Chapter 17 - Need, Part 6

Kirk returned to his room from his session with Loomis. He ordered food for two, intending to feed his leaner than ever companion a full dinner no matter the time he arrived. The food came by automated cart. Kirk brought the heated delivery box up to his room and set it beside the door. Ginger and garlic and hot pepper scents leaked from the sealed lid, filled the room.

Kirk sat on the bed reviewing the most recent dispatches from Lohanna. Spock arrived, stepped in with head bowed, looking as humble as Kirk felt.

Kirk set his padd aside. "How was your day?"

"Acceptable."

Kirk clasped his hands together in his lap, looked up at Spock. "It's good to see you."

Spock nodded distractedly.

"Need anything?" Kirk waited a beat. "Besides dinner that is." He stood, touched Spock on the arms and bent to open the food box.

Kirk served out plates for two. Spock took a seat, didn't complain that Kirk had served him far more than he usually ate. Kirk put his hands under his chin, gave Spock a soft smile. The food smell made him dizzy, but he waited for Spock to start eating first.

Kirk bit into a sauce-soaked mushroom, made a noise of delight. He ate as slowly as he could, pretended to pay no attention to Spock's choice of eating only small amounts of each of what he'd been given.

"I'm going to miss a lot of things, but you and the food are the top two of the list," Kirk said.

Spock nodded. He put his chopsticks down and clasped his hands together. He'd had eaten more than Kirk expected, especially given how unemotional he remained while eating.

"I have transport arrangements," Kirk said. "For Saturday, very early. Oh three hundred. I've been called to an oversight board tomorrow and possibly the next day regarding Tantalus Colony. Otherwise I'd be heading out sooner. The delay works out, I got on a faster ship to a nearby outpost to the Lohanna Sector, and I get a few more evenings with you."

Kirk waited for a response, but there wasn't one. "Is there anything specific you need from me this week?"

Spock glanced down at the table. His eyes came back up Kirk's chest to his face. "This."

Affection ruled Kirk. He wiped his mouth, pushed his plate aside. Spock ate three more bites of tempeh, then stopped as well.

"How is your project on the Apollo?"

"It is completed. I am hoping to get access to the sensor data from the Apollo's test runs this week through Commander Absom. In time to complete my report."

Kirk rubbed his chin, wondered about not getting the data directly, but said nothing. "Good thing you don't need much sleep."

"It is an advantage."

"It's an unfair one to us mere humans."

Kirk stood and put the plates aside, returned and put his hands on Spock's shoulders from behind. He bent and put his face into Spock's hair, just above his right ear, held that way, breathing him in. Even over the stir fry Kirk could smell the baked sage and bitter musk of him. He held the scent in his mind, willed it to reside there.

He massaged Spock's shoulders while searching for things to say. Words were inadequate and may violate his need to be merely accepting. He kissed an ear, worked his way down to Spock's neck. "This all right?" Kirk asked.

"Yes," Spock said, level and stoic.

Kirk smiled as he worked his way along Spock's jaw, found his mouth which was always more supple than expected. Spock bent his head back, met Kirk's deep kiss with an open mouth.

Kirk broke off the kiss, looked down at Spock for a time, at his warm brown eyes, the fine hairs of his brows. Spock's hands came up Kirk's arms, took hold, even as his face remained neutral. Kirk's fingers fumbled for and found the seal at Spock's neck, peeled his uniform open to the waist, slid his hands inside.

"Move to the bed?" Kirk's voice came out low and eager. Between a new roommate, and wanting to be ready, he hadn't had a release since the last time they'd been together, which suddenly felt like months ago.

"If you wish," Spock said into his ear.

Kirk felt hungry expectation like a drink he could gulp down. He steered Spock to lie back on the pillow, stood straight just long enough to shed his own uniform, then straddled Spock's half bared body, put his hands on his chest and traced the shape of him with slow movements.

Spock stared up at the ceiling, the picture of neutral stoicism.

"Oh, my darling Vulcan," Kirk said.

Spock's eyes found his, tinged with curiosity. Kirk reached down and unsealed more of Spock's uniform, down one of the legs of it. Spock failed to react, his breathing remained steady.

Kirk resisted smiling. He felt an illicit tingle mix in his stomach with a sense of challenge.

At each increasingly intimate touch, Spock's eyes fluttered, then grew steady again. He watched Kirk without any apparent feeling on the matter. Kirk bent and kissed a knee, worked his way up.

"What's this?" he said of an triangular yellow and green bruise on the side of Spock's leg.

"It is minor."

"It looks old." Kirk raised his head and waited.

"It was an equipment failure of sorts."

Kirk kissed near it on Spock's thigh. "As long as an upperclassman didn't do it."

"I would defend myself from that level of injury, without regard to rank."

"You can't heal it unless you have someone to stay with you, right? You want me to help?"

Spock's face grew distant. "It is healed. That is why it looks old."

"I see." Kirk kissed just above the bruise where Spock had a bit of longer hair on his leg. "I'm curious what happened."

"It was unremarkable."

Kirk ran a hand over Spock's lower abdomen. "If you insist. You aren't usually clumsy."

Kirk backed up again, enjoyed the sight of Spock lying before him, angular, every muscle detail standing out. Kirk had never seen anything so beautiful. He wondered how he ever worried anything else could surpass this. A great relief flowed through him, bent again to work his way over Spock's body. The room was quiet enough his own lips and Spock's level breathing were the only sounds.

"You are doing really well," Kirk said of Spock's continued lack of outward reaction.

"Zienn has been teaching me additional advanced techniques to disjoint my body from my mind."

Kirk ran his tongue in a far more sensitive spot. Spock's fingers dug into Kirk's shoulder, withdrew.

Kirk kept working his way up. Pressed lips to his right side to feel the thrumming of his heart. Kissed collar bone, then pushed up on all fours to look down at Spock, who met his gaze with so ordinary of one, Kirk snorted in amusement.

"What shall I do with you?" Kirk said.

"I am thine."

Kirk bent, kissed Spock's forehead. "I miss you already."

Spock's hands came up to Kirk's ribs, held on. Kirk kissed him on the mouth, over and over, until the moisture made his lips sore. Every time he raised up, he encountered the same level gaze. Kirk stared back, his longing to use Spock's own reactions to cleave open this newfound control. He lowered himself, let his weight rest entirely on Spock's body and did just that.

Spock's upper body fell lax in release, but he locked his legs around Kirk's torso. "My control is poor," he said, sounding disappointed.

Kirk studied Spock's neutral face, head canted to the side showing off his mussed hair, vanquished but glorious in it.

"You are so beautiful. I don't know what it is about you, but I adore every millimeter of you."

Spock opened his eyes and turned his head just enough to look at Kirk from under his dark lashes. "James. We are going to have to learn to communicate using only speech."

Kirk laughed. "Yes, we are." He stroked Spock's thighs. "We'll both grow some. I realized today that we both need to more than I wanted to admit."

Spock closed his eyes.

"Anything I can do for you?" Kirk asked.

Spock held his eyes closed, voice sleepy. "Touch me additionally. That way the scent of you will remain on me for a time. Weeks perhaps."

It was a new experience having Spock's unwashed skin against him as they lay together on the single pillow, Spock under two blankets, Kirk uncovered. They were both languishing after a second lazy round.

"You will be careful," Spock said.

Kirk stared at Spock's profile which was pointed at the ceiling. He wanted to point out that they weren't saying goodbye quite yet but didn't.

"I'll be careful. And I'll come back most of the way to full commander." He touched Spock's cheek. "I have to be there for you when you finish at the Academy." He breathed in the odor of the two of them there, relished it. "I'm curious. How many Vulcan-human hybrids are there?"

"I do not know an exact count. A hundred or so, perhaps."

Kirk adjusted his head on the pillow, waved the lights down to dark. "That's not very many."

"Most are younger than I. Mortality can be an issue in the first years of life, even for those that resort to aggressive gene therapy."

Kirk kissed Spock's shoulder, put a firm arm around his chest. "I didn't realize. Makes me even more honored to have you."

Spock turned his head toward him. Kirk knew he was looking him over in the darkness. He met his gaze as if he could see just as well, and held it.


Kirk returned from a run that had morphed in the hard wind into a vigorous climb. He felt released now, at least, from his frustrations. The oversight board meeting had been harder than expected, the members reluctant to believe things on Tantalus had been that bad. The only hard evidence was video of Adams using the neutralizer on Kirk and Eli using it on Noel, which the board had felt didn't count since it was unauthorized use of the device. Kirk had felt it necessary to argue and describe his experience too many different ways, making it seem as bad as possible, when he much preferred to simply move on.

A scalding hot shower soaked the bone chill left from the wind. Kirk wandered his room still steaming from the heat, bundled in a clean set of workout clothes. He settled in. He had hours before he'd see Spock. Too many hours and little to occupy them. He didn't care about the earth news. It was already seeming pointless to his existence.

The personal feed indicator on his monitor chimed. A message from Overlander came up with a copy of a note she'd added to Spock's file. Not a citation, Overlander explained, because she didn't want to open an issue for Hully, whom she assumed had learned her lesson about equipment discipline without the need for further sanction.

Kirk read the note, read it a second time more slowly. Spock had acted the way he always did when faced with danger: with discernment and mental and physical competence. He had used his inhuman strength and wits to rescue his mentor from decompression, had done so with a circus move and no concern for his own race's distaste for touch. Overlander also praised Spock's handling of Hully's strongly negative reaction to being reminded of the Ranger's hull breech, described his words as "appropriately understanding and calming."

Spock had not mentioned the atmospheric breech on the Apollo to Kirk, even when prompted repeatedly about his injury. That could be Spock's innate desire to downplay everything or the result of receiving too much criticism over time. Kirk wasn't sure which to hope it was. He put a copy of the message in his private file. He would need it to remind himself that Spock was going to get increasingly harder to earn.

Uncertainty rose up again in Kirk. In the quiet of his dorm it resembled a cavernous, lonely ache. This wasn't just professional uncertainty as he'd claimed to Loomis. It was personal too. He closed his eyes, remembered the night before, how open Spock had been to his attentions, how willing to be an extension of him while giving and taking pleasure. Kirk tried to force it to be enough.

He checked Spock's schedule, took up his jacket and went out again.

Kirk stepped into Starfleet Academy carrying a takeaway box. Spock's last class of the day was just letting out, although he had station practice and labs to attend to until twenty two hundred.

The Academy halls bustled with activity. Heads turned to follow Kirk in his deployment uniform. A few snapped to attention calling out his rank. He replied casually, kept going. At the spot where the connectors came together in a wide area between the first and second year dorms, Kirk stopped and looked around. An Andorian sitting in one of the circular seating areas stretched up her neck to stare at him in surprise, stood up.

Kirk approached. "Cadet P'Losiwst, by chance?"

Her eyes lit up beneath metallic blue eyeshadow. "I am, sir."

"Do you know where Spock is?"

"He should be here shortly. If you'd like to wait." She stepped back with a courtly gesture to indicate the empty sliver of seat beside hers. The other cadets with her had also stood and now shifted awkwardly, waiting for a cue as to what to do next.

"At ease," Kirk said. "I don't want to interrupt."

The others gradually sat down, heads turned upward to fixate on him.

P'Losiwst said, "Are you excited to be shipping out, sir?"

Kirk turned from looking down the connector in the direction of the central hub. "You know, I am. I have to see new places at least now and then. And I like to see how others do things well and not so well, and a lot of the personnel stationed there have been through more than one tour in that location."

"The press said the Federation are making a big push there in preparation for abandoning much of it." She was clearly comfortable with roundabout formal social speech. And Kirk wondered if this made Spock more at ease with her.

"I honestly gave up on the non-Starfleet feeds for the duration."

"I understand, sir."

Kirk checked the corridor again. "You'll be here to keep an eye on Spock?"

She smiled. "He doesn't need looking after, sir. We're the ones in his group dragging him down."

One of the other cadets made an absurdly sad face, nodded.

"Don't ever think that," Kirk said. "Teamwork always gets us farther."

Spock approached from the far hub. His head lifted as he recognized Kirk, who watched him sidle along in the flow of gray and gray-blue bodies until he came before him, the very picture of Academy confidence. Kirk fought to keep an embarrassingly broad smile in check.

"James?"

"I brought you dinner." Kirk tilted his head to the side and Spock followed to the solid wall on the other side of the corridor. "I won't stay, but take this."

Spock accepted the package, held it in front of him by the sides as if it were a formal gift rather than a steaming box of falafel and spinach phyllo triangles.

Kirk dropped his voice. "You didn't tell me what happened on the Apollo." He held up his hand. "I'm not saying you had to. I'm just curious why you didn't for my own information."

Spock looked down. "Commander Overlander mentioned she sent you a copy of the note she attached to my file."

Kirk put his hands on Spock's arms. "It's okay. Whatever the reason. Understand please that it makes me uneasy for when I'm talking to you from a distance, how little you might be sharing."

Spock stared at the floor. Kirk let go of him.

A group of second years and seniors went by, chanting as they walked in time with a stuttering, sloppy step ever fourth step, a mockery of parading. They stuttered more and fell to normal walking upon seeing Kirk there. A few glanced back at him, checking if he cared to say anything.

Kirk waited until they were gone. "I'll let you get to your station practice."

P'Losiwst stood three meters away, hands behind her back. At this pause, she looked up. "If I may, sir. The group have decided that Spock, since he has already done far more than his share, should get a session off." She looked between them. "It will be good for us to try and do a full round of simulations without his coaching, honestly. And it's a waste of time for Spock to practice something he could do in his sleep."

"Spock?" Kirk said.

Spock turned to Kirk. "Do you think I should?"

"It's your decision."

"GO," P'Losiwst said. "You have what, two, three days?"

Spock stared. Kirk gave her a wink, which made her curl her antenna back.

"You are encouraging me to play hooky, I believe the human term is."

They were in Spock's room and Kirk was pulling out a place to sit. "Logical hooky, Spock. If I were setting up drills, I'd be mixing up the groups more already. I wouldn't have you in the same one all the time, at the very least."

Spock crossed his arms. "I do try to limit my corrections per session."

Kirk slipped off his boots, put one foot up on the bed. "It will get better. Classes will get difficult even for you. If you choose the right ones. Which I'm sure you will."

"You assume I am not struggling in some already." Spock sat across from him, lanky arms still latched together.

"Are you struggling still in Leadership?" Kirk almost didn't ask this.

"Much less so. There is a great deal of basic logic in that material once one accepts the sociology, psychology, and behavioral economics at issue. But the midterm examinations and simulations will verify my estimation one way or the other."

"I do regret that I won't be here to help you more."

"I will manage, James. I am certainly at no risk of falling below the minimum performance threshold."

Kirk smiled with the full force of his feelings.

The door chimed. Spock stood and opened it. An upperclassman stood there.

"You have an unregistered visitor in your quarters, Plebe. I checked the records. And I don't think this is the first time, either, based on a lot of rumors."

Spock turned to Kirk, who sat back, crossed his arms, stretched his feet out and crossed those. Spock raised a brow at him.

The cadet stepped in despite Spock not stepping out of the way. "Oh, Commander," he said, taking in Kirk's uniform.

"It's true I'm unregistered," Kirk said with bored casualness. "You have two choices, Cadet. Fetch Lt. Grange, or file the paperwork yourself. But it's annoying paperwork, by design, I believe. You have to really want to get even with someone to waste the effort on it."

The cadet turned to Spock, glared at him.

Kirk said, "You haven't introduced yourself to your superior, Cadet. For someone who likes rules . . ."

"Senior Cadet Humfress, sir." He nodded crisply.

"Noted." Kirk slowly rested his chin on his knuckles. "You make a decision yet on your course of action, Cadet?"

Humfress's face creeped closer to the color of his red hair. His mouth twisted unpleasantly. "I'll fetch Lt. Grange, sir. He's probably just coming on duty for the evening."

"You do that. I'll be here."

The door swished closed.

"I expected that the second time you came for the night," Spock said.

Kirk smiled.

"You are amused by this?" Spock asked.

"Spock, you aren't in even a fraction of the trouble with upperclassmen that I was. By this time in my first year I'd already fallen flat on my ass or face at least three times from various pranks. For some reason my tormenter liked setting me up for falls. One time he sprayed component hydrophobic coating at the threshold of my door." Kirk pointed with his thumb. "And then a mist of water. And half the Academy, it seemed at the time, was waiting to watch me skid across the corridor on my tailbone. Which I had already broken the week before, so I gave a very poor showing of decorum on top of falling."

Kirk sat back again, hands behind his head. "Of course, I had arranged for his girlfriend to stand him up on a date when he hadn't seen her in a month." He spoke defensively. "But I didn't start it."

Spock stared down at him, brow held high in dismay. "You are terrible influence."

"Oh, I know that. But I also know you've been getting kid glove treatment because of your mystique. You're not just strange to many of your fellow cadets; you are dangerously strange."

"I see."

"It's okay, though. Everyone's learning something." Kirk dropped his arms. "You're going to do okay. And most of them will too."

"Is this part of earning my place?"

"Yes."

Spock turned to the door and four seconds later it chimed. Spock called for it to open, remained standing beside Kirk's crossed knees.

Grange stepped in, let the door close on Cadet Humfress and several others in the doorway.

"You COULD register as a visitor," Grange said to Kirk.

Kirk held up his hands. "But this feels like home."

Grange rolled his eyes. "I'll handle it this time, renew your registration from your talk." He turned to Spock. "Since you are now in someone's sensor range, take it off campus from now on, Cadet."

"Yes, sir."

"And you are already doing extra duty with me so I'll remind you that you have extra duty with me. I'll try to think of something unpleasant for one round so I can file everything neatly." He looked between them. "You ship out when, Commander?"

"Very early Saturday."

"I'll also renew what I said last time to you."

Kirk nodded formally. "Thank you, Lieutenant."

At the door, Grange shook his head. "You were the very last cadet of this batch I expected to be trouble."

They were alone again.

Kirk reached for the food box. "Why don't we eat? Then you can go to your next lab on time."

Spock sat across from him, motions stiff. He accepted a fork-speared falafel. "I was correct about the trouble your visits would cause."

"You really hate breaking the rules."

"Yes."

Kirk took the single fork back, took a bite of salad drenched in dressing. "Great bird. The food. Even earth salad is good." He handed the box and the fork to Spock, wiped his mouth. Spock ate another falafel in neat nibbles off the fork. He held out the box and the empty fork.

"I've been lying to you," Kirk said. "This is not going to be easy."

Spock dropped his eyes. Nodded.

"But it will work out. Okay?"

Spock kept his gaze down. Nodded again.