Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Let me get this straight,” Kirk says. “You’re me. Are we in a parallel universe?”

Jim grins. “We’re a genius in every timeline, huh?”

Kirk sits back in his chair and cocks his head in a way that’s way too similar to how Sam would. He looks more like Sam than Jim ever did, with darker hair and green eyes, but has an easy grace to him where Sam seems like he’s constantly second-guessing himself when he does something. “Didn’t you just say that I was the original you? So given that—”

“Okay, okay,” Jim grumbles.

—

Spock looks at Kirk as soon as he walks into Jim’s ready room. Then he turns on Jim and raises an eyebrow. Jim holds up his hands.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“This is why there were abnormal transporter readings,” Spock sighs. “So—”

“Spock, meet, uh—well, me.” Jim waves a hand vaguely in Kirk’s direction; Kirk is looking at Spock, totally shocked. Maybe he hasn’t met his Spock yet? Spock’s eyebrows raise. 

“Am I incorrect in assuming he is from—”

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s that timeline too.”

“Are you able to verify that?” 

“Well, I’ve got this from—uh—” Jim tries to figure out how to talk around the existence of Ambassador Spock. That’s this Kirk’s Spock, and—fuck, this whole thing is circuitous as hell. He taps the PADD on his desk, which has a file that was forwarded to him after the ambassador’s death, as per his request (apparently), even though his physical effects had gone to Spock. There’s not much in there; a recording from his Jim (Who is, again, this Kirk? God, this is fucking insane) congratulating him on his new ambassadorship, and some photos. The PADD lights up and Jim clicks to the file, and then to the photos. 

He swipes to the one that looks the earliest, chronologically; there’s the ambassador, probably in his late twenties, along with four other people sitting together and talking at a table in what looks like a starship rec room. One of them looks just like Kirk, half-grinning and sharing a glance at his Spock. Jim lets Spock look at it for a moment after he hands the PADD over. 

“Also,” he says, lounging back in his chair like a cat, “he knows my passcode. Any version of me’s got that shtick.”

Spock flicks his gaze up, either looking irritated or vaguely amused. “You mean your ridiculous propensity to maintain the same passcode for everything?”

“It’s convenient,” Kirk points out, even though he still sounds stunned. 

“I see.” And then Spock turns to Kirk and dips his head, before offering the ta’al. “Jim, if it would not trouble you, I would like to pursue further verification of your universe of origin through a simple mind link.”

Jim sits up “Jim? Did you just call him—it took you six months to call me—"

Kirk is looking at Spock, his eyebrows drawn together, still stunned, before his face smooths out and he smiles. It’s almost… shy? Shit.

“Spock,” he says warmly. “It’s good to meet you. And sure, of course. Anything to help.”

Fuck, Jim thinks. How old is this Kirk anyway? Twenty-something? He can’t have a thing for his Spock, although Jim can admit that he had a tiny, tiny thing for the Ambassador years ago, but that was when his Spock still thought he was a giant dick and before Jim had graduated from oh my God, he’s hot as fuck to oh my God, I can’t live without him. 

It doesn’t matter anyway. 

—

“You’re jealous,” Nyota says when she sits across him from the mess later that week. The whole explaining the other Kirk to the crew had gone pretty swimmingly after Spock had confirmed that yes, original-flavor baby Jim Kirk had popped up in their universe, all things considered. It probably makes sense given they ran into evil-Spock-with-a-goatee only three months ago. Evil Spock had actually still looked hot with the goatee, which is unfair as fuck on a hundred levels, and even more so, annoying as fuck because Jim has no one to complain about it to; Bones had stopped entertaining his Spock-rambling about three months ago.

Jim stabs at his mac n’cheese. “No,” he says, but it totally sounds like a lie. “I’m a mature adult. Mature as hell. The very pinnacle of maturity.”

“Denying it isn’t going to make it go away,” Nyota replies, sharp but still gentle in a way, because she and Jim are friends now and the rough edges of their early ribbing have mostly softened with time. “Besides, you’re about as subtle as Monty is when he gets new dilithium. Sorry, Jim.”

Bones, who shows up with a plate of sprouts and assorted greens, scoffs as he slides next to Jim. “Not like Jimbo over here’s ever had luck being subtle.” 

“Jim’s right here,” Jim protests, “and you’re disowned from being my best friend.”

“Oh, gee, what’ll I fucking do now?” Bones deadpans. “And I think that makes the forty-second time you’ve said some version of that to me on this godforsaken ship.”

“Don’t insult the ship. And are you co-opting Spock’s internal clock or something? Actually, that’s a good sign; maybe you two’ll stop bitching constantly—"

“I’ll talk about the Enterprise however I want. Saved your dumb ass in it more than once, didn’t I?” And me and Spock—it’s what we do. The expiration date on fixing that ran out years ago.” 

“It’s a love language, in my professional opinion,” Nyota chips back; Bones makes lots of offended noises, even though Jim can tell that after Yorktown, Bones and Spock are finally approaching the whole fire-forged-friends territory, and Nyota laughs.

Jim looks over a few tables to where Kirk and Spock are sitting together. He’d been watching them before Nyota and Bones crashed the party, and they’re still talking. This time, Kirk is laughing, all charm and fucking grace, and Spock’s not smiling exactly, but his eyes are doing that crinkly thing that he does when he’s happy. It’s beautiful, but then again, Jim had come to terms with all of those feelings about Spock when he was still a twenty-five year old dumbass. He’s thirty-three now; what’s his excuse?

Fuck it. He tears his gaze away and eats his mac n’ cheese. He’s not jealous. 

— 

Kirk is curious, but not in an annoying way. Fucker. He finds Jim in the rec room moodily playing a game of 2-D chess by himself because a bunch of rowdy ensigns demolished the 3-D board last week during a not-exactly-sanctioned speed chess tournament and Jim hasn’t had the time to request a new one yet. He’s still having nightmares about the paperwork he’d had to file after Spock had broken up the tournament and given him the eyebrow of death when Jim had admitted that he’d known about the whole thing but had let it slide. (“There is damage to the rec room wall. From a— ” “I can’t see the future, Spock! Jesus.”)

“Can I join you?” Kirk asks. He doesn’t slide into the chair opposite Jim; he waits. Jim would’ve taken the seat without hesitation even as he was asking, and tries not to wince at the thought.

“You wanna save me from my misery?” he sighs. “Fine.”

He takes white and Kirk takes black, and they play in silence for a bit. Jim’s mostly debating between how to take Kirk’s rook and how to get out of this whole thing with a slightly-better-than-bullshit excuse when Kirk says, “Spock says you made captain at twenty-five.” Jim can’t read his tone at all, and bites back the sharp, awful feeling of thinking of Kirk and Spock talking to each other. 

“Did he tell you how?” 

Kirk’s mouth flattens for a moment, before he smiles. It’s wry on the edges. “He skirted around it.”

Jim thinks of running into Ambassador Spock talking to Spock during a visit to the New Vulcan colony, not that long after shit went down with the Narada, and reading the quiet humor in the ambassador’s eyes as he’d basically told Jim he’d fucking lied to him on that frigid outpost. It makes something sharp and sad erupt in his chest, even though the ambassador’s death was over three years ago. 

He doesn’t meet Kirk’s eyes. “Probably a good idea, I guess. I wouldn’t want to try to influence how things go for you.”

Kirk tilts his head. “We’re not the same person,” he reasons, and he’s trying to sound kind about it, which is… sort of horrible, but also fitting for what Jim’s gleaned from the few times the ambassador had ever mentioned his Jim Kirk.

Yeah, he thinks meanly, you didn’t have a truckload of shit happen to you, but then feels awful about it. It’s been a long time since Jim revisited those long, terrible years after Sam had ran away and before that night in the bar with Pike, but he’s accepted now that at least half of those things were out of his control. The other half is rooted in the terror of going through Tarsus IV, of not really knowing if Mom loved him or saw him as a reminder of what she didn’t have, and the anger of what he didn’t get. And he knows enough from what the ambassador kind of told him that his Jim’s life, while not as fraught, wasn’t some cakewalk either. 

So Jim says, “Yeah,” and it feels all ragged. Then, trying to keep it light, because he can’t just go into this shit with baby original-him—he can’t, he adds: “Yeah, you got that right.”