Chapter X - All I need is a sign
He took to the balcony a bowl of soup and a blanket. He was always worried that it would be too cold for Spock, despite rationally knowing that they were in his planet, in the climate that his body was created to support. It was strange how he could always think it was too cold when he spent most of the time with light clothes and sweating, but either way he felt cold when the day was ending and the wind blew the sweat-drenched clothes, so maybe it was just natural to worry about Spock. Or rather, to worry about Spock was his natural state.
He straightened the blanket on Spock's shoulders before preparing to give him the soup. Having talked so much about Spock renewed every desire he had to take care for him. It had remembered him of all the things he loved about him and that were never really forgotten, but that were difficult to think about when he had to take care of him like a baby.
"Spock, I said I'll stay here for the rest of my life, and nothing will make me change it. But I need you to do something for me. I need to know that you are still here with me, I need to know what you really came to life. Anything, just do anything to show me that you are really you. That's all I'm asking." he hadn't realized how true those words were until he said them. He need a sign, something to prove that their efforts weren't in vain, anything to prove that this was the same Spock with whom he shared a few years of his life and wanted so much more. All this effort was for him, but he need to know what he was really there.
But no answer came, as was to be expected. He sighed and tried to hide his disappointment. He felt again that strange pain that didn't exactly hurt, and that in the last couple of weeks he started to treat it as if it were a principle of migraine, despite knowing that it wasn't just that. Spock needed food, that was more important than a little headache that probably would soon pass.
He slowly approached the spoon of his lips, taking care to gently force them open without spilling the liquid. He noted that this time Spock parted his teeth and closed his lips around the spoon, when he usually had to gently drop the liquid inside his mouth and hope that the swallowing reflex would work. He still remembered with awe that one time, in one of the first days, in which Spock gasped violently with Bertakk soup. He always had to keep in mind that his body could decide not to work as it should.
Once removed he the spoon, Spock turned to him, which was odd. Spock rarely moved when they were in the garden, spending most of the time staring at one point on the horizon. Blaming himself for feeding his foolish hopes, Kirk couldn't help but thinking that it should mean something.
"Jim" Spock said hoarsely.
Nothing could have prepared him to hear that voice for the first time in months. Kirk left the bowl fall and remained immobilized by shock for a moment. His ears need to be the tricking him somehow, he was just listening to what he wanted. But the realization did nothing to help, all his hopes returned with the force of a dammed steam that suddenly found itself free of barriers. It was only then that he realized that he had actually lost hope that what felt now could in nothing be compared to what he felt before that moment.
Bertakk soup is a kind of Vulcan soup, and one of the Vulcan dishes programmed in the replicators in the Enterprise. After all, I couldn't make him eat only plomeek soup all the time, right?