K/S fic: Hypothetically Possible Logical Relations
ST:XI, Kirk/Spock, R, ~2,150 words.
X-Men-inspired AU. "Loss of control," Jim snorts under his breath. "That's rich, coming from Cool Head Spock." Due thanks to leupagus for unwittingly introducing me to the phrase "f&ck a duck." Blame no one but me, however, for the rest of it.
Hypothetically Possible Logical Relations
They're out of bread and Lucky's is definitely closed this time of morning, so Jim opens the freezer and rummages until he finds an open package of Eggos. Even though they're frostbitten and nearly six months past their expiration date, he stuffs them in the toaster. When they pop back up he's already laid out a plate, and then he piles tuna, cheddar, wilted romaine, and cranberry sauce in between the two waffles.
It doesn't taste half as bad as he'd thought it might, but after the first bite eating feels pointless, like he should be doing something else. There's always something he could be doing. But he doesn't want Bones waking up halfway through the night just because Jim is hungry and exhausted. That's been happening too often lately. While he doesn't think he can sleep yet, maybe resting will be enough for now. He scrapes the rest of the eggowich into the trash and sets the unwashed plate in the sink -- he'll probably get Sulu's clean-freak spiel in the morning (again), but fuck it, he can't find the scrubby brush.
On his way out of the kitchen, he nearly walks straight into Spock. "Oof!"
"My apologies, Jim. I have begun to associate your presence with extraneous noise and therefore neglected to notice you in its absence."
"It's always too quiet around here -- I do what I can. And don't tell me you don't love the Bee Gees; I saw you head-bopping the other day."
"Head-bopping," Spock says doubtfully.
"Ah ah ah ah, stayin' aliiiive," Jim deadpans.
Spock's eyebrow twitches--usually getting Spock's eyebrow to twitch is one of Jim's favorite pastimes, since it means he's either really amused or really pissed and both are really entertaining for Jim. Right now Jim is not in the mood to be entertained, and rubs his middle finger up and down his forehead, where he can feel the creep of an incipient headache. That would explain the vague queasy feeling. Or maybe that's just the waffles.
Regardless, Jim wants to be somewhere dark and cool and unpopulated, barring someone to massage his temples and maybe blow him, but he can't take chances like that anymore, so unpopulated will have to do. He tries to maneuver around Spock, but Spock's taking up the whole door frame and eyeing Jim like he's a particularly fascinating science experiment that's just gotten past the "form hypothesis" stage and is moving into the "collect data" phase.
Jim sighs. "Share with the class?"
"If you are referring to --"
Jim must be more tired than he thought, because it takes him a minute to translate colloquialism into Spock-ese. He has a fuck of a lot of practice with that. "Tell me what I've done to invite such scrutiny."
"If I am not mistaken --" Spock is very rarely mistaken "-- today marks the one year anniversary of, of Gary Mitchell's unfortunate death." Interesting. Spock also very rarely fumbles his words. Jim wonders what Spock might have said instead of just Gary's name. Our comrade? Your friend? Your partner?
"Hardly unfortunate," Jim points out. "He was trying to kill me at the time."
"At the time," Spock says quietly. Then, louder, "You cared a great deal for him."
"I wasn't fucking him," Jim says, being deliberately crude mostly just because he can be, but also because the irony of Spock comforting him over the loss of his purported fuck-buddy is too much.
"I was not aware that a lack of sexual relations precluded genuine affection," Spock says, very gravely.
Jim barks out a laugh. Shit, he loves it when Spock makes fun of him.
"Additionally," Spock continues after a minute twitch of his lips, "I believe the behavior which necessitated his demise has been and continues to be a source of considerable distress to you. I predict that today's events have done little to ameliorate your concerns and may, in fact, have exacerbated them."
"Bravo," Jim mutters, running a hand through his hair. He keeps forgetting that he let Bones hack most of it off. "The psychiatrist is in, I see. Do I owe you a nickel now? Or has McCoy prepaid for me in advance?"
"You fear loss of control," Spock presses on as if Jim hasn't said anything at all. "You fear forfeiture of your humanity at the hands of your extraordinary abilities."
"Loss of control," Jim snorts under his breath. "That's rich, coming from Cool Head Spock."
"I regret this," Spock says finally, still ignoring Jim's commentary, his eyes darting from Jim's to fix on a point over Jim's shoulder. His voice is small, almost tentative, and when the words and tone together actually register, Jim startles.
"You regret this," he repeats faintly, staring. "You regret that I have the -- fucking disturbing, incidentally -- ability to persuade anybody to do whatever the fuck I want? Or you regret that I find it terrifying that I can override anyone's free will at a whim? I dunno, man, I'm with you on the former, but I think the latter has sociopath potential."
"I regret that you experience fear, regardless of its source. That it is an irrational and doubtless extraordinarily painful fear only serves to heighten that regret."
"Irrational?" Jim doesn't even know where to start with the rest of it. He paces the space between the fridge and the still-blocked doorway. "You were there. You saw how fucking helpless we all were -- you saw how his powers consumed him."
"Indeed."
Before Spock can say anything more, Jim whirls around to face him again and challenges, "Then why not me, too?"
Spock clasps his hands behind his back in what Jim privately refers to as his you're about to get schooled, motherfuckers pose. It's pretty hard not to smile when he does that. "This is not a logical concern. In fact, I believe your concern is predicated on the logical fallacies of conflation and what is commonly referred to as the 'slippery slope.' Gary Mitchell rarely considered his abilities -- markedly more ambiguous in their potential applications than yours, it must be noted -- except as a means of power. You, conversely, consider the repercussions of yours perhaps even more than I do mine, and avoid abuse of power so diligently as to avoid use of power.
"Gary Mitchell sought to increase the strength of his abilities without consulting any other, more impartial Extras --"
The defense of Gary is reflexive. "He was trying to --"
" --and concealed these attempts from those who would have cautioned and aided him. His abilities did not corrupt him." He was already corrupt is, of course, the implication.
"How do you know I'm not corrupt too," Jim says, then. "Gary and I were bosom buddies, after all. Like attracts like."
"You are not corrupt," is Spock's immediate response, accompanied by a piercing stare. Jim resists the urge to step out of the car with his hands in the air. Then for a while all he can hear is Felix the Cat-Clock's tail twitching to mark the passing seconds as Spock's stare turns, if not uncertain, then less certain, and he hesitates.
He says, more imprecise than Jim has ever heard him, "I know you," like Jim is as easy to learn and memorize and recite as one of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Any effectively generated James Tiberius Kirk capable of expressing elementary sexual interest in the nearest humanoid cannot be both corrupt and himself.
Fuck a duck, Jim thinks. This conversation is erasing and rewriting his understanding of the concept of intimacy. He's not sure if he wants to laugh with Spock or have sex with Spock to defuse it, if either or even both would defuse it, if he wants to defuse it, if he can maybe do both and keep it.
There was never a Kirk who had a mouth that operated manually -- only automatic transmission for them -- and so automatically Jim's mouth coos, "Aw, Spock, I like you too," in trademark obnoxious fashion. "You should really look into writing for Hallmark."
It's not that Spock flinches; Jim doubts he even remembers how to broadcast emotion that easily. But something about his expression that Jim wasn't ever aware of being open is suddenly closed, and for once Jim's mouth acts in the direct interest of something other than self-preservation or sexual gratification. "Shit. Shit, I didn't mean that."
He scrubs a hand over his face as Spock just stands there, stiller than should be humanly possible. "You do know me," he says, an invitation, admission, and apology all in one. He's efficient like that.
And then Jim is padding over from his spot near the fridge, with intent to -- his mind scrambles, in the surreality of the situation, for an appropriately Spock-like verb, and settles uncomfortably on -- embrace Spock. It's not like he's never thought about what it might be like to touch Spock -- the dude's a touch telepath; Jim has a vivid imagination, so sue him -- but it's not like he's never thought about Scarlett Johansson's breasts either, yet she's never shown up naked in his shower.
He imagines that were he ever confronted with Scarlett Johnasson's rack all his careful fantasies would desert him, so he thinks he can be forgiven for taking a moment to integrate Spock -- Spock, ladies and gents -- into a context that involves Jim and the potential for touching. Maybe even sex.
When he's more or less done so (from somewhere in the vicinity of oh my god what the fuck BBQ to shit, this is going to be fantastic even if it's terrible is about as far as he gets), Jim reaches out, stopping just short of touching Spock on his (clothed) upper arm. "Can I --"
"Yes," Spock says, and Jim does. Wrapping his hand around Spock's bicep feels significant somehow, like they're forming a ground connection. It makes more sense when Jim thinks about how often he's ever touched Spock at all, even casually: hardly ever, out of respect for Spock's ability and his personal boundaries, which are so tightly entwined as to be inextricable. Destroy one and maybe you'll even destroy the other, like some sort of perversely brilliant defense mechanism.
Most of the time Jim kisses women, and most of the time women are shorter than him, so it's weird to tip his forehead forward in a straight line and actually meet Spock's forehead with his own. It's even weirder to encounter Spock's mind right there, nothing like any metaphor for touch telepathy Jim's ever heard of, no buzz or hum or waves lapping against his own mind. Instead it's like someone has drawn a Venn diagram of them, and he and Spock are in it, making it up, and outside it, looking at it all at the same time; the middle part, the shared part, feels like euphoria. Composing it are their commonalities, shared conversations and experiences, their emotions. It's an incredible not-duality -- he doesn't feel echoey or mixed-up or like he's lost any part of himself; just that he is somehow exactly who he's always been and somehow better than he's ever thought he was.
He doesn't hear Spock talking in his head so much as know so much about Spock that he could probably passably be Spock, that he knows what he would say and feel and do and think and remember and long for in infinite situations, permutations, combinations.
Right now he'd say something along the lines of, I recommend we relocate, and considering they are in a spot that's high-traffic regardless of the time of day and Jim is half-hard and Spock is not an exhibitionist, Jim accepts Spock's recommendation. This means pulling back from their -- what, connection? Meld, Spock answers -- meld, which Jim accepts less readily.
They do a 1-2-3-go approach to it, and as soon as they're separated, though still physically close, Jim, well, he sort of misses it, the overlap. Spock moves from in front of him to beside him and then takes Jim's hand, and the Venn diagram is back, but fainter, like it was in bold black marker and now it's stenciled lightly in pencil. It allows him to actually focus on something other than that.
"It's like a reprise of junior high," he says, swinging their joined hands back and forth between them. He's not sure yet whether terror or relief dominates when he realizes that, to Spock, he is no longer only made up of what he says aloud.
"Neither is logical," Spock points out, but ha! Jim sticks his tongue out, mentally, at Spock. Spock's not only what he says anymore either.
"I wanna hold your hand," Jim sings as they start to climb the stairs together, and Spock doesn't laugh, not out loud, but that's definitely the general gist of it.
X-Men-inspired AU. "Loss of control," Jim snorts under his breath. "That's rich, coming from Cool Head Spock." Due thanks to leupagus for unwittingly introducing me to the phrase "f&ck a duck." Blame no one but me, however, for the rest of it.
Hypothetically Possible Logical Relations
They're out of bread and Lucky's is definitely closed this time of morning, so Jim opens the freezer and rummages until he finds an open package of Eggos. Even though they're frostbitten and nearly six months past their expiration date, he stuffs them in the toaster. When they pop back up he's already laid out a plate, and then he piles tuna, cheddar, wilted romaine, and cranberry sauce in between the two waffles.
It doesn't taste half as bad as he'd thought it might, but after the first bite eating feels pointless, like he should be doing something else. There's always something he could be doing. But he doesn't want Bones waking up halfway through the night just because Jim is hungry and exhausted. That's been happening too often lately. While he doesn't think he can sleep yet, maybe resting will be enough for now. He scrapes the rest of the eggowich into the trash and sets the unwashed plate in the sink -- he'll probably get Sulu's clean-freak spiel in the morning (again), but fuck it, he can't find the scrubby brush.
On his way out of the kitchen, he nearly walks straight into Spock. "Oof!"
"My apologies, Jim. I have begun to associate your presence with extraneous noise and therefore neglected to notice you in its absence."
"It's always too quiet around here -- I do what I can. And don't tell me you don't love the Bee Gees; I saw you head-bopping the other day."
"Head-bopping," Spock says doubtfully.
"Ah ah ah ah, stayin' aliiiive," Jim deadpans.
Spock's eyebrow twitches--usually getting Spock's eyebrow to twitch is one of Jim's favorite pastimes, since it means he's either really amused or really pissed and both are really entertaining for Jim. Right now Jim is not in the mood to be entertained, and rubs his middle finger up and down his forehead, where he can feel the creep of an incipient headache. That would explain the vague queasy feeling. Or maybe that's just the waffles.
Regardless, Jim wants to be somewhere dark and cool and unpopulated, barring someone to massage his temples and maybe blow him, but he can't take chances like that anymore, so unpopulated will have to do. He tries to maneuver around Spock, but Spock's taking up the whole door frame and eyeing Jim like he's a particularly fascinating science experiment that's just gotten past the "form hypothesis" stage and is moving into the "collect data" phase.
Jim sighs. "Share with the class?"
"If you are referring to --"
Jim must be more tired than he thought, because it takes him a minute to translate colloquialism into Spock-ese. He has a fuck of a lot of practice with that. "Tell me what I've done to invite such scrutiny."
"If I am not mistaken --" Spock is very rarely mistaken "-- today marks the one year anniversary of, of Gary Mitchell's unfortunate death." Interesting. Spock also very rarely fumbles his words. Jim wonders what Spock might have said instead of just Gary's name. Our comrade? Your friend? Your partner?
"Hardly unfortunate," Jim points out. "He was trying to kill me at the time."
"At the time," Spock says quietly. Then, louder, "You cared a great deal for him."
"I wasn't fucking him," Jim says, being deliberately crude mostly just because he can be, but also because the irony of Spock comforting him over the loss of his purported fuck-buddy is too much.
"I was not aware that a lack of sexual relations precluded genuine affection," Spock says, very gravely.
Jim barks out a laugh. Shit, he loves it when Spock makes fun of him.
"Additionally," Spock continues after a minute twitch of his lips, "I believe the behavior which necessitated his demise has been and continues to be a source of considerable distress to you. I predict that today's events have done little to ameliorate your concerns and may, in fact, have exacerbated them."
"Bravo," Jim mutters, running a hand through his hair. He keeps forgetting that he let Bones hack most of it off. "The psychiatrist is in, I see. Do I owe you a nickel now? Or has McCoy prepaid for me in advance?"
"You fear loss of control," Spock presses on as if Jim hasn't said anything at all. "You fear forfeiture of your humanity at the hands of your extraordinary abilities."
"Loss of control," Jim snorts under his breath. "That's rich, coming from Cool Head Spock."
"I regret this," Spock says finally, still ignoring Jim's commentary, his eyes darting from Jim's to fix on a point over Jim's shoulder. His voice is small, almost tentative, and when the words and tone together actually register, Jim startles.
"You regret this," he repeats faintly, staring. "You regret that I have the -- fucking disturbing, incidentally -- ability to persuade anybody to do whatever the fuck I want? Or you regret that I find it terrifying that I can override anyone's free will at a whim? I dunno, man, I'm with you on the former, but I think the latter has sociopath potential."
"I regret that you experience fear, regardless of its source. That it is an irrational and doubtless extraordinarily painful fear only serves to heighten that regret."
"Irrational?" Jim doesn't even know where to start with the rest of it. He paces the space between the fridge and the still-blocked doorway. "You were there. You saw how fucking helpless we all were -- you saw how his powers consumed him."
"Indeed."
Before Spock can say anything more, Jim whirls around to face him again and challenges, "Then why not me, too?"
Spock clasps his hands behind his back in what Jim privately refers to as his you're about to get schooled, motherfuckers pose. It's pretty hard not to smile when he does that. "This is not a logical concern. In fact, I believe your concern is predicated on the logical fallacies of conflation and what is commonly referred to as the 'slippery slope.' Gary Mitchell rarely considered his abilities -- markedly more ambiguous in their potential applications than yours, it must be noted -- except as a means of power. You, conversely, consider the repercussions of yours perhaps even more than I do mine, and avoid abuse of power so diligently as to avoid use of power.
"Gary Mitchell sought to increase the strength of his abilities without consulting any other, more impartial Extras --"
The defense of Gary is reflexive. "He was trying to --"
" --and concealed these attempts from those who would have cautioned and aided him. His abilities did not corrupt him." He was already corrupt is, of course, the implication.
"How do you know I'm not corrupt too," Jim says, then. "Gary and I were bosom buddies, after all. Like attracts like."
"You are not corrupt," is Spock's immediate response, accompanied by a piercing stare. Jim resists the urge to step out of the car with his hands in the air. Then for a while all he can hear is Felix the Cat-Clock's tail twitching to mark the passing seconds as Spock's stare turns, if not uncertain, then less certain, and he hesitates.
He says, more imprecise than Jim has ever heard him, "I know you," like Jim is as easy to learn and memorize and recite as one of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Any effectively generated James Tiberius Kirk capable of expressing elementary sexual interest in the nearest humanoid cannot be both corrupt and himself.
Fuck a duck, Jim thinks. This conversation is erasing and rewriting his understanding of the concept of intimacy. He's not sure if he wants to laugh with Spock or have sex with Spock to defuse it, if either or even both would defuse it, if he wants to defuse it, if he can maybe do both and keep it.
There was never a Kirk who had a mouth that operated manually -- only automatic transmission for them -- and so automatically Jim's mouth coos, "Aw, Spock, I like you too," in trademark obnoxious fashion. "You should really look into writing for Hallmark."
It's not that Spock flinches; Jim doubts he even remembers how to broadcast emotion that easily. But something about his expression that Jim wasn't ever aware of being open is suddenly closed, and for once Jim's mouth acts in the direct interest of something other than self-preservation or sexual gratification. "Shit. Shit, I didn't mean that."
He scrubs a hand over his face as Spock just stands there, stiller than should be humanly possible. "You do know me," he says, an invitation, admission, and apology all in one. He's efficient like that.
And then Jim is padding over from his spot near the fridge, with intent to -- his mind scrambles, in the surreality of the situation, for an appropriately Spock-like verb, and settles uncomfortably on -- embrace Spock. It's not like he's never thought about what it might be like to touch Spock -- the dude's a touch telepath; Jim has a vivid imagination, so sue him -- but it's not like he's never thought about Scarlett Johansson's breasts either, yet she's never shown up naked in his shower.
He imagines that were he ever confronted with Scarlett Johnasson's rack all his careful fantasies would desert him, so he thinks he can be forgiven for taking a moment to integrate Spock -- Spock, ladies and gents -- into a context that involves Jim and the potential for touching. Maybe even sex.
When he's more or less done so (from somewhere in the vicinity of oh my god what the fuck BBQ to shit, this is going to be fantastic even if it's terrible is about as far as he gets), Jim reaches out, stopping just short of touching Spock on his (clothed) upper arm. "Can I --"
"Yes," Spock says, and Jim does. Wrapping his hand around Spock's bicep feels significant somehow, like they're forming a ground connection. It makes more sense when Jim thinks about how often he's ever touched Spock at all, even casually: hardly ever, out of respect for Spock's ability and his personal boundaries, which are so tightly entwined as to be inextricable. Destroy one and maybe you'll even destroy the other, like some sort of perversely brilliant defense mechanism.
Most of the time Jim kisses women, and most of the time women are shorter than him, so it's weird to tip his forehead forward in a straight line and actually meet Spock's forehead with his own. It's even weirder to encounter Spock's mind right there, nothing like any metaphor for touch telepathy Jim's ever heard of, no buzz or hum or waves lapping against his own mind. Instead it's like someone has drawn a Venn diagram of them, and he and Spock are in it, making it up, and outside it, looking at it all at the same time; the middle part, the shared part, feels like euphoria. Composing it are their commonalities, shared conversations and experiences, their emotions. It's an incredible not-duality -- he doesn't feel echoey or mixed-up or like he's lost any part of himself; just that he is somehow exactly who he's always been and somehow better than he's ever thought he was.
He doesn't hear Spock talking in his head so much as know so much about Spock that he could probably passably be Spock, that he knows what he would say and feel and do and think and remember and long for in infinite situations, permutations, combinations.
Right now he'd say something along the lines of, I recommend we relocate, and considering they are in a spot that's high-traffic regardless of the time of day and Jim is half-hard and Spock is not an exhibitionist, Jim accepts Spock's recommendation. This means pulling back from their -- what, connection? Meld, Spock answers -- meld, which Jim accepts less readily.
They do a 1-2-3-go approach to it, and as soon as they're separated, though still physically close, Jim, well, he sort of misses it, the overlap. Spock moves from in front of him to beside him and then takes Jim's hand, and the Venn diagram is back, but fainter, like it was in bold black marker and now it's stenciled lightly in pencil. It allows him to actually focus on something other than that.
"It's like a reprise of junior high," he says, swinging their joined hands back and forth between them. He's not sure yet whether terror or relief dominates when he realizes that, to Spock, he is no longer only made up of what he says aloud.
"Neither is logical," Spock points out, but ha! Jim sticks his tongue out, mentally, at Spock. Spock's not only what he says anymore either.
"I wanna hold your hand," Jim sings as they start to climb the stairs together, and Spock doesn't laugh, not out loud, but that's definitely the general gist of it.