Starship On the Edge of Forever

by Trench Kamen

"If I had it to do over…" It is not a productive thought, beyond its ability to make one learn from one's mistakes and so apply those lessons forward, but Spock spent most of his later life pondering this. There was all the time in the world and there wasn't time, wasn't time, it was never the right time. And then he was gone. And then Spock got to do it over. (Kirk/Spock)

4. All this and heaven, too

"Captain? May I enter?"

There was a pause, and the intercom crackled on. "Yeah."

The door unlocked. Data stepped closer and it opened, and he stepped inside the captain's quarters, folding his hands behind his back. The captain was hunched down in the couch and stretched out across the ottoman, holding an archaic game controller and—Data froze—Q was sitting on the back of the couch staring intently at the screen, fingers folded under his chin, elbows on his legs. Q finally looked at him, and they stared at each other.

"Yes, Data?" said the captain.

"…Captain." Data did not take his eyes off Q, who also kept staring. He was wearing civilian clothes. "I have finished what I can do to get the ship in good repair, but I was unable to modify the heater in Commander Spock's quarters to reach Vulcan levels of comfort."

"Was it a mechanical issue?"

"No, sir. Commander Spock had the privacy locks activated and I did not think a repair reached the level of emergency that would make an override appropriate."

Q and the captain exchanged a look, then looked back at Data. "Uh-huh," said the captain.

Data narrowed his eyes slightly at Q. Q narrowed his eyes back.

"Captain, might I ask what this Q is doing on the ship?"

"Could I make him leave if I wanted to?"

Data thought about it for a moment and arched his eyebrows in acquiescence. "I suppose not."

"I'm affronted." Q drew back from her in mock hurt. "I thought we were having a great time."

"We are, until you get bored, I assume." Q thought about that for a moment and shrugged. "Data, at ease. You're off duty. Sit down."

Data sat gingerly on the edge of the couch, as far away from Q as possible, and folded his hands in his lap.

"It is rude to sit with your shoes on the furniture," he finally said to Q.

"You're rude."

Data blinked several times and looked forward, wondering what he had done that was rude. The ghost of his emotion chip, somewhere overlaid in his circuits, told him this was a sort-of jest of a comeback, but ultimately it was just a ghost, and Data wanted to err on the side of politeness.

He had felt very unstable since he had come into this intersection of a universe. Physically, he lacked his emotion chip. However, unlike in the other, more linear world, he felt its ghost, a nudge toward the reactions he would feel were it still installed. And he had no control over it, this time. All those Datas—the pure android, the unstable and overly-emotive version with the emotion chip still raw, the one that had control over the chip, the one that had the chip taken away, and could still feel the raw edges of those circuits like a loose tooth in his psyche—felt superimposed. Would he be more emotive were it still physically in place? Was there a version of him out there that did have it in place, so he could ask?

He had not had it in place and had made the ultimate sacrifice, at the end of his former life. It was the most rational and logical thing to do. Picard was more needed than he was. And yet, while the biocircuits whirred away as a calm hum as he made the decision, that ghost came up on him, and he felt fear, and something almost like sadness. He could not pretend it was merely an ethical sub-routine that led him to that decision. That would be intellectually dishonest, and, ultimately, that is unethical, and leads one no closer to the truth.

It was illogical and impossible. And yet, it was. There was a ghost in his machine brain and now that he was reincarnated he had time to think about it.

Desire to be human is an emotion, is it not?

"Is there nothing of Data in what I'm hearing?"

Data had not known how to respond to Picard, who had seemed confident. He hadn't felt, when he had played that symphony; there was no chip, no ghost, this was all before. He had merely made a creative choice in the violin styles he emulated and how he integrated him. They were calculated to be most pleasing to the human ear.

And, yet, it still was not that simple, was it?

He would very much like to talk with Picard about all of this. He had approached Spock, and while Spock had indulged him his own damaged mind was partially somewhere else, coping with the weight of a lifetime condensed into single clarity. Data hoped Kirk would put Spock's mind at ease, at least a little. But, even if it were that simple, until either Spock was well or Picard was found he would keep his apprehensions to himself.

"I, also," said Q—Data jumped a little—"would like to find Captain Picard."

"You are merely seeking out an amusement. I am seeing advice on an issue of considerable weight."

The captain looked at him sidelong, seemed like she was about to offer to speak with him, and thought better of it. Maybe. The implicit invitation was there but she was still a largely unknown quantity to Data—completely absent from Memory Alpha—and he would rather speak with somebody who knew him intimately, or at the very least understood a struggle with a partial humanity. Her unruffled and overly-analytical nature did not make her any less human, inside. How can a man who is warm understand a man who is freezing?

"And, yet, it is still not that simple, is it?" said Q. "Picard is fully human too and you seek out his advice."

"I do not appreciate you reading my thoughts without my permission. That, Mr. Q, is extremely rude."

Q sighed and rolled his eyes. They sat for a while in silence, except for the noises from the game. Q was getting bored. Data could sense it.

"When are you going to collect Captain Picard?" Q said abruptly.

The captain glanced at him. "You go get him, if you want him so badly."

Q huffed and leaned on his hand. "Now, that would be no fun!"

"Well, if you want a human to take care of your business, you are restricted to a human's limitations."

"A human's laziness, more like."

"He'll come through the portal when he does. I cannot make that happen any faster. Don't you know when that will happen, anyway?"

"I haven't thought about it. I don't want to ruin the surprise."

The captain thought about this for a moment, closed her eyes, rolled them, and shook her head slightly. "Then get off my ass. I can't do anything."

By this point Data had learned not to ask if something was a colloquialism if it clearly was—Q was physically twenty point two centimeters from the captain at their closest points, his toe to her knee, the way she was hunched back into the corner of the couch.

"I am going to return to the warp, Captain," said Data.

"But you just got here," said Q. "We're having such a lovely time. It would be rude to leave so soon after arriving."

Data hesitated and folded his hands in his lap. The captain sighed, paused the game, and set the controller on her leg.

"He's messing with you, Data. You may come and go as you please with no worry as to the propriety of your actions."

"Speak for yourself, Captain," said Q. "I for one would find it unspeakably rude."

"I am not concerned with your perceptions of rudeness," said Data.

The door intercom chirped. Q leaned toward Data as the captain answered.

"My, my, you're becoming a feisty android."

The door whooshed open, and Dr. McCoy stepped into the room. He tossed the captain a black rectangle which she caught and put in her pocket.

"I got your picture."

"Picture?" said Q. "Of what?"

"Excellent," said the captain, ignoring Q.

"Of what?"

"What are you going to do with it?" said McCoy.

"Of whaaaaat?"

"I haven't decided yet."

Q scowled, snapped his fingers, and the device appeared in his palm. The captain paused, almost said something, but didn't, and turned around.

"Q."

"Amazing." He turned the device around in his hands. Data leaned over to get a better look. "I haven't seen one of these since—well, since they were all the rage back in the early twenty-first century."

"It is what was commonly called a 'smart phone', the first true fusion of a communication device and a computer," said Data.

"And a camera." Q swiped at the screen and leaned back, grinning. "Well, well! Wait until Trelane sees this!"

Q snapped his fingers, and Trelane appeared behind the couch leaning over his shoulder. "Sees what, old man? Oh!" He straightened and clapped his hands, grinning. He seemed to be ignoring McCoy, whose eyes had widened at his appearance and who was backing toward the door. "I'll be damned! The Vulcan's blood is made of something other than ice water! Doctor." He was still staring at the phone. McCoy froze. "Don't go away yet, we've only just met again."

"I have no interest in talking with you, you monster."

"Wha?" Trelane drew back dramatically and clutched at his chest. "A monster! From whence spring your vile accusations, physician?"

"You know God damn well what you did to Jim and Spock."

"Ah, but!" Trelane held out his hands in supplication and tilted his head, smiling. "A necessary evil to bring together two souls in the greatest fullness of love."

"Was it really?" McCoy was hissing.

"It does make the whole thing rather sweeter, doesn't it?" said Q.

"Yes," said Trelane. "Adds a…" He twisted his hand around looking for a word.

"—urgency," said the captain.

"No, not quite the word. Close, though. For is not joy sweeter when contrasted with the deepest sorrow?"

"Spoken like a man who hasn't ever experienced real sorrow in his life," said McCoy.

"Oh, you." Trelane put his hands on his hips. "You know the Vulcan well, Doctor. Would he be as open with his feelings without that urgency?"

McCoy did not speak, took a deep breath.

"It was still a horrible thing to do," he finally said.

"I can't really deny that, but we do what we must, don't we?"

The captain's communicator chirped. She pulled it off her belt and flipped it open. "Yeah?"

"Captain?" It was Garak. "You might want to come up here and see this."

---

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

---

Spock had been meditating for quite some time. He had lain there, supine with his forefingers steepled over his mouth and his eyes closed, for almost an hour now. Kirk lay outside the sheets, still overheated, and watched.

Spock had not insisted on washing himself up but had gotten back under the blanket sweaty and disheveled and splattered with semen. He had only stared at the ceiling, breathing heavily, as Kirk brought back a damp towel and mopped them up. He fully expected Spock's catlike and fastidious need for cleanliness to have them in the sonic immediately, but when Kirk moved the towel away from his abdomen and hesitated, Spock did not make any movements. Kirk dropped the towel by the bed and sat next to him.

"Spock?"

Spock did not respond. His pupils were still blown, hair mussed, flushing pallid green along his cheeks. He had drawn the sheets around himself like a mummy. Kirk cupped his cheek and Spock closed his eyes, leaning into his palm. Spock's mind opened a little. Even though the light bond Kirk could feel that Spock's mind was overburdened.

"Spock?" Kirk kissed his cheekbones and leaned his forehead against Spock's. He ran his fingers through Spock's hair. "Spock? You're scaring me."

"I apologize for causing you undue concern." Spock took Kirk's hand and brought it back up to his cheek.

"No, no, don't apologize." Kirk leaned back so he could see Spock's face. "I'm just worried about you. Are you all right?"

"I need some time for meditation."

"Oh." Kirk gestured toward the door. "Should I… should I leave or…?"

"No." Spock interlaced his fingers with Kirk's, gripped tightly. Now his eyes were focused, a direct stare. This simple feeling, an echo from another time. The expression was the same, on a younger face, a lifetime older. "Stay with me. I merely need time for contemplation."

"It's a bit beyond your comprehension, is it?"

Spock smiled, and Kirk's stomach melted, again. "I admit to being overwhelmed."

Spock loosened his fingers, and Kirk withdrew his own. The sides of their fingers slid together, and Kirk ran the tips of his fingers over the back of Spock's hand as he moved it away. Spock closed his eyes and dropped into his trance.

Well, that was an hour ago, anyway. In trance Spock's breathing was so light that he barely moved, and Kirk kept checking for signs of movement, although he knew fully well by now that this was the norm. He breathed through pale, parted lips, that just an hour ago—

Kirk smiled and rolled onto his back, folding his arms behind his head. He had fantasized about sex with his first officer an inordinate number of times, in an inordinate number of ways and scenarios, but the reality is always different. His fantasies with anybody were split-perspective and constantly shifting, part in oneself, in first person, part seeing from outside, part shifting into the other person's mind. The reality was restricted to one viewpoint. Well, with most people. Through meld he had also seen and felt things as Spock, and he was still having a difficult time synthesizing that. At the time, in the meld, it felt perfectly natural, and he had no problem splitting a consciousness. Now he was trying to piece it all together, and make some rudimentary divide, the himself and not-himself, the emergent things they only felt as one, the chains of reaction and awareness.

Maybe Spock's idea of taking time to file all of this to memory was a good idea.

---

Spock's lips had barely brushed his when the sympathetic fear that had frozen Kirk lifted, and he had seized Spock's head with both hands and crushed their lips together. Spock was taken off guard and he had bruised their lips against teeth. But he adjusted, quickly, opening his mouth more and relaxing as Kirk ran his fingers up the back of his head and gripped his hair. Kirk pushed up onto his knee and straddled Spock on the bed—sparks of surprise through the tongue and lips—and pushed Spock flat onto his back. He sat back, still straddling Spock's waist. Spock's chest was heaving, and his black shirt had rucked up enough to show his flat stomach, the trail of black hair going straight down into his trousers. Kirk licked his lips and pushed his hands up under Spock's shirt, through wiry hair and over lean muscle, and ran his palms around up Spock's back. Spock shuddered and lifted himself a little and Kirk grabbed the hem of his shirt and started to tug it up.

The shirt came over Spock's head, and Kirk threw it aside. He paused, already reaching behind his neck to pull off his own shirt. He had seen Spock shirtless countless times. He had never seen Spock looking up at him, pinned under his legs, resting on his forearms and trying to catch his breath, with his hair rucked up from under and looking completely undone. He looked completely broken open, cheeks and neck and collar green, lips flushed bright. Vulnerable—that was it. Spock's defenses had been stripped away like sheath over wire. It was like that smile after the kal-if-fee, and that smile in sickbay. Kirk finished pulling his own shirt over his head and threw it aside.

He truly was intending to take it slow. He was about to kiss Spock again and toy with him a while, give him time to get comfortable with each stage of undress, when Spock started fumbling with Kirk's trousers. Kirk breathed deeply as Spock held himself up with his abdominal muscles, both hands shaking and trying to undo his fly. He placed his hands over Spock's.

"Spock. Hey." Spock stopped, still staring at his fly, and Kirk cupped his cheek to make him look up. "You're shaking. We can go slow. It's all right."

Spock caught his breath and licked his lips. "Do you suggest this because you yourself are uncomfortable with the pace at which I am proceeding?" His voice was shockingly level and low. Kirk almost snorted and kissed him again softly.

"I am not, I can assure you." He breathed heavily over the tip of Spock's ear and Spock shuddered. He licked up the inner ridge, up to the tip, and nipped, and he finally heard that Spock was groaning. That was the rumbling in his chest, coming up quietly. Kirk's abdomen clenched low and hard and he nipped at the earlobe, ran his fingertips up behind the shell along the skull.

"Sensitive ears?" He moved his lips down to his neck. "I fully intend to find every one of your most sensitive areas, Mr. Spock—"

Then Kirk was on his back, and before the sudden drop in blood pressure could equalize and his vision could come back, Spock was straddling him, sitting back on his heels and taking the weight off Kirk's hips so he could access Kirk's fly, again. Kirk gasped and gripped Spock's knees.

"Oh my god, Spock."

"I have waited for this for a lifetime." That low voice again, utterly at odds with his hands shaking and fumbling so badly. He was staring into Kirk's eyes. "I have thought through every possible manner in which I can make love to you." Kirk swallowed. Spock did not break eye contact, and after he finally had Kirk's fly open—a relief of pressure—he left it, and moved back up over Kirk's chest, leaning over him face-to-face. Spock ran his fingers up the back of his head, through his hair, and leaned into his ear, scraping his teeth along the ridge. "On every planet we ever visited together. Under every sky. In every ship."

Kirk groaned; liquid metal was running down the nerves from his ear, pooling in his groin, clenching at those muscles. He pushed Spock back enough to get at his fly and undid it with one hand while he drew Spock's head in for another kiss with the other.

"Keep talking." Kirk spoke against Spock's mouth between kisses. Spock's fly came undone, and Kirk pressed his palm into his erection through his shorts. Spock groaned into his mouth. "Do you know how many times I fantasized about bending you over your console and fucking you blind?" He bit Spock's lower lip. Spock was seeping through his underwear under Kirk's palm. He felt the edges of the protective lips, secreting mucous all up and down the length of the shaft. "About sweeping away the chess board and slamming you into the table? I have decades of frustration to work out on you."

Spock hesitated. Kirk pulled back to look at him. Oh God. What did I say? What did I do? Did I break some Vulcan taboo?

"What's wrong?"

"…I am not…" Spock chewed on his bottom lip and avoided eye contact. He was flushing the greenest Kirk had ever seen him. "…there are certain sexual practices with which I am not comfortable. You seem to be implying them."

"Oh! Yes, of course. I should have figured Vulcans wouldn't like anal."

No, that was it. That was the greenest Kirk had ever seen him.

"Must you be so vulgar?"

"We're—" Kirk gestured up and down their bodies, at their opened trousers. "Since when do you not want to be direct? You're usually the blunt one."

"Of course. I am sorry."

"Look, we never have to do anything you don't want to do. Ever. And you never owe me an explanation other than that you do not want to."

"I am aware." Spock thought for a moment. "I admit the idea of penetrating you, of being inside you, or having you inside me, has appealed to me on an abstract level. The reality and the details give me pause."

"Totally understandable." Kirk held up his hands in surrender. "Nothing set in stone today." He lowered his hands and grabbed Spock's wrists, smiled coyly. "Let's just enjoy ourselves now."

Spock's fingertips played on the insides of his palms. That flat look again. "You are disappointed."

"Hardly. I'd say on balance I'm very much not disappointed with the way things are going."

Spock thought for a moment. Through his fingertips Kirk could feel traces of Spock's thoughts—a current of curiosity and intrigue. Conflict. Repelled. Curious. Kirk pulled him back in for a kiss.

"Come on." Kirk lay back and stretched out like a cat, not-so-subtly showing himself off and flexing. His underwear pulled down to reveal the tip of his cock. "I believe you said you had an exhaustive mental list of things you had imagined doing to me? Care to continue that line of thought?"

Spock crawled back up between Kirk's legs and lay himself flat against Kirk's chest, skin-to-skin, hair ghosting over Kirk's chest, and they started to kiss again. Spock brushed his fingertips over the heel of Kirk's still-outstretched hand, over his head, and ran his fingertips up the insides of Kirk's fingers before reaching the end of the palm and interlacing their fingers. He supported his weight on his free arm, slipping that hand under Kirk's back and holding him. Kirk ran his free hand up Spock's bicep, down over his flanks and his ribs. When his hand reached Spock's waist he ran his fingers up Spock's spine, back down, and pushed on the small of his back while he ground up. Spock sucked in breath, at that, over Kirk's mouth, and Kirk chuckled and ground up again, this time really digging his hips in and pressing harder with his hand. He bit back a groan. He wanted to hear Spock's response and he was sure Spock would try to be quiet. Spock took in breath sharply again and untangled his fingers from Kirk's, brought that hand down to Kirk's crotch, dragging his fingers down Kirk's abdomen. Kirk growled softly and arced up into the touch. Spock slipped his fingers under the hem of Kirk's underwear and barely brushed his cock with his curled fingertips, almost a whisper, and Kirk ground up again. Spock was moving his own hips, surging up and down with Kirk even though their groins barely touched, to make room for his hand. He brushed Kirk's cock again, this time running his fingers almost down behind his balls, and Kirk let out a sharp breath and nudged Spock's hand with the side of his leg.

"It's not going to bite you. You can grab it." Spock gave him a look. "Please grab it."

"Impatience ruins artistry," said Spock. Kirk gave him a flat look and started to sit up, reaching for Spock's pants.

"I have been patient for years—"

Spock moved just out of reach. Kirk was about to say "Hey!" when he realized Spock was dragging Kirk's underwear and trousers down with him, slowly, his fingertips curled into the hem scraping down his stomach. The slightly-glued-flat stitching on the inside hem of his underwear dragged along the underside of his cock. Kirk realized he was holding his breath, some seconds later, and released it with a groan as the hem cleared his balls with a slight spring and Spock paused, cocking his head slightly. There, the detached scientist look was coming back, a little, on a flushed face, framed by mussed hair, but this time his pupils were blown open with desire as well. Kirk blinked.

Great, my dick is about to be analyzed by a Vulcan.

"Fascinating."

Spock leaned down a little to look from the side. Kirk pressed his lips together and sat up a bit to push his pants down to the point he could toe them off. Spock moved out of the way without breaking his stare.

"It is a poor evolutionary adaptation to have one's gonads on the outside of one's body." Spock looked up at him as he finished kicking his trousers to the floor. "How have human males managed to protect their fertility?"

"We get by."

Spock nodded sagely. "There are theories as to the fitness exchange that comes of having reproductive cells that thrive at a temperature lower than the core body, but I myself find them to be a reach. I have yet to hear an explanation that satisfies me logically. I would accept more readily the happenstance argument but in youth they are still in the abdominal cavity, as they so remain into adulthood in many humanoids, so, conceivably, there was at some point at which a mechanism for moving them was established."

Spock looked up at Kirk. Kirk had started a little chagrinned at the sudden halt in momentum, pressing his lips together and looking unimpressed, but this was so very Spock. By the time Spock had realized he was going on and looked up to see Kirk's reaction, Kirk was smiling, eyes heavy-lidded. He made a come-here motion with his hand.

"Come on, then, my dear Vulcan scientist. Let's have a look at your 'gonads'."

Spock shook his head slightly. "I am not finished."

Kirk really did not know what to say to that. He made a hollow protest noise in the back of his throat and was getting words together to tell Spock off and tell him he could examine him later when he realized that Spock was lowering his face to his cock. That hollow noise died. Spock kept eye contact with him and moved so he was more comfortably rested on the bed, holding himself up with his arms, and licked the tip. Kirk grabbed Spock's upper arm.

"Oh my god."

Spock paused, hovering, his lips inches from his cock, and then sat back. "You do not want this."

"Are—you—" Kirk sputtered and grabbed Spock by the short hairs on the back of his head and pulled him back down. "Yes I want this—I am not a schoolboy, Spock. You are not going to do anything that will make me uncomfortable. I was just shocked. In a good way."

Spock paused at that, looked up. Kirk closed his eyes and counted, took a deep breath. He shook with the effort of not thrusting up in Spock's face. His stomach muscles felt flat, stretched, close to his spine.

"I am sorry. I am—very worked up right now. And very happy. But this isn't exactly my first time. You do not need to treat me like glass."

He realized that was the wrong thing to say a second before something flickered behind Spock's eyes. Kirk would have missed it if he was not staring into them, and if he did not have decades of experience in Reading Spock.

"…it is intimidating, to realize that I have being compared against me such a background."

Kirk pressed his lips together and rubbed between his eyes. "Emotionally, in terms of that bond—no. There is no compare. You only come out ahead. And that means a hell of a lot when it comes to how satisfying sex is. This is coming from a very experienced—" He wanted to say 'playboy' but that was not the word to use now. "—perspective." He lowered his hand from his brow and looked up. "I mean that, Spock."

"Physically, however…"

Kirk sighed and ran his hand down Spock's face. "It is a learned skill, like anything else. Stop. Fretting."

He realized his fingertips were still against Spock's skin when he thought that the constant hard stops in momentum, that jerking feeling rather like being in that old car on Sigma Iota II, were giving him whiplash. He jerked his hand away as that same insecurity flickered in Spock's eyes, and he felt Spock pull away, mentally. Kirk sat up and grabbed both of Spock's wrists.

"Stop. You are overthinking everything, as usual. You need to relax." He smiled and rested his forehead against Spock's. "Your body knows the rhythm. You keep stopping it with your brain. How do you turn your head off when you need to meditate?"

Spock thought for a moment. "…it is the opposite, but in the sense that it is the shadow of the concept, not something unrelated. I must become immersed in the concrete present for this."

"Great." Kirk patted Spock's shoulder. "That sounds great. Let's try doing that." He lay back and stretched out, again, raising his hips slightly. He brushed against Spock's still-clothed groin and Spock took in a quiet, deep breath. "Perhaps we should continue where we left off."

Spock nodded and settled his chest on Kirk's thighs, then leaned back up enough to hover over his cock. His breath was hot. Kirk closed his eyes and dropped his head back, taking in a deep breath. There was an agonizingly long moment—Kirk almost looked back up, beginning to wonder if he was being inspected again—but a rough, hot tongue raked up the underside of the shaft, and he gasped, dropping his head back again. Spock dragged his tongue up slowly, slowly, almost abrasive against the foreskin, over the ridge, over the top of the glans, and Kirk shuddered and groaned. The felid ancestry, right. A tongue not nearly as rough as a cat's, but certainly rougher than a human's. And his mouth was dry.

Do I say something and break his momentum again? His confidence is on a razor's edge.

Thankfully Spock paused, and Kirk heard swallowing, and this time, when the tip of the tongue played under the foreskin experimentally, there was more saliva. He sighed deeply in relief. Spock paused, taking in the new data, and continued to do that cautious tip probing. Kirk tried to focus exclusively on the idea that Spock was sucking his dick, right now, this is real, this is happening, and to dredge that excitement in the pit of his stomach to the rest of his body. But the probing was not nearly enough.

"If I may…" said Spock. Kirk almost short-circuited with frustration. He fought the urge to snap and looked up.

"Yes?" He did not realize how short of breath he was until he tried to speak.

"A meld would allow me to experience what you are experiencing, physically, and to feel the degree of pleasure associated. I admit to feeling lost."

Spock looked lost. Kirk smiled and rubbed Spock's arm.

"Of course. Yes, that is an excellent idea. As usual, Spock."

Spock stared at him. Kirk, the here-and-now Kirk, the one naked and flushed and pinned between his thighs and smiling up at him, was utterly, 100% in his focus for a moment. Kirk felt Spock's focus in the moment Spock's fingertips hovered over his stomach, small jumping thoughts like static. That was truly what he was seeing in Spock's eyes, not merely hoping. Overwhelming love and vulnerability.

Spock's hand was shaking. He spread his fingertips along Kirk's skin, touched and—

Every muscle in Kirk's control locked and his heart seized. He now felt the shadow of Spock's heart fluttering in his side.

My god.

He thought he had some idea of how much Spock had loved him. He hadn't. Emotion bled out of Spock bodily into gut, into muscle, into veins, and Kirk closed his eyes and dropped his head back, gasping, trying to regain some control. His lungs were burning. Spock pulled his hand away and Kirk's diaphragm relaxed, and he gasped. Spock's fingers had only been on him for a few seconds. Those seconds had suspended, sweetly, agonizingly long. Spock was holding his hand back. That love was in his eyes, but there was also growing fear, and guilt. Kirk grabbed his wrist and pulled him back down nose-to-nose.

"Do that again."

"Jim." Now there was emotion coming into that voice. Spock shook his head. "I am sorry. I exerted sloppy control over—"

"Hang your control. I want to feel what you're feeling. Meld with me, Spock."

Spock hesitated. A spark of vulnerability, of fear. Something retreated. A flickering shadow.

Running into the desert—

Kirk tightened his grip on Spock's wrist. "Stay with me! Spock!" Spock froze—the flutter in Kirk's side froze, stuttered—and Kirk huffed and pulled the back of Spock's hand to his forehead. "…God's sake, stop pulling away from me. I can handle it. I'm ready this time." He smiled and brushed Spock's hair behind his ear with his free hand. "I'm not exactly easy to kill."

Spock stared at him. A tug-and-pull, an internal fight, the shadow of which Kirk felt projected onto the back of his skull. Spock finally rested his fingertips across Kirk's temple and brow, a deliberate placement. No thought flow, yet, but held back; Kirk felt the potential in Spock's skin.

Spock paused. That battle, again, an eternal second. His resolved steeled and something flickered into focus in his eyes. Kirk held his breath.

The hold released, again, and this time Kirk was ready for it and did not allow his muscles to lock. The pounding ghost-heart in his flank came back and he tried to steady it, forcing his own heart to keep time and keep them both calm. He closed his eyes and dropped his head back, drunk on the feeling of being loved, and loving, and of Spock realizing how much he himself was loved, in disbelief, afraid to believe, and dragging his fingers back down to Kirk's stomach from his face as he slid back down. This time as Kirk wished for a hot, wet, enveloping mouth, he heard Spock swallow several times, and this time the tongue was broad and wet, now deliciously textured, up the underside again. Kirk groaned as Spock took him entirely into his mouth and almost wept with relief. Spock's fingertips trailed along his flank and to his back, where he curled them and subtly lifted as though he were trying to drink Kirk dry.

When Kirk anticipated what he wanted to happen next, Spock would follow that. When he allowed his mind to float and judge sensations as they came, Spock did as he would, and adjusted his movements in accord with Kirk's pleasure. He swallowed Kirk to the hilt and buried his nose his in pubic hair, inhaling deeply as though he was entranced, or sucked and licked at the head, stroking the rest of the shaft, or kissed and licked up the side. He kept one hand curled around Kirk's flank and the other holding the shaft steady in the web between his thumb and forefinger, fingers curled around to cradle and stroke his balls. Spock was a fast study. There was soon a drop-off in false starts, and Spock's ability to anticipate exactly what Kirk wanted improved over minutes. He fell into rhythm when Kirk needed consistency and switched when he needed change. Kirk felt Spock's heartbeat calm as he gained confidence and could sense, himself, that he was bringing his lover pleasure. In the moments when Spock lifted his fingers to adjust or move the link muted, sharply, and Kirk felt bereft until Spock touched him again.

Spock moved his fingers to the inside of Kirk's thigh, the thin skin high up, and released some subtle shocks into those nerves that made Kirk's back seize and his gut and pelvic floor clench. He wove his fingers into Spock's short, silky hair, grasping hard. Too hard—Spock looked up, eyes narrowed, and shook his head slightly to loosen Kirk's grip. Kirk only faintly felt the tug in his own scalp. He loosened his fingers and gasped, "Sorry." Spock sent a pulse of understanding up his nerves and leaned back into Kirk's hand, indicating that he liked being touched there, just not so hard.

Kirk realized he had only been focusing on his own body. Selfish, spoiled brat. He had focused on Spock's responses to his own responses, the satisfaction, the deep love, only vaguely the building of Spock's own anticipation. Kirk shifted his focus, and he felt Spock's body as his own. It was like becoming aware of the placement of one's own limbs. Spock was keeping a mental lock on his own overwhelming arousal so he could continue sucking Kirk off without going mad. He was grinding against Kirk's leg and as his trousers had sloughed down he was leaking onto Kirk through his thin underwear, leaving a damp patch.

Kirk yanked himself out of his stupor, just about to fall over the edge, and sat up, gently pulling Spock's head up off his cock. Spock's hair was an utter mess from Kirk's fingers, rucked up with sweat, and his lips were swollen jade and wet. He was breathing heavily, but evenly, through his mouth, and his eyes seemed to sort Kirk into the middle-distance, as though he could not believe he was there, before re-focusing. Kirk kissed Spock hard and moved him onto his back, fumbling with Spock's already half-off trousers and helping Spock shed them and going back for his underwear. He had gotten the damp, clinging garments off Spock's hips and halfway down his thighs before he looked down.

He stared, panting, running his fingers through dark hair on Spock's stomach, as Spock silently shed his underwear the rest of the way and dropped them on the floor. Spock, unaroused, he had seen multiple times. When he first studied xenobiology he had found Vulcan male anatomy disconcerting and feminized, neutered, in conjunction with the same secondary sex characteristics, build, voice, etc, they shared with human males. They had internal testicles, as Spock had pointed out, under the kidneys, with a prostate gland analogue closer to the surface. The penis itself was protected behind lips, like a stamen, and in the unaroused state was hidden. It looked like human female external genitalia, just higher up on the pubic bone, and longer. It was, again, as Spock had pointed out, a logical adaptation. Sometimes Kirk was convinced Vulcans had conscious control over their own genes.

That was unaroused. Aroused it looked like an unfolding flower, green and wet mucous membranes parted around an erection with a double-ridged glans, otherwise quite like the human in shape. And there were those—filaments, anthers, were the only things Kirk could think of—prehensile flagella still tucked along either side of the penile base. He ran his fingers up over the swell of the pubic mound, to where the body and pubic hair met lying on different grains, the latter being curlier and denser, springy. He ran his fingers back down and into the open lips, and Spock shuddered and leaned back on his arms, stretching out his long torso. Spock was soaked. Kirk brought his two fingers back out glistening and licked them. Spock made a shocked groan that could have been despair or arousal; Kirk sensed Spock did not know which.

"You spent some time 'inspecting' my private parts, mister." Kirk licked up the other side of his finger and Spock took in a shuddering breath. He smelled alkaline and vaguely of chlorine, the same overtones that came from semen. It was, in retrospect, rational. On a guttural level Kirk had expected something more acidic and piscine.

"You do not find the—juxtaposition of what is in your species a female structure to be awkward? I would seem a hermaphrodite to a human, based on surface structure."

Kirk licked his fingers clean and stroked the inside of Spock's wrist. He felt Spock relax as he allowed him to feel his gut reaction.

"Not at all." Which was the truth, as he had decades to prepare for it. "It is, as you say, a logical adaptation. I am rather enjoying myself."

"In human fetal development the genital structures differentiateeeeaagh—"

Kirk shoved him back down onto the bed and straddled his waist, grinding down hard. "Fascinating." Spock managed to arch an eyebrow even though he was panting. Kirk patted his cheek and ground across again, churning with his hips, and Spock dropped his head back and moaned, narrowly missing the footboard. "Absolutely fascinating. As riveting as this line of conversation is sure to be, Mr. Spock, I would rather we continue it at another time. But I would like to see what you can do with those intriguing anther-like structures." He slipped his fingers under Spock's cock and ran his fingertips up the underside, which was veined much like his own but sopping, and wrapped his hand fully around it. Through Spock's fingertips on his hipbone and the ghost-heartbeat in his flank he could feel Spock was doing the mental equivalent of choking. Kirk stroked Spock's shaft and leaned on his other forearm, stroking Spock's hair.

"Spock. Come on, buddy. You've got to stay with me. I can't have you stroking out on me. Breathe."

Spock gasped, and his mind released and started running again. "That's better," said Kirk. "We're going to get through this." He tilted his head when he realized that Spock's vision was still somewhat unfocused and rested his forehead against Spock's. "Spock? Hey." He brought up his other, wet hand and cupped Spock's head, running mucous through his hair, stroking his temple with a fingertip and leaving a thin trail. "Spock?"

Two vines lashed around his dick, yanking him flush with Spock and pulling his own cock into the cleft. Kirk gasped. Spock's eyes had re-focused and he was smirking.

"You can move. I will hold you in position."

Kirk moved his hips experimentally, thrusted a little, lifted himself up onto his forearms. The tip of one of Spock's anthers pressed into his perineum, the other stroked along his inner thigh. It was like being re-connected mentally when Spock had his fingertips on him. Then Spock started sending out delicate, but deep, shocks through those tips, and Kirk's entire pelvic floor gripped, and he groaned, hard. Spock hesitated.

"Is that too much stimulation?"

"Absolutely not. Keep doing that."

The anther tip on his thigh stroked up to the hollow of his leg, and Kirk rolled his hips, grinding down against Spock, and the vines tightened around him. The underside of his cock slid against Spock's, wet, hot, the lips barely brushing the side of his cock. Spock arced up and Kirk lay flat against him, pinning his hands over his head and lacing their fingers, clenched, and then untangled one hand to run his fingers through Spock's hair and down his neck. He kissed Spock and rested the top of his head under Spock's chin, staring down at their cocks rubbing together, his own ruddy, Spock's verdant beneath pale skin. Blind eyes in mushroom heads, dilated slits, sandy pubic hair crushed in with black, the glisten of green inner lips. His neck began to kink and he raised his head, re-clenching Spock's free hand with his own, now pinning him with both hands. Spock's eyes were closed and his head was thrown back, and he was breathing heavily in time with their thrusts. Through their contact Kirk sensed that metronome-like concentration, and could trace the nerves arching up through their groins, through the abdomen and pelvis, clenching. There was a trace through Spock's abdomen up to his lower back that Kirk felt as a ghost in his own body, a vague tickling like a feather-touch. Right, the internal gonads. And the prostate glands. He untangled his fists from Spock's and ran his fingertips down both sides of Spock's lower spine, lightly, and Spock arced up, gasping, opening his eyes. Kirk felt pleasure in his lower back, also ghosted in his actual prostate. Kirk kneaded a little harder and Spock groaned, grasped his upper arm. Kirk froze.

"Does that hurt?" Which he would expect to feel in himself, but he would not put it past Spock to have the immaculate control to block out sensations of pain from reaching him. He resumed moving his hips. Spock shook his head.

"Quite… the opposite." Kirk rubbed again, and Spock clenched his arm tighter. Kirk froze again. "But I will not last long if you continue."

"Mmmm." Kirk started moving and kneading again, and Spock released his breath. The delicious clenching ran up Kirk's spine as well, and he arced his back and shuddered. "So you do like it."

"Jim—"

"It's all right." Kirk kneaded hard and Spock threw his head back with a groan. Kirk flattened himself over Spock so he could speak into his ear. "We have all night. I'm not letting you go anywhere, Spock. I have so many things I want to do to you. So many ideas."

Another surge went up into Kirk's deep abdominal muscles, and his vision almost went out. The clenching along his pelvic floor was so deep he was sure he was about to go over the edge, but something stopped him, clamped down. When his mind came back he looked back down. Spock was smirking open-mouthed and panting, one eyebrow raised.

"I have rather more control over the situation than you seem to believe."

Kirk pressed his lips together and kneaded, hard and up. The smirk vanished as Spock threw his head back again and groaned.

"Oh, do you?"

Kirk slid back down to whisper in Spock's ear, but this time he unpinned his wrists from the small of Spock's back and slid his fingers up Spock's chest, up the insides of his arms, up his fingers until their fingertips touched. Kirk found his thrusting rhythm again and nibbled Spock's earlobe, ran his tongue up the shell. Spock surged up to meet him.

"As much as I love a good competition, I want us to come together."

That pressure like the web of a hand against the base of his cock released. Kirk released his breath and ran his fingers back down Spock's flanks to his lower back, started kneading again. Kirk shifted his focus away from himself, as his ego had so shifted when the competitive edge came out, back partially into Spock's nerves. There was some scene, ghosted over Spock's visual memory, and the sheets shifted to blue silk, and beneath them sand shifted. Kirk blinked.

—he could drop into the visualization/memory. Ochre-red sand holding the sun's heat under a starry sky.—

—"T'hy'la, if you die tomorrow, surely you will bury me as well, for a moment alive without you I could not bear. I would sooner strip my skin from my bones."—

That was his own voice, rumbling against his throat, up from his chest. A cloak laid out on the ochre sand in the shelter of a dune, the stars moving above them, sweat dripping off his brow onto Spock, the heat from the sand trapped radiating close. The desert night wind was cool. A bed made of a gold and a blue cloak. A shift behind the eyelids, the film of a shifting imagination, a fantasy many times re-imagined and refined, and it was blue and gold nylon weave, the inner shell of uniform jackets. The sand stung Kirk's eyes and Spock ran his hand over them, two fingertips over each eyelid as though closing the eyes of the dead, and tears flushed them out, and he could see without pain. Spock's palm flashed ochre-stained as he lowered his hand. To their sides their phaser belts and a tricorder / a lirpa and a phaser belt, a flickering change of setting in enduring, the essence of two warriors' weapons.

This, then, was the constant: we might die tomorrow. So I will love you as if it was our last night alive.

These, then, were the variables: a Starfleet officer and a Vulcan renegade. Two Starfleet officers. I have confessed to you, for the first time, tonight. You have confessed to me, for the first time, tonight. We have been lovers, long before tonight.

I have loved you, since the moment I met you.

The sheets and mattress were beneath them again, the close enclosure of the small cabin and the artificial air and light. Kirk shook his head slightly, blinking, and felt Spock's chest hollow with shame and terror, his hips faltering, eyes un-focusing. Kirk pressed his forehead to Spock's and kneaded his lower back, encouraging him to keep moving.

"It's fine." Kirk kissed Spock's neck and ground; there was a clenching surge in Spock's groin that brought Spock's attention back. "Stay with me, Spock. Don't you dare stop now."

"Is that an order, Captain?"

Spock's terror was thawing under Kirk's unabated enthusiasm. Kirk kissed under his eyes, along his cheekbones, down to the sweat-damp hollow of his throat. Spock tilted his head back further and purr-groaned.

"I'll take you to Vulcan," said Kirk. "I'll fuck you over every inch of the desert. But right now I'm going to make you come all over your sheets like I know you've done thinking about me since we met. Like a horny cadet on his first shore leave."

Spock hummed softly. "And you have not, sir?"

"I don't believe I was as backed up as you were." Kirk licked over the shell of his ear and spoke into it. "But, yes, Mr. Spock, I did save some energy to fantasize about you. I believe we have a similar predilection for near-death scrapes and fantasies as such. Thanatos and Eros drive each other."

He felt Spock think that only worked in one direction, unless one was mentally disturbed, but before Spock could verbally object Kirk kissed him. He hooked the side of his knee into Spock's hip and flipped them over, relaxing his own tired back against the mattress and drawing Spock's pleasant weight over himself. He wrapped his thighs around Spock's waist and clenched, arms around Spock's shoulders, fingers tangled in Spock's hair and dragging his head down to the crook of his neck, and Spock began to kiss and suck at the skin there. Kirk stared at the ceiling for a moment and closed his eyes, falling back down into himself as Spock kissed up his collarbone, and he sighed and relaxed his legs as the clenching in Spock's pelvic floor triggered his own muscles. There was that clenching, again, ghost-like as he lacked the same structures but deliciously light, along his back and woven through his guts, spreading out like a net on his stomach. Something inside hollowed out and opened, irreversibly, and he clutched Spock's arm.

"Spock, I'm…"

Spock nodded into his neck. Kirk felt Spock was close, also, not quite to that point but—oh, there was another grasping, and that deepening momentum toward what Kirk knew was going to be a really good orgasm popped. He didn't realize he had already come until he felt his own semen leaking across his stomach, and he felt almost as an afterthought the waves clenching through him. He groaned, sighed, and dropped his head back against the pillow. He opened his eyes with a start and realized his disappointment would be leaking into Spock, but Spock grabbed his wrist as he tried to worm away and placed his fingertips over Kirk's psi points with his other hand. Kirk had not been prepared to contend with his own biofeedback and another person's, and had lost control of his own orgasm. Spock's was still building up, and he was sending those feelings into Kirk's body. Kirk melted back into his own lassitude, ill-earned, and focused on what Spock was feeling.

Spock was controlling his own body exquisitely well. He wrung out each clench with voluntary muscles, and pulled to the edge of orgasm and back, surging closer each time. He finally froze at the peak, every muscle clenched, and groaned loudly, biting down on the blade of his own hand by Kirk's ear. His vision went out in waves and he moaned, rhythmically, finally releasing his hand, and Kirk stroked the back of his neck, grinning at the ceiling. The clenching ran up Kirk's nerves through the link and spilled out some residual semen still left in the pipes, and Kirk moaned softly, closing his eyes, as Spock collapsed against him. Spock's breath scoured his neck and Kirk grinned, still stroking down his neck and spine.

"Breathe, Spock."

Spock did not respond. Kirk nudged Spock up until he pushed himself off Kirk and onto his back, and Kirk curled into his side, resting his head in his shoulder. He closed his eyes and let his fingertips drift over Spock's stomach, through the semen matting his hair, fingertips drifting along the edges of the labia. Spock's breathing slowed. Kirk raised himself onto his forearm and stared at Spock, who was staring ahead, eyes focused on something just over the ceiling. Spock's mind was pulling back into itself, behind a vague, opaque static.

"Spock?"

Spock stared for a moment longer, blinked, and shook his head. "I am here."

"Here." Kirk got out of bed to look for a towel and wet it down, sure Spock would feel better once he was clean. When he turned back to the bed, Spock had already cocooned himself in the sheets.

---

An hour and a half.

Kirk stared sidelong at Spock, sorely tempted to shake him, but he sensed that Spock was at ease and his mind was organizing itself with repose. He sighed and picked up the PADD on the bedside table he had been eyeing and swiped through it. A different model than that to which he was accustomed, but familiar and intuitive enough. He searched for Vulcan anatomy, still feeling some parts sexed up and some parts pre-sex lassitude, a comfortable familiarity that put him in the mood to review his partner's body. He found a well-reviewed anatomy and searched through it.

Aside from the obvious physical protection of the reproductive organ, the inside surface of the lips is a mucous membrane, and secretes sometimes with the lubricating mucous a rudimentary topical anesthetic and/or a vasodilator to recruit blood to the partner's genital area to heighten arousal. The evolutionary usefulness of the anesthetic is unknown, given especially the Vulcans' known propensity for restraint. The control mechanism for the release of the anesthetic is unknown but may be hormonally linked. The internal storage of the testes in the abdomen, also, provides obvious protective benefits. The prostate-analogue organ from whence alkaline fluid is mixed with spermatozoa for survival in the acidic vaginal environment (again, as with human females, although the microflora and mucosal chemical composition differs markedly) is also in the abdomen, against the lower back and adjacent to the testes, but closer to the outside. Upon sexual arousal, these glands become engorged and can be stimulated to pleasurable effect through the lower back. Direct strikes to the groin are painful, but not to the extent as they are in the human male given the layer of skin cushioning the penis itself and the absence of testes in this area.

The prehensile anthers contain on their tips psi receptors such as those found on the Vulcan fingertips in both sexes. They are only mobile in a state of arousal when there is enough blood flow to give the anthers shape; otherwise, they are folded under the shaft and deflated, receiving residual blood flow only to the muscular sheath. The Vulcan male can use these anthers to stimulate the partner's genitals and provide neural feedback. They are especially useful in stimulating the clitoral structure of the female, which, as in the human female, has as its only known function stimulating orgasm. Why the males have evolved a structure explicitly and only for providing pleasure must be related to the fact that Vulcan females experienced heightened fertility and a higher chance of conception upon orgasm, to a degree far greater than that of human females. Hereditary patterns follow this: the spread of male genes as measured by the Y chromosome lineage does not show as dramatic an increase in progeny of a conquering peoples in the area they have conquered, signifying that rape is, from an evolutionary standpoint, not as fruitful an activity for the Vulcan male. (Let this not mislead the reader into thinking there is no genetic spread from this practice; merely, we do not see the utter demographic upheaval we see in human societies with war.)

What benefit the male, then, or the selfish gene, which cares not for the rights and wrongs of consent? And why, then, can the prehensile anthers exhibit the strength to hold a weaker partner's hips still? The Vulcan female is, like the human, a K-type strategist—

Outdated. The file had not been updated to reflect general knowledge of pon farr, some time after Vulcan realized the cat was out of the bag so to speak but still insisted on being strangely coy about the whole affair. And no mention of the Romulans. It was essentially the same information he had gotten in high school xenobiology. He found a more recent version of the book and scrolled down the page searching for updates. He immediately noticed the following footnote:

There is the famous legend of the Vulcan woman T'nai, who lived in the days before women could challenge for their own hand and therefore disguised herself as a male suitor to do so in kal-if-fee. While an improvement over the days when Vulcan women had no way to challenge a betrothal, Vulcan feminist scholars take issue with this arrangement. The burden is borne entirely by the female, as the male's losing does not bind him to somebody in whom he has no sexual interest. He is, by default, free, while the woman is, by default, bound, and so she has only to lose and the man only to gain. The woman is also likely to be smaller and physically weaker than the male, and to have received less combat training, an additional shackle on her ability to win her freedom, awarded to the male by default. Vulcan feminists argue that a woman's freedom should not hinge on her physical prowess or martial ability, but should be absolute and inviolable; that exceptionalism not be a prerequisite for basic dignity but that it be a birthright. This tradition upholds the patriarchal standard by allowing the illusion of choice and freedom for a select few women, while holding the majority in functional bondage. This male author is humbly inclined to agree.

Kirk backed out of that document, wondering where to search next. Author's aside aside, as it was an anatomy with an evolutionary focus, not a sexual manual, there would be no mention of homosexual practice—other than, probably, the offhand passages speculating on the persistence of a trait that resulted in no direct offspring. Good uncle hypothesis, and all that. He could well enough sort out on his own possibilities arising from Spock's magical self-lubricating cock with possible light anesthetics and/or sensory enhancers, but he still wanted to know what new insights had made it past Vulcan censorship after his time. He was about to look for an updated anatomy of a more sordid variety when he remembered the ghost of the passage he had sensed in Spock, the hot desert wind at night and the sun-warmed sand. Where was that from? There was a canon of pre-Reform homoerotic romances in the tradition of Song of Solomon and the Greek epics, rather florid and purple, but he was having difficulty recalling anything specific.

He was thinking of how best to start searching when he sensed Spock's mind return to the here-and-now, somewhat. It stopped just beneath the surface. But Spock did not open his eyes or lower his hands. Kirk set the PADD on the bedside table and thought of reaching for Spock's hands, hesitated, and interlocked his own fingers. Spock smiled a little.

"I welcome your touch."

Kirk rolled onto his side and clasped Spock's clenched hands in his own. Spock opened his eyes.

"Welcome back. I missed you."

Spock arched an eyebrow. "I was 'gone' one hour forty-two minutes and sixteen seconds. And had there been an emergency you could have roused me immediately."

"Is that all?" Kirk stroked the outsides of Spock's hands, running his index fingers up Spock's, curling his fingers into the crease between his palms. Spock opened his hands and Kirk interlaced their fingers. Their bond was re-established more strongly. "Will you need to meditate every time we…?"

"I am processing a great deal of sensory and emotional data. Once I have established a set of mental heuristics for sorting through the input and my own reactions to it, I will be quicker in assimilating it in future. And the inputs, themselves, will become familiar."

"…so, no?"

"Frequency and duration of need should decrease rather sharply with each instance."

"Oh, good."

"You are not having difficulty re-integrating your sense of yourself as an autonomous being? A meld with such intermeshed physical sensations can leave the unpracticed person with something akin to what you call 'phantom limb' syndrome. It is the ego-death of the sense of self."

"It is a little odd. But honestly I've been thinking about how nice it is to make love in a young body again." Kirk patted his flat stomach and smiled ruefully. "I didn't exactly age well. Everything is so much—tighter. And lighter; I feel light. I spent a longer time in an old man's body than young and I forgot after a while. Well, that is the privilege of those who live long enough. I'll be more vigilant this time around."

It was an insensitive thing to say. Kirk realized that as he felt something congeal in Spock's chest, something cold that sat heavy. That weight, borne for years. Kirk huffed at himself and rested his forehead against their hands.

"Sorry. It still was nothing compared to… what you went through."

"It is of no consequence."

Kirk looked up. "It is of every consequence, Spock. But I have an old man's forethought and cautiousness. Once burned, you know."

Spock narrowed his eyes a little. "I do not recall you suffering any significant burns during your lifetime."

"Old Earth saying. 'Once burned, twice shy.' It means I'll think twice before doing something stupid again. I plan on being around a very long time."

"I am impressed, Captain. While it may have taken you the full duration of a lifetime to develop some sense of caution, you have finally attained the wisdom to, I believe the saying goes, 'look before you leap'."

Spock's eyes were narrowed in amusement, a subtle smile. Kirk smiled and rubbed their clasped hands on the side of his face like a cat.

"Better late than never, Mr. Spock. But I can't make any promises. I have the devil's own luck for getting into trouble and getting out of it."

I cannot go through that again.

The thought, driven by trauma, had barely pulsed through their joined hands when Spock untangled his fingers from Kirk's. Kirk snatched a hand back and a moment of fear rolled through him, a bone-deep dread, before Spock shielded his emotions. Spock looked away.

"It is selfish, and foolish, to be presented an opportunity such as this and to react with cowardice," Spock said, voice low.

"Hush. I plan on bedeviling you a very long time." Kirk tilted his head and smirked. "I would like to hear about that passage you were fantasizing about while we were, ah, fencing."

Spock was stopped from objecting that they had not been sparring in any capacity when Kirk brought a visual-sensory memory to the forefront of his mind. It seemed to work, as Spock's cheeks colored a little.

"A very interesting metaphor. It has an appropriate martial element given our professions."

"Come on, out with it. What was the passage?" Kirk lifted one of Spock's fingertips with his lip and sucked on it, flicking with his tongue. Spock took a deep breath. "Some sordid periodical you read under your sheets when you were a teenager? I am rather intrigued by the idea of a young Spock tugging himself off."

This time there was a sharp edge of pride when Spock narrowed his eyes. "It was not a 'sordid periodical'. It was a passage from a pre-Reform Vulcan epic."

"I notice you do not deny the rest of it, Mr. Spock."

Spock arched his eyebrows and looked down his nose. Kirk smiled and licked at Spock's fingertip again.

"Please? Tell me? I do so love reading."

"…might I see your PADD?"

Kirk grinned and fished his PADD off the floor, unlocked it, and handed it to Spock. Spock tapped at it for a moment and hesitated, his finger hovering over, before tapping it a final time and handing it back to Kirk. Kirk nestled in next to Spock and Spock ran his fingertips over Kirk's face, staring resolutely at the wall.

Everything in Spock's psyche said: "Do not laugh at me. Please."

Kirk turned his head to watch Spock for a moment, the flushed cheekbones, the resigned stare at the wall. It was the look Spock wore when he accepted his fate. He felt more exposed and steeled for rejection than at any point during their intercourse. Kirk turned back to the PADD.

And so, the warriors found for themselves a secluded area in the lee of a dune, and in the fullness of starlight so took their pleasure of one another. They lay their cloaks upon the sand and surged into one another, lashed together through body and bond, and said to each other adoring words. They drank of each other's seed as the creature that devours its own tail. They worshiped each other's thighs with lips and tongue and so made an altar of the t'hy'la's body, kneeling to be anointed. They spelled the sacred words of love across each other's skin. Their hunger could not be sated. And always over them the stars moved, toward tomorrow, heightening their thirst as the dawn of battle approached.

"T'hy'la, if you die tomorrow, surely you will bury me as well, for a moment alive without you I could not bear. I would sooner strip my skin from my bones."

Kirk turned to Spock, eyebrows raised. Spock was still staring at the wall. He was going to say something pithy about it being rather florid, but Spock's self-confidence was on a razor's edge. Kirk instead cupped his cheek and turned his face back toward him. Spock avoided eye contact.

"Hey."

Spock still did not look at him. Kirk shook him gently, and Spock finally steeled himself and stared into his eyes, almost a challenge.

"It is lovely," said Kirk. "Thank you for trusting me with this."

Something in Spock relaxed, and Spock touched Kirk's hand on his cheek.

"I have imagined…" Spock was almost mumbling. He looked down shyly and looked back up through his lashes. "…you laid out on the red sands. On many nights."

Kirk grinned and looked back over the page he had pulled up on his PADD. "It seems they got up to some things we didn't get around to quite yet. I'm sure you've fantasized about it. Although I admit the idea of having sex in the sand seems very… sandy."

Spock, surprisingly, held eye contact this time. There was that stubborn firming of the jaw. Kirk put the PADD aside and kissed Spock.

"I will have to read the whole story later. But right now I am absolutely famished. Is that replicator as buggy as the rest of the ship?"

"It produces meals of acceptable nutritional value, but some dishes come out tasting strongly of citrus. I would suggest something aggregable with that possibility. It is an improvement, however, over its original state; everything tasted at least faintly of spoilt milk."

"I see." Kirk looked at the replicator across the room. "No, uh, outbreaks, then?"

"Its deficiencies extend only to its ability to create palatable food. There is no safety concern."

"Most of what I can think of that pairs well with citrus is salads and fruits and that kind of thing." Kirk looked at Spock sidelong. "Did Bones have a hand in fixing these?"

"I do not believe Dr. McCoy possesses the skillset for such modifications. And I know well from experience on Earth that your imagination as regards acceptable pairings with citrus is lacking. This does not even include Vulcan dishes."

"Oh," Kirk gestured toward the replicator. "Well, then. You go right about it."

"Of note, dishes incorporating tomatoes and tomato-based sauces pair well with citrus. As do other dishes associated with the Italian peninsula post the tomato's introduction via Spanish contact with the Aztec."

Kirk stared at Spock. Spock's face did not change. Kirk finally smiled, and Spock crinkled his eyes slightly.

"Fine, fine." Kirk kissed Spock on the cheekbone and got out of bed. "Are you also hungry?"

"I am, for the first time in many weeks, anticipating food as a pleasure instead of as a necessity. And you know that I like Italian food as well as you do."

"See, now you've ruined it. You could have just let it hover unspoken. Now it's just pat."

"Forgive me if I sometimes forget that humans are capable of appreciating the unspoken or subtle."

The replicator did not know how to make fried green tomatoes, which was Kirk's half-joking way of requesting a work-around the requirement of health food, but it did know how to make simple pasta, which wasn't half-bad, considering. Lemony, but Kirk was too hungry and bolting his food down too quickly to care. He finished his second helping while Spock was still halfway through his first, and retreated to the cabinet-sized sonic. He collapsed back onto the rucked-up sheets and dozed while Spock showered and woke with Spock dozing lightly beside him, his long fingers curled to the inside of Kirk's palm. He woke as Kirk did and seemed genuinely relaxed—happy, he had been earlier, but finally Kirk felt some pressure inside Spock's chest had released and he felt lighter and at ease. Spock stripped the bed and dropped the sheets into the laundry chute, and though Kirk would gladly have collapsed onto a stripped bed, Spock would not stand for it, so he helped Spock put on the fresh sheets, which they immediately mussed up with burrowing. They talked, and the conversation eventually turned to what they were going to do next, in a grander sense.

"I want to find David," said Kirk. This was the general thread of thought he had been knitting into a coherent plan, slowly, since he had woken up next to Spock the first time. "I have the opportunity to actually be a dad. Maybe Carol will be okay with it this time around." He thought for a moment and turned to Spock. "Maybe you could mentor him. Maybe he'll have the chance to live long enough to make some kind of significant contribution. It would be kind of idyllic, the four of us living as a family."

Spock did not respond. Kirk furrowed his brows, realizing he was talking about reuniting with his ex with his current lover—the thought was still new-sour and unripe and giddy—and wanted to reach for Spock's hand to read his thoughts, but he still had not grasped the nuances of when it was appropriate to initiate a bond. A telepathic species had a great many taboos around nonconsensual mind reading. Spock, still staring at the ceiling, shook his head.

"It is not that. I would be honored, and gratified, to serve as a mentor to your son, if he would have me. The trust you place in me does me a great honor. But as regards the fact that we were… selected… to relive things in such detail, I worry about your ability to work with Klingons in this universe. They are allied, now. There might well be Klingons serving with us."

Kirk pressed his lips together. "It puts me at a disadvantage that you can read my thoughts remotely and I cannot read yours without contact."

"As I will be returning to the original question, your attempt to dodge it will not be successful. But…" Spock paused for a while. Kirk looked at him; his cheekbones were tinged green. Spock did not move his gaze from the ceiling. He swallowed. "…it is possible to initiate a deeper, more permanent bond. One that would give you remote access."

Kirk thought about this for a moment. He sat up on his arm and stared at Spock, who was still stubbornly staring at the ceiling.

"Spock."

Spock did not respond. Kirk turned Spock's face so he had to look at him. He was going to say something, but his tongue was too dry. Spock closed his eyes and touched Kirk's hand on his cheek.

"I have shown you the depth of my affection. I have had ninety-seven years to reflect on this desire. This is by no means an impulsive decision." Through touch Kirk could feel Spock was forcing himself to maintain eye contact. And he realized the depth of trust and intimacy this request required. "I want you to be my bondmate, James Kirk."

Kirk smiled, hoping he looked more casual than he felt, and traced his fingertips down Spock's cheek. Spock tightened his fingers through Kirk's and Kirk lifted their joined hands, kissed the heel of Spock's palm, and Spock closed his eyes in pleasure. "Why, Mr. Spock, I thought you would never ask."

"I do not like to presume. It is a state requiring the utmost trust, and will lock us into an intimacy that would be most painful to sever."

"What do you think my answer is?" Kirk took the tip of Spock's forefinger into his mouth, and Spock closed his eyes, took a shuddering breath. "Yes, Spock. I accept. I want to be your bondmate."

Spock closed his eyes and smiled softly. "Then I can request a mindhealer meet us at the closest class M planet."

"There's no need for that. We are not far from Vulcan. We can go do this up properly."

Again, that distant look. Spock withdrew his hand. Kirk's felt some sick nausea, some fear, sour under his tongue, and his stomach dropped. He did not know if it all originated from Spock or himself.

"I am sorry." Spock rested his hand next to Kirk's. "I will have to learn how to open myself more fully."

Kirk grabbed Spock's hand and a wave of guilt slammed into his guts and diaphragm. He gagged a little. Spock grabbed Kirk by his upper arms, shutting off those psi receptors, brows bent back in concern.

"I am sorry. I somehow forget you need more discipline to deal with unfiltered emotions."

"Spock, you are not responsible for the destruction of Vulcan or Romulus. You have every right to be there."

Spock stared for a moment. Kirk took a deep breath, his lungs freed, and grasped Spock's hand again. Spock understood and released the lock on his hand psi receptors. This time Kirk was ready for the onslaught, and he channeled it into his brain, shielded the nerves to his body, and Spock seemed to have siphoned some of the intensity into some opaque, shielded place Kirk could not see. And that was when it occurred to him that even the horrid initial spike of guilt and shame he had felt was a heavily-filtered version of Spock's rawest feelings.

"Captain, about the Klingons—"

"Oh no." Kirk grasped Spock's hand so hard the bones ground together, as if that would make his mental powers stronger. "You're not running away from this."

A spike of irritation and pride from Spock, the animal instinct to refuse a command, and Spock glared a little and a blast of mental energy knocked Kirk back. His brain was scoured white for a moment and his head actually jerked back with the force. Spock's face drained, something snapped in his eyes, and he dropped Kirk's hand like he had been burned.

"Jim, I'm—"

"Don't." Kirk grabbed his hand again. "I shouldn't have pushed like that. I'm sorry."

"You have an indomitable will, but it is undisciplined."

"…I don't know about the Klingons." Kirk rested his forehead against their clasped hands. He had to tread carefully, here. Spock would know if he was lying. And he still had that human need to articulate things verbally, to work them out that way. "I thought I made peace with them. I convinced myself of that. I had to say… something, something neat and tidy, after all that went down with Gorkon, but I guess my feelings weren't really that simple."

"I do not think anybody for a moment thought they were," said Spock. Kirk glared at Spock, a little. Spock rubbed his hand. "I am not implying that you were in any way insincere. I do believe that, on a very important level, you spoke with complete honesty. But as there were so many emotions beneath that you could not articulate, there would be no point. Simplicity, sometimes, is ultimately the closest to the truth."

Kirk shrugged and rested his forehead against their clasped hands again. He was staring down at his legs, still half-enthralled with seeing himself in a young body, again. Tight muscle and lean in a way he had not been for years at the end of his life. "It was a lot easier when I thought I was retiring soon. It's pretty damn easy not to hate somebody from a distance, when they're sort of an abstraction and you're not making decisions that involve them. It's a totally different thing when actually have to work with them." He looked up. "What if I find myself in a command position over Klingons? I make most of my decisions from my gut. That's where prejudice roots itself."

Spock nudged him mentally, just a little. It was a tendril of green fire prying his thoughts apart just enough he could see them.

"There's some systemic prejudice in me that I have to root out. I'm not seeing them as individuals, who make individual choices, within the confines of the demands of their culture. All I see are the most negative aspects. Spock, I think we're still old, deep down. We have young bodies but our minds are old. And I think I'm still set in my ways like an old man."

He somehow thought just realizing that would make things all better. It didn't. That green fire teased his thoughts apart a little more, lined them up in some way that would correspond to words.

"Things used to be your body and your mind got weaker as you got older; it forced you out of those positions of power. That… cut out the dead wood and rot, to let new growth in, so the organism could continue to evolve. But our lifespans keep getting longer." Kirk looked up, realizing something. "Spock, will our minds stay as fresh and open as long as our bodies are healthy? Or are we acting by a heuristic that served us well enough for millennia, whereby we set up our perceptions of the world in the first few decades of our lives, and we don't ever move beyond that, not really?"

He was a little taken aback even as he spoke. There was an odd shunt, in his brain, from that green fire—it linked abstraction and idea to the language center of his brain, and he felt as though he were speaking automatically, but he realized as the words came out that they did correspond with what he was thinking, more or less. As much as words ever could bridge that gap. Spock nodded.

"I have learned that some humans feel a need to verbally articulate ideas to make them feel real. I am merely helping to facilitate that process."

"Is there some way to have you help me out like this every time I have to make a dramatic speech?"

"Realizing and accepting are not the only steps, but they are the first steps. You have a heart that hates bigotry as a concept. That is also a first step. And you have the humbleness and willingness to look honestly at yourself."

"…I really do want us to be joined as soon as possible."

That glare, again, from Spock. Barely perceptible. The tendril of green fire curled in on itself but this time Kirk was ready for it; he captured Spock's thought as he had grabbed him by the hand when he tried to run away.

"What is with you? You're the one who suggested this."

"…I am sorry. You are right." Spock closed his eyes and the thoughts flowed freely, again. Overwhelming shame. Fear. He didn't deserve this, not a second chance at everything he wanted, not after what he had done. Not after he was too prideful and blind to grasp it when he first had the chance. All those chances. The thoughts hurt too much. He had to put them away.

No—

A small child running away into the desert. I do not want to have feelings anymore.

They're just thoughts. They can't hurt you. You can examine them and they won't hurt you.

It is not about deserving or not-deserving. It is. There is no justice in the universe.

Denying yourself won't bring them back.

It is too good. The universe cannot allow it. It will retaliate.

Those are irrational thoughts. Irrational. Undisciplined. The thoughts of a weak mind.

That is the human half. It is an impurity, the defilement of the crystal latice—no. It's part of who I am. All of it together is who I am. To deny that would be irrational.

"You're perfect the way you are," said Kirk.

Spock's eyes widened. His mind shuddered in pleasure, his thoughts coiled around.

Not perfect. There are still flaws I need to work through. None of us is perfect.

–No. We all do. It doesn't matter.—

Kirk tried to transmit the truth behind his original statement, some core truth beyond the illogic and deficiencies of the statement.

–It means I love you, you stubborn, contrary, perfect Vulcan. It means I accept you for who you are.—

And that is all anybody can do.

No two entities can ever understand each other, not completely.

It's okay.

"It's okay. We'll keep muddling through."

"This is the origin of Original Sin. This is guilt. It is the understanding that we are flawed, and fall short of an acceptable standard. That, held up to light, we are all broken and unworthy."

It was a page of a book, in Spock's mind's eye, in Vulcan. Kirk blinked. "Where did you read that?"

"It was a book on the monomyths found in the humanoid civilizations. I thought I understood it when I read it." I lived a little, and I thought I understood it. I lived a lifetime, and I thought I understood it. I think I see it, now, just a little bit more clearly.

Kirk rested his head in the crook of Spock's neck and ran his fingertips up the back of Spock's hand. Spock shuddered, clasped his hand to trap Kirk's fingers, and turned to hold him with his free arm. They dozed for a bit, odd tendrils of shared, surface-level dreams crossing the bond.

The wall communicator chirped.

---

The HMS Bounty was a great, olive-green broken-winged swan with head hanging heavy, resting on its belly and wingtips among the junk surrounding the Guardian. Something was wrong with the way it sat; it put Spock to mind of a dying bird, and he felt uneasy climbing up the gangplank. But upon getting inside its belly and starting up the lights, it felt intimate and homey again. McCoy was grinning and looking around the old bird-of-prey while Kirk poked his head in, smiled, and stepped fully into the ship.

"I'll be damned."

Garak was next inside, with Data close behind carrying a toolbox, the captain and Dax behind them. Kira had volunteered to stay aboard the Constellation-class ship. Dax looked around the atrium, walking a slow circle in place, then ran down the hallway and felt some of the panels.

"It's amazingly-well preserved!" she called back down the hall. "I haven't been in one of these models in ages!"

"I would reserve judgment on its state until I can check the engine and other core components," said Data. "But, yes, this is a remarkable example of an early Klingon bird-of-prey."

"I do not sense anybody aboard the ship," said Spock.

"We should first check for the rightful owner of this ship," said Data. "Nobody has yet claimed the Constellation-class vessel but we did put out a notice of abandonment. There has been no answer."

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy exchanged a look at that. "Ms. Dax," said Kirk, looking down the hallway after her. "Are you experienced in piloting this model?"

"I wouldn't say experienced, Captain, but I can get around." She looked at the other captain, who seemed to be lost in thought. "Sorry, Captain. Captain. There's too many captains on this ship."

Kirk pressed his lips together; Spock felt in his mind a prickling, stubborn pride and agreement. This was going to have to be addressed at some point, soon. He felt Kirk pause and meditate away the irritation, rationalize it and sort it away in his head, and put his hands on his hips, looking around. The other captain was shielding her mind from his intrusion, but she was staring up at the ceiling, arms crossed. And, then, she broadcast one thought to him – What happens when even more captains, or people of higher rank, show up?

Spock blinked, taken aback a little. She did not look at him. Kirk noticed this and looked from him to her. He edged closer to Spock and whispered his name, a question.

"An idea occurred to me, Jim," he said quietly. He touched Kirk's wrist and transmitted to him what had just happened with the captain, her knowledge of his abilities and self-shielding. Surely she's read about Vulcan telepathic abilities, but she's showing a familiarity with our more casual usage and anticipating it to counter it. This is greater familiarity than I expected. She has either a powerful intuition and extrapolative abilities, or she has another source of information on our daily life patterns.

Kirk narrowed his eyes and stared at her turned back. This was not the first time had had wondered about that familiarity. —Something is off. This isn't just an intuition. A clairvoyant?—

I do not sense any omniscient vision or anything beyond human ability. She is not reading what we are saying right now and she cannot probe independently. But she knows I can probe thoughts, if necessary, and that if she projects a thought with force and intent I will get the meaning. And she's shielded. She is unpracticed, so I could break through the shield with little effort if I could initiate physical contact, but I would not transgress that taboo lightly. A conscious barrier is sacred. It is one thing to read thoughts on the surface of the mind, in the super-ego; they are close to what can be read with body language and facial expressions. And the thoughts we project with intent—it is close to what you call a prayer, when you reach out to a consciousness or deity with entreaty—are meant to be read.

"Sir," said Kirk. Spock felt her back stiffen. She looked over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes. Kirk softened and cleared his throat. She turned around fully and crossed her arms, exhaling through her nose. She felt the confrontation was finally going to happen. "You have a source of information about us you are hiding. I have good reason to hold your ability to piece together fragments of information and… extrapolate upon them, in the highest regard, but I cannot ignore the impression that you draw information from more than that. And I will hear your explanation."

The captain drew herself up to her full—unimpressive—height and raised her head and squared her shoulders. Defensiveness was eating at the edges of the mental static she had put up against Spock. "I will tell you if you dispense with the machismo and bluffing. You do not command me."

Kirk was about to say that he was not bluffing when Spock mentally nudged him. Machismo, indeed. She is trying to make her voice even deeper and make her small, female frame seem as large as possible. If you try your usual tactic against women she will get angry enough to shut down.

—Spock, you know that I don't underestimate women.—

Jim.

Spock gave Kirk the mental equivalent of a knowing look. He gave back the mental equivalent of an acquiescing eye-roll.

These thoughts flickered between them on the scale of fractions of seconds. Kirk took a deep breath and folded his hands behind his back. "I'm sorry. I should not puff up like that." He stepped forward. Spock felt that she wanted to step back, but she forced herself still. "But it makes me uncomfortable, to think somebody knows so much about my own life." He shrugged and looked up through his hair winsomely, smiled. "Surely you understand. You seem like a private person."

Her mental shield flickered, the psychic disturbance rooted in the same place that made her heart rate go up, and she tramped it back down with embarrassment. She was putting a lot of energy into not glaring directly at Spock and daring him to say something.

"Captain." Kirk grabbed her other arm loosely. "Please."

"I'm from the other side of the fourth wall. The other side of the television screen."

Kirk blinked, truly taken aback. He stepped back from her and looked back at Spock, silently asking if he had indeed understood that correctly.

"Spock," she said. Spock looked at her. "You may meld with me." If you do not transgress the boundaries I put up. "It will be a faster than a verbal explanation. Kirk may listen through you."

---

"Nobody is going to question why the youngest and least experienced person here is in charge? Just because she got here first?" said Garak.

They were around a table in a small briefing room. It was dark, and that horrid Klingon shade of grey-avocado with a green cast to the lights and an oppressive, center-leaning angularity, and the seats were flat metal without backs. Kirk's ass had started hurting five seconds after he sat down, so he was standing, as was Spock beside him. The captain was staring at Garak.

"That is literally the only reason I've been put in charge," she said. "Also I'm fairly sure I'm not actually the youngest."

"And that doesn't strike you as unwise?"

The captain turned up her palms as though saying "Well, here we are, aren't we?", eyes narrowed and frozen in an exaggerated shrug.

"Data was the first person I picked up. He started calling me 'captain' and I went with it."

Garak sucked on his teeth and crossed his arms. "Well, it's certainly not the most absurd sudden and utterly unmerited promotion I've heard of, especially one coming entirely of luck and the circumstances of one's… birth, I guess you would say, in this epoch."

"Do you want the position?"

"Hardly. I'm just a simple tailor."

The captain rubbed between her eyes. "Dude, everybody's read your file."

"'Dude'! That is so delightfully twentieth century! Do not take my skepticism of your fitness for your position as a personal condemnation, my dear. This is my objective evaluation given in the fullest respect to a peer."

"You must admit, Captain, Mr. Garak, that it was a logical conclusion," said Data. "It is customary to refer to the person in charge of a vessel that falls into the classification of 'ship', nautical or galaxy, as 'captain'. The title is not limited to members of Starfleet or any other hierarchical pseudo-military organization. While Starfleet Order 104 is the most-often cited protocol for assigning command of a ship in absence of its assigned captain, it does not provide guidance for this circumstance and only applies to Starfleet personnel. The nature of the warp has created a situation in which following the temporal prime directive as we had come to understand it is no longer possible. This would extend to issues such as custody of a ship, which changes with time."

"Custody, yes," said Spock. "But ownership of the craft itself has not changed. Starfleet still retains ownership of that Constellation-class ship for the duration of its lifetime, unless other explicit arrangements have been made." He shrugged and arched his eyebrows. "As for the Klingon ship in which we currently stand, it was manufactured before the Klingons joined the Federation."

"The Klingons will probably want to take custody of this vessel back, anyway," said Dax. "It is technically their ship, old as it is." McCoy and Kirk exchanged a glance at this. Spock just watched Dax placidly, the picture of polite disinterest. "And Starfleet will probably want the Constellation class ship back. And I am not sure of the enlistment status of those of us who are—were—whatever, in Starfleet."

"It's a good point," said Kirk. "Even if they want to scrap most of this heap, there are some solid salvageable parts. I'm kind of shocked they haven't contacted us already."

"They are probably busy working out how to deal with the presence of multiple versions of the same person, and the same ship, in the same timeline," said Dax. "Salvageable though these ships may be, there are nicer ships out there to reclaim that are good as-is. These are probably low priority to reclaim, relatively speaking."

"I wonder what the chances are they'll just put us out to pasture," said McCoy. "Starfleet, I mean. Especially those of us from the earlier centuries. Why wouldn't they just use the officers who are on the up-and-up with the latest technology, if they have it?"

Cut out the dead wood and rot, to let new growth in.

Kirk and Spock exchanged a brief look. More than technology, thought Kirk. We're deadwood with dead ideas and dead sensibilities. And I'm not the only person who thought of that. The future is for the young.

We can grow, thought Spock, if we have a will to do so. The mind is infinitely plastic. It takes a greater will, and humility, to learn new ways with an old mind. But it can be done. Besides, if they 'put us out to pasture', as Dr. McCoy put it, we will be together.

Fragments of Kirk's thoughts flared as strongly visual, strongly sensory – a cabin at the base of an arroyo, someplace he had found solace and a period of rest. But this time, Spock was there. Spock followed the traces in Kirk's spatial memory as he re-fitted the cabin to house a library, and a laboratory, solitary places Spock could retreat. The stone at the base of the house was mentally carved out, the mountain dented, the space expanded. Not desolation, not an utter loss of orientation. Not this time.

It would not be a bad existence, to be put out to pasture together.

"Well, we are here, now," said the captain. "Tomorrow will take care of itself tomorrow. We can't wait for that. We need to come to a decision about how we will organize today. Is it strictly necessary for a non-military vessel to have a chain of command?"

"I believe you will find things run far more smoothly," said Kirk. "It saves a great deal of arguing."

Spock started to say something, but Kirk gave him a look and he closed his mouth and clasped his hands behind his back.

"If I may speak freely, Captain," said Spock.

The captain nodded.

"I speak to you as a peer with the fullest amount of respect. But it is wise to know one's limitations, and to not ignore them out of defensiveness. They do not reflect on you as a person or on your intellect."

The captain's eyebrows were raised. And you're particularly good at this yourself, are you?

Spock arched his eyebrow in response to that and blew it off. Another thought to put behind that field, for now. "You are aware that observing a world through the window of fiction is not the same as having lived in it. I do not condescend to you to point that out. I suspect the view of the world through a screen may well be refracted through a prism of theatricality and narrative neatness. And having come of age in the early twenty-first century you saw how during your short lifetime, alone, scientific understanding did not merely advance but paradigms were shattered and replaced, over again many times. If I might indulge in a metaphor, scientific and social understanding are quantum leaps beyond what you learned. To bring you fully up to speed would be like explaining the internet to a Renaissance scientist. The broad ideas are easy, and the raw intelligence is there, but the details, where, as you well know, all the work and problems reside, are not. You have been trying to catch up but you have yet a long way to go. Your training in empirical and critical thinking lays a solid groundwork for this process and will expedite it. But, the training is still ongoing. You are not yet equipped to head a twenty-third or -fourth century starship, scientific or otherwise.

"That aside, there are many people who are perfectly capable of excelling in a command position who will find in it little satisfaction. I never found my time as a captain running training exercises as satisfying as my time as a chief science officer. Indeed, in that time of mental lassitude before sleeping it was my days as CSO aboard the Enterprise I found myself remembering most fondly. And, it was not merely because of the pleasurable company." She smirked at this, and Spock chose to ignore it. "Command took me away from my first love, which was science. I was by all objective measures an adequate captain but I never felt as though I was where I was supposed to be. I felt… needed, elsewhere, in the laboratory, or at the scientific conference. I felt truant in an existential sense. That I could take up in the laboratory again with the degree of peace I have made with myself in the years hence. That was my first, and best, destiny, where I could do the most good. I was a decent captain but a singular scientist. The promotion was a poor allocation of my skill set."

"Your modesty is humbling," said Bones.

"And I never really felt at peace with admiralty, either," said Kirk. "The demotion back to captain was one of the most precious gifts life ever gave me."

Kirk brushed his fingertips up Spock's knuckles, at this; it was a barely-perceptible motion, hidden as Spock's hands were behind his back and with Kirk's arms crossed, but Spock's mind flared and shuddered in pleasure. He was very aware of the fact that now Kirk could read those flashes of emotion, and he sensed Kirk was still marveling at what an emotional creature he had bagged behind the Vulcan mask. He had always known Spock had emotions but now he was seeing just how powerful they were. Since leaving the company of Vulcans he had let his discipline over his conscious emotions lapse and had gotten away with merely an expressionless face for a long time. He would have to rectify that.

Don't. The complex threads of the thoughts were below his readable surface-level, but the general feeling, the desire to retreat and reign in, flared beyond that barrier and into what Kirk could perceive. Kirk slid his hand over the top edges of Spock's folded hands and squeezed. Don't you even think about it, you stubborn bastard.

Spock curled his fingertips around and squeezed back briefly, still looking at the captain.

"We each have a first and best destiny—some of us, more than one. That is a Vulcan set phrase, 'first and best destiny', that is not fully encapsulated in the English word 'destiny', which is a poor substitute. But those destinies are finite, and if you have the opportunity to realize them, it should be seized. It is a tragedy to forego that when the opportunity arises. Not everybody gets the opportunity."

The captain stared at a star chart on the wall. Her surface-thoughts, the ones not-shielded, were of how marvelous it was to be in an age where each person could realize a 'first and best destiny', not something allowed by the sociopolitical or economic structure of her time. Most people were tied to drudgery for subsidence, and for those people 'finding oneself' was a laughable indulgence, the paternalistic utopian thinking of the clueless upper classes who had that indulgence.

"It is not so utopian, in this time," said Spock. "Better certainly than the conditions from which you came, but I am sure your media representation of our existence glosses over the lot of the exploited. They still exist."

The captain's eyes flickered toward him for a moment. "I am aware of that. But it is moving in the right direction. It is better. It is already far better than anybody hoped it could be, back then. This system, as flawed as it may yet be—as many people as it still grinds under the boot—was considered a wild fantasy. The ravings of a naïve utopian lunatic, childish and petulant, with zero awareness of the darker side of humanity. And yet, here we are."

"So, ah…" Kirk rubbed his hands together and half-stepped forward. Spock felt the ghost of the arms of the captain's chair under them, reflexive twitching. "I'm glad you like it here. I'm glad we could show you a vision of a better future. That being said… We still need to address the command issue. For now. Just for now." He folded his hands behind his back and tried his most dashing smile. "Nothing permanent."

"You are a century older than Dax or Data or Garak or Kira; only marginally less a dinosaur than I am," the captain said. Kirk opened his mouth as though he was about to say something, closed it, licked his lips. He was almost bouncing with pent-up energy, suddenly arrested. The captain glanced over from the window. "Will you not apply the same criteria to yourself?"

"It's not a full century, really…"

"Captain, if I may," said Data. "I suggest we hold an election whence all of us can be considered."

"Not yet!"

Q had not been there. He suddenly was, lunging out of a chair as soon as he appeared sitting in it, and grasped Data by the shoulders. Data blinked several times, processing. Most everybody else made surprised noises and flinched. Spock arched his eyebrows and quickly recovered composure. Garak's eyes stayed wide, though Spock sensed he was hoping something exciting would finally happen.

"Do you mind," said McCoy, "not appearing out of thin air like a goddamned curse straight from the gods?"

"You must wait!" Q released Data, who blinked again several times, shrugged, and folded his hands behind his back, watching Q carefully. Q had rounded upon the assembled audience. He was wearing his 24th century Starfleet uniform. "There are players missing from the stage! The curtain cannot—rise! Not yet!"

"Are we just supposed to wait for Picard for—however long?" said the captain.

"I will make it happen." Q drew himself up to his full height and squared his shoulders. "I will find him! But don't you dare start anything yet! I'll tear this ship apart and leave you all to—" He hesitated. "have your blood boil out your eyes in the vacuum of space!"

Several people opened their mouths, but Dax was the first to say, "We're not in space."

Q snapped his fingers. There were no windows in the conference room, but the implication was plain. The captain's communicator immediately started chirping. Q snapped again, and Kira appeared in the center of the room, legs bent as though she had been in a chair, and fell hard on her arse. She had barely time enough to rub her wounds before she stood back up, staring at Q.

"You!"

"Yes, me. You're in orbit around the Guardian's planet but I could easily send you into the territory of the Borgs that haven't been allied as-of-yet in this preposterous mess of a timeline."

"Wha—" said Kira.

"So," said Garak, "should we even bother having an election or should we assume that Picard is just going to be anointed captain?"

"Picard?" said Kira.

"Now wait. Here. Quietly."

Q snapped his fingers again and disappeared. Kira pointed at where he had been, looking around the room for some kind of explanation.

"He's throwing a tantrum," said Garak. "So, I do assume, since it was so obvious he has been listening to us, that he heard the portion of our conversation where we mentioned that the life support functions on the ship had not been fully inspected. Along with pretty much anything else here."

Data stepped forward. "Captain, if I may—"

"Yes, you may. Take Dax with you. Get the life support sorted. And, ah, whatever else can be sorted."

"Wait," said Kira, as Dax passed and patted her on the shoulder.

"I'll explain. You can come with us. Might need an extra pair of hands anyway."

"Fine." The captain swirled her finger at Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. "You three and Garak, with me to the bridge. At least there are windows up there."

---

"Do you not get it, Jean-Luc? Time. It is time that is collapsing. The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree are of equal duration. I have seen miraculous things happen here. Things even I could not perform, in the old timeline. But the fire and the rose are one. This is a world of infinite possibility. I feel as giddy as a newly-whelped Q, not an eon old."

Picard thought about this for a moment. "Are you quoting T.S. Eliot at me?"

"Oh, forgive me, it's a thread that's been running through that insufferable Vulcan's head. I suppose I caught some of it."

"What Vulcan? Q—"

"But it's so right, Jean-Luc. 'We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.' Oh, sublime, isn't it? The dramatic irony! Everything is collapsing under it!"

Picard pointed at the warp over his shoulder. "I am going to go back, now."

"Oh, no!" Q grabbed him by the upper arm. "You mustn't! The blip from whence you came is past; you'd be walking into the stream of time, to come out someplace not even I can predict."

"Not even you can predict?" Picard jerked his arm out of Q's grip. "Q. What the devil is going on here?"

Q grabbed his arm again and pulled him up to his face. Picard tried to draw back, but could only crane his neck back so far.

"We're going," Q whispered against his lips. "We're going to the world of new possibilities, a world outside of time."

There was a flash, and they were gone.

---

Author's Notes:

This was supposed to be a short story I wrote to indulge my fantasies about my ship (fucking on my ship) in Timelines and here we are well over a year of dabbling later. Also, I stopped playing Timelines pretty early in because the gameplay was boring and I'd rather spend my video game time playing trash JRPGs and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. The basic premise of Timelines is that you showed up, somehow, in the combined Star Trek universe, and are the captain of a ship, somehow, crewed by random Trek characters that come through the Guardian of Forever. The first case in this story (involving Vulcan) is accurate to the game, more or less; I barely remember it and only did cursory review for this story because it's sort of beyond the point. But that is the point at which you 'recruit' Spock (Commander/TOS age form).

I've seen all the original series, associated movies, and Deep Space Nine, and I'm current with Discovery as of publication date. I've only seen some of The Next Generation and hardly anything of Voyager and Enterprise. Hence, the lack of VOY and ENT characters: I do not feel I could do them justice. Hence, the gaping and obvious hole with Q not obsessing over Janeway as well as Picard. I was on the fence about including any of the TNG characters as it is.

Full disclosure of my biases: I did not like AOS. Yes, I do get that the characters were shaped by different major events growing up, this, that, and the other thing; it still did not ring true to me. The actors seemed to do best they could with what they were given (especially Bones and Scotty), but what they were given sucked. Unfortunately, though, since Spock Prime poked his nose into that universe, I have to take it into consideration. Also, the Romulans in AOS are Nine Inch Nails roadie rejects with shit tribal tattoos. On the other hand, Sarek was suddenly cool. Eh, it's really neither here nor there. I also admit I only saw the first AOS movie.

Timelines: or, why the hell did you ruin this with a self-insert character?

If you're dedicated to the Timelines storyline and notice what I am sure will be several breaks from canon, just pretend this is an alternate Timelines. I also omitted that I had gotten to 'meet' Kirk and some others through Q's orchestration of the prologue mission, as it just made for a better story if I had not done. Each 'captain' gets different crew in their 'starter deck', and I did indeed have Kira and Data in my first round of characters. So I started with that setup.

I did write the captain as myself because why the hell not; this entire story is an exercise in self-indulgence anyway and it fits the framing I used. I originally considered trying to write a blank slate, without much in the way of idiosyncrasy, a sort of blank or avatar, but it felt artificial next to the other characters. It is difficult to write a person who is essentially negative space. I tried to balance some degree of fleshing that would negate the lampshading effect that would come of having a Silent Protagonist, but having that personage have some degree of universality so the reader could imagine themselves slipping into that role. I ended up shaving a lot of myself out to make room for that.

I do think this is a way in which video games create an experience that does not well translate into text re: self-insertion as the protagonist and customization therein. It's something I thought about back when I was writing stuff for Persona. But I digress.

The debt owed to foresmutters:

I read a lot of the vintage K/S slash archived online from the 70's and beyond. Those original slashers were ride-or-die fans who had to get their (then illegal to ship in many states) gay porn (in prose and drawing) physically printed at the local print shop. You did not submit your proofs online and get them discretely shipped to you; you walked up there with your proofs in hand and slammed them on the counter for God and everybody to see associated with your face. I'm only a little older than the average slash fan online now and I remember it being not long ago when anything to do with homosexuality was truly taboo, or, at the most generous, something unfortunate that happened but was not to be glorified. Gay porn aside, this was well before being an adult 'fan' was socially acceptable even in men; for women it was considered aberration, and this before one even adds the slash aspect. The fandom history is fascinating. I urge you to read it.

That being said, those original stories established fan-canons and headcannons that endure to this day, and to them I am indebted. I was also influenced by some more recent work. These are the ones of which I am consciously aware, and can trace back to a source:

Trelane as a minor Q and a trickster-like spirit came from "The Squire of Eros" by aldora89.

Vulcan reproductive anatomy: this is an amalgam of multiple fics combined with my original flourishes, but they all share some common roots in the OG works. Most work written within the past ten years or so seems to stick to the idea that Vulcan males have a double-ridged glans and that's about it, as far as differences from humans goes. I gave Spock this, at least, as a nod to that old tradition that goes back as far as Gayle F's works. The prehensile anther-like structures and protective covering comes originally from Leslie Fish's works "Shelter" and "Poses", as do the internal testicles. I kept these conventions because a) they made sense from an evolutionary standpoint and b) I'm writing science fiction and I love the trappings of the weird and old pulp, some of which seems less prevalent in modern scifi works. I think people try to tramp down the alien aspect of alien physiology and that's rather dull. Star Trek is nothing if not pulp and I relish that.

T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding" and the association with Spock:

There was an officially licensed Trek book focusing on Spock (as I gather from the cover) called "The Fire and the Rose". I have not read it. I saw it at a used bookstore and thought the title sounded familiar; oddly enough I had a bit of a T.S. Eliot phase in high school but did not offhand recognize it. (The phase was mostly study of "The Waste Land" and "The Hollow Men", for what that is worth. So a rather limited phase, I would say, with a tight focus.) Upon reading Eliot's poem the various thematic links with Spock's struggle with the duality of logic and emotion are clear, and I therefore venture many of the same links I draw here are so drawn in the book. I could not shake the association, and those lines had burned themselves into the shape the story was taking in my head. So, I ran with it. I really thought I had done away with the 'songfic' format forever with Piano Man but here I am again; keeps coming up like a bad habit. I don't think any editor would let me get away with it in any original novels, so I indulge here.

The other influences that probably run strong, although not as explicitly-stated

The media I was consuming in the background of writing this (mid 2017-October 2018), in conjunction with watching The Original Series, are surely reflected here, to varying degrees of explicitness.

What I specifically associate with this time period, other than the TOS viewing and attendant fandom: A lot of Florence + The Machine. Specifically, "All This and Heaven Too" and "Cosmic Love", neither of which, if you are familiar, will shock anybody. A re-reading of all works of Ursula K. Le Guin upon her death in January 2018, including the Hainish Cycle, Earthsea, and all her short stories and novellas. (If you are not familiar, she is an absolute treat to read and one of my most revered influences. Her older works are a delightful mix of mid-century pulp science fiction and fantasy with a sociological bent, and she becomes more unrepentantly feminist and radical with time. And her sheer wordsmithing—sublime. She is a master of prose. One of those whose works get the label 'literary' sci-fi/fantasy for the pure strength of craft. But I digress. Her death left me gutted on level with the deaths of David Bowie and Terry Pratchett.) With the immersion in classic sci-fi, a lot of prog rock and psychedelic pulp stuff, especially Bowie, especially The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and "Space Oddity", which I can almost play kinda. That "Major Tom" song by Peter Schilling. I named my old lady warrior character in Etrian Odyssey V Oratt. Oh, yeah, and Steven Universe, and the sheer revelry the show takes in being a science fiction show about sentient rocks from outer space who are also lesbians and space rebels who fight the power of love. Seriously the dopest shit ever.

Discovery integration

Regarding Discovery: I've had considerable angst wondering whether to wait to finish this until Discovery ends. In episode three it's established that Michael Burnham and Spock have had contact with each other, but beyond that, not much is said of her level of integration into the S'chn T'gai household. The season 2 trailer on July 20, 2018 confirmed they were considered foster-siblings and hints at rather large and mysterious role for Spock. (Hell yeah.) However, I've had this cooking for a year and a half now and it is time to publish. I would be afraid of integrating some aspect of Discovery into the story that winds up being utterly wrong. So, to the gentle reader who is a) reading through my rabbiting author's notes and b) reading in the future, after more of Discovery airs, I task you with mentally integrating the Discovery canon that will be uncovered into this story.

I would want to explore Burnham reuniting with Prime Captain Georgiou and finding some way of atoning for her mistakes, but as of the time I wrote this there is not nearly enough context to hash out how her story ends. She is clearly destined for great things, one of those "big men" (hah) of history who change its course. Her courage, in that she is willing to be loathed by everybody she has ever known or cared about to do what she thinks is right, is humbling. It is easy to be hated for what you are. It is hard to be hated for something you are not—especially when that thing is something repellant. And she knew fully well history may never vindicate her, and she would die branded a traitor. That quality of spine and character is rare.

Regarding Spock, I assume he would be deeply influenced by his elder adoptive sister. He would always be trying to live up to her reputation as a peerless genius and what I assume will be an eventual appreciation of her courage and fortitude. He might well feel in her shadow, especially as a child, especially given that Sarek even seems to favor her. I had an idea that he would have told Spock at some point that his full-human ward was not necessarily a better Vulcan than Spock, but that she tried harder to live as such, and so had more of Sarek's respect. Also, Sarek has melded with her, which he never did with Spock. It is difficult—Sarek absolutely supported Burnham's decision to join Starfleet, but Burnham was also full human, and not his blood. I can only imagine Spock developed a complex and it would explain a lot of his dislike of his father early in TOS.

I like to imagine during The Menagerie Spock found in the memory of Burnham some of the courage necessary to do what was right, even at the risk of being branded a traitor—even by the person whose opinion he valued most in the world. They've both had the experience of being first officer to dashing captains who taught them how to feel and fully live. I see Kirk and Georgiou touching a frozen heart, in each of them, respectively, and bidding their blood to run hot again. They can see the world in color again after that. They certainly regard their captains with the same degree of awe, although Spock masks it far better. Even with that, they took different paths—Burnham was far quicker to embrace her humanity, and overall seemed a much more well-balanced person than a younger Spock. I still bet they'd have a lot to talk about in that arena…

At the time of Discovery and the Battle of the Binary Stars Spock would have been serving on the Enterprise under Captain Pike. Burnham became famous within Starfleet after that, but at that time Spock was keeping his parentage hidden, so no link with Burnham would have been evident. (I find it difficult to believe nobody would dig up that Spock was Sarek's son somewhere on the net, but in the 60's when the original was airing and the internet was not A Thing it was easier to believe anybody could hide their identity for that long. Maybe he used those computer skills to completely scrub his records.) So, he would have had to keep his deeply conflicted feelings to himself, but he would not have to deal with prying questions. I like to think he would have had faith in her, from the outset. He's shown that he is willing to take leaps of faith in believing in select people who have earned it, despite all evidence contrary. It follows an internal logic of personality. The season 2 trailer states that Spock has taken a leave of absence from the Enterprise, and I wonder if it related to an identity crisis hearing about Burnham's adventures has caused.

Kirk would view Burnham as a hero and role model. Depending of the quality of info he was getting on his ship he might at first view Burnham as a traitor but I would think even then he would have doubts. He is good at guessing motives and valuing character and Burnham lacked motive to start a war, and had until then shown no signs of mental instability. But, by the end of it, he would surely see her as somebody to be emulated and revered. I would like to think by the time he takes over the Enterprise he would cite her as one of his personal heroes if asked, and would be absolutely star-struck meeting her in person. If he had some time to get his feet under him after their initial meeting he might become flirtatious, in that goddess-worshiping way, but that's sort of a default fallback for him dealing with anybody with whom it would not be hugely inappropriate to be intimate (like an underling). Well, the world of Timelines provides just such an opportunity regardless of what happens to Burnham over the course of Discovery.