Halfway to Anywhere, Part 1
TITLE: Halfway to Anywhere
FANDOM: Star Trek TOS
PAIRING: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
TABLE: # 8 - Miscellaneous B
PROMPT: 05. Desire
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: 7507
SUMMARY: [Set a year after the show, established relationship.] Not every day in space is filled with action and adventure. Kirk is bored and horny, McCoy is too busy to be sympathetic and Spock is okay with everything as long as his reputation doesn’t suffer.
NOTE: Too long for one post, link to the second part at the bottom. Unbetaed. (You’re welcome to point out my mistakes.)
“There are bets going on.” McCoy didn’t waste his breath for a greeting, but then, he rarely did. “Did you know?”
Kirk looked up from his sandwich. “There are always bets going on. You need to be more specific if you want us to answer that question correctly and in the right context.” He took another bite. The chicken sandwich had been almost cold by the time it got delivered to his quarters, and by now the ‘almost’ had also waved goodbye. On the seat opposite to him, his CMO grimaced.
“Do you even notice how much you sound like Spock, Jim? One of him is enough, thank you very much.”
“Must be the bond,” Kirk said with his mouth full. McCoy snorted.
“Well, as long as your etiquette is underdeveloped like that, I guess there’s not risk of his personality swallowing yours like that cold sandwich.”
“I assure you, such a risk never existed at any point,” Spock quipped in, sounding slightly insulted.
“How do you know the sandwich is cold?” asked Kirk.
“It always is. Since I came aboard this ship, you have complained five hundred times about Starfleet being marvellous and technologically advanced and not sparing a single credit for keeping the food warm.”
“Exactly two hundred seventy-six times, only counting the occasions on which I was present to witness the complaint.”
“Thank you, Spock, for this fascinating if completely unnecessary bit of information. Anyway, I expect that should the miracle of a warm sandwich occur while I’m still serving on your ship, you’re going to greet me with a kiss and a dance down the corridor. Also, the sandwich I had delivered to my office earlier was cold, and if I had found out that you got a warm one, I would have been forced to kill you in a violent fit of envy. And… Jim, do you by any chance happen to call that ‘lunch’?”
Kirk looked down on his plate, but the transfer of food from his plate to his stomach was already one hundred percent completed. “What did you call the sandwich you had in your office?”
“I called it a sandwich, Jim. Do I really have to lecture you about the importance of proper nourishment in a stressful job like yours? Again?”
“I fail to see the point of such a conversation, as evidently neither of you is able to listen to this advice,” Spock voiced his opinion.
“Didn’t you say something about a bet?” Kirk hurried to say, before the two of them could gang up on him. “What was it about?”
“Oh, right. Well, it’s got to do with you, Jim.”
“Half of the bets and rumours going on on this ship have to do with me.”
“And half of them are true. Well, I assume you’ll be happy to learn that you are one again the centre of attention.”
“He is.”
Kirk glared at Spock. “Get to the point, Bones. Who am I having an affair with this time?”
“No one. The crew does, however, take bets on who you will eventually end up with, and when. Spock or me.”
“Oh.” Kirk reached for his coffee and found the cup gone. After a brief survey of the room he re-discovered it in McCoy’s hands. “That obvious, is it?”
“On the contrary, Jim,” Spock said. “As you will notice, the formulation of the bet, as well as the fact that it exists at all, does indicate that the actual existence of our relationship still remains undiscovered by the rest of the crew. And as for its nature…”
“There should be a rule against betting on the private lives of your commanding officers,” Kirk growled, not letting him finish.
“There is, Jim. That’s why you haven’t heard of it yet.” McCoy took a sip from the coffee and made a sound of disgust. “This is cold! I don’t believe it! Millennia of technological advancement and Starfleet still hasn’t got its priorities in order.”
Over the bond he shared with Spock, Kirk sensed the Vulcan’s irritation, mingled with amusement and affection; a peculiar mix of feelings only Bones ever invoked.
“Well, fortunately we have you to inform us about everything interesting that comes up,” he observed. McCoy snorted.
“You bet? You don’t hear half of it.” Which was probably true. The crew had its own layer of communication, somewhere below the level of the attention of their commanding officers and department heads. There was an unspoken agreement in all Federation vessels that the people of higher rank would not try to listen in on private conversation that involved a lot of laughter and fell silent when they entered the room, as long as the crew kept its part of the deal and didn’t kill them to take over the ship. For generations it had worked.
That McCoy, despite being a ranking officer and a department head, still got to hear most of them had to do with his working place. Everything eventually ended up in sickbay. Is was as inevitable as the rising of Spock’s eyebrows right this moment, as he and Kirk exchanged a glance.
Asking for further information about the rumours they did not get to hear would have been useless, however. The one reason why McCoy learned about them in the end was the fact that he did not always share his knowledge with his captain and first officer.
“What are the odds?” Kirk asked.
“What do you care? As you are in control of the outcome, you‘re not allowed to participate anyway. Although I was wondering if I should take my chances. You wouldn’t mind declaring your undying love for each other on next shore leave, would you?”
“Leonard, as you are well aware, we have already ‘declared our undying love for each other’ quite often in the past, and there is a probability of ninety-one percent for us to do so again before next shore leave.”
McCoy rolled his eyes. “In public, Spock. Otherwise there is no point.”
“Except for informing the other of our undying love for them, you mean?” Kirk didn’t bother suppressing a smile.
“Such an action would be highly unwise in regard to our future careers, not to mention our chances of continued serving together,” Spock pointed out helpfully. This time even Kirk rolled his eyes.
Are you actually doing that on purpose? he asked over the bond, because bond or no bond, sometimes he simply couldn’t tell.
Spock blinked innocently at him in response.
If Bones took notice of their wordless exchange, he chose to ignore it. “Maybe,” he admitted with a gleam in his eyes. “But I would get some money out of it.”
“May I ask, Leonard, why you would put your money on me?” Spock wanted to know. “To my knowledge of the rumours circling amongst the crew, more people enjoy speculations concerning an intimate relationship between Jim and me than think he might be involved with you. Surely your financial gain would be greater if you put your money on yourself.”
“Sure, but it’s not worth the trouble.” McCoy graciously waved the comment away. “Because of the career damage and all that. Besides, once you came out, all attention will be on you and they’ll leave me in peace.”
“I admit, there is a certain logic to your argumentation. Even if semantically it lacks grace.”
Kirk snorted. “Excuse me, did I miss something? Bones proposes to ruin our lives and you call him logical? I think I need a drink on that. Or two.” He’d been planning on a drink anyway, and this offered a good excuse.
McCoy raised his eyebrows. “Are you off shift?”
“Yes, Bones. As are you. We both had the alpha shift, remember?”
“Right.” The doctor rubbed his eyes. His shoulders slumped, and suddenly he looked a lot less energetic. “You have no idea what a day I’ve been having.”
“Enlighten us.”
“Read the report from sickbay.”
“I’m off duty. And so is Spock.”
“There’s a disease spreading through the ship.” Seeing Kirk’s eyes go wide, McCoy hurried to add, “Nothing dangerous, mind you. It seems to be little more than an itchy irritation of the skin, but we haven’t seen this one before, and need to figure out what to do with it, not to mention how it spreads.”
“How many are infected?”
“Twenty seven, so far. M’Benga and I are quite optimistic that we’ll have a vaccine ready by morning. But until then try not to kiss anyone who scratches themselves a lot.” The sigh he let out sounded a lot like a groan. “I swear, if this turns out to be a VD, I’m going to kick every single infected out of the airlock.”
“When did it start?”
“According to the first ensign who showed up with it about two days ago. Just after we returned from Amazonia.”
The look Kirk and McCoy exchanged as they recalled that particular mission didn’t need a mental bond to translate into words. It probably was a VD.
“The correct name of that planet is Alnilam Seven,” Spock felt the need to remind them. Both Kirk and McCoy ignored him.
“I’m off to take a shower,” the doctor proclaimed and disappeared in the bathroom that connected the captain’s quarters with those of his first officer since a somewhat explosive gaseous creature had wrecked his old ones. It had been a convenient excuse to ‘move in with Spock’, as McCoy called it. Finding an explanation for Bones to spend his nights at their place had been a little more difficult, but eventually a shape shifting gelatinous blob from a world close to the Great Barrier had set his bed on fire (for reasons neither Kirk nor Spock had ever been able to find out and Bones was reluctant to talk about), and his friends had graciously offered him a place to sleep.
Officially he was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, or alone in Kirk’s bed if the captain was away. The latter was true too often for Kirk’s liking, as their shifts didn’t always run at the same time.
The best thing about living here, Bones couldn’t tell them often enough, was the fact that their shower was offering real, wet water as an alternative to the sonic version. And since Spock never used it anyway, no one could complain that between the three of them they were wasting too much water.
Usually, McCoy took his time with this luxury he had to go without for so long. But this time he emerged after little more than five minutes, dressed once again in his uniform.
“Anything wrong with your normal clothes?” Kirk asked, raising an eyebrow at him in question. True, he was still in his uniform himself, but then he didn’t have a reason to take it off so far, and preferred it over civilian clothes anyway, because no one could tell when the next emergency would call him back to the bridge. McCoy, on the other hand, liked to relax in his own trousers, claiming that the uniform never quite sat comfortably.
Spock was in his meditation robes, drinking tea. It was steaming hot, even ten minutes after emerging from the replicator, which was just plain unfair, and indicated that the Vulcan and the replicators were somehow conspiring against Kirk to overthrow him and steal his ship.
Your concern is quite illogical, Spock told him over the mind link, vaguely amused. This tea is not replicated but was made by me in my quarters.
Your coffee would not get cold if you managed to drink it within a sensible amount of time, Spock added, but he was looking at McCoy as he ‘spoke’, watching him with the kind of quiet intensity that always made Kirk’s heart ache in a way that was not entirely unpleasant, yet not entirely enjoyable either.
The Vulcan was trying to figure something out, watching McCoy for all the little signs he would give away without realising it. All his attention was concentrated on this one man, because he had no bond with him to reveal all his feelings.
The doctor flopped down in his chair without answering Kirk’s question. “Really, Jim, we are in need of some serious new rules for landing parties. Your men just run around touching everything they can reach without any caution, and not just with their fingers. ‘Diplomatic mission’ my ass!”
“As I recall it, the ladies there were very diplomatic.” Kirk smirked. He couldn’t really blame his men for wanting to have a little fun, especially if such beautiful women were involved. Of course he hadn’t taken up any of the ladies’ offers himself, being in a proper relationship and all, but, well, he wasn’t blind.
Still, McCoy was right. These men, regardless of the fact that they spend most of their time locked in a tin box in space, should know better than to let themselves get infected with every STD that came with a pretty face.
At the very least they should have the sense not to spread the disease through the entire ship before the routine check up in sickbay.
“Who did you say this started with?” he asked. Bones grunted.
“I didn’t, and I won’t, as you very well know. As long as you don’t give these boys and girls some proper orders to follow, you don’t have any right to know.”
His hair was still slightly damp, underlining how little time he had wasted on the shower this time. At least he looked a little less tired.
Kirk himself felt more exhausted than he had any right to be after a shift during which pretty much nothing happened. It was the boredom that got to him. In times of crisis, the adrenaline kept him going far beyond the point of exhaustion, but during the eventless journeys between one star and the next the hours seemed to pile up and sit on him until his bones were aching with the weight.
Across the table, Spock looked as rested and alive as always. His Vulcan genes allowed him to go without a break for much longer than any human, but in between disasters he didn’t have to. Starfleet regulations were quite strictly against discriminating against alien crew members by letting them work more than the human ones simply because they could.
It was rare for the three of them to be off shift at the same time, and Kirk was determined to make use of the opportunity.
Over the bond, he could feel Spock’s quiet approval.
His Vulcan lover got up without a word to stand behind McCoy, and put the palm of his long fingered hand on the narrow back - all the time watching the doctor with this quiet focus that seemed to make him the centre of his cosmos. The unexpected touch mad McCoy turn his head, startled. As usual, Spock waited until the doctor relaxed under his palm before he brought his other hand to the doctor’s back and started a massage Kirk knew from experience to be very skilled. With a soft groan, Bones let his head fall back.
“You are very tense, Leonard,” Spock said quietly.
“You have no idea,” Bones agreed. With slowly growing arousal, Kirk watched both their faces as Spock’s hands wandered up and down the doctor’s spine, kneaded his shoulders and eventually came to touch the naked skin of his neck. Bones shuddered at the direct physical contact, even though the mental contact it created it was one-sided. Through the bond, Kirk felt the faintest echo of Bones’ feelings - uncoordinated, mingled and contradicting, such a contrast to the well ordered disciplined inside of Spock’s mind. As usual, the second-hand intimacy granted him turned him on, and he felt his desire echoed in Spock.
The contact gave him an idea of Bones’ feelings, but not his thoughts, being restricted to the very surface layer. It was all Kirk’s oldest friend was willing to share with them.
What the captain received from him now was exhaustion, love, vague distress and pleasure caused by the massage Spock was giving him. It wasn’t the kind of pleasure Kirk had been hoping for, however. He was simply enjoying the sensation, slowly relaxing under the touch.
Eventually Spock’s hands wandered lower again, and to Bones’ front where they rubbed his stomach in gentle, relaxing circles before wandering lower still. He bent down to kiss the human’s neck, and Kirk got off his chair, deciding he had watched passively long enough. It was then that Bones suddenly tensed.
“Ah, stop, Spock!” he said, wriggling out of the Vulcan’s grip. “I’m sorry. I just took a shower, and I don’t have time for another.”
“You don’t?” Kirk asked, feeling Spock’s confused disappointment at the reaction as well as his own. (Only in Spock’s case it was confusion and disappointment, well distinguished and each kept in its respective box.) “You’re going somewhere?”
“Yes, Jim. Back to sickbay.”
“Oh?” Now anger got in the mix, but it was Kirk’s alone. From Spock he received merely resignation, as if he had seen this coming. “You agreed not to take any double shifts unless circumstances demand it. In fact, as I recall, I made it an order.”
McCoy scowled, his face a more than sufficient screen for his emotions now Spock no longer served as a link between them. “Circumstances do demand it, Jim.”
“A few cases of VD hardly count as a crisis.”
“First of all, we don’t know yet if it’s really a VD,” his CMO reminded him. “It’s one of the things we need to figure out, because if it spreads any other way, this could quickly become a crisis. Not to mention we need to cure it. Much as I’d love to see you try to fight a battle with half of your crew too busy scratching themselves, it’s a situation I suspect you’d want to avoid.”
“You said you were almost done. Can’t M’Benga and Sanchez handle it on their own? They’re not completely incompetent, you know.”
“Perhaps not, but one doctor needs to be on duty in sickbay, as you will recall, and M’Benga is busy in the lab.”
“Doctor Sanchez…”
“…is infected and isolated from the rest of the crew, along with the other cases. So you can see circumstances do indeed demand my presence.”
“If so, why come here at all?” Kirk asked, full of frustration and neglected arousal.
“To spend my lunch break with you, of course. Regulations say I have to have a break of at least an hour between shifts.”
“I’m touched. You didn’t have any lunch.”
“I had a sandwich in my office, remember?”
“Hah! You did call it lunch! I knew it!”
“No, Jim, I called it a snack. There was no time for lunch. Which should give you an idea of how busy we are.”
“And you keep lecturing me on…”
“Doctor,” Spock interrupted Kirk’s upcoming triad that was about to follow McCoy out into the corridor. “Assuming you came here right after leaving sickbay, there are still twenty-two minutes of your break left.” It was testament to their intimate relationship that he didn’t offer any decimal numbers.
McCoy replied with a sheepish grin. “Yeah, but knowing Jim, twenty-two minutes aren’t enough for what he’s planned for the evening. So I’d better get out while I still can and leave you two to it.” He stepped up to the Vulcan and pressed an almost but not quite chaste kiss to his lips. Then he gave the still steaming Kirk an apologizing half smile. “Don’t wait for me,” he said and left.
“He could at least have said something before we got started,” Kirk growled. Then another thought hit him. “Wait, Sanchez got infected with the VD? Are there only idiots working in our medical department? And please,” he hurried to add, “don’t give me a list of their IQs.”
Beside him Spock sighed, somewhat frustrated himself. “I wasn’t going to.”
Continued HERE
FANDOM: Star Trek TOS
PAIRING: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
TABLE: # 8 - Miscellaneous B
PROMPT: 05. Desire
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: 7507
SUMMARY: [Set a year after the show, established relationship.] Not every day in space is filled with action and adventure. Kirk is bored and horny, McCoy is too busy to be sympathetic and Spock is okay with everything as long as his reputation doesn’t suffer.
NOTE: Too long for one post, link to the second part at the bottom. Unbetaed. (You’re welcome to point out my mistakes.)
“There are bets going on.” McCoy didn’t waste his breath for a greeting, but then, he rarely did. “Did you know?”
Kirk looked up from his sandwich. “There are always bets going on. You need to be more specific if you want us to answer that question correctly and in the right context.” He took another bite. The chicken sandwich had been almost cold by the time it got delivered to his quarters, and by now the ‘almost’ had also waved goodbye. On the seat opposite to him, his CMO grimaced.
“Do you even notice how much you sound like Spock, Jim? One of him is enough, thank you very much.”
“Must be the bond,” Kirk said with his mouth full. McCoy snorted.
“Well, as long as your etiquette is underdeveloped like that, I guess there’s not risk of his personality swallowing yours like that cold sandwich.”
“I assure you, such a risk never existed at any point,” Spock quipped in, sounding slightly insulted.
“How do you know the sandwich is cold?” asked Kirk.
“It always is. Since I came aboard this ship, you have complained five hundred times about Starfleet being marvellous and technologically advanced and not sparing a single credit for keeping the food warm.”
“Exactly two hundred seventy-six times, only counting the occasions on which I was present to witness the complaint.”
“Thank you, Spock, for this fascinating if completely unnecessary bit of information. Anyway, I expect that should the miracle of a warm sandwich occur while I’m still serving on your ship, you’re going to greet me with a kiss and a dance down the corridor. Also, the sandwich I had delivered to my office earlier was cold, and if I had found out that you got a warm one, I would have been forced to kill you in a violent fit of envy. And… Jim, do you by any chance happen to call that ‘lunch’?”
Kirk looked down on his plate, but the transfer of food from his plate to his stomach was already one hundred percent completed. “What did you call the sandwich you had in your office?”
“I called it a sandwich, Jim. Do I really have to lecture you about the importance of proper nourishment in a stressful job like yours? Again?”
“I fail to see the point of such a conversation, as evidently neither of you is able to listen to this advice,” Spock voiced his opinion.
“Didn’t you say something about a bet?” Kirk hurried to say, before the two of them could gang up on him. “What was it about?”
“Oh, right. Well, it’s got to do with you, Jim.”
“Half of the bets and rumours going on on this ship have to do with me.”
“And half of them are true. Well, I assume you’ll be happy to learn that you are one again the centre of attention.”
“He is.”
Kirk glared at Spock. “Get to the point, Bones. Who am I having an affair with this time?”
“No one. The crew does, however, take bets on who you will eventually end up with, and when. Spock or me.”
“Oh.” Kirk reached for his coffee and found the cup gone. After a brief survey of the room he re-discovered it in McCoy’s hands. “That obvious, is it?”
“On the contrary, Jim,” Spock said. “As you will notice, the formulation of the bet, as well as the fact that it exists at all, does indicate that the actual existence of our relationship still remains undiscovered by the rest of the crew. And as for its nature…”
“There should be a rule against betting on the private lives of your commanding officers,” Kirk growled, not letting him finish.
“There is, Jim. That’s why you haven’t heard of it yet.” McCoy took a sip from the coffee and made a sound of disgust. “This is cold! I don’t believe it! Millennia of technological advancement and Starfleet still hasn’t got its priorities in order.”
Over the bond he shared with Spock, Kirk sensed the Vulcan’s irritation, mingled with amusement and affection; a peculiar mix of feelings only Bones ever invoked.
“Well, fortunately we have you to inform us about everything interesting that comes up,” he observed. McCoy snorted.
“You bet? You don’t hear half of it.” Which was probably true. The crew had its own layer of communication, somewhere below the level of the attention of their commanding officers and department heads. There was an unspoken agreement in all Federation vessels that the people of higher rank would not try to listen in on private conversation that involved a lot of laughter and fell silent when they entered the room, as long as the crew kept its part of the deal and didn’t kill them to take over the ship. For generations it had worked.
That McCoy, despite being a ranking officer and a department head, still got to hear most of them had to do with his working place. Everything eventually ended up in sickbay. Is was as inevitable as the rising of Spock’s eyebrows right this moment, as he and Kirk exchanged a glance.
Asking for further information about the rumours they did not get to hear would have been useless, however. The one reason why McCoy learned about them in the end was the fact that he did not always share his knowledge with his captain and first officer.
“What are the odds?” Kirk asked.
“What do you care? As you are in control of the outcome, you‘re not allowed to participate anyway. Although I was wondering if I should take my chances. You wouldn’t mind declaring your undying love for each other on next shore leave, would you?”
“Leonard, as you are well aware, we have already ‘declared our undying love for each other’ quite often in the past, and there is a probability of ninety-one percent for us to do so again before next shore leave.”
McCoy rolled his eyes. “In public, Spock. Otherwise there is no point.”
“Except for informing the other of our undying love for them, you mean?” Kirk didn’t bother suppressing a smile.
“Such an action would be highly unwise in regard to our future careers, not to mention our chances of continued serving together,” Spock pointed out helpfully. This time even Kirk rolled his eyes.
Are you actually doing that on purpose? he asked over the bond, because bond or no bond, sometimes he simply couldn’t tell.
Spock blinked innocently at him in response.
If Bones took notice of their wordless exchange, he chose to ignore it. “Maybe,” he admitted with a gleam in his eyes. “But I would get some money out of it.”
“May I ask, Leonard, why you would put your money on me?” Spock wanted to know. “To my knowledge of the rumours circling amongst the crew, more people enjoy speculations concerning an intimate relationship between Jim and me than think he might be involved with you. Surely your financial gain would be greater if you put your money on yourself.”
“Sure, but it’s not worth the trouble.” McCoy graciously waved the comment away. “Because of the career damage and all that. Besides, once you came out, all attention will be on you and they’ll leave me in peace.”
“I admit, there is a certain logic to your argumentation. Even if semantically it lacks grace.”
Kirk snorted. “Excuse me, did I miss something? Bones proposes to ruin our lives and you call him logical? I think I need a drink on that. Or two.” He’d been planning on a drink anyway, and this offered a good excuse.
McCoy raised his eyebrows. “Are you off shift?”
“Yes, Bones. As are you. We both had the alpha shift, remember?”
“Right.” The doctor rubbed his eyes. His shoulders slumped, and suddenly he looked a lot less energetic. “You have no idea what a day I’ve been having.”
“Enlighten us.”
“Read the report from sickbay.”
“I’m off duty. And so is Spock.”
“There’s a disease spreading through the ship.” Seeing Kirk’s eyes go wide, McCoy hurried to add, “Nothing dangerous, mind you. It seems to be little more than an itchy irritation of the skin, but we haven’t seen this one before, and need to figure out what to do with it, not to mention how it spreads.”
“How many are infected?”
“Twenty seven, so far. M’Benga and I are quite optimistic that we’ll have a vaccine ready by morning. But until then try not to kiss anyone who scratches themselves a lot.” The sigh he let out sounded a lot like a groan. “I swear, if this turns out to be a VD, I’m going to kick every single infected out of the airlock.”
“When did it start?”
“According to the first ensign who showed up with it about two days ago. Just after we returned from Amazonia.”
The look Kirk and McCoy exchanged as they recalled that particular mission didn’t need a mental bond to translate into words. It probably was a VD.
“The correct name of that planet is Alnilam Seven,” Spock felt the need to remind them. Both Kirk and McCoy ignored him.
“I’m off to take a shower,” the doctor proclaimed and disappeared in the bathroom that connected the captain’s quarters with those of his first officer since a somewhat explosive gaseous creature had wrecked his old ones. It had been a convenient excuse to ‘move in with Spock’, as McCoy called it. Finding an explanation for Bones to spend his nights at their place had been a little more difficult, but eventually a shape shifting gelatinous blob from a world close to the Great Barrier had set his bed on fire (for reasons neither Kirk nor Spock had ever been able to find out and Bones was reluctant to talk about), and his friends had graciously offered him a place to sleep.
Officially he was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, or alone in Kirk’s bed if the captain was away. The latter was true too often for Kirk’s liking, as their shifts didn’t always run at the same time.
The best thing about living here, Bones couldn’t tell them often enough, was the fact that their shower was offering real, wet water as an alternative to the sonic version. And since Spock never used it anyway, no one could complain that between the three of them they were wasting too much water.
Usually, McCoy took his time with this luxury he had to go without for so long. But this time he emerged after little more than five minutes, dressed once again in his uniform.
“Anything wrong with your normal clothes?” Kirk asked, raising an eyebrow at him in question. True, he was still in his uniform himself, but then he didn’t have a reason to take it off so far, and preferred it over civilian clothes anyway, because no one could tell when the next emergency would call him back to the bridge. McCoy, on the other hand, liked to relax in his own trousers, claiming that the uniform never quite sat comfortably.
Spock was in his meditation robes, drinking tea. It was steaming hot, even ten minutes after emerging from the replicator, which was just plain unfair, and indicated that the Vulcan and the replicators were somehow conspiring against Kirk to overthrow him and steal his ship.
Your concern is quite illogical, Spock told him over the mind link, vaguely amused. This tea is not replicated but was made by me in my quarters.
Your coffee would not get cold if you managed to drink it within a sensible amount of time, Spock added, but he was looking at McCoy as he ‘spoke’, watching him with the kind of quiet intensity that always made Kirk’s heart ache in a way that was not entirely unpleasant, yet not entirely enjoyable either.
The Vulcan was trying to figure something out, watching McCoy for all the little signs he would give away without realising it. All his attention was concentrated on this one man, because he had no bond with him to reveal all his feelings.
The doctor flopped down in his chair without answering Kirk’s question. “Really, Jim, we are in need of some serious new rules for landing parties. Your men just run around touching everything they can reach without any caution, and not just with their fingers. ‘Diplomatic mission’ my ass!”
“As I recall it, the ladies there were very diplomatic.” Kirk smirked. He couldn’t really blame his men for wanting to have a little fun, especially if such beautiful women were involved. Of course he hadn’t taken up any of the ladies’ offers himself, being in a proper relationship and all, but, well, he wasn’t blind.
Still, McCoy was right. These men, regardless of the fact that they spend most of their time locked in a tin box in space, should know better than to let themselves get infected with every STD that came with a pretty face.
At the very least they should have the sense not to spread the disease through the entire ship before the routine check up in sickbay.
“Who did you say this started with?” he asked. Bones grunted.
“I didn’t, and I won’t, as you very well know. As long as you don’t give these boys and girls some proper orders to follow, you don’t have any right to know.”
His hair was still slightly damp, underlining how little time he had wasted on the shower this time. At least he looked a little less tired.
Kirk himself felt more exhausted than he had any right to be after a shift during which pretty much nothing happened. It was the boredom that got to him. In times of crisis, the adrenaline kept him going far beyond the point of exhaustion, but during the eventless journeys between one star and the next the hours seemed to pile up and sit on him until his bones were aching with the weight.
Across the table, Spock looked as rested and alive as always. His Vulcan genes allowed him to go without a break for much longer than any human, but in between disasters he didn’t have to. Starfleet regulations were quite strictly against discriminating against alien crew members by letting them work more than the human ones simply because they could.
It was rare for the three of them to be off shift at the same time, and Kirk was determined to make use of the opportunity.
Over the bond, he could feel Spock’s quiet approval.
His Vulcan lover got up without a word to stand behind McCoy, and put the palm of his long fingered hand on the narrow back - all the time watching the doctor with this quiet focus that seemed to make him the centre of his cosmos. The unexpected touch mad McCoy turn his head, startled. As usual, Spock waited until the doctor relaxed under his palm before he brought his other hand to the doctor’s back and started a massage Kirk knew from experience to be very skilled. With a soft groan, Bones let his head fall back.
“You are very tense, Leonard,” Spock said quietly.
“You have no idea,” Bones agreed. With slowly growing arousal, Kirk watched both their faces as Spock’s hands wandered up and down the doctor’s spine, kneaded his shoulders and eventually came to touch the naked skin of his neck. Bones shuddered at the direct physical contact, even though the mental contact it created it was one-sided. Through the bond, Kirk felt the faintest echo of Bones’ feelings - uncoordinated, mingled and contradicting, such a contrast to the well ordered disciplined inside of Spock’s mind. As usual, the second-hand intimacy granted him turned him on, and he felt his desire echoed in Spock.
The contact gave him an idea of Bones’ feelings, but not his thoughts, being restricted to the very surface layer. It was all Kirk’s oldest friend was willing to share with them.
What the captain received from him now was exhaustion, love, vague distress and pleasure caused by the massage Spock was giving him. It wasn’t the kind of pleasure Kirk had been hoping for, however. He was simply enjoying the sensation, slowly relaxing under the touch.
Eventually Spock’s hands wandered lower again, and to Bones’ front where they rubbed his stomach in gentle, relaxing circles before wandering lower still. He bent down to kiss the human’s neck, and Kirk got off his chair, deciding he had watched passively long enough. It was then that Bones suddenly tensed.
“Ah, stop, Spock!” he said, wriggling out of the Vulcan’s grip. “I’m sorry. I just took a shower, and I don’t have time for another.”
“You don’t?” Kirk asked, feeling Spock’s confused disappointment at the reaction as well as his own. (Only in Spock’s case it was confusion and disappointment, well distinguished and each kept in its respective box.) “You’re going somewhere?”
“Yes, Jim. Back to sickbay.”
“Oh?” Now anger got in the mix, but it was Kirk’s alone. From Spock he received merely resignation, as if he had seen this coming. “You agreed not to take any double shifts unless circumstances demand it. In fact, as I recall, I made it an order.”
McCoy scowled, his face a more than sufficient screen for his emotions now Spock no longer served as a link between them. “Circumstances do demand it, Jim.”
“A few cases of VD hardly count as a crisis.”
“First of all, we don’t know yet if it’s really a VD,” his CMO reminded him. “It’s one of the things we need to figure out, because if it spreads any other way, this could quickly become a crisis. Not to mention we need to cure it. Much as I’d love to see you try to fight a battle with half of your crew too busy scratching themselves, it’s a situation I suspect you’d want to avoid.”
“You said you were almost done. Can’t M’Benga and Sanchez handle it on their own? They’re not completely incompetent, you know.”
“Perhaps not, but one doctor needs to be on duty in sickbay, as you will recall, and M’Benga is busy in the lab.”
“Doctor Sanchez…”
“…is infected and isolated from the rest of the crew, along with the other cases. So you can see circumstances do indeed demand my presence.”
“If so, why come here at all?” Kirk asked, full of frustration and neglected arousal.
“To spend my lunch break with you, of course. Regulations say I have to have a break of at least an hour between shifts.”
“I’m touched. You didn’t have any lunch.”
“I had a sandwich in my office, remember?”
“Hah! You did call it lunch! I knew it!”
“No, Jim, I called it a snack. There was no time for lunch. Which should give you an idea of how busy we are.”
“And you keep lecturing me on…”
“Doctor,” Spock interrupted Kirk’s upcoming triad that was about to follow McCoy out into the corridor. “Assuming you came here right after leaving sickbay, there are still twenty-two minutes of your break left.” It was testament to their intimate relationship that he didn’t offer any decimal numbers.
McCoy replied with a sheepish grin. “Yeah, but knowing Jim, twenty-two minutes aren’t enough for what he’s planned for the evening. So I’d better get out while I still can and leave you two to it.” He stepped up to the Vulcan and pressed an almost but not quite chaste kiss to his lips. Then he gave the still steaming Kirk an apologizing half smile. “Don’t wait for me,” he said and left.
“He could at least have said something before we got started,” Kirk growled. Then another thought hit him. “Wait, Sanchez got infected with the VD? Are there only idiots working in our medical department? And please,” he hurried to add, “don’t give me a list of their IQs.”
Beside him Spock sighed, somewhat frustrated himself. “I wasn’t going to.”
Continued HERE