Work Text:
Come on now, touch me...
Can't you see that I am not afraid?
Spock rubbed his hands in the warmth of the heater, listening to the steady drumbeat of rain on the roof of his cottage. Sov-Masu, they had named the new planet. Rain. Far from Vulcan, far from its scarlet sands and arid winds, the remnant of his people now lived on a planet of near-constant rainfall. McCoy would probably have laughed at the irony.
The ache in his fingers subsided somewhat and Spock picked up his stylus to begin writing again. He spent most of his time alone, separate from the rest of the colony. The other Vulcans found his presence...somewhat discomfiting. It would be illogical to blame him for the destruction wrought by another man, of course. But Spock was from another place, another time. He was not one of them, not truly. He helped in the colony when it was necessary. The rest of the time he stayed in his hut and listened to the rain, and wrote. And remembered.
He looked down at the blank, fresh screen. He put his stylus to it.
"The Squire of Gothos. Stardate 2124.5. The Enterprise was on a supply mission to Colony Beta VI when it encountered a rogue planet drifting in space..."
He lost himself in the memories, writing them down, giving them form and life again. The constant rattle of the rain was a meditative drone. He was completely engrossed in writing.
And yet he was not surprised, somehow, when a knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.
Raising an eyebrow, he stood and went to the door.
It opened to reveal a dripping-wet James Kirk standing under an inadequate yellow umbrella. His hair was wet with rain and his smile was polite and yet somehow hopeful. "Mene sakkhet ur-seveh," he said, raising his hand in the salute. He had some difficulty holding his fingers apart correctly.
"Captain," Spock said after a moment to regain his equilibrium.
"The Enterprise is in dry dock at a nearby Starbase for repairs," said Kirk. "It will be a few days. I...decided to come here."
"You did not inform me of this in advance."
Kirk looked abashed. "I was afraid you might say no."
"Indeed, I might have."
Kirk's look shifted mercurially to impish. "Then it's a good thing I didn't ask, isn't it?" He waved the useless umbrella. "May I come in?"
Spock blinked. Then he moved out of the way and permitted Kirk entry.
: : :
Kirk curled his hand around the cup of tea Spock handed him, murmuring the proper thanks for food in Vulcan. His words were stilted but his pronunciation and inflection were good, and he held the cup in the correct way. "You have been studying Vulcan," Spock noted.
Kirk nodded.
"Why?"
A flash of surprise on the human's face, as if he shouldn't have to explain himself. "When Vulcan...when it happened, you...felt all those deaths. Every one."
For a moment, Spock felt it again: the death agonies of six billion sentient beings ringing in his soul, ripping at his mind. "Yes."
"In the meld, I felt them too," Kirk said simply. "And I wanted to...pay them some tribute." He shrugged, uncomfortable and solemn at the same time. "It seemed the right thing to do." He sipped the tea and beamed with sudden delight. "This is delicious!"
The force of his personality hit Spock like a furnace glow, like a sun. It had been so long since he had felt that warmth on him...
"It is an adaptation of a local leaf to Vulcan recipes," he explained, looking down and pouring some more. "Captain, you mentioned the Enterprise was being repaired. I would be curious to hear how she came to need them."
Kirk launched into a story involving an energy being that had attempted to take over the ship and nearly sent it plunging into a sun. "And then Scotty managed to override the energy patterns--complaining all the while it couldn't be done, of course--and trap the being in a subroutine in the computer banks. Then Spock, Uhura and Chekov had to track it down like a virus and delete it--that was a close one, it almost leapt to the life support systems."
Spock found that his fingers were steepled and he was nodding. He asked a few questions about how his younger self had solved the problem--slightly surprised because that wasn't the approach he would have taken. Somehow the conversation segued into a different adventure the Enterprise crew had encountered, and then another. Kirk was brimming with affection and pride in his ship and his crew, eager to share everything they'd done together. Spock listened intently, feeling an odd sense of dislocation at hearing the old names used in new stories.
He would have to get used to that, as there was no world in which the Enterprise crew did not create stories worth telling.
Kirk glanced at the clock and looked alarmed. "It's late," he said. Spock looked up and blinked; it had become late without him noticing. Strange, as he was normally quite aware of the passing of time. "I have to get back into town and find a place to stay." Kirk was pulling on his coat and reaching for his umbrella before Spock was able to frame the words with the conciseness he wished:
"You could stay here." Kirk looked around the tiny hut with a raised eyebrow, and Spock added hastily, "I assumed you would be coming back tomorrow. If I was in error--"
"No. I'll be back," said Kirk.
"Then there is no need to walk back to the center of town in the rain. Stay here. It is...the logical choice."
"But--"
"I have a spare sleeping roll. I shall sleep on the floor."
Kirk shook his head, smiling faintly. "I'll stay if you promise not to give up your bed, Spock."
"Very well, Captain."
Kirk shrugged his coat off again. "You don't have to call me Captain, you know."
"It is...an old habit."
That quick, flashing smile again. "There's something to be said for old habits."
Spock went to get the sleeping roll before he spent too long looking at Jim's smile.
Later, wrapped in the warm blankets--a luxury he couldn't bring himself to deny his old bones--Spock listened to Jim snoring on the floor. He listened for the little hitch that meant Jim would be waking himself up soon, and when Jim snorted slightly and rolled over in his sleep, Spock felt a strange wave of something like homesickness. He let the emotion roll over him, experiencing it, accepting it, waiting for it to pass.
As he slipped into sleep, he wondered if Kirk had let him keep his bed out of respect to his advanced age.
: : :
What was that promise that you made?
Why won't you tell me what he said?
What was that promise that you made?
Jim Kirk rubbed sleepy eyes and finished eating the dried fruit bar. "Forgive the paucity of my meal," Spock said. "If I had known I would have guests--"
"--That's fine," said Kirk, polishing off the bar. He took a long sip of the tea. "Your turn."
"My turn?" Kirk looked at him, eyes bright and blue and intent. Spock would have to do research into how the events on the Kelvin might have been able to alter the chromosomes for eye color at such a late stage in gestation.
"I told you my stories. Now I want yours. Tell me about your Enterprise. Tell me about your--your crew."
Slowly at first, then with more comfort, more fluidity, Spock began to talk. Kirk listened, hanging on every word, interrupting sometimes:
"A silicon based life form? Amazing!"
"So she was blind...that dress doesn't sound like anything we can make yet."
"Wait--a brother? Your Kirk had a brother?"
Spock talked until he was nearly hoarse. He paused eventually to take a long sip of tea and rest his voice. Silence stretched between them. Humans so often wanted to fill silence with chatter, but Kirk merely sat gazing into the distance as if trying to imagine the scenes Spock had described for him. It was a surprisingly comfortable silence. Spock sat and drank his tea. Being in the same room as James Kirk again.
"What was he like?" Kirk said quietly after a time.
Spock didn't try and pretend he didn't understand. "The James Tiberius Kirk I served under was...brash. Reckless. Emotional. A great leader. Passionately committed to his ship and his crew. Brilliant. Arrogant."
"How did he die?"
Spock swallowed. "I wasn't there," he said. It was the only fact of his captain's death that seemed to matter.
Kirk nodded as if that answered his question. "I saw him. In your mind."
Spock held himself very still.
"I saw both of you."
It wasn't a question, but Spock nodded, once.
"Why did you avoid me? Why did you make me seek you out?" Kirk sounded honestly curious, and Spock closed his eyes briefly.
"You are not my Captain. You are your own person. I did not have the right."
Kirk pondered that for a moment, then suddenly shot Spock a dazzling smile. "If I'm not 'your Captain,' you'll have to call me Jim."
Spock shook his head slowly, mutely. There was a pain in him too deep to analyze, too deep to outwait. And a hope he could not look at.
"Spock." Unfamiliar blue eyes in a familiar face. "The Jim Kirk I saw in your mind. I want to know him better. I want to see him through your eyes again. I want to..." he stopped, swallowed, searched for words. "I want to be the kind of man you would look at that way."
The sound of the rain was thunderous, deafening. Jim Kirk had never been the sort of man who would let him evade the truth. "I am...a hundred years older than you. I am an old man," he said, the words blunt and brutal.
This time the smile was slow, sweet, strangely knowing. It moved through Spock like a fire he had long forgotten. "The Spock I felt in the meld has never been old."
Spock arched an eyebrow, tried to defuse the look in those eyes with humor, always his last line of defense. "Why, Captain, are you attempting to seduce me?"
The smile deepened. "Yes," said Jim Kirk.
Spock looked away.
He felt motion; Jim was close now, very close, not touching. "I want to feel the touch of your mind again," he said, low and urgent. "Cool and hot at once, pure logic and pure fire mingled. It felt..." He shook his head, his eyes bright. "Tell me you don't want it and I'll leave," he said.
Spock drew a long breath. The room seemed as hot as Vulcan somehow, a desert heat burning the cold rain from his heart. "Vulcans...cannot lie."
Kirk didn't contradict him, merely smiled as if he'd won the argument. Waiting.
After a moment, Spock put out his hand, the fingers outstretched. And yet he could not bring himself to touch the familiar/unfamiliar face before him; it trembled in the air between them as if palsied with age.
James Kirk moved the last few centimeters, turning his face into the touch. "My mind to your mind, Spock," he whispered.
At the contact, the shaking stopped completely, leaving Spock's hand sure and certain. Five points of contact. An infinity of yearning. "My thoughts to your thoughts, Jim."
The rain, the cottage, their bodies and the world itself fell away into light.
I'm going to love you till the heavens stop the rain.
I'm going to love you till the stars fall from the sky
For you and I...