Star Trek does not belong to me, of course.
*****
"What is this?" Spock inquired.
"These are ear prosthetics. We need to hide the pointed tips to distinguish you from the hobbits."
"Oh."
There was no backing down now, Spock knew this was too precious an opportunity to just let it go.
Three minutes of ignominy would get him enough money to tide him and the kids over to the next month. It was a perfectly logical choice.
But what would they live from after the money from the recording company were gone? Perhaps the Court might finally force Jim to pay the alimony?
Oh Jim. What a great disappointment he proved to be. In retrospect, Spock had to admit that all those who had warned him about the notorious philanderer had been right:
His father ("I strongly advice you against attempting to pursue a committed relationship with an individual who believes that monogamy is synonymous to reserving each weekday to sexual intercourse with one particular person while enjoying an orgy with all of them on the weekends") had been right.
Spock was ill-advised to have thrown that eyebrow twitching fit at him.
And the mysterious Dr. X who kept slipping him notes underneath the door to his quarters?
His cryptic messages
("Goddammit, man, I should not be writing this, but seriously, Jim has been and always shall be a slut. So when he dumps you, you overgrown Christmas elf, don't come crying to me, you know I'm a doctor, not a" - what usually followed were several scratched out words and then, finally legible, "a shoulder" and a little arrow with an explanation note "as in something you can cry on.")
had been proven by time to be right as well.
If only Spock had any idea who this anonymous adviser was, he would gladly concede him his indisputable point.
But despite of now being aware of all the mistakes of his youthful naivety, Spock regretted nothing. Jim had been worth it.
He did not regret the heated moments in the crammed auto-broom closet. Nor did he regret dressing up as a cheerleader in one of their many role-plays. He did not even mind (at least not, ah, on the mental level) wearing a buttplug for 24 hours straight as a punishment for failing to perform a cartwheel.
Least of all he regretted eloping with his beloved Captain to London, even though it did ruin his family's reputation.
Unfortunately, the newlyweds' romantic honeymoon was shortlived. It was ended by a fat, mustached man with whom Jim had apparently, in one of his less lucid moments, traded Spock for 20 acres and a Mule.
Spock's following engagement as a dancer/prostitute in an orbiting cabaret was over before it even properly started. A routine medical check-up discovered, that he was, incredibly, yet were really, pregnant.
Broken and gestating, Spock swallowed his pride and went to knock on the Starfleet headquarters door. Although his career had been pronounced dead after the infamous London wedding, he was placed in an interplanetarily-sponsored Poorhouse where he befriended a pale, soft-spoken girl who was given to coughing ominously whenever he mentioned any of his own tribulations.
Just when Spock started to believe that the Poorhouse would become his permanent home, he was thrown back out on the street after daring to ask for seconds at dinner.
The next few months were the worst. Spock spent them going around San Francisco coffee houses, sitting over one cup of cheap decaff espresso for the duration of the day and furiously writing stream-of-consciousness beatnik novels on napkins. He was quickly running out of the money he had transferred from his father's retirement fund to his own account (thus he would not call it stealing per se) and could not even afford a Datapad.
Luckily, shortly before he went into labor, a priest took pity on him and offered him a temporary job (before they would get the automaton to work properly again) as a bellringer in the Cathedral. And there, in the cool and dark safety of the belfry, Spock incredibly, yet very really, gave birth to his three children. He named them after the gargoyles, the only witnesses to their lonely birthing.
It was inevitable to contact the other father. Jim, whose half-hearted attempts at sharecropping had been terminated by the sudden death of his mule, expressed some mild surprise at becoming a father of yet another set of hybrid triplets but claimed that he was in a longterm financial shortage.
So once again, Spock was on his own. He briefly worked as a hover-truck driver, but then a music producer discovered his rich baritone when he overheard Spock soothing his babies with a lullaby as he changed their diapers on the overheated hood of the truck.
Since then, the contracts for records, mostly covers of classics, were coming at a slow, yet fairly regular pace.
In fact, at this moment, as his fake rounded ears were being applied over the painfully smashed tips, Spock was beginning to feel quite optimistic about the prospects of The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. Catchy rhythm, good lyrics, combined with his heart-felt delivery ...
Perhaps he would no longer need to wait for Jim to pay the child support, perhaps this song would be his entry into the glamorous life of a rockstar.
****
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