A quick answer to a question posed to me: no, the Onofrians aren't an actual Trek race. I created it.

Ten:
Inebriate

Phiora gaped at him like a fish. "They're 'gone'?" She only vaguely noticed the sun had gone completely down. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean precisely what I said," he said calmly, taking a few steps towards her.

"There is always...some kernel of emotional connection between two people after a mind-meld."

Phiora had no clue the flash she saw in Spock's eyes was his distress of her bringing that up.

"You are correct," he replied coolly. "There was an undoubtedly small 'emotional connection,' which I later disposed of—not for the purpose of impairing you, but for the sake of sustaining my psychological stability. I was able to meditate thoroughly last night and today within my reading, which then returned me to my mental balance."

An incredulous silence befell Phiora. "What?"

"Whatever it is you assumed I was experiencing could correctly be filed under the classification of an emotion, thus rendering your anticipation illogical," Spock said almost icily, his hands behind his back. "Perhaps you did not comprehend that I purely withheld myself from equilibrium for the reason that I found it logical and less time-consuming to erase any emotion I gained from the meld along with the...agitation I was experiencing."

Phiora narrowed her eyes. "You...did the meld first...so you could then just put those feelings in the trash along with your other craziness?"

Spock raised an eyebrow and inclined his head. "That is an unsophisticated yet fitting analogy, Lieutenant. Though I have motive to dispute the existence of any psychosis of which you may be referring."

There was a long pause. Phiora watched him. His dark eyes were the same. His face was the same. His posture was the same, though it seemed faintly more rigid. Even the slender eyebrow he lifted at her silence was the same.

What about my emotional "garbage?" And that...deeper thing....

Had she just read him wrong?

...Apparently so.

"Okay," she murmured, casting her eyes downwards in a gesture of embarrassment and hurt. "Okay. That...makes sense." She started to back out of the area towards the Dorms, angrily willing herself to take a deep breath. "Sorry to have...disturbed you."

"It is no matter."

Phiora paused and watched him again. "No, I guess it isn't, is it?" she shot at him through a dryly observant voice.

She left so fast she missed the slight wince in Spock's eyes.

The irony wasn't lost on Phiora. Spock gathering her emotions and putting them back where they came from, only to have him fuck them up again. She wondered if he had always been an ass...then she remembered Jim mentioning something about wanting to punch him in the face...and boy did that sound good right about now.

No, she forced herself to digress as she watched time crawl by at an infuriating pace. She wanted to be friends with her commanding officer, which was a stupid idea to begin with, but add him being part Vulcan to that equation....

Though that didn't make much sense, did it? She was good friends with her other, higher commanding officer.

Her mind was utterly ransacked. The thought of those carefully placed nylon squares being ruined again by the person who rearranged them actually made her laugh. And that was not the reaction she expected.

Then Phiora knew what she needed. Though it contradicted almost everything that happened that day, she showed up at Jim's door and knocked roughly.

Of course, the captain was still awake. He answered the door, took a minute to process who was standing there, then seemed confused and very concerned.

"You look like someone set fire to your brain," he said bluntly.

She could have kissed him then. "Let's get drunk."

She did kiss him a few times as they went bar-hopping that night, which quickly spread over to early morning. She found she liked kissing him, but after a while—more around the time their drunkenness was turning into the need to hurl like no other—she realized kissing him was like kissing any of her brothers. Not that she'd ever kissed Vigo or Rico, but if she had, that's probably what it would feel like.

Jim must have felt like he was kissing his sister, because by the time the sun came up, he refused to exist within ten feet of her. And that set fine by Phiora.

They were arranged haphazardly in Jim's quarters by sunrise. Phiora was on the bed with her eyes closed, willing her nausea away, and Jim was on the other side of the room, sitting pathetically under the window.

"You know," he almost whispered, yet Phiora could hear it quite fine, "you're the only woman I've ever gotten drunk with and not slept with."

"And it's gonna stay that way," she assured him. He laughed, then winced. Any sort of emotion was physically painful, which was alright as far as Phiora was concerned. Wasn't that her whole plan?

Yes. Yes it was.

There was a long stretch of silence between the friends, and each one was starting to think the other went to sleep. Jim was the one to break the silence again.

"Do you think he's still sitting on that goddamn blanket?"

Ouch. Phiora's laugh turned into a frustrated growl. Her eyes remained closed. "I don't know. He can just...." There wasn't a single atom in her body that would let her finish that sentence. "He can just whatever."

Jim chuckled, resting the back of his head against the wall behind him. "I'm not going to ask what the hell's going on between you guys."

"Much appreciated."

After another pause, Phiora felt the bed move and the presence of a face inches away from hers.

The clock says cuddle time.

Phiora opened her eyes and threw Jim a weird look. "Do you ask Doctor McCoy to cuddle with you after you guys get drunk?"

"Sometimes," Jim answered with a straight face, though it was obvious he was kidding.

There was one other time Jim and Phiora had ever cuddled, and that was after a gratuitous meltdown she had when they were teenagers. She missed her mom, and he was there, and he cared—still had an on-again, off-again crush on her—and sat under a tree, and he just held her.

Somehow, those memories plus everything that happened the previous night brought on a wave of sadness, and she buried her face in Jim's chest and just...cried. And because he knew that was coming—the reason why he brought up cuddling in the first place—he just held her.