Dreaming Through the Noise (5/6)
Title: Dreaming Through The Noise (5/6)
Wordcount: ~4,000
Pairing/Characters: Kirk/Spock, Chapel, Pike, Bones
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own them!
Summary: Spock remembered far too well the first night he heard Jim's mental voice - close to dawn on a dreamless night and he was pulled away from his bed, to a dark, alien kitchen and a terrified, alien mind.
Note: FINALLY. Finally. This was...the hardest part by far to write, and took me way too long, and frustrated me, a LOT. I'm still not too sure about some of the choices I made, so please, if you have constructive criticism, give it to me! Or nonconstructive, really. I think my ego can take it.
'Aren't you going to eat anything?' Chapel asked, gesturing at his empty tray and glass of clear, cold water.
"No," Spock said simply, pressing his hands down on the table. He could feel his heart beat against his gut, could hear his breath too loud. It was getting worse.
"Spock?" She asked, and leaned down, concern plain on her face. "Are you - "
"I said no, Cadet Chapel." He said, standing in a rush. His chair began to fall, and he flung out a hand to catch it. She stared at him, wordless, and for a moment he stared back. I had hoped this would not happen.
***
"Because I do not want to tell you." Spock grit out, his hands clenching and unclenching on the back of the chair. It was flimsier than the one in the dining hall. Would crack so easily, under his strength. "Allow me my privacy and cease your endless questioning!"
"I deserve to know!" Chapel insisted, her eyes boring into the back of Spock's head. "How did James Kirk know you seven years ago, when you've barely been here a year? How did he get you to smile like that? And now you're all...twitchy and strange and you're not eating and..." She sighed and changed tactics, her voice becoming wheedling. "I'm just trying to learn, Spock. You know we don't get aliens on Orpheus, help me out here!"
Seven years.
Spock didn't look at her, closed his eyes, but that only made it worse. "No."
"Come on, Spock! I'm your friend, aren't I?" Chapel pressed.
Spock spun. "I am Vulcan." He hissed. "I do not have friends, and if I did, you would certainly not be counted among them, you whining, useless insect!" He advanced on her, fists at his sides clenched so hard his nails would leave marks on his palms. "The closest thing I have ever had to a friend is cut off from me so entirely that I cannot even find him, now, when I need him most. It is taking all of my considerable control not to wring your neck for your interruption of my attempts!"
Chapel's eyes were wide, and she retreated from him, open hurt and fear splashed across her face in an ugly red flush. "Yeah, you're really doing great on that control thing, Mr. Spock," she spat, almost too shaken to be angry, and fled through the door.
Spock collapsed on his bed, the tension leaving the room with Chapel. The silence was relief, for the barest of moments, and then it was just a space for T'Pring's hated voice to fill. It's happening, she whispered. Seven years since the bonding. Come home, Spock. You've suffered enough. Let it end. You saw your little friend and he does not want you. What, then, is there for you to live for? Come home, bonded, and die.
Spock curled in on himself, pressed long, cold fingers to his temples. No. He said. No. No. He is here. I will stay here.
You will die anyway, T'Pring spat, and Spock opened his eyes to find himself curled in the dream-space, with her standing over him, eyes full of rage. You will die far from home, alone and loveless.
Ah, Spock thought, and then he was standing, broken but strong. But I will take you with me.
She studied him with hard eyes, and then changed tack. You are not so horrible, she thought at him, as if giving him some great gift, stepping closer. I am sure the heat of pon farr would simulate love, enough that you would not die entirely bereft. Let me hold you, Spock. Come home to me.
Home. Spock thinks, circling her. There is an earth expression, "Home is where the heart is."
A meaningless phrase. She dismissed. For them, it would be in the upper left chest cavity. For us, the lower right. Are we snails, then, to carry our homes with us?
As usual, you fail to grasp even the simplest understanding of humanity. Spock said, narrowing his eyes. I may have been raised on Vulcan, but my heart is here.
It was then that her mask cracked, broke open, and she struck out at him, the pain nothing in this place but her very real disgust and rage hitting him with its approximate force. I don't care, I don't care! She screamed at him, and finally he could see that she, too, was affected by the madness of pon farr. Her teeth were bared and her eyes flashing. I will not seduce you to me. I will not waste my time playing your stupid, emotional games. You will come home. You will face Stonn in combat, and you will die.
Something, far away, beeped.
No, thought Spock, and returned to his body. I will not.
He opened his eyes to find that the comm was bleeping in the corner. He pushed himself up, dragged a hand across eyes that seemed strange and dry. His fingers found the appropriate switch, and he steeled himself for Chapel's anger - or worse, tears.
Instead, Pike stared out from the screen. He looked taken aback, for a moment, at Spock's appearance, but was obviously in a hurry. "Come to my office immediately, cadet Spock." He said, grim. Spock had a moment of panic - I can't explain it, forbidden, the most private shame of my people - before he continued, "We've found him."
"Yes, sir." Spock said, saluting with shaking hands. He made a cursory attempt to smooth down his uniform, then exited his room at a pace close to a run. His heart was in his throat. Found him. He wondered if they'd arrested Jim - wondered how many other times they had without knowing who he was, how important. He wondered that Pike had known, so easily, what it was he needed - not that he would take it. This was an opportunity, an opportunity only, to make him understand...
He rounded the corner and saw, through Pike's open doorway, the blue-skinned back of the Orion.
Oh. He stopped dead, all the energy draining from him. Of course.
We found him.
He stared, hard, at the floor. The backs of his eyes felt hot and strange. He closed them, scowling, and was surprised to feel his eyelashes grow wet. Were these tears? His eyes were wet, his heart beat, and it felt almost as if a bubble of sorrow and hopelessness was choking him. All symptoms of crying.
Fascinating, he thought, and then straightened, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. But distracting.
He knocked once on the doorway. "Sir?" He asked.
Pike looked up. He gave Spock a tight, quick smile, before turning his attention back to the Orion.
Heled-Mar was sitting in the chair, perched quite comfortably. He was handcuffed, but was currently staring at them, all of his attention absorbed, twisting and examining his wrists as if the handcuffs were an interlocking-ring puzzle like those given to idle Vulcan children. He was dead silent, and seemed entirely at ease.
Spock supposed, distantly, that he probably was. After all, he'd been arrested thirty-eight times.
"He won't talk to us." Pike said, and for the first time, Spock saw Chapel, leaning in the corner by the bright window. She didn't look at him. "I could just send him back to Orion..." Pike continued, leaning back and crossing his arms. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that he'd just end up free again. What I want to know...is why. What is it about him that makes them let him go?"
The Orion sat, silent, the chain of his handcuffs clack-clacking against his wrists.
He glanced up at Spock. "Which is where you come in."
Spock swallowed, and Pike frowned a little at the twitch. "I don't understand, sir."
Pike leaned forward. "You're a touch telepath. I know that from your own story, as well as your file." He gestured towards the Orion. "I'm not gonna get anything out of him by asking, I can't even tell if he speaks Common. So I need you to read his mind."
Spock looked at Heled-Mar. Heled-Mar looked back, all clear, dead eyes. "That would not be wise." Spock said, folding his hands carefully behind him. He looked back up to Pike. "Sir."
Pike frowned. "What?"
"In fact, I cannot comply with that order." Spock said tightly. "Now if that is all - " He turned, took a step towards the doorway.
Pike stood. "No, goddamn it, Spock, that is not all! What the hell is going on with you?" He came around the desk. "First you somehow terrorize poor cadet Chapel here so much that she hasn't said a word since you came in, Chapel, and now you refuse to do your job?" He stepped towards Spock, passing close to the Orion as he did so. Spock resisted the urge to shy away. "Was it the Kirk kid that did this to you? I know there were things you left out of your story, and yeah, that's your right, but not if - "
Spock had time to only blink when the Orion moved. Heled-Mar was standing, hands flashing out, and Pike grunted in pain. Heled-Mar reared back and pulled, and Pike staggered, almost fell. Chapel darted forward, but Heled-Mar spun and kicked his chair into her stomach. Spock saw several things simultaneously - one of Heled-Mar's hands was free, and he'd embedded the other end of the handcuffs, toothed-side first, into one of Pike's legs. He'd probably been aiming higher, but Pike had been moving at the time, and the sheer force involved staggered Spock's mind.
The other thing he noticed, with the piece of his brain that was nothing but fire and want, was that the Orion's shirt was torn along the shoulder-seam, exposing a smooth blue sliver of skin. On closer inspection, it was dotted with tiny, silvery-white freckles. Spock felt as if he were moving in slow motion, reaching out to trace them. Heled-Mar's skin was cool to touch, and Spock placed two fingers feather-light, just so, and squeezed.
Immediately, images rushed into his mind, and a strange, liquid-smooth language full of allusions and illusions and secret sly ways. He saw Heled-Mar in chains, again and again, in front of Orion officials, yes, and Starfleet ones, and aliens Spock didn't recognize, but most often in front of Orion women. Gorgeous, stately women the color of jealousy, the color of sorrow, their smiles wide and toothed and beautiful. They spoke to him in words Spock didn't understand, couldn't understand, because he was tearing himself away, back to a body that ached and rushed with need.
The Orion dropped, unconscious.
Spock stood over him, breathing hard, his hands shaking. Pike stared at him, uncomprehending, from where he was propped up against the desk. "Cannot." Spock managed, strangled, and then stumbled from the room. Behind him, he heard Chapel move to Pike's side, heard her soft, clipped voice telling him to sit, dammit, before he lost more blood, and she would try to get the handcuffs out with the least damage.
Spock fled made it to his rooms, barely, before breaking down and sobbing, crying out his own helplessness and frustration and all the Orion's, too, all of Heled-Mar's long-forgotten guilt and sorrow and desire and anger, all the things that had been beaten and broken out of him. The emotion was so loud in his ears that even T'Pring's cold voice was drowned out, but Spock couldn't bring himself to care.
Eventually, empty and drained, he fell into a dreamless sleep, propped up against the door of his quarters.
**
He woke up when the door chimed. His brain told him he had slept for hours, that it was nearly 02:00. His eyes were crusted with something, his second eyelids dry and slow to retract. He cleared them with one long, shaking finger, and then stood, swaying. He pressed his forehead to the cool metal of the door. "I do not wish to speak of it, Chapel." He said, weakly. "I would have thought I had made that clear enough. Go away."
"I'm staying here, Spock." It's almost a whisper, a murmur. "Why the hell are you?" The voice is not Chapel's, is not Pike's, is warm and nervous and so familiar it almost hurts.
Spock froze. "Jim?" He breathed, and stepped back from the door. "Open." He commanded, quickly. Want to see, want to hear, want want want -
The doors slid apart. Jim rubbed the back of his neck, not making eye contact with Spock. He looked as tired as Spock felt - no, he radiated it, radiated exhausted and worried and a desperate sort of sorrow that wants so hard to be hope but can't quite believe hope is even possible. "Go back to Vulcan, Spock." Jim said, still not looking at him. "I know what this is. Seven years."
Spock stared at him, hard. "Seven years, Jim, and you would have me go back?"
Jim scowled, raised his eyes quick and angry. "If it's that or die? Yes!"
They stared at each other for a long moment, and Spock folded his hands behind him, clutching his own wrist, fingers around it like shackles (and for the briefest moment he felt small, cowering, broken, in front of yet another in a chain of smiling, sharp-minded women), preventing himself from stepping forward and...
Kirk tore his eyes away, which just left Spock staring at his profile, studying the strong curve of his neck, the peeking temptation of collarbone above his t-shirt. His mouth was dry. "I die if I go back," he said finally, once he remembered that words were necessary (and that was wrong, so wrong, between them). "You...we were Broken before I learned T'Pring's plan, but she...she will challenge, and Stonn will kill me."
Jim looked at the floor. "You can defeat Stonn." He said. "You did it before."
"Seven years ago, yes, with you in my head to direct me. But I have seen Stonn, through T'Pring's eyes, Jim. He is nothing but logic and muscle, a mountain driven by his hatred for me. T'Pring has made sure of that." He shook his head. "I would not survive a confrontation with Stonn."
Jim made a low, frustrated noise, moved to sit on Spock's bed with his head in his hands. Spock forced himself to think about the obvious distress radiating off of him rather than the fact that he's Jim, sitting on his bed. "So, what, I'm supposed to just watch you die? God, Spock, what was your plan, here?"
Spock closed his eyes, stood swaying in place. "I didn't think this would happen." He said softly. "I didn't think I would ever undergo pon farr."
"Why not?" Jim asked. "We both had no idea, last I checked. What changed?"
"T'Pring." Spock said, and his hands are at this sides now, twitching and shaking, his eyes still closed. "You never met her, Jim, not how she really is. She is ice and cruelty and hatred and...I never thought that anything could make me need her. Foolish, I suppose. It is not as if biology cares what would hurt me, what would kill me."
"Biology might not, but I do." Jim said, and his voice is shaking now. "And there's...there's got to be something I can do. I can feel it, Spock. The tugging towards Vulcan, though I've never been there. I see...I see the Breaking-place, and T'Pring as she was seven years ago and I just...I've got this longing, as well as being horny as all fuck, and it's goddamn confusing."
Spock's eyes snapped open. "You can feel my pon farr?"
Jim nodded, miserable. "I guess. I mean, I don't know. How is that even possible?"
Spock shook his head, took a step closer. "It's not." He said, and then smiled, a tiny, slim bloom of hope. "But then, we've always been good at being impossible." He put out a hand, traced it across Jim's cheekbones, just his barest fingertips. He wanted to touch, god, he wanted to taste and bruise and take.
Jim looked up at him, weary and clear-eyed. "I killed a woman." He said, voice devoid of emotion. "That's what I don't want you to see. That's why I can't..." He turned his face away from Spock's fingers, and Spock wanted to laugh.
"I suppose you mean to shock me with that." He said, and knelt in front of the bed. "I suppose I am meant to assume you were drunk, and angry, and the woman was defenseless and innocent, and that it was a senseless, random crime." He leaned forward, both hands on the edge of the bed. "But remember, Jim. I know you....and now, I now how it feels to murder." He caught Jim's eyes with his own, so close, so close, tilting his head. "Show me?"
Jim closed his eyes, swallowed, and then he was leaning in, pressing his whole face to Spock's, pushing out a long slow breath and seven years of waiting against his face. They brushed noses, brushed lips, brushed foreheads, every nerve afire. The images started slow, and Spock used the pause, aligning their mouths and claiming Jim's bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth, swallowing up Jim's tiny gasp. He ran a tongue over Jim's teeth, exploring and hungry, and when Jim opened fully for him he saw fire.
It was a house, a house on fire and Jim was pulling him up, hand on his arm, hand in his hair, there were screams - children, he thought, and a woman, and then someone was shouting, a male voice that is familiar but not to Spock and Spock tangled himself in Jim, limbs caught with limbs, and pressed hot, wet kisses to his jawline. Jim was mumbling something and diving into the flames, wet blanket across his back squirming up against him, one hand tracing again and again along the shell of his ear, the other tugging insistently at his shirt but there was no time no time no time, the children breathing smoke and a woman in the doorway, already aflame and Spock distracted, distracted, licking a long stripe up Jim's neck, sucked faint bruises into his collarbone and Jim was mumbling the screaming was louder, too loud, louder, curses and prayers and his name, again and again, and please please please move, have to get them out, please, please, and Spock complied, his hands finding Jim's belt, tracing along the trail of hair there and Jim's face was twisted with pleasure and need and horror all the same and the woman isn't moving, blocking the doorway, her mouth working but it wasn't her that was screaming, it was him, and Spock wrapped long fingers around him Jim struck out, desperate.
The woman crumpled, and Jim arched, crying out in anguish and pleasure, and Spock stopped. He lifted his other hand to Jim's face, cupped his cheek. He rubbed the back of his knuckles against Jim's inner thigh, soothing, teasing, until Jim would look at him again. "You saved them, the children." He said, though the images have stopped, now. "You saved their lives, at great risk to your own, and yet you would not let me see this?"
"I went back for her." He said. "She didn't die of smoke. She didn't die of burns - she died when she hit her head, when I pushed her. I could have gotten her out, I could have...The blood - I...I killed her, Spock."
"And saved eight children, eight of her children, in the process. Jim..." He ran his thumb across Jim's lip. "...The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Jim stared at him for a long moment, and pulled him down, kissing him hard, thumbs against his cheekbones. Spock sank into him, closed his fingers around his length, ground down into his hip. They breathed harsh and quick between kisses, rocking and desperate. Lost in Jim - the feeling of him, the smell of him - Spock felt something shift, something huge and important but he didn't notice, couldn't, with two minds worth of pon farr and no more walls, at last, to leap.
When it was over, he curved himself around Jim, cradling him to his chest like something to be cherished. Jim moved, sleepy and languid, to curl into him. "Didn't think...you wanted me here. You were so...smooth and you had a career and friends - they're why I'm here, you know. Chapel hunted me down - I thought I was in trouble, for a bit, before I recognized her from that night in the bar." He smiled, a little, and Spock felt it more than saw it, the tiniest twitch of lips against his collarbone. "Bones was about ready to stick a hypo in her and run, but I calmed him down."
"Bones?" Spock asked, though there were whispers of him at the edges of his mind - dark, worried eyes, tongue lazy with alcohol but never anything but clever and roughly kind.
"He's my best friend." Jim said honestly, and Spock felt odd. "My only friend, really, except for you, but that's always been..." He lifted his head, his stubbled jaw rasping all along Spock's throat in a way that made him shiver, and looked Spock in the eyes. "...something else. Something...more."
Spock nodded, warm again, and said softly, "T'Pring tried to tell me it was only lust, what I felt for you. That...with who I am, what I am, only an alien like yourself would have me and I was going to...take advantage of the trust you had in me. She had me almost convinced that the pon farr would tear you apart."
"God." Jim's lips twisted. "What a bitch. I can't imagine seven years of her in my head."
"It was...difficult, on the worst days, for me to remember why she was wrong. But some days I remembered...many things, and she was quiet." He curled a hand around the back of Kirk's neck, traced his fingers through the hairs there. They were softer and finer, and he could fit his fingertips in the dip between muscles, trace along it to the top of his spine. He wondered whether there was any part of Jim that he would not find fascinating. "At the moment, I cannot hear her at all."
Good, said Jim, fiercely, and then, aloud, "This is not for her."
And he kissed Spock again, slow and careful, and melted all T'Pring's ice with hands and tongue and thought.
Wordcount: ~4,000
Pairing/Characters: Kirk/Spock, Chapel, Pike, Bones
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own them!
Summary: Spock remembered far too well the first night he heard Jim's mental voice - close to dawn on a dreamless night and he was pulled away from his bed, to a dark, alien kitchen and a terrified, alien mind.
Note: FINALLY. Finally. This was...the hardest part by far to write, and took me way too long, and frustrated me, a LOT. I'm still not too sure about some of the choices I made, so please, if you have constructive criticism, give it to me! Or nonconstructive, really. I think my ego can take it.
'Aren't you going to eat anything?' Chapel asked, gesturing at his empty tray and glass of clear, cold water.
"No," Spock said simply, pressing his hands down on the table. He could feel his heart beat against his gut, could hear his breath too loud. It was getting worse.
"Spock?" She asked, and leaned down, concern plain on her face. "Are you - "
"I said no, Cadet Chapel." He said, standing in a rush. His chair began to fall, and he flung out a hand to catch it. She stared at him, wordless, and for a moment he stared back. I had hoped this would not happen.
***
"Because I do not want to tell you." Spock grit out, his hands clenching and unclenching on the back of the chair. It was flimsier than the one in the dining hall. Would crack so easily, under his strength. "Allow me my privacy and cease your endless questioning!"
"I deserve to know!" Chapel insisted, her eyes boring into the back of Spock's head. "How did James Kirk know you seven years ago, when you've barely been here a year? How did he get you to smile like that? And now you're all...twitchy and strange and you're not eating and..." She sighed and changed tactics, her voice becoming wheedling. "I'm just trying to learn, Spock. You know we don't get aliens on Orpheus, help me out here!"
Seven years.
Spock didn't look at her, closed his eyes, but that only made it worse. "No."
"Come on, Spock! I'm your friend, aren't I?" Chapel pressed.
Spock spun. "I am Vulcan." He hissed. "I do not have friends, and if I did, you would certainly not be counted among them, you whining, useless insect!" He advanced on her, fists at his sides clenched so hard his nails would leave marks on his palms. "The closest thing I have ever had to a friend is cut off from me so entirely that I cannot even find him, now, when I need him most. It is taking all of my considerable control not to wring your neck for your interruption of my attempts!"
Chapel's eyes were wide, and she retreated from him, open hurt and fear splashed across her face in an ugly red flush. "Yeah, you're really doing great on that control thing, Mr. Spock," she spat, almost too shaken to be angry, and fled through the door.
Spock collapsed on his bed, the tension leaving the room with Chapel. The silence was relief, for the barest of moments, and then it was just a space for T'Pring's hated voice to fill. It's happening, she whispered. Seven years since the bonding. Come home, Spock. You've suffered enough. Let it end. You saw your little friend and he does not want you. What, then, is there for you to live for? Come home, bonded, and die.
Spock curled in on himself, pressed long, cold fingers to his temples. No. He said. No. No. He is here. I will stay here.
You will die anyway, T'Pring spat, and Spock opened his eyes to find himself curled in the dream-space, with her standing over him, eyes full of rage. You will die far from home, alone and loveless.
Ah, Spock thought, and then he was standing, broken but strong. But I will take you with me.
She studied him with hard eyes, and then changed tack. You are not so horrible, she thought at him, as if giving him some great gift, stepping closer. I am sure the heat of pon farr would simulate love, enough that you would not die entirely bereft. Let me hold you, Spock. Come home to me.
Home. Spock thinks, circling her. There is an earth expression, "Home is where the heart is."
A meaningless phrase. She dismissed. For them, it would be in the upper left chest cavity. For us, the lower right. Are we snails, then, to carry our homes with us?
As usual, you fail to grasp even the simplest understanding of humanity. Spock said, narrowing his eyes. I may have been raised on Vulcan, but my heart is here.
It was then that her mask cracked, broke open, and she struck out at him, the pain nothing in this place but her very real disgust and rage hitting him with its approximate force. I don't care, I don't care! She screamed at him, and finally he could see that she, too, was affected by the madness of pon farr. Her teeth were bared and her eyes flashing. I will not seduce you to me. I will not waste my time playing your stupid, emotional games. You will come home. You will face Stonn in combat, and you will die.
Something, far away, beeped.
No, thought Spock, and returned to his body. I will not.
He opened his eyes to find that the comm was bleeping in the corner. He pushed himself up, dragged a hand across eyes that seemed strange and dry. His fingers found the appropriate switch, and he steeled himself for Chapel's anger - or worse, tears.
Instead, Pike stared out from the screen. He looked taken aback, for a moment, at Spock's appearance, but was obviously in a hurry. "Come to my office immediately, cadet Spock." He said, grim. Spock had a moment of panic - I can't explain it, forbidden, the most private shame of my people - before he continued, "We've found him."
"Yes, sir." Spock said, saluting with shaking hands. He made a cursory attempt to smooth down his uniform, then exited his room at a pace close to a run. His heart was in his throat. Found him. He wondered if they'd arrested Jim - wondered how many other times they had without knowing who he was, how important. He wondered that Pike had known, so easily, what it was he needed - not that he would take it. This was an opportunity, an opportunity only, to make him understand...
He rounded the corner and saw, through Pike's open doorway, the blue-skinned back of the Orion.
Oh. He stopped dead, all the energy draining from him. Of course.
We found him.
He stared, hard, at the floor. The backs of his eyes felt hot and strange. He closed them, scowling, and was surprised to feel his eyelashes grow wet. Were these tears? His eyes were wet, his heart beat, and it felt almost as if a bubble of sorrow and hopelessness was choking him. All symptoms of crying.
Fascinating, he thought, and then straightened, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. But distracting.
He knocked once on the doorway. "Sir?" He asked.
Pike looked up. He gave Spock a tight, quick smile, before turning his attention back to the Orion.
Heled-Mar was sitting in the chair, perched quite comfortably. He was handcuffed, but was currently staring at them, all of his attention absorbed, twisting and examining his wrists as if the handcuffs were an interlocking-ring puzzle like those given to idle Vulcan children. He was dead silent, and seemed entirely at ease.
Spock supposed, distantly, that he probably was. After all, he'd been arrested thirty-eight times.
"He won't talk to us." Pike said, and for the first time, Spock saw Chapel, leaning in the corner by the bright window. She didn't look at him. "I could just send him back to Orion..." Pike continued, leaning back and crossing his arms. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that he'd just end up free again. What I want to know...is why. What is it about him that makes them let him go?"
The Orion sat, silent, the chain of his handcuffs clack-clacking against his wrists.
He glanced up at Spock. "Which is where you come in."
Spock swallowed, and Pike frowned a little at the twitch. "I don't understand, sir."
Pike leaned forward. "You're a touch telepath. I know that from your own story, as well as your file." He gestured towards the Orion. "I'm not gonna get anything out of him by asking, I can't even tell if he speaks Common. So I need you to read his mind."
Spock looked at Heled-Mar. Heled-Mar looked back, all clear, dead eyes. "That would not be wise." Spock said, folding his hands carefully behind him. He looked back up to Pike. "Sir."
Pike frowned. "What?"
"In fact, I cannot comply with that order." Spock said tightly. "Now if that is all - " He turned, took a step towards the doorway.
Pike stood. "No, goddamn it, Spock, that is not all! What the hell is going on with you?" He came around the desk. "First you somehow terrorize poor cadet Chapel here so much that she hasn't said a word since you came in, Chapel, and now you refuse to do your job?" He stepped towards Spock, passing close to the Orion as he did so. Spock resisted the urge to shy away. "Was it the Kirk kid that did this to you? I know there were things you left out of your story, and yeah, that's your right, but not if - "
Spock had time to only blink when the Orion moved. Heled-Mar was standing, hands flashing out, and Pike grunted in pain. Heled-Mar reared back and pulled, and Pike staggered, almost fell. Chapel darted forward, but Heled-Mar spun and kicked his chair into her stomach. Spock saw several things simultaneously - one of Heled-Mar's hands was free, and he'd embedded the other end of the handcuffs, toothed-side first, into one of Pike's legs. He'd probably been aiming higher, but Pike had been moving at the time, and the sheer force involved staggered Spock's mind.
The other thing he noticed, with the piece of his brain that was nothing but fire and want, was that the Orion's shirt was torn along the shoulder-seam, exposing a smooth blue sliver of skin. On closer inspection, it was dotted with tiny, silvery-white freckles. Spock felt as if he were moving in slow motion, reaching out to trace them. Heled-Mar's skin was cool to touch, and Spock placed two fingers feather-light, just so, and squeezed.
Immediately, images rushed into his mind, and a strange, liquid-smooth language full of allusions and illusions and secret sly ways. He saw Heled-Mar in chains, again and again, in front of Orion officials, yes, and Starfleet ones, and aliens Spock didn't recognize, but most often in front of Orion women. Gorgeous, stately women the color of jealousy, the color of sorrow, their smiles wide and toothed and beautiful. They spoke to him in words Spock didn't understand, couldn't understand, because he was tearing himself away, back to a body that ached and rushed with need.
The Orion dropped, unconscious.
Spock stood over him, breathing hard, his hands shaking. Pike stared at him, uncomprehending, from where he was propped up against the desk. "Cannot." Spock managed, strangled, and then stumbled from the room. Behind him, he heard Chapel move to Pike's side, heard her soft, clipped voice telling him to sit, dammit, before he lost more blood, and she would try to get the handcuffs out with the least damage.
Spock fled made it to his rooms, barely, before breaking down and sobbing, crying out his own helplessness and frustration and all the Orion's, too, all of Heled-Mar's long-forgotten guilt and sorrow and desire and anger, all the things that had been beaten and broken out of him. The emotion was so loud in his ears that even T'Pring's cold voice was drowned out, but Spock couldn't bring himself to care.
Eventually, empty and drained, he fell into a dreamless sleep, propped up against the door of his quarters.
**
He woke up when the door chimed. His brain told him he had slept for hours, that it was nearly 02:00. His eyes were crusted with something, his second eyelids dry and slow to retract. He cleared them with one long, shaking finger, and then stood, swaying. He pressed his forehead to the cool metal of the door. "I do not wish to speak of it, Chapel." He said, weakly. "I would have thought I had made that clear enough. Go away."
"I'm staying here, Spock." It's almost a whisper, a murmur. "Why the hell are you?" The voice is not Chapel's, is not Pike's, is warm and nervous and so familiar it almost hurts.
Spock froze. "Jim?" He breathed, and stepped back from the door. "Open." He commanded, quickly. Want to see, want to hear, want want want -
The doors slid apart. Jim rubbed the back of his neck, not making eye contact with Spock. He looked as tired as Spock felt - no, he radiated it, radiated exhausted and worried and a desperate sort of sorrow that wants so hard to be hope but can't quite believe hope is even possible. "Go back to Vulcan, Spock." Jim said, still not looking at him. "I know what this is. Seven years."
Spock stared at him, hard. "Seven years, Jim, and you would have me go back?"
Jim scowled, raised his eyes quick and angry. "If it's that or die? Yes!"
They stared at each other for a long moment, and Spock folded his hands behind him, clutching his own wrist, fingers around it like shackles (and for the briefest moment he felt small, cowering, broken, in front of yet another in a chain of smiling, sharp-minded women), preventing himself from stepping forward and...
Kirk tore his eyes away, which just left Spock staring at his profile, studying the strong curve of his neck, the peeking temptation of collarbone above his t-shirt. His mouth was dry. "I die if I go back," he said finally, once he remembered that words were necessary (and that was wrong, so wrong, between them). "You...we were Broken before I learned T'Pring's plan, but she...she will challenge, and Stonn will kill me."
Jim looked at the floor. "You can defeat Stonn." He said. "You did it before."
"Seven years ago, yes, with you in my head to direct me. But I have seen Stonn, through T'Pring's eyes, Jim. He is nothing but logic and muscle, a mountain driven by his hatred for me. T'Pring has made sure of that." He shook his head. "I would not survive a confrontation with Stonn."
Jim made a low, frustrated noise, moved to sit on Spock's bed with his head in his hands. Spock forced himself to think about the obvious distress radiating off of him rather than the fact that he's Jim, sitting on his bed. "So, what, I'm supposed to just watch you die? God, Spock, what was your plan, here?"
Spock closed his eyes, stood swaying in place. "I didn't think this would happen." He said softly. "I didn't think I would ever undergo pon farr."
"Why not?" Jim asked. "We both had no idea, last I checked. What changed?"
"T'Pring." Spock said, and his hands are at this sides now, twitching and shaking, his eyes still closed. "You never met her, Jim, not how she really is. She is ice and cruelty and hatred and...I never thought that anything could make me need her. Foolish, I suppose. It is not as if biology cares what would hurt me, what would kill me."
"Biology might not, but I do." Jim said, and his voice is shaking now. "And there's...there's got to be something I can do. I can feel it, Spock. The tugging towards Vulcan, though I've never been there. I see...I see the Breaking-place, and T'Pring as she was seven years ago and I just...I've got this longing, as well as being horny as all fuck, and it's goddamn confusing."
Spock's eyes snapped open. "You can feel my pon farr?"
Jim nodded, miserable. "I guess. I mean, I don't know. How is that even possible?"
Spock shook his head, took a step closer. "It's not." He said, and then smiled, a tiny, slim bloom of hope. "But then, we've always been good at being impossible." He put out a hand, traced it across Jim's cheekbones, just his barest fingertips. He wanted to touch, god, he wanted to taste and bruise and take.
Jim looked up at him, weary and clear-eyed. "I killed a woman." He said, voice devoid of emotion. "That's what I don't want you to see. That's why I can't..." He turned his face away from Spock's fingers, and Spock wanted to laugh.
"I suppose you mean to shock me with that." He said, and knelt in front of the bed. "I suppose I am meant to assume you were drunk, and angry, and the woman was defenseless and innocent, and that it was a senseless, random crime." He leaned forward, both hands on the edge of the bed. "But remember, Jim. I know you....and now, I now how it feels to murder." He caught Jim's eyes with his own, so close, so close, tilting his head. "Show me?"
Jim closed his eyes, swallowed, and then he was leaning in, pressing his whole face to Spock's, pushing out a long slow breath and seven years of waiting against his face. They brushed noses, brushed lips, brushed foreheads, every nerve afire. The images started slow, and Spock used the pause, aligning their mouths and claiming Jim's bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth, swallowing up Jim's tiny gasp. He ran a tongue over Jim's teeth, exploring and hungry, and when Jim opened fully for him he saw fire.
It was a house, a house on fire and Jim was pulling him up, hand on his arm, hand in his hair, there were screams - children, he thought, and a woman, and then someone was shouting, a male voice that is familiar but not to Spock and Spock tangled himself in Jim, limbs caught with limbs, and pressed hot, wet kisses to his jawline. Jim was mumbling something and diving into the flames, wet blanket across his back squirming up against him, one hand tracing again and again along the shell of his ear, the other tugging insistently at his shirt but there was no time no time no time, the children breathing smoke and a woman in the doorway, already aflame and Spock distracted, distracted, licking a long stripe up Jim's neck, sucked faint bruises into his collarbone and Jim was mumbling the screaming was louder, too loud, louder, curses and prayers and his name, again and again, and please please please move, have to get them out, please, please, and Spock complied, his hands finding Jim's belt, tracing along the trail of hair there and Jim's face was twisted with pleasure and need and horror all the same and the woman isn't moving, blocking the doorway, her mouth working but it wasn't her that was screaming, it was him, and Spock wrapped long fingers around him Jim struck out, desperate.
The woman crumpled, and Jim arched, crying out in anguish and pleasure, and Spock stopped. He lifted his other hand to Jim's face, cupped his cheek. He rubbed the back of his knuckles against Jim's inner thigh, soothing, teasing, until Jim would look at him again. "You saved them, the children." He said, though the images have stopped, now. "You saved their lives, at great risk to your own, and yet you would not let me see this?"
"I went back for her." He said. "She didn't die of smoke. She didn't die of burns - she died when she hit her head, when I pushed her. I could have gotten her out, I could have...The blood - I...I killed her, Spock."
"And saved eight children, eight of her children, in the process. Jim..." He ran his thumb across Jim's lip. "...The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Jim stared at him for a long moment, and pulled him down, kissing him hard, thumbs against his cheekbones. Spock sank into him, closed his fingers around his length, ground down into his hip. They breathed harsh and quick between kisses, rocking and desperate. Lost in Jim - the feeling of him, the smell of him - Spock felt something shift, something huge and important but he didn't notice, couldn't, with two minds worth of pon farr and no more walls, at last, to leap.
When it was over, he curved himself around Jim, cradling him to his chest like something to be cherished. Jim moved, sleepy and languid, to curl into him. "Didn't think...you wanted me here. You were so...smooth and you had a career and friends - they're why I'm here, you know. Chapel hunted me down - I thought I was in trouble, for a bit, before I recognized her from that night in the bar." He smiled, a little, and Spock felt it more than saw it, the tiniest twitch of lips against his collarbone. "Bones was about ready to stick a hypo in her and run, but I calmed him down."
"Bones?" Spock asked, though there were whispers of him at the edges of his mind - dark, worried eyes, tongue lazy with alcohol but never anything but clever and roughly kind.
"He's my best friend." Jim said honestly, and Spock felt odd. "My only friend, really, except for you, but that's always been..." He lifted his head, his stubbled jaw rasping all along Spock's throat in a way that made him shiver, and looked Spock in the eyes. "...something else. Something...more."
Spock nodded, warm again, and said softly, "T'Pring tried to tell me it was only lust, what I felt for you. That...with who I am, what I am, only an alien like yourself would have me and I was going to...take advantage of the trust you had in me. She had me almost convinced that the pon farr would tear you apart."
"God." Jim's lips twisted. "What a bitch. I can't imagine seven years of her in my head."
"It was...difficult, on the worst days, for me to remember why she was wrong. But some days I remembered...many things, and she was quiet." He curled a hand around the back of Kirk's neck, traced his fingers through the hairs there. They were softer and finer, and he could fit his fingertips in the dip between muscles, trace along it to the top of his spine. He wondered whether there was any part of Jim that he would not find fascinating. "At the moment, I cannot hear her at all."
Good, said Jim, fiercely, and then, aloud, "This is not for her."
And he kissed Spock again, slow and careful, and melted all T'Pring's ice with hands and tongue and thought.