Thanks to everyone who read and to LauraCynthia for reviewing.

Spock tightened the strap of his bag across his shoulder, ensuring that it would remain close against his person, and stepped up to the door of the eating establishment. The already-audible music, for lack of a better term, did not bode well for what he might find inside, but he had failed to properly account for transit time on the single poorly-maintained passenger shuttle that had offered Riverside, Iowa as a destination, and he would not compound his error by disclaiming basic manners when there was another option available.

He nearly flinched as the door slid open, the increase in volume being such that he estimated thirty minutes maximum time of occupancy before risking damage to his eardrums, and for a fraction of a second considered that the captain rarely found offense unless discourtesy was directed towards another member of the crew. However, he was already here, and it would be illogical to leave without fulfilling his mission. He ignored the stares directed at him and made his way towards the bar. With regards to the noise level it was not an improvement, but as he'd learned on the rare occasions that Nyota had requested his presence on social outings during their time at the Academy, bartenders frequently offered a more rapid response time than overburdened waitstaff.

The nearest bartender did a visible double-take as Spock braced himself and wedged into what could only nominally be considered an empty space, sliding a drink across the bar to another patron and then shifting down to Spock's location.

"Hello, stranger." His greeting was a practiced half-shout, an indication that the volume levels this evening were not unusual. "Don't get a lot of your sort around here."

An obvious truth that required no response, but Spock nodded in acknowledgment of his attention and raised his own voice slightly. "Hello. Is it possible to procure food 'to go' in this establishment?"

The man blinked and then shrugged and produced a PADD from under the bar. "Sure, we can box up anything you'd like. Why don't you take a look and give me a wave when you're ready to order?"

If Spock had had the opportunity he would have cleaned the PADD before accepting it, but under the circumstances he put aside his distaste at the somewhat sticky frame and accepted it with a second nod, making a mental note to thoroughly wash his hands at the earliest possible opportunity. Per his expectations all of the items on the menu were of human origin, but there was a reasonable selection of vegetarian options, and the bartender was prompt when Spock indicated his readiness to place an order.

Said bartender assured him that the food would be ready in less than ten minutes, and while it was ten minutes longer than Spock would ideally spend in this place, it would—

He reeled forward into the bar, a combination of the sudden physical pain of having one of his ears twisted and an unexpected blast of violent telepathic contact, and even as he pressed his hands into the solid surface in an attempt to center himself, there was the sound of a fist hitting flesh.

"Touch him again, I dare you."

Confusion brought Spock up nearly as short as the attack had because while he recognized the captain's voice and the fierce anger in it, he had no idea why a second assault would in any way be desirable. He turned in place, readying for whatever form of self-defense might prove necessary.

His presumed aggressor was marginally shorter but considerably stockier than either himself or the captain, and while his nose was bleeding badly, his stance indicated no inclination to stand down.

From the captain's posture he would also be willing to continue the confrontation, and Spock considered reversing their positions. The assault had caused those nearest to him to move away, giving him room to maneuver, and while the captain was perfectly competent in hand-to-hand combat, Spock had both been the target of the initial attack and also remained the more formidable. Especially since Jim was only recently released from sickbay.

However, before he had to make a decision the man spat on the floor and then turned and stalked away.

"Come on, Jimmy, he was just drunk," the bartender said.

Jim turned sharply. "Not that drunk." His gaze shifted to Spock, anger fading away. "Are you o—"

Spock missed the end of the question when a hand closed on his arm. While he'd become accustomed enough to casual contact among non-telepaths that he could normally ignore momentary connections, with his control already shaken he got a blast of—fucking ass—the hell is he—missed a con—that made him withdraw momentarily to focus on his shields.

"Spock?" A light shake. "Hey, are you with me?"

Spock forced his eyes open again to find the captain craning his neck to look at his ear.

"How bad did he get you?"

Spock stepped to the side, relieved when Jim released him. "I am unharmed."

"Yeah, right." He looked distinctly disbelieving. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but what are you doing here? Did I miss a message that you were coming? I'm sorry, I—"

"I did not message," Spock interrupted, focusing past him.

"Right," he repeated after a moment. "Look, this place is getting loud for me which probably means it's halfway to blasting your eardrums out of your head. If you don't need a first aid kit or anything—are you sure your ear is okay?—how about we get out of here? Head back up to the house?"

"My ear is undamaged, and my eardrums are not in immediate danger." Although immediate was the relevant word given the noise level. And while he appreciated the offer…. "I did not intend to take you away from your evening's recreation."

That got a laugh, although Jim's expression did not convey amusement. "From past experience my evening's recreation will start looking like a bar fight in about an hour, and since Bones'll kill me if I show up back at Starfleet with anything approaching fresh bruises," he glanced down at his knuckles and then shrugged, "it's probably better for both of us if we head out."

"It would be highly illogical for the doctor to kill you immediately after spending several weeks restoring you to health."

"Yeah, and you're the one who's always going on about how logical Bones is." He tilted his head. "If you want to stay we can, but if not, just give me two minutes to say goodbye and we'll get out of here."

Since Spock could not claim that his preference was to remain, there was little he could do except nod, and he put his back to the bar and watched the crowd with considerably more caution than he had upon first entry.

Jim's goodbyes took almost three times as long as he'd indicated, but as he returned as the bartender was offering Spock a bag with his meal in it, the timing was more than acceptable. Spock fell in at Jim's shoulder automatically as they exited the bar.

"Seriously, are you okay?" Jim asked in a more normal voice as soon as they were clear of the cacophony. "I saw you, saw Kyle, and figured you'd be in for a couple nasty comments before I got there, but I never thought he'd up and grab you like that."

"I am unharmed," Spock repeated. "You know him?"

"You'd have a hard time finding someone in this town that I don't know, but yeah, Kyle and I went to school together. I guess bullies probably aren't a thing on Vulcan, it's not exactly logical, but that's him to a T." A pause. "I'm kind of surprised that you didn't just break his wrist."

The behavior of Vulcan children was irrelevant, and as such Spock declined to correct the captain's assumption. "If it had been only a physical assault that would indeed have been my reaction, but his mental voice was unusually...loud...for a non-telepath. I was not expecting the attack, and my shields were momentarily overwhelmed."

"Direct skin-to-skin contact, shit. I just thought he deserved a busted nose for grabbing your ear period."

"An unpleasant action even without the telepathic component," Spock agreed. The retribution also required no discussion.

"Do you want to make a report? It's your call, and I should have asked before, especially if he did actual damage."

"He did not, and I do not. The matter has been resolved, and my shields will be fully restored with meditation."

Jim nodded and then frowned and looked around. "So I was going to hitch a ride back with you since I just hiked over, but where are you parked?"

Spock had intended to ask the same question since they were nearly to the back of the lot, and he shook his head in negation. "I took a shuttlecab from the transport dropoff to this location intending to walk the rest of the way to your residence."

"Oh. Okay. I guess that makes it easy. Come on." He made an abrupt turn away from the marked path.

"The map I consulted indicated a 5.3 kilometer walk following the road north before turning west."

"It's a shortcut."

Spock raised an eyebrow but didn't disagree as they dropped off the engineered surface and onto packed earth.

"So why'd you end up at the bar, anyway?" Jim asked as they started walking, and if the limited light from the quarter-moon was of any hindrance to him he gave no sign of it. "Based on every shore leave I've ever seen you on it's not exactly your kind of place, and you could have gone up to the house and synthesized some dinner even if I wasn't there. Although we might have to do some hacking to convince the synthesizer to produce Vulcan dishes, now that I think about it. As old as that thing is there's no way that they came standard, and I know I haven't added anything."

His tone and phrasing indicated curiosity rather than offense, but Spock was well aware that he was approaching the violation of several basic courtesies. "My intention was not a slight upon your hospitality. It is simply that by Vulcan custom one does not make entrance at a residence in need of sustenance, and as I failed to communicate my intent to visit in adequate advance of my arrival—"

"I said you were invited," Jim interrupted with a frown and then waved it off just as quickly. "But never mind, custom, I get that. Why here? At least around the shipyard you would have had some options."

"The passenger shuttle did not stop at the shipyard."

"Passenger...wait, please tell me you didn't come out on that circuit-running hunk of junk?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Sorry, I should have told you to catch one of the cargo shuttles to the shipyard if you were coming. They run straight from the San Francisco ports, and they have a passenger compartment even if they don't advertise it. And as a bonus, they don't usually make the news for engines that randomly catch fire."

If Spock had done the logical thing and contacted the captain before booking his ticket he would have had that information, and thus the fault lay entirely with him.

"Did something happen?" Jim asked before he could decline the apology. "Because me getting on a random shuttle without thinking too much about it? Sure, whatever. It's not exactly how I ended up at the Academy, but it's not that far off, either. You? I don't believe that for a second."

"A large number of things have happened since we last saw each other, and as such I would request that you be more specific," Spock said, taking refuge in the inexactness of the query even as he knew that his reticence was illogical.

"Uh-huh." He tilted his head. "I'd have heard if something happened to the crew or the Enterprise...did your visit with Uhura's family end in screaming or something?"

"Screaming was in no way involved; her relatives were gracious and attentive hosts."

"Okay, good." A pause. "Very much hoping that there hasn't been any bad news from New Vulcan?"

"Per their latest missives both my father and Ambassador Spock are in adequate health, and the colony continues to expand."

"Also good." Another pause, and then, "Come on, Spock, give me something. Otherwise this is going to turn into twenty questions, and we're both going to get annoyed."

"Annoyance is a human conceit."

"Too bad being annoying isn't." He jumped down into a ravine and then scrambled up and over a fence running down the center.

"Such a barrier would indicate that this area is not intended for public passage," Spock pointed out.

He glanced back. "It'll be fine."

Spock stayed where he was.

"Look, are you planning to reprogram any sprinklers, tip any cows, or stomp any rude messages into a crop field?"

"I have neither reason nor desire to attempt any of these things, and the second would seem to involve mechanics with which I am unfamiliar."

He grinned. "It's pretty literal, actually. But I promise, if you're not planning to make trouble, nobody is going to care. It'll be okay."

Spock had yet to determine any form of logic behind it, but statements of that sort from the captain were accurate a statistically significant amount of time, and he climbed over as well.

"Thank you."

"You have done this before, I presume?"

"About a billion times. "

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Given your age and the physical requirements involved, that is a mathematical impossibility."

He laughed. "Fine, then, a lot. It's the fastest way home from the bar, and I…." Laughter trailed off. "I used to spend a lot of time there."

Lacking an appropriate response Spock remained silent, matching paces with him as they climbed up the other side of the ravine and made a slight change in direction before continuing along the dusty plain. Despite Jim's recent injuries he was moving at a speed that Spock found typical for a planet of this gravity and air composition as defined by the away missions they'd successfully completed together, and his breathing and heart rate were steady. The plain, however, was not as flat as he'd first thought, minor elevation changes and ravines making it far more difficult to determine what lay ahead of them than he'd assumed, and despite having completed both the Kahs-wan and all of the required survival courses at Starfleet Academy, if the captain hadn't been with him he'd have started retracing his steps after the first twenty minutes. "May I assume that you have done the things you've suggested?" he asked as the silence drew out.

"Hm? Oh. Yeah." A quick grin and then a wince. "The sprinklers were easy to fix, and the cows didn't much care, but the crop messages were a pretty shitty thing to do considering how tough it is to get anything to grow around here."

The captain's willingness to admit his own mistakes—at least when he agreed that they were mistakes—was admirable, and Spock nodded as they continued. "I would also ask why you wished him to assault me a second time."

"Huh?"

"The man at the bar."

"Kyle?" Jim frowned and then shook his head. "Sorry, I'm still not following."

"And I quote: Touch him again, I dare you."

Jim's head snapped back around. "That wasn't—I didn't mean it like that. I meant, like, 'touch him again, and I'll break your face,' not 'please attack my friend again.'"

"Fascinating." The first interpretation of the words was not one that would have occurred to Spock, but upon reflection it was far more in keeping with the captain's usual behavior when one of the crew was in some way threatened. "He clearly interpreted it as you intended."

"Bully, not idiot. He might not know that you can wipe the floor with me, but he does know from the number of times that he and his friends went after me when I was a kid that I don't go down easy. If Jerry or Tom or someone had been with him it might have been different, but on his own there was no way he was going to risk it."

"Logical." The man had been no threat to Spock once he'd been aware of the danger, but avoiding further confrontation had been the optimal solution.

A much thinner fence than the last they'd climbed was suddenly in front of them, but rather than attempting to go over it, Jim turned parallel for a few minutes until they reached a boulder. "Up and jump clear, and be careful, it's low-level electric."

"And this does not indicate that we should not pass in this direction?"

"Technically it indicates that we're about to reach the Rift, and most people would rather take a shock than accidentally fall into it. Don't worry, we'll cross at the old rail bridge."

That statement did not lessen Spock's concerns, but the captain was already over and after a moment he followed.

They dropped down into another ravine, one that fell off even further only a few meters in, and Spock realized that what he'd thought was an extended plain had concealed a deep chasm in the earth running a considerable distance to the east and west. "The Xindi?"

"Yep. Things were pretty ugly at that point in the war so when the military needed cargo transports they dropped in a couple ground-rail bridges, and while obviously no one's using them for that any more, they work well enough as walking paths."

Spock might have debated that point given that there were electric fences involved, but before he could a low, black-framed structure was suddenly visible reaching out into the darkness, and the captain stepped towards it.

"Your bridge." An unnecessary comment, perhaps, but it was barely a meter in depth and no more than that in width, and there was a distinct lack of handrails or any other safety feature.

"Yeah." He started to step up onto it.

"What was the date of its last maintenance cycle?"

A groan. "It's fine, it's been here forever."

"It has been here for slightly more than two hundred years based upon the information you gave me previously, and said age is precisely why I am inquiring about the maintenance schedule."

"I swear, someday I'm going to lock you and Bones in a room together to fuss each other to death. Come on, and watch your step."

If he'd been closer Spock would have seriously considered pulling the captain back, but he was already beyond reach, and it would be beyond illogical to risk a conflict on the bridge. And despite his concerns, there were no sounds of metal strain as Jim walked out into the darkness.

They were both across in less than five minutes—across it and then under another wire fence—and Jim glanced over. "So what are the odds of me getting smacked if I say I told you so?"

"I have not calculated them. I would, however, strongly advise against such a course of action."

He laughed. "Fair enough. And that's the worst of it, for the record, we're not too far from the house, now. It won't be visible until we're across the valley, but you'll be able to have dinner soon."

Spock dipped his head, and silence fell again, but it was not one that he was inclined to break, and Jim seemed unconcerned as well. They crossed another low-lying stretch of land, and as they crested the hill on the other side, the ridge-line of a roof was visible in the distance. "Were you familiar with Professors Navrics and Aaangstrom at the academy?" Spock found himself asking.

"Hm?" Jim looked over with a frown. "Uh, yeah, sure. I took a couple of my intro courses with Aaangstrom—propulsion and warp drive mechanics, I think—and then I went to a bunch of of Navrics' open lectures on hyperwarp theory, but every time I tried to sign up for one of her actual classes I got bumped since I wasn't on the science track."

He made a face, and Spock was reminded that while Jim's personal record at the Academy had contained a number of...questionable...notations, his academic record short of the Kobayashi Maru had been unimpeachable. "I was on the science track and thus was able to take a number of her classes," he said rather than commenting, "after which I spent several quarters working as a research assistant in their warp prototype lab."

"Nice. Although I can't say I'm shocked."

"I had intended to spend some amount of my shore leave reviewing with them the data that the scientists from Irgani VI were willing to share with us. My initial review indicated a strong correlation between an experiment that the professors had performed while I was assisting them and a second potential branch of research that we discarded at the time but that Professor Aaangstrom in particular had been interested in revisiting. However I discovered upon attempting to comm their lab this morning that they had been presenting a paper at a conference on advances in propulsion drive research just outside of Headquarters when Khan crashed his ship. There were no survivors."

Jim cursed and then sighed. "I'm sorry, Spock."

He nodded again. It was far less logical than the Vulcan equivalent, but the sentiment was appreciated all the same. "I provided all of the Irgani VI research to their current assistant, but he and I are not acquainted, and I saw no advantage to visiting him in the labs."