Work Text:
Nurse’s log, Christine Chapel. Stardate 2265.4. Today the Enterprise carried out a routine survey of Tetra V, an uninhabited Class P moon in the Alpha Quadrant. The science officers were all talking about some kind of crystalline ice rock they found in the core samples, but there’s nothing alive here, so I guess we’re meandering off to the next stop tomorrow, which will be a week’s voyage.
It’s been nice, I won’t lie. No high stakes, no sign of the Gorn for weeks, no life or death situations. But it’s a little boring, too. La’an has a running bet on when the other shoe’s going to drop, and Ortegas reported to sickbay with a phaser burn from some over-enthusiastic target practice. That’s honestly the last type of thing we need. At least it was an easy fix: dermaline gel and a stern talk about safety procedures.
Oh, and Spock is acting strange. Ever since that encounter with the Gorn, he’s been a lot more standoffish and I haven’t seen much of him. I’m hesitant to start asking around, though. I mean, I do consider him a friend, but who knows if he feels the same? Vulcans are pretty hard to get a read on. Even half-human Vulcans. I keep replaying that conversation we had in the corridor after— well, I mean, I did hug him, and he did hug me back, but he hasn’t spoken to me since. Did I do something wrong? I hope I didn’t offend him. I did some reading on Vulcan expressions of affection, and it looks like I should have just touched the tips of my fingers to his? I don’t know. It’s just been weird since the whole T’Pring situation. Thank God she understood that he was bluffing on the bridge.
How is it already 20:00? Anyway. Chapel signing off for the night. Log end.
She liked the sickbay. Clear white lighting, clean surfaces, everything properly straightforward and not a single hypospray out of place. It was her little domain, overseen by Doctor M’Benga, and she liked it. Liked being a nurse, liked helping people. It was just… well, after the Gorn, sometimes she would catch a flicker out of the corner of her eye from something innocuous like M’Benga’s office or a flap of clothing from a medical uniform and go cold all over and have to take a long minute to breathe and remember where she was.
I’m safe, I’m fine, don’t be stupid. In and out, in and out. What would you tell Christine Chapel if she was your patient, and you were her doctor? That it’s okay to be scared, your brain is unlearning a trauma, all that. Yeah, we’re okay. Right. Back to work. Don’t you love your job? Sure, you do.
“Another electric burn?” asked M’Benga, looking exasperated as he applied dermaline gel on a security officer’s fingers. “Near the holodeck, you said?”
“Yes, Doctor. Damn door sprayed sparks and caught me.” The officer ruefully twisted his wrist.
“Must be another short. I’ll log it with Engineering,” mumbled Chapel, bringing herself back to the present and opening her PADD to tap out the complaint. “That’s the third one in two days.”
“Probably left over interference from the Butterfly Nebula. Remember how it put our scanners on the fritz?”
“Mmm.” Chapel was watching her PADD as a message came back from Engineering. “Oh, good. Captain already ordered a reboot of the system on Deck 3 starting today at oh-nine-hundred. That should fix it.”
Her tricorder pinged. “Pike to Nurse Chapel, bridge, please.”
She picked it up. “On my way, sir.”
It wasn’t often that Chapel was summoned to the bridge, being junior medical staff, but when she was, it was usually something important, so she made sure to straighten her tunic and stand up straight as the lift doors slid open and she walked out. “You wanted to see me, Captain?” Mentally, she calculated the figures in red, blue, and yellow: there was Una, there was Uhura at her new comm station, and Ortegas and—
Pike, handsome in that Someone’s Single Father way of his, turned and smiled at her. “Yes! Christine, I was wondering if you would do me a favor.”
“Of course, sir.” Where was—
His voice lowered. “I would appreciate it if you’d get someone to check up on Mr. Spock. He’s been absent for the last three days and he said he has the Andorian flu, but we’ve gotten no reports from medical on his status yet. Are you backed up on reports?”
“The what?” Chapel stammered, caught off guard and trying to gather herself as she automatically checked her PADD. “Andorian flu is only transmissible through plant life to Andorians, Captain. And we haven’t logged Spock as reporting to sickbay in weeks.”
Pike’s brow furrowed. “Huh. That’s… out of the norm for Spock.”
“I’ll double check with Doctor M’Benga. And I’ll check Spock’s quarters myself.” Chapel tucked her PADD away and, dismissed, headed back to the lifts. “Deck 2,” she said, gripping the handle and losing herself in thought as the lift whisked her away. Why would Spock lie about having a disease? If he was experiencing some kind of identity crisis, why not simply speak to someone in counseling services? Unless he thinks we can’t help his particular situation… She frowned, trying to think of it from his point of view. What kind of logic would dictate lying to his commanding officer and skipping duty?
His door, like every other door in the corridor, was shut. She knocked on it, clearing her throat. “Spock?” she called. There was no answer. Chapel opened the locking pad and tapped in a set of emergency medical access codes. “Computer, override door 1120-D-4.”
The pleasant voice of the ship’s computer said, “Denied.”
She rolled her eyes, speaking clearer and louder. “Computer, emergency override lock under authority of Medical Officer Christine Chapel, EMAC 3234512.” Chapel could have sworn the computer huffed at her as the door slid open with a soft hiss of hydraulics. Damn thing was like a pissy older sister. The first thing she noticed was that the whole set of quarters was freezing cold and all the lights were dimmed considerably. Weird, she thought, and inched in. “Spock?” she called out. “It’s me, Nurse Chapel. The captain’s worried about you. Are you sick?” No answer came from the corners of the rooms, so she flicked the switches for the lights on and looked around.
The place was a mess. Spock was neat and orderly with everything he owned— one of the chairs was overturned, an untouched meal sat on the table, and a few personal items were strewn around. Chapel crept into the sleeping area and wrinkled her nose: it smelled like stale sweat and the bed was unmade, the sheets and blankets bunched up and half-cast off the mattress. Even stranger, she noticed an odd double-crescent stain on one of the pillows. What the hell? She pulled out her tricorder. “Chapel to Captain Pike.”
“Nurse? Any luck?”
Belatedly, she realized she wasn’t sure if the whole bridge was listening or not. “Not so far. His quarters are empty. I’ll keep searching.”
“Thanks, Christine.”
“Sure. Chapel out.” She put her tricorder back in its holster and sniffed again. There was an oddly… salty, musty kind of smell, mingled with the stale scent of sweat, and she wasn’t sure what it was exactly. “Where would I go if I was a sick Vulcan?” she murmured, looking around at the cabin. The food on the table was a soup— she vaguely remembered T’Pring telling her about Plomeek broth. A comfort food type of meal, something Vulcan mothers made for their sick children. Chapel went back to the table and dipped her finger in, tasting it. Yep, that was Plomeek broth all right.
If I was sick and missed home and I was stuck on the Enterprise… Chapel drummed her fingers on the table, thinking. I’d… probably go to the holodeck and load a home program. She hurried back out to the turbolift. “Deck 3,” she said quickly, grabbing the handle.
Most of Deck 3 was empty, and Chapel hurried down to the holodeck, taking care to not get shocked by the entry doors. Inside the circular lobby, there were five deck platforms, and all but one had open doors, the yawning mouths showing nothing but the black emptiness of a non-projection. The fifth one was closed, and Chapel shouldered her bag as she approached.
“Spock?” she called, tapping lightly on the door. There was no answer. She sighed. “Computer, open doors to Holodeck Door Five.”
That cool, smooth voice answered, “Deck in use. Access denied.”
Chapel groaned and tried to resist kicking the wall. “Oh, my God, medical override , can you please just voice print me?”
“Enter access code to obtain medical override.”
“Jesus, fine! Medical Officer Christine Chapel, EMAC 3234512, now please let me in!”
“Access granted,” said the ship’s computer, and the door slid open, but stopped only a foot and a half open, the whirring motors stopping. Christine groaned and wiggled her way through the gap into the deck, but her bag got snagged on the door and her PADD went crashing to the floor, the bag upended and all her things scattered. “Shit,” she muttered, realizing belatedly that the deck was just as dark as the unused ones. She yanked free and took a few steps into the darkness. “Spock? Are you—”
“You should not have come.”
It was Spock’s voice, the right tone, but the wrong cadence: normally he spoke very evenly, half-tonelessly— this was rough and gravelly, like he had a sore throat, and she’d never heard him put emphasis on you like that. “Pike sent me to find you, Spock. He says you haven’t been at your duty station in days, and maybe he bought that Andorian flu line but I sure didn’t.”
“Get out.” That sounded more like Spock. Far more even and tempered, but something was simmering behind it. Probably upset she was invading on his privacy.
Chapel took another step into the darkness. “It’s okay to be sick, Spock. Let me just check you over, and we can go to sickbay—”
“You cannot take me to sickbay in this condition.”
Where was he? Chapel raised her voice. “Computer, generate scenario 43-F.” A simple, lowlight-condition scene of an Earth lakeside at dusk, complete with fireflies and an audio file of rippling water. Something calming, nonthreatening. The scene came up, and there he was, kneeling in the long grass at the water’s edge in a meditation pose, but he looked—
“Don’t,” he said, exactly as she said, “Holy shit, Spock.” Because he was just as much of a mess as his quarters were: his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, there were dark circles under his eyes, his cheeks and throat were flushed a feverish green-bronze, and weirdest of all, he wasn’t wearing his uniform, just an open Vulcan robe of dark gray shimmersilk that was stained dark under the arms and down the chest. Something is very wrong. Chapel took a few steps toward him, but he jerked to his feet in one swift motion and held his hands up as a shield in front of him.
“Stop!” he barked, and she could see that his hands were trembling. “Nurse Chapel, I advise you to return to duty.”
She stood where she was, bewildered by his behavior. “My duty is to sick people, Spock, and you look like you’re about to pass out. It wouldn’t be logical of me to ignore a medical emergency.”
“You cannot help me.”
“I highly doubt that. Are you running a temperature? We can find out what’s wrong if you—”
“I know exactly what is wrong with me. You need to leave , Nurse Chapel. Now. I will not ask again.”
“Okay, so tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll just loop Pike in—”
“No!” he snapped, cutting her off. “No, the captain doesn’t need to— it is not— it is a h-highly personal and private situation that you and he do not need to know about.”
“Spock,” said Chapel, losing her patience. “I am a Starfleet medical officer. I have seen the most personal and private things you can imagine. I have attended three Betazoid weddings, okay? I have pulled rectal parasites out of a Jem’Hadar. So whatever is wrong with you, I can help you, and if you don’t want me to tell the captain, then it can stay between us, under patient and physician confidentiality.”
Spock’s hands, still upraised, were still shaking, and then he did something completely unexpected: he lowered them slowly and collapsed to one knee, his shoulders hunched. “I… have a fever,” he confessed, his voice still raspy.
It was a start. “Okay. Other symptoms?”
“Irrationality. Loss of appetite. Elevated levels of cortisol. Elevated heart rate and— and abnormalities in my lower circulatory system.”
“Abnormalities? Is this a Vulcan thing?”
Spock looked like he might be sick. “It is, in fact, a ‘Vulcan thing’, Nurse Chapel.”
Chapel frowned. Clearly he knew what was happening to him: was there a folk remedy for this, whatever it was? “Okay. So what’s the cure?”
He went sickly pale, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. “There does not appear to be an option for a cure for this particular case.”
“What? This is a Starfleet vessel. We have a cure for everything that could possibly affect a Vulcan.”
“Not everything. Not—” He closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring as he breathed deeply. “This is the first time this has happened to me. I thought— I thought I could use the holodeck for deep meditation, but I— that is not— has not been working.”
“Oh, shit,” said Chapel, suddenly remembering the scheduled maintenance at 0900. “Spock, we have to get out of here before Engineering shuts down the power for a reboot.”
“I cannot leave. Go.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you. You’re my patient now, and—”
Abruptly, the lakeside scene vanished, plunging them both into pitch darkness, and then the emergency lights, warm gold, flickered on as the ship’s computer serenely intoned: “Emergency power shutdown for scheduled maintenance. Please make your way to the egress.” And then, with a soft chime, the computer powered down on Deck 3.
“Oh—” Chapel turned and saw that the door had closed down all the way. “Oh, no, Computer, medical emergency, activate override—”
“There is no power.” Spock sounded hollow. “You will need to manually open the door.”
“I don’t have a crowbar in my medical bag, Spock. Besides, all my stuff is all over the floor.” She started hurrying to the mess of scattered items, but a frantic sound from Spock stopped her in her tracks and made her look over her shoulder, startled. He had lunged for her, and made it four steps closer, bringing him nearly within touching distance, but he was shaking so badly he looked like he was vibrating, and sweat was rolling down his face in beads.
“Do not. Make. Sudden movements,” he forced out.
“Ohhhh-kaaay,” she said very slowly, backing up a step with her hands in the air. “I am just trying to get my PADD and my scanner so I can figure out what’s wrong with you.” He mirrored her step, his eyes locked on her face and his neck taut as if he was desperately fighting some outside force that was pulling him to her. “Maybe I’ll just stay still,” she said aloud.
“Pon farr,” he said, as if every word was pain.
She swallowed, intensely aware of the focus he was holding on her. “Is that— a type of food?”
“No. It is an event in an adult Vulcan’s biology that is the culmination of a seven-year hormonal cycle. I thought— being half-human, I would escape it. That is not, it seems, the case.”
“All right. Tell me about this pon farr .”
His dark eyes were pinned to hers, the pupils dilated. “It— many outsiders do not know about it. It is an intensely guarded secret, and we— we do not speak to others of it. Only our partners. The levels of cortisol reach a lethal pitch if we do not find—our mate—or kill in ritual combat for a mate— within several days.”
Chapel’s mouth was so dry she didn’t think she could speak. No wonder he’d been hiding: this was absolutely antithetical to his whole being. To the whole idea of a Vulcan: logical, cool, measured. “I never—I thought I knew everything there was to know about Vulcan biology. You’re telling me if you don’t murder somebody or hook up with T’Pring in a few days you’re going to die?”
“It… does not need to be T’Pring,” he ground out. “And I do not have a few days. I have hours. I have already been ill for four days. Some Vulcans last as long as a week, but I do not— I have never experienced this and I do not know my own limits.” His voice cracked on limits, his jaw muscles clenching and knotting beneath his skin. “But the instincts awakening with this are—highly illogical, yet compulsive to the point of pain.”
“I am going to get my scanner,” said Chapel firmly. “You are going to remain where you are. Is that understood?”
“Slowly,” he said, his eye twitching. “Move slowly.”
She backed up, facing him all the while, and felt around on the floor until she found her scanner. “Got it. Coming back.” He was silent as she approached, and closed his eyes as she scanned his head and torso. The screen turned scarlet and pinged an urgent warning, and Chapel’s mouth fell open as she interpreted the readings. “Your stress hormones are sky-high and your heart rate is almost double normal. You’re going to have a cardiac arrest in the next ten minutes if you don’t lower them. Open your eyes for me.”
He did, every muscle in his neck and chest tight, and Chapel frowned. The third eyelid was moving very sluggishly. “Your pupils are huge. When was the last time you slept?”
“Four days ago,” he answered, hoarse and ragged.
“So we can add sleep deprivation to the list of symptoms.” Chapel shut down her scanner and tried to think over the tingling sensation curling down her spine. No, no, no. Behave. Be professional. “Well, I can’t let you murder anyone, that goes against my Starfleet medical oath, and if you can’t, um, meditate your way out of this, the only option I can really see here is the third one. Now, ordinarily I’d say power up the holodeck or call T’Pring, but she’s… at least fifteen parsecs away, and the holodeck isn’t working right now, and won’t be for another couple of hours, and by then you’ll have gone into cardiac arrest and there won’t be anything I can do locked in here with you. But…” She took a breath. “Logically speaking, there is something I can do with you now, to prevent that.”
“No,” he said instantly, his voice cracking.
Okay, that stung. “I know I’m not the greatest option here. I’m not your girlfriend, and I don’t really know what the Vulcan rules about cheating are, but I’m sure if it’s a life or death situation T’Pring will forgive you.”
“That is not—” He cut himself off and ran a hand down his face in a strangely human gesture. “Nurse Chapel, I could seriously harm you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m a tough girl.”
“I am three times stronger than any human. I could break your pelvis without making an effort to do so, and the blood fever will make it almost impossible to stop.”
Chapel pinched the bridge of her nose. “So what’s your solution? You want to sit here and die of a completely preventable heart attack because you might hurt me? There are no other logical options, Spock. If you had reported this to me earlier, I could have put you into a medical coma or something, but this is the only solution I can see.”
He looked abjectly miserable. “I see. I have put us into an impossible situation.”
Chapel couldn’t help but feel bad for him. “We don’t have to talk about it after. I’ll just write down that I administered a fever reducer and you were right as rain.”
“You would... make a false medical report for my sake?” he asked, looking as taken aback as she had ever seen him look.
“I mean, this is clearly a very private cultural Vulcan thing, so yes. Nobody needs to know except the directly affected.”
Spock took a shuddering, shallow breath, and Chapel could almost see his resolve crumbling. “Christine Chapel,” he whispered, and extended his hand toward her, his index and middle fingers straight out and his third and fourth curved back. She reached for his hand, touching the tips of her fingers to his, and felt the shocking heat of his skin as he drew his fingers down her palm, then took her firmly by the hand. “Do you consent to assist in the purging of plak tow, by—by use of your body?” His words were slightly slurred, as if he was drunk, and Christine nodded, trying to ignore the lightning-hot sensation rippling down her skin.
“Yes. I do.” Oh, fuck, if he really does break my pelvis I’m—
He sucked in a short breath, his fingers trembling against hers, and for a single, frozen moment they were just staring at each other, standing in the dim yellow emergency lighting of the dead holodeck before he lunged forward, his free hand tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck as he crushed his mouth to hers.
Oh, thought Christine, blindly trying to kiss him back on instinct. It didn’t even register that he smelled like stale sweat and adrenaline. The hand that wasn’t being clenched in his slid down to his chest, then his stomach, where his heart was thrumming like the wings of a trapped, terrified bird. Warmth flooded her nerves from head to toe, hitting everything on the way down and puddling in the crux of her thighs. That’s not right, this shouldn’t turn me on, he’s— he— this is a medical emergency—
Spock collapsed to the floor, bringing her down with him. Belatedly, she remembered that having sex on a hard floor was probably going to leave her with a bruised ass and back. His teeth pressed into her lower lip hard enough to break skin, and she jerked her face away with a grunt of pain. “Christine,” he choked out, barely noticing, and laid her down flat, hooking his fingers into the waistband of her pants and pulling.
“Don’t tear those, I need them later—” A seam tore. “God damn it, Spock—”
“Please, please, please —” He was scrabbling at her clothes, his eyes so dilated they looked black and his fingers shaking. Christine hurriedly removed her tunic, hoping to at least save that from further damage at the hands of an unhinged Vulcan, and balled it up to pillow her head. He yanked off her boots, slipped her pants off, and tore off her ugly cotton Starfleet-issue underwear like it was nothing more substantial than cobwebs. She had no time to take off her sleeveless camisole. The cool air of the holodeck struck her bare skin and raised goosebumps, but Spock didn’t wait, just feverishly stripped off the gray silk robe, which was the only piece of clothing he was wearing, and fit himself to her, gasping for air as he tried to breach her with desperate, quick thrusts.
It pinched. It pinched quite a bit, actually.
“Ow, ouch fucking slow it down—” She struggled with him for a moment, then licked her own fingers and tried to get herself at least a little more conducive to entry. “Just—”
He crawled backward on his knees, naked, and fastened his mouth over her, his tongue working. Christine’s back arched as she tried to recover from the whiplash and sensation flooded her whole nervous system. “Hooooohhh-leee shit —”
Spock took his face away from her body, his mouth glistening, fit himself to her once more, and miraculously, it worked. He slid himself home in one agonizingly deep thrust, and Christine instinctively reached up, grabbing for his shoulders as he gripped a fistful of her camisole in one hand, buried his face in her neck, and kept moving. Every push slid her a few centimeters along the floor of the holodeck, but she barely felt it: he felt so good, he was choking out a tangled string of stuff she couldn’t understand in Vulcan as he fucked her, and just when she thought she wouldn’t be able to stand it anymore, he convulsed violently against her body and shuddered, rocking himself into final stillness as he sobbed for air like a man who’d just run a twenty mile race.
For a long minute, there was nothing but Spock’s pants for air and his weight pressing down on her. Then, he painfully forced himself upright, his forearms bracketing her shoulders.
“I cannot express my gratitude for your actions, Nurse Chapel,” he said, his voice sounding considerably more normal.
“No problem. Let’s, um, scan you, okay?” she said, flustered, and reached out her right hand, feeling around for the scanner. She lifted it and moved it around his head and chest again, trying to ignore the fact that his cock was still inside her, and still hard, somehow. “Looks like your cortisol levels have sharply decreased. Dopamine and serotonin are higher, that’s good— and your heart rate is slowing. That’s great! Temperature still a little high. Are you—” She tried to sit up, which shifted his dick somewhere inside her, and he went pale and made a stifled sound of pain. “Spock?”
“Do not move,” he said tightly, and she lay back down while he re-seated himself very delicately. “I apologize. I did not warn you.”
“Warn me about… what?”
“Vulcan penises.”
Christine choked on her own tongue. “What about Vulcan penises?”
“In a post-climactic state, the Vulcan penis has sensitive flared segments that open against the inside of a Vulcan vaginal canal, which is designed with niches to catch and hold the segments. We evolved for closeness and bonding after sexual intercourse. In a human vagina, which I can tell has no niches, this feels…” Spock paused, as if trying to find a word that wouldn’t offend her. “Very strange.”
“Bad, strange?” Christine wanted to laugh at the idea of her vagina being critiqued for not having enough pockets, but he looked so uneasy and put off that she couldn’t.
“The overwhelming instinct is to ensure you do not move.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Spock.” The discomfort in his eyes was almost palpable. “Did you know human penises evolved with a tip designed to remove semen from previous mates?”
His mouth twitched. “Fascinating. What does such a design look like?”
“Smooth shaft, bigger tip. Sort of has a helmet-shaped head, with a flared, wider base.” Christine drew a shape in the air with her finger. “Not that I’ve seen a whole lot of human penises.”
He cleared his throat. “When I was attempting to… join with you, you did something with your fingers.”
“Oh. We didn’t have any lube on hand, and you’re a little thicker than I was really expecting, so—was it rude? I didn’t—”
“No, that is not the—” Spock cleared his throat. “You did something with your mouth.”
“I… licked my fingers,” Christine prompted, letting her brows meet in the middle. The greeny-bronze flush on his cheeks spoke all she needed to know. “Oh. You liked that?”
“I found it… very intriguing.”
“Really. Give me your hand, Spock.”
He rolled her over in one quick, efficient movement so that she was on top of him, and he was on his back, getting the weight off his arms before presenting her with one hand. Christine took him by the wrist very cautiously, unsure of what he would do, and looked over his hand. It really was a beautiful hand: strong and firm, with characteristically blunt, broad human fingers and delicate Vulcan structure. The knuckles were slightly thicker than the phalanges, and his nails were flat and smooth and maintained well. Yes, he really did have great hands. So she leaned forward and licked a cautious stripe directly up the inside of his hand, from his wrist to his index finger.
Spock froze, eyes wide and startled. She could almost feel the wheels turning in his brain. The scanner still in her hand began to flash, and she pulled back to glance at it. “Oh. Heightened levels of testosterone, vasopressin levels rising steadily. Heart rate increasing, respiration—”
“It is illogical to continue speaking at this point,” rasped Spock, and he slid his index and middle fingers into her mouth. Instinctively, Christine closed her lips, sucking, and Spock made a sound that was probably definitely not a proper manner of communication for any Vulcan who had finished the Kolinahr as he began to move again, this time from beneath her body, at an angle where all the right nerves were lighting up, and Christine was— she was—
Her first orgasm hit her like a train, and she shrieked through her nose, biting down on his fingers. Spock, his other hand tangled in her camisole, pulled her down harder on him and twisted his hips upward. “Oh, shit!”
“You,” he choked out, and rolled her back over so he was on top again before removing his hand from her undershirt and running his thumb in a deft, quick movement between her outer and inner labia.
She pushed his fingers out of her mouth with her tongue, bewildered. “Spock, what are you doing?”
He blushed green with confusion. “Is this… not an erogenous zone?”
“Uh, maybe it is for Vulcan women? Try—no, right here—” Christine reached down and pulled his hand to front and center, fumbling for a second to get him near her clitoris, and when he touched it her legs shot straight out and she sucked in a very sharp breath. “Yes, yeah right there just keep touching th-that—”
“I can sense the nerves here,” he said, sounding awestruck as he kept working at her, slowly pumping his hips in tandem with his fingers. Christine was absolutely going to go insane if she didn’t come in the next two seconds. “It is surprisingly similar to a Vulcan fingertip—”
“Ohhh my god fucking god dammit shit shit shit—” Her back came up off the holodeck floor as stars burst behind her eyes, and vaguely she heard Spock choking his way through another orgasm of his own— but weirdly, she could feel his climax, overlaid on top of hers: the pelvis muscles, a burst of release radiating out from his spine, the aftershocks, the trembling. Even his thoughts were dimly echoing, as if behind a barrier. Her own mind felt blown wide open, a huge door flung into the breeze, a shout of desperation. See me! Look at me, all of me! She couldn’t move or breathe or do anything but feel two different orgasms at once for a long moment, and when it finally let her go, she blinked her eyes open to see Spock above her, panting for air and sheened in sweat. “What… was that?” she tried to say, but it came out more like “whuzzat?”
“It was similar to a mind-meld,” he said thickly, his sweat-inked hair clinging to his temples and forehead. “I felt yours, too.”
“I thought. I thought for mind-melds. You had to. Touch. Face.” Once her breathing got back to normal, she thought, she’d be able to actually talk coherently.
“I assume the meeting of two clustered nerve bundles facilitated such a connection. I have never— I did not know that would be the result.” Spock shifted his hips cautiously, bracing himself on his hands, and his face twisted into a moue of discomfort. “Ah.”
Christine managed to shoot him a grin. “Is it the penis thing, Mr. Spock?”
A very faint twitch played at the corner of his mouth. “It is indeed the penis thing, Nurse Chapel.”
“Well, we’re not going anywhere until the power outage is resolved. Take a couple breaths.” He exhaled softly and his stomach grumbled. Christine bit her lip, grinning. “Hungry?”
“Very. I have had no appetite for days and I believe it is starting to ‘catch up to me’, as the phrase is.” His arms were shaking a little. “Would you mind if I switched positions with you?”
“Not at all.” She held on as he rolled over, leaving her straddling his hips and him flat on his back below her, and finally Christine got a decent look at his body. Hard, well-muscled chest with not much body hair despite the soft black down on his arms and shins, and to her surprise he seemed to have a little five o’clock shadow dusting his cheeks. “I didn’t know Vulcans grew beards.”
“It is not common. We shave. And I am half-human, after all.” His eyes flickered down across her belly and thighs. “Your body hair is a different color than the hair on your head. Is that…”
She fixed him with a serious stare and lowered her voice into the gravest tone she could muster. “Now you’ve discovered my biggest secret, Spock, so you’ll have to take it to the grave. I’m not a natural blonde.”
He blinked, unsure, and then slowly his face split into a wide smile. “Nurse Chapel, you are making a joke.”
Christine clapped a hand to her mouth in shock. “Oh, my God, I’ve never seen you smile. I’m putting this in my private log. Stardate whatever day it is, I made Spock smile—”
Spock lunged up to her, catching the back of her neck again, and kissed her. This one was gentle, a little clumsy, but firm and sure, and she was pretty sure she might have felt tongue. “I smile occasionally,” he said very softly, his nose brushing hers as he pulled away a few millimeters. “In private. So now you know one of my secrets, as well.”
“I guess I do,” she breathed, half cross-eyed from trying to look at him. “I, um…” Christine’s hand trailed down his chest and brushed against his betrothal necklace, the long pendant that brushed his sternum that she’d barely noticed in all the commotion.
The physical reminder that she’d just fucked a person who was already engaged.
It should have made her recoil. Should have made her shy away and make excuses and apologize and rush off— but she couldn’t do any of that, not when Spock’s warm hands were cupping her back. “You are worried that this encounter will complicate my relationship with T’Pring,” he said, searching her eyes.
“A little, yeah,” she admitted.
“She will see it as meaningless. A necessary, logical, medical action to save my life. She may even be grateful to you for your assistance.”
Well, that was reassuring. Slightly. “And… will you share her perspective?” Spock was silent. Nothing moved on his stone-still face as he met Christine’s gaze. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Spock?”
“S’Chin T’Gai,” he said quietly, his face giving away anything.
Christine blinked. Was that a Vulcan phrase? Some kind of ceremonial goodbye, thanks for the fucking and saving my life, let’s never speak again, type of thing. “What?” she asked.
“It is my name. S’Chin T’Gai Spock. Only my immediate family knows it, and it is only spoken in private. I would very much… like to hear you say it, Nurse Chapel.”
She felt her face go hot. “I don’t think I can say that. You should ask Ensign Uhura, she’s the linguist—”
“I did not ask anyone else. I asked you.”
Chapel couldn’t even look him in the eyes. What was he doing? What was this? “I…”
He reached for her face and delicately brushed his fingertips along the line of her jaw, half in her tangled hair. His thumb glided along her parted lips, her chin. Her throat. “I saw your fear," he said. "The Gorn. Memories of the ship. You let me see it, perhaps unconsciously. I want you to understand..." and his voice trailed off into silence.
She still couldn't meet his gaze. "Are you going to tell me having post-traumatic stress is illogical?"
"It is the opposite. The mind adapts to sudden danger, then logically repeats that adaptation in times of safety. There is nothing more logical. You have trusted me with that, and I will trust you in return with my name."
“Sh-shin to-guy,” she tried, her eyes plastered to the curve of his bare shoulder.
“S’Chin T’Gai. Your tongue does not leave your palate. Again.”
Christine wet her lips and tried again. It felt odd to have no vowel between the s and the ch sounds. “Sss-chin ta’guy.”
“T’Gai.”
“T’Gai,” she tried, finally nailing the vowel there. “S’Chin T’Gai.” Spock said nothing, only sat there with her in his lap, staring at her as she finally met his gaze. “Did I get it right? S’Chin T’Gai Spock?”
“Perfect,” he said very, very quietly. “Now you possess a true secret of mine, Nurse Christine Chapel, and I have one of yours. We are even.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she assured him, placing her hands on his chest. Somehow, she didn’t think he was just talking about his name.
“And I will tell no one but T’Pring, if I must, of your medical assistance. Of only your medical assistance.”
Her face was so hot she thought she might run a fever. Could humans catch pon farr from Vulcans? “The ship’s log will have only that you— you had Romulan flu. Because Vulcans can catch that. And I— simply administered a fever reducer.”
“Thank you,” said Spock, and something seemed to relax his shoulders as he inched back away and slid out of her body, leaving Chapel feeling cold, sore, and damp. He staggered to his feet, slightly off-kilter and weakened, but with pure resolve in his eyes. “I will go to my quarters and recover privately. Will you inform Captain Pike that I will report for duty in the next cycle?”
“You need more than six hours to recover from that, Spock—”
He was already shrugging on his robe. “I need only two hours of meditation, a shower, and a hot meal. I am fine. You should report to sickbay and complete your report once Deck 3 has power again.”
Christine didn’t have the energy to argue. She pulled her jacket back on. “What happened to my underwear?”
“I believe I damaged them beyond repair. I apologize.”
“Oh, right. Don’t worry, I’ll just go commando for the rest of the day.”
“Go— that is not an expression I am familiar with.”
Chapel tugged her pants back on, smiling in spite of herself. “It’s an Earth phrase. Means I won’t be wearing any underwear for the rest of the day underneath my clothing.”
“I see.” He glanced down at himself. “So, I too am… going commando.”
“You sure are,” she said with a grin as she whipped out her tricorder. “Nurse Chapel to Engineering, anyone around?”
“Loud and clear, Nurse.”
“I’ve been trapped with a… very sick Mr. Spock in Holodeck 5 for an hour. Can someone redirect power to get us out of here, or do we need to manually override the doors?”
“Oh! Sorry, Chapel, we thought everyone was clear! We’ll reroute power to the doors for a minute. Stand by.”
As they waited, side by side, Spock cleared his throat. “You are… a very good medical officer,” he said.
“Oh. Thank you.” Chapel gave him a sideways look. “You’re good at science stuff,” she said, very lamely. “But you’re also really good, um— T’Pring is very lucky to have you, I mean.”
“Oh,” said Spock, flushing bronze-green from his hairline to his throat. With some effort, the color receded. “I appreciate the compliment, Nurse Chapel.”
“Anytime,” she mumbled, and a nanosecond before the door opened, she felt the back of his pinky finger brushing hers, tentative and almost reverent—
Then, the door slid open, and they walked through together, never touching, and their faces set straight ahead.