Casual Contact
Disclaimer: Star Trek re-boot and original don't belong to me, just this story-line
A/N: I've spent my summer writing this, so far there are five chapters which I'm going to try and keep to a weekly basis so hopefully I can get the next chapters written - not sure how long this will be but at the moment its quite a length; I'm really excited about it though!
P.S It's not a slash by the way - just an awesome and intense friendship
Prologue
Vulcans are an excessively private species.
This is common knowledge – actually one of the only firm based facts known of the logical beings.
If you sat and searched through the public Starfleet Xeno Database, over a year could be spent reading through the details of biology, customs, language and even in some cases financial management of all discovered species listed tidily A-Z.
However on reaching the Vulcan subsection, the file would read this sentence;
'The Vulcan is a species of immense intellect whose foundation is formed around the process of logic with no emotional bias; little else is of public knowledge due to strict privacy beliefs although further information is revealed in chosen confidence. If greater detail is required the matter must be requested of a Vulcan although there is no guarantee an answer will be supplied or that there'll be no resulting bodily harm.'
Although another fact that wasn't necessary to learn from a record system was that physical contact was a big no-go area with Vulcans.
The beings of logic had been one of the founding species of the United Federation of Planets so there had been many decades and a lot of bruising glares or in extreme cases, hospital visits, for people to understand that touching a Vulcan in any manner, no matter how casual or subconsciously, would not make you any friends… or whatever the label for common acquaintances in their logical reasoning.
Spock had always been an anomaly to this fact.
On reflection in his later years he would put it down to the affection of his mother; growing up she would always run a hand through his hair, give a peck on his cheek, keep a gentle grip on his shoulder – touch was a normal action for the young boy and he didn't realise how different he was until he left his home to attend the Vulcan Children's Academy.
Despite his father raising him with all Vulcan traditions and customs, Spock had never fully understood the extent of the adversity to touch until an unfortunate incident on his first day which had therefore listed him as a target for the remainder of his school years.
For Spock it hadn't been something he would have thought about, a fellow student had tripped over an apparatus that had uncharacteristically been left out of its assigned spot and Spock had stepped forward to grab the boy around the waist to divert him from falling – it was a responsive action, he was simply preventing an injury.
Yet the child had shoved him away with a glare that almost disproved the Vulcan belief of not having emotions and he failed to prevent the tips of his ears flushing green as the other surrounding students looked down at him, making comments about his human nature and how he didn't belong with them, that he should return to Earth where he would perhaps at least be more tolerable.
In-admittedly this event was the first to drive his need to purge his human half; it was not due to shame for this would require an emotion, it was simply logical to wholly embrace his Vulcan heritage since that was the home planet he situated.
The issue arising from this was that when a child is brought up with particular normalities, such as physical contact and comforting touch, that need or expectance can then never completely disappear.
Spock came to this realisation on joining Starfleet Academy.
He was acutely aware of the human customs involving gestures of many degrees through person to person contact so it was logical for him to prepare to adapt to this situation and possible incidents it may present as a representing Vulcan.
However his human half was actually anticipating the chance to once again experience all these gestures he only received from his mother and since the event on his first day of school, even those were fewer as he did not wish to appear even more abnormal among his people.
But on Earth it was the normal procedure, guaranteed nobody would emit non-permitted contact with a Vulcan however as his file would classify him as half-human this information would likely spread to 85% of the Starfleet Academy in the first week – resulting in students not holding the same discipline of touch to him.
The problem became evident from the first contact; his muscles tensed, an uncomfortable sensation crawled through his limb and he barely managed to hide his flinch.
This occurred with every touch – no matter how brief.
After 78.6 hours Spock had formed a conclusion; despite his mind urging for the contact he had grown to be familiar with as a child, the events that had turned him to decide to engulf himself within the laws of Surak and be raised fully Vulcan meant that his body was adverse to such contact.
He had hoped that the uncomfortable sensation would disappear over years of shoulder pats, hand shakes, wrist tugs or elbow guides but all that occurred was he perfected the art of hiding this negative reaction to casual contact.
Much more to come, hope you enjoy :)