Chapter Seven: Bile
x
The hearing was closed soon after. The committee unanimously approved the case for a martial court, the date of which was to be determined. The twelve accused were remanded into the hands of designated Starfleet Security Officers, and the audience was asked to leave and attend to their academic pursuits.
Jim lingered, waiting for the hall to empty.
Spock used the opportunity to inch close enough to almost encroach upon Jim's personal bubble and impart: "Since the information will become publically available upon being confirmed by the Admiralty, I took the liberty of formally notifying my Father." He paused, most likely to gauge Jim's reaction, which for the moment was basically instinctual numb terror that he had no intention to outwardly display. "He wishes to speak with you."
Bones snorted. "Finally meeting the in-laws, kid, huh?"
Jim wondered whether he should inform the man that, technically, Sarek was Bones' in-law, too, but decided to refrain for a slew of reasons, starting with the fact that they were in a public venue and Bones' reaction was bound to be loud, moving on to the fact that he didn't want Bones to head straight for the good liquor, and accounting for the very real worry that Bones might decide to milk it for what it was worth and offer Sarek all sorts of mortifying details in revenge. For all their sakes, Jim let his friend go on in blithe ignorance.
Spock raised an eyebrow at him, following a similar train of thought, with the added trauma of genuine horror at the idea of being indirectly married to Bones.
"Lead the way," Jim bade him once the exits had cleared.
He couldn't say he was happy about the development, but being polite to his partner's parent was basic courtesy, so Jim fell in stride at Spock's side and walked with him toward the T'Plana-Hath Park (which might or might not have been Spock's pithy comment on Jim's life choices). Bones split from them at the first waft of the smell of cafeteria in the air, and Jim enviously glared at his departing back.
They met the rest of their makeshift family unit by the Friendship Fountain. Sarek stood ramrod straight; Ambassador Spock next to him appeared downright relaxed.
"Sa-mekh," Spock spoke formally, "I present my bond-mate, James Kirk, Captain of the Federation Flagship Enterprise."
Since it was obviously some kind of traditional procedure, Jim split his fingers in a ta'al and after a brief consideration decided to not even attempt to fake a smile.
Sarek didn't show much of a reaction beyond a nod of greeting and a ta'al of his own. It wasn't like he and Jim hadn't spoken in the past and, judging by the utterly unconcerned demeanor of the old Spock, the personal relationship between the Captain and the First Officer had been at the very least hinted at before.
"So," Jim asked when it seemed that the official part of the powwow was over, "what's your beef with Ester Cavanaugh?"
Sarek incredulously mouthed 'beef', exasperated with colloquial Terran Standard, but Ambassador Spock didn't even pause. "I have concluded that she is one of the culprits behind the dissolution and criminalization of the VCE."
"I see." Jim wondered if she had been reported missing already, and what it must have been like to fall into a vat of corrosive hydraulic piston lubrication. "What about the other culprits? Any tragic fatal accidents?"
The old Vulcan gave him an admonishing look. "Do you believe me so callous, Jim?"
Yes. Yes, Jim absolutely did believe this man capable of great and terrible things, if he was properly motivated. Ambassador Spock might have stood for pacifism and respect for all forms of life, but all bets were off the instance something – or someone – that belonged to Spock were threatened.
"Take one life, save hundred," Jim replied very quietly.
The old Spock blinked at him, slowly – which Jim had come to suspect was what he did when he compared Jim to the other Jim.
"It will be interesting to see what shall become of the Enterprise without the temperance of James Kirk's singular capacity for mercy." The Ambassador gripped Jim's upper arm, uncomfortably tightly, and then let go. It, maybe, made his speculation sound a little like a threat.
"The needs of the many," Jim replied, unison with his own Spock, who had unexpectedly become a part of the conversation at possibly the most inconvenient moment possible.
"It is, indeed, a basic tenet of Vulcan ethics," the old Spock allowed with audible distaste.
"Vulcan ethics." Jim clenched his jaw, thinking of six months ago, when the Vulcan Colony had advised Spock that he needn't bother making the trip, because there would be no one willing to help him through the pon farr. "That's an oxymoron." Funny how neither of the Ambassadors had done anything then. Maybe this was the time-traveler's meddling – a sink-or-swim method of forcing Jim and Spock to bond.
Ethics his ass.
"Vulcans preach IDIC but engender xenophobia," he continued, because once he had started poking a hornets' nest he might as well get a good kick in. "They're sanctimonious racist pricks – no offence to present parties."
"Captain-"
"Spock," Jim turned to his First Officer, "you have yourself learnt at an early age that Vulcan logic does not preclude cruelty, even cruelty for entertainment's sake." He wasn't going to talk about the genetic-dead-end rejection unless necessary, but Spock's history was practically a continuous illustration of Jim's point.
"That, Captain, is a thoughtless generalization based on singular anecdotal evidence."
Jim opened his mouth to say that Spock's mother had faced decades of ostracism from the alleged cream of Vulcan society, but then he closed it again. It was another valid point, and it might have won him the argument, but Jim had misused Amanda Grayson's name for several lifetimes in advance, so that wasn't going to happen.
Spock clasped his hands behind his back and raised his chin. His eyes were clouded.
Basically, to everyone else it would have looked like Spock had squarely won the debate, but both Spock and Jim knew that Jim had come out the clear victor, and Spock had not ever had a chance on defending his point of view.
"A blanket dismissal of a sentient race as inferior is illogical," Spock said eventually, and while it sounded like he was denying that his people had ever held that opinion, Jim took that as Spock distancing himself from that philosophy.
Jim extended his hand and settled his palm against Spock's shoulder blade. The connection was ephemeral but, he hoped, sufficient to relay his chagrin at the unfortunate topic and his gratefulness for Spock's improved state of mind. This wasn't how he had wanted to restore his relationship with his bond-mate.
Spock moved out of his reach.
Jim retracted his hand and promptly stuck it into his pocket, because otherwise he would have ended up clenching his fist. It must have been a special talent, how he always managed to fuck up.
So, there was that thing Jim did. That thing, where he felt like he was losing, and he was such a sore loser, there was nothing funny about it. A lion with a thorn in its paw was a purring kitten compared to him when he gave up control of his mouth and turned on the obnoxiousness for real.
The crew didn't know what to do with him when he was in a mood, but he was getting better about not letting it interfere with his duties.
Sadly, he couldn't seem to keep it out of his marriages. Bones hated him when he was like this. That was, actually, where the whole thing with hypo-ing Jim into submission had started. And Spock… well, Spock was possibly worse when it came to the passive-aggressiveness than Jim himself. It took a lot to penetrate the Vulcan shields, and yet more to properly tick the man off, but once Spock got there… well, Jim still vividly recalled what it felt like to have those fingers wrapped around his throat and squeezing.
Unfortunately, even that recollection wasn't enough to stop him from turning to Ambassador Sarek and remarking: "He's a stubborn prick."
Sarek went a little green around the gills.
"Second only to your own obstinacy," Ambassador Spock pointed out easily, with the aplomb of a man who had dealt with a Jim Kirk for a lifetime. It was a little humbling to see how he could bitch-slap Jim with a single well-aimed sentence.
"Of course we are," Jim retorted. "A match made in Hell-"
"But worth every possible unpleasantness-"
"Or so you tell me." Jim crossed his arms in front of his chest and gritted his teeth when he saw the tightening around the old Spock's eyes. That was a non-eye-roll, right there.
Jim had thought he had grown up more than this. He felt hideously young.
He closed his eyes for a moment, recalled to mind that he was the Captain of the Enterprise and what it meant. He wasn't standing here with two family members – he was an officer in the presence of two foreign diplomats. He should probably apologize for his utterly forthright display of irritation, but whatever he might have said now would have sounded contrived.
Instead he let his hands down, shifted his stance, and turned to the two older Vulcans with an expression that, he knew, resembled serenity. "By the way, did you figure out a solution to the othuash problem?"
"Indeed," the old Spock replied. "There is a blend of several herbs that has remarkably similar effects. Dr Cantrell is publishing an article on the topic within the month, but circumstances being what they are, I will have the details sent to your account, Jim."
"Thank you, Ambassadors." Jim smirked at his Spock. "See? Now you can stop experimenting on yourself."
The look Spock returned was unexpectedly dark. They had too much to talk about, to deal with, but it was all private, and misdirecting the hurt into mutual anger would help nothing. Jim knew it, Spock knew it, and it seemed like it should have been really easy at that moment to just refrain from getting into an argument. But it wasn't. Jim wished he were better at compartmentalizing.
"Indeed, Captain," Spock said, with tolerance that humbled Jim.
"It has been gratifying to see that my son has found a bond-mate that suits him so well," Sarek stated so dryly that it took Jim a while to catch onto the sarcasm.
He might have gaped a bit.
Then he figured that this was Spock's Father, and all the magnificence had to have come from somewhere. Miss Grayson had been pretty amazing in her own right, so it stood to reason that she would have gotten together with someone just as special. And since their son was, in Jim's not-so-humble opinion, the best thing since the warp drive, quod erat demonstrandum.
Spock took the dryness as a challenge, turning to Jim as the easiest available target. "Would that your other husband were as congenial a companion. Unfortunately, my relationship with Dr McCoy remains invariantly contentious – although I must admit that I find his propensity for passion arresting."
Jim at least had a good idea of what the actual relationship between Bones and Spock was like, so he just choked and then stuffed all the emerging, half-formed images back into the darkest recesses of his mind.
Sarek was not so fortunate.
Much to Jim's shock, old Spock also looked like he had swallowed a lemon.
"I…" Sarek paused, eyes moving from the other Ambassador to Jim to Sarek's son, "must meditate. Please, excuse me." Limiting himself to a perfunctory greeting, the Vulcan turned on his heel and walked at a steady pace down the path toward the campus gates and the parking lot.
Jim saw the glint in Spock's eyes, which, yes, Spock was capable of greater than moderate evil for the sake of his personal amusement. It was very attractive.
"What?" Jim faux-innocently inquired of the remaining Ambassador. "Was I never married in your timeline?"
The old Spock looked ever-so-slightly down at him and raised an eyebrow. "…not to Doctor McCoy." He still seemed disconcerted, but now the shock was abating and amusement set in.
Jim refused to speculate on his potential partners. He couldn't imagine marrying – actually for real marrying – joint account, death do them part– anyone else. Maybe in a reality where his father had survived to see him become a cookie-cutter starship captain, his approach to romantic relationships was different, but he wasn't interested in hearing about it.
"I believe," Jim's First Officer opined, "that the relevant cliché in this case would be 'you are unaware of what you are missing'."
There was the lemon-swallowing face again.
Spock may not have invented trolling, but he certainly raised it to an art form.
On the other hand, Spock wouldn't have been inclined to making fun, however malicious, if he had been truly angry or hurt. Jim realized that he didn't have a clue what was going through his bond-mate's head, and that made him angry at himself.
He should have known. They had been friends for years and literally sharing mind-space for over six months, and Jim was such a sorry bastard that he hadn't let Spock in. And he had promised – he had meant the promise when he had made it.
It got shoved aside somewhere along the way. There were missions – running for their lives and diplomatic near-disasters and even the odd space battle with the newly arisen organization of dissatisfied Romulans that had decided to take on Nero's mission in the aftermath of Narada. Jim had delighted in exposing them and blasting a few of them out of the night sky, even though a loss of life shouldn't have brought him satisfaction.
It was easier to kill when it wasn't personal.
It was easier to be married when it wasn't personal.
Jim was such a fucking asshole.
And Bones was there to save him once again. Jim had no damn clue what he would have done without Bones, and he had never, for a single second, regretted signing on the dotted line for him. This guy was one of the best things that had ever happened to him; without him Jim wouldn't have lived long enough to even meet Spock. Seeing the gruff, grumbling bear approach now made Jim quietly joyful on the inside.
Especially since Bones carried a bag of sandwiches in the crook of his arm and went straight for Jim, as though he suspected that Jim hadn't eaten anything since the apple he had had for dinner yesterday.
"Heeey, hubby!" Jim cheered, and attached himself to the medicine man's free arm like a Captain-shaped barnacle.
Bones glared at Spock Zero and through clenched teeth demanded: "Get him off me."
"This is yet another unfamiliar dynamic," the Ambassador remarked.
Bones gave him the hairiest eyeball, scowled some more at nothing and everything, and deftly manhandled Jim so that he could press a palm to his forehead. Then he caught Jim's wrist, palpated for the pulse and counted.
The scowl didn't abate when Jim didn't make even a token protest against the treatment.
Jim didn't protest, because Bones was warm and solid and there, and maybe Jim needed someone to be warm and solid and there at the moment.
"I don't like this," the grump grumbled. "I'm taking you to the Sickbay."
Jim cast a thoughtful look at two of the three Vulcans that – aside from Bones – were apparently his whole family, and felt… tired. He nodded.
Unfortunately, this had the side-effect of scaring Bones yet more.
x
The hypo wore off in the middle of the night. Jim woke up in his cabin, because Bones cared enough for him to stab him in privacy rather than in the middle of the Sickbay, when he had the luxury of choice.
Jim lay on his bed and stared into the near-darkness, recreating familiar melodies in his head, then equations, reciting the list of Enterprise's missions since he was granted captaincy, and eventually surrendered to the unquenchable need to sort out his… feelings.
He made a few surprising discoveries when he allowed himself to think on it.
One was that he would be capable of terrible (genocide level terrible) deeds for Spock. It was worse coming from him, because he had been there for a genocide. He had been a witness and a victim of it – indirectly, but in a way that shaped the rest of his life. This resolve, coming from him, was a moment of blank sociopathy, and Spock would have hated it if he ever found out he could inspire it.
Maybe not the old Spock. He kind of seemed like he knew.
Another surprise was the level of abstraction on which their relationship had been happening. There was little to nothing mundane to it. It pretty much consisted of life-or-death decisions, mortal combat, edge-of-a-blade negotiations, philosophy, chess and sex.
Which led directly to the most surprising of Jim's finds.
Figuring out the sex had been painful and jarring, because it started when Spock had gone from irrational to insane to completely incommunicative, gripped by the instinct to dominate and propagate to the exclusion of all else. Jim had survived with minimal trauma only by dint of his many and varied past sexual conquests. Once a guy had ventured outside the humanoid sphere, there was nothing shocking about the biological differences between Vulcans and humans.
The rape-y feel of the whole thing had not been so hot, but Jim had not been given a lot of time to agonize over it. Between the exhaustion and the orgasms, he was pumped up to his eyeballs with endorphins (and that idiom lost something when he realized just where his brain was located in relation to his eyes) or sleeping most of the time. What little else he remembered had been suffused with the alien-turned-familiar presence of Spock's mind. Not a sustained meld; more like a dissolution of shields. An osmosis of psyches.
Jim had no clear memories of the pon farr, but he had come out of the experience surreally adapted to being Spock's bond-mate.
Or so he had thought.
And he hadn't been the only one thinking so, judging by the way Bones had kept quietly freaking out every time Jim had done something wildly out of character for him. Like acting polite to Komack (it was still acting, but now Jim could be persuasive about it, which Bones hadn't expected). Or toning his obnoxious flirting down to friendly flirting (now that Jim had seen himself through another's eyes, he decided that he might as well strive to keep some dignity, as befitting the inherent gravitas of Captaincy). Or… well, that time the science gals from Lindstrom's lab dared him to the cultural equivalent of a panty raid on Cait, and he had refused because… well, because Spock's borderline pathological respect for people's cultural practices was rubbing off on him?
Jim could guess how it stemmed from being the child of an interplanetary Ambassador and his wife, who was a different species and a pioneer of peaceful intercultural exchange, and it was compounded by the relentless bullying Spock had endured as a child to the point that he had made one of his theses on Interspecies Ethics and went on to teach the class at the Starfleet Academy… but Spock did Jim the courtesy of not psychoanalyzing him, so Jim resolved to return it and just take Spock as he was.
Too bad that he apparently had not gotten to know Spock as well as he should have.
But he wanted to. That counted for something, surely? And maybe it was long overdue, but better late than never, right?
x
Jim dressed and appeared on the Bridge in time for Alpha shift, and it only occurred to him that he was technically doubly off the roster (vacation time and medical leave) when he found Sulu splayed in the Captain's armchair and idly listening to an audiobook in Japanese.
Sulu flinched when he noticed Jim's presence. He moved to somersault out the chair and Jim quickly gestured him to remain where he was – it wasn't like Jim was big on ceremony even when people were watching.
"Good to see you up and about, Captain," the pilot said with an easy grin, pausing the recording. "Heard you kicked ass yesterday."
For all of Jim's planning, risk-taking, effort and near-fatal wounds, the one to kick any ass yesterday had been Spock.
"I don't suppose there's anything that needs doing here?" Jim inquired, knowing the answer would be negative. The Bridge of a docked spaceship was a surprisingly boring place.
Sulu shrugged. "I play a mean game of battleship…?"
Jim tried his damnedest to smile and left the pilot to his book. With most of the crew on shore leave and the rest concentrated in Engineering, the Enterprise had become a ghost town. Corridors were empty and quiet, illumination reduced to emergency lighting on vacant decks; Jefferies tubes that usually conducted echoes of activity and speech remained conspicuously silent.
Under the oppressive weight of solitude, Jim made a nearly unprecedented decision and voluntarily went to the Sickbay. The turbolift door slid open to reveal Spock, who looked as surprised as Jim felt.
"Captain," Spock said.
Jim stiffened, body subconsciously drawing into parade rest, before he consciously took it over again; nevertheless, any chance of appearing to be literally at ease, rather than the military equivalent, was lost. Without the shield of professionalism he felt uncomfortably exposed. Vulnerable.
In retrospect, he was proud of himself (and a little of Spock, too, but with Spock that kind of thing was a given) for how well he has comported himself over the past few days. Their friends had sensed that, for once, the tension in the command team wasn't entirely of the titillating quality, but in the eyes of strangers they presented a united front. It was good to know that he was capable of that kind of thing. Putting his duties first. Rising above his own shit.
Has he finally become a real boy? Jim needed to ask Bones; Bones could riddle him that.
"I have confirmed the finalized roster of Medical personnel with Dr McCoy," Spock offered when the silence stretched from awkward to excruciating. "I will upload the files to the ship computer from my personal terminal."
Jim wanted to hear the rest, but no more words were forthcoming. Spock moved slightly to the side, despite the fact that the entrance was wide enough that they could comfortably pass one another, and pointedly waited for Jim to exit the lift.
Jim complied. "All yours, Commander," he said with a pale imitation of humor, taking care to not touch Spock as he passed him, since the man had made it obvious he would resent it. Their eyes met very briefly, and Jim took note of the dark circles under Spock's. "Take the opportunity to actually rest, Mr Spock. Service as exemplary as yours is exhausting, and I would hate to see you spend our entire downtime cleaning up my messes."
"Jim…" Spock exhaled deeply. "It is gratifying to see you well. May I extend the same caution to you?"
Jim nodded in acceptance of the concern. He was still not back to hundred percent health-wise, but he was at that point when Bones stopped griping about it, so he considered himself recovered. He looked like replicated shit because he hadn't slept well – and he hadn't slept well because the specter of his guilty conscience kept following him around his subconscious and whispering to him about the way he had treated his partner.
When he looked up, he found Spock standing in the turbolift door and scrutinizing him with concerned interest. In that instance, Jim wanted nothing more than to move back and be welcome into Spock's arms, just to lean against him for a while and absorb some sense of stability.
But Spock might as well been hewn from marble for all the welcome he radiated. He would not be inclined to hugging in the least, much less in a place where the display of affection could be witnessed. It was one thing to file a marriage contract for the public's perusal; hugging was an entirely different league.
Jim's shoulders dropped.
Spock's concern intensified.
On another day, Jim would blunder through Spock's defenses and ask for what he wanted, ready to present logical and faux-logical arguments for why things should be given to him and concessions be made for him. Sometimes he by-passed the talking entirely, and went straight to the taking. But not through stop signs – never through stop signs. It was tough trying to consolidate their expectations, and just surrendering to one another's wants was easier, but not right, and ultimately not as fulfilling as fighting that battle and coming out bruised but richer for it.
Unfortunately, today Jim just didn't have the energy and mental and emotional fortitude to combat the resistance, so he gave up – he backed down when he needed the contact most.
"I'm just drained – as you have observed."
"You are unhappy," Spock corrected, worry and frustration telegraphed in the vestigial lines around his eyes and mouth.
Jim shrugged. "I'm going to bug Bones. Have a pleasant period of rest, Mr Spock."
x
"Aw, Hell to the naw!" Bones exclaimed the moment he clamped eyes on Jim.
Then he put his work down, locked the door and utilized a terrifying combination of his best weapons – alcohol, the threat of hypos and the stare of a repeatedly kicked starved dog – to get the whole dumb story out of Jim with embarrassing ease.
"Easiest thing you've ever done my ass," the doctor complained as he poured himself a third glass.
Jim was still nursing his first, because his friend had warned him beforehand that it was the only one he would get and meant it. The wisdom of moderation was so obvious that Jim didn't waste energy arguing. He sipped incrementally, relished the slow burn that oozed down his insides and talked.
"It's easy, when it takes all the choices right out of my hands and leaves me with a 'yes or no' question." When it came down to a decision between Jim's commitment phobia or Spock, there wasn't any bellyaching about which was more important. "But I've wised up to that, and now I've got the option to just not let that happen, and keep my choices. And I wanted to touch him, but I didn't want to, because then he'd know. And it was easier to just leave."
Bones, perhaps owing to the alcohol, but more likely just due to prolonged close acquaintance with Jim, managed to follow that train of thought. He looked up – if he had been wearing glasses, he would have been looking over them, not so much judgmental or condescending as simply certain that he knew better. "But it's not easier now, is it?"
"I know!" Jim snapped.
His friend could tell him a thousand times that he was 'not that kind of a doctor' but Jim would never take him seriously, because Bones went and did shit like this. Just looked into people or through them, peeled them down to the core parts, reduced them to what was important, and put their problems into perspective with the aplomb of a true cynical altruist.
"I know what you're saying, Bones. And it's not about me being a coward, I swear it's not. I just…"
When he had definitively decided that he was going to bond with Spock, a sense of finality had come over him, and it had felt good. So good. A lot of existential worry had fallen away of him – now he barely remembered that part, because after the pon farr he wasn't entirely the same person as he had been before.
In a sense, he realized (far too late and embarrassed by how obvious the whole thing seemed in hindsight), he was only just regaining himself – re-becoming the person he had been when he had been an individual, prior to the bonding.
Maybe this was healthy. Maybe it was normal, or maybe it was a side-effect of being a human telepathically tied to a Vulcan, but it wasn't a bad thing. The process was difficult, often painful and made unnecessarily more uncomfortable by Jim's ignorance of what he should expect, but he would still rather be himself than some odd Spock-infected semblance of Jim Kirk.
He sighed into his half-empty glass. "I wanted this to be indefectible. I don't know why. I mean, obviously, that's stupid. It would be boring if it was perfect. But I just realised that I was fucking up, and the only way to make it right was to come clean and…"
"He knows you," Bones filled in.
It wasn't what Jim had been thinking, but it was indisputably correct.
"I know." It wasn't necessarily an advantage. The better people got to know Jim, the more of the not-nice submerged nine-tenths of the glacier of his personality they got to see.
Bones rolled his eyes, took a deep breath to brace himself and, with almost comical discomfort, mumbled: "He… you know."
"I know," Jim replied, crows' feet emerging in an unrealized smile. "Bones… I know. And despite that I'm not there. I'm here."
"Who's surprised?" The doctor shook his head. "Not me, kid, you can bet. In your vocabulary, 'intimacy' is a profanity."
Jim tilted his head to the side, contemplated for a while, and then concluded: "I'm probably fucked up, it seems like."
Bones snorted. "Jesus, kid. You don't say."