Astral Bodies
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Word Count: ~23,000
Warnings: underaged sexuality, graphic sex, rimming, Tarsus angst, copious hurt/comfort clichés, painful characterizations, bogus science, adjective and adverb abuse, heavy schmoop
Disclaimer: Under no circumstances am I affiliated with Star Trek or anyone who owns Star Trek. No offense or copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Jim knew what men liked: to possess and destroy. Planets, women, slim-hipped young men mucking out stables as distant Sol browned their glistening skin, it didn’t matter.
A/N: My friend told me the title sounds like a really bad porno, one where you can see the boom mic in every shot. That pretty much sums up how I feel about this fic.
Spock extricated himself from Jim with care, mindful of his lover’s sensitivity in the wake of orgasm. Jim gave a sigh at the separation, one hand weakly clutching at Spock’s shoulder. He huffed a soft laugh as Spock paused to commit this image to memory: Jim, panting, flushed, spattered with semen and gazing at Spock with hopeless adoration.
“Oughtta take a holo, Spock.”
Spock did not answer but rose to his knees, stroking down the length of Jim’s torso before leaning down and lapping up the stripes of ejaculate from Jim’s chest and belly. Jim whimpered, tangling one hand in Spock’s hair and using the other to trace the powerful line of Spock’s shoulders. He tried, as much as possible, to soak up through his hands, through touch and muscle memory, the feeling of his union with Spock. Of course there was the physical: smooth skin taut over firm muscles, blazing as though with the heat of tightly controlled Vulcan passions; his clean, masculine scent like a crisp, clear desert night; his dark eyes and hot breath searing with the promise of ownership. Catching Spock’s face between his hands and tugging him up for a deep, explorative kiss, Jim reveled also in the connection beyond their bodies. Spock settled his hips against Jim’s, two spent sets of genitals languishing against one another as the lovers found belonging in the soft swipe of tongues and gentle sucking of lips, in the two mouths that opened and sighed and found each other.
Jim groaned his loss when Spock rose to clean them up.
“You would regret the indulgence when the dried semen tore out your pubic hair, Jim,” Spock admonished him, a pointed look and a raised eyebrow indicating that Spock would never let Jim forget the heady beginnings of their sexual relationship, the bald spot, and the thunderous yelp that had preceded it. Jim, despite his languor, attempted his patented James T. Kirk Smile of Ultimate Seduction. He pouted when Spock remained impassive.
“Just wish we never had to be separate is all.”
“We are not, ashayam.”
The endearment, seldom used between bouts of manliness and the security of their mutual affection, caused Jim’s chest to constrict. He took a deep breath as Spock turned him over and pressed a damp cloth to his asshole, swiping up the length of his crack, wiping away sweat and lube and come. Discarding the cloth, Spock continued to stroke Jim’s backside lightly, a gesture of his appreciation for something that achieved perfection.
“You just love seeing your come in my ass, admit it,” Jim murmured, face pressed into a pillow, voice muffled from amusement clear.
Spock spread Jim’s cheeks to examine the orifice within: raw and red with their exertions, leaking semen, hot to touch. Spock smoothed a gentle thumb over Jim’s anus, soothing the lingering discomfort. His penis made a valiant skyward effort but was ignored.
“Yes, it moves me to see evidence of our coupling. As you are aware of all my sexual proclivities, you are aware of this one. Logic dictates that if you have such data, my ‘admitting it,’ as you say, could not further your knowledge, merely confirm it.”
Jim laughed and sat up, turned to put his arms around his lover and clutch him to himself tightly. They fell back against the bed and the pillows in a tangled embrace, and Jim said into Spock’s mussed black hair, “Call my desire for periodic verbal confirmation of previously held knowledge an illogical human foible, if you want.”
Spock hummed into the space he occupied between Jim’s neck and shoulder. “Curious,” he said, eyes fluttering shut, “the emotional needs of a human.”
Jim’s hand on Spock’s head catalogued the thick, silky quality of his hair, the commitment to memory now an automatic, unconscious reaction to being in Spock’s presence. Jim knew it was greedy, that his love was possessive and consuming like a collapsing star, but still he wanted, needed more. Needed his hands and his mouth all over Spock’s body, his cock in Spock’s mouth, his ass full of Spock’s come, his face covered by Spock’s fiery fingertips and their minds blending in long, interminable eternities called moments. He needed the oneness of their union in body, mind and heart. He ached for their consumptive singularity.
The stars blazed just outside the impenetrable tempered glass of the bedroom window. Space so vast and clear, so swallowing in its omnipresence, seemed to Jim to pause in recognition of their love, as if meeting its equal in enormity. Yes, Jim thought as his breathing evened and deepened, eyes closing. It’s as if even space knows it’s got nothing on us.
“Spock,” he whispered, neither sleeping nor awake now. Spock grunted from his position on Jim’s chest, drowsy and disinclined to move.
“We’re bigger than space.”
Spock did not answer, whether due to sleep or the inherent dilemma or answering such illogic, it could not be ascertained.
“Sometimes I wish,” Jim continued, mumbling and unaware, “that you were the first one. To be inside. That what we have could be the only thing I’ve ever had. This feeling bigger than space, the only feeling. Untainted. Instead. I wish, sometimes. Is all.”
Great stars that dwarfed both Eridani and Sol rushed past them as the Enterprise cruised at a leisurely pace through friendly space to her next mission. Great stars flashed their fortunes at having met their equals.
*
Jim became aware of an oppressive heat choking him away from sleep. Covered by a sweaty sheet, he gasped, scrambling to get out from under the tangle, away from the heat bearing down on him. With a frustrated grunt, he finally gained purchase, sitting up on his knees and flinging the offending sheet away. He paused at the unfamiliar surroundings.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, gazing out the window into wide open space, studded brightly with an infinite number of stars. He jumped up and pressed himself against the glass, careless of his nudity.
“Computer!” he called. “What is my location?”
A tinny, automated female voice answered, “Captain’s quarters on the starship Enterprise NCC-1701, Captain Kirk.”
Jim couldn’t decide between gaping at the view or gaping at what he’d just heard. He looked down at his naked body. Encountering nothing out of the ordinary, he said, “Computer, what is the star date?”
“2262.71.”
“Oh, balls.”
Jim hurried into what appeared to be the bathroom and met his own familiar reflection. He was as he’d expected: coltish, a bit gangly, perhaps too thin, hoping to fill out in the next few years. Hoping to gain back what he’d lost, knowing he asked for the impossible. Rings the color of fading bruises shadowed his eyes. He averted his gaze, the weight of too much knowledge making him falter. With his back to the mirror now, he leaned against the cool column of the sink and took a few deep breaths as he’d been taught in Federation-sponsored therapy.
Suddenly a door slid open - not the door he’d come though in, he noted with mounting panic - and a tall, imposing Vulcan with no facial expression strode in. And stopped as soon as he caught sight of Jim. Jim moved to cover his exposed genitals even as he maintained eye contact with the Vulcan, who was now openly gawking in what Jim was fairly sure was a terrible breach of Vulcan decorum.
“Captain - Jim, are you quite all right?” came the deep voice, a little aghast, Jim imagined.
“I’m naked.”
The Vulcan hastened to hand Jim a towel before averting his eyes quite pointedly.
“Please explain.”
Laughter bubbled unbidden from Jim’s throat.
“Explain?” he echoed, voice rising in pitch, edging on hysteria. “You explain! Why am I thirteen years in the future being called captain! Who are you? Why are you in my bathroom? What’s happening?” Jim had begun to shake, clutching the towel he’d wrapped around his hips in nervous fists.
The Vulcan seemed to have snapped out of his unbecoming stupor, stepping into the captain’s quarters and slapping a comm device on the wall.
“Spock to McCoy. Come in McCoy.” He kept his eyes trained on Jim. Or rather, on Jim’s shoulder.
“Jesus, Spock, do you know what time it is?”
“The captain is having an emergency, please come to his quarters immediately. Spock out.”
“Spock! Spock, what kind of emergency, goddamnit?”
“Unknown. Come immediately. Spock out.”
The Vulcan rummaged through a closet and Jim took a cautious step out of the bathroom after several calming breaths. When the Vulcan - Spock - emerged it was with a t-shirt and pajama pants. A little too large, Jim noted, shrugging and shuffling into them, but they would do. As for Spock the Vulcan, he seemed to adjust his own clothes, sleek, unforgiving Starfleetwear, and stared unwaveringly at a spot just to the left of Jim’s head.
“So you’re a Vulcan,” Jim put out into the ensuing silence.
“Affirmative.”
“And you just wander into your captain’s bathroom, your captain who happens to be me.”
Here the Vulcan named Spock met his gaze. He could discern nothing there.
“It is a shared bathroom, Mr. Kirk.”
In a flurry of crashes, beeping and expletives, a scruffy, harried looking man with eyes bloodshot from interrupted sleep entered the quarters and Jim’s personal space all at once. Jim began taking gulping breathes that did not ease his discomfort.
“Jim, what the hell happened to you?”
“Hey, stop, stop, don’t -” Jim began pushing the man away from him, pressing himself against the bulkheads, squeezing his eyes shut.
Immediately the man backed off, hands raised in surrender. He glanced at the Vulcan, who managed an even graver expression than the one Jim assumed he’d been born with.
“All right Jim. It’s okay, I’m not even near you. Listen. Just tell me what happened.”
Jim looked at the two of them: the stiff-necked Vulcan in starched science blues, the Southern man with a day’s worth of beard growth and a whirring tricorder. Jim grasped for familiarity but met only vapors where he imagined memories should be.
“I don’t know. Woke up here,” he said. Then he added, “naked.”
“I’m Dr. McCoy. This is Commander Spock. Tell me how old you are.”
Jim swallowed, remembering a time when the answer to that demand, among others, determined whether you lived or died. He felt no menace from McCoy, but he’d felt none from Kodos either, in the early days that make him sick to think about now for their bright optimism. He could not remember this ship, being a captain, knowing these two very different men, but he could remember that his age in experience defied his age in years.
“Old enough,” he said. “I can take care of myself.”
If the doctor looked a bit sad at Jim’s declaration, Jim chose to ignore it. He hated people’s pity, the bitterness like a fire in his gullet.
“He stated earlier that he found himself thirteen years in the future, doctor. Assuming he ascertained the current star date, I speculate that the captain is approximately sixteen Terran years of age.”
Studying his tricorder, McCoy frowned deeply and nodded. He looked about ready to dispense good advice. Jim began to fidget, feeling enclosed in the space of the quarters he could not remember as his own, encroached upon by these strange men who looked at him with such concern and disappointment. He focused his eyes on the door McCoy had busted in through. He knew there was no getting off this starship, but surely there had to be someplace with more space, somewhere he could stretch out his arms, somewhere less godawful hot---
“….and you could stand for some more protein in your diet, drink some fortified milk too. You know, I might have some down in sickbay stashed away for a special occasion, the real deal, not this reconstituted, regurgitate, replicated sh-- ….garbage. Whattaya say, Jim, some nice Devarsian goats’ milk, fresh outta sickbay’s fridger?” McCoy was attempting to smile; it was more unsettling than the Vulcan’s flat, blank nonexpression.
“I believe Mr. Kirk would benefit from a walk around the Enterprise, Dr. McCoy,” Spock said. The doctor shot him a sour look.
“You can be in charge of that, Mr. Sleep-is-for-the-weak. I’m running these readings down to sickbay and cursing the day I met you people until Alpha starts. We’ll need to debrief the senior staff at the start of shift and find a way to fix this.” McCoy turned from the Vulcan and rounded his fire-eyed wrath on Jim. “And you! Don’t think you’re off the hook, kid. You come down to sickbay as soon as this hobgoblin’s done giving you the grand tour and we’re having a talk about your diet.”
With as much fanfare as he’d arrived, McCoy exited the captain’s quarters, and Jim was left, once again, with Spock. Spock, whose silent presence was like a black hole sucking all the air out of Jim’s lungs, the room, the hallway and the whole ship if Jim wasn’t quick. He ducked out of the sliding doors McCoy had forced open and took a deep breath. The Vulcan regarded him with unreadable black eyes from inside the captain’s quarters.
“I can look around on my own,” Jim told him, itching to leave this weird alien with his watchful gaze and lack of inflection. “You must have duties to attend to, so.”
“My duties, Mr. Kirk, include keeping myself appraised of your status. You will not be left alone.”
Jim felt fear lick up his spine. He tried to quell it; after all, what was one flint-eyed Vulcan in comparison to the innumerable horrors he’d already faced?
*
McCoy sat, feet propped up on his desk in his office, with the padd in his lap opened to Captain James Kirk’s confidential health file. He stared through it without seeing, one hand cupping his haphazardly-shaven chin. He paid no heed to the few drops of blood beading up where he’d nicked himself. It didn’t matter that he knew this file as well as he knew his secret liquor stash. It would tell him nothing new, nothing he was not already aware of as Jim’s doctor and Jim’s friend. But the file was a clinical recitation of facts, a digitized document that could not capture the acrid stench of thousands of bodies piled in the Tarsus sun; could not transmit the cold, clenching burn of a stomach empty for weeks, months; could not reveal the all-consuming fear of being caught or the depth of the blackest miasma of guilt and grief. Snarling, McCoy flung the padd on his desk, dashing it against the bulkhead.
“Damnit, Jim!” he cursed. He heard a gamma shift nurse scurry to the far side of sickbay to cower for the remainder of his shift. McCoy took a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut for the duration. Leaning forward, he wrote out in old-fashioned pen and paper - more permanent, more immediate, more truthful, he thought - the facts:
James T. Kirk, Captain. Regressed in body and mind to age 16
Cause: unknown
Immediate medical issues: malnutrition, stress response
Immediate command issues: en route to Zenzobar of the Third Outer Ring for trade negotiations, Captain Kirk directly requested by Supreme Empress H’Lopia.
ETA: 72 hours.
Treatment:
McCoy sat tapping his pen into the corner of the page for countless minutes, seeing nothing. The gamma shifters left and Chapel loomed in the doorway of his office looking statuesque and well-rested, damn her.
“There a gnat in your britches, doctor?” Chapel’s voice was sly. He scowled at her.
“For that, and not getting me a coffee, you get babysitting duty.”
“Excuse me?” she huffed, looking harassed. McCoy let himself feel a tingle of satisfaction.
“Jim’s been turned into a teenaged angst bomb. You get to mind him while Spock and I debrief the senior staff.”
“What am I supposed to do with baby Captain?”
“I don’t know, Christine. Make him clean the head with a toothbrush if it strikes your fancy.”
McCoy did not examine the unholy gleam in his head nurse’s eyes before he gathered his weary bones and trundled himself up to the bridge.
*
“Okay, so, let’s get our timeline under control here,” Sulu said, setting his padd onto the table of the meeting room. The core bridge crew was there, along with Dr. McCoy, Mr. Scott and Lieutenant Giotto from security. Chekov sighed, familiar with Sulu’s love of lists: making them, reading them, making Chekov read them, imagining that they at all helped him organize his thoughts and actions. “Mr. Spock, you said you and the captain went to bed around 2300 hours? Sir?” Glancing up for confirmation, he took Spock’s stony discomfort as such, and inserted ‘went to “bed”’ into the slot for 2300. “And you say you woke up at 0400 for, quote, ‘meditation and optimal productivity,’ is that correct?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, we have repeated the facts three times now. I was not present for the Captain’s regression. We must move on to finding a solution to his dilemma before we reach orbit around Zenzobar of the Third Outer Ring, and, barring that, we must focus on completing the upcoming mission without him in command.”
“Spock, the Supreme Empress is no one to take lightly,” Uhura said. “She was really forceful about the Captain’s presence.” She looked hesitant for a moment. “We may have no choice but to send him in as is.”
“Hey now -” McCoy began.
“Lieutenant, that is not an option,” Spock said. “The Captain’s mental state and maturity level are --”
“The Keptin, he is sixteen, not so much younger from me at the beginning, but I think the Keptin and me, we are very different sixteens.”
“Goddamnit, now, are we really talking about sending-”
“Can we focus on this list?”
“I think tempers are running a wee bit high right now, maybe we should stop for a snack?”
Suddenly Giotto stood and slammed his heavy fists on the table. Everyone shut up and stared at him.
“We have about three days to get Sunshine all growed up again,” he said, mouth set in a tight line. “It’s smooth sailing to the outer rings, and we are all of us the best of the best in our departments, and we will goddamn well find a way to fix this before the mini captain even has a chance to mess up these negotiations for us. Now do you people want to panic and argue about something we have days to find a solution for or do you want to get this done?”
It was the most anyone outside of security had ever heard Giotto speak. Spock recovered first.
“Indeed, Lieutenant Giotto makes a logical argument. The available resources in the science and medical departments will assess any anomalies in Mr. Kirk’s physical condition-”
“That’s just it Spock, I’ve been over it a hundred times. There are no anomalies. He could stand to gain a few but otherwise, there are no physical problems. He’s a perfectly fine sixteen year old kid.”
“I would thank you, doctor, not to interrupt me.” Spock managed to go even more upright. McCoy thought that if that spine didn’t snap by itself, he might have to snap it for the green-blooded bastard himself. McCoy clenched his jaw and said nothing. “As I was saying, the science and medical teams will share relevant data in the attempt to understand and reverse Mr. Kirk’s regression. What is it, Mr. Sulu?”
Sulu put down is hand.
“I know I’m beating a dead horse, sir… Um, unnecessarily reiterating the issue, but I really think we’re missing something between 2300 and 0500 when you found the Captain in his current condition. The list could help. If you can think of anything out of the ordinary, sir.”
“Leave the list,” Chekov hissed at him.
“Mr. Sulu, while I admire your attention to detail as a helmsman and crew member, I must remind you that I have an eidetic memory, and I assure you, the timeline you have developed is accurate and comprehensive.”
Sulu sat back in his chair with a sigh.
“What about crew morale?” Uhura asked after a moment of subdued silence. “Should the captain’s condition be common knowledge or are we keeping it hush hush for now?”
“He won’t be confined to quarters,” McCoy said. “It’d be torture for him, and I don’t see the point. The crew will find out, might as well tell them outright and not have some kind of mass freak out on board.”
“Do you think this will happen to anyone else?” Chekov asked.
“No, this kind of crap only happens to Jim Kirk, I swear.”
“It is a possibility, Ensign. Which is why we must find the solution as quickly as possible. As Acting Captain, I will make the announcement to the crew as a whole, inform Starfleet Command, and give the science and medical teams their new assignments. Lieutenant Giotto, you will lead security sweeps on all decks and increase detail in traffic-heavy areas, particularly near officers’ quarters. Meeting dismissed.”
*
After a few hours of regaling him with tales of curious and vile space diseases, Nurse Chapel plied Jim with a reconstituted cheeseburger for lunch and a trip to an observation deck. He knew he was a cheap date, but the observation deck afforded a far more spectacular view than the veritable porthole in the captain’s quarters, not to mention that it was a wide open space with plenty of comfortable furniture as well as private nooks for when a guy might like to be alone with himself. Or with someone else. But he could walk around the entire deck, look around himself, and see nothing but the stars burning lightyears away in all directions. A person could breathe on this observation deck.
Jim leaned against a railing at the far end of the deck, casting a sideways glance at his taciturn companion. After telling him about degenerative interspecies STDs, she seemed to have nothing else to say to him. “So,” he fished for a conversation topic, “you like being a nurse in space?”
“I suppose it’s a little more interesting than treating overdoses and aircar crash victims like I did before I joined up at the academy. Theoretically, I’ll put in a few more years and get my MD after this mission’s over. Xenobiology, and all.” She was looking at him more closely. Trying, he realized, to recognize the man she knew in the boy she saw.
“Am I like him, then?”
“You are him, so. I mean, you’re the same person.”
“Yeah, but he’s done all this stuff,” Jim said, gesturing outward as if he’d been to each star system he could see and had performed feats of heroics he couldn’t remember at all of them.
Chapel turned back toward the stars, but she saw only Jim’s gaunt face in the tempered glass, the startling blue of his eyes. They were the eyes of someone who refused to be a victim, the eyes of a survivor, the eyes of her captain. She chose her words carefully.
“Jim, somewhere in the trajectory of your life you’ve had to find a well of strength and resolve. Sometimes you might feel weak, or helpless, or powerless, but you have risen to the challenge and come out alive every time. The captain is strong, and passionate, and loud, and colorful, and full of life, and he was shaped by all you’ve endured, all that’s come before and all you’ll still face. You are the reason he’s a great man right now.”
Jim leaned his forehead against the cool glass. He didn’t feel like the blueprints of a great man. He felt as though by existing in this present, his future, he was robbing himself of a bright life darting about among the stars, a relic from the past tainting everything to come. He had the curious and paradoxical desire to erase himself so that this shining future where he had friends and inspired loyalty could be secure. He didn’t even know this forthright woman in pressed nursing scrubs who stood by his side comforting him, who looked wary that he might want a hug but was prepared to give one if it became necessary. He suddenly didn’t want her to know him, to know how he really was in the private recesses of his mind. Decayed, and depraved, and so needy after so much loss.
“I think I want to go back to my quarters. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I can get there myself,” he said, stepping away from her. She frowned.
“Jim, let me walk you there, at least.”
“Look, I know you just have your orders or whatever, but I swear I won’t tell McCoy, and I’m pretty sure the Captain will go easy on you when he’s back.”
“Jim, wait.” She followed him with long-legged strides. He realized that he’d have to run if he wanted to get away from her. “Look, I’m sorry if what I laid on you back there was heavy. But I know you’re not a kid and I know you can handle it. Let me walk you back to your quarters.”
“I’m not -”
“What?”
“I’m not good.”
Chapel stared at him, at the defiant tilt of his chin, the set of his jaw not yet squared by manhood, the glinting eyes and determined mouth. He declared his lack of goodness not with resignation or sadness, but as a gauntlet thrown down at the feet of detractors. He spat it out as if it were a poison that should make her recoil. But Chapel had a strong constitution, and she had seen her share of the darkness residing deeply within all sentient beings. Some more than others.
“Evil touches you. I know that.” She walked past him then, leading the way. “Come on.”
*
Spock’s duties as acting captain kept him from performing in his capacity as science officer, and therefore kept him from working with the science department on finding a cure for his bondmate. He knew he was being derelict in his duties even now; 74% of his thoughts were occupied by the puzzle of Jim’s condition. Further, he contemplated his off duty hours, commencing in just 37.3 minutes: should he attempt to spend them with Jim, who could not hide his fear and contempt for Spock, but who nonetheless needed someone who understood him fully, or should he assist in the search for a solution with the science team, increasing their productivity and chances of success? He was aware of an increased pressure to restore Jim’s age, as Admiral Komack, surly even in his text transmissions, demanded that they send Jim into negotiations on Zenzobar regardless of his condition. He ruminated on his options until -
“I wish you would shut up about the lists!” Spock’s keen ears picked up Chekov’s irritated hissing from the helm. “They do not help you, only make you procrastinate! You think you are doing something but you are not, Hikaru! I wish -- ”
Spock stood abruptly.
“Lieutenant Sulu, you have the conn.”
In the corridors crew members gave their acting captain wide berth as he made haste with his characteristic grace toward sickbay and Dr. McCoy.
He rapped on the door to McCoy’s office and did not fidget waiting for McCoy to let him in.
“Dr. McCoy-”
“All I’ve been able to find is some obscure reference to some fountain of youth in Devar XI, but Christ, we were there almost a month ago -”
“McCoy.”
“I mean, I guess it could be a delayed reaction or something, but I don’t reckon--”
“Doctor, cease your illogical prattle at once.”
McCoy’s jaw snapped shut and he finally looked up from the text of the padd in is lap.
“What?”
“I believe I have been remiss in… completing Lieutenant Sulu’s list.”
“Hold on, hold on -” McCoy stood, meeting Spock’s gaze levelly. “You’re saying….you made a mistake?”
“Doctor-”
“You? The great and mighty infallible pointy-eared Vulcan god? A mistake?”
“A small omission and nothing more, Dr. McCoy. Are you more interested in gloating or in saving your captain from a second adolescence?”
“I’m listening, oh fallen one.”
Spock straightened, clasping his hands behind his back and fixing his eyes on a point on the bulkhead behind the doctor.
“As we fell asleep, the captain spoke to me of wishes. I did not give credence at the time to words spoken as if in dreams.”
McCoy crossed his arms, a square hand coming up to squeeze his chin. He frowned when the silence after Spock’s statement stretched.
“You have to keep talking or it still doesn’t mean anything, Spock.”
“It is private.”
McCoy threw his hands up and gave a grunt of disgust. “Spock! You goddamned infuriating Vulcan, I’m a doctor, not a psychic! If this is relevant, you have to tell me!”
Spock managed to straighten further.
“He expressed a desire that I…be first. In his mind and body both.”
McCoy gave no reaction. “And?”
“He wished, as in Terran tradition, on a star. On a great number of stars whose energies are yet unknown to us.”
McCoy’s lips parted.
“I’ll be damned. He’s a virgin at sixteen?”
“Doctor, you make light of this.”
“Okay, okay. But you’re the scienciest scientist this side of the Velubian system, and you’re saying Jim is a nubile young thing again because he made a wish like some nineteenth century damsel in distress? And some unknown invisible hand of the universe was just dispensing wishes like candy to starship captains last night?”
“I am not ‘saying’ anything. I am providing evidence that was previously overlooked.”
McCoy sat down heavily, shuffling papers and padds into piles that passed for neat on his desk.
“Okay, so let’s look at this from your proposed angle. Jim wished it, therefore it is so. How the hell do we fix it? Wish really hard?”
“The answer is fairly obvious if we follow the hypothesis to its natural conclusion, doctor.”
McCoy did not look at him. He propped his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands in front of his face.
“That boy is in no state to be manhandled by the likes of you, Spock.”
“Doctor-”
“No, just hear me out on this one,” McCoy said in a gruff voice. “I’m happy for you guys. Big crazy love and all that, it’s good. Jim deserves it. Hell, you deserve it, and I will deny ever saying that if you go around telling people, you walking computer. The universe may have spit out the last version of Jim to ever be a virgin and delivered him into your hot little hands, but we both know what he’s still recovering from, we both know he’s not well, and I’ll be damned, Spock, if I stand by and let you take advantage of him while he’s like this. Not to mention the fact that he’s underage.”
“Technically, doctor, he is 29.36 standard years of age. He was born in 2233; it is now 2262.”
“You can’t even convince yourself of that logic.”
Spock shifted his gaze from McCoy to the sundry medical implements adorning McCoy’s office. Ancient saws and cruel blades. Reminders, he knew, of the medical field’s barbaric past. Reminders to be thankful for modern conveniences, and reminders never to cease progress toward the easing of human suffering.
“I am uncertain as to the course of action when we have found the solution, but it is morally untenable. In the Standard vernacular, ‘the cure is worse than the disease.’ The condition remains impossible to resolve.”
“It might not be the only solution. Hell, it might not be the solution at all, Spock. There must be something organic to blame, we just haven’t looked hard enough. Why are we only seeing zebras here?”
“I do not understand the reference to an extinct earth mammal in this context.”
“I just mean, Spock, that you’ve jumped to the most far-fetched conclusion possible when there must be some simpler explanation.”
“Doctor, your insults are tiresome. I have offered a hypothesis that would explain the captain’s condition and what would reverse it, whereas you have merely read thousand year old fairy tales from a planet whose inhabitants prize goats above children.”
“Look at yourself, Spock! An imprecise, hyperbolical statement? All that Vulcan logic out the window the moment Jim might be threatened. Just like every time you put yourself between him and phaser fire. If you can’t think clearly, Mr. Spock, mark my words, I will pull you off duty to get a hold of yourself.”
“Is that a threat, Dr. McCoy?”
“It’s a goddamned promise, Spock. Now get out of my sickbay.”
*
When Jim got back to the captain’s quarters, a yeoman had been by to tidy up, but domestic upkeep did nothing for the smell. Nothing unpleasant or even illicit, just - he knew what a room that was his alone smelled like. He shared this space with someone on a regular basis, maybe even a permanent basis, and when he pressed open the doors of the closet, he found crisp blue shirts among command gold. Whirling around, he crossed the room to reach a bookshelf where some holos flickered, propped up against books and bulkheads. There were a few of him grinning, arms slung around a scowling Dr. McCoy; the locations varied but the expressions did not. Sharing space and intimacy with the beleaguered doctor suddenly seemed a very real possibility. There was one holo of Sam and - Sam’s family, Jim realized with wonder. A few groups shots displayed people who must be part of his crew. But the holos that made the air thin and his head dizzy were of Spock. The first was a portrait of Spock almost in profile, head and shoulders occupying the frame, that Vulcan ear a delicately tapered arch, eyes downcast as if in deep concentration of something off-camera, perhaps even unaware that it had captured him in so exposed a moment. The only other holo of Spock was also a candid shot that showed Spock and Jim leaning close to one another in conversation, oblivious to their surroundings and even their observer. They did not touch, but the riveted quality of the energy between them gave Jim the sensation that his stomach had flipped. Those weren’t Dr. McCoy’s blue shirts in his closet, it wasn’t Dr. McCoy in his bathroom easy as he pleased this morning, and it wasn’t Dr. McCoy whose personal smells now mingled with his own in this room, that combined scent the palpable manifestation of their intimate association.
Quickly Jim turned the holos of Spock around to face the collection of books he did recognize. Spock, the Vulcan with the wooden expression and the smoldering eyes. Did Spock know him, really? Was Spock aware of how damaged he was in thought and deed? I must have lied, Jim thought. I must have lied and he has no idea what I am and if he did he wouldn’t be here. Jim swallowed back the rising nausea. Great man, my ass.
He went back over to the window where he watched the stars flicker in the distance. He realized he had no idea of his exact location in the galaxy, or even that of their destination. He had vague knowledge of the outer rings being small, rocky planets on the border between the second and third quadrants, rich in precious gems and sitting on top of a store of dilithium crystals, but not much else. Jim realized he was very far from Earth and thought of his mother for the first time. But her visage was bitter and pinched and silent in his memory, and he forced her down like bile.
The image of his future self with Spock was not as easily tamed. The alien he found so disquieting occupied this bed with him. Conjecture indicated that here in this room Spock had held him, kissed him, taken ownership of him, kept him from the consuming blackness. He had sudden insight into what he must do: to secure his future and keep the happiness he’d seen on his own face in all those holos, he must not let Spock see the depths of depravity and despair he plumbed in the darkest hollows of himself, must not let Spock see all that he’d done when he’d run out of options on a putrid planet just an arm’s reach from hell. Must not let Spock see and know and leave.
Jim knew what men liked: to possess and destroy. Planets, women, slim-hipped young men mucking out stables as distant Sol browned their glistening skin, it didn’t matter. And Jim could imagine, had read about and jacked off to, all the depraved acts that could keep them satisfied. Satisfied and disinclined to asking questions. He saw himself reflected in the glass, superimposed among the stars, a reedy, fatherless thing desperately searching for comfort, for immolation, for anything that could eradicate the crawling darkness inside him. Maybe Spock would even make it good for him, if they’d been together a long time. If a Vulcan could care.
Settling into the bed, Jim hugged a pillow to himself, and when he slept, he dreamed that the stars were eyes that judged.
*
Spock’s long strides faltered as he rounded the corridor of the officers’ quarters toward the captain’s and first officer’s. While he kept the first officer’s quarters for workspace, meditation, storage of his few belongings, and periods of necessary solitude, he had not truly stayed in them for 2.7 years. He hesitated at the captain’s door before knocking.
The door glided open at Jim’s command, but Spock had not expected that he would be propped up in bed, sheets pooled around his hips, blinking at him with bleary recognition through the open partition.
“I apologize. I did not know you were resting. I can return at a more convenient time, if you wish.”
“No. No, um, it’s fine, don’t worry. Stay.”
Jim didn’t move, nor did Spock, standing in the wider space of the living area and gazing unobstructed at the boy whom his bondmate had become. The boy from whom his bondmate had grown. He felt conflict at the thought of his hypothesis’s conclusion. He did not wish to commit morally reprehensible acts upon an underaged body and mind unable to consent by law, yet he could not deny the appeal of his bondmate’s current - previous? - lithe young form. If his conclusion required ethical justification, he told himself that his mind and blood would not cleave to this Jim, indeed, to any being too young to consent, without the existing anchor of their bond, the strength of their union. Spock had erected his shields the moment he found Jim naked in the head, but a cursory exploration at the edges of his mind provided Spock with the familiar thrum of Jim’s mood: apprehension and arousal in equal parts. Spock closed himself out again, unwilling to use his superior telepathic abilities to his own advantage.
They did not speak but continued to regard each other from different rooms. Spock saw in Jim’s expression the moment he made a decision, spurring him to push aside the sheets and swing his legs onto the floor.
“You and me are together, right?”
“Indeed, we are both occupying the captain’s quarters at this time, Mr. Kirk.”
Jim rolled his eyes, sitting up straighter.
“No, you know what I mean. We’re like, boyfriends, or whatever.”
“We are bonded in the Vulcan form of marriage.”
Jim’s eyes widened. Spock realized he had been expecting a more casual relationship, perhaps of the sort common to human teenagers. “Oh,” he said, seeming to lose his nerve and looking down at his hands.
“Perhaps you would enjoy a refreshment, Mr. Kirk? In the past, your adult self interfered with the engineering of the replicator and it now dispenses a favored beverage, lemonade. I am told it is a passable facsimile.”
Jim peered at him from inside the bedroom, assessing. He padded barefoot out into the living space to join Spock at the table, sliding in across from where Spock had taken a seat. Spock input a request for a mild tea and a cold lemonade and waited, feeling Jim’s gaze appraise him.
“So how long have we been Vulcan married?”
“Two years, four months, twenty days, four hours and…. thirteen minutes.”
“Huh. And were we together before? I mean, were we in a mutually satisfying monogamous romantic relationship beneficial to both parties? Before.”
“Indeed, Mr. Kirk, our relationship commenced approximately one and a half standard years before our bonding.”
“Approximately.”
“There is disagreement as to the exact date of commencement.”
“And do you call me Mr. Kirk the whole time? Because I gotta say, more than a little kinky.” Spock noted that the patented James T. Kirk Smile of Ultimate Seduction was in its infancy and not terribly effective.
“I can call you James, if you prefer,” Spock said mildly, knowing Jim associated the use of his given name with impending punishment. Jim looked suitably sour at the prospect.
“Why not just Jim?”
“Very well. Jim. And you may call me Spock.”
Jim looked amused. “As if I’d call you anything else, Acting Captain.” Spock’s control did not slip even as Jim’s words and tone unwittingly echoed their interactions during the Narada incident, unsettling him.
The replicator chimed and Spock set Jim’s lemonade in front of him before carefully handling his own cup of tea. Jim continued to study Spock, scanning his features as if for any flicker of recognition or feeling. He began to fidget as the silence persisted.
“Any progress on making me old again?”
“There have been two…theories.”
“Oh, so what are they?”
“They are confidential at the moment.”
“Oh come on! I’m the subject right, so how can you not tell me? What is it, electroshock treatment or something? I think I could take it.”
“There will be no electroshock treatments, Jim.”
“Then what?”
Spock chose a proven method of defense: prevaricate and distract. “Theories must be tested, Jim. If one proves sound, we will implement it. Would you care for a game of tri-dimensional chess?”
*
By the time Jim and Spock had finished two games, Jim was unable to conceal his admiration for Spock, and, by extension, his future self for managing to marry Spock.
The novelty of having found someone who not only challenged him but beat him had not waned in the face of defeat. Spock also had a staggering breadth of knowledge in a variety of subjects ranging from Federation-wide historical events (though he made no reference to the one Jim hated and knew most intimately) to the social castes of the tree people of Kartasia III. Plus, he might never be a stand up comedian, but after a few suspicious comments, Jim had the feeling he’d spent a lot of time catching his breath laughing in Spock’s presence.
Of course, Jim was not one to overlook the fact of Spock’s striking appearance. Alien, yes, with his upswept brows and the ears that required no mention, the blood pumping green beneath porcelain skin, but Jim had lost his grip on what so disturbed him about Spock that morning. Spock was totally masculine in his beauty, nothing soft or curved in the sharp lines of his face and body. And Jim could sense power there, pulsating tightly coiled and deceptive in the lean sinews of Spock’s spare form. He found that as the afternoon subsided into evening, more and more he craved that potent might, burned with biting urgency for oblivion in Spock’s immersive presence.
He’d felt this before in the company of powerful men, his frantic heart forcing overheated blood southward in eager teenaged optimism. Only a tenuous thread of anxiety had kept Jim from slithering like a low, begging thing into the beds of such men: Hank, his mom’s chief farmhand, whose fading prison tattoos stretched over burly muscles used for a lifetime of labor; Coach Nunez, who’d never stopped asking him to join the wrestling team even after he’d been barred from extracirriculars altogether for truancy; Mark Song, who had his own holding cell at the Riverside police station and served him drinks on the sly at the Orbit with a dangerous glint in his black eyes.
Jim frowned at the planes of the chess board, hardly seeing where Spock mounted his offensive on Jim’s queen. Spock was not like those men. Spock was… his husband. His husband who was being kind to him, and making clever jokes, and playing chess with him. No, Spock was not to be counted in their company.
A comm device whistled.
“McCoy to Spock.”
“Spock here.”
“I’d like you and Jim to come to the mess for dinner. I need Jim eating specific food.”
Spock met Jim’s eyes over the game. Jim shrugged his assent.
“We will leave immediately, doctor. Spock out.”
Jim hopped to his feet and stood near the closet.
“I should wear something better than pajamas, maybe,” he said, pressing the door open. He rifled through the civvies pushed to the far left of the closet for something where he wouldn’t look like a scrawny kid playing dress-up with his dad’s clothes. He found a pair of jeans that might fit him; his future self appeared to favor tight jeans a size or two down, and these might drag on the floor a bit but he could pull them off. With a furtive glance at Spock, who still sat straight up and proper at the work table they’d been playing on, Jim shucked the black cotton pants Spock had handed him in the morning and turned toward the closet, ostensibly for modesty, but really to display his bare ass as he stepped slowly into the denim. When he turned back around, zipping up the fly, Spock had clasped his hands on the table and appeared to be resolutely studying the game he’d all but won. Smirking, Jim made a show of stripping off the oversized white t-shirt and slipping into one of the snug black Starfleet issue undershirts. If he failed at putting on a stunning show of grace, he chose to ignore it and announced that he was ready to go.
In the mess hall, McCoy sat at a corner table opposite Nurse Chapel. When Jim and Spock joined them, Jim sliding in next to Chapel and Spock next to McCoy, McCoy slid a tray of food at Jim with perhaps more force than necessary.
“I wanna see you eat all of that,” he said, jabbing a finger towards the tray. Jim looked down to see slices of a large steak lying on a bed of dark greens. A cup of replicated fruit sat in the right corner, and a stubby breadstick in the left. For dessert Jim got a -
“Yogurt, are you serious right now?”
“It’s key lime flavored,” McCoy growled.
When Jim turned his eyes on Spock for support, Spock only said, “The doctor is an expert in nutrition.”
Jim looked at Chapel then, meeting only an incredulous look accompanied by a shake of her blonde head. With a sigh, he speared a slice of steak, catching greens on the end of his fork and shoveling the entire mass into his face with barely contained gusto. Truthfully, he still felt profound relief to behold food in all its forms. He kept up the dessert racket to comfort the adults who so often hovered over him, not only wanting him to eat and smile and achieve, but to be as spoiled and entitled a teenager as the sullen youths who crowded deserted drug store parking lots and sneered at passersby unworthy of their august presence. It passed for normal, made his mother feign exasperation, deflected from the putrescence roiling in his gut and his spirit. Jim ate quickly and silently, McCoy and Chapel bickered over sickbay rosters and reconstituted grapes and the ethics of treating such and such a people for this and that foul parasite while Spock interjected every so often to tell them they were being illogical. But Spock’s eyes and attention stayed on Jim, who felt impossibly young and laid bare under the weight of that unwavering gaze.
Part II
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Word Count: ~23,000
Warnings: underaged sexuality, graphic sex, rimming, Tarsus angst, copious hurt/comfort clichés, painful characterizations, bogus science, adjective and adverb abuse, heavy schmoop
Disclaimer: Under no circumstances am I affiliated with Star Trek or anyone who owns Star Trek. No offense or copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Jim knew what men liked: to possess and destroy. Planets, women, slim-hipped young men mucking out stables as distant Sol browned their glistening skin, it didn’t matter.
A/N: My friend told me the title sounds like a really bad porno, one where you can see the boom mic in every shot. That pretty much sums up how I feel about this fic.
Spock extricated himself from Jim with care, mindful of his lover’s sensitivity in the wake of orgasm. Jim gave a sigh at the separation, one hand weakly clutching at Spock’s shoulder. He huffed a soft laugh as Spock paused to commit this image to memory: Jim, panting, flushed, spattered with semen and gazing at Spock with hopeless adoration.
“Oughtta take a holo, Spock.”
Spock did not answer but rose to his knees, stroking down the length of Jim’s torso before leaning down and lapping up the stripes of ejaculate from Jim’s chest and belly. Jim whimpered, tangling one hand in Spock’s hair and using the other to trace the powerful line of Spock’s shoulders. He tried, as much as possible, to soak up through his hands, through touch and muscle memory, the feeling of his union with Spock. Of course there was the physical: smooth skin taut over firm muscles, blazing as though with the heat of tightly controlled Vulcan passions; his clean, masculine scent like a crisp, clear desert night; his dark eyes and hot breath searing with the promise of ownership. Catching Spock’s face between his hands and tugging him up for a deep, explorative kiss, Jim reveled also in the connection beyond their bodies. Spock settled his hips against Jim’s, two spent sets of genitals languishing against one another as the lovers found belonging in the soft swipe of tongues and gentle sucking of lips, in the two mouths that opened and sighed and found each other.
Jim groaned his loss when Spock rose to clean them up.
“You would regret the indulgence when the dried semen tore out your pubic hair, Jim,” Spock admonished him, a pointed look and a raised eyebrow indicating that Spock would never let Jim forget the heady beginnings of their sexual relationship, the bald spot, and the thunderous yelp that had preceded it. Jim, despite his languor, attempted his patented James T. Kirk Smile of Ultimate Seduction. He pouted when Spock remained impassive.
“Just wish we never had to be separate is all.”
“We are not, ashayam.”
The endearment, seldom used between bouts of manliness and the security of their mutual affection, caused Jim’s chest to constrict. He took a deep breath as Spock turned him over and pressed a damp cloth to his asshole, swiping up the length of his crack, wiping away sweat and lube and come. Discarding the cloth, Spock continued to stroke Jim’s backside lightly, a gesture of his appreciation for something that achieved perfection.
“You just love seeing your come in my ass, admit it,” Jim murmured, face pressed into a pillow, voice muffled from amusement clear.
Spock spread Jim’s cheeks to examine the orifice within: raw and red with their exertions, leaking semen, hot to touch. Spock smoothed a gentle thumb over Jim’s anus, soothing the lingering discomfort. His penis made a valiant skyward effort but was ignored.
“Yes, it moves me to see evidence of our coupling. As you are aware of all my sexual proclivities, you are aware of this one. Logic dictates that if you have such data, my ‘admitting it,’ as you say, could not further your knowledge, merely confirm it.”
Jim laughed and sat up, turned to put his arms around his lover and clutch him to himself tightly. They fell back against the bed and the pillows in a tangled embrace, and Jim said into Spock’s mussed black hair, “Call my desire for periodic verbal confirmation of previously held knowledge an illogical human foible, if you want.”
Spock hummed into the space he occupied between Jim’s neck and shoulder. “Curious,” he said, eyes fluttering shut, “the emotional needs of a human.”
Jim’s hand on Spock’s head catalogued the thick, silky quality of his hair, the commitment to memory now an automatic, unconscious reaction to being in Spock’s presence. Jim knew it was greedy, that his love was possessive and consuming like a collapsing star, but still he wanted, needed more. Needed his hands and his mouth all over Spock’s body, his cock in Spock’s mouth, his ass full of Spock’s come, his face covered by Spock’s fiery fingertips and their minds blending in long, interminable eternities called moments. He needed the oneness of their union in body, mind and heart. He ached for their consumptive singularity.
The stars blazed just outside the impenetrable tempered glass of the bedroom window. Space so vast and clear, so swallowing in its omnipresence, seemed to Jim to pause in recognition of their love, as if meeting its equal in enormity. Yes, Jim thought as his breathing evened and deepened, eyes closing. It’s as if even space knows it’s got nothing on us.
“Spock,” he whispered, neither sleeping nor awake now. Spock grunted from his position on Jim’s chest, drowsy and disinclined to move.
“We’re bigger than space.”
Spock did not answer, whether due to sleep or the inherent dilemma or answering such illogic, it could not be ascertained.
“Sometimes I wish,” Jim continued, mumbling and unaware, “that you were the first one. To be inside. That what we have could be the only thing I’ve ever had. This feeling bigger than space, the only feeling. Untainted. Instead. I wish, sometimes. Is all.”
Great stars that dwarfed both Eridani and Sol rushed past them as the Enterprise cruised at a leisurely pace through friendly space to her next mission. Great stars flashed their fortunes at having met their equals.
*
Jim became aware of an oppressive heat choking him away from sleep. Covered by a sweaty sheet, he gasped, scrambling to get out from under the tangle, away from the heat bearing down on him. With a frustrated grunt, he finally gained purchase, sitting up on his knees and flinging the offending sheet away. He paused at the unfamiliar surroundings.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, gazing out the window into wide open space, studded brightly with an infinite number of stars. He jumped up and pressed himself against the glass, careless of his nudity.
“Computer!” he called. “What is my location?”
A tinny, automated female voice answered, “Captain’s quarters on the starship Enterprise NCC-1701, Captain Kirk.”
Jim couldn’t decide between gaping at the view or gaping at what he’d just heard. He looked down at his naked body. Encountering nothing out of the ordinary, he said, “Computer, what is the star date?”
“2262.71.”
“Oh, balls.”
Jim hurried into what appeared to be the bathroom and met his own familiar reflection. He was as he’d expected: coltish, a bit gangly, perhaps too thin, hoping to fill out in the next few years. Hoping to gain back what he’d lost, knowing he asked for the impossible. Rings the color of fading bruises shadowed his eyes. He averted his gaze, the weight of too much knowledge making him falter. With his back to the mirror now, he leaned against the cool column of the sink and took a few deep breaths as he’d been taught in Federation-sponsored therapy.
Suddenly a door slid open - not the door he’d come though in, he noted with mounting panic - and a tall, imposing Vulcan with no facial expression strode in. And stopped as soon as he caught sight of Jim. Jim moved to cover his exposed genitals even as he maintained eye contact with the Vulcan, who was now openly gawking in what Jim was fairly sure was a terrible breach of Vulcan decorum.
“Captain - Jim, are you quite all right?” came the deep voice, a little aghast, Jim imagined.
“I’m naked.”
The Vulcan hastened to hand Jim a towel before averting his eyes quite pointedly.
“Please explain.”
Laughter bubbled unbidden from Jim’s throat.
“Explain?” he echoed, voice rising in pitch, edging on hysteria. “You explain! Why am I thirteen years in the future being called captain! Who are you? Why are you in my bathroom? What’s happening?” Jim had begun to shake, clutching the towel he’d wrapped around his hips in nervous fists.
The Vulcan seemed to have snapped out of his unbecoming stupor, stepping into the captain’s quarters and slapping a comm device on the wall.
“Spock to McCoy. Come in McCoy.” He kept his eyes trained on Jim. Or rather, on Jim’s shoulder.
“Jesus, Spock, do you know what time it is?”
“The captain is having an emergency, please come to his quarters immediately. Spock out.”
“Spock! Spock, what kind of emergency, goddamnit?”
“Unknown. Come immediately. Spock out.”
The Vulcan rummaged through a closet and Jim took a cautious step out of the bathroom after several calming breaths. When the Vulcan - Spock - emerged it was with a t-shirt and pajama pants. A little too large, Jim noted, shrugging and shuffling into them, but they would do. As for Spock the Vulcan, he seemed to adjust his own clothes, sleek, unforgiving Starfleetwear, and stared unwaveringly at a spot just to the left of Jim’s head.
“So you’re a Vulcan,” Jim put out into the ensuing silence.
“Affirmative.”
“And you just wander into your captain’s bathroom, your captain who happens to be me.”
Here the Vulcan named Spock met his gaze. He could discern nothing there.
“It is a shared bathroom, Mr. Kirk.”
In a flurry of crashes, beeping and expletives, a scruffy, harried looking man with eyes bloodshot from interrupted sleep entered the quarters and Jim’s personal space all at once. Jim began taking gulping breathes that did not ease his discomfort.
“Jim, what the hell happened to you?”
“Hey, stop, stop, don’t -” Jim began pushing the man away from him, pressing himself against the bulkheads, squeezing his eyes shut.
Immediately the man backed off, hands raised in surrender. He glanced at the Vulcan, who managed an even graver expression than the one Jim assumed he’d been born with.
“All right Jim. It’s okay, I’m not even near you. Listen. Just tell me what happened.”
Jim looked at the two of them: the stiff-necked Vulcan in starched science blues, the Southern man with a day’s worth of beard growth and a whirring tricorder. Jim grasped for familiarity but met only vapors where he imagined memories should be.
“I don’t know. Woke up here,” he said. Then he added, “naked.”
“I’m Dr. McCoy. This is Commander Spock. Tell me how old you are.”
Jim swallowed, remembering a time when the answer to that demand, among others, determined whether you lived or died. He felt no menace from McCoy, but he’d felt none from Kodos either, in the early days that make him sick to think about now for their bright optimism. He could not remember this ship, being a captain, knowing these two very different men, but he could remember that his age in experience defied his age in years.
“Old enough,” he said. “I can take care of myself.”
If the doctor looked a bit sad at Jim’s declaration, Jim chose to ignore it. He hated people’s pity, the bitterness like a fire in his gullet.
“He stated earlier that he found himself thirteen years in the future, doctor. Assuming he ascertained the current star date, I speculate that the captain is approximately sixteen Terran years of age.”
Studying his tricorder, McCoy frowned deeply and nodded. He looked about ready to dispense good advice. Jim began to fidget, feeling enclosed in the space of the quarters he could not remember as his own, encroached upon by these strange men who looked at him with such concern and disappointment. He focused his eyes on the door McCoy had busted in through. He knew there was no getting off this starship, but surely there had to be someplace with more space, somewhere he could stretch out his arms, somewhere less godawful hot---
“….and you could stand for some more protein in your diet, drink some fortified milk too. You know, I might have some down in sickbay stashed away for a special occasion, the real deal, not this reconstituted, regurgitate, replicated sh-- ….garbage. Whattaya say, Jim, some nice Devarsian goats’ milk, fresh outta sickbay’s fridger?” McCoy was attempting to smile; it was more unsettling than the Vulcan’s flat, blank nonexpression.
“I believe Mr. Kirk would benefit from a walk around the Enterprise, Dr. McCoy,” Spock said. The doctor shot him a sour look.
“You can be in charge of that, Mr. Sleep-is-for-the-weak. I’m running these readings down to sickbay and cursing the day I met you people until Alpha starts. We’ll need to debrief the senior staff at the start of shift and find a way to fix this.” McCoy turned from the Vulcan and rounded his fire-eyed wrath on Jim. “And you! Don’t think you’re off the hook, kid. You come down to sickbay as soon as this hobgoblin’s done giving you the grand tour and we’re having a talk about your diet.”
With as much fanfare as he’d arrived, McCoy exited the captain’s quarters, and Jim was left, once again, with Spock. Spock, whose silent presence was like a black hole sucking all the air out of Jim’s lungs, the room, the hallway and the whole ship if Jim wasn’t quick. He ducked out of the sliding doors McCoy had forced open and took a deep breath. The Vulcan regarded him with unreadable black eyes from inside the captain’s quarters.
“I can look around on my own,” Jim told him, itching to leave this weird alien with his watchful gaze and lack of inflection. “You must have duties to attend to, so.”
“My duties, Mr. Kirk, include keeping myself appraised of your status. You will not be left alone.”
Jim felt fear lick up his spine. He tried to quell it; after all, what was one flint-eyed Vulcan in comparison to the innumerable horrors he’d already faced?
*
McCoy sat, feet propped up on his desk in his office, with the padd in his lap opened to Captain James Kirk’s confidential health file. He stared through it without seeing, one hand cupping his haphazardly-shaven chin. He paid no heed to the few drops of blood beading up where he’d nicked himself. It didn’t matter that he knew this file as well as he knew his secret liquor stash. It would tell him nothing new, nothing he was not already aware of as Jim’s doctor and Jim’s friend. But the file was a clinical recitation of facts, a digitized document that could not capture the acrid stench of thousands of bodies piled in the Tarsus sun; could not transmit the cold, clenching burn of a stomach empty for weeks, months; could not reveal the all-consuming fear of being caught or the depth of the blackest miasma of guilt and grief. Snarling, McCoy flung the padd on his desk, dashing it against the bulkhead.
“Damnit, Jim!” he cursed. He heard a gamma shift nurse scurry to the far side of sickbay to cower for the remainder of his shift. McCoy took a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut for the duration. Leaning forward, he wrote out in old-fashioned pen and paper - more permanent, more immediate, more truthful, he thought - the facts:
James T. Kirk, Captain. Regressed in body and mind to age 16
Cause: unknown
Immediate medical issues: malnutrition, stress response
Immediate command issues: en route to Zenzobar of the Third Outer Ring for trade negotiations, Captain Kirk directly requested by Supreme Empress H’Lopia.
ETA: 72 hours.
Treatment:
McCoy sat tapping his pen into the corner of the page for countless minutes, seeing nothing. The gamma shifters left and Chapel loomed in the doorway of his office looking statuesque and well-rested, damn her.
“There a gnat in your britches, doctor?” Chapel’s voice was sly. He scowled at her.
“For that, and not getting me a coffee, you get babysitting duty.”
“Excuse me?” she huffed, looking harassed. McCoy let himself feel a tingle of satisfaction.
“Jim’s been turned into a teenaged angst bomb. You get to mind him while Spock and I debrief the senior staff.”
“What am I supposed to do with baby Captain?”
“I don’t know, Christine. Make him clean the head with a toothbrush if it strikes your fancy.”
McCoy did not examine the unholy gleam in his head nurse’s eyes before he gathered his weary bones and trundled himself up to the bridge.
*
“Okay, so, let’s get our timeline under control here,” Sulu said, setting his padd onto the table of the meeting room. The core bridge crew was there, along with Dr. McCoy, Mr. Scott and Lieutenant Giotto from security. Chekov sighed, familiar with Sulu’s love of lists: making them, reading them, making Chekov read them, imagining that they at all helped him organize his thoughts and actions. “Mr. Spock, you said you and the captain went to bed around 2300 hours? Sir?” Glancing up for confirmation, he took Spock’s stony discomfort as such, and inserted ‘went to “bed”’ into the slot for 2300. “And you say you woke up at 0400 for, quote, ‘meditation and optimal productivity,’ is that correct?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, we have repeated the facts three times now. I was not present for the Captain’s regression. We must move on to finding a solution to his dilemma before we reach orbit around Zenzobar of the Third Outer Ring, and, barring that, we must focus on completing the upcoming mission without him in command.”
“Spock, the Supreme Empress is no one to take lightly,” Uhura said. “She was really forceful about the Captain’s presence.” She looked hesitant for a moment. “We may have no choice but to send him in as is.”
“Hey now -” McCoy began.
“Lieutenant, that is not an option,” Spock said. “The Captain’s mental state and maturity level are --”
“The Keptin, he is sixteen, not so much younger from me at the beginning, but I think the Keptin and me, we are very different sixteens.”
“Goddamnit, now, are we really talking about sending-”
“Can we focus on this list?”
“I think tempers are running a wee bit high right now, maybe we should stop for a snack?”
Suddenly Giotto stood and slammed his heavy fists on the table. Everyone shut up and stared at him.
“We have about three days to get Sunshine all growed up again,” he said, mouth set in a tight line. “It’s smooth sailing to the outer rings, and we are all of us the best of the best in our departments, and we will goddamn well find a way to fix this before the mini captain even has a chance to mess up these negotiations for us. Now do you people want to panic and argue about something we have days to find a solution for or do you want to get this done?”
It was the most anyone outside of security had ever heard Giotto speak. Spock recovered first.
“Indeed, Lieutenant Giotto makes a logical argument. The available resources in the science and medical departments will assess any anomalies in Mr. Kirk’s physical condition-”
“That’s just it Spock, I’ve been over it a hundred times. There are no anomalies. He could stand to gain a few but otherwise, there are no physical problems. He’s a perfectly fine sixteen year old kid.”
“I would thank you, doctor, not to interrupt me.” Spock managed to go even more upright. McCoy thought that if that spine didn’t snap by itself, he might have to snap it for the green-blooded bastard himself. McCoy clenched his jaw and said nothing. “As I was saying, the science and medical teams will share relevant data in the attempt to understand and reverse Mr. Kirk’s regression. What is it, Mr. Sulu?”
Sulu put down is hand.
“I know I’m beating a dead horse, sir… Um, unnecessarily reiterating the issue, but I really think we’re missing something between 2300 and 0500 when you found the Captain in his current condition. The list could help. If you can think of anything out of the ordinary, sir.”
“Leave the list,” Chekov hissed at him.
“Mr. Sulu, while I admire your attention to detail as a helmsman and crew member, I must remind you that I have an eidetic memory, and I assure you, the timeline you have developed is accurate and comprehensive.”
Sulu sat back in his chair with a sigh.
“What about crew morale?” Uhura asked after a moment of subdued silence. “Should the captain’s condition be common knowledge or are we keeping it hush hush for now?”
“He won’t be confined to quarters,” McCoy said. “It’d be torture for him, and I don’t see the point. The crew will find out, might as well tell them outright and not have some kind of mass freak out on board.”
“Do you think this will happen to anyone else?” Chekov asked.
“No, this kind of crap only happens to Jim Kirk, I swear.”
“It is a possibility, Ensign. Which is why we must find the solution as quickly as possible. As Acting Captain, I will make the announcement to the crew as a whole, inform Starfleet Command, and give the science and medical teams their new assignments. Lieutenant Giotto, you will lead security sweeps on all decks and increase detail in traffic-heavy areas, particularly near officers’ quarters. Meeting dismissed.”
*
After a few hours of regaling him with tales of curious and vile space diseases, Nurse Chapel plied Jim with a reconstituted cheeseburger for lunch and a trip to an observation deck. He knew he was a cheap date, but the observation deck afforded a far more spectacular view than the veritable porthole in the captain’s quarters, not to mention that it was a wide open space with plenty of comfortable furniture as well as private nooks for when a guy might like to be alone with himself. Or with someone else. But he could walk around the entire deck, look around himself, and see nothing but the stars burning lightyears away in all directions. A person could breathe on this observation deck.
Jim leaned against a railing at the far end of the deck, casting a sideways glance at his taciturn companion. After telling him about degenerative interspecies STDs, she seemed to have nothing else to say to him. “So,” he fished for a conversation topic, “you like being a nurse in space?”
“I suppose it’s a little more interesting than treating overdoses and aircar crash victims like I did before I joined up at the academy. Theoretically, I’ll put in a few more years and get my MD after this mission’s over. Xenobiology, and all.” She was looking at him more closely. Trying, he realized, to recognize the man she knew in the boy she saw.
“Am I like him, then?”
“You are him, so. I mean, you’re the same person.”
“Yeah, but he’s done all this stuff,” Jim said, gesturing outward as if he’d been to each star system he could see and had performed feats of heroics he couldn’t remember at all of them.
Chapel turned back toward the stars, but she saw only Jim’s gaunt face in the tempered glass, the startling blue of his eyes. They were the eyes of someone who refused to be a victim, the eyes of a survivor, the eyes of her captain. She chose her words carefully.
“Jim, somewhere in the trajectory of your life you’ve had to find a well of strength and resolve. Sometimes you might feel weak, or helpless, or powerless, but you have risen to the challenge and come out alive every time. The captain is strong, and passionate, and loud, and colorful, and full of life, and he was shaped by all you’ve endured, all that’s come before and all you’ll still face. You are the reason he’s a great man right now.”
Jim leaned his forehead against the cool glass. He didn’t feel like the blueprints of a great man. He felt as though by existing in this present, his future, he was robbing himself of a bright life darting about among the stars, a relic from the past tainting everything to come. He had the curious and paradoxical desire to erase himself so that this shining future where he had friends and inspired loyalty could be secure. He didn’t even know this forthright woman in pressed nursing scrubs who stood by his side comforting him, who looked wary that he might want a hug but was prepared to give one if it became necessary. He suddenly didn’t want her to know him, to know how he really was in the private recesses of his mind. Decayed, and depraved, and so needy after so much loss.
“I think I want to go back to my quarters. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I can get there myself,” he said, stepping away from her. She frowned.
“Jim, let me walk you there, at least.”
“Look, I know you just have your orders or whatever, but I swear I won’t tell McCoy, and I’m pretty sure the Captain will go easy on you when he’s back.”
“Jim, wait.” She followed him with long-legged strides. He realized that he’d have to run if he wanted to get away from her. “Look, I’m sorry if what I laid on you back there was heavy. But I know you’re not a kid and I know you can handle it. Let me walk you back to your quarters.”
“I’m not -”
“What?”
“I’m not good.”
Chapel stared at him, at the defiant tilt of his chin, the set of his jaw not yet squared by manhood, the glinting eyes and determined mouth. He declared his lack of goodness not with resignation or sadness, but as a gauntlet thrown down at the feet of detractors. He spat it out as if it were a poison that should make her recoil. But Chapel had a strong constitution, and she had seen her share of the darkness residing deeply within all sentient beings. Some more than others.
“Evil touches you. I know that.” She walked past him then, leading the way. “Come on.”
*
Spock’s duties as acting captain kept him from performing in his capacity as science officer, and therefore kept him from working with the science department on finding a cure for his bondmate. He knew he was being derelict in his duties even now; 74% of his thoughts were occupied by the puzzle of Jim’s condition. Further, he contemplated his off duty hours, commencing in just 37.3 minutes: should he attempt to spend them with Jim, who could not hide his fear and contempt for Spock, but who nonetheless needed someone who understood him fully, or should he assist in the search for a solution with the science team, increasing their productivity and chances of success? He was aware of an increased pressure to restore Jim’s age, as Admiral Komack, surly even in his text transmissions, demanded that they send Jim into negotiations on Zenzobar regardless of his condition. He ruminated on his options until -
“I wish you would shut up about the lists!” Spock’s keen ears picked up Chekov’s irritated hissing from the helm. “They do not help you, only make you procrastinate! You think you are doing something but you are not, Hikaru! I wish -- ”
Spock stood abruptly.
“Lieutenant Sulu, you have the conn.”
In the corridors crew members gave their acting captain wide berth as he made haste with his characteristic grace toward sickbay and Dr. McCoy.
He rapped on the door to McCoy’s office and did not fidget waiting for McCoy to let him in.
“Dr. McCoy-”
“All I’ve been able to find is some obscure reference to some fountain of youth in Devar XI, but Christ, we were there almost a month ago -”
“McCoy.”
“I mean, I guess it could be a delayed reaction or something, but I don’t reckon--”
“Doctor, cease your illogical prattle at once.”
McCoy’s jaw snapped shut and he finally looked up from the text of the padd in is lap.
“What?”
“I believe I have been remiss in… completing Lieutenant Sulu’s list.”
“Hold on, hold on -” McCoy stood, meeting Spock’s gaze levelly. “You’re saying….you made a mistake?”
“Doctor-”
“You? The great and mighty infallible pointy-eared Vulcan god? A mistake?”
“A small omission and nothing more, Dr. McCoy. Are you more interested in gloating or in saving your captain from a second adolescence?”
“I’m listening, oh fallen one.”
Spock straightened, clasping his hands behind his back and fixing his eyes on a point on the bulkhead behind the doctor.
“As we fell asleep, the captain spoke to me of wishes. I did not give credence at the time to words spoken as if in dreams.”
McCoy crossed his arms, a square hand coming up to squeeze his chin. He frowned when the silence after Spock’s statement stretched.
“You have to keep talking or it still doesn’t mean anything, Spock.”
“It is private.”
McCoy threw his hands up and gave a grunt of disgust. “Spock! You goddamned infuriating Vulcan, I’m a doctor, not a psychic! If this is relevant, you have to tell me!”
Spock managed to straighten further.
“He expressed a desire that I…be first. In his mind and body both.”
McCoy gave no reaction. “And?”
“He wished, as in Terran tradition, on a star. On a great number of stars whose energies are yet unknown to us.”
McCoy’s lips parted.
“I’ll be damned. He’s a virgin at sixteen?”
“Doctor, you make light of this.”
“Okay, okay. But you’re the scienciest scientist this side of the Velubian system, and you’re saying Jim is a nubile young thing again because he made a wish like some nineteenth century damsel in distress? And some unknown invisible hand of the universe was just dispensing wishes like candy to starship captains last night?”
“I am not ‘saying’ anything. I am providing evidence that was previously overlooked.”
McCoy sat down heavily, shuffling papers and padds into piles that passed for neat on his desk.
“Okay, so let’s look at this from your proposed angle. Jim wished it, therefore it is so. How the hell do we fix it? Wish really hard?”
“The answer is fairly obvious if we follow the hypothesis to its natural conclusion, doctor.”
McCoy did not look at him. He propped his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands in front of his face.
“That boy is in no state to be manhandled by the likes of you, Spock.”
“Doctor-”
“No, just hear me out on this one,” McCoy said in a gruff voice. “I’m happy for you guys. Big crazy love and all that, it’s good. Jim deserves it. Hell, you deserve it, and I will deny ever saying that if you go around telling people, you walking computer. The universe may have spit out the last version of Jim to ever be a virgin and delivered him into your hot little hands, but we both know what he’s still recovering from, we both know he’s not well, and I’ll be damned, Spock, if I stand by and let you take advantage of him while he’s like this. Not to mention the fact that he’s underage.”
“Technically, doctor, he is 29.36 standard years of age. He was born in 2233; it is now 2262.”
“You can’t even convince yourself of that logic.”
Spock shifted his gaze from McCoy to the sundry medical implements adorning McCoy’s office. Ancient saws and cruel blades. Reminders, he knew, of the medical field’s barbaric past. Reminders to be thankful for modern conveniences, and reminders never to cease progress toward the easing of human suffering.
“I am uncertain as to the course of action when we have found the solution, but it is morally untenable. In the Standard vernacular, ‘the cure is worse than the disease.’ The condition remains impossible to resolve.”
“It might not be the only solution. Hell, it might not be the solution at all, Spock. There must be something organic to blame, we just haven’t looked hard enough. Why are we only seeing zebras here?”
“I do not understand the reference to an extinct earth mammal in this context.”
“I just mean, Spock, that you’ve jumped to the most far-fetched conclusion possible when there must be some simpler explanation.”
“Doctor, your insults are tiresome. I have offered a hypothesis that would explain the captain’s condition and what would reverse it, whereas you have merely read thousand year old fairy tales from a planet whose inhabitants prize goats above children.”
“Look at yourself, Spock! An imprecise, hyperbolical statement? All that Vulcan logic out the window the moment Jim might be threatened. Just like every time you put yourself between him and phaser fire. If you can’t think clearly, Mr. Spock, mark my words, I will pull you off duty to get a hold of yourself.”
“Is that a threat, Dr. McCoy?”
“It’s a goddamned promise, Spock. Now get out of my sickbay.”
*
When Jim got back to the captain’s quarters, a yeoman had been by to tidy up, but domestic upkeep did nothing for the smell. Nothing unpleasant or even illicit, just - he knew what a room that was his alone smelled like. He shared this space with someone on a regular basis, maybe even a permanent basis, and when he pressed open the doors of the closet, he found crisp blue shirts among command gold. Whirling around, he crossed the room to reach a bookshelf where some holos flickered, propped up against books and bulkheads. There were a few of him grinning, arms slung around a scowling Dr. McCoy; the locations varied but the expressions did not. Sharing space and intimacy with the beleaguered doctor suddenly seemed a very real possibility. There was one holo of Sam and - Sam’s family, Jim realized with wonder. A few groups shots displayed people who must be part of his crew. But the holos that made the air thin and his head dizzy were of Spock. The first was a portrait of Spock almost in profile, head and shoulders occupying the frame, that Vulcan ear a delicately tapered arch, eyes downcast as if in deep concentration of something off-camera, perhaps even unaware that it had captured him in so exposed a moment. The only other holo of Spock was also a candid shot that showed Spock and Jim leaning close to one another in conversation, oblivious to their surroundings and even their observer. They did not touch, but the riveted quality of the energy between them gave Jim the sensation that his stomach had flipped. Those weren’t Dr. McCoy’s blue shirts in his closet, it wasn’t Dr. McCoy in his bathroom easy as he pleased this morning, and it wasn’t Dr. McCoy whose personal smells now mingled with his own in this room, that combined scent the palpable manifestation of their intimate association.
Quickly Jim turned the holos of Spock around to face the collection of books he did recognize. Spock, the Vulcan with the wooden expression and the smoldering eyes. Did Spock know him, really? Was Spock aware of how damaged he was in thought and deed? I must have lied, Jim thought. I must have lied and he has no idea what I am and if he did he wouldn’t be here. Jim swallowed back the rising nausea. Great man, my ass.
He went back over to the window where he watched the stars flicker in the distance. He realized he had no idea of his exact location in the galaxy, or even that of their destination. He had vague knowledge of the outer rings being small, rocky planets on the border between the second and third quadrants, rich in precious gems and sitting on top of a store of dilithium crystals, but not much else. Jim realized he was very far from Earth and thought of his mother for the first time. But her visage was bitter and pinched and silent in his memory, and he forced her down like bile.
The image of his future self with Spock was not as easily tamed. The alien he found so disquieting occupied this bed with him. Conjecture indicated that here in this room Spock had held him, kissed him, taken ownership of him, kept him from the consuming blackness. He had sudden insight into what he must do: to secure his future and keep the happiness he’d seen on his own face in all those holos, he must not let Spock see the depths of depravity and despair he plumbed in the darkest hollows of himself, must not let Spock see all that he’d done when he’d run out of options on a putrid planet just an arm’s reach from hell. Must not let Spock see and know and leave.
Jim knew what men liked: to possess and destroy. Planets, women, slim-hipped young men mucking out stables as distant Sol browned their glistening skin, it didn’t matter. And Jim could imagine, had read about and jacked off to, all the depraved acts that could keep them satisfied. Satisfied and disinclined to asking questions. He saw himself reflected in the glass, superimposed among the stars, a reedy, fatherless thing desperately searching for comfort, for immolation, for anything that could eradicate the crawling darkness inside him. Maybe Spock would even make it good for him, if they’d been together a long time. If a Vulcan could care.
Settling into the bed, Jim hugged a pillow to himself, and when he slept, he dreamed that the stars were eyes that judged.
*
Spock’s long strides faltered as he rounded the corridor of the officers’ quarters toward the captain’s and first officer’s. While he kept the first officer’s quarters for workspace, meditation, storage of his few belongings, and periods of necessary solitude, he had not truly stayed in them for 2.7 years. He hesitated at the captain’s door before knocking.
The door glided open at Jim’s command, but Spock had not expected that he would be propped up in bed, sheets pooled around his hips, blinking at him with bleary recognition through the open partition.
“I apologize. I did not know you were resting. I can return at a more convenient time, if you wish.”
“No. No, um, it’s fine, don’t worry. Stay.”
Jim didn’t move, nor did Spock, standing in the wider space of the living area and gazing unobstructed at the boy whom his bondmate had become. The boy from whom his bondmate had grown. He felt conflict at the thought of his hypothesis’s conclusion. He did not wish to commit morally reprehensible acts upon an underaged body and mind unable to consent by law, yet he could not deny the appeal of his bondmate’s current - previous? - lithe young form. If his conclusion required ethical justification, he told himself that his mind and blood would not cleave to this Jim, indeed, to any being too young to consent, without the existing anchor of their bond, the strength of their union. Spock had erected his shields the moment he found Jim naked in the head, but a cursory exploration at the edges of his mind provided Spock with the familiar thrum of Jim’s mood: apprehension and arousal in equal parts. Spock closed himself out again, unwilling to use his superior telepathic abilities to his own advantage.
They did not speak but continued to regard each other from different rooms. Spock saw in Jim’s expression the moment he made a decision, spurring him to push aside the sheets and swing his legs onto the floor.
“You and me are together, right?”
“Indeed, we are both occupying the captain’s quarters at this time, Mr. Kirk.”
Jim rolled his eyes, sitting up straighter.
“No, you know what I mean. We’re like, boyfriends, or whatever.”
“We are bonded in the Vulcan form of marriage.”
Jim’s eyes widened. Spock realized he had been expecting a more casual relationship, perhaps of the sort common to human teenagers. “Oh,” he said, seeming to lose his nerve and looking down at his hands.
“Perhaps you would enjoy a refreshment, Mr. Kirk? In the past, your adult self interfered with the engineering of the replicator and it now dispenses a favored beverage, lemonade. I am told it is a passable facsimile.”
Jim peered at him from inside the bedroom, assessing. He padded barefoot out into the living space to join Spock at the table, sliding in across from where Spock had taken a seat. Spock input a request for a mild tea and a cold lemonade and waited, feeling Jim’s gaze appraise him.
“So how long have we been Vulcan married?”
“Two years, four months, twenty days, four hours and…. thirteen minutes.”
“Huh. And were we together before? I mean, were we in a mutually satisfying monogamous romantic relationship beneficial to both parties? Before.”
“Indeed, Mr. Kirk, our relationship commenced approximately one and a half standard years before our bonding.”
“Approximately.”
“There is disagreement as to the exact date of commencement.”
“And do you call me Mr. Kirk the whole time? Because I gotta say, more than a little kinky.” Spock noted that the patented James T. Kirk Smile of Ultimate Seduction was in its infancy and not terribly effective.
“I can call you James, if you prefer,” Spock said mildly, knowing Jim associated the use of his given name with impending punishment. Jim looked suitably sour at the prospect.
“Why not just Jim?”
“Very well. Jim. And you may call me Spock.”
Jim looked amused. “As if I’d call you anything else, Acting Captain.” Spock’s control did not slip even as Jim’s words and tone unwittingly echoed their interactions during the Narada incident, unsettling him.
The replicator chimed and Spock set Jim’s lemonade in front of him before carefully handling his own cup of tea. Jim continued to study Spock, scanning his features as if for any flicker of recognition or feeling. He began to fidget as the silence persisted.
“Any progress on making me old again?”
“There have been two…theories.”
“Oh, so what are they?”
“They are confidential at the moment.”
“Oh come on! I’m the subject right, so how can you not tell me? What is it, electroshock treatment or something? I think I could take it.”
“There will be no electroshock treatments, Jim.”
“Then what?”
Spock chose a proven method of defense: prevaricate and distract. “Theories must be tested, Jim. If one proves sound, we will implement it. Would you care for a game of tri-dimensional chess?”
*
By the time Jim and Spock had finished two games, Jim was unable to conceal his admiration for Spock, and, by extension, his future self for managing to marry Spock.
The novelty of having found someone who not only challenged him but beat him had not waned in the face of defeat. Spock also had a staggering breadth of knowledge in a variety of subjects ranging from Federation-wide historical events (though he made no reference to the one Jim hated and knew most intimately) to the social castes of the tree people of Kartasia III. Plus, he might never be a stand up comedian, but after a few suspicious comments, Jim had the feeling he’d spent a lot of time catching his breath laughing in Spock’s presence.
Of course, Jim was not one to overlook the fact of Spock’s striking appearance. Alien, yes, with his upswept brows and the ears that required no mention, the blood pumping green beneath porcelain skin, but Jim had lost his grip on what so disturbed him about Spock that morning. Spock was totally masculine in his beauty, nothing soft or curved in the sharp lines of his face and body. And Jim could sense power there, pulsating tightly coiled and deceptive in the lean sinews of Spock’s spare form. He found that as the afternoon subsided into evening, more and more he craved that potent might, burned with biting urgency for oblivion in Spock’s immersive presence.
He’d felt this before in the company of powerful men, his frantic heart forcing overheated blood southward in eager teenaged optimism. Only a tenuous thread of anxiety had kept Jim from slithering like a low, begging thing into the beds of such men: Hank, his mom’s chief farmhand, whose fading prison tattoos stretched over burly muscles used for a lifetime of labor; Coach Nunez, who’d never stopped asking him to join the wrestling team even after he’d been barred from extracirriculars altogether for truancy; Mark Song, who had his own holding cell at the Riverside police station and served him drinks on the sly at the Orbit with a dangerous glint in his black eyes.
Jim frowned at the planes of the chess board, hardly seeing where Spock mounted his offensive on Jim’s queen. Spock was not like those men. Spock was… his husband. His husband who was being kind to him, and making clever jokes, and playing chess with him. No, Spock was not to be counted in their company.
A comm device whistled.
“McCoy to Spock.”
“Spock here.”
“I’d like you and Jim to come to the mess for dinner. I need Jim eating specific food.”
Spock met Jim’s eyes over the game. Jim shrugged his assent.
“We will leave immediately, doctor. Spock out.”
Jim hopped to his feet and stood near the closet.
“I should wear something better than pajamas, maybe,” he said, pressing the door open. He rifled through the civvies pushed to the far left of the closet for something where he wouldn’t look like a scrawny kid playing dress-up with his dad’s clothes. He found a pair of jeans that might fit him; his future self appeared to favor tight jeans a size or two down, and these might drag on the floor a bit but he could pull them off. With a furtive glance at Spock, who still sat straight up and proper at the work table they’d been playing on, Jim shucked the black cotton pants Spock had handed him in the morning and turned toward the closet, ostensibly for modesty, but really to display his bare ass as he stepped slowly into the denim. When he turned back around, zipping up the fly, Spock had clasped his hands on the table and appeared to be resolutely studying the game he’d all but won. Smirking, Jim made a show of stripping off the oversized white t-shirt and slipping into one of the snug black Starfleet issue undershirts. If he failed at putting on a stunning show of grace, he chose to ignore it and announced that he was ready to go.
In the mess hall, McCoy sat at a corner table opposite Nurse Chapel. When Jim and Spock joined them, Jim sliding in next to Chapel and Spock next to McCoy, McCoy slid a tray of food at Jim with perhaps more force than necessary.
“I wanna see you eat all of that,” he said, jabbing a finger towards the tray. Jim looked down to see slices of a large steak lying on a bed of dark greens. A cup of replicated fruit sat in the right corner, and a stubby breadstick in the left. For dessert Jim got a -
“Yogurt, are you serious right now?”
“It’s key lime flavored,” McCoy growled.
When Jim turned his eyes on Spock for support, Spock only said, “The doctor is an expert in nutrition.”
Jim looked at Chapel then, meeting only an incredulous look accompanied by a shake of her blonde head. With a sigh, he speared a slice of steak, catching greens on the end of his fork and shoveling the entire mass into his face with barely contained gusto. Truthfully, he still felt profound relief to behold food in all its forms. He kept up the dessert racket to comfort the adults who so often hovered over him, not only wanting him to eat and smile and achieve, but to be as spoiled and entitled a teenager as the sullen youths who crowded deserted drug store parking lots and sneered at passersby unworthy of their august presence. It passed for normal, made his mother feign exasperation, deflected from the putrescence roiling in his gut and his spirit. Jim ate quickly and silently, McCoy and Chapel bickered over sickbay rosters and reconstituted grapes and the ethics of treating such and such a people for this and that foul parasite while Spock interjected every so often to tell them they were being illogical. But Spock’s eyes and attention stayed on Jim, who felt impossibly young and laid bare under the weight of that unwavering gaze.
Part II