On Restless Pinions, Part II
The atmospheric controls of the Enterprise were set at twenty-two degrees Celsius - human-normal - and this was generally considered to be the optimal temperature at which humans should work.
Spock needed thermals.
His uniform came with black undershirts in thermal fabric and thicker, moisture-wicking socks, and that was standard procedure for all Starfleet officers from warmer planets, or even for humans from warmer climates on Earth or Earth colonies. 1.6% of the crew required such garments, in fact.
And yet Spock awoke freezing the day after he parted from T’Pring. He checked the temperature in his quarters, which read as Vulcan-normal - thirty-two degrees - and then he checked the corridor, which also proved normal. Then he commed down to engineering to ask if anything seemed amiss in atmospheric control, only to be told all was well. Even though it was quite early in ship’s day, Spock commed Lieutenant Ix’laak from the Marvis system to ask if xe too felt a chill this morning, but xe informed him that xe was experiencing no difficulties outside of the usual ones with xir tail. Spock promised to have the quartermaster design a better uniform before he cut the transmission.
A shiver wracked him and he called up the temperature to forty degrees. After his sonic shower, he donned two of his thermal undershirts and partook of two cups of steaming tea, as hot as he could get it.
His day was almost tolerable.
After beta shift the next day, his temperature seemed to have righted itself, but he could not achieve an acceptable meditative state, and he perceived a slight nausea, even momentary sweating, which kept him from the necessary focus.
Humans were susceptible to various maladies that had similar symptoms; the most common culprits were sure to be influenza or the common cold. He had never succumbed before, but he knew that in the limited and recycled atmosphere of a starship, a comparable virus could be expected to infect a significant percentage of the crew. It was not completely out of the question that he should contract a human illness, but the more he contemplated the possibility, the more he believed it illogical. After all, the crew was mostly intact - minor injuries and scant illnesses, none resembling his, represented those currently in treatment by the medical staff.
Spock tried to go deeper into meditation, but his thinking was scattered, his breath out of line with the pace of his thoughts. And then - there, in the recesses of his mind, he became aware of what was left of his bond to T’Pring. It was merely a ragged stump, a limb torn off.
Spock’s eyes snapped open. There would be no meditation until his bonding cortex healed, but he estimated that it should take no longer than three days, less once he could achieve a healing trance. Vulcans recovered from broken bonds naturally; bonds broken by death or by design, like his, were a normal occurrence, if not a pleasant one.
He would endure.
-
A week after he had his bond torn from him, Spock stared into his view screen at the science station. It gave gas readings of the star system the Enterprise was currently hurtling though before it would reach the site of this cycle’s shore leave. Spock tried to commit them to memory, as was his habit, but found that he was having trouble concentrating and understanding why he should do such a thing. He leaned over his console and addressed Uhura at communications.
“Status of transmissions?”
Uhura glanced at him, curiosity plain on her face. “If I get any, I’ll tell you,” she said.
Spock subsided into his seat. He swiveled around and caught the captain’s eye. Jim smiled at him.
“What’s the word on that space gas, Mr. Spock?”
Sulu snorted, and Spock saw Chekov throw an elbow into his ribs. Behind them, Jim rolled his eyes and sent Spock a commiserating look.
“As expected, Captain.” He couldn’t remember the precise percentages, but Jim had never asked for those before anyway. “And this star system appears remarkably free of detritus. We’ll fly unencumbered, like a soaring eagle.”
Jim hid a smile in his hand. Unsuccessfully. “Thanks for the update, Mr. Spock. Carry on.”
A dismissal if ever he heard one. Delivered mockingly, which Jim had not done since their inauspicious beginnings, but Spock could not be sure he interpreted that tone correctly. Spock turned back to his viewer without bothering to suppress his sigh. Face pressed into the eyepiece, Spock closed his eyes.Just for a moment, he told himself. Just until this fuzz, this noise, goes away.
“Captain!” Uhura’s voice, and Spock himself seemed to be tipping to the side, but he caught himself and managed to remain upright. The bridge swam around him, and his inner eyelid drooped, beyond his control. Jim appeared at his side, propping him up, a dizzying proximity.
“Spock, are you all right? I’m taking you to sickbay.”
Spock sagged against his captain even as he said, “I am well, Captain, no need for histrionics.”
But Jim’s arm remained tight across his shoulders, and Uhura’s eyes were brown and concerned and warm, taking up all the space on the bridge, in the universe.
“Eyes are dilated, balance is off,” he heard her say. “And I’d put money on temporary cognitive impairment.”
“All right, Mr. Spock, you and me are headed to sickbay. Up you get.”
Spock clutched at Jim’s sleeve, stricken. “No, Jim, no.”
Jim, frowning. He squeezed his bicep. “Come on, Spock, you don’t hate McCoy that much. Let’s go.”
“Captain. Let me.” Uhura stood before him once again, shoulders squared, eyebrows lifted: the communications officer in her element brooked no argument. “Spock? Listen to me. You’re going to sickbay whether you want to or not, either on a hovering gurney or under your own power, your choice.”
Spock focused hard on the tip of her nose. He righted himself and pushed his shoulders back. “I am ready to proceed to sickbay, Lieutenant.”
“Glad to hear it, Commander.”
Jim led them out while the rest of the bridge crew stayed intent at their stations, perfectly willing to pretend that Spock’s outburst never occurred. Human, illogical, and something Spock acknowledged that he would be wholly grateful for when this episode passed. Such a trespass would not have gone undissected on Vulcan Past; it would have been forever picked apart and peered at with the usual Vulcan precision, and never forgotten, never forgiven. It would be logical, after all, to file away the information of some infirmity, to call it back whenever there came a disagreement so one party could discredit the other. Much like the abject offense of being human. Half. Mongrel.
Spock liked humans. Even the one that manhandled him onto a cot and called him a “damned stubborn mule of a hobgoblin.”
“Bones, he was fine yesterday,” Jim said, and Spock could see his face, hovering above him, eyebrows thick and drawn down. McCoy twisted up his whole face and sent Jim a wild eyebrow of his own.
“Oh, and I suppose you think illness just announces itself politely like a visiting dignitary.” He gave a dramatic roll of his eyes. “You know better than that, Jim. Especially with this one. He’s probably known something was off for days and tried to logic it away.” McCoy prodded Spock with the tricorder that was still whirring away at his side. “Hey. How’ve you been feeling the last few days?”
Spock ventured a swipe of his tongue over his teeth. He tried to think of one, but there was no other word for it: “Fuzzy,” he said. “But functional. Am I no longer functional? Am I error codes and overheated hardware?”
Above him Jim’s face pinched inward and McCoy’s mouth flattened. McCoy placed two fingertips at Spock’s temple. Calm - McCoy felt calm, and Spock could feel him. Cool and calm. A consummate professional, for all his flaws, for all the differences between them.
“This damned tricorder - it’s a flaw, but it’s calibrated to human-normal, and it’s not telling me the right things. It says you’ve got an imbalance, Spock. But it’s- not hormones, or anything. It’s something else. It’s almost like you’re slowly bleeding out, but, well, you haven’t sprung a leak anywhere I can tell.”
“Oh my God, what?” But neither Spock nor McCoy paid Jim any mind.
“Vulcan telepathy,” Spock said. McCoy’s hand dropped away and he nodded.
“You know what’s wrong already.”
“It should not be wrong. It should be… well. Functional. That it is not is an anomaly. Homily. Hominy.”
Spock watched Jim and McCoy exchange glances. Gruffly McCoy patted his shoulder.
“All right, Spock,” McCoy hushed him. “Well. I’ve called M’Benga in for a look at you, and we’ll see what we can do about a vid conference with a Vulcan healer. You should rest up here.”
McCoy jerked his head to indicate to Jim that he should follow him out, but Spock caught his sleeve. They both turned back to him. Blue eyes, hazel eyes, kaleidoscope color.
“I would prefer to coalesce in my own quarters.”
McCoy’s face split wide to accommodate a toothy grin, but Jim scowled and hissed “don’t laugh at him, dick,” into McCoy’s ear. But Spock had big ears, good for catching quiet mouse things.
“Can’t mind you if you’re on your own, Spock,” McCoy said.
“Sickbay smells of… sickbay.” Spock couldn’t contain a full-body shudder, and McCoy looked long-suffering.
“Spock, I can’t leave you alone, and I can’t spare a member of my staff to be at a single patient’s beck and call, even the first officer.”
“Bones,” Jim interjected. “We’re just flying through empty space here. I could take the rest of alpha off, sit with him. Make sure he doesn’t get into anything or try to do work like a total overachiever.”
McCoy turned to Jim and stared at him hard. In that stare was a silent communication Spock couldn’t parse out. He itched to push a fingertip to McCoy’s wrist so he could understand too, understand Jim. From this vantage, Spock had an optimal view of both men’s mandibles - McCoy’s sharp, perhaps with a day’s worth of stubble, held at an angle Spock might call ‘defiant.’ And Jim’s - first the muscles ticked, then the entire jawline flushed pink.
“It’ll be fine, Bones,” Jim bit out after a moment’s passing. “I’ll be fine. And mind your own.”
McCoy crossed his arms and turned back to look at Spock with an exaggerated scowl. Then a big finger was in his face, waving away.
“Your captain spoils you, Spock,” he said. “I hope you can appreciate it. And you’re waiting ’til M’Benga gets here, at any rate. He might be able to prescribe something so your thinking’s clearer.”
With some effort Spock managed to move his head enough that McCoy was no longer the only thing he could see.
Jim smiled at him.
-
M’Benga diagnosed Spock with an improperly broken bond.
“But T’Pring is a professional,” Spock said. And he believed that she would not deliberately harm him, despite all that had come between them.
M’Benga merely shook his head and regarded him with a significant measure of pity. “Not with work like this she isn’t. You’re going to need to see a healer, not just speak to one.”
He hypoed Spock with a compound designed to treat the symptoms of an improperly broken bond, but it would do nothing to treat the cause, and he would have to have it administered every six hours. There was nothing for it but to be patched at the source. Spock tried to think of the quickest way to a healer - a passenger craft from the pleasure planet was his likeliest chance, either to Earth or to Uzh-Ah’rak. Earth was closer from this sector, but Uzh-Ah’rak likely boasted more healers. On either planet, the healers were sure to be overworked and careworn. Spock supposed it didn’t matter either way - he couldn’t go alone in his condition, and Jim seemed to have appointed himself Spock’s minder. Spock would go wherever Jim deemed it convenient.
When Spock was safely ensconced in his quarters, he said as much to Jim. He sat on his bed, tea in hand and blanket about shoulders, because apparently Jim had decided to make a fuss.
“What do you mean, you have no preference?” Jim asked. He pulled a chair up to the foot of Spock’s bed and kicked his feet up. “I figured there’d be more healers on New Vulcan, better ones. And don’t you have people to see, progress to check out, stuff like that?”
“This is hardly a pleasure trip, Jim,” Spock said. “I do not wish to take up more of your time than I already have. Your shore leave -”
“Is no big deal, Spock, I already told you. And Scotty can handle command for the next little bit. That’s settled, then - we’re going to New Vulcan.” Jim cocked his head. “Wouldn’t you do the same for me? If I were the one who needed to go somewhere?”
“Of course,” Spock said without hesitation. There was no question.
Jim nodded. “Yeah. And you’d swear it wouldn’t trouble you, either.”
“It would be no burden.”
Jim gestured outward with one sweep of his hand. “So there you are. This is… what friends do for each other.”
“Cross star systems?”
“No sweat.”
They shared a moment’s accord, Jim grinning, Spock letting the muscles of his face relax. In the other room Spock’s replicator beeped, and Jim got up to collect the cup of hot chocolate he programmed. When he returned to his seat, he blew on it and took a sip, then grimaced so thoroughly it must have been physically painful.
“It’s getting better,” he choked.
“Your expression indicates otherwise,” Spock said, craning his neck to eye the black sludge.
“You wouldn’t believe what I was dealing with before.”
Spock had some idea. He remembered variations on a theme: faux-chocolate in a mug like pebbles, like dirt, like sand. The tender pink tip of Jim’s tongue, darting out to taste the mixture, always with explosive results.
“So,” Jim said, his voice overloud between the sleek bulkheads. “Do I get to know what’s wrong or should I make up something really bizarre to occupy myself?”
“It is… private,” Spock told him. The blue of Jim’s eyes dimmed and he tucked his nose back into the hot chocolate. His smile had devolved into something forced and painful, and he stared resolutely at a bit of bedding by his knee. Hastily, Spock added, “so it must not go beyond this room.”
Jim perked and pulled his chair up closer to the head of Spock’s bed. He leaned his elbows on his knees and looked into Spock’s face expectantly.
Where to start? In truth, it started with Spock’s kahs-wan, when he proved himself worthy of a mate and the name Vulcan. Or maybe the story really began millions of years ago, when modern Vulcans first evolved, when pon farr first ravaged the fierce warriors of a different era. But Spock was not certain Jim required the ‘history lesson,’ as humans often referred to such things with sneers in their voices. He would make it as concise as possible.
“Vulcans who possess a certain level of social status are betrothed to one another as children by the dictates of tradition,” he began, “and this is accomplished through a mental link called a bond, which functions, essentially, as an organ in the Vulcan body. Due to biology, all adult Vulcans are required to have a bond, though, as you might imagine, there is still a twenty percent divorce rate among Vulcans who prove incompatible. A successful bond is prized among Vulcans, venerated, even.” The thought that he would never have one made him ache somewhere that did not have a name.
“So… you were one of these children,” Jim filled in. “You were engaged.”
“More than engaged,” Spock said. “She was… my only companion. My wife. I had believed… ridiculous, romantic things. Human things, I suppose.”
Jim’s mouth took a mournful downward turn.
“You loved her, Spock. That’s not a crime.”
Spock let himself lift his shoulder in a tiny shrug. He had wanted all of T’Pring’s attentions on him, had wanted, in some ways, to consume her, to be consumed by her. It had been an overwhelming feeling that, at the time, he had tried to deny out of deference to Vulcan non-emotion. But he was more than ten years removed from it, and now that he felt the same stirrings again for the man beside him, he did not want to damn himself by labeling it as that most tumultuous of human emotions, that thing he had seen burn bright and hot before exploding, or fizzling to embers, leaving everything in its path scorched and destroyed no matter how it ended.
“She loves another,” he said, “and has since we were young. The time came that she could no longer delay their bond. Thus, she severed the connection between us. However, it seems to have gone awry, resulting in trauma to the bonding cortex in my brain.”
“Why?” Jim asked then, voice harsh. “Why couldn’t she delay it enough to wait for you to pop over to New Vulcan and do it without making you bleed to death? Whoever she is, Spock, she doesn’t sound like that great of a catch to me.” Jim sat back in the chair with his arms crossed over his chest, lower lip protruding obscenely.
In his weakened state, Spock felt two things: gratitude that someone, that Jim, should feel so protective of him, and annoyance at the fact that Jim couldn’t understand how T’Pring’s hand was forced, couldn’t see beyond his esteem for Spock into T’Pring’s situation. Couldn’t understand Vulcans - their bodies, their bonds.
“She had little choice,” Spock said.
“Yeah, I don’t buy that,” Jim said. “Whatever’s happening now, it could have all been avoided if she’d just gotten a quickie divorce when she realized she didn’t want to be with you.” Jim shook his head. “There’s this thing I’ve noticed - people do and say horrible, unspeakable things to the people they care about, things they would never dream of doing to a complete stranger on the street. What is that? If you love someone, shouldn’t you cherish them, treat them, well, kindly? I don’t get it, Spock, and I never have.” He hitched up his shoulders and glanced at Spock’s eyes before his gaze skittered away. He was self-conscious of a sudden, Spock realized, as if only now aware he’d said too much. He hunched in on himself and dropped his eyes to the deck. “Whatever. Glad I don’t do the relationship thing.”
“In our case, it is more complicated than you posit,” Spock told him. “There is-” Spock took a deep breath and sighed. “There is the matter of the biology of the Vulcan male. A time of great shame.” Jim’s eyes flicked back up to his. “It is the pon farr, the time of mating.”
Those eyes grew huge and round. “Seriously?”
Spock broke eye contact and stared straight ahead at the bulkhead opposite his bed. Another deep inhale.
“Once every seven years, the Vulcan male descends into the plak tow, the blood fever. He must mate - or die. The first pon farr is unpredictable - this is why children are bonded, so the bond can settle and be strong enough to sate the male when his Time comes, even if it comes early. The bondmate holds the life of the stricken male in her hands.”
“Vulcans are secretly kinky, this is so awesome.”
Spock sent him a quelling arched eyebrow, and Jim ducked his chin back down to hide - again unsuccessfully - a smile.
“Sorry.”
“As I was saying,” Spock continued pointedly, “the sexual component of pon farr can be the source of some amusement and speculation, especially amongst children who are learning about it for the first time, but sex is, even in a society dedicated to logic, something of a fact of reality: not much spoken of, but frequently engaged in nonetheless. The true source of shame in pon farr is the loss of control. In pon farr, a Vulcan has no logic, no regard for the sanctity of life. He will rage, he will kill, anything to get to his mate. He is a savage beast, a throw-back to a less evolved time. If he is not sated, in flesh as well as in mind, he will perish. All Vulcans are taught at an early age that it is a most harrowing ordeal.”
“I get it,” Jim said, sober once more. “Your… wife stayed bonded to you as a favor. In case you went into pon farr and needed her.”
Spock nodded. He closed his eyes and set his head back on the bulkheads, suddenly exhausted. When he opened his eyes again, Jim was peering at him intently.
“She has an admirable measure of integrity, and she is not without compassion for me, though she does not wish to be bonded to me. I believe that if my need arose, she would have done her duty, and then requested a breaking of our bond, which would have been her right. When her chosen entered pon farr himself, she could wait no longer. Though she is a practitioner of telepathic healing, she must have been… wrong-footed in her haste. I do not begrudge her this. Do you understand now, Jim?”
Jim frowned, but slowly he nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Man, you’re way more forgiving than I would be. You’re dying, Spock.”
Spock let the corners of his mouth rise minutely. “Only in the existential sense, Jim. With the requisite medical care, I will be, as humans say, proper as precipitation.”
Jim blinked at him. “God, I missed your jokes,” he said. He was not smiling, though. “I wish we-”
“What, Jim?”
Jim’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he looked away. He took a swig of his drink.
“Nothing, Spock. We should hang out more. Like buddies do.”
Spock found that he no longer wished to keep himself from this man. Even if being close without the permission to touch would be akin to masochism. Even if he had to watch him pursue woman after woman, again and again, right before his eyes. It would be worth it, to be near him.
“Perhaps,” Spock ventured, “during the next shore leave, we could rent an air car.”
Jim slouched back into his chair, demeanor considerably lightened.
“I’d like that, Spock,” he said.
-
“I do not require coddling,” T’Pring said when Stonn brought her a bowl of fruit native to Uzh-Ah’rak. She lay in bed two days after Stonn had passed out of pon farr safe and whole. And bonded. She had taken leave from her duties at the Center for Telepathic Linguistics and intended to use the full week. Nonetheless, there was a padd in her lap.
“It is my right to coddle you as I see fit,” he replied. He pushed back the covers and climbed in alongside her. He lay his head on her shoulder and put his arm around her waist, careful not to jostle the padd. “Patient files?”
“Indeed. Take care not to look at them.”
Stonn hummed out some kind of agreement and turned his face away, only to start trailing his lips over her shoulder, her chest, her breast. T’Pring set the padd aside and sighed, carding her fingers through his hair.
“I had expected the cycle would ease your insatiability for some time.”
“I must admit to a certain amount of satisfaction when you are wrong, my ko-eik-te’krusu.” He sucked on her nipple, cupped the other breast and pinched the nipple there. T’Pring clutched him closer, her legs falling open, and Stonn moved atop her. She felt her loins go liquid as he fit into the cradle of her pelvis. Her palms absorbed the muscular width of his shoulders, the strong line of his back, the hard swell of his diminutive buttocks.
“How did I find such an unsupportive bondmate?” Between them, their bond bloomed open, a desert breeze, thrumming with life. Matching heartbeats.
“Choice,” he said as he slid inside her. She arched her back, forced him deeper, clasped him closer. “Always by choice, ashayam.”
-
The disorder of the space port on Amilin IV, the pleasure planet on which the crew was taking five days’ worth of leave, threatened to overwhelm Spock. His brain buzzed at his proximity to the rush and bustle of activity, the press of hundreds of harried bodies. Sometimes, despite his best efforts to keep his exposed hands close to his body, someone’s skin would brush against his and there would be a spark, a hiss, a recognition; unsolicited intimacy that stung the open wound of his bonding cortex. Abruptly, Spock was reminded of his roommate at Starfleet Academy, an underachiever of the highest order. While Spock was attempting quiet study, the other cadet would often moan, “I can’t read anymore, dude, my brain is totally fried,” and Spock would check for smoke before he realized halfway through the first semester that the phraseology was merely an example of illogical Standard idiom that he would never quite comprehend like a native speaker.
In the crush of the crowd, Spock suddenly understood his former roommate, who had made Lieutenant in the end, who had been someone whom Spock had managed not to alienate completely in his first year. Spock had even attended his funeral in western Montana. His grandmother had hugged him.
When Jim finally appeared at his side after checking in at the New Vulcan transportation desk, Spock tugged his sleeve - a t-shirt, civilian wear - and Jim obligingly leaned his ear close to Spock’s mouth.
“My brain is totally fried,” Spock said into that seashell curve.
Jim drew back, leveled a crooked half-smile at him, and thumped a hand on his shoulder.
“I think you need another hypo, Spock. Let’s get into our cabin. I sprung for first class; it’s gonna be awesome.”
And though Spock had not told Jim the nature of his difficulty with the crowd, with the psychic noise, Jim stuck close to him, forged ahead such that anyone who might touch Spock touched Jim instead. Spock felt the skip of sparks in his abdomen - a feeling. Gratitude. Examined, acknowledged, tucked away. Jim led the way towards the shuttlecrafts that waited to take them to the ship in spacedock.
“Jim. Jim.” He had to raise his voice to be heard.
“Yeah, Spock? We’re almost there, just hang on.”
“Jim, a first class cabin will not be covered by Starfleet per diem.”
Jim tossed an easy smile over his shoulder even as he kept maneuvering them through the crowds.
“Jim. Jim, you mustn’t waste your hard earned credits on me.”
Jim stopped and turned around. He stood closer to Spock than Spock was accustomed to, a protective stance.
“Hey, don’t be like that,” he said. “I wanted to. I’ve always wanted to fly first class - champagne and legroom, right? And it’s not like my salary’s going anywhere else. Seriously Spock, don’t sweat it. My pleasure.”
“I will repay you.”
Jim’s mouth grew droopy and unpleasant, bracketed by frown lines. He turned back around and started forward again, pulling Spock along close to his back by his tunic.
“It’s fine, Spock. Come on - the sooner I can sit you down the sooner I can stick you full of meds.”
-
First class was a sprawling, well-scrubbed deck on the starboard side of the small passenger ship Helena. Aside from four corridors with private passenger cabins, there was also a dining room, practically gilt in its ostentation; a recreation room with gym equipment and table tennis; a modest cinema scheduled to show family-friendly holofilms during the day and darker fare in the evenings; and a lounge, complete with fully-stocked bar, plenty of couch space, card tables, and private nooks that would still receive service from the staff. Said staff operated all over the first class deck, striking a curious balance between unobtrusive and obsequious that Spock found both disconcerting and faintly irritating.
The very fact of those states of being were a testament to his illness. He grew weaker each day, his mind duller, his sense of balance tenuous, his ability to regulate his temperature in tumult. He needed M’Benga’s hypo with more frequency - he was up to one every four hours, even during resting periods. And of course, Jim would hear nothing of Spock attending to himself; Jim was awake, alert and without a complaint on his lips, no matter when Spock required his medication.
The trip to Uzh-Ah’rak was scheduled to take four days, three nights, and Spock had not meditated in almost ten standard days. He was deteriorating with increasing speed, and he knew he could not hide it from Jim for much longer. Perhaps Jim would see fit to while away the travel time in the cinema or making friends in the lounge, and would not notice if Spock rested in their cabin for the duration of the trip. Spock’s captain was a gregarious man, a man who enjoyed company both platonic and intimate, a man who attracted admiration everywhere he went. He couldn’t help it. It was written into his DNA, the fabric of his character, like the blue eyes, the bronze hair, the pinkish tone of his fair skin, the breadth of his shoulders, that laugh, rich and intoxicating. Yes - Spock would encourage Jim to socialize among the other passengers, and he would be spared the knowledge and helplessness of Spock’s decline.
Four days to Uzh-Ah’rak and a healer.
-
Spock lay curled on his bunk facing the bulkheads when the door to the cabin whooshed open. The blanket was pulled over his ears.
“Spock?” Jim’s voice - of course. “Why don’t you come to the lounge with me? There’s some quiet spots, and we can have snacks. Spock?”
“I am fatigued, Jim,” Spock said. He didn’t turn to face his captain. “And not in need of refreshment.”
He heard the door close and then there was a depression on his bed, Jim’s meager human warmth palpable even through the blankets. Spock gave a violent shiver, and then he couldn’t stop.
“Hey,” Jim murmured. Spock felt him rub a hesitant hand over Spock’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m gonna turn the temperature up.”
Jim got up and Spock heard him fiddle with the temperature controls. Suddenly, an acute longing came upon Spock for the Enterprise, with her voice commands, her familiar replicator glitches, her particular smell.
There was some shuffling - Jim peeling off layers, maybe even down to just his undergarments. It would be much warmer than a human accustomed to cold winters and air conditioned summers would be used to.
“You need not stay,” Spock said.
“Spock. I’m staying.”
“The lounge -”
“Will still be there in a couple hours.” Spock heard him puff out a long exhale and shift on his bunk. “Now I can sit here and be quiet while you take a nap, or we can talk. Which would you rather?”
Spock didn’t say anything for a moment. He would not sleep at this hour, and there was no hope for meditation. Without Jim, there would be only this wall, these wracking shudders, this hemorrhaging bond.
“Talk,” he said.
“Okay. So. What do you wanna talk about?”
“Tell me… something I do not know.”
A huff of disbelieving laughter.
“Man, Spock. That’s a tall order. What am I supposed to say?”
“Relate an anecdote. Humans enjoy sharing humorous, incredible, or curious accounts from their pasts.”
“You’re asking me to tell you about myself. Are you going to reciprocate?”
Spock made the effort to flip over onto his other side. He pulled the blanket down enough to stick his nose out and peer at Jim. Indeed, Jim was down to his boxer-briefs, supine on his bunk. His head rested in the cradle of his linked hands atop the pillow, and Spock could see wisps of brownish underarm hair. He made the perfect picture of human masculine beauty, and inwardly, Spock ached. Jim blinked at him, guileless, open.
“I will endeavor to find a comparable anecdote to share, yes.”
When Jim smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled pleasantly. If Spock had been closer, he may not have been able to stop himself, in his weakened state, from reaching out and pressing a fingertip into the tiny creases.
“Awesome,” Jim said. “I’ll make it something good then. Let’s see.” Jim brought his arms down to cross over the fine musculature of his chest, and he braced his chin in the meat at the base of his thumb, fingers drumming at his lips. “All right, Spock. You’ll appreciate this.
“The summer I was twelve, my step-dad sent me and my brother to science camp in Illinois. Not even somewhere decent like Chicago, you know, just over the border from Iowa, like if we just weren’t in his state he didn’t have to think about us. Anyway, science camp was dull; I knew everything they tried to get us to learn about, Sam pretended he didn’t know me, and the other kids were mostly dorks. Except for this one girl, Carol Marcus.” Jim gave a long, appreciative sigh and Spock’s heart sank. Not only did he have to watch Jim on his conquests, he had to listen to him enumerate them, too. “She was a year older than me and about ten times cooler. A million times cooler than the other kids. She was smart, too, and she never cared if we had to dissect something; she liked it, she was good at it. She’d even brought her own dissection kit, which was so awesome. When everyone had to introduced themselves, she said she was going to be a scientist, and she was going to catalogue all sorts of animals from all sorts of planets, even discover new species.” A short laugh. “File her under Crush Object #1 - and she didn’t even know I was alive. Obviously.
“So one day we were scheduled for a hike at some reconstituted state park, I don’t remember the name, and it was going to be just totally boring, I mean, slow walking along the big trails with lots of stops to eat or pee or look at something we already knew all about. Obviously they should have broken up the groups by age or something, so the little kids could go slower, or for less time, or whatever, but - hindsight 20/20 and all. Anyway, there we are walking along when I see it, about forty feet out: a badger. Hiding, you know, just shuffling around, but they’re not really supposed to be awake during the day. So I duck out from the group; the counselors were always looking after the little kids, making sure they didn’t do something dumb. Guess they forgot no one’s really exempt from being a dumbass, no matter what their age. So I’m going and I’m going, trying to follow this badger but I can’t find it, and then I’m totally alone. Can’t hear the group, can’t hear voices, nothing. And I wasn’t scared, I was relieved. I thought to myself: I can totally forage for food, build a campfire, set up some kind of lean-to, maybe even a latrine. I’ll just stay here all night and look up at the stars, and no one else will even be there to bother me, or whisper about my dad, or push me around. So I began to look for a good place to set up camp.
“Then, all of the sudden, there’s this crash in the brush, and out comes Carol friggin’ Marcus with her hair all tangled and messed up, sunburned, her backpack sort of half off. She’s like, ‘what are you doing here?’ like she’s not the one who just stumbled onto my campground like a deranged bear. So I’m all suave, you know, this is my moment. ‘Camping out,’ I said. ‘You can stay, if you want.’ Jesus, Spock. I mean what exactly was I gonna do with an older, cooler, smarter girl out in the woods?” Jim shook his head, the corner of his mouth curled up in a rueful smile. “But miracle of miracles, she goes ‘yeah, okay,’ and sits down next to me. I’m just staring at her, because I had nothing else in my arsenal, and she looks like an angel, all streaked with dirt like that. Then she goes, ‘hey, wanna see something cool?’ Duh. Obviously. Have you met me? So she leads me out of my camp and down through all these trees and it looks like no one’s ever been there but us and then - surprise! Dead armadillo.”
Both of Spock’s eyebrows flew up. “Jim, armadillos are endangered on the North American continent.”
Jim nodded. “Yeah, and they have been for like hundreds of years before we were born. So anyway Carol Marcus says she found it before, and she wants to dissect it but she didn’t bring her kit. I was all, ‘don’t worry - James T. Kirk to the rescue’. My kit’s just camp issue, kind of crap, especially compared to hers, but whatever. And no shit, Spock, she legit starts doing an autopsy on this thing. Had a Y-incision on it like it was no big deal, like it wasn’t covered tip to tail in armor. She’s all ‘respiratory arrest,’ ‘probably rabies,’ when one of the counselors finally shows up and starts screaming at us, hauls us by up the ears like it’s a Victorian novel, and drags us back to the group. Anyway, long story short, we were punished by being kept from the stupid after dinner activities no one ever wants to do anyway, and we were given these gigantic rabies hypos, and our parents were called and everything, and Carol Marcus didn’t even look at me for the rest of camp. Never found out what happened to her after that summer, either.” Spock caught the note of wistfulness in Jim’s voice.
Carol Marcus did not sound like Jim’s usual choice of paramour. She sounded intelligent and self-reliant, living comfortably outside the bounds of social norms and the more attractive to Jim for it. Jesting lines sent in Uhura’s direction aside, Jim’s ‘type’ had seemed, before this revelation, to run toward the vapid and large-breasted. Spock reordered what he had previously believed about Jim’s companions, placed ‘intellect’ and ‘independence’ at the top of his mental list of data.
“Your turn, Spock,” Jim said, and Spock’s gaze snapped back to his. “Quid pro quo.”
Spock pulled the blanket down further so that his chin was uncovered. He was warming up, anyway. He cast about for a comparable anecdote - a wild land, a girl loved in the way of innocents - and there was only one.
“I once participated in a similar survival exercise,” he said. “It is called the kahs-wan, and it is a rite of passage for all young Vulcans.”
“Oh, that sounds fun.”
Spock shrugged. “Participants must survive ten days in a desert canyon called The Forge without food, water, or weapons. If they meet with success, they are deemed worthy of forging a marriage link.”
“Hold up.” Jim gesticulated at him. “You said the other day you got engaged when you were little.”
“That is correct,” Spock replied. “I was seven standard years of age. I entered the challenge a year early without informing my parents, in a bid to prove wrong the constant taunts of my peers.” Again, a shrug. “It was foolish, and motivated by emotion rather than logic, but it was very long ago, Jim.”
Jim sat up and faced him. His torso glistened in the low lighting; he was probably overheated, and yet he said nothing about it. His thick brows were drawn down into a furrow, and he braced his hands on the edge of his bunk.
“Spock. Vulcans send little kids to do survival shit in the desert? Oh my God, what if someone dies?”
“Some do. One or two per year, on average. My cousin Tekshar was one such child… he simply did not return. No body was recovered. It is the way of things. Was.”
Jim looked stricken. His face, previously flushed in the heat, drained and took on a grey, unpleasant pallor.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“Shall I continue my anecdote or are you too preoccupied in questioning my cultural traditions to listen properly?” Spock just barely refrained from pulling the blanket back up and over his eyes in a fit of pique.
“Sorry, Spock. I’m sorry. I’m working on the cultural sensitivity thing, I swear. Go on.” Instead of lying back down, he put his elbows on his knees and rested his chin in his hands, eyes on Spock and unwavering.
“As a child, I had a companion animal, a sehlat, named I’Chaya. He had been with me since birth, and he was very loyal. On the third day of my kahs-wan, I perceived that I was being followed, possibly by a predator. I was… quite small in those days, frequently in and out of healers’ offices, everything about me from my size and my reserve to my logic and my brain turned over and tutted about to the point of acute annoyance. Despite this, I was aware of my physical limitations - I knew I would not survive against the fauna I might meet in the Forge. Wild sehlats, le-matya. The only means I had of overcoming a confrontation with one was trickery. So - I set up a rudimentary trap, little more than a hole in the sand before the cave in which I had taken shelter, and from a higher perch I waited for nightfall, when I knew my pursuer would seek my warmth.
“At the sound of an agonized howl and a great thud, I realized that my trap had worked - but it had captured only my own sehlat, I-Chaya. He had followed me from the house of my father, fending off predators without my knowledge. I rushed down to the mouth of the cave to meet him, and he rose from my trap as if it had been a mere dip in the sand. I was very fortunate that he had not been a predator after all. However, despite his ease with escaping my trap, he had sustained a sprain to one of his back paws, the left. I apologized to him and led him into the cave, where I huddled against his warmth. He… he was very dear to me.” Spock pulled his knees up against the threat of his voice breaking. More than anything in this moment, he wished for his control to be restored to him. “On the final night before the completion of my kahs-wan, a le-matya attacked me while I’Chaya was some ways off in search of water.”
“Oh, no,” Jim murmured, barely audible. Spock met his eyes and nodded.
“Yes. I was struck down, my face bloodied, my arm broken. I stayed as still as I could manage - le-matya were known for detecting their prey through movement rather than traditional sight or smell, but the damage was done, as a human might say. The le-matya sprung into action, but never met its mark. I-Chaya had returned, and as I watched, helpless, a fierce battle ensued. I-Chaya managed to deal a fatal blow, fang to belly, but not before the le-matya had perceived his weakness and tripped him by the left hind leg, forcing him to stumble and landing its claws in his throat.
“He did not take long to expire, a fact for which I am still grateful. I stayed with him until morning - the smell of a fight, of the blood of a le-matya and sehlat and their two corpses were enough to keep other predators away. At dawn I left him to return to the outpost, where elders would be waiting for those who had succeeded in completing the kahs-wan. A day later, I was declared a mature Vulcan. A week after that, I was bonded to T’Pring, who had also completed her kahs-wan.”
Jim’s face held open sympathy. “I’m sorry, Spock. About I-Chaya.” Then, in garbled, awkward Vulcan, “I mourn with thee.”
Spock felt his chest constrict to hear the guttural syllables issued from Jim’s throat in all sincerity. He had not been aware that Jim had made a study of the Vulcan language.
“Thank you, Jim.”
“You don’t… I just want you to know you don’t have to tell me anything upsetting just because I’m a bastard who pokes things with sticks. Anything you tell me, Spock, it’s always up to you. Only what you want to.”
Spock pressed his lips together. “I am not ‘upset,’ Jim.”
Blue eyes went wide and Jim shook his head vigorously. “No, no, of course you’re not. I know. I’m just saying. For future reference.”
“I see.”
“Okay. Just so we’re clear.” Jim took a deep breath and when he blew out, he directed the stream of air over the pink, damp skin of his chest. “How are you feeling?”
“My temperature has been regulated,” Spock said. “We can turn down the controls. You are uncomfortable.”
Jim sent him one of his half-smiles, one part flirtatious, two parts self-deprecating. Over time, Spock had learned not to take that expression to mean more than it did. But he was half-naked and flushed and looking at Spock and it was difficult.
“I guess it’s pretty obvious, huh? I’m sweating like a pig over here - gross. Sorry. But hey, we can keep the temperature up. You’re not shivering anymore, but this is better for you anyway, isn’t it?”
Hesitantly, Spock nodded. “But I do not wish to inconvenience-”
“Pshh,” Jim interrupted him. “Stop right there, Spock. There will be no more talk of ‘inconvenience,’ or ‘repayment,’ or ‘taking up my time,’ okay? Besides, Iowa has blazing hot summers, and old houses full of air conditioning in disrepair. I’ve had worse, Spock, and I’ll live.” He threw himself back into his pillows and flung his limbs open. They hung over the edges of the bunks. “So. Wanna get room service?”
Jim harangued Spock into ordering a fruit plate while Jim himself got an array of Earth-style sandwiches. Spock had expressed some confusion over Jim’s rather pedestrian choice - there were delicacies from all over the galaxy available, after all - but Jim just shrugged at him.
“They’ve got real bread here, Spock. All sorts of real food in a real kitchen, actually. But I’m talking about fresh-baked, hot out of the oven stuff. Yeah, I got sandwiches, and I won’t regret a moment of it.”
By the time the chime at the cabin door came, Spock had managed to sit himself upright and was no longer cocooned in the comforter. Jim scrambled from his position on the bunk and pulled on a t-shirt before he answered the door with a wide, lazy grin.
The woman pushing the food cart was in a smart navy uniform.
“Fruit and sandwiches for Captain Kirk?” she asked. Spock watched her eyes follow the lines of Jim’s body straight down to his bare feet and back up. Just a flick of her gaze in the merest fraction of a second, but Spock caught it. He felt heavy, weighted on the bed. The woman was a humanoid female of proportions generally considered pleasing, black hair coiffed, face painted. Spock could not see Jim’s face to gauge his reaction, but he was certain it was favorable. If this interaction proceeded in a similar fashion as shore leave, Spock would be alone in this room tonight, and for the next three nights. He remembered quite forcefully why he had stopped taking shore leave with Jim after all.
“Thanks,” Jim said, and he pulled the cart in. He took her hand to shake it as humans are wont to do, and in that movement he discreetly tapped his credit chip against hers, contained in a bracelet.
“Thank you, Captain Kirk.” She was making eyes at Jim, Spock believed the term was. He crossed his arms over his chest and resisted the frowning pull of his own brows, but Jim merely ushered the staff member out the door with his usual charm and locked it behind her. Then he turned around and clapped his hands together, eyes sparking with delight as he beheld the tray of sandwiches.
“God, can you smell that, Spock? It’s like a bakery exploded in here.” He rubbed his hands together and pulled the cart into the space between their bunks. He peeled his shirt off again and flung it into a far corner before settling on the edge of his bunk and pushing the fruit plate in Spock’s direction. He grabbed one of the delicate little triangles and bit into it heartily. The ensuing obscene noise issued forth from Jim’s throat brought a hot flush to the tips of Spock’s ears. “Oh my God,” Jim said. “Spock. Spock you have to try this.” He plucked another triangle from the same sandwich off of his plate and placed it on Spock’s. “This one’s brie with poached pear and watercress on a baguette. I think I might cry.”
Spock started, but it seemed Jim was merely engaging in the common human linguistic foible known as hyperbole. Mouth full, Jim nonetheless made a wrist-rolling gesture at Spock indicating he should partake of the food before him. Spock reached for a piece of Orion heman’oshk root.
“Will you not follow the flight attendant out?” Spock found himself asking in a fit of masochism. “She was… very attractive. And if I am not mistaken, she made you an offer.”
Jim stopped chewing and the sandwich euphoria left his face. He blinked, finished chewing, and swallowed his mouthful.
“She was okay, I guess,” he said, back slumping. “But I’m chilling here with you. Aren’t you having a decent time, even though you’re sick? Am I bothering you? Do- do you want me to leave you alone, let you get some rest? I could go to the movies or something for a couple hours, ’til your next hypo.”
“No,” Spock said, too loudly. Jim startled back, eyes gone wide. Spock amended his tone. “No. I wish for you to stay.”
Jim’s shoulders relaxed and he gave a single sharp nod. They passed their meal in companionable silence.
Part I | Part II | Part III
Spock needed thermals.
His uniform came with black undershirts in thermal fabric and thicker, moisture-wicking socks, and that was standard procedure for all Starfleet officers from warmer planets, or even for humans from warmer climates on Earth or Earth colonies. 1.6% of the crew required such garments, in fact.
And yet Spock awoke freezing the day after he parted from T’Pring. He checked the temperature in his quarters, which read as Vulcan-normal - thirty-two degrees - and then he checked the corridor, which also proved normal. Then he commed down to engineering to ask if anything seemed amiss in atmospheric control, only to be told all was well. Even though it was quite early in ship’s day, Spock commed Lieutenant Ix’laak from the Marvis system to ask if xe too felt a chill this morning, but xe informed him that xe was experiencing no difficulties outside of the usual ones with xir tail. Spock promised to have the quartermaster design a better uniform before he cut the transmission.
A shiver wracked him and he called up the temperature to forty degrees. After his sonic shower, he donned two of his thermal undershirts and partook of two cups of steaming tea, as hot as he could get it.
His day was almost tolerable.
After beta shift the next day, his temperature seemed to have righted itself, but he could not achieve an acceptable meditative state, and he perceived a slight nausea, even momentary sweating, which kept him from the necessary focus.
Humans were susceptible to various maladies that had similar symptoms; the most common culprits were sure to be influenza or the common cold. He had never succumbed before, but he knew that in the limited and recycled atmosphere of a starship, a comparable virus could be expected to infect a significant percentage of the crew. It was not completely out of the question that he should contract a human illness, but the more he contemplated the possibility, the more he believed it illogical. After all, the crew was mostly intact - minor injuries and scant illnesses, none resembling his, represented those currently in treatment by the medical staff.
Spock tried to go deeper into meditation, but his thinking was scattered, his breath out of line with the pace of his thoughts. And then - there, in the recesses of his mind, he became aware of what was left of his bond to T’Pring. It was merely a ragged stump, a limb torn off.
Spock’s eyes snapped open. There would be no meditation until his bonding cortex healed, but he estimated that it should take no longer than three days, less once he could achieve a healing trance. Vulcans recovered from broken bonds naturally; bonds broken by death or by design, like his, were a normal occurrence, if not a pleasant one.
He would endure.
-
A week after he had his bond torn from him, Spock stared into his view screen at the science station. It gave gas readings of the star system the Enterprise was currently hurtling though before it would reach the site of this cycle’s shore leave. Spock tried to commit them to memory, as was his habit, but found that he was having trouble concentrating and understanding why he should do such a thing. He leaned over his console and addressed Uhura at communications.
“Status of transmissions?”
Uhura glanced at him, curiosity plain on her face. “If I get any, I’ll tell you,” she said.
Spock subsided into his seat. He swiveled around and caught the captain’s eye. Jim smiled at him.
“What’s the word on that space gas, Mr. Spock?”
Sulu snorted, and Spock saw Chekov throw an elbow into his ribs. Behind them, Jim rolled his eyes and sent Spock a commiserating look.
“As expected, Captain.” He couldn’t remember the precise percentages, but Jim had never asked for those before anyway. “And this star system appears remarkably free of detritus. We’ll fly unencumbered, like a soaring eagle.”
Jim hid a smile in his hand. Unsuccessfully. “Thanks for the update, Mr. Spock. Carry on.”
A dismissal if ever he heard one. Delivered mockingly, which Jim had not done since their inauspicious beginnings, but Spock could not be sure he interpreted that tone correctly. Spock turned back to his viewer without bothering to suppress his sigh. Face pressed into the eyepiece, Spock closed his eyes.Just for a moment, he told himself. Just until this fuzz, this noise, goes away.
“Captain!” Uhura’s voice, and Spock himself seemed to be tipping to the side, but he caught himself and managed to remain upright. The bridge swam around him, and his inner eyelid drooped, beyond his control. Jim appeared at his side, propping him up, a dizzying proximity.
“Spock, are you all right? I’m taking you to sickbay.”
Spock sagged against his captain even as he said, “I am well, Captain, no need for histrionics.”
But Jim’s arm remained tight across his shoulders, and Uhura’s eyes were brown and concerned and warm, taking up all the space on the bridge, in the universe.
“Eyes are dilated, balance is off,” he heard her say. “And I’d put money on temporary cognitive impairment.”
“All right, Mr. Spock, you and me are headed to sickbay. Up you get.”
Spock clutched at Jim’s sleeve, stricken. “No, Jim, no.”
Jim, frowning. He squeezed his bicep. “Come on, Spock, you don’t hate McCoy that much. Let’s go.”
“Captain. Let me.” Uhura stood before him once again, shoulders squared, eyebrows lifted: the communications officer in her element brooked no argument. “Spock? Listen to me. You’re going to sickbay whether you want to or not, either on a hovering gurney or under your own power, your choice.”
Spock focused hard on the tip of her nose. He righted himself and pushed his shoulders back. “I am ready to proceed to sickbay, Lieutenant.”
“Glad to hear it, Commander.”
Jim led them out while the rest of the bridge crew stayed intent at their stations, perfectly willing to pretend that Spock’s outburst never occurred. Human, illogical, and something Spock acknowledged that he would be wholly grateful for when this episode passed. Such a trespass would not have gone undissected on Vulcan Past; it would have been forever picked apart and peered at with the usual Vulcan precision, and never forgotten, never forgiven. It would be logical, after all, to file away the information of some infirmity, to call it back whenever there came a disagreement so one party could discredit the other. Much like the abject offense of being human. Half. Mongrel.
Spock liked humans. Even the one that manhandled him onto a cot and called him a “damned stubborn mule of a hobgoblin.”
“Bones, he was fine yesterday,” Jim said, and Spock could see his face, hovering above him, eyebrows thick and drawn down. McCoy twisted up his whole face and sent Jim a wild eyebrow of his own.
“Oh, and I suppose you think illness just announces itself politely like a visiting dignitary.” He gave a dramatic roll of his eyes. “You know better than that, Jim. Especially with this one. He’s probably known something was off for days and tried to logic it away.” McCoy prodded Spock with the tricorder that was still whirring away at his side. “Hey. How’ve you been feeling the last few days?”
Spock ventured a swipe of his tongue over his teeth. He tried to think of one, but there was no other word for it: “Fuzzy,” he said. “But functional. Am I no longer functional? Am I error codes and overheated hardware?”
Above him Jim’s face pinched inward and McCoy’s mouth flattened. McCoy placed two fingertips at Spock’s temple. Calm - McCoy felt calm, and Spock could feel him. Cool and calm. A consummate professional, for all his flaws, for all the differences between them.
“This damned tricorder - it’s a flaw, but it’s calibrated to human-normal, and it’s not telling me the right things. It says you’ve got an imbalance, Spock. But it’s- not hormones, or anything. It’s something else. It’s almost like you’re slowly bleeding out, but, well, you haven’t sprung a leak anywhere I can tell.”
“Oh my God, what?” But neither Spock nor McCoy paid Jim any mind.
“Vulcan telepathy,” Spock said. McCoy’s hand dropped away and he nodded.
“You know what’s wrong already.”
“It should not be wrong. It should be… well. Functional. That it is not is an anomaly. Homily. Hominy.”
Spock watched Jim and McCoy exchange glances. Gruffly McCoy patted his shoulder.
“All right, Spock,” McCoy hushed him. “Well. I’ve called M’Benga in for a look at you, and we’ll see what we can do about a vid conference with a Vulcan healer. You should rest up here.”
McCoy jerked his head to indicate to Jim that he should follow him out, but Spock caught his sleeve. They both turned back to him. Blue eyes, hazel eyes, kaleidoscope color.
“I would prefer to coalesce in my own quarters.”
McCoy’s face split wide to accommodate a toothy grin, but Jim scowled and hissed “don’t laugh at him, dick,” into McCoy’s ear. But Spock had big ears, good for catching quiet mouse things.
“Can’t mind you if you’re on your own, Spock,” McCoy said.
“Sickbay smells of… sickbay.” Spock couldn’t contain a full-body shudder, and McCoy looked long-suffering.
“Spock, I can’t leave you alone, and I can’t spare a member of my staff to be at a single patient’s beck and call, even the first officer.”
“Bones,” Jim interjected. “We’re just flying through empty space here. I could take the rest of alpha off, sit with him. Make sure he doesn’t get into anything or try to do work like a total overachiever.”
McCoy turned to Jim and stared at him hard. In that stare was a silent communication Spock couldn’t parse out. He itched to push a fingertip to McCoy’s wrist so he could understand too, understand Jim. From this vantage, Spock had an optimal view of both men’s mandibles - McCoy’s sharp, perhaps with a day’s worth of stubble, held at an angle Spock might call ‘defiant.’ And Jim’s - first the muscles ticked, then the entire jawline flushed pink.
“It’ll be fine, Bones,” Jim bit out after a moment’s passing. “I’ll be fine. And mind your own.”
McCoy crossed his arms and turned back to look at Spock with an exaggerated scowl. Then a big finger was in his face, waving away.
“Your captain spoils you, Spock,” he said. “I hope you can appreciate it. And you’re waiting ’til M’Benga gets here, at any rate. He might be able to prescribe something so your thinking’s clearer.”
With some effort Spock managed to move his head enough that McCoy was no longer the only thing he could see.
Jim smiled at him.
-
M’Benga diagnosed Spock with an improperly broken bond.
“But T’Pring is a professional,” Spock said. And he believed that she would not deliberately harm him, despite all that had come between them.
M’Benga merely shook his head and regarded him with a significant measure of pity. “Not with work like this she isn’t. You’re going to need to see a healer, not just speak to one.”
He hypoed Spock with a compound designed to treat the symptoms of an improperly broken bond, but it would do nothing to treat the cause, and he would have to have it administered every six hours. There was nothing for it but to be patched at the source. Spock tried to think of the quickest way to a healer - a passenger craft from the pleasure planet was his likeliest chance, either to Earth or to Uzh-Ah’rak. Earth was closer from this sector, but Uzh-Ah’rak likely boasted more healers. On either planet, the healers were sure to be overworked and careworn. Spock supposed it didn’t matter either way - he couldn’t go alone in his condition, and Jim seemed to have appointed himself Spock’s minder. Spock would go wherever Jim deemed it convenient.
When Spock was safely ensconced in his quarters, he said as much to Jim. He sat on his bed, tea in hand and blanket about shoulders, because apparently Jim had decided to make a fuss.
“What do you mean, you have no preference?” Jim asked. He pulled a chair up to the foot of Spock’s bed and kicked his feet up. “I figured there’d be more healers on New Vulcan, better ones. And don’t you have people to see, progress to check out, stuff like that?”
“This is hardly a pleasure trip, Jim,” Spock said. “I do not wish to take up more of your time than I already have. Your shore leave -”
“Is no big deal, Spock, I already told you. And Scotty can handle command for the next little bit. That’s settled, then - we’re going to New Vulcan.” Jim cocked his head. “Wouldn’t you do the same for me? If I were the one who needed to go somewhere?”
“Of course,” Spock said without hesitation. There was no question.
Jim nodded. “Yeah. And you’d swear it wouldn’t trouble you, either.”
“It would be no burden.”
Jim gestured outward with one sweep of his hand. “So there you are. This is… what friends do for each other.”
“Cross star systems?”
“No sweat.”
They shared a moment’s accord, Jim grinning, Spock letting the muscles of his face relax. In the other room Spock’s replicator beeped, and Jim got up to collect the cup of hot chocolate he programmed. When he returned to his seat, he blew on it and took a sip, then grimaced so thoroughly it must have been physically painful.
“It’s getting better,” he choked.
“Your expression indicates otherwise,” Spock said, craning his neck to eye the black sludge.
“You wouldn’t believe what I was dealing with before.”
Spock had some idea. He remembered variations on a theme: faux-chocolate in a mug like pebbles, like dirt, like sand. The tender pink tip of Jim’s tongue, darting out to taste the mixture, always with explosive results.
“So,” Jim said, his voice overloud between the sleek bulkheads. “Do I get to know what’s wrong or should I make up something really bizarre to occupy myself?”
“It is… private,” Spock told him. The blue of Jim’s eyes dimmed and he tucked his nose back into the hot chocolate. His smile had devolved into something forced and painful, and he stared resolutely at a bit of bedding by his knee. Hastily, Spock added, “so it must not go beyond this room.”
Jim perked and pulled his chair up closer to the head of Spock’s bed. He leaned his elbows on his knees and looked into Spock’s face expectantly.
Where to start? In truth, it started with Spock’s kahs-wan, when he proved himself worthy of a mate and the name Vulcan. Or maybe the story really began millions of years ago, when modern Vulcans first evolved, when pon farr first ravaged the fierce warriors of a different era. But Spock was not certain Jim required the ‘history lesson,’ as humans often referred to such things with sneers in their voices. He would make it as concise as possible.
“Vulcans who possess a certain level of social status are betrothed to one another as children by the dictates of tradition,” he began, “and this is accomplished through a mental link called a bond, which functions, essentially, as an organ in the Vulcan body. Due to biology, all adult Vulcans are required to have a bond, though, as you might imagine, there is still a twenty percent divorce rate among Vulcans who prove incompatible. A successful bond is prized among Vulcans, venerated, even.” The thought that he would never have one made him ache somewhere that did not have a name.
“So… you were one of these children,” Jim filled in. “You were engaged.”
“More than engaged,” Spock said. “She was… my only companion. My wife. I had believed… ridiculous, romantic things. Human things, I suppose.”
Jim’s mouth took a mournful downward turn.
“You loved her, Spock. That’s not a crime.”
Spock let himself lift his shoulder in a tiny shrug. He had wanted all of T’Pring’s attentions on him, had wanted, in some ways, to consume her, to be consumed by her. It had been an overwhelming feeling that, at the time, he had tried to deny out of deference to Vulcan non-emotion. But he was more than ten years removed from it, and now that he felt the same stirrings again for the man beside him, he did not want to damn himself by labeling it as that most tumultuous of human emotions, that thing he had seen burn bright and hot before exploding, or fizzling to embers, leaving everything in its path scorched and destroyed no matter how it ended.
“She loves another,” he said, “and has since we were young. The time came that she could no longer delay their bond. Thus, she severed the connection between us. However, it seems to have gone awry, resulting in trauma to the bonding cortex in my brain.”
“Why?” Jim asked then, voice harsh. “Why couldn’t she delay it enough to wait for you to pop over to New Vulcan and do it without making you bleed to death? Whoever she is, Spock, she doesn’t sound like that great of a catch to me.” Jim sat back in the chair with his arms crossed over his chest, lower lip protruding obscenely.
In his weakened state, Spock felt two things: gratitude that someone, that Jim, should feel so protective of him, and annoyance at the fact that Jim couldn’t understand how T’Pring’s hand was forced, couldn’t see beyond his esteem for Spock into T’Pring’s situation. Couldn’t understand Vulcans - their bodies, their bonds.
“She had little choice,” Spock said.
“Yeah, I don’t buy that,” Jim said. “Whatever’s happening now, it could have all been avoided if she’d just gotten a quickie divorce when she realized she didn’t want to be with you.” Jim shook his head. “There’s this thing I’ve noticed - people do and say horrible, unspeakable things to the people they care about, things they would never dream of doing to a complete stranger on the street. What is that? If you love someone, shouldn’t you cherish them, treat them, well, kindly? I don’t get it, Spock, and I never have.” He hitched up his shoulders and glanced at Spock’s eyes before his gaze skittered away. He was self-conscious of a sudden, Spock realized, as if only now aware he’d said too much. He hunched in on himself and dropped his eyes to the deck. “Whatever. Glad I don’t do the relationship thing.”
“In our case, it is more complicated than you posit,” Spock told him. “There is-” Spock took a deep breath and sighed. “There is the matter of the biology of the Vulcan male. A time of great shame.” Jim’s eyes flicked back up to his. “It is the pon farr, the time of mating.”
Those eyes grew huge and round. “Seriously?”
Spock broke eye contact and stared straight ahead at the bulkhead opposite his bed. Another deep inhale.
“Once every seven years, the Vulcan male descends into the plak tow, the blood fever. He must mate - or die. The first pon farr is unpredictable - this is why children are bonded, so the bond can settle and be strong enough to sate the male when his Time comes, even if it comes early. The bondmate holds the life of the stricken male in her hands.”
“Vulcans are secretly kinky, this is so awesome.”
Spock sent him a quelling arched eyebrow, and Jim ducked his chin back down to hide - again unsuccessfully - a smile.
“Sorry.”
“As I was saying,” Spock continued pointedly, “the sexual component of pon farr can be the source of some amusement and speculation, especially amongst children who are learning about it for the first time, but sex is, even in a society dedicated to logic, something of a fact of reality: not much spoken of, but frequently engaged in nonetheless. The true source of shame in pon farr is the loss of control. In pon farr, a Vulcan has no logic, no regard for the sanctity of life. He will rage, he will kill, anything to get to his mate. He is a savage beast, a throw-back to a less evolved time. If he is not sated, in flesh as well as in mind, he will perish. All Vulcans are taught at an early age that it is a most harrowing ordeal.”
“I get it,” Jim said, sober once more. “Your… wife stayed bonded to you as a favor. In case you went into pon farr and needed her.”
Spock nodded. He closed his eyes and set his head back on the bulkheads, suddenly exhausted. When he opened his eyes again, Jim was peering at him intently.
“She has an admirable measure of integrity, and she is not without compassion for me, though she does not wish to be bonded to me. I believe that if my need arose, she would have done her duty, and then requested a breaking of our bond, which would have been her right. When her chosen entered pon farr himself, she could wait no longer. Though she is a practitioner of telepathic healing, she must have been… wrong-footed in her haste. I do not begrudge her this. Do you understand now, Jim?”
Jim frowned, but slowly he nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Man, you’re way more forgiving than I would be. You’re dying, Spock.”
Spock let the corners of his mouth rise minutely. “Only in the existential sense, Jim. With the requisite medical care, I will be, as humans say, proper as precipitation.”
Jim blinked at him. “God, I missed your jokes,” he said. He was not smiling, though. “I wish we-”
“What, Jim?”
Jim’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he looked away. He took a swig of his drink.
“Nothing, Spock. We should hang out more. Like buddies do.”
Spock found that he no longer wished to keep himself from this man. Even if being close without the permission to touch would be akin to masochism. Even if he had to watch him pursue woman after woman, again and again, right before his eyes. It would be worth it, to be near him.
“Perhaps,” Spock ventured, “during the next shore leave, we could rent an air car.”
Jim slouched back into his chair, demeanor considerably lightened.
“I’d like that, Spock,” he said.
-
“I do not require coddling,” T’Pring said when Stonn brought her a bowl of fruit native to Uzh-Ah’rak. She lay in bed two days after Stonn had passed out of pon farr safe and whole. And bonded. She had taken leave from her duties at the Center for Telepathic Linguistics and intended to use the full week. Nonetheless, there was a padd in her lap.
“It is my right to coddle you as I see fit,” he replied. He pushed back the covers and climbed in alongside her. He lay his head on her shoulder and put his arm around her waist, careful not to jostle the padd. “Patient files?”
“Indeed. Take care not to look at them.”
Stonn hummed out some kind of agreement and turned his face away, only to start trailing his lips over her shoulder, her chest, her breast. T’Pring set the padd aside and sighed, carding her fingers through his hair.
“I had expected the cycle would ease your insatiability for some time.”
“I must admit to a certain amount of satisfaction when you are wrong, my ko-eik-te’krusu.” He sucked on her nipple, cupped the other breast and pinched the nipple there. T’Pring clutched him closer, her legs falling open, and Stonn moved atop her. She felt her loins go liquid as he fit into the cradle of her pelvis. Her palms absorbed the muscular width of his shoulders, the strong line of his back, the hard swell of his diminutive buttocks.
“How did I find such an unsupportive bondmate?” Between them, their bond bloomed open, a desert breeze, thrumming with life. Matching heartbeats.
“Choice,” he said as he slid inside her. She arched her back, forced him deeper, clasped him closer. “Always by choice, ashayam.”
-
The disorder of the space port on Amilin IV, the pleasure planet on which the crew was taking five days’ worth of leave, threatened to overwhelm Spock. His brain buzzed at his proximity to the rush and bustle of activity, the press of hundreds of harried bodies. Sometimes, despite his best efforts to keep his exposed hands close to his body, someone’s skin would brush against his and there would be a spark, a hiss, a recognition; unsolicited intimacy that stung the open wound of his bonding cortex. Abruptly, Spock was reminded of his roommate at Starfleet Academy, an underachiever of the highest order. While Spock was attempting quiet study, the other cadet would often moan, “I can’t read anymore, dude, my brain is totally fried,” and Spock would check for smoke before he realized halfway through the first semester that the phraseology was merely an example of illogical Standard idiom that he would never quite comprehend like a native speaker.
In the crush of the crowd, Spock suddenly understood his former roommate, who had made Lieutenant in the end, who had been someone whom Spock had managed not to alienate completely in his first year. Spock had even attended his funeral in western Montana. His grandmother had hugged him.
When Jim finally appeared at his side after checking in at the New Vulcan transportation desk, Spock tugged his sleeve - a t-shirt, civilian wear - and Jim obligingly leaned his ear close to Spock’s mouth.
“My brain is totally fried,” Spock said into that seashell curve.
Jim drew back, leveled a crooked half-smile at him, and thumped a hand on his shoulder.
“I think you need another hypo, Spock. Let’s get into our cabin. I sprung for first class; it’s gonna be awesome.”
And though Spock had not told Jim the nature of his difficulty with the crowd, with the psychic noise, Jim stuck close to him, forged ahead such that anyone who might touch Spock touched Jim instead. Spock felt the skip of sparks in his abdomen - a feeling. Gratitude. Examined, acknowledged, tucked away. Jim led the way towards the shuttlecrafts that waited to take them to the ship in spacedock.
“Jim. Jim.” He had to raise his voice to be heard.
“Yeah, Spock? We’re almost there, just hang on.”
“Jim, a first class cabin will not be covered by Starfleet per diem.”
Jim tossed an easy smile over his shoulder even as he kept maneuvering them through the crowds.
“Jim. Jim, you mustn’t waste your hard earned credits on me.”
Jim stopped and turned around. He stood closer to Spock than Spock was accustomed to, a protective stance.
“Hey, don’t be like that,” he said. “I wanted to. I’ve always wanted to fly first class - champagne and legroom, right? And it’s not like my salary’s going anywhere else. Seriously Spock, don’t sweat it. My pleasure.”
“I will repay you.”
Jim’s mouth grew droopy and unpleasant, bracketed by frown lines. He turned back around and started forward again, pulling Spock along close to his back by his tunic.
“It’s fine, Spock. Come on - the sooner I can sit you down the sooner I can stick you full of meds.”
-
First class was a sprawling, well-scrubbed deck on the starboard side of the small passenger ship Helena. Aside from four corridors with private passenger cabins, there was also a dining room, practically gilt in its ostentation; a recreation room with gym equipment and table tennis; a modest cinema scheduled to show family-friendly holofilms during the day and darker fare in the evenings; and a lounge, complete with fully-stocked bar, plenty of couch space, card tables, and private nooks that would still receive service from the staff. Said staff operated all over the first class deck, striking a curious balance between unobtrusive and obsequious that Spock found both disconcerting and faintly irritating.
The very fact of those states of being were a testament to his illness. He grew weaker each day, his mind duller, his sense of balance tenuous, his ability to regulate his temperature in tumult. He needed M’Benga’s hypo with more frequency - he was up to one every four hours, even during resting periods. And of course, Jim would hear nothing of Spock attending to himself; Jim was awake, alert and without a complaint on his lips, no matter when Spock required his medication.
The trip to Uzh-Ah’rak was scheduled to take four days, three nights, and Spock had not meditated in almost ten standard days. He was deteriorating with increasing speed, and he knew he could not hide it from Jim for much longer. Perhaps Jim would see fit to while away the travel time in the cinema or making friends in the lounge, and would not notice if Spock rested in their cabin for the duration of the trip. Spock’s captain was a gregarious man, a man who enjoyed company both platonic and intimate, a man who attracted admiration everywhere he went. He couldn’t help it. It was written into his DNA, the fabric of his character, like the blue eyes, the bronze hair, the pinkish tone of his fair skin, the breadth of his shoulders, that laugh, rich and intoxicating. Yes - Spock would encourage Jim to socialize among the other passengers, and he would be spared the knowledge and helplessness of Spock’s decline.
Four days to Uzh-Ah’rak and a healer.
-
Spock lay curled on his bunk facing the bulkheads when the door to the cabin whooshed open. The blanket was pulled over his ears.
“Spock?” Jim’s voice - of course. “Why don’t you come to the lounge with me? There’s some quiet spots, and we can have snacks. Spock?”
“I am fatigued, Jim,” Spock said. He didn’t turn to face his captain. “And not in need of refreshment.”
He heard the door close and then there was a depression on his bed, Jim’s meager human warmth palpable even through the blankets. Spock gave a violent shiver, and then he couldn’t stop.
“Hey,” Jim murmured. Spock felt him rub a hesitant hand over Spock’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m gonna turn the temperature up.”
Jim got up and Spock heard him fiddle with the temperature controls. Suddenly, an acute longing came upon Spock for the Enterprise, with her voice commands, her familiar replicator glitches, her particular smell.
There was some shuffling - Jim peeling off layers, maybe even down to just his undergarments. It would be much warmer than a human accustomed to cold winters and air conditioned summers would be used to.
“You need not stay,” Spock said.
“Spock. I’m staying.”
“The lounge -”
“Will still be there in a couple hours.” Spock heard him puff out a long exhale and shift on his bunk. “Now I can sit here and be quiet while you take a nap, or we can talk. Which would you rather?”
Spock didn’t say anything for a moment. He would not sleep at this hour, and there was no hope for meditation. Without Jim, there would be only this wall, these wracking shudders, this hemorrhaging bond.
“Talk,” he said.
“Okay. So. What do you wanna talk about?”
“Tell me… something I do not know.”
A huff of disbelieving laughter.
“Man, Spock. That’s a tall order. What am I supposed to say?”
“Relate an anecdote. Humans enjoy sharing humorous, incredible, or curious accounts from their pasts.”
“You’re asking me to tell you about myself. Are you going to reciprocate?”
Spock made the effort to flip over onto his other side. He pulled the blanket down enough to stick his nose out and peer at Jim. Indeed, Jim was down to his boxer-briefs, supine on his bunk. His head rested in the cradle of his linked hands atop the pillow, and Spock could see wisps of brownish underarm hair. He made the perfect picture of human masculine beauty, and inwardly, Spock ached. Jim blinked at him, guileless, open.
“I will endeavor to find a comparable anecdote to share, yes.”
When Jim smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled pleasantly. If Spock had been closer, he may not have been able to stop himself, in his weakened state, from reaching out and pressing a fingertip into the tiny creases.
“Awesome,” Jim said. “I’ll make it something good then. Let’s see.” Jim brought his arms down to cross over the fine musculature of his chest, and he braced his chin in the meat at the base of his thumb, fingers drumming at his lips. “All right, Spock. You’ll appreciate this.
“The summer I was twelve, my step-dad sent me and my brother to science camp in Illinois. Not even somewhere decent like Chicago, you know, just over the border from Iowa, like if we just weren’t in his state he didn’t have to think about us. Anyway, science camp was dull; I knew everything they tried to get us to learn about, Sam pretended he didn’t know me, and the other kids were mostly dorks. Except for this one girl, Carol Marcus.” Jim gave a long, appreciative sigh and Spock’s heart sank. Not only did he have to watch Jim on his conquests, he had to listen to him enumerate them, too. “She was a year older than me and about ten times cooler. A million times cooler than the other kids. She was smart, too, and she never cared if we had to dissect something; she liked it, she was good at it. She’d even brought her own dissection kit, which was so awesome. When everyone had to introduced themselves, she said she was going to be a scientist, and she was going to catalogue all sorts of animals from all sorts of planets, even discover new species.” A short laugh. “File her under Crush Object #1 - and she didn’t even know I was alive. Obviously.
“So one day we were scheduled for a hike at some reconstituted state park, I don’t remember the name, and it was going to be just totally boring, I mean, slow walking along the big trails with lots of stops to eat or pee or look at something we already knew all about. Obviously they should have broken up the groups by age or something, so the little kids could go slower, or for less time, or whatever, but - hindsight 20/20 and all. Anyway, there we are walking along when I see it, about forty feet out: a badger. Hiding, you know, just shuffling around, but they’re not really supposed to be awake during the day. So I duck out from the group; the counselors were always looking after the little kids, making sure they didn’t do something dumb. Guess they forgot no one’s really exempt from being a dumbass, no matter what their age. So I’m going and I’m going, trying to follow this badger but I can’t find it, and then I’m totally alone. Can’t hear the group, can’t hear voices, nothing. And I wasn’t scared, I was relieved. I thought to myself: I can totally forage for food, build a campfire, set up some kind of lean-to, maybe even a latrine. I’ll just stay here all night and look up at the stars, and no one else will even be there to bother me, or whisper about my dad, or push me around. So I began to look for a good place to set up camp.
“Then, all of the sudden, there’s this crash in the brush, and out comes Carol friggin’ Marcus with her hair all tangled and messed up, sunburned, her backpack sort of half off. She’s like, ‘what are you doing here?’ like she’s not the one who just stumbled onto my campground like a deranged bear. So I’m all suave, you know, this is my moment. ‘Camping out,’ I said. ‘You can stay, if you want.’ Jesus, Spock. I mean what exactly was I gonna do with an older, cooler, smarter girl out in the woods?” Jim shook his head, the corner of his mouth curled up in a rueful smile. “But miracle of miracles, she goes ‘yeah, okay,’ and sits down next to me. I’m just staring at her, because I had nothing else in my arsenal, and she looks like an angel, all streaked with dirt like that. Then she goes, ‘hey, wanna see something cool?’ Duh. Obviously. Have you met me? So she leads me out of my camp and down through all these trees and it looks like no one’s ever been there but us and then - surprise! Dead armadillo.”
Both of Spock’s eyebrows flew up. “Jim, armadillos are endangered on the North American continent.”
Jim nodded. “Yeah, and they have been for like hundreds of years before we were born. So anyway Carol Marcus says she found it before, and she wants to dissect it but she didn’t bring her kit. I was all, ‘don’t worry - James T. Kirk to the rescue’. My kit’s just camp issue, kind of crap, especially compared to hers, but whatever. And no shit, Spock, she legit starts doing an autopsy on this thing. Had a Y-incision on it like it was no big deal, like it wasn’t covered tip to tail in armor. She’s all ‘respiratory arrest,’ ‘probably rabies,’ when one of the counselors finally shows up and starts screaming at us, hauls us by up the ears like it’s a Victorian novel, and drags us back to the group. Anyway, long story short, we were punished by being kept from the stupid after dinner activities no one ever wants to do anyway, and we were given these gigantic rabies hypos, and our parents were called and everything, and Carol Marcus didn’t even look at me for the rest of camp. Never found out what happened to her after that summer, either.” Spock caught the note of wistfulness in Jim’s voice.
Carol Marcus did not sound like Jim’s usual choice of paramour. She sounded intelligent and self-reliant, living comfortably outside the bounds of social norms and the more attractive to Jim for it. Jesting lines sent in Uhura’s direction aside, Jim’s ‘type’ had seemed, before this revelation, to run toward the vapid and large-breasted. Spock reordered what he had previously believed about Jim’s companions, placed ‘intellect’ and ‘independence’ at the top of his mental list of data.
“Your turn, Spock,” Jim said, and Spock’s gaze snapped back to his. “Quid pro quo.”
Spock pulled the blanket down further so that his chin was uncovered. He was warming up, anyway. He cast about for a comparable anecdote - a wild land, a girl loved in the way of innocents - and there was only one.
“I once participated in a similar survival exercise,” he said. “It is called the kahs-wan, and it is a rite of passage for all young Vulcans.”
“Oh, that sounds fun.”
Spock shrugged. “Participants must survive ten days in a desert canyon called The Forge without food, water, or weapons. If they meet with success, they are deemed worthy of forging a marriage link.”
“Hold up.” Jim gesticulated at him. “You said the other day you got engaged when you were little.”
“That is correct,” Spock replied. “I was seven standard years of age. I entered the challenge a year early without informing my parents, in a bid to prove wrong the constant taunts of my peers.” Again, a shrug. “It was foolish, and motivated by emotion rather than logic, but it was very long ago, Jim.”
Jim sat up and faced him. His torso glistened in the low lighting; he was probably overheated, and yet he said nothing about it. His thick brows were drawn down into a furrow, and he braced his hands on the edge of his bunk.
“Spock. Vulcans send little kids to do survival shit in the desert? Oh my God, what if someone dies?”
“Some do. One or two per year, on average. My cousin Tekshar was one such child… he simply did not return. No body was recovered. It is the way of things. Was.”
Jim looked stricken. His face, previously flushed in the heat, drained and took on a grey, unpleasant pallor.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“Shall I continue my anecdote or are you too preoccupied in questioning my cultural traditions to listen properly?” Spock just barely refrained from pulling the blanket back up and over his eyes in a fit of pique.
“Sorry, Spock. I’m sorry. I’m working on the cultural sensitivity thing, I swear. Go on.” Instead of lying back down, he put his elbows on his knees and rested his chin in his hands, eyes on Spock and unwavering.
“As a child, I had a companion animal, a sehlat, named I’Chaya. He had been with me since birth, and he was very loyal. On the third day of my kahs-wan, I perceived that I was being followed, possibly by a predator. I was… quite small in those days, frequently in and out of healers’ offices, everything about me from my size and my reserve to my logic and my brain turned over and tutted about to the point of acute annoyance. Despite this, I was aware of my physical limitations - I knew I would not survive against the fauna I might meet in the Forge. Wild sehlats, le-matya. The only means I had of overcoming a confrontation with one was trickery. So - I set up a rudimentary trap, little more than a hole in the sand before the cave in which I had taken shelter, and from a higher perch I waited for nightfall, when I knew my pursuer would seek my warmth.
“At the sound of an agonized howl and a great thud, I realized that my trap had worked - but it had captured only my own sehlat, I-Chaya. He had followed me from the house of my father, fending off predators without my knowledge. I rushed down to the mouth of the cave to meet him, and he rose from my trap as if it had been a mere dip in the sand. I was very fortunate that he had not been a predator after all. However, despite his ease with escaping my trap, he had sustained a sprain to one of his back paws, the left. I apologized to him and led him into the cave, where I huddled against his warmth. He… he was very dear to me.” Spock pulled his knees up against the threat of his voice breaking. More than anything in this moment, he wished for his control to be restored to him. “On the final night before the completion of my kahs-wan, a le-matya attacked me while I’Chaya was some ways off in search of water.”
“Oh, no,” Jim murmured, barely audible. Spock met his eyes and nodded.
“Yes. I was struck down, my face bloodied, my arm broken. I stayed as still as I could manage - le-matya were known for detecting their prey through movement rather than traditional sight or smell, but the damage was done, as a human might say. The le-matya sprung into action, but never met its mark. I-Chaya had returned, and as I watched, helpless, a fierce battle ensued. I-Chaya managed to deal a fatal blow, fang to belly, but not before the le-matya had perceived his weakness and tripped him by the left hind leg, forcing him to stumble and landing its claws in his throat.
“He did not take long to expire, a fact for which I am still grateful. I stayed with him until morning - the smell of a fight, of the blood of a le-matya and sehlat and their two corpses were enough to keep other predators away. At dawn I left him to return to the outpost, where elders would be waiting for those who had succeeded in completing the kahs-wan. A day later, I was declared a mature Vulcan. A week after that, I was bonded to T’Pring, who had also completed her kahs-wan.”
Jim’s face held open sympathy. “I’m sorry, Spock. About I-Chaya.” Then, in garbled, awkward Vulcan, “I mourn with thee.”
Spock felt his chest constrict to hear the guttural syllables issued from Jim’s throat in all sincerity. He had not been aware that Jim had made a study of the Vulcan language.
“Thank you, Jim.”
“You don’t… I just want you to know you don’t have to tell me anything upsetting just because I’m a bastard who pokes things with sticks. Anything you tell me, Spock, it’s always up to you. Only what you want to.”
Spock pressed his lips together. “I am not ‘upset,’ Jim.”
Blue eyes went wide and Jim shook his head vigorously. “No, no, of course you’re not. I know. I’m just saying. For future reference.”
“I see.”
“Okay. Just so we’re clear.” Jim took a deep breath and when he blew out, he directed the stream of air over the pink, damp skin of his chest. “How are you feeling?”
“My temperature has been regulated,” Spock said. “We can turn down the controls. You are uncomfortable.”
Jim sent him one of his half-smiles, one part flirtatious, two parts self-deprecating. Over time, Spock had learned not to take that expression to mean more than it did. But he was half-naked and flushed and looking at Spock and it was difficult.
“I guess it’s pretty obvious, huh? I’m sweating like a pig over here - gross. Sorry. But hey, we can keep the temperature up. You’re not shivering anymore, but this is better for you anyway, isn’t it?”
Hesitantly, Spock nodded. “But I do not wish to inconvenience-”
“Pshh,” Jim interrupted him. “Stop right there, Spock. There will be no more talk of ‘inconvenience,’ or ‘repayment,’ or ‘taking up my time,’ okay? Besides, Iowa has blazing hot summers, and old houses full of air conditioning in disrepair. I’ve had worse, Spock, and I’ll live.” He threw himself back into his pillows and flung his limbs open. They hung over the edges of the bunks. “So. Wanna get room service?”
Jim harangued Spock into ordering a fruit plate while Jim himself got an array of Earth-style sandwiches. Spock had expressed some confusion over Jim’s rather pedestrian choice - there were delicacies from all over the galaxy available, after all - but Jim just shrugged at him.
“They’ve got real bread here, Spock. All sorts of real food in a real kitchen, actually. But I’m talking about fresh-baked, hot out of the oven stuff. Yeah, I got sandwiches, and I won’t regret a moment of it.”
By the time the chime at the cabin door came, Spock had managed to sit himself upright and was no longer cocooned in the comforter. Jim scrambled from his position on the bunk and pulled on a t-shirt before he answered the door with a wide, lazy grin.
The woman pushing the food cart was in a smart navy uniform.
“Fruit and sandwiches for Captain Kirk?” she asked. Spock watched her eyes follow the lines of Jim’s body straight down to his bare feet and back up. Just a flick of her gaze in the merest fraction of a second, but Spock caught it. He felt heavy, weighted on the bed. The woman was a humanoid female of proportions generally considered pleasing, black hair coiffed, face painted. Spock could not see Jim’s face to gauge his reaction, but he was certain it was favorable. If this interaction proceeded in a similar fashion as shore leave, Spock would be alone in this room tonight, and for the next three nights. He remembered quite forcefully why he had stopped taking shore leave with Jim after all.
“Thanks,” Jim said, and he pulled the cart in. He took her hand to shake it as humans are wont to do, and in that movement he discreetly tapped his credit chip against hers, contained in a bracelet.
“Thank you, Captain Kirk.” She was making eyes at Jim, Spock believed the term was. He crossed his arms over his chest and resisted the frowning pull of his own brows, but Jim merely ushered the staff member out the door with his usual charm and locked it behind her. Then he turned around and clapped his hands together, eyes sparking with delight as he beheld the tray of sandwiches.
“God, can you smell that, Spock? It’s like a bakery exploded in here.” He rubbed his hands together and pulled the cart into the space between their bunks. He peeled his shirt off again and flung it into a far corner before settling on the edge of his bunk and pushing the fruit plate in Spock’s direction. He grabbed one of the delicate little triangles and bit into it heartily. The ensuing obscene noise issued forth from Jim’s throat brought a hot flush to the tips of Spock’s ears. “Oh my God,” Jim said. “Spock. Spock you have to try this.” He plucked another triangle from the same sandwich off of his plate and placed it on Spock’s. “This one’s brie with poached pear and watercress on a baguette. I think I might cry.”
Spock started, but it seemed Jim was merely engaging in the common human linguistic foible known as hyperbole. Mouth full, Jim nonetheless made a wrist-rolling gesture at Spock indicating he should partake of the food before him. Spock reached for a piece of Orion heman’oshk root.
“Will you not follow the flight attendant out?” Spock found himself asking in a fit of masochism. “She was… very attractive. And if I am not mistaken, she made you an offer.”
Jim stopped chewing and the sandwich euphoria left his face. He blinked, finished chewing, and swallowed his mouthful.
“She was okay, I guess,” he said, back slumping. “But I’m chilling here with you. Aren’t you having a decent time, even though you’re sick? Am I bothering you? Do- do you want me to leave you alone, let you get some rest? I could go to the movies or something for a couple hours, ’til your next hypo.”
“No,” Spock said, too loudly. Jim startled back, eyes gone wide. Spock amended his tone. “No. I wish for you to stay.”
Jim’s shoulders relaxed and he gave a single sharp nod. They passed their meal in companionable silence.
Part I | Part II | Part III