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The thing about love, Jim mused as he leaned in the doorway of the empty first officer’s quarters, was that all the songs and the clichés went like “all you need is” and “conquers all.” Not too many catchy phrases quite captured the exact sensation that he was experiencing right now – the sensation of his chest being exposed to the vacuum of space and his scalp heating and contracting and all of his extremities going tingly-numb. And that, he thought, that was how love really felt. Like being consigned to eternity in all the vast emptiness of the spaces between the stars. Like no amount of gasping would get the breath past the great constriction in your throat and down into your exhausted lungs. Like being told “I cannot do this,” and being left behind.
None of those were destined to pass into the vernacular as timeless aphorisms, Jim supposed.
Jim wheeled around and inched back to his own quarters half-leaning on the corridor bulkheads the whole time. He wondered if this was some kind of sudden-onset vertigo as he stumbled into his office chair and put his head down between his knees without any semblance of grace. He sucked in air and cackled it out again involuntarily to the cold, unanswering floor. It was funny, wasn’t it? Funny that he hadn’t known, when he’d spent so much time being shown over and over that love is pain. It was written in the lines around his mother’s mouth, in the way Bones hid the holos of Joanna from himself on bad nights, in the way Chapel worried at the locket around her neck containing her lost lover’s visage when she thought no one was looking.
Jim scoffed – as usual, he’d thought the rules didn’t apply to him. He’d thought that once he’d found it, let it in, gave himself over to it without reservations, that love would be exactly like the movies and the pop music and nothing like what the amateurs who’d come before him kept enacting to such disastrous results. They, after all, didn’t have the fancy Vulcan word and the Great Big Destiny, did they? All they had were pale shadows, facsimiles of the real thing. How he’d pitied them as he huddled against Spock’s heated body, secure in the faultless foundations of their union.
Jim slapped a hand on his comm unit.
“Kirk to McCoy,” he croaked. “Come in, McCoy.”
“I’m on my way,” came the gruff rumble. “Hang in there, Jim.”
Jim’s universe narrowed to the red-black dark of his closed eyes, the recycled oxygen that passed in and out in labored heaves from his lungs, the rhythmic clench and release of his fists clutched to the crown of his head. Then, he felt a warm, firm weight through his shirt, and he knew Bones had arrived to rub circles into his back.
“We’re gonna get through this,” Bones murmured amid the other soothing nonsense that tumbled from his lips. “It’s gonna be all right, Jim, you’ll see. Shh. Deep breaths through your mouth, steady, steady, there you go. That’s it.”
When Jim felt that he could lift his head again, he did, but he laid it immediately on the cool surface of his desk. His cheek and mouth were squashed against it, and his arms hung like overcooked noodles between his splayed legs.
“I begged in the end,” he said, garbled. “At first I used logic, then a guilt trip, but in the end I was just begging. Begging.”
“Jim, this can’t have come as a surprise. He broke up with you. He told you repeatedly that he was resigning his commission once the mission was over.”
“I thought I could change his mind!” The words burst out of him, a terrible revelation, and left him panting into the false wood paneling of his desk.
Bones kept rubbing his back. “You thought,” he said, “that he wouldn’t actually do it.”
Jim made a tiny sound like a choked off moan.
“You thought,” Bones continued, “that he was bluffing, or that he didn’t mean it in the first place.”
Jim turned enough that his whole face was pressed against his desk. He wondered idly if he could suffocate himself this way.
“Hell, kid. I never thought he’d up and leave either. If there were a list of the universe’s dependable things, I’d’ve put the hobgoblin hunched over the science station of the Enterprise at the top of it, come hell or high water.” Bones sighed and Jim envied him the ease of breath. “But. Life’s not a fairy tale. You know that already.”
“It was though,” Jim mumbled into his desk. “It was.”
Jim got that feeling like he was being assessed very thoroughly by the Chief Medical Officer version of his best friend. That feeling often preceded a vicious inoculation via one of sickbay’s biggest hypodermic needles. Instead all he heard was a quiet, “I know, darlin’.”
Jim’s innards somehow felt brittle and liquid at the same time. A whimper threatened to escape his gullet, but he choked it down, converted it into a dizzy nausea.
“Up, come on,” Bones said then, shoving hard hands into Jim’s armpits and pulling him roughly into a standing position. “Up you get. Come on Jim, cooperate with me here.”
Bones manhandled Jim into his bedroom and onto the bed. He manhandled Jim’s uniform off and his night clothes on. He manhandled a glass of water into his hand and up to his mouth. He sat on the floor up against the bulkheads and ordered the lights to zero percent.
“You sleep now, Jimboy,” he said. “And I’ll be right here if you need anything.”
Once in a while, Jim still dreamed of Spock. Of hot fingertips, tongue and cock, a verdant blush, whispered words of devotion. Of being full and whole. Of locked hands and mingling minds. But when he woke alone to simulated dawn, he quashed down the memories, stripped his sheets, and got on with captaining his ship. He no longer spared Spock conscious thought; at least, he didn’t do so with any kind of frequency. If it occurred to him in quiet moments of reflection that he had managed to go weeks or months without so much as thinking the name of a certain half-Vulcan lover from years ago, he would indulge in a moment of self-congratulations at having so successfully moved on.
The dreams were always worse when the Enterprise was ordered to the colony on Uzh-Ah’rak. As a show of solidarity, Starfleet Command sent the flagship to the remaining Vulcans an average of three times per standard year. Jim and his crew were forever hauling supplies, offering their expertise on rebuilding projects, negotiating treaties, smoothing feathers, playing diplomats. The colony was flourishing, and Jim was glad, but he could not countenance the dreams.
Another night, another dream, another set of bedding to chuck down the laundry chute. Jim stumped into the head, movements stilted with sleep, and splashed water over his face. He called the lights up and stared into the mirror. At thirty-four, tiny lines had begun to crease the skin next to his eyes, and his mouth looked harder, sterner. Too much time spent under the artificial light of the ship had turned his hair a shade or two darker. He approved; age looked good on him, made him seem more captainly, he thought. Bones would only grunt if he waxed on about it to him, though.
Jim slid open the mirror cabinet to see if he had any of Bones’s little red pills left from last time. They would reach Uzh-Ah’rak in seventy-two hours, and a starship captain needed his rest.
The Vulcan Science Academy had been one of the first institutions to be resurrected from the ashes of Vulcan civilization after adequate shelter and medical centers were erected. It had come a long way from the shabby lean-to that had represented its first incarnation on Uzh-Ah’rak nine years prior; it now sprawled across several acres of arid land in a cluster of angular white towers that Jim was not sure was entirely logical beyond its pleasing aesthetic appearance, but he was sure they had some justification that cited energy efficiency or something like that. Jim found it a spot of dazzling beauty in a harsh landscape whose deserts recalled all the starkness of the Vulcans’ collapsed home world but none of the character. In this geographic region, at least, the land stretched flat until it met a distant horizon; there were no dunes, no cliff-faces, no geological distinctions to give the eye a point of interest. In choosing this place, the refugees chose ease and convenience, and Jim could not begrudge them that, even though the concerns for immediate survival had past.
Inside, the Vulcan Science Academy was sleek and modern and housed the Federation’s latest technological advances. And the dean of students, Jim’s guide, V’Tyne, was telling him about some of the newest acquisitions brought by the Andorians.
“And this computer is occupied only in calculating π,” she said. A small gesture of her pale hand indicated a small room and in it a small computer. Jim hummed his feigned interest and tried to act like he hadn’t been looking around at the architecture and daydreaming.
“Why do you need a computer whose only job is to calculate π?” he asked. “Seems a little wasteful.”
V’Tyne was as rigid and austere as most of the Vulcans Jim had met over the years. She was a slender whipcord, sculpted and strong, almost as tall as Jim himself and a study of contrasts with her porcelain skin and dark hair. If he caught her prominent nose and sharp jawline at a particular angle, Jim’s heart did a curious little stumble.
“Because, Captain Kirk,” she intoned with careful non-emotion, “to expand our knowledge of the irrational number π would be to clarify our understanding of geometry, mathematics, and, indeed, the universe as a whole, and we dedicate one machine to this singular pursuit so as to expedite the process. It has now calculated almost twenty trillion digits.”
Jim didn’t bother to suppress his grin for the sake of V’Tyne’s sensibilities.
“Knowledge for knowledge’s sake, is what you’re saying,” he said. “Vulcans. Curious as the proverbial cat and can’t admit it. I’ve always found that part of your charm.”
“Captain, I assure you—”
“Joking, V’Tyne, joking,” Jim said. “It’s a thing humans do to understand the universe.” He swept a hand out to prompt her to continue the tour of the facilities. “Shall we?”
V’Tyne gave a curt single nod and led the way to an expansive lecture hall.
“This is where Lieutenant Uhura will give her speech on the universal translator,” she said.
They walked on and on, peeking in on each room. Jim asked polite questions and reined in his more off-color jokes, V’Tyne tolerated his on-color ones, and finally they were in the lab wing of the building.
“Some of our most distinguished scientists are analyzing the DNA of the remaining Vulcan population in these halls,” V’Tyne said. “Would you care to greet them and hear of their progress?”
“Oh, you know, I don’t really want to interrupt anything delicate.”
V’Tyne brown eyes were lit with an intensity Jim had grown accustomed to lacking. His breath caught in his throat.
“It is the meal period, Captain Kirk,” she said. “There is no interruption, and our scientists will be gratified to make the acquaintance of the captain of the Enterprise. Did you believe this tour was without purpose?”
Jim floundered for words.
“Perhaps,” she went on, “you believe that the dean gives superfluous private tours of the VSA to every individual who provides our colony with aid.”
“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me,” Jim said, hands up and palms facing outward as if they could stop his confusion. “You’ve made an elaborate arrangement for me to meet one of your scientists because he’s a fanboy?”
V’Tyne’s eyes were level and her posture straight and dignified. Her left eyebrow arched upward into a delicate nonverbal rebuttal.
“Perhaps the scientist who requires your presence is female, Captain.”
The doors to one of the lab anterooms slid open, and when Jim crossed the threshold following V’Tyne, he met the same pair of eyes that burned him in dreams. His breath left him and his blood rushed in his ears. He barely registered that those eyes betrayed surprise and anger all in one explosive expression.
Another Vulcan, a handsome male maybe ten years older than him with broad shoulders and smooth dark skin stood and obscured Jim’s sight of his former first officer. He parted his fingers in the ta’al, and Jim answered the gesture with his own as if in a daze.
“Captain Kirk, this is Kevak.” V’Tyne’s voice came from some far off distance. “I believe you are already acquainted with Spock. I will leave you to your discussions.”
With that, V’Tyne disappeared behind the doors, and Kevak stood to the side and invited Jim to sit opposite Spock, who sat frozen in place with a forkful of greens halfway up to his parted mouth.
“Captain Kirk, I am pleased to meet you at last.” Kevak’s voice was deep and formal. Jim lowered himself into a seat and Kevak sat next to him. Jim’s attention stayed on the dear angles and slopes of Spock’s face. The barren years between their last meeting and this one rose up to choke him, and, unbidden, he murmured Spock’s name. At that, Spock seemed to rouse himself from his stupor, and he cast a searing glare at Kevak without bothering to hide a snarl.
“What is the meaning of this, Kevak? I bring you into my confidence only to have you flout it?”
Jim blinked and hazarded a glance at the Vulcan beside him. Kevak met Spock’s gaze steadily.
“I followed my own counsel because yours is compromised. I apologize if you view this as treachery.”
“You overstep your bounds.” Spock began gathering his food items in a hurry, without care to organization or cleanliness. Jim frowned at the way his hands shook.
“Spock, please. You are increasingly unstable. See reason. Captain Kirk is here.”
Spock stood, a tower of fury. His eyes burned and lit an answering fire in Jim’s gut. He glowered down at Kevak without once sparing Jim a glance.
“This is a private matter not for outworlders. I take my leave of you.”
Spock whirled around and stalked out, a flurry of napkins fluttering to the floor in his wake.
Jim kept his own hands from trembling by clasping them together in his lap. He stared at the table, peripherally aware of Kevak’s measured breathing and how he moved to sit in Spock’s place. A hand outstretched palm down on the table breeched his line of vision.
“Captain,” Jim heard him say, “it falls to me to discuss with you an unfortunate personal matter on Spock’s behalf.”
Jim looked up. Kevak’s gaze was intent on Jim’s face, and the scrutiny left Jim uneasy and self-conscious. He didn’t know exactly what just happened, but it sure felt like another rejection, and this random guy had seen it all. Jim gave a little snort at the luck.
“What was the point of this little scene, hm?” Jim ventured. “I’m sure there’s some eminently logical explanation.”
“I apologize for Spock’s unseemly reaction. I made a… miscalculation.”
Jim’s fist slamming onto the table surprised him, and even Kevak flinched back.
“Tell me what’s going on. I didn’t— I mean I wasn’t prepared—”
“Captain, allow me to explain,” Kevak said. Jim thought he detected a note of placation in the deep voice, and he let his face pinch in a further frown. “Do you know what our current project is here at the VSA? Spock and I are but two scientists of many assigned to it, but we are deeply invested in the outcome.”
Jim took a deep breath and barely kept himself from screaming that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the experiments.
“Kevak, right? Right. Kevak, if you don’t get to the point of why you and V’Tyne set me up to be tortured by memory lane, I am going to get up and walk out of here and go tell every Vulcan I meet from now until we leave in a week that I saw the two of you smiling at each other. Teeth and all.”
“Captain Kirk, I assure you, I am attempting to ‘get to the point,’ as you say. But you require context. I will make this as expedient an explanation as possible.”
Jim crossed his arms and met Kevak’s eyes, expectant. Kevak linked his hands in front of him and began.
“Spock and I are involved in a project of utmost importance here at the Vulcan Science Academy. We have gathered the DNA of every Vulcan under two hundred standard years old, and we are analyzing it for genetic diversity. We are able to make matches between individuals whose offspring would represent the most advantageous combination of genes least likely to contribute to future genetic stagnation and degradation. Without an aggressive and scientific approach to repopulation, it is believed that the Vulcan people would encounter great difficulty with mutation and infant mortality within three generations. We extrapolate that the whole of the Vulcan race would perish within six, if not earlier.”
“Okay. That… really sucks,” Jim said, “and I wish you the greatest luck, seriously, but I’m still not seeing where I fit into this. Sounds like you should marry Spock off, get his über-smart genes in the pool and leave me out of it.” Just like he wanted, Jim didn’t add. Barely.
Kevak cocked his head. If he didn’t know Vulcans better, Jim would say he looked at Jim with fondness.
“That would be the logical path, yes, Captain,” he said. “Unfortunately, there are opposing modes of logic, and the old prejudices, illogical as they are, still stand.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some Vulcans believe that preserving Vulcan culture in its most insular form is of more importance than ensuring a healthy future population. Or rather, they do not believe that the future population is at risk. For them, preserving Vulcan culture often means marrying within the same ethnic groups and among people from the same geographic regions of Vulcan-Old and reestablishing traditions among clan units so they may be passed on, as occurred when our population numbered in the billions. These Vulcans believe that the dangers to the ‘gene pool’ as you termed it are not as dire as those of us who support the DNA project. They believe we are being alarmist. We believe they are being willfully ignorant.
“Captain,” Kevak continued, “proponents of the DNA project view these Vulcans as clinging unnecessarily to tradition in the face of extinction, and it is abhorrent to us. The traditionalists view the mixing of genes between hybrids and full-Vulcans, or even full Vulcans from separate ethnic groups, as a perversion of Vulcan culture, and that is abhorrent to them.”
Jim felt his stomach hollow and go cold. A terrible sense of knowing began to gather at the base of his neck. Kevak kept speaking.
“Of course there is overlap. Some who believe in the necessity of the project still hesitate to marry outside the bounds of race and ethnicity. Some who claim to be traditionalists breech those bounds freely — usually in the case of marriage-by-choice.”
Love matches, Jim realized. Not that they’d ever admit it.
“You’re saying you already tried to match Spock with someone. And they wouldn’t have him.”
Kevak’s placid expression registered, just for a moment, an infinite sympathy.
“Captain, it may come as no surprise to you that my home on Vulcan was… very far from Spock’s. I lived on a continent rich in resources yet poor in capital. When I was accepted to the VSA on a scholarship, I moved to Shi’kahr and found myself – out of step with my peers. Everything was a barrier between us: my mode of dress, my appearance, my accent, my traditional foods, my customs. I made acquaintances, I even met she who would become my wife, and I led a satisfactory life full of accomplishment. But to be so markedly different among a largely homogenous group is a difficult life, Captain Kirk. When Spock came to us four years ago, I observed him experience a similar displacement due to his human heritage. I recognized that we could be useful for one another, and thus I befriended him.”
Jim smiled a little, imagining the careful friendship Spock and Kevak must have built together, cobbled from loneliness and petri dishes and a bone-deep understanding of each other’s struggles, all while never mentioning it because doing so would be indecorous. It made Jim’s heart swell.
“There is more, Captain,” Kevak said, and here he seemed to hesitate. “ Spock’s betrothed perished with Vulcan, but the time has come for him to marry. It has been… building for approximately two and a half months by the Uzh-Ah’rak calendar, but I am… concerned that he can wait no longer. We have attempted to persuade his matches of his desirability as a mate: he is highly intelligent and his DNA is diverse. He is not displeasing to the eye. But none would have him. It is not logical; I cannot understand it. It is a function of my esteem for one I call friend that I engaged in duplicity to arrange your reacquaintance.”
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Jim said, waving his hands in front of him. He leaned forward. “I’m missing something. Why the sudden wedding bells? Is there a fire under his ass?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Jim frowned and shook his head.
“Listen, Kevak,” he said. “I like you, even though you lied and cheated. I mean, maybe I like you because you lied and cheated, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, Spock dumped me. Kind of spectacularly. Kind of in a ‘my life is ruined forever and ever amen’ way. He doesn’t want me, and no matter how much I—” Jim swallowed and gathered himself. “I mean, sometimes things don’t work out, you know? I can’t marry a guy who doesn’t want to be with me. I can’t live like that. Besides, think of it logically: if I married him, there would be no little Spocklets to diversify the Vulcan gene pool.”
Kevak managed to sit back and retain his straight-backed, square-shouldered posture nonetheless.
“Occasionally, Captain Kirk,” he said carefully, “there is a certain logic to love.”
The House of Sarek stood a tall, proud edifice on the outskirts of the city, and Sarek himself seemed a tall, proud edifice in the door when Kevak dropped Jim off with a small but heavy bag and the promise to inform Dr. McCoy and First Officer Sulu of his whereabouts and immediate unavailability.
“James,” Sarek said. He spread his hand in greeting. “I am gratified at your arrival.”
“Hey,” Jim said. Seeing Sarek and this unchanging house sent a tremor through him. It reminded him too much of shore leaves “at home,” dinner with the in-laws, a life he’d never thought to have but dearly missed when it was gone. He and Sarek had had their own rapport, and Jim struggled now to recapture the barest hints of it.
“Spock is in his wing. I trust you recall the way. I must away on business, so you will forgive me my failings as a host during your stay here.”
Jim leveled a smiled at him as he stepped inside.
“What a euphemism. Thanks, Sarek.”
Sarek inclined his head. He picked up a small duffle and made to leave. He paused.
“James. Jim. I know my son is… stubborn. But I urge you to look past that, as you once did. And it is I who should be thanking you – for saving his life. Prosper, Jim.” He shut the door behind him without letting Jim answer.
Jim opened the bag Kevak had given him. He whipped it shut again when he found lubricant, a series of graduated buttplugs, and a bulbous rubber contraption he assumed was a kind of enema. He felt his face heat, and laughter bubbled out of him. The thought of Kevak casually assembling this kit threatened to break his brain, but his feet knew the way to the nearest lavatory, and he hunkered down to prepare himself for what Kevak referred to so missishly as Spock’s “Time.”
At the very least, Jim figured he would get some pretty raucous sex out of this. It had been too long, and if he focused on the fact that he was about to get laid for the first time in months, he could push back the ache at being his lover’s last resort.
Spock had an entire wing to himself but occupied only the largest bedroom. He’d told Jim once that it was traditional in the old, venerated clans for each son to have enough space and privacy in his father’s house to raise his own family. Jim had made a joke about not quite having child-bearing hips, but he didn’t miss the way Spock’s eyes dimmed, and they never spoke of it again. In the years since Spock had left the Enterprise, Jim had gone over and over that conversation, trying to find a clue as to why Spock stopped wanting him. He’d never really explained, and Jim thought rationally that not being able to give him a horde of pointy-eared babies was as good a reason as any. But Jim’s intuition led him away from his lack of uterus and toward an empty place where there simply was no adequate explanation for his desolation.
He didn’t bother knocking; Spock wouldn’t let him in if given the choice. When he opened the door, a billowing cloud of incense assaulted him and he reflexively waved a hand in front of his face.
“Jesus, Spock, I can’t believe you haven’t asphyxiated on this stuff.”
Spock was arranged in a meditative pose on the floor in front of his bed, swathed in silken robes. Without opening his eyes, he said, “Get out.”
Jim pressed his lips together and tried for a cleansing breath through the incense with middling results.
“Look, Spock. I know I’m the last person you want to be tied to forever, but the way Kevak tells it, I’m your only chance for survival. So. We should get to it.”
When Spock opened his eyes, Jim had to fight the urge to shrink back. He’d never seen them so dark and ferocious.
“You know nothing. Leave me.”
“That’s your move, Spock, not mine. And you should know by now that once I take to a notion I don’t let it go. You might as well accept it now and save yourself a lot of exhausting pig-headedness.”
“You are a fool.”
Jim scoffed out a broken laugh. He crossed his arms around himself.
“What happened to us, Spock?” he asked then. “I keep trying to figure it out. I’ve gotten pretty good at not thinking about you, but sometimes I look over and I know you should be there but you’re not and it trips me up, Spock, it really does. Even after all this time.”
Spock squeezed his eyes shut again and shifted to stand. He lashed his robes around his body with a harried fussiness not native to his nature.
“I sought to spare us both pain. As I seek to do now. Please, Jim. Go back to the Enterprise.”
“So much for true love. God, I was a fool.”
Spock turned away and clenched his hands together at his sides.
“Indeed. It seems we both were.”
“Fine, Spock. We were both idiots. But we don’t have to compound it now by standing around twiddling our thumbs while your system goes haywire from a terminal case of horniness.” Jim watched Spock bring a hand up and presumably press it to his forehead in exasperation. “Tell me if there’s someone else, someone you’d rather have, and I’ll go find him. Her. Whatever. I’ll find her and I’ll bring her here and you don’t have to suffer this anymore and I’ll go back to the ship and drown my pathetic sorrows and we can all just… be okay.”
“There is no one,” Spock said. “Kevak informed you of this.”
“Yeah, but maybe there was someone you weren’t matched with from the DNA banks. Maybe someone you… admired, but didn’t ask. Someone who admired you back.“
“There is no one, Jim. Please go. Please.” Spock’s voice was hoarse. There was a weakness there, and Jim intended to exploit it.
“Do you find me so repulsive that you’d rather die, then? Is that it?”
Spock whirled around and suddenly Jim’s senses were overwhelmed by the heat of him, the scent of him, the gorgeous, furious sight and sound of him. Spock gripped him by the loose fabric of his gold uniform shirt and pulled him close enough that a single deep breath would send their noses and chests and hips into sharp collision.
“My eyes are flame,” he growled. “My heart is flame.”
“Spock—”
“You would quench me, Jim. And as repayment, I would destroy you.”
“You won’t. I trust you. I trust you, Spock. You won’t hurt me.”
“My blood is flame.”
Jim put his arms up around Spock’s neck and laid his head on a hard shoulder. He pressed his face against his neck and hugged hard.
“Spock, I begged you once,” he said, “and you didn’t listen to me and it nearly killed me. Now I’m begging you again. Please take what I’m offering. Please. Even if you make me go away afterward and never speak to me again, please don’t die for this. I couldn’t bear it, Spock. Please. Please.”
A deep rumble erupted from somewhere low in Spock’s chest. He released Jim’s shirt and his hands swept up and framed Jim’s face, tangled in his hair. Jim thought his heart might burst at the depth of feeling those fingers elicited.
“I am not – Jim, I am not good.”
“What do you mean, Spock?”
“My affections are consumptive. I am, I am not a soft creature. I would bond with you, tear you apart, destroy you utterly.”
“You’re not gonna hurt me. Vulcans do this all the time. And, okay, unsexy, but your mom got through it, didn’t she? It’s gonna be okay, Spock. I’ll be fine. You do what you need to do.”
“Jim, t’hy’la, it is not of the fires of pon farr of which I speak. It’s me. Just me. I discovered this long ago. I left you because I could not allow myself to consume all that you are.”
“Why do I feel like my entire day has been filled with conversations where I’m missing vital information?” Jim drew back and cupped Spock’s face. A devastated frown marred the smooth brow, the bowed lips. Jim rubbed his thumbs over sharp cheekbones in soothing circles. “I don’t know what you mean by that, Spock, but I can tell you that you never hurt me when we were together. You hurt me by leaving. Every day since then, I’ve been hurting.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Shh. Listen to me. I know you. I know you’d never physically injure me. I trust that you can get us through this mating thing without any lasting damage. And after, we’re gonna have a long talk about the two of us. Like we should have had a million years ago. Okay? Spock?”
Spock’s eyes were closed but he nodded his head. Jim placed his hands over Spock’s and entwined their fingers. Spock gasped and shuddered and their mouths slid together for the first time in over four years, hot and slick and familiar and perfect.
But Spock was hotter to the touch than Jim had ever felt him when he wasn’t ill, and into the kiss he murmured “I burn, Jim.” Then teeth clashed against teeth, and Jim went from being savored to being devoured.
He knew when Kevak first said the strange words “pon farr” with such gravity that this would be no gentle reunion, no quiet affirmation of long-held feelings. Spock, Kevak told him, would turn savage, would become a rutting beast Jim would not recognize. Jim’s task was to submit and endure. Jim thought privately that he could do better than endure, but he pushed thoughts of Kevak from his mind and disengaged his lips from Spock’s.
“Let me,” he whispered, and he sank to his knees.
The next morning, Spock let Jim indulge in the unspeakable offense of breakfast in bed. While naked. It was just unidentifiable juice and spongy Vulcan bread, but it would not have been allowed in their previous life. Jim figured he could milk this pon farr thing for a long time, but he also found the idea of Spock quietly wallowing in guilt unbearable. He chewed and swallowed and downed some juice before wiping his mouth and saying, “You know Spock, pon farr isn’t so bad. I don’t know what the big deal is.”
Peace once again restored to warm brown eyes, Spock cocked his head at him from his position propped against the pillows.
“I admit the experience was much more mild than I had been led to believe, but the loss of control and reversion to base instincts were distinctly unpleasant.”
“Translation: didn’t live up to the hype.”
“Perhaps it is because I’m half-human that the duration and intensity were halved.”
“The book was better than the movie.”
“At least we will not have to suffer it for another seven years.”
“Hey. Spock. All I’m saying is I could do that three times a week.” Jim waggled his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t even have to ask me twice.” He beamed at Spock once he made sure there wasn’t bread in his teeth. The faint upward curve of the lips Spock answered him with was his version of smiling back, and it lit every nerve in Jim’s body with joy.
“How do you do that so easily, Jim?”
Jim raised both eyebrows.
“Hm? Do what?”
“Put me at ease. Understand and diffuse the negative feelings I experience without my having to express them.”
Jim set his glass down on the bedside table and slid over to rest his head on Spock’s chest and throw an arm over him. He nestled close and savored how Spock’s embrace warmed him.
“Just talented, I guess.” The absolute best thing about this, Jim thought, was that he could smell Spock again, and it was intoxicating.
“I would cite our newfound bond, but you have always been able to undo me, my Jim.”
Jim twisted so that he could look up at Spock’s face from his vantage. All he really got was a stubbled jaw and a delicate ear, but it would do.
“So, tell me if I’m wrong here,” he began, “but I get the feeling we could slide back into old habits and politely gloss over the fact that you left me without ever giving me a real reason, and we’d be happy for a little while, but eventually all the old niggling shit would come back and we’d never talk about any of it and then one day I’d wake up and you’d be gone again.”
Spock was silent, his breathing steady. Jim curled a hand in the silken hair that lay between his pectorals.
“Spock? I really, really don’t want that.”
Spock cleared his throat.
“That is not my wish, either,” he said finally. “But I find… It is a difficult subject to speak of.”
“More difficult than pon farr?”
Spock shifted enough that Jim slid off of him. He sat up a bit and faced Jim more openly, but he didn’t make eye contact. Jim sat up too.
“Tell me,” Jim implored him.
Spock picked at a corner of the sheet he and Jim were tangled in as he took a breath.
“I had great difficulty integrating the varied and disparate threads of my… esteem for you.”
“Love, Spock, I know you can say it.”
Spock nodded once and let one corner of his mouth rise slightly in acknowledgement of Jim’s inelegant hinting.
“My love for you. For much of the duration of our personal relationship, I believed that the best and most admirable aspects of both my Vulcan and human natures were emphasized in my love for you: temperance and passion, rationality and empathy, commitment to duty and enactment of compassion. For the first time in my life, I was able to reconcile that which was Vulcan with that which was human in myself, and I had found that they need not be opposing forces. I came to a peace I did not know I had been seeking.
“But we would occasionally disagree. On a command decision, or some petty domestic issue or breech of social etiquette, or any number of small things. Often what seemed small became much larger, and from the well of my love for you also sprang worry, and confusion, and frustration. Sometimes rancor. I could not understand how feelings of affection could engender other, negative feelings that seemed so divergent as to be mutually exclusive from the positive ones. It was a paradox, and it haunted me.”
“All couples fight, Spock. It’s normal.”
“I did not wish to fight.”
“Which is why we need to have this conversation. It’s overdue, Spock. And maybe it’ll hurt our manly pride, but if we’re gonna do this again, we need to have more open lines of communication.”
“I wasn’t finished.”
“Jim Kirk, failing at communication on his first try. Sorry, Spock. Continue.”
“As time went on, I became aware of another, darker compulsion within myself. To call it possessiveness would be to misrepresent the nuances of the sentiment. I find Standard a language inadequate to describing it fully, and of course Vulcans appear to take pains to any avoid traces of emotionality in their language. This possessiveness that began to encroach on my interactions with you was informed also by a desire to… to consume.
“When I touched you, I wished to own you. Sometimes, during acts of intimacy, I felt that I could not get close enough. I had the wild and irrational urge to burrow beneath your skin and merge with you bodily so as never to be parted from you. I desired a bond, which would place a portion of my consciousness in yours such that I could fulfill my impulses both literally and metaphorically, but I feared the intensity of my desires and the burden of them upon my controls. I began to fear what I would do to you if we forged a bond, but I also feared what I would do to you if we did not.
“You will recall our final coupling before I ended our association was particularly… enthusiastic. I was engaged in the manual stimulation of your anus when the urge came over me like a terrible heat. I wished to—” Spock closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed convulsively. “–to force the entirety of my hand inside you. Jim, it was devastating. Some bestial part of me wished to destroy you, and I did not know if I was civilized enough to stop it.
“In that moment, I managed to keep control, but I resolved to remove myself from you as a means of protection. Thus I ended our association and moved my belongings back into the first officer’s quarters and subsequently left the Enterprise some months later. I am regretful that I did this so clumsily, and in a way so detrimental to your emotional wellbeing.”
Jim could only blink at him in stupefaction. Spock took another breath.
“Jim,” he continued. “I am not certain these… longings I have are resolved. I considered undertaking the Kohlinar to purge myself of their hold over me when I first came to Uzh-Ah’rak, but when I arrived at the new temples in the northern provinces, I found that I was unwilling to divorce myself from the cradle of my feelings for you, and for my mother, and for those whom I had had the honor of calling friend. I am not certain I have conquered these depraved desires, but I promise you on the sanctity of our bond that I will not succumb to them.”
Jim let the silence bloom between them heavy and oppressive. He had to tread lightly, he knew, but he couldn’t quite resist the verbal equivalent of poking Spock with a stick. It would be good for him, Jim decided.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, enunciating each word precisely. “You dumped me without a word, resigned your commission, ran away, and let us both moon around pathetic and sad for the last four years because you got scared when you realized you wanted to fist me?”
Spock didn’t bother to mask any irritation in the dark look he sent him, and Jim threw his head back and laughed. He pulled the sheets off and plastered himself to Spock’s body, hugging him tight enough that the dense Vulcan bones in Spock’s ribcage ground together. When Spock’s arms came around him reluctantly, he knew he was forgiven.
“I… was unaware that this activity was common enough in human sexual practice to warrant a name. But you are ‘missing the point,’ as you would say; that particular… craving was merely a symptom of the troubling sense that I wished to hurt you.”
“Spock. You have a big fat brain. Use it for a second. Do you want to hurt me? Do you want to tear me apart with your bare hands?”
“No, Jim. Of course not.” The denial came without a moment’s hesitation, as Jim knew it would.
“So there you go,” Jim said. “Stray thoughts like that are normal. Plus, you said pon farr was a total loss of control, but it was fine, Spock. Great, even. You didn’t hurt me then and you wouldn’t hurt me in any other context either, barring aliens with mind-control powers. I mean, other than Vulcans. And all that stuff about negative feelings coming from the same place as positive feelings, well. I’ve had a lot of time to think about that myself. And it’s like this: emotions aren’t cut and dry. They aren’t one thing that you can separate from everything else. It’s all tangled. That’s why relationships are complicated. That’s why it takes work. And communication.”
Jim drew back to look into Spock’s face. He sat back on his haunches, but he was still straddling Spock, and his flaccid penis was nestled against Spock’s quiescent sheath, humid and warm. He linked his hands together at the back of Spock’s neck and toyed lazily with the short hair there. Spock’s hands slid down to rest on his hips.
“So,” Jim said with a sly, spreading smile. “Fisting, eh?”
Spock’s blush suffused his cheeks and trailed up to the tips of his ears and travelled down his neck and mottled his chest.
“Is it quite common, this desire?” In his lighted eyes Jim could parse out hope and embarrassment. It was curious, how easily reading Spock came back to him.
Jim gave an idle shrug.
“Not exactly vanilla, maybe, but yeah, common enough. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Vulcans were secretly fisting each other left and right behind closed doors, what with your super-sensitive fingers and all.”
“I refuse to visualize your hypothesis,” Spock declared, but his face had relaxed into the expression that passed for amusement on him, and Jim leaned in for a kiss.
“So, we just got married, right?” he murmured against Spock’s lips.
“Indeed.”
“So… we’re on our honeymoon now?”
“That is the Western Terran tradition, as I am given to understand it, yes.”
“Know what else is traditional about honeymoons?”
“Jim…”
“Marathon sex.”
Spock cocked his head.
“Another point at which our cultures differ. For Vulcans, the marathon sex is part of the wedding ceremony.”
Jim burst into laughter. He wrapped himself around Spock like a limpet, chin on shoulder, and Spock answered by running his hands up and down the long line of Jim’s back.
“Fuck, Spock, I missed you so much,” he said when he calmed.
“The sentiment is mutual, t’hy’la.”
“So I’m thinking we make this a fully integrated Vulcan-Human wedding and honeymoon. You up for it?”
Spock ran light fingertips over Jim’s brows, his cheekbones, his jaw and the shell of his ears, memorizing.
“Reacquainting myself with you while not in the throes of the blood fever does have its appeal, Jim, but are you not sore? In need of respite?”
Jim shook his head.
“Slept it off. Woke up good as new.” Then he leaned in close to Spock’s ear and whispered, “And the thought of you fisting me is getting me hard.”
Spock went still in Jim’s embrace. He pulled away to meet Jim’s eyes.
“Are you certain? It seems… ill-advised.”
Jim clambered off of his bondmate and settled back against the pillows.
“I figure I’ll take a shower, clean up the, uh, mess from yesterday, make sure I don’t have any imminent gastronomical events. And then I’ll come back in and lie down and we’ll do what feels good. You’ll be careful and I’ll be eager and everyone’ll have a good time.”
Spock stroked a hand over Jim’s flanks.
“Have you ever done it before?” he asked.
“Nope,” Jim replied with a shake of his head. “But it’s you and me, here, Spock. It’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be better than fine — we’re gonna love it.”
“You’re quite sure of yourself.”
Jim thought he might never stop smiling. He knew for certain he’d never get tired of Spock’s eyes on his.
“I’m quite sure of you, Spock.”
When Jim exited the restroom, he met a real-life tableau of his greatest fantasy: Spock lounging naked on an expansive bed under dim lights and an industrial sized bottle of lube sitting innocuously on the bedside table. So what if he liked things simple? Just the thought of him and his lover and a heated stretch of time for them to be alone together was enough to set his heart racing. The rigid line of Spock’s shoulders indicated his nerves, though, and Jim shook himself from his reverie and joined his lover on the bed.
“Jim,” Spock said, “this is not imperative. I am fortunate enough to be the recipient of your favor without your acquiescence to this act.”
“I’m not some kind of martyr, Spock. Yes, I want to do this for you, but I want it, too. I want you, as deep inside me as you can get.”
Spock’s breath hitched, and Jim pulled him down for a kiss. Skin met skin in an ecstatic rush of feeling. Spock’s body on his own was a riot of heat and lust, a welcome weight. Jim skimmed his hands over the smooth, flexing muscles on Spock’s back while Spock put his mouth to use mapping each freckle, each scar, each whorl of bronze hair on Jim’s chest. He laved both tender nipples until Jim moaned and squirmed under his attentions and latched onto Spock’s hair. The fiery tip of Spock’s tongue trailed lower, swirled in his bellybutton, followed the line of hair towards Jim’s full, aching cock. He spread his legs wider to accommodate the width of Spock’s shoulders, the humid breath on his pubis. He whined and Spock flicked his gaze upward to meet Jim’s own before he pressed his mouth into the soft juncture where thigh met torso and sucked. Jim gave a strangled cry, his hand convulsing in Spock’s hair.
“Spock,” he gasped.
Spock nuzzled into Jim’s pubic hair and stroked along his inner thighs. He cupped Jim’s balls and rubbed a gentle fingertip along the strip of skin behind them. Jim hummed encouragement and ran his thumb along the shell of Spock’s ear. He hooked his legs over Spock’s shoulders, and then Spock swallowed the length of his cock in a single fluid bob. Spock had a innate talent for sucking cock that Jim was now reminded of quite forcefully as he felt the universe narrow and burst in a kaleidoscope cascade of sensation. Jim grunted out a garbled plea and Spock began sucking him with earnest abandon. Spock used one hand to grip the base of Jim’s cock while the other was occupied roaming the muscled expanse of Jim’s stomach. Jim writhed under him, trying not to thrust, but no one gave head like Spock, no one loved him like Spock, no one had touched him with so much worship since last they’d been together on the Enterprise. Spock was a solid weight that kept him steady, though, and Jim gave himself up to the rhythmic suck and release of Spock’s hot mouth.
Jim had been reduced to incoherent babbling by the time Spock slid his hands beneath him and tilted his hips up to nudge his nose against Jim’s balls and flickered his tongue over the rim of Jim’s asshole. Jim produced a loud keening and gripped the back of Spock’s head. He’d missed this too, Spock’s single-minded dedication to eating his ass. Spock squeezed his asscheeks and got to work lapping around the outside of his hole. Jim hooked a knee in his hand and held it to his chest to give Spock more space while his other hand crept up from Spock’s head to yank his cock in a firm grip. Spock sucked and licked and rubbed his tongue in and around until Jim’s asshole began to spasm and relax and open with each flick. He pulled his hands out from beneath Jim’s ass to spread his crack wider and shove his face in deeper. He made quiet, choked off grunts during his ministrations, and the sound and feel of Spock’s enjoyment against his perineum enflamed Jim further. Each pass of Spock’s tongue was an exquisite torment.
Finally Spock pulled away and rose up on his knees, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Jim forced his heavy eyelids open to meet Spock’s intent gaze.
“How do you want me?” Jim asked, panting.
“Exactly as you are,” Spock said, his voice rough and deep. “Beautiful.”
Jim’s hands abandoned their respective tasks and came around to cup Spock’s face and Spock pushed his own into Jim’s knees and pressed them to Jim’s chest. Spock shuddered at the contact, his eyes falling shut. Jim kissed him slow and deep and thorough.
“I love you.” Jim half swallowed the words.
“Jim, I never stopped loving you. I never stopped.” And then Spock was maneuvering a firm pillow beneath Jim’s hips and one on each side of him. “Hold yourself open,” he said, and Jim held his knees wide. He watched Spock retrieve the bottle of lube and set it beside him as he knelt between Jim’s spread legs. He bent to press his tongue into Jim’s asshole a few more times, but then he replaced his tongue with a slick middle finger, and Jim’s hole accepted it hungrily.
“Oh, fuck,” Jim whimpered. His head lolled back and his eyes slid shut. Spock worked his finger in an out in gentle, gradually widening circles. He rubbed along the inner walls and lit Jim’s nerves. He added more lube and pressed another finger in. The fit was tighter, and Jim rocked down into Spock’s hand. The fingers pumped and twisted and drummed against his prostate. Jim whined and writhed while his cock, rampant, untouched and aching, trailed fluid along his stomach.
“You like this?” Spock asked, voice pitched low.
“Yeah, God yeah, Spock, keep going.”
Spock moved so that Jim could sling one of his legs over Spock’s own shoulder, thus freeing a hand to pump at his needful cock. Spock’s free hand was splayed high on one of Jim’s thighs, pulling his asscheeks apart for easier entry.
Spock poured lube onto a third finger and eased in all the way. He coaxed Jim open with maddening strokes until he could tuck in his smallest finger. A desperate whine erupted from Jim’s throat, and when he opened his eyes, Spock was flushed green and staring at him through sooty black lashes.
“Do it,” Jim panted.
Spock moved his free hand up to rest on Jim’s groin beside the root of his cock as if to steady him. Jim’s heartbeat came fast and hard against his ribs as Spock pulled out and rocked back in, slowly but inexorably pushing past resistance and pressure to get the flat of his hand inside Jim’s body. After an interminable moment, it slid in easily and Jim moaned at the stretch, the fullness. Spock took a sharp breath and choked out Jim’s name, a benediction.
“What’s it feel like, Spock?”
“Tight,” he answered, breathless. “Warm.”
Jim hummed and clenched around Spock’s hand.
“Go on.”
Spock was generous with the lube once more, then he slid his free hand low and braced it behind Jim’s balls. He eased his fingers almost all the way out, gathered his thumb in to join the tight bud of his hand, and with excruciating slowness, he pushed his hand into the smooth constriction of Jim’s ass. Jim gave a long bellow and bore down, and after a bright flare of pain, Spock’s hand was in past the second resistant ring and his hole spasmed around the slim girth of Spock’s wrist. Jim’s shout echoed in Spock’s bedroom and drowned out Spock’s labored panting. Spock shuddered and moaned, his mouth hanging open. He shifted his gaze to Jim’s, and Jim met brown eyes gone wide. In that moment, the space and years and distance between them fell away, and what connected them was an infinite understanding.
“Jim,” Spock whispered, “I’m inside you. I’m inside you.”
“God, yeah, you are, Spock. Fuck. Fuck.”
“Jim.”
Jim let go of his cock and drew Spock down. Careful not to jostle or dislodge the hand Jim clenched around, Spock molded his body to Jim’s and kissed him with a reverent tenderness that made Jim’s chest constrict. He pulled back and pushed one of Jim’s legs up watch his hand disappear into Jim’s ass.
“How’s it look?” Jim asked.
“Amazing,” Spock replied.
“Reduced you to non-sentences, have I?”
“Indeed.”
Exercising great caution, Spock pulled the widest part of his hand out and pushed it back in again. Jim let out a guttural moan. His penis jolted and he gripped it again with punishing force.
“Fuck, Spock, do that again.”
Spock complied and Jim began to rock into the motion, groaning with each pass of Spock’s knuckles through his stretched hole. Spock added his small grunts to the cacophony Jim was producing when he began to fistfuck Jim in earnest with smooth, controlled movements. Need sparked to flame deep within him, spurred by each firm thrust of Spock’s fist that opened him wider and bumped his prostate.
“Jim, this is… this is indescribable. I am overcome, I’m—” Spock’s words dissolved into a moan and he shifted enough to thrust his own slick cock against Jim’s leg.
Jim could only groan in answer, and he jerked his cock faster as the feeling of each knuckle and ridge surging inside him magnified and flared and drove him closer and closer to a devastating summit. His cries grew louder and Spock fucked him more fluidly, Jim’s hole stretched taut and wide, somehow tight yet impossibly accommodating. Spock wrapped his free arm around Jim’s leg to anchor him and thrust in and out of him with shattering precision.
Jim’s cries pitched and choked, his breath trapped in his throat. He let out a thwarted wail and came explosively, splattering his chest and stomach and even Spock’s face as he leaned in close. His vision dappled until his eyes shut involuntarily, and he jerked himself until he was spent, and the final throes of his thunderous orgasm calmed. He gasped as Spock gently extricated his hand, and when he had the strength to crack open an eye, he saw Spock studying the gape of his ass with intensive focus as he jerked himself furiously.
Jim gathered his limp limbs enough to hold himself open to Spock’s scrutiny again. He could feel the slack emptiness of his ass as the muscle winked and quivered.
“Come on Spock,” he said, voice hoarse, “come all over that loose hole.”
Spock gave a strangled shout and obeyed. He braced himself on Jim and threw his head back, and Jim felt the hot jets of his come stripe his sore asshole. Jim moaned out his encouragement, and Spock tipped and slumped on his side against Jim. He wiped his hand on a pillow that Jim reminded himself to dispose of later, and they lay languid and panting, tangled in each other in the aftermath.
They dozed, and when Jim swam back to consciousness, he became aware of Spock’s warm hand, clean now, touching him near his meld points, worshipful. Spock’s eyes were brown, soft and sated, and the tiniest of smiles played on his glistening lips.
“You are happy,” he said.
“Radiantly,” Jim said.
“As am I.”
Jim hummed and snuggled in closer to his bondmate. Spock put his arm around him and pressed their foreheads together. Their noses nudged, and then their mouths.
“I liked it,” Jim said. “We should do that again sometime.”
“I believe engaging my hand with your anus on a regular basis would be detrimental to your health.”
Jim laughed.
“Maybe special occasions only. But. Seriously. It was really good. I’m glad we did it.”
Spock breathed out a contented sigh and pressed himself to Jim chest to chest, groin to groin, legs entwined.
“Then we are of an accord,” he said.
Spock toyed with Jim’s fingers while Jim breathed in Spock’s scent, and an abiding peace stole over them. Wrapped around heart and mind was a vibrant bond, pulsing with bliss.
Uzh-Ah’rak was a desert planet like the Vulcan home world before it, but unlike Vulcan-Old, it did not operate on an almost permanent water shortage. Drought conditions were seasonal and easy to deal with, so when the schematics of Sarek’s house were first drawn up several years prior, Sarek had the contractors include a long, rectangular reflecting pool in a clean, bright room with lots of windows overlooking the private acreage of rolling desert that constituted a Vulcan backyard. He called the reflecting pool a meditative device, but Jim saw it for what it was: an opportunity to luxuriate in a novelty he could now afford. The pool was deep enough to wade in, and the windows let in the light but filtered out harmful ultraviolet rays. It was always Jim’s favorite room in the house, where he could enjoy both the sun and Sarek’s secret indulgences in illogic.
He and Spock lounged naked in the pool room on Jim’s last day on Uzh-Ah’rak. They’d both been able to get a little work done remotely, but mostly they just basked in each other’s company.
“I’m gonna miss you,” Jim said for the billionth time. He lay on his stomach on the cool blue tile at the edge of the pool, occasionally dipping a hand in to send ripples through the water.
Spock set his padd aside and rose to join Jim at the pool. He sat beside him and placed his bare feet in the water carefully. Jim found it endearing that after so much time, Spock still approached water as gingerly as he did when the pool was first constructed. He reached a hand over and ran his fingers through Jim’s hair. Jim’s eyes fluttered shut, and Spock paused to rub his thumb against a temple.
“We are parted but never parted, Jim. And though I wish to have you at my side also, we will not be daunted by distance nor deterred by absence. We will be together, truly.”
“I don’t want to wait til the next mission to have you back.”
“We have discussed this already.”
“I know.”
“We should not spoil what remains of this trip in conversational redundancies.”
“Look, I’m an illogical human, all right? You knew that going in.” Jim sat up and swung around to put his legs in the pool, too. He did it gracelessly and Spock ended up splashed. Spock made an admirable attempt to disguise his moue of distaste.
“I am unable to resume my Starfleet commission without the stipulated amount of retraining required to keep my knowledge of technology and Starfleet policy current. I also have work that I cannot abandon at the VSA. Furthermore, the remainder of the current five-year mission is fifteen months, and to oust Mr. Sulu at this late stardate would be an insult to him and his commendable performance as first officer.”
Jim sighed and sagged against Spock.
“I know. I know all that. I just… I want you with me in body as well as in spirit. Don’t tell me how illogical it is; just let me feel what I’m feeling.”
Moments passed, measured by the sound of their breathing and the lap of water against their legs. Then Spock cleared his throat.
“There is a Terran poet who wrote to his beloved upon the occasion of his departure on a business venture that she was not to mourn his absence. Are you familiar with the work of John Donne?”
Jim shook his head from his place on Spock’s shoulder. Spock began to recite.
“’As virtuous men pass mildly away,/And whisper to their souls to go,/ Whilst some of their sad friends do say/ The breath goes now, and some say, No;/ So let us melt, and make no noise,/ No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,/ ’Twere profanation of our joys/ To tell the laity of our love.’”
The stanza hung between them for a heavy moment. Then,
“John Donne sounds like an asshole.”
“Perhaps it is not as comforting as I had been led to believe.”
Jim slipped a hand into one of Spock’s and entangled their fingers. He pressed their palms together and watched as Spock’s lips parted for a sharp intake of breath. He brushed his own lips against the corner of that well-loved mouth.
“People say a lot of things about the nature of love,” he said. “Mostly about how great it is, and I got really tired of hearing all the platitudes after you left. Sometimes when I was really frustrated, I told myself it was a trick of the mind, nothing more than a biological function, an evoluntionary imperative built into our psyches and hormones to encourage propogation of the species, not that species was necessarily this big barrier, obviously. And then there were the really bitter adages about how much love sucks. Bones used to favor those before he and Chapel finally got their act together. Somehow all these insipid sayings didn’t capture the full truth of how love really is, how it overtakes you and breaks your heart but is also lifegiving, but then I remembered one. It’s old, and it’s simple, and it’s perfect, I think.”
“What is it, Jim?”
Jim leaned down to trail fingers through the surface of the water. He pressed himself closer to Spock’s body, squeezed his hand tighter.
“'Many waters cannot quench love.’”