Work Text:
It was, he knew, a foolish and sentimental plan. An illogical plan. An oh-so very human plan, but he could not help himself. He had walked every path open to him, and they all led back to this.
Find Jim.
Spock moved slowly around the San Francisco apartment. He had given away the plants to neighbours, with carefully handwritten notes detailing the conditions of their homeworld and the care they each required. He had, one week ago, allowed the small ginger tabby with the rather outsized name of I-Chaya II to pass into the hands of Joanna McCoy and her excitable son, Leonard. Leonard McCoy II. It was, he supposed as he folded another comfortable robe into his travelling bag, quite fitting.
He was packing light. This trip, whatever its outcome, would not be a long one.
Spock reviewed again the details of the route in his mind. It would take longer than it had taken the Enterprise-B, travelling in a personal shuttle – though, as Ambassador, his personal shuttle was significantly more advanced than the starship that had carried his husband out of his life.
The journey itself was a simple matter. There was nothing suspicious in the Vulcan ambassador setting off in the general direction of his home planet, after all. And it had been 95 years since he had been given to even the smallest small talk. It was hardly unusual that he left without a word.
And then—And then. There was space. Deep, drowning space, scattered with the stars that had always so sparked Jim’s imagination. He had once asked about his fascination with them.
“They are a simple matter of chemical and physical decay. Their properties are well-understood.”
“It isn’t about the stars,” Jim had said, his gaze never leaving the observation deck window. “It’s about the worlds they give life to. It’s about all the people out there who look up and wonder if there’s anyone else, in all that darkness. Like we do.”
Spock slowed the shuttle and consulted his instruments. Not far now. He reached into his robe and drew out a pendant on a long chain. A gold ring clicked against the metal of the locket as it moved. It was warm, as warm as his skin. Spock pushed a concealed lever and the lid sprang open, a small holographic torso flickering to life. Jim.
He returned it to its place beneath his robe before the voice recording could begin – and delay him from acting.
Spock pointed the shuttle directly into the only area of space which produced no readings at all. A soft mist condensed around the viewing window, rolling over the shuttle like a small boat caught in a sea storm. Spock had never seen a sea storm, but Jim’s paperback novels described them with vivid colour.
The mist thickened and became dark, with flashes of electrical light surrounding him on all sides. Spock closed his eyes. He pressed one hand hard over his heart, as if to stem the pain that had weighted his every heartbeat for almost a century.
He felt turbulence, and thought of Jim. Whether this worked, or whether these were to be his final moments, was almost irrelevant. He would think of Jim either way.
At length, Spock became aware of a stillness that transcended lack of motion. He reminded himself that prayer was illogical. He prayed anyway. In his mind’s eye, he heard Leonard’s victorious remarks about the power of feeling. It almost drew a smile. He was grateful to the doctor for so many things.
Spock summoned his courage and opened his eyes.
He was sitting, he discovered, on the remains of a felled tree. The shuttle seemed never to have existed at all – nor did he ever seem to have been anywhere else. Confusion began to seep into his thoughts. How had he come to be here? He did not remember walking from the cottage to this place on the edge of the forest. He did not remember—
Spock gathered himself. No. He had not walked from the cottage. He had flown, in a shuttle. That was right. He shook his head, a habit Jim often employed to dispel unwanted thoughts. It was surprisingly effective.
Spock rose and reached to smooth his travelling robe, only to discover that it had become, quite suddenly, far softer and more comfortable. And blue. An achingly familiar shade of blue. Spock’s hand trembled as he ran his fingers across it. He pressed a hand to his chest, and relaxed when he felt the outline of the locket still resting there. Good.
The cottage was only a short walk away. Spock pushed inside, his heart fluttering wildly against his side. There was a small, well-used kitchen around him, filled with pots of herbs and mugs of tea, and a plate of something Spock realised was pok tar. The closest thing to salad his bondmate had ever taken to eating. The ache in his side deepened. He moved further into the house, through an arched opening that took him to a cosy living space. There was a fireplace, unlit, and a sofa strewn with blankets and cushions. There were two very plush armchairs. There was—
Two very plush armchairs. One occupied.
Jim looked up from his paperback, half-moon glasses perched on the end of his nose. He reached up and very slowly lowered them to rest on their chain against his front. Without once taking his eyes away from his visitor, he pushed a piece of paper between the pages of his book and set it aside.
For a very long moment, there was silence.
“Oh.”
Jim broke it first. So very like him that Spock could have laughed, if he had not been putting all his energy and focus into remaining upright.
“You’re…”
Jim struggled for the right words.
“I suppose there’s no use in asking whether you’re real, this time.”
Jim stood slowly, still never looking away. He crossed the small room, socked feet padding over an old rug that Spock would have recognised from his ancestral home, if he had been able to look anywhere but at Jim either.
Two hands curled around Spock’s upper arms. Jim peered up, searching for the fault in the illusion. “You were younger, last time,” he murmured, eyes scanning Spock’s face. “Young enough to still be on the Enterprise. Pulled from my memory, I suppose. I’ve never seen you like this.”
Jim reached up and traced the lines across Spock’s brow with the pad of his thumb, temporarily smoothing them as he went. “Say something.”
Spock fought to find his voice. The moment Jim’s skin came into contact with his own, the careful patchwork of protection he had placed around the unhealed remnants of their bond had shuddered to life. Now his mind was crying out for him.
“T-T’hy’la, I…”
He blinked. Jim was still there when his eyes opened. This man was real, and he was his husband. It was overwhelming. Spock opened his mouth to speak, but no words came forward. He reached for the doorframe, his strength suddenly faint. “Jim…”
And then there were arms, instead of hands, guiding him to that overappointed sofa and down, into the mass of cushions. A heavy throw was draped around his shoulders and a shift in the seat beneath him said that Jim had sat down by his side. A worried face watched him, carefully.
“It has been a very long time, ashayam. I had thought I would not ever see you again.”
The words were small and halting, forced into the open air against the rush of feelings that threatened to devastate him entirely.
A single hand, rough with work but gentle as a butterfly alighting on a petal, reached out and laced their fingers together. A thumb brushed soothingly across his knuckles.
“How?”
Jim’s expression was shifting, from disbelief to disbelief of another kind. His hand would not still, stroking Spock’s knuckles over and over.
“I could not—Without you, there was nothing. The universe contained no wonder, no hope. I was not—I had expected that I would be stronger, in the face of your loss. I have always known it would come. We both knew I would live far beyond your lifetime. That I would one day live without you. In 95 years, I have not discovered how to do it yet. I have realised that I cannot.”
Spock turned on the sofa to face Jim. There were tears running down his husband’s cheeks. With one hand, Spock cradled his jaw, brushing the droplets away.
It was only the smallest of movements from there to his meld points, and then Jim’s hand was pressed over his own as if it might vanish at any moment, as if he could rejoin them by force alone.
The bond burned.
They burned.
When the outside world returned, they were one again. The pain of 95 years was lifted. Spock felt a decade younger. Jim felt real, for the first time in far too long.
“I have spice tea.”
Jim broke their second silence, and this time, Spock smiled.