They didn't really have a relationship, it was more a mutual understanding, maybe not even that. It was something imperceptibly small to anyone outside of their not-relationship, but it was there, there for them. Like there was a static in the room that only they could feel, or a secret that only they knew. But it was quiet, and unobtrusive. They didn't mind this, she didn't need saccharine displays of affection and he was no more enabled to supply her with them. Uhura found all that she needed in his nuances, his leftovers. The slight dip in his voice as his said her name, calmly and reverentially as if it was sacred. The way he looked away from her eyes just moments before it would be unbearable to hold the gaze any longer, like a moth tempting fate, flittering around the flame, stuttering and shaking but irrepressibly beckoned all in the same second. She remembered his first almost invisible grin at her, sly, and amounting only to a slight inclination of the corner of his mouth, but filled with a gratifying sense of pride, in her, in his student. More than anything else, she found it in the way he breathed, purposeful but measured, as if his was forever on the edge of a monumental decision, oxygen being too precious to waste around her.

Spock found it in her distance, the way she moved like an ebb and flow, cooling and calming him, but drowning him all the while. He mapped the swing of her hips and the length of her stride, pulling her apart into cartography when she was too much to bear as a whole. She was so whole. So unlike him. Tumult and longing swirled in his veins, along with a certain distinctly human exuberance in her presence. An exuberance or vibrancy he felt, let out only in the most inaudible sounds. A swallow, a murmur, a squeezed hand. He watched her like like a flame, hypnotized and captivated. There was nothing so alluring in the world, nothing so fascinating, the way she spoke, the way her hands moved, the tics she thought he didn't notice. Edging closer to fire he was endlessly watching, he felt her warmth radiate out and seep into him, sometimes uncomfortably hot, but it was intimate too, and potent like nothing else. He couldn't describe it, and he never had reason or situation to try, but this did not stop him questioning, reexamining, being completely absorbed by her.

He would sometimes be caught unaware, and be dazed by the sudden swell of pride he felt in her or the admiration for her skills, sometimes irrational thoughts of wanting to encompass her totally and hide her way from the world, never to be harmed never to hurt engulfed him up to his tapered ears as he struggled to keep it in check, keep his neck above water. She has the utmost respect for him and him for her, but they were too consumed with each other. Too powerful. An immovable force and an unstoppable object. It took him so high sometimes and it utterly crushed her sometimes. It felt, Spock mused, somewhat like love.