obstinatrix | Fic: Easy Is A Shadowed Look

Title: Easy Is A Shadowed Look
Pairing: Kirk/Spock (ST:XI) if you squint. Pre-slash.
Rating: G/PG (:O!)
Disclaimer: Paramount owns everything, and knows everything about all of us. (That's too much KNOWLEDGE!)
Summary: Kirk's been fighting again, and Bones isn't on hand to patch him up. Spock steps in, and Kirk comes to some half-drunken realisations.
Notes: This was written for

betweenthebliss for

trek_exchange, Round 1. From her myriad prompts, I think the ones I settled on were 'character study' and 'Kirk getting into fights'. Oh, and Kirk/Spock, through a glass darkly. :)

Bones should have been the one to do this, Jim thought, one arm curled up and over his head to expose the purpling bruise on his ribcage. He was, after all, as he was so fond of telling people, the ship's doctor: Jim's doctor, as well as Jim's friend. And Spock - well. Spock was neither of those things. But shipwide shore leave was no misnomer, and Bones had been nowhere to be found when Spock had beamed back aboard with his staggering captain clutched in his arms, a faint prickle of irritation just detectible in the tightness of his mouth. Jim was learning, slowly, to read his expressions, for his face did alter with his moods, as obviously as any human's, if you knew what to look for. Currently, the look on Spock's face hovered somewhere between annoyance and anxiety, but whether out of concern for his captain, or because he doubted his medical capabilities, Jim could not be sure.

His hands were deft, scrupulously accurate as they mapped the spread of the bruising, as Jim might have expected. They were also very gentle, long-fingered and careful, touching his aching skin with something strangely close to tenderness. Jim had, most definitely, failed to anticipate that. The whole left side of his body throbbed, far beyond the visible borders of the blood-dark bruise, but Spock's hands were like balm to his wounds, and Jim wanted to keep them there, soothingly hot beyond the warmth of any human touch. Bones's hands didn't feel like that, like you could sense them healing you, taking the tatters of your body and knitting them effortlessly back together. No. Jim was glad Bones wasn't here to fulfil his duties, all things considered. He wondered vaguely how Spock would react if he asked him just to go on doing this, Captain's orders, until all the pain had seeped away.

Jim was, it must be confessed, a little drunk. More than a little, really. It wasn't that it took a lot of alcohol to inveigle him into a bar fight - in fact, in the distant days of Iowa past, it had rarely taken more than a shot or two. But he was the Captain of the Enterprise, now, and the responsibility, the pride, had changed him. He was a man, now; he commanded; he held his crew's respect.

In practice, this meant that Jim now had to be pretty well on his way to comatose before he'd allow himself to become deliberately involved in a brawl; but if he were actively provoked, after more than a few drinks, it was more than his recent captaincy could manage to keep him in his seat on the passive moral high ground. And, this evening, he had most definitely been provoked.

Spock claimed not to understand the concept of provocation. "I imagine it must be very difficult," he said curtly, as he dabbed something cool and wet onto the bleeding centre of the bruise, "to be so easily affected by the opinions of others."

Jim rolled his eyes. "Insults, Spock," he declared, waving a hand in the general direction of his First Officer's face, "are not the same thing as opinions. Man's got a right to his own opinion. Nobody's got a right to be insulting."

Spock raised an eyebrow, but did not look set to pursue the subject, for which Jim was grateful. Spock's attentions to his side were so restful, so capable and calming, that Jim really had no wish to be distracted from the sensation by yet another pointless argument. Spock, of course, would have insisted that it was a discussion, but he would have been wrong.

Spock was wrong, sometimes. This was another thing Jim Kirk had become sure about, in the days since his captaincy began.

There were a lot of these things, now he came to think about it, these new sureties. Some of them were about himself: he had discovered, for example, that he worked best under pressure, and that responsibility drove him to competence, and not to breakdown and rebellion, as he might once have expected. Some of them were about his ship, his beautiful lady Enterprise, which he was sure would always bring him home. But more of them - most of them, he realised now, as he watched his First Officer's fingers unwrapping a bandage - were about Spock.

Complex was a word Jim had often heard applied to Spock, and to Vulcans in general, from all kinds of different people. As far as Jim was concerned, it didn't even begin to capture the sheer scale of Spock's infinite strangeness, his reserve and his efficiency and the deep-rooted core of compassion whose existence Bones would have denied. Complex, really, was a very easy thing to say, and if there was anything Spock was not, it was easy.
And yet. Spock was almost finished with the bandaging now, winding the old-fashioned gauze in uniform strips around Jim's ribcage, and the fluid interaction of his hands and arms was most definitely easy, there; the way he pinned the ends of the bandage distinctly easy, too. The blue-sparked sheen to his hair was easy; the way his tunic clung to his shoulders; even the quirk of his mouth, habitual, slight. And as he looked up into Jim's watchful face, Jim recognised all in a moment that knowing the meaning of such a look was easy now, too; that the subtle thread of gold in those dark eyes spoke of loyalty, and fondness. It was a great thing, to be able to read that in a Vulcan gaze: fondness. There was nothing blatant about it, nor even unguarded - no, on the contrary, the whole point seemed to be that Spock was still cloaking his feelings, shuttering his expressions, and yet Jim could read this look easily even still, where it was objectively so difficult. Where only someone who knew Spock could have hoped to find an answer.

He knew Spock. In that moment, there and then, as Spock held his gaze before turning away to wash his hands, Jim Kirk was absolutely certain of it. And that was new.

Bones should have been the one to do this, to patch him up and tell him off and send him to bed with some painkillers and an earful of vitriol. But he thought - as Spock ran those gentle hands up his captain's arms to help him raise them; as he inched the black undershirt back onto his aching body - that he was glad to have had Spock help him like this, if only for that glimmer of understanding shared between them, that warm, sure knowledge born when Spock's dark eyes met his. He was glad to have felt Spock's hands on him, certain and careful and deft, and to have known that the touches were fond ones, attentive, concerned. Bones was always concerned. With Spock, it was different. Knowing you concerned Spock was like knowing you were the special favourite of a god.

...Jim was too tired, and too sore, and too drunk, to dissect the implications of that thought just now. Hands on skin flushed to prickling with drink were pleasant at the best of times. Hot-blooded Vulcan hands, on skin that ached like a slow burn, were a different thing entirely, and Jim was not ashamed to have indulged himself in a deep appreciation. He was drunk, and that meant he could think these things with impunity. That was why the arch of Spock's eyebrow kept drawing his eye the way it did; why the sharp lines of his profile now resembled a stark work of art. He was drunk, and Spock had fixed him up, and everything was easy.

"That should be sufficient, Captain." Spock stepped away from the medical table with a slight inclination of his head, and indicated the bandaged bruise on Jim's side with a gesture. His eyes were like smoked glass, transparency clouded dark. Jim smiled, and edged gingerly off the table and into a standing position.

"Thank you, Spock," he said. "You're good at this, you know."

"The procedure is a perfectly logical one, Captain. "

"It's easy, you mean," Jim said, and grinned. Spock, of course, did not smile back, but it didn't matter any more. Jim had no need to see him smiling.

When he got back to his quarters, he fell asleep almost the moment his head touched the pillow. He dreamed formlessly of dark eyes, and a spreading warmth in his ribcage, flooding him with assurance.

In the morning, he remembered nothing but a thundering headache.