Chapter 3
"How'd you catch him?"
The Doctor steps out of the way, to let Spock take his place.
"I didn't."
There is no other way to say that Jim lights up and settles down, relaxing into a warmth that appears golden against the blue-white of the bed, the room, and the sky.
"You saved my life."
It is not simply said as a fact, but an inevitability.
"Uhura and I had something to do with it, too, you know."
"You saved my life, Captain. And the lives…"
"Spock, just… Thank you."
His smile is not lazy, but it is easy, spreading luxurious across his tawny skin, even when he's reprimanding Spock with a gently rasping voice. Jim has just awoken from an induced coma, after dying from irradiation - yet the wonder glowing in those uncategorizable eyes is as equally for Spock as it is for life.
"You are welcome, Jim,"
…
"I have brought my chess board."
Jim stops pushing at the controls, ending his childish game and letting the foot of the bed whirr back to it's original position. Spock represses an odd clench of irritation/affection.
"You mean our chess board?"
Spock sits quietly on the seat provided, as Jim struggle-pushes himself up into a sitting position.
"I was under the impression that Christmas gifts are given permanently, and that ownership was relinquished by the giver upon the recipient opening it."
Laughter-lines crinkle at the edges of Jim's warm eyes, and Spock innocently raises an eyebrow.
"They are. However, I figured I've used it just as much as you have, so…"
"In that case, both Engineer Scott and I have strong claims to the command chair, considering both the fact that you prefer to pace the bridge rather than sit, and the amount of landing parties you lead."
Jim laughs, a humorous bark that Spock files away in his eidetic memory.
"Never! Besides, you come with me on most of the away missions anyway."
"That is because, as your First Officer, it is my duty to ensure you do not become injured."
Or killed.
Their eyes lock in lieu of wanting to say anything, and Spock detangles himself from self-hate long enough to set up the board. Bathed in silence, they begin to play, familiar, hopeful, and teetering on a precipice. Feelings are not things with which Spock is intimately acquainted, but Jim is. And he does not simply have reckless, vast, bone-shakingly cathartic feelings, he also inspires them.
"I wasn't sure that you were coming back."
Jim does not look at him, laid bare and barely contained, as his fingers rock a pawn in a circle on its base.
"I apologize. It was imperative that I inspect the repairs to the ship while you are indisposed."
He allows softness to tint his voice to the closest kind of gentle Spock can let Jim have.
Understandably, he had been disturbed earlier that day, when the Doctor, and later Spock, had tried to leave. It was not illogical for a human who had experienced significant trauma to act in this way, and if Spock had felt his own fear rise to mirror the cold-ice-pain in Jim's expression - in the shock of horror leaching the control from where Jim caught his arm - then perhaps it was not illogical for a Vulcan to brush his reassurances across the back of Jim's hand with the ghost of a single finger.
"No, I get it. And I'm sorry for… earlier, too."
"It was understandable."
Jim looks at him deeply.
"How are you?"
"I am fine."
"'Fine has variable definitions.' You told me that once when I said the same thing. Did you really think I wouldn't use it against you?"
He is smiling, but it has that look about it that Spock is unable to adequately describe, even in his own head, other than it reminding him of eyelashes spiked with dried tears.
"If it were not illogical, I would regret having given you this information."
Jim laughs once, before his smile fades.
"Seriously, though. How are you? There's something… I don't know, I just feel like something happened, something big, and now you don't know what to make of it."
As always, Jim sees that which Spock does not want to see himself. Several 'big' things have happened, he wishes to say. You ceased to live, and I ceased to function, and now that you are alive it is as though I have just realised a truth which I should already have known.
"Nyota has terminated our relationship." He says instead.
Sympathy opens the pink bow of Jim's lips in an automatic apology, brow creased as he reaches out to curl a tender hand over Spock's shoulder. Although he does not lean into the contact, he does not forbid it either. A slow blink later, he straightens up and away from the inappropriate display of emotion.
"You wanna talk about it?"
There is a neat line of black pieces on Jim's side of the board, and he adds a rook to this now. It is deliberate, Spock is sure, allowing him this moment of composure, and he is both grateful and borderline uncomfortable that someone could know so unerringly what he needed.
"It is unnecessary. I do not believe it was, as you humans are fond of saying, 'a bad break-up.'"
Spock puts him into check. Jim considers this, and makes an absentminded-seeming move, biting the inside of his cheek as curiosity hums through the twitch of his fingers. Less than three-point-two seconds is all that Spock gives him, and three-point-one seconds is all he gives Spock.
"Can I - Am I allowed to ask what happened?"
"It appears that you just did."
Jim rolls his eyes in a manner Spock has come to associate with Doctor McCoy.
"So… you gonna tell me?"
Even in this, he is relentless.
"She… pointed out flaws within our relationship."
That look of apology is back, but tempered with something Spock would not dare to call repressed hope.
"I'm sorry, Spock. I am sorry. She's a great woman, and you're - well, I hope you two can still be good friends, and good colleagues. Remind me to, I don't know, buy you some chocolate so we can get stupid-drunk. Don't look at me like that, I'm kidding!"
Spock lowers his eyebrow.
"That was a shit pep talk, I know. But I do mean it - mean everything - and you know that."
"Yes, Jim. I know."