Chapter Text
“Jim,” Spock murmured into Jim’s hair. The Vulcan’s arms were wrapped loosely around his waist, and his fingers brushed against the human’s skin. Warmth from his fingertips bled into Jim’s hips and he shifted imperceptibly closer to him.
“Hm?” came the soft, sleepy reply.
“I love you.”
The words were so quiet, so gentle, that Jim almost missed the sliver of tension in them.
“Spock,” Jim replied quietly. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he said. But there was a tightness in his voice that rang alarm bells through the sleepy haze in Jim’s head. Rolling over, Jim let his hands touch the warmth of Spock’s chest, his fingers brushing over the hair that dusted his skin.
Spock’s breath hitched.
Jim cracked his eyes open in the darkness, smiling as the silvery light of the stars outside lit up the side of his bondmate’s face. One of his hands ventured up to cup Spock’s cheek, his thumb caressing the spot just under his eye.
“Jim…” Spock whispered.
“Yes?”
The Vulcan’s eyes fluttered closed as he melted into his human’s touch, a soft sigh escaping him. His body sagged a little.
“I am sorry.”
“For what?” Jim asked, suddenly a little more alert. It was unlike Spock to say ‘sorry’, especially not without a reason. Usually, he would say ‘I regret’, or something similar.
Spock swallowed, his throat moving. Jim’s fingers drifted down to touch him there.
“I… I woke you.”
Jim broke into a grin. He buried his head in the crook of his bondmate’s neck and pressed a gentle kiss there. “Don’t be sorry. You know I love hearing you tell me how much you love me.”
Spock was quiet. There was clearly more he wanted to say.
A sense of unease began to seep through their bond, but it was gone before Jim could properly process it. Spock had clamped his shields down.
“Babe?” Jim said, letting some of his concern seep into his voice.
“I…” Spock swallowed. “I believe I am feeling unwell…”
Those words snapped Jim out of his sleepy haze, bringing him to attention.
“Unwell how?” Jim asked, finding himself mentally revisiting everything Spock had eaten in the last day, and everywhere they went that could have exposed Spock to germs.
“It is… not physical.”
Jim was quiet, waiting for Spock to continue, but he didn’t.
“I apologise for disturbing you. Meditation will likely restore my equilibrium.”
There was tension in Spock’s body now. Something that wasn’t there before. Jim could feel the tendrils of sadness stretching out to him through the bond, despite how hard Spock was trying to keep them to himself.
“Talk to me, please?”
Spock breathed in and rolled to lay on his back, eyes closed so he didn’t have to see Jim’s reaction as he spoke. He kept his voice level, as though he was reciting a scientific report, not telling his husband what was hurting him inside.
“I… I have been experiencing a disruption in my cognition over the past 18.39 days,” he started. Jim’s stomach clenched as he thought of eighteen days of sharing this very bed with Spock while Spock was suffering right beside him. “It was previously manageable, but over the period I specified, it has become exacerbated.”
Spock lapsed back into silence. Jim knew this routine. He knew it well.
His husband hated sharing things that hurt him. Spock had once described it as a feeling of inadequacy. It had been drilled into him since his childhood on Vulcan that any and all emotions were to be processed and filed away through meditation. To require assistance with this after childhood was viewed as a shortcoming. Spock’s exact words had been, any Vulcan who cannot manage their own emotions brings shame to their family.
And even though Jim had tried to tell him that it was illogical to find shame in seeking help, one human’s words were not enough to dismantle a lifetime of Vulcan teachings. The result of this was that whenever Spock needed help, whether it was physical or emotional in nature, he struggled to ask.
Though this hurt Jim from time to time, he had learnt to adapt to pick up on the tiny clues his husband left him when he needed something. Long, drawn out eye contact in social settings when Spock’s capacity had worn thin but he could not ask to leave. A few successive mentions of plomeek soup when he was coming down with a cold. Jim was no expert, but five years of bonding, and decades of knowing each other had him well-attuned to Spock’s needs, just as Spock was to his.
Right now, he could tell the silence Spock had left between them was an invitation. It was a way of telling Jim I have more to say, but I do not wish to burden you. Should you want me to continue, please tell me.
So that was exactly what he did.
“Exacerbated in what way?” Jim probed gently.
A soft breath from Spock was followed by a flutter of relief in the bond, a sign that Spock was grateful that Jim cared enough to ask.
“I…” Spock’s voice wavered. “I find that the frequency of certain thoughts has increased significantly.”
“What kinds of thoughts?” Jim continued. He was aware of a heaviness in his chest but couldn’t identify how it got there.
“Thoughts of… thoughts of hurting myself.”
The silence that followed this admission was tense. Spock’s fist tightened around the bedsheets, and Jim tried to quell the rush of fear that spread through him. The idea of Spock, his steady husband Spock, wanting to hurt himself made Jim feel sick.
“Spock…” he whispered in the starlight, putting his hand back on his husband’s chest. “You’ve been dealing with this for three weeks on your own?”
“18.39 days is not yet three weeks,” Spock replied, a deflection if Jim had ever heard one.
Jim’s hand trailed up to cup Spock’s cheek and he propped himself up on his elbow to get a good look at him. Spock’s eyes were open now, staring up at the ceiling, glassy with barely repressed emotion.
“Have you… have you hurt yourself?” Jim asked, stomach cramping with worry about the answer.
Spock shook his head minutely, though his eyes remained vacantly fixated on the paint above him. The muscles that had tightened up in Jim’s abdomen loosened their hold. He let out a breath of release and brought his forehead to rest on Spock’s shoulder.
“Thank you, for telling me that.” Jim pressed a soft kiss to Spock’s skin.
More silence followed as Jim’s hand moved from Spock’s chest to wrap around him, resting at his waist. Jim revelled in the gentle rise and fall of his husband’s chest, listening to the steady heartbeat under him. He waited patiently for Spock to keep going when he could.
“Jim.”
“Hm?”
“There is more I wish to tell you.”
“Okay, I’m listening.”
Spock swallowed. Gathering his words, he spoke. “I cannot explain why, but I do not feel present.” He paused to examine his own words, and Jim gave him the time he needed. “Each day I wake and perform my tasks with the diligence expected of me, but I… I no longer find any satisfaction or… joy… in anything.”
“Oh, Spock…” Jim held him just a little tighter. He had no words of comfort to offer yet, knowing that Spock did not appreciate empty platitudes.
“When I attempted Kolinahr, I strived to reach a state where I would not feel anything at all,” Spock kept going. He rarely talked about his time trying to complete Kolinahr, so Jim let him continue uninterrupted. “However, now that I truly do feel nothing, it is not as… it is not as—Jim, I apologise. I cannot find a word to describe what I mean.”
“That’s okay,” Jim said, running a hand through Spock’s hair. “I understand what you were trying to say.”
Spock leaned into Jim’s touch, letting his eyes close again as he let his husband play with his hair. It was something Jim had picked up in the early days of their relationship, when he would sit in bed and Spock would lay on his lap. The Vulcan found it soothing when Jim played with his hair. Running his nails along his scalp, or twirling a lock around his finger, all of it was bound to soothe Spock.
“I find…” Spock breathed deeply, and those tendrils of fear returned to the bond. His voice was quieter, less certain, when he kept talking. In fact, it cracked in the middle of his sentence. “I find that I do not wish to continue in this way.”
Immediately, Jim was back up on his elbow, one hand still entangled in Spock’s hair while the other moved his face so he could look his husband in the eyes. The starlight coming in through the window lit up the sharp planes of the Vulcan’s face, accentuating the lines that had developed over the years. It highlighted the exhaustion and vulnerability that Spock tried so hard to hide.
“Look at me,” Jim said, voice as steady as he could muster.
Spock did as he was told, lifting his gaze to meet Jim’s hazel eyes.
“Are you ashamed of me?” Spock asked, voice small and rough. The bond flared with anxiety and resignation and shame.
“No,” Jim cried out, his forehead meeting Spock’s. “God no, Spock. I am not ashamed of you.”
A tear rolled down the bridge of Jim’s nose and landed on Spock’s cheek.
“I have made you cry,” Spock said, hands coming up to wipe Jim’s tears. The hand Jim had kept at Spock’s waist came up to hold the Vulcan’s wrist.
“Don’t apologise.”
“But—”
“No, please don’t apologise. I…” Jim pulled back and sniffed, trying to collect himself. “I… I’m upset. I won’t lie, Spock, I’m so upset.”
The Vulcan opened his mouth, ready to backtrack everything he had just confessed if he could just bring Jim’s peace back. But the human held up his hand.
“Not at you,” Jim continued. “Never at you.”
Spock closed his mouth.
“Spock, I… I know this isn’t about me,” the human kept going. “But… I just need you to know—you—you are my everything. There is no me without you. And hearing you say that… that you don’t want to continue? That scares me.”
“I am sorry, Jim,” Spock replied shakily. “My logic… I have calculated the potential outcomes hundred of times—”
Jim looked down at him with teary eyes, dreading the words that were to come.
“The benefits of my continued existence are outweighed by… by my cessation.”
Jim sobbed, unable to hold it in anymore. He collapsed onto Spock’s chest, head tucked under his husband’s chin, arms holding him tight. “No, Spock. Can’t you see? That’s—that’s not logic. That’s something else—something inside you that’s skewed your calculations the wrong way.”
Spock did not reply, but he brought his hands up to hold Jim in return, tears rolling down his cheeks too.
“It’s a faulty instrument,” Jim continued. “You logic is faulty, which is why it’s spitting out the wrong conclusions.”
“A faulty instrument…” Spock’s gravelly voice echoed.
Jim pulled himself up to look at his husband’s face again. A sad but hopeful smile graced the human’s face. “Any what do we do with faulty instruments?”
Spock glanced away, at the window. “Discard—”
“No!” Jim cut him off. “No, we don’t just throw them away. We recalibrate them.”
The Vulcan looked back at him, their eyes meeting again. “Recalibrate…”
“Yeah,” Jim laughed softly through his tears. “You… you dying isn’t going to fix things, Spock. Call me selfish, but that would destroy me.”
Spock nodded. Despite what his logic had been telling him about Jim’s resilience and his ability to recover from losses, deep down he knew that losing his t’hy’la would change the man he loved in a way that would make him unrecognisable.
“We can get help, though. We can talk to Bones in the morning—get you a psychologist, or medication if you need it—something that can help you recalibrate.”
Spock could see the hope on his bondmate’s face, but the Vulcan half of him, the side he chose to embrace, reminded him that he was a failure—that seeking help would bring shame to his family. Wouldn’t it have been wiser to die a hero than survive as a blemish on an otherwise untainted family name?
But Jim was looking down at him with wet eyes and a hopeful smile, and Spock realised that death would mean he would never get to see that face again.
“I… I cannot agree to that right now,” he said. “But perhaps after some more consideration.”
Jim nodded. He lay back down at Spock’s side, head on the Vulcan’s chest, arm across his torso, and leg draped over Spock’s. His breathing was still shaky, but he listened to the heartbeat in Spock’s ribs.
“Just promise me you’ll fight, and I’ll be here every step of the way.”
“Jim… I cannot promise I will have the desire, nor the capacity to fight,” came the honest reply. “But I can promise that I will try.”
“Thank you,” Jim whispered, his breath tickling the hairs on Spock’s chest.
“Please do not let me go.”
And Jim held on.