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fanfic-phoenix · 9 months ago

Text

A Whole Lifetime

Rating: Gen

Word Count: 1538

Read on AO3

Perhaps, like Jim, Spock felt an inability to connect. A barrier between himself and the rest of the galaxy. Different barriers, yes - the barrier of rank, the barrier of emotion - but barriers all the same. The impossibility of meeting someone, anyone, who might understand them well enough to…

To what?

All that, and Jim’s mind was fixed on one crucial point. When I feel friendship for you, I am ashamed.

***

No longer infected, Jim and Spock are forced to discuss what came to light in the briefing room.

I’ve spent a whole lifetime learning to hide my feelings.

-Spock, The Naked Time

“Three days to live again,” Jim said, as he and Spock entered the lift down to their respective quarters. Doctor’s… suggestion. A step down from an order, which had to go on the record, but Bones had no compunctions about making them into orders if the captain dared resist them.

The suggestion was that all those expected by the virus go to bed. Sulu had gone down immediately; he and Spock had resisted a little longer, though Bones had glared.

Perhaps he wouldn’t have glared so fiercely if he’d known the conversation they were avoiding.

“It sounds… It feels impossible,” he finished.

“It will be an interesting report for Starfleet Command,” Spock said, his voice as deep and measured as it ever was. “I look forward to reading your take on it.”

There was no hint in him of the tearful man Jim had encountered earlier.

My God! Tears! Even now, it was, quite frankly, unbelievable. Spock had always seemed… above such things. And now, Jim knew that he wasn’t. That even if that heart of his bled green, it could bleed all the same.

“Mr Spock,” he began, then faltered. “That is… Spock, I…”

“Captain?”

“If…” Jim cleared his throat, frustrated. He was James T. Kirk. He was no coward. “If you wanted to go to Vulcan, to see your parents… Well. You have plenty of leave time accumulated, and I have no reason to deny it.”

The silence rang like a death knell. The tips of Spock’s ears flushed slightly green - a delicate olive shade - in embarrassment, or perhaps in shame. Jim regretted opening his mouth, and he was about to apologise before Spock finally spoke.

“You have my thanks, Captain.” His dark brown eyes flicked to the ceiling, away from Jim. “And my request that, if you intend to continue this conversation, we retire to my quarters.”

Jim blinked. He’d expected dismissal, total retreat, and instead received only the suggestion that they change to a more suitable venue - an entirely reasonable request, of course. And an invitation to Spock’s quarters! Jim wasn’t sure any being aboard ship could claim to have had the same. The Vulcan was famously unsociable; several months into the friendship, and Jim had only succeeded in tempting him to chess in the rec room. They hadn’t even shared a meal, yet; Spock apparently preferred to eat alone.

“Most agreeable, Mr Spock,” he said, and followed him to his room.

It was not the room he had expected his first officer to have.

He’d expected something rather sparse, ascetic. Instead, the wash of red and green was almost luxurious. Thick curtains surrounded Spock’s bed - and Jim would be damned if those blankets were standard issue. Vulcan art adorned the walls, alongside Spock’s lyre, and even a few weapons, shining sharp in a way suggesting they were polished regularly.

“We were once a culture of warriors,” Spock said, following his gaze. “It is the opinion of some on Vulcan that employment in Starfleet represents a return to those primitive ways.”

“And so you embrace it,” Jim said, with no small amount of admiration. To take an insult and turn it into interior design… If nothing else, it demonstrated a sense of humour that Spock had little opportunity to exercise - at least in front of his captain.

A hint of a smile appeared at the corner of Spock’s lips - or perhaps Jim imagined it. “And so I embrace it.”

Jim smiled back and, for a moment, they could almost forget the awkwardness that had brought them here in the first place.

Almost.

“I must apologise, Captain, for my earlier loss of control.” Spock’s smile, if it had ever existed, was entirely gone.

“Apology accepted, Mr Spock,” Jim said, “though I’m of the firm opinion that none was necessary. No one could resist that infection - I don’t hold you responsible.”

“It was undignified.”

“No more so than striking one’s first officer. Or… Confessing attraction to members of the crew.”

“Yeoman Rand,” said Spock, very quiet. After a moment, he added delicately, “Sir, Starfleet regulations do not directly forbid-”

“No, Spock.” Jim smiled weakly. “I’m not really… It would never be anything long term. And I can’t have anything short term with someone on the Enterprise. I wouldn’t want that.”

“I see.”

“It was… Representative of a larger issue.”

“In that case,” said Spock, finally taking a seat and gesturing Jim to another, “I confess that my distress regarding my mother was also indicative of… wider difficulties.”

For a moment, they sat in silence. Even in the stillness, Jim’s mind whirled. Dare he ask? Was it… selfish? To ask? Here Spock was, confessing to… difficulties. Perhaps - perhaps - the same difficulties that Jim himself experienced.

To what?

All that, and Jim’s mind was fixed on one crucial point. When I feel friendship for you, I am ashamed.

“Ask,” said Spock. If Jim hadn’t known better, he might have suspected Spock of reading his mind. But Vulcans were touch telepaths, and they were not touching. And besides, Spock would never breach his trust, in that way or any other. They…

Strange to think of it, but they hadn’t known each other all that long. Yet Jim was as certain of Spock’s loyalty as he was of Bones’.

“You are ashamed of friendship.” It was hardly a question, but Spock seemed unoffended.

“I am shamed by the depths of my… feelings.” He seemed reluctant to own that such feelings existed when not under the influence of the virus that they had now never contracted. “I have known you less than a year, yet I have allowed you to know me better than any other being. I owe you my loyalty, the loyalty of an officer to his captain, but even if you were not my captain, I believe you would have it. It is foolish, rushed, and I have allowed it to happen. That is why I am ashamed.”

“At least you aren’t alone in it,” Jim said, shell-shocked to the point he hardly knew what to say. “You know me better than any being aboard this ship, and the crew aboard this ship knows me better than anyone in the galaxy. Only Bones comes close to beating you, and even then… There is a burden of command which he cannot share.”

Silence fell again, silence that neither of them knew how to break.

It suddenly struck Jim how… lonely his life had been, that the man who knew him best was a Vulcan he’d met only months before. He’d known it, of course, but never been made to confront it so… so terribly.

And how lonely Spock must be to find himself in the same boat. Lonelier, even. At least Jim had a people, a species, behind him; Spock was one of a kind, and separate from both sides of his heritage because of it.

The air felt thick. It should have been sudden, yet it wasn’t.

Their eyes met in perfect understanding. One desperately lonely man and one desperately lonely Vulcan, bound by duty and by logic to remain that way. Whatever else they might become, they would always be that.

And yet the air was so thick.

“I won’t,” said Jim. “I was telling the truth. The captain cannot notice. He is not allowed to notice.”

“There is no official regulation, especially when ranks are close,” said Spock. “However, if you do not wish to notice, then I will ensure there is nothing to notice.”

And he would, wouldn’t he? That damned Vulcan loyalty - if Jim said the word, Spock would bury anything he was asked to.

But he didn’t say the word, and Spock appeared before him, kneeling, smiling very slightly at him. He placed his hands on Jim’s thighs.

“If it goes to hell,” he said hoarsely, “I lose the best first officer in the fleet. I won’t risk that.”

Those wonderful hands danced towards Jim’s hips, and Jim let them.

“If it ‘goes to hell’, as you say,” Spock murmured, and he must have known what it’d do to Jim to hear him curse, he had to have known, “do you not think that, of any man aboard this ship, I am capable of compartmentalising?”

Jim had one more argument, one more excuse, and no desire to play it. He bent his head, and Spock raised his, and they came together in something like a crash, something like a fall, something that didn’t fit quite right and yet fit perfectly. Spock’s lips were plush and pliant and slightly…

“Lip gloss?” Jim asked, smiling.

Spock raised an eyebrow and kissed him again, and Jim noted that that was not an answer, but let it slide.

If it goes to hell, Jim hadn’t said, I lose my closest friend.

But Spock’s fingers painted patterns on Jim’s skin, and the thought faded into nothingness.

#phoenix_rose #star trek: the original series #jim kirk #spock #post-episode s1 e4: The Naked Time #spirk #jim kirk/spock #first kiss #getting together

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