A/N: This may contain a part two, I haven't decided yet.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to work with Jim. To Spock, the bond that he and Jim shared was, as his th'y'la would say, as clear as mud, but to the said th'y'la, the bond was as unnoticeable as a changing season on Vulcan.

Spock carried the bond he shared with Jim everywhere he went. He felt Jim in him as he woke in the morning, as he showered in the small space allotted to him, as he dressed in his space-officer blue and pinned the official Starfleet symbol to his sweater. It was so foreign to him, this abundance of feeling in a body that was so used to nothing but logic. Everything felt tingly and unfamiliar, like every nerve ending in his body sparked with emotion that wanted to transfer to his th'y'la. Spock had finally connected with his emotions and now he wanted to do was touch, feel.

But Kirk did not seem to feel the same way. He carried on, businesslike as usual. Or, as businesslike as he usually got – Spock noticed that he continued subtly "making moves" on the women on the ship and all women who visited, but this was to be expected; the two had done nothing but touch hands as Jim dragged Spock across the ship for this or that, and as soon as the captain had touched him, Spock's body went on high-alert, buzzing from the unexpected Vulcan kiss. Spock had yet to bait his emotions – and his libido, another new thing he was discovering about his human half – back down, but Jim continued life unfazed, not even aware what his touch had done to his friend.

Friend, Spock sternly reminded himself. Not th'y'la. Not soulmate. Friend. That's all Jim sees you as.

Kirk noticed something odd going on with Spock. Sure, he was overall relatively strange compared to his small-town upbringing, but he knew when his friend was acting particularly out of the ordinary and when Spock was just being, well, Spock. But this was definitely out of the ordinary. The calm, hands-to-himself Vulcan was found, on multiple occasions, standing a little too close or a little too far away, looking like he wanted to stand a little too close. Jim just waited it out, played it cool, let the Vulcan wear himself out and a) spill the beans and say what he had to say, or b) completely let it go and go back to normal. Jim didn't know which he was hoping for.

It took all of about two weeks for it to come to a head. The captain was just seeing a humanoid alien girl off to her room (she was from a planet that Starfleet had commanded the Enterprise to watch over for a short while) when Bones walked by. He thumped Jim on the shoulder with his fist.

"Hey Bones!" Kirk greeted him happily, his face splitting into a wide smile. The doctor made a small mocking sound which the captain promptly ignored.

"What did you do to Spock?" McCoy asked the captain, immediately wiping the smile off Kirk's face.

"What do you mean?" Jim asked, furrowing his eyebrows. "Is there something seriously wrong with him?"

"Have you not seen him trailing over you like a lovesick puppy for the past few weeks? What did you do to the kid Jim?"

Immediately the captain racked his brain. He knew for a fact that they never slept together (unless he got WAY more drunk on the Andorian Sunsets he'd consumed than he thought), but perhaps there was something thoughtless he'd done recently, something that would cause Spock to react. He realized what it was in a time that was exponentially longer than it should have been – when he'd grabbed Spock by the hand and pulled him across the ship. When he relayed this news to Bones, the doctor did nothing but roll his eyes.

"Dammit Jim, you have to have more respect for other cultures. Just because you grew up in some dirt-ball, low-down-"

"Yeah, yeah, Bones, get on with it." Jim cut off, opting for a sarcastic tone. "Do you, in your professional opinion, have a way that I can get Spock back to normal?"

"Get him off?" Bones suggested.

"Yeah right," Jim snickered.

"I'm not kidding."

"Shit."