y yo a ti, brute

We know of no former partners for which his lack of commitment or investment in the relationship or depth of feeling was actually the problem. On the contrary, when we meet Kirk's former girlfriends, they give every indication that having the Jim Kirk concentrated intensity beam trained on them in the context of a serious, ongoing, mutually voluntary and heartfelt romantic relationship was an incredibly heady experience that was difficult to give up, and remains difficult not to try for again.

It's also repeatedly suggested that, if anything, he was more committed in his past relationships than his partners were, though his girlfriends' feelings and motives were by no means casual either. We know of multiple times he's remained in obviously doomed relationships longer than was wise, trying to make them work anyway.

I actually do get that a 30-something male protagonist who, onscreen, has a revolving door of "love interests" (though ranging from ex-girlfriends to people he actually falls in love with to people he seductively flirts with as a tactic of survival to people sexually threatening, coercing, or outright assaulting him) is easy in some respects to assume must be averse to commitment or never all that seriously in love. But his ruthlessly utilitarian relationship with his own sex appeal when trapped or endangered + occasional harassment and/or assault is not the same thing as a small number of uncomplicatedly voluntary, heartfelt romantic relationships over the course of some 15 years, and his behavior when he's using his wiles "on the clock" is conspicuously very unlike how he behaves in his uncomplicatedly spontaneous, heartfelt romantic relationships.

a) he came a little (which is gay)

or

“I can’t believe you still look so young”

double points if they don't even plan to do it. they decide to soft launch via no longer actively hiding their relationship, just slowly acting more like a couple around other people. they're both at some event and ilya finds shane and just wraps his arm across his shoulders, which maybe that could just be ilya being ilya, but then shane just leans into it? like this is fine and normal? and when someone questions it shane panics and is just like "why wouldn't i? he's my boyfriend" and whoever they're talking to is like "what? since when?" and ilya is immediately onboard with this game "since 2017."

they just keep doubling down "you don't remember me sneaking out to go visit him every time we played in boston? you were all chirping me about it."

"wait, did you two drive here together?" "why would we take separate cars, we live together?" "you WHAT?"

when someone thinks they're joking they bring up the group chat with shane's parents, ilya scrolls back to a text where yuna calls him her favorite son. they bring up a video clip jackie sent of the twins saying "we love you uncle ilya!" shane brings up his thread with svetlana where she sends him russian words and phrases she thinks he should know.

they quickly enlist everyone who already knew, get them all onboard to pretend like their relationship wasn't ever top secret information. shane posts a picture of him with anya, when someone comments "that looks just like ilya rozanov's dog?" he just replies "yeah, we adopted her several months ago" and ilya replies "love our daughter ❤️"

Spock's second pon farr makes it pretty much impossible to conceal the nature of his relationship with Kirk from Vulcan. I subscribe to "his menarche first pon farr was unusually late, enough that he'd started to hope his human blood had prevented it from ever happening, and his later pon farr schedule might be irregular in other ways," so this could occur right after they get together after the mission, several years afterwards, etc; it doesn't terribly matter for the headcanon's purposes.

Anyway, no matter when it happens, my headcanon is that the revelation that Spock spontaneously formed a deep psychic bond with his human best friend, and the re-contextualization of evidence that already existed (T'Pau remembering Spock only introducing Kirk to her, and not his other friend until prompted, and implying he's considering suicide after the kal-i-fee: ...ah), isn't that surprising to the Vulcans. It's like, oh, the half-human among us who has chosen to align himself with human groups at every opportunity where a choice could be made—even within Starfleet—formed an irregular bond without a ceremony, to a human? Once again, we have discovered a fork in the kitchen.

Thank you! I think so, yes. I feel like... well, K/S + Vulcans sometimes gets much more caught up in Kirk-as-the-human over Kirk-as-Jim-Kirk-the-specific-individual, but both Kirk and Spock actively enjoy disrupting expectations in ways that make assholes uncomfortable and also think each other is the most perfect wonderful smart adorable noble person in existence who deserves every good thing. So I think both the trollish and supportive, affirming parts of Kirk's motives are going to get a day in the sun :D

#and let's not lie spock would find the reactions of other vulcans very funny

Yeah, I think this is a significant contributor to Kirk's maximally correct Vulcan spouse being an ongoing thing. They have quite similar strains of bitchiness but also Spock genuinely cares what Vulcan thinks of him, but also he's well beyond being ashamed of his feelings for Kirk—so I do think Kirk's readiness to accommodate and welcome what's Vulcan as well as human about him is deeply meaningful, and also the look on various childhood nemeses faces are not in accordance with the precepts of Surak, how embarrassing for them.

#jim has made t'pau's jaw muscle twitch twice

In fairness, Kirk is a massive T'Pau fanboy and within an hour of meeting him she was lying to Starfleet for him (and personally, I think she 100% knew he wasn't dead and quite possibly that he'd defied Starfleet orders in the first place to get Spock to Vulcan, hence the lying to Starfleet to protect him). So I imagine Kirk and T'Pau might well have more of a mutual admiration society in the context of all this than he does with Sarek and Amanda; he likes Amanda, but they're very different. I feel like she's internalized more actually harmful perspectives in Vulcan culture from her isolation and active attempts to assimilate than Kirk is likely to share, but also retains some of the Terran-typical patronizing perspectives on Vulcan culture at the same time, both of which powerfully affect Spock. Meanwhile T'Pau observes and is silently congratulating herself on her good judgment (in accordance with the classic Vulcan belief that smugness is not an emotion :D).