"Your eyes are a different color," is the first thing Spock says when he's gotten his clothes on. "As of the last time I saw you, and for the entirety of our acquaintance, they have been hazel."
"As of the entirety of our… I'm still kind of stuck on the fact you think we're dating, to be honest here."
"We are."
"I'm beginning to rethink how good an arguer you are," Jim mutters, which only earns him another eyebrow, but really, the man could come up with an actual explanation for the whole thing about them dating, rather than just repeating it over and over.
"I am unsure as to what you-"
"Never mind," Jim sighs. "When is Bones- Bones!" he half shouts when the door finally, finally, slides open. "Look, there's something really wrong with Spock, Bones, you gotta take a look at him."
"I don't have to look at him to tell you that," Bones says and Jim wants to hug him it feels so familiar, Bones standing there with his arms crossed and eyeing Jim with significant lack of patience. After everything this week, just… everything, Jim never thought he'd be so happy to see Bones so exasperated, and on the Enterprise of all places.
"He thinks we're dating," Jim explains, already grinning because if there's something that'll make Bones laugh during a week like this one, it'll be the thought of Jim in a committed relationship.
The laugh doesn't come though, just a small frown passing over his friend's face and his quick look back and forth between Jim and Spock.
"Jim?"
"No, Bones, really, I think… I mean, everything that's happened, I think there's something really wrong with him, you know?" Jim asks quietly, steering Bones to the side with a hand on his arm. The guy's had a bad week, which is the understatement of the century and Jim doesn't feel right standing in front of him and ridiculing the guy no matter how hilarious his delusions are. "He um… well tonight, he…" Jim trails off, glancing behind him at Spock, who's watching them impassively. "He, uh-"
"I really, don't want to hear it, Jim," Bones says, backing up towards the door, his hands held in front of him.
"No, no, I want you to… I'm not… what? I want you to look at the Commander. He's all…"
"You promised. No details."
"No details about what?" Jim asks. It's the first time Bones has ever refused to look at someone and Jim can't make any more sense of that than he could of having Spock in his bed. Touching him.
"Is this some kind of joke? Did Spock sprout a sense of humor and you two thought this would be a fun way to wake me up?"
Jim tries to decide if it's stranger to think that Spock might actually posses a sense of humor or that Jim has seen him naked.
"No, I just… he's… I told you," Jim says, dropping his voice again. "He thinks we're dating. And I don't know-"
"Did you break up? So you want to go get a drink? Is that what this is?" Bones crosses his arms. "It's the middle of the night, Jim, but it's not exactly the first time I've been through this with you."
"Break up? No, we didn't…"
"Good, I don't want to have to deal with you again after one of those."
"Doctor," Spock says, rising from the end of Jim's bed. "We did not end our relationship. However, as you can see Jim is-"
"Not a relationship counselor, Spock," Bones says, his hands rising in front of him again. "Don't want to hear it. Nope. Done. Goodnight. You two work this out, you hear?"
"Jim is under the impression we are not in a relationship," Spock continues as if Bones hadn't spoken.
"Well, we're not," Jim says. "C'mon, Bones, look at him. What is this?"
"What is this, Jim? This is you waking me up in the middle of the night to deal with some sort of issue the two of you are having!"
"We're not having an issue. Spock is having an issue. There is no 'we'."
"That's just cold, Jim," Bones mutters. "You two might be fighting, but this isn't like you."
"That isn't like him!" Jim cries, pointing at Spock. "He- he got in my bed!"
"Jim-" Spock says, way too calmly for someone who is supposed to not even be in Starfleet anymore, let alone getting into officer's beds. In their quarters. On their ships. Naked.
"Jim-" Bones says, his tone far too gentle and not nearly sufficiently scandalized at the thought of Spock, of all people, climbing into Jim's bed. "How long has he been like this, Spock?"
"As of this evening, he seems to have no memory of our relationship. Furthermore, his eyes have changed color."
"His eyes?" Bones asks, stepping towards Jim. "Lights."
The lights come on full glare and Jim blinks against them, resisting the urge to cover his face with the other two men staring straight into his eyes.
"You're supposed to be halfway across the solar system, Spock, not staring into my eyes," Jim grumbles.
"Huh. You're eyes are blue, Jim."
"Of course they're blue! And I'm not… I'm not- Look. Spock. I'm sorry if you think, or if you're confused, or if somehow some wire got crossed and this is some thing about me versus Uhura-"
"I assure you my brain contains no wires," Spock interjects.
"Could have fooled me," Bones mutters. "And what is this about Uhura?"
"She… him…" Jim points back at Spock. "You know! I told you all about it!"
"I don't. And you didn't."
"This is not the first time she has been mentioned tonight," Spock says.
"You and her," Jim says, licking his lips and pausing, thinking of the best way to explain this when Spock is so incredibly, obviously confused. "Are an item. Dating. Whatever. In love."
"Spock and Uhura are friends," McCoys says, just as slow. "But you and Spock are the ones who are dating, Jim."
"Bones! What is wrong with you?"
"There's something wrong with you, Jim," McCoy says in that same slow, firm tone Jim's heard him take with countless patients.
"I quite concur."
"Now you two agree," Jim mutters, crossing his arms. "I'm fine. I'm the sane one. Bones, c'mon man, stop messing around, I'm too tired for this."
"Your eyes are really blue," Bones says, still studying him. "And you look different. Did you get a haircut?"
"No," Jim says, scrubbing a hand up the back of his head.
"He appears to be younger," Spock says, walking over to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bones, so that they're both staring at him.
"He does," Bones agrees.
"You look older," Jim grumbles but when he actually stops to think about it, Bones does look older. "And your ring is different."
Bones glances down at his hand and frowns. "No, it's not, Jim."
For the first time, Spock's implacable expression shifts, but it's so slight Jim can't read it, though Bones' face is reading concern loud and clear and it's Jim's turn to take a step back.
"This is weird. You two are being weird," he states. "Bones, your ring. And Spock… you… just all of this. What's going on?"
"I do not know," Spock says softly and Jim can't help but think that he looks concerned, if he can even wrap his mind around Spock looking concerned along with everything else that's happening.
"You think we're dating," Jim says slowly, pointing at Spock, who nods. "And you think he and I are dating," Jim asks Bones, who also nods. "Let's call Uhura."
"I do not understand your fixation on Lieutenant Uhura."
"Fixation? Spock, fixation is making out with her on a transporter pad!"
"Are you cheating on Jim?" Bones asks, so severe and so sudden that Spock takes a long stride back from him. "I swear to God, Spock, I told you once and I'll tell you again, if you hurt him, so help me-"
"Bones, Bones, it's fine, it's cool, he and I aren't-" Jim repeats for the millionth time that night but even as he does so, he sees another shift in Spock's expression and shuts his mouth so fast there's an audible click. There might be a better way around this than denying a relationship with a man who just lost his planet, and his mother, and who might be dealing with it in a peculiar way but Jim certainly isn't helping matters by continuing to deny – with no proof – what's actually happening.
It takes a couple minutes for Uhura to get to his quarters, which Bones spends glowering at Spock, and Spock spends glancing repeatedly at Jim, and Jim spends staring at Bones' hand and the tiny signs of age around his mouth and eyes that Jim swears weren't there the last time he saw him.
But when Uhura gets there, it's no better. Jim was sure she'd be pissed about him waking her up in the middle of the night, orders from a commanding officer or no, but she looks somewhere beyond tired and maybe like she's been… crying? He shakes off the thought because he's seen Uhura stressed and he's seen Uhura upset, and he's seen Uhura kissing goodbye her as-of-then-secret boyfriend that Kirk is kind of dying to get the details about, but he has never, ever, in three years of the Academy which brings most cadets to tears at some point, seen Uhura cry.
The sight of her so upset must be getting to Bones and Spock, too, because they both stare at her she walks in, and don't speak when she lays eyes on Spock and draws in a short, quick breath.
"Spock?" she asks, so softly that it suddenly registers in the exhaustion and confusion that has taken residency in Jim's brain that Spock leaving Starfleet might just also mean Spock leaving –
"Spock?" she asks again, stepping forward. "What's going on. Why are you here?"
"Uhura, Spock's not-" Jim starts, thinking he should have maybe explained this whole thing before dragging her out of bed.
"What happened to your hair?" Bones cuts in, his mouth slightly open and his forehead furrowed. "Uhura?"
"What?" she asks, grabbing at her ponytail and then quickly brushing a few stray strands that have slipped loose – something else Jim has never seen since Uhura is nothing less than fastidious about her appearance – behind her ears. "I just woke up."
"No, you-"
"How old are you?" Spock asks and when Jim looks at him he swears he can actually hear gears turning in the man's mind, what with the fierce look of concentration he's wearing as he stares back and forth between Jim and Uhura. "You once mentioned you wore your hair long while at the Academy."
"What are you doing here?" she asks him, her arms still crossed. "Are you… back?"
"How old are you?" Spock repeats. "What year is it?"
"It's 2258," Jim says slowly, staring at the way Uhura's staring at Spock, her eyes suspiciously wet.
"No it's not, Jim," McCoy says, looking back and forth between him and Uhura. "It's 2268."
"Jim," Spock says softly, stepping towards him.
"What's going on?" Uhura asks, blinking at Spock walking towards Jim with, Jim's sure, an expression on Spock's face that Uhura has to be much more familiar with than he is, all that Vulcan austerity softened by what is clearly emotion, no matter how impassive the man normally is.
"Let's get you two to Sickbay," Bones suggests and his mouth tightens the same moment Spock's expression hardens as Jim steps away from Spock.
"Sorry," he mutters, swallowing and looking over at Uhura, who's still just staring at Spock. "I just…"
"Sickbay," Bones says again, firmer, his hand on Jim's back like he's going to make a break for it.
No matter what's happening and no matter what year it is, him sprinting in the other direction of a medical exam still seems to be the same, since Bones hovers close behind him down the corridor.
All the way, his mind's churning over what could possibly be up with all this and he comes up with scenarios that range from Spock and Bones suffering some sort of psychotic break from stress, to the possibility he's still dreaming, to some sort of messed up thing from Command pitting his crew against him to see how he'll react.
He glances over at Uhura more than once, but all she does give him a small shrug and her patented 'this is your fault, Jim, figure it out face' that he's seen way too often over the last three years.
As they go, he can't help but look around, and as he does he notices that the ship seems… busier than it should be even despite the late hour. There's too many personnel around for the stripped down crew the Enterprise is operating with, and he sees a disproportionate number of crew members in science blues and command tunics, whereas the last few days the ship has been crawling with communications, engineering, and other operations officers as they work to rehab all the damage done by Nero.
And more than that, the more Jim looks, the more things look different. Not so different that he notices it all right away, but the bulkheads seem less shiny and there's something off about the corridors he can't put his finger on.
He's considering whether or not he hit his head hard enough that he doesn't even remember it when Uhura suddenly speaks. She's also staring around the corridors and, now that Jim looks, is on the receiving end of not a few bald stares as people turn to check out her hair.
"My quarters are purple."
"What?" Bones asks. "Are you having any other visual impairments?"
"No, I just mean the decorations. I haven't unpacked yet and yet somehow everything is all put away and just… purple."
"You haven't unpacked? What does that mean, unpack from what?"
"I just got onboard today I haven't had a chance. I'm surprised you're even here, I thought you were still planetside in the hospital."
"My duffel was gone," Jim realizes. "I wasn't unpacked either."
"Unpacked?" Bones repeats. "From your trip to Iowa?"
"I didn't go to Iowa," Jim says, again, rubbing at his forehead. "C'mon, Bones, you know I hate going there. And anyway, I was at HQ all day."
Bones just gives him another look, which makes Jim sigh as they all walk into Sickbay, which is also slightly different but Jim chalks that up to it mostly being intact.
"Looks like the building crews got a lot done," he says, slowly turning around and taking in the walls and ceilings, which the last time he saw them, were nothing more than braces and exposed wires. Bones and Spock glance at each other and their mutual, unspoken agreement is enough to make Jim swallow. "What?"
"There has not been any maintenance done in Sickbay since we returned to Earth," Spock says.
"But this was…" Jim waves at the room and then spreads out his hands in front of him, miming an explosion. "Gone."
"The only thing gone is my night's sleep," Bones mutters, steering Jim towards a bed. "Sit. You too, Uhura."
Bones frowns through both of their exams while Jim fidgets and stares around.
"The buttons look like candy," he finally points out, which makes Bones drop the tricorder on the bed next to Jim's leg and let out an all too familiar long suffering sigh.
"Exactly."
"Pardon?" Spock asks from where he's been standing, staring at Jim with an expression that is a little too blank.
"Candy," Bones mutters. "He's physiologically the same as he was ten years ago, Spock. He's… regressed, you could say. De-aged. Uhura, too."
"I have not," Jim says sharply. "And they do look like candies. Gumdrops, to be specific, but that's not… I'm not… What do you even mean, Bones?"
"According to your memory, what is your current assignment?" Spock asks.
"Captain of the USS Enterprise," Jim answers, though it still sounds funny to say that out loud.
"Twenty five and a captain?" Bones asks. "That's ambitious even for you, Jim."
"When you were twenty five you served as an ensign on the USS Republic before you transferred to the USS Farragut," Spock tells him and sounds so sure of it that Jim half believes him before he shakes himself.
"I applied to the Republic and Farragut, but our postings hadn't been finalized and I was hoping, I mean we were all hoping, Uhura too, that we'd be on the Enterprise. But all that was before…" he trails off and looks over at Uhura. "You know all this, Spock. You too, Bones. Hell, you proofread read my applications for both ships."
Bones just squints at him, so Jim looks at Uhura again. She's the only one who hasn't said anything about him going to Iowa, or that his eyes are the wrong color, and is the only other one who has noticed these slight differences.
"I don't know," she answers to his querulous look. "I'm really tired and today…" she trails off and glances at Spock, then down at her hands that are folded in her lap. Jim thinks he's never seen her fingers clenched so tight, but when she sees him looking she immediately relaxes her hands and smoothes out her skirt. "It's been a long day," she finishes.
"Is that a new uniform, Uhura?" Bones asks and Uhura brushes her fingers over her skirt again. "Short sleeves?"
"Well, yeah," she says, looking around at the three of them. "You were there, McCoy, you and I went to get our uniforms and you picked up Kirk's too. That was just yesterday."
"You don't remember that?" Jim asks. "I had that meeting with Admiral Archer about Scotty's assignment and the quartermaster had just received our active duty uniforms, since we only had the ones we had gone to Vulcan with. You got mine for me. Thanks, by the way."
"When did you go to Vulcan, Jim?" Spock asks, a small furrow between his brows. "You must be confused, you and I are intending to go in three weeks to see my parents."
"No… I, no…" Jim looks helplessly at Uhura, who finally pushes herself up off her biobed and crosses to where Spock's standing.
"Spock," she says quietly and the hand she lays on Spock's arm gets an eyebrow the sorts of which Jim's never seen. She doesn't remove it, though, just steps into him in a way that makes Jim look away, like he shouldn't be watching something so private between them. "Look-"
"Lieutenant," he interrupts, moving out of her grasp. "Please desist."
"I don't understand," she says quietly, reaching for him again before dropping her hand when he continues to pull back. "Today, you said-"
"You and I have not spoken today. Furthermore, while I understand that you and the Captain are suffering the effects of some type of-"
"We aren't suffering any effects of anything," Jim interjects.
"You're suffering from suddenly being twenty five," Bones supplies and Jim takes a deep breath so he won't snap, not at Bones of all people.
"I am twenty five. And Spock, I know you've had a week I can't even possibly understand, and hell, I don't know you that well to begin with, but everything, tonight, with the… it's weird, man. And you too, Bones. What is with all of this?"
"You don't know him well?" Bones asks. "Lie back, Jim, I'm going to give you a full body scan. I think that if there's anything that's true in this room, it's that you know Spock pretty damn well. Better than I'd ever like to, that's for sure."
"I share that sentiment, Doctor."
"Stop," Uhura interrupts, both hands raised. "All three of you, just stop. Kirk and I aren't the crazy ones here."
"Thanks," Jim grins.
She sighs and Jim thinks it's only his new rank that keeps her from rolling her eyes at him, since it certainly wouldn't be unprecedented.
"McCoy, you've been in the hospital with the survivors for what, five days straight? Seven if you count the trip back from Vu- the trip back. And Spock… Spock I know it's been a lot. But," she says, stepping towards him again as he eyes her warily. "Maybe you should try to sleep, and then we can talk. Again. And if this is you not wanting to go to the colony, that's… you know that's great. I think that's wonderful. But let's talk about it in the morning, ok?"
"What colony?" Bones asks and Jim seriously considers running Bones' own tricorder over him.
"The Vulcan colony. You know, New Vulcan or whatever they decide they're going to call it."
"What happened to that old, inhospitable dirtball that is Vulcan? "
"Bones?"
"Jim?"
"McCoy, please," Uhura sighs, glancing between Bones and Spock.
"Too soon," Jim confirms. "Even if it is 2268, still too soon."
"It is 2268," Spock says with way more equanimity than even a Vulcan should be able to muster in such a moment.
"It is not," Jim says, his voice starting to rise.
"It's not," Uhura confirms.
"I'm going to confine you to quarters, Jim, and you too Uhura, until we can sort this out."
"I'm going to confine you to quarters, Bones, as well as you, Spock, since the last thing Starfleet needs this week is the two of you running around denying everything that just happened!"
"Which was what, exactly, Jim?"
Jim opens his mouth to answer Bones, but while he's trying to think of words that are less bald than reminding the room that Vulcan just got sucked into a giant black hole, Uhura steps into the space between the three of them.
"Let's slow down," she suggests. "The three of you hold on of a second and let's talk about this rationally."
"About what?" Bones asks, crossing his arms.
"Vulcan's destruction," Jim says, which is met by a stony silence and more looks traded back and forth between Bones and Spock.
"Perhaps a ration discussion is in order," Spock finally says and Jim can't help but agree.
The list they make for the next hour as ship's night ticks by around them only becomes more and more preposterous, no less so for the fact that Jim can barely use the antiquated padd Bones pulls out to write on once the discrepancies in their stories become too much for anyone except Spock to remember.
"Middle of a five year mission?" Jim asks, poking at the padd until Bones takes it out of his hands with a sigh and starts typing himself. "You're in the middle of a five year mission and are making a pit stop back on Earth?"
"Resupply and repair stop," Spock corrects.
"Right. Pit stop. That's what I said." Jim closes his eyes, which just feels scratchy and grainy. He rubs at them until he sees spots, then keeps going until Bones bats his hand away from his face. "All right. Well. According to us," he says, gesturing at Uhura sitting on the biobed next to him, "we're cadets who received field promotions in the wake of what is being called the Battle of Vulcan. According to the two of you," he says, gesturing to Spock and Bones sitting together on the biobed across from them, "we hold the same ranks and positions but I didn't become captain of the Enterprise until 2265."
"Correct," Spock nods.
Bones shakes his head again, looking from Uhura to Jim to Spock and back again.
"And you two," he says, pointing back and forth between Uhura and Spock. "Are…"
She presses her lips together, her eyes flashing at Jim before she finally nods.
"We've been together for three and a half years," she says finally, her hands tight in her lap again.
Bones lets out a low, long whistle while Spock just blinks.
"Curious."
Jim immediately has a half dozen questions, his mind coming up with more and more even as he tries to decide what he wants to know first about the truly delicious notion of Uhura having dated Spock for so long. His train of thought, which involves a lot of sordid details of cadet reds and instructors blacks, is interrupted by Bones pointing back and forth between him and Spock.
"Kind of blows you two out of the water."
"The length of a relationship in no way makes one more or less valid-"
"Geez, Spock," Bones sighs. "Looks like you get laid in any reality. Congratulations."
The corners of Spock's mouth turn down minutely. "That is hardly relevant."
"Still," Bones says. "At least it means Jim here didn't either pick the most awkward way to break up with you, or hit his head so hard he forgot the last year and a half."
"Nineteen months and twenty six days," Spock interjects in a tone Jim can only call prim. "Regardless, what you said is accurate. The fact that you, Jim, and Lieutenant Uhura, and I and Doctor McCoy have such identical understandings of this disparate scenarios suggests that a mere lapse in memory is statistically unlikely."
"Speak Standard, Spock, it's too late for this. Or, rather, too early," Bones mutters, rubbing at his forehead.
"An alternate reality," Uhura supplies.
"Again," Jim adds.
"Again?" Bones asks.
"It's a long story," Jim sighs, meeting Uhura's eyes and seeing the beginning of a fear that she's almost successful in hiding, but which Jim also feels welling up inside of him. "If we're here…" he says slowly.
"Where is our Kirk and Uhura?" Spock finishes for him. "I do not know."