| ST: TOS S2 Fic, Part 5/5: "Revolving Doors" - Kirk/Spock - R |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|12:15 am] |
Title: Revolving Doors
Fandom: Star Trek: TOS (S2)
Pairing & Characters: Kirk/Spock, Bones
Rating: R
Notes: This is Part 5/5 in my S2 fic arc, which itself follows from my five-story S1 arc (which begins here - I strongly recommend reading those first; meanwhile, Part 1 of this arc is here, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, and Part 4 is here). This piece contains references to/spoilers for "Bread and Circuses." As with the first sequence, there's music holding all of this together. The song in question is "This Is Me," by Girlyman. I find that they're very little-known outside the Northeast U.S., so I suppose I'm imagining a future where they're still haunting the airwaves.
Summary: Achieving a three-way balance is easier done than said.
[Part 4/5, Ship and Star, can be found here.]
The hours of the day wonder how they've been spent;
The creases on the bed grow deep, I've made my descent.
This is me:
All that I am.
You will see
all that I have:
This is me.
—This Is Me, Terran 21st-century
*
It was the Doctor who sought Spock in the end, rather than the other way around. The laboratory door so rarely slid open when Spock was alone running analysis, unless it announced Jim's presence. That it was not Jim standing there with an uncertain look in his eyes took Spock somewhat aback. Then again, what they had been through together on 892-IV had been...enlightening. Spock could allow that much.
"Listen, Spock," McCoy began, his hands tightly clasped behind his back, "about what I said down there, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. We were both deeply concerned about Jim, and that was pretty obvious. I should have just left it—"
"Do not trouble yourself with apologies, Doctor," said Spock, carefully tilting the remainder of his soil sample into a test tube. "I have little use for them."
McCoy snorted. "Now, you're just being ridiculous. I offended you. I'm sorry."
"On the contrary, you were curiously inoffensive in comparison to any number of past instances of your general behavior towards me." Spock removed his safety goggles and set them aside, indicating his readiness to talk. "For that, Doctor, I should at least thank you. I am aware that humans find the sentiment gratifying."
"I sincerely hope you're not being sarcastic," said McCoy, his expression curiously unguarded, perhaps even slightly hurt. "I've known you for long enough to understand what your double-talk means."
Spock stiffened, vaguely mortified that he had evidently been unsuccessful in quelling the annoyance he had been intruded upon by someone other than the Captain. "Then it is I who owe you an apology, Doctor. I had not wished to be disturbed."
McCoy's mouth quirked into a half-smile. "That's what voice-lock is for, Spock. This conversation could've waited till later. I'm sure you wouldn't have turned down an offer of dinner with yours truly, now would you?"
"Unlikely, Doctor," Spock admitted, somewhat relieved. "Your company is...agreeable."
"Anyhow, I thought I'd let you know that everything checks out. None of us seem to have sustained any injuries or psychological damage down there. It amazes me that Jim can recover so quickly from the loss of a friend."
"Merik will, indeed, be missed," Spock said, moving around the work station to stand nearer to the Doctor. "As he was already missed."
McCoy's eyes crinkled at the corners, softened by something resembling pity. He reached out and clapped Spock on the shoulder, and then gentled the gesture to a light squeeze. The contact was not pleasing, but it was not unwelcome, either.
"Have I ever mentioned that I have no idea what Jim would do without you?"
Spock shifted and straightened, successfully dislodging McCoy's hand. "I am certain that he would continue to captain this ship to the best of his abilities, and no doubt succeed. You would do better to question how we would function without him."
"True enough, Spock," sighed McCoy, leaning heavily on the counter. "But I wonder—"
"You two have developed the annoying habit of vanishing off together lately," Jim announced, abruptly striding through the laboratory door. "Is there any fallout I should be concerned about, or is this just a casual tête-à-tête?"
"The Doctor was just informing me that we have returned from our sojourn on planet 892-IV in one piece," Spock said, taking comfort in Jim's easy smile. "Additionally, none of my tests on local flora and fauna samples indicate any substances that would endanger the hand-to-mouth existence of those fugitive slaves."
"The Children of the Sun," McCoy mused. "Or, as it were, Son. Well, I'll tell you one thing: they're brave to resist the Empire. If they succeed in the long run, I hope whatever changes they make will bring about peace and tolerance for everyone."
The shadow of Earth's history hung poised between them, a delicate, unspoken shame. Spock could not think of any examples from his birth-planet's past that could rival the cruelties that Earth's major religions had committed not only against each other, but against millions of innocent bystanders as well.
"The best laid plans," Jim murmured, catching Spock's eye. "Good luck to them, anyway; I don't plan on checking in any time soon." He glanced sidelong at Bones. "Doctor, would you mind—?"
"Not at all," said McCoy, nodding to both of them. "I'll see you gentlemen later."
"What's he giving you trouble about now?" Jim asked, still smiling.
Spock turned back to the sample he had abandoned and tapped the test tube until its contents settled. "Doctor McCoy wished to inform me that nothing is amiss with any of us in spite of our recent travails."
"Did he, now," Jim murmured, and although Spock was not looking at him, it was clear by his tone that he was not buying any of it. "I thought maybe he'd dropped by to thank you for saving his life. He's been working on the whole politeness thing."
Spock glanced up briefly and nodded. "One might say he has even been congenial."
"He's not under orders, I can promise you that." Jim leaned over to watch the experiment's progress, idly setting a hand between Spock's shoulder blades. Such warmth, Spock still had to marvel at it: where one friend's touch brought surprise, neither wanted nor unwelcome, Jim's hands were a constant reminder that Spock needed his touch just as any being of their mutual constitution needed oxygen.
"I did not believe him to be," Spock said, setting the test tube aside in defeat. "Especially given the circumstances under which we were made to endure each other's presence for quite a considerable amount of time." Ever so slightly, he leaned back.
Jim's fingers slid upward, curling around Spock's shoulder. "I worried for you, too," he said, softly, his breath close to Spock's ear. "Every moment. And it's getting worse all the time. I know you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, and Bones too, the cantankerous bastard, but the minute you're out of my sight, it's..."
Bogozh fi'Terra, Spock thought, hardly daring to move as Jim's other arm encircled his waist. "Hell on Earth, as you would put it."
"Or worse," Jim said, seemingly content to keep as they were. "One of these days, we're going to beam down to some God-forsaken rock where they kill all intruders on sight, no questions asked. Sometimes I think it'd be easier."
Only if I were with you, t'hy'la. Spock permitted himself to relax somewhat, seeking Jim's hand where it rested against his stomach. "Perhaps you should not have made such a confession," he said. "You will find me less inclined to stay behind when you insist upon figuring yourself prominently in a small landing party."
Jim drew in his breath, as if Spock had issued a challenge. "And if I order you to stay behind?" he asked, tentatively lacing their fingers together. Oh, but he had been quick to learn such Vulcan subtleties as nuanced hand-to-hand contact.
Spock turned to face him, dislodging all of their efforts at a careful, unhurried seduction. It was late afternoon by the ship's clock, and both of them were still on duty. Very rarely did either of them take such an extravagant risk.
"Then I shall protest, Captain. As usual."
"Yes," Jim sighed, regarding him pensively. "I know."
Spock was almost disappointed when the intercom crackled to life, demanding Jim's attention. He left a Spock with a kiss, the briefest chaste press of his lips.
One day this will undo us, Spock thought. He resumed the goggles, but his heart was not in the task. Where it was, safe with Jim, it would just have to wait.
* * *
"You're really not joking, are you?" Bones asked, not nearly incredulous enough for Jim's liking. "You know, I wouldn't have put it past you two just to be having me on."
"What would you like me to say?" Jim asked, finding himself suddenly disinterested in the whiskey that Scotty had so kindly loaned to Bones. "That it's just another fling and it'll be over with by the time we've hit the next star system?"
"Well, no," Bones said, gesturing expansively, his inebriated tone indicating that he thought that was the daftest thing Jim could have possibly said. "Just tell me that you're not jerking my chain, for crying out loud!"
"Given I'm not the one who brought this up, which I find hilarious, by the way," Jim reassured him, forcing down a mouthful of peat-flavored fire, "no, we're not having you on. And I don't want to talk about this anymore."
Bones shook his head and did another shot. "Boy, Nurse Chapel's going to be put out."
"Bones—"
"It explains a lot, though," said McCoy, almost thoughtfully. "It really does. Well, anyway, good for you. That's one less thing I have to worry about."
"What might that be?" Jim asked, wondering since when it was that two shots of twelve-year aged whiskey could make his head start to swim. What they were doing was trying not to discuss this, because any minute now—
"I, too, would be most curious to know," Spock cut in, regarding them from the doorway. Jim also wondered since when two shots of whiskey affected his hearing.
"Keeping each other out of goddamn trouble, that's what," McCoy said, patting Spock on the shoulder as he left, bottle in hand. "Lots more incentive, wouldn't you say?"
What Jim wouldn't have given to react with no more than a raised eyebrow and an imperceptible shrug, he couldn't say. Then again, Bones had kept things between the lines, right where they belonged. If he'd been any drunker, though, it might've been a different story. Spock was standing right in front of Jim by now, frowning slightly.
"You are mildly intoxicated, Jim."
"It'll wear off soon."
Unexpectedly, Spock leaned in and kissed him with a level of fervor that was shocking even after knowing how maddeningly possessive Vulcans tended to be in love. Jim would have toppled off-balance if not for Spock's arms, closed vise-like around him.
"Your recklessness today was uncalled-for," said Spock, matter-of-factly, already leading him towards the bed. His tone was otherwise unreadable.
"I can think of several times recently you've been pretty reckless," Jim managed, too dazed to mind this turn of events, never mind that Spock might be angry.
If he was angry, however, nothing in the way that he methodically stripped Jim of his clothing seemed to suggest it. Even the urgency of his kiss was absent here in the graceful, measured slide of his hands from Jim's collarbone down to his waistband. Spock unfastened the garment and knocked Jim back onto the bed in one efficient movement. What it was, Jim couldn't recall even a few seconds later, because by then he was naked and Spock was in the process of getting naked, and in spite of Spock's meticulousness in this, too, it was still the hottest thing that Jim had ever seen.
"Then we are, as the Doctor is so fond of putting it, even," Spock said, sliding from where he'd been sitting at the foot of the bed up the length of Jim's body.
What Jim wanted to say was that he had better things to be thinking about at the minute than goddamn Bones, but it came out as a choked moan as Spock settled against him. Beneath the muted glow of desire in those dark, pensive eyes, there was something else—not anger, as Jim had thought, but a quiet, fitful desperation.
And Spock's fingers were there at his temples, at his cheeks, at his jawline, the words mumbled between brief, fretful kisses and thrusts that they couldn't quite still.
Do not ask me to leave you, t'hy'la. Never, never ask it!
I won't, thought Jim, drowning in it. How could I? Would you ask it of me?
Beneath the frenzied haze of the meld, their bodies were already slick with sweat, movements frantic. Spock's fingers twisted wildly in Jim's hair, his other hand straying to hitch Jim's knee up tight to his hip, thrusting harder.
—never never never Jim but if your life depended—
Lost, all lost in the hopeless, bliss-torn rush that gripped them both. Even as the pounding in his ears began to fade and Spock's dead weight in his arms trembled back to life, Jim could only think that if his existence depended on anything, it was this.
"It would seem," Spock said, his voice rough, "that I am not doing a very good job."
"Hm?" Jim asked, still working on breathing properly.
"Keeping you out of trouble." Spock sounded perilously close to amused.
Jim covered Spock's lips with his fingers, feeling them slowly spread.
Gotcha, he thought. For one perfect moment, everything else could wait.
- Continue to S3 arc, Part 1: Incidentals - |
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