So I am constantly trying to come up with content for the blog that encompasses something other than boring ass me.
I was looking over at my work on AO3 today and re-read a one-shot story I had written and posted last May called Not This Time. It’s very short and also my lowest hits for a Star Trek story (sad ending) and here it is here for reference.
*I should have told you…something. And now…it’s too late. My heart hurts so much. I can’t even breathe. I can’t even see past the tears. I feel so empty. Lost. Your face. Do you know? Do you even know what you were to me? I dreamed of tasting your lips. Touching your tongue with mine. Running my hands over your bare skin. It was not to be.
“Doctor, we’re losing him!”
“Damn it. Get out of the way. Get Spock out of here!”
“No. Jim! I want—”
Spock.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppppppppppppppp
Jim gasped as his lungs filled with air. He began to choke, leaning on the glass of the observation deck.
What the fuck was that?
“Captain? Are you all right, sir?” Ensign Davers was suddenly by his side, touching his arm.
Was he? He didn’t know. He’d never spaced out like that before.
“Yeah, fine. Thank you, Ensign.”
Davers looked uncertain, but he nodded, practically clicked his heals and saluted, and excused himself from the observation deck.
Maybe he was a little more apprehensive about the mission coming up then he’d thought. Which wasn’t exactly like him.
Shaking his head, he decided it was time to return to his quarters and get some real rest.
As he approached his door, he spotted Spock and Uhura in the hallway outside hers, a little ways down. She had her arms around his neck as usual. And his gut twisted, also as usual. Dumb, Jim.
She kissed Spock on the corner of his mouth and then released him, entering her quarters. Spock turned and headed down the corridor toward Jim.
“Captain.”
“Commander.”
“If you have time, I would like to discuss the parameters of the upcoming mission.”
Jim shook his head. “Yeah. I don’t. Not really. I’m a little tired and kind of spacey.”
Spock straightened minutely. “It will not take long.”
Jim accessed his door. “All right.”
Spock stepped in after him. “I recommend that you not be part of the landing party.”
Jim pulled off his gold tunic. “Why?”
“The mission does not require two senior officers. And since it is more a scientific mission, my presence is more logical.”
Jim frowned.
Spock stands in front of a native plant, scanning it. He begins to speak, “This is fascinating, Captain. The plant—”
Jim sees the plant turn its-its head or bud or whatever and aim its spores right at Spock’s side, where his heart is.
No.
Jim pushes Spock out of the way and the spores hit him. He goes down.
“Captain?”
Jim looked at Spock. “I think Lieutenant Commander Morse can handle the mission. I want both of us to skip it.”
“Captain—”
“You have your orders, Commander.”
“Very well,” Spock replied, but he was not at all pleased. Even for a Vulcan. He turned to leave.
“Spock, I—”
Spock turned back. “Captain?”
“Nothing,” he said softly. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
And Spock was gone.
Jim touched his fingers to his lips.
I dreamed of tasting your lips. Touching your tongue with mine. Running my hands over your bare skin. It was not to be.*
This got me to thinking that I didn’t really want to leave at this for my poor baby. So I started something that I am probably going to post on the blog. Probably just in bits and pieces as the whims hit me and maybe it will be a long process before Jim gets any kind of happiness, but anyway…the following was inspired by the previous, and you might say they are part of the same universe and the same Jim. So here is the first part, and I’ll add to it whenever.
When Jim was a small boy he sometimes spent time with his gran, his father’s mother. He didn’t get to spend a lot of time with her but when he did, Jim always loved it.
At one time, according to Gran, she and Grandad had owned the farmhouse in Riverside, but they’d passed it on to George and Winona when they’d first got married.
Gran and Grandad had moved to a condominium in Chicago. By the time Jim used to visit Gran, it was only her, as Grandad had passed on right after Sam was born.
Jim was six and Sam nine when they got to spent the winter holidays with Gran. Mom had to be off planet at a space station that had required her engineering expertise for an extended period, including over the holidays, and it had been, mercifully, before Frank had entered their lives.
Jim had never been a good sleeper, even as a small boy, and he had gotten up in the middle of the night, three nights before Christmas, to find Gran rocking in her chair and sipping brandy. He’d crawled into her lap and she spun a tale for him.
“You know, Jimmy, our family has the gift.”
“The gift?”
“Auyuh. The intuition.”
“In-ta-wishing.”
Gran chuckled. “Close enough, Jimmy. You can also call it the sight.”
“Everybody sees, don’t they?”
“Not that kind of sight. This is the ability to see what’s going to happen in the future.”
Jim frowned. He wasn’t sure what Gran was talking about.
“For example, I knew when your grandad was going to have a heart attack and pass on from this life. I foresaw it. And I knew your daddy wasn’t ever coming back from his last mission on the Kelvin.” She shook her head sadly. “But here’s the thing, now, Jimmy. Not all of us have it.”
“We don’t?”
“It can skip some people, some generations. Your daddy, Lord Rest him, didn’t have it. I used to ask him once in a while. But he never did have it. But you.” And she thumped him lightly on the chest. “You might have it.”
“Yeah?” Jim really had no clue what “it” was but the way Gran talked about it, it sounded cool.
Back then, when Gran told him, Jim hadn’t understood. He just knew he loved spending time with her and he loved that holiday time. It was his favorite ever.
And after she passed away and Jim remembered her words, he dismissed them as a story to tell a boy who couldn’t sleep.
When Jim got into the Academy, he began to experience moments he couldn’t quite explain. Like that night, after talking with Pike, Jim had gotten the absolute sense, conviction even, that he would meet someone who would become immensely important to him that next day.
And he had. Bones.
It was just little things like that at first. Easily dismissed.
But then he’d had a couple onboard the Enterprise right after he’d made captain. One where he died saving Spock. One where Spock died because Jim hadn’t been there. He’d been able to stop them, both of them.
It didn’t always work. He hadn’t foreseen Spock almost dying in the Volcano. And he hadn’t really known Marcus was going to betray them until it was far too late. But he had seen his own death saving the ship and he had let that one happen anyway.
Bones saved it, luckily.