Out of a Curve

by mrasaki

It settles into something not quite like friends with benefits, because they're not friends, not exactly. -Kirk/Sulu-

Title: Out of a Curve
Author: mrasaki
Rated: NC-17
Wordcount: ~9700
A/N: Written for the LJ comm kirk_sulu exchange, for sail_aweigh. The prompt: Academy days, Jim sees Sulu in the mess hall-Who is that boy? Stalker!Jim (but not in a creepy way)
(My apologies that this is um, somewhat late, though in before the deadline. The first draft had been 90% done, then I discovered that it wasn't working out at all so I had to scrap it and start over.)
Summary: It settles into something not quite like friends with benefits, because they're not friends, not exactly.

––

Cafeterias are, as a general rule, terrible to places to eat. Overcooked macaroni, wilting salad, piles of mystery meat of mysterious origin – most Academy cadets opt for dining in town. San Francisco is a foodie haven and more or less affordable, depending on where one goes. But Jim's a scholarship student and 'scholarship' generally means 'one rusty rung above panhandling,' so he prefers saving his not-so-generous monthly stipends for Dollar Thursdays at his favorite little bar downtown, so mess hall and his unlimited meal card it invariably is.

It isn't so bad, really, if you get creative about your food combos and aren't particular about the state of your taste buds or your arteries for that matter, but if there's one thing the dour mess hall cook – who apparently hates everyone and everything but especially Jim – gets right, it's Taco Tuesdays. (Every day has a cutesy nickname in bizarro-land, Jim has learned.) It's an antiquated and extremely imprecise term; the buffet bar has so much more than just soggy tacos of every shape, size, and filling; it's a bit of everything else too: a bit of Chinese, a bit of Indian, some bratwurst, a lot of Vulcan, something Klingon and squirmy in the name of multiculturalism that everyone but the freshman frat kids on a dare steer clear of – but oh, the waffle bar. Waffles toasted to a fragrant, fluffy perfection, accompanied with a rainbow of toppings: strawberry jam, cherry pie filling, an entire selection of syrups, whip cream. Chocolate sauce. Jim is all over that. Like white on rice, or more appropriately, like strawberries-and-cherries-and-blueberries-and-everything-that-can-be-fit-on-a-six-inch-diameter-waffle as the laws of physics allows.

"That's disgusting," Bones says.
"That's enough sugar to kill a moose," Bones complains.
"Be grateful for your metabolism, when you hit my age it all goes to your ass," Bones advises.

Bones has no appreciation for fine dining.

"Leave that tray empty again and I'll sock you right in the kidneys," another voice warns from behind Jim's left shoulder. Jim's perfected the art of tuning Bones's mellifluous complaining out, at nodding and smiling, 'Yes Bones. I am indeed grateful, Bones,' so this unexpected voice from Bones's vicinity makes Jim nearly drop the ladle on the floor.

Good thing he doesn't, because when he shoots a glance over his shoulder, a guy he doesn't know is glaring back at him. Bones has betook himself and his carefully nutritionally balanced salad elsewhere, probably to harangue the matron about the sugar content of the dessert bar, bless his grouchy, health-crusading heart – and the guy totally ninja-ed into his place. Now he's staring at the ladle in Jim's hand, which is hovering over the last three scoops of strawberry topping left in the pan.

The black eyes slide back up to Jim. "Every week," he says slowly, deliberately. "Every week you show up here and clean them out of waffles. And everything else. Every week."

Jim drops the ladle as if it were red-hot. "Jesus. Sorry. Didn't know it was a life or death situation."

"It's first-come-first-serve, not first-come-eat-everything situation, you jerk."

"Christ. Look, here, have the rest, okay?" He backs slowly away from the waffle psycho. Waffle Psycho also has quite the collection of waffles and syrup piled high on his plate, but Jim judges it wiser not to point that out. He's learned quite a lot in his time since being the baddest boy around Riverside – chiefly, when to keep his mouth shut around the unhinged because getting punched loses its savor when Bones is your doctor.

With every step backwards, the snapping intensity in the air eases, and by the time Jim is five steps away, pressed up against the soda machine, the guy is almost smiling. Looks almost friendly, in fact. He scrapes up the last helping of fruit, gives Jim an almost-friendly nod, then disappears into the dining area.

Jim cranes his head, boggling after him until the slim figure in red is gone around the corner.

"So you met the other waffle fiend," Bones says, reappearing at Jim's side. Jim is unnerved enough to jump again. His plate clanks, and his waffles cant dangerously to one side.

"What do you mean, 'other'?"

Bones gives him a look. "You nearly got into a catfight over goddamn waffles. I think you're soul mates."

"I think he's absolutely crazy."

"He rattled you, didn't he?"

"Shut up," Jim mumbles, scraping disconsolately at the tray of strawberries. There's one strawberry left, stuck to the side in a blob of jam. It looks lonely.

"I think I'm in love with him." Bones grins.

"Shut up. Eat your stupid salad."

––

He sees Waffle Psycho almost constantly from then on – not just in the mess hall, but on campus, around town. Walking to class. Studying in the library. Jogging along the marina in Academy gray sweats that only accentuate the long, athletic lines of his body, loping along with earbuds tucked into both ears. The educational campus on the Marin side of the bay is only about a square mile; the admin side in the Presidio across the bay only about two. San Francisco itself, sprawling like a spilled drink in all directions down and across the peninsula is larger. It's a city with a small-town feel with a big city population, and for all that he begins to see the guy everywhere.

Not that he's looking for him.

But Waffle Psycho is distinctive, and tall, with that shock of unruly black hair and black eyes and an air of cool self-confidence, his mouth always curled up slightly like he's in on the world's biggest private joke. He's hard to miss.

The first time, Jim missed the part where he's also extremely easy on the eyes. He doesn't miss it the second time.

Normally, Jim would be intrigued and begin what he likes to call The Game (Bones calls it his Mating Dance), except this time his fantasies of unzipping Waffle Psycho out of those viscose cadet reds that silhouette him into a dangerous sliver of flame, all shoulders and narrow hips, end in holding the guy's face down into a tray full of waffles and maybe making him scream Jim's name, and not in a sexy way.

Bones calls him weird. Bones is wrong; Jim isn't weird, it's the situation in which he finds himself that has gone distinctly oblong and sea-foam green.

They play a game every Taco Tuesday, one called See Who Gets There First. Waffle Psycho must have a class close to the mess hall, he's got to, because nine times out of ten Jim gets there, panting and sweaty from his run all the way across the campus, and Waffle Psycho has struck and gone.

Find What's Missing, is the next step of the game. The guy is devilishly subtle – there's nothing blatant like a completely empty serving tray with only a few blots of jelly left in it; more like Jim will pump at the maple syrup dispenser and it'll splurt a couple times then make that empty wheezing sound that a dispenser makes when it's full of nothing but air.

The mess hall cook, Sergeant Pollan, only gives him a cold, measuring look as Jim pumps frantically at it like an idiot. It's useless to ask her for a refill. Maybe she will, one day, if he begs nicely, but he's not quite that desperate.

Yet.

Okay, so. This feud is stupid, he knows. He knows because Bones tells him all the time. It's stupid and immature but it also raises Jim's competitive hackles and pisses him right the fuck off.

"You're still going on about that guy?" Bones grunts one day. They're out on the Embarcadero one Saturday morning in April, getting coffee in the Ferry Building. The day is that fragile blue of early spring where the sun is still uncertainly poking through the haze, that uncertain kind of weather where it can't decide what temperature to be. Not that there's such a thing as cold in California; to Jim's Midwestern sensibilities, anything not ice and sleet and snow and your snot freezing into an icicle as it drips off the end of your nose doesn't count.

"No," Jim growls, following the figure in cadet-red through the throngs of farmers-market shoppers with his eyes. "Who is he?" Jim hisses, mostly to himself.

"What, you gonna stalk him if you find out? Maybe strangle him with waffles?"

"That is so not funny," Jim groans. "You think you're funny but you're really, really not."

Bones takes pity on him. "Name's Sulu. Astro-Sciences major. Now you owe me a favor. Scratch that, make it three, because did I mention this entire affair is really fucking stupid?"

"Sulu." Jim rolls the name on his tongue. "SuluSuluSulu." 'Waffle Psycho' is catchier. "How–?"

"He came in to the clinic before." Bones gives him a look. "Can't tell you more than that, so don't ask. I could lose my job and then I swear, I will spend my unemployed days making sure your little waffle love story is the least of your problems."

"Waffle love story my ass, you – wait, isn't that Uhura with him?" Jim interrupts, noticing the other slim figure talking animatedly to Sulu.

"Still not giving up on her, huh?"

"No, I—"

"Good luck," Bones grunts. "Because I'm pretty sure Sulu's a better catch."

This startles Jim. "What?"

"For her," Bones clarifies. "Sulu's Astro-Sciences, right? With a specialization in exo-botany and physics. Overachieving type, like someone I know. He's smart. Weird, but smart."

"Bones," Jim says slowly, choosing to ignore the not-so-implied insult, "You sure seem to know a lot about him."

"Look," Bones says, settling himself comfortably onto his bench to pick at his breakfast muffin. "I can't tell you how I know him, remember? He's nice enough. Doesn't scare easily." He frowns down at his plate as if that upsets him. "Forget him, how're things going for you?"

"Better. Next semester they'll move me out of these idiotic pre-reqs." Jim twists the paper sleeve around his coffee cup, frowning thunderously at it. He hopes so, at least. His marks are good, so good that lately his instructors have been less prone to frowning at him and shaking their heads, and sometimes they even smile.

He says nothing of the way his classmates sometimes look at him as if he's a particularly interesting species of paramecium that just flopped onshore with feet. Not everybody has to have a high school diploma to ace Academy, damn those elitist bastards, and he's going to prove it. "I told Pike I was going to graduate in three years, and I'm going to do it if it kills me."

"That's because you're an idiot," Bones says, but he doesn't really mean it, this time.

––

Taco Tuesdays continue as the quarter progresses. Jim manages to get out of class thirty minutes early for once so he makes it a point to cadge all the chocolate sauce, ignoring Bones' snide comments about having a waffle with his chocolate soup, just to see Sulu's face fall.

It isn't nearly as funny as he thought it would be. And it really is too much chocolate, even for him. The sarge is glaring at him again.

"This is infantile," Bones informs him, dipping his crouton into Jim's bowl 'o chocolate sauce like it's fondue.

"But he's done it to me tons of times," Jim protests, but he feels bad enough to load up a plate full just for Sulu the next week, braving the disapproving glares of the sarge and other students who watch him lugging two overloaded plates about. Extra blueberries just for Sulu, and he's carefully arranging a finishing dollop of whipped cream on top when a throat clears behind him. "This is embarrassing."

"Oh, you have no idea," Jim replies, adding a generous helping of chocolate sprinkles. "All this would be avoided if they just put out more food on the bar but you know how cheap they are, and Sergeant Pollan hates me, so – "He looks up and does a double-take. That – that¬ – is a kidney-punching face if he ever saw one. "No—wait, wait, you think this is for me? I'm making this for you." He pushes the plate at him.

Sulu regards it suspiciously, as if suspecting Jim spat in it or something.

Then he looks into Jim's eyes and smiles and oh wow, in thirty seconds he goes from 'annoying asshole who steals my waffles' to the top of Jim's very long list of people he'd dearly love to shag without bloodshed.

Jim swallows with a dry click and offers a smile of his own, the plates between them like peace offerings. "So, like. Want. You, uh, want to get a table?"

Sulu assesses Jim with eyes that seem to catalogue everything about him, down to the mysterious blob of uncertain origins on Jim's sleeve (salad dressing, hopefully), and gives an I'm too cool for this shrug as if he hadn't just spent the last two months beating Jim to the mess hall to fuck with his dinner.

"My name's Sulu," he says finally. "You can call me Hikaru."

Jim knows Sulu's first name, of course, gleaned from overheard conversations and the campus newsletter in which Sulu figures heavily in the fencing and judo clubs. Jim also knows that Sulu's nickname is Roo, if the person is especially close, but almost no one uses this cutesy nickname and it's not just because Sulu obviously hates it.

Knowing this isn't really that creepy.

He clears his throat. "I'm Jim."

That grin emerges again. "Yeah. I know."

––

Jim finally digs himself out of the tar pit of prereqs following a very satisfying interview with Pike and the admissions committee who determine that Jim is more than ready to become a full-fledged cadet. Pike's justifiably smug and claps Jim on the shoulder on the way out of the meeting room.

Feeling good enough to allow the implied I told you so, he lets the man to take him out for a drink at a luxuriously appointed bar that serves the kind of liquor that Jim is very sure he can never afford, in heavy leaded glass he definitely can't afford, much less break over anyone's head if he ever gets the urge to revisit his Iowa days, and drinks an excellent bourbon that Bones would shit himself out of jealousy if he knew.

Somewhere in that evening of understated opulence and pride and paternal lectures it dawns on Jim that Pike considers himself Jim's mentor. This is okay. He'd sponsored Jim's late admission to Starfleet Academy sans any real qualifications beyond his parentage, so he's probably more than a little entitled to take a personal satisfaction in Jim's success. Pike is a cool guy, a lot like the dad Jim never knew but Sam used to tell him about, and he's one of the few people Jim genuinely likes and respects and wants his respect in turn. Jim is also okay with eating anywhere not the Academy mess hall, especially on someone else's dime.

Jim's first full semester of major coursework is challenging. He gets top marks, he makes damn sure of that, with a grim pride that's born half of sheer stubbornness but also half of the memory of the dad he never knew and Pike's paternal expectations, but by the time he climbs into his bed in the hours that count more as early morning rather than late night only to wake up four hours later for PT feeling like his head's wadded full of cotton, only the mantra I'm not going back to Riverside keeps him going.

On the plus side, he's taking an Exo-Chemistry course with Sulu.

On the negative side, he's taking Exo-Chemistry.

To begin with, there are 6,509 elements to memorize, along with their atomic masses and electron configurations, and those are only the known ones from the Alpha Quadrant.

Even staring at the little mole just a little south of Sulu's earlobe during class doesn't begin make up for this. Rewarding himself with Vulcan poetry and 22nd century Maori literature and the exhilarating clarity of his tactical classes doesn't even begin to balm the epic levels of suckitude that Exo-Chemistry brings into his life.

All it takes is one moment of inattention in the lab. Jim pours the wrong solution into the wrong beaker and suddenly he's on the other side of the room in the middle of a smashed cabinet. His head hurts and he's foggy on how he got there, except people are rushing around and there's debris and glass everywhere. Strong hands grab him and push him into the emergency shower and eyewash station.

Then the professor – an Andorian – is bustling around, blue antennae waving in distress, saying, "Take – take him to the infirmary immediately, oh dear –"

And then he's outside, someone's hand on his elbow. Sulu says into his ear, "There have got to be easier ways to get out of class." Sardonic humor seems to be leavened with concern, but Jim can't really tell, too distracted with his face feeling like the time he forgot his anti-UV booster before going to the beach except a hundred times worse.

Sulu's sudden proximity makes his head spin. He hasn't seen Sulu the entire summer. He sorta missed him.

Or maybe he just missed being aggravated.

"Don't I wish," Jim replies sourly. His face is stinging raw. He can't see very well. "How bad is it?"

"The stuff's not supposed to be toxic, but the swelling's pretty bad." A pause. "Are you allergic to anything?"

"Maybe?"

A hand on his chin then, tilting his face back and forth as if for a better look. "You must be. You look like a potato."

Jim swears in heartfelt fashion.

He half-expects Sulu to return to class after depositing him at the infirmary, but he doesn't. His vision almost completely gone now, his eyelids swollen shut, Jim senses rather than sees Sulu seat himself next to the biobed. "Didn't Professor P'Trell tell you not to mix the two solutions that way?" Sulu asks.

"What two solutions?" Bones demands after a cursory, "Hey," to Sulu.

Sulu tells him and Bones matches Jim's sotto voce swearing, stabbing Jim in the neck – Bones' favorite place, Jim's discovered to his dismay a hundred times over – with a hypospray he never sees coming, then slathers Jim's face with a cream that immediately soothes the sting. "I didn't," Jim says rather plaintively as he prods at his now-numb face. "At least, I think."

"Well, at least the effects will be only temporary," Bones grumbles, smacking Jim's hands away. "You'll still be pretty, even if you'll still be an idiot."

"You okay?" Sulu says after a moment, in which Jim realizes Bones has left the room, probably to get an even bigger hypospray to attack him with.

"Yeah," Jim mumbles. He isn't really; beyond the embarrassment of this happening, he knows this will get back to Pike and probably go down in the annals of Cautionary Tales of Stupid Students Who Nearly Darwined Themselves.

"No offense, but," Sulu says. He seems to hesitate before continuing. "You sure you're okay? You've seemed really tired lately. A little down. And I haven't seen you around the mess hall for awhile."

Jim laughs. It's half a noise of surprise that Sulu's even noticed; in the one month of their mutual class-time Sulu had mostly just nodded an acknowledgment and otherwise ignored him – and half of weariness, because – yeah. 'Tired and down' is one way to put it.

"Don't really have time to eat at the regular hours anymore." Chews his lip, then confesses, "I really hate Exo-Chemistry."

"Everybody hates it," Sulu points out.

"Yeah, I hate it more."

"Aren't you getting good marks, though?"

"I'm only second in the class."

"Between you and me – old P'Trell grades on a curve."

"No shit?" Jim tries to focus his blurry eyes on Sulu and gets a general impression of white against tanned skin and red uniform. "I didn't know that." He really ought to pay more attention to what he's saying, this first time really talking to Sulu not in some awkward détente over platefuls of food in the mess hall. Sulu, the ghost in his life, as if his life is some cerebral indie movie about waffles and crazy people.

Of course this milestone occurs during the most embarrassing scenario ever, with his face burned off and half-looped on whatever Bones shot him up with. Because his luck is just like that.

"Yeah. That's good, because otherwise everybody would be failing."

"Wait. Wait, no. You got a 100% in the last midterm. P'Trell announced it to the class. You're ranked first."

"Well." Now Sulu sounds embarrassed. "Yeah."

"So he grades on a curve but you're the one screwing it up?" Jim shifts about irritably on the biobed, wondering where Bones hared off to. "Asshole. It's gonna be me in first," he promises. "If it kills me."

"It nearly did," A gentle finger traces the curve of Jim's brow. "So considering you're missing half the skin on your face and also your eyebrows, excuse me if I'm not shaking in my boots over here."

"Maybe you should tutor him," Bones says abruptly from the doorway, then rapidly crosses the room and stabs Jim with another hypospray. Jim lets out an undignified yip before he can stop himself, then in the wave of chemically-induced sleepiness that follows he hears Bones say, "I have a vested interest in this idiot not burning off what's left of his idiot hide, or killing himself with exhaustion, so do me this favor, Hikaru, huh?"

Fuck you, I don't need help, Jim tries to say. What comes out is, "Wait, you're friends?"

––

After a week of telling girls that he burned his face in a freak shuttle accident in which he had to rescue an entire class of kindergarteners training guide dogs, he returns to his usual spot in the back of the mess hall.

Sulu is waiting for him. Long legs propped up on the table, absently crunching on a breadstick smeared with mustard and hot sauce. Stacks of padds are arranged neatly around him. He's studying something that turns out to be Jim's homework assignment.

In the ensuing three hours Sulu eats breadsticks deliberately in the dirtiest way possible, making sure Jim is watching, and pokes holes in all of Jim's solutions. Unbearable, that wry almost-mocking smile as he watches Jim curse under his breath and jab his stylus at the padd. The only thing Jim can do to thank him is kick him under the table.

Not to be outdone, Sulu kicks back. Hard.

Then he leaves his foot resting against Jim's under the table, and Jim lets him.

A truce, then.

Until Jim gets up to go to the bathroom. On the way out of the booth he deliberately trods on Sulu's toes.

He's feeling pretty smug about that until hard hands grab him by the shoulder and spin him around, up against the door. The dura-glass shivers with the impact. Jim gets his hands up in a defensive block against what at first feels like a stranglehold, but then Sulu's tongue is in his mouth, Sulu is against him, around him, crowding him. He tastes sweetly of soda and mustard. Jim forgets to struggle.

The restroom isn't the weirdest place Jim's ever had sex – that honor goes to the janitor's closet inside the female locker room – and at any rate Jim's never been one to ever say no to free and consensual sex with someone who's so very dedicated to having it, especially someone who Jim would probably have tried this on sooner if that someone hadn't also spent that time being thoroughly exasperating.

They struggle against each other for a moment, both warring for dominance, muscles straining, damp puffs of breath on sweaty skin. Jim tries biting the nearest thing he can reach – Sulu's cheek – which earns him an elbow in the solar plexus and a low laugh that goes straight to Jim's cock. Only sheer willpower keeps him standing upright then and gamely fighting on, instead of going to his knees on the cold tile floor and swallowing anything Sulu wants to put in his mouth.

In the end they're of a height and of similar build so it's a draw, only Sulu's not afraid to play dirty so he gets a grip on Jim's balls that changes the game in an instant.

"God, you are so annoying," Jim nearly whines, and Sulu laughs.

"No, I have siblings," Sulu replies, and does something with his thumbnail that makes Jim rise up on his toes and pant mostly silent expletives into the disinfectant lemon-scented air.

–

Uhura corners him at a party that weekend.

As he refreshes himself at a plastic cooler that's filled with an unholy concoction of frozen lemonade mix, beer, and moonshine, she says, "James Kirk. You're here."

"How kind of you to notice," Jim replies, unnerved.

"Kirk," she says again, sultry voice dipping into a flat, dangerous monotone. "You remember Riksene?"

Jim tries, he really does. And comes up with nothing except the vague impression of blue hair and a whiny, rhythmical gasping, and the feeling of annoyance. "Sure I do," he says, and flashes his best don't hurt me because I'm pretty smile. "How is she?"

"He," she says in precise tones, "is one of my best friends since high school."

"Oh," Jim says, and starts plotting escape routes.

She follows him towards the food table. "And since he made that mistake with you, he spends every minute outside of class moping around listening to sentimental old Earth opera and writing poetry about soaring eagles and the honeyed cadences of evening dusk." Her tone drips bewilderment and contempt. "Poetry, Kirk," she repeats again. "From a Communications major, Kirk, do you understand?"

"Look. It was just a….thing, okay? One night, that was it, and that was all. It's not my fault he thought it was more, okay? What do you want me to do?"

"Not being a dick would be start," she snaps. "Or maybe calling someone when you say you will. Or only saying it when you mean it, instead of just to get your ass out of a bind the morning after. And now you're trying it with my other friend? Hikaru? Tell me you remember him."

"As I recall," he quips, "It was Ricky's ass in a bind."

She throws her drink in his face. Several ice cubes make painful and cold indents into his skin.

There are many things he could reply here, witty things like how Sulu is a grown man and can take care of himself, that Sulu was the one who'd pinned him in the restroom and sucked his cock with the skill born of long practice until Jim hadn't known if he was at land or sea, Sulu who greeted him the next afternoon in class as if nothing had happened, then kissed him like he was drowning that same night. Or maybe that he would have called Ricky except for the life of him Jim couldn't remember his name the day after and besides the sex had sucked.

But he doesn't say these things, because he suspects an argument with Uhura will be more of a guerrilla war with uncountable collateral damage on both sides. And Uhura is one of the few people who genuinely scare him.

Instead, he stalks off in search of a restroom. His ears are burning and he's sure everyone's staring at the way the top half of his previously natty velour green shirt is soaked through and he smells like a distillery, but Jim is playing it off because it's the only option. He's sure not going to leave, because leaving means running away and running away means defeat.

Uhura can glare at him all she likes – and maybe she's just a little bit right, a traitor part of his mind whispers – but it's the principle of the thing.

––

It settles into something not-quite-like friends with benefits because they're not friends, not exactly.

He doesn't know when it changes with Sulu, when not-exactly-random encounters around campus that result not-exactly-random mind-blowing sex turns into something more, and Jim doesn't even know what to call it. Sulu intrigues him, frustrates him, foils him at every turn, and as Bones puts it, keeps Jim's head from 'swelling too much.' Not in my pants, Jim replies, and Bones looks as if he's warring between groaning or rolling his eyes (or doing both) but he laughs instead.

"I'll tell you what it is," he says to Jim. He's hustling around the infirmary like he always does, never stopping for a moment, wearing that harried expression of the chronically overworked that worried Jim until he realized it's just Bones' default state. The man doesn't know how to relax. "I can't believe you haven't realized this by now."

"What?" Jim asks. He's parked on one of the beds because they're a damn sight more comfortable than one of the waiting chairs.

Bones stops and stares at him as if he's wondering if Jim was dropped on his head as a baby – his second most favorite expression. "Why you're so upset about Sulu." At Jim's deflecting shrug and bluster, he rolls his eyes. "Why you're always coming down here lately and bugging the hell out of me and wasting my time like a kid who wants his mommy to pat him and tell him everything's going to be all right."

Jim would have called his bullshit and baited him a little bit more except Bones is staring at him in total seriousness and okay, he knows Bones isn't totally wrong. So he crosses his arms defensively across his chest and says, "Okay, what."

"Damn, don't they train you any better in Command track? Self-evaluation or whatever they call it?" He sees the look on Jim's face and changes tacks. "Jim, you're used to being the only child. Yeah, shut up. I know you've got a brother somewhere, that's not my point and it doesn't matter. You know what it is? It's always your way or nothing. You know the world doesn't revolve around you but you think it should. People always come easy to you, you don't have to work at it. And if you say, 'of course, I'm awesome,' my foot is going up your ass."

"But I am," Jim protests.

"Yeah. Whatever." Bones goes back to throwing medical equipment into various drawers with unnecessary vigor. Jim thinks that's going to be it, that the subject is going to slide and they can talk about distinctly less uncomfortable subjects, but then Bones continues abruptly, "And now you're in a situation that you've never let yourself be in before, and you're not in control. You hate that." He pauses and goes on in a gentler tone. "Jim, you ever tried being friends with someone you're doing the horizontal tango with? At the same time? That thing where you know their favorite ice cream, their hobbies, favorite color, not just the color of their pubes?"

Good question. It takes him a moment to classify his partners back to what feels like the beginning of time before he reaches – "Uh. I had a girlfriend. In high school." It hadn't ended well, if 'not well' was her stealing his entire holovid collection and his pet turtle and moving across country, as opposed to 'total and utter devastation.' Generally, Jim prefers to pick and choose the people he lets inside his guard, with everyone else in a grouping nebulously labeled 'friendly acquaintances he can meet for drinks and probably sex on Fridays.'

And the population of his inner circle is disturbingly small.

As if reading his mind, Bones says, "I'd say you suck at this friends-with-benefits thing. Actually, I'd say you suck at this friends thing, full stop."

"I'm broken, Len," Jim says. The joke wavers and trails off into a depressed monotone. He stretches out on the bed and stares at the ceiling, wondering why he's even more confused about what he wants than before.

"Christ." A big palm, warm and rough, slides across Jim's forehead. "Feel sorry for yourself on your own time, I've got work to do."

"So what's the doctor's advice?"

"You're asking the guy who's probably going to be picking the sands of his divorce out of cracks he didn't even know he had for years to come? How should I know?"

"Fat lot of help you are, Bones."

"That's why my advice is free."

––

The training exercise is easy enough, in theory – take the second years out by Martian Colony 3 and let them space walk. Jim is delighted to discover that Sulu is certified to be a freakin' pilot. A side hobby, he says. Extra cool. And Sulu is finishing up his helmsman requirements by flying Jim's shuttle, and so Jim is sitting there, sweating into his exo-suit watching Sulu do it. Sure, deft movements, murmured communications to base and navigator, long fingers dancing over the controls with a familiarity that makes Jim's mouth go dry and his cock go hard, and why he can't watch Sulu without making entirely inappropriate sex metaphors in his head?

To distract himself, he talks at the back of Sulu's head, countless questions and observations without meaning just to see Sulu valiantly try to ignore him, his irritation expressed in his fingers stuttering, pausing. Calling him Roo earns Jim a full head turn and a glare. This attention pleases and encourages him. He's ready to continue needling Sulu until launch but his instructor snaps at him to quit distracting the crew.

The EVA clears his head. The weightlessness and infinity of space fills him with a peace like coming home, the far expanses of black dotted with stars, the red curve of Mars in the foreground, the serene blue of Earth behind him, calling to him with their siren song of adventure and potential. The flight instructor barks orders over the comm, and slowly the second-years maneuver into formation, awkward and ungainly with their own momentum. Jim grins. Simulations on Earth are never the same up in space. This is a million, exponentially a gazillion times better.

That's when the shuttle explodes.

A crackling hiss, then an alarm blares over the comm, high-pitched enough to make him wince against the feedback and the flare that temporarily blacks out his photo-sensitive face shield. When it clears, he's already flipping himself around with his jets, almost overshooting in his fumbling haste. There's no sensation of heat or cold in the insulated suit, only the bright gouts of flame and vapor in total silence and the shuttle flipping end over end away from them.

Sulu's voice comes over the comm, businesslike, almost monotone. Only Jim can decipher the fear buzzing beneath the thin gilding of calm. "Starbase, we have an emergency. Primary thrusters offline. Lieutenant J'red is unconscious; we need emergency medical evac ASAP. There's been a hull breach, trying to compensate–"

Even as he watches there's another eruption of flame and debris just as the force of the second explosion buffets them. Now Sulu isn't answering their hails.

They're all still tethered to the shuttle by a long belay line. One by one his classmates unhook themselves lest they be dragged along with the shuttle into the Martian gravity well, but for Jim there's only one choice to make and too little time. He flips off his comm, cutting off the panicked chatter and shouting from his classmates and instructor, and turns himself around to pull himself hand over hand after the tumbling shuttle. His classmates are waving frantically at him. If he looks to his right he can probably see his instructor's straining, shouting face, but he doesn't. There's no time to argue.

It takes a bit of acrobatic maneuvering to align himself to the shuttle's spin and find an opening. Wrenching the exterior door open turns out to be unnecessary; a gaping, jagged hole nearly bisects the ship on the starboard side. The shuttle's interior is a nightmare of flashing lights and swirling flame and vapor, but the blast doors must have malfunctioned. Good and bad – he doesn't have to waste time on manual overrides as he gropes his way blindly along, but it decreases the chance of there being any breathable air left in the ship.

Sulu is alive and conscious at the helm, an oxygen mask crooked over his face. He's struggling with something bulky.

Jim ignores the wash of relief as sharp as a dash of cold water, to grab him and turn him around and check him over. Sulu shrugs him off violently and goes back to whatever he's struggling with, and now Jim sees he's got J'red stuffed into the escape pod and is trying to get the hatch to close.

"Time to go!" Jim shouts, forgetting Sulu probably can't hear him through his helmet. "Get your suit on!" Sulu doesn't react, barely seems to have registered that it's him, that if they don't get off the shuttle they'll probably die. The path to the other escape pod is blocked with flames and sparking panels. Most of the aft pods are simply gone. J'red, large and heavy even for a Vulcan, is taking up most of the pod. The only chance they have is their exo-suits, to get out, into space and clear of the shuttle, and wait with the rest of the class for evac. Sulu's eyes are dazed, his forehead bloody, his movements swimming and uncoordinated even without the loss of artificial gravity, so Jim pushes him away – no time for courtesy, he simply grabs a shoulder and shoves. But Sulu refuses to go, bracing himself against the bulkhead and flails back, too brain-scrambled to realize that Jim is trying to help.

Of all the times to—Jim swears the air in his helmet blue – there is no fucking time to be doing this ridiculous slap fight now so he pulls back and socks Sulu right in the face. Sulu gives him an almost comical look of betrayal and surprise as his eyes roll back in his head.

Punching Sulu's not nearly as satisfying as he once thought it would be.

"My life was so much easier without you," he informs him, as he slaps the pod's eject button with his other hand.

He has a suited, unconscious Sulu tucked under one arm as he kicks away from the still-tumbling shuttle and uses the suit's thrusters to get them far away.

––

It doesn't occur to Jim that maybe Sulu won't appreciate him showing up at his dorm at five in the morning. The first inkling of this is when Sulu doesn't answer his texts as Jim's shivering outside his building waiting to be buzzed in.

Then it occurs to him that maybe he should have solicited more specifics when Sulu had said, "Hey, yeah, sure, just stop by anytime," when Jim had said something ages ago about coming over, maybe training for the Academy marathon which until that point hadn't been much more than a passing fancy. But shit, after the shuttle fiasco and the ensuing hearings here's another thing Sulu's offering to help him with, and while Jim still isn't sure how he feels about all this being helped versus being the helper, he's not one to turn down a free running partner. He's a firm believer of using every advantage possible to win the game, be the game poker, Exo Chemistry, the upcoming Kobayashi Maru, or even the marathon, and today – today can't be wasted because he needs to see Sulu. He hasn't seen him in two weeks, not since the accident and the depositions that followed. And well, it had been a generic enough invitation, hadn't it?

Nothing happens, so nothing daunted, Jim just…well, jimmies the door. It isn't that hard. And, if this is what passes for security in the student dorms, Jim needs to have a second look at the lock on his own room.

He queries a console in the hallway – again with the security – and wends his way to the fifth floor. Finally his knock is answered by a disgruntled groan and then what sounds like an eternity of fumbling and thumping before Sulu apparently manages to scrape together enough brain cells to call, "Enter."

"God," Sulu says, putting all the exhausted disgust into the one word that only a night-owl can muster at the single digits of the morning, "What time is it?" He should be unappealing, in rumpled gray Academy t-shirt and even rattier flannel pajama pants in an eye-scorching purple plaid, his hair shooting off into corkscrewed directions, the seam of the blankets imprinted on his cheekbone, dark circles stamped under both eyes, a fading yellow shiner around the left, but he isn't, at all. He looks good.

There's something very close to murder in Sulu's eyes, but Jim pushes past all that, pushes him, propels him across the room until they fetch up with a thumping rattle against the far wall. Jim slides himself up against Sulu, nothing but his sweats and Sulu's startled hands tangled in Jim's running shirt between them, Jim's tongue in Sulu's mouth because after the first initial exclamation and the clank of their teeth Sulu is kissing him back, opening to him as if he's been expecting something like this from the very beginning.

"Seven," Jim lies against his mouth. It's more like five-fifteen, but he has the feeling Sulu isn't going to take the news kindly. "The final grades are posted. Have you seen the grades?" Sulu's increasingly bewildered face has a strangely green cast in the early morning sun and it takes a moment to pinpoint why – there are plants everywhere. Mostly crowded onto the narrow sills of the two windows, filtering the sunlight through their leaves, but there are plants in the bookcase serving as bookends, a rather giant leafy vine is suspended from a hook in the ceiling, there are three spiky cacti-looking ones on the nightstand, and an orchid nearly pokes Jim in the eye as he turns to take in the panoramic view.

"I have a minor in Botany," Sulu explains belatedly, noticing Jim's rather country-bumpkin gawping. He sounds dazed. Jim's discovering this is a good look for him, still melted against the drab beige wall, dark eyes half-lidded, t-shirt rucked up, his entire world discombobulated in one stroke by one James Tiberius Kirk. A defensive note edges into his voice. "I like plants."

Jim resumes exploring the smooth skin under that awful shirt. "Got any sex pollen ones?"

A derisive snort. "Those are just a myth, Kirk." Sulu squirms against him, apparently feeling crowded. Jim leans in some more and keeps him pinned there. "Kirk, it's not seven o'clock, it's an hour that shouldn't exist, and you want to know if I've seen our grades yet? How did you even get in the building?"

Jim is suddenly grateful there isn't anything sufficiently heavy nearby that Sulu can chuck at his head. "Mad ninja skills, of course. You're missing the point. The grades. They're posted."

"So?"

"So—" Jim realizes he needs to rewind, past the blaze of fuck yeah and – truth to tell – disbelief that he's aced the test, aced all his classes and of course he did most of it, but the remaining percentages are to be laid squarely at Sulu's door, because yeah. Exo-Chemistry. And Sulu's been gone, and Jim's missed him, and the accident wasn't his fault. Even the inquiry had said so. "So I'm in first, you asshole."

"Oh, what? What the hell," Sulu exclaims, and shoves him off. He crosses his room in two bounds to his console, Jim entirely forgotten, and starts tapping away. He pauses, swears, then thumps himself back into his chair hard enough that Jim's afraid he's going to topple right over backward, ass over teakettle. There's a long moment of silence, in which Jim watches the graceful lines of his neck, and Sulu rakes his fingers through his hair in an unconscious, habitual way that leaves his hair even wilder than before.

Finally, Sulu laughs. It's a full bellied laugh, not cynical or frustrated or bitter at all, nothing at all like the way Jim would have reacted to this news, and this is why Jim finds him so wildly, inexplicably attractive; he takes Academy and his coursework and his grades and his career as seriously as anyone, but he has perspective, can roll with the punches, can laugh at himself.

"Now we both screwed up the curve," he says. He turns to look at Jim, sober again. "To be honest, I totally forgot about the finals."

"Yeah. I know. It wasn't your fault." The words are gentle. This earns Jim a sharp look, which tells him that was precisely the wrong thing to say and the wrong tone to say it in, because like Jim, Sulu will never not blame himself for things that go wrong.

Sulu seems about reply, then stops. Looks down at his hands and adds awkwardly, "I should have said thanks sooner. For coming after me." His lips quirk. And giving me this." He touches the bruise. "Though you didn't have to sucker punch me that hard. Jerk."

Jim doesn't know what to say to that. So he does what he does best – soothes the offense with his mouth.

The chair creaks and leans backwards at an alarming angle as Jim leans harder on the arms in his bid to get as much of his tongue into Sulu's mouth as possible, while Sulu is apparently trying to devour Jim's lips whole. Between them it's raunchy and exhilarating and fucking perfect.

Jim yanks him off the chair and shoves him onto the bed just as the chair's about to go over. Those ridiculous pajamas are the first to go, Jim sliding his hands under the thin fabric to palm warm, pliant flesh, skimming them up over the jut of Sulu's hipbones, the dip of his waist, the bumps of his ribcage – Jim slaps Sulu's hands away from yanking on his shirt.

"Will you stop—"he snaps, and stops, breathing, looking up at that wry twist of mouth that he has to kiss. "Just let me for once. I want to touch you, okay? Just let me –" he breathes, and now that smirk is gone, replaced by something dark and smoldering that twists something inside of him.

"Missed you," Sulu says finally, voice low, and cants his hips up into Jim's touch. "Even though your timing sucks and you're a cocky little—ah!"

Jim grins against his thigh, laves an apology into the bite with his tongue. Sulu's hands trembles on Jim's shoulders. He's flexed into an extended abdominal crunch as he cranes his head to see what dastardly acts Jim is up to, his abs perfectly toned and tanned golden.

Damn showoff.

To make Sulu stop flexing them in his face, Jim licks a wet stripe right up Sulu's cock to finish with a teasing swirl around the head.

Damn, it feels good to make Sulu come apart like that, his face going slack and tightly controlled mouth soft, shiny with spit. Jim sets up an irregular rhythm then, just short of teasing, just short of serious, relishing every small betrayal of Sulu's usual control – the hitch of his hips following every flick of Jim's tongue upwards, the barely perceptible clench of his fingers against the bed sheets, the sudden electrified silence, the bobbing of his adam's apple as Jim swallows around him.

He wants this to be good. He needs this to be good, for Sulu to make those low, unguarded sounds only for him and no one else. Sulu's fingers trail through Jim's curls as if Jim is his only anchor keeping him from floating away. They clench as Jim rewards him for it, swallowing him down to the base, and then his body arches into Jim's mouth, straining, shaking, as Jim slots his thumbs along the grooves of Sulu's hipbones and holds him as he comes.

He loves the way Sulu tastes, hokey as it is: grassy, salty, a little milky.

Jim almost never sees him like this: melted, eyes soft, limbs loose. They usually do it in hurried snatches in semi-public places, and never have the luxury of time before clothes have to be rearranged, hair combed back into place, Sulu pulling away from him and gone in an instant as if nothing had happened.

Jim takes full advantage of this unplanned peace, leisurely exploring his way up Sulu's flat belly with nose and tongue, tasting salt and the tensile strength of toned muscles under smooth skin. He's hard, hard enough to pound rock it feels like, but for the moment he just enjoys this rare moment of peace, and even rarer moment of Sulu just lying quietly under him without trying to judo-flip him, or something.

It doesn't last of course. After about a minute Sulu starts to squirm. "Do you want to?" he asks finally. His voice is raw as if it's gone through a blender. Jim doesn't need to ask what he means, doesn't even need to say yes aloud as his cock surges against Sulu's thigh at the thought. That genuine, slow smile touches Sulu's face again, and Jim has to kiss it. "I know you've been thinking about it," Sulu adds, a calculated taunt, without heat and full of mischievous humor.

He curls upwards into Jim's chest in one feline movement and sinks his teeth into the side of Jim's neck, hands everywhere, running through Jim's hair, scrubbing up Jim's cheeks, down his back to his ass, marking him, teasing him, challenging him, until Jim pushes him over onto his stomach. Sulu goes, grinning white in the dim light, eyes crinkling the way they do when he's really enjoying himself until Jim pulls his hips up to meet his mouth and the grin disappears into a silent O of pleasure as quickly as if it's been slapped off.

Jim loves the surprise on his face as much as the bitten off, broken sounds Sulu is making into his pillow, the way his knees are hitching apart and hips thrusting back and up for Jim's tongue, as he licks him and opens him and thrusts his tongue in and punishes him for underestimating him.

He wants to make this last, maybe even wring another orgasm out of Sulu just like that, with no hands, but Jim's not made for patience – and to be honest, Sulu, though better endowed in that area, is at the end of his. There are many ways Jim's thought of doing this, in idle moments during class or in the library or staring across the table at Sulu in the mess hall, this first time in a bed and not up against a wall redefining 'quickie,' so Jim takes it slow, replacing his fingers and tongue with his cock, rocking forward in agonizing inches.

Sulu is hot around him, tight, his eyes going wild and his mouth open and bruised and panting again, long thighs flexing as he arches into every thrust. Deep and slow, until Sulu pushes and pulls him around front, seizing him by the nape of the neck, fingernails digging in. He holds him there, breathing into Jim's mouth, almost soundless except the gasps when Jim re-enters then gets him right there and then he pants into Jim's mouth, "You think I'm going to break? Come on, fuck me," and Jim can never say no to that.

So he gathers that lithe body in his arms, socketing his forehead into the slick hollow of Sulu's neck and fists Sulu's cock until the filthy words coming from Sulu's mouth degenerates into empty vowels and Sulu punches him right in the ribs in frustration. The pain sends a jolt straight into the primal core of Jim's brain and from there he's lost.

Sulu is a wet, shaking wreck beneath him when he pushes one last time and comes. Maybe he hears Sulu whisper something like his name, or maybe he only imagines it.

––

He knows how much sugar Sulu likes in his coffee, if he prefers strawberries over cherries, chocolate over vanilla, that his favorite food is Korean. Everything he knows about Sulu, it seems, is related to food – well, except the newly discovered nuts-about-plants thing. It's a start, at least.

This, too, is a new experience.

"What elective language are you taking?"

"Vulcan. Anakana dialect." It comes out muffled, sleepy.

Jim raises both eyebrows. "Fancy."

"I have to. Astroscience specialization, you know. A lot of the modern research is taking place at the Vulcan Science Academy, so you gotta learn at least the basics to read the newest journals–"

"I'm taking Klingon."

Sulu opens his eyes, stopping in the middle of what Jim is sure will be a very long and rather boring run-down on all the applications of the Vulcan language, and gives a disbelieving bark of laughter. "You what? Why?"

Jim grins. "Command track. And Klingons are going to be our next major conflict, I bet you. Get this: nuqDaq ta' SoH pol yuch?"

Sulu stares at him so long Jim starts laughing, shifting into annoyed when Jim doesn't stop. "You just made that up," Sulu says finally. "You're just a freshman, how—?"

"I'm not really a freshman," Jim informs him. "No, honest. Well, kinda."

"Well," Sulu says dubiously, "you are a bit old to be a freshman."

"It's my first year," Jim admits. "But I'm a genius. And awesome. The regents love me." That only deepens the skeptical look on Sulu's face, so he finally takes pity on him and explains, skipping the bit about his dad and starting with Pike and that dive bar in Iowa, marveling at how easy being friends is. How easy being friends could have been, if he hadn't wasted time being stupid.

Now here's Sulu, who's looking at him as if he can't decide whether Jim's an entirely new species that needs classifying or just totally crackers, or maybe both, and Jim is finding that, like with Bones, he likes making him look that way.

"So yeah, Pike," Jim finishes, which probably isn't the most eloquent way of ending a story. "So there I was, failing Exo-Chemistry. But I'm aces at languages and tactical and all the humanities but it's weird how it doesn't balance out, huh?"

"So why don't you go into Communications?" Sulu isn't looking at him now. He'd dug a personal padd out from under the bed and is tapping away at it.

Because of my dad. "Dude, that just sucks all the fun out of it. I know how to swear in fifty languages, what else do you need?"

"Wait." Sulu sits up. "Wait, wait. Did you just say 'where do you keep the chocolate' in Klingon?"

"It's a surprisingly useful phrase," Jim says carefully. For a moment he thinks Sulu's pissed, but then he sees Sulu's actually trying not to laugh. This pleases him ridiculously.

For an endless moment Sulu's gaze slides like warm ice down to Jim's mouth. Jim's heart skips a beat in true cheesy romance novel fashion, and then the moment is gone.

But it had been there, as tangible as the cool air that vents from the ducts above them, the expression Sulu only gets when chatting with this scrawny round-eyed kid with brown curls and freckles who Jim only knows in passing and in rumor as that Russian genius. Something about the kid's face or his hair or his freckles or maybe just the way Sulu had been laughing at something the kid had just said or maybe because the kid is one of the few who's actually allowed to call Sulu 'Roo', had made Jim want to sock him in the fucking face every time he saw him, because it should be Jim, only Jim, who can make Sulu look like that, all warm and secretively amused.

"What is it?" Sulu asks, sensing Jim's sudden mood shift.

"Nothing," Jim replies, fumbling on the floor for his clothes. "I should shower, maybe go."

"You might as well stay," Sulu says quietly into the dawn light. "You have someplace to be?"

"No," Jim admits. Not that he wants to go; the quarter is over for the time being, and Sulu is sprawled out on his bed, looking fucked out and sleepy and smiling in invitation. At that moment Jim wouldn't care if the building were on fire; his 'someplace to be' is right here.

"Then shut up and lay down." Sulu yawns. "For future reference, you don't ever, ever wake me up before eight. Waking up early is for boot camp first years. So don't. If you don't want to lose one of your balls."

"Only one?" Jim grins, leaping and cartwheeling inside at his words. For future reference. Then this, whatever this is, is probably going to keep happening.

One eye opens to glare at him. "The first one will be a warning. You coming here or not?"

"It's Tuesday."

"So?"

"I can't believe you forgot what happens on Tuesday."

"Waffles are bad for you," Sulu says, deadpan. Then he grins. "Let's go piss off Pollan later."

"That's the idea," Jim says, and steals a pillow.