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When Spock comes over, Jim’s already washing the car and fuming. Spock catches on, because he starts with this: “You appear upset.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Jim grumbles, hosing down the Corvette.
“You are aware what my name is, Jim,” Spock says, sounding vaguely disapproving even though he’s only two years older than Jim. Jim also knows him well enough by now to tell that Spock is just being annoying on purpose.
“Are you going to help,” he snaps, “or are you just gonna be a smartass until the end of time?”
When Spock decides to get the sponge sitting in the bucket of suds nearby instead of replying, Jim figures that he’s got his answer.
—
“I’m sorry,” he mutters, while they’re busy scrubbing the dashboard of the car and the inside of the doors. “About—you know.”
“Apologies are illogical,” Spock says, voice even, but Jim had seen the hurt flash across his face earlier, and feels pretty shitty about it.
“Sam left,” he says after a moment. “I mean, he was gonna leave anyway, but Frank found him packing his stuff and kicked him out early.”
Spock pauses to look at him. Jim wonders if he’s thinking about Michael, the sister that stays on Vulcan with his dad when he and his mom come for the summers. Spock doesn’t really mention her all that much, but when he does, Jim sees all the same things he feels about Sam in his face.
“Your stepfather,” he says, and now his voice is completely flat, “is a terrible person.”
Jim laughs, but it’s not really happy. “I could’ve told you that, Spock.”
“I do not understand why your mother—“
“I don’t understand my mom, period,” Jim interrupts, even though it’s a lie. He’s seen pictures of his dad in the Academy yearbook Mom pretends not to have on her terminal, from Grandpa Tiberius and Grandma Violet the few times he’d been to see them in person. It’s too much like looking in a mirror. “At least with Sam, I kinda got it, you know? I don’t—I just wished he’d stayed anyway.”
Spock doesn’t respond, which is probably a good thing. Jim doesn’t know what the right kind of answer to something like that is. It doesn’t actually matter, because Jim opens up the sunglasses holder and catches something cool in his palm. They’re keys, catching the gleam of the afternoon sunlight.
—
“Frank’s selling the car anyway. That’s why I’m washing it,” Jim insists, after he proposes to Spock that they should totally take the Corvette on a joyride and Spock looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Anyway, fuck that. It’s my dad’s car.”
“You do not know how to drive,” Spock points out, working at a particularly stubborn stain on the console.
“I’ve done stuff with tractors on my grandpa’s farm! And I’ve watched dashcams on the net. Can’t be that hard.”
“Watching an online video is hardly the same as—“
“I’m really good at driving the tractors—“
“Jim.”
Spock looks—well, kind of disappointed and a little pissed, which is a lot for Spock. It had taken a whole summer for Jim to wear him down, to get him to say Jim instead of James when they were both still in single-digits and things felt a little less shitty. But now Jim knows better; he knows that Sam likes science, but won’t touch anything starship related with a stick, and he also knows that Sam wanted to leave more than he wanted to stay. Jim knows that Mom loves him—probably—knows that she used to sing him to sleep with 20th century rock when she was planetside, but he also knows that Mom’s always going to see a starship as more of a home than Riverside, and that on Kelvin Day, she’s never been able to look him in the eye. He knows that Frank hates him, knows that Frank just sees him as wasted space, knows what it feels like to be called useless a million different ways; he knows what it feels like to be alone, and he knows what acid-sharp, hot-rod red, simmering anger feels like. It feels like Jim's skin’s too itchy sometimes with it, like he can’t talk around it sometimes without wanting to scream and scream and scream.
He also knows what it’s like to miss someone. He doesn’t think he’s ever known how to not miss people.
(He knows that Amanda and Spock have the same kind eyes, that Amanda knows more than a dozen languages and songs in even more, and he knows—
Well, he knows a lot about Spock. It’s not like he’s got feelings about it, okay?
This definitely isn’t a lie.)
Instead of any of this, Jim palms the keys, jagged edges digging into his skin.
“Look,” he says, “you don’t have to come with me. I’m okay with you staying out of it, okay? You should stay out of it. But Spock, whether or not you’re coming, I’m doing this.” I need it. I have to feel something other than—
Spock stops scrubbing at the console. Instead, he just looks at Jim. This time, Jim can’t tell what he’s feeling at all.
—
So Jim ends up doing a few miles in the Corvette on the dirt path before he banks on to the paved road a little farther away. When he does the turn, Spock says, sounding like he’s very much trying to be calm, “You should use less centripetal force when maneuvering this vehicle.”
Jim turns to him, grinning. “We’re basically home free,” he says, “so chill.”
“I fail to see how that is supposed to appease me,” Spock says tightly.
“Hey, you were the one who said that stuff about me being illogical! And then you added that you should be there anyway so I could have a voice of reason or some shit like that—“
“You are misquoting me—“
“Blah, blah, blah—“
“I—“
The old Nokia ringtone of the car phone cuts off Spock neatly, and Jim groans.
“Don’t pick up,” he warns.
Spock raises one eyebrow. Then, probably to make some kind of point about responsibility or whatever, he answers the call.
“Hey, are you out of your mind?” Frank snaps, irate and tinny. “That car’s an antique! You think you can get away with this just ‘cause your mother’s off planet? You get your ass home right now!”
“That’s why I told you to not to pick up,” Jim says, irritated.
“It would be presumptuous to assume,” Spock says, all clipped but just a little smug, “that no one would notice that we were gone.”
“Is that the Vulcan kid? Jesus Christ, Jim, is he with you? It isn’t enough I have to tolerate him at the house all the goddamn time—“
Jim feels something hot and murderous boil in his belly at that, and then ends the call. When he looks over at Spock, Spock’s lips are pursed and tight and his fists are clenched.
“Hey,” he says, “he’s a jackass.”
“I know,” Spock says, but it’s softer. Jim thinks of that time Spock told him about some of his classmates hurling names at him, at Amanda, at the way Spock couldn’t look at Jim when he’d added, quiet but not sorry, that he’d eventually punched one of them in the face.
“Seriously,” Jim says, and then he takes a hand off the wheel to pull up the in-car playlist. It’s all of his dad’s favorite songs; no one’s updated it in years. He taps the top song and grins as it starts.
“C’mon,” he shouts over the chords of the opening guitar, “let’s make this worth it.”
—
For about solid two minutes, it’s perfect: Sabotage is wailing over the rush of the wind after Jim and Spock unlatch the convertible top, and they must be going over 80 at this point. They speed past Sam, who’s hitchhiking along the road, and Jim honks the horn gleefully as they fly by while Spock actually fucking waves at him. Sam looks like someone knocked him on his ass, he’s so stunned, and it’s hilarious. It’s perfect, all of it.
Jim looks over at Spock; his dorky dark bangs have been blown askew and his cheeks are chapped green from the wind. He turns to Jim and the corners of his mouth quirk a little.
Jim doesn’t have feelings. He definitely doesn’t have feelings.
“See,” he yells, “I told you, I told you it’d be—“
Spock’s eyes go a little wide, and then Jim’s confused for a moment before he sees that Spock’s caught something in the rearview mirror. He checks and—fuck.
The police officer sidles next to them in a hovercraft, serious as anything. “Citizen—pull over.”
“Jim,” Spock calls, “we should—“
Jim turns into the dirt road nearby instead. “No fucking way,” he grits out, thinking of having to deal with Frank again, having to deal with his mom’s disappointment when she inevitably finds out. “Look, lemme just find the way—“
But then they hit the quarry gates with a jolt enough to knock Jim down to his bones, rattling him all over. Fuck. Jim forgot that one of the dirt paths leads to the fucking Riverside quarry.
“Jim,” Spock says, his voice shaking through the syllable, “Jim—“
And it’d be one thing if it was just Jim, but this is Spock. Spock who had taken ages to wear down, who pretends he’s not awesome at the lute, who secretly loves Alice in Wonderland and quantum physics all at the same time, who makes Jim’s life better, makes Jim better, who Jim can call his friend, who Jim—
The drop’s coming too soon; there’s not enough room to stop. Jim’s going to crash or worse or, or—
It’s not over, Jim thinks fiercely, wind whipping at his face, it’s not, it’s not—I’ll get us out of this—
He pulls a sharp turn, dust kicking up, hits the brakes, and shoves open his door, before he catches Spock’s bony wrist and pulls, yanking both of them out the side right before the Corvette flies over the drop.
—
Spock pulls him up; he’d ended up a little farther from the cliff than Jim, who’d been busy scrabbling on the rocky edge and trying not to die. There’s a scratch across his cheek; Jim can feel the coppery taste of blood on his own lip.
“I am never listening to you again,” Spock hisses, and Jim’s stomach drops hard before he realizes that Spock’s eyes are wet. Jim’s never seen Spock cry before; it’s sort of the worst thing ever.
“You’re okay,” he whispers, trying to be reassuring, and Spock makes a choked kind of noise, all watery and horrible and so unlike him.
“You think I am concerned for myself?” he rasps. “What about—“
“Citizens,” the police officer interrupts, and Jim hates him.
He blinks against the harsh sun instead, and takes Spock’s wrist in his hand again; Spock doesn’t pull away. It’s probably stupid to do this. They’re not anything to each other, even if—and Jim doesn’t have feelings. He doesn’t.
“Is there a problem, officer?” he asks, putting on his best cornfed-good-boy-schmuck face. Sam would be proud. Maybe.
The police officer cocks his head. “Citizens,” he says, “what are your names?”
—
Anyway—they both know how the rest of this story goes. Eventually, anyway.