Chapter Text
Jim steps off the shuttlecraft with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back and whatever credits are left on the card in his wallet. He claps McCoy on the shoulder as they part ways and are lead away to be signed up. It takes a couple hours to complete the entrance exams but because of his results - although perhaps mostly because of Pike's influence - Starfleet accepts him and he is escorted by an officer to his single person dorm room.
They say they will give him his uniform tomorrow and supply him with the first round of credits for his bursary so he is able buy the notebooks and equiptment he will need for classes. His textbooks will be provided for him. If it were a hundred years ago, he would have had to pay for his education and everything else to go with it. But it’s not a hundred years ago, he lives in a socialist society. It's this thought that makes him smile at the officer escorting him and thank her; he's not used to people giving to him, especially not big institutions like Starfleet, and it touches somewhere inside of him and warms him from the inside out. Although he supposes he'll be paying them back in terms of his service aboard whatever ship he ends up serving on, and in terms of the new discoveries that he will aid, especially if he achieves his goal of becoming a captain in three years.
The officer leaves him in his room and he takes it in. It is furnished sparsely, with only a bed, a wardrobe, a desk with a chair, and a small chest-of-drawers filling the space. There's a door immediately to the left of the entrance that leads to a small en-suite bathroom. The room feels unusually warm even after Jim removes his jacket and throws it over the back of the chair. After checking the thermostat on the wall he frowns, seeing it's set to 35°C, and turns the heating in the room off completely. It's the middle of summer, he can definitely bear with his room not being heated.
Laying down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as the heat in the room begins to diffuse, he thinks to himself that maybe joining Starfleet will turn out to be the right decision. Because he was meant for something bigger, something better, more than being a farm-hick, repeat-offender, and general asshole. He closes his eyes, breathes in through his nose deeply, and smiles unabashedly at the ceiling. Yeah. Yeah, this is going to be alright.
----
The next day he gets sized and fitted for his cadet uniform in the morning and is granted the first bursary payment just before midday. He goes out and buys whatever equipment he thinks he'll need. When he returns to his dorm, he finds that his student PADD has been placed on his desk, his password and username scribbled hastily down on a piece of paper underneath it - probably by someone who has been way over-worked. Two new cadet uniforms have been laid down on his bed and he grins at them, grins at the red that's so bright it makes his eyes burn, grins at the turtle-neck jumper he has to wear underneath the jacket that he can already tell is going to itch horribly.
But mostly he grins because it's nice to feel like he's actually doing something again. He’s going to learn, and he's going to finish his four year command course in three years, and Starfleet can kiss his ass as he rises to the top of their ranks and becomes the youngest captain in the history of Starfleet. And he feels like he can achieve it, he feels--
Jim feels far too warm.
He places the bags of equipment down on his bed next to the two uniforms before turning and striding over to the thermostat. It's set to 35°C again and he frowns at it before tapping his finger against the screen and turning it off once more. He’ll have to see about finding someone who can have a look at it because it’s got to be broken some how. A spike of cold travels through the room, causing him to shiver and in no way related to the lack of heating. Jim looks around, ever so slightly uneasy, before shrugging and pulling himself together. It’s just a broken thermostat, nothing more and nothing less.
Picking up the uniforms from the bed, he hangs them up in the closet. He picks up his PADD and the slip of paper. He lays back on the bed and ignores how the room doesn’t feel like it’s changed temperature.
----
Because he’s so unused to doing so much, Jim ends up working himself to the bone during his first month at Starfleet as he tries to balance the heavy load of school work, assignments, and trying to establish a social life. Sometimes he and Uhura catch eyes across the hallway and he winks at her, causing her to shake her head, maybe sigh a bit as she hides what he sincerely hopes is a smile. He knows he’s probably annoying her but it’s an aspect of his personality that he can’t really repress. Flirting is just in his nature. Or maybe it's leftover asshole-ish tendencies. Who knows?
The man he met on the shuttlecraft, Leonard McCoy, ends up being his go-to when he needs company and Jim is pretty sure he’s McCoy’s go-to as well. It’s too early to say that they’re best friends, barely even long enough to say they’re friends at all, but Jim can feel it sort of blooming between them. They’ve started visiting bars and wandering around San Francisco together on Saturdays when they both have time off, as a way to get out and distract themselves from their workloads but also as a way to get to know each other better. So far Jim knows that Leonard has an affinity for mint juleps and strawberry bon bons plus what he’d been told already about his failed marriage when they sat next to each other on the shuttlecraft.
So between the work, the somewhat poor attempt at a social life, and a kind of mild exhaustion he hasn’t felt in a long time (it causes a pleasant hum inside of him that he’s missed because it feels so good to just be doing something) Jim ends up falling asleep at his desk late one night on a Tuesday. His unfinished algebra questions for Advanced Mathematics act as a rather uncomfortable pillow, the paper sticking to his cheek.
When he wakes up the next morning with a start - caused by the loud blearing of the alarm on his PADD - the question paper for his assignment sticks to his face and he sleepily slaps it off with an uncoordinated hand. He blinks a few times, rubs the sleep out of his eyes, and ignores the slightly sick feeling in his stomach that tells him he’s forgotten to do something. He stops ignoring the sick feeling when he actually notices the question sheet he’d just peeled off his face. Sighing as he feels the worry settle into the pit of his stomach, he picks up his pen and returns to the paper where he’d written his answers down.
Only, when he looks down at his notebook, the answers are already scrawled out on the paper for him. Jim finds himself blinking in surprise. The handwriting is too tall and too lightly penned to be his, his own characters half a page up are thick-lined and short compared to this steady swirl of letters and numbers.
It’s too early to question it though, so he doesn’t. He shrugs, yawns and changes into his uniform. He shoves his notebooks and textbooks into his bag and picks up his PADD, thanking whatever higher order sent some sort of Maths angel to complete his work for him.
It only truly strikes Jim how surreal it is at lunch when he’s sat across a table from Leonard.
“Have you ever fallen asleep when doing something and then when you’ve woken up you find out that it’s been finished, only you know it couldn’t have possibly been you who finished doing what you were doing?” Jim asks, resting his forearms on the table and leaning across the space towards the other man. Leonard stares at him like he’s gone insane.
“I swear to God kid, if you’ve been buying drugs from big bald men in public toilets--” McCoy starts but Jim cuts him off.
“No! No, no. Just... here, look at this,” he bends down and picks up his notebook, turning it to the page where his work had been completed for him and slapping it down on the table in front of McCoy. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”
Leonard assesses it for a while before leaning back into his chair with a non-committal shrug. “There have been cases of people writing when completely unaware. I think it’s called something like 'dissociative writing'. Maybe you just did that?”
“No, not possible,” Jim shakes his head. “I was definitely asleep. And besides, the handwriiting changes completely. Look at it!”
Leonard doesn’t look at it. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you, kid. Yeah, it’s weird as all hell, I can’t deny that, but maybe it’s easier to move on and just accept it than it is to dwell on it and get all worked up, “ he shrugs, crosses one leg over the other beneath the table. “If it happens again, maybe you could start setting up cameras or somethin'."
Jim doesn’t like the explanation or the advice but he sighs and decides to drop it, ignore it. The conversation moves to other topics and Jim is quietly reminded, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he still hasn’t had the thermostat checked out for any faults yet.
----
The next weekend, he calls in one of the maintenance crew on campus to take a look at the thermostat, which has started to creep ever so slightly higher in temperature and is set to a nice cozy 38°C now. The mechanic frowns a lot as she pushes buttons, takes the panel off and fiddles with the wiring. When she puts it back in its place nothing changes and she runs a hand through her hair.
“I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it. The wires are all in the right places and the console seems to be programmed properly... maybe the system itself is bugged or compromised or something. Because it’s summer, I’ll disconnect it completely so you don’t get heatstroke, and I’ll get one of the lot down in IT to look at the system and see if they can figure out what’s wrong,” she gives him an apologetic, sheepish smile but he thanks her as she gathers her equipment and steps out of the door.
For a moment he considers asking her out; she’s smart and from what he can gather she seems good-natured. But as he opens his mouth to ask, a shiver runs down his spine. By the time he regains his composure, she’s turning the corner at the end of the corridor.
Turning back into his room, Jim frowns at the wall opposite the door in confusion and mild annoyance before turning back to the room and then throwing himself suddenly down into the chair at his desk. Immediately, Jim feels a cool chill smooth its way through his body, sapping all of the heat from his insides. It stops suddenly and Jim decides he’s had enough of the weird shit happening today. Grabbing his uniform jacket and his PADD, Jim hightails it out of there, knocking some equipment off his desk in his haste to leave.
The look in McCoy’s eyes when he opens the door tells Jim that the older man wants very badly to tell him to just fuck off, asshole. When Jim says, “I think my dorm room is haunted” McCoy’s eyes squint dangerously.
“And what? You want to borrow my comm unit to call the Ghostbusters, is that it?” McCoy asks, incredulous.
“Look, can I just sleep here tonight? One night. It’s just,” Jim rubs his hand through his hair nervously, feeling just a little bit stupid. “It’s just really creeping me out, okay?”
McCoy lets out an over dramatic sigh but moves away from the door and into his own single dorm room, letting Jim him inside. The doors close behind him and Jim feels a strange sense of mild relief. McCoy immediately slumps down onto his bed on top of the covers, throwing Jim a pillow over his shoulder.
“You’re sleeping already?” Jim frowns, checking the time on his PADD. “It’s barely eight.”
“Yeah, and tomorrow is Monday and I’ve got an eight am class for Xenobiology with some professor that’s never the same person,” Leonard replies, voice slightly muffled by the way he’s pressing his face into the remaining two pillows. “And I want to fit a jog in around six-ish.”
“Oh,” Jim says intelligently.
“Oh, indeed,” McCoy grunts. “Spare blankets are in the bathroom. You can sleep on the couch. And change out of your damn uniform before you sleep, you moron.”
Jim looks down at the red uniform jacket, a little bit lost. McCoy waves his hand vaguely towards a dresser, yawning. “Borrow a spare shirt if you have to. Frankly, I don’t give a damn. Just stay quiet for the next nine hours.”
An hour later, Kirk tilts his head over the arm of the couch and looks at Leonard and the way he appears to be trying to suffocate himself with the pillow. He isn’t sleeping, Jim can tell from how still his eyelids are.
“Psst,” he vocalises quietly. McCoy’s mouth twitches at the edges. “Psst.” Nothing. “Pssst.” Still nothing. Then, louder, “Psst, hey, Bones.”
“Bones?” McCoy finally tilts his head up slightly to look at him. “Is that supposed to be me?”
“Yeah,” Jim grins. “Because you’re a doctor and you’re really old. So old. So old you’re a skeleton.”
McCoy snorts. “I’m barely in my mid-thirties.”
“Sooooo ooold!” Jim draws the letters out, grinning, and receives a pillow briefly smoothered against his upside down face in return.
“Shut up. You’re, what? Twelve?” McCoy asks.
“Yeah, child prodigy. Twelfth birthday last week. I can’t believe you missed it, Bones,” Jim pouts and McCoy full on laughs, a sound Jim only realises he’s never heard before as soon as it stops. Then something hits him from the conversation before.
“Why does your Xenobiology professor keep changing?” he asks.
McCoy makes a strange face at him, like he’s confused at the sudden change in the topic of the conversation. “I dunno, I’ve not really asked. Could have just quit, or been fired.”
“Or died,” Jim supplies.
“Way to be a fuckin’ downer, Jim,” Leonard frowns. “Apparently it was some asshole Vulcan. Whatever happened to them, I’m glad they’re gone. Can’t stand Vulcans.”
“Wow, space racist much?”
“Shut up,” McCoy says, tilting his head back against his pillow. “I don’t like their ethics. Logic over emotion? It ain’t right.”
Jim falls asleep to Leonard ranting about the teachings of Surak in a soft, pleasant, lulling southern drawl.
----
When Jim returns to his room at 9AM to prepare for his 10AM astrophysics lecture, his room feels strange. Strange and really God damn cold. As he looks over to where he knocked equipment over in his flee to escape his dorm room, he finds it’s no longer on the floor, but rather that it has been placed back on top of his desk. Jim pauses for several long moments, staring before he shakes his head and sighs, letting it just slip. He’ll deal with whatever is happening later, and he will deal with it because he can’t just keep sleeping on the rather small couch in McCoy’s room.
He showers and changes uniforms before grabbing his bag and shoving notebooks, textbooks, equipment and the like into it. He calmly refuses to acknowledge how the room feels like it’s warming up the longer he stands in it, as though his presence alone is enough to restore heat to the space. His PADD beeps with a message from an unknown contact and when he opens it, it just says “Apologies.” so he ignores it. They probably typed in the wrong ID code when they sent it. Jim slings his bag over his shoulder, tucks his PADD under his arm, and leaves.
When he returns to his dorm at 5PM, he collapses into his chair but immediately pauses, frozen in position as that cold shiver returns, sapping heat from his body just as it did the first time, disappearing as suddenly as it came. Jim shakes it off, mentally and physically, slapping his PADD and textbooks down on the desk alongside a pack of post-it-notes and some loose leaf notebook paper. It takes him five minutes in total to work up the willpower required to so much as start the first sentence of the essay he’s been assigned for Astrophysics.
A few hours later he calls it quits. With the essay mostly finished and not even bothering to take his uniform off, he collapses onto the bed on top of the covers. He manages to toe his left shoe off before he falls asleep.
Jim dreams of a desert, hot and dry and harsh as he treks across lifeless land and scales some impressive rock faces. His mind somehow associates the thought of rock faces with Mt. Rushmore which is literally ‘rock faces’ (although George Washington lost his nose and an eyebrow in WW3, so more like 'rock mostly-faces') and he wakes himself up as he laughs at his own subconscious' joke. He reaches out for his PADD, slapping his hand about on his desk until he manages to feel out the cool corner of it. He ignores the digital clock that reads 3AM and messages McCoy and Uhura something semi-coherent about rocks. Jim stretches and sits up, blinking the sleep out of his eyes for a couple of minutes before deciding he might as well read through his essay again and be a good student.
There are four extra paragraphs in blue pen, written in that tall, thin, lightly penned handwriting from before. Each paragraph is labelled with an asterisk and a number to fit in somewhere else amongst the essay.
“Christ, what are you?” Jim mumbles sleepily to whatever entity appears to be haunting his dorm room. He rubs a hand disbelievingly down his face. “A Math angel? A Math angel would be great but it sucks when I don't know who it is. Or are you like, a guardian angel? Or ghost? Are you a ghost? I mean, I'm skeptical but weirder things have happened in the universe...” he considers it for a moment. “Probably, anyway.”
Silence answers him.
“So, are you a ghost or not?”
As he waits silently for his answer, he falls asleep, face pressed sideways into his pillow. When he wakes up again, he’s on his back. A post-it-note tickles his nose. He peels it off and squints carefully, reading it as his alarm blears obnoxiously from the desk.
|| I believe that I am indeed a ghost. ||
“Alright then,” Jim replies to the seemingly empty room. “That’s something I can work with.”
----
Jim slaps the post-it-note onto Leonard's forehead; the strip of adhesive, however, fails and it drifts pathetically to land in the salad that he’s eating. Leonard’s eyes narrow in fractions but he does pick up the small square of paper. He reads it once before looking at it closer. He squints and squinting that hard, Jim thinks, must hurt. McCoy doesn’t say anything.
“It’s a ghost,” Jim supplies helpfully.
McCoy makes a sort of grunting sound and continues to sort of squint and stare at the post-it-note.
“Bones, a ghost is doing my homework for me,” Jim says desperately. “What do I do? Do I ask it to stop? It’s clearly more educated on this stuff than I am but it’s not ethical to let ghosts do your assignments for you, is it?”
Leonard looks at him for a long moment, glances at the post-it-note again before placing it carefully on the table between them. He looks at Jim. “You sure you’re not just on drugs? You're not pranking me or anythin'?”
“Positive,” Jim nods.
“So you’ve got a ghost roommate?” he quires.
“Looks like it,” Jim shrugs.
“Maybe you should establish some dorm rules,” McCoy says, clearly sarcastic and somewhat rudely disbelieving as he shoves a forkful of the salad into his mouth.
----
Jim knows that Leonard means it as a joke but he might as well get some dorm rules sorted so he and this ghost don’t end up hating each other, and so this ghost doesn’t end up thinking it’s a great idea to kill him in his sleep. He's seen a lot of horror movies and from he's seen it's a very real possibility that the ghost will, in fact, kill him if he makes it angry. So, with his mind made up completely, a few days later Jim strides into his dorm room and throws his bag down just inside of the door. He places his PADD down on the desk.
“I don’t know the rules or whatever for how you’re able to communicate through writing and stuff, but if we’re co-existing in this dorm - which I am ignorantly assuming that you can't leave - then we’ve got to get our bearings and make some rules,” Jim says, hovering by the chair at his desk for a moment before sitting down. A cold chill does not spread through his body. “I’ll write down some rules now and then, whenever you can, you alter them and add your own, alright?”
Nothing and nobody answers but Jim’s arm suddenly feels cold so he takes that to be some sort of confirmation from the ghost/spirit/whatever that they have understood what he’s said. Jim plucks a loose leaf sheet of notepaper up from off his desk.
“I’m Jim,” Jim says as he writes. “Jim Kirk. I’m from Iowa and my parents were George and Winona Kirk. Childhood sucked but whatever, and my life was pretty mediocre until Pike convinced me to join Starfleet. Got into a lot of fights. I'm aiming to complete the four year command course in three years. If you can leave some sort of post-it-note or something with basic information you don’t mind sharing on it, that’d be cool. I hate thinking of you as ‘that weird ghost thing’.”
Five minutes later and Jim shoves the paper aside and strides over to his wardrobe to get changed into casual clothes.
“Bones and I are going out tonight so if you can add to the list that’d be awesome. Or if I have to be asleep for you to do whatever you do then that’s cool as well. I totally understand.” For some reason it doesn’t feel weird talking to himself in an empty dorm room.
Pulling on a leather jacket and grabbing his wallet, he says a quiet goodbye to the room before leaving to meet Leonard where they’d agreed.
When he gets there, Leonard is outside and grinning at him. When Jim gets close enough to do so, the other man slaps his shoulder. Jim can smell the alcohol on McCoy's breath that tells him he's started without him when McCoy says, “How's that ghostie of yours doin’, Jimmy?”
“Oh, it’s Jimmy now is it?” he asks, eyebrows raised as Leonard’s hand presses against his shoulder and guides him into the bar. “If I’m ‘Jimmy’ that means you’re gonna have to be ‘Bonesy’.”
Leonard outwardly cringes and shakes his head. “That’s fuckin’ awful. Don’t you ever call me that.”
“Got it, Bonesy,” Jim grins at him as he takes a seat on one of the stool at the bar. Leonard grumbles as he sits down besides him and orders for them both.
It takes a few minutes for Leonard to realise that Jim hadn’t answered his initial question. “So how’s that ghost then?” he asks. Jim doesn’t really know how to answer so he shrugs. “Come on, Jim-Bob. Answer the question.”
Now it’s Jim’s turn to cringe because ‘Jim-Bob’ is absolutely at least a million times worse than ‘Bonesy’. “I took your advice,” Jim says simply.
“What?” Leonard asks, clearly unaware of what advice he’d actually given him. “What advice’d that be?”
“I made an attempt to establish dorm rules,” Jim says a little be haughty as he takes a sip of his beer.
Leonard chokes on his own drink, laughing so hard it looks like he’s either going to throw up or fall off the bar stool. “You did what?” he asks, voice loud and slightly hysterical.
“I attempted to establish dorm rules with the ghost,” Jim says again and yeah, no, that does sound a little bit funny when he says it out loud. Actually, who is he kidding, it sounds fucking hilarious, as proved by the fact that Leonard’s laughs are now almost silent, punctuated with a sort of cough as he tries to calm down. When Jim looks at him his face is a shade of red that says he’s having difficulty breathing as he laughs entirely at Jim’s expense.
“You talked to a fuckin’ ghost,” Leonard manages to wheeze out, hands pressed over his face. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Jim.”
Jim ignores him and downs his drink before ordering another one. To be honest, he brought this upon himself for answering the question in the first place. He shouldn’t have tried to one up a drunk McCoy because a) you can’t, and b) he did attempt to talk to a ghost. It’s his own fault.
----
When Jim gets back to his room he’s slightly tipsy, a little bit dizzy, and mildly queasy. He trips clumsy and uncoordinated over the threshold and almost gets his jacket stuck in the door as it slides shut. He does, however, have enough state of mind to check on the list of dorm rules that he left for the ghost to fill out. When he manages to reach the desk and looks down at the paper he’s pleasantly surprised.
1) Thermostat absolutely stays at 30°C as the highest temperature.
2) Jim must announce where he is going to sit so he doesn’t accidentally end up merging with entities (such as Spock ) whenever he sits at his desk.
3) Jim is/is not allowed to bring people back to the room. (for reasons sexual or otherwise)
4) Jim will not eat meat products in the dorm room.
5) Dorm room must stay somewhat clean.
Jim grins at the dorm rules that have been added on because not only do they prove that he’s not insane like Leonard has been telling him he is all night, it also proves that this ghost actually exists and that they’re beginning to lay down some sort of groundwork for their understanding to be built on. It’s a shame that he’s drunk though because the excitement at making groundwork with a ghost manages to overpower any sort of scientific interest he may have had whilst sober regarding the paranormal phenomenon that’s happening right here in his own dorm room. Who would have guessed it. After re-reading over the rules a few times - just to prove that they’re well and truly real - Jim peels the post-it-notes off the top of the page and lays back on his bed, reading each of them in the order that they have been numbered.
|| 1. I am Spock. I was a student at the Academy and this was my dorm room. ||
|| 2. Upon becoming a teacher, I moved off campus. As far as I am aware, I cannot be seen. ||
|| 3. I cannot recall the date of my death, however I believe it to be somewhat recent. ||
|| 4. I am Vulcan and therefore vegetarian. Hence the request regarding meat products. ||
|| 5. As illogical as it is, I have a fondness for cats. I am aware humans have a fondness for useless information. ||
|| I am somewhat surprised that you unquestioningly accepted that I am a ghost. ||
“Hello, Spock,” Jim says to the empty room as he sits down on his bed and attempting to toe his boots off in a way that must look hilarious to any onlooker. To be honest, if he and this ghost are going to be sharing a room together then the ghost is going to be getting a look at much worse sides of him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m sure we’ll have a blast together. Ghost roommate.” He gives the room a lopsided smile before whispering, “Ghostie roomie.”
He trails off as he gives up trying to get his boots off and lays back on the bed, feet still on the ground. He just lays there for a few moments, breathing, before he laughs and grins at the ceiling. “Just don’t watch me changing clothes, yeah?”
----
For a few days he doesn’t receive any post-it-notes, nor does Spock make any corrections to the work that he does. This either means that he’s doing incredible work, or it might possibly mean that Spock is annoyed at him. Maybe Spock just needs some space though. Jim doesn’t know in any way how ghosts work and maybe communicating with Jim just takes it out of him a lot. He can’t imagine the amount of energy it must take to lift a pen and write with it when you don’t have any kind of physical body with which to manipulate matter. Fortunately, after a week has passed and just as Jim is starting to believe he’s gone insane, his PADD beeps out it’s message tone. He picks it up and checks the contact, which turns out to be the same unknown ID that he’d received a message from a couple of weeks back. He opens it.
Δ It appears I will be able to contact you in this way at any time as long as you are in the room, although it is somewhat more taxing than writing post-it-notes while you sleep. -Spock.
“Do you need to be in the room with just the PADD or do you need me here as well?” Jim asks, staring at the PADD with a sense of wonder. The message takes a couple of minutes to come through and during that time, Jim changes the name of the anonymous ID contact to ‘Spock’.
Δ Both. Although the PADD is more important it appears that you, however, are something of an energy source. It is hard to explain. -Spock.
“So you can only talk to me when I’m in this room?” Jim questions, then adds: “And you can stop signing the messages with your name.” Once again, it takes a number of minutes for the message to come through.
Δ I believe so. It appears that I am confined to this room physically as well.
“It must get lonely,” Jim finds himself saying and he frowns at the message. How long ago did Spock die exactly? How did he die? He’ll have to do some research on the first one, look through the school records. He can’t do that from his PADD - he’ll need a computer. The second question he can just ask. Spock takes longer than the other messages to reply.
Δ It is. However, I was lonely before my death. I am Vulcan, thus I can repress such unwarranted emotions. You need not concern yourself with whether I am lonely or not. It is irrelevant.
“How did you die, by the way?” Jim asks, picking up a post-it-note and writing a reminder for himself to book a terminal late tomorrow evening in the library. He sticks it to the wall above the headboard of his bed. Spock doesn’t reply for a long time and Jim gets worried that the question he’s asked is too invasive, that he’s made Spock uncomfortable by asking it. “If you don’t feel comfortable answering that, don’t answer it, okay? I was just--”
His PADD beeps.
Δ I committed suicide.
And now it’s Jim’s turn to be silent for a long time. He stares at the screen, mouth slightly open in shock as he tries to absorb the information. The only thing he can think is ‘not logical for a Vulcan’. He wants to ask why but the question seems more invasive than the last and he can’t bring himself to ask it, the words stranded on the tip of his tongue. Fortunately, Spock answers it anyway.
Δ In hindsight, my reasons for doing so were illogical.
"I doubt many suicides are logical," Jim answers. Spock must have been part way through writing the next message when Jim spoke because when he replies he doesn't comment on what Jim said.
Δ Loneliness factored into the decision. I felt alone, divided between Vulcan and Earth yet I did not truly belong on either planet. I did not self harm beforehand however I thought of it. Perhaps if I were alive longer I would have. It was not spontaneous as I spent several weeks planning it and making sure my students would not suffer academically due to my choice.
“Do you regret it?” Jim asks. His skin feels cold.
Δ I am not sure.
The answer was almost instantaneous that time. Jim breathes in, then out, then puts the PADD down on his desk. He wants to tell Spock that he’s not alone any more, but he sort of is. The only person Spock actually has for company right now is him and he’s not exactly a stellar member of the human race. He runs his hand through his hair, conflicted, and decides not to say anything else. Spock doesn’t try to continue the conversation. If he wanted to, Jim could pretend Spock didn't exist but Spock can't do that with him.
----
It’s been so long since he so much as looked at a computer that it’s sort of hard to get used to using it again. His typing on the keyboard is atrocious as he’s more used to writing with his thumbs on the touchscreen of his PADD or with a pen in a notebook. It takes a few minutes for him to access Starfleet Academy records, never mind typing in what he wants to search and it pains him - it really does - that he couldn’t have done this from his PADD, although he’s sure that if he tried hard enough he could probably find a way. He’s finally found a list of staff from a couple of years ago when Uhura sits down at the terminal next to him.
“I’m going to pretend I don’t see you stalking the profiles of staff members,” is all she says as she punches keys on the keyboard quickly and precisely, logging into her student account.
“That’s great because I’m not stalking them. I’m just trying to find the name of someone who used to work here,” Jim answers, leaning on his hand as he stares at the names and pictures on the screen.
“Oh, so you’re only stalking one person. That’s much better,” Uhura smirks, leaning back slightly in her chair as she waits for the computer to load. “So who’s the person you’re looking for. I’ve been here a year longer than you, I might know who they are.”
Jim frowns slightly, scrolling up and down the list. “I only know that he’s Vulcan and his first name, or at least I think it’s his first name, is Spock.”
Something changes about the atmosphere and Jim looks up to see Uhura’s stiffened, sitting tensly besides him. He frowns a little bit more. “Did I say something wrong?”
Letting out a breath, Uhura shakes her head before leaning over to take the mouse from him and scrolling through the list of names and pictures. “I knew him. He’s dead now but he used to teach my Advanced Phonology class and I think he taught Xenobiology as well. And he’s not just Vulcan, by the way - he was the first and only Vulcan-Human hybrid ever born. His mother is a genius, helped to invent and engineer the universal translator. His father is still the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth.”
“So he didn’t die very long ago?” Jim asks.
“No. I think it was the week after final exams. I heard he killed himself but we never got told, just rumours among students,” she clicks on one of the pictures, enlarging a profile. Sitting back, she waves at the screen. “That’s him. S’chn T’gai Spock. Deceased.”
Jim stares at the picture, taking in the features of the man he believes is haunting his room. His facial expression is stern, eyebrows slanted at a severe angle and lips pulled into a line that Jim believes he would find to be perfectly straight should he ever have the opportunity to check with a ruler. The man’s bowlcut is cut perfectly straight also, all hair aligned perfectly, the hair in front of his ears shaped into a fine point, probably to match the fine points of his ears themselves. He’s kind of beautiful, in a strange way, although he looks too tense to be comfortable. Just your average Vulcan, Jim supposed.
“Hey,” Uhura begins, but hesitates before turning to face him again. “How do you know him? As far as I know, he didn’t socialise much at all. And, well, no offence but--”
“How would he know some farm boy who lived way out in Iowa?” Jim continues for her, his smirk matching the wry smile she gives him.
“Yeah, that.”
“I don’t know him, not personally anyway,” Jim eyes up the information in a sidebar next to the picture of Spock. First Officer to Christopher Pike. He decided to lie through his teeth. “I know Pike though, and he mentioned his old First Officer who was a Vulcan. I thought I’d check him out.”
Lying to a Xenolinguistics expert isn’t easy because if there isn’t something in his voice that gives it away, there’s definitely something in his body language. Uhura looks at him suspiciously but she nods and accepts what he’s said, turning back to whatever project she’s doing on her own computer terminal. Jim turns back to his computer screen and continues reading through the information on Spock’s profile that he has access to as a student. When he’s read that, he hacks it and reads the rest of it before logging off and shutting the terminal down. He pats Uhura on the shoulder as he leaves and she answers his “see you around” with a distracted “yeah, bye” as she continues with her own work.
The information he had access to as a student had outlined what Spock had taught as a professor (Advanced Phonology, Xenobiology, and Interspecies Ethics), the dates at which he joined and left Starfleet, his rank, and the ships he had served aboard - or, in this case, the ship Spock was supposed to serve aboard - and under whom he had served. On the full Starfleet record he’d been able to access a report on Spock’s death. Spock had died on Saturday 1st July 2254, about a week after his classes had sat their final examinations. His death was officially listed as a suicide. He’d left a note to his mother, the contents of which Jim wouldn’t read even if they were available.
When he enters his dorm room it’s unusually cold, although it seems to warm up a little bit as he steps through the door.
“Hey, Spock,” Jim says to the room, dumping his bag down next to his desk. It’s when he’s changing into a more comfortable shirt and out of the jumper of his uniform that his PADD pings from across the room. The room itself is still a somewhat cold.
Δ You looked at my Academy record.
Jim frowns a little at the message but really, what’s the point in trying to lie when Spock clearly already knows. “Well, yeah. I was curious. I wanted to know more about you,” he says sheepishly, hesitating next to the chair in front of his desk before he sits down in it.
Δ If you wished to know more information about me and my past you simply could have asked me.
He lets out a quiet scoff as he reads the message. “You see, the problem with that is that you’re a Vulcan, and Vulcans have a reputation of not wanting to talk about emotional things, like their pasts. So I didn’t ask you. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable with sharing information or anything.” Jim pulls a textbook out of his bag and flips it open. When he runs a finger over the page, the words highlight themselves.
Δ Is it not customary for humans to talk to one another when seeking out information about someone’s past? It is rather impersonal for a human to look at a record about an emotional subject.
“Yeah, but you’re Vulcan,” Jim sighs. “Like I said, didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.” He picks up a pen and pulls a sheet of loose paper over to himself with the intention of writing notes.
Δ I believe you are misunderstanding me. It may be difficult to read my true meaning as paralinguistic features are not present in written text. The pragmatics of what I am saying indicate that I am giving you an opening to ask me about my past. It is likely that the Starfleet records did not include everything.
The message causes Jim to stop the movement of his pen, ceasing the doodling of stars when he should have been writing notes instead. He swallows. “Are you sure? Because really, you don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me. If it makes you uncomfortable you don’t--” A beep from his PADD cuts him off.
Δ Jim.
That’s all it says but suddenly his forearm feels cold and Jim gets a sense of some kind of fond exasperation being projected through his skin. He stares at the cold spot on his arm for a moment before looking towards the bed, where Spock must be sitting if he’s the one who is touching Jim’s arm. “Is that you?” he asks. The message takes a while to come through.
Δ I was unsure if attempting to project emotion on to you would work or not. I’m pleased to see that it does. Touch telepathy is rarely able to transmit emotions from the telepath to another person, never mind when the telepath is a ‘ghost’.
Jim merely shakes his head and the cold patch on his arm disappears. “Maybe we could do the talking about our pasts thing tomorrow. Tomorrow is Friday, I’ll have more time to talk after classes. Right now I really have to study, Spock.”
Δ I understand.
There are no more messages after that for the night.
----
It’s at around 10PM when Jim decides to go to sleep, closing the textbook and turning his PADD back on to check any unread messages he might have on there before he goes to bed. None from Spock, but there’s one from McCoy asking if he wants to go out for drinks tomorrow. Jim decides it's probably better to answer that one in person rather than this late considering he might actually wake McCoy up and make him grumpier than he usually is. There’s also one from Uhura, asking him the real reason he was looking at Spock’s Academy records. He doesn’t reply to it because if he tells the truth, he doesn't think for a second that she'll see him as anything other than some douchebag playing a horrible trick, but if he lies again then he doesn’t doubt that Uhura will know he’s lying.
With a sigh, he drops the PADD down on the bed next to his pillow and gets up to change out of the rest of his uniform, putting some pyjama bottoms on. He almost trips over his boots on his way to the small en-suite bathroom, kicking them to the side, both boots making a ‘thunk’ sound as they hit the wall. Going through the usual routine, Jim squeezes toothpaste onto his brush and shoves it into his mouth. Only, when he looks up, he sees a shimmer out of the corner of his eye in the mirror.
“Spock?” he asks, forgetting to spit the toothpaste foam in his mouth out into the sink and having to wipe away however much manages to dribble out of his mouth. After he spits it out, he continues. “Spock, is that you?”
A faint reflection is visible in the mirror now, and if Jim squints he can almost make out a facial expression. It’s not as stern as the picture he’d seen in the report; Spock’s features are somehow softer (admittedly, that might be because the reflection of Spock in the mirror is almost entirely see-through), a vague expression of surprise adorning his features. Jim spends minutes staring at it, squinting the whole time in order to keep the reflection in focus. Spock is completely still, meeting Jim’s eyes in the mirror.
When Jim gains the nerve to look behind himself at the spot where Spock would have been stood, he can’t see Spock at all. He looks back to the mirror and the last of the reflection of Spock’s ghostly form is fading away. A coldness seeping into his bicep tells Jim that Spock’s still there, that his ghost roommate hasn’t passed on fully just yet. Jim finishes brushing his teeth before returning to the main room.
A new message on his PADD simply reads: “Δ Fascinating.”
----