One of the ions stirs. Even the incredible marvel of this romance cannot stand in the way of a crick in the neck. His movement disturbs the other, whose large. dark eyes open to him questioningly in the moonlight.

"My neck," Kirk murmurs sheepishly in a low voice.

The miracle beneath him reaches one hand to the back of Kirk's neck and gently massages away the pain. Kirk smiles in response, too sleepy to speak anymore. He sinks back down onto the strong, dense Vulcan body, warm with life, and falls back asleep, feeling the lull of Spock's heartbeat against his stomach. The simple rhythm proves that life is not all prose--that poetry comes true, and there is love beyond death.

Spock remains awake for a while, continuing to digest the new things that bombard his brain from the events of the day. Falling--no, being pulled into San Francisco Bay by his overexuberant friend and the subsequent immersion in water, an experience unique to his more human adventures, released into his mind the final flood of memories held back by Vulcan training and the difficulties of refusion. Until that day, Spock knew of his marriage to Admiral Kirk only because his family told him about it, and because it was legal record. For three months on his home planet, he thought and thought, philosophized and reasoned, to try to discover the nature of these sentiments and emotions he'd apparently felt for James Kirk in his other life. What were they? What did they do to one, and what good were they? How could they be recognized?

He didn't understand.

He treated Kirk with the respect he was due, of course--what else could be logical? But it was all he had--nothing further seemed natural.

At first.

He hit the water and everything rushed back, every feeling, every warm kiss, every deep breath that caressed the back of someone else's shoulder in a night, an afternoon, a lifetime. Every time his heart was squeezed ever so gently by the hand of he that held it. He knew it all.

But in this moment beneath the salted sea, he also knew that this was not just the love of his first life, but the love of all he lived--for indeed, in the time they spent together in these past months, awkward though it was for both men, Spock had taken Jim Kirk into his heart anew, with no memory of the first time. On the streets of their grand old city on the bay, and with the shy, silent steps of uncertainty but the resolution of fact, Spock fell in love with him all over again. Just as intensely.

In the bay, the new love mingled with the old, and Spock could taste it on his lips like the saltwater surrounding him. He tasted it as he kissed Jim in the sunlight, the beautiful shining sun brought home to the battered, windswept planet.

Now, it is the moon's turn, and Kirk and Spock rest under her glow.