Chapter Text
After stealing the Enterprise; before Genesis.
You've always known it's a bunch of bunk, the idea that Vulcans don't have wants and feelings like anyone else. You spent years telling Spock that, but boy, it's different having an insider's view.
Spock wants a lot of things. Cold Altair water. The last word in a conversation. The comforting smell of his own quarters, with his own bed. Jim.
You've got your own list of wants, thank you very much, it's not like Spock has a monopoly. You'd like a mint julep with the good bourbon. A night of sleep without someone else's vivid and confusing dreams butting in. Your own bed, too, for that matter. And also, always, Jim.
Turns out you and Spock have all kinds of things in common after all.
You keep losing time. It's spooky as hell realizing you're not sure how you got somewhere. Noticing you're wearing or eating something you'd never have picked for yourself. Realizing everyone's staring at you like they've seen a ghost. Because of course the ghost you're carrying can't sit back and be polite, like an unwanted passenger is supposed to. Spock thinks he deserves his own time in the driver's seat.
You wake up as you're crawling into bed, and isn't that a hell of a thing. The pillow smells good, comforting, and you nuzzle into it, pulling the blanket up, and then someone moves beside you in the dark.
"Bones?" says Jim, muzzy with sleep, voice surprised. "The ship all right?"
"Jim," you hear yourself say and your voice is deeper than normal. Is it just because you've been asleep too?
Jim must not know either, because he comes close in the dark, close enough to see your face, eyes searching for something. You wonder what it is and if he finds it.
"What is it, old friend?" he asks, voice soft, and he could be talking to either of you. His hand moves under the blankets to grasp your arm. Always so tactile. "What do you need?"
You shake your head. "I don't know," you say, and that's all you.
His eyes search yours again; his hair is mussed, faint pillow creases on his cheek. A way you never get to see him.
"Sleep?" he suggests.
"Yes," you say, sagging, letting your eyes close for an extended blink. "We could all definitely use some sleep."
Jim's mouth quirks up at the corner.
"Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?"
"It's my opinion," you grumble, "as a damn tired receptacle for an annoying Vulcan katra."
"And does this katra have an opinion on the subject?" Jim says, voice still light and teasing, but you can feel the ache there, the longing for even one word more from Spock.
You sigh a little and do something you've been pretending you haven't figured out: let yourself go loose inside your mind, floaty in your own body. You'd be mortified to describe it that way in, say, a paper, but that's how it feels.
Spock's good; he can take an opening as soon as it's offered. Your eyebrow goes up in a practiced arch. "The excessive human need for dormancy is highly inefficient."
Jim chuckles like he's holding back a sob. "Did you come here just to inform me of how inefficient we silly humans are?"
A pause. You wonder if Spock even knows why you're both here, and as you think it, you can sense that he doesn't. That Jim's bed isn't a place he's used to either. Fascinating, to coin a phrase.
You let the silence stretch. You know Spock's still there, which isn't always the case.
"It appears," Spock says finally, in that overly precise way of his, "the subconscious human mind has a powerful influence on the whereabouts of the body."
You snort. "The subconscious human mind? I never had anything like this happen without a Vulcan hitchhiker in my skull."
Jim's biting back a laugh and you suddenly realize you sound exactly like a raving lunatic, talking back to yourself. You groan, turning your face into the pillow. "Jim, you're in bed with a crazy person. Or persons. As the case might be."
"Yes, why am I in bed with a crazy person or persons?" Jim asks, his voice still light. You open one eye to look at him. Neither of you have an answer you want to share. You sigh and flop onto your back, resting your hands on your chest above the covers.
"Dunno what tomorrow will be like. Never liked being alone the night before something big."
You feel a spark of interest breeze through your mind.
I did not know that.
Yeah, well, now you know all kinds of new things about me.
Faint amusement, something like fondness.
Indeed.
Jim props himself up on his elbow, watching you steadily. "Mm," he says.
Pressure behind your left eye and in your larynx. You close your eyes and let that resonant voice use you like a comm channel. He starts slowly.
"There is… something I have been wishing to share. I find there is a change to my risk/benefit analysis when it comes to disclosing certain private matters."
You tense. Spock can't be planning to— When you glance over, Jim has gone very still, his eyes sharp. When nothing else is forthcoming, he licks his bottom lip. "Oh?"
"About how I… feel. For you. It is with an intensity far greater than friendship."
Jim sucks in air, his eyes bright.
I'm sorry, Spock. I'd make my graceful exit, if I could.
No.
No? What kind of answer is no? I'm trying to be considerate here.
"Spock," Jim whispers, lifting a hand to run the back of his fingers down your cheek, knuckles catching on your stubble. The reality of it must remind him of the bizarre situation because he pauses, thumb hovering over your lips close enough to feel its heat.
"… right?" he adds uncertainly. Hell of a time to be unsure of who's confessing their feelings for him. Christ, this is torture. And you've been actually tortured.
One of you nods your head and Jim shudders. His thumb falls to your lips and he moves closer but it's only to rest his forehead against yours.
You wish you were anywhere in the universe but here. Living a moment you've never been brave enough to have. Trying to hide that fact from the man who is brave enough, who deserves it, without even knowing how to do that.
A fond exasperation, a surge of unwanted reassurance.
Your lips kiss the pad of Jim's thumb. You'll always know how that feels now. You press your eyelids closed, like that'll keep tears from welling up.
"I have been imprecise," Spock says, your voice cracking. "I have always thought it a failing of Standard that the language lacks no distinction between the singular and plural second person."
You frown in confusion, opening your eyes and seeing your expression echoed on Jim's face. Then his eyes go wide.
Both of you. I am speaking to both of you, Leonard.
Your eyes go wide, too.
"What?" you squawk, scrambling to sit upright. "Of all the—" You raise your voice, pitching it vaguely and illogically toward the ceiling. "I don't want your pity, Spock."
Jim sits up too, staring at you. "Why would it be pity?"
You think this feeling is pity?
Again a rush of affection, this one far far stronger, tinged with heat and yearning and things you don't have names for.
"That's not— you were—" Just because you could tell I was feeling sorry for myself.
I did not know how you felt about him.
You cross your arms over your chest, hunch over a bit. "It's fine, it's old, I'm used to it."
The latter are not proof of the former.
Still can't say anything regular and straightforward, can you?
"Are you— are you talking to him? In your mind?" Jim's hands are on your shoulders.
You realize you've been scowling silently at the blanket while Jim watches you intently, leaning forward to peer into your face. You expel a burst of air, press the heels of your hands into your eye sockets.
"Yeah, sorry, yeah. Seems like. That's new."
Jim lets out a little laugh, not quite hysterical. "I think it's a conversation I should be included in, don't you?"
You pull up your knees, rest your head on them. "Yeah, it does."
You should tell him.
No! And don't you go telling him anything either.
I cannot. Your mind and body are too tense. I cannot—
A mental image of trying unsuccessfully to manipulate a shuttlecraft's unresponsive controls. You snort.
I'm not a damn shuttlecraft and you're not my pilot.
I suggest asking Jim to help you relax.
Why Mr. Spock. What a salacious suggestion.
I only meant—
It's not a bad idea. You sigh and look up at Jim, who's looking half out of his own mind at this point.
"Spock says he can't get through anymore. I'm not relaxed enough."
Jim's eyes brighten at having a clear action item.
"Oh, Bones," he says and places a warm gentle hand on the back of your neck. "Nothing about this has been relaxing for you."
He slides his fingers up into your hair, scratching a little, then sweeps his hand down your back. Despite yourself, you feel your shoulders dropping, muscles relaxing.
He repeats the motion in slow strokes, breathing calmly and deeply and you find yourself matching your respiration to his. It feels good. You find yourself sinking into it, leaning towards his warmth, 'til Jim's almost supporting your weight. It would be nice to pretend he were doing this for some other reason, not just because he wants to talk to Spock.
I don't believe that is the only reason.
Oh, what do you know?
I believe I know the Admiral very well.
Yeah? Then maybe you shoulda picked his head to hitch a ride in.
… while I am sorry for the distress and difficulty my presence has caused you — I am glad I did not. I am glad circumstances led me to you.
You jolt a little, half-lidded eyes widening. Jim has slid his arm around your shoulders.
"What is it?" Jim says, voice very quiet.
"He says he's glad he's in my head not yours," you mutter without thinking it through. "Doesn't make any damn sense. He doesn't even like me."
On the contrary.
"Oh, I think you'd be surprised," Jim says in a tone you can't interpret.
Jim guides you both to lie back down, keeping his arm around you. You're so tired. You're too old for all of this.
Your head is on Jim's shoulder, your eyes flickering shut. Your knees press against his leg; it's been an awful long time since you were this close to someone in a non-medical setting.
"I am sorry I did not share my feelings sooner," Spock says, your mouth moving against Jim's shirt. "Death has a way of putting one's regrets into quite sharp relief."
"Yes, I'd say your death has clarified a number of things," Jim replies softly, wryly. His thumb is stroking the skin of your upper arm, back and forth. You wonder if Spock can feel it.
I can.
That's good. He should get to still feel good things, for as long as he can. You don't know what going into a katric arc entails, but you're pretty sure it doesn't let you cuddle with Jim Kirk.
"Will you care for him?" Spock's voice is even lower.
"Of course."
"As I should have done for you?"
Part of you is floating, far away. Part of you is listening as hard as you can.
"… if he'll have me."
"Will it be sincere?"
A brief tightening of the arm around you.
"God, yes."
"That is what he must believe."
"Spock, I—" his voice breaks. "I'm going to miss you so much. I don't know how to do— anything without you."
"You will learn. You always do."
A long exhale from Jim. "I'm still obfuscating. Old habit. I don't want to do anything without you, Spock."
You can barely hear Spock's voice, a rasp in your throat. "Nor I, Jim."
The weight of sorrow, the longing is all around you: Spock's, Jim's, your own. You can half-feel the weight of all the years behind you, the countless days the three of you have spent together, on the bridge and in alien caverns and everywhere in between. And this the last time.
In a few hours, you'll retrieve Spock's corpse. You'll give it to his father, along with the incorrigible, precious passenger in your head.
And then? Silence. Inside your mind and out.
No one else was ever as fun to argue with, you think drowsily.
Bittersweet amusement.
The sentiment is mutual.
You fall asleep to Jim holding you, whispering goodbyes to Spock.
=-=-=
Did you know? you ask, when you find out. That you'd be alive? That your body would?
I did not know. A pause. The possibility did, however, occur to me. It is why I begged the Admiral to retrieve and return me to Vulcan.
You sense his revulsion at the idea of it: a soulless body, awake and trapped in its coffin on the surface of Genesis. Or stumbling, driverless, light years from his katra. A mundane horror.
=-=-=
It will be dangerous, he tells you on the climb up Mount Selaya. For you, Leonard. Shadowy echoes of regret, grief.
Well, I guess your father knew that when he told us to come here. You've lost track of how many hours you've been awake and the climb is not made easier by the damn thin air.
I was not clear. While extracting a katra from the mind of a human was always going to carry some inherent risk, the procedure now proposed is… untested for many centuries. The transfer of a katra to an arc is almost like a magnet being pulled into place and happens fairly quickly. The fal-tor-pan, however, is a lengthy procedure, opening the mind to many more moments of potential risk.
There's something almost hilariously comforting about having Spock lecture you. On Vulcan voodoo, no less. Bit eerie, though, when you glance over at his unmoving, sedated body.
Makes sense, you say. Longer surgeries carry greater risk, too.
Should you not wish to go through with the procedure, Spock says, you should not let Jim or my father sway you. The decision is yours.
Well, Spock, you say wearily. I've reattached every nerve in your brainstem. I've patched up half the bones in your body. Don't suppose I'm about to let all that go to waste now.
The stone table where you end up lying is damned uncomfortable and apparently it never occurred to these Vulcans that a little padding would be nice for some arthritic human bones. But that ought to be the least of your concerns.
(Later, Jim will ask you what it was like and you'll envision two growing things, green tendrils too entwined to distinguish, each vine and stem being slowly teased apart.
"Like untangling fishing wire," you'll tell him.)
Time stretches, winks out. When it's over, you blink your eyes open at the pale, lightening sky.
Guess I'm all alone in here again, huh?, you think and nobody answers at all.
=-=-=
It's two days before you get the chance to give Spock a full physical. Sure, he's got the fanciest Vulcan mind-healers this side of the quadrant, but you've been his personal physician on and off for the past several decades. And nobody knows exactly what kind of physiological effects to expect from a Genesis-powered rebirth and hypersenescence.
More importantly, you're not going to feel like this has all really turned out all right until you've checked him out yourself — and neither, you know, is Jim.
It's why you let Jim loiter in the corner of your temporary bedroom at the Vulcan embassy, hands in his pockets, while you examine Spock. Spock flicked a glance toward him when he first entered, but said nothing. He's awfully quiet these days. You know he's still unscrambling his memories, but it's damned uncanny.
"Thanks for coming by, Spock," you say, and he just nods briefly and takes a seat as indicated at the foot of the bed. He watches you with that implacable face, brow ever so slightly furrowed, as you gently press your fingers to the lymph nodes in his neck, then test each of his reflexes — a familiar battery of human and Vulcan responses you put together the first month you served together.
Everything checks out, right down to his picture perfect vital signs. You turn off the tricorder with a sigh.
"Still seems too good to be true," you grumble, then raise your voice for Jim's benefit. "He's healthy as a horse."
Spock opens, then closes his mouth.
"How have you been doing?" you ask, looking back down at him. "You sleeping all right?"
"I sleep on both the left and right sides of my body, Dr. McCoy," Spock tells you very seriously. "As well as supine."
Jim lets out a snort that turns into a chuckle. You roll your eyes so hard it hurts.
"Haven't I done enough, Lord?" you ask the ceiling. "Do I deserve this, too?"
Jim claps you on the shoulder, his proximity sudden. The three of you are so close: Spock's knees nearly bumping yours, Jim warm behind you.
Like he's realized it too, Spock's upturned face of silent cooperation is gone, replaced by— you're not sure what. But his gaze flicks from your face to Jim's and back again.
"Admiral, Doctor," he begins. "I cannot explain it, but I have been having the persistent sense that there is something significant I had meant to discuss with you. With both of you. Yet I cannot recall any details beyond that. Do you have any notion of what it might be?"
You glance at Jim and see him looking right back at you. You shake your head minutely. He widens his eyes. You glower. He lifts the inner corners of his eyebrows.
"Fascinating," Spock says from his seat a foot away, making you jump. "I had not thought humans possessed telepathy, yet I see you have found ways to make up for this deficit."
"Why's it always a 'human deficit', not Vulcans overachieving and causing more trouble than anyone bargained for?" you grouse, causing both of Spock's eyebrows to shoot up. You're more forceful than you mean to be when you shove your tricorder back in your medical bag and duck around Jim, making for the door.
"Listen," you say when you get there, forcing your voice back to calm. "I know the two of you have a lot to catch up on. Maybe some new stuff to figure out. You don't need me for any of that."
"Bones—" Jim protests immediately, but Spock is speaking too.
"Doctor McCoy, while I may not know the topic I wish to discuss, I feel with great certainty that it involves both you and the Admiral."
You plaster on a smile, though you can tell Jim's not buying it one bit. "Not sure what it could be, Spock. Maybe you've still got a few wires crossed."
Jim and Spock glance at each other like it's instinct and it reminds you so much of old times your heart hurts. You plough ahead anyway.
"Take as much time as you need." You tap the doorframe, trying to sound casual as you back through it. "I'll see you around."
=-=-=
You don't, though.
Spock keeps to himself and Jim keeps giving you long sad looks, topped only by the ones he sends Spock's way. Real buncha sadsack miracle workers you are.
What you do get are dreams: someone else's. Dreams you never asked for, cluttering up your head. Dreams of walking through the desert at night. Tediously long and detailed experiments run in some lab or other. V'Ger. A human girl with a Vulcan haircut smiling down at you. Jim, wounded. Jim, smiling. Jim, his shirt ripped, eyes blazing.
Yourself, from below, as someone would see you from a biobed. Yourself, distracted, studying readouts. Yourself, scowling, face thunderous, eyes bright.
Yourself slumped in Jim's arms, unconscious, your own shirt torn. An inexplicable tenderness and fear at the sight of your exposed waist, the ladder of your ribs.
They're fucking awful, the dreams. You lay panting, fuming, staring at the ceiling after that last one. And Vulcan pharmacology's got almost nothing in the way of really good sleep drugs, the kind that even kill nightmares. Because of course if they have insomnia, they just meditate it away, poof! How nice for them.
At least when you're court martialed back on Earth, they'll probably let you have sleeping pills.
=-=-=
Spock back on the bridge is a sight to behold, even if it is in a Vulcan bathrobe on a ship that still smells like Klingon. It makes something flare behind your ribcage. Maybe you can start to move beyond — everything, back towards normal.
He doesn't seem to want to talk to you, though.
Maybe he doesn't remember how things used to be; he certainly seems to have misplaced his sense of humor most of the time. Which even you'll grudgingly admit, he does have. Or did.
Maybe he remembers you running away when he was practically begging to talk to you both.
Maybe he and Jim did work things out after all — though if so, whatever's going on there is more complicated than you want to know.
Maybe he remembers everything and has regrets. This would be his way of letting you down gently.
Not so nice when you have to face up to your insincere post-deathbed confessions, is it?, you think grumpily. Still, of course, there is no answer.