Chapter Text
Part Six: The Door In The Sky
He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear...
- William Faulkner, 'As I Lay Dying'
Jim
Bad harvests. A childhood of bad harvests. I ask my dad, I say: "Dad, what's at the end of the Universe?" And he says, "Your chair, that's at the end. You're ready for your chair." Mom says, "Are you sneaking food out to that girl again, Jimmy? Jim? Answer me. Jim!" Lyla. "Tell me about your girl, Captain". She smells like apples. "You're getting luckier all the time". Dad's there, in the bar, or maybe it's Pike: "I believe in you." Sam's letting me ride his bike. "You'll do OK, Jimbo". I was in this play once, at school... It was Shakespeare wasn't it? Puns. Pain, like a living thing, separate from me, pulsing and ravenous, all over me. I want it to stop. He hates him / That would upon the rack of this tough world / Stretch him out longer. There is no fear anymore, only a desire to make it stop. Make it stop. Make this feeling stop. "What's so important about feelings?" "Shh, shh now, T'hy'la. I know, I know you. T'hy'la". There's a scar on my eyebrow where Frank's wedding ring caught it, one time. Frank; his fists. "You'll never amount to anything". "You think you’re infallible. You think you can’t make a mistake". Then the pain lifts off me, raises its great shaggy head, unlocks its claws from my chest, and is gone. I want it to come back. I know what it means now. "I'm dying". Green ribs in the white moonlight. T'hy'la. Come back. Star light, star bright. I wish I may, I wish I might. There was someone once who traced their finger along it, that scar. The gentlest touch I've ever known. "Is this the result of an altercation in a drinking establishment?” "You're just jealous, because you have ridiculous eyebrows. " It was Spock. There was a door once, but now I don't know how to find it. No, there was never a door. There is no door. I wanted to live, I wanted the door, I wanted. I want. Spock. Spock. Spock.
__________________________________________
Jim dies.
Jim dies and it's the worst thing. It's almost stunning, Spock thinks, the pain of it. Part of him is coldly, detachedly curious at this sudden and unexpected ability to feel something so brightly, so sharp and brilliant in its intensity. A tiny part of him. The rest of him feels like one, giant, endless scream. Jim.
Nyota comes to him.
"Spock. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Tushah nash-veh k'dular." She rests one warm hand on his shoulder, squeezes. "We all loved him you know." Then she sees his face. "But not like you. But not like you."
The anger is good because it is the only thing which brings relief from the tight, white agony of the pain. The hopelessness of the pain.
It is the anger which carries him to the bridge, which enables him to instruct Sulu to scan the Vengeance, now smashed into the San Francisco bay, for signs of life. It is the anger which takes him to the transporter pad, which flows through him like liquid fire as he scans the panicked crowds for Khan. It is the anger which finds him. It is the anger which sends him racing after him. It is the anger which means he does not feel the pain, not when Khan stamps down viciously on his wrist to make him drop his phaser, and not when Khan throws him bodily against the side of the transport ship they have climbed onto. It does not matter what Khan does to him, Spock will win.
I will win, he thinks. I will kill you, because I do not care if I live or die.
He realises that, before when he thought he didn't care, he in fact did. Deep in the belly of the Niribian volcano, when he thought he had let go of caring, he hadn't, not really. No, this is what actually not caring feels like. He does not matter. His life does not matter. Nothing matters. Nothing matters except destroying the man who has taken everything, who has turned all to nothing.
You have taken from me everything that could possibly be taken from me, Spock thinks, as he smashes his fist into Khan's face. You have taken all I had left. K'hat'n'dlawa. Half of my heart, half of my soul.
He had struggled to master the pain in his katra when his home was destroyed, but this is worse. Because now he knows Jim was his true home. Everything else was just geography. Jim, his home. Gone.
He remembers Jim, on the bridge, the day his mother died: 'What is it like not to feel anger or heartbreak or the need to stop at nothing to avenge her death?'
What he would say to him now: Jim, I feel all these things. Anger. Heartbreak. Vengeance. I will stop at nothing. Nothing.
He remembers holding Jim in his arms, saying to him 'If you were to die...' He remembers not knowing how to complete that sentence. Now he knows. It turns out the answer is: I would die. It turns out there is a hierarchy of grief. There was the loss of T'Pring, his mother, his home. Things to be borne, things to be lived through. And then there is the loss of Jim. The worst thing. A thing which cannot be endured.
There is a brief moment when he thinks on Surak, who says: Nam-tor ri’el nazh-tor s’rasahkos-dve lan hi tviyan nesh-kur . But then he recalls how dull Jim's eyes went as he died, like the light falling out of the sky, and it is like another dark lance shocking through his heart. Khan's hands are pressed tight against Spock's skull as he tries to break Spock's neck. It will be to no avail. Spock will win.
He raises his hand to Khan's psi points, lets the anger flow through him. Eshack. It is not something that is talked of. The killing gift. He has never had cause to use it, has never even been trained in how to use it. But it comes easily, as if it has always been just waiting to be summoned. It comes like a dark flood in his brain, he feels it reverberate through his psi points in a rattle of agony. It feels like ripping, but it wants Khan dead, and so the ripping is sweet.
Khan senses it, the black maw that is heading for the delicate pink tendrils of his brain, and for the first time Spock sees him look afraid. He feels his mind wash over Khan's, destroying, ruining, ending.
With a groan of pure exertion Khan manages to wrench himself free, to break the meld. He is away in an instant, on the run now, scared. He leaps from the transport ship they are on, landing on another one, but Spock follows him. There is no fear. There is nothing. There is a fierce pleasure in feeling Khan's fists upon him, because it shows he is scared, that he knows. He knows Spock will kill him. He knows there will be no other ending to this. Even when Khan has him on the floor of the ship, is trying to twist at his neck once more, there is never a shred of doubt inside Spock's mind, not even a chink in his certainty.
Khan suddenly releases him, rises to his feet. Spock sees Nyota appear on the deck, phaser raised and ready as she fires on Khan again and again. He staggers, stunned. Spock wrenches a metal crank from the side of the ship as he, too, gets to his feet. He smashes it into Khan's face, feels the wet gristly give of something crunching in on itself. He seizes Khan's arm, bends it over his own shoulder for leverage until he hears the wet snap of Khan's humerus breaking.
You can’t even break a rule. How could you be expected to break a bone?
Khan didn't expect that. Spock feels the sudden bolt of Khan's crimson pain flowing through the place where their skin touches. There will be more of that, Spock thinks. Much more. I will break every bone in your body upon the rack of my grief. Spock can feel that Khan is surprised at the intensity of the pain, unused to it. His surprise flows into the sore spot in Spock's head where their minds briefly touched. Yes, thinks Spock, after I have broken your body I will break your mind. He feels the gift ripple inside him again, ferocious and untamed. It is a savage thing, wild and uncontrollable, and he cannot master it adequately, but it does not matter. It does not matter if using it kills him too. That is irrelevant. He drives his fist into Khan's face again and again and again. You will break, you will break, and then you will be broken, broken like I am.
Nyota is crouched down on her knees in front of him, shouting something, but he can barely hear her over the roaring in his head.
"Spock, stop! Spock, he’s our only chance to save Kirk!"
Jim. What she is saying makes no sense. Jim is dead, Spock knows it. His heart knows it, his katra knows it. Still. Still. He hesitates, meets her eyes, huge and trembling. Sees the truth in them. He stops. He stops.
**
He carries Khan's unconscious body to medbay himself, lays him down on one of the beds. He turns to McCoy.
"Doctor, you cannot do this."
"You don't even know what I'm gonna do!"
"You are intending to use Khan's blood to restore Jim's irradiated cells."
"Damn right I am," McCoy's jaw is set firm, his eyes flashing, defiant. "And neither you nor anyone else is going to stop me."
"The Federation has a zero tolerance policy with regards to genetic engineering. You could lose your licence to practice medicine. You could be court martialed."
"Like I care about any of that garbage. Jim's my friend, goddammit. My best friend. Hell, after Jo that kid's the nearest thing to family I've got. I would risk anything for him. Just because you don't understand the meaning of sacrificing everything for someone you care about-"
"Do not talk to me about what I would and would not sacrifice for the Captain." Spock's voice is ragged with rage, a spiky barbed thing he can hardly believe has come from his own throat.
McCoy regards him in silence, both of them breathing heavily.
"Look, I'm not exactly over the moon about it either, but it's our only hope."
Spock takes a deep breath, attempts to slow the frantic skittering of his heat.
"You know how Jim feels about eugenics," he says, softer. "After Tarsus, after what Kodos did-"
"I know damn well, thank you," McCoy snaps, cutting him off. "I don't need you to tell me his feelings on anything. I also know how Jim feels about being alive."
They look at each other again.
"That is what you want too, isn't it, Spock? For Jim to be alive."
Yes. The want is a great force inside him, many coloured and multifaceted and all consuming.
"You must consider this logically, Doctor. What either of us wish is of no consequence. You have no guarantee that your intervention will work. You have no data on what it could do to Jim, even if he were to survive. On what it might make him. Recall what happened to your own Doctor Arik Soong. He, too, believed he could cure illness via the use of eugenics. He too used the DNA profile of the original Augments, those like Khan. And the ones he created were no less violent, no less despotic."
McCoy looks haggard, haunted.
"I know that Spock. But I can't not try. I have to try."
"Federation officials will find out," Spock says. "They will arrest you, arrest Jim. If he survives. They may decide... They may decide to terminate him."
"No one's gonna find out, Spock," McCoy assures him. "It's a clusterfuck down there. A full-on warship crashed into StarFleet HQ and took out half of downtown San Francisco, and the Admiral turned out to be some batshit crazy warmongering traitor to the Federation. They've got more important things to worry about than how I'm treating a case of radiation poisoning in one of my crew members. That's why I wanted Khan back. They might notice if one of the other Augments is missing, or has been unfrozen and had samples taken. They sure as hell won't notice what we do to Khan. Not with the state you've left him in. I've put the whole ship on quarantine for two weeks. No one out, no one in until I give the all clear. Perfectly reasonable considering we've suffered a major hull breach that's let God knows what kind of space 'flu into the ventilation systems, not to mention the fact we've got radiation floating around everywhere. We're just gonna sit tight here docked in the central port, and no one will be any the wiser."
Spock looks down at the floor. He feels hollowed out, empty. The rage has left him, and in its wake there is only a gnawing kind of numbness. He wonders if this is what Kolinahr feels like.
"It is decided then. You will use Khan parasitically. You will harvest his cells without his consent and synthesize them with Jim's. Without his consent either."
"Look, I know it's against practically every medical rule in the book. I know. But yes. That is what I will do."
"It is not about rules, Doctor. It is about ethics. It is about principles," Spock says.
"Would you have me not do it?" McCoy asks.
Spock is silent for a long beat.
Then, quietly: "No. I would not have you not do it. For Jim; there is nothing I would not have you do."
**
When he dresses for bed that night he notices that there are bruises all over him from his fight with Khan, chartreuse around their edges, darkening in their centres to shades of sage, viridian, olive. It takes a lot for him to bruise, and he is unused to seeing so many of them, clustered upon the pale cream of his skin. He thinks of Jim's skin, how easy it was to suck or squeeze dark pink hues onto its surface. The warm willingness of his blood. How breakable Jim was, how tender. He thinks on how much that used to scare him. But the fragility is part of the beauty. He sees that now. Every love story is a potential grief story. That's the whole point.
**
Doctor McCoy performs the procedure. He exits the medbay some hours later, his face drawn and grim.
"It was... He's very weak. His vitals... aren't good. He's in a coma."
"Will he come out of it?" Spock asks.
McCoy scrubs a hand over his face.
"I don't know. I just don't know."
So Spock waits. He finds that time is different, it can become both longer and shorter than it really is. It is far from the constant he learned in Physics. Instead it accommodates your need to go deeper into it. It is elastic, it can take anything you give it, and then it snaps back, forces you into the slow, swift, slow, swift day to day of your lived existence.
A day. Two days. Three, four. He assumes command of the Enterprise as she rests, Earthbound in port, sets about de-radiating the engine rooms, effecting basic repairs. But it feels like he is watching someone else do these things. Some other version of himself that he does not recognise.
"It doesn't look good," McCoy says. "There's no improvement. I think it might be time... We might have to face the fact that... He's not gonna make it."
Spock remembers what he said to Jim at their first Book Club meeting. We have differences. May we, together, become greater than the sum of both of us. They were, together, greater than the sum of both of them. Now Spock feels that what has been taken is greater than the sum of what was. And that is not mathematically possible, and yet it is possible. And yet it is.
The pain is back, low and desperate in his guts, the pain of losing Jim. He is no longer surprised that it hurts so much. It hurts exactly as much as Jim is worth. Jim was beyond value, and so the pain is beyond bearing. Spock thinks how he would smile at that, if Spock were to tell Jim that he missed him mathematically, that he was mathematically sad. Spock thinks about Jim's smile. About the crinkles around his eyes. Those mortal lines. He had always known Jim would be taken from him. He thinks on the line in King John, the opening play in the copy of the Collected Works of Shakespeare that Jim had lent him. We cannot hold mortality’s strong hand. He knows this. He always knew this. But how he wishes... How he wants...
He remembers Jim's hopeful eyes over chess. "What's the valuable life lesson to be learned from that, then?" We had almost no time together, Spock thinks. I did not know. I did not know, and now...
**
On the fifth night he stands on the observation deck, looking out over the river that borders the port, looking past the San Francisco skyscape, looking up at the stars. Nyota finds him, stands beside him for a while in the purple silence.
"I am lost," he says.
She looks at him. Her beautiful eyes, so endlessly giving.
"I do not know who I am, what I have become. Nyota, I allowed Doctor McCoy... I allowed him to do something which goes against everything I know to be right, to be logical. To be moral."
"Spock." It is just his name but it carries with it a wealth of comfort.
"And worse... I would have killed Khan. And not just with my fists, I... I would have killed him with my mind. I would have... What I would have done, it is zadik. It is something we have not practiced since the time of The Awakening. It is an ancient way, an illogical way. An evil way. A way that leads only to destruction, and death. But I cared not. In that moment... In that moment I hated him. I hated him so profoundly that I ceased to be myself."
"Spock," she says again, gently. Then: "Don't be so harsh on yourself. When you open the door to love you open the door to hate as well. Surely Surak talks about that? The balance?"
Spock tilts his head in acquiescence.
"Yes. He says: Rik’mu’fel’es, ri yi’ken-tor etek ha’gel."
"Without the darkness, we would not understand the light," Nyota translates. She looks at him appraisingly, dark eyes both cool and warm. "For what it's worth, I think it's a reasonable trade."
Spock looks into the inky Terran night.
"This simple feeling."
"Yes."
She rests her head lightly on his shoulder. She is warm.
"I am glad you had him, Spock. There were things in you... I wanted you to show them to me, I wanted to nurture them, but I couldn't draw them out. He touched things in you I never could. The way you used to look at him..."
He thinks of the things she offered him, the things he could not, then, accept. He starts: "I am sorry-"
But she cuts him off; "I am glad."
They look at the stars.
**
He spends that night on the observation deck, surrounded by the stars, the stars that Jim so loved. He watches the first rosy glimmers of the dawn grow into a bright, clear Spring day. The sky on Earth this morning is very blue. Spock looks at it for a long time, standing on the observation deck. He has never thought much on the colour of the sky. On Vulcan, here on Earth, on any of the countless planets he has visited. The sky is the sky. The colour of it depends on the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, and the scattering, and the angle of the planet's rotation, and the surface temperature of the nearest star. It is simply the colour of the void and the fire. It has no further meaning. But the sky this morning is the exact same blue as Jim's eyes.
Now every time I see the Terran sky I will feel heartbreak, Spock thinks. I will feel this sadness inside me, almost overwhelming. It will no longer ever just be the sky, it will be Jim, Jim's eyes. Ha'pla-kur.
He looks at the sky for several more long minutes, as the breaking feeling unfurls and shatters and then closes back in on itself in his side.
All those days by Jim's side, all that fear and shame he experienced at the new and unexpected emotions Jim awakened in him, all that time spent trying to suppress them. And it was for nothing. The realisation comes to him then, slowly and with a sense of dislocated surprise, that he has been wrong all along. For even now, even now with the heartbreak he finds he is gladder than he has ever been to look upon the sky. Everything, everything that happened, even if Jim is lost to him forever, is worth it, because of the colour of the sky. Now it will always mean something to him. Always. And he finds he would not have it any other way.
**
A week passes. Ten days. Spock wanders the hallways of the ship, listless, supervising the crew as they undertake repairs of the Enterprise, of her damaged skin and bones. McCoy's two week quarantine finishes, and Jim is moved to a StarFleet medical centre on the edge of the city.
Spock divides his time between the ongoing repair work to the Enterprise and sitting by Jim's bed.
"You could try talking to him, reading to him," McCoy suggests.
"And what purpose would that serve, Doctor?"
"It's meant to help."
"And this is your medical opinion?"
"Well, it can't do any harm. And it would certainly help me. Constantly finding you sitting here in morbid silence is beginning to creep me out."
He finds that he misses Jim not just physically, intellectually, socially, but also morally. But loving Jim was always about seriousness and truth. How could it not have been? Spock sees that now. Loving Jim was the most logical action in the Universe, because it made him better. It is since Jim has died that he has behaved in a way that shames him. What he visited on Khan, his fists. What he allows McCoy to do now. When Jim was alive he only wanted to be better.
It does not matter anymore whether this means a better Vulcan, a better person, a better Commander... He has always strived for excellence, but it was as if having Jim in the Universe allowed him to be the best possible version of himself. And now he has not only lost Jim, he has lost himself, the better part of himself.
He could have undertaken Kolinahr and lost Jim that way. But he would have still known that somewhere James Kirk was alive and in the Universe, and so he would want to be better.
It is grief, grief and regret and frustration, that has made Spock selfish and small, curved in on himself, violent and isolated, in a way that love never did. He tries to meditate but it does not help. All that time spent facing in, but to be truly facing in suddenly seems to be facing nothing at all. Everything he does is imprinted with Jim's fingerprints; Jim has touched every part of his katra; there is nothing left of him but that which has been remade through Jim. He could undertake the Kolinahr, purge all emotion, and for what? What would be left without Jim? Maybe there would be a serenity, but it would still be a life without Jim, and Spock sees now what a life without Jim is. This.
_______________________________________________
There is a line from a book, a book he first read nestled on his belly down by the cool curve of the creek, in one of those endless days of summer, the endless haze of the summers of his childhood. Chin propped in his hands, and the sound of water running, as if from far away. Hot days. Diving into the cool depth of the creek afterwards. Then shaking himself like a dog. The smell of summer. The smell of home. There is a line from a book and it goes like this: At first he only dipped below the surface of sleep, and skimmed along like a salmon in shallow water, so close to the surface that he fancied himself in air. He thought himself awake when he was already asleep.
And so it is. He thinks himself alive when he is already dead. Surely? Or is it that he dreamt he was dead when he was always alive, alive all along? He hovers between the two, skimming between life and death like a salmon in shallow water, feeling the boundaries break over him. The water is lovely, dark and deep. He is swimming fast, upstream, and it is exhausting, it is... It would be such a relief to plunge down, let it cover over him forever. But there is something inside him that still delights in the challenge, that still gleams and twists and wants.
He hears his mother's voice, his father's. He was loved, loved. He feels fingers upon his brow, upon his hair. "I would not have you any different."
Then there is a voice that comes through louder than the others, rippling through the cool touch upon his forehead.
"He lives. If it be so, / It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows / That ever I have felt."
Spock. It is Spock. Memories of Spock come crashing around him, in a warm frenzy. Spock. Except... Jim furrows his brow. Thinks: Are you quoting... Lear? You don't even like Lear.
There is a hint of that delicious chocolate warmth that he so well remembers in the voice when it sounds again inside his head. Amusement.
-Well, it is better than REM
Then the voice fades away into quietness, and Jim sleeps again, but this time he knows it will only be sleeping. He has made his choice. However hard it is, he will live.
**
The next time he awakes, sudden and gasping, Bones is there, looking down at him with a happy kind of concern.
"Oh don’t be so melodramatic – you were barely dead." He runs a scanner over Jim's face. "It was the transfusion that really took its toll. You were out cold for two weeks."
"Transfusion?" Jim asks.
Bones looks a little chagrined.
"The cells were heavily irradiated – I had no choice."
Jim frowns, briefly confused before it dawns on him what Bones is saying.
"Khan?"
"Once we caught him I synthesised a serum from his ‘superblood’. Tell me, are you feeling homicidal? Power mad? Despotic?"
"No more than usual. How did you catch him?"
"I didn’t."
Bones steps to the side, and Jim sees Spock standing at the back of the room, impeccable as ever in his grey dress uniform. His eyes are very dark, very solemn. He steps towards the bed. Jim smiles, remembering suddenly the Lear Spock had quoted inside his head. He lives. If it be so, / It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows / That ever I have felt.
"You saved my life."
"Uhura and I had something to do with it too, you know," McCoy interjects.
"You saved my life, Captain, and the lives of—" Spock starts gravely.
"Spock, just… Thank you."
"You are welcome, Jim," Spock says, and it's the first time Jim's ever heard him use his name like that in front of someone else, fond and informal, and it makes something bloom open inside his chest, a flower unfurling itself to the unexpected sun.
___________________________________
"Did you read to me?" Jim asks, when Spock comes to visit him in the medical centre the day after he wakes. "When I was dead, or in my eugenically induced coma, or whatever it was."
"I did."
"What did you read?"
"'The Once And Future King'. You had said it was a boyhood favourite."
Jim grins at him.
"I must've heard it. I was dreaming about it. That line about the salmon."
Jim looks at him for a long time, still smiling.
Then he seems to shake himself.
"So, Kobayashi Maru. How did I do?"
"You passed. With airborne chromatic dispersions."
Jim's wide, easy smile. The crinkles around his eyes.
"You know that's not even where the metaphor comes from, right?"
" You are aware I find metaphor both obfuscating and illogical. As such I am not familiar with many of their origins."
"And you don't want to be enlightened?"
"On occasion it is preferable to remain unenlightened so as to better enjoy the dark," Spock replies.
Jim's smile widens still further.
"You've gone weird since I died and came back to life again. I like it. You should surprise me more often." He pauses for a second. "Although you were pretty surprising before I died as well. The trick with Khan and the torpedoes. You cheated!"
"Well. I learned from the best."
Jim's hand finds his where it is resting on the blanket. He places his warm skin on top of Spock's coolness, lets their fingers tangle.
Ah, this, Spock thinks.
"I...I want...." Jim starts. He sounds almost shy. "I missed this. I want us... Do you...?"
"Yes," Spock says simply.
"Are you sure, because I know before that you-"
Spock interrupts him.
"Yes. I am sure. I am sure that I want you in any manner that you will have me."
"OK, you're gonna have to ease up on the whole surprising me thing, I'm still in a delicate state," Jim interjects. "You want something? I thought Vulcans did not want."
Spock strokes his fingers steadily against Jim's.
"Well," he says. It is not an explanation, it is not even a sentence, but he finds himself unable to care.
They stay like that, hand in hand, for some time.
_______________________________
The second night in the medical centre he has a panic attack.
Bones is there almost instantly, checking Jim's vitals in a flurry of activity, then, when he realises what is happening, being still and quiet, holding Jim's hand and rubbing his chest 'til he starts breathing normally again.
"I was dead, Bones," Jim says, when he can talk. "I was dead."
"And now you're not."
"No. No, but I..." He pauses, bites his lip. "How do you know I'm not dying? That I'm not still dying?"
"I've checked your vitals time and time again, and you're as fit as a goddamn fiddle. Trust me. That's some pretty potent blood our Augment friend has there."
"Yeah, about that. I... I'm not exactly...." He struggles to find the words.
"Jim," Bones says, eyes deep and serious. "I knew you wouldn't be happy. I accept this is something you'll struggle with, and I accept that you may well blame me. But I... Call me selfish if you like, but I couldn't let you die. I had to at least try. Even the hobgoblin agreed with me in the end."
"Spock? Spock agreed that you should inject me with Khan's blood?"
"Sure. He banged on for a while about medical ethics, and risks, and how much you hate eugenics, but, yeah. He agreed."
Jim lies still for a while, digesting this.
"Look, I... I'll never blame you for this Bones. I would have made the same decision. For myself, and for you. You know that."
"I do," Bones says. "I do." Then, gruffly, "Couldn't let you die, Jim. You're my best friend."
And despite Jim's protests he insists on spending the rest of the night sleeping in the chair beside Jim's bed.
**
Bones finally lets him out of the medical centre the following day, and Jim heads straight back to the Enterprise, trying not to wince at the amount of damage still visible across her battered hull.
He itches to get involved with her repairs, but Bones has refused to sign him back on to duty for another week, and, besides, there is something else he needs to attend to first. He heads to Spock's cabin.
"Hi," he says when Spock buzzes him in.
"Hello."
Spock rises from where he was sitting at his desk, and Jim goes to move towards him, but then hesitates. He feels almost shy again, like he did that first time he had come to Spock's cabin, the time they first had sex. Ridiculous. He takes another step, but again, falters.
But then it doesn't matter, because Spock is striding towards him, and taking him in his arms, and his body is flush against Jim's, and his mouth is like the cool water of the creek on a hot day in Riverside, and it's like coming home, and it's like the rain breaking at the end of a dusty summer, and it's like the cool side of the pillow in the middle of a long, sultry, Iowan night. They kiss for a little while, and then in mutual unspoken agreement they both lie down on the bed. Jim rests his head against Spock's chest, listens to distant race of his heart.
"So," he says after a while. "Uhura tells me you went ape-shit on Khan?"
"It was necessary to subdue him before we could take him back to the Enterprise."
"Uh huh. That's not how she tells it. She says you broke his arm? Like, stone cold style."
"It is not something of which I am proud," Spock says levelly.
"She sounded impressed. And she's never impressed. So I'm impressed."
"He had taken something from me which is beyond value," Spock says.
Jim rolls over, props himself up on his elbows.
"You were emotionally compromised, huh?"
"I was."
Spock's eyes are endless. Lovely, dark and deep, Jim thinks.
"Because you... care about me?"
"Jim." Spock looks so solemn, almost childlike in his sincerity. "I care about you... I care about you more than I ever believed was possible. There is nothing I would not do if I deduced it would benefit you, even if only in some small way."
"Including beating up superhuman psychopaths."
"Including beating up superhuman psychopaths," Spock confirms.
Jim scrunches his face up, feeling awkward again.
"Just so's you know, I'm not really that good at depending on people. No one's ever... Well, I guess my brother once... But not for the longest time..."
"You can always depend on me," Spock says. "I will always be there for you. For the longest time."
Jim shrugs. "I mean, thanks, but I've gotten pretty used to it being James T Kirk versus the Universe, so..."
"Jim. You have many people in your life who care for you. Your entire crew was devastated by your apparent death. Nyota, Mr. Scott, Mr. Sulu. I have never seen Doctor McCoy so distressed. There are a great number of people who are more than prepared to take on the Universe, if required, on your behalf."
"Yeah, I know that, but I mean with this," Jim gestures between himself and Spock. "With, you know, romantic stuff, I know I'm not... I mean, I know I'll probably fuck it up. I did last time. I'll let you down, and I'll... I'll... I mean you should also know that after we broke up - or whatever - the last time, that I met these girls and we-"
"Jim. I do not require the details. Suffice to say that whatever you did, it is forgiven."
"Maybe this time, but you won't be able to forgive me every time. And there will be other times that I'll do something to hurt you. It's just what I do. Because I'm not a good person. I'm selfish, and I'm... I know you know it, it's what you saw that time we melded and you freaked out, isn't it?"
"I will admit to being somewhat bewildered, Jim. To which occasion do you refer? I do not recall ever being 'freaked out' by the experience of any of our mind melds. Contrary to what I may have stated at the time, I have always found them to be a positive experience. As for your assertion that you are selfish, that you are 'not a good person', I will remind you of the event sixteen days ago where you sacrificed your life to save those of your crew. Sacrificed without hesitation."
"Yeah, well. What I'm trying to say is that I know I'm not good enough for you. I know I'm not-"
"Illogical."
Spock presses a gentle kiss to the delicate hollow of his temple.
"You can't just say that and make everything alright... I know what I am Spock, and I don't deserve-"
"Illogical."
He kisses the other one, just as reverently.
"Spock."
"Jim." Spock pushes the hair back from Jim's brow, and then he says, "Istau nash-veh tu-gluvau lu du sa'awek il svi'mu'gel'es, tauraun ha'ge-tu hasu."
"Surak?"
"Yes. He says: I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in the darkness, the astonishing light of your own being."
"Hm. Ok, that's nice. I'll shut up now."
Jim leans down and kisses him, and Spock responds enthusiastically at first, tongue seeking out the soft skin inside Jim's mouth, but when Jim runs one bold, acquisitive hand down between their stomachs towards Spock's growing hard-on Spock gently pushes him away.
"Jim. You have undergone a great deal of physical trauma. It would be highly inadvisable for us to engage in any activities which are overly vigorous."
"Hey, I've got eugenically engineered superblood in my veins now. I could go on all night." Jim raises one eyebrow, licks his lips with deliberate lasciviousness. "You can wear yourself out on me."
"Hm." Spock makes a tiny, pleased, animal sound low in his throat.
Jim smiles at him, leans down again to tongue a long, wet stripe up the pale column of Spock's throat.
"You can just... hammer it to me, you know? And I'll just take it, and take it, and take it. And you'll be all breathless and exhausted." Jim tries his best Khan impression, all cut glass British vowels. "And I'll say 'Oh Commander, is that the best you can do?'"
Spock gives an almost growl then, flips Jim over onto his back as if his weight were nothing, sets about divesting him of his clothes. But he is still almost unbearably gentle with him, fingers soft and reverent, peppering his touches with quiet Vulcan words, words Jim hasn't heard him use before. Ashal-veh, taluhk, petakov, ashayam.
"What's that?" Jim asks. "Vulcan love poetry? I thought Vulcans hated love poetry? Trite, sentimental crap etcetera."
"I am articulating what you are to me, Jim, as you have requested I do on previous occasions."
"And what's that?"
Spock meets his eyes very solemnly.
"They are not words I have used, even in my thoughts, since I was very young, when I used to think them about my mother."
"About your mother? Spock, please tell me they aren't sexy words?"
"Negative. They are merely words which express the depth of my regard for you, that you are the most precious."
Jim can't help his smirk, even though it earns him a slightly disapproving eyebrow lift.
"I am pretty precious."
"Did I say precious? I am in error. I meant precocious brat."
Jim feels his smirk soften into a smile, tries to bite it back. He still feels raw and unsure with it, letting Spock see all this feeling. It's like something inside him has been stripped back. And it's a good thing, but strange, like the acoustic version of a song you're used to hearing in surround sound with full production values. But Spock smiles back, the little half-smile-not-quite-a-smile Jim'd first fallen in love with, natural and guileless, a smile that has no intention to charm. It makes Jim's throat ache. Gold, gold, gold from straw. Spock kisses him then, and Jim loses himself in the sensations, Spock's eyes and his hair and his skin. The feel of Spock's long fingers, working him open, wet and twisting inside him, every now and then grazing lightly against his prostate until Jim is reduced to an inarticulate melt of wanting.
"Come on, fuck, Spock, please. I want you inside me so much. Do you want to be inside me?"
"Yes," Spock says simply.
"Say it."
"I want to be inside you."
Oh, God, just hearing Spock say that word makes Jim's cock jump and pulse with blood.
"Say it again."
"I want to be inside you, Jim."
"Yeah, you do," Jim says roughly, "Yeah, you do."
He cants his hips back on the bed, pulls at Spock's shoulders.
"Come on. Please. I'll beg if I have to. Please."
Then he feels the blunt head of Spock's cock pushing against the slackened muscle of his hole, and he sighs at the rightness of it. Spock seats himself in a long, slow glide, and Jim feels his back arching with the sting and the pleasure.
"Do you want me to tell you how good you feel?" Jim asks.
"Yes. I want you to tell me how good I feel."
Jim half laughs, somewhat breathlessly.
"Fuck. You're really getting the hang of this."
"Of intercourse?"
"No you, uh, you, huh - oh - always had the hang of that. I mean, the talking thing. You know the... Oh, fuck."
"Ah. You mean to say we both appreciate hearing the other articulate their pleasure during the act of mating."
"God, it's hot when you call it that."
Spock dips his head to swipe his rough tongue along the edge of Jim's ear. He braces himself on one leanly muscled, lightly furred arm, his other hand reaching between them to stroke and twist along Jim's aching cock.
"Shit, yeah. That's good. That's good. Just... I'm not going to last much longer if you..."
"I want you to ejaculate, Jim. I want to observe you orgasming."
Jim laughs again, hearing it turn into a gasp as Spock's long fingers flutter over the sticky opening at the tip of his cock.
"Just hearing you say 'want' and 'Jim' is not going to get old anytime soon."
"I want you, Jim. I want you. Want. Want you, Jim. Jim."
"Oh... Christ."
Jim feels everything pulling up tight and tense inside of him, feels himself clenching hard around the thrusting length of Spock's prick, feels the air catch and hold in his throat. There is a needling feeling in his fingertips, hot and prickling, and it speeds up his arms, across his chest, down into his belly, to the tip of his weeping dick, and then he is coming, coming with a hoarse shout, feeling the warm jets of his semen land across his chest, his stomach, his mouth open in jubilance against the side of Spock's neck.
He lies still, panting and boneless, feeling Spock pull gently out of him before manoeuvring him around on to his hands and knees, pushing smoothly back inside.
"Mphm," Jim manages. It is almost too much, everything almost too sensitive, but it is Spock, and Spock is inside him, and Jim feels like he might burst with light.
Spock thrusts into him hard, one hand clenched around his hip, the other splayed across his chest, right over his heart. It is possessive and intense and Jim delights in it.
"Ah, Jim," Spock hisses, voice low and rough with need. "Wufik. Fal. Masupik. You are a delight. You are...so pleasing."
His hips stutter as he drops his head to bite, hard, into Jim's shoulder.
"T'nash-veh," he growls, and then Jim can feel a hot spurting inside of him, feels his spent cock give an answering flutter of arousal.
Jim exhales heavily, breathes out a laugh as Spock pulls out. He flops, giddy and breathless onto his back, let's Spock wipe him gently clean.
He smiles lazily up at him.
"Hey."
Spock looks somehow sad, almost as if he is in pain.
"Hey, what's wrong? 'Cause I thought... I thought that was pretty, uh, amazing."
He puts his hand lightly on the side of Spock's face, trying to guide Spock's gaze to his. Spock smacks his own hand over Jim's almost violently, pressing Jim's hand into the lines of his skull, the stubborn jut of his chin, the delicate arch of his cheekbones, the butt of his nose. He turns his face, presses his lips against the base of Jim's palm. His eyes are clenched shut, and he is exhaling heavily.
"Spock?" Jim asks, hesitant.
"I cannot... speak. Do not... ask me to."
"Whatever you need baby, whatever you need."
"After all this, and still I cannot..." Spock fades off, his eyes still screwed shut, his face half hidden, sill buried in the cup of Jim's hand. "Still I cannot say..."
"I know," Jim says. He runs his free hand soothingly up the cool silk of Spock's spine. "I know, I know. I know you. Th'y'la."
"Ah..." Spock's voice is small, choked. "You know what that word means?"
"Sure I do, it's what we are. Friends. Lovers. Brothers. Everything."
Spock opens his eyes.
"You," he says after a while. "You".
He releases Jim's hand, and Jim gently flips them so he can rest his head against Spock's clavicle, hear the distant stampede of his heart, fast and dangerous, beloved. He feels Spock's cool fingers thread their way through the damp hair at the nape of his neck, arches himself into the touch.
"Jim - I should say, considering you have been so candid with me. I will... continue to anticipate an ending. I doubt I can ever be as immediate as you would wish me to be. It is, perhaps, as hard for me to imagine a future for us as it is for you. For different reasons. Everything is temporal, it is only logical to... To... Prepare oneself. To..."
"I won't leave you, Spock," Jim says. "I might fuck this up, I probably will, but I won't leave you. I promise. To be honest, I don't think I even could."
Then, after a while, he adds: "I love you."
Spock's fingers are gentle on his head.
"I know you do. I do not need you to tell me. I can feel it."
"But I like to tell you."
Silence.
Jim tries to marshal the disappointment he feels sinking low in his belly. He expects too much. Spock has never been anything less than honest with him about what he is capable of.
Spock says, slowly "Would you like to feel it?"
"Feel what?"
It is unlike Spock to be so vague, so imprecise.
"How I feel about you?"
"I do feel it. I know you don't like saying it. I know it's hard for you, I know you can't really love like me, so you don't want to pretend. It's fine. It's enough. I know I'm yours and you're mine. That's all I need."
"But would you like to feel it?"
Jim says nothing, unsure.
"The meld - it works the other way too."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, you can see inside my head, what I am thinking."
"I know what you think, Spock, I can hear you thinking. We've had whole conversations in our heads."
"Yes, but I have not... I... I have never let you in. You have never seen who I am. Not as I have with you. It is difficult to express it in Standard. You will see. Here."
He puts his hand to Jim's meld points, but then with his other hand he takes Jim's fingers and places them to the where the pulse point trembles beneath his own temple.
"Why do you look nervous?" Jim asks, concerned. "This won't hurt you will it?"
"No," Spock says slowly, "It is just.... It is my own foolishness. And I see now that it is foolishness. There is something Surak says of those who are kindred, something I would do well to remember. Yeht'es katra-vehong katra-torong ka-tala'es, tu saudau-veh, veh saudau-tu, etwel svi'til-vath ."
Then he says the words.
Jim
I am everywhere. Everywhere inside him.
Sweeping silver sands, great black rocks. For a moment I am stunned by him, by his beauty, by his fierce intelligence, by his surprising passion. And most of all by the feeling he has of me; great, rich, purple clots of it, layering around me as warm and fragrant as a summer's dusk, humming with delicious dark promise. I will keep you safe Jim, I will keep you safe through any night. Smells like spices, all around me the gorgeous inky velvet of Spock's love. How could I ever have doubted his love? It is staggering. I feel in awe.
More and more of Spock's inner vista is opening up to me now, in a rush that makes me feel dizzy, but still that comforting softness all around me, shielding me. There is the structure, and the perfection, the order of that first glimpse, but there are surprising areas of mess as well. There is this great, spiky maw of a thing, dark and treacly, which I see is the place where he melded with Khan, so spoiled and rotten it makes my heart hammer in my throat. I will stop at nothing. Nothing. And I see blisters of pain around it, and they are singing of me, of Spock's loss of me. I feel flutterings around me, like wings, both slow and frantic. Heartbreak. This is my heart breaking. I experiment with thinking back: Here I am, I am here, you haven't lost me. Gentle pale wings now, stroking downy through the velvet around me. Yes. Yes, k'hat'n'dlawa. Here. You.
There are the places he did not want me to see. Grey rivulets of fear. This will not be enough for him, my love will not be enough. Faint, yellowish bruise places: It is shameful to love him this much. It is weakness. Mean-faced children, their dark eyes and pinching tongues. Green spaces, wild green spaces that are thorny and huddled in on themselves. Broken walls rubbled around them. My mind will disgust him, like it disgusted her. I pull them all to me, delight in the imperfection as much as the beauty, hope he can somehow sense that.
There is a worrying amount of space dedicated to my ass. Several peachy looking versions of myself, posed in all manner of ways. Spock has been very generous in his, uh, interpretation of my body, particularly with certain aspects of my anatomy.You are beautiful. This is how I see you. Here the sands are shifting waves of Demerara, everything smelling of sugaring and spice. You are my banquet, I wish to eat and eat. A familiar smell, that of uncooked bread dough left to prove; and then I can taste it on my tongue. Never go without. You will never go without again, T'hy'la, I will make it so
I am aware there is a great rent somewhere, pulsing dull and red, a hole where Vulcan used to be, an aching graze of grief. Home. Kelek. But then there's me again, my presence almost blinding, a golden corona that he has set around his heart. You are my home. You are my home, Jim.
It is all beautiful. It is all Spock. It is all love.
Then I see a younger version of myself, well not quite, it's Spock's take on me, five, maybe six years old, but I recognise him anyway. And Spock's made him a place at the end of the Universe, where the wall is, and the wall is glowing in the late afternoon sun, warm and rich as marmalade, and there's a door, with the paint peeling away, just so. And the little me is always reaching up for the door, and the door is always opening. Opening, and opening, and there is no end. There will always be a door for you Jim. Always. I swear. And for the first time in my life, I really know it to be true.
Spock is my way out of all things. Spock is the chink of blue sky that will never go away, Spock is the hope in my heart. Spock is the door in the wall at the end of the Universe. Spock. My door.
**
Thank you SO much to everyone who had read and/or commented on this, I've hugely appreciated it, especially as a newbie to the Fandom. I actually can't believe I've written a novel length Trek fic! A massive thanks to my wonderful beta, Amanda Warrington.