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]

It is the same, after all then. Jim can't help the way he smiles. Proud to be able to help at least a little bit.

"Won't take me but a minute to go and get it."

Jim's fishing for his new PINpoint when the question of Felix comes up. Uncharacteristically, Jim's finding his face heating up. He doesn't look up from the PINpoint for a moment or two. Embarrassment isn't the sort of thing he's overly familiar with when it comes to most things. But intimate gestures in a committed relationship is apparently something he gets flustered over.

"N..not the flowers, no. I didn't know what kinds Felix would like. But I did make those baked apples for him the night I admitted I was in love with him." Ahem, let him just clear his throat. He wasn't mumbling.

[boldygoing]

...huh. That's a reaction that he didn't expect, and watching the other captain's ears and cheeks flush deeper pink is probably the most bizarre thing he's seen today. Jim Kirk does not get embarrassed, not like that.

Oh. Well then.

"How sweet," he says with a grin, pushing just enough to make things not awkward. He hopes.

[smartass_captain]

"I will punch you in the dick." No he won't. Frankly, Jim's well within his rights to laugh at the way the older captain's face gets even redder at the comment. Either way his older counterpart is disappearing with a bip! in short order.

Even if it only takes him a minute to copy down the recipe he's taking longer to get himself under control. He doesn't get embarrassed especially not over sappy shit. Okay? Right? Okay. Good talk, self. Knock that shit off.

When he pops back in a moment later, it's with a sheet of paper in hand he pushes into his counterpart's hands.

"When I figured out how easy the streusel filling was I got mad she'd been holding out on me for so long." Yes he's going to pretend that didn't happen and if Jim knows what's good for him he'll do the same.

[boldygoing]

Jim allows himself to laugh a little as the older captain all but storms out. Gives himself a few minutes to remember that oh yeah, he might be in the same boat, well shit. Not that he's going to say as much. Can't go giving his counterpart more ammo, they've already got enough between them to shoot down a whole fleet of metaphorical shuttles.

So when the other guy does make his reappearance, Jim only gives him one knowing sort of look before taking the recipe and looking it over. You haven't heard the last of this, other Jim. But for now, truce. Here's hoping he doesn't fuck this up, too.

"How'd you find the time to get the recipe out of her, anyway?"

[smartass_captain]

That's right. As you were, as Bones would say. Jim doesn't take the bait and even if he wanted to the opportunity is soon overshadowed by a question he hadn't really been expecting to hear from his younger counterpart.

The confusion shows on his face. Along with something heavier. You know when he got the recipe from her, Younger Jim. Right?

"She gave it to me after..." Ahem. You know. When they were off world that time as kids? "After I was released from hospital and went home again. She gave it to me."

[boldygoing]

After... then? Really? The smirk slides off his face in a hurry, replaced by a somewhat confused frown. The hell? "You... stuck around, after that?" He can't think of any other explanation. For her to start pushing recipes at him instead of just constant attempts to feed him, as if it would make up for the months of suffering without... that wouldn't have happened in the handful of days it had taken Jim to decide to follow in Sam's footsteps and scram. He would've had to stay, for months. Years, even.

[smartass_captain]

"Stuck around? I mean...yeah. Mom practically had me on a leash for the first year I was back. Longest she ever stayed planet side in my life. I got into trouble a lot for nicking food. She'd always get me out and remind me that I didn't need to do that anymore."

Jim sighs and mutters the bit about his mother. Being turned from something damn near unwanted to a glass pet that needed constant pampering lest it shatters didn't sit well with Jim. It was smothering. Reeking of too little too late. But...he has to admit she was patient with him. She only lectured him a few times when she'd come break him out. The rest of the time she took him home and made a home cooked meal while telling him everything was okay now.

And that's the part that really dug into Jim. Was it? Was it okay? Was anything okay that shit like that was allowed to happen in the first place anywhere, let alone a Federation colony?

He hates platitudes. Hates how they exist to comfort the speaker and not the one who suffered.

"That next year...on Remembrance day, Grandma Margaret gave me the recipe and a jar of her blueberry preserves as a present. Said I might learn to take comfort in food again if I taught myself how to cook. I never got to be any good, but I learned the basics. It was enough to convince Mom that I was stable enough to not be supervised twenty four-seven. She went back to the fleet and I...pretty much bummed around Iowa and the surrounding states getting in trouble for petty shit until Pike found me on Recruiting Day."

[boldygoing]

Jim slowly shakes his head as he listens, surprised as all hell to find that this is something else they don't share. Sure, some of the beats are familiar, but... "I got tired of all the... you know." Smothering. Food constantly being offered to him, sometimes to the point where he ate himself sick, unable to make himself say no. Soothing words and awkward hugs that were as foreign to him as if his mother had been replaced by some stranger wearing her face. And way more crying than a traumatized teen was prepared to deal with, over him, over his aunt, whatever happened to set her off. And not just her, but her parents too, trying to make up for the lack and overcompensating just as much as she had. Too little too late, and way too much for him to deal with. It had been when he was still in the hospital, and it didn't stop when he got out.

"I think I lasted a week at home before I packed a bag and left." Like Sam had. Part of Jim had naively hoped he could find his brother, go back to living with the only member of the family who had ever given a shit about him. But Sam had been long gone, and if the adults couldn't find him, what hope did a teenager have? "Wandered around for a few years, doing whatever the hell I wanted. Lots of petty shit," he echoes, a ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Yeah, he did that too. Shoplifting food, exceeding speed limits, yadda yadda. "It was dumb luck I was back in Iowa when Pike came through."

Shit. It's been almost a year, and his voice still almost hitches on his mentor's name. But he takes in a breath and lets it out, and the moment passes.

[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.