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The Farragut, newly an official resident of the beta-quadrant, is a week into her new five year-ish mission, and as is standard for a senior officer at the end of a work week, Jim is sitting in the mess, idly playing with the stirrer in his glass, the ice cubes making a pleasing noise against the sides. The whisky had long become diluted, and he feels like he’s the same, so full of work the real him has been thinned out almost to nothingness. It has been a long one, the end of a long night after a long day, part of a long week, a long, long way from home.Jim’s a patriot; he believes that the Federation is the greatest thing that humanity has ever been involved in. Just a few generations ago humans were fixated on the differences between people who were born just a few hundred kilometres away, and now humanity is united as one species, heading out into the stars defined purely by their biological uniqueness and the best of themselves. To have spread so far in such a short time makes him want to cry sometimes from the awe of the whole thing.And yet. The beta quadrant is so incredibly, impossibly, infinitely far from not just home, but from everything important and crucial to the universe he knows. Of course, the Farragut is the same, the same walls, Captain Rubin’s balding head and avuncular brand of competence, but so much else has changed that even the old girl feels unfamiliar. Half of the crew transferred in that window between the announcement and their repositioning voyage, and then another 20% disappeared at the quadrant border, having realised that they weren’t talking about going to Betazed or some of the Vulcan colonies, but actually deep, deep into the B. The faces are fresh, but the latency back home is now measured in days rather than seconds, even through subspace, and Jim is in his feelings with nowhere to go.He still hadn’t put his personal comm back together. He’d bought another one at the night market on Betazed, when they’d stopped for refuelling and the final point where they could offload the changing minds, but the only person with the number is McCoy, who only uses it to send him pointed medical articles about stress and alcoholism. He hasn’t even reinstalled PADDChess. The thing is no more useful than a brick that occasionally yells at him about his blood pressure."Jim?" a voice pulls him from his reverie. Looking up, he smiles his third-most unprofessional smile when he sees who is interrupting him. "Petra! Good to see you. How can I help you?"Flopping rather than sitting down, Petra, the operations chief of the Farragut and one of his best friends, slumps dramatically against the bar as if she had lost the will to live. "Jim, darling, I need to make a very serious complaint.""We should probably go to my office," Jim says, aware of the twitching ears of the Farragut gossip corps pricking up in his peripheral vision, but when he moves to stand up, Petra pulls him down with that ever-surprising strength of hers. "No, not that kind of complaint," she moans, "stop ruining my fun. Make me a drink and listen like a good barkeep."Jim raises an eyebrow and vaults the bar, finding the bottles well restocked and setting to pouring Petra her usual Caitian Knock-Down. "So, let me guess,” he muses as he muddles the lime leaves. “It's gossip, rather than anything actually serious, but it's also not the kind of gossip that isn’t common knowledge across the lower ranks of the ship, hence why we are discussing it here. It's something you don’t think I know, but it also isn’t mutinous, so it's not about Rubin. I don’t know Pet, the list of potential offenders feels mighty small, so I feel like I should be asking: what have I done now?""Is there anything more serious than gossip?" Petra says, nodding and taking a big gulp of his whisky. "But no, you haven’t done anything wrong. It's about our darling new sister the ‘Temkins, specifically their XO. He's driving me mad. He’s driving all of us mad.""Ah," Jim says, "say no more." He finishes shaking up the liquid and slides the saucer of drink in front of her. Petra puts her chin on the edge and starts to sup it like it is designed to be drunk, with as little dignity as possible."So you agree? He's the worst?" she says, between slurps."Oh, I wouldn't say that." Jim prevaricates. "He's a little...difficult. Sometimes you have to be like that to make it as far as he has.""You've made it further," Petra points out, "and everyone says you're a delight to have in class.""Gary's XO too," Jim points out, but Petra shakes her head, pursing her lips in disapproval."Don't be coy, he's temporary acting XO while his real XO is on maternity leave, and even then that’s only because they had that bout of Canadian flu that took out half of the command, and even that's only because we're so goddamn short on officers since the war. You got it in open competition, legitimate as it comes, which is why you’re a full commander, and he’s still an el-tee-cee""Starfleet is a meritocracy, not a competition," Jim lies. "Anyway, you're not the first to gossip about him. I put it down to our not having a mission, but it has only been a week, it shouldn’t be this bad this soon. Maybe I should go over there and talk to him, XO to XO."“Brilliant, but Jim, be careful,” Petra says darkly, as if this wasn’t her idea. “You can never be sure what that guy is going to do.”“I think I can handle Gary Mitchell,” Jim scoffs. It takes Jim a few days to find a space in his diary to go and have the kind of talk that he needs to have, and so it is the end of the week when he shimmers over to the Potemkin. The newly paired sister ships are meeting for a joint mission investigating a disturbance in subspace unlike anything the sciences have ever seen. It’s been a busy week, one that has involved a lot of sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop.It gives him a bit of guilty ship-pride every time he sees the inside of the Potemkin. Farragut had spent five years being compared to the literal flagship, and she always came up short, but she’s the prettiest puppy in the shop compared to the battle-scarred, shabby-chic Potemkin. Her interiors are tired, her halls still stuck in that old darker lighting that they insisted on during the war. The aesthetic was supposed to be functional and industrial, but now it looks oddly naked, like she had forgotten to put pants on before stepping out. Still, Jim has a flawless memory, and so navigates the dark hallways towards the XO’s office and chimes exactly on time.The door slides open, and so Jim steps in, but his polite and friendly greeting dies on his tongue when he sees Mitchell sitting in his chair spun towards the windows, swathed in that dramatic darkness."Jim Kirk," Gary Mitchell says, his voice floating over sounding tightly furious. "Why, you’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face around here. What gives you the right?""We have a meeting?" Jim says, confused, as Mitchell swivels his chair around to face him. Jim and Gary hadn’t exactly been friends at the academy, but they also hadn’t not been. Officially, Jim was in the cohort a year behind, but by the time the final two years come around you’re so laser-focused on your specialism you’re taking classes based on the gaps in your training rather than any curriculum, so they had overlapped a fair amount. He’s still got that pretty-boy idol look, all dark hair, bedroom eyes and full lips, and any extra weight he’s carrying is 90% muscle and ego. Right now though, he looks like he's going to punch Jim’s lights out, and for a moment Jim is caught like a deer in the headlights, utterly confused, before Gary’s face breaks open with a raucous laugh."Oh I know, I'm just teasing ya. Come in, take a seat. It's been far too long! How's the fam? How's...what's her name? Carol?"Jim plasters on his most-WTF coverup smile on and takes said seat. "The family are fine, thanks, Dad is driving the Ensigns at the VA to restart the war, and Mom has something cooking I can barely understand but has literal go faster stripes on it so she's happy. Sam and Aurie had another kid;" and he notices immediately that Gary’s interest has been lost; he’s staring at his screen, his eyes flicking back and forth, attention fully distracted. "...it has three eyes and a tail but who of us doesn't, am I right?" Jim tests."Haha yeah," Mitchell says, confirming what Jim had suspected. "Good to hear. Anyway, what brings you here for real?""I worry we've all got off on the wrong foot," Jim says. “My crew and yours. I’m here to make amends, do what is needed to get things back on track. It's hard out here in the B, and we need to work together.”Gary grimaces, but there’s conciliation at the edges there. He sighs deeply, and presses his hands against his brow.“We were happy, you know?” he says. “Before this. Potemkin and Franklin, we were the dream team. We did a lot of good work, a lot of exploring. We were fire forged. And then…the worst happens.”Jim remembers the loss of the Franklin being all over the Starfleet wires, around six months earlier. She had gone to investigate a subspace disturbance and then disappeared with all hands. Five rescue ships that had gone after her had also been lost. It had been a huge controversy, one that very few people had come out of looking good.“It was bad taste naming an exploration ship Franklin,” Jim half-jokes. “I don't know what Starfleet was thinking. It's like naming a heavy cruiser Titanic. Of course she got lost.”“They’ll find her again,” Gary says, blithely. “It's only been a few months, and space is big. Anyway, the point is we had a lot of friends on that ship, and we had a plan, but then you had to go and spread your wild oats all over the admiralty, and instead of looking for her in the alpha quadrant we’re saddled with Enterprise’s cast offs the complete other side of the galaxy because our old admiral fucked the wrong guy and forgot about the two-hundred lost souls we were supposed to be finding. No offence. Well. Some offence.”“It's the military, Gary,” Jim says, bluntly. “None of us gets a choice in these things.”There’s an awkward silence, before Jim sighs and bends. “Look, if I was still lower decks, or even just a head of department, I would be invoking unofficial starfleet rule 23 to sort this out, but we are XOs now, so that tends to be thought of as mutiny.”“So…you’re saying we should manipulate our team leads to do it for us?” Gary asks, confused. “I don’t see how that’s more ethical. Where do you even get an ape suit this side of Vulcan?”“No,” Jim says, quickly. “I’m saying we’re smart men, we can surely work this out between us.”“I dunno, that sounds like hungry work,” Gary says sceptically. “Might take a few hours. How’s your evening looking?”“I’m free as can be,” Jim smiles.“Why don’t you join me for dinner?” Gary says. “Our chef makes a mean lasagne. Just like home.”“That sounds great,” Jim says, and stands up, but then holds up his hands, shaking his head. “But only if there’s garlic bread. Our CMO, in his infinite wisdom, has put us all on customised food plans even though we all passed our medical. Apparently he has plans for us and I’m legally not allowed to intervene.”“Of course there’s garlic bread, Jim, I’m not a monster,” Gary says, clapping him on the back, and Jim notices that his hand, warm and firm, rests between his shoulder blades for just a moment longer than could be considered purely professional. There was indeed garlic bread. There was also wine, and lasagne, but mostly the wine is what Jim is remembering when he wakes up in his quarters the next morning with a hangover he hasn’t felt the likes of since…well. Since the situation he doesn’t want to think about.He drags himself into the shower, and then after staring at his blotchy face in the mirror and weighing up whether he can afford a day of not shaving, does it, and then walks queasily down to the turbolift, and despite the call of the Farragut’s breakfast spread, goes to sickbay instead.McCoy is in his office prodding at the keyboard with his two finger typing method that makes Jim want to slap him every time he sees it, three cups of coffee and a pastry by his screen against about fourteen regs about sanitary workspaces and preventing avoidable spills. “I won’t report you if you give me half of that,” Jim says, pointing, and McCoy raises his eyebrows at him, but kicks the chair away from the table so Jim can sit down.The pastry is good, and the coffee is better. “Just what the doctor ordered,” Jim says, and McCoy laughs, before prodding another few words out and then cramming the rest of the croissant in his mouth.“Good night?” he says, mouth full. “I heard you were over on the Potemkin until the witching hour. People are already talking.”“I did it for them,” Jim pouts, and when McCoy’s eyebrows rise corrects himself, “Get your mind out of the gutter. We had dinner, got drunk, and I did my best to get him to not hate our guts. It's actually nothing we’ve done. They used to be paired with the Franklin.”“Ah,” McCoy says. “That whole clusterfuck.”“Exactly.” Jim takes a deep drink of the coffee, layering boiling hot bitter liquid over stomach acid and grimaces with a sudden stab of pain. “Len, how do you get on me for my diet when you live almost entirely on liquid spite?”“Professional hypocrisy,” McCoy says mildly, pulling a tricorder out from his desk and scanning Jim with it. “Your cortisol levels are better since I limited your coffee ration. How are you feeling?”“Hungover,” Jim says. “Hungover, homesick, homicidal and other things starting with h.”“Are you going to get Mitchell to help with at least one of those?” McCoy asks. “I can’t kill him,” Jim sighs. “Someone will find out.”McCoy looks sceptical. “I believe in your skills as a former security officer, but I was thinking more that you could fuck him. I assume horny was one of the aitches. It usually is with you.”“How's your sex life?” Jim says, desperately. “Why don’t we ever talk about your frustration levels? Or about the giant invisible stress tumour you’re refusing to diagnose because you don’t want me to have a week off?”“I had enough sex at the gala to tide me over for about three years, thanks,” McCoy replies. “Question though, why do you only find new things to be allergic to during sex? Is this because your diet is so shit? It's making the paper Joseph and I are working on about your allergies even more awkward, what with the whole recent mutual orgasms aspect of our otherwise wholly professional relationship. Not helping the time difference between here and the alpha quadrant is making me more paranoid than usual. I’m like a recently deflowered girl the day after prom.”Jim grimaces. “Again, this isn’t about me. Do you want to talk about what happened?”McCoy snorts. “Not even a little bit, and certainly not with you.”They glare at each other for a moment, before McCoy opens his drawer and pushes a draft of the paper at him. “I need your approval again. For ethics reasons.”“Okay, but this is the last one,” Jim says, seizing the PADD and stalking out. “Stop writing papers about me, it's weird.” They get orders, finally, which helps with a bunch of problems.There is a dark space in an area called the tranquil passage, a beautiful part of space that nothing bad has ever happened in, until now. Nothing bad has happened yet, but there’s something there, sending the sensors insane, and Starfleet wants to know if they have to start renaming.Jim is in the chair when the Farragut and Potemkin arrive at the passage. “It looks like a smudge on the screen,” Lieutenant Morley opines from the sciences console. “I can’t help but want to go over and wipe it off.”“You’re welcome to go out there if you want,” Jim says drily. “We might have to at this rate, those sensor readings are nothing but garbage. Morley, prepare a probe?”Morley gets up and heads out to do so, and Jim pages Commander Goodenough to come and join them in his place.“Sir,” Goodenough says, taking Morley’s seat. “The probes are almost ready to go.”“Thanks Kraig,” Jim says, and his next comment is interrupted by Petra at communications.“I’ve got the Potemkin for you, sir,” she says, and Jim grins. “Put him on screen.”The viewscreen opens a picture-in-picture of Gary sprawled in the chair, his legs spread obscenely wide. “Commander Kirk. Have you detected anything from the smudge?”“We’re sending a probe,” Jim says. “You should have called earlier, we’ve got a couple out there already, and we’re getting nothing. I think we should poke it.”“Send us your telemetry and I’ll find a long stick,” Jim says, easily. “If you show me yours I’ll show you mine,” Gary says, and there’s a distinct moment of eyefucking between them before Tamsin at tactical calls out “Potemkin firing torpedo, sir!”“Gary?!” Jim says. “Relax, it's disarmed,” Gary says, and Jim watches as a torpedo casing slowly approaches the smudge, and the crew of both bridges watch as it gently touches it and disappears with an action that looks like it should have a slurping noise, if space had a foley artist, but instead leaving behind an impression like a stone dropped into a puddle of gelatin. Both ships are hit by a shockwave, and all rock to the side, gripping to their seats. Goodenough swears under his breath. “We have to get Morley to stop the probe.”“Bridge to Lieutenant Morley,” Jim says, but there’s silence. “Abort probe launch.”“Erm,” Morley’s sheepish voice comes over the comm. “You couldn’t have said that three seconds ago, could you?”On the viewscreen, the probe from the Enterprise gently falls towards the smudge, and begins to transmit telemetry.Everyone on the bridge holds their breath, but it all seems fine.And then the smudge wobbles again, and spits out the torpedo casing at supersonic speeds. Jim barks out the order for evasive action, but all are then distracted as the smudge starts to part, gape, like light spilling through the crack in curtains on a bright cold morning. As they watch, something prises open spacetime and with obvious effort, climbs out into their reality. It is enormous, white, with long, strange limbs and organic twisting curlicules of light and strange charm jittering off it like lightning. The bridge crew shield their eyes in pain as it keeps going, pulling an impossibly large and bright body out into the vacuum of the tranquil passage.The thing finishes climbing, and then with a swish of painful light, turns and looks at the two ships hanging in space. Its eyes are twin black smudges; it had been watching them, content to be quiet until they literally poked it in the literal eye.“Shields up, red alert,” Jim yells, and with a glare, cuts the connection to the Potemkin, to Gary’s stunned, overexposed face. “All hands to battlestations,” he calls, “Captain to the bridge,” as the gleaming white creature starts to glow even brighter, its mouth, or something like a mouth, opening like a chasm, and there may not be sound in space, but there is agony, and the ship shakes with it in percussive sympathy.“How bad is it”, Rubin says, hurrying back onto the bridge.“Shields are holding at 87%”, Jim says, wobbling to standing to switch back to his usual seat. “It caught us off guard, there is damage to the starboard nacelle but engineering says we can get out of here.”“Why haven't we?” Rubin asks, reasonably.“The whole situation is messing with our systems,” Morley adds from his seat at sciences. “There’s a novel radiation causing the spool up sequence to fail.”“Also the big white space creature keeps spitting at us,” Tamsin says from the opposite wall. “Though us shooting back did stop that for a while.”“Do we know who they are? Or what it is?” Rubin asks communications.“No answer to hails, and giant glowing white monster isn’t in the database,” Petra says.“Recommendations, Mister Kirk,” Rubin asks.“We estimate well be at sufficient distance from it in five minutes, and then we should be able to warp away once the drive comes back online”They are rocked by another barrage.“I have another idea,” Jim says. “You're not going to like it though.”A shower of sparks illuminates Rubin's raised eyebrow.“I'll take anything right now that doesn't involve crashing into that thing or losing the core,” Rubin says, and so Jim gets up and relieves the ops lieutenant.“Hold on everyone,” he calls, and like a virtuoso before his instrument, begins to press buttons with practised confidence.The Farragut makes a turn that shouldn’t be possible, and the creature lashes out. The ship weaves through the tendrils of light, impossibly slick and fast, before stopping dead in space, and like a tennis player aiming for an ace, the back of the creature’s hand hits them square between the nacelles, and with a cry of “now!” the engines spool up, and all is adrenaline and exhilaration, and Jim turns back to grin at his crew. That is of course when physics, temporarily stunned, reasserts herself, and the screaming starts.“We survived, didn't we?” Jim says from where he is lying prone in sickbay, as McCoy runs the osteo over his pelvis for the third time.“The captain is very grateful that your ass was the main casualty of your daring escape. What did you call it?”“The insanity defence,” Rubin says, stepping into the room. “Thank you doctor. I need to speak to my XO. Any chance I can speak to his face, or am I just going to be the envy of the lieutenant corps tonight and address his peachy ass instead?”Jim can't see, but from the captain's annoyed grunt and move to sit on the floor where he can see Jim's face through the cut out in the biobed, he knows what McCoy will have indicated.“There's good news and there's bad news. The good news is we escaped and we still have two working nacelles. The bad news is we have to go into space dock anyway because the cracking of the gravity plate under shielding constitutes a serious fault that requires a full inspection.”Jim hasn’t got enough in him to do more than slump his shoulders. “So much for a five year mission. This must be a new record.”“It will be a week's waiting, tops, we've already repaired it. But I wanted you to hear it from me.”Jim squints. “Hear what?”Rubin grins his most smug smile. “The person doing the inspection. Fleet Commodore Solomon.”Jim's eyes seem to bug out of their sockets. “No! Since when is she in the beta quadrant?”Rubin shrugs. “Since the reorganisation I guess. It's a brave new galaxy.” He pats Jim’s face, grins and stands up. As he leaves, Jim hears Rubin shake McCoy’s hand. “You know what doctor, I do feel better. Thanks.”Debriefing happens once he manages to get dressed again and stagger out when McCoy is in the bathroom. He gets a status report from long-range telemetry; both ships got away. No one died, in fact, his injury was the worst from both ships, but while the Potemkin seemed to have escaped with a few scratches, warping away during Jim’s distraction, the Farragut is in much direr straits. The hull has received what can only be described as radiant damage; metal with a sunburn or some form of radiation poisoning, the bonds between the cells flaking and weak. The top layer is almost entirely gone, but the rest seems to be fine. The shielding is keeping them safe, but the stress of Jim’s great piloting feat burst three of the water tanks, and the extra power to shields will cause shortages until they can reinforce the hull.They debrief in the ready room. The Potemkin senior team beams over, and the room is cramped, a mismatch of chairs around Rubin’s kidney-shaped desk. Captain Gardiner of the Potemkin is a small, soft spoken man with the eyes of a killer and the reputation to match. He has a notebook and pen in front of him, and rumours are that he has killed three separate spies with said pen during the war. Gary sits by his side, looking exhausted. He smiles at Jim when he limps in and pulls out a chair for him, which is appreciated.The meeting is standard; Gardiner and Rubin do most of the talking. Jim just winces and apologises at appropriate moments, and Gary talks logistics, mostly negotiating how much water can be transferred between them, and then a lot of briefing from celestial cartography and xenobiologists about their new friend, including a long debate about what it should be called.Jim’s pocket vibrates; he’s being paged by Xi in security, who needs his advice. He steps to the other side of the room and takes the call, grateful for the break from the argument about the respective benefits of Greek or Vulcan taxonomic naming standards.Gary appears with two coffees in hand and Jim takes one gratefully. “I hear you broke your ass,” Gary says quietly, and Jim rolls his eyes, but before he can reply, Gary leans in and says in a low voice right in his ear, “if you need it breaking back in, let me know.”Jim blinks, glancing to the side where Rubin and Gardiner are finally shutting down the science cold war, and seeing that no one has heard, subtly nods once in acknowledgement.“Let me get back to you,” he says and Gary just winks and goes back to the table.The cluster fuck of the day pales into the bureaucracy of the aftermath. Space is dark once again, the creature off to parts unknown, so all that is left is that which always remains; Paperwork. Requisitions. More paperwork. A third draft of the official log dictated with a tired voice that the computer no longer recognises.Jim doesn't get back to his quarters until late, then realises that of course, it's all still broken. He is filthy and crusted in sweat and grime and the Farragut has no excess water for showers and no excess power for sonics.“Kirk to Mitchell.”“Mitchell here.”“...can I use your shower?”“Mi shower es su shower,” Gary replies, easily. “Give me five minutes.”Jim stares at the wall, willing himself not to fall asleep where he sits, and is jolted awake by Gary’s comm inviting him to make himself known.He beams into the hallway outside of Gary's quarters, and the door opens before he can press the chime.“Come in,” Gary says. “It's all yours.”His room is fine, though there are signs of things having been hastily baled under the bed, and the way the chair is angled is hiding something else. Jim usually would have something to say, but he’s so tired, so dirty, that he just lets it go, and lets the door to the shower close the thoughts off.Undressing is hard, his joints are so stiff from the osteo and the drugs McCoy had pumped him with to facilitate the reattachment of all his torn ligaments and fascia. He hasn’t felt this sore and exhausted since he died after Spock did their little amateur psychosurgery, but that at least had the twinge of great sex behind part of it. This time, his ass only hurts because it was shattered against the wall from the impact of making the creature hurl them across the sector.The water is good; high pressure, clean and hot. He cranks the sonic on as well, and lets the dual cleaning get him right down to the bone, before turning off the sonic and just letting the peaceful hum of the water and the ship hold him tight.He almost falls asleep standing up, but he’s awoken by the swish of the door opening. He keeps his eyes closed as the shower door opens and...someone...joins him. He stays under the gushing spray, the water blanketing his eyes and nose and mouth, as his visitor runs a long fingered hand down his spine, until his ass is being cupped in a big, masculine hand, and Jim twists around and kisses him.Jim doesn't open his eyes, but he puts his hands in thick hair and his brain, so tired, so lonely, fills in the gaps. He doesn't touch his companions ears, but in his mind the skin he kisses is hot and so smooth it is almost poreless, the lashes long and sweet, the flush that travels all the way down is spring-green and the dick that pushes against his hip as he's crowded against the door is ridged all the way down and flushed like the finest imperial jade.He bites his tongue as his brain calls out for Spock, Spock, Spock, and maybe Gary knows, because he stays silent save the huffs of arousal against Jim's mouth, lets him moan and grunt but doesn’t ask any questions he doesn’t want the answer to. Turning Jim around, he presses against Jim, and grinds against his ass, fisting Jim’s dick competently as he kisses the back of his neck, his dick pressing against his hole like the most filthy and delicious promise.When Jim comes, it's dreamlike and spare, even his dick too exhausted for anything but a token spurt, and then he drops to his knees and takes Spock’s…Gary's dick in his mouth and sucks him down so deep he can't tell the difference when he deposits his DNA down his throat.He slumps down and lets the water cascade over him, and doesn’t open his eyes until he knows Gary has gone. He turns off the shower, dries himself, and calls for the cowards exit, beaming back to the Farragut without saying another word.The two ships separate again at that point. The Potemkin has new orders; find the thing and work out what it wants, while the Farragut is told to limp back to the nearest inspection port for repair. Engineering has a new chief engineer, Dolores Connon, formerly of the Enterprise, and in the three weeks it takes them to get back to Betazed, she does enough work that they are cleared to go up to warp 2. This knocks the final three weeks down to four days, which helps. The water situation had become tenuous; the Potemkin’s extra stores she had lent them now dangerously over-recycled and you can taste it in every sip. Even if technically every molecule is proven dihydrogen monoxide, there’s definitely something else in there with it, refusing to let go.They arrive at spacedock very much worse for wear, but the catastrophe has been downgraded to a major incident, with Commander Connon promising that she’ll have it down to Inconvenience by the time the week is out. Jim and the Captain join the engineering team as the ship is attached to the dock. The enormous clamps shake the partially remineralised hull and the docking tunnel clunks loudly as it attaches to the port opposite main engineering.“Ready?” Rubin says, and Jim nods, and pulls himself up to full attention.“I’ve not met Solomon,” Connon says as the airlock procedure begins. “Is she as bad as they say?”“Ask Kirk,” someone says, and Jim tries to make a note of who it is for future reference, but he’s unable to work it out before the airlock opens.The team who arrive are your usual Starfleet engineers, but they part like a wave as their commanding officer stalks through the door. Commodore Solomon is a shrewd looking woman in engineer's blacks and a cap over her salt-and-pepper auburn hair. Tall and angular, the crew of the Farragut straighten up as she looks at them. “What did you do to this ship?” she barks. “I just certified her refit.”“Commodore Solomon !” Captain Rubin says, clasping her hand in both of his. “An honour to meet you at last. Please ignore the smell, my crew have had a difficult month. Farragut looks worse than she is, I assure you. Right, everyone?” He looks around for support.Solomon gives him a sceptical smile, raising her eyebrows in a familiar manner. “I will do my best, Captain,” she says, but her eyes are casting around looking for something specific. Jim, who had taken the opportunity to try and slink into an access hatch, gives up when the Commodore steps neatly around the Captain and blocks his way.“Hello, Commander Kirk,” the Commodore says, formally, her hands clasped behind her back but her eyes dancing with mirth.Jim lets out an aggrieved sigh. “You can call me Jimmy, Mom. Everyone knows, and those that don’t need to use this as an excuse to improve their social connections.”“Thank god, I couldn’t have kept that up for more than a few more minutes,” Winona Solomon, formerly Kirk, says, and pulls him into a big hug, and plants a loud kiss on his cheek. Her mauve lipstick leaves a perfect outline on his lips like something out of a cartoon.“Why don’t you show me where you fucked the ship up, Jimmy? I’ll see if I can kiss it better. And then you can have a shower and stop smelling like you did at thirteen, hm?”Behind her, Jim watches Captain Rubin clench his fists and look to the ceiling in pure joy, like all his high holidays had come at once. Jim gets through the recertification with most of his dignity intact, though that might be wishful thinking after everything else that has happened. Connon had, in fact, performed some miracles, and so it had taken his mom only a few hours to sign off on the additional things needed. They’d be in dock for three days, most of which was to touch up the paint job. Potemkin, having lost the trail of the giant white space creature, had been recalled to join up with them, and Jim is keen to see some more of Gary than he got to last time.Still, he knows that his good mood isn’t likely to last, as Rubin has already asked mom to dinner, and Jim can’t even supervise because he has a late shift. “Please don’t do anything I would do,” Jim pleads to Rubin as he leaves space dock to go back to the ship, but Sid refuses to promise anything, and he’s wearing his best civvies, so Jim beams back on board with a distinct worry his captain might become his step-dad.“Wait, your mom is Solomon? Damn. Your mom’s hot,” Gary says later, at the end of their weekly catch up, after Jim finishes complaining about how it's probably some kind of incest that his captain is probably boning his mom right now.“She would crush you like a bug,” Jim says, mildly. “Bold of you to assume I wouldn’t enjoy every second,” Gary grins lasciviously. Jim is glad the conversation is moving into pastures he’s more familiar with. “Well if that’s the name of the game,” he flirts, “then why don’t you come over later. I’ll bury you in bureaucracy so hard your pen will run out.“Paperwork and chill?” Gary says smoothly. “I thought you’d never ask.”They do paperwork as flirtatiously as possible, which turns out to be quite effective as pre-foreplay. Jim is definitely into the way Gary licks the end of his stylus as he thinks, and the loops of Jim’s signature are way outside of the lines by the time he’s reaching the end.“You know, you always talk about your dad and living up to his legacy.” Gary asks. “Legendary first officer, Commander Kirk, but your mom is a Commodore and you never mention her. How does that work?” Jim shrugs. “We spent my childhood following dad from posting to posting. Mom was Starfleet too, but enlisted; she was an engineer, building warp cores and maintaining them. In theory it was a perfect solution to the problem of being a Fleet Family, but in practice we never saw him, and mom had no power on the ships, which grated. Dad decided we should be settlers if she hated it so much, and well...that's a story for another time. At the end of that, they broke up. Dad went back into starships, became XO, and mom moved back to earth with Sam and l. Everyone thought we were done, but she went to OCS, got her officers commission. Billeted straight away as Ensign, got a job on Mars. She made Commodore five years ago, just a shade under fifteen years of service. Dad's career stalled out at Commander, never managing to make the jump to the big chair. He was retired out of starship service three years ago; he's been at veterans affairs ever since.”“Huh,” Gary says. “You’re a fleet brat like me. I’m surprised we never ran into each other.”“Big galaxy,” Jim shrugs. “You were on your dad’s ship, right?”“Yeah,” Gary says. “Summers only, we were on Earth at the boarding school otherwise.”“Wow. I’ve heard stories,” Jim prods, and Gary chuckles.“I promise whatever you’ve heard, it's both more and less salacious than you would think.”“Much like the fleet,” Jim posits, but Gary shakes his head. “Oh, absolutely not. The fleet is absolutely as sex soaked as the rumours say,” and the look he flashes Jim practically burns through his uniform.Soon enough, Jim is half naked with his thighs spread, leaning back against the desk with Gary between his thighs, stylus still clutched in one hand as he sucks Jim’s dick with deserved confidence. There’s no such thing as a bad blow job, but maybe Jim is getting old, maybe he’s had too many first-times, but there is a difference between getting sucked by someone who loves you and knows what drives you mad, and someone who is applying what has previously worked on other people. Jim doesn’t want to think about Spock, doesn’t want to compare them, but he does, and finds the gaps in Gary’s technique, and wishes it were different.He comes with a sibilant on his lips, and only through sheer force of will he doesn’t close his lips around the voiceless plosive he wants so very much to give into. They trade places, Jim falling to his knees, the aftermath of an orgasm generally the same no matter who gives it to you. He looks up, lets his mouth relax and asks the question with a hint of tongue.Gary confesses immediately to a fantasy of having his dick sucked while he sits at his desk, and although Jim barely fits into the cubby, they give it a go. Gary’s dick is thick and drooling, but he takes too long to come for Jim’s taste; the fantasy, on reflection, is generic and mildly demeaning, especially considering their respective ranks. The post–nut clarity hits hard, and Jim is soon enough bored, and so does a dirty little trick that would always make Spock come like a full phaser bank, but Gary just grunts and squirms. Frustrated, Jim pulls off. “Sorry,” he says. “My leg’s cramping.”“Come here,” Gary says, and Jim levers up to standing, and lets Gary kiss and grope him until he comes against Jim’s hip with a pleased groan. They breathe heavily in the aftermath, the awkwardness levels rising. “I should get back,” Jim says, before remembering they’re on his ship. “...To work. I mean. So many forms.”A wave of tension passes over Gary’s face; for a second, Jim thinks he looks hurt, but it passes almost immediately. “Sure,” he says. “I should get home. I need to shower.”The showers on the Farragut have been fixed now, but Jim doesn’t mention this. Gary gathers his clothes up, then calls a transport, and is gone in a flash.News comes from a Denobulan colony that the bright white creature has been spotted in their sector, and so the Potemkin and the newly repaired Farragut begin the chase. They follow the screwy sensors across the sector until they reach the point of undeniability, exactly where the Denobulans had said all their ships had gone missing.“It's on the seventh planet,” Morley says. “I can’t work out what it's doing, but it doesn’t look good from the long range scans.”“Do we have any intel on the planet otherwise?” Rubin asks, but Morley looks apologetic. “It's only been charted. No obvious civilizations, but the probe was only really looking for warp or near-warp. Sorry, sir.”“The Prime Directive takes precedence, hence the name,” Rubin crosses his arms and thinks, “but we need to know more about this thing, and our sensors are useless.”“Not entirely,” Morley says. “We have run simulations in the lab. We thought that it was the metal that was the problem, but it is actually the temperature. Life, or at least items with a temperature above 21 celsius, are unaffected.”“Convenient for us,” Jim says. “We get to go for a walk. Morley, grab Tamsin and get suited up.”Turning to the screen where Gary is dialled in. “You want in?”“I could do with the exercise,” Gary says. “I’ll bring our xenobiologist, Thiollier. He needs the hours, and loves stuff that could kill you with a look.”“Sounds like a date,” Jim grins, and the meeting ends. “I don’t think you’re good for each other,” Rubin says. “Or more, for me. Try to not let your flirting kill you or your team, okay? I don’t want to have to think of euphemisms for ‘Kirk couldn’t stop flirting: dozens injured’ again.”“That only happened once,” Jim protests. The seventh planet is lush and beautiful, but it's hard to appreciate it when the sky is burning-white and devastating, and Morley shudders when he fires up the tricorder and it sparks in his hands, useless. “Time for old fashioned recon,” Jim says. His hands flex; they’ve beamed down without phasers, in case the disintegration of the case causes more problems. They’ve got subdermal beacons in case of sudden exfil, but everything else is analogue. They’ve beamed down to the top of a hill so they can get a good look at the situation, and they’re about ten kilometres from the thing that sciences are still calling the creature, because they still haven’t finished arguing over taxonomy. The creature has curled into a ball, and where it is nestled in the forest it is pulsing, bright and white, but within an atmosphere other colours crackle at its edges as light splits under the pressure. It is prismatic and it hurts to look at even through their adapted warp welding goggles that had been liberated from engineering. “I don’t know what we can do,” Xi says. She has two swords strapped to her back, and has liberated a big stick from one of the fallen trees. “It doesn’t look like it's doing anything.”As soon as she says that there is a rumbling, and the ground heaves. The away team grab onto each other, and gaze at the thing in horror. “We need to try and find out,” Jim says. “We won’t get close, but we should at least try and find out something.”They climb down the hill, and start to walk through the jungle. There are no animals to speak of, but silver and green beetles scurry across the wide leaves as they walk. Thiollier grabs a few samples, but other than that, the place is silent save the hum of enormous cosmic power waiting just over the treeline.After an hour, the away team stops by a suitable congregation of trees. Strapping themselves into harnesses, Gary goes first, setting the pitons into the tree to allow for the rest of them to climb up into the canopy to make further observations. Breaking through the blue leaves, the creature above them is impossibly massive. It is making a noise beneath the interference, a small chittering noise, like a thousand mechanical birds being electrocuted at once.Next to Jim, Gary winces, grabbing his head in pain. “Shit, hang on. I’m getting something.”“What is it?” Jim asks. Squinting through the pain, Gary gestures for him to wait. Eventually, he manages to grind out an explanation. “I had my translation matrix updated last year, an experimental one, part of a trial. I think it's…processing the creature’s noises.”Jim nods, and watches as the pain on Gary’s face starts to fade, until it passes completely and Gary cocks his head as he listens. “Huh,” he says, eventually. “Can you set your matrix to receive? I think I might have something you want to hear.”Jim presses behind his ear, and then there’s a note of static, and then the noises his brain otherwise was filtering out start to coalesce into words, or more accurately…music.“star coming out, star coming out, dark every night but star coming out.”“It's singing to itself,” Jim says, in wonderment. One by one the others download the update, and the team as a whole watch the giant glowing god soothe itself, singing scraps of songs, never a whole thing. “hungry, hungry, home, home” the creature whispers on the wind. “babies in the nest, babies in the nest. babies playing in the nest…”“We should try and communicate,” Gary whispers, and Jim nods at Thiollier. “Hello?” Thiollier says clearly. “We are explorers from the United Federation of Planets…” but before he can get any further, the creature twists around, enormous arcs of ultra-white radiating off it.“MY PLANET!!!!” the creature screams in its glorious polyphony, and trembles, before launching a bevy of spines out in all directions. “MINE! MINE!”The team, as one, hit the emergency descent on their harnesses, and disappear into the canopy within a second of the scream, and hit the ground as all around them, the spines shoot through the trees, skewering their trunks and branches.“Is everyone alright?” Jim calls out, and the team responds one by one. Tamsin has a spine through the calf, but everyone else answers in the positive.Jim rolls over and presses his arm where the subdermal transporter beacon is located, and hears Petra acknowledge him. He goes to confirm this with the team, but his mouth doesn’t seem to be working.“Jim?” Gary says, scrambling over, and it's strange, he sounds far away, even as his face is right there. “Jim! Stay with me?” Gary says, urgently, his hands pressed into Jim’s side with steady pressure.“But I don’t even like you,” Jim slurs, and then frowns, and passes out. Jim wakes up in sickbay for the second time in the month. His stomach hurts in that particular way that he always gets after surgery, like hunger that has gone too far into his soul. The machines around him beep, so he hasn’t got much time to pretend to be asleep, but he holds on until he hears McCoy arrive, his heavy footfall and almost subsonic grumbling as familiar as it is unwelcome. When he opens his eyes McCoy has a look on his face that is one Jim has learned to find both worrying and irritating in equal measure.“Am I alive?” Jim croaks, because you can’t beat the classics.“Yes. We got the spines out. You would have been a goner, Jim. But it turns out this saved you.”He presents an empty surgical bowl and shakes it. Peering, Jim takes it from him but then almost drops it. The bowl is heavy, but it appears to be empty.“Is this a joke?” he asks.“Put your fingers in,” McCoy says, and Jim does and recoils from the feeling. The contents are cold now, but they’re organic, like uncooked organ meat. Jim grimaces and hastily wipes his fingers off on the bed sheets.“What the hell is that thing??” he snaps.“It was growing in your abdomen, can’t really say exactly where because it was kinda…everywhere. We've sampled it, and the good news is that while it's likely precancerous, it looks like it did most of its growing while it was benign, but it's like nothing we've seen before. The results…well…it indicates it feeds mostly on cortisol.”Jim hands the bowl back and leans back into the pillows, still grimacing as the words finally filter through his postoperative funk. He squints and turns to McCoy, who looks incredibly guilty for some reason. “Wait...”McCoy sighs. “My apologies. Turns out you did have a giant invisible stress tumour after all.” He grins, awkwardly. “Chalk one up for your great scientific brain?”There's a lot that Jim can say, but he knows the look on McCoy’s face. “You cannot take credit for this.” he snaps. “I want first authorship, and if they name it after you, I'll sue you and have you up on charges.”“You want this to be your legacy?” McCoy says, holding the GIST bowl in his arms like a precious child.“No, more I don't want it to be your legacy,” Jim says meanly. “You misdiagnosed it, and only found it because a literal spike got stuck in it. You're a good doctor, but you don't get to mark this one as a win.” “Okay, okay,” McCoy says. “The important thing is you’re fine, we got it all, and we filled you back up with blood, and we’re three sectors away from the nasty spine spitting space-god with the beautiful voice, and we’re all trying to learn a lesson from this.”“Okay,” Jim says, “as long as we’re learning”, but his voice wobbles, and McCoy jabs him with a hypo in the way that ends any conversation immediately.Word comes from the Denobulans that something is happening on the creature’s planet, and so the Farragut and Potemkin return to the previously established safe distance to watch. The collective minds of stellar cartography have been hard at work, and they manage to magnify the image from a safe distance. The sensors are still scrambled, but from the Farragut bridge, they can watch.Gary and Thiollier beam over to join the viewing party. “We bought popcorn,” Gary says when they arrive, “and before you ask, yes, we bought enough for the whole class.”It's nice, actually. Jim gives Gary his chair, and sits on the floor, alongside the majority of the sciences and engineering, who have been given leave to come and sit with the grownups. The ship is positioned in a very loose geosynchronous orbit of where the creature has been nesting. It is visibly bigger than it was just a few days ago. “I think something’s going to happen,” Morley says from the sciences console, and sure enough, the creature starts to spread its odd white arms, the intricate filigree of white encompassing the major landmasses of the planet.“It looks like it's going bowling,” Gary says, and Jim nods. The creature wiggles, and then the proximity alarms start to blare. Navigation adjusts, as the creature pulls the planet off its axis, looking like an octopus holding a coconut. With one tendril, it reaches out and parts space, and then gives off several bright pulses of prismatic light, and then pulls itself and the planet through the hole in reality. It closes behind it, and the crew sits in stunned silence.It is broken by the communications array, and Petra fumbles her earpiece in. “Update requested from Denobulan high command,” she relays.“How the hell are we going to tell the Denobulans that something just stole their planet?” Captain Rubin asks.“I think we just have to say what we saw,” Jim says. “It bought a souvenir home,” and Rubin laughs but shrugs, and Petra does just that. There’s a post-mission party in the officer’s mess, and after Jim audits the music for any LLAP tracks that have snuck in, he grabs a beer and a slice of synthesised pizza (not bad for something that came out of the same machine they get warp core parts from), and heads over to the rest of the command team.It's a pretty shoddy party; there isn’t even any punch yet, which is probably because the captain and XO are still hanging around. Rubin and Gardiner excuse themselves, leaving Jim and Gary alone for a moment.“You wanna?” Jim says, raising an eyebrow.Gary looks like he’s thinking about something, but then he breathes out and just says “Yeah,” and they leave together. They go straight to Jim’s quarters and kiss as soon as the door closes behind them, and it's nice. It's easy, so easy, and they fall together onto the bed, and Jim closes his eyes and feels Gary’s touch and remembers the time before the Gorn raid, how he rucked Spock up, how great it was to let someone take care of him, who knows him…“No, actually, I think I have more self-respect than this,” Gary says suddenly, pulling back.Jim opens his eyes, confused. “I’m sorry?”“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Gary says, pulling his shirt back on. Jim sits up. “Okay. Can I ask why?”“You’re thinking of someone else”, Gary says, plainly. “When we fuck. Every time. I can’t do it. I thought I could, but I can’t.”“How could you possibly know that? Are you psychic?” Jim says, thinking about how Spock’s mind had felt, soft, like the tail of a cat brushing against his heart.Instead of confessing, Gary just looks belligerent and sad. “You’re still doing it! God, it's not like…everyone knows about you and that Vulcan guy from the Enterprise. I thought you’d be over it by now, hell, I was okay with being your rebound at first, and maybe another time it would have been fine, but after the Franklin, I'm not really into it. Life’s too short to be with someone who doesn’t want you back.”Jim feels defensive. “I didn’t think this was something serious. This was just a fling.”“It didn't have to be,” Gary says, raw. “I got that out of my system when we lost them, when I lost them…I thought we were in the same place. I like you. I like you a lot. But your head is somewhere else, and I thought I could wait it out, wear you down, convince you that the grass can be greener, that there can be life after loss. But…” he sputters in disbelief, “you don't even know you're doing it! You're using me and telling yourself you're the wronged one! You don't even open your eyes when we fuck, because you're thinking of someone else!”“If you know this, why do you keep coming back?” Jim says, meanly, and Gary’s gaze gets hard and flinty in response.“That’s a good fucking question,” he says. “Best question you've asked all month,” and then he gets up and walks out, without looking back.Jim has nothing to do now, so he goes back to the party, but not before grabbing a bottle of something he had hidden in the back of his wardrobe. When he arrives, the punch has begun, and McCoy is there doing his part by pouring vitamin supplements into the punchbowl with the grim determination of public health professionals across time.“Hey,” Len says. “I thought you had gone off to make the XO with two backs with Gary Mitchell.”“Ugh,” Jim says, pouring a bottle of contraband into the punchbowl and dipping a glass in and draining it. “Nope. That’s over.”“Wanna talk about it?” McCoy says. He hands his medkit to a passing nurse. “I’ve done all I can here.”Jim nods, grabbing another glass, and double-fisting punch like he’s in the middle of a fight. McCoy does the same, and they retreat to sickbay to get drunk in private.“...and THEN, just as things were getting good, he tells me that I’m not over Spock, and says I can’t stop thinking about him, and I mean, that's bad etiquette, I had no idea he was psychic. Did you?”McCoy doesn’t reply immediately, and so Jim drinks some more, before he clicks his fingers in front of McCoy’s face.“Hm?” McCoy grunts.“Do you want to say something?” Jim prompts.“I’m just impressed how you’ve obviously spun this to be as one sided as possible, and yet you still sound like the worst guy in the quadrant,” McCoy snarks.“I’m sorry?” Jim says, offended.“Jim, you've lost Carol, you've lost Spock, hell, you lost your relationship with David before it even started. Now you've pushed Gary away, and yeah, I don't like him but newsflash, I don't like many people. There wasn't anything wrong with him, undisclosed psychic or not. He's just an asshole, but most of us are. We still deserve love.”Jim glares. “There were mitigating circumstances to all of those.”McCoy gestures with his glass. “Of course. But you can’t deny that you’re this great assertive command-trained officer right up until your dick gets involved, and then you’re a self-victimising passive kitten who can’t take responsibility for anything.”“So what do you think, I should try again? Go on my knees and beg?” Jim demands. His voice is strained, he can hear how angry he is, but it's coupled with the sick, sick feeling of knowing that McCoy is right. “Do you really want to know what I think?” McCoy asks, and the sentence is all fight.“Of course.” Jim lies, teeth gritted. McCoy takes a fortifying breath, and then the speech comes out all at once, like he’d been thinking it for a long time. “I think you should be single for a while. I asked around, have you been unattached for even a month since you arrived at the academy at eighteen? Do you even know what you want? Or do you just take whoever will have you and lucky for you, those people are smart, hot and crazy about you because you're one of those assholes who walk in the light and never has to try? Gary Mitchell is you, you dick. He's an overachieving nepo baby with a chip on his shoulder the size of his dad's starship. He looks like an underwear model and breaks hearts for breakfast, and probably could also do with someone giving him the harsh truth, but he’s not here. You are.”“Wow.” Jim says. He can’t say anything else. He wants to lash out, tell Len he’s wrong, that he’s a hypocrite, that he doesn’t understand, that none of it is true. That he’s jealous, that he’s a fraud, and as it all cycles through his head, pickled in the contraband alcohol he’s been downing, the spite and the fury and the self-loathing that gets turned around and around, but he knows that McCoy is right, that his protestations would be hollow and mean, and then the shame washes over him. He looks at McCoy with bleary eyes. “Len,” he says. “I don’t know what to say.”Len opens the drawer and pours some of his good whisky into the dregs of Jim’s party punch. “I love you, Jim. You don’t have to say anything. We can just sit here until that big brain processes it all.” He presses a button on his keyboard, and the silence is filled with music, and Jim hangs his head and lets the whole thing soak into his bones, lets the tears fall, and McCoy pretends not to notice, just drinks his whisky, and keeps Jim’s glass topped up.It takes a few rounds, but eventually, Jim’s brain processes enough to talk, and it's long into the morning by the time he’s done.Things are frosty between Jim and Gary, but they're professionals, and this isn’t the first time XOs have had these kinds of problems. Jim waits for it to get hot again, go weird, but then rumour comes through that Gary is head over heels with someone new, the scientist on deck eight with the hair and the large collection of non regulation heels she wears anytime she can get away with it, and so when Jim sees him skulking around when their ships are nearby, they just nod to each other. It's fine actually. Any lingering shame fades, fast, and Gary just goes back to some guy he knows, who he works with, who he maybe once had a thing for.Eventually the admiralty decide that they can be trusted to be on their own again, and so the Farragut and Potemkin take a break for a few months, and when they meet again, the original Potemkin XO, Novello, has returned from her maternity leave, and Gary has shipped back to the alpha quadrant on a passing freighter. He leaves Jim the customary bottle of something and his personal comm number, which Jim puts into his new comm, and sends him a message every couple of months like a grown up.The night after they meet Commander Novello, Jim and Rubin share a bottle of wine.“Back in the saddle again,” Rubin says. “Are you going to be okay without Mitchell?”“Fine, sir,” Jim says. “I’ve decided to be a paragon of single officer virtue for a while, actually. No more fraternisation. There’s a reason it is discouraged.”“Probably for the best,” Rubin says. “I’m in the same boat. We can be the sad command bastards club, Farragut chapter.”“I hate to ask,” Jim grimaces, “but I take it that things didn’t work out with mom?”“Your mother is a brilliant woman,” Rubin says, “but god, I can only deal with one of you at a time, and I have to deal with you, so.” He shrugs.“Thanks, captain,” Jim says, aghast. “I am totally not going to think about what you’re implying there in the middle of the night at all.”“You and me both,” Rubin says, and they clink glasses.“To the uniform code,” Jim toasts. “May she lead us well,” Rubin replies, and they get back to work.The single life isn’t too bad, actually. Jim finds he likes it, once he gets reacquainted with his right and left hand and the contents of the server he doesn’t officially know about. He likes it so much that he barely notices that a month turns into several until it turns into two entire years, gone in a blink of a celibate eye, right up until he enters the shuttle that changes his life forever.But that’s a story for another time.