here and there (and everywhere)

It started sometime between when Spock went to Gol, and when the Vulcan came back.

(If we're being wishful, romanticizing, he came back not from Gol but to Jim. One defines the origin not as Starfleet, not as San Francisco, not as Earth, not as Terra, firma or otherwise, but as Jim, and the Enterprise, because the door and the robes swish in tandem after the ship has gone through a wormhole; there's a thing out there and they're not home anymore, except that they are.)

As simple a feeling as any other he's and they've had along the way, which is to say quite likely dreadfully, damnably complicated all the same, but soon (immediately) it's growing, and growing, and growing, and then of a sudden it's swimming madly, fission- and fusion- both bright, terribly bright, behind Jim's eyes - a probe is a foreign object and Spock is not one, is not one - and he doesn't know how to stop it, he hasn't ever known and there is no one in the galaxy, not in all the universe, who can teach him.

(And they couldn't teach Spock either, now, could they? Spock who is the pinpoint of all intelligence, in Jim's eyes. He doesn't need to name a caveat or a successor. The fact simply is. It remains, rather. Has been. Will be. It...simply is.)

It's a needless want, and it's also, beyond all question, an absolute need.

Spock. Jim. Is he still Jim? Does he still think of himself that way?

He's old, his hair is graying and curling and those two facts are inseparable from each other because to attempt to discern them would be, quite literally, to be attempting to split hairs.

Spock is still angles. Jim is still curves.

Jim has less angles than he ever did. Spock has more curves.

Is he Jim? Is he Kirk? Is he "Admiral" forever, because he's too old to be "Captain" and this is, after it all, the point of no return?

(Return to what? What else is there?)

No matter. Him. Spock. Together. Forever.

(Someday. Every day. Always.)

No change.

An object in motion remains in motion until and unless acted on by an unbalanced opposing force.

(.Immovable object. Unstoppable force)

It is brought to rest. The hammer falls.

The glass produces not a shatter but a squeak.

(.Jim knows those hands were meant to touch his, if they ever were to touch anything. Not that terrible, soundless, streaking glass)

(and tears, and tears, and tears)

He doesn't want to change.

But what if he changes?

.He doesn't want to change

It's not a complaint - never a complaint, about Spock...

That he should feel required of him such effort. Such continual conscious choice. To do this. To know this. To be this.

Only it isn't that way. Loving Spock, acting for and in his benefit every day, after day, after day, doesn't require thinking, doesn't require thought.

And that's the trouble. Each and every day when he awakes, Spock is certainly the first thing on Jim's mind, after he's stopped thinking of nothing at all, and that sublime subliminal ease frightens him.

What if one day he comes to forget how to perform, how to show...all of this? What if it truly can be cast aside, forgotten (forgotten) without so much as a whimpering-whistling cry for help?

It's barely even conscionable, and then again it isn't at all.

This responsibility, to that man at his side on the bridge, is the gravest, biggest, most infinitesimal one he has ever taken up.

Spock's brittle attachment to the one human, save his own mother (and even Jim felt that he'd never really know the whole scope of that), he'd truly abandoned himself to lies in James T. Kirk's hands.

He's never loved Spock by accident - by some accident. That can't change now. Not with Genesis, not with any of it.

As a captain, it's easy to follow orders. It's natural, if not easy, to proceed from one day to the next in such a fashion, always practicing, always slipping up, always refining. It's neither easy nor natural to overcome his prejudice against the Klingons, but the majority of the federated world is pushing for it, so he does, in undignified fits and starts that make him glad he doesn't have to pretend an admiral anymore.

But Spock is everywhere. Spock is everywhere. With Spock, Jim is alone.

Jim is afraid he'll lose himself in the enormity of it all. There are worse ways to go, surely there always have been and always will be, but no fate is worse than the obliquely considered possibility that he might, one day, disappoint Spock.

(His steadfast, lionhearted first officer would in kind, he'd think, quite logically protest that such a departure is not in his captain's - his t'hy'la's - nature. That it is demonstrable in court of fact and feeling that Jim is bound to Spock without possibility of failure. Not now. Not then. Not ever.)

It is terrifying. Indeed, awe-inspiring. And with that universal awe in mind, James T. Kirk swears that he will never stop showing up, never stop being present for Spock.

Love is the responsibility. The responsibility is love. The journey itself is home, it's always been said.

But, together, forever and always, touching freely...

...hand to hand, heart to heart, mind to mind...

.well, there's no telling where they might go...

But they are, perpetually, going. And they can't do it alone.