Terrible Threshold

Fanfiction
Title:	Terrible Threshold
Author(s):	Emily Adams
Date(s):	1989
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
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Terrible Threshold is a Kirk/Spock story by Emily Adams.

It was published in the print zine Counterpoint #1.

Summary

"Spockʼs second pon farr is approaching, but McCoy is dismayed when it progresses faster than expected, with Kirkʼs presence the only thing seeming to help alleviate the symptoms and keep Spock alive."

Reactions and Reviews

1991

This was the best story in this issue, for me. The development of the relationship between Kirk and Spock was nicely written. I liked the fact that Kirk's heterosexuality was in play, and that Spock repressed his link with Kirk, so that they both didn't know about the bond between them. T'Lessa was a very interesting female character, too, and I enjoyed her part in revealing the truth to Kirk and Spock, who was nearing Pon Farr. Their Pon Farr was loving, yet also insistent. The anatomical differences in Spock were intriguing. The entire evolution of the relationship was smoothly done and believable.

2001

It's a pleasure to review one of my all-time favorite stories as representative for the Counterpoint series. The opening sequences and the non-Kirk and Spock sequences have never struck me as making a whole lot of sense, but when you concentrate on the Kirk and Spock sequences, you've really got a winner.

Spock, on the Enterprise, is going into pon farr. Kirk, his closest friend, wants to help in any way he can, but the sexual possibilities don't seem to occur to either man. Instead, Kirk is just there, sometimes even at night when he soothes a restless Vulcan so he can sleep, and McCoy almost has a paper written in his head about how the presence of a close friend can soothe the rutting Vulcan male during the time immediately before pon farr.

Since Spock proclaims he is unbonded, it should take him a good four weeks before he reaches the critical point, but for some reason his Time is progressing a good deal faster than that. When he and Kirk rescue a Vulcan Healer from certain death on a primitive planet, Kirk is severely burned and needs to go into the regeneration tank, but now there is a female Vulcan on board who might be able to help the rapidly failing, pain-wracked first officer.

Kirk, finally healed and on his feet, begs with the woman, who is frosty and all-Vulcan, to go to Spock, who is now almost comatose and confined to his quarters, to agree to a bond that might save his friend's life. The woman, reluctantly, goes to Spock's bedside, but she returns to Kirk and McCoy with startling news: Spock is already bonded. To his captain. Neither he nor Kirk had known.

The rest of the story is my absolute favorite part, and I can read and re-read it many times without tiring of it. Kirk goes in silence and determination and with a great deal of finally-acknowledged love to Spock's cabin, and there he looks down at the sleeping figure thinking: Bondmate. Husband. It's a new and startling concept, but it doesn't feel wrong to him in any way.

The way the author has the two of them finally making love seems absolutely just right, perfect in every way. (Well, except for the occasionally shifting povs, but don't get me started on that!)

I miss Emily Adams as a writer and as a friend I didn't know well enough. I consider this her best story. Read it.

2007

There’s a story by Emily Adams in Counterpoint 1 called “Terrible Threshold” that’s about when Spock shows every sign of going into pon farr again while he’s on the Enterprise. The only thing that seems to help the encroaching symptoms is when Kirk stays with him; it’s funny how they all, McCoy included, keep misinterpreting that, thinking the presence of a close friend helps during this time for Vulcans, when really, of course, it’s because Spock’s bonded mate is near.... It’s a serious story, another one where the author has Spock’s gonads, or testicular system, whatever you want to call it, located in his back. Didn’t I read about that in one of the very earliest K/S stories, one of the classics? It’s a concept that keeps cropping up now and then. Not as popular as the double ridges, of course, which I know Gayle F. invented. It’s a shame she didn’t put a patent out on the idea, she could have made a fortune! Hah!