Kirk woke to the sight of a honey colored, sinuous, wooden ceiling. He was chilled. Beside him Spock slept in a mound under his generous robe. Only Kirk's legs were still covered.

The pure companionable ordinariness of fighting over covers with Spock struck Kirk through his midsection. He lay for a time, distracted from the chill, feeling heartsick. Spurred to action finally, he curled his shoulders up off the bed, pulled his uniform shirt together and sealed it back up, trying not to get distracted by the white hot memory of how it got undone.

The cocoon fuzz sat in a tangled sphere beside the bed. He stretched it flat and pressed it over himself, felt it reshape to his body, seeking his warmth, seeking to seal it in. Snug and unexpectedly blissful, he fell back to sleep.

# # #

"Jim, I—"

Kirk snapped awake to find Dr. McCoy beside the bed, towering over the lumpy robe that was Spock. Spock's brow and eyes were all that was visible to Kirk. Spock's dark brown eyes were slitted open, and they had a strange, possibly dangerous edge to them.

Kirk sat up, grappled with the cocoon around himself, tossing it aside like a spiderweb he'd been snagged on.

"Oh, you're dressed," McCoy said.

"Don't you knock?" Kirk said.

McCoy had the decency to appear sheepish. He gestured behind himself. "I, uh. There's no way to knock on a door like that."

Kirk rocked to his feet. His boots were somewhere. He didn't want to act like he didn't know where. He strode around the bed to draw McCoy away from it.

"What are you thinking, Jim?" McCoy glanced back at Spock, who was sitting up, slipping easily into his robe. "Do you have any idea what the talk is about?" McCoy glanced back again. "You're both dressed."

"Yes?" Kirk said. Anger was making him ungenerous already this morning. "What did you expect?"

"Well, I don't know." McCoy crossed his arms. "You must admit…" He flipped a delicate hand in Spock's direction.

"It was warmer in my room. We're sharing quarters."

"It's not going to look good."

Kirk expanded his chest to look bigger. "The best way I know to shut down talk is by blatantly not caring about it. Spock needed a warm place to sleep. I'm not turning him away because a bunch of busybodies are bored."

McCoy rubbed one ear. "Well, it's true that beehive was pretty dank. Especially for a Vulcan. The earthen walls could lead to fungal pneumonia… Fine."

"Thank you. As if I needed your permission, Doctor, to take care of one of my officers."

"Sorry, Jim."

Kirk rubbed his forehead and used that as a chance to assess Spock. The Vulcan stood calmly, robe open, hands at his sides. Kirk said, "I'm sorry I flew off the handle too, Bones. This has me a bit riled up. Spock deserves better."

McCoy made a disbelieving face. "What's that supposed to mean? And you don't?"

"You know what I mean, Bones."

McCoy took a hold of Kirk's forearm when he tried to turn away to find his boots. "No, I don't know. Stop a minute and tell me."

Spock's voice was factual and calm. A world away. "The captain is far more sensitive to issues surrounding my privacy than his own, at least in this instance. The captain and I discussed this at great length last night, Doctor."

Kirk exhaled, studied Spock, but then tried not to obviously study Spock.

McCoy dropped his hold on Kirk's arm. "Well, all right then. You okay, Jim?"

Kirk straightened. "Do I not seem okay?"

McCoy laughed lightly. "No. Not at all."

"You annoyed me."

"Yeah, I got that. This is something more than that, though."

Kirk looked away. He was fairly sure he had control of himself, but something of last night's uncertainty was apparently leaking out where it could find an exit. He took another cleansing breath.

"I'll be glad when this mission is over."

"Really? This is the easiest mission we've ever had."

Kirk stared at the increasingly bright orange light streaming over the floor from the sun rise. "Yes, I suppose it is."

McCoy considered this far too long. "Give me a run down of your schedule today, Captain."

Kirk blinked. "You think I'm that far gone?"

"No, but I'm going to see if I can join you for a bit."

Kirk looked to Spock, who raised both brows. "Do I seem—" Kirk waved his hand dismissively. "Never mind. Bones has full authority on this. I won't get you involved." Kirk huffed. "Okay. I think we are encouraged to explore some plantings on the edge of the next village before breakfast. Something about accelerated carbon capture. I forget the details. Then there is a luncheon, which I expect you will be at already, Doctor. Then there are a string of tours that I am relying on my yeoman to make sure I show up for." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Probably not the best showing on the details."

"It's the late nights and the drinking," McCoy said authoritatively.

"It's that I'm worried about everything but the schedule. As you say, easiest mission on record. Makes me nervous." Which was a lie for cover. Kirk was nervous. He was terrified, more specifically. He and Spock may not be able to work this out and he didn't know how they would recover from that.

McCoy chuckled. "Yeah. Fair enough. That is your actual job. I do understand that."

"Okay. But please knock. Or just yell, 'knock knock' or something next time."

"I will, Jim. You deserve your privacy too even if you don't seem to think so. I shouldn't have barged in."

Kirk shrugged, gave his CMO a smile of camaraderie. Didn't risk giving his first officer anything, not knowing what might emerge and completely give him away.

# # #

The handful of VIPs who had nothing more productive to be doing, and were best kept out of the way of their dutiful underlings, were on a tour of an experimental food factory. The scent from the vats was upsettingly like a murky stale beer mixed with banana candy. Kirk stood patiently, face fixed, while the locals explained, and occasionally violently argued about, the processes they were experimenting with.

Everyone breathed better when they had moved back into the open air. No one complained about the required long walk to the hatching hospital. The knowing glances and thinly veiled asides aimed at Kirk had died down while everyone coped with the stench. They resumed when the environment became pleasant again. Kirk pretended to be blind to them while working hard to avoid anxiously reviewing and re-reviewing everything that had been said the night before.

Their group was lined up before the long structure of an incubator built out of suspended mesh nets and antiseptic fungal foam when McCoy stepped up. Kirk kept his hands locked behind his back as he turned to his CMO.

"Our medical review is going well, Captain. How is yours?"

"Everything has been informative, Doctor."

The Commodore stepped forward to watch a hatchling emerge from a foamy egg. Her aides moved with her as well as the other captains.

Kirk realized he was flicking his fingers. Forced himself to stop.

McCoy slid closer and spoke low out of the side of his mouth. "You are jumpier than a cat at a rocking chair convention."

"Why, thank you, Doctor."

"Well. Telling people to calm down directly usually has the opposite effect."

Kirk side-eyed his friend. "Something you need, Bones?"

"Just seeing how you were doing. The answer is: not well. Good thing this is a ridiculously easy mission. That's all I have to say."

Kirk stared at him. Stared through him. This was an easy mission. If this was going to work between him and Spock he had to make it work here and now. Or give up on the entire idea.

"That's a very good point." Kirk relaxed then, let out a long sigh. "Thank you, Doctor."

"I don't know what I said."

Kirk watched the group watching the hatching. Any relationship with Spock would be fully outside of Kirk's usual means of control. Failing to embrace that was the root cause of his anxiety. It would be a two-way exchange, not a mission to be commanded. Another version of him, an ignored and starved version, ached to fight over the covers. And it told him in no uncertain terms to knock it off with this captaining nonsense.

Kirk said, "Just the right thing."

McCoy looked him up and down, rocked up on his toes. "Alrightee then."

# # #

The alpha science team was cataloging centuries of neglected computer archives stacked in an abandoned observatory. They assigned themselves this task because previous teams had already cataloged the state-of-the-art equipment. And to run out of computer-related tasks would mean assisting in other areas such as cataloging carnivorous swamp plants, which could also be rightly argued to be science-related.

Spock was using a jury-rigged harness to scan an old memory unit onto an archival tape when McCoy stepped up, flipping his hand in front of his face to fend off the dust. They were unfortunately alone at the moment.

"I assume you have dissected the captain and have come to dissect me, Doctor."

McCoy leaned uncomfortably close. "If I did put you on the table right now and cut you open, Spock, what would I find?"

"I assume that you would find a perfectly ordinary Vulcan."

McCoy stood straight and frowned. "I don't know why but that's the least expected answer from you."

Spock put the unit back into its soft case despite the antique material partially disintegrating. "It being the most logical expectation, I cannot fathom why you might find it unexpected."

"Har har." McCoy looked around himself at the stacks of clutter. "Something's up with you two. I assume Jim knows I don't for a minute believe that poppycock about being oh so concerned that something will go wrong down here. Not that that isn't a worry. The good lord knows I know that well enough. But something's up and neither of you are talking to me straight."

"Are you implying, Doctor, that you feel uncertainty regarding our various relationships?"

"I'm stunned that you caught that."

"The captain had similar concerns last night. Perhaps I am primed to recognize it. He was in fact overly concerned."

"Did you manage to calm him down?"

"I tried my best but I do not believe I succeeded sufficiently."

"Well, I managed to talk him down a bit more just now."

Spock picked up the next item from the stack. The case was crumbling and wriggling insects scurried out to hide among the items on the table. "If I may hear how. I would find that information useful in the future."

"Honestly I don't know. All I said was it's a good thing this is an easy mission. And like magic…" McCoy snapped his fingers. "…he was back to his happy ol' self."

"Odd."

"That's what I thought. So you have no idea either."

Spock blew the dust off a perfectly clear cube. "Not in this instance. But the captain is a more dynamic individual than I can account for. Hence why I often lose to him at chess."

McCoy watched Spock work for a while. "Well. If you need anything from me. You'll let me know, I'm sure."

Spock set his tricorder down and put his hands in his lap. "I am not competent at human relationships, Doctor. As you are well aware."

"You apologizing for something right now?"

Spock stared at the screen of the tricorder, which showed layers of memory permanently imbedded in quartz two centuries ago. "Perhaps."