Chapter Text
“—and would be just for a few days—”
“ I really don’t—”
“Jim, please. Sam won’t answer my calls.”
“….fine. Yea. I’ll be there, Mom.”
“You sure are quiet,” McCoy says suspiciously as he reaches for the pepper shaker. “Y’know it works better if you use the fork to stab the food.”
Jim doesn’t look up, just continues to push a cherry tomato around his plate like he has been for the past few minutes. The earlier conversation swirls in his head like storm clouds rolling in. It takes effort to ignore the way his skin starts to crawl as he imagines her tired face on the vid screen, eyes pleading.
“My mom called.”
McCoy doesn’t answer right away. He shakes pepper on his potatoes and takes a bite before speaking. “Everything alright?”
Jim looks out the window of the cafeteria, watching as a couple of cadets walk across the courtyard. He’s unsure how to answer for a moment, never allowing his mind to settle on any one emotion since the call.
“They’re moving Frank to hospice. He’s sick. Liver and kidney failure,” he says finally, voice flat.
“Well…I s’pose that’s what happens when you pickle your insides with Hawkeye vodka for 30 years,” McCoy shoots him a sympathetic look. Jim smiles humorlessly and nods in agreement. “So she’s just calling to let you know?”
“Not just that, she wants me to come h—” Jim hesitates, the word catching in his throat, “—to go back to Riverside for a few days to be there. Apparently she’s selling the house and wants my help going through some stuff.”
“Sorry, kid,” McCoy says, and Jim knows the condolences aren’t about Frank. “Are you gonna go?”
Jim pierces the tomato and looks up to meet McCoy’s eye.
“Yea, tomorrow,” he points the fork at him, “and you’re going with me.”
“The hell I am,” he replies with a snort and picks up his glass of iced tea. “I’ve been to Riverside, if you’ll recall. Once was enough for me. Looks like the kinda place you’d see creepy kids crawling out of the corn. Speaking of creepy—why don’t you ask Spock?”
Jim follows McCoy’s gaze behind him to see Spock approaching their table briskly with a tray of food in his hands.
“I’m not asking Spock—”
“Ask me what, Captain?” Spock sets his tray at the table and sits, scooting his chair close.
Jim makes a pained face. “Spock, we’re on leave, don’t call me—”
“He wants to know if you’ll go with him to Iowa tomorrow, he’s got a plus-one.”
Jim shoots McCoy a dirty look that gets ignored.
Spock unfolds his thin paper napkin and places it in his lap, head quirking inquisitively. “A plus-one? May I ask what sort of event we are attending before I make my decision?”
“Oh, Jim’s stepdad’s going into hospice.” McCoy says, matter-of-factly as he sets his glass down with a smack of his lips.
Spock raises an eyebrow.
“Frank isn’t the reason I’m going. I’m going because my mom asked for help going through some stuff at the house before she sells it. Thanks, by the way,” Jim adds with a pointed look to McCoy, who shrugs and continues eating.
Bones is the only one that gets to hear about his mom or Sam or Frank or Riverside, a privilege that Jim may soon be taking away. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Spock, it’s just he’s had more drunken late nights commiserating with Bones. Plus, emotional vulnerability isn’t either of their strong suits. Jim slips sometimes, letting some things through the cracks when he’s talking to himself on the bridge, or when he and Spock have their own late nights playing chess. Spock never presses because he’s Spock, but Jim can tell that the information is stored away in that massive Vulcan brain for later use.
“Your mother, Winona Kirk?”
“That would be her,” Jim isn’t hungry anymore, if he even was in the first place. He taps his thumb anxiously on the end of his fork for a moment and stares down at his plate. An ugly old anxiety runs through him like a chill, one that really only rears its head when he’s truly under stress. After a moment he methodically continues to eat his salad. “But I honestly don’t even know if I’m going to go.”
McCoy frowns. “Jim, you just told me that you were—”
“It doesn’t matter!” Jim exclaims, skin starting to prickle. The table next to them looks over. He sighs and lowers his tone, shoulders slumping. “It doesn’t matter what I said. Now, I’m saying I don’t know if I’m going.”
“If I may interject,” Spock’s voice floats between them. “I believe visiting the Captain’s home town could be quite enriching. I have seen much of the western coast but not the more central part of the country. I know very little about the region and would be interested to do some research for personal growth as well as accompany the captain to his—to Frank’s transition into hospice.”
Jim stares at him.
Bullshit.
Spock could barely be torn away from his station long enough for their shoreleave in San Francisco while the Enterprise underwent routine maintenance. There’s no way he actually wants to go, so why is he offering?
“See? You’re not going to deny Spock enrichment, are you?” McCoy says waving a hand, a little too pleased with himself.
The image of Spock standing outside the house he grew up in makes Jim feel nauseous. He forces himself to swallow his last bite of food. It sits heavy in his stomach.
“Listen, I appreciate it, Spock. But this wouldn’t really be a fun trip.” Jim begins piling his refuse onto his tray.
He needs to be done with this conversation now, needs to go find something to take his mind off of the whole thing.
“I would have no expectation or desire for ‘fun’, Jim,” Spock says, the corners of his mouth just barely upturned. “I would be pleased with some basic data collection.”
Shoulders tense, he imagines Spock moving through the farmhouse with his tricorder, taking scans and measurements. Frowning slightly. “This place seems to be uninhabitable, Captain.”
Jim stands to leave and McCoy opens his mouth to say something, but Jim holds up a hand.
“I don’t even know if I’m going, but—” he ignores McCoy’s scowl, and instead looks at Spock. “But if I do, I’ll keep you in mind.”
—
–I’m sure if I talked to Frank he’d tell me a very different story—
full marks again, Jimmy, my little genius—
you know that I’m in the air for another two months, if you would just behave for once—
commemoration vigil goes until 9:00 and then we’ll get ice cream for the birthday boy—
Do you understand what it’s like to get a call that—
I’m a horrible mother for ever sending you to that place—
You know that after your brother left—
Be home soon—
Just for a few days—
Be home soon.
Jim inhales sharply through his nose and blinks, bringing himself back into the present.
He sits up in bed and looks around his room, one reserved for high ranking officers. The ceilings are too high and the room itself too big. Too silent. Too steady. Jim hadn’t realized how much he’d miss the sheer amount of noise that the Enterprise made until he was suddenly without it.
“Lights 40%…” Jim instructs, rubbing his eyes with his palms. He reaches for his PADD on the nightstand.
After lunch he’d tried to keep himself busy. He’d gone on a run and signed off on maintenance checks before using the combat simulator until he could barely stand. Anything so he didn’t have to think about Riverside or his family.
Family.
The word feels wrong in his brain somehow, like when the universal translator misjudges alien lexicon and substitutes a word that was understood to be ‘close enough’ but still causes dissonance.
Is that really what they are? Have they ever been that?
—
“—since he wants to be so fucking ungrateful! He’s lucky I got him anything after the shit he pulled! D’you know last week that little asshole—”
Jim turns in his bed to face the ceiling. He doesn’t bother to try to muffle the sound of Frank screaming from the dining room, even though he’s the subject. Frank’s wrath is inescapably loud and if there’s a good way to block it out, he hasn't found it yet.
Jim is 12 and it’s Christmas for another 20 minutes, not that it’s felt like a holiday at all. His mother’s return to Earth had been delayed due to a minor rescue operation. He hasn’t seen her yet. Not for almost six months. Jim had barely heard the door shut when Frank’s heavy steps creaked through the farmhouse and he started in.
He strains his ears trying to hear his mother’s voice, steady and serious. Frank’s voice interrupts her, echoing.
“I don’t want any fucking excuses, I’m tired of it, Winona! Both of your brats need to learn—”
Jim turns to get out of bed and pretends like he can’t hear Frank’s threats. He’s been threatening a lot more lately. Frank can yell and grab and push, but he’s never hit them before. Sam says he’s a coward that doesn’t think he has it in him. Jim isn’t so sure.
Jim walks in practiced silence, toe to heel, over the warped wood of his bedroom floor to the door he’d left open just enough to slip through. He waits for a beat before walking the 7 steps to Sam’s room, sidestepping a creaky floorboard.
Jim carefully opens his brother’s door and is hit with a gust of biting cold air coming from the open window on the opposite wall. Sam has one leg over the sill and is moving to duck his head under it, a backpack slung over his shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Jim asks in a panic at full volume, causing his brother to flinch and wheel around, the contents of the backpack clinking as the bag threatens to fall off his arm. Sam bangs his head loudly on the window and bites his lip in pain. He looks at Jim with a murderous expression.
They both hold very still for a moment. Waiting.
There’s silence from downstairs. Bad sign.
Jim’s heart races and he gives Sam an apologetic look as they wait for the sound of feet on the stairs.
Jim holds his breath…
…and lets it out again in relief when he hears the clink of a bottle cap and the murmured voice of his mother followed by a grunt from Frank, who must’ve tired himself out.
“Are you stupid? You’re going to get me in even more trouble,” Sam hisses, eyes angry, brow furrowed.
“Where are you going?” Jim repeats.They’ve talked about running away more times than he can remember, but he didn’t know it was serious. Sam can’t leave. Not without him.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You can’t run away, Mom just got home, she’d be so sa—”
“I know Mom just got home, Jimmy. Thanks to Jackass screaming at her, the whole town probably knows that Mom’s home. Merry Christmas.”
Sam looks bitter. These days he’s usually bitter at their mother for leaving them with Frank while she runs off to space. Jim tries to defend her whenever he can, but secretly, he’s bitter too. He just feels too guilty to admit it.
Sam turns and begins to duck under the window again and Jim’s heart drops.
“Sam, It’s freezing outside, you can’t just leave,” he’s having a hard time keeping his voice low with his throat so tight. There is no snow on the ground yet, but the temperature has reached -20F with the windchill the past few nights and Sam’s not even wearing a hat.
Sam hesitates and stares out the window into the black night. He sighs.
“Listen, I’ll be back in the morning and we can hang out,” he stares at Jim, eyes softer than they were before. “They won’t even know I was gone. Okay?”
It’s not okay.
Still, he nods. Watches Sam go.
Jim sits at a chair , leaning with his head propped in his arms on the sill of the open window. He stares out as Sam crosses the empty field behind the house. Watches him as long as he can before he disappears into the night.
Jim lets the frigid air sting his face until it’s painful, and then until it’s numb.
Jim can’t remember how his mother found him the next morning, just knows he woke up in the hospital being treated for mild hypothermia. That, and Sam had returned home to a very pissed off Frank and then didn’t talk to Jim until New Years.
He blinks and realizes he’s been scrolling through the messages on his PADD aimlessly.
What does she even need help with? He sure as hell isn’t going to sort through Frank’s garbage for him.
Maybe the boxes in the attic, filled with reminders of his mother’s happier times. The life she should have had.
No, he doesn’t want to do that, either, and shouldn’t have to. There are reasons that Jim hasn’t been back to Riverside since he enlisted.
Probably all of the same reasons why Sam skipped town for good at 16 and moved on with his life.
The person Jim used to look up to the most is a stranger now. He does something in the sciences, Jim isn’t sure what, and lives very happily on Deneva with his pregnant wife. Or at least she might still be pregnant. He can’t really remember when he and Sam spoke last, a thought that makes a distant part of him ache.
Jim wants to call his brother and yell at him. Doesn’t he owe her? After he abandoned her? Jim wants to tell him to be a man and just go deal with it. Jim had to deal with it after Sam left.
Had to deal with their mother growing more detached than she already was, with Frank’s unrestrained rage, with fucking Tarsus. All of that while Sam got to start his life over and pretend nothing ever happened, while Jim never stopped having to deal with it. With everything.
At some point, Jim selected Spock’s direct communication tab without realizing.
He stares at it.
Would it really be so bad taking Spock? He knows it wouldn’t be. He and Spock had traversed the galaxy together for 9 months and managed to share a bathroom while doing it. Jim had gotten used to most of Spock’s idiosyncrasies and had even grown fond of more than a few of them.
But the problem isn’t Spock. The problem is that he’s spent his life burying exposed, raw nerves and if Spock were to see them, he’ll be incapable of not poking at them. For science. Spock has without a doubt read his personal file as a bedtime story and learned everything about him that was objective or measurable.
Jim knows he looks impressive on paper.
Spock has expectations of him and of how people perceive him. Jim usually tells himself that he doesn’t care what others think and usually can believe his own lie, but not this time. He unfortunately cares very much what Spock thinks and has worked very hard to make himself better than he was when they met. More considerate, more approachable, more level-headed. If Spock went with and saw him broken down to the shitty kid he was when he left Riverside, saw the ways people looked at him, surely his perception of his captain would change.
But what’s the alternative?
As if on cue, the PADD chirps and a new message pops up in their chat.
[01:09:48] Comm. Spock —
Captain, I have attached the systematic review of the bio-indication sensors to be signed off at your discretion.
Jim hesitates. Even though Jim’s frequently up, Spock rarely messages so late.
[01:10:15] Capt. Kirk, J. —
thanks will look in the morning
He receives a reply almost immediately.
[01:10:20] Comm. Spock —
Understood, Jim. Please let me know if there is anything else you need.
Jim rereads the words. He understands now. This isn’t about the report. Spock is playing his first pawn.
But there’s no way Spock actually wants to go. There is nothing of interest there for him, or anyone else for that matter. No, Spock wants to go out of obligation to him as the first officer of the Enterprise. A responsibility. A duty. Jim admires Spock’s loyalty. More than admires it. It’s dizzying to know that if Jim said ‘jump’ Spock would simply ask ‘what is the height of the jump you wish for me to achieve?’
The PADD chirps again.
[01:10:42] Comm. Spock —
Our conversation at lunch piqued my interest and I took the time to do some initial research on Iowa. I was not aware that Iowa was a top producer of corn and hogs.
[01:10:59] Capt. Kirk, J. —
Iowa is a top producer of bad smells & meth
Jim chuckles, imagining sharp, scrunched eyebrows as Spock tries to interpret his joke. The ‘typing…’ icon pops up and disappears three times before he receives a response.
[01:11:21] Comm. Spock —
Understood.
Jim’s smile fades and he drums the stylus rapidly against his leg.
[01:13:14] Comm. Spock —
I apologize if my asking to accompany you to your hometown was overstepping a boundary. I hope that you are not reconsidering going to assist your mother on my account. I would not take it personally if you preferred to go alone.
Jim stops the movement of the stylus.
Checkmate.
The alternative is going to Riverside alone.
No buffer between him and the past, between everything he’s pushed away. Between who he is and who he was.
[01:14:45] Capt. Kirk, J. —
We’ll need to leave here at 1000 to get to the shuttle station on time
[01:14:51] Comm. Spock —
I will meet you in the lobby at 0945.