Chapter 22

Time passes. Weeks melt into weeks as the sun gets yellower and the sky gets bluer. Kirk finds himself walking a little taller as the gathering spring sucks the damp chill out of the earth and the pressure in his chest releases, the angry ache dulling to a low, background keening that can be subsumed beneath the minutiae of daily life. 47 Aeolus C goes nowhere, but Draconis slides back onto the tracks of diplomacy as if it had never stalled, and Eremetis - an impulse-recommendation, prompted by nothing more substantive than the pseudo-Byronic appeal of its solitary moniker on a particularly bad day - turns out to be spectacularly promising on further investigation, and earns him a number of hearty backslaps and a fleeting reputation within the middle echelons of command as a kind of First Contact savant.

And Spock is there. He's there at a distance, and sometimes it's as though a wall separates them, barriers sliding readily into place with no warning, like a ship entering combat. But sometimes it's almost as it was before. Sometimes, they'll be walking side by side, chatting inconsequentially like they used to do, or sitting late into the night at Spock's desk - because they both prefer his office to Kirk's - or rediscovering a city that both of them used to know and then forgot, and Kirk will glance over and see something in those dark eyes, something that reminds him all over again that, whatever it was, he wasn't the only one who felt it. Kirk says nothing in these moments; just catches his breath and drops his gaze and waits for it to pass. This new entente of theirs feels… fragile. He has no desire to find out how much pressure it can take before it breaks.

His thirty-seventh birthday passes without incident. Bones is on Ganymede at a conference on blood disorders that he's been grousing about for weeks, as though his irritation might be in any way convincing to someone who's known him as long as Kirk, but he comms in the early morning with an irascible comment about the statistical likelihood of arterial plaque build-up in men approaching 40, and a somewhat contradictory promise to bring back a bottle of something highly flammable from Jovian duty-free. There is the customary communication from Kirk's parents, an unexpected note from a distant cousin whose name he barely remembers, but who clearly watches the holos, and, to his surprise and subdued delight, messages from Uhura and Scotty. Kirk spends a preoccupied journey into his office trying to remember if he even knows when either of their birthdays might be and hoping that he hasn't inadvertently missed one of them recently. Ciana says nothing, although she must have seen the date in his files, for which small mercy Kirk will be eternally grateful. Nor does he hear from Spock, beyond a perfunctory note wishing him increased prosperity commensurate with the completion of another year of his life and a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment consistent with Terran cultural tradition. The snort of uncontrollable laughter that escapes his former CO was, perhaps, not the note's intent, though it's impossible to be certain.

As the sun sets, he finds himself restless and wanders to his window to watch the day disappear in a blaze of coral and crimson. A year ago exactly, the only light outside his office was a smattering of silver pinpricks against an endless sea of black, and he was only one year on the wrong side of 35, with a lifetime of possibility spread before him like the open arms of the galaxy. Now he's suddenly a man approaching 40 and the horizon has shifted, and though he knows that this is nothing more than a question of perspective - semantics at the very most - it feels… rooted. As though there's a truth here that goes deeper than day last year, he was cresting the top of a wave that had risen to incredible heights, but the months between have seen it break against the shore. And this was always going to happen, he's known that from the beginning - it's just that it feels as though it happened so soon.

It feels as though the past months have been a series of answers to questions that he didn't mean to ask. Look up from the command chair and feel a hooded gaze in the moments before your eyes confirm it, and there's possibility there; in a glance that lingers a moment too long; in the brush of long, musician's fingers against an arm wrapped in command-gold; in a continual, low-level battle to see who can risk the most to save the other. Chip away at layers of reticence, and there's promise there, bright and unexpected. Maybe it would have been better if it had stayed buried safely under fantasy - since he never really believed that there was a chance for anything more, surely it's better not to know that he was right? Confirmation rubs a little of the shine off memories that might otherwise have been warm and pleasant: the touch that could mean anything at all, the friendship that might be more, the hidden meaning in words that are never careless. If the answer was always going to be no, then maybe it would be better to have left it hanging, unspoken.

And then he remembers cool lips pressed without hesitation against his, the scent of skin and hair and fabric warmed by the relentless desert air, the taste of copper in his mouth… It's a good memory, and, if he thinks of it infrequently, that's only because it has the power, every time, to send him spiralling abruptly into desire and arousal, and there are very few places in his life right now where that sort of thing is anything other than embarrassing or inconvenient or both. If it's their only memory, then at least it's worthy of its disproportionately-elevated importance. So it's laced with threads of melancholy that tug a little tighter every time he stands next to his friend and thinks about what might have been. That will pass.

Everything passes, in the end. Including one's thirty-sixth year, and the day that heralds its end. The world keeps turning and the sun keeps rising, and the calendar in his head keeps counting down the days. Every setting sun is another day closer, and there's a kind of satisfaction in that.

Near the end of the month, Kirk's repeated requests bear fruit, and the interim report into the attack on Starbase 19 appears in his inbox, accompanied by an ill-tempered note from the Vice Admiral in charge of the investigating committee. It's an 8,000-word document, but so much of the material is redacted that sections of it resemble a Rorschach test, and what's left consists largely of several hundred different ways of saying damned if we know.

"What did you expect?" says Ciana when he voices his frustration. "They've got nothing to go on. And the prevailing suspicion is basically unprovable and beyond horrifying, so they're not going to make it official."

Kirk was not aware that any of the prevailing suspicions - a half-dozen races whose names are whispered sagely around the corridors of command with the horrified fascination of teenagers recounting urban legends around a campfire - were particularly plausible. But he says, "Can I ask what's being done to verify their theory?"

His CO leans back in her chair, tilting her head so that she's looking directly into his face. "Let it go, Kirk," she says. "If this needs to come to Xeno, you better believe I'll make sure it does. Right now, there's nothing you or I can do."

Frustration pinches his lips and he sees it register behind her eyes, even as he tries to contain it. She takes a breath, drops her eyes.

"I get that this doesn't come easy to you," she says quietly. "But, Kirk… they're chasing ghosts."

She knows him better than to think it's enough. She has yet to underestimate him. And he knows her well enough to understand that the quiet assurance with which she's asking him to take a step back indicates her access to more information than she's able to share with him. In the quiet darkness of his office that night, Kirk sits with a cooling mug of coffee and scrolls through the monochrome strips of text and and fat ribbons of black, scanning for any hidden nuance, any stray phrase or implication. Appended to the opening titles, in 48-point red lettering, is a stark note reminding the reader that the document in question holds classification level three, for all the secrets he could spill in any case from a document that takes such pains to say nothing at all. The Starfleet party line, fed to the holos by an admiral whose face is 98 percent smile, is that a coil malfunction within the central generator led to a catastrophic power failure that destroyed the central cortex beyond repair. Commodore Hansen is the 'Fleet hero who kept the residents safe until help arrived.

Ghosts, he thinks as he scans abstract patterns of black on white against the milky glow of his terminal screen. Smoke and mirrors. Chess. Roulette. An infinite jigsaw with no clues and no color but gray. Chinese whispers in a language he doesn't speak.

Investigations are ongoing, concludes the report. Kirk takes a gulp of lukewarm coffee and scrolls back to page one.

-o-o-o-

Vulcans, as Spock will undoubtedly remind him if Kirk's baser nature gets the better of him and he makes the half-dozen jokes that he wants to make, do not get excited. Nor do they experience fannish awe, which is certainly illogical, and probably emotional as well. But there's an uncommon glow to his friend's eyes as they exit the auditorium, and a relaxation of the muscles of his face which, while only slightly like a smile, might well qualify as near-hysteria on the streets of ShiKahr. Kirk knows he's grinning like a man with one too many Saurian brandies on board, but it's impossible to do otherwise as the spirited monolog that has accompanied them from their front-row seats, through the sparse crowd and out into the narrow quadrangle, enters its fourteenth consecutive minute and shows no sign of stopping. He can feel the weight of the past week's frustrations and compromises lifting from his shoulders as they walk, eased away by a relentless tide of infectious enthusiasm against which he has no defence. Kirk is certain that no-one else sees this side of Spock, and every time is a gift.

"However," says Spock, with a brief glance sideways as he's jostled by the rapid passage of a cadet who possibly didn't think quite so highly of T'Drega's seminar on the gluon signature of a hypothesized eleven dimensional warp bubble, "Should the Falstaff particle be observed in situ, this would open up several further avenues of investigation. It is possible, in fact, that the wormhole could be sufficiently stabilized that controlled, directed inter-dimensional travel might be achievable. Starfleet's own acceleration experiments are in their infancy, but the initial data would appear to correlate with T'Drega's posited mass transference field. As yet, it has only been possible to measure a seven-dimensional matrix, but if we are to believe…"

Starfleet's experiments, thinks Kirk. He'd be prepared to bet his Commodore's stripes that this is code for Spock's Side-Project, quite possibly set in motion one quiet Saturday afternoon while he was waiting for the computer to boot.

The day has been bright and dry and, though dusk has almost finished its lazy segue into night, the air still smells of sun-warmed sidewalks and basking leaves, even as the chill sea breeze rushes in to claim the darkness. Kirk carries his overcoat on his arm for now, but Spock is bundled tightly into his thick duffel, sinking into the brushed wool as though it's a forcefield to hold the cold at bay. This doesn't exactly mitigate the warm rush of affection that is massing and clamoring in Kirk's belly, and he has to leash the urge to reach out a comradely hand to his friend's elbow, as if the secret to keeping warm on a water-rich planet is the hesitant touch of a conflicted flag officer. So he folds his arms beneath the fabric that drapes them, and the sentiment finds its way out of him in a widening of his grin instead.

A raised eyebrow brings the lengthy exposition to an end, and the evening seems a little darker for it. "You are smiling," Spock points out.

"No," says Kirk lightly, which lacks finesse, because he is, but he's answering the covert accusation in those words, which no amount of logical reasoning will ever cause Spock to acknowledge. "Just a stray thought, Mr Spock," he adds. "Nothing more."

If Spock is feeling maligned, he will not hesitate to ask for Kirk's own opinion on the lecture; it's the kind of passive-aggressive logic-attack that has ever proved impervious to counter-maneuvers. That he doesn't is, perhaps, testament to the placatory qualities of higher theoretical physics and their effect on Vulcan forbearance, which something that the Captain of a multi-planetary crew either learns early in his tenure or else lives to regret. It's not that Kirk was averse to attending the symposium or that, left to his own devices, he might not have made his own way there - he has heard T'Drega speak before and, if her tone and inflection are something of a powerful sedative, her incisive mind and inspired theoretical conjunctions are like a scientific symphony that makes his brain buzz and raises goosebumps on his arms. It's more that there's a very specific kind of warm and comfortable joy to be had from the fact that Spock wants to be here, and that Kirk is doing something that brings that incandescent glow to his friend's eyes.

The urge to reach out, close the narrow gap between them with a casual press of fingers on rough wool, surges again, and Kirk grips his sleeves under cover of cloth.

They have reached the edge of the campus, emerging onto Fulton Street alongside the towering hulk of St Ignatius, whose ruined eastern bell tower stands out as a pointed reminder of the wars that almost tore the planet apart in centuries past. It would be logical to suggest flagging down a cab, sharing the short journey back to the Residences in easy conversation or companionable silence, but Kirk finds that he's unwilling to let the evening end just yet.

So he offers up an affable smile in the direction of a carefully expressionless face and says, "Plans, Mr Spock?"

An elegant nod. "I have none."

The answer jolts a pleasant shock in the depths of Kirk's stomach; he'd been expecting a rebuff. Hard on its heels is the realization that he hasn't got any further than the vague idea that it might be nice to do something, and that hazy suggestion doesn't really have anything concrete in terms of actual specifics to back it up. He glances along the street, hushed and lazy in the evening lull, and decides to come clean.

"Neither do I," he says. "What say we just walk and see where it takes us?"

They've done this before, along the unfamiliar streets of countless cities on countless worlds where Federation feet have never previously passed. Where security is not a concern, it's Kirk's preferred means of getting a take on a new people, and Spock has long since given up on his stone-faced disapproval; it's years since he's even called it illogical. As Spock inclines his head, soft-featured and genial, Kirk indulges, momentarily, that stifled desire to make contact, with the briefest touch of his fingers to his friend's elbow. It can masquerade as direction, a gentle instruction to follow his right turn and set off along the street that leads - he belatedly remembers - towards Golden Gate Park and the Botanical Gardens, where a series of Xeno domes maintain a variety of temperatures that dance around Vulcan-normal. Spock betrays no reaction beyond an alteration of his course in line with his companion, so perhaps it's Kirk's imagination that conjures up a frisson of non-specific energy as his skin brushes wool, like a minor electric shock in the bones of his hands and the base of his spine. A rapid, hooded glance at his friend's face reveals nothing but imperturbable Vulcan calm. Kirk lets his hand fall away.

They move unhurriedly along the broad thoroughfare, and Kirk opts to shrug on his overcoat, less to counteract the cold than to allow him to fold his hands safely behind his back and out of temptation's way. The passage of infrequent cars disturbs the air overhead, and Kirk glances up to follow their path, eyes drawn inexorably upwards towards the reticent sparkle of early stars against the indigo sky. In his peripheral vision, he sees Spock's gaze follow and, abruptly, drop. It's on Kirk's lips to ask about the starfield painted across the Vulcan night, the one he stared at with unseeing eyes on an evening that they never acknowledge, but the words die before they can draw breath. There are things that can't be said and questions that can't be asked; it's just the way things are now.

So instead he says, "You were telling me about your acceleration experiments, I believe."

Spock offers the non-committal nod of a Vulcan who has realized that the mask has slipped and allowed a bright flash of unbridled enthusiasm to shine through. "I regret that they have proved unsatisfactory to date," he says. "While the Marin County array is undoubtedly the most suitable planetside facility in this sector, Terran conditions in general are not ideal for the formation of the Falstaff matrix."

"Ah." Kirk plasters a grin he doesn't feel across his face. "Might this be further evidence of Human inadequacy, Mr Spock?"

"On the contrary," says Spock, who does not even deign to raise an eyebrow at the tone, "The gravitational discrepancies that inhibit matrical formation are directly linked to the relative youth of your planet." A beat. "It seems… unreasonable… to hold Humanity accountable for this."

Kirk purses his lips. "That's… magnanimous of you," he says. Quiet footsteps carry them forward a few paces before he makes himself ask, "And where might you find your ideal conditions?"

There is a moment's silence. Then Spock says, "The ideal environment does not exist."

It's - possibly - an answer to the unasked question, the one that tries very hard not to wonder pointedly once again about what the hell someone like Spock is doing cooped up in academia when at least ninety-seven percent of Federation Space would be more appropriate to his aptitudes and interests. But just in case it isn't, Kirk asks, "Presumably, some sort of offworld facility…?"

"It is conceivable that a deep space environment might be more suitable," says Spock slowly. And then he adds, "However, Starfleet's Terran facilities are immeasurably superior to those found in any field station."

Genuine delight, a mixture of amusement and creeping relief, lights the Commodore's smile. But he says, cheerfully, "I told you you'd get too comfortable in this teaching assignment of yours."

"Indeed," says Spock, which is neither a response nor an engagement with the manifest provocation embedded in the words. But it's not a denial either.

They cross the road at the intersection with Stanyan and skirt the border of Golden Gate Park. It's late for the dinner crowd and early for the theater crowd, but the thoroughfare is busy regardless: a constant stream of restless traffic that billows the cooling air and causes Spock to burrow more deeply into his coat. Kirk catches the subtle gesture in his peripheral vision and feels an inappropriate smile tug at his lips.

To cover it he says, lightly, "I guess we're going to the Park, then."

Spock inclines his head. "It would appear so."

A beat. "Is that all right with you?"

"I have no objection," says Spock mildly. Kirk glances at him, but he's scanning the street impassively, eyes canted towards the approaching greenery. "It has been my habit to make extensive use of the grounds whenever I have had occasion to spend any length of time in San Francisco."

A slow smile catches at the edge of Kirk's mouth. Funny how, even after five unbroken years of the man's company, it's still possible to come across these little morsels of brand new information, buried like hidden gems beneath the strata of familiarity. He says, "I didn't know that."

"There is no reason you should," says Spock, which sounds a lot like a barrier sliding into place. But the body language is wrong: he's not closed off or distant; there's nothing about his stance that indicates the violation of a hidden boundary.

Kirk hesitates. "Perhaps not," he says carefully. "It just… hadn't occurred to me." A covert glance sideways, and he risks a sly, "You. In the great Terran outdoors." A beat. "Voluntarily."

That earns him a full-scale facial lockdown, the one that firmly, and with great dignity, implies that the recipient has demonstrated illogic that's facile even by Human standards. Kirk thinks of it as the McCoy Glare, in honor of its usual target.

Spock doesn't sigh; not quite. But he says, "I believe I have expressed my appreciation of the natural sciences on several occasions."

"You have," says Kirk. Eyebrows arc in open-faced innocence. "I just thought you preferred to exercise that appreciation on planets where the moisture content was significantly lower."

Spock acknowledges the truth of that with a small nod. "Nevertheless," he says, "I find that there are many days on which the benefits outweigh the bodily discomfort."

"I see." Kirk purses his lips around the smile that rises relentlessly from some irrepressible spring of warmth deep inside him. "You're an example to us all, Mr Spock," he says, and enjoys the slow nod it earns him in return, as Spock manifestly tries to work out if he's being serious and what the appropriate response might be either way. The urge to reach out, to close the distance between them, to make some small physical connection, surges again, and Kirk twists his fingers tightly around each other, anchoring them in place. He says, lightly, "Would it surprise you to learn that I used to spend half my free time in this park myself when I was a cadet?"

"It would not," says Spock.

Kirk's eyebrows achieve the diagonal. "Oh?"

"I see no reason to find it out of keeping with your character," says Spock. "Confinement is not your natural state."

"Ah," says Kirk, and drops his head. He watches his footfall along the pavement for a moment - steady, measured paces in civilian shoes that make his feet look like they belong to someone else. He says, "You know… I haven't been back once since we've been grounded."

There's a short pause, a couple of seconds in which the absence of a response has time to become pronounced. Kirk looks up just as Spock breaks it with an even, all-purpose, "Indeed," but he's just in time to catch the sideways glance that accompanies it. It's brief, covert - furtive, even - and it completely repurposes those two syllables.

Bones would make some acerbic comment about the proximity of public gardens to a desk in 'Fleet Command, and the concomitant availability of the former to a man who spends every waking moment at the latter. Spock won't say that, and not only because he has cast-iron evidence of the fact that Kirk does, in fact, leave his office these days - and on a semi-regular basis, too. But, beyond the practicalities of the situation, Spock has always been able to hear the words that Kirk doesn't say, no matter how stridently he might protest emotional illiteracy. It makes it 100% harder to have an inconsequential conversation with him, but sometimes that's… not a bad thing.

They walk a while in silence. The street is busy, but the traffic stays above the high redwoods that fringe the road on either side, like nature's own sound-dampening field, and, through the thick brush, it's possible to see the glow of the Xeno domes in the near distance. The air is heavy with the scent of magnolia, drifting in waves along the narrow paths that lead through the trees. They turn off at random, setting out along a lamplit avenue edged with out-of-season hebe and budding mount vernon laurel, keeping easy time with the one solitary figure far ahead, shadowed by distance, with whom they share the road. Spock casts a scientist's eye over the foliage as they walk, and Kirk wonders if he's scanning it with his mother's voice in his head, or his father's. Son of Vulcan or son of Earth; maybe neither, after all.

Muted sounds of distant Human life filter through the copse, but on the path there's only the gentle clip of quiet footfall and the unseen industry of local fauna beneath the brush. Silence has never been a problem for them, but Kirk finds himself uneasy, in the absence of background noise, as though the hush presses in from all directions the longer it persists. He clears his throat experimentally, and it cuts through the oppressive quiet like a knife through cold butter. Spock glances sideways but says nothing, and Kirk finds himself wondering if his discomfort is as obvious as it feels.

He says, to cover it, "You know, I got another memo across my desk yesterday from Operational Command." A beat as he slides his eyes towards his companion to find, predictably, an eyebrow raised in polite enquiry. "Wanting to know why I wasn't recommending you for promotion."

It's almost certainly the wrong thing to say. He realizes this as the words escape, but, really, it was the memo or the weather, and he's not that desperate yet.

"Indeed?" says Spock, and it's hard to tell if that's an Indeed, please elaborate; an Indeed, let's get this over with since you're evidently going to proceed whether or not I offer my explicit permission and it pleases me to pretend that I acquiesce; or possibly an Indeed, and do we really have to have this conversation again? The first interpretation suits Kirk best, so he takes it as his cue.

"The ceremony has them antsy," he says with a wry smile. "I guess they think it looks strange. Most all of the senior crew are stepping up a grade. They believe it reflects poorly on Federal relations that the only non-Human member of the team isn't adding to his stripes."

There is a small pause - almost imperceptible, but Kirk has known Spock long enough to hear the equivocation buried in that slight hesitation. "I have never sought command," says Spock.

He's right, of course. He's a scientist above all things; promotion is useful to him only inasmuch as it provides access to better computers. And for all the layers of himself that he's gradually stripped away as friendship has grounded him more firmly in his sense of who he is, at a very fundamental level he understands neither Human nor Vulcan pack mentality. He cannot be what either people wants him to be, and he knows this, and part of him - the part that made Kirk fall in love so damn hard - has stopped trying. He should be a captain, for everything it represents, but it's hollow ostentation; it would close off some essential part of him for the sake of a paper exercise in vainglory, and isn't that, after all, what has Kirk tethered to a planet he'd thought he'd left behind?

He didn't phrase his reply in quite those terms; 'Fleet Command don't tend to think in abstracts and actual people. Instead, he reiterated the results of the Captain and First Officer's end of mission review meeting - and wasn't that just four hours of painful reserve and excruciating conversational lulls - and restated his strong recommendation that Commander Spock be allowed to bypass the usual products of Human excitability. He hopes it will be enough.

"I know," he says now. He tries a smile; it falls only slightly flat. "They'll just have to think of some other way to venerate your efforts."

Beside him, the temperature drops a couple of degrees. Kirk smothers a smile. Spock won't go so far as to openly disapprove of the ceremony, but he's made a couple of barbed comments about politically expedient ritual that are practically mutinous, coming from him. As they emerge from the redwood grove and circle around the Class P dome, which includes specimens from both Andor and Rigel X and therefore maintains an ambient environment that hovers in the mid-twenties and below, he says - not for the first time - "It is not logical to reward the performance of duty."

Kirk huffs a quiet laugh. "You've been in the service long enough to know that's not the way it works," he says.

"I swore an oath to uphold Starfleet's fundamental tenets and to abide by its regulations," says Spock stubbornly; or, at least, what counts for "stubbornly" in a tone that labors hard to excise all emotional nuance. "I have abided by that oath to the best of my ability. It is extraneous to unduly praise the exercise of my obligation."

"Obligation?" says Kirk lightly. "Mr Spock, I've seen 'the exercise of obligation' in action more times than I care to count, and it bears no relation to your performance on the Enterprise. If anything, the opposite is true."

"I see no reason to cast aspersions," says Spock, with an imperious eyebrow that might, once upon a time, have been convincing. These days, it provokes an unfailing burst of cheerful laughter that carries them around the curve of the polar dome and into an intersection of temperate Terran-normal plantation.

"Look," says Kirk, as they pass through dormant flower beds in every shade of green, nestled beneath the louring wall of static that separates the high-spectrum Class M dome from the rigors of north-Californian weather, "Neither one of us is happy with the situation, but it stands. We turn up, we shake hands, we pose for pictures. That is the performance of duty: hate it but do it anyway." He grins. "No doubt you had cause enough to reflect on that while you served on my bridge."

Spock's eyebrows arch as he considers the question. "Never to this extent," he says at last.

Laughter sputters out of his companion. "I'll take that as a compliment," says Kirk.

Spock inclines his head. "As you wish."

Kirk shoots him a sideways grin, which Spock studiously ignores. "'Not quite so illogical as Starfleet Command'," he says cheerfully. His skin tingles as the path leads them through the heat shields and into the dome. "That may be the nicest thing you've ever said to me, Commander."

This early into the year, the dome is at double strength and the temperature differential, as they emerge through the curtain of frustrated current - bubbling against every nerve like a shaken can of soda - is pronounced. Kirk sucks in a breath of heated air as sweat prickles uncomfortably beneath his shirt, and takes a moment to regret the impulse that made him shrug on an entirely superfluous coat. But a hooded glance towards Spock reveals a subtle relaxation of his shoulders: tension leaching from rigid muscles; a gentle easing of furrows in his brow; a small intake of breath which, in another man, might be a gesture of satisfaction. Kirk says nothing, and looks away before he can be seen.

The ground is uneven beneath their feet, desiccated by underground radiators that bleed the moisture from the soil and leave it cracked and friable, coated in a layer of fine, sandy dust. Paths feed into the dome from every direction, but the sculpted interior - high, louring rock formations shipped from distant worlds and fringed by irregular whorls of thick brush and straggly desert trees - locks the display ground into discrete sectors, divided by oxygen concentration, and linked by leaf-shrouded avenues that hide their occupants from sight. They strike out counter-clockwise for no other reason than that a flash of crimson glimpsed through the thick foliage to the left might be cadet reds, though it's equally possible that they are alone inside the warm cocoon of static and vaguely-confused verdure.

The air is thinner than Terran-normal in this section, subtly but palpably wrong in the Human chest. Kirk is aware of a tightness beneath his ribs as his lungs refuse to be persuaded that they're not slowly suffocating, and a gnawing buzz of muted anxiety from a disregarded section of his brain that remembers this sensation all too well. It doesn't help that he recognizes alem-vedik and g'teth between the spreading foliage, and he doesn't have to wonder too hard about where he might have learned the names of two desert-dwelling Vulcan plants. He clears his throat, a reflexive action designed to reset the sudden onset of inner chaos, and glances sideways at Spock. Fortunately, this gives him the opportunity to notice that, at some point along the path, the top two buttons of his companion's overcoat have found themselves undone.

Kirk buries the rush of amusement in an innocent arch of his eyebrows. "Acclimatizing, Mr Spock?" he says.

There is a short pause, as of a man who recognizes the tone and is considering his options. Presently, he settles for, "Somewhat."

A recalcitrant grin twitches one corner of the Commodore's mouth. "I'm glad to hear that," he says. "I was beginning to worry that our spring weather was getting the better of you."

An imperious brow scrapes Spock's hairline. "I believe it was the Terran author Mark Twain," he says, "Who wrote, 'The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco'."

The grin breaks free. Spock is almost certainly acutely aware that Kirk's fondness for classical literature does not extend to an encyclopedic knowledge of every word that ever fell from the pens of the authors in question, and there's simply no point in arguing with an eidetic memory. So instead, he says, "He should have tried Iowa."

Spock tilts his head, considering. "I understood the Iowan climate to be quite temperate."

"Did you?" Kirk laughs. "I guess that depends on who you ask."

"I have only my mother's opinion," says Spock, in the careless manner of a man who has no cause to know that his words are significant. "She visited several years ago."

Ah, Iowa. The remembered voice sinks like stone in Kirk's belly, slicing through the ambient heat to trail tendrils of ice across his chest and down his spine. I visited once when we were on Earth for several months…

But Spock was not there for that conversation; he was indoors with his father, locked in a battle of vicious politesse. He has no way of knowing that this is information that Kirk already possesses; that circumstances since have conspired to make it one of the least significant features of that evening, buried close to the surface where it drifts, disregarded but not forgotten. Or that a throwaway reference now is enough to catapult his companion back into that gnawing desire that ate at his reason for a long time - many months - and then, later, at a tender place, just below his ribs.

Kirk freezes his hollow smile in place, a thin veneer of composure that resists him all the way; his cheeks are already protesting the strain. But he keeps his voice light, casual, and he says, "Then I'll bet she didn't visit in winter."

"In August, I believe." Spock glances sideways, but it's impossible to tell if the gesture is meaningful; if it's a response to some nuance imperfectly ironed out of the Commodore's tone, or if he's simply glancing sideways. "I was studying at the time and could not accompany her."

They pass through a curtain of trailing uxgarash leaves that billow a wave of lemon-mint perfume into the stifling air, curling around the sharp, unmistakable scent of birkeen, hla-meth, a subtle undercurrent of favinit dancing on the thermals. Waneti weaves through the crawling shrubbery that fringes the path, and, ahead of them, as the path curves abruptly to the right around a monolithic pillar of hishid-kov, he thinks he sees the bright flare of yelas beneath an in-du-ka. The sense of temporal disjunction couldn't be more pronounced. All that's missing are the damn roses.

Kirk is aware that he's been silent too long even before Spock half-turns a quizzical eyebrow over his shoulder, but he wants to make damn sure that none of the images clamoring for attention against the inside of his skull bleed their way into his response. His smile, he thinks, is wilting around the edges, so he forces both corners of his lips into position, and says, as nonchalantly as he can, "Well. I guess when one is used to Vulcan weather, 90 degrees might count as 'temperate'."

It's not enough. He didn't really expect it would be, but he gave it his best shot. Kirk can feel Spock's evaluative stare even without looking, and, when he makes himself glance upwards it's to find dark eyes fixed on his, with an expression that would be unreadable if it wasn't for the fact that Kirk is expecting exactly what he sees there.

"Perhaps," says Spock carefully, though the man does everything carefully, so Kirk's not entirely sure what he's using as his basis for comparison. For a moment, it looks as though he'll add to this one, tightly-drawn, reluctant word and Kirk steels himself for an acknowledgment, a recognition that everything they say right now has a shadow-meaning, words buried beneath layers of semantics and double-think, equivocal and never quite in context. The knowledge flashes behind Spock's eyes - a fleeting moment of confession - and then it's gone, chased to the shadows by something that's part petition, part granite-faced obstinacy.

He nods, slowly, in response to a question Kirk hasn't asked. And Kirk realizes that this is as close as he's going to get: a tacit confirmation that Spock remembers too, that he thinks about it too, that he's read all of the sensory cues and that he is 100 percent aligned with where Kirk's memory has gotten itself snagged right now. And, hard on the heels of this understanding, comes the realization that everything, everything, depends on their joint ability to pretend not to know this.

A flash of pale skin, bleached white by the thin light of the Watcher, luminous against the creeping blackness of a desert night. He tastes of copper and pepper and heat, and the scent of him fills Kirk's lungs with every breath. His body is lean and hard and folded tightly against him as he presses them both into the wall, where affronted flowers protest the invasion in a cloud of heady, honey-sweet perfume…

It's a good memory. It's all they're likely to have, and so it will have to be sufficient to dampen down this spiralling need that pools in his belly and his groin, that tingles in the ends of fingers that simply want to reach forward and claim in the name of the vague sense of sadness and loss that burns the back of his throat. It's a good memory. And it only works if Spock remains within reach; cut him out of the equation, and it becomes the story of something precious gone forever. One day, he'll learn how to do this so well that it'll fade into the background and they'll simply be, without any need for repression or constraint. Not today, but one day.

So Kirk finds a smile from some hidden reserves of stubborn determination, and plasters it across his face. With a little bit of effort, he thinks he can make it meet his eyes. He smiles, and he turns it on Spock, and he says, "Undoubtedly, Mr Spock." A beat, but it's easier now that the decision has been made. "After fifteen minutes inside this dome, I think I'd find a 100-degree heatwave pleasantly refreshing by comparison."

"If you are uncomfortable…" says Spock, and a prickle of something dark and malignant worries itself into the hollow beneath Kirk's ribs.

But he takes a deep breath, which sears the inside of his nostrils and startles his lungs, and he says, "Perhaps a little. But it's nothing I can't handle." He steps back, gestures to the path spread out before them, twisting into the shadow of rock and greenery. "Shall we?" he says.