you used to be able to fall off the edge of the world, here

by justalittlebit

Chapter 2: Part Two

Jim wakes up and he doesn't remember falling asleep; he remembers kissing Spock and he doesn't remember stopping, and so he thinks they must have fallen asleep like that which is not what Jim normally does when he has gorgeous marine biologists on his bed. Granted, what he normally does has never actually ended well, but that is almost entirely beside the point.
This time, though, he wakes up dressed (mostly) and with Spock's arm trapped up against his back and Spock's breath hot on his neck, which is wonderful. Jim rolls over, and he must wake Spock doing that, because he's looking into Spock's eyes and he feels like a teenaged girl (or Bones; this is what he imagines Bones is like in bed, not that he's really spent a lot of time thinking about that). And so Spock kisses him which wasn't what happened at all last night, and Spock's all curious when he's doing it, and he's on top of Jim, which is sort of nice. It's like Jim's being tasted and Spock's almost - it's not like he's judging him, it's like he's categorizing him. Which makes Jim think of krill, which is not precisely the sexiest thought he's ever had, so maybe it's a good thing that that's when Spock pulls back.
"You have things to do today," Spock informs him, before leaning to down to kiss him again, still tasting him and this time Jim manages to not think about crustaceans, which is awesome. He manages to just think about the feel of his hands on Spock's back, the smoothness of Spock's skin like this (and how did he get Spock's shirt off, but not his pants? He disappoints himself in so many ways).

"Yeah," Jim says, finally, when Spock has apparently decided that air is more important than kissing Jim. "I've got you to do."

"Whoever told you that you were funny," Spock tells him, managing to sound really smart for someone who is quite clearly putting all of his brainpower into not thrusting against Jim's hand, which has slid down his pants in Spock's time of distraction (it's a skill) "was lying to you quite egregiously. Perhaps after you are done dealing with the current crisis you could find them so that I could have them punished?" Then he rolls off the bed.

"Seriously?" Jim whines (and maybe he just is a teenaged girl, but that deserved whining), and Spock nods, and then - relenting, possibly, or maybe just knowing that it was the only way Jim will get out of bed - kisses him once more (and ends up on top of him on the bed; it's not like Jim's unskilled or anything).

"You do have other things to do," Spock says, after, and shoos him out. "We will do this again."

And they do. Jim just doesn't get to be the aggressor, like, ever.

And he's not complaining - he really likes making out with Spock. Really, really, a lot. And now he gets to do it a lot. Spock has a really amazingly wicked tongue and it can make up for a lot of his general Spockness when it's given a chance. Not that Jim necessarily minds most of the Spockness.

What he minds is that he can't predict when he'll get to touch Spock. He is apparently not in charge of making out - he initiated it the first time, and apparently he'll never get to do it again. Not that he's really tried because Spock's always there first, which would be great if he thought it was that Spock was desperate for his body. But he mostly doesn't think it's that (well, he thinks it has to be a little bit that). It's just this feeling he has like he has to wait for Spock to take the next step. And it's like no matter how much he tries to force himself to do start things with Spock, he can't quite get there; everything he'd normally do feels like it somehow isn't the right thing to do next, and now he's got the idea that Spock would know what that right thing would be. Which is, of course, ridiculous because it's Spock and about half the time it's like Spock isn't even from the same damn planet with the way he acts around people, so of course Spock doesn't know what to do next.

Jim kind of wants to ask Bones, the most cynical man on earth, since Bones thinks he can figure everyone out in about ten seconds and Jim needs the certainty of Bones thinking everyone's an asshole right now. He could also ask Uhura, who might actually give him the right answer, or tell him what to do or what he was feeling, but he thinks there'd be an ass-kicking in it somewhere.

And it's not that it really irritates him, they're still doing stuff and it's great stuff, but he feels like the girl And yes, he is all about the sensitivity and he gets that there isn't supposed to be a girl. But if he was allowed to talk about this to anyone he would still tell them that he's the girl and that being Spock's girlfriend really fucking sucks. Because he's the girl, and so he has to wait for stuff to happen to him, and then he gets to decide whether or not he wants it to keep happening. In case Spock was wondering? Jim wants pretty much everything to keep happening. Forever.

But there is no forum in which he can say that because the only time they actually talk about their relationship is about four days after it starts when Spock pulls him into what is theoretically a pantry but what is mostly Bones' spare needle closet. Jim's always really freaking nervous when he has to go in there (which is, yes, OK, mostly for hiding from Bones or that one really awful week every January when he has to do inventory and he's normally lost a bet just before and so he has to do the medical inventory too, and he does suspect Bones of cheating, but Bones never actually does a count when he's supposed to do it, he just makes a list of stuff he wants, like a kid writing to Santa). The thing is, though, that Spock tricks him into the closet by backing him up against the wall and sucking a bruise into his neck (which he's going to have to cover with a hoodie for fucking days, but he can't actually bring himself to ask Spock not to). Point being that when Spock announces that they need to come to an accord, he's already nervous and horny and generally not in the sort of state he wants to be in to come to accord with Spock about anyone. Or to carry on a conversation in fluent English with anyone.

"An accord? It's hooking up Spock, not the Treaty of Versailles."

"Which was, overall, historically unsuccessful."

"Sex is mostly successful, well, I mean, I guess that depends what you think the goal of sex is, because if it's impregnation then I guess you and I'll be pretty huge failures, so maybe that's a problem, but if it's pleasure than I think I can probably do that. You know, unless you pulled me in here to tell you're a eunuch or something - are you? 'Cause that'd actually be a really good reason why I've never seen you naked and they can still get -"

"Captain."

Jim pokes him hard in the side to remind Spock that this is a first-name time. Not that there isn't some hotness there, but he's pretty sure that Spock and roleplay were going to be mutually exclusive concepts. Spock would have too many questions and probably stop in the middle of like, a blow job, to point out a plot inconsistency in Jim's fantasies and so it would be best never to try.

"You are babbling. It is not attractive," Spock continues, as if he had never been poked at all.

"You think everything I do is attractive ," Jim argues back, and looks up through his lashes to emphasize his point. It's been four days, and he's already figured that this and his really atrocious habit of chewing on his knuckles when he's waiting for something get him up against a wall really fast. Spock's hand, at his hip, tenses. Jim wants bruises from those fingers - it's a really good fantasy, Spock marking him all up, and then resting his hand there during the day and no one else would know, but Jim would. In his fantasies, there's a lot of casual touching. Jim has this whole policy about not examining what gets him off, so he doesn't think about it at all.

Spock sighs, once, heavily. Spock, Jim is beginning to think, finds Jim to be a great burden on him, and possibly on the world as a whole. That's actually kind of fine - it's how Bones sees him, and Jim's pretty sure that under there somewhere Bones adores him.

"Be that as it may," Spock says, still sounding more controlled than he normally does - which means that he's horny or exasperated or murderously angry or all three, "There should be some sort of conversation if we are going to continue to-" there's some rather pathetic helpless gesturing. Like a baby bird taking off. An idiot baby bird that's going to have its head smacked on the ground.

"Make out in dark places?" Jim suggests.

"Accurate." This makes Jim feel oddly accomplished. "We need to establish our roles."

"I - okay , that's hot," Jim answers. "If you wanna play it like that, I guess." Spock stares at him, blankly. "It's not really my thing, to you know, lay it out like that, I'm more about seeing how it goes once we get started, but -"

"I was not referring to sexual positions," Spock interrupts, looking offended. A little distracted, but mostly offended and blushing. Jim decides that he's really going to have to teach Spock to talk dirty, or just whisper filthy things in Spock's ears for hours, sometime and get him all worked up if that's how he reacts when it's this fucking clinical.

But that decision is made while he's reeling Spock in for a kiss because Spock wants to make rules for making out and Jim's in this weird phase where Spock has almost all-the-way saved his babies. So he has to kiss him. It's important. And that doesn't count as initiating something because there was tongue at the beginning to trap him in the damn pantry, so it's more of a continuation.

"I meant only that I was unclear on the structure of our relationship," Spock says, once he he's pulled back.

"We're just," Jim makes some of his own broad gestures and had tries remember that he was good at semi-illicit sexual encounters in secluded and weird places. At some former point in time, he'd been able to make people really want to have sex with him, he's almost entirely certain of it. At that period in his life - which is rapidly fading into the mists of time, for which he might blame Spock if Uhura wasn't so convenient for that sort of thing - he's pretty sure he would have been able to say something that would have gotten him blown right there in Bones' spare needle closet.

Spock kisses him while he's still pausing and gesturing and trying not to knock over what looks like morphine - which, really, when are they going to need morphine?

"Yeah, we're doing that," Jim says, because, well they are, and if he hadn't said it all out-of-breath and earnest it might have been an awesome line, really. And maybe Spock hasn't noticed the emotions of it, because Spock can kind of miss stuff about people sometimes (not often stuff about Jim, but it's happened).

They never actually manage to sort out any rules, aside from a general sort of idea that telling anyone is a terrible plan because then people will know and then when it eventually goes to shit, they'll know about that, too. Or, actually, they'll probably find out when Spock quits in a huff and then Chris calls to yell at Jim and does it loud enough that people in the next room can hear. Jim's actually not sure how much of that is just him, but Spock kind goes along with it and then suggests that Uhura's going to find out whether or not Jim actually wants her to. He does think he's smarter than one little linguistics genius though, and it makes him happier to ignore Spock about that. The point is, there are no rules but they're not telling people and that's something Jim can be happy about.

Jim's not the kind of guy who plans this shit, but he still feels that maybe there should've been more planning that should have happened at some point. He's not sure what that would have looked like, but Spock likes to plan stuff. He has this kind of ridiculous moment of thinking that it's awesome that he's the one thing Spock can't plan for, and then he feels very guilty about that thought.

~*~

Chris talks to Jim at least once a day, sends him a couple emails if there's something else that they need to talk about. It's not obsessive, it's just the amount of communication that they both need. So it means Number One mostly doesn't talk to anyone on the Enterprise unless she's doing pay. When she's doing pay, she talks to Nyota to figure out social security numbers or how they're supposed to pay Scotty when it's entirely possible he's an illegal immigrant. Chris doesn't know. There's a reason Number One does it and he doesn't. This is that reason. But it does mean he gets this, which is Number One perched on the chair across from him, coming as close to bouncing her seat as she's ever likely to.

"Your son," she announces, and it kind of stings because he thinks of Jim as his son because Jim is, but it's not something Jim says. It's not something either of them really lets anybody else but Chris say out loud, either, "has fallen in love."

"He told you so, did he?"

"He as good as told me so," Number One says, and she's nearly smirking.

"Just because Uhura said it and you like her better than you like Jim, doesn't make it true," Chris reminds her. Number One does like Jim, she just doesn't know how to admit to it. Well, Chris is pretty sure of that. She hadn't, originally, been such a huge fan of the notion of Jim, inasmuch as she has an opinion of anything Chris does. But her objections had died down over time until she'd started recommending nutritionally balanced lunches for him when Jim was in tenth grade.

"I am not here only to gossip with you," she says, and pushes a folder at him.

"I thought you didn't gossip."

"Jim is different," Number One says, as he signs neatly by the blue sticky notes and the silver stars. The woman is well-coordinated and for such a serious person has a highly unusual number of stickers. It took him about eight days to learn the parts of her system that he needed to know to function, and she's never seemed so keen on the idea of his learning anything else about what she does all day. "You missed one," she points out.

"So he's in love with Uhura?" asks Chris, going back two pages to find that, yes, he missed a star. He knows Jim's not. He couldn't tell anybody why, but he does know it.

"Marine biologist," Number One says, shaking her head at him.

"Even though he has the stupid hair?" Chris says, handing her back the folder and thinking that that can't be true. He'd have figured it out, and anyway, Jim's really terrible at falling in love. Jim - well, Chris doesn't like to think about Jim and sex much at the same time, because it's horrifying, but with Jim one sort of has to eventually - Jim likes sex. Jim likes people. He doesn't like falling in love, and if it's ever happened to him Chris wasn't looking. And Chris is pretty much always looking at Jim.

It's kind of been a problem for Number One, he thinks. Because the thing is, Chris would do anything, give anything up for Jim. He knows it. He knows, too, that Number One is the thing he gave up. She's been with him since she was in her twenties - young and efficient and just out of the worst marriage in history. She stayed with him and he thinks that, at some point, he fell in love with her. He asked her to dinner, even. Got the damn suit on and twitched his way through tying his tie. But that was the night Winona Kirk called him to say her son was in jail thirty minutes from his house and could he bail Jim out and send him back home? He never went to dinner with Number One, and he didn't even really think about it again for a year. If it had looked like they were going to happen, for a couple days - well, more important things had happened instead, and he's still got his girl and his son, no matter how different it looks than it does for most people.

"He's not as superficial as we all pretend he is," Number One says, and takes the folder. She rarely stays to talk to him when she doesn't have something official to be doing in his office, so she leaves.

He looks down at his desk and not up at her leaving, because watching her leave would be perverted and strange and he is her boss.

~*~

The seventh day after Jim kisses Spock by accident and then Spock very purposefully keeps kissing Jim is the child's eighteenth birthday (Jim considers giving him the gift of calling him by his name, but decides that he still looks like he's seven and so can't have that). This is something Sulu has been excited about for weeks and Jim, vaguely, remembered that morning and so he fished out some of his spare liquor from under the bed (Spock cast a glance at the array of bottles, from where he was sitting looking calm and tempting on his own bed, and then commented that if Jim could organize those there was really no reason he couldn't see to it that his books were alphabetized). Chris is looking over Spock's adventures in forensic accounting and what might have been corporate espionage, and trying to figure out what he could do about it, and if it changed what he wanted Jim to do (which, apparently, is to sit on his damn hands and wait for something terrible to happen). Jim has really nothing to do on the child's birthday, except for his normal things which keep him busy but not as busy as he wants to be.

Spock helps with that.

Spock presses him up against the fridge in the galley when Jim's stumbling his way through making breakfast and everyone else is either asleep or Scotty and thus not likely to emerge. He kisses Jim like there's a prize at the end (or like there's any way Spock won't get the prize the first time it even seems like he's trying), which is great, and actually a good start to any day. And then Spock disappears to help Scotty rewire the scuba radios (which Scotty fixed so very well that, apparently, they don't actually function as walkie-talkies. They are, however, flashlights now). It was Jim's idea to send Spock to supervise, so he has no one to blame but himself when Spock then retreats belowdecks. Bones, when he appears, criticizes Jim's breakfast but still gives Jim some of his preciously hoarded bacon (which he mostly only prepares when he's hungover or because he's mad at someone and wants to reinforce that they had lost their bacon privileges; Jim doesn't really care which it was as long as he still has his bacon privileges).

But then, midway through a conversation with Bones about whether or not it's reasonable to stock morphine just in case Jim suddenly develops an allergy to all modern anesthetics, the child shows up and haltingly, blushing, accent in its full force, asks if it would be all right if he perhaps used the satellite phone to make a call home to his previously unmentioned girlfriend.

There is actually nothing Jim could have done to lie to Uhura about that, as she is the keeper of the phone, and once three people know anything, everyone else is going to find out. It's like it's something in the air. Or, alternately, like someone had told Bones, who, in another life, could have been a fabulous gossip columnist.

Sulu steals Jim's best tequila and gets weepily drunk on Jim's bed. That means that instead of getting all wrapped up in Spock and devoutly hoping that tonight is the night someone takes his pants off, he consolingly pats Sulu on the back until he's all wept out and asleep.

He realizes later that he's sort of awful at that part of being someone's friend.

"He's only eighteen, he would have been a lousy lay anyway," in particular, probably just made Sulu whimper louder. It would have made Jim feel better.

But like half an hour after that, Sulu falls into a sad, depressed sleep. He sleeps like the fucking dead when he's drunk, so on the bright side, Sulu's hangover isn't really even a problem until two days later. He'd started drinking at about three, but by the time he finally passed out for good it's past one and Spock had announced his intention to bunk down in the unearthed bed of the executive suite if Jim wasn't going to kick Hikaru out at about eleven. That means Jim gets Spock's bed, which smells really distractingly of Spock, and so he goes to find Uhura, who is already in bed and makes space for him without asking any questions. He curls around her, and she's all warm, but she isn't distracting. Just cozy.

"Haven't seen you in a while," she comments, because he probably wouldn't like her as much if she possessed the common decency not to prod at his personal life when she thinks he's maybe having one.

"Wanna sleep," he mutters into her neck. "Fucking Sulu's all heartbroken and the child's having fucking phone sex and there is nothing right in this world, so I'm gonna go to sleep now."

"Is this the thing where you're not getting any and you're frustrated with everyone and you're going to bother me about it until I join you in sadness?"

"You're a mean, mean lady." Because, mostly, she has no idea how true that statement is. And there's no way he can go wake Spock up, because Spock'll just get all bitchy about it, and doesn't really cuddle until he's been unsatisfactorily fondled into submission. Well, it's satisfying. There's just every possibility it could be exponentially more satisfying. Which is not something he's thinking about in bed with Uhura, because she's Uhura.

"Yeah, but it's my bed and I can make you leave if I want to, so be nicer to me."

"I've always got Bones."

"Kicks."

"Fuck you," Jim says.

"It's not my fault. And why can't you bunk down with Spock?"

"Not allowed to screw the marine biologist," he says, virtuously, and rolls onto his back since it has become clear that while he's there he has to talk to her. She sits up and examines him, slowly.

"You know that's never actually stopped you for more than a week and a half, before?"

"And you've held out longer when, exactly? It's just that since Gaila -"

"Gaila was really sweet about it, Jim, and I think she left more because you wouldn't do it again than because you broke her heart and made her crazy. Even you can't twist it to make that traumatizing. And I held out three weeks with the first one, and the second one doesn't bear speaking about anyway."

"Shut up, stop knowing me, I'm going to sleep."

She actually lets him think that might happen for a few minutes, though when he rolls onto his side she stays stubbornly on her stomach, not touching him in a single bed, which is kind of a skill in itself.

"You know, Spock likes you more than he likes other people."

"Shut up."

"I think it wouldn't take much effort to get him into bed, you know, if you wanted to. It'd be hot, right?"

"OK, first off all," because he was clearly not sleeping, though he doesn't turn to face her in the hopes that she'll realize this. "You can't talk about casual sex because you are physically incapable of having it, as we all learned last year, so stop trying now. It's very embarrassing for you." Jim really had approved of Uhura and Bones. And then there'd been this whole thing where they both realized that it wasn't going anywhere but orgasms, which was apparently a problem for some people (Jim pretended to get it, he mostly didn't) and so now they don't fuck anymore, which they seemed to be enjoying.

"I was trying to be your guy friend."

Uhura really thinks he's kind of deficient in a lot of ways, and apparently one of those ways is that he has no male friends who will talk to him about sex. Which is kind of true, but not because he doesn't have male friends. He's got Bones who is on this sort of anti-sex kick where he's either sworn himself to celibacy or is being celibate by default because the only things on Earth he likes are his little girl and his medical practice and he can't find a third thing, other than Uhura, to like in a way where he can have sex with it (one day, Jim'll find him jerking off on the New England Journal of Medicine, but that day is at least three months off). Sulu can't really deal with promiscuity in the specific. Some faceless girl, yes, he'll absolutely help Jim get her talking to him in a bar, but if it's anyone they know, Sulu gets this little kicked puppy look. Besides, Sulu has enough issues of his own to be dealing with at this point, with the jailbait and all. Jim has this theory that Scotty is either asexual or has unnatural relations with his engines that Jim never wants to know about (well, he wants to know, but he doesn't want to remember very clearly in the morning) and he's pretty sure Chris'd kill him for asking the child for advice, if Jim didn't do it himself first. But he did not need Uhura to be his guy friend. He needs her to be a sleeping warm body so that he can get some rest.

Also, none of his guy friends were freaks who knew fucking everything despite Jim's best attempts to keep some stuff secret.

"I appreciate the effort?"

"Good."

"Second, why are you encouraging me?"

"You haven't been in here in a week."

"Yeah?"

"Which means you've been sleeping in your room."

"It's warmer, I figured you were fine without me."

"It means you're not avoiding Spock anymore," Uhura tells him, and she's doing this thing she does, where she'll notice stuff that nobody else notices, or put it together in a way that nobody else really would think to do. With other people, she'll just come out with whatever her final conclusion was - other people would have had to start this conversation with "I think you're going to end up fucking the new marine biologist too," but Jim's never been other people. He loves that she's in his life and in his head, because he didn't really have friends like her (or, Bones, but Bones is something else again) before he was on the Enterprise. But it still scares him, a little, that she can get into these places he didn't decide to let her go, even if he knows that maybe he would have wanted her there, or needed her there. Uhura understands that and she doesn't pull her psychic act with him, she just tells him what she thinks and why she thinks it and gives him about six seconds to work through it before she's telling him what he should do next.

"I was never avoiding Spock."

"Captain. You told me you were avoiding Spock so you wouldn't have sex with him."

"OK, fine, educate me on my life. I mean, there's clearly nothing to do around here but spend all day thinking about me and my mental well being and my naked body."

"I've seen your naked body, I have pictures of your naked body. I don't dwell on it. And this took me about eight minutes this morning while Spock was making my coffee, it wasn't my whole day."

The pictures were a horrible mistake, and one day she will leave him alone with her laptop and he will erase them from the face of this Earth. She'll get less vigilant, or less sober and he will make it happen. The sombrero, he decided, actually made it a lot worse. And it had been outside in Alaska where it was cold and rum had never been his friend. Uhura, maybe, had only been pretending to be his friend so that he couldn't fire her for being in possession of the pictures.

"But here's what I think," she says, "and I'm right. I think that you said you were going to have to hide here so you wouldn't have sex with Spock, or try to and then get shot down. But that was before the fact that you're just a little deranged worked for you and then suddenly he's your best friend - which, how do you make that happen? You spend two weeks seizing up every time there's a boat-shaped cloud and then people who previously wanted you dead sleep with you."

"I still don't know why that clear and calculated strategy didn't work on you," he grumbles.

"Because I think you're mostly kind of funny when you're doing it. I mean, tragic and very fucked up, but funny. If you won't tell me why you do it I'm just gonna make fun of it until you give me a reason not to." She pulls him onto his back and kisses him on the forehead.

"Figure me out on your own if you're so goddamned smart."

"You're not as complex as you think you are, Jim," she tells him, and smiles, and he shakes his head. If she knows what the hell's going on his head when he's freaking out, he doesn't want to know that. "But, the actual point is not that you have issues, it is that you slept in your own bed for seven nights running. You went there early for three. So, I think you're having sex with Spock."

"Am not," and he wasn't even lying.

"So you don't want to? That would be weird because you want to have sex with everything capable of consent." He can't really deny that, pathetically, and so he doesn't. "If Spock had shot you down you wouldn't sleep in the same room as him anymore," she decides, after a moment's thought. "Though, if he ever does shoot you down, and you're not really emotionally invested in it, can I have video?"

Jim doesn't think Spock's the kind of guy who is capable of shooting someone down in quite the way she's picturing. Spock would break up with someone, and then about six days later they'd figure out that's what he'd meant. Whether or not Spock would do this on purpose, Jim isn't quite sure.

"I do not get shot down."

"I shot you down," she points out.

"I didn't try very hard with you, really," Jim answers (which is a lie, sort of, he wasn't allowed to try very hard because she is scary and Chris loves her and Number One approves of her, and so he could never have been rid of her).

"Wait, did you just - Jim, are you emotionally invested? Is this you building up to a relationship?" She drawls the word in her best imitation of Joanna McCoy - or maybe she's still trying to be his guy friend and has decided to be Bones to do that. He can't really tell. Her Southern accent or whatever the hell she's trying is for shit, though.

He tries to pretend that she's not speaking a language he understands (this has happened before and is absolutely never out of the question entirely) and fakes sleep while she prods at him for a full five minutes because there's this very small possibility that that's true and that's why he's letting Spock be in charge of kissing, and why he's really good at sex but exceptionally awful at this thing he's doing with Spock.

The small part of his brain that wasn't concerned with that horrifying realization was really busy wondering why Uhura had to tell him about his feelings. It was stupid and he honestly had thought he was more aware than that.

~*~

Spock believes everyone hears some part of Jim's conversation with the Senator - he paces, frantically, throughout the entire thing and covers most of the ship in the doing of it. Only Spock, sitting beside Jim in the lab when the phone originally rings, is there for the entirety of it. He is struck, first, by how positive Jim seems - hopeful and proud and pleased all at once. Spock forgets that initial happiness, though, in the fall of Jim's face, afterwards.

"What the hell do you mean it's not enough?" Jim asks, and that's when he springs from the chair, and starts wandering around the small lab, picking up things Spock would prefer he didn't touch and putting them down when he remembers this. "It's fucking everything we need to prove that Narada owns the Kobayashi Maru. And if they bought a whaler I think it's fairly safe to say that they are engaged in whaling." There's a long pause, and Spock wants more than anything to be able to hear the other side of this conversation. He has only met the Senator twice - once at his interview, once when he left for Seward, but Spock imagines from what he has heard of the senator that he would not want to be making Jim look like this. Now quietly desperate, then angry, suddenly, and Jim seems to be almost clinging to anger, his whole face clenched and the hand not pressing the phone to his ear in a fist by his side.

"Chris," is the last thing Spock hears before Jim leaves the room, feet falling heavily on the stairs leading up to the open decks, and he is briefly concerned that if the Senator continues with this conversation, the satellite phone will be a casualty. Though he often suspects Jim of a great deal more sense that Jim likes to pretend he has, Spock decides this is enough of a reason to follow Jim.

Pavel joins him in following Jim and they pass Nyota as she leaves the bridge, apparently having been sent away by the captain. Scott is piloting but also departs as they enter, presumably thinking that his position has been taken and he can return to the radios which he destroyed (though very ingeniously) and which it will take the rest of the day to put back together. Nyota seems concerned, but continues with her day and Scott seems not to notice them at all, except to nod briefly at Jim.

Pavel treats it like theater, and Spock wants to send Pavel away, but he has no way of telling Pavel that this should be what - should be Spock's? Should be private?

It is theatrical - Spock gleans that his proof has not been enough for Pike, and that the senator has told Jim that the captain's job is not to discover the origins of the ship or to stop it but to observe only (this last phrase is actually loud enough that Spock can hear it quite clearly each time the Senator repeats it, even standing five feet behind Jim to avoid his windmilling arms). There's a brief diatribe which Spock surmises is about danger from Jim's curt response and it all ends with some sort of admonishment that Jim takes very poorly. It is at some point around the very end of the conversation that McCoy has joins them, though he is lurking outside the bridge for reasons Spock does not quite understand. Jim turns the phone off and sets it down and the sound of it on the console seems final, in some way.

Jim's face is utterly destroyed. It has been a half-hour conversation (Pavel lost interest some five minutes ago and had left for his room, where he has been since Sulu made a strategic retreat to his own room after only a brief stop at sickbay to collect ibuprofen and blame Jim for making him an alcoholic. Pavel spends most of his days with Sulu, since Spock has little use for him and the filing system has begun to manage itself). Jim doesn't turn to Spock, afterwards, just stares out the wide windows of the bridge onto the ocean, for a few moments.

Spock wants, partially, to leave and thinks that despite the doctor's multitude of deficiencies, he does know Jim well, and has known him for longer. If he isn't on the bridge then perhaps Spock should not be either. And there is a small, cowardly part of Spock that wants to get out of the line of this fire. There is another part, less acknowledged, which is hissing insistently that his place is here. So he turns the decision to Jim, who perhaps will know where he should go. But he has no idea how to approach Jim - Spock has, in all honesty, no idea what he is to the captain. Their one conversation on the topic had been inconclusive in many ways, and Jim is distracting because Spock is allowed to touch and discover him, which has never helped his focus. He cannot resist touching Jim (or, more accurately, he could, he simply sees no reason to, whenever he is reasonably certain that they are alone). This makes conversation nearly impossible when it is not strictly related to their work, and sometimes, even then.

Jim's hand begins to tap on the console in front of him, not really rhythmically and Spock realizes that if he and Jim were merely coworkers he would have nothing to say and if they were - partners, he supposes would be the best term for a committed relationship - then he would have no experience at this point and would be simply waiting on cues Jim would be no more likely to give him than he is now. Since they are - he is, at least, certain of this - friends, he sees no reason not to simply inquire as to what Jim wants, and then to do that. It seems like the right thing to do and if it also happens to move the burden of responsibility onto Jim, Spock thinks that on this occasion he does not mind. He might distract Jim with work, but Spock has done none to distract Jim with, since it is Spock's own work that has caused the distress, and his others studies had fallen to the wayside in his research of the Kobayashi Maru. His attempts to focus on anything else, professionally, have been pitifully unsuccessful (as they were this morning before Jim interrupted), and only the simple logic of wiring has been enough to focus him.

"I could leave," Spock offers quietly. "If you would prefer solitude."

"No, stay, you've been following me like you want something," Jim answers, and collapses into the command chair. "It's not like I've got anything else to fucking do."

"I do not want anything," Spock answers.

"We've talked about the staring and how it's sexy and creepy but more on the disturbing side, generally?"

Spock is only rarely frustrated - he believes that there are few problems that cannot be solved with sufficient dedication, and he has endless wells of that from which to draw. When Jim misinterprets his actions, as he has done now, thinking that Spock wants something from him when Spock much more wants something for him, he is frustrated by Jim.

"I followed you because wanted to help you, in whatever way I might able to," he provides, in case that was not clear. He does not imagine how it would not have been, but it seems to him sometimes he and Jim speak in dialects of the same language, and sometimes they are not even working with the same basic syntax that Spock had previously believed was native to all humans and which he had been so careful to learn so well, even when he felt it did not come naturally to him. It is not that communication has ever been easy for him (and it is easy with Jim, so deceptively simple), but it has never been so hard as it is when they do not understand each other.

"Real sweet of you, but I can take care of myself," Jim says. "I'm just pissed, is all, I'll work it out. Go be useful if you don't have anything you need me for. Bones, you heard that? Go," Jim shouts, and the doctor, shaking his head, goes. "Unless you wanna -" Jim adds once McCoy's gone, leaning back in the chair and opens his arms, making his intentions quite clear without the lascivious leer he usually affects. Spock considers this - the bridge is well trafficked, between Nyota's equipment, Sulu's actual employment (if he ever surfaces, Spock supposes), Doctor McCoy's eventual boredom in an empty sickbay and Pavel's filing being tucked neatly into a corner (the only area that shows any signs of organization).

The idea of touching Jim is never entirely unappealing and he regrets, again, their total lack of restraint before settling gingerly into Jim's lap, straddled across his legs and closer to Jim than he believes himself capable of being without kissing him (it is a more romantic thought than he has ever had about another partner, and he wonders, briefly, if the romance novels masquerading as military adventure he has been filching from Doctor McCoy, having exhausted all other reading material aboard, have had some deleterious affect on his mental faculties).

Jim is in the process of reeling him in closer - something to which he does not object in the slightest - when Spock pulls back, just slightly. Forehead still pressed to Jim's, he feels obligated to warn his captain of the dangers of their current situation.

"There will only be twelve point eight minutes, statistically, before either Sulu or Nyota must return to their stations and only eighteen point seven before Doctor McCoy will come back to ascertain your mental wellbeing. Which, I should add, I feel will not be best served by taking your frustrations out on my body."

"You really need to stop being all Freudian and just ask me to be rough with you, and I definitely do not need twelve point eight minutes, if you know what I mean." Spock rolls his hips. "Fuck."

"I cannot imagine a person who would not know what you mean, Jim. Though it does not sound that impressive, to be honest with you," Spock tells him and Jim clasps his hips in response.

"You asshole," Jim says, after a moment, happy if not laughing.

Then, Spock is caught it is the play of Jim's lips on his , Jim's hands on his hips and his groin against Jim's, his own hands in Jim's hair and perhaps, somewhere, the notion that this chair was not made for two grown men and he might fall.

This is, of course, when Doctor McCoy chooses to make his blustering re-entrance (at least seven minutes before Spock felt anyone was likely to find business on the bridge) - the sound of his footfalls blocked by the high winds, something neither of them had considered. Spock becomes aware of his presence only when Jim pushes Spock off his lap and runs after the doctor, and Spock is left alone, and after a moment's indecision, uses the intercom to summon Scott and returns himself to his room.

~*~

Jim normally likes talking to Bones. Talking to Bones is fun - talking to Bones, even when Chris had been in the hospital and he'd been kind of blaming doctors in general for it, had always been a good thing. Today, not so much.

"You said you wouldn't," Bones thunders, from where he has planted himself against his examination table, arms crossed. It's like the wrath of some angry, Georgian god and Jim does not like being the target of any of it. He's standing in the doorway, wondering if he should take this chance to run away. "Jim, you cannot drive another one off. This one is good."

"You hate Spock," Jim feels obliged to remind him. It's not like Bones needs an excuse to get angry, but sometimes if Jim gives him an excuse not to be before he gets too into his current snit, he'll come out of it. "So if I drove him off why would that matter to you? Actually, why are you being so fucking weird about this?"

Bones normally just mopes until the marine biologist goes crazy. Because normally he just assumes that whatever's going on is Jim being kind of a whore and has to leave because Bones has issues. Jim only mostly knows what these issues are because he thinks knowing any more than that about what goes on in Bones' head would be damaging. He's not even entirely sure why he followed Bones down here just - maybe it's just that this thing with Spock doesn't feel like fucking the marine biologist, and so he can't treat it like that. There's still no reason for Jim to be defending himself and no reason for Bones to be making him (even if, maybe, technically, Jim's down here of his own free will). Spock's not the kind who goes crazy (and, yes, Jim has said that the past four times, but he was right at least one and a half of those times) and Bones also mostly gave up on making him stop fucking them after the third one. Anybody else, he'd have kept kissing them and winked at Bones and waited a couple days to approach him again. This is another thing.

"Yeah," Bones says. "But you don't hate him. Last one you liked like this was Carol, Jim. That didn't end really any better than any of the others, and actually maybe was a little worse. You think this is going to go well?"

"And on that note - how did you not learn from that? Casual sex that goes horribly wrong is fine, but Jim, my room's right fucking next to yours and that was not a first kiss I just saw, but you definitely haven't gotten laid in months, which means you're taking it slow. So what the hell?"

"Maybe we're fucking like crazy in the lab."

"Spock's too tidy, he'd never let you."

"Maybe I'm letting him," Jim tries to leer. Normally Bones can be distracted with sex, and he could start giving his little STD talk, and Jim could think about how he's supposed to make this up to Spock. But it's not happening because Bones is still giving him determined-and-judgmental eyes rather than exasperated-and-judgmental eyes.

"He'd never."

"We do it while you sleep."

"You haven't had sex and you've been at it for how long?" Now he's gone all soft and medical. Soft and medical is not a favorite of Jim's, particularly, because it can build up to I-did-my-undergrad-in-psychology-and-yes-I-sucked-at-it-but-I-still-know-more-about-your-psyche-than-you-do, which is his very least favorite thing about Bones.

It is in Jim's best interest, he decides, to never open his mouth again.

"Over or under forty-eight hours?"

This game kind of sucks, Jim reflects, and does not answer.

"Over," Bones decides. "Lord, Jim. What is this?"

"Maybe I took a vow of chastity." OK, so anyone who's ever met him knew the plan to never open his mouth again wasn't going to last. He thinks he did admirably well considering that all his willpower has been taken up by not fucking Spock.

"You did not."

"Maybe Spock did."

"I know his sexual history better than I know yours - and no I am not telling you a damn thing." That's a little tragic - though Jim can mostly guess and has this idea that he could probably ask Spock and get a list of sexual partners and a rating of the experiences on a scale of one to ten. "Jim, as your doctor-"

"As a nosy busybody who should really just get porn and stop worrying about my sex life," Jim corrects, because it's true (the STD talk tends to start with "as a concerned citizen who does not want to treat patient zero of the next plague when it brews itself up in your nethers" so he's pretty sure he didn't just cut off his only hope of salvation now that Bones is all entrenched in anger).

"As your friend, Jim, what the hell?"

"Do I have to know right now?"

Bones examines him, tilts his head and raises his eyebrow and generally performs his little thinking face gymnastics which mean he thinks he knows something that no one else wants him to know (Jim has always been kind of glad Bones and Uhura never got past fucking like bunnies, because their kids wouldn't have actually been psychic, but they'd have been able to figure out too much for their own good and would have been very proud of it and probably a really cute blight upon the human race in general).

"You know what this looks like, Jimmy?" The sad thing might be that Jim gets that this looks like a relationship with meaning and substance and even he can't give very many reasons why it's not (you have to tell people about those for them to count and you proably get at least occassional sex being the main two).

"I kinda do," he admits, sullenly.

The day, at that point, is completely unsalvageable and Jim decides when he leaves that he is going to make all new friends and only keep Spock, because it's not Spock's fault that he makes Jim do new things which scare the fuck out of the perceptive people around him, so the only solution can be to accidentally leave the perceptive people behind in Hawaii. This will leave him with Scotty, who would not question anyone for having sex right in front of him unless they were obscuring his view of the engines and Sulu, who will probably still be drunk in six months if he keeps going the way he has been and won't be in a position to do anything to annoy Jim.

"Jim, last one like this left with your kid," Bones calls out after him, which doesn't help at all. And before Jim can even turn around to hit Bones very hard, Bones is sighing.

"I never told you that," Jim says, and he can't decide if he feels worse that Bones knows (because, OK, he knows it's never a story that he comes out of looking any good) or that Bones knows and Bones didn't tell him.

"Where the hell do you think she got the pregnancy test, kid?" Bones says, which, OK, fair point. Jim had never really considered that. "And I was waiting for you to tell me."

"For a year?" Jim's kind of incredulous. Bones has the patience of a high-strung toddler, possibly one on methamphetamines.

"Doctor-patient confidentiality," Bones says, and it's kind of clear he's reaching. Reaching very far and very quickly, and falling somewhat short.

"Bullshit," Jim says, and he's trying to be mad, but mostly he's not. Rock and a hard place, or something, and lying to Bones never has sat well with him. Being lied to by Bones is up there too (Bones is the guy who told him Chris might not know who he was when he woke up and the guy who snuck him in a flask a couple days after that, Jim expects honesty from him).

"Just looking out for you," Bones says, and he says it in that low way that he'll say serious, true things. All growly and rough like he's been crying or something. "I thought you'd tell me."

"Sorry I didn't," Jim says, because he's never actually be able to muster anger with Bones. It'd be too easy, or something, with Bones spending most of his life like he's just been shot, to do some real damage. So Jim doesn't. And he is sorry.

"Yeah, I know," Bones says, and doesn't add that he is, too. Because he's probably not, honestly. Bones is weird, ethically. Still a good guy though. "Just don't let it go like that again."

"I really doubt it's going to," he says, and tries not to think too hard about a pregnant Spock, because it makes his spine itch.

"You know what I meant," Bones laughs and boots him out of the sickbay. Could've gone worse and Jim's kind of forgotten to be angry.

Jim honestly suspects nothing else could get worse unless the ship capsizes.

~*~

The first time Nyota Uhura met Jim Kirk, she told him he was incompetent. He told her she had a nice ass. That was two years ago and he was new to being a captain and she was new to being out of her nasty little basement linguistics lab.

It went downhill for two months from there, and then one morning she woke up in his bed with the worst hangover ever and all her clothes on; he made her an omelette. They still don't know why that happened or how, and no one will tell them, but after that they both decided they were supposed to be friends. It works out pretty well, generally. She doesn't take his shit, and he just sits there and takes hers when she needs him to.

When she comes into Spock's lab where Jim's mostly loitering and hoping Spock'll give up on light pollution statistics that are so sketchy as to be unusable and refocus on feeling Jim up, she knocks.

Uhura does not knock on doors, not ever. But she does this time (which would make him suspect that Bones had already told everyone, except he can't possibly have because it's only been about twenty minutes and that's about how long it takes Bones to have an ethical dilemma and then decide to tell Sulu so he'll get the blame instead). She knocks on the door and she pulls him aside instead of just saying whatever she has to say and then moving on with her life. They've got very few secrets onboard because it takes a metric fuckton less energy to swear everyone to secrecy than it does to make them not tell each other things.

All of these things are bad signs, but Jim's still at a point then where he's decided that really nothing else can go wrong today because he can't have that much bad karma short of murdering kittens in cold blood, which he has never done. He thinks maybe Bones just got over it faster than he maybe should have and now they've teamed up to try and talk Jim out of doing anything with Spock (which, Jim thinks, in the half second he has before she opens her mouth, is totally unfair since he's not doing anything and it was less than twelve hours ago that she was mad at him for that).

"I just lost the signal from Red," she says, quietly.

"He's sitting still, whatever, probably hitting on hot girl whales," because Jim gets that they're all tense, but even he knows that the signal stopping is more than normal. Migration is actually lengthened by periods of socialization, and it always has been. This can drive Jim crazy and make him consider taking up whale-herding, since he thinks that, on the whole, they're too easily distracted and should just fucking move it so he can get off the ship and compile data and scuba dive and do things that aren't sitting on the bridge staring mindlessly at clouds. Or harassing Spock, which is probably his new favorite hobby, but he thinks he could find whole new ways of doing it on dry land.

"No, Captain, I mean I've got nothing. Not like he shook it off nothing, not like he's still nothing, like he has completely ceased to exist nothing, and it's all I've had for the past fifteen minutes so it's not a dead zone."

"Why the fuck didn't you tell me sooner?" Jim says (though he knows why she didn't; their first year out they hit a couple dead zones and it was ten minutes of pulling out their own hair before poof whale, so now they wait twenty before telling anyone, except it's only been fifteen now). "Wait, no, why are you telling me now?" He's already moving for the bridge, because it could just be a malfunction in the system, and he knows it just as well as she does, but he's a little more creative with it, generally speaking, so he could make that work again.

There's something tight in his throat telling him it's not that and he flashes back to the first time Chris went into cardiac arrest two days after the accident and it feels just like that. He tamps it down, though, because not only does he not believe in that shit, it screws with him and makes him less effective and right now he needs to be useful.

Spock quietly sets down his slides and follows them, clearly listening in and clearly not caring that Jim knows it.

"I've been getting chatter from the Kobayashi Maru," she says, softly, like she's trying not to disturb a small animal. They're in one of the cramped staircases belowdecks, though, and it echoes in the damp space. "It's pretty vague, but there was something about radios and something about preparing a harpoon and I just thought you should know."

The next fifteen minutes are kind of a blur - he knows he fucks with the tracking until he's well and truly satisfied that it's all working. He knows that at some point Bones stumbles up the steps and grips his shoulders and tells him he's hyperventilating.

He knows he tells Uhura that she should have figured this out days ago, and instead of reminding him that she's really fucking good at her job and slapping him, she just nods and steps out of the bridge. He knows that Spock mumbles to him that he'll have to apologize for that when it's all fine.

He knows that Spock is always there, handing him the tools he needs and reminding him not to be an asshole and taking over the controls (thankfully set to autopilot because he doesn't really know if Spock knows how to drive the fucking thing and Sulu's still drunk and there are other things for Jim to be doing, which Scotty needs to help him with).

He snaps back in at the moment when the bow hits a rush of red water and he knows and he can't shake that knowledge no matter how hard he tries, and he knows that his job is to prove it and get something incriminating and make this look as bad and hurt as much as it possibly can. But he feels outgunned and outwitted and like he's failed, and like he wants to get in bed and probably never get out again, but he can't.

Spock still stands behind him.

~*~

Chris guesses that at least the ship didn't go down.

But it's six hours later and Jim still hasn't called him back - he made Uhura do it, once, for a daily check in that Jim's religious about. She said everything was fine, and he learned long ago that unless he knows different it'll just drive him crazy to worry. He has to operate on the assumption that Jim's fine, because if he didn't, then the times when Jim does turn up passed out in a ditch or wakes up in jail might just kill him. When Jim's done being angry that Chris isn't authorizing some sort of holy war because Sarek's kid called a couple law firms, he'll let Chris know.

Jim never doesn't call Chris back, eventually, so it's just a waiting game. Either he'll want Chris to apologize, he'll want to keep fighting about forensic accounting and why he should get to sink anything he thinks might be a whaler, or he'll want to make it up to Chris. There's this part of Chris that is proud that Jim's being a stubborn jackass with him, because he knows that he matters to Jim and maybe this means that his son is finally getting that he's not going to be allowed to go anywhere no matter how pissed Chris gets. Maybe it's that Jim's smart enough to know without questioning it more than he absolutely has to that there's nothing they can do.

They're a small nonprofit - they observe and they try to scare whalers off by being there when they can - they don't have guns and they can't stop anything if the people doing it are shameless enough.

Chris wrote his dissertation on a murder a lot of people suspect was due to a bribe by Narada and by Nero. He knows that Nero is shameless enough. He killed Jim's father and it's taking every fiber of Chris' being and probably most of Number One's energy to keep him from ordering Jim home to get Jim further away from Nero. He wants Jim here so Chris can sit outside his door and be assured that there is absolutely nothing getting to Jim, which, yes, he did a little during the custody clusterfuck. He's not actually sure how well it'll work in the chair, but he's really determined.

And it can't be a coincidence. There's no way it was George and then it just happened to be Jim. This is about Jim, it's about hurting Jim, and getting to him because the only thing that Nero's ever done that anyone even almost noticed was killing George.

He can't tell Jim that though, because Jim is stubbornly uninterested in his father's death and Chris's work about it, and he's never read the damn dissertation (something he has in common with pretty much everyone but Chris, Chris' thesis advisor and Winona Kirk). Chris is happy with that. Let Jim think it was police brutality and be the angry young man who hates the system and has a sealed juvenile record as long as Chris' leg (when he used to able to extend them). Just don't let him be vengeful and angry and unsafe, that's all. He once tried to get Jim to read it - when he was trying to get Jim to go to school, to show him that he could do something meaningful there, too.

Jim burnt his copy in an actually pretty characteristic show of passive-aggressive pyromania (only Jim could manage passive while setting shit on fire).

And taking action right now isn't wise for them as a business, either. If something happens - Chris isn't a praying man, but god forbid, if something happens - they can make a big deal of it. If Jim can hold it together for long enough; but then, Chris knows he can hold it together for that long. It's how much longer after that he gets worried about. There's McCoy and there's Uhura but there's not much beyond that holding Jim up, and there's this part of Chris that's convinced he's the only one who can do it.

He's not thinking any of that, when the phone rings; he's thinking that it's about damn time Jim called, and that's how he answers.

What he gets is; "You better not have fucking known this was happening, Chris." Jim sounds ripped apart. It's terrifying. Chris doesn't quite know what to do with it.

"What, Jimmy?' He never calls him Jimmy - he had tried it, for a while at first, and he knows he did it just after he woke up, when he was pretty strung out. But Jim's not a big fan of him doing it, for whatever reason, and so he mostly restrains himself. Jim shocks it out of him, this time.

"We lost the signal on Red half an hour ago, somebody jammed it," Jim says, tersely. "Uhura got it back, because she's fucking amazing, but by the time she had there was no fucking point because they did it right in front of us Chris, we were sitting on him and they still fucking - God, Chris I can see the fucking Kobayashi Maru right now and there's not a fucking thing I can do."

"They did what?" He asks, but the hand not crushing the phone to his ear is white-knuckled on the armrest of his chair and he knows what is coming next and he will kill someone over this if Jim doesn't get them first. And then there's this part of his brain that's asking if they got pictures, if they can prove it and make it stick, if they can still do their jobs when they're all this attached and Jim who gets more and more like a drill sergeant the more scared he gets is so fucking gone that he's sounding as angry-scared-lost as he is.

"Red," Jim says, and his voice is stiff and clinical - Chris strains his ears, looking for the familiar muttering in the background. Jim never gets left alone when they're all the way out and the only one on the ship who can stay quiet is Sulu, who tends to just take off when Jim gets like this. There's nothing. He hopes, briefly, that Jim hasn't locked them out and then decides, in vain, that he should probably just hope somebody's got a lockpick. "Was harpooned by the Kobayashi Maru. They'll haul him in the next fifteen minutes and don't fucking worry, I'll get you the pictures you need." And then he hangs up.

Chris calls him back and gets Nyota, who sounds more scared than anything else and tries to give the phone to Jim who, yes, is locked in the bridge with Spock and McCoy.

"He's not doing his thing, though," she assures him (for a certain measure of assuring which includes not feeling any better). "He's just really angry at everyone and everything."

"Except Spock and McCoy?"

"I think Leonard too, but especially you," there's the sound of her settling on the ground. "If I tell you to give him a couple days, that's not going to do any good, is it?'

"You want me to give Jim Kirk time to stew and you think that'll make it better?"

"I think it'll help your hearing," she corrects. "He's working through a thing on his own, and he's doing as well as he ever could have, Senator. We're all going to do the best we can. But right now, your son is safe and healthy and couldn't hold a grudge for more than week against anyone he loves, what do you want him to do with your ship?"

Hiring her from her scary linguistics lab in the basement at NYU was probably the best thing he ever did, he reflects.

"Whatever Jim - whatever the captain wants," he corrects himself, rapidly. He hates this, but it can't just be about him and Jim. "I want one of you on the phone once an hour, if longer than that goes by and I don't hear from you, I swear to god I will airlift in Number One and she will take over and you can all swim to Hawaii. The second Jim's willing to speak to me, he's going to, I don't care what time of night it is and I don't care how drunk he is."

"He won't drink until we're through this," she says.

"Yeah, if you and Doctor McCoy could make that happen for me."

Those whales were the first things Jim ever cared about without a reason; the first things that didn't have to prove themselves to him over and over again, the first things he'd give to without expecting that they'd take more from him than he had (though maybe they did). Nyota might think that Jim's angry at everyone and everything, and that's probably true. He's probably a little mad at Chris for telling him to basically sit on his hands and wait for something to happen (even if there was no way Jim could have stopped this, not if they're just fucking with them like this now). He also knows James Kirk, and he knows that all that's going through Jim's head right now is how much he's failed and how no one's going to forgive him for this one.

"Maybe," Uhura answers something he feels like he said eight days ago (already today's gone on forever and he's too wound up for it to end, except tomorrow will probably be awful as well). "Senator?"

"Yes?"

"Why did they have to show us like that?" She sounds young, younger than he's ever heard the confident, brash, brilliant girl who took Jim down within five minutes of meeting him. She's twenty-eight, and she's the oldest person onboard (except Scott, who Chris could probably place between thirty and death, but no more accurately. And McCoy, but he gets too tied up in whatever stupid idea Jim's had to really count as a day older than Jim is.).

He wonders, not for the first time, how they're going to handle this and how impractical it would actually be to be airlifted in to just fix it.

 

~*~

It's not really the best idea to go anywhere near a mother and new calf, right after the birth - they shouldn't even have been able to sex Red until he was six weeks old, maybe more. But at that point, Gracie had spent most of her life around humans and had had really no negative feelings about the Enterprise. They'd watched Red's birth, and Jim had been in the water with them two weeks later. He's not one of those people who has a religious experience every time he's in the water with the whales (the first time yes; but after that it was just sort of cool, and most of the time he was there for some intensely pragmatic reason that precluded staring with doe-eyed wonder at anything). That time had been better than the first, better than pretty much anything.

Red was awesome and he was Jim's, because Jim made sure he got the life he deserved (even if technically Jim had not known he was doing it at the time). Jim realizes that he should probably only ever have the one kid, because holy God does he play favorites. With whales. Who probably don't care. But still. He had spent basically a month making excuses to get as close to Red and Gracie as he possibly could. He had photographed them and swum with them and spent so fucking long in the dinghy that their very first marine biologist had quit because she couldn't have access to any of the materials he was using and he possibly didn't let anyone else use the scuba gear because he was so greedy about every opportunity he could get. Also, he had slept with her their third night out and then ignored her for three weeks, but she didn't quit for five, so he thinks that was probably secondary.

He took a lot of pictures, and they went up on Chris' website, and they got a metric fuckton of press because everyone likes to put a really adorable face to a cause. Dealing with the press is, yes, Jim's job (well, Uhura runs interference, but he's the face people know at least a little bit), but that was the only time he was actually happy to do it, because he was proud of what he'd done.

Chris had been, too.

Right now, he's taking pictures of Red's body being hauled onto the deck of the Kobayashi Maru to be butchered, and he needs both hands for the camera, but there's McCoy beside him and Spock standing behind him - not touching, but close enough that Jim can feel the warmth of him and that there's this really bad temptation to just lean back and let Spock take the weight a while, because Spock could maybe deal with it and Jim feels like he's teetering on the edge of not being able to.

There are six harpoon marks.

There's no fucking way you need six if you aren't legally blind.

This killing was cruel and pointed, and to be doing this is broad daylight means that whoever the hell is up there is trying to show them something, or prove that they can get away with this.

Right now, Jim's mired in how he can make it so that they don't. The proof tying the Kobayashi Maru to Narada is good, but not perfect. He needs something concrete and he doesn't have it. And if he doesn't have that, he can fuck this ship up as much as he wants to, and it'll just happen again. And if they show the world that the IWC is fucking toothless, and so is every fucking research ship out there, then this is going to become a business. And, Christ. Jim can't go there.

He takes six more pictures. It's weird to think that Red's small, but in comparison to the ship he is and Jim should've been able to do something.

"It's not your fault, Jim," Bones says. He's said it maybe a hundred times. It's what he thinks Jim needs to hear (hell, it's what everyone but Spock seems to think Jim needs to hear, but Spock's pretty much stopped talking entirely, so maybe he's thinking it).

In the end, he takes eighty-six pictures before they can't get any more in high enough resolution to be useful. By the time he's done it's nearly eight and there's absolutely no light, and he's cold. McCoy's been and gone to call Chris a couple times and Spock's moved to stand next to Jim. Scotty's in the bridge getting them to Gracie as fast he possibly can, because it'll make Jim feel a hell of a lot better to be there.

"You should go inside," Spock advises, quietly. "You will get cold." It's the first thing he's said in maybe two hours. It's not what Jim would have expected, and yeah, he's in a t-shirt and he's fucking freezing, but he hadn't noticed that until Spock said it.

"I'll go get a blanket," he says, and knows it's unreasonable not to just go inside where it's reasonably warm and that probably Spock won't get why he won't . "I wanna stay out for a while, until we're on Gracie, OK? You should eat."

"I will get you a blanket," Spock says, "and also something to eat. The cereal in the second drawer, above the sink?"

"Um, no, additive," Jim thinks, though he can't remember which one. It's maybe the food coloring in the red ones? And hives? Bones and Chris know these things, and he knows not to go to restaurants and what will actually kill him. "The stuff in the drawer by the bulletin board is all mine." He doesn't want to eat, but he also knows (from some experience when he tried to send Spock out of the room right after they lost the signal) that Spock isn't actually going to do anything but exactly what he wants to do right now.

Spock leaves, first pressing a kiss to the back of Jim's neck that makes Jim shiver, but he couldn't say why. Spock comes back less than a minute later, this time carrying a large metal bowl.

"If you hurl yourself overboard, I will have to both fish you out and explain the whole incident to Senator Pike. Nyota advises me that I should tell you to keep this in mind, and I am also to remind you that she is not the enemy. Doctor McCoy has told me to tell you that people must know that you are allergic to wool before you ask them to bring you blankets, and Sulu has apparently made you popcorn," he holds out the bowl. Jim takes a moment to be deeply impressed that Sulu can even bear the sound of popcorn popping right now; Sulu's hangovers are epic.

"They're not pissed?"

"Not at you," Spock says, and comes back, pulls Jim closer towards him by the waist, one hand still holding the steel bowl. It smells like garlic dressing and Jim almost laughs; that would be Sulu's way of making him feel better. Sometimes it would've worked, too.

They will be pissed at him, though; it won't take them long to figure out that this was his fault. He spent like ten minutes being mad at Chris before he got there and realized he could have persuaded Chris to do something different, or he could have just been crazy and figured something out with that and done it anyway, or he could have gone further with Spock's research. He could have figured out that the only reason to go after tagged whales is if you really, really want to get noticed, and if you really want to get noticed it can't just be for hovering threateningly and giving Jim an ulcer.

"No one, Jim, is angry at you. Senator Pike has called six more times since you last spoke with him, I am to tell you that if you will just answer the phone and confirm you aren't having some sort of cardiac episode, he will leave you alone at least overnight."

"You're a pretty good messenger," Jim tells him. "You got anything you want to say?"

"I am making you a stir-fry; you should come inside to eat it if you do not want it to be cold." Jim shakes his head. He wants to be outside. This does not seem to please Spock, since he raises an eyebrow in what might be judgment.

"Go do that, and let go of me, we've got like ten minutes before Sulu decides that if he's heroically giving up his popcorn the least I can do for him is share, and then Bones'll be back from wherever he fucked off too."

"I find that I do not want to," Spock tells him.

"I'm not in the mood." He's trying not to be pissy because Spock's the only person who has stayed calm all day and Jim doesn't know what to do with that, but he's got Spock pressed up against him and warm and undemanding, he doesn't know what to do with that, not at all, except that he wants to burrow into the space between Spock's neck and shoulder and maybe never come out, or at least not until they figure out a way to make this better.

"Nor am I," Spock answers. "I felt that perhaps you would appreciate some physical comfort, if I was wrong, I apologize. I do, however, note that you are not going anywhere." Jim's not sure he could.

"People will see."

"Do you care?"

He should say yes, because he and Spock might still be a mistake that's gonna drive Spock off, and that'll only be worse if people know that it was more than one fuck that Jim managed to use to screw up the pretty good thing that they've got going onboard at the moment. He wants to say no, because this is getting to a point where all day he's been hanging onto the rhythm of Spock's breath like a lifeline and he needs to ask Uhura what the hell is happening in his head, because he sure as fuck doesn't know.

"I do not," Spock says, but begins to pull back.

"They figured it out anyway, right?'

"What is there to figure out?"

Jim doesn't know, and that's the thing he's putting aside just for a little while because he's almost entirely sure Spock will let him.

"I'm fucking freezing."

"Of course you are," Spock says, and clutches him a little tighter and then gives him the popcorn. It's gone cold, but not stale, which is actually how he likes it. He's pretty sure Sulu couldn't have timed it like that, but he knows Jim well enough to have maybe tried. "Perhaps if you stepped out of the wind," Spock advises, and then pulls away, one last time. "I will be back."

~*~

It's like they're all watching a funeral, Spock thinks. He is the chief mourner, though he doesn't know how he was put in the position. McCoy, Nyota and Pavel have assembled in the galley, and are watching him cook as if he is doing something fascinating. He's burnt himself with hot oil three times in the past ten minutes, and if he does it once more he is going to send them all to their rooms. He's almost entirely certain they would go.

No one is not jarred by this, no one is not a little scared. This does include Spock, who had to restrain himself from making sure that the peppers he's cutting are sliced perfectly evenly, with a ruler, something he has not had to do since he was a child making cookies with his mother (who could not cook; she forgot baking soda and added too much sugar and they caramelized, despite his careful measurements and to her puzzlement). But Spock is trying, desperately, to be balanced because no one else can. Uhura let herself be cowed by Jim, something he has never seen before, and has spent hours going over transcription copies on her laptop trying to see how she could have known that the Kobayashi Maru had meant to be predictable, had hidden itself only well enough to be plausible. McCoy is trying to be soothing, but he keeps leaving to fret at little things, and then coming back to try to chivvy them into bed as soon as the sun is down because he seems to have developed some sort of preoccupation with sleep deprivation. No one has gone yet, but this doesn't dissuade him. Sulu had stumbled out of his room in the middle of everything, realized there was nothing he could do, and stumbled directly back in - except, of course, when he emerged to make popcorn for Jim, nodding wisely to himself. Spock wonders if Sulu has finally found Scott's stash of Scotch, which has long been rumored to be in the executive suite but has never been found. Scott himself had disappeared to the engines initially and is now on the bridge, and they are traveling towards Gracie at a greater speed than Spock had been led to believe the Enterprise could achieve. Pavel is sitting in the galley and staring at them all, though he was - briefly - dispatched to the labs to rearrange some of Spock's slides, just to give him something to do with his day other than make coffee no one could bring themselves to drink.

Spock is not sure how much of what they feel is for Red and how much is for Jim. This is something entirely new for all of them, and though they have all done their jobs remarkably well (something he has told them, and something that the senator has told them, though they'll probably not believe it until it's their captain telling them so).

Jim isn't particularly in any state to be a captain for people, though. He's doing well with the ship, and that is all Spock wishes to ask of him. He is still surprised to find that he can offer Jim this measure of his own calm. Spock remains nervous, though. The rest of the job is the Senator's, unless Jim is expected to give interviews. Without something to do, surely eventually Jim will crash and need cushioning as he falls. Surely anyone would. If it does happen, Spock feels a keen certainty that his place is in cushioning that fall.

"What's he thinking?" Nyota asks him, disrupting the way the kitchen has been quiet except for the noises of the ship around them and the snapping of vegetable oil in the pan as Spock adds the peppers.

"You could ask him yourself," Spock advises, because some small part of him wants to keep Jim's brokenness for his own. But Nyota looks at him as if she's lost, which is such an alien expression on her face - so frequently determined, and nearly never looking for much outside of herself for that determination that he can't help but offer more, because it will be important to her. "He thinks you are disappointed with him."

"I should have figured it out," she tells him, and flicks a switch on the rice cooker. He flicks it back; Nyota, he has learned, has deplorable tastes in food and wishes her rice to crunch. No one else need be subjected to that. "Of course he's disappointed in me."

"No one could have discovered their plans before they executed them," he tells her. "Jim will tell you the same thing as soon as he is in any state to do so."

"You're sure he's not going to jump for it, right?" she asks, only half-joking.

"I think he will want revenge," Spock says. He hopes Jim will want revenge, though at the same time he hopes that Jim himself is not instrumental in getting that revenge. Jim's father cannot have been the only man ever killed by Narada; it would not make sense to expend that much effort for a single protester when it had not been tried before, and illogical to stop once they had gotten away with it so smoothly once. They will need to take some action, and the planning of it will be much safer than the execution. He knows Jim will be instrumental to both, and it disconcerts him,. worries him in a way he's unfamiliar with. "Go be with him, if you are so concerned."

"He doesn't want to see me."

"He never wants anything that he needs to have, you have told me so yourself," he says, and runs a knife under the tap. "Go. Tell him I will be fifteen minutes and that if he is so cold he can go inside and get a sweater."

~*~

Jim really doesn't want to see anyone but Spock. Spock is all calm and quiet and not angry at him, and is apparently cooking him things which he is not at all prepared to deal with.

He kind of especially doesn't want to see Uhura who comes up behind him and locks her arms around his shoulders before pressing her face into his back.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. She has nothing to be sorry for and he still doesn't know how to apologize to her for the things that are his fault. He can't imagine what this conversation is going to look like and he'd very much prefer not to be involved in it.

"You do know I'm the guy, right?"

"Whatever, you love it when I'm the dom," she says, and he can feel her smirking into his spine. "Spock says you're not going to kill yourself."

"You trust Spock?"

"You do," she tells him, and it's true. "That's good enough for me. And, Jim, I should have listened better, should have figured out it was never that easy with anyone who didn't want to be seen."

"I should have known to tell you to look," he mutters, to his shoes.

"Yeah," she says, finally. "Maybe can it be a little bit everyone's fault, right now. 'Cause it sure as hell can't be just yours. You're good, but you're really not that good." It doesn't make him feel better, but it doesn't make him feel worse and there's not much he's asking for. "What do we do next?"

"Do I have to know?" he asks, because he doesn't really, he's done all the things he was supposed to do. He knows he's supposed to do something more, but he doesn't know what, yet. He doesn't know how to start to think about it because he keeps running into this huge black block of you fucked this up and you never deserved it anyway that he mostly doesn't know how to get around.

Uhura squeezes his shoulders, once, and then spins him around. "Yeah, Captain, you do," she says. " So figure it out, but first call your father and tell him you're OK and he'll tell you he still loves you and it will be fine. And then you can go and kick some ass, OK?"

"Your plans are always deceptively simple sounding," he says, and it's still more his fault, but she's got the look in her eyes that she had when she told him he didn't get to call her by her full name, and arguing with that is just stupid. Besides, he kind of wants to believe her, even if she's wrong. "And he's my stepfather."

"He doesn't think about it like that," she says, which is true. Jim knows it's true, but he also knows that shit like that can change. "Call him before he drives us all crazy."

"Are - is everyone holding up OK?" It's something he should have asked a couple hours ago, and at the thought that he hadn't his head sinks onto her shoulder. She runs her hands through his hair and he can imagine her grinning, thinks she must be.

"Well, you know, I think the child cried, which could be a suggestion for you. You could have cathartic crying right here, right now, and I would not blame you. Also, Spock has stopped trying to even pretend he's not head over fucking heels for you."

"I maybe told him to stop." He always figured she'd kill him when she found out, but she doesn't look like she's going to. And maybe he'll get really lucky and he'll have told her before Spock did and Spock'll at least be in more trouble (what they're supposed to be telling people is still unclear to him, and he's still too busy with so much else that he can't fucking think about that too). "Not that's it's - that."

"He's cooking for you," she says. "Right now, he is in the kitchen, cooking for you. Leonard's letting him - Leonard McCoy is letting someone prepare you food without instructions, which is I think how he gives his blessing. And Spock is cooking for you, and you are letting him. So I think it's exactly that, if 'that' means that you're so in love you can't see straight so you're willing to eat whatever the hell it is he's making. But you can't admit that because you're you, so you need me to tell you so. " She pushes him back and looks into his eyes, and then nods as if she's decided something. "Also, later, when we are all on dry land and this mess is cleaned up and we're all significantly more stable, there will be a punishment for not telling me that last night. Or, you know, whenever this started."

"You think this is going to get fixed?" he asks her, and he knows exactly why there's so much hanging on her answer. Uhura had made him work for her respect. Made him work really fucking hard, so it means something that he keeps it. To everyone else he's the fucking captain, and you listen to the captain. Uhura could give a fuck. She listens to Jim, when she thinks he deserves it, and she respects him enough to give him a chance when she thinks he's being an idiot. He needs to keep that.

"I know we'll fix it," she tells him. "You loved Red too much to let it go any other way, and so did the rest of us. Take the night, figure out you and let Spock help, for fuck's sake, and then I'll see you in the morning and we can start making this better, OK?" He nods, and he's not choked up because he hasn't cried sober since he was eleven, but he's feeling something huge and frightening for her that he's always associated with Chris.

~*~

Spock only knows how to prepare three dishes, but he knows that the stir fry he makes is borderline acceptable when he is able to use the aroma to help McCoy convince Pavel prepare himself a meal. Spock feels oddly accomplished at having done this, though the feeling does not last long as once Pavel is happily settled, Spock gets pulled into McCoy's office and threatened.

Well, perhaps threatened is too explicit a word. McCoy communicates his idea of a possible future and tries to be menacing while he does it.

"You know he's for shit at relationships, right?" McCoy says, and Spock contemplates, briefly, feigning ignorance, but he decides that it will most likely not work, and it would be futile to try. "He's going to break your heart - provided you have one - and he's not going to know he did and you are going to have to leave, and then it will all be terrible for weeks. Jim's invested in you, and there's going to be no talking him out of it, so now the only hope I've got is that you haven't gone crazy yet and I can talk some damn sense into you."

"I am very concerned about allowing you to continue as ship's physician if you believe there is as chance that I do not have a heart."

"Figure of speech," McCoy snaps.

Spock doesn't know how to respond to the rest of what McCoy has said. From what he's gleaned of Jim's relationship history, he does know that things won't necessarily end well for them, no matter what choices they make at some point in the future when their relationship (or lack thereof) is the most immediate thing happening in either of their lives. He finds that, at least today - and for the past eight days, but that was probably more about the fact that it has been nearly a year since he last had a regular sexual partner - he does not care. Spock is perhaps defined by his worrying and yet he finds that Jim is something he cannot worry about. Jim is there now and needs Spock now and it seems some great presumption to think very far beyond that. He will give what he has now, and that is all he finds himself capable of doing. He will continue doing so until the opportunity is no longer there, and then he will regret its passing. He can't explain why, he certainly can't defend it and he can't see a way to speak about anything he feels or anything they have done with the always-oppositional McCoy. A small, vindictive part of him also feels that it is both none of McCoy's concern and if McCoy is going to make it one then that should be a problem which it falls to Jim to resolve.

"Perhaps, Doctor," he says finally, because it's the only thing that he is certain of knowing in this entire mess of Jim and Red and this ship, "I cannot be talked out of it, either."

"Well, damn," says McCoy and eyes him exactly the way Nyota does every time she teases him about Jim. "Nyota put the fear of god into you about breaking his delicate little heart already, didn't she?"

"If you mean to ask if we discussed my relationship with the captain, then no, we have not."

"Take care of him," McCoy says, finally. "He has no fucking idea, but there are a lot of people who will do a lot of really awful things to you if you don't. She'll tell you the same. Go, his dinner'll get cold. And try to get him to sleep, I won't drug him 'cause now he'll just wake up mad but he could use some rest before he goes off half-cocked tomorrow."

"We do not know what -"

"Jim's the one in charge of coming up with it. It'll work, but it'll be crazy and probably also dangerous."

Spock leaves, feeling like he has been handed some sort of challenge. Feeling, for once, like it is a test that might be difficult for him. But - as always, with tests in school and with the challenges presented by his work, by Jim, by the very nature of Spock's own personality - as if he will be able, eventually, to pass it.

~*~

Jim spends the night sitting on the deck, starting curled beneath a blanket and ending with Spock's arm around him under the blanket while Spock gets probably as close as he's ever gotten to cursing another person out.

"It has been at least three hours since I have felt the toes on my left foot," Spock informs him. He's been pulling Jim closer for hours and Jim's actually not sure he could get closer. He still wants to be. Everyone else left him to Spock's tender mercies after Bones motherhenned them into bed, and now he's pacing the hall so they stay there. And has forgotten that Jim and Spock exist or something, maybe. Jim doesn't know, he's just glad not to be on the receiving end of Bones' earnest medical advice when really all he wants to do is sit right here and have a really nice nervous breakdown and maybe some hot chocolate if he can persuade Spock that he's still capable of standing.

"You are such a sissy, seriously," Jim tells him.

"I grew up in Arizona," Spock argues. "It does not get this cold there. Ever."

"Your dad had a posting in fucking Russia, that's gotta be colder." At maybe about midnight they decided that there was no point in trying to talk about what had happened. They'd made out for a while, but even that got frustrating when there was really no way anyone could get naked and Jim was skittish about the first move, and Spock's hands were everywhere but it was like he didn't know the next step. Jim would've maybe thought he was a virgin if it hadn't been for Bones' sexual history slip, which thank god, because in what Uhura will probably call Jim's delicate state, he's not entirely sure he could have handled that knowledge. At all.

They'd have been fucking, on the open deck, right now, he's almost entirely certain.

"We were only there in the summer," Spock says. "And had we been there in the winter, I can only assume my parents might have allowed me to go indoors in the night when the risk of frostbite was not so much a risk as a guarantee."

"You do not have frostbite, even a little bit, but come here," Jim says, and shifts and wriggles so it's Spock under his arms instead of him under Spock's. He realizes that when they're curled under a blanket anyway, it doesn't make much of a difference, but it might make Spock feel a little better, maybe. Hell, it makes Jim feel colder, but, no, that's actually because the blanket has slipped off.

At least now he can feel the cold and he's thinking about how at some point he's going to have to make Spock go outdoors in Alaska in just a t-shirt, instead of all bundled up and ridiculous, and maybe teach him the meaning of really fucking cold. He feels - well, he doesn't feel better. He still feels a little bit like someone took out something important from his chest with an ice-cream scoop and tossed it into the sea.

He also feels like he's diving to get it back.

He feels like he could call Chris in the morning and apologize and talk about next steps, and he feels like maybe when he's got visual on Gracie he could go inside (Spock says maybe forty-five minutes, if they're lucky, and he's learned to trust Spock's math without many questions). He feels like there's a tomorrow and there's still something next and that came faster that he'd thought it would.

But the worst things, Jim knows, are never as bad as you think they'll be. He's thought his world was ending a lot of times and it never has, and he pushes through it and he waits for it to be morning because it's cliched and it's stupid, but it's always gonna come, and he doesn't necessarily have to be standing when it does, he just has to be breathing.

Sometimes, they stop talking or touching or eating or whatever for a few minutes and he ends up thinking about it all too much and then he has to settle back against Spock and remember to breathe when Spock does, and Spock seems to get it and waits it out, patiently.

"You could go inside if you wanted to," he adds, suddenly, because he's started to rehash what Spock said last to find something they could talk about so he doesn't start to freak out again, or start to plan because it can't be time for that yet. It should have been immediate, but the Kobayashi Maru can't go faster than they can and now Uhura's doing her best to jam the signals from Gracie and George until they can get there. It's probably safer for them, and they are technically still doing research which does involve seeing whales. And, well, yes, it'll probably make him feel exponentially better.

There's this small part of him that's pretty sure that Nero's made whatever the fuck his point is and now they're safe. So he has tonight before he has to do anything. The empty time should drive him crazy, he should be pacing somewhere and trying to work out what to do next, but instead he just feels frozen, but not stiff. Like he's - there was some stupid movie that his brother watched, when Sam was maybe six. There were people stuck in slowed-down time. They spilled drinks or something and even at four Jim had realized that it all made no fucking sense. But those people had looked like they were maybe moving through jell-o, and that's how he feels. Except it doesn't feel absurd because it's real and this, right now, is when time is a little slower and he knows it's not enough time to get over anything, but it's enough time to get better.

"I do not want to," Spock tells him, and then reconsiders. "I do want to, but I do not think it would be best to leave you alone at this time." Jim doesn't really get why everyone thinks he's a fucking flight risk, and he'd have ripped Bones's head off for it at least four hours of condescension ago. But Spock's not condescending, or not really - he's something else, and that something else makes it so Jim isn't thinking about how to pay Spock back. Spock talks like it's not about not leaving Jim alone so Jim won't do something stupid, but like it's not about leaving Jim alone because Spock likes taking care of him. It's nice.

"I'm sorry about your toes," Jim says, after a pause in which he pulls Spock just a little closer and the blanket just a little tighter. "Even if I do think you're full of shit."

~*~

Spotting Gracie is like - it's not quite like a release it's more like being finally, finally relieved after months of isolation, and she breaches just next to the ship like she knows that he's been waiting for her and he can't help but think that she does, somehow. And yeah, so maybe he is sometimes one of those guys who has a religious experience every time he gets near them but she's his girl and today he needs this. And there's this little part of him that would make Spock - Spock - die laughing that thinks maybe she needed him a little bit, right now. Jim doesn't think that his babies think like he does, but he thinks they've got to feel and maybe if she's felt Red dying she can feel something about that. He doesn't know how he got to be this guy.

His reaction is not maybe the most emotionally balanced one he's ever had. There's a few minutes of gripping the railing and doing something really nasty to his hands that's probably going to end in arthritis, and then he - well, he didn't actually know that jump was ever a literal term, but he guesses he kind of makes it one, because he's not entirely sure how he got Spock pressed up against the wall, but he knows that his feet didn't really touch the ground between here and there and also that it feels fucking wonderful.

This feels new, pressing into Spock's mouth and taking control and tangling their tongues and trying to swallow every moan and remember every touch because they're all amazing. He steers Spock's hands to his hips because that's where he wants them and then he keeps them there because he wants to explore and he can't when Spock's trying to do the same thing.

He's got one hand up the back of Spock's shirt, exploring smooth skin and what feels like a mole just between his shoulder blades that Jim can already taste - all salt and sweat and Spock and amazing, and he'd be pressed up over Spock and he'd be still because he wouldn't want to leave that one spot, but it'd be like fire at the base of his spine trying to get him to move, and Spock wild - no, Spock would never be wild. Spock composed under him but gasping and moaning and maybe eventually begging if Jim could get himself to stay still for that long and it would be God, it would be so, so good like that.

It's thinking about that that gets him riding the leg Spock somehow got between his own, and moving down from Spock's mouth - which takes effort, fuck, Spock tastes like heaven and a bit like the tea he had in a thermos a while ago - to Spock's neck where he's not sweating because they've only maybe been like this for minutes but he can feel the rhythm of Spock gasping for breath against his tongue and it's so, so good.

"If you wish to continue," and here, Spock's voice fucking hitches, and it's maybe the hottest thing Jim's ever heard and he's pretty sure they can't continue because the second he gets his hands on any more of Spock's bare skin he's going to fucking come and he doesn't even know why. He's not even sure he felt like this when he was thirteen and he got his hands under a girl's shirt for the first time. "If you wish to continue, Jim, we must move inside."

"Why?"

"I am not an exhibitionist," Spock tells him, and then pulls him back up to kiss him again.

"But later?"

"We will discuss it," Spock says, but Jim's pretty sure Spock actually means 'no', but then Spock is somehow out from under him and grabbing his hand and pulling him towards the staircase and Jim ceases to care if he doesn't get to have public sex for the next - well, a part of him that is apparently a teenaged girl is suggesting lifetime. That part is stupid and he doesn't want to think about exactly how much of him it comprises right now.

They make it to the first landing before they're grinding up against each other. Jim's not sure what changed or what broke and he's still hurting, but it's like that's a corner of his mind that's just been overwhelmed by this which is so, so much more and he cannot fucking take it, so this time he's the one who pulls away because Spock's not the kind of person to hold something over his head, but Jim's pretty sure he couldn't take it if he had to know that his first time with Spock he came in his pants in the hallway. And he also knows that Spock would always remember and would find ways to allude to it during otherwise normal conversation and he doesn't know how he got to know Spock so well but he likes it.

Likes it like the feeling of Spock's hand in his, or the feeling of Spock finally pressing him down into the bed, or the way that Spock sighs when Jim shifts a little against him just like that.

He likes that they have a whole discussion about getting naked because clearly they had some different plans for how that was going to go. He likes that he tosses his clothes on the floor and gets to lie back and jerk himself and put on a fucking show for Spock while Spock's folding his clothes and Spock's hands are shaky, halted and it is so, so clear that the only thing he's thinking about is Jim, and then there's the feel of Spock's tongue on him and Spock settling between his legs and it's the only thing he can think of and it's maybe the only thing he ever wants to see again.

Except then Spock stops which is a fucking sin, and pulls up so he's looming over Jim and goes to nip and bite at Jim's ears, which normally Jim thinks is kind of weird but right now it's working and then Spock's talking and maybe, OK, maybe Jim's so far gone that he should have missed it if it had been anyone else's voice.

"I want you inside me," Spock pants, though, and his voice is all rough from having Jim's cock down his throat and there is no fucking way Jim could ever have not heard that, could ever have not registered it by rearing up and pinning Spock to the bed and kissing him until he couldn't breathe and grinding down against him and wondering why the hell he wasn't coming already because even just the idea of it was quietly pulling him to pieces.

~*~

It will occur to Spock, later, that it was presumptuous of him to think that Jim would have condoms and lubrication easily accessible when he had had no idea, embarking, that he would be engaging in sexual relations before they were in port in Hawaii.

It will occur to him even after that that he need not feel guilty for the assumption because Jim would have taken it as a compliment.

When he is writhing on two of Jim's fingers and so lost in sensation that he could not beg even if he had ever been inclined to begging, nothing occurs to him at all. He mouths at Jim's shoulder only because it is the closest skin and not especially because he had thought about the broad stretch of them. Eventually, though, his mouth falters on Jim's skin until he is merely resting it on Jim's collarbone and Jim is curling and scissoring his fingers and Spock cannot breathe and he doesn't care.

And then Jim's pushing in a third finger and Jim is moaning, which Spock cannot quite understand since Jim is so carefully holding himself above Spock, barely touching him at all since Jim is receiving no real, direct stimulation - and Spock had thought, until Jim, that he was not attracted by strength, would have thought it would have been the bird-delicate bones of Nyota's wrist and not the tight-bound strength of Jim's arms that would have enthralled him. He tries to pull Jim down on top of him, thinking of pressing them together, the infinitely arousing weight of Jim's body on his, but Jim shakes his head, wordless when he tries. Jim presses a wet kiss to Spock's cheek, as if soothing the sting of some imagined rejection before he places his hand on Spock's waist and guides Spock until Spock is straddled over Jim's arousal, looking down at Jim who seems calm, who smiles up at him and presses a wet kiss to Spock's wrist where it comes to rest by Jim's head.

"You've done this before, right?" Jim says, and his voice is rougher than Spock has ever heard it, and then he's letting go of Spock, withdrawing to grab for a condom and Spock is trembling with the effort of being even so far from Jim, of waiting patiently for what he knows is a necessary precaution.

He wants so very badly for it not to be. He wants to be the only one Jim does this with and he wants them to touch in as many ways as possible. The small barrier is practical, and he knows that he will not think of it in the act, but it bothers him now, like something small biting at the back of his mind. This is not his to keep, not yet, perhaps not ever.

"Yes," he says, answering in the general instead of the specific. He has had intercourse before, with a man, even. He has not done this. He does, though, understand the basic mechanics of it and there is some small part of him that says there is a reason not to give Jim the power of the knowledge that he is the only one who has done this to Spock, the only one who has ever made him feel this way, or want this.

And then he is taking the condom from Jim, rolling it onto him - and how is this the first time he has touched Jim like this when it feels as if this is perhaps where his hands have always belonged, where his body fit better than it does anywhere else.

There is an awkwardness, in trying to figure out how they will be together. Spock tries to guide Jim into him as Jim bucks his hips, almost as if it was involuntary. Jim tries to kiss Spock as Spock is trying to pull away from him to get - some perspective, he thinks, he needs. The fit is just slightly wrong for a moment, and Spock has to wonder if the rightness of everything up until now has been only momentary. If the rest of this were not the same simple flow of their bodies together, he would not mind. But the loss of that simplicity requires an adjustment, almost. But then there is a pause and Spock feels drawn out of the moment - enough to wonder what he must look like, if he could possibly be as tantalizing as Jim under him when he is only himself and nothing like the gold of Jim's skin and the burning blue of his eyes. Jim is laughing, though, and taking Spock's hips into his hands and maneuvering, and Spock would feel offended if Jim did not look so lovely underneath him, did not look like temptation embodied and was not something more than beautiful.

"Oh," Spock sighs, when Jim has guided himself in, and he did not mean to say that, did not mean to make any noise at all, but there is just the tip of Jim, and it's a stretch like nothing he's felt before, but it is Jim and so it is so, so good and he is pushing down, because there had been a look in Jim's eyes as if he were both restraining himself from movement and savoring the moment all at once and Spock had realized they could have stayed like that, still, forever. But Spock cannot savor, he needs - he wants, perhaps, but it feels like need - more than this.

Then Jim is seated in him, and Spock is touching Jim everywhere, because he seems to no longer have control of his hands, Jim starts talking, and that is Spock's own undoing.

"I wanted this," Jim says, softly, beginning to move, and it hurts, but Jim's hips are shifting as if Jim is looking for something, "I looked at you that first day and I wanted this - but then you were so, God, Spock, you were so you and I wanted this so much more, but then I thought I couldn't because I want to keep you. OK? I want to keep you and I want to freeze your fucking toes off and then I want to come in here and warm you up and holy hell, yes, baby, like that, OK, just move with me a little bit and I promise, it's gonna be so good for you."

"Do not call me baby," Spock answers, because he does not know how to respond to that, is vaguely impressed with himself for having the ability to speak and the endearment has never suited him.

"Call you whatever the fuck I want to, sweetheart," Jim tells him, but Spock notes that at least he listened in his own way. And then Jim is shifting him just once more and Spock does lose the ability to speak, at all, and he must be making noise but he can only hear the rush of air past his ears and sometimes Jim is grunting, sighing, swearing, and sometimes it is his name, and it's only - it's only a few embarrassing minutes later and he is climaxing with barely a touch of Jim's hand.

He cannot remember Jim's climax, though he thinks he would like to see Jim like that, so very undone.

He remembers Jim whispering to him and thrusting up into him during his orgasm, and he remembers the rush and Jim quietly pulling out and settling onto his side, a parabola as Spock is a vertical equation next to him.

Jim has left him space, and Spock finds he does not want it so he reaches out to Jim, one hand on Jim's shoulder and pulls him, so that his body is resting mostly over Spock's. Jim is pliable and bends his body to fit Spock's, and the weight of him on Spock is soothing, as if it is keeping him grounded.

He falls asleep nearly immediately, Jim pressed up against his side, breathing hotly into his neck.

~*~

Jim hates the morning after, as a general rule. If he liked sex even slightly less, he would be so overwhelmed by hatred for the morning after that he would become a monk and fulfill all the fantasies Bones has ever had and it'd be awesome, for Bones. The thing is, when it's someone he knows (so, OK, lately that means when it's the damn marine biologist) that means there's no quick escape and it's all going to go to hell and he just has to wait for it. When it's whoever he picked up the night before, he's got a pretty good chance of knowing their name, but getting it wrong is possibly the worst thing he ever does to people and he fucking hates when that happens. And then there's the whole getting-out-of-somewhere-strange and he used to have to call a cab, which was fine because cabbies pretty much professionally mock people doing the walk of shame and he feels like he's brightened someone's day. But now, mostly, he has to call Uhura, or if he can't get her it's Bones and it's not very nice (but better than Sulu who likes to leave him to find his own way home). So yes, Jim hates the morning after so very much. But Jim really likes sex, so he hasn't stopped doing it just to avoid that and he probably never will.

Sex with Spock, he thinks, was fairly awesome. Maybe not the best sex he's ever had; top ten, though. Top five. Maybe not worth the morning after, but there's this chance that it was that's got Jim putting off opening his eyes in case it wasn't.

He does open them, though and Spock is sitting next to him, with a mug of coffee.

Top three.

"You made coffee?"

"Pavel cannot sleep," Spock tells him, and then his hand makes some sort of aborted gesture and he adds, "I am pleased that you could."

Jim kind of doesn't want to let go of the coffee to take Spock's hand, but he also thinks that he wants Spock to know that he gets to touch Jim now, because top-three sex on a first try is pretty good and they are going to do that again. Possibly, a very small part of Jim contributes, until Spock is the entire top ten. Keeping that in mind, Jim reaches out for Spock's hand and puts it in his own before sipping his coffee.

"You're all clothed," he grumbles. It's not fair. Spock should always be naked.

"It is the morning. Well, it was morning when we fell asleep, now it is midafternoon. It is, though, time to be awake," Spock tells him and other people (Jim, but he's pretty sure also normal people, or at least Sulu) would've been lascivious about that. Spock is not. "You should dress as well, the Senator has called eight times already and I believe in his last phone call he told Nyota that she was dead to him. He is very anxious about you, and I believe he plans to fire the next person who tells him he cannot speak to you. You have things to do."

Yesterday comes crashing down, really suddenly, and it's not pretty and Jim's almost impressed with himself for not crying and only pulling Spock down so he can kiss him and get the rhythm of his breathing. And, right, that's why he doesn't hate his life. Because today is the ninth day after he kissed Spock and yesterday was maybe the worst day ever and he doesn't know how to fix this and he spent the entire night trying to remember what it was like to be all right, and he never figured it out. Spock kisses back, quietly yielding for a minute, and then does pull away.

"You will give Doctor McCoy some sort of fit if you do not demonstrate soon that I have not, in fact, killed you."

"With sex?"

"He last suggested strangling," and Jim should make some sort of cheap shot about bondage - because holy God does it come up a lot with Spock, which is both weird and intriguing - but instead he just keeps resting their foreheads together.

"I'm filthy," Jim says, instead, aiming for seductive and honestly not entirely sure whether he gets there. Spock kisses him and makes this soft noise against his lips right before he does that might have been a laugh, on someone else. On Spock it's just sort of bizarrely charming and also makes Jim want to lick into his mouth, except Spock is not letting that happen, because he goes all steely and determined and moves away.

"You really do have things to do," he reminds him. "And Jim? I did not say yesterday. I am sorry for your loss."

And that's the thing that gets Jim out of bed and moving, because he did lose something, and he wants something in return.

~*~

There's a part of Chris that regrets that this is his life. He hates that it's the phone on his desk waking him up because that means he didn't go home last night, and so neither did Number One. That means that Chris will have no coffee because he doesn't quite know how to procure it and she won't do it unless she's asked, and he won't ask her because he knows she has every right to be unhappy with him.

"Pike," he answers, not even really bothering to raise his head. It's got to be - fuck, how long was he asleep for?

"Hey, Chris." It's Jim which is - more than surprising. He'd thought it was going to be fucking days before he heard from him without having to get someone to wrestle him to the phone. Yeah, Jim's really for shit at staying angry with Chris and he goes looking for reassurance as soon as he's out of his own head, but this was a really big fucking deal, and Chris had been sure he wasn't going to be speaking to Jim until Jim had drunk it all off at the seediest bar he could find on the nearest landmass. Not that he hadn't been calling every half hour anyway, just to check that nobody needed him.

"Jim," because he wants to yell at him and he want to apologize and he wants to check on him and that's all competing in his throat, so there's pretty much nothing to say but the kid's name.

"I'm, um, I'm sorry I didn't call?" Jim suggests, and it's sounds like there's just as much going on in him, so Chris makes a humming sort of noise of assent. "And, Chris, I'm sorry about Red. I had - Uhura's going to send you some pictures, and you can work with that. And we're on Gracie now, and I don't know what the fuck to do about George, but his signal's been fine, though if that means anything is kind of unclear to me, but I think it has to mean he's fine right now, and maybe we can go between for a couple weeks. Kobayashi Maru's fucking gone, though. Uhura's losing her shit because she can't find it, but she thinks maybe the signal we used to be getting was one they wanted us to get - she's working on it. We're gonna figure out what to do, and we'll do it soon but Chris -"

"Jim," he says, and he doesn't really know what else to say. That Jim's even starting to apologize means he's lost it in a really major kind of way. Jim used to - God, he remembers when he used to let Winona call, when he thought maybe Jim was just staying with him for a few months - Jim would spend hours apologizing to her for leaving, for fucking making Frank hit him. It was this thing of Jim's, when he didn't know what to do, he just took it all on himself. Chris never knew how to make it go away, and he's always been ashamed that he hadn't ripped the phone out of Jim's hands or held him or parented or something instead of leaving the damn room and waiting outside in the hopes that eventually he'd be needed.

It's never been aimed at Chris before, though.

"There's no way anyone saw this coming," he says, "not me and not you and the only blame is on the bastards that did it."

"You gave them to me to take care of," Jim says, stubborn, and then there's some muttering in the background - he'd think Uhura, only now he remembers he sent her to bed after the last time he called, and it's too deep for that.

"Who've you got with you?" he asks, finally, because he's too old to ram his head against this brick wall and he always wanted to be something better for Jim than Winona was. Listening to Jim apologize just makes him sick and tired and reminds him that maybe he can't fix this part of Jim and that he'll never get his kid to be as OK as he might have been if Chris had had him always.

"Spock," Jim answers, "he made me breakfast."

"Did you eat it?" Jim doesn't eat when he's unhappy, and the he won't notice he's hungry for days. It's why Chris is always checking. When Jim was in school, he used to be able to tell when it was a bad week because he'd need to go more than two days without going for groceries.

"It was vegetarian. But I'm eating it, I'm eating it," there's the sound of throat clearing at the other end of the line and then a door closing. "Kicked Spock out," Jim explains, and Chris wonders that he's got Spock obeying his hand gestures at this point. "I want to do something, Chris."

"You are doing something, you're eating breakfast. Thank Spock for me."

"That's not what I'm saying." Chris has this moment of wondering what he'd do if it were anyone else on the Enterprise, or if he'd argued that Narada hadn't been culpable for George's death, and finds it doesn't really matter. What matters is he's going to keep Jim safe. It's the least he can do.

"We'll send out the pictures, Jim, but this is not a children's movie where you heroically save the damn whales. This is our real life, I can make this look bad and I can get the Kobayashi Maru inspected next time they go to port somewhere half-civilized, but that's all I can do."

"It's not all I can do," Jim says, "it's not all I'm gonna do. We'll send you the pictures later today. And Chris?"

"What?"

"I'm really sorry."

Chris isn't sure if Jim's apologizing for what he's done or what he's about to do, and both ideas tear him apart in equal measure. And then he's just furious that Jim hung up on him and sets to composing an email that says so, which he nevers sends because he is, in fact, smarter than that.

~*~

It's not, precisely, a council of war, because that would be ridiculous. That's just what Scotty's calling it. And, OK, yes, what Jim's calling it in his head, but not out loud, because even if he's maybe not taking this as badly as he should have (the child, for one, is looking at him like he should be a weeping heap on the floor of the bridge and not just leaning into Spock more than he might have done if he'd never had his hands on Spock's junk and if he wasn't feeling like maybe he was going to need something solid to grab onto at any given moment).

"Full disclosure," he says, because he knows he'll never feel right if he doesn't. They're all in the galley because it holds them all - his back is pressed up against the sink and he's got Spock on one side of him and McCoy on the other. The child handed him coffee and Uhura handed him a six-page long memo on what she had done wrong and how they could have all stopped it and then she'd kissed him on the cheek and told him that he shouldn't beat himself up so much about stuff when he could blame her, because she was a stronger person than him. "I'm probably not going to tell Chris about anything we talk about here, so if you really, really want for him not to kill you, then you can leave now."

"He says I'm dead to him anyway," Uhura tells him , from where she's settled on the floor by the small table.

Sulu's next to her, and he just gives Jim this look that screams I followed you this far, moron and then looks away.

"Someone's got to mind you," Bones says, and he sounds exasperated but he looks like a kid going on an adventure or something, except maybe grimmer.

"No one else'll be able to work on my bairns so he can't give me the sack," Scotty informs them all. This probably true; after two and a half years of Scotty Jim's fairly certain the engines no longer even resemble whatever they were manufactured to be.

Pavel looks around at all of them, and then nods once, and mutters something in Russian that Jim probably doesn't want to understand.

Spock maybe presses a little closer to Jim (they can pretend they're just in close quarters all they want, but even Scotty's kind of giving Jim the eye for it).

It sounds like a big moment, it feels like it should be building up to something. But at the same time, this is his crew and he knows them, and he knew they would probably come with him, because they're amazing and they're not blaming him; it's this stupidly warm feeling that he's pretty sure might be all that's keeping him running.

Bones nudges him when the pause goes on a beat too long, and then again when it goes a beat past that.

"So," Jim says, finally, "ideas?"

At that point, Scotty has one about blowing the Kobayashi Maru up using only underwater volcanoes, something that sounds like it'd happen in a comic book and Scotty could probably make work. It sounds a little appealing, but Jim's pretty sure murder is not the answer. The rest of it is - not lackluster, his crew's brilliant and they try to find what he's looking for. It's just not coming to anybody. Jim's trying not to get frustrated, because he should be the one to fucking figure this out, but it normally doesn't take him this long to get there.

"Uhura, find out where they are, I don't care how you do it. We're going to want to know where the ship is and once we do, if they get within twenty miles of George, I want to know about it, I don't care when it is or what I'm doing," he says, later, when they're exhausted and they're staring dully at appliances more than they're talking.

"Might want to ask Spock's opinion on that," McCoy mumbles; Jim glares at him, and Bones glares right back. "You are not quiet, Jim."

He hadn't even known Spock could blush, or that he could actually figure out how to laugh again this quickly. Sulu hugs Bones for it and Uhura smiles at Spock and then gives Jim this look like he's possibly dirt on her shoe.

"If you break him, Captain, I am going to find real marine biologist nuns and I am going to have the senator hire all of them. And then we'll all quit and you can ride around on a boat of marine biologist nuns and it will be nothing like porn. Are we clear?"

"You fucking told me to," he informs her, and he doesn't know how they got this off track, and they still don't have a (feasible) plan, but there's his crew in his galley and Spock beside him looking like he's never been this offended before in his life, and there're still some really good things in the world.

Notes:

So, back at the dawn of time, I said I was going to write an epic AU in which Jim and Spock save the whales. This is that fic. It was betaed by leupagus who says I'm not supposed to thank her anymore, but seriously, you guys, she did so much for this fic, and also is the reason it was very nearly called Not Exactly Free Willy or The Captain's Wife. Mostly it's not called that, because, as she pointed out to me, Jim? Is always the wife. Anyway, I have had (and am having) so much fun writing this and I really hope you all enjoy reading it; please let me know if you have (or really, if you haven't, concrit is always welcome, it is why I'm here).

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of whaleverse