Chapter Text
Thomas James Johnson was the name on his birth certificate, but the boy sitting on the front steps of the Georgian mansion with a single suitcase next to him had always been called Slim. Even as a baby he'd been scrawny and undersized, a malnourished scrap of a thing, and at thirteen-and-a-half he was notoriously thin and wiry for his age. People often mistook him for ten or even younger. He'd gotten used to it, even gotten used to feeling left out because kids his own age didn't think he was strong enough to play with them. But now, he felt more alone and friendless than he could ever remember feeling.
He'd thought this was it. After eleven years of bouncing from foster home to foster home, he'd been with the Kincaids for more than seven months, an all-time record. He knew Mrs. K, as he called her, had been trying to pressure her husband into adopting him, so when the social worker had called the day before and told Slim she had good news, he'd thought it was that Mr. Kincaid had come around.
But no. She'd told him to pack his things, that she'd be coming to get him the next day. Circumstances you can't change, she'd said. Mrs. K wasn't even waiting with him. It was like she'd given up on him now that she wasn't going to get him for good. He'd hoped she might still be his friend...
If Slim closed his eyes, he could almost remember his mother. Not clearly. He'd only been two when she died, and he'd never been sure of the circumstances. Sometimes, though, he thought he could remember the feel of her arms around him, the smell of her perfume, like cinammon and nutmeg, as she promised she'd be back after...what? She'd left him in someone's care temporarily, and never returned, and he'd ended up in the system. His mother was dead. As far as he knew, he had no other family. Slim Johnson was a boy without a father.
The vehicle pulled up. Slim stood, took a deep breath, shouldered his suitcase, and climbed in. He couldn't help but look back wistfully as they pulled away, hoping for a last glimpse of Mrs. K waving a dish towel at him. He'd even have settled for Mr. Kincaid shaking his fist. But all he saw was a white house that was no longer a home.
"Thomas," said the social worker softly. Mrs. O'Leary was the only one who ever called him by his first name.
Slim turned to look at her wearily. "Where am I going this time?" he asked with a cynicism far beyond his years. "Another foster family? An asylum? Reform school?" Foster families in the past had threatened him with the latter if he didn't act less like an orphan and more like...Slim didn't know what.
Mrs. O'Leary shook her head. She took a deep breath. "Thomas...this is going to be difficult for you to believe."
"You're sending me to the North Pole to live with Santa Claus?"
"No. But...we ran your DNA through a national database. And we finally got a hit." Mrs. O'Leary regarded him seriously. "Son, we think we found your dad."
Slim froze. He'd been asking about his dad since he was about seven. Kids didn't just come out of nowhere, right? There had to be two parents, a mother and a father. There wasn't a name on his birth certificate, though. The spot for "father" said "Unknown." As he got older, he'd wondered if his mother was raped, or if she slept around, or if she was just ashamed of who his real father was. He hadn't realized they were seriously looking for him.
The questions stuck in his throat. What's his name? What's he like? Why wasn't he there for me? Does he even know my mom is dead? His bright blue eyes looked at Mrs. O'Leary, pleading with her. Don't make me talk. Just tell me.
Thank God, she understood. "I'll tell you everything we know about him, Thomas. We've got a long shuttle ride ahead of us."
"Why? Where--?" Slim tried to articulate the question, but it felt as though his tongue weighed a thousand pounds. It stuck to the floor of his mouth.
"San Francisco. For now, anyway." Mrs. O'Leary smiled. "It's going to be okay."
They pulled up to the shuttle stop. Slim followed his social worker obediently, his head spinning. San Francisco! In his entire living memory, he'd never been further west than Black Mesa, and he'd spent most of his life bouncing around foster homes in Oklahoma County, mostly the smaller towns. He called up the statistics they'd studied in school the previous year. San Francisco had a population of almost a million. Oklahoma City, which was both the capital and the largest city in the state, had a population of eight hundred thousand. The town where the Kincaids lived, Woodlawn Park, had fewer than two hundred people, and was still one of the biggest places Slim had lived. He was a country boy at heart. How would he survive in such a big, bustling city?
Not until the shuttle had lifted off did Mrs. O'Leary speak again. "You wanted to know about your father, right?"
Slim nodded. He probably could have spoken at that point, but he didn't want to. He'd never flown before that he could remember, and he was simultaneously terrified and enjoying the sensation.
"He was at school with your mother. We've been looking in San Francisco all these years--that's where you were born, you know--but we never could find him." Slim turned to look at Mrs. O'Leary in surprise; he'd never known he wasn't born in Oklahoma. "The reason, it turns out, is that he wasn't in San Francisco anymore--not very often." Mrs. O'Leary studied him. "He's a member of Starfleet."
Slim stilled again. Starfleet. He'd dreamed, secretly, of being a member since he'd first heard of it at age six. His math and science scores were good, and he'd been saving up the pocket money he infrequently got from his foster families. It wouldn't be enough and he knew it, but maybe, with a father who was a member...
Mrs. O'Leary continued. "He was a little wild in his younger days, and he knew he'd probably made a mistake or two. But he insisted that he never knew about you, and that he'd have done right by you if he'd known."
Done right by me, Slim thought. What does that even mean? Would the man who had knocked up his classmate fourteen years ago have taken in his son, or would he have just provided for him, given someone a stipend for his keeping? Slim didn't ask. He was afraid to.
If Mrs. O'Leary noticed, she didn't say anything. "And you're not just getting a father--you're getting a whole family. He's married now. They just had a baby, which is why his DNA was on record..."
Slim looked up sharply, torn between excitement and apprehension. "I've got a stepmom? And a brother?"
Mrs. O'Leary laughed a little. "Switch the genders and you've got it."
"A stepdad," Slim said slowly. "And a sister. My dad is bi?"
"Mmm, I don't know exactly. But his husband is definitely a man. They had their DNA combined to make a zygote and had it incubated. The baby is two months old now."
Slim tried to wrap his brain around that. It wasn't that he minded his dad being bisexual, or pansexual, or whatever he actually was--and if he loved the man enough to marry him, that was good enough for Slim. But he had a little sister--half-sister, he guessed--who was two months old. That was the part that really startled Slim. His dad and his stepdad had already gone through a major change in their lives, and that quite recently. And now they were willing to bring a thirteen-year-old kid halfway across the country to live with them. They were either incredibly generous and loving, or incredibly reckless and daring.
"What's his name?" Slim asked, finally managing to articulate the question. What's my name? he added silently. Because if his birth dad was going to claim him, that would mean that his last name would change to his dad's.
"Kirk," Mrs. O'Leary replied. "James Tiberius Kirk."