Two-shot, written for Snarky Banter and Sappy Ending on my McSpirk Bingo Card (hop over to find me on tumblr to see the visuals). Written as an ambiguous gen (I believe the cool kids are calling it a QPR these days?), but you're free to read as you see fit.
So here is the snarky banter, and the sappy ending will follow in part two.
"I'm sorry, what did you just ask me?"
"I need you to make up something that'll get me out of this, Bones!"
"Okay, so I did hear you. I just don't understand you." Amusement, and just a little bit of evil glee, is very clear in the tone. "You're acting like a cadet who needs an escape plan from a bad date." A brief pause. "It's not a date, is it? Because if it is, y'all hid that well, last I saw you."
"No, it is not."
The headache which had been lurking in the periphery intensifies to a razor's edge as a duo of shrieking children run past on the walkway, weaving in and out of tolerant passers-by and chasing a runaway kite.
"I'm just bein' nosy, Jim. Relax."
"I would like to, but someone has been dragging me all over the city in the heat of summer for literal hours," he hisses, glancing around the column to make sure Spock's nowhere in the vicinity of Vulcan hearing range. Fortunately, he's still waiting in line at the small beverage stand across the park walkway, and apparently oblivious to all else but the handwritten menu on its chalkboard sign. "We've been to eleven different locations today!"
A muffled noise that sounds much like a laugh being hastily swallowed. "And?"
"And there's something wrong with every single one of them! If it's not the view, it's the size of the kitchen. If it's not the kitchen, it's the lack of customizable sonic shower. If it's not the damn shower, it's the fact that the bedroom windows get less than fifteen hours of natural light. As if the sun shines for that many hours straight here in San Francisco anyway.
"If it's not that, it's that there's a Starfleet admiral who lives on the same level, or the neighbor has a large dog. Or, and I swear I'm not making this up, we don't like elevators and the communal staircase echoes too much." Kirk drags a hand down his face, and gestures helplessly toward the sky as if requesting divine assistance. "Did you have any idea he was that particular?"
"Well, yeah." McCoy's clearly grinning. "Are you saying you didn't? You lived right next to him for years aboard ship."
"Obviously, I missed that key facet of his character, or else he picked it up on Vulcan while he was trying to purge his half-humanity."
"Don't be mean, Jim."
"I'm not, I'm just saying. I never noticed it before."
The alternative would mean Spock tailored his personality while aboard the Enterprise to a point of being unnaturally accommodating, and that's an uglier thought than some of the ones Jim has had about this particular week and the key players in its drama.
He's working on it, okay.
"I swear, I have no idea what kind of picture-perfect Shangri-La he expects to find in the city, if none of these meet his requirements."
"Mmhm."
Kirk frowns suspiciously at the communicator. "I know that tone."
"You damn well should," is the testy response. "Not that you've bothered to ask me about my housing plans, now that someone hauled me back into the 'Fleet to clean up both a personal and professional mess, without so much as a by-your-leave."
Kirk winces, and pinches his forehead, eyes shaded momentarily from the sun. "We've been through that. I thought we had, at least. I'm sorry. And not just for this week."
"I'm just yankin' your chain, Jim." The mischief in the tone mellows into something softer. "We're good, I promise."
"I'd like us all to be good," he mutters. "And you know the most annoying part?"
"That you can't really be annoyed with him, because you're still too glad he's back to have room for anything else."
"Exactly." Kirk sighs, and tilts his head back against the cool stone column briefly. "I want to be angry with him, Bones. And I'm just not. Not much, anyway. How ridiculous is that?"
"Sounds pretty much as expected, to me," McCoy replies reasonably. "Give it a few more weeks, and I bet the honeymoon wears off real quick."
"It certainly will if I can't get him to settle on an apartment! He can't keep crashing on that awful guest mattress forever."
"Uh-huh. I'm sure the mattress is the problem."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
A snort of laughter. "Jim, come on. You're not stupid. Especially where he's concerned."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Huh." The word is thoughtful, and carries a weight of realization. "Maybe you are that stupid where he's concerned."
"Explain yourself, Doctor."
"I'm not takin' orders from you in my own home, Admiral," is the swift retort. "You want my free advice, you come out here and ask for it in person."
"Bones…"
"Just take a step back and think, Jim. What is this really about?"
"Spock's complete inability to choose a blasted condo anywhere within the entire Bay area," he replies dryly.
"Is it?"
"Is it what."
"Is it actually about the condo?"
"What else would it be?"
"That's what I asked you." A burst of background noise, and McCoy's voice returns after a moment, more brisk and business-like. "Look, I gotta go, Jim. I can't help you any more, here."
"You didn't help to begin with." Grudgingly, he adds a testy "But thanks anyway, Bones," and doesn't wait for the snort of laughter, to hang up the comm.
Less than five minutes later, Spock finally returns from the vendor's cart and hands him an iced coffee in a tall, frosty cup.
It's the best thing Kirk's seen this week, other than that first moment on the Bridge of the Enterprise, when the Past crashed into the Present with all the dangerous hope that entailed.
"Thank you." He stirs it briefly, ice cubes clinking, and takes a sip, pleased to find it not too sweet and with a hint of mint; vaguely evocative of snowy winter days back in the Midwest and all the more welcome under summer sun. "You remembered!"
"Indeed," Spock replies easily, sipping from his own cup. Despite the heat, he's opted for a hot drink, likely one of the eclectic tea blends advertised on the sign. "The vendor seemed quite taken aback by the choice, I presume due to the time of year here on Earth."
"Yes, I suppose it's a much more common flavoring at Christmas, but I appreciate it." Kirk shakes his head and pulls up the next location on the list, then hands the padd over yet again. "Shall we continue the quest?"
Hopefully, twelve is their lucky number.
Twelve is not, in fact, their lucky number.
Neither is thirteen, fourteen, or the following two. No, their upper limit before the sun sinks too low on the horizon is seventeen.
Seventeen apartments or condominiums in varying floor plans, sizes, boroughs, and amenities have they browsed today. According to his wrist monitor, Kirk has gotten more steps in during this one day than he did years ago on an Enterprise shipwalk, and they are no closer to finding Spock's new living space. That elusive destination is apparently unattainable by this one particular Vulcan's current living standards.
Honestly, Spock spent the last almost-three years essentially roughing it in the Vulcan desert with no creature comforts to speak of, so why on Earth (literally) is he being so picky now?
Because it's always something.
Something ridiculous, or at least something Jim would consider to be ridiculous, since most of the excuses seem flimsy at best, completely outrageous at worst. Granted, his own condo had been set up by the 'Fleet once the Enterprise was decommissioned, part of the unwanted perks package of being promoted to a rank equally undesired, so he has no idea what it's like to voluntarily choose one's living space, really.
It hadn't mattered that much to him, at the time. A building is just a building, if it's not a home.
That said, perhaps Spock just wants to make sure there is no hint of such unofficial presence in his own lodgings. Or perhaps he is planning to accept a posting aboard a starship, resuming his primary love of scientific exploration rather than being tied down to a Terran posting. Jim would like to think Spock has no immediate plans to head back into deep space again so soon after returning to the 'Fleet; but he has no right anymore to really inquire or have an opinion about Spock's life, in general.
Spock had made that clear enough, three years ago.
And it's been too long. Too many years of too many misunderstandings on both their parts, for Jim to take anything for granted in this relationship (if it can even be called that), again.
Regardless of this melancholic reminder, condo number seventeen is a definite bust, just as its sixteen predecessors had been. Granted, this particular denial, Kirk actually agrees with; because if he can hear the arguing couple on the floor above, there's no doubt Vulcan ears would never be able to tolerate the noise, exponentially multiplied.
The other sixteen reasons, however, are just ridiculous.
How can it always be something?
They share a cab ride back across the city, as their quest for the Perfect Apartment has taken them well out of the beaten track, so to speak. And at the least, three years apart have not entirely obliterated their ability to relapse into thoughtful silence alongside each other, a fact for which Kirk is devoutly grateful. The ride is not filled with the awkwardness which might result from such a lack of conversation, were he sharing the vehicle with anyone else.
It affords him plenty of time to think, and while the wild storm-tossed sea of his thoughts is not a precisely pleasant place to navigate without the stars to guide him, this new problem is important enough to occupy his full attention. Puzzling out what he's missing here, from this one being who has always known him best.
Until a few years ago, Jim might have thought that went both ways, but now? He's nowhere near that confident. A few painful conversations about the topic have done little to fully assuage the hurt which still lies in wait below the surface, a monster barely addressed and likely to rear its ugly head at some point in the near future.
If he's quite honest, it really irks him that Bones seems to have forgiven and forgotten all around, like the kind-hearted man he was, and is. Granted, the doctor probably has no idea how much his abrupt retirement had crushed one Jim Kirk, since Jim had never been anything but supportive in public of both Spock's abrupt disappearance and McCoy's retirement soon after. No matter how much Kirk resented being left to pick up the pieces, it must always fall to the captain – or the admiral – to bear the brunt of any inquiry for his people, good or bad.
His very last act, as captain of the Enterprise, and neither of them really know how hard it was.
But he is not blameless himself, here. He made far too many mistakes of his own, and more in the years since, to really be justified in feeling bitter about those to which he was only spectator.
Knowing that doesn't really change how he feels, unfortunately.
Left behind in a promotion he'd never asked for, he'd seen no other option but to just continue, one day at a time, to try and salvage what he could of a life suddenly breaking apart under unimaginable loss. Ship, friends, found family, and whatever other label one might put to all three –gone, in the space of a few days. Now, he might just have at least two of them back again, or at least a version of them. It's equal parts thrilling and terrifying, because it's doubtful he would survive losing them a second time.
If Jim has any say, that will never happen; but that means setting aside what is as-yet undealt-with, and focusing on the Now, particularly Spock's odd insistence upon finding a suitable place to lay his head here in the city.
It's near the end of the ride that it finally hits him, like a bolt out of the blue and with the force of a shuttle crash.
It is always something.
But with Spock, it's never nothing.
And it's a logical impossibility for there to not be one condo or apartment in the bunch that might be satisfactory enough to at least shortlist. That's just statistically not a thing, Vulcan or otherwise.
What, then, is going on?