Pure silliness. That is all.

3.

"Seriously Spock we are on the beach –take off your shoes."

After a rather over enthusiastic game of Hover – pod bumper cars, at least on Kirk's part, they recline on the beach, sat on the sand.

"And stop worrying about that crack in the windscreen, we'll get it fixed…somehow."

"I am not worrying about –"

"Oh yes you are, and you're fretting about the impropriety of taking your shoes off. Spock last night you were naked on the balcony, if anyone was around to see I don't think they'd care about your feet anymore."

"But –"

"But what? You have toes? I gotta tell you Spock we all got toes –"

"Your argument is infantile and yet compelling through pure irritation" Sighs Spock, taking off his shoes and putting them neatly beside their picnic blanket.

"You're saying I bug you so much you'll do something anyway?"

"I said nothing regarding your entomological abilities but I suspect your usage of the word bug in this case does not refer to any manner of insect." Kirk laughs –

"You suspect correctly. Damn, I wish I'd thought to bring a picnic –" he sees Spock looking at him with a look in his eye that for once he completely misreads – "Don't tell me you don't know what a picnic is?"

"On the contrary, as I understand it a picnic is a traditional Terran pleasure excursion centred around the consumption of a meal in attractive surrounds –"

"Wow, you make it sound so tempting –"

"I believe this is the intention. I researched traditional coastal activities before we came here, based on what I see to be an accurate assumption that you would wish to engage in all of them –"

"Well that's disappointing – you're saying I'm predictable?"

"I am saying only that I do attempt where possible to predict your intentions, thereby preparing myself for a circumstance I would not otherwise comprehend. I do not generally succeed and am not sure I would wish this different. I could not have predicted –"

Spock stops suddenly, realising that anything he might have said next would only be deeply sentimental or emotionally compromising.

"What?" Kirk asks, eyes bright, eager to trip Spock into sentimentality – "Could not have predicted what Spock?" Spock looks away, opening and closing his mouth several times so as not to have to say it - that I would find you, that I would lose you, that I could have you back again, mine and so complete – that I could ever feel- let alone feel like this –

Kirk laughs softly, deciding to let him off the hook this time –

"Relax Spock, quit being a goldfish. I can hear you, you know."

Spock fights back a blush and instead frowns –

"I fail to see how I in any way resemble a small member of the carp family – nevertheless in answer to your earlier question –" he starts removing food from the bag he has put down on the sand. Kirk's eyes widen like Christmas morning –

"Oh my god! You did pack a picnic!"

"Indeed. Though I am not certain I intend to share it if you continue to compare me to aquatic life forms."

"Spock – you wouldn't withhold picnic from this face would ya?" he blinks rapidly, bestowing his most deliberately cheesy smile on the bewildered Vulcan. Spock makes the noise that is almost a laugh, never failing to be dazzled by those eyes, unable to restrain the thought I could withhold nothing from you – he half smiles and says only –

"No Jim, I could not."

"So what did you pack?" Kirk grins, in perfect assurance that Spock has chosen brilliantly. He is not disappointed. There are three different kinds of sandwiches, four different kinds of cake, pink iced biscuits and little raspberry cream filled chocolate people. Just when he thinks it cannot possibly get better Spock silently passes him a bottle of beer. Kirk's eyes positively roll back in his head –

"Spock I think I love you."

"Are you going to say this every time I provide food?"

"Probably. These sandwiches look odd though."

"A failing on my part. I am not accustomed to making with ingredients rather than replication –"

"You actually made it?"

"I cut sandwiches. I did not actively bake."

Kirk makes a blissfully happy sound very similar, Spock cannot help but thinks, to one that he sometimes makes during sex. He shakes his head in contented despair and nibbles a biscuit looking out to sea.

"Jim?"

"Spock?" They both speak at the same time after a long pause of pleasant silence.

"You first Spock"

"If I might pose a most….illogical question –" Kirk makes a cheer of delight. Spock all but wriggles uncomfortably –

"You would never ….leave me….in favour of….foodstuffs – would you?"

Kirk smiles that special just- for- you smile that means he need not say anything out loud, even so he compounds it with –

"Spock. I love food. It's amazing. But you have been and always shall be my –" he pauses, dramatically. Spock raises an eyebrow, bracing himself –

"Yes?"

"Cookies." Says Kirk.

"Cookies?"

"Oh yeah."

"Cookies are an especially excellent form of foodstuff?"

"Oh, the best."

"Then I shall acquire some the next time occasion arises. Now you were going to say?"

"Have you ever built a sand castle?"

"No but I have researched the practice in expectation of this question."

"I would never have guessed. Anyway I'm glad 'cause….'cause I haven't either. You for it?"

"It is not…."

"If you say logical I'll hit you with a sandwich."

"That would not be –"

"Spock!"

"Painful."

_x_

Later they watch the tide come in, first filling up the moat of the very logically constructed little sandcastle then gently, remorselessly lapping away at the walls. Kirk watches contemplatively and Spock watches him watching, the blue of the sea and the sun caught in his eyes.

It is empowering. He thinks – to create without any expectation of permanence. To watch the sea undo your work is bittersweet and true. I never understood bittersweet before there was you. I never understood a lot of things, I would have gone my whole life without living. Strange that to be so alive can bring with it so much peace. In meditation we strive so hard for clarity, tranquillity, for the patterns of the mind to become smooth and clear. The Vulcan way is to construct a wall we then break down so it exists and does not exist and that is what is here. The completion of the thing is satisfying and so too is the end, the smoothing down. I was wrong – he catches Kirk's eye on this admission – Sandcastles are logical.

At the same time as he hears Spock's thoughts Kirk's own flow in harmony beside them – We never were kids, neither of us, not really, never got to have that chance. Should have been kids together, to do this shit for years. Doesn't matter now. Doesn't matter how many times you get to do a thing as long as there's always the one memory that stays. When we were building I thought what a shame the castle wouldn't last the day - but it's not. This is, what everything gets, this is a lifetime. Tomorrow the sand will be smooth and if we want we can start again. Or do something else. I used to think my life was like the sand – something to be built and then destroyed, no permanence, no perfection. I was wrong – he catches Spock thinking to him and smiles. It's okay to be wrong Jim Spock thinks to him, he nods and in the end it does not matter which thought belongs to who because all the thought is shared and the sand and the sea are one and the same –

Nobody could have told me the things you tell me and I would have believed. So tell me this moment can last forever.

It can.

It does.

_x_

In the next section…. Smut. That is all. :-)