From the Beginning

by Linsky

Summary:

Spock is drawn to Kirk from the first time he sees him at the Academy.

Notes:

This was the very first piece of fanfiction I ever wrote, almost five years ago. It hasn't been thoroughly edited since then, so if there are any major errors, past!me begs your forgiveness. Enjoy!

Chapter 1

Spock was twenty-one the first time he laid eyes on James T. Kirk.

At the time, he was sitting in a Starfleet Ethics class required for all first-year students at the Academy. Spock was in his fourth and final year at the Academy and would not have chosen to spend an afternoon in a first-year class when he could have been in the lab. However, his lab advisor was also the professor in charge of evaluating new instructors, and he had asked Spock to sit in on this class and evaluate the young Dr. Wyndham. Spock did not think himself the logical choice for such an assignment, but he had not thought it fit to object.

So far, Dr. Wyndham was not making a good showing. He was discussing the Prime Directive and the reasoning behind it, while stammering an average of 2.6 times per sentence.

“So the Prime Directive is only meant to apply to…to living and growing civilizations. So if, uh, if you found a world where, um…where people were not able to express their, uh, natural selves, then, um…”

The point was extremely poorly phrased. The man looked as if he thought the classroom might some sort of imminent threat. Spock was no expert at reading human facial expressions—a defect he was studiously attempting to correct—but he was fairly certain that the young doctor’s implied fear.

The instructor raised his arm—with a look Spock classified as “relief”—to call on someone in the class. “Er, yes.”

“How can you tell for sure if a different culture is following a natural course of development?”

The question was asked in a clear voice. Spock turned and saw a boy—a young man—about halfway up the auditorium, in the middle of the center section. He was leaning forward in his seat, and his eyes were intent on the instructor.

“We’re assuming that we can judge whether another culture is expressing itself naturally,” the student continued. “But don’t we risk viewing things from an Earth-centric point of view and judging wrong?”

The instructor coughed. “Well, there are always, um…signs. If, uh…from frequent observation of someone, you can, uh, tell whether they are at liberty to say and to do as they like…to show how they feel…”

“What about the Vulcans, though?” the clear voice asked in response.

Spock felt his own attention sharpen. When his people were mentioned in large groups of humans, it was rarely to express something good.

“They choose not to express how they feel,” the student continued. “But no one could accuse theirs of not being a living, growing civilization. Isn’t the choice not to express yourself still a form of self-expression?”

Spock turned fully in his seat to look at this intent face. The boy’s comment revealed a level of insight rarely—in Spock’s experience—found in one so young. Spock himself was only twenty-one, a mere three years older than this human, but his experience with worlds other than his own had led him to observe that most people, whether human, Vulcan, or otherwise, took many more years than eighteen to accept that their own cultural precepts were not superior to all others. If they ever did accept the fact.

“Certainly,” the instructor said. He looked flustered and fiddled with his pen until it fell to the floor. He bent to pick it up. “I’m sure it is so. Thank you for your observation, Mr. Kirk. Now, if you’ll study with me the language of the Prime Directive in the Starfleet Manual…”

He went on to talk about the legal precedent surrounding alleged violations of the Directive in Starfleet history. But Spock was no longer paying strict attention: his thoughts were still on the boy who had asked the question. There had been a strange look in his face when Dr. Wyndham had changed the subject. Frustration, yes, but also something that Spock, with his limited understanding of human faces, found it difficult to recognize. He thought that it might have been compassion. Spock turned his head once more, discreetly, to observe the boy’s as the lecture continued. It was logical: he needed to study faces, and this young man’s expressions seemed…more vivid than most.

After a bit, Spock was afraid his gaze might become noticeable, and he turned his eyes to the front of the room once more. Dr. Wyndham was not improving. Spock was sorry, for it was vital that the students at Starfleet Academy receive a thorough grounding in ethics. A question such as the young man—Kirk—had asked might have sparked a fascinating and useful discussion in the hands of a more capable professor.

Spock found it fitting to think about how he would have responded. Yes, it was difficult to try to evaluate another culture without viewing it through the lens of one’s own cultural values. That was why the Prime Directive was not designed to evaluate. It required a subtle shift in perspective: one had to start from the assumption that whatever another culture did was valid according to its own rules, and only if one were to be confronted with indisputable evidence of a great danger—to the culture itself or to the outside world—could one interfere. It could happen only in the rarest of cases. That was one of the many points Dr. Wyndham should have been making: that of the intrinsic value of other cultures, even when an observer cannot find or recognize any traits of value in them. The value of the cultures of both Spock’s parents, for example. That was a talk that would have benefited the future Starfleet officers in the room.

At least, Spock told himself, there was one student in the room who understood that already.

That night, Spock wrote an unfavorable review of Dr. Wyndham and sent it off to his professor.

***

The rest of that week passed in its usual manner for Spock: it was filled with days spent in the lab and a few spare hours gleaned between eating and sleeping to meditate and to walk around the Academy grounds. Since coming to the Academy, Spock had found that walking in peace and quiet was almost as beneficial to his inner balance as meditation. He did not spare any thought for the Ethics class he had observed.

But the next Monday, a few minutes before one o’clock, he found himself once more in that part of the school, on his way from the cafeteria to the labs. It could at first have been termed an impulse that made him consider following the stream of students into the classroom. A second after the impulse had occurred to him, he had a justification: his professor had seemed quite affected by his negative review of the young Dr. Wyndham. Spock, while not doubting the accuracy of his report, thought that he perhaps owed it to the novice instructor to give him an additional observation. It was possible, after all, for an emotionally changeable human to give a significantly worse performance on one day than another.

Spock entered the classroom and sat, once more, on the right side of the room, where the seats curved around and he could have a view of most of the auditorium. He immediately found his eyes going to the middle section of the room. The next instant he chided himself: there was no reason the boy should sit in the same place he had last time, and, moreover, no reason Spock should find any particular interest in the sight of him. Yet a moment later the boy did sit down, just a few seats away from where he had been the previous class. He was apparently conversing with another boy, though Spock was too far away to hear what was said.

Just then the instructor took a step forward at the front of the room and cleared his throat. The students gradually quieted down. Spock saw the one called Kirk make a gesture at the other boy to be quiet.

Spock turned his eyes back to the front. This lecture, on different cultures’ attitudes towards privacy, was no more enlightening than the previous one. Dr. Wyndham seemed long on information and short on the ability to interpret it. Spock quickly became unengaged in the talk and found his eyes drifting back towards the boy called Kirk. It was a logical enough action: Kirk had proved to be interesting, while Dr. Wyndham was merely tiresome.

Kirk’s emotions were once more blazoned upon his face as he watched the lecture. Spock frequently saw frustration—an emotion he could easily understand in this setting. But occasionally Kirk’s eyes would light up with interest, as something Dr. Wyndham said evidently sparked an idea or a question. Whatever it was that made Kirk’s eyes so bright, Spock could not help but suspect it would have been more valuable to hear than the instructor’s lecture.

Upon leaving the class that day, Spock made two easy decisions. First, he chose not to amend his review of Dr. Wyndham’s teaching skill. Second, he deliberately moved his thoughts to the experiment he was currently conducting in the lab, and his highly organized mind found it easy not to think of the lecture or anything that had happened in it for the rest of the week.

But the next week, at quarter to one on Monday afternoon, he found himself inclined to attend the class again.

This time, there was no easy justification for the inclination, and this made Spock pause in concern. Rather than entering the classroom, he stopped at a window in the hallway outside and looked out at the San Francisco afternoon while he turned his mind to the problem. Any seemingly illogical desires needed to be rooted out and examined and, if found to be truly illogical, suppressed. At the moment, he found himself with a desire to attend a class he did not find interesting or profitable. Why? It could not be because of the instructor or the subject matter.

After several moments of thought, he concluded that there was only one possible reason: the interest he found in observing the young student called Kirk.

Was this a logical desire? He did have the need to improve his understanding of human facial expressions. He rarely had the opportunity to observe a single subject in great depth when he was not himself a part of the conversation and therefore distracted. While his studies of Kirk might not be easily translatable to other humans, there was merit in the idea of becoming more deeply acquainted with a single subject’s expressions. A study was not balanced unless it was approached from many angles. Attending this class, therefore, was beneficial to his education in correct interactions with humans, a skill which was essential to his ability to serve as a competent Starfleet officer someday. He would go to the class.

The lecture was as unsatisfactory as always. This time, however, Kirk asked another question—about the extent to which an officer was intrinsically responsible for harm done to any of his people, even when it did not occur as a direct consequence of his orders. Spock was understandably gratified to hear Kirk’s thoughts spoken aloud, for it gave him external verification of the thoughts he saw flitting across Kirk’s countenance. There was no other conceivable reason for his gratification in hearing Kirk speak.

That evening after leaving class, he found himself thinking of Kirk’s voice raising that question while he was in the middle of a delicate experiment. That was understandable, as it was an interesting question. But he had to force the thought aside immediately to avoid interrupting his experiment, and he determined to avoid such lapses in the future.

***

Later that week, Spock spent one of his rare evenings outside the lab. He had arranged to meet a study partner for a project they were working on for fourth-year seminar. The partner, a quiet human girl named Cindy who was of East Asian descent, had chosen to meet him in the student lounge, where there was a snack bar in addition to tables for study and group work. Spock was surprised at her choice, for he found the level of noise in such areas distracting. However, he did not find it necessary to object.

Cindy was to meet him at 7:30. Spock arrived at 7:00, for he had finished one stage of an experiment and did not have sufficient time to begin another. He sat at an empty table in the end of the student lounge farthest from the snack bar.

Despite his calculated choice of seat, there were still streams of people walking by on all sides of him. And at one point as several people passed each other, one of them was jostled so that the cup of coffee in the student’s hand overturned and spilled all over the pad of paper Spock was using to write down notes.

“Dammit! I’m so sorry.”

Spock looked up at the person who had drowned half his seminar coursework in coffee and found himself looking at the face he had stared at for so long across an Ethics classroom.

It was startling to see at such close distance someone who had existed, in his mind, purely in a classroom. That was the reason Spock gave for his temporary speechlessness. He had not before observed the color of Kirk’s eyes, for example. It was evident that they were hazel. His hair had golden highlights that Spock had not previously suspected. Kirk’s face seemed even more vividly alive at this distance than it had across half a lecture hall—even with its current expression, which was clearly chagrin.

“Here, let me help you with that.” Kirk grabbed a pile of napkins of a nearby table and aided Spock in his efforts to soak up the coffee from between the pages of his notebook. “Damn, I’m sorry. I hope you can still read this.”

“I predict that it will be salvageable.” It was true: the pages were stained and would wrinkle, but the ink was not smeared. He would be able to read it after it dried.

“I’m just glad you weren’t using a compuslate,” Kirk said.

“I must confess to some elation on that subject myself,” Spock said.

Kirk smiled—a bright, glowing smile that took all the brilliance of those moments in class when his eyes lit up and applied it to his whole face. Spock found himself strangely unable to look away.

“I’m Jim Kirk,” Kirk said, holding out a hand for Spock to shake.

Spock made sure his shields were well in place before he took the hand. Kirk’s grip was firm and friendly. “Spock,” he said.

“Spock,” Kirk repeated. He cocked his head. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? Aren’t you in Ethics class with me?”

Spock had to use his emotional controls to quell the panic that rose in his chest at those words. Had Kirk seen him watching him? But no—he would have noticed if Kirk’s eyes had turned toward him while he was looking back. Kirk must have observed him entering or leaving class.

“I am not enrolled in the course,” he said. “I was asked to observe Dr. Wyndham and evaluate his performance.”

There was a flash of something in Kirk’s eyes. For all his observation, Spock could not quite read it. He thought it might contain amusement, but it was tempered by something else. “That’s…some job.”

Spock considered his words before speaking. “I admit that it has not been an overwhelmingly positive experience.”

This earned Kirk’s laughter. Spock found this unaccountably gratifying. “That’s an understatement,” Kirk said. “I think half the people in the class have tried to transfer out already. The other half are asleep.”

“You do not appear to be asleep in class,” Spock said. It immediately occurred to him that it was a foolish thing to have said, for now he had told Kirk that he had been paying attention to him. But Kirk didn’t seem to have noticed his slip.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d just let us get into discussions about the issues,” Kirk said. He had that glint in his eyes Spock had sometimes seen when he had spoken up in class. “I keep trying to start something, but he never lets me get anywhere.”

“Yes, I have observed that,” Spock said.

“It’s a shame,” Kirk said. “We could make his job a lot easier if he’d let us get involved.”

An interesting point of view: Kirk was considering how to make the instructor’s task easier. Clearly he had noticed his suffering. “You think the other students in the class would be interested in such debates?”

Kirk shrugged. “Not everyone. But I’ve had some great discussions with some of them—you know, when we’re just sitting around in the evenings. Sometimes when we’ve had a little bit to drink.” Kirk grinned. His grin was different from his smile: less brightness, but still the same warmth.

The image he presented—that of students sitting around and discussing deep matters with each other for the mere joy of it—was not one Spock had previously associated with the other students at the Academy. He had tended to keep to himself in his leisure hours, as one of the few non-humans, and he had not believed himself to be missing anything of value in the Academy social scene. Now he wondered if he had been mistaken.

“What kind of issues do you discuss?” Spock asked, out of curiosity and out of a desire for Kirk to continue looking at him with that spark in his eyes.

As predicted, Kirk’s eyes remained alive. “Well, last weekend we got into a debate about—”

“Spock,” a new voice said. “I apologize for my lateness.”

Spock looked away from Kirk to see Cindy putting her books down on the table. She looked askance at the piles of coffee-soaked napkins.

“That was my fault,” Kirk said with a smile in her direction. He scooped up the napkins. “Looks like I’d better go. Nice to meet you, Spock!”

“Likewise,” Spock said as the glowing smile moved away. He turned back to Cindy, who was laying out the materials they would need for their project.

For the rest of the evening, his thoughts were focused on the cross-species analysis of digestive systems. Cindy was a more-than-adequate partner for him: she was a quick thinker and could concentrate almost as well as he could. She rarely smiled, a trait of which Spock approved. However, the encounter with Kirk was not absent from his mind.

He was able to admit to himself that there had been something aesthetically pleasing in Kirk’s smiles. It was the first time he had had a thought such as that. Yet after all, what was there to be ashamed of in appreciating a smiling human? It was part of another culture which he should be able to value from the outside.

In the two weeks after that, Spock came to the common area to study three separate times, one of them alone. He did not, of course, go with any particular purpose in mind beyond studying. However, he did find his eyes straying occasionally from the page, and he was forced to meditate extensively before he could eliminate these lapses of focus.

He was more careful now about how he watched Kirk during Ethics class, and he did not see him outside of class for several weeks. Then one cloudy day he was walking, as was his custom, on the northern side of the Academy grounds, where tall hedges created the illusion of more extensive grounds than were actually present. He had been walking for about ten minutes when he heard a raised voice that he recognized. He found himself focusing on it immediately.

“You didn’t have to do that to him!” Kirk’s voice—it was unmistakably his—was raised from a few hedges away.

“It’s just a joke.” Another boy’s voice.

“Not a very funny one,” Kirk replied. “You can’t do that kind of thing to people.”

“Fine, you don’t have to be involved next time,” the other boy said. Spock heard the sound of footsteps disappearing toward the school.

There was a short silence. Spock wondered whether he should continue on his way or turn in the other direction. He had not heard Kirk leave, and if he continued, he would most likely encounter him.

He chose to continue. He passed by a gap in the hedges and was surprised to Kirk standing there—he had not realized he was so close.

Kirk was looking at the ground with an expression Spock was almost certain was distraught. He looked up when he saw Spock go by, and Spock automatically paused.

“Oh, hi, Spock,” he said. His voice sounded dejected as well.

“Hello,” Spock said.

“Did you hear all that?” Kirk said. “Sorry about that.”

Spock hesitated before speaking. “It seemed as if your companion had done something amiss,” he said.

“Yeah. He says it was a joke, but if you ask me, it was in pretty poor taste.” Kirk shrugged and ran a hand through his hair with its glints of gold. “He’s always doing things like that. I wish I…” He came over to the gap in the hedge where Spock was standing, and then he seemed to hesitate. “Mind if I walk with you?”

Spock did not normally appreciate company on his walks, but he found that he did not object at this time. He gestured with his hand that Kirk should come into the lane.

“Thanks. I really need to clear my head,” Kirk said.

Spock cast a glance at him as they started walking. His face did seem more perturbed than it normally did. “If your friend is of such a cast of character, why do you continue to associate with him?”

Kirk shrugged. “He’s not all bad. He has a lot of good qualities.”

“Yet he seems to lack compassion,” Spock said.

Kirk ran a hand over his jaw. “Sometimes you have to take the bad along with the good, and, well…that’s his bad.”

Spock was silent. When he glanced over, he saw Kirk looking at him.

“You’re thinking that you wouldn’t be willing to overlook something like that,” Kirk said.

Spock considered before speaking. “Not precisely. I was thinking that the cost of such companionship might not be justified by its value in my case. But then, mine is a people that feels less of a need for companionship than yours. Our situations are not equivalent.”

Kirk was looking at him gravely. “You might be right, though,” he said. “I wonder how many of our friends are chosen because we need companionship, when we could be holding out for the people who are really worth spending time with?”

“It would not be right for one of your species to deny yourself companionship because you are waiting for an imagined ideal,” Spock said. “Yours is a social species.”

The corner of Kirk’s mouth quirked up into a grin. “And yours isn’t?”

“Not to the same extent,” Spock said. “Thought we, too, need companionship from time to time.”

Kirk smiled—the sunny smile that sent a warm glow to Spock’s chest. “Well, I’m glad you can get some now,” he said.

Spock found that he was in agreement.

They walked for a minute in silence. Then, “Is it hard for you?” Kirk asked. “Being in the middle of people so different from you, I mean.”

Spock considered for a moment. “I suppose that it is."

Kirk shot him a sideways look. “You sound as if you haven’t thought about it before.”

“Thinking about such things is not the Vulcan way,” Spock said. But that answer did not sit well with him. It was incomplete. “I suppose the true reason is that it is not a new condition for me,” he said. “I have always been somewhat…isolated. My half-Vulcan nature has made me an outsider in my own world as well as this one.”

Kirk looked at him in surprise. “You’re half-Vulcan? I didn’t know.”

“My mother is human,” he said. “But my anatomy is almost fully Vulcan, and I choose to follow the Vulcan practices I was raised in.”

“Even though the Vulcans didn’t fully accept you.” Kirk shook his head. “That must have made for a very difficult childhood.”

“It was…challenging,” Spock said. He felt uncomfortable voicing these things out loud. He had never talked about such things with anyone before. He did not know why he did so now, except that Kirk’s questions seemed so natural. They did not feel like the questions of someone gawking at an exotic oddity. They felt like…Kirk really wanted to know him. “My father was not pleased when I chose to join Starfleet.”

“Has he come around?”

“No,” Spock said. “We have not spoken since I left Vulcan.”

Kirk was looking at him now with an emotion in his eyes. Sympathy. “God, Spock, that must be horrible.” He reached up and put a hand on Spock’s arm.

Spock was not properly shielded for the touch. It was not skin to skin, but still he had an impression of Kirk’s emotions: concern, interest, the sympathy he had seen in the human’s eyes. The emotions, faint as they were, temporarily overwhelmed him so that he could not speak. Yet he did not find them objectionable as he found the constant barrage of unshielded human emotions at the Academy. These, the emotions of one human he was conversing with, he could handle. They carried with them the unique aura of Kirk’s mind. It was the first time Spock had sensed it, but it felt familiar, for it matched the thoughts he had seen flitting across Kirk’s face.

He let the psychic contact go on for several seconds longer than he needed to before he strengthened his shields. There was no shield against the physical warmth of Kirk’s hand.

“It is a fact to which I am now accustomed,” he said. “But yes, I believe there are many things lacking from my familial relations that would be fulfilling.”

To Spock’s surprise, Kirk laughed. “I love how you do that,” he said. “You're a master of understatement, Spock.”

Spock could not think of anything with which to reply. No one had ever made such a comment about his speech patterns before. Many had commented on the difference between his speech and that of a human, but none had ever found it pleasing.

He must have let his stupefaction show on his face, for Kirk looked at him and laughed again, his hand still on Spock’s arm. It was such a joyous sound that Spock could not help but be moved by it. He let the corners of his eyes relax into an expression of amusement.

Kirk suddenly stopped laughing. “That’s your smile, isn’t it?” he said. “That thing you do with your eyes.”

Spock did not let the eye-smile disappear. “I find that humans smile very often.”

“Well, maybe we have reason to,” Kirk said. “Or maybe it’s our way of whistling in the dark.”

Spock decided to find out if he could deliberately make Kirk laugh. “I do not see how the production of high-pitched musical sounds could help alleviate the difficulties of darkness.”

Kirk did laugh. “You’d be surprised,” he said.

He took his hand off Spock’s arm as they kept walking, but Spock could still feel the warmth of where it had rested.

***

Spock left Kirk at the door of the science and technology building. He would gladly have spent longer conversing, but he had made an appointment with his adviser to discuss his latest research. Kirk gave him a parting smile and headed off down the path toward the main undergraduate residence hall.

Spock found as he opened the door and entered the building that he felt a strange dizziness: as if he were floating in a zero-gravity chamber. He looked down and was relieved to see that his feet were anchored to the ground as usual. There was an emotion granting him this illusion of flight, but it was unfamiliar to him, and he was hesitant to root it out without first understanding it. It was somehow associated with the walk he had just taken—with companionship.

The emotion was still humming through his head and chest when he went down to dinner that evening. At this point, he was beginning to be concerned and to wonder when it was going to subside. He had made plans to work with Cindy that evening, but he considered that perhaps he ought to meditate instead. Clearly, he was emotionally unbalanced in some way.

He sat down at a table in the main cafeteria and caught sight of Kirk on the other side of the room. The pitch of the humming in his head seemed to rise. For no reason that he could discern, the mere sight of Kirk was gratifying. He had never found that to be so with another person before.

Kirk was moving through the crowd towards a table. For a moment Spock had the irrational hope that Kirk might come join him. Instead, he watched him sit down next to a girl, who turned and smiled at him.

A slight crack appeared in Spock’s elation.

The girl reached out a hand to Kirk, and Kirk took it. Kirk’s smile had that eager intensity Spock had seen during his first conversation with Kirk and several times today. Kirk leaned forward towards the girl, and their mouths met in a kiss.

Spock felt the humming feeling vanish in an instant. In its absence, he felt something cold and empty, like pain, but not of the body. He found that he was having difficulty drawing breath. His appetite seemed to have vanished—he found, in its place, a strong desire to leave immediately—but eating was a logical action. He finished the food on his plate as quickly as he could and then got up to dispose of his dishes and leave without looking at Kirk.

Once out in the hall, Spock slowed his pace and searched within himself. What was causing these emotional and physical disturbances? Obviously his emotional imbalance was more serious than he had thought. A few seconds had been enough to turn him from euphoria to despair, and for no discernable cause. There was no reason for him to be surprised to see Kirk behaving intimately with a girl. He was outgoing and attractive by what Spock understood to be human standards. Was Spock so shocked at such a public display of affection in one whom he hoped to consider a friend? There was no call for such disapproval. The cultural standards of his own people could not be applied here. Yet he had been undeniably disturbed at the sight.

He very badly needed to meditate.

But to break his arrangement with Cindy for such a personal matter would have been dishonorable. He returned to his room for his things, then went to meet with her as they had planned. He found, though, that his concentration was inferior to what it ought to have been.

“Spock, are you all right?” Cindy asked, when Spock had twice given her the wrong page number for a reference they were citing.

“I am fine,” he said. This was true: in all physical respects, he was in excellent condition. There was no need to tell her of the persistent feeling of disquiet that he could neither understand nor eliminate.

Cindy began telling him that he ought to be sleeping more. Spock tuned her out and did a few simple exercises for the restoration of emotional control. His lapses were truly becoming egregious, and he did not understand their cause.

***

He went to the Ethics class on Monday as usual, but he did not watch Kirk. It was a compromise: he could not bear to stay away, as logic dictated, but he could manage to listen to logic so far as it told him that watching Kirk’s face, for whatever reason, was dangerous to his emotional health.

As he was leaving class, he heard feet running up to him and a voice calling his name.

“Spock!”

He turned and saw Jim Kirk running down the hallway towards him.

“I was hoping I could catch you,” Kirk said. He slowed down to a walk. “Want to grab dinner?”

Spock looked at him in confusion. “It is four o’clock.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kirk said, “but I always eat early on Mondays. A bunch of us play soccer in the gym around five.” He looked at Spock with an expression Spock interpreted as hopeful. “You don’t have to eat if you don’t want. You can just come sit.”

“I see no obstacle to that,” Spock said.

Kirk grinned at him. “Or you can have a cup of coffee. I promise not to spill it on you this time.”

They went to the servery, where Spock dialed a cup of tea from the drinks replicator. Kirk looked at it with interest when Spock sat down across from him. “I didn’t know they did tea.”

“The replicator in the servery can produce over five thousand varieties of beverages.”

“Seriously? Have you tried all of them?”

“I have limited myself mainly to the teas. I find their warmth to be beneficial.”

“Because Vulcan is so much warmer than Earth,” Kirk said. It wasn’t a question.

Spock nodded. “At times I find the regulation of body temperature in this climate to be challenging,” he admitted.

Kirk was looking at him with a strange expression in his eyes that Spock could not quite read. “I can’t get over how much courage you must have to be here,” he said.

Spock found that, as happened so many times in his conversations with Kirk, he did not have any words to respond with. He was caught by Kirk’s eyes, and even if he couldn’t read what was in them, they were making his head feel strangely light. It was almost a relief when Kirk broke his gaze and started attacking the plateful of food in front of him. “So, I wanted to ask you a question about something Dr. Wyndham said today,” he said.

They spent the rest of the hour talking about the difficulties of defining sentience, until Kirk had to run off to his soccer game. Spock went off to the lab with a feeling dangerously resembling the euphoria of a few days before. It took many hours of meditation that night before he could will it away.

The following Monday he walked more slowly than usual when he left ethics class, and it was not a surprise to him when he saw Kirk coming towards him, a big smile on his face. Kirk seemed to smile more easily than the average human, but Spock found that he did not object. That week they talked about the difficulties of governing a federation and maintaining the rights of individual planets.

“It’s the most important thing the Federation has,” Kirk said. He was speaking with great enthusiasm and stabbing his fork into his pile of spaghetti. “Without individual planets, the Federation would be just like…an empty bookshelf without any books. No content.”

Spock found himself amused at Kirk’s use of such an antiquated analogy. “Have you seen many other worlds?” he asked.

“No, not yet,” Kirk said. He smiled a half-smile, and looked up at Spock through his eyelashes, as if he were embarrassed about what he was about to say. “But someday, I’m going to be a starship captain, and then I’ll see them all.”

“I do not doubt it,” Spock said gravely, and he was rewarded with a wider smile. If there was anyone he would trust with his life aboard a starship, it would be James Kirk.

***

Thereafter, dinner with Kirk became a regular part of Spock’s weekly schedule. He occasionally found himself thinking about it at other times of the week, and once he even caught himself wishing that Monday evening would come more quickly. Usually the two of them discussed the topic of the Ethics class they had just attended, but often they branched off into more personal matters as well. Spock believed, based on the evidence of Kirk’s face, that the human enjoyed their dinners as well.

One Monday in late April, however, Spock had just begun to wait for Jim outside of the Ethics classroom when he saw him storming up with unmistakable anger on his face.

“Spock!” Jim said. He was brandishing a piece of paper. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?” Spock asked.

“This.” Kirk thrust the piece of paper into his hands.

It was the list of assignments for graduating seniors. Spock himself had been posted to Alphalon Science Laboratories, the top Starfleet research facility in the Federation. He had been pleased to receive the news. “I did not think it would be of concern to you.”

“It wouldn’t be of concern to me? What, you’re going halfway across the galaxy, and you thought I wouldn’t care?”

“It is not halfway across the galaxy, Jim. It is only—”

“I don’t care how far it actually is,” Kirk cut in. “The point is, why didn’t you tell me?”

There was anger in Jim’s face and in his voice. Spock was at a loss to understand it. “I did not occur to me that you would wish to know.”

“It’s the kind of thing friends tell each other,” Kirk said. “I would have liked to know you were leaving.”

“Did you not already know that I would leave at the end of the year?”

“Yes, but…” Kirk looked down at the ground, near Spock’s feet. “I mean, I guess I didn’t know. You could have been sticking around. There are lots of Starfleet postings in San Francisco.”

“There is very little for one with my science background,” Spock said.

Kirk nodded, looking to the side now, still not meeting Spock’s eyes. Spock felt himself growing uncomfortable. There were expectations concerning human friendship that he did not understand, and he did not want to misstep. “Does it sadden you to learn that I am leaving?”

“Well…yeah, you’re my friend, I don’t want you to go,” Kirk said. He finally looked up at Spock. “Doesn’t it sadden you?”

Spock had not considered it. There was no place in the galaxy that he could consider home at this point in his life, and so relocation had not been a cause for any particular distress. “Such sadness would not be a Vulcan experience,” he said.

“Yeah,” Kirk said. He was looking away again, and Spock heard him take a long breath in. “Yeah.”

Spock could not think of anything else to say, and so he changed the subject. “Do you wish to go to dinner?”

“No, I can’t today,” Kirk said. His eyes met Spock’s again, and there was the ghost of a smile on his face. “Next week, though, okay?”

“Of course,” Spock said.

He stood and watched as Kirk walked away. Spock still held the list of seniors’ assignments and the feeling that he did not quite understand the exchange that had just taken place.

***

The next week when they had dinner after class, Kirk seemed normal, and Spock concluded that he had not, after all, done anything to disturb their friendship the previous week. This was a relief to him. His friendship with Kirk was the first relationship to which he could truly put that name, and it was more gratifying than he would have expected.

“Some of the guys in my room are having a party tonight,” Kirk said that week as they were eating. (Spock had long ago adjusted his meal schedule on Monday to give him sufficient appetite for a four o’clock dinner.) “You should come.”

Spock raised one eyebrow. “I am not in the custom of attending such parties.”

“I know,” Kirk said, “but it’s going to be really boring otherwise. It’ll be my roommates and all their swim team friends. I need you to come make it bearable.”

Spock kept his eyebrow raised. “And how, may I ask, would my presence accomplish such a thing?”

Kirk grinned. “At least then I’d have someone to talk to.”

Spock took a bite of his salad and considered whether he would, in fact, like to attend this party. In any case, it was irrelevant. “I have already made plans to work on a project with a classmate.”

“Oh,” Kirk said. “Well, no big deal. Come by later if you get the chance. My suite.”

“I will consider it,” Spock said.

***

A few hours later Spock showed up at Cindy’s room for their preappointed study session. It was unusual that she should request that he come to her room, but he supposed it was because she desired them to be uninterrupted. They were only a few weeks away from completing their research project, and it was more than usually important that they be able to focus.

When Cindy opened the door, Spock blinked in surprise. Instead of her ’fleet uniform, Cindy was wearing a dress made of green velvet, and the room had been lit with a strand of small white lights that were certainly not regulation. “Is there a special occasion I was not informed about?” Spock asked, mystified

Cindy made a noise that Spock identified as giggling. He had not thought of her as one who would make such a sound. “I just thought we might want to talk in a different setting,” she said.

Spock took a cautious step inside. Cindy shut the door behind him and went across the room to sit on the sofa. Spock followed slowly and sat down beside her. She was looking at him with an expression that, he found to his frustration, he could not read. There was more color than usual in her cheeks.

“I do not believe this will be the optimal place for us to work,” he said. “There is no convenient location for our books.”

“I don’t want to work,” Cindy said. She leaned forward and clasped her hands in her laps. “Spock, I want to talk.”

Her eyes were distinctly shining. Spock found that he was growing uncomfortable. “About what do you wish like to speak?”

“About us, silly.” She gave another giggle.

“Cindy—” he said.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

Spock could honestly have said that he hadn’t. “I cannot say…”

“Look at how well-matched we are,” she said, cutting him off. She was still leaning forward, looking at him eagerly. “We’re both scientists. We’re serious about our work. We know that we’re intellectually compatible, and we have similar temperaments. Our characters are perfect for one another.”

Spock stopped for a moment to consider this. This had not occurred to him before, but he saw that she made some good points. They were similar in a number of important ways. He was unlikely ever to find one who was so similar to him outside of Vulcan. If he had been searching for a human mate…

Suddenly Cindy was moving, and he saw that her face was approaching his. Her head tilted and her lips came against his in what was unmistakably a kiss.

Spock pulled back sharply. To touch another person there, on the mouth, was a gesture of the greatest intimacy. She did not have the right.

“What’s wrong?” Cindy asked.

Spock rose to his feet. He found himself trembling, as if in anger. He had felt the brush of her aura as her lips had touched his, and he had been repelled as if by the wrong end of a magnet. There was nothing in her for him.

“No,” he said. “I am sorry, Cindy. But I cannot consider you that way.”

Disappointment and hurt were on her face. “But…”

She looked so dejected that Spock was moved to compassion for her. But he could not give what he did not have to offer. “I am sorry,” he said again. And he turned and left the apartment.

***

Outside in the hallway he walked for a few minutes without heed to direction. His heart was still beating faster than normal from the shock of the situation. Her kiss had shaken him, though it should not have had the power to. Clearly he needed to work at strengthening his shields. If she had not taken him by surprise…

But she had, and he had felt her aura and had been repulsed.

It had not occurred to him to worry about such a thing before. It was likely that the imperative of Vulcan biology would fall upon him at some point. What if, when he of necessity touched another, that person’s aura…?

Footsteps behind him cut into his thoughts. “Spock!” a familiar voice said.

Spock turned to see Jim Kirk coming up behind him. His face was bright, as it sometimes was when something in a conversation made him very happy. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” Kirk said.

“My study appointment was cut short,” Spock said. He had a sudden vision of Cindy’s lips coming towards him and did not choose to elaborate.

Kirk grinned. “So that means you’re coming to the party after all, huh?”

Spock found suddenly that he had the desire for such a distraction. He let his eyes relax into the beginning of a smile. “To use a human expression, I suppose it could not hurt,” he said.

***

The room was painfully loud when they entered. Spock flinched at the aural barrage. There was a large crowd of human students standing around the room with plastic cups in their hands, not dancing, though dance music blasted from a set of speakers.

“So, what kind of effect does alcohol have on Vulcans?” Kirk asked over the noise.

Spock raised an eyebrow. “I believe its effect is similar to that on humans,” he said.

Kirk had evidently caught the whole sentence. “You believe?” he asked with a grin.

“I have not conducted extensive experimentation,” he admitted.

Kirk’s grin got wider. “Oh, we’ll have to get you something good.”

Spock followed him to the suite’s kitchen. Kirk must have been accurate in his statement that this was a group of people he did not know well, for no one tried to interrupt their passage. Spock watched as Kirk went to the table that seemed to be serving as a makeshift bar and began combining different-colored liquids. Spock moved closer, fascinated by the complexity of the concoction.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Oh, you’ll love it,” Kirk said, handing him the cup. “Here.”

Spock took a sip and raised both eyebrows. He could feel the alcohol soaking into his system from the tiny quantity on his tongue.

He handed it back to Kirk. “I do not believe I can drink this.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it would result in my being flat on my back on the linoleum floor of this kitchen in approximately twenty-eight minutes.”

Kirk laughed long and loud at that. “All right, fine,” he said, waving his hand, “I’ll mix you something weaker.” He took the drink back from Spock and grinned. “I’ll drink this one.”

A minute later Spock had something in his hand which was darker in color and had far fewer varieties of liquid in it. He took a sip and considered. It was still alcoholic, but much less so, and it had a pleasant tang. “That is quite nice,” he said.

Kirk took a large sip of the drink he had taken back from Spock and shook his head. “Not up for the Long Island Ice Tea, huh? It’s a shame.”

Spock considered the cup in Kirk’s hand. “I see nothing about it that resembles an insular land mass, either long or otherwise,” he said.

Kirk laughed again, which had been Spock’s intention. He put a hand on Spock’s arm and steered him back towards the main party.

Spock had been correct in his assessment of Kirk’s limited acquaintance at the party. He was surprised, for from his observations of Kirk, it had become obvious to him that the human was friendly with quite a few people at the Academy. But this party was largely male—presumably the swim team Kirk had made reference to—and had few of the young women who were so often talking to Kirk when Spock saw him in the cafeteria. Spock found that he was illogically glad of this.

“I must inquire as to the choice of music,” he said in a necessarily loud voice once they were back in the living room.

“What about it?” Kirk asked. They were stationed by the windows.

“It would appear to be dance music, and yet no one is dancing.”

Kirk laughed. “Yeah, that’s weird, isn’t it? Parties are like that. Sometimes people start dancing later in the evening.”

Spock nodded. He found he did not understand the appeal of parties when contrasted with quieter, less crowded environments in which people might converse. But he had no immediate desire to leave this one.

Kirk asked him how his research was going, and they spent several minutes discussing the difficulties of cross-species comparison of enzyme function. Then the conversation turned to the role of science in Starfleet, and how the ’Fleet’s many different purposes should be balanced. The two of them were largely undisturbed in their conversation, except for the few times one of Kirk’s roommates would come over and slap Kirk on the back or bump his fist or one of the many other inexplicable ways human males seemed to show camaraderie.

“Did you always know you wanted to join Starfleet?” Kirk asked. He had worked his way through his first drink, with such speed that Spock was impressed at his coherency, and was now on his second. Spock was only halfway through his first. He could feel the faint effects of the alcohol, but it was not debilitating.

He shook his head. “I believed for a long time that I could find my place on Vulcan and be content. It was only when I was in my late teens that I came to believe I was mistaken.”

“What would you have done if you’d stayed?”

“I would have attended the Vulcan Science Academy,” Spock said. “I had been accepted there. I understand that I was the first accepted student to turn them down.”

Kirk laughed. “They must have loved that.”

“I believe they were less than pleased.”

Kirk laughed again. He was laughing and smiling even more frequently this evening than usual, and Spock wondered if he should credit the alcohol. “What did they do?”

“Nothing, of course,” Spock said. “It is the Vulcan way to accept what is. However, they urged me quite strongly to reconsider my decision.”

Kirk smiled at him over his drink. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” he said.

Spock met his eyes, and for a moment they simply looked at each other. Spock felt something building in his chest, though he didn’t know what name to put to it. Finally he had to look away. “What about you?” he asked. “When did you discover your vocation?”

When he looked back at Kirk, he saw that his cheeks were pinker than usual—another effect of the alcohol, he surmised. It was a pleasing color. “I think I knew when I was ten,” Kirk said. “My…well, my dad had just died, and things were tough. Sam—my older brother—felt like he had to be the strong one, and I saw how hard it was for him. I wanted to help him, and to help my mom, and I couldn’t. I hated not having any power to change things. I think that’s why I wanted to be a Starfleet officer: because I wanted to be able to change things, to do some good.” He laughed. “I think I had some better reasons by the time I actually decided to join. But really, who wouldn’t want to?” His eyes had that intensity they sometimes gained. “Who wouldn’t want to see the stars?”

Spock looked into the open face of his friend. “I am sorry for the loss of your father.”

Kirk looked back at him. “I guess I still haven’t talked about that much.”

“I grieve with thee.” The formal Vulcan statement coming out of his mouth surprised Spock, and seemed to surprise Kirk as well. He looked embarrassed and took a large sip of his drink.

“Listen to me,” he said, looking away. “I would never say these things to a friend, and here I am—”

He broke off as a horrified expression came over his face. His eyes cut back to Spock, who was merely mystified and who looked at him curiously.

“Oh, Christ.” Kirk looked away again. “What am I doing?”

He set his almost-empty drink on the windowsill. “Spock, I have to go,” he said. “I…sorry.” He turned and pushed his way through the crowd and out of the room.

For a second, Spock stood there, completely at a loss. Whatever change had just come over Kirk had been so abrupt that he could not trace its cause. Had it perhaps been their discussion of his father that had upset him?

He considered whether it was wise to go after him. Part of him—the part that did not generally associate with the other students at the Academy, and which was hesitant ever to claim the word “friend”—that part of him told him to let Kirk go. But he did not wish Jim to be alone and upset. He put his drink down next to Kirk’s and wound his way out of the party.

Kirk was most of the way down the hallway when Spock emerged. Spock followed him at a distance: not trying to catch up, just staying close enough to be able to see where he went. He did not take any care to be silent, but Kirk did not turn around. Spock followed him down to the main entrance of the dorm. He saw Kirk open the door and step outside, stumbling a bit as he did so, and Spock knew he was right to follow. Kirk was in no condition to be wandering outside alone.

Outside, Kirk walked quickly towards the hedges. He seemed to be walking steadily enough now, his hands shoved in his pockets and his head down. Spock considered turning back and letting him be alone, if that was his desire. But there had been such distress on his face as he’d left the party. Spock did not know what had caused it, and what role he himself might have played, but he could not let Jim go off into the darkness to be unhappy alone if there was something he could do to prevent it.

There were fewer lights by the hedges. In the darkness, Spock stumbled over an unseen root in the ground, and the world spun a bit. He remembered that he was not quite sober himself. The sensation was a fairly new one to him. He had imbibed alcohol before, but not to the extent that he had tonight. The world had a sheen of dizziness to it.

He came to the beginning of a row of hedges and saw Kirk standing at its end, hands still in his pockets. He turned around as Spock started walking towards him.

“I wasn’t saying that we weren’t friends,” he said. His gaze was steady: Spock could see his eyes in the light of the lamp a few hedges over. They were gray at the moment, a clear gray that Spock felt he could look straight through.

“What were you saying?” Spock asked, coming closer. Here in the hedges, all of the sounds of the Academy behind seemed to be gone. He could see Jim’s eyelashes sparkling in the dim light of the lamp, as if they were wet. The world spun dizzily at the corners.

“That I…haven’t had a friend like you before. That you’re different.”

Spock took a few steps closer. He wasn’t sure why. There was still distress in Jim’s eyes. His head was tilted back so that he could look up at Spock, and his face wore the expression of openness Spock had seen at the party.

“How am I different?” Spock asked.

He was close enough now that could smell the scent of Jim’s breath. There was the alcohol, and also another scent, something both familiar and delectable that he could not quite name at the moment. It made his head swim.

Kirk didn’t move away. “It’s just that you’re…”

Their heads were moving closer now. That scent reached into Spock and moved something deep inside of him so that he felt as if he couldn’t breathe any longer.

“You’re…you,” Jim’s voice whispered.

The next moment, the lips that spoke those words were against his own. Their mouths were slightly open, and the contact was soft and warm. Spock felt a thrill shoot straight through him to all extremities. If Cindy’s kiss had been the desert sand, this was the ocean. Jim’s mouth was tipped up towards him, open and giving. Spock felt as if he were drinking something, as if he were endlessly thirsty and finally, finally had the goblet to his lips. This aura…the feeling of Jim settled around him, and Spock felt he could never get enough.

Jim’s mouth opened a little wider under his, and the rough-wet tip of a tongue touched against his lips. Spock heard himself moan aloud. Jim’s lips moved against Spock’s, and his tongue came farther forward. It touched Spock’s own tongue and sent a tingling shock straight to his groin. Kirk’s mouth was not close enough to him. He pressed his mouth over Jim’s as closely as he could, and their tongues moved alongside each other.

Kirk suddenly sucked Spock’s tongue into his mouth, and it felt to Spock as if all the air in his body went with it. He gasped and felt a weakness in his legs. His hands moved to Kirk’s head and touched that golden hair where it brushed against the soft skin of the back of his neck. He had wanted to touch that hair for so long, without realizing it. Kirk’s arm was around him. Spock could feel each of Kirk’s five fingers pressing into his back through the fabric of his tunic and forcing him closer. Kirk’s other hand went to Spock’s ear, stroking, fingering the tip. And the whole time that mouth, that wonderful, delicious mouth…

Spock did not notice when they started to bring their lower bodies together. It seemed necessary to have more of this man, to press himself against him as much as possible. This, he knew suddenly, was what he had wanted from the very beginning: Kirk’s body against his. Their mouths could never be separate again. He sucked on Jim’s tongue and heard him moan. Spock's hands slid down from Jim’s neck to his back. If only they could slide into each other, so that this warm flesh against his might be a part of him, so that it would never go away…

Their legs hitched closer together, and suddenly dazzles of electricity burst into Spock’s world. His penis, harder than it had ever before, came up against another, and the combination seemed to give birth to fire. Red-hot golden flames burned all along where their bodies touched so that Spock thought they might go up in a conflagration. He wanted to go up with the conflagration. He made a groaning noise and started to move…

Then—emptiness. Cold. Kirk wrenched himself away so abruptly that Spock felt the sudden absence like a wound. He gasped and fell back a pace.

Kirk stood a few feet away, staring at him with a dark-eyed expression that Spock, with all his practice, could not read. Then he turned and ran off, unsteadily, down the lane of hedges. Near the end he crashed into one of the bushes, and there were muffled curses before he disappeared out of sight.

Spock had to put out a hand to the hedge for balance. He was still breathing heavily, half from arousal and half from the shock of Kirk’s departure.

It was clear now what a fool he’d been, what a fool he’d been for months. How could he have thought, in that moment, that he was desired in return? He reminded himself of the amount of alcohol Jim had consumed, the emotional distress he had been in. Spock should have considered those factors before accepting Jim’s reaction as genuine desire.

The fire had been in him only. He had forced it upon Jim, and Jim had been burned.

How could he have done such a thing? He should have recognized the desire in himself from the first moment it had appeared. He should never have let himself inflict it on Kirk. The alcohol he himself had imbibed was not enough to excuse it—there was no excuse for what he had done.

And yet, at the same time, he felt bereft not to be touching Jim. The evening had grown chill, and he shivered. His breath gusted in white clouds in the frosty air, and he thought of how it had been contained in Kirk’s mouth, and wished that it might be so again…

No! He could not let himself begin to yearn. He would deal himself the one punishment befitting a Vulcan: that of living with the pain of emotions that should have been controlled long ago.

He had the sudden desire to sink down onto the grass and draw his knees to his chest and stop thinking forever. But there was no logic in sleeping on the damp ground on a cold night. He began to walk back to his dorm room.

The walk seemed to take so long that he doubted the accuracy of his own time sense. His boots echoed on the pavement of the campus paths. Finally he entered his building and blinked uncomfortably against the brightness of the lights. There was a couple embracing halfway down the hall: a boy and a girl murmuring things into each other’s ears. Spock turned his head away as he passed. He could still taste Jim’s mouth on his.

***

The next morning Spock went down to breakfast later than usual. He not slept the night before: he had sat up and meditated until he thought he might be able to go through the next few days without the memory of the past night’s events haunting his thoughts. The meditation had been effective up to a point. His thoughts as he walked towards the cafeteria were properly on the work he had to accomplish that day. But as he came through the door on the upper level of the cafeteria, he saw a golden head down below that made the yawning chasm open within him again.

Spock froze by the wall next to the door. He could not bear the sight of him. It was a shameful, non-Vulcan reaction, but it pervaded his entire body. He could not bear it. Jim was so nearby. Those arms that had held him last night…

Spock clamped down on the thoughts. He closed his eyes and stood still for several minutes and exercised the bodily controls that would sweep the negative emotions away. Soon the sickening feeling of emptiness had faded. But he did not trust his equilibrium to last him through a meal in the same room as Jim. He turned and went back through the door and straight to his laboratory, where he made a decision.

It was clear that he could not trust himself to maintain his emotional control around Jim. Further, it was clear from Jim’s behavior last night that what Spock seemed to want—illogical though it might be—would not be welcome to him. Therefore, the healthy course of action would be to avoid any further contact between them.

It would not be difficult. Spock had only six weeks left at the Academy. He would simply avoid common areas, including the large main cafeteria. The biology department had a small replicator that he could use to procure his meals. He would spend his time in the lab, working, or in his room, sleeping. His walks through the hedges would have to be sacrificed, but some sacrifice was necessary for his emotional stability. There would be nothing of significance missing from his life.

***

He saw Jim Kirk one more time before he shipped off to Alphalon Science Labs. It was at the entrance of the main corridor of the school. Students were milling about between classes. Spock had needed to get a form signed by his advisor, and he had been in the lab for so long that he had forgotten to consider at what times the hallways would be crowded. He was threading his way through one side of the crowd when he saw him. That face that he would have spotted anywhere.

Jim saw him, too. He was all the way on the other side of the hall, but their eyes met and locked.

Spock felt himself suddenly deprived of the ability to move or even to breathe. He could not read what was in Jim’s eyes. They stared at each other, and though other students must have come in between, Spock did not notice. He felt that he wanted this to continue: that though the pain had returned to his chest, it would be better to be standing here looking at him forever, never to have him, than to be sundered…

Then someone pulled on Kirk’s arm, and Kirk’s gaze was torn away. Spock felt its absence like a blow. It was a girl: she had taken Kirk’s hand to pull him after her, and she kept hold of his hand as they moved away. Kirk followed her. His eyes flicked back to Spock’s, just once, and then he looked away again. In a moment he and the girl had vanished into the crowd.

Spock’s breath was coming shallow and fast. He could not move. He was paying the price for irrational behavior: the life seemed to be draining out of his chest again. It took three slow, deep breaths and the sternest possible application of his mental controls before he could make his feet move forward with the crowd again. Even then he was not walking steadily.

The hallways were emptying out; class had begun. Spock was relieved: he did not need the added drain on his mental shields at the moment. He was busy fighting scorn and shame for his illogical wishes of a few moments ago. He stopped by a bank of windows and stood still once more, braced on the sill, until his breathing was steady. What was it about that human that made his controls disappear and his logic seem irrelevant?

Clearly, Spock could never see him again.

Three weeks later, he boarded the small cruiser that would take him to Alphalon Science.

Chapter 2

Over the years that followed, Spock rose steadily in the world of Starfleet Sciences. Naturally, he did not cross paths with James T. Kirk: Spock was immersed in the highest level of research in physics and biology, and Kirk had been in the command track, not science. Spock practiced an unusually strict regime of meditation during his first six months at Alphalon. The result was that Jim Kirk did not cross his mind unbidden.

Nor did the images of others cross his mind. Spock had learned by now that sexual feelings were a path away from logic. When desires of the body arose from time to time, he worked diligently to crush them. In their absence he found some of the calm he had been seeking.

There were times when Jim’s name arose in Spock’s hearing, however, especially in later years—the young Kirk was an officer on the U.S.S. Farragut now and was apparently making a name for himself. Spock was gratified to discover, when these occasions arose, that he felt nothing he should not. His efforts at renewed control had been successful.

His career could not keep him at Alphalon labs indefinitely. Spock soon found himself making trips to other planets, to science research facilities or to field sites. As a Starfleet officer, he went wherever he was posted, and in general the assignments were to his intellectual satisfaction. He was not expecting, however, the assignment that reached him eight years after his graduation from the Academy.

He was posted to Gammon IV at the time. He had just returned from collecting ore samples from the stream beds, and his computer beeped at him to tell him that he had a message.

New assignment, it read. Position: Deputy Science Officer, U.S.S. Enterprise.

Spock’s first reaction was one of curiosity. He had never actively sought duty on a Constitution-class starship, but he could not say that the opportunity was unwelcome. Service on a starship would bring him into contact with many more scientific mysteries and opportunities for investigation. As deputy science officer, he would no doubt have many duties supervising the other scientists on board, but his experience managing scientific teams on various projects had shown him that he had sufficient leadership skills for the task. Over all, it seemed likely that this new assignment would be satisfactory in many ways.

Spock rose from his computer and began the task of organizing his experiments to be passed on to another officer. He was ashamed to note as he did so the fleeting feeling of relief that the ship named had not been the Farragut.

***

Eighteen days later, Deputy Science Officer Spock reported for duty on the bridge of the Enterprise. Captain Pike greeted him with a warm smile and the Vulcan salute. Spock was gratified at the concession to his heritage and at the omission of the ever-prevalent handshake. Physical touch, Pike seemed to understand, was not a part of Spock’s world.

He found that he settled easily into life on the Enterprise. The scientific projects in which the ship was engaged were intellectually exciting; his command duties, while not onerous, were satisfying. And the constant visits to unfamiliar worlds were a pleasure Spock had not previously anticipated. If he remembered at times a young cadet talking with eagerness about the chance to see other worlds, he did not let the thought cross his mind with great frequency.

There were other rewarding features to life on the ship. Spock had effective working relationships with many of the other officers. His superiors appreciated his contributions, and his subordinates showed signs of respecting and admiring him. When the Science Officer on the ship retired, Spock was promoted quickly and without hesitation. If asked, he would not have said that there was anything missing from his life, and he would not have noticed that, for all the interaction he had with his colleagues, he was still lonely.

***

Thus passed the first twelve years of his life after the Academy. It was almost a dozen years to the day since his graduation, in fact, when Spock found himself once again back in San Francisco. Captain Pike had suffered an accident too severe to allow him to continue in command, and as the ship had been damaged as well, they had been called back to headquarters for repairs in expectation of the appointment of a new captain.

Spock was saddened by the accident. His relationship with Captain Pike had not been extremely close, but Pike had been a superb commanding officer, and their interactions had been gratifying. Spock suffered some slight concern as to whom Starfleet would choose as a replacement. It was not everyone, he knew, who would be able to develop such a good working relationship with a Vulcan.

He was walking along a corridor in Starfleet Headquarters when he first heard the name Jim Kirk whispered in connection with the ship. He paused involuntarily to listen. As soon as he had done so, he felt ashamed of his curiosity; but he did not resume his walking.

“I would put my vote behind him, if I had one,” a woman was saying now. “Sure, he’s young, but have you seen the things he’s done?”

“I don’t know,” a second giggled. “I think he’s too cute to be a starship captain.”

“He’ll charm all the alien women out of their pants!” another said, and there was general laughter.

Spock started walking again. He had not known that Kirk was under consideration for promotion to captain—and, presumably, for the only open starship captaincy in the fleet. It was only a rumor, but that alone was enough to cause him some disquiet.

The rest of the conversation had been disturbing as well. He knew all too well the charm those women had spoken of. Part of him wanted to defend his former friend against their accusations—Kirk had never intended to charm him, after all—but another part was merely ashamed to acknowledge that he was no better than those giggling women in the Starfleet corridor, or the hypothetical alien women they had spoken of. He, too, had let himself be overcome.

It was important that he discover the level of truth behind this rumor. Spock had always been more skilled at getting information out of computers than out of people, and so when he got back to his temporary quarters, he scanned through Starfleet open records and various prominent publications for mentions of Kirk’s name in connection with the Enterprise. He found only two small mentions, in articles that seemed highly speculative and not very well researched. He was relieved. That was one emotional challenge he would not have to face.

But two days later he was walking by a vidscreen in Starfleet Headquarters and heard the name of James T. Kirk once again.

“It has been rumored in some Starfleet circles that the young Tactical Officer of the Farragut may be in contention for the most coveted posting in the galaxy at the moment. Is the dashing James T. Kirk too young for such a demanding position? I hand you over to Shawna, with some highlights from his record…”

Spock hurried on his way. He did not need to hear the rest.

When he got to his workspace, he sat down and spent a moment thinking the matter over. The first obvious truth was that even if Kirk were truly being considered, he might not be awarded the post. Spock knew of a dozen other candidates who were as well or much better qualified. Kirk was young. Spock had no doubt that he would command a starship someday, but it was unlikely to be this one at this time.

And if he were given the command? Spock probed cautiously at his emotional defenses. It had been twelve years, and he had been very young back then. He had spent much of the intervening time strengthening his emotional controls. He was undoubtedly well prepared for the challenge, if a challenge it would still be.

But would their working relationship be able to be effective? Spock had served for long enough on a starship to know the importance of trust between a subordinate and a commanding officer. In their last interaction, he had betrayed Kirk’s trust. It had shattered their friendship. He might know himself to be changed, but Kirk would not.

There was also the issue of the necessity of his maintaining his distance from Kirk in order to preserve his emotional controls. Would he and Kirk be able to rebuild that trust between them that had once existed, now that Spock knew the danger of getting close to him? He was afraid the answer was no.

For this reason, he decided that it would be an unfortunate occurrence should Kirk be appointed the captain of the Enterprise.

Two days later, though, he once again heard voices in ’Fleet Headquarters that made him pause.

“They just announced it—can you believe it? He’s so young.”

“Did you catch him on the news? I’ve never seen anyone look as happy as he did in that interview...”

Spock hurried to the nearest computer terminal and typed in his Starfleet ID with fingers that were not as steady as he would have liked. There, waiting for him, was an official announcement of his new commanding officer:. James Tiberius Kirk.

His hands gripped the sides of the keyboard shelf. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply and repeated to himself: What is, is. There was no reason to view this with disappointment, for now that it was known, it must be accepted.

I’ve never seen anyone look so happy. The words Spock had overheard flitted through his mind and left faint emotional resonances in their wake. Joy, that Kirk was happy; irrational sorrow, that Kirk was happy somewhere without him; foolish trembling, at the memory of his smile. He had not seen it for twelve years. Would it still have the same power over him?

There were more words at the screen. A meeting with his new commanding officer and several members of Starfleet command, tomorrow at ten-hundred hours.

Spock went home to meditate.

***

The next morning at ten-hundred hours, Spock sat in a chair in conference room 211B at Starfleet Headquarters. Admirals N’Kapa and Fredericks were in the room with him, but Spock found it difficult to pay attention to the social niceties they were exchanging. His energy was occupied with maintaining his shields and attempting not to glance towards the door.

He almost jumped when it opened. He kept his eyes trained on the blotter on the table in front of him until he felt he’d regained control. It would be Kirk walking in, of course. He found that he was afraid to look directly at him. What would Kirk’s face show? Would it show the anger, the disdain he had imagined? Would Kirk be able to see through him to the shame and weakness?

His behavior was ridiculous, and beneath his position as a Starfleet officer. He made himself raise his eyes towards the figure who had just entered.

The first things he saw were Jim’s eyes, looking directly at him. Spock felt their eyes meet with a shock, and instantly it was as if twelve years of emotional control faded away. That gaze was as full of bright intensity as ever before, and Spock could almost feel it melting through his mental barriers.

A quick glance was enough to show that Kirk had lost none of his charisma over the past twelve years. His face, though older, was still full of youthful energy. And he was smiling at Spock.

He was smiling. At Spock. Spock looked into that smiling face that he had learned to read better than any other face he’d known and saw a hint of a question in it, a slight uncertainty. Were they still friends? Spock could not withhold his reaction: he let the corners of his eyes relax just slightly.

Instantly Kirk’s smile broadened, and the uncertainty disappeared. “Admirals,” he said, turning to them and shaking their hands. “Spock.” He turned to Spock and bestowed upon him the Vulcan salute. Spock found his hand returning the gesture. It would have been illogical to wish for a handshake, when the ta’al was so consistently his preference.

Kirk took the chair next to him, across from the two Admirals. As he sat, Kirk moved his chair approximately 3.5 inches to the left and father away from Spock. Spock noted this and knew it was not an accident. The message was clear: they could be friends, but Kirk would be careful to maintain the physical distance between them. Spock was grateful for the first and had only to continue to subdue his shame that the second should be necessary. He was being given a second chance at trust; this time, he could not betray it.

He turned his attention back to the meeting. The pleasantries were evidently over. “Now,” Admiral N’Kapa was saying, “what say we get down to business? How about this starship of yours?”

“I’m eager to discuss it myself, sir,” Kirk said. Spock did not look at him, but he could hear the grin in his voice.

The two admirals laughed. “I bet you are,” Fredericks said. “A bit of a surprise, getting this appointment, eh?”

“It’s an honor, sir,” Kirk said seriously.

N’Kapa leaned over the table. “Don’t you mistake it,” he said. “And it’s a big job. I know you think you know what it’s like to run a starship, but you don’t. Not yet.”

Kirk nodded. Spock was aware of the nod as he was aware of all of Kirk’s movements, down to the hands that were clasped on the blotter.

“Now, Spock here—” the admiral gestured, “he knows the Enterprisebetter than anybody.”

“Yes, sir,” Kirk said.

“That’s why,” N’Kapa continued, “we’d like to make him your First Officer.”

Spock looked up. With a great effort, he was able to keep the surprise from his face. He had assumed that he would continue as Science Officer only. He glanced quickly over to Kirk. There was surprised pleasure in his face. “I think that’s an excellent choice, sir.”

“Spock is one of the best scientists in the fleet,” Fredericks said. “I hope you’re aware of what an asset you’re getting in him.”

“Oh, believe me, I am,” Kirk said. His eyes cut over to Spock’s, and Spock had to work to control the flush that threatened to rise to his cheeks.

***

The rest of the meeting concerned various logistics with regard to the five-year mission. Throughout the discussions, Spock never lost his intense awareness of Jim’s physical presence next to him. He made an effort to look at him as little as possible, but he could not block out the sound of his voice, and those few times their eyes did meet, he could not stop the jolt that went through him.

He had thought himself so much stronger than this. After only an hour of Jim’s presence, his emotional controls were all but gone. He was glad when Jim had to rush off to another meeting when theirs was over. Spock did not think his control could have survived a one-on-one conversation.

After saying his own goodbyes to the admirals, he left the conference room and walked for a few minutes until he found a deserted office to duck into. He closed his eyes and let the tremors take him while he tried to recover what meager control he could.

He had underestimated the potency of Kirk’s physical presence—that much was clear. He was not sure how much, if any, the others in the room had noticed of his distress. But it was clear that he could not perform his duties in this condition. Had twelve years’ worth of time not been enough?

Well, it had been their first encounter. Subsequent exposure would lessen his reaction, and he would be better able to prepare for the challenges posed by a living, breathing, smiling Kirk. He would not let his emotional instability interfere with the performance of his duties.

***

The next few days were full of preparations. Starfleet had recently rolled out the idea of the five-year mission, with the expectation (however unrealistic, in Spock’s opinion) that the ship would not have to return to port until the five years were over. This resulted in high demand for duplicate parts and equipment that might be difficult to obtain at the Starbases on their journey, and Spock, as first officer, was in charge of all acquisitions. He did not see his commanding officer during this time.

Until, that is, the day before they were supposed to launch. Spock was in his temporary office at Starfleet Headquarters, inputting last-minute requisition forms, when he heard someone clear his throat from the doorway. He looked up to see Kirk standing there.

He was leaning against the doorframe, his hair golden even in the incandescent lighting and his uniform fitting far too perfectly. “Hey, Spock,” he said. “I was wondering if you wanted to get dinner in the mess.”

Spock’s first thought was to say that he had too much work to do, which would have been reasonably accurate: he had very little time to spare before the relaunching of the Enterprise. But this was his commanding officer, and it would be futile for Spock to delay the necessary effort of becoming accustomed to Kirk’s presence.

“Certainly, captain,” he said, rising and turning off his computer and stepping into the hall with Kirk.

“Captain,” Kirk repeated. He grinned and shook his head as they started walking. “I’m going to have to get used to that.”

“Surely it is not an unfamiliar term to you, having served on the Farragut,” Spock said.

“No, but it’s completely different when it’s being applied to yourself,” Kirk said. His stride, Spock noticed, had not changed. It was still as determined as always. “Don’t you think it’ll be strange to suddenly be called First Officer?”

“I have not developed emotional attachments to any of my titles,” Spock said stiffly.

Kirk shot him a look that might have been uncertainty, or concern. Too late, he realized his tone had been deliberately off-putting. It would not have disturbed a new captain who was a stranger, but Kirk had been his friend. Spock did not have the luxury of a period of growing acquaintance.

By this point they had reached the mess. By the time they had acquired food and chosen a table, Spock had mentally prepared himself for following Kirk’s lead of friendship.

“Tell me,” he said consequently after they had sat down, “has the exploration of new planets satisfied your expectations?”

It must have been the right thing to say, because Kirk’s face lost the distant look it had worn and broke into a smile. “It’s been even better,” he said. “You had the right idea, Spock, when you came to Earth to join Starfleet. There’s something so…invigorating…about seeing worlds that are foreign in every way from the one you grew up with.”

“Not foreign in every way,” Spock said.

“No, that would be harder,” Kirk agreed. “But it just doesn’t occur to you, living on Earth, all the ways things can be different. I remember the first contact with one planet where the ground mists were so thick that people walked around on each other’s shoulders, three or four high, and you wouldn’t believe how they decided who’d be on top…”

Spock sat and listened to Jim talk in his animated way about all the things he’d seen. It was strange to be across the table from him at dinner once more. A dozen years had passed: there had been a boy across from him back at the Academy, and now there was a man. In the intervening time, Kirk had served as a senior officer on a starship. He had made life-or-death decisions and had come close to death himself. But he still possessed the same enthusiasm, the same optimism, the same ability to be delighted by the smallest details.

Spock found himself wondering, with a sudden feeling of displacement, how much he himself had changed. What did Kirk see when he looked across the table? He hoped very much that it was not the same foolish young Vulcan who had let his emotions lead him into disastrous decisions. They might be sitting once more at a dinner table in San Francisco, but this time, things between them would have to go very differently.

“It sounds like you are well-suited to your current assignment,” Spock said when Jim paused in his recitations of the wonders of the galaxy.

Jim smiled. “It’s a dream come true,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this for years. I didn’t think it would come so soon, but hey, I’m not complaining.” He took a big bite of his food, which had been somewhat neglected during his recitation. “What about you, though? You’ve been out and about as much as I have. What’s stood out about it for you?”

You, Spock thought immediately, taking himself by surprise. He did not voice his thought out loud, of course, but he could not deny it: he could not think of a single thing over the past twelve years that had stood out as brightly in his mind as did James T. Kirk. He took a deep breath and reminded himself to be careful. “I do not know if the things that have moved me would translate well,” he said.

“Try me,” Kirk said with a challenging glint in his eyes.

Spock took a bite of food and thought for a moment. “I did not anticipate the breadth of scientific phenomena I would encounter,” he said. “For example, on Capri III, I spent six months with a team studying mirror universes.”

“Mirror universes?”

“Parallel worlds,” Spock said. “The theory holds that in each moment of our lives, there are infinite possibilities. One of these possibilities comes to pass, and the others are spun off into alternate universes.”

Jim’s eyes were intent. “So there are infinite versions of each of us, in infinite universes?”

“And even more universes where we don’t exist at all,” Spock said. “Everything that comes to pass in this universe may be omitted in another.”

“And every missed opportunity is somewhere taken,” Jim said.

There was a moment in which they looked at each other without speaking. At first Jim’s gaze was not troubling, but soon Spock felt himself growing uncomfortable. “It is still merely a theory,” he said. “What evidence we have of it is anecdotal and highly suspect.”

“You mean it might be more of a problem in the fermentation process of whatever the witnesses were drinking than a glitch in the universe?” Kirk asked.

“An unorthodox way of putting it,” Spock said, raising one eyebrow, “but I cannot disagree.”

Kirk suddenly laughed. “I’ve missed that,” he said, gesturing at the raised eyebrow.

Spock ducked his head and took a bite of food to hide the green flush he couldn’t keep from his cheeks. This was highly dangerous. He should never have let himself begin a discussion about personal matters. “I am afraid that I must go monitor the repairs on the warp drives,” he said.

“What, already?” Kirk said. “You’ve hardly even finished your food.”

“It is a matter of some urgency,” Spock said. “I cannot delay any longer.”

“What, not even if your captain orders you to?” Kirk asked with a grin.

Spock had raised an eyebrow again before he realized he was doing it. “Would my captain like us to be without warp power at our launch in two days?”

Kirk conceded with a sigh. “Fair point.” He waved his hand. “Go, go, I’ll be fine here.”

Spock hesitated for a moment, then stood with his tray and left Kirk sitting there finishing his dinner. That had been far too dangerous a conversation. And yet, clearly any conversation between them was going to be equally dangerous. It seemed that the battle with his feelings would not be an easy one to win. That was acceptable, as long as he was able to control his behavior. He must never, ever again let the smallest shred of his continuing emotions become visible to Kirk if they were to work effectively as a team. Once, he told himself, had been enough.

***

Two days later, Spock stood on the bridge of the Enterprise when the ship left Earth’s orbit. He watched the blue-and-white orb become smaller and smaller as they moved away into the depths of space. It was always breathtaking, much more than any other exit from orbit, even though it was not the planet of his birth. Earth meant ground, and stability. Spock watched it recede, and then he watched Kirk’s face watching it. Kirk’s eyes were far brighter than the globe of reflected sunlight.

During his first week in command, Kirk made a series of unobtrusive changes around the ship. He went to Spock and adjusted the duty rosters so that more experienced officers were mixed with cadets on beta and gamma shifts, so that the younger crew could learn from their experience. He took the larger rec room that was reserved for senior officers and switched it with one of the junior common areas—“Since we have so little time to relax anyway, and there are fewer of us,” he said when Spock commented on it. And as far as Spock could tell, he introduced himself to every crewperson on the ship. Every time Spock saw him, he was talking with another man or woman, smiling and showing that he was genuinely interested in his or her role on the ship. Somehow, he seemed to remember everyone’s names.

“Sir, I am beginning to suspect we have cause for concern,” Spock said one afternoon when they were at lunch together.

“Why’s that?” Kirk said, leaning forward and knitting his eyebrows together.

“Because given how quickly you seem to have met everyone on the ship, I can only conclude that you have not been sleeping at all,” Spock said.

Kirk laughed loud and long at that.

There were other changes in the senior crew of the Enterprise that took some adjustment. The former CMO had retired, and in her place had been appointed Dr. Leonard McCoy, who was, it seemed, a friend of Kirk’s from an extended stay at a Starbase hospital. McCoy seemed to take an instant dislike to Spock. Spock could not say the feeling was wholly one-sided. McCoy appeared to be a skilled doctor, and he and Jim had an easy friendship that led Spock to believe that there must be much of value in the man—but his emotionalism and distaste for logic would require some adjustment.

But of course, the biggest adjustment was Kirk himself. Spock now saw him every day, on the bridge, in the briefing rooms, in the mess. He had to become accustomed to Kirk’s presence in every corner of his life. He adjusted quickly: he no longer had the lapses of control that he had had in that first meeting at Starfleet Headquarters. Kirk’s presence was no longer an insurmountable trial. But he was always aware of it; Kirk never became simply another crew member to him. Anytime they were in a room together, Spock was constantly aware of Kirk’s location, and when Kirk moved a hand, Spock knew it. He could not expunge the knowledge from his mind.

Nonetheless, he had much on which to congratulate himself by the time they were three weeks into the mission. He had not made a fool of himself. There had been no lapses in his control which he believed would have been visible to others.

It was at this point in the mission that he had reason to glimpse one of the disadvantages of a captain’s life that had not occurred to him. Spock had been working in his quarters one evening after dinner, and door buzzer went off. He buzzed it open to reveal Kirk standing there, three-dimensional chess board in hand.

“Hi,” Kirk said a bit sheepishly. “Feel like a game?”

It was the first time Kirk had come to visit him in his quarters. They shared a bathroom, of course, but both had thus far been scrupulous about activating the privacy locks. Spock hadn’t seen Kirk outside the public areas of the ship. And yet, there was no reason why Kirk should not come visit him; much socializing on the ship took place, of necessity, in private quarters.

“I did not know you played,” Spock said as he stepped back and allowed Kirk to enter the room.

“When I can,” Kirk said. “The problem is, Bones doesn’t play, and I always feel strange walking into one of the rec rooms looking for a partner.”

Spock nodded, eyebrow raised. It was not a dilemma that had occurred to him previously. Of course the captain, as captain, would not be able to socialize with the crew of the ship in a comfortable way. He, as first officer, was one of the few people the captain would be able to rely on for such interactions, and so it was his duty to provide them. This interaction—a game of chess—was surely one he could provide without risking his control.

Yet it was difficult not to feel a number of conflicting emotions as he sat down at his desk across from Kirk in the privacy of his quarters. Happiness, nervousness, shame. They had not been truly alone like this since…

But Kirk’s eyes were on the pieces he was arranging. He did not look at Spock until he held out two hands, each with a pawn hidden inside, and smiled an invitation.

Spock pointed to one hand without touching it. Kirk opened the hand to reveal a white pawn. Spock would make the first move.

After that there was silence for several minutes as they made their moves. It had been several years since he had played, but Spock found that he had not lost his skill. It took slightly longer than it might have for him to calculate his moves, but all of his techniques returned to him. It was quite simple for him to determine the most logical move in any given situation.

But Kirk, he found, did not follow the same method. Many times Spock saw clearly the most logical strategy for Kirk to follow, and yet Kirk surprised him by doing something entirely different. Spock was unable to figure out the pattern of his moves. It was as if he moved by intuition more than by calculation.

The result was that Kirk won their first game. He could not resist a smile as he took Spock’s king. “You played well,” he said.

“As did you,” Spock said. Kirk’s smile broadened.

Spock wondered if Kirk would leave now that their game was concluded, but he showed no sign of doing so. Instead he sat back and played with one of the knights with his fingers. “Where did you learn to play?” he asked.

“On Catalphus,” Spock answered. “I was part of a biological expedition, and the lead scientist was in search of someone to play with. He played well, but not, I believe, with the same flair as you.”

Kirk grinned. “I know; it’s not very Vulcan of me.”

“On the contrary,” Spock said, “it is the Vulcan way to admire a course of action that achieves its aims. I believe my people would appreciate your method of play, even if we do not all possess the necessary skills to duplicate it.”

Kirk’s smile softened.

“Where did you learn?” Spock asked, in large part to distract himself from Kirk’s smile.

“My brother taught me,” Kirk said. “We used to play for hours. He was a couple of years older than me, but we were pretty evenly matched. He played more like you than me, I think.”

“You are at an unfair advantage, then,” Spock said, “for I cannot claim ever to have played someone whose style resembled yours.”

“But now you have,” Kirk said. “Next time we’ll be even.”

Some anxiety that Spock had not known he felt was soothed at those words. Kirk seemed to take it for granted that they would play again. “Next time you may not find it so easy to claim victory,” he said.

Kirk’s grin reappeared. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

He was leaning slightly forward now, as he always seemed to when encountered with a challenge, and his countenance was open and warm. Spock found himself looking into his eyes and forgot to speak. The light was there that he knew so well. For an instant the controls on his memory gave way the slightest bit, and he remembered when he had let those eyes draw him closer and closer until their bodies had met. The memory made desire wash through him. If he were to lean in closer…

Then reason returned to him, and he let his eyes drop. This was not the memory of a mutually enjoyed moment. It was the memory of a violation: when he had forced himself upon Kirk, and Kirk had moved away and rejected the desire that now made Spock contemplate lunacy. He exercised control over his endocrine system and forced away his arousal.

He looked back up at Kirk, who was beginning to look at him with concern. “It is late,” he said. “I believe it may be best if I retire now.”

“Of course,” Kirk said. He stood up hurriedly. “Thanks for the game, Spock. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

“I would not be averse to that,” Spock said, and earned himself another smile before Kirk disappeared into the hallway and left Spock to begin the long journey back to normalcy.

 

They did play again, many times. As the year went on, despite Spock’s misgivings, they became an excellent command team. And Kirk continued to strip Spock of his control with a glance and make him spend hours recovering himself in solitary meditation.

The worst trials were on landing parties, when Jim would begin smiling at a beautiful woman who gave him coy smiles in return. Then Spock would stand at his best friend’s side and feel each gaze, each smile, like a blow to the chest.

But he got to go back to the ship with Jim and sit across from him in the evenings when they played chess or talked, and the women did not. That was how Spock pushed aside the jealousy.

On one evening after one of these landing parties, 9.7 months into their mission, Kirk sat in Spock’s quarters with a glass of bourbon in his hand. He had been smiling at a girl that day who had turned out to be a willing partner in her father’s tyranny, and who had tried to kill them before they had gotten the upper hand.

“I can’t believe I let her get to me,” Kirk said. He was sitting in a chair on the other side of the desk, swirling his bourbon around in the glass. They were supposed to be playing chess, but the board stood untouched on the desk. Kirk seemed more frustrated by the day’s events than he normally was, and he seemed to need to talk more than he needed to play tonight.

“There were no signs of her true character at that point,” Spock said. “You could not have been aware.”

“No, but…” Kirk shook his head, and the annoyance in his face melted away to something closer to melancholy. “Why do I keep doing this?” he asked Spock. “I’ll flirt with a girl, go full speed after her, and she'll turn out to be someone I couldn’t stand to associate with, let alone love.”

“It is a hazard of your profession,” Spock said. “You encounter many women in settings where you have little data with which to evaluate their characters.”

Kirk put down his glass of bourbon and looked up intently, bridging his hands together. “Yeah, but that’s just the thing. I go after them without knowing their characters. Why do I do that?”

Spock could not deny that he had wondered the same thing. Yet he had no wish to condemn his friend. “It is the human need for companionship, Jim. There is no shame in your attraction to these women.”

Jim shook his head again. “I don’t know,” he said. He looked off into the distance, and he was quiet for so long that Spock thought he might not speak of it again. But finally he took a sip of bourbon and went on, still looking into the distance. “I keep thinking of something you said to me once, Spock,” he said. “About friendship. How I shouldn’t deny myself companionship just because I’m holding out for an ideal that I haven’t found yet. But now I don’t know…I wonder if I’m doing the right thing, going after all these women who aren’t really right for me, instead of holding out for what I’m really looking for.” He gave a little laugh. “I just wish I knew what that was.”

Spock felt a constriction in his chest. This topic, on Jim’s lips, had robbed him of the ability to speak. He could only sit and look at Jim’s face, so pensive…

Jim looked up and met his eyes. “Do you know, Spock?”

Spock forced his voice into speech. “I do not know to what you refer, Jim.”

“I mean,” he said, “do you know what you’re looking for?” There was a faint flush in his cheeks, and he looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “That might be a really rude question. I mean, I don’t know anything about Vulcan customs for things like that…”

“It is all right,” Spock said, though he had no idea what he would answer. The truth, that his whole being was wrapped around the man in front of him, could not be uttered. And if he could turn away from Kirk, what would he be looking for? Had he ever even been able to think about it? “I am afraid I do not know, Jim.”

Kirk nodded, brow furrowed, as if he were trying to puzzle something out. “I just wish I could stop going after these women who aren’t worth anything,” he said. “Sometimes I feel…” He shook his head and smiled a sad smile. “Sometimes I feel like the need to have someone to hold just isn’t worth this, you know?”

Spock’s heart was in his mouth. The desire to go to Jim and take him in his arms was so strong that he could feel it like a substance spreading all over his body.

Jim laughed suddenly as if he were embarrassed. “Sorry. I guess that’s not a problem Vulcans usually have. Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“No, Jim,” Spock said. His voice sounded rough to his ears. “It is not pathetic.” The next words he wanted to say felt as if they weighed several hundred pounds each, but he felt the need to say them. “I do understand,” he said quietly.

Jim’s eyes caught his. Spock experienced a feeling of intoxication: as if he were being submerged into deep water, as if the world were tilting and spinning around him. Jim’s eyes had a power that he could not comprehend. It would be enough, he thought, if they could sit and look at each other forever…

Their gazes held for thirty-four seconds. Then Jim suddenly broke off his gaze and lifted his bourbon glass again and drained it. He put the empty glass back down on the desk.

“Well, I had better be going to bed,” he said. He got up and went around the desk to stand next to Spock and put a hand on Spock’s shoulder. The contact sent a jolt through Spock’s system, and he felt, once again, the whisper-touch of that mind he so desired. “Thanks for being such a good friend,” Jim whispered.

Then he was gone.

In Jim’s absence, Spock looked down at the desk and felt the feelings of loss and disappointment sweep over him. He rose and did all of the things he normally did before going to bed, and then he climbed under the covers with those feelings draped around him like a cloak.

Perhaps it was the conversation they had just had, or Spock’s irrational clinging to sorrow—whatever the cause, at that moment a crack appeared in the gates of his memory. A wisp of the scene in the hedges came into his mind, and Jim’s arms were holding him again.

Spock gasped at the force of the memory. It sent a jolt all through him to his groin, and his penis throbbed against the restraint of his sleep pants.

Normally he would have forced the arousal out of his system. But before he could do so, the vision of Kirk standing close to him, Kirk’s hand on his shoulder, swam into his mind. What if Kirk had not left, but had stayed? What if his hand had slid across to Spock’s neck, and his head had leaned forward until their lips met in a new kiss….

Spock felt his heart rate rise further. His organ was hard and throbbing. Ripples of sensation seemed to run from it all over his body. He took hold of the waist of his sleep pants and eased them down over it.

Kirk had just leaned in to kiss him, and Spock stood up to meet him, not breaking their kiss. Kirk’s arms slipped around his back. Spock was held, once more. His chest was pressed against Kirk’s. Kirk’s tongue was against his, moving…the taste of Kirk was once more in his mouth…

Kirk’s penis hard against his leg. Spock let the tips of his fingers graze over his own erect organ, something he never allowed himself to do. The touch sent a bolt of electricity through his system. He threw his head back at the power of it. Jim…what was Jim doing now?

Jim had come with him to the bed, their hands intertwining as Spock pulled him down on top of him. Jim’s naked body was on top of his, next to his, warming, stroking. It was Jim’s hand that stroked along Spock’s penis, Jim’s other hand that came around behind Spock’s head and pressed Spock’s mouth to his, Jim’s legs that tangled with Spock’s…

“Jim. Jim,” he whispered into the darkness. Jim’s hands were stroking him now, all along his chest and back. Spock’s hands were all over Jim’s smooth flesh—down around that trim waist—lower still, to the buttocks. He squeezed the imagined softness there. “Jim!”

It was Jim’s fist now that worked up and down Spock’s penis, Jim’s mouth on his, ravishing him. Spock thrust into Jim’s hand as the dizzying arousal built up inside of him, oh, the feeling of Jim’s warmth all along him, nuzzling into Jim’s neck, Jim’s penis in his hand, no holding back now—

Spock came with an explosion that felt as large as the supernovas he had seen in space. He felt blinded by the light of it all, overwhelmed by the power of the waves that came over him. He could not move until it faded. Then he lay, quivering, against the sweat-soaked pillow.

“Jim,” he whispered into the silence.

The fantasy figure was gone now. He wished he could have Jim’s head on the pillow next to him now, smiling in the afterglow. He would take a finger and brush Jim’s hair off his forehead. Jim’s eyes would be looking at him…Jim’s arm would still be around his back…

Spock closed his eyes. The foolishness of his actions was inescapable. He had deliberately fed a desire that was already painful, and he had spent 12.4 minutes longing for what could never be. He had done what he thought he would never be weak enough to do.

He got out of bed and cleaned himself off. Then he sat down in his meditation position and plunged himself in thought.

There were three choices before him—the same three options that had been before him for all the long months of Kirk’s time with the Enterprise. This evening’s events, however, had thrown them into sharp relief, and Spock did not think he could move forward without making a choice.

He could leave the ship. He could stay on the ship, but curtail his relationship with Kirk so that he would be able to maintain his emotional distance. Or he could continue on the path he was on and descend into madness.

The third option did not deserve the term. Spock knew now, as fully as he ever could, that he could not possibly continue his relationship with Kirk as it was and expect any peace or sanity.

The first option…the first option would be the easiest. For that reason, Spock’s thoughts inclined towards it immediately. But his sense of duty rose to chastise him. He and Kirk had become one of the best command teams in Starfleet. He could not throw that out because of his own emotional weakness.

Was the second option a feasible alternative? He had never truly tried to distance himself from Jim in a lasting way while still remaining in Jim's presence. At the beginning of the mission, his intentions in that direction had been swept away by Jim’s expectations. If he could try it—if he could preserve the command team and his emotional control at the same time—

His habit of honesty forced him to admit that he didn’t know if it was possible. But he went to sleep that night with the intention of trying with all his force.

***

Beginning the next day, therefore, there was a change in Spock’s behavior around James T. Kirk. Before, despite the danger of such actions, he had sought the captain out more than he needed to for official ship’s business. He had welcomed Jim’s overtures of off-duty friendship. Now, he did not quite rebuff his friend—that would have been damaging to their professional relationship, and in any case, he did not wish to hurt the man who had become so dear to him. But he created more distance than there had been between them.

Jim noticed. Spock saw it in the sadness of his eyes when Jim greeted him in the corridors, and he heard it in his voice when Jim asked if he wanted to join him for a game of chess. At first Jim asked with his accustomed frequency, and then gradually, as Spock began to say no, the invitations slowed to a trickle.

Spock found it more difficult than he had expected to do these things to Jim: to say no, to pull away when Jim reached out, to cause the sadness in his eyes. But Jim’s presence in his life was like a poison. It would hurt while the poison was extracted, but only then would he be able to return to health.

Such was the state of affairs on the Enterprise for six weeks, until the mission on Cambria VIII.

***

Cambria VIII was a first-contact mission. Spock was part of the landing party, as, of course, was Kirk. Spock had had words with him about participating so frequently in first-contact missions, but his words had not had any effect, as he had in fact expected them not to. Exploring new worlds was too integral a part of Kirk’s personality to be reasoned out of him with a few words about personal safety.

Their ship-board scanners had observed isolated villages of inhabitants with very primitive technologies. It had been the crew’s plan to beam down at a good distance from a village, make some scientific observations, and then approach the village with caution.

The first two stages of their plan had been carried out successfully. It was when they were making their way through the rocky terrain toward the village that they discovered what would have been a most helpful thing to know: that the Cambrians hunted by guerilla tactics, and they had an inexplicable fondness for small, shiny objects.

The six men and women of the Enterprise party—Kirk, Spock, a biologist named Michaels, and three from Security—were approaching the village between two sets of boulders when swift hands fell upon them. Spock felt a sharp tug at his waist that told him that his communicator had been taken from him. Naturally, he fought back—but he barely landed a blow before his attacker darted out of sight. Even his hearing could not clearly detect which way the footsteps had gone, and he could not decide which way to shoot.

He straightened up. Around him, most of the other crewmembers were in similar plights. Kirk had managed to catch hold of one of their assailants and was grappling with him on the ground. As Spock watched, the man slipped out of Kirk’s grasp and disappeared among the boulders. When Kirk rose, though, it was with a grim look on his face and a communicator in his hand.

“Did they get all our others?” Kirk asked the group.

There were nods all around. No one seemed hurt to Spock’s eye, and all had their phasers, but there was not a communicator to be seen among them.

“Damn. This one got pretty banged up on the rock; I don’t know if it will work,” Kirk said as he flipped it open. It did not beep. “Kirk to Enterprise. Do you read me?”

There was nothing from the communicator. Kirk tried a few times before flipping it shut and handing it to Spock. “Think you can fix it?”

“I do not know,” Spock said. “It would depend on the—”

His words were interrupted by the crash of large stones falling from the sky. The crew all ducked.

“Quick, this way!” Kirk herded them at a run through the boulders and around the corner of a steep wall of rock. On the other side, they all stopped and caught their breath.

“Spock,” Kirk said. “Any idea what’s going on?”

He looked at Spock with the look of intensity that Spock knew was only caused by the crisis. Nonetheless, he automatically took a step back to maintain a safe distance. “I have no explanation for the seizure of our communicators,” he said. “It may be that they have a cultural reason for believing that they are valuable.”

Kirk nodded. “Okay, so we need to fix this one, or we need to attack to get the others back. Either way, we need a safe base of operations.”

Spock did a quick survey of the surrounding terrain. “I believe there may be a usable cave thirty yards along this wall,” he said. “As their primary means of attack seems to be from above, it may offer us the necessary protection.”

“All right, we run on my count,” Kirk said. “Michaels, Spinelli, Jorgenson, you go first, and we’ll cover you. Then you cover the three of us from the cave.”

The first three ran on his count. They made it to the cave without any projectiles raining from above.

“Our turn,” Kirk said. “On three. One…two…”

They all ran on the count of three. Their group, however, was not so fortunate. Spock had covered half the distance when he heard the scrape of falling boulders above and answering phaser fire from the cave in front of them.

The danger was not great. Given their distribution and speed and the number of attackers who had shown themselves previously, Spock estimated the odds of any of them getting hit at less than one in four. He was calculating with greater precision when the rock struck his temple.

It felt like a hammerstroke to the head. At first Spock could not determine if it had hurt him, and then the world tilted a bit and he staggered.

“Spock!” cried a loud voice behind him. Arms came around him before he could reach the ground. He did not need to hear that voice to know that they were Jim’s. He could feel it everywhere they touched, like a light brushing of Jim’s mind.

The arms enclosed him. For a moment, that part of Spock that was still alert warned him against the danger of this. But the relief of being held, of being held at last by this man, was so great that Spock felt as if the walls inside him were melting. He could not keep himself standing anymore. He sagged against Jim’s chest, and he had the wonderful reward of Jim adjusting his hold so that Spock’s head was leaning back against his shoulder. “Mallory!” Kirk’s voice called. “Cover us!”

Spock felt himself being moved forward. He tried to help, but his legs weren’t obeying him the way he wanted them to.

Kirk was giving orders to the others. “Michaels, see if you can get the communicator working. Spinelli, Jorgenson, go with Mallory and cover us from outside. The natives have rocks, but they don’t seem to have any better weapons than that. If we scare them enough, we might be able to keep them from attacking again until we can figure out the communicator.”

“Want some help with Commander Spock, sir?” a voice asked near Spock’s ear.

Spock stiffened without consciously choosing to. He felt Kirk’s arms tighten around him. “No, I’ve got him. See what you can do with that communicator.”

Then for a few minutes there was quiet. Spock realized that Kirk was sitting down, and that his own legs were stretched out on the ground in front of him. There was a throbbing pain in his head, but he didn’t care. His head was still on Kirk’s shoulder, and Kirk’s arms around were around him. Kirk was holding him.

Jim. Jim was holding him. Spock floated for long minutes in that happy dream. All of the thoughts and feelings he had been carefully suppressing for weeks came flooding back. Every so often, the reminder would creep into his mind that this didn’t mean anything, that Jim was just holding him because he was injured, to give him comfort—but it didn’t matter. There was warmth all through his chest and his limbs.

The side of Jim’s face was up against his. Spock moved his head slightly, just to feel the skin of that cheek. “Shh,” Jim whispered. His mouth was right by Spock’s ear, and Spock could feel the breath gusting against his face. “No need to move. You’re all right now.”

He was all right now. He could feel the very barest edge of Jim’s lip against his ear. Jim’s fingers were spread across his chest. Jim’s head moved, just a little, and Spock thought he could feel those lips brush against his temple.

There was the sound of falling rocks and phaser fire outside. Spock felt Jim’s arms tense around him. “Be right back,” he whispered, and then Spock felt himself being settled on rock, and the arms were gone.

The absence of those arms was worse than the pain in his head. He felt as if the world was dark and cold and indistinct, and he was sinking…

“Jorgenson! Under cover!” Kirk’s voice cried. There were more sounds of falling rocks. Jim was out there—Spock had to move, to help. He struggled towards a sitting position.

Then there was a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down. Jim’s hand. Some of the warmth trickled back into his body. Spock tried to turn his head toward the hand, and a bright explosion of pain burst in his skull. He settled for feeling the touch.

“We have to get him out of here,” he heard Kirk saying to someone else. “Any luck with the communicators?”

Spock did not want to be out of here. He wanted, just for one tiny moment more, to be held in Jim’s arms. But the illogic of this chain of thought finally burst into his mind like a splash of water and knocked him halfway out of his daze. Clearly, he had suffered some kind of brain injury, and it was affecting his automatic pain controls. Either that, or the endorphins that resulted from being held by Jim had tricked his mind into thinking he did not need the pain controls. Either way, he needed to put aside his dreams of Jim’s arms and focus on pushing the pain away.

It took a few minutes of concentration, but soon his head had cleared enough so that he was able to open his eyes and look around. They were in a shallow cave in the side of the mountain. Kirk’s hand was still on his shoulder, and his thumb was rubbing little patterns in the skin. Spock did not allow himself to enjoy the feeling. He opened his eyes and pushed himself upright.

Jim took his hand away immediately. “Spock! You’re all right?”

“I am all right for the moment,” he said. He could still feel that there was something wrong in his head, but it would not endanger his life or impair his functioning in the immediate future. He held out a hand to Michaels. “May I see that?”

She handed him the communicator. Its circuits were damaged, but not beyond repair. Fifteen minutes of work later—interrupted by two more attacks—Spock had it working. He flipped it open with the familiar beeping sound.

Kirk’s head snapped up at the sound, eyes glowing. He looked a question at Spock, and Spock nodded. Kirk took the communicator in his hand. “Kirk to Enterprise.”

“Enterprise to Kirk, this is Uhura.”

Smiles broke out on the faces of the others in the little space. “Uhura,” Kirk said, a broad grin on his face. “Six to beam up.” His eyes cut to Spock. “And have McCoy standing by.”

***

A few hours later, McCoy finally certified Spock fit to have visitors. Kirk burst into the room, with all the energy he usually reserved for encountering recalcitrant alien species. “Spock, is this true?” were the first words out of his mouth.

Spock looked at him levelly from his position on the bed. “I’m afraid I cannot say with great accuracy to what you are referring.”

“Dammit, Spock, I mean what McCoy told me, about you putting yourself in danger by exercising those Vulcan mental controls with a brain injury.”

McCoy answered that one. “It’s like I told you, Jim. It was a damn foolish thing to do. He could have ended a lot worse than he is.”

Kirk spun around in his anger and walked a few paces away. “Dammit, Spock!” he said again.

“I assure you, the doctor is exaggerating,” Spock said.

McCoy glared at him. “You could have ended up in a coma.”

“But I did not,” Spock pointed out. “In fact, it was my use of Vulcan pain controls that led to our being rescued and my receiving timely medical care.”

Kirk had come back to the bed and was looking down at him with eyes that were both angry and hurt. “You shouldn’t have done that, and you know it.”

Spock could easily blow off McCoy’s anger, but he could not do the same with Jim’s. “I apologize, Jim,” he said gravely.

Something in Jim’s eyes softened. Spock felt the familiar leaping in his chest that always came with that look in Jim’s face. He looked away quickly.

McCoy gave a snort. “Sure, you’ll say that to him,” he said. “All you’ll say to me is that Vulcans are in excellent control of their own brains.” He tapped his finger against the bio display. “Not today, you weren’t.”

Spock should have had a reply, but he did not. He was still trying to push away the feelings that had been aroused by Jim’s look.

“Well, I’ll leave you to recover,” McCoy said. “No leaving that bed, now, until I’ve given permission. Honestly, sometimes you’d think I was the only one looking out for you.”

He left, and Kirk and Spock were alone.

“I suppose you want me to leave too,” Kirk said.

There was a sadness in his voice that made Spock look at him in surprise. “Jim, no, I…”

Kirk shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.” He turned and left the room.

Spock was left with the kind of emptiness he thought he had begun to put aside six weeks ago, now made worse by the tone of Kirk’s parting words. Jim’s arms around him had undone all his careful distance. He would have to begin the process again—for though it would mean continuing to hurt his friend, it was the only way to prevent a more serious betrayal that would hurt him all the more.

Chapter 3

Spock was certified for limited duty the day after the accident on Cambria VIII and was back on the full duty roster the day after that. As soon as he stepped back on the bridge, he noticed that Jim was avoiding his eyes. The captain usually turned to great him with a smile as soon as he entered. Now, however, he kept his head on the data PADD on his lap. Spock had not noticed to what extent he had come to rely on those smiles until this one did not come.

He crossed to the Science station and commenced work as usual. It soon became clear that he was not imagining Jim’s avoidance: the captain usually visited the Science station an average of 2.3 times per hour, and today the rate barely approached one. When he was there, he seemed quiet and distracted.

This was a beneficial development, Spock told himself. Distance between him and Kirk could only aid his own efforts at controlling his emotions, eventually making them a more effective command team than they could otherwise be. But he could not help but feel pain at the behavior of his friend and the thought that Spock had injured him deeply enough to cause it.

This state of avoidance continued for two days. On the third day, when Spock stepped onto the bridge, Kirk looked up and smiled at him.

Spock immediately felt his spirits lift. He clamped down on the reaction and went about his work.

That day, Kirk visited the Science station an average of 2.8 times per hour. Their discussions were about ship’s business, and Kirk seemed as affable as he had ever been. Spock congratulated himself on the success of his plans. He had forced distance between them, and as a result the command team had been strengthened.

It was five days later, while the ship was still on routine patrol, that the live call from Starfleet Headquarters came in. Spock felt a frisson of tension pass through the bridge: a live call generally meant that an announcement of some import. Uhura projected it on the screen, and everyone on the bridge was treated to the sight of Admiral N’Kapa.

“Kirk,” the admiral said. “How goes the captaincy?”

From his seat at the Science station, Spock could just see that Kirk was smiling in greeting. “Judge for yourself, sir,” he said.

“Believe me, I am,” N’Kapa said. His voice was gruff, but Spock did not think his eyes showed animosity. “That’s not why I’m calling today, though.”

“What is it, sir?” Kirk asked, leaning forward in his chair. Spock could easily imagine his intent expression.

“I’ve got some important news for you,” the admiral said. “New Starfleet project. We’re calling it the Junior Leadership Initiative.”

“I haven’t heard anything about it,” Kirk said.

“No, we’ve been trying to keep it quiet until it’s implemented,” N’Kapa said. “Starfleet feels that it’s important for junior officers to get a taste of command experience every once in a while. It’s the best way to ensure that they’re ready for a command of their own someday.”

Kirk nodded. “I couldn’t agree more, sir. My chances at the conn of the Farragut were invaluable.”

“Well, now we want to make it more official,” N’Kapa said. “Give junior officers a longer stay at the helm.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. Kirk must have made a similar expression, for N’Kapa laughed. “No, don’t worry, we’re not taking your ship away from you. Or at least not permanently.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sir,” Kirk said, though there was an open question in his voice.

“Two weeks,” the admiral said. “That’s how long we’re asking you and your first officer to clear out.”

Spock had not expected to find himself included in this call. He rose from his seat and stepped forward. He saw Kirk look round at him. “Well, that shouldn’t be a problem, sir, I’ll be happy to give Mr. Spock leave—”

“No leave this time,” N’Kapa said. “We want the two of on duty, and we want you together.”

“How so, sir?”

“Two weeks in a cabin on Marren V, just the two of you. Team-building exercise.”

Spock was looking at Kirk’s face when the Admiral said this, and he was just in time to catch the expression of horror that came over it. A second later, Kirk had smoothed it away. Spock doubted that anyone but himself had been able to recognize it. But he had spent more time with Kirk’s facial expression than had anyone else, and he knew it for what it was. It created an abrupt physical sensation in him, as if something heavy were sinking down into the pit of his stomach.

He should not care, of course. As a Vulcan, he should not care. But the feeling was temporarily stronger than his power to overcome it. Kirk did not want to be alone with him. Had he hurt his friend so badly with his imposition of distance?

Kirk’s reaction to the trial had been of such concern to him that the trial itself did not immediately sink in. Now he considered the prospect of two weeks alone with Kirk. It would be…well, the part of him that was eager for it was the very part that would pose the problem. There would be no distractions, no retreating into his duties while the impact of Kirk’s presence faded from his psyche. It would be a very difficult two weeks indeed.

N’Kapa was speaking again. He was telling them that the JLI, as he called it, would be beginning one week from that day. That would just give them time to get Kirk and Spock to the drop-off point. Then the ship would be off without them, to patrol new parts of the galaxy.

“I don’t know how much I like the idea of the ship going off without me,” Kirk said. “And just what are we talking about for this leadership training for Spock and me?” His good humor had recovered; there was a jocular tone to his questions.

N’Kapa chuckled and cast an eye at both men. “Don’t worry; we didn’t design it to be difficult. If you’re even half the command team that rumor has been making you out to be so far, it will be a piece of cake.”

***

A week later, Spock stood with his suitcase in Transporter Room B. He was slightly early for their appointed departure. He had spent much of the previous night meditating, but he hadn’t been able to reach the levels he normally could. The expected time alone with Jim had proved too distracting.

Jim and McCoy showed up together. “Well, off you two go then,” McCoy said. “You get to have all the fun.”

“You could have my place in a heartbeat, Bones,” Jim said. “Believe me, it’s not going to be a picnic to see the ship go off without us.”

“Aw, quit your complaining,” McCoy said. “You get two weeks of fresh air and sunshine.”

“Or rain,” Jim pointed out.

“Indeed, Doctor, I have not heard that the climate of Marren V is one of universal sunshine,” Spock said. “I believe it suffers from the ordinary proportion of weather that humans might deem unpleasant.”

McCoy made a deprecating noise. “I’m surprised you don’t already have the weather reports memorized.”

“Actually—” Spock started, but Jim waved his hand with a laugh.

“Bones, Spock, we’ll never get going at this rate,” he said. “I swear, it’s the two of you who need a bonding experience, not Spock and me.”

“Well, I’ll do my best to keep your ship in one piece while you’re gone,” McCoy said, “but I don’t promise anything.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Kirk said as he stepped onto the transporter platform. He still hadn’t made eye contact with Spock.

The transporter tech readied the controls. Spock stepped up after Kirk and felt the slight tingling that heralded the transporter beam. The ship disappeared around him.

When Spock rematerialized, it was in what appeared to be the living room of a spacious, tidy cabin. There were several upholstered sofas around a fireplace, and through a door he could see a modern-looking kitchen. Through the windows, he caught glimpses of mountains.

Jim was standing a few feet away from him. Spock looked over at him, and their eyes met for a second before Jim looked away. “So, let’s see where we’ve landed, shall we?”

They hadn’t received any instructions on their training exercises, and so Spock could only assume they would receive direction now that they were here. He headed down the hallway while Jim went into the kitchen. He had just ascertained that there were two comfortable-looking bedrooms when he heard Jim’s laughter from the kitchen. “Spock, come look at this!”

Kirk was holding a piece of paper that he held out to Spock when he entered. “Look at our schedule,” he said. “This isn’t a training; it’s a cleverly disguised vacation.”

Spock raised an eyebrow as he read down the list. The first three days were designated for “exploration.” At some point in that time, they were instructed to try to reach the summit of the mountain on which their cabin was perched—an afternoon’s climb, it was reported. The following days were similarly lenient. One day’s task was to “cook a pleasant meal.”

“I believe the admiral has misled us,” Spock said.

“Well, this should be fun, anyway,” Kirk said in a light tone. Spock caught sight of his face as he turned away, however, and he saw a sadness creep over it.

It occurred to him that he might have been incorrect in his diagnosis of Kirk’s recent behavior. Perhaps he had been hasty in assuming that it was only his behavior towards Spock that had changed. If there was an external cause for Kirk’s unhappiness, it would be Spock’s duty as first officer to try to discover it and see if anything could be done about it. He resolved to monitor the situation.

They retreated to their separate bedrooms to unpack. When Spock emerged, Kirk was waiting in the hallway, dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a button-down shirt, and hiking boots. Spock raised an eyebrow at him.

“The schedule said we’re supposed to be hiking the mountain,” Kirk said.

“Within the next three days,” Spock said.

Kirk grinned. “Yeah, but why wait?”

Spock could think of no particular reason. “I shall change my clothing,” he said. He retreated into his room. As he closed the door, he reflected that he should not have been surprised that Jim wanted to climb the mountain right away. He wasn’t one to delay any sort of adventure.

The cabin turned out to be well-supplied with mountain-climbing equipment. He and Kirk were soon rigged with harnesses and ropes. It was not a particularly daunting climb, but both of them were experienced enough to know that even short ascents could have unexpected dangers.

Their cabin was about halfway up the mountain, at the end of a winding road, and the climb began near their front door. When their gear was prepared, Spock stood at the base of the rock face and watched as Kirk began to ascend in front of him.

It was impossible to be with this man and not admire him. The physical picture he presented as he climbed up the mountain was appealing, yes, but that would have been easily resisted. It was his eagerness to begin the ascent, his drive to explore the unexplored, his wholehearted curiosity and enjoyment of the unknown for its own sake and not for any use he might make of it, that made Spock watch him to the exclusion of the rest of the world.

He gripped the rope and began the ascent himself.

The trip to the top was not all rock face: after an initial steep ascent, something akin to a path appeared, and they were able to walk single-file with only short scrambles. Spock soon found that he was enjoying himself: both the physical exertion and the sunshine created a pleasing contrast with his usual life on the ship. He let himself absorb the sight of Jim walking before him, his golden hair in the sun, the look of his face as he turned it occasionally to smile at Spock.

“I have to say,” Kirk said at one point as they walked along, “I wholeheartedly approve of Starfleet’s choice of location.”

“Indeed,” Spock said. “I wonder to what extent it was chosen for us individually.”

“Whatever the other command teams are doing for their ‘training,’” Kirk said, grinning and making quotation marks in the air, “I bet they’re not having as much fun as we are.”

They had reached a steep spot that required a bit of climbing. Kirk began the ascent in front with Spock close behind him. Near the top, Kirk lost his hold and skidded suddenly downward. Spock caught him by bracing himself on a ledge and putting his hands on Kirk’s back.

For a moment they stood like that. Spock could smell the scent of Kirk, fresh and piney, and he could feel the warmth of Kirk’s skin against his hands, through the thin layer of shirt.

“Thanks, Spock,” Kirk said. “That could have been close.”

“You are most welcome,” Spock said. His voice sounded rougher than usual to his ears, but he could not modulate it properly. It was all he could do to remove his hands from Kirk’s back and take a step downward and away from him.

Kirk started to climb again. Spock paused long enough to take a deep breath. He could still feel the proximity of Kirk’s body tingling all along his own. He tightened his grip on the rock and began to climb.

***

Their ascent of the peak took the whole first afternoon. After that, they did not, of course, spend the next two days in unbroken leisure. They had been placed in the middle of a chain of small mountains, and Kirk seemed determined to explore them all. Spock finally had to call pause to the climbing on the fourth day.

“The schedule instructs us to go down to the town and replenish our supplies,” he said.

Kirk sighed in mock resignation. “I suppose it wouldn’t kill us to go down instead of up.”

It was rather pleasant to walk alongside Kirk on a road that posed them no immediate danger. Kirk seemed cheerful this morning, laughing, swinging their arms as he walked. Spock was glad: he saw no signs of the hidden sadness that had haunted Kirk’s face over the past few days.

The “town” proved to be a collection of a half-dozen buildings, including a general store and a small restaurant. Marren V was a Federation planet, and the Marr were a peaceful, humanoid people, with the result that the town itself held no great surprises. This far from a city, however, local idiosyncrasies abounded. The only restaurant in town, for example, served all its food on long sticks.

“Like a popsicle,” Kirk said as he surveyed his hamburger on a stick. He took a bite. “Not bad, though.”

Before leaving, the two of them stopped in at the general store and bought what fresh food they thought they’d need over the next few days. “As good as shore leave,” Kirk declared as they left.

“Perhaps with fewer…diversions…than you are accustomed to on shore leaves,” Spock said.

Kirk skirted his eyes. “Yeah, well, that kind of thing can get old,” he said with a little laugh. “Come on, let’s get back to the cabin.”

***

The next few days were as satisfactory as could be expected. Kirk’s state of mind continued, however, to be a cause for concern. He would be cheerful and laughing one moment, and then Spock would catch sight of that elusive sadness. He wanted to raise the question, but Kirk seemed to be careful to keep their conversation light. They were easy with each other, but they did not have any of the serious conversations they had occasionally had in the past. Spock found that he was sorry for this.

The day after their trip into town, they did a bit more climbing, and the day after that they went fishing in a mountain stream and grilled their catch over a fire. The next day, their seventh, brought heavy rain that only began to clear as darkness fell and cold set in. They spent the day reading, and as darkness fell, they lit a fire in the hearth and sat on the carpet, relaxing in the warmth of the flames.

Spock watched Jim’s face as he sat staring into the flames. “I have rarely seen you so contented in inactivity as you have been today,” he observed.

Jim shot him a glance. “What about all those days on the bridge when nothing happens for hours on end?”

“I would not characterize that as the same situation,” Spock said. “You are in command. Your attention is constantly demanded for various tasks.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Kirk said. “I guess I’m not usually content to sit and read like I have been today.”

“Perhaps it is an intended benefit of the training,” Spock said.

Kirk laughed, as he was supposed to, but when Spock looked at him a minute later, he was staring into the fire with a melancholy expression.

Spock wanted to ask him what was troubling him. He opened his mouth to pose the question, but he could not force his mouth to produce the words. The look on Kirk’s face was closed against questions.

A few minutes later, Kirk got up to go to bed, and Spock was left to damp the fire and regret his silence.

***

He woke up that night quite suddenly at 2:47 am. He could not tell what had awoken him, but he had a vague sense of unease. He put on his clothing and slipped into the hall.

The house was quiet. Spock could only assume that some noise from outside had disturbed his sleep and had been forgotten in the transition from sleep to wakefulness. It was most likely innocuous, but he continued checking the house nonetheless.

The living room and kitchen were empty. He was about to go back into his bedroom when he caught sight of a figure on the balcony.

Spock walked silently toward the glass-paned door that separated the balcony from the corridor. Jim was standing outside, leaning against the balcony railing and looking out. The light of an almost-full moon shone in his hair.

Spock hesitated, then continued towards him. The door made a clicking sound as he eased it from its latch, and Jim turned around swiftly.

The view he presented to Spock was entirely unexpected. He had expected a contemplative Jim, even a saddened Jim. But he had not been prepared for a Jim whose cheeks were wet with tears.

He stepped forward more quickly. Jim hurriedly raised an arm and wiped it across his face.

“Spock,” he said. “What are you doing up?”

“What is wrong?” Spock asked. He paid no heed to the question Jim had asked. It was irrelevant next to the sight of Jim’s tears. He had known there was some source of sadness in Jim’s life, but this connoted a distress deeper than he had suspected.

“Nothing,” Kirk said. He turned back toward the mountainous view he had been facing. “It’s nothing.”

“Do not dissemble, Jim.” Spock stopped at the railing a few feet away from him. “It is obvious that something is bothering you.”

Jim smiled weakly. Spock could see his face in profile against the moonlit mountains. “Let’s just say it’s nothing that concerns you.”

“It does concern me to see you in distress,” Spock said.

“Does it?” Jim asked, meeting his eyes.

Spock felt sudden self-consciousness rise. “Jim, as your first officer, I must always…”

Jim interrupted him with a little laugh that caught in his chest. He swiped his arm across his eyes again. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “I wish you weren’t seeing me like this.”

Spock could see that his face was still wet. He wanted more than anything to reach across and dry it himself. But there was still a slightly tightened look to Jim’s face, as if he hadn’t finished crying and was only holding it back because Spock was here.

“Jim,” he said. “You are not on the ship. There is no need to maintain a command persona.”

“That’s…not what I meant,” Jim said.

Jim didn’t want Spock to see him that way, when it was all Spock could do not to reach towards him and pull him into his arms. “I…do not care how I see you, Jim,” Spock said. “To see you is enough.”

The words were too much for him to have said. He knew it the moment he had spoken. Kirk raised his eyes to his again, then looked away.

“God, Spock,” he said. He gave another halfhearted smile. “If you didn’t say things like that, it would be easier.”

What would be easier? Being friends with Spock would be easier, if he were not constantly reminded of what Spock had done, thirteen years ago, and of how Spock might really feel?

There was another tear, rolling from Jim’s eye down his cheek. Spock watched its progress in the moonlight. Suddenly he could not restrain the urge to comfort any longer. Pretending didn’t seem to matter at the moment. And if Jim already knew…

Before he could think better of it, he raised his hand and touched it to Jim’s cheek, brushing away the tear.

Kirk’s eyelids fluttered shut. He moved his face into Spock’s hand, so that Spock was cupping his cheek. Spock could feel the smoothness of his skin all along the length of his hand.

Kirk’s eyes were still closed. “What…” he whispered, and Spock could feel the slight motions of his lips against the side of his hand.

Spock felt as if it were a struggle to breathe. He drew a long, shuddering breath. “I am afraid I misled you just now, Jim,” he said in a low voice. “It is not enough merely to see you. It has…never been enough.”

Jim’s eyes opened. Spock had been afraid of what he would see there: shock, disgust, pity. But to his surprise, the eyes were bright. They held…Spock, with all his experience, could not determine what they held.

Jim raised his hand and placed the fingertips over Spock’s on his cheek. “Is this real?” he whispered.

Somehow they had moved closer so that barely a foot separated them. “Jim,” Spock said, with no idea what he would say. “I…”

Jim’s eyes were looking into his. They were clear, and warm, and they smote Spock with their glance. They wiped all thought from Spock’s mind. He could not look away. Their faces were so close to each other now that he could feel Jim’s breath on his lips.

“Oh, God, Spock,” Jim whispered, and that was enough to make Spock bend his head down and join their mouths in their second kiss.

Their lips melted together. It was like the rejoining of a single thing that had been long sundered. Spock felt it with a wave of joy and relief, as if he had been cramped in a vise for years and now finally was wonderfully, ebulliently free. The taste of Jim was in his mouth again. The faint sense of Jim’s mind floated all around him.

His hand slipped around from Jim’s cheek to the back of his head. His other arm came up around Jim’s back, just as Jim’s arms settled into place around his. All distance between them was an evil now. Spock felt Jim’s whole length pressed against him, toes to chest, and it filled some part of him that had long been empty.

The closeness was overwhelming. Spock held Jim and kissed his mouth and let the feeling of fullness expand into every crevice inside of him. He was soaking up Jim like the parched earth might soak up the rain. The sweetness of it flooded over him and was almost too strong to bear. He had not known, all these years, that this haven waited for him. He would stand in these arms forever.

His hand moved over Jim’s head, holding Jim’s mouth to his, and his other hand caressed Jim’s back through the fabric of the shirt he wore. Thumb and fingers stroked along muscle. The feel of Jim’s body in his hands was marvelous. Jim’s tongue was in his mouth, licking his lips and tongue and oh…

Jim’s arms tightened around him. Spock moaned with the pleasure of being held, at last, of feeling Jim against him. And as if that moan had broken a floodgate, the kiss deepened and gained new urgency: both their mouths opened wider, to get as much of each other as possible. Kirk’s tongue thrust against Spock’s. They were both breathing heavily now. Spock felt his penis throbbing against Kirk’s leg, felt Kirk’s equally hard against his own. Their tongues were sliding into each other…

“Wait!” Kirk gasped.

He broke the kiss and pulled his head away, though their chests and lower bodies didn’t separate. They were both panting.

“Spock,” he said, and raised one hand to stroke the side of Spock’s face. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Spock turned his head to feel those fingers better against his face. “Jim,” he said, “I have wanted this since the very first day I saw you.”

For a second they looked into each other’s eyes, and then they moved together more greedily before. Kirk’s mouth welcomed Spock home with eagerness. Spock’s hands moved down Kirk’s back to where the curve of his buttocks began. His fingers kneaded down into the lush softness, and he used his grip to shove Kirk against him.

Kirk gasped at the motion, and then he kissed Spock even harder. “Bed,” he managed to say, with his tongue in Spock’s mouth.

Somehow they made it across the balcony without letting go of each other. Kirk took one hand away from Spock’s back and groped behind him to turn the doorknob. As soon as the door was unlatched, Spock pushed him against it so that it was flung open and Kirk was pressed against the wall. Their kisses grew more frantic. Kirk moved his hands down to Spock’s ass as he sucked harder on his tongue. Spock could feel the fingers there, stroking, desiring, and it seemed to set a flame in his flesh.

Kirk’s bedroom door was only a few feet to the right. They were moving again, bodies still pressed as close together as possible. Kirk’s tongue tasted wonderful, almost as good as his ass felt under Spock’s fingers, as his cock felt pressed up against Spock’s leg.

Kirk pushed Spock through the door, moving his mouth to Spock’s jaw and leaving little rows of kisses. Behind Kirk’s head, in the light of a low lamp, Spock could see the expanse of rumpled white sheets where Kirk had been sleeping earlier that night. The sight filled him with a sudden panic.

“Jim,” he whispered in Jim’s ear, while Jim applied himself to Spock’s neck. “I do not know how…I have never…”

“Shh,” Jim whispered into his ear. Spock was still held in his arms, as close as it was possible to be. “I’ll show you.”

Jim’s mouth was back on his. The kiss was long and deep and hungry and almost deprived him of air. Spock felt Jim’s hands slide under his shirt at his waist. The feel of other hands on his bare skin there was a shock that sent quivers through his stomach. The hands stroked up his sides, strong thumbs against the planes of his chest. Then the thumbs moved inward and landed on nipples. Spock gasped at the sharp pleasure. “Jim!”

Jim’s mouth captured his again. Then his hands were lifting Spock’s shirt, and they had to break their kiss to lift it over Spock’s head. As soon as the fabric was clear, Jim’s mouth was on his again. His arms circled Spock’s bare back to pull him to his chest.

“Oh, Spock,” he said, his voice rough. “You're amazing.”

Spock found the place where Jim’s shirt ended and slipped his hands underneath. Oh, Jim’s skin was like a paradise. He tore Jim’s shirt over his head and felt, at last, the joy of their two bare chests against each other. They could not be close enough.

Jim’s fingers were at the clasp of his pants. Spock felt a quiver of desire and excitement mixed with fear. He did not know what to expect—he had utterly no experience in this realm. But the man in his arms was one he would trust with his life, and he was so hard he ached to be touched.

Jim did not touch him there. He skimmed Spock’s pants down to his ankles, and then he took off Spock’s shoes and socks. Spock stood breathing heavily from arousal and watched as Jim’s hands stroked up his calves and around to the backs of his thighs. Jim’s eyes came up and held Spock’s. Then he looked down again, at the place where Spock’s penis strained against his briefs.

“Yes, Jim,” Spock said, almost without realizing he was speaking. “Please.”

Jim skimmed the outline of the bulge with his fingers, so lightly that Spock gasped and groaned. Then Jim’s fingers slid under the waistband of the briefs and lifted them free. Spock’s penis stood straight out in the air. Jim moved forward towards it.

The warmth of it, the wetness as Jim’s mouth slid slowly down the shaft. “Oh! Yes, Jim, yes!”

Jim took his entire organ into his mouth. Then he retreated, tongue lapping at the ridges at the top of Spock’s shaft, teasing, making them stand out even harder in sharp pleasure. Spock ached for more touch, and then he was engulfed again, the fullness of sensation overwhelming him. This was—

Spock could not think. He was not even sure he could stand for the pleasure coursing through him. His knees felt weak, and if it had not been for Jim’s hands on his ass he might have fallen over from the sweet, exquisite melting feeling. Jim’s mouth moved back and forth, lips, tongue all bringing forth ecstasies. Spock found himself thrusting into the open mouth. The blood began to pound in his balls, and he felt…

Jim’s mouth lifted off his penis just before Spock could go over the edge. Spock gasped at the sudden absence of sensation. Jim rose and kissed him full on the mouth. Spock kissed him back hungrily, and he tasted a new flavor which must have been his own.

“You are everything,” Jim whispered.

It was all Spock could do not to thrust against Jim’s leg. Their kisses were urgent, desperate. He could feel Jim’s need in the kisses as well as his own.

“Now,” Jim growled. “Now.”

Spock’s hands fumbled at the clasp of Jim’s pants. Two sets of hands hurriedly shoved off the remainders of Jim’s clothing, sending one of Jim’s shoes flying through the air. Spock lifted his briefs free, and for the first time he wrapped his hand around the warm length of Jim’s penis.

Jim moaned and put his head on Spock’s shoulder. Then he moved Spock backwards so that they fell onto the bed, full against each other. Spock could feel skin against his, electricity flicking everywhere they touched. For a second Jim looked down at Spock, eyes bright and hungry with desire, and Spock thought there had never been anything better to look upon in the world…

Then Jim brought his hips down to meet Spock’s, and the fire ignited.

The second time Jim thrust down, Spock thrust up at the same instant. They moved together, as one. Cock rubbed against cock, and the friction sent Spock flying. Their mouths came together and held. They were flying together, soaring through the air, and together, always together, and Jim, Jim, oh, Jim, this golden being above him who was the most amazing person he had ever known, who he had watched and wanted and fallen for in his youth and foolishness, who he had despaired over during dark lonely nights, Jim was above him and their blood burned together and…

“Jim!” Spock cried aloud as the dam burst and the fire lit the world and everything shattered into wonder. A second later Jim cried out as well. Then there was Jim coming down into Spock’s arms and Spock holding him, and the wonderful glow of oneness, and nothing could ever be wrong when they were together like that.

Spock quivered under the warmth of Jim’s heat as his orgasm faded. It had been far more intense than his solitary orgasm, when he had only been imagining Jim’s presence. This they had made together. Jim’s living flesh had come against his own, and they had made love.

And now…Jim lay in his arms. Jim lay in his arms. That fact held more wonder than anything Spock had ever seen or heard in his travels around the galaxy. Jim lay in his arms, and they had made love, and Jim’s head was lying on his chest.

Both their chests were heaving. They lay like that for long minutes as their breathing slowly quieted. Spock leaned his head down and bestowed a kiss on the honey hair.

Jim raised his head in response and looked at Spock with shining eyes. He slid up a few inches so he could reach Spock’s mouth, and then he captured it in a long, sweet kiss. Spock closed his eyes and let himself be lost in it.

Finally their mouths separated. Spock opened his eyes to look at Jim, a few inches away on the pillow. Jim’s eyes looked back, warm, bright. He raised a hand and trailed his fingers along Spock’s brow and down the side of his face. “I love you,” he whispered.

Spock felt warmth bloom in his heart. It seemed to spread along his body, settling into all the crevices and making him complete. Jim loved him.

He slid his hand along Jim’s back, up to a shoulder blade, relishing the feel of Jim’s skin. “As I love you,” he said.

He saw joy light in Jim’s eyes. Then Jim kissed him again, softly, pulling their bodies together so that their chests were up against each other and their legs entwined. Each kiss from Jim was a gift. They lay like that for long moments, kissing slowly, twined into oneness and love.

Then their faces separated again, though their bodies did not. Spock thought he could lie here and look at this man for a very long while.

“You know, I never thought I would hear you say that,” Kirk said softly. “I thought this was a done deal years ago.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “It was,” he said.

Kirk smiled and trailed his fingers up Spock’s spine. “Was that true, what you said on the balcony?” he asked.

“To which statement do you refer?”

Kirk’s eyes looked suddenly shy. “That you wanted to do this from the first time you saw me.”

Spock brought a hand up to tangle in the back of Jim’s hair. “Yes,” he said. “I…don’t think I knew it at the time.” His fingers stroked through the golden hair. “I may have been less than fully truthful with you on the day we first spoke. I told you I was asked to evaluate Dr. Wyndham. I was, but only for a single lecture.”

Kirk’s face, so close to his, was alight with amusement. “What made you come back?” he asked.

“You,” Spock said simply. These words, that might have been words of humiliation in another context, were a gift to be able to say to the man in his arms. He felt a faint flush rise to his cheeks. “I heard you ask a question in that first class, and you were so…vibrant. Full of life and light. I couldn’t look away. I came back class after class, just to watch you.”

Kirk’s fingers were soft against his cheek. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I did not realize what I felt,” Spock said. He remembered those days: dark days of fascination, the attempts to exercise control to keep Kirk from his mind, the repeated failures. “I thought it was because you were interesting to me, a subject to study. I did not realize the nature of my attraction to you until the day that we kissed.”

Kirk laughed, groaned, lowered his head to press his lips Spock’s shoulder. “That kiss. That kiss has been in many of my dreams.”

Spock bent his head to rub his cheek against Kirk’s hair. “I thought I had imposed my affections on you, and you had rejected me.”

Kirk raised his head again. His eyes were serious. “You thought I pulled away because I didn’t feel the way you did.”

“Yes,” Spock whispered.

“We were both so blind, Spock,” Kirk said. “I thought I was the one who had imposed on you. That night…” He shook his head against the pillow, and his eyes looked sheepish. “I had told myself that I wasn’t going to try to make anything happen, that I just wanted to spend time with you. But I think the whole time I was thinking that if we went to the party and we were drinking, then maybe something would happen.”

“And then it did,” Spock said.

“And then I felt horribly guilty,” Kirk said. “I’d gotten you drunk and then I’d taken advantage of our friendship.”

Spock stroked a hand up his back. “I thought it was I who had done so.”

Jim laughed softly. “I still can’t believe I managed to pull away from that kiss,” he said. “When I realized what I was thinking about at the party, I knew I had to leave, but then you followed me. Then when we were kissing…” He raised a hand and brushed Spock’s bangs off his forehead. “I was never more turned on in my life. But I couldn’t believe what I’d done, and what I’d almost done. I felt so ashamed afterward.”

“Why did you not say something?” Spock asked.

“There were…a lot of reasons,” Jim said. His eyes looked off, away from Spock. “I was afraid to face you. Afraid to know what you thought of me. But more than that…I think I was afraid of what I felt. Afraid to find out that the person I was didn’t match the picture of myself in my mind. I had such a clear vision of the future. I was going to be a starship captain, a hero of the galaxy. There were women who loved me, and I was fine with that; I knew how to keep things light. But then you came along.” He raised his eyes back to Spock’s. “And I needed someone. Someone who didn’t need me.”

Spock placed his hand on Jim’s cheek and leaned forward so that their foreheads were touching. “I do need you, Jim.”

“Show me,” Jim whispered roughly. “Show me how you need me.”

Their bodies began to slide against each other again. Spock felt a renewed flush of heat spreading along his body. His fingers explored Jim’s back while Jim’s tongue lapped at his lips. Jim’s hand slipped down between their bodies and grasped his penis.

Spock’s breath caught and then quickened. He could feel his cock began to swell in Kirk’s hand. Kirk’s began to harden as well, and Spock moved so he could squeeze it between his legs. Their tongues began to thrust once more into each other’s mouths. Their kisses deepened impossibly, each one gaining in desperation.

Jim’s hand traveled away from his penis, over to his ass, and down into the crack.

“Yes,” Spock hissed as Jim’s finger found the opening. “Yes, Jim.”

Jim pulled his face away, eyes bright and chest heaving. “You’re sure?”

Spock felt himself pulse at the look in Jim’s face. “I love you,” he whispered, “and I would have you inside of me.”

Kirk seized his mouth again, and his finger slipped just inside the tight ring it had been fondling. Spock felt a thrill of pleasure go up his spine. He attacked Jim’s mouth with ferocity. Jim’s finger pushed farther and farther, until Spock threw his head back. “Jim, now!” he cried.

Jim gave him one quick kiss and then pulled away. “Just a minute,” he whispered.

He got off the bed and went to the bureau. Spock lay on the bed, breathing heavily, and watched in anticipation. Jim’s body was flushed, his hair tousled. Spock remembered the feel of that skin, those buttocks under his hands. Jim turned his head and met his eye and smiled. Spock felt as if his entire body might be melting in desire.

Soon Jim’s warmth was next to him again, reigniting his own. He was holding a small white tube in his hand. Spock reached for him automatically—it was not a response he would ever choose to quell, now that he was at liberty to make it. He pulled Kirk in and kissed him long and lushly. He felt Kirk’s cock returning to full hardness against his leg, and he heard his breath turn to ragged panting.

Kirk’s hand returned to his buttocks. This time, there was a click as Kirk uncapped the tube in his hand, and his finger when it entered Spock was cool with something slick that made him gasp. First one finger entered, then two, rotating and producing the most pleasant sensations.

“You have to let me know if I hurt you,” Kirk murmured with his lips against Spock’s.

“Do not worry,” Spock said. He was now so aroused that he could not cease kissing Jim, but he managed to get the words out between kisses. “Vulcans have”—kiss—“very good control”—kiss—“of the sphincter muscle.”

Jim laughed against his mouth and pushed his fingers more deeply in. Spock arched his back and moaned aloud. Jim’s lips went down to his chest and began kissing him there, and then his hands went back to the tube.

“Stop.” Spock’s fingers closed over Jim’s on the tube.

Jim cast him a questioning glance.

“I wish to do this,” Spock said.

He saw Jim’s face light with a smile. He took the tube from Jim and squirted some of the lubricant onto his fingers. Then, while looking Jim in the eye, he moved his hand down to Jim’s penis and began to stroke it.

Jim closed his eyes and bent his head back. “Oh, God, Spock,” he said. “God, your hand…”

Spock felt his own breathing becoming ragged at the sight of Jim in this state. His smooth chest was shiny from sweat, and Spock could make out the ripple of every muscle beneath the flushed skin.

Jim took Spock’s shoulders in his hands and rolled him onto his back. Spock went with him willingly, feeling Jim’s heat above him. He raised his legs and wrapped them around Jim’s back. He watched Jim’s face as he lowered himself into position with his penis at the parting of Spock’s buttocks.

Jim held himself still like that for a moment. He made sure his and Spock’s eyes were locked. Then, “I love you,” he said, and he pushed against Spock’s opening.

Spock closed his eyes to better experience the sensation. Jim went in slowly, allowing his Vulcan sphincter to handle the intrusion with ease. It was…oh! it was a feeling of wonderful fullness. Everything that he had longed for was now contained inside him.

“Jim,” he whispered, and opened his eyes. He saw Jim poised above him, his hair tousled, his face alight. “Jim, Jim, oh, Jim.” The murmurs poured out of him.

Jim’s hand wrapped around Spock’s penis, and then, as he began to stroke it, he began to thrust.

The dual sensation was incredible. Spock felt as if his body were being pierced through. Jim’s penis moving in and out, slowly at first, and then faster, faster, so that their bodies were slammed together. It was like being caught in a whirlwind. Spock had no control over what his body did: his legs pushed against Jim’s back without his conscious volition to aid in his thrusts. The pleasure reached such a height that he thought he might shake apart.

“Spock!”

This time Jim called his name as he came, seed spilling into Spock’s canal as his movements abruptly ceased. This was enough to send Spock tumbling over the edge. The world seemed to shake for a few moments as the pleasure tore through him. Then Jim came gently down into his arms, his penis still contained in Spock’s flesh. Spock did not want it ever to be removed. It had filled a part of him that had long been empty.

After a few minutes of panting contentedness, Jim shifted and withdrew so that Spock could lower his legs. Spock felt him leave with a sense of sadness, but it was all right, for he knew he would return again. He consoled himself by gathering Jim in his arms and pulling him against him.

Jim reached an arm to the nightstand and grabbed a tissue. He gently wiped it over both of their torsos to remove the semen that had accumulated there. Then he snuggled into Spock’s chest and pulled a blanket up over both of them.

“You,” he said, his breath tickling against Spock’s chest, “are amazing.”

“As are you, beloved,” Spock said. He felt the languor in Jim’s muscles and the pull of his own eyelids. He tightened his arms around him, and they both drifted off to sleep.

***

The sun was high when Spock awoke the next morning. He opened his eyes to find himself looking at Jim’s face, next to his on the pillow.

Jim was already awake. They were still wrapped around each other: Spock’s arm was flung around Jim’s torso, and their legs were entwined. Jim smiled softly at the sight of Spock’s eyes. “Morning, sleepyhead,” he said.

For a long moment Spock did not speak. He looked in wonder at the man next to him.

“Is something wrong?” Jim asked. There was a flash of uncertainty in his eyes.

Spock shook his head. There seemed to be some obstacle in his throat that impeded his speech. “I am merely having difficulty believing that the events I remember from last night are true,” he managed to say.

Jim leaned forward and kissed him. Spock closed his eyes at the feeling of Jim’s mouth, Jim’s tongue. They were real, and they were his. “Believe it,” Jim whispered.

Spock pulled Jim close, so that his head was against Spock’s shoulder, and held him tightly. There was almost a sadness in this moment: the release of so many years of sadness, brushing against his psyche and leaving an imprint on their way out.

For long, long minutes they held each other that way. Then finally they separated, so that they could look at each other again. Jim raised a hand and touched it to Spock’s cheek. “I can’t believe how lucky I am,” he said.

Spock received the touch and the words. He had never seen Jim’s eyes like this before: looking at him from the pillow next to him, bathed in morning light. He knew that he wanted to see them like this many times in the future.

“So,” Jim whispered, looking at him through his eyelashes, “what happens next?”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Next, Jim? I believe that we have been ordered by Starfleet to spend the next week together in this cabin, engaged in whatever activities we see fit.”

Jim laughed. “Do you think Starfleet had this in mind when they planned to make us a better leadership team?”

The sun-burnished skin of Jim’s side was warm under Spock’s hand. “I believe,” he said, “that they may have gotten more than they bargained for.”

“You’ve got that right,” Jim said. Then he covered Spock’s mouth with his own and made the rest of the world drift away.