"And tell me today's stardate. Not to the millisecond, if you can restrain yourself."
Bones asks offhandedly, his tone barely loud enough to be heard above the beeping of the machines, while he's mostly absorbed in the task of shining a light into Spock's pupil and entering the findings in the PADD resting on his hands.
Jim just stands there, bored, gaze wandering around the MedBay as he bounces on his feet. This is dull. Spock's fine. His skull is thick enough that he could probably take ten times the hit he just did and still keep going, and come on, he barely lost consciousness. They could already be beaming down on the planet, if it weren't for Bones fretting like it's an olympic sport.
"2263.356"
"Okay," Jim interjects, clapping a hand on Bones' shoulder. "Can we go now? Those soil samples aren't gonna collect themselves and the planet has pink snow." He wiggles his eyebrows at Spock as he says it. Jim's totally planning a snowball fight. Chekov has it coming.
"Commander, repeat today's stardate."
The question gives Jim pause.
Not because Bones ignores Jim, which is not that unusual, but because he's also unironically addressing Spock as 'commander', and being remarkably civil about it to boot, which is unusual, enough to be maybe be the second—nope, Jim thinks, the very first time it's happened, and they're about four years into the mission.
And, wait. That would make today's stardate…
"2263.356," Spock repeats, his tone holding trace amounts of condescension.
Jim straightens up and he and Bones exchange a glance. Then they lower their eyes to the upper corner of the PADD in McCoy's hands, where the numbers 2264.165 are written in large, black, easily readable, standard characters. And then, they look at each other again.
"Fuck," they both say at the same time.
...
He slips in love with Spock inconspicuously, during an uneventful afternoon, on an unnamed planet destined to become little more than a Greek letter and a Roman numeral on Starfleet's chart of the Beta Cygni system.
In hindsight, he should have known it would end poorly.
The planet is as M-class as they get, with shallow lakes and rolling hills and very short yellow-orange grass that reminds Jim of Iowa while simultaneously being radically different from it. One year into the mission, and after over six weeks coped up in a spaceship at warp, it feels like a much needed reprieve from the void and darkness and the long hauls of deep space travel. Which is, unlike Jim's expectations, not that entertaining. This mission is like a visit to paradise.
However.
The planet also hosts exceptional reserves of pergium, which means that any paradise-like quality will be wiped out pretty soon to make room for a mining colony. As soon as they file their reports, probably.
"We could just omit, I guess."
They're on top of a hill that overlooks about ninety acres of sprawling, golden fields, interrupted only by the occasional pond and Spock's staff milling about and pretending to collect soil samples they don't need. By unspoken agreement, everyone on the planet has decided to ignore the fact that the geological survey is long completed.
Jim has even managed to persuade his first to climb up the nearest hill with him, and Spock is now sitting with his arms propped on his knees, face upturned to take in the warmth of Cygni.
A cat. Jim has this working theory that his first officer is, deep down, a cat.
Jim's laying supine beside him, head cushioned by the soft grass. This planet smells amazing.
"Omit that twenty-four percent of the geological structure of the planet is pergium?" Spock doesn't even bother opening his eyes.
"Why not?" Jim turns and takes in the side of his face. The point of the ear is visibly greener than the earlobe. Wow, Jim's brain provides. Vulcan sunburn. Cygni-burn.
"I know your opinion of the admiralty is quite negative, captain, but I believe they are, in fact, able to count to one hundred."
Jim huffs, not quite convinced of that. "We could just… substitute."
Spock opens his eyes. "Excellent idea, Captain. What do you propose?" He's wearing what Nyota sometimes refers to as his 'Jim expression'. A mix of condescension, amusement, and genuine curiosity. I am slightly shocked and I hate to admit it, but I actually think Spock finds you… fascinating, she had laughed. Jim had shrugged. It's still a vast improvement from not too long ago, when Spock's 'Jim expression' had been poorly concealed disgust.
"Mmm. I was thinking quartz."
"The resulting material composition would make the core geological structure of the planet unstable. I doubt anyone would believe that the planet lasted longer than a few hundred years, let alone that we landed on it." Spock fingers a longer straw of grass peaking out of the ground. Jim has troubles looking away from his fingers.
Distracting. Spock can be distracting, sometimes. The things he says and does. The way he moves.
"Mmmm. What about Dickite?"
Is that an eye-roll? "I was waiting for you to mention that specific mineral."
"You know me so well, Mr. Spock." Jim grins and hoists himself up until he's standing, his shadow blanketing Spock. "What am I thinking right now?"
Spock mulls it over for a moment. "You wish to bathe in the pond."
Jim can feel his grin spread wide. Not exactly what was on his mind, but… good guess. "Excellent idea, Mister Spock. Let's do it."
He offers Spock his right hand. Not that he needs help standing, but...
Vulcan and hands, Nyota told Jim once, it's a funny business. You might want to avoid that.
Not that Jim would ever let that stop him.
Spock looks at Jim's hand for a second longer than he probably should, the corners of his eyes creased by the brightness of Cygni, the tips of his ears pea green, and is that a freckle on his nose? And then Spock reaches with own hand and takes Jim's, for no reason other that Jim is offering, and then.
That.
That's the moment Jim knows he's already halfway down the slide.
"What if we just make some shit up? I like 'corbomite'." Jim's vaguely surprised that his voice is not shaking.
Spock just shoots him a mocking look, a non-smile obvious on his face.
And that is a freckle.
By the end of day, Jim has bathed in a purple lake, submitted a very inaccurate report to Starfleet, and is madly, hopelessly in love for the first time.
...
Jim's not ashamed to admit to having been scared shitless once or twice in his life, namely whenever he crosses paths with the Romulans, or when Uhura catches him reading comic books in the captain chair during Alpha, and even that time he almost… scratch that, he actually died.
But this panic. This is not something Jim knew he had in him. He crosses his arms on his chest and lowers his chin, trying to contain it. "Fix him."
He's standing with Bones and M'Benga about ten feet from Spock's biobed. "How? With my magic wand?"
"With you medical degree? You fixed Hendorff when he couldn't make memories anymore."
Bones throws his hands in the air. "Retrograde amnesia's not like anterograde, it doesn't have specific neural correlates. I can't fix it 'cause there's nothing to fix!"
"Okay. So we do what?"
Bones just shakes his head and begins compulsively re-stacking hypos, which must be M'Benga's cue to deliver the bad news. "We wait."
They all turn at the sight of Spock walking towards them, straightening the hem of the blue jersey he just put back on.
"Spock, do you remember who I am?" Jim asks tentatively.
Spock raises one eyebrow, right at the same time as Bones elbows Jim in the ribs, mumbling something about melodramatic infants who sometimes conveniently forget how to count. "He's only lost a few months, Jim. If you can plot navigation vectors in your head you can figure out what he's missing."
"Doctors. Captain." Spock crosses his arms on this lower back. He looks remarkably unconcerned, for having woken up six months into the future. "This is no cause of concern. Retrograde amnesia usually resolves itself naturally following its inception."
Bones just looks at him, shaking his head and muttering bitterly to himself. "Goddamn hobgoblin. Amnesia. How cliche can you be?"
"I apologize if the banality of my psychogenic illness causes you distress, doctor." Spock looks at Bones with that shit-eating non-expression he has, which becomes a little more intense as a vein on Bones' forehead starts throbbing noticeably harder. And then… then he turns to Jim, and the non-expression softens, the sarcasm melting away. It's a private look.
Intimate.
Which becomes even more intimate when Spock touches Jim's fingers with his knuckles, and the entire MedBay, with the possible exception of the beeping of the heart monitors, goes silent. "I do not remember how we came to be bonded, Jim."
It knocks the wind out of him.
Jim knows, distantly, that there are about seven pairs of eyes on them. There's Bones, who's working his way towards a heart attack, and M'Benga, and two nurses, and three lab technicians not ten feet away. Jim knows that they're all staring, but he cannot move, especially when Spock presses his fingers tighter agains Jim's and holds his eyes for a long moment, and it's closer than they're ever been, except of course for—
"Jim. I am sorry."
Jim swallows through a dry throat, and says nothing.
He presses back on Spock's fingers, though.
Because it feels amazing.
Right.
Amazingly right.
And Jim could probably stay here for the rest of his life, provided that Spock stays too, and keeps looking at him like that, and doesn't move his hand, and—
"What makes you think that you have bonded with the captain, commander?" It's M'Benga who breaks the moment, apparently deciding to ask the question after clearing his throat about three times does not seem to do the trick.
Spock cocks his head, but doesn't step away from Jim, he remains right there, warm, and available, smelling amazing— "The mind link, of course."
A loud sound. Something crashes to the floor and breaks in a million pieces. Jim immediately snaps out of it and takes a look, and... Bones' jaw is slack, and his tricorder is at his feet, the separate components scattering across the MedBay floor. The transistor hits the tip of Jim's boot before skittering noisily inside Bones' office.
Yep. Jim concurs.
...
He sullenly informs Spock sometimes at the beginning of the third year of the mission, while they're sparring.
"You're number four." He ducks and barely avoids a jab.
Jim tries not to pay attention to ship's scuttlebutt, since around sixty percent of it is about himself and Bones, or himself and Uhura, or himself and some slimy, betentacled ensign. So it's not his fault if he cannot help overhearing that he's polling behind Spock in the shockingly inappropriate list of 'hottest guys on the Enterprise'—get it, Jim? it rhymes!—that has been circulating for a while on certain private loops.
He's also polling behind Sulu, though that's to be expected, given the Lieutenant's degree of self-grooming.
The fact remains that Spock is number four and Jim's barely breaching the top ten.
"Fascinating." Another jab, which hits Jim this time. "And what about you, captain?" Spock's voice doesn't even catch while he delivers a well-timed hook.
Jim leaps back, eyes trained on Spock's fist. "I'm number nine—Ouch." Kick in the shin. He should have known.
And that's the end of the conversation.
At least, until Jim is defeated and lying spread eagled on his back. "Interesting," Spock says, helping him up. "I wonder what the judging criteria are. The list editor must be employing sophisticated quantitative method to account for individual differences in esthetic preferences, as well as each responder's state at the time of the survey. Perhaps mixed-effect modeling might do the trick—"
"Really? Stats? C'mon, Spock, aren't you flattered? Not even a little bit?"
Spock straightens the hem of his Starfleet regulation t-shirt. Jim grabbed it when he was going down and almost managed to pull it off completely in a last-ditch attempt to win, revealing what has got to be a six-pack. At a minimum.
Probably eight, the voice inside him that didn't complete sensitivity training tells him.
Jim tears his gaze away immediately.
"Indeed, captain. Outranking you by five positions is my proudest accomplishment."
"Oh, come off it. You, even you, have to be pleased."
Spock just looks at him with his confused expression, the same one he has when Jim and Bones exult because the Academy parrises squares team won, or when Jim won't stop snickering after watching holos of people slipping on a banana peel. "Why would I be? My physical appearance is solely the product of my genes and the environment in which I was raised. I have little claim to pride, and the fact that members of the crew find me attractive does not procure me any advantage." He finishes by crouching slightly in sparring position, ready to start another round.
Jim's not ready, though.
"Right." He narrows his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. "It does though, doesn't it?"
Spock straightens his spine, looking a little aggravated at the forced pause in his workout. "In which manner, Jim?" Is that a sigh?
"Well. Heaps of manners. People are more likely to go out with you, for example."
"I see." Spock nods solemnly. "I shall make sure to take advantage of it."
Wait. "Wait. Are you planning to start going out? Like, on dates?"
"Is that not what you just suggested?"
"I—" Not precisely. No. But kind of? Without meaning to? He feels a bubble of panic swell inside him. "Do Vulcans even date?"
"Captain, I see I must have previously neglected to inform you that I am half human—"
"Smartass."
"—furthermore, and I do remember filling the relevant paperwork, Lieutenant Uhura and I engaged in what you refer to as 'dating' for nine months, five days and—"
"Fine, fine." Jim waves his hand. "So…the dating thing. With who?"
Jim's not feeling possessive. And panicky. Not at all.
Oblivious, Spock raises one eyebrow, maybe at the inappropriateness of the question, most likely because of Jim's grammar. "With whomever is interested. I have several options, as you just mentioned."
It's okay. It's fine. "Um, do you have someone in mind? I mean, she should, you know. Probably not be in your department. For example."
Spock nods, solemnly, while somehow making it perfectly clear that he is only humoring Jim. "I will ensure that she or he is not under my supervision."
She or…?
"Okay." She or he!? "Okay, good." Jim thinks that he does a good job of not skipping a beat in the conversation.
Considering that his head just exploded. Catastrophically. She or he.
Spock just nods, going back into sparring position.
And Jim, exploded brain and all that, just blurts it out.
"The dating… What about me?"
And that's it. Years of longing and wanting and pining and telling himself to just stop, stop, he's not for you, and Jim just asked Spock out, and Spock—
Spock sighs.
"It appears likely that several crew members will be equally interested in engaging socially with you, captain. Although perhaps less than with me, as I do outrank you by five positions. Now, would you like to resume our session?"
"That's not—"
Spock raises an eyebrow, impatiently.
And Jim just drops it.
Spock takes him down in about ten seconds, and it hurts like a motherfucker.
...
"He said there is a… link?"
"A link?" Uhura stops in the act of rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with her index fingers to throw Jim an incredulous look. She was very ready to murder him for interrupting her sleep, only letting him in when he mentioned Spock's injury. Jim thinks it wise not comment on how adorable she looks like this, her hair wavy around her shoulders and wearing a definitely non-regulation t-shirt that says 'Linguistics Ninja' over plaid pajama bottoms.
"A mind link. A bond. Some kind of Vulcan thing. You know what I'm talking about?"
She nods. "It's a marriage, basically. With whom?"
Jim tries to minimize his eye-roll. She did just wake up after taking Gamma yesterday, after all. "With Scotty," he deadpans. "With me, of course!"
She's suddenly looks considerably more awake. "Wow."
"Wow what? Wow good or wow bad?"
"Just… wow. You have a link with Spock?"
"I don't know. Do I? Could he be wrong?"
She gives him a skeptical glance.
"Well. How often have you known him to be wrong?"
There's that, Jim concedes. "Could he be lying?"
"Sure. Who wouldn't lie about having a mind link with you, Kirk? I do it all the time. It's what keeps me going in the cold, vast desolation of outer spa—"
"Okay, okay." He raises his hands defensively. "So, there probably is a link."
Nyota nods, pensively. "Wow." Is that a smile? Why is she smiling? Is she enjoying herself? "Why wouldn't he have mentioned it before, though?"
Jim shrugs. "Is it possible that he didn't know?"
It's not that Jim hasn't asked all of this stuff and then about forty more questions to M'Benga. It's that no one on board knows shit about any of this, because Vulcans are ridiculous, and they insist on acting like some fucking space masonic lodge.
Nyota shrugs. "Maybe? It's possible that Spock took stock of his mind links when he regained consciousness and noticed it for the first time. He did mention once that he couldn't really feel his familial link with Sarek unless he focused on it. But…" She looks to her right, staring unseeingly at a picture of the bridge crew taken last year during shore leave on Omicron 4. The good times. When everyone was oriented in space and time. "How would it have formed? Not spontaneously. At least, not without some kind of very intimate physical contact happening between the two of you. And even then, the chances would be…"
She must see it in his eyes when she looks back at him. Or maybe it's in the way he has crossed his arms on his chest, or lowered his gaze to his own boots, or flattened his lips in a thin line. She is a comm officer, after all. She is good at reading this stuff. At reading people. And Jim is bad at making himself opaque.
"No."
Jim firmly shuts his eyes, for just a fraction of a second, and says nothing. When he opens them, she's still there. The whole situation is. Fuck.
"Jim."
"I…"
"Jim."
"It was only—"
"Jim."
"—the once."
"Jim!"
"I know! I know. Don't think that I don't know."
"I told you to stay away from him!"
She did. A little less than a year ago, when Jim had been hitting a rough patch, always so fatigued and stressed out that it had been so hard to push down that thing inside him clamoring for more closeness, for more time, for more of Spock, there had been more lovesick looks thrown at Spock than Uhura could ignore. Except that she had interpreted them less as lovesick, and more as staring at her best friend's ass out of boredom and a misplaced tendency to engage in challenging pursuits to break the monotony of deep space. So she had given him the "don't hurt him or I'll carve out your testicles with a rusty scalpel and eat them in front of your eyes" talk, and Jim had though it best to put the brakes on the whole thing.
Because he's Jim Kirk, after all, and hurting people is what he does.
"I tried to. It was really hard. It was impossible. And I mean, it's not like you did any better than I did."
"Good point," she mumbles. "Well, now you have a mental link to show for it. Congratulations, captain."
"I should have listened to you."
She snorts. "When have you ever?" She walks to the chair in the middle on the room and sits in it with both her legs underneath her. It would look lazy and sprawling if it were anyone else, but she manages to be as graceful as a work of art.
"So how did you tell him?"
"…How did I tell him, what?"
"That you're not really bonded."
"I didn't. We all just kinda, um, went along with it?"
Nyota's eyes widen. Then they widen more. Jim has the distinct impression that they would open even wider, if it weren't for obvious structural impossibilities.
"Wow."
"Listen—"
"Wow."
She's using that one word a lot, for a linguistic ninja.
"What was I supposed to do? He's missing months of his life. Should I confuse him further by telling him that this thing he can feel in his head is not a thing?"
Especially because, Spock didn't exactly seem to mind it. Jim remembers his warm fingers pressing against his own, nerve endings buzzing and fluttering under his skin, and abruptly feels the impulse to flex his hand.
"Wow."
"Uhura—"
"Listen, I'll tell you two things." She stands again and walks up to him, he expression intense. "First, hurt him and your testicles are as good as surgically detached from your body. Without numbing agents, of course. Second," she suddenly grins, "please, do keep me updated. I want to know everything about this shit show."
He can still hear her laughter from the corridor outside her quarters.
...
"I thought you were straight."
It's about a month into the third year of the mission. This morning, during Alpha, he and Spock decided to meet in Jim's quarters to play chess.
It's now 21:13 PM.
In the intervening time, Jim has spent an inordinate amount of time and mental energy trying to settle on a good strategy to finally ask Spock, in an offhand kind of manner, what he meant exactly about dating, and dating other dudes in particular.
And if there's any chance. Even a small one. Minuscule. Infinitesimal. Nanoscale.
That this dude could be Jim.
He has polished and rehearsed at least eight different opening, and made an effort to predict all of Spock's possible responses to ensure that his line of pursuit will actually lead to the topic of interest. It's a fine tactical game, not unlike the dozens of diplomatic negotiations with more or less hostile populations he's gotten commendations and medals for over the past few years. Not unlike chess itself, in a way. It's an art, as Jim has learned. And there is a reason, if Jim is often referred to as the best captain in Starfleet. Not to mention that he became a grandmaster at the age of eighteen.
Which is why it's all he can to not facepalm when the first thing he blurts out, barely five moves into their game, is, "I thought you were straight."
Very smooth, Kirk.
He's frantically wondering if he should make up some kind of excuse, maybe sound a ship wide alarm just to get himself out of this clusterfuck, when he notices that Spock is looking at him with a genuinely confused expression on his face, hand still in midair and holding his knight.
"…Straight?"
Now. Spock can be—is—the worst kind of troll, with the whole pretending not to understand Terran slang thing—dude. Knock it off. Your mother was Amanda Greyson. She basically invented Standard—but this time, this fucking time, Jim can tell with absolute certainty that he truly has no clue what Jim is referring to.
Damn him.
"Is that it? The knight stays airborne?" he asks, playing for time.
Instead of replying, Spock takes Jim's rook without even breaking eye contact. "Check."
Jim frowns at him and hurriedly moves his king.
"Straight, Jim?" Spock prompts him. Jim's clearly not getting out of this.
"Ehm… you know. Strictly, um. Straight. Heterosexual."
"Oh. I see." Spock looks back at the board, clearly unperturbed by Jim's question. He should have figured that it would be easier to agitate Spock by misremembering Tungsten's atomic number than by asking sex-related questions. "It was a reasonable assumption, based on the available information."
"Oh." Jim narrows his eyes. "Was it?"
"Indeed. Most logical."
"That's high praise from you, commander."
Spock nods once, acknowledging his words with what Jim knows to be pure, undiluted sarcasm. Although everyone else on the ship, except for Uhura and maybe Bones, would interpret it as solemn agreement.
And Jim knows that as far Spock is concerned, this is the end of the topic.
Which, no.
No fucking way.
He leans back on his chair and starts the questioning. No need to be subtle at this point, obviously.
"So… Have you dated a lot of guys?"
Spock looks up from perusing the board. "Thirty-seven percent of my sexual partners have been males." He inclines his head. "You appear surprised."
Jim will not get turned on because Spock used the word 'sexual'. He. Will. Not.
"No. No, not at all." He looks at the ceiling for a second. "Well, maybe a bit. I mean, you were with Nyota, and there was that lady you had gotten stuck with before…" They don't mention the fall of Vulcan. Ever. "Yeah, before. Spring? String?"
"T'Pring," Spock supplies patiently, his tone dry.
"Right. Her. And you never mentioned being into guys. Or males, I guess."
"You mean, over the multiple conversations we have had regarding our sexual preferences?"
Spock really needs to stop saying sexual.
"Come on. We've had some."
"There have been instances of you elbowing me and inviting me to, and I am quoting, 'check out' the occasional 'hot chick', but that is the extent of what I remember." Spock moves his bishop and takes a sip of his tea.
"Well, if you wanted to talk about hot guys you could have said so. I'd have listened. Happily."
"If I recall correctly, all I wished was for you to stop your blatant sexualization of unaware passerbys." Oh, Spock knows nothing about the magnitude of Jim's sexualizing habits. "It is your turn to move, Jim."
"The point is, I feel like I didn't know this really important thing about one of my closest friends that I'm only finding out right now. Not that it's not in your rights to keep it from anyone." Not that what Jim's saying is one hundred percent true, either.
"I see." Spock's expression softens minutely. "It was not something I sought to hide. Although for reproductive reasons bonds are usually initiated between people of different sexes, on Vulcan sexual experimentation was highly encouraged, if not expected. Perhaps as a consequence, I find the male body equally sexually arousing as the female one. This is quite common among my species, I believe. To the degree that mentioning it would be redundant."
For a fleeting moment, Jim thinks that he can see something in Spock's eyes, as if there were something to add that he is hesitant to say, but it's gone before he can investigate further.
Meanwhile, Jim's fight against his boner crumbles under the weight of Spock's words.
He clears his throat. "Well. I'm not Vulcan. It would have not been redundant." He says it a bit sourly, moving his rook to threaten Spock's bishop while he surreptitiously adjusts himself under the table.
There is no way in hell Jim's winning this match.
"True," Spock concedes, "But what difference would it have made, had told you?"
It's there.
The opening he's been waiting for. The one he plotted to reach and failed at achieving, miserably, until now, when Spock handed it to him on a gold platter.
The one in which Jim tells Spock several things, like how sometimes it's hard for him to stay focused on the bridge when Spock is leading even very low-risk away missions, or that he's the one who programmed that gross plomeek recipe in the cafeteria replicator, or how he has thought it through in the past few months, and he actually believes that he can bear watching a holomentary about terrace farming on ninety-fourth century Andoria, if that's what constitutes Spock's ideal date.
Or maybe just that he likes Spock, a little more than how one likes a friend.
And that he thinks Spock might like him too, if he actually decided to give Jim a chance. And that they might have even more fun than they've be having, together.
In bed, for example. But also out of bed. Really, mostly out of bed.
That's how bad Jim's got it.
So he swallows, and he searches for the right words, a process made no easier by the patient, intent way Spock is staring at him. He finds them, he thinks. He's gonna go with, "I think I would have asked you out myself," since it's not a declaration of undying love, which would horrify a Vulcan, and it's also pretty concrete and straightforward, which should appeal to a Vulcan. All the facts. None of the feelings. He'll couch in the least possible threatening way, and—
When the shipwide red alert sounds, he's not even that surprised.
...
Jim offers to bring Spock back to his cabin, and it takes him a moment to realize that the puzzled look M'Benga gives him is due to the fact that Spock is perfectly capable of finding his quarters on his own.
Right. Six month memory loss.
It's not as bad as it could be, for sure. Spock could have lost the last five years of his life, which would require a lot of explanation about what exactly happened to his home planet and family, not to mention how Jim was promoted to captain of the Enterprise and not booted out of the Academy for cheating on that stupid test. Or he could be missing four, which would place them as that weird pre-Khan moments when Spock had still been weirdly reluctant to admit that he cared whether Jim lived or died.
Then again, he could have forgotten just a couple of days, which would have left them both on the same page, regarding this bond thing.
"We do not share quarters?" is the first thing Spock's asks him when they step into his room, a vertical line between his brows. His wound, now cleaned of the green blood, is hidden by his hair.
"Um, we… share a bathroom. You know." Of course, Spock knows. They always have, since day one, and they are now on day one thousand and something. "Starfleet doesn't exactly… know."
The line deepens. "How new is the bond?"
Ha. "Very." A remarkably imprecise reply, that Spock for some reason decides not to focus on.
"Was a healer present?"
Finally something he can answer with certainty. "Nope." No one was present. Not even their common senses. Though, if Jim recalls correctly, there was the sensation of a strong arm wrapped around his ribs, and hands clenching around his waist through his t-shirt, and the fan of an inhumanly hot breath at the base of his jaw. An unfamiliarly angular ear pressed against his mouth, its taste magnificent under the tip of his tongue, like spices and cream. And something pooling low at the base of his spine, and he had wanted to make it last, but Spock had been so close, and the pleasure so lovely, and Jim had been so in love it hurt— "No healer," he says, shrugging away whatever that was.
"Does the crew know?"
It's getting harder and harder, to hold Spock's gaze. Jim runs a hand through his hair and walks to Spock's desk, studying the stacks of PADDs and the absolute lack of clutter on it. The chessboard is there, on the right side. The pieces haven't been moved in several weeks. It's still set as the last game they played, before…before.
"Most don't."
"I see." Spock's voice sounds nearer than Jim would have expected, and when he turns he finds him not a foot away. Close. Very close. Not excessively close, but definitely closer than Spock would have chosen to be were he in possession of the entirety of his memories.
Jim loves it.
Which in turn makes him feel nauseous. Suffocated. Because Spock should know that…
"Listen, you should probably know that—"
Whatever Spock should know, gets lost in the way he wraps his hands around Jim's, so that their palms are brushing. "Jim. You are distressed. Let me help you."
It's unlike anything Jim has felt before. It's a very concrete awareness of Spock's warmth, Spock's body, Spock's flesh, shifting upwards and taking its place beside Jim's, occupying his personal space. The contact irradiates upwards from his hands and into his arms. It presses inside Jim for a second, and then for minutes, and Jim wonders if he'll have to forcibly scrub Spock away from his skin.
He feels calm. And cozy. And contained.
He is also aroused. Not an impatient, urgent arousal, but a pleasant one. Enjoyable, even should it lead nowhere. Nothing like the last time he and Spock—
"What did you do?" His voice is unexpectedly raspy. He knows he's flushed, and visibly. Damn blondie complexion.
"I simply attempted to soothe you through the bond."
Spock's hand moves upwards, coming to push Jim's too-long hair back from his forehead.
Okay, so maybe he's more horny than he thought. He's really, really quite turned on, but he's not so far gone that he doesn't realize how close to his meld points Spock's fingers are getting.
"Can you read my thoughts?" he asks.
"Not without a meld, no." Spock's forehead creases. "Did I neglect to inform you of the nature of the bond?"
It's the perfect time for Jim to take a step back. To explain. And yet. "You might have… omitted a few details."
"I see." Spock is running his thumb back and forth on Jim's cheekbone, now. Undoubtedly, he's convinced that this, standing mere millimeters apart, breathing the same air, making the other's pupil dilate, is something they do regularly.
Among other things.
Like…
No. No.
This has been fun, to use a euphemism, but Jim should really disabuse him of the notion. Come clean. Set the record straight. And yet.
"Jim. I cannot read your thoughts or memories through the bond. However, if we are sufficiently close I can perceive your feelings. And… physical sensations."
And that's what does it. It's all well and good to lie to one's first officer about being in love and Vulcan-married or whatever, and even to let him go through with what Jim's perfectly aware are pretty filthy Vulcan kisses. But knowing that Spock can feel his hard on in his head…
Jim steps and clears his throat, taking a second to collect himself. "You should just… rest. Meditate." He waves a hand inchoately. "Solve equations. I'll be back later." He doesn't wait for Spock's answer and heads for the door.
"Jim," Spock calls him, right as the doors are about to open. "I am sorry I cannot remember how the bond came to be. But it changes nothing."
Jim swallows and nods, exiting without looking back.
Then, he spends five minutes slumped on the bulkhead right outside of Spock's quarters.
...
Three years and nine months into the mission, and Jim and Spock finally have a system.
It's a relatively elaborate protocol, that they only use to deal with away missions that are so disastrous that they require something more than Jim raiding Bones' stash of whiskey, or Spock meditating himself into oblivion. They seldom use it for anything below a heavy number of casualties, or injuries so severe that are likely—certain—to end in Jim making subspace comms that interrupt the peaceful lives of a handful of families on various federation planets, and Spock spending a night or two filling forms to request replacement personnel.
It works like this: they beam back without exchanging a word. They stand in front of Bones, shoulder to shoulder, as he tells them what the state of everyone's injuries is, and what to expect in the next few days, still talking to each other as little as necessary. Then come the reports, sometimes conference calls with the Admiralty, mostly depending on whether they are in range. At that point, they have to talk some, to make sure they have their story straight—they have learned so much since Nibiru—but it's minimal, and it usually involves little to no eye contact. Finally, each goes back to his own cabin. Take a sonic shower, spend some quality time staring bitterly out of the viewport, engage in some overdue reevaluation of their life choices (at least, that's what Jim does; Spock probably meditates or eats spinach while reading peer-reviewed scientific journals).
They don't reemerge from their quarters until halfway through Gamma, when the corridors are dark and silent with ship's night.
Spock is usually already in the sparring room when Jim arrives, wearing an exact replica of Jim's clothes—Starfleet-issue sweats and t-shirt, all in combination of black and gray— going through the moves of that weird martial art whose name Jim can't quite pronounce and thus refers to as Vulcan Tai Chi. Spock drops whatever he's doing as soon as notices Jim's presence.
And then.
And then, they proceed to beat the shit out of each other.
It's not sparring.
It's not training.
It's not exercise.
Spock lays into Jim with little restraint, and yes, he's supposed to be impossibly stronger, but Jim has spent way too many years fighting people stronger and bigger and meaner than himself not to have learned how to put up a good fight. So they're almost evenly matched, and they fight like they hate each other instead of… yeah. And it feels good. It feels amazing to be beaten, because deep down Jim knows that he deserves it. And it feels good to dish it out, too, to punch the shit out of someone, someone who can take it, who's not gonna die because of Jim's poor decisions. Someone who's still gonna be there at the end of everything. With the dermal they snuck out of the MedBay, ready to use it on himself and on Jim. And then again tomorrow, on the bridge, without mentioning any of this.
It's on one of those nights, Jim thinks—Jim knows—, three months and two weeks before the Enterprise jerks and Spock hits his head and then brushes his fingers against Jim's, that the bond comes to be. Right after Bones looked at them and shook his head, and Jim had to make seven—seven—subspace calls, and Spock's face went more and more impassible as time went on, which is never, ever a good sign.
So they did the reports and shower and meditation dance, and now they're here, shoving and kicking at each other, and Spock's lip is bleeding green, and Jim's side is purple and hurting like a son of a bitch, and as he tries to avoid Spock's kicks, Jim is feeling for the first time in hours like maybe—maybe—he can bear to be alive and captain of this ship for one more hour. One more day.
He's hard, too. It has nothing to do with fact that he's flush against Spock—or at least, very little. It's the adrenaline, and that special brand of exhilaration that comes from the fact that, holy shit, Spock hesitated just a millisecond there and totally missed his window of opportunity with that uppercut, and Jim was able to dodge it pretty easily and to retaliate while Spock's defense was not quite in place, and now he's absolutely dominating the fight and at least he gets to be in control of something. So he stays hard, and becomes harder as he corners Spock with punches and almost knees him in the balls once, twice (dirty, they both fight so dirty), leading them away from the sparring mat until there's no more room for Spock to retreat, because Jim's got him pinned against the wall, right forearm pressing into Spock's throat, body flush against his.
Which is when Jim realizes that Spock is hard, too. Again, no big deal—or is it? How do Vulcans work? How does Spock work?— probably just one of ten billion anatomic responses elicited by this weird, shitty situation, except that.
Except that Spock is looking at him, inside him, and though Jim has his upped body completely immobilized, Spock definitely can still shift his hips, and suddenly he does, and their erections are not two parallel lines, but they're brushing against each other, and yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes.
It's maybe ten thrusts. Maybe.
The friction is good, for sure, but not enough to make them come, and definitely not enough to make them come like that, like a fucking freight train, sound and sight receding under the waves of pleasure while Spock mouths what has got to be 'Jim' against his cheek. It's not enough to make Spock's hands spasm against Jim's waist until they leave imprints that will last eleven days, or to make Jim forget himself to the point that he is biting hard into Spock's ear. It should not be enough, which is how Jim knows that this orgasm is coming straight from his brain.
Trust Spock to redefine fucking for Jim in less than thirty seconds.
Also, trust Spock to immediately kill his buzz and look at Jim like that while his balls are still tingling.
Horrified. Appalled. Revolted.
Jim has seen him this way before, maybe twice, and one of those times Jim was in the process on dying in front of him, so the expression is pretty vivid inside his head. Which, yeah. It brings him down real quick from his high—finally, finally, it's been so long and Jim is so bad at wanting and not having and no one ever told him that being in love was all about wanting, wanting, wanting—to a new low—what's that in his eyes, is it panic, is that fucking disgust, did I make him, did he feel coerced, is this the end, is it over now, me and him and the Enterprise, how far would he go to get away from me, cut your losses, Jim, just cut your losses—
And Jim. Jim cannot bear it. Jim is clearly not built to be in love, because this is excruciating and it's way more than he can stand. So he takes one step back, and then another, and he ignores the wetness at his groin—it's not just his come, in their come so why the fuck is Spock looking at him like Jim just punched him—and swallows around the lump on his throat. He looks straight into Spock's eyes.
"This didn't happen. Is it clear?"
It takes several moments for Spock's nod to come. As soon as it does, Jim gets the fuck out of there.