Jim and Len

The first time they'd met, Jim remembered, Len had thrown up on him. Well, not on him exactly, but close enough that Jim felt he had a right to joke about it.

"Jim, stop—I have to finish this report," Mom said, because he'd been tugging on her sleeve trying to get her to give him the games login for the library PADD. She'd clearly been exaggerating when she'd said the ride back from Atlanta wouldn't take long at all, because it was taking forever.

"But Mom, it'll just take—"

"For God's sake, you spend too much time on that thing anyways," she snapped, and he pulled away. She glanced up, across the shuttle, and took a deep breath. "Jim, why don't you go on a mission for me, ok?"

Jim made a face, because he wasn't stupid. He'd figured out that 'going on a mission' was code doing some kind of chore, like picking up rotten crabapples in the backyard or finding peanut butter in the grocery store.

"I'm not five, Mom, jeez."

"Well, you can either go on a mission or you can sit there and stew. Take your pick."

Jim huffed a sigh. There was really no reasoning with her when she got like this. "Fine."

She gestured across the shuttle. "Go introduce yourself to that boy over there."

Jim looked. The kid in question was sitting with three adults: a man strapped into a wheelchair, and an old, gray-haired man and woman. The kid's hair was brown and looked like it had been cut recently. He looked a little taller and older than Jim, though not by much, and while the old couple spoke to each other in hushed whispers and the man in the wheelchair slept, the kid's eyes were fixed at a point on the floor. Maybe, Jim thought, he was bored too.

Jim glanced back up at his mom, who had turned her eyes back to her PADD, then slipped off his seat and walked over.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Jim."

The boy didn't look up. He didn't say anything, actually. He just kept staring at that point on the floor of the shuttle like if he looked away it would explode.

Jim followed his gaze and didn't see anything interesting. "I'm Jim," he repeated, a little louder.

At this, the old woman turned around and tapped the boy on the shoulder. "Leonard, you're being awfully rude."

"You're Leonard?" Jim asked. He was getting impatient.

The boy still didn't answer. Then, after a moment, he mumbled something inaudible.

Jim frowned. "What?"

"I think I'm gonna hurl," he said.

Then he did—all over the floor.

All at once, the old woman was out of her seat, pulling tissues out of her purse and chiding, "Oh, Leonard," over and over again, and the boy was unbuckling his seatbelt and rushing past to the bathroom. Jim followed because some of the puke had gotten on his sneakers. He found the boy gripping the edges of the metal bathroom sink. He glanced up and saw Jim in the mirror.

"Don't call me Leonard," he said, immediately.

"What?"

"I said, don't call me Leonard." He had an accent, Jim realized. Something southern and drawly, which was weird because the old woman didn't sound that way at all.

"What should I call you, then? Kid-who-puked-on-my-shoes?"

"My name's Len."

"Well hi, Len-who-puked-on-my-shoes. I'm Jim." Jim paused. "Are you sick?"

For a moment Len said nothing and glared at him. But then the glare faded and he shook his head. "No. I just don't like shuttles."

"How come?"

Len didn't answer at first. Then he muttered something under his breath.

"What?"

"I don't like flying. It freaks me out."

"So you puke?"

"Yeah." Len nodded. Then he bent over the sink, looking pale.

"Are you gonna puke again?" Jim asked.

"I don't know."

Jim frowned. The equation wasn't quite adding up, the flying and the getting freaked out and the puking. But when he thought about it, he remembered that sometimes he got freaked out too, when it was just him and Frank and his mom was off-planet. Not because Frank sometimes yelled at him or smacked him around, but because when he tried to use Frank's phone to call his mom, she didn't always pick up, and he had to leave her video messages and pretend everything was ok. When that happened he went upstairs to his room, shut the door, and played spaceship. He wasn't stupid, reckless Jim Kirk from Riverside, Iowa. He was Jim Kirk, Starfleet officer, marooned on a distant, hostile world and needing to get back to his ship. The comms didn't work and his crew thought he was dead—that was why they weren't coming for him. Why he had to escape himself.

"Do you wanna play a game?" Jim asked.

"Do I look like I wanna play a game?" Len snapped. "I'm gonna be sick."

"Ok, but what if we pretend we're not on a shuttle?"

Len blinked at him in the mirror.

Jim thought for a moment. "We're not on a shuttle. We're on…a mining ship. A pirate mining ship. In the Delta Quadrant."

Len stared at him.

Another spark of inspiration. Jim shut the door to the bathroom, grinning now. "And we're prisoners of war! The pirates are at war with Starfleet. We're Starfleet and we're prisoners, so we have to escape." He glanced back at Len, then added, "And you've been poisoned."

He met Len's eyes in the mirror. There was a long pause, and for a moment Jim was afraid Len would say he was being stupid or tell him to go away. But then, slowly, he started to nod, and said, "So…I'm puking to get the poison out of my system."

That sounded right, and Jim nodded. "Yeah. Hurry up, the pirates are coming."

The shuttle lurched suddenly and Len bent his head low over the sink. A few seconds passed. Then he looked up, scowling. "Dangit, I'm doing the best I can here."

Six months later, Len's dad had died, and there had been a memorial at Len's house.

His mom had left him in the living room to find Len's grandparents, to give them a casserole she'd made herself. Even when she was at home she hardly ever cooked, but there she'd been, standing in front of the stove, carefully measuring out ingredients and checking the oven. When Jim had asked her why, she'd said that grief made you hungry, and she wanted to do something nice for Len's family.

She'd left him standing alone, in itchy clothes and a tie that was choking him that she'd made him wear, surrounded by grown-ups in dark clothes speaking in southern accents. Len was nowhere in sight, so he'd wandered upstairs, tugging at his collar and his annoying sleeves. He'd never actually been in Len's room, but at the end of the hall there was a shut door with a pair of kid's shoes abandoned outside it. Nice shoes, leather and shiny.

He knocked and got no answer, so he knocked again.

Len's voice, muffled: "Go away."

"It's me."

Len didn't respond, but through the door Jim heard the sound of something shifting on the carpet, and then the sound of a lock turning. Gingerly, he turned the doorknob and pushed, meeting resistance. He was able to get the door open just enough to squeeze through, and sure enough, Len was sitting right on the other side of it, in an itchy button-up shirt of his own, his knees tucked to his chest. He wasn't crying right then, but there were tear tracks down his face.

Jim shut the door and locked it for good measure, then sat down next to him. He wasn't sure what else to say, so he said, "My mom brought you guys a casserole."

Len drew his sleeve under his nose. "What's in it?"

"Macaroni, chicken…" Jim tried to remember, then made a face. "I think there's broccoli. Sorry."

"It's ok. I don't really wanna eat right now."

Jim nodded.

Len buried his face in his knees, and let out a long breath. "I don't wanna be here," he said. "I wanna be somewhere else."

"Like where?"

"I don't know."

"…Like on a starship?"

Len didn't look up, but he shrugged.

Jim paused. "We're…on Delta Vega. It's a Class M planet. We were…doing research experiments, but something went wrong, and something got into the base. A monster. So…we're hiding so we can regroup, and figure out how to…"

He trailed off, because Len's shoulders were shaking up and down, and he was making gulping sounds in the back of his throat.

Jim didn't speak. Hesitantly, he put his arm around Len's shoulders. Len didn't shove him away or tell him to back off, so they just sat there, Jim breathing and Len crying, and both of them saying nothing at all.

"Jim?"

Jim looked up. He was sitting on a bench in the waiting room, and Len's grandmother was looking at him, curiously.

"Are you all right there, dear?" she asked. Her voice was gentle and calm, and Jim something twist in his stomach.

Len didn't wanna go tree-climbing, but I wanted to, so we did, and then he fell and broke his arm.

"I'm ok," Jim said.

"Where are your friends?" Len's grandmother asked.

"They had to go home."

True to his word, Gregory Scott had made them call their parents the minute they'd gotten to the hospital. Hikaru's mom had shown up twenty minutes later in a towering rage. She'd yanked Hikaru out the door, snapping something about safety and that could have been you and I need to know where you are at all times, even if I'm not there, and Jim was pretty sure he wouldn't be seeing Hikaru at the abandoned lot anytime soon.

He was also pretty sure that where Frank was concerned, their little jaunt to the hospital would neatly fall under the category of "don't do anything stupid." So when Gregory Scott had led him to the public comm console in the waiting room, Jim had taken advantage of the fact that he didn't know any better and dialed his mom's signal.

He didn't get an answer, of course, and Gregory Scott was reluctant to leave. But then Len's grandparents had shown up. Len's grandmother had immediately recognized him and offered to drive him home later, before disappearing into the hall to check on Len.

The Starfleet kid—Montgomery-Scott-but-you-can-call-me-Scotty—had turned to Jim with a broad grin. "We should hang out," he'd said, adding as his brother pushed him out the door, "I hope your friend's ok!"

He was a little weird, Jim decided, but he'd gotten them to the hospital, and in the end that was what counted.

"He's all done now. Do you want to go see him?" Len's grandmother asked.

Jim nodded.

For some reason, he'd imagined Len would be asleep, so he was surprised to find him sitting up in the hospital bed, wide awake and looking at something on a PADD. Len looked up and gave him a knowing smirk.

"Well, finally."

After a beat, Jim managed a smile of his own, and sat in the chair next to the bed. "How's your arm?"

Len stretched it out, gingerly. He was wearing a dark, plastic brace that stretched from the palm of his hand up past his elbow.

"It's ok," he said. "I have to wear this for a couple weeks, but otherwise it's fine."

"Did it hurt? The bone knitter, I mean."

Len shook his head. "They waited for Gran and Gramps to get here so they could give me anesthesia. So I wasn't awake for it."

Jim remembered Len lying on the ground, his face pale, whispering the words regen unit. "I bet it would have hurt if you'd been awake, though," he said.

"Well, no," Len said dryly, "'cause then they would have just numbed it."

He was a lot less shaken-up than Jim had thought, and that more than anything was what drove the little stab of guilt into his stomach. His smile faded. "I'm really sorry," he said.

"Jim—"

"I shoulda listened to you. It was stupid and—and reckless, and—"

"Stop it."

Jim looked up. Len was scowling at him.

"I followed you," he said. "It's not your fault."

"But I was the one who—"

Len cut him off again. "Jim. Stop freaking out."

Jim stared at him. There were some fights with Len you just didn't win. "…Ok," he said, finally.

After a beat, the smirk started to pull back onto Len's face. "Besides," he said, "you're not Chief Medical Officer of this starship, so you don't have the authority to freak out."

Jim was relieved to find he still had it in him to laugh. "Oh?" he asked, "And I guess you are?"

Len paused for a moment before answering. "Yeah. That's right."

"Well, some CMO you are, getting yourself injured like that."

Len snorted. "Where are we, then?"

"We're…" Jim had to think for a minute. "…on one of the moons of…Orion. We got stranded. You were scouting for enemies, and you were dumb enough to climb up a cliff without a rope, and you fell."

"And I guess you patched me up?" Len held up his arm.

"Yeah."

Len pulled a face. "Great."

"Hey," Jim said, but he was grinning.

At that moment the door swung open, revealing Len's grandmother, saying, "Leonard, time to get ready to go."

"Oh," Len said. "Ok."

Jim didn't have to look up to know Len was looking at him. He'd suddenly become very interested in his sneakers.

Then Len's voice, directed away from him: "Grandma, can Jim stay for dinner?"

Jim's head snapped up. He glanced between Len and the door, where Len's grandmother was smiling gently. "Sure," she replied. "Hurry up now; it's not getting any earlier."

She shut the door.

Jim turned to Len. "Thanks," he said.

Len shrugged. "I hope you like meatloaf."

He could've said they were having frozen peas and overcooked broccoli, but it wouldn't have mattered. Jim would've gone anyway.

A/N: Thanks for reading!