AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello all you incredible star Trek ff writers and readers out there! This is my first time writing a full-length story, so I'm a little new to this. It is slash, folks. Don't like, don't read. As always, flames will be used to toast my marshmallows. Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek. If I did, I would have lots of money. And i do not.
Expectations
Jim really doesn't know how it happened. He wasn't expecting it, no, not in the slightest. What he was expecting when he accepted this job was copious piles of paperwork, the best crew in the fleet, adventure, and lot of hard work, to be honest. He expected long hours. An uncomfortable chair to sit in. Listening to yet another of Scotty's (hilarious, albeit filthily dirty) machinery jokes. (And he was right-he got all of that in spades.) A common assumption outside of Starfleet was that being Captain of the Enterprise entailed nothing more than giving orders, looking sharp, and exploring new planets. Dead wrong, of course. Being Captain is a (hideously stressful, incredibly amazing, profoundly rewarding) difficult job. He is responsible for hundreds of people, and his actions, his very human, imperfect decisions, affect lives. It is work that routinely raises his heart rate far past what Bones would like it to be. In this instance however, his heart rate keeps climbing for another reason entirely. Which brings him back to square one- Jim simply didn't see this one coming.
He expected mountains of monotonous paperwork he would be obliged to sign. (He signs off on everything from new phasers to toiletries.) He was not at all surprised when nearly half of the new-to-the-federation life forms they routinely encountered became viciously incensed and attempted to kill him and/or other members of his crew (particularly the redshirts for no reason he can fathom- perhaps the color incites violence? He really has no idea) because he's always had a penchant for attracting trouble. However, he, James T. Kirk, the infallible, senselessly irritating, dazzlingly handsome (so he often tells Uhura, because it never fails to irritate her) really really really really really wasn't expecting this. "This" being, in the loosest terms, his First Officer. "This" being, in the most concise and truthful terms, his growing attraction to his First Officer that, as of the past three months, has been making him feel a little too warm whenever the Vulcan glances his way. (How many Vulcans does it take to make Captain Kirk blush? Just one, it seems. Only one.)
His pulse, for no real reason at all, tends to speed up when he hears a familiar voice say his name (it took two years to get Spock to stop calling him Captain all the time). And Spock has an uncanny ability to make the tight feeling in his chest after a difficult day of work disperse into a warm feeling like he's drunk a cup of cocoa (and what is he, a schoolgirl? He's started using beverages in romantic metaphors, but he can't bring himself to care).
It's getting ridiculous. Since that stupid, horrible, amazing night, he's been beginning to feel this silly, incomprehensible, intoxicating, wholly un-logical attraction All. The. Fucking. Time. That rush of affection when he sees Spock's toothbrush lying perfectly parallel to the wall in the bathroom they share together. When the beard suppressor ran out when they were in the Delta quadrant and Spock had a (incomprehensibly bewilderingly attractive) five o'clock shadow for all of twelve (glorious) hours before the new shipment arrived. And especially when his Science Officer moves a chess piece to capture his Queen, looks at him with eyes that are darker than the space outside, and quietly says "Check" with a smoldering satisfaction that by all Vulcan's accounts of non-emotiveness (is that even a word?) should really not exist. (But it does. It so does. ) As Kirk leans back in his chair and admits defeat yet again (their games are generally fifty-fifty now- Jim wins a little under half of the time and Spock often wipes the board with him), and as the Vulcan's eyes glimmer with humor, he finds himself thinking suddenly that those who believe chess is a cold, logical game have obviously never played it with Spock.
And if he admits it to himself- (which he finally did three months and seventeen days ago, as he lays in bed with his mind racing and finally addressed why , #1, he has a compulsive desire to get his shirt ripped off by random attackers whenever he is in the Vulcan's general vicinity, and, #2, he felt oddly buoyant the day Uhura and Spock decided to shift their relationship back to being purely platonic friends)-the truth is...
well, the truth is that with Spock, board games have really never been hotter.
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