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sprite-writes · 1 year

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all I want for christmas (is you)

Leonard “Bones” McCoy/Reader (Original Female Character)

Summary: McCoy finds himself wrapped up in the Enterprise annual gift exchange, and for some reason, this Christmas gift feels a hell of a lot more important than just a Christmas gift.

Maybe it’s got something to do with who it’s for.

Word Count: 6,463

A/N: guys I swear this was suppose to be a 2000 word drabble for the holidays but its a whole chapter now idk, I hope you enjoy! as always special thanks to @lightning-writes

“Lieutenant, is there a reason you haven’t drawn a name yet?”

“I need to feel all the papers! That’s how you pick the best one– duh.” She swirls her hand around the bowl once more, rubbing the notes between her fingers. Spock stares patiently.

“Is there a best one to be picked? My understanding of the secret Santa tradition was to be given a random partner.”

“There sure is, and it’s... this one!” she says as she finally plucks the blue sticky note. “It was calling to me.” She unfolds the paper like it's about to self-destruct, and it reveals its neat loopy handwriting.

CMO McCoy

She blinks.

Oh. Leonard.

She blinks again.

It’s Leonard!

She laughs to herself, and Spock raises an eyebrow.

“I assume you’re happy with your choice?”

Her heart beats a little quicker. “Oh, definitely. I told you I had to feel all the papers.” She smiles and rocks on her heels.

I’m Leonards's secret Santa!

Spock nods politely and returns the bowl back to himself. “Thank you for your participation, Lieutenant. I hope your exchange goes well.”

“You too, Spock! Merry Christmas.”

She pats his shoulder and returns her gaze to the piece of paper. Spock makes his way back to his station when something settles in the pit of her stomach.

Oh god, I’m Leonards's secret Santa.

“I’m not doing a gift exchange.”

“Bones, hear me out.”

“No.”

“All the other senior officers are doing it, Even Spock!”

“And? Good for them.”

Leonard doesn’t look up from his PADD, and Kirk fitfully shakes the bowl of papers.

“What will it take for you to do this?” he pleads. Leonard halts, his eyes narrowing, and his hands folding on his desk.

“What are you offering?”

When Kirk sighs, “I mean, whatever if it’s reasonable,” he knows he’s got Kirk right where he wants him.

“You show up for your next two physicals, get up to date on your vaccines, stop flirting with Nurse Walker – then I’ll buy someone a candle or something.”

Kirk glare,s but it does nothing to deter his friend.

“ I think Walker really likes me—“

“Jim.”

“Fine! Fine, you win, just pick a name.”

The doctor rolls his eyes and plucks the first paper off the top of the pile. It’s yellow, and he hopes to god it doesn’t say Spock.

It doesn’t; its pristine sharpie work stains the paper.

Operations Manager A. Sunshine

He stares and squints, all while Kirk watches him intently. A tight, nervous feeling begins to bloom in his chest.

Sunshine. Christ.

“Well?” Kirk prompts. Leonard folds the paper again and shoves it in his uniform pocket.

“Yeah, I got it,” he waves Kirk off. “You can leave my office now. Not like I got patients to attend to or anything.”

Kirk laughs, and it’s blindingly bright.

“I’ll leave you to it, Bones. Remember - two weeks until the exchange!”

Two weeks until the exchange. God help me.

“Okay, what about a jacket? Or a sweater?”

“Nyota, we wear a uniform every day. When is he gonna wear a sweater?”

Sunshine paces back and forth on the sidewalk, chewing on her nails. They’re an hour into their recreational shore leave, with four stores under her belt, and she’s no closer to a gift.

“You want my help or not?” Nyota crosses her arms and stops Sunshine in her path.

“Sorry, I’m being mean, aren’t I?” She receives a pointed look. “I don’t mean to, I just really want this to be…”

“Perfect?” Nyota finishes.

“Perfect?” Sunshine repeats the word, rolling it over in her mouth. “No, not exactly. I just want it to be… right? I guess? I feel like there's an answer, and I’m just not seeing it.”

She sighs. The entire endeavor begins to feel a bit hopeless, and she wonders if she's doomed to just be the shittiest secret Santa the enterprise's annual gift exchange has ever seen. She imagines Leonard's face opening a sweater he’ll never wear, feigning appreciation, and her stomach flips.

Nyota locks her arm with Sunshine’s and gives her all the seriousness she would a Starfleet mission. “If there's an answer on this starbase, we’re gonna find it.”

“You think so?”

She smiles, “Not a doubt in my mind.”

“Bones, you can’t just get a woman makeup, you have to know her shade,” he plucks the tube of lipstick from Leonard's hands, whose eye twitches.

“She wears this color every day, Kirk.”

“She does?” He examines the tube. “Oh, yeah, I guess she does. Still shouldn't get it for her though, what if it’s not her brand?”

“Her brand?”

Kirk looks at Leonard like he’s a child asking perpetually asking why.

“Yes, Bones, her brand. This stuff is very elaborate.”

“Well, I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas,” he hisses, shoving the lipstick back into its holder like it offended him. Kirk shrugs.

Leonard wants to scream. From the moment he unwrapped that damn yellow paper he knew this would be a disaster. Why couldn't he have gotten Chapel? Or Sulu? Or Chekov? Or even Kirk? Instead, he gets Sunshine, who he can't bear to disappoint with the candle that's been sitting in his bedside drawer since two Christmases ago. She deserves more, a lot more… he just has no idea what more looks like.

“This is impossible.” he concedes, his hope having run dry after four stores and three makeup departments.

“It is not, we just need to get creative. I think you’re looking at this wrong, Bones,” Kirk begins to weave his way through the retail-maze. “You’ve got to think more… Sunshine. Not just some generic Christmas gift.”

Kirk's words make their way around his head, and unfortunately, he has a great point. Perhaps, maybe, there is a tiny chance that he was carried away by the daunting expectation of what a holiday gift should be. The answer is staring him in the face now - he isn’t getting a Christmas gift, he is getting a Sunshine gift. This, he could work with.

“You might be onto something, Jim.” He snaps his fingers. “With me–I’ve got an idea.”

Sunshine has always been partial to mint chocolate chip, and it's not like there's much of it in space. So, the cone in her hand is indeed a necessity and not a distraction.

“No more pit stops after this,” Nyota says, sweet yet stern, as she holds the door open for Sunshine.

“I completely agree, so quit trying to get us sidetracked,” she quips and takes a long lick of her mint chip.

Ever the patient one, Nyota rolls her eyes with a smile. “So sorry, Lieutenant. I'll try to stay on task.”

Sunshine laughs, links their arms, and they walk down the strip. The impending sugar rush raises her spirits, and she is more than ready for the next bout of stores.

“Okay, so I'm thinking we stop up here and try--”

“Oh, look, It's Jim and Leonard,” Nyota says casually, and nervousness shoots through Sunshine.

“It's what!?” Sunshine hisses, her head shooting left and right for a store to dive into. It’s too late, Jim is already waving, and nudging Leonard, who does his polite little half-wave—awww.

“Shit, it’s too late, we were seen,” she sucks in a breath. “Okay, okay, act natural, Nyota. Don’t give anything away!”

She lobs the rest of her ice cream in the nearest trash, straightens her clothes, and skirts backward until her back is against the nearest wall. She has just enough time to pull Nyota next to her and prop her foot against the wall before the pair approach—and just like that, she’s as natural as ever.

“Hello boys,” she hums. She doesn’t even spare them a glance at first, choosing to stare at her nails, and be incredibly casual. She’s met with silence and the prickling feeling of someone staring at her.

They all are.

“Er—hi, Sunshine,” Kirk says slowly, like it's a question. She inches her gaze away from her hand. Kirk has that crease between his brows that he gets when he’s thinking, and Leonards's arms are crossed over his chest, and suddenly this interaction is anything but natural. She plants her foot back on the ground.

“Everythin’ alright?” Leonard asks, in his concerned doctor voice that she knows all too well. She prays the interaction is salvageable.

“Of course it is, everything is normal, as it usually is – right, Nyota?” She juts her elbow into her friend's side, who does not take the gesture kindly. With a hard glare, Nyota nods.

“Just enjoying the day off,” she says tightly, and Sunshine envies her talent for socializing.

There's a suffocatingly awkward pause, where Sunshine sweats and looks at anything other than Leonard – who, in turn, stares at her like he’s trying to solve a math problem.

“Well, uh, we should get back to it, I guess,” Kirk breaks the silence, still confused as ever.

“Yeah! Yeah, of course, us too,” she blurts, and pushes herself off of the wall, “Have fun! Be safe! See you at work!” And with that, she's locking her arm with Nyota once more and hauling ass away from the two. She walks so fast, they’re out of earshot in seconds.

“You know that went terribly, right?” Nyota says flatly.

“I do, and I’m willing to take some of the blame.”

“Some?”

“Most of the blame, maybe,” Sunshine cringes. “It really was that bad, wasn’t it?”

She knows the answer already, but instead of a hearty yes, Nyota bursts into laughter, and keeps laughing until Sunshine joins her.

“It was terrible, awful,” she says, trying to catch her breath. “You’ve really got it bad, huh?”

Sunshine giggles, and leans on her friend. “Ha, got what bad?”

Nyota pauses, curiously observing her friend's seriousness. “Nothing. Here, I’ve heard good things about this store.”

Leonard stares at Sunshine's back as she retreats, thinking about what the hell he just watched unfold.

“Any idea what that was?” Kirk asks, his head tilted so far, he could hurt his neck.

“Not a damn clue.”

Another hour passes, and Sunshine is close to hysterics, and the shopkeeper is hearing all about it.

“So, I pick the name out of the bowl,” she brandishes the crumpled blue paper, “and I’m like, ‘oh, perfect’ because, like I said, we’re great friends, like super close, but now, I actually have to get the gift. And it’s impossible! Everything is too ordinary or not thoughtful enough or just useless! We’ve been at this for hours, and I’m at my wits end here.” Sunshine’s legs swing from her place perched on the countertop.

“So, this friend of yours,” the assistant manager, Tina, begins, “he doesn’t have any hobbies? Or interests?” Customers pass, and Sunshine sighs.

“Hobbies? Not really. I mean, all we do is work, and he works a lot– did I mention he’s CMO? Yeah, I mean, he’s passionate about his work! He loves being a doctor, he acts all jaded about it, but he’s actually a huge softie, loves helping people.” She pauses and sucks in a breath, while Tina nods like she’s keeping up. “He doesn’t love doing it in space, though. That’s what he’s mostly jaded about. I mean, he did his dissertation in med school on deep space diseases, so it makes sense but –”

“Well, where’s he from?” Tina interrupts.

“Oh, he’s from Earth; I am too.” Sunshine points to Nyota, who is rifling through the cologne section in her stead, “So is my friend.”

“You know, there’s a little earth-themed shop just around the corner…”

This piques Sunshine’s interest, and it fills her with hope.

“Earth-themed?” she repeats. Tina nods while she restocks the shelf behind the counter.

“It’s an antique shop; they have trinkets from everywhere but mostly earth. Maybe you’ll find something there?”

Sunshine grins, and she feels a weight being lifted off her chest. “Tina, you’re a godsend, thank you so much,” she hops off the counter with renewed vigor. “C’mon, Nyota! I think we’ve got our answer!” Nyota is halfway through the stack of samples in her hand when she’s rushed out of the store. She fleetingly wonders why she puts up with this.

—

Leonard barely looks up from his PADD the entire way back to the ship. It takes Kirk, attached to his side, to weave him through crowds and assure no accidents or injuries. The enterprise is quiet upon arriving, and Kirk is ushered into Leonard's office.

“Alright! Game time, Bones, tell me whatcha got,” Kirk claps his hand on Leonard’s shoulder—it reminds him of a high school football coach.

“Right, we’re gonna need to abuse your authority. “

“…for a Christmas gift?”

Leonard rifles through his drawers.

“Well, what else would it be for? Listen, go ask the head nurse–should be Nurse Bennet– tell her you need access to the medical imaging equipment, and grab the camera in Drawer B, got it?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess?”

Leonard shoos him out of the room. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he uses the moment of solitude to clear his head.

He really hopes this isn't a stupid idea.

—

In the antique store, Sunshine elects to not sit on any of the countertops.

The entire place seems fragile to her, with shelves lined high with old-world things she didn't recognize and floors littered with boxes. It was eclectic, to say the least. To say the most, it was downright cramped. And tiny.

Definitely no countertop sitting for her.

Her eyes trail across the room, and she gets an odd nostalgic feeling, like she isn’t quite in space anymore. It feels like her mom's old house. The feeling sweeps her up like a hug, and she almost forgets why she’s there as her eyes roam. Nyota recenters her with a nudge and points to the back of the store.

“Hello!” Sunshine calls and catches the attention of the man behind the register. He’s older, with deep smile lines, and an overly large coat. He looks kind, she thinks. He waves in return for her hello.

Nyota slips between two shelves, already scouring for ideas, while Sunshine approaches the shopkeep.

“Somethin’ I can do for you?” he asks, his accent familiar, and strikes her with a sudden longing feeling.

“If it's not too much trouble, I really need some help finding a gift for my friend,”she says, uncharacteristically beginning to feel shy. “And there's a bit of a story to it too, if you have the time.”

He stares at her curiously, and she hopes she hasn't overstepped.

“Sure.” He shrugs.

He gestures for her to come around the counter, and she can see a wooden chair peeking from behind it. She accepts his invitation and makes herself comfortable in the old-looking wooden rocking chair. Dust flies from it when she sits. He continues counting the register and waits for her to begin.

“So,” she fiddles with the blue sticky note that has lost its stickiness, “I joined Starfleet like, a little over a year ago, and there's this Doctor…”

—

The captain clears his throat and clears it again, running a hand through his hair because he’s just not sure what to say.

“So, I gathered you both here for a reason, which is very important… but I also cannot provide much information about why it’s important - very… classified stuff, but I assure you-”

Leonard is too impatient for his own good, and he’s rolling his eyes and grumbling mere seconds into the captain's fake speech.

“I’ll take it from here, Jim,” he interjects, “I can’t watch you flounder like a fish out of water anymore.”

The captain's patience wavers, but Leonard takes no mind to this.

“Henly, Donavan, stand next to each other and smile. We’re doing a Starfleet scrapbook or something,” he says, voice filled to the brim with sarcasm. He brings the camera to his face, and the two girls look at one another with confused, pinched faces.

“We don't have all day, Ensigns,” he mumbles. Henley and Donavan turn their confused frowns into tentative smiles, and he snaps the picture. He throws a thumbs up their way.

“Great. You’re dismissed.” Leonard turns around, sights set on their next stop already. Kirk, however, scrambles to leave this interaction on a politer note.

Kirk calls, “What he means is thank you so much for participating ladies, and you look great by the way, can’t wait for you to see the scrapbook!” but they were already retreating, whispering and giggling to one another. He sighs.

“So, now that I’ve abused my authority for the sake of a Christmas gift, do I get to know what the gift is?” he demands.

“We’re not done abusing your authority, just so you’re aware,” Leonard says pointedly, “and fine, but we walk and talk.”

That’s fine with Jim, he’ll walk wherever, talk to whoever, if he finally gets to know what’s going on.

“One year, for Pam and I’s anniversary, she got me this holoframe, piled high with a bunch of pictures of us. The thing’d flip through them all day, like a highlight reel while our marriage fell apart.” Leonard stays five steps ahead and doesn’t look back at Kirk. It’s an odd place to be vulnerable, the enterprise hallways, and Kirk has no idea how this fits into anything.

“Okay…”

“I hated the damn thing. Not the sentimental type, but what you said, about getting a more, Sunshine gift, somethin’ clicked,” he snaps his fingers. “Can’t think of anything she likes more than the crew, and I’ll go out on a limb and say she’s the sentimental type.”

Kirk pauses thoughtfully and suddenly feels touched by the gesture that isn't even for him.

“So, we are making a Starfleet scrapbook? But of all Sunshine's favorite people?”

“Do not go around saying we’re making a scrapbook like we’re a couple of grade schoolers.”

Kirk catches up with his friend with a newfound dedication to this endeavor.

“Sorry, holoframe,” he grins.

—

Sunshine and Nyota are both perched behind the shop counter now. Sunshine slumped down into the rocking chair, Nyota rested on the arm of it.

“...after I told Tina all of this, she sent me here and said maybe you could help—oh, well, actually, she never said that, I just sort of roped you into this on my own accord, sorry about that– but, on the way here, I wrote down this list of facts about Leonard to maybe help find him something?” She pulls out a crumpled receipt with sharpie on the back.

“You brought…a list?” the shopkeep drawls, and it makes her blush.

“Yeah it’s—I thought it might help,” she says sheepishly.

“She is very prepared,” Nyota supplies with a comforting pat on her shoulder.

“Alright, then let's see it.” He holds out his hand, and she lays the receipt flat on his palm. It feels like she's handing something over much more important than the record of her ice cream purchase, but she doesn't put her finger on why.

She waits as the man reads, and she rocks in the chair. She thinks about what a whirlwind of a day it's been but still feels at ease.

“He’s from Georgia?” the shopkeep finally says. She perks up.

“Yeah! He’s, like, a country boy,” she cringes. “Well, like, he's from the country, he grew up on a farm, I just don't know what the actual word for it is.”

Thankfully, the man just chuckles and doesn’t correct her. It's a win in her book.

“He ever miss home?” he asks, eyes still on the paper.

“Oh, only all the time,” she scoffs, “ he’s really not a fan of space.” She buzzes with excitement— she can tell he’s onto something. When he finally speaks, Sunshine has to restrain herself from leaping up and hugging him right there in the store.

“Yeah, I think I got a few things he’d be interested in… Georgians ought to help each other out anyways.”

—

Three fake emergencies and six photos later, both men are exhausted.

Leonard hopes no one enters the rec room for the next hour. He fears the image of him and the captain sprawled on the couch looking through photos of various crew members may be hard to explain.

“Are we done now? Please tell me we’re done.” Kirk shifts, really he wiggles, to prop his feet on the chair beside him. Leonard fiddles with the camera as he replies.

“Just waiting for Uhura to be back from shopping, and that should be it.” Kirk sighs and sinks lower into the couch. Since starting this whole thing, Leonard's anxiety has grown steadily, like a snowball rolling down a hill. Aside from the task of wrangling crew members, and then inventing explanations for his actions, the real challenge is convincing himself that this is even a good idea in the first place. He thinks about that tube of lipstick, and if it was her brand, and wishes this whole thing could be simpler.

“Do you think Spock’s still mad?” Kirk asks, and Leonard barely hears it over his own thoughts.

“He’s forgiven you for a lot worse, I wouldn't get too wound up about it,” he replies absently, hands still fidgeting. “Y’know, Jim, I appreciate you running all over hell's half acre for me. God knows you didn't have to.”

“Bones, I have no idea what that means, but you’re welcome.” His friend smiles, and it quells some deep nervousness. “Totally gonna be worth it, anyway,” Kirk adds.

Leonard isn’t all that sure what he means, but still, he agrees.

“Yeah, I think it will.”

Leonard doesn't see the smirk on Kirk’s face, nor does he pick up on the mischievous cadence of his voice, or even the way they're on completely different pages. Kirk thinks perhaps that's for the best.

—

The gift sits on her desk for three days before she wraps it.

She carefully maneuvers her work around it, avoiding touching the object like it was some precious gem. On occasion, her eyes would drift to it while she sits in her quarters, and her cheeks would heat without reason. She makes an effort not to think about it too much or get too excited, and to definitely not touch it. She finds lately that a bit of effort is required to get her mind off of many things related to the CMO, and it takes even more effort not to think about why that was.

She wraps the gift on the day of the exchange—because it's the easiest way to avoid thinking about it.

—

Leonard gets the damn thing out of his sight as soon as possible.

The gift had been finished – pictures uploaded, running on a ten-second loop – hidden away in a gift bag, out of sight out of mind. He is protecting his peace—leaving it out in the open will only restart the cycle of doubt in his head. So, he pulls doubles, up until the holiday party, if only just to get his goddamn mind off of this stupid exchange he shouldn’t have ever done in the first place—

He works until Chapel won't let him in the medbay anymore, and when she doesn't, he slots his time with other tasks. Hell, he even wonders if he should’ve gone back for the lipstick, the day after they leave the port. He goes as far as to bother Nyota about it, who waves him off and tells him she's sure Sunshine will love her gift—her reassurance helps more than he anticipated.

He almost gets himself to forget the whole thing, lost in the medbay chaos, until he feels the scrap paper crushed in his pocket.

The gift stays hidden away until just a few minutes before he has to meet her, and his palms sweat when he picks it up.

—

Lieutenant Jameson calls out the day of the holiday party— Dakitoan Flu.

Without much choice, Sunshine takes his rounds. She doesn’t think she’s ever completed a task faster in her life. Complete is even a strong word—it's more like half-ass. She’s all too aware of how she’ll have to repeat most of the work again tomorrow, correcting her own mistakes. But she doesn't care. She’s been stressing out about this party for two entire weeks, she’d be damned if she misses it.

When she does finally rush to the rec room, the blue-wrapped gift in hand, there are few people left, and her heart sinks a bit.

There's a Christmas tree in the corner of the room, with only one present left beneath it, and a few red and green ribbons are strewn about. She spots Spock first, already wiping down tables and cleaning up the festivities. He catches her eye, and he must see how her posture is wound tight with nervousness—or her pink cheeks, or her frazzled hair, or the way she obviously ran here. Spock doesn’t quite smile, but his gaze softens in some way she doesn’t see often, and he nods toward a table in the far corner. She follows, and—

Oh! It’s Leonard!

Spock gets a double thumbs up for his help.

Leonard sits with Jim, both of them with glasses of some dark liquid in hand. She wishes she could have had a drink before this. She smoothes down her hair before she approaches.

Kirk notices her first and smiles — it reminds her how nice it is to have someone in her corner.

“Sunny! You made it!” He cheers. She grins back and lets it sink in, yeah I did make it, and the thing she’d been fussing over for weeks is finally coming to an end.

Leonard is much more reserved, he always is. He sees her, and his posture relaxes—he does that a lot. Almost like he’s holding his breath for some reason.

“Captain, Doctor,” she greets the two, still catching her breath. “I’m sorry I missed the party, you have no idea how insane my shift has been —I mean, no idea, but it's over now, and I’m so glad I caught you guys.”

“We had to convince Spock to leave the Christmas tree up until you got here, he’s been cleaning damn near since the party started,” Leonard tuts, and she laughs.

“Aw, I’m glad he did…” She looks at the pine tree, which is bare of ornaments and lights, and raises her eyebrows.

“Well, he sort of did,” Leonard amends. “It was a compromise.”

“A compromise that leaves me with putting the decorations back in storage, so I’d call it more of a trade,” Kirk complains.

“Master negotiator, huh?” she teases and has every intention of teasing him more, maybe even calling Christmas his new Kobayashi Maru, but she waits a beat too long.

“Anyways, Jim, don’t you think you should be getting to it?” Leonard says, as if the conversation didn’t just start.

Jim doesn't say anything at first, just stares at Leonard while Leonard stares at him. It’s all very… intense, she thinks. They exchange pointed looks like they’re engaged in a silent conversation– actually, she’s pretty positive they are. Awkwardness begins to prick at her skin.

“Is there something—”

“Wow, I didn't even notice the time, better get to it, just like you said,” he springs to his feet with alarming speed.

“Oh, do you have to go?” she asks with disappointment.

“I do, duty calls, or something.” He holds her by the shoulders looking at her with enough intensity to make her squint. “Have fun,” he says meaningfully, and smiles, and then, he's gone, leaving with a friendly pat on her back.

She hesitates a moment before taking Kirk's seat.

“Is he…okay?”

“That's a loaded question,” Leonard deadpans, and despite her confusion, she laughs.

“So I have something-”

“Anyways, there's this-”

Their sentences crash into each other, and they both freeze.

“You first,” she offers. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just purses his lips and avoids eye contact.

“Just—Don’t move, I’ll be right back,” he grits out and leaves her at the table. It's abrupt and leaves her wondering why this interaction is going like this. She wraps her arms around herself and waits.

Behind her, he picks up the last present left under the tree, which has been waiting there for her all day. Yellow bag with yellow paper stuffed inside. He places it on the table, and sits back down, hands wringing together. She wants to ask what's got him so worked up.

“I’m your secret… Christmas person or whatever the hell it is,” he grumbles and doesn’t meet her gaze. Not until he hears her stifle a giggle, which then bubbles into a laugh. She doesn’t mean to, but the whole thing just comes together too perfectly for her to contain herself.

“You’re my Secret Santa?” she asks, alight with excitement, and he nods at her slowly.

“Yeah, if that’s the name—” He’s cut off with another laugh, and she eagerly puts her gift in front of him—blue paper with a blue bow.

“Leonard, I’m your Secret Santa!” She beams, “We picked each other! What are the odds?”

He stares at her, then at the gift, and says quietly, bewildered, “What are the odds?”

She doesn’t catch what he means, but she’s too excited to harp on it.

“Well?” she prompts and inches the blue box towards him. “Are you gonna open it?”

Curiously enough, she’s not nearly as nervous anymore.

He blinks and shakes his head like he’s clearing his thoughts. “Yeah, yeah of course,” he says distractedly.

He opens the box carefully, it's like he’s doing an operation. When he looks down at the gift, the gift, he pauses and gets this expression that Sunshine doesn’t think she's ever seen on him.

“Len?”

“Sunshine, is this…?”

“It’s a postcard! From Georgia!” She grins, “A real one from Earth, It’s an antique.” She reaches over the table and taps on the glass of the frame in his hand. “See? There's a little stamp of authenticity. Isn’t that neat?”

Neat. It’s about the neatest thing Leonard’s ever seen.

She settles back in her seat. “I thought it might make you a little less homesick,” she adds, much quieter, as if the statement itself needed privacy.

Leonard stares at the postcard. It's got a picture of a peach orchard, on a perfect summer day, he can tell by the blossoms that line the trees. Greetings from Georgia! it reads. It looks like something he would have seen hanging in his Ma’s house. He thinks of the red door of his childhood home, and how the branches of his family's own peach tree framed it. The smell of his Ma’s cooking and the feeling of coming home— his chest fills with familiarity and longing. He stares for a while and doesn't say anything for even longer.

He doesn’t realize he’s been silent until Sunshine clears her throat. It feels like he forgot he was on the Enterprise for a moment.

“Sunshine this is…” Damn near perfect. “Nice. Thank you.” He says it and cringes. There's so many more feelings and thoughts under the surface. He wishes he could make a sentence out of them. But Sunshine, like she knows his inner thoughts, accepts the weak compliment like it's the best thing she's ever heard.

“Aw, Leonard!” She tucks her hair behind her ear and flushes – or maybe it's the lighting. “I'm so glad you like it. You have no idea the hell I put Nyota through to find it.”

He’s not sure what Nyota had to do with it, and he doesn't ask either. “I’ll thank her too then,” he says weakly, but he definitely won’t. With a deep breath to quell his nerves, he pushes her gift toward her.

“Your turn,” he says with bated breath.

Being so wrapped up in her own Christmas shopping, she almost forgot she gets a gift too. She tears through the tissue paper with the same unrestrained excitement she had picking her secret Santa just a few weeks ago.

“I still think it's so crazy we got each other, this makes the gift-giving thing like, ten times better,” she tells him. He nods curtly, and she can tell he’s wound tighter than a spring–or at least that’s how he would say it.

“Relax, Len, I’ll like whatever’s in the bag– heck, I’d like it even if you gave me a rock.”

She dives her hand into the bag, the tips of her fingers touching cool metal. At first, she has no idea what she’s looking at. A… little screen? A flat little screen with a cool blue border? She opens her mouth, a question on her tongue, when—

“The power buttons on the side,” Leonard says. He doesn’t give her a chance to move, leaning over the table and clicking the button for her.

The screen comes to life with a picture of Sulu and Chekov, both donning awkward thumbs up… and is that in Kirk’s room? She blinks, and it changes again, this time to Scotty and Keenser sitting among a mess of wires in engineering but smiling brightly nonetheless. Another second passes, and she's looking at Spock and Nyota, sitting beside each other in the rec room loveseat looking equally poised yet annoyed. Sunshine laughs before she can stop herself.

“Len is this—?” The picture flickers again, and the sight of it stops Sunshine's words in their tracks. It's Leonard and Jim, on that same rec room loveseat. Jim’s practically beaming—face lit up and an arm looped tightly around Leonard’s shoulders. Leonard, shit. He’s got that soft and reserved smile on his face—like the one he has when he talks about home or his friends, where his eyes are just filled with this warm something.

Sunshine’s face turns hot, and her chest becomes unbearably heavy with emotions.

“Leonard, this is so fucking sweet—” She cuts herself off with a wet laugh, and she realizes she’s got tears in her eyes.

Leonard, however, looks mortified, as he watches her face become red and tears fall down her cheeks.

“Shit—Damn it, I’m sorry—You weren't supposed to cry!” he stutters in a panic. Sunshine laughs again and hiccups over it with a sob.

“They’re happy tears, Len!” she insists, wiping her cheeks. “This… I think this is the nicest gift I've ever gotten.” She can’t bring herself to look away. The pictures are just the slightest bit grainy—like the camera her mom used to take pictures of her. The thought starts the waterworks all over again.

“It is?”

She sniffles, scrubbing her tears with her sleeve. As Sunshine traces the edges of the frame, and watches the photos loop again, she knows for certain this is the sweetest, most thoughtful gift she's ever gotten. She thinks about how curious it is that it's from someone she’s known only a year—a coworker, no less.

Then, she thinks, maybe, it's not all that curious at all.

“We should do this every year,” she tells him. She’s positive, actually, that, as much of a headache as this exchange has been, she would do it again in a heartbeat.

“Secret Santa?”

“Yeah, but not so…secret next time, and… just us, maybe.”

She doesn’t look at him when she says it, for both their sakes.

“Sure,” he says, and she can hear the tightness in his voice. “I’ll try not to make you cry next time.”

She laughs, “No, do it! It’s more fun that way. Maybe I’ll make you cry.”

“Uh-huh.”

He seems less nervous now, like his smile is coming a bit easier.

“We should get going before Spock sticks us with the rest of the cleaning,” he says, gathering the discarded paper from the table, “and I know you had a long day, Jameson told me you covered for him.”

She doesn’t want to leave, but she knows he’s right. She wonders if he feels the same pull to stay.

“Yeah, but it’s fine,” she tries to say casually. She leaves her chair as he does. “You know me, I don't mind.”

“Doesn’t make it a good thing, you pull about as many doubles as—”

“As you?” she interrupts cheekily, and he rolls his eyes with a smile.

“Yeah, as me.”

The paper goes in the trash, and they’re left with nothing to do but bid each other goodnight. It’s the last thing she wants to do.

“Thank you again, Len. The pictures—It’s perfect. I love it.” She tries not to cry again, mostly for his sake.

“No problem, and you too,” he tells her simply. His cheeks are still tinged pink, and seeing him hold the present she labored over in his hands, with all that warmth in his eyes, it's almost more than she can stand.

Fuck it. She thinks to herself, and before her nerves can stop her, she wraps her arms around Leonard's neck. It's an awkward angle, and she has to pull him down to her height a bit—and she’s still got the frame in her hand and everything. As far as hugs go, it's not great, but in other ways, it's perfect. Leonard doesn’t react for a moment, but finally, his arms encircle her waist, after a fair bit of hesitation.

It’s really nice, she thinks.

“No, really, thank you,” she says into his shoulder. The fabric of his uniform is soft, and she can smell his apple shampoo.

“You too, Sunshine,” he mutters. The sincerity in his voice feels nearly tangible. Leonard pats her back, maybe because he feels awkward or maybe because it's time for the hug to end; either way, she lets him go.

“Have a good night,” he says, and he can't quite meet her eyes.

“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she answers softly.

They share a long parting glance, as they head in opposite directions to their quarters.

Unbeknownst to the pair, their senior officers are perched just around the corner.

“...and he knew her shade, Spock. The exact shade of lipstick she wears. He was so… dedicated to the whole thing. I half-thought he might give her a candle or a necklace or something but this?”

Spock nods thoughtfully. “She treated the exchange with similar enthusiasm, from what Nyota has told me.”

“You’re a genius for setting this thing up,” Kirk shakes his head, “even if I did have to copy Sunshine’s signature on 20 different sticky notes.”

“Well, it was your influence that caused me to—”

Kirk waves him off.

“You don’t have to justify it, Spock. Hell, everyone can see how bad they’ve got it for each other. Can’t blame you for wanting to move it along.”

“Indeed they do, Captain.”

#leonard mccoy x reader #Leonard McCoy #james t kirk #star trek #star trek alternate original series #reader insert #on a cloudy day #bones x reader #original female character #star trek imagine #Idc that they dont celebrate christmas in space #they do now #spirk

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etherealspacejelly · 7 months

Text

Lay All Your Love On Me - Chapter 1

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: Multi

Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series

Relationships:

James T. Kirk/Reader, Spock (Star Trek)/Reader, Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Reader, James T. Kirk & Reader, Spock (Star Trek) & Reader, Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Reader, James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Spock

Characters:

Spock (Star Trek), James T. Kirk, Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Reader, You

Additional Tags:

Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Sleepy Cuddles, Leonard "Bones" McCoy Needs a Hug, Spock Needs a Hug (Star Trek), James T. Kirk Needs a Hug, They all get one, Touch-Starved, Reader-Insert, Beta Read by My Friend

Summary:

Your attempt to convince Bones to take better care of himself leads to the touch-starved triumvirate discovering that you are a very good hugger, and you are more than happy to provide them with the attention they so desperately need. Several cuddle sessions later, the three of them team up to return the favour.

There is no use of Y/N. Gender-neutral pronouns are used, and there is no physical description of you. Can be read as either romantic or platonic.

Is this another incredibly self-indulgent cuddle fic? Yes. Yes, it is.

Will be releasing a new chapter every day! (4 total)

#star trek #star trek tos #fanfic #fanfiction #star trek fanfiction #reader insert #kirk x reader #bones x reader #spock x reader

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rssspockuhura · 1 year

Text

The Way I Loved You | James T. Kirk x Reader

Warning: Some M/M works might show up here because the Spock/Uhura tag is used in ref to S/U as a side pairing, past pairing, etc. Currently there is no way to filter and exclude feeds on Ao3 to get only S/U F/M works.Solution. Read at your own risk.

by misaverawrites

James T. Kirk and you are best friends, have been since your days at the academy, he has you placed on the U.S.S. Enterprise at the beginning of it's five year mission. The only issue? You both have been pining for one another since your academy days, and everyone knows it. These five years together on the U.S.S. Enterprise are going to feel very long unless one of you decides to say something.

Words: 908, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: F/M

Characters: James T. Kirk, Reader, Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Spock (Star Trek), Carol Marcus, David Marcus (mentioned) - Character, Christine Chapel, Nyota Uhura, Montgomery "Scotty" Scott

Relationships: James T. Kirk/Reader, James T. Kirk/You, James T. Kirk & USS Enterprise, James T. Kirk/Carol Marcus (past), James T. Kirk & Carol Marcus, James T. Kirk & David Marcus, James T. Kirk & Crew of the Starship Enterprise, James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Reader, Spock (Star Trek) & Reader, Spock/Nyota Uhura

Additional Tags: Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Breaking Up & Making Up, Flirting, Best Friends, Crew of the Starship Enterprise as Family, Daily Life on the Starship Enterprise (Star Trek), BAMF Crew of the Starship Enterprise, James T. Kirk & Spock Friendship, Genius James T. Kirk, Insecure James T. Kirk, POV Second Person, Eventual Smut, Eventual Happy Ending, History, James T. Kirk is a Good Captain, Fluff, Angst, Smut, Father James T. Kirk, Title from a Taylor Swift Song, Song: The Way I Loved You (Taylor Swift), Not Actually Unrequited Love, Love Confessions, Denial of Feelings, Blood and Injury, Blood, Poison, Leonard "Bones" McCoy is a Good Friend, Mutual Pining, Pining, Coma, Panic Attacks, Dissociation, Past James T. Kirk/Carol Marcus, Mentioned Carol Marcus, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, Slow Burn

read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/47185735 via AO3 works tagged 'Spock/Nyota Uhura' https://archiveofourown.org/works/47185735

Need an Ao3 invite? Don't want to wait? Get one via LiveJournal or Dreamwidth. Remember to check out the Spuhura fanworks community on livejournal. Follow rssspockuhura for Spock/Uhura fanworks from around the web.

#spock #uhura #spuhura #star trek #stxi #stxii #stid #nutrek #ao3feed #star trek into darkness #star

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ao3feed-thehobbit · 1 year

Text

Tell me a story, Mama.

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/gSn2lA3

by Aria_died_last_Winter

"Mama, will you tell me a story?"

"Which one would you like to hear?"

"...The one with the key." She beamed.

"Darling, that's at least four of them alone. You have to specify. " I chuckled.

"The one with the cards, funny men and the cherry blossoms."

"Oh, that one. I suppose you're old enough." My gaze shifted down. I hadn't told that tale in a long time. "Well, if I tell you that tale there are a few more pieces of the story you must know."

"Such as?" She questioned.

"Well, there was a fox, twelve gems, an important revolver hand gun, a masquerade mask, and a man. A cunning, cruel, handsome, strange, kind man."

"Anything else of importance?"

I paused for a moment. "Yes, a few pomegranate seeds."

"Pomegranate seeds! Nah, wait! How are pomegranate seeds relevant to that plot?!" She squealed.

"Very actually, my darling child. Here, take your dinner and drink then go rest by the fire place, let's start from the beginning. Black, white, and grey. Everything was- is black, white, and grey." ◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇

Words: 9, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Star Trek: The Original Series, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: F/M, Multi

Characters: Fred Weasley, George Weasley, James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, Spock (Star Trek), James T. Kirk, Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Bilbo Baggins, Tom Riddle

Relationships: Fred Weasley/Reader, George Weasley/Reader, Remus Lupin/Reader, Tom Riddle/Reader, Bilbo Baggins/Reader, Sirius Black/Reader, James T. Kirk/Reader, James Potter/Reader, Spock/Reader

Additional Tags: Self-Indulgent, Assassination Attempt(s), Magic, Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Noir, Self-Insert, Love Triangles

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/gSn2lA3

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #the hobbit

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ao3feed-tolkien · 1 year

Text

Tell me a story, Mama.

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3Wg2VTX

by Aria_died_last_Winter

"Mama, will you tell me a story?"

"Which one would you like to hear?"

"...The one with the key." She beamed.

"Darling, that's at least four of them alone. You have to specify. " I chuckled.

"The one with the cards, funny men and the cherry blossoms."

"Oh, that one. I suppose you're old enough." My gaze shifted down. I hadn't told that tale in a long time. "Well, if I tell you that tale there are a few more pieces of the story you must know."

"Such as?" She questioned.

"Well, there was a fox, twelve gems, an important revolver hand gun, a masquerade mask, and a man. A cunning, cruel, handsome, strange, kind man."

"Anything else of importance?"

I paused for a moment. "Yes, a few pomegranate seeds."

"Pomegranate seeds! Nah, wait! How are pomegranate seeds relevant to that plot?!" She squealed.

Words: 9, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Star Trek: The Original Series, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: F/M, Multi

Characters: Fred Weasley, George Weasley, James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, Spock (Star Trek), James T. Kirk, Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Bilbo Baggins, Tom Riddle

Relationships: Fred Weasley/Reader, George Weasley/Reader, Remus Lupin/Reader, Tom Riddle/Reader, Bilbo Baggins/Reader, Sirius Black/Reader, James T. Kirk/Reader, James Potter/Reader, Spock/Reader

Additional Tags: Self-Indulgent, Assassination Attempt(s), Magic, Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Noir, Self-Insert, Love Triangles

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3Wg2VTX

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #Tolkien #JRR Tolkien #Tolkien works #ao3 #fan fiction

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grandtheftstarship · 5 years

Text

Painted Roses (Barista!Jim Kirk x Artist!Fem!Reader) [Request!]

“So, Jim is a barista in a coffe shop /he could be the owner too, but it's not that important / and the reader always goes there but she never drinks coffee just hot chocolate or sometimes tea. She's an artist and she always goes there and sits there for hours just drawing people in her sketchbook. Sometimes she's all covered in paint. /continuing/... And she somehow caught Jims attention and one time she forgets about time and sits there all day, Jim brings her refills time to time maybe some desserts to eat because she kinda forgots... Until Jim tells them that it's closing time, but they start a conversation an they sit there for a litte while longer... ||Sorry for the long ask, if you don't want to do it, it's fine, still love ya! 💕 Have a nice day ❤️” - @rh-girlonfire

I love this request SOOOOOOOOOO much!!! Mainly because I like to think of myself of an artist :) I can never get enough of coffee shop AUs! Please enjoy :) Love you too ❤︎

Also THANK YOU ALL FOR FOLLOWING ME!!! I just reached 100 and even though it’s a small milestone it still means a lot to me :) Thank you all for supporting me and what I love to do! Love you all ❤︎

P.S- I just wanted to let you all know that I see it when you guys comment and reblog! I just can’t respond because this is a secondary blog, so it won’t come up as me :( Just know that I see you, and I appreciate you!!! Every time someone comments or reblogs it makes me so happy :) Did I mention that I love y’all?

Word Count: 2157 Warnings: mega fluff, I’m pretty sure this is my favorite thing I’ve ever written ever, swearing, keep a lookout for the Office reference ;)

Take a shot every time I use the word sometimes lol

You didn’t know when you first started coming to the quaint little coffee shop on the corner of your block, and you didn’t know when you started making a habit out of it. Once or twice a month turned into several times a week, and then suddenly you were there for several hours a day to work on your projects. You found the atmosphere warm and inviting, as opposed to your cramped apartment down the street that you could barely afford.

Yes, you were a starving artist. But that didn’t make your art any less meaningful. Ever since the first day you had been coming, you had your table. It was the smaller booth in the corner by one of the large windows overlooking the park and the busy street. It was also dotted with paint marks, but the owner didn’t seem to mind.

It was the barista, though, that caught your eye. Every single day, he was there ready with one of your usuals. You never drank coffee, it was usually tea or hot chocolate. He usually chose for you, but you didn’t mind. Whatever he made tasted delicious. You always ordered ‘for here’, enjoying the cute, white mugs with the pretty art he made with the cream in your hot chocolate or with the honey in your tea. It was different every day, sometimes a flower, or a cute face, and one time he made an elaborate heart with swirls and sprinkles which made you blush as you thanked him.

On days you were really working hard, you were there from opening to closing now and again, he would bring you refills and sometimes small deserts. You would pull your headphones back and thank him, smiling as he would rub the back of his neck, bashful. You thought it was cute.

In fact, you thought he was cute all the time. On days you weren’t really working on big pieces you would just pull out your sketchbook and draw the people around you, but mainly it was him, dressed in his black apron and a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. You would draw him from various angles; walking with the serving platters filling both his hands, smiling at a customer, washing things in the sink: rough sketches of him filled many pages in your book.

Other days, you would decide to paint outside in the park in the morning to get practice with realistic nature, get covered in paint, and then head over to the coffee shop for your afternoon drink. It was on these days that you felt the most insecure since you were in your painting overalls and your old vintage Queen T-shirt underneath and you were covered in various colors and stages of dried paint. There was even paint in your hair or on your face sometimes, and the barista (who, after you finally took notice of his nametag, was named Jim) would kindly point it out to you. You would get red in the face and frantically try to wipe it off, getting more paint on your already paint-splattered hands; it was all just a mess.

Today was not one of those days, though; today you were working in your sketchbook, doodling and working on drawing people. You came in early, some twenty minutes after they had opened. Jim was there as you walked in, beaming as you walked up to the counter.

“Hey,” he greeted, pushing a mug full of steaming cocoa up to you.

You peeled your headphones back to rest on your neck as you pulled out some wrinkled dollar bills. You frowned. You didn’t realize how low you had been getting on money and you knew exactly where it had all been going. Nevertheless, you put a smile on your face and slid the money across the counter to him.

“Hey,” you returned the hello, lifting the mug from the counter. “What’s my drink of the day today?”

“Well, we just got some new teas in so I thought I fix one up for you,” he replied. “This one is Chamomile Citrus, with three swirls of honey just how you like it.”

You smiled, pink dusting your cheeks. “Thanks, Jim.”

Your blush deepened as his face reddened up at the sound of his name coming from your lips. It was the first time you had ever called him by name, and you felt like he liked it. He did.

You moved away before he could say anything else, heading over to your table and settling in. You pulled your headphones on and unpacked your backpack, flipping your sketchbook open to the next blank page and getting started.

_______________

Jim didn’t know when he first started noticing her. Maybe it was when she first started coming in with paint splattered all over her overalls, maybe it was when he first saw her set out her paints. He didn’t really care, all that mattered was that he noticed her now.

He had never been so captivated by someone like he was by her, his typical pulled-together demeanor was thrown out the window when she entered the shop and when she smiled all of his insides turned to mush. He didn’t even know her name.

So, in order to capture her attention, he started writing down her orders for future reference, such as how much whipped cream she liked on her hot cocoa, or how much honey she preferred in her tea. There was one thing he knew for sure; no coffee.

He figured out that she was pretty lenient when it came to her orders, so he started making them ahead of time. He knew that she would be in almost every day, so he made them when he had a free minute. He even started practicing latte art on other customers’ orders to try and impress her. He felt like she enjoyed it. She did.

He would never forget the time the flower he meant to do on her hot chocolate one time morphed into a heart that actually looked pretty good so he decided to just go for it. Her face was exactly what he wanted, her cute cheeks turning a soft pink and her thank you coming out a bit quieter.

He couldn’t deny the fact that he was attracted to her. He had been with plenty of girls, but it was different this time. His palms would get sweaty when he saw her come in and butterflies would spring up in his stomach when she thanked him for whatever thing he had brought her.

He caught himself staring at her sometimes when hours were slow, noting how her bottom lip got caught in her teeth as she concentrated, and how that one strand of [h/c] hair fell into her eyes every so often and how she would blow it out of her face and keep working. He was mesmerized by it all. The only problem was that he wasn’t exactly sure what to do with those feelings.

There wasn’t exactly an outlet for him to let them out through and he didn’t want to sleep with other girls, so he kept them in a little jar in the back of his mind. When he lied alone at night in the small apartment above the shop (that the owner, Leonard, had graciously let him stay in), he would let them out and let himself feel in full throttle. Sometimes it was a lot to handle.

He didn’t realize how much he felt for her until she came in only a few minutes after he opened with a large canvas. She didn’t go to the counter right away since her hands were full, so Jim came to her. He set her iced tea on the table out of the way, humming as she thanked him.

He wiped his sweaty hands on his apron as he walked away, only then understanding what he had gotten himself into.

_______________

You had never been there this long. You barely noticed the time passing as you painted, concentrating hard on the details. You hadn’t even realized that you had started painting the cafe storefront until you started mixing the paint. You decided to just go with it.

Jim brought you little pastries and refills from time to time, making sure you wouldn’t be disturbed. Even he didn’t disturb you, letting you enjoy your time listening to [your favorite band] and just paint to your little heart’s content.

That was, until closing time rolled around.

You didn’t know that you had been there for that long until Jim tapped your shoulder and you jumped, like, three feet in the air.

You yanked back your headphones and smacked him in the arm.

“You scared me!” you gasped. He chuckled, holding his hands up in mock surrender.

“Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you, but...” He waved his arm at the empty floor.

“Oh...” you sighed in disappointment. You had really wanted to finish your project before the day was over.

“I mean... if you want to stay I could close up shop and we can talk or something while you finish...?” he asked it like a question and a smile spread across your face at his flustered expression.

“Sure,” You replied. “You got an aux cord?”

He nodded, leading you behind the counter and letting you plug your phone in and shuffle your playlist.

“Wanna help me?” he asked, beckoning you over to the counter.

“With what?” you wondered, walking over.

“With the drinks,” he picked up the box of your favorite tea. “Tea sound good?”

You nodded, grinning. He showed you how to mix the two teas together and how he made honey flowers to float on top of the steaming mug before they dissolved into the hot drink. He fixed himself one before shutting off all the lights besides the one above your table and sat in the booth across from you that had gone unused for so long.

Your music played softly in the background as you resumed painting, Jim watching your brush intently.

You looked up sharply, catching him off guard. “Wanna play A Question Game?”

“A question game?” Jim repeated, bemused.

“Yeah, like where we ask each other random questions to get to know each other better.”

“Is this what you do on all of your first dates?” he smirked.

“What’s a first date without the basics?” you mirrored his expression. “You go first.”

“What’s your name?” he questioned.

“[y/n],” you replied, not looking up. “[y/n] [l/n].”

He let your name roll around his mind, liking the feel of it. “Your turn.”

“What’s your last name?” you glanced at him, a smile playing on your lips.

“Kirk,” he responded. “James T. Kirk.”

You looked up quickly. “Your real name is James?”

“What did you think it was?” he chuckled. “Jimothy?”

You laughed, enjoying the reference. Jim’s eyes bore into yours.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh before,” he said, a little quieter. “You should do it more often.”

You sent him a knowing smile. “Next question, Kirk.”

The game went on like that for at least another hour or so, basic questions like favorite colors, birthdays, favorite shows, hometowns, etcetera etcetera. You learned that Jim’s favorite color was purple, his birthday was on March 22, and he was from Rivertown Iowa.

“I think I’m finished,” you said suddenly, wiping your paintbrush off on a paper towel and putting it in the water.

“Oh yeah?” Jim stood. “Let’s see it.”

You propped it up and turned to look at it, pride flooding your senses.

“Wow,” he breathed. “This is amazing.”

“Thank you,” you said shyly, cleaning up your things and putting them back into your backpack. “Well, I really should be going.”

You started to open your wallet to pay for the food, but Jim stopped you by putting his hand over yours. Heat blew up in your cheeks, as you met his gaze.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, eyes flicking down to the painting. “If you want, you can pay by letting me hang that on the wall.”

You eyes blew open wide. “Seriously? You want my art on your wall?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I really do.”

You stared back into his blue eyes and let him close the distance between you, liking the feeling of his smooth lips against yours. He pulled away first, stomach flipping at the sight of your eyes still closed. They opened slowly and you smiled up at him.

“Second date?” he asked, leaning his forehead against yours.

You giggled, raising your hand up to boop his nose.

“Mhm,” you hummed, pecking his lips before pulling out of his embrace. You picked up your backpack and slung it over your shoulder, holding your headphones. “See you tomorrow?”

“Same time same place,” he grinned as you smiled and waved as you left, pulling your headphones over your ears and putting your hands in your pockets as you started walking down the street to your apartment.

Both of you thinking about what a wonderful day you had.

#star trek #jim kirk #james t kirk #star trek fanfiction #star trek fanfic #star trek imagines #star trek x reader #star trek reader inserts #jim kirk x reader #jim kirk imagines #jim kirk reader inserts #james t kirk x reader #james t kirk reader inserts #james t kirk fanfic

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getaway-gatsby · 2 years

Text

A Spot of Bother - 1/6

Originally posted on AO3 as @getaway_gatsby

You hadn’t even felt the dart pierce your skin. Later, this would strike you as ironic; that the object that would wreak so much havoc through your system had entered your body in such an innocuous fashion. But it had been Kirk that pointed out the small hole in the arm of your uniform. It had been Kirk that made you go down to the med bay.

However, it was Bones that identified the dart as poisonous.

"What happened?", he had asked, ushering you towards a biobed.

"Natives were hostile, decided to use me as target practice. Kirk insisted I came to the med bay, so he walked me down here."

Bones snorted. "I'm surprised he knows where the med bay is. The man avoids this place like the plague."

Carefully removing the dart from your arm, he had placed the offending object in a kidney dish, running his tricorder over it this way and that, until you thought you’d burst with impatience.

“What’s the verdict, doc? Can I go?”

Now he turned his tricorder towards you, frowning at the results.

“Not so fast, Y/N. The dart is definitely coated in some kind of venom. The strange thing is that I can’t find any trace of it in your system.”

“Surely that’s a good thing?”

The CMO laid his tricorder down, running his hand down his jaw wearily. “Well, yes and no. It’s good in that you’re not displaying any symptoms of being poisoned.”

“I'm sensing a but.”

“But I don’t know how quickly this type of venom acts or how long it would take to show up in your system. I want to keep you in for observation for a couple of days until I can rule out any adverse effects.”

You scoffed incredulously. “Len, I think I’d know if I’d been poisoned. I feel completely fine - I can’t just take the next few days off work on the off-chance something might be wrong.”

Bones opened his mouth to argue; you cut him off before he could get started, softening your tone slightly.

“Look, if I feel ill, I’ll come down to med bay immediately, alright? Just don’t keep me here. I'd be wasting everyone's time.”

When he nodded reluctantly, you knew you’d won.

“Alright, but I’m not happy about this. And if you so much as cough, I want to know about it.” He fixed you with a steely glare. “Promise me.”

“Oh my god, Len, if it’ll get you off my back, then yes, I promise.”

You had never intended to break your word. It was just that there was a reasonable explanation for every symptom you experienced over the next couple of days. If you had a few nosebleeds, so what? It was just the dry air of the Enterprise. And if you woke up on Thursday morning feeling as if you had been hit by a shuttlecraft, it was only a migraine, surely? It wasn't anything to bother the CMO with - it didn’t mean anything.

It wasn't as if you were dying.

#leonard bones mccoy #leonard mccoy imagine #leonard mccoy x reader #mission gone wrong #mission fic #james t kirk #injury #hurt/comfort #reader insert #spock #major character injury #whump

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strawwritesfic · 3 years

Text

Kelvin!Jim Kirk x Female!Old Flame!Reader: Starship in a Bottle

Summary: Life is fragile. Life is beautiful. Life can be smashed to pieces in the blink of an eye. Such smashing does not require that what is left will not still be fragile and beautiful itself.

Request: A one shot with the romantic interest being any male character from the Star Trek Kelvin Universe.

Rating/Warnings/Tags: T (teenage pregnancy; discussion of abortion; sexual references; foul language; implied Spock/Uhura; implied Hikaru/Ben; alive!Pavel Chekov; Five Year Mission; post-Star Trek Beyond; Vulcan OC; Vulcan OC & Reader Friendship; OC child of a canon character; Commander!Reader; ship designer!Reader; reference to Utopia Planitia; many call forwards to places, species, and objects introduced in The Next Generation and beyond; reference to And the Children Shall Lead)

Notes: This is, hands down, the thing I’ve written that I’m most proud of. I love Star Trek Beyond. I love Kirk. I loved cramming as many references as I could to the series as a whole into this. This one shot is a labor of love and the first one shot for the series I wrote after I had seen every single live action Star Trek episode up to that point. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

It’s about 11,000 words. You have been warned!

Starship in a Bottle

“This is a disaster!”

Your voice, shrill as it had ever been, echoed throughout the empty workstation. Thankfully there weren’t many people loitering there to view what remained of the U.S.S. Franklin, because you sounded quite deranged. But why should you not? What floated in the spacedock, just beyond the four-inch-thick transparent aluminum, could be described as nothing but a disaster.

“I fail to see the logic in shouting the obvious,” said your companion. He was dark-haired and dark-skinned, with pointy ears and a placid demeanor. “If there was not a disaster to fix, you would not have been called out to Starbase Yorktown to begin with.

You shot Tanir a dirty look. Of course, what with him being Vulcan, he merely returned your venom with a blank stare.

“This is not the Enterprise,” you said.

“No. I should think the ship’s registry makes that clear.”

“We were called away from Utopia Planitia to refit the Enterprise.”

“Another accurate statement. Three in a row, Commander. Just one more, and you’ll reach a new record.”

Vulcans. You admired Tanir. Really, you did. Sometimes, though, you wished your closest friend and coworker were an Andorian or a Tellarite, at least so you could find a little variety in the abuse you so constantly endured by those among your staff.

“How can you be so calm about this?” you asked. “You gave up shore leave on New Vulcan for the opportunity to work on this one ship, and it’s not even the ship we were led to believe it would be!”

“Perhaps there is a good reason for the switch. I see a group approaching. Let us hope they will provide us with an explanation.”

You spotted the flash of the opening door reflected in the aluminum yourself and turned to greet the coming party. Pissed as you were to discover that you’d been lured across the quadrant on false pretenses, you knew better than to yell at Commodore Paris over it. Tanir would never let you live down such bad behavior.

It was not the commodore headed over to greet you, however. It was instead a group of four: a short, wiry man in the same red uniform as yours, with dark hair and pale skin; a woman with stark white hair and skin whose species you could not identify; a tall, pale Vulcan in Science Blue, and—

“You!”

You and Jim Kirk recognized each other at the exact same moment. His Vulcan raised a single dark brow at the sudden chorus.

“What are you doing here?” Jim demanded.

“Fixing your ship,” you answered coolly.

“Like hell you are. I’m not letting you get anywhere near my ship!”

“What do you mean, your ship? Did you put this hunk of junk here so I couldn’t even see the Enterprise?”

“Be careful what you call a piece of junk. That ‘junk’ is my home!” said the woman. She looked ready to lunge at you over the insult, but the man in red held her back with a hand to her shoulder.

“Easy there, Jayla. She has no way of knowing that,” he said in a Scottish accent.

“Perhaps, then, she should learn to hold her tongue.”

“An excellent suggestion,” said Jim. “I don’t know what she’s doing here anyway. Commodore Paris said the best from Utopia Planitia was being brought in for the refit.”

“Forgive me for speaking out of turn, Captain, but Commander [L Name] is the best Utopia Planitia has to offer. That is why she is here,” Tanir said.

You would have offered him thanks right then, but knew doing so would likely only prompt him to say something derogatory to make up the compliment.

Such praise—coming from the mouth of a race not often known to lie—seemed to draw Jim up short. Then he said one word: “No.”

“No?” Tanir echoed curiously.

“No. You can work on the ship. I don’t care who else does. Just not her.”

“Captain,” said the other Vulcan, “to dismiss Commander [L Name] would be a grievous error. Only she can do what you want done for the ship in the time frame required of her. If you had read her research into—”

“The point, Spock!”

Spock blinked before smoothly continuing, “It would be foolish to allow your personal feelings to get in the way of allowing someone of her talents to prepare the new Enterprise.

Scowling, Jim looked from Spock’s face, to Tanir’s, to yours.

“The sooner we complete the job, the sooner you can continue your mission. Unless you are attempting this delay because you would prefer not to go on with your assignment?” said Tanir.

Jim did not look happy about it, but struggling under the pressure of two Vulcans at once was something you understood well was difficult not to cave under.

“Fine!” he snapped at last, spinning on his heel. “But I want regular updates on your progress.”

He offered no farewell before leaving the room. Spock watched him go before turning his attention to you and Tanir.

“I will allow Jayla and Mr. Scott to explain the assignment. Thank you for coming out to work on this for us. Mr. Tanir. Commander [L Name]. Live long and prosper.”

You knew Tanir well enough to know that his and Spock’s exchange of the Vulcan Salute thrilled him more than he let on. Spock was a big name among the remaining Vulcans—especially since the other Spock’s passing—and you wondered if the chance of meeting him had been part of the allure of Yorktown for Tanir to begin with. Not that you had any room to needle your engineer about his hero worship. Spock’s name drop of the Enterprise’s engineer had you seeing stars yourself.

Mr. Scott was too busy shaking his head to notice your staring, thankfully. “Wonder what’s got into the captain. I haven’t seen him this upset since the incident with Kahn.”

“Mr. Scott. As in Montgomery Scott?” you asked in awe. Well, making sure of that was easier than explaining why Jim was acting as though an exocomp had crawled up his butt.

“Yes?” Mr. Scott said.

“I can’t believe I’m meeting you! After Admiral Archer got you exiled I thought I’d never get the chance!” Forget the screaming from earlier; your squealing over meeting this man made you sound far more deranged. “I’ve kept up with all your research. The transwarp beaming technique—I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I appreciate you saying that. You’ve done a lot of impressive stuff yourself. I particularly found the—”

“Montgomery Scottie. Is there a reason you asked me to come along with you to see my home?” Jaylah interrupted.

Mr. Scott smiled. “Oh. Right. Best we move onto the instructions.”

“That would be ideal. We are in something of a time crunch as it is,” said Tanir.

“Well, you already know the basics.” Mr. Scott gestured at the ship floating nearby. “We need a new Enterprise.”

You and Tanir glanced at one another.

“Okay,” you said slowly. “Where is the Enterprise?”

“Gone,” said Jaylah.

“Aye. It sort of got…blasted into a million tiny smithereens out in deep space,” Mr. Scott admitted.

“Wh—” Just like Jaylah before, you required holding back to prevent yourself from lunging at him. Tanir did so as discreetly as he could.

“We were not informed that this was the case. Of course we will do our best to provide a new ship that meets your qualifications,” he said, “but why is the U.S.S. Franklin here in the Enterprise’s stead?”

“Well, that old ship did do us a lot of favors. What we were hoping was, with your permission of course,” Mr. Scott said to Jaylah, “that you could use some of this ship to build the new one.”

Her amber eyes lit up. “So it will get to fly again?”

“That’s what we hope.”

“That would be wonderful Montgomery Scottie. Please do it. Then, once I’m done at the Academy, I can come home again.”

Was anyone going to ask you how you felt about this task? No. Of course not. Jaylah’s acceptance was enough apparently, even though she wouldn’t have anything to do with the construction or deconstruction of either ship. After several seconds of her and Mr. Scott beaming over their plan, the latter held his hand out toward you.

“We’ll leave it to you, then,” he said.

Tanir prevented you from saying what you were thinking by stepping forward to shake Mr. Scott’s hand himself. “We will ensure your captain is regularly updated, as he requested.”

You couldn’t bring yourself to not shake Mr. Scott’s hand yourself, no matter how upset you were about his and Jim’s cockamamie plan to combine a brand new ship with elements of a dinosaur from the Federation’s birth.

He and Jaylah left immediately after. Before she left, she called out a cheerful “goodbye!” as though she hadn’t just given permission for you to do the impossible.

“If I may say so, you handled that remarkably well,” Tanir observed.

You didn’t answer. There wasn’t enough time to list all the reasons he was wrong. Commodore Paris wanted this refit done impossibly quickly, and now you had even more work ahead of you than originally anticipated. Trying to put Jim out of your mind (never an easy task), you went to your station to begin your designs.

******

Days and nights passed quickly in the secluded silence of your workshop. Things did not proceed as planned. Blueprint after blueprint found itself tossed unceremoniously into the database trash bin; you frequently wished that you could delete yourself along with it. Normally you didn’t have to spend the better part of week on nothing but a basic outline…but normally you already had access to what was required for a ship.

Jim always had to make things difficult, didn’t he? All the parts for a new Constitution-class could be put together easily. That just wasn’t good enough for him; he had to have some Frankenstein’s monster of a ship that included Freedom-class parts, too, and those hadn’t been in use for ages. Maybe a ship remained in a junkyard somewhere, but you doubted it.

The Franklin messed things up for its own stripping, too. Spacedocks just weren’t made with old ships like that in mind, meaning Tanir had to supervise a staff to manually pull the antique apart. Since you still didn’t know just how you were going to incorporate the old ship into the new, you needed everything as intact as possible. What had begun as a quick assignment you’d been eager to tackle was turning into an endless slog you’d just as soon pass to one of the Andorians always vying for your position.

“This is ridiculous!” you said as your seventh simulation for the day ended with the new Enterprise shaking itself into pieces less than a light-year away from its starting point.

“Mom.”

A hand tugged at the sleeve of your uniform. Slowly, you lifted your head from where it had fallen onto your arms to see a boy, grinning and muss-haired, gazing at you through his huge blue eyes.

“What is it, Emmett?” you asked. “Need help on a homework problem?”

“No. I finished that an hour ago. Are we going to eat soon?”

Poor Emmett. Just twelve years old and already he knew better than to interrupt you at work, even when you were hours past a reasonable quitting time and he’d likely been sitting there doing extra homework just to pass the time. You pressed a guilty kiss to the skin just beneath his thick, brown hair.

“Sorry, baby. I got caught up again, didn’t I?"

He nodded.

"How about I give you some credits and you go get us something you like for dinner? As soon as you get back, I’ll quit, and we’ll go home to eat.”

“Okay!”

Any boy his age would be eager to run through the streets of Yorktown unsupervised. You felt a little bad about letting him do so, but what harm could he get into? It was still a Federation starbase. Once you handed over the credits, Emmett shot off like a phaser beam toward the exit. Well, he’d been cooped up in there with you for most of the evening. Even worse, Tanir had left to give Jim the update he demanded, leaving your son without his favorite person in the galaxy to distract him.

Knowing that Emmett wouldn’t take long to return with food, you went back to your station. Your frustration level rose with every failed simulation. Tanir could remind you how proud you’d be of the work once you finished as much as he wanted; it didn’t prevent you from resenting just how much of a miracle Mr. Scott and Jaylah and Jim were asking you to perform—especially since the last clearly didn’t think you had it in you.

“Excuse me, Commander.”

“Think of the devil,” you said, still poking around at the new blank screen. “Not that your resemblance to the devil is all that extreme. How’d the meeting go? Did Jim convince you that you could do a better job than me yet?”

“No. But I tried.”

Thank goodness that you’d sent your son away, because your reaction to hearing Jim’s voice in your workspace was to let out a colorful Tellarite swear—among other reasons you were relieved Emmett was gone, of course. Scowling, you turned on your stool to face the door, where, sure enough, Tanir stood with Jim beside him.

“He refused to take the update from me, on the grounds that I am not the one with the most immediate knowledge of how the refit fares,” Tanir said.

“Oh, so now you’re not even going to let my staff do their jobs? Don’t you have better things to do than harass me in person?” you demanded of Jim.

“Not until you fix my ship,” he said.

To emphasize that he had no intention of leaving without getting what he’d come for, he pulled out the stool on the other side of your table and plopped right into it. His eyes focused directly on yours. You could feel yourself falling into them, head over heels…

“Commander.”

Tanir saved you from embarrassing yourself further with his interruption. Startled, you cleared your throat and turned back to him. Your cheeks burned. Hopefully keeping your face directed away from Jim’s would prevent him from noticing.

“Yes, Mr. Tanir?” you asked.

“I believe that when I left you to give Captain Kirk an update, you had company. May I inquire as to where your company went?”

You swore again, this time in Andorian. “I don’t have time to deal with you right now,” you shot at Jim, already bustling to get your things together so you could leave.

“That is all right, Commander. You speak with the captain. He has made it quite clear that he will not receive the information from anyone else. I will ensure that your guest makes it to your quarters safely.”

When you nodded, it was very reluctantly. Staying to speak with Jim was not what you considered an ideal situation. Better than the one Tanir had barely prevented, however. Emmett would be returning with dinner any minute.

“Then, Captain Kirk, I bid you farewell.”

Tanir did not suggest that Jim live well or prosper before he left. His obvious frustration at not being allowed to do his job distracted you effectively enough that you almost forgot to shout, “Tell him I’ll be there right away! Just as soon as I’m done with this last problem!”

One wave of the hand without turning told you Tanir heard. You could breathe again knowing that Emmett would not come running in at the most inopportune time available. Perhaps bringing him along with you to Yorktown had been a mistake. After all, you had been well aware Jim would be there, too, long before you boarded your shuttle there.

“Is that really what you think of me?”

Jim, of course, had not left with Tanir. He remained precisely where you’d left him: a continuous pain in your ass. The way his lips curled into a sardonic smile caused a long-buried, quavering feeling to unfurl inside your stomach. Thirty looked good on him. Or was that the Starfleet uniform? Before you could give this disturbing thought the attention it deserved, the man lifted himself from his stool just enough to reach forward and tap you on the forehead.

“Hey. Earth to [Name]. You still in there?”

Perhaps you didn’t need to swat his hand away so forcefully. Perhaps you did. It was all up to interpretation, and your interpretation was that Jim had a lot of nerve touching you like that after all these years.

“Yes, Jim, I’m still here,” you said, “and I’m still wondering why you sent away my second in command when he is perfectly capable of giving you the information you want. Which is why, yes, I think you’re a problem.”

“Well, that should be nothing new. I’ve always been a bit of a problem, haven’t I?”

“Do you have to look so pleased with yourself? Being captain of a starship hasn’t changed you one bit.”

“Because Starfleet’s done such a perfect job of ironing out all your imperfections.”

“What are you doing here?” you asked. “I really have somewhere to be.”

“Got a date?”

“Yes. I do.”

One blink set his face to a completely foreign blank mask. “Oh. Well, I guess I shouldn’t keep you then.”

“That would be…nice.” It would—but that didn’t stop your words from coming out confused. All this hassle for him to let you go just like that?

“Right. So, how are things going for the ship? Are you making progress?”

“We’re making progress with the disassembly of the U.S.S. Franklin,” you allowed.

“But how’s the Enterprise?”

Again, all of this was something that Tanir could have explained to him—or Mr. Scott or Jaylah, both of whom spent most mornings observing your work. “That’s a little more complicated.”

Jim scoffed.

“Something funny?”

“No. Nothing’s funny at all. I just knew I shouldn’t have let you continue the work.”

“Because I haven’t been able to combine two ships from vastly different eras in a matter of four days?”

Shaking his head, he got up. “No. Because you can’t see things through. You never have, and you never will.”

“That’s not true!”

Why did it matter to you? What James Tiberius Kirk thought of you hadn’t mattered to you since you were sixteen years old. Just because he was handsome—just because he was successful—just because he’d managed to convince an entire crew that he was something special didn’t mean that you, too, needed to concern yourself with your reputation in his eyes.

But if any of that were true, why did it hurt so much when he looked back just long enough to say, “You’ve never seen anything through for me”?

******

Trust Jim to barge back into things the minute you made a lick of progress on his ship. You had not heard from him once in the two weeks since he’d accused you of having no ability to follow through. Mr. Scott probably relayed any relevant information to him after his and Jaylah’s daily visits, and not seeing Jim suited you just fine. Having to listen to more of his smug, veiled references to your shared past did nothing to help your already sky-high stress levels. You had better ways to spend your free time than hashing out old arguments with your ex.

First dinner, now homework. What was the man going to pull you away from next? Your frustration must have shown plain on your face as Yorktown’s artificial sunset beamed across it. All manner of sentient beings hastily stepped out of your way like you were a Klingon on a warpath. If only such an expression could cow Jim into leaving you alone—but you already knew from experience your anger would only delight him. He obviously wanted you angry, or else he wouldn’t have insisted on a personal visit when he could just as easily have gone straight to your lab himself.

When you arrived at his quarters, no sounds issued from within. A parade of unwanted memories flashed through your eye. You shook your head to clear it of them. No, if Jim were in bed with an Orion or a Caitian or a Kelpien, there would have been a lot more noise. It was with great trepidation all the same that you pressed the buzzer beside the silver door.

“Enter,” called a familiar voice.

This did not exactly unclench the muscles in your stomach. Terrified of what you might see in the room beyond, you slapped a hand over your eyes before you stepped over the threshold.

“Is there a reason you’ve covered your eyes like that?” asked a new voice, this one wholly unknown and with a strong Southern accent. More surprisingly, the voice belonged to a man.

Removing your hand revealed a completely normal sitting area. It matched the one in your own quarters, all the way down to the low glass coffee table and a sleek black couch. Two men sat on the last: Jim and an older white man with thick brown hair and eyebrows to match.

“Oh, hello,” you said a little awkwardly. “I didn’t realize Jim would have company.”

“But you clearly expected him to. Don’t worry. All the times I’ve seen him naked have been purely medical in nature.”

“Dr. McCoy here is my ship’s doctor,” Jim explained.

“Much to my everlasting chagrin,” said Dr. McCoy.

“Bones, this is Commander [F Name] [L Name]. She’s…overseeing the building of the new Enterprise.”

“Please to meet you.” He grasped your hand briefly, stood, and looked right at Jim. “Well, seeing as you have a visitor much prettier than I am, I think I’ll take my leave. Goodnight, Jim. Commander.”

Neither of you protested his going. Jim would probably have insisted on you giving your update in front of both of them if Dr. McCoy didn’t vacate the premises himself. Normally you wouldn’t have minded an audience, but considering what aspersions Jim would probably cast on your work, you’d have preferred to present your ideas alone. Even after Dr. McCoy exited, though, Jim didn’t say anything. Not for a long time.

“How was your date?” he asked at last.

Needless to say, you had not expected that question. “What are you talking about?”

“Your date. The one you said you had last time you and I talked. How’d it go?”

“Oh! Oh, that.” Not the kind of date he thought it was, but all the better for you. “It went fine. Thank you for asking.”

Again, Jim said nothing. His eyes wandered away from your face. You held your breath. What on earth was going on in that man’s head? This was a puzzle you didn’t have the time to ponder. A prepubescent boy eagerly awaited your return. Whatever was bothering Jim, he would have to work through it on his own.

“Look, are we going to get started on the Q and A or what?” you asked.

He answered with a question of his own: “Do you want to take a walk?”

“A walk?”

“Yeah. A walk. I can’t stand sitting in here one more minute. Can you give me your update while we walk instead?”

Well, that did sound a little more like the Jim you knew. Iowa didn’t provide a lot in the way of distraction for a maladjusted guy like him, so there had been plenty of road trips (mostly of the unsupervised variety) made just to occupy him.

His return to something resembling normalcy forced your hand. A single nod indicted your acquiescence. He stood, then motioned for you follow him back out onto the walk. All of the artificial sunlight had vanished by then, leaving the both of you underneath a transparent roof full of unfamiliar stars.

Not a word passed between you as you walked along. A few people recognized Jim and called out greetings to him. Each of these he acknowledged with a smile and a quiet “hello.” To you he said nothing at all. It occurred to you that you would have to be the one to begin if you wanted to get back to your quarters anytime soon.

“I’m sure Mr. Scott told you we’ve finally got a working model of the new ship,” you said. Jim continued walking without so much as glancing at you. “We’re not going to be able to use much of the Franklin. A few of her noncritical systems can be installed—you can keep the music player, for instance—but I’m afraid that, other than that, the best we can do is melt down the Franklin’s hull and combine what’s left with the alloy for the new Enterprise.”

Still his eyes did not move toward you. They moved downward to his boots instead. This forced you to look at him in profile longer than you would have liked. There really wasn’t any angle he wasn’t beautiful from, which wasn’t fair. All those stunts you’d pulled together as kids should have aged him just as quickly as they had you.

At last, Jim chuckled. “I bet Jaylah loved hearing that you want to melt down her home.”

“She didn’t. But she’s an exceptionally smart woman. I let her tinker around with my program for a bit, and she agrees that this is the only way we can properly integrate two ships of such vastly different time periods. Now Jaylah’s just glad we’re not sending the Franklin to a junkyard somewhere she’ll never see any of it again.”

You’d reached a swell in the pathway. Below, on another tier of the tangle of paths that made up the station, sat a fountain spewing silvery wet sparks into the air. Here Jim stopped, pulled away from the crowd, and leaned forward against the metal railing. Was he even listening to you? He never really had, but why ask for an update that night of all nights if he didn’t want to hear it?

“Jim, if I’m boring you, we can always do this another time.”

“Hm? What? No. No, sorry.” He took a deep breath, fixing you once more with his beautiful eyes as you came to stand beside him. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to tell you.”

“You wanted to tell me you don’t care where we are in the process of building your ship?”

“No. I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. For what I said the other day, about you not having any follow through. Clearly that’s not true. I was thinking about something that happened, what? Thirteen years ago? I was out of line.”

All you did was stare at him—not only because he remained just as handsome as he had been those thirteen years ago (maybe even more so), but also because of what he was saying. An apology? Coming out of his mouth?

“I really surprised with that one, didn’t I?” He looked delighted with himself.

“Shut up,” you said. “I’ve just never heard you say that you’re sorry to anyone, except maybe Sam.”

“We’ve both done some growing since we last saw each other, huh? Well, maybe you didn’t need the growing. You always knew what you were doing.”

“I was sixteen and scared. I still had a lot of growing up to do myself.”

“Still, you made the right choice. We wouldn’t be the people we are today if you hadn’t, and I like who I am a hell of a lot more than who I was. So, thank you. Maybe it’s time to let bygones be bygones.”

Every inch of your being screamed for you not to shake the hand he offered you. Jim was not above deceit or temper—not to mention that he was completely wrong about everything. But in the end, you did take his hand and say:

“I’d like that. Does this mean I can finish my work on the Enterprise without further interference?”

“Yeah, yeah. Spock was right all along. Like usual,” Jim said with a rueful grin.

“About what?”

“About how I shouldn’t let personal feelings interfere with the plans for our ship.”

Together, you both fell silent once more. It was almost a comfortable silence—like the kind you used to spend together in rural Iowa, gazing up at different stars and doing your best not to think about what awaited either of you when you finally sneaked back to your respective homes. Almost. Unfortunately, all those years without Jim there stretched between you too loudly to allow you much comfort.

“Does he know?” you asked. “Mr. Spock?”

Jim shook his head. “No. I haven’t told a soul. You?”

“No, I—”

“Mom!”

One word. One word was all it took to set ice down your spine. One word was all it took to get you spinning away from your view of the fountain. One word had Jim looking over to see the exact same thing you did at the exact same time: Emmett, beaming, racing through the throng of evening pedestrians and right toward you.

“This is a nightmare,” you murmured.

Why was Emmett outside at this time of night? Where was Tanir? Yet Emmett threw his arms around you in a snug embrace far too solidly to be some terrible dream. He nearly knocked the wind out of you with his enthusiasm.

“I finished my homework, Mom! You said that once I did we could go get some ice cream. Remember? You promised! And you left ages ago so I had to come looking for you, or by the time you got home you’d probably tell me it was too late for dessert.”

Very, very slowly, you lifted your head to look over at Jim. Standing so close to each other, Emmett and Jim’s resemblance was unmistakable: same eyes; same nose; hell, they even had the same jawline. Your mind raced to find some excuse, some lie that Jim might swallow—

But it was too late. The moment your eyes met, Jim turned around and walked away.

******

The following morning brought with it one of the worst headaches you had suffered since early adolescence. Any amount of synthetic sunlight felt like a phaser set to kill blasting through your frontal lobe. Your nausea was somehow worse. Getting Emmett out of bed, fed, and ready for his classes after your night of binge drinking took Herculean effort on your part. You had no intention of going to work that day. As soon as your son was out the door, you told the computer to dim every window, and then you settled miserably onto your couch.

Work found you anyway—or rather Tanir did. What was the difference? You did not answer the shriek of the buzzer, but he just came right inside anyway.

“Commander. May I inquire as to why you have chosen to remain on your sofa instead of coming into work on the Enterprise?”

“Because I’m hungover,” you groaned. “What does it look like?”

“A hangover is no excuse to shirk your duties. You knew very well that you had an obligation in the morning when you chose to drink yourself into a stupor.”

“The only thing happening today is the framework going up. It’s a standard Excelsior-class design. Surely you’re intelligent enough to oversee that on your own for a day.”

“My leadership capabilities are hardly relevant. What concerns me is that you believe hiding in your quarters and feeling sorry for yourself is a good solution to your problem.”

Tanir saying something like that twisted the bat'leth further into your gut. He had been the one to find you in the Yorktown bar, trying to convince the reluctant Bolian bartender to give you just one more glass of Saurian Brandy. You didn’t think you’d revealed the cause of your bad decision making to Tanir during the course of his getting you to your quarters safely, but surely that was the only way he would know about it.

“It.” Your son. Your son and his prodigal father. Would Jim really tell anyone else? When would he have had the time?

You could not very well leave the room in a huff in your present condition; the pounding in your head prevented you from so much as rolling over on the couch. To avoid having to look at Tanir, you closed your eyes. He didn’t take the hint, of course. Hints flew well over the head of most Vulcans.

“Emmett is Captain Kirk’s son, is he not?” he asked.

You nodded weakly.

“You never told either of them?”

Your eyes opened only wide enough to allow you to glare at him. “They didn’t need to know. If you hadn’t let Emmett run off last night after you helped him with his essay on the history of Human-Vulcan relations, no one else would know at all.”

“I am not a babysitter.”

You flinched—not at the way his voice sliced through your head, but because he was right. Tanir usually was, but on this matter he was more right than ever, and the vaguely hurt twinge in his words was deserved. If you had not been so afraid that doing as much would literally have caused your skull to split in two, you would have started crying right then and there.

“What I am is your coworker,” Tanir went on, “and your friend. And as your friend, I must inform you how monumentally foolish it was to bring your son here when you knew his father would be here as well. In fact, it was uncharacteristically foolish of you. I suspect you only did so because you wanted Captain Kirk to discover the truth.”

“After thirteen years, you really think I’d want to tell Jim about his son? I’ve worked too hard to build a decent life for myself and Emmett to just throw that all a way. Jim’s worked too hard to throw it all away!”

“I do not suggest you made the decision consciously, merely that you might consider that it was your choice going forward. This discovery might do him more good than harm.”

Which “him” Tanir referred to—Jim or Emmett—you never got the chance to ask. The noise of the front door sliding open (without so much as a buzzer to announce the newcomer) left you and Tanir staring at each for a split second before Jim himself stalked into the room.

“Captain,” said Tanir, “to what do we owe the—”

“How. Dare you,” Jim said.

He had eyes only for you. So great was the intensity of his gaze that you couldn’t be sure he even realized that Tanir had tried to greet him. What startled you more was that Jim wasn’t drunk. He looked as though he’d spent most of the night pacing and pulling at his hair, but he definitely hadn’t gone on the bender you had.

When you made no attempt to answer him, Jim spoke again:

“You told me you weren’t even going to have him.”

“I told you what you wanted to hear,” you said.

“Excuse me,” Tanir interjected, but this time, Jim did notice him.

He pointed right at Tanir’s chest. “If you want to stick around and listen to this, I’m not going to make you leave, but I’d appreciate it if you kept any logic-related remarks to yourself.”

Both of Tanir’s dark eyebrows rose, then he looked to you as though for permission. Perhaps he worried what Jim—a captain well-known for using old-fashioned fisticuffs more often than not—might do if left alone with you. You motioned with your head toward the door, despite the pain doing so caused you. Jim would not strike you physically. He’d had occasion to before and never had.

“Then I shall leave. Commander, I will ensure things go as planned today, but I expect you back to work tomorrow. Otherwise I will have to report your continued absence to Utopia Planitia.”

With that, he left. Not a single word passed between you or Jim until both of you could be sure that Tanir wouldn’t turn right back.

“That’s a load of shit, [Name].”

Every sentence he had spoken remained at the same volume, though his voice quavered enough to make his feelings clear.

With great effort, you heaved yourself into a seated position. “Which bit?”

“I told you that I’d take care of you. I told you that I’d be there for my kid.”

“And how were you planning to do that, Jim?”

“What?”

“How were you planning to 'take care’ of me? You weren’t going anywhere. You didn’t have any plans. Hell, you didn’t even have a job. All you wanted was to keep making trouble in Iowa until one of your stunts got you killed.”

“I…I would have figured something out,” he insisted.

“Sure you would. Meanwhile, what was I supposed to do? Do you think for one second my family would have helped us out? Or yours?”

Your vision pulsed around the edges as your tone grow higher pitched. Through this, you could see Jim’s wide-eyed, red face. He could be as angry as he wanted to, but after all these years, you were finally telling the truth. If he hadn’t wanted to hear it, he should have just minded his own business until he could get back on the Enterprise and fly right out of your life again.

“That’s not fair,” he said. “I got this far, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t start at Starfleet Academy until after I’d already graduated. And you were mad at me for signing up to go to begin with!”

“Because you left me!” At last, Jim’s voice rose to meet yours, and as it did, it cracked. “You left me, and there was nothing that mattered anymore once you were gone. And now I find out you took my son from me, too?”

With a jolt, you realized his eyes were wet. “You said last night that I made the right choice.”

“That was when I thought you had an abortion.”

“I was going to. I just…couldn’t do it in the end.”

“So you decided that you wanted to be mother, but you didn’t give me the opportunity to be a father.”

“This is insane. We wanted different things!” Your shout caused your stomach to flip over inside you, but you swallowed away the nausea. “I couldn’t stay in Iowa another month, let alone as long as it would take to raise a child. You weren’t going to leave. Something had to give, and it was easier for you to go on thinking I took care of the problem.”

“That wasn’t your call to make.”

“If I hadn’t told you I wasn’t going to have Emmett, we wouldn’t be the people we are today. You like who are you are today,” you reminded him. “Isn’t that reason enough for me to do what I did?”

“Emmett,” Jim repeated in a whisper. “His name is Emmett.”

You didn’t like his tone one bit. “Jim,” you began, but he had already leaped toward the door.

“I’m going to talk to him.”

“Like hell you are!”

“Whose going to stop me? You? You couldn’t stop an unhosted Trill symbiont right now.”

The churning in your stomach surged in strength; Jim’s shadowed outline seemed to blur around the edges. He could do it. He could run off this very instant, find Emmett, tell him everything. All your careful planning, all those difficulties endured as a single parent at the Academy, could come to ruin in the blink of an eye.

“I didn’t tell him either,” you said, and there was a pleading edge to your words that you couldn’t entirely quash.

Horror washed over his features. That was what bothered him the most out of all of this? That you hadn’t breathed a word to your son over who his father was? Not that it mattered. If that knowledge prevented Jim from seeking him out, so much the better. Did it, though? You couldn’t tell. He swallowed, opened his mouth, then closed it again to walk out the door.

As soon as you were alone, the nausea overcame you. Your shaking legs forced you to your feet…but too late to avoid vomiting all over your feet and the carpet.

Just one more stellar moment in this stellar life you’d just claimed was for the best.

******

Four weeks later, the newest Enterprise floated complete inside the spacedock. It had a taken a lot of staff doing a lot of work to get it ready—countless hours of testing, tweaking, and transporter modifications—but there she was: gleaming and gorgeous, ready to set off for the first time (technically) into the vast frontier.

You and Emmett stood together in your cleared-out laboratory. There was a party going on inside the ship beyond the transparent aluminum. Soon, someone would eject a bottle of champagne at just the right trajectory for it to break against the ship’s oddly-colored hull. It wouldn’t be long after that the Enterprise and all her staff would be gone again, far out of the reach of anyone on Utopia Planitia.

Emmett stared straight ahead. He refused to look at you. That was nothing new, but that didn’t mean you weren’t hurt by his behavior. His growing arms hung stiff at his sides, making him look all the more awkward in the nice clothes that he had donned for the occasion.

“Emmett,” you said.

“What?”

“It’s time to go.”

When he snapped his attention to you, his jaw was set. You’d seen that look a thousand times on a face that did not belong to him. Another flip of the stomach had you wondering if you were making the right call here. It had been four weeks. Before that, it had been thirteen years. Did anyone have the right to cause such an upheaval after so much time had passed?

You would lose your nerve standing around like that—your nerve and your designated transporter time. One sweeping motion of your arm got Emmett moving. Poor kid. Though he still refused to look at you, you could see him trembling. His skin (the color of which he had inherited from you, if nothing else) took on an ashy cast as he stepped onto the waiting pad. If you could have done something to comfort him, you would have. Boys his age were not interested in hugs, you were learning, and boys his age that were angry with their mothers were even less so.

“Two to beam up, Enterprise,” you said.

“Aye, I got you,” Mr. Scott’s voice said over the audio connection. “We’ll be seeing you soon.”

The lab dissolved before your eyes into a glittering stream of silver and white. Your body—or rather lack thereof—prickled like someone was rolling a cactus from the bottoms of your feet all the way up to your hairline. Then the worst part came: the darkness of non-existence. After that, sensation returned to you all at once. The prickling stopped and sight returned. You and your son stood together in an entirely different room, on an entirely different transporter.

Mr. Scott came around the monitoring station with a grin.

“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to get on it if you weren’t the one that installed this thing,” you said breathlessly.

“Well, Chekov helped. But he’s needed on the bridge, so I’ll do in a pinch when someone wants over. Are you here for the party?”

“I was actually hoping to see Jim. Would that be all right?”

Mr. Scott’s smile faded a little. Then his eyes went right to Emmett. “I don’t see why not. Hello,” he added to him. “I’m Montgomery Scott. And you are?”

“Emmett [L Name].” At least he wasn’t so mad at you that he had forgotten his manners. He gave Mr. Scott’s hand a firm shake before looking at you for direction.

“Good to meet you. Your mother speaks very highly of you. So does Mr. Tanir.“

"Thank you, sir.”

“Turbolift’s down at the end of the corridor. Just tell it you want the bridge and it will take you right there. Well!” He laughed. “Why am I telling you this? You built the damn thing!”

You offered your thanks as well. Then you and Emmett left the room. Color had crept up the back of his neck at Mr. Scott’s compliment, but it did not seem to have thawed him at all toward you. The quiet that sat between the both of you for the duration of the lift ride was as icy as one of Neptune’s moons.

This came to a grinding halt the minute the doors opened onto the bridge. A party was in full swing there. So many people were crammed into the room that it was a wonder any of the people carrying trays of drinks and foods of a dozen different cultures could get around them.

You looked immediately to the chair in the center…but it was vacant. Heart sinking, you took another look around you, only to this time gain the notice of Tanir, Spock, and a very pretty dark-skinned woman in red.

“Hello, Commander,” Spock said. “It is a pleasure to have you here for the ship’s christening. Mr. Tanir informed us you had a prior obligation.”

“That is what she told me,” said Tanir.

“No. What I told you was that I didn’t want to come, but I appreciate the cover story,” you said.

“It was no story. Your prior obligation was being elsewhere in consideration of your own mental health.”

The woman with them tried to a hide a dazzling smile behind her flute of synthehol champagne—no real alcohol was allowed on board with a warp so close at hand—but she did not do so well enough to avoid catching your eye.

“Sorry. You just don’t see Vulcans covering for their bosses very often. I’m Lieutenant Nyota Urhura, by the way. Communications officer. You and your staff did a fantastic job with this ship.”

“Thank you.”

Being inside the ship afforded you an entirely different view than your blueprints and designs ever could. Without a doubt, this new Enterprise was the closest thing to a work of art you’d ever been a part of. Mixing the Freedom-class starship with enough of a Constitution-class to remain familiar to its crew, all stuffed into the newest Excelsior-class framework made it entirely unique. No one was about to dub the new design an Enterprise-class considering just how unfeasible mass production would be, but you were proud of her nonetheless. You doubted anyone would notice how outdated the stereo was unless they were informed of its age by the crew.

“I take it this your son.”

Spock’s voice drew you from your admiration, reminding you that you were not here to bask in a job well done, but to make some much-needed amends.

Emmett stood behind you just as quiet as always. Normally he was so outgoing…then again, he was outgoing among the Utopia Planitia staff that had watched him grow up, not among a group of people that thought they already knew him because he looked familiar—or maybe he was being so shy because of Lieutenant Urhura. This was not a comforting thought for a mother that had given birth to him not much older than he was now.

“Yes,” you said. Gently, you took Emmett’s wrist and pulled him forward. “This is Emmett James [L Name]. Emmett, this is Mr. Spock and Lieutenant Urhura.”

“Good to meet you,” Spock flashed him the Vulcan salute, then added, “If you have half the mind your mother does, I expect we’ll be seeing great things of you.”

“Oh. I don’t know about that,” Emmett said. Color climbed from his neck to his ears.

“He’s twice as smart as I am,” you put in proudly.

“Perhaps more. I’ve read his papers. Certainly he is the most logical of the family,” said Tanir.

Lieutenant Urhura couldn’t take her eyes off your son. “Did you say Emmett James?”

“Yes. Speaking of, I really hoped to speak with Jim—I mean, Captain Kirk—before he left. Is he around anywhere?” you asked.

“Last I checked, he was in his quarters. I could call him up on comms if you’d like.”

“It is odd for the Captain not to be on a time for a social engagement,” said Spock, “but he has been uncharacteristically closed off for the past few months. Do you suppose he decided to take the vice admiral position after all?”

“No, Spock. Let me talk to him. I’ve got a pretty good idea why he’s been hiding so much lately. It was a pleasure to meet you, Commander, Emmett.”

You bid her farewell before she strode off to her communications desk. Spock followed her. Your heart hammered in your chest. Was Lieutenant Urhura right? Could Jim be closing off from his friends and coworkers because of you? Or were you just assuming the universe revolved around you as you always had? Some pathetic sun you were.

“Mom,” Emmett whispered. He looked stricken. “What if he doesn’t come?”

How could you even begin to answer that? If Jim didn’t come, it would be a long time before he got back into communication range again—if he would be willing to communicate with either of you at all. And if Jim never spoke to Emmett, never got to know the son you’d kept from him, it would be all your fault. You had kept Emmett’s existence a secret all these years. You had forbidden Jim from speaking to him when he found out. You had chosen to not tell Emmett the truth until the Enterprise was nearly ready to leave.

“If indeed Captain Kirk has become so upset by your mother’s actions as to turn into a recluse, it is highly unlikely that he will make an appearance after being informed that she is here,” Tanir said.

Emmett blanched; you glared at Tanir, though this had its usual lack of any effect. Before you could open your mouth to ask him to kindly keep such observations to himself, he went on in that same level voice:

“However, if the reason he is upset with her is because she has forbidden him to know you, there is no reason to assume that he will not come when he finds that you are here. Captain Kirk is not above bending rules he finds burdensome, and such a rule seems like it has become quite a burden.”

Your son relaxed a little. As much as you appreciated Tanir’s attempt to cheer Emmett up, you thought it would be best if you got the two of them away from each other sooner rather than later. Tanir could just as easily dash hopes as raise them, and his reasoning would be perfectly sound either way. The way Emmett looked up to Tanir would only exacerbate the former’s feelings.

“Here, Emmett, let’s find you something to eat,” you said, as one of the servers carrying a tray of some Orion delicacy passed. Emmett loved trying new food…or he did, when he wasn’t so upset with the world at large.

“I’m not hungry,” he said stiffly.

“Don’t be silly. You haven’t eaten all day. You’re a growing boy.”

“Mom. Don't—”

Whatever he wanted to tell you, Emmett broke off without finishing. His blue eyes froze on something behind you. Tanir’s gaze followed his until it, too, came to a halt. Slowly, you turned around to see what they were looking at.

Jim himself stepped out of the turbolift. The high color in his cheeks indicated that he had run from his shipboard quarters to the lift and still hadn’t quite caught his breath yet. His hair, on the other hand, had been immaculately combed, his uniform pressed, his boots polished to a high shine. All that remained perfectly in place.

Your stomach turned over, but it wasn’t from having too much to drink this time. You hadn’t seen each other, hadn’t spoken a single word, since that terrible fight a month before. What was he going to say when he found you standing on his bridge, bold as brass? What was he going to do?

Worrying about that turned out to be unnecessary. With Emmett standing just a little off from the captain’s chair in the center of the room, it didn’t take much searching for Jim to spot him. Their eyes locked and remained riveted on each other so thoroughly that you might as well have turned invisible. You didn’t mind (being invisible to Jim was probably preferable to the alternative), except that neither of the men seemed capable of breaking the silence between them, and crew and party-goers alike were starting to stare.

“Perhaps you ought to say something,” Tanir suggest in an undertone.

An excellent idea, but it was already too late. The quiet grew so unbearable that one of Jim’s crew apparently felt it his duty to break the ice himself: A young white man with curly brown hair and a yellow uniform jumped up from where he sat at the helm to shout, “Captain on the bridge!” in a thick Russian accent.

His words did the trick. Jim thawed enough to notice just how many people in the room were watching him with great interest. For once, he looked a little abashed at the attention, though perhaps it was only your memories that made his smile appear so sheepish.

“Thank you, Ensign Chekov!” he called, and several people in the room tittered.

“Happy to help, Captain,” Chekov said cheerfully, then plopped himself down next to a Japanese man who had a little girl sitting in his lap.

Jim waited for most of the onlookers to return to their previous conversations before he took a breath so deep you could see him taking it from several feet away, then seemed to force himself to cross the remaining distance to your trio.

“Hey,” he said, once he was in speaking range.

Hey. Hey? Thirteen years, a guilt trip the size of a gormagander, a thirty-three day-long cold shoulder, and the most Jim could manage to say to his son was hey? You couldn’t help the disbelieving snort you let out, unfortunately. It caused Jim to snap out of his daze long enough to notice you standing there next to Emmett.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, but his tone was not the same as it had been upon your first reunion. It was softer somehow, maybe even curious.

Nonetheless, your instinct was to rail against him. He might have been captain of this starship, but you were that ship’s architect. Who cared that he outranked you in Starfleet hierarchy?

Seeing Emmett watching you with glistening eyes reminded you that you had not come to this party to have another big blowout with his father. You took a deep breath before planting your feet more solidly onto the floor.

“I came to say I’m sorry,” you said.

“You…”

“I really surprised you with that one, did I?” No, that tone would not do. You tried again, this time with a more sincere tone: “I’m sorry, Jim. I’m sorry that I lied to you about Emmett, and I’m sorry I kept you from him all these years. I’m even more sorry that I told you you couldn’t talk to him now. And I’m sorry to you, too, Emmett. I should have told you about your father a long time ago.”

Jim looked thunderstruck. Emmett looked nearly just as surprised.

“Four accurate statements in a row. A new record,” Tanir said.

“Thank you, Mr. Tanir,” you and Jim said in unison.

To your surprise, Emmett laughed. He cleared his throat when he caught the two of you goggling at him. “Hey. It’s…it’s really good to meet you—er, Captain?”

“I think it would be okay if you called me 'Dad.’”

The grin on your son’s face could have lit up an entire solar system. “It’s really good to meet you, Dad.”

“Likewise, Emmett.”

Oh, no. There came the waterworks. Seeing your two boys like that, standing face to face, made your eyes mist up. It was a good thing that neither of them seemed in a hurry to do more than stand there face to face, or you might have missed something important while you tried without success to find something to wipe your eyes with.

“I believe in situations such as these, a hug would be the next appropriate course of action,” Tanir suggested.

“Don’t be a voyeur,” you said.

“It is being a voyeur now to suggest humans partake in a typical familial action in front of me?”

“They just met. Don’t rush things.”

Unfortunately, while this hushed exchanged took place, Emmett and Jim did awkwardly embrace. By the time you realized it was happening, both men had sprung apart.

“That was a little weird…right?” asked Jim.

Emmett nodded. “Weird, yeah.”

“Maybe it would be less weird if you two got to talk a little bit by yourself,” you said.

A sharp intake of breath from Emmett’s direction indicated he knew what you were suggesting. For the first time in his young life, you were about to leave him alone. No Tanir to fall back on. Just him and a strange man wearing his face. But you had had Emmett for nearly thirteen years now. You owed Jim much more time than that he would be able to eke out before the Enterprise left again on its five-year mission.

“Wait a minute,” said Jim. “You mean by ourselves without you?”

“I trust you, Jim.”

“That’s new.”

Maybe it was. Jim hadn’t ever given you a lot of reasons to trust him growing up. Other people’s belongings—other people’s hearts—were never something he’d been careful about. The point remained that Jim Kirk had changed. He’d grown up just as your son had in the years since you’d left, probably a lot more than you had yourself. Your decision to leave with Emmett might have been the right one, but the many decisions until then refusing to let either Emmett or Jim know the other existed was not.

“Hey,” Emmett said, “I’m not a kid. It’s not like either one of you has to look after me.”

“Nice try. You think I don’t remember what it was like to be a thirteen-year-old boy?”

“Welcome to having a father, Emm. I never experienced the boy part, but he sure did,” you said.

Slowly, Jim shook his head. “No. I don’t think it’s going to be enough.”

“What?”

“An hour today isn’t going to be enough. I’ve missed so much. I can’t let you just walk off the ship out and out of my life again—”

“Jim!”

“—so I’ll do you one better. How would you like to stay on the Enterprise with me for a little while?”

Emmett’s mouth fell open. “Stay with you? Here?”

“I don’t know about him staying with you that long,” you said. Jim rolled his eyes, so you cut him off quickly, “Your mission is going to last a really long time. What about school? What about being around other children?”

“It’s not as though we never have any children on board. Just a little while ago, a whole group of them nearly took over my ship with the help of a Force Ghost. And anyway, we have to stop at starbases for supplies. He could leave at one of those, easy.”

“Easy? You expect a thirteen-year-old boy to get all the way back to Mars on his own?”

“Of course not! I expect that his mother will be able to help him get back to Mars when she decides she’s had enough of living on a starship herself.”

For what seemed like enough time for the Enterprise to get all the way back to Earth at impulse speed, you could think of no way to answer Jim’s suggestion. Your mouth opened; it was just that nothing came out of it. A million different thoughts flew through your mind, none for long enough for you to grasp. Was this a test? Was Jim playing some cruel trick on you? Or were you overthinking what he had intended to be a joke?

“[Name]? You still with us?” he asked, with that same familiar tap on your forehead.

“Yes. I’m sorry. This is just…quite a shock. You don’t want me out there with you.”

“Sure I do.” He eyed Emmett speculatively, then stepped right up to you—so close that you could smell his cologne, so close that you could have kissed him right there without giving him time to move away. Not that you considered doing that. “You were right about one thing: I don’t know the first thing about being a father. If Emmett’s going to stay, I need you here.”

What was it about the way he spoke that made your knees go weak? You were a grown woman, a commander in your own right, a major figure at Utopia Planitia, and still all it took was for this one man to say he needed you? Disgusting…and yet his offer was tempting. Emmett should stay, but you didn’t think you were quite ready for him to be light years away from you for months (perhaps years) at a time.

“A lovely sentiment, Captain. However, I think you are overlooking an important detail. The Enterprise, even in its updated condition, is not setup to accommodate families,” Tanir said.

Jim waved his concern (and eavesdropping) away. “We’ll figure something out. You both can stay in my quarters for all I care.”

“Please, Mom!” Emmett said. It had been so long that he spoke to you without anger that that was nearly enough to convince you. Almost.

“I’m expected back to work as soon as I can find a shuttle to take me there,” you hedged.

“Mr. Tanir can look after things for a while, can’t he?” asked Jim. “And Mr. Scott can always use an extra hand in Engineering. We won’t have you sitting around all day every day.”

“Emmett has to get back to his regular classes.”

“Oh, come on! You really think that his teacher will refuse to give him any credit if he’s with me?”

“Yeah, Mom! Mrs. Onaira won’t mind if I’m on the Enterprise! Especially if I’m with both of you.”

Forget the combined pressure of two Vulcans. How could you ever possibly say no to Jim and Emmett when they joined forces like that? You turned helplessly to Tanir, who only gazed, as always, placidly back. He hadn’t rejected the chance to go back to Utopia Planitia in your stead, you noticed. There was no question that he’d would do a fine job…

Something warm on your hands forced your attention back to Jim. He had taken them in his own, causing your heart to leap all the way into your throat. You couldn’t breathe. This sensation only increased when he leaned in and very gently pressed his forehead against yours. Until that very moment, you had forgotten how comforting that gesture on his part was. No way would you decline his offer after that, but he added:

“I wasn’t what you needed me to be then. But I’ve grown up. Now I’m ready to leave Iowa, and I’m ready to go with you. Just give me a chance to show that to you. Or at least a chance to get to know you and my son. I won’t keep you here if you decide to go.”

“Okay.” Your voice cracked around a sob you hadn’t noticed had been lurking in your throat. So surprised were you to find yourself crying that you couldn’t help laughing. “Okay, you win. You both win. I have a feeling that’s going to happen a lot from here on out.”

“I’m counting on it,” said Jim while Emmett cheered.

Throughout this ordeal, you hadn’t quite forgotten how many people were around you. You tried to back away from Jim before more of his crew could find you together. Before you could take so much as a single step away, he leaned down and kissed you on the mouth, hard enough to bring all those Milky Way stars right back into view.

It was over as soon as it started, but for good reason. As your mind finally caught up with reality, Jim grabbed Emmett’s arm and pulled him into a hug with you. You pulled Tanir in not long after. There, tangled up in the limbs of every person you truly cared about, you realized just how much you’d missed over the past twelve years and just how much you had to gain in all the years to come.

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hailbop1701 · 2 years

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Lol made a meme out of boredom. 🤣

#star trek tos #star trek aos #leonard mccoy #leonard bones mccoy #james t kirk #jim kirk #mister spock #spock #reader insert #hailey the queen of typos #Meme #star trek memes #🤣🤣🤣🖖

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labyrinthof-fan-fiction · 4 years

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Confessions Spock x Reader

Prompt from @write-it-motherfuckers blog.

Person A: “I have something to tell you.”

Person B: “Oooh~ Are you about to profess your undying love for me?”

Person A: “Yes, I am.”

Person B: “…..What?”

Look, I read this prompt and my brain said SPOCK. So here we are.

Summary: You are a geophysicist onboard the Enterprise. You and Spock develop a friendship that turns into something more, but Vulcans are bad at expressing emotions. And let’s be honest, humans are worse.

Warnings: None, I don’t think, if I should have one for this please let me know!

Implied Jim/Leonard.

Word Count: 2,831 (Sorry, not sorry)

You had been spending extra time in the labs, trying to get all of the data from the previous away mission cataloged. You rolled your shoulders as you finished your final entry for the night. You signed the bottom of the report and turned off your PADD. You had not left your post, staying through both shifts. You knew that would bite you tomorrow when you woke for Alpha. But you wanted this done, so you could take a moment to breathe. At least until the next away mission and you would restart the data cataloging again.

Your focus of study had been geophysics, the geology of other planets had fascinated you. But aboard the Enterprise you found yourself working in multiple disciplines at the same time. You would never complain, it gave you the chance to explore the other disciplines. You had always loved science, and journeying into space was everything you had dreamt of. Being assigned to the Enterprise had been a shock. You had not expected to ever be on a ship of such importance, but here you were.

You rubbed your eyes as you stood up, you definitely were going to regret this in the morning. You wearily made your way to the exit, running face first into a blue clad chest.

“Lieutenant Y/L/N?” A voice questioned, you turned your head upward, meeting eyes with Commander Spock.

“Commander.” You said, taking a step back.

His eyes scaled your figure, no doubt taking in your disgruntled appearance. “What are you doing here, you are not scheduled during this time.”

“I was finishing up the cataloging of the….” You started, interrupted by a yawn.

He tapped on his PADD. “You have tomorrow off. Catch up your rest. I do not want to see you anywhere near this lab for a full day. Am I understood?”

Your eyes grew wide, but you knew better than picking a fight with Commander Spock, especially when exhausted. “Yes, sir.”

“I will accompany you to your quarters, you are in no state to go on your own.” He said, turning on his heel and leading you out of the lab. Again, you resisted the urge to fight him, and followed him wordlessly.

As you made your way down the hall you felt eyes on you, passing crew members glanced in your direction as you made your way to your quarters. You shifted uncomfortably as you felt the eyes boring into your shoulders. You glanced at Spock, he seemed oblivious to the attention. Maybe you looked rougher than you thought. You stopped in front of your quarters.

“This is me.” You said, Spock stopping beside the door.

He nodded. “Remember. Get your rest, no lab work tomorrow.”

You sighed as an answer, typing into the pad on your door. Nodding at Spock.

“And….” He hesitated. You looked up at him, an eyebrow raised. “Sweet dreams.” He said brusquely, turning quickly on his heel back in the direction of the lab. You fell into your bed, thinking perhaps it was odd that your Commanding Officer had walked you to your quarters, but who cared, you just wanted to sleep.

You woke up the next morning and glanced at your clock, you shot up. You were late, too late, glancing down at your still uniformed body you guessed that it would have to do. Several reprimands flew through your brain, your near perfect report was going to be butchered today. You rushed to your door before the computer started speaking.

“Lieutenant Y/L/N, Commander Spock would like you to be reminded that you are not to come to the lab today.”

“Thank you, Computer.” You mumbled, rubbing the remaining sleep from your eyes. In all honesty you thought that exchange between you and the Commander had been a dream. You wandered over to your replicator and plugged in the sequence for your favorite morning drink once your mug was full you wandered to the couch and grabbed your personal PADD flipping through articles and news from the universe. You continued reading, your drink grew cold as you found yourself caught up in your reading. A knock sounded at your door.

“Commander Spock, Lieutenant Y/L/N.” The computer stated.

You jumped up from your couch and rushed to the door. You pushed it open, narrowly missing the Commander. “Commander.” You greeted.

“Lieutenant.” He said stiffly.

“What brings you here?” You asked cheerily.

“I wanted to see how you were after a night of recovering.” He stated, taking a breath. “I also noticed you had not left your room and wanted to see if you would accompany me to the mess for dinner?”

You could swear that the Vulcan’s skin deepened at his cheeks. You glanced at the clock, realizing you had been reading for hours, without eating. “I would love to.” You answered, remembering that you had not brushed your hair or changed uniforms. “Give me a moment?” You asked, he nodded, you stepped aside to let him into your quarters, missing the curious eyes staring at your door. He sat on your couch as you raced into your room to make yourself mildly presentable. You changed into a more casual version of your science blues and ran a quick brush through your hair. That’ll have to do. You thought to yourself.

You exited your room to see Spock still seated at your couch, looking at the photos you had on your side table. “You and your family appear quite close.” He stated.

“Yeah, they were excited to see me join Starfleet, but I still miss them.” You said wistfully, “Are you ready?” You asked.

He nodded and stood up from your couch. You glanced at him, realizing how tall he was compared to your height, noticing his shoulders and shape, you shook your head slightly. Not your Commanding Officer. You chided yourself. You lead him out of your room and toward the mess hall.

You both walked in comfortable silence to the mess hall. You started noticing people pointing in your direction in the halls. You glanced at Spock, seemingly unaware of the attention you were drawing. You decided to take his approach and kept your eyes forward. Once you reached the mess hall you noticed it was filled with crew members.

“I hope you don’t mind, but we’ll be joining Doctor McCoy and the Captain.” Commander Spock stated as you both joined the serving lines.

“I don’t mind.” You stuttered out, not only were you eating with your Commanding Officer, but also the head of medical and the Captain. This is fine.

Your trays were filled and Spock turned toward a table with the aforementioned duo. The Captain turned your way and waved you both over, with a huge smile on his face. “Spock, Lieutenant.” He greeted.

“Captain, Doctor.” You said stopping before taking a seat. Commander Spock took the seat next to the Captain, leaving the seat between himself and the doctor open for you. He pointedly looked at the seat and yourself, and you sat. The table remained silent for a moment.

“Spock tells me you are quite the dedicated researcher.” The Captain said, breaking the silence.

“It’s nothing, Captain.” You said, blushing. Bringing your eyes up to Commander Spock’s, a hint of something flashing in his eyes.

“Jim, Y/N, just call me Jim.” The Captain said, his blue eyes shimmering with mischief.

“Jesus.” The doctor muttered under his breath.

“And him you can call Bones.” The Captain, Jim, said gesturing to the doctor with his thumb.

The doctor rolled his eyes and extended a hand to you, “Leonard.” He said as you shook his hand.

“So, what’s new in the lab?” Jim asked, Spock.

“Lieutenant Y/L/N has been cataloguing the data from the last away mission. They have been working on a cross disciplinary research of the planets we have visited to create a more in-depth database for our findings.” Spock said, nodding to you.

“That’s impressive.” Jim said, Leonard giving a non-committal grunt over his dinner.

“It is.” Commander Spock stated firmly. The two other men glanced at each other, smirks on their faces.

You continued in the conversation, the three men telling stories. Well, Leonard and Jim spinning tales and Commander Spock integrating the reality and truth to their stories. You found yourself laughing at their antics and feeling comfortable being a part of their dynamic. The night wore on and Leonard and Jim left, leaving you and Commander Spock alone at the table, discussing your research and recent studies released on planets and space travel.

A yawn took over your conversation and Commander Spock rose from the table. “I think it’s time to retire, Lieutenant.” You nodded joining him on the walk back to your quarters.

You stopped outside your door, “Thank you, Commander.” You stated.

“Spock,” He murmured. “You can call me Spock. And you are welcome.”

“Thank you, Spock.” You restated.

“I will see you in the morning.” He said, nodding to you and turning away. You watched his back for a moment before entering your quarters.

You took a quick shower and settled into your bed, wondering how all of that had just happened.

The next morning you woke for Alpha shift and went to the labs to continue your cataloging. Spock was there, working in a separate part of the lab. He glanced up and gave a small wave before turning back to his work. You smiled to yourself and set to work.

The next few weeks you fell into a pattern. Work, then lunch with Spock, occasionally Jim or Leonard would join. Back to work, dinner with Spock, then he would walk you to your quarters. You found yourself enjoying the company of the Vulcan. It was refreshing to have someone to talk to who did not grow tired of your constant speaking of new findings and research.

The weeks grew into months and the ship had come to terms with the fact that if they saw Spock, there was a ninety percent chance you would be with him and vice versa. It would have been a blatant lie if you stated that you had one friendly feelings for Spock. Which shocked most of your friends, who you had been neglecting in favor of him. They were curious, and defensive of you. More often than not you found yourself defending Spock. Regardless of your feelings, they found it difficult to believe the Vulcan had a caring nature. They were used to seeing his logical and cool demeanor. As their criticisms continued you found yourself distancing from them and keeping even more company with Spock than you had previously.

The two of you fell into a comfortable friendship. You are shocked to find the Vulcan was adept at teasing. Which spurred you both often into a battle of wits, his approach more logical and calculated, yours completely on the fly. Often at dinners with Leonard and Jim you both would wage war upon the other unsuspecting men. Leonard would roll his eyes when you would start to tease, and Jim would eagerly join in. Jim’s direct target would always be Spock, causing you to counter his teasing by going after him. Spock occasionally joining in to back you up. Vulcan humor may have been drier than human humor, but you never failed to laugh.

A full year passed and you and Spock had continued to be friends and continue your daily meals together. Your feelings toward him had grown, but you never found it in yourself to tell him. In a way you felt like you were taking advantage of his kindness towards you, and the fear of losing his friendship was too great to ignore.

You found yourself lost in thought at dinner and were drawn out of your haze by Spock’s voice.

“Y/N?” Your eyes shot to his, seeing the concern in them.

“Spock? Sorry, what were you saying?” You asked.

“I was asking if you would like to come to my quarters for a game of chess?” He asked, a wary look still in his eyes.

“Sure, I’d love that.” You said, nodding. You had never been invited to his quarter before, you had played many a game of chess, but that was always in common areas.

He nodded and began gathering your trays and glasses to take to the wash area. You tried to take them from him but he stopped you, “I have it.”

You had grown used to Spock being attentive to your needs, but you felt guilty each time he did something for you. Especially when you felt your heart race at his general existence. Your cheeks grew warm as you stood up to follow him out of the mess. He lead the way to his quarters and opened the door, gesturing you inside.

You glanced around the quarters, it was homier than you had expected. A warmth radiated from being in his quarters that made your heart flutter. A game of chess was set up in the middle of the living area.

Spock lead you over to it and sat across from you. You sat and began the game. You had never won a game against Spock, you always gave him a fight, but ultimately he always won. Today, something was off though. His counterattacks were not as well thought out as they usually were, actually his whole strategy was not as well thought out as usual. You found yourself winning and looked at Spock shocked.

A tiny smile was on the Vulcan’s face, “Nice work.”

“I don’t think that was a fair battle. You seem distracted.” You said, moving so you were next to him.

“I have something to tell you.” He said, looking into your eyes, folding his hands into his lap.

You felt worry grow in the pit of your stomach, heavy moments weren’t your forte, so you responded in probably the worst way you could think of. Letting a devious grin split your face you said, “Oooh…Are you about to profess your undying love for me?”

Spock’s eyebrows raised slightly, “Yes, I am.”

You felt the grin fall from your face and your eyes grow wide. This could not be happening, no way. “…..What?”

“I love you, Y/N.” He stated, “I understand if you do not feel the same way. Perhaps I misread your signals. I apologize if that is the case.” He continued to speak and you broke through his monologue.

“Spock, I love you too.” This caused the Vulcan to freeze in his rambling and he looked into your eyes. “I have for a while now.”

A small smile came across his lips. He reached out and placed his hand on your cheek. “May I kiss you?” He asked tentatively.

You smiled at him and nodded, he leaned forward pressing his lips lightly to yours. He pulled away, too soon for your liking, and stared into your eyes. “I love you.” He restated.

You smiled, “I got that part.” You leaned in for another kiss, this one tender and lasting a bit longer than the last.

The next day you met for lunch, Jim and Leonard sat at a table with two empty chairs. You and Spock joined their table. You sat across from Spock, flanked by Jim and Leonard. You could sense mischief in the air, but chose to ignore it. You all comfortably made small talk through lunch, that is until Jim wrapped an arm around the back of your chair.

“So, Y/N,” He said, you could see Leonard roll his eyes and start muttering to an Earth deity. “What do you say, we grab a drink next shore leave?”

You looked up at Spock, one of his eyebrows raised, wondering how you were going to handle this. “I don’t think my boyfriend would like that.” You answered.

A smile split Jim’s face and he removed his arm from your chair and smacked Spock on the shoulder. “You finally did it!” Green tinted your significant other’s ears.

Spock made eye contact with you as Jim started to talk his ear off about relationships and love. You giggled as his expression grew more and more pained. You knew you could save him from Jim, but as much as you loved him, you also loved seeing him flustered at Jim’s antics. Jim started going on about wedding colors and you thought Spock was going to combust on the spot.

“Idiot.” Leonard grumbled.

“Yeah, but he’s your idiot.” You answered.

A slight flush grew across Leonard’s face. “And that one’s yours.” He retorted, stuffing his face with the sandwich in front of him.

You smiled at Spock as he continued to listen to Jim’s ramblings. He smiled back and you could feel a warmth surround you. Regardless of the ever-changing nature of the universe around you, you knew one thing for certain. You loved Spock, and he loved you.

#spock x reader #spock imagine #star trek #star trek imagine #jim kirk #leonard bones mccoy #leonard mccoy #james t kirk #spock/reader #reader insert #write-it-motherfuckers

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