A/N: Written for victorylilygreen on tumblr, for the prompt "Your smile is not as bright as it used to be."
x
From the window of their suite, he can see the streets of Yorktown twisting, turning over on themselves until their buildings hang suspended in the air, streets uncoiled like a broken down double helix, in a harsh defiance of gravity. As the sun sets and the sky beyond the planet darkens, the sight becomes that much more surreal: window lights like stars blinking on, blinking off. Jim's been staring too long. It makes him dizzy.
He shuts the curtains with a decisive movement, turns the lights on one setting brighter, and collapses down onto the bed. Behind him, on the other side of the wall and through the half-open door, he can hear the shower running. Spock will be out soon. He's never been one for long showers, water conservation is too deeply embedded an instinct in him, and as Jim listens, the echo of water against tile lessens, then stops. Various sounds of movement, vague, and hard to decode, follow. Jim leans back against the pillows and closes his eyes.
"If you are going to sleep, I suggest finding another position as that one will quickly become quite uncomfortable."
Jim startles up, looks to his right first, toward the door, then finds the voice was actually from his left, the other side of the bed. Spock is staring at him with a certain expression on his face, a certain tilt to his head and a certain twitch about his eyebrow, that implies he's making a joke, so Jim offers a short smile. He pulls his feet up onto the bed and lies down on his back, reclining against the huge slope of pillows their hosts have left them. "Better?"
"Somewhat," Spock answers, and settles down on his side next to Jim. The bed is large; they do not use a third of it.
For a long time, in the silence, Jim lets his thoughts wander, until they have wandered into the wordless, until he's focused only on the gentle sensation of Spock's thumb, moving against the outside of his wrist.
"How long have you been so unhappy?"
The voice shocks him; even gentle and low it grates at his floating non-thoughts, pulls him harshly back into himself. He blinks slowly. Even now, hazy, tired, he thinks he'll sound angry when he answers, but all that comes is: "What's that supposed to mean?" murmured in quiet resignation.
Spock lifts his hand slowly, traces the outline of Jim's lips with the gentlest touch. Yorktown is busy at all hours and waves of city sounds slide in around the window panes, mix with the ill-defined movement-sounds of their neighbors that seep in through the walls. Still the only sound that Jim can hear is the rustle of blankets and sheets as their bodies shift, those sweet susurrus sounds that interrupt what would otherwise feel a perfect silence. He flicks out his tongue against the tip of Spock's finger, and feels him shudder.
"I mean that your smile is not as... bright as it used to be."
"How poetic."
Spock's hand slides now so that his palm curves lightly against Jim's cheek. "Do you think that Vulcans cannot be poetic?"
"Didn't say that." No, he knows that Spock finds something in poetry, music, art, that lies beyond him, a strain of notes he cannot hear. It isn't surprise or incredulity in his voice. The words were only a method of avoidance, a means of delay. "It's just... Do you ever look out the windows of our ship?"
Jim doesn't know the intricacies of Vulcan rituals of touch, but he knows that the way Spock's fingers skim against his skin brings him feelings of calm.
"Do you ever think about that vast unknown and how the only thing between whatever's out there, and all those people on the ship, over four hundred people, is…you?" His eyes close for just a moment, a rattling outtake of breath, Spock's fingers sliding down behind the curve of his ear. "I mean—me?"
"You are an able captain, Jim—"
"Stop. Spock—that's not what I mean."
He can't entirely explain what he means. That the unknown has never felt so uninviting. That home has never seemed so far away, or so foreign. That he has never felt like such a stranger to himself.
Somehow, without realizing it, without feeling the movements of his own body, he's found himself with his nose squashed against Spock's collarbone and an arm around his stomach, and he's known closeness like this, physical closeness, but he's never known the feeling of the whole planet shifting out from under him, twisting out beneath him like one of Yorktown's topsy-turvy streets. He grabs on. And for a long time, neither one moves.
"Home," he tries again, quietly, "doesn't feel like a secure concept anymore." And then he tries to laugh, unconvincing and hollow. "I guess that sounds—like a ridiculous thing for me to say."
"Not at all," Spock murmurs. "It is an emotion with which I am well acquainted myself."
Jim keeps his eyes closed, searches out Spock's hand in the dark, like a man about to fall searching out one last hope of safety, and when he grabs onto Spock's wrist and feels fingers wrap around his wrist in return, he knows he's found the best security he can. He knows that, at least for the moment, it will hold.