Too Much Information
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, though I am using them for my own purposes!
Spock almost never dreams, and this morning is no exception, but when his mother wakes him later, he feels as if a weight has settled in his chest while he slept. He can tell that she is ready to talk—but he dodges her questions and reluctantly agrees to drive her to the market.
Amanda has lived on Vulcan for so long that she doesn't seem to notice the attention they always draw when they go out in public together, but Spock notices it, intensely, and feels a ghost of resentment when people turn to look at him with his mother. Their stares are more curious than impolite, but he resents them nevertheless…for what they say about their unlikely pairing—human mother and Vulcan son. As often as he draws looks on Earth, he does not feel as judged as he does when Vulcans examine him.
"Where's that book?" Amanda says as Spock engages the drive of the hired transport and they head to the city. She is sitting beside him in the front of the little hover car, her old-fashioned notepad and stylus on her lap. The cookbook—a gift from Spock—is at her feet, and she picks it up and turns to the recipe she had noted earlier.
"Here it is," she says, and Spock looks down quickly before guiding the car into the main thoroughfare. "I thought we might try this recipe tonight—no, wait, this won't do. It calls for cinnamon—authentic Moroccan food, all right. Just enough to make your father sick."
"Father?" Spock asks, and Amanda continues.
"I never use cinnamon—not after we found out how your father reacts to it. Have you tried it?"
"If I have, I was unaware," Spock says, and Amanda chuckles. "Oh, you would know if you had tried it. It is fragrant and strong—and some Vulcans get ill from it. Or…not exactly ill. More like a bad cocoa reaction. I remember reading once that it is one of the only real human aphrodisiacs—something about the way it sensitizes certain pheromone receptors."
Spock is surprised to feel himself flush. He looks at his mother and sees that she is smiling broadly. This doesn't bode well.
"Now I remember," Amanda says, and Spock keeps his attention carefully on the landscape hurtling past. "I had known your father for only a little while and I lived in an apartment right across the avenue from this quaint little Moroccan restaurant. They didn't have a menu or anything—you just sat down and told the chef what you wanted to eat."
"That sounds inefficient," Spock says, turning off the main thoroughfare onto a smaller side road.
"People don't go out to eat to be efficient!" Amanda exclaims. "If you want to be efficient, you stay home and cook whatever is at hand."
"As I usually do," Spock says, though he flushes again remembering a night only a week ago when he and Nyota had eaten an evening meal together at a diner near the campus. He had not intended to go there; it was another night of working late and Nyota had announced that she was going to have to go somewhere other than the cafeteria—which would surely be closed by now. Spock had walked her out of the lab building and had stood there, once again unmoving, once again expected to do something—and on an odd impulse, he had offered to walk her to the diner.
"I thought this wasn't on your way," she had teased him as they walked across the quad--she hugging her jacket across her chest and he with his hands clasped behind his back. Despite the cold and the late hour, they had strolled rather than walked….curious, he thinks now, that neither seemed to be in a hurry.
The diner was almost empty and the meal itself was unremarkable—though when he tries to call up the details, he discovers that he is still experiencing that peculiar amnesia that has troubled him for weeks, as though he has gone blind.
No, not blind. For he can recall every detail of Nyota herself…the tiny mole that decorates the side of her neck, the whorl of her ears, a stubbornly errant curl, tiny and dark, that always escapes whatever clasp or band she uses to pull her hair away from her face.
He has not been blind. He has been wearing blinders.
After the meal they had walked in silence back across the quad to the lab, and at the outside door they had paused. He had another simulation to run but she was going on to her dorm. As Nyota started to speak, a group of laughing students walked past and she fell silent until they were out of earshot.
"Thank you again for going with me to dinner," she said, and Spock had given a short nod. The moment stretched on and she seemed to be waiting for something. He considered their earlier conversation about walking in the dark and he said, "Do you require an escort to your dorm?"
At that she gave a small smile, though Spock sensed no humor behind it. Of course, the lighting was patchy in front of the lab and Nyota's face was partially obscured by shadow.
"An escort? No, I can make my way alone."
And then, in a brighter voice, she added, "Good night. Good luck with that last program."
In the past they have had many bantering conversations about luck and the human propensity for believing in it. "Luck is nothing more than a random series of events whose unfolding is neither predictable nor quantifiable," he usually recites when Nyota wishes him luck in jest. Her trilling laugh at his comment never fails to amuse him, though he cannot understand why.
"Good luck!" she called again, waving her arm as she turned and headed away. For a second Spock debated starting after her, but he could think of no reason for doing so.
"Luck has nothing to do with it," he had said aloud, but she was already too far away to hear him. He watched her until she was swallowed by the dark and only then had he made his way back inside and up the stairwell to the lab.
"You men," Amanda says, bringing Spock back from his reverie, and she motions to him to turn into the parking area of the nearest market. "The Moroccan chef was a terrific cook, but he had never cooked for a Vulcan. Your Father and I were supposed to go to some sort of show afterwards, too…we never did get there."
"Mother," Spock says as he parks the hover car and presses the door release, "that is more than I wanted to know."
X X X X X X X
Sarek's transport is parked outside the house when Amanda and Spock return home. Amanda leaves Spock the task of carrying in the groceries while she goes inside to find Sarek. Even before she enters the house she knows something is wrong—though their bond she senses a dark emotion she cannot name, something Sarek rarely projects.
His study door is closed but she knows he is inside—she opens the door and sees him sitting behind his desk, his elbows resting in front of him and his fingers steepled together.
"Close the door," he says brusquely, and Amanda reaches behind her and quickly pushes it to.
"Sarek, what's the matter—"
Instead of answering, Sarek points to the blinking communications console.
"This came while you were out," he says, touching the controls and adjusting the sound so Amanda can hear it. A formal, stilted voice of an elderly Vulcan man speaks for a few moments on the recording. Amanda feels the rush of Sarek's dark emotion again, and she sits down, her stomach churning.
"Spock must have contacted her when he arrived yesterday," Sarek says, his eyes unblinking, his breathing short and brisk.
"Play it again," Amanda says, and Sarek touches the console and the voice begins again.
"S'chn T'gai Spock, please be advised that K'Loh'r T'Mir T'Pring is unavailable for contact at the current time. Her family regrets any inconvenience this may cause you."
"That's it?" Amanda asks, but Sarek does not answer, and she doesn't expect him to. Of course this is it. Her own fury blazes up and drowns out the darkness Sarek has already expressed.
Amanda's mind is racing—is this why Spock has come home? He has been distracted, and somewhat reticent to speak—and, yes, thinner and paler than usual—but she would not have guessed that he was in the beginning throes of pon farr. She looks up at Sarek and can see that he is reaching the same conclusion—Spock's behavior does not seem to be the gradual, rocky descent into plak tow.
"Of course, he might manifest it differently than a full Vulcan," Sarek says to Amanda's unspoken question. She shakes her head—that can't be it.
"But Sarek, even if he did—if he does—T'Pring has no right—"
With her right hand she presses the ache in her breastbone; with her left she reaches for Sarek and he holds out his fingertips to her. She takes a breath and attempts to still the anger she feels—not just at T'Pring, but the older anger she feels towards Sarek for insisting on Spock's bonding. It has been a source of conflict for them for years—erupting now and then when Amanda hauls out her other grievances for airing.
If he weren't feeling an equal fury now, Amanda would have spoken her disapproval yet again, but she realizes that she doesn't need to—that, indeed, Sarek feels the snub so keenly at this moment that he is ready to acknowledge his error.
"This is intolerable," Amanda says, and to her surprise, Sarek answers, "Agreed."
"Then what are you going to do about it?" she says, and once more Sarek surprises her.
"It is Spock's decision. I will do what he wants me to do."
A/N: Reviews are the only payment fanfic writers get paid! Please take a moment to leave one! Thanks to StarTrekFanWriter for her help—she took time out of her busy schedule writing "The Native" to read over several drafts of my story.
