Title: Home (Multichapter fic with 35 parts)

Beta: un-beta'd D: D: D:

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 24 of 35 –

Jim ran faster. Fuelled by the love for his friend, he dodged pedestrians, skidded around corners, and shouted for Howard to go faster, heedless of what any of the pirates might think-screw them. Screw them all and this whole damned base! The worry was eating away at his insides like corrosive warp coil cleaning fluid. His heart was beating in his chest far too fast; some of the drugs and their breakdown products still lingered in his system, he could feel it. Exercise and hangovers didn't mix.

Howard stopped. Jim and Chekov came to a halt next to him, both gasping for air. Howard bent over double, rested his elbows on his knees, and threw up.

"Is this the place?" Jim asked between breaths.

Howard nodded. His dark skin had taken on an ashen tinge. Jim looked around: they were in a wide, high ceilinged corridor, which resembled an alleyway. On either side, all the way up, ladders, ramps, and walkways clung to the corridor walls. Doors lining the walkways were set into the windowless façade; each entrance looked individual, shaped by years of either self-improvement or neglect.

He turned to Howard. "Where now?"

"Got the information from there," the ensign said, and weakly waved in the direction of a door.

Jim banged against it. It was opened by an old man—one of the locals. He had the palest of green skin, white hair, pointy ears and blue lips.

"What you want? Bit early, isn't it?"

"A … Romulan. Slim, pale skin, dark hair." He pointed at Howard. "He asked about him-you said you knew where he was. Take us there. Now!"

"Alright, alright, we don't want any trouble here, none of us do, see? So please, no weapons, no firing-don't want anyone hurt."

"I won't give up my weapon, but I won't carry it in my hand. Unless you refuse to help me."

The old man hesitated. Jim made sure his expression didn't leave it to the imagination what he'd do if he didn't receive the response he was after. The man stepped out of his apartment and slammed the door shut behind him.

"This way," he said.

He led them up one of the rickety metal ladders to a walkway that swayed; it was only attached to the wall with a few brackets, half of which were missing screws. The drop down to 'street level' was a few floors.

The man pointed at a door, gave Jim a card to swipe over the entrance pad and hurried back the way they'd come. Jim took out his plasma weapon-promises to that old man be damned. He swiped open the door and rushed inside, weapon aimed and ready to fire.

The room was a mess; it was also stuffy, warm, and moist. In the middle of the floor was a large mattress, or maybe it was simply a pile of blankets, he couldn't tell. Spock was lying on it, his back to him. At the intrusion Spock's arm shot up over his head to a ledge from which he grabbed his own weapon. He spun around to face Jim. The minute recognition hit, Spock relaxed and dropped his weapon.

Jim was too stunned to move. Next to Spock, more like below, if he thought about it, which he didn't want to, was a woman. Another pale Vulcanoid; black hair with sheens of blue, and lips the color of the void. She looked tiny next to Spock. At the sight of the weapon she scrabbled away from him and dived through a curtained doorway into an adjoining room. She wasn't wearing a thing, Jim noted.

He could see Spock was absolutely livid—his eyes were fixed on Jim's Adam's apple. Instinctively Jim raised his gun higher to protect himself from that rage, though his hand was shaking as he did so.

He was breathing heavily and the hold he had on the plasma gun was so tight his knuckles had turned white. He inched his way towards Spock until he was standing above him. Slowly he lowered the weapon.

"Get up," he spat. "Now!"

Spock did, clutching a blanket around his waist, eyes flicking to the door where Jim knew Chekov and Howard stood.

"Of all the things-," Jim said.

"Please, if we could discuss this in private-."

"Shut up! I don't want to hear you interrupting me."

At that moment the woman reappeared, dressed this time, although her clothing barely even covered her chest. She grabbed a bag off the floor and ran out through the main door. Jim didn't stop her.

Good, now she was gone he could talk frankly without fear of someone listening in. He returned his eyes to Spock's face.

"No, we will not discuss this in private, but right here, right now. This is completely unacceptable."

Spock stood to attention, but he had a murderous glint in his eyes when he once more looked over towards the two ensigns. Then the rage in his stare dissipated, leaving behind a steely calmness that had more in common with the edges of sharp knives than with tranquil lakes. He focused on a spot on the wall somewhere behind Jim's left shoulder and, despite his state of undress, managed to look like the perfect soldier.

His voice was professional. It was emotionless. "I will not deny what I did. My conduct was unbefitting of a Starfleet officer and I accept any note you wish to place on my permanent record, Captain."

Jim was speechless. He'd just been calming himself down-maybe there'd been some misunderstanding, after all Spock had drunk a fair amount, but the way Spock was talking about this made his blood boil.

"When you left last night, I really needed you Spock. I was so drugged up I couldn't even tell my ass from my face. We all needed you. You should have stayed, but I presumed you were worried you might give us all away—even though the ale was making you more Romulan and you weren't anywhere near as far gone as I was. But that's not why you left, was it? Answer me!"

"No."

"Care to tell me why?"

Silence. It seemed Spock was contemplating his words, probably looking for some way to evade giving an answer without directly disobeying him, as that sneaky Vulcan tended to do.

Then Jim got his answer.

"No."

"Fuck you Spock. Fuck you!"

Jim tried to get his breathing under control; he knew his face was probably bright red. He didn't need to deal with this-he could just walk away now. While Reid might not have deserved quite the talking too he'd gotten, Spock had earned every word. But the man didn't care, did he? He just stood there like a fucking statue.

Jim strode past Chekov, whose face had gone pale. Both ensigns followed him out onto the walkway. Chekov lingered outside the entrance, though, clearly wanting to wait for Spock to dress and join them.

"We're going back to Quol's ship," Jim said. "I want to get out of here now. We aren't going to wait for him. He can run to catch up with us. When we get to the ship, I want to do a cold start. No warming up of the engines, no systems' check. We won't give them any warning-we'll tailgate out on thrusters when the next pirate raider leaves the base," he paused to take a breath, "and then we'll start injection on the warp-core, get it up and running and jump straight to maximum warp."

Jim took long strides, and bumped into people on purpose. No one started a fight with him though. On the main deck, exiting a shop, was the woman, that whore, as he called her in the privacy of his mind, who Spock had been with. She was laden down with bags filled to the brim with satin garments in blue and pink and was wearing far too much chunky jewelry. Damn, how much of Quol's latinum had he paid her for just one night? Surely not all of it? Spock had had enough latinum with him to buy a small spaceship.

People were scrambling to get out of their way faster now; it seemed Spock had caught up with them. Jim kept looking straight ahead. He couldn't wait to finally be back aboard the Enterprise.

"Ve are being followed," Chekov said and pointed at a red dot on one of the ship's monitors.

There'd be more to come, Jim knew. The ship they'd tailgated out of the base had jumped to warp immediately, but their own warp core was still off-line. Spock and Howard were doing the best they could down in the engine room, but soon ships would be swarming around them, like bees from a disturbed hive. Kroth had his men well organized when they weren't drugged up to their eyeballs.

"Warp core status?" he asked.

"Still off-line, sir," Chekov replied. "And there are now two sheeps following us."

"Shields up."

He'd been prepared for a fight, because although Andorian engines were powerful, once shut down, it could take a long time to restart them, because unless the core was active the anti-matter was stored separately in rods for safety reasons. These rods had to be reinserted with care to avoid blowing up the ship.

"How much time do we have until they catch us?" he asked.

"1 minute, 5 seconds."

A light on the control panel flashed. Jim recognized its significance—
they had an incoming call.

"Put it on-screen."

Chekov complied immediately. It was Kroth. Jim had been disappointed not to meet him in person, but he hadn't really expected it, the man was too important to have time to greet new recruits and Jim hadn't felt like hanging about that place even a minute longer.

"So, Jim. When can I expect Starfleet to be knocking on my doors? Assuming you make it back to Federation space alive."

"You don't still believe, Quol, do you?"

"So what is this? You're going for a morning stroll? Do not take me for an idiot. You're Starfleet."

"My friends and I simply decided we'd rather chance it on our own," Jim replied and cut the connection.

"41 seconds. If ve go to warp, they vill still be able to track us. Ve cannot take a direct route back."

"We've got all Quol's navigational charts. I think we'll be able to lose them quickly. Plot a course to these co-ordinates, which should take us into an asteroid belt-assuming we can fight them off long enough to get to warp."

Jim watched the ships close on their position.

"On my command fire on the closest ship."

Chekov stared at the controls in front of him and grinned. "Sir! The engines are on-line!"

"Then get us the hell out of here."

"Yes sir," Chekov replied, beaming from ear to ear.

Not a moment too soon, Jim thought, as they went to warp.

"Spock, the skin is falling off both your hands! You have to let me help you bandage them."

Jim hadn't been able to find any first aid supplies on Quol's ship, so he'd torn up some strips of cloth, boiled them in water and irradiated them under UV light. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best he could do for now. The strips of cloth were in a large blow between himself and Spock, who was sitting on his sleeping pallet.

Jim dropped his voice to a whisper, although neither Howard nor Chekov were in the room. "I know how sensitive your hands are. I promise I'll be as careful as I possibly can."

It hurt him physically just to look at the damaged skin, knowing how much pain Spock's injuries must be causing him—pain that was no more visible on the pale face than any other emotion, though. Spock was suppressing the agony he was in ruthlessly. 'Pain is only in the mind, it can be controlled,' he'd said. But he was clearly not willing to test his limits on how much he could keep bottled up, as he was reticent to let Jim treat his wounds.

Jim took some of the bandages and rolled them up into a ball. "See here. You can bite down on this. If the pain gets too much, just let it out and scream. This will muffle the noise. It'll be days before we get back to the ship, 'cause we've got to make sure we shake those pirates off our trail first."

The Vulcan held out his raw hands, palms up-turned—they were dark green. Jim felt is heart squeeze in sympathy.

"Alright," Spock said and opened his mouth just wide enough for Jim to place the bandages inside.

He was as careful as he could be, but Spock's mask was starting to slip more with each added inch of cloth Jim wrapped around the bloodstained hands.

"I don't think you know this yet, but we really were only seconds away from being caught by our pursuers. Your decision—it might well have saved our lives."

The decision he'd made had been to abort the slow, automated procedure and literally take the injection of the anti-matter rods into his own hands, not even wasting time to look for any safety gloves.

Spock's hands were starting to shake.

"Nearly over."

"Nnngh."

Spock's grunt was muffled through the gag. His eyes were closed in concentration-then another pained grunt.

"There all finished," Jim said.

Spock spat out the bandages.

"Thank you, Jim," he panted.

He lay down on his back, his arms stretched out to his sides, so his palms wouldn't come into contact with anything.

Lying down on his own sleeping pallet Jim curled up with a blanket and watched the rise and fall of his friend's chest.

"I'll be right here if you need anything," he said.

They'd got the last of the pirate ships off their trail. Now they were heading towards Luria II, where hopefully the Enterprisewould still be docked. It had been eight days now since he'd left his ship behind at the starbase; Scotty was a patient man, but they were about to find out just how patient. They'd arrive at Luria II in 22 hours. In his mind the long, boring hours stretched out ahead of him like the minutes did during an Academy lecture on Interspecies Ethics. With them at warp, no Quol to guard, and no pirates on their heels, there was only need for one of them to be on duty at a time. He'd just been relieved by Howard, who'd be relieved by Chekov in 10 hours, and then they'd basically be home. He had nothing to do until then. The ceiling in the living quarters above his bed looked just as unappealing as it had the time he'd stared up at it with the world's worst hangover.

"Hey, Spock," he whispered, not wanting to wake Chekov up.

"Yes, Captain?"

Jim took a deep breath. He'd had a lot of time to think about this.

"I'm sorry. About how I reacted when I saw you with that women. I should have allowed you to explain in private, you deserved that much, but I had a go at you in front of the others instead."

Spock didn't reply.

"Again, I'm sorry. I really am. Will you tell me what happened? We can go down to the engine room to be alone."

"I accept your apology. But it was a moment of weakness that made me want to explain myself to you, Captain. That has passed and I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions."

"What do you mean? Spock, talk to me."

"An official reprimand and a note on my record are both things I would prefer over having to give you details over what transpired. Please to do not ask me to explain."

The meaning of Spock's words was clear to him. His first officer would not disobey him if he made it a direct order, but even if he did it would still be like pulling teeth. And although the Vulcan would never admit to such emotionalism, he'd probably hate Jim forever for it.

Jim rolled over in bed so he was no longer facing Spock's direction.

"You're a stubborn bastard, you really are," he muttered.

Spock was only hurting himself by staying silent, but he couldn't bring himself to betray his friend by taking the decision away from him. He trusted that Spock wasn't withholding any information vital to their mission, if he'd had even the slightest of doubts about that he would order him to talk.

Now what, though? He couldn't sleep. Apart from the time he'd fallen unconscious after all the drugs and alcohol, he'd not had much rest and without the help of Bones' sleeping pills he didn't think it was likely he was going to be getting any in the next 22 hours either. Especially not having to sleep this close to Spock—Jim didn't relish the thought of being left to guess at what exactly had happened once he'd left their table, and more importantly, why it had happened. Had sex with him meant as little to Spock as it had with that woman?

He turned around again; it was getting to the point where he was so tired he simply felt nauseous. In an emergency he'd be no use at all, with the reaction times of a snail.

He shouldn't be thinking of that box of Meekon he'd discovered in one of his jacket pockets ... and yet he was. Why hadn't he thrown it out of the airlock yet? He got up and retrieved the offending box. He'd get rid of it now.

But when he got to the airlock he didn't place the box in it. The skin all over his body broke out into goosebumps. The only difference between some drugs acting as medicine or as poison was the dosage, right? His throat was dry and his brow was damp with perspiration. This substance would get him to sleep, but more than that, if it put him in the same state of mind it had last time, he might even be able to deal with the root of his problems. Maybe Spock had been right and meditation did hold the key to his peace of mind. He made a decision.

With shaking hands he opened the box. He placed it into the airlock. He took a pinch of each powder, slammed the lid on the box, closed the hatch and pressed 'open'. It was ejected out into space-gone. He breathed a sigh of relief and felt his muscles relax.

It was only a small amount of the drug that he'd kept back and which still rested on his hand. He took the powder before he could change his mind. He sat down on the floor, leaned back against a bulkhead and pulled his knees up to his chest. His hand reached up to the back of his neck instinctively.

Pike would never have pushed for him to get the Enterpriseif he'd known this was what he'd be doing; disregarding all protocol because he had personal issues he didn't know how else to deal with. And Chekov and Howard—if they told everyone about this mission, then he deserved that really, didn't he. The mirco-chipped captain who knows his illegal drugs. Great. Fucking fantastic.

He shook head and stumbled back to his sleeping pallet. This whole thing had a point after all, to help him sleep and, although he didn't want to get his hopes up, to help him meditate; he could regret it later, but now he had to focus on the problems he wanted his unconscious mind to reflect on. When he lay back and looked up at the ceiling, it started to spin: slowly at first, then ever faster. He closed his eyes, but that just made it worse—rather than the ceiling turning, it felt as if he was the one moving.

The flat plain of his consciousness was empty, it was desolate.

He thought the words 'cold' and 'lonely', and his mind moved quickly to supply him with a memory to match.

He was wet, freezing cold, battered and alone. The only person who'd 'got him', who in time might have come to understand him fully, who he wasn't afraid to allow close, was probably dead.

"Spock!" he cried out.

When he couldn't pull himself up out of the water, his body too heavy, he felt his spark to live flicker.

The memory was cold and lonely. It had matched his thoughts-that's why his subconscious had taken him there! But he could control this, he could get away from the despair and he could get the information he wanted! He could do this! Love you Spock, he thought and the words propelled him into another memory.

He was sitting at his desk in his quarters and Spock standing a few feet away.

Jim took a deep breath. "I don't like how pleading my voice sounds right now. I don't like the way I'm feeling, don't like this place, it's far from an ideal situation. Either we take the next step in this relationship or, … ."

He sighed and buried his head in his hands. "I can't take this anymore. Either a proper, normal relationship or nothing!"

"I must think," Spock said. "If you would excuse me."

The doors swished open.

"Wait, Spock. Don't go. I know you're going to break up with me. Just tell me why? What did I do wrong?"

The Vulcan stopped in the doorway, but didn't turn around. "You wanted more from me than I could give."

"Why won't you give me your heart?" Jim got up, but didn't dare close the gap between them.

"I do not want to give it to you."

"Why not?"

"I do not know you."

Jim threw his hands up into the air. "Yes you do! You're the only who knows me."

Still, Spock didn't move. "I do not know you."

"Okay, I know we haven't known each other that long really, but I'll share more of myself with you, I'll be more open, we'll talk. We can take this slow."

"But you are not willing to take it slow—or not able to. You did not like being with me."

"I never said that!"

"You said you didn't like the way you were feeling, the place you inhabited mentally—that what we shared was far from ideal."

Jim walked up to Spock. "Okay, that's true and I did mean that … but I didn't want you to leave me!"

"You desired either all or nothing. And I made my choice. Goodbye, Jim."

The doors hissed shut behind him. The room darkened and Jim's breath hung in the air, while ice crystals grew on his desk and frosted up the picture frame on his shelf. The light was so low he could only just make out the bulkheads, and then the room was in complete darkness-he was all alone in void.