Title: Almost Forgotten

Rating: PG-13

Chapter Summary: Cadet Kirk makes a horrible mistake in his alcoholic choices, and he fumbles across the Commander in his sick stupor.

Disclaimer: Star Trek characters are not mine.

Author's Note: Okay, so I thought it was spelled VulCan (that IS how Wikipedia spells it)… but then people whined about it being spelled VulKan… and now people are saying it's VulCan. I'm going to drown myself if someone tells me another way to spell it – 'cause I'm, quite frankly, giving up on the spelling for the time being. :) EVERYONE knows how to pronounce it… so work with it. K and C make the same sound in MOST cases, so damnit, it is what it is; though, notably, I'm going back to the C because Microsoft Word even says that it's the right spelling.

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Kirk slammed the empty blue-lidded flask of what was once-full of some kind of disgusting ale (that McCoy had insisted would be pleasurable) back onto the stand beside his bed. Sinking his neck heavily into the pillow beneath his head, the cadet sifted through a series of playbacks that could be reasonably titled as melancholy tributes to his horrible day. Well, it hadn't started out completely horrible. In fact, to do a short play-by-play he had awoken from this same bed earlier in the morning with a very satisfied pleasure as to what he would be performing on the 'unbeatable test', and had then beaten the unbeatable test with a gesture that shocked all of Starfleet. Then he had been roughly called to the front of a very aggravated council, accused of cheating. Which, in all honestly, he had cheated – but he had cheated for a good reason! He had to prove a point, and that point had been proven, and quite frankly he was doing everybody a favor… and yet, here he was, being punished for it. Running his tongue lazily over his liquor-tainted lips, the cadet inhaled heavily while grappling the image of Commander Spock's sinister eyebrow raise from his mind. That bastard. It was his entire fault. He just had to go whine and bitch to whomever would listen about how his unbeatable test had been surpassed by a cheat… and he probably didn't rest until he was promised by the group of marital teachers that the fiend would be punished. And so, here Cadet Kirk was, awaiting the outcome of whatever unnecessary yet impotent punishment would be thrust upon him.

Twitching his feet back and forth at the foot of his bed, the cadet flipped over onto his stomach and winced. Bad move. His bulging stomach full of alcohol flopped and whirred as he shifted around back onto his back, cursing every inanimate object in the room. His ears began to ring with pestilent omniscient sounds that, in reality, weren't even real – but damn they felt real. Clutching his hands to his eyes, pressing the cave in his palms to the lids of his face, the cadet blew his cheeks into a large pocket of air with a disgusted grimace. Inwardly, he kicked himself for ever accepting such a strong alcoholic beverage from his intended 'doctor' of a friend. Oh, some doctor. What kind of a doctor recommends an alcoholic beverage of crap to their friends? Kirk pursed his lips in pain, dropping his hands from his eyes with an exasperated groan, picturing a new way for Spock to improve his stupid test; instead of a ship crash, it could be a test of what to do when faced with the certain death of alcoholic beverages. Chuckling from his own ridiculous thoughts, Kirk shot up as the jostle of his stomach from repetitive laughing caused a nauseating impulse to drive him upward. Tossing his bare feet onto the marble floor, the cold chill of the polished tile sending tremors of burning freeze up his naked legs, he stood on shaky legs and clutched at his abdomen.

Teetering to the door, waiting impatiently for it to whir quickly open on its retracting duo, Kirk pressed the back of his hand firmly to his mouth as a painfully domineering spasm twisted in his stomach. Finally, after what seemed to be eight hours, the door whirred open and the cadet slipped out into what he presumed to be an empty hallway. Of course it would be empty, everyone at this time of night was undoubtedly eating or studying, not finding any reason to wander room to room for any given reason – so, obviously, he would be free to sprint to the bathroom with little to no encounters. Right? Chin to his chest, hand over his mouth, Kirk stared at the ground as his feet moved furiously, just below the speed of a sprint. He was too afraid to look up in the fear that any sudden movement of his head would open the passageway, much like a hose, and have some kind of dominoes-effect in the essence of spewing. Damn McCoy to hell.

Suddenly, with no warning and no foreshadowing of probability, Kirk's golden head of hair slammed painfully hard into someone's strong chest, who just happened to be coming from around the corner at the exact same time, forcing the cadet to raise his head up with a regretful notion. And, though he was horrified enough as it was to be stopped in his initial course of action, Cadet Kirk dropped his hand from his mouth and bit down on his tongue aggressively when he found himself face to face with his recently-assigned moral enemy. Bastard. Swallowing down the impulse to vomit all over his placid face, Kirk stared at the Vulcan whose emotions were dripping with a derogating lack of inadvertency. Slowly dropping his arms to his sides, fists clenched to the point of pure-white knuckles, the cadet took a steady intake of air in hopes of calming his stomach.

Raising an eyebrow, Commander Spock twisted his lips into a flat line as he stared at the cadet before him, who was glistening with sweat and trembling with the promise of pain. "You appear as if you are about to regurgitate your recently consumed food, Cadet." He said smoothly, quirking the side of his mouth into a small smile.

"Yeah, well, I feel like I'm about to regurgitate my recently consumed food." Kirk said in a mocking voice, twitching his eye at the disgusting illustration the words played before his mind. Oh, Commander Spock had a series of temerities to be willing to engage with him in conversation when he felt like this…

Sighing, Spock noted the despondent attitude the cadet was taking, and squared his shoulders in a professional fashion. Though the Vulcan had managed to loath the cheating fiend just a few hours prior, he couldn't fight off the urge to at least offer the pathetic cadet his personal aid. "Do you need assistance in making your way to the personal relieving facilities?"

Kirk, wincing at him with the utmost lack of plaudit, dropped his jaw for a moment and hesitated in a stupor position with a shocked expression. "No. I do not need help. I know where the bathrooms are – I have relieved myself a few times, y'know." He possibly would have laughed at his point, had his physical attributes been in an opposite situation, but instead he just stared up at the Vulcan with the single wish that the entity before him was not a Commander but rather a meaningless cadet; simply because, if that were the case, he could thrust the Vulcan to the side with an aggressive elbow and continue on his way. But, wishes never coming true and all, he would have to ask nicely. "Now, if you will excuse me, I should probably –" A sudden involuntary spasm threw the cadet's shoulders into the opposite wall, causing him to rush his hand once again to the gap of his mouth. Caving the square of his back into the wall he had collapsed into, Kirk slid down it with another nauseating quirk, plopping onto the floor with a loud clap.

Spock, still seemingly inadvertent and rather taken by surprise at the series of events, narrowed his eyes on the cadet with fascination. Taking a step towards the fallen man, the Vulcan slowly bent down onto his knee, leveling himself with Kirk. Placing his elbow squarely upon his thigh, Spock then took the first inquiry of concern as he watched the man's brow furrow in distress. For the first time in his small span of knowing him, the cadet seemed much weaker and – frankly – human. Before, when the Vulcan had first laid eyes upon Cadet Kirk, Spock had been implausibly frustrated by the strong willed man – but not now. Fighting off the impulse to place his hand onto the cadet's forehead, much like his human mother did to him when he was sick, Spock forced himself to ask the most immediate question he could capture. "Have you requested that Cadet McCoy examine you?"

Kirk gurgled a chuckle, raising his head with one eye open, glaring at the Vulcan next to him with a single gaze. "Cadet McCoy is the one responsible for this."

Spock looked confused. "I had assumed you were intoxicated –"

"Oh! Oh. I am quite intoxicated, Commander." Kirk slummed over him, slapping the Vulcan in the side of the arm playfully with a very wide grin. "My stomach just does not agree with th-th-the-"

Spock stood quickly and took a swift step backwards as Cadet Kirk – well, one can probably imaginatively play the scene out over and over again in one's mind as to what Cadet Kirk did next. Eyes darting up to the ceiling, Spock winced into the florescent light above his head which caused the jet black hair on his head to shine with the illusion of being glass. Absentmindedly the Vulcan rubbed his left arm that had so recently been rattled by the cadet's strong hand, and he tenderly pressed inward on his pale skin. It didn't necessarily hurt him, but it had been a long while since Spock had been touched in such a manner, playful or not. When the sound of Kirk's heaving fell to silence, the Vulcan felt he had a probable amount of control on his stomach reflex, and slowly lowered his gaze onto the cadet's paled-out face. As he stared down upon the mess, Spock was momentarily overcome with the misrepresented feeling of pity as a hidden longing at the pit of the Vulcan's stomach secretly wanted to reach down and help the man to his feet – or at least somehow ease the obvious pain in the cadet's frangible body…

"My God, man!" A voice rang behind the Commander, causing his pointed ears to twitch in the general direction. Twisting his head to the side, Spock glanced at the image of Cadet McCoy, sprinting down the hallway with a hand to his head in an inherited trait of shock. "I said the green lidded flask – not the blue one!" Rushing past Spock, banging lightly into his placid arm, McCoy skid to a screeching stop at the sight of Cadet Kirk and pressed his forearm to his nose as to fight off the putrid fumes.

Kirk, leaning back against the wall, pulled his knees up to his chest and he glared up at McCoy with the opposite diffident of anger. "Bullshit. You said blue!"

"Nope. Nope, I swear I said green." McCoy said defiantly, turning towards Commander Spock for the first sign of acknowledgement and shooting him a tiny grin. "I told him green."

"I hate you…" Kirk wheezed, clutching his stomach again and doubling over. And he was honest, in this moment in time, that he truly hated McCoy with a fiery passion. He hated him for making him vomit, he hated him for lying, and he mostly hated him for embarrassing Kirk in front of Commander Spock! Squinting his eyes, Kirk shook that last thought from his mind in confusion. It's not like it really mattered what Spock thought of him; other than the fact that he looked like a babbling idiot at the moment, and probably appeared to be weak. Gnawing on the inside of his cheek, the cadet allowed McCoy to loop his arms around his flaccid chest and heave him upwards, helping him to his feet. Dilatorily, carefully, they made their way towards the restrooms in a clambering mess of urgency. Grunting with every step, Kirk eventually gave into the hesitated avoidance to cave his weight into his friend's body weakly. As he bent heavily against McCoy's side, grasping deathly tight to his shoulders, the cadet's head began to spin with regret; if only he hadn't been so stubborn, it would have been Commander Spock helping him to the restroom instead of McCoy. If he hadn't been so stubborn, he would have been tightly clinging to Commander Spock, who had shown the first sign of weakness in offering to help him in the first place. If he hadn't been so stubborn… Oh, hell. Digging his head into his own shoulder, Kirk drove the ideas from his mind, swearing that those ridiculous thoughts were coming from the poisonous liquid that bastard McCoy had told him drink from the blue lidded flask…

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Spock stared down at the messy area that the malevolent Cadet Kirk had recently been seated near, and bit down on his lip with a paling impulse. His frenzied mind began to slow as he turned his back on the image, preparing to make his way back towards the office in which his original destination was plotted. Glancing down at his white hands, admiring the greenish hue of his own skin against the blue fabric of his suit, Spock exhaled lightly, grasping onto the remaining sanitary thoughts that flitted through his mind. Narrowing his gaze aggressively, he found it much harder to shake the image of Cadet Kirk's fragile body on the floor than he had originally perceived.

"Commander Spock!"

Stopping short of his heel, turning his body back towards the mess he had forced himself to abandon, Spock's human eyes softened at the sight of Cadet Uhura bounding quickly towards him. When she had finally cut the distance short between them, hHer long hair bounced to a halt on her left shoulder, cascading down the front of her shirt like a mane. "What happened to Cadet Kirk?" She stammered quickly, hooking an inquiring thumb in the direction that Kirk and McCoy had disappeared. Spock simply gestured towards the mess on the floor a few feet away, which Uhura's eyes fell onto with an adjacent look of bitter disgust. "Is he alright?"

Raising his eyebrow and folding his arms slowly before his chest, Spock tugged his dark and gentle gaze back to Uhura's face. "I was brought to believe that you disliked Cadet Kirk." He said simply, emotionless as usual, though if he were to show any sign of emotion, Uhura might have caught a leaking sense of jealousy twisting through his gritted teeth.

"I – I do." She stammered in confusion. Was she lying? Was she just pretending to detest the handsome cadet so much as to avoid the concurrency of worry that might overtake the Commanders emotions? "I was only wondering."

Satisfied with this, hording off the bubbling rise of accusations, Spock lifted his pale hand slowly from its enwrapped linger on his chest and ran two fingers gently across the Cadet's soft cheek. Her warm skin sent a hot sensation past his wrist and through his forearm, reminding him why he cared for her the way he did. Funny – he had almost forgotten…

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Oooh, what's that mean?
Should I keep going? I think so… :)