Chapter 3

It has often been Spock's habit, when his mind is unsettled, to anesthetize his thoughts with a series of complex and detailed projects, and it is unfortunate that his prior efficiency has made it impossible on this occasion. The Camusian analysis might have offered some respite, but for the fact that Camus II and everything connected with their brief stay on the planet is the root cause of his current agitation, and this has left him with either the sensor alignment or the bridge.

The long-range sensor array lab is buried in the forward hull of the engineering deck, not far from the observation rooms where he often cloisters himself in meditation. The sight of the infinite depths beyond the small windows is immeasurably soothing to his scientist's soul, stretching as it does into the incalculable distance where numbers begin to coil and dance in a way that has always twisted a tiny thrill of satisfaction in his belly, like the lazy brush of a high-summer sun through the shade of an in-du-ka in full leaf. There is also the fact that very few crewmembers have any reason to spend much time in this part of the ship, which has a lot to do with his decision to remodel today.

It's not that they couldn't have taken the required measurements with a high degree of precision using the current system, he reflects as he unrolls his tool case and sets to removing the access paneling. The Enterprise and the Potemkin are similarly equipped and it's just a question of pooling resources for optimum efficiency, but Spock is Spock and the prospect of being set loose on a binary system - and a possible source of Berthold radiation - is the sort of thing that finds him pulling eight-day marathons in the lab before someone points out that he probably ought to sleep now. Or eat. Or at least sit down for a while. There is a part of him that he can't help but acknowledge - but to which he'll never openly admit - that has been looking forward to this mission since the orders came through a little over six days ago. It's the same part that allows him to justify his absence from the bridge, but made sure he stayed long enough to see for himself that the Captain was all right.

Self-deception is illogical. What is left to him, therefore, is damage control.

There is no way to accurately determine when the change occurred. Some time between the second and third years of the mission, he believes, but it's speculation, and speculation makes him uncomfortable. At some point, despite everything he knows and everything he's seen, partiality crept up on him. Perhaps it was a mistake to lower his guard enough to allow their friendship to take root and grow, or perhaps nothing could have halted this explosion of emotion; either way, it's proved remarkably impervious to exorcism and he's had to learn to live with it. Kaiidth; there is nothing to be gained from regret. All he can control is what he does next.

He opens the paneling and sets it gently to one side. The cave of relay circuitry blinks and glimmers in the shadowy darkness as he eases himself into the heart of the sensory system and runs questing fingers across arcane banks of wires and readout dials, gently inspecting, surveying, cataloging. It will not take him eight hours, he decides, but he knows already that he won't return to the bridge when he's done – he'll sequester himself away in one of the labs that isn't working on Camusian hieroglyphs and find some other perfectly reasonable way to occupy himself until eight o'clock.

At some point, he really is going to have to spend some time meditating on what happened yesterday.

He knows Kirk didn't sleep well last night because Spock spent most of the night crouched cross-legged on his mat in front of the asenoi trying to reach the preliminary stages of kohl-tor, and he heard his Captain shuffling and moving about in his quarters until well into the small hours of the morning. In the end, he gave up pretending he was going to get anywhere with meditation and simply listened to the sounds of Kirk's proximity, settling into a warm glow of satisfaction in the knowledge that the Captain was back where he belonged. The flavor of Kirk's mind danced in his psi-center, brushing up against the memories of the day and sending little jolts of panic thrilling through his belly at the sound of his remembered voice inside Spock's head.

The Captain was diminished and alone inside that unfamiliar consciousness, hollering his First Officer's name, and hot on the heels of the first, breathless rush of horror was a rage that almost crippled Spock's capacity for coherent thought. It was kae'at k'lasa, perhaps not in the Vulcan definition, but a violation of the sanctity of the mind nonetheless. He knows that his controls did not completely disintegrate, by virtue of the fact that the men who tried to stop him from removing his Captain from captivity are still alive, but he remembers the fires of anger boiling in his veins and a scream of fury echoing in his skull: you shall not touch him. He remembers the overwhelming need to reach out for Kirk's hand and reassure himself that he was there, that he was solid and alive, and to feel the buzz of the Captain's self beneath the surface of that alien skin. With the objectivity of hindsight, Spock can catalog every action and reaction and its emotional imperative. This is not the problem. The problem is that he gave in to it.

He passes the morning in solitude. Close to the midday meal break, as he has been vaguely expecting, his communicator chirps and the Captain's voice fills the electronic grotto. In another colleague, this would be irritating. In the Captain, it's too predictable to cause any flare of annoyance.

"How's the work coming along, Mr. Spock?" he wants to know.

"Adequately, Captain," he says. As an answer, it has the advantage of being so non-specific as to be true at virtually any stage of the process, while offering absolutely nothing in the way of actual information. He has possibly an hour's work ahead of him before the modifications are complete, but if Kirk finds out he'll expect them to eat lunch together and Spock hasn't finished collecting his thoughts yet.

"I'm just about to meet Bones in the officer's mess," says Kirk. "He's insisting that you join us."

Spock twists a dial three quarters of a degree clockwise. "Regretfully, I must decline," he says.

There is a small pause. It's possible that the Doctor is listening in. "Come on, Spock. You need to eat."

"The Vulcan metabolism…"

"Don't give me 'Vulcan metabolism', you green-blooded computer!" Well, that was predictable.

"Stop hiding out in the ship's circuitry and come and have lunch with us."

"As I told the Captain, Doctor, the nature of this work is extremely delicate," says Spock. "It requires my full attention."

"Bones, leave him alone," says Kirk. "I told you he was busy."

"We can all be busy when we want to be," mutters the Doctor. Spock considers analyzing that and then decides against it.

"I'll see you later, Spock." Kirk again. "Don't work too hard."

There are two possible replies to that. The first involves a token protest about the relative difficulty of the task in hand, and will certainly elicit some form of invective from McCoy. Spock opts for the second. "Negative, Captain," he says. Like adequately, it is conveniently vague. "Spock out."

The exchange has lasted less than three minutes, but for the devastation it has wreaked on his patchwork controls, he might as well have stayed on the bridge all morning. It is typical of his responses in the hours after he has allowed his barriers to slip. If he had known – if it had ever occurred to him to ask – he might have been able to pinch down hard upon the flowering affection before it was able to blossom into something so manifestly ungovernable, but he has spent his life striving towards the Vulcan disciplines, to the point where he'd begun to believe that his body would always follow the biological patterns of his father's people. Even if he'd had the words to ask his mother, he'd never had any cause to think that his Human side would rear up to announce itself so violently and so unexpectedly, and this is how it came to take him so completely unawares.

He remembers the day of his pre-bonding ceremony and the sudden, probing invasion of another mind in his. He remembers recoiling, the tightness of his father's hands on his shoulders, his eyes flickering upwards to meet T'Pring's, and the look on her face that mirrored the turmoil inside his skull. There should be a sense of presence when a connection is made. There should be a manifest difference between before and after. It ought to be possible to look back and remember with crystal clarity the moment that his life became joined to another's. If he had any inclination to imagine the Human conception of erotic love, it must have hovered vaguely around the notion of a collision of minds, of feeling the pricklings of another consciousness gently brushing up against his. No wonder Standard is so reprehensibly vague when it comes to a definition of the Human bond – there is no way to catalog it or refine it into a single fragment of time. It simply is. There must be a moment when I becomes we, but it's lost to the vagaries of emotion and it wasn't until it had insinuated itself irrevocably into his sense of himself that Spock was even aware that he had fallen in love. The Human way.

It's a disaster.

-o-o-o-

He spends fifteen minutes trying to decide whether he should turn up for his appointment with Kirk dressed still in his uniform, or if he ought to change into his off-duty robes, and then another five being seriously unimpressed with himself for even wondering in the first place. In the end, the internal debate conveniently eats up the last minutes before the meeting and the decision is made for him, and he realizes, as he waits outside the Captain's quarters for admittance, that it's the right one anyway. Uniform keeps this business. He's not sure he's ready yet to resume their camaraderie.

"Come," calls Kirk's voice from inside, and the door slides open.

The Captain has taken his boots off and loosened the collar of his tunic, and he sits back in his chair with his stocking feet propped up on his desk. He looks tired but at ease, as Spock has often found him in the evenings after their shift when they've found time to spend in easy conversation and unexpected companionship. He smiles up at his First as he enters, and Spock schools his expression into indifference and stares at the wall behind Kirk's head.

"First Officer reporting as requested, Captain," he says. A light in Kirk's eyes fades and the smile wilts but does not collapse. He lifts his feet down from the desk and indicates the spare chair with a wave of his hand.

"Have a seat, Spock," he says as he stands – slowly, a little stiffly, perhaps – and crosses to the synthesizer. "Thanks for coming. I'm ready for a drink, how about you?"

It would be so easy to accept, to loosen his rigid shoulders and let his tightly-leashed affection shine from his eyes. To sit quietly and listen to his Captain tell tales about an uneventful day on the bridge, and infuse them with all the passion, all the humor, all the love of a man who has found his rightful place in the universe. Spock's spine aches where he forces it to resist the urge to lower himself into the chair and, clasped behind his back, his hands would tremble if he didn't hold them so tightly. He makes himself say, "Thank you, Captain, but I must decline."

Kirk raises an eyebrow. These are the things that make it so difficult to hold onto his resolve.

The Captain says, "You're not going back to the lab tonight?"

Spock could probably find something to do, but it wouldn't be nearly enough to keep his mind occupied. He says, "Negative, Captain, but I must spend some time in meditation tonight."

"And a glass of pineapple juice is going to stop you meditating?" The words are light, but Kirk is not looking at him and there is a tension in his shoulders as he speaks. He bends to retrieve a decanter from his liquor cabinet and pours a generous measure into an ornate glass. The sharp odor of alcohol infuses the air. "Come on, Spock. Sit down and have a drink with me. I won't keep you long."

There is something about the way that James Kirk makes a request that is not quite an order and not quite a suggestion, but is simply loaded with the assumption that the world will just fall into place the way he expects it to. It is one of the many, many reasons that Spock found him close to intolerable in the first weeks of his command, and has become one of the many, many reasons for his regard. He sits. Kirk takes this as acquiescence and punches a code into the synthesizer, which responds with a tall glass of pale yellow liquid. Spock accepts it with a perfunctory nod and the Captain slides into his chair on the opposite side of the desk. His eyes do not seek Spock's.

"Thanks for coming," he says again. Spock inclines his head and the movement causes the hazel eyes, belatedly, to dart up. "Did you make much headway with the sensor arrays?"

"The system has been fully remodeled," says Spock. The glass is cold in his hand and he sets it on the desk. A thin vein of condensation tracks towards the surface and he catches it with an outstretched finger, aware that the Captain is watching. "Efficiency ratings should improve by approximately thirty-eight percent."

"Approximately?" says Kirk, and a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.

Another evening, Spock would cheerfully join in the game, but tonight it's as much as he can do to hold the fragments of his barriers together, so he allows a single beat to declare his disinterest and says, "37.87 percent, to be precise."

The smile fades. "Excellent," says Kirk without conviction. "It never hurts to show 'fleet what we've got." Spock says nothing and Kirk takes a savage gulp of his drink and leans forwards. Ice clinks against the sides of his glass. He says, "So, I won't keep you from your busy evening, Spock." The words bruise, as they are intended to do, but there's nothing can be done about that. "The admiralty are in a panic about the political implications of yesterday's events and they want to make sure we're all singing from the same hymn sheet. Don't even bother, Spock," he adds as his First opens his mouth to speak. "I know you understand and I'm not sure why you're pretending not to."

Caught in an outright prevarication, but before he's had the opportunity to condemn himself, Spock goes for the defensive. "I was merely preparing to state my apprehension of the situation," he says.

Kirk fixes him with a relentless stare that telegraphs his skepticism and holds it for a moment too long. "Good," he says at last. "Then I don't need to tell you that there are certain aspects of yesterday's court martial that are going to be struck from the official record."

"I had anticipated as much."

"And you've got nothing to say about that?"

Spock raises an eyebrow. "It would be illogical to protest when the necessity is clear."

"Spock!" Kirk's moods are mercurial and anger is rarely sustained. His eyes furrow in concern. "They ought to give you a goddamn medal for what you did yesterday! And I can't even put a commendation in your records! They're going to pretend it didn't happen."

Silence hangs heavily between them. "Yes, Captain," says Spock at last.

Kirk sits back heavily and raises an exasperated hand. It hangs in the air between them. "I can't…" he begins to say, and shakes his head. "Never mind. Just… Go. Meditate. Be Vulcan. Do what you need to do." The hand drops abruptly, like an injured bird. "Bones wants to talk to you, but I'd avoid that if I were you."

"I have found that to be a sensible strategy when faced with the Doctor's ministrations," says Spock. Kirk peers up from beneath a hooded brow.

"I'll expect you on the bridge tomorrow then." It's not quite a statement and not quite a question. Spock is aware that the Captain will not make it an order, not at this stage.

He says, "There are currently no projects in the laboratories that require my attention." It's not quite an answer either.

The evaluative gaze continues, and is abruptly concluded with a huge intake of breath. "Good," says Kirk. "I'll let you get on with your evening then. Lord knows, I have enough to do myself."

He scrubs his hands over his face as Spock stands, and the action leaves his hair mussed at the front. For a terrible moment, it's as much as Spock can do not to reach a hand across the desk to straighten it. The Captain looks exhausted – more than when Spock arrived. But there's nothing he can do about that.

"Thank you, Captain," he says.

"Get some rest, Mr. Spock," says Kirk. He is already reaching for his terminal and does not look up as he speaks. It's a clear dismissal and Spock is aware that he deserves it.

"Captain," says Spock. He crosses to the door and pauses by the control pad. What he ought to do is walk out and across the few feet of corridor that lead to his door, and sequester himself inside until he finds either meditation or unconsciousness; some way, at least, to allow his yammering mind to sort through the emotional detritus of the past days. But the Captain is tired and bruised, and some of that is Spock's fault. He turns back to the room.

"Jim," he says. Kirk looks up, startled confusion plastered across his face. "You are fatigued. You should also rest."

Kirk's eyes are wide. He says, "I will, Spock. I have some reports to finish first."

"Perhaps," says Spock, "I could assist you tomorrow. If our schedules are free."

The Captain's face slowly unfolds into his sunshine smile, the one that seems to illuminate him from within. It eases the lines of strain from around his eyes and warms the room around him. He says, "I'd appreciate that, Spock. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," says Spock. It's a Jim moment, but he's already given more than he's equal to, and he leaves it at that.

-o-o-o-

Translations:

Kaiidth - What is, is

asenoi - firepot

kohl-tor - meditative trance

kae'at k'lasa - mind-rape