Hello, everyone. This is just a story that popped into my head a while ago when I should have been going to bed. You know that you've crossed a line and can never go back once you've spent an hour late on a school night writing random Spirk fanfiction. No regrets. Thank you for reading, and I'd appreciate reviews and constructive criticism. This is a oneshot, obviously, and it takes place after Amok Time.

Two colors warred in the dark void, alone in the universe. Brilliant orange clashed with deep black, and at the edge of the star birth the colors mixed in wispy inseparability. The bright points of the children of the cloud shone through the star birth like diamonds. In the midst of the swirling shapes, it seemed as if the star birth was an immense microcosm of the universe: The bands across the center echoed the patterns of Jupiter's surface. The smoothest and most deeply orange region could have been the sands of Vulcan's deserts. Interstellar winds brushed the clouds of dust into shapes resembling animals, continents, seas. And no doubt, when the period of volatile growth was over, planets would form to circle the stars, and the new worlds would develop life strangely similar to the life in the rest of the universe.

The scale was enormous compared to the starship. Spock had seen pictures of nebulae and supernovae, but nothing could remotely capture the vastness of the real thing. He knew that the Enterprise was traveling on impulse drive at several hundred miles per hour, but they had not noticeably moved in comparison to the star birth. Spock stared into the clouds of debris, opening his mind to the majesty of space, as he had been doing for the past fifty minutes.

The Vulcan's ears caught the sound of footsteps in the corridor long before the door whooshed open. Soft, tentative steps approached him.

"You alright, Spock?" his captain said at last.

"Perfectly, Captain. I was merely admiring the sights while Mr. Scott repairs the warp drive." Spock turned away from the window and faced Kirk. "I apologize for my reaction yesterday. My mind was still somewhat affected by the fires of pon farr, and your appearance was a shock."

"No apology necessary, Mr. Spock. Your… hormones have achieved the necessary balance again, I assume?"

"The effects wear off after two to three hours. I am perfectly normal." Sensing that a more private location would be better for this conversation, Spock led Kirk out into the empty halls and began walking towards his quarters.

"Then why, might I ask," the Captain said, "had you been staring out that window for the better part of an hour? Circumstances have forced you to reveal your emotions before, but you've never been this affected by it."

Spock hesitated.

"I'm just concerned. You're my friend, and my first officer, and I want to know you're alright."

Spock glanced down at his hands and back at the captain before replying. "You understand that I was bonded to T'Pring from an early age." Kirk nodded. "We had been telepathically connected for all of that time. I could not read her thoughts, or even sense her emotions most of the time, but her consciousness was still present. When I was despairing or lonely, I could take comfort in the fact that my mind at least was not alone. Now I have none of that. A bond like that is never meant to be broken, except by death. When a married Vulcan dies, his or her spouse often is driven insane or dies as well. Our bond was not as strong, as it was not strengthened by love, and T'Pring and I have been apart much of our lives, but I still feel the loss deeply." Kirk nodded in sympathy. "There is a great empty place in my mind where there once was T'Pring's comforting presence. The sliced off consciousness stings like a wound, and unlike T'Pring, I do not have another mate's mind to fill the gap. However, Captain, I will soon get over it, and the loss will not impair my abilities in the slightest.

"But you will still feel the emptiness?"

"Yes. Always."

Kirk broke eye contact with his first officer as the door to Spock's quarters slid open and the two officers entered. Kirk walked slowly around the room, looking distractedly at the shelves. He knew that he was famous throughout Starfleet for his brash impulsiveness. With hardly a thought, working off of intuition alone, he would interfere with an undeveloped civilization, pick a fight with the Klingons, or take a beautiful woman to bed. Aside from some bumps along the way, quite a few bumps when it came to the women in bed, everything always came out how he wanted it to. But here, he was surprisingly uncertain. "So, Spock," the Captain said with uncharacteristic nervousness, "If, say, I were to, what did you call it, bond with you, then that empty spot would be filled?"

"Yes, Jim, but such a bonding is not initiated by mere friends or acquaintances. It requires lasting intimacy of thoughts and feelings if the two people are to be in close contact. Moreover, it is only undertaken by mates."

Spock had seen Kirk flirt with women before. The captain was always confident and sure, deftly handing out compliments. Spock had also discussed uncomfortable topics with Jim. Kirk would avoid eye contact and speak in disjointed phrases, but that was just awkwardness, never nervousness. Jim was truly nervous now, as he looked up from the diorama collection he had been absently inspecting.

"Of course, Spock. But… I am still willing."

Spock walked several steps closer. "You are suggesting that we be more than friends?"

"Forget it," Kirk stammered, his usual confidence gone. Humanity had come a long way in the last several hundred years, but it was still considerably less acceptable for a male captain to make advances toward his male first officer than it was to flirt with a young and pretty, and female, yeoman. "It was just an idea from an illogical human. I, well, we're still friends, aren't we? I'd understand if you want to go on extended leave, to forget about this conversation for a few weeks, and then we can pick up our friendship again like nothing ever happened. Given your recent illness and the fact that you have accumulated leave days, Starfleet wouldn't protest. You can visit your family, or meditate, or something…" Kirk trailed off as Spock walked closer.

"You, James Kirk, the most sought-after man in Starfleet, would give up a lifetime of young women for a restrained relationship with a Vulcan scientist?"

"Yes, I would," Kirk said. He may be impulsive, but his impetuosity always had some reasoning behind it, and he suspected that the justification for this case had been building inside him for years. "But—"

"Good. Then you will be doubly satisfied when you learn that Vulcans are not as unemotional as they seem, and touch telepathy adds a whole new layer to lovemaking." Spock reached forward and grabbed his captain in a passionate kiss, lowering his mental barriers.

Kirk gasped as his mind sparked with Spock's consciousness. Kirk felt what Spock felt, and Spock felt what Kirk felt, and every touch reverberated between their minds like a swelling cymbal crash. Each sensation, reflected again and again between them, made a simple kiss more exotic and intimate than the most intense sex. After a long minute, Spock pulled away.

"You realize, Jim, that once bonded our minds will not be easily parted. You cannot turn back." He spoke unemotionally, calculatingly, as if nothing momentous was occuring and he was just describing the composition of an atmosphere or explaining a scientific anomaly.

"Jesus, Spock, if that's what a Vulcan kiss feels like, it's a wonder you guys don't engage in perpetual orgies. Of course I agree. I'd agree even without the telepathy. Hell, I'd agree if you said it meant we had to live on Vulcan and raise children and act like unemotional domestic Vulcans. I agree with all of my mind and heart."

Spock smiled freely. "Then give me your hands," he said, and arranged them carefully on the Vulcan's face. Spock took a deep breath before placing his fingertips on Kirk's katra points.

"My mind to your mind," he said as he felt the first tendrils of his mind anchor themselves in Kirk's.

"My thoughts to your thoughts," Jim replied without knowing where the words came from.

"Parted and never parted," Spock could feel how both his and Kirk's stomachs jumped with anticipation.

"Never and always touching and touched."

They were one. Suddenly, both remembered waking up on a dewy morning in Iowa, and walking on Vulcan's red soil under the bright desert sky. They had both been teased, called an emotional human, both chafed at living in nowhere while the universe awaits. They remembered a jumbled life lived in two bodies in two separate worlds until this day in this room when they were joined by words as old as the Vulcan sun.

When they broke apart, Spock explored the edges of his mind. He felt comfort, love, acceptance where before there had been black emptiness. A star birth had filled the vacuum.

"Jim, my t'hy'la, I will love you until the stars stop spinning."

"You realize that is physically impossible, Spock."

"That is precisely why I said it."

"How, my impossible Vulcan, are we going to explain this to Bones?"

"We can figure that out tomorrow." With a precisely calculated leap, Spock threw himself onto Jim, knocking them both onto the bed. "Now do you want to feel what a true Vulcan orgy is like?"

Bones narrowed his eyes as the captain and science officer walked onto the bridge. He noticed how Kirk shuddered in enjoyment when Spock's fingers brushed his own. "About time," the chief medical officer muttered before giving them a knowing grin and returning to the sickbay.