Chapter Text
If he had to try and trace the whole clusterfuck back to the very beginning, Jim's pretty sure it started with the Saurian brandy. His worst stories usually do.
He just hasn’t had one in awhile that ended with him in a brig.
* * * * *
#1: This Part Was Technically Bones’ Fault
See, okay, what happened was, Spock got stuck in the science lab finishing an experiment that was running long, and Jim didn’t want to beam down to New Vulcan without him, for three crucial reasons.
#1: If Jim beams down alone, Sarek will feel obligated to come meet him in person and escort him to the family estate, an experience which will drive them both to the brink of insanity without Spock there as a stoic Vulcan buffer. The last time he was stuck alone with his father-in-law for the forty-minute hovercar ride between the New Shikahr transport center and the S’chn T’gai residence, they both wanted to kill themselves by the end of it. (Sarek does not do small talk, and when Jim gets nervous he can only do small talk, a disastrous combination.)
#2: If Jim beams down alone, and Sarek doesn’t come meet him in person, some earnest young diplomatic aide from the Federation outpost - whatever eager beaver got tasked with shore leave housing assignments and recreational itineraries - will take it upon themselves to fill however much time Jim admits to having free before Spock shows up, which means there is a zero percent chance he’s going to get out of this without having to go say hi to the council members (well, not literally, can you imagine, just like walking up to T’Pau and saying “HI” or “what’s up” or, even worse, “hey girl,” and then waiting to see if she actually can light you on fire with her eyes or if that’s just a vibe she gives off), which is like being trapped alone with nine Sareks, except that at least Sarek Original Flavor tolerates humans enough that he married one, and permitted his half-human son to do the same.
(Jim frequently gets the feeling that after he’s left the room, Sarek’s job is to translate his behavior to the other Vulcans like a zoologist. “You mistake his meaning, Elder. The ‘it’ in ‘how’s it hanging’ is a generalized abstraction referring to the state of one’s being as a whole. The admittedly quixotic choice of ‘to hang’ as a verb in this context, though rather more difficult to parse, seems to have roots in a twentieth-century colloquialism from the territory of the United States, in which” snore snore et cetera. Spock claims that the Vulcan High Council hold Jim in high esteem, and have done ever since the whole, you know, drill incident, which might be true as far as it goes; but Jim is frequently obligated to point out that being treated with respect by T’Pau and being treated with ice-cold loathing by T’Pau seem to involve a lot of the same facial expressions. Spock denies this, but Spock is full of shit.)
#3, and most importantly: Bones is still on board the ship - because Bones is an idiot who won’t just tell Uhura he likes her, and now it’s too late because she’ll be spending two weeks at the VSA helping sort through twenty crates of antiquities from Vulcan colony worlds, and probably flirting with that pretty xenolinguistics professor they met last time, who Spock hates because her brother was a dick to him in school, which is almost certainly half the appeal for Uhura, something which Spock would like Jim not to find quite so hilarious but unfortunately that ship has sailed. And he's being even Bonesier than usual (gruff, snappish, visibly upset while loudly denying anything's wrong) because he's missing Joanna's graduation tomorrow, which means he broke out the emergency Saurian brandy, which he’ll drink by himself and probably die if Jim isn’t there to take one for the team.
Huh. Okay. Maybe this was actually all Bones’ fault.
Or Uhura's.
Or Joanna's high school's academic calendar.
That helps, a little.
Well, anyway, regardless of whose fault it was or wasn’t, as long as everyone agrees that it was not Jim’s, the bottle is full when Jim sits down across from Bones’ desk to wait for Spock’s experiment to finish and patiently explain to his best friend that yes, his daughter loves him, and no, he's not going to die alone; and it’s half-full when he staggers to his feet again some number of hours later at the sound of his bondmate’s patiently exasperated voice from the doorway behind them, dryly informing Bones to save his hypospray for himself. “Perhaps the captain will learn a valuable, overdue lesson about knowing one’s limits, after he spends the first night of his long-awaited shore leave ejecting the contents of his digestive system into my father’s guest room lavatory.”
(Translation: Spock thinks it will be funny to see how his dad responds to Drunk Jim, and he’s decided to be a dick about this.)
Jim decides to play it with like a nonchalant “bitch, please, I don’t even need that detox hypospray" kind of energy (in fact, he says “bitch, please” to Spock four times on the walk between Sickbay and the transporter room; but since his mind keeps wandering before he can finish the rest of the sentence, it does not, ultimately, help his case), and he’s extremely proud of himself for how close to fully upright he is walking. By the time they arrive he’s almost convinced that he has this in the bag - that is, until Keenser, half-buried inside the console, and Scotty, hunched over it, start visibly at his entrance, wrinkling their noses in a way that makes Jim wonder if perhaps he’s radiating booze fumes more palpably than he’d thought.
Jesus, he’s probably so fucking flammable right now. It’s a good thing human beings stopped carrying around lighters in their pants pockets like three centuries ago. Otherwise, Jim accidentally catching himself aflame would basically kill all of them, since the ship’s fire suppression system involves opening an airlock and sucking out all the oxygen.
This strikes Jim as hilariously funny, and he attempts to explain the joke to Spock, but somehow it comes out “IF MY PANTS WERE ON FIRE YOU’D BE DEAD,” which he can tell isn’t quite right. Though it doesn’t matter, in the end, because Spock’s not listening. He’s half-turned away from Jim, deep in conversation with Scotty, who seems super worried about something. Scotty’s looking at both of them, like he’s trying to explain the problem to Jim too, but Jim’s still busy trying to figure out where the pants joke went wrong so he misses like half of it. Plus Scotty’s doing that thing where his accent gets thicker when he’s agitated, so all Jim can make out is like “something something tachyons” and Keenser gesturing heatedly toward the transporter platform. The rest is just Scottish background noise.
But Jim’s not worried. Jim never has to worry. It’s Scotty. Scotty might be absolutely fucking bonkers, but he’s bonkers in the “pull your ass out of the frying pan every single time” way. Things break, Scotty fixes them. Jim’s not worried. He’s blissfully hammered, nothing can harsh his buzz, and he’s about to spend two weeks sharing a bedroom with Spock in a very large estate with thick stone walls that are (they have tested this) absolutely soundproof, which means that unlike on the ship, Jim will not have to bite down on a pillow to avoid making everything awkward at breakfast the next day. (Sulu still has not forgiven them for the night they first tested the Orion vibrators on that camping trip.) It is actually very close to impossible for Jim to get a boner if Sarek is within earshot, which means when the house was still under construction and they were all staying at the embassy, they had to sneak around to fuck in secret during the day like a pair of teenagers. Now that Spock has his own private guest wing, which does not share a single wall with Sarek’s sleeping quarters, Jim can plow his husband in peace as God intended.
It’s gonna be great.
Spock’s thoughts, however, definitely don’t seem to be traveling along the same drunk, horny lines as Jim’s, because he puts both his hands on his bondmate’s shoulders and looks directly into his eyes. “Captain,” he says. “I need you to listen to me very carefully.”
“Can’t wait to rip your clothes off and get my mouth all over those sexy fuckin’ ears,” Jim agrees, which makes Spock blush and wince simultaneously, and doesn’t appear to be the answer he wanted, though Jim has already forgotten what they were talking about.
“Captain," Spock repeats, more firmly this time. "Mr. Scott has detected unusual bursts of tachyon radiation emanating from the Talvath system, which are interfering with transport. If you wish to proceed directly to the surface of New Vulcan, he believes it may be possible to beam us down one at a time -”
“Rad,” says Jim, hopping up onto the transport platform next to their luggage, half toppling over, catching himself, and striking what he thinks is a pretty good come-hither pose.
Though it’s not having much of an effect on Spock, who keeps talking.
“ - but rather than taking that risk, my recommendation would be to call Dr. McCoy, obtain a detox hypospray for you, and delay our shore leave by one day in order to investigate the matter ourselves.”
“Got five bottles of lube in that suitcase,” says Jim happily, not listening at all. “We’re gonna fuck like so much.”
“Christ, I didn’t need to know that,” he hears Scotty mutter under his breath.
“Jim,” Spock says forcefully. “Ashayam, please listen.”
“Love you too,” Jim says, not quite sure why this makes Spock pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration.
But he doesn’t get the chance to ask, because after that about five different things happen at once.
First, there’s a huge, abrupt jolt which almost knocks Jim over. His arms go windmilling backwards and he just barely manages to catch himself with his heel, Saurian brandy sloshing around unpleasantly in his belly and making the whole world go woobly in a way he finds extremely unpleasant. For a moment he's genuinely unsure whether the others actually felt it too.
That mystery, at least, is solved by the second thing that happens: the flashing lights and shrieking klaxon that signal a red alert.
All right, well, Jim may have voluntarily consented to pickle his internal organs in an attempt to console his best friend, and he may be faintly disgusting and dangerously flammable, but even three sheets to the wind he’s still a goddamn Starfleet captain. The tiny remaining corner of his liquified brain that's still somewhat lucid immediately barks the following commands in the following order - Bones, hypospray, turbolift, bridge - but he doesn't get any further than reaching for his comm before the third thing happens.
This one can’t even be fairly called a “jolt.” It’s a fucking earthquake, and the entire room suddenly, sickeningly, horribly, tilts sideways. Jim hits the deck on his knees and scrabbles to grab hold of the lip of the transport platform, which is the only thing that keeps him from tumbling through the air; but Keenser goes flying, Scotty leaps to catch him, and they both crash together on the floor. Spock’s impossible strength and catlike grace have failed him for perhaps the first and last time in his life, because he was mid-run when the impact hit, which means he had nothing to hold onto and he sails backwards too, slamming into the bulkhead.
Dimly, Jim is aware that the only reason Spock was running was to try to get to him, which isn't funny at all - in fact, it’s terrifying, because it means that however drunk Jim thinks Jim is, Spock must think Jim is even drunker than that, and he’d already gone past fond exasperation well into genuine alarm, verging on panic, well before the ship got hit by whatever the fuck the ship just got hit with - but for some reason he starts laughing and can't stop, even though his guts are roiling again. He tastes bile in his throat as he tries to stand up, so he can get off the platform, because Scotty said there was something wrong with the transporter, Jim suddenly remembers, that’s what he was telling Spock, it was important, Jim shouldn’t be standing here - even though nothing could really happen to him because no one’s at the transporter controls, they’re all staggering to their feet on the other side of the room.
Yeah, there is absolutely, definitely, positively nobody standing at the transporter controls. Which makes it awfully weird - weird enough that even an absolutely plastered Jim can put two and two together - when he starts to feel the telltale sensation of tingling at his extremities which he’s learned through extensive personal experience means either frostbite or a transporter.
Time's moving funny, suddenly. Jim looks up to see Spock moving towards him, hands outstretched, fear etched on his face, but it's like he's swimming upright through jello, and Jim can't tell if it's the booze playing tricks on him or if the whole world's gone crazy.
“Spock, I don’t think it’s frostbite!” he yells over the blare of the red alert, as the ship is rocked again and he tumbles to the floor - but it’s no use. By the time the words are out of his mouth, Spock's gone, and so is the Enterprise.
The last thing Jim remembers is to roll over onto his stomach so his vomit won’t choke him to death.
Then everything goes black.
#2: This Part Was Science’s Fault
* * * * *
When he finally comes to, with a head full of bees and no real sense of how much time has passed, he's relieved that it doesn't seem like he's thrown up all over himself. Which is good news, mostly, though it does mean he's still horrifically drunk. He rubs his glued-shut eyes as he mutters a few garbled obscenities, trying to put back together the fractured pieces of memory that are sloshing around in his head.
He's lying on a cold floor, which hums below him.
A transport platform. Right.
Jim's never stepped into the transporter with Saurian brandy in his bloodstream before, and now definitely knows not to do it again. In a more just universe, the pattern buffer would filter that shit out for you, and he would have woken up sober; maybe he can get Scotty on that. It seems like the kind of project he'd see the value in.
Wait.
Hang on.
The transporter.
Something was happening before the transporter. Something important, something he's supposed to remember. Something went wrong, and he’s not sure what (because, again; head full of bees). Not to mention that he's pretty sure he doesn't usually get into the transporter lying down, so that’s another question worth finding an answer to. It’s not exactly like it’s so much more comfortable down here, especially because his ass hurts, why does his ass hurt, why can’t he push through this boozy brain fog and think -
"Um. Sir?"
His train of thought is interrupted by a polite voice from up above him somewhere, followed by a tactful throat-clearing. The toe of a boot gives Jim's hip a light prod. "Can I, uh, help you, or -"
Jim tries to force his eyes open again in order to respond, but they really don't want to cooperate.
“Just gonna . . . lie here . . . for a sec,” he mumbles weakly.
"Cool. Yeah. Okay. That's - um - yeah. Cool.” Another cough, followed by an awkward pause. “Except, um, the thing is - you're not actually supposed to, like? Be here? Like I think there's been some kind of . . . a mistake?”
Now, Jim may be drunk, but he’s not so drunk that he can possibly believe the New Vulcan consulate would allow a diplomatic aide to talk like that. They barely tolerate contractions, even from humans; this level of palpable nervousness would probably get you court-martialed, at least if T’Pau had anything to do with it. Well, maybe if Jim managed to get stuck with a baby intern on their first day, they won’t have been fully briefed yet on the visiting dignitary dog-and-pony show. Maybe he can escape without having to pay a visit to the council chamber and stand there while ol’ girl silently judges him for crashing her planet with a bad case of the booze sweats, reeking of contraband liquor.
Jim manages to squeeze one eye open, wincing at the screechingly bright white light overhead, and sees, not an elegantly robed diplomatic aide, but an absolute teenager of a Starfleet cadet in some antique-ass-looking uniform blinking down at him with an expression of total confusion.
Jim uses his fingers to pry open his other eyelid (ignoring the way this causes the cadet to flinch backward, startled and a little bit horrified) in order to get a better look.
Okay, well, it’s for sure a transporter room. But it’s one he's never seen before.
“. . . the fuck am I?” he mumbles, trying valiantly to peel himself off the floor, but succeeding only in rolling over onto his side, dropping back down with a deeply undignified “oof.” Though at least now he’s facing the kid and can make a game attempt at polite eye contact.
For some reason, this inquiry seems to leave the cadet even more confused than Jim. “Uhhh, Deep Space Eight?” they reply, brow furrowed. “In orbit over Simon-316? Was that not . . . where you were trying to go? Is that how this happened?”
Okay. This is getting annoying. "There is no Deep Space Eight," he reminds the cadet, trying to sound patient, the effect somewhat marred by the fact that his tongue feels like it weighs about fifty pounds and keeps tangling his words up, "and we were in orbit over New Vulcan. Nobody calls it Simon-316 anymore, okay? It doesn't make you sound science-y, it makes you sound xenophobic.”
“New Vulcan?” the cadet repeats blankly, with a strange emphasis on the first word. But Jim's only half listening, still attempting to lever himself into some position more dignified than a belly flop. He attempts something like a push-up, but collapses immediately. Great. He reaches into his pocket for his comm, and is very surprised to find that it’s not there, though the more he thinks about it the more he seems to remember the feeling of it flying out of his hand as he fell on the platform.
Though he still can’t remember why.
"Listen, kid,” he says, as clearly as he can, “I'm in no state to argue with you. As you can probably tell. Neither of us want to be doing this right now. Just hail the Enterprise, okay? Get me back up there and Scotty can try it again.”
“The . . . the what?”
The kid’s staring at him now like Jim has grown a second head, and . . . look, okay, he does not want to be an asshole about this (his husband’s bitchy little zingers to the contrary), but no matter how much they seem to be playing fast and loose with uniform regulations out here on the undeveloped side of New Vulcan - which must be where he is; this is probably the complex that was under construction when they came out last year - that’s still Starfleet operations red, and he’s still, you know, James Tiberius Kirk, and it’s been at least ten years since he landed anyplace where there was a single uniform within a hundred-mile radius that didn’t recognize him on sight.
When he tells the story to everyone later, he decides, he’ll pretend the anonymity was refreshing (“celebrities just want to be treated like normal people sometimes, Uhura, you wouldn’t understand,” followed by swiftly dodging the inevitable punch in the arm); but at the moment he’s just irritated.
“All right, listen.” He sighs deeply, cursing Spock for depriving him of that hypospray (maybe it is all Spock’s fault) because now the headache is setting in. “I’m going to go very slowly, so we don’t get our wires crossed again. My name is Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise. I'm supposed to be getting silently judged by my father-in-law right now, but apparently I did not land at the central New Vulcan transport depot like I was supposed to. There are three ways out of this. I’ll let you pick. #1, you beam me to New Shikahr. #2, you beam me back up to my ship. #3, you call my ship and have them send my CMO Leonard McCoy down here, to wherever this is, and tell him to bring the hypospray. He’ll know which one.”
“Oooooooookay,” says the cadet uncertainly, who Jim can't help but notice doesn't exactly seem to be leaping to do any of those things. "Right. Yeah. So, um. I’m just gonna, uh, be right back. And you can just, like, lie there for a minute. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
Couldn't if I wanted to, Jim considers replying, but those last few sentences really took it out of him, and his head's starting to swim again. He offers the cadet a reassuring thumbs-up instead, which is met with a dubious expression before they turn and make their way out the door.
Watching them go, Jim gets his first real look at the full layout of the room, and he's not as far away from the console as he'd thought. If he can roll himself down from the platform, maybe he can crawl across the floor to the comms and hail Scotty himself.
Suddenly Jim freezes.
Scotty.
The transporter room. The red alert. Keenser flung through the air. Scotty charging after him. Spock’s eyes wide with panic, reaching for Jim, then falling backwards. The ship was hit. Three times, the middle one worst.
And no one was at the console.
Okay, well, the cadet looks about twelve years old, so maybe they weren’t exactly the mastermind behind what looks an awful lot like a kidnapping plot; but they’re sure as hell in on it.
“Deep Space Eight, my ass,” Jim mutters into the floor as he uses his elbows to drag his body off the platform and attempts an army crawl with two dead legs. Cursing himself for taking his comm out to call Bones - since it would still be safely in his pocket if he hadn’t - he swims his way across the floor with agonizing slowness, guts still churning (okay, that’s it, forever, he means it, he is never drinking Saurian brandy again), and he’s in the midst of congratulating himself on having reached the base of the console - which he’s holding onto for dear life with both arms, attempting to climb it like a tree in order to reach something resembling a vertical state, when -
“This is him?” comes a new voice from behind him. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”
This voice is decidedly older, gruff, with a hint of I am already so fucking over this that can’t help but rub Jim the wrong way. For the first time, it occurs to him to regret the fact that he is wearing his ritual First Day of Shore Leave outfit (specifically selected because it annoys Spock), consisting of a pair of extremely short white denim shorts which leave nothing to the imagination, and a truly retina-searing hot pink and purple Hawaiian shirt. Maybe the reason they don’t recognize him (again, not that he cares, not like it’s a thing, okay, Uhura, he doesn’t need public attention, it’s just weird and annoying not to have it in the rare situation where it would actually be useful) is because he’s wearing his most mortifyingly fruity civvies and not his uniform. If he actually looked like Captain James T. Kirk, they’d be addressing him with a little more respect.
Still, this has gone on for long enough, and he’s starting to get a little sick of it. “Actually, no, that’s not how this works,” he says, still a little too woozy to climb up the console and speak with any shred of dignity at the same time. “I’m assuming, based purely on vibes, that you are a security officer, which, you know, important gig, good for you, but that would put you at best in the commander range, so I still outrank you. I’m gonna have to ask you to come with me. Take me to whoever’s in charge at this outpost, and they can explain to the elders why I’m not in New Shikahr right now.”
The voice tries again, its veneer of politeness fading. “Sir, I said -”
“I heard what you said,” Jim cuts him off irritably, “but you guys dragged me here. Transporting an officer off his own ship without permission outside emergency situations is a violation of Starfleet regs, but I’m willing to let it go without pressing charges if you just get me back there in one piece so I can figure out what went wrong. And for fuck’s sake, can someone give me a hand off the floor? Jesus.”
A pair of rough hands clasp Jim below the armpits and haul him roughly to his feet, where he comes face to face with a beefy, red-faced security officer wearing a stony expression.
“Impersonating a Starfleet officer is also a violation of Federation law,” he informs Jim. “Tell me again what you told Lieutenant Crenshaw your name was.”
Jim whirls around, taking in the gawky youth. “That’s a lieutenant?” he exclaims. “Jesus, they get younger every year. This is an infant. Is this how Bones feels all the time? Oh God, am I finally turning into Bones?”
“Are you - are you turning into bones?” the security officer repeats, a look of stunned alarm in his eyes. “Sir, how much have you had to drink?”
“Oh, way too much," Jim concedes readily. "I feel like ass. Just get Scotty for me, will you?”
“Sir, your name, please.”
“Look, I can explain the outfit, it’s an inside joke, I’m technically on shore leave and it’s fun to embarrass my husband in front of his relatives but yes, I’m Captain James Kirk, USS Enterprise, and -”
There’s a telltale click behind him, and Jim’s cuffed before he even realizes it’s happened.
“The Enterprise isn’t scheduled to arrive at Deep Space Eight until tomorrow,” says the security officer coldly, before Jim can respond with anything more than a stunned what the fuck at the sheer audacity of this. “And her captain is Christopher Pike. A great man and a hero, who doesn’t deserve to be insulted this way. And Lieutenant James T. Kirk, of the USS Farragut - who you look nothing like, by the way, nice try - beamed off the station just a few moments before you beamed onto it. I don’t know who you are, where you came from, or what you want; but not one word of your bullshit story holds together.”
Jim is attempting to make sense of this absolutely incomprehensible sentence, but is struck speechless by the gut punch of Pike’s name, so his mouth just flaps open and closed like a fish with no sound coming out. Which is good, actually, because it means he’s paying attention when the next thing happens, and the truth clicks into place.
“Station, this is the Farragut,” chirps a faintly impatient female voice from the transporter console. “We were cleared for departure seven minutes ago. Please advise on status. We’re ready to receive Lieutenant Kirk on your signal.”
Everyone looks at everyone else in silence for a long moment, like they’re all trying to figure out whose fault this is.
Baby Lieutenant Crenshaw, whose face expresses clearly that they have already figured out they are the most likely culprit, zooms over to the console and hits the comm. “Uhhhhh, Farragut, this is?? Deep Space Eight???? Lieutenant Kirk was transported aboard your ship, ummmm, 5.2 minutes ago?”
"Negative. Lieutenant Kirk has not arrived. We can’t find his signal on our end. Are you telling me you don’t have him?”
Crenshaw looks around the room helplessly, like they’re hoping the answer to this question will suddenly become anything other than “we one hundred percent do not have him” through the sheer power of wishing. It doesn’t work.
The grumpy security guy stomps over, elbowing Crenshaw out of the way, and taps at the controls impatiently for several minutes. Jim watches with great interest, already pretty damn sure exactly how this is going to play out, but very curious to see how the big guy takes it.
The answer is: not well.
“Farragut, confirmed, we do not have Kirk’s signal. Repeat: Deep Space Eight does not have Kirk’s signal. There is no trace of him in the pattern buffer.”
Jim bursts out laughing, and can’t stop.
“Sorry, sorry,” he says, wiping tears from his eyes as the furious security guy hastily mutes the comm so that poor confused engineer doesn’t hear a total stranger cackling at her mysterious disappearing lieutenant. “It’s just that now I finally know how the old guy felt. I always wondered. Jesus, the irony. I wonder if that Kirk is his Kirk? Or if this is, like, a third place. Christ, how many of me are there, do you think?”
Crenshaw blinks stupidly at Jim. "The old guy?"
“Even though the whole thing about the universe imploding if they were ever in the same place together was obviously horseshit,” Jim goes on, ignoring the interruption. “He thought he was so fucking funny for that. They both did, actually. God, this would have made him laugh. Anyway, your Jim Kirk's not on his own ship. But there is an outside chance he's on my ship. Any unexplained tachyon signatures in the area recently?"
"I am not aware of any -”
“You'll want to check again. There will be.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I swear to God, if the VSA was fucking around with the last of the red matter and that’s how this happened, I don’t care whose son-in-law I am, I will be punching some Vulcans, and he can just deal. ‘Under lock and key,’ they said. ‘Simply as a matter of scientific interest,’ they said. ‘Contained in an inert suspended state.’ Okay, well, then what slammed into my ship three times and dragged me through another goddamn portal in my vacation clothes without so much as -”
He halts midsentence, suddenly aware that the baby lieutenant is basically recapping his words into the comm, like a simultaneous transcriptionist who’s also offering a somewhat judgmental commentary track. “ . . . and I don’t know what any of it means,” they stammer in a low voice, throwing a nervous glance back over their shoulder at Jim, “except something about tachyons, and punching Vulcans. And that Kirk’s on his ship.”
This last remark is met with a fraught pause.
“Deep Space Eight, please confirm last transmission,” says the woman on the comm in an extremely terse voice. “Let me get this straight. You are currently holding a suspect in custody who impersonated Lieutenant Kirk, and then admitted to kidnapping him?”
“Well, that escalated quickly,” Jim mutters, desperately attempting to push back the rising headache beginning to emerge in every part of his skull simultaneously, and praying he can convince this woman he’s sober. He elbows his way past Crenshaw to stick his head over the console before either officer can protest. “Farragut, this is Captain James Kirk, long story, you don’t know me, and no, I didn’t do either of those things, but it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to explain this to your science officer first. Who've you got that knows tachyon singularities?”
This, it seems, is the last straw.
“You don’t get to just summon Starfleet personnel to answer to your whims,” says the security officer angrily, grabbing Jim by the wrist cuffs and yanking him away with surprising force. "Even if you were a captain, as you claim to be, you aren’t in uniform -”
“I was supposed to be on shore leave, I already told you that.”
“And you have no identification on your person -”
“To visit my father-in-law? Trust me, buddy. He does not need help identifying me. Besides, all my shit was in my suitcase.”
“Which is where?”
“You tell me! You’re the ones who beamed me here! My ship was getting tossed around, there was a red alert, some kind of singularity opened just enough for two transport signatures to get scrambled up, and then I woke up here! It’s not like I had time to collect my luggage in an orderly fashion before you guys whisked me into an alternate universe, did I?”
“Into a what?” the security officer repeats, eyes widening. Jim sighs deeply, bracing himself to do the whole song and dance from the very beginning, about the red matter and the Jellyfish and the Narada and the Kelvin and the other Spock and how all this shit went down the last time; but he doesn’t get a chance.
A dull thump from behind him draws their attention before Jim can even open his mouth, and both men turn as one to see Lieutenant Crenshaw lying on the floor.
“Did they literally faint?” Jim demands, oddly fascinated. “That’s a thing? People actually do that in real life?”
The security officer doesn’t seem to think it's that interesting, and has turned his attention back to Jim. “You’re coming with me,” he growls, seizing Jim’s elbow.
“Like actual, for-real, fainting.” He can’t let this go. “I mean I’ve blacked out, that’s different, but I’ve never fainted. Just, like . . . one minute, standing up, next minute, floor. Like they do in books. That was wild. That was the wildest thing I’ve seen today. And I just got yanked through a tachyon singularity, so, you know. Bar’s pretty high.”
“Better if it’d been you than Crenshaw,” says the security officer unsympathetically. “Maybe you’d be more inclined to talk sense after a few hours unconscious, once the Saurian brandy’s out of your system.”
“Yikes.” Jim winces. “Okay, if you can, like, identify it on me, the smell must be pretty bad.”
“I’m burning this uniform when I get home,” the man says matter-of-factly, giving Jim’s arm a tug. “Now, less talking, more walking.”
Jim agreeably permits himself to be dragged out of the room, noting with professional approval that Security Officer Grumpypants follows standard protocol for transporter malfunctions - sealing the room, stationing another officer at the door, alerting both Engineering and Operations - and even calls a medic to come check on poor baby Crenshaw, which Jim has to admit makes him like the guy a little better.
He's also extremely strong. Which is good, because the brain fog may be fading, but if Jim had begun to hope he might be sobering up, he's tragically mistaken. His feet seem to keep bumping into each other, which really is not supposed to happen while you're walking, and he can hardly make it more than a few steps at a time without needing to be hauled back upright.
But the fact that the guy hasn't let him fall on his face seems like something of an olive branch, so Jim attempts to extend his own. “There is no Deep Space Eight where I come from,” he says as they walk, trying to make conversation. “They only go up to five.”
“Uh-huh,” Grumpypants mumbles noncommittally, clearly reluctant to engage his drunk, crazy prisoner in conversation any further.
Jim steels himself for a second attempt.
“I was on my way to visit my husband’s family,” he tries again. “It’s possible that there was an experiment of some kind going on down on the planet’s surface, something to do with tachyon radiation. If the Vulcan Science Academy was doing some high-level shit they didn't disclose, and it went wrong, that might explain all of it. If I could just talk to someone who knows anything about tachyon radiation, quantum singularities, anything in that area, whoever’s the best you’ve got on this station, I could -”
“I’m not letting you talk to anyone else until we figure out who you are.”
"Well, I told you who I was."
"Unverifiable."
"I'm sure. For reasons I'd love to explain to any scientist you can find me. Ideally, if you’ve got any kicking around, a Vulcan.”
“Whether you get to talk to anyone is gonna depend a lot on whether we can figure out who you are, and whether or not you’re a threat. But if you decide to cooperate, well, it’s lucky you seem to like Vulcans, because you can have your pick. There are hundreds on the station this week, and more on the way. Big conference or something.”
Jim inhales deeply, desperately summoning the courage to poke at the only spot more tender than the sound of Captain Christopher Pike had been, and ask the question he's been terrified to ask. “Are they all, uh.” He clears his throat awkwardly. “Are they. From Vulcan. From . . . from the planet Vulcan.”
The security officer turns to stare at him blankly. “Are they from Vulcan? You’re asking me if Vulcans come from the planet Vulcan? Good God, man. This is why I don’t drink. Yes, you lunatic, it’s the name of both the people and the planet. At least now we know for sure you’re not a real Starfleet captain. And hey, if you like that one, wait ‘til you hear what planet Cardassians come from. And Romulans. And Trill.”
Jim can’t even bring himself to mind that he’s being openly mocked by a guy who now thinks he’s too stupid to fly a starship, that’s how relieved he is to learn that the Vulcan homeworld is safe. Nero didn’t make it here. These Vulcans are okay. He still doesn’t know if he’s in Ambassador Spock’s own past, or someplace completely different, but at least now he can breathe a little easier.
Now he feels a little bad for being so hard on Crenshaw. No wonder they were confused by Jim talking about New Vulcan, when the original one is still standing.
There’s a part of him that longs to see it, so he can share it with Spock when he gets home . . . and another part of him that wonders whether that would make anything better, or whether it would be worse.
“Is it a science conference, by any chance?” he inquires, returning to the present.
“I don’t know,” the officer shrugs, as he pushes Jim into a turbolift and steps in behind him. “I didn’t ask. Maybe.”
“Listen,” Jim says firmly. “You know about mind melds, right?”
“Well, I know more than you do, clearly, since I’ve actually heard of Vulcan, so -”
“Yes. Very funny. You should do stand-up. Listen to me. I need you to send a note to whoever is in charge of this conference. I need them to send a Vulcan down to the brig - I assume you’re taking me to the brig, that sort of seems like the way this relationship is going - who is willing to perform a meld with a human and has expertise in anything related to the scientific fields I’ve been trying to tell you about. They’ll know what I’m saying is true, and evidence collected in a mind meld is admissible in any Federation court. If a Vulcan reads my mind and tells you I’m Captain James T. Kirk from an alternate universe, that counts as legally-binding identification.”
Grumpypants pushes him out of the turbolift with a noncommittal sound that Jim hopes is closer to “we’ll see” than “fat chance,” though he can’t really tell, and there’s no time to ask before he’s shoved into a cell and a forcefield hums closed behind him.
“Enjoy your night in the drunk tank, Captain,” says Grumpypants, in a snide voice that would totally get him court-martialed if Spock was here to hear it, and then he’s gone.
Silently cursing - in the following order - Spock’s experiment, Bones’ liquor cabinet, Uhura’s Vulcan girl crush, Joanna's commencement ceremony planning committee, his own idiocy, transporter technology, red matter, the VSA, Grumpypants, and the fact that he didn’t eat something before he started drinking, Jim decides that his best course of action at present is to immediately lay down on the narrow bunk, close his eyes, and hope to God that this all turns out to be a weird, shitty dream.
He curls up in the fetal position, belches twice, recoils from the horrific alcoholic stench of his own breath, attempts to fan it away from him with dubious success, and finally falls asleep.
#3. Yeah, Okay, Fine, This Part Was Jim's Fault
* * * * *
He’s not drunk anymore when he wakes up again; but that’s the only good news.
To call what he is currently experiencing a “hangover” is an insult to every hangover in the history of fermented liquor and human misery. It is so far beyond the furthest outskirts of where James T. Kirk has ever imagined a hangover could extend that it deserves a new name to truly do it justice.
He remains sprawled on the narrow bunk for several minutes, the heels of his hands pressed into his eye sockets in a fruitless attempt to do something about the sensation of a hundred tiny nails being driven into his skull from all directions, before he realizes that someone is talking.
“You asked for a Vulcan with science expertise who was willing to meld with a human,” he hears Grumpypants say, his voice weirdly muffled, like he’s talking to Jim from underwater. “You’re in luck. I found one.”
Jim, who hadn’t actually been sure the guy was listening to him, let alone even remotely willing to help, sits bolt upright at this, then immediately regrets it. There’s nothing in his digestive system anymore - he did wake up to piss like four times during the night, which presumably helped, though he’s very glad they turned off the lights at night so he couldn’t see what color it was - but somehow his guts are churning anyway. He leans forward for a moment, eyes still closed, and tries to breathe the nausea back down.
“Somehow, you look even worse today,” says Grumpypants, with a decided lack of sympathy. “Come on. Up. They’re waiting for you down the hall. I’ve got a yeoman on the way to bring them some Vulcan spice tea, and if you don’t vomit on me between there and here, I might be nice and let you have a cup too.”
“Deal,” says Jim, with totally unwarranted confidence, and lurches to his feet.
In the end, it is a very, very, very close call.
The brig has a private interrogation room, down a short hallway just outside the ring of cells that flank the guard station. It’s a walk of, at worst, maybe two minutes. Jim has to stop four times, including once with the door actually in sight. His eyes sting with tears from the too-bright lights, his stomach is roiling, his skull is full of bees again, but this time the bees have hammers and nails, and the fact that he hasn’t simply laid down on the floor and prayed for the sweet release of death feels like an act of frankly heroic courage he ought to be congratulated for. (Except he won’t be, because when he tells this to Spock later, Spock will sensibly point out that this was the inevitable result of drinking that much Saurian brandy, and Spock will be right.)
But all of that is necessary as a prelude to what happens next, which is - and Jim means this sincerely - the single worst moment of his entire life; even though at the moment he isn’t thinking about anything except the fact that some blends of Vulcan spice tea are caffeinated, and the ginger-like root which gives it that bitter kick, disgusting though it may be, has pretty significant anti-nausea properties. He really, really, really wants that tea, which means every single cell in his body is focused right now - with the kind of ruthless singlemindedness that made him the youngest captain in Starfleet history - towards the goal of not barfing on this guy’s shoes.
So that’s the reason, and he stands by it. He cannot be blamed for this, okay, it just happened, sometimes things just happen, it would be completely unfair to fault him for the fact that he shambles into that interrogation room halfway hunched over, shaking his head to get the bees out, completely not looking where he’s going, until his forward motion is violently arrested by a headfirst collision with something bouncy and soft, followed by a series of small, shocked noises from all around the room which are the first indicator that something has gone horribly amiss.
Jim opens his eyes to see darkness, and slowly realizes that it’s not because he’s suddenly been struck blind by a hangover. It’s because his head is buried in something.
And, okay, yes, well, it’s been awhile, but his head has definitely been buried in such things before, so he gets there pretty quickly.
Jim recoils in violent horror, backing up so fast he collides with the wall and stumbles into it, totally unable to make eye contact with the - and there really is no other way of saying this - absolute MILF standing in front of him, whose frankly incredible breasts he has just inadvertently headbutted. She’s probably in her late forties or early fifties and absurdly gorgeous; petite, very curvy, with long dark hair in a loose braid draped over her shoulder. The plum-colored velvet gown she wears is cut with a low scoop neck, from which her very impressive cleavage emerges (the cleavage which, again, and one really cannot get away from this point, Jim has just unwittingly rammed with his head). There's something in her brown eyes that Jim finds oddly familiar, and he wonders if there’s a version of her in his own world, if he’s met her before. She certainly doesn’t seem to recognize him, though maybe that’s a good thing. He hopes, for the other Jim’s sake, that he and she never cross paths. He really isn’t trying to make trouble for the guy.
He decides to try dusting off the old James Kirk charm and pray to God it’s not too late to fix this.
A feat that might be easier, he realizes, if he looked her in the eye and stopped staring.
But they’re just.
Like.
Sorry, but they’re right there.
The thing about Jim, see, is that Jim is bisexual. And being bisexual - as he was patiently forced to explain to Winona again and again through his chaotic adolescence - is not exactly the same as being “sometimes gay and sometimes straight,” as she appeared to understand it. She’d noticed quite early on that Jim’s crushes seemed to operate on a kind of pendulum, in phases - sometimes interested in only girls, sometimes in only boys. He’d argued with her about this for years, often quite heatedly, but her point wasn’t a totally unreasonable one; he did sort of swing back and forth at times, and he didn’t quite know why. In Riverside it had been men, mostly, and older ones when he could find them - which for one brief depressing moment had been what he’d thought Christopher Pike wanted from him, before he’d had a chance to explain himself. But then at the Academy he had been absolutely drowning in pussy, couldn’t get enough of it, and he’d never found a guy that turned his head. Until the day Bones discharged him from the hospital after Khan’s blood saved his life, and Spock drove Jim back to his San Francisco apartment, helped him up the stairs, opened the door, sat him down on the sofa, and scared him absolutely shitless with a speech that included words like “ashayam” and “t’hy’la” and “bondmate” and, over and over again, “love.” Spock went to Jim’s bed that night for the first time, and has remained there ever since, keeping him so well-satisfied that he’s nearly forgotten what it used to feel like to bury his face in a truly world-class pair of boobs like that. He’s not tempted, not at all, and he’s not even really attracted; it’s more like . . . nostalgia. A bossy MILF in a velvet gown with a rack like that, glaring at him like he’s been a bad boy and she wants to spank him? Twenty-year-old Jim would have hit that without thinking twice. He wouldn’t even care if she was married. He’d made that questionable life choice before, more than once.
Present Jim, however, is far more concerned about getting back to his husband, which requires the assistance of a Vulcan, which . . .
. . . this isn’t.
The braid over her shoulder conceals one ear, but as she turns her head toward the door, where a yeoman is entering with a tray of spice tea, the other one comes into view, and it’s perfectly rounded, just like his.
A Vulcan who was willing to meld with a human.
Jim turns around very, very slowly, to take in the rest of the room. There, in the center, at a small white circular table, sits a male Vulcan with dark, gray-flecked hair, black robes, and an absolutely murderous expression on his chiseled face.
He turns to Grumpypants. “You win,” he says. “No tea. I’m gonna -”
“No, you’re not.”
“No, you don’t understand, I’m - oh fuck -” He doubles over, an entirely new source of nausea and horror bubbling up from inside him.
“He appears quite unwell,” he hears a female voice say. “It will be impossible to help him in this condition. Can you do something?”
A male voice he doesn’t recognize - it’s definitely not Grumpypants - answers unintelligibly, and then he senses movement somewhere nearby.
“Mr. Kirk, I would like to offer my assistance,” says the voice, closer now, and much more clear. “I may be able to ease your . . . symptoms. It will require a brief, non-invasive touch. Your left wrist should be sufficient. Is this acceptable?”
Jim, still doubled over, right hand braced on his knee as he attempts to hyperventilate his way out of puking - something which never works, yet somehow he always tries it - holds the other one out with alacrity. He feels the cool press of fingertips against his pulse, and then . . .
“Oh, son of a bitch,” he exhales gratefully, slumping back against the wall in sheer, overwhelmed relief, as the nausea, headache and general sense of Feeling Like Absolute Shit are drained away, leaving him a little spent, and suddenly ravenously hungry, but finally returned to his ordinary self for the first time since he sat down in Sickbay with Bones.
“Are you sufficiently recovered, so we may proceed?” the voice inquires.
Jim snorts with laughter. “It is a little ironic - you’ll see, once you get in and dig around in there - that technically, this whole situation only came about because I was trying to avoid spending an awkward hour hanging out with you. Or, not you -you. Other you. My you.” He scrubs his hands over his face. “I just motorboated my mother-in-law,” he laments, a remark which causes Grumpypants to choke violently and spit Vulcan spice tea all over the floor. “I’m never going to live this down.”
“Mother-in-law?”
Jim looks up at her, amused by the look of open shock on her face. “It’s hard to imagine a worse first impression,” he concedes. “But in another universe, on the other side of the tachyon singularity that brought me here - I’m t’hy’la to Spock. We’ve been bonded for six years.” He grins at her. “It’s nice to meet you properly, Amanda. Mortifying - for me, at least - but nice.”
He turns to Grumpypants, who is standing in front of the door, tea in hand, watching the whole scene play out like he might very well be the next one to pull a Crenshaw and faint dead away on the floor. “I didn’t throw up on you,” Jim points out. “Can I have some tea now, please?”