The Time When Spock Gave Kirk the Cold Shoulder (Fic Report!)

There’s a lot of K/S on ao3. Like. A Lot. Most of it’s explicit, some of it has plot, and there are a rare few that just really slap. I’d like to posit that “Warm Thoughts,” written by an author pseudonym’d lettered, is one of these. This fic explores the Hurt/Comfort trope with regard to the aftermath of Spock and Kirk’s koon-ut-kal-if-fee fight in The Original Series episode “Amok Time.” The basic premise of the fic is that, six months after Spock’s pon farr and the events on Vulcan, Spock still refuses to talk to Kirk about what happened. After investigating Epsilon Tauri Four (which is, according to the author’s description, basically Ithaca on account of it being mad brick), Kirk is mysteriously afflicted with perpetual cold. While Uhura tries to determine the cause, McCoy tries to synthesize a cure, and everyone tries to get Spock and Kirk to finally have a damn conversation.

Unlike other Hurt/Comfort fics, Spock is principally responsible for Kirk’s “Hurt”; Kirk’s ailment makes him feel cold, but he is only in discomfort as opposed to any real danger. Instead, Kirk’s mental and emotional strain is the real source of his suffering, although in the universe of the fic he has been operating under it ever since Vulcan. Throughout the narrative, Kirk’s condition is a parallel to (and almost a physical manifestation of) his emotional pain. Meanwhile, Spock is going through something similar, albeit without a visceral component; the fic suggests that Spock’s latent romantic feelings toward Kirk were exposed by his passionate fighting and killing of him on Vulcan. In lettered’s story, Spock’s intense guilt about the whole ordeal has lead him to completely repress his emotions and to avoid conversation about it. Accordingly, Kirk’s been increasingly dispirited for the past few months (with “rather less sanguinity than usual”), unwilling to confront Spock and slowly losing hope for their friendship. Through “Warm Thoughts” author implies that a lack of meaningful reconciliation after “Amok Time” might have resulted in tension between the two lifelong friends; the endangerment of Kirk’s life is the only thing that allows Spock to break free of his emotional restraint.

In the beginning of the story, nearly every early moment when Kirk and Spock make or nearly make physical contact (e.g. Spock gripping Kirk’s elbow to help him regain balance, or even just leaning forward to speak), Kirk shies away. The story later confirms that this was Kirk’s coping mechanism in the face of Spock’s intensifying aloofness:

Kirk’s confusion would eventually give way to hurt, and these were the most difficult times. Spock could not stand to see the captain looking wounded, because the captain so rarely did so [...]

The hurt would subsequently give way to anger—usually only subtly expressed, bitter little digs that were exactly what Spock deserved, when Spock treated every smile and friendly conversational sally from the captain with abrupt coldness. Only when the captain’s attitude dissolved into blankness after the anger did Spock feel he could relax again. This meant Kirk had resolved not to care one way or another, had finally determined that the banter and warmth and special moments they shared were gone for good and he would not try to retrieve them. Then Spock was finally out of danger. It meant that he had managed to resist the urge to comfort the captain.

Kirk, understandably, is salty as hell that Spock won’t talk to him. What’s so admirable about lettered’s writing is that we empathize with both characters, and accept them with all their flaws. Kirk is like a Space Elizabeth Bennet: pretty, witty, and playful, and Spock his conscientious and uber-rational counterpart. We see how Kirk’s pain affects Spock, who is himself in pain because desperately wants to help him but feels like he’ll make things worse. Instead, Spock focuses on what he thinks he can do, and touchingly runs through a mental list of what might physically help Kirk—wearing a sweater, the captain’s favorite coffee blend, a warm water (instead of sonic) shower, a blanket—and for all his familiarity with the captain, he fails to acknowledge that it is his own emotional restraint that has contributed to Kirk’s condition.

Kirk cares about his first officer; despite his feigned cheerfulness, he is still incredibly hurt by Spock’s refusal to confide in him. In the fic’s second sick bay scene, Spock and McCoy discover that Kirk simply believing he is warm causes his affliction to lessen:

Kirk glanced at Spock, then turned back to McCoy. “You mean, if I can convince myself I’m warm, my inner thermostat tones it down.”

“Yeah,” said the doctor. “Think warm thoughts.”

Inexplicably, Kirk looked at Spock again. “Well,” he said, and his smile was one that belonged exclusively to the captain—teasing, slightly rueful, utterly sincere. “Warm thoughts.” Kirk’s voice was a murmur.

“That,” said Doctor McCoy. “That right there. Keep it up.”

Spock cast his gaze to the floor. In certain instances Spock did not regard himself equal to the task of maintaining an emotional equilibrium if eye contact were maintained.

Eleven point eight seconds passed; then Kirk turned back to McCoy. “I can’t think warm thoughts forever. I’ve tried.”

“I can’t help it if some people are frigid.”

Amusingly, McCoy knows exactly what’s going on, and Kirk’s looking toward Spock when thinking of warm thoughts is inexplicable to the most intelligent crewmember on the Enterprise.

For the most part, the fic is alternately painfully and delightfully angsty, but there are a bunch of other funny moments as well. Spock seems to have A ThingTM for sweaters; at one point, he defends himself in a line that’s honestly so iconic:“I neither like them nor dislike them. Sweaters are logical.” Even so, lettered uses them meaningfully; Spock thinks to offer Kirk the sweater his mother made him, and in one of Spock and Kirk’s mind-melds Spock shows Kirk a very personal memory of a younger Spock speaking to his mother, who is knitting a sweater.

In “Warm Thoughts,” the whole will-they-or-won’t-they? cliché is tackled head-on, and instead of being irritating, I can actually dig it. Spock first suggests mind-melding as a way to help Kirk perceive warmth, and nearly all of Spock and Kirk’s four mind melds nearly devolve into straight up mind-sex until Spock, spooked, breaks the connection and leaves Kirk to “meditate.” The mind melds here are used as a tool to bare Spock and Kirk’s souls to each other; they generate more vulnerability and require more trust than probably any other contrivance in sci-fi. Vulnerability is central to the narrative as it is to most Hurt/Comfort fics, but also serves as a marker of the “androgyny” of Kirk and Spock’s relationship. Additionally, according to Lamb and Veith, the “...hurt-comfort theme...depends on Kirk’s and Spock’s “feminine” traits: compassion, tenderness, affection, gentleness, altruism, and, most important, the necessity for permission to initiate physical closeness” (Lamb and Veith 108). Part of Spock’s inner fight is that he is worried that exposing himself to the captain, with all his love of Kirk and hatred of himself, will completely destroy not just their relationship, but Kirk himself:

Spock wished that he could feign lack of comprehension, but he remembered what had occurred just before he had broken the mind link—hands touching, lips, the feel of skin to skin. Spock understood all too well, and yet to say so would require explaining that he could not act on such emotion without enslaving himself to it. To venture into such a relationship with the captain would risk reenacting his pon farr all over again, and there was nothing in the conceivable universe Spock less wanted to do than hurt his captain.

Before the fourth and final meld in the fic, Kirk is in the sickbay, his body temperature fatally dropping. Spock performs a hasty mind meld in order to stabilize him, while McCoy and Uhura hurriedly try to synthesize a cure. Spock’s memories involuntarily shift to the fight on Vulcan, at which point Kirk mentally interferes and leads both of their minds in a new direction, toward a new concept of heat: sex. In fact, some of the lines of the fic are reminiscent of T. Jonesy and Killa’s fanvid, “Closer,” such as “...thought was not in words but images, ideas, a feeling: the image of hips rolling. The low, hot snap of desire, a flame of want” and “Jim sent another image: hands on a back—brief, pornographic. With it, Spock could feel the heat of skin on his, the innocent sensation of fingers on his spine, the not-so-innocent sensation of a hard body under his.” The author doesn’t use the Vulcan mind meld simply as a vehicle for sex, but rather a means of binding Kirk and Spock in emotional intimacy. And after their mind meld, McCoy is finally successful in treating the captain. In “Warm Thoughts,” lettered explores a timeline in which the event of “Amok Time” are a lot more sexually charged, and the fallout a lot more agonizing. But, as the closing scene shows Spock seeking out Kirk to finally talk about what happened in Vulcan, the same incident that tore the pair apart has become the means of uniting them.

Or, as tumblr user transienttrash asked “fellas is it gay to have to fuck or die and declaring yourself cured of this after wrestling around in the dirt with your (dude) captain :/"

Yes. <3