A/N: Thank you again to everyone who has reviewed! And if you read and enjoy, please do leave a review. Comments encourage me to keep writing even when I get discouraged by this epic project.

I've already written most of the next chapter and it is long. As in, it's already 14,000 words (for comparison, this chapter is about 7,000 words and an average Home Also chapter is 5,000 words). It's also going to be the last chapter in Part Two. Part Three will be the final part of Home Also, and it's still in the planning stages, so if you have anything you'd like to see in the last part of this fic—a minor story line that still seems to need resolution, a character you'd like to see again or more of, etc.—let me know! I make no promises but I do want the conclusion of this story to be as satisfying as possible to everyone who's stuck with it so long.

As before, you can find more of my work on AO3 under the name "elle_stone." I am also continuing to repost Home Also to that site, currently up through Chapter 37. Sometimes I post (spoilery!) Home Also related stuff to my tumblr, kinetic-elaboration, (/tagged/home-also-i-cannot-go).

This chapter, and even more so the next, features me making up a bunch of stuff about Vulcan abilities. Nothing that contradicts canon, just… my own take on it.

x

When Spock was pregnant, he imagined any number of alternate lives. They felt like shameful, secret fantasies, and caused him so much guilt that he often indulged in them only late at night, waiting up in the dark for sleep to come. He imagined that the human boy had asked him to stay. In the hidden corners of his deep-night thoughts, he pictured himself saying yes, and when they found out Spock was pregnant, the boy would grin a ridiculous human grin, and Spock would find himself hoping their child would be able to smile just like that. This story he told himself was so unrealistic that it made him pull the blankets up almost completely over his head, as if hiding from some invisible judging gaze, but he didn't stop. He felt his real child moving inside him, a first few tentative kicks, and he pictured the human boy asking where do you feel it? and pressing his hand next to Spock's, curious to feel it too.

This was not the only fantasy. He imagined meeting the human boy again on Vulcan, or on Earth, imagined introducing him to a daughter or a son, imagined a welcome both warm and sincere, imagined he'd know what to do in the face of foreign, effusive emotion. Sometimes he pretended that they'd never ran into each on Earth but met for the first time in some completely different way, older perhaps, and able to form a relationship in the proper way. His parents and his peers would easily approve of them. (In his night world, his peers simply accepted the idea of a Vulcan bonding with a human man, and he did not care, he did not care in the slightest that their acceptance was only a thing of fantasy. He did not care at all that he wanted it enough to build it into his dreams.)

Sometimes he couldn't sleep, and he played the illusion out and out, an intricate alternate life for himself and his child and the boy he couldn't get out of his head. Years and years he imagined for them. Sometimes he spun the fantasy on Vulcan, sometimes, and less confidently, on Earth, filling in fanciful details that seemed acceptable, even true, in the late night and the total dark of his room. But he never imagined a life in space. He never imagined Starfleet or the Enterprise or Captain James T. Kirk.

And he did not predict this moment.

He sees those old fantasies—those secret and embarrassing thoughts whose existence he could never admit to a soul—for what they are now. They were no more than stories, comforting bed time fictions, and the once subtle shine of fantasy on them is glaring now. Naïve and young, he'd found comfort in imagining grand gestures, big reunions, desperate pleas: Spock, stay.

But what is so truly fascinating about his life now is the existence of quiet, soft, utterly mundane moments, like this one. His son on a stepstool, trying to reach the highest shelf. Jim Kirk, leaning over the old, paper-bound cookbook splayed open on the kitchen countertop, his elbow on the counter and his hand over his mouth, thinking. He's crossed one ankle over the other. A variety of kitchen instruments, bowls, and miscellaneous ingredients are scattered around the room, in haphazard order. Sevin was born exactly eight years ago today, and for the first time, the human boy is with them to celebrate.

The very concept of a birthday is already a strongly human idea to Spock, but it has never felt more of an Earth tradition than it does this year. Hardly surprising: they've never marked the occasion in such an acutely traditional Earth fashion before. Kirk showed up after lunch with a large blue balloon and these old books, a shopping bag full of random ingredients over one arm, and now he and Sevin are quite intent on this process of making a cake. Spock's lived on Earth long enough to know why a cake, but still—it's quite curious.

"Spock, do you know you have nothing in this apartment?" Kirk asks him suddenly, and Spock's attention snaps back to him. He's kneeling now, opening up one of the lower cupboards that Spock has never used and peering in, as if he might find something useful hidden in the back, against the wall.

"I have many objects in this apartment," he corrects stiffly. He knows, of course, what Kirk means. But he'd rather play the part of the alien confused by Earth expressions, because it's easier, because it's less aggressive, than show he's annoyed—slightly, irrationally—at the question. Kirk's obvious good intentions aside, he's just a little too used to being told he is lacking. "What specifically are you looking for?"

"Something to put the cake in." If he's noticed Spock's tone, he ignores it. "You don't have anything in the way of pots or pans. Do you ever cook?"

"On occasion," he answers, at the same time as Sevin answers, "Not really," and Spock just knows that when Kirk reappears from the cupboard, he'll be grinning. And he is.

"It's okay, I'm not much of a cook, either," he admits. "Good thing we'll have food synthesizers on the Enterprise, huh?"

"Yes, quite fortunate," Spock agrees, as he walks over to a cupboard above the stove, where he keeps the few cooking supplies he does own, and fishes out a suitable cake-sized container. It's true he doesn't exactly have the best-stocked kitchen in San Francisco, but in his defense, it's not like he's ever had much time for cooking, and even less for baking. And it would be foolish to invest in kitchen supplies now, only a few weeks before the departure of the Enterprise. Everything he owns is about to be put into storage. A new tenant is already planning to move in.

He hands the dish over, and Kirk smiles and says, "Thanks," seems to be on the verge of saying something more, then doesn't. This is also quite curious.

"Dad, do we have everything?" Sevin asks. He's interrupting nothing, and yet it feels like he is interrupting something, some small but growing moment, nonetheless.

"Um—" Kirk take a quick glance at the assembled ingredients and utensils, then nods, though he hardly looks sure. "Probably." This is not exactly the voice of a confident Captain, but then his duties on the Enterprise will probably not involve baking cakes. "Here," he says, and helps Sevin down to the ground again, slides the cookbook over so they can double check their list together. Spock hardly feels needed here, which is acceptable: he'd rather be an observer, anyway. He sits down at the far side of the kitchen table to watch them.

He's never had a chance like this before, really, and it's a strange one: a chance to see Kirk in charge as a parent. He knows that Kirk has spent plenty of time around Sevin on his own, of course. And they've spent time together as a family, or their confusing version of it. But when he's around he usually, by habit, or because of experience, dominates their dynamic in ways he has not even noticed until now, in subtle ways he's half-sure Kirk himself has never given a second thought. Perhaps it is sensible that he does. It is certainly forgivable: he's been Sevin's sole parent the boy's whole life. He's never let anyone else come even as close as Kirk has to his child. No one else has had that right, nor earned it. But when their ship takes off and their mission begins they will all be living, not quite together, but in closer proximity than ever before and it is inevitable that their routines and habits will change. There will be more days like this, he expects. And Kirk will grow into his own as a father just as he will grow into his own as a captain and Spock will be there to see it happen, and he's glad for it.

It's odd, not what he expected, but he feels no jealousy. He knows, quietly, privately, in the silent space in himself where he faces no judgment and can think anything with the purest and clearest honesty, that if it were anyone else here with his son, he would be fuming. If Kirk were just a close friend, if he were a boyfriend, a lover, a husband, Spock would never allow him here. Or at the very least, grudgingly. Sevin's birthday has been, ever since they moved to San Francisco, a day for the two of them alone. Has he made an exception because Kirk is Sevin's biological father? Because he feels obligated, because it would be wrong to separate Sevin from one of his parents on this day? That would be logical. But even if so that explains only Kirk's presence, not Spock's strange feeling of calm.

Kirk is helping Sevin pour sugar into a measuring cup. He's doing most of the work but letting Sevin think he's in charge, and he seems so at ease—how long has it been this way?

Maybe Spock finds Kirk's presence easy to accept because he so long held onto a fantasy of the human boy, not this fantasy exactly, true, but a romantic image nevertheless of forming a family together. Seeing that the reality is both more mundane and more vibrant and true than any imaginary world he ever created for himself, it becomes easy to form a new fantasy and then to say that he is living it.

Sevin asks Kirk if he's ever baked a cake before, and Kirk admits that he has not; Sevin stares at him with wide eyes, like the thought of a grown-up not being an expert in all things has never occurred to him, and almost pours too much sugar into the container in his distraction. Kirk catches him at the last moment. "I never claimed to be an expert," he insists. "We're going to figure this out together, right?"

Is this all he wanted? Do such simple things really make him content? Is it enough to know that Sevin's dad is in their lives and that Sevin can spend an afternoon with him and be happy?

Is it a sign of how far he's come than he even dares to think of these blessings as small?

Sometimes he still thinks of Kirk as the human boy, a distant and nameless fantasy figure, an outline he could fill with every alternate life, every far-away future, that ever sprang into his mind. Every time he let himself think everything would be easier if, he remembered the human boy. Every time he let himself think everything will be better when, he brought up those images again, and told himself he was illogical, even foolish, and promised himself he'd never travel this path with his thoughts again. No real life person could ever be everything the human boy was to him, more symbol than even memory as the years went by, a well-worn talisman, a comfort object.

He likes to think of Kirk in those terms again just to bring the past and the present together in his mind—otherwise a surprisingly difficult mental puzzle. He likes to remind himself that this person—his colleague, co-parent, perhaps his friend—is the same as the young man he met in Iowa almost nine years ago. Those memories are real. Everything he remembers sharing with the human boy, he shared with Kirk. It truly happened.

Quite a ridiculous thought: he has Sevin, he knows it was real. He can hardly forget.

He wonders if Kirk ever has thoughts like these; if that night seems distant to him, like another life, or close; if it's muffled by all the years and all the people in between or just as sharp as if it had happened only a few day ago.

Sevin is carefully combining ingredients, while Kirk stands just behind him, hovering, anticipating disaster. Spock is not worried.

"Are you sure you've never made a cake before?" Sevin asks, his gentle but curious question interrupting a long but companionable silence. "Not even for your birthday?"

It's good to know, Spock thinks, that he's not the only one with a thought stuck on repeat in his mind.

"Ah—no," Kirk answers. For the first time, there's something like hesitance, awkwardness, in his manner. "I never celebrated my birthday much growing up, actually." Kirk tries to keep his voice light, as if the words were trivial, but he has neither of them fooled. Sevin tilts his head and devotes all of his attention to studying the expression on his dad's face. Spock just waits, wary of this new turn. Kirk clearly knows he's said just the tiniest bit too much and backtracks quickly. "But hey, that doesn't matter, right? I know how to read directions and I think between the two of us we can figure this thing out."

His mistake is in assuming Sevin cares at all for the cake anymore. He has the one-track mind of a child but the intensity of a young Vulcan and now that he's on to something new, he won't give it up easily. Not for a little while, at least. He knows well enough that not everyone celebrates birthdays, that the tradition was, in fact, all but unknown on Vulcan, but the idea of a human, spending his childhood on Earth, avoiding that particular day even as a child is a strange new concept for him. "Why not, though? You grew up here, didn't you?"

"Well, not quite here. Iowa, actually—that's almost two thousand miles—"

"But on Earth?"

Spock would almost smile, if he were more human, at the way Kirk's walked himself right into a corner. But he doesn't, and not just because such an expression would be improper. He doesn't want Sevin to learn this particular truth at this particular moment, any more than Kirk himself does.

A long beat passes, Sevin looking up at his dad and Kirk looking anywhere but at Sevin. Then he sighs, a capitulation, leans back against the countertop, crosses his arms, and says, "Yes. But… you remember I told you once that I never got to know my dad? Because he died when I was young?"

"Yeah," Sevin answers slowly. He's thinking through the story as he imagines it will go, before it's told to him, and his gaze as he does is intense and unwavering. Spock can tell Kirk is unnerved by it. He's hesitant, uncertain of the right words, but still he goes on.

"He died on the day I was born, specifically. So my birthday… it was always about remembering him. Even when I was a kid." He shrugs, but this gesture will not be enough to shrug off the words, or this moment. Both Spock and Sevin are watching him closely, and though his gaze is on the floor, he must know it.

Spock knows the story, of course. Everyone at the Academy does—everyone in the Federation does, he would assume. But they've never spoken of it. Not in any of their conversations, not even their most personal, at any point in the year they have spent in each other's company. It's strange, how Spock has only noticed this oversight now. To him, George Kirk is still little more than a name in the history books, hardly a flesh and blood man and not at all a father who never got to know his son. What he may be to that son—perhaps a mystery, a myth, or just a ghost—Spock cannot begin to guess.

For a long time, Sevin says nothing in reply. His expression is thoughtful, more adult than he knows, but otherwise unreadable. Then quite without warning, he wraps his arms around Kirk's middle without any apparent intention of letting go. With his sensitive ears, Spock hears him murmur, "I'm sorry," and at those words, like a cue, Kirk wraps his arms around his son in return. The moment seems so private, so personal, that Spock not only wishes he were somewhere else, but almost feels as if he were.

Still, he notices when Sevin pulls away just a little, and gently, purposefully, presses his fingers to the bare skin on the inside of Kirk's wrist, right against his pulse point. It takes Spock a moment to recognize what he's doing, and he's not quite sure what clues him in, at last: the expression on his son's face, one of concentration and purpose, or on Kirk's, one of confusion and dawning peace. "Sevin," he interrupts sharply, and both of them startle, and turn to stare at him. Sevin looks contrite, Kirk merely confused. Immediately, Sevin drops his hand back down to his side. "You know you cannot—"

"I know, I'm sorry." His cheeks have flushed pink, and he turns back to the half-assembled cake ingredients on the counter, his back to Spock. "Sorry, Father."

"It's—" Kirk starts to interject, then cuts himself off, perhaps aware that it is not his place to say, as Spock is sure he was intending to, that it is all right. He is not a Vulcan, and does not know about their people's rules. And Spock is in no mood at all to explain.

Sevin has never tried to send feelings or thoughts through touch telepathy before, not since he grew old enough to understand and control the ability. It was surprise, more even than shock, that made Spock speak so suddenly and sharply. He is not angry. He understands well the instinct Sevin had and gave in to, what some would call the human instinct to share but which Spock thinks of rather as the Vulcan instinct, buried and suppressed out of necessity, to share, to comfort in this uniquely Vulcan way. He would explain all of this if he could. Later, in private, he will. For now, it is Kirk who breaks the silence, bringing Sevin's attention back to the celebration at hand. This time, he lets the prior moment drop easily, purposefully, and they are distracted again.

Later, as Kirk sets the temperature on Spock's somewhat unreliable old oven, Sevin says brightly, "But you'll celebrate your birthday on the ship, won't you, Dad? Next year? You have to."

"Mmm, I don't know," Kirk answers, pretending he is not really thinking, though Spock highly suspects that he is. "How do you think I should celebrate?"

"With a big party and a cake," Sevin says, as if this were completely obvious. "A big party and a big cake to celebrate turning…how old are you?"

"Twenty-six." He might as well be saying 'eighty-six.' The number seems to surprise him, and in truth it sounds strange to Spock's ears too: a reminder as sharp as Sevin's birthday itself that time has passed for them all. "Twenty-seven next birthday."

"Old," Sevin declares, which would be funny, in a slightly different circumstance.

"Hardly," Spock tells him. "Do not be rude, Sevin."

"I'm not! I didn't mean it in a bad way." His hands free now, he's started to move restlessly around the kitchen; Kirk steers him away from the stove unobtrusively, hardly seeming to affect his course at all. "I'll be that age someday. Doing something really cool."

"No doubt you will," Kirk murmurs. Sevin doesn't seem to hear him.

"So are you going to have that party?"

Kirk just smiles this time. "If my First Officer approves."

Spock quirks up his eyebrows, and, just a little, the corner of his mouth, for the benefit of the two pairs of eyes watching him. "I hardly believe I could say no, Captain."

x

While the cake is in the oven, Kirk and Sevin play chess, and Spock slips into a state of semi-meditation on the floor by the sofa. True meditation, of course, is for private, but at least he has achieved a state of pleasant thoughtfulness and calm.

When Sevin asked Kirk if they could play a game while they waited, Kirk had seemed hesitant—it was only a game for two, after all—and it had been Spock who insisted that he was fine, and they need not worry about him. And that was the truth. Their intermittent conversation, the unnamable sense he has of them, his simple awareness of their presence in the room, forms enough of a connection. He feels included. And if his presence is a background one, that is acceptable—he and Sevin spent the morning together, just the two of them, after all.

This year for his birthday, Sevin had insisted, somewhat to Spock's surprise, that his father show him everything he could of Starfleet. They visited the Academy campus, the classrooms, the offices, the research facilities, the dorms—Sevin had, of course, no memory of the months they lived in one themselves. They stopped by the docking bay and walked through the cavernous hangars, and Sevin had asked question after question about Spock's experiences, about their future life in space, and again and again about the Enterprise. He'd wanted to see the ship, too, but this close to launch, such a visit was impossible. Soon, Spock had promised instead. Soon. Before you know it.

As an officer, he has been able to visit the ship a few times himself, always on official business, and so his own curiosity is not as acute as Sevin's. Still, Spock understands his sharp anticipation. He understands the frustration of waiting. He's more than ready, too, for the long-awaited takeoff to occur.

The light ding of a bell startles him, and his eyelids shoot open, the inside lids on the slightest, still disconcerting, delay. For a moment, he has no idea what the noise could mean. Then—"It's done!" Sevin announces, and starts to stand.

Kirk waves him back. "I'll get it," he offers, but Spock gestures him back in turn. A glance at the board shows him they are quite in the middle of things.

"Let me," he says, and rises to his feet.

It's been some time since he's used the oven, he would be embarrassed to admit, and it takes him a minute or two find the oven mitts hidden in the back of one of the drawers. He turns the oven off, opens the door, and carefully reaches in to draw out Kirk and Sevin's cake. A simple operation. And yet, as even simple operations occasionally do, it goes awry—the oven mitt slips, his hand comes in contact with the hot metal side of the pan, and he all but drops the whole thing. He lets it clatter from his hands onto the stovetop, unthinking, just acting on the instinct to get it away, and lets out a fast string of Vulcan curses, mostly under his breath.

It's not his proudest moment.

The pain has largely subsided, the slight throb of it easily brought under his control, and only an acute and less simply suppressed embarrassment left, when he turns and sees Kirk and Sevin standing in the doorway.

"Father, are you okay?" Sevin asks, skirting around the kitchen table to get to him. Kirk follows the same path, but slower, and echoes the same sentiment: "Are you all right?"

All Spock can think is that he hopes Sevin didn't hear too much of what he was saying. Kirk wouldn't have understood a word of it, but those weren't phrases he wants added to his son's vocabulary.

"Yes," he answers, trying to convey by his tone just how misplaced their concern truly is. He keeps his hands behind his back, in part because the posture is a familiar and comfortable one, and in part to hide the burn, slight though it is, from view. "I am uninjured."

Kirk and Sevin continue to stare at him as if he had told them quite the opposite, and in a way, by saying too much, he supposes that he has. Sevin's face shows a wide-eyed concern, while Kirk's expression is one of persistent skepticism.

"Then what was that crashing sound?" he asks.

"And why did you say all those bad words?" Sevin adds.

Spock flinches with embarrassment, and carefully does not allow himself to even glance in Kirk's direction; it is worrisome enough that Sevin understood what he said, without also seeing Kirk's reaction to his slip. Instead, he just adjusts his shoulders back and admits, "I accidentally touched the side of the pan when I took it from the oven. It was nothing, only a bit of clumsiness. I did not mean to alarm you." He means 'either of you' but only flicks his eyes to Kirk at the very last moment.

But there is nothing mocking in his expression, only, still, that same concern. He takes a few steps closer and asks, again, "Are you sure?"

"Yes. My exclamation was one of surprise. That is all." He turns to Sevin, intending to offer him additional assurance, when his son suggests, brightly and with an earnest expression that is hard to deny:

"Dad should kiss it better!"

The idea is such a strange one, and so suddenly presented, that for a moment, Spock can only stare. "And how," he manages finally, "did you come up with a cure such as that?"

"I heard about it in school," Sevin answers brightly. "It makes it hurt less." Then, a bit more quietly, he adds, "Maybe it will help, Father."

"I do not know—"

"Come on, Spock. It's an old Earth remedy."

He had expected Kirk to want to avoid this particular awkward moment just as much as he does himself, but when he glances back to the captain, he finds his expression is that peculiar combination of open and unreadable that, among all of the aliens with whom Spock has had contact, only humans have seemed able to master. He's half-holding out his hand, wanting, but unwilling yet, to touch. Something about him, something unusually and unexpectedly soft, makes any possible answer stick in Spock's throat.

The uncertain half-smile on Kirk's face just makes the nervous twist in Spock's stomach worse. Sevin is glancing between them now, expectant, and the subtle throbbing of the burn against the side of his index finger, light though it is, is frustratingly difficult to ignore.

"An Earth remedy the logic of which escapes me," he answers, as he takes his hands from behind his back. He gives Kirk a little nod, the permission he's been waiting for, and then Kirk is holding his hand carefully in his own. Spock's breath catches, despite himself, and he forgets that their son is watching them.

Kirk searches out the burn easily, a slight thing, a small bump of angry green between Spock's first and second knuckles. He traces it gently with his fingertip. On Vulcan, this would be an intimate touch, a decidedly private and personal touch. A touch that, in its softness, would be inappropriate from even a close friend.

On Earth, it carries no such significance. That is what he must remind himself, even as Kirk slowly lifts his hand and presses a soft kiss against the burn. The kiss seems to last, Spock thinks, longer than it should. But then, he is not familiar with the details of this strange tradition.

"Do you feel better?" Sevin asks, and his voice is a sharp interruption to a moment Spock wishes he could say had never been building at all. Kirk takes a long stride back, his own manner awkward and uncertain. "Did it help?"

It did not. The touch, the kiss, brought up only a rush of old, best-buried memories, of touches more illicit and more intimate still, of feigned closeness that felt so achingly genuine, it echoed in him, taunted him, for years. It was not the contact of skin against skin, hands, lips, that caused this uncomfortable beating of a heartbeat in his temples, but the sense of deep caring and concern that passed between them: no telepathic wave of it, but clear in the minutiae of the gesture, telegraphed in the most human of ways.

But he cannot, does not dare to, put this realization into words, so he answers only, "Yes. It did. Thank you, for the suggestion, Sevin. And thank you, Captain Kirk."

x

When Uhura sends him a message asking to meet, Jim assumes, reasonably enough, that she wants to talk about the mission. He suggests they meet in his office. She tells him she'd rather not, and that's when he understands—this is personal. He shows up early to the small, crowded café a few blocks from the Academy campus where she suggested they talk, and he buys himself a large coffee, because he already knows that he'll need it.

The Enterprise takes off in three weeks, two days, and fourteen hours. He tells Bones he's not really counting the hours, but he is—not even on purpose; the count just keeps coming to him. They'll have to be out of their apartment at the end of next week, which is somewhat inconvenient, and in the interim, as they wait out the final days before flight, Bones will be staying with Scotty and Jim will be crashing on Sulu's couch. Sulu had agreed cheerfully enough ("I assume this means I'll be getting all of the best bridge shifts this year?"), then asked a question that Jim's pretty sure, in hindsight, was a handy precursor to the conversation he's about to have now, and to many future conversations, too: "But—why aren't you staying with Spock?"

If only there were an easy answer to that one.

From where he's sitting, he can see the door open, a bright shaft of sun stream in, and with it a group of harried Academy students. Uhura, in civilian clothes, is almost lost in the back of the crowd of them. But he sees her, catches her eyes, and waves.

She orders something caffeinated and iced and faintly alien looking, then sits down across from him.

He opens with: "Is this a conversation that should worry me?" capped off with his best charming smile, because charm is his go-to, so hard-wired he might call it instinct, and he's not sure what else to do.

"No." But she looks serious, even nervous, and when she smiles it's just for a moment, just to add, "Maybe a little. We need to talk about Spock."

That's pretty much what he expected to hear, and yet for a few seconds he has no idea what to say. The truth is that Spock has been on his mind a lot recently. But even if he could distill all of those jumbled, rotating, tangled thoughts into something intelligible, namable, he's not sure he would.

"What about him?"

Uhura opens her mouth, like she has a whole reply already planned, then closes it again. Not so simple for her either, perhaps. She sighs, leans the slightest bit forward, and says, "Look. I don't know what's going on with you two—"

"Nothing."

"But I know it's something." She gives him a hard stare, like daring him to argue. He doesn't. "And I'm not the only one."

Jim just shrugs and leans back in his chair, arm slung back over the top rung. "We've been the favorite topic of the Academy rumor mill for a year now, and you know most of that gossip isn't true. And once the Enterprise takes off and we get out there, none of us will care anymore about what a bunch of bored Starfleet people in San Francisco are saying to amuse themselves."

"I'm not talking about gossip and rumors. I'm talking about what I've seen, what everyone on the bridge crew has seen, what Sevin's probably seen—"

"Hey." His son's name makes him sit up straight again, a deep frown furrowing between his eyes. "We're careful around him. He's just a kid, he probably wants his parents together, but we've made it clear that we're just friends."

Uhura looks, now, if not apologetic, at least sympathetic, and her voice is softer when she answers, "I'm not saying either of you is doing anything wrong. I'm just saying it's obvious, in the way you look at each other and talk to each other and talk about each other—you're not just friends." She gives a little nod, almost imperceptible, as if she were convincing herself, and he realizes just how hard this was for her to say, and feels some sympathy.

Still not as much sympathy as confusion and curiosity, though. "Have you talked to Spock about this?"

"No. And I'm not going to." She pushes her shoulders back slightly. The words are a promise but the tone is a dare. "Not until he's ready."

Jim would really like to know what that means—ready to talk? ready to hear these stark supposed truth she's so eager to deal out to him?—but he doesn't ask. "So why are you talking about this with me? Not that there's anything to talk about."

"Because if something does happen between you two, if you're even thinking about, it there's a couple of things I want you to know."

Uhura looks on the verge of saying something more, of starting some speech even, but he cuts her off. This conversation is starting to veer into unsettling territory: there's a this-can't-be-happening buoy of denial floating in his stomach, a here-comes-bad-news feeling, an imminent-break-up feeling, almost. He's not in control, is what it is.

"I'm serious. I'm not even thinking about something happening." This is the truth. He's thought about Spock, yes. All the time. How great he is at raising Sevin. How efficient and expert he is at his job. How brave he is. His odd sense of humor. His stubborn insistence when he thinks he's right. His intellectual curiosity. His unexpected quirks and habits. His moments of vulnerability.

How much of a mystery he still is.

How Jim was wrong to judge him as harshly as he did last summer, to see an all-too-human mistake as a deliberate breach of trust.

But he doesn't think of Spock in a romantic way. He doesn't think of anyone that way. He's not trying to fill some sort of emptiness anymore, not looking to romance or sex or women or men as a stop-gap against a void. He has his work and his son and his crew and his friends, and he's fine, he is—except that Uhura is looking at him like she can read each and ever thought in his head and she doesn't believe a single one.

All she says out loud is, "Let me say what I came here to say." She's not begging, just polite and calm. "Please. Just in case it should become relevant to you."

Jim considers a moment, then inclines his head and tells her to go on. It seems like the sort of thing a good Captain would do.

She takes a deep breath and starts, "Spock doesn't let people in easily. I think he wants to, but the way he grew up—I don't mean being Vulcan, I mean being half-human, and then having Sevin so young—it's just safer for him to make sure he stays independent. But he has a soft spot for you. I think he'd take big risks for you."

Is this supposed to be encouragement? He almost hopes it's not.

"But if he takes that risk," she continues, "and it doesn't work out, it will be devastating to him—emotionally, professionally. And it could be even worse for Sevin." She looks down at her hands for a moment, clears her throat. Maybe trying to decide if she should go on. "Spock is my closest friend. And Sevin is the sweetest, most good-hearted kid I've ever met. And I would hate to see either of them get hurt, even a little bit, by a risk that doesn't pan out."

At that, she flashes her gaze up to him again, and he finds himself taken aback by how sharp it is. "Is that a threat, Lieutenant Uhura?"

"No." Her answer is quick, bright—too much so, and he doesn't believe it. "I just wanted to remind you of the stakes involved here. Spock and Sevin aren't just in your life for the next five years, though that's long enough. They're in it for the rest of your life. They could both be really hurt here. And neither of them deserves that."

It's hard to know what to say to that. One instinct wants to be defensive: he knows all of that and that's why nothing is going to happen, that's why he's kept Spock at a careful emotional distance for months now, because he's not stupid, and he's not a masochist, and he's not cruel, either. But another part of him, smaller but strong enough to keep those other words down, knows that Uhura's only saying what he needed to hear. He's been known to act without thinking. He's been known to avoid uncomfortable truths.

So what he says instead is, "I know." His voice is quiet and low and there's an undercurrent of something else, approaching a plea, underneath. "Believe me, I know. You're talking about the two most important people in the universe to me. Do you really think I'd let myself do anything that could hurt them?"

For a moment, Uhura just stares at him, as if he'd said something really out there or strange, and he can't fathom it. Then he replays his own words to himself and he hears it, too. For him, it is no great revelation. He's known this, on some level, for a long time. Perhaps for an impossibly long time.

But he knows what it sounds like. A confession. A harbinger of trouble to come.

He sits back, slumping just a little—something he almost never does anymore—and crosses his arms against his chest. "Sevin is my son. Of course there's no one more important to me than him."

"And Spock?" The words are light, but a challenge. Because obviously, that was the part that actually surprised her, that needs explaining.

"Sevin's father. My First Office. My friend." He shrugs, but doesn't feel it. "Of course he means a lot to me. And of course I'm not—I'm not going to do anything that could hurt him, either."

"That's all I'm asking," she answers, but if her words imply they've come to an agreement, conflict resolved, negotiation completed—she won't press any further and he won't look any deeper and it will all be fine—there's still a nagging feeling him that says this is, at best, a pause. It's a persistent, tickling feeling that he's at the beginning of something, not the end of anything.

And that feeling doesn't go away, not that evening, or the next day, or the next.

Last summer, almost a year ago now, he knew what his feelings for Spock were. He wasn't in love with him, that would be saying too much, but he liked him, he was attracted to him, he was willing to see where those feelings went. Finding out that Sevin was his—finding out that, as his feelings grew, as he opened himself up more than he had to anyone since he left Iowa, at least, Spock was hiding something so central and so important from him—cut off all of that. It brought up too much shit. Too many insecurities, too many bad memories and bad associations, too much fear, and he masked it all in anger, and sent it all away. Pushed it all onto Spock.

So many months later, and he still doesn't know how to get past that. He doesn't know how to trust that they can do this right, this time, and he doesn't know how to swallow down his fear at the stakes involved (not just their feelings or even their careers, but their kid) because high stakes have never given him pause before.

He's locking up his storage unit on the last day of May—an early summer humid scorcher that has him longing for his climate controlled ship—when the real problem occurs to him at last. He sees his blind spot. He uncovers the assumption that has defined every circular, hurried thought he's had the last three days.

None of this would matter if he only saw Spock as his friend. Or his co-parent or his colleague or his First. The spaces Spock occupies in his life can't be summarized in a few words. There aren't any boxes he can check off and say: that's what he means to me, no matter how he made it sound to Uhura. That's too simple. Too incomplete. He and Spock moved beyond that long ago.

He swipes the back of his hand across his forehead, wipes away a layer of sweat, then leans back against the hot metal of the storage room door. The sun is bright and the sky a clear, sharp blue. Two weeks before takeoff is not the time to be finding complications. He's putting away his old life. He's starting again: the next five years in command of a ship, finding the outer edges of space. The frontier.

He knows this, and he knows just as well that it's too late. Doesn't matter. Whatever those feelings are, they can't be put back in their box. Whatever Spock is to him now, he's not going to become anything less.

Jim knows he's not ready, yet, to put a name to this, and maybe in the end it won't matter, because he'll never test the words, because Spock won't want to hear them, because Spock will have nothing to say in return. But he feels it. He knows it's there. Not love, not fate. Not yet. But when he stares up at the sky, he wonders if the resolution is out there, somewhere out there, hiding with the rest of the unknown. He wonders if he'll be lucky enough to understand it all someday, let it resolve into something clear and bright and true, a simple feeling all their own, at last.

x

In chapter fifty-two, it's time to leave Earth behind.