Hey. I'm Malin Marie. I love these two boys with all my heart and I won't them to love each other with all their hearts. So, here we go!
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Honestly, not this, not my life, nothing. All rights to their respective owners.
A wave of emotion beat against Spock's mental barriers. He didn't pause in his frantic sprint to Engineering to identify what emotions they were. He could hardly spare a thought outside the barrage of possibilities racing through his normally sharp mind.
Mr. Scott's voice echoed in his mind, 'You better get down here.' There was pain and strain in the scottish man's voice. Cold fear had attempted to slip past Spock's barriers in that moment but he shoved it away, mind narrowing on the only thing it could have been. Jim.
He made it to the white web of pipes and metal walkways, flying around a corner with a lack of his usual grace. Scotty stood, grim faced, near the warp core's main control panel. His head was tilted downward and his eyes were overcast, avoiding looking Spock in the eye. Spock immediately noticed the lack of sandy-haired Captains in the vicinity.
"Where is Captain Kirk?" His voice held more restraint and tension than Scotty had ever heard in the Vulcan. He gestured in the direction of the warp core, mouth ajar as if to say something but no words came out. A slithering horror filled his system and he was before the glass door in moments.
The anguished scene before him nearly wiped all thoughts from his brain. He faintly heard himself order Scotty to open it and vaguely heard the reply that he knew would come. The black-haired man sunk down to his knees.
Jim was purple with exertion and pain, the blood cells in his face bursting from the immense heat and radiation. His shaking arm barely managed to reach the button to close the interior door to begin the decontaminating process, collapsing with his chest heaving as it closed. A visual burst of relief passed over the man's face and his brilliant blue eyes focussed in on Spock's form as if noticing him for the first time.
"Spock.." Jim's voice was broken and weak. He gasped a bit more, furrowing his brow as he attempted to form coherent thoughts.
"Captain.." Spock replied, trepidation clear in his voice as he felt his mental barriers decompose, letting wisps of emotion through. Sadness, fear, anger, all flooded his consciousness.
"How's our ship?" came the brilliant question from the dying man's lips. His dulling eyes captured Spock's and Spock felt the maddening urge to cry for the first time since childhood, yet also to laugh at the insanity of Kirk asking about their ship when he was clearly perishing.
"Out of danger. You saved us all, Captain," the blunt reply came, lacking any of the turmoil that was swelling in his chest, twisting his brain, and attempting to spill from his eyes.
Jim visibly relaxed, a sigh passing from his lips. He closed his eyes for a moment and panic captured the Vulcan.
"Captain, why would you-"
"It was only logical, Spock. You would have-" He coughed, interrupting himself. "You would have done it too." Tears began to well in the broken man's eyes and he once again opened them to capture Spock's. "I'm scared, Spock," his voice was that of a small boy rather than the hardened Iowa playboy Spock knew. "I'm scared. Help me not to be." Hopelessness hit Spock and all he could do was begin to shake and quiver, his lips pressing into a thin line. "How do you not feel?" Jim was desperate and pleading, looking for comfort in the Vulcan who was always his support when he was dashing himself into unconquerable situations. Said Vulcan broke a little more at the look in Kirk's eye.
"I do not know. Right now.." He bit his lip, a tear sliding from his eye followed by another. He took a deep, steadying breath and noted the widening of Jim's own eyes at the sight of the Vulcan's tears. "Right now, I am failing, Captain." There was mock calm in his voice. Jim saw past it and inhaled laboriously.
"Spock, you-" Jim coughed heavily and Spock's body tensed, hands jerking forward to press against the glass as if he could break through and save the man before him from his fate. He heard a gasp behind him but didn't turn to look, the entirety of the world fading as he watched his captain, his companion, and his best friend die before him.
"Jim, hold on till the decontamination process is completed." Urgency laced the first officer's words and his captain finally regained his breath. Jim captured Spock's eyes with intensity that seemed to be strenuous for the poor man.
"Spock, I want you to know why I.. why I had to go back for you." Blue eyes flickered to Spock's hands on the glass. Jim moved his hand with a great effort, dragging it up into the air as if in slow motion. The Vulcan watched the agonizing movement disconnectedly.
"Because you are my friend," Spock murmured matter of factly, tears spilling in larger quantities down his cheeks. Jim's own face was becoming stained with similar tear tracks as the pain, both emotional and physical, coursed through him.
But still Jim's hand rose, his head shaking in response to the Vulcan's words while staring at Spock's fingers. Spock's brows furrowed in slight hurt. Jim's gaze flickered back up to meet the confused chocolate orbs of his first officer and he placed his shaking hand firmly to the glass, surprising the Vulcan with a searing barrage of Kirk's inner turmoil as he died.
A flood of pain and anguish bulldozed through Spock's brain blinding him and desensitizing him. His lips parted as if to make a noise but nothing came out and he felt as if it was his own body being burned inside out by radioactive waves. Spock wandered distantly why Jim would want to make him feel this way. Were they really not friends? Was that why Jim had just denied his statement?
However beyond that flood, there were wondrous emotions. They were warm and overpowering, wrapping around his psyche and smothering him pleasantly. He felt only Jim in that moment, saw only Jim, heard only Jim's fluttering heartbeat and mangled thoughts. There were fragments of sentences darting through the vision of Spock's mind's eye, echoing just out of his field of hearing. He couldn't make any sense of any of it but somehow he suddenly felt cherished in a way he had never felt before, He felt idolized and adored, respected and cared for.
Spock regained his vision and noticed an expression of warmth and deep set devotion across Jim's face. Spock felt the glorious blanket of something akin to how he had felt when his mother held him as a child, only much stronger, tighten around him.
Jim leaned his forehead against the glass and Spock felt himself drawn to do the same. He wanted more of this feeling, his mind suddenly craved it.
As their foreheads met through the glass, the bond grew infinitely stronger. Their friendship, their attachment, their.. Whatever it was that was that they were, seemed to intensify, strengthening the bond to something far beyond anything Spock had ever felt. The anguish and desperation of the situation seemed to only goad their connection on and Spock wanted to purr.
Jim's contentment and his resignation bubbled through the thick liquid sheen of intense, adoring passion between them.
Spock pulled at the bond, seeking more of it, feeling as if he was being starved and dehydrated and Jim's mind was a full course meal and their bond was an endless waterfall. He broadcasted waves of something much more powerful than his adoration for Nyota into Jim's tattered mind. Jim's face visibly relaxed and his eyelids drooped a little from the powerful stare the two had been locked in while their minds preoccupied themselves with the intensity of their telepathically spiritual bond.
Spock's brow furrowed again, wondering through the fog of his mind why Jim had dropped his gaze. Those orbs now stared almost unseeing at him.
Then.
The life slipped from them and Kirk slumped back a bit, Spock realizing his mistake too late.
Horror filled the first officer and he ripped his hand away from the glass. His mind had overpowered Jim's. Mind melding took a great amount of energy and Jim had hardly none to begin with. Spock watched helplessly, his stomach churning, as Jim smiled at him in his lopsided way, seemingly unaware that Spock had just sealed his fate. Jim brought his hand from the glass and curled it up against his chest, looking up into nothing now while a form of peace seemed to shift over him.
"Thank you, Spock.." Jim's lips breathed these gracious words. His serene eyes finally lost their beautiful light and the world suddenly came crashing back into Spock's senses. He hear Nyota and Scotty sobbing a few feet away, he heard the hum of the warp core, he saw the still decontaminating progress report on the panel above him.
A pit opened up in his chest and stomach and a headache like that of a four hundred ton boulder being suddenly dashed against his head erupted in the center of his forehead, nearly blinding him with its intensity. He gripped his temples, horror and self loathing filling him.
The sudden but illogically and incomparably powerful bond he had formed with Jim was quickly ripped from his psyche, leaving a gaping hole in its wake at the death of its other half. Spock's vision blurred, a mixture of tears and exertion blackening his vision. The only thing he could make out from the swamp of images before his eyes were the twin sky colored, lifeless orbs he held so dear.
Jim was gone. His Jim was gone. His T'hy'la.
Fury, rage, anger, grief, anguish, agony, horror, terror, no word was great enough to identify the sickness that swarmed his consciousness. Suddenly, Spock needed to put his hands on something, to make amends for the wrong he had just been dealt, to assuage the self hate he felt boiling inside him, to bridge the gaping cavern of loss and hurt that had tore open inside of him, to rebuild the mental barriers that had been torn easily down like the walls of a human sand castle by a two year old. His vision sharpened with the daggers of rage and he found himself being carried along with his angered body as it instinctively sought out Khan for the loss of his newly found bondmate.