The BLTS Archive- Echoes Two
Now
by Laura Jacquez Valentine (jacquez@dementia.org)

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Disclaimer: Lo, Paramount the Most Holy is God-or-Something.  I am a
most humble acolyte.

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Spock stood in the doorway of my office, as he had nearly every day
for the past two years.  I could feel him there, waiting.  I swallowed
and looked up.  "What's on the agenda for today, Spock?"

"You."

Oh, no, not this.  With a sickening lurch in my stomach, I remembered
his body pressed against mine, his mind forcing its way through my
barriers.  No, not him--his double.  Remembered dreams of *my* Spock
doing the same thing, dreams that had disturbed my sleep for months
and from which I had woken with my belly slick with semen blended in
my mind  with the actual forced meld.  "What about me, Spock?"  I kept
my voice casual.

"Tell me what I have done, Leonard."

"You?  Nothing."

"Leonard.  Now."

The word affected me as it had before, so long ago.  It echoed inside
my  veins, and I suppressed the urge to kneel before him, to lean my
head on  his thighs and beg him to heal the damaged places inside my
head. Instead, I gestured for him to come in.  He did, and the door
slid shut behind him.

"What makes you think--"

"Len."  His voice was soft, so soft.  "Now."

The focus I had craved so long in that voice had returned.  His entire
attention--that formidable mind, those long-fingered hands, those
black eyes--all belonged to me at this moment.  And I could no longer
resist his command, tempered as it was by genuine concern.

He took one step closer to me, and I felt the heat of his body. 
"Now." His eyes met mine with the easy openness of a friend.

"Your counterpart--"  I swallowed and looked at the floor, unable to
tell him.

I didn't need to.

"You should have told me," he said, and I found myself clinging to
him, shuddering convulsively, his inhumanly warm hands keeping me from
falling.  There was no hint of mind-touch where his skin brushed mine,
nothing but the slide of his fingers through my hair and his pulse
beating quickly against my cheek where I'd pressed my face into his
neck.

When the tremors subsided, he kept hold of me, and I was glad to let
him.  "How deep did he go?"

"Not very.  Just wanted to know who I was, and what was going on.  But
it hurt."

"Yes.  It would."  He shifted, pulling back so he could see my face.
"Do you need dealing with it?  Were you Vulcan, what he did would be
considered rape.  But I confess I do not know how humans cope with
such things."

"Doesn't often happen."  I leaned back into him, and he let me.  "I'll
be fine.  He didn't--didn't touch anything personal.  My name, the
name of my ship, the current situation."

"Good."

"Good?  Is that all you have to say, you--"

He dropped his arms and stepped back, his face blank.  "I am gratified
that you were not badly injured, Doctor.  Good evening."  He spun and
walked out, his body language as cold to me as it had been when I
first met him.

I sank into my desk chair and buried my head in my hands.

Two hours later, I pressed the buzzer on his door and heard that calm,
dark voice answer the signal with one word: "Come."  I walked in, and
he  rose out of the shadows like a spirit, robed in black, a long
knife in his hand.

"Am I...interrupting?"

"I was about to perform the Meditation of Blood."  He set the knife
down  on his desk and steepled his fingers.  "May I help you?"

The Vulcans have a ritual called the Meditation of Blood?  I couldn't
imagine it--they were all cool reserve and asceticism.  But then I
remembered the mirror-Spock, and the casual ease with which he fit
into the bloody Empire, and the silent Vulcan guards at his side.  And
the Romulans--

As though someone had hit me over the head with it, I realized,
suddenly, that Vulcan emotionlessness was cultural, not biological,
and that Spock had been teasing me for two years with his "I have no
emotions" routine.

Dammit, Spock, I almost said, but instead I said what I had come there
to say.  "I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have treated you like that."

His black eyes met mine, and I saw the hurt in them.  "No, you should
not have."  He picked up the knife and went to hang it on the wall,
under his longsword.

"Spock--"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"Thank you for helping."

His features softened.  "Leonard, come here."

I did, obeying the natural command in his voice, feeling it curl
through  me, as thin as smoke and as pervasive.

"When a Vulcan is forced as you were, they cannot bear the mind touch
for a long time, even from their mate.  But they need physical touch
to keep them sane and to help them heal.  You have no mate, Leonard. 
Let me help."

And he held me close again, warming me through, brushing back my hair.
I choked back a sob when I thought of the other Spock holding me like
this against a wall, the heat of his fingers pressing into my arm.

But this was *my* Spock, the one I sometimes dreamed about.

"It helps," I murmured against the skin of his neck, wrapping my arms
around his waist.

"You are safe, now," he said.

"Now?" I asked.

"Yes, Len.  Now."

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The End