Spock's Hair

The nerves in his head pounded like the force of a thousand feet upon the earth, their receptors in his brain begging for the return of numbing sleep. As much as he wished to oblige, Jim just couldn't. Something had awoken him in the first place.

He could not place what it was exactly, but he knew that he had felt it in his sleep and that it tugged on his consciousness, pulling it from the depths of his dreams.

Fighting their heavy lids, his eyes opened.

From his curled up position on his side, all he saw was faintly shining darkness.

Shining?

That couldn't be right. What was this vaguely rounded shape?

He blinked several times, adjusting his sight, and upon a second inspection realized that he was looking at a head of very dark hair in very uncharacteristic disarray resting on the side of his bed.

He still almost didn't believe what he saw, but the pointed peak of an ear poking out from underneath a particularly mussed section of hair confirmed everything.

Spock?

On his bed?

In his quarters?

Asleep?

Did he ever sleep?

Why?

He sat up quickly, clutching his blankets to his unclad chest, while his head screeched in protest. Shit.

His mouth tasted of old alcohol and not-quite rinsed out vomit. Fuck. He was hung-over then.

He eased himself back down, trying to fight through his disorientation to find memories of the previous night, but they were not forthcoming. Nothing beyond impressions of pulsing sound, a shifting world, and an extended meeting with his toilet.

His formerly clammy skin flushed. What the fuck could have happened to end up with Spock here?

Jim turned to look back at the head, and found himself locked in a gaze tractor-beam like in its intensity.

So he'd woken up Spock. Great. He had probably made a total asshole of himself and he couldn't even manage to let the guy who'd obviously helped him sleep in.

"Hey, sorry. Didn't know you would be here. What happened?"

His voice was an unattractive croak and scraped painfully at his throat. He must have thrown up a lot. Ugh. It was a blessing he didn't remember that part; Jim hated being ill.

Spock blinked. "I had assumed it probable that you would not recall the events of the past 12 hours, as the amount of alcohol you consumed is disruptive to short term memory in humans."

He paused, eyes flicking over Jim in cool assessment.

Kirk fought the urge to pull the blanket tighter about him; why did he always feel so naked under that gaze?

Spock spoke again, quietly, like he was confessing a sin, and the captain strained to hear him. "I am glad that you do not remember Jim."

Kirk lost whatever bit of composure he had. His heart began to pulse wildly and his mind seized upon thought after panicked thought, leaping onto the next one as soon as the first was realized.

Spock had called him Jim. That was a sign of trouble, no matter how inappropriately gushy it may have turned his insides. He admitted to a feeling. Gladness that Jim didn't remember. Remember what exactly?

His voice seemed to hold so much emotion too. So much that Jim would have found it nearly impossible to believe that even the worst of observers couldn't hear it. And it was all his fault.

He had gotten drunk – very drunk – that much was clear. And some how or another, despite his clever slip-out, Spock had found him.

What he might have said or done around Spock when all of his defenses and self control, which contrary to popular belief he did have a lot of, were gone was something that he couldn't bear to think about.

His skin prickled and felt uncomfortably tight when he began to imagine what exactly may have happened to produce this response in the Vulcan, the multitudes of ways that he could have offended Spock.

Did he confess his surely unwanted physical desire?

The small fact that he was oh, you know, in love with the guy?

Did he endanger him?

Did he make Spock uncomfortable with his physicality?

His general drunken behavior?

Taboo skin to skin contact?

Worries and embarrassing scenarios crowded and tumbled over each other in his mind, growing to an agonizing crescendo.

"If I did anything-"

"Captain-"

They both stopped, waiting for the other to continue. A few awkward seconds, then Jim reluctantly moved his eyes from the ceiling and turned to Spock, who was now staring down at his coverlet, but still unmoved from his position at the side of Jim's bed.

He didn't think that the Vulcan was aware that he hadn't moved, and this small thing did a lot to ebb the flow of his panic.

If he had behaved in an unforgivably egregious manner, surely Spock would not still be comfortable on the floor by his bed, lapsing into humanness in his presence? Because Spock typically didn't slip out of his hyperawarenes if he didn't trust those around him.

Hope's wings fluttered weakly in the pit of his stomach.

Since Spock had that air of waiting about him, Jim started swallowed and started again, "If I did anything to upset or hurt you in any way, I sincerely apologize. I know that we've been kinda distant, and that it's my fault, I'm a shit friend and I'm sure I was a total ass last night, and that couldn't have helped things, but…" His lips were dry and he paused to wet them.

It was hard for him to say this out loud, to apologize, to be honest, but Spock was worth it to him. Worth every bit of effort that he didn't put in with other people. "I want to do better for you. Please tell me if there's anything we need to talk about."

Turns out he was grateful after all that his voice was already croaky; otherwise it would have cracked like it always did when he was emotional.

Spock was looking at him again, intense, but in a different way than usual. Like a soft intense, like – the wings fluttered harder – like he was looking at Jim and "finding agreeable" what he was seeing.

Before Jim's mouth could smile in return, though, the look changed. His eyes became more distant, inward. Spock had disappeared back into himself, a place that Jim didn't think was particularly happy for him. He suspected that they had a lot in common in that self-loathing way.

The First wasn't getting away with that right now though, not when Jim wanted so desperately to reach him, to find a way to mend the rips that had sprung between them.

"Spock."

Kirk watched his attention come back, but he was guarded now, and stood up, straightening his hopelessly rumpled science blues. Jim tensed, looking up into his stoic face and waiting for the doom that would surely fall.

"Captain, while you did behave in a manner unbefitting of Starship captain, you did not do anything unbefitting as my friend."

Well, that first part stung a bit, but totally true. Sure he was being all formal, but Kirk thought he really deserved much worse. Why was Spock letting him off so easy?

"Indeed, sir, I have not behaved with propriety in regards to you. I am the one in need of pardon."

Jim sat up again, ignoring the whole head splitting thing.

"What are you saying? You've been nothing but by-the-book. Fuck, you've been more proper than you ever were for the whole first six months of this mission. You haven't wronged me."

Shit, I'm the fucked up one, I've been thinking about you in improper ways for ages. Like naked for instance. And I've been avoiding you and pretending to myself that I'm trying to do something about my stupid fucking puppy-dog devotion. "I… I'm improper," he finished lamely.

Spock's eyes widened briefly, leaving Jim more confused than ever.

"While I do not debate that you bear little regard for authority, have a surprising adeptness in making a nuisance of yourself, and are oftentimes confident to excess, in our interactions, you have yet to behave in a way that is improper. As my perfect memory supplies, it was not you who nearly asphyxiated me."

"Hey!" Jim protested. "Didn't I tell you to drop that? I started it, I had it coming."

"No, Jim, you were correct. I was too fixated on my own way to see. I was most illogical."

"I'm not going to sit here and listen to you call yourself the dirtiest thing you can think of Spock. It's fine and I'm over it. We're both fuck-ups, okay? Can we leave it at that and you can go intimidate Bones into giving you some hangover cure? Please?"

Of course Jim wanted a deeper conversation, a full exploration of why the hell Spock was criticizing himself and possibly the whole story of last night, but it could wait. Neither of them was in any shape for that, and he was honestly happy that things felt almost normal between them this morning.

He had already decided Spock was worth any amount of apologizing. He was worth patience too.

Jim could wait.

He could wait for Spock to be won, or for Spock to be ready to be won for that matter.

He could wait the fuck out of stuff when he so chose.

Starship captain and galaxy-class waiting champ – it was what he envisioned his tombstone would eventually read. And if he also envisioned it being right next to Spock's and even this part of them being eroded into time together, well that was just another function of waiting, wasn't it?

Spock breathed what sounded suspiciously like a sigh. "Of course, Captain, and after you have recovered, we will have our 319th discussion about the duties and responsibilities of the Enterprise's captain."

"Looking forward to it," Jim intoned as he lay back into his pillows.

He waited until Spock's superhuman hearing couldn't catch him anymore before adding, "It'll be particularly rich coming from a guy whose head looks like a haystack."

Jim snickered, and hoped that Spock totally went all the way to Sickbay and back with his hair like that.

And that at least one crewmember snapped a picture of Spock in his uncombed bowl-cut glory.

Because subject of his love or not, that shit was hilarious.

Hello! I know it's been forever since I've updated and I really hope that anyone who was reading this is still doing so. School was crazy, but the glorious summer has now begun.

Thank you for reading/being patient, and if you want to berate me for being slow, please do so in your review.

I am completely shameless. :)