" I detect a note. Is there something you're not telling me?"
She flusters immediately, floundering over what to do or say under the steady gaze of her father. Michael opens her mouth but when her bottom lip quivers she shuts it back again.
There was always a chance of this day happening. She knew it as much as she dreaded its probable coming. Yet now that it's here, she can't help but feel surprised that she is surprised.
" I-"
One small word squeaks past her mouth but the others are held at bay as she struggles to keep her composure.
I can't and I'm sorry war for supremacy in coming out first but they get caught behind the burning lump in her throat.
He's studying her harder now. What could have been an simple yes or no has devolved into something that is clearly distressing. " Michael? What is-"
"- I am sorry. I can't."
She woke up to a chorus of hissing outside her room. Fear as to what it could be is quickly replaced by curiosity to the time. She blinked blindly into the darkness surrounding her bed for her comm. When she couldn't immediately find where she last placed it, Michael settled for more remedial time telling.
A glance outside displayed The Watcher's luminous body filling up nearly every pane of her window. She and her mother retired earlier than the rest of their family
With the door close it was hard to say what exactly was going on but there was an air of tension to the tone.
Michael unwrapped herself from the thin coverlet and toed out of bed. Stepping closer to the door, the voices are clearly irritated. And familiar.
The deep, rumbling bass of her eldest brother Sybok growled at the snarly tenor of her youngest brother Spock. She stopped near the door, not wanting to trigger its automatic slid open on her approach. It was just as well, she could make out what the two were debating.
" It is inappropriate."
" I did nothing."
" Yet. Do you believe yourself above reproach? Why exactly are you loitering outside of her room?"
" I did nothing ."
Spock practically hissed the word at him. Maybe that's why they didn't hear the door trigger as Michael shifted forward. What was Sybok's concern? She froze in place, not wanting to make her presence known.
Spock visibly swells in agitation and makes a sound she can neither decipher or recall hearing before. Sybok grimaces and makes a noise of his own. " Bluff all you want to Spock, I will not move until you leave."
Sybok grunts at his young brother as Spock neither confronts him or leaves his spot. He shifts in agitation unsure of what to do next. " Why are you even up."
Spock is quiet when he replies moments later. " I had a dream. About Michael. She was hurt. I was worried she left again."
Sybok softens at this and steps a bit closer. " It is only your REM cycle. Michael has not left."
As if to check for himself, Sybok looks up to find Michael staring at them in the doorway. Spock turns and brightens. " Michael."
He is smiling at her. The earlier snarls and hissing a distant memory as he comes towards her. She smiles back at him and gazes up at Sybok. " I can put him back to bed."
" Be sure that you do." he says gruffly. He has been more emotional since attending VSA. Things between him and his professors have been fraught, their disdain for his open expressions clear from their conversations or lack thereof. His bondmate has also been...unenthused with his use of emotions.
The rich irony of it is that all of their objections have only serve to exacerbate the matter. The more they press the stronger Sybok's emotional strain grows.
Spock following around Michael like a selhat pup hasn't sat well with him. Their mother thinks it is cute, their father believes it serves a purpose. Sybok sees something he knows the others do not.
He stares at Michael a moment longer as Spock takes her hands and spreads their fingers into a practiced ta'al. " Do not linger. You all need to sleep. Good night."
" Yes." she agrees. Their hands are still pressed together when Michael feels Spock's returning upset. She glances at him and catches the furrow in his brow. " I do not wish to return to my quarters."
" But you must sleep."
She weaves their fingers together and tugs him in the direction of his room. He plants his feet and she is jarred to a halt. " May I sleep next to you?"
" Why?"
He tilts his head hiding his eyes and his reasons. Michael tilts her own chasing after his gaze. " Spock?"
His mind answers her in a whisper from where they touch. I am scared I will wake and you will not be there. I do not trust you to stay.
She sighs. She hadn't thought about all the consequences when she had attempted to runaway and protect them from the extremist. She saw herself as the sole cause of their hate without taking into account the human heritage of her adopted mother and brother.
It's not until years later that also reckons the other reasons but that's neither here nor there now. Now Spock is looking forlorn and clutching her hand as if she might melt away from him. " Please."
It's the please that does it. Spock doesn't use many manners, more prone to scientific quandaries than eloquent requests. She nods her head and walks back to her bed with him. She tucks them both beneath her coverlet and falls back asleep still holding his hand.
Amanda wakes them the next morning in a cheerful refrain. " Good morning kids. Having a sleepover party?"
Spock rubs his eyes and peers up at her from the pillow. " I had to make sure and protect Michael."
Amanda affectionately brushes her hand over his cow-licked hair and gives him the tamest smile she can manage. " That is very kind of you. Such a good brother you are."
Spock beams at her praise and asks what they're having for breakfast. Michael watches them talk while sleep leaves her limbs. She had been asleep, adrift in dreams. Spock's presence followed her into each one. Together they went from one adventure to the next with him trying to make sense of her idle mind's fantasies.
Maybe it's from them falling asleep holding hands earlier in the night. Or the fact that she knew him to be in her bed. Either way Spock's mood is buoyant and she shares it with him.
She sits up and looks at the open door to her room. Sybok is standing within its frame staring at all of them.
When he sees her looking, Michael looks away and mumbles a request for pancakes.
" Why do humans kiss? What is the logic?"
Michael blinks rapidly. His question, like most anything Spock says or asks, takes her by surprise. That he should want to know about kissing at all is one thing but why is he asking her?
She shrugs and goes back to sorting her styluses for school. " To show they care about each other."
" Then why is it that you only perform this gesture with our mother and not the rest of our family?"
" She's human. The rest of the family is Vulcan."
She wonders vaguely if Spock will catch onto the fact that she did not say our family. It still goads him that she doesn't but what bond do they have between them besides caretakers?
He frowns at her answer and pouts his bottom lip as he thinks. Michael feels a reflexive urge to laugh at him as she might have in years past but bites at her lip instead. Fourteen Vulcan years of age and Spock's still pouting like he did at six.
He's finally caught up with her in height which has recently given him an illogical measure of pride over her. He looks up finally as he finishes his pondering. " I am human too and you care for me. Why is it that you do not kiss me?"
It's Michael's turn to frown now as guilt floods over her. You disgusting half breed said in her voice rings in her mind and dries her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
He probably still wonders even after all her apologies whether she actually loved him. Her actions had placed the two of them on shaky ground. Michael would play with him, defend him as any sibling would, share and quarrel.
But Michael had alsotried to separate them emotionally along the only bond he saw that they had. She had tried to leave to protect him and shouted slander at him. And now she has not kissed him because he is not human enough for her to see it necessary?
Michael blinks away the blurring effect of the water in her eyes and shakes her head. " You're right Spock. I'm sorry."
She takes a hold of his arms and bends towards him. Spock freezes in amazement, his eyes wide and watchful as she brings her face towards his. When their lips touch she can feel his mind as she can when he has his fingers at her temples. He finds her kiss euphoric. It's incredibly soft with just a hint of warmth. It is over as suddenly as it started and Spock stares at her as if she's became magical somehow without him knowing.
Michael feels he cheeks burn under his starstruck gaze. " See. It's no big deal."
Spock shakes his head slowly and blinks at her with glittering pupils. " I would beg to differ."
They return to silence and resume getting ready for school. She just readying her satchel when his voice addresses her. " Kiss me again."
Now she's truly flustered. Why again? She can see by the look in his eyes that he's puzzling over something but the what is lost to her. Before she can think too much of it she leans closer and does so, this time planting a kiss on his cheek.
She feels his fluttering lashes graze her face as she pulls away and catches the same glittering, awe-struck stare he was giving her earlier on his face. She sucks nervously at her top lip and inadvertently tastes him on her mouth. It's similar to the way he smells, warm and bittersweet like his mother after she's been baking balkra.
Puzzlement flashes briefly in his expression and he pulls forward with his own experiment. He kisses her now, a formless press of his lips against her own. She would tell him he is doing it wrong but he would continue you to try again until she deemed it right. And right now, she can't because she's sure she's giving those bashful, fluttering eyes Spock gave her and she's the one looking touched.
Michael rises a hand to her cheeks and brushes her fingers over the area where her skin feels hottest. She is flush. This was new. She cannot recall feeling this way before, not really.
The closest times are when her classmate Gomal had assisted her up after a fall and briefly touched her hand. The resulting knowledge of his concern over her person before his mind veiled itself had made her feel irrationally favored by him. And then there was the surprised, dizzy feeling she developed whenever she caught sight of Hivok.
Other than her adopted brothers, he had been the most beautiful looking Vulcan Michael had seen. He walked around with his bondmate and friends and could regularly been seen in the commons area. He had never been cruel to Michael but neither had he gone out of his way to welcome her as a peer. A crush, Amanda had called it.
When she felt Spock's fumbling kiss something of it had kindled a similar feeling. It wasn't familial or nurturing like Amanda's or her birth parents had been. It felt...electric. It felt like something she hadn't known was lodged inside her chest was blossoming from its tight bud.
She meets her Vulcan brother's gaze and recognizes the that he feels the same way. They never discuss it and neither one of them shares this new development with anyone else.
That night. If what had happened had only stayed to one evening. She wished it had. She's glad it didn't. Shame haunts her on both accounts. Melds are intimate.
" May I?"
Such a simple, open-ended question. It seemed as harmless as Spock to her.
His long fingers had hovered over her hand as he waited for her answer. In that moment she had to will herself not to rush out a yes. Of course he could but he shouldn't. Even if she desires it, whatever the it is and will become.
Michael's gaze went from his fingers to his face. Spock held her stare and allowed her to study him.
He knew her, loved her but how the latter manifested itself as they grew older complicated matters. They are siblings but not. Family but not in blood.
" Please?"
Michael blinks at him startled. Spock did not use please. Whether he considered it below him to use such etiquette or a human pleasantry she did not know. All Michael does know is how much he must want this of her, his desire to share.
She looks at his hand again and chews at her lips. " Okay."
It's his turned to be caught off with her use of okay. He hesitates now and wonders why she used that word in particular.
-After a few tense moments of waiting Michael holds herself still as her brother in name lifts his hand to her face. They're hot to the point of being uncomfortable against her skin as he lines each finger across her face.
Her breath quickens in her throat as the first threads of his consciousness spin through her. She feels his other hand resting itself along her lower back to brace her as he sinks deeper. Soon all the physical sensation slip away and Michael is standing before him in a landscape she is unfamiliar with.
Her unspoken question over their location within his mind reaches Spock as he drags his rapt attention away from her to the amethyst colored stalactites hanging overhead. " It is the cave I made home during my tal'oth."
He looks back to where she's standing rigidly in place and fidgets with his lips as he tries not to smile. " You are allowed to move. My mind will supply any necessary details to the surrounding as you navigate through the memory."
Her brows furrow together and she frowns at him. " I know. I mean, I just do not know where I wish to go."
He seems charmed by her non-admittance of not knowing what to do and steps towards her. " Then come here to me." Spock extends his hand and holds it towards her. " I was gone for nearly five months and I never told you about my time out in the wilds beyond the Forge."
Michael looks at his hand and puzzles over its meaning. He extends it like an olive branch but how does she know it's not a farce for peace between them? She had been happy for Spock's return back beyond Mount Seleya but he had been different. He had been reserved and quiet each time she encountered him. It wasn't solely directed at her; Spock was also quiet with their mother and brother. His relationship with their father remained the same.
Whatever his countenance, Michael did not like it. It was much too close to the time where he had been freshly wounded by her words. Now after weeks of begrudging interactions, here he was extending his hand and beckoning her closer.
A question wiggles free from her heart and threatens to leave her mouth. She swallows at it but it burns at her throat refusing to be silenced. She does not want to ask but Michael cannot in good conscious take his hand without knowing the motivation behind it. " Spock? Why are you doing this? What is it you want me to know?"
His mild expression of amusement sobers into something harder to read. " I want you to know me. I want to be known and- for so long we have been complacent in our ignorance of one another and I for one am I tired of it. I only have so many people who care me and fewer still to understand me. However, I believe you could be the one to best perceive who I am and not what I am."
He tilts his head and levels his eyes at her. " Will you try?"
For me ? The last two words go unspoken but Michael feels them nevertheless. She steps towards him and places her hand inside his. Spock grips it firmly and the cave around them transforms into the deep red sands of the forge. Michael squints against the glare of Vulcan's suns as she gazes out over the dunes. Spock's hand is still around hers in the vision. His excitement bleeds through her as they traverse the land together.
He takes his time in recounting his months away from them, picking over days and the events that had particular note. He slows his recollection when he feels a pique in her interest, like when he spotted a group of le-matya stalking about in the distance one evening. The fear he felt as he spotted a travel worn stranger. Spock had been forging and saw the male laughing to himself whilst brandishing a knife. He did not know if he were being hunted but he did not make himself known to find out. His wonder at a rare flash flood, all fifteen minutes of it, and the resulting change of landscape as the ground erupted with huge burst of colorful flora.
Michael feels each experience as her own, through his eyes and emotions. She is alive out here. None to judge, none to help, just her brawn, wit and will to see her through this perilous land. It thrills her to see her fragility, how small she is in this world. Still it has welcomed her among its inhabitants to shape and mold time if she has the strength enough to change her circumstances. She feels it, he had felt it and now they are one in it.
Away from everything that would define them, they can be free. They need not chain themselves with the titles of human, whether half or whole, outcast or freak. So long as they do not lose sight of the truth, they could live like this.
He can be Spock and she can be Michael and they can be happy.
Spock's face fills her view as they meld between them dims. He is smiling and she is grinning. He moves his fingers just below her jaw and moves his thumb over her chin. " I thought you would understand what I had to show you because I thought it was something you wanted. To be free of expectations and stereotypes. To be yourself."
Michael closes her mouth but keeps her smiles. " I do want that."
Spock drops his hand away and nods at her. " Then you are free to be yourself with me."
" And you do that with me too." She says back, striking an agreement. And in this bargain, Spock and Michael agreed to share the desert, their minds and their emotions.
She gives him the intimacy his father refused and his mother didn't for his own good. He didn't believe it to be 'good'. He enjoyed hugging Michael. He loved curling against her as they watched holovids in the living room. And while he would not admit it, high fives were thrilling as well.
There positions have changed with age. With him so much larger and her frame remaining petite, Spock has her tucked along his side. Michael ignores both of their emotions as she settles in for the movie and sits rigidly beside him.
An angry green bruise sits just below his left eye accompanied by a split in his bottom lip. Everyone has avoid talking about it since the pair of them arrived back from school but discomfort over how the wounds appeared lingers between them and distracts her from the movie.
Amanda and Sarek had commed in for the conference with the school's headmaster, as productive as that was. It was another reciting of tired lines of Spock and Michael needing to try their best to assimilate to the rest of the school's population instead of contradicting it. That the 'siblings' resistance was often done by vitriol commentary or violent outbursts did nothing to endear them either. Each parent defended them in their own way as best they could but it didn't save either one from in-school suspension.
Guilt and anger welled between them as they left the headmaster's office and had yet to dissipate. Guilt for Michael, that Spock had been dragged into her fight and anger for Spock, that she should even feel ashamed in the first place.
She glances up at his face. Spock stares ahead as if he doesn't feel her gaze studying him. He would have remained that way as well if she hadn't reached out to touch his cheek. His eye catches the movement of her hand and he reflexively flinches away. " Don't Michael."
Michael holds her hand suspended between them, struck by his annoyance. Age had yet to mellow out his moodiness. She thinks it's more of who he is than the person he's becoming. Hormones do nothing to help either. He has to shave now and his deeper voice, still occasionally cracks when he is emotional.
" I am sorry." she mumbled. Spock's huffs in irritation and turns to face her. " Stop feeling for sorry me."
She turned her lip and made a deliberate scoot away from him on the couch. " I wouldn't have to feel sorry for you in the first place if you had just left me to fight my own battles alone."
Spock's nostrils flare and he turns towards the comm projecting the movie. " Computer pause."
Movie paused
Michael looks from him to the screen and back again with a frustrated look. " What's your problem."
Spock readjusts himself on the couch with his back to the pillow leaning against the armrest and one leg folded up along the couch cushion. " My problem is you never let me help you."
" I do!" she snaps angrily. " You help me with my studies in-"
" I'm not talking about your studies, Michael." he says cutting her off. " You don't need my help academically anyway. I only tutor you because you asked and it makes mother happy. I'm addressing the fact that when something bothers you emotionally you try and hide whatever the effects are and seek to deal with it on your own."
Michael twists her lips to keep herself from scowling." I'm just being independent. Can't I do things on my own?"
" When it comes to your emotions I would rather you not." he answers glibly.
Michael scoffs and sits up straighter on the couch, inching a bit closer. " I don't believe you have any support on your part to make that kind of accusation. I wasn't the one who started the fight and I certainly didn't end it with people having to go to the infirmary."
Spock ignores her and pushes further. " I am getting tired of saving you, Michael, when I know that you are more than capable of doing so yourself. When are you going to stand up for yourself and stop taking abuse from your peers?"
" If you're so tired then stop! I didn't ask you to save me, I never have! And what do you care, Spock? I was fine and I had it under control." she says firmly.
" Fine? Under control?" he asks, tilting his head. " Crying in the face of your tormentors is what you would consider to be under control?"
" It's not your business!" she shouts. They never argued this long or loudly. With Sarek and Amanda, there's no one to intervene. " They were lying anyways."
" They were planting seeds of doubt." he counters. " To bully you is one thing but they accused you of cheating and sexual acts to achieve your grades. They said all that and you said nothing as if you were guilty."
She is reaching out with an open hand before she was even thinking and gasps as he catches it a moment before it collides with his face. Spock folds her hand between his and Michael feels her sudden anger dissolve under the heat of his regard. Spock laces his fingers with her and watches her expression falter as she fights to keep her face impassive. " I will always defend you just as I will always tell you when you are wrong."
She chuckles bitterly and blinks her eyes rapidly to keep the tears back. " So for eternity then?"
Spock chuffs through his nose and gives her a muted smile. " However long it takes for you to stop being wrong. And to start defending yourself."
Michael bit her lip and leaned towards him. Spock's free arm catches her and pulls her against him. He dips his head down and slants his mouth against hers before she can think of reasons not to. She tastes the coppery sharpness of his scabbed lip and tempers her touch so as not to break it. Spock either doesn't care or notice as he tilts his head and kisses her again, harder this time.
Their joined hands stay together while the others wander. Michael moves her's over Spock's face until her fingers drift through his hair.
He pulls her closer and bumps his forehead against hers. His mind, usually so open and clear to her as the sky, is suddenly hidden from Michael. She breaks the kiss to get a better look at his face. " What are you not telling me?"
He blinks at her and runs his tongue over the wound on his lip. " Nothing you should know about."
His vague answer chills the mood and has Michael climbing out of his lap and back onto the couch to reclaim her seat. " Let's finish the movie."
Spock nods and moves the pillow behind him onto his lap. He orders the movie to resume playing once they've resettled it plays without anymore interruption. They watch until the credits and retire for bed, continuing their own act as if they don't notice the change between them.