kirktastic | [Out of Time, Out of Body] -- [Kirk and Kirk]

Current Location: Sickbay (and Beyond!)

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[Out of Time, Out of Body] -- [Kirk and Kirk]

There is a certain moment that people take, where they close their eyes and take a slow, deep breath inwards. For that moment, right at the very peak of the breath, the world around vanishes, thoughts disappear, and the body seems to almost float. Try it. Slow, deep breath with the eyes closed.

Each breath was slow, deep, measured. It filled the lungs, as loud as the rush of the ocean on the beach. Underneath it all was the same slow, deep, measured toll of each heartbeat.

It was on the peak of one of those breaths that his eyes opened. White light spilled between his eyelids, then the world became fuzzy colors, then fuzzy outlines, then solid ones. He was staring at a ceiling. So he remained there, time unknown and unmeasured, staring. It was better then the darkness, at any rate.

Sickbay? Looked like the ceiling, at least. The picture of sickbay built in his mind as he heard the biobed's continuous digital beat, the sound of someone murmuring in the distance, the smell of antiseptic, the hum of something mechanical around him.

So, naturally, he sat up. He took a slow look around him, feeling strangely distant from everything, even himself. Bedsheets covered him, there was something glowing slowly around him, and yes, definitely in sickbay.

It should have been very strange to look back down at himself as he stood up, yet there was nothing. No panic, no terror, just a strange divorced feeling. Kirk shifted away, looking at himself, then finally away. His body still beat, still breathed, wouldn't miss him for now. Why was his skin bright pink like that?

He stepped away, unable to feel the cold floor under his bare feet.

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Course I do. Kirk repeated back. He glanced around, almost uncaringly, then asked, Walk with me? I need to check on the ship. The tone was casual despite the words.

Of course.

Jim fell into step beside him, glancing periodically at the younger man's face. Did he know it was a dream? Jim decided not to say anything yet, until he knew more about what was going on. He might be wrong, though glancing back, his body still lying there, it seemed reasonable. Oddly, he thought of Bill. Maybe because he now had another context for looking at that face, that body.

He faced forward again.

...Feels like... it's been a long time since I walked this corridor. Kirk murmured, moving slowly, their footsteps silent. He looked around, seeing people pass by them. He felt no urge to speak to them.

It has been. A little.

Jim paid no notice of anything but Kirk, his attention entirely fixed on him.

Everything looks okay.

...Should go to the bridge. Want... to see Spock, Bones...Sulu, Pasha, Chekov... Scotty, Harold... everyone. Make sure they're okay. His smile was so warm, almost child-like. He blinked slowly, bringing his arms up and stretching.

They're okay, Jim reassured him. But let's go anyway. He couldn't help it--he reached up, sliding his hand down the side of Kirk's face, his own smile nakedly loving and sloppy with it.

Kirk leaned into that touch, his eyes closing. Jim felt so, so warm. You feel... so good... His voice drifted, not fully concentrated.

Jim chuckled, a warm, golden sound in the thick air around them. Kirk's face was solid, but there was something mutable about that touch, some part of them that seemed to melt into one another though their skin remained impermeable. Jim decided to think about it later. This could easily go in a certain direction, he knew that, but he wanted something else, first. Or thought it was needed. He wasn't sure where the conviction came from--he seemed to be in better shape than Kirk, more coherent, but it was all relative.

Yes. Show me your ship.

They were so very similar and so very different. Jim was golden - his skin, his eyes, his hair, his attitude. The air around him seemed golden. Jim made him feel like he could step forward and curl up inside him. Maybe he could.

...ship? Oh, ship.. yes. Thoughts came a little disjointedly.

Sure. That smile, bright, and he turned, slowly showing Jim the entirety of the ship. He spoke in surprisingly loving terms for how young of a captain he was and how short of a time he had been in command of her.

Jim followed, his eyes taking in every detail, but more of Kirk's enthusiasm than anything else. Yes. This was it. Something had gone wrong, put them in sickbay, and they were dreaming. And Kirk was showing him the Enterprise. Because it made him happy.

She's beautiful.

...She's like nothing else I've ever seen or ever want again. Kirk said, his tone open, honest. I could die happy knowing I was her captain... and I got to captain a crew better then any other.

His smile could light up the world.

Jim's mirrored it.

Then you are me, he said, as if it needed confirmation. I've never wanted anything else. Jim... may I show you mine?

Suddenly it seemed possible. It seemed necessary. It was Jim's refuge, his home. And he needed Kirk to see it, to understand. To share. As Jim had shared his. And in this place, he thought, wherever it was, couldn't he make that happen?

It seemed possible, and it seemed just as natural to accept it. Please? He wanted to see Jim's Lady, Jim's crew, despite the impossibility of it.

It didn't seem so impossible. It seemed as natural as offering to show an image from the computer or something down in the gym. Sure, they could. Kirk would follow Jim anywhere.

Jim smiled, held out his hand. Probably not necessary, but it felt right to touch Kirk, to remind them both of their solidity, their reality, as the world shifted around them. Only the shift was ever so slight, the contours similar, the sounds just a bit off. They were the sort of changes that were, if anything, more jarring because they were minute. They added up as one watched, surprising one at turns because it was easy to be lulled by familiarity.

But this was Jim's lady.

The bridge. Bustling in Jim's memory, no emergency but the heady rush of alpha shift, everyone wanting to be there, not minding the lull between adventures when they could take a little time between duties to joke pleasantly. It was all a low buzz as Jim smiled at Kirk, slowly turning in a circle to take it all in.

I miss her. She'll always be home.

Kirk looked around slowly in wonderment. It still felt like the Enterprise, still had her hum, but it was different somehow as well. The look struck him first - so completely different in style! Things looked almost old, despite the obvious newness of the technology. It was less... less...

Shiny.

Kirk stepped forward, just taking in everything with each step. He blinked as he studied people, finally asking as he stepped in front of Chekov at navigation - having met Sulu - Who is this?

Chekov. Jim gestured around the bridge, naming his crew. Uhura. The rest... you know.

For a moment, Jim merely basked in her presence. There was that twinge of homesickness, but here, somehow, he could just remember without regret. He would return. For now, there was this. A reminder. In his memory, Spock bent over the viewer, and as it never had before this aroused a surge of affection. The turbolift doors opened, admitting Bones, who came to stand just behind and to the side of the command chair, and Jim smiled. Yes, it would be like this again.

They look so different, but... act the same. Kirk said as he turned, a smile of wonder on his lips. Still feels like the bridge, my bridge, our bridge.

He let out a laugh. Something simple and easy, his eyes bright. This is amazing! Show me more of her? He wanted to see it all. The reasons to be there, which felt as solid as earth despite the fuzzy edges, were unneeded. All that mattered was that they were there.

You see? Why I need her back. Why I need this.

Jim held out his hand again, and Kirk took it, and they seemed to drift through the ship though her decking felt real under their feet. He showed Kirk Engineering, the labs, the rec room where he and Spock had first discovered their mutual love of chess, his quarters. Jim's eyes glittered the whole time, his passion different from Scotty's but his love no less for that.

Kirk took in every nuance of the same-but-not ship, asking questions as they moved without any sense of time. When they stopped, he looked to Jim and smiled again, We'll bring you home to her. Promise, we'll keep looking for ways until we find her.

He knew Jim needed this ship. He could sense it, feel it in every word Jim spoke as he showed her off.

I know. He held Kirk's face between his hands, studying him as if for the first time, cataloging the nuances, the similarities. We need the same things.

He didn't know how, or why, that was immutable. It just was, and that was enough.

It just was. They were who they were, separate yet somehow the same. The same person, born and bred and raised on different circumstances. While they did not have the same face, it hardly mattered.

Kirk leaned into those hands, his eyes half closing, enjoying the heat of Jim's touch. Same people, too. They needed their crew, needed Spock and Bones.

You, too.

Jim leaned forward, kissing Kirk lightly on the forehead. They'd retrieved him. Jim couldn't quite remember from where, but he knew that Kirk had come back and he would be all right. Somehow. And Jim did need him. Had needed to meet him, to see himself mirrored and in some ways reversed but still thriving. Still him. Jim had seen himself too many times in hideous parody, a mockery of the man he thought he was. Kirk had reassured him.

Kirk closed his eyes and leaned in against Jim, finding strength there. Something told him he was weak, could use the support that Jim gave. Here, wherever here was, pride and past wouldn't put a stop to that need so he could simply live it.

He let out a breath against warm skin. Glad we met, Jim.

Jim wrapped his arms around the other man, feeling his familiar shape, the warmth under his hands, the way Kirk's head fit in the crook of his neck and vice versa. He was still feeding him strength, still connected, and Jim could feel it here better than awake.

Yeah. If for nothing else, it is worth it for that.

The space they had occupied vanished when it was no longer being concentrated on. Where they were ceased to matter and ceased to be, but Kirk had his focus on the touch of their bodies. When he looked down, just a glimpse, he could have sworn there was a golden light slowly passing between them.

...You protected me. He murmured, questioned. The memories that formulated that comment were too distant to be able to focus on.

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