Chapter Text
“Staring at them isn’t gonna heal ‘em faster.”
Spock’s head snaps up to meet Doctor McCoy’s slight frown.
“I am aware of that, doctor. I am merely inspecting the external damage,” Spock’s eyes rake over his hands that McCoy was rebandaging. He insisted on keeping them bandaged throughout the day, not for any medical purposes but to “remind you of your limits.”
Doctor McCoy told Spock about the extent of the damage from his exploding tricorder. He’d have some nerve pain, random spasms, which could be limited with physical therapy and nerve repair treatments. He insisted on following a strict schedule that included remaining in sickbay for the duration. Two weeks in and Spock is considering the merits of simply leaving.
“Doctor?” Spock says, “my condition allows me to walk does it not?”
“Yes Spock of course-“
“Then what is inhibiting me from continuing my treatment from my quarters?”
McCoy leans against the wall and puffs out a sigh, “because you’ll sneak in work the moment you’re alone and near a PADD. I gotta keep you where I can make sure you’re not doing more damage to yourself for some ‘needs of the many’ nonsense.” McCoy’s use of air quotes feels unnecessary.
Spock attempts to fold his hands in his lap, but flicks an eyebrow up instead when the appendages cramp, “I will not attempt to work.”
“And I’m supposed to just take you at your word then? When you’re a known liar when it comes to your health.”
“Vulcans cannot-“
“Like hell they can’t!” McCoy snaps, all joking from his face gone. McCoy looks worn, his hair standing on end and eyes void of their usual sparkling mirth. He’s been short with Spock since he returned, but he hasn’t raised his voice until now. “You can lie Spock, you do it all the time about your health. And about your supposed ‘not feelings.’ You’ve been lying about being emotionally fine since you returned!”
Spock blinks a few times, his brain function down nearly 20% since returning from the planet. His reaction time is slow, a lag in his sharp mind. McCoy has clearly observed this.
“I will heal just the same in my quarters, including improved quality of your patient's life.”
The doctor scoffs but must take pity on Spock, for he drops the issue, something he only does when Spock isn’t well. It irks something deep in the Vulcan. Like McCoy just deemed him too fragile to argue with.
However, he is allowed to continue his physical therapy in his quarters. Before he is discharged, McCoy unwraps his bandaged hands with a kind of tenderness usually saved for the captain. But then Spock remembers that gentle touch on his back as he was guided to sit after being blinded, recalls the crack in McCoys voice when he said it was his fault. The careful fingers on his pulse following his brain operation. He shivers at the remembered chill of Scarpadia, and McCoy’s hands, steadying him while his brain was on fire.
McCoy’s tenderness is coupled with his volatile hatred at Starfleet recklessness, of the patients under his charge that neglect themselves for the mission. Spock remembers McCoy’s breathless shout before Spock was put under in the cave only weeks ago, when panic at Jim’s death had swept through him. He couldn’t hear McCoy then but his mind remembered.
“Dammit, not now Spock, please. We just got you back, dammit, don’t go dying on me. Chapel, hypo, let’s put him under before he bleeds out.”
The bandages fall loose, McCoy and Spock stare down at Spock’s long fingers. The scar on his right hand runs up his middle finger, trailing jaggedly off to the left of his palm. His left hand holds two new scars, one short and deep in the center of his palm, the other lighter, barely noticeable, along his thumb and down the side.
His hands are painted in bruised smudges; black and deep greens stroke over the worst of his gashes and along his fingers. He inspects a particularly deep bruise on his left pinky where it had broken.
Vulcan bodies are so strong, so durable. He has backup eyelids and organs, Katras and trance sleep healing. But the hands of Vulcans, spinning with nerves and life, are delicate things. Each nerve is wired to connect telepathically. Unlike Betazoids, who “read minds” (to use the human colloquialism) Vulcans communicate primarily through hands. If they are bonded, telepathic communication becomes easier to do without touch, but the hands are essential to a Vulcan.
He tries to configure his fingers in the live long and prosper symbol, but his middle finger shakes, pain spiking like Setlat fangs in skin. He’s still trembling.
“Physical therapy is all about building up muscle, Spock. It’s normal to be shaky at first,” McCoy says, “I see you pushing yourself in PT, but healing takes time.”
It appears McCoy is the telepath these days. Spock has spent two weeks in sick bay; the first week recovering, resting, and learning the physical therapy exercises. The second Spock devoted to his PT sessions with McCoy and was allowed a PADD in the afternoons to catch up on science lab reports and the month's duty roster.
The PT sessions showed a frustrating lack of progress. No matter how many reps he would achieve, his hands remained shaky. Spock hadn’t noticed much improvement to his hands, except the pain decreasing. He may be pushing himself, but that often warranted positive progress.
Throughout the two weeks, he had visitors as well. McCoy allowed two at a time so Sulu and Chekov arrived during their breaks to eat lunch with him on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Uhura came to read beside his bed two days a week, a silent companion while he read reports or studies. Scotty and M’Ress often came in a pair, coming with fascinating engineering stories and puzzles. They all seemed to have worked out a schedule so Spock was never alone for more than two hours. He could never state how deeply he appreciated it.
And then there was Captain Kirk. He visited Spock a few times a day for the two weeks he’d been a prisoner to sickbay. The captain sat with him, sometimes working in silence, but usually he talked. He spoke of work, or told stories of his time on the Farragut and at the academy. These conversations were mainly one-sided and Kirk babbled on. Many days, Spock went a majority of the day in near silence. Settling for single words or sentences. Getting his tongue to form words was a difficult task, and more often than not, Spock didn’t have the energy for much speech. He longed more than ever for his telepathic abilities, to touch his mind to Kirk and share what his head was screaming about.
Spock’s hands ached when the captain was around. The sound of Kirk’s voice sent goosebumps down his arms. He wanted to wrap himself in that voice and also leave the Enterprise and never hear it again. Anything to not lose him once more. How many times could Jim appear dead? With the Tholians, during Spock’s Pon Farr, and now on that desert planet. He didn’t think he could manage another time.
Not engaging in his romantic feelings at all was the most logical course of action. If Jim Kirk well and officially died because of him… he may not survive it either.
Perhaps Spock was feeling a bit melodramatic. His father often thought of his children and wife as dramatic. “A fan of the theatrics” he used to say when passing Michael and Amanda in the study, acting out Alice scenes, Spock assisting with lines, a non-smile in his eyes.
His head hurts, as it does when thinking of his father, so he stops.
Spock notes he hasn’t spoken for a long while. His internal clock couldn’t tell him how long. By the look on McCoy’s face, it’s been too long to be socially acceptable.
McCoy had been regarding him with a look between thoughtful (like the doctor he is, working out a medical puzzle) and concerned (like how he regards Jim after a close call.)
“Doctor, is there a reason you are looking at me?”
McCoy huffs, “I’m just glad you're okay Spock. And I know you’re not fully okay, but I’ll help get you there. We all will, if you let us, that is.”
Ah, that’s the problem, isn’t it?
Spock is given a strict sleep, dietary, and physical therapy schedule, a light workload, and his computer is his quarters will be locked out for another week.
McCoy sends him with a PADD and his doctor’s orders to “take it easy.”
Spock isn’t sure how to accomplish that.
—————
“There’s nothing like it, is there?” Jim Kirk throws Spock a quick glance. He’s standing a step behind his first officer in the observation lounge. A giant nebula swirls before them, glittering against the black canvas of space.
Kirk doesn’t stare at Spock’s figure outlined by the beautiful nebula, though his muscles itch to. He remains fixated on the Cercus Nebula, and not on the fact that he’s found Spock in here, in the dead of night, six nights out of seven. When Kirk asks the computer and it always responds with “Commander Spock is located in the observation lounge” the captain looks over to see 0200 blaring on his digital clock (yes he’s old-fashioned, he doesn’t like asking the computer for the time always.)
He’s been watching Spock closer after the away-mission-gone-wrong, particularly after reading Spock's official report of the incident on the class H planet. Hearing his log about it hasn’t been pleasant.
“First officer Spock’s mission log: since we, that is to say, the transporter clone of Captain Kirk and I, were stranded on a class H desert planet, I had no available technology to complete my log. However, I am back aboard and my hands are too injured to type this log. Captain Kirk and myself hit a subspace eddy when going back to the Enterprise after a successful mission on Hera Kimal. The Enterprise was in range and attempted to beam us up, however, only Captain Kirk was successful and yet a clone of him remained behind with me. We spent nine days in a cave. He sacrificed his life for mine.” There’s a long pause where Kirk can hear the ambient beeping sound of Sickbay. It stabs at Jim to think Spock recorded this before he even was healed enough to leave sickbay. The log ended there.
“There are quite a few like it, Captain,” Spock’s deep-toned reply rumbles Jim from his thoughts, “your galaxy also contains this type.”
Jim huffs, gripping his fist in his other hand. Spock’s profile is backlit by the sparkling nebula, his long nose and pointed chin the only defining features in the darkened lounge.
Kirk takes a sidelong step toward Spock, who stiffens. Kirk forges ahead, “penny for your thoughts?”
Spock’s back stiffens more if possible and Jim can't help the worried glance he sends Spock’s way.
“Nothing Captain, I simply cannot sleep.”
Kirk hums, trying to go for thoughtful but shooting past that to concerned. Spock’s shoulders, jaw, and back are so stiff Kirk worries about his muscles in the morning. He’s always leaning over his station, always sits so stiff, he’s gotta be sore.
Jim longs to massage the ache out of Spock but he knows how private the man is about touch. How uncomfortable touch makes him feel. So he keeps his hands clasped behind his back, mirroring his first officer's position and swims in the silence washing over the two of them.
He doesn’t do well with silence though, particularly when there’s a problem he needs to solve. Seeing Spock like this, stiff and reserved, reminds him of their first few encounters on the Enterprise . Though this time, that stiffness is directed at him so clearly. He’s declined three chess invitations, is absent from the mess, and leaves right after his shift on the bridge. Kirk didn’t realize how often he spent time with Spock until he wasn’t.
He can conceptualize why. He can imagine what Spock felt knowing that Kirk (clone or not) sacrificed himself for Spock. And if Kirk were in his position, he knows how crazy he’d be going.
Jim Kirk has spent years observing his first officer, learning what each tilt of the eyebrow and stiffening of shoulders may mean. But the man before him he can’t quite recognize.
They stand in the low hum of the core, watching the nebula glitter. Space twinkles in Spock’s eyes. It’s intoxicating. But Kirk mentally shakes himself. Spock needs his help, not his pining.
Jim remembers the times before the desert planet, where Spock and he would meet late like this in the observation lounge. They would talk about missions, ships business, the current galactic chess tournament scores. They'd philosophize and get into deep discussions late into the night. Though Spock never divulged much information about himself, he still found every opportunity to ask Jim things about his life.
The Spock beside him now is cut from marble.
A statue Jim can't touch, only admire. He's exquisite as ever, his features silhouetted by the vastness of space, but just as mysterious. Kirk longs to pass a casual touch on his shoulder, but he's tried it twice since Spock's return, and the man had flinched and averted his gaze. He was so quiet in sickbay too. McCoy said he was frustrated with his body’s slow recovery.
He wants to feel Spock’s warmth beneath his hand, to assure him he's not in fact made of stone. That he is here so Jim can forget the burn of those nine days scanning that damned planet for him.
“Spock-” Jim steps forward as Spock takes a step back. They collide and Kirk’s fingers curl around Spock’s wrist, the pulse beating rapidly under his fingerpads.
Spock wrenches himself out of Kirk’s grasp and mutters, “goodnight captain.”
Kirk's stomach plunges as Spock walks through the door, light from the corridor flooding the room before swishing closed and leaving Jim in darkness.
—————
When Spock cannot sleep these days, he goes to the largest windows on the ship and gazes out into the cosmos. Its glittering mass gives his mind a chance to order itself. To think, away from the liveliness of the day. However, Kirk had entered his calm bubble and sent Spock’s thoughts into orbit again. Spock’s skin still tingles where Kirk touched him, but in the moment it had nearly burned. Kirk’s care for him is a scalding golden light and Spock does not deserve it. He cannot allow Jim to waste his kindness on him. He could die again if he did. Shaking his hand to rid it of Kirk’s touch, Spock enters his quarters.
Since returning to duty, something akin to paranoia has been creeping along Spock’s spine. It starts with a numbness in his appendages, crackling static that inches up his fingertips toward his twitching palms and snaking around each wrist. Spock cannot halt the numbness, and as the choking sensation creeps around his lungs, paranoia becomes a tight hand over his ribs, constricting and pulling tightly.
He's felt this tingling paranoia before, with the Red Angel, but never with his eyes raking the crew, checking each face for life, for pulse. It’s only been three days since his return to duty but he’s spent 30% of his time checking to ensure the captain was alive. The backwards glances are becoming more frequent, and fear fills his mouth like ash. Something lingers on his spine, like the coil of a Deneva creature, an internal cloying ache, one destroying his mental concentration.
He sits at the science station, on Kirk’s right, and waits for the tense fear to fade. He wills it back with the strength of his Vulcan shields.
The more he pushes down the fear, the more his vision tunnels. He blinks down at his hands, tracing a pale green scar with his eyes, and there must be cotton in his ears for the beeping on the bridge is stuffed down.
He does not feel here, on the bridge, though he knows logically he can see, his body cannot reconcile what he is seeing. He feels like he’s watching his life on a monitor.
A faulty sensory input, Spock hypothesizes, but he can’t grasp the rest. So he sits and waits for it to pass, hazy on what his bridge task was.
He blinks and the bridge officers stand, breaking for lunch, Sulu’s taking the con today. Kirk tilts his head to Spock’s, indicating that he follow.
Spock cannot decline anything so direct of his captain, even at the moment. So he follows him to the secondary mess hall, peculiar, since the caption enjoys his lunches most surrounded by people.
The secondary mess hall is half the size and tucked beside the science and hydroponics labs. Spock comes here often to enjoy a quiet respite between long experiments or warps, or when he is feeling less in the mood for human scrutiny.
Kirk orders an earth dish that Spock is unfamiliar with, and he gets a bowl of Plomeak. Kirk hands him a spoon and nods them over to a corner table, sitting with his back to the door. Spock is able to see every corner of the room and Kirk in full view. The only other occupant, a yeoman from security, Marryn, looks shocked to see the captain and first officer but quickly ducks his head to return to his food.
Something about Kirk’s actions feel deliberate; taking him to a quiet corner and letting him see the exits, handing him a spoon with a knowing smile.
They eat for a moment.
“So, how have you been adjusting back to duties?” Kirk asks without preamble. They both hold a dislike for small talk, another thing he loves about Jim.
The thought of that love makes Spock’s stomach churn so rapidly he fears he will lose his meager bites of soup. But he pulls in a few breaths and glances to Kirk’s face. His brows pull inward, a crinkled crease.
“I am healed, captain,” Even as he says it, he wants to push his bowl away, to watch Kirk eat every bite, to ensure that this Kirk is staying healthy. Humans are so fragile, after all. And Kirk hates feeling hungry. Spock told Kirk in that cave, “I will not let you die here, Jim.”
And yet he died there, hungry and alone and burnt. With Spock uselessly unconscious on the ground, so far away…
“Spock?”
Spock blinks and Kirk is finishing his lunch and piercing him with his cerulean gaze.
“Yes, captain?” Spock asks, convincing himself he sounds unstrained.
“You’ve been quiet. Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?”
Kirk knows something is bothering him, he always does. They have known one another for four and a half years now.
“I apologize, captain. I am merely…” Spock chews on the best word, “preoccupied.”
“With the events of your last away mission?” Kirk asks it with such gentleness that Spock wants to hurl the table they're dining at.
Humans often subject him to pity while his Vulcan peers scorned him for any emotional display.
He nods, “nothing to concern yourself with, however.”
“You have to give it time, Spock. Your hands have only just healed. Duty shift ought to be overwhelming at first.”
Spock nods stiffly. Kirk’s logic is sound, but Spock doesn't feel sound. He's on a rocking ship at sea, marooned and drifting.
The Kirk before him can never understand and Spock is too unwilling to open up to him, to confess anything more than what he put in his report. He only saw a nine-day divergence of the two Kirks, yet they feel like strangers to him.
Does the Kirk before him love him? A juvenile question, yes, but one that meditation cannot banish.
Does Spock have the will to lean into that love once more? When the first was ripped so violently from him?
“Spock?” That voice sounds so like the one in the cave, worried, sincere, and unbearable. Something in
Spock meets his gaze, knowing full well if he doesn’t, his captain will suspect something more.
He sees the bluish hue even in the gray lights of the room. Or perhaps it’s the tinge he looks at the world now. He shakes his head once to rid the dramatic thought and too late, Kirk frowns.
Spock feels his pulse in his side; thudding, thudding. He feels it in his wrists and head.
“How can I help?” Kirk whispers, leaning forward to see Spock closer, to scrutinize his imperfections, and see behind the cracks.
His heart thuds harder against his side.
“I cannot explain it, Jim,” Spock mutters.
Kirk opens his mouth but Spock stands, the chair shrieking backward and Marryn looks up sharply from his finished meal.
Spock leaves before Kirk can say more. He takes the turbolift down two floors. Outside of science and hydroponics, he takes two steadying breaths. Then three more. Then five. His pulse hammers against his head and he squeezes his eyes shut. He breathes for another 2.5 minutes until his pulse evens and his thoughts aren’t swirling.
Remembering he’s due in the science lab for duty shift reports, he packs away his guilt and every other emotion corroding his usually strong mental barriers and enters.
—————
Pacing, Spock makes circles around his quarters, thoughts skittering around his head like creeping desert bugs. He’d called him Jim. Something he’d been even mentally prying himself from doing, forcing distance, carving a path between them.
Spock looks at his lyre, meditation candles, and painting of the Vulcan desert. He stops in front of the canvas. Michael painted it during her art class at the learning center. She crafted it for Spock, in preparation for his Kas-Wain.
She never saw him complete it, wasn't with him when losing I-Chiya. Only Selek was there, who he now knows was himself. The metaphor of only having himself through hard times is not lost on him…
She never met I-Chiya. They got him after Michael ran away. Perhaps his mothers way of helping Spock cope with her loss. She never knew the words Michael carved into him. How they made him marble.
He picks up the painting, a few inches larger than his palm. The strokes are lovely, and sloppy, and bold, and so Michael.
He’s thought of her often in the weeks he’s been healing. He thought of her leaving him, of her laugh, of her bringing him to Talos IV. So many memories of her and yet not nearly enough as they deserved.
He thought of her in the Red Angel suit in the same breath he sees Jim exiting the mouth of the cave. He feels Jim’s lips on his own and the longer he stares at the swirling drops of paint that carve out the dunes, the more a desperate ache gnaws at his stomach and spreads to his chest. He grips the painting, and before he can carelessly snap it in half, he opens his top dresser drawer and places it on top of his Starfleet-issued undershirts. He closes the door and his eyes.
He smells smoke, feels it cloying and swirling in his lungs, burning up and out. He opens his eyes and peers around the room, but there’s no traces of a fire or of smoke. But he still feels it inside of him, invisible smoke burning him from within.
He can't get Jim out of his mind and he thinks of the look that his captain, the one who is alive and well, gave him when he'd left the table two days ago. He’d been avoiding him since.
He opens the bathroom door, heading to the mirror. He inspects his features.
The furrow in Spock’s brow and troubled frown greets him. He runs a hand over his face to rid it of the look. He looks again but there it resides. Everyone sees right through him, as his taunting peers did.
Sad eyes. That’s what he was called at the learning center.
Taking a shuddering breath, Spock turns away from his gaze and knocks on the connecting door in their shared bathroom. He waits, holding himself coil-tight to avoid tapping his foot. He hears the creak of the chain and footsteps. The door opens and Kirk is in his nightwear, very short shorts, perhaps what McCoy wantonly calls tighty-whities, and a t-shirt that reads, “I’m the EnterPRISE”
“Captain-”
“Spock, what’s going on?” Kirk asks, voice coated in sleepiness.
He now realizes the time is very late.
“I apologize for waking you,” he goes to close the door but Kirk pops out a hand and holds it open.
“What’s up?” He prompts.
Spock looks down, “I wanted to apologize for my weakness earlier. This… pain I am experiencing is a thing of the mind, and the mind can be controlled.”
Kirk laughs tonelessly, “you said that on the Devena mission. And I told you, I need you. That’s still true. And you don’t need to explain yourself, Spock. That is still true now.”
That's when I fell for you, after Devena, Jim’s voice echoes from the cave.
Spock turns a tinge green.
“That still does not condone my behavior to you in the secondary mess,” Spock fixes his hands behind his back and grips his wrists tightly, digging his nails into skin. Anything to get him through this conversation and away from Kirk.
“It's fine, Spock. What's not fine is you not talking to anyone. McCoy and M’Benga are both licensed therapists, you know? And I am a pretty good listener!” His smile is open, Spock almost hates him for how brightly he beams.
“Understood.”
Kirk’s smile falls flat and Spock’s heart hardens to a lead ball.
“And… forgive me for prying, but have you seen more quiet lately… withdrawn. Neglecting your health, your appearance is…” Spock stiffens at Kirk’s words. Has his appearance been untidy as of late?
“Sorry, not a great word to use. Just that I’ve noticed you’ve looked more tired, thinner, your shirts are usually crisp and pristine but now they’re rumpled and-“
“My apologies for my appearance, Captain, I will-“
“No, Spock, that’s not the reason I’m saying this! I’m saying that I know you have put yourself on the back burner while you try to wade through this time alone. No one can do that, not even a Vulcan.”
Spock looks to a point beside Kirk’s head, “I merely came to apologize. Good night, Captain.”
Before Kirk can say another word he presses the close button, watching Kirk’s face disappear. Spock dares not breathe.
Spock will not sleep. He unrolls his meditation mat and pulls open the third drawer, with a wooden boxes of candles, incense, and various mediation paraphernalia. He pulls out a wrapped package, in silk, an IDIC necklace and thinks of T’Pring’s eyes when she handed him the soft silk. Their hands brushed and tingled. He loved her touch, but couldn’t love her the way she wanted, the way he loves Jim.
He meditates until night rotates into day shift, and now must dress for his shift, which begins on the bridge in the morning and the Laboratory this afternoon. As both the chief science officer and first officer, his duties often require him to oversee experiments the science department is running, like ones on a nearby gaseous nebula density or collaborative projects with medical.
Bridge duty is quiet today, as they are on a mapping mission before moving on to the next system.
Spock is in the lab that afternoon when he's overtaken by a rubbery nothing. His surroundings dull to plastic and set dressing. Spock completely forgets what he's doing in the lab. What his hands are doing with the microscope, or frankly, why he has hands at all.
It is illogical. Surely, it’s some kind of drug in his system. Hyposprays make him feel cottony like this.
His bangs brush his tingling forehead and it’s a fiery trail of feeling amidst the bloated numbness.
Spock’s limbs feel thick, like they've been pasted with gooey concrete. He shakes his hand and blinks. It does not clear the fog.
He tries again, this time blinking and touching the delicate skin on his wrist, where his pulse thuds. He expects it to be elevated, a parasympathetic response to this troubling behavior, but the pulse remains steady, almost sluggish.
He breathes. And breathes. And floats. Until he can get his feet under him, until he can leave, get to his quarters. He cannot tell if anyone saw him, nor how long until his shift ends, or when he last did any actual work. He is alone in his quarters before he quite realizes it.
He checks the time, it’s 1850, far past his shift.
He sighs.
The worrying factor is that Spock doesn’t remember the time passing for three hours; it both oozed and evaporated, somehow eroding right before him, hours of worktime, wasted to whatever mental crisis that is.
What he desires is company. But he cannot allow himself to have it. So instead, Spock sits on the floor of their shared bathroom and listens to Kirk get ready for bed. He loves the sound of his captain humming as he undresses and putters around his room.
His lungs ache like the room is filled with invisible smoke. The fire rages in his head and he wishes he could burn on the outside too.
A part of himself just begs to be seen. His mother, when interrogated by a teenage Spock why she agreed with Sarek in every discussion, sighed and said, “it’s the people pleaser in me.”
Spock thinks he has that in himself. He worked hard to please his father, Michael, Sybok, Amanda, Starfleet professors, Pike, Christine, T’Pring, La’An, McCoy, Scotty, and now Kirk.
He sees his mother in himself. Her furrowed brow and wringing hands. He clasps his own behind his back to halt any movement.
Spock also dreams like his mother. She’d wake screaming sometimes, consumed by nightmares. Spock would wake panting, choking on his own yell, his body held down by gruesome images. His dreams were disturbing things, a cacophony of sound and light and hands pressing down, down, and Spock’s lungs burning like he’s underwater, though he gasps air into his dark bedroom.
He’d pad downstairs quietly, only to find Michael and his mother already there, quietly sipping tea and whispering in hushed voices. Their whispers sounded like wind in trees.
Amanda would notice Spock, peaking at them beyond the doorway and stand, a kind of pinched sadness on her face. He’d be beckoned over, Michael moving her chair, and Spock would be handed a cup of tea. He always waited for his shaking hand to calm before picking up his cup.
He’d listen to Michael talk of the horrors of her dream, those horrors she’d already lived through. When asked what he dreamt about, he said “Vulcan’s do not dream” determined his gripping dreams of imagined scenarios were not cause to take up the space that Michael needed.
He sat quietly and listened to them talk, while Sarek slept a floor above, unaware of his family's quiet pain below.
Spock’s been dreaming again. Mainly of Jim.
He wakes up shaking and cursing himself for his lack of discipline. He’s tired, more exhausted than he’s been in years.
Bridge duty the morning after four nights of consecutive nightmares is difficult.
Spock can feel the fatigue crawling along his spine, pushing it into a slouch. His head pounds against his skull and his eyes burn for rest. His lips are cracked and dry. When was the last time he had water? Yesterday? The day before, perhaps? Days leak into one another and Spock’s care for his body is pushed aside.
Spock sits in his chair on the bridge today, his back aching too much to stand over it properly.
He stares at a stellar report and the numbers make little sense. Instead of trying to comprehend them, he imagines digging a finger nail into his skin and tugging until his skin pulls free and he bleeds out there on the council.
He shakes the thought away quickly.
Behind him, Kirk is briefing Sulu and Uhura on last-minute mission prep. They are beaming down to Degus II for a trade of technology with a new Federation planet. Their colony ran their agriculture entirely on salt water and the botany and science departments were understandably intrigued by this. The Enterprise prepared to trade their weather bio-sphere technology for a salt-water garden machine.
It is all quite fascinating, but Spock cannot will himself to feel intrigued. He wasn’t going on the away mission, Spock not sure if McCoy or Kirk advised against him going, but he feels too numb to care about things like this.
Which should be alarming, but again, he doesn’t care.
Spock returns to his quarters after his shift and lays in bed, time oozing by at an indiscernible rate.
His comm panel beside his bed chimes, “Kirk to Spock.”
Spock takes a deep breath before clicking the button, “yes, captain?”
“Care to join me for a round of chess tonight? We could go somewhere private, like my quarters.” Kirk’s voice, it’s almost honey, almost sultry, and open, not at all Captain Kirk.
It must be evening then, the mission is over.
Spock wants him. He wants him so much his body burns, his very bones ache. It feels like the gnawing fire of Pon Farr, but also nothing like it. It’s intense longing and it makes Spock’s ribs ache. He cannot push himself closer to his captain, not in his state.
“I appreciate the offer. However, I am going to attempt to sleep early tonight and must decline,” Spock tries to let him down gently, to plunge remorse into the words.
“Ah.” There’s a hesitation in Kirk’s voice, “are you feeling alright?”
“Slightly… disordered. I am not sleeping well and must remedy that.”
All of this is true. Spock can finally say he is honest with him.
“Rest, Spock. If you need tomorrow off-?”
“No,” Spock hurries, “not necessary.”
“Alright, goodnight Spock.”
“Goodnight Jim.”
Spock lies in bed ten minutes later and thinks of how he called the captain Jim again. It steals his breath. The loss he faced with his Jim is the loss he’s currently facing with his Captain. This loss is slow, aching, but ultimately, necessary.
He kicks the Starfleet-issued covers off him, their sheets too much like tangled bandages and closes his eyes to sleep, his fatigued body encouraging the process.
Spock dreams that night; it starts with a scorching sunset over the desert. Is it Vulcan? The H Class planet? Spock can only see sand stretching on for miles, the sunset painting the sky red, yellow, and flaming orange.
A hand grips his palm, fingers encircling his own, alighting his nerve centres. Spock’s head whips around to see Jim, eyes golden and stunning as the sunset displayed behind him.
Jim beams at him, “Spock, god, you look beautiful bathed in this glow. I love you.”
Spock’s gaze meets his and he cannot look away.
“Let me have you,” Jim whispers in his ear.
Spock nods, squeezing Jim’s hand. It sends electrifying jolts down his spine and to his groin.
One of Jim’s hands remains in his, stroking their fingers together in a way that is so erotically Vulcan.
The other hand snakes to his front, stroking his chest, ghosting over budding nipples. He touches his neck, cheeks, and psy points. Jim’s fingers tangle in his hair as they meet for a human kiss. Their lips crash together and a roar of need rears its head.
Spock deepens the kiss, fingers stroking Jim’s, as his captain’s hand trails down to his chest again, this time dipping under his uniform, to his nipples. Spock lets out a little breathy something that has Jim grinning into their kiss. He rolls his fingers over Spock’s emerald bud until it hardens, along with his other nipple.
“My my, so attentive, Mr. Spock,” Jim murmurs, fingers teasing his nipple, pinching and rolling it.
They’re on the ground and Spock writhes in the hot sand. Jim growls, straddling him.
Their groins meet and the two moan. Spock can feel Jim’s bludge as Jim presses his hips down hard to grind against Spock’s sheath. The sun is arcing low over the valley, casting long shadows on their heaving bodies, as Jim’s hard cock presses against Spock’s clothed mound. He can feel himself hardening, growing, his sheath is soaked and he needs Jim to coax him out.
Jim knows, “I need you too Spock.”
And with those clever fingers of his, he slides them under his uniform pants, dipping past Starfleet-issued underwear, to Spock’s soaking sheath, his hole, his penis hardening beneath, and unsheathing in his hands as Jim hums, “beautiful.”
Spock flushes green and Jim sinks two fingers inside of him. Spock arches with the sun as it crests over the horizon. The Vulcan moans, his body inches from Jim’s as he lays on top of him, their bodies, their bones slotting into place.
Their clothes are somehow gone and Jim’s slipping inside of his anus, the same time his penis emerges fully from its soaking sheath. They’re merging closer, and the sun’s rays stretch across their backs as they climax together. Blood roars in Spock’s ears and he pants into Jim’s mouth for another loving kiss.
As the sun disappears beyond the horizon of bruised purple, Jim’s body vanishes with it.
Spock is heaving on the sand, naked and wet and hard and empty. Completely alone.
It’s cold, the sand is everywhere and Jim is nowhere. Spock cannot move, he can only pant and want. His hands spike in pain and he wakes, sitting up in bed, robbed of breath.
Spock gulps in breaths that turn into shudders. He’s wet, he realizes, sweating yes, but aroused as well. He’s hard too. Achingly so. His perked nipples tug on his shirt and he can still feel Jim’s hands all over his body. His bulge has slipped from his sheath in the night, like Jim’s hands had been there to coax it out.
His teeth begin to chatter and he must be rid of the wetness, the hardness, the ache. His human urges, his failings, his love, it has all betrayed him and left him soaking and hard and he realizes now, crying. He feels the wetness on his cheeks like he feels the ghostly hands of Jim’s in the dream.
To sleep perchance to dream, aye there’s the rub.
Spock must now face his humiliation. His shame. He must do what he hasn’t since he was a teenage boy and when he was curious about his body before his first Pon Farr. He slips out of bed, tossing the sheets and his nightgown in the laundry dispenser.
He half wishes Jim would accidentally walk in on Spock, naked and shivering in the sonic shower, holding his hard, emerald cock and mouthing Jim’s name.
But he doesn’t and Spock comes, aching someplace deep, someplace he cannot reach alone.
—————
Jim Kirk is a patient man. He has stared down Romulans and Klingons and sat at negotiating tables for hours, days and he’s sat through Arex’s long-winded stories for longer. But he is starting to itch under his skin, wanting to pick at an irritated scab deep inside him. Spock has been avoiding him, in his cordial Vulcan-y manner, and Jim can’t help but squirm in his captain’s chair when Spock hightails it off the bridge the second his shift is over.
He used to linger, to barb with Bones, or consult Chekov on their shared science projects. And Jim knows Spock isn’t pulling overtime in the lab, because he’s checked the lab entry logs (not creepy, he’s just curious) and Spock hasn’t logged any additional time in the labs or gardens or any other place on the ship. He seems to be heading straight for his quarters.
Jim also catches the look on Spock’s face, however rare it is that Spock looks him in the eye these days, and he sees a concerning hollowness there. Spock doesn’t ask follow-up questions during briefings, he offers up scientific facts but neglects to regale them with any extra details. He sometimes goes quiet on the bridge, sitting in his chair and staring at the console or his hands. Jim’s chest grows cold whenever this happens, but he cannot and will not point it out on the bridge, even if Spock’s efficiency is down.
So today Jim jumps up a minute before shift change on the bridge and heads to the turbolift before Spock can bolt. He’s been trying for weeks to get Spock to talk to him, but to no avail. He will have to be less direct, more tactful. Spock hates head-on questions about his wellbeing.
“Mr. Spock, will you join me for a moment, I’d like to tour the science labs before dinner to go over projects before we reach the Tarcalius sector.” It’s not quite a lie, even. Jim has been neglecting the science departments recently and he would like an update before they start their next leg of space. He knows many of the projects are coming to completion or critical final stages.
Spock nods, stiffly and follows him into the turbolift. Jim calls out the deck number and turns to Spock, putting on his best carefree smile.
“Spock, what’s this I hear about Sulu and Chekov’s joint botany and chemistry project? You think it will actually yield better growth results or are they dreaming too big?”
Spock pauses, seeming to ponder this, but as Jim watches Spock’s eyes, the chill returns to his chest. There are bags under his eyes, and he’s looking to the turbolift door, but like he sees past it or doesn’t see it at all. Jim waits for an answer and watches Spock flex his fingers. They’re still hurting him, Jim can see it in their stiffness, the way Spock is using the same movements frequently throughout the day.
“It is possible they will be successful, however the experiment is still in early stages,” Spock’s answer is toneless.
Jim nods, humming his understanding.
They tour science labs one through four and it takes nearly an hour for Spock and Jim to look over and discuss each project. It’s the most time he’s spent with Spock alone since his return from the desert planet, and the thought feels like a phaser burn to the chest. He misses Spock so much it aches. He misses their chess games and the cheeky half-grin when Spock wins. He misses lunches discussing ship’s business and often straying into other topics. He loves going on scientific tangents with Spock and brainstorming in briefings with him. He hasn’t been on any missions with Spock, not sure he is ready to be back in the field just yet. He’s trying to give his first officer time, but the more time and space he gives, the more distance Spock creates. The gap between them yawns wider and Jim’s beginning to fear that he will never stitch it closed.
There is some wonderful work being done in the labs, but Jim mainly watches his friend. Spock leads the discussion, explaining each project with an incredible memory and efficiency but lacking any vigor. Spock speaks of each project in short sentences and Jim fills silences more than he is accustomed. For a stoic guy, Spock can be extremely chatty when discussing his passions, but Jim doesn’t see that Spock today. He sees someone blurred around the edges, wading through thick waters.
To an outsider, and someone who has dealt with it, this looks like depression. It floors Jim, but once he thinks about it he can’t unsee it. All the signs are there. It hurts him, somewhere deep in his gut, to see Spock like this, to know he is right in front of him but also galaxies away.
Before they leave science lab four, Kirk touches Spock’s shoulder and says in what he hopes is a soothing undertone, “Spock, I was thinking, since you’re an early riser, why don’t we grab breakfast. You can just come into my quarters. There’s this great Vulcan dish I’ve been wanting to try.”
Spock pauses, eyes fixed on a nearby lab table, and Jim sees a glimpse of genuine pain in the Vulcan’s eyes. He knows what words are coming, but still can’t brace for it.
“I will have to decline, however, thank you for the offer.”
Spock leaves Jim standing in the lab, watching the door swish shut and thinks, he couldn’t even come up with a reason why.
Anger claws up his chest and he lets it grab purchase on his ribs and fester there. He can only do so much, and his patience has run dry.
—————
It all feels false to Spock. It feels like this life he is living now is a simulation in the Rec Room compared to the life he left on that desert planet.
He taps his fingers on the buttons of his science station, the sensation plastic and deadened.
This is the fifth occasion of detachment from reality and body, and Spock now has a method of managing it. When he feels his body begin to float, he wraps his long fingers around his delicate wrist and feels his pulse thud there. Or if he is alone, and time gets sluggish and oozing, Spock presses his hand against his side, to feel his heart pound under his palm, a reminder that he is alive and present.
Illogical, but somewhat effective.
Spock trudges through each day, watching Captain Kirk try to act like he doesn’t see right through him.
But Spock has always been transparent when it comes to his captain.
Kirk is serious during red alerts and overly worried when a crewman is injured on an away mission. He’s casual, jovial, and laughs with Doctor McCoy, Scotty, Uhura or Sulu. But Kirk’s causal demeanor is forced with Spock. He is strained, because of Spock’s behavior. Spock can tell that Kirk is careful around him, and tentative. He remains casual and friendly with the others, but stiff with him.
Spock understands why. He has changed, his behavior cold, even for a Vulcan.
He cannot gather himself to warm around his captain. When he thinks of tenderness and affection for Jim Kirk… his mind is pierced by memories, and emotions flood the barriers of his mind, eroding the stone. He cannot face Kirk with sunshine when the man let himself be scorched for Spock.
“We protect each other,” Spock had told Jim on the planet. Yet he had failed.
A flair of fear burns through his bubble of non-reality, the jolt of white panic like static in his brain. Kirk would do the same thing again if given the chance, so Spock mustn’t give him the chance.
So he tells himself: don’t give Jim Kirk the opportunity to sacrifice himself again.
He is back in the field, on away missions, but never alone. Spock began insisting on security, Doctor McCoy, or on the occasion Chekov or Sulu.
But never alone with the captain. Not again.
—————
Vulcan’s can master pain of the mind with similar barriers as with physical pain. Yet, it has been a month, both a yawning on and blundering-forward month, and Spock cannot master this pain. He has attempted everything. Meditation, workouts, away missions, work, yoga, time off work, sleep deprivation, and over-sleeping.
He spent two therapy sessions in total silence as well. The first with Doctor M’Benga where Spock could not get his mouth to open. Even his lute remained slack in his hand. The second was with McCoy and the two shared a stubborn silence as Spock refused to say a word.
He’s withdrawn from life on the ship. Uhura has stopped asking him to breakfast or reading with him in the observation lounge, because Spock only leaves his quarters for his duties. He hasn’t helped Chekov on any of his science projects or Scotty in any fascinating engineering puzzles. Arex, Sulu, and him used to tend to the flowers in hydroponics but Spock hasn’t visited that warm space for weeks.
McCoy he sees out of obligation for frequent check-ups. He is still having random jolts of pain that quote “aren’t normal” for this type of injury. McCoy suspects them to be psychosomatic and insists they see one another every two weeks.
Spock sees it as another way he’s failed to meet any standards. Vulcan or human.
And with Kirk….
Spock now worries he will never repair what he had with Jim. He fears that he has ruined everything good in his life like he did on Vulcan; with Sybok, mother, Michael, and Sarek. The rift between him and his father stretched the gap too wide to cross again.
Would it be like that on the Enterprise ? Did Spock simply walk away from everything once it got too unbearable? When did life with his family on this beautiful ship become unbearable?
He’s tired of the scalding paranoia that he’ll lose someone else. He’s tired of being resilient and tired of holding back his burning emotions for Jim Kirk. Spock shrinks from groups in the corridors, and he feels himself withdrawing, reverting to his self-protective state. He’d become this way when Michael left the family. When she told him he was unlovable, that he couldn’t follow her. He retreated into himself like cornered prey. Lost in that labyrinthine loneliness, Spock wanted nothing more than to leave Vulcan, and years later, made that wish come true.
Is that what it would take again?
—————
Spock seems to lie in bed a lot more often than is needed as a Vulcan, feeling his pulse thud in his ears.
When he dreams, it’s of his current Kirk, and they're in another cave.
Kirk confesses his love, just like his Jim did, and Spock snarls and reels back.
“Why?” Spock asks Kirk, shaking his shoulders, showing him his bloodied hands, getting emerald all over Kirk’s gold.
He awakes shaking, so he meditates for three hours. When he is no less consumed by his gnawing thoughts, he hails Doctor McCoy. It is nearly 0500, so likely he will be awake soon.
“Doctor McCoy. I am requesting a day of medical leave for rest and meditation.”
“Mr. Spock, good morning,” McCoy’s voice sounds on his comms.
“Do you grant me today to meditate?” He keeps his voice level, watching his hand tremble.
“Of course, Spock. I guess you’ll want me to let Jim know then?”
“Yes. Good day, doctor.” And he ends the transmission.
He meditates for a full 12 hours and it seems he cannot come to any conclusion, like he cannot protect Kirk from everything. If he confesses his love to this Jim Kirk, then he is making himself vulnerable to more loss. Kirk is more likely to sacrifice himself if he knows Spock’s feelings. Yes, he will miss him as a friend, but as a th’yla it would be much more difficult to adjust to that loss.
Particularly now that there are not a plethora of Kirk clones out there he can simply keep putting his love to.
It is illogical.
He will maintain a respectful distance from Kirk but still be an exemplary first officer. He will attempt to keep the friendship in the process, though a part of him thinks that is too late as well.
Near evening, he gets a call from Doctor McCoy summoning him to his office.
With a sigh Spock sheds his robes and dawns his uniform.
Spock enter’s McCoy’s office, “Ah Spock, come in and have a seat.”
“Doctor I-”
“Sit.” McCoy kicks out a chair across from him and Spock sits.
“Look, Spock. I’m not gonna beat around the bush. You are clearly going through something mentally that you are trying to hide from everyone. And you’re gonna sit here and listen to my theories and tell me which is correct. Got that?”
Spock nods reluctantly.
“Your affection for Jim is obvious. The only one who can’t see it is Jim himself. And I can see that it’s damaging your psyche and causing the pain in your hands to continue. All that seem right to tou?”
Spock stiffens. He grasps his hands behind his back and grips tight, his slender fingers trembling.
“Doctor, that is none of your business.”
“It is when said affection is slowly killing my patient!"
Spock furrows his brow, “I am not dying.”
McCoy raises his eyebrows, “Could’ve fooled me.”
Spock can’t do it again, he can’t go through the turmoil of admitting his feelings to his captain. He can’t risk putting his emotions exposed like a nerve to be plucked at leisure. His hands tingle, a numbness spreading down his fingers.
He sucks in a breath and it catches like it’s snagged on sharp barbs. He remembers acutely the time Christine publicly broke off their relationship via song. The mere memory of the mortification is reason enough for Spock to never let himself become vulnerable and open up to the one he cares for. The way it ended with T’Pring is more proof. He blinks away a few dark spots swaying across his vision.
Jim’s clone dying for him solidified one thing, that loving someone brings emotions far worse than humiliation. With Jim, he feels gouged. Hollowed. He is void of any essence. Perhaps he can understand what McCoy is saying. With the mixture of little sleep and no solace from the memories of Jim’s touch, Spock feels his emotional walls degrading. His essence is dying.
There’s a tightness in his chest, an iron band gripping his lungs.
He puffs out a shallow breath, inhaling another too quickly. There’s a sickeningly familiar sensation of white hot static crawling up his abdomen.
He cannot control his breath in this state, his vision tunnels and it all comes crashing down around him.
“Spock. Christ, you’re having a panic attack.”
So that’s what they were. Vulcan’s had no term for them even though Spock got them frequently as a child.
However, knowing does not aid in his breathing. He sucks in two shuddering breaths and they whistle out of his lungs.
I can’t lose Jim I can’t lose Jim I can’t lose Jim the mantra burns into his skull, a fundamental truth so crushing it may actually kill him. There is a reason why Vulcan’s purged their emotions, after all.
“Spock, hey, focus on the sound of my voice, not on whatever that Vulcan voice is sayin’ in your head,” McCoy’s southern tilt peeks out when he is worried, and Spock almost feels touched by his concern. It’s nice to be cared for, to let himself be cared for.
He listens to McCoy’s voice through the wheezing breaths, unable to translate his soothing tone to actual words. But though his head is dizzy, he isn’t detaching. McCoy’s voice is an anchor sunk into port. He can soon drag enough breaths in his shredded lungs to begin a normal pattern.
“There ya go, it’s alright. Just keep breathin’ as long as you need. When you’re ready, just give me a nod.” McCoy has a steady warm hand on his knee but is otherwise not touching him. It strikes Spock that McCoy does know exactly what Spock’s body needs, perhaps more than Spock himself.
Spock takes a few deep breaths and closes his aching eyes. No tears had slipped out, thankfully, but they are painfully sore.
That static fades, feeling creeps back to his hands with steely pricks, and Spock finally nods.
“Alright, so I’m guessing my hypothesis was correct?” McCoy asks.
Spock nods again. He cannot say it, but McCoy’s small smile unknots some of the tension in Spock’s stomach.
“My best advice is to talk to him, Spock. You don’t have to confess anything. You don’t have to change the nature of your relationship, but at least tell him you’re struggling. Suffering alone doesn’t seem very logical when you’ve got a family here who wants to help?”
Spock cannot reply, but McCoy is right.
Spock leaves Sickbay, intending to sleep for at least 6 hours. His hand spasms painfully and he clenches it into a fist, unable to guard his face from the pain.
“It still hurts, doesn’t it?” Kirk’s voice makes Spock start. The captain is standing outside of Sickbay.
“It is healed.”
“But it still hurts?” Kirk leans in closer.
“I am fine.”
“They say Vulcans can’t lie, but I don’t believe that,” Jim’s face is cast in half shadow and Spock can make out the pull of his lips.
“Captain-“
This seems to make Kirk wince.
“I think you know how to lie so well that even that ‘fact’ about Vulcans was a lie,” Kirk uses air quotes and the look on his face is hard, no glint or glow there. He’s like dried canvas. “If you ever wanna drop the ‘Vulcan’s have no feelings’ act, I’m here.”
Spock’s chest lights up, and with it a cruel and delicious thought. His adrenaline is still buzzing through him from the panic attack and his thoughts are electric currents shuddering out of him. If he pushes Kirk, searches for the darkness swirling there, and brings it fourth, then perhaps the captain will be angry enough with him to finally leave him alone.
“I do not require your help, captain. I am in control of my feelings and-”
“Oh you are?” Kirk snaps, stepping within an inch of him, “then tell me why your hands are shaking, and why you look like you haven’t slept in weeks. Tell me why you zone out on the bridge and hide in your quarters all evening!”
There is is, Spock sees the anger there, the frustration. It’s in Kirk’s clenched fists and heaving chest, his eyes like cold blue flame and jaw set into a scowl.
“That is none of your concern, so stop attempting to ‘comfort me’” Spock keeps his tone cold, using quotation marks over the words as they drip with ire. Keep pushing him, make this chasm wider and maybe I’ll stop feeling anything at all for him. Poke and prod the darkness.
Kirk deflates, his shoulders curling inward, and he lets out a sigh that seemed to come from deep in his core, “I see right through you, Spock. We’ve known each other long enough for me not to. You can push and pretend and lie, but I know you are hurting, and I know it’s easier to shut everything away. But it will only make it worse in the long run. But sure, I won’t bother you until you’re ready to come and talk.”
Spock doesn’t show the spike of pain as Kirk turns to leave. It is better this way.
“You are very resilient,” Sarek praised when Spock chose the Vulcan way, “You may become Vulcan yet.”
“Thank you, Father,” Spock knows the insult behind the praise.
—————
Spock looks up from his mirror, his reflection glaring back. He scans his Vulcan features. His eyebrows, that carve so sharply up his face. His ears, that protrude out past his groomed hair. He looks away and his mother’s voice in his head says, “you cannot remove your ears to spite your face. You must face all parts of you.”
He looks back into the mirror, it was always the best way to school his face into expressionlessness when he had weaker control (so human) as a child.
He blinks at himself and cannot recognize the person who looks back. He looks tired, bags under his eyes, the eyes themself are dull, lacking their usual inquisitive spark. His reflection fills prods to life a crimson hatred.
“Spock,” Sarek regards him, “there is a gleam in your eyes, indicating a smile. You must also control the emotion in your eyes.”
Spock nods, unsure what emotion he was showing, but his father grips him, tight like talons, by the shoulder and leads him to a towering mirror in the foyer. Spock looks into his eyes, then Sarek’s. He cannot tell the difference, but Sarek’s pursed lip tells him all he must know.
Looking at his eyes now, he sees no light, no emotion.
His father would approve. It makes him hate his reflection.
Spock would like to drive a sharp knife through his eye to rid it of his father’s look. He swallows corrosive bile and looks away, banishing the intrusive thought.
—————
Tending to his plants in his quarters a month and three days following his rescue, Spock’s peripheral vision blackens and blurs. His world narrows to his hands, his long fingers, with ghosts of light green rivers decorating him. He sees those fingers, curled around the spray bottle he uses to properly spritz his Vulcan-Earth cactus, a hybrid like himself and a gift from his mother. He sprays it twice, looking for leaves to prune. The curl of his fingers sends a throbbing pulse down his bones, joints creaking like a rusty door hinge.
The little plant sits plastic-looking in its pot and soil. Spock leans closer, to peer at the plant, looking for signs of decay, or plasticity, assessing the plant’s validity.
He cannot determine if the plant before him is real, so through cloud thoughts, drifting and opaque, Spock’s hands clench around the cactus spines and squeeze. The spines prick into his palm below his pointer, middle, and pinky finger. He releases the cactus with a rush of air and looks down at the spines poking from his skin, which have parted from the little plant and embedded into his skin. Green blood oozes from the puncture below his pointer finger. He feels nothing for a second, three, five, then pain blooms, dull but present enough to clear the surroundings of their gray tinge. The pain wipes his mind clear, like condensation scrubbed away.
He looks down at his hands; spines protruding from bleeding skin, new pricks along deep grooves and valleys of light green scars. The old scars are still so fresh and puckered looking, and the more he looks the more he’s lost in them. The bruising has gone away but the thin lines remain deep. His knuckle bones thud in time with his heartbeat, and tiny anvils pound against the bones and cartilage and muscle. He squeezes his hand into a reluctant fist, fingers twitching in a frenzied dance at control.
He yanks the spines out of his skin with his other hand, the jagged lines there looking ugly against the too-bright glare of his quarters, and places them in the recycler.
He cannot wrench his gaze from the little trickle of blood. When he sees the green liquid carving down his wrist, he can only think of the tricorder exploding in his hands, the sharp edges slicing arteries and peeling open his skin, revealing him.
Spock sighs, a noise he only allows himself alone. He dabs the blood off on his handtowel, which follows the spines into the recycler.
He dresses for sleep, though his shift ended only an hour ago and he neglected dinner. The pinched look on Kirk’s face when Spock declined yet another game of chess with a curt I don’t think so, Captain, flickers over his memory.
Spock stares at the ceiling, awaiting sleep like an impatient child. He feels the pressure crawling behind his eyes. He blinks and blinks until he’s crying silently. He thinks of how he sobbed into his hand every night for a month after Michael left. The pain in his chest is hollow and yet it aches.
Tears burn hot as Spock wrestles his emotions back into place. Where did his control go? What had that desert planet done to him?
He doesn’t dare meditate, not when the answer has already been uttered, been felt, been experienced. He aches for the feeling of Jim’s hands in his hair, ghosting over his psi points. The phantom pain in his hands flairs nastily, a moaning throb that contradicts already-healed tissue. The pain of it snags his breath and a sharp sob echoes around his quarters.
He feels the pricks of the cactus now, where he’d barely attempted to stop the bleeding. He pulls in deep breaths until he can pull the pain back behind his Vulcan shield.
That shield is the only thing bringing his mind any quiet these days. He longs for his control to be airtight, but there are times when his mind floats away and his control slips from his grasp, wrecking havoc on his sympathetic nervous system.
Spock’s thoughts alight, panic at his sipping control, and another flair of pain licks up his left hand along with it. It snakes around his wrist and constricts, until the veins in his arm throb.
He hasn’t slept in 6.8 days and has not meditated in far longer. His control is tissue paper and yet he knows he will not meditate. He will not confront the things he experienced on the desert planet. Not now at least. McCoy had laid bare what he was feeling. He said it was killing him but Spock couldn’t pry himself from his proud independence. How could he disrupt his avoidance tendencies when they’d been programmed into his DNA and abundant experience?
Pain throbs more than Spock can comprehend. It shouldn’t hurt this much, from the tiny prick.
He flexes his hand in the motion McCoy taught him during their physical therapy sessions. He squeezes and counts to five, then releases.
He had been warned of nerve pain, but the reality was robbing him of breath. He sat panting before his mind shutters into a resolution. He’s standing before he can change his mind.
He dresses in his uniform and subtly checks the hallway before leaving for sickbay.
“Spock, what brings you here?”
Spock nods them to his private room. McCoy frowns but follows.
“You must not tell the captain.”
They sit.
“Spock, of course I won’t. But I think you should-“
“Leonard. Please.” Spock says.
Startled into silence, McCoy nods.
Spock holds out his hand. McCoy runs a dermal regenerator over the green dots.
“What happened?”
“I clutched my cactus.”
Without hesitating McCoy replies, “You grabbed a cactus because…?”
“I wanted to assure myself it was real.”
McCoy blinks at him, and blinks again. “Oh. Okay.”
“I would appreciate if you would articulate, doctor.”
McCoy scoffs, “what I mean, Mr. Spock, is that it sounds like you dissociated. You felt like you or the world around you wasn’t real? That you were disconnected from the world?”
Spock’s lips thin. He shoots a glare at the doctor, though he knows the doctor is corrrct.
Spock takes two measured breaths. McCoy watches
him, brows knitted.
“I have never-“ a lump cloys in his throat and he clears it, and a frozen sensation crawls through him, clawing into his bones and worming into cartilage. This is what has been happening to him. The dripping time, the plastic world. He swallows down a chill like an ice cube lodged in his throat.
“I have never experienced such a condition,” he lies. It would be shameful to admit that he’d been dissociating often this past month. And he is glad for the lie when McCoy speaks.
“That’s because it’s typically a human condition for the mind to deal with trauma,” the doctor says.
Something hot and fiery spits up his throat and he bites his inner lip to prevent the words he’d like to shout at the doctor.
It takes a second longer than usual to regain his control.
“How is it treated?” Spock asks instead, tone level.
“Therapy, grounding techniques, and talking about what’s going on,” McCoy empasizes.
Spock backs up a fraction and crosses his arms over his chest.
“Thank you Doctor, however, I am managing fine,” and then to assure him he adds, “however, the strain of physical therapy and the incident on the class H planet has taken a mental toll.”
“We both know it’s more than that,” McCoy says, and there’s a look that Spock has never seen McCoy give him before: understanding.
McCoy’s tone is back to snappish in a second, “you’re not gonna get better if you go on the way you are.”
Spock’s back stiffens impossibly further and the cloying darkness is in his throat, like thick smoke shuddering up his lungs. It won’t be long before this invisible smoke chokes him.
McCoy’s scrutiny burns. Spock wishes to return to his quarters, to the dark, away from his gaze. Why did he come here? For the human need for comfort, or the Vulcan need for a logical explanation?
They stare at one another. Spock’s gaze drops first.
“I require sleep,” he replies to the desk; his stiff, aching shoulders slumping a fraction.
“How long since you last slept?” McCoy’s voice is back to professional.
“6.8 days,” Spock cannot meet McCoy’s eyes, but hears the sigh.
“… how about meditation?”
“I have meditated once since returning to duty.”
“Ah. So you haven’t slept, your boiling with emotions you haven’t sorted out, and you’ve now dissociated to deal with the repressed feelings.”
Spock flinches. He doesn’t mean for it it happen, however his control is fading. Paranoia crawls like bugs under his skin.
Is he so transparent? He never meant it to get to this point.
“Spock,” McCoy leans back, “I am sorry if I pushed you or spoke out of turn, we’re just- I’m just worried about you.”
Spock looks McCoy in the eye, “who is ‘we’ doctor?”
McCoy smirks, “Chekov and Sulu have come to talk to me separately in the past month, M’Benga, and Jim has come to me nearly every other day. Oh and Uhura last week said she hasn’t seen you play your little harp thingy-“
“Lute,” Spock interrupts.
McCoy plows on, “and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve all seen each other through low points, together. ”
“Leonard, I cannot simply-”
“Yes you can simply,” McCoy replies, peering into Spock with that steady gaze of his. This time, the look burns a little hole in Spock’s chest.
Spock feels like he’s on the edge of a crumbling cliff, fingers coated in dust, dangling and grasping with his own strength alone and he’s slipping…
They’ve been offering him a hand this whole time, all Spock has to do is grasp.
Can he? The crew has surely seen him physically worse than this…
His head is heavy but he says, “I will try to reach out, when I rest. I am requesting a sleeping aid for the time being.”
“Good thinking,” McCoy throws him a soft smile before he’s up and rummaging for the right medication.
Spock thanks the doctor before leaving, even if his back is turned to McCoy.
Spock sleeps through the night, dreamless and relaxed. It’s fascinating what a decent sleep can do to solidify his still rusty barriers. They still have cracks, but are less decayed by morning.
While he is getting ready for his shift, he contemplates McCoy’s words. Perhaps he can speak to Kirk, they don’t have to talk about his health but about scientific findings or mundane things. He would like to speak about unimportant things again.
However, they are arriving at Kesprytt III for their newest assignment. The Kes are requesting associate membership in the Federation. The mission comes first.
Arriving at the briefing room, Kirk is the only one there.
Spock glances around and Kirk says, “The Kes decided they don’t want a landing party of more than two. They are rather paranoid.”
“I see,” Spock replies, dread filling him.
Again? The word loops in his head, tightening into a spiral.
They sit to go over the mission’s final details, and when they’ve finished Kirk looks off to the monitor of the borders on the map. Spock, despite his concern for Kirk’s safety, notes his captain’s far-off gaze.
“Are you concerned about this mission with the Kes?” Spock asks. Normalcy. That is what he craves at present.
“Not concerned, exactly. This idea of admitting half of their planet to the Federation while leaving the other half out…” Kirk trails off.
“The Kes are more than half the planet, they are nearly three quarters of it. And the Prytt do not want to have contact with anyone from the outside, including the Federation,” Spock says.
“Every member of the Federation has entered as a unified world, and that unity said something about them. That they had resolved certain social and political differences and they were now ready to become part of a larger community,” Kirk replies, fiddling with his intertwined fingers on the table.
“By all indications, the Kes are a unified, progressive people,” says Spock.
Kirk shakes his head, “but the Prytt are not. They are reclusive to the point of xenophobia.”
“On Earth, before your World Government formed in 2150, would that have disqualified you as a Federation member?”
Kirk humms.
“Scott to Captain-”
In the split second before Kirk answers Mr. Scott, he looks at Spock. His gaze is probing, asking, curious. He can see that Kirk is checking on him, ensuring he is okay for the mission and is fit to the task ahead.
Spock gives a tiny nod.
“Go ahead, Scotty”
“They’re ready for you down there.”