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A TOS AU in which series episodes may happen in what we fans consider ‘out-of-sequence’ order. McSpirk. Mentions events from: Bread & Circuses, For The World Is Hollow and I have Touched The Sky, Amok Time, and The Enemy Within.Love Is A Welcome State of Existence“I didn’t sleep with her in that sense.” Jim assured McCoy, as he, McCoy, and Spock sat in his quarters, drinking and talking; knowing that they had some off-duty hours ahead of them all; because Enterprise had just arrived in space-dock; maintenance work on her would start tomorrow, and it was then that the Bridge crew would leave the ship for shore-leave. “We slept next to each other. We kissed; that was all, and I tried to make it all about her. I kept telling her that she didn’t have to come on to me. She was a slave girl. I wasn’t about to become one of her oppressors. You know I’m not like that.”“Yeah, I know, Jim. I promise you I do.” McCoy spoke with Jim about Jim’s supposed night with Drusilla, the slave ‘girl’, while he (McCoy) and Spock were in the jail cells at the say so of Drusilla’s ‘owner’.“I know that I have a Casanova reputation, but, maybe, I look elsewhere, because I cannot have my heart’s desire.” Jim finished his current drink emphatically. “You both know what I’m talking about.” He reminded his friends.Bones and Spock looked over to one another for a moment.• * * “Were you getting back at me? Did you think that I don’t care? Did you forget that I told you and Spock my reasons for trying to find love elsewhere?” Jim confronted Bones in the Doctor’s quarters. Weeks ago, they’d talked, sort of, after their experiences in a ‘modern day’ old-style Roman Empire; now, they were trying to communicate after McCoy had almost left the ship to be the husband of a woman he’d only met earlier that same day.“Maybe, I was just trying to take a leaf out of your book for the same reasons you’ve got!” McCoy stood up, from where he’d been sitting on his sofa; still recovering from thinking that he was going to die of a terminal illness; reeling also in the events that unfolded with Natira. “Besides, watching me die the way I would have; it would have distracted you. That’s why relationships aren’t meant to happen between Command Staff, or upper and lower ranks. I didn’t want to risk your life just so that I could feel comforted with real love while I died!”“I’m going to go and get Spock. We need to talk!” Jim informed Leonard H. McCoy; his friend, Bones.“You really think Spock’s going to talk to us, about this?” McCoy asked pointedly, as he stood and glared at Jim.Jim turned and left; temporarily.))))) )))“I am so sick of each of us nearly losing each other, and steadfastly trying to ignore how we feel despite the fact that, every day, near enough, something happens that means we might not see each other at the end of the day, or the start of tomorrow.” Jim announced to Bones and Spock/Spock and Bones. “We’ve pulled through so much before the journey to Babel and during it; we’ll probably go through even more once we get our next set of orders. We need to stop wasting time, and allow ourselves to be together!”“I almost killed you, Jim, very recently. How can that be the course of action of a man who says, even to himself, sometimes, that he’s in love with you?” Spock asked; unable to stamp on every bit of pain showing through his voice. “And, in similar circumstances, I lost my temper with you, Leonard.”“You fought not to fight me until you forgot all sense of who I was, or what makes you you; you even forgot who you were; you know that to be the truth. You were experiencing fear, and nothing beyond the droning hormones screaming at you that fighting was the only way to survive now that sex had been taken off the table by the woman we were fighting over; only because she and T’Pau forced us into that situation.” Jim explained the situation again. “Your brain kicked over in to fight mode because the Pon Farr had gone on too long, and T’Pring took what your body knew was its second to last hope of surviving, away from you.”“The ice-planet incident was extenuating circumstances, too. I know that you worry that I only think that because of my past so-called relationship experience with Jocelyn, but I swear to you, that’s got nothing to do with it. I’m speaking the truth about that, and about our heightened argument when you were answering my taunts on Zarabeth’s planet.” Leonard tried to assure Spock.“I still feel as though I should tell you and Leonard to ‘go off’ and have a relationship together without me.” Spock managed to confess, to Jim, and then, he looked at Bones.“Spock, what happened, during either time; it was absolutely not your fault. Jim and I have both told you that, and we stand by the facts.” Len interjected, from where he was perched on the arm of the sofa on which Jim and Spock sat next to each other, and he sat next to Spock.“But, it must be said, must it not, that I always have that potential within me?” Spock replied.“They were doubly extenuating circumstances, Spock.” Jim reiterated.“Really, they were.” McCoy agreed. “You know that many more times, you have managed to control your behaviour.”“I know what it’s like when guilt is being stubborn, Spock. For instance, I have night-mares about what might have happened if my selfish, primitive side had forced more than a kiss on Janice Rand. I have even more nightmares about the fact that Janice herself must have, or have had, night-mares about that, too. Why else would she have slapped the other me; if she’d not felt in imminent danger of that act coming next in his apparent behaviour?” Jim still felt horrendous about what he was potentially capable of, or what he feared he was potentially capable of; because hadn’t he seen the evidence?“Janice trusts you as the good man you are, Jim. She’s said so – and, like her; we trust you.” McCoy mentioned.“Yeoman Rand has also promised that she told you the truth when she explained that not even a kiss was welcome from you, under the circumstances as they were. She hit the other you because she wanted to make that clear; knowing, as she did and does; that he was acting with unchecked selfish impulses; impulses which she does not attribute to you. In true cases where rape or the potential of rape is mentioned, the fact that it was, personally, unprecedented, cannot be held up in court as an excuse; The event we speak of was not such a case; it was the case of a transporter accident splitting your bio-chemistry and your brain's abilities in two. Rand was simply exercising her right to tell the impulsive half that his unbridled arrogance and selfish self-absorbed, overconfident interests, were not welcome near her. You, Jim, as you are; you are not leaving your arrogance unbridled, nor are you self absorbed; The fact that you are a Starfleet Starship Captain proves that you can temper any natural measure of selfishness; something which all sentient, and non-sentient, beings, have to some degree. Also, the impulses you have for sexual contact, are compassionate and considerate; I have seen evidence of this, even if I have never been your lover; the other Jim, whom you saw, and who you fear, does not exist within you in the way that you fear; because the impulses and bio-chemistry which rang in his ears were not complete, and, in you, they are; they are also met by your intellect, your compassion, your instinct for what is right and what is wrong. The definition of rape, and of a rapist, does not talk of Transporter Accidents. It talks of people who do not care whether they show selfishness; of people whose complete brain and body bio-chemistry, processes right and wrong, and yet, they ignore what is right.” Spock noted. He knew that Rand had told Jim this, and he knew that she was telling his love; her Captain (and his) the truth.Jim sighed, and tried to take his own repeated advice to Spock and Bones; to therefore stop beating himself up. “Spock, you and I and Bones; we do our best work when we’re together, and the truth is; we are in love with each other. We have to figure out a Bond, a romance, a relationship, between us, that helps us, heals us, works for us, and completes us.” Jim noted passionately. “I trust all three of us to still be trustworthy and selfless Starfleet Officers, whose priorities are to those we serve. I think we can do this. I think we’re strong enough. I know we are. We’re men of integrity, and that’s part of what each of us loves about each other. We can make the pact that we will never risk our crew, Starfleet, or the Federation, nor anyone else’s life, to put ourselves, our love, and our relationship status, first. We can make that pact, and still be in love, get together, and find happiness with each other. We are strong enough.” Jim spoke confidently; with faith, and trust, and belief.“How do we begin to be together in the ways of which we have been speaking?” Spock asked both Jim and Bones.“We all feel self-conscious and a little bit nervous, Spock. It’s okay.” Bones answered.“Well, let’s start by all moving over a bit so that Bones is sitting on the sofa next to you, and where we can both reach out to him.” Jim suggested.They re-arranged themselves on the sofa accordingly.“Would it be okay if we both held, or touched your hands, and asked you to hold our hands?” Jim asked of Spock.“Yes; I would find it agreeable to our mutually found love.” Spock told them.Carefully, so carefully, Jim and Bones reached out and held one each of Spock’s hands.He held their hands willingly, and gently, but definitively, and definitely with love.They sat there, supposedly silently, but their touches speaking volumes of love to one another in a Bond so natural that it already, tenderly, had begun to form; because, though largely unspoken until now, it was a fact that each of them had warmed to and looked for, and longed for, in and with each other, almost from day one of meeting on-board the ship and the destiny that brought them together.The End? 5.6.17/ typos corrected, and one paragraph added to on: 26.6.17