Chapter 2

"Jim, you're fine," says Bones, handing a towel to his sweating Captain as he swings his legs off the biobed and sits up. It's the second time in two days that Kirk's had a run-in with the wall exerciser, and, if his brain doesn't remember the last time, his body certainly does. He'd swear the Doctor was enjoying himself. "I didn't know better, I'd say Dr. Lester took better care of your body than you do yourself."

"Thank you, Doctor," says Kirk wryly. He slings the towel around his neck and lowers himself to the ground. "Imagine the wonders she could have worked if she'd had access to it for longer than seven and a half hours," he adds pointedly.

"Yeah, well, don't forget I haven't signed your certification papers yet, Captain," says the Doctor.

"Blackmail, Bones?"

"You work with what you've got in this line of business."

He scrolls through a PADD as Kirk wriggles his damp arms into his command tunic. Bones is his usual irascible self but there are lines of strain around his eyes and furrowing his brow and Kirk suspects his CMO slept about as well as the Captain did last night. He tries to remember the last time they sat down together and watched a game or a movie, or even just shared a decent bottle of bourbon and talked about something other than ship's business. Shore leave is definitely overdue.

"I don't suppose there's any chance you'll sign them now and let me get back to the bridge?" he says now, without expectation.

Bones laughs his Machiavellian laugh, the one he reserves for sickbay, where his autocracy is unchallenged. "Sit down, Captain," he says.

But Kirk has learned a thing or two about psychological warfare and the application thereof in the thwarting of Bones' plans. "After you, Doctor," he says.

The Doctor lowers himself into the chair behind his desk, with the air of one who knows very well that the upper hand is his. He says, "Sit down, Jim, I'm not going to bite. I just want to know how you're doing, is all."

"Is that Dr. McCoy asking, or Bones?"

"Personal or professional interest, you mean?" He leans back in his chair and folds his arms. "Both, I guess. Call it professional interest, off the record."

Kirk raises an eyebrow. The significance of the gesture is not lost on him and he hides a laugh in an ironic smile as he lowers himself into the chair opposite. "Off and on the record, Bones - I'm fine. A little shaken up, disoriented maybe, but no lingering urge to bring you and all my closest friends with me every trip to the bathroom, if that's what you mean."

Bones quirks his lips but his stare is relentless. It's a really good stare. "Have you talked to Spock?"

"Spock?" Kirk's pulse spikes but he keeps his face steady. "A little, yesterday. On the bridge. Why?"

"Jim," says McCoy, and the concern in his voice is surprising. He's seen the wall drop once or twice, mostly when Spock is injured or otherwise incapacitated and it falls to the Doctor to work out some way to hang onto him in the face of immovable Vulcan reticence. Bones has known Spock longer than Kirk has, and the Captain has never once doubted that the bickering and antagonism masks a genuine respect and grudging affection, but he's never heard him use that tone when their First has been in no immediate danger of death. "Jim, he was prepared to stand in front of a firing squad." A beat. "For you."

As if he needs to be reminded of that. He slept restlessly last night when was able to sleep at all, and his dreams were full of phaser fire. But his voice is even when he says, "So were you, Doctor, if I recall. You and Mr. Scott."

"That's different, Jim." And if the gaze hardens just a little, if the set of the jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, it's only because Kirk knows him so well that he sees it at all. "We didn't know what we were getting into, Jim. Spock did. He stood up in front of the senior officers on a charge of mutiny. Mutiny, Jim. You know how Vulcans are, their code of honor. You know what'd have happened next and so does Spock, and he stood up there and did it anyway."

The Captain of the Enterprise carries out an illegal death penalty on the son of the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth, on trumped-up charges that Vulcan pride cannot ignore. Yes, Kirk knows what would have happened next. It wasn't just his life Spock risked, once Lester's plans became clear - it was political chaos, potentially the end of the Federation, somewhere down a long and dangerous path of recrimination and counter-recrimination. Half of Kirk's conversation with Admiral Fitzpatrick last night was dedicated to making sure that Spock knew not to tell his dad what nearly came to pass.

He spreads his hands. "What do you want me to say, Bones? He won't thank me for mentioning it. He won't thank me for thanking him. And he certainly won't thank me for asking if he's all right."

"Just..." Bones waves an irritable hand. "Just keep an eye on him, Jim. And yourself. Lord knows, between the two of you I've got more gray hair on my head than I did twenty-four hours ago. I tell you, Jim, if I make it to the end of this mission, I'm gonna hole myself up in private practice in a town so small it don't even appear on the map. I'm gonna spend my days pulling buttons out of kids' noses and thank the Lord I don't live in interesting times anymore."

It's a little too close to Kirk's wandering thoughts from the night before and he drops his eyes, before he realizes that Bones has his gaze fixed on him and will absolutely not miss the gesture. He covers it with a smile and says, "I'd better promote you before you can escape, then."

"Don't you dare, Captain."

"Don't worry, Bones." He glances up. "I'm sure you've offended enough of the admiralty that they'd refuse to ratify it anyway."

"Well, the life entity transfer hasn't cured your questionable sense of humor, I see," says the Doctor, with a long-suffering sigh. "I'll sign your papers, Captain. Now, get yourself back up onto the bridge before the hobgoblin frets."

"I'd like to see you say that to his face," says Kirk cheerfully.

"I'll have to, you hang around here much longer," says Bones.

Kirk stands, tucks his chair back under the desk and rests his hands on it for a moment. He says, "Have you spoken to Dr. Coleman this morning?"

Bones nods. "Sure. First thing."

"How's Janice?"

"Sedated. Told him he'll keep her that way, long as they're on this ship."

A flare of resentment bubbles in Kirk's chest but he presses down hard upon it and says, "Is that really necessary?"

"I'd say so, Jim. We don't have the resources to deal with a Janice Lester on the Enterprise. It's for her good as much as anything else."

"She wasn't always so... full of anger."

"Nope. I'd say she wasn't. Shame of it is, I don't even disagree with most of what she's saying. But no-one's gonna listen to her now."

"No." Kirk drums a tattoo with his fingers on the back of the chair.

"Something on your mind, Captain?"

"Plenty, Doctor." He looks up and flashes a grin. "But I believe I'll keep it to myself. At least until you sign off on my psych-eval."

Bones heaves a sigh and reaches for his PADD and stylus. "Well, there goes my leverage," he mutters as he scrawls a signature. "Now get, Captain."

The Captain gets, but at the door he pauses and turns over his shoulder. "Bones," he says. "Thanks. For... what nearly happened."

It's not enough. It's not nearly enough, but the words haven't been invented to describe that sort of gratitude and, in the absence of suitable hyperbole, Kirk has usually found that simple works best.

McCoy inclines his head, purses his lips. "Any time, Jim," he says. "Make sure you thank Spock, too. And I'll deny everything if you tell him I said so." On cue, the ship's whistle sings and the Doctor rolls his eyes. "Speak of the pointy-eared devil..."

He waves a dismissive hand at the Captain as Spock's voice sounds over the comm.

"Spock to sickbay..."

"Yes, Mr. Spock, he's just leaving," says the Doctor with what he probably imagines is an air of infinite patience. As the doors close behind him, Kirk just catches a muttered, "What am I, a doctor or a chaperone?"

-o-o-o-

Kirk diverts to his quarters for a shower and sends his Yeoman up to the bridge with the news, which is cowardly, but he hasn't spoken to his First yet this morning and he just cannot imagine how he's going to make those their first words of the day and not blush scarlet, not after the night he's just had. Alone, he strips off his sweat-soaked tunic and pants and throws them in the cycler, crossing naked to the head, which still smells faintly of Spock's morning toilette. Kirk has no clear picture of Vulcan daily cleansing rituals, other than that the shower cubicle is never wet and the sonics are always set a few decibels too low for his taste, and the air is gently scented with ginger and lavender and pine when he's done. His towel is neatly pegged to the door and darkened in patches where it has clearly been used to soak water off his skin, but there are no splashes around the sink, no fingermarks left on the highly-polished sheen of the vanity, no watery residue in the basin. There is absolutely nobody in the galaxy like a Vulcan to make a reasonably well house-trained Human male feel slovenly.

Reasoning that housekeeping will be in before Spock returns at the end of alpha shift, he opts for a water shower and steps inside, letting the jets pummel his skin just on the wrong side of too hot. As he scrubs, his head runs over the agenda for the day: conversations and conference calls, revised rendezvous arrangements with the Potemkin, negotiations with Starbase 2 to receive a secure medical transfer from their sickbay, and at some point he'll have to make time to meet with Spock. No matter what McCoy says, Kirk does not plan to thank his First, for exactly the reasons he gave. He might have done, once, but this is too big for thanks, and it's not quite that they're not expected and not quite that they're not necessary, but rather somewhere in between. There came a point, indefinable now, where it became obvious that this is just what they do: one of them gets into trouble and the other one fixes it. Explicit thanks imply that there was ever a chance that their recipient would have acted differently. They are simply understood.

If only he could stop thinking about the goddamn hand, though.

They used to flirt continuously, shamelessly even. On the bridge, at chess, in the mess room, on away missions, in sickbay, in the gym, on shore leave - it was like there was an invisible score board that followed them around and awarded randomly-calculated points for outrageous boundary-pushing. It was fun. Kirk flirts as easily as talking or breathing; he catches himself doing it sometimes right in the middle of a seduction he didn't know he was planning, and sometimes it leads somewhere but most often it doesn't. It's not precisely about sexuality, not really; it's more that he is attractive and he is charming, and these two things lead people to have certain expectations of him. And he's learned how to use that.

Good looks are an accident of birth, just like intelligence. The only thing anyone can control is the way they use what they've got. It's worked against him almost as often as it's worked for him: all the tutors and the superior officers who saw only the face and not the brain beneath, all the times he's lost the sympathy of a colleague or CO who decided that he's got where he's got on charisma alone. Admiral Komack's antipathy is almost certainly based, at least in part, on the fact that Kirk is younger and better looking than he is, because Kirk is certain that - up until the Vulcan incident, anyway - he did nothing else to deserve it.

So he's learned to use it, as a shield or as a weapon, according to circumstance. He flirts because it's expected of him, because, mostly, people get offended if he doesn't. It leads to sex far less often than anyone might think, usually because it can't. That's the intelligence kicking in. There are far more people in the galaxy with whom it would be a political nightmare to knock boots than an advantage, but flirtation is usually harmless. Often it's useful; more often than that it's enjoyable. The people who think he's an empty face find him predictable and lewd and, while they're busily confirming their opinions of him, he's finding out what he needs to know. And the people who understand the game dance around him in a courtly two-step that demands his reciprocation.

He started flirting with Spock mostly just to annoy him.

He's worked with difficult subordinates before, but difficult just doesn't even begin to cover an intransigent Vulcan XO. Everything was scrupulously correct, regulations observed to the sub-section and clause, and delivered with such a tangible sense of disapproval that the Captain often wondered how the air didn't just freeze when his First Officer looked at him. He knows that Chris Pike didn't want the promotion that took him off the Enterprise, and he knows as well that the promotion was offered almost entirely on the basis that it freed up the flagship of the fleet for the publicity-heavy advancement of a photogenic new Captain with the sort of bio that looks good on the front page of the Sunday papers. Neither of them had any say in the matter, so he's not sure how logical it would have been to have immolated himself on an altar of professional integrity, but he's long since discovered that logic comes a poor second to loyalty in the Vulcan psyche. If they'd only admit that, he suspects a lot of misunderstandings would be avoided.

There's very little you can do when your First Officer is engaged in a campaign of meticulous-ing you into insanity. It's not as though you can ask him to stop being right all the time. And it's not as if any functional Human with the social skills to exist outside of an institution with padded walls is ever going to be able to match the encyclopedic knowledge of a race with a built-in eidetic memory, so it was a given that the new Captain was going to fail the Vulcan test of regulatory observance. In the absence of a strategic alternative, and provoked to an impotent, bone-crushing rage by the delivery of one too many implacable eyebrow-raises, Kirk defaulted into a charm offensive that had the dual advantage of being both immeasurably satisfying and equally impossible to counter. It's not the first time he's used sexual manipulation as a tool, but it's the first time he's ever used it on a Vulcan. At first, all it did was make everyone uncomfortable, but that was happening anyway every time Spock or the Captain opened their mouths, and gradually - so gradually that he didn't notice it happening until it had more or less happened - it stopped being about retaliation and started being about fun.

Kirk steps out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist before the water can puddle on the narrow floor, and crosses to his quarters. He flirts with Bones because they both enjoy it, and because Bones flirts right back and then pretends to be horrified. They've been doing it so long now that it's hard to imagine how they'd interact without it, and there's never been any kind of undercurrent of sexual tension or desire between them, so why the hell not? And that ended up being why he flirted with Spock, too: because there came a day when he realized that he couldn't remember the last time his First had quoted some sententious little micro-codicil to explain why the Captain wasn't allowed to cross his right leg over his left, and hot on the heels of that revelation came the sudden realization that the kind of compression thing he did with his eyes sometimes, the thing that seemed to light up his face from within, that was a smile, and it was directed at Kirk. And when the retaliatory imperative was gone, it turned out that a behavior born in antagonism was kind of exciting on its own - because it was Spock, because it transgressed every xenosociological norm in the extraordinarily detailed Starfleet book of etiquette, and because it meant that they were friends, and friends was so completely unexpected when three months earlier he would have settled for somebody I don't spend seventeen hours of every day wanting to kill.

And then there was The Sneeze and the flirting... it didn't stop, exactly, but it wasn't innocent anymore. And while innocent has never been a prerequisite for fun in the act of flirting, this is clearly not that simple. There's flirtatious banter, and there's flirting with intent, and the decision to move from the former to the latter cannot be taken unilaterally. He's not sure which of them decided to scale things back, only that they don't really seem to do it anymore, and Kirk really, really hopes that the shift came from him. The alternative is too humiliating to contemplate.

He pulls on a fresh uniform, straightens his hair, steps into his boots. Friendship is good. It's not the whisky-drinking, quasi-fraternal relationship that he has with Bones, or the low-maintenance, sexually-charged connection he had with Gary, and even after all these years he's not absolutely certain he has a handle on what it is, but it's good. It doesn't need to be anything else. It's good.

No, it's good. Better than good.

Kirk heads to the bridge.

-o-o-o-

Spock is in the command chair and rises in one swift, fluid movement when the turbolift doors discharge the Captain. "Course plotted for the Beta Aurigae system, Captain," he says formally. "Estimated arrival in sixty-two hours." His eyes are fixed on an unremarkable spot above the engineering console and do not waver to Kirk's.

The Captain represses a sigh. This again.

On the other hand, it does invoke some interesting precedents.

"Thank you, Mr. Spock," he says. "Anything else I should know about?" He moves to the side of the chair but instead of sitting he deliberately places himself inside his First Officer's personal space and smiles up into his face.

"Captain?" says Spock.

This again.

"Anomalies, incidents, extraordinary events, Mr. Spock," says Kirk, and cannot resist adding, "Anecdotes."

Nothing. Not so much as a quirked eyebrow. "Nothing to report, Captain," says Spock, drilling a hole into a quotidian section of bulkhead with his unaltering stare.

Kirk gives in.

"Fine, thank you, Mr. Spock," he says. He slides into his chair and takes a moment to enjoy the sensation of familiar contours pressed tightly against his skin. It's a pleasure that has never entirely receded with familiarity, and twenty-four hours ago he wasn't sure he'd ever know it again. When he looks up, it's to see that Spock hasn't moved from his position, although he has dropped his eyes.

"Something on your mind, Spock?" says Kirk.

Now it's the floor that's caught his interest. He says, "I merely wished to express my satisfaction at your return to the bridge, Captain."

Kirk feels the smile spread like melted butter across his face. "Thank you, Mr. Spock," he says. "I believe I share that sentiment." Maybe it's the warmth in his voice and maybe it's the words, but something earns him belated eye-contact and the hard edges of the angular face soften into a clandestine smile.

The moment shines brightly, before being abruptly swallowed by the demands of the bridge. Kirk glances at the viewscreen, uniform black flecked with the occasional uninspiring pinprick flash of white, and says, "I'll need you at some stage today, when you can spare a few moments." He glances back at his First. "Admiral Fitzpatrick has some concerns he wants me to share with you."

Spock inclines his head, and manages to convey with one utilitarian gesture that he has anticipated both the request and its contents, and is a tiny bit offended that the admiralty think he needs to be reminded not to start a Cold War between the two largest powers of the Federation. "I am at your disposal, Captain," he says. "However, I had hoped to spend the remainder of alpha shift in the laboratories in preparation for our rendezvous with the Potemkin."

"I thought Lieutenant Afaeaki had everything in hand?"

"I have asked Lieutenant Afaeaki to head the team beginning analysis on the data collected on Camus II. Given that we have limited resources from which to work..."

"Yes, all right," says Kirk, with less irritation than he feels. There is no good or pressing reason to keep Spock on the bridge, apart from the fact that he clearly wants to leave and Kirk's not sure he should get to run away like that. This happens every single time. "Very well, Mr. Spock. With any luck, we're in for an uneventful journey. But keep your communicator on you, will you?"

"Captain?" says Spock, and Kirk resists the urge to close his eyes and sigh heavily. If he's progressed to pretending not to understand idiom already, then there could be days of this ahead.

"Just - go on, Mr. Spock," he says. "But keep some time aside for our meeting, please. I assume the labs can spare you for fifteen minutes at some stage?"

The sarcasm is heavily implied, but Spock has the upper hand, since all he has to do is start talking about the implications of the coefficient of pi on the delta-emissions of neutron radiation and the Captain will not be able to offer a rejoinder. He says, "In fact, I anticipate that the remodeling of the duotronic inhibitor circuits to the sensitivity required to separate the gravitational matrices of the binary system will require at least eight hours to complete. However," he adds before Kirk can snap an irritable reply to the effect that he damn well better make some time in that case, "if the matter is not sufficiently urgent, perhaps we might arrange to discuss it after the conclusion of alpha shift?"

Kirk opens his mouth to speak and even gets as far as drawing in the first breath, but then Spock's words catch up with his brain and he stops. His First Officer is standing calmly in front of him, waiting for the words that will allow him to run away and hide in his labs for the next few days, and the Captain could order him to delegate the jobs to someone else - Fipe Afaeaki could re-route the duotronic inhibitors with her eyes closed, which means Spock could do it in his sleep, from another starship on the other side of the galaxy and with both arms and legs immobilized - but he'd be pulling rank without much in the way of justification and they both know it.

But the thing is, the fact that he's engaged at all in a battle of wills over a proposed emotional withdrawal means that the hand-holding incident has left an impression on Spock as well, because this is what always happens. Everything will be fine, warmth flowing easily between them, half-smiles traded across the bridge, finishing each other's thoughts, and then suddenly something will happen, something more, and Kirk will wonder if maybe, possibly, conceivably there's something else there. And Spock will disappear - into a shell of taciturn Vulcan correctness, into duty and regulation or, occasionally, physically into another part of the ship. If there was some way to be sure, some guarantee that it's not all in Kirk's unrequited mind, then he'd corner his friend and demand an answer. But nothing that's happened to date is tangible enough to pin down and say, this. This is what I mean. Nothing has happened that can't be spun into something perfectly innocent, and he won't risk the friendship or his pride on smoke and mirrors.

Still, he's pretty certain that, in the face of a full-scale Vulcan retreat, he's just been handed largess. "Very well, Mr. Spock," says Kirk. "I'll be in my quarters after eight o'clock. I assume that's suitable?"

Spock offers a patrician nod. "I appreciate the accommodation," he says.

"Fine, fine," says the Captain, waving a hand, but he can't keep the smile from coursing back across his face again. "Have fun with the inhibitor circuits, Mr. Spock. I'll see you at eight."

Spock doesn't raise an eyebrow, but neither does he feign confusion. In a complicated battle for terrain he doesn't know, Kirk is not prepared to count it a victory, but it's not a complete defeat either. He accepts a PADD from a Yeoman and when he looks up again, Spock is gone.