"All right, since you ask so nicely I'll tell the whole tale.  Let me make perfectly clear from the outset that none of this was planned.  I repeat: this was not planned, there was no plot of any kind, at least not on my part, I don't care how it looks.  Certainly animal desire and human meddling played a part, but desire is part of everything else that springs from chance.  Innumerable possibilities swirl around shapeless, devoid of direction or form - until one solid moment in time, and the hot, animal needs of a living creature's desire crystallize them.

"Then you are stuck.

"People have less control over their lives than they like to think.  Most of what transpires is what chance does to you, like it or not, and so it is with this little drama.  Lay all the blame and thanks entirely at the feet of Divine Chance, and call it quits.

"To begin with, I have never genuinely looked up to anyone else the way I do to Spock.  I admire him, I respect him, I honestly like him as a person and a friend.  He's a truly solid individual, and although he has proven himself more than once to be a little shaky on points of protocol, he is, in my eyes, a quintessential Star Fleet Officer. A gentleman, a real man, and a true brother.

"Spock respects me. He trusts me as his Captain, and he also likes me as a comrade.  We were friends before this, good friends.  That's partly why all of this happened the way it did.  If we hadn't been so close to start with, none of the rest would have been possible!  Not that I regret that, I don't. I don't regret anything.  Neither does Spock, naturally, but he can't help himself.

"Spock knows that I always wished for him nothing but good luck, and I never dreamed of ruining his personal life.  Not that I didn't want to get involved in his personal life, I did!  Spock knew I was attracted to him all along, and although he didn't encourage me, he was fine about it, because I did not push it.  I know my duty. I also have a little pride.

"Our relationship was warmly cordial, and utterly professional.  Simple as that.  What happened next would be simple to report, too, but you ask how I felt as these events unfolded... how I felt... describing that is not going to be simple.  I guess I do have to get into all that, or else what happened and how it happened won't make a lot of sense.  So, here goes!

All right, in a nutshell, I felt like Br'er Rabbit when he tangled with the Tarbaby."  

<long laugh>

"Are you familiar with that fable?  I don't remember all the details, but it goes something like this:  Br'er Rabbit is hopping along, minding his own business, when he spies a stranger sitting on a log.  Br'er Rabbit likes knowing everybody in his neighborhood, and he takes pride in staying abreast of current events, so he's naturally anxious to meet the stranger.  He hops over and says hello, in a friendly way.  Even though he knows nothing about the newcomer, he tries being welcoming to show he's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.  The stranger does not say hello back, and Br'er Rabbit's first thought is maybe he's hard of hearing.  He shouts, "I said hello, nice day isn't it!?"  and the stranger doesn't react.  Just sits there.

"Well now, this 'stranger' can't do much else since it's not alive, but a dummy made of tar.  This is actually a trap set for the smart-aleck Br'er Rabbit by his enemies, who think he's too cocksure about being a world-class escape artist.  Br'er Rabbit is famous for escaping all kinds of traps and bad situations, and he's famous for being vain about it, too.  A couple of his neighbors (who found this quality of his less than endearing) decided to use a tarbaby to teach him a lesson.

"So, Br'er Rabbit, all innocent of the danger he's in, gets a little huffy because the stranger is acting stuck up.  Apparently he thinks he's too good to make a little conversation with the famous Br'er Rabbit! He gives the guy a shove to get his attention.  Big mistake. His paw sinks into the tar, and he's stuck.  Now he understands his predicament, but he has never been in a situation like this, and doesn't know what to do.  He tries putting his foot up for leverage to pull his paw out, and then his foot gets stuck.  This just gets worse and worse, until Br'er Rabbit is lying under the tarbaby and tar is just hopelessly stuck all over him.

"Then his enemies came out of hiding, and stood over him to laugh.  It felt like that.  

"I know that doesn't answer your question about what happened with Spock.  I'm getting to that.

"You know, you can't become as successful as I am, and you can't be as well-known as I am without upsetting some people.  Usually they can't hurt you, or they would have already, but never assume an old enemy has given up just because they never before succeeded against you. Sometimes chance proves fickle, and decides for a lark to favor them, not you, just once.  Sometimes chance gives those people, who are still stewing in their own bile years after you forgot to worry about them, a chance to screw you up, and few are strong enough to resist that temptation. For example, a certain superior officer who shall remain nameless made the decision to put Spock under me as my first officer instead of giving him his own ship to command the way he should have because - and I do firmly believe this - he was envious of me and was trying to screw me up!  It was just a bonus that it was also an insult to Spock.

"Spock does not kiss butt.  He could have been a little more focused on furthering his own career, but, due to no fault of his own, he's just incapable of playing bullshit games.  Hasn't got a single bullshit bone in his body.  He's also proud, although he will never admit it.  He's too proud to ask for his own command, to show that he wants it.  He (I think) despises the same officer-who-remains-nameless because the guy is ALL BULLSHIT, and Spock could never bring himself to stoop enough to ask him for anything - and I don't blame him!  As a matter of fact, that's one more reason I love Spock.  He has integrity.

"What he doesn't have is buddies among upper echelons.  Because he felt (quite rightly) he had already done enough, he had given no extra special reason for them to favor him.

"Because certain people who should know better couldn't see past the demands of their own silly vanity, Spock was robbed of his chance at a command - which he had earned with heroism and faithful toil - and instead he was sent into the deepest space they could find as a subordinate of the youngest and most inexperienced starship Captain in the Fleet.

"He didn't ask for a kiss goodbye, either, and they didn't offer one.

"Anyway, it's my belief that Spock was supposed to be jealous of me being favored with the command that should have been his, and he was supposed to know me for a phony and should have delighted in bringing me down by undermining me in inhumanly devious ways.  I'm happy to say the device backfired spectacularly, first of all because I'm not a phony, I'm the real deal, and the highly perceptive Mr. Spock saw that at once, and appreciated it!  Instead of being a disastrous mismatch, Spock under my command turned out to be one of the best things that happened to the whole Fleet, as well as to me personally.

"It's not the way we might have preferred things to go if we'd had more of a choice, but all things considered, it could have been worse!

"Spock was a student at the academy while I was there, but the most we ever did was pass each other now and then in the hall.  He was a year ahead of me, and we didn't move in the same circles.  Spock doesn't move in circles at all.  He wasn't to be found hanging around, all right?  I know there are some wild rumors flying around about our academy days, but I swear I never had a chance to talk to the man back then, although I would have welcomed the chance.  Just knowing he was around somewhere was exciting to me.  I thought it made Starfleet Academy seem like a real reflection of the Federation.  I counted myself lucky to be there while he was there.  I remember looking at his graduation class and picking his face out of the crowd and thinking, "That's another nice way to look."  and "Of all the people in that bunch, he's the one I most hope to work with someday."  That's as far as it went.  He never once even noticed me back then, or anyway, I didn't think so at the time.

"I found out after he came to serve under me that he had taken notice of me more than once, and I blush to remember how intensely flattering that was for me to learn. I developed a crush on Spock almost right away. I didn't realize it, at first, but Spock sensed it all along.  Oh yeah, he had my number, but he wasn't planning to dial it.

"Mice and men, huh?  Mice and men.

Spock didn't need extraordinary powers to see what was going on.  He may have been an unwitting Tarbaby, but he's no dummy!  Plus, I'm not exactly a subtle person, especially when I'm fixated on somebody.  It was KILLING me that I had Spock right there every day - Spock, himself! - and I was working closely with him, and I could stand right next to him, close enough to feel his body heat and smell his breath when he spoke!  I could feel the vibration of his voice rumbling in my bones when he talked.  And he smelled good!  His hair - so shiny and soft-looking my palms itched to touch it, the way a kid can't help wanting to pet a puppy.  I'd watch his hands moving when he worked - his hands are amazing! - and he's so graceful and precise in his movements. He's so able - just the sheer overwhelming immensity of his ability is sexy to me.

I knew from his records that he was unusually strong, but knowing that is one thing: feeling it..."

<laughs>

"...was phenomenal.  I'll never forget the first time I touched his body.  It was unintentional. We were engaged in a hostile confrontation with some very confused people, the misunderstanding turned physical, and at one point during the scuffle I fell against him.  He just picked me up and set me on my feet like I was made of cork.  His muscles felt like iron!  I was impressed!

"If Spock had been a lady who was having an erotic effect on me, or even a human man, I would have known what to do about it.  As it was I was just flummoxed, and man is not at his most graceful when he's flummoxed."  

<laughs>

"God!  I was a mess!  I was like a schoolboy! The way he made me feel took me way back, all the way back to grade school.  I developed a stupid crush on a teen boy who was a friend of my brother's when I was in fourth grade.  Nothing came of that, and I never expected anything would come of this either.

"I would just watch him do whatever he was doing, and I'd be swooning inside, but I didn't show it on the outside. At least, I tried not to. I'm not by nature a subtle person. I was actually pretty obvious, at least to Spock, but I didn't know that because he didn't react.

"People see what they want to see.  I also have a knack for making people see things the way I want them to.  In the beginning, even I didn't see it, even though it was coming from me. I wasn't conscious of what was going on inside of me.  I was self-deluded, and I was colluding with the people around me to see all my flirting as something other than what it was, while Spock just sat there, saying nothing, giving no sign whatsoever.

"In retrospect I can see that the more he did nothing about it, the more he gave no sign to answer my signals, the more worked up I got.  I was all feverish and couldn't sleep. I was jumping up out of my cot to pace around my cabin and rant aloud to myself about how in the hell I'm going to make this work with Spock!  I had to make friends with Spock, but he didn't seem to want to!  He was ice-cold to me! Insulting, humiliating, intriguing, maddening! I was obsessed!  I was just eating myself up about it, and this was only the first month!

"Bones figured I was nervous because it was my first command.  Yeah! That's it!  That's the answer!  I didn't argue.  It was a plausible excuse!

"When you are around only other humans all your life, you never know the disconcerting sensation of dealing with people who aren't human and don't even care about acting human.  Human beings, I learned, depend on each other for much that we are never consciously aware of, until it's not there.  It's like, you never know how important your pinkie finger is until it's injured and you can't use it.  You have no idea how important all the little smiles and nods and gestures are until they are not there, and what is there instead is inhuman, alien, inscrutable and forbidding.

"Spock seemed unfriendly.  When someone with his outstanding abilities seems unfriendly it can be pretty frightening!  Spock, just by being there and being himself was bringing down morale.  I could just sit and watch the flowers wilting all around him.  It wasn't what he did, it was what he didn't do.  He didn't do the thousand little things humans do to reassure each other.  I've never seen anything quite like it.  The guy could brighten a room just by leaving it!

"I was always glad to see him, but I was a minority of one. Well, two. Our Chief Engineer Lt. Commander Scott likes Spock just fine.  They got along very nicely, right off the bat, and still do, even after this big revelation.  Our ship's surgeon Leonard McCoy, who had always been a big sweetheart with everybody else, developed a disgustingly obvious dislike for Spock, and I often got the feeling when he went off on Spock that he thought he was speaking for many.  Maybe he was."

<long pause>

"Perhaps it's wrong to say I was always glad to see Spock.  He could really be inconvenient to have around sometimes, but I'll not get into that right now.  I wasn't glad, I was... stimulated by him.  Spock is not boring!  He's the most non-boring person I have ever met. Honestly, he thrills me, but I'm trying to remember how I felt back then...gosh, it seems so long ago!  I almost can't remember how I used to think.  I'm not the same man now.

"Mr. Scott was the one who told me that Spock is telepathic.  I guess this was two or three months out.  Spock never volunteered any information about himself when I was around, so I was amazed that Scotty had gotten anything out of him.  I was envious that he and Spock had managed to become buddies.  I grilled the poor guy, and I admit I chose a time when he was off duty and had been tipping the bottle a bit.

"I was a man on a mission.

"Anyway, he told me that Spock had told him (about me) that I was 'sincere', which he considered the highest possible praise, coming from someone like Spock.

"I became excited, because up to that point I had no idea what Spock thought of me as a person. Naturally I demanded clarification.

"Scotty said, 'Bein' he's telepathic, he knows who's honest and who's not!', then clapped a hand over his mouth.  It seems he had just remembered he had promised to keep quiet about Spock's mind-reading abilities, because Spock did not want to be called upon to perform parlor tricks for people.

"You know, a couple of parlor tricks for the people now and then wouldn't have hurt his social standing one bit, but I digress.

"I died the proverbial thousand deaths thinking: Spock knows.  He knows I'm batty over him, and that's probably what he really meant by that dry little remark.

"Later that night, that conversation provoked a vivid dream: Spock walked in on me while I was lying back on my bunk naked, jerking off, and he just stood there and watched me like he was watching mold grow. He began to glow, brighter and brighter, until he was as bright as the sun, and his light shone all the way though me like lamplight through a lampshade, and I had no secrets.  He didn't love me or hate me.  He wasn't judging me. I was a bug under a microscope, and he was studying me.

"'~I'll show you sincerity!~' I screamed at him, and sprayed cum all over him, while he just stood there.  Didn't faze him.  He didn't even blink.

"I thought that dream was pretty disturbing, but I didn't worry too much because a dream is just a dream.  Except when it isn't.  When is a dream not just a dream?  When it's true, like this one was.  All dreams are not equal:  some are messages from the Guardians of The Realms Below, and you ignore them at your peril.

"Life became hectic, and stayed hectic for a couple of weeks before I finally had some time free when I could confront Spock.

"Since that crazy dream I couldn't stroke off without imagining Spock there with me.  I fought it at first, willing myself to substitute the nymphs of my imaginary pornotopia that had always pleased me before, but it wasn't working.  It was taking the fun out of masturbation to censor myself, so one night I just let go and let my mind wander where it wanted to go.  It turns out it wanted to go be an experimental puppy dog for a Pavlovian Vulcan scientist (Spock, in lab coat and jackboots).  Oh brother!  Bad enough to feature Spock in my jack-off fantasy, but to star him in this cliché!  Really, I thought I had a better imagination than that.

"I have no idea why this idea appealed to me, but for the time being I went with it because it was working.  I had a spectacular orgasm, then immediately after was disgusted with myself. Then I laughed at myself. I was really glad I'd gotten it out of my system.

"My system agreed!  My system was so glad that the next night it demanded a sequel.  Revenge of Pavlovian Spock, Part Two!  And I caught myself thinking as I flung my jiz at the ceiling that I hoped Spock was feeling that, and that it was amusing for him.

"In short, I cracked a crystal.

"Commander Spock continued to give no sign that he felt or cared for anything, except for what duty had put before him like hay before a horse. When we finally got a break from the excitement I couldn't stand the suspense anymore.  I called him to my quarters for a private chat.

"As usual, Spock was impenetrable, but I wasn't.  I got right to it and told him Scotty had tipped his hand about the telepathy thing.  Spock calmly explained about touch-telepathy, and assured me he hadn't been reading my mind from across the room.  I could have let it go at that, but I didn't want any bullshit standing between Spock and me:  I wanted an honest relationship. I was craving any kind of genuine connection with the man. So I asked about him being able to sense 'sincerity', looking him right in the eyes when I said it.

"He blinked that time.

"Well, that tactic worked brilliantly well.  Spock actually warmed to me a little, confessing that he could indeed feel the emotions in people around him.  He seemed relieved to get it out in the open, but he did caution me against telling anyone, for reasons I understood very well. Knowing that Spock could feel people's emotions would give most of our shipmates the creeps, and the ones who wouldn't get the creeps I didn't want to start worrying about (the way I was starting to worry about myself).

"I then said, 'I understand, among your many other outstanding talents, that you can also feel what people are feeling.  I know that means you have been feeling some pretty strange things coming from me.  I want you to know that, although I can't always control how I feel, I can control how I act, and that is what I intend to do.  If I do or say anything that makes you uncomfortable, that you think is inappropriate, and especially if you feel that it interferes with your ability to fulfill your duties, I ask, I insist that you bring it to my attention, so I can amend my behavior. My only intention is to be professional, to conduct myself properly as your Captain, and to show you the respect you are due, at all times.'

"This went over well.  Spock began to open up to me. In later conversations he began answering some of my questions about Vulcans and their ways.  I didn't understand at that time that Spock was in no way a typical Vulcan, so when he said Vulcans this, Vulcans that, I assumed, as most people would, that these things also applied to him. I think Spock believed that himself, to a point.  I also think he thought it was easier than really trying to explain himself.  Just between you and me, I also think he liked letting people believe one thing, while he kept his truth to himself.  My dear friend Spock is more like a clam than a canary when it comes to sharing, which certainly has been a contributing factor in complicating our little imbroglio.

<pause>

"Let's skip ahead a few months.

"Being Captain has its perks, and one of them is being able to choose your own course if you have nothing particular to do at the moment.  I took a little side trip to visit my brother and his family, fully expecting this to be a dull occasion for everybody but me and my relatives.  It turned out the colony was infested with these disgusting organisms that had already doomed my brother and his wife, and that might have gone on to decimate the whole population if we didn't act fast.

"I had no time right then to react to this horrifying personal loss. Something happens inside me when there is a real emergency, and I become clear-headed, efficient and almost machine-like.  I didn't take time to feel the death of my brother right away, but as soon as the crisis was over and I had time to reflect, it hit me like an asteroid the size of a barn.  I almost went insane thinking that if I'd come only a day or two sooner I might have saved him!  I had never met my sister-in-law or nephew, and it was hard to be too attached to them and their pain, but Sam had been like a father to me.

"He practically brought me up by himself, because my parents both worked, and after work they were both tired.  I was Mr. Tag-along, his little hitchhiker.  He used to carry me around on his back, or on the back of his bike.  My most persistent memories of Sam are of him craning his neck to look over his shoulder to tell me something.  I knew the back of his head better than I knew his face. I used to wear all his cast off clothes.  I got all his old stuff, and stuff he didn't want.  This set the pattern for my whole life.  I wasn't even the first Captain of the Enterprise.  <laughs>Second Hand Rose!  That's me!  I think my uniform was the first new thing anybody had ever given me in my life.  No, that's not right - my mom bought me a bike once, but only because my brother's bike was too big for me.  It was pretty beaten up too.  The two of us had run that thing ragged.

"He left home before I was grown, and since then we'd only seen each other a couple of times, at things like family weddings.  I was dying to show him the Enterprise!  He was as proud of me as if I were his own son.

"I won't say I loved my brother because that would be inaccurate.  Do you love your legs, do you love your backbone?  No, you just assume they will be there, but it ruins you when they are taken from you.  My brother was a part of me.  I didn't realize how important he was to me until he was gone.

"One quiet evening, when I was all alone in my cabin with nothing to do, I had a few drinks, then started trying to write an obituary to send to the hometown newspaper, and it just suddenly struck me.  Sam was dead.

"This didn't seem like a trick of chance, it seemed like a cruel joke! Chance has no sense of humor.  That was supposed to be me, dead at a young age, buried in alien soil - if all you are talking is odds.  Sam was the one who had always toed the line and played a real conservative game.  A serious student, a sober and chaste family man...why him!?  Why him!?  It was beyond ironic, it seemed like the sadistic prank of a cruel God.  It's kind of hard to not take it personally when it seems so precisely aimed at the core of your life.  Hard to imagine that was just bad luck!

"Now I had gone to church as a kid but none of it had stayed with me.  I had too many smart-aleck questions no one could answer.  I was tired of arguing about it, so I just stopped worrying about whether or not there was a God, and how to know his will.  I figured if I just did my best and tried to be a good guy that that should be enough.  This is how I learned that there really is a God, and that he'd stop at nothing to let me know he was out to break me.

"'You think you are such a big shot, with your big starship. With one stroke I can take away the person you love the most, blight everything else in your life, and show you how powerless and small you really are! You don't believe in me?  Let's see how you like me not believing in you!  You're now NUTHIN' to ME, Jimmy boy!  En Oh Tee Aich Eye En Gee!'

"Not a very nice God, is the impression that I got!  How could the Devil be much worse!?  I told you I almost went crazy.  I started thinking crazy things, like, now I can't allow myself a hero's honorable death. If I kill myself, I'll go to Hell which seems to be the only way to deprive this piece-of-shit God of his last Kirk-family prize.  It hurts to give that up, but it's worth it to cheat that divine BASTARD of his complete set!

"I was crying my eyes out, phaser in hand, sitting on the floor just bawling like a baby when I suddenly realized Spock was there.  My door had been locked, but he had let himself in anyway, and without knockin' too.  He crossed the room to me in three long steps and plucked the weapon from my hand before I could say What The Fuck.

"That was a shock, but it was nothing compared to what came next.

"It's hard to describe what it was like for me to mind-meld with Spock that first time.  That is a unique experience: it's not like anything else.  It's like going to sleep and dreaming, except instead of getting drowsy and becoming unconscious, you become very alert and more aware of everything than you've ever been, more and more, until the brilliance is almost blinding.  My own mind flung open all its doors and windows and all my thoughts and wishes lit up, exhaled perfume, and started playing music.  Each thought I'd ever had, every memory stored, seemed equally attractive.  It was like touring the shopping mall at Christmas time, and everything in me was on display and was free for the taking.  Spock could just go where he liked and look at everything, and he did.  He took it all in at a glance.

"I was so astounded at this that at first I didn't realize that to gain that access to my innermost self he had to grant me equal access to his vaults.  I found an archway almost accidentally and cautiously walked through it ... and I found a jeweled chamber that widened and finally opened up into this heavenly crystal cathedral of a mind that reached up and out forever.  It was palaces within palaces as far as I could look to see in every direction and just so beautiful I wept with joy.

"That was a humbling experience, but the good kind.  I felt the powerful love that God was supposed to feel for us puny humans, and it healed me.  Like watching spokes of a picket fence blur by as you pass, I watched scenes from my life and Spock's pass, and every single sin was forgiven, and every virtuous act was rewarded, and time stretched out forever in both directions and I stood high on the mountain and looked down with a loving God's eyes at all the little people and felt only compassion.  A mighty, Divine, healing compassion that dried all tears and assuaged all hurts, and let the people feel satisfied and secure.

"A little boy who had lost his daddy was crying, and Jesus appeared to him and said, 'I am your father'.

"The kid ran to Jesus and leapt into his arms, and when Jesus embraced him and gave him a kiss the kid sprung a boner and started humping Jesus' leg, but Jesus loved the kid anyway.

"'Will you be my daddy now?' The kid panted.

"'No.' Jesus said, but he said it gently, and when he held the kid away at arm's length, his touch was firm but tender.

"'Please!?' The kid begged.

"'No.'  Jesus was adamant.  'I am unable to gratify that desire.  But what I can do I will do.  This I promise.'

"'Let's promise to always be friends!' the kid insisted.

"'Agreed.' said Jesus.

"'Let's shake on it!'

"Jesus put out his hand, and the kid grabbed his hand and cut it with a pocket knife.  Then he quickly cut his own hand, and slapped the two cut palms together and squeezed.

"Jesus gasped, astonished at the sight of his own and the kid's blood oozing out between their clasped hands.

"'Now we are blood brothers...'  The kid darkly warned,  'If you ever break this promise, your guts will turn to dog food and your nuts will dry up and drop off!'

"Suddenly, I realized I was me, and Spock was there beside me, and none of that had been real.  Except it was.  It was real.  It was the most real thing that had ever happened to me.

"I felt calm and a little sleepy.  It seemed like years had passed, but it had only been a few minutes.  My tears were still wet on my face. Spock had been kneeling beside me, and now he stood up.  I also stood up, then stepped into the bath to splash some water on my face and pull myself together.  After all, I had distinguished company!

"What the hell do you say to a guy after something like that?  Words seemed completely superfluous and laughably inadequate.  I gestured at the chair, and he sat.  Then I sat across from him and we just sat looking at each other for a few minutes in silence, but we had a hell of a conversation with our eyes.  I felt like I knew him so well that I knew what he was going to say and I knew he knew and he knew what I would say so it was a waste of breath to say anything, and besides, nobody can talk that fast and remain coherent, so why try?

"I now understood everything about Spock.  I knew why he didn't talk much, I knew why he preferred to keep to himself, I knew why he didn't like talking about himself and his life, I knew why he was here.

"And I then understood why we could never be lovers.  It wasn't that he didn't like me, it wasn't that he wasn't curious...it was that he felt no sexual desire whatsoever.  The guy was a virtual eunuch.

"I now understood that Spock was half human, and that he didn't like Vulcan life, and that he was pretty sure he'd never be touched by the fire.  I understood that he had accepted that about himself.  I understood that he got a vicarious kick from empathic eavesdropping, and that I was one of his favorite channels to tune into, because he knows I love him.  I then understood that Spock liked being loved as much as anybody would, and that in his sad and lonely life few people had loved him, and he was glad I loved him, and he didn't want me to change.  He just didn't want me to get my hopes up too high.  He was hoping I wasn't too disappointed but of course I was, but I'm a tough guy and I can handle a little disappointment.  I was grateful for his friendship, and he understood that, and he knew that I would cherish our friendship for the rest of my life: that I would never let him down.  We just sat there and looked into each other eyes and just knew all that for a while, then we stood up, and saluted, and he handed me back my phaser and walked out, posture perfect as usual.

"You asked me how I felt when Spock was on his way to Vulcan and I just knew it might be the end of his Fleet career and our association.  Let me ask you:  how would YOU feel?  That's how I felt.

"This is turning out to be easier to explain than I thought it was going to be.

"OK, cut to the chase.

"Well, Spock was touched by the fire one day after all, against all odds, and if what happened next wasn't so embarrassing for everybody it would have been funny.  We'll all have a good laugh one day, I just have no idea when.

"What happened at the Vulcan wedding arena is a matter of public record, as are Amanda Grayson's recent allegations.  That's what people already know.  Here's what they don't know:

"Ambassador Sarek and his wife Amanda were our guests aboard the Enterprise once.  When Amanda caught wind of how it was between Spock and me she immediately decided, it seems, to interfere with us, because, it seems, she completely disapproved of me.  She may say I ruined Spock's chance for something resembling a normal life, and for the Captain of the ship that was malfeasance, but I say she's a jealous, possessive woman who never learned how to properly let go of her little boy, and that she's delusional to think that Spock was ever going to be content on Vulcan with that bimbo they betrothed him to.  Spock doesn't want a normal life, and I'm not the one who convinced him he didn't want to live on Vulcan - he decided that for himself.  I just didn't argue with him! I was happy about it,  because I didn't want to lose him.  If Spock would rather make me happy than to make his mother happy, that's his right.  It's his life!

"The truth about Spock and me is not what eyes can see, and not what mortal souls have the authorization to judge.  I love that man.  We are in love.  Maybe it looks a little shady that I concealed Spock's condition and my visits to him in his hour of need, but it wasn't really anybody's business, was it?  That was our private business.  I kept it quiet because when something is delicate and precious you shelter it, not because we did anything shameful.

"And just because we fuck like beasts doesn't mean there's anything bestial about what goes on between us.  I don't care how it looks.  Fuck how it looks, and fuck anyone who doesn't like it.  Fuck Amanda Grayson!  I did not abuse my office, I did not disgrace the uniform, I did not take advantage of him, I did not ruin her little boy, and he wasn't ever going to give her grandchildren anyway, because he's infertile, OK?  I'm good for him, he's good for me, and everybody is just going to have to accept that, because that's the way it is.

"Thank God we can get all this out in the open.  I didn't want to go public, but I must admit it is a huge relief.  Now that people know the nature of my relationship with Spock, they know they can't fuck with me without fucking with him, and funny, nobody hankers to do that!"

<laughs>

"Spock is like a skunk.  He's not very fierce, but he still gets respect!"  

<long laugh>

"The most interesting development is this wrinkle about how our partnership can be a legal marriage under Vulcan common law.  This gives me protections and privileges that are pretty phenomenal, and just when I needed them, too!  It's hilarious to see the people that hate me getting more and more frustrated as they realize they can't touch me, even though I'm hanging here, twisting in the wind, right in front of their faces!

"If Br'er Rabbit were me he would have discovered the tar was magic tar, and everything that sticks to it turns to gold.  I'm sticky all over, I'm stuck all over with gold.  I'm bristling all over with magic gold like a magic golden porcupine and how do you think I feel!?  I feel pretty god-damned good, as a matter of fact!  All the shit people are throwing sticks, but it turns to gold too.  The worst that can happen now would only be good for me.

"The one thing my enemies wanted, the thing I feared the most, has happened, and you know what?  It turns out it's not so God-damned bad!"

<long laugh>

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