Chapter Text
After the commotion Jim admittedly caused died down, Mrs. Bond appeared in the parlor, wringing her hands and glaring in Jim’s direction.
“Tell me, Mister Kirk, are you the sort who also gets pleasure in revealing to children that Santa isn’t real?”
“What? Of course not.”
“A little bit,” Bones said at the same time.
“Hey!”
“The point is, we aren’t malicious in our fictional displays of the supernatural in this establishment,” she said with the loftiness a queen would be proud of. “Guests expect to have a spooky experience that they’d paid for and you’ve just ruined it.”
Jim opened his mouth, closed it. Looked at the others.
“She’s not wrong,” Sulu said with a shrug.
“Well I…” But Jim didn’t know what to say. He felt a little bit embarrassed but also put out that his friends weren’t on his side. Had he been wrong to expose their shenanigans?
“Do not fret, Jim,” Spock said, standing next to him. “I had been considering a way to bring the trickery to everyone’s attention also. I don’t find being tricked particularly entertaining. Nor someone deliberately trying to frighten someone.”
Jim smiled at Spock.
Mrs. Bond sighed.
“So you did make my room deliberately cold, right?” Jim asked her.
“Certainly not,” she insisted. “I did have our maintenance man check into it while you were out of the room and he advised he couldn’t find a cause for it and that the room temperature was normal.”
“It was after I returned to it today.” Jim thought about it. “And the light in the hallway and the footsteps.”
Bones laughed, drawing Jim’s attention. “That was me.”
“What?”
“I was in on some of it,” Bones told him and the others. “Robinson the gardener was not actually dead. He’s perfectly fine.”
“Yes, of course he is. It was merely to make you wonder. Later in the week some of you might have looked out of the back windows onto the garden and see his ‘ghost’ wandering.”
Jim first stared at her and then back to his friend. “Bones!”
“Well.” He shrugged. “You’re always pranking me, I thought I’d return the favor.”
“But you pranked the rest of us too!” Uhura pointed out.
“We owe you big time, Len,” Sulu said, but he was grinning.
Bones turned to Jim. “You’re not too mad, are you, Jim?”
In truth, Jim felt a little humiliated, not to mention annoyed as hell, but he wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. Okay, maybe he was. But in this instance the whole going to the house brought him a lot closer to Spock. And since he looked for that relationship to continue growing, he decided to cut Bones some slack.
Just a little. He’d plot to get his friend back one day soon.
“Jim?” Bones looked genuinely worried.
He didn’t answer Bones, instead he turned to Mrs. Bond, Della, and Magnus. “How were you going to make the blood appear here in the parlor? Assuming you normally do.”
It was Della that answered and she seemed pretty proud about it too.
“It’s a projection program I developed at school. It works so well that onlookers actually believe the carpet is stained. We would have put the blood stain out later this week.”
“Do you have a ghost girl?”
“No, no,” Mrs. Bond said. “No one ever sees Emily Sue. They just hear her. Girlish laughter.”
Rand spoke up, “Was that a real mouse?”
Mrs. Bond looked pained. “Yes, unfortunately, that was very much real.”
****
The rest of the week there ended up being a lot of fun. The staff at the house gave them a tour of all the background ‘supernatural’ happenings and even a true history of the house.
There was no Mrs. Partridge who’d been murdered there, but apparently Professor Lovelorn had really existed and died in the house.
Eventually Jim talked to Bones again, so all was well.
Jim didn’t see any point of separating himself from Spock so they stayed in the same room.
By the end of the week, though, there had been talk of dissolving the Starfleet Academy Chess Club.
Spock didn’t really want to be the leader of a mostly social club and no one else really wanted to take on the task either. Nothing for sure had been decided but Jim figured that this event was likely the end of it all.
He wasn’t that sorry about it. He liked chess okay, but he wanted to meet Spock, which he’d done. Some of the others were all right, but he didn’t really like Finney much and honestly Shaw even less.
He noticed as they were all getting ready to leave that Shaw and Finney appeared to be hooking up that week too. Weird combo.
“Are you ready to go?” Jim asked Spock as he stood in the doorway of Room 300, his own packed bag on the floor at his feet.
“Incredibly so,” Spock replied as he zipped up his bag.
Jim grinned. “You didn’t have fun?”
“I quite enjoyed the time spent with you. I did find their elaborate plans of deception fascinating.”
Spock carried his bag to where Jim stood.
“Still weird about that coldness though.”
“I doubt we will ever get the full explanation for that.”
“Probably not. It’s going to be strange going back to my dorm and sleeping alone,” Jim commented as they headed down the stairs.
“Then don’t.”
“Hmm?”
“I have an apartment off campus, just a five-minute walk away. I would find it pleasurable if you would share it with me.”
Jim stopped in the middle of the kitchen to gape at Spock. “Y-Yeah?”
“Unless you do not wish to do so.”
“Are you crazy?”
Spock frowned. “I do not believe so.”
Jim laughed and kissed him right there next to the stove. “I’m there. As long as you come with me to get my stuff and help me move it.”
“Of course.”
Bones waited outside the house even as Jim noticed most of the others were already departing. Uhura stood to the side and so Spock went to speak with her.
Jim stepped up to Bones. “So, uh, I have news.”
“News?”
“I’m moving in with Spock. Effective immediately.”
His friend snorted. “You don’t waste time.”
“Why should I? It’s what we both want. We like each other.”
“Like is it?”
Jim grinned. “A lot. We like each other a lot.”
Bones rolled his eyes. “All right. I’ll help you move. Least I can do.”
“I’ll say. But this has been fun. Now I’ll just have to see what to do for Christmas.”
“One holiday at a time.”
“Mm.” Jim turned to look at the house.
The curtain fluttered on the third floor and he expected to see Della or Mrs. Bond staring out at them. But the face that appeared next to the cracked pane was not a woman. It was a man with a goatee.
“Jim?”
He flicked a glance at Bones.
“Everything all right?”
He looked back at the house but the man was gone. The hair on the back of his neck rose.
Spock came to stand next to him. “Ready?”
“Yeah. Let’s-let’s get out of here.”