"Pull over," Tabitha says, her forehead pressed to the window, and her breath creating a foggy, imperfect circle on the glass.
"There is far more ahead," he says and needlessly gestures to the road that stretches up towards the mountains, dark silhouettes against the black night, shadows where no stars shine in the sky before them.
"Please," she says in a voice hardly less than a demand.
Nyota smiles at him when he slows the car. Carefully, he edges onto the shoulder, well out of the way of any oncoming traffic. Though only sparsely have other cars appeared on these winding roads, bright dashes of headlights that cut through the night and dim again in a wash of red. Overwhelmingly, it has just been them, alone in the dark once the city lights faded behind them.
When he stops the car completely, Nyota has her lower lip caught between her teeth, the pressure creating small divots in the skin. When she releases her lip, her tongue passes over it.
She is looking at him.
Cold air rushes into the car. Quickly, he turns to Tabitha. "This is not a safe place to stop."
"A moment," she says, though it takes far more than that for her to first push the toe of her shoe into the hard pack of snow that lines the edge of the road and then to scoop some up into her palm. The piles of snow are patchy, half melted from the day's sun and frozen again. Still, how it crusts and breaks in her fingers hardly deters her, passing the clump from one palm to another, and when it crumbles, falling apart each time she touches it, she bends to pick up even more.
"Do not bring that in the car," he says.
"It is only frozen water."
"It contains a number of pollutants."
The car door closes firmly behind her. "If it were truly hazardous, the environmental services of this planet would not allow it to remain on the roadside where it could contaminate the watershed."
Logical, their father would say. Mind your clothes, their mother would tell her.
Spock's only capitulation to the moment is to dial the heat higher, cold having seeped into his neck, feathered across his shoulders, and cooled the front of the car. He is sure that Tabitha has borne the brunt of the weather, her jacket unfastened and her cheeks already flushed green. Nyota is smiling once more, her thumb hooked beneath the strap of her safety belt and her eyes on him. As he eases the car onto the road again, he knows her attention does not shift, so he alone is left watching the direction they are headed, Tabitha bent over the increasingly thawed sample in her hands and Nyota studying him until his skin pricks with it.
He does not stop again until they have reached the edge of the forest park, a conservation area set aside so long ago that the road leading to it bears signs of its age. Potholes such as these would have been long mended on Vulcan, though left here as they are, they add to the backdrop of the woods at night, moonlit and silver where snow catches the low light and reflects it back.
With the engine cut off, it is silent. Still. Completely so, no chirp of birds or rush of the city, and in the hush, not even wind stirs tree branches together, laden as they are with their heavy loads of snow.
Then the door behind him unlatches once more, thrown open to the cold.
Tabitha takes slow steps from the car, alternating her attention from the shift of it beneath her feet to the expanse of it before her. It would be a meadow in the summer, here at the edge of the trees and mountains, a clearing that stretches out. Now, it is covered in a snowpack thick enough that her feet do not reach ground, just leave imprints where she walks, each step left behind in a distinct, crisp marking of where she has been.
When Spock stands, snow encrusts his boots as well, and cold air works its way into his collar, up the cuffs of his sleeves, bright and brittle with the chill of it. Nyota steps from the car too, her hands cupped before her mouth and her elbows drawn tight to her sides.
He allows his eyebrow to rise, his mind reaching for Tabitha's attention. "Has this been sufficient?" he asks, calling to her across the still of the night.
Moonlight catches on the purse of her lips, how her eyes narrow. "It is illogical to drive here if we do not stay longer."
Nyota laughs, glitter clear in the sharp air. When they both turn to her, she cups her fist before her mouth, though it does little to hide her smile. Would that she never stop. He will learn to tolerate that jump in his stomach at the sight of her, adapt to the presence of that warm glow and live with its persistence. An acceptable adjustment, given how the snow shine catches bright in her eyes, how the same warmth that lights her face sits growing in him too, beating back the sweep of the chill around them.
"Go, then," he says to his sister, his head tipping towards the field and the forest and all that awaits there. It is hardly his idea, the thought sitting at the forefront of her mind, pushing and tripping over itself with her eagerness. Her expression betrays none of this, though she knows of his awareness of her desire, and the delight that swoops through her when he articulates what it is that she wants. How little she does to hide all that from him. So foreign an idea it is for him, to be so transparent, so unequivocal even in his own thoughts, let alone what might slip across to another.
Two steps, and then she stops. Snow reaches nearly to her knees and already he knows that when she returns it will be with wet shoes and socks and pant legs, and a green flush of excitement that will alleviate that discomfort and so much more besides. "For how long?" she asks.
He could tell her to fasten her coat. Instead, he says, "It is, as I have been reminded, vacation."
She runs off, boot prints left behind her and the top of her head disappearing over the bank of the meadow where it meets the trees. For a moment all is still, and then snow falls from a tree branch, a sparkling drift that billows downwards.
He cannot feel the slide of the wet snow down his own neck, but knows that it has happened to her all the same. Were she still closer, he could likely hear her sudden exclamation of shock that knocking the branch above her so lightly had such an effect. As it is, that startle touches him, along with another emotion entirely, irritation pushed away for a feeling akin to determination, resolve. Long ago he remembers that same upwelling, though then it was not the soft mush of snow beneath his feet but the grit of sand and the dirt that clung to the paths winding up the mountains.
Alone together in the white bright of the moonlight, Nyota leans back to half sit on the hood of his car. A smile still lights her face, though it is smaller now, her eyes following where Tabitha has gone, before they shift to find his own.
"She's great."
There is space enough beside her. And the engine is still warm, a pleasant spot to settle. Logical, then, to rest his weight there. The only possible, reasonable choice.
"My mother always says that she is 'something else'," he says, which causes Nyota's smile to grow. "Though what, she has never specified."
She had said the same to Spock when he was younger, long before Tabitha was born. Then, he had not understood the phrase, attributing it to a Terran idiom with a nonsensicality that rendered it inconsequential. Later, he had reconsidered. For what else could truly describe Tabitha, what words could serve to begin to grasp all that she is.
Again, Nyota catches at her bottom lip with her teeth, and his eyes travel there, drawn despite himself. "Commander Spock. That has a nice ring, you know. And I can't even believe it. I'm-" Her head shakes, the motion carried gently through to his own arm so near to hers. "I'm so happy for you."
The snow is marred by their footsteps, patted down before his car where they are standing, the small treads of her shoes clear and the larger prints of his own. Carefully he knocks snow from the side of his boot. Eventually he nods, though he is certain he is supposed to do more than that. Thank her, in all likelihood. That is the Terran response offered in answer to such congratulations.
"Really," she says, and he only nods once more, uncertain how to begin to talk about all this and what might come out of his mouth were he to try.
How poorly words serve to hold all that rushes inside of him. Though perhaps this inarticulateness he could tell her, for who else would understand that so well, so completely. Or understands it already, perhaps, as she sits there in the silence with him.
How very, very glad of her he is.
"I went up to the Enterprise with the Captain," he says finally.
"How was it?"
Up above them, the stars glitter, hard pinpricks of white light, hung in the sky shining. Among them is Spacedock and the ship next to it. A brighter white than here, none of the silver that coats the landscape before them.
"Exceptional," he says. Though so much has been, and so recently.
Soon, perhaps, this constant stir inside of him will settle. What is new now will become normal, his life shifted to make room for a different form of ordinary.
But a better one. Hope is illogical, but expectation is not, and the new shape to the coming weeks is no longer hemmed in by the banality of the semester but formed over again entirely with opportunities so novel he cannot yet begin to truly make sense of them. He will, though. His return to work will be heralded with duties and tasks he cannot now anticipate but will lend structure to his life in a way he will soon become used to.
And to sit here, on the edge of it all. Spelled out before him, a beginning so soon to come that he can nearly believe it started already.
Nyota's lips are parted, and when she ducks forward, her eyes on him, he tracks her movements in the shift of her hair over her shoulder, the swing of her earring. Her hands are spread over the hood of the car and she locks her wrists, bearing her weight there as she leans into him. For a moment, the brisk, brittle smell of night air is replaced by her perfume. The same scent as when he entered his office to find her there, bent over her padd but already looking up towards him, even before the door was fully whisked open.
"I thought you might be smiling," she says.
"I am not." This, by rote. Before even he can think that she would hardly mind. That she might have asked out of the very aspiration thereof, a thought that arrives as a dull sort of realization, rendered only from how her eyes track over his face.
It is so difficult, as always, to depend on sight alone to form an understanding of another, the modularities of voice and the choice of words. So utterly imperfect to rely on this, when even a light press of thoughts carries so much more.
Her nails are painted a deep blue. Nearly black, in the darkness the edge of the forest wraps them in. Her fingertips would be chilled, even with the warmth of the car. His are. Stiff and cold, despite the jacket he wears.
She continues to watch him, near enough that he can note each minute shift of her eyes and see clearly the small puffs of cloud her breath creates. What she is looking for, he does not know, only sure of his certainty that they have done this too often now, this liminal precipice of a moment where time drags, moments counted out in the rush of his heartbeat.
He looks at her lips. Takes a breath and considers shifting closer still.
But when he does not, Nyota leans back, and the plunge in his stomach as she tucks her hair back, staring now out across the snow, is unbearable.
Overwhelming. As all of this is.
I apologize, he nearly says. Forgive me. Please.
Instead when he opens his mouth, it is to say, "You are cold."
Down the hill, Tabitha is clambering over rocks, distracted to the degree that the brush of his mind on hers does not pull her thoughts away from the next ledge she will jump to. In all likelihood, continuing downhill will require a climb back up she did not anticipate, though she will soon learn that lesson. Spock does not impart it, withdrawing as much as he is able and leaving her to her adventures.
He is hardly more prepared than Tabitha, but at least he has long since learned to travel around Earth with suitable clothing. From his bag, placed in his car that morning, he retrieves a jacket. Innocuous, it is. And scarcely had he anticipated he would need it now, predicting that he would be unpacking in his apartment tonight, alone in those rooms with a quiet he had not had for days now.
Though his ability to anticipate his own future has proven poor, at best. And now, handing the coat to Nyota, he is sure he never knew to foresee this, the blue silver of the moonlight, how the sleeves hang too long over her hands, the fall of her hair as she pulls it from beneath the collar.
"Thank you," she says. Once, she had said the same when he handed her a syllabus, that very first day when she was a cadet among many. Now she stands ankle deep in the snow. How different she seems now. The urge to speak to this swells in him, and unbidden he feels his mouth part on words he has only half thought. You were my student, he could say. I did not know you at all and look, now, at this.
But that is not all of what he intends. Is not even half of it, that backwards look at their shared history. No, not when the days before him already hold such promise, such unexpected, unanticipated potential.
Unbidden, his hand reaches out to the front of his own jacket that she wears.
"Nyota," he says, and her face tips up, her eyebrows raised, waiting.
He does not release the fabric that he has taken in his fingers, and the continued contact seems only to compel her to sway into him. The proximity of his hands to her is nearly dizzying. Incomprehensible. Unfathomable, except for the feel of the cloth, the cold snap of air over his wrist, the hint of what it might be if his hand were closer still.
The effort to not hesitate is significant. Unnecessary, that ever present urge to pause, an inefficiency in this and in so much else in his life, that lick of disbelief that what he wishes for might actually be brought about, that he might succeed in what he attempts. Inaction is safer. And yet it brings its own discontent. Writ differently, but no less potent. Between yet another unsated moment and the possibility of gratification, he compels himself onward. For when has she ever not been there to meet him, eyes turned towards him and waiting, a patience that has persisted for so long now, enduring enough he has grown more certain of it, that constant, steady acceptance she offers.
"If you are amenable," he says, "I wonder if I might continue to see you." He pauses. Considers his words, now that he can hear them, now that they are not shuttered inside of his mind but hanging bright in the night air. "Outside of work," he clarifies.
He will be dissatisfied with anything less. This he knows as surely as he can see her smile, forming first in her eyes and then spreading over her face.
"Very amenable," she says and steps closer into him.
Tension leaves him, and he has to bend his head in his struggle for control over his expression, his mind, the tumble of thoughts that rush forth in him. Even subdued, the ebb of nerves is only mitigated, sitting in his stomach, his chest, a hot wash that threatens to continue to beat and pulse.
The hand she lays over his only fuels that spark. She blinks twice. Against his knuckles, her fingers are cold. The cuff of the coat she wears is caught between her palm and the back of his hand.
He knows quite clearly what he wants, and that too light touch is not it. He swallows. And then he bends down to her.
It is a simple kiss, her lips warm and gentle, and her nose a cold brush against his cheek, and yet the contact lingers in a way he did not think to anticipate. He might have, though, and perhaps it might have prepared him for this. He can smell her skin. Against his face, her nearness is a brush of warmth in the cool night air. Softly, her lips tug at his. Of course a hazy, imagined picture in his mind is hardly comparable to the fact of it, so much so that it nearly takes him a moment to comprehend that it is happening at all, that this is not some fantasy spun out to himself. But her fingers rise to touch his jaw, and when he presses into the kiss, she returns the pressure with a firmness of her own that wears down any impulse to let his mind wander anywhere but on the fact of her lips against his, how she moves into him when he allows his hand to touch light to her back.
When he finally pulls away, her eyes open slowly.
He likely never knew the correct thing to say in this moment and even if he did, most cohesive thoughts have swiftly abandoned him. Any that might remain are rendered inert from how she continues to touch his face, the shape of her back beneath his hand. She has not moved away very far and instead is nearly tucked into him, close enough that his chin must tip down to look at her. Slowly he gathers loose strands of her hair from her face, soft around his fingers. There is much he would ask of what will happen in the coming days, weeks, months between them, what has passed already, an ordering of their shared history so far, laid out together as to what began when, the impetus of the first thoughts of this. Always has he wished for greater clarity, the careful search for complete understanding, and so too in this. Even more so, perhaps. But that can wait. For now, he leans down and they kiss again, the sounds of their mouths filling the snow dampened silence, her lips a warm contrast to the crisp chill of the night air around them.
…
Nyota wakes as the car slows. Before them the lights of the city shine in the dark stillness of night, and behind him, he knows that an edge of dawn is creeping into the sky. Her mouth works softly as he takes the exit from the highway that leads to campus, her eyes blinking open as she lifts a finger to rub a knuckle beneath her lower eyelid.
"Good morning," he says and still tucked into his coat, arms crossed over her chest and her cheek against the back of her seat, she smiles.
He parks at her dorm and for a moment they simply watch each other. Then he unhooks his safety belt. She turns towards the backseat, long fingers tucking her hair behind her ear.
"Tabitha," Nyota says, barely more than a whisper. His sister's eyes blink open, bleary. "I'll see you again soon, I hope."
"Goodbye," Tabitha murmurs before shifting deeper into her seat, her eyes closed once more.
Outside Nyota's hand rises to the fastening of the jacket she wears. With a step, he is near enough to stop her, his hand caught around her elbow, his other cupping her arm. It is cool, still, the fog thick and close. Her movement arrested, her hands hang in the air between them before she lays them on his chest. Her touch is so light. Gentle, until her fingers tighten on his shoulders. Kissing her is still novel. Thrilling. A riveting, gripping, entirely fascinating experience. He touches her cheek, feeling how her jaw shifts as they kiss, tracing out the movement with the pads of his fingers. To think that this might become commonplace is tantalizing, incredible, impossible and believable all at once. When they part, it is only to kiss again and then pull back once more, breathing the same air, their noses bumping together.
"Later today," he whispers. The growing blue pink of dawn shines over her face, catches the curve of her cheek, the edge of her smile. With his thumb, he touches the corner of her lips. "I will call you."
"You better," she whispers back, leaning closer once more, the words pressed into his own mouth, her body fit against his, and she does not release him, and so too does he not let his hands fall from her, instead cupping the side of her neck in his palm and drawing her closer still, as her arm wraps over his shoulders.
The thought of her fills him after they have finally stepped apart, when the dew of the morning air is replaced by the warmth of his car, when he keys the engine to life and begins to reverse from the lot, the feel of her lips in his mind, how she held him, tight and firm, balanced on her toes as she was.
Quite suddenly, Tabitha sits up.
"Wait," Tabitha says and then is opening the door before Spock has fully come to a stop. "Nyota!"
At the door to her dorm, Nyota turns. Tabitha runs towards her, stops, and returns to the car to rifle through her bag, finally drawing out her handful of padds.
When Tabitha reaches her, Nyota bends down to her to take them, shaking too long sleeves back from her hands and quite clearly speaking, though Spock cannot hear what is said. Instead he watches, Tabitha staring upwards at Nyota, pointing once and then twice to the padds and then slipping Nyota something more, a piece of paper that shines white against the lingering dark of early morning.
When she returns, Tabitha settles herself in the front seat.
"Will I see her again?" she asks.
He too watches Nyota slip through the doors of her dorm. "I believe so."
"And Gaila?"
"If you visit Earth again before they graduate, yes."
"But you will be gone."
"Not for some time." Not before Nyota and Gaila earn their commissions, which is more pleasing than should be the case. Fortunate, truly. A fact of scheduling in all actuality. Lucky, his mother would call it, and after a night with no sleep, his mind laced through with thoughts of Nyota, the effort to be at odds with such a thought is beyond him.
"Will you come home again before you leave?" Tabitha asks.
He shifts from studying the facade of Nyota's dorm to Tabitha beside him. For so long, home did not contain her. He lived so much of his life without her in it, without even the thought of her. And now to go home again will mean having her there, as she has been for so many years, waiting in the doorway as he walks up the stone steps, once reaching upwards towards him, hands extended and her mind outstretched. "Yes." Precisely when, he does not know. But he will. There is time enough for that. "Ships often visit Vulcan. I would anticipate that we may be sent there even after we deploy."
"Truly?" she asks, as if he did not just say this. "May I see the ship, if you do?"
"Perhaps."
"May I see it now?"
"No." He should back out of the parking lot, though he does not. "Do you really wish to be a Starfleet officer?"
Her lips purse. She was so small, once. Unimaginable now to think that all the force of who she has grown to be once fit into a body that was lost in the folds of a blanket.
"I am considering all of my options," she says, and for the vehemence of her words, he finds himself surprised she does not cross her arms over her chest.
"If you would like to be in Starfleet, I cannot imagine that you will do anything but," he says. "However, your talent with art should not be subjugated. You should pursue that, if you wish to."
For some time, Tabitha stares out the window, and he sits there beside her, dawn slowly lightening the interior of the car.
"You are sufficiently adept," he finally says.
"I am hungry."
She is. He can feel this against his mind, as fully as if her desire for food were his own. And she is still cold, her clothes still wet. He turns the heat higher and nods. "Breakfast would then be the logical choice."
Elsewhere in the city, their father is already awake. If the light filling the car is not evidence enough of this fact, the hum of Sarek's mind against his own is sufficient in itself. His mother is still asleep and likely will be for some time. When she wakes, Spock will not need to comm his father for him to find them, and Amanda will be brought along as well, likely ordering coffee before even considering food. Already he knows he will drive them to the transport station and will wait for their shuttle with them, lingering there until they have left, departed through the gate with the other travelers who are returning home.
And then the morning will be his own, to call Nyota, to read the messages surely awaiting him from Pike, and to contact the Academy regarding the shift in his duties for the coming semesters. There will be new uniforms, a second, thicker rank stripe, the business of paperwork and likely the need to endure the congratulations of his colleagues. And that will likely be only the beginning of what is to come, more and better things spread out before him that he can hardly begin to know to anticipate.
But for now, there is Tabitha beside him, clicking her safety belt shut. "Gaila recommended waffles, a suggestion that Nyota seconded."
"Is there anything you did not discuss with them?"
"Yes."
"Did she have a suggestion as to where to find them?"
"She did not."
Spock lets his hand rest on the back of her seat as he reverses from the parking space. "In that case, I believe that, as ever, we are on our own."
…
The End
1/2/17: So many thanks and so much gratitude to you all for sharing in this story- and especially again to wifebeast-s for the amazing beta job, to Sam for everything and all that she does, and to jusysyllygirl who drew a beautiful portrait of Tabitha. It's posted on my blog on tumblr under the 'warp trails and fairy tales' tag and you all should check it out- it made my day, my week, and my year. Here's to a happy 2017, the stubborn belief that Tabitha is in fact canon, and the wonderful corner of fandom that is all things spock/uhura.