A/N: these final chapters are dedicated to Guilt, who haunts me frickin daily

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Enterprise High

being a high school AU of ST: XI

with many hijinks

and much angst

and finally

a grand conclusion

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Chapter Forty-Nine: The Naked Time

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"Prom," Sulu said philosophically, his arm wrapped around Chekov's shoulders, "is forever. You live life. Get born, go to school, make some money, make some kids, buy a nice retirement home on Nebulon V, die. But prom." He shook his head. "Prom is larger than all of that."

Chekov was staring at Sulu with huge blue eyes. "Really?"

"Hikaru, stop fucking with Pavel," Uhura snapped. She was trying to put some tasteful rhinestones in her hair but they kept falling out. Everyone was crowded in to Bones's tiny bedroom, putting the final touches on their outfits. "Pavel, prom is not more important than school."

Gaila burst out laughing, and didn't even stop when Uhura glared at her.

They had an hour until they needed to leave. Scotty was munching on some cheese in a corner, Bones had locked himself in the bathroom, and Chapel was trying to get Spock to put on some lipstick ("You're already wearing eyeshadow! Why not go the extra mile?"). Uhura paused, staring at the mirror. "Does anyone know when Jim's going to be here?"

x

Jim would have been amused by Sam's high-pitched shrieking if it wasn't distracting the EMT so much.

"Okay, man, you have got to let them deal with this," Jim hissed, trying to drag his brother away from where four EMTs were making Aurelan—whose baby was apparently coming out of her vagina right fucking now—as comfortable as they could on the floor of the living room. "They're professionals. What do you know about delivering babies?"

"I know that this one is coming out of my wife!" Sam yelled at Jim. Sam was taller and ostensibly stronger, but Jim, not currently disabled by blind panic, had the edge. "Let me by!"

"Dude, I think Lamaze classes would have been more useful for you at this point," grunted Jim. He finally managed to shove Sam onto the couch and sit on him. "Don't fucking move! They're professionals."

"Does he need a tranquilizer?" said one of the medics, a little threateningly.

"No," said Jim and Sam at the same time.

There was a bit of an awkward silence on Jim and Sam's parts as the EMTs asked Aurelan, who was breathing heavily and trying her best not to scream or kill something, a lot of questions. Finally Sam said, "Why is your butt wet?"

"You don't want to know," said Jim darkly. He was fully dressed in a rented tux Winona had surprised him with that morning and was more than a little pissed at himself that anything had happened to it.

"No, I think I want to know," said Sam.

"Okay, well, you weren't here, and I heard Aurelan yelling that her water had broke, so I came running in here, and, uh, slipped in the water."

Sam stared at him. "You're sitting on me with your baby-fluid covered butt?"

"I am just as unhappy as you are about this," Jim snapped.

"Not sure if that's possible," Sam sighed.

x

Shortly after Jim had finally let Sam up and even more shortly after the EMTs had relegated them to the kitchen, there was a triumphant shout from the living room.

"You can come back out, now," one of the EMTs called. Jim jumped off the counter he had been sitting on. Sam was already gone. That had not taken very long. Jim was used to hearing his mother go on for hours about how long his labor had been on every single birthday he could remember, which, really, seemed like pretty reasonable revenge on her part. It was lucky she didn't do more to him considering how much pain he'd caused her.

The EMTs were cleaning Aurelan up. She could hardly keep her eyes open. She looked happy, which surprised Jim a bit, considering what had just happened to her. Sam, meanwhile, was clutching a deformed, reddish-purple squash. Or at least that was what it looked like. Jim squinted. It was the ugliest baby he had ever seen in his entire life. He wasn't totally sure it was human.

"I'll take the baby," Aurelan said. Sam bent down and passed the baby to Aurelan, who held it, eyes narrowed.

"What?" said Sam.

"This is the ugliest baby I've ever seen," Aurelan said. Then she burst into laughter. "Good lord! Look at this!"

Sam plopped down next to her. He'd started laughing too.

"Have you both lost it?" Jim asked cautiously.

"I see this a lot," one of the EMTs confided as she repacked her medkit. "The parents go a little off their blocks after a birth. I had a man faint right on top of his husband one time, he was so out of breath from laughter."

Jim did not feel totally comforted. Aurelan had thrown a sheet over her head and was quaking silently. Sam was leaning against her, face buried in the squash-baby, cackling. The squash-baby contorted its face into even more of a squash and pushed ineffectually at Sam's forehead.

The EMT poked at Sam. "You'll need to visit a hospital of your choice within a twenty-four hours, you know."

Sam let out a broken sort of noise of agreement.

"We've scanned parent and child and you're both tip-top but you've got to register your bundle of joy, you know."

"Q-quite," Aurelan managed, emerging from under the sheet.

"And us medical types always want to make sure there weren't any consequences we somehow missed."

"Mm-hm," Sam choked.

The EMT dragged at her cheeks, pulling her eyes down. "Okay then. We're gonna go now."

"I'll look after them," Jim said.

"Best of luck with it," the EMT sighed. She signaled to her coworkers, and they all filed out the door.

Jim curled up on the couch and picked at his nails while Sam and Aurelan calmed down. He was going through nail polish colors in his head when he realized Sam was standing in front of him.

"Go on," Sam said, offering Jim a bundle. "Hold him."

Jim had held plenty of babies, even if none of them had been as ugly as this one. He had even had strong and profound emotions about the fragility and wonder of life before; all that transcendent shit. But the difference was that this was his brother's baby. This baby had a bit of him in it, a full twenty-five percent of his own genes. Kirk took the baby and stared at it. It had his hairline already, even if it did look like a vegetable.

"Good job," he said to Sam and Aurelan, who were beaming grossly at each other. "Both of you." He looked up, grinning. "Mainly you," he said to Aurelan.

"Mainly!" laughed Aurelan. "This lug didn't do a damn thing." They kept ribbing each other, but Kirk got distracted again by the baby's ear, which looked just like Sam's, down to the pokey tragus and the thin, swooshing antihelix.

Look at this, he thought, touching the ear. That ear had grown, just recently. It wasn't anything nine months ago. The cells didn't exist. The atoms were in another place. He stroked the shell of it, and the baby snuffled and turned its head towards him. It had fat lips and fat fingers. It had not been in the world for more than thirty minutes. It had been forced out of the only home it ever knew, and it was sleepy and it had ears, and it hadn't even existed nine months ago.

Things change, he thought.

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He called Uhura.

"Oooh, what are they naming it?"

"They haven't decided," said Kirk, trying to find the blow dryer under the sink. "I swear, it looks like the most profound tomato I've ever seen. It's like—lumpy and iridescent."

"I could so easily make a penis joke here."

He shoved aside at least four empty bottles of shampoo. "Now you know how I feel, like, ninety-four percent of the time."

"So, you're still coming, right?"

Kirk made a deeply undignified snorting noise into the receiver. "Duh. As if my middle name isn't Tiberius."

"I know a lot of languages, and in none of them does 'Tiberius' mean 'party.'"

"Ugh, grow a sarcasm gland. I'm going to have to meet everyone there. I gotta blow dry my pants."

"I could so easily—"

"I hate you, bye!" Kirk yelled, and hit end.

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Spock was just standing there, minding his own business (read: avoiding everyone), when someone yelled in his ear: "LET'S GET DOWN!"

He nearly socked the whoever-it-was but pulled back his fist right before he made impact with a face. Then the face was gone. Kirk—because really, who else could it be?—had fallen over, and was laying on his side on the floor, laughing.

"Are you injured?" Spock asked tersely, leaning down. Kirk just curled into a cackling ball.

"Your face! Oh my god, you looked like somebody had told you you got a 97."

Spock sighed internally. "If you're going to talk in absurdities—"

Obviously, this made Kirk laugh harder. Spock went over and got himself some punch. He came back. Kirk was still laughing helplessly. Spock took some photos for the blackmail potential. He had a little more punch. Finally Kirk got up and brushed himself off, still grinning.

"My face hurts from laughing."

Spock didn't even dignify that with a response. He sipped his punch.

"Okay, I got my tux dusty, but it was worth it," Kirk sighed.

Somebody had pulled some serious strings. They were standing in the Venetian Room of the Fairmont, which Spock had been in plenty of times—it was a favorite meeting location for Vulcans, who admired the ancient architecture—and which Kirk had never seen before in his life. Most of the room was original, although the south wall had been redone after the 2052 quake. The stage, with its heavy gold drapes tied back, was occupied by a live band playing top 50 and bopping badly to the beat; strings clearly hadn't been pulled there.

"Who arranged this?" said Kirk. "I mean, how much does it cost to rent out the Venetian Room? I didn't think Enterprise had this much cash on hand for dances."

"I have heard that Scotty's family helped arrange the lease," said Spock, looking around. "Gaila extracted his help. Thankfully he was able to assist, or she would have come to me next."

"I heard a joke."

"Fascinating."

Kirk studied Spock's profile. "Did you hear that Aurelan had the baby?"

Spock blinked. "Did she. Congratulations on becoming an uncle."

Kirk made a face. "Hadn't looked at it that way. Disturbing that a child will look up to me now. I'll be the perfect fun uncle, though. Teach them how to drift. Steal panties. Et cetera."

"I expect nothing less."

"Buy them liquor young. Get them hooked on Andorian spellpowder. Give out tips on prison tattoos."

"Purchase them el-blade knives and black market bullet guns."

"The little things."

"Of course."

"They're gonna be great parents."

"I am sure. You are a wonderful family. You all care very much for each other."

Kirk blinked. "We really do, don't we?"

"Has this just occurred to you?"

"I guess. I don't know. Sometimes I think when you're a teenager you just start to take your family for granted. Take it for granted that they're terrible and embarrassing and in the way. And also that they love you. It's a lot of cognitive dissonance but it fits into being a teenager perfectly."

"Very sanguine—for a teenager."

"Well, I'm mainly quoting the state-mandated therapist, so take it all with a grain of salt."

Spock nodded. "Much wisdom can be discovered in self-exploration. Much hubris may be exposed as well."

"Ouch."

"Your hubris was already laid bare."

"Like the Canadian Shield. You're not wrong."

"And you are not Precambrian."

"Where did this conversation even start?"

"With you falling down and getting your suit dusty."

"Oh yeah." Kirk straightened out his suit again, brushing imaginary dust off the shoulder. "So. Want to dance?"

"I thought," said Spock, feeling brave, "that you would never ask."

Kirk raised an eyebrow and extended his hand.

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Like a mote of dust levitates, hanging in the thin bright hands of the afternoon, they danced.

The song filled their lungs. All around were the other motes, heavy against the current of sound, and they moved, a flood breaking across a parched plain. Indeed, they were light and water, playing off each other, one hand pressed to a hip, feet in a perfect arc forward and back, a chin on a shoulder or a lip poised near an ear. One called; the other came. What was the song? Gentle. Resonant. The lyrics too profound to hear. Look at the sun through a sheet of water. The beams scatter and refract. They are the whole of the sunlight, the music the water, arcing them, bringing them out and around in great circles, immutable, coronal. Incalzando, the motes vibrate. Perhaps it is too much. One looks away; the other worries. Hands flutter uncertainly. A step is out of place. Does the rhythm jar, or does it search for a new harmony? The bass goes flat. The ripples are evening out. Had the circle broken? Of course not. The major lift comes at last, insistent and heartfelt, and gold again goes their sphere, the harsh capillary wave evening, slowing, finding its breath, holding a perfect theme and a perfect angle of illumination in the arc of their arms.

All suns set, though again they will rise. The tide ebbed. The music ceased. To regret the end would have broken the circle. They drew apart, peaceful, half quenched, but half starved. What was left? To touch lips? Would that even be enough? The circle grew red-green with lust, the gold corrupting sublimely.

It was not to be that night. There was an alarming crack, almost like a gunshot, and then a long, drawn-out creak, all above their heads. Faces craned upwards.

Then a car fell through the ceiling.

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