Kirk's Habits

by Starsinger

This contains the birthday party mentioned in Two Weeks of Hell. Thank you AlbusSPotter for the prompt. Kirk's eating habits have long been the subject of speculation. McCoy learns of Jim's involvement in Tarsus IV after Jim's habits catch up with him. Don't own them.

It wasn't that Jim didn't eat, he did. McCoy watched him do it often enough to know he did it, but patterns seemed to develop from the first day at the Academy. First day after they woke up Kirk looked up and saw McCoy about to head out for breakfast, "Come on, Jim. Time for breakfast."

"Oh, yeah, breakfast," Kirk responded. He followed Bones to the mess hall and got breakfast. Jim absently led McCoy to a far corner of the room where he could watch everyone coming in and sat down. The next thing McCoy realized was that Jim took the entire meal hour to eat his breakfast, and lunch and dinner.

The next thing McCoy realized was that Jim didn't eat much. Barely enough to keep a healthy weight, and even then his instructors were glaring at him about his weight. On top of that, he was a neat freak. His side of the dorm room was immaculate. Nothing out of place unless it was something that drifted over from McCoy's side of the room, and then it tended to end up somewhere embarrassing, like the toilet. His eating habits and his cleanliness were exactly the same, clean and tidy.

One day, McCoy threw Jim a birthday party. Upon realizing people were coming over for a party, Jim started cleaning up McCoy's side of the room. People started arriving and Jim was running the vacuum cleaner and the feather duster at the same time. McCoy was attempting to pick up his mess. Naturally, everybody drifted over to Jim's side of the room. Uhura had brought a cake as well as presents.

It was at this point that McCoy became dumbfounded. Jim didn't realize that all the fuss was over him. People started handing him presents and all he did was look at them, unsure as to what to do with them. "It's your birthday, Jim. Haven't you ever had a birthday party?" McCoy asked.

"Well, no, I mean Sam used to buy me presents, but, no one else really cared about it being my birthday, I mean, it was the day my Dad died."

McCoy stared at Jim in consternation. Uhura immediately took up the cleaning of McCoy's half of the room while they sat Jim down. McCoy gave him a large black and white photograph of a lakeside at dusk. Uhura gave him a tiny crystal vase that caught and reflected the light. Cupcake paid off his bar tab. Jim even had to be shown to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. It made McCoy sad that Jim had obviously not had any of the childhood experiences that most people take for granted.

No one was really sure how, but a large man stormed the party, and it was obvious from the way Jim shrank from him that he knew the man. The man demanded money from Jim, and Jim refused. The drunk grabbed Jim by the arm and yelled at him that he needed money and Jim was going to give it to him. Not even Cupcake had ever witnessed this kind of behavior. He stepped up to the man and tapped him on the shoulder, inviting him to step outside, but not before the drunk landed a solid hit on Jim on the shoulder. Jim dropped to the floor, curling in a little ball and whimpered.

The whole scene made McCoy's blood boil. The only people he'd seen ever react in this way had been severely abused, and in McCoy's mind, this was Jim's abuser. Cupcake must have come to a similar conclusion, because he was seen hauling the man away with several friends. When they returned their knuckles were bruised and bloodied, no one said a word. McCoy checked Jim over, he didn't think it was anything worse than a bruise. "Come on, Jim, he's gone. It's all over, he's not going to hurt you again," McCoy kept saying over and over.

Jim slowly uncurled himself from the fetal ball he'd tucked himself into as Christopher Pike showed up, his face became unreadable as he dropped to a crouch in front of him. "It was Frank, Chris, he was here," Jim whimpered.

Pike looked up as Cupcake gave a short summary of what happened and what they had done about it. Pike nodded his thanks as the party continued. "How'd he get here? Why? How'd he find me?" Pike had no answers, and had Cupcake find security and throw Frank in jail. When he came back Frank had disappeared, nowhere to be found. An alert was given out, he was not allowed on Academy property, no matter what happened.

The next day Kirk told McCoy about his abusive childhood. Frank was his stepfather, "When I was ten my Mom shipped me off to her sister's. I returned about five years later and my mom wanted nothing to do with me, so I traveled the world. Got a couple of Master's Degrees, learned a few languages, and wound up back in Iowa where I got arrested a few more times."

"Tell him, Jim, he needs to know about those years at your aunt's," Pike leaned into him. "It's alright, he's not going to judge you. There are already whispers about those scars."

Kirk sighed, "You've heard about the Tarsus 9?" McCoy nodded, "I'm JT."

That hit McCoy like a ton of bricks. He knew who JT was, they had just finished discussing Tarsus IV in ethics class. "That explains your eating habits, Jim. You just got used to not eating."

Pike was rubbing soft circles on Jim's back, "It's okay, Jim, everything's fine. Frank is gone." Jim never saw Frank again, he died three weeks later in a barroom brawl. Somebody decided to beat the crap out of him. Jim never forgot the lessons learned that day. He finally realized there were people here who really and truly cared about him, and he treasured all the gifts they gave him. It was that determination that drove him to save his family from the fate both Marcus and Khan had decreed for them in the space above San Francisco.

Well, this was restarted three times before I finally got done. The picture mentioned in this story is actually sitting behind me on the wall. I just fell in love with that picture. Please R&R.