Chapter Text
The Door
Jim
Riverside, Iowa. The back end of the decade. '39, maybe '40. Those summers were sticky and hot; sweaty and all-embracing at the beginning, dry and stark at the end. They were a bad couple of summers for crops; I remember the guy who owned the farm down from ours, the hard lines digging in harder still round his mouth as he looked out over his withering fields of flax. The way lines dig in sometimes so you know they won't drop out easy, if at all. His eyes bright, like Sam's would go when he came fast off his bike and tore his elbows up but didn't want to show me he was hurting. He was a tough old bird too, that farmer, never without the back of his hand grazing his gun belt. Even Frank was a little scared of him, used to touch his hat when he drove by in that great beat-up pick-up of his. But the fields of flax drooping under the weight of all that sun were enough to make his eyes bright, his mouth tight, like he was all scraped up inside, like he was trying not to cry.
In the back end of those summers I remember big dust storms would blow in from the plains. You'd get some warning they were coming. The sky would turn thick and red. Heavy and quietly savage as a bruise. Everything would get this weird glow, like you were looking at the world after pressing down too hard on the inside of your eyelids. That dull, pulsing red; solid. Then the storm would roll in, sweeping up half the soil in its wake, everything more earth than air for a few hours. Sam and I would press our faces to the glass of the screen doors, mesmerised by it, the screaming howl of the wind; and then that strange quiet, worse than the storm really, that quiet, the air still so clotted with the rich iron of the ground it looked like a living thing. Of course Mom would holler at us to get away from the glass; it wasn't safe. She hated those storms. They'd make a real mess of everything, afterwards there'd be so much dust on the car you couldn't tell what colour it was; all the windows of the farm would turn thick with grime. It would get into the air con vents and you'd be coughing for days afterwards, your lungs scoured by invisible shards of Iowa dirt.
This was back before things went really bad, before Sam left, before Mom got more interested in drinking than caring about us, before Frank, before Tarsus IV. And I would ask Mom then what was at the end of the sky. Because it looked so complete. Not like it was most of the time, that bright vertiginous blue that you could fall and fall and fall into, and never find the bottom. That sky, the storm sky, was like the end of things, it was everything. There was no passing through that sky. So I would say: Mom, what's at the end of the sky? And she'd say, well, space, the universe. And I knew that, because of dad and everything. But then I'd ask: what's at the end of the universe? And she'd say, nothing, nothing; and I'd say, but what's actually there?; and she'd say OK, OK then Jimmy, a brick wall. A big brick wall. A big red brick wall. Is there a door? I'd ask. No, she'd say. No door.
I'd never believe her though. From that moment on I could see it so clearly, the door in the wall at the end of the universe. I could see every last rust spot on the latch, the way the pale blue paint started to crack in the divots between the panels. I could see that door so distinctly I knew if the time came I could reach out and touch it, push it. I knew it would open. But I guess that was me. And it was something I never grew out of. With the Kobayashi Maru test, and afterwards, with everything that happened. I was always looking for the door. But she was right; Mom was right, Lyla was right, Spock was right. Sometimes there's just nothing. No way into anything else.
Nothing.
No door.
______
Part 1 - Book Club
Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
- J.D. Salinger, 'The Catcher In The Rye'
The problem is, he's bored. It reminds him of the endless summer holidays from school as a kid. First: that breathless, excited feeling, a whole summer of unbounded, unfettered freedom. The entirety of the East Fork his for the exploring, including all the places he was absolutely, definitely not allowed, like the gorge down by Matty Johnson's farm. Lazy days of swimming in the creek, trying to dive deep enough to feel the thick, rich silt of its bottom. Dee Hannigan said there was all sorts down there. Treasure. Unexploded mines from some long forgotten skirmish in the First Civil War. Bodies. But then: by the end it just got boring. After all, there was only so much to do in Riverside, and most of his friends disappeared for the summer, went somewhere cooler, Alaska, Scandinavia, off-planet. He would get to the point - not that he'd ever say it, he had a reputation to protect - but he'd get to the point where he'd long for school to start again, just so he had something to challenge himself with, something to think about.
It was books that saved him. Old ones, the real paper kind with greasy smudges on the pages from other readers' fingers and cracks along the spine where the good bits were. "You're not taking a PADD out in this heat," his mother would admonish. "I know you James Tiberius Kirk. You'll only leave it somewhere and it'll get destroyed." So it was paper books he would sneak out to read, nestled into the shade along the cool cheek of the creek. Paper books didn't mind if you left them out somewhere, and they got destroyed. And at 20 credits a pop his mom didn't mind either. Of course, people didn't really print much paperback fiction anymore, so he was restricted to the classics. Swallows and Amazons. The Once and Future King. The Lord of the Rings. Whole worlds he could enter, that would suck him in and spirit him away; away from Riverside, away from Frank, away from everything. While he was reading, it was like he was outside time, and it made him feel magical. Plus it stopped him from going half mad with boredom.
Much to his surprise, it is the same with space travel. It had started off with that same sense of breathless excitement, all those new worlds just waiting to be discovered (treasure! unexploded mines! bodies!) but mostly it was just admin, admin, admin, and staring out into the great starry void of nothingness. Of course it was punctuated by brief moments of action, but even these tended to involve a lot less excitement than he had previously imagined - mostly diplomacy, or 'babysitting' as he liked to think of it, talking fractious Federation members down from the brink of their own civil wars (no mines in the creekbed today, thanks to Jimmy Kirk & Co.).
And now here they are being sent on another surveying mission, to a planet that takes six weeks to reach. Six weeks of endless warp, with nothing to occupy him but epic reams of paperwork. So it is books that save him again. He has a seemingly infinite supply of fiction on his Reader, but he still likes the paper ones better. The realness of them in his hands. The way they smell. The history. The way they make him believe that the universe inside his head can be infinite, even if the one on the outside sometimes seems not to be. And they take the edge off both the boredom and the low, thrumming, slightly hysterical feeling of stress that lines his belly day-in day-out. The fear that somehow he'll find a way to fuck this up, even if it is only babysitting missions and geographical surveys. Don't fuck this up. When he's reading, he doesn't have to be responsible anymore. He doesn't have to be anything. It also gives him something to try and settle his mind when he's off shift and can't sleep. Can't. Sleep. He never used to have a problem with sleeping. Apparently Captaincy is characterised by boredom, a vague sense of terror, and chronic insomnia. Then, happy low, lie down! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
He writes too. Poetry mainly. Sometimes he thinks about writing the story of his life, but whenever he reads back anything he writes about himself, even the damn Captain's Log, it always twangs with insincerity. Because you can't bring yourself to say what really happened. Even to yourself. Plus he always gets caught up in fucking exposition. Exposition is the mark of a cheap writer. Show, don't tell.
The thing is, there is no one to show, no one to tell.
Oh yeah, loneliness. The other thing about being a Captain. At least he has Bones. And Spock. Spock who is sort-of-his-friend. Who he is trying to convert into definitely-his-friend. He's not even sure why. Probably because he's contrary. Probably because we always want our biggest critic to fall for us the hardest.
He saw a therapist once. He had to, to go for Command track. Obviously he asked about Frank. Jim said he understood why Frank didn't like him. Of course he did. He had been a right little punk: bratty, obnoxious, entitled. And it can't have been easy for Frank, following in the footsteps of someone like George Kirk ("Saint George"). Like he doesn't know all about that. He told the therapist - Phil - about the car. He said: "I was such a shit. Honestly. I don't even know why I did it. Just to piss him off. I was... I was terrible, really. I see that now."
Phil had said: "I don't see that. I see a little boy who was scared. I see a little boy who thought any kind of attention was good attention because no one had ever taken the time to really know him. I see a boy for whom his stepfather is the greatest unrequited love of his life."
Jim thinks that's trite, generic psychobabble. He does.
He would never want the love of someone who was not willing to give it. As Spock would say, that would be highly illogical. He would never want the love of anyone, really.
Love.
Whatever that means.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Spock has come to the conclusion that the Captain spends a disproportionate amount of his time reading. Today is a case in point; despite the fact that Jim has at least three Comms from StarFleet HQ that Spock knows are in need of his attention, he finds him in the observation deck, sprawled ungracefully on his stomach, chin propped in his hands, reading a book. Granted, Jim is not actually on shift, but in Spock's opinion, missives are best dealt with as promptly as possible.
Spock studies Jim for perhaps a beat longer than is strictly necessary. It is unusual to see him so still, so relaxed.
"Captain."
When this evokes no response, he tries again, a little more forcefully.
"Captain?"
Jim glances up, eyes a little unfocused, face scrunched up with confusion, the same way he looks on the Transporter when he has just been beamed back from somewhere else. "Sorry Spock, I was lost to the world there. Re-reading Walt Whitman. I haven't looked at his stuff since Junior High. It's some good shit."
"'Good shit' Captain? That would appear to be an oxymoron."
"This is why we need to get you started on some poetry reading. It'll kick all that literalism right out of you. Introduce you to the glorious world of us oxy-morons."
Spock has read some Terran literature, mainly biographies, historical accounts, and philosophical texts, all of which he has found to range from the slightly, to the profoundly, unsatisfying. It isn't that he thinks Earth is bereft of any artistic output of merit. He is prepared to concede that he can take satisfaction from listening to Terran orchestral music. Music is precise, much like mathematics it possesses the ability to transcend culture, to speak beyond the bounds of its creator. Music can be clean and pure. But Terran literature, Terran poetry, that is something Spock doubts very much he will ever consider to be "good shit".
Jim knows this. It does not stop him attempting to persuade Spock otherwise.
"I find it highly improbable that reading Terran poetry would alter my opinion on the structure and usage of the English language. As we have discussed, I find Standard to be a most illogical language. It contains an inordinate number of possible configurations that result in imprecise communication. I have noticed errors of this nature seem to be concentrated in poetic texts. For example, cases where both the spelling and the pronunciation of two words are the same, but there exists two or more possible meanings-"
"Homonyms," Jim interjects happily, as if naming this phenomenon makes it in some way more acceptable.
"Indeed, homonyms. Given the frequency with which even supposedly highly educated members of your species commit errors in their interpretation of poetry because of the imprecise language used in such texts, I very much doubt I would be able to derive anything of value from my reading of them."
"Don't you have poetry in Vulcan?" Jim asks.
"There are... texts that could be described as poetic in nature. Predominantly from before the Time of The Awakening. However, unlike Terran poetry they are straightforward and logical in style, and their meaning is therefore readily deducible."
It is for this reason that Spock sometimes privately wishes that Vulcan had been adopted as the Standard lingua franca for the Galaxy. It is his opinion that many of the diplomatic missions they have been sent on so far could have been avoided if species simply learnt to communicate their needs more effectively. But no, everything must be nuance, and shadow-boxing, and misunderstandings, and duplicity.
"Well, I'm happy to try Vulcan poetry if you like. We could start a Book Club!" Jim's face is full of boyish enthusiasm.
"A 'Book Club', Captain?"
"Yeah, you know, like a club. Where we read books," Jim adds, unhelpfully.
"Would that be 'club' as in a heavy stick suitable for use as a weapon, or 'club' as in a group of people organised for a common purpose?"
Jim gives him a lopsided grin. "Ha. See, some people say you're not funny, but they're wrong."
"I am unclear of your meaning, Captain. Do you mean 'funny' as in causing laughter or amusement, or 'funny' as in strangely or suspiciously odd?"
Jim's mouth quirks, but he raises an eyebrow in slight exasperation. "Know when to quit, Spock."
This is sometimes the way he is around the Captain, and he does not fully understand it. He would not normally partake in this sort of discussion, one where there is no purpose to the questions he asks (for he already knows the answer), where he asks purely for... For what? Is it that he wishes to give Jim cause to laugh? To make his eyes go warm and crinkled at the edges? Why would he wish for that?
"So, Book Club. You up for it?"
"I am still not entirely clear what a 'Book Club' is. Therefore I am presently unable to commit to my membership of such a group."
"It's where people read books, the same book, and then, you know, talk about them. But we could do an exchange, like, you could read a book I chose for you, and I could read a book you chose for me. I'd even read Surak if you wanted."
"Vulcans do not want," Spock replies automatically.
For some reason Jim looks vaguely affronted by this simple statement of fact, and chooses to interpret it as a rebuff on Spock's part. "Yeah, I guess you think I'm too stupid to understand all your highbrow Vulcan philosophy mumbo jumbo. I guess discussing my thoughts on it would be painful for someone of your intellectual capabilities." He's half teasing - perhaps - but his voice has that rigid, bitter edge to it, an edge that only seems to cut against Spock. He has never heard the Captain speak to anyone else in this manner.
"On the contrary, Captain. I assure you I would be most interested to hear your thoughts on the writings of Surak."
In an instant Jim's face brightens again, the clouds passing as quickly as they had descended, the summer storm of his eyes. "Great! I'll look forward to it. It will be good to have someone to discuss books with again. Bones point blank refuses. He says he read enough anatomy books in college to fill up his reading quota for a lifetime. He won't even read Hemmingway, which is ironic, because, you know..."
Spock does not know. But he concedes the point with a slight raise of his eyebrows, because for some reason he wishes Jim to think he does. He wishes to be on the inside of Jim's private universe, his jokes, and his smiles, and that warm, easy camaraderie he gives so casually to everyone else. Spock is sure Jim does not intentionally hold this back from Spock: his happy, everyday affection. The Captain may have many dubious qualities, many weaknesses, but malice is not one of them. Nevertheless, from Spock he is always holding this back; always guarded, always quick to move to irritation. Spock knows they did not get off to the most auspicious of starts, but he fails to see why Jim does not now grasp how much Spock respects him. He wouldn't be here, on this ship, if he didn't. This ship that is still the butt of many a joke around the Academy (he had heard two Commodores speaking once, in the quad outside the Academy, about The Enterprise. They had been laughing. The cruel, spite-scented laughter Spock remembers from his youth. "I don't know why they're still flavour of the month. It's a disaster waiting to happen. Do you know they've fired more missiles in the past six months than the rest of the Fleet combined." "Well, what do you expect?" the other had said, "They're a bunch of infants. Rockets going off in their pockets like it's junior prom." This is how people view the Ship, the Captain, Spock realises. And by extension this is how they view him). But despite all this, despite the way the Captain bemuses him with his abundance of spontaneous passion and complete lack of logic which make it difficult for Spock to predict how he will act in any given set of circumstances, never mind act as an efficient First Officer, anticipating his Captain's needs; despite the mocking jealousy of his contemporaries, despite the pull of Uzh-Ah'rak, despite the disappointment of his father, despite all these things Spock has chosen to continue to serve on The Enterprise, under his Captain. It is the height of illogic. And the reason for all this is Jim. Spock wishes to work alongside him almost desperately, a strange, thrumming sort of wishing that he is unused to. That feeling, on the Romulan ship, covering each other, moving in tandem... Surrounded by uncertainty and death, it was the most sure, the most alive Spock has ever felt. And even when they are not in accord, even when Jim fudges, and lies, and cheats, and makes brash, arrogant mistakes, Spock finds him uniquely fascinating. He is like the most glorious, and difficult, of scientific conundrums. Spock would like to take him apart, piece by piece, and examine every molecule of him. But it is somehow more than that. Spock has never much felt the need for other people's regard. Of course, he wants them to respect his skill, his intellect, his dedication. But he has never had any need for their warmth, their friendship, nor their approval. But for some reason he wishes this from Jim. And only from Jim. Like anything that is anomalous, this unprecedented desire attracts his curiosity, and so Spock holds it in his mind carefully, examines it from every angle. He remains frustratingly unenlightened.
**
The Captain does not mention the 'Book Club' for the next 3.7 days, and Spock assumes he has changed his mind, or else forgotten the idea altogether. Then he passes him in the corridor near both their cabins, just as Jim is coming off shift, and he is about to start.
"Spock!" Jim looks happy. "Finally. Have you got a minute? I thought we could pick out our books for each other."
Spock has precisely 16 minutes before his shift starts, so he raises both eyebrows, yes.
He notices they are approximately five feet away from the door to Jim's cabin. The door which Jim is now unlocking.
"Come in, come in," Jim says, casually, as if this is not the first time Spock will have entered into this, the Captain's private space. "I'll need to have a look at my shelves, get some inspiration. Then we can decide what to start you with."
Jim's cabin is small and surprisingly neat. Spock has always assumed he would be messy, careless. But no, everything is organised with a military precision that mirrors Spock's own quarters. Except for a set of shelves to the left of the doorway which are crammed with old Terran books, squeezed in next to each other so tightly that each one appears to bulge out from its fine paper casing, like overripe fruit. Spock scans the titles across the first shelf. For Whom The Bell Tolls. A Tale of Two Cities. The Once and Future King. Moby Dick. The Hound of the Baskervilles. As I Lay Dying. The Great Gatsby. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The Catcher In The Rye. Complete Works of Shakespeare. The Winter Of Our Discontent. Euripides. Shelley. Keats. Jim is scanning them too, his face alight with interest and a fond affection that he usually reserves for Dr. McCoy.
The books are his friends. Spock does not know where that thought comes from. It does not make sense.
"Captain," Spock feels compelled to speak. "Why would you take all these antique paper books with you on a mission? They must account for nearly the entirety of your personal luggage allowance. You could access all these stories on your PADD. It is illogical."
Spock tries not to use that word too often, because he knows it makes Jim irritated with him, but there is no other adjective appropriate to describe Jim's actions 67.8% of the time.
Jim actually looks slightly sheepish. He flushes, rubs the back of his neck, gives Spock a half wink. "I'm a bit of a geek about books, and there's something about the paper ones... I don't know, like, they're more real? I like being able to hold them in my hands, each one its own little compact universe. And I like the way they smell." He inhales deeply, as if to compound his point. Spock flares his own nostrils but can smell nothing beyond the crisp, sterile air coming out of the Enterprise's vents, mingled with a slight tinge of Jim's own personal scent, sandalwood and citrus.
"My mother also had a large collection of books," Spock says, uselessly. He sounds fatuous to his own ears, but Jim seems to like this, a pointless exchange of information, of personal histories. He looks across at Spock and smiles, faint but genuine. They stand for a while, shoulders almost touching, examining Jim's shelves.
"May I borrow one of these volumes?" Spock asks. "Instead of downloading your choice onto my PADD."
Jim looks amused and delighted all at once.
"Of course. Here." He pulls out the thickest tome of them all. "Start with this."
Spock examines the book Jim hands him, its battered leather cover, the golden gilt lettering. It reminds him of another book, another time, a lifetime ago. He does not think on this. Breathes, banishes the thought from his mind. Instead he says, "This will be our first 'Book Club' item."
"It will. It's gonna be a bitch to follow-up on, I'll tell you that, but we might as well start at the pinnacle."
Spock has only held one paper book since his youth, and that one only rarely. When he returns to his cabin after his shift, he places it neatly on his pristine desk. Opens the first page. King John. Curious, he bends his face to the pages, pushes his nose into the crease of the spine, and inhales.
That smell. Suddenly he is back in his childhood room, and his mother is sat by his bed. Brown eyes, lamplight. "I thought I might read to you."
He feels a sudden wrench of loss low in his stomach, so vicious and unexpected he finds himself bracing once hand against the side of his desk like an anchor. He breathes out sharply. The olfactory region is right next to the amygdala in the brain, so it is logical that emotion and smell would be so closely linked, that odours would be particularly powerful cues for autobiographical memory. It is indeed a positive therefore, Spock thinks, that his sense of smell is so muted, or it seems he would go about his duties barely able to function for being assailed by thoughts from his personal past. Like this: the smell of well worn paper from long fallen Terran trees. Like the snatches of Nyota's perfume that would sometimes linger in the corridor long after she had left.
Fortunate. He is fortunate.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Spock is coming to his cabin on their only shared downtime this week, to discuss Shakespeare. It gives Jim this weird, anticipatory thrill, like he is about to do something daring, or dangerous. He figures it's because he thinks - hopes - that this might be the start of what he has come to think of as The Legendary Friendship, the one old Spock talked about.
More than talked about.
When he'd experienced the mindmeld with the old Spock, everything about him, about Jim Kirk, had been tinged with a glowing gold-y sort of feeling. Every image of him in old Spock's memory had been infused with such light. It was the sort of thing you could get addicted to, if you weren't careful, having someone see you as shining like that. But the other Spock - his Spock - always seemed to spend most of his time acting as if Jim was at best a minor irritant, at worst a complete waste of space. The cold distance in his eyes couldn't have been any further from the warm intimacy in old Spock's if he'd tried. After all, this was the guy who had marooned him on the coldest planet in the whole of Alpha Quadrant for mutiny. Well, maybe not the coldest planet. But right up there. Hell, if you were from rural Iowa and had been through more than a couple of winters and you thought a place was cold then it was fucking cold. But now it seems as if they have reached some kind of accord. Sometimes he even thinks Spock likes him. And this is one of those times. Spock wouldn't be giving up one of his precious free shifts, which he could be spending in one of the labs, or making upgrades to the impulse power systems with Scotty, or discussing the finer points of xenolinguistics with Uhura (or whatever else it was they did together now - Jim prefers not to think on that), to sit and chat sixteenth century literature with Jim if he didn't at least sort of like him. Right?
**
"So what did you think?" Jim asks.
Spock is leafing through the book with something approximating bemused fascination, as if it is some bizarre anthropological text. Not exactly the sort of reaction Jim had been hoping for.
"It was... enlightening. I must state a preference for the histories and the tragedies over the comedies."
"Figures," Jim says darkly.
"The comedy is...," Spock seems almost at a loss for words, which is an interesting development. "Different. Puns," and the line between his brows momentarily deepens, "puns. It is the strangest humour I have ever come across. And this is what you would describe as the 'gold standard' for Human literature?"
"Hey," Jim admonishes mildly, "A good pun is its own reword."
Spock raises one pristine eyebrow. “I now see from where you get your sense of humour – such as it is.”
"Always good to learn from the master. Did you like it though? I mean, the stories, the way he uses language, the poetry of it."
"I did not find it uninteresting," Spock says. He continues to leaf silently through the pages. Jim is clearly going to have to work to get the kind of critical debate he was hoping for.
"Well, that's a qualified response if ever I heard one. You must've liked some of it. I mean, take King Lear for instance. Now, damn, there's a play."
The lines come back to him, well-worn lines that he has run in his head a hundred times, a thousand, more. He says them now, to Spock.
"No, no, no life?
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all? Oh, thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never.—
Doesn't that just slay you? Don't you just think: yes, that's it, that's it exactly."
Spock is regarding him quizzically. "That was one of the many passages I did not understand. Cordelia is hanged, is she not? If nothing has happened that would necessitate various other creatures also having their necks broken, then it is logical that dogs and horses and rats would continue to live while Cordelia does not. It is not clear to me why Lear would even question why they live and Cordelia does not. Edmund did not hang the horses."
Jim feels a sudden faraway prickle of tears, alarming and unexpected, a tightening in his throat. He hasn't cried in... Well. He doesn't cry. Not in front of Spock anyway. Not over fucking Shakespeare. He was foolish to think they could bond over this. Why did he even want them to? Why did he want Spock to love what he loves, to feel how he feels?
"It's not about that, it's about the unjustness, it's about how unjust... You know, all these lesser things keep living, and the being you most value, the greatest person to ever walk the earth, they're dead. Dead. And everything else just carries on, as if their passing did not matter..."
Spock is still looking at him intently, head cocked to one side, that almost-frown. He feels his throat thicken again.
"D'you know what, there's no point trying to explain. If you don't get that Spock, if you don't get Lear then you don't get anything."
"It is not that I do not seek understanding, Captain," Spock says softly. "It is simply very different from any way of looking at the Universe that I have ever known."
Jim sniffs.
"Yeah, well. I suppose it didn't make Lear very happy. He should have just logic-ed up and got on with it. No useless moping. Driving himself batshit crazy."
The line between Spock's eyes softens, they narrow slightly at the edges. Amusement.
"Nevertheless, despite the 'moping' and the 'chiropteran excremental craziness', you think he is a great man, this character 'Lear'?"
"It's not that... I actually think he's a very flawed... It's more that it's my favourite... My favourite play. It... speaks to me, you know? It's one of those texts that just, you know, grabs you by the throat and shakes you and makes you feel feelings."
That eyebrow raise. "Feel feelings? Indeed."
It might have been a bit much to expect Spock to be moved by Shakespeare, to feel feelings. Jim concedes this.
"Tell you what, I'll feel the feelings, you think the thoughts," Jim offers.
"I feel obliged to point out the numerous errors with that statement, starting with your flagrant use of tautology..."
"Deal?"
Spock gives one of his deep, impenetrable looks. For a few seconds Jim thinks he is going to ignore him.
"There is a saying attributed to Surak: Ma etek natyan teretuhr lau etek shetau weh-lo'uk do tum t'on. It approximately translates thus: We have differences. May we, together, become greater than the sum of both of us. I believe it could be applicable here."
There it is. A little glimmer of that feeling it seems he is always chasing, the golden-old-Spock-feeling. He smiles, lets Spock see it.
"I like that."
Spock doesn't smile back, but his eyes do the soft thing, the thing they normally only do for Uhura.
"It is agreed, then. You will 'feel the feelings', I will 'think the thoughts'."
"Winner."
**
Their second meeting is to discuss The Catcher In The Rye, which it would appear Spock emphatically does not like (well, as emphatic as Spock can get about anything) - "It is a book about nothing. There is nothing to be gained from reading it. It serves no clear purpose." "That's sort of the point," Jim counters.
He is somewhat distracted by the fact they are holding it in Spock's quarters. Jim had imagined they would be spartan, well-organised, clinical. Instead the decor is surprisingly sensual; thick red velvety drapes hang above the bed, and a number of weird, Eastern looking artefacts are arranged on his shelves, incense burners and statues of strange animals, old ornamental weapons. It reminds Jim of Dee Hannigan's room when she was going through her hippie phase before college, all mystical and faux-spiritual and slightly kitsch. It is tremendously unsettling. Combined with the ridiculously high temperature Spock keeps his cabin at, and the complicated, nuanced flavour of the smell that is just Spock, it is making Jim feel a little light headed, unable to concentrate on the task in hand.
It is when he is making another subtle inspection of the general rich strangeness that is Spock's inner sanctum that he notices the book. There is an actual book propped up against the side of Spock's desk, by the only holo in his room, one of Amanda and Sarek and a tiny bundle of cloth that must be a baby Spock. Sarek looks as stern and forbidding as ever, but Amanda's face is positively dreamy, transfigured with a gentle joy, one hand pressed against the side of Sarek's face, in a way Jim can't imagine anyone being allowed to touch the Ambassador. Ever. He looks at her, and she looks at Spock. It is a private moment, almost embarrassingly intimate, especially given that Spock, normally so private and self-contained, has chosen to display it, and Jim finds himself averting his eyes, glancing instead once more at the book.
"You do own a book."
Then: "Spock?"
"As you were making a simple observation, Captain, I did not realise there was a need to respond."
"I'm just surprised, is all. An actual book. To read for, you know, pleasure."
"It is not-" Spock stops himself abruptly. Appears to reconsider. "It is a book I have found to be most informative. But you are right. I do take some pleasure from reading it."
Jim stands up and wanders over to it. It looks to be very old, maybe a few hundred years, a well preserved copy of Alice in Wonderland.
"Lewis Carroll though? The owl and the pussycat," Jim gives him a mock scowl. "Nonsense kids' stuff. Very unVulcan."
"On the contrary. I found it a most logical book," Spock clears his throat. "'Begin at the beginning,' the King said, very gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop'. There is nothing nonsensical about that."
"Well, when you put it like that...," Jim trails off, smiling. He picks the book up, weighs it in his hands, resists the temptation to bring it to his face and breathe in of it. Maybe it is not so weird that Spock likes this book. There is Alice on the front, all prim and curious, in her science blues, and the Cheshire Cat, grinning down at her. "We should read this next."
"As I am sure you have deduced Captain, I have already read it."
"Yeah, so have I. Eons ago. But we should both reread it, then we can discuss it."
Spock looks briefly unsettled, but quickly schools his features back into their normal inscrutable placidity. "That would be acceptable."
"Don't worry, Spock. I promise I won't be mean about your favourite book. Not that you afforded Catcher the same courtesy."
____________________________________________________________________________
At least Jim hadn't asked to borrow his copy. For this, Spock is relieved, and then concerned by his relief. It is illogical to develop an attachment to a material item. He spends several hours meditating upon this thought, trying to locate the importance of the book in his mind, hold it, then let it go. He considers throwing the actual book itself down the waste chute, but at the last second something constricts and bunches painfully in his side, and he cannot. He settles for putting it in a drawer, where he can't see it. Things and people: they all pass with time. The answer is to be above and beyond them. Then their absence or loss is irrelevant to you. Everything you love will be carried away. So do not love anything. Be beyond love, outside it. Let it pass through you, and touch you, but do not let it own you. For several days this is what he focuses on, 'til he feels steadier, less unsure. Still. He keeps the book. He does not throw it away. 'I thought I might read to you'.
When they meet to discuss it, Jim is enthusiastic - "You were right, it's a great book, clever and funny and full of pastiche and sly parody, and then a happy ending! Quite romantic, really." He talks about it animatedly, waving his hands around, leaning back in his chair. Spock has noticed that Jim moves his body a lot when he talks, even by Human standards. Vulcans do not gesticulate, everything that needs to be conveyed is done through language. They barely even move their faces. But Jim is always moving, pointing, shrugging. A waste, Spock thinks. He has always preferred the Vulcan way, the economy of movement - pared down, logical. But something about the way Jim gesticulates is so exotic and expressive and emotional. Spock should disapprove of it, it is after all an excessive and unproductive use of energy, but he doesn't. Like all things with Jim it is wasteful, and the waste itself is strangely, almost erotically, compelling. He could just watch Jim move. There is a line from Wonderland: “You’re not the same as you were, you’ve lost your muchness. You used to be much more…. muchier". Spock has never understood that line, but now he thinks he does. There is a 'muchness' about Jim. Spock isn't one for imprecise language, but it is the closest he can come to, in words, for what he admires most in Jim. Muchness.
________________________________________________________________________________
Jim hesitates outside Spock's door. Frowns. Yes. Yes, that's definitely music he can hear inside. And not just any music -
If you believed they put a man on the moon, man on the moon
If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool
The second Spock opens the door he pounces. "Spock - are you listening to REM?"
"I am experimenting with Terran popular culture, as you suggested."
"I thought you thought all pop songs were, and I quote, 'trite Terran sentiments set to repetitive synthesised music'."
"I may have been somewhat hasty in my judgement," Spock concedes. "Some of these songs are not without artistic merit."
"REM is not without artistic merit? The maudlin music of choice for your average bourgeois mopy teenager? 'Oh look, I'm so retro and moody'. Honestly Spock, it's all: wah wah wah. I can't believe that of all Terran culture you chose REM."
Jim pushes past Spock and flops down extravagantly on his usual chair.
"I understand they were well-regarded musicians." Spock looks vaguely affronted.
"That's not the point. Their stuff is like, hundreds of years old and it's not even... Hang on, I still don't get it, why do you like it? Jeez, are you having some kind of early mid-life crisis?"
"Captain, I can assure you I am a long way from the central point of my predicted lifespan."
"Have you been smoking weed? Is this you finally getting down with metaphor? Fuck me, Spock, this is priceless. Shakespeare doesn't get you, Eliot doesn't get you, even Dylan doesn't get you. But REM? REM and suddenly you're all emo and shit? This is just too awesome. I can't even."
"Are we going to discuss Shelley, Captain, or do you intend to continue mocking me?" Spock asks dryly. His tone is even, but his eyes have a slightly wounded sheen, Jim thinks. He stalks over to his PADD, goes to touch the relevant part of the screen.
"Nah, don't turn it off. It's nice. I'm just being a dick, as usual. I'm glad you like some of my species' trite sentimental soft pop. Honestly. I am."
"In that case we can return to your species' trite, sentimental poetry, which I can assure you I still find almost entirely without merit."
Jim laughs. "What are all these kissings worth / If thou kiss not me? I should have known that you would find nothing worthwhile in love poetry, Spock."
___________________________________________________________________________
It is not that Spock does not think upon romantic love, upon desire. There have been girls for him, boys too, and then a few he would describe as women; each had occupied a few months of his time, filling him, briefly, with strange, irrational desires, with intrusive thoughts about their eyes, their hair, their lips. But then he would find himself drifting away from them, the cool wash of his Vulcan thoughts once again soothing the Human tide in his blood. He would find himself directing them towards another partner, someone he thought they would be more compatible with. Even T'Pring, even though she was his intended. He could see the naturalness of her desire for Stonn, he could see the logic in it. He thinks how it would amuse Jim, probably, that the girls and boys back on Vulcan had looked upon him as unusually passionate, as unsettlingly physically demonstrative.
Even the only Human he has been with, Nyota... He remembers her in the aftermath of the first time they had lain together, limbs supple with sweat, eyes bright, smiling at him - "I wasn't..."
"You were not...?"
"I wasn't expecting... You know..."
He had raised an eyebrow at her.
"Well, that."
"Are you complimenting me or insulting me, Lieutenant? I am finding it difficult to tell."
"Complimenting," - somewhat breathlessly - "Complimenting! I mean... Wow. Just... Wow."
But these are things that Jim will never know.
**
They haven't met for Book Club in nearly a week. Jim has not suggested it, and so neither has Spock. Spock assumes this means their interlude is at an end. There is a feeling this gives him, strange and anxious. He locates the feeling, exhales, lets it move through him, lets it pass. It is unexpectedly difficult.
Not only have they not had a Book Club meeting, Spock has barely seen Jim in days, not until they finally have a shift together on the bridge. Jim keeps giving Spock unfathomable looks, and when Spock corrects him on an error he has made in a minor calculation, Jim's gaze turns from confused to sad. Spock feels the fluttering again. He has caused offence when none was intended. Still, Jim falls into step with Spock as they head for the canteen. A different sort of fluttering.
"You're pissed with me," Jim states.
"I am not."
"Well you seem pissed with me."
Spock is silent. There is little he can say to that.
"Spock?"
"I cannot comment on how I seem, Captain. Your perception of my internal state is your prerogative."
He can sense Jim looking at him, with an unnerving intensity, but he keeps his own gaze forward, his face serene.
"Is it the REM thing?" Jim asks eventually.
"No."
"Well, whatever I've done to make you 'not pissed' at me, or whatever, I'm sorry," Jim says sulkily.
"Your apology is unnecessary," Spock says simply. He still doesn't look at Jim. He is not sure why, but he feels if he looked at him in this moment, something - he is not sure what, but something - would happen.
"God, you're hard work."
Spock keeps walking.
"Sometimes I get the impression you still don't even like me," Jim says. He still sounds sulky, but there is an undercurrent there: anxiety.
Finally Spock looks at him. "As I am sure you are well aware Captain, I hold you in high regard. Your constant need for reaffirmation of this is indicative of your-"
Jim rolls his eyes and interrupts, "OK, well, tell me three things you like about me."
Your muchness. But he says nothing.
"The fact that you're hesitating tells me a lot."
"I fail to see why my providing you with a list of your positive attributes will have any-" Spock starts.
"Just do it! Now. Go! Tell me three things you like about me in five seconds or less."
"Five seconds or fewer," Spock corrects automatically.
"Jesus, Spock, enough with the Grammar Nazism already. They mean exactly the same thing."
"They do not mean exactly the same thing."
"Do so. I should know, it's my goddamn language."
Spock gives him a cool, appraising look, then continues as if Jim hasn't spoken. "For example, would you discern a difference between my saying: 'Captain, you are one of the few intelligent people aboard this starship', and 'Captain, you are one of the less intelligent people aboard this starship?'"
To his surprise Jim doesn't even scowl, only breaks into a broad, warm grin, laughs.
"Touché, touché, Mr. Spock." He nudges Spock with his elbow, sending a small dark spark up Spock's arm. "So, you think I'm one of the few intelligent people on board the Enterprise? Is that one of my three things?"
He looks slyly happy, almost mischievous. Spock feels the tight feeling in his side that Jim's displeasure gives him dissipate, only to be replaced by something else, no less unnerving.
"Seventy eight percent of the crew function in the top 0.5 percentile of broadly accepted Universal Federation Intelligence Tests. You are, in fact, one of the many intelligent people on board this starship. My previous statement was simply an example of the correct and incorrect usages of the aforementioned terminology."
"But is that something you like about me?"
"I find your use of the term 'like' bizarre and somewhat inappropriate given-"
"Answer the question!"
"Yes," Spock replies. It feels oddly like something he doesn't want to concede, even though Jim's obvious intelligence is one of the qualities Spock admires him for.
Jim grins widely. "Thought so. What about the other two? My devastating charm? Razor sharp wit? My ass?"
He turns and gives what can only be described as a wiggle.
"I was not aware it was proper procedure for one commanding officer to pass comment on the posterior of another," Spock admonishes.
"Sorry," Jim says, and shrugs apologetically, but his smile has too much of the wolf about it to be truly sheepish. "It is a really great ass though."
To his surprise, Spock suddenly finds his head flooded with images of Jim's ass. Like many other aspects of Jim's personality, it is surprisingly generous. Pert and round. Ripe. Spock thinks of the kasa that used to grow outside his bedroom window, how late in the summer they would become so full and lush it looked like the soft furry skin on the outside might split. How it felt when he bit into one, the sweetness exploding over his tongue, sweet enough that even his insensitive Vulcan tastebuds would curl up with the pleasure of it. Jim's ass. Sweet and ripe. The taste on his tongue.
"Spock - are you blushing? Oh my God, you're blushing."
"I doubt that very much." Spock knows he has superior vaso-control to Humans. He does not blush. Not unless he so chooses.
"You are! You're thinking about my ass right now, aren't you? Aren't you?"
"I would advise you to desist from this line of conversation at once, Captain, or I genuinely will be, as you say, ‘pissed’ at you."
Jim duly falls silent, but he spends the whole of the meal looking over at Spock and grinning, and winking. It is most unsettling. But, Spock concedes, less unsettling than when they weren't talking.
**
This week's Book Club selection is by an author named Charles Dickens. The language is somewhat obscure, which provides a welcome distraction from the content, which, while providing some interesting insights on Terran social structures of centuries past, is predictably overblown and farcical. Spock finds himself skimming through it, mind alert only for parts that Jim might like, that Jim might wish to talk about. He is at the penultimate page when something flutters out of the book, lands face-up on the floor of Spock's cabin. A picture of George Kirk. Not a holo, but an old-fashioned Terran photograph, printed onto thick varnished cardboard. He looks very, very young, despite the fact he is in full Fleet regalia, Lieutenant Commander stripes proudly emblazoned across his arm. He is smiling broadly, Jim's smile.
Spock stoops and then gently slots the photograph back where it has fallen from. He notices the last line of the book is underlined in thick, black ink: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
Spock thinks on this for some time.
______________________________________________________________________________
"This book is important to you," Spock says carefully, when they are sitting in Jim's cabin.
Jim is surprised. Maybe all the novel reading is giving Spock a crash course in emotional intuition.
"Why'd you say that?" he asks.
"You have...made some annotations. There is a... photograph of your father," Spock seems unusually hesitant, almost shy.
Jim touches his fingers briefly to the edge of the book, lets them skim the slightly thicker slither of cardboard near the back.
"Oh, that picture. Yeah. I forgot I kept it there. I've had that for years. I used to... Ah. There weren't holos of him up around the house when I was young, but I had that. I used to... look at it. When I was sad. It used to make me feel better. Then... Well, I don't know. It stopped making me feel that way I guess."
He knows very well why, although he would never tell Spock, would never tell anyone. "Like he'd be proud of you. You'll never amount to anything, James. Nothing." He wonders if talking about something real, something emotional like this, will make Spock uncomfortable. If it does, Spock doesn't show it.
"I am sorry," he says simply. Then: "Captain." But the word is soft, more like a balm than a term of professional address.
"He was a great man though, my dad. That's what the bit of underlined text means. You know, dying for your crew, sacrificing yourself for others. It's not-" Do you remember how far the walk was? Do you remember whistling? No. Jim forces his mind away from those things. He can't think on them. He can't. They would drive him mad. "He was a great man," he adds again, quietly.
"He was."
The sit in silence for a while, but for once it feels companionable, not awkward.
"It sucks doesn't it?" Jim says. "The whole dead parent thing."
"It does." Spock hesitates, then volunteers, "It must have been very difficult for you. Never knowing your father."
"Yeah. I would do anything, anything to meet my father. Just to have one hour, one minute in his company. Growing up it was like I had no roots, no tether. It's like I don't understand half of who I am."
Jim thinks of the hours he sometimes spends looking in the mirror. Are these his eyes? His chin? Did he hold his shoulders back like this? Did he smile this way when he was caught off guard by something genuinely funny? He's in there somewhere, in his DNA, in the very marrow of him. But Jim can't find him, can never find him. It's been worse since he met old Spock, found out about the other Universes. Because now he knows that somewhere he is existing, the real George Kirk, and yet Jim can never have him. The Universe dangles this most wanted thing in front of him, then snatches it away.
He says, "Do you think about the other Universes? The ones where she might still be alive? Your mother?"
"Yes," Spock says simply. On anyone else the monosyllabic replies would be off-putting, but from Spock they are strangely comforting. They make it easier for Jim to talk. This is stuff he never talks about, not even to Bones, and it's not like Bones doesn't have his fair share of parent issues.
"He was nice about it. I mean you were nice about it - other you. You said my dad was proud of me."
"Captain - if I may - I do think on these things, but only momentarily. It serves no purpose to dwell on them unnecessarily. It can only bring negative emotions. When I have these thoughts, I simply acknowledge them, and then let them move through me. There is nothing to be gained from thinking about what might have been, about things that we can never have."
"It's a good sort of sadness though," Jim persists. "Thinking about my dad being proud of me. It's a happy sad."
"Oxymoron."
There it is. Almost a smile. The faintest lifting of the corners of Spock's mouth. His lips are surprisingly bowed, Jim notices, his mouth surprisingly generous, and now with the tiny fragment of a smile breaking at the edges, surprisingly sensual.
He takes Spock's advice and does not think about the other things the Universe dangles in front of him, the other things the other Jim enjoyed which he can never have. Spock. His love.
______________________________________________________________________________
Jim comes to sit by him one day at dinner. He has not done this before, generally either eating alone with his PADD in front of him, or with Bones or Scotty, laughing, talking loudly, exhibiting that kind of brash, overt confidence that is so alien to Spock. Spock feels a little tendril of pleasure lick around his belly.
"So, Book Club," Jim says. "I need to set you something."
"I am rereading Shakespeare. I know you believe I did not give it due diligence last time. It is possible that it will improve upon a second reading. Although I confess, I cannot bring myself to reread some of the comedies. As You Like It."
Spock allows his shoulders to stiffen slightly, notes how this unexpected physical expressiveness makes Jim smile. That tendril again, thicker, more persistent.
"Which one are you reading at the moment?"
"Hamlet."
"Ah," Jim smiles ruefully. "Topical. And how are you finding it? Enjoying all the paternal angsting subtext?"
"It was my understanding that the majority of the character's 'angst' could be ascribed as originating from his mother."
"Yeah, well I feel that. The funeral baked meats on the marriage table etcetera. Frailty, thy name is woman!"
"You are referring to your mother's second marriage?" Spock asks carefully. He has not been this aware of the delicacy of Human emotions since he was with Nyota. It gives him the same sense he used to have around her, always: I will upset her, somehow, even without trying. I will upset her and I will not know I have until it is already done.
To his relief, Jim does not look angry or sad, although there is a distant darkness that encroaches upon the bright blue of his gaze. "Yep. Good old mom. Always had the ability to fuck me over better than anyone else."
Spock inclines his head. "Mothers."
"Yep." Jim pushes some food around his plate.
Spock feels that irrational urge to confide in Jim again, to tell him something secret and personal, to make him let Spock into his private world in return. He speaks before he can think better of it.
"I was once involved in an altercation at my school, the catalyst for which was the subject of my mother."
Jim looks incredulous. "You got into a fight? At school?"
"That is what I just said, Captain."
"And I thought I was the only one who could get under your skin like that. I feel so unspecial." Jim is using the tone that Spock recognises as teasing.
Spock doesn't want to dwell on the similarity of the only two occasions he has lost control of his anger, he doesn't want to think about the things Jim said that day on the bridge, "You never loved her!" When he searches for that during meditation it is easy to find, for it has taken root deep in the core of him, and it is a barbed and poisonous thing. His loss, his sadness, his anger, his shame. It resists all his attempts to weed it out, to let it be gone from him.
He thinks now on that other time. A time he only rarely recalls. Also about his mother.
" My fellow classmates were prejudiced against me on account of my mixed heritage. And because I would frequently achieve the highest mark in examinations. I may have been... less than humble about this."
Jim grins. "Feeling you there. There's no point not being smug about one's general awesomeness."
"They would try to goad me. They wished me to reveal my Humanity; to lose control. They wished me to cry. If they had done so, they would have known they had won. They attempted various tactics, both physical and verbal, with no success. Then one day... they called my mother a whore. A Human whore, who my father was a traitor to marry. I gave them cause to regret that particular utterance."
Jim looks delighted. "Ha, I bet. Little Spock, being all bad ass."
"My father was disappointed in me. I did not lose control like that again. Until..." 'You feel nothing! It must not even compute for you!' "Well, perhaps I have always been somewhat illogical when it comes to my mother."
Mother. Petakov.
"Yeah. Mothers have a tendency to bring out the bad ass in me too". Jim's eyes are distant, angry on the surface, sad in the core. Then he shrugs. "They say that all the best cowboys have daddy issues, but look at us, huh?" He smiles, but his eyes don't crinkle, so Spock knows it's not a true smile. "Mommy issues all the way."
"But then we are space cowboys, Captain."
And Jim laughs then, a real laugh, the surprised hoarse bark he has when he's not laughing to be charming, or to ingratiate himself with some galactic diplomat, or woo some pretty female.
"Where do you even get this shit from, Spock? Is it the pop music? Well, whatever it is, don't stop it. I like it."
He laughs again and the laugh is glowing, and it makes Spock feel warm inside to have caused it, like he is glowing too.
______________________________________________________________________________
Jim invites Spock to the rec room to play pool with him and Bones and Scotty. Bones is less than pleased.
"Christ Jim, we have to socialise with the guy now? It's bad enough dealing with him professionally, but at least he's efficient, I'll give him that. But he's hardly Saturday Night At The Movies material now is he? Every time I tell an off colour joke I'll be worried he's going to have me put in the brig."
"Hey," Jim protests mildly. "Spock can be funny."
"Yeah," Bones says darkly. "Funny like how enemas can be funny."
They were planning on playing doubles, but Spock is late, some crisis in some lab somewhere, so they end up playing a tournament instead, and then Uhura wanders over, and by the time Spock arrives they are well underway.
"Ah, Spock, nice of you to join us," Bones says. "You look particularly devoid of emotion today. Good sleep?"
"My rest period was perfectly adequate, thank you Doctor."
Jim notices how Spock's eyes flicker to Uhura and catch there, unwilling to leave her. "Lieutenant."
She gives a reserved smile. "Commander."
Jim is not really sure what has gone on there, between the two of them. It's not something he can exactly come out and ask, both of them so cool and collected and closed-in on themselves. Maybe something is still going on. He feels a strange hot spike in his belly, sharp and unpleasant. It feels like jealousy, which doesn't even make any sense, because he hasn't been attracted to Uhura like that - actually been attracted to her, not just pretending to be attracted to her to annoy her - in a really long time. Not since the first year of Academy, really. Unless the jealousy is to do with Spock. Spock and his secretly beautiful mouth and his sad, dark eyes. But that would be... That would be really weird.
They finish the game, and then Spock swaps in to play Jim. Swaps in and promptly clears the table, leaving Jim standing there holding his cue and trying not to gawp. Maybe it is Spock he feels jealous about. Because, damn, if that isn't just the hottest thing.
"Where on earth did you learn to play pool like that?" he asks incredulously. He notices Bones and Scotty are wearing similar expressions. Only Uhura looks unfazed by this unexpected display of talent.
"I did not learn to play pool on Earth."
"Seriously?"
"Calculating the trajectory of the balls if struck at various angles and velocities is not difficult, Captain," Spock says dryly. "It requires only a rudimentary knowledge of geometry and physics." Jim tries to detect even a trace of smugness in his tone, but fails. He is sure it's there somewhere. No one can be that casual about their startling brilliance at a competitive sport.
"I think he's trousered you mate," Scotty remarks happily.
"'Trousered', Mr Scott?" Spock enquires.
"Yeah. When two people are playing pool and one clears the table before the other's even got one ball in the pocket, we call it trousering. Loser has to take his trousers off."
"Indeed." Spock turns to Jim and raises both his eyebrows expectantly.
"What? No! No, I am not taking my pants off," Jim protests. "You took me by surprise, that's all. Rematch!"
They play another two games, with much the same results. Everything is over so quickly that Bones, Scotty and Uhura don't even complain about having to sit out three times in a row. Jim has always considered himself to be a pretty decent pool player. Scotty can give him a run for his money ("Although it's not a proper game, laddy. You want to try snooker, now, that's a real man's sport"), but he beats Bones pretty comfortably every time. Bones who is now looking a bit too delighted at this unexpected turn of events, crowing with laughter at Jim's sulky expression, and even slapping Spock on the shoulder.
"I'm still finding my feet," Jim grumbles. "Looking for weaknesses in your game. One more round. One more round and I'll beat you."
"I find that highly improbable, Captain," Spock says evenly. "Based on our previous respective performances, the odds of you beating me in the next 'round' are 1,982:1."
"Oh, whatever," Jim snaps. "It's a stupid game anyway. Isn't that right, Scotty?"
"You're on your own there," Scotty says, laughing.
Jim gives him a dark look. "Right, well. It is a stupid game. It's a stupid game and I'm bored of playing."
Spock mutters something in Vulcan under his breath, "ko-elki". Uhura's eyes widen and then she gives a quick, hastily bitten off smirk.
"What?" Jim asks, "What did he call me?"
Uhura looks over at Spock and smiles again. "Princess."
"Princess!" Jim exclaims.
This earns Spock another shoulder clap from Bones: "Princess Kirk. Finally the hobgoblin's come up with something I can get on board with."
_____________________________________________________________________________
They are discussing The Winter Of Our Discontent in Jim's cabin. The conversation has become somewhat more animated than their earlier discussions.
"So you agree that when you kill someone in war it doesn't make you a murderer?"
"Captain," Spock says mildly. "My judgement on the morality of ending another life would always be relational. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
He feels something catch and charge in the air between them, but he cannot tell exactly what it is. Jim's eyes are electric.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," he repeats slowly. "And you really believe that?"
"It is the way of Surak," Spock replies evenly.
Jim looks abruptly to the side, then down at his desk. He picks at the surface with his thumb.
"You know I was on Tarsus IV." It's barely a mumble.
Spock feels a slight surprise at the apparent non sequitur.
"I am aware, Captain. It is in your personal files, which I was given cause to review when you were still a cadet."
The unspoken spectre of the Kobayashi Maru joins the other nebulous things that weigh heavy upon the conversation.
"You think that was OK, then? What he did?" Jim does not look at him, eyes trained intently on a tiny indentation on the side of the desk, which his thumb is worrying and teasing at.
Spock feels a tiny slither of unease. "Captain?"
"You know who I'm talking about. You know what I'm asking."
"You are asking if I agree with Governor Kodos's decision to selectively euthanise approximately half the colony?"
"Bingo." Jim's voice is still unsettlingly quiet, and there is an unusual blankness behind his eyes, eyes that he still won't bring to meet Spock's.
Spock hesitates again before answering. There is a strange helplessness low in his stomach. To lie would be illogical. To lie is always illogical.
"There is some clear logic behind his reasoning. Resources were severely limited. There was insufficient food for eight thousand people. Many had died. Many more would have died. The probability of Federation ships arriving and bringing relief was less than 4.7%."
"And yet they arrived."
"That was not the most likely outcome. You are in danger of consequentalism. The ethical nature of an act must be evaluated as and when it is done, and not based on its results."
"So you think it was the right thing to do? To kill all those people?"
"I can see the logic in preventing many lingering deaths by instigating a smaller number of swift ones. Depending on various factors, it can take the average Human up to forty-two days without food to starve to death. It is a slow and painful way to die. In addition, there is likely to be fighting and violence over scarce resources. As I understand there had already been such outbreaks. Riots. Looting. Robbery. Rape. It is possible to see the logic in Kodos's decision. A Vulcan council may well have decided similarly."
Jim looks up suddenly, eyes a furious blue, raging torrents of clean sky. His voice is still quiet, but his tone is alive with the rough edge of his emotion.
"You're trying to tell me you would have made the same fucking decision? I know you. I know you wouldn't."
Spock looks at him narrowly, warily.
"I am not a member of the Vulcan Council."
"See! I told you! I knew you wouldn't!"
"Captain, you misunderstand. I have learned from the... situations that I found myself in following the death of my mother, that I have a propensity to behave irrationally in highly emotionally charged scenarios. Nevertheless, if in such a scenario I chose not to act in accordance with logic it would be the wrong decision."
"No, it wouldn't! The ships arrived. Everyone would have been saved!"
"Ethics aside, it would be a logically wrong decision."
Jim's whole hand is now clenched against the desk, his short, blunt nails gritted against the wood.
"Morally wrong, logically wrong? How are those things any different?"
Riyeht, Spock thinks. Perhaps the meaning is not entirely unambiguous. He inclines his head.
"There are... Perhaps it is better if we continue this conversation when you are less emotionally compromised, Captain. It is not my intention to cause you any discomfort."
Jim gives a derisive snort, rubs a hand through the coarse bronze hair at the back of his neck.
"Discomfort. Right."
He does not look at Spock. Spock sits very still, waiting.
"Yeah, you're right," Jim says, after a long silence. "You should probably go. I can't talk about this stuff. Not with you."
The word 'you' is loaded, and loaded in such a way that it burrows its way all the way into Spock's bones and sits there for the rest of the day, hot and sharp.
**
When he returns to his cabin after his shift there's a copy of John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism propped against his door. Spock feels a slight confusion. He presumes this is a Book Club item, but surely Jim knows it would be highly improbable for him to have taken the mandatory Interspecies Ethics course at the Academy and not encountered one of the most prominent thinkers in Terran ethical philosophy? He picks the book up, carefully, and takes it into his cabin.
Jim has written in the inside cover, the same thick black ink Spock has noted on others of his books. 'I imagine this will become your new favourite book'. He has pressed far harder into the page with the nib of his writing instrument than is strictly necessary. At the bottom of the page he has written: 'See, we do think about the needs of the many'. The 'do' has been underlined. Twice.
Jim is angry with him, then.
'I can't talk about this stuff. Not with you.'
Spock leafs through the book. At the back, on the final page Jim has written something else, messily, almost as an afterthought: 'I still wouldn't do it. And neither would you. And I am glad.'
__________________________________________________________________
Jim has one of his nightmares that night, one of his suffocating, stormy nightmares, the worst one, the one he used to stay up all night drinking (and other things), just to keep at bay. If you don't sleep, you don't dream. It's the one where he's back in the storm again, those old Iowan dust storms, but this time there is no screen door, no Sam, no mom. Just Jim and the storm. All the red sky and no door. And the dust is the brick dust, blowing in from the big red brick wall at the end of the Universe, and it scratches in his lungs 'til he's coughing up blood, and it gets in his eyes 'til his vision turns dark. It's so thick he knows he'll never be able to find the door. It's so thick he can barely see. And then he wishes he couldn't see, because there are things out there in the dust. Dark things. Crawling things. Things that reach for him. Things that whistle.
He wakes up. His heart is thundering. His lungs feel raw, and he has the irrational thought that if he coughed now there really would be brick dust inside.
"Lights, twenty percent."
He sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed. Grimaces at the greasy sheen of sweat he can feel all over his body. There's no point trying to sleep again now.
He goes to the rec room, which is thankfully empty. Types the familiar code into the replicator.
He wishes it smelt like the real stuff does. But like most replicated food, the odour is slightly diminished, slightly less textured. It feels good in his mouth though. Dense and satisfying.
He chews it slowly, holds the rest of it in his hands as he walks to the observation deck, lets the heat of his hands warm it through. He thinks of the yeast cells, moving and swelling. Living.
He looks out at the stars, the beautiful stars, the stars he always loved. He tries to let their iridescent magic cast its spell over him. But tonight it's like he can only see the darkness, the darkness between the stars, the darkness beyond the stars. He can feel it creep towards the answering blackness inside him, the darkness and the dust. The things that blot out the stars.
"Captain?"
It is Spock. Of course it is Spock. He turns, tries to smile. Holds up the pastry.
"Ah, you've caught me at it. My secret fetish."
"Uncooked bread dough?"
"Can't get enough of the stuff." His voice sounds blank and empty, even to his own ears.
"It is illogical that you would like that, Captain. It is flour, butter, salt and water. I am reliably informed to most Humans it tastes unpleasant."
"I just like it, OK, Spock."
"But ... " Spock pauses briefly, a tiny indentation appearing between his brows, the same face he pulls when processing a particularly difficult set of mathematical formulae on the bridge. "You have a variety of highly flavoured foods at your disposal on this ship, Captain. I do not understand your decision to eat something which has little flavour and is of little nutritional value."
Jim feels something shift and click inside of him.
"Maybe I like it because for a year of my life this was the biggest luxury you got, and I would steal pats of it from the bakers where he'd left it out to prove, and I'd run, and run, and then later I'd take my girl out to the desert and we'd eat the whole fucking ball of it like it was ambrosia. Not everything has to be logical Spock. Food is about a lot of things. Emotion. Love."
Jim can hear that his own voice has been rising throughout his speech, 'til it's only just below a shout. He feels weirdly buzzy and energised, tightly bound, wired. But he isn't angry, not really. He wants to hate Spock in this moment. He wants Spock to look at him like he looks at other people when they say something Spock thinks is stupid, or illogical, or foolish, or just quintessentially Human. But instead Spock gives him this unbearable look, not quite pity, not quite compassion, caught somewhere on the path between confusion and sympathy, and it kills him, that look, Spock trying to understand him, Spock wanting to understand him. In a way no Human ever would bother.
Spock looks at him for a long while, and Jim knows how he must appear, hair in disarray, sweaty, wild-eyed, holding a lump of raw bread dough. Spock looks at him for a long while, and then he says,
"Tell me about your girl, Captain."
Such an un-Spock-like thing to say.
And so Jim tells him about Lyla, and for a while some of the brick dust blows away, and it is like he can see the sky again.
______________________________________________________________________
Spock
Shi'Kahr, 2236. It was a hot summer that year, too hot for my mother who would spend most days in the cool darkness of the anterior halls, sleeping. Her skin would become pale, not like the ruddy brown it would turn in the cooler months, when she would be up all day, either at the school or round the house, singing, laughing. More like Vulcan skin, and she would keep Vulcan hours. In the summer she would only come out when the darkness did, like one of the night blooming cacti that used to shed their scent over the sands of the Sas-a-Shar every evening. She would spend the majority of the night with my father, in his study, talking in her low, musical voice. He did not speak of it, but I would notice in those months when he would have her company long through the darkness, that his shoulders would unstiffen, that he would hold his fingers less rigidly by his side.
She would frequently come into my room those nights, the times I was not meditating. Sometimes she would talk to me, sometimes she would just sit, tilt her head back and close her eyes, smile. Sometimes she would read to me. It began that summer.
"Do you remember when you were little I used to sing to you before you went to sleep?"
I could indeed recall it. “I do, Mother.”
"Well, I thought I might read to you."
"From Analects?"
"No, a story."
"A story?"
"Yes."
"A history?"
"Yes, except these are things that never happened. Well, they did happen, but only inside someone's head."
I had heard of fictions before, of old oral legends and of warrior poetry from before the Time of Awakening. They were not much spoken of. We did not study them at School.
"These are... Vulcan 'stories'?"
"No," my mother had given one of her less wide smiles, I knew the word even if I did not understand the feeling, melancholic. "Earth stories. I thought you might like them. I have one with me that my father gave me as a child. He used to read it to me. Here."
She had held out a book; a paper book. I had not held one before, only seen them on display in the Grand Library. It was heavy in my hands. It smelt of old things, long forgotten. There was a female Terran child on the front, hands folded behind her back, staring up at a surprisingly small and somewhat fluffy looking le-matya perched in a tree. The le-matya was snarling broadly, that much was as expected. The child appeared unconcerned. Perhaps this was indeed akin to the old Vulcan legends; despite her frail appearance the girl was a brave warrior who felt no fear in the face of her own certain death at the claws and teeth of the diminutive predator. This story would be about her own acceptance of her fate.
I studied the cover for some time. There was looping Terran script on it, in a type of gilt, but I had not been sufficiently advanced in my studies at that point to read it. "What is it about?"
"A little girl who falls down a rabbit - an animal - hole and meets lots of fantastic creatures and has adventures."
I had felt mild consternation as I listened to my mother, and leafed through the book, which was full of brightly coloured tableaus depicting various scenes from the story. "And this is possible on Earth? Human children fall down animal burrows and the creatures themselves wear clothes and talk?"
She had smiled, more warmly that time. I think on that sometimes, my mother's smile. The words to describe it. Fond. Indulgent. The smile she used to give only to me. "No. Like I said, it's all made-up."
I had looked at her gravely, handed the book back. "Mother. Reading such a story is highly illogical. What is the purpose of you reading to me about something that never happened, and never even could happen, beyond someone’s imagination? I believe I shall decline your offer."
Unlike any of the others since, her smile never wavered, even though I know now I must have upset her. She never gave me to believe I had caused her offence, that I was in any way lacking, that she wished I were different. She always was alone in that.
"Just see," she had said, "You might like it more than you think. Listen:
’Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where-’ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
‘-so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’"
I remember thinking that the narrative thus far appeared logical. Perhaps Carroll was less a story-teller and more a Terran philosopher, a scholar, a logician. She read the entire book to me that summer, and the volume that followed, and I found it a constructive use of my time, listening to Carroll alternating between logic and nonsense, considering the alienness that was the human mind. Sometimes so similar to mine, sometimes so entirely different.
I recall that on occasion I would specifically ask for her to come and read to me prior to my retiring for the evening.
"Someone's impatient." That smile.
"Vulcans are never impatient, Mother."
But it was not the story itself that I truly wished for. No more than it had been the singing. It was my mother's warm hand on my brow, the occasions she believed I had already fallen asleep when she would run her fingers very lightly all around my face, down my nose and across my jaw, and then up the curve of each ear. Little dark embers of comfort sparking off each finger and burrowing into my soul. And I would allow myself the rare luxury of my own nonsense thinking then; you are my favourite person in all the Galaxy, my most special, Mother, petakov. "My little one." Her voice, its modulating tones and shifts, more like music than the flat manner of speaking that was customary among Vulcans. "My baby boy. My heart's own darling." Things she would never say when she knew I was awake. Things I would not allow her to say.
On occasion it comes back to me, though unbidden: I was someone's heart's own darling once. I am reminded of it at foolish times, inappropriate times. When my father's mouth pulls momentarily tight with disappointment, when Jim rolls his eyes at me and then cuts them sideways at McCoy and sighs, the blankness behind T'Pring's face the last time I saw her, the last time I will ever see her. Nyota, her hand on my ribs "Why won't you let me in? Let me in here." The things that give me a strange, unnamed twisting feeling in my side, and then will come the thought: I was someone's heart's own darling once. But now she is dead, the only one who ever thought that of me, and if some benefit can come from her death it is that that thought, that weak, illogical thought, will grow as distant as the rest of her memory. There will be no time for nonsense, only rationality. The chink in the armour will knit over, the door that was left ajar will be closed, and never again will it open. And on balance that is indeed a positive outcome.