“Uncle Jim!”
Jim lowered his coffee cup and looked up from
his PADD into the wide blue eyes of his four year old nephew, Peter. He smiled.
“What’s up?”
“Whatcha doin’?”
“Looking at some messages I received.”
Peter scrunched up his face. “For work?”
Jim sensed a trap. He slowly sipped his
coffee. “Er.”
“Daddy said you aren’t supposed to be doing
work while you’re here.”
Daddy has a big ugly trap, Jim thought. But
he continued to smile. “It’s just a teeny bit.”
Peter sort of shrugged at that. “Santa comes tonight!”
“I know he does.” Jim scooped the boy up onto
his lap. “Are you excited?”
“Yes. Are you?”
Jim chuckled. “Well, sure I am.”
“What did you want Santa to bring you?”
“Uh. Well.”
“Mister Spock?”
Jim’s face heated a little. “Uh, no.”
“He likes you, Uncle Jim. I know he does.”
“Well, even if he does, I wouldn’t ask Santa
for that. Santa doesn’t bring people,” Jim told his nephew.
“He doesn’t?”
“Nope.” Definitely time for a change of
subject. “What did you ask Santa for?”
“A red truck,” Peter said, matter-of-factly.
“Well, I bet he brings you one. Did you make
him cookies?”
“Yep. Mister Spock helped me.”
Jim found himself laughing again. He patted
Peter’s leg. “This I gotta see.”
Peter jumped off him and Jim stood up
following him into the kitchen. They’d made sugar cookies, of course, with all
kinds of colorful icing. Some were much more neat and elegant than the others
so Jim figured he could guess who made those.
“Those are cool. Okay, go see your Mommy. I
think it’s probably time for you to go to bed so Santa can come.”
Peter ran off to see his mommy and with a
shake of his head, Jim grabbed a tree shaped cookie and went in search of
Spock.
He found the Vulcan sitting outside on the
front porch with Sam. He’d been quite surprised when Spock had decided to come
with him to visit his brother and his family for the holidays. Sam, Aurelan,
and Peter had moved to the old farmhouse in Riverside, taking it over from
their mom, who now resided on a colony planet, doing research there.
The Enterprise and her crew were on a short
leave on Earth while some repairs and upgrades to the ship were done. Spock had
declared there really wasn’t enough time to warrant spending his leave on New
Vulcan and since he and Uhura had never really revived their ended relationship
after their experience with Krall and Altamid, they weren’t spending their
leave together.
That left Spock deciding to join Jim.
It was a rare delight to get to spend time
with his family for the season, especially since he and Sam had put aside their
differences a while back, and an even greater delight to have Spock there.
And yeah, he guessed it should bother him
that even his four-year-old nephew figured out he had a crush on Spock. A
crush. Only. Really. But he doubted anything would ever come of it. Spock and
Uhura had been done for a while and it wasn’t like Spock declared undying love
as a result.
Sam glanced up at Jim from his chair. He
smiled. “I guess it’s time for me to go play Santa, huh?”
“Getting close, yeah. Peter’s pretty excited
for his red truck.”
Sam grinned. “Santa will deliver, no
worries.” He rose from his chair. “All yours. Oh.” He looked back at Spock.
“Think about what I said. Goodnight.”
Jim watched him go into the house and then he
lowered himself into the chair Sam had vacated. He was pretty sure there was a
faint green hue across Spock’s cheeks, but the light on the porch was pretty
bad.
Spock was avoiding Jim’s gaze too and Jim
didn’t feel like making Spock even more uncomfortable, so he decided not to ask
his first officer what Sam had said to him.
“I had one of your cookies,” he said instead.
That caused Spock to look at him and he
visibly relaxed. “I had one as well. They do not taste terrible.”
Jim shook his head. “Yeah, good job. You can
make cookies for me anytime.” He winked. Then paused. “Are you all right? This
has got to be pretty boring for you.”
“Not at all,” Spock replied. “You have a very
lively and interesting family.”
Jim snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Spock looked away once more. “Jim.”
“Yeah?”
“I
wanted to come along with you on leave for a more personal benefit.”
“Oh?”
Spock blew out a breath. “It is…I find it
difficult to discuss this with you.”
Alarm shot through Jim. “Spock, you aren’t
going to…you don’t want to leave again, do you?”
Spock looked quickly at him. “You know about
that?” He shook his head. “Of course. The doctor. He has a big mouth.”
Jim agreed with that, but he said, “True, but
in this case it wasn’t Bones. Uhura told me.”
“I see.”
“Are you? Going to leave?”
Spock looked down at his hands. “That depends
mostly on you.”
Jim licked his lips. “On me?”
“Your brother recommends that I be honest
with you. I have…developed romantic feelings for you.” Spock let out another
heavy breath. “In reality, I have held them for some time, but for some of that
I was in a serious relationship with Nyota, and without some prior indication
from you of a mutually shared level of feelings, I thought it best to maintain
that relationship, but afterward when Nyota and I decided to remain friends only,
I…”
“Spock.”
He looked up at Jim, his dark eyes wider than normal in his very pale face.
Jim smiled bright. “Stop rambling. I have the
same feelings.”
“You…do?”
“Are you kidding?” Jim jumped up from his
chair and moved the few feet to where Spock sat. “Move over a bit.”
Spock did, of course, without hesitation. Jim
sat on the chair with Spock. Mostly on top, but he noticed that the Vulcan didn’t
seem to mind. In fact Spock’s arms came up and around him.
“Why don’t you kiss me and find out for
yourself?”
They leaned in for the kiss when the door
from the house burst open.
“Uncle Jim! Uncle Jim?”
Jim rolled his eyes, pulled back and gave Peter
a smile. “Why aren’t you in bed, buddy?”
“I wanted to see Santa.”
“Oh. I see. And did you?”
“Yes! And Mommy was kissing him!”
Jim laughed. “I bet she was.”
Peter eyed them. He was dressed in the most
adorable feety pajamas Jim had ever seen, green and red striped with some
Christmas creature on them.
“Santa brought you your present too!” Peter
exclaimed.
He laughed. “Yeah, I guess he did.”
“I wanna see if he ate the cookies!” Peter hopped
up and down and ran back into the house.
Spock arched a brow. “Your present?”
Jim put his hand on Spock’s jaw. “Uh-huh. I guess
I was wrong when I said Santa didn’t bring people for presents. Because he definitely
brought me you. About that ki—”
But Spock’s mouth was already covering his, silencing
him.