Title: Home (Multichapter fic with 35 parts)

Beta: Lissaea at Livejournal

Warnings, Themes and Tropes, etc.: bondage, torture, prostitution, explicit sex, drug use

Summary: The Vulcans need a new home planet, so the Enterprise and her crew set out to find one for them.

"They'd come all the way for this? Which mad astronomer had sent them out here? Whose twisted idea had it been?"

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or any of its characters.

– Home-Part 16 of 35 –

"Jim," Spock asked, "what is on your mind?"

Jim looked up from the desk in his quarters. "What?"

"You are very distracted."

"Am not," Jim replied, eyeing up Spock.

The Vulcan was sitting, reading a few PADDs.

"You are suffering concentration problems."

"Oh Spock, just leave me alone will you. You're putting me off."

"It is you who requested that I come by your quarters tonight. Have you changed your mind?"

Jim turned away from Spock and looked at the computer screen in front of him.

"I do not mean to imply that you are not fully capable of writing the report to Starfleet you are currently working on, however, I have seen that you have a lot of work to do besides this report. If you want, I would draft the report to Starfleet for you to alleviate your workload—as you are aware, I am not busy since I am currently not permitted to assist with the mission."

"No, I'm fine, really."

He heard Spock get up, followed by the swish of his quarters' doors opening.

"Wait," Jim said, jumping up.

He walked up to Spock, placed a hand on his arm and smiled. "Thanks for the offer though."

His heart went out to Spock. He'd be incredibly annoyed in Spock's place-not being able to help, to be so utterly useless. Spock was taking the situation with a lot more grace than he would were their places reversed.

He squeezed Spock's shoulder. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Captain."

And again, he'd missed an opportunity to talk about them. Then again, Spock seemed to be trying to avoid the conversation even more than he was. It was scary how similar their minds worked, really. But should he be that surprised?

He'd never dated a guy before, not exactly. There had been Lawrence, back in prison, but well, obviously they'd not had any conversations about feelings or anything like that. The other two encounters with men had both been with aliens on training missions as a cadet-and it had been clear to both parties from the start that it was nothing more than a fun way to improve interspecies relations; just a one night stand. He'd loved how uncomplicated those encounters had been.

Hmmm … and here he was trying to make things complicated.

Bones opened the door to his quarters to let Jim in. "Glad I've finally been able to steal a free minute of your time as it seems to be so precious at the moment."

Jim grinned. "Well, I am the Captain. So what's up Bones? You said it was business."

He'd been surprised Bones had wanted to meet in his quarters rather than his sickbay office as usual, but he wasn't about to complain. He wasn't that fond of sickbay.

"It is, so I want you to take me seriously," Bones said.

He reached for a bottle on one of his shelves and poured them each a little whiskey.

Jim started to chuckle. "That kind of serious?"

"Well, I just thought you might need a drink," Bones said.

They both sat down and Bones handed Jim his glass. The fumes from it made his eyes water.

"Sheesh, what's this stuff? Turpentine?"

"Got it off Scotty," Bones replied.

"What happened to the regular stuff you had?"

"All gone, Jim, all gone."

Jim eyed the drink suspiciously. "Has Scotty set up a distillery down in engineering?"

"Believe me, Jim, you don't want to investigate."

"Right. Fine. So what's up?" he said, looking at Bones.

"Spock."

Jim's insides turned to ice and he found it hard to breath. He dropped his eyes back to his drink and was thankful that Bones had had the good sense to invite him to his quarters.

Clunk. Bones had put his glass down.

The sound oddly mirrored the feeling Jim's stomach was currently experiencing. He didn't want to talk—if Bones knew and the admiralty didn't … he couldn't put his friend in that position. Instead he took a sip of the paint stripper in his glass.

Jim settled for a simple, "Yes?"

" 'Yes?', Is that all you've got to say? He's your goddamn first officer!"

Jim closed his eyes.

"Have you nothing else to say about his mental health? He nearly got you both killed. I know he seems better, but that's only 'cause we're keeping him away from Saketh and the mission. Much use he is to this ship right now."

As Bones had been talking, Jim had slowly opened his eyes again. Now he slowly let out the breath he'd been holding, hoping Bones wouldn't notice. He knew he needed to respond, so he gulped down all of Scotty's whiskey in one. Carefully he set the glass back down on the table and reached for the bottle to refill it. All to give himself just that little bit more time to recover. It wasn't healthy for him to jump every time someone said Spock's name. Clearly, his own mental health was taking quite a beating.

"What do you want me to do about it?" he finally said. "You're the Doctor. You're the one who's not allowing him to go back down to the planet. We can't solve this mystery without letting him get back to work. Maybe it was just a one off reaction? Who knows."

Bones leant back in his chair, swirling the vile spirit around in his glass. "Alright, fine."

Jim's eyebrows shot up. "I get Spock back?"

Bones glared at him. "Although first I will need both a full health check and a final, thorough, review of his mental health."

"Fine, you do that, Bones," Jim said, a broad grin on his face. "Sounds good to me."

He held his glass up. "Cheers!"

But Bones shook his head. He leant towards Jim, supporting himself with his elbows on his thighs.

"Jim, the next point I have to raise is … look, kid, I couldn't do what you do, no way. You have the sharpest tactical mind in the fleet, you're quick, brave, decisive—you're also ever so young. It can't be easy having so much weight on your shoulders. Most men twice your age have trouble bearing such responsibilities. But, there are ways to deal with the loneliness of command … and then there are ways."

Jim's lips formed a flat line. The sinking feeling from earlier was back.

"I'm your friend and sometimes that isn't an easy job, heaven knows you can be a right jerk at times. But you can come to me when you have problems, my door is always open. And I wish you'd talk to me, let me in a bit on what's going on in your life."

Jim put his glass down on the table with a thud. The following silence between them was deafening.

"Look, I know you're having sex with someone … ."

Jim stood up. He didn't think he could take much more of this. There was no way Bones could know. Well, Bones knew him well, maybe it was his body language, but he couldn't know for sure.

"You don't have any proof."

Bones' eyebrows shot up; his face contorted in fury.

Jim looked away. He knew he'd hurt his friend.

"Look-," he said.

Bones cut him off. "Oh, I have proof alright, you stake your ass on that. Now tell me who!"

Instantly Jim snapped his head up and looked Bones in the eye. He clenched his fists at his side.

"Oh god, Jim, come on tell me."

Jim remained silent.

"The fact that you don't want to tell me, see that's more worrying than anything. I'm sitting on a bomb here and I don't want it to explode. If this shit blows up and I didn't tell anyone what I knew … I need to know how serious this is, Jim. So tell me who-."

"Well it's up to you what you do, but you won't be getting one word out of me. Goodbye," Jim said and left.

As he walked back to his room, the white of the corridor walls assaulted his eyes. White was too simple and far too bright. He punched his key code into his door and as soon as it shut behind him he turned around and smacked his fist into it.

Jim's shoes thudded on the hard corridor floor. The still air was able to cool his face as he set a fast pace towards Engineering. Jim looked back over his shoulder at Spock. It felt like the man was walking in his shadow. But Spock wasn't walking any closer than usual, he kept telling himself over and over again.

In front of them, Uhura came rounded a corner; she was carrying a PADD and had her eyes on Jim. He slowed his pace to a stop.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

He was very aware of how close Spock was. Great, he could feel his ears starting to burn.

"The latest communication from headquarters, sir," she replied.

"What do they want?"

"They received your report and now they want to know more about what happened to Spock. A planet that isn't safe for Vulcans to be on-."

"What else?"

"They're also alarmed at the number of casualties we reported," Uhura said gravely and looked from him to Spock.

Jim forced himself not to look at his first officer. Instead he nodded and took the PADD off Uhura. He made his excuses and continued on his way to Engineering, not looking back at them.

He finally arrived there and looked around until he found Scotty.

"Most of the repairs are complete. But Lieutenant Sulu's been complaining to me that the geological scans aren't being done fast enough. But we're still only operating at a third of our sensor capacity—and we don't want to hang around here longer than necessary," Scotty said. His voice was tight.

"So our timing hinges on some repairs?" Jim said raising his eyebrows in surprise. "Do you need a hand, Mr Scott? I can give you more men."

"Follow me," Scotty said and took him aside.

Jim went with him, although he wasn't sure where Scotty was taking him. A few corridors later, deep in the heart of ship's bowls they reached a section that was cordoned off.

"This is where we're having the biggest problems," Scotty said. "It's tricky work, repairing data substations. Most weren't too badly damaged, some though … I've got many mechanics who are good enough at repairing substations, but we have to build some of them from scratch and that's a whole different kettle of fish—especially when ye're lacking the correct spare parts. Ye really have to know yer non-linear optics, especially four wave mixing. I've worked on them myself to get six of them repaired, but we still have to build another nine."

"I know data substations like the back of my hand," Jim said. "The Farraguthad the most unreliable ones in the galaxy, constantly exploding at the slightest overload of the systems. Go too near a solar flare-boom!"

"Well, if ye want to lend a hand, it might be quicker that way," Scotty replied and walked under the cordon to grab a tool box.

He opened his communicator. "Hey, Lindsey, McKinnon, get yer arses down here and help me and the Captain."

The substations they both ended up working on were relatively close to one another. This was probably deliberate, so that Scotty could keep checking up on him-just to make sure he hadn't been bullshitting. The engineer did suggest a few changes to what Jim was doing, but in general he let him work.

"Nice work, Captain, credit where it's due," he said the next time he came over. "Ye really are a dab hand at re-building an obliterated substation. Sure ye don't want to join my engineering crew down here? The Enterpriseshould be just fine in Commander Spock's hands. Could do with someone with some brains down here, though. Yeah I'm talking to ye, pretty boy," Scotty said, pretending to hit McKinnon over the head with a PADD. "Watch and learn, don't just stand there like an orangutan."

Scotty seemed to enjoy tormenting the guy, but McKinnon seemed to be decent enough. There was someone who was really getting on Jim's nerves though—Lieutenant Reid. Jim knew he was the engineer responsible for the section they were working in, the one who put together the duty roster for Scotty. And yes, of course he had to do his job by checking up on everyone, but, gods, he was prick, a complete prick! If only he would stand around doing nothing, it would be an improvement.

For the fifth time since he'd started working on the sub-station the low hum of the Enterprisewas interrupted by Reid's loud chatting, all while Jim was trying to concentrate on a particularly difficult alignment problem. And he felt annoyed, because the guy was not only putting him off, but also Lindsey, who was making some parts for Jim.

"If you can connect the wire, there, I think that should do it," Jim told her. Lindsey did as instructed and then when she'd finished, she placed the component down on one of the toolboxes.

Reid walked past and knocked it onto the ground.

Jim jumped up. "Are you a real engineer?"

"Yes, I am."

Jim looked at the broken piece on the floor.

"I want you off the fucking engineering deck!"

"Sorry," Reid stammered.

"No, don't just be sorry-think for one fucking second!"

Reid tried to say something, but Jim cut him off. "No, don't shut me up. What the hell is it with you? What were you doing?"

"I was-."

"Fuck man-you're an amateur," Jim said. "Mr Scott, do you have something to say to this prick?"

"Sorry, I wasn't watching-," Scotty said, panting. He'd dashed over as soon as the argument had started.

"Well someone should be! This is the sixth time that he doesn't give a fuck about what's going on down here. What's he doing here? That's what's going through my mind." He turned back to Reid. "Stay out of this fucking section and let's not have you breaking parts. You are unfucking believable man-you are strolling around, making a fuck-ton of noise!"

Jim pushed his way past Reid who was stuttering incoherently.

"You don't fucking understand what it's like working with mechanics," Jim said. "No, I'm not asking you, I'm telling you."

He'd brought his index finger up and was pointing it at Reid's chest.

"Unfucking believable," he muttered as he stormed out of Engineering.