HELP HOW DOES I ANNIVERSARY

[boldygoing]

Brace yourselves, Nexus citizens. James Tiberius Kirk is back, after a somewhat lengthy absence. Not the one who went AWOL and scared the shit out of a lot of people, as he hasn't been gone nearly long enough to grow a beard to rival the Jim that is currently standing in the plaza looking concerned, confused, and very mildly alarmed. At the very least, he isn't behaving like it's an emergency, or like anyone's life is at stake. No, his problems are of a much more mercifully benign type today. Hooray for mundane difficulties!

"What the hell do people do for anniversaries?" he asks, once he's sure that Hunter isn't anywhere to be seen. It wouldn't do to make him seem unprepared, next week. Assuming he figures out what the hell he's going to do, that is.

Comments

[smartass_captain]

"She was the only one who didn't coddle me. But she died pretty soon after that. That was the last thing she ever gave me. So I learned how to make it pretty well."

And Jim can definitely see why his counterpart left home. He'd certainly thought about it many times over the next few years. Every night he'd spend looking for an easy fuck in another backwater drinking hole. Every weekend he spent in jail for some misdemeanor or another. Every time he came home beat to hell and collapsed on the couch in the empty house his Mother was no longer in. He wondered about leaving.

What good would it do? Where would he go? The itch for exploration was buried then under a protective coating of alcohol and one night stands. Keeping him numb from his troubles and satisfied enough with the pleasures of the flesh not to push himself for anything more.

He'd proven on Tarsus what he was good for.

Jim didn't need to go anywhere to live up to that.

"I tooled around the neighboring states here and there but somehow I always ended up going back home. I wasn't living then, though. I was just existing from day to day."

[boldygoing]

Even though he'd spent his teenage years mostly on the road, Jim can't say that he doesn't know pretty much exactly what that was like. Never a goal, never a purpose, just... being there. Doing things. More for something to do than out of any real idea of what he was going to accomplish, seeking out anything and everything that wouldn't remind him of home, or that place.

Shit, staying in Riverside must have been stifling as fuck, though. Thank fuck for Starfleet. And for Pike.

Jim clears his throat a little, fingers curling a little more securely around the paper recipe, now more aware of what it actually means. "Guess I'd better take good care of it, then."

[smartass_captain]

Jim watches the bearded captain curl his fingers around the recipe and he can't help but to feel proud. They've done this not once, but twice now, with this Jim and Hunter. All those years believing they were worthless and undeserving of someone else's time and affection seem far away to him now.

The barest hints of a proud smile are on his face when the younger captain looks up again.

"You're going to do fine. No matter what you decide to do for him." Because he's willing to admit he cares now. Willing and trying to put the effort in. No matter what he decides, Jim knows he'll see it through to the best of his abilities.

[boldygoing]

"Thanks." He doesn't specify what for, knowing he doesn't really have to. Weird as it is to even be contemplating an anniversary in the first place, still wondering when the hell this went from a casual hookup to something deeper, a larger part of his life than he'd ever expected to devote to this kind of thing. Even weirder to be getting romantic advice from a doppelganger who has the voice of experience to back him up. And family recipes? Yeah, hadn't seen that one coming either.

But hey, he'd be a shitty explorer if he let fear of the unknown scare him off, right? So... baked apples it is.