Fic: Of Human Bondage (PG)

[obstinatrix]

Title: Of Human Bondage
Rating: PG
Pairing: Shatnoy (say I, with caution), and, uh, Kirk/Spock. And maybe something else if you read it that way, my_daroga. ;)
Disclaimer: This is completely untrue.
Prompt/Notes: I wrote this for my_daroga for the trekrpfexchange. This...doesn't exactly fill any of the prompts I had. I read them through, wrote this, and then came back and read the prompts again and realised that, while it takes parts of all of them, it does not fully fill any one of them, for which I apologise. In this fic: exploration of that space between character and actor, Shatner or Nimoy (or both) meet Kirk or Spock (kind of? Maybe?), and a 70's setting, in this case, The Motion Picture set.

Wow, this is unclear.



He never really had a real friend, before Star Trek happened.

Oh, sure, he'd had acquaintances - acquaintances on every level from the old guy he used to smile at on the Montreal sidewalk to the little band of brothers amassed during his performance time in Stratford, men he lived and died and breathed and slept with, drank with into the long Canadian night. And they were great guys, great buddies; people who liked him and helped him and laughed with him and at him, before that ever got dangerous. Guys like Chris and Marty and the girls who came with them - who came to be as inextricably associated with them as if they had been created as matched sets. They liked him, these people; worked with him, talked with him, ate with him. For the most part, Bill liked them too.

For Bill, though, a friend meant something else. Having a friend meant having someone who knew the way the landscape ran, not only in your life, but on the inside of your head. A friend was someone whose eyes communicated in a single glance what hours of words could not articulate; a friend might not always agree with you, but would take your side anyway. A friend, Bill thought, would stand behind you no matter what, would be there to thrash out issues that had no hope of resolution, if only because the darkness in your mind might look a little different from the opposite side. Other people, Bill knew, had friends. People in books, particularly. People in history. Riding like hell over the dusty Californian desert in the summer of '63, Bill dug in his heels and wished he really were Alexander, whose friendships returned royalties of blood.

Not that Bill wanted anything so visceral as that, not in its raw, real-world sense. But he wanted to know, for once in his life, what it might feel like, really feel like, to know it was possible. Just to feel that other person there, behind you, supporting. Unconditional.

By the time he was thirty-five, he had almost given up.

Now, standing alone in a dressing room whose newness glares at him from the empty walls, Bill almost believes there might be miracles. He runs his hands distractedly down the front of the long grey tunic, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles over the suddenly nonexistent curve of his stomach. On the opposite side of the room, he echoes the gesture, for once, in this moment, uncomplicatedt. A reflection, nothing more. Bill quirks the corners of his mouth, a little: a smile for the man in his head, the unexpected friend. Jim Kirk.

He missed him, all the years that he was gone, or sporadic, or unhelpful. The years after the divorce, while Bill got fatter and the work got thinner and really, he had never been more in need of a friend’s support. There was something about Jim, about this man who smiled back at him with his own charm a hundred times magnified, that defied all the irritating truths about Star Trek being a figment of Gene Roddenberry’s imagination. Looking at him now, in the mirror – seeing that upright, military figure again, the confident, challenging gaze – Bill feels like some engendering god, himself; not a creative force, but a nurturing one, from whose head Kirk had sprung fully formed, eleven years and a lifetime ago.

It is hard, sometimes, to be Jim Kirk. Bill does not doubt this. Kirk is a sensitive man, and Bill felt his pain when his ensigns fell foul of unseen dangers; felt his frustration and shame, when others failed to realize that he cared. Felt his uncertainty, sometimes; the loneliness of command. Still, Bill thinks, it is very often harder to be William Shatner; and more difficult still, in recent years, to be Bill-who-owes-his-alimony, Bill-we-won’t-need-you-again; Bill, who commands no loyalty but his own.

Sometimes, Jim Kirk has been the only thing that made living possible. That voice in his head, his golden control, his measured encouragement. Come on, Bill. Do it the way I’d do it. Saying lines, talking to bank managers, reasoning with his wife. Doing these things by the instructions Kirk supplied in his head was so often the only thing that kept him from breakdown, and from that terrible certainty that he could only fail. Sometimes, the connection had become so involved as to be almost seamless; and while this could be a beautiful delusion, there were times – such as the ill-fated occasion on which he had almost attempted to execute Kirk’s famous flying kick upon a gang of teenage louts – when Bill did worry about his capacity to detach himself, to think unaided. In Kirk’s world, the flying kick was a lethal weapon. In Bill’s, gravity was altogether more scathing a force, rendering the kick at best ineffective, and at worst, a rather painful humiliation. This, Bill told himself firmly, was the difference between them. Some of the things Kirk did, Bill could never achieve, because Kirk had a kind of magic on his side.

His feelings for Kirk were often vacillatory. How would Jim do it? he ‘d ask himself, smiling at a pretty young thing on the far side of a bar, hearing the Captain’s voice in his head, encouraging. Come on, Billy, she wants it. Go buy her a drink. You’ve done it plenty of times before. And, for the duration of the first pint of beer, he’d love Kirk, his confidence, his borrowed machismo. But the problem was that, when he put on too much of Kirk, the lines were not invisible, nor the mask unnoticed. And the moment it became clear to Bill that the girl he was talking to was talking not to him, but to Kirk, all the warmth would dissipate. He hated Kirk, then, for being so much better than Bill could ever be. He hated Kirk when those girls (more than once) called him Jim with their legs around his waist. He hated him, but Kirk was Bill’s best friend, sometimes the only person he had. And maybe that meant Bill was crazy, but the fact of the matter was, Jim never quite went away – and in that, he was unique.

Here in his dressing-room mirror, Kirk is smiling. Bill never regretted anything quite so much as the knowledge, coming in 1969, that he would no longer see Jim Kirk every day; would no longer put on his clothes and his face and his charm, and be that hero in his mind. And now, at least for this interlude, he is Kirk again. They are one. Leonard will call him by Kirk’s name, and Bill will say, “Spock - Spock - “

In the mirror, Kirk’s smile dims. Bill bites his lip on a sigh. He will call out to Spock, they will call out. And Spock will say – absolutely nothing.

There are no Jims in this movie; no quirked eyebrows, no smiles. They have been filming for only a couple of weeks, and already the constant stiffness in Spock’s face is a little unsettling, making the Kirk in his head uncomfortable. Not my Spock, he is saying, and Bill is forced to agree. Leonard isn’t half so submerged, this time; is grinning around the set as if to compensate for the sheer stoniness of Spock, and so for much of the day, Bill is perfectly content. But Jim Kirk, he realizes, is unrelentingly miserable; quiet and loveless and alone. This is the first time Bill can ever remember feeling him this way.

For a long minute, Bill stares at the face in the glass. He studies the shape of it, the fine lines around eyes and mouth. The closeness of the expression. “Oh, Jim,” he murmurs, because there is no-one else to say it, not the way he needs it to be said. He remembers it in Spock’s warm velvet voice, all the Vulcan’s love and richness in that one simple sound. Jim! as he stood before the Horta, and Spock felt danger. Jim - on the bridge, a question, or a confirmation. Jim, just like that, in the turbolift, with their faces half an inch apart, affirming. All the Jims Spock ever said to him ring hollow in the emptiness of Kirk’s lonely face in the glass, and palpably, horrendously, Bill wants to cry for his loss. “Oh, Jim,” he breathes again, “Jim.”

He finds Leonard in his dressing room, three doors down and unlocked. His face is soft, relaxed; Bill notices the telephone pulled towards him on the desk and wonders if this is because he has just been speaking to his wife, to his children, to someone else who loves him. Without warning, he feels Kirk’s heart leap a little in his chest, and notices belatedly that Leonard is still wearing Spock’s ears, Spock’s eyebrows. He feels Kirk glow a little, thinking that half-smile to be Spock’s.

Leonard, he is very glad to note, is in a good mood. He looks up when Bill enters, and lets the smile take proper form. Bill suppresses Jim’s little swell of joy, and says, “Hey. Okay if I come in for a while?”

“Sure,” says Leonard, unfolding himself from the desk chair, leaning over to shift a pile of scripts and other papers from the couch. For months, Bill had been dreading these afterhours moments. Dreading the anticipated awkwardness, the pain that rang the changes. Then, last month, he had called Leonard, and the two of them had grown close again with worrying, meeting for lunch and talking on the phone about how to reignite cast chemistry, until suddenly it occurred to them that the problem had solved itself. It was still a little strange, at first, to work together again, after all these years. But this is only the beginning, and that will fade.

In Bill’s mind, Kirk is reassured, too. Bill takes a moment to feel a little bad for him, knowing his easiness with Leonard, his joy at things creeping towards feeling right again, is not Kirk’s own happiness. He hopes Kirk doesn’t overhear him, thinking this.

“I was thinking about Jim,” Bill says, before he can change his mind. He settles himself on the cheap new couch; crosses his legs. “He’s sad.” He catches Leonard’s eyes, a challenge in his own. “D’you think I’m nuts?”

Leonard shakes his head in fluid slow motion as he sits down, pulling the coffee table towards them and setting down his glass on its tea-ringed surface. “I told you before, Bill. I’ve got him up there – “ he taps his temple “ – Spock. Can’t say he’s too happy, either.”

Bill nods, slowly, and looks at the carpet. Leonard follows his gaze, tracking it to a stain over by the desk. For a long moment, they sit there like that, in silence. Then Bill says, “Why did he go to Gol, anyway?” He twists the cuff of his tunic sleeve in his hand, wishing he had a glass to play with, spectacles to open and close, anything for his restive fingers to do. “And why’d he come back? It doesn’t make sense.”

Leonard shrugs, leaning down to pick up his glass again. “Unclear. That’s one of the problems I have with it.” He sighs. “Frankly, not much of it makes sense, does it? He went to Gol to purge all emotion. Why? Not clear. He came back, Gene claims, because he senses in his mind that Kirk needs him. But I don’t think even that’s very obvious in the script, is it?”

Bill laughs a little, softly. “Gene said that?”

“That’s what he told me.”

Deep in Bill’s chest, Kirk is holding his breath. Bill looks at Leonard sidelong and says, “Jim likes that. If it’s true.”

Leonard rubs a hand over his eyes. “I…I don’t know. I mean, I can feel that being true. Spock would do that. But him leaving in the first place…” He trails off. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “I just – don’t know.”

“I hate that Spock doesn’t greet him,” Bill says abruptly. It comes out too fast, and he fixes his eyes on his fingers, a little embarrassed; but it is what he’s thinking, and moreover, it is what Kirk is thinking, and Kirk’s thoughts hurt. Get them out, get them out, get them out, and damn the embarrassment.

But Leonard is nodding, slowly, his face thoughtful. Not mocking. “Yes. No ‘it is pleasing to see you again, Jim’; not even a ‘Greetings, Captain.’ Hell, not even a goddamn raise of the eyebrow!”

The depth of relief Bill feels at hearing Leonard’s indignation match his own is almost shaming. Encouraged, he says, “No! Do you think Spock would do that?”

“No emotion – “

“But he came back for Jim,” Bill puts in, “You just said he came back for Jim. Do you feel him, emotionless?” He is pushing, but the sense of Kirk is flaring behind his eyes, making his breath short with a desperation not his own, and he grips Leonard’s arm. “Does he really feel nothing, seeing Kirk again, after all that time?”

“He loves him,” Leonard says, with a simplicity that stops Bill dead in his stumbling tracks. Leonard’s eyes meet Bill’s, dark-wide-open. Something in Bill seizes tight in response, like a fist. Leonard’s not done, and Bill is watching him, Jim is watching him lik e a hawk, waiting. “God, you know this script is – dubious at best, Bill. However it comes off in here, I’m telling you, Spock loves him.”

Reaction makes Bill giggle. It is either one of his most unattractive traits, or one of his most endearing. Opinions differ. His hand, too tight on Leonard’s forearm, relaxes. “Jim just jumped for joy in my head to hear that,” he confesses, and then laughs. “Alliteratively, apparently.”

Leonard smiles, a lopsided quirk of his mouth. “Not that he’d ever say that, of course.”

Bill grins. “Of course not.”

“He just says, ‘Jim.’”

Kirk’s pulse is thrumming in the side of Bill’s throat, requesting. Compelling. Bill says, “Go on then - “ says it lightly, though his heart is abruptly thunderous. “Come on, Len, before the poor Captain busts a gut, worrying.” He laughs again, to make himself feel less ridiculous, less caught up on how important this suddenly feels. “Say my name, Spock.”

How strange it is, Bill thinks, that Leonard understands him, when he says these things. How strange that Leonard, too, has had that friend inside him, soothing all the places in his mind that he hadn’t known were hurting, before. And now Kirk is hurting, and it is Bill’s turn, and they have rewritten scenes before for far more trivial reasons. Bill wants this, for Kirk; wants it for himself, even if it’s never seen by anyone but them. He wants this unexpected brush of Leonard’s fingers to his cheekbone, the side of his face. He wants that look in Leonard’s black eyes that is all the love his Spock has ever felt. Leonard’s fingers find the meldpoints, their gentleness overwhelming.

Then Spock says, “Jim,” and Kirk is falling into joy.

Bill is not so far gone as to believe they are really telepathic. But in their closeness, Leonard’s face is legible as typeset, and far more accessible than the rambling screenplay currently lying on the floor by Bill’s left foot. Bill is sick of the script, of all that thinking without feeling, of meetings and discussions that dissolve into arguments and mean nothing anyway without this. Leonard presses their foreheads together, just barely. “We are their keepers,” he says, “Whatever Gene thinks.”

When Leonard pulls his fingers away, the moment seems to fragment, the pieces dissipating exactly as if some mental bond had been severed. But it is still there, Bill thinks to himself: the bond. It will always be there, as long as Spock is alive in that place in Leonard’s mind, and Kirk in his. Oh, Bill can be superficial; he would be the last person to deny that; and he can be irritating. Many of his interactions with Leonard are trivial ones, conversations rambling for hours but shallow as a puddle. The fact is, though, that Bill keeps Kirk – or Kirk keeps him. And Leonard keeps Spock. Kirk and Spock are lashed together in ways they cannot ever hope to comprehend; and Bill and Leonard are equally bound to their characters, for better or worse.

Bill does not spell out the final inevitable conclusion, not even to himself. But it is true anyway, spoken or not; profoundly, unavoidably logical. Somebody is finding that deeply reassuring, but Bill can’t be sure, for the moment, whether it is Kirk or himself. At this juncture, he doesn’t suppose it matters all that much.

The next morning, when Bill arrives in his dressing room, he finds a sheet of paper face down on his desk. Script rewrites, undoubtedly. Bill is a little grouchy, not yet reacquainted with working hours like these, and he is not optimistic.

When he turns it over, he is surprised to find that it is handwritten. The handwriting is familiar. It begins:

We know this is how it goes, even if it doesn’t make the movie. (All four of us know, right?)

KIRK: Spock. Spock! (impassioned)
SPOCK: (smiling, as much as a Vulcan ever does) Captain. It is pleasing to see you again.
KIRK: It’s great to have you on board again, Mr Spock. (beaming) Please – (beckoning)
SPOCK: (walks onto the bridge and straight to Kirk) (lowering his Vulcan barriers purely for Kirk’s benefit, he takes his hand and grips it in a half handshake) Jim. (in the old, fond way)
KIRK: Spock. (smiling)

I know they say each other’s names a lot, but they always did, didn’t they? Must be a reason.

Anyway, I hope this entertained you. L.

Bill folds the sheet of paper and tucks it in his jacket pocket for safekeeping. It is all he can do to hold in his smile until it is time to leap out of the captain’s chair; call out “Spock!” like a man whose heart’s desire is in his sights.

“Spock!” Kirk says, as Bill’s hands close on the parapet. “Spock!”

And it doesn’t matter what it says in the script, any more. It doesn’t even matter that Spock’s face is impassive, cold, his Vulcan bearing more complete than Bill has ever seen it.

In their mind, Spock’s voice sounds clearly: Jim.

And it’s enough.

**

Comments

[obstinatrix.livejournal.com]

You know, in this universe? It was probably their idea. ;)