A/N: ACK! So sorry this took so long to get to you, but GUESS WHAT? In this chapter we have some real, blatant, SLASHY SPIRKY SLASH. YAY! I hope you enjoy it!
Colonization
Chapter Three
Underhanded
"Sir, with all due respect—anything you do to these men now will only have worse consequences later." Kirk looks professional, composed, but the glint in his eye and the tic in his jaw betray his frustration. "They are rogue, sir, and they aren't afraid to turn on you or anyone else who gets between them and what they want."
The head of the council looks down his nose at Kirk, a distinct sense of superiority blossoming in his voice that the cool mask of his face cannot contain. Or maybe Jim has just gotten better at reading Vulcans—he likes to think it's a little bit of both. The council head scoffs. "They may be reckless, Captain, but they are vastly outnumbered. Any outright attack would be quashed before it even began."
"It won't be an outright attack," Kirk urges, stepping forward, "You're dealing with your own people; you know they're too smart for that."
"With age comes the wisdom to outsmart inflamed zealots."
"And with each new generation comes zealots smarter than the last," he's swallowing down frustration best he can, but his stance has only become more rigid, and his nails are trying to bite crescents in the palm of his hand. "This isn't just some ragtag group of rebels. This is organized, and this is dangerous."
"These are children," the elder chimes condescendingly, "And their tantrums will not be indulged nor tolerated. We have two of their members—they will be made an example of."
"You have no idea what a mistake that would be!" Now openly flustered, Jim turns to Spock with a look of desperation.
Spock steps forward, unflinching as the eyes of the council turn one by one on him. They are dark looks, disgusted looks—looks of Vulcans who still chafe at the thought of his rebellion in joining Starfleet. His father's gaze is the most ambiguous—lacking the disapproving element gleaming from all the others. He watches, instead, with a black concentration.
"I mean no disrespect,"—the care with which he crafts his words is unmistakably present on his face—"but so brash an action would be unwise. The uprising has already proven it's reliance on instinct above logic for the sake of their ends. Provoking them could result only in disaster. I request that, for the time being, the captives remain imprisoned until a less abrasive method is found to handle them."
The head of the council is quick to correct him. "I assure you, such cautionary measures will not be necessary—"
Sarek interrupts them. "I agree with their assessment. We should not let our own insecurities lead us to rash action."
A female member pulls herself to her feet, saying, "You are biased, Sarek. Your own son stands before you—you would not refuse him."
The look on Sarek's face borders on an emotion, though one both Kirk and Spock find nearly impossible to read. "You are biased: in your own prejudice against his heritage. Our very species and culture is falling apart—will we catalyze it?"
Spock feels taken aback—the council's unity degrading before him seems as if he is watching his own culture cave in on itself. He casts a conflicted look at Jim who nods in support, watching solemnly as the council bickers over matters which should be discussed.
Those of the new uprising are not the only Vulcans who are letting the primordial sway of emotions get the better of them.
"Stop!" Kirk calls suddenly, making all the Vulcans in the room flinch. Spock shoots a questioning glance his way. "What good are you to your people like this? They are relying on you to lay the foundations of their society. And so long as we are here, they are relying on us to keep the peace. Let us handled things for now—let us fix it. Before things get worse."
Grudgingly, the head elder nods to him. "Well said, Captain. Very well. You have a week until we take matters into our own hands."
"Thank you, sir." With hurried bows, Kirk and Spock leave the council, conversing in low voices on what, in actuality, could be done against the Vulcan uprising in their current situation. With no other ships in the vicinity to provide them with backup within the week, and no real method of combating the splinter group head-on, they're left at something of a loss.
Jim waits until they are well away from the council to let the smile break out across his face. Looking over to Spock, he says, "You're father stood up for you, back there."
"Yes," Spock says with a hesitant sort of uncertainty—one well-masked by the near-monotone of his speech. One Jim would have to be immeasurably thick to miss. "Things are changing." He pauses. "I have never seen the council behave in such a manner. I find myself incapable of comprehending the logic behind—"
Jim interrupts him, laying a gentle hand between Spock's shoulders. "I don't think they understand, either." His hand shifts up to grip the base of his shoulder, and the soft brush of his thumb against the skin of Spock's neck is enough to send across brief waves of the soothing comfort Jim is trying to relay. It is a conscious struggle not to sink into it—not to relax into Jim's hold and envelop himself in everything that is Jim and simply forget the twisted events going on around him. Jim is still talking, but Spock feels the words more than hears them.
"Vulcan is gone—things have gone past logic. You're not the only one hurting—but they're not like you, Spock. They're not half-human. They don't understand what it means to feel pain: not this kind of pain. They aren't handling it too well."
Slowly, measuredly—struggling to keep his head above the warm waters of Jim's presence—Spock says, "They should be endeavoring for the betterment of the colonies."
"They're trying," Jim assures him, and shifts his thumb in a way that's almost a kind of tender display. "Even the group we're here to stop is trying. The only difference is that they're dangerous, and we have to stop them as quick as we can."
Spock quickens his pace just enough to slip out of Jim's hold, coming to a stop as soon as the last echo of the warmth of his hand is gone. He looks down at the rocky soil, his shoulders only slightly slumped, his back only minutely curved, the skin between his eyes creased only to the fraction of a millimeter—just enough for Jim to see.
"My own roots have become unstable."
-
Despite his scattered attempts at bravado, Kirk can feel his own unease and discomfort creeping up on him, and he wouldn't be at all surprised if Spock's worry is rubbing off on him. No matter how solid the mask of Vulcan impassiveness he puts on, Jim can feel his unease crackling around him in a cloud that borders on tangible.
The crew is at their stations on the bridge, checking and double checking in the hopes that the sensors have missed something and that there is, in fact, another Starfleet vessel within the same system. Proving and reproving time and time again that they're on their own on this one, and that things sure as hell aren't going to be easy.
As Spock walks past, Jim catches his arm to murmur lowly, "Would you relax? You're giving me an ulcer."
"Apologies, Captain," Spock replies hollowly, "The atmosphere here is… unsettling."
Jim sighs and releases Spock's arm. Keeping his voice too low for the rest of the bustling crew to hear him, he answers, "Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like everyone's waiting for the other side to make a move, but no one's stepped forward yet, and it's starting to freak me out."
Spock nods, rearranging the positioning of his belt with a nervous calmness only a Vulcan could muster. But there's a lie in the smooth line of his brow, and a pseudo-repose lingering along the slope of his shoulders.
Tactlessly speaking his mind with that casual, yet somehow smug and prideful air indigenous to Captain James T. Kirk, he mutters, "I guess we can see what generations of suppressing emotions gets us. Overload."
Shifting in his stance as if smoothing ruffled feathers, Spock rebuts, "My people have existed in intellectual peace for thousands of—"
Kirk holds up his hands in surrender. "I'm not trying to be an ass, Spock—I'm just putting it out there. Obviously, the Vulcan purging of emotions isn't total. And what we're dealing with right now is dangerous." He pauses. "And very human."
Blankly—tensely—Spock asks, "What are you suggesting, Captain?"
It's the formality that catches Jim's attention. "Nothing, Mr. Spock," he says dismissively, "Nothing."
A time passes as he watches the activity around him—as he feels Spock's eyes boring through him in spades. Its length is stretched taught between them, balancing tense discomfort along the fragile expanse.
Jim was not expecting Spock to be the one to snap it.
"What is going on here is not the fault of my culture." He isn't sure why, but Kirk is almost surprised by the possessive.
The words fly from his mouth of his own accord—driven on by unease and lack of sleep and indignance that after all the worry and attention he's paid to Spock's well-being, he should be given this now. "Your culture," he snaps back—always a slave to pride, "was a disaster in the making."
Spock stands with his shoulders rolled back, chest extended in some primal, physical one-ups man ship Kirk has no hope to win. It is will all the control he possesses that he manages to keep his voice low enough to not attract any more of the bridges attention than they already have. "And now, sir?" His voice has only the faintest and most dangerous traces of venom. "Disaster has struck, and not at the hand of my culture, but by me. I was unable to reach Romulus in time; I was the one who set Nero out for blood. Me. Me and my own half-breed imperfections."
Jim comes to a tumbling stop, all but gaping at the Vulcan. The scattered shards of his pride come crashing down around him, burying their dagger points in the dry ice sensation that's cracking apart his stomach.
"Spock," he stammers meekly, "That wasn't you; that was—"
Spock cuts him off, quiet and reserved and against lacking any betrayal of emotion. By now, near all of the crew members on the bridge have noticed them, and while some try to politely continue their work, there are enough eyes on them to make Jim's discomfort manifest. Spock is unmoved.
"Whether or not it was me of the present or a self from a different time does not excuse it. It has been done, and it has cost my people everything."
This was what he had seen—the ragged, unhealed wound Spock couldn't bring himself to show Jim, even when he'd shown him everything else. The weight of the guilt Spock had been silently shouldering hits Jim like a wave, and can hardly get a coherent thought together to rebut it.
"Spock, you can't—"
Finally speaking at his normal volume, Spock says, almost mechanically, "Captain, I request permission to be excused from the bridge."
"Granted," he says so quietly he can hardly hear himself. Spock paces stiffly away into the turbolift, and nothing Jim could say could possibly bring him back.
Nothing, at least, that Jim could put words to.
-
"The hell's the matter with him?" Bones barks under his breath, snatching Jim by the arm as their paths intersect in the mess hall to redirect him to an empty table. They stop next to it and set down their trays, but they don't sit. McCoy casts a glance at Spock, dining at a table largely by himself on the other side, with young science-blue ensigns dropping by his table now and again to ask a question or two before being scared off by the unusually icy demeanor of the First Officer.
"He's been nothing but a pain in the ass since you two got back here, and you've been moping around like a kid to match. What the hell is wrong with you two? Damn it, Jim—the whole crew is stressed enough as it is without their first and second in command behaving like infants. And I can't handle all the injuries I've got on my hands and deal with you two at the same time!"
Jim laughs as he takes his seat, but it's wearing thin, and his 100-watt smile is less than beaming these days. "Sorry, Bones," he says with a lie of cheerfulness in his tone, "Nothing to worry about—just a little trouble on surface."
"Like hell it is." Bones crosses his arms and glares down at Jim a moment longer before taking his seat. "I don't know what this is, but work it out before you piss everyone off."
They don't have long of eating in silence before Kirk catches sight of Spock pulling himself to his feet and striding stiffly from the mess. Almost without meaning to, he casts a helpless look at Bones who, with a somewhat flustered softening of his expression, sighs, "Jim—go talk to 'im."
McCoy watches Jim stand, looking not at all like the Captain Bones knows him to be, and finds himself praying to God that the damn hobgoblin has a heart on him afterall.
-
The last thing Jim can bring himself to do is knock—and he briefly eyes the keypad beside the door, entertaining a thought he's not truly contemplating. Barging his way in by way of Captain's pass codes seems more uncouth than practical.
After at least a good five minutes of mustering up just enough courage to chicken out at the last possible second, Jim forces himself to rap his knuckles against the metallic surface of the door, holds his breath, and waits.
Waits for the longest twenty seconds imaginable.
The doors swipe open to reveal his first officer, looking blank and stiff and somewhat empty. Jim finds himself trying not to swallow his words.
"Spock," he says apologetically—finally letting himself drop the professional façade. "I'm sorry—what I said, it was… I'm sorry."
Spock blinks down at him, his expression unchanging. His voice chillingly… blank. "I have not taken offence, Captain. You are only human."
Struggling to keep his voice level, Kirk barks, "Don't pull that superior bullshit with me—and don't treat me like I'm stupid."
His face like stone, Spock responds, "Apologies, Captain. It was not my intention to imply—"
"Stop that!" Kirk snaps, and Spock gives a minute cock of the head that Jim supposes is supposed to be a question. "You know damn well what," he mutters, mostly to himself, before continuing. "Can we please talk? Seems like we haven't talked in a while."
"No, we have not… I shared my mind with you." The last phrase is added softly—a side note Jim was likely not truly meant to hear.
"But you hid this from me," Jim murmurs, his tone finally falling to something tender.
"It was… personal."
"It wasn't something you should have been trying to shoulder alone." Jim shifts awkwardly in the doorway. "Please let me in, Spock."
With only a hint of hesitation, Spock nods and steps aside. "Aye, Captain."
"Jim," Kirk insists softly, before stepping into the room. "I'm not here on business—I'm here as a friend."
Spock pauses again to study Kirk—Kirk and his entire demeanor and intention and emotion, or whatever it is he's come to display—before speaking. "My thanks… Jim."
Taking his place uncomfortably at the heart of the room, Jim watches Spock—and the gentle slope of the Vulcan's shoulders gives nothing away; his face is cool, and calm. And porcelain.
And Jim will be damned if he doesn't find a way to egg the human out. "I'm sorry," he starts again, with a weighty exhale of breath.
"You have already stated—"
"Spock," Jim groans as he draws his hand frustratedly across his face. "I don't know what to say. You shouldn't… carry this by yourself. Can you just… talk to me? I didn't even know about this until…" He stops, runs his hands anxiously through hair already mussed by the same action. "How can I help?"
"I'm afraid I do not understand the question."
"Let me help! Just let me… do something. Knowing you've been shouldering guilt like this all on your own while I've done nothing… I feel useless."
Spock hesitates. "Captain, I am unsure—"
"Damn it, Spock, would you quit that crap? What are you so afraid of? You've proved it to me before—I know you feel more than this, and don't pull that Vulcans-have-no-feelings bullshit on me! Why does it scare you so bad?"
While he hadn't been aware of stepping forward, Jim realizes he's pushed far past the bounds of personal space, to the point where he has to tilt his head up to hold eye contact.
Spock looks away. "Not fear," he says quietly. "Shame."
When Spock again looks at him, a swell of emotions surges untamed in the facets of his eyes. Emotions that do not touch his face or his voice, but fuel him: drive him in a way no full-blooded Vulcan could hope to understand. They are his purpose, his sanity—what carries him from day to day and thought to thought. They are a part of him.
They are his humanity.
And he is a creature of pride and high upstanding. He carries himself with dignity and adopts an air both regal and refined. It is his upbringing, weighing on him with a heavy hand whilst his pride and humanity rage against his in a juxtaposition of forces that would tear any weaker man apart.
Jim doesn't have time to feel shock when his hands move of their own accord to seize the fabric of Spock's science-officer blues. He doesn't have the time or the discipline to think around the heady air of instinct and adrenaline weaving together through his veins. He has no time to reprimand the body that moves independent of his mind to fist in Spock's collar and drag the taller man down. Doesn't have time to question—hardly has time to savor—as their lips crash together in a crescendo of sub-layered feelings flooding to the light. He doesn't have time to feel selfish as he holds Spock there for a brief, heatedly possessive instant.
Mine.
Control and sense flood back to him only once their mouths part, while he's still left to stagger in the dizzying aftermath of the most baffling knee-jerk reaction he's ever experience. It's then he's able to question, to realize, to step back as a terror of mixed nature takes hold of his heart. He uses one hand to shove himself away from Spock, throwing the other across his mouth and not daring to look away from the carpet.
"Christ, Spock—I'm… I'm—shit, I'm sorry," he stammers out, tucking both arms in against him and turning away—running fingers through his hair in a frantic, pell-mell rush of emotions too tangled to even try at sorting through. "I didn't mean to—Jesus, they can fire me for stunts like this." He stumbles through hurried sets of "Shit, I thought I'd finished with this back at the academy" and "Spock, I'm so sorry" and "sexual harassment in the workplace—Jesus Christ—"
And Spock stops him, snatching at his shoulders to spin Jim around and hold him in place so they're nose to nose. His hands move, cautious and confident all at the same time. They shift up to ghost across Jim's neck so that he fights to suppress his shiver, and settle against his jaw to cup his face and force Jim to meet his eyes. In them is a more murky and wanton expression than Kirk ever thought Spock capable of.
And his hands are hot—fire against Jim's human skin. Fever-hot. Desert-hot. The most beautiful, delicious heat Jim thinks he's ever experienced—driving him crazy until he clutches at the arms holding him as if in attempt to beg.
Through their contact, Jim feels flashes—all that pride and proper upbringing, mixed in with the background static brought on by waves of guilt, slurring together with a dark, animalistic, greedy emotion that snatches the breath from his lungs.
Spock draws Jim to him in a way too desperate and hungry to be anything but human—claims his mouth and claims him: his territory, his anchor—better than home.
He feels Jim—the bands of personality, live and vibrant under the skin of his cheeks, his chin—under the shadow of his eyelashes, in the farthest corner of his mouth. Spock soaks in him, him and the oppressive human instinct strong enough to stir his own to life.
Understanding, hardship: an imperfect human leading an imperfect life, teaching an imperfect Vulcan the perfection of being imperfect.
He feels Jim's emotion as clearly as he feels Jim's hand snake up his back—as keenly as he feels the other reach out to clasp one of his: to hold it and touch it was a tenderness that fills him in a way he can't explain.
They separate—to breathe, to see, to step away from the moment just to prove it's all real.
Spock takes Jim's hand in both his own, running his fingers along it and memorizing every line—savoring each ripple of sensation. His eyes drift closed in blissful concentration, allowing the hints of a smile to brush his lips.
Slowly, measuredly, Jim brings up his other hand to draw fingers across the expanse of Spock's palm, tracing his way up the fingers.
"You're smiling," Jim murmurs almost too low to hear as he watches the soft knot of their fingers.
The quirk of Spock's lips steepens and he nods in enraptured response. Pulsing with abstract thoughts and feelings that seem to glow beneath his skin, Spock feels something true and genuine seep from Jim's fingers to fill all the wayward hollows and creases left by time and torment and self-accusation.
Under his touch, he feels again that familiar drumbeat—freedom, freedom.
"It's not your fault," Jim replies automatically, moving with the sway of vague thought and raw emotion that feeds through their connection. "And they're not your responsibility." He pauses to clutch Spock's hands tight in both his own. "And I can't do this without you."
"Jim," Spock breaths, and the word falls from his lips like silver. Jim's eyes soften and widen and the blue all but glows. He wraps his arms around Spock's shoulders, pulling Spock back to him with a tender, wanton tug, nudging their lips together with a playfulness indigenous to himself and Spock and feel Jim smiling against his mouth—is keenly aware of his wayward fingers that wander up to trace the line of his ear.
Spock shivers: tugs Jim by the waist so he's pressed against him. Jim's mouth moves away a fraction of an inch to let the laugh escape. His fingers play across the contours of Spock's ear.
"I've always wanted to do that," he laughs.
Something like a grin quirks the corners of Spock's mouth and he buries his nose in the crook of Jim's neck.
"You are most illogical, Jim," Spock murmurs against the skin of his throat, reveling in the way it makes Jim grip him tighter.
"Goes double for you," Jim says breathily, nosing Spock's ear and stealing the witty response from the Vulcan's mouth.
Jim runs into Bones on the way to his quarters, surrounded in the buzz of the leftover high.
"You look damn pleased with yourself," Bones comments dryly. "I take it you two finally kissed and made up?"
A panicked, nervous giggle sort of knee-jerk reaction takes hold, and Jim freezes where he stands. It's only after another beat, where he takes in the typically cantankerous demeanor of the doctor and the general innocence to the statement, that he expels the lungful of air he's been holding.
"Yep," he chimes—a bit breathlessly and all too cheerily, "All patched up."
"Happy to hear it, Jim," McCoy says slowly, nodding farewell to his friend.
Watching Jim walk away, Bones is struck with the sense that he's stumbled upon something he really didn't want to hear about.
Damn it, he's a doctor—he doesn't have time for these things!
