Work Text:
James Tiberius Kirk grows up on Earth, where there is no need to count breaths. This is already a privilege many are not afforded.
He has no appreciation for an atmosphere and consistent gravity until he leaves them behind. He shouldn’t have had to at all, given dear old dad’s status as Number One Tragedy Pilot, but with Frank eating up mom’s money and willpower and Sam doing whatever older brothers do after they leave home, he was left with few choices. At least pushing upward would mean more room to run. Run he does.
It was a tentatively enjoyable first few months, with a steady stream of credits available to him as he bounced around the system looking for work. He spent a while on the good side of Venus (if such a thing exists) repairing mid-class ships with bumps and bruises. He met Scotty in that shop, cursing over a shitty DIY economy warp core. Together they wrenched the thing out and Jim got to see a truly brilliant man do a truly bang-up job. (The client went home happy, of course, their position on some solar energy board or another cushioning the cost of an entirely new warp core imported from Saturn’s Hexagon.)
It was when the money grew scarce that Jim grew up. No more honest work for honest pay, not when oxygen cells were getting pricier by the minute and secure bubbles of all-inclusive air became a staple of the best orbiting hotels. No more honest work for honest pay when he got word that Sam suffocated on a probe vessel with six other scientists because their O 2 rations didn’t cover an unexpected avalanche on Uranus of all places.
Jim didn’t go to the funeral. He received twenty-nine calls from his mother, six from Frank, and one from Pike, and he didn’t pick up a single one. He spent the night drinking and crashed on Scotty’s couch without telling him why.
The first few jobs were easy: fuck up a soldering tool just enough that minor explosive damage was plausible to the non-mechanically-minded, direct that explosive damage at the air bank of the given ship, and apologize profusely for any personal materials lost due to the suboptimal performance of the shop’s meager resources. It lost a few customers, the ones who couldn’t afford suboptimal performance, but generated a surprising number of pity credits from clients with the money to put on public displays of generosity. Of course, this also meant that suboptimal performance became less and less believable as new equipment was purchased, which meant Jim had to get creative.
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It is very, very necessary that they lay low for a while. Unfortunately, in order for them to lay low it is also very, very necessary that the ship have air in it, so they can do that delightful thing called breathing.
Jim is not panicking about it. He’s not. They’ve got about six days’ worth of compressed air in the ship’s main bank, and between them they have maybe another day more in breather refill cells. (They also have sixty-three one-use O 2 inhalers, and Jim has refrained from formally doing the math of how many minutes that buys them, even though he knows in the back of his head because he’s been counting breaths every day since Sam died.) All they have to do is find a station, preferably planetside, from which they can find ship bank refills that are dirt cheap, free, or free with complications. Jim is not panicking.
Spare fuel is important too, as Scotty relentlessly reminds everyone, so they’ve got to get their hands on some of that as well. One of the thrusters on the Kelvin’s left side is getting faulty and should be repaired with a replacement on hand. They’ve got more bodies than they do spacesuits, and that’s its own brand of anxiety, especially for Bones. Chekov misses interesting company. Uhura misses silence. Sulu hasn’t been able to contact his husband in ages because of the whole on-the-run deal, and he hasn’t actually said anything about it, but everyone can tell it’s wearing on him. They’re all desperately in need of some shore leave.
Jim decides that they’re going to dock on Vulcan. He gives a host of reasons, but he can see in most of his crew’s eyes that they know why he actually wants to: it’s by far the closest. They’re a dangerous six days from the Solar system and Jim can’t bring himself to risk it. Landing on Vulcan means the least air lost.
Graciously, they let him get away with it.
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It was the creativity, or rather the consequences of it, that led him to meet one Leonard McCoy. Jim royally fucked up a simple stakeout and ended up in a biodome on Mercury with “hyper-dangerous open space heatstroke” which isn’t a medical term in the slightest but made sense to his partially-sedated brain at the time. McCoy was a lonely man; he was also not aware that Jim was awake and listening while he vented his woes in the long-term wing to the assembled unconscious patients.
“Dammit, John, I’m a bones doctor, not a whole people doctor,” he grumbled into the silence, and Jim snorted, and McCoy had about four heart attacks in as many seconds while Jim debated whether it was worth apologizing for.
“Why’m I John?” Jim said, and his throat felt like he’d inhaled a solar flare or two, but at least the air in the biodome was tax-funded.
McCoy was still looking at him like he just came back from the dead, but said, “John Doe, idiot. You’re John, he’s John, she’s Jane, that one’s from the Sirius system, so I don’t very well know, and-”
“Jim. Nice t’meet you, Doctor Bones.”
Bones, it turned out, was actually the best person in the universe to have on your side when your body got damaged instead of the ship. (Scotty was still the guy for ship damage and kindly helped Jim out of snags even after the couple Terran weeks of ghosting due to, well, no access to a comm.) Jim returned to Mercury regularly with bodily failures ranging from atmo pressure headaches to thirty broken bones (every carpal, every metacarpal, and the radius and ulna in his left arm, don’t ask him). Eventually, Bones got so irritated with the paperwork, and also so on the run for illegally providing medical care to iron miners, that he agreed to hop onboard Jim’s Kelvin II, where they spent a cramped month or so orbiting Venus and waiting to be forgotten about. Bones turned out to have a great mind for antique Terran literature and no patience whatsoever for chess. He also turned out to have a drastically anti-capitalistic take on just about everything and hated Starfleet even more than Jim, so they were a good match on the ideals front. Bones dreamed of air becoming a non-economic, free-flowing resource. Jim dreamed of not counting breaths ever again.
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The air on Vulcan is a lot subtler than Jim would like, but they’re greeted by an unbearably gorgeous spaceport manager when they land, and he quickly decides that he’ll get over the whole air deal if it means finally getting to unleash his inner flirt again.
Vulcan’s gravity is almost at 10.6, which is just different enough from the 9.8 that Jim grew up on to be a challenge. He understands why Vulcans are so goddamn strong, carrying their own weight around with their backs ramrod straight while fighting the very planet. It’s not like it’s unprecedented—he’s met people who served jail time for a few months on the core of Jupiter and came back out with legs like tree trunks—but it’s still pretty impressive. That said, he has yet to see any of them use that strength, but he’s gone so long without getting laid that he’d probably have an orgasm on the spot if he did see it. So.
Once they get everything arranged, with the general agreement that no one is spending any credits on hotels when they can easily sleep in the ship, Uhura declares that she’s going to track down an old colleague and see if he’ll let her crash with him instead. Jim doesn’t blame her in the slightest; if he had a Vulcan friend, he’d be chasing them right now too. Out of politeness more than anything, he asks the guy’s name, and when Uhura says, “Spock,” it instantly sends Chekov into near hysterics.
Between slews of very fast Russian, he manages to explain that Spock, whose full name Jim couldn’t pronounce if he tried, is the author of Chekov’s dearly beloved paper book, which he’s now reread four times due to the lack of other interesting reading material on the ship. (Jim does not reiterate that there are in fact almost thirty other books which are available to anyone who asks. They’ve had that conversation already.) Spock is generally elusive as far as academics go, offworld more often than not conducting research, and it’s very rare for his time on his home planet to be open to the public. Uhura, a cool good close work friend, is notably not the collective public.
It takes about twenty minutes of needling for her to agree to bring Chekov, with the stipulation that he doesn’t also ask to sleep in Spock’s house, because he’s not a cool good close work friend. He agrees.
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Nyota Uhura showed up next, and Jim still has to pinch himself about it sometimes. She’s absolutely brilliant. She’s radical, ethical, and beautiful. She speaks eight offworld languages and thirteen Terran ones. He met her in the cargo bay of a warehouse station orbiting Luna, and they played the universe’s most intense game of verbal rock-paper-scissors for rights to the O 2 tanks they were both trying to steal. Jim wanted them so he and Bones could take a crime vacation and quietly drift around in the asteroid belt. Uhura wanted them so she could safely transport her class of human and Klingon students out of the Romulan hostage situation they were in. Uhura won.
Once the kids were delivered safely to an Earth-orbiting station with distance comms for their families, Uhura decided to disappear into the background for a while to work on her latest paper. The Kelvin was conveniently empty of people who wanted to ask her about her work, because communicative vibrational signals sent into the ice of Europa is a phenomenally boring subject for most people, Bones and Jim included, and Scotty only bugged her when he had another wild hypothesis about artificial sentience. If she happened to occasionally translate administrative documents or talk to people involved with, say, security, that information wouldn’t leave the ship.
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They part with Scotty, who’s happily staying at the dock to putter around and conduct repairs, and with Bones, who declares that he’s had more than enough of them all and is going to find a bar, and with Sulu, who’s already in the spaceport main office trying to convince the employees that he can be trusted with a distance comm. They catch a shuttle into town and listen to Uhura list facts about Vulcan culture that neither Chekov nor Jim really absorb. They reach an oddly quiet thoroughfare, briefly lose their minds about the glory of free public transportation, and then realize that they don’t actually know where they’re going.
Uhura hooks up her work padd to a public access connection system (extremely fucking impressive and awesome, Jim decides) and shoots a message to the Spock residence. It only takes a few minutes of waiting for the response to come through, and it’s hilariously formal: Nyota, my family and I would be honored to host you during your stay on Vulcan. Your company is and always has been appreciated. If you are amenable, I would like to discuss my most recent data regarding fungal mycorrhizae with you. If your friends are the type to enjoy such a setting, I suggest we meet at the Shon-Ha’lock to socialize and “catch up” before you are potentially limited by my home’s stricter conversational parameters. Please inform your company of the plan and tell me of any changes you wish to make. — Regards, Spock.
“He sounds so boring,” Jim marvels briefly, then receives twin glares from Chekov and Uhura.
“I’m telling him that you’re excited to hear all about the mycorrhizae,” Uhura says, “and that you enjoy long conversations about particle physics and the potential uses of deep space radiation.”
“I hate you. I actually hate you.”
“Yes, dear.”
Chekov says, “I want to hear about the particle physics.”
Uhura says, “I know, Pavel.”
“And the potential uses of deep space radiation.”
“I know, Pavel.”
Jim says, “And you’ll never get the chance if we don’t get going.”
Uhura gives him a look like she knows that he’s little-kid antsy and feels no sympathy, but she defers and confirms the plan before disconnecting from the comm system.
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Jim is a fine pilot, thank you, but between Bones’ hatred of the steering yoke, Uhura’s aversion to life-or-death responsibility, and Scotty’s tendency to calculate gravity parabolas on paper mid-flight, they kind of needed someone they could trust in the cockpit while Jim was off being stupid elsewhere.
Enter Hiraku Sulu.
On paper, Sulu should be running with literally any other crowd. He’s got a Federation piloting license and a master’s in xenobotany. He’s young, fit, and an excellent fencer. He’s got poise and manners up the wahzoo. He’s got a family. In any other timeline, he would live a comfortable if not memorable life and die old, happy, and peaceful. In this timeline, his connections to revolutionary groups on Luna and Mars have made him an enemy of the silent elite spread like a virus across the branches of Federation bureaucracy. In this timeline, his options are to mysteriously go missing on his terms or on theirs. In this timeline, he joined the crew of the Kelvin.
He took to the ship quickly, prompting both Jim and Scotty to declare their own affections for her, and then Sulu, Bones, and Uhura got to witness them have a very long argument about whether a spaceship should be thought of as a child or a spouse. (The argument still has not been concluded.)
Sulu proved his competence only hours later, calmly fielding the asteroids around Ceres while Bones hyperventilated in the bunkroom. It was only after they’d docked in one of the shadier Ceres spaceports that Sulu disclosed that he’d never flown through the belt before. Jim balked, but then they were too busy lifting ship nitrogen cells to discuss it, and the matter was dropped. Sulu was too goddamn effective to lose to a crime as small as omission.
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It’s noticeably darker when they start walking. The closest star, 40 Eridani A, easily the number one killer of people with hangovers, sets quickly. Uhura informs him that it’s known locally as Nevasi, which is cool and also not very important to him. What is important to him is that the street gets more lively by the minute, Vulcans and the occasional offworlder appearing from seemingly nowhere to bustle about in the kind chill of dusk. Jim would have been the last person to guess that Vulcan had any sort of night life, but he hopes to stand corrected.
By the time they get to the Shon-Ha’lock, which Uhura says means something like “the engulfment,” it’s almost Earth-night dark and there’s a substantial amount of people around, going in and out of establishments and looking almost like they’re having fun. Jim relishes the similarity to the evenings he spent in Cedar Rapids carousing before the pull of the stars became too strong to ignore. He doesn’t miss Iowa, not exactly, but there’s a nostalgia somewhere in him that needs brushing off, so he does.
“Am I going to be allowed in?” Chekov asks, warily watching the clientele. Jim takes a second to do the same and starts wondering.
“I think so,” Uhura says, though there’s a question in her tone that Jim doesn’t like. “Terran alcohol doesn’t affect Vulcans, really, so I doubt they’ll be serving anything that you can’t have. Either that or it’ll be something that could kill all three of us.”
Jim and Chekov both splutter with alarm, but Uhura doesn’t elaborate. She faces serenely toward the street and waits for her friend. Jim and Chekov are forced to do the same.
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Christine Chapel was working in a rural Mars hospital when the entire Kelvin crew dropped in to the ER with potentially deadly hypoxia. Jim, sickeningly dizzy, insisted over and over that the others receive treatment first. The air running out was his fault. (The air running out is always his fault.) Chapel didn’t put up with it for even a second, just neatly sedated him, and when he woke up four hours later with free air in his lungs, she held him until he was done crying.
She never explicitly said anything, but when she slipped a few one-use inhalers into his hand while they left, Jim knew they could come back to her and she would take care of them, no questions asked.
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When Spock arrives, Jim spends far too long looking at him before hastily holding up a ta’al in greeting. Spock doesn’t even see it, already conversing with Uhura and her fluent Vulcan, which Jim finds himself irrationally and extremely jealous of at that moment. Yes, sure, they’re cool good work friends and Uhura is smart and fun and has way less baggage than him, probably, but Jim wants to talk to this man, and his Standard was perfect over text but what if he doesn’t speak it, what will Jim do-
“These are my crewmates, Pavel Chekov and James Kirk,” Uhura says, and Jim snaps to attention.
Spock’s Standard remains perfect, of course. “Greetings, Pavel Chekov and James Kirk. Anyone liked by Nyota is someone I am certainly pleased to meet.”
Chekov looks about two seconds from fainting and says nothing, so Jim swoops in with far more confidence than he feels. “Call me Jim. I’ve heard a lot about you in the last hour. Is it true that you’ve suggested looking into the Terran botanical process for oxygen production as a model for mechanical air recycling?”
Spock lifts one perfect brow. “That is not generally the first question I am asked by people aware of my work.”
“Jim and air have a history,” Uhura says, and Jim could strangle her until he sees something change in Spock’s gorgeous, gorgeous eyes about it.
“Air and I are on perfectly fine terms.” He self-consciously touches the mouthpiece of his breather, which is in its magnet holster at his hip just like it always has been, to really punctuate what a massive liar he is. “Besides, it’s not like I need to ask about any of your physics stuff. Chekov’s got that covered.”
Finally, Chekov takes the yoke of the conversation and launches into an absolute maelstrom of questions, all of which Spock fields with grace and generosity. Jim can feel himself making heart eyes. When he manages to drag his gaze away, he finds Uhura looking at him very intensely and not all that kindly. Her face says absolutely not. He quirks a watch me eyebrow. She gives him a don’t you dare glare. He replies with a you’re not my mom deadpan. She rolls her eyes, and Jim finishes the conversation with a wide grin that he hopes comes off as fuck you too.
“Spock,” she says sweetly, and Jim feels his heart leap into his throat until she adds, “are we going in or were we just meeting here because the sign is big?”
Spock looks off toward the open doors of the Shon-Ha’lock, beyond which there are people talking, people drinking, and a group further back which are in what looks like a slow-motion rave to the beat of a haunting, ethereal dance track. Jim gives himself about five seconds to picture Spock in there, with a sheer and/or sleeveless flowing top and that metallic body glitter on his collarbone that Vulcans wear to social functions and pretend isn’t insanely sexy, slowly writhing to the music with his lovely eyes closed. Then Jim wipes away the image as firmly as he can before he gets wet enough for the numerous Vulcans around him to smell it.
Spock says, “I have never seen a human patron here. I had assumed that the intoxicants sold, which are similar to several on Earth, would make this establishment open to human customers, but now I wonder whether the concentration of substances would in fact be dangerous to humans rather than safely familiar.”
Before he can stop himself, Jim asks, “What the fuck are they serving that could be dangerous to us?”
“Certainly not the chocolate,” Spock says with raised brows, which, um, what? “But perhaps the beverages would be. Personally, I am not fond of their effects, but many of my people find the experience freeing and stimulating. Their base is similar to Romulan ale and a stronger variant of Terran cocaine.”
Jim’s jaw drops even as the back of his brain informs him that he really wants to try a glass of that shit. “That… yeah. That sounds like it could kill us.”
“Drinking age in Russia is eighteen,” Chekov says a tad too fast and without enough disappointment. “Two more Earth months, then I will… think about it.”
Uhura adds, “Drinking age on Io is twenty, and as far as the Kelvin’s concerned, that’s where you hail from.”
Chekov just shrugs. Jim seriously does not understand him.
“So that’s a no on what sounds like the best alcohol in warp reach?”
Uhura says, “That’s a no on the cocaine ale, Jim.”
“Cool. Okay. Just… making sure.”
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Their worst job was the one where they picked up the most unusual person.
It was going fine until one of the fancy pants idiots recognized Sulu from some Federation blacklist and loudly declared him a space-sucking anarchist. Sulu, who had apparently heard this before, promptly led a daring escape from the expensive ballroom in the expensive biodome on the expensive side of Io, which was shielded from radiation and sported breather top-ups in every building. It involved a wildly stupid jump from the blowhole at the top of the dome into the open back chute of the Kelvin.
Curled up with a paper book at the very top of the catwalk was a boy, eighteen at most, who looked at them first with derision, then with a dawning light of hope. He introduced himself as Pavel Chekov. Sulu shook his hand while Jim hacked away at the hatch lock with a screwdriver. He overheard only that Chekov was a university student, hated his life and future, and may he please go wherever they’re going. Sulu said that they were enemies of Starfleet and is he really sure. Chekov was not discouraged. Chekov also had a very fancy breather at his hip, which he cited as his credentials. Jim got the hatch open and they had no time to talk the kid out of following them.
While Sulu scrambled for his breather, Jim took a deep and insubstantial inhale. Sulu looked at him like he was insane but couldn’t say anything past the mouthpiece. Jim opened the hatch, and together the three of them launched through the laughably gentle 1.8 gravity and caught Uhura’s waiting hands.
When the chute door was closed and Jim heard the hydraulic hiss to confirm it, he finally opened his mouth and sucked in a large lungful of stale ship air. It took him under ten seconds to get himself back to normal. No breath wasted. Every molecule accounted for. One panic gasp is three regular inhales.
He didn’t want to open his eyes, but he did, and he found Uhura, Sulu, and the new kid looking at him with something unbearably close to pity. He went to the cockpit and he said nothing.
Over the next few days, they learned that not only was Chekov of rich descent and fucking insane, but he was also very passionate about star mapping and eagerly showed his holomap to anyone who so much as hinted at interest. He only slowed down about it when Scotty explained to him that they couldn’t charge the holoprojector unless they were docked somewhere lest the ship lose power in the empty blackness of space. Suitably threatened, Chekov put the projector under his pillow and kept it there until they landed again.
Jim tried to talk to him about Terran literature, but the paper book he so treasured was some Vulcan text about the use of mathematical proofs in relation to intersystem exchange of photons, radiation, and material objects, so Jim sadly deemed him a lost cause and put his copy of Frankenstein back in the storage nook above his bunk.
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The inside of the club (and Jim doesn’t care that they’re all tactfully using the name and dodging the noun, it’s a fucking nightclub) seems to have Earth roots but has been so completely overtaken by the extreme ends of Vulcan taste that it’s nigh on unrecognizable. Jim’s simply been to a lot of clubs. The front of the room is dotted with wide black pillars stretching up to the arched ceiling. The floor is a dull silver that reflects the silhouette of everything on it. Jim waves and watches the vague shape of his arm wave back. There are high counters on either side which are almost certainly bars. The back and center of the room are dominated by a black oval that’s no less reflective than the rest of the floor, populated by Vulcans and a few offworlders doing that unsettling, gorgeous dance under the grey lights. There’s no bouncer or visible security, which is super convenient and also says a great deal about the kind of conduct these people expect. Nevertheless, Chekov gets about three steps in before he’s nervously saying something to Uhura, who leans in to say something to Spock, who responds, and she gives Chekov an answer that makes his face absolutely light up before he scampers off into the dusk.
“He okay?” Jim asks.
Uhura rolls her eyes fondly. “Atmosphere was a little much for him. We’ve sent him off somewhere more his speed.”
Jim wants to ask about it, know where his crew is and whatnot, but then Spock is leaning over a bar and talking to a beautiful woman with the tallest hair Jim has ever seen, and there are more important things than what Chekov is up to.
Jim and Uhura join Spock where he stands. Three crystalline glasses are being put in front of him, and Jim is fucking thrilled that he gets to try the cocaine ale after all, until he downs a mouthful and finds it’s just water. Spock arches an eyebrow at him, which makes him feel some kind of way. Not fair.
Uhura, who has rightfully ignored the whole interaction, is making her way back to the pillars. Jim forgets his ire for a moment in favor of surprise: they’re not pillars, but rounded half-walls blocking the tables from view of the street and each other. He makes a not-bad face to himself and follows her.
They park at one about halfway between the door and the bar, unimpeded in its view of the dance floor. Uhura chugs her water almost immediately and barely waits to toss a “back in a bit” at Jim before she’s off to join the ghost rave. This, naturally, leaves Jim alone with Spock. Will he thank her or cry? Time will tell.
“Busy place,” Jim says, and immediately wants to kick himself. Thankfully, Spock doesn’t look instantly bored.
“It is more crowded than usual, I believe. I would not know very well how many patrons it receives on average.”
“Not a club life type, are you?”
Spock gives him the eyebrow again. “It is not a ‘club’ as such-”
“Right, right. You don’t say nightclub. Den of sin. Inebriation station. Revelry rendezvous. Drinks and dance destination. Business of booze and a beat.” He’s got more, but Spock gives him a look that Bones patented, and Jim is grinning too hard to keep talking.
“You assume that Vulcans do not participate in most everything. You are incorrect. Enjoyment without harm is logical to most, and places such as this are only lightly discouraged due to there often being better or more important ways to spend one’s time. We are simply not as hedonistic as most Terran cultures.”
“Of course. This place could be a goth club in L.A. if it wanted to be, you know. Humans love Vulcan shit, at least when it’s not about arranged marriages or the purging of emotion.” Spock looks like he’s going to object but Jim barrels on. “Not an arranged marriage, I know. Pre-bond telepathic link. You’re usually, what, seven years old? Feels like a little much to me, but Earth’s America has generally never been one to practice arranged partnership, so it’s just foreign in my head. Some Earth cultures agree completely on the sense of it. As for the Kolinahr, humans are just naturally emotional, so that reads as pretty wild and alien to us, which, well, you guys are, so that’s that.”
Spock tilts his head. Jim’s reminded of a cat. “You are aware of our customs.”
“Well, yeah. It’s not even the first time I’ve been here. Just the first time I’ve, uh… stuck around to see things.”
“Elaborate, if you would.”
“Well. I. There’s the literature too, obviously—I’m a big fan of books. Vulcan books are always so beautifully formatted. Good formatting sort of lost its way on Earth, and what a damn shame. You ever read a Terran book?”
“...Yes,” Spock says. “My mother read Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland to me when I was small. That was the beginning. I have had a long fascination with humans and this has caused me to read much of your surviving classical collection. Nevertheless, Alice remains… dear to me.”
Jim gapes, just a bit. It’s wildly off the mark from the answer he was expecting. It’s close to emotional, though Jim isn’t actually enough of a dick to state that. It makes him want to toss Spock on a dissection table or under an interrogation lamp. “I fucking love Alice. Carroll did some great poetry, too, you might like it.”
With a shift on his face that’s almost wry, Spock says, low and conspiratorial, “No Ghost of any common sense begins a conversation.”
Jim laughs, can’t help himself. It spills out of him like a confession. Spock doesn’t shrink back or even look all that perturbed—he just tilts his head the other direction, and Jim wants to kiss him so bad it aches.
Woah. Okay. Goddamn. Slow down.
“When I was a little Ghost, a merry time had we,” he answers, just to get something out of his mouth that isn’t damning. “God. I didn’t expect that. Honestly, I didn’t know I even knew any of the words anymore. It’s been a while. I think I had a paper copy of Phantasmagoria when I was a kid, but if it’s still around, it’s in some box on Earth, so I guess I won’t see it again.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t go back much. Space is—easier. For lots of reasons.”
“I find I agree.”
At that, Jim gets his own curious edge. “But you’re here now.”
Spock nods. “I visit my mother when I am able. Father is frequently offworld for work, so she grows lonely.”
“That’s a lot of emotion, isn’t it?”
“Yes. My mother is human.”
“She’s–” Jim’s mind rapidly rifles through the Federation history in his head and finds a match. “Amanda Grayson and Ambassador Sarek. You’re Grayson and Sarek’s kid.”
Spock doesn’t sigh, but he exhales with intent. “I am. If you and Nyota are intending to stay in my home during your visit, you will at least meet my mother.”
Trying his best not to visibly nerd out, Jim smiles winningly. “You’ll let us crash with you, then? Not gonna make us sleep on our same old small, cold bunks on the Kelvin?”
“I feel as though you are trying to discourage me in both directions.”
“Good. It’s working. I promise I’ll be a perfect houseguest. Nothing broken, nothing stolen. Scout’s honor.”
Jim expects something dry, or perhaps a question as to what a Scout is, but Spock leans in just enough to intimidate and says, “Are you often liable to break and steal things, Jim?”
Fuck. Jim grins, because it comes easy and it’ll read like a joke. Probably. “Wouldn’t you like to know. Hey, unrelated: how about that drink you talked about? Uhura doesn’t want me to have any, but she’s not watching, is she, so I think I’m gonna partake a little. You coming?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. The air outside the little nook is a degree or two cooler than inside, but not enough, and Jim closes his eyes for a second to check in on his breathing. Suitable number, a little too fast. He slows it. His lungs complain, but then he’s at the bar realizing he doesn’t speak Vuhlkansu and hoping desperately that he can describe what he wants in Terran colloquialisms.
“Can I get a shot—uh, small glass? Small cup? Of…”
In nothing short of shining armor, Spock steps in. “Nartau muhl-olau’es mon.”
The woman behind the counter, who hadn’t reacted to a word Jim had said, turns to the tall cupboards on the wall with the same black sheen as the dance floor. His focus on her work immediately tapers off as Spock gets close enough for Jim to feel the alien heat through his clothes.
Just for Jim’s ears, Spock murmurs, “I discourage you from drinking any more than what you are about to. I would not see you harmed.”
Jim’s almost too busy fucking reeling to notice the glass that’s put in front of him. It’s a little bigger than a shot glass but a far cry from Bones’ favored tumblers. The cocaine ale is almost brown, almost red, almost gold, and glitters oddly in the low light. Jim allows himself a deep breath and knocks it back.
The only thing that stops him from hitting the floor is Spock’s strong hold around his waist, which secures before Jim even really gets falling. He makes a noise embarrassingly close to a moan and the residue of the drink burns in his throat as punishment. It’s not unlike toxic waste, or what Jim assumes toxic waste tastes like. It’s nuclear fallout in his mouth.
He wants another.
Disappointingly, Spock herds him back to their table. He’s saying things, probably, in that gorgeous voice of his, but Jim’s busy watching the dancers, how the reflection of their skin tones and makeup shimmer in wonderful synchronization as they move. The whole room is beautiful. Spock, when Jim looks back at him, is no exception.
They sit. It’s easier than standing, which is nice. Jim’s legs are shaking a little but he’s getting a handle on it. He restarts his breath count. Spock is so fucking pretty. Spock is holding his glass in both hands, not looking at Jim, which hurts a little but is actually probably fine.
“Jesus,” Jim finally says. “What the fuck did I just. Put in my body.”
Spock lifts an imperious eyebrow. “I will assume that your question is rhetorical and that you were listening when I explained it before.”
“Yeah. No. I was. I’m just—wow. Fucking. Yep.”
“Soon you will be speaking only in monosyllables.”
“Oh, fuck you, I can—I can talk. Just fine.”
There’s a hint of mischief on Spock’s face that Jim doesn’t trust in the slightest. “Very well. What brings you to Vulcan?”
Yep. Mischief. “Shore leave ‘n stuff. Everyone’s tired. Kelvin’s a little ship. Sick of each other, y’know, cabin fever. Vulcan was closest.” He pats himself on the back for not saying something incriminating and/or horny, but he knows he’s not safe yet.
“It is a fascinating human trait to become discontent when one’s surroundings are too familiar.”
And there, that’s something Jim can work with, that’s blood in the water. He leans in and places his chin on his laced fingers, though the lacing takes a thoroughly embarrassing moment because his muscle memory is down for the count. Sweetly, he says, “Do you become discontent, Spock?”
“That is a vague and general question. I have become discontent for many reasons in my lifetime.”
“With your work. With the whole, uh, Vulcan. Are you… entertained?”
Spock’s eyes narrow. Jim grins. Bingo. “My productivity is high and the quality of my research has only increased across my career. Working from home on Vulcan is sufficient.”
“But it’s not fun for you,” Jim says, then waves his hand when Spock’s eyebrows go to a protesting position. “Shhh. I’m right. You’re not having fun, even if your work is satisfactory or whatever. And don’t tell me it’s a foreign emotion or something stupid like that. Boredom is like. The most Vulcan emotion. Are you bored, Spock?”
“...I would prefer to be abroad,” Spock says, which isn’t an answer but it’s the closest Jim’s going to get to a resounding yes, and he calls that a win.
“Then you should go abroad.”
Spock leans back just a little, and to Jim’s soused brain, it reads like a disconnect. “I will not. My work is here for the time being, as is my mother.”
Jim takes a swig of his water. It helps a little. “Hm. Someone should entertain you here, then.”
“Oh?” and Jim didn’t really expect that quip to go anywhere, but Spock leans back in. “Who do you propose?”
Well. Easy A, there. He flashes a grin. “Me.”
Because the universe has it out for James Kirk, that’s when Uhura comes back to the table. She’s sweating a bit and looking dazed, but she’s smiling wider than Jim thinks he’s ever seen, and it makes him smile back. She downs her water and the rest of Jim’s. She says something about the dance floor, probably, but Jim doesn’t catch it—he made the mistake of catching Spock’s eye.
Jesus, that look. Spock’s whole face goes into it, this laser-intense, piercing thing that makes Jim feel like something squirming around in a petri dish, and worse, turns him on a nonzero amount. He can’t control his own expression, is probably an open book right about now, a cadaver hopping up on the autopsy table and pulling back his own skin and saying, here, this part’s interesting.
Most of him is horrified. A small but core part is absolutely thrilled.
Uhura leaves with a friendly whack to the back of Jim’s head, which he laughs weakly at but can’t muster much more. Spock’s still… dissecting him. With an emotional turnaround so fast it gives him whiplash, he realizes he really, really doesn’t want Spock to leave.
“Sorry. That was really forward. I didn’t. Uh—I made a lot of assumptions and. Well. I shouldn’t have.”
“I did not refuse,” Spock says, and just keeps gazing coolly across the table like he hasn’t possibly just sent Jim into cardiac arrest.
“Beg pardon?”
Spock leans in again, like they’re conspirators working on a plot. “I did not refuse. You were offering… I am fairly certain you were offering sex. I apologize. Human conversational patterns and ongoing double-meanings are often difficult for me.” And now Spock looks like he’s ready to bolt, and that is not what Jim wants.
“No! No, you had it right. I was. Am. Offering. If you… want.”
The dissecting look is almost fond this time. Jim glows under it, just a bit. Spock tilts his head. “Very well. I accept.”
On their way out of the club some time later, Jim’s handed a purple-red fruit that’s sort of conical and a little longer than his hand, and when he bites into it, it’s like wet gingerbread with vitamins. He’s hungry only in the time between the first bite and the last one, and after sucking the juice off his fingers, he plays with the little brown stem.
The dissecting looks from Spock have not stopped. They’ve gotten worse, in fact. Jim’s pretty sure Uhura can tell. He nurses his Vulcan deintoxicator that tastes like bleach and peppermint, looks out the window of the shuttle that he’s pretty sure was only for his benefit, and studiously ignores both of them. Terrible for his health, these two. No wonder they’re friends.
They hop off the shuttle on a rounded street corner at the edge of town. There’s more space between the buildings here, though the roads remain the same width as the inner city. Residential, Jim guesses, then remembers that they’re going to a house, so yes.
The S’chn T’gai home is two stories, a crisp white material not unlike stucco, and absolutely baffling to look at. There are circles where there should not be circles. The windowpanes are dead black. The walkway is lined with Terran desert flora, and Uhura asks questions about them as they pass. Jim just flicks his fruit stem into the dirt and stares. The teddy bear cactus unnerves him on principle. No, sir, he doesn’t like it.
Lady Amanda Grayson barely lets them get through the door before greeting them, a flurry of tasteful grey silks and refreshingly human idiosyncrasies. She’s a citizen of Vulcan through and through, her posture perfect and her every word deliberate, but she smiles easily in a way that puts Jim immediately in a state of childhood trust. It would be disconcerting if it wasn’t so damn nice.
Jim himself is spared a clasped set of hands and a warm, genuine welcome, but it’s Uhura who gets the spotlight. The linguists quickly pick up a game of bouncing around between languages and dialects, some of which Jim has heard and others that could very well be made up and leave neither he nor Spock the wiser. For his part, Spock continues on into the house as if nothing is amiss, so while Amanda and Uhura toss toH DaHjaj Supaw’a’ and HiSlaH, DaHjaj po back and forth, Jim follows him.
Spock’s bedroom is spacious and elegant, a strange but endearing combination of vaguely Asian Terran elegance and pre-Surak dramatic flair. The walls are covered in things that look like they belong in a museum. The bed is a low four-poster with cylindrical pillows and sheets that Jim suspects have a threadcount to make Bones weep. The far side of the room is more window than wall, looking out over the reddish mountains in the distance. There’s a fireplace to the right and Jim is almost distracted by the lure of Vulcan’s common firewood, whose trees of origin grow in the copper-rich desert and produce flame with green tips. Then Spock takes off the outer layer of his robe and Jim is thoroughly un-distracted.
Spock is gorgeous. Of course he is. He’s tall and lean and has the hands that every scientist seems to have, hands that can cradle the most delicate insect or pry open the oyster-esque flytraps they grow on Neptune. Jim shudders. Fuck. He doesn’t get like this, not since he was fifteen, definitely not since Gary, what is happening-
“You are apprehensive,” Spock says, and Jim realizes it’s been way too long since he moved or spoke or had a coherent thought.
“No! Well, I mean, normal human amount of apprehensive, I guess? It’s been. A while. And you’re really fucking hot and interesting and I don’t usually get to talk to hot and interesting people and also sleep with them, so.”
Spock returns to him and places one of those sexy, sexy scientist hands on his cheek, and he can’t help but lean into it like a fucking kitten, what is wrong with him, but Spock says, “There is no need to be nervous. We will stop or adjust according to either of our wishes, and I have no intention of doing anything with you that you do not desire.” Then, because he’s mean and evil and also a mind-reader, he leans in close and adds, “I will take care of you, Jim.”
And damn if Jim doesn’t fucking melt at that, straight into Spock’s waiting arms, uncaringly dropping his overnight pack on the floor. There’s an edge of that infamous Vulcan strength there and it makes Jim’s blood hot, so he vents it by tilting his chin up those crucial few centimeters to meet Spock’s mouth with his own.
He’s aware that Vulcan kisses involve zero mouths, but despite it, Spock is a damn good kisser. Or maybe Jim’s just really pent up. Either or. Regardless, it’s intoxicating, and he wraps his arms around Spock’s lovely shoulders and sighs happily against his lips, and it’s only then that he realizes he hasn’t been counting breaths for—too long. Far too long. When did he stop? He doesn’t get to relax just because he’s planetside. The assumption of infinite air is deadly. The assumption of infinite air will absolutely be his killer if he doesn’t stay on top of it, and he hasn’t, and he’s on a strange planet with a man he met four hours ago in a house that isn’t his and he has no idea how much air he’s used up.
He can’t control his breathing. He isolates the sensation in his mind, the action, the movement of the diaphragm, and even as he visualizes it he can’t get the reins on it, can’t force it to still, which makes his panic settle more firmly, silt compressing into stone.
Distantly, he knows Spock’s hands are on him and he’s being moved, but none of it matters if he dies of suffocation, so it’s not important. Then Spock’s fingers brush his mouth and he jolts so hard he almost falls over. The axes of the world tilt, but Spock’s hands are still there, holding him, so he focuses on his breath and tries again to ease it.
The mouthpiece of a one-use inhaler is shoved between his lips, and he feels tears well up in his eyes as it blasts him full of air. It’s a little pathetic; he doesn’t care. He gasps meekly a few times, the weak air of Vulcan a strange wakeup call after the rush of oxygen from the inhaler, and he slowly realizes that he’s trembling very hard.
Spock is there with him. Spock is hovering over him, holding the empty inhaler, and there’s an adorable crease between his eyebrows that Jim aches to smooth away. Spock’s sheets are very soft under him.
When Jim finally has his breath back and has restarted the count, he says, “Sorry.”
The eyebrow crease gets deeper. “I do not understand why you feel the need to apologize.”
“Killing the mood?”
“You labor under a misconception, Jim. Your emotions are not—unknown to Vulcans, nor are they the burden you seem to believe they are to me. I take no pleasure in witnessing your distress, but I would not rather you hide it from me.”
Jim laughs, a little hysterical, and then a pang of alarm puts him right back in that distress. “Was that the inhaler from my pocket?”
Spock at least has the sense to look a bit sheepish. “I will buy you another. Many more, if you will allow me.”
“Are you trying to be my oxygen sugar daddy?”
“Your-”
“Nevermind.”
Spock does something complicated with his mouth that ends up similar to fondness. Jim finds himself wanting to kiss it, and with no reason to ignore the urge, he does.
Jim has to remind himself to breathe while Spock undresses him.
It’s not just his relentless distrust of the air supply, though that’s definitely present—it’s also that Spock is just so gloriously beautiful that Jim forgets to inhale, sometimes. There’s so much of him, miles and miles of handsome, of that distinctly alien density, and Jim feels caught in orbit.
Spock doesn’t appear to be faring much better. Jim admittedly doesn’t know a ton about the Vulcan opinions on frequent casual sex, but he’s willing to bet that they’re not favorable. Spock’s eyes are a little wide and his breath is a little quick and he’s got that intoxicating desert-planet heat under his skin, and Jim gets the feeling that this is the first fuck in quite a while for both of them.
Before he can stop himself, Jim smooths his palms up and down Spock’s chest, delighted by the feel of him. Spock’s eyes fall closed and a small sound gets aborted at the back of his throat. Jim grins. He pulls Spock back into a Terran kiss, and with the other hand lacing into Spock’s, starts a Vulcan one. Spock doesn’t moan so much as rumble. It’s gorgeous. Jim squeezes his hand to hear it again.
In a tantalizing show of Vulcan strength, Spock takes Jim by the backs of his thighs and bodily rotates him onto his back on the bed, and the air leaves Jim’s lungs entirely. He welcomes the dizziness. Spock leans down to nuzzle over his cheek, and says near his ear, “Do you have a preference of position or method?”
Jim laughs, then gasps as Spock bites his ear. “God, I—fuck. Kinda? I’m down to do literally anything you want, I mean it, I’m not all that picky.”
“Jim,” Spock says, almost fond, “tell me what you desire.”
And what is he supposed to do under all this pressure? Jim tells the truth. “I really want you to fuck me.”
Spock’s pupils go entirely circular and his hands tighten where they rest on Jim’s thighs. Jim, who had no idea what it would do to him to see Spock get genuinely horny, fights the urge to roll over and spread his knees on the spot. Instead he settles for unsexily wiggling out of his briefs.
Spock’s unbearably practical legging-slack things are still on, and that’s unacceptable, so Jim starts fiddling with the clasp on them until Spock takes pity and does it himself. (It’s a weird but cool spiral hook and he would never have figured it out on his own.) Then they’re both naked, and, uh, hello, Spock’s dick does not disappoint.
Jim knew vaguely that Vulcans had a sort of modified cloaca thing going on, but it’s entirely different to see it in person, the utilitarian folds of the genital slit widening to make way for the ridged, green, slicked cock that resembles a great deal of the dildos that became available for sale post-contact. Contact indeed, he thinks, then bites his lip to fight a grin.
“I would like to corroborate one-minute-ago me’s statement. I really, really want you to fuck me.”
Spock makes an eyeroll face without the eyeroll, eerily similar to Uhura. “Thank you for your confirmation.”
Jim has a clever retort on the tip of his tongue, but Spock grabs him by the hips to yank him closer, and the words are lost. He feels himself clench pathetically around nothing. Spock takes him further apart with a deep, soul-sucking kiss, then leaves him high and dry with his legs wide open. “Hey!”
Barely a second later, Spock is back in his sightline. “I apologize. I assumed you would benefit from lubrication.” Indeed, there’s an unmarked glass jar in his hand, and Jim suppresses a wave of fondness at how fucking pretentious Vulcans must be that even their lube is too good for a plastic tube.
He wordlessly pulls his legs up to his chest. Spock takes it for the invitation it is, settling back on the bed and opening the jar. The stuff inside has a thin consistency, much waterier than the gel type Jim keeps hidden in his pillowcase, but it tingles pleasantly when Spock brushes his wet fingers over Jim’s thigh. (It doesn’t feel like an allergy tingle, thank god. Seems to just be something in the chemical makeup.) He has half a mind to ask what makes it do that, but then Spock is pushing an exploratory finger into his cunt, and suddenly nothing else is important.
“Another, give me two,” Jim says almost immediately, and Spock looks a little dubious but complies, and Jim sighs happily at the stretch. It really has been way too long. He’s just not built to go months without a good fuck, and Spock is looking to be a fantastic one.
True to form, Spock has a great eye for feedback and pace, and Jim barely has time to notice he’s ready for another finger before Spock’s already working it in. He’s long since discovered the come-hither motion that’s already got Jim embarrassingly close. There’s a consistent laser-focus on Spock’s face that’s equal parts intimidating and hot. His fingers are long and strong and hitting all the right places. God, Jim’s close.
He opens his mouth to announce it, but a firm grind of Spock’s fingertips against his g-spot turns the words into a helpless moan, and Spock, the smug fucking touch-telepath, quirks an eyebrow and says, “I am aware. Proceed.”
Jim might have had a giggle about the language if he were more coherent, but he’s not. He gets his feet under him and arches hard, Spock’s hand dutifully keeping the angle, and the feeling of inescapability should make Jim much more nervous than it does. He reaches down to give his clit some last-minute attention and comes wonderfully hard on Spock’s glorious fingers.
It takes him longer than usual to get his breath back as he comes down from orgasm. He assigns blame to the thin Vulcan air and ignores it. And what does he need air for, anyway? Spock’s mouth is on his, devouring him almost reverently, and that’s by far the most important thing.
Jim whimpers in protest when Spock pulls his fingers out, but Spock shushes him. “I am under the impression that human males require a period of respite following climax. Is this true?”
Jim smiles despite himself, already unbearably fond. “For most of us, yeah. My particular plumbing is rare in males and more able to bounce back after an orgasm, but pretty much all of us are more comfortable with some cooldown between rounds, regardless of anatomy.”
“Understood,” Spock says, then pulls Jim into his lap with no further preamble. Jim grins, thinking, who knew Vulcans were so cuddly, and Spock replies, “Few offworlders. We do not generally speak of our sexual behaviors with outsiders. Additionally, I suspect that I am in the minority of my species’ varied tolerance for physical affection. Most of us are not ‘cuddly’ to the extent that I am.”
Jim hums an affirmative, shuffling until he’s settled more firmly, and rests his head on Spock’s warm shoulder. His internal temperature has the effect of a heated blanket and Jim highly suspects that he’d be able to fall asleep in about forty seconds pressed against him. Spock puts a hand between Jim’s shoulder blades and presses clever fingertips into the perpetually tight muscles there, which makes Jim sigh happily. He decides retaliation is in order. He grazes his nails up the back of Spock’s neck, which gets no reaction, and then slowly scratches through the short hair on the back of his head, which yields a full-body shiver.
“I have a query,” Spock says, voice a little shakier than before.
“Yeah? Shoot.”
A pause. “I am curious, given your relationship with respiration and the usually extreme circumstances in which you must contend with it, whether it would be enjoyable for you to experience it in a setting less… dire. I sensed many of your emotions in the midst of your earlier panic and some were unexpected and unusual. Is this concept one you have encountered previously?”
Unbidden, Jim recalls a few particularly lonely nights before Bones arrived when the boredom set in too hard and the ship felt stagnant. When he would lay on his back in the dead silent bunkroom and think himself in circles, and after he grew tired of that, would strip and wrap a belt around his neck and see how close he could get to unconsciousness while it still felt good and not like a prophecy. The nightmares, always the nightmares, that followed. He clamps down on the memories, but Spock’s hands press slightly harder into his skin, and Jim knows something slipped through.
Spock’s voice is soft when he speaks again. “I apologize if I caused you discomfort. I did not intend to. My curiosity often overrides my understanding of human emotional needs.”
“It’s alright,” Jim says, only a little surprised to find that he means it. “You weren’t even wrong. It’s just—not something I had considered, I guess. Not in a positive light, anyway. I think I wouldn’t mind trying it. At least with you.”
They sit in silence for a moment. Spock’s hold remains sure and steady, so Jim stays still, fighting the urge to duck out now that he’s exposed one of the ugly things he usually keeps locked behind his ribs. He doesn’t want to waste this encounter on behalf of something as stupid as insecurity. Spock doesn’t seem all that put out, at any rate; he’s still hard and tempting. Jim closes his eyes and lets his lust snuff out the rest. It’s not unlike building a fire. He lights it with the heat of Spock’s Vulcan skin, then lets it spread until he’s restless enough to rock his hips in a useless little downward grind. Spock picks up on it immediately, because of course he does. Jim’s taste may be questionable at the best of times but he knows a genuinely good lay when he meets them. It’s just the personality he’s not always great at caring about.
Lucky for him, Spock is shaping up to be a genuinely kind and attentive lover. He braces his hands under Jim’s thighs to lift him tantalizingly out of reach of contact, and says, “I would like verbal confirmation that you wish to proceed.”
“Yes, yes, come the fuck on, I know you can feel how fucking horny I am, smug little telepathic—oh FUCK.”
Suddenly, the novelty Vulcan dildos make perfect sense. As good a time as Spock seemed when Jim was just looking at him, it’s nothing to the feeling of those ridges sinking into him, slow and sure at the pace Spock chooses to lower him. And god, it’s been so long, the sensation of being stretched around anything other than his own fingers in the his ship’s cramped washroom is making Jim fucking feral.
When he’s completely settled in Spock’s lap, on Spock’s dick, they spend a moment just breathing and adjusting. Jim is doing his best to count, honest, but it just seems kind of futile at this point, and he’s planetside anyway. Logically he’s aware that he doesn’t have to count. He focuses instead on his form: breathes into his belly, long and slow, breaths that feel like taking a bite of good food. Spock’s breathing is also controlled. To an almost weird extent, actually. Jim tries to match him, but it feels like singing along to a recorded track, and then an involuntary clench around the cock inside him distracts him thoroughly from the effort.
Spock’s perfect breathing stutters. Jim smirks a little to himself—clenches again. Spock’s fingers dig into his thighs. He shifts until his knees are more firmly planted on the bed, arms around Spock’s shoulders for support, and gives himself an experimental lift.
It’s wonderful. Of course it is. Jim’s not sure when Spock managed to get some of that slippery, tingly lube on himself, but he seems to have done it at some point, because the slide is perfect, warm and smooth and just the right side of too tight. The involuntary celibacy has done Jim few favors, but his inability to relax around the intrusion is very welcome, giving him lots of borderline worrying thoughts about being railed until he can’t clench, can’t walk, until he bleeds, and he’s not sure which thought is the loudest but whichever one it was is apparently very interesting to the telepath he’s riding, who makes a noise like a rockslide and suddenly grabs his hips to pull him as far down as he can go and keeps him there.
“Whuh- ah- Spock, what-” Jim tries, then loses the words on a thin groan as Spock rolls his hips up into him.
Unexpectedly sharp teeth catch his earlobe for a second. “Another time, I would like very much to make you bleed. It is inadvisable tonight.”
“Inad-fucking-what-able? Why not tonight?”
“Because,” and here Spock lifts Jim off his cock to turn and dump him unceremoniously on his back, crawl over him, and push back in to the sound of Jim’s delighted gasp, “this is our first time engaging in sexual activity with one another, the air here is less sustaining to you than is preferable, and my mother is asleep in this house.”
Jim really wants to say something witty, but then Spock pulls almost entirely out and thrusts hard back into him, and there are no wits around to be used.
He can’t decide between pulling his thighs up to his sides or wrapping them around Spock’s hips, but Spock saves him the trouble by bringing them up over his shoulders. Jim moans decadently at the depth of the angle and busies himself getting his hands all over the lovely specimen before him. Spock has a frankly unfair amount of chest hair and it’s ridiculously attractive, which, yeah, Jim is probably a little biased on that front, but it’s true.
Like a red-alert, his hindbrain reminds him insistently about the whole breathing conundrum. How Spock pretty much offered to… God, what was even on the table there? Covering his mouth and pinching his nose? Choking him? They should probably have talked about this.
Spock tilts his head, which is fucking adorable even mid-thrust. “You are intrigued by my proposal.”
Yeah, they should definitely have talked about this.
“Similarly inadvisable,” Spock adds. “Even so, I find myself willing and eager to attempt it should you desire the same.”
It's not a great idea, but Jim is generally stupid, and reaches exceedingly stupid when there are people involved that are either trustworthy according to his gut or very hot, and Spock has settled himself firmly in the center of that Venn diagram, which says as much about Spock's unique charm as it does about Jim's eternal weakness for being given attention. “Yeah. Fuck. Yeah, I want to.”
“Very well. What would you have me do?”
Predictably, Jim’s mind races. He can see Spock trying to track thoughts like speed-reading complex text, and he can see the moment that the image crystallizes in his high-definition mind’s eye. Spock moans then, barely a ghost of a sound, and Jim is so completely enamored that he forgets to be nervous altogether.
Spock dips down to give him a human kiss. A moment later, Spock’s firm, sure fingers cup his throat like fine china. Jim’s ragged inhale is the loudest thing in the world.
“Oh my god.”
“Indeed,” Spock says, and Jim is gratified to see him visibly working to keep himself together. “I will almost certainly sense your distress, should it arise, but please follow through physically and push me away if I do not act quickly enough. I shall release you the moment you wish to be released. Does this agree with you?”
Jim’s going to have to train him into better dirty talk. The thought is quiet and distant, like everything else in his head aside from the feeling of Spock’s hand on him. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize that he was asked a question. “Y-yeah. I’ll—I’ll tell you if it’s too much. Don’t worry about it. I trust you.”
He didn’t mean much by it aside from, well, the truth, but Spock reacts so viscerally that it might as well have been a marriage proposal. Spock closes his eyes and breathes very deeply, one hand white-knuckling the sheets while the other tenses but doesn’t tighten around Jim’s neck, and the pace of his thrusts increases dramatically. Jim arches up as much as he can. He’s always been a size queen, yes, but he has a sinking feeling that he’ll have to replace the meager toy he keeps hidden behind a wall panel under his bunk with something thicker. Spock is ruining him and it’s not fair. Spock reacts to this, too, with a vaguely feline growl and a bout of searing eye contact. Jim may have died and gone to the heaven he didn’t particularly believe in before.
“Come on,” he hears himself say. “Come on. Please. I can take it. Please, Spock.”
Immediately, the hand around Jim’s throat tightens just enough to restrict him. He pants happily against the pressure. Spock shifts his hips a bit, then uses his free hand and fucking unreasonable Vulcan strength to shift Jim’s hips instead, and then an upward tilt puts Jim’s knees against his sides and allows Spock to finally reach the perfect angle. Jim gasps, a wet “hah!” that would mortify him under most circumstances, but right now he really can’t find it in himself to care.
His eyes do their level best to roll back in his head, but he fights to keep them steady, unwilling to miss out on even a second of the way Spock is looking at him. His tight control and almost neutral expression proclaim clear-headed and unaffected, but the rest of him, tense muscle and green blush and hot skin and eyes like iron star cores, do not. Those eyes whisper yes.
With audible effort, Spock says, “I… desire to probe the depth of your trust. May I?”
Jim is way too far gone now to refuse such a promising venture. “Yes, yes, oh my god, please.”
Spock’s free hand joins the one on Jim’s neck and together they pin him inescapably to the mattress. Spock’s hips slow but don’t cease, and Jim is bowled over by the sheer intensity, by some inclination he didn’t even know he had which is being thoroughly sated by the whole situation. Spock is controlling the pace and the air. Spock won’t let him get hurt. Spock has him.
Jim’s eyes finally flutter up and closed at that. He hears Spock make some sort of noise, soft and lovely, and his hands tighten. Jim drags air through the closing channel. Between that restriction and the already thin O 2 of the planet, he quickly finds himself light-headed and pleasantly foggy, which only emphasizes the stretch and wet drag of Spock inside him. He can feel his own heartbeat in his head, in his neck, in his cunt, in his fingertips clinging for purchase against Spock’s back.
Jim tries to say “harder” but it turns into a choked moan halfway through and he can’t get it back. Instead, he thinks very hard about the increase in sensation, the following decrease in his faculties, the hot, pulsing want threading through his arteries and making him shake. Spock shudders and grits his teeth. He’s beautiful.
“Please,” Jim manages.
“As you wish.”
It’s like the polar plunge Jim and Sam used to do on winter mornings. Spock’s hands release him long enough to gulp in a rush of air, and then they close tight and there’s silence. Jim’s thoughts come through muted and dim. He can’t breathe. He’s not particularly alarmed. He’s just drifting in the cold water, listening to his heart in his ears. There’s still sensation; he zooms in on it, unable to stop whatever reaction comes out of him as he re-registers the delicious, filthy feeling of being railed through it all. He lets his eyes fall closed. Or… maybe his vision is fading. It doesn’t matter.
At the horizon of his consciousness, there’s a neon flicker of panic. Spock lets go.
Jim desperately fills his lungs. He’s buzzing, all of him, heels to fingertips to the ends of his hair, and it still feels like he’s moving through water but at triple the speed, and he feels the vibration of himself moaning long before he gets his ears in order to tell him how pathetic he sounds. Spock caresses his throat and it only makes him shake harder.
Through their skin contact, Jim gets a wave that feels like a touch that sounds like a word, and when he manages to unscramble the letters, it comes out as: again?
He nods furiously. Spock’s incredible hands return to his neck, and he goes back under.
(It’s unlike anything he’s ever felt. It’s divine.)
Spock eases up just a split second before the panic flickers this time. Jim returns from la la land with nothing but thrill in his head. He needs a long moment to come back to his body, thin as the air is, and whatever part of his brain is still online decides that this would be even more fun with his breather. He’s tempted to make the request, but a check-in with his body reveals that he’s on a hair trigger at the edge of his orgasm, so it’s not worth the break.
“Sphah- Spock, I’m, nng, fffuck, please, I’m-”
And apparently Spock wants Jim to drop dead, because he hears that nonsensical jumble of sounds and responds, “Fall. I will catch you.”
Of course that does it. Jim’s hands twist into the sheet on either side of his head, nearly tight enough to rip the fabric, and his whole body spasms hard enough that only Spock’s steady weight above him stops him from arching entirely off the bed. He feels himself clamp helplessly around Spock’s cock and the inescapable friction only makes him thrash harder. His head is empty of thoughts, full of noise—ocean storms and solar flares. He’s burning up in the atmosphere. He feels Spock’s hand over his mouth and belatedly realizes that he’s been way too loud. He doesn’t care. He’s floating, dying, electric. On the edge of it all, invisibly skirting the whole thing like an event horizon, is an impression of shapes that resemble words: it’s never been like this before.
Then, for a second, nothing.
He comes to pretty fast, he thinks; nothing has changed, and there are still shooting-star shivers running up and down his limbs from aftershocks. Spock is still balls deep in him with hands probably bruising his hips. Spock is also notably still hard. It takes a couple tries for Jim to get his tongue to remember that it’s a muscle and not a dead jellyfish. “Fuuuck.”
Spock is trembling a little. “Are you well?”
Jim does his best at a lazy grin: his most charming expression. “Fucking kidding me? I haven’t gotten off like that in… well. Forever, I guess.”
A smile flits across the edge of Spock’s mouth and it’s gone just as fast. He’s tense, Jim realizes, taut like a bowstring with the force of reining himself in. It’s hot, yeah—Jim feels a little like royalty under that unfaltering care—but it’s also not necessary.
Jim unknots one of his hands from the sheets and uses it to cup Spock’s face, index finger tracing along his adorable pointy ear, and Spock’s eyes close tight. He makes some sort of aborted noise in the back of his throat. Jim thinks, you’re perfect, and covers with with, “Fuck me.”
Spock doesn’t collapse so much as crumble. He buries his face in Jim’s neck with a passion bordering on desperation, and his teeth sink into the place where Jim’s shirt collar usually sits. (He’s not sure if he can cover that mark. He’s not sure if he wants to.) Spock’s hands are relentless, petting and holding everything he can reach, and Jim moans under his breath when those hands drag over his chest. Getting rid of his tits on the dark side of Luna by a disgraced ex-Federation medic had few advantages, but at least his nipples stayed sensitive, and he relishes it.
Jim clenches as best he can to sweeten the pot, managing not to flinch at the post-climactic rawness. “Come on. Fuck me, I said. It’s okay. I want it.”
It’s like flipping a switch. Spock obeys immediately, muffling cute noises against Jim’s skin as he rolls his hips. The pace is still even; Jim isn’t sure if Spock could deviate from that if he tried. Spock’s hands return to their rightful place, clinging alternatively to his waist and his ass, and Jim just relaxes and lets him. It’s… kind of delightful, actually. He could lay here forever and be perfectly content.
Spock is silent when he comes, save for a few ragged breaths that he tries to bite down on, except Jim’s shoulder is still between his teeth and it just makes Jim gasp louder than Spock was going to. Jim also makes a deprived little noise when those wonderful ridges leave him, though he’s quickly distracted by the wet-soft-loose emptiness followed by what feels like a frankly unreasonable amount of liquid. He leans in for a kiss before he can start feeling bad about the state the bed must be in.
“You’re incredible,” he murmurs when they pull away.
Spock’s fingers brush featherlight over his jaw. “As are you.”
And then he’s gone. Jim blinks a few times to recenter himself, and it’s a good thing he does, because then he gets to check out Spock’s ass while he makes his way to what appears to be an ensuite. Jim’s extremely tempted by a shower, given that the Kelvin only has a sonic and he hasn’t felt water-clean in months, but the ache beginning to bloom at the base of his spine tells him pretty firmly that it’s not happening tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
The thought of tomorrow is exhilarating and terrifying. He’s leaving soon, yeah, but the whole crew has been dying of collective cabin fever, so they should hang around on Vulcan at least a few more days, if not longer. Surely they can all find something to occupy their time. There are greenhouses somewhere for Sulu, Bones and Scotty can get their hands on the cocaine ale and try to drink each other under the table, there’s all kinds of math to entertain Chekov, and, and, and…
Jim wouldn’t leave Spock’s side unless he had to. He sits uncomfortably with that realization for a moment, then flops onto his back, tracing idle fingers over the developing marks on his hips. Spock is unfairly lovely. Spock is everything Jim isn’t. Jim wants to learn him inside and out, dissect his patterns until they understand each other, mind, body, and soul. He sort of feels like he already has, and the information is just locked away in the sewers of his mind.
He feels a little sick.
Spock returns, thank god, with a washcloth and a declaration that the bedding needs to be changed. Jim falters only for a second, and it’s due to the overwhelming eroticism of the feeling of lavender-tinted come dripping down his thighs as he stands. Spock catches him with a hand pressed firmly to the small of his back. Jim deflates into the embrace, still a little unsteady from his brush with that most dangerous of emotions, and Spock takes it like a fucking champ, using the opportunity to straight up lift Jim off his feet and carry him to the chaise-looking thing in front of the fireplace.
Jim’s left there with the damp cloth and a rabbiting heart while Spock putters about. Spock gets a pair of pants on and the sticky sheet balled up before Jim remembers that he’s supposed to be cleaning himself. Still, he observes. The new sheet that Spock gracefully tosses over the bed isn’t fitted, but instead gets fancy-napkin folded at each corner to sit nicely on the mattress. Jim deduces that Vulcans don’t toss and turn all that much. What he had assumed was some sort of bed scarf is apparently a blanket which neatly unrolls up to the headboard. Spock turns the top down, perfectly parallel. It reminds Jim of a hotel bed and he shouldn’t feel nearly as soft about that as he does.
Spock says, “Do you require sleeping garments?”
Jim says, “Nah, I usually just sleep in my underwear,” then realizes that his briefs are in desperate need of a wash due to how annoyingly turned on he’d spent a lot of the day being. He doesn’t want to sleep in them, but they’ll do.
Without a word, Spock goes to a wide, flat drawer set into the wall near the ensuite. It pulls out from an indent that he hooks three deft fingers into. Jim has to repress a horrifically lovelorn sigh—of course Spock folds all his clothes like his closet is a department store.
“Thanks,” Jim says when he hands off a pair of pants. They’re dark grey, lightweight, and criminally soft; he might just have to steal them. They tie once in the front and wrap between his legs to go around his waist and tie again in the back, and while the sexy leg slits up the sides are fun, he’s pretty sure it’s just because these things are tailored to Spock’s comparatively slim thighs. Spock seems like he gets his clothes tailored. (That shouldn’t make Jim smile to himself.) Regardless, they’re more than adequate to pass out in, especially given that his alternatives are his slick-caked briefs or buck ass nothing.
Spock settles silently on his back on one side of the bed, a respectful distance from the center as if Jim is going to stay in this fancy house in this fancy bed with this fancy man and choose to sleep solo. Utterly ridiculous. Jim crawls over Spock and lays flat on top of him. To his credit, Spock takes it in stride, putting one hand in Jim’s hair to play with it and one a little possessively just above the waistband of his borrowed pants.
Jim relaxes his perpetually tense body and tries to settle into the silence. Spock breathes quietly. Spock’s general physiology is weirdly quiet, actually. On impulse, Jim says, “Hey, uh, are Vulcans’ hearts in your chests or what?”
“They are not.” Spock’s hand leaves Jim’s hair to take his wrist and guide him to Spock’s side, where his skin is soft and even paler than the rest of him, and sure enough, what seems to be a four-chamber heart is beating steadily under his ribs. Jim is inordinately fond of it already.
“Nice,” he mumbles, which is far from the most articulate response he’s ever come up with, but not an untrue one. His eyes feel a little heavy. It is nice that Spock’s heart is in his side. Jim can keep his hand on it while he shuffles to find the most comfortable way to lay on another person. He can feel it as proof that Spock is alive and well, even if he has no reason to wonder, given that Spock has been alive and well the whole time. It’s nice to be able to check. Slow, gentle beats, indicative of zero stress or danger. Jim notes vaguely that there’s something there he should examine about himself, but he chooses to do it… not now. Another day.
(There are other things he should examine. The inherent comfort of Spock’s room, how Jim normally doesn’t like incense but is actively making an exception here, the thrill of belonging that he never gets from borrowing anyone else’s clothes, and how Spock’s hand on his back makes him so happy he could cry. Those are some.)
(Another day. It’s fine. He’s fine.)
Dawn creeps like a slow-acting poison into Jim’s awareness.
It’s exceedingly pleasant, which puts him instantly into suspicion mode. He’s warm. The air has… a smell. Dusty. Not the worst. Kind of comforting, actually. Certainly a far cry from the slight but constant bleach smell on the Kelvin that lingers from Bones’ cleaning solution like the world’s worst air freshener.
The tendrils of a dream slip out of his fingers as he grasps at them. He manages to parse out a vibe, something soft in muted colors and a minor key, unusually gentle, but it’s gone just as fast. He releases it and squirms back into the warmth behind him.
Oh. Yes.
Jim gingerly begins rolling himself over, but when the arm draped over his waist lifts for ease of movement, he stops trying to be sneaky. He flops onto his other side with the grace of the heavily drunk. Just a few inches from his face, Spock’s eyes belay the tenderness that the rest of his expression doesn’t. He says, “Good morning.”
Jim makes a groggily affectionate noise and closes his eyes again. “Morn’. How long v’you been awake?”
“Three minutes, eighteen seconds. I felt you close to waking as well and opted to remain still.”
“Mm. Thanks. Your bed’s so f’cking comfy.”
“I suspect that your standard of mattress quality is low.”
Jim makes a vague sound of denial, then immediately undermines himself by snuggling in closer, one arm tucked up against Spock’s chest and the other over his waist to keep him still as long as possible. Given a minute or two, Jim could absolutely go right back to sleep in this soft bed with the free air and the warm, delightful alien.
On the floor, in his pocket, his comm goes off.
He groans low, entirely intending to ignore the first ping. He’ll actually get it if there’s another. It can’t possibly be that important.
Spock’s door opens, and there’s Uhura, hair out of order and shirt untucked from her skirt. “Christ’s sake, Jim, answer your calls! We have to go!”
The graveness of her expression wakes him up pretty damn quick. He pulls himself out of Spock’s warm arms with a reluctance overshadowed by his mounting panic. As he’s tossing on yesterday’s shirt, he says, “Talk to me.”
“Sulu’s call got traced, probably from Ben’s end. McCoy says he’s having a little bit of a breakdown about it. They’re both back on the ship.”
“Fuck,” Jim says emphatically. “Okay. Scotty and Chekov?”
“Onboard, unknown.”
“You head back, get Sulu in shape to fly. God knows Bones can’t. And you let him know it’s not his fault, okay? Word for word. I’ll get Pav.”
“Be safe, Jim.”
“You too.”
And she’s gone. Jim throws the rest of his dirty clothes into his pack and shoulders it, spinning in place for a minute before remembering that his shoes are at the front door. He gets his breather strapped on and runs his safety check by muscle memory while his mind reels. Spock is sitting on the edge of the bed, alarm seeping into the center of his Vulcan stoicism, and Jim bends down to plant a firm kiss on his mouth.
“Thank you,” he breathes, and he bolts.
Spock takes entirely too long to process the information of the morning.
Obviously, the most pressing aspect is the sudden, deeply suspicious departure. He compiles Jim’s various question avoidances of the previous evening; more than enough data to suggest a lifestyle that relies at least somewhat on illegality, but Spock had allowed his heart, not his mind, to infer that Jim Kirk was entirely too good for that. Clearly, he had been wrong. The far most likely conclusion is that Jim Kirk, and by extension his crew, regularly engage in crime.
It’s unusually difficult to wrap his head around. He considers his bias—obviously, being raised in prosperity on the levels of family, community, and species would give him a low esteem for defiance of the law. He knows intellectually that not every criminal must by necessity be an ill-tempered brute. Not every criminal must by necessity take part in violence. Additionally, the law is never guaranteed to be written with an ethical base, so crime may be the morally correct thing to do in many circumstances.
Spock recalls Jim’s viscerally powerful relationship with air. Humans cannot hold their breath as long as Vulcans on average, but most can do so with minimal emotional discomfort for a short time. Many positive human idioms concern air and breathing. Jim’s behavior, therefore, could reasonably be presumed unusual. Perhaps he had spent his childhood offworld and so instinctually thought of air as a finite resource. Perhaps there was a traumatic event in his past which caused him undue fear. Spock momentarily wishes to perform a mind-meld: a fleeting thought which he allows to slip by. A mind-meld with a near stranger would be scandalously improper.
Then again, their entire evening had been varying degrees of scandalous. Nothing to be done about it now except ensure that his father never, ever hears a word of it.
(He determinedly ignores the unsubtle tug near his brain stem that insists Jim is no mere stranger, but instead a person he has known since the birth of his very katra and will know forevermore until the heat death of the universe. That unsubtle tug is the pith of illogic and he will not succumb to its nonsense.)
He rises from his bed. Though Jim had taken every physical trace of himself away when he left, there are still olfactory ghosts: his departing panic, the soft undertone of contentment, and subtler, staler, the bite of lust and sex. Spock sorts these in his head as a recentering activity. It carries him through the majority of his morning routine, only finishing its course as he descends the grand, curving staircase to the main floor of the house. This surprises him; even in varying states of meditation, he has been known to use the narrow well of straight stairs which puts him in the library, as its peak is much closer to his bedroom. Jim must have taken the larger, more obvious staircase.
In the kitchen, his mother is using a Terran mortar and pestle to grind what appears to be star anise from her garden. He says, “Good morning, Mother.”
She turns to smile at him. “Good morning, my love. Are you hungry? Your father left a message for me this morning including a Cardassian recipe that seems to have viable Earth and Vulcan ingredient substitutes. I’ll have it in about an hour, if I can get these verum to cooperate.”
“I wish you luck,” Spock says. Star anise indeed—he can tell from the smell, now. “I am not hungry at this time. I am, however, amenable to keeping you company while I do some speculative research. May I?”
His mother smiles again, an open, Human thing that reminds him instantly and irrevocably of last night’s bedmate. He folds up the thought and files it away. At his mother’s directive gesture, he settles in the window bench across the counter from her, where the morning sun comes in from behind his head to warm the whole area. He allows himself exactly seven seconds to bask in the sensation before opening his padd.
It has been some time since he last engaged with the organization of Starfleet willingly. He is of course naturally averse to its militaristic nature, though aware that it serves other functions as well. It is easy to distrust a government body which so closely guards any records which should be public (which is practically everything, he thinks, save for medical or other personal information caches that are, as his mother would say, ‘no one else’s beeswax.’) Despite this, it is remarkably easy to find active arrest warrants. Though publishing these is perfectly logical, it makes him… uncomfortable.
Before him are the faces and names of the Kelvin II crew, grouped together on the list and in descending order by the length of their search duration. One McCoy, Leonard is at the top, crimes including but not limited to unauthorized surgical procedures in Starfleet facilities and theft of Starfleet supplies and medicines. Spock finds he is not averse to these charges, especially after reviewing the reports of unauthorized procedures in more depth. Doctor McCoy obviously holds the lives of his fellow man in higher esteem than his career, and this is admirable.
Similarly, Uhura, Nyota has been charged repeatedly with theft of oxygen cells, and when he checks this against her personal timeline and the surrounding events, it is easily discerned that she was doing this for the purpose of prisoners of war and civilian groups caught in the crossfire. Spock looks over the report concerning her rescue of a group of her own students. Their faces are grim in the photographs taken on the shuttle ride afterward, but hers is as determined and uncompromising as ever. He is not surprised.
Sulu, Hikaru is a name which does surprise him, though now he recalls Nyota using it before her and Jim’s hasty departure. He had known Sulu, though distantly, through Sarek’s ambassadorial collaboration with Starfleet. By all accounts, Sulu is an exceptionally skilled pilot. Spock is intrigued by a mention of his xenobotany degree but ignores it for the time being. According to a report which requires some minor code alteration to reach, he had been caught smuggling supplies to the subjugated colonies of Luna and various governmental reformation groups on Mars, both of which nearly alarm Spock in their necessity. Though Starfleet has evidently tried very hard to keep any of it from entering Federation news at large, there are deeply unhappy people under their command. Sulu was caught using his skill set in aid of these people and has since had his flying license revoked. The file lists him as missing and presumed dead, though evidently he prefers it that way. Spock merely skims the mention of husband Benjamin and daughter Demora. The limited information given to him by Nyota and Jim’s exchange confirms that Sulu’s family are aware that he is alive.
Persons listed as missing and later seen in the Kelvin II’s company: Scott, Montgomery and Chekov, Pavel, respectively an Earth-raised starship engineer last recorded as employed on Venus and an Earth-born university student pursuing a theoretical physics degree last recorded as residing on Io with his parents. Neither are presumed dead, though there was some privately-funded investigation into the disappearance of Chekov. To Spock, Chekov appears the easier puzzle to solve; prolonged discontentment is a very strong drive for humans and has been known to cause them to make rash and remarkably fast decisions when presented with an escape. (He pointedly does not consider the long onset of boredom which has somewhat dampened even his desire to conduct his studies.) Scott, who has little in the report regarding family and a great deal regarding his unusually rowdy and enthusiastic behavior in the workplace, seems like a perfect candidate to befriend a man like Jim Kirk.
Kirk, James T. has an extensive and frankly impressive list of theft locations. It is primarily oxygen, but also includes ship nitrogen, rations, drinking water, a large assortment of starship parts, tools, and, fascinatingly, many paper books. To Spock, the inclusion of the books in the report seems unimportant in the face of the vast amount of other things which Jim Kirk has stolen. Also on file are several instances of arson, though no one was injured in any listed, and of course an ongoing count of resisted arrests and unwillingness to cooperate with the law. The introductory paragraph to the group as a whole mentions his involvement in nearly all of the charges his crewmates are faced with, as both their presumed captain and often as a confirmed accomplice on-site. Spock is… not as put off by this as he should be. He notes the phenomenon and does nothing more.
For a moment, he looks out the window at the city. It’s not a view he can access from his bedroom or during his occasional use of his father’s home office, and it’s more dynamic than the stretch of desert he’s accustomed to, so it provides a pleasant underscore of entertainment while he thinks. Though he does not look at her, he’s aware of his mother joining him on the bench.
“It’s lovely today,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Your father should be back by sunset. He promised me some old Cardassian tablets that need translation, which might keep me busy for a while, but we should all eat together tonight. Now, are you sure you don’t want breakfast?”
Spock is well aware that he has not eaten since a hasty lunch the day before, having completely forgotten in favor of the much more interesting presence of his houseguests. Despite this, hunger is only a mild complaint on the edges of his awareness. “I am sure, Mother. Your concern is appreciated but unnecessary.”
She gets that twist at the corner of her mouth then, a sign that Spock has said something very Vulcan which comes off as insensitive to the very human, and though he knows it is merely a cultural and linguistic difference, it still makes him feel distinctly negative. As he attempts to revise his statement in a way that will please her, she squints out the window. “That’s odd.”
He looks. Above what is presumably the landing pad of the spaceport, a Starfleet combat ship is descending out of the thin cloud layer. It shines sleek and silver in perfect match to the detailing on every modern structure. Though it is a glaringly human thing to do, Spock decides the ship is menacing.
Very quickly, he realizes two things. One: the ship is almost certainly arriving on account of the presence of the Kelvin II, which may or may not be aware that it is being actively hunted. Two: he is quite helpless against the urge to aid Jim, Nyota, and their friends. He would commit any number of violent acts if necessary.
Next, he realizes that his window of time is closing rapidly.
“Mother,” he says, and the urgency must leak through because she mirrors it on her face. “I apologize. I believe I must do something exceedingly illogical.”
There are some Vulcans out and about, though not nearly as many as in the evening, and Jim blames the sun’s relentless glare; he gets why Vulcan pupils can go hair-thin, with a sun like this.
He keeps trying Chekov’s comm as he makes his way to the dock. Five pings. Six. On the seventh, he finally picks up, and his voice is so quiet that Jim wonders if he’s already been captured and Jim just alerted the officers to the comm’s hiding place.
“Keptin? What is it?”
“Where are you?”
“Vulcan library. Absolutely incredible. I’ve been up all night—they’ve got all of Mister Spock’s papers and copies of his field notes, and every scientist I can think of, and one has your name, Kirk, isn’t that funny? The report said his crew was-”
Jim digs his nails into his palm. “Focus, kid. Cover’s blown. We need to go. Can you get to the ship from where you are?”
Sounding a lot more awake, Chekov says, “I-I think so. Yes. Should I be avoiding main streets or— Гавно.”
“What? What happened?”
Jim sees it before Chekov says anything: a Federation militia cruiser descending through the atmosphere and coming into clarity as the particles thin. He disconnects from Chekov’s line and pings Scotty, who picks up immediately. “Right. What’s the plan, then?”
“New complication: our friends at Starfleet have sent a calling card and she’s headed right for the spaceport.”
“Well, fuck. Shall I take our girl elsewhere?”
“You read my mind.” He thinks of Spock. Shakes himself. Now’s not the time. “Get us out of the city some, maybe in the shade of a big building. They’ll still find us quick, but it’s better than sitting out in the open desert where they can fish-in-a-barrel us.”
“Aye. Get back to us.”
“Will do. See you.” Keeping his head down, he starts a steady power-walk toward the circle of taller buildings at the central hub of town, where it’s safe to assume Chekov’s giant library is. He keeps track of the cruiser when he can. It’s slow, like most big ships, three or four times the carrying capacity of the Kelvin at a guess. There’s a dramatic element to it, too, and Jim’s been around the block enough times to recognize a scare tactic. It won’t work on him. They can descend toward the planet like slow, haunting footsteps, and he’ll sneak his crew out the back door while they put on the show.
He finds Chekov hovering like a nervous mouse under the entrance overhang of a tall, elegant building with black glass panels spiraling around it and rounded external elevators gliding up and down silver tracks. It’s rather gorgeous, but he doesn’t have time to admire the beauty of what they must call “logical” design. He shuffles them up against one of the silver stripes in the wall for some privacy.
“Listen,” he says, and Chekov visibly swallows but stands tall. “They’re gonna land in a few minutes and we don’t know what their orders are. We’re probably a detain-for-trial type of mission, but we don’t have proof that we’re not shoot-to-kill. Have you ever seen a phaser before? Yes you have, you hung out on Io. They’re gonna have phasers. Have you seen one in action before?”
“No.”
“They’re loud and they’re bright. It’s pretty disorienting. Your instinct will be to startle, but it’s not a good idea. Now, here.” He digs through his pack under his clothes and miscellaneous junk to the cloth-wrapped failsafe he keeps at the bottom. He presses it into Chekov’s hands, who unwraps it, then blanches at the sight of a pristine condition Terran handgun. (It’s not new. Jim just cleans it after every use until his fingers hurt.) “Tuck this against your stomach or behind your breather, under your shirt. You probably won’t have to use it, and you definitely won’t have to kill anyone. I want you to keep it on you and take it out if you’re cornered. It’s a bargaining tool. Okay?”
Chekov breathes deeply and wavers just a little before solidifying. Jim feels pride well up in his throat. Chekov says, “Alright. But—don’t you need it? It’s yours.”
Jim grins haphazardly, the grin that’s gotten him into and out of a thousand jams. “I’ll be fine. Let’s go.”
Scotty, bless him, hid the Kelvin in an open lot under the shade of a sort of rounded conical building (and seriously, what are Vulcan architects on when they design these things?) with her tapered nose at the peak. She doesn’t exactly blend in, but neither do her crew, so there’s not much to be done. Jim sees her and wills himself not to break into a sprint. The Fleet ship had touched down several minutes before and he really doesn’t feel like attracting undue attention.
“Keptin,” Chekov says, and Jim follows the line of his gesture to where Scotty is frantically waving at them through the tinted glass of a shuttle-stop shelter. Way to keep a low profile.
“Everyone here?” Jim says once they’ve pushed through the plastic flaps of the door, answering his own question with a headcount, and following up with, “Okay, why the fuck are we not on the ship?”
Scotty bounces nervously on the balls of his feet. “They found her, Jim. It was either leave or get caught.”
“Are they still searching her?”
“Should be about finished now.”
Jim puts his head against the back wall and cups his hands over his eyes, grateful that the sun is behind them, and watches two Fleet officers lean against the stabilizer leg of his beloved ship. One rests their palm loosely on their phaser holster while the other gesticulates. He grinds his teeth harder than he should. “Okay. Okay. Fuck. We wait here for them to be done, at which point they’ll file out and leave her mostly empty with a few guards to make sure we don’t come back. It would be stupid to come back—they’re counting on that. Once most of the unit has fanned out around the city with enough distance that backup calls will take a second, we can take out one or two for their phasers, stun the rest, and from there we can-”
A horrible, glorious explosion whites out his hearing and sends loose sand careening against the glass of the shelter. Through the ringing, he checks his team; they’re all wincing as hard as he is, and Sulu looks about two seconds from falling into a flashback of some sort, but no one’s hurt.
The ship, though.
The ship is hurt.
Past the dust cloud, fire stretches out of the Kelvin’s metal frame and into the sky. As Jim watches, her stabilizer leg groans, shudders, and snaps under her, jolting the whole body at an angle against the ground. The Fleet officers, now standing off to the side, pat each other on the back and watch Jim’s ship cough up smoke.
He can’t hear himself when he opens his mouth, so he just loudly thinks, There she goes. There goes my life.
“Jim,” Uhura says, strained but strong. Jim barely understands her. “Jim. Jim Kirk. Come on. Come back to us. We need to go, hun. We need to leave right the fuck now and we need you with us.”
He says, “Yeah,” and it sounds ridiculously weak as it comes out. His eyes burn and there’s a lump in his throat that won’t go away as he swallows. He shakes himself. “Fuck. Fuck. Okay. Fucking—everyone listen.” They do. “We’re splitting up. Sulu and Bones are of equal arrest value, so if you get spotted, you split again and they’ll waste time calling back to their COs for new orders and give you a little bit of a head start. Uhura and Chekov look the least like pirates and Uhura speaks the language. Hide out somewhere vaguely public and look as natural as you can. Barring that, you run like hell, but stick together. Scotty goes to the spaceport. Find something we can hop in to get the fuck out of here. Comms stay on. If someone doesn’t answer, you wait three minutes and call again. If they don’t answer again, we assume they’re in big fucking trouble and we plan from there. With no significant complications, we all meet Scotty at the spaceport in half an hour and we bolt.”
As Uhura, Chekov, and Scotty peel off in different directions, Bones grabs Jim hard by the arm. “And what are you gonna do?”
Jim can’t quite muster a smile. “I’m the big fish. I might not earn anyone a medal if they get me, but I look the best on a Federation top story headline. They’ll chase me. I’m gonna outrun them.” To emphasize this, and out of caution, he hands Bones his pack. “Light on my feet, see?”
Bones sighs. “You’ve been outrunning everyone and everything for a long time, kid. Just… make sure this isn’t the day your legs finally give out.”
“I’ll get back in one piece.”
“Swear to me.”
He can’t. Bones knows that. Still, Jim looks him in his worried, protective eyes, and says, “I swear I’ll make it back.”
Bones reels him in for a rib-cracking hug, which is how Jim knows that he’s terrified, but he leaves when Sulu’s urging reaches a crescendo. Jim watches them duck down a side street. He exhales. Starts a new breath count. Inhales. Exhales. One. Deeper inhale, louder exhale. Two. His fingertips are buzzing. There’s Fleet radio chatter somewhere behind him. He leaves the shelter and steps into the sunlight. Three.
Someone calls, “James Kirk!”
Showtime.
Vulcan cities are too damn walkable. The streets are too wide and the spatial layout makes too much sense. God damn Vulcans and their dedication to ease of use.
Aside from the struggle of the too-pleasant terrain, Jim’s far more accustomed to running from local space cops, who don’t usually care enough to chase him for the sake of a corporation, and private security, who are trained to resist and overpower someone who’s putting up a fight. Starfleet operatives of this flavor, however, are trained to track and capture.
All things considered, Jim’s doing pretty well.
He’s been spotted a couple times and had to make route deviations that made no sense to shake the people immediately on his tail. He’s quite a sight, sprinting around in Vulcan pajama pants and a t-shirt, so he’s pretty sure every local who gives him a curious look is someone who will point the way he went when asked. Which, well. Fuck that.
His muscles burn a medium amount, but not enough that he feels he needs to worry just yet. It would probably be a good idea to find a spot where he can rest for a few seconds. Momentarily, he yearns for the old school dumpsters of Earth, where he could take a hidden if usually rancid-smelling break from a chase. There are no dumpsters on Vulcan; the waste receptacles dotted around outside the entrances of buildings and businesses are clean and beautiful, a manifestation of their vow to not fuck up their ecosystem with technological and societal progress.
Fuck them. Fuck the planet Vulcan and its wonderful fucking infrastructure.
Jim ducks behind a grounded shuttle to lean and pant for a second. He has to raise a hand to his eyes. The sun is so goddamn bright, how do they deal with it? He’s suddenly aware of how much he’s been sweating, running around in heat this intense. Briefly, he wonders if it’s summer. Even briefer, he wants to ask Spock.
To his left, there are slow, stalking footsteps. He heaves one last calm breath and checks the time: one thousand twenty-six, fourteen minutes. Once again, he starts running. He runs, and he runs, and he runs.
As the buildings get shorter and more frequently stone-colored than the sleek and shiny things at the center of town, he knows he’s running out of hiding places. There’s nothing he can do once he reaches open desert. With the circular perimeter of the city, he’d have to move faster than the Fleet personnel inside just to match circumference with them, nevermind get ahead, and he couldn’t keep that up forever even if they didn’t figure him out and send people ahead. Think, he tells himself, and mouths the word around his next ragged breath. Think. Think. You’ve outsmarted puzzles harder than this. In the back of his head, he sort of doubts that, but now isn’t the time to weigh his life’s challenges against one another. Think like them. They’re just people. They’re not predators. You can beat these odds.
Finally, there’s an older street that’s narrow and nonsensical, just like he’s used to. He ducks down it and hears someone yell about half a block away. A left turn on a whim, a right, a right, a left, and then there’s a greenhouse where there should be a clear alley.
“Oh, fuck me.”
He turns to double back, but there are voices and heavy footsteps, so he looks over his options. The greenhouse is a silver metallic frame with a frosted cover, and when he touches it, he feels the world’s thinnest and hottest glass. It’s a half-hexagonal prism that meets the walls on both ends. It’s taller than he is. There are probably makeshift weapons inside, but he doesn’t know that, and for all he knows the glass and the frame would fuck him up so bad as he pushed through them that a weapon might not matter all that much. When he puts his boot on it and applies a little pressure, the glass cracks.
Through the mess of white noise in his head, he manages another weak fuck fuck fuck before it lapses back into the rapid mush. He can’t climb any of the walls or buildings around him. The windows in reach have the fancy twisty metal grates over them, but nowhere for him to go. Getting over the greenhouse would put too many holes in him to be worth it—it would be so unbelievably embarrassing to bleed out halfway back to his crew. The voices and footsteps are much closer.
For just a second, he’s back in Iowa, listening to his Sam fight with his mom. Watching his big brother, his only real friend, leave him in the dust and run away. Hiding in his room and waiting for something to happen, good or bad, because at least a bad thing would let him know what he’s supposed to do.
Behind him, the lucky first says, “James Kirk, you are under arrest on the authority of Starfleet. Your crimes are numerous. We’ll list them as we go. Your bounty is two-hundred fifty thousand Federal credits. Kneel and put your hands behind your head.”
Jim, who has never been one to kneel for anything except fun, turns slowly on his heels with his hands tentatively raised. “Hey.”
The officer before him, flanked by two others, says, “Kneel. Hands behind your head. I don’t have time for this.”
“I do. I’ve got all day, actually. We could grab lunch if you promise not to shoot me.” He’s not totally lying; she’s gorgeous and would probably be his type if she didn’t work for Starfuck. Alas.
She glares at him. “Phasers to stun two.” Her compatriots fiddle with their phasers, but hers doesn’t so much as twitch. “You realize we’re cleared to set these to kill. Stun two isn’t a walk in the park, either. Make another clever fucking comment and we’ll switch to stun three.”
“Is yours still set to ‘tickle’?”
“Phasers to stun three,” she grits out, and then adds, “Mine’s been on kill since we touched down.” Jim’s heart is in his throat and between his ears. His stomach is making its way down to the ground. He knows he’s ghost-white. Still, he smirks. The officer starts again: “James Kirk, you are under arrest on the authority of Starfleet. Kneel and put your hands behind your head.”
In the time it takes him to blink, she goes from upright to falling over, and the other two are yelling. Jim’s gone a little too dizzy to do much about it, but he still jerks away when he hears a phaser blast. He shouts at a burning sting that hits his chest. Stun three works fast, he’ll give it that: he’s incoherent and collapsing before he even has time to register it. As his eyes roll back and he feels the ground approach, he hallucinates someone calling his name.
Even in the soupy darkness, he’s seething. Fuck Starfleet. Fuck Vulcan. Another thing: fuck stun three. Stun three can eat shit and die. He’s not in pain, but he’s also pretty sure he’s unconscious, so it doesn’t count. Once he’s back in the real world (big ‘if’ there) he’ll complain about the ache he’s undoubtedly going to have to endure for a while. Bones will fold like a house of cards and give him a painkiller, hopefully the strong stuff he hides at the bottom of his biggest duffel and thinks Jim doesn’t know about. That would be lovely.
There’s a noise. He perks up, but he’s still drifting in the black murk and sees nothing. A noise. A word. A name? Jim.
Oh. That’s him. Hello?
Jim, tell me your location.
I don’t—what? I don’t know where I am. Who are you?
Please, ashayam. We have little time.
Jim’s still fucking baffled, but he does his best to reach out. It’s not unlike a dream. He was never a very lucid dreamer, but he’s more himself than usual, so he has some influence. There’s a flicker of silver in the dark.
Good. Pull again. You are doing very well.
Why can’t I see you?
You will.
Well, he’ll just have to take that at face value. What else is he gonna do? He pulls again, and the silver flicker solidifies, losing its shine as it approaches, and the second the image clears, Jim understands. How the FUCK did you get here?
Spock looks more comfortable in the dark soup than Jim feels, hovering with his feet pointed down and his shoulders loose. I am in your mind through a meld. It is a Vulcan telepathic technique. In any other circumstance, it would be unacceptable to perform it without your explicit consent, but I—feared for your safety. You must come with me.
Jim blinks at him. We’re in my head, though…?
Yes. We must get out of your head. You are deeply unconscious and we are not in a place where I can wait for you to wake of your own accord. Come. He holds out his hand.
Jim looks at it. Looks around. Looks at Spock. Why did you follow me?
I… will tell you when I understand.
Fair enough, I guess. Let’s go.
You have no further questions?
Oh, do we suddenly have time to kill now?
You are right. We do not. Come.
Jim takes Spock’s hand and they rise out of the murk and gloom into the wildly uncomfortable conscious realm.
Jim’s whole body hurts. Every inch of tissue, every nerve, is deeply upset with him. He’s pretty sure he was supposed to stay under for another hour at the very least to wait this shit out, but, well.
Spock is cradling him, hands protectively around his head, five fingers pressed to the side of his face. His eyes flutter open as Jim watches, and for a second, he winces hard. Jim thinks, oh yeah. Touch telepathy while Jim’s entire brain is on fire. That must suck pretty hard.
“Do not concern yourself,” Spock says, and again Jim thinks, oh yeah.
“I will concern myself.”
“Jim, we do not have time.”
Oh, fuck, that’s right. Three knocked out(?) Starfleet officers litter the alley, and there are voices and radios and clomping boots within earshot. Right. Okay. They’re in deep shit. Luckily for everyone, deep shit is Jim’s natural habitat.
Even though every muscle in his arm screams about it, he reaches for his comm. “Come on, you Celtic fuck, pick up, pick up—”
“Jim, thank GOD. Where the fuck did you get to?”
“Yeah, hey, Scotty. Uh… detour. I’m fine. Have you got everyone?”
“Everyone but your reckless arse. Our good doctor took a shot on stun two but he’s doin’ alright. Up and about and everything.”
“Good. Okay. Um. I’m a little held up—” and just turning his head to shoot Spock a look is painful— “but I’m okay. I’ll be there in, uh… I’ll be there. But if you see any Fleet personnel around, you ditch, okay? Don’t worry about me.”
An angry and unmistakable Bones replaces Scotty. “Don’t fucking do that to us, kid. Your life is important.”
Jim offers a weak laugh. “Please. My life just went up in smoke. I’m serious, Len. You ditch me if you have to and you keep everyone safe. This is what I’m asking of you.”
Spock, who shouldn’t have any skin in this particular game but somehow definitely does, plucks the comm out of Jim’s hand and says, “I will ensure his safe return, Doctor.”
“Who the fuck—Spock? Is that Spock I’m hearing? How—you’re kidding. They fucking WHAT?” Spock switches off the comm.
Jim says, “Uhura just signed your death warrant, you know. Sorry.”
Spock doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing. “Are you able to stand?”
“Let’s see.”
Spock is overbearingly helpful and pretty much pulls Jim to his feet. Jim finds his balance, but it’s sort of a distant acquaintance. He takes a step: success. He takes another: instant loss. He ends up pressed to Spock’s solid chest. Again.
“You are unsteady,” Spock says.
Jim hums. “You know, if I had a nickel…”
“A what?”
“Nevermind. Don’t let go, I’m gonna try again.”
He does. It takes some doing and a few more close calls, but Jim finds his sea legs. They still sting like hell but it’s a sting he can walk through. That has to be enough, so he decides it is.
There’s still the issue of the entire squadron roaming the streets. They’re much smarter than Jim’s used to, and several times Spock has to yank him out of view of someone or another. Quietly, while they’re creeping behind a row of older and squarer buildings, Spock explains that Vulcans have superior hearing to humans as well as strength, and with the naked eye can see better in the bright midday, equal to a human wearing a medium-strength light filter. Jim is a little astonished by his own interest in the information—he hasn’t been bored for even a second in Spock’s company.
There’s also the manhunt. That’s helping.
At any rate, Spock is both cleverer and better-versed in the city than their adversaries, and leads Jim safely most of the way to the spaceport. There’s a stretch of open tarmac for the larger ships, maybe three-hundred yards of it. There’s the hangar where small ships are stored out of the weather. (Jim thinks of the Kelvin, then stops doing that.)
Jim exhales as slowly as he’s able. “Okay. Do you see them?” (On top of everything, Vulcans can apparently focus on objects three to four times farther away than humans can, which is just ridiculous and Jim sort of thinks Spock is lying, which Vulcans supposedly don’t do. Sounds like something a species of frequent, stone-faced liars would say.)
After a moment, Spock says, “I do not.”
“Well, fuck. Guess we’ll have to ask. Keep watch for a minute, I can—”
Jim catches the tiniest noise behind them just as Spock has already sprung into action. The Fleet officer hits the ground in seconds.
While Jim is unholstering their phaser and switching it from kill to stun three, he says, “You gotta teach me that. I mean, how does that even work? Is it just a human thing?”
“It is the Vulcan nerve pinch,” Spock says, then tilts his adorable head this way and that. “They are coming.”
Jim mutters, “Fantastic.”
“I fail to see how any aspect of this situation is—”
“Sarcasm, forget it. Oh, fuck, fuck, okay, RUN!”
Jim shoots the building they were just next to, sending a rain of dust and gravel-sized rubble onto the handful of officers below. He throws a few more shots for good measure and watches them duck for cover. Good.
Of course Spock is some distance ahead, but graciously slows until Jim is next to him. He’s beautiful. Naturally. There’s no other way for him to be. But this, cheeks a little green from exertion and running so gracefully and glancing at Jim to make sure he’s keeping pace, Spock is gorgeous. Jim finds himself laughing into the wind.
The shooting picks up then. First it’s distinctly behind them, but as the aim is narrowed, patches of tarmac start popping open to fling dust and sand into the air. Spock touches Jim’s arm and tells him, Keep up.
They swerve. Spock’s probably doing math about it or something, calculating the change in angle and margin of human error, but Jim just trusts in his brilliant fucking mind and does what he’s told. He stays at Spock’s elbow and doesn’t let himself falter even as the pace picks up. His lungs are burning; that’s not so bad. He can handle a little oxygen deprivation. That’s his job.
The next immediate problem, second to the shooting, is the distinct lack of Jim’s crewmates in sight. Granted, they might have taken off already, and he steels himself against the terror that that ugly insecurity causes. He told them to go if they had to, and maybe they did. That would be okay.
(It really, really wouldn’t. It would not be okay. He would not be okay. There’s nothing he can do about it right now.)
Just as Jim lets himself be happy about the shots falling behind them again, something passes overhead that makes a big fucking shadow.
Jim looks up and curses. Spock looks up and says something in Vulcan that’s probably similar. The Starfleet ship, that big shiny fucker, is cruising along and pulling ahead of them. Jim eyes the gun turret on the bottom and his step almost falters with the knowledge that he’s about to die on a Vulcan tarmac next to the guy he slept with who also bothered saving his life. They’re not touching, so he can’t apologize, but he aches to. I’m sorry you met me. I’m sorry it’s ending like this. I’m sorry I took your future. You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever known.
The world starts going white. It’s not unlike dying of suffocation, he supposes. He shimmers and tingles and then there’s a simple, empty nothingness.
Jim and Spock materialize, panting harder than they ever have, on a circular platform on the Starfleet ship. Behind a control board, Scotty lets out a wordless holler of victory.
Spock lands in a crouch like a cat, gracefully not falling on his ass. Jim very much falls on his ass. Breathless, absolutely unable to believe his fucking luck, he collapses on his back. The ceiling is a stark, medical white. The lights are little flat bulbs set in a wide grid. There’s air.
Jim laughs. He laughs until he feels like he’s going insane, and then a little more. A sob makes it in from time to time. He doesn’t think of the Kelvin just yet, because he knows it’s going to take him the fuck out for a while and he needs to be present for his crew, since they’re technically not out of the woods yet.
Still, he takes a second to celebrate: he puts his arms around Spock’s shoulders and kisses him with the passion of a man who just cheated death again.
He’d happily stay there forever, honestly, drowning in Spock’s warm, lovely mouth, but he hears Chekov saying, “Keptin!” followed by a shocked and nigh on betrayed sound, which makes Jim wonder who he’s more disappointed in. They’ll figure it out later.
He pulls away from the kiss but doesn’t even begin to fight the firm hold Spock has on him. “How are we doing?”
Chekov looks somewhere between baffled and revolted, but clears his throat. “Doctor McCoy is on his feet and yelling at everybody. Mister Sulu is at the helm. The doctor and Miss Uhura are there also.”
“Thanks. Hey, Scotty, I’ll need a comprehensive rundown on whatever the fuck you just did to get us up here. Later.”
Scotty just beams at him.
Jim still kind of doesn’t want to move, but extricates himself from Spock’s limbs. Spock stands, straightens his shirt, fixes his hair, and looks ready to give a presentation or make a grant proposal or meet the parents, which is deeply unfair. Jim stands as well and feels a bit like he’s about to fall right over again. (If Spock steadies him a few times on their way to the cockpit, that’s no one’s business.)
“Mister Sulu,” Jim says, and refrains from slapping him on the back since he’s got a ship to steer. “You know how to fly this bad boy, I take it.”
Sulu grins. “Flew the same model as her for seven years. Timetable’s printed on the door there, if you want to take a look.”
Jim absolutely wants to take a look.
On the inside of the door to the cockpit, as promised, is the air consumption timetable. “Sixty Earth days of air for a ship capacity of forty-five. Lowest it goes is two-hundred seventy days for ten occupants. Well, fuck, with only seven of us, that’s…”
“Three-hundred eighty-five point seven one days,” Spock says. “Rounded.”
Chekov whoops, and it’s unclear whether it’s about the number or watching Spock be a smart bastard in person. Jim gets it, regardless.
He thinks of the Kelvin and her lovely timetable. The late nights spent staring at the bunkroom ceiling and trying to figure out how he’s going to get more air in her bank before he suffocates in three days, two days, eight hours, whatever. The exponential increase in stress as he added people to his ongoing math problem. God, his ship. His girl. His baby. His home that he was always just on the edge of dying in, living to buy himself a little more time.
Softly, he says, “What’s her name?”
Uhura says, “Starship Enterprise.”
He’s crying.
He can hear everyone cooing nice things. Spock’s steady arm wraps around him, which is more grounding than anything else. There’s a bit of a jolt as they exit Vulcan’s atmosphere and the gravity simulators turn up. Spock keeps him upright. When Jim puts his head against the door and slides into a sad little squat, Spock follows him. Spock’s very good at following him.
Apparently, Bones agrees. “So, question: what’s the Vulcan doing here?”
Spock says, “After spending the evening with your captain and later reviewing your criminal records, I came to a logical moral conclusion which demanded action, and so-”
“You already know I slept with him, Bones. Don’t think too hard about it or your old-man brain might pop.”
Jim doesn’t lift his head from the wall, but smiles shakily when he hears Bones making defensive, doctorish noises. Spock also doesn’t speak. Uhura says something that Jim doesn’t catch and so becomes the target of Bones’ ire. Chekov starts muttering in Russian. Sulu and Scotty pick up an entirely unrelated conversation about the new, fancy ship they’re on.
Jim, who is apparently not done crying, puts his shaking hand on Spock’s leg to keep him there. Spock rubs circles into his back. For the first time since Jim left Earth, he believes the universe’s kindest lie: Everything is going to be okay.
.
.
Even weeks in, the Enterprise still has new quirks to explore.
According to Sulu, she’s got a hell of an accelerator but her brakes need a careful hand. She steers beautifully. Jim lets Sulu pilot, mostly, but he wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t impose from time to time.
Her warp core is state of the art and Scotty treats it like a foreign deity. It’s kind of hilarious. Jim helps him haul things around in the vast engine room, which has its own deck to contain it and the smaller satellite rooms around it. (Jim spends a nonzero amount of time sitting next to the air bank just to stare at the crates and crates of refill cells. He’s aware that it’s a worrying behavior. No one has said anything about it yet.)
Of course, as a Fleet vessel, it takes some serious and rapid work to get her off the grid, but after the transponders and trackers and automatic comms and every other fucking surprise are disabled, there’s an absolute dragon’s hoard of information for Uhura and Chekov to sink their teeth into. Databases within databases on top of databases stuffed to the brim with mission logs and maps and copies of seemingly every text in the known universe. There’s a growing heap of things that need various amounts of verification to access, which Spock is steadily chugging through. It’s… worryingly trivial for him to sidestep passcodes. It definitely makes Jim wonder what he normally gets up to in his free time. Still, it’s damn helpful, so he hasn’t asked.
The part that Bones likes best, and also the part that helps Jim sleep easiest, second to the air bank, is the fully-stocked, cutting-edge medbay. Bones practically lives in there. There’s apparently a shit ton of work to be done, which he readily lists in complaint while Jim goofs off and plays with anything that has buttons. Jim doesn’t even know the names of most of the stuff in the room. Bones’ circus, Bones’ monkeys.
Jim has been fluctuating between joyful relief and desperate, crushing sadness, which everyone is fielding as best they can. He’s been meaning to apologize for it but he’s positive that it’ll spark another public waterworks session, which he isn’t super ready for. For the most part, save the occasional drink with Bones, it’s been Spock’s job to navigate the choppy seas of Jim’s feelings.
They all have their own rooms now, which is an adjustment. Jim can announce that he’s retiring for the evening rather than citing a need to piss so he can cry in the washroom for seven minutes. The entire crew seem to know that he’s fibbing, but they don’t address it to his face, for which he’s grateful. He announces for the fifth day in a row that he’s feeling tired and wants to get an early night; Uhura glances at Chekov, who nods at Scotty, who looks to Bones for direction, but Bones is just giving Jim those sad, knowing eyes. Jim ignores it.
Spock, who’s usually dead silent while they eat or otherwise perform a social function, says, “I shall join you. I require meditation.” Everyone bats an eye, but they do so silently, and that’s good enough.
Jim’s quarters are relatively small. He had his pick of rooms, being the unofficial-official captain and all, but there’s a comfort in being able to see his whole space that he didn’t find when he tried to sleep in one of the big fancy suites. Actually, he just had a horrendous nightmare and went to go curl up next to Spock in his more modest room for a few more hours of disorienting rest.
Since then, Spock’s room has become a bit of a facade. It’s not like he had anything to unpack, so it’s just as clinically sparse as the empty quarters. He goes there to meditate sometimes, or says he’s going to meditate as a cover for whatever else he gets up to, but for all intents and purposes, he lives with Jim. It’s not something they’ve discussed, really. Jim just woke up with Spock draped over him once and that was that. Jim isn’t nearly brave enough to question it.
As they leave earshot of the others in their temporary mess hall (the actual mess was too big and creeped them collectively out), Jim says, “Do you actually need to meditate or was that one of your Vulcans-don’t-lie-and-yet moments?”
Spock’s ear twitches. Jim hasn’t figured that one out yet. “I do, though not urgently. Primarily, I have found the relative silence of the Enterprise to be calming, and so am more easily taxed by the noise of company.”
“Oh? Shall I find a way to make myself scarce?”
“That is not necessary.”
Jim laughs and Spock goes a little green around the cheeks. It’s adorable, frankly, like so many aspects of him, and normally Jim would be scared out of his mind of the sheer force of his affection for this strange, delightful man, but his usually reliable commitment-phobia has yet to rear its head, and Jim doesn’t at all feel like looking this particular gift horse in the mouth. He’s going to just… let this happen. He says, “Okay.”
Jim’s quarters aren’t much better than the ones that are supposed to be Spock’s. The Fleet officers who were there before really didn’t do much in the way of interior decorating, so there’s not a lot to work with. Jim’s mostly alright with that. It’s not like he had anything interesting going on around his bunk on the Kelvin, save for his books, his dildo, and his gun, which is… such a perfect reader’s digest of his personality.
Anyway.
Like always, Spock takes off his shoes and lines them up by the door, which Jim thinks is adorable and doesn’t comment on. Jim turns the heat up a bit higher than he would if he was alone and Spock doesn’t say anything even though he’s definitely aware it’s for his benefit. Spock’s perpetually high-strung body relaxes as he dresses himself down. Jim happily collapses on his back on the bed and listens to the hum of the ship that now belongs to him.
Like always, they fall into each other within minutes.
Jim rolls them over after some heavy petting, gratified to see Spock flushed a fetching coppery shade on top of his greenish tinge. He’s panting, and Jim knows that he’ll insist Vulcans have a higher lung capacity than humans if pressed, rather than just admitting that kissing Jim makes him go a little breathless. That one’s a long game and Jim intends to win it.
“Tell me what you want,” Jim says, by now well aware that asking will get him nowhere.
Spock flushes darker. He’s so fucking cute. “I… I desire to see you. I have little preference regarding how.”
With a bit of a flourish, Jim pulls off his shirt. It’s been a long time since he attempted any sort of strip tease but he gets the feeling it would work very well here. “Like this?”
Spock says nothing, but his hands immediately go to Jim’s waist, his pecs, his shoulders, and Jim feels a little like those eyes could burn a hole in him, which is how he knows he hit the nail on the head.
“Clothes.”
“Indeed.”
They part temporarily. Jim has to stop in the middle of wiggling out of his briefs to snort belatedly at the indeed, and Spock, mid-removal of his second sock, just gives him an absolute deadpan, which only makes him laugh harder. He hasn’t laughed this often in, well, maybe ever, which is as depressing as it is thrilling.
As soon as Spock has gotten himself naked, Jim takes him by the hand (and relishes the shiver it causes) to bring him back down where Jim can lay him out and look at him. He’s beautiful, of course. It’s a fundamental law of the universe. He looks right back at Jim without guard, without hesitation, and Jim has to remind himself that crying isn’t conducive to the sexy atmosphere he’s trying to create.
They haven’t been able to find lube anywhere, so Jim’s been drinking plenty of water in hopes that his body will mostly make up for it, which is a strategy that hasn’t failed them yet. It also helps that Vulcan dicks have to exit a vulva-esque zone before they’re of much penetrative use. Between the two of them, Jim has yet to rupture anything. He errs on the side of caution purely due to his unending fear of Leonard McCoy in doctor mode.
Still, Spock is on the girthier side of the list of things Jim has put inside himself. It’s only because they’ve been fucking with alarming regularity the last few weeks that Jim is able to breathe through the stretch with little preamble and take him to the hilt on his first go.
Spock makes a noise like he’s been gut-punched. It’s nice to know that Jim’s still surprising him.
“You okay down there?”
Spock’s hands dig into the half-faded bruises on his hips. “I am. Adequate.”
Jim laughs again, because isn’t that such a thing to say when someone sits on your cock? But he opts not to give him a hard time about it. Instead, he puts his hands on Spock’s chest and gets his legs better arranged under him so he can start a gentle rocking motion. Spock clings to him.
You are extremely attractive, Spock projects, and Jim grins. He knows how hard it is for Spock to get things like that out of his mouth. Or mind, for that matter.
So are you. It’s absolutely wild to me that no Vulcan lady ever managed to snatch you up.
One nearly did. I was engaged to a woman named T’Pring for a time.
Jim stops moving. Wait, you were engaged? What happened?
Spock does the mental and Vulcan equivalent of a shrug. We were not as compatible in adulthood as we were as children. We were cordial, but we did not truly desire each other. She became attached to another man and I was not saddened to release her. As far as I am aware, they are bonded and content.
Okay, I’m gonna need more information about the part where you were incompatible, because that’s shit I should know, but later. Right now I’m distracted and I won’t be able to give it the attention it deserves.
I concur.
Distracted indeed. Jim lets himself think about the prospect of Spock marrying someone just long enough for the smug pride to kick in, and uses it as a fresh burst of energy to put into the motion of his hips. Spock certainly isn’t marrying some lady named T’Pring, no—he’s in Jim’s bed, in Jim’s cunt, and he’s not going anywhere.
Spock definitely feels some portion of the thought, but instead of the non-eyeroll Jim was expecting, he exhales hard and his pupils go wider.
“Vulcans are often possessive by nature,” Spock says, apparently hedging his ego on the ability to speak normally at this point in the proceedings. “I had not—ah—previously been aware of my own… Jim… ”
Jim has perhaps been clenching as hard as he can and making the blissed-out face that he knows Spock can’t get enough of. It’s too much fun not to do; hardly his own fault if his maybe-boyfriend generally has a stick up his ass and so has made it incredibly fun to get him to lose his composure. To be fair, Jim is also pretty enamored with Spock when the stick is firmly in place, but it’s a special treat to watch him unravel. Jim’s unpredictable like that.
“So,” Jim says, because he’s an asshole at heart. “Before, your fiancé fell for another guy and you were more than fine with that, but you spend one night with some scrappy human criminal and suddenly the teachings of Surak just aren’t as compelling as the idea of everyone knowing I’m yours?”
Spock does his lovely little rumble, a short, quiet one that means Jim is exactly fucking right but Spock will never confirm or deny anything on the assumption that Jim will eventually get bored and let it go. Oh, how dreadfully wrong he is.
“Sure, babe. You know, while we’re on the subject: wouldn’t it be so much more fun for both of us if you stopped laying here like a lovely, lovely corpse and started actually fucking me?”
Between two beats of his heart, Spock takes a fistful of the hair on the back of Jim’s head and drags him down into a human kiss. Jim gasps, which is taken as the opportunity it is. Spock kisses him absolutely stupid and then pulls the barest distance away to say, “Reckless,” in that voice of his.
“Have you met me?” It comes out in a breathy laugh, but the hand in his hair relocates to his throat, and all of the air leaves him at once.
It’s a bit of a thing, the choking from that first night. There have been no repetitions, but Jim goes absolutely boneless at every reminder, and Spock doesn’t seem to be faring much better. So far it’s mostly been a fantastic tool to swing the mood of an encounter from cute and fun to woefully, desperately horny, and tonight is no exception. Jim groans from deep in his chest and picks up the pace of his hips.
Spock leaves his hand where it is. It’s infinitely distracting, and every time Jim starts to get a hold of himself and calm down, Spock gives his neck the slightest squeeze and sends all that hard work toppling to square one again. The rhythm would be a a fucking mess if Spock wasn’t also following it, fielding Jim’s erratic bucks and little sensation-seeking grinds that do nothing more than remind him how full he is.
For a moment, he thinks of lonely nights when all he had was a mediocre toy and cold lube to entertain himself with, and the vaguely pathetic yearning he’d send into the void about it. As usual, it makes Spock’s dark eyes go all sympathetic and sweet. The hand not on Jim’s neck traces down his arm in pity, or maybe affection, or maybe a request. More by touch than sight, Jim recognizes him forming an ozh’esta and follows suit.
The immediate rush of adoration would have knocked him over if he was standing. As it is, he just groans happily through it, well used to the intensity of Spock’s emotional projection when he’s really putting his back into it. Fondness, plain lust, admiration, a nigh on overwhelming desire to see Jim never want for anything again. It all runs through the wrinkles of Jim’s brain with the texture of liquid fucking mercury. His arm shakes as the psionic waves travel. Spock only holds his hand tighter.
The hand around his neck squeezes, and he moans, then moans again at the responding wave of emotions and thoughts. He gives up on supporting himself so he can start frantically rubbing at his clit. Muffled but discernible, he feels Spock’s indignation that he’s not the one doing it.
“After,” Jim manages. “You can… fuck, you can eat me out as long as you want, yeah? Fuck me now, play with me later.”
Spock projects, You will not be so eager to offer such things when you are crying under my tongue because you have climaxed enough times that your pleasure is indistinguishable from pain.
It’s not at all fair that he has the wherewithal to use words like ‘indistinguishable’ when he’s talking like that, even over their mental bridge, so Jim retaliates by feeding as much of his own sensation as he can through the connection and takes great joy in watching Spock’s jaw clench about it. Outlast me then, dickwad.
Challenge accepted.
Jim doesn’t have time to rethink anything before Spock has tipped him neatly onto his back and is starting up the slow, hard, circular motion that he’s recently discovered drives Jim absolutely insane. As usual, Jim gasps and squirms uselessly for a moment before relenting to the sensation and going mostly limp. With this much of Spock’s goddamn Vulcan bone density on top of him, there’s not much he can do. He settles in for the ride.
“Fuck,” he offers weakly. “Oh my god. How did you get so good at this so fast. Holy fuck. God, Spock.”
Spock huffs where he’s got his face buried against Jim’s neck again. “Your mind is exceptionally dynamic. It has never been difficult to read what pleases you.”
“I think that’s cheating.”
“Perhaps, but I will carry on for as long as my ‘cheating’ continues to yield such satisfactory results.” For emphasis, he fits both hands on the backs of Jim’s thighs to fold him just so, and like clockwork, Jim’s vocal cords do some extremely embarrassing things. Spock’s bitchy smugness is palpable through every square inch of contact. Jim doesn’t even have it in him to bitch back in turn.
Also palpable through every square inch of contact: how close they’re both getting. Jim carefully dodges the thought—he still wants to win, and between Spock’s competitive streak and Vulcan physiological control, Jim needs to be smart about it. He leans hard into the joy and lust, the utter delight of being with the oddest and sexiest man he’s ever met, and Spock exhales more forcefully. Despite it all, he’s easy. Simpler than he wants to be. Jim bites his lip around a grin and allows his eyes to roll back and flutter, allows soft, strained noises out of his mouth that he knows Spock can absolutely read, allows the risk of reaching down to rub his clit again. As long as he’s the one doing it, he can keep it measured. He can be patient. Just this once.
It works like a charm, of course. He ups the ante just a bit more by dipping his fingers into his mouth for a moment to get them wet, sparing a deeper moan, before resuming touching himself. Spock reacts beautifully. God bless the Vulcan hand kink.
“Ah—hah,” Spock says, then projects, Ashayam. It’s criminally cute and Jim gives up the game for a moment just to make sure that the wave of adoration he sends over is strong enough. Spock makes a gutted noise, fixes his head firmly in its rightful place against Jim’s neck, and shudders through what seems to be a devastating orgasm.
“Fuck, there you go,” Jim murmurs, because he can’t help himself. “Perfect. God. You’re so perfect. You don’t even know. Fuck, Spock.”
Spock makes… a sound, Jim isn’t really sure, and then he’s rumbling with some urgency and grabbing Jim’s whole head between his hands and absolutely smothering him in a kiss. Jim relents to it, because he solidly won and now he just wants to come, and Spock is really, really good at this.
It takes approximately zero time for Spock to leave him gasping, drag his teeth down Jim’s torso, and run his rough, hot tongue over traces of his own come. Jim knows from experience that there will be more over the next few minutes, and if he were to put underwear on and go to sleep right now, he would be noticeably wet in the morning. Fortunately, Spock doesn’t seem interested in letting that happen.
For someone who only recently dissolved his engagement, Spock is unusually adept at giving head. Jim will admit to coaching him through a few rounds, yes, but since then Spock has needed few cues and zero actual instructions. Intuitive learning is a hell of a thing. The strength of his Vulcan tongue is also a hell of a thing, as are his singular focus and near-scientific determination, and combined with the slight oral fixation he’ll never admit to, Jim never stood a chance.
It takes three of his fingers, some perfect swipes of his sandpaper tongue, and less than a minute for Jim to clamp his thighs shut and bite his own wrist so he doesn’t negate the medium soundproofing of the room.
He doesn’t pass out (win!) but it takes him some time to come back down. Spock stays, dutifully leaving his no doubt sensitive fingers where they are and idly mouthing at Jim’s clit, dragging out the aftershocks. He’s a fan of that, apparently. Jim is acutely aware that if he gave the word right now, Spock would dive straight back in and make him come two or three more times before showing any signs of restlessness. The thought is strong, probably very easy to pick up on, and a glance at Spock’s mischievous eyes confirms that he heard it loud and clear.
Ruefully, Jim pushes his head away. “And you call me insatiable. Fuck. Can’t do another for like half an hour, at least. That was fucking perfect.”
Spock presses a wet kiss to his thigh. “Shall I begin a countdown?”
“Normally, I’d say bring it on, but I think the consequences of my actions are catching up to me. I’m actually tired.”
“Entirely reasonable. Your capacity for forward momentum is bizarre, for a human. It was bound to hit you eventually.”
Jim grumbles, stretches, shivers happily. “Yeah, well.” He drags two fingers through the mess between his legs and sticks them in his mouth just to be a sore winner. Predictably, Spock’s pupils go almost circular about it. Jim fucking adores him.
(That’s still a problem. He’s kind of waiting for it to ease up, calm down, leave him in peace, but it hasn’t happened. He’s pretty sure Spock is aware, but he’s been quiet about it just in case. His life is finally going in the right direction—the last thing he needs is to chase this man away by loving him. Too much of a good thing, something something. Vulcans are notoriously allergic to feelings and Jim’s not taking chances, not with this. Not with him.)
“Bathroom,” he announces, and almost makes a fool of himself as he stands but saves it. A few wobbly fawn steps and then a few regular human ones, and he’s made it to the ensuite. It’s not bad at all for a Starfleet regulation space: comfortably roomy without getting into ridiculous territory, neat, decent layout, linoleum that pretends to be black ceramic tiles. There’s another door that leads to the mirror quarters. Jim keeps trying to get Spock to claim them, but Spock is still determinedly rooming with him, and it’s so far from a problem that he’s close to giving it up. Still, once they acquire more material objects, one room might not cut it. It’s not like they’re going to stop sleeping together either way.
If Jim rests easier, and also more reliably and longer and deeper, when Spock is there, that’s something for him to acknowledge in the safety of his own head and promptly bury.
He goes about his routine. His cleanup is rushed, because he’s fucking tired and it’s not like he can avoid the trace amounts of Vulcan semen no matter what he does, short of an actual shower, which is so not on the agenda tonight. Besides, he’s pretty sure that Spock gets some sort of pre-Surakian gratification from smelling the sex on him after they’re done. Worth the minor inconvenience.
An uncomfortable thought strikes him. Leaning out of the doorway just a bit, he says, “Sorry if this is invasive, but, uh, do we think you’re infertile? Hybrid and all.”
Spock looks very alarmed. “I had assumed, given your lack of concern for any form of contraceptive-”
“Oh, no, it’s not—I got my tubes tied ages ago. It’s not a concern, per se. Reassurance, I guess. And some substantial curiosity.”
Though relaxed a little, Spock’s still stiff. Jim resolves to cuddle it out of him in a minute. “It is likely, though unconfirmed. T’Pring and I did not discuss the possibility of children during our few interactions. I had intended to schedule a test consultation before I became otherwise engaged.”
Jim fills in, before you barreled into my life. “Okay. Cool. No surprise space pregnancy. That’s good.”
“Indeed.”
Jim retreats back into the ensuite and does his goddamn best to ignore the soft, small animal at the back of his mind that absolutely wants to have Spock’s adorable Vulcan baby, because that’s not a great thing to have in his stream of consciousness when the guy he’s trying to keep around his a touch telepath who would rather backflip out of the airlock than admit to being happy. Jim’s unruly human emotions haven’t chased him away yet, but Jesus fuck, it’s going to be an issue sooner or later.
He looks at himself in the mirror for a moment. The bags under his eyes are brutal. His hair is a mess, but not as bad as it could be. He’s noticeably thinner than he’s used to; that should probably be addressed. The blast mark on his chest from his brush with stun three is fading steadily and doesn’t feel like anything in particular when he pokes at it. (He’ll be a little sad when it’s all the way gone. It makes Bones all prickly and protective, and it does something concerning but deeply flattering to Spock’s thought process.)
Spock raps his knuckles against the open door, and Jim thinks, speak of the devil. It’s the easiest thing in the world to relax into his embrace. Unfortunately, he’s got pants on now.
“I apologize,” he says at length, still stiff, “if you have been given the impression that I do not wish to be on the Enterprise. My departure from Vulcan was sudden and unexpected, but I was aware that I did not entirely know where I was going when I left my home that day. I did not go without consideration. It is my choice to be here and I would choose the same were history to repeat itself.”
Jim says, “Baby,” in a voice that’s far too openly touched, then follows it up with some silence. Spock isn’t making eye contact with him in the mirror. Words aren’t really coming out of Jim’s mouth, so he finds Spock’s hand and gets a Vulcan kiss going, and Spock shivers just a little. Jim’s ozh’esta game isn’t the strongest yet, but he’s getting there.
I want you here for the long haul, he thinks, because it’s easier than letting things this stupid out of his mouth. I’m a pretty hopeless romantic, so, grain of salt, but there’s something here that’s new for me. And I think you wouldn’t have followed me if you didn’t feel it.
Spock says, “I…” and Jim’s stomach drops hard, but Spock squeezes his hand and sort of mentally shushes him, and he shushes. There is a Vulcan concept which may apply, but I am hesitant to employ it without sufficient information. Tomorrow I will research the phenomenon.
Jim loves him. God, does he ever. “Sounds good.”
They stand there for an amount of time that Spock could give to the tenth of a second, though Jim doesn’t ask. They get ready for bed in outward silence, regularly trading thoughts across the void through brushes of hands and nudges of ankles. Jim’s comfortable, and it would scare him if it wasn’t so goddamn all-encompassing. The part that would be scared is comfortable too. It’s black magic.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on a pair of socks (there are no carpets onboard and it’s appalling, frankly) when he feels a mental nudge akin to someone softly calling his name from outside the room. He looks up and meets Spock’s eyes where he’s midway through whatever he does to his hair.
For a delirious, insane instant, those eyes are looking at him over a stack of padds, across a shiny white bridge, between people neither of them like, under the glare of a medbay, in front of the glare of a medbay, glances shared over dimensions and eras, resolutely unbreakable. For a delirious, insane instant, he’s known and loved Spock longer than either of them have been alive.
Spock looks away first, and it breaks. Jim has to take a second to get some air back into his lungs—he starts counting again, which Uhura has been insisting is a security blanket. Sue him. Security is a great feeling. He might be shaking a little, but he’s also kind of hungry, so maybe it’s a blood sugar thing. He’ll mention it to Bones tomorrow. Right now he’s sort of never been more exhausted and he just wants to curl up with Spock, who, he firmly reminds himself, is some guy he met on an air run and simply hasn’t managed to scare off yet.
If Spock can hear the inner monologue through his skin when they make it back to bed, he politely doesn’t mention it. Jim’s grateful. He’d been rather pathetically staring at the ceiling on his back, just in his briefs, and he almost wished for an antique cigarette to complete the picture. Like a housecat, though it’s a comparison Jim may end up taking to his grave, Spock artfully drapes and then arranges himself, now in addition to the pants wearing a sort of tunic sweater thing that’s probably very popular on Vulcan. Jim’s not sure where he got it. It’s soft, though, and Jim quickly gives up the stoic idea of not nuzzling into it. Limbs tangled, lights down, no ship alerts going off. Their foreheads end up touching in the dark. Spock’s hand comes up to the back of Jim’s neck to keep him there, so Jim stays, and it’s that easy.
Thoughts travel sluggishly through the contact. Jim lets them slip between his fingers, silver and gentle. There’s a word, something Vulcan that he’s never heard out of Spock’s mouth but that he’s also heard a thousand times, murmurs and whispers and projections that say t’hy’la across the universe. He isn’t consciously sure what it means, but it’s pretty and he likes it. When he tries it out, just the shape of the word in his mind, Spock responds with a pulse of warmth so perfect it kind of makes Jim want to cry. Spock’s long gone—he meditates deeply most of the night, he said, and it’s only slightly unnerving. Looks close enough to sleep for Jim to pretend, anyway. He puts some teasing affection into the mix like slipping something through a mail slot, and he can almost feel Spock’s careful, ordered mind picking it up and turning it over, cataloging.
Jim sighs: ninety-one. He holds his breath for a moment and lets the count trail off into silence. He inhales again and deliberately focuses hard on the alien heat of the, well, alien in his bed. Between the soft tether of Spock’s meditation (t’hy’la, t’hy’la) and the free air, Jim lets himself sleep, and he does not dream.