The Heart in Interphase

Waking up was not usually a laborious process for Kirk, but something was off this time. For one thing, there was the thick shroud muffling his brain, as though a long-term sedative was only just wearing off. For another, there seemed to be a heavy weight on his chest, restricting his movements—he couldn't move his arms, either, nor could he see—

"Bones! Bones! What's happened to me?!" Kirk shouted, shrill with panic.

McCoy rushed to his side and laid a hand on his chest. "Don't worry, Jim. There's nothing wrong with you; I did have to give you a hypo, but that's over with," he said, voice reassuring and professional.

"But why can't I see?"

"Oh, well, hmm. I'll let Spock explain that."

Spock stepped up to the bed and Kirk turned his head in the direction of the sound (his left, it seemed).

"Captain, I have decided that you need to be disciplined."

Kirk seethed, not believing what he was hearing. "Spock, have you lost your mind? I hardly think you have the right to—"

"Afraid he does, Jim," McCoy interrupted. "Unless you want me to declare you medically unfit to command—which I have ample proof for, thanks to your losing it on the bridge—you better let him do this."

"In addition to your reckless behavior yesterday on board the vanishing Defiant, by which you nearly cost the Enterprise her captain without a valid cause, your recent treatment of me also needs to be addressed," said Spock, staring at Kirk's blindfolded eyes. "I have reason to believe that my present course of action will help rectify all of this."

Frowning, Kirk considered all of this. "But none of that explains why I can't see," he said mock-patiently. "And why I can't move, and why—"

"Do you remember the ship being attacked by a parasite two years ago, sir?" Spock's voice was right next to his ear now, low and dangerous. There is a wrong answer, is what he seemed to be leaving unsaid, and you do not want to be wrong.

After some long quiet moments of searching through his conscious memory and trying to see through the blindfold that appeared to be made of a sleeve torn from one of McCoy's old set of scrubs, he shook his head.

"It's been such a long time, I..." Kirk paused. "Wait, I remember seeing something with these terrible tentacles just destroying the bridge...and later, much later, you told me that it, it carried out sexual assaults, I think was your wording."

"Yes. It raped us, sir," Spock said flatly. McCoy winced; there were times when Spock let his Vulcan detachment get the better of him, and this was definitely one of them.

"What? Us? You never—" Unbidden, images sprang to life against the dark backdrop of Kirk's blindfold. They were filthy images, grotesque, showing the bodies of Chekov, Scott, and all the crewmates he felt closest to contorted in impossibly lewd poses—with Spock towering over them all, his—

It is only because McCoy and Spock were leaning in close that they caught what Kirk barely whispered. "I.... Did we...have sex?"

McCoy could have sworn a triumphant smile curled its way across Spock's face, but that was impossible, and anyway it was gone already.

"Do you remember anything else, Captain?" Spock said, gentle now, though the dangerous edge was still there.

Kirk felt Spock's fingers on him and fell silent. He couldn't make up his mind whether they evoked pleasurable memories or were rightly the stuff of the nightmares he'd been having; it was almost as though he didn't want to make that decision, as though he wanted Spock to make it for him—

"Captain." Spock's voice was like steel, making McCoy shiver and take a step back. "If you do not answer, I shall have to resort to disciplinary action." After long seconds stretched into minutes, he gave a nod to the doctor. "Remove his trousers."

"Hold on now!" Kirk yelped, struggling against the biobed's restraints as McCoy lifted his legs and tugged off his pants, tossing them to Spock. "Just what do you think you're doing? Spock, I command you to stop! Spock—"

"You forget, Captain, you have not yet been deemed fit to resume your office. Until then," and Spock stopped there, the unfinished sentence more threatening than anything he could have said aloud. Dropping his captain's trousers on the floor, he moved to the foot of the bed, leaned down, and lightly stroked Kirk's bare legs.

Trembling at both the feel and the imagined sight of those green-tinged fingers toying with the golden hair on his thighs, Kirk whimpered and continued his struggle. In response, McCoy tightened the restraints, the belt across Kirk's chest tightening to the point where he could barely breathe.

"I—I can't—" Gasping, Kirk tried to gesture with his hands, though they were bound tightly to his sides, at his throat.

Hands paused on Kirk's hips, Spock bent in until his words were warm against his captain's neck. "Is this how it felt, sir, to be trapped in outer space with your oxygen running out? To know," and he squeezed, hard, his trimmed fingernails leaving white-hot moons on Kirk's flesh, "That you would run out of air because of your own highly egotistical decision?"

Kirk groaned at the pain, skin tender under Spock's hands. He shook his head again, some arrogance still left in him, and quick as lightning Spock had his ankles by his head, underwear-clad ass vulnerable in the air.

With his doctor's intuition McCoy moved in again, this time with a separate set of restraints to bind Kirk's legs where they were and leave him exposed to Spock's whims.

"Captain," said Spock, trailing his fingers down from Kirk's ankles until they hooked in the bands of Kirk's jockey-style underwear, drawing out more shudders as he went, "I have only just begun."