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He hurts.
Getting thrown down the bottom of the warp core chamber was pretty damn bad, but it's nothing compared to how his whole body feels like it's on fire. His muscles can barely move, he feels sick and exhausted and so, so alone. He hurts, but he can't feel the ship juddering and careening around him, so he thinks (hopes) he fixed it in time.
He knew it would end like this. Maybe not with the whole kicking-the-warp-core-back-into-place thing, but he knew he'd die like this. Alone. He can see Scotty wake up, slowly staggering out of his chair and turning towards him. When he sees him, he jumps back and immediately calls the bridge. Jim can't really hear some of what he says, because the glass muffles his voice from this far away, and he's sort of blacking out, but he swears he can hear Spock's name.
Spock's footsteps thunder from down the hall. God, Spock must have run to him. It gives him the falsest hope he's ever had in his life, that maybe Spock was driven to such an emotional state because of him, but before he can let himself get carried away in that, it hits him that he isn't going to die alone. He's going to have Spock near him, even if they're stuck on either side of the door, and that's more than he ever thought he could hope for.
"How's our ship?"
"Out of danger." Spock sounds shaky already. God, he's never seen him like this. He's never seen him this unhinged, not even when he throttled him on the bridge. This is the last time he's ever going to see him. It hits him like a phaser shot. The last thing he's ever going to see is Spock, closer than he's ever been but nowhere near close enough. His whole body hurts. His heart hurts even more.
"I'm scared, Spock," it hurts to move, it hurts to breathe. What was it like for Spock, standing surrounded by molten rock, to take away his feeling and accept his fate? He could use that, right now. "Help me not be. How do you choose not to feel?"
"I don't know." Oh, god. Those are tears. Those are honest to god tears in Spock's eyes. Could there be any tiny, microscopic chance that maybe Spock is hurting as badly as he is right now? "Right now, I am failing."
That makes two of us. He would cry if it didn't hurt so much. He's scared and hurting, and even though Spock is so, so close, he still feels so alone. He's going to die without Spock ever knowing just how much he means to him, how the thought of Spock burning up in that volcano was so devastating that he risked the whole ship getting him back. He's never going to be able to tell him why it hurt like hell when Spock filed that report, and why even though he felt like he'd been stabbed in the back, the thought of going back on the Enterprise without him still made his reinstatement more bitter than sweet. Damn it. He has to tell him. Even though he's gasping for breath now, he has to say something.
"I want you to know," god, he can barely even talk, "why I couldn't let you die. Why I went back for you." He hasn't quite worked up the strength (or the nerve) to finish before Spock is talking, again.
"Because you are my friend."
Jim's heart drops clean out of his chest. He knew it was too good to be true, too much to hope for that Spock had lost his control this much because of him. But then Spock puts his hand on the glass and Jim can't find any words right now, so he decides maybe he'll just let his hands do the talking. He puts his hand against Spock's, wanting so damn badly to be able to remove the glass between them so he can feel their hands touch. He has to say it, he has to, he can't let himself die with this regret weighing him down. He separates his fingers, lines their hands up together so maybe, just maybe Spock will understand, he'll understand that this is the same thing Jim saw Uhura do once-
The words die in his throat, and instead he makes a sort of choked noise. Fuck, he can't do this to Uhura. He can't do this to either of them. His last living act is not going to be potentially ruining Spock and Uhura's relationship. He loves him too much to do that. Instead he just looks at him, keeps their hands together, and makes sure the last thing he sees is Spock's face. I love you, Spock. I love you so much. Maybe if he thinks it hard enough, Spock will hear him.
Maybe.
---
His first thought upon waking up is that hospitals smell really gross. His second is that he feels six different kinds of hungover (whiskey, burbon, nasty-cheap beer, Saurian brandy, that wine Gaila had hidden under her bunk, and vodka). When he opens his eyes, he sees Bones grinning at him. He figures they've all had to have known he was alive for a while for Bones to be back to his usual sarcastic self. He's surprised when he sees Spock there, though, especially looking so clean-cut. Maybe Bones had told him he was awake? No...no, Spock would've looked more ruffled if he'd hurried to get here. Spock was here already. ...Jim wonders how often Spock's come to visit him in the two weeks he's been out.
He only half remembers what they even say to each other. He's just so damn happy to see Spock, he can barely think straight. It does get his attention, though, when Spock calls him "Jim", because he immediately does a total memory recall of every conversation he can remember having with Spock, and he realizes Spock has never called him by his first name. It's always been "Captain", even when he wasn't technically his captain.
He's struck a bit dumb by it, so much so that when Spock excuses himself, saying he'll "allow him some time for rest", all he can do is nod and thank him. Bones finishes tweaking one of the machines next to his bed and takes a seat beside him.
"I swear, that's the happiest I've ever seen him." He picks up a padd from the table and flips through a few screens. "God knows it's refreshing, considering how he got when he and Uhura broke up."
"Wait," Jim sits up ramrod-straight. "What?" This is news. This is big fucking news.
"Yeah, it was about two days after we confirmed you were alive," Bones takes a swig of his coffee. "They're on shockingly good terms, though. It's not gonna change anything onboard the ship, but it still got ol' pointy-ears down for a while. I mean, in his own non-emotional way. He got even quieter than usual, you know? Uhura wasn't much better; she straight vanished for a couple of days. They both levelled out after a week or so - Uhura started joining us for poker night, if you'll believe it - but it was still about as cheerful around here as a dry county on a Saturday night for a while."
Jim feels something huge bubbling up in his chest. He knows he shouldn't be happy, not really, but he just can't let this go, now. He's managed to cheat fucking death itself, and now that he won't be the universe's biggest asshole for doing so, he is not going to let another day get past him without getting this off his chest. He swings his legs off the side of the table - and that's when it hits him he's wearing a hospital gown.
"...you got a set of clothes I can wear?"
Bones gives him a very familiar glare. "Why? You don't think you're going anywhere, do you? You've just come back from the dead, Jim, whatever wild hair you've got can wait."
"No Len, it can't," Jim does his best to sound as serious as possible, leaving out the nicknames to get his point across. "Just...trust me. It really can't. Look, I'll come right back and you can run all your tests and stick things on my face and do whatever else you want, but I have to do this, and I have to do it now."
Bones looks at him for a long moment before sighing heavily, reaching down to take a plain black uniform out of a cabinet and handing it to him. "You've got two hours before I come looking for you."
"Great, awesome, thanks," Jim pulls the gown off without the slightest bit of hesitation and throws it to one side, yanking the uniform on as quickly as he can. "Where did Spock say he was going, again?"
Something seems to dawn in McCoy's eyes, and he nods slowly before speaking. "Back home, but he told me something about stopping by the library on his way."
"Thank you so much," Jim claps him on the shoulder.
Bones responds in kind. "Good luck, Jim."
---
He's pretty sure he looks like a madman, running at top speed across Starfleet Headquarters barefoot, wearing a hospital-issue uniform, with his hair all messed up from lying in a hospital bed and a furious determination in his eyes. He can't be bothered to care. He feels wonderful, with the wind on his face and the ground under his feet and the utter freedom of being able to run like this, not being stuck in a tiny radiation-flooded entryway with Spock unbearably close but never, ever able to touch him. He feels terribly, frighteningly alive, and he isn't going to waste it.
He's lucky enough to catch Spock leaving the library, about halfway across the courtyard. He's running full-tilt at him, so stopping himself takes a little more friction on the cement than the soles of his feet would like, but the rest of him does not remotely give a shit.
"Spock!" He sounds more than a little breathless, and Spock turns to look at him with the closest thing Jim's ever seen to shock.
"Captain? What are you doing out of -"
"No, no no no," he shakes his head, coming to a complete stop and pausing to catch his breath. "Not 'Captain', Spock, not now."
Spock now looks visibly alarmed. "Has your position changed?"
"No, Spock, it's just - it's Jim," he probably looks even crazier than before now. "Please, just call me Jim."
"I..." Spock looks around them nervously, and Jim nearly slaps a hand on his forehead.
"Right. Fine. We can go somewhere else." Jim grabs Spock's shoulder and walks them both back to the library. They're halfway up the elevator to the floor with the private study rooms when Spock finally seems to have his words together.
"If I may ask," shit, he's gone and freaked him out; he's going all formal again, "what exactly has happened that necessitates I call you by your first name?"
"It's not a necessity," Jim sighs, walking out of the turbolift and into the first empty study room he finds. He waits until the door shuts behind Spock before he starts talking, again. "I just like it."
Spock does that head-tilt thing that always drives him up the damn wall, and Jim decides that this is it. He has to say everything he couldn't say, and he has to say it now.
"Alright look, I've been trying to find a way to tell you this for a long time, and if you interrupt me even once, I swear to god I will walk straight out of here, and you will never know what I was trying to tell you in the warp core chamber. Do you understand?"
Spock does not say anything, but he does nod.
"Good," he squares his shoulders and takes a deep breath. "Spock, do you know what went through my head when I found out you were stuck in that volcano? While you were figuring out how to accept your fate, I was up on the bridge going out of my mind, because there was no way I was going to accept the thought of losing you. Absolutely none. Even considering it as a possibility...it nearly broke me, Spock."
He runs a hand through his hair and looks at the floor. "You remember that hearing after I rigged your Kobayashi Maru test? Of course you do, what am I saying. You told me, 'a captain cannot cheat death'. In that moment, while I was watching the timer for your cold fusion bomb ticking down, I could hear those words of yours in my head, and I was hellbent on proving them wrong. Even after you filed the report and I lost my ship, I wasn't kidding when I said I'd miss you." He looked up again and gestured a little bit frantically towards the ceiling. "There's a whole cosmos of life and culture out there, but even if I discovered every secret in the universe, it wouldn't be the same if I couldn't share it with you."
Spock still said nothing, but Jim could see something changing in his expression. He couldn't quite place the emotion he was seeing (fear? sadness? hope? affection? pity?), but he sure as hell wasn't going to stop now.
"You mean so much to me that it scares me, sometimes. You're brilliant and loyal and you care. Even if you don't like us knowing it, you care so damn much that you'd sacrifice yourself for any one of us. You've got this boundless curiosity that makes you get excited and reverent every time we discover a new planet or nebula or hell, even a new species of insect. I get so stupidly happy when I see that light in your eyes, when you've found something amazing and you want to share it with everyone. I..." he chuckles softly, "I thought you were just some biological equivalent of a computer when I first met you. I thought the most horrible things about you, and god, I was so wrong. I don't know when it happened, but suddenly everything went from wondering when you'd get out of my face to finding the thought of living without you unbearable."
He looks straight into Spock's eyes and steels himself, because there's no going back, now.
"I couldn't let you die because I love you, Spock. I love you more than anyone else I've ever known in my life. You're my best friend, but...you're also so much more than that. I would cheat every force of nature and break every law in the known universe if it meant you would be safe."
There's a long, long pause, and finally Jim inclines his head a little bit to indicate that he's done. His hands are cold and shaky, and he can sort of barely believe he's still standing. Spock seems to hesitate before he responds, and his words sound careful and measured.
"Jim..." There's a depth of emotion in his eyes that Jim recognizes, because he saw something very similar on the other side of a reinforced glass door. "I will admit that I have been...conflicted, as of late, regarding my own emotions towards you. I have considered you my friend for some time, and yet recently I found that I felt an unbridled joy in seeing you accomplish a mission successfully, or when you regarded me with a sincere smile. To my dismay, this joy left me feeling ashamed, and I could not see a reason why."
Jim furrows his eyebrows. Spock felt ashamed of being happy? There has to be more to this, but Spock didn't interrupt him, so the least he can do is show him the same courtesy.
"I will not deny that this uncertainty, this shame, played a large part in the termination of my relationship with Nyota. She is a wonderful woman who deserves much better than to be with someone so unsure of himself." Ouch. That explained a lot. Had to give Spock points for straightforwardness, though. "I consider you a very close friend; of that I am sure. However, the word in Vulcan that, in a casual context, describes a dear friend carries a deeper meaning when applied in a more intimate context. I believe my confusion originates in the fact that, over time, my feelings of friendship have evolved. Therefore, though I still consider you my t'hy'la, the definition of that word has changed from that of a close friend...to that of one whom I cherish very much."
It's like a dam bursting in Jim's heart. He freezes for a second, nearly tearing up from the relief and happiness that crashes over him. He lunges forward without even thinking about it, reaching for Spock's hand. Spock flinches away a little, obviously startled.
"Spock, please - I mean, sorry, I just," he takes a deep breath. "I can't get the feeling of that damn glass out of my head-"
It's like his words flip some switch in Spock's mind, because he takes hold of Jim's hand and pulls him close. Jim moves his other hand to the back of Spock's neck and kisses him again, and again, and again. His brain feels like someone's set off fireworks inside it, and he can't remember being this happy in his whole damn life. They stay that way for a long time, their kisses gradually calming until they simply stand wrapped in each other's arms, daring the universe to separate them.
"...oh man," Jim looks at the time displayed on the wall. "Bones is gonna kill me if I don't show up, soon."
He can't see it, but he knows Spock has that smirk he only gets when he's about to be clever.
"I will take full responsibility for your absence."