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“If you hurt him,” McCoy begins, darkly.“Doctor,” Spock interrupts. “There is no uncertainty. I shall hurt him. I am aware it is traditional among humans to threaten the partners of loved ones with violence should their behaviour prove unsatisfactory; if cultural obligations compel you to enact revenge, you may as well regard your plans as settled. I would pursue the only alternative course if Jim were not adamant in finding it unacceptable. If I could do anything else to spare him it would already be done. I do not lack … motivation.”Much too late, he stops. He had expected this second visit to McCoy’s office to be unpleasant and had answered the doctor’s summons intending simply to endure it, to let the doctor vent his inevitable feelings, not to expose his own. Already his controls are worn so thin.McCoy tips his head to one side, raises both eyebrows.“When you hurt him, then,” he says with exaggerated patience, “you’re going to need this.”He places a medikit on the table between them with an emphatic thump.  Then he turns his eyes to the ceiling and mutters, “cultural obligations’, Jesus Christ.”Silenced, Spock surveys the small red box. It is not a standard medikit: opening it he finds a medical tricorder, a dermal regenerator, neatly labelled hyposprays loaded with antibiotics Jim isn’t allergic to, antiseptic creams. Painkillers.  It is a catalogue of the injuries McCoy expects Jim to suffer at his hands. And it is far greater kindness than he expected. Spock is able to suppress the tremor of mingled misery and gratitude before it surfaces in his lips, but his hands are another matter. He clenches them into fists on his knees where McCoy can’t see them. “I figure none of us want me running in there when you’re only just … done.” McCoy grimaces eloquently. “Don’t let him kid himself this means he’s getting away without a full check-up. ‘Cause he’s not. But so long as you can handle everything in here, it doesn’t have to be immediate.” His eyes harden. “Unless it does. In which case you call me.”“Of course.”“Yeah. And the ship’s sensors’ll alert me if anything too crazy happens with either of your vitals, so.” McCoy sighs, and leans back in his chair. He looks, suddenly, wan. The bags under his eyes are heavier than usual.  “Guess that’s all any of us can do on that front.”Spock takes the medikit, clasping it unnecessarily tightly to mask the trembling. “Thank you, Doctor.” Beyond uttering the words, he cannot risk relaxing even enough to let his sincerity show. His voice is taut, dry – it does not do justice to how much he means it. He starts to rise from the chair.“No, wait, we’re not done here, Commander. I have some concerns we’re going to discuss. I’m pretty sure you also told me Jim was having to argue you out of letting yourself die.”Spock finds he can no longer meet McCoy’s too-sharp gaze.“Did I hear right?”
 
“If you’d rather die than hurt me,” Jim had said, “then you have to understand why I’d rather get hurt than let you die. And as there’s no option available that doesn’t hurt me, you have to prefer the one that hurts me temporarily rather than permanently. Logically.”

“You do not know what you are offering.”

A sigh. “You keep saying that.”

“It is true. Humans cannot imagine. I could kill you.”

Even Spock has been guilty of that most human tendency to assert that an undesired outcome simply will not happen. But Jim merely nodded thoughtfully as if considering a mission brief and asked, “How?”

“There are multiple risks. I believe the possibility of head injury represents the most significant danger. I could cause you to fall against a hard object with sufficient force to fracture your skull.”

“I could trip over your feet any day of the week,” Jim said lightly. His faint, bewildering smile faded into equally bewildering impassivity. “If that happens,” he said, “it’s an accident, and I forgive you.”

Spock could not breathe, did not even know the name of the feeling to blame.

“What are the odds?” Jim added, almost casual.

“Given the lack of data on comparable cases, I cannot be precise.”

“I’ll take your version of imprecise. Odds,” Jim insisted.

“In the region of three point zero six two per cent, assuming reasonable steps to fall-proof the –”
He had a split second to watch Jim’s unnervingly inscrutable expression turn vivid with disbelief, before Jim threw three data cards and a copy of I, Claudius at him.

“Do I need to schedule you a psych exam, Spock?”  “Psychological instability is a normal stage of the condition,” Spock says stiffly.“Oh? So you’re going to snap straight out of this when it’s over? Because if you’re this cut up about it before you’ve laid a finger on him …”Spock is completely unprepared for the mental image of Jim, shivering as Spock trails a single index finger over his naked chest, though oh, he will soon be far beyond such delicacy. The desire is devastating, as is the rush of fury that follows. It is unbearable that McCoy should have the power to  make him picture such a thing, that he should invoke it so carelessly, that he should know anything of this.Blithely unaware of the effort it is costing Spock to remain quietly seated in his chair rather than hurling him across the room, McCoy continues. “Not to mention you came in here thinking I was gonna give you a formal introduction to grandpa’s shotgun.”Spock exhales, forcing the blast of humiliating feeling out on the breath. “I do not believe you own an antique firearm.” It’s a prevarication, and McCoy knows it. In the circumstances the vigorous eye-roll is quite restrained. “I made an assumption. I apologise.”  McCoy waves this off. “And if I had been threatening you – apart from that snotty speech you came out with, what were you going to do about it?”Spock says nothing.“Did you figure I’d just be blowing off steam – all emotional-like – so you’d let it slide, or did you think I might actually come looking to give you a good slug in the mouth?”“I do not see the purpose in exploring a hypothesis that has already been shown to be invalid.”“Well, I’m the chief medical officer, and I do.”He wants to flee, and knows it would only expose him further.  “It didn’t matter to me what you intended.”McCoy purses his lips. “You’d have just let me,” he deduces flatly.Spock studies the tabletop. “I would have understood. He is your friend. And I am … a threat to him.”Even that, far more of a euphemism than he deserves. Threats can sometimes be avoided. Threats sometimes vanish of their own accord.McCoy contemplates that in silence for a moment. “So that’s a yes to the psych exam,” he says brightly. “I estimate that I will remain lucid for approximately another two point one hours. That is insufficient time.”“Well, you’re having one after.” McCoy stabs the appointment into his PADD with almost gleeful force.   “And in the meantime, come on, Spock. What’s the good of beating yourself up over this? I can’t pretend I’m happy about it, but you don’t think I’d rather you die, do you?”“I should have taken your oath into account.”“To hell with my oath! Christ, Spock. You’re not doing anything wrong. Jim’s clearly consenting.” But McCoy interrupts himself with a sigh and mutters, mostly to himself, “so far as that’s possible.”Spock cannot suppress his flinch.“I’m sorry.” McCoy rubs his forehead. “I … wish there was something else we could do, that’s all.” But it is not all. “I just hate that he won’t have any way to stop it.”“As do I.” He tries, but he’s been trying for too long already; his voice shakes. “And your implication was correct. His consent is so compromised as to be meaningless.”“Hey.” McCoy leans forward, alarmed. “I didn’t say that.”“But it is true. And not only because I will be beyond understanding when he wishes for it to end. He cannot allow me to die. Even if I could allow it for myself. From the moment he knew of my condition he had no real choice.”No, from before that. From the first kiss, certainly. Earlier still.“Well, maybe, but you haven’t got a choice at all. All that’s the pon farr –” Spock grips tighter on the medikit as another shock of rage flashes through him: he hates hearing the name in human mouths, hates hearing it at all, they have no right –It passes, leaving him dazed, as McCoy continues: “It’s not you.”  “It is part of me,” Spock manages. “It is convenient to pretend this is something separate and external, but it is inextricable from me. And I from it.”“You could say the same of cancer. Or heart disease.”“I am not sick. It is not an illness.” “It’s outside your control and it’s killing you. You can argue for a clinical distinction, I guess. But ethically, morally – I don’t see one. I’m a doctor –”“I am aware.”McCoy exhales lengthily through his nose. “And as a doctor, I spend most of my godforsaken life dealing with the fact that bodies go wrong in awful ways and sometimes there’s nothing you can do. And sometimes there is something, but it sucks. That’s what we’re stuck with, until we get to evolve into beings of pure energy and I’m out of a job. Bodies force choices on people. I haven’t seen it happen this way before, but I have seen it. A lot.”“But such choices,” Spock says, “should not be the burden of others.”“But they are. Yes, they are. It would be an awful thing, wouldn’t it, to force a person to take a dangerous drug then extract his blood, pint after pint, to keep someone else alive. Did your father do that to you, Spock, when he was in here for surgery? Or was he just sick? And maybe it wasn’t much of a choice, maybe your consent was a foregone conclusion – but it would be pretty different if we’d just tied you down and gone for it, wouldn’t it?”Spock examines the line of reasoning, for a moment almost impersonally interested. “That is a well-constructed analogy,” he admits.“Well, you needn’t sound that surprised. They do try not to let morons into medical school.” McCoy glances at Spock sidelong. “This helping at all?” he asks, offhandedly.He does not know the answer. He might be able to find it, if he could meditate. Fire licks the inside of his skin, agonising and beautiful and destroying everything he has chosen to be, and the knowledge it is temporary does not ease the horror of watching himself disintegrate. The guilt is slower to yield to the flames, and some part of Spock cannot help but cling to it for that. And yet guilt is illogical. Guilt will not protect Jim.Nothing will protect Jim.“I am … grateful for your insights.”McCoy sighs. “But you still feel like shit. Well, for what it’s worth, Spock. I’m sorry you’ve gotta go through this. Like I say, I wish I could give you both some more options.”Spock shakes his head. “There is nothing that can be done.”“Yeah? How do you know?” His gaze narrows. “You told me everything you knew, yesterday?”“I did.” He had even insisted on it. Jim had been far too willing not to tell McCoy at all. Spock had been cowardly enough to let Jim speak to McCoy first, but then allowed the doctor to interrogate him, holding back nothing. It had been necessary. It had been excruciating.“Well, that was what, a paragraph? And I’ve got nowhere trying to get any kind of data out of the colony. I’d take anything, a ninth-grade handout, freaking Pon Farr and You. And you know what I think? I don’t think they’re keeping it out of my nasty human hands – I think they don’t have it to give. A whole species, some of the greatest scientists the galaxy ever produced, all too embarrassed to do a single study, all going through this knowing only the basics, every single one of you probably scared to death – how’s that for logic? It’d almost be funny if it weren’t so damn irresponsible.”His murdered world – so few fragments are left of its beauty, its nobility, its wisdom. And he must sit here and see its frailty and folly exposed to amused and pitying human eyes. Spock does not even realise he is moving – his chair skidding back, his fist clenching, his voice snarling “Enough” – until he hears the impact –McCoy recoils, his eyes wide with automatic fear.Spock looks down, shocked to see the crater he has made in the surface of the desk.“Jesus,” whispers McCoy. Worse than the flash of fright on his face is the resigned sadness that takes its place. They gaze at the damaged desk and Spock does not have to touch McCoy to know they are both picturing what the same strength could do to human skin and muscle and bone.“Forgive me,” he gasps, and makes for the door. “Wait,” McCoy orders, and between the note of command in the doctor’s voice and his own miserable shame, Spock obeys.“I am sorry,” he says. “For a symptom?” asks McCoy, though his voice is muted. “It’s all right, Spock. Just, promise me something.”Spock nods, unsteadily.    “Listen, you weren’t completely wrong, about why I asked you to come here.” He spreads his hands with a forced smile. “No shotgun. Just … look after him.”Within the furnace of guilt and longing, a flicker of despair: he was so foolish to believe the doctor actually understood. And if McCoy does not, if Spock has not just proven all too well that he cannot look after Jim, how can Spock believe that Jim himself knows any better?“Yeah, you can,” says McCoy, answering his thoughts with unnerving certainty. “Not during. I know. But after.” He gestures at the medikit. “And I don’t just mean with that. He’ll be – fuck, I have no idea how he’ll be, he was in here trying to convince me it’ll be a cakewalk, maybe he’ll be just fine. But even if he is…”McCoy closes his eyes for a second, and then looks up at him. The doctor’s face is often disconcertingly expressive, but the transparency has never been at once so intense and so deliberate. Spock can see every shade of his fear for his friend.“Take care of him,” he tells Spock.  “When it’s over. And no matter how bad you feel, don’t let him do it for you. Not then. Please.”

“Three per cent?” Jim had shouted, his voice ragged with strain. “You’re putting me through this over three per fucking cent?”

“And when he’s OK for you to leave him you can come to me and try and convince me you’re a monster, and I’ll try and convince you you’re not one. But Spock. Don’t make Jim do it.” 
“God, Spock. Just let me help you.”
 “I understand,” he says, hoarsely. “I promise.”  Spock hears the shower running when he returns to his quarters, then muted footsteps, Jim moving back and forth between the bathroom and his own room. Then silence, long enough to make the skin across Spock’s shoulders prickle with unease.He places the medikit on his desk, removes his blue outer tunic, and sits on the bed. There is almost nowhere else left to wait; everything hard or heavy has been cleared away. The bed now has a padded headboard – fortunately among the ship’s standard options for officers’ quarters – and has been pushed back against the wall (only one side to fall from, Jim had reasoned). The bedroom floor is carpeted in folding exercise mats, and Jim, laughing at his own ingenuity, fastened lengths of foam pipe lagging around the edges of the desk and room divider with draq tape. Even in Spock’s absence, he has been busy; there are bottles of water on the bed itself, propped in a neat row against the wall.Spock tries not to wonder what Jim is doing, whether he is preparing his mind or his body, whether he is frightened. But he cannot meditate and the room offers his attention no refuge from what is about to happen. He wishes he still had his lyre.“How bad was it?” Jim asks, when he wanders in at last. He is dressed only in loose pants, his hair damp. The blaze inside Spock lights him up like a figure in a stained-glass window, lending the gold and the blue too much otherworldly brightness. He is too beautiful, in the eyes of the creature Spock is becoming – luminous and hypnotic like a daydream given form.Not a person.Uselessly, stubbornly, Spock fights. The fire will have to defeat him by force, he decides. He will not surrender a scrap. “It was enlightening,” he replies.“Really? No yelling?”“Regrettably, some, but he has forgiven me.”“You were … oh.” Jim leans on the room divider, chewing his lip as he studies Spock. “So, how much more time, do you think, before …?”“One point seven eight hours. Approximately.”Jim grins suggestively, although it does not quite meet his eyes, and climbs onto the bed beside him. “Do we need to wait? Wanna make a start? I’m good to go.”“It would not reduce the duration. It would be better to conserve your strength.”“Oh.” They sit in silence for a while.“Jim.”“Don’t tell me I don’t have to do this. Not again.” Jim’s hands are tight on the edge of the bed. “I am getting you through it, and that’s a promise. Please don’t ask me if I’m sure.”Spock watches him. “You are afraid,” he says softly.Jim looks back at him, his eyes a little narrowed, his jaw set. He says, in his captain’s voice: “Yes.”Spock drops his gaze. “I love you,” his says, voice clipped, back tight. Jim knows; it would be unforgivable to have even considered proceeding so far if he did not. Spock has whispered it in Vulcan, echoed it in Standard (“and I you”), released it wordlessly into Jim’s mind. But to say it aloud, in his mother’s language, feels like tearing himself open, and Spock commits the violence gladly, wishing he had done so before. It is the last thing he will say, before the fire takes him.Jim comes into his arms.“So much you’d rather die than hurt me,” he whispers, “except I’m not letting you. I know, and I’m going to remember it all through this. I promise. And after, you’ll remember it too.”He kisses Spock’s scalding forehead, and Spock holds him very gently, while he still can, and they wait.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Fine,” Jim said, before. “So I don’t know what I’m getting into. So what?”Spock had paled. “To allow you to proceed without ensuring you were as fully apprised as possible–”“It wouldn’t matter.”Spock shook his head minutely, too aghast to speak. Jim closed in. “Imagine I do get it. Whatever you think that looks like. Everything you’re afraid you could do to me; every detail you’ve told me but seem to think I’m too dumb to understand. Every nuance of every scenario you’ve come up with. Actually, assume I know everything you don’t, seeing as you’ve never gone through it before and Vulcans don’t talk about this. Assume I know all of it. What are the odds I back out?”Spock’s eyes flickered away from his face.“I cannot calculate based on unknown variables –"“You can determine, based on prior observation, whether you’re dealing with a variable or a constant. You can, and I know you already have. So, go on. Tell me the odds that any amount of knowledge I could have would make any difference.” He waited Spock out, until at last Spock met his eyes.“Zero,” Spock admitted in a whisper. Jim grinned at him. The way he usually grins at enemy battleships and Romulan assassins and glowing portals to god-knows-where.You don’t have to look if you were always going to leap anyway.*** It’s just sex, he reminds himself. He’s going to get kind of beaten up by it, but it’s just pain, and it’s not like he’s going to have to deal with that for all that long. It’s just three days.He’s not an idiot, he knows these descriptions are certain to fall far short. But they’re somewhere to start, and that's all that Jim needs.He afraid, as he steps into Spock’s quarters. But it’s just fear, and Jim does what he always does with it: opens his arms to it, welcomes the flood of adrenaline, the clamour of his heart. Everything before and after now drops away. Every cell in his body feels alive and awake.He promises Spock he’s going to save him, and that he won’t forget how much Spock loves him. And as he kisses Spock’s forehead, Jim silently, not for the first time, promises himself something else.He is not going to say stop.***The shivering stops. Spock falls utterly still.That’s all the warning Jim gets before he’s on his back, and his nerves light up, fear and delight fusing into one incandescent substance, as the sweat pants are ripped off him like tissue paper. Spock surges over him, still clothed in his blacks, the sober neatness utterly at odds with the wildness in his eyes, the feral grace of his body. He straddles Jim and just touches him – sweeping splayed fingers over him in long, looping strokes – and Jim thought he already knew about Vulcan hands, but as Spock does it again, nails beginning to scrape over the skin of Jim’s throat, his chest, his belly – he’s starting to think he didn’t know as much as he thought.  His hips jolt upward a little of their own accord, and Spock surprises him shifting off him and reaching down to stroke him. Jim wasn’t sure if any of this was going to be about getting him off. He bucks up into Spock’s hand, breathless even if Spock’s grip is hard enough that the sensation quivers back and forth over the edge of too much, even if there’s pain as well as desire in the whimper that escapes him. He catches Spock’s other hand and draws two fingers into his mouth, swirling his tongue around them, prompting an answering moan.Then Spock’s wrenching his way out of his clothes, and oh, he’s beautiful like this, his hair dishevelled, his eyes glittering black in the dim light, his skin flushed green – like some fierce forest god of ancient Earth, Jim thinks, dizzily picturing worshippers gathering in secret groves, ecstatic rites among the trees. He strains against Spock’s grasp to try to kiss him, but Spock won’t let him up, descends down his body and Jim’s pulse thunders in his ears as Spock’s mouth closes over him, merciless and fever-hot. And God, this has barely begun, but he’s not going to last. Jim tenses, trying to hold back. He can’t keep pace with Spock for long, doesn’t want to fall behind so soon.“Hey, come here,” he says, reaching for Spock’s head. “Hey –”He’s shocked to realise he was about to say Don’t. He breaks off, and lets it happen, lightning coursing through him, heat spilling into heat.  The tremors are still shattering him apart as Spock crawls up him and his fingertips fasten on Jim’s face.Spock had said there would be mind melding, and Jim had wondered how that could be if Spock was going to literally lose his mind. Now it’s happening, it’s very far from the sense of transcendent wholeness he’s shared with Spock before. Everything here is fractured and scattered and reeling on gusts of fire, and the mayhem buffets him, sweeps him up and turns him over and there’s nothing steady to hold onto. Spock is far, far away, trapped in the distance behind palisades of flame. And Spock is all around him, but slipping through his fingers in echoes and fragments, pouring endlessly away.He can see himself, mind and body shining in the chaos, somehow out of reach for all that Jim’s right there, naked in Spock’s arms. He sees how excruciating this is; Spock is burning alive and Jim is a river, the one cool bright place in the heat and the dark. And on the bed, Jim winds his limbs around Spock, trying to enclose as much of him as possible, whispering, “Go on, you have me, you can take me. Go on.” Echoes of Spock’s need fling along the link between them and land like embers in his own flesh. He’s hard again, far sooner than he thought he could be.Spock sinks into him in one long lunge and Jim holds him tight, gasping as Spock’s teeth close on the base of his neck. The pain glows like a star.Jim lets the waves of havoc carry him as far as they will, chases the mad glory of it as long as he can.He knows it will only be part of the way.***So this is the part when it gets kind of boring.Spock is panting against his neck, and Jim is mentally drafting his report on the negotiations over topaline mining rights in the Ventani system. It’s already overdue, and Jim actually hopes that Komack is currently working himself into a pissyfit over that; because when Jim gets to tell him that he’s been busy – saving the alpha quadrant – from an ancient superweapon – again – the look on Komack’s face is going to be …Jim notices where his mind is.“I’m thinking about Komack while we’re having sex,” he informs Spock, because he’s an informative person who likes to keep people informed.No, he does not feel even a little bad; there’s no way he’s getting it up again any time soon, not by any power of man or Vulcan, and there was never any chance this wouldn’t include stretches of … sameiness … for the human side of the operation.So he gives Spock a friendly pat by way of apology and goes back to compiling a list of possible advocates for the interests of inhabitants of Ventani III – who are still getting the hang of steam engines and so have no idea they live in a big, tempting cloud of topaline – while their very warp-capable neighbours on Ventani II do know and are itching to start selling it to the Federation yesterday. And look, Jim isn’t going to stop whining about diplomacy being the most boring part of space exploration any time soon, but he is actually interested in the ethics of this one and … ow.He guesses he kind of had it coming, but, still: it’s one thing when you’re out-of-body levels of turned on and another thing when you’re in the middle of mental paperwork … “Can we not, with the biting,” he suggests.He tries pushing at Spock’s face – gently, then a little harder.They can’t not, with the biting.   Jim grins shakily up at Spock. “Worth a shot,” he gasps, twisting his neck so at least Spock’s teeth land in fresh skin rather than worrying deeper into the bitemarks he’s already made.***                So, we'll go no more a roving
                So late into the night …
 
Where the fuck did this come from?                Though the heart be still as loving
                And the moon be still as bright Better than negotiation reports, anyway. He had no idea he knew it off by heart. Just look at Jim Kirk, intergalactic Renaissance man, reciting Byron in his head while getting pounded into the mattress in the middle of his boyfriend’s pon farr. People forget what a cultured bastard he actually is. 
                For the sword outwears its sheath …
 …Oh, that’s where this came from. Jim laughs breathlessly through his teeth as Spock slams into him again. Ha very ha, brain, and ha ha Byron, you pair of filthy fuckers.Spock moves faster, faster faster inside him, then utters a ragged groan, fingers gripping deep into Jim’s hip and shoulder, as his orgasm wracks them both.                 … For the sword outwears its sheath
                And the soul wears out the breast Spock pulls out of him, flips him over onto his back as if he weighs nothing. He gazes down at Jim with mad, devouring eyes and then descends upon him, burning hands and lips and teeth everywhere. Of course he’s hard again in seconds. And incredulously, Jim feels his own sore, oversensitive body start to respond, sensation snagging like raw wool as it’s drawn out of him.
 
                And the heart must pause to breathe,
                And love itself have rest Something tightens painfully in Jim’s chest and he wishes he’d never read any fucking Byron, even as Spock enters him once more, even as his brain decides to go back to the beginning and recite it again. ***The first time Spock passes out – if that’s even what’s happened, how would Jim know – Jim just sits at his side, frozen, waiting for the other shoe to drop. At the same time, though he knows it can’t have been more than what … twelve hours? ... he can’t help but wonder if just maybe they’ve snagged some kind of a miracle and it’s already over.

(Already Jim’s been awake for twenty-three, already some of the marks on him are starting to darken from red to purple.)Spock wakes up after perhaps ten minutes, clutching at Jim like he’s drowning, dragging him down.Later the spells of unconsciousness get longer – thirty, forty minutes – but they get more frightening, too. It’s while Spock is inert on the bed that Jim’s most conscious that blood fever isn’t just some kind of metaphor. Spock’s skin blazes, he gasps and shakes with what seems to be pain; his pulse rattles like a taut rope in a gale. How can anything speed so fast for so long and not just – give out? What if this isn’t normal? What if it is, but Jim isn’t getting this right, isn’t doing enough to save him? Jim tries to trickle water between Spock’s lips, lays cold towels over his neck, sits on the floor beside the bed and whispers, “You’re OK, you’re gonna be OK, I’ve got you,” and hopes it’s true.***Blood on the sheets, his chest, his thighs.Not a lot of blood – it kind of looks like a lot of blood, but Jim knows what “oh, shit” bloodloss is actually like and this is not even close.Each time Spock wakes he’s at his most … intense (Jim tries not to think the words violent, brutal) grappling Jim under him, shoving into him like there’s no way to get deep enough, soon enough, and Christ, fuck, but it hurts.This is OK. He knows what he promised and he doesn’t take a shred of it back. He thinks of Spock telling him he loves him, and he hangs onto that, wraps the memory around himself, fold after fold of it between him and –It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s OK. He strokes Spock’s side, feeling that alien heart racing under his palm until Spock pins his wrists down again. It’s only then, as he breaks off, that he realises he’s been speaking aloud, that he hears the edge of panic in his own voice.***It doesn’t hurt, right now. Well, it does – Spock’s weight, rocking into bruises – but not enough to really register. He managed to coax Spock between his thighs this time, so at least his ass is getting a break. Nothing’s happening to cause any new damage.  For now, Spock’s less frenzied than he was. Which is … good. It is – ha – illogical to consider the fact that Jim’s currently not getting any more beat up than he already is as anything but good news.It’s illogical, but compared with feeling nothing –At least, before, it hadn’t felt like Spock was simply absent. Helpless, transfigured, robbed of logic, language, thought itself – but the flood of feeling left behind was still Spock’s, still demanded feeling from him in return. Spock’s hands, before – reverent even as they held him too tight, loving as they scored scratches down his back.  It’s been a long time since Spock’s fingers found his brow and cheek and drew him into that region of chaos and fire, and Jim hopes that it won’t happen again.  The last time, it had been as though all the light of the flames was gone, leaving only suffocating heat and blackness. Jim couldn’t find more than drifting ashes of Spock in the dark.  Spock’s hands aren’t on him now. Jim doesn’t want them to be, not like this. Spock’s propped on his arms above him and his movements are so … mechanical, now. As though the stranger left in Spock’s place isn’t even conscious that what’s beneath him is a living thing. As though Jim’s body is just a vehicle, carrying him where he needs to go.  His throat is dry. There’s a bottle of water lying on the mats on the floor. It’s just beyond his reach, but he thinks he could get it without going anywhere; he’d have to lean sideways and he’d have to push at Spock’s arm or … or maybe dodge under it, somehow? But he doesn’t think Spock would stop him. He doesn’t think Spock would notice. Jim gazes at the water bottle, dully interested in the way the light glints off its contours. He doesn’t move.He doesn’t want to look at Spock. He can’t look at Spock – Spock’s not there to look back, to think to touch him, to give a fuck about what’s happening to him. He doesn’t want to see Spock’s face on this – emptiness.He’d thought, before, that it would help, knowing that whatever happened, it wouldn’t really be Spock doing it to him. He hadn’t realised it would be this lonely.Spock’s body works away on his, indifferent, and it doesn’t particularly hurt, and Jim wonders if he could even go to sleep, just check out of this for a while. He’s been awake for so long and maybe, if he was even a little less tired, if they were even a little closer to it being over …Are we nearly there yet, he sing-songs in his head, and almost manages to snigger at himself.They’re not nearly there yet.He shuts his eyes and – oh, fuck. He’d been so determined to get through this without crying. ***He wakes, crying out. He’s injured, trapped, and someone’s on top of him, pushing inside him  –He’s too weak to struggle so of course he does it anyway and – it’s Spock, holding him down, penetrating him, and this can’t be happening – Spock would never –He remembers.He remembers and tries to breathe. Tries, can’t. He knows, he knows what this is, but – his body won’t catch up, won’t cancel the red alert, and he just needs – he just needs a fucking second to talk his muscles into relaxing and his lungs into knowing what to do with oxygen, but each thrust, scraping over raw tissue, shocks his breath away again before he can catch it.“Please –”It’s out of his mouth before he can think. Jim clenches his teeth before anything else can escape.He knots his fingers in the filthy sheets and concentrates so hard on not saying stop that he forgets about breathing completely.Things blur.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Things blur –Then Spock’s collapsing over him and Jim’s rolling free of the bed and lurching across the room, and he doesn’t know exactly where he’s heading until he falls against the food synthesizer and slams in the code for Cadmian adrenalade and Yes (he is over 18) and No (he does not suffer from epilepsy, Thek’lar Syndrome, and is not pregnant.)  Cadmian adrenalade is disgusting, illegal in five star systems (now including Cadmos), and the opposite of helpful for the shaking, but he can’t, he can’t do that again and therefore he is staying awake for the rest of this.You dumbass, says the Bones in his head, sadly, as Jim drains the cup. At least drink some actual water.  But it’s a while before Jim can do anything except sit there crumpled on the floor beside the synthesizer, waiting for his body to regain some respect for the chain of command, hoping Spock won’t wake up before it does. His breathing doesn’t really go back to normal; his heart whirrs and a cold flush breaks out on his skin as the energy drink kicks in, but eventually he manages to stand and staggers into the bathroom, propping himself against the wall as he goes. He drinks from the tap – there, Bones! – and as he straightens up, catches his own eye in the mirror above the sink. He wishes he hadn’t.I signed up for this, he thinks. I’m saving his life.He doesn’t really expect it to help, and it doesn’t.“OK,” he whispers aloud, leaning hard on the basin. “OK, OK, OK …”The simple rhythm of that actually does help a little, but he needs to, he just needs –He can’t work out what the end of that thought is supposed to be.He didn’t tell Spock about not saying stop. Spock wouldn’t have understood it wasn’t the same promise as I am getting you through this. He’d have thought Jim still didn’t get that he wouldn’t be able to stop, and Jim did, does get that, that’s the whole point. If he says it – when Spock doesn’t – he doesn’t want to find out what that’ll do to him.He cleans himself up and half-heartedly dabs on some antiseptic and healing gel as best he can without really looking at his body, but he doesn’t see much point in doing a full inventory of the damage before this is over.They’re what, halfway through? At least that. They must be. Halfway through, and it’s not going to be like that again. Please, God, they must be at least halfway through.He glances at the door on the other side of the bathroom, picturing his own rooms beyond: quiet, cool, still.No.Back into Spock’s quarters, then.  Spock’s still quiet on the bed. Jim’s eyes skate over him, not settling. He finds one of Spock’s meditation robes in a drawer and slips it on, reflecting that at least it’ll be easy to get off again.It feels at once luxurious and unnerving to be covered from neck to ankle.  His skin basks in the dark beneath the soft fabric, all the marks he’s avoided looking at hidden away.His heart continues to skip and quiver; his hands twitch. Spock moans softly, and maybe he needs water, maybe he needs Jim to sponge him down with a cold washcloth and whisper to him that he’s going to be OK. But Jim can’t. He tries to at least take a step towards the bed and he can’t.  He goes into the small living area. Just standing there in the silence, this far from the bed, feels like committing some small crime – like he’s trespassing in an abandoned house.The chess set stands on its shelf on the wall, far enough from the bed to have escaped the purge of hard or breakable objects. Jim scans the tiers of the unfinished game and feels a little of the tension flow out of him; at least this is something he can stand to look at. Four days ago, Spock placed his knight there, and Jim stared at it for about a minute thinking what the fuck as Spock’s eyebrow crept skywards – which, of course, indicated nothing, because Vulcans don’t experience smugness. But then there was  a subspace rift, and also Klingons, and they’d had to leave the game there and go save the ship.His ship ... What if something happened to it now? Sulu’s in command, under the impression that both Jim and Spock are quarantined with Andorian flu. And Jim trusts him, of course. Sulu, Scotty, Uhura – they’d deal with it, whatever it was.  And they could be dealing with it, right now, and Jim wouldn’t know.  Even as the worry takes hold, part of him knows he's desperately trying to distract himself, that the assurance he wants is not so much that the ship is safe as that it’s there. That the universe hasn’t really shrunk to this silent room.He finds his padd still resting on the room divider and is half-surprised it even turns on.Bones, it turns out, has spammed his inbox with at least fifty messages all headed “DON’T CHECK YOUR WORK MESSAGES FOR GODSAKES.”Jim snorts and opens one.
Jim, you idiot, has there been a red alert? Can you hear explosions? No there hasn’t and no you can’t. You are on leave. It’s not a complex concept; you could wrap your head around it if you tried. There is no way you need to be worrying about whether we’re running low on dilithium crystals on top of what you’re dealing with.”
Shit, are they running low on dilithium crystals?
“WE ARE NOT RUNNING LOW ON DILITHIUM CRYSTALS. If you’re on some kind of a break from the main event and you need a distraction here are three cartoons and an article about mountaineering on Toliman VI.”
Jim’s already laughing unsteadily. He drops into the one chair that remains, tucked into the corner, not caring how much the motion hurts. Bones really has left links to the cartoons and the travel piece. 
 “I don’t really think you’ll read this before it’s all over, and God, I don’t know what I can say to you if you do, but I’m thinking of you (don’t worry, I am definitely not thinking about the details) and hoping like hell you’re OK.

If you’re reading this and I can do anything for you, I’m here. If I need to come in there I will. Never mind my poor retinas, they’re calloused over at this point anyway.

Seriously. If you need me, yell.

Now get out of this inbox.”
Jim doesn’t mean to, but he wonders vaguely if there’s any chance Bones can give him something more reliable than adrenalade to keep him awake, and then his fingers are typing Hi Bones as if of their own accord.It’s only then he notices that it’s 4.23 in the morning, which means Bones isn’t going to answer, even if Bones was ever going to be on board with Jim’s genius chemsex plan anyway, which Bones isn’t. More importantly, that means they’re 34 hours and change through and Christ, he can’t be this ridiculous – he can’t break down over being two pathetic hours short of the halfway mark – assuming the 72-hour thing is exact, which, fuck, it probably isn’t.His padd beeps.—  Hi, Bones replies.Unluckily, given his calling, Bones hates being woken up before he’s ready. Or even when he is ready. Hates being woken up ever, at all. And yet there he is. Jim wipes his eyes and grins crookedly at his padd, realising that he shouldn’t be so surprised.—  You OK?Jim has to spend a while working out an answer to that, long enough that even as he’s typing We’re getting through it, Bones adds:—  Jim, what do you need? I can come over. Jim stares at the screen.Bones has so carefully avoided mentioning Spock. Didn’t say anything that might make Jim feel he had to defend him. Didn’t even say, in so many words, I will get you out of there, but Jim can see the promise between the lines all the same.If Bones sees him, if he tells Bones why he has to stay awake – if he even hints at what it felt like when he didn’t – Bones will try to stop this. Oh, he won’t argue for letting Spock die, but he’ll insist there has to be some other way to save him. And then Jim will have to fight to stay in here, fight to get Bones to leave, and … he’ll do it, somehow. But there’ll be even less of him left after.So it should be easier to refuse.— Don’t come, he types, one slow letter at a time. But can youHe stops. What the fuck can Bones do? He’s not even halfway through and this is on him, only on him. There’s no way for anyone to help.Except …— can you call me an idiot, again.— oh boy can I, says Bones immediately, and Jim laughs aloud.— I guess I can’t blame a man for being born without the commonsense God gave a chicken Caesar salad It’s like a shot of Bones’ Saurian brandy: bracing, warming, familiar.— but you work at it, Jim. Like on Capella IV, you get creative about it. You find opportunities for idiocy the ordinary moron wouldn’t see. – what did I do on Capella IV, Jim types, genuinely at a loss.– JESUS YOU DON’T EVEN REMEMBER. “Sure let me wrestle the Klingon, that’s Tuesday for me at this point.”  Oh yeah, that.– Jim, is it asking too much for you to wait for the aliens to MAKE you fight to the death? Let them come up with the idea. Give other people a chance to shine. Jim has to admit it says something about his life that he really had just kind of assumed that’s where things were heading, had been vaguely disoriented when they weren’t.
– and you know what else?
– what?– Apart from how you’re the sharpest, sneakiest son of a bitch in the quadrant, and the bravest captain in the fleet, and the best friend I ever had, you’re nothing but a lunk-headed pain in the ass  and you can jump in the lake.Jim’s eyes prickle again. He’s about to type Thank you when there’s a creak, a stir of fabric from the bed. Jim drops the padd as he starts to his feet.He can do this, he can do this. Bones, wizard that he is, has managed to stick him back together without even being in the room.

Nothing happens.But it won’t be long now. He stood up far too fast and his pulse is hammering so hard in his temples that he sways, and he hears Spock’s weight settle back onto the bed rather than sees it, because he still can’t bring himself to turn and look.  He’s leaning against the wall beside the chess set, and so he looks at that again, instead. At first just the familiar, sculptural beauty of the board, the elegance of the pieces. But as the silence extends, and Jim tries to slow his breathing, he lets himself slip a short, wary distance into the game itself.What is Spock’s knight doing? There must be a logic Jim’s not getting – OK, he’s probably not functioning at peak intellectual capacity right now, but still, he cycles through variation after variation and can’t see how the knight gets out of this mess or what Spock gets for the sacrifice. And Spock doesn’t play like this, Jim’s the one whose pieces like throwing themselves into the line of fire for no obvious reason, and … oh.It’s not logical at all.It is perfectly logical to adjust one’s strategy to one’s opponent, Spock comments primly in his head. Because this …It’s what Jim would do.  The knight isn’t angling at anything, he’s just capering around yelling LOOK AT ME I’M CRAZY so Jim will tie himself up in knots trying to figure out why. And while he’s distracted ... oh, shit. There, on the second level …  But now he’s spotted the trap, he can …But if Spock knows he’s seen through it, and clearly he will, then …Yeah, Jim’s going to have to pull something spectacular to get out of this one. Not that he’s giving up. Not that Spock would expect him to. Spock’s drawn a fucking portrait of him, outlined in fianchettos and intermezzos: someone cocky and mercurial and … and fascinating, to be worthy of such attention.Someone who’ll sacrifice a lot, to win.Jim picks up the black knight and holds it, so tight the hard edges cut into his palm.Did Spock even know how perfectly he’d captured himself, too – if only for Jim’s eyes?  The watchful intelligence, the subtle humor, the devotion – Jim can see it all, set down in black and white. Can see them both, there on the board, twined around each other.There’s another sound from the bed, a pained, questioning moan.Jim shuts his eyes, leans his forehead against the fist that holds the chess piece. He should put it back on the board where it’ll be safe, but he can’t seem to let it go. He needs to keep it, at least within sight, for as long as he can.Still holding it, he turns and walks back to the bed. He thinks unhappily of Bones awake in his own quarters, hopes he doesn’t stay awake too long watching his padd for a reply that isn’t coming. But Spock’s body is struggling into wakefulness and Jim’s out of time.He slides off the robe.“It’s OK,” he says, as he lies down. “I’m here.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

***He doesn’t sleep, but he drifts. Sensation laps at him, from somewhere in the distance. ***He blinks, and finds himself standing in the shower, alone, and doesn’t remember how he got there.***He doesn’t sleep, but fragments of dream break over him – hot sand under his back and a red sky overhead, there are drums and fire and –** *Even now, sometimes, there’s pleasure, wrung from his faraway body as whatever’s happening to it happens and happens and happens.***He doesn’t know what happened to the chess piece; it must be tumbled in the bedsheets, or smashed on the floor.***Then he looks up and he’s … standing in Spock’s quarters, and everything’s kind of whirling, and … he’s been sleepwalking? There was a reason he was trying to stay awake, a reason why he can barely stand – and he almost has it, and then –He turns. Spock’s not on the bed. “Wait,” Jim gasps.If he could just have kept his mouth shut. If he could just have had one more second.His bruised back strikes the wall as Spock crowds against him. And nothing he’s told himself so far – that it’s just sex, and it’s just pain, and it’s just three days – has any purchase on this.“Please don’t, please stop, Spock, please, stop –” And he has to shut up, just hearing himself is making it so much worse, but he can’t, he can’t, there’s nothing else in him any more, please stop is all that’s left.Spock’s hands rake over him; Spock’s breath is scorching on his neck, and on desperate impulse Jim gives up trying struggle free and instead leans his face against his, their cheekbones knocking together, bringing psi-points into clumsy contact. And doesn’t know what he’s doing and this is not going to work, but he screws his eyes shut and screams Spock’s name, silently, into the place where their faces touch –
Spock.
And the darkness comes – engulfing him, sweeping him away from himself –
Spock, please.
And there’s nothing: no light, no air. Curtains of fire and blackness.He flings himself deeper.
Help me.
Spock’s just a cinder tossed in the whirlwind, a tiny scrap of helplessness in the dark.Jim reaches, lets desolation carry him like a thermal.
Spock!
He catches hold, clings. And he has the sense of something flickering into fitful, guttering life, a tiny sheltered space in the midst of the inferno, enclosing them both.(And their bodies are still moving, Spock’s hands, spreading his legs, lifting him effortlessly against the wall –)
Jim?
Mirrored in Spock’s horrified mind, Jim surveys the tatters of his own.Jim, Spock repeats, the name ringing with heartbreak. Spock eddies around him, soft and frantic, a caress that comes from everywhere at once.    And then the darkness screams with strain – a soundless howl, like rocks shearing, steel ripping, sinews tearing.  The flames freeze, locked into place. He can feel Spock already buckling with the effort of holding them there.
Jim, run. Lock the door. You have seconds.
He feels himself pushed back, sent flying helplessly through the motionless firescape, and –– His feet slip to the ground as Spock lets him go.  Spock’s inches away, leaning on one arm against the bulkhead, his face contorted, shaking as if he’s supporting the weight of a collapsing building.Spock’s eyes find his and he speaks, although his voice is an unrecognisable rasp: “Run.” Jim stumbles clear, reaches the bathroom door and looks back in time to see the recognition in Spock’s gaze blink out.Spock lunges after him as the door slides shut and locks.Jim falls, hard, to the tiled floor.The thud of Spock’s body hitting the door blasts through him like a gale through the ruins of a house.He buries his head in his arms. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. It’s not a thought, any more. It’s the rhythm that throbs in every bruise and tear, every gasp for air that won’t come. Two days. He thinks it’s been two days.Does what he’s already done for Spock count for anything? Is Spock any better, any safer than he was two days before? If the clock’s at least been wound back, if Jim could get out of here just for a few hours, let Bones patch him up, let himself sleep, he could –No.The noise repeats and repeats.So what, he hears himself saying, before.So he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. When isn’t Spock right? He knew some of it would hurt and some of it would be frightening, but he figured he was pretty good with both pain and fear. He didn’t know it would feel as though part of him’s dying. And if he had known. If he could have seen himself here, trembling on the bathroom floor, feeling like his fucking soul is cracking into pieces –He wouldn’t have hesitated.Of course he’s going back in. He can’t do it, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s going to do it.  He tries to breathe and tries to breathe. There, that’s it. Keep trying to do a thing and you’re bound to luck into it eventually. One breath, then another, then another.OK, break it down into steps. Just move, to start with. What would that take?    Spock, placing the black knight in that ridiculous position on the board. Spock, meeting Jim’s eyes with that secret, inward smile.Jim holds onto that with all the nothing he’s got left and reaches and gets one hand on the edge of the basin, then the other.Spock, at his side, on the bridge, on alien sands, undercover, under fire. Beside him as if he’s always been there and always will …Jim pulls himself up, everything swimming around him so that it’s only his grip on the basin that keeps him on his feet.Spock, over Yorktown, grabbing him out of the air as he fell. Spock, on that beautiful, murderous planet, jumping between him and a spray of poisoned darts. Spock, outside the warp coil chamber, weeping on the other side of the glass.He pushes off from the basin and falls more than walks across the room towards the door. And he just has to lift his hand, now, to trigger the lock’s sensor – just that, moving his hand, that’s all that’s being asked of him.  Spock, alone and dying in the heart of the flames. Spock, who didn’t think he was coming back.He swings his hand forward, then drops it. There, that’s it. He’s done. He topples forward as Spock surges across the threshold.*** Jim maybe faints, then, just hands himself over and leaves his body to take what happens next. Because it takes him a while to realise that what’s happening is nothing.They’re on the ground and Spock’s holding him crushingly tight … and that’s all he’s doing. Jim waits, forcing himself not to tense up, not to hold his breath, to stay limp and loose. Spock passes a clumsy hand over his face in a rough caress and utters a sad, keening sound.“What’s going on with you?” Jim croaks. He squints up at Spock, who rocks him as if either to soothe him or to shake the life back into him.Jim hears himself laugh, a thin, wobbly, half-mad sound. “Did I scare you? You big weirdo, did you think you’d lost me?”Spock does not answer, of course, but for a moment Jim has the strange impression he’s trying to. He blinks at Jim, as though he’s struggling to focus.“You didn’t,” Jim says. “I promised you, didn’t I?”Spock’s eyes slide half-shut and he droops heavily.“Oh, c’mon, not here.” Jim struggles to sit up, pushing weakly at Spock’s chest. If Spock’s going to pass out on top of him, Jim would strongly prefer it wasn’t on the floor, half in and half out of the bathroom.  Spock frowns, and shakes his head as if he has water in his ears, then sags again. Jim manages to free himself enough to get onto his knees and Spock clutches for him in panic. “I’m not going anywhere, God, I’m just getting us off the floor,” Jim gasps with another quiver of hysteria.  He totters upright, propping himself against Spock, pulling him with him, and they stumble back towards the bed. And then Spock collapses, sprawling over Jim, very thoroughly unconscious.Jim lies there, pinned under his weight, waiting, waiting. Feels his own eyelids sink and wrenches them open again.  Just one more day, he thinks.Another whole day.The thought rushes him away into the dark.*** He doesn’t remember why sleeping isn’t safe, but he shouts at himself to wake up. There’s a high-pitched noise he can’t place, and someone’s leaning over him, hands on his shoulder and hip, turning him from his side to his back.Jim flinches awake with a ragged intake of breath. The hands on him snatch away, as if stung.“Jim.” Spock’s voice is a wreck. “Jim, I won’t hurt you.”Jim blinks and blinks until Spock comes into focus. Spock’s draped in his meditation robe, his face haggard and drained, his hair still a tousled mess, his eyes damp and scrawled with green, but –“You’re okay,” Jim breathes.“Yes. You –”Jim promptly passes out again.“Jim!”Jim does not think whatever Spock’s yelling in his ear about can be that big a deal, but Spock disagrees and keeps doing it. The annoying trilling sound comes back – oh, medical tricorder – inches above his head, and Spock … Spock sounds so scared. “Jim, please,” Spock begs. “I promise you can sleep soon. I promise I won’t touch you, I will – I will leave if you wish me to, but please wake up.”That’s not easy, but Jim does it.“Hi,” he says.Spock, crouched beside the bed, gazes at him with wide, terrified eyes and asks politely, “Jim, who is the President of the United Federation of Planets?”Jim wants to make some kind of wiseass comment about that, but he’s too tired and Spock is too frightened and some of what he has already said is starting to filter through Jim’s brain.“Pellan Fel. Not concussed. You … you’re going somewhere?”Spock swallows. His left hand is on the edge of the bed, just inches from Jim’s face; it flexes towards him but then drops back. He whispers, “May I stay?"“Yeah.” He can’t keep his eyes open to see how Spock takes that, but he lets his head roll to the side, closing the distance to Spock’s fingers.  “Please.”There’s a pause, and then fingertips skim weightlessly over his brow, smooth his hair. The gentleness comes like a word whispered too fast into ringing ears – Jim doesn’t catch it, can’t make sense of it. “You are badly dehydrated,” Spock announces, warily businesslike. He slides a cautious hand under Jim’s head, lifting it.Jim wasn’t aware of being thirsty, but Spock brings a glass to his lips and then he’s murmuring “careful, Jim, not too fast” and the water’s all gone. A second glass, in slow, rationed sips, and Jim’s head clears a little, like a space rubbed onto a fogged window. God, everything hurts.“May I continue to assess your injuries?”“Go for it,” Jim slurs, dropping back. He hears the tricorder start to warble again, and the mattress shifts as Spock kneels over him on the bed.His eyelids are still achingly heavy, and yet he’s not slipping back into sleep. He can’t, under Spock’s silent scrutiny. Spock, once again, isn’t touching him and maybe it’s just the strangeness of that, the newness of having his own body to himself that makes him feel strangely faraway. From Spock, from everything.“Are you sure it’s over?” he blurts out.Spock’s fingers alight on the back of Jim’s hand, impossibly careful, gone before Jim knows if he wants them to stay. “I am certain.”“But that wasn’t three days.”“No.”He doesn’t elaborate. Jim cracks his eyes open. Spock’s lips are tightly pressed together, but they tremble. Jim follows Spock’s gaze to the vivid black and red and purple daubed across his skin.“Just bruises,” Jim comments. Which is dumb, considering the garland of bites around his neck and shoulders, the scratches on his flanks, the fiery seams of pain inside. But still. Nothing permanent. And there’s relief in being able to look, knowing what’s there now is all there will be.Spock looks from Jim’s body to the tricorder and back.“The bruising alone,” he begins levelly, “extends into various muscle groups and into the bone of your left iliac crest and your clavicle. The damage could, I believe, cause continuing pain for weeks or months if left to heal on its own, and I cannot treat it here as Dr. McCoy did not issue me with an osteo-regenerator. There are only three on board, so it was logical not to place one where it could not be readily retrieved, however –” and his voice is no longer level at all, it’s shaking to pieces – “it is also likely that he hoped I would not hurt you so badly.”  The tricorder falls from his grasp into the sheets. He presses one hand over his face.“Hey, no, it’s okay –” Jim can’t really sit up, but he can’t let Spock do this to himself, can’t lie there without trying to comfort him. He struggles to prop himself on one elbow, reaches out.Spock catches his hand before Jim can touch him.  And then he just – holds it, clasped in mid-air between them. Jim watches, baffled and anxious, as Spock takes a breath and lets it out, long and unsteady. Once, twice.Then he lowers his other hand from his face. He does not look calm, exactly – not by Vulcan standards, at least – but he looks into Jim’s eyes, and his gaze is firm. It holds Jim in place, holds him so steady that Jim, at last, no longer has to hold onto anything. “Jim,” he says, very deliberately. “Thank you for what you have done for me. Thank you for my life.”He lowers his head to press his lips against Jim’s hand. And Jim feels something in him crack open, like heavy glass letting air rush in, and he starts to cry.Spock gathers him up, holding him close, taking all of his weight, and Jim and gasps, “I’m so glad you’re back, I’m so glad you’re alive.”He sobs as Spock strokes his hair, and now Jim remembers how to feel it. Softness whispers down his nerves like meltwater and he remembers how to let it happen.  “Thank you,” Spock repeats, in Vulcan, in Standard, over and over again. “Thank you.”***He’s asleep again when Spock lays him down. He fades in and out, dimly aware of Spock moving around in the room, once hearing the click of a communicator closing. Then Spock’s lifting him from the bed, carrying him towards the bathroom.“Can walk,” Jim objects, only thinking to fact-check the claim after he’s made it and then realising that this is big talk for a guy who can’t hold a glass of water.Spock pauses, dips his face over Jim’s to brush his cheek against his brow. “If lives were at stake, no doubt,” he murmurs. “But for now you need not.”The flicker of protest ebbs away at that – and he smiles, letting himself settle into Spock’s arms. The shower is already running when Spock carries him in, and the water is cool, soothing on his hurts after the relentless heat of Spock’s quarters. The low seat wasn’t there before – Spock must have summoned it from somewhere while Jim slept. Spock places him upon it and cleans each break in Jim’s skin with featherlight fingers, and Jim thinks he should maybe hate this a little: having to be bathed because he can’t do it himself – there should be indignity in the contrast between his helplessness and Spock’s strength. But somehow there isn’t – there is the opposite.  Spock’s kneeling at his side, as though this is a shrine. His hands are infinitely gentle on Jim’s body, but not as if Jim could shatter at a touch. As if Spock’s handling something sacred.  The water beats down, and if it’s pleasantly cool for him it’s probably icy for Spock. He opens his eyes and sees the bands of gooseflesh on Spock’s arms, and that if he’s not shivering it’s probably only because Vulcans can force themselves not to.“Spock,” he whispers.Spock looks up at him, and what he wanted to say about the water is lost in the flood of everything else there is to be said. The scale of it exhausts and awes him at once, but as their gazes meet, he finds maybe he doesn’t need to speak. He lifts a hand and rest it on Spock’s wet hair, Spock lets the weight of it guide his head down to Jim’s thigh, where he places a small kiss on a patch of unmarked skin, and Jim thinks you’re welcome, and hopes Spock hears it. ***“Tell me there’s more I can do,” Spock says softly, much later.  There isn’t, really. They’re in Jim’s quarters, and the painkillers are kicking in, and Spock’s run the regenerator everything he can. Jim’s eaten actual food and drunk what seemed like an improbable amount of water before the tricorder was satisfied. He’s dressed in the pyjamas he almost never wears, lying between clean sheets, and he had little to nothing to do with making any of this happen.“You could eat,” Jim mumbles, eyeing the abandoned plate of vegetables and cous cous in which Spock barely made a dent.Spock looks away, his lips compressing again for a moment. “My appetite will return after meditation. It is not urgent. I am quite well, Jim.” He adjusts the sheet over Jim’s chest. His voice catches slightly. “Please.”“You could get my padd and come lie down.”Spock’s eyes widen with alarm. “You must not attend to the ship now.”Jim smiles up at him hazily. “No. Just wanted to read for a little while.”But holding the padd up is still too difficult, so Spock takes it from him and begins to describe the way the dawn scatters into blue and violet over the jade mountains of Toliman VI. “I missed your voice,” Jim breathes, not sure he’s even audible. “God, I missed your voice.”  Spock’s only halfway through the third paragraph before Jim’s asleep.***That night – or that day, he has lost track completely – he begins to wake, thinking he hears someone crying quietly. But the sound vanishes as he starts towards consciousness in search of it, and Spock’s voice whispers, “There is nothing, dear one, go back to sleep.” And later Jim isn’t sure he didn’t dream it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“It’s my fault,” Uhura sighs. “Although, you’re the Captain. So technically it’s always your fault.”Technically, Uhura was the one to voice the desire to go boldly into the deep, dark forest to find out what was making the eerie-yet-enticing tinkling noise, but no one, with the singular exception of Leonard McCoy, signs up for a five year mission in space if they aren’t that sort of a person. Jim would have gotten around to it if she hadn’t.It’s only been twenty-five minutes since they last saw the rest of the landing party, and only fifteen since the tricorders and communicators went from “fuzzy” to “unusable”.They’re only a little lost.“OK, this sounds crazy, but I think it’s the trees.” Uhura gives her tricorder a frustrated little shake as if that might motivate it to be more helpful. “They’re emitting something and we can’t cut through it. And our scans didn’t pick it up, so either it’s something completely new or they weren’t doing it until we got here.”Fascinating, Jim thinks, and smiles a little. He squints up at the light filtering through the canopy, trying to get a sense of the sun’s position.The air is soft and heavy. The silver-limbed trees support sheets of purple fleece instead of leaves, and the velvety grey moss silences their footfalls. The softness is lovely and yet walking here feels a little like being anaesthetised, everything muffled and numb.“Are you OK?” Uhura asks, sharply.He looks at her, startled. “What? Yes.”“You’re just – quiet. You’ve been quiet for a while.”Jim gives her a wide smile and turns his attention back to the treetops. “I’m going to climb up there. If we can get above this purple stuff we should be able to see where we are.”He’s about to swing himself into the nearest tree, but Uhura shakes her head and points. “That one.”Her tree doesn’t have any branches within easy reach, but it’s definitely taller.  “I’ll do it,” she says. “Give me a leg up.”He gets down in front of her; and she gives him an affectionate look of warning, ready to roll her eyes or cuff him lightly round the head. And he’s about to go ahead, say something cheesy for her to bat back at him like she’s expecting: Why Lieutenant, if you wanted me in this position you only had to ask.But then he doesn’t feel like it.She gives him a troubled glance as he grasps her boot and silently vaults her upwards. But she’s too preoccupied with scrambling onto the lowest branch to ask. She climbs confidently but the higher she gets the more alarmingly fragile she looks to Jim and he wishes he'd gone instead, that he wasn't just waiting here, helpless.  “OK,” she yells down.  “I can’t see the others, but I can see the plain. It’s that way.”“Where’s the sun?” Jim yells back.“On our left!”Uhura’s almost all the way to the ground and Jim’s memorising the outline of the furthest tree he can make out within the scope of “that way” so they won’t get turned around again, when she says, apologetically, “Uh.”He turns. A slim branch of the tree has coiled itself around Uhura’s waist. They both stare at it.“Do you think,” Jim asks slowly, “that maybe this place kind of … lured us here?”“Like we’re the dumb children in a fairy tale, and Spock and Sulu are the smart children who didn’t go wandering into the forest because they heard a weird noise, and they’ll live happily ever after, and we’ll die and it’ll serve us right? I’ve been thinking it for the last twenty minutes.”  She tries to pluck the branch free. The coil visibly tightens and she winces.“Well.” He draws his phaser. “Unless you can think of a way to communicate with it?”“I can’t.”Jim sets it to stun and fires. The branch whips away and Uhura drops to the ground, landing with surprising grace, but at the same time something heavy smacks Jim across the shoulders, sending him sprawling. The impact on his still-tender back is enough to make him yelp, but the moss cushions his fall and he can tell at once it isn’t bad. Not yet, anyway – the tree is straining for them, fleece tossing, boughs thrashing. The branch that struck him draws back for another swing. He scrambles up as Uhura rushes to him.The tree heaves one set of roots out of the earth, then another, and lurches towards them.Jim and Uhura exchange a look of horror and delight, and run for their lives.Which would be easy – the tree is very slow – except now it’s not just one murderous, unexpectedly ambulant tree they have to worry about.And suddenly there it is: the flash of chaos and wonder that Jim loves enough to chase from one end of the universe to the other. The small, tense distance he’s been carrying around with him vanishes in a rush of endorphins. They dodge and duck and shoot; the forest is strange and new and beautiful and trying to kill them and they are alivealivealive …He flies through the trees, utterly at home in his body for the first time since … since. Then Uhura sprints past him, or rather, he falls behind Uhura, which normally wouldn’t happen. And oh, crap, all those vague lingering aches and stiffnesses which didn’t seem worth noticing are catching up with him, and if he doesn’t die there’s going to be so much yelling, and if he does die …There’s a flash of blue ahead.“Captain! Down!”Jim flings himself down, not even feeling his bruises ring with protest, as Spock fires his phaser and a heavy branch swishes through the air where Jim’s head was a second before. Then Spock’s hauling him up and they’re racing towards the daylight beyond the trees.“Zombie trees! ZOMBIE TREES!” Jim bawls at a startled Sulu, as they break from the treeline onto the silvery plain, the forest lumbering after them.(Lumbering. Ha!)There’s a sweet spot between the missions that go so right that it’s boring and the ones that go so wrong that people die, and despite that slightly-too-close-a-call moment, Jim’s still riding the high as they beam up, as he steps down from the transporter pad. And then Scotty sucks his teeth and says, “Eesh, laddie. You want to get that down to sickbay.”It’s only then that he registers that of course, of fucking course, his shirt is ripped at the shoulder seam and a large flap of fabric is hanging down his back.“Oh, that’s – it’s nothing,” he says. And idiotically, he’s looking straight at Spock, whose expression is, for an instant, so nakedly anguished that it’s just almost just as well everyone’s busy looking at Jim.Modern medicine is really good at mending stuff that’s been cut or torn or broken, but has not progressed at all on making blood pooled beneath the skin go the fuck away.“Captain, that is not nothing,” Uhura says, as the transporter technicians gather round and crane their necks to get a better look. “I didn’t realise it got you that hard.”Spock’s eyes close and Jim babbles, “It didn’t! Just a tap, it’s fine, I bruise easily, I guess.”Why can’t he stop talking?“No you don’t,” says Uhura, frowning. “You never have. Are you still sick?”And suddenly it’s not just the fact that she must be seconds from realising the bruises are too dark and dramatic to be fresh, not even just the consciousness of how this is torturing Spock, that has him desperate to get out of there. He can feel their eyes on his bare skin.“Fine! I’ll get it checked out!” he says too loudly, and practically runs out of the transporter room.The relief that crashes over him is way too intense, forces him to notice just how freaked out he was. Still is, when he realises that there’s nowhere to go from here that doesn’t involve a good long walk with his back on display. And for fuck’s sake, it’s just skin, and most of the crew have enjoyed a far more substantial eyeful of his than this; what the fuck does he think is going to happen?Spock appears at his side. They walk, in silence, to the turbolift.“Are we really going to sickbay?” Jim asks wearily. He wants to slump against the wall of the lift but the pressure would still hurt. “I guess we have to.” Oh, the lecture he’s in for.Spock’s fingers brush his wrist and a wordless request for permission flutters against his mind. Jim nods and feels warmth, reassurance, affection flowing over and through him – and none of the pain Jim knows is there.“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry about this.”“Jim.” Spock’s other hand clasps his arm. “Please. Do not say that. You did nothing wrong.”“I’m not technically cleared for away missions yet,” Jim mutters.Spock’s lips quirk and he amends: “You did nothing atypical.”Jim feels the ripple of humour as well as seeing it, but something slips through along with it, so faint Jim can tell he wasn’t supposed to hear it.
Are you afraid of me?
And almost at the same time, because Spock can sense the answer before Jim’s finished thinking it:  
But how can you not be?
Jim grips his hand, trying to force conviction through the contact. “Spock, no.”But the turbolift comes to a stop and Spock’s distress vanishes out of Jim’s reach so that all Jim can feel is love.***It’s a little mortifying that when he arrives in sickbay Bones gives him a searching look and proceeds to yell a lot less than Jim is expecting – and that Jim is grateful.  Nevertheless, Bones does stalk him back to the bridge, re-explaining what “cleared for away missions” means and the subtle signs, like Bones telling him, that will alert Jim when it happens.They can’t go back to the planet anyway, not until they have a better idea of whether the trees are actually sentient. So Spock and Uhura are off in the labs, analysing recordings of the tinkling noise to try to work out if it’s a language. The bridge is quiet. Jim swallows painkillers and settles into his chair.The planet rolls past, purple and silver and beautiful, under its blazing trio of moons.***In Spock’s quarters, the sculptures, the weapons and the lyre are all back in their places. All the padding that seemed so innocuous to begin with and so ugly by the end has been stripped away. Jim’s glad everything looks so different, so normal now, but even so, his shoulders tighten, just a little, when he glances at the bed.Spock is at his desk, studying soundwave patterns on his screen.Jim goes and leans over his chair. “You saved my life today,” he says. “I know it happened so fast I hardly noticed. But it did happen.”Spock nods bleakly. “In the course of duty.”   “Spock.” Jim squeezes his shoulder. “When do I get to tell you it’s OK?”Spock turns off the computer and lays a hand over Jim’s. He murmurs, “You are still in pain.”“Barely. Only if I bump against something.” Or, OK, also if he gets chased through a forest by something. But Spock looks up at him and Jim realises that wasn’t what he meant.He lets Spock go, slowly, and sits propped against the desk so he can face him. He feels the urge to insist that Spock’s wrong about this and wills it to pass. He admits, “I guess I’m still kind of … shaken.” “Since returning to duty you have been smiling at approximately 64% of your typical frequency.”Jim blinks. Several times. “OK. Wait. How long have you been logging my smiles?”Spock’s face does the sort of absolutely nothing that Jim can nevertheless read as ‘slightly flustered’. “The calculation was based on three point six years’ worth of observation –”“Wow –!”“However, as I have an eidetic memory it was not really a matter of logging individual occurrences; it was merely necessary to review the data.”“Sure, I get it. How often does Sulu smile?”A short pause.“I don’t know.”Jim grins. “So I’m going to continue finding that incredibly cute.” He gestures at his face. “Here’s another one for the pot, anyhow.”Answering mirth, faint but perceptible, gathers at the corners of Spock’s eyes. Then it fades. “You have ceased initiating non-essential physical contact with members of the crew entirely.”“What? No, I – I touch you all the time, I –”But as he says it, he realises it’s true. He’s touched Spock, but he hasn’t given anyone else a congratulatory clap on the back or a reassuring pat or a conspiratorial nudge. People have touched him, surely, and he hasn’t minded? He hasn’t had any awareness of avoiding something unpleasant. It just … hasn’t occurred to him.“I didn’t know that was happening,” he finishes, weakly.Spock hesitates. “Would it not be beneficial for you to speak with a counsellor?”Jim struggles with a small, irrational flash of hurt. Like Spock’s pointed out that he’s failed at something, something he was sure he could do.“I don’t need that,” he says. “It’s not like I –” something clenches painfully in his chest. He tries again, “You didn’t –”And he doesn’t want to say the horrible word, doesn’t want Spock to have to hear it, but now it’s there and Jim can almost never feel this afraid without forcing himself forward, “You didn’t rape me,” he says, harshly. Spock doesn’t lower his gaze, doesn’t flinch, but Jim does.There’s a silence.Then Spock begins, very softly, “Nevertheless …”“Nevertheless nothing,” he’s almost shouting. “OK, I’m still getting … used to things again. But it’s not bad.”“I agree that it is not necessary for you to seek treatment,” Spock answers, carefully, “for I have no doubt you would live and work and accomplish the extraordinary without it. But Jim, whatever the name for what you have gone through, you have still been harmed. That you can bear it unaided does not mean that you must.”He’s so pale. Jim looks at him and wishes this was someone’s fault, that there was someone he could go and punch for doing this to them both.He slumps back on the desk. “Bones said kind of the same thing. Said he wouldn’t make me, but …” he sighs. “I’d have to … explain, and you hate people knowing about …”Spock shakes his head with un-Vulcan intensity. “I want you to be well.”Jim reaches for his hand. “I’ll get there. Soon,” he promises. “But if you’d died … nothing would make that bearable, and it would have been forever.”And from the perspective of forever, handwringing over a few viewscreen therapy sessions seems silly.“OK. I’ll do it.” To his surprise, he feels a little lighter at once. “What about you?”Spock’s expression shutters.“I am cleared for duty provided that I consult either a healer or a therapist and comply with their advice.” He twitches an eyebrow, his face otherwise dull. “In my case the doctor has advised that it is not optional.”“I … guess that’s not surprising.”“You need not be concerned.”“Of course I need to be concerned.” He rubs his thumb over Spock’s hand. “I’ve noticed, you know. I try to help you with this, you keep turning it around on me. And maybe I needed that to begin with. So, thank you. But don’t do it now, OK? Please. Let me make this easier for you.”Spock lowers his eyes, gazing at their joined hands. “You’ve done enough.”“What, for the rest of our lives? No, I haven’t. Spock, come on. I want you to be well, too.”Spock is silent for what seems a long time. Finally he begins, slowly, “It would never be easy to accept what you suffered. And …” he pauses again. “I am beginning to remember.”Jim more or less throws himself from the desk into Spock’s lap, wrapping his arms around him. “Oh, Spock. That must suck.”He’d normally be happy to have Spock looking at him as if he’s a miracle, but not when he’s apparently the saddest miracle ever. “How can you be capable of such compassion? I remember your pain. And your steadfastness. And that neither meant anything to me.”“Do you remember you stopped when I needed you to?”This only seems to make Spock feel worse. He makes a small, bitter sound. “You needed me to stop long before.”“Not like I needed you to live.”                  “Jim. If it did not have to last three days, why should it have lasted one? If I could stop, then, when you were so hurt, then I must have been capable of stopping before. I did not have to … abuse you, for days on end, and yet I –”  Jim holds him closer. “No. No, illogical. Stop.” He presses Spock’s head to his shoulder, as if to smother the flow of guilt.  “That is not how it works, and I know, OK? I was there for all of it and you … you weren’t.” His voice wobbles a little at the memory of Spock’s absence. “It wasn’t like hitting an off switch. It was like when little old ladies lift shuttles off people –”He feels the puzzled shift of Spock’s eyebrows. “…When little old ladies …?” “Spock. You didn’t end it, you couldn’t. It was still happening. It was still killing you. You kind of … held it back for a few seconds so I could get away, and I saw what that cost you. I saw it shouldn’t have been possible. But you did it for me, even though you thought you’d die.”Spock lifts his head, pulling back a little. “Yet I did not. And it did end.”Jim takes a breath as he remembers watching the door slide open. “I think … after that, when you saw me again, you were so … thankful, it shocked you out of it somehow.”“… After that,’” Spock repeats, blankly. Then something shifts in his gaze, and he says, “You came back.”“You only just remembered? Of course I did.”“Yes,” agrees Spock, his voice cracking. “Of course.”Jim sweeps his hand up and down Spock’s back.  “I’ve been hurt a lot worse, for things that mattered a lot less.”“I know you do not believe I am at fault. You have done everything in your power to convince me of that – before and since, and even while you endured what I did to you. It is illogical and unjust to ask you to offer what I refuse to accept, when I have taken so much from you already.” The words are coming faster, stumbling into each other. “This is why I have not apologised to you.”“You don’t have to,” whispers Jim. “I don’t need you to. But you can say it, if it helps.”“I am so sorry,” Spock gasps out, and he buries his face against Jim again, his arms tightening around him.  Jim’s bruises twinge a little, and he doesn’t care. He presses as close as he can get, as Spock shakes in his arms.At last Spock sighs, and stills. Jim lifts his face and, carefully, kisses him. It’s barely a touch, at first – he’s a little afraid it might be too much, for either or both of them.  He’s surprised at how easily it deepens, that the shiver that flows between them comes so swiftly, sweeping them up like a tide.They haven’t lost this.“It was worth it. You are worth all of it. And if I’m not all the way over it yet, you’re worth that too.”Spock rests his forehead against Jim’s, lifts his hand to stroke his cheek. He breathes, “I shall try to be.”***He’s clearing the remains of dinner into the recycler and Spock asks, “Jim, why was this on the floor?”Jim turns. Spock’s holding the black knight.Jim’s breath catches. He feels the contours of chess piece as vividly as if it was still gripped in his fist, the edge of the tiny mane sharp against his palm.Then he laughs. The knight is completely unscathed.“Because I know what you’re up to, and I’m going to wipe the floor with you,” he answers.  Spock tilts his head and raises an eyebrow and places the chess piece back on the board, exactly where it was. Its surfaces gleam, still as bright.