Chapter 2

Surprise! I'm not dead! I actually got my google drive account canceled and lost my work on my stories… so that was fun… but here, I'm finally finishing this 2 part story! Yay!

Spock had had a brother once. Sybok. Sybok had been… strange. Emotional in the wrong ways and distant from Spock until it hurt. He had left. Spock had ceased to consider him a brother, as he had ceased to consider Sarek a father.

And that was supposed to be the end of that particular train of dysfunctional family relationships. But then someone else had appeared in his life. And James Kirk was strange too. Emotional in incomprehensible ways and occasionally so attached it hurt. He learned, though, that vulcans appreciated space, and adjusted his actions accordingly.

He became less incomprehensible and fine tuned his relationship with Spock until it was no longer a human uncomfortably attempting to relate to an alien shipmate but… something different.

The day Spock realized the role Jim now occupied was effectively that of a brother, his efficiency decreased by 61 percent. It was fortunate nothing else of note happened that day.

But Spock did not find the concept quite so incomprehensible now. Fact. Jim was his little brother. It was illogical to deny facts.

Jim would tease him and try to drag him to interpersonal functions and do his very best to embarrass him in front of McCoy. But he knew where the lines were drawn and did not behave in any truly inappropriate manner, understanding Spock's dignity and respecting him.

And Spock protected his little brother, as he assumed it the proper role of an older brother to do. And while it was the duty of a first officer to protect the captain, it was not technically a first officer's duty to run a through background check on every woman in whom the captain showed interest.

It was also not per regulation for a first officer to keep a log of a captain's food choices or sleep hours. It was not regulation that forced him to accompany Jim to 'experience foreign culture' onshore unexplored planets.

Now, Jim was not always pleasant to be with. Spock had been informed of the recurring phenomena known as the 'annoying little brother'. Spock attributed Jim's tendencies toward rule breaking, loud music, and 'being adventuresome with the local cuisine' (when Jim knew he was allergic to nearly anything under any sun) as behavioral patterns in this category.

But Jim more than made it up in his unerring devotion, the way he accepted all of Spock's idiosyncrecies and defended Spock against anyone who so much as hinted slight against his older brother.

It was in the way he relaxed around Spock, did more than accepted him and wanted him, something no one had ever done before. People had wanted his skills, wanted his knowledge or ability but no one had ever wanted him.

It was in the way he got angry when someone hurt Spock. In the way he tried so hard to keep Spock safe as much as he could, and when the job required Spock be in danger he always had that undercurrent of tension where he worried about what might happen to his older brother.

Spock was determined to protect his younger brother as well, to the best of his ability for as long as he lived. He did so even though he knew that one day, barring an unnatural end to his life, he would far outlive James Kirk, and would be left alive without his younger brother for a hundred years.

But Spock had discovered something, along his path in his relationship with Jim. For all the turmoil that inevitably appeared, for all that he knew they could end in nothing but pain…

Jim was worth it.