In his defense, Jim's always had a semi-good reason to hate his birthday.

Not really for the reasons someone (looking at you, Bones) might suspect, once they learn about his less-than-perfect childhood and psycho-analyze him accordingly (still looking at you, Bones). There are plenty of kids who grow up never having a birthday party; or worse, never being invited to one by classmates or friends. Jim, at least, never had an issue with the latter, and he's grateful for that.

Granted, this is due more to the fact that whatever parental figure was currently in his life literally did not care where he went after school than anything else, but at least it developed social skills in an otherwise troubled child who grew into an even more troubled teenager. Jim learned quickly how to make himself the life of a party, and it at least ensured he didn't go to bed hungry on those days.

It's not the fact that his own mother couldn't do more than paste on a fake smile and make him breakfast on the very, very odd occasion she was planetside on the date, or that Sam stopped bothering to acknowledge the day after Jim turned 5, or that his thirteenth of such birthdays was spent witnessing untold horrors of a colony leader who turned said starving colony into a real-life exercise in eugenics.

It's really not any of that. He just doesn't see any reason to celebrate his birth, in particular. He's no one special, and the world seems to agree on that for most of his adolescence and young adulthood. He's always been nothing more than a poor copy of a man everyone else remembers as a hero, and who Jim doesn't remember at all.

He's never quite understood why other people seem to make a giant production out of an event they had zero control over, anyway. He's certainly not about to throw himself a party, because even he is not that pathetic, thank you very much. His mother is the narcissist of the family, not him.

This aversion to anyone's attention being drawn to the day becomes ten times more intense, after the majority of his Academy classmates suddenly don't make it to their twenty-first. His own date of birth (and, for once, his father's date of death) goes unnoticed in the uproar that fuels a panicking Starfleet following Nero's rampage through the galaxy, and the day is more like a warning than cause for celebration.

Jim's next birthday is spent uneventfully aboard ship, because no one realizes, or at least doesn't care about it; and the next one flies by while he's unconscious in a 'Fleet medical facility, waiting to see if he'll wake up from a coma or just quietly drift away from the crew who fought so hard to bring him back. The next one is spent in working his way through a backlog of assessments and miscellanea that needs completed before the refurbished Enterprise can start out on a deep-space mission. He has far more important things to think about during the latter, and can't be bothered to wake up and think, for the former.

Five years, in deep space. It's something thirteen-year-old him (and twenty-one-year-old him) could only have ever dreamed about, much less achieved. He made so many mistakes in the last few years that should have gotten him killed (for good), or at the least, kicked out of the 'Fleet and a better captain re-installed; but somehow, some way, by some miracle, he has another chance to make a difference here, and he's not going to waste it.

He'd give anything, including his captaincy, to have had the horrors of the last couple of years just not happen to the people he now loves with a fierceness that legitimately frightens him – but he cannot change the past, all he can do is ensure the future is brighter for those left behind.

It'll have to be enough.

That this crew agrees to follow him out into the void, knowing what they do about him, is nothing short of unbelievable. He would never have chosen Khan's machinations as the catalyst to produce the tightly-knit, weird little clan they seem to be now; but he also can't find it in himself to be ungrateful for the result. For the first time, they function as a well-oiled machine, deadly and beautiful and dangerously close to becoming the family he never had and never really felt the need for, until now.

These people know more about him than his own flesh and blood ever bothered to learn (not that the bar is very high, there), and it equal parts terrifies and awes him, sometimes.

That said, they still have the ability to surprise him, and surprise him they do, more than once during that first official year in space.

A quick, twenty-four-hour stopover at Starbase Four isn't enough time for most of the crew to have shore leave, but as they have a lengthy stop scheduled in three weeks, no one seems overly annoyed about the fact. They've diverted to the starbase to restock a few raw compounds which are running low in Sickbay supplies, knowing any shortage could mean life or death in an emergency, and are taking the opportunity while docked to carry out some maintenance tasks in Engineering which Scott has been putting off until such a time as this.

Given that his senior staff will be the last shift to have leave when they do stop as scheduled next month, it's not particularly unusual for them to leave the ship for an hour, and pop into a nice restaurant on the 'base for a meal together. They try to do it once a week aboard ship, but their schedules typically don't align more than that; so it's nice to have the chance without the imminent threat of a yellow alert hanging over them.

He was never much for family dinners, growing up, but he's come to love them now.

Granted, as a white-coated server approaches the head of the table unexpectedly and drops a small cake topped with massive sugar flowers and honest-to-god burning candles in front of him, Jim revises that sentiment.

At the same time the cake hits the table, Uhura whips out an honest-to-god rhinestone-bedazzled tiara from somewhere and drops it on his head while he's distracted not setting his sleeves on fire.

Joke's on her, because he can rock a tiara, thank you very much.

However, he recognizes the gleam of mischief in her eyes, and heads that off at the pass, because it'd be way more mortifying.

"I hear one note of a song, and I will fucking stab you," he hisses.

She snorts, grinning, but doesn't embarrass him further. For now, at least.

"Make a wish and blow 'em out, Jim." Bones's smirk is evident behind his nearly-empty (third) mint julep, but his eyes are a little tense. This is probably because Jim is clearly a little taken aback by it all. A nice surprise is still a surprise.

"I have never understood the cultural importance of such an unsanitary human custom," he hears Spock observe in a tone of mildly fascinated revulsion to his left, and Jim nearly chokes on a candle as he laughs.

"I'll split a piece with him; it's chocolate anyhow and he's on duty tonight." Uhura's smile still glows despite the fact that the fireworks have been sufficiently extinguished. "Fork it over, birthday boy. And do not skimp on the icing."

Chekov's cheerful bounce in his chair is no less than adorable, as he passes the next slice down to Scotty. "What did you wish for, Keptin?"

"Uh." Jim clumsily dishes out a lopsided wedge of cake and hands it down the table, though no one seems to care that it's a messy pile of crumbs and buttercream more than anything else. "Nothing, really?"

"Oh, come on." Uhura takes a smaller second piece from him, scrapes a large frosting rose off of it onto her slice, and hands the poor scalped monstrosity to Spock, who eyes it with fastidious disdain. "Nothing?"

He shrugs, passing another piece down the table to Sulu, who salutes him with his fork before digging in. "Nope. I have everything I want. But I got my first birthday cake! I'm kind of ridiculously stoked about that." The startled silence that follows that seems to be emotionally charged, and he glances up to see his staff looking at him. "What?"

"Nothing, Jim." Bones sends a warning look down the table, and them makes grabby hands in Jim's direction. "Now gimme. Corner piece."

Spock surveys the pile of crumbling dessert and unnatural, almost violently blue icing with a critical eye. "Had we been aware of the inaugural significance, I believe we could have found a more appealing option."

"Aye. Even from the replicators aboard ship."

"Or one of the bio-labs."

"You two put basically no work into this shindig, you get no opinions," Bones says pointedly around a forkful of cake. He then grimaces, and reaches for his water glass. "But they're right, Jim, this is pretty bad. Sorry."

"Do I look like I'm complaining? This is awesome." He shoves a forkful of frosting into his mouth, and at the distinctly artificial taste makes a face. "Shit, my teeth are gonna be blue, aren't they. I have a call with the station commodore in an hour."

Spock sets his fork down with a longsuffering sigh. "I am perfectly capable of handling a cargo manifest reconciliation, Captain. Consider it my acknowledgment of the occasion."

Jim points a fork down the table. "Best birthday gift ever. The rest of you, take notes."


And weirdly enough, they apparently do just that.

Maybe wishes do come true.