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Hikaru Sulu cannot, for the life of him, figure out why, and on what planet Captain Kirk would ever have agreed to this.
As if it weren’t enough that they barely know each other, that they’ve hardly made eye contact since the Enterprise made it back to earth, the very idea that his own mother would have the audacity to invite Kirk to their house in Tahoe and that Kirk - in his infinitely incomprehensible cocky weirdness- would even accept it... It makes him want to throw things. It’s like the universe conspired not only to unalign everyone’s fates, but to play special nasty tricks on Hikaru in particular.
It doesn’t make sense, it will never make sense, and every time he has to look at Kirk, smiling as he helps to load the family SUV, he feels like he could punch everyone forever.
“Let me get that for you, Mrs. Sulu,” Kirk flashes Hikaru’s mother an even more advanced version of his current grin as he takes her suitcase from her, and Hikaru is a bit relieved to hear his older sister Kirana make a kind of scoffing sound behind him.
“Good to know you’re not thrilled by this weirdo display either,” he mutters to her, and she just flips her hair over her shoulders, eyelids low and gaze bored.
“At least I’m not the one who has to ride with him in daddy’s car.”
“Wait, what?”
“Well we’re not all going to fit in the Toyota, are we? Obviously we need to take another car. Oh, I call dibs on riding with mom and dad!” And now she’s grinning, that unpleasant ‘fuck you I’m older suck it up little bro’ look that she’s perfected since she was 16 (nearly ten years ago, she’s had a lot of practice). “Have a good drive.”
Hikaru is still sorting out how any of this could have happened -maybe they really were sucked through the black hole, that’s the only explanation- when Kirk walks over and and dangles some car keys in front of Hikaru’s face.
“So I know this is kind of not right since you’re the pilot, but I just saw your dad’s car, mind if I drive?”
Hikaru has never been known to get carsick. He has a feeling today might be the first time.
-
Apparently it had been a very long time since Kirk drove any sort of manual car, and it made Hikaru want to pull out all his teeth every time he ground the gears of the black BMW convertible, but because Kirk is irritatingly good at everything somehow, he soon has the car humming pleasantly along the highway.
Or you know, it would be, except that the top is down, and his little sister Akiko demanded to ride with Captain Kirk and called shotgun, so Hikaru is mostly listening to the roar of the wind and the snatches of shouted conversation that get carried back to him.
“...’KARU....DRILL....OME?”
“YEAH, I...CRAZY...MULANS...FACE!”
It only takes three and a half hours to get to Lake Tahoe, but it seems that this ride is going to last nothing short of three years.
Kirk looks back at him and smiles, sunglasses flashing, and Hikaru shouts, “WATCH THE DAMN ROAD!”
“BACKSEAT PILOT!” Kirk yells back with a laugh, and Hikaru wonders if it’s vehicular homicide or just regular homicide if you kill someone in a moving car.
“...YET?” He hears.
“WHAT?”
“YOU...YET?”
“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”
“..FUN YET?”
“OH YEAH. OH YEAH.”
Akiko turns around in the seat and gives him her own special look, a kind of god what is wrong with you could you be anymore of a downer? gaze from behind big D&G sunglasses that she’s been perfecting since she was 16 (only last year, but damn it’s a fierce look). Hikaru makes a face back at her and folds his arms across his chest, slouching down just far enough that the wind is making miniature disasters of his already too-fluffy black hair, but it’s out of his face.
He pulls out his comm and checks the messages, finding one from Chekov - they traded numbers at the post-Narada wake/graduation/Kirk-captaining ceremonial gala (and it was somewhat awkward that they were all the same thing, but situations being as they were, no one was going to mention it), the same event where Hikaru’s mother went crazy and his future potential captain apparently went crazier.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Is is true that the captain really joined your family on vacation??
Hikaru sighs; it’s easily lost in the wind.
New text: HSulu
>>Yeah. He’s driving my father’s car right now.
Akiko turns on the radio, and of course he can barely hear it.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>That is insane. Not that you’re not perfectly nice but why would the captain have ever agreed to that? Doesn’t he go everywhere with Dr. McCoy?
Hikaru blinks - he’d been wondering the exact same thing, how scary of Chekov to be so...spontaneously psychic or something. He narrows his eyes at the back of Jim’s headrest, then types back.
New text: HSulu
>>I have no idea. I’m gonna find out sooner or later, though. Cuz this is fucking nuts.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Bet he tries to get on one of your sisters.
New text: HSulu
>>OMG EW NO BET NO BET
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Come on. $20.
New text: HSulu
>>Go do whatever sex act was invented in Russia on yourself.
Hikaru shuts the comm and closes his eyes. Maybe he can just sleep the rest of the way, and then the rest of the weekend, until this trip through the looking glass is over.
Kirk and Akiko have apparently hit it off and are singing along to the radio together. Hikaru wishes that he’d thought to take up drinking before they left the house.
-
The Sulu family house in Lake Tahoe was built by Hikaru’s great grandfather, and is now jointly owned by his father, George, and his three brothers. While not all of said brothers get along, the house has been nicely maintained, and they have always been reasonable about allotting time for each family to spend up to several weeks there each year.
Hikaru loved to lie on the back porch for hours, staring between the redwoods, out across the lake to the mountains, and if he was lucky, beyond that still to the stars. Now that he’s been to the stars at last, and even further, the house seems kind of small and trite.
Kirk whistles, though, when he sees it, and whistles again once he has a glimpse of the view as he (far too chivalrously) hauls the bags in.
“Damn, that is something. Never got much scenery like this at home.”
“Where did you grow up again, James?” Hikaru’s mother is already taking stock of what they’ll need for kitchen in the coming week.
“Iowa, ma’am. And please, call me Jim.”
“Iowa isn’t known for its mountains, is it?” She smiles across the counter, “And it’s Hana, dear.”
Hikaru can’t believe he’s watching this scene -it’s unreal, the plasticky politeness slathered all over every word, and while that may be a necessary and admirable quality in a starship captain, he bristles to hear it used toward his own mother in their own (well, partly their own) house.
“Hikaru, why don’t you show Jim where you’ll be staying?”
He balks.
“What?”
“Well of course you’ll be sharing a room, dear, you didn’t think I was going to let him share with Akiko, did you?”
Akiko blushes, but makes a flirty little wave at Jim.
“Oh I don’t mind, mama...I’m happy to room with Captain Kirk.”
“Yeah, let her.” Kirana has already parked herself on a couch with the most recent issue of Fortune 500 pulled up on her PADD. “She snores and kicks in her sleep anyway.”
“No seventeen year old daughter of mine is sharing a bed with a man under my roof,” George Sulu offers his two cents as he walks past to the master bedroom, and Kirk looks at Akiko with a shrug.
“Maybe next time. Or when you’re older.”
“Can I get that in writing?” Akiko just about leers.
“Can I get a drink if I have to keep watching this charade?” Kirana raises her hand.
“Amen to that,” Hikaru breathes, and glances away when Kirk looks at him. “Come on, sir. Captain. Whatever. This way.”
And he motions Kirk after him down the hall. They don’t talk as they set their things in opposite corners of the room, they don’t mention the one bed, and they keep not talking until Hana sends them out to buy groceries, and Hikaru finally gets a chance to drive.
-
“So did you plan on ignoring me for the whole trip or just until I said something.”
It’s a good twenty minutes into the drive, the top is up, and Hikaru is so lost in the mountain roads and his own head that he starts a little.
“Huh?”
“I mean, maybe I’m not supposed to say anything, but you’re kind of acting like a dick.”
“Dude, this is how I normally act.” Hikaru pushes his sunglasses up and downshifts as they pass through a tunnel of trees and mentally steels himself against whatever is about to happen.
“That’s a bummer.”
“You’d’ve figured it out sooner or later.” Especially if we ever work together again, he thinks, which is probably less than likely after this week.
“It’s too bad, though, because like...I thought it might be cool to get a drink with you sometime, but I guess if you’re just a chronic douchebag...”
Hikaru narrows his eyes at the road and realizes what the sound in the lower register of Kirk’s voice is - faint amusement, like he’s trying to hold in a smirk or even a laugh.
“Did you want to get a drink with me before or after my mother invited you to leech on her hospitality for a week? Because as far as I’m aware, we haven’t really spoken since we got off the ship.”
Kirk shrugs and looks out the window.
“You’re a hard man to find and I was kind of a little busy. I think we all were. And it’s not like this is the only invitation of profound gratitude I got. If I’d known it was going to be so hard on you, I might’ve accepted a different offer.”
Hikaru eyes the trees and wishes for Chekov to calculate the velocity and the angle at which he’d need to hit one of the trees to kill both of them instantly. Instead, he finds an emergency stop and pulls over, throwing the car into park.
“So? Why did you come?”
Kirk looks at him, all trace of snide pleasure gone.
“If you really didn’t want me to come, you should have said something before.” He raises an eyebrow. “Or did you feel like you owed me?”
“Fu...I don’t owe you anything, we’re all clear on the frickin’...we’ve saved each other’s asses an equal number of times, we’re even!”
And Hikaru is horrified to feel himself blushing under Kirk’s gaze - it’s not the eyes (everyone always raves about the eyes) but the darkness in his pupils, like space focusing directly on him, twin black holes that he really won’t escape this time.
They’re at a kind of stalemate and it surprises him that Kirk turns away first.
“Look, if it’s this much of a problem for you, I’ll find a reason to leave in the morning. Okay? I just.. let me at least make nice for a little while longer. I didn’t mean to harsh your vacation.”
Hikaru just kind of stares at his neck and doesn’t know what to say - conciliation in the face of his awful attitude is the last thing he expected, and now he feels oddly guilty. He opens his mouth-
“I hope we can still work together after this. I was going to ask you to be my pilot.”
-and the sound dies. Because that’s not fair. That’s not fair at all, for Kirk to spring that on him when he was already starting to feel like such a piece of fuck, like such a dire asshole, to offer him what he wants the most when he’s at his worst.
“I...wuh...”
“You don’t have to answer now. Look your mom is gonna worry, let’s just get to the store and get back for dinner, okay?”
Shamed into silence, Hikaru presses down on the clutch and on his pride, and pulls back onto the road.
-
If they’re acting differently when they get back, no one mentions anything. The groceries are carried in and Hana immediately shoos them out of the kitchen so she can make dinner. Kirana hasn’t moved from the couch, and Akiko and George are out the deck together.
Kirk and Hikaru kind of look at each other awkwardly, then Kirk says, almost shyly, “You mind if I lie down on the bed until dinner? I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
“Sure, of course,” Hikaru has felt somewhere between numb and subdued since the drive, and it’s pretty annoying and confusing. Better for both of them if they don’t interact for a while. Hikaru occupies himself by not thinking about anything except the silverware as he plays good son and sets the table, and helps his mother carry dinner out before summoning everyone.
Kirk sits down next to him and pointedly doesn’t look at him, but no one seems to notice because the fact is that Hana is an excellent cook, Akiko and Kirana are both perfectly loquacious, and conversation continues whether or not either of them says anything. Which is a bit odd, honestly, and Hikaru isn’t sure if he should feel bad or relieved that Kirk hasn’t spoken up and gently rebuffs any questions about himself and turns them around so that the inquirer has more to say in the end.
Hikaru is absently twirling the last of his linguine and thinking about asking his father to pass him the bowl when he realizes that Kirk hasn’t actually touched his greek pasta with shrimp at all. He’s eaten some of the bread, but...
Kirana apparently notices at the same time.
“Mr. Kirk, is there something wrong with your dinner?” Kirana has never been one for subtlety. Or niceness for that matter.
Kirk -freakishly- looks slightly abashed.
“No, it looks great. I uh...I’m just allergic to shellfish.”
“Oh my goodness!” Hana’s fork hits her plate with a jarring clatter. “Jim I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think to ask-”
“Dude,” it rolls out before Hikaru can help it- “Why didn’t you tell me at the store?!”
Kirk shrugs and seems uncharacteristically meek and subdued.
“I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
“Jim, it wouldn’t have been an inconvenience at all! Please tell me what I can make you in it’s place, we can’t have you starving!”
“Yeah, see, it’s so much less of an inconvenience to make my mother do extra cooking-Akiko, I know that’s you kicking me!”
“Stop being such a bitch to our guest!”
“Akiko,” George speaks up, “That language is not appropriate at the table!”
It might be Hikaru’s twisted imagination, but Kirk seems to be turning red.
“I really didn’t mean to cause trouble, I just forgot to tell you. I’m not even that hungry, I-”
“It’s really no trouble, Jim! We’re all in your debt, it’s my pleasure!” Hana pushes her chair back. “Now what would you like?”
Hikaru tops off his glass of wine as Hana gets out a cookbook and sets it in front of a stammering Kirk, Akiko and Kirana engage in petty torments of each other, and George shakes his head and gives himself more pasta. But the truth is that aside from Kirk, dinner is like this a lot of the time in the Sulu household. It’s comfortingly familiar even while astoundingly awkward. Kirk changes everything and nothing at the same time.
-
Kirk spends a lot of time after dinner standing out on the deck, and Hikaru chooses not to join him until both his sisters -who have stopped fighting and allied with one another once again in that super obnoxious way they always do- force him to go and make nice or at least passable.
Hikaru is a little buzzed, he admits it, and the beer in his hand isn’t really helping. There’s apparently another one in his other hand, and it must be for Kirk - Kirana must have given it to him, clever bitch. He tries to be steady as he joins Kirk against the railing.
“Here, uh...brought you this.”
“...No offense, but I think that one’s yours.”
Hikaru blinks at the already open, half-drunk bottle.
“Oh. Whoops. Yeah. I meant this one.” He offers Kirk the correct bottle this time, and receives a limp half smile in return.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Sure. None at all.”
Kirk looks at the bottle and for a moment Hikaru feels even more stupid - it needs an opener, which he brilliantly left inside- but then Kirk lifts up his shirt and uses his fucking belt buckle to pry the cap off and Hikaru isn’t feeling stupid, he’s feeling kind of turned on. And that's just it’s own fucking bucket of worms.
“Dude.” He offers helpfully.
Kirk looks at him sideways as he takes a swig, and then offers the other half of the smile.
“The things you can teach yourself when you have nothing better to do, huh?”
“I guess so,” Hikaru tears away eyes that were inexplicably starey and looks out at the lake.
The silence is palpable and obnoxious. He wonders if he should break it or if Kirk will take the initiative again. He feels more ungrounded about the situation than ever, and while that probably has something to do with his boozled state, the flash of Jim’s stomach and the movements of his hands are unsettling things on a whole new level.
“So dinner with my family, huh.” He tries to laugh, decides to snort derisively halfway through, and ends up with a kind of bizarre horking noise.
Kirk doesn’t look at him.
“I thought it was nice.”
Now the laughing gets mixed up in coughing and why can’t Hikaru actually make functional sounds?
“You’re kidding right?”
Kirk shrugs.
“Not really. It’s nice to see someone’s family like...being together. Being real and functional.”
“Functional isn’t the word I’d use.”
Kirk gives him a look between sour and sad, and Hikaru immediately puts the bottle back in his mouth so he can stop saying what is apparently the stupidest shit ever.
Except he can’t shut up or something. Not talking is just as weird. He should apologize or clarify or say something.
“Mmrrgh.” Hikaru says around the bottle.
Kirk seems satisfied with this response and dangles the bottle over the railing.
“You can say what you want, and you can fight and bitch at each other, but you all obviously really love each other. I haven’t...I don’t see that much. It’s nice.”
A cool night breeze brushes over both of them, and for a moment Kirk looks like a little boy, lost and alone and out of place. It’s never occurred to Hikaru that Kirk could be any of those things - he’s never seen him without some kind of entourage, even it if was just Dr. McCoy. He’s the most immediately confident and belonging-seeming person Hikaru has ever met.
He doesn’t know what to say.
“I...”
“Look I know you want me gone, and I’ll go in the morning. It’s clearly been a pain for you and I don’t want to put your mom out anymore, that was pretty embarassing. But thanks for letting me have dinner with you. It meant something to me, even if it’s just standard operating for you.”
His stomach shifts. His head shifts. His heart seems to shift too and Hikaru sets his bottle on the railing and grips it with both hands to keep standing. None of this is stuff Kirk should be saying, because that’s not who he is - that’s not who Hikaru imagines him to be, and it messes up his irritation, his self-righteousness, his whole immediate worldview of this deck and this man.
“Why did you even come?” he blurts, not even meaning to ask that question in particular.
Kirk looks at him and gives him that awful enigmatic smile, tinged with so much more than Hikaru expected.
“Does it really matter?”
“You don’t have to go.” Hikaru has suddenly become the king of disjointed statements.
Kirk laughs softly.
“You’ve made it pretty clear you don’t want me to be here.”
“Yeah, well you’ve made it pretty clear that I’m a raving douchecanoe so what’s it to you?” Pause. “I don’t really know why I’m saying what I’m saying right now, but like...I don’t...I shouldn’t...you...”
“Use your words, Sulu.” Kirk smirks.
“I’m sorry for being a dick, you should stay cuz it’ll make my mom and sisters happy. Okay?”
Kirk is quiet for a moment.
“Sisters plural? I was pretty sure Kirana hated me.”
Hikaru snorts.
“Kirana hates everyone all the time, she thinks that being total cuntrag makes her some kind of hella hot bitch, which might work in the business industry, but...” He trails off and makes a face.
Kirk just keeps looking at him, his expression pleased but otherwise unreadable, and again, fucking again, Hikaru feels himself blushing.
“What?”
“You said ‘hella.’ You really are from NorCal, aren’t you.”
“Shut uuuup,” Hikaru honest to god reaches over and pushes Kirk, pushes his once and future captain and there are sparks under his palm and he pulls his hand back quickly. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. Let’s...” Kirk shifts a little, looks almost uncertain for a split second. “Let’s start again, without the stress and the falling and the end of the universe and stuff.” He holds out his hand. “Jim Kirk.”
“Hikaru Sulu.” He takes Kirk’s hand even though he feels a little silly, and doesn’t let himself squeeze it too hard.
“I want you to be my pilot, Hikaru Sulu. On the Enterprise. But let’s be friends too.”
All the feeling drains out of Hikaru, spills into the shoes he’s wearing without socks and puddles at his feet.
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
“I was also going to ask you for the bed tonight, but I think you’re going to need it more.”
“What? Why would I-” And he realizes he’s still holding Kirk’s hand, staring at him like he’s made of some...unfathomable night beauty, and he flails away, skillfully knocking his beer off the railing and into the vegetation far below. “....okay. Fair enough.”
Kirk laughs. It’s a real laugh. The wind blows and smells like summer.
-
It’s not the worst hangover Hikaru’s ever had by far, but the disapproving looks his mother keeps giving him really add something. He slept in late, and she was the only one left in the house when he finally got up, giving him arch looks as he fumbled with the coffeemaker and then sat down on the couch where Kirk’s blankets were neatly folded.
“Guests are supposed to have the bed, Hikaru.” She says finally.
“He offered it to me. He’s the captain, it was like an order.”
“Well you should have disobeyed. It’s only polite, Hikaru.”
Hikaru tries to focus on the emails on his PADD and ignore her, but he doesn’t actually have any emails (and if he thinks about that too long he’ll remember it’s because many of his friends were on the Farragut, the Ikari, all those other ships that weren’t the Enterprise and-) so he find gives in an looks at her.
“Where is everyone?”
“Your father went to run some errands, Jim and the girls are swimming.”
“In the lake?”
“Yes, Hikaru,” Hana gives him a look that she’s been perfecting her whole life and obviously passed down to her daughters, “Because we thought that giving Jim hypothermia would be an excellent show of hospitality.”
Hikaru wonders why he didn’t get any useful facial expressions in his genes, and sulks into a game of bejeweled, which his mother indulges for about four minutes.
“Hikaru.”
“What.”
“Go join them at the pool.”
“I don’t feel like swimming.”
“Ah.” Pause. “Well maybe I’ll go. I’m sure that Jim looks quite handsome wet.”
Hikaru actually drops his PADD in sheer horror.
“UGH MOM! Are you seriously perving on-UGH!”
“I’m married, not dead.”
“MOM!” Hikaru adds some extra mortified horror for emphasis and is out the door with his towel and trunks in a flash.
-
Kirk does look good wet. This is very upsetting, so he tries not to think about it. The fact that Kirk seems to enjoy grabbing him like an octopus and making Hikaru drag him around the pool doesn’t actually help at all, nor does his mental image of Chekov laughing his little ass off once he tells him about all this.
But it’s strange, the change he sees in Kirk’s reactions to him and the ones he feels inside himself, and how could it have been so easy to stop being irritated and start considering enjoying himself? It’s not like Kirk himself is a different man, or that he’s any less curious as to what he’s doing on vacation with them (and by the way what was that stuff about enjoying watching his family, Hikaru files that away for further reference), but he just...lets it happen.
They leave the pool and get lunch in town, and Hikaru tries to share an order of onion rings with Akiko (she eats most of them, unfortunately). There's ice cream, and when Kirk gets a brain freeze he jumps around shrieking “Hypothalamus, hypothalamus!” until it subsides, and he acts like that’s a completely normal thing.
“Too much time with Bones.” he offers, smiling, when Akiko states that he’s “hella weird,” and then he teases her about the “hella” thing too.
“Who’s Bones?” she asks, and that sends Kirk off on an hour-long explanation of their “life together” and various madcap adventures around the Starfleet campus; by the end of it Hikaru feels like he knows everything about McCoy, and still almost nothing about Kirk.
“Is he your boyfriend?” Akiko asks in a tone that suggests both prying younger sibling and mocking all-knowing teen.
And Hikaru is shocked -stunned and maybe even a little appalled- to see Jim blush. Or maybe it’s just a sunburn.
“No, he’s just my best friend. It’s a bromance thing, you know.”
“Ugh, ‘bromance,’ whatever. You don’t even want him to be your boyfriend?”
“Akiko, knock it off,” Hikaru grumbles, fidgeting with the car keys in his pocket to distract himself.
“Yeah Akiko, knock it off,” Kirk does what is probably the worst impression anyone has ever done of Hikaru. “Where’s your boyfriend if you’re so concerned about who’s dating who?”
Hikaru is surprised to see his little sister rendered speechless, and even Kirana almost offers some kind of expression other than disdain. Kirk winks at him.
Ice cream melts down his hand and leaves sticky trails across his knuckles. He looks away as he licks it off and wonders if Kirk is still watching, and if it would matter either way. He has the bad feeling it might.
-
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Sulululululululu. Hey, can I call you Lulu?
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>I guess the cold silence means no. Are you surviving?
New text: HSulu
>>Sorry, putting out a fire.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Literally or figuratively?
New text: HSulu
>>Literally. BBQ accident. Apparently Kirk is not a master of the grill.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Wow, sounds like you’re having a great time.
New text: HSulu
>>It’s not so bad anymore, really. We kind of had it out the first night and its been cool since then.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Does “had it out” mean sex? Because if it means sex, I don’t know what I’m going to think of you.
New text: HSulu
>>Fuck you, we just talked. He said he wanted to be friends. Now we are friends. It’s cool.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Aw, it’s like an afterschool special.
New text: HSulu
>>Okay first of all, do those exist anymore, and second, do they even have them in Russia?
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Hell if I know, I picked up the saying from you classy Americans.
New text: HSulu
>>Anyway it’s fine, he just talks about McCoy all the time.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Jealous?
New text: HSulu
>>No, I just really don’t care.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>You’re totally jealous. Oh my god you are falling for him. I am so shocked and appalled, Lulu. SHOCKED and APPALLED.
New text: HSulu
>>That’s right, now I remember: I hate you and wish you were dead.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Maybe you should go take care of him before he sets your bed on fire. WITH PASSION.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>My mother says I’m very funny and charming and everyone should like me.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>...oh god, are you two having sex right now?
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Shit, do you really like him? It’s just a fast turnarond and I thought you liked girls.
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>Lulu come baaaaaaack. ;_; I’m sorry, I was just kidding.
New text: HSulu
>>Good. I’ll forgive you...LATER. :p
New text: Pavel Chekov
>>diufhsdk being friends with you is going to be a total pain, isn’t it.
-
The week passes quickly. The barbeque incident is neutralized and becomes an ongoing joke. Akiko finds a very very old cardboard set of “Monopoly,” and they play several rounds with Hikaru’s parents, and then when they go to bed, several more drunken, trash-talk full rounds with just his sisters. Kirana wins all of them and looks too smug for words. Jim falls asleep on a deck chair and sunburns half his face. They go for a drive into the Nevada desert in his parents’ SUV and Jim talks about his plans for the ship and the crew and McCoy. And McCoy.
Sulu is tired of hearing about McCoy and says as much, and the resulting quiet is deafening.
“Sorry.” Jim seems meek. “I just...he’s...he’s a character in a lot of my best stories.”
“Yeah he’s the only character, I feel like sometimes.” Hikaru has no reason to be this bitter about it, but he is anyway.
“You’re doing that moody thing again, aren’t you.”
“I do the moody thing a lot, you wanted me on your crew, you can change your mind anytime.”
“Sulu.”
“Kirk.”
Kirk sighs and looks out the window. Sulu stares straight ahead and squeezes the steering wheel, wondering if it really is more than just wanting to hear about Kirk instead of McCoy, if it really is some kind of jealousy that’s come out of nowhere and if he could possibly chase it back into that darkness.
“Nothing. Never mind. Can I drive back?”
Hikaru pulls over without a word, and no more words are said -again- the entire way home. It’s a long way, and night falls, covering everything with stars that seem too close but painfully far.
-
They spend the last day hiking the Loch Leven Lakes trail, and of course being the harpies of perception that they are, Akiko and Kirana hustle their parents on ahead, leaving Kirk and Hikaru alone.
It’s a beautiful day, a beautiful trail, and Sulu just feels foul, like he’s ruined everything, like it shouldn’t be his fault for ruining everything because Kirk was the one who wouldn’t talk about himself, wouldn’t share, wouldn’t do anything but ramble on about someone who wasn’t even there.
He’s so busy working himself into the lower levels of his mood that he doesn’t notice he’s been walking alone until Kirk is a good fifty feet behind him. He wants to keep walking, he wants to leave him behind, remind both of them that Kirk has no business being the center of Hikaru’s attention, especially if he’s not even going to appreciate it... but he finds himself walking back.
“What?”
“I dropped my water bottle.” Kirk says sheepishly. “And it rolled into some plants and I don’t know if they’re poison ivy.”
Hikaru boggles.
“How do you not even know what poison ivy looks like? Were you raised on the moon?”
“Iowa, you know? Lots of fields, never a lot of hiking. Plus I never really paid attention to it before.”
Hikaru inspects the plants shielding Kirk’s waterbottle.
“It’s not poison ivy, dude.”
“Oh cool.” Kirk reaches for his bottle.
“But it is Foxglove, which can be really irritating to your skin, and you’re probably allergic to it.”
Kirk pauses, hand an inch away from a leaf that seems to strain towards him, and looks at Sulu. The look is both comically betrayed and honestly slightly injured, and Sulu feels his mood not-quite-break but squeeze around his chest.
“Sulu, I thought we were friends.” he says, trying to make it sound like nothing more than a plaintive whine.
“I’ll get it for you,” Hikaru reaches carefully into the plant, and takes it out, considers it, then hands Kirk his own water bottle. “Here.”
“...thanks.”
They start walking again, but it’s only a few minutes before Kirk points out another plant and asks what it is. Then another. Then a tree. Then a vine. Before he knows it, they’ve reached the lower Loch Leven Lake, and Hikaru has spent the whole time giving an improptu lecture on the flora of the area, and Jim has done nothing but let him talk, let him just go on and on and on-
“Dude.” he says.
“Hmm?” Kirk bends down to pick up a rock and skip it across the lake surface three times.
“Why did you just let me keep going like that? Do you really care so much about plants?”
“You obviously do.” Kirk picks up another rock. “And it’s kind of neat to see you so involved. Like your eyes lit up, and you went into this zone. It was cool. I liked it.”
Hikaru stares, feels that melting sensation again with no alcohol as an excuse.
“Oh.”
Kirk puts his hands on his hips and watches the ripples of his first throw subside before he throws the next one.
“It’s hard to get you to talk about things you care about.”
Hikaru snorts.
“It’s impossible to get you to stop.”
Kirk looks at him sideways.
“You mean Bones? Look, I didn’t...” he sighs and wipes his hands on his shorts, digs his toe into the rough half-sand.
“I just don’t understand why you’d be here with me instead of with him if he’s all you seem to...to...”
The words are out before Hikaru can stop them, and he immediately considers attempting to drown himself in the lake. Kirk doesn’t look at him, doesn’t really seem to look anywhere.
“I don’t understand why you came with me.” Hikaru keeps talking for some reason, his tongue a fucking traitor to the Sulu cause.
“Because Bones said it would be good for me.”
A knife in the gut. A thorn in the heart. Hikaru actually takes a step back.
“You’re here because of him?”
“Look, Sulu, I...that sounded wrong, but it’s...” Kirk holds his hands in front of himself, palms up, spreads his fingers. “Your mom asked me to come with you because I saved her son’s life, and honestly she wasn’t the only person who asked. I got a lot of offers, and I didn’t want to take any of them, because I’m used to just being with Bones, two guys who don’t have a family or anything but each other, and the thought of being around something like that, like what you have, with your mom and dad and your sisters... it’s weird to me. It’s scary.”
It might be funny that Jim Kirk, who threw himself into the sky above Vulcan for someone he didn’t know, who survived ice and fire and rage and hate to become some kind of living hero legend, would be scared of Sulu’s family, but it isn’t funny. Nothing is funny.
“So I told Bones, and he said that I needed to get past that. I needed to get beyond him and me and our magical little insular world and try something. And that it would be good to go with your, because you’re stable and from a good family and I’m not... okay so Bones isn’t necessarily a role model all the time, and I don’t have what you’d call a functional family... wait, so like...did you ever read those old books about the boy, Harry Potter?”
Hikaru has completely lost all sense of where this one-sided conversation might be going - it’s veered past normal into totally surreal.
“No?”
“Okay so...well I read a lot when I was a kid because...anyway, so Harry, right, he’s this fabulously talented wizard kid, but like...his parents are dead and he lives with his jerk aunt and her family and when he finally gets out into the wizardy world -you with me here?”
Hikaru nods warily, not actually sure.
“When he gets out, he meets this kid Ron, and Ron has this huge family and they bicker and the argue and they whine about each other but they all love each other. And Harry doesn’t know how to be in that kind of family, but he likes to be near it, he likes to watch it, because maybe someday he could learn to have something like that.
“Does that make sense?”
Hikaru puzzles it out for a moment, then nods again, slowly, less warily.
“I’m not really good at letting people close. But I want to be a good captain, with the best crew I know Starfleet has, and that’s gonna mean I need to understand group dynamic better. I need to move away from clinging to one person and reach out and I like you, Sulu, okay? It sounds wrong to say that ‘Bones made me come’ but I wouldn’t have if he didn’t push me, and told me I needed to get out of his damn hair for a while, and I’ll be honest, when we get back, I’m gonna fly out to Georgia and spend some time there and you know what I’ll probably piss him off talking about you and your family. Because I’ve had a really good time and I...I like you. And it’s not easy for me to talk about myself, so I talk about the people around me, who make up my stories. Until now, Bones just...happened to be the only other person I knew enough about to maintain a good run.
“But I didn’t know it bothered you. I didn’t mean for that.”
Hikaru sits. Suddenly and heavily on a fallen tree and just kind of looks out at the lake, feels the sun on his cheeks, burning the skin across his nose.
“Sulu?”
“I just...” he feels the words before he thinks them, before he even knows them. “I just wanted to know about you. Not him.”
Kirk looks a little sheepish, digs in his shoe-rut a little more.
“Well I just told you some stuff about me, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. You and Harry Potter. I think Akiko might have read those when she was like, ten or something.”
Kirk starts to smile.
“Harry Potter is a beautiful animal, I’ll have you know.”
“I’ll take your word on that.”
Kirk stands in the sun and is gorgeous, and Hikaru starts to realize that there’s going to be something between them from now on, more than the actions they took to save each other’s lives that seem so unreal here and now, but this trip, these days, this vision of Kirk right here, right now, where they might be the only two people at the only body of water on the only planet that’s ever existed. There’s a force that pulled them together, a gravity well. And he doesn’t want to look too much deeper into these thoughts, because it might go beyond that, into places he’s not ready to explore or try to understand. But it’s something, somewhere. It matters. McCoy’s influence or not, they are here, they are together, they are talking and learning about each other.
Kirk reaches out his hand and Hikaru takes it, stands up, doesn’t let go for a few long moments.
“We should try to catch up to the others.” Kirk says softly, then pauses before adding: “They have the sandwiches.”
Hikaru isn’t sure which one of them lets go first, only that there’s a longing in the release.
“You have to promise that you’ll talk about yourself a little more too, though, okay? Cuz I’d like to know who I’m flying for.”
Kirk grins.
“I can do that. I mean, uh, ‘zat.’”
Hikaru rolls his eyes.
“That’s never going to die, is it.”
“He’s so cute when he talks!”
“You clearly don’t know him well enough, he’s a total dick who charms people into thinking otherwise.”
“I’ll get to know him too. Promise.”
They get back on the trail, and Kirk talks about himself, makes Hikaru talk more himself too, and if their hands brush together more than a few times, neither of them mentions it.
-
Their last dinner is at a nice restaurant, and Kirk is not allowed to pay not matter how many times he offers. Hana even tears up as she thanks him not only for coming, but again for saving her son’s life, saving all their lives, and Kirk turns darker than his sunburn in embarrassment.
Hikaru, Kirk, and Kirana find a club after dinner and spend the next few hours there, lost in music, in alcohol, in dancing with strangers, with each other, and the last dance is Hikaru and Kirk and it would be friendly if it didn’t seem more than that, it would be almost a come on if they weren’t still feeling out what it means to be friends.
Kirana is the only one sober enough to drive home, and when they arrive, although Kirk and Hikaru have been alternating nights on the bed, they fall onto it together, too drunk to do anything but giggle until Kirk closes around him like that octopus again, like Hikaru is his teddy bear that smells like sweat and smoke and beer, and snores wetly in his ear.
And for his part, Hikaru feels pangs of something he won’t think about, he remembers Kirk’s arms around him as they fell, hears Vulcan wind in his ears as he falls again and asleep.
-
The drive back to San Francisco is quiet, but for once not in a tense way. Hikaru drives with the top up, and Jim watches things out the window. They’re both a little hungover and sleepy. Sometimes their hands brush as Kirk uses the arm rest and Hikaru shifts. Akiko, sitting in the back, either chooses not to say anything or is so busy texting that she doesn’t even notice. That’s fine by Hikaru.
He feels strangely bereft when the familiar skyline appears, and grind of daily traffic is bittersweet as they head for the Starfleet campus. Kirk already said his goodbyes to the rest of the family, and it’s now Hikaru and Akiko’s job to drop him off.
“How, uh, how long will you be in Georgia?” Hikaru asks as they drive down the Embarcadero, and he’s tempted to stop at a restaurant, but at this point prolonging the goodbye would just be painful.
“A week or two, I’m not sure. I have a lot of shit to take care of, about a trillion forms to fill out, and then I’m gonna spend some time going over schematics with Pike and Scotty, and...” Kirk trails off. “Do you want me to call you when I get back?”
Hikaru shrugs.
“If you have time. It’s not like we’re not going to be seeing a lot of each other in the next five years or so.”
“I hope so.” Kirk says, or maybe Hikaru hopes he says it. Either way, he smiles.
They pull up to Kirk’s dorm, and Hikaru pops the trunk, doesn’t get out. Akiko does, and gives Kirk a lingering hug before sliding into the front seat.
Kirk pops around to Hikaru’s side of the car and he rolls down the window to get Kirk’s hand in his face. He takes it, and they look at each other, into each other, past each other, somewhere into space and then back to earth.
“I had a great time. Thank your parents for me again, okay?”
“No problem. Take care yourself.” He thinks a moment, then adds, “Give my regards to McCoy.”
Kirk smiles.
“Will do. I’ll see you in a few weeks. Or on the Enterprise, helmsman Sulu.”
He winks again, and then he’s walking to the dorm without looking back. Hikaru stays, car idling, until the door shuts behind Kirk, and then he pulls out.
He expects Akiko to tease him, or question him mercilessly about their time alone on the trail, but she tucks her hair behind her ears and says, “You know, the other night, Jim was asking me about your hobbies, and I told him you liked botany. He seemed really interested.”
“Huh,” Hikaru says, pointing the car home, not ready to consider the implications that Kirk might have dropped his water bottle on purpose.
“I think he likes you.” She considers for a moment. “I mean, he obviously likes you, but like... I dunno. Maybe he likes you more? I dunno.”
Hikaru holds his breath, not sure what he’ll say if she asks him how he feels, what he’s thinking, what his sense of Kirk is now as opposed to then, and-
“Can we stop at Starbucks on Powell Street? It’s my favorite one, and I would kill a man for a frappucino.”
“Yeah, we can do that,” Hikaru smiles, and downshifts away from gravity, for now.
End.