Stanley wasn't the worst step-father a kid could ask for. But he cut the line pretty damn close. Sam tended to just keep his head down, to duck out of the way and avoid him, but Jim wasn't so good at that. He couldn't help it, really. Being ignored was something he hated – so slinking off to the sidelines just wasn't an option for him.

Stan was one of those guys who seemed pretty nice half of the time. When he'd still been dating Jim's mother, he'd sometimes bring the boys gifts – model ships, ice-cream, toy phasers. The kind of stuff you could easily produce for a couple of kids you didn't really know. He shared Winona's love of antiquated technology, and he had a confidant, boisterous personality. But he had one hell of a temper, and once he went off, he simmered for a long time. Jim had been mostly ambivalent to the man until he moved in. Then things started to go downhill very, very fast. Stan didn't like to have him and Sam 'underfoot', as he called it. He had his projects, and neither of them could have cared less what they were about, but somehow whenever one of them failed to pull through or work out, it was always their fault. If something broke around the house, it was because one of them had mishandled it. If his latest 'invention' couldn't get off the ground, it was because they were always running around, distracting him. And since Sam managed to skirt around trouble, nine times out of ten 'they' was in fact just Jim.

Oh, Stanley never hit him, no. But he'd explode just the same. That man could shout himself blue in the face, and he could hiss under his breath the kind of words no sane person would ever direct at a kid. And because Jim got angry right back at him, that seemed to immediately qualify him for 'delinquent' status. But he couldn't help it. He wasn't the only one Stan directed his tirades onto. The fights he and Jim's mother got into sometimes seemed like they could physically shake the house, and they always ended the same way – Sam in his room with the door shut, his mother quietly crying in the bathroom, and Jim, furious, at the top of the stairs. So he started throwing Stan's own temper back at him. He'd take the man's curses and twist them past his own lips, mocking and obnoxious in the way only a child could be. And when his 'step-father' would throw plates or glasses or one of his mother's rooster knick-knacks because he was so mad that he just had to break something, but he was too smart to hit Jim, then he'd throw and smash and break something of Stan's. Because this was Jim's house, and everything in it belonged to Jim's family, which Stanley most emphatically wasn't a part of.

The tension between them quickly built up to the boiling point. It got so that Jim actually wanted Stanley to hit him. He did everything he could to try and goad him into it, because he knew if that one little line was crossed then the bastard really would be sent packing. Then who would be destined for jail?

It reached critical mass one week, back when his mother was still doing the occasional bit of off-planet colony work. She liked helping around the colonies, because they didn't have the resources that were available on Earth, and working to achieve self-sustainability was an interesting goal. Both Sam and Jim had often begged to go with her on these trips, but to no avail.

She wouldn't let them fly in space.

So they were left behind. Sam tucked himself away, as always, and Jim was left with Stan. Who was in an unusually good mood.

"You're not gonna be a problem for me much longer, boy," Stanley had informed him as he gathered up his tools, getting ready to head out to an old shed where he worked on his self-proclaimed 'inventions'.

"Why? Are you finally leaving?" Jim had quipped back with utter insolence, retrieving a glass of lemonade from the replicator. But Stanley didn't look annoyed. Instead, he just smiled.

"Nope," he said. "You are."

Jim had looked at him like he was crazy. "What?" he said, not liking the look on Stan's face one bit. "I'm not leaving. This is my house!"

"Not anymore," Stan replied, and if you hadn't known the context of their conversation, you'd think he was talking about the weather. "I'm the one who's married to your mom, boy. Her house is my house – and we've all just about run out of room for you." That said, he leaned down a bit, something of a mocking swagger carrying over in his demeanor. "I saw your aptitude tests, punk. You're some kind of freak, 'cause I don't know how you cheated 'em, but it's good news for me. I figure it'll take me about a week once your mom gets back for me to convince her to ship you off to one of them special boarding schools. Let them take the heat for a while," he snickered.

Jim felt his face flush, anger and fear and humiliation all filling him up in an unpleasant tangle. His mom wouldn't – she wouldn't send him off to some school. Not if he didn't want to go.

But, Stan had convinced her to do things he wouldn't expect her to before. And Jim knew… he knew that there was something about him that his mom just didn't like. No matter what he did or how he tried, he couldn't really fix it. So she might. She might send him away from her and Sam.

As if he was reading his thoughts, a wide grin split Stanley's face.

Jim threw his lemonade at it. "Fuck you, asshole," he said, using words specifically designed to enrage, to provoke. A trill of fear and mingled victory filled him when Stan's fist closed around the front of his shirt and yanked him, hard. He braced himself for it – but the man caught himself in time.

Instead of punching him, he just let him go, still smiling, and wiped the lemonade off of his face. Jim fumed as he watched him, shouting out insults and trying to rile him again. But that anger turned to fear when he saw Stan go into the sitting room, and pull open one of the glass cases by the entryway.

The case that had Jim's father's stuff.

"What are you doing?" he demanded, racing over as he heard the hinge creak, and one of George Samuel Kirk's academy trophies was plucked from its rightful place.

"Me?" Stan asked, holding the delicate award for third place in a shuttlecraft race between his hands. "I'm not doing anything, boy. You're the one who opened the case," he said, and realizing, Jim lunged to grab the bronze-coloured trophy – moments too late.

"You're the one who dropped it," Stan said snidely, before he threw it at the ground, hard. The stand snapped, and there was a sharp 'crack' as the little model shuttle broke and clattered. Then, just because he was too big for Jim to stop him, Stanley stomped a boot down onto the remains and mangled them further.

"Won't your mother be disappointed."

Jim heard the words distantly as he stared at the destroyed little trophy. He leaned down, not even looking at Stan as the man walked out of the room, whistling cheerfully to himself. Instead he carefully gathered up the pieces – and then with a cry of outrage let them fall again.

It took him about ten minutes to decide what he was going to do.

Stan was in his shed, still whistling away as he worked on whatever idiotic creation would never hold half as much meaning as a little bronze shuttlecraft. Jim found the key in the kitchen, lying innocently and out in the open on one of the counters. Clenching it in one fist, he slipped out of the front door and down the drive, to where a synthetic blue tarp was protecting the car from the elements.

He removed this none-too-gently, adrenaline heightening his senses and thundering in his ears as he kept one ear on Stan's distant whistling. As quietly as he could, he lifted the latch for the door, and the slipped into the driver's seat. His eyes assessed and examined, recalling the very, very few times he and Sam had ridden in the vehicle with Stanley, and deducing through simple logic what steps he'd have to take. Once the engine started it would be loud. He only had one shot at this.

Satisfied that he'd figured it out, Jim shut the door behind him, shoved the key in the ignition, and turned. The pampered machine purred obediently to life, and he slouched down in the seat to hit the gas – barely able to see out the old glass windows. The car gave an awkward lurch – too fast. He moved his foot from the pedal, but the distant sound of an enraged shout spurred him on, and he tried again, the vehicle kicking up dirt and dust as it turned atop the bare earth. The wheel was heavy and awkward in his hands, but he obediently and clumsily managed to get the corvette onto the road.

A glance in the mirror revealed the sight of Stan erupting from around the other side of the house, running heavily to chase him down and shouting all the way.

Still consumed in his fury, Jim floored it. He knew where he was going. Let Stanley chase him – maybe he'd follow his precious car right over the cliff's edge, since Jim wasn't stopping until he'd completely totaled this thing.

The cop was an unforeseen side-effect, but the open air whipping around his head almost made him forget his fear and anger. He could feel his own pulse singing in his ears as the old-fashioned vehicle kicked up the dust, riding the wind to its destruction.

He almost rode with it.

For one dark instant as the cliff closed in on him, Jim thought about staying put. He was only a kid – he wasn't supposed to have those kinds of thoughts. But he was on the cusp of his teenage years, and in truth, more than intelligent enough for the concept which briefly flitted through his mind. He could go out in a blaze of glory. His mother would leave Stan, and she and Sam would realize how much they missed Jim, and how they shouldn't have spent so much time ignoring him. Maybe Stan would even go to jail. He thought about it, as the remaining stretch of ground grew scarce. What did he have to go back to? No one would believe that Stanley had broken the trophy, and even if they did, it would never excuse the car. He'd probably go to jail, just like Stan had said. Or else to some boarding school where they tried to pick his brain and make him into some obedient, dull, lifeless little drone.

If he died now, he wouldn't have to deal with all of that. He could even meet his father. His father… who had died to save his life.

Jim hit the break, sending the car spinning over the cliff, and jumped clear.

Later on, he could try and tell himself that it was just a miscalculation of distance and speed that had nearly gotten him killed, or that he'd stopped himself because he hadn't really wanted to die. But he always knew what the actual reason was.

How could he face his father in whatever afterlife was waiting for him as he was? How could he look the great and good George Samuel Kirk in the eye when he was… when he was just some punk delinquent kid? Too ungrateful to actually live his life?

How could he face his father if he took his sacrifice and shoved it?

So he'd pulled himself up, and when the robotic cop asked, he recited his name almost desperately. That moment, standing in the dust and dirt with his blood thundering in his ears, his heart racing and his body aching from being slammed into the ground, he'd never felt so alive. Before then he'd always been reckless. But after that, he flirted with danger as often and as brashly as he could.

Stanley tried to get him arrested. His mom finally took a side on the issue, and they split up. By Jim's standards it should have been a triumph.

But he couldn't think about the incident without thinking about that one moment when he'd come very, very close to sharing the corvette's destiny. It burned inside of him like a beacon of shame, and hesitation, and darkness, and 'what if'? As he grew older it seemed more and more pathetic, to think that he'd nearly killed himself over Stanley. It seemed to back up the arguments of those people who told him he was worthless, a mess, that he'd never amount to anything. Eventually he'd told Sam about it, and his brother had yelled himself blue in the face. He'd been so angry that Jim could even think about doing something like that. It marked the first and last time his brother had ever hit him.

"I don't want to hear anything like that come out of your mouth again!" Sam had shouted. So Jim had obliged. He shut up about it, kept it quiet and buried, and never mentioned that moment before the cliff's edge.

But once he started talking to Spock, he found that he couldn't leave it out.

His tone was steady and even as he recounted the entire tale, completely, honestly. He lost himself in the memory and the quiet still of his audience, recounting the entire thing from start to finish without glossing over the details, or omitting anything at all. It was the whole, naked tale – still so vivid even after going so long without a proper telling. It was like his fierce desire to forget the whole thing had only served to burn it completely in his mind.

Spock didn't say a word as he spoke, until at length Jim ran out of steam, and took a long drink from his glass. He felt simultaneously apprehensive and relieved, which was a really bizarre combination. On the one hand, it actually felt good to more or less purge the incident to someone other than Sam, whose reaction had been… less than ideal. On the other, he was now half expecting Spock to express his utter disgust and then leave.

"And that's the car and cliff incident," Jim said after he'd drained the entire contents of his glass, keeping his gaze fixed on the table now. For a moment he felt like a man who'd just laid his neck out on a chopping block. The axe was there, his hands were tied – all that remained to be seen was whether or not Spock would swing.

There was a pause.

"I was almost the same age the first time I broke another child's nose," Spock said instead, and Jim's eyes flew up to lock onto his face, surprised by the unexpected revelation. The half-Vulcan's expression was utterly devoid of contempt or condemnation. Instead he merely looked thoughtful – and something else which was hard to place. "A small group of students at the educational facility I attended would make a daily practice of contriving various insults in an effort to provoke an emotional reaction from me. Eventually, they succeeded."

Jim looked at him for almost a full minute, taking in his guileless expression and the placid calm of his engaging, telling eyes. He felt something untwist inside of him.

"Yeah?" he said. "What did they say?"

"I will not go into specifics. However, the topic of my mother was broached," Spock replied.

"And you punched the kid?"

"Technically, his nose was broken when I tackled him into one of the testing chambers," Spock clarified. "But I did also strike him several times."

Jim laughed, trying to picture a miniature Spock as a whirlwind of childish fury. "Good for you," he said. Spock gave him a wry look.

"Centuries of Vulcan philosophy, and my father, would disagree with that assessment," he replied.

"Well," said Jim, unable to keep the smile off of his face. "I won't hold it against them. I know not everyone has the potential to achieve my levels of wisdom." Then, because it seemed prudent, he injected some more whipped cream into his mouth. He was rewarded with the faintest twitching of Spock's lips.

A moment later the playfulness passed, but not in a bad way. Spock's gaze turned thoughtful, then intent, and Jim actually had to swallow pretty hard when it met his own with some unspoken knowledge dancing behind it. "I feel I must once again apologize for my earlier words," Spock admitted. "Their inaccuracy was extensive."

With a brief, slightly self-deprecating chuckle, Jim waved him off. "Hey, don't worry, Spock. I've been called worse," he assured him. "Beside, you weren't that far from the mark." If anything, the car-and-cliff story should have convinced him that his assessment was bang-on accurate. But the look his first officer gave him stilled any further dismissals from passing his lips.

"I was," Spock insisted. "You are more than intelligent enough to control your impulses – as you have demonstrated before. I would be remiss if I left you with any impression that I believed otherwise."

If he didn't know any better, Jim would describe the subsequent feeling which formed in his chest as 'flustered'. He held Spock's gaze while he spoke, but once the sincere, dry, yet oddly compelling words had ended, he found that he could only duck his head away and fight the urge to fiddle with the whipped cream can. Instead he cleared his throat and lowered it steadily onto the table.

"Well… thanks," he said, a little bit awkward, before clearing his throat. When he finally managed to look at Spock again it was to see him lower his napkin onto the table, and then turn a casual, inquisitive gaze upon him.

"I believe we are finished here for now," his first officer noted. With a nod he agreed, and nearly in unison they rose from their seats.

Jim felt like some invisible weight had been lifted off of his chest as they headed back to their lodgings, intent on retrieving their bags and – in Jim's case – sending a few messages out. Spock apparently had fewer people to talk to than Jim did.

Which was actually kind of depressing. And explained a lot.

If Jim was worried that his first officer would feel left out, however, he needn't have been. As soon as he sent his transmission home his mother answered. He was a little disappointed, as he'd been hoping that she would be out and he could just leave a message. But she wasn't. Instead she was there, on the screen, grinning cheerfully until she caught sight of his face. Then her expression dropped like a stone.

"Goddammit, Jimmy!" she cursed and scolded all at once. He reflexively flinched. "It's been a day. What did you do? Get off that shuttle and walk straight into a wall?"

He took a moment to consider that.

"…Yes?" he answered hopefully. She scowled at him.

"Nice try. And where's Spock?"

Jim blinked. Where's Spock? "Uh… he's over by the window. Why?" His gaze flickered up to where his friend was examining the view. At the mention of his name, Spock had turned to regard him and the computer console curiously.

"Get him over here," his mother said impatiently, as if this should be the most obvious thing to do and Jim was just being exasperatingly dense. "I want to see if he's in as much of a state as you are."

"He's not," he assured her, but Spock had obligingly moved within view of the screen just the same.

Like the flicking of a switch, his mother's expression immediately brightened, and she greeted Spock with chipper enthusiasm. From then on Jim found himself to be something of a third wheel to his own call home – his mother directed nearly all of her inquiries about him towards his first officer. What had he done this time, had he been behaving himself, were they having a nice trip, etc. Spock answered all of her questions honestly and efficiently, although he hedged around a few of the less pleasant details, much to Jim's approval. After a few minutes of this, Jim leaned back in his seat and made a show of examining some of the decorative objects on the desk.

His mother took one look at him and rolled her eyes.

"Are you feeling left out, Jimmy?" she asked, as Spock followed her line of sight to where he was idly batting at an artificial plant's decorative leaves.

"Oh, no, no," he assured her. "By all means, keep grilling my first officer. Pretend I'm not even here."

She gave him a disparaging look. "Well maybe if you didn't insist on telling me lies and half-truths, I would be able to trust your answers a little more often," she pointed out, but Jim could tell that she was only partially serious – she was mostly do this to get to him.

"Perhaps it would be better if I left," Spock suggested.

"No," Jim and his mother both said in unison, causing him to raise his eyebrows slightly and glance between them. "I'll go," Jim continued, rising abruptly from his seat and straightening his shirt. "You two have a nice chat."

But as he turned to walk away, he found his path blocked.

"Jim," Spock said. That was all he did. But it worked.

It was something about his tone. Not reprimanding, or beseeching. It was almost a warning, although not quite – more like a grounding. Stop being stupid, that one little word seemed to convey, yet not in an antagonizing fashion. It was more in the sense of what Jim's own thoughts would tell him when he knew he was over-reacting, or getting out of hand. The voice of reason and sanity, low and deep and tugging him out his self-centered little cloud.

And all he'd done was say his name.

Jim heaved a sigh and sat back down. His mother watched this exchange soundlessly. Then she gave Spock an appraising look, followed by a long whistle. "Why Spock, if I didn't know any better, I'd think that you have some kind of magical power over him," she noted, her voice laughing as though there was some secret joke behind her words. Spock gave her an intrigued look.

"I was not aware that humans still cultivated such beliefs," he replied.

"Oh, we don't," she assured him. "It's just a figure of speech."

Feeling vaguely exasperated again, Jim leaned his arm near the console, and wondered how long he was going to have to listen to the two of them 'chat'.

It was several minutes, as it turned out. Spock seemed to try and deflect the conversation so that his mother started addressing him rather than just referring to him in the third person, but to limited success. She seemed to have decided that he was the easier one to talk to – and Jim would admit, just then, that she probably wasn't wrong. For his own part Spock actually just seemed a little… well, actually, he looked concerned over it. His gaze kept shifting over to Jim, assessing, as if he felt like he was over-stepping some boundary. When at last his mother bid them both goodbye, Jim let out a relieved breath and dropped his head against his arms.

"Gee. That was fun," he said, more exasperated than anything else.

Spock shifted slightly where he was standing. "I apologize, Jim. It was not my intention to monopolize-"

Jim cut him off with a dismissive gesture. "Hey, no, I know," he insisted immediately. "You even started out on the other side of the room. That was all her – I'm used to it," he admitted. "She doesn't like to talk to me when I look like I've been in a fight."

"Nevertheless, my apology stands," Spock insisted. Jim shook his head and then clasped the top of Spock's forearm in a gesture of reassurance.

"If you tell me you're sorry for something one more time today, I'll have to seal your mouth shut," he threatened jokingly. The arm under his hand tensed a little, and he remembered himself, and Spock's very real bubble of personal space. Hastily, he let go. "Shit. I'm always forgetting you don't like to be touched," he chided himself.

There was a slight shift in the muscles of Spock's throat as he seemed to swallow. "Do not concern yourself over it, Jim," he insisted politely.

For a second, Jim wondered if he'd just been granted permission to occasionally breach the invisible aura of Do-Not-Make-Contact which surrounded his first officer. But then he realized that the comment likely meant that he just shouldn't feel bad for forgetting himself. It was oddly disappointing – which was a little confusing, because he didn't know why he should feel disappointed, except that maybe he liked the idea of Spock making allowances for him. Or maybe he just liked the idea of being permitted to touch Spock.

His eyes widened briefly when that particular thought shot up out of the blue. Rather than dwell on it – which could not be anything but a bad idea – Jim decided to immediately get his brain off of this topic. This very bad, weird, not good topic.

"Right!" he said instead. "Bones."

Spock raised an eyebrow at him.

"I should call Bones. I told him I would. Now's a good time," he babbled, turning promptly in his seat to set up the transmission. He held his breath as his fingers worked across the console, trying – and failing – to ignore the gentle wave of body heat emanating from his nearby first officer. Vulcans really did have a higher general temperature to them, didn't they? It was funny, because when one thought of it they ought to be a little cooler than normal, given that they came from a desert planet. But maybe their bodies had just evolved to operate with more heat instead… Bones would probably know. He should ask him. Except that Bones didn't really specialize in xenobiology, so maybe he wouldn't. He was more of a human doctor, which was alright enough in Starfleet, since most cadets were still human. Although the number of other species enlisting had been going up lately…

Jim's panicked train of thought was mercifully halted when the chief medical officer's face appeared on the screen across from him. McCoy at first seemed utterly casual. But then his gaze sharpened, drifting between Jim and the half-Vulcan who was still standing nearby.

"Ah, shit," the doctor swore with feeling. "What is it? Some kind of emergency's come up, hasn't it? Dammit, I knew I wouldn't get a full five days shore leave off of this…"

"Bones, Bones," Jim interrupted, feeling distinctly confused. "What are you talking about?"

Bones blinked at him. "What you mean, 'what am I talking about'?" he demanded. "Something's got to be up, Jim, or else why would you and Spock of all people be calling me together?"

Jim and Spock glanced at one another.

"So what is it?" he persisted. "Did that crazy-as-all-hell space dust create some kind of lethal parasite onboard the ship? Dammit, I knew I should have activated the disinfectant systems again before we left. God damn alien space-dust and its god damn contaminants, eating computers my ass. I knew it wouldn't stop there…"

"Bones. Relax," Jim instructed, cutting off his tirade and trying not to laugh at the disgruntled look on his face. "Nothing's wrong. Spock and I just decided to do a little sight-seeing together."

Dead silence greeted this assertion. Bones gave him a blank look.

"…Pull the other one, Jim. It's got bells on it," he then said.

Jim couldn't help but laugh a bit after that. "No, really," he insisted, before leaning towards the console's screen in a conspiratorial fashion. "He's actually pretty good company."

The look on his friend's face was priceless. "You… you're serious?" he demanded, gaze darting back and forth between Jim and Spock, as if they were an equation which didn't quite add up. "Jesus, Jim. Spock?"

The half-Vulcan in question took a deep breath – which would have been utterly unnoticeable if Jim hadn't been sitting so close to him. "Your eloquence is, as ever, astounding Doctor," Spock noted. McCoy narrowed his eyes at him.

"I wasn't talking to you," he said, raising a hand and jabbing a finger in his direction for emphasis. Then he turned back to Jim, examining his face a little more closely. "And why do you look like you tried to catch a wall with your face? You didn't provoke him again, did you?"

The tensing of Spock's shoulders was subtle, but still noticeable to Jim, who had immediately glanced over at him when the question escaped the doctor's lips. He frowned. "Nah, I just ended up going a few rounds with some asshole in a bar," he insisted. Then he smiled, a little bit amused. "It's funny you should mention walls, though. When I called my mother she asked if I'd walked into one." When he glanced over at Spock again he seemed to have relaxed marginally. Dark eyes briefly met his own, sharing the silent joke.

Bones just looked confused. "…Alright," he said, nodding slowly in the manner of a man who's just realized that he's in a room full of lunatics. "Say, Jim. How hard did you hit that head of yours?"

Jim rolled his eyes. "The bar fight was after the sight-seeing," he replied, cutting straight to the chase. Bones gave him a bland look.

"You sure about that?" he asked. "Because things can get a little fuzzy upstairs when you've been knocked around."

"Doctor," said Spock, breaking in. "Are you implying that an individual would be required to suffer some form of head trauma in order to willingly spend their shore leave in my presence?"

There was a long silence. Between any other three people it might have seemed awkward, but Jim found that there actually wasn't any real tension in the air. It was almost like they were participating in some kind of odd sporting event, where there was clearly a point and a goal and some kind of competition, but no malice.

"Yup. That sounds about right," Bones agreed after some careful deliberation.

Spock raised an eyebrow at him. "Your hypothesis is most illogical, in that case, given that the captain was suffering no injuries when he approached me in the shuttlebay shortly after we disembarked from space dock," he said evenly. "Unless you are claiming to have been remiss in your duties as Chief Medical Officer, given that any injury he sustained prior to that point would have occurred under your supervision?"

Bones' jaw dropped. "What?" he said, looking between the two of them. "You mean you two've spent your whole damn vacation so far with one another?"

"Indeed," Spock confirmed, before Jim could a word in edgewise. "It is our intent to spend the remainder of our shore leave together as well."

If Jim hadn't known any better, he might say that Spock was almost gloating. He leaned against the desk again, sitting back to watch as Bones sputtered and professed disbelief, and his first officer calmly, methodically, and logically goaded him, pressing all of the right buttons in a subtle effort to incur an almost volcanic emotional outburst.

Huh, Jim thought, watching the two of them bicker like little old ladies. It's like they're both trying to get as big a rise as they can out of each other.

Once again, though, he found himself a third party to his own transmission. A little bit put out, he went back to fiddling with some of the decorations on the desk. He only stopped when he realized that the conversation going on around him had halted.

Looking up, he noted that both Bones and Spock were watching him now.

"Is he sulking?" Bones asked, referring to Jim in the third person even though he was right there and now looking directly at him.

With an annoyed huff Jim leveled an accusatory finger at him. "You know, Spock's right. You really are too much like my mother," he said.

On that note, he cut off the transmission.

---

Author's Note: I've got the day off, so you all get an earlier update than usual. This one's dedicated to everybody who's reviewed, you guys are awesome! You can have all the puppies and cookies you want, so far as I'm concerned. Now, to get the ball rolling on chapter eight!