Chapter Text
It occurs to Christopher Pike at around 2200 hours over a glass of the good brandy that Lieutenant Kirk and Commander Spock, if introduced, would probably click so hard that the resulting sonic boom could damage the warp core. Once it’s occurred to him, it’s kind of impossible to get the idea out of his head.
He feels a little like he’s doing something that would get him in trouble—he feels at the very least like he should be asking someone’s opinion. But Number One has never met Jim and Winona has never met Spock, and Sam Kirk would probably eject himself before giving Pike a serious answer. The warp-core-damaging sonic boom might be the least of his worries, and then he’d be responsible for the damage they caused.
But… god. The two of them as a command team? The two of them on away missions? Jesus. Diplomatic negotiations reinforced with Spock’s ambassadorial prowess and Jim’s sheer people-pleasing charm. Nasty encounters with unfriendly locals where victory is pulled through the eye of a needle by Jim’s tactical genius and Spock’s unflinching protective nature. Of course there would be the issue of both of their martyr complexes, but maybe they’d even each other out a bit instead of resorting to an unspoken ‘who can die sadder’ contest. At the very least, they’d look phenomenal standing back to back on a recruitment poster. Join Starfleet: One day you might be half as stupidly heroic as these two.
Briefly, Pike worries about Spock’s distaste for command and the rift it might drive between them if he continues to scamper off to the lab whenever possible. Then he remembers that Jim has almost exclusively dated scientists who could talk him in circles until his head unscrewed and he would let them. Then he thinks, Oh.
Oh. Oh. Oh no. That romance would shake the heavens.
Problem: Spock is engaged to a Vulcan woman. Possible solution: Pike is one of the only people in Spock’s life who knows that the engagement is on rocky ground and has been for years, due at least in part to the fact that Spock feels no attraction to women. It’s his human half driving it, but his human half could absolutely do with a little appeasement.
Problem: Spock is notoriously cagey about his personal life until it’s immediately relevant and so is unlikely to bring up his engagement in conversation, and even less likely to confess that it might be ending. Problem, part two: Jim is excellent at suffering in silence and is very likely to do so if he ends up with a crush. Jim doesn’t do casual feelings. He does friendly acquaintances and forged-in-steel soulmate partnerships. Spock, who is easily intimidated by the amount that his human colleagues genuinely like him, will probably be spooked by Jim’s fast attachment. Possible solution: Jim never met a heart he couldn’t melt and Spock never met a challenge at which he wasn’t ready to die trying. Hopefully their mutual stubbornness would push them together instead of apart.
Problem: Spock is already intensely squeamish about showing his feelings to the crew as a whole and a relationship of any level with a human would be like blood in the water for anyone still stupid enough to tease him. Possible solution: Pike has personally witnessed James Kirk pick multiple fights with people a head taller than him and sometimes in groups because they insulted his Orion friend Gaila, often to the backing track of her encouragement or protest. Anyone who made Spock even a little bit uncomfortable would probably have to square up with Jim, or worse, square up with the considerable influence of Jim’s tight-knit friend circle.
Problem: Jim has the soul of a romantic but the heart of a man who’s gone through some pretty immense trauma and the mind of a realist to boot. He’s liable to nip the relationship in the bud on the assumption that they wouldn’t be compatible long-distance. Or, alternatively, on the assumption that he’s so broken that even Spock the problem-solving maniac can’t truly help him. Well. Between the continuation of Jim’s therapy and Pike’s long-term plan to turn him into captain material in time for the Enterprise to be turned over, that’ll probably sort itself out on its own. Jim and Spock are both deeply caring people, and past all the bullshit of their youth and bravado and self-appointed expectations and the trappings of the military life they lead, they’re both so damn smart. Not just book smart, though Jim graduated in the top four percent and Spock is Spock. They’re clever little bastards and deep down they just want to feel stable. Maybe they can give that to each other.
Problems that aren’t problems: The frequent human fetishization and appropriation of alien cultures and how that makes the aliens feel. Spock’s father. Sam’s potential disapproval. The dangers of deep space. The built-in solutions, in order: Jim is fluent in almost enough languages to be on a communications track purely because he’s a scholar at heart; his respect, knowledge, and tact when dealing with non-Terran cultures are impeccable. Sarek may be stony and nigh on impossible to please, but even if Jim couldn’t charm the fight out of a Tellarite, Spock is equally likely to like Jim more under Sarek’s disapproving eye. Sam Kirk is a lot of things, but heartless isn’t one of them, and his playful disgust at his brother’s dating life will never override how much they love each other. The dangers of deep space, plentiful and vast though they are, should honestly start psyching themselves up now if they intend to withstand the legendary duo that Pike is now dead set on sparking to life.
Pike finishes his brandy with a little flourish and can’t stop the mischievous look that he knows is creeping onto his face. He can only be grateful that Una isn’t here to call him out on it.
Around 2230, he yawns hard enough to crack his jaw and can practically hear M’Benga telling him that rank won’t stop the melatonin hypo coming his way. He puts the idea of JimandSpock on the shelf for the moment. There’s always the chance that he’s simply getting older, and this is his brain grasping desperately at ways to positively impact the future. It’ll remain a pipe dream until further notice.
Further notice is the next time they run into the Farragut, when Nyota Uhura introduces Pike’s boys right there in the shuttle hangar. Jim executes a flawless ta’al that Spock goes a shade greener over, and then Jim calls Christine Chapel “Chrissy” and gives her a big, human hug, and no one but Pike sees the way Spock’s pupils go razor-thin and his lip twitches in the direction of a snarl. Oh, god. The pipe dream is real and is about to bean him in the head.
Pike is terrified of this working out, actually. He’s also terrified of it crashing and burning. Jim and Spock, already becoming JimandSpock among the people who know both of them well enough, have a strange electricity about them that doesn’t align with modern science or anything that M’Benga will tell him about Vulcan telepathy.
They talk without speaking. Their faces light up when the other comes into view, to the point that Pike feels like he’s intruding on something when it happens even though he was the one getting a status update from Spock when Jim happened to pop into the office. They’ve apparently been playing some very intense chess games in the officers’ rec room; Pike picked up through the grapevine that Jim won the first match, which he would bet money on having set Spock aflame.
What Pike didn’t take into account strongly enough is that Spock is a diva and Jim is a chameleon, but they both pretend not to be. Jim’s prettyboy shell and Spock’s shield of cool disinterest are clashing. Pike knows Spock well enough to be aware that he’s warming up to the friendship. Pike also knows Jim well enough to be aware that he’s desperate.
They hit the hard part very quickly, all things considered. It took most of Spock’s friends around a year to soften him enough to worm their way in, and Jim did it in under three months on and off. (As difficult as the ‘on’ sections have been, ‘off’ is so much worse. Pike won’t be the one to introduce Spock to the concept of pining, but someone should.) Jim decides that people are his new best friends usually within an hour of meeting them, yes, but Pike was planetside to see magic happen when Jim met his doctor buddy McCoy, and that unbreakable bond took some hard work on McCoy’s part, not to mention a few late-night comms to Pike himself asking how to deal with a nightmare or a panic attack of Jim’s flavor, to get to where they are now. Spock got under Jim’s skin in the same amount of time that Jim got under his. That was never going to be an issue. The issue, now presenting itself for all to see, is that despite being true, bonafide geniuses, they’re both exceedingly dense.
The other issue, more pressing and more widely applicable, is that a handful of them are once again stuck on an unexplored planet because of yet another in a series of transporter malfunctions that Pike is beginning to suspect are a curse on the ship herself. Nowhere does it say that the transporter is only supposed to get his crew into uncomfortable situations and never ever out of them, but the rule is observed anyway.
Pike chews his lip and glances between vital displays and the live feed of Tech Development’s new baby, the mission log drone. Ensigns Nguyen and Acker, some of the best the security team has to offer, keeping careful guard over Chaudhary from Physical Sciences. Spock with his tricorder, unarmed, Vulcan heartbeat slow. Jim stuck like glue to his side, phaser drawn preemptively. (Jim is not one to preemptively draw his phaser. The actual security officers haven’t drawn theirs. Maybe Spock just does that to him.)
“Some radioactivity in the sediment,” Chaudhary says, though the words are kind of fuzzy and it takes Uhura’s blessedly fast addition of subtitles for them to make total sense. The drone’s microphone is tetchy at best. The dev team spent a very long time on its behavioral algorithms and not nearly enough time on its more basic features like its main purpose. Pike should set them to making an electronic puppy or something as a side project. A place to put all that creativity. Chaudhary adds, “Not actively harmful, but we should recycle our shoes when we get back just to be on the safe side. More magnesium than I would have expected for a class-M. I’m gonna grab a sample while we wait.”
Pike sighs—scientists. “Sure. Keep in mind that if I catch wind of any more explosions in the chemistry labs, I’m recalling all your nice clean goggles and you’ll have to use the cloudy ones.”
Chaudhary grins at the drone camera. “Noted, sir.”
There’s relative calm for a few minutes. Pike watches Jim’s heart rate spike whenever there’s a noise, and Spock gets adorably excited in his Vulcan way about an insect he finds under a rock, but nothing bad happens for a nearly suspicious amount of time. Pike’s ready to comment on it when suddenly the poor drone mic is overwhelmed with white noise.
“Number One,” he calls immediately.
Una is rapidly assessing something on her viewscreen. “I don’t know, Captain. It’s not a physical root but it’s causing physical reactions.” It’s true; Spock and Jim in particular are showing alarmingly high amounts of distress. Jim has dropped his phaser and has his hands clasped tight over his ears. Spock is on his knees with his teeth gritted. Nguyen and Acker have their phasers drawn but are blinking hard through what looks like pain, and Chaudhary is clutching the test tube so hard it might shatter. It gets almost eerier when the drone mic gets a handle on the static and starts filtering it back to silence.
Pike says, “Number One, contact transporter room. Get me a time estimate to the minute. Ortegas, I want us ready to bolt the second we have them back.”
Onscreen, Spock is visibly piecing himself back together even as their mystery ailment keeps tearing him apart. “It is—psionic in nature,” he manages.
Pike pales slightly. Psionic problems are the hardest to work around, with so few telepaths onboard. “Elaborate. Is it an attack? An overload? Intentional, accidental?”
“Unnatural, yet… ghh. Unnatural yet undirected. It is not designed to cause pain. I suspect—that—there is a telepathic population of this planet who are—accustomed to it.”
Jim lets out a shout like it’s been yanked out of him and collapses to his knees. Pike says, “Kirk, kid, stay with us.” To anyone who might answer, he asks, “Why is it hitting him so hard?”
Finally, Una gets the ESP readings up next to the heartbeats onscreen. Spock’s is dancing around in the upper quarter, Nguyen and Chaudhary’s near the center, Acker’s lower but climbing, and Jim’s firmly at zero. Pike recalls there being a note about how insanely psi-null he is in his file.
Once again, Spock finds his voice. He almost looks steady now. “A wave of this nature has the potential to affect him in the way that the skin reacts to ultraviolet light while the eyes do not. The psionic receptors in his brain are closed constantly and now being forced open. Jim. Are you able to hear me?”
Jim’s eyes are shut tight and his hands still over his ears, but he nods miserably. His mouth opens and closes a few times, then settles on open, but no sound comes out. Spock looks more agitated than Pike has seen him in a long time.
“Jim, you must focus. Listen to me. The noise will fade if you do as I tell you.” He puts his hands on Jim’s shoulders and Jim leans into it hard. “Focus on me. Focus on my voice. Lower your hands.” Jim does, and puts them on Spock’s forearms. “Very good. Center your consciousness. Bring it directly between your eyes. You are not in danger. Your body is unharmed. The noise is only that. You must feel its texture. It is water flowing around you but you are fixed to the ground. It cannot carry you.”
Una says, “Transporter ready, Captain,” and before Pike can give the order, Spock cuts in.
“He must not be removed from this place until he is able to redirect the pain or it will stay with him for far longer, and I am entirely unequipped to heal the damage it may cause if that is the case. He must master it first. I will direct him.”
Pike pinches the bridge of his nose; of course. “Alright. Beam up the others, but keep Acker and Nguyen on that pad in case we need to send them back down. Spock, I really need both of you back. Are you sure you can do this?”
Spock doesn’t even look at the camera. He just keeps on staring at Jim. “Yes, Captain.”
Security and Chaudhary are beamed out. The drone, which is supposed to follow the largest group of crewmembers at any given point, does not add its signature to the transporter beam and sticks firmly by Jim and Spock. It might be because Spock is a natural with observation and analysis and so is a more interesting target for data collection. It might be because any technology with even the barest hint of personality tends to imprint on Jim like a duckling. Whatever the reason, Pike is tempted to turn off the visuals to give them privacy, though he doesn’t know why, and that urge is overridden by his unrelenting protective terror for his crew. That terror is far too familiar with these idiots in particular.
“Jim,” Spock says, soft and uncertain. “Jim, hear me. I wish to initiate a Vulcan mind-meld. My consciousness will be clearer in the shelter of your psionic block and I will be more directly able to assist you. Do you consent to this?”
Jim says something quiet enough that the mic doesn’t pick it up, but it must be an affirmative, because Spock is now holding Jim’s face in his hands like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever touched, and then both of them gasp.
It’s quiet over the mic for a little while. Una keeps herself busy flipping around their vital readings. La’an goes to the transporter room to check on her people. Briefly, Chaudhary takes a trip to the bridge to check on Jim and Spock, then declares a monster headache and goes to lay down. Sam arrives panting hard and no one asks him if he’s allowed to be here. Pike gives him a squeeze on the shoulder and then places himself near Uhura, who knows both of his boys in a different way than he does, so that if she decides there’s any off-record personal information that’s relevant to this, she can tell him.
They all watch Jim’s pulse settle almost to resting while his ESP reading makes tiny hops from baseline. Spock’s reading isn’t dancing anymore, which is normal for him and thus probably a good sign. Both of them have their eyes closed and their hands are tight around each other. Spock’s expression says intense concentration. Jim’s is an open plea. Their foreheads touch—it’s not sudden at all, which tells Pike they’ve been steadily moving closer and he hadn’t noticed.
“I bet they’re really compatible, katra-wise,” Uhura murmurs.
Pike doesn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Oh?”
“I mean, there’s got to be something different about Jim that made Spock offer a meld so fast in the first place. He doesn’t just hand those out. And they’ve got this weird…”
“Synchronization,” Pike says. “Like they’re communicating in twenty ways that the rest of us can’t see.”
Uhura nods in his peripheral. “Yeah. Exactly.”
Sam butts in, as is his brotherly prerogative, to whisper, “Jim’s in love with him.”
Pike closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if that’s your information to share.”
“Please, it’s not like you need more than eyes to figure it out. I’m mostly letting you know so that if this goes any kind of bad, you’ll know why he’s being all kicked-puppy. Not that I think it will. Spock point blank refuses to talk about Jim with me, which says a lot, I think. And god knows Jim physically can’t shut up about Spock.”
Onscreen, Jim and Spock finally open their eyes again, which saves Pike from having to decide whether or not to make Sam stop talking. Their heads aren’t pressed together anymore, but they’re still very close, staring deeply into each other’s eyes, and once again Pike feels like this isn’t something he’s supposed to see. That electricity is crackling between them again and it’s too important to be touched by the outside world.
Still, he’s got a ship to run, so he says, “Spock? Kirk? Back with us?”
There’s a long moment where they don’t react. Jim breaks first, blinking rapidly and relaxing a little. “Y-yeah. We’re good. The noise, uh, the noise is gone.”
“Good. Ready to beam up so we can get the hell out of here?”
“Affirmative, Captain. The lieutenant’s psychosupressors are functioning optimally, and at any rate, the psionic wave has ceased.”
“Oh really? How long has it been ceased for?”
Spock clears his throat. “Between two and four minutes, sir. I apologize for the impreciseness—my internal chronometer was somewhat affected.”
“Don’t worry about it. Transporter room, let’s get them out.”
They’re beamed up in short order and the ship breaks orbit to fly generally away; they have no precise orders, but Pike decides to submit a request for a milk run mission or something so that they all have a chance to take a breather. Is it the worst a dirtside day has gone? No, not by a long shot. But both Spock and Jim are a) workaholics and b) very popular for some reason, so if there’s anything even remotely interesting going on, they might a) not find time to talk about whatever the fuck they just did, or b) accidentally drive all their friends up the wall by going about their business as usual after an event that unsettling. Neither course is desirable. Pike has no issue overloading them with free time until he feels they’ve settled this. For all that Spock likes the sound of his own voice and Jim’s cursed/blessed ADHD gets him yammering, they’re unlikely to talk without some minor intervention.
Pike has his padd out to file the request, meandering back to his cabin and trying not to get distracted typing and run into a wall, when a sound piques his interest. He’s in the middle of a pretty long stretch of corridor that’s mostly crew quarters, and those are relatively soundproofed, so if anyone was making enough noise to get through those doors, it would be clearly audible and not the mere suggestion of a sound he caught.
He pauses and holds his breath for a moment. Silence. Three, five, seven, ten seconds of it. He shakes himself—his hearing must be going. Then:
“Oh fuck, Spock…”
Ah. He’s caught between the desire to fist pump and roll his eyes, plus a secret third urge to go bury himself, and he gets moving at a brisk, professional walk to leave them in peace. Unfortunately, they were ahead of him instead of behind, and as he passes a single-stall restroom, he overhears a choked moan in Spock’s voice that he would really love to scrape out of his brain.
He gets to his cabin and takes a moment to lean against the door and scrub his hands over his face. It’s definitely a good sign that they’re having sex, though he very much wishes they’d spared the extra two or three minutes to get to the quarters that are soundproofed for a reason. His concern is that it’ll end up being sex without further discussion. He can see it all too vividly: Jim going back to the Farragut again to remind his assigned crew and Garrovick that he’s still alive, Spock’s friends back on the Enterprise dealing with the inevitable bitchiness that befalls him when Jim isn’t around. (Not even the fun, sassy, endearing bitchiness that comes with the all-Vulcans-are-divas rule. It’s just a moody and depressive bitchiness that even he can’t pull off.)
“Idiots,” he mutters into the empty room, mostly for the catharsis of it. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
He spends a few days waiting it out, trying to parse the vibe. Jim and Spock remain consummate professionals as always; that was never a real concern. Pike joked with Una once or twice about how sad slash funny it would be if Spock started getting visibly distracted on duty, but it never came to light. Jim, who is distracted every second of every day by anything that isn’t his work, handles it as usual. Frankly, Pike is pretty sure Jim could pretend to focus through a planetary apocalypse if he tried hard enough. Kid’s got more than enough practice. Sure, it’s a little annoying during briefings and whatnot, but it’s going to make him a hell of a captain. He doesn’t look where he’s supposed to and so he sees things first. It’s a whole early warning system built into one man.
The shift is ending and it’s been a slow day of watching the stars streak by at warp, so Pike lets himself drift slightly. It’s not hard to imagine Jim continuing what he’s always done—the fun part is tossing Spock in. With that silent communication they do, it would be child’s play for Jim to realize something is wrong and get Spock scanning for anomalies in two seconds flat. Pike recalls a particularly eventful treaty negotiation between four warring factions of a pangeal continent: two begrudgingly ready to play fair, one planning a kidnapping, one planning an assassination. La’an had managed to stop the latter at the cost of the kidnapping going rather smoothly, and the next few days were spent frantically hunting down the lost diplomat. It was an exhausting mission with too many loose ends.
It’s weirdly comforting to think of how Jim and Spock might have done—Jim spotting someone messing with the drinks and notifying Spock who would get close enough to smell the toxin and promptly knock the glass off the table, claiming Vulcan behavioral quirk, so sorry, won’t happen again. Maybe the assassin would try to pull a phaser; Jim would be faster. Maybe they’d start a grapple; Spock would employ the nerve pinch. They’d have security and a xenoculturist or xenolinguist (Uhura? Oh, god, Uhura) on the situation with enough time to notice the lack of the other diplomat. Spock would scan the outside of the building while Jim made that face that meant he was about to drop something insane and usually right, and he’d say, they’re underground, and Spock, who studied the schematics of the city’s tunnel system because he’s an overachiever, would whip out a most likely location from his eidetic memory and they’d have the whole thing solved with a few hours to spare for dinner.
“Captain,” Spock says, and Pike feels a bit like he’s been found out.
“Yes, Mr. Spock?”
“A word after the shift, please. I wish to discuss something rather personal but which may affect me professionally.”
“Of course.”
Pike spends the last four and a half minutes of alpha lost in the middle distance, hoping, nay, praying that his meddling has led to good things.
Spock seeks him out, looking sheepish, so Pike saves him the words. “Walk with me.”
They go to Pike’s quarters. Like usual, Pike offers Spock a glass of something or other, and unlike usual, Spock says yes. Pike turns away from him to pour the brandy so that Spock doesn’t see the wide-eyed trepidation on his face.
“Sit,” Pike says, making a world’s-your-oyster gesture at the couch. (He wouldn’t dare speak the idiom aloud unless Spock’s friends were here to witness his inevitably haughty response.) He settles in the chair across from where Spock gingerly places himself. “What’s going on then, Spock?”
Nevermind sheepish—Spock looks downright mortified now. “I have… I have filled out the necessary declaration of crew fraternization between myself and Lieutenant Kirk.”
“Well, good that you two put a label on it.”
“That is not what I wished to discuss. The paperwork, I mean. I do wish to discuss my—rather, our… relationship,” and isn’t it so goddamn adorable that he goes green over the word, “and how it pertains to your duty of crewmember assignment.”
Pike raises an eyebrow. It feels wonderful to turn those particular tables. “Everyone wants their boyfriend on the same ship as them, Spock. You know it doesn’t work differently for you just because I like you.”
Spock goes even greener and breaks eye contact to stare into his glass. “Yes, sir, I am well aware. My request does not come from a place of an expectation of favoritism. It is Vulcan law which is not yet standardized across the Federation but which will be within my father’s lifetime. It is… extremely difficult to see Vulcan tradition accommodated in Starfleet without a great deal of lobbying and overexplanation, which Vulcans are not partial to, especially on my behalf.”
“Sure, I’m pretty aware of that.” There’s something big lurking under Spock’s words, but it doesn’t appear to be directly related, so Pike doesn’t draw it forward. “What’s this got to do with you and Jim?”
After a momentary pause, not enough for a human to be concerned with but definitely an alarm bell for Spock, he says, “The ordinance I speak of guarantees the right to serve on the same ship for pairs with bonds recognized under Vulcan law.”
Oh.
Oh.
“Oh,” Pike says, because apparently that’s all he’s got in him right now.
Spock looks up, finally, and the eye contact is searing. “Jim and I did not intend to bond in the way of my people and would not have for years if not for unforeseen circumstances. Courtship is an important part of the process. Ours was rather… expedited.”
With the sense that Spock will beat around the bush until the heat death of the universe if left to his own devices, Pike intervenes. “I gathered that. So what’s different about the two of you?”
Spock is silent for a long moment. Pike knows him well enough to be aware that what he wants to say is crystal clear to him but he’s trying to string his words together in a way that will appease his human company. It’s not a habit he can easily be broken out of; Pike has tried. Finally, he says, “There is a Vulcan term for the kind of compatibility we share. It is not the same as likeness, nor as perfect opposites, though Jim is fond of referring to us as such. It is… The Vulcan word is t’hy’la. It is a pre-Surakian concept not unlike Terran ‘soulmates’ though generally subject to disdain rather than romanticization. Its Standard translation is something like ‘friend, brother, lover.’ As far as I am aware, we shall be the first recorded case in some three-thousand years.”
Pike sits with that just long enough for it to make some sense; not long, given the way the two of them are. “So this t’hy’la—did I say that right?—this t’hy’la business bonded you much faster than either of you were anticipating, and I assume it was unintentional.”
“That is correct.” Spock looks into his glass again. “A bond is created through an intricate series of melds, often by the combined effort of the pair, sometimes with assistance from a trained healer. They are not the kind of thing one establishes accidentally. When I melded with Jim on Baten Kaitos II, it merely created an open tunnel through which our katras were finally able to touch. This is the nature of the t’hy’la bond. It is not that a bond was created, though it feels this way to us. It is that the bond has always existed and we have now discovered it.”
“Awfully Terran-style poetic for a Vulcan concept.”
“As I said: quite pre-Surakian. I suspect few of my people will believe me when I tell them.”
Pike swirls his brandy a little. He looks at Spock, one detail at a time. Assessing. “What did that feel like? Melding with him?”
Spock closes his eyes. “Indescribably wonderful.”
“If you had to put words to it. I know you read Earth books. You’ve got the vocabulary for this.”
After a brief, unheated glare, Spock does. “His mindscape is very bright. I experience his katric presence as gold, though the actual environment is… a maelstrom of color. It is overwhelming to the senses. Unsurprisingly, he is exceedingly talented at every Vulcan technique I present to him, including the manifestation of locations and objects in the mindscape. During that first meld, he had constructed an ancient Terran stronghold for us in forty-six seconds with little instruction other than the prompt.”
“He does like his castles.”
“Very much. I asked him to describe our surroundings to me in order to distract him from the psionic noise and I received a three-part lesson on the feudal societies of Europe.”
“Three-part?”
“A detailed supplement after returning from Baten Kaitos II and a follow-up two days later.”
Pike downs the last of his brandy to hide his smile. “And you listened to the entire thing without a speck of complaint.”
Spock furrows his eyebrows. “I had no complaints to voice. It was a fascinating lesson.”
“God, the two of you.”
“The two of us, sir?”
At that, Pike can’t help but chuckle. “There’s something about you. The soulmate deal would explain it, I guess. You’re just… special. Older than old. King and lionheart, if I had to take a stab at naming it.”
“I don’t follow, sir.” He’s got that knowledge-devouring look on his face again. Pike sighs.
“Jim could sit on any throne in history—he’ll have the captain’s chair in the next few years and that’s this life, but in another it might have been anything—any throne, metaphorical or not, and you’d be at his side like you were always meant to be, hand on the back of that chair. I… Can I confess a little bit of scheming to you, Spock?”
Spock blinks. “Always.”
“Before you two met, I thought you might be quite a pair. I was going to introduce you under carefully-controlled circumstances and see if I could shake a friendship out of you. Then I thought, what the hell, Spock’s gay, Jim’s Jim, they’re each other’s type, maybe they’d start something. I promise I haven’t put my fingers in it all that much. Just a little back-and-forth with Garrovick to get Jim over here more often, and that’s mostly because I want him here. Just his luck that you’re here too. Uhura shot down my little plan, obviously, but it seems to have worked. I’m glad you proved me right. It makes me feel awfully smart.”
The roundabout blessing seems to have done its work: Spock sits a little straighter and his mouth does something that Pike reads as a smile. “I wouldn’t want to make you feel unintelligent, Captain.”
Pike laughs. “Thanks. So, circling back, what’s this about the Vulcan bonded pair protections?”
“It is merely a rule that bonded pairs possess the right to serve on the same ship should they request to do so. There are several aspects of a mating bond which are only accessible in person and are essential to the mental and physical health of the individuals—unrelated to the benefits of nearness in human relationships, which Jim, who is what I am told is a ‘cuddle bug,’ would of course appreciate. I for one think an insect is not an accurate symbol for what is clearly the combined behavior of octopi, constricting snakes, young non-human primates, and a genus of Vulcan gastropod which suffocates its prey by laying on top of it.”
By the end of that little gem of a Spockism, Pike has to set his glass down so he doesn’t drop it while his shoulders shake. “Spock,” he manages after a moment, “I need you to tell Jim exactly that, verbatim.”
“Yes, Captain. I suspect it will generate a similar reaction.”
Quite unexpectedly, that hits Pike in the heart. “You like seeing him laugh, huh.”
“I—I do, yes. He is… nothing short of magnificent.”
“Wanna get sappy about him? Nothing you say leaves this room, I promise.”
Spock almost looks like he’s going to decline, but then he gets an odd shine to his eyes like he’s just closed his tertiary eyelid, and he says, “James Kirk is quite probably the most incredible person of any species I have ever known. He is brave and fierce, but he is gentle, loving and caring, and profoundly hurt.” The back of Pike’s brain itches the way that it always does when he’s reminded of Tarsus, but he keeps his mouth shut. That’s absolutely not his story to tell. “He is gracious and accommodating with me, always, yet understands when I need to be engaged with rather than left alone, and does both with absolute dedication. He is beautiful in ways I am not equipped to articulate. I am… entirely enraptured with him. I suspect I always have been, though I deliberately avoided examining my decidedly unVulcan emotions toward him for some time. When we melded and I was able to see that his reciprocation took root before we had even met, hearing stories from his brother, I…” He takes a breath. “Some part of me will always ache for it, I think. As a human, and one so full of feeling, he was much more aware of the negative space of the missing bond even though he did not know the words for it. He allowed himself to hurt for a rather long time and I was entirely unaware of it. The thought of it now is… painful. There was a period in which he knew of my engagement to T’Pring and believed that he would lose my friendship should he allow me to deduce his affection for me, and so took great care to suppress it. Naturally I have since explained to him that T’Pring and I have not been romantically involved for some years and the dissolution of our bond was merely a formality. He understands. Actually, since my bond with him was established, I am barely able to sense T’Pring. Mostly I am aware that she is still alive. She has been told of Jim and is generally unimpressed by him, which I admit makes me illogically upset, but there is a satisfaction in it as well. Regardless, no Vulcan’s disapproval will override a bond which snapped into place the instant it was given an opportunity. Such bonds are mere legend, you understand. Until him.”
Pike puts his feet up on the coffee table and catches Spock’s affronted glance. “Until you, Spock. Until both of you.”
Spock sighs. “Indeed.”
They sit for a moment, Spock with his eyes closed and a soft expression, Pike watching him. Spock hasn’t so much as sniffed his brandy; more for Pike when he eventually sets it down. Right now he’s clutching the glass. Must be grounding. Pike lets him.
Spock must know he’s being looked at. “Captain?” he prompts.
“I’m curious,” Pike says at length, “about how the bond works. You can sense Jim, yes?”
“Yes. Currently he is engrossed in an activity which is sufficiently entertaining but of no great importance. He is feeling pleasantly neutral.” A pause. Spock tilts his head a little. “I have notified him that I am with you. I have orders to ‘say hi’ on his behalf.”
“You can talk?”
“Of course. It is a function of all Vulcan bonds that-”
“No, Spock—you can talk? You can share information both ways without speaking aloud or sending a traceable signal or even looking like you’re communicating at all?”
Spock gets that bitchy cat look on his face. “As you have witnessed, yes.”
“Please, please tell me it’s not taboo to use it for things that aren’t calling each other pet names from different rooms.”
He sighs. It’s his ‘these goddamn humans’ sigh. “There are no such taboos.”
“The next time shit hits the fan on an away mission, I want you two talking. Anything where we have to sit at a table with angry people, I want you two talking. On the bridge when he’s made captain and you’re there in whatever role you want, because no one is going to stop you. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir. We will do what we were already going to do but now under unofficial orders.”
“You have a tremendous asset and I want you to use it for good and measured evil and everything in between. You’re already an unstoppable team and everyone knows it. Set their expectations high and then blow them out of the water.”
Having apparently gathered that this is an appropriate environment for his sass, Spock says, “We will have a much easier time of it if he is assigned to the Enterprise for whatever remains of his time as a lieutenant. Do you intend to ‘pull some strings,’ sir?”
“Yes.” Pike stands. Spock follows. “Yes, I absolutely intend to pull some strings. I was already going to, because if that kid plays his cards right, and I think he will, he’s next in line for this ship. I genuinely can’t think of anyone else who would be a better fit for my Enterprise, save for you, and I couldn’t take you away from your lab like that.”
There’s a tiny but unVulcan smile on Spock’s face. “Thank you, sir. He will appreciate your close brush with nepotism.”
“Oh, don’t you give me that. Every captain does it. I’ve had my eye on him since before he enlisted.” As usual, the mere thought of Jim Kirk as Pike met him, traumatized and lost and deeply alone, makes him more sentimental than he can contain. With slow and telegraphed movements, he wraps his arms gently around Spock’s shoulders, and solidifies the hug once he feels Spock return it. To the wall behind him, Pike murmurs, “I’m so damn proud of both of you. I need you to know that. And I need you to take care of each other.”
“I will protect him. Always.” Then: “He returns the sentiment.”
Pike can feel Spock starting to get stiff and awkward and so releases him from the embrace with a pat on the shoulder. Spock doesn’t even pretend that the pat rocked his center of gravity. He doesn’t step away, either.
Actually, his eyes are closed and his little Vulcan microexpressions are flitting in and out. He’s probably talking to Jim.
Pike smiles. “Get out of here, Lieutenant Commander. Go lose at chess or something.”
Spock doesn’t roll his eyes, but he gets very close. “Yes, sir.”
“Good man.”
At around 1730, Christopher Pike drinks Spock’s untouched brandy and grins at the empty glasses while he cleans them. He doesn’t have a psychic link to either of his boys, but he knows for certain that they’re delighted right now, just because they’re together. No red alerts, no orders. They’re together and they get to be only that.
If the universe allows it, they’ll be together for the rest of their mortal lives.
Not a bad hunch, Chris, he thinks. You’ve still got it.