Jim sat straight up, gawking at the figure sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Sp-pock?”
Then he threw his arms around Spock as Spock’s arms came around his. Spock’s arms tightened and held him very close.
Tears sprung to Jim’s eyes before he could stop them. A gasping sob escaped.
“I am here, Jim, I am here,” Spock whispered.
“Are you even real?”
Spock pulled away but only to frame Jim’s face with his hands so that he could kiss him. Spock’s warm lips crushed his, kissing him as though he needed to make up for a year’s time.
Spock broke the kiss, panting. “I am real.”
“But…how are you here? I thought…”
“I could not leave you, Jim. You are my T’hy’la. My bondmate. You are…everything. I have spent the last year trying to find a way for us to be together. My brother was working on a way to help me.”
“I’m going crazy, Spock. I don’t want to live like this.”
“Nor do I.” Spock put his hand on Jim’s face and in a moment Jim felt a burst of warmth and then so much love and tenderness.
“Is that the bond?” he asked, awed.
“Yes, ashayam. I unshielded. I will never keep you out of my mind again.” He blew out a long breath and leaned their heads together. “No matter how we live it must be together.”
Jim swallowed and nodded. “God, it feels so good to have you here.” More tears fell down his cheeks. “If this is a dream, I never want to wake.”
“I must concur. But if it is a dream, we are both having it.”
Spock kissed him again. “Will you come with me?”
“To the future?”
“Yes. I do not wish to take you from your family, however—”
“They’ll be okay.” Jim felt his pulse racing. “Dad knows. We’ve talked. Mom and Sam don’t, but I think Dad would tell them, I don’t know, but he said they’d all be okay. Spock, I could do it. I can go with you.”
“The other way that we have figured out is to have me stay here, with you in this time.”
Jim frowned. “How would that work? I mean with your different physiology.”
“Leonard McCoy. He said if the only way was for me to come here to be with you, he would come here too, to be my doctor.”
Jim blinked, startled. “Yeah?”
“Yes, Jim. Whichever way we choose, there will be times when we could use the technology my brother has developed to cross over to either the past or the future. Not often, not even as much as every year, but it could be done.”
“Not without risk though,” Jim guessed.
“Yes, there is still the chance something could go wrong.” Spock took Jim’s hands in his. “The choice is yours, T’hy’la. For me, the choice is to be with you, wherever you wish. Where I am from is more familiar to me, but I can adjust to anything, do anything, to be with you.”
Jim pulled away and rose. He ran his hand over his face. “I need coffee.”
Spock got up too. “Come.”
They left the bedroom and went out to the kitchen of Spock’s apartment. Jim silently made a pot of coffee, his mind a whirl of thoughts, mostly confusing ones.
“What do you want?” he asked Spock, when he turned from the coffeemaker after he set it to brew.
“To be with you.”
“Me too. Do they have coffee there?”
Spock smiled slightly. “They do, yes.”
Jim closed his eyes. “My family and friends are here. Your family and friends are there.”
“Yes.”
“Here you would always have to hide your true self, there I would have no idea what’s going on, really. But I could learn.”
“Here the weather is good, there it sucks.”
Spock chuckled softly, making Jim’s eyes open in surprise.
“Pros and Cons,” Jim explained. “I can’t help but go through them.”
“I understand.”
“You would outlive me.” He got that thought from Spock. For he’d somehow been given the knowledge that Vulcans outlived Humans by a number of years. “When I die, if you were here, you’d be able to go back there.”
“Theoretically.”
“Theoretically,” Jim agreed. “I don’t know what to do, Spock.”
Spock sighed, it was soft and low. He nodded. “Then allow me to choose for you, ashayam. We will stay here on Earth. In your time. Doctor McCoy will come here as our friend and my doctor. And you will have your friends and family with you.”
“But that’s not fair.”
“What is not fair is to be apart. Everything else is workable, Jim. I want your choice to make you happy.”
The coffee had finished so Jim turned and filled his mug with coffee. It was the Dad mug Jim had found so long ago now. It seemed an eternity but really wasn’t and even though it kind of felt like it, he had not loved Spock for an eternity.
He took a few sips of coffee.
“This place, this city…it’s my home.”
Spock nodded.
Jim set his coffee mug down.
“But my home is you now, Spock. I want it to be. I love you. What we have, I think, is the love of a lifetime. I feel you everywhere. This…” He gestured around. “This is my old life. My future is you. With you…in the future.”
Spock’s warm chocolate eyes gazed at Jim intensely. “Are you sure, T’hy’la?”
Jim smiled and kissed him. “I’m sure.”
Spock drew him close and into his arms once more. “You’re my future too.”

The end. Thank you for reading this two month story!