Chapter Text
Spock was twenty-one the first time he laid eyes on James T. Kirk.
At the time, he was sitting in a Starfleet Ethics class required for all first-year students at the Academy. Spock was in his fourth and final year at the Academy and would not have chosen to spend an afternoon in a first-year class when he could have been in the lab. However, his lab advisor was also the professor in charge of evaluating new instructors, and he had asked Spock to sit in on this class and evaluate the young Dr. Wyndham. Spock did not think himself the logical choice for such an assignment, but he had not thought it fit to object.
So far, Dr. Wyndham was not making a good showing. He was discussing the Prime Directive and the reasoning behind it, while stammering an average of 2.6 times per sentence.
“So the Prime Directive is only meant to apply to…to living and growing civilizations. So if, uh, if you found a world where, um…where people were not able to express their, uh, natural selves, then, um…”
The point was extremely poorly phrased. The man looked as if he thought the classroom might some sort of imminent threat. Spock was no expert at reading human facial expressions—a defect he was studiously attempting to correct—but he was fairly certain that the young doctor’s implied fear.
The instructor raised his arm—with a look Spock classified as “relief”—to call on someone in the class. “Er, yes.”
“How can you tell for sure if a different culture is following a natural course of development?”
The question was asked in a clear voice. Spock turned and saw a boy—a young man—about halfway up the auditorium, in the middle of the center section. He was leaning forward in his seat, and his eyes were intent on the instructor.
“We’re assuming that we can judge whether another culture is expressing itself naturally,” the student continued. “But don’t we risk viewing things from an Earth-centric point of view and judging wrong?”
The instructor coughed. “Well, there are always, um…signs. If, uh…from frequent observation of someone, you can, uh, tell whether they are at liberty to say and to do as they like…to show how they feel…”
“What about the Vulcans, though?” the clear voice asked in response.
Spock felt his own attention sharpen. When his people were mentioned in large groups of humans, it was rarely to express something good.
“They choose not to express how they feel,” the student continued. “But no one could accuse theirs of not being a living, growing civilization. Isn’t the choice not to express yourself still a form of self-expression?”
Spock turned fully in his seat to look at this intent face. The boy’s comment revealed a level of insight rarely—in Spock’s experience—found in one so young. Spock himself was only twenty-one, a mere three years older than this human, but his experience with worlds other than his own had led him to observe that most people, whether human, Vulcan, or otherwise, took many more years than eighteen to accept that their own cultural precepts were not superior to all others. If they ever did accept the fact.
“Certainly,” the instructor said. He looked flustered and fiddled with his pen until it fell to the floor. He bent to pick it up. “I’m sure it is so. Thank you for your observation, Mr. Kirk. Now, if you’ll study with me the language of the Prime Directive in the Starfleet Manual…”
He went on to talk about the legal precedent surrounding alleged violations of the Directive in Starfleet history. But Spock was no longer paying strict attention: his thoughts were still on the boy who had asked the question. There had been a strange look in his face when Dr. Wyndham had changed the subject. Frustration, yes, but also something that Spock, with his limited understanding of human faces, found it difficult to recognize. He thought that it might have been compassion. Spock turned his head once more, discreetly, to observe the boy’s as the lecture continued. It was logical: he needed to study faces, and this young man’s expressions seemed…more vivid than most.
After a bit, Spock was afraid his gaze might become noticeable, and he turned his eyes to the front of the room once more. Dr. Wyndham was not improving. Spock was sorry, for it was vital that the students at Starfleet Academy receive a thorough grounding in ethics. A question such as the young man—Kirk—had asked might have sparked a fascinating and useful discussion in the hands of a more capable professor.
Spock found it fitting to think about how he would have responded. Yes, it was difficult to try to evaluate another culture without viewing it through the lens of one’s own cultural values. That was why the Prime Directive was not designed to evaluate. It required a subtle shift in perspective: one had to start from the assumption that whatever another culture did was valid according to its own rules, and only if one were to be confronted with indisputable evidence of a great danger—to the culture itself or to the outside world—could one interfere. It could happen only in the rarest of cases. That was one of the many points Dr. Wyndham should have been making: that of the intrinsic value of other cultures, even when an observer cannot find or recognize any traits of value in them. The value of the cultures of both Spock’s parents, for example. That was a talk that would have benefited the future Starfleet officers in the room.
At least, Spock told himself, there was one student in the room who understood that already.
That night, Spock wrote an unfavorable review of Dr. Wyndham and sent it off to his professor.
***
The rest of that week passed in its usual manner for Spock: it was filled with days spent in the lab and a few spare hours gleaned between eating and sleeping to meditate and to walk around the Academy grounds. Since coming to the Academy, Spock had found that walking in peace and quiet was almost as beneficial to his inner balance as meditation. He did not spare any thought for the Ethics class he had observed.
But the next Monday, a few minutes before one o’clock, he found himself once more in that part of the school, on his way from the cafeteria to the labs. It could at first have been termed an impulse that made him consider following the stream of students into the classroom. A second after the impulse had occurred to him, he had a justification: his professor had seemed quite affected by his negative review of the young Dr. Wyndham. Spock, while not doubting the accuracy of his report, thought that he perhaps owed it to the novice instructor to give him an additional observation. It was possible, after all, for an emotionally changeable human to give a significantly worse performance on one day than another.
Spock entered the classroom and sat, once more, on the right side of the room, where the seats curved around and he could have a view of most of the auditorium. He immediately found his eyes going to the middle section of the room. The next instant he chided himself: there was no reason the boy should sit in the same place he had last time, and, moreover, no reason Spock should find any particular interest in the sight of him. Yet a moment later the boy did sit down, just a few seats away from where he had been the previous class. He was apparently conversing with another boy, though Spock was too far away to hear what was said.
Just then the instructor took a step forward at the front of the room and cleared his throat. The students gradually quieted down. Spock saw the one called Kirk make a gesture at the other boy to be quiet.
Spock turned his eyes back to the front. This lecture, on different cultures’ attitudes towards privacy, was no more enlightening than the previous one. Dr. Wyndham seemed long on information and short on the ability to interpret it. Spock quickly became unengaged in the talk and found his eyes drifting back towards the boy called Kirk. It was a logical enough action: Kirk had proved to be interesting, while Dr. Wyndham was merely tiresome.
Kirk’s emotions were once more blazoned upon his face as he watched the lecture. Spock frequently saw frustration—an emotion he could easily understand in this setting. But occasionally Kirk’s eyes would light up with interest, as something Dr. Wyndham said evidently sparked an idea or a question. Whatever it was that made Kirk’s eyes so bright, Spock could not help but suspect it would have been more valuable to hear than the instructor’s lecture.
Upon leaving the class that day, Spock made two easy decisions. First, he chose not to amend his review of Dr. Wyndham’s teaching skill. Second, he deliberately moved his thoughts to the experiment he was currently conducting in the lab, and his highly organized mind found it easy not to think of the lecture or anything that had happened in it for the rest of the week.
But the next week, at quarter to one on Monday afternoon, he found himself inclined to attend the class again.
This time, there was no easy justification for the inclination, and this made Spock pause in concern. Rather than entering the classroom, he stopped at a window in the hallway outside and looked out at the San Francisco afternoon while he turned his mind to the problem. Any seemingly illogical desires needed to be rooted out and examined and, if found to be truly illogical, suppressed. At the moment, he found himself with a desire to attend a class he did not find interesting or profitable. Why? It could not be because of the instructor or the subject matter.
After several moments of thought, he concluded that there was only one possible reason: the interest he found in observing the young student called Kirk.
Was this a logical desire? He did have the need to improve his understanding of human facial expressions. He rarely had the opportunity to observe a single subject in great depth when he was not himself a part of the conversation and therefore distracted. While his studies of Kirk might not be easily translatable to other humans, there was merit in the idea of becoming more deeply acquainted with a single subject’s expressions. A study was not balanced unless it was approached from many angles. Attending this class, therefore, was beneficial to his education in correct interactions with humans, a skill which was essential to his ability to serve as a competent Starfleet officer someday. He would go to the class.
The lecture was as unsatisfactory as always. This time, however, Kirk asked another question—about the extent to which an officer was intrinsically responsible for harm done to any of his people, even when it did not occur as a direct consequence of his orders. Spock was understandably gratified to hear Kirk’s thoughts spoken aloud, for it gave him external verification of the thoughts he saw flitting across Kirk’s countenance. There was no other conceivable reason for his gratification in hearing Kirk speak.
That evening after leaving class, he found himself thinking of Kirk’s voice raising that question while he was in the middle of a delicate experiment. That was understandable, as it was an interesting question. But he had to force the thought aside immediately to avoid interrupting his experiment, and he determined to avoid such lapses in the future.
***
Later that week, Spock spent one of his rare evenings outside the lab. He had arranged to meet a study partner for a project they were working on for fourth-year seminar. The partner, a quiet human girl named Cindy who was of East Asian descent, had chosen to meet him in the student lounge, where there was a snack bar in addition to tables for study and group work. Spock was surprised at her choice, for he found the level of noise in such areas distracting. However, he did not find it necessary to object.
Cindy was to meet him at 7:30. Spock arrived at 7:00, for he had finished one stage of an experiment and did not have sufficient time to begin another. He sat at an empty table in the end of the student lounge farthest from the snack bar.
Despite his calculated choice of seat, there were still streams of people walking by on all sides of him. And at one point as several people passed each other, one of them was jostled so that the cup of coffee in the student’s hand overturned and spilled all over the pad of paper Spock was using to write down notes.
“Dammit! I’m so sorry.”
Spock looked up at the person who had drowned half his seminar coursework in coffee and found himself looking at the face he had stared at for so long across an Ethics classroom.
It was startling to see at such close distance someone who had existed, in his mind, purely in a classroom. That was the reason Spock gave for his temporary speechlessness. He had not before observed the color of Kirk’s eyes, for example. It was evident that they were hazel. His hair had golden highlights that Spock had not previously suspected. Kirk’s face seemed even more vividly alive at this distance than it had across half a lecture hall—even with its current expression, which was clearly chagrin.
“Here, let me help you with that.” Kirk grabbed a pile of napkins of a nearby table and aided Spock in his efforts to soak up the coffee from between the pages of his notebook. “Damn, I’m sorry. I hope you can still read this.”
“I predict that it will be salvageable.” It was true: the pages were stained and would wrinkle, but the ink was not smeared. He would be able to read it after it dried.
“I’m just glad you weren’t using a compuslate,” Kirk said.
“I must confess to some elation on that subject myself,” Spock said.
Kirk smiled—a bright, glowing smile that took all the brilliance of those moments in class when his eyes lit up and applied it to his whole face. Spock found himself strangely unable to look away.
“I’m Jim Kirk,” Kirk said, holding out a hand for Spock to shake.
Spock made sure his shields were well in place before he took the hand. Kirk’s grip was firm and friendly. “Spock,” he said.
“Spock,” Kirk repeated. He cocked his head. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? Aren’t you in Ethics class with me?”
Spock had to use his emotional controls to quell the panic that rose in his chest at those words. Had Kirk seen him watching him? But no—he would have noticed if Kirk’s eyes had turned toward him while he was looking back. Kirk must have observed him entering or leaving class.
“I am not enrolled in the course,” he said. “I was asked to observe Dr. Wyndham and evaluate his performance.”
There was a flash of something in Kirk’s eyes. For all his observation, Spock could not quite read it. He thought it might contain amusement, but it was tempered by something else. “That’s…some job.”
Spock considered his words before speaking. “I admit that it has not been an overwhelmingly positive experience.”
This earned Kirk’s laughter. Spock found this unaccountably gratifying. “That’s an understatement,” Kirk said. “I think half the people in the class have tried to transfer out already. The other half are asleep.”
“You do not appear to be asleep in class,” Spock said. It immediately occurred to him that it was a foolish thing to have said, for now he had told Kirk that he had been paying attention to him. But Kirk didn’t seem to have noticed his slip.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d just let us get into discussions about the issues,” Kirk said. He had that glint in his eyes Spock had sometimes seen when he had spoken up in class. “I keep trying to start something, but he never lets me get anywhere.”
“Yes, I have observed that,” Spock said.
“It’s a shame,” Kirk said. “We could make his job a lot easier if he’d let us get involved.”
An interesting point of view: Kirk was considering how to make the instructor’s task easier. Clearly he had noticed his suffering. “You think the other students in the class would be interested in such debates?”
Kirk shrugged. “Not everyone. But I’ve had some great discussions with some of them—you know, when we’re just sitting around in the evenings. Sometimes when we’ve had a little bit to drink.” Kirk grinned. His grin was different from his smile: less brightness, but still the same warmth.
The image he presented—that of students sitting around and discussing deep matters with each other for the mere joy of it—was not one Spock had previously associated with the other students at the Academy. He had tended to keep to himself in his leisure hours, as one of the few non-humans, and he had not believed himself to be missing anything of value in the Academy social scene. Now he wondered if he had been mistaken.
“What kind of issues do you discuss?” Spock asked, out of curiosity and out of a desire for Kirk to continue looking at him with that spark in his eyes.
As predicted, Kirk’s eyes remained alive. “Well, last weekend we got into a debate about—”
“Spock,” a new voice said. “I apologize for my lateness.”
Spock looked away from Kirk to see Cindy putting her books down on the table. She looked askance at the piles of coffee-soaked napkins.
“That was my fault,” Kirk said with a smile in her direction. He scooped up the napkins. “Looks like I’d better go. Nice to meet you, Spock!”
“Likewise,” Spock said as the glowing smile moved away. He turned back to Cindy, who was laying out the materials they would need for their project.
For the rest of the evening, his thoughts were focused on the cross-species analysis of digestive systems. Cindy was a more-than-adequate partner for him: she was a quick thinker and could concentrate almost as well as he could. She rarely smiled, a trait of which Spock approved. However, the encounter with Kirk was not absent from his mind.
He was able to admit to himself that there had been something aesthetically pleasing in Kirk’s smiles. It was the first time he had had a thought such as that. Yet after all, what was there to be ashamed of in appreciating a smiling human? It was part of another culture which he should be able to value from the outside.
In the two weeks after that, Spock came to the common area to study three separate times, one of them alone. He did not, of course, go with any particular purpose in mind beyond studying. However, he did find his eyes straying occasionally from the page, and he was forced to meditate extensively before he could eliminate these lapses of focus.
He was more careful now about how he watched Kirk during Ethics class, and he did not see him outside of class for several weeks. Then one cloudy day he was walking, as was his custom, on the northern side of the Academy grounds, where tall hedges created the illusion of more extensive grounds than were actually present. He had been walking for about ten minutes when he heard a raised voice that he recognized. He found himself focusing on it immediately.
“You didn’t have to do that to him!” Kirk’s voice—it was unmistakably his—was raised from a few hedges away.
“It’s just a joke.” Another boy’s voice.
“Not a very funny one,” Kirk replied. “You can’t do that kind of thing to people.”
“Fine, you don’t have to be involved next time,” the other boy said. Spock heard the sound of footsteps disappearing toward the school.
There was a short silence. Spock wondered whether he should continue on his way or turn in the other direction. He had not heard Kirk leave, and if he continued, he would most likely encounter him.
He chose to continue. He passed by a gap in the hedges and was surprised to Kirk standing there—he had not realized he was so close.
Kirk was looking at the ground with an expression Spock was almost certain was distraught. He looked up when he saw Spock go by, and Spock automatically paused.
“Oh, hi, Spock,” he said. His voice sounded dejected as well.
“Hello,” Spock said.
“Did you hear all that?” Kirk said. “Sorry about that.”
Spock hesitated before speaking. “It seemed as if your companion had done something amiss,” he said.
“Yeah. He says it was a joke, but if you ask me, it was in pretty poor taste.” Kirk shrugged and ran a hand through his hair with its glints of gold. “He’s always doing things like that. I wish I…” He came over to the gap in the hedge where Spock was standing, and then he seemed to hesitate. “Mind if I walk with you?”
Spock did not normally appreciate company on his walks, but he found that he did not object at this time. He gestured with his hand that Kirk should come into the lane.
“Thanks. I really need to clear my head,” Kirk said.
Spock cast a glance at him as they started walking. His face did seem more perturbed than it normally did. “If your friend is of such a cast of character, why do you continue to associate with him?”
Kirk shrugged. “He’s not all bad. He has a lot of good qualities.”
“Yet he seems to lack compassion,” Spock said.
Kirk ran a hand over his jaw. “Sometimes you have to take the bad along with the good, and, well…that’s his bad.”
Spock was silent. When he glanced over, he saw Kirk looking at him.
“You’re thinking that you wouldn’t be willing to overlook something like that,” Kirk said.
Spock considered before speaking. “Not precisely. I was thinking that the cost of such companionship might not be justified by its value in my case. But then, mine is a people that feels less of a need for companionship than yours. Our situations are not equivalent.”
Kirk was looking at him gravely. “You might be right, though,” he said. “I wonder how many of our friends are chosen because we need companionship, when we could be holding out for the people who are really worth spending time with?”
“It would not be right for one of your species to deny yourself companionship because you are waiting for an imagined ideal,” Spock said. “Yours is a social species.”
The corner of Kirk’s mouth quirked up into a grin. “And yours isn’t?”
“Not to the same extent,” Spock said. “Thought we, too, need companionship from time to time.”
Kirk smiled—the sunny smile that sent a warm glow to Spock’s chest. “Well, I’m glad you can get some now,” he said.
Spock found that he was in agreement.
They walked for a minute in silence. Then, “Is it hard for you?” Kirk asked. “Being in the middle of people so different from you, I mean.”
Spock considered for a moment. “I suppose that it is."
Kirk shot him a sideways look. “You sound as if you haven’t thought about it before.”
“Thinking about such things is not the Vulcan way,” Spock said. But that answer did not sit well with him. It was incomplete. “I suppose the true reason is that it is not a new condition for me,” he said. “I have always been somewhat…isolated. My half-Vulcan nature has made me an outsider in my own world as well as this one.”
Kirk looked at him in surprise. “You’re half-Vulcan? I didn’t know.”
“My mother is human,” he said. “But my anatomy is almost fully Vulcan, and I choose to follow the Vulcan practices I was raised in.”
“Even though the Vulcans didn’t fully accept you.” Kirk shook his head. “That must have made for a very difficult childhood.”
“It was…challenging,” Spock said. He felt uncomfortable voicing these things out loud. He had never talked about such things with anyone before. He did not know why he did so now, except that Kirk’s questions seemed so natural. They did not feel like the questions of someone gawking at an exotic oddity. They felt like…Kirk really wanted to know him. “My father was not pleased when I chose to join Starfleet.”
“Has he come around?”
“No,” Spock said. “We have not spoken since I left Vulcan.”
Kirk was looking at him now with an emotion in his eyes. Sympathy. “God, Spock, that must be horrible.” He reached up and put a hand on Spock’s arm.
Spock was not properly shielded for the touch. It was not skin to skin, but still he had an impression of Kirk’s emotions: concern, interest, the sympathy he had seen in the human’s eyes. The emotions, faint as they were, temporarily overwhelmed him so that he could not speak. Yet he did not find them objectionable as he found the constant barrage of unshielded human emotions at the Academy. These, the emotions of one human he was conversing with, he could handle. They carried with them the unique aura of Kirk’s mind. It was the first time Spock had sensed it, but it felt familiar, for it matched the thoughts he had seen flitting across Kirk’s face.
He let the psychic contact go on for several seconds longer than he needed to before he strengthened his shields. There was no shield against the physical warmth of Kirk’s hand.
“It is a fact to which I am now accustomed,” he said. “But yes, I believe there are many things lacking from my familial relations that would be fulfilling.”
To Spock’s surprise, Kirk laughed. “I love how you do that,” he said. “You're a master of understatement, Spock.”
Spock could not think of anything with which to reply. No one had ever made such a comment about his speech patterns before. Many had commented on the difference between his speech and that of a human, but none had ever found it pleasing.
He must have let his stupefaction show on his face, for Kirk looked at him and laughed again, his hand still on Spock’s arm. It was such a joyous sound that Spock could not help but be moved by it. He let the corners of his eyes relax into an expression of amusement.
Kirk suddenly stopped laughing. “That’s your smile, isn’t it?” he said. “That thing you do with your eyes.”
Spock did not let the eye-smile disappear. “I find that humans smile very often.”
“Well, maybe we have reason to,” Kirk said. “Or maybe it’s our way of whistling in the dark.”
Spock decided to find out if he could deliberately make Kirk laugh. “I do not see how the production of high-pitched musical sounds could help alleviate the difficulties of darkness.”
Kirk did laugh. “You’d be surprised,” he said.
He took his hand off Spock’s arm as they kept walking, but Spock could still feel the warmth of where it had rested.
***
Spock left Kirk at the door of the science and technology building. He would gladly have spent longer conversing, but he had made an appointment with his adviser to discuss his latest research. Kirk gave him a parting smile and headed off down the path toward the main undergraduate residence hall.
Spock found as he opened the door and entered the building that he felt a strange dizziness: as if he were floating in a zero-gravity chamber. He looked down and was relieved to see that his feet were anchored to the ground as usual. There was an emotion granting him this illusion of flight, but it was unfamiliar to him, and he was hesitant to root it out without first understanding it. It was somehow associated with the walk he had just taken—with companionship.
The emotion was still humming through his head and chest when he went down to dinner that evening. At this point, he was beginning to be concerned and to wonder when it was going to subside. He had made plans to work with Cindy that evening, but he considered that perhaps he ought to meditate instead. Clearly, he was emotionally unbalanced in some way.
He sat down at a table in the main cafeteria and caught sight of Kirk on the other side of the room. The pitch of the humming in his head seemed to rise. For no reason that he could discern, the mere sight of Kirk was gratifying. He had never found that to be so with another person before.
Kirk was moving through the crowd towards a table. For a moment Spock had the irrational hope that Kirk might come join him. Instead, he watched him sit down next to a girl, who turned and smiled at him.
A slight crack appeared in Spock’s elation.
The girl reached out a hand to Kirk, and Kirk took it. Kirk’s smile had that eager intensity Spock had seen during his first conversation with Kirk and several times today. Kirk leaned forward towards the girl, and their mouths met in a kiss.
Spock felt the humming feeling vanish in an instant. In its absence, he felt something cold and empty, like pain, but not of the body. He found that he was having difficulty drawing breath. His appetite seemed to have vanished—he found, in its place, a strong desire to leave immediately—but eating was a logical action. He finished the food on his plate as quickly as he could and then got up to dispose of his dishes and leave without looking at Kirk.
Once out in the hall, Spock slowed his pace and searched within himself. What was causing these emotional and physical disturbances? Obviously his emotional imbalance was more serious than he had thought. A few seconds had been enough to turn him from euphoria to despair, and for no discernable cause. There was no reason for him to be surprised to see Kirk behaving intimately with a girl. He was outgoing and attractive by what Spock understood to be human standards. Was Spock so shocked at such a public display of affection in one whom he hoped to consider a friend? There was no call for such disapproval. The cultural standards of his own people could not be applied here. Yet he had been undeniably disturbed at the sight.
He very badly needed to meditate.
But to break his arrangement with Cindy for such a personal matter would have been dishonorable. He returned to his room for his things, then went to meet with her as they had planned. He found, though, that his concentration was inferior to what it ought to have been.
“Spock, are you all right?” Cindy asked, when Spock had twice given her the wrong page number for a reference they were citing.
“I am fine,” he said. This was true: in all physical respects, he was in excellent condition. There was no need to tell her of the persistent feeling of disquiet that he could neither understand nor eliminate.
Cindy began telling him that he ought to be sleeping more. Spock tuned her out and did a few simple exercises for the restoration of emotional control. His lapses were truly becoming egregious, and he did not understand their cause.
***
He went to the Ethics class on Monday as usual, but he did not watch Kirk. It was a compromise: he could not bear to stay away, as logic dictated, but he could manage to listen to logic so far as it told him that watching Kirk’s face, for whatever reason, was dangerous to his emotional health.
As he was leaving class, he heard feet running up to him and a voice calling his name.
“Spock!”
He turned and saw Jim Kirk running down the hallway towards him.
“I was hoping I could catch you,” Kirk said. He slowed down to a walk. “Want to grab dinner?”
Spock looked at him in confusion. “It is four o’clock.”
“Yeah, I know,” Kirk said, “but I always eat early on Mondays. A bunch of us play soccer in the gym around five.” He looked at Spock with an expression Spock interpreted as hopeful. “You don’t have to eat if you don’t want. You can just come sit.”
“I see no obstacle to that,” Spock said.
Kirk grinned at him. “Or you can have a cup of coffee. I promise not to spill it on you this time.”
They went to the servery, where Spock dialed a cup of tea from the drinks replicator. Kirk looked at it with interest when Spock sat down across from him. “I didn’t know they did tea.”
“The replicator in the servery can produce over five thousand varieties of beverages.”
“Seriously? Have you tried all of them?”
“I have limited myself mainly to the teas. I find their warmth to be beneficial.”
“Because Vulcan is so much warmer than Earth,” Kirk said. It wasn’t a question.
Spock nodded. “At times I find the regulation of body temperature in this climate to be challenging,” he admitted.
Kirk was looking at him with a strange expression in his eyes that Spock could not quite read. “I can’t get over how much courage you must have to be here,” he said.
Spock found that, as happened so many times in his conversations with Kirk, he did not have any words to respond with. He was caught by Kirk’s eyes, and even if he couldn’t read what was in them, they were making his head feel strangely light. It was almost a relief when Kirk broke his gaze and started attacking the plateful of food in front of him. “So, I wanted to ask you a question about something Dr. Wyndham said today,” he said.
They spent the rest of the hour talking about the difficulties of defining sentience, until Kirk had to run off to his soccer game. Spock went off to the lab with a feeling dangerously resembling the euphoria of a few days before. It took many hours of meditation that night before he could will it away.
The following Monday he walked more slowly than usual when he left ethics class, and it was not a surprise to him when he saw Kirk coming towards him, a big smile on his face. Kirk seemed to smile more easily than the average human, but Spock found that he did not object. That week they talked about the difficulties of governing a federation and maintaining the rights of individual planets.
“It’s the most important thing the Federation has,” Kirk said. He was speaking with great enthusiasm and stabbing his fork into his pile of spaghetti. “Without individual planets, the Federation would be just like…an empty bookshelf without any books. No content.”
Spock found himself amused at Kirk’s use of such an antiquated analogy. “Have you seen many other worlds?” he asked.
“No, not yet,” Kirk said. He smiled a half-smile, and looked up at Spock through his eyelashes, as if he were embarrassed about what he was about to say. “But someday, I’m going to be a starship captain, and then I’ll see them all.”
“I do not doubt it,” Spock said gravely, and he was rewarded with a wider smile. If there was anyone he would trust with his life aboard a starship, it would be James Kirk.
***
Thereafter, dinner with Kirk became a regular part of Spock’s weekly schedule. He occasionally found himself thinking about it at other times of the week, and once he even caught himself wishing that Monday evening would come more quickly. Usually the two of them discussed the topic of the Ethics class they had just attended, but often they branched off into more personal matters as well. Spock believed, based on the evidence of Kirk’s face, that the human enjoyed their dinners as well.
One Monday in late April, however, Spock had just begun to wait for Jim outside of the Ethics classroom when he saw him storming up with unmistakable anger on his face.
“Spock!” Jim said. He was brandishing a piece of paper. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” Spock asked.
“This.” Kirk thrust the piece of paper into his hands.
It was the list of assignments for graduating seniors. Spock himself had been posted to Alphalon Science Laboratories, the top Starfleet research facility in the Federation. He had been pleased to receive the news. “I did not think it would be of concern to you.”
“It wouldn’t be of concern to me? What, you’re going halfway across the galaxy, and you thought I wouldn’t care?”
“It is not halfway across the galaxy, Jim. It is only—”
“I don’t care how far it actually is,” Kirk cut in. “The point is, why didn’t you tell me?”
There was anger in Jim’s face and in his voice. Spock was at a loss to understand it. “I did not occur to me that you would wish to know.”
“It’s the kind of thing friends tell each other,” Kirk said. “I would have liked to know you were leaving.”
“Did you not already know that I would leave at the end of the year?”
“Yes, but…” Kirk looked down at the ground, near Spock’s feet. “I mean, I guess I didn’t know. You could have been sticking around. There are lots of Starfleet postings in San Francisco.”
“There is very little for one with my science background,” Spock said.
Kirk nodded, looking to the side now, still not meeting Spock’s eyes. Spock felt himself growing uncomfortable. There were expectations concerning human friendship that he did not understand, and he did not want to misstep. “Does it sadden you to learn that I am leaving?”
“Well…yeah, you’re my friend, I don’t want you to go,” Kirk said. He finally looked up at Spock. “Doesn’t it sadden you?”
Spock had not considered it. There was no place in the galaxy that he could consider home at this point in his life, and so relocation had not been a cause for any particular distress. “Such sadness would not be a Vulcan experience,” he said.
“Yeah,” Kirk said. He was looking away again, and Spock heard him take a long breath in. “Yeah.”
Spock could not think of anything else to say, and so he changed the subject. “Do you wish to go to dinner?”
“No, I can’t today,” Kirk said. His eyes met Spock’s again, and there was the ghost of a smile on his face. “Next week, though, okay?”
“Of course,” Spock said.
He stood and watched as Kirk walked away. Spock still held the list of seniors’ assignments and the feeling that he did not quite understand the exchange that had just taken place.
***
The next week when they had dinner after class, Kirk seemed normal, and Spock concluded that he had not, after all, done anything to disturb their friendship the previous week. This was a relief to him. His friendship with Kirk was the first relationship to which he could truly put that name, and it was more gratifying than he would have expected.
“Some of the guys in my room are having a party tonight,” Kirk said that week as they were eating. (Spock had long ago adjusted his meal schedule on Monday to give him sufficient appetite for a four o’clock dinner.) “You should come.”
Spock raised one eyebrow. “I am not in the custom of attending such parties.”
“I know,” Kirk said, “but it’s going to be really boring otherwise. It’ll be my roommates and all their swim team friends. I need you to come make it bearable.”
Spock kept his eyebrow raised. “And how, may I ask, would my presence accomplish such a thing?”
Kirk grinned. “At least then I’d have someone to talk to.”
Spock took a bite of his salad and considered whether he would, in fact, like to attend this party. In any case, it was irrelevant. “I have already made plans to work on a project with a classmate.”
“Oh,” Kirk said. “Well, no big deal. Come by later if you get the chance. My suite.”
“I will consider it,” Spock said.
***
A few hours later Spock showed up at Cindy’s room for their preappointed study session. It was unusual that she should request that he come to her room, but he supposed it was because she desired them to be uninterrupted. They were only a few weeks away from completing their research project, and it was more than usually important that they be able to focus.
When Cindy opened the door, Spock blinked in surprise. Instead of her ’fleet uniform, Cindy was wearing a dress made of green velvet, and the room had been lit with a strand of small white lights that were certainly not regulation. “Is there a special occasion I was not informed about?” Spock asked, mystified
Cindy made a noise that Spock identified as giggling. He had not thought of her as one who would make such a sound. “I just thought we might want to talk in a different setting,” she said.
Spock took a cautious step inside. Cindy shut the door behind him and went across the room to sit on the sofa. Spock followed slowly and sat down beside her. She was looking at him with an expression that, he found to his frustration, he could not read. There was more color than usual in her cheeks.
“I do not believe this will be the optimal place for us to work,” he said. “There is no convenient location for our books.”
“I don’t want to work,” Cindy said. She leaned forward and clasped her hands in her laps. “Spock, I want to talk.”
Her eyes were distinctly shining. Spock found that he was growing uncomfortable. “About what do you wish like to speak?”
“About us, silly.” She gave another giggle.
“Cindy—” he said.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
Spock could honestly have said that he hadn’t. “I cannot say…”
“Look at how well-matched we are,” she said, cutting him off. She was still leaning forward, looking at him eagerly. “We’re both scientists. We’re serious about our work. We know that we’re intellectually compatible, and we have similar temperaments. Our characters are perfect for one another.”
Spock stopped for a moment to consider this. This had not occurred to him before, but he saw that she made some good points. They were similar in a number of important ways. He was unlikely ever to find one who was so similar to him outside of Vulcan. If he had been searching for a human mate…
Suddenly Cindy was moving, and he saw that her face was approaching his. Her head tilted and her lips came against his in what was unmistakably a kiss.
Spock pulled back sharply. To touch another person there, on the mouth, was a gesture of the greatest intimacy. She did not have the right.
“What’s wrong?” Cindy asked.
Spock rose to his feet. He found himself trembling, as if in anger. He had felt the brush of her aura as her lips had touched his, and he had been repelled as if by the wrong end of a magnet. There was nothing in her for him.
“No,” he said. “I am sorry, Cindy. But I cannot consider you that way.”
Disappointment and hurt were on her face. “But…”
She looked so dejected that Spock was moved to compassion for her. But he could not give what he did not have to offer. “I am sorry,” he said again. And he turned and left the apartment.
***
Outside in the hallway he walked for a few minutes without heed to direction. His heart was still beating faster than normal from the shock of the situation. Her kiss had shaken him, though it should not have had the power to. Clearly he needed to work at strengthening his shields. If she had not taken him by surprise…
But she had, and he had felt her aura and had been repulsed.
It had not occurred to him to worry about such a thing before. It was likely that the imperative of Vulcan biology would fall upon him at some point. What if, when he of necessity touched another, that person’s aura…?
Footsteps behind him cut into his thoughts. “Spock!” a familiar voice said.
Spock turned to see Jim Kirk coming up behind him. His face was bright, as it sometimes was when something in a conversation made him very happy. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” Kirk said.
“My study appointment was cut short,” Spock said. He had a sudden vision of Cindy’s lips coming towards him and did not choose to elaborate.
Kirk grinned. “So that means you’re coming to the party after all, huh?”
Spock found suddenly that he had the desire for such a distraction. He let his eyes relax into the beginning of a smile. “To use a human expression, I suppose it could not hurt,” he said.
***
The room was painfully loud when they entered. Spock flinched at the aural barrage. There was a large crowd of human students standing around the room with plastic cups in their hands, not dancing, though dance music blasted from a set of speakers.
“So, what kind of effect does alcohol have on Vulcans?” Kirk asked over the noise.
Spock raised an eyebrow. “I believe its effect is similar to that on humans,” he said.
Kirk had evidently caught the whole sentence. “You believe?” he asked with a grin.
“I have not conducted extensive experimentation,” he admitted.
Kirk’s grin got wider. “Oh, we’ll have to get you something good.”
Spock followed him to the suite’s kitchen. Kirk must have been accurate in his statement that this was a group of people he did not know well, for no one tried to interrupt their passage. Spock watched as Kirk went to the table that seemed to be serving as a makeshift bar and began combining different-colored liquids. Spock moved closer, fascinated by the complexity of the concoction.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Oh, you’ll love it,” Kirk said, handing him the cup. “Here.”
Spock took a sip and raised both eyebrows. He could feel the alcohol soaking into his system from the tiny quantity on his tongue.
He handed it back to Kirk. “I do not believe I can drink this.”
“What? Why?”
“Because it would result in my being flat on my back on the linoleum floor of this kitchen in approximately twenty-eight minutes.”
Kirk laughed long and loud at that. “All right, fine,” he said, waving his hand, “I’ll mix you something weaker.” He took the drink back from Spock and grinned. “I’ll drink this one.”
A minute later Spock had something in his hand which was darker in color and had far fewer varieties of liquid in it. He took a sip and considered. It was still alcoholic, but much less so, and it had a pleasant tang. “That is quite nice,” he said.
Kirk took a large sip of the drink he had taken back from Spock and shook his head. “Not up for the Long Island Ice Tea, huh? It’s a shame.”
Spock considered the cup in Kirk’s hand. “I see nothing about it that resembles an insular land mass, either long or otherwise,” he said.
Kirk laughed again, which had been Spock’s intention. He put a hand on Spock’s arm and steered him back towards the main party.
Spock had been correct in his assessment of Kirk’s limited acquaintance at the party. He was surprised, for from his observations of Kirk, it had become obvious to him that the human was friendly with quite a few people at the Academy. But this party was largely male—presumably the swim team Kirk had made reference to—and had few of the young women who were so often talking to Kirk when Spock saw him in the cafeteria. Spock found that he was illogically glad of this.
“I must inquire as to the choice of music,” he said in a necessarily loud voice once they were back in the living room.
“What about it?” Kirk asked. They were stationed by the windows.
“It would appear to be dance music, and yet no one is dancing.”
Kirk laughed. “Yeah, that’s weird, isn’t it? Parties are like that. Sometimes people start dancing later in the evening.”
Spock nodded. He found he did not understand the appeal of parties when contrasted with quieter, less crowded environments in which people might converse. But he had no immediate desire to leave this one.
Kirk asked him how his research was going, and they spent several minutes discussing the difficulties of cross-species comparison of enzyme function. Then the conversation turned to the role of science in Starfleet, and how the ’Fleet’s many different purposes should be balanced. The two of them were largely undisturbed in their conversation, except for the few times one of Kirk’s roommates would come over and slap Kirk on the back or bump his fist or one of the many other inexplicable ways human males seemed to show camaraderie.
“Did you always know you wanted to join Starfleet?” Kirk asked. He had worked his way through his first drink, with such speed that Spock was impressed at his coherency, and was now on his second. Spock was only halfway through his first. He could feel the faint effects of the alcohol, but it was not debilitating.
He shook his head. “I believed for a long time that I could find my place on Vulcan and be content. It was only when I was in my late teens that I came to believe I was mistaken.”
“What would you have done if you’d stayed?”
“I would have attended the Vulcan Science Academy,” Spock said. “I had been accepted there. I understand that I was the first accepted student to turn them down.”
Kirk laughed. “They must have loved that.”
“I believe they were less than pleased.”
Kirk laughed again. He was laughing and smiling even more frequently this evening than usual, and Spock wondered if he should credit the alcohol. “What did they do?”
“Nothing, of course,” Spock said. “It is the Vulcan way to accept what is. However, they urged me quite strongly to reconsider my decision.”
Kirk smiled at him over his drink. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” he said.
Spock met his eyes, and for a moment they simply looked at each other. Spock felt something building in his chest, though he didn’t know what name to put to it. Finally he had to look away. “What about you?” he asked. “When did you discover your vocation?”
When he looked back at Kirk, he saw that his cheeks were pinker than usual—another effect of the alcohol, he surmised. It was a pleasing color. “I think I knew when I was ten,” Kirk said. “My…well, my dad had just died, and things were tough. Sam—my older brother—felt like he had to be the strong one, and I saw how hard it was for him. I wanted to help him, and to help my mom, and I couldn’t. I hated not having any power to change things. I think that’s why I wanted to be a Starfleet officer: because I wanted to be able to change things, to do some good.” He laughed. “I think I had some better reasons by the time I actually decided to join. But really, who wouldn’t want to?” His eyes had that intensity they sometimes gained. “Who wouldn’t want to see the stars?”
Spock looked into the open face of his friend. “I am sorry for the loss of your father.”
Kirk looked back at him. “I guess I still haven’t talked about that much.”
“I grieve with thee.” The formal Vulcan statement coming out of his mouth surprised Spock, and seemed to surprise Kirk as well. He looked embarrassed and took a large sip of his drink.
“Listen to me,” he said, looking away. “I would never say these things to a friend, and here I am—”
He broke off as a horrified expression came over his face. His eyes cut back to Spock, who was merely mystified and who looked at him curiously.
“Oh, Christ.” Kirk looked away again. “What am I doing?”
He set his almost-empty drink on the windowsill. “Spock, I have to go,” he said. “I…sorry.” He turned and pushed his way through the crowd and out of the room.
For a second, Spock stood there, completely at a loss. Whatever change had just come over Kirk had been so abrupt that he could not trace its cause. Had it perhaps been their discussion of his father that had upset him?
He considered whether it was wise to go after him. Part of him—the part that did not generally associate with the other students at the Academy, and which was hesitant ever to claim the word “friend”—that part of him told him to let Kirk go. But he did not wish Jim to be alone and upset. He put his drink down next to Kirk’s and wound his way out of the party.
Kirk was most of the way down the hallway when Spock emerged. Spock followed him at a distance: not trying to catch up, just staying close enough to be able to see where he went. He did not take any care to be silent, but Kirk did not turn around. Spock followed him down to the main entrance of the dorm. He saw Kirk open the door and step outside, stumbling a bit as he did so, and Spock knew he was right to follow. Kirk was in no condition to be wandering outside alone.
Outside, Kirk walked quickly towards the hedges. He seemed to be walking steadily enough now, his hands shoved in his pockets and his head down. Spock considered turning back and letting him be alone, if that was his desire. But there had been such distress on his face as he’d left the party. Spock did not know what had caused it, and what role he himself might have played, but he could not let Jim go off into the darkness to be unhappy alone if there was something he could do to prevent it.
There were fewer lights by the hedges. In the darkness, Spock stumbled over an unseen root in the ground, and the world spun a bit. He remembered that he was not quite sober himself. The sensation was a fairly new one to him. He had imbibed alcohol before, but not to the extent that he had tonight. The world had a sheen of dizziness to it.
He came to the beginning of a row of hedges and saw Kirk standing at its end, hands still in his pockets. He turned around as Spock started walking towards him.
“I wasn’t saying that we weren’t friends,” he said. His gaze was steady: Spock could see his eyes in the light of the lamp a few hedges over. They were gray at the moment, a clear gray that Spock felt he could look straight through.
“What were you saying?” Spock asked, coming closer. Here in the hedges, all of the sounds of the Academy behind seemed to be gone. He could see Jim’s eyelashes sparkling in the dim light of the lamp, as if they were wet. The world spun dizzily at the corners.
“That I…haven’t had a friend like you before. That you’re different.”
Spock took a few steps closer. He wasn’t sure why. There was still distress in Jim’s eyes. His head was tilted back so that he could look up at Spock, and his face wore the expression of openness Spock had seen at the party.
“How am I different?” Spock asked.
He was close enough now that could smell the scent of Jim’s breath. There was the alcohol, and also another scent, something both familiar and delectable that he could not quite name at the moment. It made his head swim.
Kirk didn’t move away. “It’s just that you’re…”
Their heads were moving closer now. That scent reached into Spock and moved something deep inside of him so that he felt as if he couldn’t breathe any longer.
“You’re…you,” Jim’s voice whispered.
The next moment, the lips that spoke those words were against his own. Their mouths were slightly open, and the contact was soft and warm. Spock felt a thrill shoot straight through him to all extremities. If Cindy’s kiss had been the desert sand, this was the ocean. Jim’s mouth was tipped up towards him, open and giving. Spock felt as if he were drinking something, as if he were endlessly thirsty and finally, finally had the goblet to his lips. This aura…the feeling of Jim settled around him, and Spock felt he could never get enough.
Jim’s mouth opened a little wider under his, and the rough-wet tip of a tongue touched against his lips. Spock heard himself moan aloud. Jim’s lips moved against Spock’s, and his tongue came farther forward. It touched Spock’s own tongue and sent a tingling shock straight to his groin. Kirk’s mouth was not close enough to him. He pressed his mouth over Jim’s as closely as he could, and their tongues moved alongside each other.
Kirk suddenly sucked Spock’s tongue into his mouth, and it felt to Spock as if all the air in his body went with it. He gasped and felt a weakness in his legs. His hands moved to Kirk’s head and touched that golden hair where it brushed against the soft skin of the back of his neck. He had wanted to touch that hair for so long, without realizing it. Kirk’s arm was around him. Spock could feel each of Kirk’s five fingers pressing into his back through the fabric of his tunic and forcing him closer. Kirk’s other hand went to Spock’s ear, stroking, fingering the tip. And the whole time that mouth, that wonderful, delicious mouth…
Spock did not notice when they started to bring their lower bodies together. It seemed necessary to have more of this man, to press himself against him as much as possible. This, he knew suddenly, was what he had wanted from the very beginning: Kirk’s body against his. Their mouths could never be separate again. He sucked on Jim’s tongue and heard him moan. Spock's hands slid down from Jim’s neck to his back. If only they could slide into each other, so that this warm flesh against his might be a part of him, so that it would never go away…
Their legs hitched closer together, and suddenly dazzles of electricity burst into Spock’s world. His penis, harder than it had ever before, came up against another, and the combination seemed to give birth to fire. Red-hot golden flames burned all along where their bodies touched so that Spock thought they might go up in a conflagration. He wanted to go up with the conflagration. He made a groaning noise and started to move…
Then—emptiness. Cold. Kirk wrenched himself away so abruptly that Spock felt the sudden absence like a wound. He gasped and fell back a pace.
Kirk stood a few feet away, staring at him with a dark-eyed expression that Spock, with all his practice, could not read. Then he turned and ran off, unsteadily, down the lane of hedges. Near the end he crashed into one of the bushes, and there were muffled curses before he disappeared out of sight.
Spock had to put out a hand to the hedge for balance. He was still breathing heavily, half from arousal and half from the shock of Kirk’s departure.
It was clear now what a fool he’d been, what a fool he’d been for months. How could he have thought, in that moment, that he was desired in return? He reminded himself of the amount of alcohol Jim had consumed, the emotional distress he had been in. Spock should have considered those factors before accepting Jim’s reaction as genuine desire.
The fire had been in him only. He had forced it upon Jim, and Jim had been burned.
How could he have done such a thing? He should have recognized the desire in himself from the first moment it had appeared. He should never have let himself inflict it on Kirk. The alcohol he himself had imbibed was not enough to excuse it—there was no excuse for what he had done.
And yet, at the same time, he felt bereft not to be touching Jim. The evening had grown chill, and he shivered. His breath gusted in white clouds in the frosty air, and he thought of how it had been contained in Kirk’s mouth, and wished that it might be so again…
No! He could not let himself begin to yearn. He would deal himself the one punishment befitting a Vulcan: that of living with the pain of emotions that should have been controlled long ago.
He had the sudden desire to sink down onto the grass and draw his knees to his chest and stop thinking forever. But there was no logic in sleeping on the damp ground on a cold night. He began to walk back to his dorm room.
The walk seemed to take so long that he doubted the accuracy of his own time sense. His boots echoed on the pavement of the campus paths. Finally he entered his building and blinked uncomfortably against the brightness of the lights. There was a couple embracing halfway down the hall: a boy and a girl murmuring things into each other’s ears. Spock turned his head away as he passed. He could still taste Jim’s mouth on his.
***
The next morning Spock went down to breakfast later than usual. He not slept the night before: he had sat up and meditated until he thought he might be able to go through the next few days without the memory of the past night’s events haunting his thoughts. The meditation had been effective up to a point. His thoughts as he walked towards the cafeteria were properly on the work he had to accomplish that day. But as he came through the door on the upper level of the cafeteria, he saw a golden head down below that made the yawning chasm open within him again.
Spock froze by the wall next to the door. He could not bear the sight of him. It was a shameful, non-Vulcan reaction, but it pervaded his entire body. He could not bear it. Jim was so nearby. Those arms that had held him last night…
Spock clamped down on the thoughts. He closed his eyes and stood still for several minutes and exercised the bodily controls that would sweep the negative emotions away. Soon the sickening feeling of emptiness had faded. But he did not trust his equilibrium to last him through a meal in the same room as Jim. He turned and went back through the door and straight to his laboratory, where he made a decision.
It was clear that he could not trust himself to maintain his emotional control around Jim. Further, it was clear from Jim’s behavior last night that what Spock seemed to want—illogical though it might be—would not be welcome to him. Therefore, the healthy course of action would be to avoid any further contact between them.
It would not be difficult. Spock had only six weeks left at the Academy. He would simply avoid common areas, including the large main cafeteria. The biology department had a small replicator that he could use to procure his meals. He would spend his time in the lab, working, or in his room, sleeping. His walks through the hedges would have to be sacrificed, but some sacrifice was necessary for his emotional stability. There would be nothing of significance missing from his life.
***
He saw Jim Kirk one more time before he shipped off to Alphalon Science Labs. It was at the entrance of the main corridor of the school. Students were milling about between classes. Spock had needed to get a form signed by his advisor, and he had been in the lab for so long that he had forgotten to consider at what times the hallways would be crowded. He was threading his way through one side of the crowd when he saw him. That face that he would have spotted anywhere.
Jim saw him, too. He was all the way on the other side of the hall, but their eyes met and locked.
Spock felt himself suddenly deprived of the ability to move or even to breathe. He could not read what was in Jim’s eyes. They stared at each other, and though other students must have come in between, Spock did not notice. He felt that he wanted this to continue: that though the pain had returned to his chest, it would be better to be standing here looking at him forever, never to have him, than to be sundered…
Then someone pulled on Kirk’s arm, and Kirk’s gaze was torn away. Spock felt its absence like a blow. It was a girl: she had taken Kirk’s hand to pull him after her, and she kept hold of his hand as they moved away. Kirk followed her. His eyes flicked back to Spock’s, just once, and then he looked away again. In a moment he and the girl had vanished into the crowd.
Spock’s breath was coming shallow and fast. He could not move. He was paying the price for irrational behavior: the life seemed to be draining out of his chest again. It took three slow, deep breaths and the sternest possible application of his mental controls before he could make his feet move forward with the crowd again. Even then he was not walking steadily.
The hallways were emptying out; class had begun. Spock was relieved: he did not need the added drain on his mental shields at the moment. He was busy fighting scorn and shame for his illogical wishes of a few moments ago. He stopped by a bank of windows and stood still once more, braced on the sill, until his breathing was steady. What was it about that human that made his controls disappear and his logic seem irrelevant?
Clearly, Spock could never see him again.
Three weeks later, he boarded the small cruiser that would take him to Alphalon Science.