Chapter Text
Even while awaiting court martial, we're still beholden to the needs of Starfleet.
Spock apparently spends his day suffering through an uncomfortably combative debrief with the newly-formed Department of Temporal Investigations and a rather chaotic meeting with Dr. Taylor and some very excited marine biologists from HQ. He's vague on details and I get the sense his mind was not fully devoted to the topics at hand.
My mind wasn't either, not during my own sitdown with Temporal — who really don't seem to like me — or at the working session with Scotty doing a hologram tear-down of the Klingon Warbird for a joint defense and engineering team. They're all drooling a bit over the amount of new intel at hand, and though I know it's not my best quality, I can't help feeling rather proud of what my crew and I have pulled off. Hopefully they'll keep this in mind when deciding whether to strip us of our commissions and sentence us to languish in a penal colony. I shouldn't be so flippant; Spock and Bones would both remind me that it's a very real possibility, but I feel remarkably unconcerned at this moment. I have more important things on my mind.
The ground is damp when I step outside, the evening air fresh and sweet. Spock and I find each other on the walk back to my apartment and though it would hardly be noticeable to most people, the throb of hope in my chest is matched by the look on his face.
"Any word?" I ask and Spock shakes his head.
"You have not heard from him either?"
"No," I say, and we fall easily in step. "He'll be back," I add, with the kind of confidence that comes of wanting something to be true and Spock indulges me.
There is a thrum of anticipation in everything we do; as a younger man I might not have appreciated it quite so much. Call it age, call it Spock's tempering influence, call it the very long and strange journey it's taken us to get here. Or the fact that one vital component is yet to arrive. But all evening, it simmers and builds: when Spock's hand brushes mine, when I meet his eyes. We cobble together a dinner and his eyes keep catching on mine across the table.
Yet I'm also watching the clock and listening for the door, I can't help it. Eventually Spock suggests gently that I might go to bed given the late hour. I agree but pause in the bedroom doorway and clear my throat, fidget with my book, suddenly a teenager again. "Do you want to come too?"
He does pause. But shakes his head. "I will meditate here, then rest on the couch, should I have need."
"All right." I am capable of patience, I'm sure of it. But it's Spock—!
His face softens. "Jim," he says. "We won't wait forever. I just wish to see if first…" he glances at the door.
"I know," I say. "Me, too."
He lowers his voice, his gaze dark on me in the dim lamplight. "I shouldn't wish to begin something that could be interrupted," he says. "As I have no intention of stopping until I am satisfied."
My stomach tumbles over itself and I breathe out hard. It's like I've wandered into one of my own fantasies. There's nothing I can say to that and I certainly can't go near him now. I turn my face into the doorjamb and groan.
When I peek back, I catch his tiny smile of self-satisfaction. I groan again and force myself away.
=-=-=
I wake disoriented in the dark. My first few weeks planetside are always like that; an instant of wondering why the engines are offline.
The click of the front door closing orients me, followed by a low murmur of voices. Bones, thank god. And Spock.
When I step out of the bedroom, Spock is stretched on the couch beneath a small mountain of blankets. He's propped up on one elbow, watching Bones who bounces on his heels a little, clearly uncomfortable.
"Jim," he says when he sees me. "Uh, hi." He scratches the back of his neck and gives me a sheepish smile.
"Bones," I say, folding my arms.
"Just came back to get my communicator," he says. "And then I'll be out of your hair. Sorry to wake you." He glances back at Spock, brow furrowing. "Both of you."
"Are you all right?" I ask. "Where have you been? We haven't heard from you all day."
He shrugs and lets his eyes wander around the room, avoiding my gaze. "Nowhere exciting," he says, then steps closer to the coffee table. "I coulda sworn I left it right here. Did one of you move it?"
"You left in the middle of a rather important conversation," I point out. He chuckles nervously.
"Oh, that." He starts picking up objects around the room, like he might find what he's looking for beneath one.
"Yes, that. I'd quite like to finish it, if it's all the same to you." I'm mostly keeping my voice even. "Spock would too."
Spock nods gravely. "Indeed."
Kneeling down, Bones peers underneath a chair, then the table.
"Well, it's not really," he says, voice muffled. "All the same to me." He sits up and frowns, sticking his hand between the cushions of the chair he's kneeling in front of. "I think we should just focus on the future. Forget it happened. Dammit, are you sure neither of you have seen it?"
"I have," says Spock, still lying propped on an elbow, and Bones turns to him, then jumps a little, like he didn't realize how close they were. His position on the floor puts their faces at the same level and suddenly the only thing in my head is what it would be like if they kissed. If I got to see that happen.
Spock shifts like perhaps he's thinking the same and the blankets on him slip down further, revealing that he's wearing a black undershirt, probably taken from one of my drawers after I offered free access. My heart hiccups at the sight of him in my clothes, something so casually intimate. Other parts of me also react to how damn good his shoulders and arms look in that shirt.
Bones isn't subtle, bless him. He's noticed the same thing and his gaze trips over Spock for a second too long before he swallows.
"Well?" he demands of Spock. "Where —why are you smiling, Jim?!"
"No reason," I say, not bothering to contain my grin. "Oh, are you thirsty? Hungry? We have leftovers."
He looks flustered. "What? It's midnight. What kinda question is that?"
"Yes, why were you sneaking in here at midnight anyway?" I muse. "Surely it wasn't so you could snatch your comm and tiptoe away without having to see either of us."
He scowls. "Now why would I do that? Just, ah, worked with my schedule." He whirls on Spock suddenly. "And why are you sleepin' out here anyway?!"
Spock tilts his head like Bones is a vaguely interesting, if not very bright specimen of local fauna on an away mission. "Where else would I sleep, Doctor?"
"With Jim!"
"I cannot sleep with Jim," Spock says gravely. "Our discussion of a change in relationship status was interrupted."
Bones stares at him. "You're joking." He turns to look at me. "He's joking, right?"
"He's not joking," I say with a half-shrug. "You left. We couldn't finish our conversation."
He gapes, actually speechless for several seconds. Spock and I exchange a quick glance over his head.
"For crying out loud!" Bones finally manages. "You're not gonna be together just to prove a point? To me?"
"It is not 'proving a point'," Spock says, regaining his attention. "It is, in fact, trying to be together. You are part of that conversation."
Bones does some more gaping at him, then drops his face into his hands and lets out a muffled yell of frustration. "I have removed myself from that conversation," he says through his hands, before dropping them. "Surely the two of you are smart enough together to figure out what that means. And where you can go from there. Now where is my comm?!"
Spock looks up at me and I move closer to sit on the low coffee table. My instinct is to box Bones in between us, since his body language is screaming 'flight risk', but I make myself sit on his other side, and not too close.
"Look, Bones," I say, trying for a gentler tone. He eyes me warily from where he's kneeling on the floor. "If this—" I gesture between myself and Spock and then to him. "—isn't what you want, of course that's fine. We'll leave you be. But given … yesterday and what you said … it doesn't seem like that's actually true."
He opens his mouth, closes it. Lets out a heavy, heavy sigh. "I just came for my comm unit," he says plaintively.
"Listen," I say, leaning in. "If you can look me in the eye — look Spock in the eye — and say you're not interested, you don't want either of us, you don't want to find out where this could go, then do it." I won't break eye contact. "But I don't think that's true."
"Nor I," says Spock softly.
Bones jerks his gaze over to Spock. "You don't know everything about me," he says, accusation in his voice.
"I do not," Spock agrees.
"People can have thoughts and feelings that are just part of their brainspace, doesn't mean they want to bring 'em into the real world. Maybe Vulcans are above all that."
"We are not," Spock says. I'm reminded abruptly of an away mission where he tried painstakingly slowly to gain the trust of a native bird a little like a wren. "I do understand."
They look at each other for several moments, something wordless passing between them, and I'm desperately curious about what it might be. I wonder, for the tenth or twelfth or hundredth time, what it had been like, sharing their minds so closely and for so long. With either one of them it would have been fascinating. If only— but no. "If onlys" are pointless — and foolish as well when any change to the past means we might not have arrived at the outcome right here. Both of them alive, intact, themselves. With me. On the far side of the valley of the shadow of death.
With a little huff of air, Bones lets his head drop, like it's too heavy for his neck to support anymore.
"I don't know what you want from me," he tells his knees.
"Don't you?" I say, surprised how gentle my voice is, when I know I cannot possibly stand a second more of inaction.
My knuckles under his chin nudge his face up, turn it towards me. I only have time to register his wide eyes, the way his mouth has just barely fallen open, before I'm pressing my lips to his. Kissing my best friend.
There's a moment when everything hangs, caught in the balance.
And Bones melts. Gives in. A soft noise in his throat and his mouth shifting against mine.
It's brief; he pulls back after a moment and he's breathing hard, but he's not avoiding my eyes. And then we both look to the side because Spock — Spock — is not a meter away. Watching us with a look on his face I don't think I've ever seen, in all these years.
"Leonard," he says gravely. "I will do everything in my power to ensure you do not regret this."
Bones still looks gobsmacked, but is unresisting as Spock's big hands cradle his face and bring their mouths together. The kiss is so sweet I can almost feel it in my own still-tingling lips. And then it changes into something hungrier, their mouths opening, Spock sliding off the couch onto the floor without breaking contact. There's a growl from one of them and I am getting hard so fast it's making me dizzy. Bones brings a hand up to twist in the hair at the nape of Spock's neck and oh— I want to know what that feels like. As though Bones is the telepath, his other hand lands on my knee.
Bones breaks their kiss and they both look up at me, lips swollen, eyes dark, and I'm thinking remember this, remember every detail of this.
"What the hell are you up there for?" Bones asks and tugs at my knee 'til I slip down to tangle on the floor with them. "I'm way too damn old to be on the floor. Hell, we all are. If I'm doing this, you're doing this."
"Yes," I say, and I'm laughing, giddy. "Of course. I'll do whatever you say, Doctor."
"Damn right, you will," Bones says, trying for stern, but he's grinning, too, that smile I've loved all these years. And then I'm distracted because Spock has a hand on the back of my own neck, tugging me into him and I go gladly, I go so, so gladly.