Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
Title: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
Beta: the lovely lousy_science
Series: STXI
Rating: G for content, R for language
Length: 2730
Warnings: drinking, swearing, irresponsible behavior with regard to the Pacific Ocean
Summary: are there better Christmas Eve traditions than getting plastered?
He's been sitting out for a while when he notices the stranger; it's hard to say how long. His normally precise sense of time has been off for a week or so now, one more symptom of the stress that has driven him to the beach to meditate. He has been there for long enough to be rather thoroughly soaked by the chilly spray and the intermittent drizzle, but not long enough to find any sort of silence.
He is cold.
His attention turns back to the stranger. A young man, clothed in Starfleet blacks, who has not yet noticed him. Some sort of knit-wear head-covering is pulled down over his ears, hiding any identifying hair color. He's walked right up to the edge of the water, his tracks in the sand visible up to the edge of the scrub-brushed hill.
Spock watches.
The other man waits, his feet at the height of the foam line on the sand, until the last possible moment before racing silently away from the crashing wave. Again. And again. And again. What is he doing? Spock squints. There is method in this madness, but it remains madness still- alone, in the rain and fog, on a deserted (mostly) beach on the 24th of December, this lone man is daring the freezing waves of the Pacific, over, and over, and over. Daring the sea to come and get him, daring the cold to freeze his limbs. Daring the universe to take him down.
It is inevitable that he will eventually fail- his legs are tiring, and on the twenty-sixth repetition, he misplaces a foot and falls face-forward on the sand. The cold surge breaks enthusiastically over him, swallowing him whole. Spock stands without thinking, preparing to dive in if the man is pulled out by the rip-tide.
He is not. He lifts his face, laughing in defeat, and sees Spock where he stands among the rocks. The knit cap is long gone, and the distinctive tuft of blond hair gives the stranger away to be a first year cadet he only vaguely recognizes.
Pike's protégé.
The man picks himself up, dripping and covered in sand. He shakes his head to the left, to the right, then shivers. Raises a hand in greeting.
"It's fucking cold out here. Let's go!"
Spock is not quite sure why he follows.
---
They walk without speaking until they are several blocks in- the man is one of the few humans Spock has met who apparently does not actively require conversation. This is good. Spock isn't sure what he'd have to say if asked, anyway. His meditation has been only somewhat settling, and the further he walks into the dense fog bank with his unfamiliar companion, the more he feels as though he is moving through a dream. The streets are empty and still, the fog muffling any sound of their steps or distant traffic. The lights of the city before them cast a sickly glow low across the horizon, while the occasional lighted candy cane or Christmas tree looms suddenly on the small lawns of the houses as they pass.
The cadet turns abruptly, pushing open a low door beneath the glow of a neon sign depicting an overflowing bar mug. He steps into the gloom of the interior, and Spock enters behind, following suit as the man hangs his black jacket on a rack inside the door. They move without speaking to sit in a carved wooden booth in the corner. The man keeps his back to the wall, nodding at the barman and holding up two fingers before turning his attention to Spock.
"You're Vulcan."
Spock has not bothered to hang up his hat, but there is no point denying it.
"Half."
The man nods as if in confirmation.
"You're Spock."
"Yes."
There is a long pause in which the bartender sets two medium sized glasses of a warm amber liquid in front of them.
"You are Pike's special case."
A flash of annoyance across the open features, then gone into a wide open smile as the man spreads his hands in front of him in a disarming gesture. Faked affability. Spock narrows his eyes.
"James T. Kirk, at your service."
Spock nods. "James."
"Jim."
"Jim." The word is short and flat in his mouth. He's heard human names his whole life, of course, but even after residing on Earth for three years, they feel alien in his mouth.
"So, Spock." Jim pops the ck in the back of his mouth, an irritating affectation. "What are you doing at the beach on Christmas Eve? Haven't you got a Yule log to burn? Or stockings to stuff? Or carols to sing?" He takes another drink, shuddering and smiling as he swallows.
"I do not."
"You do not."
Spock does not bother to answer. He sips his drink. Whisky, he believes, though he has not tasted it before.
"So. Fine. No festivities. Why the beach?"
Spock rolls a shoulder in his best approximation of a shrug, takes another drink.
"Why were you at the beach?"
Jim laughs suddenly, all his teeth gleaming in the low light. Spock can hear the dull chatter of a sports game emanating from behind the bar, but Jim's laugh echoes in the room.
"Man, talking to you... do they not teach conversation on Vulcan? Basic Small Talk 101?"
Spock raises an eyebrow. "Perhaps we have better things to do than simply mouth inanities or pry into one another's business."
Jim laughs again, and holds up two more fingers to the barkeep, so Spock finishes his drink.
"Perhaps you do." The bartender sets two more glasses in front of them, and Jim slides the empty ones over to be taken away. "Alright. I was at the beach for a couple reasons. First of all, I'm bored. Second of all, I'm really fucking bored. Thirdly..."
"You lacked an activity with which to occupy yourself."
"Nope. Annual tradition." Jim grins. "Gotta tell the universe at least once a year that while she can still kick my ass, she can't have me yet."
Spock swirls his drink. He feels warm now, his limbs loosening up from the awful chill.
"Your turn. Vulcans don't like water or cold, that's what they said in xeno-whatever class. So you must have a really good reason."
Spock does not. He considers.
"I was meditating."
"Meditating?" Spock hadn't been previously aware that human eyebrows could be quite so expressive. "The beach in winter is kind of a stupid place for that, if you don't mind my saying. So, why there?"
Spock drinks. It makes him feel less... it makes him feel less.
"I am half human. When I was on Vulcan, it was regularly assumed that my human traits were inferior, or an embarrassment, particularly any sign of emotion." He looks at the small amount of liquid in his glass. "Just recently a... friend... told me that in ancient Earth mythology, water is often considered the source of the unconscious, of emotion. Ergo, I was meditating on my connection to this planet's waters, and the primordial chaos of the ocean and tides."
Jim blinks, and Spock is suddenly unsettled. What has possessed him? He doesn't even know this man across from him.
"Wow. That's... way cooler than my reason."
It's Spock's turn to blink incredulously. The silence holds, and the bartender sets a new pair of drinks on the table. Spock takes a moment to study the face across from him. The cadet is older than many, but with a youthful face- round eyes, white teeth. His hair is the light non-color that Spock had never seen before coming to Earth- it makes him think of sand, dust swirling in the afternoon light. He's attractive, Spock supposes, but his physical appearance is nearly irrelevant in the face of his personal charisma. His hands are large, with long, blunt-tipped fingers that circle his glass easily. Hands of a worker; a farmer, a mechanic.
"So, what are the seasonal holidays like on Vulcan, anyway? Very logical, I assume. Do you sing songs about the perfection of square roots and the rationality of IDIC?"
From anyone else, this would be offensive, but Spock cannot bring himself to object. He nods carefully as he takes another sip.
"What? Nuh-uh. You're making that up."
Spock lifts an eyebrow. "Vulcans do not lie."
Jim laughs. "Uh-huh. Sure. I'm convinced."
Spock smiles, then immediately grabs hold of himself. He is becoming drunk, he realizes. He tries to find it within himself to be concerned, but cannot. He is alone on a world that is only partially his, on a holiday he finds baffling. There is no one here to see him waver except this Jim, and somehow... it doesn't seem to matter.
"We do not celebrate seasonal holidays."
"None?"
"No. We have historical celebrations, but none having to do with the transits of Vulcan around her star." Jim looks disappointed, so Spock hurries to explain. "Our planetary axis is not tipped as strongly as Earth's, and so our 'seasons' are in fact very subtle. Also, it has been a very long time since the orbit of our planet and the other heavenly bodies held any intellectual mystery for us." He attempts another shrug. "It is of no consequence."
Jim's eyes are far too discerning for as much alcohol as he has quickly consumed, Spock thinks, and forces his hands to remain steady on his glass.
"Fine. No decking of the Vulcan halls. But your human parent, your..."
"Mother."
"Your mother. What did she celebrate?"
"She observed the annual festival at the approximate occurrence of it relative to the Vulcan seasonal calendar."
"So there was decking of the Vulcan halls!"
Spock tips his head in acknowledgment and takes a sip from the miraculously re-filled glass in front of him.
"Only indoors, and only for us."
"Did you like it? Did you have a tree? What about snow, did she try to tell you about snow?"
"I..." Spock hesitates, but there is no logic in feeling shame. "I was embarrassed by her actions."
Jim nods knowingly, his face twisted with a look of regret. "Yeah. Yeah, my mom was crazy about Christmas. Made me nuts, you know? There's her third husband giving her another black eye, and she wants to sing fuckin' 'peace on earth, good will toward men'. I couldn't take it."
Spock keeps his face still. "Yes. I could not understand why a woman who had willingly married into a culture of logic and rationality would persist in killing a plant yearly, only to hang trite bits of replicated decoration upon it and declare that this day was the most joyous of all exactly identical days."
"Right? I remember when my brother broke his arm sledding, and nearly froze to death in a snow drift, she made the doctor put him in a bright green cast so she could draw Santa and his motherfucking sleigh on it. Gotta keep everyone's spirits up! Never mind that one of your sons just nearly died!"
"The other children saw it as yet another example of my father's foolishness and my own inferiority. My hybrid genetics were bad enough, but to be raised in an environment where I was routinely exposed to such emotionally-laden drivel was sure to warp whatever chances I had of being superior."
Jim begins to chuckle, quietly at first, then more and more loudly. Spock can feel himself smiling in response, but makes no attempt to restrain it. Eventually Jim settles, and wipes at his eyes.
"Christ. I just got back, you know?" Spock didn't, but he nods. "First five-month deployment. It was fine, I guess, I made it through. But you're out there, and it's just... you're all doing a job. There's focus, there's teamwork, there's accountability. You know what you're doing, and why, and there's no room for this sort of messy sentimental bullshit. And then..." He takes a bracing slug from the glass in his fist. "I just got back two days ago, and it's all... fuckin' Santa everywhere. People asking for things they don't want, but feel like they should have. People buying gifts for other people they don't actually like, but need to impress. Greed and apathy and manipulation and corruption, all wrapped up in an oh-so-shiny brightly colored bow. I just..." He covered his face with a hand, breathed slowly for a minute. Hiccuped. "It was too close to how it was when I was a kid. 'Let's all just play pretend, and sweep the mess under the rug, just for another month.'"
He brings his hands back down onto the sticky surface of the table, and the pleading in his eyes makes Spock a little lightheaded. Just as quickly as he sees it, it's gone, the earlier mask of affability sliding a little crookedly into place.
"The egg nog, though. I always did like the egg nog. Mmmm, forbidden rum!" Jim polishes off the drink in front of him, closes his eyes for a moment. "What did you like, Spock?"
Spock thinks hard. By the time he realizes that he can come up with not one single thing, Jim is slumped in his booth, his eyes shut and breathing slow.
---
Eventually Spock becomes increasingly aware that it is late. He lifts his head off of the surface of the table with a great effort and regards his tablemate. Jim is passed out cold, drooling onto a coaster. Spock takes the opportunity to haul himself carefully to his feet. The room tips and sways around him, but once he's up, it remains relatively steady.
Spock is pleased that he remembers both his coat and Jim's as he navigates them carefully out of the warm bar and into the damp chill of the San Francisco night. The cold invigorates him, and he sets out in the direction he's nearly sure will lead them back to the Academy. Jim is wandering along beside him, happily singing snatches of holiday tunes in a surprisingly pleasant tenor. Spock recognizes just enough to conclude that Jim is melding several sets of lyrics into a single, long, medley, but he can't imagine how it would matter.
They walk.
The second time they pause for Jim to regurgitate, Jim cheerfully shoves his head into the midst of a lit-up tree shape and proceeds to evacuate the contents of his stomach all over its metal base. Spock passes the time swaying carefully and admiring the multi-colored lights that are sprayed across this particular house and all of its topiary.
"Lights."
"Hmm?" Jim emerges none the worse for the wear, nonchalantly wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"You asked me what I did like about Christmas, even if I did not appreciate the rest of it." Jim nods, then clearly thinks better of it. "I always liked the strings of colored lights."
Jim smiles broadly, and claps him on the back.
"Lights!" He says, and staggers off. Spock nods again, to himself, then follows at a slow roll.
"Lights."
Spock's never sure how they made it back to the dorms, though he suspects the fact that they could navigate at all in the state they were in bodes well for their careers. Memory gap or no, he wakes up late the next morning as the sun streams in the open blinds. It stabs, it burns, and he flicks a hand at the wall to dim the plexiglass before rolling over to go back to sleep.
The second time he awakes, he realizes that his bladder is on the verge of combustion, so he forces himself upright and staggers to his toilet where he pisses for what feels like days. He finishes, washes his hands, and stares at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror.
"Merry Christmas."
It's not right, so he turns and is heading back to his bed when he realizes that his door is slightly ajar.
He walks over.
At the base of the door, a small package is obstructing the beam. He picks it up.
On the box there is markered a comm number, which he files away for future reference. He turns it on its end, pulls open the wrapping, and nearly drops the box in astonishment.
He takes a deep breath, smiles to himself, and pulls out an 18 foot string of multicolored Christmas lights.
Beta: the lovely lousy_science
Series: STXI
Rating: G for content, R for language
Length: 2730
Warnings: drinking, swearing, irresponsible behavior with regard to the Pacific Ocean
Summary: are there better Christmas Eve traditions than getting plastered?
He's been sitting out for a while when he notices the stranger; it's hard to say how long. His normally precise sense of time has been off for a week or so now, one more symptom of the stress that has driven him to the beach to meditate. He has been there for long enough to be rather thoroughly soaked by the chilly spray and the intermittent drizzle, but not long enough to find any sort of silence.
He is cold.
His attention turns back to the stranger. A young man, clothed in Starfleet blacks, who has not yet noticed him. Some sort of knit-wear head-covering is pulled down over his ears, hiding any identifying hair color. He's walked right up to the edge of the water, his tracks in the sand visible up to the edge of the scrub-brushed hill.
Spock watches.
The other man waits, his feet at the height of the foam line on the sand, until the last possible moment before racing silently away from the crashing wave. Again. And again. And again. What is he doing? Spock squints. There is method in this madness, but it remains madness still- alone, in the rain and fog, on a deserted (mostly) beach on the 24th of December, this lone man is daring the freezing waves of the Pacific, over, and over, and over. Daring the sea to come and get him, daring the cold to freeze his limbs. Daring the universe to take him down.
It is inevitable that he will eventually fail- his legs are tiring, and on the twenty-sixth repetition, he misplaces a foot and falls face-forward on the sand. The cold surge breaks enthusiastically over him, swallowing him whole. Spock stands without thinking, preparing to dive in if the man is pulled out by the rip-tide.
He is not. He lifts his face, laughing in defeat, and sees Spock where he stands among the rocks. The knit cap is long gone, and the distinctive tuft of blond hair gives the stranger away to be a first year cadet he only vaguely recognizes.
Pike's protégé.
The man picks himself up, dripping and covered in sand. He shakes his head to the left, to the right, then shivers. Raises a hand in greeting.
"It's fucking cold out here. Let's go!"
Spock is not quite sure why he follows.
---
They walk without speaking until they are several blocks in- the man is one of the few humans Spock has met who apparently does not actively require conversation. This is good. Spock isn't sure what he'd have to say if asked, anyway. His meditation has been only somewhat settling, and the further he walks into the dense fog bank with his unfamiliar companion, the more he feels as though he is moving through a dream. The streets are empty and still, the fog muffling any sound of their steps or distant traffic. The lights of the city before them cast a sickly glow low across the horizon, while the occasional lighted candy cane or Christmas tree looms suddenly on the small lawns of the houses as they pass.
The cadet turns abruptly, pushing open a low door beneath the glow of a neon sign depicting an overflowing bar mug. He steps into the gloom of the interior, and Spock enters behind, following suit as the man hangs his black jacket on a rack inside the door. They move without speaking to sit in a carved wooden booth in the corner. The man keeps his back to the wall, nodding at the barman and holding up two fingers before turning his attention to Spock.
"You're Vulcan."
Spock has not bothered to hang up his hat, but there is no point denying it.
"Half."
The man nods as if in confirmation.
"You're Spock."
"Yes."
There is a long pause in which the bartender sets two medium sized glasses of a warm amber liquid in front of them.
"You are Pike's special case."
A flash of annoyance across the open features, then gone into a wide open smile as the man spreads his hands in front of him in a disarming gesture. Faked affability. Spock narrows his eyes.
"James T. Kirk, at your service."
Spock nods. "James."
"Jim."
"Jim." The word is short and flat in his mouth. He's heard human names his whole life, of course, but even after residing on Earth for three years, they feel alien in his mouth.
"So, Spock." Jim pops the ck in the back of his mouth, an irritating affectation. "What are you doing at the beach on Christmas Eve? Haven't you got a Yule log to burn? Or stockings to stuff? Or carols to sing?" He takes another drink, shuddering and smiling as he swallows.
"I do not."
"You do not."
Spock does not bother to answer. He sips his drink. Whisky, he believes, though he has not tasted it before.
"So. Fine. No festivities. Why the beach?"
Spock rolls a shoulder in his best approximation of a shrug, takes another drink.
"Why were you at the beach?"
Jim laughs suddenly, all his teeth gleaming in the low light. Spock can hear the dull chatter of a sports game emanating from behind the bar, but Jim's laugh echoes in the room.
"Man, talking to you... do they not teach conversation on Vulcan? Basic Small Talk 101?"
Spock raises an eyebrow. "Perhaps we have better things to do than simply mouth inanities or pry into one another's business."
Jim laughs again, and holds up two more fingers to the barkeep, so Spock finishes his drink.
"Perhaps you do." The bartender sets two more glasses in front of them, and Jim slides the empty ones over to be taken away. "Alright. I was at the beach for a couple reasons. First of all, I'm bored. Second of all, I'm really fucking bored. Thirdly..."
"You lacked an activity with which to occupy yourself."
"Nope. Annual tradition." Jim grins. "Gotta tell the universe at least once a year that while she can still kick my ass, she can't have me yet."
Spock swirls his drink. He feels warm now, his limbs loosening up from the awful chill.
"Your turn. Vulcans don't like water or cold, that's what they said in xeno-whatever class. So you must have a really good reason."
Spock does not. He considers.
"I was meditating."
"Meditating?" Spock hadn't been previously aware that human eyebrows could be quite so expressive. "The beach in winter is kind of a stupid place for that, if you don't mind my saying. So, why there?"
Spock drinks. It makes him feel less... it makes him feel less.
"I am half human. When I was on Vulcan, it was regularly assumed that my human traits were inferior, or an embarrassment, particularly any sign of emotion." He looks at the small amount of liquid in his glass. "Just recently a... friend... told me that in ancient Earth mythology, water is often considered the source of the unconscious, of emotion. Ergo, I was meditating on my connection to this planet's waters, and the primordial chaos of the ocean and tides."
Jim blinks, and Spock is suddenly unsettled. What has possessed him? He doesn't even know this man across from him.
"Wow. That's... way cooler than my reason."
It's Spock's turn to blink incredulously. The silence holds, and the bartender sets a new pair of drinks on the table. Spock takes a moment to study the face across from him. The cadet is older than many, but with a youthful face- round eyes, white teeth. His hair is the light non-color that Spock had never seen before coming to Earth- it makes him think of sand, dust swirling in the afternoon light. He's attractive, Spock supposes, but his physical appearance is nearly irrelevant in the face of his personal charisma. His hands are large, with long, blunt-tipped fingers that circle his glass easily. Hands of a worker; a farmer, a mechanic.
"So, what are the seasonal holidays like on Vulcan, anyway? Very logical, I assume. Do you sing songs about the perfection of square roots and the rationality of IDIC?"
From anyone else, this would be offensive, but Spock cannot bring himself to object. He nods carefully as he takes another sip.
"What? Nuh-uh. You're making that up."
Spock lifts an eyebrow. "Vulcans do not lie."
Jim laughs. "Uh-huh. Sure. I'm convinced."
Spock smiles, then immediately grabs hold of himself. He is becoming drunk, he realizes. He tries to find it within himself to be concerned, but cannot. He is alone on a world that is only partially his, on a holiday he finds baffling. There is no one here to see him waver except this Jim, and somehow... it doesn't seem to matter.
"We do not celebrate seasonal holidays."
"None?"
"No. We have historical celebrations, but none having to do with the transits of Vulcan around her star." Jim looks disappointed, so Spock hurries to explain. "Our planetary axis is not tipped as strongly as Earth's, and so our 'seasons' are in fact very subtle. Also, it has been a very long time since the orbit of our planet and the other heavenly bodies held any intellectual mystery for us." He attempts another shrug. "It is of no consequence."
Jim's eyes are far too discerning for as much alcohol as he has quickly consumed, Spock thinks, and forces his hands to remain steady on his glass.
"Fine. No decking of the Vulcan halls. But your human parent, your..."
"Mother."
"Your mother. What did she celebrate?"
"She observed the annual festival at the approximate occurrence of it relative to the Vulcan seasonal calendar."
"So there was decking of the Vulcan halls!"
Spock tips his head in acknowledgment and takes a sip from the miraculously re-filled glass in front of him.
"Only indoors, and only for us."
"Did you like it? Did you have a tree? What about snow, did she try to tell you about snow?"
"I..." Spock hesitates, but there is no logic in feeling shame. "I was embarrassed by her actions."
Jim nods knowingly, his face twisted with a look of regret. "Yeah. Yeah, my mom was crazy about Christmas. Made me nuts, you know? There's her third husband giving her another black eye, and she wants to sing fuckin' 'peace on earth, good will toward men'. I couldn't take it."
Spock keeps his face still. "Yes. I could not understand why a woman who had willingly married into a culture of logic and rationality would persist in killing a plant yearly, only to hang trite bits of replicated decoration upon it and declare that this day was the most joyous of all exactly identical days."
"Right? I remember when my brother broke his arm sledding, and nearly froze to death in a snow drift, she made the doctor put him in a bright green cast so she could draw Santa and his motherfucking sleigh on it. Gotta keep everyone's spirits up! Never mind that one of your sons just nearly died!"
"The other children saw it as yet another example of my father's foolishness and my own inferiority. My hybrid genetics were bad enough, but to be raised in an environment where I was routinely exposed to such emotionally-laden drivel was sure to warp whatever chances I had of being superior."
Jim begins to chuckle, quietly at first, then more and more loudly. Spock can feel himself smiling in response, but makes no attempt to restrain it. Eventually Jim settles, and wipes at his eyes.
"Christ. I just got back, you know?" Spock didn't, but he nods. "First five-month deployment. It was fine, I guess, I made it through. But you're out there, and it's just... you're all doing a job. There's focus, there's teamwork, there's accountability. You know what you're doing, and why, and there's no room for this sort of messy sentimental bullshit. And then..." He takes a bracing slug from the glass in his fist. "I just got back two days ago, and it's all... fuckin' Santa everywhere. People asking for things they don't want, but feel like they should have. People buying gifts for other people they don't actually like, but need to impress. Greed and apathy and manipulation and corruption, all wrapped up in an oh-so-shiny brightly colored bow. I just..." He covered his face with a hand, breathed slowly for a minute. Hiccuped. "It was too close to how it was when I was a kid. 'Let's all just play pretend, and sweep the mess under the rug, just for another month.'"
He brings his hands back down onto the sticky surface of the table, and the pleading in his eyes makes Spock a little lightheaded. Just as quickly as he sees it, it's gone, the earlier mask of affability sliding a little crookedly into place.
"The egg nog, though. I always did like the egg nog. Mmmm, forbidden rum!" Jim polishes off the drink in front of him, closes his eyes for a moment. "What did you like, Spock?"
Spock thinks hard. By the time he realizes that he can come up with not one single thing, Jim is slumped in his booth, his eyes shut and breathing slow.
---
Eventually Spock becomes increasingly aware that it is late. He lifts his head off of the surface of the table with a great effort and regards his tablemate. Jim is passed out cold, drooling onto a coaster. Spock takes the opportunity to haul himself carefully to his feet. The room tips and sways around him, but once he's up, it remains relatively steady.
Spock is pleased that he remembers both his coat and Jim's as he navigates them carefully out of the warm bar and into the damp chill of the San Francisco night. The cold invigorates him, and he sets out in the direction he's nearly sure will lead them back to the Academy. Jim is wandering along beside him, happily singing snatches of holiday tunes in a surprisingly pleasant tenor. Spock recognizes just enough to conclude that Jim is melding several sets of lyrics into a single, long, medley, but he can't imagine how it would matter.
They walk.
The second time they pause for Jim to regurgitate, Jim cheerfully shoves his head into the midst of a lit-up tree shape and proceeds to evacuate the contents of his stomach all over its metal base. Spock passes the time swaying carefully and admiring the multi-colored lights that are sprayed across this particular house and all of its topiary.
"Lights."
"Hmm?" Jim emerges none the worse for the wear, nonchalantly wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"You asked me what I did like about Christmas, even if I did not appreciate the rest of it." Jim nods, then clearly thinks better of it. "I always liked the strings of colored lights."
Jim smiles broadly, and claps him on the back.
"Lights!" He says, and staggers off. Spock nods again, to himself, then follows at a slow roll.
"Lights."
Spock's never sure how they made it back to the dorms, though he suspects the fact that they could navigate at all in the state they were in bodes well for their careers. Memory gap or no, he wakes up late the next morning as the sun streams in the open blinds. It stabs, it burns, and he flicks a hand at the wall to dim the plexiglass before rolling over to go back to sleep.
The second time he awakes, he realizes that his bladder is on the verge of combustion, so he forces himself upright and staggers to his toilet where he pisses for what feels like days. He finishes, washes his hands, and stares at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror.
"Merry Christmas."
It's not right, so he turns and is heading back to his bed when he realizes that his door is slightly ajar.
He walks over.
At the base of the door, a small package is obstructing the beam. He picks it up.
On the box there is markered a comm number, which he files away for future reference. He turns it on its end, pulls open the wrapping, and nearly drops the box in astonishment.
He takes a deep breath, smiles to himself, and pulls out an 18 foot string of multicolored Christmas lights.