Sweet Dreams Are Made of These [2/2]
Name: Sweet Dreams Are Made of These [2/2]
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Spock/Kirk
Rating: PG...13? (still no porn, sorry)
Summary: When Jim meets the older Spock in that horribly cold ice cave, only a small part of him is shocked. Of course, he thinks to himself. Of course I can see the future and dream of my as-of-current-arch-enemy fucking me senseless and then meet his alternate-older self on an icy hellhole where he basically left me to die. Of course. Life is never fucking simple.
Notes: Written for this prompt at the kink meme. Leave it to me to pick the most obvious title in the world. Apologies for the disproportionate length of this part as compared to the first one. Beta'd by the super special awesome igrab who totally rocks my socks.
Part 1 | Part 2
Another year or so passes and then comes The Bar Brawl (appropriately capitalized for its importance), the big bar brawl to end all bar brawls. It isn’t the worst that he’s endured, but it is quite honestly “the brawl to end all brawls” because after that he’s off to Starfleet Academy, where beat-downs are not acceptable for cadets who want to keep their record clean and eventually command their own ship. Jim has finally looked deep inside himself, said a good ol’ healthy fuck you to the ball of self-loathing at his center, and he’s decided to do something with his life. Maybe he won’t save eight-hundred people in twelve minutes like dear old dad. But if he can help people, really help them, explore new worlds and promote peace and all that shit, maybe his father wouldn’t have died in vain. Maybe he’ll be proud, wherever he is. Whatever it is, Jim can’t deny that something inside him pulls him toward the stars, just like it did his father, and still pulls his mother. Maybe it’s in the blood.
So… Bones. Bones is everything he wants in a friend. Snarky and cynical and caring and even loving, though he tries not to show the last one. They’re close, they’re best friends, they’re brothers, and Bones makes those little moments of existential crisis fade into the background. Jim is curious, at first, if this is the love he’s dreamt of, but decides against it, after a while. It’s love, true, but of a completely different kind. Not overtly romantic or remotely sexual, but love nonetheless. Jim’s doing research (ugh) on pre-twentieth century philosophy when he finds the right word: philia, love between friends. It’s eros, romantic love, that he dreamt about.
All this thinking of love makes Jim feel uncomfortably girly, even if it’s the truth. So he doesn’t tell Bones, apart from the occasional drunken I love you, mans that Bones may realize are not entirely in jest. But Jim has the feeling that they don’t have to speak about it. It’s mutual, and it’s understood, no questions asked.
Bones does ask a shitload of other questions, though. “What the hell were you thinking, Jim?”, “What is it this time, Jim?”, and even “Where is it that you’re bleeding, Jim?” become almost a staple in his friend’s vocabulary. Because while there aren’t brawls anymore there are the occasional fights, one-on-one scuffles that are usually just attributed to the alcohol and overlooked by Starfleet administration. And this is because while Bones does offer an incredible friendship that he’s been missing all these years, there’s still something huge that’s not there, either. It’s frustrating. And when he’s feeling especially frustrated he goes and sleeps with a girl/guy/other that’s ready and willing, only to learn that it’s not sexual frustration, really just mental frustration which is still there, and that the girl/guy/other’s significant other is pretty pissed about the sex he’s just had. Which definitely isn’t his fault: he doesn’t aim for taken people, after all.
But he’s promiscuous nonetheless, which makes Gaila the perfect partner, because she’s just as loose as he is. And the night before the third time he takes the Kobayashi Maru is his victory, his little reward to himself because he knows he’s going to succeed. It might not be love (contrary to what Gaila might think in the heat of the moment), but damn, the sex is good. Or, well, it would have been, if Uhura hadn’t interrupted them.
Jim’s glad that she does, because it provides him with enough evidence to confidently reveal to the bridge the trap the Enterprise is heading into, once he pieces it together. But he also sort of regrets it, because that failed night is pretty much the last time he’s able to have sex for almost two years. At times, Jim truly wishes his dreams came without all the strings of responsibility attached, because he would really have liked to know about that dry spell before it happened.
__
It’s during the hearing for his work the Kobayshi Maru (he’s not going to call it cheating: it’s too awesome for such a mundane word) when Jim first meets him. He asks for the right to face his accuser, and when the man stands, Jim feels the color drain from his face and his throat close up and his hands get sweaty.
This… this is the person from his dreams. He’s sure of it. Everything about him screams it to be so. Eyes, deep and calculating, his face passive and shielded. He makes his way down the steps toward the floor of the auditorium, and each inch the accuser comes closer to Jim makes his heart pound even more loudly. He can feel the blood rushing in his ears and he blinks rapidly to clear his vision. He can’t pass out or throw up or anything, not now. He can’t show weakness to the admirals before him or the student body behind him. But in his dreams… in his dreams the person-Spock, an admiral supplies-is supposed to love him, not-- not condemn him.
He feels helpless, and the sentiment only increases as he debates with Spock about the nature of the Kobayashi Maru. Trying to argue his case against impeccable logic, especially from this man, is threatening to turn Jim inside out. This can’t be him. This can’t be the accepting and overwhelming feeling of affection that he’s experienced in dreams past. Except if they weren’t premonitions: if they were just regular old fantasies of the night. But Jim shakes that thought immediately: he’s never had problems differentiating the two. Still, it can’t be. It can’t. It doesn’t matter that Spock is, admittedly, quite attractive, with a commanding voice and an appealing visage. It just can’t be.
Some voice at the back of Jim’s head questions if this is supposed to be what’s referred to as “love at first sight”. Jim quashes that thought immediately: you don’t fall in love with people who get you kicked out of school.
He's on the verge of losing his case-and just losing it, in general-when the unthinkable happens and they’re called to the battlefield. The graduating class is called to take up arms and rush into the expansive black for rescue or combat or something equally dire. Students rush out of the assembly half in groups and pairs and sometimes alone, but Jim’s closest friend makes his way to the floor and braces him with a pat on the shoulder.
“Who was that pointy-eared bastard?” he hears himself ask McCoy, because he’s really not too sure himself, now.
“I don’t know,” McCoy responds, “but I like him.”
And for a moment Jim gives him an incredulous stare. He can’t be serious, can he?
___
Ooooh, God. Mud fleas? Jim has no idea what Bones has injected him with, but he’s starting to rethink that whole philia thing right about now. Everything hurts and the world’s spinning and he’s going to hurl… he’s even pretty sure that he’s wet himself. He changes clothes (or, is made to change-he moves his limbs weakly while Bones does most of the work for him). And then he’s given a sedative and things fade to black.
Black. The blackness of space. He’s looking at space, and absently realizes that it’s another dream. Fuck, and it’s been almost four years since the last one. Jim is about ready to curse his luck when a large metal something swoops past his field of vision and toward a large reddish planet that appears in front of him.
Actually, the space all about him is filled with these large chunks of metal, obscuring the cosmos around him, and certain to make interstellar travel a pain in the ass for the people who live on that planet. Kessler Syndrome, his mind supplies lazily, but he pushes this fact away to peer more closely at the large metallic obstructions. He’s never dreamed this vividly before, he realizes vaguely, never seen this much detail. He can make out all the little windows on the hulking object, the tiny fires going on inside and the people being ripped from their grip on the broken ships and flung into the vacuum of space, where they boiled or froze or-
Fuck. He realizes what he’s watching. It’s not interstellar space ballet with asteroids and metal and planets floating through the black, it’s a massacre of the small armada of Starfleet cadets. And there, there it is-the Enterprise’s hull floats by him, ripped apart like aluminum foil. Devoid of life.
He struggles, kicks, screams, fights as much as he can to wake up. It’s a trap, he screams, to no one in particular because no one here is alive; the cadets already know it’s a trap because they’re dead. He has to get out of here, has to fight this because it’s going to become true any second now. But the sedative, it keeps him here, stuck in limbo while he watches cadets and crew die from space exposure and fire and lack of oxygen, contradictorily enough. He watches people he knows and likes shredded to pieces as shrapnel glides into their bodies-
Jim shoots upwards in the biobed and resists the urge to scream a variety of expletives. Instead he mutters something about a lightning storm, because he knows, he knows what’s going to happen, can feel the rush of adrenaline through his body and fear almost overpowering his senses. He has to tell the captain. It might be not be too late to save some cadets, if any. It might not be too late to save themselves.
As it turns out, it is too late. Not for them, but for the others.
___
The chair. Spock’s only sat in it for a short period of time but Jim can almost imagine his long limbs fitting comfortably against the smooth, black material of the seat. He can almost feel the warmth of the otherwise cold Vulcan in the armrests, feel the arch of a strong back against the back of the chair. Spock (despite his obvious disdain for Jim, or at least Jim’s actions), and the chair, and the Enterprise… it feels like home. More like home then his real home ever did.
“Out of the chair,” Spock interrupts his internal monologue, and Jim scowls at him. Spock might be the Captain of the Enterprise at the moment, but he certainly can’t be the person from Jim’s older dreams. He can’t. In Jim’s dreams he feels love, but from Spock he feels nothing but cold disinterest. Spock feels familiar, like Jim’s gotten to know him if solely through his nighttime “encounters” in slumberland, years long past, but from the way it looks now, the two of them definitely won’t be approaching that relationship any time soon.
Especially not when Spock Vulcan Nerve Pinches the shit out of him and then tosses him onto Delta Vega.
___
While Jim’s en route to the icy planet (entirely against his will), he dreams again. This time it’s Earth getting the ever-living hell drilled out of it, but for once this is something Jim already knows is going to happen if he doesn’t stop it. It’s just more fuel for the fire.
There are dreams that have outcomes Jim can change, if he’s fast enough. The incident with Ms. Rhymer was one attempt at that. But there are many that Jim simply can’t do anything to alter, futures that remain the same, regardless of how he tries to fix them. Like the deaths of their fellow Starfleet cadets. Jim’s learned long ago that it’s useless to beat himself up over things he can’t fix, but an overwhelming number of “ifs” still cling to him, accumulating over the years to form a heavy armor of guilt. If he’d just woken up faster… never mind that the sedative that had put him to sleep had allowed him to see what was coming for the Enterprise. If he’d recovered from the effects just a little quicker, he’d have been able to-
No. He’ll save all the “what ifs” for later. Now it’s time to focus on the present (and the future!), rather than the past.
If there’s ever been a dream that Jim Kirk has wanted to prevent from happening, it’s this one.
___
When he meets the older Spock in that horribly cold ice cave, only a small part of him is shocked. Of course, he thinks to himself. Of course I can see the future and dream of my as-of-current-arch-enemy fucking me senseless and then meet his alternate-older self on an icy hellhole where he basically left me to die. Of course. Life is never fucking simple.
And then Spock says that he has been, and will always be his friend, and Jim can’t bring himself to be angry at the guy. Not as much, at least. So he’s got no clue what this Spock’s going to do when he reaches toward Jim’s face, but he allows it because wouldn’t it be great if this universe’s Spock came to be able to touch him that casually, too? And then the meld starts, and Jim can’t think about anything but the death of billions of Vulcans, the destruction of a planet and almost all of its culture, and the simple story, a failure, that started it all.
When they break apart, a million things try to explode out of his head at once. He knows now that the other Jim Kirk couldn’t see like he could-he really is alone with the ability, and that realization is probably the most depressing thing he’s ever felt-but the thing that surprises him the most is the other Spock’s pure love for his Jim Kirk. He sees and feels so many things in the brief instance that Spock allows through the bond, and yet he yearns for more. It’s not fair, he realizes, that this Spock can so readily and openly love the other Kirk, while he and his own Spock are practically mortal enemies. It’s unfair, and he’s intensely jealous.
He wants to say all of these things at once, but it comes out weird. (Probably for the better.) “So you do feel,” he says, panting out harsh breaths in the cold air.
The other Spock simply gives him the Vulcan equivalent of a sad smile before suggesting that they get the hell out of dodge. In more Vulcan terms, of course.
Jim agrees.
___
“It’ll work.” He interrupts Spock’s ‘tell her I love her’ speech to assure his friend (?) that they’ll be fine. Because they will: even though Jim’s had that dream of the Earth being torn to shreds, he grasps on to the hope that the dream of unconditional love is still true. For once, he really wants it to happen, because if it does It’ll mean that the both of them survive, and that the crew of the Enterprise (hopefully, by proxy) will have survived, too. And the Earth, too, he guesses. The events of the future are changing as they speak.
So he assures Spock, and assures himself with another, “It’ll work!” Because it damn well has to, if anybody wants to make it through this.
___
It does work. It works and he’s commended and not only is the Enterprise saved, but it’s given to him. He, Jim Kirk, Fuck-up Extraordinaire, gets a goddamned ship! He’s giddy with glee: if he had dreamed this before the day of the commendation ceremony, he would have thought it anything but a premonition. He’d liken it to those dreams people had about flying, or fighting crime, or obtaining desires that they never would in real life. He would never have thought it to be real.
But it is real, really real. It’s “the best of all possible worlds”: his mind even throws forth this quote from ancient Terran literature to celebrate the occasion. But Jim stifles the thought almost as soon as it rises, because it’s not the best of all the worlds, all the universes they live in. The best possible world doesn’t have a decimated Vulcan, doesn’t have a destroyed Kelvin and a distant Winona Kirk and a Starfleet Academy with the smallest graduating class in the organization’s history. Jim doesn’t know which alternate universe is the best: maybe the other Jim Kirks hate the circumstances they’ve been thrown into. But it’s certainly not this one, that’s for sure.
Jim tries not dwell on what could have been, even though he’s told himself that he could do so once the whole ordeal was over with. Because he’ll drive himself made with grief if he keeps wondering about the cadets he could have saved or the planet that could have lived to see another day, year, millennia. He attends funerals and wakes and memorial services and doesn’t let himself break down, because if he did, he’d never be able to build himself back up again. And then who would captain the Enterprise, huh?
Jim doesn’t go and see his mother during shore leave for this reason. Even if she’s proud, accepts him into her arms with all the joy and pride the mother of a hero can have, he’ll still see that look in her eyes, he knows it. That look that brings back all the “what ifs”. So he sends her a message and packs up his shit (which actually isn’t very much: came to Starfleet with the shirt on his back, and he leaves with little more), and moves it into the spacious captain’s quarters on the starship Enterprise. He says goodbye to the people who matter and aren’t coming with him: Pike, a few professors he liked during his stay at the Academy, and then it’s thrusters on full, to go where no one has gone before.
Jim realizes that those brief feelings he’d had in the chair in that moment forever ago, that feeling of belonging and home: it’s true. The Enterprise is home. He’s never felt more comfortable than he does in the command chair, plotting courses and giving orders, and more often than not just messing around with his bridge crew when a mission isn’t pressing.
He learns that Ensign Chekov can hold his liquor and has somewhat of a crush on Lt. Sulu, who finds the thrill of maximum warp exhilarating and has just a tiny crush on Ensign Chekov. He sets plans into motion to bring the two together. Jim Kirk has been said to be a lot of things, but never a matchmaker; he’s never been happier to remedy that fact.
He discovers Uhura’s love of music and talent for singing, and makes sure they stop by a planet that’s known throughout its galaxy for its breathtaking choirs and heart-rending orchestras. Uhura’s eyes tear up at the beginning of a particularly dazzling overture, and Jim will never admit it, but he sort of tears up too, seeing her so happy. She might have Spock, but every day she becomes more and more like a chiding-older-sister figure to Jim, rather than a rival. He kind of likes that.
He finds out about Scotty’s dislike of solitude after Delta Vega, and endeavors to join the engineer and his companion Keenser for a drink (Bones and Chekov and sometimes everyone else shows up for this), or a game of pool, or just simply sit around and shoot the breeze. It helps that Scotty’s set up an illegal distillery entertainment venue in the depths of the ship somewhere, but Jim can honestly say that spending time with his zany chief engineer is one of the more enjoyable parts of being the captain of the Enterprise.
And there’s Bones. Good god, he didn’t think there was any more he could learn about Bones, but it seems that his best friend is a bottomless well of stories and secrets that come out when Jim isn’t fucking around or getting beaten up all the time: the things that come out when he’s just listening. It makes Jim feel a little guilty for all the one-sided wailing he’d done back at the Academy, but at the very least he knows he’ll be a better friend in years to come.
Then there’s Nurse Chapel, who has become enamored with the Terran activity know as “tap-dancing”, and Lt. Riley who, despite a great love of singing, couldn’t carry a tune in a bathtub, much less a bucket (and much to Uhura’s upset). And the myriad of other security officers and engineers and nurses and science officers and weapons masters on the Enterprise who Jim’s come to regard as a bizarre extended family.
But Spock is still somewhat of a mystery.
___
And then the dry spell. Jim becomes somewhat celibate, to his occasional horror. Occasional, because most of the time he doesn’t even notice that he’s gone without intimate physical contact (other than a fist in the face, he’s gotten a lot of those) since just before the Kobayashi Maru. There’s too much work to be done. Starfleet may have given him a flagship, but they sure as hell don’t trust him with it yet, not completely. Jim isn’t the perfect captain, he knows this. He fucks up a lot and isn’t all that great at diplomacy. He needs to show Command, needs to show his crew and himself that he can be a damn good leader when he puts his mind to it.
So that means no sleeping around with crew members (though he isn’t above the occasional “all in good fun” sexual harassment), no more getting piss-drunk at bars (sure, he can have a few drinks, but he’s gotta be able to get back to his own quarters by himself, that’s the rule now). And absolutely no pining over your first officer - goddammit, that isn’t a rule! Well, it is a rule. But that’s the fraternization rule, not an eerily specific “Captain Kirk, please stop daydreaming about getting it on with your second-in-command” rule. These are regulations Jim sets for himself, and he’s doing a pretty good job at keeping them, dammit.
(Then there’s the weird fact that he hasn’t really wanted to have sex. Well, that would be an outright lie: he has wanted to, definitely, but just with one specific person. But he shoves that thought to the back of his mind because it’s easier to ignore the desire than to act upon it.)
Still, Jim can’t help but spurt orange juice from his nose when Bones mentions the captain’s unusual period of chastity and Spock sagely comments: “A man and his hand.” The table at the officers’ lounge goes silent before bursting into fits of laughter, as Spock continues to inquire as to why this human colloquialism he’s heard for masturbation is so humourous. Everyone else is laughing because, hello, Spock using idioms is always hilarious, but Jim’s laughter is also sort of secretly hysterical because the idea of Spock implying that Jim masturbates frequently hits it a little too close to home, what with the Vulcan being the frequent subject in Jim’s fantasies whenever he jacks off.
He has a horrible moment of frozen fear, like, Vulcans are fucking touch telepaths and he has touched Spock when absolutely necessary, what if Spock knows, oh my God, but kills the thought immediately. Spock would definitely have said something along the lines of: “Captain, I have noticed that you harbor intense sexual urges toward me, and while I realize that most humans would find this infatuation ‘flattering’, I would suggest that you find another object of desire to focus your more carnal urges toward, as I am rather committed to my relationship with Lt. Uhura at the moment. The sex is fabulous, by the way, thanks for asking.”
Still, though, after the incident in the officers’ lounge Jim tries to avoid touching Spock so much as he did before (which already wasn’t a lot, to tell the truth). No more aggressive slaps on the back or pats on the shoulder. He knows how to keep his hands to himself: learned as much when he found out (the hard way) that Jennie Dooley didn’t want to go any farther than kissing.
And if Spock looks a bit more solemn, if he’s a bit more quiet… well, Jim has no idea what’s up with that. He’s gotten a lot better at reading the Vulcan after the time they’ve spent in the black, but he can’t figure out what the absence of emotion from an already emotionless façade is supposed to mean.
___
Somehow, Uhura and Spock part on amicable terms about a year and a half into their five year journey. “We followed the relationship to its logical conclusion,” is all that Spock answers when asked about the break-up. Uhura says about the same (though in more understandable terms, of course).
And it’s about two months of denial and desire, of pining and pain before Jim finally gives it all up, says fuck it to the universe and marches straight to Spock’s quarters, overrides the entrance code, and just does it, just kisses Spock senseless, until he needs to come up for air.
“How did you know?” Spock asks, breathless and panting and eyes deep with something Jim can’t identify. And, wow, does that look hot.
But how did he know? Jim simultaneously blesses and curses the universe, both for giving him Spock, but letting him angst over it for years. If there’s some supreme governing force out there, they must have a fucking field day when they’re messing with Jim Kirk’s life.
“I- I had,” oh, look at that, he’s breathless, too, “I had a dream about it, once. A few times.” He doesn’t know why he’s being so honest. Lie, Jim Kirk, lie! Spout deceit from your experienced lips! He yells these commands to himself, but they all fail to intercept the words that tumble out of his mouth. “A lot of times, actually. Back before-before I joined Starfleet.” He ignores the fact that he didn’t know, that he’s only acting on selfish desires and on a whim, and he doesn’t even know if they’ll ever reach the stage of affection which graced his dreams so many years ago.
Spock goes silent for a moment, and Jim tenses. If he gets more anger, more fear, more rejection, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.
“I see. You possess the uncanny ability to see events that will happen, far before they have occurred,” Spock says, posing the phrase as more of a statement than a question.
Jim blinks and nods, a little dumbfounded. Spock’s taking this with all the ease Scotty had when Jim and the elder Spock had showed up at the Starfleet base on Delta Vega. He’s almost sure that Spock is going to ask if he sees sandwiches in their future. “I used to,” he clarifies, ignoring that one he’d had when he was kicked off the ship. And the one he’d had while under the influence of the sedative. He’d been doing so well in the whole “not-seeing-things” department; it was only natural to ignore a random occurrence in otherwise flawless data, right? “Not anymore.”
“Do you know why?”
Why. How. Questions Jim has stopped asking a while ago. He has, however, formulated a pretty skewed and unreliable theory. “I think it might be….” He pauses to look at Spock, to see if he should continue with an obviously crazy conjecture. Dark brown eyes watch him closely, free of judgment. He continues.
“I think it might be because of my birth. I mean, I guess it was a normal pregnancy but then Nero-well, I mean, how many kids are born at pretty much the exact same time a space-time anomaly occurs? Not many, I’m guessing, so I can’t be sure.” He chuckles to himself, a bit darkly. “But it kinda makes sense, in a weird way, that a rip in the fabric of reality, some weird tear in time, would cause me to be able to see things before they happened.” He sees Spock open his mouth to say something along the lines of “that doesn’t make sense at all,” but it’s really more intuition then premonition that allows him to guess at what his first officer’s going to say. Goddammit, and things were just getting interesting. Why did they have to start talking now?
“I know it doesn’t actually make sense,” Jim mutters before Spock can form the words, “but it’s the best explanation I’ve got.”
“That is not what I was going to ask,” Spock says instead, and Jim finds himself blinking with surprise again. The usually predictable Spock, surprising him not once, but twice within five minutes? He is really slipping, isn’t he?
“Although that is an… interesting hypothesis, I was about to inquire as to why you do not receive these forewarnings any longer.”
Jim freezes up. No. He is absolutely not going to talk about this. The feelings of guilt and abandonment and more guilt that he’s harboured over the years. It won’t make sense to Spock. It’s inane and illogical, but what about his fucked-up life has ever been logical-
“I made them stop,” he blurts, and then flinches visibly at this admission. Still, there’s no going back from that whammy. “I didn’t-I couldn’t deal with them. It was so much easier to be normal, to not worry about the things that were happening or were going to happen or what could have been.” It seems so contradictory, that James Tiberius Kirk wants to be normal, but it’s the truth.
There’s silence again, and Jim feels like he’s going to implode. Either that or he wants to go crawl into a small corner somewhere and die. He feels so vulnerable, so bare, telling Spock these things. Especially when he’s just put himself on the line to show this burgeoning affection toward him.
Then Spock speaks, and Jim is surprised, shocked even. Because Spock says: “I believe I understand your situation, Jim.”
Oh.
Shock turns to confusion, and then confusion turns to annoyance, and annoyance turns to anger. “H-how the hell do you think you understand this?” Jim finds himself snapping, though he doesn’t really mean to, it just comes out loudly. “How could you possibly-- I don’t even understand this, and I live this! There’s no way you can ever-”
His first officer puts a hand on his shoulder, and he falls quiet almost instantly. Spock has initiated touch, and not out of anger, this time (thank God), but of… comfort?
“I believe I understand what you are feeling,” Spock repeats, “because it not dissimilar to my own situation.” At Jim’s apparent confusion, he elaborates. “There is something about you, some characteristic, perhaps, that distinguishes you from the others. You are no longer like them, but there is no world that you truly belong to. And so,” he takes a deep, calming breath, and Jim realizes that this is the closest he’s seen Spock come to really and truly exhibiting emotion without provocation, “you purge yourself of what makes you different. Life becomes much more simple and… efficient, if you are more easily accepted by your peers. And your progenitors,” he adds this last part as an afterthought, perhaps more for himself than for Jim, but it strikes home nonetheless.
“In the short time that I have spent as the first officer on the Enterprise,” Spock resumes after a short pause, “I have realized something. It is, perhaps… unfitting of us to deny what makes us different. You and your ability, as I have just discovered, and I with my human heritage. If we embrace what sets us apart, even in the slightest, we can only serve to gain.” Spock maintains the same, neutral expression that he always has, but his eyes are smiling. “It is only logical, after all,” he concludes.
And Jim realizes suddenly that Spock understands him more than anyone he’s known. More than his mother, obviously, more than the friends he’d made and subsequently lost at the Academy, more than the crew he’s become family with, and more than Bones. Maybe even more than Jim understands himself, because now Spock really knows what it’s like to be alone, to feel different and hate yourself for it, to feel this immense and illogical guilt over events that you couldn’t control. Because Jim inhibits his own dreams, and Spock strives to remove himself from his human heritage, they both deny themselves the things that make them who they are. Each is, in short, living as only half the person they were born to be.
Jim recognizes this all at once, and realizes that maybe, just maybe, they can try to help make each other whole again.
He leans toward his first officer, pushes himself up on the tips of his toes, and kisses Spock again. It’s slower, this time, more passionate and full of reassurances and comfort and promise, and he guides their bodies toward the inviting bed at the corner of the room. He knows they probably won’t go far tonight, but there’s time. They’ve got all the time in the world, in multiple worlds and in multiple universes. He doesn’t have to dream to know that. So he kisses Spock and lets the rest wait for all the tomorrows they’ll have in the future.
Jim falls asleep with comforting arms around him.
When he sleeps, he dreams.
This time, he doesn’t try to stop it.
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Spock/Kirk
Rating: PG...13? (still no porn, sorry)
Summary: When Jim meets the older Spock in that horribly cold ice cave, only a small part of him is shocked. Of course, he thinks to himself. Of course I can see the future and dream of my as-of-current-arch-enemy fucking me senseless and then meet his alternate-older self on an icy hellhole where he basically left me to die. Of course. Life is never fucking simple.
Notes: Written for this prompt at the kink meme. Leave it to me to pick the most obvious title in the world. Apologies for the disproportionate length of this part as compared to the first one. Beta'd by the super special awesome igrab who totally rocks my socks.
Part 1 | Part 2
Another year or so passes and then comes The Bar Brawl (appropriately capitalized for its importance), the big bar brawl to end all bar brawls. It isn’t the worst that he’s endured, but it is quite honestly “the brawl to end all brawls” because after that he’s off to Starfleet Academy, where beat-downs are not acceptable for cadets who want to keep their record clean and eventually command their own ship. Jim has finally looked deep inside himself, said a good ol’ healthy fuck you to the ball of self-loathing at his center, and he’s decided to do something with his life. Maybe he won’t save eight-hundred people in twelve minutes like dear old dad. But if he can help people, really help them, explore new worlds and promote peace and all that shit, maybe his father wouldn’t have died in vain. Maybe he’ll be proud, wherever he is. Whatever it is, Jim can’t deny that something inside him pulls him toward the stars, just like it did his father, and still pulls his mother. Maybe it’s in the blood.
So… Bones. Bones is everything he wants in a friend. Snarky and cynical and caring and even loving, though he tries not to show the last one. They’re close, they’re best friends, they’re brothers, and Bones makes those little moments of existential crisis fade into the background. Jim is curious, at first, if this is the love he’s dreamt of, but decides against it, after a while. It’s love, true, but of a completely different kind. Not overtly romantic or remotely sexual, but love nonetheless. Jim’s doing research (ugh) on pre-twentieth century philosophy when he finds the right word: philia, love between friends. It’s eros, romantic love, that he dreamt about.
All this thinking of love makes Jim feel uncomfortably girly, even if it’s the truth. So he doesn’t tell Bones, apart from the occasional drunken I love you, mans that Bones may realize are not entirely in jest. But Jim has the feeling that they don’t have to speak about it. It’s mutual, and it’s understood, no questions asked.
Bones does ask a shitload of other questions, though. “What the hell were you thinking, Jim?”, “What is it this time, Jim?”, and even “Where is it that you’re bleeding, Jim?” become almost a staple in his friend’s vocabulary. Because while there aren’t brawls anymore there are the occasional fights, one-on-one scuffles that are usually just attributed to the alcohol and overlooked by Starfleet administration. And this is because while Bones does offer an incredible friendship that he’s been missing all these years, there’s still something huge that’s not there, either. It’s frustrating. And when he’s feeling especially frustrated he goes and sleeps with a girl/guy/other that’s ready and willing, only to learn that it’s not sexual frustration, really just mental frustration which is still there, and that the girl/guy/other’s significant other is pretty pissed about the sex he’s just had. Which definitely isn’t his fault: he doesn’t aim for taken people, after all.
But he’s promiscuous nonetheless, which makes Gaila the perfect partner, because she’s just as loose as he is. And the night before the third time he takes the Kobayashi Maru is his victory, his little reward to himself because he knows he’s going to succeed. It might not be love (contrary to what Gaila might think in the heat of the moment), but damn, the sex is good. Or, well, it would have been, if Uhura hadn’t interrupted them.
Jim’s glad that she does, because it provides him with enough evidence to confidently reveal to the bridge the trap the Enterprise is heading into, once he pieces it together. But he also sort of regrets it, because that failed night is pretty much the last time he’s able to have sex for almost two years. At times, Jim truly wishes his dreams came without all the strings of responsibility attached, because he would really have liked to know about that dry spell before it happened.
__
It’s during the hearing for his work the Kobayshi Maru (he’s not going to call it cheating: it’s too awesome for such a mundane word) when Jim first meets him. He asks for the right to face his accuser, and when the man stands, Jim feels the color drain from his face and his throat close up and his hands get sweaty.
This… this is the person from his dreams. He’s sure of it. Everything about him screams it to be so. Eyes, deep and calculating, his face passive and shielded. He makes his way down the steps toward the floor of the auditorium, and each inch the accuser comes closer to Jim makes his heart pound even more loudly. He can feel the blood rushing in his ears and he blinks rapidly to clear his vision. He can’t pass out or throw up or anything, not now. He can’t show weakness to the admirals before him or the student body behind him. But in his dreams… in his dreams the person-Spock, an admiral supplies-is supposed to love him, not-- not condemn him.
He feels helpless, and the sentiment only increases as he debates with Spock about the nature of the Kobayashi Maru. Trying to argue his case against impeccable logic, especially from this man, is threatening to turn Jim inside out. This can’t be him. This can’t be the accepting and overwhelming feeling of affection that he’s experienced in dreams past. Except if they weren’t premonitions: if they were just regular old fantasies of the night. But Jim shakes that thought immediately: he’s never had problems differentiating the two. Still, it can’t be. It can’t. It doesn’t matter that Spock is, admittedly, quite attractive, with a commanding voice and an appealing visage. It just can’t be.
Some voice at the back of Jim’s head questions if this is supposed to be what’s referred to as “love at first sight”. Jim quashes that thought immediately: you don’t fall in love with people who get you kicked out of school.
He's on the verge of losing his case-and just losing it, in general-when the unthinkable happens and they’re called to the battlefield. The graduating class is called to take up arms and rush into the expansive black for rescue or combat or something equally dire. Students rush out of the assembly half in groups and pairs and sometimes alone, but Jim’s closest friend makes his way to the floor and braces him with a pat on the shoulder.
“Who was that pointy-eared bastard?” he hears himself ask McCoy, because he’s really not too sure himself, now.
“I don’t know,” McCoy responds, “but I like him.”
And for a moment Jim gives him an incredulous stare. He can’t be serious, can he?
___
Ooooh, God. Mud fleas? Jim has no idea what Bones has injected him with, but he’s starting to rethink that whole philia thing right about now. Everything hurts and the world’s spinning and he’s going to hurl… he’s even pretty sure that he’s wet himself. He changes clothes (or, is made to change-he moves his limbs weakly while Bones does most of the work for him). And then he’s given a sedative and things fade to black.
Black. The blackness of space. He’s looking at space, and absently realizes that it’s another dream. Fuck, and it’s been almost four years since the last one. Jim is about ready to curse his luck when a large metal something swoops past his field of vision and toward a large reddish planet that appears in front of him.
Actually, the space all about him is filled with these large chunks of metal, obscuring the cosmos around him, and certain to make interstellar travel a pain in the ass for the people who live on that planet. Kessler Syndrome, his mind supplies lazily, but he pushes this fact away to peer more closely at the large metallic obstructions. He’s never dreamed this vividly before, he realizes vaguely, never seen this much detail. He can make out all the little windows on the hulking object, the tiny fires going on inside and the people being ripped from their grip on the broken ships and flung into the vacuum of space, where they boiled or froze or-
Fuck. He realizes what he’s watching. It’s not interstellar space ballet with asteroids and metal and planets floating through the black, it’s a massacre of the small armada of Starfleet cadets. And there, there it is-the Enterprise’s hull floats by him, ripped apart like aluminum foil. Devoid of life.
He struggles, kicks, screams, fights as much as he can to wake up. It’s a trap, he screams, to no one in particular because no one here is alive; the cadets already know it’s a trap because they’re dead. He has to get out of here, has to fight this because it’s going to become true any second now. But the sedative, it keeps him here, stuck in limbo while he watches cadets and crew die from space exposure and fire and lack of oxygen, contradictorily enough. He watches people he knows and likes shredded to pieces as shrapnel glides into their bodies-
Jim shoots upwards in the biobed and resists the urge to scream a variety of expletives. Instead he mutters something about a lightning storm, because he knows, he knows what’s going to happen, can feel the rush of adrenaline through his body and fear almost overpowering his senses. He has to tell the captain. It might be not be too late to save some cadets, if any. It might not be too late to save themselves.
As it turns out, it is too late. Not for them, but for the others.
___
The chair. Spock’s only sat in it for a short period of time but Jim can almost imagine his long limbs fitting comfortably against the smooth, black material of the seat. He can almost feel the warmth of the otherwise cold Vulcan in the armrests, feel the arch of a strong back against the back of the chair. Spock (despite his obvious disdain for Jim, or at least Jim’s actions), and the chair, and the Enterprise… it feels like home. More like home then his real home ever did.
“Out of the chair,” Spock interrupts his internal monologue, and Jim scowls at him. Spock might be the Captain of the Enterprise at the moment, but he certainly can’t be the person from Jim’s older dreams. He can’t. In Jim’s dreams he feels love, but from Spock he feels nothing but cold disinterest. Spock feels familiar, like Jim’s gotten to know him if solely through his nighttime “encounters” in slumberland, years long past, but from the way it looks now, the two of them definitely won’t be approaching that relationship any time soon.
Especially not when Spock Vulcan Nerve Pinches the shit out of him and then tosses him onto Delta Vega.
___
While Jim’s en route to the icy planet (entirely against his will), he dreams again. This time it’s Earth getting the ever-living hell drilled out of it, but for once this is something Jim already knows is going to happen if he doesn’t stop it. It’s just more fuel for the fire.
There are dreams that have outcomes Jim can change, if he’s fast enough. The incident with Ms. Rhymer was one attempt at that. But there are many that Jim simply can’t do anything to alter, futures that remain the same, regardless of how he tries to fix them. Like the deaths of their fellow Starfleet cadets. Jim’s learned long ago that it’s useless to beat himself up over things he can’t fix, but an overwhelming number of “ifs” still cling to him, accumulating over the years to form a heavy armor of guilt. If he’d just woken up faster… never mind that the sedative that had put him to sleep had allowed him to see what was coming for the Enterprise. If he’d recovered from the effects just a little quicker, he’d have been able to-
No. He’ll save all the “what ifs” for later. Now it’s time to focus on the present (and the future!), rather than the past.
If there’s ever been a dream that Jim Kirk has wanted to prevent from happening, it’s this one.
___
When he meets the older Spock in that horribly cold ice cave, only a small part of him is shocked. Of course, he thinks to himself. Of course I can see the future and dream of my as-of-current-arch-enemy fucking me senseless and then meet his alternate-older self on an icy hellhole where he basically left me to die. Of course. Life is never fucking simple.
And then Spock says that he has been, and will always be his friend, and Jim can’t bring himself to be angry at the guy. Not as much, at least. So he’s got no clue what this Spock’s going to do when he reaches toward Jim’s face, but he allows it because wouldn’t it be great if this universe’s Spock came to be able to touch him that casually, too? And then the meld starts, and Jim can’t think about anything but the death of billions of Vulcans, the destruction of a planet and almost all of its culture, and the simple story, a failure, that started it all.
When they break apart, a million things try to explode out of his head at once. He knows now that the other Jim Kirk couldn’t see like he could-he really is alone with the ability, and that realization is probably the most depressing thing he’s ever felt-but the thing that surprises him the most is the other Spock’s pure love for his Jim Kirk. He sees and feels so many things in the brief instance that Spock allows through the bond, and yet he yearns for more. It’s not fair, he realizes, that this Spock can so readily and openly love the other Kirk, while he and his own Spock are practically mortal enemies. It’s unfair, and he’s intensely jealous.
He wants to say all of these things at once, but it comes out weird. (Probably for the better.) “So you do feel,” he says, panting out harsh breaths in the cold air.
The other Spock simply gives him the Vulcan equivalent of a sad smile before suggesting that they get the hell out of dodge. In more Vulcan terms, of course.
Jim agrees.
___
“It’ll work.” He interrupts Spock’s ‘tell her I love her’ speech to assure his friend (?) that they’ll be fine. Because they will: even though Jim’s had that dream of the Earth being torn to shreds, he grasps on to the hope that the dream of unconditional love is still true. For once, he really wants it to happen, because if it does It’ll mean that the both of them survive, and that the crew of the Enterprise (hopefully, by proxy) will have survived, too. And the Earth, too, he guesses. The events of the future are changing as they speak.
So he assures Spock, and assures himself with another, “It’ll work!” Because it damn well has to, if anybody wants to make it through this.
___
It does work. It works and he’s commended and not only is the Enterprise saved, but it’s given to him. He, Jim Kirk, Fuck-up Extraordinaire, gets a goddamned ship! He’s giddy with glee: if he had dreamed this before the day of the commendation ceremony, he would have thought it anything but a premonition. He’d liken it to those dreams people had about flying, or fighting crime, or obtaining desires that they never would in real life. He would never have thought it to be real.
But it is real, really real. It’s “the best of all possible worlds”: his mind even throws forth this quote from ancient Terran literature to celebrate the occasion. But Jim stifles the thought almost as soon as it rises, because it’s not the best of all the worlds, all the universes they live in. The best possible world doesn’t have a decimated Vulcan, doesn’t have a destroyed Kelvin and a distant Winona Kirk and a Starfleet Academy with the smallest graduating class in the organization’s history. Jim doesn’t know which alternate universe is the best: maybe the other Jim Kirks hate the circumstances they’ve been thrown into. But it’s certainly not this one, that’s for sure.
Jim tries not dwell on what could have been, even though he’s told himself that he could do so once the whole ordeal was over with. Because he’ll drive himself made with grief if he keeps wondering about the cadets he could have saved or the planet that could have lived to see another day, year, millennia. He attends funerals and wakes and memorial services and doesn’t let himself break down, because if he did, he’d never be able to build himself back up again. And then who would captain the Enterprise, huh?
Jim doesn’t go and see his mother during shore leave for this reason. Even if she’s proud, accepts him into her arms with all the joy and pride the mother of a hero can have, he’ll still see that look in her eyes, he knows it. That look that brings back all the “what ifs”. So he sends her a message and packs up his shit (which actually isn’t very much: came to Starfleet with the shirt on his back, and he leaves with little more), and moves it into the spacious captain’s quarters on the starship Enterprise. He says goodbye to the people who matter and aren’t coming with him: Pike, a few professors he liked during his stay at the Academy, and then it’s thrusters on full, to go where no one has gone before.
Jim realizes that those brief feelings he’d had in the chair in that moment forever ago, that feeling of belonging and home: it’s true. The Enterprise is home. He’s never felt more comfortable than he does in the command chair, plotting courses and giving orders, and more often than not just messing around with his bridge crew when a mission isn’t pressing.
He learns that Ensign Chekov can hold his liquor and has somewhat of a crush on Lt. Sulu, who finds the thrill of maximum warp exhilarating and has just a tiny crush on Ensign Chekov. He sets plans into motion to bring the two together. Jim Kirk has been said to be a lot of things, but never a matchmaker; he’s never been happier to remedy that fact.
He discovers Uhura’s love of music and talent for singing, and makes sure they stop by a planet that’s known throughout its galaxy for its breathtaking choirs and heart-rending orchestras. Uhura’s eyes tear up at the beginning of a particularly dazzling overture, and Jim will never admit it, but he sort of tears up too, seeing her so happy. She might have Spock, but every day she becomes more and more like a chiding-older-sister figure to Jim, rather than a rival. He kind of likes that.
He finds out about Scotty’s dislike of solitude after Delta Vega, and endeavors to join the engineer and his companion Keenser for a drink (Bones and Chekov and sometimes everyone else shows up for this), or a game of pool, or just simply sit around and shoot the breeze. It helps that Scotty’s set up an illegal distillery entertainment venue in the depths of the ship somewhere, but Jim can honestly say that spending time with his zany chief engineer is one of the more enjoyable parts of being the captain of the Enterprise.
And there’s Bones. Good god, he didn’t think there was any more he could learn about Bones, but it seems that his best friend is a bottomless well of stories and secrets that come out when Jim isn’t fucking around or getting beaten up all the time: the things that come out when he’s just listening. It makes Jim feel a little guilty for all the one-sided wailing he’d done back at the Academy, but at the very least he knows he’ll be a better friend in years to come.
Then there’s Nurse Chapel, who has become enamored with the Terran activity know as “tap-dancing”, and Lt. Riley who, despite a great love of singing, couldn’t carry a tune in a bathtub, much less a bucket (and much to Uhura’s upset). And the myriad of other security officers and engineers and nurses and science officers and weapons masters on the Enterprise who Jim’s come to regard as a bizarre extended family.
But Spock is still somewhat of a mystery.
___
And then the dry spell. Jim becomes somewhat celibate, to his occasional horror. Occasional, because most of the time he doesn’t even notice that he’s gone without intimate physical contact (other than a fist in the face, he’s gotten a lot of those) since just before the Kobayashi Maru. There’s too much work to be done. Starfleet may have given him a flagship, but they sure as hell don’t trust him with it yet, not completely. Jim isn’t the perfect captain, he knows this. He fucks up a lot and isn’t all that great at diplomacy. He needs to show Command, needs to show his crew and himself that he can be a damn good leader when he puts his mind to it.
So that means no sleeping around with crew members (though he isn’t above the occasional “all in good fun” sexual harassment), no more getting piss-drunk at bars (sure, he can have a few drinks, but he’s gotta be able to get back to his own quarters by himself, that’s the rule now). And absolutely no pining over your first officer - goddammit, that isn’t a rule! Well, it is a rule. But that’s the fraternization rule, not an eerily specific “Captain Kirk, please stop daydreaming about getting it on with your second-in-command” rule. These are regulations Jim sets for himself, and he’s doing a pretty good job at keeping them, dammit.
(Then there’s the weird fact that he hasn’t really wanted to have sex. Well, that would be an outright lie: he has wanted to, definitely, but just with one specific person. But he shoves that thought to the back of his mind because it’s easier to ignore the desire than to act upon it.)
Still, Jim can’t help but spurt orange juice from his nose when Bones mentions the captain’s unusual period of chastity and Spock sagely comments: “A man and his hand.” The table at the officers’ lounge goes silent before bursting into fits of laughter, as Spock continues to inquire as to why this human colloquialism he’s heard for masturbation is so humourous. Everyone else is laughing because, hello, Spock using idioms is always hilarious, but Jim’s laughter is also sort of secretly hysterical because the idea of Spock implying that Jim masturbates frequently hits it a little too close to home, what with the Vulcan being the frequent subject in Jim’s fantasies whenever he jacks off.
He has a horrible moment of frozen fear, like, Vulcans are fucking touch telepaths and he has touched Spock when absolutely necessary, what if Spock knows, oh my God, but kills the thought immediately. Spock would definitely have said something along the lines of: “Captain, I have noticed that you harbor intense sexual urges toward me, and while I realize that most humans would find this infatuation ‘flattering’, I would suggest that you find another object of desire to focus your more carnal urges toward, as I am rather committed to my relationship with Lt. Uhura at the moment. The sex is fabulous, by the way, thanks for asking.”
Still, though, after the incident in the officers’ lounge Jim tries to avoid touching Spock so much as he did before (which already wasn’t a lot, to tell the truth). No more aggressive slaps on the back or pats on the shoulder. He knows how to keep his hands to himself: learned as much when he found out (the hard way) that Jennie Dooley didn’t want to go any farther than kissing.
And if Spock looks a bit more solemn, if he’s a bit more quiet… well, Jim has no idea what’s up with that. He’s gotten a lot better at reading the Vulcan after the time they’ve spent in the black, but he can’t figure out what the absence of emotion from an already emotionless façade is supposed to mean.
___
Somehow, Uhura and Spock part on amicable terms about a year and a half into their five year journey. “We followed the relationship to its logical conclusion,” is all that Spock answers when asked about the break-up. Uhura says about the same (though in more understandable terms, of course).
And it’s about two months of denial and desire, of pining and pain before Jim finally gives it all up, says fuck it to the universe and marches straight to Spock’s quarters, overrides the entrance code, and just does it, just kisses Spock senseless, until he needs to come up for air.
“How did you know?” Spock asks, breathless and panting and eyes deep with something Jim can’t identify. And, wow, does that look hot.
But how did he know? Jim simultaneously blesses and curses the universe, both for giving him Spock, but letting him angst over it for years. If there’s some supreme governing force out there, they must have a fucking field day when they’re messing with Jim Kirk’s life.
“I- I had,” oh, look at that, he’s breathless, too, “I had a dream about it, once. A few times.” He doesn’t know why he’s being so honest. Lie, Jim Kirk, lie! Spout deceit from your experienced lips! He yells these commands to himself, but they all fail to intercept the words that tumble out of his mouth. “A lot of times, actually. Back before-before I joined Starfleet.” He ignores the fact that he didn’t know, that he’s only acting on selfish desires and on a whim, and he doesn’t even know if they’ll ever reach the stage of affection which graced his dreams so many years ago.
Spock goes silent for a moment, and Jim tenses. If he gets more anger, more fear, more rejection, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.
“I see. You possess the uncanny ability to see events that will happen, far before they have occurred,” Spock says, posing the phrase as more of a statement than a question.
Jim blinks and nods, a little dumbfounded. Spock’s taking this with all the ease Scotty had when Jim and the elder Spock had showed up at the Starfleet base on Delta Vega. He’s almost sure that Spock is going to ask if he sees sandwiches in their future. “I used to,” he clarifies, ignoring that one he’d had when he was kicked off the ship. And the one he’d had while under the influence of the sedative. He’d been doing so well in the whole “not-seeing-things” department; it was only natural to ignore a random occurrence in otherwise flawless data, right? “Not anymore.”
“Do you know why?”
Why. How. Questions Jim has stopped asking a while ago. He has, however, formulated a pretty skewed and unreliable theory. “I think it might be….” He pauses to look at Spock, to see if he should continue with an obviously crazy conjecture. Dark brown eyes watch him closely, free of judgment. He continues.
“I think it might be because of my birth. I mean, I guess it was a normal pregnancy but then Nero-well, I mean, how many kids are born at pretty much the exact same time a space-time anomaly occurs? Not many, I’m guessing, so I can’t be sure.” He chuckles to himself, a bit darkly. “But it kinda makes sense, in a weird way, that a rip in the fabric of reality, some weird tear in time, would cause me to be able to see things before they happened.” He sees Spock open his mouth to say something along the lines of “that doesn’t make sense at all,” but it’s really more intuition then premonition that allows him to guess at what his first officer’s going to say. Goddammit, and things were just getting interesting. Why did they have to start talking now?
“I know it doesn’t actually make sense,” Jim mutters before Spock can form the words, “but it’s the best explanation I’ve got.”
“That is not what I was going to ask,” Spock says instead, and Jim finds himself blinking with surprise again. The usually predictable Spock, surprising him not once, but twice within five minutes? He is really slipping, isn’t he?
“Although that is an… interesting hypothesis, I was about to inquire as to why you do not receive these forewarnings any longer.”
Jim freezes up. No. He is absolutely not going to talk about this. The feelings of guilt and abandonment and more guilt that he’s harboured over the years. It won’t make sense to Spock. It’s inane and illogical, but what about his fucked-up life has ever been logical-
“I made them stop,” he blurts, and then flinches visibly at this admission. Still, there’s no going back from that whammy. “I didn’t-I couldn’t deal with them. It was so much easier to be normal, to not worry about the things that were happening or were going to happen or what could have been.” It seems so contradictory, that James Tiberius Kirk wants to be normal, but it’s the truth.
There’s silence again, and Jim feels like he’s going to implode. Either that or he wants to go crawl into a small corner somewhere and die. He feels so vulnerable, so bare, telling Spock these things. Especially when he’s just put himself on the line to show this burgeoning affection toward him.
Then Spock speaks, and Jim is surprised, shocked even. Because Spock says: “I believe I understand your situation, Jim.”
Oh.
Shock turns to confusion, and then confusion turns to annoyance, and annoyance turns to anger. “H-how the hell do you think you understand this?” Jim finds himself snapping, though he doesn’t really mean to, it just comes out loudly. “How could you possibly-- I don’t even understand this, and I live this! There’s no way you can ever-”
His first officer puts a hand on his shoulder, and he falls quiet almost instantly. Spock has initiated touch, and not out of anger, this time (thank God), but of… comfort?
“I believe I understand what you are feeling,” Spock repeats, “because it not dissimilar to my own situation.” At Jim’s apparent confusion, he elaborates. “There is something about you, some characteristic, perhaps, that distinguishes you from the others. You are no longer like them, but there is no world that you truly belong to. And so,” he takes a deep, calming breath, and Jim realizes that this is the closest he’s seen Spock come to really and truly exhibiting emotion without provocation, “you purge yourself of what makes you different. Life becomes much more simple and… efficient, if you are more easily accepted by your peers. And your progenitors,” he adds this last part as an afterthought, perhaps more for himself than for Jim, but it strikes home nonetheless.
“In the short time that I have spent as the first officer on the Enterprise,” Spock resumes after a short pause, “I have realized something. It is, perhaps… unfitting of us to deny what makes us different. You and your ability, as I have just discovered, and I with my human heritage. If we embrace what sets us apart, even in the slightest, we can only serve to gain.” Spock maintains the same, neutral expression that he always has, but his eyes are smiling. “It is only logical, after all,” he concludes.
And Jim realizes suddenly that Spock understands him more than anyone he’s known. More than his mother, obviously, more than the friends he’d made and subsequently lost at the Academy, more than the crew he’s become family with, and more than Bones. Maybe even more than Jim understands himself, because now Spock really knows what it’s like to be alone, to feel different and hate yourself for it, to feel this immense and illogical guilt over events that you couldn’t control. Because Jim inhibits his own dreams, and Spock strives to remove himself from his human heritage, they both deny themselves the things that make them who they are. Each is, in short, living as only half the person they were born to be.
Jim recognizes this all at once, and realizes that maybe, just maybe, they can try to help make each other whole again.
He leans toward his first officer, pushes himself up on the tips of his toes, and kisses Spock again. It’s slower, this time, more passionate and full of reassurances and comfort and promise, and he guides their bodies toward the inviting bed at the corner of the room. He knows they probably won’t go far tonight, but there’s time. They’ve got all the time in the world, in multiple worlds and in multiple universes. He doesn’t have to dream to know that. So he kisses Spock and lets the rest wait for all the tomorrows they’ll have in the future.
Jim falls asleep with comforting arms around him.
When he sleeps, he dreams.
This time, he doesn’t try to stop it.