CyberDreams 1

OUT OF PRINT

First Published in July 2003
183 pages
Ten K/S stories, all previously posted online
Cover and all interior art are CGAs by Virginia Sky

McCoy choked on his whiskey and pressed a hand over his mouth, eyes watering as he forced himself to swallow. “I almost spit that out, Jim! That kind of question, when a man’s got a mouth full of whiskey…why, that’s practically alcohol abuse! Who accused you of flirting?”

“Ah.” McCoy sat back and cleared his throat. “Well, it’s like this, Jim. Yes.”

“Yes? That’s all you have to say? And if I was, why the hell didn’t you mention it to me?” He thumped his drink down and shook his head. “No, I know, you thought I was seriously pursuing a non-serious fling with him, didn’t you? Because you knew I hadn’t screwed him yet, and you consider me a man who doesn’t do long term.”

“Well…yes. I figured you were looking for a roll in the hay. I didn’t know that you didn’t know…hell, we sound like a romance novel. So, Spock finally spoke up about it. What did you say to him?”

“It’s not that simple, Bones.” Kirk sighed and picked his glass up again, then recapped the events of the previous night to his CMO. McCoy grew still and thoughtful. Kirk finished his recitation and sighed again. “What do I do that makes you and him think I’m flirting?”

“Well, you touch him all the time, for one. You don’t touch other people the same way, not constantly like you do him. And no one touches Spock except you, they wouldn’t dream of it. Even I don’t without permission during exams, not since we all realized that he is a touch telepath and can pick up our emotions and surface thoughts from any casual contact. So he is no doubt constantly aware of your affection for him.”

“Lord, Jimmy, like he’s a tribble and you’re a love starved spinster.” McCoy replenished Kirk’s glass and sat back again. “And you tease him. With that same ‘come hither’ look you use on pretty girls and the occasional pretty boy.”

“You do! What else? Oh, where to begin! There’s the way you lick your lips when he’s talking to you. The way you always listen to his opinion as if it were the gospel truth, leaning toward him, never taking your eyes off of him but blinking far too often. There’s the fact that you’re always adjusting your clothing around him. There are other examples, but perhaps you’re getting the picture?” McCoy drummed his fingers on the table for a moment but didn’t get a response. “What worries me is that you didn’t know you were doing it. And what you’re going to do now.”

“That worries me, too, Bones. So, to honour my promise to him, I need to know all you can tell me about Vulcan sexuality and long-term relationships. The stuff from Beresford is interesting, but it covers mostly the…well, the physical and scientific things, like breeding. Spock seems to think you know quite a bit about the more…social? Social aspects of his culture’s mating rituals.”

“Oh boy. Okay. Let’s finish these drinks and get some food in us before we’re drunk, shall we? Then we’ll have the pre-marital seminar.”

“You’re not kidding it’s damned serious. Drink up, dinner’s on me tonight. Come on.”

But then, Spock had not experienced a normal day since—that would be Stardate 3371.5. It shocked him that he had had to actually stop and think, to know the date of his last full duty shift before he began to feel that his pon farr was upon him.

As it still was. He had told McCoy that the madness had passed, meaning the plak tow. The moment he had looked down at Jim’s unmoving, dirt-streaked face, the animal that had clawed through Spock’s veins and glared out of his eyes was gone. But the plak tow was for the challenge only; from the time of the Beginning, after the battle was won, the victor mated. McCoy’s habitual illogic seemed to have kept him from seeing the obvious. Jim seemed not to have thought the situation through either; but surely being half-strangled and passing through the effects of a neural paralyzer would not leave most men with the energy to sit in their chairs, much less pursue a logical thought.

Spock heard the lift doors open and McCoy’s footfalls as he came down to stand beside Jim’s chair. They began to speak, voices low, evidently believing they were unheard. Spock could always hear these conferences, so clearly that he suspected that the rest of the bridge crew only pretended not to notice. As he was doing now, of course.

“Just dandy,” Jim said. “I don’t know why I haven’t thought of a fight with those ahn-woon things before. Great workout. Aren’t you always telling me to get more exercise?”

“No more than you predicted,” Jim admitted after a moment. “Fine, really.”

McCoy paused, presumably staring the truth out of his captain and friend. “We-ell,” drawn out slowly, “all right, you have the spray I gave you if it acts up more. Now here’s what I want you to do about Spock….”

“Oh yes, he’s mighty fine at taking care of himself. Especially lately. Come on, Jim.”

Spock knew Jim had turned his chair to look back at the science station, and gazed unseeing into the viewer until he knew the golden head was turned away once more. Why did Jim hesitate? Why did McCoy keep urging against Jim’s resistance? Spock felt the dangerous irritation rise and knew that he was still burning, still in that shameful state, not fit to be seen. Despair took him like quicksand, while he still heard McCoy’s and Jim’s voices murmuring, as if they spoke into his own ears.

“See he goes back to his cabin and really rests. Get him to eat something. If he’s had more than a polite sip of that plomeek soup of Christine’s, neither she nor I have noticed it. And—”

“You’re the only one he’d talk to before. Maybe he’ll tell you how long this goes on, and if there’s anything we ought to be doing.”

“He also said he wasn’t delighted to see you alive. So we know what that all’s worth.”

Spock was so keenly aware of them that he could hear the faint rasp as McCoy rubbed his face. “Look, I’m tired too.” A pause. “Jim, we could still lose him.”

Logically, it should mean nothing to hear McCoy say what Spock himself had been thinking, yet at the words a mindless fear sluiced through him. To be lost was what he feared, and saw coming toward him, and could not think how to avoid. McCoy clearly did not know either. The grief he heard in the doctor’s voice clutched at his own throat. Then Jim answered, his voice rough and weary, and Spock closed his eyes and ground his teeth together to force feeling back. He still could.

If there was one thing that ought to make him feel completely normal, Jim thought, it should be a briefing. Uhura, Scott, Sulu, McCoy—all the usual suspects in their usual seats, with their usual faces—but not quite. Looking down the length of the briefing table, Jim could see eyes shifting. He wondered exactly what the current scuttlebutt was about recent events in the first officer’s quarters. The only other person certain to be ignorant was staring into the middle distance, elbows on the table and fingers steepled.

“Well,” Jim said, sitting down, “let’s get this show on the road,” and wondered which show he really had in mind. He had been questioning his own reactions a lot lately. He wanted to stop. Shore leave was probably what he needed, but there was none in sight at the moment. Unless he counted Altair, and he suspected that in the end he would not be able to count it.

Spock moved one hand toward the base of the computer terminal, while the other drifted down to rest on the table. The screen lit with the image of a man with dark gray skin and navy blue hair. On the pictured face was an extraordinary expression, a hero’s look of strength, intelligence, and purpose. A little theatrical, Jim felt, but still impressive.

“Aulua Jiilau,” said Spock. “He has now been the inaugurated president of Altair 6 for two days. According to the Federation’s political analysts—and apparently, according to the Altairian electorate—the one man who can unify the planet’s factions and complete the peace negotiations with Altair 5.”

“Admiral Komack said so,” Jim agreed, “but why? What makes him the only man of the hour?”

Spock’s eyes flicked to his face, then away to the center of the table again. “Altair 5,” he went on, “was founded as an agricultural colony by Altair 6, three hundred and forty-five planetary years ago. Jiilau was confirmed as the Governor-General of Altair 5 shortly before the outbreak of armed insurrection there. After several police actions were insufficient to stop the home rule movement, Jiilau was given specific and strict orders by the Altair 6 government to make a deliberately brutal pre-emptive strike.” There was a special look of austere distress that Spock got whenever he spoke of violence; he wore it now. “The plan was to destroy the city of Giniwallon.”

“Destroy it?” Sulu sounded like he couldn’t believe it; Jim had the same problem. McCoy made a sound of disgust, and Spock looked even more austere.

“Yes, Mr. Sulu. Giniwallon had a population of approximately 485,060, and it had already seceded from the rest of the colony. Jiilau’s orders were to level it, not only to kill its inhabitants but to reduce the city itself to rubble.” Spock paused. “This would in fact have crippled the home rule movement.”

“He did. In fact, he took command of the fleet of ships which had been dispatched to destroy Giniwallon, and immediately ordered them disarmed; then he returned with the fleet to Altair 6. Before his trial and subsequent imprisonment, he released to the Altairian press every communiqué he had received relative to the planned massacre, as well as a great deal of supplementary information, interviews, pictures, artworks, and so forth produced by the colonists. He was, in effect, their publicist.” Spock’s eyebrow twitched up, and Jim felt better, seeing that familiar look. A little better.

“No, but his status as a prisoner of conscience and the scandal created by the released material was a significant influence on the government’s further policy. No such wholesale massacre was attempted again.”

“A hero,” mused Jim, “and now he’s the president…and he changed the date of his inauguration.”

“Yes, why’d he do that?” asked McCoy. “Only a week earlier, too, so what good could that be?”

Spock, without actually moving any muscle in his face, managed to look completely unconvinced as he said, “The official explanation was that the original date coincided with the most sacred fast of one of the planet’s religious sects.”

”But you don’t believe it?” McCoy was never one to let anything go unspoken, especially by Spock.

“I have no logical reason to disbelieve it. The religious holiday, the observation by fast, is real; it is held on that date every year.”

“Every year! So it was predictable? No reason to wait until just two weeks beforehand to notice it?” McCoy pressed Spock.

“Yes,” Spock agreed. Jim had noticed that lately they had not been baiting each other as often as they sometimes did. Even that touched a nerve, but everything did, now, and it really had nothing to do with—well, yes, it had something to do with Spock, foolish to pretend even for one thought that it didn’t.

“There must be rumors. There must be reasons,” Jim insisted. “I don’t buy the holiday. Something’s going on, more than I realized when—” He shook his head. “More than Komack told me. He ordered three starships to this inauguration. He must have expected trouble.”

“Perhaps,” said Spock. “Or from disaffected citizens of Altair 6. Apparently several threats have been received, though the exact nature of the threats does not seem to be known.”

“Gentlemen, we need better information,” Jim said. “Perhaps the Farragut and Constellation crews will know more by the time we get there. We’re late for this party, after all. Maybe they’ll have taken care of everything for us.” His grin said, fat chance, and we love it that way, don’t we?

Spock looked up, looking slightly surprised. “The Farragut will not be in attendance. She has been reassigned to an emergency at Space Laboratory Tau Omega. New results in the station scientists’ investigation of Bertholdt rays have revealed that they are intensely dangerous to animal life, and the scientists must be evacuated.”

“Why,” asked Jim with deceptive mildness, “didn’t I know that already?”

“The message just came in before the briefing started, sir,” Uhura answered promptly. “I was waiting until I gave the Communications and Protocol reports.”

Jim reminded himself that the Enterprise did not have sole responsibility for every emergency in the galaxy. “Well, President Jiilau seems fated to have only two starships at his inauguration.” He reflected without dismay that Komack must be having fits. “In any case, Lieutenant Uhura, let’s have that protocol report. What else do we need to know to get along in Altairian society?” The presentation that followed was so routine that it was boring, and Jim reveled in the boredom.

“Thank you, Uhura,” he said afterward so sincerely that she looked at him in surprise.

He glanced down the table to where Spock was doing some file transfer on the library terminal, then back past all the other faces. “Well, people, this meeting is adjourned.” He stood at the table as they left, not needing to see them go but not feeling any special urgency to be elsewhere. Spock was gathering up his disks.

Suddenly he looked up and said, “Captain, a word?” and despite the formality of the question, Jim felt suddenly chilled. Everyone else had gone. He and Spock had not been alone since they had had sex; they had never had a chance, or made a chance, to talk about anything that had happened since Spock’s aborted marriage. This was not the moment Jim wanted to start.

“I request permission to return to alpha shift, Captain. The research projects in which I was engaged for the last four gamma shifts are complete, and Dr. McCoy assures me that I am in perfect health.”

“Some surprise! I’ll bet.” Love to have been a fly on that wall. Or, on second thought, maybe not.

“His exact words were, ‘Tell Jim you’re healthy as a horse and chomping at the bit to get back to work.’“

The joking response left his lips without any second thought: “And you asked him what resemblance you could possibly bear to any member of the genus Equus.”

Spock inclined his head, his lips just curved in one of his typical not-smiles, and Jim flashed unexpectedly back to the full smile he had seen on that mouth, only a few times, and the last time was—Jim clenched his teeth while Spock was still saying gently, “Why, Captain, you might almost have been present.”

“Yes, well, Mr. Spock, permission granted,” Jim said in haste, stepping back, and immediately wondering why he had moved. Spock raised his head slowly; his mouth set and his eyes grew remote. Then he nodded once and left the briefing room, and Jim let a minute or so pass before he followed.

Kirk leaned forward and rubbed his hands over his face again, knowing he should get back to the party. Feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to get him anywhere, and the least he could do was put a good face on it for the others.

He checked the chronometer and was just pushing himself to his feet when he realized that he wasn’t alone in the room; someone was standing in the doorway, backlit by the light from the corridor. The figure was tall, angular: Spock.

So he had heard, at least some of it. There had been a time when that wouldn’t have bothered him. “No, of course it wasn’t.” Kirk ran his fingers along the edge of the console, glancing involuntarily at the darkened screen. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

Spock hesitated a moment, then came into the room, stopping a few paces away. “My mother says that time heals a great many things.”

Kirk looked up, unreasonably touched by the earnest attempt at comfort. Watching Spock’s growing pains as he tried so hard to understand and connect with his human shipmates made him feel things he couldn’t articulate, made him smile and hope and hurt all at the same time. “Your mother is a wise woman. I hope she’s right.”

Kirk found himself smiling in spite of himself. “You know, I’ve noticed that about her.” With a sigh, he checked his chronometer. “Cartwright looking for me?”

“Affirmative. Regrettably, I suspect he wishes to introduce you to the Kendaii Council delegate and his attaché.”

“You know, all those months on Vulcan, I’d forgotten how much I love Starfleet politics.” Spock frowned slightly in puzzlement, and the faint, familiar ache settled in Kirk’s chest again. “A little joke, Spock. I just find it ironic that tonight, Starfleet needs heroes to win them points with the Council, and we fit the bill. It’ll be a different story in front of the tribunal, I bet.”

“My father anticipates much the same thing,” Spock admitted. “He says the Klingon delegation has threatened to end peace talks if the Genesis inquiry does not go forward immediately.”

It was no more than Kirk had expected, and he found himself curiously unconnected from the thought of what it would mean. They’d made their choices, and with the Enterprise gone, it was hard to care too much whether they busted him down to ensign, or worse.

“Well, the good news is, I think we’ve already met and schmoozed with just about everyone who’s ever seen the inside of the Council chamber. Maybe we can plead exhaustion and bow out of this party before too much longer.” He straightened up and turned toward the door. “Shall we?”

He led the way back, and Spock fell into step beside him as effortlessly as breathing. Sometimes Kirk thought that the hardest things were those that hadn’t changed, because they made him forget for a while. He would catch himself falling back into old patterns, thinking of this man beside him as the old Spock, until the next time he was reminded, and the breath-stealing weight returned to rest against his heart.

Back on the ground floor, he stopped abruptly in the breezeway outside the reception hall. “Listen, I haven’t said anything to the crew about the tribunal. I wanted them to have one night of fun. God knows, they’ve earned it.”

It occurred to Kirk that maybe being busted right out of the fleet might have its advantages, if it meant that Spock might actually remember now and then that he had a first name. “I’m not in command at the moment,” he said gently. “You could call me Jim, and the world wouldn’t end.”

Japanese lanterns swung gently between pillars and trees, gilding Spock’s angular face in red and gold. “Jim,” he conceded, the hint of a question in it.

Their eyes held, and after a moment, Kirk realized he was doing it again—searching for something he couldn’t even have named. This Spock was real and alive and at his side, and to ask for more than that miracle was ingratitude of the highest order. “You okay?” he asked impulsively, seeing faint lines of strain in his friend’s face that he hadn’t noticed before. “You look tired.”

“The media sharks. Starfleet. Every biologist, geneticist, and medical doctor within four parsecs who’d probably kill to get their hands on you.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Negative. The security at the Vulcan embassy is exemplary.”

“You may find that having is not so satisfying a thing as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”

The words with which he had confronted T’Pring and Stonn had become his mantra. And so, standing on the bridge, his hooded eyes gazing through the blue light of his viewer, peeping under his own left arm, he watched as strength and poetry settled into its captain’s chair, and he thought the words once again. He let them fix in his mind, felt their weight, knew their truth.

The last time he had walked in his friend’s mind, he had confronted himself, finally knowing the nature of his own desires. He had gone there, slipping inside the bright warmth, to ease pain, to take from him the sharp memory of a woman who had not been a woman until she felt—and then, in feeling, in choosing, Rayna had died.

He remembered the decision he had made, crossing the small room that was his captain’s quarters, leaning down to place one hand on the head resting in his locked hands.

One word, so simple, and in that moment, easing from his friend’s mind the worst of the loss and self-hatred, Spock had found an odd flavor of thought: jealousy, possessiveness. He had wondered at it, at this feeling among all those others.

“Mr. Sulu,” an amused voice called out. “Are we going to get those warp engines up to speed before the end of the week?”

“It’s not the helm’s fault,” Scotty groused, sprawled out under the open control panels while two somewhat hapless engineering crewmen handed him tools. “It’s these damned replacement parts from Starbase 18. I dinna know what the commander there is thinking, but almost none of it is up to regs.”

“Finish your report and I’ll push it under Command’s nose, Scotty, I swear it. Now get my warp power fixed before some Klingons buzz us.”

The chair swiveled. Hazel eyes met his. Open respect and affection, casual greeting framed by a viewscreen of stars.

He moved, feeling the prickle of short, thick hairs against his cheek, and the incredible warmth of the soft skin beneath. So odd, to think of “snuggling” with Spock.

Hours now, he had been here, and still each breath surprised him. Each rise, the press of inhalation against him, attempted to prove that he was actually lying here in Spock’s bed. His body, naked, pressed all along the longer, slightly darker, disciplined, restrained, equally naked body of his first officer and friend. Against the soft inside of his thigh, right above his bent knee, pressed the soft flesh he had been allowed to caress, which he wanted to spend forever caressing….

Was Spock going to turn Vulcan again? When those dark eyes opened, would he be ashamed? He had spoken of needing Jim to “keep” him, of Jim’s being faithful, of wanting sex and more sex. But he had also explained brokenly about being bonded, and pon farr. Kirk had seen Spock pass through and out of madness before, returning seamlessly composed. Would he see that now? If he moved now, as he wanted to, to take Spock in his mouth, would the man come awake and protest? Or would he simply endure it, explaining later that he was no longer in need of such attentions? Would it be seven years before Spock needed him again?

Jim Kirk knew himself well enough to be certain he could not be happy in a relationship where he could only have sex that infrequently. He was a human man, damnit, and had never pretended at being a monk. Spock knew that better than anyone.

I’m rambling, I know…. I hate it when I do that. My writing is precise, but speech—my thoughts get ahead of my tongue, and then the right words just aren’t there. Anyway, I told Mr. Spock that I would be pleased to help if I could. And then he said—and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him at a near loss for words before—he said that he wished to explore certain aspects of his personality which, as a Vulcan, he’d had no opportunity to experience before. He said that he perceived me as a competent officer whose manner with him had never been anything other than professional—I think I’m quoting him exactly now—and that I would not be likely to read into his request anything other than a literal meaning. I hope I kept the shock off my face, but it must have been obvious that I was surprised. All I could think of to say was that if what he asked was within my ability, I would do my best to assist. I still had absolutely no idea what he could be talking about. Then he looked down at the notes and stuff in front of him and said, “It is my wish to acquire some experience in the area of human sexual relationships.

Jim slapped his hand down on the playback key and cut off her voice. After a moment, the adrenalin rush receded, leaving him chilled and shaken, and a little surprised at himself. Not because he was startled—that was normal enough, in view of Commander Ballard’s astounding statement. Why, then? Why such a vehement reaction, shock tinged with…anger? He picked the memory apart until it yielded, suddenly, a biting flash of jealousy.

He could hardly believe himself at first, but on closer inspection, it made sense. Not good sense, as Bones would say, but sense nonetheless.

He was honest enough to admit that his need of Spock extended beyond ship’s business. He made himself verbalize the logical conclusion; if Spock had become involved in a relationship with Meg Ballard, he might not have been there some time when Jim needed him. Wanted him. Brought into the light, the thought seemed faintly ridiculous. Everyone else on the ship engaged in casual liaisons, after all. There were even some permanently paired couples, officially married and otherwise. No one let their personal lives come before the ship. And that, of course, was the problem. Spock would never do so either, but late night conversations when the captain couldn’t sleep didn’t exactly qualify as ship’s business. Or impromptu chess games. Or off-hand invitations to share leave.

He made a face at himself and set the thought aside. Surely he was mature enough to allow Spock the same freedom he took for granted himself. It was just a jolt to hear that freedom spelled out in Ballard’s quiet voice. A wild thought seized him—could this be some fantasy of a lovesick woman’s imagination? He was shocked at himself all over again at how quickly he grasped at that, in light of the facts.

Fact: Commander Ballard was easily one of the most highly regarded officers on Spock’s staff, had been since long before the last few days. You didn’t get to that exalted position by mooning over your boss, not on the Enterprise. As sensitive as Spock had become to the nuances of human emotion, there wasn’t much way to hide it.

Fact: Commander Ballard could probably have had any unattached male on the ship if she’d ever shown any interest at all. She had no reason to fabricate a story to get attention, even in her own imagination.

Fact: the events on the log were recorded in the same composed, unruffled voice that characterized all her speech, though she made no attempt to pretend she was unaffected.

He’d been relieved that Spock had agreed to come with him. They hadn’t fought, but there had been a silence growing between them that even late night psychic caresses weren’t bandaging. He was damned if he knew what he’d done wrong. In any other relationship, he might have pushed, but there wasn’t any sense of disturbance, only distance. Not anger, he thought. Just stillness. And his own growing restlessness as he missed his lover.

He’d grown up in this house, and he could find his way in it well enough without the benefit of illumination. For some reason, he was as reluctant to turn the lights on as he was to forcibly break the silence between Spock and himself. He paused on the stairs for a second, getting a sense of the house in the dark. Most of the furniture was in storage to keep it from being damaged, and what was left gave the house a cabin feeling of improvisation and unfinishedness. The wooden stairs slanted downward a little. At the base of them, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror by the door, a middle-aged man wrapped in a quilt and a pair of jeans, barefoot in the empty house.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the next lightning flash, counted the seconds until thunder hit. Coffee, he thought. He could make coffee, watch the storm through the porch screens. No one would miss him if he wanted to sleep on the porch swing instead of in bed.

The kitchen was a dozen steps away. Once, he brushed the doorframe with his hip and blushed a little at his own clumsiness on his home ground. To reassure himself, he kept moving in the dark, finding a mug and the coffee filter, filling the old-fashioned steam kettle from the kitchen tap. Drops of water on the kettle’s sides hissed as they touched the burner. His parents had never added food synthesizers to the kitchen appliances, and by his teen years he’d considered cooking to be a vaguely meditative activity.

It was the sound of breathing that finally alerted him. He twisted from the waist and made out Spock seated at the kitchen table, watching him. Startled, he spilled the tablespoon of ground coffee onto the counter. The smell was as much of a shock to him as the sudden presence, and it was that that made him jump.

None of the constellations I was raised with, but I saw them in your mind every time you showed me your home. Nights I slept beside you and our thoughts blended and I couldn’t remember who I was in the instant after I woke up. Nights after you left that I remembered those visions and cried. Moving in between the stars. I had my love for you and my love for my ship. And I gave up each of you in turn to keep the other.

I was thinking of the first night we were lovers. Maybe only because it started here, after we left T’Pring standing on the edge of the desert and went back to our ship. Another pon farr since then, and the one you spent without me, in deep meditation here in the mountain. I dreamed that one. I was on Earth, playing admiral, and you had disappeared. I’d wake in the night like this and feel your hands running over my skin while you were dozens of light years away and so deep in your mind that no one could touch you. I remember it so vividly.

I dreamed we were at the edge of the Forge, sleeping in a canvas tent, nomads five thousand years before the Reformation. We were hunters, you and I, and we had been travelling for three seasons since we left our people. But we were explorers, too. No one had ever gone to the places we had been to, surely. No one else had tracked the desert’s rim and communed with the a’kweth, the old ones who live under the sand. They told us that the Underliers had taught the first Vulcan wanderer the first word, that before there had been only the indistinctness of shared thought. They told us that the first word was heya, told to a lost one who stumbled on the Underlier at the mountain’s foot.

The days, beloved, god, the days were so hot I didn’t realize when you started Burning. Only lying beside you at night, when the desert got so cold, I could feel the fever in your body. We made camp in the shelter of a pile of rock and stayed there so many days. Mating, rough as animals, frantic as sentients, intense as only telepaths are. And you were my lover again.

That first touch. Finger to finger, then fingers tracing hands and arms and faces. Kissing you, my tongue in your mouth. Your lips wrapping around my ear. Licking my way down your body, tasting the desert on your skin, and taking you in my mouth.

When I woke, I could taste you. I was sure you’d been there. My room was so cold, not like the desert at night but like I was on the wrong planet. I was on the wrong planet. I had to be with you. But you were there, beloved. I felt your hands on my shoulders, pulling me down, stroking my body, penetrating me and pushing against me and I remember screaming….

I screamed your whole name, the one you taught me over a hundred nights, correcting my pronunciation and guiding me through the secret patterns of syllables. You said that the name of something is the most important aspect of it, call any thing and it will come to you, call any person by his right name and you can own his soul. And then you found my name, the one you were supposed to have, and I suppose I should have known it would be that….

If I screamed loudly enough, now, in my head, would you even hear me? The link never shattered, but I don’t get anything from it except its presence, an itch inside my skull.

Jim had been slightly different lately, and Spock had estimated that this was due to fatigue. That assumption had been supported by numerous recent events. Several times that day, the captain had shown signs of absent-mindedness. This was an unusual behavior for him, but one that Spock understood to be related in humans to physical weariness, or alternatively to what McCoy had described as being “just plain worn out.”

Spock had initially found this phrase not only puzzling, but completely incomprehensible; however, when a red-alert drill had been called the day after leaving Vulcan and the koon ut kaliffee, and he had gone an additional forty-three point six one hours without sleep, he had begun to gain an understanding of it.

He was forced to reconsider his earlier assumption when he emerged from his quarters after three point four minutes, having changed from his uniform into attire more appropriate for physical exertion, and found Jim already in the corridor, leaning against the bulkhead with his arms crossed. His smile was somewhat distant. It was a facial expression Spock had learned to associate with Jim’s claim that he was “just thinking,” usually about “nothing important.”

They walked side-by-side towards the turbolift. “Jim, are you not…tired?” Spock asked as they stepped through the doors.

“Not particularly.” Kirk glanced up at him, smiling slightly. Evidently he was amused—by what, Spock did not know. “Why?”

“Lately I had observed some subtle changes in your behavior, but did not know how to classify them. This morning, however, when I observed what I believe you humans term ‘absentmindedness’—” Jim was laughing, now; another good sign “—I thought I understood that you were demonstrating mental fatigue similar to the physical variety, which would have some of the same physical indicators but would not necessarily abate simply with sleep or rest. I believe humans are most susceptible to this condition.”

He was definitely laughing now. “Are you saying that you aren’t susceptible to mental fatigue, Mr. Spock? To getting tired of something? What about when Bones is teasing you? Don’t you ever feel impatient?”

This was more familiar territory, and Spock responded almost without thought, “Vulcans do not experience impatience.”

He got a sideways look from Jim again, glimmering with amusement, before his face shifted into a pensive mask. “You may have something there, though. I may just be…experiencing a mental fatigue of some sort.” Spock nodded, satisfied to have his guess confirmed. “I’m curious, though.”

“If you thought that I was tired, wasn’t it illogical to suggest we go to the gym?” Jim led the way through the doors of the room in question.

“If my guess that your weariness was not physical had been incorrect, you would have declined the invitation. I would then have canceled the chess game and insisted that you rest.”

Jim laughed outright again. It was a sound that, curiously, brought Spock pleasure, whether he understood its cause (earlier, his denial that he experienced impatience) or not (for instance, now). Jim quickly answered Spock’s raised eyebrow: “You were concerned for me, in other words. I’ve been seeing more and more obvious displays of emotion from you, Mr. Spock. You should be more careful.”

“As your welfare is crucial to the efficient functioning of the ship, my actions were in no way illogical,” Spock replied calmly and truthfully, sidestepping the question and relaxing almost imperceptibly. If Jim wanted to play this game, then not very much could be wrong. Perhaps in one sense, this relief he experienced was less than logical. He paid this idea little attention, though. He had decided long ago that concern for Jim was logical, since this was part of the nature of friendship; having voluntarily entered into friendship with Jim, he was obligated, was he not, to accept its rules?

Jim let it go, just glancing up with a grin from under the bronzed arch of one arm. “Zua?” he asked, giving the Vulcan art a humanized pronunciation and shortening it by approximately fifty percent.

“Negative.” Spock stretched towards his left foot while the captain stretched in the opposite direction. “The jiu h’a tenna is a form of combat. The recent…events at the koon ut kaliffee make me reluctant to participate in it with you at this time, Jim.”

“Spock, I don’t mind,” Jim said so easily that Spock knew the statement to be absolutely true, from the depths of his guileless being. More difficult, then, to give the necessary reply.

“Oh.” He straightened, looked at Spock with humanly inscrutable silence for a moment, then smiled again. “It’s Jim, though.”