fic: a question of science (2)
Part One
As they materialized on the Enterprise the next day, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were terrified when the lights in the room dimmed and slowly returned to normal.
"Fuck Jim, fuck, I can't feel my liver!" McCoy yelled.
"Spock, check on his liver," Kirk said distractedly as he ran to the console and paged engineering. "Scotty! What the hell was that?"
"Captain, did you happen to beam back a whale with you? The three of you have blown out our dilithium!"
"The fuck do you mean -- hold on, we're coming down."
"I saw my atoms flash before my eyes," McCoy said.
"That is to be expected, Doctor," Spock replied calmly.
Once in the engineering deck, they found Scotty shrieking at the dilithium crystals until Kirk grabbed him by the arms and shook him a little.
"Now. What's the problem?"
"What's the problem?" Scotty asked. "A Constitution-class starship requires 30 kilos of dilithium for full functioning capabilities; possibly, maybe, if you're lucky, it could run basic life support including food synthesizers on half that -- you sirs have just blown us out to 19 kilos."
Kirk glanced around the room and saw Scotty's staff paging every department on the ship, calling for a shut down of all their non-essential systems.
"Right -- can we hail New Vulcan and see if they have any we can borrow?" Kirk asked. "How much do we need to get back to full capacity and to compensate for the reboot of these systems?"
"Double what we have."
"Double?"
"I'd settle for 15 more kilos in a pinch, which this fucking is."
"Fuck, Scotty," Kirk groaned as a realization dawned on him, "New Vulcan is totally devoid of dilithium."
"Indeed; we would be taking directly from their survey ships, as New Vulcan does not yet have full starship capabilities of the Enterprise's class. Even then, I am certain the limited capabilities of those ships would not provide you with even 10 kilograms. It would also leave the planet without spacecraft," Spock added.
Kirk walked over to the intercom on the wall. "Kirk to the bridge -- Uhura?"
"Yes, Captain -- can we have an update on the situation?"
"Yeah -- we'll be running only essential systems due to a problem with the dilithium. Uhura, we need dilithium fast, so make that announcement and then find me the closest sources in this quadrant, okay?" He flicked off the intercom and turned to Spock. "Your damn counterpart had to find a planet in the fucking remotest corner of the Beta quadrant for your new colony, didn't he?"
Scotty looked puzzled and shook what he had heard out of his head. "Here are our options, let me know if I miss any --" Kirk began.
"They all involve crawling along to whatever destination on only our impulse engines," Scotty interrupted. "If Uhura's lucky enough to find a starship willing to share some of its dilithium, which is unlikely if they're anything like me, it'd take them days to get out here at warp 6 so they don't burn out that dilithium -- that's if they leave immediately, which they won't. There are no dilithium-mining planets within seven light-days of New Vulcan and -- did I mention how we can only afford to use our sublight-speed-traveling impulse engines?"
"Captain, Uhura here," the intercom announced.
"Yup, talk to me," Kirk replied.
"Captain, there are no Federation starships in this quadrant, nor will there be for close to a month. I've contacted Starbase 12 and they can have a shuttle meet us three-fourths of the way there with the dilithium. Sulu says it'll take us three weeks on our impulse engines."
"Three weeks?" Kirk screamed. "Three fucking weeks? Bridge, stand by, and thanks." He switched off the intercom and looked to everyone. "Three. Weeks."
"Three weeks in space, running only essential functions," McCoy groaned.
"No experiments in the labs," Spock realized. "The risk of power depletion is too great to allow our continuing experiment on the dilithium isotope that could fuel our journey to the starbase."
"No creative meals," Scotty added.
"Okay, shut up, all of you. I'm going to go take care of the meal situation for these next three weeks -- brace yourselves, because it's going to be ugly and probably disgusting." Kirk ran a hand through his hair and added, "We'll be fine. It'll be like a vacation -- like shore leave. But without the fun."
"Captain, I suggest taking several moments to compose your thoughts on the matter before announcing your estimation of the situation." Spock paused and clarified, "For the sake of crew morale, I would not open with that."
The situation was this: as all non-essential systems were taken offline for power conservation, there was nothing for close to three hundred and fifty people on the ship to do for most of each day except catch up on their reading, work out in the gym, stroll along the corridors, and have possibly dangerous amounts of sex in their quarters.
McCoy, smug for close to a minute because his department was highest priority, began to regret his calling when he suddenly became the most popular person on the ship, that distributor of birth control and healer of creatively attained sprains.
The bridge staff was put on half-duty, as there was a sudden influx of occupation-starved staff that wanted to gain some experience working there, which they were granted.
"This is just like the Academy!" Kirk laughed in his quarters. It was 1100 hours and he had just woken up and, to his greater surprise, Spock was still there, also half-asleep.
"How so?" Spock asked groggily.
"You know -- okay, maybe you don't know." He turned on his side and put an arm around Spock's torso. "Get out of class on Thursday, head to lunch, see some striking, hm. Redhead, for the purposes of this nostalgia. Talk, laugh, share some fries, make eyes at each other, oh yeah I have class now, yeah, but maybe we can meet up after for dinner? Same thing there -- funny running into you! Oh man, I'm so excited, class was canceled tomorrow -- right, you're in Orson's history of who-gives-a-fuck class, shame he's so sick all the time --"
"He had advanced irreparable liver failure," Spock said.
"And he's in a better place now, like I was that Friday he cancelled his class," Kirk replied. "Hey, do you want to come over? Oh, sure, that'll be great. Yeah, we can watch some holovids, just hang out, next thing you know: sex! And waking up like this, and there's no class on Friday, so you spend the whole day together. Then Friday goes by and you wake up Saturday, and Sunday -- it's the classic three-day date. You never had that?"
"More relevantly, I do not have the poor taste of bringing it up in such detail while on one of those dates," Spock replied.
"Tell me about one of yours."
Spock looked to be considering whether he would answer or just get up and shower. Interestingly, Kirk noted, he sat up and leaned over to Kirk's side of the bed. "First of all, PADDs were forbidden."
"I'm thinking that wasn't your call."
"But one that I came to appreciate."
"And then?"
Spock leaned in until his mouth was centimeters from Kirk's, and then he exhaled softly the word, "Breakfast."
"Shut up and do me, bad breath and all."
The excitement of spending twelve hours per day in bed, five hours in the gym, four hours on the bridge, and three hours not doing much of anything, wore off after about a week.
The gym was the most exciting place on the ship as Kirk began offering combat lessons to anyone who wanted them. This involved affectionately humiliating someone young, adorable, and proud like Chekov in demonstrating some moves for the next planet-side landing party brawl, or Spock showing up and the two men being carted off to McCoy after a demonstration.
"Funny how I keep running into you," Kirk said as McCoy tended to his ribs.
"Indeed. With our limited occupations, our paths of travel intersect on a more frequent basis than when we had regular hours," Spock replied. He bit his lip when one of McCoy's staff set his shoulder back in place and looked at Kirk indifferently.
"Nice shoes," Kirk said. "Wanna --"
"Don't you dare," McCoy interrupted. "There are people here."
"I was going to ask if he wanted to see some holovids in my room. You're welcome to watch."
"We're not allowed holovids, Jim."
"It's a metaphor," Kirk grinned. "You can still watch, though."
"Oh how I wish I was back in Georgia," McCoy sang off-key, "Or maybe dead in a mine. Maybe dead of Antarian measles, or --"
"You know just how to cheer a guy up," Kirk replied. He jumped off the biobed and groaned. "Fuck, why didn't you warn me."
"I live to watch you suffer!" McCoy said cheerily. "Off to my next patient. Try and avoid aggravating your muscle sprains for at least two hours, okay? Modern medicine is good, but not if you keep fucking with the process." He paused and added, "Literally. Good god damn, do you two need your jobs back."
Kirk was the first to snap. Spock entered Kirk's quarters to find him at his desk, surrounded in PADDs. "Depleting your PADDs' power banks hardly seems logical, Jim, when they are our only form of --"
"I need to look over all the ship's manuals to see what the fuck we can do to re-energize the crystals."
"Jim, there is nothing on board the ship capable of doing that -- there is nothing in our knowledge of science capable of doing that."
"That's bullshit, we just haven't found it yet."
"Precisely, but we do not have sufficient energy to experiment. Even if you should find a way to recrystallize them, it would have to be purely theoretical --"
"Tell me something I don't know, Spock."
"The continent on which I was born was called Na'nam."
"Actually, I did know that. I've read your file, and I've picked up a book on your home planet before -- in a manner of speaking. Try again."
"Our word for snow is izh."
Kirk turned off all the PADDs and rubbed his hands along his jawline. "Think I'm going to grow a beard."
"I will shower and retire to my own quarters for a time."
"Okay, yeah, go for it. I'll be here, growing my beard and trying not to blow up the ship."
Spock was back in his quarters and considered slipping on his meditation robes for a moment, but his body refused. His mind was too active, demanding the rigors of duty and research, opportunities for which were severely limited until they met the shuttle.
Of course, the past 12 days of leisure had not been entirely wasteful. They had been extremely enjoyable -- which brought his mind back to something he had not considered for several days, and that was Ambassador Spock. Ambassador Spock and his talk of bonding, families, Jim, everything.
Several days ago, it had been unthinkable. Yet now there was nothing to do, few theoretical questions that he felt like exploring as much as that particular one, especially considering the excessively co-habitative state of their relationship since they left New Vulcan.
Spock picked up his PADD, opened a new audio log, and began to speak.
Stardate 2261.140. This is the private log of First Officer Spock.
At the behest of my alternate reality counterpart, now a matchmaker on New Vulcan, I will endeavor to catalogue here my personal requirements of a long-term romantic partnership, as qualified by my experiences with the matter until the present stardate. A formal representation may follow.
I should begin by listing my primary sources of data. These sources are my observations of the relationship of my parents; my past relationship with Nyota Uhura; and my current relationship with James Kirk. They are not particularly ranked and are the most significant connections I have to this topic.
I must also note as a secondary source the relationship between my counterpart, Ambassador Spock, and the James Kirk of his alternate reality. Additional information on their relationship was revealed to me during my recent visit to New Vulcan. Obviously, as I did not directly observe their interactions and know my counterpart to express himself with less than Vulcan restraint (particularly with regard to the matter of James Kirk), his interpretations of that relationship will hold less weight than my primary sources.
Long-term relationships of this nature have shown to exist on the following levels: physical, intellectual, emotional, and social. The social level is subdivided into the private and public sphere, as seen in the dual nature of a familial unit and its co-existence both as a private entity and one under public scrutiny. I have devised these categories based upon my life on Vulcan as part of my own familial unit (and the intense scrutiny brought upon us for my mother's heritage), while the former three categories made themselves apparent in my own relationships as well as in observing the relationship between my parents.
I should clarify at this point that my query is this: will Jim Kirk prove to be a worthy individual with whom to form a bond? (Note: I deliberately use the word 'bond' in the sense of the permanent mental bond forged during a marriage ceremony.)
I must correct that query, as a review of it suggests unkindness towards Jim. It would take much more time than I have available to detail the ways in which he is an excellent friend, captain, companion, and sentient being. His human traits have brought me clarity in more areas than I may ever be able to understand fully. As I say this, I begin to wonder why I must explore this at all -- I wonder if Ambassador Spock was correct and, indeed, this is completely unnecessary because I feel (yes, feel, not know) that the chances of finding another individual like James Kirk is an unprovable impossibility. Yet for my logical self, which I must live with alongside my emotional self, I must advance further until it is satisfied with my conclusions.
I bring my attention back to the four categories I stated earlier. I will not cover Jim's compatibility with me on the intellectual or physical levels; we complement each other excellently in both these areas. Therefore, I will focus on the status of our relationship on the emotional and social levels, and begin with the social, as it is more easily quantified and examined.
The social level may also be defined according to the status of dependents: namely, children. Jim informed me that, in addition to my counterpart's impending marriage, he will become a father shortly after the ceremony (which we will not be attending, due to an assignment that sends us to the Gamma quadrant of our home system once we have replenished our dilithium stores). This did not lead to a conversation between myself and Jim and our potential future status as parents in a familial unit.
One may argue that it is my emotional investment in this particular relationship that causes me to believe Jim would be nothing but the most doting, caring, and supportive of parents. I cite now his overall character and the lengths to which he must be driven in order to speak a cruel word; the extraordinary loyalty that he has shown every staff member of the Enterprise; the fact that he has, in fact, offered himself several times to captors rather than see a single innocent bystander or crew member injured.
I must adjust my query again, as I find that my hesitation in committing myself fully to this relationship lies in the doubts I hold of my own abilities to communicate on the emotional level. I recall all too clearly the only argument my parents had while I lived on Vulcan (an argument they repeated too frequently, in my opinion): my mother demanding of my father more human-like behavior, and my father acquiescing but never enough. "How could the tapping of fingers together match a kiss?" was a question she frequently asked. It could not, he admitted, but it was the custom and anything more would draw unwanted attention to our already remarked-on household.
The same situation, which briefly presented itself with Nyota, frequently presents itself with Jim. Nyota, with all her patience and dedication to studying languages and cultures, would not transfer that patience to the personal sphere and a relationship with me. Jim has consistently seen my Vulcan upbringing as a challenge and, unlike Nyota, has never openly wished me different from what I am. However, my primary concern is that, with the passage of time, he will react as my mother did: he will stay with me, care for me before all others, but long for more I could not provide.
This is the point on which the social and emotional levels converge, as my mother made clear during my childhood and adolescence: showing emotions is the only way for humans to prove their existence. Actions, even small ones such as a clasping of hands or kiss, are more valuable than a spoken reassurance of the represented action. Jim has registered few complaints during our relationship to this date, and they have stemmed from the misunderstanding that I am less invested than he (this initial log should demonstrate otherwise). He continues to refuse a mind meld because actions have more significance with humans than words or telepathic connections (ironically, he cites it as cheating and disapproves of it). I revise my query to consider this question: could I adequately provide for this man's needs?
Spock noticed knocking on his door and switched modes on his PADD immediately. "Come in," Spock called, and when Kirk entered he added, "I apologize, I did not hear you. Why did you not enter?"
"You're in your room," Kirk explained. "So. You know. Here you are. And I heard your labiodental flaps from outside -- didn't want to interrupt whatever you were doing."
"Please interrupt me," Spock replied. "You know you are free to."
"I won't," he answered. "Anyway, come on! Delta shift! Let's burn some midnight oil, baby."
Spock rose and they walked to the turbolift quietly so as not to disturb those sleeping. In the turbolift, Kirk nudged him with his elbow.
"I called you 'baby' and you didn't even flinch. What's with that?" he asked. "I've got to get more creative when it comes to annoying you."
"I am used to the term," Spock said. Kirk raised his eyebrows and suppressed some amusement. Spock matched it with a curve of the corner of his mouth and told him, "My mother spoke Vulcan tolerably well, but it was obviously not her primary language. She would frequently use Earth terms alongside Vulcan ones; that particular term was one of her favorites."
"How'd she explain it to you?" he asked.
"I believe you are aware of Vulcan's use of particles."
"Sure; a few languages on Earth use them, too, ancient ones especially."
"She called it a 'particle of affection'."
There was a long pause and Spock attempted to interpret Kirk's reaction: widened eyes, furrowed eyebrows, the tip of his tongue emerging from the side of his mouth, momentarily halted respiration. Kirk slowly reached over to the turbolift's controls and stopped its movement. He looked at Spock and said, "I would kiss you right now, but you know how creepy the night shift gets about trying to find people fooling around on camera. So I'm just going to stand here and tell you that is the fucking cutest thing I have ever heard in my entire fucking life." He pressed the button again and the turbolift resumed its journey to the bridge. "And baby -- just so you know -- I'm never going to stop calling you that."
"I love our date nights," Kirk murmured into his glass of whiskey.
"You keep calling them that..." McCoy poured himself another measure and swirled it around the glass as he considered possible threats. Soon, he shrugged and said, "Fuck it, they are date nights, aren't they?"
"Yup. Know what I hate?"
"Hm?"
"The power of suggestion."
McCoy raised an eyebrow. "I never would have gotten that, not with a million guesses."
"It's Spock -- the older model, not mine. Ever since he was all... you know... I'm getting married! I'm having a kid! Suddenly everyone's doing that."
"I'm not. I already did. Who's everyone?"
"Well." Kirk slouched in his chair and looked to the ceiling of McCoy's quarters for answers. "Oh! That lieutenant in botany. You know. Richards... or Ricardo... whatever, he just proposed to his girlfriend on the Talbot. And Chekov's getting serious with a girl down in operations."
"Serious by our standards or Chekov's standards? Is he asking you for her hand or did he just get to second base?" McCoy asked.
"Handholding in public," Kirk said. "Hell, even I'm not there yet."
"Ha," McCoy laughed. "You'd hold hands in public en route to a handjob and arrest."
"Bones! I'm -- no, you're totally right."
"Especially when your boyfriend has got those interesting hands of his..."
"Damn, holding hands with him would be a handjob in public, wouldn't it? This needs to happen. Remind me."
"Sorry, Spock!" McCoy announced to the universe.
"How'd you know, Bones," Kirk said, "That Mrs. McCoy was the one for you?"
"She wasn't, remember? Divorce? Enlisting? Weekly whiskey-filled debriefing sessions with you?"
"Yeah, but... whatever, I just wanna know. You know, what made you think she could be it."
"Easy," McCoy replied. "She was pregnant."
"Leonard fucking McCoy! You dog!"
"No regrets. Got Joey out of it, didn't I?"
"Fuck yeah, you did." They clinked their glasses and Kirk polished off what was left in his glass. "Bartender, one more, if you please, then cut me off."
"Sure, sure. What were we talking about?"
"There's a version of Spock out there, the ancient one, that's getting married for the second time."
"Interesting."
"And that's not counting the five thousand years he was fucking bonded, or whatever Vulcans do, to his version of me."
"Wait a second," McCoy interrupted. "Just wait a goddamn minute. Have you -- you've been talking to this time traveling Vulcan -- he's been talking to you about what you did in that other timeline? This whole goddamn time?"
"Well. Yeah. You had a moratorium on me and Spock and our relationship issues for the longest time, so I figured --"
"He's been interfering with the prime directive and you've been letting him?"
"I don't think he's technically a member of Starfleet any --"
McCoy leaned over and punched Kirk in the shoulder hard enough to make him yell.
"Don't give me your semantic crap, Jim! And has Spock been indulging himself with a little peek into the future, too?"
"The fuck does it matter? It's an alternate timeline! It's never going to happen!"
"The hell it isn't! You jackass! This is like being a hundred pages into a story and skipping to the end! Dammit, Jim! You should have told me what you talked about. I thought it was Vulcan nonsense for Spock, or you running to the grandpa you never had to tell him what you did in space this week, but this is -- did you even think about how this will affect you?"
"It hasn't, Bones. Nothing's changed! I'm still the same devil-may-care roguishly charming starship captain I've always been," Kirk replied with a faltering grin.
McCoy tapped his fingers impatiently and then asked, "Would you have started fucking Spock if it wasn't for the other him?"
Kirk swallowed and didn't answer. "Irrelevant," he eventually replied.
"Relevant. Jim, you can't --"
"You're right, I can't anymore, anyway," Kirk snapped. "Old Spock is getting married, having his family, so we're never speaking again, he says. He knows what he's done."
"About goddamn time." McCoy rubbed his face with both hands and groaned. He lowered them back into his lap and glanced at Kirk, who refused to make eye contact for more than a split-second at a time. "I forget stubbornness, especially with you, is at work. You know drinking this much the night before you have Alpha shift is going to make you unbearable tomorrow, but you do it anyway." McCoy groaned again and added, "At least, it would if we weren't in this fucking limbo."
Kirk examined his glass and said, apropos of nothing, "Spock knows there's, like, an eighty percent chance I'm going to die before him, but he still likes me."
"Likes you? Are you twelve? I've gotta tell you -- no one on this ship has put up with you these past three years just because they like you. For him to put up with you as much as he does -- I think you need to upgrade to something beyond 'like'."
"That's what I meant before," Kirk replied. His tone was almost gentle as he explained. "See, it isn't enough that we've saved each other's lives a thousand times -- that's part of the job requirement. It's also not enough that we can talk about our lab projects for hours. What made you think 'yeah, let's give this a try, we'll aim towards forever and see how long it goes'?"
"Mostly the pregnant thing. Can't lie about it. Don't get Spock pregnant."
"Not even a little?"
"I will straight up murder you, Jim, you hear me?"
"Sure sure. Good night, Bones."
"Jim! I'm not kidding! I'll hypospray you sterile if I have to!" The door slid shut behind Kirk, and McCoy poured himself a final glass of whiskey, muttering "dammit" a few times under his breath between sips.
Kirk entered his quarters and there was Spock, already in his shorts and undershirt, PADD in hand. Usually whiskey made him easy going, but Kirk had to thank McCoy for the fucking downer of a conversation. Kirk yanked off his boot and looked up quickly when he thought he saw Spock's eyes dart to him. Of course, that hopping-on-one-leg style of boot removal, startled exchange of looks, and whiskey led to Kirk falling flat on his back and his head narrowly missing the corner of his desk.
Spock was over him in a moment and looking down. "Do you ever actually debrief with the doctor during your meetings?"
"Not like we do during ours," Kirk replied from the floor. He tilted his head and said, "Speaking of briefs, I can see --"
"Thank you, Jim." He extended a hand and helped Kirk up. "Do you need my help?"
"The day I can't walk to my fucking bed after three drinks with Bones, you have the right to phaser me into the next dimension, okay?"
"Do you have a preference as to which one?" Spock asked as he resumed his position on the bed.
"Up to you, buddy, it won't matter is the point." Kirk sat on the edge of the bed, pulled off his other boot, and threw it across the room. He pulled his shirt off and said, "So I talked to Scotty today. He told me something interesting."
"Indeed?"
"He told me," Kirk began slowly as he undid his belt and slipped out of his pants, "That your directory, the one that holds your personal logs? Has suddenly jumped from holding about 20 hours of recordings from the past three years -- which is shocking, really, unless you talk faster than light in your logs and why can't your tongue power any warp core but mine -- to almost 35 hours in a week."
Spock put the PADD down and Kirk, in identical shorts and shirt, turned on the bed to face him. "So I know you're bored like the rest of us, but. I have to ask. What have you talked to your PADD about for 15 hours that you haven't been able to tell me? Something I should be worried about?"
"Worried, no," Spock replied. His hands rested on the bed at either side of his legs and Kirk saw Spock's eyes probing and evaluating his face. "Our last encounter with my counterpart brought many questions to the forefront of my mind concerning our relationship."
"You, too!" Kirk said. He quickly scrambled to the top of the bed where the mattress met the headboard and mimicked Spock's sitting position, legs stretched out but with his arms crossed over his chest. "How did we not talk about this -- right, because of that whole fucking dilithium thing, and the whole fucking because of dilithium thing. What did he tell you? Besides the facts, I mean."
"I know what I have been told and deliberated," Spock said. "Would you mind telling me what he shared with you and your conclusions?"
"Well, I don't have a lot of conclusions yet," Kirk said. "He told me you were jealous when I hugged him --"
"He embraced you," Spock corrected. "You merely extended an arm to him and he crossed a very definite boundary with full awareness of how I would react. I believe he was provoking me."
"He just wanted to cop a feel -- wouldn't you? Come on, look at this." Kirk grinned and was glad Spock, at least, looked away -- it was the closest he got to an eye roll and sigh. "Anyway, what else. The wife, the kid -- yeah, he yelled at me for not melding with you and asked if we had talked about bonding."
Kirk didn't speak for a moment, but he saw Spock nod from his periphery. He said after another hesitation, "Melding freaked me out the first time. I really couldn't control what was happening to me, and old Spock was too compromised to control the emotional transference -- I'm not kidding, I almost cried afterwards and you know how often I fucking cry. I saw too much, a lot I didn't want to see." Kirk looked over and asked, "Is it really that important to you?"
"You are important to me." Spock cleared his throat and said, "As for what I dictated to my PADD -- I was evaluating our relationship."
"Okay..."
"Our almost equal emotional hesitancies have made us a very functional team for operating the ship. I would not go so far as to suggest a bond would have caused us to falter or made us better at our duties, but the emotional investment that comes with such a bond would have compromised us at a critical --"
Spock glanced over and saw Kirk breathing deeply and steadily. Usually he would not wake Kirk up, but the situation warranted it. He nudged Kirk in the shoulder, and then in a still-sensitive rib.
"Fuck, ow, that still hurts," Kirk groaned. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to, I blame the whiskey." Kirk sat up straighter and rubbed his eyes. "So tell me what we're going to do. What have we concluded?"
"I believe we should be able to compromise," Spock said. "You have previously mentioned to me that I do not show my affection as openly as I could."
"I haven't said that in a long time," Kirk replied. "I've gotten way better at reading you. Actually, I just assume that everything you do is screaming either 'fuck you' or 'love me' in Vulcan." Spock glanced at Kirk, who was staring at him expectantly. "Sorry, that was really funny and I was hoping you'd laugh. Like, with teeth and all. What do your teeth look like?"
"Very similar to yours. Your canines are more pronounced than mine, while mine are very pronounced for a Vulcan. I also believe there is greater variety in the length of your top row --"
"You've measured my teeth?" Kirk asked.
"You flash them quite frequently in my presence. I did not have a choice in the matter."
Happily, Kirk grinned and flashed his teeth much more obnoxiously in Spock's face than he had in some time.
"The doctor shared his better whiskey with you tonight," Spock commented.
"That's a new level of intimacy, right? Evaluating whiskey quality based on my breath?" Kirk toned down the grin and said, "Next time we're fucking, like, not a quickie before shift or anything, but really into it -- let's meld, okay? I trust you not to make me hyperventilate and cry for days. Maybe." Kirk cleared his throat and said, "Though I should warn you -- be prepared for what's in my head."
"Can it be more disturbing than what emerges from your mouth?"
"That's what I said!" Kirk shrieked. "I'm not even fucking kidding you, word for word, I told him!" Spock allowed himself a smile and that made Kirk grin again. "Seriously, though, I mean -- don't get scared of how much I like you. This, with the grinning and fucking you senseless and playing with your ears, it's. It's a lot worse in my head." He paused and added, "And I think there's like, a whole lobe dedicated to you in your dress uniform at the Academy that other night, I mean, if we never fuck again, that is my --"
"Captain! Sorry, Captain, it's Scotty!" the intercom in the wall yelled. "Come in, Captain!"
They scrambled out of bed and Kirk answered.
"Captain! The Farragut is 20 minutes away with ten kilos of dilithium!"
"Holy shit, Scotty that's --"
"And it's carrying five from each the Intrepid and Excalibur, and ten more from the Defiant -- it might be just enough to put us in warp to Starbase 12 for the full load they have for us."
"Scotty, brace yourself. When I see you, I'm going to kiss you. Long and hard, with a lot of tongue." He flipped the switch momentarily and Spock raised an eyebrow at Kirk. "Hope you don't mind." He flipped the switch on again and switched to the bridge channel. "Kirk to bridge, who's the communications officer whose children I'm going to bear right here? I'm seriously about to shit you a dilithium necklace."
"It won't be necessary, Captain," Uhura replied warily.
"I'll be up on the bridge with Spock in a few minutes -- call ahead to Starbase 12 and find out how much alcohol they have for immediate purchase and shipment." He flicked off the intercom again and scrambled for his pants, then ran to Spock and pulled him in for a deep kiss. "Prepping for Scotty, you understand, right?"
They dressed and their conversation was mostly forgotten, seeming like something out of the dream world they had inhabited for the past two weeks. Kirk and Spock ran out the door and to the turbolift, discussing heatedly what to do with the extra dilithium they would have after their stop at Starbase 12.
Follow up: Calibration.
As they materialized on the Enterprise the next day, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were terrified when the lights in the room dimmed and slowly returned to normal.
"Fuck Jim, fuck, I can't feel my liver!" McCoy yelled.
"Spock, check on his liver," Kirk said distractedly as he ran to the console and paged engineering. "Scotty! What the hell was that?"
"Captain, did you happen to beam back a whale with you? The three of you have blown out our dilithium!"
"The fuck do you mean -- hold on, we're coming down."
"I saw my atoms flash before my eyes," McCoy said.
"That is to be expected, Doctor," Spock replied calmly.
Once in the engineering deck, they found Scotty shrieking at the dilithium crystals until Kirk grabbed him by the arms and shook him a little.
"Now. What's the problem?"
"What's the problem?" Scotty asked. "A Constitution-class starship requires 30 kilos of dilithium for full functioning capabilities; possibly, maybe, if you're lucky, it could run basic life support including food synthesizers on half that -- you sirs have just blown us out to 19 kilos."
Kirk glanced around the room and saw Scotty's staff paging every department on the ship, calling for a shut down of all their non-essential systems.
"Right -- can we hail New Vulcan and see if they have any we can borrow?" Kirk asked. "How much do we need to get back to full capacity and to compensate for the reboot of these systems?"
"Double what we have."
"Double?"
"I'd settle for 15 more kilos in a pinch, which this fucking is."
"Fuck, Scotty," Kirk groaned as a realization dawned on him, "New Vulcan is totally devoid of dilithium."
"Indeed; we would be taking directly from their survey ships, as New Vulcan does not yet have full starship capabilities of the Enterprise's class. Even then, I am certain the limited capabilities of those ships would not provide you with even 10 kilograms. It would also leave the planet without spacecraft," Spock added.
Kirk walked over to the intercom on the wall. "Kirk to the bridge -- Uhura?"
"Yes, Captain -- can we have an update on the situation?"
"Yeah -- we'll be running only essential systems due to a problem with the dilithium. Uhura, we need dilithium fast, so make that announcement and then find me the closest sources in this quadrant, okay?" He flicked off the intercom and turned to Spock. "Your damn counterpart had to find a planet in the fucking remotest corner of the Beta quadrant for your new colony, didn't he?"
Scotty looked puzzled and shook what he had heard out of his head. "Here are our options, let me know if I miss any --" Kirk began.
"They all involve crawling along to whatever destination on only our impulse engines," Scotty interrupted. "If Uhura's lucky enough to find a starship willing to share some of its dilithium, which is unlikely if they're anything like me, it'd take them days to get out here at warp 6 so they don't burn out that dilithium -- that's if they leave immediately, which they won't. There are no dilithium-mining planets within seven light-days of New Vulcan and -- did I mention how we can only afford to use our sublight-speed-traveling impulse engines?"
"Captain, Uhura here," the intercom announced.
"Yup, talk to me," Kirk replied.
"Captain, there are no Federation starships in this quadrant, nor will there be for close to a month. I've contacted Starbase 12 and they can have a shuttle meet us three-fourths of the way there with the dilithium. Sulu says it'll take us three weeks on our impulse engines."
"Three weeks?" Kirk screamed. "Three fucking weeks? Bridge, stand by, and thanks." He switched off the intercom and looked to everyone. "Three. Weeks."
"Three weeks in space, running only essential functions," McCoy groaned.
"No experiments in the labs," Spock realized. "The risk of power depletion is too great to allow our continuing experiment on the dilithium isotope that could fuel our journey to the starbase."
"No creative meals," Scotty added.
"Okay, shut up, all of you. I'm going to go take care of the meal situation for these next three weeks -- brace yourselves, because it's going to be ugly and probably disgusting." Kirk ran a hand through his hair and added, "We'll be fine. It'll be like a vacation -- like shore leave. But without the fun."
"Captain, I suggest taking several moments to compose your thoughts on the matter before announcing your estimation of the situation." Spock paused and clarified, "For the sake of crew morale, I would not open with that."
The situation was this: as all non-essential systems were taken offline for power conservation, there was nothing for close to three hundred and fifty people on the ship to do for most of each day except catch up on their reading, work out in the gym, stroll along the corridors, and have possibly dangerous amounts of sex in their quarters.
McCoy, smug for close to a minute because his department was highest priority, began to regret his calling when he suddenly became the most popular person on the ship, that distributor of birth control and healer of creatively attained sprains.
The bridge staff was put on half-duty, as there was a sudden influx of occupation-starved staff that wanted to gain some experience working there, which they were granted.
"This is just like the Academy!" Kirk laughed in his quarters. It was 1100 hours and he had just woken up and, to his greater surprise, Spock was still there, also half-asleep.
"How so?" Spock asked groggily.
"You know -- okay, maybe you don't know." He turned on his side and put an arm around Spock's torso. "Get out of class on Thursday, head to lunch, see some striking, hm. Redhead, for the purposes of this nostalgia. Talk, laugh, share some fries, make eyes at each other, oh yeah I have class now, yeah, but maybe we can meet up after for dinner? Same thing there -- funny running into you! Oh man, I'm so excited, class was canceled tomorrow -- right, you're in Orson's history of who-gives-a-fuck class, shame he's so sick all the time --"
"He had advanced irreparable liver failure," Spock said.
"And he's in a better place now, like I was that Friday he cancelled his class," Kirk replied. "Hey, do you want to come over? Oh, sure, that'll be great. Yeah, we can watch some holovids, just hang out, next thing you know: sex! And waking up like this, and there's no class on Friday, so you spend the whole day together. Then Friday goes by and you wake up Saturday, and Sunday -- it's the classic three-day date. You never had that?"
"More relevantly, I do not have the poor taste of bringing it up in such detail while on one of those dates," Spock replied.
"Tell me about one of yours."
Spock looked to be considering whether he would answer or just get up and shower. Interestingly, Kirk noted, he sat up and leaned over to Kirk's side of the bed. "First of all, PADDs were forbidden."
"I'm thinking that wasn't your call."
"But one that I came to appreciate."
"And then?"
Spock leaned in until his mouth was centimeters from Kirk's, and then he exhaled softly the word, "Breakfast."
"Shut up and do me, bad breath and all."
The excitement of spending twelve hours per day in bed, five hours in the gym, four hours on the bridge, and three hours not doing much of anything, wore off after about a week.
The gym was the most exciting place on the ship as Kirk began offering combat lessons to anyone who wanted them. This involved affectionately humiliating someone young, adorable, and proud like Chekov in demonstrating some moves for the next planet-side landing party brawl, or Spock showing up and the two men being carted off to McCoy after a demonstration.
"Funny how I keep running into you," Kirk said as McCoy tended to his ribs.
"Indeed. With our limited occupations, our paths of travel intersect on a more frequent basis than when we had regular hours," Spock replied. He bit his lip when one of McCoy's staff set his shoulder back in place and looked at Kirk indifferently.
"Nice shoes," Kirk said. "Wanna --"
"Don't you dare," McCoy interrupted. "There are people here."
"I was going to ask if he wanted to see some holovids in my room. You're welcome to watch."
"We're not allowed holovids, Jim."
"It's a metaphor," Kirk grinned. "You can still watch, though."
"Oh how I wish I was back in Georgia," McCoy sang off-key, "Or maybe dead in a mine. Maybe dead of Antarian measles, or --"
"You know just how to cheer a guy up," Kirk replied. He jumped off the biobed and groaned. "Fuck, why didn't you warn me."
"I live to watch you suffer!" McCoy said cheerily. "Off to my next patient. Try and avoid aggravating your muscle sprains for at least two hours, okay? Modern medicine is good, but not if you keep fucking with the process." He paused and added, "Literally. Good god damn, do you two need your jobs back."
Kirk was the first to snap. Spock entered Kirk's quarters to find him at his desk, surrounded in PADDs. "Depleting your PADDs' power banks hardly seems logical, Jim, when they are our only form of --"
"I need to look over all the ship's manuals to see what the fuck we can do to re-energize the crystals."
"Jim, there is nothing on board the ship capable of doing that -- there is nothing in our knowledge of science capable of doing that."
"That's bullshit, we just haven't found it yet."
"Precisely, but we do not have sufficient energy to experiment. Even if you should find a way to recrystallize them, it would have to be purely theoretical --"
"Tell me something I don't know, Spock."
"The continent on which I was born was called Na'nam."
"Actually, I did know that. I've read your file, and I've picked up a book on your home planet before -- in a manner of speaking. Try again."
"Our word for snow is izh."
Kirk turned off all the PADDs and rubbed his hands along his jawline. "Think I'm going to grow a beard."
"I will shower and retire to my own quarters for a time."
"Okay, yeah, go for it. I'll be here, growing my beard and trying not to blow up the ship."
Spock was back in his quarters and considered slipping on his meditation robes for a moment, but his body refused. His mind was too active, demanding the rigors of duty and research, opportunities for which were severely limited until they met the shuttle.
Of course, the past 12 days of leisure had not been entirely wasteful. They had been extremely enjoyable -- which brought his mind back to something he had not considered for several days, and that was Ambassador Spock. Ambassador Spock and his talk of bonding, families, Jim, everything.
Several days ago, it had been unthinkable. Yet now there was nothing to do, few theoretical questions that he felt like exploring as much as that particular one, especially considering the excessively co-habitative state of their relationship since they left New Vulcan.
Spock picked up his PADD, opened a new audio log, and began to speak.
Stardate 2261.140. This is the private log of First Officer Spock.
At the behest of my alternate reality counterpart, now a matchmaker on New Vulcan, I will endeavor to catalogue here my personal requirements of a long-term romantic partnership, as qualified by my experiences with the matter until the present stardate. A formal representation may follow.
I should begin by listing my primary sources of data. These sources are my observations of the relationship of my parents; my past relationship with Nyota Uhura; and my current relationship with James Kirk. They are not particularly ranked and are the most significant connections I have to this topic.
I must also note as a secondary source the relationship between my counterpart, Ambassador Spock, and the James Kirk of his alternate reality. Additional information on their relationship was revealed to me during my recent visit to New Vulcan. Obviously, as I did not directly observe their interactions and know my counterpart to express himself with less than Vulcan restraint (particularly with regard to the matter of James Kirk), his interpretations of that relationship will hold less weight than my primary sources.
Long-term relationships of this nature have shown to exist on the following levels: physical, intellectual, emotional, and social. The social level is subdivided into the private and public sphere, as seen in the dual nature of a familial unit and its co-existence both as a private entity and one under public scrutiny. I have devised these categories based upon my life on Vulcan as part of my own familial unit (and the intense scrutiny brought upon us for my mother's heritage), while the former three categories made themselves apparent in my own relationships as well as in observing the relationship between my parents.
I should clarify at this point that my query is this: will Jim Kirk prove to be a worthy individual with whom to form a bond? (Note: I deliberately use the word 'bond' in the sense of the permanent mental bond forged during a marriage ceremony.)
I must correct that query, as a review of it suggests unkindness towards Jim. It would take much more time than I have available to detail the ways in which he is an excellent friend, captain, companion, and sentient being. His human traits have brought me clarity in more areas than I may ever be able to understand fully. As I say this, I begin to wonder why I must explore this at all -- I wonder if Ambassador Spock was correct and, indeed, this is completely unnecessary because I feel (yes, feel, not know) that the chances of finding another individual like James Kirk is an unprovable impossibility. Yet for my logical self, which I must live with alongside my emotional self, I must advance further until it is satisfied with my conclusions.
I bring my attention back to the four categories I stated earlier. I will not cover Jim's compatibility with me on the intellectual or physical levels; we complement each other excellently in both these areas. Therefore, I will focus on the status of our relationship on the emotional and social levels, and begin with the social, as it is more easily quantified and examined.
The social level may also be defined according to the status of dependents: namely, children. Jim informed me that, in addition to my counterpart's impending marriage, he will become a father shortly after the ceremony (which we will not be attending, due to an assignment that sends us to the Gamma quadrant of our home system once we have replenished our dilithium stores). This did not lead to a conversation between myself and Jim and our potential future status as parents in a familial unit.
One may argue that it is my emotional investment in this particular relationship that causes me to believe Jim would be nothing but the most doting, caring, and supportive of parents. I cite now his overall character and the lengths to which he must be driven in order to speak a cruel word; the extraordinary loyalty that he has shown every staff member of the Enterprise; the fact that he has, in fact, offered himself several times to captors rather than see a single innocent bystander or crew member injured.
I must adjust my query again, as I find that my hesitation in committing myself fully to this relationship lies in the doubts I hold of my own abilities to communicate on the emotional level. I recall all too clearly the only argument my parents had while I lived on Vulcan (an argument they repeated too frequently, in my opinion): my mother demanding of my father more human-like behavior, and my father acquiescing but never enough. "How could the tapping of fingers together match a kiss?" was a question she frequently asked. It could not, he admitted, but it was the custom and anything more would draw unwanted attention to our already remarked-on household.
The same situation, which briefly presented itself with Nyota, frequently presents itself with Jim. Nyota, with all her patience and dedication to studying languages and cultures, would not transfer that patience to the personal sphere and a relationship with me. Jim has consistently seen my Vulcan upbringing as a challenge and, unlike Nyota, has never openly wished me different from what I am. However, my primary concern is that, with the passage of time, he will react as my mother did: he will stay with me, care for me before all others, but long for more I could not provide.
This is the point on which the social and emotional levels converge, as my mother made clear during my childhood and adolescence: showing emotions is the only way for humans to prove their existence. Actions, even small ones such as a clasping of hands or kiss, are more valuable than a spoken reassurance of the represented action. Jim has registered few complaints during our relationship to this date, and they have stemmed from the misunderstanding that I am less invested than he (this initial log should demonstrate otherwise). He continues to refuse a mind meld because actions have more significance with humans than words or telepathic connections (ironically, he cites it as cheating and disapproves of it). I revise my query to consider this question: could I adequately provide for this man's needs?
Spock noticed knocking on his door and switched modes on his PADD immediately. "Come in," Spock called, and when Kirk entered he added, "I apologize, I did not hear you. Why did you not enter?"
"You're in your room," Kirk explained. "So. You know. Here you are. And I heard your labiodental flaps from outside -- didn't want to interrupt whatever you were doing."
"Please interrupt me," Spock replied. "You know you are free to."
"I won't," he answered. "Anyway, come on! Delta shift! Let's burn some midnight oil, baby."
Spock rose and they walked to the turbolift quietly so as not to disturb those sleeping. In the turbolift, Kirk nudged him with his elbow.
"I called you 'baby' and you didn't even flinch. What's with that?" he asked. "I've got to get more creative when it comes to annoying you."
"I am used to the term," Spock said. Kirk raised his eyebrows and suppressed some amusement. Spock matched it with a curve of the corner of his mouth and told him, "My mother spoke Vulcan tolerably well, but it was obviously not her primary language. She would frequently use Earth terms alongside Vulcan ones; that particular term was one of her favorites."
"How'd she explain it to you?" he asked.
"I believe you are aware of Vulcan's use of particles."
"Sure; a few languages on Earth use them, too, ancient ones especially."
"She called it a 'particle of affection'."
There was a long pause and Spock attempted to interpret Kirk's reaction: widened eyes, furrowed eyebrows, the tip of his tongue emerging from the side of his mouth, momentarily halted respiration. Kirk slowly reached over to the turbolift's controls and stopped its movement. He looked at Spock and said, "I would kiss you right now, but you know how creepy the night shift gets about trying to find people fooling around on camera. So I'm just going to stand here and tell you that is the fucking cutest thing I have ever heard in my entire fucking life." He pressed the button again and the turbolift resumed its journey to the bridge. "And baby -- just so you know -- I'm never going to stop calling you that."
"I love our date nights," Kirk murmured into his glass of whiskey.
"You keep calling them that..." McCoy poured himself another measure and swirled it around the glass as he considered possible threats. Soon, he shrugged and said, "Fuck it, they are date nights, aren't they?"
"Yup. Know what I hate?"
"Hm?"
"The power of suggestion."
McCoy raised an eyebrow. "I never would have gotten that, not with a million guesses."
"It's Spock -- the older model, not mine. Ever since he was all... you know... I'm getting married! I'm having a kid! Suddenly everyone's doing that."
"I'm not. I already did. Who's everyone?"
"Well." Kirk slouched in his chair and looked to the ceiling of McCoy's quarters for answers. "Oh! That lieutenant in botany. You know. Richards... or Ricardo... whatever, he just proposed to his girlfriend on the Talbot. And Chekov's getting serious with a girl down in operations."
"Serious by our standards or Chekov's standards? Is he asking you for her hand or did he just get to second base?" McCoy asked.
"Handholding in public," Kirk said. "Hell, even I'm not there yet."
"Ha," McCoy laughed. "You'd hold hands in public en route to a handjob and arrest."
"Bones! I'm -- no, you're totally right."
"Especially when your boyfriend has got those interesting hands of his..."
"Damn, holding hands with him would be a handjob in public, wouldn't it? This needs to happen. Remind me."
"Sorry, Spock!" McCoy announced to the universe.
"How'd you know, Bones," Kirk said, "That Mrs. McCoy was the one for you?"
"She wasn't, remember? Divorce? Enlisting? Weekly whiskey-filled debriefing sessions with you?"
"Yeah, but... whatever, I just wanna know. You know, what made you think she could be it."
"Easy," McCoy replied. "She was pregnant."
"Leonard fucking McCoy! You dog!"
"No regrets. Got Joey out of it, didn't I?"
"Fuck yeah, you did." They clinked their glasses and Kirk polished off what was left in his glass. "Bartender, one more, if you please, then cut me off."
"Sure, sure. What were we talking about?"
"There's a version of Spock out there, the ancient one, that's getting married for the second time."
"Interesting."
"And that's not counting the five thousand years he was fucking bonded, or whatever Vulcans do, to his version of me."
"Wait a second," McCoy interrupted. "Just wait a goddamn minute. Have you -- you've been talking to this time traveling Vulcan -- he's been talking to you about what you did in that other timeline? This whole goddamn time?"
"Well. Yeah. You had a moratorium on me and Spock and our relationship issues for the longest time, so I figured --"
"He's been interfering with the prime directive and you've been letting him?"
"I don't think he's technically a member of Starfleet any --"
McCoy leaned over and punched Kirk in the shoulder hard enough to make him yell.
"Don't give me your semantic crap, Jim! And has Spock been indulging himself with a little peek into the future, too?"
"The fuck does it matter? It's an alternate timeline! It's never going to happen!"
"The hell it isn't! You jackass! This is like being a hundred pages into a story and skipping to the end! Dammit, Jim! You should have told me what you talked about. I thought it was Vulcan nonsense for Spock, or you running to the grandpa you never had to tell him what you did in space this week, but this is -- did you even think about how this will affect you?"
"It hasn't, Bones. Nothing's changed! I'm still the same devil-may-care roguishly charming starship captain I've always been," Kirk replied with a faltering grin.
McCoy tapped his fingers impatiently and then asked, "Would you have started fucking Spock if it wasn't for the other him?"
Kirk swallowed and didn't answer. "Irrelevant," he eventually replied.
"Relevant. Jim, you can't --"
"You're right, I can't anymore, anyway," Kirk snapped. "Old Spock is getting married, having his family, so we're never speaking again, he says. He knows what he's done."
"About goddamn time." McCoy rubbed his face with both hands and groaned. He lowered them back into his lap and glanced at Kirk, who refused to make eye contact for more than a split-second at a time. "I forget stubbornness, especially with you, is at work. You know drinking this much the night before you have Alpha shift is going to make you unbearable tomorrow, but you do it anyway." McCoy groaned again and added, "At least, it would if we weren't in this fucking limbo."
Kirk examined his glass and said, apropos of nothing, "Spock knows there's, like, an eighty percent chance I'm going to die before him, but he still likes me."
"Likes you? Are you twelve? I've gotta tell you -- no one on this ship has put up with you these past three years just because they like you. For him to put up with you as much as he does -- I think you need to upgrade to something beyond 'like'."
"That's what I meant before," Kirk replied. His tone was almost gentle as he explained. "See, it isn't enough that we've saved each other's lives a thousand times -- that's part of the job requirement. It's also not enough that we can talk about our lab projects for hours. What made you think 'yeah, let's give this a try, we'll aim towards forever and see how long it goes'?"
"Mostly the pregnant thing. Can't lie about it. Don't get Spock pregnant."
"Not even a little?"
"I will straight up murder you, Jim, you hear me?"
"Sure sure. Good night, Bones."
"Jim! I'm not kidding! I'll hypospray you sterile if I have to!" The door slid shut behind Kirk, and McCoy poured himself a final glass of whiskey, muttering "dammit" a few times under his breath between sips.
Kirk entered his quarters and there was Spock, already in his shorts and undershirt, PADD in hand. Usually whiskey made him easy going, but Kirk had to thank McCoy for the fucking downer of a conversation. Kirk yanked off his boot and looked up quickly when he thought he saw Spock's eyes dart to him. Of course, that hopping-on-one-leg style of boot removal, startled exchange of looks, and whiskey led to Kirk falling flat on his back and his head narrowly missing the corner of his desk.
Spock was over him in a moment and looking down. "Do you ever actually debrief with the doctor during your meetings?"
"Not like we do during ours," Kirk replied from the floor. He tilted his head and said, "Speaking of briefs, I can see --"
"Thank you, Jim." He extended a hand and helped Kirk up. "Do you need my help?"
"The day I can't walk to my fucking bed after three drinks with Bones, you have the right to phaser me into the next dimension, okay?"
"Do you have a preference as to which one?" Spock asked as he resumed his position on the bed.
"Up to you, buddy, it won't matter is the point." Kirk sat on the edge of the bed, pulled off his other boot, and threw it across the room. He pulled his shirt off and said, "So I talked to Scotty today. He told me something interesting."
"Indeed?"
"He told me," Kirk began slowly as he undid his belt and slipped out of his pants, "That your directory, the one that holds your personal logs? Has suddenly jumped from holding about 20 hours of recordings from the past three years -- which is shocking, really, unless you talk faster than light in your logs and why can't your tongue power any warp core but mine -- to almost 35 hours in a week."
Spock put the PADD down and Kirk, in identical shorts and shirt, turned on the bed to face him. "So I know you're bored like the rest of us, but. I have to ask. What have you talked to your PADD about for 15 hours that you haven't been able to tell me? Something I should be worried about?"
"Worried, no," Spock replied. His hands rested on the bed at either side of his legs and Kirk saw Spock's eyes probing and evaluating his face. "Our last encounter with my counterpart brought many questions to the forefront of my mind concerning our relationship."
"You, too!" Kirk said. He quickly scrambled to the top of the bed where the mattress met the headboard and mimicked Spock's sitting position, legs stretched out but with his arms crossed over his chest. "How did we not talk about this -- right, because of that whole fucking dilithium thing, and the whole fucking because of dilithium thing. What did he tell you? Besides the facts, I mean."
"I know what I have been told and deliberated," Spock said. "Would you mind telling me what he shared with you and your conclusions?"
"Well, I don't have a lot of conclusions yet," Kirk said. "He told me you were jealous when I hugged him --"
"He embraced you," Spock corrected. "You merely extended an arm to him and he crossed a very definite boundary with full awareness of how I would react. I believe he was provoking me."
"He just wanted to cop a feel -- wouldn't you? Come on, look at this." Kirk grinned and was glad Spock, at least, looked away -- it was the closest he got to an eye roll and sigh. "Anyway, what else. The wife, the kid -- yeah, he yelled at me for not melding with you and asked if we had talked about bonding."
Kirk didn't speak for a moment, but he saw Spock nod from his periphery. He said after another hesitation, "Melding freaked me out the first time. I really couldn't control what was happening to me, and old Spock was too compromised to control the emotional transference -- I'm not kidding, I almost cried afterwards and you know how often I fucking cry. I saw too much, a lot I didn't want to see." Kirk looked over and asked, "Is it really that important to you?"
"You are important to me." Spock cleared his throat and said, "As for what I dictated to my PADD -- I was evaluating our relationship."
"Okay..."
"Our almost equal emotional hesitancies have made us a very functional team for operating the ship. I would not go so far as to suggest a bond would have caused us to falter or made us better at our duties, but the emotional investment that comes with such a bond would have compromised us at a critical --"
Spock glanced over and saw Kirk breathing deeply and steadily. Usually he would not wake Kirk up, but the situation warranted it. He nudged Kirk in the shoulder, and then in a still-sensitive rib.
"Fuck, ow, that still hurts," Kirk groaned. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to, I blame the whiskey." Kirk sat up straighter and rubbed his eyes. "So tell me what we're going to do. What have we concluded?"
"I believe we should be able to compromise," Spock said. "You have previously mentioned to me that I do not show my affection as openly as I could."
"I haven't said that in a long time," Kirk replied. "I've gotten way better at reading you. Actually, I just assume that everything you do is screaming either 'fuck you' or 'love me' in Vulcan." Spock glanced at Kirk, who was staring at him expectantly. "Sorry, that was really funny and I was hoping you'd laugh. Like, with teeth and all. What do your teeth look like?"
"Very similar to yours. Your canines are more pronounced than mine, while mine are very pronounced for a Vulcan. I also believe there is greater variety in the length of your top row --"
"You've measured my teeth?" Kirk asked.
"You flash them quite frequently in my presence. I did not have a choice in the matter."
Happily, Kirk grinned and flashed his teeth much more obnoxiously in Spock's face than he had in some time.
"The doctor shared his better whiskey with you tonight," Spock commented.
"That's a new level of intimacy, right? Evaluating whiskey quality based on my breath?" Kirk toned down the grin and said, "Next time we're fucking, like, not a quickie before shift or anything, but really into it -- let's meld, okay? I trust you not to make me hyperventilate and cry for days. Maybe." Kirk cleared his throat and said, "Though I should warn you -- be prepared for what's in my head."
"Can it be more disturbing than what emerges from your mouth?"
"That's what I said!" Kirk shrieked. "I'm not even fucking kidding you, word for word, I told him!" Spock allowed himself a smile and that made Kirk grin again. "Seriously, though, I mean -- don't get scared of how much I like you. This, with the grinning and fucking you senseless and playing with your ears, it's. It's a lot worse in my head." He paused and added, "And I think there's like, a whole lobe dedicated to you in your dress uniform at the Academy that other night, I mean, if we never fuck again, that is my --"
"Captain! Sorry, Captain, it's Scotty!" the intercom in the wall yelled. "Come in, Captain!"
They scrambled out of bed and Kirk answered.
"Captain! The Farragut is 20 minutes away with ten kilos of dilithium!"
"Holy shit, Scotty that's --"
"And it's carrying five from each the Intrepid and Excalibur, and ten more from the Defiant -- it might be just enough to put us in warp to Starbase 12 for the full load they have for us."
"Scotty, brace yourself. When I see you, I'm going to kiss you. Long and hard, with a lot of tongue." He flipped the switch momentarily and Spock raised an eyebrow at Kirk. "Hope you don't mind." He flipped the switch on again and switched to the bridge channel. "Kirk to bridge, who's the communications officer whose children I'm going to bear right here? I'm seriously about to shit you a dilithium necklace."
"It won't be necessary, Captain," Uhura replied warily.
"I'll be up on the bridge with Spock in a few minutes -- call ahead to Starbase 12 and find out how much alcohol they have for immediate purchase and shipment." He flicked off the intercom again and scrambled for his pants, then ran to Spock and pulled him in for a deep kiss. "Prepping for Scotty, you understand, right?"
They dressed and their conversation was mostly forgotten, seeming like something out of the dream world they had inhabited for the past two weeks. Kirk and Spock ran out the door and to the turbolift, discussing heatedly what to do with the extra dilithium they would have after their stop at Starbase 12.
Follow up: Calibration.