Chapter Text
“I’m sorry sir, we, uh, one of the parents was coming by to pick up his child and saw our problem, and-”
"I see.” Spock cut the woman off mid-sentence. “However, it is logical that I inspect his work so as to be certain he is correcting the appropriate issues. Also, with my aid, I estimate a fifty-two point five seven percent increase in the speed of the repair,” It was logical he stop the woman from speaking, before her gratingly high-pitched voice provoked a show of irritation. His mother would be appalled at his rudeness, but he assumed he could be excused, considering the length of his shift and the types of problems he had been forced to contend with today. Idly, he wondered if the woman appeared distressed because she had called him from the technical support office of Starfleet Academy for a problem that, it would seem, was already being taken care of, or if her expression was naturally similar to that of the Terran creature called a deer, startled by the bright forward lights of an automobile driving in darkness.
The problem, as the emergency repair call had informed him, was a malfunctioning replicator in the child care center on the main campus of Starfleet Academy. Apparently, it had started out the day by providing hot milk in the children’s cereal for breakfast, then progressed through larger errors until it began shooting purple and green sparks and providing anyone who approached it with a thin coating of syrup.
As Spock approached the malfunctioning machine, he became aware of a small child, no doubt one of the many charges of the center, seated on the floor next to… a long pair of legs in regulation black pants. The body they were presumably attached to was likely inserted into the replicator up to the waist, or else Spock estimated a 99.8 percent probability that he would have to alert the authorities. The boy, who appeared to be a human of about four years of age, stared up at him from behind slightly shaggy blond hair. Bright blue eyes narrowed a bit, before he looked away and tugged on the pants of the man next to him.
“Daddy, a scary man’s looking at us.”
“Just a sec, kiddo,” the reply was muffled, as if spoken around an object in the speaker’s mouth. “Let me just connect this one…” a flash of light erupted from the replicator, quickly followed by some rather inventive curses in what was likely Andorian.
“Daddy makes things go boom,” the child informed Spock solemnly, poking his father in the knee. “Uncle Bones’ll be mad if Daddy burnt himself again.”
“I see.” Spock really didn’t, but it was his experience that human children hardly ever made sense. “Perhaps you could tell me your father’s name?”
“I’m David,” David said, “and this is Daddy. Uncle Bones calls him ‘kid’, but that’s not his real name.”
“Might as well be, as much as he uses it,” the owner of the legs told them, sliding out from under the replicator. Spock was unsurprised to notice that his uniform shirt was charred in places, and his hair stood on end and sparked slightly. “But it’s really Jim. Jim Kirk.” He spread his fingers in an approximation of the Vulcan salute, grinning at Spock from the floor. His eyes, Spock noticed, were even more vibrantly blue than his son’s. For a second, he found himself wondering that human eyes could be such a color.
“I guess you’re the tech guy…?” Kirk trailed off, examining the Vulcan.
“I am Spock.”
“Oh, good to meet you, Spock. Do you know much about the circuitry involved in replicators?” When Spock didn’t reply, judging his answer to be self-evident, considering that he was currently on call from the academy’s technical services the man shrugged. “Uh, sorry, dumb question. I’m used to dealing with, well, my students.” His expression made it obvious what he thought of the intelligence of the cadets placed in his charge. “And they aren’t exactly the best with the actual how-to stuff. Don’t get me wrong, some of ‘em could actually probably write code in their sleep, but none of them know how to put together a computer from the inside out.”
After a pause, during which the man -a lieutenant by his stripes- watched him with those startlingly blue eyes, Spock replied. “I am familiar with the subject, yes,” “Great. Could you give me a hand? I need to reconnect the induction coil before we can start poking around the matter converter, and you probably know what a pain those are to fix. I’d tell the center to replace the thing, but they’re short on funds as is.” Kirk prattled on as Spock joined him under the replicator, watched by the curious child.
Two hours later, they were nearly done. Spock was mildly impressed. If he’d been on his own the job would have taken 63.98 percent longer and would not have included the upgrades to the device that Kirk was putting in without a second thought.
“Aaaaaand- yes! Got it!” The lieutenant crowed in delight, connecting the last wire in a shower of sparks. They were rewarded with a beep from the machine, which sprang to life, producing a bowl of what Spock believed were called ‘cheerios’ complete with chilled milk and sliced bananas. “Hah! Whaddya think about that, Davey? Is your Dad awesome or what?”
The child, who had long ago gotten bored, looked up from his toy starship. “I’m hungry,” he announced.
“I’m sure you are kiddo. How about we go get you that dinner I promised now?” Kirk stood, his tools already placed back in his bag. “Thanks for the help, Mr. Spock. I don’t know what I would’ve done had you not come. Bones’s on shift tonight, and there’s no one else I’d really trust to feed Davey here something other than candy. I probably would have had to rush the job, just to get the kid some food.”
“It wasno trouble,” Spock said, and it was true. He hadn’t anticipated enjoying the repair job, or the company of those on-site, but Jim Kirk was a… unique individual. His conversation, interspersed as it was between bouts of cursing and silence as he concentrated, was intelligent and educated, and had ranged across a wide variety of topics from antimatter use to the finer points of speaking Orion. Spock had hardly noticed the passage of time, and found himself strangely disappointed when the repairs were finished.
“Well, um, good. I’m glad. I’d love to stay and chat, but Davey might just mutiny if I don’t feed him. Here, let me give you my comm number so you can send me that article on computer engineering.” Kirk held out his hand for Spock’s padd, entering his information in when it was provided, and returned it. “We should get together sometime,” the lieutenant added, hoisting the child onto his hip. “I’d like to hear what you think about that lecture on Wednesday, the one about interstellar communication.”
“I would be agreeable to that, Mr. Kirk,” Spock responded, thrown slightly off-kilter by the human’s quick change of topic.
“Great!” Kirk picked up his tool box. “Then I’d better get going. See you around?”
“Indeed.” Spock doubted it, as both of them had been at the academy for several years without previously encountering one another. He returned to his apartment fully expecting to not hear from the lieutenant again, despite sending him the article he had requested. His meditation that night was unexplainably interrupted several times with images of the young man.