Title: Still Amok
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: jat_sapphire@yahoo.com
Series: TOS
Rating: [NC-17]
Codes: K/S, h/cSummary: Immediately after "Amok Time." Spock told McCoy and Kirk that "the madness" had passed, but his pon farr is not really over.
Archive: Please
Disclaimer:
Paramount in its glory owns the Enterprise, its crew and the space it flies in. I just visit, and I don’t make any money while I’m here.This story contains sex between men. If you are not yet 18, stop now. Don’t read. No, no. It also contains language unbefitting dress-uniform functions.
Feedback: I *pray* for feedback! I’m looking down and not seeing a net (or a beta reader).
Still Amok
Part 1: Protesting Nature
"It would be illogical for us to protest against our natures, don't you think?" ("Amok Time")
"--in a pig’s eye!" muttered Dr. McCoy as they walked to the door.Jim Kirk looked back, then clearly decided he knew a parting shot when he heard one. "Come on, Spock, let’s go mind the store."
And they were out of Sickbay, after another bit of banter of the kind Spock had just had time to feel he had lost, and now he had not lost it. Ahead, Jim walked with a little more spring, shoulders a little looser, than usual. He seemed to feel the same euphoria Spock did: a singing motion, like a stream in flood, pressing up under his lungs, carrying him along.
But no sooner were they in the turbolift than they heard the comm whistle, and McCoy’s voice spoke to them. "Jim, you aren’t really going to mind the store for too long, now, are you?"
"What do you mean, Bones?"
"Well, I’d say the both of you have had a pretty stressful day already. Don’t you think? You’re just patched up, Spock’s just calmed down--"
‘Calmed down’ was not how Spock himself would have described it, but he had no intention of discussing the matter. He relaxed the muscles in his shoulders, clasped hands behind his back, and waited, facing the shut door.
"Whoa, Bones," said Jim, "did I argue? There’s only an hour or so left of the shift anyway. Come on, I just want a little business as usual. Normality."
McCoy warned, "I’m coming up at the end of the shift. To make sure."
"Fine. Any other nagging to get out of the way before then?"
"Nothing that can’t wait."
"Then Kirk out." He rolled his eyes at Spock, who just looked back.
As they left the turbolift, the Bridge crew all looked up, then back to their instruments, as if choreographed. Spock wondered how they always seemed to know when their captain had been in danger; how, even, the inexpressive movement of their heads and eyes conveyed that they had known, and that they were relieved to see him unharmed. Uhura glanced up again as Spock passed her station, and he was surprised to realize that some of the relief was for his safety too.
Even his science station seemed to welcome him. A maudlin idea; still, he rested his hand against the side of the viewer for an instant before bending to look into it. And all the time, he was as aware of Jim’s movements as if he deliberately watched them: striding to the command chair with that light springy step, sitting down in it, brushing his fingers across the armrest controls--that supple, living hand! Spock could hear Jim’s breath go in and out, and each susurration added to that river in Spock’s mind. Jim was breathing, though a little unevenly, with a catch now and then. Breathing still.
The end of this duty shift (that "hour or so," actually one hour and 23 minutes, 39 seconds at the time Jim had spoken the words) went by in curious eddies; time dragged out, compressed; Spock felt curious gaps. But then, Spock had not experienced a normal day since—that would be Stardate 3371.5. It shocked him that he had had to actually stop and think, to know the date of his last full duty shift before he began to feel that his pon farr was upon him.
As it still was. He had told McCoy that the madness had passed, meaning the plak tow. The moment he had looked down at Jim’s unmoving, dirt-streaked face, the animal that had clawed through Spock’s veins and glared out of his eyes was gone. But the plak tow was for the challenge only; from the time of the Beginning, after the battle was won, the victor mated. McCoy’s habitual illogic seemed to have kept him from seeing the obvious. Jim seemed not to have thought the situation through either; but surely being half-strangled and passing through the effects of a neural paralyzer would not leave most men with the energy to sit in their chairs, much less pursue a logical thought.
Spock heard the lift doors open and McCoy’s footfalls as he came down to stand beside Jim’s chair. They began to speak, voices low, evidently believing they were unheard. Spock could always hear these conferences, so clearly that he suspected that the rest of the Bridge crew only pretended not to notice. As he was doing now, of course.
"How are you?" McCoy began.
"Just dandy," Jim said. "I don’t know why I haven’t thought of a fight with those ahn-woon things before. Great workout. Aren’t you always telling me to get more exercise?"
"Very amusing, Jim. Any wooziness? Shortness of breath? Sore neck?"
"No more than you predicted," Jim admitted after a moment. "Fine, really."
McCoy paused, presumably staring the truth out of his captain and friend. "We-ell," drawn out slowly, "all right, you have the spray I gave you if it acts up more. Now here’s what I want you to do about Spock…"
Jim said, "Why not tell Spock?"
"Oh yes, he’s mighty fine at taking care of himself. Especially lately. Come on, Jim."
Spock knew Jim had turned his chair to look back at the science station, and gazed unseeing into the viewer until he knew the golden head was turned away once more. Why did Jim hesitate? Why did McCoy keep urging against Jim’s resistance? Spock felt the dangerous irritation rise, and knew that he was still burning, still in that shameful state, not fit to be seen. Despair took him like quicksand, while he still heard McCoy’s and Jim’s voices murmuring, as if they spoke into his own ears.
"OK, tell me."
"See he goes back to his cabin and really rests. Get him to eat something. If he’s had more than a polite sip of that plomeek soup of Christine’s, neither she nor I have noticed it. And—"
"Yes?"
"You’re the only one he’d talk to before. Maybe he’ll tell you how long this goes on, and if there’s anything we ought to be doing."
"Goes on? He said it was over."
"He also said he wasn’t delighted to see you alive. So we know what that all’s worth."
"You mean--?"
"Think it through. Get him to rest and eat. Eat and rest yourself. Got it?"
"Yes, sir, Doctor, sir."
Spock was so keenly aware of them that he could hear the faint rasp as McCoy rubbed his face. "Look, I’m tired too." A pause. "Jim, we could still lose him."
Logically, it should mean nothing to hear McCoy say what Spock himself had been thinking, yet at the words a mindless fear sluiced through him. To be lost was what he feared, and saw coming toward him, and could not think how to avoid. McCoy clearly did not know either. The grief he heard in the doctor’s voice clutched at his own throat. Then Jim answered, his voice rough and weary, and Spock closed his eyes and ground his teeth together to force feeling back. He still could.
"That’s--still not what we came to Vulcan for."
"No," McCoy said simply, and Spock did not hear him say any more.
*Not what we came to Vulcan for. We could still lose him.* Spock could not stop hearing the words. His hand tightened on the side of the viewer until the plastic squeaked and shifted and he jerked his hand away, horrified. Spock stepped back from the viewer just as Jim came up to him.
"The end of a long day, Mr. Spock."
"Indeed, Captain." He realized that his beta-shift relief was waiting for him to leave the science station; Scott had the conn. Spock and Jim went into the lift, to Deck Six, and Jim led the way down the corridor to the mess. Spock didn’t know whether he could eat anything, but the exhausted determination on his captain’s face would have led him on to attempt far harder tasks than ingesting salad. They sat at one of the small mess tables and simultaneously looked blankly at the contents of their trays, then up at each other. This made Jim smile, then chuckle. "I’ll eat if you will," he said, his tone as low as it had been with McCoy; something unexpectedly vibrated in Spock with the sound. He looked at Jim, now, with the intensity with which he had listened to him speak to McCoy: Jim’s face was a yellowish pale, even the lips; his eyelids were pink and there were grayish circles around his eyes. The eyes themselves were darker than usual, and the lashes clumped together as if with the sleep he so clearly needed.
Spock thought he was beautiful.
He bent his head over his salad again, picked up the fork and jabbed it in blindly. He told himself, I thought he was dead, and he is sitting there alive. The cause is sufficient, surely. He put the fork in his mouth, where the greens sat on his tongue, tasting more like wet paper than anything else. He must not think about the taste; he must just chew and swallow.
Jim swallowed something too, and said with amusement, "You look like you’re chewing your cud."
"I fail to see," Spock began, "in what way this supposed resemblance to a …" and couldn’t think of the rest of the sentence. "I…" He began to panic; it was too much like the conversation of days before, when Jim told him he had committed an act of mutiny which he could not even remember, rerouting the ship to Vulcan when the captain had decided there was no time to stop there. Then too, his own tongue had betrayed him, hitting his teeth as clumsily as if they were foreign objects, stuttering.
"Yes," said Jim as if he had been speaking coherently, and on another subject than the metaphoric ox, "I want to talk about that too, but right now I am going to eat all of this synthetic meatloaf and you are going to finish that salad you are enjoying so much."
Against all probability, his voice calmed Spock; Jim’s transparent understanding of Spock’s state of mind somehow made it possible for him to go on putting the tasteless leaves and bits of root and bean into his mouth. He thought only of what he was doing, fork into bowl, then into mouth, teeth crushing, throat swallowing, esophagus pushing the food down to his stomach, all the steps again. Jim did the same, then began to talk softly, vaguely, intermittently, as if speaking to himself or to an object, as humans so often and so illogically did.
"Someday they’ll learn how to make something more like real food with those machines. What I’m eating is about as tasty as old boot. Well, my old boots would have more flavor… I gather that meatloaf was the first molecularly synthesized food known to man, maybe because meatloaf has such a generic texture anyway. I don’t much like it even when it comes from actual cows and pigs. You, on the other hand, are eating cutting-edge technology, if that makes you feel any better…I think I see endive, which for some reason is particularly hard to synthesize. And chick peas."
Spock suspected that if he were human he would have been laughing by now, or at least putting aside enough tiredness to smile. But he could not, any more than he could keep up his end of the banter a moment before. He had eaten nearly all the vegetables, however, and suddenly Jim pushed his tray farther toward the middle of the table and sat back in his chair, sighing.
"There, McCoy should be pleased with us." Spock’s eyes rose to his in surprise. "Oh, come on," said Jim, "don’t tell me your Vulcan ears didn’t hear every word he said to me." Spock looked at his plate again. "Now step two of the good doctor’s prescription is for me to ask you a lot of intrusive questions about something you clearly feel is none of my business."
Spock stood up, and his chair fell over. The sound of its fall stopped him before he could pick up the tray, and he froze for a second, then slowly placed his hands flat on the surface of the table, as if a weight had settled on his back which he could neither carry nor shrug off. Jim stood too, staring fearlessly into Spock’s eyes but saying nothing. Spock had expected anger, but the amber-dark eyes met his with a steady strength that held him suspended for seconds; then Jim said, "Pick up that chair; I’ll get the trays." And he did so, piling Spock’s dishes on his own and tucking the second tray under his arm.
Not until he had set the chair upright and looked around for Jim did Spock realize that the mess was full of people—not too crowded, but an ample number for the end of the alpha shift. Some of their gazes slid guiltily from his as he registered their presence. Realizing they had seen his loss of control, he waited for the wave of shame to wash over him, but it didn’t. Perhaps he was too tired. And here was Jim’s pale face returning as the captain threaded his way between tables. Reaching the table, Jim reached a tentative hand as if to take Spock by the arm, but let the hand fall again. Spock followed him out in silence.
They went, still without speech, directly to Spock’s quarters, and into the office area, where Spock stopped dead in front of the ruined computer terminal. Shortly before they reached Vulcan he had smashed it with his bare fist, the killing rage swooping up like vomit in his throat and moving his muscles without any consent from his mind--"Let me alone!" he had heard himself shout, a ridiculous response. As ridiculous as this immobility, when confronted by the evidence of something he knew perfectly well that he had done. Now Jim did touch his arm, tilt his head to look into Spock’s face, and Spock felt green heat climb from chin to forehead.
"Off switch not working?" asked Jim gently. "On the terminal, I mean."
Spock stood. He felt like a beast of burden worked too long. When Jim guided him to a chair, he sat docilely. Jim pulled the other chair out from behind the desk and sat facing Spock, their knees nearly touching, only air and silence and two cultures between them.
"Listen," Jim began at last, then paused again, then resumed, "I’m beat too. I won’t drag this out if you won’t. But you must realize if you think about it that if you’re still in—this estrus, this pon farr—we have to know about it, McCoy and me, anyway. *Have* to. Are you still in danger? Do you need to get back to Vulcan?"
"No," said Spock bleakly. "I think not."
"You *think* not?" Now there was some of the same irritation he had shown when the matter had first come to his attention, when it had just looked like Spock making unreasonable requests and refusing to explain them. Spock remembered himself standing beside the grille there behind Jim’s shoulder, telling Christine that it was illogical to deny their differing natures. Now Jim was saying much the same thing, and he saw its logic, and still the taboo was so strong that he had to close his eyes to speak…pretend that there was no real Jim listening, just an imaginary captain, perhaps a dream…he had dreamed this, hadn’t he?
"This was my first," he told the darkness, "and the time of true bonding, so I had to journey to the appointed place. Or die, as I told you. Then, in the challenge, I had to die or to kill. Then, had…the ritual gone more smoothly…" a soft sound like a snort reminded him of Jim’s real, corporeal presence and closed his throat on words for three full seconds, but then he recovered, "…I would have died or…mated." The last word was choked out, his throat and teeth and lips all fighting his will to say it, to be honest with this man who had risked death for him. Whom he was sure would now pull away, repelled.
"So…it’s not over because you haven’t mated," Jim said softly, matter-of-factly.
"Bonding is optimal. S-sex is necessary," Spock responded, hating the stuttering hiss emerging from his mouth.
"Hence the plomeek soup," said Jim under his breath. Spock’s eyes flew open. "Well, really, is it such a problem? Chapel aside, the ship is full of women who would be more than willing to help you!" The captain wore a thinner, wearier version of his famous rakish grin.
"It happens to the birds and the bees?" Spock quoted Jim’s own words.
"And to Starfleet officers. Frequently. Don’t tell me Starfleet officers are not Vulcans."
"The ones you are thinking of are not. I would have to start by telling them what I have told you." A swelling wave of ill-defined feeling made him raise his voice against Jim’s manifest skepticism. "No Vulcan could…no true Vulcan…!" He surged up out of the chair and Jim caught his forearms. He could have broken free, of course, but the touch swept away the confused rage that had made him stand. He collapsed back into the chair. Jim kept hold of his arms, and he was grateful. It steadied him. The human hands were cool on his skin.
"You *are* a true Vulcan," Jim insisted, knowing nothing about it, yet with perfect, ringing conviction. Spock turned his arms in Jim’s grasp and returned the grip. That made him feel steadier still. Anchored. He looked intently again at the face now closer to his own than ever, for he had pulled Jim forward as he sat down. Now their knees pressed against each other. Now Jim’s eyes looked leaf-green, and his pale face and golden hair glimmered in Spock’s sight. A current of emotion and vague, buzzing thoughts ran back and forth as they touched. So cooling, like rain falling into Spock’s parched mind. He sifted his mental fingers through the silk of these perceptions. Jim was concerned for him. Jim was angry at T’Pring.
"No," Spock said dreamily, "She said nothing of the kind." Neither of them realized the syntactic gap in the conversation. Spock saw golden glints in Jim’s eyes, like the amber color he had seen in the whole iris before. They really were amazing, those eyes. If he got closer--if he looked deeper—
"You’re pulling me into your lap," said Jim. "I’ll collapse in a minute anyhow. I have to get to b-- to my own quarters!" He let go Spock’s arms and pulled back. For a slow second Spock didn’t think he could force his own hands to open. Long enough for Jim to notice, and frown, and then Spock pulled up a last little bit of strength from some reserve he had not known existed, and pried his fingers apart. Jim stood. Spock looked at his hands as if they belonged to a stranger, and knew dully that they did. The stranger in himself, the animal that nearly killed Jim, now wanted nothing so much as to pull Jim onto his lap, into his body, to fuse them completely. And he could not.
"We both need rest," Jim said, but made no move to go. Nor did Spock stir. "Come on, that’s an order, mister. And a medical prescription, as a matter of fact. The last of the things McCoy told me to see you did." Spock raised his head, rose from his chair, clasped his shaky hands behind his back. The tremor was not nearly as bad as before the plak tow. The thought did not comfort him, for Jim was walking away, and each step seemed to tear something in Spock’s mind. He swayed with the effort of standing upright. His eyes clung to Jim’s back. Jim stopped in the door as it opened, half-turned, said over his shoulder, "You’re not going to die tonight."
Spock thought it was a question, though the tone was more that of an order. All the pain and weariness in him rose up and he wanted to shout *Yes! I’ll die now, when you step out, when the door closes! * But he listened to his heart beat in his side, the breath that moved in and out once in his lungs, and knew it was not literally so. The plak tow had drained him, almost quieted the mad hormonal rush of his blood. "I shall not die in the next several hours," he said. Jim nodded, then he did step out, and the door shut, and Spock closed his eyes and survived it.
Part 2: Burning
"I burn, T'Pau. My eyes are flame. My heart is flame." ("Amok Time")
Spock moved, step by step, around his cabin, absently going through the motions of his normal bedgoing routine. Jim’s cabin was next door. In fact, through this very bulkhead—he stared at it—Jim was presumably undressing just as he now was. Or perhaps brushing his teeth. Spock had a flash of imagery, a bare shoulder bent over the wash basin, the bright hair tousled—the boot he was holding fell out of his hand; he jumped at the sound. Unstrung, uncontrolled, undone. *We both need rest,* Jim had said. *That’s an order.*He had not expected to sleep well, if at all, but when he lay down the accumulated fatigue of days struck him like a phaser blast, stunned him into deep sleep. He lay, had there been anyone to watch him, with his head tilted back and arms and legs splayed, his dissolution written on his sleeping body. He stirred, quivered in his sleep, jerked one limb and then another at random, eyeballs rolling under their lids. His lips parted, closed, moved again. He rolled his head to one side.
Spock was dreaming. Bright, jagged shards of image, sensation, emotion, movement sparked through his brain like heat lightening: flashes of the stone arches of Koon-ut-kal-i-fee, of Jim’s voice, "I haven’t heard a word you’ve said," of T’Pau’s face, T’Pring’s, his own voice saying, "She is T’Pring--my wife," the punching of his heart below his ribs, the hot scent of the coals sizzling under Jim’s shoulder, rage and loneliness and pain and desire, the swing of the lirpa in his hands. The feel of the terminal caving in as he struck it again and again. The green tincture in his sight, the swelling in his lungs, as he rasped out word by word, "Ask me no further questions, I will not answer!" Jim’s eyes widening. Narrowing. Golden. Emerald. Steel.
And now he sank to a lightless depth where he barely breathed, lay like Jim in the strap of the ahn woon, limp, empty. He was a single drop lost in the ocean of sleep, and the tide pulled him gradually deeper, farther, then just as gradually pushed him back. His eyelids tightened; his eyes moved.
He dreamed he was the watcher. With the ghostly ease of sleep, he moved through the bulkhead he had stared at, into Jim’s cabin, to hover over the bed. Jim too had been restless: he sprawled, hair tangled, arms flung wide, sheet wound around his legs. His skin was flushed. A light sheen of perspiration picked up the faint light that sifted through the grille and touched his chin, his throat, his chest, his arms and legs, all bare.
Spock held out both hands, but somehow he could not reach that inviting skin, though it seemed so close. He stretched his arms and even his fingers; he knelt beside the bed, leaned forward, reached farther, yet Jim, unmoving on the narrow mattress, eluded him still. He knew he had dreamed this before, that if he got up and walked to the grille, he would be able to put his hand through it, like a ghost; that if he turned toward the outer bulkhead, he could push out into the darkness of space and hang there, impossibly breathing the sweet scent of stars. But he put off that part of the dream.
He felt time had passed; he needed to get to the bridge. He was in the corridor, striding toward the turbolift; the chill air swept over his skin, and he looked down and saw that he was not wearing a shirt or even an undershirt. Crew members walking past gave him a few sidelong looks, but showed little surprise, as if such a sight were not unusual. Spock kept walking, considering his options. He ought not to appear on the bridge out of uniform, yet his errand was urgent. Jim was waiting for him to take his station. He was on the other side of the saucer from his own cabin, and at least one level further ‘down’--suddenly he was not sure whether he was on Deck 6 or Deck 7. Deck 6, surely: hadn’t he just been in the mess?
He had stopped in front of the lift doors. They remained closed. McCoy, were he there, would say that Spock was in a ‘mess’ now; it was his kind of joke.
Again, for a moment, he was aware that he was dreaming. What had he done the last time he had been here? The lift hadn’t ever arrived. It didn’t look as if it were going to come now, either. He reached for the comm button on the wall. "Spock to Captain Kirk," he said. Bursts of static replied.
Spock could only think of a few conditions under which intraship communications would be down, and all of them required his presence on the bridge. He turned and ran for the nearest access ladder. It should be around this corner—yes, there it was. He began climbing. His bare foot slipped across one rung, and he realized that his shirt was not all that was missing from his uniform: he was now naked. He had no time to go to his quarters. Indeed, he seemed to be making surprisingly little progress on the ladder, which seemed to go on and on without ever reaching the next deck. It was very cold; as he climbed, the metal rungs, the drafts, even the touch of his own skin, seemed colder and colder.
His own shivering woke him while he was still dreaming about climbing, and he found himself damp with sweat, the coverlet fallen to the floor, his penis painfully hard, but his arms and legs hardly strong enough to move. It felt as though he had been the one given a neural paralyzer. It felt as though he were dying right at that moment. His intestines twisted with cramp, and a sour fluid seeped into his mouth. His head ached fiercely. He lay still, drugged with his own discomfort and misery, until the erection subsided. Then he managed to roll onto his side, where he rested a little, gathered his control, fought his aches and pains, and finally managed to slide out of bed, getting more or less to his feet and leaning against the mattress while he waited for the room to stop spinning around him.
A duty shift was out of the question. Standing up and walking was almost too much. He supported himself against the ledge below the grille, looked into his office, and saw the damaged terminal again. There was no way to contact the bridge. He would have to go into the hallway, at least. And for that, since he was no longer in the dream-Enterprise but in the real one, where a First Officer out of uniform would be a shocking and demoralizing sight, he would have to get dressed. He thought all this out, feeling as if his skull were full of water, and then began, very slowly, to move around the room, the reverse of his actions the night before, with even less confidence in his movement and balance, dropping things, misplacing them, eyes narrowed with effort, shaking in every limb.
When he was at last finished, he drew himself up as straight as possible and went out. He stopped outside the door as it closed, and tried to force his unruly brain to remember where the nearest wall comm was. Left? Right? How far? Two crewmembers passed him as he stood there, which he slowly registered as very little traffic; it must be early still. He felt it bitterly that he did not know the time. He was very ill.
When he tried to think of what to do, all he could imagine was to find Jim, who after all was probably still in his quarters. And his comm would be working. And the door was right here, a few steps only, which Spock knew he could do if he took it slowly.
He pressed the buzzer, and heard Jim say "Come," and the door opened, but he had no will left; he just stood. Jim raised his head from his paperwork and then jumped up, moved around the desk and said, "Spock! Come in!"
"Good morning, Captain," Spock said weakly, taking one step, then another, enabling the door to close.
"God, Spock, you look terrible!" One look, then Jim was leaning over the terminal, pushing the comm button. "Kirk to Sickbay. Bones, you there?"
"Partly," drawled McCoy’s voice. "Haven’t had my coffee yet."
"Do without," Jim said. "Get down here. It’s--that matter we were speaking about."
A slight pause. "Acute?"
"Yes--no, not--life-threatening. Yet." Another look at Spock. "I think."
Spock reflected that he must look even worse than he felt.
McCoy said, "Why not bring him down here?"
"I do not think I could walk so far," Spock admitted.
"Did you hear that, Bones?"
"I’ll be right there. His quarters?"
"Mine."
A pause; then McCoy’s voice was thick with amusement. "But Jim-boy, if he’s in your quarters at this hour, what do you need me for?"
Jim’s mouth twisted, with what emotion Spock could not tell. Yet he had not been disgusted by anything Spock himself had told him, and surely he must be used to McCoy’s sense of humor by now. Spock was so intent on Jim’s reaction that he never noticed his own lack of embarrassment or even irritation. Now Jim was shaking his head, which dislodged the lock of hair that always seemed to fall onto his forehead at the slightest movement; his voice was low and stern as he spoke. "Get down here, Dr. McCoy. Kirk out."
He tapped the comm again and spoke to the bridge, then to Lt. Boma in Science, who would replace Spock for this shift. Boma sounded stunned; obviously, Spock was the last person he had anticipated would need a substitute. Jim was short with him. When he turned to look at Spock, he still had that odd expression around his lips. "What are we going to do with you, mister," he said, as if to himself; Spock therefore did not reply. Surprisingly, Jim reacted as if he had been snubbed: his expression hardened, and he said in a sharper voice, "Have you eaten anything? I’m sure you haven’t."
"You are correct. I have not."
Jim nodded, already on his way to the synthesizer. He punched something into the controls, then took out a steaming cup.
"I never drink coffee," Spock reminded him.
"Soup," said Jim, handing it to him. "Carrot-beet-something, I forget. I figured you must be sick of plomeek by this time."
Spock sipped the broth, which was pleasantly bland. A little warmth began to spread through him. "In fact, I have never been very fond of plomeek," he agreed, discovering that he could keep track of his own sentence with a little concentration, "though it seemed discourteous to inform Lieutenant Chapel of my preference."
"Seems to me," Jim said with amusement, "that you did inform her—the first time she tried to serve it to you."
Spock had a flash of memory: the bowl splintering against the corridor wall, the soup dripping. "Ah, yes," he said slowly. "Then. I am afraid I was not thinking primarily of decorum at that moment."
Jim grinned. Spock felt a vast relief, though his hands were shaking, at the fact that he could play this simple verbal game once more. But for how long?
The door buzzed then, and Jim said "Come," and McCoy came bustling in. He was waving his medical sensor over Spock’s body before the door had completely closed behind him.
"Good morning, doctor," Spock said with mild irony.
"Hardly," said McCoy, not looking up from the instrument. "You’re a mess, you know that, Spock? More than usual, I mean."
Spock said nothing, having no constructive comment to make.
"And," McCoy went on irritably, even while he was adjusting the hypo, spraying, readjusting, and spraying again, "there’s not a single thing I can do about it. Is there?"
"It seems unlikely," Spock agreed, hearing the hiss and feeling the sting of a third hypo.
"Really, Bones?" asked Jim.
McCoy stepped back, and both men regarded Spock, who looked back as calmly as he could for the undefined fear coursing through him, as it had done while he listened to McCoy on the bridge. "Oh, I just gave him something for the fever, the intestinal pain, other symptoms. Might do some good in a superficial way. But I can’t cure his hormonal cycle, Jim." McCoy stared significantly at Jim, and Jim looked back with an impassive face.
Wanting the tension broken, Spock asked, "Will your ‘superficial’ treatments enable me to perform my duties?"
"Not right away," said McCoy. "No shift for you today, and that’s final."
"I assigned Boma," said Kirk. "It’s all arranged."
"My, my. A sick-day for Spock! The whole crew’ll think he’s dying."
Spock clenched his teeth, and succeeded in getting to his feet before saying, only a little breathlessly, "Not--a totally inaccurate assessment."
Jim’s impassivity was gone: his eyes blazed as if Spock had sworn at him. He spoke as if each word were forced out of him. "Nobody - around - here - is - giving - up!"
In the whirlwind of that anger, Spock bent his head and fought for balance; both McCoy and Jim rushed to him, each grabbing an arm, further disorienting him with the sudden rush of contact with their minds. Their emotions swamped him, and he shut his eyes, fighting his own. What did Jim want? Why was he so angry?
"Let’s get him to his quarters," said McCoy. "You belong in bed, Spock." A splash of amusement came through his touch and he added, "Resting."
Between the peaks of their emotions and the valleys of his physical weakness, over which he seemed to be rushing as if in some Earth carnival ride, he really could not walk, and indeed was so disoriented that he could not even register whether anyone passed in the corridor while McCoy and Jim were virtually carrying him to his quarters. What he did, thus belatedly, register was the state of his own feelings, cast up as jetsam from the passing waves of McCoy’s/Jim’s concern and anger and humor and sadness and anxiety. Only one set of hands burned through his uniform. Only one profile held his rapt attention. Only one exhalation in his ear made him think about feeling that breath puff against all of his skin--another dip of weakness bent his knees.
They lowered him to a sitting position on his bed, and then he said, though his head still spun, "Thank you--in a moment--I will prepare for sleep." This, as he had hoped, made the two humans step away.
"I’ll come back and check on you later," said McCoy. "Unless you’d rather I sent Nurse Chapel?" Spock just looked at him.
"Spock," said Jim, "you need a working communicator. Where’s your hand unit?" Spock gestured toward the drawer where it lay; Jim got it and moved it to the shelf beside Spock’s pillow. "I’ll let Uhura know you may be using it." He hesitated, touched Spock’s shoulder lightly. "Rest now." Spock nodded, a little reassured, and twisted on the bed to watch them as they went back into the office space.
He knew now what he wanted: Jim. He didn’t know what Jim wanted, and fear rode his lungs as he breathed.
McCoy, surely by design, stopped Jim before they left and said quietly, "Wait, Jim."
"What?"
"Jim, did Spock tell you anything? That I ought to know?"
Spock remembered Jim’s voice: *I haven’t heard a word you’ve said.*
"No," said Jim now, loyally. McCoy waited until Jim went on, "Nothing you haven’t already guessed."
"Well, what are you both planning to do about it? Just wait?"
Jim didn’t answer immediately; then he said, "Spock hasn’t told me his plans."
"And you don’t have any plans yourself? Just going to sit back and watch him get eaten alive by his hormones?"
Jim’s voice was tired. "You can’t--manage the condition? Synthesize what he needs?"
Spock, listening, mourned. Oh Jim.
"What an idea," said McCoy, between laughter and anger. "Why?" Kirk did not answer. "Oh, right, I forgot we’re talking about a man who was gonna die before admitting he needed some nookie like the rest of us. Crazy Vulcan. And now he’s got you going along with it. Well, let me tell you, Jim boy, I have not had any heart-to-heart chats with Vulcan doctors yet this morning. They might, just possibly, know exactly what it is he needs--but probably not. Don’t you think if Vulcans could take a little pill or a hypo instead of going crazy and howling at the moon, they would? It’d be standard issue to Starfleet Vulcans, I bet. Take two when you start feeling like throwing soup at the wall, and don’t call us in the morning. --No, don’t even start--" Jim must have begun to speak, but McCoy was well away. "Can you tell me what happens to *you* when you have sex? In medical detail? Come on, I’ll limit it, just the chemical changes in the brain." A short pause. "Exactly. Now I would assume, on the tiny bit of information you’ve seen fit to pass on to me, and working it out with what I’m sure Spock would tell me is inadequate logic, that something beyond orgasm is involved. If Spock could have made his hormones happy with a little quiet jerking off in his quarters, I’m sure you and I and little Miss Kal-i-fee would never have heard a thing about it! But what else is involved I can’t guess. Maybe it’s the magnetism in the ground. Maybe it’s a compound in her sweat--or somewhere, not to be coarse. Maybe it’s a telepathy thing. But I am not gonna be able to goddamn *synthesize* it!"
By this time, there was no pretense at lowered voices, and Spock felt no surprise when McCoy spoke to him. "Spock?"
"Yes, Doctor?" he answered, and they came back to stand near the grille, McCoy bouncing aggressively, Jim hanging back, almost in the office, stone-faced.
"Spock," McCoy began, then clearly changed his mind about what he had been going to say. Spock waited. "I usually say the wrong thing to you," the doctor admitted.
A human might have uttered a polite denial; a fully controlled Vulcan would have said nothing; Spock could do neither. "Not always," he said at last.
"Not this time, I hope." Another pause, then McCoy surprised him. "Spock, tell me about celibates on Vulcan."
"Celibates," Spock repeated, and carefully pulled one thigh up onto the bed. What was McCoy leading up to? "There *are* celibates on Vulcan." He spoke slowly, pausing between sentences, but for once McCoy showed no impatience. "The Masters of Gol, who have eliminated emotion, are celibate and unbonded. They have a special discipline, Kolinahr, which among other effects, prevents pon farr." He had said it, and to McCoy, and felt no shame. He wondered what was happening to him so swiftly, and whether he would live through it to face its consequences. "There are also bonded persons who do not choose to have sexual relations. With a bond, there is apparently--less danger. After the first time."
McCoy nodded. "But yours," he said very gently, "is the first time. And you are not yet bonded. So those are not workable options for you."
"You are correct." Still in the dark, Spock could only trust McCoy, and found it easier than he would ever have guessed before.
"If you could choose," McCoy pressed him, "would you—-what would you choose?"
Involuntarily, Spock’s eyes went to Jim’s shadowed eyes. "I would choose to live," he said hoarsely.
McCoy stepped around Jim, who did not move, and said, "I suggest you gentlemen talk about that," and left. Jim turned his head after him, but the door’s closing sound stopped whatever words had been on his lips.
Part 3: Transcending Discipline
"Captain, there are some things which transcend even the discipline of the service." ("Amok Time")
Spock, looking at his captain’s profile, knew one of those moments which were like a refocusing of his personal sensor array, a locking of the phasers of his attention. Jim Kirk seemed the only living, was certainly the only important, thing in the room. His glinting eyelashes, the quirk of the muscle beside his mouth, the pulse of blood in his throat, ah, and now his adam’s apple moving in a swallow--these struck Spock’s awareness with the force of blows. *My heart is flame,* he thought. Fever moved in waves up into his chest, down into his groin, not the lava heat of plak tow but an annealing fire that poured strength into his limbs. Jim’s head turned back, and Spock saw fire in his eyes too, but even as he drew a wondering breath he realized that the emotion he saw was not--or not simply--desire."It didn’t seem like you were choosing to live. Up through this morning. Up to now. It looked like, it felt like you were choosing to die."
*I choose you,* Spock wanted to say but instead blurted, "You are angry."
"Damn straight! Spock--" Jim took a pace forward, came up against the end of the bed and stopped. His hands were clenched and a little lifted; Spock felt the aura of his anger troubling the air, and felt he would never understand. But Jim looked baffled too, through his anger. "Spock, how *dare* you?"
Spock dared no more than to hesitate for a breath, and it was almost too long, as he realized when Jim’s nostrils flared. "Explain," he said, and realized he had not improved matters.
"Explain! Spock, for God’s sake! You didn’t think, a week ago, that I’d want to know about this beforehand? You didn’t think I’d care whether you lived or died? You--" something broke in him, it seemed; he looked down at the coverlet and said simply, "You were in trouble and you pushed me away."
"I was in trouble," Spock said, "and you saved my life."
"For how long? For *how long*?"
Spock dared more now. He reached out with a hand that miraculously did not shake; he touched Jim’s fist, slipped his fingers around it, looked up to meet those amazing eyes. "Enough time," he said. "Now would be enough." The blood in his veins was singing. He felt as he had among the stars in his recurring dream, outside of time, reality, logic. The fist he held was relaxing, and he drew their linked hands nearer. "Jim."
Jim reached for him, stroked the side of his face and up into his hair, but Spock still could not read the expression of his eyes: dark, dilated, they were still curiously blank when they met his, and his thoughts were no less clouded. Yet Jim slid one hand up from his wrist and the other down from his face until both hands gripped Spock’s biceps. "Spock," he said at last, "This is all wrong."
Spock felt himself falling in shock, felt ice on all his skin, and shuddered. But Jim’s hands gripped even tighter, bringing him back again. "I made a promise to myself," he said, hands flexing, not shaking Spock exactly but pushing and pulling him back and forth. "Now I’m breaking the promise. Breaking my promise, and saving your life--but I can’t save the life we both had, the command team we were--god damn it! Everything’s going to change! Isn’t it?"
Spock braced himself--his vertigo was gone--and peeled the hands from his arms, held them tightly. "Yes," he said, and held as Jim tried to pull away. His mind was clear, his body obeyed him, and passion ran through him like current. He had no doubts left. He understood pon farr and the man before him and the dark places of his own heart.
No, it was never meant to be madness, never simply madness. Perhaps he saw that all the more clearly for his halfbreed heritage, or perhaps it was a different experience for him than for the fullblood Vulcans. He thought not, but resigned himself to never knowing, since it was not discussed. But just in this last hour, how many wild waves of emotion had he ridden? On Vulcan they would call that ride insanity, but feeling it, Spock knew he was sane. The denial and silence he had been trapped in, that was unbalance beside which his present state was equilibrium itself.
He smiled, taking pleasure in the unusual stretch of his facial muscles, and heard tenderness in his own voice as he spoke, and felt the bittersweet touch of Jim’s conflicted mind. "Is this James T. Kirk, the man who rewrites the rules, for whom there is always an alternative, saying that he cannot bear the thought of change?"
"This change." Jim‘s voice was low. "Counting on you—-is second nature to me now. If I ever had to stop--"
Spock leaned forward, pulling Jim’s hands apart, breathed the words, "Do not stop." And placed his lips on Jim’s.
He had never kissed a lover: Jim’s mouth showed him how. He had never, even when he had touched Jim in the past, felt anything like the magnetic pull of the cool, human skin against his—-never, he began to think, felt anything at all, for the very air stroked him now, caressing even the insides of his lungs as he gasped: "Jim!"
He grasped Jim’s waist and lifted him up onto the bed, really pulled him onto his lap, buried his face in the hollow between neck and shoulder. Jim let him have a few seconds of this comfort, then twisted out of his arms. Spock would not hold him against his will--even as he slid tormentingly over Spock’s erection--but neither could he force himself to take his hands away from Jim’s body, so that when Jim stood again beside the bed, Spock’s hands restlessly rubbed the sides of Jim’s neck, slipped into his collar, brushed back along the line of his jaw.
"If we’re going to do this--" Jim began, and all Spock’s muscles tensed at the "if." Jim slid his hands along Spock’s forearms to his frozen hands and stroked them. "I want this," he said, "Of course I do. And you--you *need* it, my friend. I only meant that--well, it’s not the way either of us usually spends alpha shift. Not my original plan for the day. I need to get a few things from my cabin, tell Chekov he has the conn. I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’ll be all right?"
"No," said Spock, surprising himself; he had expected to say yes. When had he not said yes to this man? And now his hands were gripping Jim’s shoulders, if not painfully then at the very least with a dominating force which Spock knew would not be welcome. He could not stop. Perhaps this *was* madness. He pulled Jim toward him again, and with widening eyes Jim leaned back and seriously resisted, braced his hands against Spock and the bed and pushed, and Spock still could not stop. The muscles stood out on Jim’s arms. Yet centimeter by centimeter he came closer, and his expression edged as slowly toward panic.
"Kroykah!" Jim shouted, and Spock’s hands dropped. When he raised them again it was to cover his own face. For a long moment all he knew was horror. Then Jim’s hands touched his gently, pulled them away; Jim’s arms held him, and his head rested on Jim’s shoulder. "It’s all right, it’s all right, nothing happened, you stopped," Jim murmured. Spock shuddered with the conflicting imperatives to hold him and to let him go. He managed somehow not to move his hands; they lay on the bed where Jim had left them, like inanimate objects. Jim was still talking soothingly to him and rubbing his back, sparking his nerves as if with static electricity. "Now I know, I won’t be --surprised-- like that again, my friend, I know I can stop you if I have to, and you know you can stop yourself. Come on, Spock, come back, it's all right, I’ll just be a minute, you don’t think I want to go anywhere? Just wait a little, I’ll be right back, trust me, trust me, will you really be all right?"
"I will," Spock promised, not at all sure, and not at all wanting to sit and wait, but willing to promise anything to Jim just now. Jim stepped back slowly, and Spock leaned forward, but only a little, and his hands lay still on the bed. Jim’s touch was gone; he had turned away; his footsteps receded; the door opened and shut. Spock was alone.
He held himself perfectly quiet, did not allow himself to gasp for air, or weep, or shudder--or think of what had nearly happened. After some blank time, he thought dully that he had not showered that morning. If he was strong enough to--his thoughts whited out--he *was* strong enough, anyway, now, to shower without endangering himself somehow; in any case a sonic shower was much less dangerous than a water one. And it was something to do. He rose and walked without dizziness. He undressed in the bathroom and stepped into the shower cubicle.
He could not walk away from his own mind, however, and it taunted him with his recent epiphany. Understand himself? Perhaps, but he could not control himself. Understand Jim? That did no good if he could not touch him gently. Understand pon farr? What difference did understanding make?
Though the sonics did not require it, the shower was equipped with air nozzles that blew warmly at him from all directions. He supposed the air functioned to remind humans of water, or to comfort them a little in the way he had observed a water shower to do, or simply for pleasure. So sensitive was his own skin that any stimulus, much less this one, magnified his arousal. He touched his thighs, ran his fingertips over his own muscles to his penis, and remembered McCoy’s voice--*a little quiet jerking off in his quarters*--and stroked from base to tip while images of Jim filled his mind. If only this were all he needed, if he could thus release the emotions of pon farr, and keep these heavy hands to himself.
"Hey," he heard Jim’s voice, and it shocked the breath out of him. He whirled around and caught himself against the walls of the cubicle. It was unbelievable that he had not heard the doors. And this situation was unimaginable, himself naked, Jim clothed and with exactly the same smile which he had seen in his fantasy. "Save that for me," he teased, and stepped forward to run his hands over Spock’s chest, down his belly, over his hips, pulling them together so that Spock’s naked erection rubbed against the cloth of Jim’s uniform trousers. Spock turned his face against Jim’s hair; his hands stroked up under Jim’s tunic; his hips moved back and forth against Jim’s, feeling the straining movement of his erection under the cloth. Unbearable to be so close and still separated. Spock ran his fingers under the waistband of those interfering trousers and said, now into Jim’s neck, "I am going to undress you."
"Yes," said Jim. "I’m going to take you to bed."
"Yes," said Spock, smiling, playing along. "I am going to touch you everywhere."
"Yes. I’m going to kiss your cock."
"Yes. I am going to learn how you like to be kissed and return the favor, again and again."
"Yes. I," Jim paused to pull his tunic over his head, "am going to be the best lay you ever have."
"Yes. Yes. Yes." Spock picked him up, half dressed, and carried him through the office to the bed. After a few startled, random movements, Jim had given in and begun teasing Spock’s mouth with his own. They ran into the desk, but made it into the bedroom with no further injuries.
Their sex was a firestorm of Spock’s emotion over the oil-slicked water of Jim’s. The metaphors were as persistent as the real experience, the incredible undreaming touch and taste of Jim’s skin, his nipples, his cock, his buttocks, his spine, his ears, his hair, his eyelashes, everywhere Spock had seen, everywhere he had imagined. Oil and water. Water and fire. They used the lubricant Jim had brought from his quarters, and Spock was so moved by the feeling of Jim’s anus enfolding him that he again had the impression that his brain had whited out, an exploding star, language and thought gone, time and reality gone. Oil and fire, except that the oil was not consumed--the fire was. After this fast orgasm, he turned to learning Jim’s responses, and saw him shudder and leap, and heard his voice as he had never before known it could sound, soft and rough, pleading and demanding, not at all how it had sounded through the bulkhead on those occasions when Spock had overheard him having sex. Spock wondered what that meant and put the wondering aside. He could not tell exactly what Jim was thinking, but knew that he never lost the power of thought as Spock had briefly done. And he knew that Jim’s strongest emotion in the aftermath was relief.
Jim lay against his side, relieved and relaxed. Spock did not move, and though his breathing was abrupt and deep, so was Jim’s; the rhythm of his breath was even, and what he felt was his own affair. After too short a time, Jim sighed, sat up, and turned to look down at Spock’s wide eyes and unmoving face. His own expression changed, and Spock knew he had been caught. A cool touch at the corner of his eye-- moisture glimmered on the pale fingertips as Jim lifted his hand.
Spock knew a word of pity would destroy him, and was profoundly grateful when Jim did not speak. Instead he simply rose and dressed, and then returned to the bedside, leaned down, and kissed Spock lightly. Then he left. Spock gazed up into the shadows that moved and swirled above him, too far away to touch.
--end--