Notes: Five times Jim gives into temptation, and one time he doesn't. For ShamelessSpocker, as the second story I promised her, and also in apology for me being an insulting, insensitive prick the other week.

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.

One

It was late - well into the gamma shift - when Jim slid down the ladder into the depths of engineering and strode purposefully over to the black-clad legs sticking out from underneath one of the (frankly, huge) computer consoles down there.

"Hey," he called, crouching down to peer into the tiny gap. "You thinking of coming out of there anytime soon?"

Spock didn't move, and his voice echoed oddly off the inside of the console. "I will have finished my repairs in approximately..."

Jim tuned him out. In all honesty, he hadn't come down here to really find out. He'd just been at a loose end, and Spock had been kind-of-busy-but-not-so-busy-he'd-tell-Jim-to-go-away so...yeah. Here he was.

He sat down properly, cross-legged like a kid at story time, and spread his hands flat over one of Spock's thighs. Even lying down (and therefore, possessing somewhat relaxed muscles) the Vulcan's leg was as hard as granite, the muscle like steel cords wrapped in cool skin. Not that Jim could feel the skin - what he could feel was the thin Starfleet-issue trouser leg, and the thicker layer of thermal cloth underneath. It always felt oddly cold, touching Spock through his clothes. No heat escaped at all.

"Jim..."

"Nobody's here," Jim soothed, beginning to knead the muscle with his hands. He distinctly heard Spock pause in his work, before calmly resuming again, obviously electing to ignore whatever strange thing Jim was up to now.

Jim blamed that ignorance for the temptation that rose up - and very easily took him away.

Like he'd said - there was nobody here.

He let go of Spock's leg and stood up, stepping over him so that he could crouch down and seize both thighs. Spock made a slightly startled noise, and then Jim pulled. The deck was smooth, and he easily hauled Spock out from under the computer, indignant look and all. Before the Vulcan could move, Jim dropped to pin him down and stretch out luxuriously on top of him, ending with their legs entangled and Jim's elbows either side of the Vulcan's neck, hands idly playing with that thick dark hair.

"Hi," he said, their face only centimetres apart.

"Jim..." Spock began chidingly, and Jim grinned.

"There's nobody here," he said, and kissed him.

Despite Spock's protestations, he had no objections to the kiss - or none he allowed to show, at any rate. As they exchanged slow, languid, almost lazy kisses, exploratory and familiar, his arms slowly came up to wrap around Jim's back. One knee bent, drawing his foot closer to his hip, but it was an instinctive motion. Jim knew that no matter how open Spock was to being kissed in a deserted engineering bay, he'd knock him across the room if he tried for sex.

A bang somewhere in the upper levels ended the kiss when they both jumped, startled, and Jim glanced up before giving Spock a rueful grin.

"Sure that computer can't wait until tomorrow?" he urged, rolling his hips once, enticingly. There was no real arousal yet, but there would be if he did that another couple of times.

"It cannot wait," Spock said firmly, but tilted his head up to catch Jim's mouth once more, briefly. "But I will endeavour to...hurry," he murmured into Jim's lips.

Good enough.

Two

Jim entered Spock's quarters without announcement - he'd given up on that weeks ago. Seeing that Spock was busy talking to someone on his console, Jim went ahead and started shedding his uniform and toying with the thermostat, wondering how low he could get it before Spock glared at him.

It was only when he heard the low, "Affirmative, Father," that Jim got the idea.

Jim and Sarek...didn't get along. Understatement of the century. Sarek had not been impressed with Jim as his son's commanding officer, never mind as his son's long-term (permanent?) partner. The news hadn't gone down well, and the strained relationship already in existence between Spock and his father only got worse.

Jim considered it to be complete bullshit. If Sarek didn't like him, fine. He didn't like the old goat either. He was perfectly content for Sarek to hate his guts - in that Vulcan repressed manner, obviously - and, while they were at, to hell with the rest of what remained of Spock's relatives too. He wasn't too sure T'Pau liked him all that much either.

But Sarek was Spock's father, and the only immediate family Spock had left, and they barely ever talked.

It was complete bullshit.

Jim didn't want to make things worse, and usually he could reign himself in, but tonight Spock had that pinched look about his eyes that said he was stressed and upset, and he hadn't been earlier, so...

Still, giving into this...

Ah, fuck it.

Very deliberately, Jim meandered over to Spock's side, naked from the hips up, and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek and lick an obscene stripe up that delicately pointed ear.

In full view of Spock's disapproving, stick-up-his-ass pure-Vulcan father.

Both Vulcans went very still, and very silent.

"Hurry up and come to bed," Jim murmured in Spock's ear, knowing damn well that Sarek could hear him, before he retreated to a safe distance. Before Spock nerve-pinched him or something.

Okay, so he wasn't getting laid tonight. Still worth it.

Three

Jim didn't even have time to think about resisting it.

They beamed the last of the rescue team in seconds before the other ship blew up - hell, not even seconds. Computers didn't lie - it had been 0.75 seconds. Less than a second. Less than a second, and he could have...

The moment those four tall forms rematerialised, all bruised and battered and dirty, Jim had taken a (more-or-less) flying leap up onto the transpoter pad and thrown his arms around his First Officer, sending him staggering backwards.

"Oh God, you're okay, you're okay, oh God, Jesus, you're alive..." he was stammering, clinging to the lean form as if to let go would be to lose him all over again. He could feel a faint shaking in Spock's limbs, and the hammer of his heart low in his side, and the smell of smoke and ash clinging to his uniform, and even death, if such a thing could be detected, but he was alive...

"Captain..."

Jim drew back just enough to kiss him, hard and unyielding and unforgiving, teeth and tongue and crushing lips and blood, somewhere in there, a metallic tang that could have been his or Spock's, and he didn't even care.

He only warded off the temptation he'd yielded to when the tremor in Spock's limbs spread, and he began to sag alarmingly against Jim, breath coming in short bursts that had nothing to do with the kiss.

"Bones! Oh God, Spock, hang on, it'll be alright, hold on..."

He didn't ward off the temptation to hold him, though, until McCoy physically threw him out of Sickbay some twenty minutes later.

Four

It was Starfleet policy to inform the family of any medical problem that required more than seven days in Sickbay to treat it - or, alternatively, any treatment that involved 'prolonged surgical intervention.' (Jim wasn't sure what classed as prolonged. M'Benga said it was multiple operations; Bones said it was any surgery that took more than four hours. Maybe it was both.) Either way, he should inform Sarek of this.

Spock had collapsed promptly after they'd gotten the rescue team off that ship. To be fair, only one of that team had not collapsed after returning to the Enterprise - copious amounts of toxic gas does that to people. But, obviously, Spock had been the one that Jim was most worried about.

He'd broken several ribs and one of his lungs had collapsed along with him - and apparently reinflating Vulcan lungs was nowhere near as easy as human ones. He'd been under the knife twice, and for seven hours in total, and had to be kept in Sickbay for at least ten days, so...

Yeah, regulations were quite clear on this one.

That was: Jim shouldn't be here. He should be in his ready room, on a live transmission to Sarek or even T'Pau, telling them that there was nothing to worry about and Spock would be fine but he felt they ought to know...

But it was in the early hours of the gamma shift, and Sickbay was quiet, and even Bones was off-duty, and...

And he could just sit here, and hold Spock's hand.

Oh, he'd get some intense ribbing if anyone saw him. Never mind if Spock knew about it. He'd never be allowed to live it down - or the breaking of regulations to do it in the first place. But Spock was asleep, and peaceful, and his breathing was easy for the first time in five days, and there wouldn't be any more surgery. He was just sleeping - no drugs, no trances, no scary comas or fits of unconsciousness. Nothing. He was alright, and he was going to be just fine.

And yeah, Jim shouldn't be here. But it was just too tempting, to be able to sit and stroke his hand and watch him breathe...

Sarek was never informed.

Five

Jim hadn't like T'Por from the moment she'd arrived on his ship.

The worst of it was that she wasn't even a bad person. She wasn't even particularly offensive - if you could, after all, be in a relationship with a Vulcan and not want to strangle every last member of the species, then T'Por certainly wasn't going to be the one to push you over that edge. She was an astrophysicist joining the labs in their star-mapping run, because the Vulcan Science Academy had an interest in the system they were exploring. There was nothing remotely sinister about that. She wasn't a diplomat. They could thoroughly ignore her, if they wanted to. They'd had worse guests.

And for a Vulcan, she was practically friendly - she didn't look down her nose at the mostly-human crew, or scoff at their technology, or their social habits. She was a little detached, and observed them like science experiments, but she did seem genuinely respectful of their customs. She didn't even turn her sharp nose up at Spock - which should have won her instant points in Jim's book. His reason for disliking most Vulcans was that they disliked Spock, but T'Por didn't. On the contrary, she was eager to get Spock's insight on humans due to his lifelong exposure to them, and constantly sought his knowledge on human behaviour and technology and history.

Therein lay the problem.

Jim wasn't an idiot, and he knew Vulcan flirting when he saw it. She was always dropping by Spock's lab, or seeking him out in the mess hall, or questioning him about everything inside (and out) of their universe. Jim was horrified when, at one point, he overheard her complimenting Spock's decision in choosing Starfleet over the Vulcan Science Academy.

She couldn't have been more obvious if she'd given him a lap dance!

Jim had fought to keep a handle on his temper and his own behaviour, struggling to be civil to her when all he wanted to do was get her the fuck away from his boyfriend. Spock was his, damn it, no matter how rare an eligible male was going to be on New Vulcan now! This one was taken, and to hell if his thought processes were somewhat caveman about the whole thing.

Spock, the bastard, found the whole thing funny. If he wasn't Vulcan, Jim was sure he'd have been in hysterics at the whole thing. T'Por seemed to be completely oblivious to Jim's part in Spock's life, and Spock was doing nothing to fill her in on that, and had the gall to find Jim's exercises in grinding his teeth funny.

It all came to a head, annoyingly enough, on the day that T'Por was due to leave the ship. Jim had arrived at the transporter room to see her off, to find her engaging Spock in conversation. In Vulcan. The translators never bothered translating Vulcan on a ship unless somebody specifically told them to do it, because every ship had a communications officer fluent in Vulcan. It had always been like that.

So to find them talking in quiet Vulcan, and the ensign at the controls goggling at them in surprise, had been a step too far in Jim's eyes. His control had snapped; the temptation to revert to his caveman instincts was suddenly too strong, and he had laced his fingers with Spock's before he quite knew what he was doing.

To Spock's credit, he had firmly kept the surprise that jolted between their fingers to himself, and had merely bowed his head at Jim in greeting.

T'Por, however, raised her stern eyebrows and eyed their joined hands. "I was unaware that you had bonded, Spock," she said evenly. "I offer my congratulations."

"Unnecessary, but appreciated," Spock said, his voice devoid of the amusement still filtering through Jim's hand.

It was only after she had gone, in a swirl of light from the transporter, that Jim sighed and let go.

"Sorry," he said. "Just...she was so damn friendly with you. It was driving me up the wall!"

"I could tell," Spock said dryly as they walked from the transporter room, perfectly in step. "Perhaps I should have informed you earlier, Jim, but T'Por had no romantic intentions towards me."

"You're kidding me, right? Spock, she was so damn friendly she could have been human!"

"Vulcans are markedly more...friendly...towards favoured relatives, Jim."

Jim stopped dead in the middle of the hall. "...Favoured relatives?"

"Indeed," but he didn't expand on it.

"...I hate you."

Spock's raised eyebrow expressed his doubt, and if it was possible to walk away smugly, then he did.

One

The New Year party was in full swing, approaching midnight, and Jim grinned through the faint haze of alcohol at the sight of Bones being bulled into a dance by that blonde nurse of his. Jim was all for it. Bones needed to get laid; it always made him slightly nicer in Sickbay. Slightly.

Jim, on the other hand, was merely fulfilling his duty. Spock was away, at some boring grilling from the Interspecies Regulations Board about whether anyone on the Enterprise was a xenophobic dick, and hadn't been able to get out of it. Apparently, squirming out of the same inquiry three years in a row made them rather adamant that you attended this time around.

Frankly, Jim missed him.

He hadn't really felt like coming to the party. Oh, he wasn't miserable without Spock or anything, but he'd rather take a long, hot shower, curl up in their bed with a book, and maybe be really pathetic and wear one of Spock's sleep robes to bed, and wake up early to greet him back to the Enterprise with a disgustingly public kiss in the transporter room. He didn't want to have to be all charming and suave in public, and then stagger back to his quarters alone, unsatisfied, and with nobody to cuddle up to afterwards. It was just a depressing thought.

And with that thought, Ensign Ashburner caught his eye and smiled at him across the room.

Ensign Lucy Ashburner was...well, pretty. She had just the right combination of big curves and a tiny waist, had just the right hips to utilise that uniform miniskirt to its maximum potential, and had, frankly, gorgeous legs to stare at, all the way up to that pert, eatable backside. Now, her skirt was even shorter, brushing the very bottom of that backside, and leaving not a great deal to the imagination.

She was like a cut-out of Jim's exact taste in women. Curvy, pretty, fair and flirtatious. That look in her eyes was distinctly familiar, and Jim knew that if he'd known her in the Academy, he would have already slept with her at least once. She was gorgeous.

And she was smiling at him, with that look in her eyes...

It would be so easy. Forget about being alone for New Year, forget about the empty bed and the coolness of his quarters, and just enjoy this New Year...

Jim shook himself and put his glass down. Definitely one too many.

He turned away from Ensign Ashburner and her gorgeous curves, and left the party. He locked the doors of his quarters behind him when he reached them, and dragged both Spock's sleeping robe and his thermal blanket out of the drawers, curling up in the bed surrounded by the faint spice of incense burning in his memory.

He woke up to the real thing, late the next morning, with a vague hangover and the warmth of a loved body wrapped around his own, and smiled into the pillow.

"Good morning," came a faint, tired greeting, and Jim reached for one of those familiar hands and squeezed it tightly.

"Yeah, it is."