PART II: EARTH

Chapter 14

The orders come through on Christmas Eve: ground assignment at Starfleet HQ in San Francisco, while they take his ship apart and put her back together again. They're appended by brief word of thanks and a note advising him that he's been recommended for promotion to the rank of Commodore. Kirk scans the page once, then reads it through from start to finish, and wonders what he's supposed to feel.

It's funny. He's been dreading this moment for so long, and now that it's real it's been robbed of its horror. They're just words, after all: no better than he'd hoped, no worse than he'd expected. The ship's already pointed towards home so this is just another footstep in a long path that ends where it began: in the corridors of Spacedock, shaking hands and exchanging frozen smiles, with uncertain years stretching vacantly ahead. It's actually a little bit of a relief to start to shape those empty days. Maybe it'll be good to get a bit of sunlight and real Terran air, to eat food that's grown in soil and rainwater, to see old friends who've never left Earth's atmosphere. To climb into a ground car and crawl the dusty miles across the face of the planet to the place where he grew up; to feel the pull of gravity beneath his feet, settling his restless blood. To walk in cornfields warmed by the first sun he ever knew. To change. To grow.

He takes a deep breath, dictates a short, utilitarian acknowledgement, and leans back in his chair, clasping his hands across his chest. Beneath his desk, he toes off his boots, kicking them haphazardly onto the carpeted floor, and swings his legs upwards to rest on the plasticized surface, feet stretched out and away from him, muscles buzzing their unexpected freedom along the bones of his feet. Shift ended almost four hours ago, and he ought to eat something, ought to shut down his terminal and leave the constricting, silent space of his quarters; ought to change out of his uniform at least. His head and his neck ache, and he presses the balls of his fists into his straining eyes, rubbing until little kaleidoscopic stars sputter to life in the darkness.

Enough. He needs a drink.

Kirk stands, slowly, stretching his back and rolling his shoulders, easing out the tension of too much work and not enough hours, and crosses to his liquor cabinet. It's dwindling like the days of the mission: three bottles left, none of them more than half full, and there's not much point in replacing them now. By unspoken agreement with Bones, he's saving the brandy for his final night on board, so he reaches for the Scotch instead and decants a generous measure into his glass, breathing deeply as the fumes billow upwards in the still air. Into the silence of his cabin drift the sounds of his ship at ease: laughter and high, excitable voices; music escaping as a door opens and quickly closes somewhere down the corridor; a mass of footsteps hurrying past. Life happening, one person at a time, oblivious and carefree, carrying echoes into the hollow chill of the Captain's quarters. He takes a gulp of whisky and glances at the chronometer.

Bones is expecting him at the party. He made that clear in that way he has that's about three quarters of a tone away from insubordination, the one he only gets away with because the chain of command gets kind of fuzzy once the doors of sickbay close behind him. There are half a dozen excellent reasons why Kirk ought to stay where he is, and maybe three times as many that are just okay but still perfectly valid - not least of which is the impressive pile of tapes sitting disregarded on his desk, which has not noticeably depreciated in size since he absented himself from the bridge shortly after lunch with the intention of putting a dent in it. But there's also the fact that the crew can't really relax in the presence of their commander-in-chief. There's the fact that Bones and his medical knowledge of blood-alcohol tolerance levels can't be trusted to pour the Captain a drink, which he will absolutely insist on doing, probably within seconds of Kirk's arrival. There's the fact that there's still a ship to command, 365 days a year, no matter what the calendar might say. And on top of it all, there's the fact that he's really not in the mood for a party, Christmas or not.

"It's not healthy, Jim," said Bones this morning, eyeing him over a biobed. Kirk has been avoiding sickbay all week for precisely this reason, but the Doctor cornered him with a query about end-of-mission medical reports and, with a grim sense of resignation, he decided just to get it over with. "Sixteen hour days, seven day weeks – for how long now? I've a mind to sign you off on medical leave, Captain."

"That won't change the fact that there's work to be done," said Kirk. "It'll just shift responsibility onto Spock."

"Yeah, well. Haven't seen much of him lately either."

"My point exactly."

"And here's mine." Bones has always had this ability to shift without warning from Genial Country Gentleman into Growling Wall of Menace, and he plays it so sparingly that it's never quite lost its ability to disorient. "Comes a point where the Captain can't function effectively if he's only ever breaking to eat and sleep. That what you want in your records when we hit Spacedock, Jim? We got another three and a half weeks for you to hide out in your quarters. The work'll get done without you killin' yourself to do it. When's the last time you spent an evenin' in company? And I don't mean dictatin' reports to your Yeoman, so don't try that one, Captain."

"Uhura's party," he said. She'd pled the case for a small soiree to mark the occasion of setting the Enterprise's final course-heading for Earth, and he couldn't exactly refuse, so they'd duly filed into the officer's mess for vol-au-vents and Chablis and reminiscence. Someone had called on the Captain to say a few words, and he stumbled his way through praise for his crew and memories of the mission, of lives lost and lives changed, of friendship and bonds and camaraderie, and he knew he was avoiding Spock's eyes the whole time and he knew that there was nothing he could do about it. He'd looked into a small sea of faces, some creased into faint smiles, some lost in other times, some surreptitiously dabbing at their eyes, and he saw Bones watching him with an unreadable expression and remembered, out of nowhere, an old fragment of Shakespeare:

Tend me tonight;

May be it is the period of your duty:

Haply you shall not see more; or if,

A mangled shadow: perchance to-morrow

You'll serve another master.

"Party?" Bones rolled his eyes. "Wake, more like. Jim, it's Christmas. Do it for morale or do it on doctor's orders, I don't much care which. Rec Room Four, party starts at eight."

The whisky is not a brand he particularly likes, which is why it's lasted as long as it has, but it's warm and restorative and he feels it easing into his knotted muscles and beginning the Sisyphean task of straightening them out. Kirk crosses into his sleeping quarters, rolling the glass against his chest as he moves, and throws open his closet, as though inspiration is waiting inside, coiled and ready to leap at him. Truth is, it all feels like dress-up; he might as well turn up in an elf costume for all he feels like himself when he's out of uniform, but the accoutrements of command won't get Bones off his back. He pulls out a pair of black slacks and a nondescript shirt - easy, unremarkable clothes - and tosses them onto his bunk, downing the rest of the Scotch in the same movement that shrugs his Captain's jersey up his back and over his shoulders. Now would be the time for his terminal to bleep another siren call, for someone somewhere to need something that just can't wait for parties, but there's never a mission when you need it. That's his life, right there. Always run on somebody else's schedule.

Benson has pulled command chair duty tonight - voluntarily, as it turns out, since it's somewhere in mid-autumn on his colonial homeworld and he'll be cleared for shore leave by the time they roll around to Proxima Centauri's winter festival - and Kirk can't resist buzzing up to him as he fishes under the desk for his discarded boots.

"All quiet, sir," he says cheerfully. The Captain can hear the smile in his voice; Benson thinks it's what Kirk wants to hear. "Enjoy the party, sir. We've got it covered here."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," says Kirk smoothly and signs off before he can ask the sort of question that telegraphs his ulterior motives: no anomalies, Benson? You're certain? Instruments functioning correctly? Perhaps I should check in, just for a moment… Enough. He knows better than to doubt Bones' resolve, and, even if the Doctor will understand the imperative, the necessity, the constant need to be on the bridge of his ship for as long as she remains his ship, he wouldn't be Bones if he didn't think he always knew best.

He pours himself another drink without bothering to pretend that it's anything other than a stalling tactic and stands in the center of his sterile quarters, sipping quietly from his glass. The pile of tapes scatter an irregular rainbow across his desk and it would be so easy to slide into his chair, power up his terminal, lose himself in necessity. There's work to be done, always; hours of it. Days of it. The pull is magnetic; it's like gravity; it's like a black hole, sucking him closer, dragging him in until he can almost feel the press of his seat beneath him and the brief glare of the screen scouring his eyes as it flashes into life.

Enough.

He purses his lips, hollows his cheeks. Then he drains his glass and heads for the door.

-o-o-o-

"Ho ho ho," says Santa, pushing a glass of bourbon into Kirk's hand. At least he knows where he is with whisky; Bones' cocktails have a tendency to get creatively combustive. "Thought you'd gotten lost, Captain. Take a wrong turn at the turbolift?"

"It's only 8:30, Bones," says Kirk, knocking back a gulp of his drink and scanning restless eyes across the room.

"Yeah, and you'll be citing command protocol or fraternization regs by nine, Jim," says Bones evenly. "There's food. Hundred credits says you haven't eaten anything since lunch."

There's no point in lying. Bones has spies everywhere. He says, "Starfleet regulations prohibit gambling, Doctor McCoy."

"You fillin' in for Spock now?" He glances sideways and Kirk keeps his face impassive, eyes fixed steadily on a group of Ensigns bobbing arrhythmically on the makeshift dancefloor. "Try the crab puffs. They near-as-damn-it taste of crab."

There are times when it pays to pick one's battles carefully with Bones, so he moves silently towards the buffet and accepts a plate from a young Yeoman with a smile and a muted thanks. Bones trails him like a red-suited shadow, halting by the drinks table to quietly refill his empty glass with a potent mixture poured from two suspiciously unlabelled bottles. It's difficult to tell in the half-light, but the Captain is nearly certain that's smoke rising faintly from the surface of the liquid.

"I believe that beard suits you," says Kirk as McCoy twists it out of the way to sip from his drink.

"Damned inconvenient," says the Doctor, blinking away alcohol fumes.

"I thought it was Uhura's turn this year?"

"Owed her a favor."

"I think you just like wearing it."

Bones grins wryly. "Not all of us're Ebeneezer Scrooge, Captain."

"True," says Kirk. His eyes flit sideways. "Some of us are Santa Claus."

The grin widens. "Damn straight. You think of anyone else who outranks the Captain on Christmas Eve?"

Kirk says nothing, hiding a smile in his glass.

"Saw that," says Bones cheerfully, swallowing a gulp of his volcano juice. "Hell, I'm gonna have half the crew complainin' to me tomorrow about some mysterious case of the stomach flu, you don't think it pays to do a little incognito intelligence-gatherin' the night before?"

"I'm pretty sure they know it's you by now, Bones."

"Not all of them."

"You've been dressed as Santa for three out of the five Christmas parties this mission."

"Yup." Another grin. "Remember the first one?"

Kirk purses his lips. "Not terribly well."

Bones chuckles. "Yeah, it was a good one, wasn't it?"

"It was instructive, certainly. I learned never to let you mix my drinks again."

"You know your trouble, Captain?"

"I'm sure you're about to tell me."

"You don't know how to switch off."

Kirk grins. "I thought it was over-confidence? Or failure to delegate? Or - no, wait - a disinclination towards green vegetables?"

"Those too," says McCoy.

"I can switch off, Bones," says Kirk.

Bones snorts. "That so, Jim?"

"Case in point: I'm here."

"No," says Bones cryptically, eyes cast out over the party. "No you're not. Not really."

Kirk opens his mouth to reply but thinks better of it before the words have formed. When Bones waxes philosophical there's often a little semantic wriggle-room, but Kirk thinks he has an idea of what his friend means. There are times - like now, as his eyes sweep lazily across the room, drinking in the sight of his crew at leisure - when he feels his life recede from him, as though it's happening in front of him as he stands apart. His gaze drifts across a wave of familiar faces: across Sulu and Chekov seated at one of the tables that skirt the walls, Chekov gesticulating wildly, Sulu's head thrown back in laughter; across Afeaki with her arm slung around Porter on one side and Chesnel on the other, calling something across the few feet of space that separate them from a table of science cadets that the Captain barely recognizes; across Lieutenants Kelly and Slovo by the replicator bank, cornered by their barely-coherent Scottish CO, who's bracing himself against the wall and talking animatedly about warp core engines in between long swigs from a pint glass; across Chapel and Uhura dancing with Riley and Ngo and Rodriguez, beckoning to Moreau to join them while she hurriedly drains her drink through a ridiculously elaborate straw; across Kasinski with his arm slung loosely around Milton's neck, Milton's head resting on his shoulder, both of them watching their shipmates through contented, vacant eyes. This is the beating heart of his ship, this is the fabric of who he is. It's a snapshot, a memory forming as he watches; something that, in years to come, he'll look back on and think, this was my life.

The pain beneath his ribs, Kirk's constant companion, twists viciously, and he turns away, covers it with a sip from his drink.

"The new orders came through," he says quietly.

Bones quarter-turns towards him and levels a stare. "And?"

Kirk doesn't meet his eyes, turning his gaze into his glass instead before looking up to peer into the middle distance ahead. "And… it's largely as expected. HQ for eighteen months. Enterprise is going to dry dock for a refit."

"Ship runs just fine," says Bones flatly.

"She's almost twenty years old, Bones," says Kirk. "It's a miracle they don't scrap her. The engines are practically obsolete; the computer system is archaic. She hasn't had an upgrade in nearly a decade - she's well overdue."

"But they'll give her back to you when they're through, right?"

Kirk lifts his glass to his lips, sips, holds the liquor in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. "I think…" he says slowly. "I think I'm done, Bones." A beat. He expects the Doctor to say something, to bristle with outrage, to throw a thinly-veiled insult, and his silence is actually worse. So he fills it, unbidden: "Ninety-four men and women aren't coming home with us. Ninety-four sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. Mothers and fathers. Lovers. We've lost 37 crew members in the last six months alone." Another gulp, and he realizes there's a fine tremor agitating the surface of the liquid as he lowers his drink. "When you can't remember their names anymore, Bones - that's when it's time to quit."

"Quit?" sputters McCoy.

"Not the service," says Kirk. He stares at the ripples buffeting the walls of his glass: concentric circles, locked in an endless loop. "But perhaps - perhaps a ground assignment might be good for me. New challenges, new horizons. It's not forever. There'll be plenty of galaxy left when Enterprise is space-worthy again."

"Uh-uh," says Bones, and there's such iron in his voice that Kirk's head twists sideways before he can stop himself. The Doctor's eyes are narrowed beneath the trim of his ridiculous hat, dark and combative, and it would be hilarious if it wasn't so damned unsettling. "Now, you listen here, Captain: that's not how it works, not for you. Jim Kirk I thought I knew wouldn't stand for that level of bullshit, not in a million years. You think I don't feel it too? All them kids, Jim - kids, barely out of the Academy, half of them - you think I don't see their faces at night? That's why you keep on going, so it damn well means something. So you have something to tell the folks back home when they ask you why their kid didn't make it back. So I don't want to hear about how you're done, Captain. Men like you don't get to be done. Bout time you wrapped up this pity party of yours, you ask me, and damn well start fighting for what you want."

He knocks back the remnants of his glass, still half-full, and slams it down on a nearby table as Kirk carefully twists his own drink in his hands - slowly, deliberately, buying the time he needs to leash the rage that's tightening his chest. The Captain looks up, steel-eyed, sucking in a breath to say something uncontrolled and uncensored, and the words rise like bile, bitter on his tongue. But McCoy cuts him off.

"Goddamn it, Jim," he says, softer now. "It's not…" He hesitates, mutters a curse, and turns his head towards the room at large, away from Kirk. "You remember what I said to you on Federation Day?"

It's not what? Kirk wants to ask, but he doesn't. Instead he says, "I'm not likely to forget, Doctor."

"Well," says Bones. His voice is conciliatory, though he still doesn't look at Kirk. He sighs. "Now, don't let's you and me get all bowed up, Captain," he says. "S'posed to be a party. Lemme get you another drink."

Kirk huffs a laugh. It almost comes out right. He says, "I'm pretty sure you told me once that my trouble was I never learn from past mistakes, Bones."

The Doctor glances sideways and half-smiles. "That too," he says.

Kirk turns his gaze from the excitable crowd, up into the Doctor's face, and feels a grin tug at the corners of his lips. He says, "Then observe my personal growth in action, Doctor McCoy: I'll pass on that drink." He sets his glass on the table and offers an apologetic glance to his friend. "It's nine o'clock. Command protocol… you know."

"Yeah." Bones twitches his eyebrows, purses his lips. "I'll see you on the bridge tomorrow, I guess."

Kirk glances out across the dancefloor, where bodies writhe in Dionysian delight. "I'd imagine you'll have your work cut out in sickbay tomorrow," he says.

"Not if they know what's good for them," says Bones darkly. "I feed you enough bourbon, or you goin' back to work?"

Kirk smiles. "I'm not sure I'm going to answer that, Doctor," he says. A beat, and then he reaches out, closes his hand around Bones' shoulder and grips briefly. "Goodnight, Bones," he says.

-o-o-o-

He doesn't go straight back to his quarters. Out of the cloying heat and noise of the Rec Room bacchanalia, the prospect of chilly seclusion rapidly loses its appeal, and so he lets his feet take him where they will, which turns out to be the observation deck. Quiet but not silent; empty but not deserted; solitude in the company of the stars. It's what he needs.

Residual anger trickles in his gut, unsettling his meditative contemplation, and he shifts uncomfortably. It's not that Bones doesn't understand, it's that he understands too well sometimes. Sometimes he understands but he doesn't know, and that's when he's hardest to deal with. The weeks after Vulcan, he watched the Captain like he was an unexploded bomb, like he wasn't quite sure what would happen if he stopped watching. Like it was a little too convenient that they were plunged headlong into a long and difficult period of negotiations with the Vulcan High Command and the Veleth Hai and the Federal Bureau of Expansion; that Admiral Komack took it upon himself to personally hyperventilate them through the two inglorious weeks of conferences and diplomacy and mediations that formed an unofficial rite of passage into the Ilion system; that there was literally not a minute of his day or night for that entire fortnight that didn't belong to Starfleet HQ. And then there was the incident with the Farragut, and the Sextus mission, and the diplomatic crisis on J'Skuut, and if he found time to eat two meals a day he counted himself lucky; if he slept more than three hours together, it was practically a vacation. And the ship doesn't stop because there aren't enough hours in the day; the mundane doesn't just go away when life gets exciting. There are reports to write and requisitions to sign off and an ocean of bureaucracy to navigate, and they're there whether you're hanging in a dust cloud watching stars congeal or rattling through the void at Warp 9 with a Klingon armada on your tail. So, no, there was not time to fulfill Doctor McCoy's requisite three hours per week of down time and shooting the breeze, nor was there time to reassure him that whatever he thought he saw in the transporter room that day was just some stuff, some things that needed to be worked out, and weren't going to be worked out if certain members of the medical team insisted on interfering. So, yes, he's tired. He's tired of it all right now.

He folds his hands behind his back, peering out into the silent expanse of blackness. You remember what I said to you on Federation Day? said Bones, and of course Kirk remembers; he remembers the conversation practically verbatim, and he remembers the glacial discord that followed it too. Federation Day is bigger than Christmas on a 'Fleet starship; it's bigger than Thanksgiving or Diwali or Kwanzaa, because it's the common denominator. It's the one thing everyone has in common. Back home, people send cards and maybe have a couple of drinks, start an argument about Federal jurisdiction and planetary sovereignty, fly a couple of flags if the mood takes them, but in deep space it's all about remembering why you're here. And so he's tended to encourage the crew to celebrate it, to turn a blind eye to some of the ways in which they choose to do so, to authorize shore leave whenever he can, to double up his shifts so that the junior officers don't have to pull bridge duty when there's fraternizing to be done. This year, there was a kind of desperation to the festivity, a restlessness that disturbed him and tugged a hole in his chest right where it hurt, and he was glad of the extra workload, glad of the ubiquity of paperwork and the necessity of command distance. He stood on the bridge and watched the star streaks dance Warp 4 around his ship and wondered what his view would be this time next year; if the day would find him on another bridge or under sky. If he'd be alone.

Bones buzzed up to him as Beta shift was ending and he fought to keep the tension out of his voice, because he was sure it was some kind of medical reprimand, a reminder of the perils of sixteen-hour shifts. "Kirk here," he said, and it sounded clipped regardless, but maybe that was just fatigue.

"Easy, Captain," said Bones evenly, so maybe it wasn't just fatigue. "Got some interestin' news, is all, thought you might wanna swing by sickbay when you get off."

He was suspicious, of course, but the truth was, Bones had been at him for weeks to take a night off - to run laps at the gym, or get drunk and watch a game, or maybe just read a book that didn't have the word Regulations in the title - and it seemed like an easy fix: go and hear what he had to say, have a drink or two, then head back to his quarters and fall asleep face down and fully clothed on top of the sheets. So he made his way to the CMO's office as the Beta shift crowd dispersed to join in the festivities, offering Chapel a rueful smile as she rolled her eyes indulgently at a full complement of occupied biobeds, and buzzed for entry at Bones' door.

McCoy glanced up from a PADD and nodded at his spare chair. "Happen to notice if McKillen's stopped mutterin' yet?" he asked as Kirk lowered himself into the seat. "He was cussin' up a storm when he came in. Spock's got him down for a disciplinary when he sobers up."

Maybe this was always Bones' habit, randomly name-dropping the First Officer and glancing up at the Captain's face, and maybe it was just that Kirk was on his guard, but it had definitely insinuated itself firmly into their conversational patterns in recent weeks. Kirk said, placidly, "He was sleeping just now."

"Bout time," muttered Bones. "Man's got the constitution of a rock. Thought Chapel was gonna smother him with a pillow." He scribbled something on the PADD and pushed it to one side, standing up in the same fluid motion. "You look beat, Jim. You gonna have a drink, or you gonna fall asleep in that chair?"

Kirk smiled. "A drink will be fine, Bones." As the doctor crossed to the cabinet, he added, "What's on your mind?"

"You'll like this," said Bones cheerfully, pulling a bottle and a couple of glasses from the sideboard. He carried them over to the table, setting them in front of the Captain and unstoppering the decanter. "Got a sub-space message today from our old friend Sorelan."

Bones' old friend, Kirk felt like pointing out. There was no time on the Ilion mission for companionable chats or heart-to-hearts, even if the Captain had been feeling particularly magnanimous towards the Vulcan race at the time. But he said, "I suppose he's back at the VSA by now."

"Got back last week," said Bones. "You know it's a holiday today on Vulcan? Not that you'd guess, the way the hobgoblin's been chewin' through paperwork all day."

"We're not on Vulcan," said Kirk levelly. "And I doubt the Professor messaged you just to tell you that."

"Nope," said McCoy, settling into his chair and cradling a glass against his chest. With his spare hand, he nudged the other drink towards Kirk. "Thought we might like to hear 'bout what happened with the Veleth Hai." Kirk raised an eyebrow and leaned forward for his glass. "Not too successful, as it turns out. Turns out," he said, warming to his story, "that what the first lot of Vulcans thought was their name, the way they kept on repeating it - V'lth ha'ia, V'lth ha'ia - oughtta've been translated as 'get the hell off of our goddamn planet right now'." He chuckled, sipped from his drink. "So we're back to callin' them the Ilionians, or somethin'. And they're keepin' their damn pergium."

His grin was spread wide and expectant across his face, waiting for an answering smile, waiting for the Captain's amusement to warm the frozen silence. Kirk forced out a hollow little laugh, nasal and inadequate, and shook his head.

"After all that," he said bitterly. His shoulders felt suddenly heavy and he sat back in his chair, raising his glass to his lips and sucking in a draught of fiery Altarian brandy that seared a chemical heat over his tongue and down his throat. And then, glancing up at McCoy from hooded brows: "Is it appropriate for you to have that information, Bones?"

"Gonna be on the cortex in a couple days anyway," said McCoy, with a defensive flare that marked the approach of dangerous territory. "Thought you might wanna know early. What you gonna do, court martial me for givin' you the jump?"

Kirk's head flicked up, startled. "Of course not!"

Bones eyes flashed fire. "Mood you been in lately, Jim, it's kinda hard to tell."

"The mood I've been in?" It was supposed to be a general question, an aggrieved rebuttal, but even as it left his mouth he realized that the emphasis had rearranged itself and changed the tone to something far too revealing. As the Doctor's face softened into understanding, he tried a deflection. "We've been busy, Bones. That's how it is sometimes, you know that."

"Time was," said Bones, "When you'd've asked for help. That's what you've got a First Officer for."

"We're all busy," said Kirk. The stare was relentless but he met it, raised an eyebrow in silent challenge.

Bones looked away first, casting his eyes apologetically downwards. "Hell, Jim," he said slowly, "I wasn't gonna say anything, figured it was your business. But the crew's on edge, the ship's on edge, and I wouldn't be much of a doctor if I let it go. Wouldn't be much of a friend if I let it go."

"If anyone's on edge, Bones, it's because we're overworked and approaching the end of the mission."

"Yeah, and maybe that's part of it too. But that ain't all of it, Jim. It's like steppin' back in time four years every time I walk on the bridge, what with all the silence and the tension and no-one knowin' where to look. So - you gonna tell me what's goin' on? Or am I gonna have to guess?"

A flash of dark eyes, turning away; hooded and unreachable... Kirk straightened in his chair, tightly-coiled and buzzing with cold fury. "I'll thank you to leave my business alone."

"I'll do that." Bones' answering stare was unreadable. "Just as long as you don't go makin' it my business, Jim."

Kirk snorted a humorless, abrasive puff of laughter and set his glass down heavily on the desk. Brandy splashed up the sides, pooling on the wooden surface below. "If I knew how to do that, Doctor McCoy, I'd have saved myself a world of trouble these past years." He stood quickly, his chair scraping a fricative whine across the floor. "Now, if you'll excuse me - I'm tired and I have work to do before I can turn in."

But Bones was scrambling to his feet too, knuckling his hands on the desk in front of him. "Goddamn it, Jim, you're one obstinate son-of-a-bitch when you put your mind to it!"

Kirk froze in the act of turning to leave. "You're addressing your superior officer, Doctor!"

"So put me on report! Don't change the fact that you're so goddamned stubborn you'd rather make a martyr of yourself than admit you made a mistake! Maybe be a goddamned Human being for once!" He threw a hand up, waving towards the door. "So go back to your work, Jim. Do your penance, or hide behind the job, or whatever it is you're doin'. And maybe it can be fixed and maybe it can't, who knows? You'll never know unless you try, that's for damned sure."

Kirk stared, his jaw set so tightly that his cheekbones ached. Finally, he sucked in his cheeks and said, thinly, "We'll talk about this another time, Doctor."

"Sure." McCoy turned away. "Whatever you say, Jim."

The Captain waited a moment, granite-shouldered and smoldering, and when Bones failed to turn back to the room or speak again, he pivoted on his heel and stalked out.

That was the last time they tried social drinks in the Doctor's office.

You remember what I said to you on Federation Day? Only too well, but he's not sure why Bones is bringing it up again now. Things get said, things get retracted. You get past them or you don't, and if you don't… you manage. You find your workaround, and you get on with the job. Things change, that's just how life goes.

He turns from the stars and begins the trek back home.

-o-o-o-

The ship's chronometer is cycling them down the last few minutes to midnight and his head is heavy with fatigue, dragging a wide yawn from his jaw as he darkens his living quarters and crosses to his bunk. He kicks off his boots and lowers himself onto the edge of his mattress, scrubbing a weary hand over his face in an effort to muster up the energy he needs to go to bed, and for a moment he just sits there, staring vacantly into space, wondering vaguely if he'll remember how to sleep in a room that doesn't constantly hum with motion. His eyes fix on the entrance to the head and a tiny prickle of sadness worries its way across his ribcage and into his throat. That's when his cabin door buzzes.

It won't be Bones. That leaves only one other person on the ship who's likely to be banging on the Captain's door at 0001 hours on Christmas morning, and he's genuinely not sure he's equipped to deal with this right now. For a long, mutinous moment he wonders if the world would really end if he just turned off the light and went to sleep - even a Vulcan is going to get the hint eventually - but that's not how this works. Not even at midnight. Especially not at midnight.

He takes a deep breath and crosses his quarters, keeping the lights on low to make a point, and opens the door. "Mr. Spock," he says, without surprise. "What can I do for you?"

Spock glances into the dimly-lit room and back to Kirk, who is still dressed from the party. He says, "Am I disturbing you, Captain?"

Kirk gives in. "Not at all. Come in."

Nevertheless, there is a small hesitation before his First steps across the threshold, and a fractional flinch as the door swishes closed behind him. Kirk wonders abstractedly when they were last in his quarters, just the two of them, without Scotty or Bones or a host of departmental heads to legitimize the meeting. But he knows the answer to that question and abruptly dismisses it, crossing to stand in front of his desk as Spock makes his way to the center of the room, arms folded stiffly behind his back.

Kirk says, "What's on your mind, Commander?"

"I have," says Spock, and his hands disengage from their habitual clasp and swing awkwardly to his front, "A gift for you, Captain." A beat. "As is consistent with your homeworld's mid-winter celebrations."

It's a blunt, rectangular package, folded in a length of heavy brown cloth, and Kirk feels something twist in his gut as Spock extends it towards him. The Captain stares at the parcel for a second, then lifts his eyes to his First. Quietly, he says, "I haven't got you anything, I'm afraid…"

"That is appropriate," says Spock. "This is not a Vulcan festival."

That's never stopped them in the past, nor has the fact that Vulcans don't typically exchange gifts as part of their traditional ceremonies, but Kirk says nothing. There's an awkward little dance as he takes a step towards Spock and Spock takes a step towards him, then both cede passage to the other, and finally they settle on a graceless half-shuffle that meets at the mid-point between them. Spock fixes his eyes on the parcel as he presses it into Kirk's hands, then secures his arms safely behind his back again and drops a restless gaze towards the floor while the Captain peels back the fabric to reveal the gift within.

It's a picture, face down in his hands and shadowed in the half-light, but he recognizes it immediately as he turns the frame upwards. Paper and ink, perhaps, or charcoal; mounted against a dark hardwood that's been lacquered to a high shine by hundreds of years of care, with a brass plaque inlaid into the frame inscribing a familiar name in curling calligraphy:

HMS Enterprize, 1705

Kirk feels his throat constrict. He traces a hand over the chill glass of the front pane, as though his fingers can brush the ancient timbers of a ship long lost to posterity, and looks up into the inscrutable face of his First Officer. "Thank you," he says softly.

"I regret that I was unable to source the replica that you and Doctor McCoy sought," says Spock. His eyes do not waver from their rigid contemplation of the deck. "However, the merchant assured me that this would be an adequate substitute."

"It's…" says Kirk. He clears his throat. "…more than adequate, Spock. It's perfect." His gaze drops back to the safety of the picture and he says again, "Thank you."

In his peripheral vision, he sees Spock nod once, then turn on his heel. There's a moment where Kirk could speak, if his brain could fix on the right words, but it's gone in half a second, and his First is already moving towards the door. As it slides open, he hesitates on the threshold and the moment is back, buzzing in the air like a high-pitched whine. And there's tiny hesitation, almost imperceptible, as though Spock is also searching for what to say; as though there's anything else to say. Then it's past, and he simply says, quietly, "Goodnight, Jim."

Kirk sucks in a breath, drags his eyes upwards. "Goodnight, Spock," he says, but he's already gone.

-o-o-o-

A/N: K/S Meta is relentlessly awesome and I never met one I didn't like, but special mention has to go here to bigmamag's analysis of The Motion Picture novelization (to which I'd absolutely post a link if I could work out how to do that easily on here. It's on LiveJournal anyway). It's all kinds of magnificent, and has been a major influence in terms of driving the character development in this chapter and those that follow.

The lines of Shakespeare are from Antony and Cleopatra, Act VI, Scene 2. (Favorite. Play. Ever.)