A Distant Horizon Part I
I
In front of Jim was a request from Admiral Kirk to drop him off in San Francisco when the Enterprise would dock for repairs in a month. She’d been hit pretty badly in the last skirmishes with Romulans on the outskirts of the neutral zone, and a starbase wouldn’t do. Jim had been wondering what the man would decide, and he was surprised to see he hadn’t requested Jim leave him on New Vulcan. The way Old-Spock told it, those two had been BFF, and hadn’t Jim been so bitterly envious to hear the ambassador speak of someone named James Kirk that way? To see “San Francisco” scribbled in familiar script under “destination” filled him with a little bit of self-satisfaction that he would never tell anyone about.
When his alternate first arrived in a scrambled transporter beam two weeks ago, Jim was excited to meet him and combine their powers for the forces of awesome. Actually, first Jim ordered him quarantined, polygraphed, and tested for alien DNA, but he should have known the guy would hack his way out of the brig, and by the time he emerged again, clothes inexplicably torn and whiskey eyes somehow deadened, Jim knew he was who he said he was and instead of excitement, he felt a creeping disquiet about the man.
He suddenly understood why Spock shied away from Old-Spock, though they were sometimes forced to interact on family or New Vulcan business. Admiral Kirk represented more than an assurance that Jim was capable of reaching forty without succumbing to a fiery death by recklessness - he represented lessons not yet learned, mistakes not yet made, hurts not yet inflicted, but all inevitable in spirit if not to the letter. Did Spock look into familiar brown eyes and cringe to see the depth of pain endured? Jim had borne more than his share of heartache, he’d always thought, but when he met his alternate properly, when he shook his hand and met his gaze, he knew by the chill that hollowed out his stomach that the admiral might just have him beat.
So he was avoiding him. So he hoisted him off on Spock when he tried to come off all admiral-knows-best on unauthorized visits to the bridge. So he’d taken to avoiding Spock too for the last few months, so what? Maybe the pair of them would be two peas in a pod, and Jim wouldn’t have to think about either of them and how uncomfortable they made him in different ways, and when they finally dropped Kirk off on Earth, Jim could go back to being blissfully unaware of how his own face looked when marked with such bitterness.
The door buzzed and Jim’s heart leapt before he remembered that it wouldn’t be Spock - not since “the incident,” as he secretly called the mortifying debacle from three months ago. The unit that had been Jim-and-Spock, whatever friendship they’d been building for the two years of the mission, was all smoke and rubble ever since Spock had stumbled through a weirdly emotional declaration of his “intentions to court” Jim, and Jim had subsequently dashed out of his quarters. Never mind that he hated to pull rank off duty and never did. Never mind that seeing the desolation flit across Spock’s face for a split second destroyed something warm in Jim’s own chest. Never mind that he’d regretted it ever since it happened, but couldn’t find a way to make it better without rejecting Spock all over again. Because Jim wanted to be friends, and Spock wanted way, way more, and the two were mutually exclusive. In petty, lonely moments, Jim was still angry at him for it. He’d liked being friends with Spock; why wasn’t that enough?
The door buzzed again and Jim shook off those thoughts, calling out to allow entry. When it was McCoy and disappointment bloomed hot and shameful in Jim’s gut, he squashed the ensuing guilt and plastered on his widest grin.
“Bones! What brings you here on this fine night?”
McCoy looked surlier than usual, and Jim went to retrieve a bottle of Saurian brandy to tame the beast.
“It’s that bastard of an alternate you, Jim. I don’t know what’s up his ass, but whatever it is, it’s gnawed its way to his brain and taken bites out of whatever it is that makes you nice most of the time.” He snorted and accepted the tumbler Jim pushed into his hands. “As if we needed a less stable version of you.” He plonked himself down at Jim’s table, and Jim took his customary seat opposite him.
“Hey,” he said with a pout, “I’m stable.”
McCoy waved his hand in dismissal.
“All I’m saying is he comes into sickbay all snide and biting when he’s got nothing to do, and it’s not even good natured. Chris almost slapped him one earlier, and then I think she went away to cry. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“What did he say?”
McCoy shook his head and leaned forward.
“Something about how Spock will never want her. Jesus, Jim, no one needs to hear something like that, even if it’s as plain as the gay on Spock’s face.”
Jim swallowed against the lurch in his throat. He hadn’t told McCoy about the incident - had never figured out a way to keep both his and Spock’s dignity in tact by sharing it, even with his best friend. Jim wondered if that fact of Spock’s homosexuality was apparent to everyone but him - and Christine Chapel. Idly he imagined holding meetings for the Wishful Thinking Club, where he and Chapel would delude themselves for an hour a week that Spock was straight and in love with the right one of them and wanted to crack beers and play fantasy football - or whatever, fill out reports - with the other. He became aware that McCoy was staring at him expectantly after the pause had stretched too long, and he fished for something appropriate to say.
“That’s out of line.”
“You’re damn right it is. And I can’t even talk to him about it - he’s not on active duty and has no compulsion to follow my orders when I tell him to come see me in a medical capacity and not just to bug me. He’s not even-” McCoy face grimaced. “He told me I’m not his Bones and I can fuck off with my bullshit psychoanalyzing. I think there might be more wrong than a lapse in gentility here. And considering your aversion to therapists, trying to get him to see Dr. Shandhir might be like trying to bathe a bobcat. You should talk to him.”
“Me? Christ, Bones, what the hell can I say? And why would he listen? To him I’m just a dumbass kid who made good faster than him.”
McCoy swirled the brandy in his glass and gave a little shrug.
“You’re him. You have insight into him that no one else possibly could. Whatever it is, it might be something you understand, and he’ll tell you.”
Jim pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed his face before blinking at McCoy from across the table. His own glass of brandy remained untouched on the table between them.
“I really don’t think it’s that simple. He’s… he weirds me out. And maybe we’re talking about the same thing, but he just seems… broken? Hurt, somehow, that I can’t relate to, and I can hardly talk to him. I don’t talk to him.”
McCoy pressed his lips together in the flattened-frog exasperated look he reserved only for Jim.
“You make Spock talk to him.”
Jim tucked his lips back behind his teeth and shrugged.
“Jesus, Jim. I’m not sure how great an idea that is,” McCoy said.
“Why not? They get along all right, far as I can tell.”
“Except Spock’s looking a little worn around the edges since the good admiral’s come to stay, too. And he’s signed out a dermal regenerator twice.”
Jim frowned.
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t let me look at him. Said it was ‘no concern of mine.’ Hmph.”
“Hold on, Bones.” Jim stood and felt all his blood leave his top half. He steadied himself with his hands on the table and fixed McCoy with an intense glare. “You think that bastard is hurting Spock? Beating him or something? Oh my God!”
“No. No, Jim, calm down.” McCoy thumped the tabletop as if ordering a dog to heel. “Nothing like that. I thought I saw something suspiciously like a lovebite on Spock’s shoulder the other day when I gave him the Morvanian bat rabies inoculation and figured he’s finally got someone paying him a bit of kindly attention, and I was a hair’s breadth away from congratulating him just to watch him turn colors. But it’s - Jim, if it’s the admiral, he’s volatile, and angry, and it’s something that has the potential to go down in some serious flames.”
Jim collapsed in the chair as if drained of strength.
“I don’t understand.”
“What part? If it’s about how you would never hurt Spock like that and can’t wrap your mind around it, yeah. I mean. There’s rough sex and there’s rough sex. Normally I’d trust you to know the difference and be safe, but we’ve established that he is not you.”
“Which invalidates your ‘I should talk to him because I’m him’ theory.”
“Shove it, Jim. I’m being serious. ”
“I’m being serious!” Jim said in a rush. “I’m not - I’m not into guys, Bones! The fact that the admiral is and might be going too far with kinky bondage games or something with Spock makes me - makes me - I don’t know, but it makes me something not good, and, no, I definitely don’t understand. But it proves once and for all that I’m not him.”
McCoy’s eyebrow was ticking dangerously close to ‘crazy mountain man who makes clothes out of trespassers.’
“What?” Jim snapped.
“You don’t like guys at all?”
Jim burned as if McCoy were accusing him of something illicit.
“No! What? What gave you the impression that I did? Oh my God, have I been giving off gay vibes?”
McCoy held up his hands as if he could stopper Jim’s mouth with one gesture.
“‘Gay vibes’ - for Christ’s sake, Jim, what year are you from?”
“I just - I’m not into it, okay? I don’t care who anyone else fucks, but for me, it’s women all the way. End of story. Anyway, this is not about me, this is about bizarro me who may or may not be hitting it with my first, and hitting it too hard.”
McCoy’s sigh was a gruff rumble, and Jim felt a profound relief when he saw the moment McCoy let the subject go.
“I think if there were anything seriously wrong, Spock would have the wherewithal - the logic - to stop it, or get help stopping it from one of us. I’m concerned more about the admiral’s state of mind in all this. I’m worried it might be some kind of breakdown, and we’re watching it happen without trying to help.”
“So he’s suddenly fucking dudes like some kind of mid-life crisis and Spock got caught in the crossfire?”
“Jesus, Jim! No! The fact of who he - that has nothing to do with anything. What’s the matter with you?”
Jim clenched his fists and pushed them under his armpits. He hiked his shoulders in another shrug.
“Nothing - nothing.”
“If you had some kind of secret homophobia thing going on, the psych evals would have caught it and you’d never have made captain. So what’s your deal right now, Jim?”
Jim closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Can we not talk about this? What about Admiral Kirk - he’s the one with the mid-life crisis.”
“Or depression. Which is treatable. But being a jackass doesn’t have a clear course of action other than a solid slap upside the head.”
Jim glared at his best friend, who had no qualms about glaring back with those lighted eyes of his all bugged out.
“Look. I just - it bothers me, okay? The thought of Spock… with him. I mean, I thought - it doesn’t matter what I thought. I don’t like that he’s not treating Spock right. And I don’t like…. fuck, Bones, let’s be real right now: I don’t like that I might wake up one day and think to myself, ‘hmm, sure could go for some cock today.’” Didn’t like to think that he already had, and had viciously stomped down on the entire idea a long time ago.
McCoy was silent, and he tipped the rest of the brandy down his throat. He let out a slow, deliberate breath.
“Would it really be the end of the world?” he asked, and Jim recognized the mildness of his tone as his ‘I’m a caring doctor, really - now let me strap you down for this painful procedure,’ voice.
Jim shook his head.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just - it’s still not easy for people, you know? To be gay, or bi, or pan, or whatever. Plenty of places in the universe still judge you. Riverside - Riverside was like that. This kid, Jordan Sanders. Man, everyone really ripped him up, you know? And adults would hardly do anything. Anyone in a position of power would do this whole winking disapproval, slap on the wrist type thing to anyone who messed with him. Total bullshit. Jordan - I don’t know what happened to him. He got beat real bad and dropped out before graduation. But I remember being so fucking glad, Bones, that I wasn’t like that. Like him.” And terrified that I was, he didn’t add.
McCoy was nodding, his brows drawn together in a thoughtful furrow.
“I get that. I do, Jim. But you can’t go around saying things like Kirk went crazy, and that’s why he’s up with the gay sex. You get that, right?”
Jim swallowed against the bile that threatened to rise in his gullet.
“I know. Okay? But it’s hard, no matter what I say, not to think of him as this future me. And then it’s hard for me to think about what that means for me, and my sexuality, or whatever. And Spock - Spock doesn’t deserve… whatever this is. A guy who’s using him to exorcise his demons, and then another guy who couldn’t possibly… be what he wants.” Because even if there was just the tiniest chance that maybe Jim could… prefer the company of men, someone unsure and afraid was the last thing Spock needed.
McCoy’s eyebrow rose again.
“Did he say something to you?”
“Ugh.”
“Jim.”
“Yes, okay?” Jim threw his hands up. “Yes. He asked, a few months ago. For us to be together. I said no.”
McCoy sat back and watched him with a calculating expression. Jim hazarded a glance at him.
“You gonna berate me about it?”
“No, Jim. Can’t force feelings that aren’t there, though I hope you tried to spare the ones he professes not to have. I had wondered why you weren’t attached at the hip with the hobgoblin anymore. Figured it was his fault.”
“Why would it be his fault? Aren’t you always telling me what a jackass I am, fucking things up?”
“Aw, kid, come off it. I just meant Spock has a tendency to be… brusque. Literal. Accidentally rude. Irritatingly single-minded. Vaguely insulting towards humans. I could go on. I thought maybe he’d finally mentioned your lack of logic one too many times.”
“Well, he didn’t,” Jim huffed, all indignation. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s perfect.”
“He sure can pick ’em.”
Jim scoffed. “Asshole.”
“Jackass.”
“Dick.”
“You realize you called him perfect just now?”
“Fuck off, Bones.”
McCoy regarded him with a calculating look for a moment before he stood and put his glass down on the table.
“Listen, Jim,” he said. “Thanks for the drink. I needed it. Now I’m asking you to go talk to Spock, or the other you, and figure out a way we can get him sorted out. No one’s asking you to start some kind of manly romance with Spock. We can even forget we had this conversation if it makes you feel better. Just - go figure out what’s wrong, and fix it. Okay?”
“That’s not my job, Bones.”
The doors to Jim’s quarters slid open and McCoy smirked at him from where he paused in the jamb.
“Everything on this boat is your job, Captain.” And the doors slid shut behind him.
Jim groaned and set his head down on the table with a blunt smack. Then it occurred to him: McCoy’s hypothesis that Kirk and Spock were an item could be completely off, based on a false assumption. Maybe Spock had some other new boyfriend sucking shapes into his skin, and Kirk was operating on an outlier of his usual emotional keel and it had nothing to do with Spock whatsoever. All he had to do was ask.
When Spock opened the door he was wearing only his trousers and black thermal undershirt. Somehow seeing his forearms bare, dusted with fine black hair, seemed an intimacy Jim should not be afforded, and he forced his gaze to Spock’s face.
“Jim.” His voice held a note of surprise. Then, more carefully, “Captain.”
“Hey Spock,” Jim said. “May I?” He gestured toward Spock’s quarters, and Spock nodded and stepped back. Jim walked in and looked around. It was the same as it had ever been, clean and Spartan and smelling of Spock. Spock herded him toward the work table.
“Would you care for a refreshment, Captain?”
Jim waved his hand.
“No, no, that’s all right. How’ve you been?” They sat across from each other
“I am functioning as usual.” There was a pause. “And yourself, Captain?”
Jim sent him a wan smile.
“I’m fine. Fine.” Were they once close enough to share thoughts and smiles freely? Or, what passed for a smile on Spock - a lifting of his expression, a softening of the eyes. Their friendship seemed like a long ago fantasy Jim had fabricated in some vivid day dream. Now it was as if it had never happened.
Spock was staring at him.
“Do you require something?” he asked.
“Sorry.” Jim dropped his eyes. “Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the admiral.”
Spock stiffened, and Jim felt a terrible weight settle on his chest.
“What is your query?”
Jim drew a breath and met guarded brown eyes.
“I know you’ve been spending a lot of time with him, and I wondered if you could give some insight about his state of mind. He seems….”
“Unhappy,” Spock finished for him.
Jim nodded. “Yeah.”
Spock sat back in his chair and clasped his hands together in front of his mouth. Elegant brows drew downward in contemplation.
“He is struggling with certain adjustments he has had to make in his life,” Spock began. “His promotion was unsought and came with a grounding, and his personal life had recently taken a terrible blow. These things, alongside the disorientation of finding himself in this reality, have converged to make his command of his humors precarious.”
“Spock. Is he going to be a problem?”
Spock lifted his head and placed his chin atop his clasped hands. He regarded Jim as if he were a curiosity on a newly discovered planet.
“If you are asking me, Captain, whether I believe he is a danger to himself or others, the answer is no, I do not.”
“Good,” Jim said. He exhaled and felt lighter. “That’s good. It makes me feel better. But do you think he needs help at all? I mean - do you think I should try to get him to see Shandhir, talk things out?”
Spock almost smiled, and it was almost sad.
“Would you go to a psychotherapist if a younger version of yourself demanded it?”
Jim grunted out a harsh facsimile of a laugh.
“I guess not. But I mean… we should do what we can to help him. He might be too proud, but Shandhir could help.”
“Perhaps I can broach the subject with him when next I see him.”
“Thanks, Spock.” A cautious smile stole over Jim’s face. “Me and Bones would really appreciate it.”
Spock dropped his hands to his lap and looked down.
“Of course, Captain,” he said. “Is there anything else?”
Jim’s heart thumped hard against his ribs. His mouth went dry and his palms clammy, but he had to ask. He had to push the question past his lips; he had to know.
“Are you fucking him, Spock?”
Spock’s head snapped up and his eyes were round and disbelieving. His face had taken on a frightening pallor even as the apples of his cheeks flushed green.
“E- excuse me?”
“It was a theory. That maybe you were letting him… do things to you.”
“That is none of your business, Captain. You may leave my quarters now.”
Jim’s eyes flashed.
“You don’t dismiss me, First Officer.”
“Respectfully, Captain, my personal life is none of your concern.” They both stood, and maybe they were too close, now that Jim could feel the puffs of Spock’s quick breath on his face, but Jim was shaking with sudden certainty of the truth yet unacknowledged. “Please leave,” Spock said.
“No. I want to hear it from your mouth.”
“I refuse to answer. The subject is none of your business.”
“The hell it isn’t!” Jim snarled. “Jesus, Spock - I didn’t take you for the casual sex type. Anyone will do, huh, long as his name’s Jim Kirk?” They were so close, Spock’s heat poured into him. “You’d let him destroy you, just for a second-hand taste of me?”
Spock stepped closer still until Jim was forced to step back and give ground. He found himself pressed against the door to Spock’s quarters, chest to chest with their occupant, eyes to blazing eyes.
“I find it curious, Captain, that you profess not to want me, and yet at the notion that another might, you fly into an irrational rage. That is your burden, not mine.”
“Is he any good? Everything you ever wanted? Answer me!”
Spock’s eyes burned, hot and black, and inside himself Jim felt a knot clench and unclench in a convulsive nausea.
“This is not ship’s business, and thus I have no obligation to answer you, Captain,” Spock said in a low growl. “I bid you goodnight with the hopes that you return to reason come ship’s morning.”
“You smarmy fucking self-righteous son of a -”
“You will not complete that sentence. You will go to your bunk and sleep and leave me in peace.”
“Does he look enough like me? Huh, Spock?”
Spock pressed the doors open and Jim stumbled out, graceless. When he looked up, the doors were sliding shut again, but Jim heard the single, clipped syllable Spock bit out before he locked Jim out.
“No.”
II
Spock paced behind his door after throwing Kirk into the corridor. Hot turmoil had flooded his senses, and he could not center himself. He crossed over to his bedspace and settled cross legged in front of it. He straightened his spine and closed his eyes, and he tried to tighten his awareness around the column of his body. But Jim’s scent and Jim’s anger and Jim’s jealousy had bled into Spock’s consciousness, a chaos that rattled him. He couldn’t find the kernel of peace that meditation required. He bolted to his feet and in under five minutes, he was at Admiral Kirk’s guest quarters three decks below, buzzing for entry.
When Spock was in, he found Kirk shirtless on his side in the bed. Kirk tilted a smile up at him and extended an arm in invitation. Spock stripped as he dashed forward, and by the time he sank in beside the admiral, he was naked, feverish, and hard enough to burst at a single touch. But Kirk’s grasp around the base of his cock thwarted him.
Kirk pushed him down on his back and levered himself over Spock, set their hips in tension.
“Tell me you want me,” he said in a low rumble.
“I want you,” Spock gasped.
Kirk gripped his hair. “Always.”
“Always, always want you, Jim.”
Kirk kissed him hard, and on the edges of Kirk’s teeth and in the consumptive heat of his hands, Spock found his kernel of peace and let himself be subsumed.
Afterward, they lay on their backs panting, glistening with sweat and semen. Their shoulders and arms touched, and Spock could feel Kirk’s despondency, tempered for now with satiation. Kirk sat up and rummaged around in the bedside table. When he turned back around, he had a soft cloth and set to wiping Spock down, careful not to go against the grain of his chest hair, and gentle when he moved down to his anus. Sometimes, even in the tumult of their affair, there were quiet moments like this one during which Spock imagined they were different people, people who had chosen each other without the spectres of others at their backs. Spock felt warm as he watched Kirk take care of him with singular concentration. He brought up a hand and traced the line of Kirk’s jaw, his cheekbone. When he looked up at Spock, his eyes were gold.
“Are you sore?” he asked.
“Not… at the site of penetration. My left nipple, perhaps.”
Kirk shifted to straddle him, knees on either side of his hips as he leaned down to inspect the nipple in question. He pressed a kiss to its abraded surface. Illogical and unfounded as it was, Spock’s nipple did feel soothed.
“Sorry,” Kirk said. “Got a little carried away.”
“It’s nothing,” Spock said, and he stroked through Kirk’s bronze hair, rubbed at his shoulders. Kirk sighed and stretched out to lay his head on Spock’s chest and tangle their legs. He set his hand over Spock’s heart.
“I’m going to Earth,” he said. “Just put in the request transmission to mini-me. He’s probably ecstatic to get me off his girl.”
Spock went rigid under him and he craned his neck up.
“What?” he asked.
“He visited me this evening.”
Kirk got off of Spock and settled on his side next to him.
“That why you were in here like a crazy person?”
Spock shut his eyes.
“I apologize,” he said. He felt Kirk’s hand on his cheek, the warm press of Kirk’s lips on his own.
“Don’t apologize. It’s not like we both don’t know how this works.”
Spock kissed him deeper, clasped his hand in his hair and anchored him to plunder his mouth. Kirk gave way, but he pulled back at the stirrings of Spock’s penis against his hip.
“Want me to suck you?” he asked.
Spock nodded, and when Kirk set himself to the task with intoxicating enthusiasm, Spock’s hand drifted down until it covered Kirk’s eyes. When he came twenty minutes later, three of Kirk’s fingers buried in his slack hole, he felt wrung out, purged of everything that gave him strength, and he lay with his arm slung over his eyes while Kirk licked away all his ejaculate.
Kirk settled at his side and rubbed a soothing hand up and down Spock’s stomach.
“Good?”
Spock nodded weakly. Kirk put his head on Spock’s shoulder and his arm around his chest.
“My Spock liked that too,” he murmured. Spock was silent, and for a moment he slipped into a dream in which he was elderly, and Kirk kissed him with aching reverence. When his eyes fluttered open moments later, his heart was beating too fast.
“My Captain had a request of me,” he said. Kirk grunted. “He wished for me to compel you to see Dr. Shandhir.”
Kirk grunted again, half laugh. “She’s…”
“She’s what?”
“Earnest. Too damned earnest - I don’t even know how she can function, being so earnest all the time.”
“Her empathetic nature should not be a deterrent to your speaking with her, should you find yourself in need of an impartial third party.”
Kirk shift and propped himself up against the pillow.
“No. No, she looks at you all big doe eyes and sympathetic expression, no matter what you say. You could say ‘I just killed a man in cold blood,’ and she would -”
“You would never kill a man in cold blood, Admiral.”
Kirk hummed out a short laugh.
“You’re right there, Mr. Spock. My point is… it’s hard to explain. Shandhir - she doesn’t see how dark things get. It’s almost like she doesn’t see the terrible facets of human nature at all.”
“She has an advanced medical degree and is a highly prized mind in her field. I doubt she is unfamiliar with… darkness. Rather, her faith in the essential goodness of her patients overcomes that darkness.”
“I know, I know,” Kirk said with a wave of his hand. “I’ve just always felt bad talking to her, like I’m soiling someone too good for the world. It ends up heaping guilt on top of whatever I’m supposed to be telling her about.”
“You have spoken to her before, then?”
“Yeah. Yeah. My McCoy was always trying to get me to air out my feelings after a bad mission.”
“He cares for you.”
“And I remember to be grateful, most of the time.”
“You could speak to our McCoy. He cares as well, despite his churlish nature.” They both knew speaking to Spock wouldn’t help.
Kirk stared down at him. Spock wondered at what subtle physical differences existed between himself and the one Kirk had loved. He wondered what Kirk saw superimposed onto his face.
“I know I’m not all right, Spock,” Kirk said. “But I also know whining to McCoy about how my lover left me isn’t gonna help. Didn’t help the first time, won’t help now. I just have to suck it up and try not to look like I’m coming apart at the seams.” He paused. “Probably shouldn’t have been such a bastard to Chapel.”
“What did you do to her?”
Kirk crossed his arms but sent Spock a sidelong smirk.
“You just drive people crazy no matter what universe. I felt like hurting someone else who couldn’t have you, either. It was a shitty move, and I’ll apologize tomorrow.”
Spock hesitated before he said, “You can, Admiral. Have me, that is.”
Kirk raised both eyebrows at him.
“You don’t want me, Spock. You want that pup chasing his tail three decks up, for whatever reason.”
“I meant my counterpart on New Vulcan.”
Kirk’s demeanor transformed in an instant. He flushed and scowled, body going stiff beside Spock.
“Look, I’ve told you -”
“You have told me and told me and not listened to me in return,” Spock said.
“Spock-”
“Hush. My counterpart is the Spock from your timeline, though he has surpassed you in age. He has not been explicit with me about the details of your union, but I know that it was a long one, and a committed one, and one that brought him joy even through times of sorrow. I know he has been without you for a long time, and I know that he would be - overcome to welcome you into his arms again.”
Kirk’s stare was a blank emptiness, but from where Spock’s fingertips rested on his arm came a wave of grief mingled with anger. The sensation was nauseating, but Spock pressed on.
“If it is as you say, and he went to Gol, then it was an unsuccessful venture and he returned to you. You were bonded in the way of the Vulcan people - mind, body, spirit. Admiral, do you believe in coincidence?” Kirk’s eyes had darkened, and he did not speak. “I find the odds of your appearance in this reality, where he also resides, on this ship, which can transport you to him easily, to be so astronomical that I cannot calculate them. It is a gift, Admiral, and one that you should not dismiss in anger.”
The corners of Kirk’s mouth drew down, and he clenched his jaw.
“I don’t know how to forgive him for this,” he said in a whisper. “I can’t.”
Spock leaned over and kissed him, soft and slow, and he pressed his palm to Kirk’s in a sensual slide. They had not kissed so tenderly in the two weeks since beginning their affair, but Spock wanted this moment to be soft, to be something warm for two men who grappled with such cold. He wanted it to be the last thing they remembered about their time together.
“You can,” he said when he pulled back. “You have, and you will again. I will set up a transmission with visual for you.” Kirk’s eyes shone too brightly from his flushed face. He could not speak, but nodded his assent.
Spock stood and gathered the clothing that was strewn on the floor between the door and the bedroom space. He pulled them on, back to Kirk, but he could feel Kirk watching him. Admiring his body. Spock pushed down the curious mixture of gratification and resentment that watchful gaze elicited. At the comm device on the table beyond the bedroom partition, Spock’s fingers flew over the commands he’d memorized. He felt Kirk at his back, and then the weight Kirk’s hand on the back of his neck.
“Thanks,” Kirk said. Spock left the seat and faced Kirk, who was now fully clothed as well. He was about eye level with Spock’s nose, but Spock’s initial sense of disorientation at their differing heights had passed. He contemplated reaching out to touch him on the shoulder, to prolong what few things could be good and pure between them, but his arms remained at his sides, and he moved past Kirk toward the door. Before he left, he watched Kirk sink into the chair in front of the view screen and press the button that would send his transmission request. When the screen flickered and the wizened face of his counterpart appeared on it bleary with sleep, Spock exited in silence.
III
“Jim?” came the hoarse voice. Spock’s hair was askew, and he blinked over and over. Kirk realized that he’d woken him, and he wasn’t as quick to alertness anymore.
Kirk’s chest constricted. It was his Spock - definitely his Spock, by the bony prominence of his nose and the strong, sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones, recognizable though age had withered his skin, clouded his eyes and tarnished his hair. Kirk felt a thickness gather at the base of his throat
“Hey, Spock,” he croaked. “It’s me.”
Kirk listened to his breathing and drank in the sight of him as he came awake.
“T’hy’la?” Brown eyes opened wider, and his whole expression lifted. He smiled, and something hard and aching inside Kirk broke at the sight. He pressed his palm to the viewer before he could stop himself.
“Spock. God, look at you.”
“I don’t understand, Jim. You are not - What’s happened?”
“Transporter malfunction. As usual. I - I’ve been here two weeks.” Suddenly it seemed a shameful, ridiculous interval to have waited to hear the sound of his lover’s voice.
Across the light-years, Spock pressed his hand to his own viewer to match Kirk’s. All Kirk could feel was the cool of the screen.
“How old are you?” Spock asked without masking his awe.
“Too close to forty, my friend. What about you?”
“I’ve lived one hundred and sixty years, Jim.”
Kirk’s breath left him and he dropped his hand, into his lap. He leaned closer to the view screen.
“You look great,” he said. “Perfect.”
Spock smiled at him again and took his hand away too, and the pain of not being together was huge and unbearable and tore at Kirk’s heart.
“You are a flatterer,” Spock said. “And a biased one, at that.”
Kirk shook his head. He knew what he really was: a low thing, selfish and wallowing so thoroughly in his own pain that he would inflict it on innocent others, on his own lover, just to feel less impotent.
“I’ve missed you. Spock, I’ve missed you so much, you don’t even know.” Kirk was horrified to find tears prickling hot at his eyes, and he steeled his entire body against them.
Spock cocked his head and the smile that threw Jim’s entire universe off kilter faded.
“Oh, Jim,” he said, barely audible. “I’ve left you to pursue the Kohlinar, haven’t I?”
Kirk could only nod and blink back the tears that threatened to spill.
“I’m sorry,” Spock said. “I have no more than that to offer, but to say that I was young, and foolish, and afraid. Know that I did come back to you. As I come into these final stages of my life, I rue every moment I spent away from you. Every moment I took myself away.”
Kirk gasped for breath and leaned closer to the view screen. Once again Spock’s hand came up as if to trace the lines of his face.
“Final stages? You’re not even old, for a Vulcan.”
He should have known what Spock would say by the sad smile he gave him now, something that he would never have permitted himself in the life they’d shared.
“Ah, but I am human as well, Jim,” he said. “I can admit as much, now. I have lived too long and loved too much to do otherwise.”
Kirk crossed his arms and shoved his shaking hands under his armpits.
“So what - you’re dying now? Mini-Spock’s theory that I was brought here to keep you company seems to be falling apart. I should go tell him how illogical he is.”
An eyebrow, much beloved, arched upward towards Spock’s severe bangs.
“Well. Hardly ‘dying,’ Jim. I am merely aware that there are more years behind me now than there are in front of me.”
Kirk managed a smile then.
“So if you lived a hundred fifty more years and outlived me two times over your statement would still stand.”
Spock didn’t seem to find that funny.
“I’ve become an old man, Jim,” he said. “My body grows infirm. My mind slows. I… I grow weary.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s not morbid. It’s simply how time works on all living things. Kaadith.”
Kirk inhaled, lungs quaking. The thought of Spock - any Spock - dying was enough to send full stores of fear crackling through his veins. Even a peaceful, old-age death seemed unthinkable.
“I hate this. I hate this conversation. How can you- I wish you were here, I wish I could touch you, smell you.” An urgency had crept into his voice and surged in his heart.
“What is the position of the Enterprise now?” Spock asked, and Kirk knew he felt it too. “I could take a shuttle and rendezvous at the nearest starbase.”
“No. No, it’s fine. We’re going back to Earth for repairs and I could just come to you. Wait. Where’s New Vulcan?”
“Perhaps it would be best if I met you in San Francisco when you arrive. You’ll recall that Sarek has a condominium there. Are you amenable to that?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. I think we’ve got an ETA of a month or so. Can you swing that?”
Spock was apparently feeling generous with the smiles tonight.
“Of course,” he said. “I would cross any distance for you, t’hy’la.”
Kirk barked out a laugh and wiped his face hastily when a tear or two finally dropped from his lashes.
“I wish I could pronounce that,” he said.
“Your butchering of the Vulcan language is endearing to me.”
Kirk basked in how easily this Spock expressed himself, basked in his praise and affection and the small smiles that shone so brightly in the darkness that had become Kirk’s life. But after an exchange of platitudes and flirtatious banter, there hung between them a certain heaviness that demanded acknowledgement.
“Spock.” Kirk struggled to contain all his disparate feelings - bursting joy, relief, love, yes, but resentment and despair lingered. And guilt. “Can you - I’m sorry, I know it’s a long time ago for you, but can you tell me? About Gol? And just… why?”
Kirk watched Spock sit back, chest expanding on a deep inhale. The desire to lay his head on that chest, to feel the thrum of the hummingbird heartbeat underneath his palm, was so acute that Kirk barely breathe.
“The depth of my love for you frightened me,” Spock said after a long silence. “I had spent so many years attempting to be wholly Vulcan, wholly logical, wholly unemotional, and yet it was when I was with you that I felt an abiding contentment and less personal conflict. I was happy, and at the time, I believed happiness to be inherently incompatible with being Vulcan.
“Jim, I don’t think you understand how difficult it was for me, a Vulcan among humans, and a very naïve one at that. You came into my life and insinuated yourself with such ease, became indispensible without even trying, that you didn’t see how thoroughly you…. shook me. I believed my happiness, my love for you, was an unforgivable flaw in my character, and when you asked me to marry you- Jim. Oh, Jim, I wanted to say yes. My acceptance almost burst unbidden from my lips before you had even finished asking.”
“So why didn’t you?” Kirk asked past the lump in his throat. “Why didn’t you just say yes, Spock?”
Spock’s eyes closed for a moment, and an ancient pain passed over his face. Kirk longed to soothe it away with gentle hands and soft kisses. But he also longed for him to have said yes all those months ago and for them to be indulging in a long honeymoon right now.
“I believed at the time that to say yes would be to turn away from my heritage, my upbringing, everything I had ever striven to be. I believed that to give in to my feelings for you in such an… irrevocable manner would be to undo myself completely. So I refused, and left for Gol to purge my emotions.”
Kirk met his eyes through the viewer, and he knew he must look wrecked.
“Jim,” Spock said. “I was a fool. I was a fool who had no idea what I was giving up, or the price I had to pay. I was a fool who prioritized the wrong things and discarded the right ones. I was a fool who could not look past my own pain and see how I’d caused yours. Please forgive me.”
Kirk touched the screen again, and Spock’s hand met him there. And it was easy, then. The easiest thing in the world.
“Of course, Spock,” he said. “Of course I forgive you.” Nothing could negate all the hurt inflicted, but a measure of the darkness he’d been carrying since he woke to find his cabin Spockless ebbed away.
“I am gratified,” Spock said, and smiled. It made Kirk’s heart swell. But its rhythm stuttered when he remembered another Spock, a younger Spock, a Spock whose tight body he’d been buried in not an hour before, whose placid face held fiery eyes touched by sadness.
“I have to tell you something,” Kirk said. The words caught in his throat.
“What is it, Jim?” Spock prompted him.
Kirk chewed the inside of his cheek. Then, “I’ve been sleeping with Spock.”
That sent both of Spock’s eyebrows upward.
“Indeed?” he said in a tone of mild surprise. “I thought perhaps he and the captain would have paired off by now.”
“That’s all you have to say about it? No recriminations, no scolding?” No jealousy?
“Jim, what would you have me say?” Spock asked, one hand lifted and spread in quite human a gesture of question. “You are an adult. Spock is an adult. Despite anyone’s feelings on the matter, you have not been beholden to me in any way. I have lain with others since our parting as well. Perhaps not recently, but I have. Would you hold that against me?”
“That’s different.”
“It is not.”
“I was angry at you.”
“Understandably.”
“I took advantage of his feelings for other-me.”
Spock sighed and lifted one shoulder in a minute shrug.
“Do you want me to reprimand you, Jim? It was not well done of you. There. Has that made you feel any more remorse than you already felt?”
Kirk passed a hand over his face, rubbed at his tired eyes.
“I knew I was being a shit and did it anyway,” he said. “Continued to do it. But even though he’s a little more…raw, he’s so much like you, Spock. The way he moves. His mannerisms. His voice.” Kirk cracked a grin. “His body. I’d tell myself - ‘just this one last time, and I’ll stop.’ But. There he’d be again, with his hands behind his back and his-” Kirk’s mouth snapped shut before he could say something humiliating. When he looked at Spock again, his lover was plainly amused, one corner of his mouth quirked up to match his eyebrow.
“I imagine I will never tire of hearing you enumerate my many virtues, Jim. Do go on.”
“You’re a dirty old goat, Spock.” That got him a full smile, complete with teeth. “Anyway. You have him to thank for finally knocking some sense into me. He made this call for me. He made me shut up and deal when I was too wrapped up in being mad at you to do anything but slowly implode.”
“I shall express my gratitude to him at our next meeting.”
“Mm, Spock meetings. Can I come? Can you kiss in front of me?”
“No.”
“You’re no fun at all.”
“Jim.”
“Hm?”
“Perhaps you can do him a favor in return.”
Spock had leaned forward, and Kirk matched him.
“I owe him one,” Kirk said. “Or ten.”
“This will do.”
“What is it, Spock?”
“The captain.” Brown eyes twinkled at him. “You are in a unique position to illuminate what he may have overlooked in a certain first officer of his.”
“Ah.” Kirk sat back with a laugh. “Translation: I’m in a unique position to tell him to stop angsting about his super-secret homosexual tendencies and get with the sexy Vulcan picture.”
“As humans are fond of saying: ‘your words, not mine.’”
Kirk cocked his head at Spock and smiled.
“I’m glad you’re here, Spock.”
“I’m glad you’re here, t’hy’la.”
“I’ll take care of the rampant dumbassery emanating from the captain’s quarters. And I’ll call you later. And I’ll tell you exact arrival dates when I know them.”
“Of course, Jim.”
“Spock? I’ll be counting the days.”
Spock held out two fingers, and Kirk pressed his own to the screen.
“As will I, ashayam. Be well, Jim.”
“Bye, Spock. See you soon.”
The screen winked back to black, and Kirk was up and dressed and out the door in under a minute. His feet knew the way to his old quarters.
Prologue Part I Part II
In front of Jim was a request from Admiral Kirk to drop him off in San Francisco when the Enterprise would dock for repairs in a month. She’d been hit pretty badly in the last skirmishes with Romulans on the outskirts of the neutral zone, and a starbase wouldn’t do. Jim had been wondering what the man would decide, and he was surprised to see he hadn’t requested Jim leave him on New Vulcan. The way Old-Spock told it, those two had been BFF, and hadn’t Jim been so bitterly envious to hear the ambassador speak of someone named James Kirk that way? To see “San Francisco” scribbled in familiar script under “destination” filled him with a little bit of self-satisfaction that he would never tell anyone about.
When his alternate first arrived in a scrambled transporter beam two weeks ago, Jim was excited to meet him and combine their powers for the forces of awesome. Actually, first Jim ordered him quarantined, polygraphed, and tested for alien DNA, but he should have known the guy would hack his way out of the brig, and by the time he emerged again, clothes inexplicably torn and whiskey eyes somehow deadened, Jim knew he was who he said he was and instead of excitement, he felt a creeping disquiet about the man.
He suddenly understood why Spock shied away from Old-Spock, though they were sometimes forced to interact on family or New Vulcan business. Admiral Kirk represented more than an assurance that Jim was capable of reaching forty without succumbing to a fiery death by recklessness - he represented lessons not yet learned, mistakes not yet made, hurts not yet inflicted, but all inevitable in spirit if not to the letter. Did Spock look into familiar brown eyes and cringe to see the depth of pain endured? Jim had borne more than his share of heartache, he’d always thought, but when he met his alternate properly, when he shook his hand and met his gaze, he knew by the chill that hollowed out his stomach that the admiral might just have him beat.
So he was avoiding him. So he hoisted him off on Spock when he tried to come off all admiral-knows-best on unauthorized visits to the bridge. So he’d taken to avoiding Spock too for the last few months, so what? Maybe the pair of them would be two peas in a pod, and Jim wouldn’t have to think about either of them and how uncomfortable they made him in different ways, and when they finally dropped Kirk off on Earth, Jim could go back to being blissfully unaware of how his own face looked when marked with such bitterness.
The door buzzed and Jim’s heart leapt before he remembered that it wouldn’t be Spock - not since “the incident,” as he secretly called the mortifying debacle from three months ago. The unit that had been Jim-and-Spock, whatever friendship they’d been building for the two years of the mission, was all smoke and rubble ever since Spock had stumbled through a weirdly emotional declaration of his “intentions to court” Jim, and Jim had subsequently dashed out of his quarters. Never mind that he hated to pull rank off duty and never did. Never mind that seeing the desolation flit across Spock’s face for a split second destroyed something warm in Jim’s own chest. Never mind that he’d regretted it ever since it happened, but couldn’t find a way to make it better without rejecting Spock all over again. Because Jim wanted to be friends, and Spock wanted way, way more, and the two were mutually exclusive. In petty, lonely moments, Jim was still angry at him for it. He’d liked being friends with Spock; why wasn’t that enough?
The door buzzed again and Jim shook off those thoughts, calling out to allow entry. When it was McCoy and disappointment bloomed hot and shameful in Jim’s gut, he squashed the ensuing guilt and plastered on his widest grin.
“Bones! What brings you here on this fine night?”
McCoy looked surlier than usual, and Jim went to retrieve a bottle of Saurian brandy to tame the beast.
“It’s that bastard of an alternate you, Jim. I don’t know what’s up his ass, but whatever it is, it’s gnawed its way to his brain and taken bites out of whatever it is that makes you nice most of the time.” He snorted and accepted the tumbler Jim pushed into his hands. “As if we needed a less stable version of you.” He plonked himself down at Jim’s table, and Jim took his customary seat opposite him.
“Hey,” he said with a pout, “I’m stable.”
McCoy waved his hand in dismissal.
“All I’m saying is he comes into sickbay all snide and biting when he’s got nothing to do, and it’s not even good natured. Chris almost slapped him one earlier, and then I think she went away to cry. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“What did he say?”
McCoy shook his head and leaned forward.
“Something about how Spock will never want her. Jesus, Jim, no one needs to hear something like that, even if it’s as plain as the gay on Spock’s face.”
Jim swallowed against the lurch in his throat. He hadn’t told McCoy about the incident - had never figured out a way to keep both his and Spock’s dignity in tact by sharing it, even with his best friend. Jim wondered if that fact of Spock’s homosexuality was apparent to everyone but him - and Christine Chapel. Idly he imagined holding meetings for the Wishful Thinking Club, where he and Chapel would delude themselves for an hour a week that Spock was straight and in love with the right one of them and wanted to crack beers and play fantasy football - or whatever, fill out reports - with the other. He became aware that McCoy was staring at him expectantly after the pause had stretched too long, and he fished for something appropriate to say.
“That’s out of line.”
“You’re damn right it is. And I can’t even talk to him about it - he’s not on active duty and has no compulsion to follow my orders when I tell him to come see me in a medical capacity and not just to bug me. He’s not even-” McCoy face grimaced. “He told me I’m not his Bones and I can fuck off with my bullshit psychoanalyzing. I think there might be more wrong than a lapse in gentility here. And considering your aversion to therapists, trying to get him to see Dr. Shandhir might be like trying to bathe a bobcat. You should talk to him.”
“Me? Christ, Bones, what the hell can I say? And why would he listen? To him I’m just a dumbass kid who made good faster than him.”
McCoy swirled the brandy in his glass and gave a little shrug.
“You’re him. You have insight into him that no one else possibly could. Whatever it is, it might be something you understand, and he’ll tell you.”
Jim pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed his face before blinking at McCoy from across the table. His own glass of brandy remained untouched on the table between them.
“I really don’t think it’s that simple. He’s… he weirds me out. And maybe we’re talking about the same thing, but he just seems… broken? Hurt, somehow, that I can’t relate to, and I can hardly talk to him. I don’t talk to him.”
McCoy pressed his lips together in the flattened-frog exasperated look he reserved only for Jim.
“You make Spock talk to him.”
Jim tucked his lips back behind his teeth and shrugged.
“Jesus, Jim. I’m not sure how great an idea that is,” McCoy said.
“Why not? They get along all right, far as I can tell.”
“Except Spock’s looking a little worn around the edges since the good admiral’s come to stay, too. And he’s signed out a dermal regenerator twice.”
Jim frowned.
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t let me look at him. Said it was ‘no concern of mine.’ Hmph.”
“Hold on, Bones.” Jim stood and felt all his blood leave his top half. He steadied himself with his hands on the table and fixed McCoy with an intense glare. “You think that bastard is hurting Spock? Beating him or something? Oh my God!”
“No. No, Jim, calm down.” McCoy thumped the tabletop as if ordering a dog to heel. “Nothing like that. I thought I saw something suspiciously like a lovebite on Spock’s shoulder the other day when I gave him the Morvanian bat rabies inoculation and figured he’s finally got someone paying him a bit of kindly attention, and I was a hair’s breadth away from congratulating him just to watch him turn colors. But it’s - Jim, if it’s the admiral, he’s volatile, and angry, and it’s something that has the potential to go down in some serious flames.”
Jim collapsed in the chair as if drained of strength.
“I don’t understand.”
“What part? If it’s about how you would never hurt Spock like that and can’t wrap your mind around it, yeah. I mean. There’s rough sex and there’s rough sex. Normally I’d trust you to know the difference and be safe, but we’ve established that he is not you.”
“Which invalidates your ‘I should talk to him because I’m him’ theory.”
“Shove it, Jim. I’m being serious. ”
“I’m being serious!” Jim said in a rush. “I’m not - I’m not into guys, Bones! The fact that the admiral is and might be going too far with kinky bondage games or something with Spock makes me - makes me - I don’t know, but it makes me something not good, and, no, I definitely don’t understand. But it proves once and for all that I’m not him.”
McCoy’s eyebrow was ticking dangerously close to ‘crazy mountain man who makes clothes out of trespassers.’
“What?” Jim snapped.
“You don’t like guys at all?”
Jim burned as if McCoy were accusing him of something illicit.
“No! What? What gave you the impression that I did? Oh my God, have I been giving off gay vibes?”
McCoy held up his hands as if he could stopper Jim’s mouth with one gesture.
“‘Gay vibes’ - for Christ’s sake, Jim, what year are you from?”
“I just - I’m not into it, okay? I don’t care who anyone else fucks, but for me, it’s women all the way. End of story. Anyway, this is not about me, this is about bizarro me who may or may not be hitting it with my first, and hitting it too hard.”
McCoy’s sigh was a gruff rumble, and Jim felt a profound relief when he saw the moment McCoy let the subject go.
“I think if there were anything seriously wrong, Spock would have the wherewithal - the logic - to stop it, or get help stopping it from one of us. I’m concerned more about the admiral’s state of mind in all this. I’m worried it might be some kind of breakdown, and we’re watching it happen without trying to help.”
“So he’s suddenly fucking dudes like some kind of mid-life crisis and Spock got caught in the crossfire?”
“Jesus, Jim! No! The fact of who he - that has nothing to do with anything. What’s the matter with you?”
Jim clenched his fists and pushed them under his armpits. He hiked his shoulders in another shrug.
“Nothing - nothing.”
“If you had some kind of secret homophobia thing going on, the psych evals would have caught it and you’d never have made captain. So what’s your deal right now, Jim?”
Jim closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Can we not talk about this? What about Admiral Kirk - he’s the one with the mid-life crisis.”
“Or depression. Which is treatable. But being a jackass doesn’t have a clear course of action other than a solid slap upside the head.”
Jim glared at his best friend, who had no qualms about glaring back with those lighted eyes of his all bugged out.
“Look. I just - it bothers me, okay? The thought of Spock… with him. I mean, I thought - it doesn’t matter what I thought. I don’t like that he’s not treating Spock right. And I don’t like…. fuck, Bones, let’s be real right now: I don’t like that I might wake up one day and think to myself, ‘hmm, sure could go for some cock today.’” Didn’t like to think that he already had, and had viciously stomped down on the entire idea a long time ago.
McCoy was silent, and he tipped the rest of the brandy down his throat. He let out a slow, deliberate breath.
“Would it really be the end of the world?” he asked, and Jim recognized the mildness of his tone as his ‘I’m a caring doctor, really - now let me strap you down for this painful procedure,’ voice.
Jim shook his head.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just - it’s still not easy for people, you know? To be gay, or bi, or pan, or whatever. Plenty of places in the universe still judge you. Riverside - Riverside was like that. This kid, Jordan Sanders. Man, everyone really ripped him up, you know? And adults would hardly do anything. Anyone in a position of power would do this whole winking disapproval, slap on the wrist type thing to anyone who messed with him. Total bullshit. Jordan - I don’t know what happened to him. He got beat real bad and dropped out before graduation. But I remember being so fucking glad, Bones, that I wasn’t like that. Like him.” And terrified that I was, he didn’t add.
McCoy was nodding, his brows drawn together in a thoughtful furrow.
“I get that. I do, Jim. But you can’t go around saying things like Kirk went crazy, and that’s why he’s up with the gay sex. You get that, right?”
Jim swallowed against the bile that threatened to rise in his gullet.
“I know. Okay? But it’s hard, no matter what I say, not to think of him as this future me. And then it’s hard for me to think about what that means for me, and my sexuality, or whatever. And Spock - Spock doesn’t deserve… whatever this is. A guy who’s using him to exorcise his demons, and then another guy who couldn’t possibly… be what he wants.” Because even if there was just the tiniest chance that maybe Jim could… prefer the company of men, someone unsure and afraid was the last thing Spock needed.
McCoy’s eyebrow rose again.
“Did he say something to you?”
“Ugh.”
“Jim.”
“Yes, okay?” Jim threw his hands up. “Yes. He asked, a few months ago. For us to be together. I said no.”
McCoy sat back and watched him with a calculating expression. Jim hazarded a glance at him.
“You gonna berate me about it?”
“No, Jim. Can’t force feelings that aren’t there, though I hope you tried to spare the ones he professes not to have. I had wondered why you weren’t attached at the hip with the hobgoblin anymore. Figured it was his fault.”
“Why would it be his fault? Aren’t you always telling me what a jackass I am, fucking things up?”
“Aw, kid, come off it. I just meant Spock has a tendency to be… brusque. Literal. Accidentally rude. Irritatingly single-minded. Vaguely insulting towards humans. I could go on. I thought maybe he’d finally mentioned your lack of logic one too many times.”
“Well, he didn’t,” Jim huffed, all indignation. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s perfect.”
“He sure can pick ’em.”
Jim scoffed. “Asshole.”
“Jackass.”
“Dick.”
“You realize you called him perfect just now?”
“Fuck off, Bones.”
McCoy regarded him with a calculating look for a moment before he stood and put his glass down on the table.
“Listen, Jim,” he said. “Thanks for the drink. I needed it. Now I’m asking you to go talk to Spock, or the other you, and figure out a way we can get him sorted out. No one’s asking you to start some kind of manly romance with Spock. We can even forget we had this conversation if it makes you feel better. Just - go figure out what’s wrong, and fix it. Okay?”
“That’s not my job, Bones.”
The doors to Jim’s quarters slid open and McCoy smirked at him from where he paused in the jamb.
“Everything on this boat is your job, Captain.” And the doors slid shut behind him.
Jim groaned and set his head down on the table with a blunt smack. Then it occurred to him: McCoy’s hypothesis that Kirk and Spock were an item could be completely off, based on a false assumption. Maybe Spock had some other new boyfriend sucking shapes into his skin, and Kirk was operating on an outlier of his usual emotional keel and it had nothing to do with Spock whatsoever. All he had to do was ask.
When Spock opened the door he was wearing only his trousers and black thermal undershirt. Somehow seeing his forearms bare, dusted with fine black hair, seemed an intimacy Jim should not be afforded, and he forced his gaze to Spock’s face.
“Jim.” His voice held a note of surprise. Then, more carefully, “Captain.”
“Hey Spock,” Jim said. “May I?” He gestured toward Spock’s quarters, and Spock nodded and stepped back. Jim walked in and looked around. It was the same as it had ever been, clean and Spartan and smelling of Spock. Spock herded him toward the work table.
“Would you care for a refreshment, Captain?”
Jim waved his hand.
“No, no, that’s all right. How’ve you been?” They sat across from each other
“I am functioning as usual.” There was a pause. “And yourself, Captain?”
Jim sent him a wan smile.
“I’m fine. Fine.” Were they once close enough to share thoughts and smiles freely? Or, what passed for a smile on Spock - a lifting of his expression, a softening of the eyes. Their friendship seemed like a long ago fantasy Jim had fabricated in some vivid day dream. Now it was as if it had never happened.
Spock was staring at him.
“Do you require something?” he asked.
“Sorry.” Jim dropped his eyes. “Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the admiral.”
Spock stiffened, and Jim felt a terrible weight settle on his chest.
“What is your query?”
Jim drew a breath and met guarded brown eyes.
“I know you’ve been spending a lot of time with him, and I wondered if you could give some insight about his state of mind. He seems….”
“Unhappy,” Spock finished for him.
Jim nodded. “Yeah.”
Spock sat back in his chair and clasped his hands together in front of his mouth. Elegant brows drew downward in contemplation.
“He is struggling with certain adjustments he has had to make in his life,” Spock began. “His promotion was unsought and came with a grounding, and his personal life had recently taken a terrible blow. These things, alongside the disorientation of finding himself in this reality, have converged to make his command of his humors precarious.”
“Spock. Is he going to be a problem?”
Spock lifted his head and placed his chin atop his clasped hands. He regarded Jim as if he were a curiosity on a newly discovered planet.
“If you are asking me, Captain, whether I believe he is a danger to himself or others, the answer is no, I do not.”
“Good,” Jim said. He exhaled and felt lighter. “That’s good. It makes me feel better. But do you think he needs help at all? I mean - do you think I should try to get him to see Shandhir, talk things out?”
Spock almost smiled, and it was almost sad.
“Would you go to a psychotherapist if a younger version of yourself demanded it?”
Jim grunted out a harsh facsimile of a laugh.
“I guess not. But I mean… we should do what we can to help him. He might be too proud, but Shandhir could help.”
“Perhaps I can broach the subject with him when next I see him.”
“Thanks, Spock.” A cautious smile stole over Jim’s face. “Me and Bones would really appreciate it.”
Spock dropped his hands to his lap and looked down.
“Of course, Captain,” he said. “Is there anything else?”
Jim’s heart thumped hard against his ribs. His mouth went dry and his palms clammy, but he had to ask. He had to push the question past his lips; he had to know.
“Are you fucking him, Spock?”
Spock’s head snapped up and his eyes were round and disbelieving. His face had taken on a frightening pallor even as the apples of his cheeks flushed green.
“E- excuse me?”
“It was a theory. That maybe you were letting him… do things to you.”
“That is none of your business, Captain. You may leave my quarters now.”
Jim’s eyes flashed.
“You don’t dismiss me, First Officer.”
“Respectfully, Captain, my personal life is none of your concern.” They both stood, and maybe they were too close, now that Jim could feel the puffs of Spock’s quick breath on his face, but Jim was shaking with sudden certainty of the truth yet unacknowledged. “Please leave,” Spock said.
“No. I want to hear it from your mouth.”
“I refuse to answer. The subject is none of your business.”
“The hell it isn’t!” Jim snarled. “Jesus, Spock - I didn’t take you for the casual sex type. Anyone will do, huh, long as his name’s Jim Kirk?” They were so close, Spock’s heat poured into him. “You’d let him destroy you, just for a second-hand taste of me?”
Spock stepped closer still until Jim was forced to step back and give ground. He found himself pressed against the door to Spock’s quarters, chest to chest with their occupant, eyes to blazing eyes.
“I find it curious, Captain, that you profess not to want me, and yet at the notion that another might, you fly into an irrational rage. That is your burden, not mine.”
“Is he any good? Everything you ever wanted? Answer me!”
Spock’s eyes burned, hot and black, and inside himself Jim felt a knot clench and unclench in a convulsive nausea.
“This is not ship’s business, and thus I have no obligation to answer you, Captain,” Spock said in a low growl. “I bid you goodnight with the hopes that you return to reason come ship’s morning.”
“You smarmy fucking self-righteous son of a -”
“You will not complete that sentence. You will go to your bunk and sleep and leave me in peace.”
“Does he look enough like me? Huh, Spock?”
Spock pressed the doors open and Jim stumbled out, graceless. When he looked up, the doors were sliding shut again, but Jim heard the single, clipped syllable Spock bit out before he locked Jim out.
“No.”
II
Spock paced behind his door after throwing Kirk into the corridor. Hot turmoil had flooded his senses, and he could not center himself. He crossed over to his bedspace and settled cross legged in front of it. He straightened his spine and closed his eyes, and he tried to tighten his awareness around the column of his body. But Jim’s scent and Jim’s anger and Jim’s jealousy had bled into Spock’s consciousness, a chaos that rattled him. He couldn’t find the kernel of peace that meditation required. He bolted to his feet and in under five minutes, he was at Admiral Kirk’s guest quarters three decks below, buzzing for entry.
When Spock was in, he found Kirk shirtless on his side in the bed. Kirk tilted a smile up at him and extended an arm in invitation. Spock stripped as he dashed forward, and by the time he sank in beside the admiral, he was naked, feverish, and hard enough to burst at a single touch. But Kirk’s grasp around the base of his cock thwarted him.
Kirk pushed him down on his back and levered himself over Spock, set their hips in tension.
“Tell me you want me,” he said in a low rumble.
“I want you,” Spock gasped.
Kirk gripped his hair. “Always.”
“Always, always want you, Jim.”
Kirk kissed him hard, and on the edges of Kirk’s teeth and in the consumptive heat of his hands, Spock found his kernel of peace and let himself be subsumed.
Afterward, they lay on their backs panting, glistening with sweat and semen. Their shoulders and arms touched, and Spock could feel Kirk’s despondency, tempered for now with satiation. Kirk sat up and rummaged around in the bedside table. When he turned back around, he had a soft cloth and set to wiping Spock down, careful not to go against the grain of his chest hair, and gentle when he moved down to his anus. Sometimes, even in the tumult of their affair, there were quiet moments like this one during which Spock imagined they were different people, people who had chosen each other without the spectres of others at their backs. Spock felt warm as he watched Kirk take care of him with singular concentration. He brought up a hand and traced the line of Kirk’s jaw, his cheekbone. When he looked up at Spock, his eyes were gold.
“Are you sore?” he asked.
“Not… at the site of penetration. My left nipple, perhaps.”
Kirk shifted to straddle him, knees on either side of his hips as he leaned down to inspect the nipple in question. He pressed a kiss to its abraded surface. Illogical and unfounded as it was, Spock’s nipple did feel soothed.
“Sorry,” Kirk said. “Got a little carried away.”
“It’s nothing,” Spock said, and he stroked through Kirk’s bronze hair, rubbed at his shoulders. Kirk sighed and stretched out to lay his head on Spock’s chest and tangle their legs. He set his hand over Spock’s heart.
“I’m going to Earth,” he said. “Just put in the request transmission to mini-me. He’s probably ecstatic to get me off his girl.”
Spock went rigid under him and he craned his neck up.
“What?” he asked.
“He visited me this evening.”
Kirk got off of Spock and settled on his side next to him.
“That why you were in here like a crazy person?”
Spock shut his eyes.
“I apologize,” he said. He felt Kirk’s hand on his cheek, the warm press of Kirk’s lips on his own.
“Don’t apologize. It’s not like we both don’t know how this works.”
Spock kissed him deeper, clasped his hand in his hair and anchored him to plunder his mouth. Kirk gave way, but he pulled back at the stirrings of Spock’s penis against his hip.
“Want me to suck you?” he asked.
Spock nodded, and when Kirk set himself to the task with intoxicating enthusiasm, Spock’s hand drifted down until it covered Kirk’s eyes. When he came twenty minutes later, three of Kirk’s fingers buried in his slack hole, he felt wrung out, purged of everything that gave him strength, and he lay with his arm slung over his eyes while Kirk licked away all his ejaculate.
Kirk settled at his side and rubbed a soothing hand up and down Spock’s stomach.
“Good?”
Spock nodded weakly. Kirk put his head on Spock’s shoulder and his arm around his chest.
“My Spock liked that too,” he murmured. Spock was silent, and for a moment he slipped into a dream in which he was elderly, and Kirk kissed him with aching reverence. When his eyes fluttered open moments later, his heart was beating too fast.
“My Captain had a request of me,” he said. Kirk grunted. “He wished for me to compel you to see Dr. Shandhir.”
Kirk grunted again, half laugh. “She’s…”
“She’s what?”
“Earnest. Too damned earnest - I don’t even know how she can function, being so earnest all the time.”
“Her empathetic nature should not be a deterrent to your speaking with her, should you find yourself in need of an impartial third party.”
Kirk shift and propped himself up against the pillow.
“No. No, she looks at you all big doe eyes and sympathetic expression, no matter what you say. You could say ‘I just killed a man in cold blood,’ and she would -”
“You would never kill a man in cold blood, Admiral.”
Kirk hummed out a short laugh.
“You’re right there, Mr. Spock. My point is… it’s hard to explain. Shandhir - she doesn’t see how dark things get. It’s almost like she doesn’t see the terrible facets of human nature at all.”
“She has an advanced medical degree and is a highly prized mind in her field. I doubt she is unfamiliar with… darkness. Rather, her faith in the essential goodness of her patients overcomes that darkness.”
“I know, I know,” Kirk said with a wave of his hand. “I’ve just always felt bad talking to her, like I’m soiling someone too good for the world. It ends up heaping guilt on top of whatever I’m supposed to be telling her about.”
“You have spoken to her before, then?”
“Yeah. Yeah. My McCoy was always trying to get me to air out my feelings after a bad mission.”
“He cares for you.”
“And I remember to be grateful, most of the time.”
“You could speak to our McCoy. He cares as well, despite his churlish nature.” They both knew speaking to Spock wouldn’t help.
Kirk stared down at him. Spock wondered at what subtle physical differences existed between himself and the one Kirk had loved. He wondered what Kirk saw superimposed onto his face.
“I know I’m not all right, Spock,” Kirk said. “But I also know whining to McCoy about how my lover left me isn’t gonna help. Didn’t help the first time, won’t help now. I just have to suck it up and try not to look like I’m coming apart at the seams.” He paused. “Probably shouldn’t have been such a bastard to Chapel.”
“What did you do to her?”
Kirk crossed his arms but sent Spock a sidelong smirk.
“You just drive people crazy no matter what universe. I felt like hurting someone else who couldn’t have you, either. It was a shitty move, and I’ll apologize tomorrow.”
Spock hesitated before he said, “You can, Admiral. Have me, that is.”
Kirk raised both eyebrows at him.
“You don’t want me, Spock. You want that pup chasing his tail three decks up, for whatever reason.”
“I meant my counterpart on New Vulcan.”
Kirk’s demeanor transformed in an instant. He flushed and scowled, body going stiff beside Spock.
“Look, I’ve told you -”
“You have told me and told me and not listened to me in return,” Spock said.
“Spock-”
“Hush. My counterpart is the Spock from your timeline, though he has surpassed you in age. He has not been explicit with me about the details of your union, but I know that it was a long one, and a committed one, and one that brought him joy even through times of sorrow. I know he has been without you for a long time, and I know that he would be - overcome to welcome you into his arms again.”
Kirk’s stare was a blank emptiness, but from where Spock’s fingertips rested on his arm came a wave of grief mingled with anger. The sensation was nauseating, but Spock pressed on.
“If it is as you say, and he went to Gol, then it was an unsuccessful venture and he returned to you. You were bonded in the way of the Vulcan people - mind, body, spirit. Admiral, do you believe in coincidence?” Kirk’s eyes had darkened, and he did not speak. “I find the odds of your appearance in this reality, where he also resides, on this ship, which can transport you to him easily, to be so astronomical that I cannot calculate them. It is a gift, Admiral, and one that you should not dismiss in anger.”
The corners of Kirk’s mouth drew down, and he clenched his jaw.
“I don’t know how to forgive him for this,” he said in a whisper. “I can’t.”
Spock leaned over and kissed him, soft and slow, and he pressed his palm to Kirk’s in a sensual slide. They had not kissed so tenderly in the two weeks since beginning their affair, but Spock wanted this moment to be soft, to be something warm for two men who grappled with such cold. He wanted it to be the last thing they remembered about their time together.
“You can,” he said when he pulled back. “You have, and you will again. I will set up a transmission with visual for you.” Kirk’s eyes shone too brightly from his flushed face. He could not speak, but nodded his assent.
Spock stood and gathered the clothing that was strewn on the floor between the door and the bedroom space. He pulled them on, back to Kirk, but he could feel Kirk watching him. Admiring his body. Spock pushed down the curious mixture of gratification and resentment that watchful gaze elicited. At the comm device on the table beyond the bedroom partition, Spock’s fingers flew over the commands he’d memorized. He felt Kirk at his back, and then the weight Kirk’s hand on the back of his neck.
“Thanks,” Kirk said. Spock left the seat and faced Kirk, who was now fully clothed as well. He was about eye level with Spock’s nose, but Spock’s initial sense of disorientation at their differing heights had passed. He contemplated reaching out to touch him on the shoulder, to prolong what few things could be good and pure between them, but his arms remained at his sides, and he moved past Kirk toward the door. Before he left, he watched Kirk sink into the chair in front of the view screen and press the button that would send his transmission request. When the screen flickered and the wizened face of his counterpart appeared on it bleary with sleep, Spock exited in silence.
III
“Jim?” came the hoarse voice. Spock’s hair was askew, and he blinked over and over. Kirk realized that he’d woken him, and he wasn’t as quick to alertness anymore.
Kirk’s chest constricted. It was his Spock - definitely his Spock, by the bony prominence of his nose and the strong, sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones, recognizable though age had withered his skin, clouded his eyes and tarnished his hair. Kirk felt a thickness gather at the base of his throat
“Hey, Spock,” he croaked. “It’s me.”
Kirk listened to his breathing and drank in the sight of him as he came awake.
“T’hy’la?” Brown eyes opened wider, and his whole expression lifted. He smiled, and something hard and aching inside Kirk broke at the sight. He pressed his palm to the viewer before he could stop himself.
“Spock. God, look at you.”
“I don’t understand, Jim. You are not - What’s happened?”
“Transporter malfunction. As usual. I - I’ve been here two weeks.” Suddenly it seemed a shameful, ridiculous interval to have waited to hear the sound of his lover’s voice.
Across the light-years, Spock pressed his hand to his own viewer to match Kirk’s. All Kirk could feel was the cool of the screen.
“How old are you?” Spock asked without masking his awe.
“Too close to forty, my friend. What about you?”
“I’ve lived one hundred and sixty years, Jim.”
Kirk’s breath left him and he dropped his hand, into his lap. He leaned closer to the view screen.
“You look great,” he said. “Perfect.”
Spock smiled at him again and took his hand away too, and the pain of not being together was huge and unbearable and tore at Kirk’s heart.
“You are a flatterer,” Spock said. “And a biased one, at that.”
Kirk shook his head. He knew what he really was: a low thing, selfish and wallowing so thoroughly in his own pain that he would inflict it on innocent others, on his own lover, just to feel less impotent.
“I’ve missed you. Spock, I’ve missed you so much, you don’t even know.” Kirk was horrified to find tears prickling hot at his eyes, and he steeled his entire body against them.
Spock cocked his head and the smile that threw Jim’s entire universe off kilter faded.
“Oh, Jim,” he said, barely audible. “I’ve left you to pursue the Kohlinar, haven’t I?”
Kirk could only nod and blink back the tears that threatened to spill.
“I’m sorry,” Spock said. “I have no more than that to offer, but to say that I was young, and foolish, and afraid. Know that I did come back to you. As I come into these final stages of my life, I rue every moment I spent away from you. Every moment I took myself away.”
Kirk gasped for breath and leaned closer to the view screen. Once again Spock’s hand came up as if to trace the lines of his face.
“Final stages? You’re not even old, for a Vulcan.”
He should have known what Spock would say by the sad smile he gave him now, something that he would never have permitted himself in the life they’d shared.
“Ah, but I am human as well, Jim,” he said. “I can admit as much, now. I have lived too long and loved too much to do otherwise.”
Kirk crossed his arms and shoved his shaking hands under his armpits.
“So what - you’re dying now? Mini-Spock’s theory that I was brought here to keep you company seems to be falling apart. I should go tell him how illogical he is.”
An eyebrow, much beloved, arched upward towards Spock’s severe bangs.
“Well. Hardly ‘dying,’ Jim. I am merely aware that there are more years behind me now than there are in front of me.”
Kirk managed a smile then.
“So if you lived a hundred fifty more years and outlived me two times over your statement would still stand.”
Spock didn’t seem to find that funny.
“I’ve become an old man, Jim,” he said. “My body grows infirm. My mind slows. I… I grow weary.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s not morbid. It’s simply how time works on all living things. Kaadith.”
Kirk inhaled, lungs quaking. The thought of Spock - any Spock - dying was enough to send full stores of fear crackling through his veins. Even a peaceful, old-age death seemed unthinkable.
“I hate this. I hate this conversation. How can you- I wish you were here, I wish I could touch you, smell you.” An urgency had crept into his voice and surged in his heart.
“What is the position of the Enterprise now?” Spock asked, and Kirk knew he felt it too. “I could take a shuttle and rendezvous at the nearest starbase.”
“No. No, it’s fine. We’re going back to Earth for repairs and I could just come to you. Wait. Where’s New Vulcan?”
“Perhaps it would be best if I met you in San Francisco when you arrive. You’ll recall that Sarek has a condominium there. Are you amenable to that?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. I think we’ve got an ETA of a month or so. Can you swing that?”
Spock was apparently feeling generous with the smiles tonight.
“Of course,” he said. “I would cross any distance for you, t’hy’la.”
Kirk barked out a laugh and wiped his face hastily when a tear or two finally dropped from his lashes.
“I wish I could pronounce that,” he said.
“Your butchering of the Vulcan language is endearing to me.”
Kirk basked in how easily this Spock expressed himself, basked in his praise and affection and the small smiles that shone so brightly in the darkness that had become Kirk’s life. But after an exchange of platitudes and flirtatious banter, there hung between them a certain heaviness that demanded acknowledgement.
“Spock.” Kirk struggled to contain all his disparate feelings - bursting joy, relief, love, yes, but resentment and despair lingered. And guilt. “Can you - I’m sorry, I know it’s a long time ago for you, but can you tell me? About Gol? And just… why?”
Kirk watched Spock sit back, chest expanding on a deep inhale. The desire to lay his head on that chest, to feel the thrum of the hummingbird heartbeat underneath his palm, was so acute that Kirk barely breathe.
“The depth of my love for you frightened me,” Spock said after a long silence. “I had spent so many years attempting to be wholly Vulcan, wholly logical, wholly unemotional, and yet it was when I was with you that I felt an abiding contentment and less personal conflict. I was happy, and at the time, I believed happiness to be inherently incompatible with being Vulcan.
“Jim, I don’t think you understand how difficult it was for me, a Vulcan among humans, and a very naïve one at that. You came into my life and insinuated yourself with such ease, became indispensible without even trying, that you didn’t see how thoroughly you…. shook me. I believed my happiness, my love for you, was an unforgivable flaw in my character, and when you asked me to marry you- Jim. Oh, Jim, I wanted to say yes. My acceptance almost burst unbidden from my lips before you had even finished asking.”
“So why didn’t you?” Kirk asked past the lump in his throat. “Why didn’t you just say yes, Spock?”
Spock’s eyes closed for a moment, and an ancient pain passed over his face. Kirk longed to soothe it away with gentle hands and soft kisses. But he also longed for him to have said yes all those months ago and for them to be indulging in a long honeymoon right now.
“I believed at the time that to say yes would be to turn away from my heritage, my upbringing, everything I had ever striven to be. I believed that to give in to my feelings for you in such an… irrevocable manner would be to undo myself completely. So I refused, and left for Gol to purge my emotions.”
Kirk met his eyes through the viewer, and he knew he must look wrecked.
“Jim,” Spock said. “I was a fool. I was a fool who had no idea what I was giving up, or the price I had to pay. I was a fool who prioritized the wrong things and discarded the right ones. I was a fool who could not look past my own pain and see how I’d caused yours. Please forgive me.”
Kirk touched the screen again, and Spock’s hand met him there. And it was easy, then. The easiest thing in the world.
“Of course, Spock,” he said. “Of course I forgive you.” Nothing could negate all the hurt inflicted, but a measure of the darkness he’d been carrying since he woke to find his cabin Spockless ebbed away.
“I am gratified,” Spock said, and smiled. It made Kirk’s heart swell. But its rhythm stuttered when he remembered another Spock, a younger Spock, a Spock whose tight body he’d been buried in not an hour before, whose placid face held fiery eyes touched by sadness.
“I have to tell you something,” Kirk said. The words caught in his throat.
“What is it, Jim?” Spock prompted him.
Kirk chewed the inside of his cheek. Then, “I’ve been sleeping with Spock.”
That sent both of Spock’s eyebrows upward.
“Indeed?” he said in a tone of mild surprise. “I thought perhaps he and the captain would have paired off by now.”
“That’s all you have to say about it? No recriminations, no scolding?” No jealousy?
“Jim, what would you have me say?” Spock asked, one hand lifted and spread in quite human a gesture of question. “You are an adult. Spock is an adult. Despite anyone’s feelings on the matter, you have not been beholden to me in any way. I have lain with others since our parting as well. Perhaps not recently, but I have. Would you hold that against me?”
“That’s different.”
“It is not.”
“I was angry at you.”
“Understandably.”
“I took advantage of his feelings for other-me.”
Spock sighed and lifted one shoulder in a minute shrug.
“Do you want me to reprimand you, Jim? It was not well done of you. There. Has that made you feel any more remorse than you already felt?”
Kirk passed a hand over his face, rubbed at his tired eyes.
“I knew I was being a shit and did it anyway,” he said. “Continued to do it. But even though he’s a little more…raw, he’s so much like you, Spock. The way he moves. His mannerisms. His voice.” Kirk cracked a grin. “His body. I’d tell myself - ‘just this one last time, and I’ll stop.’ But. There he’d be again, with his hands behind his back and his-” Kirk’s mouth snapped shut before he could say something humiliating. When he looked at Spock again, his lover was plainly amused, one corner of his mouth quirked up to match his eyebrow.
“I imagine I will never tire of hearing you enumerate my many virtues, Jim. Do go on.”
“You’re a dirty old goat, Spock.” That got him a full smile, complete with teeth. “Anyway. You have him to thank for finally knocking some sense into me. He made this call for me. He made me shut up and deal when I was too wrapped up in being mad at you to do anything but slowly implode.”
“I shall express my gratitude to him at our next meeting.”
“Mm, Spock meetings. Can I come? Can you kiss in front of me?”
“No.”
“You’re no fun at all.”
“Jim.”
“Hm?”
“Perhaps you can do him a favor in return.”
Spock had leaned forward, and Kirk matched him.
“I owe him one,” Kirk said. “Or ten.”
“This will do.”
“What is it, Spock?”
“The captain.” Brown eyes twinkled at him. “You are in a unique position to illuminate what he may have overlooked in a certain first officer of his.”
“Ah.” Kirk sat back with a laugh. “Translation: I’m in a unique position to tell him to stop angsting about his super-secret homosexual tendencies and get with the sexy Vulcan picture.”
“As humans are fond of saying: ‘your words, not mine.’”
Kirk cocked his head at Spock and smiled.
“I’m glad you’re here, Spock.”
“I’m glad you’re here, t’hy’la.”
“I’ll take care of the rampant dumbassery emanating from the captain’s quarters. And I’ll call you later. And I’ll tell you exact arrival dates when I know them.”
“Of course, Jim.”
“Spock? I’ll be counting the days.”
Spock held out two fingers, and Kirk pressed his own to the screen.
“As will I, ashayam. Be well, Jim.”
“Bye, Spock. See you soon.”
The screen winked back to black, and Kirk was up and dressed and out the door in under a minute. His feet knew the way to his old quarters.
Prologue Part I Part II