Note: This story is inspired by "Ghost in the Machine" by Killashandra, which I read on...er, another fic archive site. If you can track it down, you should read that one first, or this one will be a little harder to catch up with.

Spock is late, and I frown at the door. Usually, if circumstances conspire to keep him more than five minutes past the appointed hour, he'll comm to let me know. It's only chess, but he hates being late without explanation. But I have reports to keep me busy—somehow, in a paperless world, we still have paperwork enough to drown in—so I work steadily until the door, finally, swishes open.

He steps in, still in uniform, and comes to a halt barely far enough from the door for the sensor to let it close behind him. For a second it looked like he wanted to...I don't really know. Wanted to leap, bolt across the room; wanted to say something, but I don't know what, and he's staring at me.

"Spock," I say in greeting, but he doesn't reply. He's just...looking at me, as if we haven't seen each other in years, as if I'm water in the desert. I set my PADD down. "Spock?" He still doesn't answer, and I stand to circle the desk. His dark eyes glint in the subdued light. "Mr Spock, are you all right?" I ask, my voice just sharp enough to command attention, and that snaps him out of it—whatever it may be.

"Captain...Jim," he says. His voice is a little harsh, as if he has a head cold or has been crying, but the words are perfectly ordinary. "My apologies. I am...preoccupied." He's still staring at me with that unnerving intensity.

I essay a smile, trying for cocksure, and I think it works because the tension in his shoulders eases a notch. "Well snap out of it," I say cheerfully. "I wouldn't want it to be easy to beat you." If it is, then I will worry. He still wins more of our games than he loses, though I've been narrowing the margin. Lately I've been experimenting with the "scream-and-leap" offensive, which occasionally succeeds in rattling him slightly with its sheer bloody-minded enthusiasm.

"I will endeavor to provide an adequate challenge," he says gravely. He sounds normal now, and I think I'll just keep an eye on him.

"You'd better," I say, and gesture at the chessboard, which I set up nearly an hour ago. "Shall we? I believe it's your turn to take white."

He nods, and we take our places, and for a few minutes I think it's all right after all. We play in silence, which we often do, but usually silences between us are companionable. This one is fraught with something I can't identify, and through it all Spock keeps watching me. Whenever he doesn't absolutely have to look at the board, his eyes are on me; water in the desert, yes, like the single pure spring on Mount Seleya that the early clans warred over.

He looks at me like he's burning and I'm the only thing that can quench him, and I have seen this look before; it's how he looked at T'Pring, when the plak tow had him so deeply that he couldn't even speak.

And God help me, he has looked at me like this before, in the dreams I never mention to anyone. When I wake from those dreams, aching-hard and panting, I think of going to him. I wouldn't dare the corridor, but I could slip through our shared bathroom easily enough. I might interrupt his meditation, or his sleep, but in the deep of night it always seems obvious that he will not mind. That he will welcome me.

I keep those dreams, those nights, as buried as I can manage. I won't risk allowing him to realize what he means to me, because I can't risk that he might not be able to serve under a man who desires him. It's hard to see him every day and be nothing more than his friend, but it's better than not seeing him at all. If I can help it I don't think about the fact that we're past the halfway point of the mission now, that more of my days with Spock at my shoulder are behind me than before; besides, even the Admiralty must see that this team is once-in-a-lifetime. They'll give us another mission. They'll have to.

I realize, then, that I've paused too long over my move; though Spock doesn't seem to care, willing if not exactly content to watch me, it's a slip I can't afford, not if I'm going to keep this desire to myself.

And then it occurs to me that I may have given myself away somehow already; perhaps Spock knows, and he's trying to decide if he has to leave the ship, leave me. Perhaps he's already decided, and now he needs to tell me, and it's difficult for him, because he is my friend, and even if my desire confuses him, even if it repulses him, he'll try to break it to me gently, and that's when I can't stand it any more.

He reaches out for his queen's bishop, closer to my side of the board than his, and before I quite realize what I'm doing I've grabbed his hand, my fingers landing across his knuckles. "Spock," I say, as steadily as I can manage, "I need to know what's going on. What the hell is going on. Why are you—if something's wrong, I need to know. I can't—" fix it otherwise, is what I mean to say, but Spock cuts me off. Spock, interrupting: I wonder distantly if I've stumbled into another alternate universe.

"Jim," he says, and if I couldn't hear him I would believe he was perfectly calm. "Jim, there's something I need to tell you." He sounds naked, stripped to the bone, as open as I have ever heard him. Vulcans are so, so good at controlling what they show; I've heard Spock sound like this only a handful of times, and only when he was compromised in some way.

"Anything," I say. "You can tell me anything, Spock."

He takes a moment to...collect himself, I suppose; he has the look of a man who has prepared a careful speech but finds, when he comes to give it, that it's inadequate to the task. I want to urge him on, end this terrible anticipation, but he needs the time and so I let him have it. "Of all people, you are aware that Vulcans do feel. That I feel. But I do not allow my emotions to control me. In all cases but one." He pauses, and the only sound in my quarters is the subtle hum of the warp core. He's shaking, a fine tremor I can't see but I can feel it. "In this one case, I am overmastered. I don't even know when it began, only when I became aware of it."

I feel like I'm holding my breath. Spock pauses, and the seconds twitch over my skin like physical things until he goes on, "I cannot stop this feeling; I cannot fight it or control it, and so I must express it, as well as I am able. You must forgive me, Jim, if I do so poorly. It is...not an area in which I have much experience."

I nod. I don't trust myself to speak. Spock takes a deep breath.

"I love you," he says, simply. "It is not logical to say that I love you with every atom of my being, but it is nonetheless true. I love you with everything I am, with everything I will ever be, and I could not bear the silence any longer. I cannot bear the long silence, Jim."

He sounds like he's inches from shattering and I don't know why, and I am desperate to stop it. I was prepared for him to tell me...anything but this. That he was requesting a transfer, that he would stay but we'd only interact on shift, that nothing had to change as long as I didn't show how much I want him—anything else. Anything but these words that I want to shout to the universe. He's watching me now as if he's afraid; I think he's mistaken shock for rejection, and I can't let him think that. So I'm careful, when I stand and walk around my desk again, to not let go of his hand. I can feel his hummingbird pulse under my fingers as I put my free hand on his chin and tip his face up; I bend slowly, so slowly so that he has time to turn away if he feels he must, for all that I think it will kill me if he does.

But he doesn't, and I brush my lips over his. It starts out almost chaste, but it doesn't stay that way for long. Spock pushes me back, just enough that he can stand up, and his hand twists to hold my wrist so that it doesn't feel for an instant that I am being pushed away, and then he's there, a few inches taller, surrounding me, his lips parting and his tongue darting over the seam of my mouth until I open to him.

For a moment I am honestly not sure whether I'm going to pass out. I am no stranger to this, to kisses and gasps and the slow movement of hands, but it's been a long time since the body pressed to mine has been another man's, and it has never been like this, like I'm on fire, like the light will blind me. I am hard, and I don't know when it happened but it doesn't matter because Spock is too—I knew that Vulcans weren't different in that, because while they keep their rituals and their secrets close, the basic, purely physiological data is available if you know how to look, and I did look, though I made damn sure Bones didn't catch me at it. It was fuel for my private desire. I thought it was all I'd ever have.

Spock makes a small, desperate noise as he slips his hands to my waist, pushing my tunic up a little to run them over my ribs, and the shuddering pleasure of it is absurd, so acute it's almost pain. I twine greedy fingers in his hair, hearing a moan from my own lips that sounds completely undone, and I'm, Spock, oh Spock, please—

And suddenly he's pushing away, heedless, ungraceful, as if I'm white-hot; I fetch up against the desk, perilously close to knocking over the chessboard, and grab the edge blindly to keep from simply falling. Once I'm stable—as stable as I'm going to get—I look across the room to where Spock stands, backed against the wall like a stag at bay, and for a slow count of five the only sound is our breathing, both of us harsh and too fast. His hands are actually shaking and he's watching me again, but I am no longer a banquet laid before a starving man; now I am an object of horror, a ghost, a monster. I can feel my arm throbbing where there'll be a bruise later, though I don't think he meant to harm me.

I am bewildered; "Spock," I say, and take a step towards him, and Spock flinches, visibly, and I stop as if I've run into a forcefield. "All right," I say. "All right, but Spock, please, tell me what I've done to hurt you. Just...tell me what I've done."

His eyes close for just long enough that it's not a blink, and then he says, "No, Jim, this is not your fault." The way his voice wavers would alarm me in anyone; in Spock, it makes my stomach clench like the moment before the shields fail, when there's nothing to do but pray that my ship and my people are enough, that I am enough to save them one more time. "This was my folly. You have done nothing wrong."

I have seen Spock cry, but never before when he was in his right mind, and at first I can't really believe it; he doesn't sob or wail, and somehow that's worse, and the tears track down his face even as he straightens and clasps his hands behind his back in a parody of his usual posture. "I will go. If you...if you prefer that I request a transfer, Captain—"

I think that wasn't what he meant to say, but I'm too at sea to puzzle him out. "That would be illogical, Mr Spock," I say, as calmly as I can manage—which isn't very, but I can pretend for his sake. "I...don't think either of us is in a mood to finish our game tonight, but perhaps tomorrow?"

He nods. "Good," I say, trying to be brisk. "Spock, I don't pretend to know what's wrong, but if there's anything I can do—"

"There's nothing," he says, desolate as the sands under the pitiless light of T'Khut. "There is nothing anyone can do."

"Well then, we'll just...forget that this happened," I say. I mean it as a stock phrase, a cliché, but his head comes up and he meets my eyes again, and I recognize the absolute stone-faced blankness; that is Spock pushed to his limits, revealing nothing at all because anything he reveals will lead to revealing everything. And I can't let him take refuge in that blankness, because I suddenly understand that there's something here I need to know. "What aren't you telling me?" I say, slowly, trying to feel for the edges of it.

"There are many things I see no need to tell you," Spock says, in his most obnoxiously logical voice, and I snap, "That's not what I mean and you know it!"

And he does, because he doesn't look affronted; the blankness is cracking already and he looks scared, though I wouldn't have been able to see it on the day I met him, convinced that I would never be able to work with Pike's Vulcan computer of a first officer. "Captain, I assure you that I tell you everything necessary for the safety—"

This time when I advance on him he doesn't flinch or retreat. I push into his space, that proper Vulcan space that he bears like a shield, that I am allowed to breach only because he knows I won't take advantage of it. I take advantage now, belligerent, until we are nose to nose. "Spock," I say, in a voice I rarely use when not on duty, "Tell me what's going on." It's flat, that voice, and it means I will be obeyed.

Again the hum of the engines fills the silence between us. I'm about to go on, maybe order him to talk to me after all, when Spock says quietly, "Computer, arch."

I don't have time to be puzzled before something shimmers into existence behind him. It's an arch all right, a few feet deep, the front edge flush with the wall in a way that ought to mean it's protruding into the corridor. There's a console set in one side and a seam up the middle, like the cargo airlock on a starbase, perhaps, and perfectly ordinary except that it's just appeared in the wall of my room. I stare at it for a few seconds and then turn to look at Spock.

"This is the entrance to the holodeck I have rented," Spock says steadily. "The establishment is not precisely legal, but they are well known for protecting the privacy of their clients. And I needed privacy for what I'm doing." The tears are already drying on his face.

"What are you doing?" I ask, my voice a hollow thing.

"Trying to...grasp something," Spock says. "Trying to make up for what never happened as it should have."

I'm shaking now too. "What is a holodeck?" I don't want to know, but that doesn't stop me. I've never let wanting stop me from doing what was necessary.

"A virtual reality environment," Spock says, cool as if he's giving a lecture, though I think it's costing him dearly. "Within its confines, one can have anything. Anything that can be...programmed."

Programmed. I can see the shape of my doom now. "And when you say that is the entrance," I say, "you mean that you came through it to get...in here."

"Yes," he says. At the last moment I shy from asking what's outside, and Spock, in his mercy, doesn't tell me. "There are two possibilities," I say, wooden. "One is that you've trapped me here, somehow, and if that's what happened you are not Spock. The other is that you programmed me. That I am not real. That somewhere out there is the real James T. Kirk—"

Spock's expression flickers, just visibly, and I realize, and I turn away from him to lean on my desk again. "He's dead."

"For decades," Spock says. His voice is iron control over howling anguish. "I did not...I found a man, a very talented young man, who was willing to take on my commission. He did most of the programming."

I laugh, but the sound has no humor in it. "Spock, you can't think that makes it better."

"I can't think of anything that would. Jim—"

"Don't call me that!" I shout, whirling on him, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. "You made me to be your toy, Spock, but that doesn't give you the right to mock me." He bows his head in acquiescence, and his voice is very low when he says, "You were never meant to be a toy. You were never meant to know. I should have known better."

"Damn right you should have," I say, and then the one question I don't want to ask bubbles up to my lips. "Did you...damn you, Spock, did you do this to me? Did you make me...want you? Did the real Kirk reject you, is that what this is?"

"No," he says, and I can hear it when he bites back the name that isn't truly mine. "I never told him. You were meant to be my second chance." If he is lying, he's really not Spock, and I would bet this false life that the man before me is my first officer.

"So you don't know what I, he would have done."

Spock makes a movement than in a human would be a helpless shrug. "So much of sentient behavior is emergent," he says. "We made the replica as close as we could contrive, and then, I had to...hope."

"I hope I provided an adequate challenge," I say, and watch with sour satisfaction as the barb hits. "But you left something out. Or I think we'd be having a very different conversation right now."

"Telepathy," Spock says, "does not interface with computers." I think about it for a second, and I realize—he was all right until his fingers touched my bare skin. Until his mind reached out for me, and found...nothing. A void in the shape of Jim Kirk. No wonder he shoved me away. I would have too.

"Get out," I say, willing my voice not to crack wide open.

"Computer, remove filter Spock," he says, and he...shifts, suddenly; his hair acquires a salting of gray and his eyes look more sunken. He looks old, at least in his mid-hundreds, though his back is still straight and he wears his Science blues easily, no matter how long it's been since he wore them last.

"Decades," I say, and he nods.

"I have lived in a universe without you longer than I did with you," Spock says. "You need not forgive me, but know that I am sorry that I allowed myself this indulgence. Whatever you wish me to do..."

For a moment, it's on the tip of my tongue—erase this travesty, erase me, but I can't ask that of him. I can't ask him to destroy the last remnant of his captain, not if he really is Spock; I'm real enough that he'd do it, if I asked, but by the same token it would hurt him. Instead I say, "I need a few hours to think, can you do that?"

"Of course," he says. He doesn't move for a long second, and my voice is trembling when I say again, "Get out. Spock, I need—"

"Turn away," he says, "so I can open the door."

"What, don't you want me to see it?" I say, challenging.

"I think that you don't want to," he says, and the hell of it is, he's right; that's precisely why Spock is the best XO I could ask for, because he knows what I can bear. I turn my back on him. His footsteps are soft. The console chirps. The door hisses open, and for all I don't want to know what the real world looks like, I barely stop myself from turning to see.

"If I call Bones," I say.

"He will not answer," Spock says, gentle but not, thank God, pitying. "Goodbye, Jim."

The door closes again, but I wait for most of a minute before I turn to look. The arch is gone.

I try to read, but I can't concentrate for more than a few seconds. I try to listen to music but nothing soothes me. I go to the gym, and there is no one there—this whole simulacrum of my ship must be empty except for me—so I run on the treadmill until my legs shake with exhaustion. Maybe I can sleep, if computer programs sleep.

Why the hell did I ask Spock for time? Surely being off would be better than this.

Back in my quarters I take a shower, a real shower, all my water rations for the next year, because it doesn't matter; none of this is real. I just lean on the wall and let the water pound into my back, and if I cry there's no one to see it but me; if someone is watching the lines of code spool into my tears I do not care. It's not the release it should be.

Finally I get out and dry myself enough to pull on the loose pants that I rarely wear because they're my favorites and I'm trying to stave off their inevitable decay. I towel my hair to merely damp and wrap the towel around my shoulders. I avoid looking at the door to Spock's quarters and try not to think about why—though I have no doubt that his room would be perfect to the last detail, if I were to enter it, just as mine is. But of course it's perfect; I wouldn't have any way to know if it wasn't, would I?

When I step back out into my room, there's a man standing next to my bed. He's blond and boyish, no one I've ever seen, wearing casual clothes of a cut I don't recognize. Adrenaline floods me, the familiar hot surge of it, as he turns to me, startled, and I advance on him. I sound more threatening than is perhaps warranted when I say, "Who are you, and what the hell are you doing in my quarters?"

"Ah, Captain," he says, and I will myself not to flinch, "this is going to take some explaining."

"Oh, I believe that," I say. "Perhaps you'd better start with the first question."

He backs up, but only a step before he catches himself—he has guts, anyway, I'll give him that—and he raises his hands to show he's no threat. "I'm Tom Paris," he says. "I'm—the programmer."

I feel myself going pale as I prepare to meet my Maker.