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Sometimes, Jim wondered if communicators ought to have undergone more practical testing before being released for military use, seeing as there were a seemingly endless number of factors that could affect their functioning. Unfavourable atmospheric conditions. Certain types of rocks. An enemy ship jamming the frequency. Being too close to a planet’s magnetic poles, or in a place where the crust was thin, and so the list went on. Spock and Lieutenant Zanat were doing an awful lot of fussing with one of them, Spock’s tricorder chirping in displeasure, but so far they were producing nothing more than a bunch of static.
“Suggestions, Spock?”
“Perhaps we could try a less rocky area.” He shook his head, frowning slightly at his readings. “Of course, it could be something interrupting the Enterprise’s communications capabilities, rather than our own.”
They were in a gravelly clearing, perhaps a remnant of a long-ago landslide. The surrounding area was very green and undulant, the air damp in the way that places which got a lot of rain tended to be; thankfully, it was clear for the moment. They had just entered a new system, and this had been the first M-class planet. To Jim’s disappointment, it was apparently uninhabited, but it had been awhile since they’d gotten to land anywhere, and there’d been a lot of people obviously keen to get off the ship. But he’d taken only a small initial team: after a brief survey, they could send other members of the various science departments for further sample collection and terrain mapping. Of course all of that now hinged on whether they were able to contact the ship again.
“Keep trying, Zanat,” Jim said.
“Yes, sir,” she replied without looking up.
“Actually— let’s get a little ways apart and see if we can at least get them working to contact each other. Ensign Diop, stay here with Zanat. Evanston, you and Atkins head about a hundred metres in that direction.” That gave each pair a tricorder. “If we can’t contact each other, we’ll meet down in that mossy area at the bottom of the hill there. Spock, with me.”
He and Spock started off toward a copse of trees not far in the distance, and when they could no longer see any other members of the away team, Jim flipped his comm back open and fiddled with the settings. “Zanat? Can you hear me?”
There was a crackle. “Captain?”
“Yes,” Kirk said. “Okay, that’s good. Try Atkins and Evanston. If we can all talk to each other, we might as well do some of our initial survey while we’re waiting.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Kirk out.” He flipped the comm shut and turned to Spock behind him. “Well, that’s something, at least.”
Spock was a few metres away, scanning one of the trees. “If you don’t mind, Captain, I’ll begin here.”
“Of course, Mr Spock,” Jim said. He leaned back against another of the trees with his comm in his hand. It chirped again a few moments later, and it was Evanston. He instructed him as well, arranging for them all to rendezvous in the mossy area he’d specified earlier in two hours if no one managed to contact the ship during that time. Halfheartedly, he tried the ship once more but got no response. As he stowed his comm again, he felt a bit strange; edgy and like his head was too big for his body— he hoped he wasn’t getting a migraine. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, which seemed to help a little.
“Captain!”
“What is it, Spock?” Jim was finding it difficult to respond appropriately to the urgency in his first officer’s voice. His eyes blinked open slowly as Spock jogged back to his side, glancing between Jim and his tricorder.
“This tree… I do not think you should touch it.”
“Well, it’s a bit late for that,” he said, though he stopped leaning against it and turned to look. “Why, is it covered in invisible poison ivy, or—?” The joke died on his tongue as he saw that the bark, which had seemed perfectly normal and solid when he’d looked at it only a few minutes ago, was— vibrating? That couldn’t be right.
“Fascinating,” Spock said, over the background music of his tricorder’s whir. “The fungi’s morphology allows it to mimic the appearance and structure of the bark almost exactly, until it is disturbed.”
“Disturbed?” Jim was mesmerised watching it.
“Yes, it appears likely these trees and this fungus have a symbiotic relationship of some kind. The fungi, when touched, bloom and release spores which contain a toxin. Perhaps it protects the tree from… wood-boring creatures, and the like. In turn, the fungi enjoy the shade, moisture, and nutrients provided by the tree.” His voice had a barely-contained excitement in it, one he often had over new discoveries, one which always made Jim smile. But his smile fell when it hit him what Spock had said.
“What do you mean, toxin? I just had my back up against this tree!”
“It is regrettable,” he said, “but based on my readings, its chemical makeup is—”
“Spock, could you just tell me if I’m going to die or not?”
He looked up. “I think not.”
“You think.”
“Without proper medical scans, I cannot know for sure, but it appears as though the toxin is mild enough to pass through the systems of beings like ourselves within four to six hours.”
“Four to six…” His head was feeling funny again, and he tried not to panic, knowing now that it was the toxin doing it. “Beings like ourselves,” he repeated, looking up. “So you touched it, too.”
Spock looked abashed, then defensive. “Only briefly. But my physiology is quite different from yours. Thus far I am unaffected.”
“Shit,” Jim muttered. “Nothing we can do about it now. We’d better contact the others and warn them. Call Zanat, I’ll get Evanston.”
“Yes, sir.”
They started walking back, taking out their comms. Jim paused and rubbed his fingers over its cover. He’d never really paid attention to its texture before… Focus, Jim, he told himself, flipping it open to contact his security officer, telling him they were to regroup at the meeting place immediately. “And don’t touch anything on your way there. Or after you get there. In fact, just— just don’t touch anything.”
Spock ended his own comm and fell in step beside him again. “Zanat has also had no further luck in contacting the ship.”
“The…” Jim struggled to remember. The ship. Of course. He’d gotten distracted over the fungus thing. He let his hand graze the tops of the long grasses they were walking through, and it tickled pleasantly. “Right. Well, we’ll try them again later.”
“Captain, are you all right?”
“Yes, fine.” His worries over the toxin being— well, toxic— had sort of evaporated as he realised he was feeling quite good, actually. Maybe Spock’s estimate of hours had been overly cautious. “Are you?”
“I believe so.”
Jim glanced at him as they neared the top of the hill, but he seemed much as he ever did, eyes moving between his tricorder and the space in front of him. There was a very fine sheen to his forehead which wasn’t there normally— Vulcans didn’t do so well in humidity, it seemed. The faint echo of voices from the glen drew his eyes forward as they crested the hill, and he was relieved to see the rest of the away team already there. He and Spock must have walked farther away than he’d thought. Or maybe Jim was dawdling because of the toxin. He was about to ask Spock if they’d been walking more slowly, but Spock had broken into a flailing sprint down the hill toward the others, and Jim jogged behind him to catch up. The running made his head feel strange again, and when he caught up, he paused with his eyes closed, hands rubbing against his face. His hands felt cool and smooth against his cheeks. That was nice. From somewhere inside his head he heard Spock talking, and he forced his attention back, only getting the tail end of whatever he’d been saying.
“...all of you?”
“We didn’t touch it, I swear! We were just scanning it.” Atkins motioned to the tree nearest them, which was vibrating— or blooming, or whatever it was— just as the fungi Jim had been exposed to had been doing. Video static. That’s what it reminded him of. It was difficult to look at properly, but at the same time oddly hypnotic.
“Something else must’ve—” Atkins broke off, laughing. “Something else must have activated it,” she managed through a fit of giggling, and made a wiggling gesture with her hand. Diop, watching her, made the same movement with his own hand, and they both dissolved again into faint laughter. The sound had a crackling, warm texture, setting goosebumps over Jim’s arms.
Spock sighed. “Never mind, Yeoman— please stay nearby with the others. Lieutenant?”
“I think I’m all right, Commander,” Zanat said. “We don’t know the specifics, but, I mean, Bolians can metabolise a lot of things that would kill a human. I guess it’s possible it’s affecting the body as an inhalant, but…” She shrugged.
“Very well,” he said. He was rubbing his hands together. “Continue trying to contact the ship. With all the humans affected, it would be best to receive medical assessment as soon as possible.”
“The captain too?” Zanat said, with a worried glance in Jim’s direction, and then he realised he’d been staring at her, the blue of her skin as rich as a summer sky. He looked away, eyes landing where Evanston had sat down cross-legged nearby on a bed of thick green moss.
“Yes, me too, Lieutenant,” he said, the words feeling small and bumpy inside of his mouth. “And since we’re not sure how this might worsen or change, in the meantime any orders that come from Mr Spock as good as came from me, understand?” It was colossally difficult to care about such things as who was in charge of what, when it felt like the most important thing at the moment would be to find out for himself how that moss felt. Distantly he knew that he couldn’t go and just flop down next to his security officer; that it wasn’t appropriate, but he couldn’t seem to remember why that was so.
“Yes, sir.”
Spock and Zanat continued talking, and Jim began to pace a little, trying to take stock of what was happening to him. But it was so easy to get distracted. He watched the tops of the trees waving in the wind and got the distinct impression they were waving to him. He raised a hand and waved back, a bubble of laughter escaping from his chest. He heard more laughter, a soupy mix of melodies, which was funny, since he’d just been wondering if trees had a sense of humour. But then he remembered the others, and looked back to where they were, his heart racing for a moment. They weren’t paying any attention to him. Diop was lying down with his head on Evanston’s lap, and Evanston’s hands were rubbing over the other man’s buzz-cut hair. That was odd— Jim hadn’t known they were together.
Or maybe they weren’t. Atkins was curled comfortably next to Diop on her side, facing away from Jim. She lifted her arm, pointing at something and laughing, and the other two looked, and laughed too. When she dropped her hand again, it landed on Diop’s chest, and she rubbed it slowly. His hand came up to join hers, twining over her fingers, while his other hand idly grasped at handfuls of the moss next to him.
Jim’s fingers rubbed against his palms as he watched them, a shiver running down the back of his neck. It’s the toxin, he reminded himself, but it didn’t seem to do anything to lessen the desire that pulsed electrically in his fingers to touch anything and everything around him— the moss, the grasses, the trees, his own face. Curling his hands tightly into fists, he attempted to blink away the languid, tactile happiness of the scene before him.
He had to get out of there.
Spock had his back to him, hunched over Zanat’s comm, and she had one eye on the others. They’d be all right without him for awhile. He had his comm (just to be sure, he rubbed a finger over it where it rested on his belt); he could be reached if needed. It wouldn’t be necessary to go too far. Just far enough away that no one could see or hear him, which would also remove any possible temptation to run his hands through Evanston’s burnt-orange curls, or over the bit of skin at Diop’s wrist where his sleeve had gotten tugged up, or along the smooth, nylon-covered leg of his yeoman.
Grateful to his thoughts for this momentary clarity, he started off in a new direction, toward a boulder some ways away in between the trees. It didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the surroundings, sticking in his vision like a bright light after too much time in shadow. There was a name for this kind of rock. Half-interestedly, he tried to recall what it was. Spock would know. He’d have to ask him later, assuming he could remember.
Jim’s skin itched for contact, and he contented himself with exploring the texture of the stripes on his uniform sleeve as he walked. When at last he reached the boulder, he walked around to its opposite side and sat down in its mossy wake, exhaling with audible relief at the green, spongy comfort of it beneath him, rubbing his fingers gratefully over its earthy fuzz. His body and mind hummed with ecstasy. Since no one could see him, he quickly abandoned all pretense and stretched his body out completely, rolling a little to see how that felt. The answer was: good. Amazing, even. He felt amazing. Laughter came tumbling out of him like a waterfall as he rolled onto his back, gazing up at the whispering leaves of the treetops, rubbing his hands forcefully through the moss because it felt so necessary to grab and hold things, and the moss was so crunchy-soft and lovely. Then he felt guilty for being so forceful, and he patted it gently in apology. Hopefully it would understand.
Closing his eyes revealed a nebulous kaleidoscope of moving colour and shape which seemed to correspond with the slipping of his hands over the moss, and a surprised sound rose up in him. This was new, but not unwelcome. He moved one hand to his face, just to see if that changed anything, and it did; soft swirls of orange blending in amongst yellow and green. Pink as he touched his fingertips to his lip. Red as he touched the tip of his tongue.
He didn’t know how long he’d been lying there when he heard the moss crinkling gently beside him, and the visions behind his eyelids darkened slightly.
“Captain.”
Spock’s voice. Black tea with honey on a crisp autumn day.
“Spock,” Jim said, moving his fingers away from his mouth, understanding that this ought to, for some reason, embarrass him, though he didn’t feel embarrassed. Reluctantly he opened his eyes, reality striking him like a thrown pillow— gently, and suddenly. He propped himself up on his elbows, looking at Spock as he crouched beside him. “What’s happened to the others? Is everyone…?”
“They are— I suppose they are not ‘all right’, but they are being safely monitored by Lieutenant Zanat.” Spock shifted, moving from his crouch to sit down on his knees, unstrapping his tricorder and sample bag, setting them down near the rock. “I was concerned when I saw you’d gone. You should not be alone in your current state.”
“No, I…” Jim knew he was supposed to be alone. But why? He was happy Spock was there, as he studied the shine of the light against his dark hair. Spock’s beauty felt smooth and clean like a marble statue, warmed in a midday sun. The urge to touch him had an almost tangible pull to it; he wanted it so badly it was as though he could smell it, taste it in the air between them. It was true that he often wanted to touch Spock, much more often than he actually did so, but this… oh. Yes. He remembered now. This was why he’d gone to be by himself.
“You should go back to the away team,” he said, as firmly as he could manage, looking away from his face and down at the ground again. “I feel… I don’t know if I…”
“Yes, based on the actions of the others, it appears the toxin is acting as a mild hallucinogen, heightening or altering certain senses.”
“I can’t be around them,” Jim said, his eyes on the fabric of Spock’s knee, which seemed the easiest part of him to separate from the fact of his physical presence, close enough for him to touch… “Not— not as their captain.”
“I understand, Jim.” Spock’s fingers curled and released in the moss beside him, curled and released. Curled and released.
Jim lifted his head again. Spock was watching his own fingers, not looking at him. “So it got to you, too, after all.”
“It appears I was—” he paused, stifling an odd sound in his throat that might almost have been a giggle, if Jim didn’t know better— “somewhat hasty in my belief that my physiology would be unreactive. Perhaps if my blood were entirely Vulcan…”
“Are you all right?” Jim’s hand raised reflexively to reach for him, but what if he didn’t want to let him go again after? He couldn’t risk it.
“I do not seem to be as strongly affected as the rest of you,” said Spock, “Lieutenant Zanat excepted, of course.”
“Well.” Jim rubbed his fingers over his brow ridge as he fought to stay focused. “I don’t know that a science lieutenant would be my first choice as the only one of us with their wits about them, but it could be worse.”
“Then we are agreed: Zanat may continue to monitor the other officers and attempt to contact the ship, and I will remain here.”
“To make sure I don’t wander off again.”
“It has only been approximately thirty-four minutes since we were first exposed. You could yet become impaired enough to require assistance. And since you refuse to rejoin the rest of the away team at this time, the task of ensuring your safety falls to me.”
“Then will you lie down, at least, so I don’t feel like you’re examining me like one of your samples?”
Spock made a face that was his equivalent of a shrug and said nothing. But he shifted his legs out from beneath him, the moss whispering softly as he lay down.
“Feels nice, doesn’t it?” Jim asked, noticing Spock’s hand skimming, fingers splayed, over the small gap of moss he’d left in between them. He’d been expecting Spock to take care with his own personal space, but he was stretched out almost right next to him.
“Yes, quite,” he said conversationally. Jim stared up at the silent bruise of clouds above him, watching them swirl with faint, silvery patterns that seemed to fade back into nothingness the moment his attention drifted elsewhere. He wondered what it felt like for Spock. Vulcan senses were different from human ones. “Both my physical and telepathic responses to touch seem to have increased somewhat,” Spock went on, as if he’d heard the thought.
“Yeah?” he replied. “What’s the moss got to say?”
“I believe it is too busy for discussion.” He let out a short exhale and then cleared his throat slightly, and Jim chuckled fondly, even more endeared to him for having been trying not to laugh at his own joke. Spock said something else a moment later, something Jim didn’t hear, or didn’t process immediately.
“Hm?” he said, just as his brain started to catch up, his body already reacting to the words. But Spock couldn’t have—
“I inquired as to whether you would wish to touch me.”
“What?” Jim rolled over onto his side, the landscape in his vision pulsing and wavering for a moment before righting itself. Spock’s face was in profile, blinking up at the sky.
“Considering the behaviour of the others, it seemed logical to me that you might.”
He was just near enough that Jim could feel movement in the moss that was touching his outer thigh, just distant enough that Spock’s roving hand never actually reached him, and it was becoming excruciating. Normally he would barely have noticed such a thing as how far apart they were. He touched Spock when it was natural to do so; he kept a respectful distance when it was natural to do so; Spock did the same. Neither of them ever seemed to give it much thought. Why was Jim so intent on not touching him now?
“I would if you wanted me to,” he said. Spock turned his head back toward him again, dark eyes full of soft curiosity, and nodded. Jim’s skin tingled, already thrilled with possibility. He stretched out a finger and brushed it against one of Spock’s, his skin cooler than a human’s, warmer than the moss. As the novel form of contact sparkled over his skin and drew a tiny, pleased hum from Spock in response, Jim felt the hairs on his arms stand up inside the sleeves of his uniform. “Well, that’s— quite something.”
“Indeed,” Spock said, his finger brushing faintly back against Jim’s. Jim propped himself up on the elbow of his other arm to see him better as he began to trace the varying textures with a fingertip: a smooth fingernail, the ridges of his knuckles, the delicate skin of the back of his hand and the bones beneath. Each subtle difference set his nerves alight in new ways, and he couldn’t help closing his eyes again, lost in the explosion of colour and pattern projected onto the back of his eyelids. His fingers dipped beneath the edge of Spock’s sleeve and over the bones of his wrist, through the hair on his forearm. Spock drew in his breath. That was new, too, and his ears held onto it like it had a weight, even though the sound itself was as subtle as a cat’s footprints.
“Jim,” Spock said, and distantly Jim registered the question in it. He opened his eyes to find Spock reaching out with his opposite hand, across his body and somewhere toward the area of Jim’s shoulder. “Might I…?”
“Yes, of course.” Jim edged over a little closer to him, so he wouldn’t have to reach so far. “Whatever you like.”
Spock sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and released it, and then his hand landed tentatively in Jim’s hair.
“Oh—” Jim gasped, as the touch sent shimmering, ice-blue tendrils of Spock’s telepathy through his skin, skating lazy figures at the edges of his thoughts.
“It seems I cannot prevent a small amount of psionic transfer,” Spock murmured apologetically. “If you find it disagreeable—”
“Not at all,” Jim cut him off. The merest suggestion that they stop touching had sent a palpable wave of… not quite fear, but something stronger than disappointment, rushing up his spine. “Feels nice.”
“Mm,” Spock hummed in agreement and closed his eyes as he turned onto his side toward him, evidently satisfied that Jim was comfortable enough. His long fingers continued moving lightly over his scalp, and Jim leaned into it like some sort of domestic animal, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His own fingers, he realised, had moved from Spock’s arm upward and over the fabric of his shoulder, massaging it idly, apparently no longer content with small and delicate forms of contact. He liked the feeling of the fabric moving under his palm, the solidness of Spock’s muscle beneath it.
“We’ve never done anything like this before,” Jim observed after a little while. It felt somehow necessary to note this fact. His hand was now running over the terrain of Spock’s side: down the batholith of his ribcage, the soft valley at his waist, the drumlin of his hip and then back again, varying between vapour trails with his fingertips, firm caresses with his palm. Melodic little pings of Spock’s responses to each touch bounced into his mind, which Jim enjoyed at least as much as the physical sensation itself.
“We have never encountered this particular fungus before.”
Jim laughed, feeling the humour from Spock’s own thoughts filtering into him, gold-bright and warm. “You and I, I mean,” he clarified. “Together. But it’s— it is good, isn’t it?”
Spock sucked his lip again. “I am finding it… even more pleasing than anticipated.”
There was another feeling forming somewhere within him, one that was mirrored in the salt-coppery tang of Spock’s thoughts. As Jim followed its mysterious, alluring light-trail through his body, he began to recognise it as arousal. Touching each other like this had turned him on— turned them both on— inescapably, even though the touch had been so innocent, an instinctive extension of the drug that begged their hands to explore the tactility of the world around them, to give physical sensations colour, to give sounds bodily form.
“Should we try something else?” Jim could taste his own heartbeat in the back of his throat as he spoke, but he didn’t need to wait for an answer, because the sensation of Spock’s yes lit up the inside of his brain with buzzing neon beauty; Spock’s entire body was alive with it, and his hand was slipping from Jim’s hair down to his cheek, and now Jim was leaning down to press their lips together with a sureness that surprised even himself. Kissing him was startling at first, with the blue-white fireworks that burst behind his eyes as Spock’s mouth opened to him with a soft moan, their hands grasping at each other’s bodies. But slowly it settled with the calm inevitability of an evening tide: one day, certainly, the ocean would have crawled up to the beach to lick at its dry shores, and the unpredictable wills of the universe had decided that day would be today.
He could sense Spock wanting more. He pulled him closer with a hand around his back, aligning them on their sides. Yes, that felt right, too, he realised, and his body reacted with a rolling, sunset-pink wave of joy. The quaint stirring of arousal he’d noticed before had coalesced into something heady and thick as Spock gasped against his mouth. The front of his pants was starting to feel uncomfortably tight where his cock had stiffened inside his briefs, throbbing with what seemed like most of the blood from his head as a brief dizziness waxed and then waned, because here was Spock, lying beside him in a mossy paradise, desperate to be touched by him.
With a grunt, Spock rolled onto his back and pulled Jim on top of him, making Jim’s erection press into his pubic bone, and the connection between their minds expanded into a glowing, pulsating thing, a blooming vibration not unlike the fungi that had led them here, but Jim wasn’t thinking about the toxin anymore. All he cared about was touching as much of Spock as possible. Awkwardly he held himself up with his left arm, twisting his right hand in Spock’s undershirt, trying to untuck it from his pants so he could reach more of his skin.
“Oh, god,” he panted as his fingers slipped beneath its familiar soft blackness to reach the unfamiliar soft paleness of Spock’s abdomen, spreading his fingers wide as he felt the muscles expand and contract, heard the small whimper next to his ear as Spock arched upward against Jim’s cock. Jim shifted a little to fit a thigh between his, recalling enough about the differences between their bodies to believe this would feel very good for him. The response was immediate. Spock’s pleasure rattled and fizzed through Jim as though his whole body were some sort of transceiver, and he licked up the tendon of Spock’s neck to his ear, needing someplace to put this overflow of need.
He felt ready to explode, and at the same time as though he could float here forever, with his fingers in Spock’s chest hair and those lovely little sounds spilling out of Spock’s mouth to tickle against his ear. But his body recognised their arrangement easily, and did not require conscious thought to find rhythm with his thigh pressing at the relative warmth between Spock’s legs, feeling the suggestion of a new hardness there, his own cock aching as it rubbed against his hip.
“It’s so good, Spock,” Jim said, half-buried in his neck. He tasted like summer starlight. “Want you so much…”
“Yes, Jim,” he breathed in reply, though Jim could already feel the way his words made Spock’s emotions burble and writhe excitedly. “Yes.”
A sound that was not Spock and was not himself jarred him, an unnatural sound, but one that his brain recognised as important, though it didn’t seem to want to tell him why it was important. For a moment he tried to ignore it, seeing as he much preferred to keep doing what they were doing than to try to determine what the sound was, but the sound persisted and he felt Spock’s hand tighten against his shoulder.
“Jim,” he said, still breathing hard, “your communicator…”
“Shit,” Jim said, finally recognising the significance of the familiar chirp. Their hazy, intoxicated pleasure was cut by the sharp glass-edge of reality, although his body didn’t quite want to give up, thrusting slowly against Spock a couple more times before Jim managed to heave himself upright onto his knees, fumbling for the device at his waist. Spock, beneath him, propped himself up on his elbows. “Kirk here.” He held the comm open in front of him so they could both hear.
“Captain,” came Scotty’s voice, with a thin crackle of static behind it. “Are you all right? We were getting a wee bit concerned.”
“Ah…” Jim glanced at Spock, which was a mistake, because at the sight of his flushed face and messy hair, his shirt rucked up toward his chest, it became difficult not to laugh as he imagined trying to explain to Scotty what they’d been doing in this definition of ‘all right’. Yes, quite all right, we’ve just been rolling around here like cats on catnip and fondling one another. Spock’s mouth twitched as their eyes met. “I don’t think anyone’s in any immediate danger, but we do require medical evaluation. What’s happened up there?”
“I’ll explain when you get back,” he said. “Ms Uhura’s managed to sort out the comms all right now, but I might only have one shot with the patch-up Kyle and I’ve done on the transporter before it needs a full restart. Are all the landing party together? We can beam you up right away.”
“Tell McCoy to get a few detox kits on standby.” Jim looked down at the slight bulge at Spock’s groin, still feeling the throb of his own erection trapped inside his pants. “Give us ten minutes to get back to the others.”
“Understood, sir. Scott out.”
Jim closed the comm with a sigh, smiling a bit sheepishly at Spock. “Guess we’d better get back.”
Spock, looking a little sheepish himself, nodded. “It would seem so.”
The physical evidence of Jim’s arousal faded as they walked back, but his senses still felt supercharged, his body primed for more contact. He couldn’t help bumping his arm against Spock’s occasionally as they walked, or brushing their knuckles together to feel the shimmer of energy between them, until the slash of blue and red that made up the other officers came into view. He squinted, and noticed Zanat appeared to have joined them.
“Lieutenant,” Jim called, as loudly as he could, fighting back the powerful urge to start laughing again. She appeared to have her hand beneath the skirt of Atkins’ uniform, her mouth locked onto Evanston’s. Diop was kissing one side of Atkins’ neck, and it was a bit hard to tell where Evanston’s hands were with Diop and Zanat both halfway in his lap. Jim looked over at Spock, who raised an eyebrow as they approached the mess of bodies.
“Captain!” Zanat exclaimed, breaking away and deftly moving to her knees, then her feet, the blue of her cheeks brightening.
“Lieutenant, these officers were to be monitored under your care in my absence,” Spock said, and Jim was a bit impressed by how collected and authoritative he sounded, considering the way he’d been panting into Jim’s ear just a few minutes ago. “If you had been affected by the fungi, you ought to have said so.”
“I’m—” she looked down at the ground for a moment, and then bit her lip and stared him in the face. “I’m not affected by the fungi, but respectfully, sir, I’m not made of stone, either! You try ‘monitoring’ them, aka watching them rubbing all over each other and asking you why you don’t join them, and see how long you hold out.”
“Me, Lieutenant?” Spock folded his arms.
“Okay, well, maybe you’re not the best example,” she said, and Jim choked on a laugh, managing to clear his throat and focus, remembering why they’d come.
“Mr Scott is going to beam us up on my order,” he said loudly, and in his periphery he caught movement from the others. “And Dr McCoy will be waiting, hopefully to sober us all up, so anything you’d prefer he and our transport engineers not see, you’ve got two minutes to sort it out for yourselves.”
Politely he turned his back to them again, and Spock followed suit. “Very generous of you, Captain,” he said, with quiet amusement.
“I figured they at least deserve the same courtesy we were able to give ourselves,” he muttered back. There was a piece of moss in Spock’s hair. Absently Jim reached over and plucked it out, and Spock ran a hand over the area afterwards. He tried hard to ignore the way his fingers felt drawn toward the point of Spock’s ear.
McCoy and Chapel had been waiting in the transporter room with medi-scanners and hypos, and after dosing them all with a basic detox— except Zanat, who even McCoy had been impressed hadn’t needed one— the doctor ordered them all to sickbay for further examination. Scotty followed, leaving Kyle fussing over the transporter console, which appeared to be smoking slightly. He explained to Jim on the way, something about the subspace relay and the annular confinement beam and the planet’s magnetosphere; Jim was only half-listening. He’d wait for the full report later. He was still a little fuzzy, and oddly bereft at the loss of the drug from his system, but he pushed the feeling down, knowing it would pass quickly with the effects of the hypo.
In the sickbay, Bones and the nurses ran a bunch more scans on them all, including Zanat for comparison. It turned out the toxin had been absorbed through sweat pores, not the lungs or digestive system, which explained why it worked so quickly. Spock had been slightly less affected, having far fewer of these entry points than humans did, and the cartilaginous nature of the Bolian’s skin had kept her protected almost entirely. When everyone had been scanned and scraped and prodded to the doctor’s satisfaction, Spock presented a small specimen jar of the fungus, and Bones had been practically gleeful, even as he reprimanded him for taking an unknown biological sample without proper protective gear.
“As I had already touched it before realising it was a fungus, let alone one that was hazardous,” Spock said, with the irritable dignity he reserved for arguing with McCoy, “I reasoned that since that particular genie could not be returned to the bottle, as it were, I could at least obtain a preliminary sample for further study.”
“Well, you should count yourself lucky I’m not taking preliminary samples from a bunch of corpses,” the doctor muttered darkly.
“Shall I prepare a sealed-system micro, Doctor?” Spock asked, and Jim smiled, knowing that for all McCoy’s posturing, the two of them would be fighting over who got to look at the magnifier’s display screen first.
“Go on,” he said begrudgingly, waving him toward the lab.
“Mr Spock,” Jim said as Spock turned, “come see me when you’ve finished.”
“Yes, Captain,” he replied.
After checking in on the bridge and the transporter room’s progress, Jim went to his quarters, where he kicked off his boots and lay down on the bed with his hands folded over his chest. Physically he felt relatively normal again, but his thoughts were troubled. He thought back to the polywater incident, the flowers on Omicron Ceti III— other times when environmental factors had affected Spock’s ability to manage his emotions in the way he preferred to, and Jim wondered if this was anything like that. It hadn’t seemed that way. He’d still felt like Spock, just a Spock that was a bit more loose and unguarded than he generally let himself be around others. But then, Jim had been high on the toxin, so how could he say for sure that his impressions were correct? Did Spock regret that he’d shown him so much of his emotion, if only within the privacy of their own minds?
Jim experienced a full-body shiver at the enchanting memory of Spock’s thoughts mingling with his. No, he was certain they’d both enjoyed that part. He let his hand drift downward and gave his flaccid cock an experimental squeeze. It began to perk up instantly, but after a minute he reluctantly let go and folded his fingers together again. Maybe it was the physical part that Spock wouldn’t normally have participated in. Spock wasn’t a sexless being, Jim knew— though he seemed to find it convenient that others tended to believe that he was. Particularly other crew members. Sometimes, when some new officer started smiling a bit too meaningfully at Jim, batting their eyelashes and walking past him just a little closer than necessary, he even envied Spock for it, knowing that those who’d be brave enough to try that sort of thing on him were few and far between. But that wasn’t really the point. The point was: did Spock want— with Jim, and when they were under the influence of nothing but their own will— more of what they’d done together?
He must have fallen asleep, because he found himself startled into consciousness by the chime of the door. “Yeah, come in.” He rubbed his eyes as he sat up at the edge of the bed. Spock entered.
“Captain,” he said, coming in far enough to hover in the doorway to the sleeping area, until Jim gestured to the chair next to the bed and he sat down. “Dr McCoy and I have made some initial observations. The fungi’s camouflaging attributes may turn out to be quite useful in furthering the development of biomimetics, provided we are able to obtain more samples, as well as to isolate and remove the toxin. Which could prove interesting, given that the toxin itself—”
“Spock,” Jim interrupted. “Do you want us to have sex?”
“Now?” He looked a little taken aback by the blunt suddenness of the question. Jim was too, to be honest. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in Spock’s report. In fact, he could listen to him wax intellectual about fungus and toxins and biomimetics for some time under normal circumstances. But sitting there with Spock’s knees a hand’s length away from his own had proved to be a bit too much for the uncertainty that still lingered in the pit of his abdomen.
“Well, I meant generally, but I suppose that could include now.”
Spock’s face had recomposed into a mildly entertained expression as he nodded slightly, looking back at Jim. “I had hoped to have given that impression, yes.”
Jim exhaled a small puff of air. “So the toxin didn’t…”
“The toxin made our senses more acute, our minds easily distracted from logical thought processes by physical sensations, our inhibitions lower than they might be under usual conditions.” He was leaning forward a little in the chair, angling himself toward Jim. “It did not create artificial desire.”
“Then…” Jim had leaned forward, too, without noticing until their faces were only a few centimetres apart. He brushed his fingers against Spock’s leg. “I take it now sounds good to you?”
“We were interrupted earlier,” Spock agreed. He reached for Jim’s hand with his, turning it so that their fingertips rubbed together, and Jim felt a whisper of what he’d felt between them before: warm, bright rays of Spock’s thought touching the pool of his mind, and that was all it took for his body, too, to recall the feeling. Arousal charged through him— not all of it his own— as Spock slid his fingers up and down the length of Jim’s. Not quite a kiss, but he wasn’t sure what better comparison could be made, and the feeling he got from Spock made it obvious he considered it equally intimate, and equally appealing.
“Come here,” Jim said, and Spock wasted little time unfolding himself from the chair and seating himself with his knees on either side of Jim’s lap, his left hand still joined to Jim’s right. Desperate to feel the shape of each other’s bodies again, they fell together, Jim’s back hitting the bed and Spock’s teeth knocking slightly into his as their mouths met. Spock pulled back and frowned in concern at Jim’s hiss of breath, but Jim shook his head, laughing a little the way one does when something unexpected and slightly awkward happens. “I’m fine.”
He wasn’t sure exactly why, but it was then, with the twinge still echoing through his upper jaw, that he realised just how deeply he loved Spock, who had never been some indestructible thing carved from marble, after all: he was a living being, as strong as he was fragile, full of the mess of bone and sinew and breath and blood and wonder and pain and desire that that entailed. He curled the parenthesis of his arm tighter around his back, and Spock groaned, kissing him as though he’d been caught in the noonday heat and Jim’s mouth were a desert spring.
Soon they were out of breath and Jim’s erection felt wonderfully, but somewhat painfully, sealed beneath Spock’s lower abdomen and the fly of his pants, and Spock broke away and let go of his hand in order to fumble with long fingers at the closures. Jim bucked up against his hand where he began to rub it over the length of him through his briefs, and Spock lifted himself a little as he felt Jim trying to open his pants in turn.
“Yes,” he hissed, as he freed Jim’s cock from his underwear, stroking it lightly in his fist.
“Mmh—” Jim groaned, as sine waves of pleasure were transmitted through the touch of their skin. He pulled the fabric at Spock’s waist down to his thighs to make space for his hand.
His fingers trailed through the dark thatch of pubic hair to the glistening seam of flesh beneath it, and Spock made the most delightful little whimper, his need reverberating inside of Jim’s skull— apparently it wasn’t only Spock’s fingers that were telepathically sensitive. They were kissing again, their hands bumping into each other like frantic, sightless creatures as they moved. Soon the small nub of Spock’s emerging erection that Jim had been rubbing at had slid properly into his hand, and Spock sat up again, pushing at the hems of their shirts as he determinedly lined them up together, Jim’s bright pink flush against his pale olive, their hands working in tandem, friction lessened as Spock’s slick spread over them both.
“Fuck,” Jim gasped, his back arching, breath stuttering as the increased contact let more of the honey-sweet, smoked-salt flavour of Spock’s pleasure ooze into his mind. Unaccustomed to telepathy, his brain was sending desperate signals to his body that were quickly threatening to overwhelm him and probably send him careening prematurely into climax, but he didn’t care; it felt too good, knowing how much Spock wanted him, had wanted him, had patiently waited for weeks or months or longer. Jim sent vague memories of his own past desires to the forefront of his mind so that Spock would know he wasn’t alone: visions of Spock bent over the science console, of laying him out over the desk in the other room and sending the chess set clattering to the floor, of Spock slipping into the bathroom while Jim was in the shower, of the two of them sprawled in Jim’s bed (which was much larger in his fantasies than the bed was in reality) clean and sated with limbs entangled. Spock moaned as he greedily lapped up each one, his rhythm faltering only slightly as he stroked their cocks together. God, this Vulcan was going to ruin him.
When the full weight of the dense body on top of him became too much for Jim’s legs, he rolled them onto their sides, where Spock positioned Jim’s cock between his thighs, trapping it against the tepid wetness of his sheath. Spock gripped Jim’s ass with one hand in order to press his own erection tightly between their abdomens.
“Oh, god—” Jim thrust eagerly as their connection hummed with almost the same vibrancy he’d felt on the planet. The fact that they’d been blue-balled earlier wasn’t helping, either.
“You feel… very good, Jim,” Spock said. He was panting, his eyes squeezed shut as they moved, and Jim could sense that he wasn’t only referring to the cock that was pressed between his legs. “Please…”
The thick, frothing amalgam of thought and emotion between them made it clear just how much Spock’s shielding had held back when they touched normally. It felt as though he could suffocate under it, and as though Spock was breathing the life back into him. Jim bit his neck gently, then less gently, pleased by the low, surprised groan of pleasure he got in response, the way Spock thrust against him faster, squeezing his thighs tighter.
“Yeah, you like that?” Jim knew he was only moments away from coming, his cock perfectly encased in the slick valley between Spock’s thighs, and he could feel the shiver of orgasm building in Spock, too. “God, don't stop…”
“Ah—” Spock panted. The thrust of his hips was matched by the undulations of his mind against Jim’s, needy and rapturous, and Jim couldn’t hold back a second longer.
“I’m gonna come,” he managed to spit out. He felt his balls tighten, his orgasm racing through him with Spock whimpering and jolting against him, the shiny, warm bubble of his pleasure expanding further between their minds. Jim groaned into his neck as his cock pulsed and spilled over Spock’s thighs and the soft flesh at the base of his erection, and then Spock was coming against his stomach, making even more of a mess of them both as he gasped and moaned brokenly into Jim’s ear. With a few lazy thrusts, Jim felt a final hot spurt dribble out of him onto Spock’s leg, and they slowed, melting against each other’s mouths. Spock’s mental presence within him had lessened somewhat, fading into the soft drag of fingers through dry sand rather than the lustful clawing it had been.
“Fuck…” Jim rolled onto his back again. “That was so hot, Spock.”
“Mm.” Spock’s eyes began to flutter narrowly open, but he didn’t move or speak further. That was fine by Jim, who felt overheated and pleasantly wrung out like a sponge himself after all the mental contact, and he lay catching his breath a little longer.
“Probably for the best we didn’t end up getting to this point down on the planet,” he joked, with a glance down at his soiled shirt and trousers.
“Agreed,” Spock said, starting to worm out of his shirts without sitting up. He wiped himself off with his undershirt, hardly looking at it. “Perhaps we ought to take our clothes all the way off the next time we engage in sexual activity, as well.”
“A very good idea,” Jim said, chuckling. Now that his mind was settled again, he’d begun to miss the contact between them, and he was glad when Spock’s fingertips touched his in order to pass him the shirt. He managed to tidy himself up a little and get his own shirt off, kicking his pants to the floor, eyeing Spock as he awkwardly lifted one foot, then the other, up toward his chest to get his boots off and finally wriggle out of his pants. They’d landed initially at a bit of an odd angle on the bed, not quite width-wise nor lengthwise, feet dangling off the edge. “C’mon, let’s lie down properly.”
He shifted himself heavily up toward the pillow, with Spock curling against his side and spreading a hand out over Jim’s chest.
“I must admit,” Spock said thoughtfully, his fingers flexing and stroking gently over Jim’s skin, “even the detox hypo had little effect on my… want of you. I was finding it more taxing than usual to concentrate on examining the sample.”
“Is that so?” Jim felt a grin break over his face. “Then I guess I’ll admit I was a little tempted to jerk off as soon as I got back here, but I figured I could wait an hour or two. Just in case.”
“I am glad you did.”
“Mm, me too.” Jim kissed his forehead, which still harboured the faintly metallic tang of his sweat. Spock continued trailing his fingertips in lazy patterns over his chest, contented beads of emotion twinkling just at the edges of Jim’s mind. It was very comfortable. “I suppose I should see how they’re doing with the transporters,” he said after a few minutes’ quiet, his own thoughts beginning to even out again. “Maybe we can start getting another team ready with some biosuits on to go collect some more samples…”
“I visited the transporter room on my way here, and Mr Scott claimed it would be at least another three hours.”
“Then even in Scotty time that’s at least ninety minutes.” Jim let his arm fall back from where he’d been reaching over for the comm button. He pretended he didn’t know that Scotty always inflated his estimates when it wasn’t an emergency— the man simply didn’t like to be rushed. “So if you’ve been here for…”
“Nineteen minutes and forty-two seconds.”
“That’s all?” Jim frowned, and Spock nodded, looking a bit smug. “All right, then, Mr Spock, what do you think would be the most effective use of the next seventy minutes?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“How soon can you become aroused again?”
“I’m not sure,” Jim laughed, thrilled to the marrow that Spock could already want him again. “You’re the science officer. Would you care to… run an experiment or two and see if we can’t find out?” He traced a finger along the rim of Spock’s ear, watching the sweet, relaxed expression on his face turn amused.
“Yes, Captain,” he said, “I believe I would.”