Author's Note: I told myself I wasn't going to write Star Trek fic. Nope, not at all, especially since all I have from that fandom is a crush on Data and now a crush on Spock (Thank you, ZQ), but now that Spock/Uhura happened... I am doomed. I was going to ignore this fleeting desire to write... until I mentioned my inkling to one named Erin and she, ever the conspiring creature, encouraged it. So this short piece and this effort to display my inability to function is blamed solely on her. ALL ON HER. Hence, why I made her title it. She's done good, the evil conspiring being.
He watches her sleep — studies would be a more appropriate term, but she's not... and he shouldn't... but he is.
He cannot help but find Nyota utterly fascinating in all her facets — what Earth literature would refer to as unearthly, being incredibly inaccurate in their literal comparison, but by the understanding of the source of that definition, perhaps not so.
She challenges his logic, and he knows that, should she know the way she affects his mind, her cheeks would warm and her heart would flutter, as it often does when he reveals something unexpected to her — and to himself.
It's her beauty, he thinks.
It's too perfect, but that is illogical. No beauty is perfect, and her body has faults invisible to those who haven't seen her as he has — naked, sprawled over his bed, sleeping soundly, face-down, next to him, as if it was the safest place in the world. And to her, perhaps, it is.
But those faults... those minute little details of childhood scars and body parts straying from their normally-accepted size aren't, by any means, imperfect to him. They should be, logic tells him so, but what he feels when lips leave a trail down her spine, when his hands cup the varied size of her breasts, when his fingers trace that scar on the back of her thigh, he does not think of the imperfections they may carry, because it feels perfect.
Her beauty is perfect.
Then, there is the matter of her mind.
Never would he have imagined to have found such an equal — such a challenge. She is not all-knowing, no creature — human or Vulcan — could ever accomplish such a feat, but her curiosity and drive allows her to excel in a way he's never seen in a human. She challenges him through her questions, her constant need to learn — which he encourages — causes him to learn as well, through the answers they find and the things he sees in her. It was what drew him in, unequivocally, with the human metaphor of "as a moth to a flame".
He had known it was against regulations, against his own Vulcan nature, and against everything logic demanded of him, but one glance at her eyes during the many late nights they shared for their work, as she closed the space between them, showing him that her mind was not infallible, had proved to be dangerously illogical. Her mind had a flaw now, as it entertained the thought of something between them, and try as he might to insist against it in his own mind, he does recall moving his lips in response. Illogical, unethical and dangerous; her mind still threaded around the situation so gracefully, keeping their relationship so well-hidden that not even walls could speak of its existence — would they have the ability of speech at all — and keeping everything solely between them. Her mind was infallible, but it was by no means unreliable in its pursuit for knowledge, and for him.
She carries a brilliant mind, he knows that now.
A perfect beauty and a perfect mind, there is no question of their existence, but what else does she posses, he wonders.
He hears it, beating softly inside her chest, reassuring him that she is, indeed, asleep, as her breathing is by no means altered by a state of consciousness.
Not many would've followed him into the lift in that moment — he remembers it well — not many would have ever attempted an emotional response from a Vulcan, but he isn't completely Vulcan, is he?
Even after the loss of the one person who reminded him of his humanity — whenever they teased him, whenever they spoke ill of her and her union to his father, of his circumstance — Spock could never lose what it felt to be human, and Nyota would never allow him to forget either.
She didn't force him to show her his emotions, but simply offered her own, opening her arms for him to fall into — should he choose. Her heart is too great, too patient, and he can't help but wonder the strength behind the gentle heart.
She demands nothing of him, and takes when he can give, patient the first few days when he simply did not know how to conduct himself in their bed. He knew the mechanics of it, of course, but the search for pleasure... the elaboration in the act eluded him, but Nyota had proved herself to be not only an adept pupil, but an extraordinary teacher.
Humans credit the heart for having the ability to love, to feel, to cherish, but Spock knows it is not so. The heart is a simple organ; the filter of blood, a student once put it so bluntly. But, with Nyota, Spock begins to have his doubts.
With her, he's willing to believe too much.
She humanizes him.
"Spock," she murmurs, her eyes still closed, and he knows she's awake now — her breathing has accelerated by a small margin.
"Are you comfortable?" he asks, willing to relinquish his own comfort to accommodate her, if need be.
"Hmm, much." She opens one eye, the corner of her lip quirking somewhat, "I'm just wondering why you're staring at me."
Fascinating.
"You were aware of my gaze while you slept?"
She mirrors his position on the bed now, resting her head on her open palm as she lies on her side, facing him, "Don't sound so surprised. What should surprise you is that you didn't notice I was awake 'til I told you."
He quirks his brows in realization, "Indeed, that is most surprising."
"They must have been very interesting thoughts," she smiles softly, approaching the subject with the caution and grace only she could muster. "Want to talk about them?"
He slowly reaches for her face, feeling the warmth of her cheek before she turns her head to kiss his open palm.
"I believe... you are an anomaly."
This causes Nyota's eyes to widen somewhat, her face turning to look directly at him, and he misses her lips on his hands already. "Oh? May I ask why?"
"Of course," he retracts his hand before continuing in his assessment, "You're unlike anyone I've ever encountered. As you are an individual and your race is unable to replicate their personalities into one another, this result is a logical occurrence; however, what makes you so particular in that sense, is what makes you different to me."
She doesn't blink, taking in all his words and deciphering them until they make sense, "What you mean to say is... I'm not really an anomaly by human standards, but... I am by yours?"
"Precisely," he agrees, with the tiniest of smiles only she has managed to conjure in him so often, because she always understands everything his words do and do not convey.
"And may I know what your standards are?" She quirks an eyebrow, edging herself slightly closer to his naked form, her curiosity getting the best of her, but he knows by the softness in her eyes she doesn't mean to pressure him into answering.
"You may," he takes her hand in his, turning them over so he can see the lines on her palm, and focus on that instead of her eyes, which draw him in more than he's willing to admit — they have too much depth in them.
"But I'm afraid... the correct words would evade me in my desire of bringing justice to those standards."
When he looks up, he's surprised to see her smiling, looking as if she's about to laugh, "I made you speechless?"
"Would I be correct in the assumption that you are teasing me," he inquires, eyebrow arched.
She clears her throat and sucks in her lips, tempting him in ways she's yet to understand. "Yes, you would, but in my defense, I am simply relishing the moment."
"May I remind you, you've left me speechless many times before?" The first time she kissed him, the time she argued in the defense of a relationship between them, the time when she demanded she be assigned to the Enterprise with him — he never quite wins with her, yet, he never quite loses.
"Just because something happens every so often, doesn't mean we should stop treasuring it every time it does," she throws him a suggestive look, and it does him in, as he pulls her to him into a kiss — a dance he's learned to do so well with her as his mate.
She finds her place above him — as if she had belonged there, always.
She leans back away from him, seizing his wrists to put his arms above his head.
"I think... I am in the position to extract information," she smirks.
He can't help but agree, "You are in a position of power, one we would both benefit from; however, I'm not quite certain how it would access any part of my mind to give you the information I've yet to organize in order to word it."
"You really think so?" She furrows her brow, and he knows she's teasing, confirmed when she presses herself down on his shaft, pressing it against his stomach so that it doesn't penetrate her, but it feels her wetness grazing it — greeting it — without a proper meet.
He swallows, his face betraying very little, "It's an untested hypothesis, I'm sure you should be able to verify if it has a good standing."
She digs her nails into his wrists — not enough to harm him, but enough to elicit a reaction. "So, tell me Commander, how am I an anomaly? What are those impossible standards of yours?"
He groans — he can't control it, because she's rocking her hips, grinding herself over him, and refuses to let him in — refuses to let go of his wrists. If he could pull his hands free, he could turn her over and take her without any restraint — she would let him — but he trusts her in a way where he gives her full control of all of him, just as she's been known to do.
"Well?" She stops moving, perhaps in the conclusion that he cannot word anything when she's doing what she does so very well.
His eyes are glazed, piercing and hungry with a desire belonging only to his human self, and that's when he's reminded of it.
"You make me human."
Her heart skips a beat, her smile dissipates and her hold on his wrists weakens until she lets go entirely.
She's in shock.
"Have I upset you?" He cannot make sense of her now, of her reaction, and it's incredibly exciting to him every time it happens. Unpredictability has its advantages, he knows. "Forgive me, but my mind could not find the correct words for—" And before he could continue with his apology of how he had so many words jumbled in his mind about her impossibly-perfect body, her defiantly brilliant mind and her amazingly strong heart — and how all those components remind him of the war between his human self and his Vulcan self, creating a harmony of sorts between their very feud — she kisses him.
She kisses him long and hard, until he forgets that she needs to breathe and that crushing her body against his with his hold might not be facilitating matters for her lungs.
She pulls back, gasping for air, and he opens his mouth, about to speak again, but she presses a finger over his lips with a smile and shakes her head. "That's not necessary... Spock," she says his name with such softness; it makes him curious what his brief words could've done to elicit such an enunciation to his name. "I understand everything."
How can she, he wants to ask? How can she understand when she doesn't know the base behind his statement: how she makes him human, and why?
It takes him another night of watching her sleep in order to understand the answer to that question.
Nyota is a remarkable creature, and she needs no grand explanations in order to understand him, and all he is.
More importantly, he has realized that with those four words, he said more than had ever been intended — though that doesn't make it any less true.
"You make me human" is the Vulcan equivalent to the human expression, "I love you."