A/N: Time for a sad drabble about my favourite Trek couple! Sorry if it's confusing. (Also, I don't own Star Trek.) Live Long and Prosper! xx
He's never been in love.
They whisper behind his back, half-lidded eyes watching him from across the room. They think he doesn't know, that he can hear them, that he's just the clueless pretty boy.
He knows. He can hear them.
He's never been in love.
He's older, now, than he once was. Wiser, perhaps, or maybe just quieter, but this hasn't changed.
He's never, ever been in love.
Some might disagree, he's sure. Bones is pretty positive that Jim falls in love with everyone he's ever seen, be they a man or woman, human or alien, and maybe he's not wrong. Chekov and Sulu think he's in love with his ship, which, okay, probably holds some truth to it if he thinks about it, which he doesn't, so. Spock, if he were a bit less Vulcan and a bit more human, might say that Jim was in love with the stars, with space, with running.
Nyota thinks he's never been in love.
Everybody has a thought or twenty when it comes to this subject, about those Jim has or hasn't loved, everyone has something to say and everyone has something that they believe, but Jim himself never answers.
He'll smile, turn away, and maybe he'll laugh. He'll ask about them, ask about who they love, and chances are that he'll already know. They'll forget about it until somebody brings it up, as they always do eventually.
He's never been in love.
(That's not true.)
Jim has been in love. He has. He's woken up with smiles on his face, he's felt the glowing warmth of adoration in the pit of his stomach. His eyes have crinkled and gone soft. His laughter has rang free and beautiful and unrestrained. Jim does nothing by halves and Jim in love was ever such a sight to behold. He shone with love, pouring out of every inch of his skin, but nobody cared to look.
They saw a promiscuous Orion girl and a crazy human playboy.
He's never been in love, they'd say, scoffing, rolling their eyes away from the brightly shining pair.
They didn't see the smiles, true and genuine and only for each other. The laughter, late into the night, and oily fingers from long hours working on various engines.
And yeah, a part of it was about sex, but it wasn't everything.
(Nyota wonders, sometimes, on the long nights where everything is heavy and presses down onto her chest, how she could have ever assumed that about Jim anyways, when she now knows just how large and glowing his heart truly is.)
They were happy, and they were in love, and if anyone had cared enough to look closer they would have seen it too and been amazed.
Always smiling, always bright, always loud and free and wild because they each knew exactly how precious their freedom was and revelled in it every day. His hand fit perfectly into her green one and her soft smile smoothed out the edges of his serrated smirk. He was the moon and she was the sun, and they reminded each other of the beauty in their lives, of the possibilities to cause mischief and magic.
Oh, yes, Jim has been in love.
Nyota cried when Gaila died. Jim didn't. She cursed him for it, hitting her shaking fists into his chest, and he let her, eyes weary. "You never loved her," she cried, "you've never even been in love." If she hadn't been so immersed in her own pain, she'd have seen him flinch, but she didn't. She didn't see a thing, just as she hadn't seen anything before.
Nyota's mother used to say that people only ever see clearly when it's too late to change anything, but even then she couldn't see a single thing.
Jim didn't cry when Gaila died, because he loved her, and she wouldn't want him to.
Instead, Jim lived for the both of them. He'd been doing it for years before her, moving on when others would have collapsed, but it hurt nevertheless. He went to her funeral, and he was the only one there. (Nyota couldn't make it.) He smiled extra bright because if he didn't the smile'd slide right off his cheeks and never pop back up again. He watched the stars at night and picked out the ones she came from.
("You're my home, Jimmy," Gaila would say, laughing, smiling her brightest smile.)
He missed her so much that every atom in his body ached with a longing he couldn't name but was long accustomed to.
Have you heard, he's never been in love, the new cadets say to each other, wonder and disgust and awe lacing the syllables because he's also a starfleet captain now, even if he's the one who's never been in love. Jim doesn't twitch, doesn't acknowledge them, but Nyota turns around, indignant.
"Hey!" she says, crossly, and the cadets jump. She starts to get up to give them a stern reprimand about disrespecting a senior officer, but Jim grabs her arm.
"Don't bother," he says, and she looks down at him in surprise. She means to say something else, but the exhaustion in his eyes catches her off guard. He's older than he used to be, less sharp edges and blinding white grins, but his eyes looks unbearably tired for one moment, and suddenly Nyota remembers a time when his eyes glowed with a light that never dimmed, some kind of emotion that she took for granted.
"Oh," she says softly, "alright, Captain." She sits down slowly and he sends her a weary, tight smile in thanks as Nyota tries to remind herself that age changes more than looks and she's sure that light from his eyes was there just yesterday when she knows, all of sudden, why she'd never tried to put a name to that light, all that emotion and feeling in those twinkling orbs of Gaila's boyfriend. She wants nothing more than for Spock to be by her side, in this moment, because he knows how to make sense of her jumbled thoughts and he's better at dealing with Jim than she is, always has been, and because she kind of wants to cry at the longing to bring that light back into her captain's eyes.
He's happy, she knows that, and Nero was a long time ago, but Nyota realises for the first time that she wasn't the only one to lose Gaila that day.
(She'd always wondered who left the bouquet of Galia's favourite flowers on her tombstone.)