Chapter 4 - Few Things Can't be Solved by Neck Pinch

The quiet bridge grated on Kirk's nerves. Diamond and his assistant had gone down to the torpedo bay to do time-motion studies. Kirk let him, thinking he'd be relieved to have him gone, but the bridge hadn't recovered, so neither had he.

Spock came down to the command chair and put a hand on the arm. Kirk shot him a warning look. He was tired of him too.

"If I may call my replacement to the bridge, Captain. There is research in the arboretum I would prefer to conduct myself rather than delegate."

Kirk nodded and minutes later, Spock was gone. Kirk wondered if that had been code for meet me there. It was Kirk's favorite place on the ship, and Spock knew that.

Kirk stubbornly remained where he was, until he could hear the torpedo crews running drills again and again over Uhura's monitor. Guilt weaseled into his stubbornness, dissolving it.

He sat forward on the edge of his chair. "Mr. Sulu, call your replacement to the bridge."

"Yes, sir."

When Lieutenant Darnell arrived, Sulu stood up and waited to be handed the conn.

"Sir?" Sulu said as Kirk mounted the steps to the lift.

Kirk turned.

"That was a good speech, sir."

"Only a speech, though, Lieutenant."

Sulu stood by the center seat, waiting until he was certain the lift was gone.

"I want everyone to listen up," Sulu said. "The captain is carrying too much of the load. We have to do a better job of taking our share." He looked around. "Does anyone disagree?"

"Vee all agree," Chekov said. "Right?"

There were nods all around.

"The captain's words about losing site of a purpose made me realize that we as a crew have lost sight of ourselves. We're all sitting around waiting for something to be done for us. We're all perfectly capable of functioning with a difficult admiral looking over our shoulder. We shouldn't need the captain to protect us from that. We are all perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves."

There were nods, bowed heads.

"Thanks for listening. I'd love to put that on intercom, but obviously can't. Please spread the word."

Down in the torpedo bay, Kirk remained in the doorway, observing. The three person torpedo crew was too busy to notice him. And if Diamond noticed him, he didn't give any indication of it.

Ensign Huranga looked up and saw him. Kirk gave him a supportive nod. Huranga appeared to sigh, gave an expression of exasperation, and went on with loading a different dummy charge for the third time while Farragut timed him. Diamond looked at his watch in parallel as if measuring his own waste of time.

That reckless feeling flowed into Kirk again; it felt like a double shot of whiskey. He stepped back and around to the lift. His reaction to helplessness was to fight. But he had only himself to fight with. He kept walking and without a firm plan climbed up the access ladder to the next deck. Moving helped a lot. He greeted some off duty crewmembers, whose smiles seemed to fade as they approached and passed. Kirk walked all the way around that deck and jumped into the diagonal access tube that led all the way down to engineering. As an ensign, they had perfected sliding these, boots on the rails, hands braking. And he did this for a few decks, before his boots got too warm.

Down, down he went. The ship was larger than expected traversed this way.

The scent of the arboretum filled the corridor outside of it. Kirk felt renewed just breathing it in. The doors opened to a portable lab station where a tech was taking samples of blossom parts while looking at a sped up recording of the blossom opening and closing. Kirk recognized the tech but couldn't remember his name.

"Crewman," Kirk said. "Is Mr. Spock here?"

"Captain, sir. Yes, he is." The crewman had an oddly varying voice like a boy in puberty and Kirk remembered his name.

"Mr. Spock is placing tags, sir, on the port side."

"Thank you, Taulie."

The man bent back over his sample with tongue sticking out, long atomic tweezers held steady.

Kirk walked farther into the greenery. He found Spock off the main path in the densest area, placing a line of sensors on a leaf.

"Captain."

Kirk almost apologized for that warning look he'd shot Spock's way on the bridge. Maybe he was too soft. He said nothing. Normally he would have crouched down and asked Spock what he was doing, but he couldn't make himself care, even as a distraction. For the second time that day, he looked at himself with fresh eyes and didn't like what he saw, but he couldn't gain traction to fix it.

Spock finished what he was doing and snapped the sensor case closed and left it on a hovering tray full of equipment. He stepped over to Kirk and put the full force of his attention on him. Kirk thought he could feel it as a heat ray.

"I think I'm finished." Kirk said. It wasn't him speaking, it was that ensign inside him, worried, speaking for him. Reckless Kirk rushed in to silence him, then overshot. "Maybe when I'm demoted, you can take over as captain."

"I do not want command, Captain."

"That's what McCoy said you would say."

Kirk took a deep breath of the earthiness. Rather than calm him, it made him confused.

"Might I intrude enough to point out that you do not seem well rested, Captain?"

"Rested enough if we were battling anything other an admiral."

Spock slipped his tricorder off his shoulder and for a moment Kirk thought he was going to use it on him, and he was filling his lungs to tell his science officer exactly how he felt about that. But Spock set it on the tray, and Kirk trembled with a righteous energy that now had no outlet.

When Spock looked back, his expression changed, then calmed again. He stepped back over, closer this time.

Spock spoke low, "Can I help you, Jim?"

"Yesterday I wanted to borrow your calm, but today I don't even want that. I'm completely focused now on the short term, which is just getting through the next few minutes." He laughed mirthlessly. "Silly. Just an admiral."

"He isn't." Spock's voice was soothing. "He is a threat to everything you have built. But I do think, perhaps, you undervalue the staying power of what you've accomplished on this ship. I believe it will outlast his visit."

"When is that going to end? I'd hoped he'd get off at Starbase 4, but we aren't even going there now." He sounded too young to his own ears.

"Have you asked him?"

Kirk turned away, but held back on pacing. "I did the first week. He was vague. Now I'm afraid to ask. I don't want him staying out of a sense of pride." Kirk rubbed his face with one hand. His eyes were gritty. "I never thought I'd be defeated like this."

"Why not, may I ask?"

"Because it's- Are you doing the Bones Socratic thing?"

"I notice that you are suspicious of my motives today. I can assure you they have not changed from yesterday or the day before."

Kirk paced away and stretched his neck to the side. "I'm not suspicious of you, just easily annoyed by your mother henning."

"I apologize, Captain."

"I don't want you to apologize, Spock. No one on this ship has anything to apologize for." Kirk put both hands on his head and bent over slightly, then bent over more. He wanted to stretch all the way over, out of himself. He made a noise of utter frustration. "I cannot bear this waste, this damage to my relationship with my crew any longer." He straightened, pulling his face down with his fingers as he did so. "I'd rather get it over with and sit this out in the brig."

Spock stepped close again and took one of Kirk's wrists. Kirk turned to him in question.

"Your physiological state is influencing your psychological state."

"There's nothing physically wrong with me."

Spock held up Kirk's wrist as if it were a sample of something. "There is a feedback loop from your physical state to your emotional one. I can break it, temporarily, if you like. I think it will return a measure of control back to you."

Kirk felt his shoulders fall. He hadn't even realized how tensely he'd been holding them. He shook his head. "I can't turn down any help."

Spock stepped around to face Kirk, still holding his wrist up between them.

Kirk said, "The last few days, I've been holding on only so I don't disappoint you." Apparently he was back to confessing.

Spock reached his other hand up behind Kirk's neck. Kirk felt a prickling in both arms, stronger in the one Spock held, as if a circuit had connected. He closed his eyes, but lost track of where he was due to the earthy air and opened them again. Spock was close enough for Kirk to study the individual hairs on his brow and notice that the neat line of his shiny bangs wasn't that neat.

Spock's fingers slid under his collar and down along the bones of Kirk's spine. A deeply concentrating appearance overcame his features. With a light touch, his fingers drifted to one side, in the hollow beside Kirk's shoulder blade and for an instant, Kirk felt a blanking out of all senses of one side of his body. He made a noise of surprise.

"Was that a neck pinch?"

"Similar, but to a different nerve."

That right side of Kirk's body fell lax. Spock's fingers drifted left and now that Kirk knew what was coming, he tensed.

"That is the wrong response," Spock said.

Kirk closed his eyes and accepted the strange anti-jolt a second time. Spock waited to release him until he stood steadily on his own.

Kirk felt his collar flapping and sealed it back up. "Maybe we should be doing this in my quarters," he said with a mischievous quirk of a smile. He stretched his arms by pulling each elbow toward his chest. Every bit of tension was gone from his back. "That's a two-hour massage's worth, Spock. Thank you."

Spock nodded and watched him rather than doing what Kirk expected, which would have been to return to his equipment right away.

"Would it annoy you unduly, Captain, if I came to check that you were sleeping all right this evening?"

"Yes. But maybe a good idea anyway."

"The delegates will be boarding tomorrow, early. I expect that will be an added strain."

Kirk let his arms fall lax. "I'm looking forward to the distraction." Kirk looked up at the branches overhead. "I should get back to the admiral. Rescue the torpedo crews."

"If one admiral is the worst thing they face this week, they are lucky," Spock said.

"Now you sound like McCoy."

Kirk took one last long look around his personal sanctuary. Spock continued to not attend to his equipment.

Kirk said, "Thanks. You're a lifesaver. Or at least a career saver."

On the way out of the arboretum, Taulie was so absorbed in mounting slides, that Kirk sneaked past without disturbing him.

Climbing back up the access tube, Kirk heard voices and found that Diamond had moved to the inorganic fabrication area. He was trying to give a pep talk about efficiency. Kirk leaned against the bulkhead, crossed his arms and listened in, trying not to smile too much.

Some of the crewmembers had pulled off their masks and the blowers were running full speed to clear the air of monomolecular fibers. The air was blowing into the room past Kirk in a steady stream to create a negative pressure zone. Kirk considered suiting up and striding in to point out the risks to the admiral from failing to wear the regulated equipment, but instead shook his head and strode for the lift and back to the bridge.