Chapter Text
Spock, so as to utilize his time to the fullest, ate alone, with the shift rotations before him on his padd.
The mess was full of humans carrying out their varied eating and social bonding rituals. Mr. Scott stole a piece of fried potato off Mr. Riley’s plate. Lieutenant Uhura pulled a long blond hair off the shoulder of Nurse Chapel’s uniform, laughing. Yeoman Rand squeezed the shoulder of Lieutenant Sulu as she passed by. Ensign Chekov tucked a strand of Yeoman Landon’s hair behind her ear.
Terran anthropology gave great significance to these actions. Touching, joint attention, communal eating, and social grooming were behaviors which stimulated the relational areas of the brain, as well as releasing hormones and neurotransmitters associated with happiness. A thirty-second embrace produced a measurable increase in oxytocin, causing both a sense of well-being and an improved relationship with the person embraced.
Vulcans did not engage in such behaviors, and furthermore they would not receive the same benefit from them even if they had done so. Similar cascades of hormonal and neurological changes took place in Vulcans only when they had telepathic contact with another mind. This constant looking and touching was unnecessary for them. Only children, still building up their telepathic bonds, needed to spend such extensive time in physical contact.
Spock remembered his infancy, though in a haze due to his incapacity for analyzing his experiences at the time. He remembered being passed from arms to arms, sleeping in arms, feeding in arms, spending the night in the safe semicircle of his mother’s body.
He had had no direct telepathic bond with his mother, as she was psi-null and he had been too young to establish one. His bond with her was instead second-hand, through his father, but it had existed. When he and his mother touched, her presence was warm and soft in his mind. She had learned—as an adult, he realized how difficult it must have been for a human—to fill her mind with calm and safety, whatever she wanted her son to feel.
When he was older, those bonds were supposed to be mature, and a Vulcan child was supposed to roam further from his parents, need physical contact less. Bonds with other children were important then. He had had no strong friendship bonds, but there had been T’Pring. That first, terrified day of school, he had sat with the side of his hand pressed tightly to the outer side of T’Pring’s hand, and it had been possible to continue.
She had not loved him. He understood that now, though as a child he had assumed that their bond meant she must. But she had chosen to be there for him, knowing that he had no one but her, and that mattered more than anything. The low hum of her quiet mind had soothed him, allowed him to arrange his emotions under his conscious control as a Vulcan should.
That bond was gone now. It had been gone for 47 Earth days, since the kalifee. His bond with Sarek—and through him, with Amanda—had been severed for nineteen years. And there was no one else. Spock’s mind was dangerously empty without those bonds to stabilize it. It was a constant source of pain for which there was no remedy, because he was here among humans, most of whom did not even know he was a telepath. There were no espers, even, among the crew: they had all died at the galactic barrier.
He watched Dr. McCoy speaking earnestly with Ensign Garrovick, squeezing his hand in a way intended to reassure, and swallowed, hand tightening in his lap. He wished to believe it would help to engage in such things. He was, after all, half human. Might it not be soothing to his mind to reach out and touch?
It was not. For humans, being psi-null, could not shield their minds, could not select which of their feelings to transfer and which to keep to themselves. It was unethical to touch a human unshielded. And to touch shielded was unnerving, like touching with numb hands, feeling a warm physical shape while emptiness yawned still in the mind.
A firm touch closed on his shoulder, and he stopped breathing in shock. Then he detected the captain, his mind so hot and dynamic the faint throb of it was detectable even through his shields. He reinforced them, to combat his longing to reach for it.
“Isn’t it lonely, sitting here all by yourself?” the captain asked, his hand loosening its grip, but lingering on his shoulder. He was a tactile man, constantly handling all his crew as if he could not be quite sure of them unless he touched them, as he brushed his hands over the tops of his chess pieces before he moved them.
The words sprang to his lips automatically. “You are projecting a human emotion on me. Vulcans appreciate solitude, as it makes it easier to be productive.”
It was a habitual defense. It would have been humiliating to admit the truth. Yet it was somehow still disappointing when the captain did not divine his real thoughts. That warm hand slid off his shoulder and Jim smiled. “Well, if you’re sure,” he said kindly, and moved off to sit with Dr. McCoy and Ensign Garrovick.
The two angled toward him like flowers turning toward the sun, sensing his dynamic personality even without telepathy. Jim had one hand on McCoy’s arm, a beaming smile for Garrovick.
If Spock felt rejected, isolated, lonely —it was no one’s fault but his own.
Ensign Garrovick finished his lunch and got up, and Jim turned to Bones. “Does Spock seem—off to you?”
“He seems exactly as emotionally constipated as he always looks,” said Bones. “But I did check all his numbers after our little visit to Vulcan, and they were back to normal.”
“But his mental health,” said Jim. “I’m not saying he looks sick, I’m saying he looks unhappy. And he keeps giving me the brushoff.”
“Embarrassed that you saw him smile that time,” Bones speculated.
“I saw him swinging from a tree on Omicron Ceti III and he was only awkward about that for a day or so.”
Bones frowned, finally beginning to take the question seriously. “You know, Jim. He did just go through a messy divorce. I thought mine was bad, but the Vulcans have us beat. Let me tell you, I was more than a little off after mine, for a lot more than a couple of months.”
Jim sighed. Maybe it was that. But that got him no closer to knowing what to do. He could hardly bring over a bottle of bourbon or offer to take Spock out on the town to cheer him up. Spock probably wanted solitude to deal with his problems, but Jim never knew if that was actually good for him.
“Maybe the next planet will do him good,” Bones suggested. “The closest he ever gets to happy is with a tricorder and some interesting ooze.”
Jim smiled, picturing his first officer intently fascinated with some bug or flower. It was a beautiful look on him, one of which he was probably completely unaware. Not a smile, but a softening, as if he had forgotten entirely about trying to be a perfect Vulcan and cared only about the specimen.
“What’s that smile for?” asked Bones, looking around where Jim had been staring off into space. “Do we have a new pretty yeoman I don’t know about?”
“I was just thinking,” Jim said defensively. “It’s not always a pretty girl.”
“It is when you make that face.”
Jim wanted to deny it, but what was even the point? Of anyone on the ship, Bones was the one to confide in. “I was thinking about Spock,” he said softly.
Bones raised both eyebrows. “Huh. Well, call me corrected. I guess that isn’t your mooning face.”
Jim opened his mouth, but Bones was already getting to his feet. “Maybe you need to get down to that planet yourself,” he suggested. “Find your own ooze to be obsessed with.”
Leaning his head on his fist, Jim sighed again. Bones couldn’t even conceive of the possibility Jim would bother to be in love with Spock, that was how out of reach Spock was. Even just their friendship was so unlikely as to seem some kind of a miracle. Spock was a Vulcan, a strictly observant Vulcan, and he would find his next spouse the way he’d found the first one: by having a logical third party pick them out.
But, hopeless or not, Jim did love him. Their friendship was wonderful, the most important relationship of his life, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want more. It was just one of those things that he had to go without for Spock, like shaking hands or sharing a drink.
He got to his feet and bused his tray. He may as well give it one more shot tonight. If Spock was having a rough time, Jim shouldn’t take just one rejection, he should at least keep offering.
He didn’t touch Spock this time—that had seemed to startle him—but he put one hand on the table and the other on the back of Spock’s chair to lean in. “Chess tonight?” he asked lightly.
Those brown eyes blinked, looked up at him. Their mouths were so close, like this. “I have the shift schedules yet to finish,” said Spock.
“We could work on them together, get them done in half the time,” said Jim.
“This is not the kind of work which is easily divisible by man-hours,” said Spock.
Jim put on his best pleading face. “C’mon, all work and no play makes Jack—”
“—a logical individual,” Spock interrupted, and now, finally, there was a little quirk to his lips. “I see you are going to insist.”
“I am,” said Jim, straightening. Was he pushing too hard? He hoped not. “Twenty-hundred?”
Spock inclined his head, and Jim finally took himself off. It was something. As long as they still played chess, it was enough.