Chapter Text
Starfleet Academy is a little better than school was, back in Iowa. The courses are faster, the students smarter, the professors more interested—Jim is still bored to tears sometimes, but he mostly goes to his classes, and he does his work and he plays chess and sometimes he walks into San Francisco itself and just wanders. It’s a different world from Riverside—maybe he would’ve come here sooner, if he’d really understood that there were places that weren’t Iowa or Tarsus or a starbase hospital. He eats and drinks his way through the neighborhoods, drags Bones along or sometimes another cadet or two. He wishes his mom had just moved them here instead of trying to hold on to the last vestiges of George Kirk in Iowa.
People still like him, and he still likes them, even more now. There’s such a wide selection, and Bones frowns when he says things like that and gives him unnecessary antibiotic hypos. Gaila is his favorite, and he likes to think he’s hers, but there are a lot of people out there. He sleeps with most of the people in his class who are interested in men, goes back for seconds with some of them. He lets them touch his mark—taboo, but it adds a kind of thrill, even if Jim never feels anything more than pressure on his skin. At a certain point his roommate says “Just stop bringing them back here,” and that’s what leads to Jim on his knees in a dark classroom, Gary’s cock thrusting into his mouth while Gaila works a finger inside him—
“Cadets!”
The voice is sharp and unfamiliar, but Jim can’t exactly turn his head to see who it is. Gary says, “Commander!” Jim sucks thoughtfully at the head of his cock and appreciates Gary’s strangled noise.
The voice is mildly disgusted, probably Vulcan. “Your behavior is highly inappropriate,” he says, enunciating heavily. “You have been assigned quarters, have you not?”
Gary releases his grip on the back of Jim’s neck, which allows Jim to turn on his knees a little and say, “Roommate got sick of me. Told me to do my carousing somewhere else.” His voice is a little hoarse. In the dim light, he can only see the man’s profile—from the ears, definitely Vulcan.
“You should do your carousing somewhere else private, Cadet.” The voice is still sharp.
“Are you just assuming we’re cadets? Or can you see our uniform pips from there?”
“From your behavior, it is a logical inference that you are cadets.”
“So—” Gary slaps a hand over Jim’s mouth and he shuts up. Gaila takes the opportunity to slide a second finger into him, which is a lot more distracting.
“We apologize, Commander,” Gary says. “We won’t do it again.”
“That would be for the best,” the Vulcan agrees, and leaves.
They do finish there, but they stop using classrooms after that. All in all, it’s not the worst thing Jim’s ever been caught doing.
* * * * *
He doesn’t see the Vulcan again until he’s accused of cheating in front of the entire class of cadets. “I believe I have the right to face my accuser,” he says.
His accuser—Spock—stands and speaks, and Jim knows that voice cold, even if he never saw the man’s face. It sends a shiver down his spine, remembering what Spock caught him doing, even as it makes him angry. Maybe he should take that as a warning sign, the way his body reacts to the disdain of this Vulcan.
In the chaos that follows—the attack on Vulcan, the massacre of most of his cadet class—he forgets about it—until the moment that Spock goes to use the damn Vulcan death grip, or whatever it’s called. Spock’s fingers must brush his mark as they close on his body, and oh, oh, this is what it’s supposed to feel like when someone touches the mark, his mind sparks as he gets a mental hit of Spock’s rage, his body arches and stiffens on his way to unconsciousness—
Jim wakes up in a goddamn escape pod on a snowy hell planet—Class M his ass, this is like the inverse of a Class Y—every nerve in his body still firing like crazy, and he tells himself that’s because the Vulcan nerve pinch fucked with his whole body. Maybe everything he felt when Spock grabbed him, it was just because of that.
It’s a long and very fucking cold walk-and-then run to safety, where an old man who could be Spock’s grandfather puts a hand on his face and shoves information into his mind. He learns what’s so important about Nero. He learns that Spock is emotionally compromised. He learns how to take back the ship. If he learns anything else, well, he doesn’t believe it.
Once he gets back to the ship, it’s painful to say what he must to Spock. Jim has never been that guy, the one to find vulnerable places and jab them, and he wants to do it even less to Spock. If his own mom had just died—he doesn’t think he’d be able to stand, let alone try to command a starship.
When he says what he has to, Spock roars and attacks him. He punches Jim over and over, gets his hands around Jim’s throat and squeezes until the world starts to go dark. Jim desperately wants him to touch the mark again, just brush it—what a way for Jim Kirk to die, choked to death by his soulmate in a fit of rage because he said Spock never loved his mother. Spock releases him eventually and the air burns in Jim’s throat as he gasps it in, coughs hard, gasps in more air.
Spock storms away and Jim wants to say, Wait, come back, I’m sorry, I only needed command—but matters are too urgent. He sees Uhura—Nyota—kiss Spock goodbye before they beam to Nero’s ship and that stings a little, and what a disaster this is. On the upside, they’re almost certainly going to die, even though he assures Spock that isn’t the case, and he won’t have to worry about figuring it out.
* * * * *
They don’t die. Enterprise limps back toward Earth, and everyone walks around with a stunned kind of relief. Jim finally goes to sickbay to let Bones exclaim in outrage at the collar of bruises around his neck—what comes of being choked by an angry Vulcan and then a slightly less angry Romulan. Spock comes in while Bones is working and says, “Captain—I must apologize for my earlier behavior.”
“Chin down,” Bones orders, and Jim obliges.
“Don’t worry about it, Spock. I was trying to provoke you anyway. It was a natural reaction.” Spock is deathly silent for a moment. “I’m sorry for what I said about your mother,” Jim says, and Spock still doesn’t react. Jim realizes that, with his head tilted down like this, his mark is fully exposed. “Bones,” Jim says, his voice raspy. “Would you give us a minute?”
Bones grumbles something threatening, but he leaves.
“So. I guess it looks familiar,” Jim says. Spock doesn’t answer. “Or you’re struck dumb because you’ve just never seen such a crummy soul-mark like that before.”
“I am already betrothed,” Spock says stiffly. “Vulcans do not place the same significance on such a marking as humans do.”
“Oh.” Jim has to admit that he’d never considered this possibility—meeting his theoretical soulmate just to get turned down flat. “You know, you’re not married yet. Until then, we could just—” Then he stops. Jim Kirk is many things, but he’s neither stupid nor masochistic enough to think it would be a good idea to bond fully with Spock in the service of great sex just to have to give him up in a year or two when he ties the knot with his Vulcan fiancée.
“I am in a—relationship with Nyota.” Jim wants to turn around to see Spock’s face, but everything in this moment is acutely painful. “I do not seek a different—entanglement.”
“But she knows. About your fiancée.”
“Of course.” Spock sounds insulted. “I would not enter into such a relationship without revealing such a fundamental fact. My fiancée is also aware.”
“Right,” Jim says. “Obviously.” Nice when people aren’t jealous.
“I understand that human marks change,” Spock tells him, and Jim has the horrifying realization that he’s trying to be comforting. “After I am fully bonded in the Vulcan manner, it is likely that your mark will change to something else and you will find another.”
“Yours has never changed?” Jim does turn then to find Spock staring at him. “It’s always been like mine?”
“Vulcan marks do not change.”
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Jim had a different soulmate before Tarsus, but what happened there made him—right for Spock? What a stupid arbitrary joke from the universe. “Can I see it?” That escapes his mouth before he can think better of it. What’s the point in seeing it, when he’s never going to touch it—when they’re never going to seal the bond, or whatever? Apparently Jim is enough of a masochist to ask for this.
Spock hesitates for a long moment. “I do not see what productive purpose—”
“Please,” and he hates the note of desperation in his voice.
“Very well.” Spock very cautiously pulls the waistband of his uniform down just enough to reveal that empty bisected circle on the jut of his hip. Jim stares greedily at it, wants to press his fingers to it, his lips—Spock must feel some of that, because he looks acutely uncomfortable and settles his uniform back into place. “I will return to my duties now,” Spock says. “I wish you a speedy recovery.” Then he’s gone.
Bones comes back into the room with an expression that suggests he was listening and a bottle of whiskey in one hand. He thinks Jim drinks too much, so it’s a pretty grim sign when he willingly hands over liquor. “Sorry kid,” he says. Bones doesn’t try to soften the blow by saying something like “who’d want to be bonded to a green-blooded hobgoblin like that anyway,” which Jim appreciates, just puts a hand on his shoulder and lets him drink in peace.
Jim is drunk, which is the only reason his good sense is suppressed enough that he goes to find Uhura. She’s alone in the transmission lab, replaying a Klingon transmission aloud with a frown on her face, when Jim walks in and asks, “Can I talk to you?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Smelling like that? Do you think that’s a good idea, Captain?”
Jim sits down a couple meters away from her and holds up his hands to indicate no threat here. “Sorry I was such an ass to you when we met.” Maybe he can just do an apology tour of the ship.
Uhura stops the transmission. “You needed to drink just to get the courage to tell me that?”
“What I’m going to say—doesn’t mean anything. For you. You should know. It’s not going to affect anything.”
She looks increasingly alarmed, which wasn’t his goal. “Captain—”
“D’you know what my soul-mark looks like?”
Obviously not where Uhura thought the conversation was going to go. “Please don’t tell me you’re about to say that we match.”
He laughs. “If only. Would you look at it? Back of my neck.” He doesn’t wait for her reply, only leans forward to press his forehead against the cool surface of the console. He hears her walk over, and then hears her sharp inhale.
“You match—”
“Mmhm.” Jim draws in a long breath and then lifts his head slowly. He turns his head and he already knows the pity he’ll see on Uhura’s face.
“You know that Vulcans—”
“Oh, he told me. Very specifically, he told me. And that he’s in a relationship with you until then and doesn’t want any other entanglements.” He laughs a little hysterically. “You know what I almost offered?”
There’s something like horror dawning on her face. “You’re not that stupid.”
“What, to take whatever I can get for as long as I can get it and know I’ll be wrecked when it ends?” Jim shakes his head slowly. “Moot point. He isn’t.”
“Are you asking me to end things with him?” Uhura’s voice is careful, but he hears the suspicion in it.
Jim shakes his head again. “Nnnnnnno. Wouldn’t matter and I’m not that guy—not if it won’t happen for real, anyway. I just—had to tell someone who likes him. Bones is trying to be sympathetic, but—”
Uhura pats his shoulder too. “You’re drunk,” she tells him. “Go lie down in your quarters before you do something you’ll regret.”
He goes to his quarters and thinks about comming his mom, but that feels too pathetic. What’s she going to say? “Sorry to hear it, your dad was my soulmate and I only got four years with him”? They haven’t talked as much since he went to Frank’s funeral wasted and brought along a very nice girl that Frank would’ve called a floozy. Jim should tell her what Frank was really like, maybe, but it would only make her feel bad.