For a moment, there is an easing of the shoulders. An agreement, looped back and between. And yet, Spock cannot help but think there is a sort of poetry in the way that Jim looks at him. A kind of art in the way of his mouth, curling at the edge. The abstract lay of freckles, the golden cast of skin—Spock recalls, for a moment, the pages of an ancient book. A tome, buried within the depths of his father’s library. Marked, he’d laid a finger upon the edge. He’d read:
And I, a sleeping moon / lightless, turn my face and palms to you / and cast upon your endless nights the bloody spill of stars.
Spock listens to the rapid thud of his heart in his ears. He feels it in his mouth, as Jim questions him. Asks him. Implores him. Let me help. How many times, he thinks, has Jim said this to him? How many times has he himself repeated it? How many times, he thinks, as he glances at Jim (for a moment, just a moment) will they both have the means to open themselves to the suggestion? Does he know?
Does Spock?
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself,” Spock recites, the corners of his eyes crinkling just so as he looks again from Jim. It should be familiar enough to him, the poem. As familiar as most. He too knows that such a feat as quelling their emotions made little sense to Humans. It made littler sense, when it came to reconciling what was reflected upon the surface was not what lay within. But, it was these philosophies and tenets that had settled his people most. It was these philosophies and tenets, Spock knows, that saved them. How else could such a species have forged such vivid poetry? Have carved from the rock the statues draped in heady sensuality? Have made for themselves the blades of weapons that mirrored the supple curve of bodies, the bosoms of their suns? Spock shifts. It is no more than a lean of the shoulder into Jim’s, but it grounds him. It makes something in him go calm and still and quiet.
“We meditate. Play music,” he says, after a long moment. The conversation resumes, answers given. Yet, there is no hardship to be found in what next he says. “But, I find there is certain sense of peace associated with your presence.”
There almost always had been. Since the time they had first met, since his hand laid against his—but, there is more to cover. There is more to answer for. Jim presses and on and so too must Spock, it seems.
“I had meant it in connection to my nature,” he says, a near sigh of a thing. But, once the cycle had been started, it was indeed most probable that it would repeat. It did not matter, the issue of his ancestry. “However, at that time?”
Spock shakes his head.
“None. It was T'Pring who raised the challenge in the depths of my blood fever. Reason and logic — it would not have appealed to me then. It is a biological impetus, one that spares no ‘higher functioning,’ as you say." Driven only by what is primal and profane, there would have been no means to suggest anything to him. There was only the urge to claim or be claimed. To die, he thinks, or die trying. "It was you, that she chose as her champion."
Doubtlessly, Jim should view it as a cruelty. But, logic pure and true held no such considerations. It operated only within the confines of conclusion and consequence, the moving parts as sure as they are certain. It was logic that had guided T’Pring’s hand to challenge, but it was emotion that led her to Jim. If there were ever any that match Spock whilst shielding her intended, it was always Jim. It was always Jim, who might have spun him back from the ledge, who might have held him from the edge with the steel and iron of his arms. If there were anyone, anything— it would have been Jim who might have unraveled the weave of his biology. It would have been Jim, who might have convinced him.
In the end, it was T’Pring who had outpaced him. It was T’Pring, who retained face for their families. It was she, left with a taste for Human volatility, that had made the final separation. Knife in the palm, she and Stonn were free to marry. But, he had wondered if her want should serve her as well as having. He had wondered, if she too would one day be left with the doubt of her decisions as he was once left in doubt of her. The bitter dregs of knowledge, the fact that what could be was often better than what was — for now, she had her freedom. Her freedom, bought with the gravity of Spock’s loss.
Loss, he knew now, that held no permanency. Loss, that dissolved in the bright arc of Jim’s voice behind him in the pale lights of the med bay, form both warm and solid beneath Spock’s palms. For all that it is subconscious, Spock seeks it even now. In the consideration of the boundary that separates them, thread and textile, he finds himself focusing upon the press and push of Jim’s fingers against the barrier of the linen. He considers the heat of them, trapped within the fabric. He considers, but finds himself making of his own hand a bowl. An upturned cup, that Jim might tip his into.
He knows that Jim’s mind calls to him, leans across the barrier as though it were nothing more than pretense, but Spock knows he cannot heed it. He cannot not heed it, not in full. He cannot heed it, no matter the depth and willingness that lingers beneath each extended conversation, each minute tilt of his chin. To want, he thinks once again, is so different than having. And to have such brilliance caught against his own body, to learn what it is to be chained to one such as himself—
How might he presume that he should be wanted? Wanted, he knows, long-term?
"It is not so simple a thing, replacing a bond of that nature," Spock opts for instead, his dark eyes still focused upon his lap. It is easier, like this. A coward’s route, but the words came smoother. They did not attempt to trip up in the mouth, to tangle themselves irreparably behind the bank of his teeth. “As such, my options are speculative.”
He tips his head. The movement lacks a certain finesse, drags as his vision does to resettle against the far wall. He does not know how else he might place it. Fatigue settles deep into the bones.
“To establish another of that magnitude is not a decision to be made lightly. For both parties, it runs considerable risk,” he pauses, words brittle in the mouth as he finds them. Each syllable that leaves him feels as though a bruise. “If one decides it is no longer wanted, it may not be possible to sever it without injury. Moreover, a cycle spent in another’s company would serve only to strengthen it.”
Though he may not know the whole of Jim’s thoughts, Spock does know his tendencies. He knows he would offer such gifts blindly, without question or thought. He knows Jim would offer it to him, at the expense of himself – at the expense of his independence. He would offer it, out of friendship.
And Spock?
He could not allow it. He could not abide it. Not when Jim deserved his own choices, his own emotions – his own ability to love.
Sometimes, Spock's mind is a mystery to Jim. While it is true they're aligned on many things, and truer still that Jim suspects he might know Spock the deepest of anyone he's ever known - sometimes, the looks he gives him are indecipherable. Jim has always found it best to just meet Spock's dark gaze, to accept the unknowable; that in some instances, perhaps Jim's presence is all that's truly required, as Spock sifts through the rest, spilling the endless grains of sand between his fingertips.
The poem gets another gentle laugh out of Jim, a titter that's quiet, relatively, but louder in the space between them. Of course Spock knew Whitman - hell, Jim already knew that he did - but the fact that it was so rare to find something Spock didn't know was something of a delight. And a pastime of Jim's, especially now with a physical library at their disposal. Spock leans into him, and Jim rocks back against him, a gentle sway and nudge of their shoulders, before he too stills, comfortable. If it's a human fallacy, so be it, but with Spock at his side, where Jim can offer whatever support his friend will be willing to accept from him - there's nothing they can't weather, right?
"Congratulations," Jim snorts, shaking his head good-naturedly, before he tips it up to catch Spock's eye. "You're the first person to ever string those words together and aim them at me."
But he can't deny it's pleasing to hear, as plainly as Spock was ever likely to say it. Truer still that Jim felt the same way - he always had, and had been identifying it more explicitly since their tenure here in Aldrip together began. Jim squeezes his arm through the blanket once more in tacit agreement, canting his head to listen as Spock continues to power through his explanation. And power through he does - of course it would be Jim. Who else? It's all starting to make some horrible amount of sense, the scene playing itself out in Jim's mind's eye in technicolor, too vivid. He's been at the other end of Spock's fists, tasted copper and seen stars - and that was an iota of what he could have done. Stripped of all logic? Jim's not sure how he would have even begun to have fought him - but he does know he would have tried.
It seems T'Pring - and now he's got a name to add to the shitlist, good - knew the same. It presents itself like a coward's loophole to Jim, one that would leave her and whomever her true champion was entirely unscathed. Did she know what it would do to Spock? Did she care? Worse, had she counted on it? Where is the logic in cruelty, in savaging another to get what you desired? Was that not the whole point of switching to a system of logic - to avoid such uncivilized mauling of the soul?
The ire it inspires, Jim swallows, burying it deep in the center of his chest. Secrets it away, as Spock leans closer, bridges the divide, tells him without words what it is he needs. His hand, a tentative half-moon beneath the fabric, and Jim mimics the motion with care, letting them come together with gentleness that belays the fury on Spock's behalf. Whatever Spock needs - whatever he is willing to accept from Jim - it is his. It always has been, and perhaps it's not as subtle as either of them might have thought, if T'Pring could see it plainly enough to abuse it but - this is their way of things.
If this is all there is, too, Jim is willing to give it. Willing to live in the permanency of their friendship, and be grateful for it. He thinks that it might not be all, though, after last night - that the things they do not say are closer to the surface than they appear, rising closer and closer still. It's not the right time for this discussion (God, when is it ever?), complicated further by all of this. Jim gaze traces the contours of Spock's face before he looks away, ingrained politeness as Spock speaks - it feels too private, and he's sure his own expression is less and less controlled as he absorbs the information.
"...I see." It's too fantastical, really, for him to fully grasp it. To be fair, it's not as though he has any similar concept by which to understand it except just that - the fantastical. Bonds, so deep and inextricable as to be integral to the whole - like destiny, or fate, or the other intangibilities that surround age-old stories of true love. That they could exist without the imagined love being there is - hard to understand, in full. Upsetting, in truth, that Spock should be left without, that he should be endangered by the lack. Jim frowns, well on his way to the suggestion Spock had already predicted - though it remains shapeless, for the moment. "And you can't subside the fever without a bond?"
No life-saving sex before marriage, evidently. The shapeless begins to take its form, understanding starting to connect behind Jim's eyes like gossamer filaments, drawing together to illustrate the whole. He lets the beat of silence pervade, just the two of them sitting on the edge of the bed, sunlight rising on the opposite wall as the sun crawls higher into the sky, lighting up the morning.
"You didn't tell him any of this." It's not a question, because Jim doesn't need a forced confirmation on something he already knows to be true. Knows, because of course Spock wouldn't, not unless - well, unless he were compelled. Literally.
The why sits there in the air, begging Jim to take it. To ask, when Spock must answer. But the thought makes him feel vaguely ill, the idea of taking more than Spock is willing to give. Or, perhaps, of hearing an answer he was not meant to know. Spock did lash out, only minutes ago, and Jim didn't want to press that further. Years of love have been forgot / in the hatred of a minute.
The silence stretches, all that is unspoken laid at their feet. Jim sighs, tipping his head back, and maybe it's an excuse not to have to look at Spock and betray the nerves that bubble up from somewhere inside of him, but hell, he'll let himself have this one. "There is only one thing in this universe I would never forgive you for, Spock."
Jim drops his gaze from the ceiling, centering it on Spock's again, hand squeezing his through the fabric. "Leaving me, before your time. The rest - we can handle. Together, not - not on your own."
"Just - " Jim doesn't know how to say it. How to wrap all that is and was and will be up in a single sentence, or even ten sentences, twenty - to press home how much he means it. That nothing Spock could ever ask of him would be as unacceptable as him leaving, as him harming himself for whatever reason he deemed justifiable. As intolerable as Spock rooting himself in Jim's life, and making the decision by himself to walk out of it. It may not be a crazy Vulcan marriage mind bond, but Jim's sure it would kill him just as similarly. "Just don't, okay?"
And it is perhaps those things that Spock did not know, that Spock did not yet comprehend that made life so curious.
It is illogical to think that anyone should know everything in space and time, that anyone should grasp the enormity of what could be and was and is as a whole. To Spock, there was always more to learn. There was always more to improve. There was always another mountain to climb once the previous was conquered in a steadier stride than the one before it. To grow and to change held more esteem and more appeal than remaining than same, but there too came the pain of existence. There too came the stranger agonies, the absolutes that one cannot be shielded from no matter the method or training.
Spock had learned it young. He had learned it in the turn of Vulcan's bright suns, in the nights that engulfed the horizon. He had learned it from the day he was born, a child of science and consequence. For all he was placed upon the consciousness of his world a miracle, he too was considered abomination. He too was challenged by dual and dueling expectations, those who would come to adore and revile him for all the wrong reasons. To most, perhaps it would be enough to hamper the fires that licked at the fabric of himself. To others, perhaps it would be foolish of him not to lash out more than he had against the narrow paths they'd tried to lay for him. But —
There is a certain pleasure, in learning with Jim. Charting what has not yet been charted, being the first to brush against the soils of new and unseen planets — seeing Jim, alight with an interest that too suffused him. Folding botanical specimens into his palm, craning his neck to peer into the stars that hung again above their heads, there was nothing that could keep Jim from movement. From chasing, Spock thinks, the same and binary formations.
And Spock?
Even now, he follows the pattern of his Captain's words, leans into the spaces where Jim welcomes him. His cupped palm in his through the fabric, the simmer of Spock's emotions distant enough not to harm him — he curls his fingers. Linens bunched and smoothed over the backs of Jim's knuckles, he maps the approximate shape of each valley and dip that lies between each finger, feels the heat of palm as it bleeds through the bulk of the blanket. He does not know what it is Jim thinks, what it is he feels, but Spock might take his guesses. He might speculate.
"I find it difficult, to think that I have not already said this," he says, words low and solemn. "Indirectly, perhaps. I find it more difficult still, to think that no one else has too."
And now? He might assume, feeling the weight of Jim's eyes against him. He might form theories, knowing how it is they trace the shape of his profile. He might confirm, within error, as he glances up and away.
"No," he says, the word a burr in the heat as it is in the chest. It prickles along the soft flesh of his throat, his dark eyes sweeping lower to the floor again beneath them. It is an answer to both. To each in turn. He knows it to be useless, to refuse the rest to rise with it. He feels the barest twinge of an ache forming at the base of his skull, the shudder of something deeper and more profound bubbling up the surface. "I could not have told him. I did not..."
He takes a breath. The tail of it hitches strange and dark and sharp.
"I could not have asked this of him. Under those circumstances, without the full knowledge of what it would entail... Knowing, that even a temporary bond might remain."
He knows he need not specify why. Not this time. The information has been given, laid in such a way that it would be difficult to miss. The fear that Jim may tire of him, might grow to resent him when he may have chosen only to bind himself to Spock out of obligation —
Spock focuses upon his own respiration. He counts. The pain he feels now is unrelated to the pain the sentencing casts upon his person. It is a mental one, intertwined with the physical. To grant such emotion without pause, without his own means and methods — it takes a moment. It takes a moment, to pull back into himself. Wrenched open, it takes time to gather the scattered aspects of what makes him him.
And, perhaps, it is all for naught when it is Jim avoids his eyes as Spock chooses now to take him in. An upward tilt of his head to pair his, chest vising about the profundity of what it is Jim tells him. What it is he asks him, as though Spock were something to be missed in ways that were deemed unfathomable. Unforgivable, should it have been in some way prevented.
Spock does not speak. Not for a long moment. The words tangle up in his throat, catch against the back of his teeth. The weight of what he might say and could say makes the backs of his eyes burn, makes of itself an effort to find the words that have so often alluded him.
And still, his hand grasps back at Jim's.
"Jim," he says, finally, the name a soft and tender thing in the mouth. It dissolves at the end, searching and so rarely uncertain. "There are always risks. Were it to come between myself and you, you are the Captain. Without you, I..."
He pauses. To his ear, the sailors are calling out at the docks. The ocean ebbs and flows, unimpeded. But, to Spock, all there is this bedroom. All there is himself. Jim.
"There is no time, where I would find myself compelled to choose myself above you," he continues, voice soft enough to be missed were Jim not pressed as close as he now is. "You cannot die. I know it is illogical — selfish. But," he takes another breath, gaze dropping again to the tangle of their covered palms and fingertips.
"I will do only what I can," he says, quiet and resolute. It is as much as he might give to him. As much as he might vow. "I will promise you my cooperation. To be more... Forthright, with what I might singularly control."
Jim had known from a very young age that he was not meant for the planet beneath his feet. Born on the shuttle, it was as though he'd been searching all his life for a way to return. He remembers sitting in the observation deck, on the ship bound for Earth after his disastrous colony experience, bony knees pulled up to his chin, watching the light streak by. How strange, that a child should turn to the stars for comfort. Perhaps it was because planets had never done him any favors - but when Pike had asked him, do you think you were destined for more?, they had both known Jim had only one answer.
There is a reason Jim and Spock get along, beyond a shared love of chess and similar taste in books. There is an insatiable desire for more that lurks beneath their skin, that certain quality that sends people like them up to the stars, instead of staying dirtside. There are those who are meant to stay in one place, and there are those who are meant to walk into the unknown - though if they're being honest, the pair of them were running, more often than not.
Jim doesn't think he could do it with anyone else by his side, truth be told. There is no one else he is as in sync with, no one else whose thirst for knowledge rivals his own. It is, perhaps, one of the qualities Jim most greatly admires in Spock - and that list, admittedly, is quite long.
"Would I lie to you?" Jim jokes, though it lands more gently than it should to be fully effective as a jest. Maybe it's because Spock is holding his hand again, even through the fabric of the blanket, like it's his tether to tranquility, to keeping his feet on the ground throughout all of the morning's chaos. Jim lets him, keeps still and covered beneath the fabric, save for when Spock's fingers map out his second knuckle, the scar tissue there, hand twitching to meet him. "Seems we make good company, then."
Inappropriate though it most certainly is, a part of Jim wants to laugh, the hard sound bubbling in his chest, begging for freedom. He tamps down on the urge - it's not born from humor, but that kind of desperate disbelief that occurs when someone is being so monumentally ridiculous. He's smart enough to pick up what Spock is putting down, what he's laying so tentatively at Jim's feet, as though he would ever dare to kick at it - but it's almost beyond the pale, truly.
Jim can't imagine a world where he turns Spock down, Vulcan brain bond or not. He can only hope the other Jim didn't give Spock a reason to think that he would, because then Jim will have to kick his own ass, and hopefully that doesn't rip a hole in spacetime or something equally ridiculous.
"Spock," Jim finally starts, glad that they're not touching skin on skin, that Spock cannot feel the whirlwind of emotions he's cycled through in the beat of silence between their sentences. He can probably intuit it well enough, God only knows what Jim's expression looks like now, but he squeezes Spock's hand through the blanket, firm and grounding. "You misunderstand. You're not asking, because it's not a question."
"If I were suffering from the same," Perhaps putting it another way will get it through Spock's head. Jim tilts his head, fixing Spock with the full weight of his gaze. "Would it be a question, for you?"
Jim sighs quietly, an exhalation of air that eases the tightness in his chest as Spock begins to speak. Starting with Jim; somehow, Spock says his name like no one ever has. Like it's something precious, like he's afraid Jim's going to revoke his right to it. It never fails to capture Jim's attention, to seat something warm in the pit of his stomach. Amidst the anxiety, the precariousness of this entire conversation - that flower still manages to bloom.
The rest is -
Jim's pretty sure his brain needs a reboot, or he needs to wake from a coma or something, because it just doesn't even seem like hearing those words out of Spock's mouth could have been real. It's dangerously close to something else entirely, something that Jim doesn't even know how to begin unpacking, in addition to everything else this morning.
Blessedly, Spock doesn't ask him to. Once again, he's glad they're not touching, skin to skin, so Spock doesn't have to feel the wave of guilt that laps at him as he says, you cannot die. Once was more than enough for the both of them, it seemed.
"I'm not asking you to," Jim says quietly, squeezing Spock's hand back - perhaps too tightly, but it helps, to feel him solid, real beside him. There is, perhaps, a part of him that is grateful he was the one behind the radiation glass - Jim's not sure what he would have done if their fates were reversed, and he had to watch Spock slump, lifeless, on the other side. "Not unless - if it's necessary, in our line of work."
Even as he says it, Jim is well aware of the irony and hypocrisy in his words - he went back for Spock, violated the Prime Directive with barely a thought, lost his ship and his rank because of it - and he'd do it all again, no hesitation. Spock, in this instance, likely wouldn't listen - but Jim would be remiss if he didn't say it anyway.
"Me too." Another squeeze to their covered hands, and Jim leans into him, brushing their shoulders together. "I promise. All we've got is each other, Spock. I can't...I can't do this without you."
One could claim willful blindness and assume Jim means Aldrip and all the situation entails, but Jim knows that they're both aware he means it in the larger sense. Still, after everything Spock's told him - everything he's been forced to tell him, in addition to everything he's chosen to - the least Jim can do is return a little of the honesty, perhaps in the way they communicate best.
"I cannot live without my life." Jim's smile is soft, shoulder a warm point of contact between them. "I cannot live without my soul."
There had always been more to the missions, to the endless spill of endless stars. There had always been a steady and easy rapport, a willingness to answer the other in ways that could not and would not have meshed with another not to their exacting tastes. Jim, for all that he was at once steady and restless, was the only that seemed to contain the curiosity that made of Spock a haven. It was he that steered Spock upon paths more emotive, more permissive of the Humanity that lurked beneath the surface without naming it for what it was. And it was Spock, that made Jim consider what was factual and calculated. When Jim could not sense that something was off, it was Spock who might have informed him. And Jim, he thinks, Jim—
There is no other that knows Spock like Jim does. There is no other that knows Jim. Spock holds what is secreted against the ribcage, stows it within the metaphorical spaces of his Vulcan heart. He understands the nights where Jim cannot sleep, knows the strength of his tea, knows the way his hands move when he is aimless. He knows that his compassion has endangered him many a time, but it is such a trait that Spock could never find himself in distaste. There will never be another that knows them as know each other. There will never be another, so long as it is they both live.
But, to Jim’s question: what else might Spock do? He shakes his head, more implicit than not, the shadowed corners of his lips curving in a way that only Jim might call upon. He knows that Jim would never lie to him. Not if he could help it. Not if it was not otherwise demanded of him. It is something Spock himself had to do once. It had brought him no pleasure, to disguise it from him. But – Spock listens. He listens, through the heavy buzz that settles over his skin, that turns less pleasant stimulus to a needling throb. Spock keeps close anyway, holds to Jim anyway, as though the idea of separation was a far more intolerable a concept. He feels Jim’s eyes upon him, a heavy and tangible weight.
He meets Jim’s attentions. Spock knows no other way.
“No,” he says, the word a confession and promise both. He tastes the declaration upon his tongue, smoke and embers. It stings, but it does not burn. Not in truth. When it is something he has known from the beginning, how might its appearance have taken him off-guard? How may it have injured Spock, when it is a wound as obvious as the inevitable impulses that would subsume him in the pursuit of keeping Jim where he ought to be – to ensure he remained where it was he belonged? “You are the one I could never refuse.”
It is no revelation, no sudden epiphany. He had known it from the time he’d rested his palm against Jim’s in the galley, young as they both were then. He had known it from the moment he had completed Jim’s sentence for him, plucked his emptied glass from the table as he reached for it to place upon a passing tray. There had been no mistaking it, no matter how he had run all these long years.
“Jim,” he pours over to him, his name more the hush of a supplicant in Spock’s mouth than any other iteration. It is a question, a query – a verification. It is all three in sum, Spock knows, as he finds within himself the shape of the words that wish to come pair with Jim’s. As he tips his head in mirror, the brush of Jim’s shoulder an anchor in turn to him.
“He’s more myself than I am,” Spock recites, his dark eyes searching. Even if Spock might discern the shape of the boundary, there is something within him that cannot believe what it is. Such things were never built for him, were never permitted. Such things were fable and legend, but how else might Spock have known him? Jim, no matter the slope of his nose or the curl of his lips. Jim, his freckles displaced as though new constellations. His eyes, the color of the birds that made within the Forge their nests and sung sweet and soft and high. Spock grips back, knowing innately the strength and pressure that would suit him. “Whatever our souls are made of…”
He pauses, allows Jim the opportunity to confirm what it is he has settled upon. For all that Spock has grasped it as fact, Jim has not been made aware of it yet. He has not been made truly cognizant, though Spock may have suspected, may have theorized, may have made guesses both educated and – he holds Jim’s gaze. He holds it, as though to look away would be to flinch from the inevitable crescendo. To lose, Spock thinks, what it is that they have built between them all these long and lonely years no matter the distance and time and circumstances. No matter, Spock knows, the infinitesimal possibility that they would ever come to meet at such a point and in such a place.
Jim is a wanderer, if not by nature, then by nurture. It's probably a mix of both, if Jim's being totally honest with himself. Perhaps the call to the stars had less to do with the expanse of the universe, laid out in front of him, and more to do with the fact that he wasn't going to find his pointy-eared counterpart with two feet stuck to the ground - and some part of him knew it, somewhere deep and instinctual. He could not have guessed at the beginning all that would come to pass between them, any more than he could have guessed what was next for them here, in their current predicament - except couldn't he, though? From the very first, when their eyes had locked over a sea of red - didn't he know, somehow?
Spock had known, both times Jim had found him, out of the blue. In the cave, the entire situation had all felt like the weirdest kind of nightmare, and Jim had never examined it too closely. It was too painful, too wrapped up in everything else, and then the meld with Spock Prime had well and truly turned Jim's thoughts from the matter, his entire mind and memory shying away from the encounter. How had he known, so immediately? The memories he'd gleaned from the Spock next to him - Jim didn't look like his Prime equivalent. Sure, he was close enough - same dirty blond hair, an approximation of the same build. Perhaps his eyes would be the same shade of hazel, were it not for the circumstances of his birth. But he could just as easily have been any other random Starfleet officer, stumbling around on the docks - how had Spock known?
At this point, the question is moot well, for the next paragraph or so, interesting though it may be. Jim knows Spock better at this point than he knows even himself; knows the shape his vowels take when he's tired, knows the cut of his cheek, when Spock is contemplating his next move in a round of chess. Knows the light in his eyes that can only come from the excitement of discovering something previously unknown to him; knows the steadiness of his presence, in the face of every adversity the universe has thought to throw at them. He knows Spock, and this Spock - day in and day out, sharing not just a house but building a home, a life together, for whatever that ended up being worth in the end - he knows him all but completely.
Spock does not shy away from him, allows their heads to draw together as they sit there, talking, and the relief is an easy thing, lingering barely-contained beneath Jim's skin. As much as the admission to Jim's question may be coerced, it seems to come easy to Spock's lips - it's the truth, and in the middle of this frankly bananas conversation, not one that is a hardship to bear.
You are the one I could never refuse.
Jim might not be fully aware of just how deeply Spock means that, but he doesn't need the details, nor the Council's bullshit compulsion, to know Spock is telling him the truth. He holds Spock's gaze, meets that secreted shade of a smile with an understanding one of his own; more pronounced, always, in the areas where Spock is predisposed to subtlety.
"Finally, Mr. Spock." Jim doesn't look away, doesn't cheapen his words with a joke, though the undercurrent of humor is present - how can it not be, when the idea that Jim would ever choose another option has been spoken aloud (as if there was ever a choice to be made, that it was not simply a foregone conclusion, and whatever 'sacrifice' Spock perceived it to be, Jim would give it gladly)? "We've found something we agree on."
And then Spock continues, pulling them past the borders of anything they've charted before, and out into the unknown.
That he quotes Brontë back at him is really Jim's own fault - he set himself up for that one, he can't deny it. The intense eye contact is also to be expected, to a certain degree - but Spock does not look away. Jim stares back at him, caught like space dust in the inescapable gravity of a passing moon. Spock refuses to lessen the impact of his words, to couch them in something more along the lines of their usual back and forth - instead content to let them lie plainly between them - with nothing to follow them but the blank Jim is filling in: whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
The understanding dawning on his expression would be comical, if it weren't so utterly bewildering. Jim blinks, then blinks again, all too aware of the drag of the seconds as they idle by, lost to the silence that pervades between them. He's no walking chronometer, like his companion here, but it's got to be a good sixty seconds before he looks away and exhales a jittery, amused huff of air - too breathy to be an actual laugh - breaking the stillness.
And yet, when Jim's gaze returns to him, Spock continues looking at him like that, not taking the out, patient as ever - and Jim's axis tilts a little further.
"...you're serious." Not a question, and not another bit of poetry, passed between them like folded notes on a playground, because for all they've bantered previously, this is certainly the boldest either of them have been - and Spock's deviating pretty severely from their previously established patter. It's not reading like flowery language, but a confirmation of - what? Even thinking it brings some color to his face. "You think - bullshit."
The word slips out, capping the sentence that Jim can't even say out loud - can't put the thought into words other than Brontë's lyrical language, without risk of embarrassing himself. He hasn't pushed Spock away, hasn't moved to free himself from their configuration atop the cedar chest, but Jim's brow does furrow, hands squeezing Spock's through the blanket - though whether it's a conscious choice or instinct, it's hard to tell. "Sorry, that wasn't - I didn't mean - I don't understand."
Doesn't he, though? Somewhere deep, somewhere instinctual - there is something within him that calls for Spock, always. That Spock is acknowledging it must mean - it must mean he senses it, too. What.
It is later, that Spock will find himself beneath the thrall of a greater exhaustion than he might have recalled in recent years. It is later, when he is between sleep and waking, that he will curl as though a Terran cat beneath the lay of fresh linens, feel his body attempt to adjust to the persistent roll and sway his vestibular system erroneously interprets.
It is here, that he will admit that the feeling he possessed in the silence between Jim’s denial and his retraction was a singular and simmering dread.
To be so swiftly followed by relief, tentative and fearful – Spock’s throat bobs, as he watches him. His lips part. And, no matter how patient and still he might appear to Jim, there is a tension that only releases from the curve of his shoulders when Jim speaks, processes. In whole or in part, it does not matter. It is then, and only then, that Spock draws breath again. All else seems… Secondary, to be broached later no matter how much a temporary balm it might have been for them.
“Yes,” he says. Without hesitation, without emphasis, without any such gravity that would make most consider why it was they had said as they did to begin with, Spock passes the answer over to him. He hands it to him, as one would hand one a flower – with the certainty that one should wrap their fingers about its stalk, hold it to their chest without suffocation. And yet, beneath even that – he watches.
“I…” Spock starts, pauses. The words will come as they are bid, but there is something in Spock that prickles at the notion. The information that has been wrenched from the secreted parts of him, the irritants formed by age and weather into misshapen pearls – they are not another’s to do with as they please. They are not another’s to hold between their teeth, to make a mockery of. They are not theirs to sample, to sieve for what is worthy. No, Spock thinks, these have always belonged to him.
“There is a word, to describe such connections,” he begins again, a shallow stitch forming between the dark of his brows. He thinks of the times his mother would wear such similar expressions, how it took so much will not to simply reach across and smooth it. Smooth it, in recognition and commiseration, with the meat of his thumb. “A term.”
He wonders if Jim often finds such impulses, wonders if he feels them as acutely as he does. In the mornings, where the wild sweep of Jim’s hair ventures into angles once unknown to man, he wonders if Jim too has caught himself more than once. Has caught himself more than once, pulling his hand back and away when Spock does not see it. Even now, his hands seem to itch. They itch, as Jim’s too seem to, grasping as he does for both of Spock’s beneath the linens. Spock finds himself unwilling, but not unable, to not squeeze his hands in response.
Jim needs it more than he does, he reasons. He knows it is in part a falsehood, but there is neither harm nor illogic in providing what is needed across. And there is not illogic, Spock thinks, in the feeling that he carries with him. Still, he does not place blame upon Jim for his reaction. To himself, such a notion seemed improbable. Impossible, perhaps. But, was it not Jim who did not believe in such declarations? Was it not Spock who, despite his better judgement, began to believe in such concepts too?
Spock’s dark eyes search him, gaze touching upon the spaces between the curve of a brow, the cut of a cheek. That Jim has looked back at all is something he had not in full anticipated, but it surprises him little in the aftermath. So often, it had been Spock who had flinched first. Who had, in full, the reason such a conversation began to start. His refusals, his inability to allow himself to want—
“You have been to me a friend, a brother. A… Companion, in all things,” Spock says, the syllables turning over his tongue as a Human within their peculiar confessionals, their perceived misdeeds spoken through velvet and lattice to the one who might hear them upon the other side. And yet, it is not himself that he had committed such injustices toward. It was not Jim, who had been at fault. “I had once told you, that to feel friendship for you caused me great shame. It was not you, who I was ashamed of.”
His fingers twitch. Ache blooms anew in the pit of his chest, in the pit of his stomach. The world beyond Jim is flat and static, the heat of the summer tart and sour on his tongue. Jim’s eyes are so blue and so disbelieving, but there is something in them. No matter how unable he is to understand the complexities of Human emotion, he too carries them. For all he might deny that they exist, they still dog him. Fang and tooth at the heel, they are as much his own as they are Jim’s.
“This… Concept. It is the singular one I might ascribe to you. ‘Friend,’ as a Human definition, does not exist in our lexicon. It is only this.”
With gentle intention and with the meat of his thumb, he presses the word into the skin. Letter by letter, he uses the codes that they know – he taps it out to him. T’hy’la. A summary, a legend, something spoken about sparingly among those scholars who would dig into the brutal and bloodied rituals that once so defined them. Vulcans, who cleaved space for themselves under and amid the net of the stars. That Spock uses the language of others to portray the depth of his thoughts, the depths of his… Regard is only circumstantial. It is the only way he might have felt capable of, until held to the knife of some instated consequence. And even then, who was to say that he should deserve this? Who is to say that he should have such an opportunity to want?
Still, ahead of all that pushes him forward toward the inundation of information, he tells Jim. He implores, syllables breaking soft at the swell of his own lip.
“That I found you that day at the pier – it was no accident. I felt you, as I have felt you before. I knew, no matter how illogical it should appear to you, that you were Jim.”
It wasn’t. He recalls it. He recalls it, across the scent of sea and sand. He remembers it, vivid as anything else he might hold frame of his memories. Jim, disoriented and unsteady. Jim, who looked upon him as he most often looked upon him. A relief, a comfort.
Jim is trying his very best not to gape, but it's a losing battle. At the end of the day, Jim is human - dazzlingly, blindingly, stupidly human - and his emotions war with each other for dominance quite plainly. Surprise, wariness, delight, concern - they swim behind his eyes, overlapping each other, building to a swell of something too dangerous to name. To name the emotion gives it teeth, sharp in their bite, pinpricks that threaten to pierce his skin. Each word out of Spock's mouth seems increasingly improbable, so much so that Jim wonders, with a rush of deja vu, if he should stop holding Spock's hands so he can look down and count his fingers.
But not impossible.
No, not impossible.
For as much as Jim is laboring under incredulity, Spock's response is rooted in undeniable certainty. There's no hesitance in his answer, no pause of thought behind it. As though his confirmation doesn't require it, because it's been predetermined. And again - Jim knows it's the truth, regardless of the compulsion Spock is suffering; the way Spock meets his gaze, intent solid and firm in dark eyes - Jim knows he would never mislead him. Not about this.
Jim feels the back of his neck burning as Spock continues, stunned into silence. The tension Spock's exhibiting begins to reach him through the initial disbelief, but Jim just keeps Spock's hands in his, firm, shoulder leaning in just enough to press intentionally against his companion's. Were he given leave to do so, Jim certainly would be more tactile - holding himself back is the norm, and even then, he slips. Even then, he is so comfortable in Spock's orbit - more and more, these days, with their experiments in skin-on-skin contact - he's definitely aborted more casual motions than he's able to count, and some, he's unable to quell.
He's long attributed it to his human nature - but this conversation, the dawning understanding in the back of his mind - could it really be something else entirely? Is that what this feeling - the one he's always dismissed as fantasy, a facet of human fallacy - truly is?
Spock's gaze is almost too much, but Jim's also powerless to look away, staring a hole right through him. There is more to this than Federation Standard can encompass, and wordless explanation isn't an option at the moment - which is probably a good thing, given the disorganized state of Jim's brain on a good day, and the big ?!?! klaxon ringing in there right now. His disbelief takes on a new shade - Spock is dead fucking serious about this, that much is evident, and it makes an alarming amount of sense, given the context. Once is by chance, twice is a coincidence - but it's a pretty ridiculous interdimensional coincidence if that holds true.
Besides, when in the blue fuck has anything in his life ever been a coincidence?
Jim's silent, mouth dry as Spock gifts him the Vulkansu, secreted against his palm. T'hy'la. Friend, brother, companion. Soulmate, to use the human turn of phrase. He feels guilty for wondering, after everything he's shared with this Spock, but he can't help it - Is that what Spock meant, at the bar? He may yet realize it, one way or another. Does the Spock of his universe know?
Then, of course, it dawns on him that he did. He must. The memory has dogged Jim lately, ever since the tower, shaken loose by his conversation with Minato, by watching the kid wake up from unimaginable pain, the kind Jim drank to forget. ɪ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴏ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴡʜʏ ɪ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅɴ'ᴛ ʟᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅɪᴇ...ᴡʜʏ ɪ ᴡᴇɴᴛ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ꜰᴏʀ ʏᴏᴜ.
Because you are my friend.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Blessedly, Jim doesn't let that thought pass his lips; instead, the silence after Spock finishes is deafening. Jim's not sure how much information his brain can absorb before he's just floating around in what the fuck soup; hell, he may already be there. This Spock hasn't told his Jim either, and he could throttle him for it, honestly. Content to die in solitude, as though he would not be stealing a piece of Jim with him, a piece he hadn't even realized he was missing - though once whole, he has to wonder how could he ever have been so blind to it.
Because it's batshit crazy, that's the answer, actually. Batshit crazy, and 100% accurate. Sounds about par for the course.
"I thought it was just wishful thinking." The words Jim finally settles on are careful, quietly contemplative - but confirmation, affirmation. He feels it, too, and he has not turned Spock away; if anything, his grasp has tightened. There are a hundred, million things he could say, questions that bubble to the surface, but Jim stifles them in their tracks. This is far too delicate - too precious - to taint with interference. "I didn't think you would - not with me."
Never a question of whether or not Spock could. No, Jim had never doubted that, whatever insults he had ever lobbied, and to whatever effect - no, that was not in question.
Jim can all but feel his heartbeat in his ears, the heat on the back of his neck ablaze, now, but he knows how he needs to punctuate this. He's overwhelmed - they both are, certainly - but he needs to make sure he's absolutely clear, here. As clear as Spock has been, despite the whiplash this entire conversation has given him.
Telegraphing his intention, Jim tips his head, leaning forward to press his lips reverently to Spock's clothed shoulder. He's not sure either of them are in a state for anything more declarative - anything that would risk transference - at present, and it's best not to test it any further. Blue eyes flicker back up to Spock's, decidedly in his personal space; Jim's breathing sounds loud to his own ears, but he holds steady.
"Just in case you ever foolishly forget," Jim's lips twist in a soft smile, the unbearable fondness clawing at the base of his throat - despite everything, the feeling he was trying to combat earlier rises like an unstoppable tide, wonder leaking through. "I'm never not thinking of you."
And isn't it remarkable, that one might find another through any given lifetime? That such an existence — so singular and fragmented as his own —, might find itself in pair instead of wholly apart?
When he was young, Spock had once wondered what it was that made him so abhorrent. He puzzled over their dismissive words, the way the would not even meet his eyes. He questioned, with his hand held within his mother's, what it was he had done to deserve it.
There are those who will dislike you no matter the cause, she had told him. Overlooking the courtyard, the gardens in full bloom — he had wondered how much more she had endured. Before and after him, how much was she given to carry? What more might she do? He hadn't understood, not then. He had not understood, what it was to hold something so sacred and secreted. He had not understood — still cannot —, why it was she had chosen his father. Had chosen, also, Spock. Upon a planet that told itself its denizens did not love, there was much to unweave in the makings of him to begin with.
There was much to untangle. There is, even now. And in that, Spock thinks with some unfurling wonder and disbelief, is the question: is it really me you choose?
Is it really him, who knows not the final shape of his wanderings? Who does not want what he cannot have? Who cannot express himself as a Human, no matter the Humanity in him? Him, who is conflicted and ugly at the foundations? Him, who carries the depth and breadth of emotion? It would not be the first time that his feelings would be considered repulsive. It would not be the last time that others would find them oppressive too, heavy in the lay of its head.
But, Jim does not pull from him. He pulls in. He pulls in, as his expression flickers through the tides of any number of emotions. Spock cannot name them all as they rise and sink and surface, but he might know they are reflected. Reflected, perhaps, in whole or in part. And yet —
Once Jim settles upon a conclusion, it is difficult to sway him. It is something that Spock himself knows. It is something, too, that Jim attributes to him in the moments where Spock does not bend even beneath the playful pressure to admit a hunch, a notion. An inkling, that belongs where logic does not. But, there is also logic in this. There is also logic in the mystic, in the otherwise indefinable. It had never been a question that Spock would come to trust Jim, that somehow — inexplicably —, the fissures in himself were a match for Jim's own. When all other conclusions were thus examined and discarded, what else might it be?
Spock's mind has known Jim's from the beginning. Jim's soul had answered his katra's call. How might he have discovered him otherwise? How might have he have thus found in every iteration, in every timeline? The universe is endless in its possibilities, but somehow — somehow, they found themselves repeated. Again and again and again.
Any such words that Spock may have uttered are quieted by the intent that lies behind Jim's movement. They gum up in the throat, still beneath the heat and the warmth and Jim's alien scent. It is all that he remembers and all that he recalls, but there is a fresher comfort in it. Like rains after a long drought, the parched soil blackening — Spock feels the kiss he presses to his shoulder like a physical brand. It burns him through the layers of his clothes, settles deep into the core of him. How might Jim have ever questioned that it would be him? How might Jim have never said —
Spock finds himself wishing he might touch him directly. He finds himself wishing to hold Jim's face in his hands, to see him as though he is first seeing him again. He thinks of mapping the spaces between his brow and his eyelid, of sweeping his fingers about the clever twist of his lips. He wishes for so many things, in this one moment, but knows this will have to serve him. That his eyes might do the touching that his body desires, Jim's breath so close to his ear — it seems an obvious choice, to answer in kind.
His hands keep Jim's cradled from just beneath the blankets, but it he who angles himself just so as to press his lips to the crown of his head. More concept than touch, he settles back only after he might find what he wishes to say on his tongue.
"It seems we agree," he says, syllables soft in the mouth. Spock thinks of the golden fields of Jim's memory, thinks of the hands that ran their way through the reaching grasses. "I had... Hesitated to think, that you may have reciprocated."
His mouth quirks at the edges. It is less a smile with the mouth than it is with the eyes, lit-up from within as candles within hurricane glass. He knows the quote Jim chooses well, but it is here that Spock turns over his own.
It makes sense, that Spock would be mystified by something so wholly human; that most illogical paradigm of love. Vulcans loved - of course they did, no matter what they claimed - but the way humans did it, the way his mother would have, must have seemed so foreign. With openness, considered vulgar by Vulcan standards; without shame, without apology - without regret and at great personal cost, leaving her species behind. For what, for why, as Spock had so astutely asked?
Because she loved Sarek, and she loved their child. The idea that there need be further reasons would never have occurred to her. It certainly doesn't to Jim - it's the kind of love he's always starved for, deep down. Unconditional, permanent. He stopped believing it was real, long ago - but hope, and dreams, they're difficult beasts to kill. Who wouldn't take the hard road, with that kind of love waiting for you at the end of it?
But that is not why Jim cares for him; it's never been about what Spock can offer him. To be frank, Jim had never thought he would have been lucky enough to get that far. It's definitely not because of whatever strange, incomprehensible bond ties them together, across multiple planes of reality - no, it's a simple fact that Jim's never been very good at doing something just because someone tells him to. He chooses Spock, as he is, as he's always been, because sometimes Spock beats him at chess, and sometimes he beats Spock, but never once do they let the other win. He chooses Spock because when Jim burns their vegetarian lasagna dinner, Spock already has the windows open, one eyebrow raised at his ridiculousness. Jim chooses Spock, because to be without him is a reality he does not wish to live in. The thought is intolerable enough he trashed his career for it, and he'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Caring for him is not the hardship that Spock purports it to be. Jim has never understood that - this is where he is, admittedly, the mystified one. How anyone could look at Spock and be repelled seems nonsensical. Intimidated, maybe that he could understand - it was natural to be intimidated by someone you couldn't quite read, but to dislike him? The kind, intelligent soul Jim has come to know? Where's the logic in that?
Jim doesn't think he'll ever stop wondering how this feeling could be reciprocated - that Spock should choose him over any other - but maybe that's okay. Love, after all, is not logical, even for a Vulcan; perhaps Jim should stop expecting it to be.
Spock leans in, and Jim has to consciously release the breath he didn't realize he was holding, heat rising to his cheeks. It's whole-heartedly chaste by anyone's standards, but it still makes his heart leap against his ribcage; embarrassingly so, and it's only the two of them there. Spock's lips press against his hair, the presence of him solid, magnetizing. Closer than they've ever been, save life-threatening situations. They've shared a bed for months, but this is an active choice and it's - different.
He can't very well say he's not feeling the same pull, the urge to express himself in a more human - and decidedly less restrained - manner, but the urge to spare Spock further pain is stronger. To spare himself, too, because if Spock accidentally zaps him through his face he'll probably pass out, which would really kill the vibe.
"Makes no damn sense that there's something to reciprocate, and I'm not on an island by myself, but I can't say I'm complaining." Jim laughs, something nervous and jittery within it but also, perhaps, something freeing, bumping his head against Spock's shoulder one more time before he pulls back, enough to meet his gaze. Spock seems - the only word Jim can ascribe to it is radiant, which seems an odd thing to say about a Vulcan, he's well aware. But it's true, in comparison to the rest of Spock's minute expressions and emotional, human-like eyes - Jim's never seen him look like that. Certainly never aimed at him.
"Neither have I. Not...not like this." Jim admits in return; it seems only right to be truthful, even if it's mildly terrifying, when Spock's verifiable truth is ringing in his ears. I have never held such regard for anyone. Holy fucking shit. "I would never want to jeopardize our friendship. Before I - I just have to say that, Spock, out loud, so you understand. If you ever...didn't reciprocate. It would be okay."
Jim blows out a breath; this entire conversation has been an emotional rollercoaster the likes of which he's not sure he's ever ridden in his entire life, let alone in the span of about an hour. He squeezes Spock's hands again, tight, gaze trailing back up to him. "You must be tired. I can make some tea, if you want to lay down for a spell."
A mirror of their own doubts of the self, reflected in kind. What Jim sees within Spock is in part mystery to him beyond the merits he provides, but Spock finds within Jim more than he might hold against any reasonable metric. What had drawn Spock to Jim had been a point of confusion at first, but it was difficult not to find himself fascinated by a mind that was so quick and so empathetic — so compassionate, but at once ferocious. It was one that might have matched his, was glad to have his considerations. Over tea and over PADDs, they had discussed any number of topics. He had saved Spock, as much as Spock had sought to save him. He had never left Spock behind. Had never abided by his logic, when it was himself as the price.
Jim challenged him, pushed him. Gentle, always careful, he had coaxed Spock to consider that he was a part instead of apart. He had looked upon him, known him to as he was and is. Accepted it. Accepted it, as Spock came to accept him. Jim was not perfect, but neither was he. They covered what the other lacked. They provided each other considerable strength. Jim to Spock was a keystone — if he were to be removed, he should wonder what would be left. Now so entwined in the nature of his being, it was a concept that bid him to run as much as it rooted him. It was logical (illogical), but it was no less true.
Jim was the only one he might have chosen. There was never any other, that captured him so thoroughly. There was never any other, that smiled over the board at him and plucked from him the vulnerabilities and anxieties. There was never any other, that looked upon his insecurities and saw them as beautiful, a component of him instead.
But, even as they both lean just so out of the other's orbits, Spock hears the nerves that are so repeated in him. Such admissions are never simple, but this — it is a remarkable thing, to know what he does now. He would never have expected it. He would never have thought it possible. He had never allowed himself to want it. Yet, Jim has his own concerns. His own worries. His own thoughts and his self-detractions. Spock knows them. He knows them, but he knows too that Jim must know this.
"Jim," he starts, spinning his rapidly scattering words into loose constellations. A line that starts, he thinks, and ends. "Please understand, Vulcans do not engage in such commitments lightly. We are intentional, focused. We do so only with those who are compatible, who ideally hold traits we find... Compelling." He tips his head, dark eyes gentled in their assessment. But yet, they assess. They look. As though waiting for any flicker of uncertainty, any ounce of repulsion. His posture has loosened, but there is still something guarded in the downward sweep of lashes, the suggestion of a furrow between his angled brows. "Once chosen, it will take much for me to consider otherwise."
It will. Jim has earned his loyalty, his devotion. He has earned Spock's respect. He knows not when his emotions toward Jim veered into something akin to adoration, to the shape of unvoiced love — but, it had been easier for him to keep hidden. It had been easier for him to ignore. To feel as he did, he once reasoned, was unbecoming of any Vulcan. But, was not too the lies he had to tell himself? Was not too the increasingly outlandish reasons he provided himself for why he must stand so close by him, must share so much time when the opportunity prevented itself? But, he knows what it is Jim means. He knows why it is he says it.
Above all else, Spock would struggle most with losing him. If he were relegated to observing his own attachment in silence, he would gladly bear it. He would gladly bear any hardship, if it meant that he might serve by Jim's side. If he might, in any manner Jim would afford, support him. And so, it is like this, that Spock provides an echo of his own sentiments. It is like this, close enough enough that he might discern the brilliance of Jim's eyes in the full cast of daylight, that Spock tips gently to him without pressure or expectation:
"I shall rest, but think upon it." Spock squeezes his hands in return, once — twice. The linens are warmed between the heat of their palms and Spock finds himself more fatigued than he might have once dwelled upon. His mind hums, at once unpleasant and pleasant. "I have no desire to force a decision, to impose upon you the intensity associated."
He knows he should rest. He will not fight any such guidance, but he needs Jim to know it is all right too. He needs him to understand what it is he will be stumbling into. What it is that Spock is thinking, at least like this.
If Jim's really going to buy this soulmate stuff - which is somehow harder to believe than the blind, horny rage thing; don't even get him started there, he needs a minute to just stare into the void on that one - maybe there's a certain sense to it all. That they should be so different, and yet so similar, aligning in key areas; Spock did his best to throw people off with his exterior, but a little doggedness on Jim's part had gone a long way to understanding what lurked beneath. He wishes, sometimes, that he could explain this to those that would turn away - but then again, they're likely not worth the time.
And then there was their mutual thirst for knowledge which made their conversations so engaging; their uncanny ability to read things in each other that they both endeavored to keep hidden. As much as it sucked, sometimes - as frustrating and prickly as it could be - it was also oddly...freeing. Having another person look at him and see him, and being able to see them in return - who else had Jim ever had that with? Who else would he even want to have that with, if not Spock? Spock, whose ability to make Jim laugh was as unparalleled as it was unexpected, a brightness to his humor and quick wit that always left Jim feeling warm. Spock, who could always be relied upon - even when the odds were stacked against them, back against the wall, everything going to shit - there's no one else he would want at his side.
There's no one else he would want, and maybe the wanting is the scariest part, now that Jim's willful blindfold (if he's being totally honest with himself here; not a habit he wants to repeat, actually, being honest with himself kind of sucks - oh God, ignorance really is bliss) has been pulled from his eyes.
If Spock is looking for repulsion or reticence, he won't find it in Jim, as he meets his focused gaze. No, there is none of that for him - any reservations Jim might have are squarely rooted in his own inadequacies, of which he's more than aware of. It's not that he doubts Spock's words, even as the mild spark of incredulity makes itself apparent in Jim's eyes - it's more that as much as Jim tries, certain things are outside of his realm of understanding. The kind of desire and devotion Spock is describing is as if Jim dreamed it up, but then, it does fall in line with the whole bond situation - Jesus H. Christ. It kind of feels like he's holding a mountain of textbooks, and Spock keeps adding more.
"Don't speak too soon," Jim jokes weakly, though they both know there's a little bit too much self-deprecating truth in the sentence. He can't help but be slightly at a loss, still processing the fact that he just heard that out of Spock's mouth. If he is asleep, maybe don't wake him up. "If I put my mind to it, I bet I could have you running for the hills in under a week. Two, if I'm being thorough."
Frankly, Jim's not sure when his feelings towards Spock veered into this territory either - or, maybe he does, but he knows that looking at it too closely is a surefire way to embarrass himself and/or freak himself out more than necessary, so he doesn't. It's much easier to repress things when you're unaware they're there in the first place, when the option is safely closed off, inaccessible from the whole. And yet here - here, it isn't. Here, Spock has opened the option, and Jim -
Fuck. Jim wants. He's so fucked.
"You're never an imposition." Jim rebuts quietly, because it's true, and definitely doesn't mention intensity isn't a problem for me. As if the whole of their friendship hasn't been intense in its own way, anyhow. As if their dalliance at the bar hadn't brought with it a frisson of something Jim was unable to ignore, something that sparked a smoldering heat in the core of his being. He had known what it meant, to engage in that kind of behavior with Spock, and he'd done it anyway. Now there's - additional context, and the freak out he needs to have isn't based in regret: he needs to freak out about the fact that he'd do it again anyway.
Jim stands slowly, his hand moving to squeeze Spock's shoulder reassuringly instead as he does so. A short whistle brings Bones to heel, the dog sliding off the bed and trotting out into the living room - probably best to let Spock have some peace, to get himself back in order. Well, as much order as the Council will allow - and the incandescent rage is back, ah, wonderful.
"I'll be here when you're rested," Jim promises, and it's not a dig for earlier - it's just an earnest promise, maybe even more to himself than it is to Spock. That he won't run, that he will give this the turnabout in his brain it deserves - even if the thought of it is as daunting as it is potentially pleasant, if only Jim will allow himself to...enjoy it. "I'll make grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch, okay?"
Hard to fuck that one up, and who knows if it will actually make Spock feel better about anything to do with the current situation but - it's an offering, and it's within Jim's power to give it. That's enough, for now. It has to be.
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acrossthemultiverse2024-05-05 01:52 am
no subject
And I, a sleeping moon / lightless, turn my face and palms to you / and cast upon your endless nights the bloody spill of stars.
Spock listens to the rapid thud of his heart in his ears. He feels it in his mouth, as Jim questions him. Asks him. Implores him. Let me help. How many times, he thinks, has Jim said this to him? How many times has he himself repeated it? How many times, he thinks, as he glances at Jim (for a moment, just a moment) will they both have the means to open themselves to the suggestion? Does he know?
Does Spock?
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself,” Spock recites, the corners of his eyes crinkling just so as he looks again from Jim. It should be familiar enough to him, the poem. As familiar as most. He too knows that such a feat as quelling their emotions made little sense to Humans. It made littler sense, when it came to reconciling what was reflected upon the surface was not what lay within. But, it was these philosophies and tenets that had settled his people most. It was these philosophies and tenets, Spock knows, that saved them. How else could such a species have forged such vivid poetry? Have carved from the rock the statues draped in heady sensuality? Have made for themselves the blades of weapons that mirrored the supple curve of bodies, the bosoms of their suns? Spock shifts. It is no more than a lean of the shoulder into Jim’s, but it grounds him. It makes something in him go calm and still and quiet.
“We meditate. Play music,” he says, after a long moment. The conversation resumes, answers given. Yet, there is no hardship to be found in what next he says. “But, I find there is certain sense of peace associated with your presence.”
There almost always had been. Since the time they had first met, since his hand laid against his—but, there is more to cover. There is more to answer for. Jim presses and on and so too must Spock, it seems.
“I had meant it in connection to my nature,” he says, a near sigh of a thing. But, once the cycle had been started, it was indeed most probable that it would repeat. It did not matter, the issue of his ancestry. “However, at that time?”
Spock shakes his head.
“None. It was T'Pring who raised the challenge in the depths of my blood fever. Reason and logic — it would not have appealed to me then. It is a biological impetus, one that spares no ‘higher functioning,’ as you say." Driven only by what is primal and profane, there would have been no means to suggest anything to him. There was only the urge to claim or be claimed. To die, he thinks, or die trying. "It was you, that she chose as her champion."
Doubtlessly, Jim should view it as a cruelty. But, logic pure and true held no such considerations. It operated only within the confines of conclusion and consequence, the moving parts as sure as they are certain. It was logic that had guided T’Pring’s hand to challenge, but it was emotion that led her to Jim. If there were ever any that match Spock whilst shielding her intended, it was always Jim. It was always Jim, who might have spun him back from the ledge, who might have held him from the edge with the steel and iron of his arms. If there were anyone, anything— it would have been Jim who might have unraveled the weave of his biology. It would have been Jim, who might have convinced him.
In the end, it was T’Pring who had outpaced him. It was T’Pring, who retained face for their families. It was she, left with a taste for Human volatility, that had made the final separation. Knife in the palm, she and Stonn were free to marry. But, he had wondered if her want should serve her as well as having. He had wondered, if she too would one day be left with the doubt of her decisions as he was once left in doubt of her. The bitter dregs of knowledge, the fact that what could be was often better than what was — for now, she had her freedom. Her freedom, bought with the gravity of Spock’s loss.
Loss, he knew now, that held no permanency. Loss, that dissolved in the bright arc of Jim’s voice behind him in the pale lights of the med bay, form both warm and solid beneath Spock’s palms. For all that it is subconscious, Spock seeks it even now. In the consideration of the boundary that separates them, thread and textile, he finds himself focusing upon the press and push of Jim’s fingers against the barrier of the linen. He considers the heat of them, trapped within the fabric. He considers, but finds himself making of his own hand a bowl. An upturned cup, that Jim might tip his into.
He knows that Jim’s mind calls to him, leans across the barrier as though it were nothing more than pretense, but Spock knows he cannot heed it. He cannot not heed it, not in full. He cannot heed it, no matter the depth and willingness that lingers beneath each extended conversation, each minute tilt of his chin. To want, he thinks once again, is so different than having. And to have such brilliance caught against his own body, to learn what it is to be chained to one such as himself—
How might he presume that he should be wanted? Wanted, he knows, long-term?
"It is not so simple a thing, replacing a bond of that nature," Spock opts for instead, his dark eyes still focused upon his lap. It is easier, like this. A coward’s route, but the words came smoother. They did not attempt to trip up in the mouth, to tangle themselves irreparably behind the bank of his teeth. “As such, my options are speculative.”
He tips his head. The movement lacks a certain finesse, drags as his vision does to resettle against the far wall. He does not know how else he might place it. Fatigue settles deep into the bones.
“To establish another of that magnitude is not a decision to be made lightly. For both parties, it runs considerable risk,” he pauses, words brittle in the mouth as he finds them. Each syllable that leaves him feels as though a bruise. “If one decides it is no longer wanted, it may not be possible to sever it without injury. Moreover, a cycle spent in another’s company would serve only to strengthen it.”
Though he may not know the whole of Jim’s thoughts, Spock does know his tendencies. He knows he would offer such gifts blindly, without question or thought. He knows Jim would offer it to him, at the expense of himself – at the expense of his independence. He would offer it, out of friendship.
And Spock?
He could not allow it. He could not abide it. Not when Jim deserved his own choices, his own emotions – his own ability to love.
no subject
The poem gets another gentle laugh out of Jim, a titter that's quiet, relatively, but louder in the space between them. Of course Spock knew Whitman - hell, Jim already knew that he did - but the fact that it was so rare to find something Spock didn't know was something of a delight. And a pastime of Jim's, especially now with a physical library at their disposal. Spock leans into him, and Jim rocks back against him, a gentle sway and nudge of their shoulders, before he too stills, comfortable. If it's a human fallacy, so be it, but with Spock at his side, where Jim can offer whatever support his friend will be willing to accept from him - there's nothing they can't weather, right?
"Congratulations," Jim snorts, shaking his head good-naturedly, before he tips it up to catch Spock's eye. "You're the first person to ever string those words together and aim them at me."
But he can't deny it's pleasing to hear, as plainly as Spock was ever likely to say it. Truer still that Jim felt the same way - he always had, and had been identifying it more explicitly since their tenure here in Aldrip together began. Jim squeezes his arm through the blanket once more in tacit agreement, canting his head to listen as Spock continues to power through his explanation. And power through he does - of course it would be Jim. Who else? It's all starting to make some horrible amount of sense, the scene playing itself out in Jim's mind's eye in technicolor, too vivid. He's been at the other end of Spock's fists, tasted copper and seen stars - and that was an iota of what he could have done. Stripped of all logic? Jim's not sure how he would have even begun to have fought him - but he does know he would have tried.
It seems T'Pring - and now he's got a name to add to the shitlist, good - knew the same. It presents itself like a coward's loophole to Jim, one that would leave her and whomever her true champion was entirely unscathed. Did she know what it would do to Spock? Did she care? Worse, had she counted on it? Where is the logic in cruelty, in savaging another to get what you desired? Was that not the whole point of switching to a system of logic - to avoid such uncivilized mauling of the soul?
The ire it inspires, Jim swallows, burying it deep in the center of his chest. Secrets it away, as Spock leans closer, bridges the divide, tells him without words what it is he needs. His hand, a tentative half-moon beneath the fabric, and Jim mimics the motion with care, letting them come together with gentleness that belays the fury on Spock's behalf. Whatever Spock needs - whatever he is willing to accept from Jim - it is his. It always has been, and perhaps it's not as subtle as either of them might have thought, if T'Pring could see it plainly enough to abuse it but - this is their way of things.
If this is all there is, too, Jim is willing to give it. Willing to live in the permanency of their friendship, and be grateful for it. He thinks that it might not be all, though, after last night - that the things they do not say are closer to the surface than they appear, rising closer and closer still. It's not the right time for this discussion (God, when is it ever?), complicated further by all of this. Jim gaze traces the contours of Spock's face before he looks away, ingrained politeness as Spock speaks - it feels too private, and he's sure his own expression is less and less controlled as he absorbs the information.
"...I see." It's too fantastical, really, for him to fully grasp it. To be fair, it's not as though he has any similar concept by which to understand it except just that - the fantastical. Bonds, so deep and inextricable as to be integral to the whole - like destiny, or fate, or the other intangibilities that surround age-old stories of true love. That they could exist without the imagined love being there is - hard to understand, in full. Upsetting, in truth, that Spock should be left without, that he should be endangered by the lack. Jim frowns, well on his way to the suggestion Spock had already predicted - though it remains shapeless, for the moment. "And you can't subside the fever without a bond?"
No life-saving sex before marriage, evidently. The shapeless begins to take its form, understanding starting to connect behind Jim's eyes like gossamer filaments, drawing together to illustrate the whole. He lets the beat of silence pervade, just the two of them sitting on the edge of the bed, sunlight rising on the opposite wall as the sun crawls higher into the sky, lighting up the morning.
"You didn't tell him any of this." It's not a question, because Jim doesn't need a forced confirmation on something he already knows to be true. Knows, because of course Spock wouldn't, not unless - well, unless he were compelled. Literally.
The why sits there in the air, begging Jim to take it. To ask, when Spock must answer. But the thought makes him feel vaguely ill, the idea of taking more than Spock is willing to give. Or, perhaps, of hearing an answer he was not meant to know. Spock did lash out, only minutes ago, and Jim didn't want to press that further. Years of love have been forgot / in the hatred of a minute.
The silence stretches, all that is unspoken laid at their feet. Jim sighs, tipping his head back, and maybe it's an excuse not to have to look at Spock and betray the nerves that bubble up from somewhere inside of him, but hell, he'll let himself have this one. "There is only one thing in this universe I would never forgive you for, Spock."
Jim drops his gaze from the ceiling, centering it on Spock's again, hand squeezing his through the fabric. "Leaving me, before your time. The rest - we can handle. Together, not - not on your own."
"Just - " Jim doesn't know how to say it. How to wrap all that is and was and will be up in a single sentence, or even ten sentences, twenty - to press home how much he means it. That nothing Spock could ever ask of him would be as unacceptable as him leaving, as him harming himself for whatever reason he deemed justifiable. As intolerable as Spock rooting himself in Jim's life, and making the decision by himself to walk out of it. It may not be a crazy Vulcan marriage mind bond, but Jim's sure it would kill him just as similarly. "Just don't, okay?"
no subject
It is illogical to think that anyone should know everything in space and time, that anyone should grasp the enormity of what could be and was and is as a whole. To Spock, there was always more to learn. There was always more to improve. There was always another mountain to climb once the previous was conquered in a steadier stride than the one before it. To grow and to change held more esteem and more appeal than remaining than same, but there too came the pain of existence. There too came the stranger agonies, the absolutes that one cannot be shielded from no matter the method or training.
Spock had learned it young. He had learned it in the turn of Vulcan's bright suns, in the nights that engulfed the horizon. He had learned it from the day he was born, a child of science and consequence. For all he was placed upon the consciousness of his world a miracle, he too was considered abomination. He too was challenged by dual and dueling expectations, those who would come to adore and revile him for all the wrong reasons. To most, perhaps it would be enough to hamper the fires that licked at the fabric of himself. To others, perhaps it would be foolish of him not to lash out more than he had against the narrow paths they'd tried to lay for him. But —
There is a certain pleasure, in learning with Jim. Charting what has not yet been charted, being the first to brush against the soils of new and unseen planets — seeing Jim, alight with an interest that too suffused him. Folding botanical specimens into his palm, craning his neck to peer into the stars that hung again above their heads, there was nothing that could keep Jim from movement. From chasing, Spock thinks, the same and binary formations.
And Spock?
Even now, he follows the pattern of his Captain's words, leans into the spaces where Jim welcomes him. His cupped palm in his through the fabric, the simmer of Spock's emotions distant enough not to harm him — he curls his fingers. Linens bunched and smoothed over the backs of Jim's knuckles, he maps the approximate shape of each valley and dip that lies between each finger, feels the heat of palm as it bleeds through the bulk of the blanket. He does not know what it is Jim thinks, what it is he feels, but Spock might take his guesses. He might speculate.
"I find it difficult, to think that I have not already said this," he says, words low and solemn. "Indirectly, perhaps. I find it more difficult still, to think that no one else has too."
And now? He might assume, feeling the weight of Jim's eyes against him. He might form theories, knowing how it is they trace the shape of his profile. He might confirm, within error, as he glances up and away.
"No," he says, the word a burr in the heat as it is in the chest. It prickles along the soft flesh of his throat, his dark eyes sweeping lower to the floor again beneath them. It is an answer to both. To each in turn. He knows it to be useless, to refuse the rest to rise with it. He feels the barest twinge of an ache forming at the base of his skull, the shudder of something deeper and more profound bubbling up the surface. "I could not have told him. I did not..."
He takes a breath. The tail of it hitches strange and dark and sharp.
"I could not have asked this of him. Under those circumstances, without the full knowledge of what it would entail... Knowing, that even a temporary bond might remain."
He knows he need not specify why. Not this time. The information has been given, laid in such a way that it would be difficult to miss. The fear that Jim may tire of him, might grow to resent him when he may have chosen only to bind himself to Spock out of obligation —
Spock focuses upon his own respiration. He counts. The pain he feels now is unrelated to the pain the sentencing casts upon his person. It is a mental one, intertwined with the physical. To grant such emotion without pause, without his own means and methods — it takes a moment. It takes a moment, to pull back into himself. Wrenched open, it takes time to gather the scattered aspects of what makes him him.
And, perhaps, it is all for naught when it is Jim avoids his eyes as Spock chooses now to take him in. An upward tilt of his head to pair his, chest vising about the profundity of what it is Jim tells him. What it is he asks him, as though Spock were something to be missed in ways that were deemed unfathomable. Unforgivable, should it have been in some way prevented.
Spock does not speak. Not for a long moment. The words tangle up in his throat, catch against the back of his teeth. The weight of what he might say and could say makes the backs of his eyes burn, makes of itself an effort to find the words that have so often alluded him.
And still, his hand grasps back at Jim's.
"Jim," he says, finally, the name a soft and tender thing in the mouth. It dissolves at the end, searching and so rarely uncertain. "There are always risks. Were it to come between myself and you, you are the Captain. Without you, I..."
He pauses. To his ear, the sailors are calling out at the docks. The ocean ebbs and flows, unimpeded. But, to Spock, all there is this bedroom. All there is himself. Jim.
"There is no time, where I would find myself compelled to choose myself above you," he continues, voice soft enough to be missed were Jim not pressed as close as he now is. "You cannot die. I know it is illogical — selfish. But," he takes another breath, gaze dropping again to the tangle of their covered palms and fingertips.
"I will do only what I can," he says, quiet and resolute. It is as much as he might give to him. As much as he might vow. "I will promise you my cooperation. To be more... Forthright, with what I might singularly control."
no subject
There is a reason Jim and Spock get along, beyond a shared love of chess and similar taste in books. There is an insatiable desire for more that lurks beneath their skin, that certain quality that sends people like them up to the stars, instead of staying dirtside. There are those who are meant to stay in one place, and there are those who are meant to walk into the unknown - though if they're being honest, the pair of them were running, more often than not.
Jim doesn't think he could do it with anyone else by his side, truth be told. There is no one else he is as in sync with, no one else whose thirst for knowledge rivals his own. It is, perhaps, one of the qualities Jim most greatly admires in Spock - and that list, admittedly, is quite long.
"Would I lie to you?" Jim jokes, though it lands more gently than it should to be fully effective as a jest. Maybe it's because Spock is holding his hand again, even through the fabric of the blanket, like it's his tether to tranquility, to keeping his feet on the ground throughout all of the morning's chaos. Jim lets him, keeps still and covered beneath the fabric, save for when Spock's fingers map out his second knuckle, the scar tissue there, hand twitching to meet him. "Seems we make good company, then."
Inappropriate though it most certainly is, a part of Jim wants to laugh, the hard sound bubbling in his chest, begging for freedom. He tamps down on the urge - it's not born from humor, but that kind of desperate disbelief that occurs when someone is being so monumentally ridiculous. He's smart enough to pick up what Spock is putting down, what he's laying so tentatively at Jim's feet, as though he would ever dare to kick at it - but it's almost beyond the pale, truly.
Jim can't imagine a world where he turns Spock down, Vulcan brain bond or not. He can only hope the other Jim didn't give Spock a reason to think that he would, because then Jim will have to kick his own ass, and hopefully that doesn't rip a hole in spacetime or something equally ridiculous.
"Spock," Jim finally starts, glad that they're not touching skin on skin, that Spock cannot feel the whirlwind of emotions he's cycled through in the beat of silence between their sentences. He can probably intuit it well enough, God only knows what Jim's expression looks like now, but he squeezes Spock's hand through the blanket, firm and grounding. "You misunderstand. You're not asking, because it's not a question."
"If I were suffering from the same," Perhaps putting it another way will get it through Spock's head. Jim tilts his head, fixing Spock with the full weight of his gaze. "Would it be a question, for you?"
Jim sighs quietly, an exhalation of air that eases the tightness in his chest as Spock begins to speak. Starting with Jim; somehow, Spock says his name like no one ever has. Like it's something precious, like he's afraid Jim's going to revoke his right to it. It never fails to capture Jim's attention, to seat something warm in the pit of his stomach. Amidst the anxiety, the precariousness of this entire conversation - that flower still manages to bloom.
The rest is -
Jim's pretty sure his brain needs a reboot, or he needs to wake from a coma or something, because it just doesn't even seem like hearing those words out of Spock's mouth could have been real. It's dangerously close to something else entirely, something that Jim doesn't even know how to begin unpacking, in addition to everything else this morning.
Blessedly, Spock doesn't ask him to. Once again, he's glad they're not touching, skin to skin, so Spock doesn't have to feel the wave of guilt that laps at him as he says, you cannot die. Once was more than enough for the both of them, it seemed.
"I'm not asking you to," Jim says quietly, squeezing Spock's hand back - perhaps too tightly, but it helps, to feel him solid, real beside him. There is, perhaps, a part of him that is grateful he was the one behind the radiation glass - Jim's not sure what he would have done if their fates were reversed, and he had to watch Spock slump, lifeless, on the other side. "Not unless - if it's necessary, in our line of work."
Even as he says it, Jim is well aware of the irony and hypocrisy in his words - he went back for Spock, violated the Prime Directive with barely a thought, lost his ship and his rank because of it - and he'd do it all again, no hesitation. Spock, in this instance, likely wouldn't listen - but Jim would be remiss if he didn't say it anyway.
"Me too." Another squeeze to their covered hands, and Jim leans into him, brushing their shoulders together. "I promise. All we've got is each other, Spock. I can't...I can't do this without you."
One could claim willful blindness and assume Jim means Aldrip and all the situation entails, but Jim knows that they're both aware he means it in the larger sense. Still, after everything Spock's told him - everything he's been forced to tell him, in addition to everything he's chosen to - the least Jim can do is return a little of the honesty, perhaps in the way they communicate best.
"I cannot live without my life." Jim's smile is soft, shoulder a warm point of contact between them. "I cannot live without my soul."
no subject
There had always been more to the missions, to the endless spill of endless stars. There had always been a steady and easy rapport, a willingness to answer the other in ways that could not and would not have meshed with another not to their exacting tastes. Jim, for all that he was at once steady and restless, was the only that seemed to contain the curiosity that made of Spock a haven. It was he that steered Spock upon paths more emotive, more permissive of the Humanity that lurked beneath the surface without naming it for what it was. And it was Spock, that made Jim consider what was factual and calculated. When Jim could not sense that something was off, it was Spock who might have informed him. And Jim, he thinks, Jim—
There is no other that knows Spock like Jim does. There is no other that knows Jim. Spock holds what is secreted against the ribcage, stows it within the metaphorical spaces of his Vulcan heart. He understands the nights where Jim cannot sleep, knows the strength of his tea, knows the way his hands move when he is aimless. He knows that his compassion has endangered him many a time, but it is such a trait that Spock could never find himself in distaste. There will never be another that knows them as know each other. There will never be another, so long as it is they both live.
But, to Jim’s question: what else might Spock do? He shakes his head, more implicit than not, the shadowed corners of his lips curving in a way that only Jim might call upon. He knows that Jim would never lie to him. Not if he could help it. Not if it was not otherwise demanded of him. It is something Spock himself had to do once. It had brought him no pleasure, to disguise it from him. But – Spock listens. He listens, through the heavy buzz that settles over his skin, that turns less pleasant stimulus to a needling throb. Spock keeps close anyway, holds to Jim anyway, as though the idea of separation was a far more intolerable a concept. He feels Jim’s eyes upon him, a heavy and tangible weight.
He meets Jim’s attentions. Spock knows no other way.
“No,” he says, the word a confession and promise both. He tastes the declaration upon his tongue, smoke and embers. It stings, but it does not burn. Not in truth. When it is something he has known from the beginning, how might its appearance have taken him off-guard? How may it have injured Spock, when it is a wound as obvious as the inevitable impulses that would subsume him in the pursuit of keeping Jim where he ought to be – to ensure he remained where it was he belonged? “You are the one I could never refuse.”
It is no revelation, no sudden epiphany. He had known it from the time he’d rested his palm against Jim’s in the galley, young as they both were then. He had known it from the moment he had completed Jim’s sentence for him, plucked his emptied glass from the table as he reached for it to place upon a passing tray. There had been no mistaking it, no matter how he had run all these long years.
“Jim,” he pours over to him, his name more the hush of a supplicant in Spock’s mouth than any other iteration. It is a question, a query – a verification. It is all three in sum, Spock knows, as he finds within himself the shape of the words that wish to come pair with Jim’s. As he tips his head in mirror, the brush of Jim’s shoulder an anchor in turn to him.
“He’s more myself than I am,” Spock recites, his dark eyes searching. Even if Spock might discern the shape of the boundary, there is something within him that cannot believe what it is. Such things were never built for him, were never permitted. Such things were fable and legend, but how else might Spock have known him? Jim, no matter the slope of his nose or the curl of his lips. Jim, his freckles displaced as though new constellations. His eyes, the color of the birds that made within the Forge their nests and sung sweet and soft and high. Spock grips back, knowing innately the strength and pressure that would suit him. “Whatever our souls are made of…”
He pauses, allows Jim the opportunity to confirm what it is he has settled upon. For all that Spock has grasped it as fact, Jim has not been made aware of it yet. He has not been made truly cognizant, though Spock may have suspected, may have theorized, may have made guesses both educated and – he holds Jim’s gaze. He holds it, as though to look away would be to flinch from the inevitable crescendo. To lose, Spock thinks, what it is that they have built between them all these long and lonely years no matter the distance and time and circumstances. No matter, Spock knows, the infinitesimal possibility that they would ever come to meet at such a point and in such a place.
Jim had found him countless times over.
Perhaps it is his turn, to do the same.
no subject
Jim is a wanderer, if not by nature, then by nurture. It's probably a mix of both, if Jim's being totally honest with himself. Perhaps the call to the stars had less to do with the expanse of the universe, laid out in front of him, and more to do with the fact that he wasn't going to find his pointy-eared counterpart with two feet stuck to the ground - and some part of him knew it, somewhere deep and instinctual. He could not have guessed at the beginning all that would come to pass between them, any more than he could have guessed what was next for them here, in their current predicament - except couldn't he, though? From the very first, when their eyes had locked over a sea of red - didn't he know, somehow?
Spock had known, both times Jim had found him, out of the blue. In the cave, the entire situation had all felt like the weirdest kind of nightmare, and Jim had never examined it too closely. It was too painful, too wrapped up in everything else, and then the meld with Spock Prime had well and truly turned Jim's thoughts from the matter, his entire mind and memory shying away from the encounter. How had he known, so immediately? The memories he'd gleaned from the Spock next to him - Jim didn't look like his Prime equivalent. Sure, he was close enough - same dirty blond hair, an approximation of the same build. Perhaps his eyes would be the same shade of hazel, were it not for the circumstances of his birth. But he could just as easily have been any other random Starfleet officer, stumbling around on the docks - how had Spock known?
At this point, the question is moot
well, for the next paragraph or so, interesting though it may be. Jim knows Spock better at this point than he knows even himself; knows the shape his vowels take when he's tired, knows the cut of his cheek, when Spock is contemplating his next move in a round of chess. Knows the light in his eyes that can only come from the excitement of discovering something previously unknown to him; knows the steadiness of his presence, in the face of every adversity the universe has thought to throw at them. He knows Spock, and this Spock - day in and day out, sharing not just a house but building a home, a life together, for whatever that ended up being worth in the end - he knows him all but completely.Spock does not shy away from him, allows their heads to draw together as they sit there, talking, and the relief is an easy thing, lingering barely-contained beneath Jim's skin. As much as the admission to Jim's question may be coerced, it seems to come easy to Spock's lips - it's the truth, and in the middle of this frankly bananas conversation, not one that is a hardship to bear.
You are the one I could never refuse.
Jim might not be fully aware of just how deeply Spock means that, but he doesn't need the details, nor the Council's bullshit compulsion, to know Spock is telling him the truth. He holds Spock's gaze, meets that secreted shade of a smile with an understanding one of his own; more pronounced, always, in the areas where Spock is predisposed to subtlety.
"Finally, Mr. Spock." Jim doesn't look away, doesn't cheapen his words with a joke, though the undercurrent of humor is present - how can it not be, when the idea that Jim would ever choose another option has been spoken aloud (as if there was ever a choice to be made, that it was not simply a foregone conclusion, and whatever 'sacrifice' Spock perceived it to be, Jim would give it gladly)? "We've found something we agree on."
And then Spock continues, pulling them past the borders of anything they've charted before, and out into the unknown.
That he quotes Brontë back at him is really Jim's own fault - he set himself up for that one, he can't deny it. The intense eye contact is also to be expected, to a certain degree - but Spock does not look away. Jim stares back at him, caught like space dust in the inescapable gravity of a passing moon. Spock refuses to lessen the impact of his words, to couch them in something more along the lines of their usual back and forth - instead content to let them lie plainly between them - with nothing to follow them but the blank Jim is filling in: whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
The understanding dawning on his expression would be comical, if it weren't so utterly bewildering. Jim blinks, then blinks again, all too aware of the drag of the seconds as they idle by, lost to the silence that pervades between them. He's no walking chronometer, like his companion here, but it's got to be a good sixty seconds before he looks away and exhales a jittery, amused huff of air - too breathy to be an actual laugh - breaking the stillness.
And yet, when Jim's gaze returns to him, Spock continues looking at him like that, not taking the out, patient as ever - and Jim's axis tilts a little further.
"...you're serious." Not a question, and not another bit of poetry, passed between them like folded notes on a playground, because for all they've bantered previously, this is certainly the boldest either of them have been - and Spock's deviating pretty severely from their previously established patter. It's not reading like flowery language, but a confirmation of - what? Even thinking it brings some color to his face. "You think - bullshit."
The word slips out, capping the sentence that Jim can't even say out loud - can't put the thought into words other than Brontë's lyrical language, without risk of embarrassing himself. He hasn't pushed Spock away, hasn't moved to free himself from their configuration atop the cedar chest, but Jim's brow does furrow, hands squeezing Spock's through the blanket - though whether it's a conscious choice or instinct, it's hard to tell. "Sorry, that wasn't - I didn't mean - I don't understand."
Doesn't he, though? Somewhere deep, somewhere instinctual - there is something within him that calls for Spock, always. That Spock is acknowledging it must mean - it must mean he senses it, too. What.
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It is here, that he will admit that the feeling he possessed in the silence between Jim’s denial and his retraction was a singular and simmering dread.
To be so swiftly followed by relief, tentative and fearful – Spock’s throat bobs, as he watches him. His lips part. And, no matter how patient and still he might appear to Jim, there is a tension that only releases from the curve of his shoulders when Jim speaks, processes. In whole or in part, it does not matter. It is then, and only then, that Spock draws breath again. All else seems… Secondary, to be broached later no matter how much a temporary balm it might have been for them.
“Yes,” he says. Without hesitation, without emphasis, without any such gravity that would make most consider why it was they had said as they did to begin with, Spock passes the answer over to him. He hands it to him, as one would hand one a flower – with the certainty that one should wrap their fingers about its stalk, hold it to their chest without suffocation. And yet, beneath even that – he watches.
“I…” Spock starts, pauses. The words will come as they are bid, but there is something in Spock that prickles at the notion. The information that has been wrenched from the secreted parts of him, the irritants formed by age and weather into misshapen pearls – they are not another’s to do with as they please. They are not another’s to hold between their teeth, to make a mockery of. They are not theirs to sample, to sieve for what is worthy. No, Spock thinks, these have always belonged to him.
“There is a word, to describe such connections,” he begins again, a shallow stitch forming between the dark of his brows. He thinks of the times his mother would wear such similar expressions, how it took so much will not to simply reach across and smooth it. Smooth it, in recognition and commiseration, with the meat of his thumb. “A term.”
He wonders if Jim often finds such impulses, wonders if he feels them as acutely as he does. In the mornings, where the wild sweep of Jim’s hair ventures into angles once unknown to man, he wonders if Jim too has caught himself more than once. Has caught himself more than once, pulling his hand back and away when Spock does not see it. Even now, his hands seem to itch. They itch, as Jim’s too seem to, grasping as he does for both of Spock’s beneath the linens. Spock finds himself unwilling, but not unable, to not squeeze his hands in response.
Jim needs it more than he does, he reasons. He knows it is in part a falsehood, but there is neither harm nor illogic in providing what is needed across. And there is not illogic, Spock thinks, in the feeling that he carries with him. Still, he does not place blame upon Jim for his reaction. To himself, such a notion seemed improbable. Impossible, perhaps. But, was it not Jim who did not believe in such declarations? Was it not Spock who, despite his better judgement, began to believe in such concepts too?
Spock’s dark eyes search him, gaze touching upon the spaces between the curve of a brow, the cut of a cheek. That Jim has looked back at all is something he had not in full anticipated, but it surprises him little in the aftermath. So often, it had been Spock who had flinched first. Who had, in full, the reason such a conversation began to start. His refusals, his inability to allow himself to want—
“You have been to me a friend, a brother. A… Companion, in all things,” Spock says, the syllables turning over his tongue as a Human within their peculiar confessionals, their perceived misdeeds spoken through velvet and lattice to the one who might hear them upon the other side. And yet, it is not himself that he had committed such injustices toward. It was not Jim, who had been at fault. “I had once told you, that to feel friendship for you caused me great shame. It was not you, who I was ashamed of.”
His fingers twitch. Ache blooms anew in the pit of his chest, in the pit of his stomach. The world beyond Jim is flat and static, the heat of the summer tart and sour on his tongue. Jim’s eyes are so blue and so disbelieving, but there is something in them. No matter how unable he is to understand the complexities of Human emotion, he too carries them. For all he might deny that they exist, they still dog him. Fang and tooth at the heel, they are as much his own as they are Jim’s.
“This… Concept. It is the singular one I might ascribe to you. ‘Friend,’ as a Human definition, does not exist in our lexicon. It is only this.”
With gentle intention and with the meat of his thumb, he presses the word into the skin. Letter by letter, he uses the codes that they know – he taps it out to him. T’hy’la. A summary, a legend, something spoken about sparingly among those scholars who would dig into the brutal and bloodied rituals that once so defined them. Vulcans, who cleaved space for themselves under and amid the net of the stars. That Spock uses the language of others to portray the depth of his thoughts, the depths of his… Regard is only circumstantial. It is the only way he might have felt capable of, until held to the knife of some instated consequence. And even then, who was to say that he should deserve this? Who is to say that he should have such an opportunity to want?
Still, ahead of all that pushes him forward toward the inundation of information, he tells Jim. He implores, syllables breaking soft at the swell of his own lip.
“That I found you that day at the pier – it was no accident. I felt you, as I have felt you before. I knew, no matter how illogical it should appear to you, that you were Jim.”
It wasn’t. He recalls it. He recalls it, across the scent of sea and sand. He remembers it, vivid as anything else he might hold frame of his memories. Jim, disoriented and unsteady. Jim, who looked upon him as he most often looked upon him. A relief, a comfort.
A sense of something whole.
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But not impossible.
No, not impossible.
For as much as Jim is laboring under incredulity, Spock's response is rooted in undeniable certainty. There's no hesitance in his answer, no pause of thought behind it. As though his confirmation doesn't require it, because it's been predetermined. And again - Jim knows it's the truth, regardless of the compulsion Spock is suffering; the way Spock meets his gaze, intent solid and firm in dark eyes - Jim knows he would never mislead him. Not about this.
Jim feels the back of his neck burning as Spock continues, stunned into silence. The tension Spock's exhibiting begins to reach him through the initial disbelief, but Jim just keeps Spock's hands in his, firm, shoulder leaning in just enough to press intentionally against his companion's. Were he given leave to do so, Jim certainly would be more tactile - holding himself back is the norm, and even then, he slips. Even then, he is so comfortable in Spock's orbit - more and more, these days, with their experiments in skin-on-skin contact - he's definitely aborted more casual motions than he's able to count, and some, he's unable to quell.
He's long attributed it to his human nature - but this conversation, the dawning understanding in the back of his mind - could it really be something else entirely? Is that what this feeling - the one he's always dismissed as fantasy, a facet of human fallacy - truly is?
Spock's gaze is almost too much, but Jim's also powerless to look away, staring a hole right through him. There is more to this than Federation Standard can encompass, and wordless explanation isn't an option at the moment - which is probably a good thing, given the disorganized state of Jim's brain on a good day, and the big ?!?! klaxon ringing in there right now. His disbelief takes on a new shade - Spock is dead fucking serious about this, that much is evident, and it makes an alarming amount of sense, given the context. Once is by chance, twice is a coincidence - but it's a pretty ridiculous interdimensional coincidence if that holds true.
Besides, when in the blue fuck has anything in his life ever been a coincidence?
Jim's silent, mouth dry as Spock gifts him the Vulkansu, secreted against his palm. T'hy'la. Friend, brother, companion. Soulmate, to use the human turn of phrase. He feels guilty for wondering, after everything he's shared with this Spock, but he can't help it - Is that what Spock meant, at the bar? He may yet realize it, one way or another. Does the Spock of his universe know?
Then, of course, it dawns on him that he did. He must. The memory has dogged Jim lately, ever since the tower, shaken loose by his conversation with Minato, by watching the kid wake up from unimaginable pain, the kind Jim drank to forget. ɪ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴏ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴡʜʏ ɪ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅɴ'ᴛ ʟᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅɪᴇ...ᴡʜʏ ɪ ᴡᴇɴᴛ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ꜰᴏʀ ʏᴏᴜ.
Because you are my friend.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Blessedly, Jim doesn't let that thought pass his lips; instead, the silence after Spock finishes is deafening. Jim's not sure how much information his brain can absorb before he's just floating around in what the fuck soup; hell, he may already be there. This Spock hasn't told his Jim either, and he could throttle him for it, honestly. Content to die in solitude, as though he would not be stealing a piece of Jim with him, a piece he hadn't even realized he was missing - though once whole, he has to wonder how could he ever have been so blind to it.
Because it's batshit crazy, that's the answer, actually. Batshit crazy, and 100% accurate. Sounds about par for the course.
"I thought it was just wishful thinking." The words Jim finally settles on are careful, quietly contemplative - but confirmation, affirmation. He feels it, too, and he has not turned Spock away; if anything, his grasp has tightened. There are a hundred, million things he could say, questions that bubble to the surface, but Jim stifles them in their tracks. This is far too delicate - too precious - to taint with interference. "I didn't think you would - not with me."
Never a question of whether or not Spock could. No, Jim had never doubted that, whatever insults he had ever lobbied, and to whatever effect - no, that was not in question.
Jim can all but feel his heartbeat in his ears, the heat on the back of his neck ablaze, now, but he knows how he needs to punctuate this. He's overwhelmed - they both are, certainly - but he needs to make sure he's absolutely clear, here. As clear as Spock has been, despite the whiplash this entire conversation has given him.
Telegraphing his intention, Jim tips his head, leaning forward to press his lips reverently to Spock's clothed shoulder. He's not sure either of them are in a state for anything more declarative - anything that would risk transference - at present, and it's best not to test it any further. Blue eyes flicker back up to Spock's, decidedly in his personal space; Jim's breathing sounds loud to his own ears, but he holds steady.
"Just in case you ever foolishly forget," Jim's lips twist in a soft smile, the unbearable fondness clawing at the base of his throat - despite everything, the feeling he was trying to combat earlier rises like an unstoppable tide, wonder leaking through. "I'm never not thinking of you."
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When he was young, Spock had once wondered what it was that made him so abhorrent. He puzzled over their dismissive words, the way the would not even meet his eyes. He questioned, with his hand held within his mother's, what it was he had done to deserve it.
There are those who will dislike you no matter the cause, she had told him. Overlooking the courtyard, the gardens in full bloom — he had wondered how much more she had endured. Before and after him, how much was she given to carry? What more might she do? He hadn't understood, not then. He had not understood, what it was to hold something so sacred and secreted. He had not understood — still cannot —, why it was she had chosen his father. Had chosen, also, Spock. Upon a planet that told itself its denizens did not love, there was much to unweave in the makings of him to begin with.
There was much to untangle. There is, even now. And in that, Spock thinks with some unfurling wonder and disbelief, is the question: is it really me you choose?
Is it really him, who knows not the final shape of his wanderings? Who does not want what he cannot have? Who cannot express himself as a Human, no matter the Humanity in him? Him, who is conflicted and ugly at the foundations? Him, who carries the depth and breadth of emotion? It would not be the first time that his feelings would be considered repulsive. It would not be the last time that others would find them oppressive too, heavy in the lay of its head.
But, Jim does not pull from him. He pulls in. He pulls in, as his expression flickers through the tides of any number of emotions. Spock cannot name them all as they rise and sink and surface, but he might know they are reflected. Reflected, perhaps, in whole or in part. And yet —
Once Jim settles upon a conclusion, it is difficult to sway him. It is something that Spock himself knows. It is something, too, that Jim attributes to him in the moments where Spock does not bend even beneath the playful pressure to admit a hunch, a notion. An inkling, that belongs where logic does not. But, there is also logic in this. There is also logic in the mystic, in the otherwise indefinable. It had never been a question that Spock would come to trust Jim, that somehow — inexplicably —, the fissures in himself were a match for Jim's own. When all other conclusions were thus examined and discarded, what else might it be?
Spock's mind has known Jim's from the beginning. Jim's soul had answered his katra's call. How might he have discovered him otherwise? How might have he have thus found in every iteration, in every timeline? The universe is endless in its possibilities, but somehow — somehow, they found themselves repeated. Again and again and again.
Any such words that Spock may have uttered are quieted by the intent that lies behind Jim's movement. They gum up in the throat, still beneath the heat and the warmth and Jim's alien scent. It is all that he remembers and all that he recalls, but there is a fresher comfort in it. Like rains after a long drought, the parched soil blackening — Spock feels the kiss he presses to his shoulder like a physical brand. It burns him through the layers of his clothes, settles deep into the core of him. How might Jim have ever questioned that it would be him? How might Jim have never said —
Spock finds himself wishing he might touch him directly. He finds himself wishing to hold Jim's face in his hands, to see him as though he is first seeing him again. He thinks of mapping the spaces between his brow and his eyelid, of sweeping his fingers about the clever twist of his lips. He wishes for so many things, in this one moment, but knows this will have to serve him. That his eyes might do the touching that his body desires, Jim's breath so close to his ear — it seems an obvious choice, to answer in kind.
His hands keep Jim's cradled from just beneath the blankets, but it he who angles himself just so as to press his lips to the crown of his head. More concept than touch, he settles back only after he might find what he wishes to say on his tongue.
"It seems we agree," he says, syllables soft in the mouth. Spock thinks of the golden fields of Jim's memory, thinks of the hands that ran their way through the reaching grasses. "I had... Hesitated to think, that you may have reciprocated."
His mouth quirks at the edges. It is less a smile with the mouth than it is with the eyes, lit-up from within as candles within hurricane glass. He knows the quote Jim chooses well, but it is here that Spock turns over his own.
"I have never held such... Regard for anyone."
Not until you.
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Because she loved Sarek, and she loved their child. The idea that there need be further reasons would never have occurred to her. It certainly doesn't to Jim - it's the kind of love he's always starved for, deep down. Unconditional, permanent. He stopped believing it was real, long ago - but hope, and dreams, they're difficult beasts to kill. Who wouldn't take the hard road, with that kind of love waiting for you at the end of it?
But that is not why Jim cares for him; it's never been about what Spock can offer him. To be frank, Jim had never thought he would have been lucky enough to get that far. It's definitely not because of whatever strange, incomprehensible bond ties them together, across multiple planes of reality - no, it's a simple fact that Jim's never been very good at doing something just because someone tells him to. He chooses Spock, as he is, as he's always been, because sometimes Spock beats him at chess, and sometimes he beats Spock, but never once do they let the other win. He chooses Spock because when Jim burns their vegetarian lasagna dinner, Spock already has the windows open, one eyebrow raised at his ridiculousness. Jim chooses Spock, because to be without him is a reality he does not wish to live in. The thought is intolerable enough he trashed his career for it, and he'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Caring for him is not the hardship that Spock purports it to be. Jim has never understood that - this is where he is, admittedly, the mystified one. How anyone could look at Spock and be repelled seems nonsensical. Intimidated, maybe that he could understand - it was natural to be intimidated by someone you couldn't quite read, but to dislike him? The kind, intelligent soul Jim has come to know? Where's the logic in that?
Jim doesn't think he'll ever stop wondering how this feeling could be reciprocated - that Spock should choose him over any other - but maybe that's okay. Love, after all, is not logical, even for a Vulcan; perhaps Jim should stop expecting it to be.
Spock leans in, and Jim has to consciously release the breath he didn't realize he was holding, heat rising to his cheeks. It's whole-heartedly chaste by anyone's standards, but it still makes his heart leap against his ribcage; embarrassingly so, and it's only the two of them there. Spock's lips press against his hair, the presence of him solid, magnetizing. Closer than they've ever been, save life-threatening situations. They've shared a bed for months, but this is an active choice and it's - different.
He can't very well say he's not feeling the same pull, the urge to express himself in a more human - and decidedly less restrained - manner, but the urge to spare Spock further pain is stronger. To spare himself, too, because if Spock accidentally zaps him through his face he'll probably pass out, which would really kill the vibe.
"Makes no damn sense that there's something to reciprocate, and I'm not on an island by myself, but I can't say I'm complaining." Jim laughs, something nervous and jittery within it but also, perhaps, something freeing, bumping his head against Spock's shoulder one more time before he pulls back, enough to meet his gaze. Spock seems - the only word Jim can ascribe to it is radiant, which seems an odd thing to say about a Vulcan, he's well aware. But it's true, in comparison to the rest of Spock's minute expressions and emotional, human-like eyes - Jim's never seen him look like that. Certainly never aimed at him.
"Neither have I. Not...not like this." Jim admits in return; it seems only right to be truthful, even if it's mildly terrifying, when Spock's verifiable truth is ringing in his ears. I have never held such regard for anyone. Holy fucking shit. "I would never want to jeopardize our friendship. Before I - I just have to say that, Spock, out loud, so you understand. If you ever...didn't reciprocate. It would be okay."
Jim blows out a breath; this entire conversation has been an emotional rollercoaster the likes of which he's not sure he's ever ridden in his entire life, let alone in the span of about an hour. He squeezes Spock's hands again, tight, gaze trailing back up to him. "You must be tired. I can make some tea, if you want to lay down for a spell."
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A mirror of their own doubts of the self, reflected in kind. What Jim sees within Spock is in part mystery to him beyond the merits he provides, but Spock finds within Jim more than he might hold against any reasonable metric. What had drawn Spock to Jim had been a point of confusion at first, but it was difficult not to find himself fascinated by a mind that was so quick and so empathetic — so compassionate, but at once ferocious. It was one that might have matched his, was glad to have his considerations. Over tea and over PADDs, they had discussed any number of topics. He had saved Spock, as much as Spock had sought to save him. He had never left Spock behind. Had never abided by his logic, when it was himself as the price.
Jim challenged him, pushed him. Gentle, always careful, he had coaxed Spock to consider that he was a part instead of apart. He had looked upon him, known him to as he was and is. Accepted it. Accepted it, as Spock came to accept him. Jim was not perfect, but neither was he. They covered what the other lacked. They provided each other considerable strength. Jim to Spock was a keystone — if he were to be removed, he should wonder what would be left. Now so entwined in the nature of his being, it was a concept that bid him to run as much as it rooted him. It was logical (illogical), but it was no less true.
Jim was the only one he might have chosen. There was never any other, that captured him so thoroughly. There was never any other, that smiled over the board at him and plucked from him the vulnerabilities and anxieties. There was never any other, that looked upon his insecurities and saw them as beautiful, a component of him instead.
But, even as they both lean just so out of the other's orbits, Spock hears the nerves that are so repeated in him. Such admissions are never simple, but this — it is a remarkable thing, to know what he does now. He would never have expected it. He would never have thought it possible. He had never allowed himself to want it. Yet, Jim has his own concerns. His own worries. His own thoughts and his self-detractions. Spock knows them. He knows them, but he knows too that Jim must know this.
"Jim," he starts, spinning his rapidly scattering words into loose constellations. A line that starts, he thinks, and ends. "Please understand, Vulcans do not engage in such commitments lightly. We are intentional, focused. We do so only with those who are compatible, who ideally hold traits we find... Compelling." He tips his head, dark eyes gentled in their assessment. But yet, they assess. They look. As though waiting for any flicker of uncertainty, any ounce of repulsion. His posture has loosened, but there is still something guarded in the downward sweep of lashes, the suggestion of a furrow between his angled brows. "Once chosen, it will take much for me to consider otherwise."
It will. Jim has earned his loyalty, his devotion. He has earned Spock's respect. He knows not when his emotions toward Jim veered into something akin to adoration, to the shape of unvoiced love — but, it had been easier for him to keep hidden. It had been easier for him to ignore. To feel as he did, he once reasoned, was unbecoming of any Vulcan. But, was not too the lies he had to tell himself? Was not too the increasingly outlandish reasons he provided himself for why he must stand so close by him, must share so much time when the opportunity prevented itself? But, he knows what it is Jim means. He knows why it is he says it.
Above all else, Spock would struggle most with losing him. If he were relegated to observing his own attachment in silence, he would gladly bear it. He would gladly bear any hardship, if it meant that he might serve by Jim's side. If he might, in any manner Jim would afford, support him. And so, it is like this, that Spock provides an echo of his own sentiments. It is like this, close enough enough that he might discern the brilliance of Jim's eyes in the full cast of daylight, that Spock tips gently to him without pressure or expectation:
"I shall rest, but think upon it." Spock squeezes his hands in return, once — twice. The linens are warmed between the heat of their palms and Spock finds himself more fatigued than he might have once dwelled upon. His mind hums, at once unpleasant and pleasant. "I have no desire to force a decision, to impose upon you the intensity associated."
He knows he should rest. He will not fight any such guidance, but he needs Jim to know it is all right too. He needs him to understand what it is he will be stumbling into. What it is that Spock is thinking, at least like this.
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And then there was their mutual thirst for knowledge which made their conversations so engaging; their uncanny ability to read things in each other that they both endeavored to keep hidden. As much as it sucked, sometimes - as frustrating and prickly as it could be - it was also oddly...freeing. Having another person look at him and see him, and being able to see them in return - who else had Jim ever had that with? Who else would he even want to have that with, if not Spock? Spock, whose ability to make Jim laugh was as unparalleled as it was unexpected, a brightness to his humor and quick wit that always left Jim feeling warm. Spock, who could always be relied upon - even when the odds were stacked against them, back against the wall, everything going to shit - there's no one else he would want at his side.
There's no one else he would want, and maybe the wanting is the scariest part, now that Jim's willful blindfold (if he's being totally honest with himself here; not a habit he wants to repeat, actually, being honest with himself kind of sucks - oh God, ignorance really is bliss) has been pulled from his eyes.
If Spock is looking for repulsion or reticence, he won't find it in Jim, as he meets his focused gaze. No, there is none of that for him - any reservations Jim might have are squarely rooted in his own inadequacies, of which he's more than aware of. It's not that he doubts Spock's words, even as the mild spark of incredulity makes itself apparent in Jim's eyes - it's more that as much as Jim tries, certain things are outside of his realm of understanding. The kind of desire and devotion Spock is describing is as if Jim dreamed it up, but then, it does fall in line with the whole bond situation - Jesus H. Christ. It kind of feels like he's holding a mountain of textbooks, and Spock keeps adding more.
"Don't speak too soon," Jim jokes weakly, though they both know there's a little bit too much self-deprecating truth in the sentence. He can't help but be slightly at a loss, still processing the fact that he just heard that out of Spock's mouth.
If he is asleep, maybe don't wake him up."If I put my mind to it, I bet I could have you running for the hills in under a week. Two, if I'm being thorough."Frankly, Jim's not sure when his feelings towards Spock veered into this territory either - or, maybe he does, but he knows that looking at it too closely is a surefire way to embarrass himself and/or freak himself out more than necessary, so he doesn't. It's much easier to repress things when you're unaware they're there in the first place, when the option is safely closed off, inaccessible from the whole. And yet here - here, it isn't. Here, Spock has opened the option, and Jim -
Fuck. Jim wants. He's so fucked.
"You're never an imposition." Jim rebuts quietly, because it's true, and definitely doesn't mention intensity isn't a problem for me. As if the whole of their friendship hasn't been intense in its own way, anyhow. As if their dalliance at the bar hadn't brought with it a frisson of something Jim was unable to ignore, something that sparked a smoldering heat in the core of his being. He had known what it meant, to engage in that kind of behavior with Spock, and he'd done it anyway. Now there's - additional context, and the freak out he needs to have isn't based in regret: he needs to freak out about the fact that he'd do it again anyway.
Jim stands slowly, his hand moving to squeeze Spock's shoulder reassuringly instead as he does so. A short whistle brings Bones to heel, the dog sliding off the bed and trotting out into the living room - probably best to let Spock have some peace, to get himself back in order. Well, as much order as the Council will allow - and the incandescent rage is back, ah, wonderful.
"I'll be here when you're rested," Jim promises, and it's not a dig for earlier - it's just an earnest promise, maybe even more to himself than it is to Spock. That he won't run, that he will give this the turnabout in his brain it deserves - even if the thought of it is as daunting as it is potentially pleasant, if only Jim will allow himself to...enjoy it. "I'll make grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch, okay?"
Hard to fuck that one up, and who knows if it will actually make Spock feel better about anything to do with the current situation but - it's an offering, and it's within Jim's power to give it. That's enough, for now. It has to be.