Archive of Our Own ^beta

Two weeks and he still hates himself. Trouble, Chris has learned, is like the weather. You take note of the right signs at the right moment and you can see the hurricane barreling down on you long before it appears on the horizon. For a starship captain, learning to note the signs is practically a job requirement.

Three lives are gone because he failed. Three lives are gone and half a dozen more almost joined him. His own yeoman numbering among the dead and Spock --

Spock had come oh-so-very close to joining him.

Sitting on the bridge, Chris closes his eyes and is, again, confronted with the image of her. Fighting just to stay on her feet, uniform stained emerald with her own blood, but still trying to get to him.

He opens his eyes, looks across the bridge at Number One, and finds her looking back. She tips her head in the direction of the turbolift and, with a sigh, he gives in.

How many people in the crew truly understand the nature of his relationship with his science officer, Chris doesn't know. He does know that it's a closely guarded secret. Between Number One, Boyce, and, previously, his yeoman, there'd been a concerted effort to protect his, and Spock's most of all, privacy. He doubts many know, with that kind of organization he can't see how they would, but he imagines that at least some suspect.

His daily ritual of the past month has done little to hide the truth.

Sliding out of his chair, he turns command over to Number One and leaves the bridge. The ride to Sickbay is rote. He covers the distance from the turbolift to Sickbay's doors in similar fashion. Each step, each fall of his foot, the only difference is the picture in his mind. They're all of that ambush on Rigel VII. Each one of them is Spock, but each one is different with each passing day.

Just when he's convinced he's plumbed the depths of his memories, another rises to the top. Today he sees Spock, before the Kaylar weapons had slashed her side and pierced her chest. Before she'd tried, and failed, to save his yeoman. Before she'd stumbled to her knees at his feet, features as pale and wan as the ghosts of his grandfather's stories.

Now, he sees her in those first few moments, when the Kaylar had first set on them. Sees her standing before him, in the midst of the fight, with one of the Kaylar by the throat.

She'd surveyed the enraged warrior with cool disinterest, cataloging strengths and weaknesses before tossing him aside with an effortless grace that had chilled him to the core.

It's one of her old, if still very rare, jokes. Her calm assertion that Terrans, indeed the galaxy in general, should experience relief at Vulcan's iron-clad control of its passions.

In that moment, he'd realized how uncomfortably close to the truth it is. Another Kaylar falls by Spock's hand. This one to the swift strike of a hand. He howls in pain as he falls, leaving Chris to realize how easily it might have been a fatal blow.

Sickbay's doors slide open. It's a mercy as, if not for that, he would have walked right into them.

"Ah, right on time," Boyce drawls, looking up from a patient. One of the Rigel VII survivors, but not Spock. Chris is disappointed, but he lets himself drift in that direction. As much as he wants to see Spock, needs to feel her skin beneath his hand, he knows appearances are everything and, worse, she'd be scandalized if he didn't.

He'd probably even get the eyebrow.

On any other day, he'd laugh. This isn't one of those days. Chris hasn't laughed in a while.

"Lieutenant," he looks down at Tyler. "Looking better."

"Oh, he is," Boyce says. "Vastly over yesterday." His lips curve up in a suggestion of a smile. "Sat up for a whole five minutes."

"Tomorrow," Jose says, grinning, "we're shooting for ten."

Boyce snorts. "The hell we are. Rest and rest only for you." He tweaks Tyler's toe, then stalks off with an ordered, "Keep an eye on him." thrown in the direction of one of the nurses.

Before following, Chris lingers. "He's in a mood today."

"Patient went AWOL," Jose reveals with a conspiratorial grin. "You know how he gets when someone disturbs the natural order."

That he does. Boyce's Sickbay is his castle. Chris grimaces with an appropriate, if reserved, expression of dismay and then slowly turns to follow Boyce. When Phil gets like this, there's hell to pay.

He's tempted, when they pass it, to duck into Spock's room. So tempted he starts to turn, but he stops himself, and follows Boyce instead. "All right," he says, stepping into Phil's office, "who is it?"

Phil looks up, surprised, "You don't know?" As soon as he says it, he's shaking his head. "Course you don't know. She wouldn't tell you. Honestly, Chris, how long have you two been together?"

"Spock?" Rocked, Chris stares at him in utter astonishment. "She's awake?"

"Transitioned out of a healing trance last night," Boyce admits.

"You should've -- "

"Called you?" Phil snorts. "Chris, do you know how you wake a Vulcan out of a healing trance?"

Chris knows. Spend half a decade in a relationship with one, you pick up a few tricks. Spock's made sure he knows the particulars and the healing trance was among them. Pain to enter it; pain to leave it.

"Exactly," Phil says, reading his expression. "That's why I didn't call you. Bad enough to hit a woman. Do it with her significant other, my captain, standing behind me?" He slaps a padd down on his desk, dropping into his desk chair. He looks exhausted. With the schedule he's been keeping, no wonder. "She's vastly improved, by the way." He turns the monitor on his desk, giving Chris a look at a very familiar physiology. Spock's most recent bioscan. "I'll give the Vulcans that much. That healing trance of theirs doesn't mess around. Teach it to the crew, I can retire fat and happy."

His heart racing, Chris leans forward to read the scans. Most of it is completely alien to him, but he gets the gist of it. "Cleared for duty?" he asks, already knowing the answer. Ordinarily, the part of him that is Spock's lover contradicts with the part of him that is her commanding officer, but in this case, they're in complete agreement.

Both of them saying what Boyce so succinctly puts into words, "Not even close." He gets up to refill his coffee cup. "Light duty in a week at the earliest. Two would make me feel better. Physio every day. She may be a Vulcan, and she's alive because she's a Vulcan, but she's still got a long way to go."

"And the reason you didn't have Security 'politely escort' her back here?" Chris asks.

Standing at the foodslot, Boyce gives him a small grin. "Because she'll take better care of herself in your care than I'll ever get her to agree to here."

"So she's -- "

"If she kept to her word, then she's in your quarters. Resting." His gaze goes to the chronometer on his desk. "Which means you've got a few minutes before she hacks into the database to review the latest sensor data."

Spock's idea of light duty and everyone else's idea largely reside in separate universes.

-

Chris doesn't run back to his quarters, but largely only because they're on a different deck.

-

She's not at his desk when he walks in. He doesn't bother holding back his sigh of relief. Instead, he looks to the sleeping area. Not there either. "Spock?"

"I am here." Her voice, reedy and thin, reaches his ears from the bathroom.

He finds her sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, regarding her own reflection in the mirror with more than a little distaste. Chris stops in the doorway and looks at her. By her own standards, she's a mess. Her hair is a greasy echo of the artful coil it was on that day, her skin sallow and sweaty, but by his, she's never looked more beautiful.

She turns her head, meeting his gaze, and he smiles. "I hear you went over the wall."

Spock looks at him. After all these years, he's learned to read those looks, find the subtle traces of emotion, and figure out what she's really saying.

This time, however, he's sure there isn't an officer on this ship that'd miss her annoyance.

"Doctor Boyce approved my release," she says, just a touch stiff. It's wrong that he gets such a charge out of an annoyed Spock, but he does. Considering how close he came to losing moments like these, Chris decides he can be forgiven for it. "As you apparently already know."

He grins. "I also know you." Going to his knees before her, he slides fingertips over her cheek. "You didn't give him much of a choice."

She leans into the touch, ever so slightly, and her eyes flutter closed. Her body temp is hot against his fingers, just like he remembers, and nothing like the unnatural cool of the healing trance.

"You scared the hell out of me," he murmurs. "You know that?"

Spock nods. "I had expected as much." Her eyes slide open, dark and warm, and he eats up the subtle affection like a starving man. She reaches out, her fingers sliding over his temple, and he feels the subtle push of her mind against his for a moment.

It's a light touch, barely even a connection before it's dissolved, but it floods through Chris immediately, his body suffused with the warmth of her presence.

"It is a typically human response," she continues, her thumb stroking the line of his lip. "However, I cannot judge you for the nature of your biology as, at times, I have found it to be most appealing."

Chris snickers. "No fair, Lady," he says, pulling out the teasing use of her title. "You're not allowed to start something we can't finish. Light duty only for two weeks minimum." He catches her hand in his, pressing a kiss to her fingertips. "That includes extracurriculars."

Her disappointment is second only to his, but Chris doesn't care. He's still over the moon that she's here. She's alive. She's annoyed with him and she's beautiful.

Spock's brow sweeps upward at his pronouncement. "I have been told it is one week." She leans forward, her hand curling around his, pulling him in as well. "And not all such activities need be physical, Christopher."

His full name. She knows what it does to him when she uses that. It's dirty pool and they both know it. Particularly since she's doing it in that tone of voice. The cool, proper, but ever-so-slightly rough voice that sets every nerve ending he's got on edge and has him half hard before the words have completely left her lips.

Chris forces himself to be satisfied with a brief kiss. "Nice try," he says, pulling away, "but you're not distracting me." He stands up and turns on the shower.

Water. Not sonic. With her hearing, Spock's particular about the settings. Fresh from Sickbay, still injured, he's not taking any chances. He pulls off his own tunic, letting it fall to the floor, and then looks at her. She's in her uniform, Sickbay-issued sleepwear abandoned in her own room, which is no surprise.

He lays hands on her shoulders, turning her around, trying not to notice how thin she is beneath his touch. Spock moves easily with him, though she's slow to respond, but doesn't protest. That tells him everything. She's never easily consented to being taken care of. Spock is the strong one. The controlled one. The one who never flags, never hesitates, she's met every challenge she's presented with and more besides.

The perfect daughter. Perfect Vulcan. Perfect --

He lays a hand on the back of her neck, thumb rubbing gently over her skin.

"You need to sleep," he murmurs.

"I have slept enough," Spock says in reply. She lifts her head, looking at at him in the mirror before them. "I will, however, rest as soon as I have finished here."

Vulcans find it distasteful to lie, yes, but Chris knows they can stretch the truth when they need to and Spock needs to pretty damn badly.

"Well," he says, in lieu of arguing, "let me help."

That she doesn't argue, even when he reaches for her hair, tells the tale. She's exhausted. When his fingers pluck the first pin free, Spock says nothing, she merely sighs.

He uncoils her hair slowly, letting it fall, lock after lock, onto her shoulders. Chris makes no secret of the fact he loves her hair. This isn't routine for them, it's ritual and he's missed it.

Chris reaches for her hairbrush. "You scared the hell out of me." He's repeating himself, he knows that, but he needs to say it. He slides the brush through her hair, slowly working through the first of many tangles. "When you dropped -- "

"I apologize," Spock says, her voice soft. "I had incorrectly calculated the volume of my blood loss. I will not make the same mistake again."

Holding her hair in his hand, Chris shakes his head. "You're apologizing?"

She stiffens again. "Should I not?"

"Spock." Dropping to his knees, Chris turns her around again. "I'm trying -- " he shakes his head. After all the years they've been together, all the years they've spent working on communication, they still run into moments like this. Moments when the fifty percent Terran DNA laced through Spock's genetic code just aren't enough against the wholly Vulcan method of thinking.

He makes a noise of frustration and closes the distance between their mouths. Pouring everything into the kiss he can't find the words to express. It's cheating to let Spock's telepathy do the listening, but Chris has spent weeks on end sitting at her bedside, hand pressed against hers, willing his thoughts to reach out to her.

That he's doing it now is understandable second nature.

He pulls away, leaving her dark-eyed and flushed, and he smiles. "Get it?"

She leans into him, resting her forehead against his, "I believe I begin to. You blame yourself unnecessarily."

That was not what he'd had in mind. So much for telepathy. He mutters as much, backing away, but Spock's hand grabs for his undertunic. Even weakened as she is, her grip holds him in place easily.

"The unfortunate reality of telepathic communication, Chris," she says, gently, "is that it can communicate truths of which we ourselves remain unaware. If, in your eyes, I should not apologize to you, then in mine, understand, you bear no fault in what happened."

"I should've seen it coming," Chris snaps. "I was responsible. Goddamn it, Spock, I'm the captain." He remembers the feeling of her, slight and frail, in his arms. Remembers the look on Boyce's face when they'd materialized on the ship. Remembers the cold, stark feeling of helplessness at watching them rush her and the other injured to Sickbay seconds before they began beaming the bodies up. "As soon as I saw the swords and the armor, I should have put it together."

"Such displays are not uncommon even on Federation planets," Spock reminds. "Do you not recall the wedding we attended on Vulcan?"

Recall? He can't forget. Standing beneath a scorching sun, watching a Vulcan woman walk down a rocky incline, her gown shining just enough as to obscure her face and let him pretend it was Spock walking to meet him.

"Yes."

"And the weaponry displayed there?" Spock prompts, still maddeningly logical. "It was quite savage in its appearance."

"Yes," he says. "It was."

"And yet we came to no harm."

"It was Vulcan, Spock." He should know better than to argue with her, when it comes to logic, Spock will not be beaten, but he tries anyway. He still can't look at his hands without seeing them stained with her blood.

Chris knows there may come a day when he orders her to her death. Knows he may have to order her to do nothing while he faces his.

Doesn't stop the fear paralyzing him. Not now, and not in the weeks past, when he'd spent each and every day questioning his ability to command. To make these decisions.

"You are not omniscient, Christopher," she murmurs. "You have displayed no tendencies toward extrasensory perception. That you sensed no danger is no greater an error than my lack of observation of the same. I saw nothing. You saw nothing. Our previous experience with the inhabitants of Rigel VII's displayed no indicators of such treachery. It was as the rebels had intended it to be. A most ingenious trap. That we were the ship involved was nothing more than chance."

"Oh god," he sighs, "the Vulcan is talking chance."

Spock eases to her feet, drawing him up with her, stepping into the circle of his embrace. "Indeed. I believe you have been a most unfortunate bad influence."

"Sure," Chris says, "blame me."

"I believe that was not an assignment of blame," Spock says, her hair brushing his hands. She tips her head, teasing him with it, as she looks at him.

"No?" he asks, backing them toward the shower. They begin the slow process of shedding clothing. "Then what was it?"

"A compliment," Spock replies.

She reaches for his belt and he covers her hand with his.

"Remember -- "

Spock doesn't smile, but her amusement wraps around him like an embrace nonetheless. "I assure you, Christopher, my intentions are entirely honorable." His belt slides open under her fingers and, seconds later, she is pushing his pants over his hips.

"Liar," he says, kissing her. "You won't win, Spock, you are going to rest."

"Perhaps," she agrees, "however, I believe I shall greatly enjoy my defeat."

So will he. If only for the fact she'll be alive and complaining all the way through it.

"We're not done with this, Commander," he warns, stepping beneath the water's hot spray with her.

Spock reaches for the shampoo, presenting him with it. "Of that, Captain, I am well aware."