fanfic, Star Trek XI: Itia Monstrum [Part II]
Title: Itia Monstrum
Author: little_laugh writing journal spider_anansi
Pairings: Kirk/Spock
Rating/Warnings: eventual NC-17
Summary: Kirk didn't escape from the Delta Vega ice monster completely unscathed, and all the changes are driving him a little crazy - but not nearly so crazy as his sudden possessiveness over Spock
Author's note: Um, sex, swear words, and dub-con (though there is a happy ending in the works, promise). Oh, also eventual mpreg. It's a st_xi_kink meme fill for this prompt.
Shame? What shame?
For the most part, Jim's physical went pretty much like it usually did when he was healthy; it was just a check-up. However, now that Bones knew his friend was living out a twenty-first century X-Men story (what? His daughter liked them), it was bit more of a specialized check-up.
"Squeeze," McCoy said, looking at the readout attached to the bar in Jim's hand. "It'll measure the pressure and tell me your grip strength, and I'll see if I can correlate that to your new strength."
So Jim bore down on the bar one-handed, squeezing hard enough to cause the tendons to stand out in ridges on the backs of his hands.
"And release." There were a few muted beeps and whirs from the readout in Bones' hands, before, "Dammit, Jim, I said squeeze, not crush my equipment and make me order replacements," growled its way out of his throat. Bones stared down at the now misshapen pressure bar, the imprints of Jim's fingers clear.
"Sorry Bones," Jim said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head with his other hand. "I, uh, guess I don't know my own strength."
"I'll say," the CMO muttered, making a note on his PADD. "You're stronger than Spock," he said offhandedly after a few moments, and Jim started, blinking once.
"I guess I am," the blond man said slowly. "I... hadn't really thought of that."
"Yeah, well, at least this time you'll be able to fight back when you piss the hobgoblin off."
"He only tried to strangle me once!" Jim protested.
"Once!" Bones threw up his hands in disgust. "Only tried to strangle you once, but then again, I'm not surprised seeing as you convince every other sentient - and a few non-sentient! - species to do the exact same thing!"
Jim pouted. "But now I can defend myself," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "You said so yourself."
"Dammit, Jim, don't try to feed me my own words!" McCoy snapped, even though he had said as much only moments earlier.
"That's pretty much it for the physical tests I can run," he said after a second of silence. There seemed to be a lot of those lately. "Just let me run some blood and fluid work to see if there's anything else going on."
"What about the neuro-scan?"
"Already run," McCoy said in reply to Jim's question. "Your head is fine, though the brain activity has increased some. Not to dangerous levels, or in places that would be concerning." McCoy's voice began to fall into the smooth, practiced tone he used when reciting information, which soothed Jim, as it meant there wasn't anything he needed to worry about on this topic. "Most of the lobes in your cerebrum have increased their activity - the frontal, occipital, temporal, and parietal lobes all show signs of higher usage, as well as what might as well be called slight mutations."
"Mutations?" Jim asked in an almost strangled voice, startled out of the comfort Bones' 'doctor voice' had provided.
"Minor ones; mostly just enlargement and an increase in synapse function. All harmless, pretty much, and they all look like they've reached the peak of whatever they were going to do." As he continued to speak, McCoy readied a vial to receive the blood he was about to draw. "The cerebellum also shows increased activity, all of which explains the heightened senses, the strength, and your speed. There were a couple of odd blips, which the blood work should clear up." Having taken the amount he needed, McCoy pressed a gauze swatch over the small pinprick left behind on Jim's arm from the drawing needle. He turned to insert the vial into another scanner, and set the program. "We'll know in a couple minutes after the sequencer and other programs have a go at it."
"I really do feel fine, Bones," Jim said.
"Yeah, yeah. Let me make sure, okay?" McCoy groused, watching the machinery.
The two waited in comfortable silence for the sequencer to finish readying the data, and it let them know it was finished with an almost musical trill. McCoy stepped forward to press a few buttons, bringing up the data and schematics on the view screen. He perused them silently for a few moments, before swearing quietly.
"What?" Jim asked, on alert. He'd been unconsciously keeping track of McCoy's scent, and he realized that right now, his best friend did not smell pleased. Jim filed away the information that emotion changes a person's scent away for later examination, and then refocused on the problem at hand: something in his blood work wasn't right. "What is it, Bones?"
"Your sequences have been changed," the CMO spat, staring angrily at the screen. "Your fucking DNA sequences have had bits removed, other pieces added, some of them rewritten and there's some foreign strand running around in there that looks a lot like goddamn Itia Monstrum DNA sequences!"
A sick sensation coiled in Jim's stomach, oily yet heavy, and he swallowed convulsively, trying to wet a suddenly dry mouth. "What?" he asked, licking his lips nervously. "What does that mean?"
"It means that you're still Jim Kirk, but you're also... evolved or improved or whatever word you want to use. Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor not a geneticist or a xeno-zoologist!" Bones ran a hand through his hair, still staring at the screen in frustration.
"Wait a minute," Jim said suddenly, brow furrowed in thought. "Itia Monstrum is... Ice Monster."
"Yeah, so?" Bones turned to stare at Jim, still grumpy and frustrated and upset and, though he'd never verbally admit it, worried.
"Delta Vega," Jim breathed, blue eyes opening wide, so very wide. "The ice monster on Delta Vega that almost ate me!"
"The what that almost did what to you?" McCoy demanded, not having heard this before.
"When Spock marooned me on Delta Vega! There was an ice monster, huge red thing. I couldn't shake it, and it almost ate me. Old Spock chased it off." The two of them stared at each other, and then Bones yanked out his PADD and began to type furiously upon it.
"What are you doing?" Jim asked.
"I'm pullin' up all the statistics and traits of Itia Monstrum; what else?" Bones growled. "All this crap has been happening since Delta Vega and now you tell me one of the bloody things almost fucking ate you. I ain't really sure what I'm lookin' for, but maybe there's a connection."
It was the work of moments to pull up all the specs of Itia Monstrum, and lo and behold, there were all of Jim's, uh, 'improvements.'
"Well, that explains why I couldn't get away from the thing," Jim mused. "Other than the whole part about it being a gajillion times bigger than me. And the two hundred eyes."
"It would explain the strength and speed, I guess," McCoy said reluctantly, still staring (almost fascinated, in a vaguely horrified way) at the picture of the creature in question. "You say it tried to eat you?"
"And not in the fun way."
"Shut up, Jim."
"You asked!" Jim burst into laughter as Bones glared at him for several seconds before turning back to the DNA sequencer. The CMO looked back and forth between the sequencer and his PADD for several moments, moments that Jim used to get himself back under control (and before his laughter got hysterical; in this situation, who could blame him?).
"Yeah, well, I hope you like the new you, then," Bones said, shoving his PADD into a pocket.
"You mean...?"
"Yeah. You're stuck, kid. Too much of your DNA has been altered, and in a way I'm not familiar with. And with the added strand of Itia Monstrum..." McCoy shook his head. "Can't engineer it backwards, Jim. It might kill you, even if someone could figure out how."
"So you're saying that this is permanent."
"Yeah."
"Okay," Jim said, slowly, "okay. I can deal with this. I mean, maybe I'll stop being the universe's bitch all the time now. 'Cuz I can fight back now. Right?"
"You'll need training, and you're going to have to watch yourself carefully, Jim. Obviously you've been able to monitor and modify your reactions so far, but now you need to make those into habits so you don't hurt anyone else," Bones cautioned. "With your speed and strength, if you use them wrong just once, or accidentally..." he let the end of his sentence trail off in warning, and Jim nodded.
"I get it," Jim said quietly. And he did - he could injure his own crew now, possibly even the ship if he let himself get out of control. And Jim had no desire to do that; he wanted to be a good captain, despite his lackadaisical and 'joie de vivre' attitude.
" - so Abendroth has already let the crew know about your super speed, we might as well tell them about the strength, and - " Bones continued, only to be interrupted by Jim.
"Can we... can we keep the senses thing between us, though?" he asked, blue eyes serious and ever so slightly tinted with trepidation.
"'Course," Bones agreed gruffly, pulling out his PADD once more to make a note on it. "I'll put it in your confidential file, but I won't tell."
Jim grinned in relief. "Thanks, Bones," he said, hopping off the biobed to clap his friend on the shoulder. "So I'm free to go."
"Get out of here," McCoy said with a dismissive wave, "and try to stay out of anymore trouble."
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
It was another month before Jim's senses finally settled, and he became used to their extreme sensitivity. Over the course of this month, and the one following, he put them to the test with McCoy's help. He also put his speed and strength to the test, and to good use by helping out around the ship - and entertaining some of the shipboard children. It became a rather common sight to see the Captain staggering about the lower family rec decks, bedecked with giggling, chattering children.
He also came in handy during away missions now, which weren’t quite so dangerous anymore. At least, not on the mind-boggling status they used to be. Oh, the Captain was still something of a trouble magnet, but now that Jim Kirk could essentially take care of himself and those around him, the missions just… didn’t seem all that dangerous anymore (everyone still trained as if they were, though, just in case).
All these changes didn’t bother Jim, though. No, it was something else driving Jim slowly crazy - Spock. Or, more specifically, his senses were driving him crazy by fixating on the Vulcan First Officer with a mindless determination.
At first, it hadn’t been all that noticeable - just a slightly heightened awareness of the Vulcan, but only to the point where Jim simply felt pleased to see his First Officer. And really, why shouldn’t he? They’d gotten off to a rocky start, true (and if that wasn’t an understatement then Jim didn’t know what else to call it), but over the months since, Jim felt that he and Spock had at least come to a sort of truce; almost a friendship. A working friendship, but friendship nonetheless. So feeling pleased at Spock’s presence and attention was a perfectly normal thing.
Until that away mission. The one Kirk was, hopefully, never going to think of again. Suffice to say, it brought to light that Kirk wasn’t just pleased with the softening affections of his stoic First - he was also rather, um, possessive of them, as well.
But only a little bit. Really. And it was perfectly normal, after all, since he was Spock’s friend, dammit. Of course he would feel upset when Spock wasn’t paying attention to him.
But then it started getting worse.
When Jim had told McCoy about the scents of the Bridge crew, he had meant as if everyone was wearing a light, almost imperceptible but essential perfume. Nice perfumes, too. He hadn’t told McCoy about his reaction to Spock’s scent, light and faint as it had been (he still had dreams, dreams of heat and fire and sand, so much burning, burning sand, swirling around towers of steel and glinting under an alien sun and wrapping him up in its embrace), but was almost about ready to go to the CMO now. Things were starting to get out of control.
Jim couldn’t hardly be on the bridge before the thrumming, rapid beat of Spock’s heart filled his ears with a low hum, vibrating straight into his very psyche. He couldn’t be anywhere in the Vulcan’s presence without that distracting scent of sand and steel creeping into his nose and winding itself around all his senses. Constantly, Jim had the urge to brush his fingertips along Spock’s cheekbones, or through his hair, or to simply touch the Vulcan, even on the hand or the arm (Jim did give in to those urges; he already touched those areas, so why not just a little more?).
What was unnerving, however, and finally drove the Captain to his best friend’s office, was the urge to maim anyone who came into Spock’s presence. When Chekov - Chekov, for Christ’s sake - asked a simple, innocent question that required the Vulcan to look at the navigator’s console, Jim curled his hands around the armrests of his chair until the knuckles turned white. Chekov. And Jim wanted to leap out his chair and yank Spock away from the Russian whiz kid, all while shouting, Hands off!
When an ensign from the Science labs came to the bridge with a message for Spock, she accidentally brushed his shoulder with her hand, and Jim had to force a coughing fit to keeping from snarling. And that wasn’t the last time, either.
It was a long series of events rather similar to those that landed Jim in McCoy’s office, a drink of something (all Jim cared about was its alcohol content, and there was plenty of that) cradled before him.
“Fuck, Bones, I can’t get him out of my head and he doesn’t even have the courtesy to fucking mind-meld with me to get himself there!” Jim burst out, rather drunk. That was probably the easiest way for him to speak about this, as it certainly made his tongue much, much looser.
McCoy remained silent, nursing his own drink and waiting for Jim to spill what was bothering him.
“He’s always there, and I can’t go into a fucking room without wanting to bash him over the head and drag him off into a cave. Cave. Fuck! It was the cave on Delta Vega where that monster almost ate me until Old Spock drove it off.” Jim hit his head lightly against the desk of his best friend, a groan issuing from his mouth. “Old Spock. Spock. Fuck.”
“You’re telling me you want to jump the hobgoblin?” McCoy asked, almost incredulous but not quite. He, like many of the crew of the Enterprise, had seen the writing on the wall long ago. He had some reservations about it all (after all, how could he forget that stallion conversation?), but it seemed like Jim was finally clueing in. If in a slightly different way than McCoy had expected.
Jim snorted.
“Not just ‘jump’, Bones,” and the CMO knew that the only reason Jim was being quite this candid was because of the alcohol, “I want to own him. I want to put a collar of bruises on his neck so everyone knows he’s mine. Hell, I want my name tattooed on him, sometimes. So that he knows he’s mine, too. Dammit, Bones!” And here Jim stood up angrily, knocking over the chair he’d been sitting in, and began to pace.
McCoy stared at his friend, his drink almost forgotten. The sheer ragged intensity in Jim’s voice - from possessiveness to desperation to even panic - shocked him.
“I’m on a hair trigger in general, Bones. I mean, not just about Spock, either. I get possessive over the whole damn crew, but Jesus, the way I get over my First Officer… my First Officer! There’s gotta be something in the regs against this, isn’t there?” Jim kept pacing, from one end of the room to the other, back and forth and back and forth like some wild, caged animal. “My First Officer is driving me mad!”
That last was said on a shout, and Jim slumped back into his seat, head dropping into his hands.
“I need him, Bones,” Jim said after several long seconds of silence. “It’s more than just want - I could deal with that!” Jim sounded almost hysterical at this point, and McCoy could see how that would be possible - plus, Jim had had a lot of alcohol. “But this - I don’t know what to do with this! I can’t deal with this; he doesn’t hardly like me, we’re just starting to be friends and I’m getting insanely possessive and dammit, Bones, what the fuck am I going to do?!”
“You’re pretty much shit out of luck, ain’t you, kid?” McCoy said, not answering Jim’s question. He took a long swallow of his own drink, and set the glass down on the desk with a soft ‘tunk.’ Jim tossed him a flat glare.
“Seriously, Bones!”
Jim, McCoy mused, was surprisingly coherent for being so very drunk (and yes, McCoy knew almost exactly how drunk his friend was; after all, he’d been pouring the drinks). The kid was also being embarassingly truthful. Usually he was just an incredibly happy drunk, but this must have been bothering him something fierce to keep steady even while under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol.
So really, McCoy was actually starting to feel sympathetic for the poor kid.
“Look,” he said finally, “so you’ve got a raging case of the hots for the hobgoblin - which I still think is weird, but then, you’ve always been a little crazy - so why not just do something about it?”
“Bones,” Jim said very carefully, “it’s Spock. You just don’t…” And here Jim made some odd, flailing hand motion, “You just don’t, okay?”
“Okay,” McCoy said simply, not bothering to argue. “You’re the one with all the unresolved sexual tension driving you mad. I’ll just sit back and watch the show.”
“You suck.”
“Not you I don’t,” McCoy quipped, calmly taking a sip of his drink.
“Bones!”
Author: little_laugh writing journal spider_anansi
Pairings: Kirk/Spock
Rating/Warnings: eventual NC-17
Summary: Kirk didn't escape from the Delta Vega ice monster completely unscathed, and all the changes are driving him a little crazy - but not nearly so crazy as his sudden possessiveness over Spock
Author's note: Um, sex, swear words, and dub-con (though there is a happy ending in the works, promise). Oh, also eventual mpreg. It's a st_xi_kink meme fill for this prompt.
Shame? What shame?
For the most part, Jim's physical went pretty much like it usually did when he was healthy; it was just a check-up. However, now that Bones knew his friend was living out a twenty-first century X-Men story (what? His daughter liked them), it was bit more of a specialized check-up.
"Squeeze," McCoy said, looking at the readout attached to the bar in Jim's hand. "It'll measure the pressure and tell me your grip strength, and I'll see if I can correlate that to your new strength."
So Jim bore down on the bar one-handed, squeezing hard enough to cause the tendons to stand out in ridges on the backs of his hands.
"And release." There were a few muted beeps and whirs from the readout in Bones' hands, before, "Dammit, Jim, I said squeeze, not crush my equipment and make me order replacements," growled its way out of his throat. Bones stared down at the now misshapen pressure bar, the imprints of Jim's fingers clear.
"Sorry Bones," Jim said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head with his other hand. "I, uh, guess I don't know my own strength."
"I'll say," the CMO muttered, making a note on his PADD. "You're stronger than Spock," he said offhandedly after a few moments, and Jim started, blinking once.
"I guess I am," the blond man said slowly. "I... hadn't really thought of that."
"Yeah, well, at least this time you'll be able to fight back when you piss the hobgoblin off."
"He only tried to strangle me once!" Jim protested.
"Once!" Bones threw up his hands in disgust. "Only tried to strangle you once, but then again, I'm not surprised seeing as you convince every other sentient - and a few non-sentient! - species to do the exact same thing!"
Jim pouted. "But now I can defend myself," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "You said so yourself."
"Dammit, Jim, don't try to feed me my own words!" McCoy snapped, even though he had said as much only moments earlier.
"That's pretty much it for the physical tests I can run," he said after a second of silence. There seemed to be a lot of those lately. "Just let me run some blood and fluid work to see if there's anything else going on."
"What about the neuro-scan?"
"Already run," McCoy said in reply to Jim's question. "Your head is fine, though the brain activity has increased some. Not to dangerous levels, or in places that would be concerning." McCoy's voice began to fall into the smooth, practiced tone he used when reciting information, which soothed Jim, as it meant there wasn't anything he needed to worry about on this topic. "Most of the lobes in your cerebrum have increased their activity - the frontal, occipital, temporal, and parietal lobes all show signs of higher usage, as well as what might as well be called slight mutations."
"Mutations?" Jim asked in an almost strangled voice, startled out of the comfort Bones' 'doctor voice' had provided.
"Minor ones; mostly just enlargement and an increase in synapse function. All harmless, pretty much, and they all look like they've reached the peak of whatever they were going to do." As he continued to speak, McCoy readied a vial to receive the blood he was about to draw. "The cerebellum also shows increased activity, all of which explains the heightened senses, the strength, and your speed. There were a couple of odd blips, which the blood work should clear up." Having taken the amount he needed, McCoy pressed a gauze swatch over the small pinprick left behind on Jim's arm from the drawing needle. He turned to insert the vial into another scanner, and set the program. "We'll know in a couple minutes after the sequencer and other programs have a go at it."
"I really do feel fine, Bones," Jim said.
"Yeah, yeah. Let me make sure, okay?" McCoy groused, watching the machinery.
The two waited in comfortable silence for the sequencer to finish readying the data, and it let them know it was finished with an almost musical trill. McCoy stepped forward to press a few buttons, bringing up the data and schematics on the view screen. He perused them silently for a few moments, before swearing quietly.
"What?" Jim asked, on alert. He'd been unconsciously keeping track of McCoy's scent, and he realized that right now, his best friend did not smell pleased. Jim filed away the information that emotion changes a person's scent away for later examination, and then refocused on the problem at hand: something in his blood work wasn't right. "What is it, Bones?"
"Your sequences have been changed," the CMO spat, staring angrily at the screen. "Your fucking DNA sequences have had bits removed, other pieces added, some of them rewritten and there's some foreign strand running around in there that looks a lot like goddamn Itia Monstrum DNA sequences!"
A sick sensation coiled in Jim's stomach, oily yet heavy, and he swallowed convulsively, trying to wet a suddenly dry mouth. "What?" he asked, licking his lips nervously. "What does that mean?"
"It means that you're still Jim Kirk, but you're also... evolved or improved or whatever word you want to use. Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor not a geneticist or a xeno-zoologist!" Bones ran a hand through his hair, still staring at the screen in frustration.
"Wait a minute," Jim said suddenly, brow furrowed in thought. "Itia Monstrum is... Ice Monster."
"Yeah, so?" Bones turned to stare at Jim, still grumpy and frustrated and upset and, though he'd never verbally admit it, worried.
"Delta Vega," Jim breathed, blue eyes opening wide, so very wide. "The ice monster on Delta Vega that almost ate me!"
"The what that almost did what to you?" McCoy demanded, not having heard this before.
"When Spock marooned me on Delta Vega! There was an ice monster, huge red thing. I couldn't shake it, and it almost ate me. Old Spock chased it off." The two of them stared at each other, and then Bones yanked out his PADD and began to type furiously upon it.
"What are you doing?" Jim asked.
"I'm pullin' up all the statistics and traits of Itia Monstrum; what else?" Bones growled. "All this crap has been happening since Delta Vega and now you tell me one of the bloody things almost fucking ate you. I ain't really sure what I'm lookin' for, but maybe there's a connection."
It was the work of moments to pull up all the specs of Itia Monstrum, and lo and behold, there were all of Jim's, uh, 'improvements.'
"Well, that explains why I couldn't get away from the thing," Jim mused. "Other than the whole part about it being a gajillion times bigger than me. And the two hundred eyes."
"It would explain the strength and speed, I guess," McCoy said reluctantly, still staring (almost fascinated, in a vaguely horrified way) at the picture of the creature in question. "You say it tried to eat you?"
"And not in the fun way."
"Shut up, Jim."
"You asked!" Jim burst into laughter as Bones glared at him for several seconds before turning back to the DNA sequencer. The CMO looked back and forth between the sequencer and his PADD for several moments, moments that Jim used to get himself back under control (and before his laughter got hysterical; in this situation, who could blame him?).
"Yeah, well, I hope you like the new you, then," Bones said, shoving his PADD into a pocket.
"You mean...?"
"Yeah. You're stuck, kid. Too much of your DNA has been altered, and in a way I'm not familiar with. And with the added strand of Itia Monstrum..." McCoy shook his head. "Can't engineer it backwards, Jim. It might kill you, even if someone could figure out how."
"So you're saying that this is permanent."
"Yeah."
"Okay," Jim said, slowly, "okay. I can deal with this. I mean, maybe I'll stop being the universe's bitch all the time now. 'Cuz I can fight back now. Right?"
"You'll need training, and you're going to have to watch yourself carefully, Jim. Obviously you've been able to monitor and modify your reactions so far, but now you need to make those into habits so you don't hurt anyone else," Bones cautioned. "With your speed and strength, if you use them wrong just once, or accidentally..." he let the end of his sentence trail off in warning, and Jim nodded.
"I get it," Jim said quietly. And he did - he could injure his own crew now, possibly even the ship if he let himself get out of control. And Jim had no desire to do that; he wanted to be a good captain, despite his lackadaisical and 'joie de vivre' attitude.
" - so Abendroth has already let the crew know about your super speed, we might as well tell them about the strength, and - " Bones continued, only to be interrupted by Jim.
"Can we... can we keep the senses thing between us, though?" he asked, blue eyes serious and ever so slightly tinted with trepidation.
"'Course," Bones agreed gruffly, pulling out his PADD once more to make a note on it. "I'll put it in your confidential file, but I won't tell."
Jim grinned in relief. "Thanks, Bones," he said, hopping off the biobed to clap his friend on the shoulder. "So I'm free to go."
"Get out of here," McCoy said with a dismissive wave, "and try to stay out of anymore trouble."
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
It was another month before Jim's senses finally settled, and he became used to their extreme sensitivity. Over the course of this month, and the one following, he put them to the test with McCoy's help. He also put his speed and strength to the test, and to good use by helping out around the ship - and entertaining some of the shipboard children. It became a rather common sight to see the Captain staggering about the lower family rec decks, bedecked with giggling, chattering children.
He also came in handy during away missions now, which weren’t quite so dangerous anymore. At least, not on the mind-boggling status they used to be. Oh, the Captain was still something of a trouble magnet, but now that Jim Kirk could essentially take care of himself and those around him, the missions just… didn’t seem all that dangerous anymore (everyone still trained as if they were, though, just in case).
All these changes didn’t bother Jim, though. No, it was something else driving Jim slowly crazy - Spock. Or, more specifically, his senses were driving him crazy by fixating on the Vulcan First Officer with a mindless determination.
At first, it hadn’t been all that noticeable - just a slightly heightened awareness of the Vulcan, but only to the point where Jim simply felt pleased to see his First Officer. And really, why shouldn’t he? They’d gotten off to a rocky start, true (and if that wasn’t an understatement then Jim didn’t know what else to call it), but over the months since, Jim felt that he and Spock had at least come to a sort of truce; almost a friendship. A working friendship, but friendship nonetheless. So feeling pleased at Spock’s presence and attention was a perfectly normal thing.
Until that away mission. The one Kirk was, hopefully, never going to think of again. Suffice to say, it brought to light that Kirk wasn’t just pleased with the softening affections of his stoic First - he was also rather, um, possessive of them, as well.
But only a little bit. Really. And it was perfectly normal, after all, since he was Spock’s friend, dammit. Of course he would feel upset when Spock wasn’t paying attention to him.
But then it started getting worse.
When Jim had told McCoy about the scents of the Bridge crew, he had meant as if everyone was wearing a light, almost imperceptible but essential perfume. Nice perfumes, too. He hadn’t told McCoy about his reaction to Spock’s scent, light and faint as it had been (he still had dreams, dreams of heat and fire and sand, so much burning, burning sand, swirling around towers of steel and glinting under an alien sun and wrapping him up in its embrace), but was almost about ready to go to the CMO now. Things were starting to get out of control.
Jim couldn’t hardly be on the bridge before the thrumming, rapid beat of Spock’s heart filled his ears with a low hum, vibrating straight into his very psyche. He couldn’t be anywhere in the Vulcan’s presence without that distracting scent of sand and steel creeping into his nose and winding itself around all his senses. Constantly, Jim had the urge to brush his fingertips along Spock’s cheekbones, or through his hair, or to simply touch the Vulcan, even on the hand or the arm (Jim did give in to those urges; he already touched those areas, so why not just a little more?).
What was unnerving, however, and finally drove the Captain to his best friend’s office, was the urge to maim anyone who came into Spock’s presence. When Chekov - Chekov, for Christ’s sake - asked a simple, innocent question that required the Vulcan to look at the navigator’s console, Jim curled his hands around the armrests of his chair until the knuckles turned white. Chekov. And Jim wanted to leap out his chair and yank Spock away from the Russian whiz kid, all while shouting, Hands off!
When an ensign from the Science labs came to the bridge with a message for Spock, she accidentally brushed his shoulder with her hand, and Jim had to force a coughing fit to keeping from snarling. And that wasn’t the last time, either.
It was a long series of events rather similar to those that landed Jim in McCoy’s office, a drink of something (all Jim cared about was its alcohol content, and there was plenty of that) cradled before him.
“Fuck, Bones, I can’t get him out of my head and he doesn’t even have the courtesy to fucking mind-meld with me to get himself there!” Jim burst out, rather drunk. That was probably the easiest way for him to speak about this, as it certainly made his tongue much, much looser.
McCoy remained silent, nursing his own drink and waiting for Jim to spill what was bothering him.
“He’s always there, and I can’t go into a fucking room without wanting to bash him over the head and drag him off into a cave. Cave. Fuck! It was the cave on Delta Vega where that monster almost ate me until Old Spock drove it off.” Jim hit his head lightly against the desk of his best friend, a groan issuing from his mouth. “Old Spock. Spock. Fuck.”
“You’re telling me you want to jump the hobgoblin?” McCoy asked, almost incredulous but not quite. He, like many of the crew of the Enterprise, had seen the writing on the wall long ago. He had some reservations about it all (after all, how could he forget that stallion conversation?), but it seemed like Jim was finally clueing in. If in a slightly different way than McCoy had expected.
Jim snorted.
“Not just ‘jump’, Bones,” and the CMO knew that the only reason Jim was being quite this candid was because of the alcohol, “I want to own him. I want to put a collar of bruises on his neck so everyone knows he’s mine. Hell, I want my name tattooed on him, sometimes. So that he knows he’s mine, too. Dammit, Bones!” And here Jim stood up angrily, knocking over the chair he’d been sitting in, and began to pace.
McCoy stared at his friend, his drink almost forgotten. The sheer ragged intensity in Jim’s voice - from possessiveness to desperation to even panic - shocked him.
“I’m on a hair trigger in general, Bones. I mean, not just about Spock, either. I get possessive over the whole damn crew, but Jesus, the way I get over my First Officer… my First Officer! There’s gotta be something in the regs against this, isn’t there?” Jim kept pacing, from one end of the room to the other, back and forth and back and forth like some wild, caged animal. “My First Officer is driving me mad!”
That last was said on a shout, and Jim slumped back into his seat, head dropping into his hands.
“I need him, Bones,” Jim said after several long seconds of silence. “It’s more than just want - I could deal with that!” Jim sounded almost hysterical at this point, and McCoy could see how that would be possible - plus, Jim had had a lot of alcohol. “But this - I don’t know what to do with this! I can’t deal with this; he doesn’t hardly like me, we’re just starting to be friends and I’m getting insanely possessive and dammit, Bones, what the fuck am I going to do?!”
“You’re pretty much shit out of luck, ain’t you, kid?” McCoy said, not answering Jim’s question. He took a long swallow of his own drink, and set the glass down on the desk with a soft ‘tunk.’ Jim tossed him a flat glare.
“Seriously, Bones!”
Jim, McCoy mused, was surprisingly coherent for being so very drunk (and yes, McCoy knew almost exactly how drunk his friend was; after all, he’d been pouring the drinks). The kid was also being embarassingly truthful. Usually he was just an incredibly happy drunk, but this must have been bothering him something fierce to keep steady even while under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol.
So really, McCoy was actually starting to feel sympathetic for the poor kid.
“Look,” he said finally, “so you’ve got a raging case of the hots for the hobgoblin - which I still think is weird, but then, you’ve always been a little crazy - so why not just do something about it?”
“Bones,” Jim said very carefully, “it’s Spock. You just don’t…” And here Jim made some odd, flailing hand motion, “You just don’t, okay?”
“Okay,” McCoy said simply, not bothering to argue. “You’re the one with all the unresolved sexual tension driving you mad. I’ll just sit back and watch the show.”
“You suck.”
“Not you I don’t,” McCoy quipped, calmly taking a sip of his drink.
“Bones!”