Fic: Companion, Chapter 27: Jim (8)

[elliewood]

 

Morning, pretty early by the look of it outside.  No one in the room with me right now, no Bones, no Spock, and thank God, no Boyce -- I don't care if I never see that tool again.

I should be enjoying the chance to be alone, to try to put together the pieces of the last few days without anyone hanging over me, but I badly have to take a piss, and the distance between me and that bathroom door looks pretty manageable.  I test my legs -- flex, extend, yeah, I think I can make it.  Legs over the edge, hands push off the mattress, feet hit the floor -- uh-oh -- floor tilts, arms pinwheel, I hit the floor with my knees, hard, and pitch forward into the rolling bedside table, face-planting right onto one of the casters. I can actually feel the skin under my eye socket split, a bruise already stretching the cut open, and as I lie panting on the floor, stunned just enough to be immobile but not enough to dull the pain of having --yeah, there it is -- knocked out a tooth, I think, that was pretty fucking dumb.  

Not the first time I've had that idea this morning.  Because I've already hashed over what happened last night and decided that, between freaking out about Spock traipsing through my dead brain and waking up crying from some crazy dream with his face between my hands, I'm not just fucking dumb, I'm going fucking nuts.        

It's hard to explain -- it's like things that should stay down are getting harder and harder to keep down.  I don't know if it's being here in a hospital, where you feel a little helpless anyway (case in point: lying on the floor like a fucking moron while my mouth fills with blood) or whether it's the whole dying thing, but the walls are getting thin, my hold on what's on the outside and what stays in is slipping, and I think it's only a matter of time before everyone sees it.

Check that -- I'm not worried about everyone.  Bones already knows almost everything there is to know about me, all the idiotic hang-ups I have and all the crap-ass shitty things I've done, and he still puts up with me, so I feel like he could dig around in my head and not come up with a whole lot that would surprise him.  But as far as everyone else, it's killing me to think about what it is they could see if I keep unraveling like this. And it absolutely paralyzes me to think about what Spock could already have seen, and how much more -- or how little else -- it would take to send him running.

Because I have a huge hang-up concerning Spock, and I'm not saying it's rational or reasonable or anything other than (say it with me) fucking nuts.  But ever since he put me at that lectern in front of the entire Academy and made me defend myself for hacking his dumbass Kobayashi Maru program, I've needed to prove to him that he was wrong about me, that I'm more than just a cheating cadet with nothing between his ears but a pretty face and a fuck-you attitude.  And the more I think about it, the more I think that recent events are not exactly in my favor on that score.  Believing anything that shithouse rat Marcus said to me was epically dumb, but nothing compared to giving Khan, a.k.a. Shithouse Rat #2,  full access to the Vengeance and basically handing him a gift-wrapped Weapon of Mass Destruction.  Right now I can't defend that there's anything between my ears at all.  

Pike was probably right.  I should give up command, go back to the Academy, learn how to do things the right way, in the right order, through the proper channels.  Keep my head up and try not to care what everybody else is thinking: There he is, the fuckup who got his command because of who his daddy was, who leapfrogged over a shitload of qualified candidates to snag command of the pride of the fleet and didn't deserve a bit of it.  Look at him now, dirtside and demoted and back in cadet reds, humiliated.  How the mighty have fallen.  Cautionary tale, kids, pride goeth before a fall.

But I think I'd do all right if I get to keep Spock as my first.  As long as I don't go dropping him into any more volcanoes. 

And that's another thing that sticks in my mind, swirling like a turd in a toilet.  Another thing Pike was right about.  What other captain in the history of forever has put his first in that kind of danger?  Answer: none, because they actually considered the consequences.  But me?  Hey, man, I got this cool idea to, like, save this alien population, and all you have to do is drop down into fucking hell and probably die in horrible agony.  You down with that?  Cool.  Plan B?  Nah, Plan B's are for suckers.  And how would he ever forgive me for that?  How could he?  

Yeah, this is the mind he had the pleasure of exploring.  I should sell tickets.

Captain, I assure you, nothing in your mind warrants concealment from me. Direct quote. I know he's lying.  Because beyond the surface mess is a whole different level of evil shit that I take out and look at occasionally, polishing it to enjoy with horrified fascination before packing it up and pushing it way back down where it belongs.  Stuff not even Bones knows about, but that Spock just might, now.  

Fuck.  It's only a matter of time until everything falls apart.

Meanwhile, I'm still here drooling blood on the floor, evidence that I'm just as much of an asshat as he thinks I am.  And hey, great, here comes another chance to prove it, because now I hear his footsteps coming down the hallway toward my room.

How do I know it's him?   After months of listening for just that step on the bridge, I know it, hell yeah.  Months of timing my pause and turn and seemingly surprised blink and smile and Hey, Spock.  Months of accidental meetings right around dinner time, Oh, hey, you eaten yet, no?  Care to join me?  Months of insomnia when I can't clear my mind and have to get up and walk the ship and end up finding him in a corridor or the rec room or the gym, like my restlessness led me to him.

I could actually convince myself that it's not so bad to passive-aggressively stalk my XO if it weren't for the evil shit.  Most of the time I keep it down, letting it out only now and then the way Scotty hoards a bottle of scotch and pours out a few sips only on special occasions.  The scenarios are few but they're depraved enough to get me killed if Spock finds out about them.    

From the sound and pace of his footsteps right now, I know he's holding his shoulders just a little hunched and leaning forward as though his head wants to get where he's going before his feet do, the Spock version of Get the Fuck Out of My Way.  And I don't know how I can read this from the sound of his footsteps, but I can see him frowning, exasperated, shaking his head, just as clear as if he were in front of me. And I can even hear him -- Oh, James.  It would have been prudent to wait for assistance.  How fucked up is that?

Okay, granted, maybe not as fucked up as perving on him.  Sometimes I can't even talk to him face to face because I don't know where to look, so I end up looking over his shoulder, or sometimes at the tip of his nose, so he won't notice me staring into his eyes or at his mouth.  Because once I get hooked on one or the other, the evil shit bobs to the surface, like a dead body in a lake, and I won't be hearing the analysis he's giving me on the latest infrared scan data of the planet below.  Oh, no.  I'll be thinking about those lips and where I want them, I mean, where on me, and where I'd put mine, what I'd do to him, with my hands and my fingers, and where I'd want his, what he looks like under his clothes, what he'd feel like everywhere, what he'd look like when he's excited, aroused, coming in my hand or my mouth or my...

Yeah, I know.  Dying didn't fuck with my brain after all; I was already fucked up, long before.

Got to push all that back down now because he's here.  I can't see all of him, not because of the blood in my eye (which I can already tell is going to be an epic mess) but because the angle is wrong, and the only thing I can see is his feet appearing in the doorway.  I watch with my good eye as those feet hesitate for just a fraction of a second before moving to circle the biobed, coming to rest near my head as he looks down at me.

Pause.  Turn.  Blink.  Smile.  Hey, Spock.

 

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