Something curled in Spock’s stomach, ugly and fluttery and painful. It rose from there and caused a dull pain in his side where his heartbeat.

“I…do not understand.” He was flustered and repeating himself but his logical brain could not compute.

“I know you don’t understand!”

And just like that the cheerful pretense Kirk had been displaying vanished as though it had never been there. Instead there was angry fire in his blue eyes.

“And that’s exactly the problem, Spock. You just never get it.”

“Jim, I—”

“You were with Uhura for years—”

“We are not together anymore,” Spock interrupts.

“Yeah you’ve been broken up for five minutes,” Jim said, sarcastically. “You were together for years, Spock. Years. And you never moved forward. Never bonded. Never married. You were satisfied with…I don’t even know what you were satisfied with. Your commitment to not commit.”

“Why are you so angry? You were explaining what happened in the alternate universe with my counterpart.”

Jim sighed heavily and turned away. “In that universe Spock loves his captain. When I returned from the mission, he thought I was his captain. As soon as I got to the captain’s quarters, Spock was all over me.”

“He forced himself on you?”

“No! I wanted it. He was full of passion and heat and was so hungry for me. It was intoxicating. I couldn’t get enough.”

Each word was like a lash against Spock’s heart.

“When he finally realized I was not his captain, it didn’t matter to either of us. We continued being together. Neither of us knew if I would come back here or his Kirk would return there, so we continued with each other, and he protected me from the reality of all that.”

Jim turned around to face him once more.

“It was the most amazing experience of my life.”

Spock blinked. He thought he might just vomit.

“It should have been with you,” Jim whispered hoarsely. “But I knew it never would be.”