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indeedcaptain · 5 months

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Regulatory Relations, chapter 9: The Bridegroom

Hello!! This chapter took me longer than I expected and it also brought up some odd and interesting plot ideas that I then had to work through!! I hope you enjoy ribbons and streamers, and Scotty crying.

Also technically this is a Spirktober prompt: day ?? KISSING :)

Also posted on AO3 here!

☆☆☆

Kirk spent two futile hours trying to clear his mind of Spock enough to fall asleep before he had to admit to himself that it was useless. He rolled over onto his back for the hundredth time and stared up at the ceiling. On one hand, it was just a kiss. He had kissed his friends before, with no regrets; at parties, in celebration, on a dare, and he had always been able to pull away laughing. It should have been just a favor for a friend who was nervous, and nothing more.

On the other hand, none of the friends that he had kissed had ever responded quite like that. He had expected a perfunctory peck on the lips and for Spock to then inform him that he considered the exercise an illogical and unnecessary exposure to extraneous bacteria. He had not thought that Spock would respond with even one-tenth of the intensity that he had. Outside of one highly irregular and biologically mandated life event and the incident with the spores, he had never seen Spock so much as check someone out, let alone express explicit interest.

Kirk never could have imagined that Spock would kiss anyone like that, ever, and the man had been engaged to be wed. But now that he knew, there was no going back. Kirk did his damnedest to ignore the heat pooling in his groin as he recalled the way Spock had crowded him against the shelf, his hands in Kirk’s hair.

He didn’t know how one friendly, experimental kiss escalated so quickly, but the fact of the matter was that it had. How far would he have let it go if Spock hadn’t pulled away? It would have been easy to slide his hands under Spock’s shirt and feel the bellows of his lungs under his palms. It would have been easy to shift his feet further apart and let Spock press one long thigh between his own. It would have been easy to suck Spock’s lower lip between his teeth and slide his hand down between their bodies.

His arousal was impossible to ignore now. Kirk pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to will himself calm, but the vision of Spock’s bare skin beneath his hands had efficiently negated that option. He rolled over, pressing his hips into his mattress, and for one moment allowed himself to indulge in fantasy. In another universe, maybe he had slipped his hands under Spock’s shirt and felt the heat of his skin and the beat of his heart. Maybe Spock had allowed him to pull his shirt over his head and lick the pale skin over his collarbone before removing Kirk’s clothes in turn. Maybe they had tumbled into bed, Kirk laughing, Spock with his nearly invisible, enigmatic smile, and maybe Spock had let him deconstruct that famous self-control until he was writhing and gasping under Kirk’s hands and mouth and tongue. Maybe he had let Kirk have all of his other firsts---

Kirk, in this universe, buried his face in the crook of his arm and just barely restrained himself from grinding down. He stifled the groan caught in his throat and wrenched himself out of bed to step into the bathroom. He set the shower to as cold as he could stand, then forced himself into it. He closed his eyes, letting the water stream over his face as the rest of his body settled slowly back into line. When he felt like he was under control again, he set the water to a more comfortable temperature and pressed his forehead against the tiled wall. “This cannot happen,” he told himself, but the new little voice in the back of his head demanded, Why not?

With his face against the tile, he forced himself to think. What would it look like to pursue more with Spock? Spock had proven that he was willing and able to act like they were together, and had done so with the grace with which he did everything. They already spent the vast majority of their time in each other’s company. Spock was inextricably important to him, the load-bearing column in the center of his life. For heaven’s sake, they were going to be legally married in less than twenty-four hours! Would it be that big of a step to allow the love he already held for Spock to shift into something different? He let the idea--- huge, irrational, terrifying, brilliant--- swell inside him like a balloon. It threatened to consume him. He took a needle to it.

First, outside of one kiss, Spock had never indicated interest in anything more than friendship with him. Before Spock broke his no-contact rule, before Kirk had learned how the rest of the crew saw them, before the kiss, it had not occurred to Kirk either to think of Spock as a potential partner. And as the scientist was so fond of reminding him, one anomalous incident was a curiosity, not a pattern. He had no real proof that his touch-starved brain wasn’t being held hostage by pleasant neurochemicals brought on by the glut of unexpected and affectionate physical contact. He had no proof that there was any real ‘this’ to stop.

Second, their wedding was tomorrow. There was no time for experimentation of any kind, not when the potential consequences, if it went badly, were so dangerous. He would not risk losing Spock to another ship--- the same threat that had caused this whole mess in the first place--- because he couldn’t stop himself from chasing this impulse.

The third reason hurt, but it was the only one that really mattered. Kirk lifted his head from the tile to let the water pour over his face. Admitting it to himself made his heart ache and his stomach twist, but he forced himself to reason it out. The third reason was that, if he had learned anything from Spock’s pon farr, it was that Vulcan relationships were built on mental compatibility and permanent psychic bonds. Kirk already knew that they were mentally compatible. They had mind-melded on missions, and he had felt the synchronicity between them as his psi-null mind opened to Spock’s touch like a flower to rain. But the melds had been short-term events precipitated by crisis, and he had been prepared, and he had been able to shield himself from revealing too much.

Kirk could never let himself fantasize about, let alone genuinely consider, a romantic relationship with Spock because he could not welcome Spock unconditionally into his head. He would not risk Spock tying their minds together and then seeing Tarsus. He would not force Spock to endure the nightmares, the panic attacks, the ghost-ache in his bones or the weight of the bodies on his back for the rest of their lives. He would never let Spock see the cracks that ran through the foundation of his soul, the ones he papered over with bravado and skill. If he was unimpeachably good at his job, and if he hid the broken pieces of himself, no one would ever have to know about the wounded animal of a child that he carried inside himself. No, Tarsus and its ghosts were his burden to bear, and it was for both Spock’s sake and his that he keep it that way.

Kirk set his jaw and shut off the shower. The basest, ugliest truth of his life was that he could not let anyone, let alone anyone in Starfleet, know how terribly Tarsus still marred him. And, after tonight, after the past week, he did not think he could take a single step further down a path that led to Spock without running the rest of the way. To protect Spock, and to protect himself, he would stay right where he was, and pray he was strong enough to do so.

He dried off and dropped himself back into bed. Ashamed, angry, and still half-aroused, he fell asleep.

☆☆☆

Kirk dreamt of a woman he had not seen for nearly half a lifetime. Her name was Elise, and she had a kind smile, and she was his Starfleet-assigned therapist when he got to the Academy.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you,” she said, eyes twinkling. “We knew you were going to be special.” Kirk was eighteen, gangly, only recently having become the manager of a functional digestive system and stable sleep pattern after four brutal years of recovery, and he loved Elise immediately. In his dream she was the same age she had been at the time---mid-fifties, just like his mom, with graying blonde hair--- but he was himself, thirty-five and strong, and she smiled so warmly at him that he thought she was proud of him.

“Sit down,” she said. “Let’s get to know each other.”

“Come on, Elise,” he said, spreading his arms across the back of the couch that he spent hours on every week and crossing his legs. “We do know each other.”

She looked down at a padd on her lap and said, “James Tiberius Kirk. Do you like Jimmy? Jim? JT?”

“You know my name,” he said. “You called me Jim for four years.”

“Jim it is,” she said, and she twinkled at him while she made a note on the padd. “And Dr. Johns sent along your file. It looks like you’re doing well, Jim, very well.”

Kirk removed his arms from the back of the couch. “Guess what? I’m a captain now,” he said. She didn’t respond to that. She nodded about something else.

“You’re a smart boy, Jim, I’m sure you can guess why you’re here.”

“Because I was on the colony,” he said. And that was what he had called it, for a long time: it wasn’t until Bones had seen his file and said the name, nearly fifteen years after the fact, that Kirk had been able to say the name too. When he had been seeing Elise, he had just called it ‘the colony.’ She had known what he meant.

“Yes, precisely,” she said. She laid her datapen down and clasped her hands in her lap. “Jim, Dr. Johns tells me you’re still having nightmares about the governor.”

He had been suspicious. Kirk stood and crossed his arms, and he could see his younger self sitting on the couch where he had been. He had been so young, and so vulnerable. He had been so angry, so scared, so eager to please.

“Maybe,” he said.

Elise hummed thoughtfully. “He said you haven’t been able to let go of some of the things you might have seen,” she said.

“Who wouldn’t?” He had been immediately defensive. He hadn’t understood yet what she wanted from him.

“It’s understandable, Jim,” Elise had said. Her voice was soothing. “And how are things at home?”

Kirk watched his younger self as his cocksure, aggressive posture flagged. “Fine,” he had said. Things at home were not fine, and she must have known that. She had noted something on her padd, but she didn’t challenge him on it yet.

“Good, Jim. That’s great.” Then she had moved on, that first day. She had been kind. She had encouraged him to make friends, to excel in his classes, to talk to her and only her about what had happened. She would hum, and frown, and smile, and sometimes she cried. Then every session would end with the same gentle lesson: it would be better for him if he stopped talking about Tarsus. Things with his parents would be better if he stopped reminding them of what he had endured. It would be better for him if he stopped talking about how Kodos’s body was never found. He would be better, stronger, healthier if he stopped talking about the nightmares where Kodos found him at the Academy, or in the depths of black space, or in his own mind.

“You’re so strong, Jim,” she would say. “And you can use that strength to protect your friends, your family, and your crew from what hurts you.” And he had slowly stopped mentioning the colony, or Kodos, or the nightmares, or the panic attacks, and Elise had been so proud of him. She had gone to his commission ceremony and hugged him at graduation, and he had never told her how awful he felt all the time. He didn’t want to let her down.

“You’re so strong, Jim,” Elise said, and he mouthed the words along with her. The younger version of him grabbed his bag from the ground and stood, recognizing the dismissal. “Now, run along. You don’t want to be late for your own wedding!”

Kirk woke with a start, eyes flying open, to only the sound of the hum of the ship around him. His alarm glowed dimly in the dark room, informing him that there were still ninety minutes before he had to be awake. He pressed the heels of his hands into his aching eyes.

He hadn’t thought about Elise in years. He thought about sending her a comm to let her know that he was getting married, but then he shook his head, erasing the idea. He didn’t even remember her last name. It was highly likely that she had retired long ago, anyway.

What had her last name been?

He wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep. He dragged himself out of bed and into the bathroom to refresh himself. There was no sound from behind the door on the other side of the head; Spock was probably in a deep, dreamless, logical sleep. For a half-second he thought about pressing the button on this side of the wall and letting himself into Spock’s room, climbing into bed beside him and going back to sleep. He shook his head again. He needed more rest, or, if that was not available to him, he needed a cup of coffee.

What the hell had Elise’s last name been? He replicated himself a coffee and inhaled the first half of the bitter drink before remembering to breathe. It was going to drive him crazy if he couldn’t remember her name. It had been something sweet, like Honey or Love. Sitting down at his computer terminal, Kirk pulled up the Starfleet directory. He had access to almost everything: he didn’t usually look through it, because Spock had taken on most of the personnel assignment duties, but he knew his way around. He sorted by the Science division, years active, first name, and ticked as many medical specialty boxes related to therapy as he could parse out and hit search.

Two hits; one a young ensign with black hair, still in training. Obviously not her. The other was a redheaded woman; she wasn’t an ensign, but she was also too young. He broadened his search to include all medical staff and eliminated everyone below lieutenant-grade. He scanned through the pictures with growing frustration. Not a single one of them had her sparkling eyes. It was possible that he wouldn’t recognize her from a holo, but he had seen her face multiple times a week for four years. How different could she look?

There were only so many Elises in Starfleet Medical, and he reached the end of the list without finding his. He frowned and added all of Science and then the Command division staff to his search. Was it possible that she had been cross-listed? He scanned through all the Elises in the command structure as his coffee cooled next to his elbow. None of them jumped out at him as the woman he was looking for.

With the force of a smack upside the head, it came to him. Darling. Her last name had been Darling. He had been so enchanted by it--- his favorite science teacher in Riverside had called him ‘darling.’ How had he forgotten? Curious now about what division she had been in, he searched directly for Elise Darling.

Her face appeared immediately. Her hair was more gray than blonde in the picture, but her eyes were exactly as he remembered. She wore the red shirt of Security, and his eyebrows pulled together. Why had his therapist been in security?

Or, he wondered, why had he been assigned a security officer as a therapist? He clicked on her biography to see what she had been up to and find out where she was now, and was met with a whole lot of nothing. She had graduated from the Academy thirty-two years before he did, served as ensign and lieutenant on the U.S.S. Maddox, and then the rest of her record vanished. There was simply nothing listed until the day she retired, some ten years ago. Kirk sat back in his chair, worrying his lip between his teeth. Everything about his relationship with Starfleet had been intense, ever since he was a child. First as the son of two officers and then later as one of the only survivors of a crisis to which Starfleet had been the first responder, he had been under careful watch since he was ten years old. He had never questioned that he had been assigned a psychologist at the Academy, just like he had never questioned that he saw a Starfleet doctor to recover from the physical aftermath of Tarsus. But now he crossed his arms, staring at the proud, professional face of Elise Darling, security officer, and said, “What the hell?”

His alarm blared behind him and he spun to turn it off. He spared one more glance for Elise before he powered down the screen and got dressed for the day.

As he pulled his command golds down over his undershirt, he remembered with a jolt what Elise had last said to him in the dream: he was getting married tonight. He fingered the stiff fabric of his dress uniform, hanging in his closet next to the rest of his clothes. He was going to kiss Spock again this evening. Even despite his angst from the night before, despite how firmly he was telling himself that crossing any more lines was a bad idea, anticipation bubbled up inside him. He was already in deep. How much harm could one more kiss do?

He tugged his shirt down more firmly, took a steadying breath, and opened his door, fearing for a split second that Spock would not be there this morning. But he stood opposite, waiting for Kirk, the brightest thing in Kirk’s vision. He looked exactly the same as he ever did: dark hair, blue shirt, tall and lean and stoic. But everything about him felt different. How could Kirk look at those hands, that mouth, knowing how they felt against his skin, without seeing them in a new light?

“Good morning, captain,” Spock said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Just fine, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said, but he felt Spock’s eyes scanning his face. “How did you sleep?”

“Adequately,” Spock said. Kirk could see, now that he had shut his door behind him and was standing closer, the faint green tinge of bruising on the delicate skin beneath Spock’s eyes. It seemed neither of them had slept well, and neither would admit it. Well, that was fine. If they could pretend that things had not changed, eventually they would go back to the way they had been. They would both be better off for it.

They walked to breakfast together, and though their arms brushed, Spock did not reach up to take his waist or press his hand against his lower back. Kirk told himself that it was a good thing and did his best to ignore his disappointment.

☆☆☆

The rest of the shift had passed in a blur of apprehension and anticipation. Spock had been called to the laboratory for a botany emergency twenty minutes in and never returned to the bridge, which removed Kirk’s number one distraction. Without the temptation of staring at Spock’s form and wondering what he was thinking, Kirk lost himself in reviewing and signing all the forms he’d been ignoring until the bosun’s whistle blew and Janice chased him off the bridge and back to his quarters.

Almost without realizing how he’d gotten there, Kirk found himself staring at his reflection in the mirror in his quarters with only an hour to go. He had worn his dress uniform a thousand times before, and yet it felt unfamiliar to him now. The gold braid around his throat choked him. He slid his finger into the collar and pulled at it again, like that might help him breathe better, but the stiff fabric was unforgiving. He undid the top button of his collar, massaging where the braid rubbed his skin, as the turbodoor slid open behind him.

Bones stepped inside holding two glasses and a bottle of Georgia bourbon. “Need some company?”

“Please,” Kirk said, and took the proffered glass. Bones cracked the top of the bottle open and poured two fingers into both glasses before tapping his against Kirk’s.

“May your marriage go better than mine did,” Bones said.

“Low bar, sir,” Kirk said, and tried to smile as he took a sip.

Bones slowly lowered his glass from his mouth. “A week ago you were chomping at the bit for this, and now you look like you’re walking to your death. What happened?”

“Just nerves, I suppose,” Kirk said. He turned back to his reflection, redid the top button, and turned away again. He knew what he looked like. There was nothing to be done about the uniform now.

Bones smirked and said, “Did you finally realize that you’re going to have to kiss the computer?”

Kirk’s stomach dropped. He looked down. There was silence, as Bones read his face, and then he said, more gently, “Oh, Jimmy.” He took Kirk by the elbow and steered him to the couch, forcing him downward, before sitting next to him. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Kirk said immediately, but Bones just took another sip and waited. “You may have had a point about not getting too close.”

Bones sighed. “Five whole days, huh?”

“Five days for me. Apparently three years for the rest of the crew.” Bones hummed noncommittally, and Kirk narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” Bones said, as full of shit as Kirk had been two minutes earlier. Kirk fixed him with a glare and took a drink.

“I just…” Bones exhaled through his nose. “I’m not exactly surprised, is all. I was the one who sat with you, and then with him, after Deneva, and the trip to Babel, and the whole mess with T’Pring on Vulcan.”

“Damn,” Kirk said.

“If it makes you feel better, there’s probably still one person on the ship immune to seeing whatever nonsense you two’ve got going on.”

Kirk pressed his glass to his forehead, and it cooled his overwarm skin. “Maybe,” he muttered. Bones raised one curious eyebrow at him, and it reminded him of Spock, and that made his chest hurt.

“I kissed him.” The words escaped him involuntarily. Bones sat in stunned silence for a moment before he asked, “And he threw you from his room bodily and declared you a scourge upon his house?”

“No,” Kirk said.

“He hit you?”

“No! Jesus, of course not.”

“Then what did he do?”

Kirk put his glass down on the coffee table so he could hunch forward, pressing his face into his hands. “He kissed me back.”

Bones whistled, long and low, and tapped his glass against his knee. “I’ll be damned. Did hell just freeze over? Is that what I’m feeling?” Kirk didn’t respond. He pressed his hands harder against his eyes until he saw stars in the blackness behind his eyelids. “I don’t understand, Jim. What’s the problem?”

Kirk leaned back again, staring up at the ceiling so he wouldn’t have to meet Bones’s eyes. “It can’t go any further than this. It’s already too much.”

“Why not?”

His eyes hurt. He wished he had slept better. Kirk said quietly, “I can’t let him into my head.” There was a pause, and then he heard Bones’s breath leave his lungs in a whoosh of air as he understood.

“He doesn’t know?”

“Of course not,” Kirk snapped. “It’s bad enough that you had to know. I won’t saddle my Vulcan with a permanent bond to my issues.”

He could see Bones studying him out of the corner of his eye, sad blue eyes locked on his face, evaluating him. Kirk picked up his glass again and drank from it, just to have something to do with his hands.

Then Bones cracked a mostly genuine half-smile and nudged him with his shoulder. “Your Vulcan, huh?”

“Get out of my quarters,” Kirk said, but he felt his own smile growing in return. He drained his glass, put it down, and stood. “I suppose we ought to get going.” Bones clapped him on the back as they passed into the hallway.

“It’ll work out, Jimmy,” he said bracingly. “One way or another.”

“Let’s hope so, or else the two of us will have to start a club for divorcees,” Kirk said, and locked his door behind him. “Oh, I had a question. Have you ever heard of a therapist cross-training as an operations or security officer? Or vice versa?”

“What the devil? No, absolutely not,” Bones said, giving him an odd look. “Why?”

Kirk frowned. That was not the response he had expected. “No reason.”

Bones gave him another curious glance, but he let it drop, and then they were joined in the hallway by chattering, congratulatory crew and swept away.

☆☆☆

Janice and the yeomen had absolutely outdone themselves. Somehow, they had hidden the vast expanses of chrome and white with green, gold, and cream ribbons, and the effect was that of walking through a sunny pine forest on Earth. It smelled of cinnamon, and it seemed as though this was a standing-room-only event, because they had done away entirely with the idea of seating arrangements. The majority of the crew of the Enterprise must have been squeezed onto the observation deck; every department was represented, and Kirk almost felt bad for those who must have drawn the short end of the shift stick. His and Bones’s arrival onto the deck heralded an excited wave of hellos and a few scattered cheers. They headed towards where the rest of the senior officers were milling, minus Spock and Uhura.

“How are you feeling, captain?” Sulu asked, grinning broadly as they approached.

“Just fine, lieutenant,” Kirk said, and Sulu’s excitement was infectious: he smiled back. Then Sulu’s eyes focused on something over Kirk’s shoulder, and he waved.

Kirk turned. The rest of the room, the noise and chatter and decor, faded away into nothing as Spock and Uhura stepped out of the turbolift. Uhura was radiant as always, but even she paled in comparison to Spock in his dress uniform. Kirk’s stomach flipped over as he drank in his first officer, tall and elegant, his dark hair shining under the lights, the blue shirt and gold braid accenting the green of his skin.

“He looks wonderful, captain,” Sulu said softly, by his elbow. “Yes,” Kirk said faintly, floored. Year after year of seeing Spock in uniform, out of uniform, in his Vulcan robes and workout gear and away mission disguises, and he had somehow overlooked exactly how handsome he was. How, exactly, had he missed it? “Yes, he does.”

Spock and Uhura approached, and Uhura kissed him on both cheeks before Spock stepped to his side, running his hand from the base of his neck to his waist. Kirk looked up. He should have sought Spock out, made sure that they were still alright, that Spock hadn’t changed his mind, but Spock met his gaze without hesitation. There was no apprehension on his face, none of the tension in his posture from the night before, just the same stoic surety that Kirk relied on.

Kirk lifted an eyebrow and said, as lightly as he could, “Not getting cold feet, Mr. Spock?” Spock’s hand swept slowly up and down his spine, and with every pass of the contact he felt his nerves settling.

“An oddly illogical question, even for you, captain,” Spock said. “My body is the same temperature it always is.” His hand continued its steady, comforting path. Surely if last night’s kiss had changed anything irreparably, Spock would not be here now, still touching him in public. Maybe everything was alright. Bones exchanged a glance with Uhura and rolled his eyes.

“Glad to hear it,” Kirk said, ignoring Bones to grin at Spock, and then Chekov was fighting his way through the crowd to meet them.

“Ready, sirs?” His smile threatened to crack his face in two.

Kirk looked up at Spock, and Spock inclined his head. “Ready,” Kirk said. Spock’s hand swept down Kirk’s back once more before he clasped them behind him and followed Kirk through the crowd. The crew parted before them as the rest of the senior staff fell in behind them. The amiable din of conversation slowly died out as they processed informally, side by side, down the impromptu aisle of crewmembers.

Scotty stood alone in the front of the room, standing before the enormous transparent wall. Everything beyond Scotty and the ship was just black and stars. The Scotsman held a padd in his hands.

“Ready, gentlemen?” Scotty whispered.

Spock nodded again, and Kirk said, “Certainly, Mr. Scott.” He turned. Scotty stood to his left, the vast majority of the Enterprise’s crew to his right, and Spock stood before him, shoulders square, face unmoving, steady and familiar.

“As astra per amorem, my friends,” Scotty said quietly to them, and then he raised his voice. “Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all ship's masters have had one happy privilege. Please do ignore the fact that I am not the master of this here vessel, but as the captain and his second-in-command are otherwise occupied, well, the privilege has fallen to me.”

Scotty grinned as the audience laughed. “The privilege is that of joining two people in the bonds of matrimony.” Kirk had said these own words tens of times, heard them even more, and yet it had never occurred to him that he might hear them as his own vows one day. Even though the ceremony was purely logistical, though he had no proof of a change between them, he felt the rightness of being married on the Enterprise, by one of his closest friends, with the crew who was his family standing behind him.

It would have been his fairy-tale ending, if not for the slight problem of Spock not really being his.

“And so we are gathered here today with you, Captain James Kirk, and you, Commander S’chn T’gai Spock, in the sight of your fellows, in accordance with our laws and our many beliefs so that you may pledge your love and commitment to each other. You may…” Scotty paused and lowered his voice again. “Are you exchanging rings?”

“Vulcans do not wear rings, commander,” Spock said back quietly.

“Aye, understandable,” Scotty said. He raised his voice. “You may take each other’s hands.” Kirk’s stomach dropped. Spock blinked, too slowly to be anything other than a cover for his surprise. Kirk opened his mouth to say something, anything that would prevent Spock from having to cross another boundary for him---

Spock reached for him, both palms turned upward. Kirk met his eyes, and Spock nodded, nearly imperceptible. The kiss had been one thing. This was another entirely. But the acceptance on Spock’s face had not changed, and after a heartbeat Kirk slid his hands into Spock’s. Spock’s hands were larger than his, fingers curling to rest on the back of his hands. Again Spock closed his eyes briefly, nostrils flaring as he inhaled. But his hands were steady, his palms dry against Kirk’s. Kirk swallowed. Spock’s eyes were warm, the sweet chocolate brown that he had only recently learned to appreciate, and they did not move from Kirk’s.

Scotty continued, voice tight: “Jim, do you take Spock to be your lawfully wedded husband, to live together in marriage, in love and in friendship?” Then he stopped, the flush in his cheeks deepening, and pressed his closed fist to his mouth. His shoulders shook.

“Scotty, are you alright?” Kirk asked, releasing one of Spock’s hands to grab Scotty’s elbow. Scotty looked at him, and Kirk realized that his eyes were filled with tears. Scotty blinked and his tears spilled down over his ruddy cheeks.

“I’m sorry, captain,” Scotty said, wiping his face with the back of one hand. Now that the tears had started, they showed no sign of stopping. “I just can’t believe it. I’ve watched the two of ye follow each other to hell and back, and then I feared ye would be separated…” He sniffled. Kirk released his elbow, a little surprised, genuinely touched.

“Alright,” Scotty said. “Stop lookin’ at me, now, or it’ll never stop.” Kirk grinned and dutifully turned back to Spock, who watched Scotty with a soft look on his face. Kirk offered his hand, and it was Spock who reached across for him this time. Spock’s hand was gentle as it clasped his, and it lit a spark that danced up his arms.

“Jim, do you take Spock to be your lawfully wedded husband, to live together in marriage, in love and in friendship? Will you keep him, and protect him, and stand by his side, in sickness and in health, for better and for worse, against all dangers, as long as you live?”

Kirk had kept him, and protected him, and stood by his side for years, without ever interrogating what had driven him to do so. But he felt something now that he had never before named aloud, and it filled his chest with something bright and burning. “I will,” Kirk said as Spock held his gaze. Like he was listening to something beyond Scotty, Spock cocked his head to the side slightly, and the pressure of his hands on Kirk’s increased.

“Spock, do you take Jim to be your lawfully wedded husband, to live together in marriage, in love and in friendship? Will you keep him, and protect him, and stand by his side, in sickness and in health, for better and for worse, against all dangers, as long as you live?”

“I will,” Spock said, and his voice was deep and sure, ringing out through the observatory. He was staring at Kirk like he had never seen him before, and it took all of Kirk’s courage not to look down, to hide from that gaze.

“Then it is, truly, my deepest honor,” Scotty said, his voice wobbling, “to announce you married. You may kiss your groom, if Vulcans do that sort of thing.” Kirk heard whoops, cheers, assorted sniffles and claps from behind him as Spock released him.

He reached up instead, taking Kirk’s face in both hands as he took one step forward, his thumbs tracing Kirk’s cheekbones. Kirk grasped Spock’s wrist with one hand, his thumb rubbing the back of Spock’s, as his other hand found Spock’s waist. His bones felt deceptively delicate beneath the skin, and Kirk felt the dry softness of his palms against his cheeks. He tilted his head back to keep Spock’s gaze. The thin line of Spock’s lips parted as he leaned in, and something sharp and electric arced between them as Kirk closed his eyes.

Spock kissed him. His anxious hesitation from the night before had vanished entirely, leaving only the strength of his hands and the press of his lips against Kirk’s. Kirk pulled him closer, sliding his hand up to where he could feel Spock’s heart thumping in his side, and kissed him back.

Spock pulled away without releasing Kirk’s face, and when Kirk opened his eyes again, he saw something new and unfamiliar and molten in Spock’s. Time froze around them, leaving them in a bubble where their faces were close enough to touch, hands wrapped around hands, breath meeting between them. For a second, Kirk wanted to pull him in and kiss him again, and he thought that Spock might have let him.

Then the crash of a roaring audience, his crew, stamping and shouting and screaming, broke over them like ocean waves. Spock released his face, dropping his hands to Kirk’s shoulders and then running them down his arms. He stopped at Kirk’s wrist, and Kirk disengaged them to wrap his arm through Spock’s, linking them without risking the contact of their hands again. Scotty slung an arm over his shoulders, and the formation and the patience of the audience broke, and they were swarmed.

In the crowd, amidst the hugs and handshakes and back slaps, he saw Janice and her army of yeomen. She wove through the crowd to meet him.

“What did you think, captain?” Her beehive was immaculate, rebraided for the occasion.

“Everything was just lovely, Janice,” he said.

“We should have weddings more often,” she said gleefully, and he saw two of the youngest yeomen---they couldn’t have been more than a year out of the Academy---high-five.

“I’ll see what I can do about that,” he said, laughing, and she vanished into the crowd. The mass of bodies buoyed them out of the observatory, leaving only a few stragglers behind standing by the windows, and down to the crew mess, which was significantly larger than the officers’ mess. Janice and her minions had decorated there as well, with the same colors of streamers and ribbons. The crowd was enormous, almost overwhelming, but Spock stayed within arm’s reach of Kirk even as he was waylaid by what seemed to be the entirety of the science division. Bones appeared by his elbow with two glasses of champagne. Kirk took his and Bones clinked their glasses together.

“I gotta say, Jimmy,” Bones murmured in his ear as the party swirled around them. Uhura requisitioned Spock and dragged him to the other side of the room, where she and Sulu talked at him animatedly. “That was one hell of a kiss. And it did not look one-sided.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kirk muttered into his glass. Bones laughed and settled next to him.

“Fine, kid,” Bones said, and he and Kirk watched Spock nod once to Uhura and Sulu and then head back across the room towards them. “But as you make, or don’t make, these huge, crazy, life-shaping decisions for you and him… don’t you think he should get a say in them, too?”

Kirk turned to respond, to rebut his point, to argue that it was better for both of them, but all his words dried up as Spock, in his dress uniform, under the dimmed and sparkling lights, came to a stop in front of them.

“Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. “What can I do for you?”

“We have been tasked by Nyota and Lieutenant Sulu,” Spock said.

Kirk blinked. “Tasked to do what?” The crowd behind Spock hushed, and Kirk heard the strum of guitar strings.

“To dance,” Spock said simply, and with a surprisingly courteous gesture he steered Kirk to an empty space on the floor as Sulu finished tuning. He looked up at Uhura, standing next to him, and began plucking a sweet, complicated pattern. After a few measures, Uhura began to sing. Kirk and Spock stood facing each other, close enough to touch, almost alone in the crowded room.

“A first dance?”

“It would seem so, captain.”

“I’ve already taken too many liberties with you, Spock,” Kirk said quietly.

Spock said, “Then one more will make no difference.” He placed one hand on Kirk’s waist and held the other aloft. Kirk slid his arm over Spock’s, hooking his hand over his shoulder, and placed his other hand in Spock’s. They fit together like machinery. They swayed as Uhura sang, high and clear over Sulu’s steady strumming and plucking on the guitar, and Spock’s body was warm in his arms. They rocked side to side in a gentle circle, and their orbit around each other collapsed until they were chest to chest.

“Congratulations, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said into his shoulder. “You won’t be leaving the Enterprise anytime soon.” Spock hummed in agreement, and Kirk felt it reverberate against him.

“Thank you, captain,” Spock said, and spun them more intentionally in a broader circle before returning to their rock and sway. “For everything.”

“I wasn’t going to let them take you if you didn’t want to go,” Kirk said. “And you didn’t want to go. But I have to ask, Spock.” He inhaled, and then lost his nerve.

“You can ask me anything,” Spock said. His breath gusted against Kirk’s ear and gave him goosebumps under his jacket. Kirk tried to hide his shiver.

“If you knew then how all this would happen, would you still agree to do this?”

Spock stopped swaying, his arms tightening around Kirk as he looked down. His eyebrows pinched together for one painful second before he picked up his motion exactly on beat, as though he had never stopped moving at all.

“Yes,” Spock murmured in his ear. His mouth was nearly brushing the shell of Kirk’s ear, jaw to cheekbone. “I do not regret anything.”

He ached with wanting, and with Spock’s arm around him and his hand in his, he didn’t have the strength to step back. Surely there couldn’t be too much harm in one dance. For a few measures of Uhura’s song, he allowed himself to lean entirely against Spock, who only tightened his grip on his waist and swayed them in lazy circles. Desire and comfort and guilt warred within him, a painful three-way tug of war that he could only hope Spock didn’t understand. But the song ended on one high, strong note like a star that Sulu’s guitar danced beneath, and then it was over. Kirk dropped his hands. Spock stepped away. They turned with the rest of the partygoers to clap for Sulu and Uhura, who took a bow together.

“Ad astra per amorem,” Uhura called to them over the applause, as Sulu leaned his guitar carefully against the wall of the mess. Then they rejoined the party. Someone replaced Kirk’s champagne glass in his hand, and Uhura returned with a cocktail for herself and a mug of cocoa for Spock.

“Beautiful, Nyota,” Spock said, and raised his glass to her. She dropped a little half-curtsey and smiled, and she turned to Sulu as well for him to bask in their attention.

“Sulu, I didn’t know you played guitar so well,” Kirk said, and grinned as Sulu abandoned all pretexts of modesty to talk about it. As the hubbub of the party ebbed and swelled around him, he listened to Uhura, Sulu and Spock talk about music, and the guilty edge of his feelings dulled as Spock tapped his shoulder, or brushed his arm, or favored him with one of his secretive eyes-only smiles. Spock was his husband, tied to the Enterprise as effectively as Kirk was, and he said that he had no regrets. That was good enough for Kirk.

An hour after the first dance, Janice appeared from the darkness with two padds in her hands. Uhura gaped at her in dismay.

“Janice, seriously? Work? Tonight?”

“Fun work,” Janice said, smiling cheekily at Uhura. “Captain, I thought, given the distance between here and HQ, and the time-sensitive nature of the issue, that you might want Form 3102-B sent out as soon as possible.”

“What would we do without you, Janice?” Kirk smiled and held his hand out for the padd. He skimmed the form. She had filled out the marriage certificate with the same meticulous level of detail that she always applied, and the only blank spaces were his and Spock’s signatures.

Spock, leaning over his shoulder to read along, asked, “What are these attachments?”

Janice winked at them. “The form requests any relevant additional documentation. I thought that since you were so secretive about it for years, a little extra proof couldn’t hurt.”

Kirk tapped on the attachments. The first one was a holo that someone must have taken during their dance: it was focused on the two of them, and everyone else around them was dark and shadowy. They were pressed together, as close as close could be, with Kirk’s head against Spock’s shoulder and Spock’s head turned towards his, as if he would press his lips to his temple.

“Charming,” Uhura said, coming around his other side to peer down. Kirk swiped to the next attachment and froze. Their wedding kiss was immortalized before him, and it was so sweet that it made him ache. Spock’s hands bracketed his face, and his hand wrapped around Spock’s wrist and rested on his chest. There wasn’t room to slide a playing card between them. It was a kiss that made them look like they were in love.

“Thank you, yeoman,” Kirk said, looking up at her. “These are perfect. Do you, ah…?” He trailed off as she held out the datapen that she had already been armed with. He signed his name to the form and held it out to Spock. Spock took the pen and signed before handing both the padd and the pen back to Janice.

“This one is for you both,” she said, handing him the second padd she had been holding. “Just a little something we put together on short notice. It’s just, we never see either of you taking holos, and the rest of us do.”

Kirk tapped open the padd, and a folder full of holos opened. He scanned through the first few. They were frequently blurry, or out of focus, clearly clipped from larger holos of other people, but it was a collection of him and Spock. Spock flipped through several of them.

“Thank you, Janice,” Kirk said, looking up from the pictures. “This is… this is very nice.”

“You’re welcome, captain,” she said, beaming at them both, and then she turned and marched away with the signed 3102-B in her capable hands.

As time passed, the mess slowly emptied. The ops team dragged Sulu back to his guitar, and then Uhura wandered over to join them, and soon the remaining members of the party had gathered around to dance or sing or drink whatever they could pull from the replicators. Kirk perched himself on a table on the edge of the circle with his eyes closed and drank in the sounds of it. He was off-shift tomorrow, and he was looking forward to dropping into bed and sleeping until he woke up naturally. Spock tapped his shoulder lightly to signal his departure before heading to Uhura, bending down to talk to her.

“Jimmy,” a voice said, in front of him, and his eyes flew open.

A younger man: floppy brown hair, nervous brown eyes, familiar heart-shaped face. Despite the years, Kirk couldn’t stop himself from superimposing the face of the child he had known over the man before him.

“Lieutenant,” Kirk said, a warning in his voice. Kevin looked between him and Spock, returning to reclaim his spot by Kirk on the table.

“I’m sorry,” Kevin whispered. “I know. I know. But I just wanted--- I had to tell you. How glad I am for you.” His eyes darted to Spock before meeting Kirk’s again. “For both of you. You deserve this more than anyone else I know.” Spock leaned against the table beside Kirk, placing his hand on his back.

“Alright,” Kevin said. “That’s all. Congratulations, captain.” He nodded to Spock, nervously smiled at Kirk, and walked away, sticking his hands in his pockets.

Kirk watched him go. Three years of serving on the same crew, three years of studiously avoiding each other, and tonight Kevin Riley broke the distance between them, just to tell him that he was happy for him.

“Captain,” Spock said, his voice quiet and his hand unmoving on Kirk’s back. Kirk jumped, the interruption ending his reverie.

“Yes?”

“Why is your heart racing?”

Kirk leaned forward, elbows on his knees, breaking Spock’s contact with him, and put on a roguish smile. “Can’t a man be excited on his wedding night?”

Spock frowned slightly at him, but returned his hand to the table. “Indeed, captain.” He paused, inhaled, like he was going to ask Kirk something else, something he knew he didn’t want to answer. Kirk interrupted him.

“Question for you,” he said. Spock paused, turning towards him, attention now undivided. “Have you ever heard of someone being listed both in Medical or Science and operations?”

Spock blinked. “No, captain. Science, perhaps. I myself have some operations certifications. But not Medical.”

“Why not?”

“The training is too disparate. The formal education for Starfleet doctors, nurses, and other medical staff is too rigorous and specific to allow for pursuing additional coursework.” He paused again. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Kirk said, but something was unsettled deep in his stomach. “Just curious.” He forced another smile to his face and said, “Shall we join the singalong?”

☆☆☆

Kirk and Spock’s footsteps echoed in sync down the empty hallway, the only other noise the ever-present hum beeping of the ship itself.

“A married man, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. “How do you feel?”

Spock gave him a sardonic eyebrow that told him exactly how he might have felt about that question, but he said, tone serious, “I am appreciative of the support of the crew. I am grateful to be staying. And I believe that my mother will be glad to no longer have to avoid Starfleet Comms so aggressively.”

Kirk laughed. “Hey, wait a second. How did you tell your mother about this?”

Spock settled his shoulders back, hands clasped behind. “I did not.”

Kirk spluttered at him, his steps stuttering, as Spock continued down the hallway. “You didn’t tell your parents?”

“No, captain,” Spock said. He glanced at Kirk. “Did you tell yours?”

Checkmate, game to Spock. “No,” he admitted. They arrived at Kirk’s door, and Spock stopped with him.

“I believe the human phrase is, ‘I owe you one,’” Spock said.

“You’ve had my back a thousand times,” Kirk said, one hand on his door, turning to face Spock. “Just returning the favor.”

The gold braid of Spock’s dress uniform glinted in the harsh fluorescent lighting. Kirk’s eyes followed the curve of it around his throat, down the long line of his torso, before he stopped himself from giving Spock a complete and hungry once-over. He snapped his eyes back up to Spock’s gaze instead. Spock, amused, unfooled, and watching him carefully, cocked his head to the side. He was standing too close. His eyes were too warm. He smelled too good, and his shoulders were too broad, and god, Kirk wanted him so badly that his teeth ached.

“Right,” Kirk said, intelligently. “Good night, then, Mr. Spock.” He unlocked his door, and it swooshed open beside him.

“Good night, captain,” Spock said, the gentle amusement still present, and Kirk only got one second to stare desperately at his back in his dress uniform as he walked away before Kirk’s door slid shut and hid him from view. Damn his hyper-observant, touch-telepathic first officer-turned-husband. Damn himself for developing feelings for the one person he would never be able to hide it from, especially if that person kept taking his hands.

And damn Yeoman Rand for handing him a padd full of irrefutable evidence. He pulled it from his pocket before releasing himself from the tight confines of his dress uniform, tossing it onto the floor of the closet to become tomorrow’s problem. He stepped into clean boxers and crawled into bed, laying on his stomach and propping the padd up on the pillow in front of him.

“You’re a masochist,” he told himself as he tapped the padd awake. But that didn’t stop him from tapping on the first picture to study it. This had been a picture of somebody else’s moment, at some point. But Janice had cropped it to just a pair of figures in the background: himself and Spock, seated in one of the rec halls, a chessboard between them. His head was thrown back in laughter, Spock’s eyebrows pinched together in dismay, and his arm was a blur in the air where he had just plucked one of the pieces off the board.

The next picture had again been of someone else. But he stood with both hands on Spock’s shoulders, a huge grin on his face. Spock’s expression was tolerant, warm, allowing himself to be shaken by his captain. Another picture: Spock handing Kirk some exotic flower on an away mission that, for once, had not precipitated a crisis via the discovery of an unknown people. It had been warm and sunny on a Class M planet, and in the picture Kirk was taking the flower from Spock’s hands with an expression that he didn’t recognize on his own face; something intimate and soft. He flicked through photo after photo of himself and Spock, in contact, laughing, smiling, standing shoulder to shoulder, frequently blurry but always together, until he reached a collection of photos that people must have taken earlier that evening and sent immediately to Janice.

His heart leapt into his throat. Someone had taken a picture of him at the moment that Spock walked into the observatory. His eyes were wide open, locked on Spock, his cheeks were flushed, and there was a genuine smile on his face. He looked beatific. He flicked through the rest of the wedding photos: him staring at Spock entirely too much, their kiss, their first dance, and then there was only one more. They had been standing in a loose circle with the rest of the senior staff, and Kirk had been laughing at something that someone else had said, leaning sideways to press his shoulder against Spock’s. But Spock wasn’t laughing: he was looking down at Kirk. He looked at Kirk like he was precious, like he was prized above all.

He had never seen Spock look at anything or anyone like that. He had never seen himself look so happy. He closed the padd and flopped it facedown onto the bed before pressing his own face into the mattress. Behind his eyelids he saw a highlight reel of his own memories, influenced and reframed by the holos Janice had collected for them. For years he had sought Spock out, relied on his counsel, cherished his friendship, and the brick wall that he had built long ago between his brain and his heart had let him pretend that friendship was all that it was.

The threat of losing Spock had pulled the blinders off. He couldn’t even fathom being who he was as the captain without Spock at his shoulder, tempering his impulses. But he was realizing now that it went deeper than that. The captain of the Enterprise needed Spock because he was intelligent, courageous, loyal. The man who was the captain needed Spock because he was in love with him.

Kirk opened the padd again to look at the picture, to study the way Spock looked at him. He fell asleep with the padd under his hand and the lights still on.

#spirk #my writing #k/s #kirk/spock #spirk fan fiction #k/s fan fiction #kirk/spock fan fiction #regulatory relations

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indeedcaptain · 27 days

Text

Regulatory Relations, chapter 16: The Admiral

Hello everyone I hope you are doing well and happy April!

Wahoo, this story broke 100,000 words with this chapter! That's an insane number to think about.

Chapter warnings: graphic depictions of violence :)

Also posted on AO3 here!

☆☆☆

Kirk materialized on a dusty, paved track in the center of what could charitably be described as the middle of nowhere. He coughed as Spock and April materialized beside him, and they moved out of the way as the security teams appeared, one after the other.

The area of Kindinos VI that they transported to was near colorless, infinite shades of gray-brown stretching to the staggering mountains breaking the near horizon. The star that served as the center of this solar system was a pale yellow dot in a pale gray sky, and though the climate could not be classified as cold, Kirk wasn’t sure he would consider it warm, either.

It was a profoundly unfriendly planet, and as he looked around, he noted uneasily that there was no sign of the miners that had called for their aid. The land around them was uneven but for the paved road leading to the mountain to the east, rising and falling sharply in a pattern like moguls on a ski slope. The security officers unholstered their phasers, setting them to stun and creating a periphery around April, Kirk, and Spock, and the only sound except their footsteps was the familiar humming of Spock’s tricorder.

Spock frowned slightly down at the screen as he turned slowly in a circle, scanning in every direction.

“Where are we, Mr. Spock?”

“It seems as though we are in the middle of the settlement, captain,” Spock said, and he lifted his eyes from the tricorder screen to look over the rolling micro-hills of the land before them.

“But where is it?”

Spock glanced over his shoulder at Kirk, and Kirk nodded before he approached one of the hills warily. Two security officers flanked him as Kirk and April followed a few steps behind, and Spock crouched next to the crest of the hill.

He reached out and yanked on something set into the ground, and stepped back as a hatch swung open, revealing a dark hole in the ground. He looked around him curiously, and stomped his foot: the sound his heel made against the ground revealed that he was standing not on hard-packed earth, but dust-coated plex. Gesturing to one of the security officers, who pulled a flashlight from his belt and flicked it on, Spock and the officer crouched again next to the open hatch and peered down into the darkness.

The other security officers broke off in groups of three and four, knocking on the other hatches set into the ground and pulling them open. Kirk came up behind Spock and leaned over his shoulder. The security officer--- a young human woman called Jackson--- shone the flashlight down into the hole. Buried beneath the ground was a self-contained unit, two meters by two meters, within which rested a single bed, a small desk, and shelving built into the walls approximating a kitchenette and bathroom. The bed was unmade, and a single, empty aluminum cup sat on the table. Lieutenant Jackson shone the flashlight around the border of the space, and the shaky light revealed that pieces of paper or plex had been stuck to the walls.

“Hold there,” Kirk said softly, and Jackson held the light steady on one of the pieces of paper. It was slightly yellowed, a little dusty, but it showed a simplistic drawing of a house, with two big stick figures and three small stick figures drawn in front of it. Kirk’s heart sank. Someone’s child had drawn them this picture, and they had taken it to this job with them, and kept it where they could see it at all times. He glanced at Spock, who scanned the little room with his tricorder but met his eyes.

“They may be in the mine itself, captain,” Spock said, and he and Jackson stood. Kirk straightened as well.

“Did you get any life signs? From any of these little bunkers?”

“Uncertain, captain. The scanner was unable to penetrate whatever matter makes up the soil of this planet. But my readings show a larger shelter just beyond our sightline,” Spock said, and indicated westward, in the opposite direction of the highest peak of the mountain range. “A larger domicile, or perhaps a central gathering place.”

“Alright,” Kirk said, and with a gesture recalled the drifting security teams back to his side. “We’ll split into three. Spock, April, and I will head to the larger building, see if anyone is there. Team A, open as many of these hatches as you can and search for anyone within who may be in need of acute medical assistance. Close them up when you’re done, though, no need to let the dust into these people’s things. Team B, head to the entrance to the mine and see if there are survivors there.” His people nodded around him.

“Remember, we don’t want to come in with accusations. We’re just here to check everything over because the comms went down. We’re here to help. Check in with the ship every---”

Tickatickatickatick. Kirk stopped as the noise echoed into earshot, drifting towards them over the dusty plain. Jackson turned over her shoulder, looking in the direction of the mountains, but nothing seemed to have changed. The ticking noise grew louder, and Spock started off suddenly towards the central road they had originally landed on. They followed Spock as he strode purposefully onto the road, and then scuffed at the dirt with his boot.

The dust cleared easily away, revealing a magnetic track set into the earth. He looked up, along the road, as a metal cart rolled into view from beyond the curve of the road, where the rise and fall of the bunker-hills had hidden it. Slowly it tickatickaticked down the road, hovering above the metal strip, the rotating magnets set into the cart itself scraping and shifting as it pulled itself along. Kirk and the away team watched as it trundled on its way, empty but for the dirt that had settled into the grooves of it, and passed them to continue through the wasteland.

“Perhaps the larger building is a storage location for the dilithium before it is shipped out,” Spock said quietly, as he watched the cart disappear around another bend.

“Maybe,” Kirk said, and when the cart had vanished from view he turned back to the away team. “Check in with us or the ship every thirty minutes. Dismissed.” The officers nodded, and team A peeled off to open hatches as team B started down the long and desolate road.

“Terrible day for a walk,” Kirk said as he, Spock, and April turned the other direction, towards where the other building waited for them. The wind had picked up around them, tossing the fine dirt in every direction, and there wasn’t a single tree to break the power of the gusts.

“I believe that they will be able ‘hitch a ride,’ as you might say,” Spock said, and they had only taken a few more steps when the tickatickatick began again. The cart lurched towards them once more, returning down its path from the mine to wherever its dropoff station might be and back again. They stepped aside to let it pass.

“I hope they catch it,” Kirk said. “No use walking if there’s a perfectly good cart going that way anyway.” He turned back to their road and continued down it. “What do you think of all this, Admiral?”

April walked alongside him, dark eyes scanning the horizon around them. “I don’t like that we haven’t seen a single person,” he said, and he gently palmed his phaser. “Alive or dead.” Kirk hummed in agreement, and Spock followed the two of them a few paces behind, sweeping from standing between him and April to fanning out beside him. The Spock rule, Kirk thought with a jolt. He hadn’t seen it in action since he learned its name. Spock had always hovered on away missions, orbiting him, but he had never thought anything of it until it had been brought to his attention. He smiled at his pacing husband before returning his attention to the road, and to April. When was the last time he had been on an away mission, had to make life-or-death split-second decisions? His hand on his weapon was making Kirk nervous.

They walked for another twenty minutes before a huge, unnatural curve broke the flat horizon. It rose up before them as they approached; it was a building made out of the same material and in the same design that the hatches and the bunkers were, but it stood twenty feet tall and double that wide. Kirk turned back to look over his shoulder, and then look around him.

“Mr. Spock,” he said quietly, returning his attention to the building. “Is there anything approaching this size, anywhere else within tricorder range?”

Spock turned slowly, scanning in every direction, before he shook his head. Kirk took in the shape of the building, the positioning of its details: there was a small rectangular door set dead center, with what looked like opaque windows alongside it, with a second row of windows higher above.

“This doesn’t look like a community center to me,” Kirk said, and Spock met his eyes as he spoke. “It looks like a house.” Spock considered it, as April’s breath left his lungs harshly. Kirk looked over his shoulder again at all the tiny, one-room bunkers, and looked back at the comparatively enormous structure. “Admiral, why did you call Dextrum’s owner unpleasant?”

April had pulled his phaser out, holding it loosely in both hands down in front of him, and he gazed over the building in front of them with a curl to his lip. “He’s a criminal ten times over, but we haven’t been able to pin him with anything. Then he showed up with proof that the government of Kindinos II sold him this planet, because they couldn’t be bothered to mine the dilithium themselves, and he badgered us into the worst deal we’ve ever cut just because he caught us at a bad time and we needed the dilithium for the new ships. He’s brash, and arrogant, and I have been waiting for something like this to happen for a year now.”

There was only one person that Kirk could think of who could possibly have made such a name for himself and pulled off such a ridiculous gambit, but there was no sense in focusing on that question now. “If I were a miner, doing the hard labor of pulling this rock out of the earth, and I live in a one-room hole in the ground and the big boss lives in a veritable mansion…” He trailed off, shaking his head. Spock’s hypothesis from the night before seemed more and more likely.

“Any signs of life inside, Spock?”

“None, captain.”

“We’re going in.” Kirk strode to the front door, Spock on his heels, and pulled the latch set into the metal of the door.

It swung open easily, revealing only darkness within. Spock flicked on the light set into his tricorder, and it shakily illuminated an entrance hallway with arches leading into other rooms on either side. Spock insinuated himself between Kirk and the doorway, and then crossed the threshold first. One hand floated towards his phaser, and the other held his tricorder light out. Kirk followed him in, and April brought up the rear. The hallway was garishly decorated, apparent even in the single weak light source. Enormous oil paintings of buxom women and exotic locales hung on every wall, and their footsteps were muffled by an oversized rug that stretched out into the darkness beyond them. Every step released a puff of the brown-gray dust that coated everything and the vibrant colors of the paintings were deadened by it. Spock turned curiously into one of the side rooms and aimed his light at the windows.

“I believe windows have been entirely coated by this dust,” Spock said.

“Cozy,” Kirk said, and he and Spock abandoned the room to continue deeper into the house. They passed two rooms with overstuffed couches built for lounging, and one with a dining room table and seats for twenty. The only place the dust had been disturbed was the head of the table, where one person had put a plate and glass and then removed them. April trailed behind them, peering dismissively at the evidence of a man who was unaccustomed to the hard life of living on an undeveloped planet.

Further in the house, there was a rickety metal staircase spiraling upwards, and the entrance to a kitchen.

“Choose your own adventure,” Kirk said, and peered upward into the darkness as Spock pointed their flashlight up into the second floor. April glanced up as well before he turned his head sharply, narrowing his eyes at the darkness hiding the details of the kitchen.

“Point that light over here, Mr. Spock,” he said, and Spock obliged. April gestured at the dust with his free hand. “Look at this--- it’s been disturbed more recently than the rest.” And so it was; there was a line in the fine, gritty dirt that was a slightly different color, as though something had been dragged across the floor and then the reclaiming dust had done its best to hide the evidence. The fine hairs on the back of Kirk’s neck stood at attention. He abandoned the staircase to follow Spock and April into the kitchen. Spock wielded the light as April followed the trail through the dust, ignoring the marble countertop of the island. But Kirk noted the island, and the expensive shine of the plates sitting in the open cabinets, and the heft of the ceramic utensil rest that he lifted off what looked like an induction stovetop. Someone had brought all the comforts of home to this mining town, and then had refused to share with his neighbors. Kirk banked the fire burning angrily in the pit of his stomach and turned to pay attention to Spock and April.

There was a door in the wall in the corner of the room, and April opened it as he raised his phaser. Kirk blinked, and for a moment Tommy looked over his shoulder at him as they both stared down into a cellar that smelled of death and rot, and then he blinked again. Tommy wasn’t there. April and Spock stood at the yawning threshold and stared down a set of untrustworthy-looking stairs that descended into pitch blackness. Kirk swallowed his sudden nausea and stepped up behind them.

“Cellar?”

“Perhaps,” Spock said, and he must have heard something in Kirk’s voice because without looking at him he reached back one hand with two fingers extended and stroked them along the side of Kirk’s useless hand before bringing it back to his tricorder. He aimed the little machine down the stairs and frowned. “But unlikely. This staircase leads down into a tunnel that extends further than a cellar or basement would.”

“How far?”

Spock looked back at him, liquid-dark eyes shining in the dim light. “At least two thousand meters beyond the boundary of this house.” The sense of unease that had dripped into his stomach at the disturbed dust intensified. He locked eyes with Spock, who gave one sharp nod, before he turned to April. “Admiral, I really appreciate you coming down here. But I don’t think the owner is still here, and I can’t guarantee your safety if we go underground.”

“Your concern is noted, captain, but I am going with you.” April’s tone brooked no argument, and his eyes were hard like flint. Kirk read his resolve in the lines of his face, and a level of apprehension that he didn’t understand, and he turned away from him and Spock to flip open his communicator.

“Captain Kirk to the Enterprise, come in, Enterprise.”

“I read you, captain, this is Enterprise.” Uhura’s voice came immediately, barely crackling over the comms.

“Checking in. We’re fine, but we’ve found something underground that needs looking at, so we’re going in. Any news from the other teams?”

“They called in just a few moments ago. Nothing yet, but they’re both fine.”

“Good, good. If we miss our check-in, ask Giotto to send another team down. We’re going beneath the big house.”

“Acknowledged, captain.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. Kirk out.” He flipped his comm shut and turned to his companions. “Once more unto the breach, gentlemen?”

April exhaled heavily through his nose, the only sign he gave that he was tired of Kirk, and allowed Spock to cross through the doorway first with the flashlight before he followed down the stairs. Kirk brought up the rear, following the light bouncing down into the dark, and tried to remind himself that there would not be metallic blue sludge waiting for him at the bottom.

☆☆☆

There was no sludge at the bottom; only a long strip of the same magnetic rail that they had seen on the road outside, and dunes of the same dirt that coated everything along the sides of the tunnel. The tunnel itself was tall enough to stand up straight in, but not wide enough to walk shoulder to shoulder, and the walls were carved directly into the earth. Kirk frowned as he dragged one finger along them. The dirt was silken, easily malleable; he didn’t trust the structural integrity of their underground avenue.

Spock walked ahead with the flashlight, but every ten steps Kirk saw the whites of his eyes glint in the heavy dark as he glanced back, as if to assure himself that he had not lost Kirk to the black tunnel. April walked between them, phaser held in one hand, eyes trained on the horizon of Spock’s light ahead of them. They walked through the tunnel for fifteen minutes; long enough that Kirk was beginning to lose track of the minutes, and the monotony of the path was easing his nerves.

Then Spock halted, raising one hand in a symbol for them to stop behind him. He stood stock-still, head cocked slightly to turn one ear down the tunnel, and Kirk could see the tendons in his neck in shadowy relief as he listened.

April opened his mouth, half a syllable emerging, before Spock whispered, “Hush,” and Kirk saw his stance shift from vaguely curious to high alert. He turned back to them, dropping his voice so low that Kirk could barely hear him, and said, “I hear voices ahead. At least ten, possibly more.”

“The miners,” Kirk whispered back, and Spock nodded.

“I heard one say ‘dilithium.’” Kirk gestured for Spock to continue on carefully. He glanced at April as Spock faced forward again, and blinked. For half of one second, before the light shifted and the moment vanished, Kirk could have sworn that April’s face was drawn down with a profound sadness. But when April met his eyes, the expression was gone, as if it had never been.

April nodded, and they followed Spock further down the tunnel. They crept forward more carefully, placing their feet gently, and Kirk unholstered his phaser to set it to ‘stun’ and keep it in his hand. Spock drew his, holding his tricorder in one hand and the phaser in the other. The tunnel started to grow wider, and as they continued, Kirk’s less-sensitive human ears began to pick up voices from further down.

He leaned forward and tapped Spock’s shoulder to get his attention, and when he had it, he purposefully reholstered his weapon. He stood for a moment as Spock analyzed him, considering his decision, before he decreed it logical and put his own away as well. April watched both of them unhappily.

“We don’t want to create a problem where there isn’t one,” Kirk whispered as quietly as he could.

“I feel certain there is already a problem,” April whispered back, and he kept his out. Kirk glanced at it. He didn’t like it, but again he was outranked.

The tunnel continued to widen, and the far-off voices grew closer and louder, and once he was able to do so he stepped up to walk next to Spock. Spock glanced sideways at him, and adjusted himself so that he was just slightly in front of Kirk, his shoulder edged in front. April walked alongside them, his shoulders square, eyes sweeping ahead of them. The tunnel curved sideways, and as they rounded the edge, they saw something up ahead: light. Spock dimmed the tricorder’s little light and turned to April and Kirk.

“There is a group of people approximately sixty meters ahead,” he said lowly. “We ought to proceed with caution. We do not want to startle these people into believing that we are a threat.”

Kirk nodded, and they proceeded. Closer and closer they crept, until the murmuring voices coalesced into individual words---packing, and careful, and dilithium, and mine---and the light ahead grew brighter and brighter. Ten meters ahead Kirk saw a standalone light source--- quite similar to the ones that they kept on the Enterprise for when they needed to provide high visibility on a mission--- facing away from them. He pulled up into the last patch of shadow with Spock, clinging close to the wall for any cover it would provide.

“Alright,” he said, and turned to April to discuss their approach. But April stuck his phaser back into its holster and stepped ahead. “Admiral!”

April ignored him. The harsh industrial lighting gleamed off his bald head as he walked straight into the center of the cavern that yawned open in front of them.

Kirk hissed, “Admiral!” He glanced despairingly behind him, back into the safety of the dark tunnel, and froze. A shadowy figure emerged from behind them. Spock slid between Kirk and the figure, drawing his phaser in one subtle, fluid motion. Kirk drew his own, pressing his shoulder to Spock’s, turning sideways to cover their backs as his heartbeat picked up. From the corner of his eye he could see the shadow of movement of others along the perimeter of the cavern, circling them.

“The admiral,” he murmured to Spock, and he felt, more than he saw, Spock’s answering nod. No one had fired on April yet, or even acknowledged his appearance in the room, and he was looking around at whatever he could see from his central position, but Kirk could still see movement---

April turned back to them, a curious expression on his face. The figure stepped out of the shadows and into the unforgiving light.

He was not a miner.

The world stopped spinning beneath them. Kirk’s heart stopped beating. His blood froze in his veins as he stared at a man in a uniform that he had not seen outside of his nightmares for almost twenty years. The Section 31 agent only spared them one glance as he strode from the tunnel behind them, a box clasped tightly in his gloved hands, and towards April in the center.

Kirk staggered forward one step, raising his phaser to protect April, to stun the agent---

“Good morning, sir,” the agent said as he passed April, and April inclined his head in greeting before clasping his hands behind his back and turning back to them. Kirk stood frozen, as stuck as if his feet had been cemented to the ground. April’s eyes flicked between Kirk and Spock, who sidled around him now to keep his body between Kirk’s and the agent’s, and he sighed.

“God damn it. So you both know.” He unclasped his hands to pinch the bridge of his nose between two fingers. The words echoed through Kirk’s head, shattering senselessly against the inside of his brain. April stared down at the ground, hand hiding his expression, before looking back up at them with undisguised grief.

“I tried everything in my power to keep us from this point,” April said quietly. “And you fought me every step of the way, Kirk. Why couldn’t you stand down?”

April knew.

April was part of it. April worked for Section 31. As a burning spear of betrayal struck through his stomach, and his heart hammered in his chest, the cold glassy pane of disassociation slid down over Kirk’s thoughts. Spock’s head twitched from side to side next to him, brown eyes assessing the cavern around them, the tunnel they’d left behind. Kirk slowly increased the power on his phaser by one level and gripped it tighter.

“That is not a wise idea, captain,” April said, glancing down at his hands. Kirk’s knuckles were white. Spock moved sideways, putting himself one step ahead of Kirk’s shoulder, his posture sliding from upright and stoic to that of a predator in the span of a heartbeat. Now that they were standing in the light, Kirk could see: a full team of soldiers in those black uniforms, gloved hands passing securely latched boxes from person to person, taking them somewhere beyond the edge of the cavern. “You will be coming with us regardless of your actions, so I recommend that you don’t do anything too brash.”

“Like hell we will,” Kirk said, and kept his phaser where it was. From over April’s shoulder he could see more soldiers approaching, and one from over Spock’s.

“Disarm them, please,” April said, and the soldier closest to Spock broke into a run. Spock slapped his phaser back into its holster and ran to intercept him. So fast that Kirk could barely track his movement, Spock shoved the man’s phaser-hand upward, grabbed the weapon, and tossed it behind Kirk where it slid up against the wall. He twisted the man’s arm behind his head. When his back was to him, his other hand dropped down onto the crook of his neck and pinched. The man slumped to the ground, incapacitated, and Spock spun with a snarl to the other two soldiers as they approached, more cautiously than the first had.

April raised one hand, and the two soldiers halted. “Mr. Spock, reports of your pacifism seem to be greatly exaggerated. But I think you’ll find that standing down would be more… logical.” He nodded to Kirk, and Spock’s head snapped to him. They both looked down at the small red dot that had appeared on Kirk’s uniform shirt, hovering over his heart.

Kirk looked up, past April, and saw a woman across the cavern from him, plasma rifle balanced carefully on a stack of boxes. She nodded in acknowledgement when his eyes found hers before slotting herself back to the sight on the rifle.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Spock,” April said quietly. “But I would recommend putting your weapon and your communicator down.” From across the cavern, Kirk saw the sniper’s shoulders settle. The red dot rested unwaveringly on his chest. Spock’s eyes were trained on it, and Kirk could see that great mind calculating percentages and statistics even before he raised his gaze to meet Kirk’s.

Spock pulled his comm from his belt and the phaser from the holster before dropping both to the dirt at his feet.

“Wise,” April commented, as Spock returned to Kirk’s side, angling himself so that the dot of the rifle’s laser sight rested on his shoulder instead of Kirk’s chest. “Yours too, please, captain.”

Kirk glanced at the laser sight on Spock’s shoulder before pulling his comm and phaser off his belt as well. “What’s going on here, admiral?” His voice sounded very far away, even to his own ears. His phaser and comms hit the dirt with a dull thud, and he nudged them away from him with his foot.

“Stupid doesn’t suit you, Kirk,” April said softly, and Kirk’s mind snapped back to a subspace call with April two weeks ago, when he had said that he was taking Spock away, that he was sending Spock to another ship---

“Come with me,” April said, and turned over his shoulder. “I’ll tell you as much as I can.” Kirk and Spock exchanged a glance, and he knew they were in agreement. They followed April through the cavern and stuck close to each other. By Kirk’s count, there were a few over twenty Section 31 agents milling through the cavern, disappearing into and reappearing from the tunnels that dotted the larger room. Two of them hefted the one that Spock had pinched over their shoulders and vanished with him down another tunnel straight ahead.

“You are both acquainted with Section 31,” April said. “But do either of you know what its actual purpose is?”

“I hypothesized that it was primarily dedicated to research,” Spock said, and he glanced at Kirk; Kirk nodded. Yes, that was the best option; keep April talking, get him to explain as much as they could while they sought another way out.

“That’s not untrue,” April said, and nodded to the scurrying agents as they shuttled those locked boxes deeper into the tunnels. No one spared them a glance, but Kirk was viciously gratified to see that no one was willing to pass within two meters of Spock. “But it does go a little broader than that. The Federation needs a variety of tools to protect the interest of its citizens and ensure that actors like the Klingons are not able to interfere with our affairs. Starfleet, as a whole, is a hammer, and to you, everything looks like a nail. 31 is a scalpel.” April glanced at them, and his hand rested on his phaser, as if they needed a reminder of who currently held the power.

“I do not understand your analogies, admiral. Please speak plainly,” Spock said, but the badly disguised anger in the set of his shoulders said that he very much did.

“Starfleet, and starships and their captains, tend to be loud and flashy. 31 is able to act with more subtlety, more… finesse. Part of its value comes from being able to operate without public scrutiny. 31 conducts research, develops technology, and asks questions, same as the VSA.” He nodded at Spock, as if they were now speaking the same language, and a minute muscle in Spock’s jaw twitched as if he were offended by the comparison. “But when something goes wrong, something that gives our enemies the opportunity to take advantage of a weakness, 31 is the best tool for mitigating that damage.”

April gestured around at them, at the contingent of individuals in black uniforms. “Dextrum wasn’t beholden to our labor laws, because it wasn’t a Federation company. When the conflict first broke out, there was a possibility that we would both lose our investment and face backlash on a galactic level from working with an organization that treated its workers like this. Section 31 was called in to make sure that, at the very least, we got the dilithium we paid for.”

“But we weren’t supposed to be here,” Kirk burst out. His fury was heavy on his tongue.

“Who is we, captain?” April asked, bemused. “You were not supposed to be here. I tried to keep you and Spock from ever seeing this at all. But then you answered that call for help, the one that was never supposed to have been sent, and I couldn’t stop you.”

They entered a tunnel, not as narrow as the first but still smaller than the cavern behind, and April strode ahead while Kirk and Spock walked shoulder to shoulder. For one second, in the darkness, Kirk grabbed onto Spock’s hand and squeezed, and Spock squeezed back. Then they reemerged into the light and he released his grip.

“Admiral,” Spock said, as he looked around at the lofty cavern around them, and the telescoping ladder leaning against the wall on the far side of the space. “Please clarify why you are willing to share this information now, when you would not before.”

For a second, Kirk watched as a muscle ticked in April’s neck, as he heard a soft clicking as April’s throat closed, as April turned his face away from them both. When he turned back again, even as his face remained neutral his eyes revealed his grief.

“You two never should have been allowed to serve on the same ship,” he said. “Regardless of what Pike thought of your potential together. I said the risks were too high, but others were so convinced that a Vulcan would never befriend humans that they were willing to ignore it.” April’s voice was profanely gentle when he continued. “Sometimes it felt like I was the only one who remembered S’chn T’gai Michael Burnham, and that she had been human.”

Spock’s eyes widened.

“I tried to separate you before it was too late,” April said, and his voice hoarsened. He pressed his hand against his sternum and closed his eyes for a second longer than normal. He clenched his jaw as his eyebrows pulled together. “But your damned Vulcan telepathy… the link to the ambassador, to Amanda Grayson, and to T’Pau, who already didn’t trust us…” April hissed a breath out through his teeth, and with every second, every secret, the wrinkles of his face and the dark circles under his eyes deepened. “I didn’t want to do this.”

“Then don’t,” Kirk said. In the space of those two words, he finally understood how Madeleine and Natalya had heard the unsaid threat in the auditorium on Tarsus. He felt the same burning clarity in his bones as he turned to Spock, felt electric fear skittering along his skin like lightning. Spock was turning to him, his apprehension plain in his beautiful brown eyes, reaching one long hand out for him, when April said, voice tight, “Make it look like an accident.”

Kirk heard the whine of a charging phaser behind him. He was standing in the auditorium on Tarsus, next to Tommy and the littles. He was standing in the cavern, hundreds of feet below the surface of Kindinos. He was standing in front of Spock on their wedding night as Spock reached out to take his hands.

“No,” he said, and he snatched Spock’s outstretched hand and yanked as hard as he could. The cavern lit up with the light of phaser fire. Spock stumbled against him, his breath leaving him in a rush as he collided with Kirk’s chest. They both rocked backwards. Kirk wrapped his arms around Spock and spun them both, Spock’s feet clumsy and dragging beneath them. Spock was warm in his arms. His breath brushed Kirk’s ear.

Kirk’s hand was warm and wet when he pulled it away from Spock’s back. He looked down over the planes of Spock’s shoulder to see green coating his palm.

“No,” he said again, and something vital inside him shattered. “No, hey, Spock, look at me. Look at me.”

From somewhere very far away, he heard an unfamiliar voice say, “Should I fire again?” April responded, “No. It’s just a matter of time. Leave them be, but grab Kirk before we take off.”

Spock leaned heavily against him, head resting on his shoulder, and his voice was low and weak as he breathed, “Captain.” His knees buckled. Kirk lowered them both to the ground, taking as much of Spock’s weight as he could, holding him close in an awful parody of intimacy. Spock slid sideways as he lost his balance, and Kirk caught his head in his hand before it could hit the ground. Spock’s hair was silky against his palm, but the blood on Kirk’s hands dampened the strands and made them stick to each other. It smudged against his forehead and drew little green lines over his skin. He coughed, sprawled on the ground where he lay, legs bent beneath him. The only things Kirk could feel were the weight of Spock’s head in his hand and the hard earth beneath his knees. Spock’s face was too pale, and his eyes were glassy as he looked up at Kirk bending over him.

“Captain,” Spock said, and he lifted one shaking hand to Kirk’s face.

“No,” Kirk said again, and ripped what was left of Spock’s shirt open. The phaser fire had torn through Spock’s chest, entering from the left side of his back and exiting near his sternum. The smell of burning skin turned his stomach, but he forced himself to look. It felt like one of his nightmares, but he couldn’t wake himself up. “It’s not so bad, see? It’s not so bad.” It was worse. The phaser had been set to kill, and it had seared Spock open. But, Kirk realized, as Spock’s cold hand landed unsteadily on his neck, that if he hadn’t pulled Spock towards him it would have gone straight through his spine and heart.

“Jim,” Spock said, and coughed again. There was a speck of green at the corner of Spock’s mouth, and Kirk wiped it away with his thumb.

“Hush,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.” He knelt over Spock, hands fluttering uselessly over the expanse of burned skin and wishing that he were Bones, and realized in horror that he could see Spock’s ribs inside his body. They rose and fell with his unsteady breathing. Spock’s hand groped for his and clasped it.

“My Jim.” Spock coughed. “Ashayam.” The Vulcan word slid like water, like blood, off his tongue, and Kirk’s eyes burned hot with tears as he remembered in a flash that first morning, sitting across from Spock in the mess, teasing Spock, watching him drink his tea as they planned their fake relationship. Beloved. Beloved. Beloved. He pressed their joined hands to his chest and leaned over him. Something dug into his stomach.

Something hard and metallic was digging into his stomach.

“You’re gonna be okay, honey, I promise,” Kirk said, and he reached one hand inside his shirt to pull out Scotty’s experimental comm. Spock’s eyes followed his hand lazily, and he shook his head.

“No, captain,” he said, and his voice was weak. “Use it for yourself…” He trailed off as his chest spasmed, and he coughed wetly. His blood seeped into the dirt beneath him, staining his shirt and Kirk’s pants.

“Absolutely not,” Kirk said fiercely, and he flipped the comm open in the space beside Spock’s body and his knees. Within it was one single red button. He pressed it.

Nothing happened. He slid it into the remains of Spock’s mangled shirt, where it rested on his stomach, and redoubled his grasp on Spock’s hand. “Hold on,” he said. “Scotty will get you out.” He had never prayed so hard for something to be true.

Spock’s eyes were trained on his face, as if he were memorizing the lines of it. “Why?”

“You have to ask?” Kirk shook his hand lightly before pressing it against his chest again, and slid his hand over Spock’s forehead, through his hair, smoothing it back away from his face. “I promised to keep you and protect you, didn’t I?” Kirk’s voice shook. Spock’s unfocused eyes searched his, but his eyelids were drooping.

Was it Kirk’s imagination, or was Spock starting to dissolve?

“For better and for worse, against all dangers, as long as I live,” Kirk said. The edges of Spock’s body softened, glowing golden with the molecular confusion of a transporter lock, and Kirk half-laughed as tears threatened to spill down his cheeks. Scotty, that mad beautiful genius. Kirk was going to owe him and Giotto whatever they wanted for the rest of their lives, assuming that he made it out in one piece.

Beloved. Beloved. Beloved. Spock’s eyes were locked on him, the warm brown that he had come to cherish over every other color, and he ran one hand over Spock’s cheek.

“I love you,” he said. “You’re my best friend, and my husband, and I want you to be both of those things for the rest of my life.”

Spock’s eyes refocused, hardening as he started to vibrate entirely into gold. Kirk heard someone from behind him yell out, but there was nothing that they could do to him now. The only thing that mattered was that Spock would be safe, that Bones would fix him, that he wouldn’t die here, bleeding out on the cold stone floor.

“I will come back for you, ashayam,” Spock said, voice harsh with the blood in his throat. Kirk kissed the back of Spock’s hand and laid it gently on Spock’s stomach. Then he sat back on his heels and watched in heartstopping relief as Spock shimmered entirely out of his vision and disappeared, leaving behind only the green bloodstain on the dusty stone floor.

April roared, “What did you do?”

“Protected my husband,” Kirk said, and he grinned ruthlessly at April from where he knelt on the ground. April frowned down at him before nodding sharply.

From behind him a phaser whined and discharged, and the world around him vanished into blackness before he had even hit the ground.

☆☆☆

Kirk’s face pressed against something cold and metallic. He could feel the rumbling of an engine reverberating through his cheekbone, rattling his skull and intensifying what was the beginning of a splitting headache. His hands were tied behind his back, and he lay facedown on his stomach. Behind him, he could hear murmured conversation; one deep and familiar voice, and an unfamiliar one. Where the hell was he?

April’s voice said, “Thank you. Dismissed.” His heavy footsteps rang against the floor, and Kirk felt each footfall through his bones.

April had fooled them, betrayed them. Someone had hurt Spock. And now, he was… where, exactly? The feel of the engine and the faint recycled smell of the air told him he was on a shuttle, but with no idea how long he had been out and no comm device to use for coordinates, he was lost. But Spock had gotten out. The Enterprise had beamed him aboard. That was what mattered.

April sat down somewhere in the vicinity of Kirk’s shoulders and sighed. Then he said, “Are you awake yet, captain?”

Kirk stayed still, weighing his options. He could pretend to be out still and wait until April left, or he could reveal his consciousness and see if he could get April to talk again. Any information would help him at this point.

He lifted his head, peeling his cheek painfully from the metal floor, and turned his head to look April’s way. “April,” he said, as coldly as he could manage. He thought he could be forgiven for abandoning his decorum at a time like this.

“I am sorry, for what it’s worth,” April said, and Kirk snorted. But April looked awful. His eyes were sunken in his face, dark circles beneath them, and the muscles of his face looked like he had forgotten what smiling was long ago. He met April’s eyes.

The other man shifted forward out of his seat and rolled Kirk onto his side before pushing him upright and retreating to his bench seat again. There was a secured stack of cases behind Kirk, and he leaned back against them, stretching his legs out in front of him. He was definitely on a shuttle--- a small one, by the width of the room they were in--- and the stars passed by the window over April’s shoulder at sublight speed.

April studied him for a minute before sighing again. “I knew this was going to end badly for you the day that you fought me to keep Spock. You should have let him go.”

Kirk resisted the urge to spit at him, but it was a close thing. He felt like a caged animal. It was only the restraint of his hands tied behind his back that kept him from throttling April. April, who had ordered the shot that had sprayed Spock’s lungs over the shirt that he still wore, who had pulled those horrible gasping breaths out of him as Kirk lowered him to the ground--- but he couldn’t think about Spock and that wound right now, or he would crumble. He pushed his thoughts behind the wall in his mind and focused on what was around him, before him.

“I was never going to do that,” Kirk said. “Not if he didn’t want to go.”

“So you married him?” April dragged one hand over his face. “I had hoped that it was all a ruse, just another one of your Corbomite maneuvers to outbluff me--- but. I do have eyes, after all. As soon as you responded to the distress call, I received my orders.”

“And what orders were those?”

“To make you my strategic extraction,” April said. He dropped his hands into his lap. “31 wants you, captain.”

Kirk laughed once, harshly. It grated on his throat. “I will never work for you. I wouldn’t have done it before, and I’m certainly not going to do it now.”

“Because we hurt Mr. Spock?”

“Because you hurt my husband,” Kirk snarled, leaning forward, and was gratified by April’s nervous twitch.

“I understand your reticence, captain, but your consent is not required.”

“Is that so? Are you going to track down Spock and put a phaser to his head every time you need something from me?”

April watched the stars go by the window over Kirk’s head for a minute before he said, “The solution is a little more elegant than that, and one that I believe you are already acquainted with.”

A cold line of fear dripped into Kirk’s stomach--- a method of forcing his hand that he was already acquainted with? What the hell could that mean? The door at the head of the room slid open, and a woman in the black 31 uniform walked in.

“Docking in thirty seconds, admiral,” she said, and he nodded at her before she disappeared back into what seemed to be the cockpit of the shuttle.

“I’m sure she’ll show you soon enough,” April said, and stood. He vanished through the door to the cockpit, leaving Kirk alone in the back of the shuttle. He staggered to his feet immediately, shoving himself upright as quickly as he could with his arms still bound. He pressed his face against the window, trying to see where they were docking---

A huge ship appeared out of the darkness before him as the shuttle swung around. It was nearly as big as the Enterprise, but a newer, unfamiliar design--- it was sleeker, and darker. To Kirk, it looked unfriendly. There were no numbers or names tagged onto the ship anywhere that he could see, but it was built in the same styles as other Federation ships. It grew larger and larger in the tiny window before the shuttle was entirely swallowed by the ship and the view was replaced by the docking bay.

The turbodoor slid open and Kirk shifted backwards, tensing. April stepped back in.

“Got a look at the ship, did you?” His voice was jovial enough, though it seemed like all of the little light remaining had left his eyes. “She’s gorgeous, and almost brand new. You might come to like her, after a time.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Kirk said. “I’m a one-ship man, myself.”

April held his eyes, and there was nothing in his face of the man who had been on the Enterprise, harassing his crew, just days before. He was still flesh and bone, but the spirit had fled somewhere between Kindinos and this ship.

For a moment Kirk held his eyes, and April’s jaw worked, throat tensing, until he pressed a hand to his mouth and turned away. When he turned back, whatever he had wanted to say was gone.

“If you’d follow me, captain,” April said, and gestured in front of him. “There is someone who wants to see you.”

“I can’t shake any hands if you don’t untie me,” Kirk said as he passed. He got an eyeful of the cockpit as he stepped through it and down onto the runner along the shuttle. It looked like those on the Enterprise. If he could somehow steal one, he could fly it.

“We won’t think any less of you if you forget your manners,” April said, and followed him down. Kirk stepped down onto the shuttle bay floor and looked around him in abject awe. The hangar was enormous--- bigger than even the Engineering department on the Enterprise. There were six shuttles resting along the runway, two recently landed with crew streaming out of them, and room for more. An entire contingent of people in 31 blacks scuttled around: working on shuttles, or passing by on catwalks overhead, or flowing in and out of the doors dotted around the hangar.

“Where’d you get the money for a ship like this?” Kirk wondered out loud.

April smiled slightly, a horrible rictus, and said, “I can be very convincing when I need to be.” He walked towards one of the larger doors leading into the depths of the ship, and the shuttle navigator prodded Kirk forward with her drawn phaser. He followed April, memorizing the layout of the hangar and the catwalks above him as best he could. Maybe he could break his restraints and steal a shuttle. Maybe he could steal a comms unit and get Uhura’s attention on some radio frequency, somehow. Maybe he could---

The large door before them slid open, and the first thing he noticed was the shine of fluorescent lights on steel gray hair. A woman strode towards him and April, flanked by a retinue of Section 31 officers, and Kirk knew her. Her hair had been blonde, and her skin once had fewer wrinkles, but Kirk knew her: he knew her twinkling eyes and heart-shaped face and gentle posture. His feet stopped moving involuntarily. His hands went numb behind his back as he stared at her.

“Captain James Kirk,” Elise Darling called, and her voice was just as it had always been; warm and inviting and utterly undeniable. “Oh, I always knew that you were going to be special. Welcome to the headquarters of Section 31.”

#my writing #spirk #spirk fan fiction #k/s fan fiction #fake married #k/s #regulatory relations #wahoo here we go deep into act 3!#it's endgame baby!

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