Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek in any of its incarnations, and especially not nu!Trek... Christopher Pike and Zack Quinto would have been my slaves for the entirety... as I own no slaves... I don't own the universe.

Pairings: None or K/S pre-slash at it's finest

A/N: I have been watching Star Trek since Sunday night (it is now Wednesday morning) and this came to me after reading several fics. Not sure if all of my information is correct, if it isn't then this is AU and you may content yourselves that I did it on purpose.

Summary: James T. Kirk was misunderstood until he wasn't.

Undersanding

James Kirk was misunderstood his entire life. At birth, he was not a blessing, but a curse. No one ever told him his dad loved him, and his mother could hardly stand to be in his presence long enough to feed him without bursting into hysterical tears whenever he opened his eyes.

His earliest memories (and he could remember to infancy) rarely featured the woman who gave birth to him. They were more often filled with Consuela, his nanny, until he turned five. At age five his mother remarried, and within a year, was off-world more often than on, leaving him with Frank, her husband.

He would not find out until he was nearly nine that he had an older brother, George Samuel, nicknamed Sam. Sam had been living with their mother's family on Tarsus IV. Sam was 12 and expressed a wish to meet and live with his younger brother. Once Sam arrived in Riverside, the truth about Frank became apparent to someone other than Jimmy.

Frank was drunken and abusive, beating them both indiscriminately until Sam began to defend Jimmy, turning the brunt of it onto himself. Jimmy had never had someone to protect him like that before, and held hope that Sam would understand him. Sam never did, but loved him all the same. Sam bore the abuse until Jimmy drove their father's antique convertible into a quarry rather than see it sold by Frank for more alcohol money.

That was when Winona Kirk finally returned to Terra and realized that she did, in fact, have two sons who needed her. Frank was arrested and jailed, and Winona stayed for six-months before hiring another nanny and leaving again. This time, Jimmy knew it was because of him.

He and Sam were sent to Tarsus IV for the summer after he turned 13 in order to give their caretaker, Anya, some time to visit her family in Russia without having to bring her two charges along. Three months later, Sam and the rest of his family were dead; either by starvation or execution, and Jim had barely survived. Winona stayed nearly a year this time before rehiring Anya and leaving again. That was the last time he ever saw her.

Later that year, Jim completed his GED and began the first of many degrees he would hold by age 18. He also began to act out more and more, almost getting thrown into jail numerous times, actually making it into the cell still more times. He received scathing messages from Winona, and eventually Anya was sent away. He continued his destructive behavior until it was brought to an abrupt halt by Captain Christopher Pike.

It wasn't the first time someone had compared him to his father, but it was the first time someone flat-out dared him to surpass his father, to become something more. So he took the dare and ran with it. It was the first time he had ever done something worthwhile for his own sake, and it felt amazing.

Three years passed and he was set to be one of the youngest ever to complete Command Path, beating his father by one year. And then he took the Kobyashi-Maru test, and failed utterly. He went back to it again with the same result and decided that he would take it again – and pass.

Of course he cheated. He had come a long way from where he had once been, but his memory ensured that he knew what to do. He passed, but not without being caught. Which led directly to being suspended when the distress signal from Vulcan arrived.

Bones, one of the first people that misunderstood him on purpose, got him on board the Enterprise, and he ended up keeping the crew from dying. He then almost died trying to save Vulcan, which Spock never thanked him for, and indeed, he ended up marooned on Delta Vega. There he met someone that understood almost all of him, the very first one to do so in his entire life. The irony of it all was that it was Spock, albeit a much older Spock from an alternate universe. It was weird.

The older Spock only understood most of him. The James Kirk from that other universe had grown up in very different circumstances. He'd had parents who were proud of him, while Jim only had Winona, who could care less unless he was in trouble.

Then there was Spock. The Vulcan man was infuriating, even from their first meeting in the auditorium Jim hated him. Spock put too much stock in his Vulcan side, disregarding that maybe, just maybe, other people had thoughts similar to his own, being lost in a sea of people who didn't care. When Spock's hand was wrapped around his throat, Jim was hit with a maelstrom of feelings more potent than those of his older counterpart. When that hand was removed, Jim couldn't move. Not from lack of oxygen, but because he finally realized something; for all that no one understood him, Spock might have been the first person he understood himself.

It wasn't until six months into their first true mission that he and Spock truly began a friendship. It began with sharing meals in the mess and eventually evolved to playing holo-chess in Jim's quarters. It was six months after their first game that Jim was privileged enough to see Spock's quarters, the sanctum of the person he had become closest to.

It was nearly a year after that that Spock 'accidentally' brushed his fingers against Jim's, and that emotion is back, only different. In the course of their early friendship he had researched Vulcan customs so as not to do something stupid on purpose, and to have Spock kiss him floored him, causing him to lose the chess game.

Small brushes were equivalent to platonic kisses to the cheek or hugs in the Vulcan language, so Jim made it four months before asking why all of these 'accidental' brushes were happening. Spock's answer was both complex and simple, and contained the three words that Jim had always wished for, but never heard directed towards him.

"I understand you."

Ha ha you thought I was going to put I love you there... this is pre-slash while trying to keep the characters in character, if that makes sense. I have a companion from Spock's point of view as well, entitled 'Belonging' which can be read o its own.