James T. Kirk/Relationships/Friendships/Spock

Kirk and Spock officially met in 2259 after Kirk visited the Enterprise for the first time after being tentatively promoted to first officer aboard the Farragut. ()
By 2265, Kirk and Spock were serving together aboard the Enterprise and were familiar enough with each other for Spock to address Kirk as "Jim". After the death of Gary Mitchell, Kirk came to depend on Spock's detached, logical analysis as a supplement to his own intuitive and impulsive nature. Their official relationship deepened into a friendship of mutual respect and love that was without a doubt the most important relationship of both Kirk and Spock's life. ()
As Edith Keeler observed of Spock's place in the world, "You? At his side. As if you've always been there and always will." () He once described his Vulcan friend as "the noblest part of myself" and declared that Spock's immortal soul "is my responsibility, as surely as if it were my very own." Kirk even told Spock's father that he would never realize how important Spock was to him, and declared that, despite losing the Enterprise and his son, had he not tried to rescue his friend, "...the cost would have been my soul." ()
The polywater intoxication that affected the Enterprise crew in 2266 led to a difficult encounter between Kirk and his first officer. Needing Spock at a critical moment, Kirk found him in anguished reflection, regretting his inability to express love even for his mother. Trying to bring the first officer around to the moment, Kirk slapped him. Spock's reaction was flat and revelatory, "Jim, when I feel friendship for you, I'm ashamed." Struck again, Spock responded in kind, sending Kirk backwards over a table. ()
Spock was sympathetic to Kirk's plight after the transporter divided the captain's personality into opposite aspects. He referred to his own halves, "submerged...constantly at war with each other," explaining that he survived it because his intelligence won out over both and forced them to coexist. Spock believed that Kirk's own intelligence would also enable him to survive such a contest intact, and urged him to embrace the part of himself that, seemingly ugly, was crucial to his personality and captaincy. ()
After Kirk discovered emotional rage was the key to nullifying the effect of the pod plants, his first step in retrieving his crew was to taunt Spock into anger. Anticipating the result of a Vulcan's higher strength level pitted against his own, Kirk wielded a pipe for protection. After being called an "elf with a hyperactive thyroid" and told that he belonged "in the circus, right next to the dog-faced boy," Spock indeed lost control, nearly killing Kirk before resuming command of himself. ()
In 2267, Spock began his pon farr mating cycle, and behaved bizarrely aboard the Enterprise. Kirk called to Spock "the best first officer in the fleet" and "an enormous asset to me" as he pled with Spock to explain his actions. When told that by taking Spock to Vulcan, against Starfleet orders, Kirk fired back, "I owe him [Spock] my life a dozen times over! Isn't that worth a career?"
Joining him on Vulcan for his marriage ceremony, Kirk was drawn into T'Pring's scheme to marry another, and forced to fight Spock to the death. McCoy, knowing Kirk was endangered, faked Kirk's death, and the marriage was not consummated. Spock, despondent that he had murdered his captain, thrilled at the sight of Kirk alive, exclaiming, "JIM!", which McCoy delighted in needling Spock about once he gained his composure. ()
Kirk's understanding of Spock had an enormous impact on the parallel mirror universe, visited after a transporter accident in 2267. As Kirk's party prepared to return to their proper universe, Kirk implored the to re-examine his role in the fascistic Terran Empire, insisting, "One man can make a difference." Mirror-Spock's consideration of those words led to his rise to dominance and reform of the Empire, with drastic consequences. (; )
When Kirk was trapped in spatial interphase during a rescue operation in Tholian space, Spock ordered the Enterprise to maintain her position in an effort to retrieve him, in spite of the danger the Tholians presented and the disruptive nature of the local space. After Kirk's assumed death, Spock and McCoy viewed the "last orders" Kirk had prepared. He urged Spock to use all the Vulcan disciplines at his disposal, tempered with intuitive insight. Kirk believed Spock had the latter qualities, but should they elude him, he was urged to seek out McCoy. ()
Kirk once commented to Captain Garth that the dream of the Axanar Peace Mission participants made him and Spock "brothers." Spock only said, "Captain Kirk speaks somewhat figuratively, and with undue emotion, but what he says is logical and I do, in fact, agree with it." ()
When Dr. Janice Lester, a former lover of Kirk's, took over Kirk's body, Spock performed a mind meld on Kirk while he was trapped in Lester's body. Spock believed Kirk was Lester before anyone else, and when Lester as Kirk ordered his execution, he continued to stand by his friend. ()
At the end of the Enterprises five-year mission, a period marked by his frequent loss of his emotional control, Spock chose to leave Starfleet and his friends, to pursue the Kolinahr discipline of logic on . His return to Enterprise during the V'ger threat was a cold event, without acknowledgment of his past friendships. In V'gers aftermath, Spock finally achieved equilibrium, able to express his friendship for Kirk without the influence of aliens or illness, and notably lacking any threat of physical violence. () In 2285, Spock was calmly able to tell Kirk, "You are my superior officer. You are also my friend. I have been and always shall be yours." ()
Spock's sacrifice of his own life, to save the Enterprise from Khan's detonation of the Genesis Device, deeply affected Kirk. At his funeral, Kirk could only bring himself to say of Spock, "Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... Human..." but he broke off and broke down without being able to continue. ()
The revelation that Spock's katra, his "living spirit" (actually his complete brain patterns), survived in the tormented mind of McCoy, led Kirk to risk his career, and in turn, his crew's. He first asked Admiral Morrow for permission to retrieve Spock's body from the Genesis Planet, to bring it, and McCoy, to Vulcan. Kirk insisted that any chance to save Spock's soul was his responsibility, "as surely as if it were my very own." His request declined, he told his crew, "The word...is 'No.' I am therefore going anyway."
With the help of Uhura, Scott, Sulu, and Chekov, Kirk rescued McCoy from confinement and commandeered the Enterprise from Spacedock One. The renegade mission saw the destruction of Kirk's ship and the death of his son. Finding Spock's body re-animated by Genesis, Kirk brought him and McCoy to Vulcan for the fal-tor-pan (re-fusion) ritual. The first person Spock recognized was Kirk: "Jim. Your name...is Jim." ()
During their homecoming from Vulcan, and eventually their trip to 1986, Kirk tried to remind the resurrected Spock, suffering from memory loss, to their friendship and past adventures together. After Kirk's and the command crew's trial, Spock told his father, Sarek, that his "associates" were his friends. ()
In 2287, the trio enjoyed a camping trip together at Yosemite National Park, which abruptly ended when Spock, half-brother Sybok diverted the Enterprise to Nimbus III. After their adventure on and Sybok's death, Kirk referred to Spock once again as his "brother," and told him and McCoy that they were his real family. ()
When Spock later entered the alternate reality, he told of their deep friendship, despite the fact that had marooned Kirk on . During this meeting, Spock called the alternate Kirk "old friend" several times and felt it was good to see a version of James Kirk despite the terrible events of that day. Kirk, who had been accused of cheating on the Kobayashi Maru by the alternate Spock, told Spock Prime that his actions in changing history could be construed as cheating. Spock nostalgically admitted that it was "a trick I learned from an old friend," referencing the prime Kirk.
When meeting with his alternate reality counterpart, Spock Prime admitted to deceiving the alternate Kirk to force him and the alternate Spock to work together to defeat Nero rather than intervening in the situation himself to make both men see the potential of their friendship. Spock Prime explained it as "I could not deprive you of the revelation of all that you could accomplish together, of a friendship that will define you both in ways you cannot yet realize." He then encouraged the alternate Spock to stay in Starfleet and foster that friendship, something Spock ultimately chose to do. ()
In 2263 of the alternate reality, the alternate Spock discovered that even so long after Kirk's death, Spock Prime kept a picture of him and the bridge crew of the Enterprise-A amongst his personal things. ()
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