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Entry tags:
Good Spor(e)ts
Title: Good Spor(e)ts
Fandom: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Characters/Ship: Kirk/Spock
Word count: ~4k words
Summary: Dr. James T. Kirk begins his service on the crew of the Federation's flag ship with an argumentative brother (it's definitely Sam's fault), a disdainful science officer, and a secret.
Notes: As with the last two years, RML and I dealt out our AO3-trope playing cards and made a bingo board for our AO3 birthdays (my account is 12 years old today T_T). For my bingo, I chose pining, medical AU, and fantasy. I ran into some problems with the last one, because every low fantasy magic I could think of sliding in already had a Trek predecessor, and I was almost at the point of throwing fireballs (but wait, isn't there an episode where--) when I talked myself down and decided that if I call it magic, it's magic, and Star Trek is science fantasy anyway, so just having an AU is enough to meet that prompt trope.
“Sam.”
“Jim.”
With the requisite greetings exchanged, they look to Captain Pike, awaiting further orders. Captain Pike’s eyebrows have shot up, but he makes no move to question their cordiality. “I asked Lieutenant Commander Spock, my science officer, and Lieutenant Kirk to show you around the ship, Dr. Kirk. If no one has a problem with that.”
“Actually, sir,” says Sam, his Iowan drawl stronger than ever. There was a time when both Sam and Jim fought to lose every hint of their rural accents, but it seems those days are behind at least one of them. “If Commander Spock doesn't mind, there are a few sensitive projects I need to get back to.”
“I offer no objection,” agrees the vulcan in science blue standing beside him. He's a conventional vulcan beauty, with his features falling and rising in the precise angles so coveted by the masses—and sometimes artificially produced, no matter the illogic of valuing beauty over substance. His hands are clasped behind his back, and his expression is characteristically blank. Which is to say, he looks like most vulcans do when they claim to be feeling nothing: simultaneously icy cold and about 2 seconds from ripping your throat out with their teeth. But sure, we'll call that “blank.”
“Great,” cheers Pike, clapping his hands together. “I'll see you both later, then. How do you feel about Andorian nachos for dinner?”
“The captain loves cooking, and he takes a lot of pleasure out of dragging us to his table and feeding us,” explains Sam quietly. “The whole senior staff will be there tonight.”
Jim nods brightly. “Looking forward to it, sir!”
“Excellent! I'll leave you to it.”
And then it's just Jim and Spock, staring at one another in the transporter bay as the engineer on duty watches them surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye.
In Jim's experience, vulcans are not amused by expressions of gratitude, but acknowledgement of time reallocated for another's convenience is generally considered acceptable. Unfortunately, Jim isn't really sure how best to phrase that kind of acknowledgement in this case. Jim settles for giving Spock a nod and saying, “I'll try not to take up too much of your time, sir. I know you must be busy.”
This is evidently still not the correct response, as the line of Spock’s mouth hardens. “Indeed.”
The subsequent tour is nearly silent, as Jim is quickly discouraged from asking questions by the responses he receives, which are terse and formal even by a vulcan’s standards of professionalism.
“Thank you, sir,” says Jim from the door of his new quarters when the awkward tour finally comes to an end. “I feel much better acquainted with the geography of the vessel now.”
Spock gives him a nod and departs, his back ramrod straight.
Jim sighs as the doors slide shut with a whisper. That could have gone better. It's inconvenient at best to face the disdain of another officer, even with their shared rank and a doctor’s unique ability to override the chain of command in emergencies. At worst, it could be dangerous, if Spock uses his seniority and dislike as an opportunity to be cavalier with Jim's life on away missions.
But that's a problem for later. First, Jim has to survive his upcoming social dinner with his new colleagues.
“Wow,” says Uhura, smiling. “Two brothers in science blues! Your parents must be so proud.”
Jim was careful to introduce himself to all his new colleagues, but he's spent most of the evening bouncing back and forth between Dr. M’Benga, his fellow doctor and new immediate superior, and Ensign Uhura, whose mind feels calm and gentle against his agitated nerves.
“They were certainly surprised,” Jim replies cheerfully, having prepared himself for this question. “They were hoping for the gold uniforms, I'm afraid.”
Uhura nods understandingly. “Well, surprise and pride aren't mutually exclusive.”
They are in my family, Jim doesn't say. “Very true,” he agrees. “So how did you get interested in communications engineering? Why not stay in the sciences and keep your focus narrowed on xenolinguistics? Which frankly seems like a broad enough area to me already.”
“Nyota loves to excel,” says Commander Chin-Riley, coming up beside them. “She makes the rest of us look bad.”
Jim laughs, and Uhura protests, and when the gathering breaks up soon later, Jim rides on those bright feelings all the way back to his quarters, bolstering himself for what he knows is coming. Sam is waiting for him by the door, not making eye contact as Jim enters his code and gestures him inside of his messy, mostly unpacked rooms.
Without exchanging a word, Sam goes straight for the replicator as Jim starts setting up his console.
Sam places the newly replicated bottle of synthehol discreetly out of sight of the console camera just as the chirp of an incoming call sounds.
“Mom, Dad,” says Jim, and Sam lowers himself onto the couch beside Jim and offers a little wave. “How’s it going?”
The call doesn’t last long, but it does last too long. Jim is exhausted of responding patiently to questions like “when are you going to complete the command training” and “how are you going to distinguish yourselves when you’re serving on the same ship,” and leading comments like “I could pull a few strings” and “I used to serve with that admiral, I’m sure he’d be willing to do me a favour or two.”
As soon as the console dims, Sam takes a long swig of the synthehol before passing the bottle on to Jim. They still don’t speak, but the bottle is empty by the time Sam heads back to his own quarters, hours later.
The thing is, Jim and Sam are brothers, and they’re brothers who genuinely, deeply care for one another.
The thing is, Jim and Sam are brothers, and they’re brothers who come from a high-performing, highly competitive family that holds a great deal of expectations from its members.
The thing is, Jim and Sam are brothers, and there’s always been a tension between them, the knowledge that if one brother wins, then it means that the other brother loses.
It should have gotten better when Jim followed in Sam’s footsteps to eschew the family expectations. Two brothers bearing the same weight of their parents’ disappointment—it should have made things easier for them, made it easier for them to understand one another, for the arms race between them to slow down.
It didn’t.
Most days, they can hardly stand to look at the other for fear of the reminder of all the ways they are disappointing to their families. Most days, they can’t help but blame the other just a little for not sucking it up and doing what the family expected of them. Most days, they can’t handle hearing people say, “You’re really brothers? But you’re so different!”
But they’re still brothers, so as Sam stands up after the bottle empties, he asks, “You gonna be alright?”
And Jim still answers, “Yeah,” and he lets Sam feel his uncertainty and determination. “You?”
“Yeah,” says Sam, and he leaves before they find themselves trapped in a long enough conversation to support an argument.
“Dr Kirk!” calls M’Benga, waving him over excitedly. “Come see the cultures. You’ll love this.”
M’Benga is eager in research and gentle in manner, and it doesn’t take long for Jim to feel comfortable working with him. When sick bay is quiet and M’Benga is busy with research, he’ll occasionally look up, and waves of sadness and loneliness will pour off him. A little investigation reveals that M’Benga is apparently close friends with one of the former nurses, Christine Chapel. Her absence has left a gaping hole in the medical social sphere, but especially in M’Benga, who has since been the only medical researcher on the ship, with all of the other nurses specialising solely in practice. Consequently, M’Benga has been overjoyed to share all his experiments, new and old, with Jim, whether it overlaps with Jim’s own field or not.
“Huh,” says Jim, peering over M’Benga’s shoulder. “The growth patterns of Specimen 3 aren’t consistent with the others. Are we thinking this is a whole new strain of bacteria?”
“We’ll have to run more tests,” agrees M’Benga joyfully. “And you? How is your mould doing?”
“It’s mouldering away,” sighs Jim. M’Benga, always easy for bad jokes, laughs.
Jim’s mould is doing very well behind its three layers of specially designed, independently powered force fields.
“Is it such a high theft risk?” asks one of the nurses doubtfully.
Jim snorts. “These force fields aren’t to protect a rare treasure,” says Jim. “They’re to keep a dangerous prisoner from escaping.”
The nurses all laugh like he’s joking. M’Benga, who Jim suspects has a high enough security clearance to actually read Jim’s full file, pretends not to have heard, and is as careful as Jim to make sure the security procedures surrounding the specimens are always followed precisely and accurately.
“Curious,” says a voice from behind him. Jim straightens up from his microscope and turns to face Spock, whose mathematically perfect features are arranged into a frown. “How does this project contribute to your broader program of research?”
You sound like my dissertation committee, thinks Jim grumpily, but he supposes that that’s one of the purposes of a science officer: to make sure that the research performed in the ship’s laboratories would be coherent, useful, and worth the resources being pumped into it. “My main line of research is in building greater resilience to different species of vegetation to allow it to grow in harsher environments, including on terraformed colonies or on planets undergoing severe climate change.”
“I am aware,” Spock says.
Jim keeps his face pleasant. I know you know. I am setting the stage, he thinks. Perhaps he’s out of practice at interacting with vulcans, though it hasn’t been that long since he left his position on a vulcan science vessel to finish his training in Starfleet. “Well, this,” he says, gesturing to his mould cultures, “is Public Enemy Number One.”
Spock looks at the mould and raises an eyebrow.
“I call it a Tarsoid variant. Species with similar characteristics and presentations have evolved independently of one another on fifteen different planets in three different sectors,” explains Jim. “If it isn’t found and completely destroyed in its earliest stages, it will spread across the crops—all of the crops, though it seems to like wheat the best—and devastate the people relying on them.”
“Fascinating,” says Spock, his tone making it clear that he finds it anything but. Jim is briefly glad that he can’t get a less physical read on Spock. No one needs to feel that much second-hand disdain on top of seeing it. “Carry on.”
“Yes sir.” When he’s sure Spock is out of sight, Jim makes a face at his microscope. What did he do to make that guy hate him so much?
And why does it bother him so much to be hated?
M’Benga walks him down to the shuttle bay for his first away mission with the Enterprise. It’s less a matter of showing encouragement and more to make sure he remembered his lunch box on his first day of school.
“And don’t forget to collect samples of the nocturnal strains of water lilies from the western bank. Our records suggest the secretions from their stems may act as a topical anaesthetic.”
“Yes, sir,” Jim says.
“And actually, why don’t you also collect a sample of the water—”
“May I remind you, Doctor,” says Spock, coming up behind them on silent feet, “that the mission directives are to investigate the forested area, not the lake.”
M’Benga waves a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, he will do his homework before he runs off to play.”
Spock’s dark eyes narrow. “There will be no ‘running off.’”
“But there will be playing?” asks Jim, grinning. Spock’s eyes snap to him, and he has to suppress a shiver at their intensity.
“I swear to everything holy, Jim, if you make that ‘fun guy’ joke again…”
Jim pouts in Sam’s direction, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Spock’s eyes dart down, which… Oh. Oh. Maybe it hasn’t been disdain that’s had Spock trailing him around the ship like an awkward, frowning shadow since he arrived. He shoots a glance back at Spock. It kind of feels as though the entire universe has just shifted three centimetres to the left. “Come on, Sam! It’s a classic.”
Sam scoffs, but he’s squinting at Spock suspiciously in a way that makes Jim think that maybe he wasn’t the only one to notice Spock’s wandering attention. “Anyway, the gang’s all here? Let’s head out, then.”
Jim looks at Spock, who’s the one who is actually leading their away mission, but Spock doesn’t seem offended. He only says, “Indeed,” while his eyes bore holes into Jim’s head.
And wow, that expression suddenly feels very different than it did five minutes ago.
The area of the planet they shuttle down to is lush and green, with air so humid that it feels like they’re swimming in it. Within minutes, Spock looks like a cat who’s wet and crotchety about it, and Jim has to hide his smile every time he looks in Spock’s direction.
“Hey,” says Sam softly to Jim as they’re wrapping up their primary work. “You need me to distract him so you can do your thing?”
“What thing?” asks Jim, genuinely bewildered. “I don’t do a thing.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “You know.” He twiddles his fingers vaguely. “Your ‘fun guy’ thing.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It’s definitely a thing.”
“It’s not a thing!”
Well, they definitely manage to distract Spock, anyway. “Lieutenant, Doctor. Have you completed your tasks?”
“Not quite,” says Sam. “I need another ten minutes for the computer to finish processing these readings.”
Spock looks at Jim, and Jim flushes. “Uh,” he says. “Yeah, same.”
Spock nods and returns to his own work.
“Jim. Jim, no way.”
“Seriously, what, Sam?”
Sam glances over his shoulder and then hisses, “You like Spock?”
Jim makes a face at Sam. “I don’t know. I guess. So what?”
“If he finds out about—”
“He won’t.”
“But if he does—”
“Misters Kirk, perhaps you should continue your work in different areas of the clearing,” calls Spock, his tone clear that this is not a suggestion.
Sam makes a gagging face at Jim as he walks away, and Jim rolls his eyes back at him.
Sam has just made it back to where he’d set up his equipment when Jim’s scanner beeps once, indicating that it’s finished processing its readings. A quick glance around tells him that Spock and Sam won’t be finished for another few minutes, yet, and… well… the northern bank of the lake is just a few minutes’ walk to the southeast. If he were to leave now, he’d probably be back before they even noticed he was gone…
But that’s not the responsible thing to do, and he’s not a kid anymore. He sighs and heads over to Spock. “Sir, my main tasks are completed. With your permission, I would like to investigate the—”
The lights on their machinery go out. Spock raises his eyebrows, but does not look alarmed. “Under the circumstances, I will need to deny your request, Dr. Kirk,” he says mildly.
Preliminary investigations tell them nothing good: all scanners quiet. Shuttlecraft unresponsive. Shipward communications down.
It’s fine, really. This happens on something like ¾ of the away missions to unfamiliar worlds. It’s no big deal. They have lots of rations—Jim always packs extra, anyway—and even if they didn’t, this world is full of edible vegetation.
It’s fine, they’re fine.
Sam wraps an arm around Jim’s shoulders and leans in close to whisper in his ear, “Okay, Jim—one, calm the hell down, seriously. Two: are you going to do the fun guy thing now?”
Jim is probably going to have to do the fun guy thing.
“Well, gee,” says Sam, who wouldn’t win an acting award even in a nursery holiday play. “We should probably split up and explore the area on foot to see what killed our tech.”
They’ve moved all their gear back to the shuttlecraft and are now huddled together in a circle, trying to work out a plan. Jim and Sam are visibly wilting in the heat, and Spock keeps making little microexpressions of distaste at the way his clothing, which has grown damp in the humid air, keeps sticking to him.
Now, Spock redirects those microexpression of distaste at Sam. This does not make them less adorable. “On the contrary, we have little to gain from that course of action, and the risk of one or all of us becoming lost is too high when we have no means of contacting or tracking one another.”
“Okay, so one of us will stay with the shuttle, and two of us will go out together,” Sam insists.
“To what end?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Come on, Spock! Our tech didn’t just shut down after nothing! Something must have happened, and we’re not going to get our systems back up and running if we don’t figure out what.”
“Not long before everything crashed, I noticed energy patterns between some of the vegetative and fungal lifeforms in the area that may have been some kind of communication,” adds Jim. “If we can find a physical sign of those energy fluctuations, maybe we can figure out what signal triggered the shutdown.”
Spock tilts his head to the side, his eyebrows high. “A curious observation,” he notes absently. Then he refocuses on them and firms his gaze. “Very well,” he says, and Sam brightens. “I will explore the clearing from our initial investigations alongside Dr. Kirk, and Lieutenant Kirk will remain behind with the shuttlecraft and search for any ‘clues’ as to what occurred in the hardware of the shuttlecraft.”
“Whoa, hold on, Spock—wouldn’t it make more sense for me to go with Jim?”
“No,” says Spock. “It would not. If any antagonistic lifeforms are developed, I would be much more capable of countering them.”
Jim hasn’t really had the opportunity to consider the physical power of the vulcan body since his epiphany. Now that Spock has raised the matter himself, Jim’s a little worried about his ability to think of anything else.
“We didn’t detect anything like that in our initial survey!” Sam protests.
“Neither did we encounter anything capable of neutralising our machinery,” says Spock mildly. “And yet.”
“Maybe we should all go out together,” Jim muses.
Both Spock and Sam give him twin doubtful looks.
“What good is Sam going to be kicking around the computers? He’s no engineer—even if there was some obvious cause implicated, he’d never know it.” Sam scowls at him, but doesn’t disagree. “And we may not have to return all the way to the original survey site—we may be able to detect physical signs of signalling from right here, given that the shuttle is down for the count, too.”
Spock nods in agreement, but Sam juts his chin at Spock meaningfully.
Jim makes sure Spock is facing the other direction when he mouths, “Distract him.”
Jim’s first pass over the plant and fungal life surrounding the landing site truly is a visual inspection searching for differences that might mirror the patterns he’d seen on his scanner before it blinked out. Once the bulk of the shuttlecraft is safely between him and Spock, with Sam ready as a lookout and potential diversion, Jim begins his second pass. He reaches out and very gently touches his fingers to the side of a bulbous mushroom growing amongst the grasses, and then he lets the tendrils of his senses float outward and settle onto the mushroom, lightly at first, and then sinking in deeper and deeper until he can feel the thrum of life within it.
“Lieutenant Kirk,” he hears, floating around in his periphery. He can’t quite parse the meaning of the works, but he feels them vibrate through him. ”Back away. I am detecting a nonhuman lifeform inside of Dr. Kirk.”
There is silence for a moment, and then, ”You are unsurprised. Your continued attempts at deception throughout this away mission have been to mask this from me.”
Even from whatever strange headspace Jim is in now, he can feel Sam’s anxiety. He tries to reach out to Sam to comfort him, but then another presence joins him in his mind.
Jim’s receptive and projective empathic abilities have been off the charts—the human charts, anyway—since he was a teenager, but he hasn’t had much first-hand experience with advanced telepathy. Spock is keeping to the edges, protective rather than intrusive, but Jim can feel his thoughts, his mind in a way that he never has before.
It’s like they’re sharing a silent conversation. Before he can stop himself, he reaches out with his tendrils and draws Spock in deeper.
“When Jim was 13, he was bitten by a radioactive fungus, and now he’s a magical mushroom man. So what? Starfleet is aware, so check for yourself if you have a high enough clearance.”
Before in mushroomland, Jim could only hear the sounds and feel the emotions. With Spock here as well, he hears Spock comprehending the language, and he understands as well.
And… Starfleet is definitely not aware. A massive amount of effort had gone toward making sure that Starfleet remained unaware.
Spock hears him think that. He feels Spock hear him think that.
“A… radioactive fungus,” says Spock, completely without inflection.
“Yep.”
But it’s too late. Jim is already pouring the true story straight into Spock’s mind.
Later, he thinks he’ll be embarrassed by what he’s sharing, but when he’s fully connected to Spock like this, he doesn’t feel shame or fear or guilt or grief as he shows Spock the life and death of Tarsus—the infected crops, the slaughter, the starvation, the sentient species of fungus merging within him—or if he does feel those things, Spock feels them with him, without judgement.
I do not understand, Spock tells Jim, his mental voice somehow ringing crystal clear in Jim’s mind.
Neither do I, Jim acknowledges. That’s why I call it magic.
Ever since Tarsus, Jim has been able to communicate with fungi, and some flora, and some fauna. Even humans, on an empathic level. He doesn’t know why. Maybe he really was bitten by a radioactive mushroom. It would probably be less weird.
It is safe? asks Spock.
It’s safe.
He feels Spock weigh the idea, and then he tells Jim, “Carry on, then. I will monitor your wellbeing.”
And so Jim turns his attention back to the curious mushroom. He settles in deeper.
Calling this a conversation would be a lie. Instead, information flies between them like a lightning strike.
As Jim disengages, he hears the whir of the shuttlecraft’s computerised life support system reinitialising, and he sighs with relief.
“—A radioactive mushroom,” Sam is saying behind him, coming closer. “So you’d better—”
It’s strange, how much can happen in the mind while time drags on at its snail pace.
“It’s fine, Sam,” says Jim, standing up with Spock steadying him. “He knows.”
“How is that fine?” demands Sam.
“It is fine,” Spock confirms. He pauses, then adds, “I find it unlikely that it will ever occur to Starfleet to investigate this issue.”
Jim laughs. “I guess it is pretty strange.”
“I have encountered stranger things,” Spock says. “Mycelial networks have many curious uses and properties.”
Sam stares at him, open-mouthed.
Jim and Sam had made so many plans for what to do if people found out and reacted badly. They hadn’t made any plans for what to do if anyone found out and then shrugged it off.
“It appears that our equipment is once again functional,” Spock continues. “I will contact the ship to give my report.”
As Spock walks away, Sam turns to Jim. “What the hell?”
“I don’t know why you’re asking me,” Jim complains. “I don’t know.”
Sam exhales slowly. “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“And he’s really okay with it?”
“He seemed okay with it,” says Jim quietly, flushing.
“Are you blushing? Don’t tell me you still like him?”
Jim stares up the purple sky beseechingly. “Are we really talking about this right now?”
“Yes! You were just in each other’s heads, and you like him! So does he know? Is he okay with that?”
Jim didn’t think he knew the answer to that question, not for sure, but as Sam asks the question out loud, the response seems to float to the surface. “Yeah. He’s okay with it. He”—if Jim was red before, he doesn’t want to know what he looks like now—“is kind of really pleased about it.”
“Ew,” says Sam.
“And we might be mind married now. I’m unclear on that.”
By the time Spock exits the shuttlecraft, Sam has worked his rant up to a yell. He’s pacing around back and forth, waving his arms as he shouts about how disappointed Mom and Dad will be, and—
Yeah. This is why Jim and Sam avoid talking to one another at all costs.
Jim smiles at Spock over Sam’s shoulder. Looking at Spock now, he can’t believe he ever thought that expression meant disdain.
END
Fandom: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Characters/Ship: Kirk/Spock
Word count: ~4k words
Summary: Dr. James T. Kirk begins his service on the crew of the Federation's flag ship with an argumentative brother (it's definitely Sam's fault), a disdainful science officer, and a secret.
Notes: As with the last two years, RML and I dealt out our AO3-trope playing cards and made a bingo board for our AO3 birthdays (my account is 12 years old today T_T). For my bingo, I chose pining, medical AU, and fantasy. I ran into some problems with the last one, because every low fantasy magic I could think of sliding in already had a Trek predecessor, and I was almost at the point of throwing fireballs (but wait, isn't there an episode where--) when I talked myself down and decided that if I call it magic, it's magic, and Star Trek is science fantasy anyway, so just having an AU is enough to meet that prompt trope.
“Sam.”
“Jim.”
With the requisite greetings exchanged, they look to Captain Pike, awaiting further orders. Captain Pike’s eyebrows have shot up, but he makes no move to question their cordiality. “I asked Lieutenant Commander Spock, my science officer, and Lieutenant Kirk to show you around the ship, Dr. Kirk. If no one has a problem with that.”
“Actually, sir,” says Sam, his Iowan drawl stronger than ever. There was a time when both Sam and Jim fought to lose every hint of their rural accents, but it seems those days are behind at least one of them. “If Commander Spock doesn't mind, there are a few sensitive projects I need to get back to.”
“I offer no objection,” agrees the vulcan in science blue standing beside him. He's a conventional vulcan beauty, with his features falling and rising in the precise angles so coveted by the masses—and sometimes artificially produced, no matter the illogic of valuing beauty over substance. His hands are clasped behind his back, and his expression is characteristically blank. Which is to say, he looks like most vulcans do when they claim to be feeling nothing: simultaneously icy cold and about 2 seconds from ripping your throat out with their teeth. But sure, we'll call that “blank.”
“Great,” cheers Pike, clapping his hands together. “I'll see you both later, then. How do you feel about Andorian nachos for dinner?”
“The captain loves cooking, and he takes a lot of pleasure out of dragging us to his table and feeding us,” explains Sam quietly. “The whole senior staff will be there tonight.”
Jim nods brightly. “Looking forward to it, sir!”
“Excellent! I'll leave you to it.”
And then it's just Jim and Spock, staring at one another in the transporter bay as the engineer on duty watches them surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye.
In Jim's experience, vulcans are not amused by expressions of gratitude, but acknowledgement of time reallocated for another's convenience is generally considered acceptable. Unfortunately, Jim isn't really sure how best to phrase that kind of acknowledgement in this case. Jim settles for giving Spock a nod and saying, “I'll try not to take up too much of your time, sir. I know you must be busy.”
This is evidently still not the correct response, as the line of Spock’s mouth hardens. “Indeed.”
The subsequent tour is nearly silent, as Jim is quickly discouraged from asking questions by the responses he receives, which are terse and formal even by a vulcan’s standards of professionalism.
“Thank you, sir,” says Jim from the door of his new quarters when the awkward tour finally comes to an end. “I feel much better acquainted with the geography of the vessel now.”
Spock gives him a nod and departs, his back ramrod straight.
Jim sighs as the doors slide shut with a whisper. That could have gone better. It's inconvenient at best to face the disdain of another officer, even with their shared rank and a doctor’s unique ability to override the chain of command in emergencies. At worst, it could be dangerous, if Spock uses his seniority and dislike as an opportunity to be cavalier with Jim's life on away missions.
But that's a problem for later. First, Jim has to survive his upcoming social dinner with his new colleagues.
“Wow,” says Uhura, smiling. “Two brothers in science blues! Your parents must be so proud.”
Jim was careful to introduce himself to all his new colleagues, but he's spent most of the evening bouncing back and forth between Dr. M’Benga, his fellow doctor and new immediate superior, and Ensign Uhura, whose mind feels calm and gentle against his agitated nerves.
“They were certainly surprised,” Jim replies cheerfully, having prepared himself for this question. “They were hoping for the gold uniforms, I'm afraid.”
Uhura nods understandingly. “Well, surprise and pride aren't mutually exclusive.”
They are in my family, Jim doesn't say. “Very true,” he agrees. “So how did you get interested in communications engineering? Why not stay in the sciences and keep your focus narrowed on xenolinguistics? Which frankly seems like a broad enough area to me already.”
“Nyota loves to excel,” says Commander Chin-Riley, coming up beside them. “She makes the rest of us look bad.”
Jim laughs, and Uhura protests, and when the gathering breaks up soon later, Jim rides on those bright feelings all the way back to his quarters, bolstering himself for what he knows is coming. Sam is waiting for him by the door, not making eye contact as Jim enters his code and gestures him inside of his messy, mostly unpacked rooms.
Without exchanging a word, Sam goes straight for the replicator as Jim starts setting up his console.
Sam places the newly replicated bottle of synthehol discreetly out of sight of the console camera just as the chirp of an incoming call sounds.
“Mom, Dad,” says Jim, and Sam lowers himself onto the couch beside Jim and offers a little wave. “How’s it going?”
The call doesn’t last long, but it does last too long. Jim is exhausted of responding patiently to questions like “when are you going to complete the command training” and “how are you going to distinguish yourselves when you’re serving on the same ship,” and leading comments like “I could pull a few strings” and “I used to serve with that admiral, I’m sure he’d be willing to do me a favour or two.”
As soon as the console dims, Sam takes a long swig of the synthehol before passing the bottle on to Jim. They still don’t speak, but the bottle is empty by the time Sam heads back to his own quarters, hours later.
The thing is, Jim and Sam are brothers, and they’re brothers who genuinely, deeply care for one another.
The thing is, Jim and Sam are brothers, and they’re brothers who come from a high-performing, highly competitive family that holds a great deal of expectations from its members.
The thing is, Jim and Sam are brothers, and there’s always been a tension between them, the knowledge that if one brother wins, then it means that the other brother loses.
It should have gotten better when Jim followed in Sam’s footsteps to eschew the family expectations. Two brothers bearing the same weight of their parents’ disappointment—it should have made things easier for them, made it easier for them to understand one another, for the arms race between them to slow down.
It didn’t.
Most days, they can hardly stand to look at the other for fear of the reminder of all the ways they are disappointing to their families. Most days, they can’t help but blame the other just a little for not sucking it up and doing what the family expected of them. Most days, they can’t handle hearing people say, “You’re really brothers? But you’re so different!”
But they’re still brothers, so as Sam stands up after the bottle empties, he asks, “You gonna be alright?”
And Jim still answers, “Yeah,” and he lets Sam feel his uncertainty and determination. “You?”
“Yeah,” says Sam, and he leaves before they find themselves trapped in a long enough conversation to support an argument.
“Dr Kirk!” calls M’Benga, waving him over excitedly. “Come see the cultures. You’ll love this.”
M’Benga is eager in research and gentle in manner, and it doesn’t take long for Jim to feel comfortable working with him. When sick bay is quiet and M’Benga is busy with research, he’ll occasionally look up, and waves of sadness and loneliness will pour off him. A little investigation reveals that M’Benga is apparently close friends with one of the former nurses, Christine Chapel. Her absence has left a gaping hole in the medical social sphere, but especially in M’Benga, who has since been the only medical researcher on the ship, with all of the other nurses specialising solely in practice. Consequently, M’Benga has been overjoyed to share all his experiments, new and old, with Jim, whether it overlaps with Jim’s own field or not.
“Huh,” says Jim, peering over M’Benga’s shoulder. “The growth patterns of Specimen 3 aren’t consistent with the others. Are we thinking this is a whole new strain of bacteria?”
“We’ll have to run more tests,” agrees M’Benga joyfully. “And you? How is your mould doing?”
“It’s mouldering away,” sighs Jim. M’Benga, always easy for bad jokes, laughs.
Jim’s mould is doing very well behind its three layers of specially designed, independently powered force fields.
“Is it such a high theft risk?” asks one of the nurses doubtfully.
Jim snorts. “These force fields aren’t to protect a rare treasure,” says Jim. “They’re to keep a dangerous prisoner from escaping.”
The nurses all laugh like he’s joking. M’Benga, who Jim suspects has a high enough security clearance to actually read Jim’s full file, pretends not to have heard, and is as careful as Jim to make sure the security procedures surrounding the specimens are always followed precisely and accurately.
“Curious,” says a voice from behind him. Jim straightens up from his microscope and turns to face Spock, whose mathematically perfect features are arranged into a frown. “How does this project contribute to your broader program of research?”
You sound like my dissertation committee, thinks Jim grumpily, but he supposes that that’s one of the purposes of a science officer: to make sure that the research performed in the ship’s laboratories would be coherent, useful, and worth the resources being pumped into it. “My main line of research is in building greater resilience to different species of vegetation to allow it to grow in harsher environments, including on terraformed colonies or on planets undergoing severe climate change.”
“I am aware,” Spock says.
Jim keeps his face pleasant. I know you know. I am setting the stage, he thinks. Perhaps he’s out of practice at interacting with vulcans, though it hasn’t been that long since he left his position on a vulcan science vessel to finish his training in Starfleet. “Well, this,” he says, gesturing to his mould cultures, “is Public Enemy Number One.”
Spock looks at the mould and raises an eyebrow.
“I call it a Tarsoid variant. Species with similar characteristics and presentations have evolved independently of one another on fifteen different planets in three different sectors,” explains Jim. “If it isn’t found and completely destroyed in its earliest stages, it will spread across the crops—all of the crops, though it seems to like wheat the best—and devastate the people relying on them.”
“Fascinating,” says Spock, his tone making it clear that he finds it anything but. Jim is briefly glad that he can’t get a less physical read on Spock. No one needs to feel that much second-hand disdain on top of seeing it. “Carry on.”
“Yes sir.” When he’s sure Spock is out of sight, Jim makes a face at his microscope. What did he do to make that guy hate him so much?
And why does it bother him so much to be hated?
M’Benga walks him down to the shuttle bay for his first away mission with the Enterprise. It’s less a matter of showing encouragement and more to make sure he remembered his lunch box on his first day of school.
“And don’t forget to collect samples of the nocturnal strains of water lilies from the western bank. Our records suggest the secretions from their stems may act as a topical anaesthetic.”
“Yes, sir,” Jim says.
“And actually, why don’t you also collect a sample of the water—”
“May I remind you, Doctor,” says Spock, coming up behind them on silent feet, “that the mission directives are to investigate the forested area, not the lake.”
M’Benga waves a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, he will do his homework before he runs off to play.”
Spock’s dark eyes narrow. “There will be no ‘running off.’”
“But there will be playing?” asks Jim, grinning. Spock’s eyes snap to him, and he has to suppress a shiver at their intensity.
“I swear to everything holy, Jim, if you make that ‘fun guy’ joke again…”
Jim pouts in Sam’s direction, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Spock’s eyes dart down, which… Oh. Oh. Maybe it hasn’t been disdain that’s had Spock trailing him around the ship like an awkward, frowning shadow since he arrived. He shoots a glance back at Spock. It kind of feels as though the entire universe has just shifted three centimetres to the left. “Come on, Sam! It’s a classic.”
Sam scoffs, but he’s squinting at Spock suspiciously in a way that makes Jim think that maybe he wasn’t the only one to notice Spock’s wandering attention. “Anyway, the gang’s all here? Let’s head out, then.”
Jim looks at Spock, who’s the one who is actually leading their away mission, but Spock doesn’t seem offended. He only says, “Indeed,” while his eyes bore holes into Jim’s head.
And wow, that expression suddenly feels very different than it did five minutes ago.
The area of the planet they shuttle down to is lush and green, with air so humid that it feels like they’re swimming in it. Within minutes, Spock looks like a cat who’s wet and crotchety about it, and Jim has to hide his smile every time he looks in Spock’s direction.
“Hey,” says Sam softly to Jim as they’re wrapping up their primary work. “You need me to distract him so you can do your thing?”
“What thing?” asks Jim, genuinely bewildered. “I don’t do a thing.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “You know.” He twiddles his fingers vaguely. “Your ‘fun guy’ thing.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It’s definitely a thing.”
“It’s not a thing!”
Well, they definitely manage to distract Spock, anyway. “Lieutenant, Doctor. Have you completed your tasks?”
“Not quite,” says Sam. “I need another ten minutes for the computer to finish processing these readings.”
Spock looks at Jim, and Jim flushes. “Uh,” he says. “Yeah, same.”
Spock nods and returns to his own work.
“Jim. Jim, no way.”
“Seriously, what, Sam?”
Sam glances over his shoulder and then hisses, “You like Spock?”
Jim makes a face at Sam. “I don’t know. I guess. So what?”
“If he finds out about—”
“He won’t.”
“But if he does—”
“Misters Kirk, perhaps you should continue your work in different areas of the clearing,” calls Spock, his tone clear that this is not a suggestion.
Sam makes a gagging face at Jim as he walks away, and Jim rolls his eyes back at him.
Sam has just made it back to where he’d set up his equipment when Jim’s scanner beeps once, indicating that it’s finished processing its readings. A quick glance around tells him that Spock and Sam won’t be finished for another few minutes, yet, and… well… the northern bank of the lake is just a few minutes’ walk to the southeast. If he were to leave now, he’d probably be back before they even noticed he was gone…
But that’s not the responsible thing to do, and he’s not a kid anymore. He sighs and heads over to Spock. “Sir, my main tasks are completed. With your permission, I would like to investigate the—”
The lights on their machinery go out. Spock raises his eyebrows, but does not look alarmed. “Under the circumstances, I will need to deny your request, Dr. Kirk,” he says mildly.
Preliminary investigations tell them nothing good: all scanners quiet. Shuttlecraft unresponsive. Shipward communications down.
It’s fine, really. This happens on something like ¾ of the away missions to unfamiliar worlds. It’s no big deal. They have lots of rations—Jim always packs extra, anyway—and even if they didn’t, this world is full of edible vegetation.
It’s fine, they’re fine.
Sam wraps an arm around Jim’s shoulders and leans in close to whisper in his ear, “Okay, Jim—one, calm the hell down, seriously. Two: are you going to do the fun guy thing now?”
Jim is probably going to have to do the fun guy thing.
“Well, gee,” says Sam, who wouldn’t win an acting award even in a nursery holiday play. “We should probably split up and explore the area on foot to see what killed our tech.”
They’ve moved all their gear back to the shuttlecraft and are now huddled together in a circle, trying to work out a plan. Jim and Sam are visibly wilting in the heat, and Spock keeps making little microexpressions of distaste at the way his clothing, which has grown damp in the humid air, keeps sticking to him.
Now, Spock redirects those microexpression of distaste at Sam. This does not make them less adorable. “On the contrary, we have little to gain from that course of action, and the risk of one or all of us becoming lost is too high when we have no means of contacting or tracking one another.”
“Okay, so one of us will stay with the shuttle, and two of us will go out together,” Sam insists.
“To what end?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Come on, Spock! Our tech didn’t just shut down after nothing! Something must have happened, and we’re not going to get our systems back up and running if we don’t figure out what.”
“Not long before everything crashed, I noticed energy patterns between some of the vegetative and fungal lifeforms in the area that may have been some kind of communication,” adds Jim. “If we can find a physical sign of those energy fluctuations, maybe we can figure out what signal triggered the shutdown.”
Spock tilts his head to the side, his eyebrows high. “A curious observation,” he notes absently. Then he refocuses on them and firms his gaze. “Very well,” he says, and Sam brightens. “I will explore the clearing from our initial investigations alongside Dr. Kirk, and Lieutenant Kirk will remain behind with the shuttlecraft and search for any ‘clues’ as to what occurred in the hardware of the shuttlecraft.”
“Whoa, hold on, Spock—wouldn’t it make more sense for me to go with Jim?”
“No,” says Spock. “It would not. If any antagonistic lifeforms are developed, I would be much more capable of countering them.”
Jim hasn’t really had the opportunity to consider the physical power of the vulcan body since his epiphany. Now that Spock has raised the matter himself, Jim’s a little worried about his ability to think of anything else.
“We didn’t detect anything like that in our initial survey!” Sam protests.
“Neither did we encounter anything capable of neutralising our machinery,” says Spock mildly. “And yet.”
“Maybe we should all go out together,” Jim muses.
Both Spock and Sam give him twin doubtful looks.
“What good is Sam going to be kicking around the computers? He’s no engineer—even if there was some obvious cause implicated, he’d never know it.” Sam scowls at him, but doesn’t disagree. “And we may not have to return all the way to the original survey site—we may be able to detect physical signs of signalling from right here, given that the shuttle is down for the count, too.”
Spock nods in agreement, but Sam juts his chin at Spock meaningfully.
Jim makes sure Spock is facing the other direction when he mouths, “Distract him.”
Jim’s first pass over the plant and fungal life surrounding the landing site truly is a visual inspection searching for differences that might mirror the patterns he’d seen on his scanner before it blinked out. Once the bulk of the shuttlecraft is safely between him and Spock, with Sam ready as a lookout and potential diversion, Jim begins his second pass. He reaches out and very gently touches his fingers to the side of a bulbous mushroom growing amongst the grasses, and then he lets the tendrils of his senses float outward and settle onto the mushroom, lightly at first, and then sinking in deeper and deeper until he can feel the thrum of life within it.
“Lieutenant Kirk,” he hears, floating around in his periphery. He can’t quite parse the meaning of the works, but he feels them vibrate through him. ”Back away. I am detecting a nonhuman lifeform inside of Dr. Kirk.”
There is silence for a moment, and then, ”You are unsurprised. Your continued attempts at deception throughout this away mission have been to mask this from me.”
Even from whatever strange headspace Jim is in now, he can feel Sam’s anxiety. He tries to reach out to Sam to comfort him, but then another presence joins him in his mind.
Jim’s receptive and projective empathic abilities have been off the charts—the human charts, anyway—since he was a teenager, but he hasn’t had much first-hand experience with advanced telepathy. Spock is keeping to the edges, protective rather than intrusive, but Jim can feel his thoughts, his mind in a way that he never has before.
It’s like they’re sharing a silent conversation. Before he can stop himself, he reaches out with his tendrils and draws Spock in deeper.
“When Jim was 13, he was bitten by a radioactive fungus, and now he’s a magical mushroom man. So what? Starfleet is aware, so check for yourself if you have a high enough clearance.”
Before in mushroomland, Jim could only hear the sounds and feel the emotions. With Spock here as well, he hears Spock comprehending the language, and he understands as well.
And… Starfleet is definitely not aware. A massive amount of effort had gone toward making sure that Starfleet remained unaware.
Spock hears him think that. He feels Spock hear him think that.
“A… radioactive fungus,” says Spock, completely without inflection.
“Yep.”
But it’s too late. Jim is already pouring the true story straight into Spock’s mind.
Later, he thinks he’ll be embarrassed by what he’s sharing, but when he’s fully connected to Spock like this, he doesn’t feel shame or fear or guilt or grief as he shows Spock the life and death of Tarsus—the infected crops, the slaughter, the starvation, the sentient species of fungus merging within him—or if he does feel those things, Spock feels them with him, without judgement.
I do not understand, Spock tells Jim, his mental voice somehow ringing crystal clear in Jim’s mind.
Neither do I, Jim acknowledges. That’s why I call it magic.
Ever since Tarsus, Jim has been able to communicate with fungi, and some flora, and some fauna. Even humans, on an empathic level. He doesn’t know why. Maybe he really was bitten by a radioactive mushroom. It would probably be less weird.
It is safe? asks Spock.
It’s safe.
He feels Spock weigh the idea, and then he tells Jim, “Carry on, then. I will monitor your wellbeing.”
And so Jim turns his attention back to the curious mushroom. He settles in deeper.
Calling this a conversation would be a lie. Instead, information flies between them like a lightning strike.
As Jim disengages, he hears the whir of the shuttlecraft’s computerised life support system reinitialising, and he sighs with relief.
“—A radioactive mushroom,” Sam is saying behind him, coming closer. “So you’d better—”
It’s strange, how much can happen in the mind while time drags on at its snail pace.
“It’s fine, Sam,” says Jim, standing up with Spock steadying him. “He knows.”
“How is that fine?” demands Sam.
“It is fine,” Spock confirms. He pauses, then adds, “I find it unlikely that it will ever occur to Starfleet to investigate this issue.”
Jim laughs. “I guess it is pretty strange.”
“I have encountered stranger things,” Spock says. “Mycelial networks have many curious uses and properties.”
Sam stares at him, open-mouthed.
Jim and Sam had made so many plans for what to do if people found out and reacted badly. They hadn’t made any plans for what to do if anyone found out and then shrugged it off.
“It appears that our equipment is once again functional,” Spock continues. “I will contact the ship to give my report.”
As Spock walks away, Sam turns to Jim. “What the hell?”
“I don’t know why you’re asking me,” Jim complains. “I don’t know.”
Sam exhales slowly. “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“And he’s really okay with it?”
“He seemed okay with it,” says Jim quietly, flushing.
“Are you blushing? Don’t tell me you still like him?”
Jim stares up the purple sky beseechingly. “Are we really talking about this right now?”
“Yes! You were just in each other’s heads, and you like him! So does he know? Is he okay with that?”
Jim didn’t think he knew the answer to that question, not for sure, but as Sam asks the question out loud, the response seems to float to the surface. “Yeah. He’s okay with it. He”—if Jim was red before, he doesn’t want to know what he looks like now—“is kind of really pleased about it.”
“Ew,” says Sam.
“And we might be mind married now. I’m unclear on that.”
By the time Spock exits the shuttlecraft, Sam has worked his rant up to a yell. He’s pacing around back and forth, waving his arms as he shouts about how disappointed Mom and Dad will be, and—
Yeah. This is why Jim and Sam avoid talking to one another at all costs.
Jim smiles at Spock over Sam’s shoulder. Looking at Spock now, he can’t believe he ever thought that expression meant disdain.
END