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“Captain,” Sulu greeted Jim as he strode onto the bridge.
“Mr. Sulu, lay in a course for Starbase 9, Warp Factor 4. We have an ambassador or an admiral to pick up or something, I can’t be fussed to care with these milk runs.”
“Aye, sir, course laid in.”
“Engage.”
SNIFF!
“Lieutenant Uhura, have the Rigellians responded on the matter of the diplomatic mission? I don’t want to give them any wiggle room on that.”
“They would adjust the agenda for the first day, Captain, to begin at local noon rather than one hour earlier.”
“No can do, Lieutenant. One concession and they’ll walk all over us – give those guys an inch and they’ll take the whole yardstick.”
She smiled and nodded. “Already done, Captain.”
Jim smiled back.
AH-CHOO! SNIFF-SNIFF.
“Mr. Spock.”
“Yes, Gabdain?”
“Got a sniffle?”
SNIFF “So id would abbear.”
Jim frowned and crossed the bridge to address his First Officer in a low voice. “I thought Vulcans never got sick.”
“On the gondrary, Vulgans rarely get sick.”
“Should you be in your quarters, Mr. Spock?”
“I am berfecdly gabable of bervorbing by dudies, Gabdain.”
“I’m going to pretend what you just said was in Standard, but will nevertheless strongly suggest that you get some rest. You’re practically wilting at your station.” Spock peered at him from watery eyes and, despite that and another sniffle, Jim could tell he was not thrilled to admit defeat to a virus. “Please, ashal-veh, don’t make me worry about you,” Jim continued, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Very well,” Spock said with some dignity and rose, straightened his uniform tunic and headed for the turbolift. Jim would swear he could hear him sneezing all the way down to Deck 5.
----
AH-CHOO! SNIFF.
BEEP
“Ender.”
Jim walked into Spock’s quarters after his shift was over to bring him a piping hot bowl of the plomeek soup he’d asked the guys in the galley whip up.
“Hey, babe, awww…” he said as soon as he saw what was before him. Spock – he was fairly certain it was him, since these were his quarters, and there were pointed ears in evidence – sat propped up in his bed amidst so many pillows, Jim wondered how he fit in there with them. There were so many, Spock was nearly lost among them; there were so many, it looked like Spock was being eaten by a being made entirely of pillows.
“Hello, Jimb,” Spock said, sounding more grave than usual. Jim wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw his lower lip quiver.
“I brought you some plomeek soup – thought it’d make you feel better.
Spock sneezed into a tissue and Jim noticed the small avalanche of them that spread across the edge of the bed and to the floor. He laid the tray he’d brought down across Spock’s lap and set about cleaning them all up, then sat on the edge of the bed watching his lover stir listlessly at the soup with his spoon. Taking a chance his hand would come back whole and unharmed, Jim took the spoon from Spock and began to feed him with it. Spock dutifully opened his mouth for each spoonful, his head coming forward for it like a baby bird’s, mouth open and ready. Jim would have made a lewd remark if the overall effect wasn’t so adorable.
“My mom used to feed me chicken soup whenever I was sick as a boy,” he explained. “There’s something special about being coddled when you feel like crap.”
“It is a fair assessment,” Spock agreed, opening his mouth for the next spoonful. “Your mother was very wise.”
Jim smiled – the soup seemed to be doing its thing and clearing out Spock’s sinuses. He dabbed at the Vulcan’s mouth with a napkin. “What did your mom used to do for you?”
“On Vulcan, it was customary to be taken to the kanu pi'shi'has, where, through rigorous meditation and fasting, the body and mind would be cleansed, and all vestiges of illness would be eradicated.”
“Sounds cold, somehow.”
Spock shrugged and accepted another spoonful of soup. “It was our way. But far from cold – each day, many hours were spent in the tauk wadashaya, the sweat caves.”
“Yikes.”
“But my mother, being a human, would attempt to comfort me in her way, despite my father’s misgivings.”
“How so?”
“She would sit beside my bed and read to me, often from the math texts I favored, until I was lulled to sleep. Quadratic equations are very soothing.”
“I’ll bet they are.”
“She kept an orange tree in our arboretum, imported from Earth, and the fruits were… for special occasions. When I was ill, she would peel them and feed them to me.”
Jim smiled. “Those are nice memories.”
“They are sentimental and illogical.” Spock took another mouthful of soup. “However, I find that today, I have a craving for fresh oranges.”
“We’ll see what we can do about that. Have you had enough soup?”
Spock nodded. “My appetite is not as large as it usually is. I am also quite tired, despite the 5.2 hours of sleep I received last night.”
“Well, I won’t keep you up.” Jim rose and cleared away the tray, resting it on his knee as he knelt over to place his lips against Spock’s forehead.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking your temperature. That’s something my mom would do when I was sick.”
“Vulcans do not register febrile conditions on their epidermises. For a more accurate reading, a rectal measurement is recommended.”
Jim quirked a smile. “Well, we’ll save that for when you’re feeling better, all right?”
It took Spock a second, but he got Jim’s joke. “Indeed. Where are you going?” he asked when Jim rose.
“Thought I’d get some dinner of my own, get some paperwork done in my quarters.”
Spock frowned. “You will come back.” It was not a question.
“Of course.”
----
Later that night, Jim wasn’t sure what woke him first, the hacking coughs or the fact that his Vulcan boyfriend had suddenly turned into an octopus. He tried to sit up, but Spock just held on tighter, face buried between Jim’s shoulder blades as the bout of coughing dragged on. Jim waited a few seconds until Spock took a breath, then struggled again to sit up and failed.
“Spooock?” he said gently. He took the wheezy whimper to be a response. “I can’t get up and help you if… I can’t get up to help you.” Spock loosened his hold, though his arms and legs still clung. Jim struggled out of the too-warm confines of the bed then sat back down again atop the covers, ordering the lights to 50% and rubbing a hand over the crick in his neck – really, where had all those pillows come from?
Spock looked up at him with such a pitiful expression in his eyes, Jim had to blink to be sure this was still his Vulcan. His eyes and nose were slightly swollen and tinged a dark green, as were his flushed cheeks, and his hair – Jim wished he could take a holo, but judged it would be too cruel; all of it was sticking up, whatever Vulcan product he used fusing it all together so that he looked like the guy in that old 20th century flick Eraserhead.
“Stop it,” Jim said, surprised that he’d spoken his thoughts aloud.
Spock tried to speak, but his voice had apparently now gone. He touched his throat and tried to clear it, then tried again with no luck. At last, he just whispered. “Stop what?”
“Being adorable.” Spock scowled; he hated endearments such as that. “That’s the way to do it,” Jim said, pointing, but honestly, he wanted desperately to kiss him all over. He refrained with an effort and instead got up to make Spock a mug of green tea.
“I prefer Vulcan tea,” Spock whispered once Jim handed him the steaming mug.
“This is better for you – more antioxidants or something. Less smelling like old socks.”
Spock scowled again, but sat upright and sipped at the hot liquid gently. It worked, freeing his voice up so that he could speak, and Jim climbed back into the bed, denuded it of 75% of its pillows, lay down and slid an arm under Spock’s shoulders. Spock came to Jim immediately, hugging onto his torso and laying his head on Jim’s chest with a sound that could only be classified as a contented sigh. Jim raised his eyebrows – while Spock never made him feel unloved or unappreciated, overt gestures of affection when they weren’t making love were rare. Jim looked down on him with a smile and began to rub circles into his back, a broad smile on his face.
“What are you doing?”
“Rubbing your back – another thing my mom used to do for me when I was sick. Do you want me to stop?”
Spock looked up at him with hooded eyes. “I do not think so. In fact, if you could decrease the rate of rotation by 25%, I believe it would be an optimum level to induce somnolence.”
----
When the alarm sounded in the morning, they still lay in each other’s arms, and it was again a tough thing for Jim to disengage, though this time it was as much because he loved having a clingy Vulcan in his arms as the actual fact of said clingy Vulcan.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jim said, a hand on Spock’s chest as he followed Jim out of the bed.
Spock attempted a reply, but apparently his laryngitis had returned. He pointed at their shared bathroom and then his closet.
“Oh, no. You are not reporting for your shift today, Mister, you’re staying in bed.”
Spock opened his mouth for a protest that refused to be uttered.
“You can’t even talk, how are you going to do your job?” Jim pointed out. Spock frowned, a dark expression in his eyes. “Don’t give me that look, I’m your commanding officer. Though, I suppose if ever I had an opportunity to prattle on and on about illogical human topics, now would be the time. Did you hear that Lieutenant Wolters broke up with Ensign Chu? Boy, were the girls gossiping about that yesterday…”
Spock made a rude, very human gesture and stalked off to the bathroom.
----
Jim took a seat in the Captain’s chair and began to flick idly through the morning’s communiques on his PADD. “Lieutenant Uhura, will you ask Lieutenant Commander Shran to report to the bridge in an hour? We’ll need a Science officer present when we arrive at the Antares Nebula.”
“Mr. Spock has already made that request, Captain.”
“Very well. Yeoman Rand, will you bring next month’s duty rosters to me? With Mr. Spock out sick, I think I’ll get a start on them to save him having to be late on it.”
“He’s already completed them, sir,” she responded. “They should arrive in your Inbox shortly.”
Jim blinked as the notice did, indeed, just appear at the top of his Inbox. “So they have. It’s Tuesday, right? What time is the weekly Science Department Heads’ meeting?”
“Eleven-hundred hours, sir.”
“Inform them it will go off as scheduled, will you? I’ll take Mr. Spock’s place.”
“The meeting’s been rescheduled, Captain.”
“Oh? Until later in the week?”
“No sir, it started ten minutes ago in Mr. Spock’s quarters.”
“Yeoman, what’s more frustrating than a sick Vulcan?”
“Is that a rhetorical question, sir?”
----
“Spock!”
Spock pressed a button on his PADD, and the ship’s computer voice answered for him. “Captain?”
“You’re supposed to be in bed.”
Spock raised an eyebrow and gestured at himself. He was, technically, still in bed, sitting in a light robe atop his covers. His department heads sat in chairs in a semicircle around him.
Jim may have let a Grr slip. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
”I would again indicate my current recumbent position,” Spock’s PADD informed him, and Jim momentarily considered bringing him up on insubordination charges.
“Do I have to order you to rest, then?”
”That would be illogical.”
“Spock!” a loud voice from the hall interrupted them, and Jim threw a triumphant smile at Spock as Dr. McCoy stormed into the room, sending everyone flying for the exit.
”That is, as I believe it is colloquially termed, playing dirty pool, Captain.”
Jim just laughed as he exited the room, leaving Bones yelling about pulmonary complications, rates of communicability, and the self-destructive tendencies of “damn-fool, green-blooded hobgoblins.”
----
“Spock? Hey, Spock.” Jim ran a finger along Spock’s jaw to wake him. “How are you feeling?”
Spock pulled himself into a seated position in the bed, and though he was considerably more rumpled than when Jim had sicced Bones on him that morning, he looked brighter-eyed and better rested for his day’s forced bedrest. He smiled at Jim and took his hand for a moment before realizing something. “I am supposed to be cross with you.”
“Me?” Jim tried to affect an innocent expression he didn’t think he could really sell.
“You embarrassed me in front of my direct reports.”
“For that I am sorry,” Jim said truthfully. “But I had a good reason. I care too much about you to risk you getting sicker.”
How Spock managed to both pout and look severe, Jim could never tell, but he was doing a fair job of it at the moment. “Very well.”
“You’ve gotten over your laryngitis – see?”
“The doctor administered a most vile-tasting concoction for its surcease. It has also seems to have reduced the inflammation and congestion in my pulmonary system.” He thought a moment, realizing something “Why are you here at this hour? There are still three hours left until the end of Alpha shift.”
“Oh that? It turned out I had an important meeting with my XO, to discuss matters of great import to the smooth running of the ship.”
Spock raised an eyebrow. “I am unaware of any such urgent matters.”
“Well, urgency is relative.” Jim got up, crossed to a nearby table where he’d left a tray he’d brought with him and poured them each a mug of Vulcan spice tea.
“I thought you said spice tea smelled of disused laundry.”
“Sock – it smells like old socks. But I figure you like it, so…”
Spock took his mug and closed his eyes with satisfaction as he inhaled the aroma. He took a sip and then looked at Jim expectantly. “What matters did you need to discuss?”
Jim bent over and slid his boots off. “Nothing.”
“But you have shirked your duties to come here. It is most illogical.”
Jim straightened up and made Spock scoot over in the bed. “Just because we’re not taking care of ship’s business, doesn’t mean we don’t have important business to take care of.” He reached into his pocket, removed something, and held it out in the palm of his hand.
“An orange? But how – the ones in the ship’s arboretum will not ripen for many weeks.”
“I may have talked Scotty into setting up a propagation field down in Engineering.”
“Jim, such fields are extremely unstable –“
“Don’t worry, we had it under control.” Jim started to peel the fruit, its bright aroma filling the entire room. Spock watched him with a hungry look on his face, and when Jim held a section out for him to take from his fingers, he instead leaned forward to kiss the captain sweetly on the lips.
“I have never had someone go to such lengths for me,” he said softly. “Not since I was a small boy.”
Jim raised the orange section to Spock’s lips and smiled. “Stick with me, baby, and you’ll see how much farther I’d go for you,” he promised.
When they had shared what remained of the orange, Jim pulled something else off the tray he’d brought, then settled himself against some of the pillows on Spock’s bed.
“That doesn’t look like a math text,” Spock said as he settled himself against Jim’s chest.
“It’s better,” Jim said.
Opening the book to its first, clearly well-worn page, he began to read, “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it…”
----
Thank you for your time.