Thank you to everyone who read or reviewed the last chapter. Hopefully this update came in a much more timely fashion.
Kudos to Rose and Psycobookcollector for guessing correctly on the origins of the title for the last chapter. The title was a direct quote from the scene in STID where Jim gets upset at Spock for forgetting to mention that their new science officer is not only not supposed to be there, but also happens to be Marcus's daughter. I felt that scene was a perfect example of Jim and Spock's communication problems.
Part 7: Trust Me
Love is not about diamonds or roses or even good sex. It's about trust. Trust is a major component of all relationships. But in polyamorous relationships, it is one of the most important components if not the most important component. If your relationship is to work, you must trust this person or rather persons, not only with your life but with your heart.
Chapter 1 of The Idiot's Guide to Multi-species Polyamorous Relationships, revised fifth edition
"I really shouldn't be eating this." Nyota said eyeing the slice of pizza dubiously. She was now sitting across from her new boyfriend's best friend and the guy responsible for him not being dead after she literally ran into him. She was crying at the time and cursing idiot psychiatrists, meddling admirals and boyfriends that force you to see them. (Okay somewhere in her tirade she cursed Tiffany, her father, and Admiral Moron. She was angry at a lot of people including herself.) He whisked her away for junk food and coffee without saying another word.
"I don't think either of your boyfriends are going to care if you gain a couple of pounds. Jim actually has a thing for curves and Spock would be a horrible Vulcan if he was attracted to anything other than your mind." She was halfway tempted to mention that Spock was very partial to her breasts and Jim's ass but they were in public.
"You're a doctor; you're not supposed to encourage me to eat stuff like this." She said, putting the slice back down on her plate without taking a bite. "I had a giant pancake breakfast with Jim less than three hours ago." Also, her therapy session took away any appetite she did have. The fact that they were sitting in the pizza place where this whole mess began just made her even less hungry if such a thing were possible.
"Well, at least somebody remember that I am a damn doctor and not a Starfleet robot or relationship counselor." Leonard snarked.
She felt like he was there in the role of relationship counselor, but she didn't say anything. She chose to take a drink of her double chocolate mocha instead. Jim was the one who turned her on to the really sweet coffees.
"You're much too snarky for that." She smirked back.
"Also, I know about breakfast. Your boyfriend, the one without the stick up his ass, sent me a picture of him licking whipped cream off of your neck. Nice hickey by the way."
Okay, he had to be joking, because Jim did not bite her that hard. They barely did anything, even though the restaurant was completely deserted. They were trying to keep the fact that he was her - can you call somebody a lover if you haven't moved past the kissing yet? Then she remembered who spent a good 15 minutes on her neck recently. Spock gave her a hickey and she didn't even think to look. He's never done that before. Although with Jim around, he has been a little bit more aggressive in bed. She likes it.
"Do I even want to know why Jim sent you that picture?" She asked, sighing. This wasn't the place to let him know that Spock really was kinkier than you would ever expect him to be.
Instead of answering he passed his communicator to her so she could see the text message that Jim sent him this morning. Underneath the image was the caption "Can we please have sex now? Are you trying to kill me via blue balls?"
"Oh god, he really would send you a message like that." She laughed.
"I got another one a few days earlier with a similar caption, this time under an image of the hobgoblin looking very debauched."
"I doubt it since were not allowed to do debauched. Seriously, it's been almost 2 months. If Jim can sit through a boring as hell briefing with the idiots that be or spend all day looking over blueprints for the Enterprise reconstruction, then I think I can give him a hand job without him ending up in the emergency room again." She said bluntly.
"I don't know. Considering it was making out that landed Jim in the emergency room just a few weeks ago?" The doctor quipped. They were never going to live down that allergy incident.
"You do know that we don't even kiss him after we eat something that he could be allergic to without using mouthwash now?" She explained.
"See this is why I think you're good for him. You keep Jim from doing stupid things." Leonard absolutely loves the fact that she's Jim's girlfriend. He's still not entirely pleased with Spock, though. She knows that Jim and Leonard have talked about this, but it was more like they've agreed to disagree.
"Please, that's mostly Spock." She said, giving all credit to Spock. He's the more nurturing one in the relationship, bizarrely enough. "I'm just here for backup."
"I don't believe that, but I'm not the hobgoblin's biggest fan." That was the understatement of the millennium.
"I am aware of that." She said bluntly.
"Well, it's a little hard to be completely okay with your friend dating a man who practically choked him to death."
With that admission, Leonard's attitude made much more sense to Nyota.
"First of all, unlike actual victims of domestic violence, Jim was deliberately goading Spock to hurt him." She said defending Spock. "I'm not saying this as an excuse to absolve Spock of his behavior, but he was in a very bad place and was not in control of himself. The psychic backlash from experiencing billions of Vulcans dying was catastrophic. Spock was a mess for weeks after that."
In some regards, he's not back to the way he was before. Spock used to smile more. He also used to make more snide comments. Now that Jim is with them, those behaviors are starting to happen more frequently in spite of having to deal with the mess of the Vengeance incident. However, she has a feeling that if Jim and Spock were not together now, she would be reliving those dark days after Amanda's death once more.
"Finally, I just want to reiterate that during the entire course of our relationship, Spock has never laid a hand on me. Therefore, I doubt that he will physically assault Jim outside of a sparring match."
"How do I know you're telling the truth? Do you have any idea how many times I heard something like that from a woman who showed up in my office with injuries from 'walking into a door'?"
"I doubt it was just women. If Spock did lay a hand on me, he would have ended up with a knife in the stomach and I don't care that he's probably six times stronger than me." She told him firmly.
"I wouldn't be surprised. I heard what you did to the Klingons." Leonard said grabbing another slice of pizza.
At that point, their server came to refill Leonard's water. She decided to order a pizza and other goodies to take home. She was going to need an 'I'm sorry I ran out on therapy' present because she just knew Jim was going to be spending hours convincing Admiral Rodriguez not to be mad at her for walking out of her Starfleet mandated therapy.
"Everybody heard what I did to the Klingons. Contrary to what everybody thinks, I would never be in a relationship that I did not want to be in especially an abusive one." That's what irritated her most about her father's accusations. He was acting like it was Spock who forced her into this arrangement.
"Why do I have a feeling that assumption is coming up a lot?" He said taking a drink.
"I've heard it from at least seven people in the last three days including my asshole father. He thinks I'm deluding myself by staying with someone who wants to date other people and that I should cut my losses. My father is also convinced that Spock does not or rather cannot love me, because if he's with Jim, then that means he's gay. He doesn't get that…" She doesn't even know how to articulate what her father doesn't realize. The actual conversation with her father deteriorated in to lots of cursing in at least four different languages. She was kind of shocked how much Swahili she actually remembered during the heat of their argument.
"You're in love with two people and you're not doing this for Spock, you're doing it for yourself." Leonard supplied for her. Nyota does not bother to ask him why he knows that she is in love with Jim and Spock. If anybody knows her as well as her boyfriends, it is going to be the man in front of her.
They are definitely friends. He brought her chocolate and other goodies when she was practically living in Jim's hospital room. It's likely that her being there almost as much as Spock gave him a good idea of what her feelings for Jim really are. It was just she would really like to tell Jim that she was in love with him before another person figured it out, even if that person was a Jim Kirk expert.
"Exactly," Nyota told him, because there's no point of lying to the doctor. "But my father thinks I'm delusional and clueless and he doesn't even know about the bonding thing. I think if he did he would be even more anti-Spock." She doesn't tell him that Jim and Spock being bonded to each other when she and Spock are not compatible does not bother her, because he's going to see through that faster than Dr. Kim did.
"Anti-Spock or anti-Jim and Spock?" He asked.
"I don't think he sees a difference." She does not. So why should he? "Dad sees it as me giving my boyfriend a free pass to cheat on me, not that I'm dating both guys." Okay, so she may have got a little too angry at her father and said something about how she enjoys watching the two of them together, but she wasn't going to tell Leonard about that outburst.
"He doesn't care about what I feel, he never has. He says that he's afraid that, I'm going to be crying on his shoulder when I divorce my husband for doing essentially what he did to mom. Personally, I think my dad's just worried about me crying on his shoulder, because he doesn't have time for his children. Trying to bring about intergalactic peace*, yes. Being emotionally available for his children, no. Not anymore, at least, not since step-mom number one."
"I don't think it counts as cheating when you're actively dating both parties involved." He said with a small snicker.
Thankfully, he didn't address all the daddy issues that were in her earlier statement and she is well aware that everything she just said was teeming with daddy issues, even without the color commentary of Dr. Kim. "No, I don't want to know details about your sex life." He added as an afterthought.
"I have no details to give, because thanks to you I have no sex life. If I was actually having sex with Jim and Spock right now, I wouldn't be so stressed out. If I wasn't so stressed, I would have never thrown a PADD at the woman or rather the piece of wall next to her head." She practically yelled at him, before adding, "Yes, I missed on purpose."
"I thought that you did." Leonard smirked at her. "Also, I think the lack of sex is the least of the things contributing to why you resorted to physical violence."
"Do you know how annoying it is for everybody to call you a slut when you're not actually having sex?" She quipped.
"I think it would be annoying regardless, but I know you well enough to know that wasn't the only reason why you did what you did." She really does hate that he knows her so well. When did they become friends like this?
"Okay, I had lots of reasons to throw my PADD at the wicked bitch and none of them are related to watching Jim-to witnessing what happened in the warp core." She quickly corrected herself remembering that she's not allowed to talk about Jim dying nor does she want to. She doesn't want to think about it ever again. The debriefing with Chan, was enough to last her a lifetime.
"I'm not saying that's the only issue but…" He started to argue, but she cut him off.
"It is not an issue." She practically yelled. "I have other things to worry about. First of all, she tried to get Jim and Spock kicked out of Starfleet by giving info to Admiral Moron. Because that didn't work, she is now actively trying to get me kicked out of the linguistics department because my 'deviant behavior' makes me a bad example to impressionable youth." That comment got her a snort from the doctor.
"Is she aware of all the orgies and poly relationships that happen in the dorms at Starfleet Academy?" He wasn't even joking that much. Just like every other college campus in the universe, there is a lot of sex going on of every variation imaginable, especially considering the Academy's diverse student body from all over the galaxy with lots of different sexual practices.
"I doubt it, because I'm sure she was never invited." She joked. "She told my mother and my father that I'm perverse because I have two boyfriends and called me things that my mom refuses to repeat. My father obviously agrees with Tiffany." She told him bitterly playing with her untouched slice of pizza. She realized she wasn't hungry at all.
"As a fellow father, I am contractually obligated to mention that this may just be a case of nobody's good enough for my daughter." She laughs at that. Sometimes it's hard for her to see him as a dad and at others it's very easy. There are days when he really is the crew's surrogate father and other days when he's just as crazy as the rest of them.
"Considering some of my father's other out of touch comments, I doubt it."
"It's probably best that you don't tell me what those are." Considering how overprotective of Jim Leonard McCoy truly is it probably was. "What about your mom?"
"I'm not sure. She wasn't happy that she found out from Tiffany and her least favorite Starfleet admiral, but she didn't say anything about the fact my boyfriend decided to get a new boyfriend without actually ending our relationship."
"No parent would be happy finding something like that from a work colleague." Okay, she can grudgingly acknowledge to herself, at least, that he had a good point.
"It wasn't like I was not going to tell her." Nyota told him defensively. "I was just waiting until I knew things were solid. I probably would've told her after we started, you know, actually having sex. It hasn't even been two months yet. I waited three months before I told her about Spock." Before him nothing ever lasted longer than a few weeks.
"It's been over a year, if you're counting from when you guys started dancing around each other." Leonard snickered. "I think the fact that you three are living together makes the relationship pretty solid."
"Maybe," she said simply, not wanting him to know that a part of her agreed with him. "My Mom did send me a copy of The Idiots Guide to Multi-Species Polyamorous Relationships. I don't know whether to see that as her approving or if she's already convinced that this is going to be a disaster."
"I've only met your mom once or twice when she was a guest lecturer at the Academy, but she seems like a smart woman and so I'm going to take her gesture as her being supportive of you. She raised you, so she can't be that evil." Leonard said being all too reasonable.
"Aunt Sarah did most of the heavy lifting." She joked, but thinking back on it now even if her mom was light-years away, she always seemed more available than her father who was just in the next room. She could tell her mom anything, even if it was the fact that she decided that her relationship with Spock would only survive if Jim was part of it and it was okay because somehow she fallen in love with Jim too. Maybe that was the whole reason she was upset about finding out about the whole thing from Tiffany.
"It's just I hate therapists and self-help books. I hate people trying to analyze me or maybe judging me is the more appropriate phrase." She told him honestly.
"So that explains why you ran out of your therapy appointment cursing everyone." Leonard said, in all seriousness. She knew he would get back to that eventually.
"No, I ran out of there because Dr. Kim is an idiot. He believes half of my problems are related to Jim dying and the other half are related to my parent's divorce." She was hoping the doctor would say that was ridiculous, but instead he stayed completely quiet.
"You agree with him?" She asked.
"I think you don't necessarily have issues with your parents' divorce, but the whole thing made you relationship wary. Just like the whole situation with my ex makes me afraid to date again."
"And yet, Jim is crashing your dates with Carol." When Nyota says her name, he smiles. Usually, the only time Leonard McCoy truly smiles is when he actually gets to talk to his daughter.
"I think it's his revenge for the no sex thing." Leonard joked.
"If you would just lift the 'no sex thing', this would not be a problem." She told him again.
"Contrary to what Jim and you believe, being able to have sex is not going to magically fix all your problems. They're all still going to be there after you cum." Leonard told her bluntly.
"Other than everybody judging me and certain members of Starfleet actively trying to screw with my life, things are good." She told him, but he just gave her his "you cannot fool me' look.
"Yeah and about two months ago you watched your…"
"We can't talk about it. Security issues." She interrupted him.
"No, we can't talk about how I brought Jim back. However, we can talk about how he got that way." He said again way too bluntly for her taste.
"I watched him die and then I watched Spock fall apart," she yelled which caused every single person in the restaurant to look at her. "Do you know it is the worst feeling in the world to realize you're in love with somebody the moment they take their last breath?" Unwanted angry tears she couldn't hold back any longer were sliding down her cheeks.
"That's when you figured it out." Leonard did not even say it as a question.
"That's when Spock figured it out or maybe that was the moment he stopped lying to himself." She told him wiping the tears out of her eyes. "Me, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe, I don't want to talk about it."
"You know you do not want to talk about a lot of things. And it's fine." He said acting like he was going to drop it, but she should know better. "You don't need to talk to me about these things, but you do need to talk to Jim and Spock about them - especially what happened in the warp core."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Do you think you're the only one who is having problems with this stuff? Do you have any idea how many people I've had to refer to therapy for PTSD?"
"Jim has nightmares. He has problems, I don't. I am fine." She told him again. Although, even she was starting to believe those were just empty words.
"I think I'm starting to hate that word as much as the hobgoblin." He said taking a drink of water.
"Unlike Jim when he's lying about having a concussion or any other malady, I actually am fine." She reiterated again.
"No, you're not. Perfectly fine people don't throw things at their office mates or spend the entire 15 minute ride here cursing out their therapist and father. They also don't change the subject any time you mention their boyfriends very near-death experience."
"Maybe…" She started to say in her defense, but she really didn't know how to defend herself, because maybe he was right.
"I know you're scared and you don't want to actually share these things with other people, but if this relationship is actually going to work you are really going to have to talk to your boyfriends, both of them. More than that, you're going to have to trust each other with these deep dark secrets." He paused for a moment and reached out for her hand. "Do you know why my marriage fell apart?" He asked, abruptly.
"Because you caught her fucking someone else?" She responded flippantly. "That little secret comes out every time you have more than three or four shots."
"Darlin', it was more complicated than that. After my dad died, I retreated into myself. I wasn't ready to talk about it. I threw myself into work and halfway moved into the bottle. I was a fucking mess." Okay, this was part of the story that she never heard before.
"How does this relate to her cheating on you?" She asked directly. "I think I heard this story before when my mom tried to explain why dad knocking up some bimbo was all her fault."
"Because I didn't trust her enough to tell her what the hell was going on, she assumed that I trusted someone else. At the same time, she didn't trust me enough to believe me when I said that I was at work, I was really at work." He explained.
"She assumed that you were screwing around first?"
"Exactly,"
"You do realize being a closed off bastard does not give her permission to sleep around on you, just like my mom having an off planet assignment did not give my dad the right to sleep with future step mom number one?" She asked.
"The infidelity was a symptom of a bigger problem." Leonard clarified. "We stopped talking to each other. We stopped trusting each other. When that happened, everything else fell apart."
"You think the same thing is going to happen with the three of us?" She asked worriedly.
"Not if you let both of them in." He said wisely.
"Maybe you're right." She sighed. He squeezed her hand and let go.
"As an incentive, if you go home and talk to your boyfriends about what's really going on in your head, I may be willing to let up on some of Jim's restrictions." As soon as he said the words her face lit up like a five-year-old at Christmas.
"Are we talking about those restrictions?" She asked, still grinning like an idiot.
"Only if you go talk things out with your boyfriends and trust me, I will know if you don't." Considering he was Jim's best friend and Jim had no filter, he probably would.
"You win," she sighed. "Although, let's pick up some alcohol. I'm going to need all the help I can get to get through this conversation."
One of the advantages of James recovering is that they are allowed the privilege to work from home. Now that the hearings regarding the Vengeance incident were over, James' major responsibility is to oversee the redesign and repairs of the Enterprise. James can just as easily approved schematics from their bedroom as he can from his office at Starfleet HQ. Also, considering the fact that James does not like to go anywhere near the section of the building where Admiral Christopher Pike died, it might be better for his emotional recovery to not be physically in the building. Although they were not planning to return to the office this afternoon, Spock was relieved to receive a message from Admiral Pike, telling them not to return to the Starfleet offices now.
"Okay, it's good to know that we're ordered not to be at work instead of just playing hooky, so we can make Nyota not mad at us. Bones is giving her pizza and coffee according to his latest text message." James said lying down on the couch. "I'm glad we thought to pick up the good cookies before coming home."
"I believe that term merely refers to schoolchildren." Spock remarked dryly.
"I love it when you play dumb regarding colloquialisms. You are so snarky when you want to be." James said, giving him a quick peck on the lips. "I'd rather be home anyway. After this morning, I really didn't want to sit in my deceased mentor's office, especially since it happens to be next door to Admiral X. I may be tempted to deck the guy."
Due to the rebuilding of the destroyed section of the building and as well as Admiral Pike's refusal to occupy her deceased husband's former office, he and James were currently sharing the space. It was supposed to be temporary, but Spock was certain that this was another mind game instigated by Admiral X (especially considering the fact that he occupies the office next door).
"You dislike working in that office because you blame yourself for Christopher's death." Spock said bluntly.
"See this is why I'm the one who sends out the 'I'm sorry your son or daughter died' emails. I am so going to have to teach you how to soften the blow." James said, using humor to deflect from his true feelings. This was obvious to Spock due to his boyfriend's fake smile.
"I had to send several of those messages when you were…" Spock started but was unable to finish. Maybe James was not the only one avoiding certain things.
"Say it Spock! I was dead." James said, closing his eyes. "I died and you watched it happen and I was fucking terrified. And sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking this is all a dream and shit- we really don't talk about this."
James is correct, they do not talk about James dying. Spock has only spoken about the subject a handful of times and the majority of those instances have been at the Vengeance incident debriefing. Thanks to the classified nature of the method used to bring James back from the dead, he rarely had to discuss it at all. Actually, he was not allowed to.
"I hate when Kim is right. He's such a bastard about it." Spock agreed with his boyfriend wholeheartedly about that.
"You do not want to discuss it when you wake up from a nightmare. You never tell me the subject matter, but I am certain your dreams are related to your death." The fact that James does not make eye contact with him leads Spock to believe that his hypothesis is accurate.
"Neither do you." Jim shot back. "You have nightmares that you don't want to talk about either and don't say Vulcans do not dream because you are my special Vulcan snowflake. You are 100% uniquely you and that's what I love about you." James kissed him once more. This kiss was slightly deeper than the one previously. Actually, this kiss involves significant amounts of groping and the use of tongues.
"You are trying to distract me from the conversation." Spock said pulling away from the kiss reluctantly.
"You can't blame a guy for trying." James pouted. "I've had nightmares for forever. I lived through genocide. I saw my mom raped in front of me." Spock just wrapped an arm around him. Before this, Spock only knew the barest details about that time in James' life. He knew it was a highly unpleasant experience, but he was unaware of the severity of it.
"Waking up terrified is not a new thing. It was just before dying, my worst nightmares were about getting a phone call from my mom's doctor telling me that she is either killed herself or she doesn't remember me at all. Now I dream about you burning in the volcano, Chris dying in your arms, and Nyota getting gutted by the Klingons right in front of us. I'm a little broken. It's no wonder I have a therapist and a mind healer." James joked.
"You're not broken." Spock said, giving him another kiss on the lips as he held him tighter. "I still dream about my mother's death." He confessed. "Now I dream about watching you die or Khan breaking Nyota's neck when she came down to keep me from killing him." Spock closed his eyes. He hates that dream.
"You really tried to kill him?" James asked surprised. Apparently, that detail was omitted from even the classified accounts of what happened.
"As you are aware, I do not remember anything between watching you die and you coming back to life. According to Nyota, this is what happened. I am uncertain as to how my mind can place Nyota in that scenario." He confessed to his boyfriend.
"Because the mind is pretty fucked up," James responded. "I didn't watch you nearly sacrifice yourself to a volcano, but my mind has come up with a pretty convincing image of what happened. Don't you dare do that to us again. Just no." In his arms, he can actually feel James tremble.
"That is a hypocritical thing to say, considering that you sacrificed your life in the warp core, just days later."
"I'm so signing you up for some classes that teach you how to filter. Now that will be stuck here for the next year." Jim said shaking his head. The words reminded Spock of the conversation he had with Christopher Pike months earlier. "I didn't have a choice Spock. If I didn't do something, we were all going to die."
"My sacrifice…" He started, but James cut him off with a finger on his lips.
"It's not the same thing. It is nowhere near the same thing. You were going to sacrifice yourself for some stupid rule and you were acting like it was no big deal at all. It was like you didn't care at all that you were leaving us. Do you have any idea how much you hurt me and Nyota?"
At the time, Spock did not entirely comprehend the true depth of his actions, but that was before watching James died in front of him. "I couldn't just leave you there and fucking idiotic Starfleet regulations be damned. You were -and then…." James was shaking again and his eyes were moist.
"In Admiral Christopher Pike's office, you said that I threw you under the bus." Spock said wiping James tears with his fingers. He can feel James' pain. It is sharp and consuming. He can also feel vast amounts of guilt radiating off his boyfriend.
"I shouldn't have said that." James said apologetically. "I was being an asshole. I shouldn't have expected you to lie for me especially without me talking to you about it. Kim was right. We do need to talk to each other about the ship related things, if nothing else. Otherwise, we are going to give X a really good reason to put us on separate ships. Honestly, half of the shit I spat at you that day was me being angry because they were taking you away from me. The rest of that was because I am absolute shit at expressing my feelings." James finished with another sigh.
"Considering I have lied for you once before, it is reasonable to assume that I would do so again." Spock said trying to make James feel better, but instead he gave Spock a very perplexed expression.
"You never lied on a mission report. So again, why the hell did I think you would cover up the volcano incident? See this is why it was all on me."
"I did lie before. I covered up the exact sensitivity of what you referred to as the "lizard girl" incident." Spock told James matter-of-factly.
"Wait, really?" James asked slightly shocked.
"I do not lie." Spock responded simply.
"You just admit it that you actually lied to Starfleet for me that means that you do lie. Also what you did is not even in the same league as lying about a mission to cover up a violation of the Prime Directive. I'm sorry I even expected that of you." It was at that moment, Spock decided to tell James everything.
"Admiral Pike detected the inconsistencies in my report and confronted me on my feelings for you. He ordered me to stop pulling your pigtails and I quote "Figure out what's going on between you two, but don't let it interfere with the ship."
"Chris really would say that. Of course, he saw what was going on between us before we did." James said with a sad smile.
"I had considered sending a report where I did not include our violation of the prime directive." Spock started to explain.
"That was not an "our" situation. I was the one who violated it." James interrupted again.
"Because of something I did. It was our violation."
"The admiralty didn't see it that way." James mumbled under breath.
"I am uncertain of that. I consider transferring me away from you and Nyota as a punishment."
"You say the sweetest things sometimes." Jim said, giving him a quick kiss.
"I reported my actions because I felt not doing so would be me allowing my feelings for you to influence my job. Because I gave a completely factual report without even bothering to add context we were recalled to earth. Because we were recalled…"
"Don't even think that way." James said, placing his fingers back on Spock's lips.
"You and I were trying not to allow our emotions to cloud our judgment, but that's exactly what we did in the end. It feels like every single decision we made was influenced by emotions. It doesn't matter. Chris is still dead…"
"If I did not allow…" Spock interjected.
"You're not blaming – that fuck up is all on me." At this point, things deteriorated in to what Jim refers to as a make out session. Although things did not progress beyond kissing, James shirt was currently in pieces on the floor of the living room.
"God, you and I are so screwed up." James said, once they broke apart "We can even get through one conversation about keeping our personal feelings out of our work relationship. I don't see how anyone, let alone Nyota can put up with us."
"I have contemplated this as well. She does not like it when I respond overly logical to a situation." Spock retorted.
"No, she doesn't like it when you act like you don't feel anything when we both know that you do."
"I am not the only one who puts on façades." Spock said in his own defense.
"Maybe, but your worse," James side. "I only put up with it because I am in love with you, but in a good way. I'm not sure why she does it." Spock does not either. He was certain that she would abandon the current arrangement, when she discovered that he created a psychic bond with James when he was supposed to be exclusively devoted to her.
"I do wonder like when you make me see your ex-boyfriend in a professional capacity. Personally, I think it's the view or maybe the fact I'm in love with both of you." Nyota said walking into the living room carrying pizza and several other food items.
"How long were you there - Spock what did you do to my shirt?" Jim asked, picking up the tattered item from the floor. Spock barely remembered removing it.
"Long enough to realize I should never leave you two unsupervised. Seriously, you ripped off his shirt? You are the reason why I don't buy really nice bras anymore. Vulcan strength and frustration with clothing is a really bad combination." She joked, placing her food on a nearby table. However, there is some truth to her statement.
"Did you just say that you're in love with me?" James asked slightly bewildered finally, picking up on her earlier words. Nyota's response was to walk over to James and kiss him.
"It was one of my therapy epiphanies." She answered, pulling away.
"Is that why you ran away? Wait, you actually love me. I have a hard enough time believing he actually likes me." James said, gesturing to him.
"What did you think that I was just tolerating your presence because I love Spock and he loves you? If you say 'Vulcans don't love' I will never blow you again." Considering her facial expressions, Spock believes she is entirely serious.
"I do not intend to."
"Smart man because I'm really looking forward to watching." James voices low, sensuous and filled with promise. Spock finds such a prospect arousing.
"I may let you, later." She said, giving James another quick kiss. "I got a text message from our wonderful Admiral Pike telling me not to come back to the Academy after this morning session, so I have time. Apparently, you have already warmed him up for me." He was tempted to remind her that James has not been cleared to participate in such strenuous activities, because Spock knows James well enough that he will not merely observe. Due to the fact her mouth was now on top of his and she was kissing him vigorously Spock chose not to raise this argument.
"We got the same message which means I have plenty of time to watch, even if I'm not allowed to participate." James said with a pout.
"You may want to check your email for a special message from Doctor McCoy. However, we need to talk first." She said pulling away from Spock.
"I hate those words." James mumbled under breath. Spock agreed with his boyfriend completely.
To be continued
I considered, including the three of them talking about everything in this chapter, but I felt it would make the chapter way too long. I'm planning on doing sexy times in the next chapter. I'm going to need your reviews to try to talk me into it. I'm not sure how far I am going to go but chances are there will be two different versions of the next chapter. There is also a 50-50 chance that will be the last chapter of this story. However, I have ideas for at least three more stories after this section, if there is interest.
*This was mentioned a few chapters ago, but I thought I would remind everybody that Nyota's father left Starfleet when she was a small child for a nonprofit that is trying to bring about intergalactic peace.