Title: Coals of Fire
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: [email protected]
Other Headings, Disclaimer and Notes, see Prologue
Act IV: Out of the Fire
Another alpha shift went by, as slowly as the first. Jiilau was still in coma, and the Altairian news gave almost minute-by-minute reports on his progress. Jim had admired the man, but could rarely be bothered to ask Uhura for an upload. He had his own set of progress reports to check - forcing himself not to ask for them too often - and they were not Jiilau's.Since they had arrived back at Altair 6, McCoy had been getting a steady stream of medical opinions, and the transporter room seemed more like the information desk at a burn-treatment conference than anything else. Jim supposed that, given the huge export trade in goldenwood, there was nothing so very odd about the Altair system being on the cutting edge of burn medicine. What really did surprise him was the number of offworlders who were doing research here, including Vulcan healers. One of them, T'Seru, became a formal part of the treatment team for Spock and even moved into quarters on the ship. She told them that Spock's unconsciousness was to be expected, that it was some form of trance that Vulcans entered to heal themselves. McCoy was apparently mortified that he hadn't known about it, because after that he told Jim three or four times all about how much he wanted a Vulcan-trained doctor on staff, or anyway a specialist in xenomedicine.
"I thought you wrote the book on xenomedicine," Jim said the first time Bones brought it up.
"Oh, that's a first-year text," said McCoy, alerting Jim to the fact that things had been added to his senior staff's vitae since he had last checked. Catching up gave him something to do in his off-time, not that he could really keep his mind on that either. When he couldn't read any more updates, he made the mistake of accessing some visuals on burns and their treatment. He didn't eat much dinner after that. Still no dreams, though.
He visited Spock. T'Seru always sat beside the bed and radiated disapproval, and of course Spock always seemed about the same. The terrible bright green color gradually faded; he was less swollen, and his arms were now stretched out so that the forearms and hands fit into suspension tanks, an Altairian technique. But he was still not *there,* an unconsciousness as profound as coma, an absence like death.
The first time, Jim allowed himself to smooth and slide his fingertips into the unburned dark hair. He was surprised by the strength of his own emotion, and he obviously surprised T'Seru, who reprimanded him: "Captain." He looked up without moving his fingers from the warm softness surrounding them. "He is a touch telepath," she added.
"I want him to know I'm here," he said, and moved his fingers to brush the extra heat of Spock's scalp.
"He hears us. You risk distracting him from the healing work he needs to do."
She was, after all, the doctor; he withdrew his hand. "Well, Spock, I don't want to distract you." If he was hearing them, why was T'Seru talking over him like that? "I don't think I thanked you - well, I know I didn't thank you this time, for coming back for me. You've gotten me out of trouble so many times. I wish you hadn't been hurt." So many things to say to Spock had crowded his mind, had chattered to him in the turbolift and the corridor, and now he couldn't seem to put words together. Of course the icy blast of T'Seru's gaze on him was not helping. She made T'Pau seem cozy. He considered telling Spock that, and seeing how she reacted. Not an option, but definitely tempting. "Spock, I miss you," he said. "Please get well." He paused again, but what else was there, really? "I'll come back soon," he promised, and left.
Later visits were hardly longer than the first. He tried not to start really disliking T'Seru, but it was not easy. Under her eyes he felt useless, even a risk factor in Spock's prognosis, and he never could stay long or find much to say.
Spock woke up from his trance in the middle of the third ship's night since the fire; T'Seru was with him, and neither McCoy nor Jim knew about it until afterward. In the morning, when Jim stopped in to visit on his way to the bridge, he found the two doctors moving around each other as stiffly as two strange cats, but much more silently, and Spock looking up at them with a resigned expression that suggested things in Sickbay had recently been worse.
When Spock looked past the feuding doctors to the door and met Jim's eyes, Jim felt a firework go off behind his breastbone. Sparks were still fading along his arms and into his stomach as he walked up to the side of the bed. "You're back," he said, not the brightest remark he could have made under the circumstances, and not any of the ones he had planned.
"Yes," said Spock. "You are well."
"He is recovered," said T'Seru, reminding them that there were two other people in the room. "You, on the other hand, have much healing to do, and can best do so undisturbed."
The three men looked at her: Spock was unreadable; McCoy looked like he was about to begin a nasty interstellar incident. Jim pulled himself together. Her attitude didn't matter now, anyway, if Spock was going to be all right. "I'm just dropping in," he said, "I'll come back later, shall I, Spock?"
"Spock," said T'Seru sternly.
"It is conventional for a captain to visit those members of the crew who are wounded or ill," Spock explained to her. "Crewmates also make such visits. It prevents much of the difficulty of reintegration to work shifts later, and increases the general efficiency of the starship crew."
McCoy brightened. "That's right," he said, "*and* I've by-god got the statistics to prove it, Doctor, if you'd like to see them."
"Statistics about humans," T'Seru stated flatly.
"The majority of the crew is human," Spock pointed out. "I have had to adapt to their customs."
T'Seru considered. "You know," she said to Spock, "that interacting with these emotional beings produces unnecessary stress."
"I have become inured to it," Spock replied. "I would prefer to receive the conventional visits."
"Then I have nothing further to say."
She stood there, bristling with what she had not yet said: conclusive, non-Spock proof that the idea that Vulcans could not lie was a pure myth.
Jim left her there, having won his point, and swept McCoy off to find out what had gotten so far up his nose.
"*Damn* that woman!" McCoy rattled around his office, picking up disks, a stylus, a padd, an empty coffee cup, and so forth, and dropping them to the desk or the shelves again as new aspects of his grievance swept over him. "She may be an expert in Vulcan medicine, but this is *my Sickbay,* Jim. When a patient has a crisis I expect to be advised! I didn't ask her here so she could by Christ take over! Or spend her time judging the way I run the rest of the facility! She has no more bedside manner than a rock, how can she have the gall to criticize!"
Jim was missing most of this, but decided he really didn't need to understand the details. The overall shape of events was gradually becoming clear. "Spock had a crisis? When?"
"He woke up, didn't he? Didn't she think I might be *interested* in that information? Does she think I need my goddamn *beauty sleep* too much to call me? Doesn't she know I spend half my goddamn time off in this office or on the wards anyway?"
"If she doesn't," said Jim with affection, "she hasn't been paying much attention since she got here."
"Probably thinks it's normal! Maybe Vulcan healers never sleep at *all.* They sure as fuck don't share information, so I suppose they can't take much off each other's hands."
"She didn't call you at all?"
"I didn't know one goddamn thing until I got here just as usual, and stopped in to see how Spock was doing. There he was, awake, and she was lecturing him about some damn Vulcan brain thing, and when I came in to say hello and glad-you're-better, she climbed all over me. Shit, Jim, don't we get to be happy he's not dead? What kind of ice water does that woman have in her veins anyway?"
"She's a Vulcan - " at McCoy's raised eyebrow, Jim said, "Spock . . . is different," wondering how different he was.
"Obviously that's what's bothering her, too. Well, all I can say is, if she's an example of what he'd be like without us, I'm gonna start to retrain him even harder. I'd like to see him mellow *more,* not shrivel up inside like that woman."
"I don't think there's much danger of it. Anyway, don't start retraining until she's gone."
"Can't be soon enough for me. Though you do know, Jim, we're not out of the woods yet. We don't know yet how his hands are. Unless, of course, that damn woman knows something she hasn't seen fit to share with us lower forms of life."
Jim regarded him narrowly. "Are you going to be able to work with her . . . Doctor?"
McCoy nodded, his wry expression saying he heard everything Jim was trying to ask. "Yes, Captain, I will."
"Then call me when you know anything. I'll get up to the bridge." He glanced back as he got to the door, to find McCoy still looking at him, slightly smiling.
And now, when he had almost stopped waiting for it, benediction came. "I think he's going to be OK," said McCoy. "Basically OK."
"Thanks, Bones." And then he really did go.
~~~~~
McCoy did a little real tidying after the captain had gone, and deep breathing as well. He really was under control now, though he doubted that at his best he had what Spock and that woman would consider control. *OK, Len, tell me three good things about T'Seru.* Nothing came to him immediately, which was ridiculous. But he really had not liked the tone she had been taking with Spock when he got there this morning, even aside from her treatment of himself and Jim. She needed to face the fact that a phalanx of Romulan Warbirds would not keep Jim out of that ICU as long as Spock was there. *Now, what about those three good things? Intelligence - if not street smarts - no, start again. Beautiful eyes. You old sexist, Len. But that's one. She knows burns back and forward and back again.* She had taken one look at the records and told him things he had needed a whole day to work out, plus things he would never have worked out if he'd had a million years. *Creative, as a doctor. Those suspension units are her design. OK, that's three. So what if she thinks you're scum? You've worked with worse.* He squared his shoulders, threw the coffee cup into the recycler, and went back to the ICU to examine Spock whether T'Seru liked it or not.
McCoy had seen heat, radiation, and electricity burns, new and old, regenerated and scarred, and so it was no surprise to him that the hands that emerged from the suspension units were dry, shiny claws, wrinkled and stiff as a mummy's. What did astound him was how whole they looked, and the fact that Spock could move the digits and had some sensation in all of them. This was all excellent news, and McCoy gloated over even the fused fingers. Those, he could fix, and the skin too. He told Spock so, and some of the tension went out of the Vulcan's shoulders.
"Movement would be hard anyway - the skin's too tight, but we'll get it supple again. That trance of yours is amazing! Looks like all the tissue is getting circulation, nerve responses - I can't tell you how much work you've saved me. No debridement. My goal in life is never to do one of those things."
"I too find that goal desirable," said Spock.
"Avoiding the need for debridement is desirable for more reasons than to conserve the energy of the medical professional," said T'Seru. McCoy rolled his eyes at Spock, who tried to look as if he had not noticed any of it.
"Thank you for pointing out that little detail," McCoy said, though he supposed afterward (always afterward - someday his mouth would get him into more trouble than he could handle) that it would have been better left unsaid. T'Seru didn't respond verbally, though, so he supposed she was trying to be a good professional too.
Later that day, they shared the major surgery on Spock's hands, and he was impressed all over again at her speed and self-confidence. She was good; he had to admit it. She separated the fingers beautifully, and her grafts were smooth. Every hour that passed left McCoy with more confidence that Spock would recover fully. He was sorry now he had scared Jim with the mention of prosthetics, even though McCoy made it a point to let him know the concrete results of his wild risks. It wasn't that McCoy wanted to increase Jim's guilt, which tended to get out of control anyway, but that he wanted the captain to look ahead, to predict the damage as well as the gains. If Jiilau had done that, none of them would be thinking about burns now.
Soon, the main problem they'd have with Spock's convalescence would be crowd control for his visitors. Already most of the alpha-shift Bridge crew and the Science-department people who worked directly with Spock had been in, some getting no farther than McCoy's office or the door of the ICU - that was while Spock was in trance - but now that he was awake, Uhura and Chekov and even Scott had stopped for a few minutes to chat. It was quite a sight to see them trying to make small talk with Spock (Spock!) while eyeing the bandages on his hands and T'Seru's grim face.
And then there was Chris Chapel, who had originally hung around T'Seru, offering assistance and lunch breaks and help with Starfleet and Sickbay procedures until T'Seru had banned her from the ICU. When Spock began to have visitors, Chapel obviously found her own banishment insulting as well as unfair. So did McCoy, who had never been averse to Spock having to deal with a little unrequited feeling on the part of someone as expressive as Christine. *Might even give him a few pointers on asking for what he wants,* McCoy thought without much conviction. But what he was convinced of was that Christine deserved to have and to show her feelings, too, and that Spock's recovery was hardly going to be slowed down by one more visitor. He overruled T'Seru, in one of the icy non-confrontations that were becoming more frequent all the time. Christine thanked him afterward with more restraint than he had really expected.
Spock, when McCoy dropped in on their stilted conversation, seemed resigned. He said gently - but he was always gentle with her - "Nurse Chapel, if you do not mind, I have some questions I need to ask Doctor McCoy," and she made her farewells and left without much visible embarrassment.
"What questions do you have for Doctor McCoy that I cannot answer?" asked T'Seru. McCoy wondered if she had any idea how transparently her territorialism showed - or if she simply didn't count that as an emotional response. It occurred to him suddenly that she might not be married, and that she might know that Spock wasn't, either. *Oh, good grief, as if we needed *that* complication.*
Spock had a ready answer for her, again. It was as if he had woken up with a list of them all tidy in his mind. "I am consulting both of you, but Doctor McCoy is the chief medical officer, and it is his recommendation which will be recorded in his log and thus be Starfleet's guide as to the correctness of my subsequent behavior."
"You mean you want to leave Sickbay," McCoy said. "You *always* want to leave Sickbay."
"I do now, yes," Spock replied. "Is there any compelling reason why I should not?"
McCoy examined Spock's hands again, mostly to give himself time to think. They were now blotched olive and apple-green and soft, the skin probably tender to the touch, perhaps painful or itchy. Of course, Spock never admitted those sensations, so it was difficult to tell. There was certainly no reason for T'Seru's round-the-clock observation. The real trouble, as always, was that if Spock left Sickbay, he was very unlikely to rest, and that he still did need.
"You won't be able to go back on duty," McCoy warned. "You can't play around with your computer terminal. I know you, Spock, practically nothing can keep you from working! Mmm, I don't trust you. I'd like to keep you here until the beginning of next beta shift."
"If I stay in quarters for the next gamma and alpha shifts, surely it would serve the same purpose?" Spock negotiated.
McCoy closed the deal. "Alpha shift it is, and stay out of the labs and off the Bridge until I say otherwise."
"I trust you will inform me when I am being consulted," said T'Seru.
"Do you disagree?" asked McCoy. "Given the success of the surgery and the rate of recovery here? All due to Vulcan strength and discipline?"
She stared long and hard at him, and he looked blandly back. Then she turned to Spock and said, "Let me examine your hands."
McCoy stood back and relaxed. A done deal. She was practically back on Altair Six already.
~~~~~
"Come," said Jim absently, looking up from the book he was reading after dinner, and was taken aback when the door opened and revealed Spock. Of course, McCoy had told him that Spock was leaving Sickbay, but the doctor had been vehement about Spock's resting, so Jim had reluctantly decided not to visit.It was the surprise, perhaps, that made Jim smile, his mouth stretching without his conscious intent and beyond his control. He rested his eyes on the tall figure in blue and black, the glossy dark hair dimmed for a moment as Spock moved through the door and under the overhanging bulkhead, but shining again as he came farther in.
"Spock, are you playing hooky? McCoy said you were going to stay in your quarters."
"I believe," said Spock, "that you worked an entire alpha shift 3.5 solar days ago, when you were in very nearly the same physical condition that I am now."
"I don't think that's really the same thing. But sit down, please."
"Why is it not the same thing?" asked Spock as he sat down on the other side of the desk, holding his hands carefully away from contact with the chair or his own legs.
Was he still in pain? "Spock, your *hands* -"
"Healing, Jim," Spock reassured him, and then repeated more vehemently, "They are healing. I came to show you that they are."
"Then show me."
Spock extended them over the desk, and Jim took his first real look at them since the fire. Allowing for the natural difference in color, they did look roughly like his, when he had been released from Sickbay. He raised his own hand, paused and glanced at Spock, and then he did touch his friend's warmer skin.
He brushed the backs of Spock's hands, where the new skin was as soft and smooth as a baby's over the strong tendons and large knuckles his eyes knew. So soft - he repeated the movement with both hands, marveling at the sensation. His fingers dipped between Spock's, where the grafted skin was even more tender and tiny ridges betrayed the edges of the surgeries. Spock's fingers closed just slightly, in a movement that might have been defensive, and Jim looked up to see if there was pain in his face.
Spock's eyes held him, the clear brown depths so accepting and so warm that Jim was immobilized. He found he had slid his fingers between Spock's as far as they would go; they were virtually holding hands. Dimly Jim realized that he was breaking his own rules, but he could not bring himself to pull away.
"Am I hurting you," he murmured, but did not wait for an answer; the feeling of Spock's skin was too intoxicating to stop stroking it. He traced the outsides of Spock's hands, and ran fingertips across Spock's outstretched ones. The long, green-tinged fingers were quivering, reaching, though Spock did not move his arms. Jim turned his wrists and rubbed along Spock's palms, back to the hollow between tendons where a gentle pressure let him feel the hot rush of Spock's pulse.
The sound of an exhalation made Jim look up again to see Spock's lips just parted, and in his eyes much the same expression he had worn before, in his quarters, in pon farr: vitally alive, compelling, sweet, undefended, seeing so far into Jim that he felt the inside of his skull, the muscles squeezing his heart, the skin of his cock and balls warm with Spock's regard. There was no dark corner in Jim that Spock could not see. Even now, with the desk between them and perhaps two inches of their skin in contact, there was no place in Jim that Spock did not touch.
Jim clutched convulsively at the warm palms above his own and, this time, Spock did flinch - only a tiny movement, but Jim let go at once. Spock's eyes closed. Jim held the edge of the desk. Spock's face was blank when he opened his eyes, and he too withdrew his hands.
"You have remembered," he said, "that you need your first officer."
"Is that what I'm thinking? I don't even know." Jim shook his head. "I need you. I hurt you. I -"
"You did not," Spock interrupted, "actually order me into the fire. You did not even order me to trace the smell of the smoke. You certainly did not order me to catch the branch and burn myself." He paused. "I have been expecting a reprimand, in fact."
Smiling in spite of himself, Jim said, "Don't ever hurt yourself that badly again, mister. Doing something I didn't order." The caveat made him pause, and realize guiltily, "If we'd known going in that Jiilau was in the fire - well, I don't know what I might have ordered."
"Jim, would you spare yourself? You never do. Why should anything you . . . feel for me make you wish to spare me?" When Jim did not answer, Spock took a deep breath and said with bleak evenness, "Perhaps I presume."
"No," Jim said, "No, Spock." But he could not immediately put his complicated feelings into words. Again Spock came to his rescue.
"When I was in trance," he began, and then, uncharacteristically, backtracked. "The healing trance is an altered form of consciousness. Hearing, touch, and telepathic sensitivity are all present, but the tranced person may not remember all that happens." He paused to mark the end of his parenthesis, and then went on, "I do not remember anything immediately after the fire. The first thing I remember is feeling you touch my hair. Your emotions were so strong that I could not help but perceive them."
"I was afraid for you. Relieved you were alive. Worried. I always want to do something, but - " Jim stopped, looked at the desk, then back at Spock.
Spock nodded, accepting what he must know was a partial list. "You could not control the situation then. Now, to feel in control, to make a decision that you can carry through and be satisfied with, you need information. I am your first officer and your friend; it is my role to give information to you." Another slight pause, and then he gave it, one evenly pronounced sentence at a time. "I am nearly healed. There is no reason for you to harbor any negative emotions about my injury. My own desires and emotions are much as they were when I was in pon farr, though they no longer threaten my life. You are free to decide. But I would have you choose me, Jim. I would choose you."
Jim could not breathe. Spock was propositioning him, and he could not get air enough to answer. But apparently what was on his face did not look like rejection, because Spock did not withdraw behind his Vulcan mask this time.
He had been leaning forward, looking into Jim's eyes, and he simply leaned a little farther and stood, moving gracefully, never breaking eye contact. "Please consider what I have said."
In another moment Spock would go, and Jim would never have matched that candid bravery. "Don't," Jim forced out, "don't leave like that." He got up and took the few steps necessary - Spock met him at the end of the table - and Jim put his arms around his first officer.
Spock's arms closed around him firmly, though his hands remained relaxed. The side of one hand brushed Jim's cheek, and he turned his face into Spock's shoulder. Spock's warmth surrounded him. He breathed in and savored the coppery-spicy-sweet smell. Spock rubbed up to his shoulders and down again, with his forearm and the back of his hand. Jim felt the knuckles bump along his spine, and held Spock more tightly, sliding his arms upward to hang onto Spock's shoulders. They kissed; Jim knew he ought to answer verbally as well, but when he moved his head back Spock followed and slid his lips slowly back and forth across Jim's, slipping his tongue between Jim's teeth and his upper lip, and suckling the lip until one strong wrist pushed Jim's head back where it had been and Spock deepened the kiss.
One of them made a sound, half a murmuring word, half a moan, but it was trapped between their mouths and Jim did not know whose voice it was. To feel this again, this heat around and rising inside him, Spock's body and his own both shaking and straining to push together as if they could literally merge - no, actually, this was not something he felt again. This he was feeling for the only, the first time. He broke the kiss gasping for air, and Spock put his head down on Jim's shoulder and gasped too. Real. The breath at Jim's ear, puffing on his neck, convinced him.
As real as the erections trapped between them; as real as the fragile skin on Spock's hands. "Now," Jim said into Spock's temple. "Do we try some sort of hands-free sex, or do we try to step away?"
"You," said Spock hoarsely, with uneven pauses between the words, "are evidently, giving me an ill-timed, example, of the human, sense of humor."
And Jim did laugh, and catch his breath, and laugh again, "Oh, my friend," and kiss all of Spock's skin that his lips could reach. Sweet. Sweet, and just slightly rough. Tongue between his lips, Jim pulled back, craving the taste of all Spock's skin as if it were air.
Spock sat on the edge of the bed, hands upturned loosely on his knees, and Jim began to undress him. The close-fitting arms of the blue Sciences uniform shirt were resistant, and in the end he pulled the body of the shirt over Spock's head and peeled the sleeves off inside-out. The awkwardness of it made laughter bubble up in his chest again. He ran his palms over the surface of Spock's black t-shirt, filling his imagination with the shapes of the flesh beneath. The black knit stretched and bunched, and Jim took handfuls of it and pulled, and worked it out where it was tucked into the uniform pants. Reaching around to the back of the shirt, his arms closing on Spock, Jim felt the gentlest touches on his neck and hair, and looked up to find that luminous stare again.
He heard Spock say, "Jim," and his heart turned over. They kissed again, and Spock stroked his neck and ears while Jim reached under the t-shirt to touch the fine hot skin over his ribs, the damp tangles of hair up his belly and on his chest and back in his even-hotter armpits. Spock squirmed like a tickled child and mouthed Jim's hair, panting, and at last slid his teeth along the edge of Jim's ear, bit the skin behind it, and sucked there. Jim's fingers were in the arm-holes of the t-shirt, and he slid them over Spock's biceps as far as they would go before he went back to pulling up the rest of it. The problem this time was getting it over Spock's head, as neither of them wanted him to stop kissing Jim's neck, but eventually they did it, and the t-shirt joined the blue uniform shirt on the floor.
"Let me," Spock said, softly, into Jim's ear, licking between the words, "let," his thumbs were hooked under Jim's shirt, "me," the thumbnail and knuckle and the bone above the wrist scraping up each of Jim's sides, "do," fingertips and nails now running down and up either side of his spine, "this," and now it was Jim writhing and working his way out of the tangle of shirt around his neck and shoulders. He threw it down, and Spock bent his head and took one of Jim's nipples in his mouth, holding his waist between forearms that were rigid and furry and hot. Jim's back arched, his head and shoulders falling away as his hips pushed toward Spock, and he could not have kept his balance if Spock's arms had not held him, if his own hands had not locked above Spock's elbows. Every part of his body, even to his eyelids and the lobes of his ears, pounded with his pulse, and his head spun.
Jim's hands shook so much when he tried to unfasten Spock's pants that he couldn't hold on to the clip at the top. Spock, trying to reach around Jim's arms, was having much the same problem. Any moment now, with Spock's fingers moving there, Jim would come in his pants; "Spock," he groaned as he squinted at his own fumbling hands and the bulge he kept rubbing, half by mistake. Spock murmured something in reply - the low vibration seemed to go directly to Jim's hands and resonate there - and Spock's hips and thighs jerked and trembled with his clenching muscles, which was not helping Jim's trouble with the clip. There! He had it, and then the other fastenings, and the fabric parted to give just a glimpse of the black briefs beneath, and a new wave of copper and honey, ginger/pepper/brown sugar, caught on his tongue and at the back of his throat. How could he have forgotten, how could he have stopped thinking about it for an instant?
Spock moved as if to stand up, but Jim pushed his shoulders back, guided him until he was leaning back on his elbows. The light above the bed fell on his slightly-tousled hair, the green flush on his cheekbones and neck; it blazed in his eyes, glistened on his mouth - "Mmm, look at you," Jim said, gazing across the breadth of his shoulders, taut arms, hard green nipples in the dark hair on his chest -
"I cannot," said Spock, "but I am looking at you," and Jim had to lean over and kiss him, burying his fingertips in the short springy chest hair, outlining its edges from collarbone in, then out to the edge of his chest, then down the stomach, lower, below the hip bones - Spock let his head fall back. Jim ran his lips down the long hot throat, sucking his adam's apple, while Spock murmured again, the syllables still not making sense to Jim, but feeling wonderful as they vibrated against his mouth with that delicious, unsalty, succulent spiced taste. Jim's hips pressed into the side of the bed, squeezing his erection until it hurt. He had to get his pants off. He kicked off his boots, holding Spock's ribs, and then pushed himself up, took his hands reluctantly away, and shakily pulled his pants down and tossed them aside too. His cock sprang out with a rush that weakened his knees, and he let them bend, kneeling - Spock sat up and looked down at him -- to grasp one of Spock's laced boots.
The bow was tight. Jim picked at the knot. "How did you get these things *on,* anyway?"
Spock did not answer, unless running his fingers through Jim's hair was a reply, and Jim impatiently jerked and pulled at the knot until it gave way. As he rose a little to flick the boot over the pile of clothes now on the floor, Spock's toes brushed across the tip of Jim's cock and he fell back, gasping. *Another boot,* he reminded himself. *Spock's pants.* Still, he had to rest his head against Spock's leg for a moment, fighting for control.
Again he felt Spock's fingers on his head. "Jim," said the deep voice, "Th'y'la," syllables beginning to sound a little familiar, "what is the matter?"
"I want you too much. I want everything, all of you, right now."
"Yes," said the deep voice, the points of warmth on his scalp, the stirring of the leg beside his cheek, "Yes."
Jim turned and attacked the other knot with savage energy, removed the boot and threw it at the wall, surged up between Spock's legs and slid down his pants almost in one movement. Spock had leaned back on his elbows again, and Jim put his arms around Spock's thighs and his face into the hollow between cock and hip. Such richness, this skin, this heat, this smell - he licked and nuzzled around the smoother skin stretched over bone, the warmer, velvet skin of the balls, the veined, hottest skin of the cock, his hands sliding under and around Spock's thighs and his mouth closing, at last, on the head, down to the first ridge. He ran his tongue around it, and around again; he opened his mouth further and tongued the skin between the ridges. Spock's hips lifted, and Jim's fingers found the crease between his tight buttocks, and Spock jumped beneath him. Jim could feel the tension growing in Spock's muscles, feel how close he was, taste the fluid seeping into his mouth, and kept going, *yes, come, now, come for me,* staring at the flushed, uncontrolled, sweaty face as Spock turned his head to one side, then the other, his jaw clenching and his eyes shut. He was thrusting into Jim's mouth; then a moment of stillness and Jim felt the rush build and then burst down his throat, and he gulped gratefully.
Spock caught blindly at Jim's ear and shoulder, urging him closer, and they struggled backward until both were lying on the narrow bed. Spock reached between their bodies and grasped Jim's cock, the long fingers firm as he stroked from tip to base, base to tip, back and forth, and Jim meant to tell him that this was not hands-free sex but could do nothing but gasp. Then Spock sat up, nudged Jim's hips over to the center of the bed and bent over to lick him. If Spock's skin was hot, his mouth was hotter still; the moment that searing wetness closed around him, Jim was coming, shuddering and arching his back and gone, gone, in a flash of throbbing heat like the heart of a star.
Spock moved up, braced on hip and elbow, until he leaned across Jim but barely touched him; Jim wrapped his arms and one leg around Spock, who rubbed his face against Jim's collarbone. "Next to this," he said, then paused to kiss Jim's shoulder and his neck, "I have never known pleasure."
"It was amazing," Jim said. "You are."
Spock dropped his forehead into Jim's neck. "Th'y'la," he said again, and again did not explain.
Jim left it: there was something else he wanted to ask. "Spock, did you know this would happen?"
"I . . . hoped for it," said Spock. "I believed that you felt strongly about me, and I knew how I regarded you. I thought you had made a decision which was - not profitable for either of us, in the long run." He raised his head and looked into Jim's eyes. "You have worried about how a changed relationship with me would affect your command decisions. I did not think that you realized how an unresolved relationship would affect them."
Jim's arms tightened. "If I had lost you in that fire."
"That is not really an example, as you took no command decision."
The dispassionate voice he heard, the warm bare skin he felt against his own, were so incongruous that Jim laughed a little.
As if he had not heard, Spock went on, "If you ordered me into a situation that later proved fatal, would you feel less guilty if we had never spoken the truth to each other, or never touched each other?"
"It just seems so sudden," Jim said, pulling out of the realm of speculation.
"It does not seem so to me. The night of the reception - "
Remorse swept Jim. "Ah, Spock, I'm sorry." He reached for Spock's face and stroked it.
"You did not expect me to react. I had not anticipated that."
"After all this time? As long as I've known you, you've said you had no feelings."
"And for as long, you have refused to believe that."
"Are you telling me I was right all along? That McCoy was right?"
"No. McCoy was usually wrong."
Jim laughed again. "So just how illogical are you now?"
"Not at all. To appreciate excellence, to desire what causes pleasure, to enhance our mutual confidence, are these things illogical?"
"In fact," said Jim, sliding his hands down to Spock's ass and rubbing it, "this has been quite an intellectual exercise."
Spock kissed him, his tongue moving in the same rhythm as Jim's hands. "Yes," he murmured on his way from Jim's mouth to his neck. Then he kissed Jim's shoulder, the inside of his upper arm, and Jim's hands came up to his shoulders and gripped hard. "I see . . . you need . . . more examples . . . of this particular intellectual mode."
"Oh, yes," Jim answered.
~~~~~
Spock woke. Jim lay sprawled across his body, his downturned face beside Spock's. Spock's thoughts slowly assembled, and he felt Jim's weight riding up and down on his own ribs, heard Jim's snoring inhalations, saw Jim's dream . . . probably it was this that had woken him. Jim was dreaming of Spock, a mixture of images in Spock's quarters, the flicker of the firepot, scattered glimpses of Spock's shoulder, hands, hip, jaw, ear. The dark shape on the bed as Jim dressed himself. Disorganized dream-feelings, desolation and anger and lust, so strong that Jim's breathing quickened and Spock thought he would wake in the storm of those emotions.Spock reached up to stroke along Jim's sides, then up and down his back. The muscles that had begun to tense against Spock, relaxed, but his own palms prickled and stung as he dragged them across the damp, cooler human surface. Pain and tenderness, sharp and soft, heat and chill . . . so they were together, he and Jim, and Spock would not have traded one instant of this night for any simpler bliss. He turned his head until his cheek met Jim's, one hand now at the nape of Jim's neck and the other rubbing at the base of his spine, then smoothing down the nearer buttock.
"Mmm," said Jim, and pressed his face closer without opening his eyes, pulled in his arms and held Spock, tightening his grasp slowly as he woke. Spock felt the shift to awareness, and the light brush of Jim's lashes as he opened, then blinked his eyes. Spock took a quick breath himself as Jim's mouth found his earlobe and sucked it in.
Jim drew up one knee and shifted some of his weight; Spock made a protesting sound and held on, wanting the length of body and leg against him. The human knee pressed against the Vulcan heart; Jim's toes slid cold under Spock, who dropped his arm to trace the line between thigh and calf, and then the outside of Jim's ankle, and then around and around the callus of his heel. Jim bit Spock's neck, not hard, and then kissed him, and Spock discovered he was hungry for the taste of bitter, sleep-stale saliva on Jim's tongue.
An even better taste was the salt of Jim's skin, and Spock sucked at the tender neck and shoulder languidly. Jim stroked him now, seeming especially taken with chest and armpits and stomach, oddly fascinated with Spock's body hair for someone who removed so much of his own. Spock bent the leg Jim was not lying on and turned a little, leaning the inside of his thigh against Jim's hip. Jim's hand strayed over Spock's flank in lazy circles. For some time they moved against each other, not speaking, too tired for sex and never really erect but unwilling to separate, unwilling to stop tasting and touching each other, waves of emotion eddying back and forth between them without urgency. It felt good, to Spock, to both of them. It all felt good, and the pleasure of it faded only into sleep's shared darkness.
Neither knew, when they woke again, which had stirred first. Neither moved away. Spock now lay with one hand extended off the side of the bed and the other arm draped over Jim, who was spooned closely into the angles of his body, keeping him just warm enough for sleep. Jim took a deep, slow, easy breath, and so did Spock. Then Jim pushed the back of his head into Spock's shoulder, and tensed all his muscles, arching his back, straightening his legs and bringing up one elbow in what would have been a stretch if there had been room for one. Then he relaxed again, reaching back to lay his free hand on Spock's hip. Spock bent his head and put his face into the musky tangles of Jim's hair, feeling the wonder of Jim's utterly relaxed, almost unthinking mind.
"OK?" asked Jim in a fuzzy voice.
Spock took a moment to realize what he was being asked, and then he said softly, "I am well."
"Not quite," Jim said, still drowsily, "but you will be. Few more treatments. Rest." He yawned. "'S a medical order."
Spock held him close, and his voice was still low. "Yes, sir."
After some time, Jim said, "How long did we sleep this time?"
"Between three and four hours."
A low chuckle. "Between?"
If he had taken thought, Spock could have told the minutes, but instead he kissed the back of Jim's head. Jim slid his hand up to Spock's waist and back down to the hip, and yawned again.
The comm whistled.
"Oh, God," said Jim, but he already sounded more awake than he had a moment ago. He sat up and rubbed his forehead. Spock reached for his back, but he stood.
Spock shivered and sat up himself. The comm whistled again. Jim reached the desk, shut off the screen, and then pressed a button. "Kirk here," he said. He leaned over the terminal rather than sitting down, and Spock stood and watched him through the dividing grille.
"Captain?" asked an uncertain voice.
"Here," Jim repeated. "Screen's off."
"Oh." The new gamma-shift Communications officer, Lieutenant Palmer, paused and then said, "Sorry, Captain, did I wake you? I thought you ought to know right away. We've been monitoring the Altair 6 video frequencies for news on President Jiilau's condition?" Her voice rose on the end of the sentence, a little uncertainly.
"I remember. Did something happen?" Jim's shoulders shifted just a little with tension, and his voice was sharper.
"Yes, Captain. He died, sir."
After a pause, Jim said, "Lieutenant, please upload the reports and send a copy to my terminal."
"Yes, sir."
"Thank you. Kirk out." He stood at the desk, his head still bent. "Damn, Spock. I liked him. Admired him."
"I too."
"Well." He straightened. "Hell of a way to start a long day. I'll call Niu and Strephon. There'll be a funeral, too." He turned and took a step away from the desk as if to pace, as he so often did while thinking or speaking of something which disturbed him, and then seemed to remember that he was naked. He looked down at himself and then at Spock, wearing a rueful expression which tugged at Spock's breath - although, as he admitted to himself, the sight of Jim walking around his quarters with not one piece of clothing on had been affecting his breathing all along.
Jim walked back into the sleeping area and up to Spock, pressing against his body and hugging his waist. "When you look at me that way - " he began.
"What way is that?" Spock asked, breathing in Jim, feeling Jim, looking into Jim's eyes. It was still hardly believable, and yet it was true. His voice had fallen without his meaning to lower it, and the sound reverberated deep in his chest. He could feel the vibrations of Jim's speech, too.
"Like - oh, like Spock the morning after lovemaking." Jim put his face against Spock's neck, and Spock felt his lips move as he smiled, and as he spoke. His breath stirred the hair below Spock's throat. "Like a naked Vulcan in my quarters at - what, four hundred hours?"
"Approximately."
"Mmm. You're worrying me. Do you really not know the time?"
"Four seventeen." He stroked Jim's hair and the nape of his neck. "You are sleepy. Can you not sleep again?"
"Not worth it, for less than an hour." Jim relaxed against Spock, who rubbed his back, gripping and massaging the unresisting muscles. "What are you doing with your hands?"
"I would have thought someone with your experience would recognize this movement."
"Funny. I mean, of course, that you are not supposed to be using your hands. If you're not careful, McCoy may bandage them."
"Then I would need even more assistance dressing - and undressing - and - "
Jim kissed him. And then stepped away, sighing. "I want to get back in that bed with you. But there's not really enough time for that either. Oh - " He stepped forward again, cupping Spock's face in his hands, and though his fingers were not on the meld points, Spock felt Jim's mind press against his as their bodies had just pressed together. It was obscurely comforting. Jim's thumbs moved in slow, firm strokes on Spock's cheeks, up from his jaw to under his cheekbones and back. "We have got to make this work. I want my lover in bed and my first officer on the bridge and my friend at the chessboard."
"We have done," said Spock, "far riskier things, and made them succeed."
At the near-quotation Jim grimaced, one of those ambivalent expressions which Spock had never truly learned to read; nor could he untangle the mixture of emotions and thoughts in Jim's touch before he lowered his hands and stepped back. "Let's get washed and dressed," he said.
They did so, though it required some maneuvering and compromise. Even sharing the bathroom was a new and slightly strange experience. Jim offered the use of his toothbrush, but Spock declined. Jim showered first, then dressed and went to Spock's quarters to get a clean Science uniform. Spock had an awkward minute or two waiting for Jim to get back. Somehow sitting naked on Jim's bed in Jim's absence made him feel anxious, and though he easily controlled the emotion, it puzzled him.
Jim said he would tie Spock's bootlaces, but Spock insisted on dressing himself otherwise. In fact, Jim went into the office area and retrieved the video uploads, skimming through them, while Spock put on his uniform and overheard the audio track. He reflected that he could have the text summaries he preferred forwarded to his own terminal later.
"We regret to report that President Aulua Jiilau, after a tenure of just four days in office, has been gravely injured in what may be a terrorist attack . . .," Spock heard, and then the soft whirr of the fast-forward function, which continued to punctuate scraps of speech in many different voices: "Investigations continue into the mysterious attack on Aulua Jiilau, while his wife Niu has accepted the position of President Pro Tem, according to a tradition that dates back to the days of her warlord ancestors . . .The most important principle of all is system unity!" Spock was startled to recognize Niu's voice, for that sentence. " . . . From the historic meeting between President Pro Tem Jiilau and the Chair of the Altair 5 Aggregate Constitutional Committee . . . Upheaval and disarray in the Upper House . . .ministers resigning . . . resignation of the Commander in Chief of the United Altair Army . . . Our exclusive interview with Akino Kriinutuo . . . Live from the press conference of the Chief of Altair's Intelligence Agency . . . many arrests. I may assure the Altairian public, our brothers of the Five Aggregate, and the peoples of the Federation that we will not cease from investigation until the very last of these criminals have been tracked down, whether they are in hiding on Altair 5 or in the ministerial offices of the Upper House . . . "
Now Spock was dressed, except for his untied boots, and he came out of the sleeping area and took the chair he had sat in 8.46 hours ago. He loosely folded his hands, which were indeed better this morning, and Jim turned the screen so that they both could see it. This was the most recent recording, a montage of film clips from a newscast, with a voiceover: "Scandal and speculation surrounding the death of President Aulua Jiilau has not prevented the expression of grief from the millions who admired and loved him. Memorial services and effigy burials have sprung up everywhere, and the funeral pyre in the Capitol Square has reached a height of ten meters entirely from public contributions. From the polar settlement of Herinalon to Deep-Sea Station J, we are all, as Altairians, drawn together in mourning this extraordinary man, torn from us too soon."
Jim said, "Computer, end playback." He looked at Spock as if he did not quite see him, or perhaps it was that Jim saw, at this moment, only the first officer, and not the lover with untied shoes. "I was hoping they had finished the investigation." He smiled a little. "I wanted to hear the end of the story for once."
"An investigation of this scope will go on for a long period of time."
Jim glanced at the screen, nodded. "They still don't really know who set the fire. Not Boridi, obviously not Akino, and not a long list of people who were peripherally involved."
"There will be no one person to blame," Spock predicted. "Jim, you must let that go."
"It's hard," said Jim, with a rueful smile. "Hard even from the position of Captain of the Enterprise. If someone came from Altair 6 to set the fire, why didn't we know? Why didn't we prevent it?"
"There is continual traffic, Jim, and we could never stop that. You would not even want a report on every shuttle that ship's sensors detected. If any kind of capsule had been launched from space, be sure that we would have tracked it. No, the most likely scenario, to my mind, is that the fire was preset, the chemicals seeded by someone on Altair 5 who knew of the location of the meeting, and unidentifiable because of the sensor interference." Jim considered this, and Spock went on, "Akino is a foolish young man. It is probable that his contacts were not actually the people he thought they were. He may have given information to the terrorist group without ever knowing he had done so. They always posed the greatest immediate danger, as they stood to lose most from Boridi's treachery."
Jim nodded, then got up and came around the end of the desk. He touched Spock's shoulder and said, "Let's get those boots tied," and knelt to do so.
"Something still troubles you," said Spock.
"This does," and Jim looked up with the laces in his hands. "I hate to think of all the things you will do, but - almost couldn't. I never really saw Aulua - after the fire, but I did see some pictures - " he looked down again, and slowly leeaned in until his head just touched Spock's knee. "I can't let go just like that. You're right, I have to stop wanting someone to blame, but - not yet."
At this angle, the light did not gild Jim's hair as it so often did. Spock put his fingers into the brown warmth and was profoundly grateful he could do so. Then Jim sat back on his heels and finished tying the bootlaces, and Spock waited until Jim got up to stand himself.
"Thank you," he said, and added, "Captain."
And Jim smiled at him just as he always had. This, Spock was certain, they would never lose.
~~~~~
Go on to Epilogue?