A/N: I contemplated a lot of ideas before getting to work on this chapter. In the end, I found the final product everything it needed to be, at this point in the story. I really think it offers some insight on who the true narrator of this story is, if that's at all unclear. Anyway, feedback is much appreciated, as always. I invite you to check out the links on my profile page, in any case, if you enjoy Star Trek, my writing, or just good old fashioned artistic labor. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't intend to generate a profit from the characters or storylines I've used in the following work of fiction. Anything reminiscent of the Star Trek lore or reality is purely coincidental and does not, by any means, belong to me.
Perhaps he had too frequently allowed himself to be engulfed by his work. Such was an efficacious vice – a privilege, even, to those with half-hooded eyes unburdened by stars. The conscientious fingers constricting his veins had, at first, directed him as far from the young Terran with the broad smile as physically attainable. Those same cold fingernails that admonished his every lingering glimpse with a haughty dig had been dragged away by the swell of her laughter, replaced with the salty froth of the sunrise that she treasured so dearly. The pleasant monotony of the human heartbeat had danced him to sleep each night since her thumb had brushed his in the throes of an inefficient PADD transference and an impassioned debate regarding the status of a fellow cadet's grade.
Instead of lending his assistance at the prospect of difficulty, he elected to observe. He watched, enraptured, as the young woman tapered her brow and learned the science of the object balanced between two palms with the inner flesh of her hands. The tawny flecks freckling her irises reflected profound intellect, that of a mind unconfined by slow things like partisan and predilection. She beheld the instrument with such proud admiration, tasting its machinations with the pads of her fingertips and appraising its worth in music, rather than weight or credits. He contemplated sumptuously whether she looked the same way at him as she did a Vulcan lyre.
Spock nudged his cheek against the young woman's shoulder, still contented with the tempo of his own silence. She eased minutely into his chest with a moderately exasperated breath. He fixed his eyes to her expression, and was fascinated by the faultless grin that augmented her lips. A repellant tune sang from an ignorantly plucked string and bathed the foyer in its ugly timbre. Nyota's lids fell with incomparable grace, eyelashes sweeping the summit of her cheeks.
"This doesn't seem fair," she murmured gently, although the words seemed to petrify in her chest before being granted to the air.
The commander shifted to perch his chin atop the naked knoll of muscle spanning the entirety of her upper shoulder, eyes reeled down at the jagged drone of the harp in her hands. She met his eyes and laughed as he tilted a thick black brow.
"I certainly hope you're entertained watching me flounder with this damn thing," She deflected a nonexistent jape. "I've never even seen one outside of your apartment."
"I am intrigued," Spock replied somberly as he eclipsed her hand with one of his own.
"Is that your way of telling me it sounds awful?" she laughed again, devoid this time of the same ardor that drew the weak sun's efflorescence through the window fixtures and onto her skin.
He caressed her narrow digits with his and rotated them so as to excavate the creases in the bed of her hand with an unobstructed stare. The surplus flesh between his brows bunched as he considered the subtle trench between two parallel tendons stretched across length of her forearm. He explored the topography of her wrist with the underside of his thumb and patiently embraced the pulse that lay buried somewhere beneath the muscle. Nyota rested the base of the instrument atop her thighs as her focus found Spock's massive hand.
"Your hands," he said with the inquisitive tone texture of a child, though his tenor delivered his words like coffee grounds under a hungry blade, "are very small."
"Yes, they are." She quietly said.
With her hand under the pall of Spock's, they approached the manifold lyre strings. They waited – one dispassionate and the other anticipatory – for the sound of composed and practiced melody. When it occurred, their eyes did not meet. Another. And a third. Nyota's gleeful but reasonably silent grin was palpable. Her skin bled the crux of human happiness into Spock's palm. He did not smile, but together they played.