Thanks to everyone who read and to LauraCynthia and sunsethill for reviewing.

Also thanks to the person who pointed out that replicators weren't common technology until closer to TNG years and TOS/AOS used more limited-capability food processors/food synthesizers instead. Previous chapters have had terminology fixed.

And as per usual I was wrong about what the total chapter count will be, but so it goes.

"You would rest more comfortably in your quarters."

"'m not tired."

"Clearly untrue." After they had taken a break for lunch Jim had stretched out on his side to work on the landing assembly for the model, but it had been more than ten minutes since he'd attempted to place a piece. Unsurprising, as Spock estimated that his eyes had been closed for at least six. "This would appear to be an opportune time for the nap to which you have already agreed."

Jim opened one eye and stuck out his tongue.

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Both an unnecessarily juvenile gesture, and also one that fails to support any conclusion beyond that which I have already reached."

Jim yawned and then rolled and reached back, pulling a battered pillow down off the couch. Spock assumed it was for sleep, but when it struck him in the side of the head instead he recoiled, model falling to the floor as he pulled his arms in defensively.

Startled eyes met his and then just as quickly Jim flushed and pushed himself into a sitting position, holding up both hands in a standard no-threat gesture. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—are you okay?"

"I am unharmed." He had no intention of moving or lowering his block, though, as he was still very uncertain what had just happened. Beyond the obvious.

"Are you sure? That was the same ear Kyle got last night."

"No damage was done." The only thing that had struck him was the pillow now lying on the floor beside him, and it would have been an ineffective force extender even if there had been power behind the blow. Which, he recognized now, there had not been. He allowed his arms to fall. "I am...confused."

"Yeah, I got that." Jim rubbed his forehead. "And I must be tired if I'm pitching pillows at someone who's obviously never been in a pillow fight in his life. I really am sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Confuse you. Whatever."

"I was not frightened, and an apology is unnecessary," Spock decided after taking a moment to review the situation. "Clearly neither harm nor offense were intended, and I have already stated that I am uninjured." He hesitated. "I remain confused, however. For what purpose would one strike another with a pillow?"

"Human thing. Human kid thing, really, which I guess doesn't exactly refute the juvenile comment, even if I was just teasing when I threw it. For the record, the usual response would be to throw it back—or if you're Bones, throw it back, call me a toddler, and tell me to go find someone else to bother; I spent a lot of time on the couch in his dorm at the Academy—but I can see how that's not going to be the first thing that occurs to someone who's never played like that before."

"I find it quite illogical to immediately restock an enemy's arsenal," Spock agreed, although the reference to Dr. McCoy was reassuring in this instance given the friendship between he and the captain.

"It sounds weirdly bad when you say it like that."

"What phrasing would you prefer?"

Jim opened his mouth and then just as quickly shut it again. "Nope, not even going to try. If I could have my arsenal back, I guess I'll take that nap now. Since apparently I need it. If I'm not up again by dinner, do me a favor and wake me up, though, okay? Catching up on sleep this afternoon won't help if I don't sleep again tonight."

"Your terms are satisfactory." Spock tossed the pillow to him and was slightly surprised when Jim shifted onto the couch rather than going upstairs. There was only a marginal difference between them in height, and he would not have selected the couch as a place to rest when other options were available. Even the floor would have been preferable. But from the way Jim curled it was obvious that the position was not unfamiliar to him, and since the temperature was stable and within acceptable parameters for human comfort there was no reason that he shouldn't sleep there if he chose. The only other presence in the house was Spock which meant that there was no chance that he would be disturbed unnecessarily.

"Don't finish without me, all right?" Jim asked, waving towards the half-built model on the floor.

"Of that there is no danger." While Jim had been working on the lower decks Spock had managed to assemble almost a full third of the upper exterior, enough for its identification as a Kalaranian moon jumper although the specific class remained unclear, but the internals were more complex than he'd anticipated, and the lack of distinguishing features between the supports had slowed his progress considerably. And that work had been done prior to dropping it, which was unlikely to have improved the assembly.

Jim nodded, yawning, and then, "Y'know, I just realized that I never gave you a tour. Not that there's much to see, but feel free to poke around if you want something else to do. The other models I was talking about are still in Sam's closet upstairs, and I've got some books in my room. And there's rain gear in the front closet if you want to try for the barn; we're close enough to the same size that it ought to keep you dry."

"Noted."

Jim shut his eyes again, and less than four minutes later his breathing deepened and his heart rate lowered.

Spock had intended to continue to work on the model while the captain slept, or perhaps return to the data he'd been reviewing previously since he would not disregard Jim's request, but he found himself suddenly curious. Given his relatively small amount of experience with human residences beyond the standard Academy dormitories and on-ship quarters, it was only logical.

He had, of course, attended diplomatic events with his parents as a child, but the expectation had always been for exemplary behavior, and even when they'd been invited for a meal at someone's dwelling it would never have occurred to him to leave the common areas never mind presume to peer into a private space. Similarly he had conducted himself with full and appropriate formality during the officers' dinners he'd attended at Captain Pike's before and after his first tour on the Enterprise, and although Nyota had assured him that nothing beyond courtesy had been required of him during their visit to her family home, said family had been very present, and he'd been unwilling to risk offense.

Here...even leaving aside Jim's still-somewhat-incomprehensible actions with the pillow, after serving with him for a year Spock was well aware that he wasn't inclined to more formality than absolutely required, and anything even approaching diplomatic formality in his home would confuse if not outright distress him. Spock would prefer that his father never learned of him sitting less than decorously on his host's floor with dried glue on his fingers, true, but the probability of that was so close to zero as to be irrelevant, and as such Spock was content to simply maintain basic social niceties. And Jim would not have made the offer that he had if he had not been entirely comfortable with Spock accepting.

Spock fitted the crossbar support that had been knocked free in the fall back into the uppermost section of the model, placing two additional spots of glue to secure it, and then set the entire assembly aside.

He had already seen the majority of this floor. This main room with its organized seating area and what appeared to be some form of entertainment unit on the wall, the guest quarters with attached washroom, and the kitchen and dining area. Upon investigation he also found a small secondary washroom with laundry behind the kitchen, a door out that back that opened onto an engineered porch, and two storage closets, one near each door.

He turned back, looking around again as he processed an oddity that he had noticed but not consciously considered before.

His childhood had been privileged in terms of material things, that was not in question. Not that Vulcans or the Federation as a whole did not make provisions for children or that his parents had ever presented him with unnecessary amounts of clothing or educational aids, but anything he'd required had been immediately made available, and said items had always been of appropriate quality. Similarly, their residence had always been maintained to standards befitting a family of rank. And while he had never specifically thought on the matter, if he had his assumption would have been that the child—children—of a man regarded as a Starfleet hero would have grown up in equivalent circumstances. But this place was almost…. Spock hesitated over the term 'shabby' and would never have been so disrespectful as to state such out loud, but it was not inaccurate. The house was reasonably clean, probably due to the scrubber units mounted above the doors, but they were as visibly outdated as the environmental system in the guest quarters, and he had doubts as to even the basic functionality of the entertainment unit given that it appeared to be of an even older vintage. And Jim himself had spoken of ancient—an exaggeration, obviously, but the base implication only reinforced Spock's analysis—interlocks on the synthesizer.

The furniture and appliances brought similar thoughts to mind, with obvious wear and in some cases poorly-disguised repairs, the flooring and rugs were nearly worn through in places, and the paint on the walls was faded, chipped and stained in multiple areas. While it was only logical to refrain from unnecessary waste, there was almost nothing he saw that he would not have replaced in his own quarters.

Now that he was aware of the worn nature of the building around him, he didn't miss the deeply-scarred tread or the handrail rubbed clean of varnish as he started up the stairs, but as the staircase ended in a narrow hallway with three open doors and the last at the far end closed, he put it out of his mind and continued his exploration.

The first open door led to a room that Spock immediately concluded had belonged to Jim's brother. There was a rough 'GSK' carved into the frame of the door, and inside was a desk and a neatly-made bed with a faded image of some sort of fantastic battle scene tacked up between them, the paper torn and roughly repaired in several places. The closet door was damaged to the point that it could not fully close, and when Spock glanced inside he found a stack of transparent boxes, each packed with dozens of smaller model boxes. Given what Jim had said about dropping some off at a school and finishing others while he'd been in residence previously, his rounding error might perhaps have been less than Spock had assumed.

The open door across the hall led into another washroom; the next down was clearly Jim's. 'JTK' was scratched into this doorframe at a somewhat lower level than the initials on his brother's, a blanket lay haphazardly across the bed rather than being made up properly, and an open bag sat on the desk opposite. Far more interesting, though, was the space between the bed and desk because rather than a manufactured image, in here there were shelves. And along with a three-dimensional chess set, a few completed models, and a scattering of other items that Spock assumed were childhood memorabilia, were several groupings of old-style paper books.

Given specific permission to look at them, Spock made a temporary return to the washroom to ensure that all of the glue was removed from his hands before stepping inside, only to be distracted by a holo of familiar faces that he hadn't noticed previously. He recalled when the image had been taken, the Enterprise command crew having gone out for dinner shortly after they'd completed their first—or, more accurately, first official—successful mission. Spock had attempted to insist that one of them must remain aboard ship, a position that he had been more than willing to fulfill upon learning that their destination was a popular local bar, but he'd been overruled by both Jim and Nyota. And it had been a more pleasant evening than he'd expected. They'd been placed in a private room for dinner, during which there had been a variety of dishes including three Vulcan options available, and while some if not all of the others had gone on to more typical recreational activities afterwards, it had been clear that that portion of the evening was optional and no one had objected when he'd declined.

A second framed image sat half-hidden by the first, two boys standing on a barren landscape, and while Spock made no particular claims as to familiarity with human children, they were with near-certainty Jim and his brother. Jim's hair had been lighter when he was younger, allowed to grow long enough to interfere inappropriately with his vision, but his eyes where they were visible were unchanged. And while his brother had darker hair and eyes, there was a distinct likeness in their facial features, and to Spock's eye the remnants of a black eye on the older boy that indicated that they might also share similar temperaments.

Spock tilted his head as he realized that unless one counted the image on the wall in Jim's brother's room, these were the first personal items that he'd seen anywhere in the house. On Vulcan before Nero and New Vulcan now, at least to the extent that it was possible, homes typically exhibited items of cultural and historical value, furniture was chosen both for functionality and to honor the skill of craftsmen, and holos taken at moments of appropriate significance might also be displayed. In their home his father had always disapproved of his mother's definition of significance—it was hardly a feat for a child to begin or complete formal schooling when nearly all children did such things—but he had also never attempted to remove that which she chose to place for viewing, and Spock had not expected to glimpse a holo from his Starfleet graduation in his father's study on his last visit to New Vulcan.

He dismissed such irrelevant thoughts from his mind. What he'd seen of human décor was not dissimilar, albeit typically trending even more towards the personal. Captain Pike had had a display containing a small memorial to his parents as well as keepsakes from particularly impactful missions; the walls of Nyota's family home were so covered in images of her extended family that he was reasonably confident that he could now identify any of them at any point during their development. Even the glimpses he'd had of Academy dormitories and quarters aboard ship typically contained some form of individualized decoration.

Here there was almost nothing outside of this room. Beyond their somewhat dilapidated appearance the walls on the main level were blank, the furniture was not only worn but also entirely utilitarian, and there were no artifacts or holos to be seen.

He left Jim's room and continued down to the last door. It opened on another bedroom, one similar to the guest quarters downstairs with regards to the size and inclusion of a private washroom, but in terms of decoration or personalization it was as empty as the rest of the house.

Given that Jim's mother and stepfather had moved to the Alpha III colony, it was only logical that they had taken their personal possessions with them, and similarly his brother must have taken those items that he considered most significant when he'd left as well. But to have completely stripped the house except for Jim's things seemed...unnecessary.

He returned to Jim's room, looking more closely at the shelves again. The books Spock had already noted—history, primarily, but there were one or two he would perhaps examine further—the completed models Jim had chosen to keep, the chess set and the few toys, but no more holos. Jim had said that he had not gotten along with his stepfather so perhaps that lack was only to be expected, but the exclusion of his mother seemed strange, and surely there should have been some memento of his father. Despite what Spock might have expected, none of the models were even of the Kelvin or a similar class ship.

Spock turned and went back down the stairs. The rain had not ceased, but Jim was still asleep, and physical activity would be an appropriate way to spend some time.

He changed quickly and found Jim's rain gear where indicated, and while the coat was tighter across the chest and shoulders than he would have selected for himself, it would serve for the short trip across the muddy grounds. The barn door opened at his touch, and if the scattered equipment inside was as clearly as well-used as everything in the house, it did appear to be functional. A standard treadmill, a badly-battered punching bag that he decided upon closer examination would not remain functional for long if he made serious use of it, a weight set, and a scattering of mats. Sufficient.

He stretched and then spent the time to register his comm with the local network, ensuring that he could call for help in the admittedly exceedingly unlikely case that he required assistance, before settling in with the free weights. There weren't quite enough plates to reach his usual maintenance setting, and of what there were several had clearly sat untouched for years, but they came close enough that extra repetitions balanced the lack.

It would be illogical for him to judge how another chose to keep their quarters. Home. As previously noted it was clean, and since Jim had the engineering skills to maintain the equipment, however outdated, there was no reason that he should be required to do otherwise. The wear and lack of personal items were an equivalent choice. And yet Spock had seen his quarters onboard the Enterprise, and they were….

Under other circumstances he might have concluded that that was the explanation that he had failed to previously consider; Jim himself might have moved all that he cared to from this place. But while there were additional books in Jim's quarters on board, and upon reflection he recalled another chess set, the walls there were bare as well, and he recalled no holos or even additional models. Both locations oddly depersonalized for someone that he knew was not lacking in personality.

Spock finished with the weights and then did a run of his typical distance since unlike the weights the treadmill was more than capable of reaching his preferred settings before moving to the mats and settling into a choreographed sequence of familiar moves at half-speed. Jim came in while he was only partially through, shrugging off some form of cloak and leaving it hanging with the jacket by the door, but since he didn't interrupt Spock and instead stretched and restarted the treadmill, Spock completed his usual routine and warm down.

Apparently Jim had been waiting for precisely that, though, because the treadmill slowed to a stop when Spock finally straightened. "I don't suppose I could convince you to throw me around some, as long as we're out here?"

"You cannot." They had—cautiously on Spock's part, although if Jim had any problems with the memory of a hand around his throat he'd never shown any sign of it—competed in eleven separate matches in the Enterprise gym over the course of the past year, but he would not engage in anything of the sort while Jim was still recovering.

"Come on, please? I'm technically not not cleared to spar."

"An oversight which I'm certain that Dr. McCoy would take great pleasure in rectifying. Shall I comm him?"

"Okay, that's just mean."

He was smiling when he said it so clearly he had taken no more offense than Spock had intended, and Spock raised an eyebrow as he stepped off the treadmill. "Captain, you are not in a fit state for any form of combat, however simulated."

He sighed, leaning back against the treadmill arm and crossing his arms over his chest. "Yeah, I know. I'm not happy about it, but I know. But I've got to do something physical besides walk around or I'll start climbing the walls no matter what Bones has to say about it."

"I will assume that that is figurative."

"If I can find something else to do, sure, otherwise no promises." He straightened again. "Any chance you could teach me whatever you were just doing? That didn't look like it involved any contact."

"In the practice form it does not, but you wish to learn Suus Mahna?" Spock paused to consider. "It would be possible to some extent, but as you are not Vulcan, you will never have the muscle structure to carry out the majority of the strikes to full effect."

A shrug. "So? There are lots of things that I can only manage bits and pieces of. Hell, I even tried a little Takhha at the Academy, and I don't know if you've ever tried it, but it's damn tricky when you've only got two elbows. It's too late for me to ever be anything other than a brawler anyway, but if you're willing I'd be happy to give it a try."

"Continuous learning is admirable, although I fail to understand how 'too late' would apply to someone who is still several years shy of thirty, standard." He could not deny that, at least currently, brawler was a remarkably accurate term, though. While Jim was competent enough in hand-to-hand to place near if not at the top regularly in shipwide competitions—if he hadn't been, they wouldn't have assigned him as an assistant instructor at the Academy—it was obvious from watching him fight that he'd come late to formal training.

"Because I've been charging in swinging for most of those several-short-of-thirty years?" Jim shrugged again. "Don't get me wrong, I'll do my damnedest to match whatever you show me, but I can pretty much guarantee that trying to change my entire style now would be a losing battle."

Spock tilted his head and then stepped back to make room for him, indicating the correct starting position for the simplest of the sequenced moves.

Jim lasted longer than Spock might have expected before starting to waver, and—unsurprisingly, given his personality—attempted to push himself still further before shaking his head and taking a knee. "Damn it."

"Returning to your previous state of health will take time." It was an echo of their conversation this morning, and privately Spock was just as glad that Jim had decided to admit his exhaustion rather than requiring Spock to force the issue, because that would almost certainly have led to an argument. He hesitated and then reached down, and Jim's hand closed around his forearm and he let Spock pull him up a moment later.

"Still annoying. But thanks. And thanks for that."

Spock nodded. "Your form is acceptable if you wish to resume at a later date."

A grin. "I'll take you up on that."

The rain had lessened while they were in the barn, but it had not stopped, and once they were back in the house Spock turned for the guest room to clean up and return to his casual clothing while Jim went upstairs to do the same. It occurred belatedly to Spock that he should have requested assurance that Jim was capable of making such a trip without assistance as a fall down the stairs would certainly be a setback, but even if Jim was unsure the odds of him admitting it were extremely low. And if his footsteps were slow, they did seem to be steady.

Spock completed his tasks and returned to the kitchen before Jim did, but he didn't expect Jim to be visibly choking back laughter when he entered several minutes later, and Spock turned with a bowl of soup and a raised eyebrow.

"I don't know what you said to Bones, but you might just want to delete everything he sent you in reply."

"I merely informed the doctor that while I had no objection to fulfilling his request, it lacked both the specificity and the required objective data for me to do so successfully." A pause. "And that it would have been logical for him to have provided such information in his initial communication rather than requiring me to elicit such obvious necessities."

Jim stopped fighting his laughter as he crossed around to the synthesizer and it took him several seconds before he was able to speak again again. "Short version: he told you not to let me do anything stupid, and you asked him to specify stupid."

"An oversimplification, but perhaps not entirely inaccurate." Spock took a seat. "His phrasing was considerably less succinct."

"Yeah, I'll bet." Jim shook his head. "Don't worry, however much I might want to blow off some steam I'm not enough of an asshole to drag you out to a bar or anything like that, and we both know you'd have something to say if I decided to go rappelling in the Rift even if I wasn't in recovery. Oh, shut up, I told you chicken soup was safe like ten years ago."

The non sequitur gave Spock momentary pause, but when Jim thumped the panel above the synthesizer the yellow allergy warning abruptly cleared, a bowl of soup appearing a moment later.

"I have got to rebuild that thing," Jim said, settling in at the table as well.

"A query," Spock said after a moment, setting Dr. McCoy's request aside. He would review the response he'd been sent prior to sleep or meditation, but Jim's assessments with regards to the doctor's unorthodox phrasing were typically accurate. Although while Jim was correct and he would not remain silent if he believed the captain's actions were reckless regardless of the state of his health, he still believed that slightly more details about said state of health would be useful in this situation.

"Okay."

"I am uncertain as to its propriety," he admitted. Or, rather, he was well aware that under most circumstances it would be considered impolite to ask; the only reason he was considering it now was because Jim wasn't one to take offense without strong provocation.

"Well, someone in this conversation actually grew up around diplomatic shit and someone else I'm pretty sure would have gotten kicked at that reception for the Tellarite delegation if you'd been sitting close enough, so if you don't know I'm damn sure I don't."

"It would be in violation of regulations to kick one's captain, or indeed any member of Starfleet or the civilian population, regardless of provocation." Although it was barely possible that Spock might have risked a hand on his arm—Tellarites weren't telepaths and likely wouldn't have noticed, and he was reasonably certain that the captain would have taken the hint without requiring too much grip strength—if, as the captain said, he'd been close enough. "However, while I acknowledge that you are extremely facile with regards to extricating yourself from verbal predicaments, I would submit that it is more befitting a Starfleet officer to avoid becoming embroiled in such in the first place."

"Will it help my case if I say he started it?"

"No."

Jim grinned. "Fine. But seriously, ask whatever you want. If I don't want to answer I'll say so, but asking won't bother me."

"Eminently logical. You've noted several times that your food synthesizer is out of date, as is the environmental system in your guest room, and it seems that the same is true of the majority of the rest of the systems here. Is there a reason for this?"

He frowned, looking around as if he had not just commented on the state of the synthesizer himself. "You're not wrong, but...I don't know. I guess it's just that I can keep them going well enough, and I'm not around enough these days to care? Although it's not like I really cared much before either, I'm used to having to hack at them since they've been that way since forever. Or, you know, as long as I've been alive, which is kind of the same thing."

Spock would have pointed out that 'forever' and 'less than twenty-seven years' were in no way synonymous, but Jim was still speaking.

"I think my grandparents must have been the last ones who updated anything, but they left in the Galvan colonization wave a year or so before my dad entered the Academy—this place belonged to his parents, but Mom's left the area around then too; there was a lot of recruiting out of the shipyard—and I can't imagine it mattered to him once he wasn't living here. Even after he and Mom got married they were both in space, and when Sam was born they just sent him to stay with Mom's older sister and her husband down the road. It wasn't until after everything that Mom moved us in here, and at that point…." He shrugged. "I don't know. I can't remember enough from when she was around to know if she ever thought about it, and then when she was gone most of the time no one cared as long as I kept things patched. And once it was just me I never got beyond vaguely annoyed to the point of actually replacing anything." He glanced back at the food synthesizer. "Although if that thing keeps trying to convince me I'm allergic to carrots I might get there."

"There is little in the way of personalization, either," Spock said after a moment.

"No, but I don't think we ever had much of that." He looked around again and then shook his head. "Sam might have tried a few times, he pretty much did biology and art and said screw the rest of his classes, but Frank would go off on these rants about us trashing the place, you know, leaving toys or school stuff or whatever lying around, and it usually ended with him throwing away anything of ours that he could get his hands on. Didn't take us long to take a hint and stop bothering. Not like I particularly wanted chess trophies that said 'congratulations, you're the only one in the school who can remember how the damn pieces move' anyway. And the only things that Mom really brought back when she traveled were the models; you already know what happened with those."

"Frank is your stepfather?"

Jim's jaw tightened abruptly and his eyes dropped to his soup. "Yeah. I don't want to talk about him."

That much was evident, and Spock nodded. "Understood."

"Have we ever actually finished a chess game?" Jim asked, looking back up again. "I know we've started a couple."

"Nine," Spock corrected, "although on one occasion we were called away before we'd even finished our openings, and of the rest all were interrupted within an hour. The only game that we played to completion was one in which you offered to take Ensign Chekov's place when he had to go on shift, and as I had captured nearly a third of his pieces by that point, you started at a distinct disadvantage."

"Oh, right. I really needed one of those knights back." He grinned, the blankness of a moment ago abruptly gone. "What do you say to a game after dinner?"