Chapter Text
On the Bridge, at the end of Alpha shift, Spock stood up when Jim did. “Need something, Cmdr.?”
“Are you otherwise occupied after this shift?” Spock asked. “I have acquired a 3-D chess board and you are the only other competitively ranked chess player aboard.”
Nyota, already most of the way into the turbolift, said, “If you don’t play her, I will and nobody wants to watch that again.” He shuddered theatrically. “She’s too good for the rest of the crew to play against and it’s up to you to save us from her winning streak.”
“If it’s for the good of the ship,” Jim said. “Then there’s nothing I can do to turn down your offer, Spock. Shall we make an announcement and play in front of everyone in the Rec Room?”
“I find no issue in that,” Spock said. “Though you should know that Lt. Uhura does not exaggerate my uninterrupted success.”
“How many crew members have you played?” Jim asked, amazed. And here she thought she had her finger on the pulse of the ship. How had she missed a chess tournament? She loved chess tournaments! They had been a bright highlight in her dismal adolescence.
“Many, but I look forward to challenging you,” Spock said, as everyone piled into the lift together. Jim and Spock ended up in the frontward corner, crowded into each other.
“Don’t get too cocky, Spock,” Jim said. “I’m not half-bad at chess.” She gave Spock her best smile, the one that had got her into as much trouble as it had gotten her out of. Spock raised a single eyebrow.
“We shall see.”
Sitting in front of Bones desk, Jim chattered about nothing while Bones finished filling out patient files for the day. “There really needs to be more Rec Rooms,” Jim complained. “I’ve never been in one that’s not loud enough to give a girl ear damage. I was talking to Spock about it and she says that she avoids going immediately after meal times and right after shifts. But what other time does that leave? I’m not going to wake up in the middle of the night just to sit in room for an hour and lose at pool to an ensign.”
“You spoke to Spock about this?” Bones asked. “I didn’t know you were getting so friendly with the Hobgoblin. You’re gonna pull her in seven directions at once.”
“I think she’s finally warmed up to the old Jimmy Kirk style of leadership, got over whatever weird thing against female captains she had. Ever since Arxo III, we’ve come to a better understanding, I think,” Jim said. “Wait, seven directions?”
Bones frowned. “You should know exactly what I mean. That poor Vulcan has one hell of a crush on you and you’ve been hot and cold on her every day since the start of this mission.”
Jim leaned forward in her seat, putting her elbows on Bones’ desk even though she knew that Bones hated when she did it. “How do you know that?”
“Spock came in to see me, asking all about ‘what does the Captain mean when she winks at me?’ and ‘do you know if the Captain feels overworked?’ and bothering me with a million more that I can’t remember,” Bones said. “I’m not an idiot, Kirk.”
“Well, I guess I am,” Jim said. “Because I had no fucking clue. I honest to god thought she hated me until like two weeks ago.”
“Why would you think that she hated you?”
“I just assumed that she thought I was a stupid, incompetent Human female not physically or mentally strong enough to take on the strain of command,” Jim exclaimed. “It sounds ridiculous when I say it outloud. I swear though, she treats me like I’m made of glass. But there’s also her parents! Her dad treats her mom like her mom is unable to make a single decision and everything I’ve read states that Vulcans have these strict families. I told you about this? The Vulcan patriarchy?”
“That’s a lot to unpack, Jim,” Bones replied. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Jesus Christ. No wonder Spock was floundering trying to seduce you. You don’t know the first thing about Vulcan society, do you. Have you even heard of T’Pau?”
The name was familiar enough. “That’s the Vulcan in charge of their Council of Elders, right?” Jim asked.
“Therefore, I doubt Spock would have issues with women wielding command when T’Pau is her grandmother!” Bones said. She slammed her hand on her desk for dramatic effect and cursed when she sends a tricorder to the ground.
In a very small voice, Jim said, “I didn’t realize T’Pau was a woman.” Now, louder, Jim says, “I need to go think about this for the next three months.” She stood up. “Only comm me if the Romulans attack.”
As Jim left, Bones shouted to her back, “If you actually let Spock stew for three months, I’m going to hypo you so far into the future you’re going to miss your own funeral!”
Jim wished she had talked to Spock in the week after the revelation from Bones. But every time Spock looked at her, Jim couldn’t help but wonder what emotions she wasn’t able to read on the Vulcan’s face. Jim thought she was some kind of expert in reading Vulcan expressions, that she could interpret the smallest turns of her mouth and the slightest changes in posture. But somehow Jim had missed the fact Spock was into her. And this left Jim completely uncertain on how to act around her First Officer.
Jim knew it was silly to be afraid of talking to Spock about Spock’s crush because she talked to Spock about a million other things in the meantime.
Until it didn’t matter, because in that week, everything goes wrong.
The Enterprise was assigned to check in on a mining colony is some distant part of the quadrant. When they reached the planet, solar flares assured that communication both from the planet to the ship and the ship to the ‘Fleet was interrupted and intermittent. Spock and Jim and a few members of Security and Engineering all beamed down to the surface but after they arrived, the transporter went down without reason, though Jim didn’t realize this until she couldn’t reach Scotty and phaser beams wer sending up clouds of dust and sparks around her.
The mining colony had been sold to the Klingons and Starfleet just had the bad luck to send the Enterprise right after the deal had gone through. The planet-side officers were arrested despite their brief firefight, split up into pairs and thrown into cells barely big enough for one.
Days passed with little word from either their captors or the Enterprise. Spock and Jim were tucked into a space so small, in order for both of them to fit, one needed to be on the bed at all times. They switched off, Jim would lie on the floor for an hour and then would lie on the bed for an hour, while Spock performed the opposite. Jim was almost entirely certain her leg was broken during their capture when one of the Klingons took a baton to her shin but didn’t want to tell Spock because then Spock would let her lie in the bed the entire time and then Spock would more likely than not exacerbate her own injuries.
A terrified miner delivered cups of water and stale ration bars once or twice a day, which was better than silence. Food meant negotiations for their release hadn’t completely dissolved. Until four days in, when the miner had disappeared and there were no longer noises from outside the small window across the hall from the cell. The other officers panicked, Jim could hear them. Their cells were on the other side of a divide and Jim couldn’t see them at all. She wished she had some words of assurance to give them but the pain and the thirst and the hunger dulled her mind and she figured she’d rather not say anything than make the situation worse.
In the two days that followed, the other officers grew quiet in a way that made Jim sick to her stomach to think about. But Spock and Jim survived, because Spock didn’t need as much water and hoarded it in those cups under the bed and Jim couldn’t help but to tuck half of her food into the pocket of her pants because nothing scares her more than running out.
Jim sat up. Spock turned over to look at her and the bed creaked with the movement. “I don’t want to die like this,” Jim croaked, her voice cracking. “Not trapped in this cell, starving to death.”
“I share the sentiment,” Spock said. “This is not how I envisioned my death.” There was silence for what could have been hours. “Captain, there is something of utmost necessity I must discuss with you.”
“If you’re going to tell me your in love with me, Spock, at least use my name,” Jim joked before her brain catches up with her mouth and she remembered that Spock very well may be about to confess romantic inclinations. “Please, tell me.”
“You know,” Spock said, she sounded exhausted. “How long have you known?”
“A week before they threw us in the cell,” Jim admitted. “I wanted to talk to you about it but it just never felt like the right moment. Spock, I care deeply for you.” She tried to stand up, only for her leg to give out underneath her. Spock caught her before she hit the ground, pulled her into the bed. “I can’t think of anyone I would rather die beside.”
Spock rested her forehead against Jim’s. “I ought to tear your captors limb from limb after what they have done to you. They have hurt you beyond measure, that you would think we would die in this miserable place.”
“That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Jim replied, feeling oddly giddy. “I know Vulcans don’t do the whole touch thing much but do you mind holding for a little longer?”
Carefully, Spock positioned both of them on the small bed so they were lying on their sides, Jim’s face pressed into Spock’s shoulder and Spock’s arms tight around her. Jim could feel the Vulcan’s heart beat against her stomach and the steady rise and fall of her chest. The warmth of Spock was welcome against the coldness that settled on the edges of Jim’s psyche more than her physical form. “I found myself unable to calculate the odds of you accepting any romantic proposition from myself.”
“Am I too unpredictable?” Jim asked. “Or are you lacking data?”
“I have spent months caught in your orbit, if there is anything that I lack, it is certainly not data,” Spock replied. “No, I did not do the calculations because I was afraid they would tell me you would not react well to the news.”
“If you had told me earlier, we probably could have avoided a lot of nonsense. I honestly thought you hated me! Like --,” Jim paused. “Well it doesn’t matter anymore, I’d rather not talk about it.” Tears started to well up and Jim shifted away in order to wipe them off.
“If death was not an almost certainty, I doubt I would ever tell you this: I am deeply in love with you, James Kirk,” Spock said with complete conviction. “And if you cry, I will assuredly cry too.”
An explosion woke Jim from a hazy dream. There were the brief sounds of battle: phasers firing, shouting. Whatever happened to the Klingons a few days ago had not prevented at least a few of them from mounting a small defense against Starfleet. When the noise subsided, Jim could hear the faint sounds of Standard being spoken with an accent that was blessedly not that of the enemy. She sat up, mirrored by Spock beside her. Then the wall across the hall shook and crumbled into rubble under the force of a makeshift battering ram under the direction of Sulu and Chekov.
“Keptain! Commander!” Chekov shouted. “You’re alive!” Then she turned to Sulu and said, “You should know better than to doubt the raw survival skills of Keptain Kirk and Commander Spock.”
Sulu was grinning as she ran up to the cell. Jim waved her away. “You need to go check on the others first, down the hall. I don’t know their status or condition but Spock and I will last another ten minutes, one way or another.” Sulu hesitated but turned to go find the other officers.
“Scotty?” Chekov barked into her comm. “I have identified the location of the Keptain and Commander! Please! Beam them up!”
Scotty’s reply was warped by the comm and by its distance from Jim but she felt the familiar disassembling of the transporter and let herself be swept back up to the Enterprise.
Hours later, after McCoy had wrestled Jim into a biobed in the Medbay and had shoved her broken leg into a temporary cast while she waited for surgery, Nyota stopped in to give Jim and Spock a short briefing on what happened following their abduction.
“The negotiations with the Klingons went poorly from the beginning,” Nyota said. “But the miners were starting to get unhappy with their presence as well. According to one we were able to capture, they had started poisoning all the Klingon’s food supply. The Klingons caught on quickly when they were getting sick and the miners weren’t. But before the Klingons could kill all the miners, one of their engineers was able to disable the anti-communication device and we beamed down to break you out.”
“And the other officers?” Jim asked. She and Spock had been placed in one of the smaller rooms off of the main medbay, a request Jim had put in after the first time she’d ended a mission injured. Nothing brought crew morale lower than seeing their Captain unconscious on a biobed.
Nyota frowned and turned his face to look at the wall. “Lts. Jamir and Lo’ret survived but none of the ensigns did. They’re a little worse off than the two of you in terms of starvation and dehydration but they didn’t face as much physical trauma as you either.” Jim wondered if Nyoto knew any of the dead ensigns, if any of them were Communication Officers under him, if he was friends with them. Then it hit Jim, she couldn’t remember the names of the ensigns at all. She had always been careful to memorize the crew roster, but ensigns transferred or only stayed for a month or died with such frequency that she often lost their names after not seeing them around for a few days.
“At least two made it out with us,” Jim said. “I can’t wait to put this whole, awful mission behind us.” All she wanted now was to stand under a hot shower until her entire body turned splotchy and red but her leg was still broken and there were letters to families that needed to be written.
Bones released Jim and Spock back to their quarters after two days of observation and the promise that they would behave themselves until their shifts started the next day. “Nothing strenuous!” she warned them, brandishing her PADD.
Jim entered her room and Spock was only a half-step behind her. “Captain,” Spock said. “James. We need to discuss what happened on Mining Colony Theta-12.”
“Sure,” Jim said. She flopped down on her bed and relished that it didn’t smell like disinfectant. “Yes,” she added, more seriously. “A lot happened.”
“I told you I am in love with you,” Spock said. She eyed the bed and the open space next to Jim but chose instead to commandeer the desk chair and pull it over so she could sit facing Jim. “But I told you this because I calculated the odds of us escaping as being less than 12.543%.”
“So you regret it?” Jim asked. “You regret telling me you love me? Or is regret one of the emotions Vulcans aren’t allowed to feel?”
Spock reached out and placed her hand on Jim’s knee. Jim stared down at it, shocked. “I wish to say that I am grateful that we were in a situation where I could tell you how I feel about you without having to face the cultural pressure of your species and mine,” she said. “I would not lie to you about loving you.”
“What did I ever do to deserve someone like you?” Jim asked. “You even do the paperwork.” She reached out with her hand, offering it. Spock pressed hers against it, so they were palm to palm. “Spock, I’ve had time to think about all this and I don’t know what to do. If anyone could work out the logical solution to this problem, it’s probably you. There’s two outcomes if I decide to date you: either we break up or we stay together until the day we die. But there’s also consequences if we don’t: our command team suffers because its weird, we split up over hurt feelings and the Enterprise loses the best First Officer in the Fleet. I don’t want to take advantage of you, Spock, because I respect you and you’re my friend, so can you give me the odds?”
“You are a singularly unpredictable element in many respects, I have discovered,” Spock replied. “In the past, knowing the odds have not changed your mind or assisted in your decision process when the decision could affect the fate of your ship or your crew. Therefore I will tell you this: I would spend the rest of my life by your side if you permitted me, and if I had my way, you would spend the rest of your life by mine.”
“Are you offering to marry me?” Jim asked. “Because that’s moving pretty fast, even for me.” She wanted to chuckle with the absurdity of it all but Spock hadn’t even flinched.
“Marriage as a concept should be saved for future discussions,” Spock said. “What I am instead suggesting is that we engage in the human activity of ‘making out’.” She stood up from the chair so she could move to the bed, never breaking physical contact, which resulted in her basically climbing atop of Jim.
Jim grabbed hold of the edge of Spock’s shirt, pulling her closer. “You’re handsy for a Vulcan,” she commented.
“I have spent months calculating the odds of us touching on any given day. Captain, you’ll have to forgive me this,” Spock said. “Now hold still so I can kiss you properly.”
“Oh Commander!” Jim said in a falsetto before she was silenced with Spock’s lips on her own.