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Kirk is dreaming about Iowa.
He’s running in his dream, jogging uphill on that dirt road that cuts through the cornfields, a mile until it hits the charred wasteland where they used to test nuclear bombs during the Eugenics wars. It’s a vivid dream, so much so that he can hear the windy clattering of dry husks against one another, and smell the sweet manure and sweat smell of his neighbors’ horses. Kirk knows it’s a dream, though, because he appears as he is now, nearing thirty five instead of the sixteen year old he last was when he went jogging in Iowa.
He can feel ribbons of sweat gathering in the creases of his elbows, cool when the breeze soothes the burn of middle American sun accosting his bare back. There is a sinister ache in his knee, and his lungs are tight and struggling against the wind, but Kirk keeps running, his shoes sending up clouds of black, ashy dust around him. He knows it’s a dream, so he doesn’t have to keep running, but that doesn’t stop him. There are lots of things that Kirk doesn’t have to do, yet he does anyway. The fact that this isn’t real makes no difference.
Some implicit, unexplained dream-knowledge tells him its Easter Sunday. Something about the chirrup of birds and the almost-summer but not quite heat of April. Kirk sucks in a breath, surging into a sprint when he reaches the top of the hill. It’s only a quarter of a mile left. His knee is all but screaming in protest, but he ignores it, reminding himself this pain is not real. This is not real.
A car slows down alongside him, a vintage thing from the 2000s, and a withered old lady leans out and scolds him for running on the day of the resurrection. His suspicions confirmed, Kirk just increases speed, smiling at her but panting too hard to speak. The car disappears, as things in dreams often do, and he’s alone again. He strikes the ground in front of him, lungs searing and a sunburn on his back. He can see the blackened earth ahead of him as he nears the war zone.
When Kirk was fourteen, fifteen, even sixteen, he turned back here. He made a left and jogged through the cow pasture all the way back home, his feet occasionally sinking in wet, amonified earth spongy with bovine urine. This time, however, he keeps going, on through the bomb craters, further and further into an Iowa he’s never explored.
It’s important to push forward. There are many things that James Kirk believes in, but none so surely as forward motion. Forward motion into the unknown, forward motion in spite of pain, in spite of fear. Kirk used to think that strength was fearlessness, painlessness, but now he knows better. He knows that strength is forward motion in spite of fear. In spite of pain.
He leaps over a crevice in the earth, still smoking like the war wasn’t two centuries ago. His stride lengthens, and the wind shifts alignment from against him, to with him, alongside him. And it’s times like this that make Kirk love running, running truly, purely, like a dog or a horse and with no concern or regards to the destination, but instead for the joy and the pain of the act itself. Air runs cool fingers through his hair, and he closes his eyes, trusting his subconscious to take him where he needs to go, deeper into his home state, deeper into the earth and the things that grow on it, die on it, and come back to life after three days on it.
Abruptly, the scent of grass and fire and hay is gone, replaced by the familiar staleness that comes from living in a tin can. Kirk’s eyes are peeled open and fixed on some uncertain point ahead of him, but they see nothing because it is dark. So suddenly, Kirk is no longer in Iowa. He’s not even on the planet, not even on the ground. He is in space.
Sometimes the absurdity of that fact hits him hard in the gut. Kirk is in space. He’s suspended in something so vast it’s endless. Something so full and so empty, so different from earth with her rules and gravity. He has spent the better part of three years somewhere that can kill him if he does something so innate and mindless and necessary as inhale.
He sits up in bed, his eyes adjusting to the darkness of his quarters, the memory of sunlight still slightly blinding him as he goes mechanically through the motions of the morning. Turning on a cold shower. Pouring himself a spoonful of Thelysian vinegar because he hates the way its tastes. He shudders as it slides bitter and acrid down this throat, and rakes a hand through his hair.
As frigid water thunders on his back, and his breath comes quick and shocked, Kirk is not homesick. Maybe he was at the exact moment of waking, when he is not himself and reduced down to an infant thing, but not now, when he has his mind. He’s not homesick because there are no uncharted territories in Iowa. He used to try and get himself lost when he was sixteen and jogging, but it was impossible. There were few roads and he knew all of them, and the nuclear testing area smelled too burnt and sulfurous to approach unless in a dream. Sometimes he longed for the familiarity of home, of Earth, but only in theory.
Familiarity was tiresome for Kirk. It made him feel restless and caged, and worse, weak. The comfort of it making him soft and unresiliant to the unpredictability of things unknown. So naturally, he joined the academy.
Space is lonely, and at times, terrifying in its immenseness. Sometimes Kirk wants to scream with how lost he is, how far from the corn and the cows he grew up around, how many stars separate him from solid ground. Sometimes the artificiality of the air he breathes startles him, reminds him that he is not supposed to be here, he was not designed for it.
But Kirk, like the Federation, is great at constructing fictions to pacify himself. When he chokes in his tin can, he reminds himself that the Enterprise is everything, she is the vehicle than enables forward motion. Forward motion into the unknown. It’s not that different from running in a dream of Iowa, being the captain of a starship. The wind is still in his face, and there are remnants of war ahead of him, shattered pieces ready to be picked up and slapped together with crazy glue and Federation promises of peace and progress.
Kirk dries off with his shabby towel, his skin prickled with gooseflesh and grey in the unlighted bathroom. His knuckles sting from where they were bruised and skinned from breaking up a fight yesterday, but aside from that Kirk feels invincible. Or at least he tells himself he does.
He pulls his uniform over his head. He brushes his teeth. He laces his boots. He pours a capful of rubbing alcohol over his bruised knuckles, even though Bones says the stuff isn’t just dated, it’s practically barbaric. Kirk doesn’t care, he likes the way it burns. When he can burn and freeze and withstand the terror of time never being measured in days and nights because days and nights don’t exist in space, the fact he is not actually invincible fades into something he can swallow.
Regardless, there is always the slightest imperfection in Kirk’s invincibility. But it’s not the kind of imperfection that ruins things around it. It’s not the wine stain on his mother’s white linens, it’s not the run in her stockings. It’s not broken or sullied by anything external. No, the breach in Kirk’s perfectly conceived of invincibility is more like a scar: ugly but hard earned. Still painful to the touch. White-purple and whorled, a different texture, but still a part of him.
This is why it doesn’t change anything, why he can still lie and feel like there’s not a breakable bone in his body. Because Kirk’s weakness is so intrinsic and unchanging and woven into his selfhood, he’s twisted it into something other than weakness. Instead, it is a pain he endures, like jogging, like burning, like captaining a starship.
It hurts worse, but it is somehow easier. Because loving Spock is a beautiful thing to endure, much more so than the discomfort of rubbing alcohol or Theleysian vinegar. Those are mere discomforts. Loving Spock is full blown agony, and agony requires more strength to withstand.
Kirk gels and combs his hair into place, too focused on the task to notice much else about his reflection. After all, he knows what he would see. More lines in the face, through his brow and on either side of his mouth. Some under his eyes, making them heavy and thoughtful. Kirk knows he looks old and tired, but he tries to not let that matter. If he believes he is desirable, than women find him so. It’s a trick he’s been using as long as he figured out that there was nothing special about a farm boy at the Academy, racing hundreds of other farm boys as far away as possible from cows and corn, so desperate for the endlessness of space. He was nothing special, no stronger and no smarter, so he had to find something else he had above them. And that thing was charm.
Charm is just a lie. Kirk supposes he is a good liar.
Sometimes he wonders if this is why he loves Spock. Because his lies do not work on Spock. Because Spock cannot lie. All of his power, everything that makes the fact he is not special meaningless, is useless when is comes to Spock. Spock is not a victim of his charm, so he strips Kirk down naked, down to the farm boy who is not special. It hurts, and sometimes Kirk thinks that is why he craves it.
Everything in order, Kirk takes a few moments to stand at his bathroom counter, head in his hands. He pauses there, takes a deep breath and lets it out, followed by another. He’s preparing himself for another day at the bridge, another day resting at the top of something he constructed out of charm, in love with someone who is impervious to such things. In this moment of stillness he wonders, as he often does, if the reason he loves Spock is because Spock cannot love him back, and Kirk is obsessed with the impossible. If loving Spock is just another Thelysian vinegar spoonful, more dated and barbaric medical techniques. Anything to make his existence a more difficult thing to conquer, and therefore a greater feat of forward motion.
And as he stands upright and strides out of his quarters with the mask of determination upon his face Kirk knows, as he always does, that the real reason he loves Spock is because he simply cannot help it.
2.
Spock is almost certain now that he will never be pure.
Which is to say, he is certain, but knows that certainty is nearly always illogical because there have been very many things that Spock has encountered that cannot be explained, and therefore it is safer to use words like almost and nearly when they precede words like certain and always.
The truth is that he is certain that he will never be pure, but being almost certain allows for a future, a brilliant though probably impossible future, where he is. Where he can say “yes, my mother was a human. But I have overcome that weakness.” A future where there is no evidence, external or even internal, imbedded into those tightly wound, miserable whorls of self-deprecation (the ironically human parts of) Spock sometimes gets locked into, that he is anything but Vulcan.
He is certain, all the way certain, he will never be physically pure. That is a biological impossibility. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality. Amanda will always be a human woman. Spock will always owe half of his genetics to her. Even if he found some miracle way to correct this, he wouldn’t allow it to happen, because when things seem too good to be true, they often are. Wishes are illogical, as are the answers to wishes.
Biology is not as important as identity. Biology is something Spock can, or perhaps thought he could, overcome. When he joined the Academy, he held a very strong and deep-seated belief that he could work to defeat the biological disadvantage, by embodying in full the Vulcan mind. After all, like pain, one’s identity exists in the mind, even if it affects and sometimes breaks or bends the body. He decided he could decide to be Vulcan, and make it his intention to become so. He could change himself, and that strength of mind would negate his weakness of body because like pain, and identity, weakness exists in the mind.
He remembers one evening with Jim, when they were on either side of the table with a half-finished chess game between them to create the illusion they were up to something less idle than conversation. He remembers telling him about his decision to become Vulcan in spite of being half human. Jim had looked at him the way Jim sometimes looks at him, and said that it was as if Spock were making himself into a piece of living art. Spock responded after a moment of stunned silence that art had nothing to do with it. Jim may have laughed, he may have laughed a sad laugh. Spock cannot remember, because this time when he told Jim about becoming Vulcan, he already knew he had failed.
Years ago, Spock still believed that wanting to be something was the same as being it. He was (unwisely) certain that he could be Vulcan. This was before he met Jim Kirk.
Now he was only almost certain that he could not be pure. And not just purely Vulcan, pure, purely. Purity was unattainable because Spock required the absence of all feeling to be pure. Pure anything. Pure, purely. Sometimes, he nearly achieved it. Some days he was disconnected as he should be, he was pure logic functioning as beautifully and admirably as a computer, hands on titanium and polypro as if they were made from it, eyes scanning the sensors scanning, as if it were his function, too. Then Jim Kirk would walk onto the bridge, and Spock would suddenly feel.
It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t in his control. He, of course, tried to control it. But that is the terrible thing about feeling...it is outside of control. Perhaps not for Vulcans, but for humans. For half humans. For Spock.
In spite of years worth of fighting, years worth of meditation and resistance and other futile attempts, Spock could not shut of the visceral clench in his gut which reflexively followed any number of things that Jim Kirk said or did.
Regardless of the efforts he makes to steal himself and build a barrier in preparation for dealing with Jim’s proximity, something always shatters it. An unexpected attack the instant they beam down onto a planet supposedly devoid of life. The feeling of Jim’s eyes lingering on Spock’s back when he leans over the command deck. Some threat to Jim’s safety, which inexplicably prompts Spock to leap in front of him and tale the bullet, the darts, the beast, whatever it may be. Spock always thinks he is control of what he feels, and then Jim breaks him.
Feeling, and specifically his inability to control it, terrified Spock. They still do. He cannot understand how, under any circumstances, humans wish to feel. Feeling hurts. Even the good feelings, things like joy or elation or relief or whatever that feeling is that springs to Spock’s throat when the captain does not realize his hand is closing around a wrist or a bicep, even those feelings are painful, if only by their nature of being feelings.
Spock hates it. Which is, of course, an emotional response, and so Spock hates that he hates it.
At this moment, he is wavering along the line of control and loss of it. He’s in Kirk’s quarters while the Captain drinks and he watches the Captain drink, face impassive and hands folded evenly in his lap. Because free time comes only in stolen, often inconvenient moments, Kirk hasn’t slept in nearly forty eight hours, and there are smudges of darkness beneath his eyes, a hand-ruffled chaos to the back of his hair Spock would long to smooth is he ever allowed himself to long for things long enough they formulated into more than a distant ache.
The way things work on a starship is never in any rhythmic, predictable fashion. Klingons don’t wait for the synthesis of a feigned morning to attack, and distress calls don’t come when you’re not in the midst of negotiating a diplomatic contract between two warring planets in the gama system. Crisis falls upon crisis and nothing waits for sleep. This sudden, most likely brief lull in the accumulation of stress and strain on the captain came unexpectedly, as its end will come unexpectedly.
Spock tried insisting, for close to an hour, that the Captain should use this time for sleep. Kirk refused, for close to an hour, telling Spock that even if he tried, he could not. So here they are, on either side of the captain’s desk, where a half-empty bottle of aged scottish whiskey sits uncorked and fragrant, an old gift from Scotty. This is how they often sit, divided by something physical, topped off with something incomplete. Its incompleteness holds them there, provides an excuse to continue talking because the game’s not over and the drink’s not finished. They are forever stuck in this purgatory, touched but not touching, facing one another but not together. Waiting, maybe.
Kirk fingers the rim of his glass, studying its amber contents and occasionally swirling them counter clockwise. His eyes are so tired Spock cannot look away from them. He knows it’s illogical, but there’s a tendril of feeling that keeps pushing it’s way out of his tightly packed soil, a feeling that he must look at Kirk’s eyes to look for him, because Kirk cannot seem to do it for himself. Illogical, but uncontrollable. Spock is waiting for an answer to a question he asked, but he doesn’t care terribly whether or not it ever comes. He is more concerned with the shadows beneath Kirk’s eyes.
“I suppose...” Kirk eventually says, breaking the near-silence of ship groans and whirrs one ceases hearing after years of being in space. “I suppose that one cannot...really...feel the pleasure of sensation without, of course, feeling the pain of it, as well.” Then he takes a swig of his drink, grimacing before cutting his gaze up to Spock’s eyes. “Does that answer your question, Mr. Spock?” His voice is hoarse, eyes bright.
Spock clears his throat. “Not exactly.”
“Help a tired man out,” Kirk smiles, stretches back in his desk chair. The Enterprise hums, always watching them. “Clarify.”
Spock is quiet for a long time, because he does not like to speak if he hasn’t already formulated exactly what he wants to say. “It has not been my experience that pleasure is ever truly pleasure. It is accompanied with pain. They are one and the same, for me.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re a Vulcan,” Kirk responded.
“Perhaps. Though, if I were truly Vulcan, I would not be feeling at all.” And this is what they’re talking about. Often, they talk about other things, chess and Starfleet and ancient earth history and philosophy. Things outside of them, this world they are a part of, things they share, but not them. However, when Kirk is exhausted and they are alone, sometimes it comes up, this secret thing. This silent knowing that Spock is not pure, and Spock sometimes feels, and Kirk is aware of it. Perhaps not of its source, but of its existence.
“That’s not what I mean,” Kirk is quick to say, waving a hand. “I mean, perhaps you only feel both pain and pleasure, together, because the pain is a result of your self punishment. That you would feel pleasure, only pleasure, but because you are Vulcan, and believe that you should...not...feel...the pain is there, too.” And then Kirk looks at Spock in that way he sometimes looks at Spock, and it hurts. It hurts in addition to whatever else it feels like, which Spock does not want to feel.
“You believe it is my own fault, not just a function of feeling?” Spock says. His voice is even, as it always is, but inside he is choking.
“I don’t know,” Kirk sighs, resting the edge of his cup against his lip. It dimples the skin there, which is still shiny and swollen from a swing to the mouth he took when he broke apart a fight in engineering the other day. Spock stares, fixated, because it’s easier to wipe oneself clean of anything distracting when one is fixated on a stationary point. It rarely works when that point is somewhere on Kirk’s body, but it seems like there is nothing else in the room. “Perhaps. But I do...think that there is this necessity for pain, or at least discomfort, to precede any kind of pleasant feeling. How do you know a mountain is a mountain, Mr. Spock?”
Spock thinks for one beat, then two. The logical response is “Because there is a valley beside it.”
Kirk’s eyes twinkle brilliant for a moment, his smile this slick, golden, knowing thing. “No one ever answers that right.”
“It’s no compliment to me, captain, I’ve merely read Immanuel Kant,” Spock admits.
“Of course you have, of course,” Kirk laughs dryly, those lips splitting with the promise of blood underneath. His tongue flits out to press against the rim of glass before he takes another sip of Royal Salute, the disappears between his teeth. “But you are precisely correct...we only know what something positive is because of the negative space that surrounds it. And I think that applies...in some fashion...to sensation, as well. You cannot appreciate the sensation of pleasure...of love unless you’ve felt pain. Unless you’ve wanted, wanted truly, and known it was impossible. I’ve always thought love was better when it was unrequited, because by contrast, the joy of loving drowns the pain of thinking you cannot be loved,” his voice has dissolved into darkness. The whole room feels shadowed as a result of it. “Or, at least that’s what we humans tell ourselves.”
Spock wonders if the captain is drunk, but knows that he is not. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was not aware that we were speaking about love,” Spock says. His voice is hoarse, but he tries very hard to ensure that his eyes are not bright. That is always what gives Jim away, the eyes. That is how Spock knows they are talking about love, even when they are not talking about love.
Kirk laughs, a bark of a laugh that fogs up the emptiness in his glass. “No, I suppose we weren’t. We wouldn’t be, would we, Mr. Spock?”
Spock cannot trust himself to lie well at this moment, so he says nothing, just sits separated by physicality and incompleteness and his own certainty that he is not, and will never be, pure.
3.
Hours ago would have been the appropriate time for Spock to say something. Give a warning, allow Kirk to respond and act accordingly. However, Spock has a habit of omitting key bits of information about himself until it’s too late for Kirk to do anything about it. Crucial information, life or death type situations. I’ll die if we don’t alter course to Vulcan. This is a pattern.
On some level, Kirk is sympathetic. He, too, will withstand pain or discomfort until the last possible second; he, too, will suffer in silence. It is part of his self concept to continue trudging desperately ahead while bearing his cross, mortally wounded and bleeding or perhaps just in love. He does it because that is who he is. Under everything, under the promotions and under his uniform and under his command, James Kirk will always be a farm boy with too much to prove, wanting so badly to escape the oppressive layer of ozone and the golden crackle and smell of corn up to the sky, even beyond the blue of it and to something better. More painful, but better. That is the man Kirk is, and when he is not that man, it is the man he aspires to be.
Kirk knows that Spock most likely has his reasons, too, but he’s also aware that chiefly, Spock suffers in silence as a function of shame. He knows that there are times when Spock withholds the truth and the details because he is ashamed of what they say about him, he is ashamed of his passion, his vulnerability, his humanity, and he is ashamed of the language it would take to communicate these things to Kirk. It wasn’t just I’ll die if we don’t alter course to Vulcan. It was, I’ll die if I don’t fuck something right now. And that was tied up in too much grief and shame for Spock to express, so silently, and alone, he suffered, until it was nearly too late. Spock can’t use words like fuck and now because they convey desperation, and desperation reveals that in spite of what he wants Kirk to believe, Spock is not in control of himself the way he wishes to be.
Things are of course less drastic at this moment, but the absence of shame still would have been helpful, as would the admission of desperation. They’re on a planet inhabited only by microbes and some resilient plant-life, engaging in a routine recording of and sample accumulation of mineral deposits to access the planet’s future mining potential. It’s unsurprising that little survives here, seeing as the surface temperature drops significantly every two hours or so, in time with the eerily accelerated cycling of daylight.
Kirk is convinced that their mission here is, indeed, routine, save for being slightly behind schedule and some transporter malfunctions, when Spock proves him incorrect. It’s dark at this moment, so it is also cold, and Spock bumps into him from behind. Kirk holds his ground, steadying them both. He’s about to ask why Spock’ walking is compromised when Spock clears his throat and says as if it’s deeply paining him, “I apologize, Captain, but I seem to be unable to hold my tricorder.” His voice staggers out of him, and the sound of it alarms Kirk, sends a sudden tightening of panic through him. It’s the voice Spock uses when something has been a pressing issue for a long time, and he’s only just decided it’s pressing enough to mention.
He turns in the dark and grips Spock by the shoulders, his fingers digging in deeper to layers of muscle and sinew and fabric than they would be if it were daylight, because darkness allows for those kind of things, uncalled for pressure and closeness and quietness. He would be studying Spock’s face were he able to see it. “What’s the matter, Spock?” Kirk says and it’s nearly a whisper. He notices that under his palms, Spock is quaking.
“It appears that the...rapid cycling of surface temperature on this planet is inducing a...hypothermic response,” Spock explains through chattering teeth. “The Vulcan body temperature--”
“I know about Vulcan body temperature, Mr. Spock,” Kirk cuts him off, irritated in too many ways to name, at himself for not foreseeing such a threat to one of his crew members, and at Spock for not saying something. He sighs, running his hands down from Spock’s shoulders to his elbows, then letting go. Then he pulls his communicator out. “Kirk to Enterprise.”
Of course, he finds the transporter is still being temperamental. A half hour at best, a full hour at worst is all Scotty can promise him, and until then, he has to come up with a way to keep Spock from freezing. Light is slowly creeping its way back into the sky, and the planet’s surface is cast in a deep, sooty blue. In it, Kirk can make out Spock’s silhouette, jagged and slumping in shame, his arms crossed in front of him and trembling ever so often with an almost imperceptible shudder.
“What hurts? Goddamnit, I should have had Bones beam down with us,” Kirk muses aloud before directing a phaser beam to a nearby rock, its craggy shape becoming a disembodied red floating thing in the darkness, casting their faces in a blood hued glow. Then he sits down on a boulder, not intending to move until the transporter is fully functional again.
“I doubt he would have been able to prevent this turn of events,” Spock says curtly. Those words, turn of events, are all he can muster to describe what he perceives as his weakness, and Kirk notices. It’s not what he wants, though, he wants I’m cold, I’m in pain, I have frostbite, take my hand. He also does not want those things, because he knows that he loves Spock because of the way he is, and the way he talks, and the way he cannot talk.
Kirk grinds his boot into the earth, a tight feeling in his chest. “You didn’t answer me, Spock. I asked you what...hurts?” He looks up, critically eying Spock, who is carefully holding his hands a safe distance away from the heated rock, warming them. They twitch and shudder like wounded white birds. Kirk waits anxiously, badly wanting on some selfish, childish level of himself to hear Spock put his pain into words. To force Spock to experience the discomfort of having to admit he’s fallible, he’s breakable and freezable, and that it was his Vulcan half, this time, that’s reminding him of his own mortality. Kirk doesn’t want this for any other reason aside from hurt, this tiny, foil-ball sized and crumpled sheet of hurt that wants all of Spock, the weakness and the infallibility. It wants all of Spock, but even more than that it wants Spock to want to give it to him.
Spock still hasn’t answered, so Kirk raises his eyebrows, looks plaintive. The rock is fading back to grey again, cloaking them in muddy blue half-dark.
“My hands, due to exposure, seem to have suffered the most damage,” he answers quietly.
“Ah. I see,” Kirk says. “Well, Mr. Spock, I implore that next time you find yourself at such...a...turn of events, that you alert me before you find yourself unfit for duty.”He says this as a captain, because it’s easier than whatever he would have to say as a friend, as someone weak, human, infallible, and harboring some fraction of hurt.
“Yes Captain. I apologize. I assumed that it would not affect me, but it seems that I overestimated my abilities.”
“It’s fine, Mr. Spock...just some advice for future circumstances we may find ourselves in.”
There is an aching quiet between them for a moment, and Kirk fights a battle between his lungs, in the pumping network of blood and muscle that collects to form a heart. He is worried, because of course any pain that Spock is enduring he is doing so quietly, he is resisting and fighting as Kirk fights himself and his own weakness. Kirk is uncomfortably cold, with clumsy numb fingers and dry lips, so he knows things must be worse for Spock. There is only one way of knowing how badly Spock may be frostbitten, and only one way of knowing that he is doing everything in his power to prevent further damage.
“Spock, come here,” Kirk says after awhile, motioning towards himself, the thing in his chest speeding up miserably, because often it tricks itself into doing selfish things under the veneer of duty and protocol and Starfleet regulation.
Spock hobbles over, stiffly.
“Give me your hands,” Kirk asks, holding his own out in front of them. The darkness makes it impossible to read Spock’s expression, which is already a difficult task by daylight. He’s hesitating, hands remaining clasped and shaking in front of him.
“That’s not necessary, Captain.”
“That’s an order, Spock. Give me your hands.”
Still there is hesitation, and then, blessedly, a blind extension of his first officer’s arms, almost as of he were praying, asking for something, begging, rather than following orders. Similarly blind, Kirk fumbles back in the dark, and takes Spock’s freezing hands in his own. They are both so cold it is like ice touching ice, but still there is something quick and hot happening inside Kirk, still he is racing against himself to keep up in the convolution of his lies and excuses and explanations for the baseness and humanity of want.
“There. Is that better at all?” he asks.
“...You are somewhat warmer,” Spock’s voice is as dark as the sky, grave and even.
“Can you feel your fingers? Are you numb?” Are you numb? Is a question Kirk regrets immediately, because it’s too loaded for either of them to answer without speaking about something else. It threatens to speak of love when they were not speaking of love.
“I...” Spock says, and then he says nothing else. Kirk is rubbing Spock’s hands between his, fingers sliding over the bones of his knuckles, feeling cool, smooth skin shift over the hard interior skeletal structure. Kirk doesn’t think of anyone else’s body in layers, as bones under flesh under skin under clothing, all things to strip away and consume. But he does think of Spock this way. He thinks of all of him.
Suddenly, Spock snatches his hands away, bringing them to an uneasy clasp in front of his chest. “Captain, perhaps that is not...it is unwise.”
“Nonsense. I’m trying to stimulate blood flow. Are my hands to cold?” Kirk can make out a troubled furrow in Spock’s brow, and maybe a twitch in the corner of his mouth.
“No, it is not you,” is what Spock responds.
“You’re my crew member, and I’m going to do what I can to keep you safe until Scotty deems the transporter functional. It would...give me peace of mind, Spock. Please. Just let me,” he insists, gripping a hand on either of Spock’s wrists and drawing him closer. Their breath is coming out in great, vaporized blooms, fogging up the air between them. It takes a strange, quiet, dark minute of Kirk’s thumbs rubbing insistently at the slow pulse in Spock’s wrists for Spock to eventually relent and allow his hands to again be folded within the Captan’s palms.
Kirk’s own teeth are chattering, but he stills his jaw with his tongue, focuses all his attention towards the skin and joints before him, manipulating Spock’s hands into fists and then splaying them again, drawing all of his fingers down each of Spock’s in turn, creating as much friction and heat as possible given the circumstances.
Kirk endures the pain of touching that is just touching and not talking about love, though he longs to take Spock’s cold hand and guide it under his own uniform, pressing those long, elegant white fingers over his heart which he knows will be warmer, he knows is hot and pulsing with humanity. But that is too much, so he only longs for it. Every once and awhile there will be a sharp intake of breath from Spock, and an erratic, almost panicked tensing of his body, but then it will fade, shame replaced with silence and the color of sunrise once again.
Spock’s head is drifting ever closer to Kirk’s, his eyes shut in a trance-like focus as he allows himself to be touched. Finally, finally, after the skin beneath Kirk’s determined fingers has been warmed to an almost Vulcan temperature, Spock’s forehead falls to rest against Kirk’s brow, and the too-fast orbit of this alien planet seems to freeze. Kirk’s breath comes out heavier than he intends, and he knows that Spock can feel it on his lips, just as Kirk can feel Spock’s. They stay that way, suspended, hands joined, until Kirk’s communicator beeps and it is daylight once again.
4.
At some point years ago, Spock fought to not love James T. Kirk. He truly fought, for almost sixteen whole months, to not feel any of it. The agony, the expansion of joy somewhere deep inside him that made the banality of a smile nearly impossible to keep out of his eyes. He fought, as if it were a physical battle spattered green with blood and bruising his knuckles almost cerulean. He fought.
He lost.
Lost control, lost the fight, lost it all. His wish to be Vulcan and his wish to not feel all slid from his too-sensitive fingers, and Spock fell in love. He never expected to fall in love, it seemed beyond him and under him, this easy shade thrown over biology so that humans could mystify yet another thing they wished was beautiful instead of functional. That is one of humanity’s many flaws, that they do not find beauty in function as Spock does. They have to write poetry about it, cloud its simplicity with iambic pentameter and spring rhyme and the curse of feeling because it’s too painful for humans to admit that they’re no different than bacteria. Their function is to divide and multiply, but they believe that it is to love.
Or at least, that’s what Spock used to think, before he lost the fight. Now he knows that however illogical it may seem, love and biology are two separate things. There is no logical reason for him to want Jim Kirk so desperately he would throw away the ideal version of himself, the stoic, computer of a man built by his planet and his father and his dignity, for ten filthy seconds of their bodies flush and tongues twined. It it simply there. The want exists free of logic, but it exists. There are other things in the universe like this. Bumblebees’ flight, for example, defy the laws of physics yet bumblebees miraculously, tenaciously, and unquestionably fly.
Love shouldn’t exist, certainly not in the heart of a Vulcan, and certainly not for his captain he could never procreate with even if he desired to. Yet, it does. It’s there, beating and thrumming and unkillable in his chest, day in, day out, no matter how much he fought in those sixteen months of torture.
Spock thought he would never fall in love, but he did, and so he fought it. It seemed logical, at the time, to quarantine the fraction of himself that did not make sense, that defied the laws of physics and insisted upon flight. However, he found that his efforts compromised his ability to perform more than they aided it. Spock thought that it was just a fraction, this sliver of nonsense that fixated on Jim Kirk, the love-part of himself that he could banish and drown and not allow to infect the rest of him. He spent sixteen months pushing the inappropriate thoughts of Jim away. The thoughts that came when their eyes met on the bridge for a second longer than necessary, the thoughts that came when Jim would rake his hands across Spock’s body when they were running from any number of threats, the thoughts that came at night when Spock was sitting in his quarters attempting to meditate, but could not even make it past the first stage.
He learned that it was not just a fraction. It was a whole network like a river of veins, running though him and extending to every inch and fiber of his anatomy, poisoning him until the whole of his body was touched in some way. Each tiny capillary eventually fed back into the same series of deltas, which fed back into the one great, thrumming, raging Nile of loving Kirk.
When he realized how pervasive the affliction was is when Spock ceased fighting. After all, it was less logical to battle the majority of himself than to accept that bumblebees can fly, and Vulcans can love. Now he still feels the pain, and his meditation is still interrupted, but he is resigned to this being his new reality. He cannot stop loving Kirk, though it would be a logical alternative to living in pain the pain of desire. He cannot stop, because loving Kirk is who he is, down to the blood and the beat of his heart.
Spock is attempting kohl-tor, and failing. It’s been this way for months now, but still, Spock tries. His hands are open and on his lap, his breath on the brink of a near-death slowness. However, far away, somewhere in the realm of his quarters, there is a sound keeping him from peace. A fist on his door, perhaps, a gentle thudding of an organic surface against a silicone one. He ignores it, continues his vain attempt if only so he can tell himself once again that it did not happen, but he tried. He tried everything.
“Spock?”
His eyes snap open, and he is in his quarters One hundred percent of himself, located squarely and firmly in his desk chair, three o clock and facing the south wall. Jim often interrupts kohl-tor, though most frequently in thought, and rarely in body. Because Spock is startled, he cannot control or avoid the icy pang of pure, unhindered sensation that reels in his gut in shameful, nearly human reaction at knowing the Captain is outside his door.
He swallows with a dry mouth, and waits a few seconds for his skin to cool. “Come in,” he says in spite of himself. He’s aware that his responses are compromised, and that he is vulnerable like the skin underneath a newly ripped scab. To be pulled out of kohl-tor is more than being pulled out of sleep, it’s completely shattering and disorienting. Still, Spock lets the door slide open, and lets Kirk stride in.
“Did I, interrupt something, Mr. Spock?” Kirk asks, moving his right hand with a flourish of motion. Its a completely unnecessary gesture, lacking in function or meaning, but regardless, it draws the inevitable sweep of Spock’s eyes. Love is illogical, and Spock knows this by now so he lets it happen. Just as humans must learn to find beauty in function, and Spock supposes that loving a human has taught him to find function in beauty.
“You know that at this hour, I work to achieve kohl-tor, Captain,” Spock tries to make his voice even, because under any other circumstances, he wouldn’t have to try. He has a weak grip on himself, however, so his voice wavers with an almost undetectable note of hoarseness.
Kirk does not seem to notice, and flashes a quick, brilliant smile at Spock in response. “I do know, Mr. Spock. I do. However, when I usually visit your quarters at such an hour, I cannot detect your presence within them, you are so silent. It is how I know you’re in, kohl-tor. But this evening, as I passed, I could still hear your breathing, and the rustling of a body in a uniform inside. I figured, perhaps incorrectly, that you were forgoing kohl-tor for another pass time. Forgive me if I misunderstood.” Kirk does not seem to be ashamed of admitting that not only does he pass Spock’s quarters at 22:00, but he listens for the quiet, private sounds of him moving. Because he seems unashamed, Spock decides not to bring it up; he only raises an eyebrow.
“You were not misunderstood, Captain,” he says, folding his hands carefully in his lap.
“Good. I would hate to disrupt you, Mr. Spock.” His smile has lost its sharpness, the prince-like golden hues of it dropping to a subtler hue, a pewter that still reflects the light but does not hurt to look at, does not burn the retinas like the sun. It’s a gentle smile, the smile of one friend to another. Spock rethinks the pain of looking at it, and opts to look away.
He does not correct Kirk, and tell him that not only did he interrupt his kohl-tor this evening, but he does nearly every evening. Jim Kirk is inescapable, so the situation is irrevocable, so Spock is silent.
“If not meditating, then what does a Vulcan do at 22:00 when off-duty?” Kirk sits down without asking for permission first, and crosses his legs, sitting back with a relaxed, comfortable air about him. Spock is still lost, and his hands wring themselves and still do not find answers. He wishes he could stop his heart from thundering, he wishes he could cease the horrible insistence of desire pressing from the inside of his ribcage, promising to shatter him as he gazes at Kirk all broad and shining and uninvited.
But desire is there, defying the laws of physics, so he doesn’t waste time with the futility of fighting it. He lets desire course through him, uninvited. Desire to reach for the mussed whorls of chestnut hair at the crown of Kirk’s skull and smooth them, desire to push Kirk’s strong but not-strong-enough body against the nearest vertical surface and crush him to dust.
“He attempts to meditate, and fails,” Spock admits.
Kirk’s face falls, and he leans his body forward like a yearning thing, a strand of ivy independent in its need for light. “I’m sorry Spock, do you need me to leave? I merely thought I’d visit a friend. It didn’t cross my mind , that you might still want privacy.”
“Is this a social visit?” Spock asks, cocking his head. He didn’t think that the captain would come by his quarters at 22:00 if it weren’t some urgent matter of command. He thinks for a fleeting lie of a moment that if he knew the Captain was coming on a social visit, he wouldn’t have answered the door. However, he knows this isn’t true, and no matter the circumstances, his name in Jim’s voice will result in his inevitable reflexive response.
“It was intended to be, yes, a visit between friends,” Kirk says gently, and he is already on his feet, gathering himself to be out the door, uninvited, as quickly at he appeared.
Spock stands beyond his control, hand shooting out to grip the Captain’s wrist. “I do not wish you to leave,” he says in a voice harsh enough to startle himself, startle them both. The sensation of his fingers gripping the complex map of tendons and bones that is Kirk’s wrist seems to isolate itself and call the rest of the room into a magnetic field of orbit, drawing all of the tension in the room to one singular point of connection. He feels Kirk’s breath stop, and both of their eyes go wide, lock onto one another as if prisoners of the same futile ache to not feel.
“Ah. I see,” Kirk says like he is unsure of Spock’s sincerity. A fast, hot pulse thrums beautifully under Spock’s fingers, and he thinks that even for a human it is too fast, too hot. His grip tightens with the idle intent to slow it, but it only plods on, more desperate than before.
“Truly, Jim. I prefer your company to that of my own silence,” Spock whispers, and it is true. The weight of it moves from him like a force of physics, like a something that can’t fly trying and succeeding anyway, because beauty exists in logic, and also, miraculously, outside of it as well.
“Then. I shall remain, Mr. Spock,” Kirk says in a very quiet voice, and does not pull his wrist away, or avert his eyes.
5.
Sometimes Kirk sees it, shining back at him as sure as his own reflection in the darkness of Spock’s eyes. There have been so many hours dedicated to convincing himself that Spock will not love him back even if he could, that those moments hit him like a shot of Brandy, burning down his throat until it unfolds hot and roiling like thunder in his belly, shocking in their candidness.
Sometimes Spock holds his gaze for too long, a lost, bewildered intensity to his eyes as they lock into Kirk’s, and he will think there it is. That is the way I look at him. Sometimes he’ll be in peril, darting helplessly away from some beast stronger and faster than himself, and he will catch glimpse of the naked panic Spock has been stripped down to, the same desperation he feels when Spock’s endangered in some way. He’ll see it and think, maybe, maybe I have been wrong.
Then he must remind himself that perhaps it is there, but that does not matter. If Spock loved him, if Spock wanted him, the fact that he would not want to want him would win out over it. It always would, because as much as seeking pain is a part of Kirk’s self concept and identity, the absence of feeling is a part of Spock’s. Spock may experience want, despite his intention not to, but it is not the same want as human want. It is not the same want as Jim Kirk’s want, the same whole, primal, brutal want. It could be, if he let it, but he would never let it.
Kirk thinks he has Spock figured out. He thinks he can read him, this equation he punches into the computer, converts into an algorithm, solves. It’s safer this way, to believe that he understands Spock in his entirity, then he can write himself into the fiction. He’s the spurned love interest, pining after the unattainable, emotionally unavailable hero. They could be, but never will be.
In his fiction (and Kirk acknowledges that it is a fiction, he would be a fool not to) the reason Spock can’t love him back is not because Spock does not love, but because he won’t let himself. In Kirk’s fiction, the love is there. It’s just contained, dampened, locked away inside Spock behind his Vulcan illusion of numbness.
This fiction is, of course, supported by evidence. Their friendship is abnormal, unlike any of Kirk’s other friendships, and possibly Spock’s only friendship. In the first year of their newly cultivated closeness, Kirk entertained the possibility that his feeling returned with more sincerity than he does now. In part, because he has developed more self preservation, but also because Spock used to give him more indications. That year, Spock has been almost flirtatious by human standards, let alone Vulcan standards. He held back smiles, but the ghosts of them were still there, twisting his lips, raising his brows. He poked fun at his own loath similarity to humanity; he used feeling words, dismayed and shame.
That year shook what Kirk thought he knew about Vulcans. That they were perpetually stoic, that they were incapable of self-recrimination, of irony. Nothing more than computers, or men attempting to live as computers, That year, he learned the nuance of Spock’s complexity. That he struggled, that he felt, that he battled between two selves, just as any man would. That was the year in which Spock told him how cleaved he felt. That he was trying to find himself, the age-old quest every human embarks upon. Kirk was shocked, intrigued. Kirk wanted him. His human side, his Vulcan side. The space between them, the crevice and the chasm.
He thought that maybe, Spock was revealing these threads of humanity within himself because, he, too, wanted. Wanted Kirk, wanted all sides of him, and the divides between those sides, fragmented like a crystal die. Now, in Kirk’s fiction, Spock just didn’t know what was happening that year. He let his guard down, let Kirk invade, let himself fall in love without knowing it was love. How would he know what love was? What models did he have? A father and mother in a marriage of convenience and logic, a captain who medicated his loneliness with hollow sexual pursuits, 19th century Earth poetry?
Certainly nothing to prepare him for the love that existed between him and Kirk. Silent, consuming, organic. Subtle and cloaked in layers of power and command, unexpected, devoted, complete. It could have been easy for Spock to misconstrue this love as something else. To pursue it, shore it up, make excuses for it, and all the while, it grew.
In Kirk’s fiction, Spock didn’t know it was love until their trip to Vulcan, his Kunat-kalifee Because for Kirk, that’s when things changed between them. Even the ghosts of smiles faded, the idle touches, the self-deprecating jokes on humanity, on the difference between Spock and the rest of the crew. Before, they has chemistry, easy, fluid, natural, rapid. Now, they had tension.
In Kirk’s fiction, this is because now, Spock knows. What love is, what is at stake. Everything. That as long as he loves, he cannot be truly Vulcan.
And In Kirk’s fiction, this is why the want can never be realized. Spock won’t let it.
But still. There are times, still, when he sees it shining back at him. Stark, stricken, inalterable. There. There it is. That is the way I look at him. And he must remind himself that what he has created it not truth; it’s fiction. And he could be wrong.
6.
Spock cannot breathe, and it’s not the thinned atmosphere, nor the energy he’s just expended by racing from the protective thicket he and Kirk were hiding in to the transporter coordinates Scotty just referred them to. It’s not hypo Bones has just jammed none to gently into his bicep, intended to return his blood oxygen level to a relatively normal percentage.
It is the way Jim Kirk looks, leaning against one of the cots in sick bay, covered in grit and with his shirt torn to carelessly expose his left shoulder, hair a tameless thing rucked up in back like someone drew their fingers through it. It’s Jim Kirk laughing, saying, “That was a close one, wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Spock?” followed by “So much for diplomatic advice...I think we may have been misconceived as... hostile.”
He looks like a boy again, cheeks ruddy and shining with sweat beneath the black, smudgy layers of earth he picked up from getting knocked on the ground. He looks like a boy and it’s making Spock breathless with all of the things he is feeling and unable to stop himself from feeling: Relief that they’re both alive, overwhelm at the adrenaline coursing through him from such a narrow escape, and of course, the nervy, sharp-edged pain in his chest that springs to life like something hatching every time Kirk wipes dirt and perspiration from his brow pointlessly with a dirty and perspiring arm. Every time Kirk’s eyes are reduced to slits of mirth from such a wide smile. It feels like a fist spreading its fingers inside of Spock, making him feel both contained and expansive all at once, a familiar feeling. Nearly as familiar as the pain that follows it, the reproach at feeling.
“And you? You made it out with only a few scrapes, I see?” Kirk asks, beaming.
“No abrasions or contusions what so ever, captain. Merely atmospheric damage,” Spock says, quirking a brow up.
“Ah, I suppose your coordination is, perhaps, somewhat superior to mine,” he says with a reckless grin. There is sweat running in filthy rivulets down Kirk’s shoulder and under his uniform to his still-heaving chest, and Spock watches them, struck by the way the human body reacts to pain and speed and adrenaline in this so exquisitely visible way. Their weakness is a tangible thing. One cannot feel, as a human, without their body betraying it. Jim Kirk is such a perfect specimen of humanity, and it is because he is imperfect.
He is also a mess, broken down and brought down from the prototypical image of Starship Captain he is often seen as, even in his own mind. At this moment he is just a boy from Iowa, an adventurer playing conquering games in costume in the backyard, between the hose water and the sandbox, only capable of imagining the terrain of other planets, the boundlessness of the stars. Spock can see when Kirk is tired and disillusioned with space, so he can also see when the thrill of it comes back in fleeting moments, borne on the wake of endorphins and the threat of danger and the company of a friend.
Spock watches, and also feels like a boy.
Because letting himself feel is so clouded with pain, Spock must make do with mapping Kirk’s feelings. Observing them, calculating their intensity, their source, their magnitude. He lets himself feel awe at Kirk’s sensations, and that is enough: somehow both more and less painful.
According to Spock’s calculations, Kirk loves space right now, he loves it fiercely and without restraint. He’s a contradiction, a child, a man, a mess. He’s so completely and inescapably human Spock should hate him. He should be able to count all the ways in which he is flawed. Instead, he can only count all the ways he is beautiful, in spite of the flaws.
Spock used to wish he couldn’t see beauty, because it made him feel and feeling made him ashamed, but in this moment where Kirk is a boy and Spock can see through every layer of him, he does not wish that anymore. He knows this peace is temporary, but for the second he feels joy without pain, he holds onto it, eyes stinging with the force of staying open. Time nearly slows down, struck by the absence of Spock fighting himself, perhaps.
Kirk disentangles himself from the shreds of his uniform, wadding the blood stained, formerly golden thing into a ball and tossing it onto the cot. His eyes are lingering on Spock, who is in a similar state of disrepair, and there is so much brightness to him he seems like he could ignite.
Bones bustles between then as he often does, superfluous and unaware, the incomplete unfinished barrier between them, the desk, the chess game. “I’m glad you think it’s so funny, Jim. Your first officer could have suffered serious neurological damage from this blood oxygen depletion,” he grumbles. Then he’s beside Kirk, sticking him with a hypo, something about Vulcan physiology barely audible and under his breath.
Kirk ignores Bones, looking over his shoulder, eyes still twinkling in this dangerous way and fixed on Spock, who is silent, one eyebrow raised in a perfectly ambiguous response. He raises his eyebrow when nothing else can be said, and also when he’s not sure what to say. It’s a gesture open to interpretation, and no one suspects anything other than certainty from him so no one suspects that the eyebrow may not be a silent answer, it may not be an answer at all.
No one but Jim, that is. Sometimes Spock will raise his eyebrow with the intention of ending a conversation, but Jim will continue looking at him, searching and prying and chest-splitting, the shine of his gaze chiseling underneath the lie of certainty and burrowing into much softer parts of Spock.
Their gazes are locked for a moment, and as always, it’s eventually Kirk who looks away. Spock exhales, ability to breathe restored and replaced with a fading, distant kind of pain, which is far more manageable than the acute pangs he usually suffers from. However, there it is. The first flourishes of it coming back to obscure the joy, or perhaps to intensify it. The moments Spock feels without hating himself for it are always short-lived, and this it no exception. The joy withers and turns grey. However, loving Kirk does not.
Some days, Spock feels so far away from his aspiration and upbringing of logic that he cannot recognize himself. If he were to make a map of himself on these days, the majority of his body would consist of loving Jim Kirk, as if that were all he was, all he’s capable of. The ideal map should show his father, his planet, his commanding rank, his duty, and the shame of being inadequately cut out for all of these things looming over them like a storm.
But on days like today, he cannot call up the image of this map to his mind’s eye. He cannot even dwell on his shame, because he doesn’t care. It’s terrifying, to be stripped of the comfort provided by one’s nettle-bed of shame and self recrimination, but on same days, it’s truth. Spock is impure, and half human, and in love, and that’s out of his control.
“Lost in thought, Mr. Spock?” Kirk’s voice rings out, bouncing off the walls of sick bay. He’s beside Spock’s cot, now, still dirty and half-clothed, still shining like some semi-precious metal imbedded in rock. Spock glances up to him, the familiarity of pain spreading like an oil slick over the surface of water.
“Yes,” Spock responds, without giving any further explanation. He studies his Captain’s face, the hard edges of bone and the grit-filled lines on either side of his still smiling mouth. He raises an eyebrow, and it could be saying many things. It could be gently asking Kirk to refrain from going any further, from asking where, exactly, his thoughts are lost. It should be the end to a conversation, after all, Bones is still somewhere in the background, there but not really, enough of a warning that Spock cannot speak, only raise his eyebrow.
Kirk continues looking at him for a long time, cheeks still flushed like a boy’s.
7.
It’s too much, and not enough, and Kirk is unsure of everything now.
His fingers are resting on the inseam of either of Spock’s elbows, and the pain of it is terrible. The index, middle, and ring, in a careful line and pressing between the tendons and muscle there, thick with strength and tension. His grip contracts slightly, but he holds himself still, hands steady on Spock’s arms and nothing else. Kirk is distantly aware that he doesn’t help other members of his crew up in the way he helps Spock up, but it is a distant awareness. Another discomfort he exposes himself to endure and come out victorious. Victorious, and alone. Too much and not enough.
“Thank you, Captain,” Spock says, through his teeth. The Enterprise suffered a blow from an asteroid at 1700 last night, and since the incident the engines have been acting up, sending the ship into unpredictable lurches of motion. The crew can’t seen to get used to it, save for Spock, who up until this moment was the only one who hadn’t ended up in a tangle of limbs on the floor.
They were both on their way to the Captain’s quarters, walking swiftly and side by side to discuss some formerly important orders, a mission, something. Kirk is having difficulty remembering, because even though Spock has righted his balance and they are both on two feet, Kirk’s fingers are still dug into cool, unresisting flesh. There is of course, a regulation blue command uniform separating skin from skin, but the grip in and of itself is unnecessary.
His hands tighten again, holding Spock there, stationary in front of him, and he takes a step forward.
Spock takes a step back, eyes narrowing in confusion. “Captain?”
Then Kirk makes a low, gruff sound like a bark and releases his first, fingers burning faintly with the ghost of Spock’s arms beneath him. “Nothing, Spock. I’m sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”
He turns on his heel and continues towards his quarters, listening for the echo of Spock’s boots behind him. It’s too long before he hears it, so he looks over his shoulder. “Are you coming?” he says curtly, irritatedly.
Spock follows, eyes downcast, because Kirk knows the pain of Spock’s gaze incinerating into his back. He knows it. He doesn’t know what it means, or where it comes from, but he’s familiar with the sensation of Spock’s lingering eyes roving his body, staying upon him long after they ceased interacting, staying like Kirk’s hands on Spock’s arms. It hurts to feel the darkness of Spock looking when he shouldn’t be, but it hurts worse to feel its absence. Kirk cannot decide what is a stronger pain to bear, uncertainty at requitedness, or certainty at unrequitedness.
Once inside the Captains quarters, the door slides shut behind them, and a strange sort of silence falls upon the room. The hallways of the Enterprise, predominantly empty at such an hour, are quiet but this feels so much quieter, a thick, woolen silence like death. Kirk sighs deeply, suddenly weary with choosing misery, with choosing the strength of being alone rather than the weakness of settling for something less than perfection.
Sometimes he wishes he could stop fighting, and let what he wants to happen. Or, let it happen and then see if what he wants follows this slip in protocol, in the battle for strength. Sometimes he wishes he could just pull Spock’s mouth to his and say fuck it, fuck it all, fuck starfleet and fuck command and fuck the rules Vulcans fabricate from thin air to pretend that that they’re so different from humans.
“I’m sorry, it’s been a long day,” Kirk breaches, overwhelmed even by the sound of his own voice. “What was the matter at hand, again, Mr. Spock?”
Spock clears his throat, and rolls forward on the balls of his feet as he responds, “The events which transpired on Sigma Theti Captain. We were going to discuss future implications of their civilizations premature discovery of”--
“Please look at me, Mr. Spock,” Kirk drills out. He takes a seat at his desk, eyes boring into Spock and his tense shoulders bunched around his neck, hands clasped behind his back like he’s preventing himself from touching something.
He flinches, startled, eyes sweeping up to Kirk. He says nothing, and his expression does not change.
This way he stands, the textbook diagram of restraint, means different things to Kirk depending upon the excessiveness of his self-deprecation at any given moment. Sometimes he reads this stance as Spock holding himself back from relaxing, from relenting, and on some days, when he is deluded and high on his own fiction of invincibility, from reaching out and touching. However, on nights like tonight, Kirk reads Spock’s restraint not as withholding, but merely discomfort. Discomfort at standing instead the quarters of a Captain who holds your arms longer than necessary, a Captain who cannot withhold, who loves too much and pushes forward and forward and forward until he falls headlong and lonely and tumbling off of some precipice.
“Permission to resume, Captain?” Spock asks to the silence. There is only the slightest tremor to his voice to bely his hesitance. Something no one but Kirk would notice. He notices, and holds onto it, as if it were solid.
The words permission granted almost touch the air, but Kirk stops himself. He does not want to discuss the events that transpired on Sigma Theti. He does not want to discuss anything; he wants to stride across the tight, too-contained space of his quarters and backhand Spock across his too placid face, he wants to tighten his hands on his first officers throat and beg him to come undone, beg him to allow a ripple to spread and multiple, beg him to reach out and touch, if that’s what he wants to do. He wants to take Spock in his arms and tongue his lips apart, he wants to know what it feels like to have every plane of their bodies pressed parallel and bisecting and colliding and shifting.
“No,” he says, startling even himself. Spock very carefully raises an eyebrow, and shifts onto the ball of his feet again. “For godsakes, Spock, why are you holding your hands behind your back like that?! Please, please sit down. Relax. Please.” This bursts from him with such force Spock’s other eyebrow joins the first, but his hands remain invisible.
“Captain, I am standing at ease. How would you prefer me to stand?”
Kirk is rubbing his temples, elbows on the surface of his desk, eyes closed. He is almost too tired to continue this conversation, which is threatening to touch on topics he swore he’s suffer alone, and silently. None of that seems to matter right now, however. The pain when coupled with the pleasure and satisfaction of knowing he’s strong and moving forward is one thing, but the pain alone, and without that reward is too much. It’s too much, and not enough, so he feels like he needs to do something. Still, Spock is wavering before him, not sure what to do with his hands and certainly, on some level, confused.
“Spock...” he sighs, looking up. “Have a seat. I’m not myself tonight, I apologize, I...like I said, it’s been a long day.” He pulls the chair opposite him out, gestures towards it.
Spock gingerly sits down.
“What are you thinking?” Kirk asks the instant Spock’s eyes fall on his, and they both hold their breath. It’s an inappropriate question, from a Captain to a first officer, and even between friends when one of those friends is a Vulcan.
“I am thinking that you are not necessarily acting unusually,” Spock says after a long moment of thinking. “But that you are not acting like the Captain of the Enterprise.”
Kirk nods, folding his fingers in front of him. “Yes, yes. I’d...Spock, may we talk as friends? From one friend to another, just you and I?”
Spock takes a deep breath, eyes darkening. “Jim, are you alright?”
Kirk’s heart nearly breaks from the sound of his name on Spock’s lips. He expected some resistance on Spock’s part, not this complete, effortless move from command to intimacy. He smiles, unsure of what he is going to say now, where this was going. “I’m fine. I’m merely realizing that you were right.”
Spock’s brow furrows. “Right about what?”
“Pleasure and pain are, the same. One and the same, I believe you said. That you do not feel one without the other? You were quite right, I’m afraid.” He takes a deep breathe, reaching across his desk and holding his hand splayed. Spock stares at his hand, as if he is unsure whether or not it is an offer.
“Has anything in particular led to this realization?” Spock says, very quietly.
There is so much to say, so many words and truths and lies Kirk can utter at this moment, but the admission that seems to sum it all up most effectively is “You.”
They look at each other, for a very long time, and Kirk is pleased to see that through the pain and sadness making his body heavy with the pressure of space and billions of stars all pressing on the outside of his tin can, Spock’s expressionless falters for a second. His hands, which had been trying very hard to remain slack and unclenched at his sides, fly behind his back to clasp in terror.
“Don’t,” Kirk breathes, mouth dry as his tongue flits to his lips.
“Captain, I must,” Spock says, very evenly.
“Why must you.” It’s not really a question, so Spock does not answer and Kirk continues. “Sometimes, it seems like you’re holding something back. Like you’re refraining from letting yourself go, like you’re holding back and I cannot, for the life of me, Spock, imagine why. If it is just me, then I am the fool. But I do not believe that it is just me.”
Then Spock breaks, looks up at Kirk. “Because if I touch you, it will cause me pain,” he grinds out, a rage in his eyes making them wet and fiery and too dark. His jaw is clenching, brows knit deep into the center of his forehead.
“But Spock, Spock,” Kirk says frantically, his hand still outstretched on the table. He beckons with it, fingers itching and longing. “It will hurt, but beyond that, it will feel so damn good.”
Spock’s eyes close, and the muscles in his arms twitch. “Jim, they are the same for me. It will be pain and pleasure, equally, and one cannot submit to such...sensation...all the time. It is painful enough like this. It is painful enough with you there.” He means across the desk. He means separated by incompleteness and flesh. By having a body, which is will be how it always is, alone. Touched and Untouched.
“It isn’t enough for me. Not painful enough, not anything,” Kirk says in a rush, the edge of his desk cutting against his stomach. “Give me your hand, Spock. Please.”
The fury in Spock’s gaze becomes sorrowful, and still, darker. “You are so beautifully human,” he says, in a broken voice. “Humanity does not practice self preservation effectively.”
Everything inside Kirk feels like it’s destroying itself, beating itself bloody and formless against the thatch of his ribcage, proving Spock’s point. Humans do not practice self preservation, not in the face of love. Humans die for love. It’s foolish, but it’s the fiction they’ve chosen to believe, that love is something worth dying for. Kirk know he has chosen to believe this fiction.
“This cannot just be because you’re afraid of pain.” He does not know what he means by this. Love, perhaps. Because they are talking about love, full blown and real and skeletal, with all the layers of flesh and skin and fabric stripped bloodlessly from its structure.
“Jim,” Spock breathes, “You don’t understand. I try. But it is... different for me, than it is for you. You want to feel. I do not understand why, but you desire feeling. You seek pleasure, but you also illogically, absurdly, seek pain. I do not wish to be like this,” Spock’s voice is becoming thick and shattering, and this is him undone. This is what Kirk has wanted all along, not Just Spock as he wishes to be and who he is to everyone else, but Spock as he is to himself, in his darkest moments. Spock fearing feeling, but feeling anyway. Spock not wanting to want, but wanting anyway.
“But you are like this. You are. You are half human, and you love me, and it hurts.” Kirk is standing up slowly, he’s pressing the whole of himself against the desk which still separates them. His breath is coming quickly and ragged, and every inch of his body is singing with the nervy terror of possibly being wrong. Having the certainty of unrequitedness stripped from him, leaving bones. And they are two skeletons, their fictions gone and fragmented at their feet.
“but it doesn’t have to hurt, it doesn’t have to only hurt, you can let me. You can let me show you the good parts, too. Give me your hand.”
There is a heavy, seemingly endless moment of silence between them.
Then, miraculously, Spock does.
Kirk is startled, at first, to feel flesh inching it’s way into his hot, lonely palm, but there it is. Unexpected, cool, unbelievable. He tightens his hand, and somehow he knows what to do, he knows how to press his index and middle fingers against Spock’s with their eyes locked and longing and explosive with pupil. He feels as if he’s done this before, but before he can place it Spock is reminding him in a low voice. “When we were at Gama Theta, and the temperature was affecting me, you did not know. You did not know, but you were destroying me,” he breathes, and then Kirk remembers.
“I only wanted to touch you,” his hand slides up, fingers enclosing around Spock’s wrist. And their heads are nodding together as they did on Gama Theta, Spock’s nose progressively nearer to Kirk’s hairline, his lips close enough to brush against the convex jut of a cheekbone. “It is what I’ve wanted always.”
“You do touch me,” Spock whispers, his skin twitching under Kirk’s hand as it moves from the topography to wrist bones higher still, to the thud of terrified blood on the inside of his forearm. Spock’s hand wavers, clenches and unclenches in the empty air.
“Yes, but not like this,” Kirk says, letting his other hand rise to grip Spock’s waist, his hip. He can feel the shift of uniform over skin, and wants to badly to reach beneath it, to pull Spock across the desk and kiss him full on the mouth at long last.
Then their foreheads touch as Spock sways forward, his own abdomen pressed insistently against the desk in the same way Kirk’s is, as if their yearning could diminish solidity between them. All of Kirk is aching, longing, adhered to this one place where they are touching. Spock’s fingers suddenly rise to cup Kirk’s cheek, holding their heads together, holding him with barely restrained need.
“It hurts,” Spock whispers plainly, and Kirk turns his face ever so slightly, until his lips press against the edge of Spock’s palm. His tongue flicks out beyond his control, and tastes salt and something markedly different, something foreign and familiar all at once. It is how he imagined Spock tasting, with only the knowledge of his scent.
The rawness in his stomach melts before it hardens, then melts again, both fire and ice, rage and misery. “But,” he whispers, tilting himself deeper into Spock’s trembling palm, thumb tracing the inside of his elbow. “But it also feels good?”
Spock is shivering all over, such a slight shudder it could be mistaken for the ever-present whirring and vibrating of the ship. Kirk can feel the strength behind his hands, under his skin. And he knows the answer to his question is yes.
“I did not wish to be like this,” Spock repeats. “I did not expect to fall in love.” His voice is the lowest rumble, and Kirk cannot stand another second of it being outside his body, so he breaks. Then they are kissing across the desk, hands fisted desperately in folds of weak, easily torn regulation fabric, hard enough to render the sound of stitching coming apart. This is drowned out by the sound of Spock becoming unhinged, groaning one long, low sound of sorrow into Kirk’s hot wet mouth. It hurts, all of it, but none of it so much as the desk separating them. Fed up with it, Kirk pulls his mouth away for a moment to clamber clumsily over it, landing gracelessly on the same side as Spock. Then they are both on their feet.
His hands grip on either side of Spock’s lengthy face, thumbs along his jaw. Their bodies sear and weld together. “But you are. And you did,” the words rip out of him as if they are along a perforated edge. Spock’s eyes are terribly dark, as wet as his mouth which is parted and gasping. Kirk needs to know, so he begs: “Please tell me it’s not just me. Please.”
“It is not just you,” Spock parrots hoarsely. Then, “Jim,” if that one syllable holds all the answers, smooths all the uncertainty. “Jim.”
“It’s better if it hurts,” Kirk says against Spock’s mouth, between hungry, desperate kisses. He’s convinced, for the moment, that this is truth. And because it is true in this moment, it is truth, and he’s right.