Title: Take a Third Option
Summary: The most important thing Nyota has learned from Jim Kirk is there is always a third option, no matter how dire the situation was and the current situation was dire. Right now, she has to figure out how to deal with the ultimate romantic no-win scenario of her boyfriend being in love with Jim Kirk in a non-platonic way. Takes place during the end of STID.
This story contains major spoilers for Star Trek Into Darkness
After watching the new movie, I came to the conclusion that the film only makes sense if Spock is completely in love with Jim. That is the only logical explanation for him being jealous of Carol and his Vulcan equivalent of a nervous breakdown. Nyota is a brilliant strong woman and I know that she would not be oblivious to this. There are normally two options at a time like this, break up or figure out how to work through the emotional infidelity (that scene was just chopped full of emotional infidelity). It's more complicated when the person your boyfriend is kind of sort of in love with is someone that you care about too. However, thanks to Jim Kirk's good (or maybe bad) influence Nyota is willing to find another solution for this romantic no-win scenario.
A/N: I'm going by memory, so I may have a couple of things wrong. I also find it deeply ironic that I did not cry when I was watching that scene (Okay, I may have been yelling at the screen 'really, just friends, really',) but I started choking up so much when writing this story that I couldn't keep dictating.
Thank you to teddy bear for proofreading, all remaining mistakes are mine and I will most likely blame those mistakes on my voice recognition software. (Update 6/21: Also thank you to Khashan for proofreading the revised version.)
Disclaimer: If I own Star Trek, Jim would have been doing Spock (and maybe Nyota too) in that scene, instead of the kitten twins. Also, there would have been enough Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto gratuitous underwear scenes to make you not care about the ridiculousness of Alice Eve in her underwear later on. Obviously, there were no women in the writing room. Therefore, I don't own anything.
Part One: Nyota's No-win scenario
Nyota was a smart and strong woman. She knows dozens of languages, can bluff Klingons, and shoots indestructible adversaries at point-blank range without breaking a sweat. She also knows when she is in a completely double fucked situation and right now when it comes to her relationship with Spock, she was completely screwed, no matter what choice she made.
She and Spock have been together for nearly three years, despite the complications of the last year. He has been keeping her at arm's length since his mother's death and the destruction of Vulcan. Half the time, she thinks he was suicidal. He said that he cared, but she's not always sure. Still, he's trying and that's all she can ask for. He drove her absolutely crazy, but she still loves him, sometimes. He frustrated her beyond belief, but, according to an old earth song,* that was a sign of true love. She still loved him despite the days when he was a complete asshole, and her life really would suck without him.
However, she realized there was a problem when she came to the conclusion that Jim felt exactly the same way she did about Spock. There were both days when they both wanted to simultaneously hug and punch the guy. It was almost as if Jim was dating Spock too. They bickered like they were dating sometimes (okay, all the time). She thought that the old earth term 'work husband' kind of applied to the situation, except maybe it was more than that. She knew that the tension between Jim and Spock had this sexual edge. She was pretty sure that she has caught Jim Kirk staring at her boyfriend's ass on more than one occasion (and possibly vice versa). She easily dismissed it because she has also caught Jim staring at her ass on more than one occasion (and possibly vice versa but she will never admit to that ever).
She didn't consider it a serious problem originally because of Jim's crappy reputation. Jim does not do relationships (monogamy) and Spock does not fuck around. When people say Jim Kirk will sleep with anyone, they really do mean anyone, and he left a trail of angry females (and contrary to popular assumption, some males) behind to prove it from various planets throughout the galaxy. She lost a Romulan expert because Jim fucked the guy and didn't call the next day, sometime at the Academy, and he pretty much refused to work on a ship run by Jim Kirk. (Apparently, something similar happened with a prospective nurse, if Enterprise gossip was correct). Jim Kirk wanted to sleep with everybody, but that's just part of who he was. The man did not fall in love. It wasn't even in his vocabulary, supposedly. (Of course, Jim hasn't met a rule yet that he has not tried to break.)
However, Spock has a way of making Jim do things that he wouldn't do under normal circumstances. Jim could not let Spock die, no matter what the consequences. He broke the prime directive for him. She would've done the same thing. Something like that only comes out of one place and that was a place of love.
She told herself it was a friendship type of love. However, she knew she was lying to herself. You don't give up your life for someone who is just a friend. Again, sometimes it felt like Spock was Jim's boyfriend too. The way they looked at each other was sparkly. She has never seen Jim look at somebody with such reverence before. The same can be said of Spock. The only other individual that Spock has given those types of looks to was her and Nyota was not even completely sure that they were the same type of looks. Despite his reputation of not being the type of guy who would fall in love, she just knew Jim Kirk was head over feet for Spock. She could feel it in every ounce of her being. (Again, rules were for other people, not Jim Kirk.)
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, this love was not one sided. Nyota was well aware of Spock's jealous boyfriend behavior on the shuttle regarding Dr. Marcus (or whatever the hell her last name is). That type of gossip gets around Enterprise fast even in a crisis. She knows it was jealous boyfriend behavior because she has seen a jealous Spock on more than one occasion and can recognize the signs a little too easily. Of course, she prefers when he was jealous over guys hitting on her not whatever is going on with Jim and that doctor.
Then there was the Spock version of an angry rant that she had to listen to when he found out that he would be moving to another ship. He was equally parts upset about being away from her and Jim. That right there should have told her everything.
But she and Spock have been together for three years and even though they've had some rough times, she loved him and he loved her. She wasn't just going to throw that away because Jim Kirk was kind of sort of in love with her boyfriend and maybe her boyfriend was kind of sort of in love with him too. Her plan was to ignore it and hope it would go away. Of the three, she was the only one who realized that Jim and Spock were in love with each other. Maybe she could have done that if Kirk didn't die. But he did die and now she can no longer lie to herself. More importantly, she does not think Jim and Spock can lie to themselves anymore either.
She knew her own emotions in regards to what happened in engineering. Her stomach dropped and she could barely keep calm. She watched from behind in those last few seconds. (She also relived the scene 15 times when she had to watch the video footage on repeat to compose the report for what remained of the admiralty and she could not subject Spock to reliving that moment). She watched their hands on the glass. Nyota knows what a Vulcan kiss looks like. From every camera angle in engineering, it still looked like a Vulcan kiss, even if a part of her mind wished she would see otherwise. She knew the significance of the gesture, even if no one else did.
Nyota heard his words and she heard what wasn't being said. 'Friend' has always been a very ambiguous term (especially in Spock's native tongue). Honestly, she was expecting Jim to say that he loves Spock because she just knew that's what he felt. She knew. The way he looked at Spock, she just knew.
The tears told her that Spock felt the same way because Spock does not cry. He did not cry for his mother or his planet. He did not cry for Admiral Pike. He didn't even react to the possibility of his own death. Yet, as Jim lay dying across the glass, the tears fell and once more she can't lie to herself about why he was crying. She just knows because she can't hold it together either.
Every time she watched the scene again she cried too, uncertain of exactly what she was mourning. She was either crying over the loss of a man who has somehow wormed his way into her life or her awareness that her relationship with Spock will never be the same. She doesn't know.
When Spock screamed, she was terrified. He doesn't do that. It was like a switch had been flipped. Her normal pacifist boyfriend was gone and in his place was a being who craves blood and vengeance. He was not even like this with Nero. What could make Spock act like this? A part of her mind told her that anyone would behave the same way if this happened to one of his or her friends. She knew better. That was just a comforting lie she told herself to avoid the inevitable conclusion that the only thing that could justify Spock's behavior was that he was in love with Jim. She already knew it was not a best friend love but rather I would die for you love filled with sensual gazes and lustful thoughts (Nyota already knew this, but she couldn't ignore this like all the other signs).
As everything was happening, she did not realize it. She was in too much shock to realize what was going on. Nyota was trying to function, despite the fact that her friend was dead. Yes, Jim Kirk was her friend. He understood her better than most. Maybe he was more than a friend to her too, because she can't deny that she felt like her whole world fell apart when he took that last breath (or at least what she thought was his last breath at the time). She can't deny that she wanted Khan (or whatever he called himself) dead as much as Spock did. However, she could not process this in the middle of a crisis situation. She did her job. She beamed down to keep Spock from killing their only hope of getting Jim back. Maybe the fact that he didn't even hear her until she mentioned Jim should be the final piece of this puzzle. It was not, even though it should have been.
Nyota doesn't get it until nearly a week and a half later when Spock is spending almost every day at Starfleet medical waiting for Jim to wake up, and even then it takes repeated viewing of various video files for her to accept it. Things clicked into place when she was forced to relive every single moment of what happened for the official report because she was one of the few senior members of Enterprise not medically incapacitated or emotionally compromised (and Jim Kirk has emotionally compromised her boyfriend). Her conclusion is simple: Jim is in love with Spock, Spock is in love with Jim, and she is just confused because despite the fact that Jim is in love with her boyfriend she still kind of likes him.
If her boyfriend fell in love with anyone else, she would be angry. She would be furious and/or shocked that her boyfriend who supposedly loved her fell in love with someone else. It was not that simple. She was neither surprised nor angry; a part of her knew that this has been building for months. Spock didn't fall out of love with her, he just fell in love with someone else at the same time. On the surface, it may seem like the same thing, but it's not. He still loves her, but he loves Jim too, and that made it so complicated.
It's not complicated because he loves two people at the same time, but rather because it's Jim that Spock is in love with. If it was anyone else, a decision would be easy to make. She would let go and be bitter or let go and be gracious. They could work through the issue with the help of a counselor. Usually, when you find out your boyfriend is in love with someone else, there are only two options: break up or work through the emotional infidelity, and this whole situation screamed emotional infidelity. If it was someone other than Jim, she could easily make that decision, but because it's Jim, she can't.
Nyota did not believe either option would be optimal. She did not want to break up because she still loves Spock, despite the fact that he drives her absolutely crazy and there are days when she wants to deck him. If it didn't feel like that, it wouldn't be real love. Real love takes work, and she's willing to work through this because she loves him and because he still loves her.
She knows that they could work through this, but does she want to? Again, she loves Spock and she doesn't want to make him unhappy, and Spock needs Jim like the air he breathes. She has known this for the last year. He makes Spock better. Together they are stronger than they could be apart. She can't keep Spock from Jim. It would be cruel and she loves Spock too much to hurt him like that.
Things were even more complicated because they all work together and she wasn't transferring ships just because she completely ignored the section in the Starfleet handbook about fraternization. She didn't want to serve on a ship without Jim in charge (and she knew that once the investigation was over Jim would still be in charge, not if, but when he woke up). She wouldn't make Spock leave either because Jim may be the only Captain in Starfleet that can make Spock think beyond the thousands of rules and regulations that he has memorized.
Then it all comes back to the fact that Spock is in love with Jim and how she feels about him. She doesn't hate Jim Kirk, even though the man was head over feet in love with her boyfriend. She should but she does not. Watching him die made her ill. Before everything fell apart, they had built a stronger-than-expected friendship. He still thought she was hot, but the flirting was mostly harmless now because, say what you will about Jim Kirk's morality, he doesn't try to screw his friend's girlfriend (or boyfriend for that matter).
So this is the situation at hand: her boyfriend is in love with Jim Kirk, Jim Kirk is in love with her boyfriend, and she still loves Spock but she kind of sort of likes Jim too in a not-just-a-friend way and did not want to hurt either guy. She also did not want anybody to have a broken heart, least of all herself, and it seemed like whichever horrible option she chose her heart was going to be broken in one way or the other. She was fucked either way and after several days of deliberating on this on her own she still doesn't know which horrible option she was going to choose because both options were completely horrible in her mind.
She wished she had somebody to talk to but her boyfriend is too preoccupied with his Jim Kirk vigil. Every single day he goes over to the medical Center hoping today was the day that Jim Kirk will wake up (half the time she was there with him). It has been 13 days, and the good news was Jim's brain function was almost back to normal and Jim was breathing on his own. That's progress.
She cannot talk to her best friend about this because it startled her to realize that said best friend was in a coma and was the whole reason why she was dealing with this major relationship crisis. When exactly did Jim Kirk become her best friend? She would say it was last year when most of her other friends died but that would be unfair to Jim.
It was a couple weeks before Enterprise was to leave and she and Spock were fighting because he was going to leave her to make Vulcan babies on the new colony. Her solution to the problem was to get completely wasted at a club by herself (yes, she realized that was stupid but she was very depressed at the time). This resulted in somebody slipping something in her drink and her passing out at the club. She woke up the next day in Jim Kirk's bed fully dressed with him sleeping on the couch. That's when she knew that despite his crappy reputation she could trust him. (She was also informed that despite being drugged she did deck the guy that was stupid enough to try drugging her, right before she passed out.)
Because she wasn't ready to talk to Spock yet about her suspicions she decided to go with Jim. Just because he was in a coma did not mean that he could not be a good sounding board. Right now, she needed to get her thoughts together before she talked to Spock.
"You know, I'm glad you're not dead," she said, grabbing his hand. "I don't know how it happened but somehow I've grown to like you, which makes the current situation so much more screwed up. So it kind of took you dying for me to finally realize that you're sort of in love with my boyfriend." She wondered if Jim would deny that factor or not if he were conscious. Instead, she just hears the silence of modern medical equipment.
"It's okay. I don't hate you. Like I said earlier, I kind of like you. Okay, maybe more than like but I'm not sure yet. The thing is you dying made me realize that Spock loves you too. We both know that he will deny feeling such an emotion in regard to you until the day he dies, but it's true. So now I'm in this impossible situation where I don't want to break up with my boyfriend but staying together will keep him from you. I also don't want to transfer ships and I don't want things to be awkward," she said, practically laughing because that was better than crying and she felt like she was going to cry.
"If you were up you would have another option. You always do. If you look up 'take a third option' in the dictionary, I think your name would be there. So what's my other option, Jim? I don't like the two I have. So if you could just wake up right now and tell me what to do, that would be good. Just wake up," she said as a tear rolled down her cheek.
"He would probably tell you to have a threesome," she heard Dr. McCoy snort from behind. She was mortified because she assumed that the only one around to hear her was Jim.
"You heard that?" she asked as she wiped her tears.
"Yes, but I kind of already knew. It takes a lot to make a Vulcan go homicidal. I'm just surprised you have realized it," he said sadly. "Also, your boyfriend has been here as much as me. Then again, so have you." That last part was practically whispered, but she still heard it.
"You are very observant. You're right, he probably would have suggested a threesome, which would be completely…"
She cut herself off right there when she realized that maybe it was not such a ridiculous option after all. Spock and Jim love each other, she and Spock love each other, and she knew that she and Jim had mutual admiration for each other, in addition to a strong sense of like. Let's be honest, it already felt like they were both dating Spock sometimes but Jim and Spock were not sleeping with each other. They might as well just make it official and have sex. If Jim was sleeping with her and Spock they would avoid something like the lizard girl incident (don't ask). That can only be a good thing. That was when she realized she had her third option.
"Sometimes, Jim, you're brilliant. Now, I have to see about getting you a new reason to wake up," she said, kissing Jim on the forehead before leaving Jim and a very confused doctor behind. It was time for her and Spock to have a very long conversation.
This was supposed to be my post Into Darkness dabble. Yet, it ended up well over 3000 words and I think this has the potential to be at least a three shot instead of a one shot. Considering I wrote a 55,000 word + 5+1 I'm not that surprised.
Let me know if you want more.
*Song reference was True Love by Pink