It's a good word.
She likes the way it comes off her tongue like syrup.
The first time she said it to Spock they were making love. She was grasping his back so he would not stop pressing his delicious weight into the length of her body. She couldn't bear for him to move a centimeter. His breath was in her ear, his entire self blending into her. She didn't think about it. It came out, basic and new. Mine.
He halted, just for a second. She thought she'd scared him off, and she was hit with a slice of fear that she'd ruined everything. But he began kissing her hard and with a kind of fervor that topped even the considerable passion they'd known before. She decided she liked what mine did.
Now he seems to like it, too. But he never says it to her. And some barely acknowledged part of her is sad for that, yearns for him to declare it. But she pushes that feeling down, because she will never force him to say anything he's not comfortable with.
She lies on his bed in his quiet apartment breathing him in while he is gone. Working so, so many hours. When will he come? She can't concentrate and drops her PADD on the covers and snuggles into a pillow. She can only think of him, wondering where he is right now, how he feels this very second and how at the very same time he's mastering that feeling, or if not mastering it then masking it.
She sees him as hers more every day.
Not just because she's territorial and would become wildly jealous if anyone ever came near him. No, not just jealous. She'd put that bitch down, hand her her ass. Not just because she wants—and has—a promise from him that his heart and his considerably gorgeous body are for her and her alone. Oh, his heart. Oh, his body.
He is also hers because she sees him.
She doesn't see the stereotype or the expectation, but the actual being. People think he looks stoic, unemotional. She can scarcely understand how. He is so obviously vulnerable, with the face and eyes of a boy. A little boy who has lived his whole life without a friend, a companion. So alone, so raw. Every time she looks at him she sees hope for belonging. A hesitant reaching out that never gets returned, hasn't been returned, ever, until her. And for that, he is hers and no one else's.
He finally walks in the door and comes to sit on the edge of the bed. So weary. So stunning in his dark uniform that is still, somehow, crisp after a relentless day of work. Another misunderstanding. People think he's got a stick up his ass. But she recognizes his neatness and punctuality as a symbol of how he is careful. He keeps up everyday precision because it gives him a structure within which to exist even given the crushing loneliness.
His eyes are tired.
Suddenly she is filled with anger at the universe for dealing him this. She's flooded with love. She throws her arms around his body and holds him tight. And she finally begins to cry, for him, for them. They are a them and she wants him to know it with dead certainty. She is thankful for whatever aligned to bring him to her. She is shaking with rage and joy mixed in a bewildering emotion she can't name or endure.
She puts it all into two words. "My Spock," she whispers. He tightens his hold around her and does not make a statement about human emotions, inexact words or vague meanings. He actually gets it. He feels a lifetime of sadness in her and realizes it is for him. And once he's felt it run through her, he can start to let it go. He did not think it would ever happen. He had resigned himself. But he begins to crack and to give in to the remarkable reality that he now has a companion, the most extraordinary companion.
He can't look at her. But he whispers in her ear. Tells her a story he's been wanting to tell.
"Do you remember the first time you said 'mine' to me?"
His voice is velvety, both whispery and deep at once. And right now it's coming out slightly broken.
"Of course."
"I was rigid for a moment. I remember it clearly. I knew that I had conveyed something inaccurate. I did not know how to fix it."
She is quiet so he will continue.
"I could not understand why you said that word to me. I was not accustomed… No…" he nearly stops altogether but keeps his eyes on the wall while he says what he suddenly can't go on without saying. "Outside of my mother I had never in my life experienced someone wanting me to be theirs."
He is silent a moment, gripping her desperately and still looking over her shoulder, unable to face her eyes. Then a single sob breaks out of him. His body collapses into hers and she supports him. He finally tears his eyes from the wall and can look at her eyes. Tender and fierce, he says it.