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Kirk genuinely liked the bridge of the Enterprise. It was a good place – nothing unexpected ever happened.
Well, plenty of unexpected things happened, but at least he usually knew what he was supposed to do. They’d trained him for that.
What he held in his hands now, however, was definitely and completely out of his comfort zone.
He read the PADD once more to be completely sure. Unfortunately, the display was unchanged. He walked reluctantly to his first officer’s station. Keeping his voice down and tone light, he said, “Spock, I think you may have made a mistake.”
Spock turned to face him. “A mistake, Captain?”
“This PADD you just handed me, it’s a request for your heating and replicator privileges to be transferred to another room.”
Spock showed no signs of confusion and simply said, “Yes.”
“Spock this –“ Kirk glanced around the bridge and lowered his voice even more. “The quarters you want them transferred to are McCoy’s”
“Quite correct, Captain,” Spock replied, his face characteristically calm. Kirk searched the tips of his eyebrows carefully for any sign of distress or madness.
Finding none, he sighed and said, “I'm sure you know that privileges like these are reserved for partnerships?” When Spock didn’t reply, he began to panic slightly. “You know… Couples? Romantic relationships?”
“I am well aware, Captain.”
Kirk could feel hysteria starting to build. Desperately trying to cling to reality, he asked, “I assume there is a logical explanation behind this?”
Spock nodded. “Indeed. Doctor McCoy’s current quarters are slightly larger than mine.”
Kirk could not reply. After a minute of staring, Spock began to look concerned. “Captain, are you well?” Kirk opened his mouth, but was unable to go any further. Or close it. Spock frowned and continued. “Perhaps you should visit Sickbay.”
The mention of Sickbay was enough to snap Kirk out of his reverie. “Sickbay! Yes. You might be right. I’ll just… go.” Ignoring the stares from the rest of the bridge crew, he all but ran to the turbolift. Once safely inside and alone, he could calm down. Actually, now that he was thinking properly, it occurred to him that Spock might be playing some kind of trick on McCoy. The two of them were always arguing and sniping at each other. It wouldn’t be the first time they had gone through him, either.
By the time the turbolift opened on the floor to Sickbay, Kirk was actually chuckling. This was by far the finest trick that Spock had ever played.
“Bones,” he announced happily. He was looking forward to seeing this now.
The doctor was sorting through a cabinet and scowled when he saw Kirk. “What’s gone wrong now?”
“Who said anything’s gone wrong?”
“Seems like the only time you come down here is when you’re hurt, someone else is hurt, or you want a drink,” McCoy replied.
Kirk held up his hands reassuringly. “Not this time, I promise. Although, you might need a drink after what I tell you.”
“Oh?”
“I just received the most peculiar request from a certain pointy-eared officer of mine.”
McCoy began to look interested. “Really?” He smiled. “What was it?”
“He put in a formal request,” Kirk began, relishing every word, “To have his heating and replicator privileges transferred to your quarters.”
Kirk was expecting McCoy to look perplexed, horrified, or maybe even as if he were about to cry. What he did not expect was for McCoy to smile wider and say, “Well, it’s about time. You’re right – this does call for a drink.”
For the second time that morning, Kirk’s brain was unable to form rational thought. Eventually he managed to stammer out, “You… you're not upset?”
“Damn fool Vulcan keeps shivering in his sleep and denying it. And he won’t hear of me staying in his on the account of the extra few meters of space I have. Here,” he said casually, as though he hadn't filled Kirk's head with disturbing imagery. He held out a shot of something orange.
Kirk took it automatically, still waiting for the punch line. McCoy just clinked their glasses together and drank. Kirk could feel a headache beginning in his left temple.
When McCoy noticed he wasn’t drinking, he eyed him worriedly. “You are going to sign off on it, aren’t you?” When he didn’t get a response, he frowned and said, “Look, I know we sometimes encounter cultures that don’t accept inter-species relationships, or even homosexual romances, but Spock and I will be…” He trailed off. “What’s wrong with you?”
Kirk’s eye had been twitching since the word ‘romance.’ He downed his drink hurriedly. “Nothing, Bones, nothing. Just checking to see that you were on board with…” He struggled to find a word for this level of calamity. “This.”
McCoy smiled. “You know me and Spock, Jim. He can speak for us both.”
Later during that same shift, Kirk watched McCoy yell for fifteen minutes straight, insulting Spock, his father, his mother, sand, and the inability of the Vulcan atmosphere to facilitate intelligent life. Spock looked at the doctor impassively, and when he stopped for breath took the opportunity to insult McCoy, antiquated Earth idioms, and the inability of thousands of years of Terran natural selection to produce a competent physician.
Kirk’s eye, which had calmed down after he signed the request and passed the PADD to a yeoman, began to twitch again.
*
For a while, Kirk thought that they were playing an elaborate joke on him. After a few months, however, he was forced to accept that his First Officer and Chief Medical Officer were sleeping in the same quarters, living out of the same quarters, and in some kind of – Kirk shuddered whenever he thought of the word in relation to them – relationship.
His unfortunate realization that it wasn’t a hoax had come after not one but six junior officers approached him asking slightly different but thematically related questions about the situation. On an interesting note, after each incident Kirk retired to his quarters to consume slightly different but thematically related quantities of alcohol.
His self-medication of choice was slowly but surely being depleted. Whenever this had happened in the past, Kirk just went into McCoy’s quarters and begged some out of him, but now Kirk was a bit scared to. He had begun to have dreams of those particular quarters detaching themselves from the ship and following him around trying to eat him. He didn’t have to be a psychologist to understand what that meant.
Luckily, some time passed, and his dreams became more sporadic. For the most part he stopped worrying, settling instead into resigned confusion. They still fought and insulted each other all the time and never resolved their arguments with anything that looked like mutual affection. The rest of the crew traded perplexed looked whenever they argued. Once, Kirk asked Scotty whether he knew what their relationship was like off-duty, and the engineer had adopted a look of morose bewilderment. No one understood.
*
One day, after Kirk sent McCoy and an away team to the surface of a class M planet on a routine sample-gathering mission, Spock let out a pained cry. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared. Spock spun around, eyes wide. “Captain, the away mission –“ He jerked suddenly and stopped speaking.
Kirk quickly opened a channel. “Enterprise to Doctor McCoy, Enterprise to Doctor McCoy, come in please.” There was no response. He looked at Spock. “What’s wrong?”
Spock shook his head. “I do not know. I can sense only fear –“ He clenched his hands suddenly, breaking the stylus he was holding. “ – And pain.”
Wasting no time, Kirk stood and barked out orders for the formation of a rescue team. When Spock started to follow, Kirk stopped him. “No, you stay on the ship. Stay in constant communication. Notify me immediately if there is any change.”
Spock looked slightly frustrated, but Kirk knew he would obey orders. He turned to leave but was stopped when Spock pulled him back. “Jim.”
“Yes, Spock?”
“You should know, our bond is not a particularly strong one. I rarely sense emotional distress and have never felt anything physical, let alone at this distance. Whatever is causing this is quite formidable.”
Kirk suddenly realized that Spock looked unusual. His hands, normally clasped behind his back when not in use, hung haphazardly at his side. For some reason, it made him look very vulnerable. Kirk clapped him on the back. “I’ll find him Spock, don’t worry.”
And instead of raising an eyebrow or casting a flippant remark, Spock just watched him go.
It took all of his skill and formidable cunning, but eventually Kirk found McCoy and the rest of the away team in an incredibly cold room hooked up to an incredibly hot machine, which was pumping their blood through them at a temperature 20 degrees above normal. At the site of the rescue party, McCoy gave a weak smile and said, “The next time you tell me to beam down to an unknown planet, the answer is no.”
Kirk ignored him. “Come on, let’s get you off of this thing.”
“Dialysis,” McCoy corrected tiredly. “Barbaric even when used properly. Ridiculous idea.” He grinned a bit maniacally as Kirk began to unhook him. “Seriously though. These aliens got me so riled my blood’s gonna boil.” He barked out a laugh that tapered off into a groan. With that, his eyes rolled back and he slumped forward, unconscious.
Kirk caught him and opened his communicator. “Scotty,” he said quickly, “Beam us up now.”
Kirk was surprised to see that Spock wasn’t waiting for them in the transporter room or in sickbay. He arrived a few minutes later, though, just as McCoy was beginning to wake up.
“Oh,” he said, blinking rapidly. “Looks like I made it.”
“Unfortunately for us all,” said Spock. “I was beginning to hope that the Enterprise would soon receive a medical officer capable of basic first-aid.”
Kirk’s eyes bugged out of his head. He started to edge toward the door, not wanting to see an ugly argument, which was surely coming.
To his surprise, McCoy smiled. “Hope? That’s a rather illogical human emotion, Mr. Spock.”
Spock coolly replied, “Even I experience worry on the receiving end of your so-called care.”
McCoy raised an eyebrow. “And worry, too. I must be really bad to inspire such fear in you.”
Spock said nothing, but he did take a step forward, his gaze unwavering.
For a second, McCoys’s face crumpled before smoothing out again. Kirk realized they weren’t talking about medical care.
McCoy began to get up. Chapel rushed toward him, but McCoy waved her off. “Don’t be ridiculous, Christine. There’s nothing for it but to let the blood cool off naturally. Temperature in my room might make it more bearable, anyway.”
Chapel protested. “You shouldn’t exert yourself, Doctor.”
Spock stepped forward and pulled McCoy the rest of the way to his feet. “I shall carry him myself.”
“The hell you will,” snapped McCoy, though it lacked his usual energy. “Jim, get over here and help me down the hallway.”
Together with Spock, Kirk half-led, half-dragged the nearly comatose medical officer to the quarters that had haunted his dreams for so long. Once inside, Kirk looked around, unable to contain his curiosity. It looked exactly the same as it always had, although Spock’s harp was lying on one of the shelves. “Thank you Jim,” Spock said as he lowered McCoy into a chair. He bent over and rested his hand on McCoy’s face, like Kirk had seen him do with others before. This time, McCoy reached up to mirror the gesture, and they both curved in on each other, breathing deeply. They were so close together that Kirk couldn’t see their expressions, but he saw Spock’s shoulders shake and he heard McCoy let out an unhappy sigh. He left quickly, recognizing that this was a very private moment.
*
The next day, since nothing was going on apart from logging the previous day’s events, Kirk approached Spock while he was at his station.
“How is Bones?” he asked.
Spock inclined his head. “He is well, all things considering. I believe he will be fully recovered by the end of the day.”
Kirk nodded and let Spock work for a little while, just thinking. Eventually, unable to help himself, he blurted out, “Why him?” When Spock looked puzzled, he added, “It’s just – you and him – you argue all the time, even now. It doesn’t seem… logical.”
Spock nodded and appeared thoughtful. “I myself am not sure. I can only assume that emotions such as love and affection are not formed logically, or with any knowledge or control.” He frowned slightly.
At this, Kirk smiled. “Annoyed, Spock?”
“Of course not, Captain,” Spock replied. He fell into silence briefly, but soon continued. “We are very compatible in a large variety of ways, and the ways in which we are not do not appear to matter. I can only speculate that unquantifiable emotion is to blame for the discrepancy. However, Doctor McCoy may be better qualified to provide an explanation.” This time, there was no mistaking the frown.
“No, no,” said Kirk quickly. “You’re explanation sounds quite reasonable to me. Thank you.”
*
That wasn’t enough to satisfy his curiosity though, so – fully aware that he was turning into a gossipy old man – he cornered McCoy where he was sure they wouldn’t be overheard. Without preamble, he asked, “When did it start?”
McCoy looked at him blankly.
“You and Spock,” he elaborated.
McCoy frowned. “You know, I'm not actually sure.”
Kirk rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that, Bones. How did it happen? Give me all the juicy details!”
McCoy blushed, and Kirk grinned. “It was during an argument, wasn’t it? I knew it!”
“No!” McCoy protested. “Well – yes and no. I don’t know.” He sighed. “We were talking – I guess you could say we were arguing – on our way to bed after a shift and when we got to his quarters I just followed him in and kept talking. He ignored me and started getting ready for bed and when he was done he just looked at me, and I lay down next to him.” McCoy smiled softly. “Like it was the most natural thing in the world.”
“The next day,” he continued, “We were doing the exact same thing at the end of shift, and I was determined to be appropriate this time. So I walked past his room and into mine, only he followed me.” McCoy smiled again.
Kirk smiled back at him. “You’re very happy, aren’t you?”
“Yes Jim," McCoy answered, shrugging and looking bemused. "Very happy.”