped his voice to whisper into Jim's ear again. "The true secret is that on occasion, I find myself unable to adhere to the logic of suppressing such unbecoming displays of emotion."
Jim might have been severely lacking in the vocabulary department as compared to the average Vulcan of his own age, but he was still an unusually sharp child. As he turned to look at his new friend, it was the slight twitch at the corner of Spock's mouth which, to Jim's curious eyes, had completely given it away. "You cry?" Jim's voice had undisguised angles of disbelief jutting out in all directions and being aware of it hurt, Spock realized. How illogical.
"You know, I cry too." Jim started. He looked shifty as he went on, gaze fixing itself to the distant horizon. "Just not often. At all." He added self-consciously. "I skinned my knee real bad once and I wasn't even trying to be dangerous."
Spock did not have much practice with identifying such things, but he could sense that Jim was trying to be sympathetic. "I fail to see how relating a personal experience to me is 'comforting', as it does not in any way make the act of shedding tears any less illogical than it already is," he said mildly.
James Tiberius Kirk had the courtesy, and surprisingly, the maturity to look away when he spotted a lone tear making its way down his friend's cheek. Jim's gaze was focused on the ground even before the stray drop of moisture was re-absorbed by logical Vulcan skin. He may not have understood Spock's need to fit in and obey standard Vulcan practice, but he did understand that real men (and big boys) did not cry and that if they did, they did not want to be seen.
By this time, a figure had emerged at the end of the long road. When the rather outdated vehicle whooshed to a stop beside them, Spock was observing the sky with his arms folded neatly behind his back, and Jim was kicking dirt around with his hands stuck deep into his pockets. "It's a good thing I did not have to walk all the way back," Amanda said as she gracefully stepped off the slightly wobbly hovering platform. She thanked the driver of the vehicle graciously even as she was left standing in a cloud of dust which was stirred up as he left.
"Well, I don't think they were informed that they would be ferrying the wife of an ambassador," she addressed her son's back, voice light and revealing none of the tiredness she felt. "It's time to leave, Spock. We have a formal banquet to attend in a few short hours." She took in the way the children were standing apart, not even facing each other. Still, she asked them both at once, "Did you have fun?"
*
It was only after the long, tiring affair that was the formal dinner that Amanda was finally able to have some time with Sarek alone. Spock had been tucked into bed looking distressed and like he'd rather have stayed by his mother's side, but once under the covers he'd refused to budge even if Amanda suspected that those wide eyes were giving away much more than his refusal to speak.
"Spock made a friend today." Amanda informed her husband as she made herself a cup of tea. Sarek did his best to look approving for her benefit, when really, humans and their idealistic notions of 'friendship'. There wasn't going to be one today, but there had been a number of near-arguments caused by the way Amanda's encouraging nature and Sarek's own stubborn unwillingness so easily disagreed.
When Sarek responded to Amanda's statement after a moment, it had nothing to do with his son, indicating that he did not wish to get into a discussion about Spock. To anyone else, it might have seemed rude, dismissive; Amanda was always touched whenever her husband made his characteristically curt yet strangely graceful attempts to steer clear of the topic which inevitably caused frustration (no matter how mild) to his wife.
Sarek was being critical as always, and Amanda had already been expecting to hear what he had to say about the meeting, the meals, their reception at the shuttle port - all in that detached and slightly disdainful Vulcan way, of course. Complaints, she would have called them, if only the manner in which he delivered them didn't make her smile.
He was verbally expressing displeasure at the lack of knowledge on Vulcan culture (Offering them meat at the table? How vulgar, and illogical), was there really anything about it that could possibly cause her amusement? He never quite understood why she so often seemed amused by things he said, and his pride usually kept him from asking her to explain. Amanda's smiles were just something that shouldn't be questioned, for they were one of the tiny, inexplicably comforting constants in his life.
As was that one other gesture of hers. The one where she would purposefully slide her thumb over the back of his hand, and he had to stop for a moment to decide if she had actually touched him, or if everything he detected (certainly not felt) existed only in the minuscule space between them. She wanted to talk about their son. He knew.
"I suppose..." Sarek started, with his expression softening as much as it was possible for a Vulcan's to.
Amanda smiled again and finished the sentence for him. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
Sarek never brought it up with his son, but as far as making friends with Jim Kirk was concerned, Spock had his father's approval.
*
The second time Jim and Spock met was on a morning three days from their previous meeting. Three days ago, they had exchanged amicable goodbyes, the sort that held no promises of ever seeing each other again. With a mother like Winona (sweet and gentle though she was) and the way she came home to see him only to leave again, sometimes bringing strange men along with her (and then one of them had become his step-dad), Jim fancied himself used to people coming and going, leaving and then never coming back.
"SPOCK!" Jim yelled, embarrassment creeping over his face when he immediately realized that he might have sounded just a little too excitable for his age.
All truth be told, the Vulcan child was terrified. "I am aware that you are joyful to see me," he stated stiffly in order to give the appearance of being unruffled. His own assessment of Jim's emotions, as far as Spock was concerned, had been an illogical stab in the dark, although he wasn't aware of the extent to which his subconsciousness had quite naturally contributed.
Spock might as well have been making an unjust accusation, if Jim's defensive reaction was anything to go by. "So what if I'm happy?" he asked, jaw jutting out comically. Spock felt something strange bubbling up inside him. Unknown to him, it was the urge to laugh. Caught up in the moment of confusion and wonder, the child let himself go, and gave in to it. The laugh was a short, uncontrolled sound, but it was undeniable that it was one of mirth. Jim's eyes widened. "Whoa," he said. "Whoa. You laughed."
Laughter was dangerous; it meant that you had let go of the reign you had been taught to keep a tight hold on at all times. Let it go and you fell into an unfamiliar realm, caught in a sea of the illogical, with waves that would batter at you relentlessly and remind you that you'd never been taught to swim. Spock's response to Jim was to keep his mouth shut with lips tightly pressed together. His heart was racing (by Vulcan standards) as he chased a memory, a distant one which allowed a degree of reassuring familiarity. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that for a short period in his early life, he had laughed freely.
Jim thought that it was perfectly fine to let go of the reigns, as long as you kept them in sight so that you could pick them up again whenever you wanted to. At least, he would have, if he had actually been able to come up with such an analogy. Instead, he nodded at Spock's stiffly held expression and said sagely, "You should do that more often. Laugh."
The young half-Vulcan stared as though Jim's ears had gone pointy, or as though he'd sprouted a horn from the middle of his forehead. An eyebrow was raised, curiously.
"Laugh, laugh," Jim reiterated. He waved his hands dramatically like a conductor of music. In his dust-covered brown shirt and loose cargo pants, he looked like a miniature, animated tree. Again, he stuck his lower jaw out and with eyes narrowed, he commanded sternly, "Laugh."
And Spock did, just once. One more sudden, carefree sound of youthful abandon.
*
Eleven days later and they had met three times more, doing mostly mundane things like tour the wide, flat expanses of land and sit in companionable silence beneath the sweltering summer sun. The back of Jim's neck got sunburnt, while Spock's did not as he'd simply pulled the hood of his sensible wear over his head when it was evident that they were going to be spending long periods of time out in the open (which was often).
It was by sheer coincidence that Amanda and Spock had come across Jim that second time. Amanda had been taking her son out for another walk, ignoring his lack of understanding of the concept of a 'stroll', and Jim had been on the way to an uncle's house to drop off a couple of letters that had inexplicably ended up in their mailbox.
While there was no school, Jim was without his usual group of minions, and he was secretly happy that he would not have to tolerate them hanging around him and trying to gain entry into his supposed circle of friends only because he had once flung a large rock through a classroom window and was thus considered 'cool'. They would avoid his home, the reason for this avoidance based solely on the rumour that a teacher had once tried to pay a house visit to discuss Jim's grades, and had been driven away with the decidedly non-verbal crash of a glass against a wall. The rumour was neither disproved nor encouraged, and during the holidays, Jim was gleeful to count on the fact that no one would be paying him surprise visits.
Jim was especially glad to be rid of Johnny. Spock had had to endure Jim's seemingly endless tirade about Johnny. Johnny copied homework. He was taller than half the kids in Jim's class but kind of dim. No one knew where he lived or cared enough to even tail him home. He spoke with a pronounced lisp and had the tendency to stare blankly if a story you were telling him got too long or was too compelling. Jim did not want friends like Johnny, or enemies like those older kids who would corner him and force his head against a wall. "All I want... is for someone to treat me like an equal!" he declared grandly. "And to listen," he added, eyes downcast but mouth a hard line.
"I assure you that I am doing my best to fulfill both requirements."
He nearly clapped his friend clumsily on the back. "Thanks, Spock. You're the best."
It was probably a physically impossible feat, but Spock was positive that he had felt himself glow. Or, at least his ears had glowed. It must have been due to the climate on Earth, so much cooler than that on Vulcan, that made him highly aware that the tips of his ears seemed to have become superheated. He turned his head slightly this way and that as if the minute touches of moving air would cool them down. All he succeeded in was getting his cheeks to burn with a humiliating self-consciousness as well.
Jim noticed. "You're green!" he yelled in surprise, startling Spock, whose only discernible reaction was a slight widening of eyes.
Spock could not find a suitable response to the statement, especially as it could be manipulated to be argued against or have the attention diverted away from its subject. "I am Vulcan," he stated calmly, as though green was now the name of an entirely new alien race.
"You look green," Jim insisted. "Are you sick?" He prodded, suddenly afraid that the origins of the metaphor had a very literal basis in reality.
A physiological response such as blushing deserved a cover that was just as typically human. Spock decided to lie. "I am well. It is merely blood rushing to my face in response to the heat from your sun."
"Your blood is green?" This was amazing and distasteful all at once. Green seemed to be representative of illness and Vegetables Which No One Should Be Made To Eat. Jim stored that bit of information away since it was something that could be pulled out in situations when he felt the need to impress ("So? I bet you don't even know what a Vulcan is! Their blood is green!").
A single nod, then, "The colours of the sky on Vulcan are very different from the ones visible here. A reddish hue is what we most commonly see."
Jim "ooh"-ed appreciatively at the information. "It never gets blue, ever?" he asked, curious and grateful as he stole a glance at the aggressive vividness above them.
It didn't, but Spock found himself wishing that it did.
*
The second last time they met, Spock brought something along with him. It resembled a miniature PADD and was fully programmable to allow the input of up to twenty thousand questions. It was essentially a compressed version of the learning bowls at his school, sans the computerized voice that he was so used to hearing while being quizzed. Ever since they'd arrived on Earth, the Vulcan child had diligently spent at least an hour each day with it, sitting at the dining table of the little farmhouse Amanda had convinced Sarek to rent for his "business trip" (which as far as she was concerned, was a holiday).
"Put that thing away!" Jim demanded when he saw it, relishing the use of an authoritative tone and a line he'd so often heard from the teachers at school. It failed to impress or even interest him; Winona had a PADD of her own, and once she'd shown him that there was nothing more than incomprehensible text and boring rectangular boxes on the display, he'd no longer found it as fascinating. Spock obediently stowed it away, tucking it into a hidden pocket somewhere.
Jim was already well-trained by now, and he had the tendency to stand with hands folded behind his back whenever he got the urge to reach out and wrap his fingers round Spock's wrist to tug him along and drag him in the desired direction. "I've got something to show you," he said, walking stately towards a place away from the road, expecting Spock to follow, which he did.
"Where?" Spock asked. He had learned just as quickly as Jim, and was now dropping excessive lines of inquiry from his speech. Amanda had noticed and was secretly approving; Sarek said nothing of it.
"Tell you when we get there," Jim replied, and then he broke into a run. Spock followed.
They ended up in the musty garage of Jim's house, perched on the red Corvette that had belonged to Jim's father, now under the care of the man Winona had most recently married. "This is my dad's car. My real dad, not that man in the house now," the human child said proudly, giving the bonnet a fond pat. Spock had found it vague familiar, recognizing it from one of Amanda's antique children's picture books. "The roof is retractable," he commented.
"Yeah, it is." After that, he seemed to be deep in thought, and didn't object when Spock pulled the quizzing device out from his pocket and started tapping on the display with the stylus.
Minutes passed. Jim had been staring out at the sky through the tiny squares of the glass window, and Spock had answered exactly sixty-three questions with a ninety-eight point four percent accuracy - he had entered the last answer too early when Jim had edged closer and nudged him with an elbow. Spock looked up at him. "I can drive this. Sam taught me how," Jim was saying as he tapped the bonnet for emphasis. "I found this book in mom's room. I wasn't supposed to be inside, mom said I couldn't, but Sam and I looked through the book together and he said it was easy, anyone can drive that piece of junk, he said."
His voice dropped to a whisper and Spock's ear twitched when the side of Jim's palm brushed against it. "I know where she keeps the keys."
They were tiptoeing across the kitchen when Jim banged clumsily into a chair. It made a painfully loud scraping sound as its legs dragged across the tiles. A sudden bellow of "JIM!" from the living room startled the both of them, causing Spock to hit his head on a dish rack and send some cutlery falling to the floor with a noisy clatter. "Ow," he said in an un-Vulcanlike manner as he rubbed at his head.
"Run," Jim urged, clamping his fingers round Spock's sleeve and pulling him out of the back door as the voice of his step-father carried out after them, warning him that he'd better not be trying to sneak into his mother's room again.
Out of breath but laughing (Jim) and frantically trying to smooth down hair that was in a mess (Spock), they came to a stop when the farmhouse was about the size of the car that they had gone there to see. "Hey, hey," Jim said, and in his exhaustion, he rested a hand on Spock's shoulder and leaned heavily against him, sending them both tumbling to the ground. "I'll steal that car someday. It's not his anyway."
Spock picked himself up, vigorously dusting his clothes off and cringing inwardly at the dirt that stubbornly clung to them. "Stealing is wrong," he said eventually.
"Yeah," Jim agreed from where he was lying with his back to the ground. "He stole my dad's car. I'll steal it back and drive it real far away. Where no one can find it."
"It is illogical to assume that such a place to hide a large object in would be easy to find," Spock reasoned. "It is possible that you might be followed."
"No I won't." Jim was stubborn. "I'll drive it out really, really far. So far that I'll have to drive till I'm... thirty!" The exaggeration left him in awe of his own declaration, contemplating the mysteries of adulthood and what it meant to be three decades old and if he would find anyone at his unknown destination or pick anyone up along the way.
The logic of the statement troubled Spock. It wasn't that the primitive Terran vehicle was likely to degenerate beyond all repair before Jim could attain his highly unrealistic goal. The steeply-angled eyebrows revealed an undesirably human display of selfish emotion when they furrowed slightly. Spock inquired, "Does this mean that we will never meet again before you reach thirty years of age?"
"I don't know," Jim confessed. He was now thinking about the daunting prospect of getting married to a girl he might meet while on his epic journey to find a hiding place for the Corvette. Maybe she'd force a kiss on him, like Susan at school who was almost an entire head taller than he was.
"If I may be permitted to ask..."
"Yeah," Jim cut in absently.
"Contact me when I am back on Vulcan." Spock's dark eyes were hopeful. "It is fairly easy to reach us as my father is an ambassador."
Jim raised both eyebrows at him. "Sure." Winona would not be back for at least half a year more, but he figured that he could always get Sam to help. There was an oddly tense moment where Spock attempted a tight-lipped smile, then, a laugh from Jim and, "Spock! You're green again!"
*
The last time they met was the day before Spock and his parents were due to return to Vulcan. Spock hadn't said a word about it, not that he was not intending to, but Amanda beat her son to it without even realizing, when she handed Jim a tiny data-chip containing information on how to contact them on Vulcan. "Come visit us next summer," she'd said with a smile. "Come visit us, and bring your mother along. We'd love to meet her."
"You're leaving?!" Jim had blurted out, perturbed expression making his little face look almost comical. Then he glared at Spock with a mixture of childish hurt and anger. "He didn't tell me!" he appealed to Amanda, clearly troubled. "Can I stay over?" Then followed a lengthy explanation which included how he could sneak back into the house and grab some clean clothes and make his brother Sam promise not to tell, and how the man in the house wouldn't even know because he hardly could be bothered to check nowadays, especially when he had friends over and they played card games till late into the night and roared with laughter all the time ("Which is kind of scary") and sometimes got into arguments and fights and-
Amanda had let him talk, only nodding at intervals, then, she stopped him with a firm grip on his shoulder and a gentle shake. "It's alright, Jim. You can stay, but promise you'll go home tomorrow. You live there, don't you?" she asked, pointing to the distant farmhouse. "We can drop you off tomorrow, on our way to the shuttleport."
"Really?" Jim said in disbelief, tone of persuasion all gone. "YEEESSS!"
*
It was the pointed ears and the straight-cut bangs and the posture. "You look a lot like your dad," Jim commented, hands folded politely into position behind his back. Spock stole a glance at Sarek. Sarek remained silent, his face impassive. Amanda chuckled long enough for the three of them. "Yes, yes he does," she said, patting Jim on the head. "He has my eyes though." She twinkled at Sarek, and he knew she was mocking his belief that Spock's eyes were excessively expressive.
The farmhouse, mostly rented out to passing travelers or holidayers, was fitted with a simple food synthesizer not unlike the ones on starships. Jim was thoroughly enjoying his dinner of milk and cereal, having chosen to have breakfast at this time for the sheer perversity of it. "Why's yours not crunchy?" He asked through a mouthful, alerted to to fact that whatever cereal-like food it was that Spock, Sarek and Amanda were eating, he was making twice as much noise as they were.
"Don't talk with your mouth full, dear," Amanda chided gently over her cup of tea. Jim responded by grinning at Spock, cheeks still bulging with cereal, to which both Spock and his father shook their heads, the slight movements seeming practically synchronized.
The evening seemed to pass too quickly. Jim had asked many questions. Amanda had answered them all and laughed more than she had ever laughed in a year, Spock had watched his mother quietly and nodded whenever she'd looked to him for confirmation, and Sarek was secretly baffled by the endlessness of this particular human child's chattering. Before Amanda had had the chance to ask if the two children were ready for bed, Jim was stifling a huge yawn and Spock was starting to slouch just the slightest in his seat.
She made sure that the both of them had washed their hands and cleaned their teeth, then ushered them into the tiny bedroom that Spock had been using since the beginning of their stay. The bed was large - too large for even two children. Amanda pulled back the covers and waited till the both of them had obediently crawled under them so that she could tuck them in. "Spock sleeps with his eyes open," she cheekily told Jim, knowing that such information would delight and fascinate him. Indeed, he looked over at Spock as though wondering if his friend was already asleep.
"Good night, mother," Spock said, evidently disgruntled. She ran her fingertips over his hair gently, then turned the lights off on her way out, leaving the door just open a crack.
"Spock. Spock, are you asleep?" Jim whispered at the ceiling barely a few moments later.
"I am awake," came the solemn but sleepy reply.
The human child shifted and pulled the covers up to his chin. "Could I have a good-night kiss?" he asked hesitantly. "I miss my mom."
Spock leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to Jim's cheek. "Good night, Jim" he said in a soft voice, trying as hard as he possibly could to imitate the tone Amanda used when she unfailingly came into his room to tuck him into bed. His heart was hammering in his side, his chest swimming with a certain tightness, and if it had been a little brighter, Jim would have accused him of being green.
"I'll miss you, Spock," Jim mumbled into the covers, and inched closer until his arm was aligned with the Vulcan's. "I like you. Everyone else is boring..."
*
For Jim, morning came sooner than desired. Spock was suspiciously fresh-faced though charactaristically stoic, already seated at the dining table and dressed to leave while Jim was still stumbling out of the bed, nearly falling flat on his face when the covers got tangled around his feet. "'s not a school day, mom," he said blearily, rubbing at his eyes as he slid into the chair between Sarek's and Amanda's. Opposite him, Spock silently watched him dig into his breakfast of mac 'n' cheese.
The goodbyes were uneventful in the way goodbyes tended to be when both parties were reluctant to leave, but neither willing to make any fuss about leaving. "Bye," Jim said simply, as he stepped off the vehicle that would be ferrying Spock and his family to the shuttleport where they would board a shuttle to take them them up to the awaiting Vulcan ship. As promised, they had dropped him off home along the way. Amanda smiled, Sarek nodded, and Spock did a tiny, awkward wave. "Goodbye." he said.
Jim Kirk watched the vehicle get smaller and smaller before he started towards the house. Then-
He wasn't quite sure what made him do it, but the next thing he knew, he had burst in through the door, not caring who he had woken with the noise. Keys, keys, he chanted to himself in his head as he snatched the keys right off a hook beside the kitchen counter and made a dash for, not the car, but the solid wooden box which contained the ones for it. He wasn't allowed to- wasn't meant to be in this room, wasn't meant to be holding that set of keys and now this one - he'd managed to get them after he'd fumbled with the latch of the box and it had gotten stuck and he'd simply smashed the box against a sideboard to get to the contents. It wasn't the first time he'd gone for the car keys and it certainly wouldn't be his last.
It was a good thing that the garage door was automated and the hinges well-oiled. He could still hear Sam's yells ringing in his ears as he sped off, wind screaming in his ears as he stomped his foot down on the accelerator and hoped with all his heart that he wouldn't hear the wail of sirens from a police hovercycle. Speed limits, he remembered. There were limits, and if he stuck to a speed which didn't make the scenery whiz by that fast, it was less likely that he would be taken notice of - never mind that he was driving an antique car in a way that seemed like it would careen off the road at any moment. He slowed down, just a little.
Luck seemed to be on his side, and the road he was on was nearly always deserted anyway. His hands were now as steady as he could get them to be, and the car wasn't swerving from side to side as much. He was exhilarated and couldn't wait to tell Sam about his first time driving the old Corvette on his own, couldn't wait to thank his older brother for taking him on those long drives to the shuttleport and all those other places whenever their step-father was out. He would run away, he decided. If running away was a crime, then this was the perfect getaway car.
The road was long, straight, and thankfully could be covered in less than half an hour. There were guards with phasers at the shuttleport, but Jim knew enough to brake such that the Corvette came to a jerky but gradual stop right in front of the security gates. "What the-" One of them started as the child stepped out of the car and rebelliously gave him the finger. Out of the corner of his eye, Jim thought he saw a familiar face at a large window, staring at him from the interior of an ungainly-looking shuttlecraft that was just beginning its slow but steady ascent off the ground.
"SPOCK!" he shouted, waving his arms frantically and dodging the two guards with expert ease. One of them caught him by the arm, but he struggled and raised his free one, grinning at Spock as he formed the split-fingered Vulcan salute. Spock mirrored the gesture, and he looked stunned, helpless, pleased, or all of the above. He was mouthing something that no one on the other side of the transparent panel could hear, but Jim knew what he was saying since Spock would know that the meaning of anything else would be completely lost to him anyway. "Live long and prosper!" he yelled back.
"C'mon, kid, that's enough," the guard said gruffly as he managed to catch hold of Jim's other arm and pin it behind his back. The child was still grinning though, and he didn't stop until the shuttlecraft that was leaving was completely out of sight.