Title: Coals of Fire
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: jat_sapphire@yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17
Codes: K/f, K/S
Summary: Set between "Amok Time" and "This Side of Paradise." What happened after the president's inauguration on Altair 6. Sequel to "Still Amok."Archive: Yes, with these headings.
Feedback: Please. It's long - fine with me if you tell me about just part of it.
Disclaimer: Paramount owns the services of many fine lawyers, the Enterprise, Kirk and Spock and the rest of the Enterprise crew, Decker and the Constellation crew, Admiral Komack, and the backstory of three starships and the inauguration at Altair 6. The rest I made up, with no remuneration but kind feelings. Unless Paramount wants my cat and my old Enterprise blueprints, there's no point in making a fuss about it.
Author's Note:
This is, as advertised in the header, a sequel to my first posted story, "Still Amok." Though the events of that story are pretty much recapped here, I certainly don't want to discourage anybody from reading it too: hence the link.
After I posted "Still Amok," I kept wondering what would happen next. There's a lot of it, and I would never, *ever* have made it to the end if it were not for my staunchly supportive betas, who never once said, isn't it finished yet, or my god it's so long, or I have seen this before, in fact many times. Islaofhope and T'Aaneli *have* seen it many times. At one point I felt I had sent them every comma as it left my keyboard. For their patience, unflagging enthusiasm, and brainstorming ideas, I cannot thank them enough. After I began to feel truly liable for charges of beta abuse, I pulled in Rabble Rouser, who with T'Aaneli told me what "security precautions" could mean, and then Animasola; the last two reassured me that even people who had not been in constant attendance on the story could make sense of it. (But I got stubborn about Spock's boots. They lace up in "This Side of Paradise," darn it. They *do.*)
There's a passing resemblance here to Jungle Kitty's write-an-episode challenge, though I can't really say it was written in answer to that, and I have messed up her criteria: there's a Sickbay location here which we never saw as a set on the show, the K/S plot is the main one, and Act IV is longer. But I did use the Prolog/Acts/Epilog structure, which was a help (thanks, JK!). And the guest star. The voice of Aulua Jiilau has been played for my mind's ear (if there is such an organ) by James Earl Jones.
Oh, for anyone who hasn't as yet guessed, there is sex portrayed in this story, both gay and het. Anybody who strays onto an archived version and isn't supposed to be reading it, please go away.
~~~~~
Coals of Fire
~~~~~
Prologue: Never Quite Amok (Jim Remembers)
He frightened me, and that was very hard to forgive. He had been frightening me all along, from the time Chris Chapel ran screaming out of his quarters and he stood in the doorway, where he never stands, shouting, which he never does. There was none of the covert warmth I'm used to seeing in his eyes. He was a stranger, wearing my best friend's face.I buried the feelings, just went on, eventually dragged the information we needed out of him, and of course that made me angry too. Damn him, there he sat behind his desk and he wouldn't even look at me, and I wanted to strike out at him. "You've been *called* the best first officer in the Fleet" - I gave that compliment like a fist in the face. And I was glad of it, glad to hurt him, in some dark corner of my mind.
For god's sake, that bonding of his wasn't even in his personnel file! I checked. That week, I must have checked and checked again five - no, six times. I felt betrayed.. My friend was married, or nearly, and I didn't know. He didn't tell me.
And then the ceremony, the marriage challenge, and I thought I was over the anger, but when I had to fight him I was . . . not entirely sorry. And then I was purely fucking terrified. He *hated* me, I could see it, it burned out of his eyes the moment he got that weapon in his hands. This wasn't a performance. I couldn't control it. He *wanted* to kill me, and he was strong enough to do it.
When I woke up in Sickbay, my clothes - I've never had that happen, never before. McCoy took it in stride: "Jim, you've seen people die all right, too many, but you haven't cleaned up after dead bodies. You *were* dead, Jim, or near enough. Sphincters relax." But it wasn't him, lying there in his own shit. And to tell the cold, absolute truth, I am not sure it happened *after* the neural paralyzer.
I was not feeling close to Spock. I was glad that he was back, of course, and that I was alive and that we had the chance to go back to the good part of our friendship. But then it became obvious that the pon farr wasn't over. He still needed sex, or he would still die. And it was also pretty obvious who he wanted. It's not that I had never thought about it. I have. I've looked at him. I'd seen him look at me from time to time, too, and yes, I fantasized. And no, I wouldn't have started it then, maybe never. Some captains work with their partners; some couples and married groups join Starfleet together; I've married people myself, some in the same chains of command. But *I* don't fuck my officers, and that's just all there is to it.
But then there was no choice, and I didn't much like that either. I hate having the decisions made for me, especially by fate. I really hated facing Spock, feeling his hands on me, seeing him so close to meltdown, when I had never changed my mind about how bad an idea this was in the long run. And he wasn't letting go. A good thing I remembered what T'Pau had said, the only word that got through to him even through the blood lust. Works on ordinary lust too. So I knew he wouldn't hurt me by mistake, and I really, really hated having to feel relieved about that.
While I was getting dressed, I kept looking over at the bed, and he never moved, except his ribcage: it raised, held, lowered, held again, like a breathing exercise. Like someone decompressing after a long dive. Like someone so damn miserable he could hardly stand to live.
There was just nothing in my head. Nothing to say.
I want to go back. Undo it all. That day it all started, when McCoy stopped me and I was so impatient, thinking I had so much to get through and all of it routine, and then the soup bowl came flying out Spock's door . . . before that.
Instead we have to keep going, to Altair 6, joining two other starships and celebrating the President's inauguration. I don't feel like celebrating anything. We'll be there in a few days, and I . . . I feel . . . I can't tell. There's too much, and it's too confused. I need some time. I need to find my normal life again, and I don't have much time to do it.
~~~~~
Go on to Act I?