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Leave all mail for Spock here.

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Leave all phone calls for Spock here.

Spock isn't certain what to do with it.

The creature is small, thick-furred and quadropedal, with two curling horns on its head and extremely long, filament-like whiskers. From what he has been able to tell, it's a desert-dwelling creature. A scavenger. It may have occupied a niche in its homeworld like jackals did on the Earth of his own universe.

In any event, it doesn't belong in the city, skulking around in garbage cans for scraps, risking being made sick or getting injured on a street, or any number of other unnatural fates. Spock was careful with the use of 'unnatural,' but it certainly seemed to fit in this case. For a raccoon to live in a city was no longer unnatural. They had evolved to make city-dwelling ideal for many populations. This creature had no such advantages yet.

He still had not figured out what he planned to do with it once he got close enough to it, which he has already berated himself about mentally -- twice. But it seems better to act, than to not act at all, out of indecision. He never was as slow to move on such things as his Vulcan brethren. It is not ethical to make a pet of a wild creature, but neither is it to allow it to continue suffering unnecessarily.

Approaching from the mouth of the alley, he gets fairly near; near enough to hold out the long pole with the collar attached. If he could get it over the animal's head, he could cinch it, and carefully move the animal into a breathable bag he'd brought to contain it, until it could be moved.

But it's too wiley for him, and when the barest brush of the collar comes, it takes off -- slow but erratic -- toward the other end of the alley with Spock in pursuit.

The state of it is plain from the glimpse he'd caught, though. Despite the thick, matter fur, its ribs are obvious. It hasn't eaten properly. It's filthy.

Things had been going along ... acceptably. A more charitable individual than Spock might even have said that they'd been good, but 'good' had a variety of definitions, and was both inexact and more than he wanted to say at once. It might imply that there had been no set-backs. There had. But they were set-backs of acceptable nature, simply part of the process of the remodeling project.. Not outside of the realm of anticipation.

Spock had never had to live in a home at the same time that it was being worked on before, though. His home on Vulcan had not needed any work by the time he had been born into his family. And if Starfleet had needed to rennovate, they had simply moved individuals across campus momentarily.

Expectation had not been quite the same as reality. There were sections of floor covered with white paper, taped down to protect from construction dust, and that dust both tracked everywhere and often lingered for days in the air in the home, bothering his sensitive nose, along with the sharp smell of paint. In their reality, they had long since created dustless tools, paints with no VOCs. Spock did not want to feel like the fact that none of this was available in Darrow irritated him.

But it did.

I don't want to eat in here," he finally said, declaring it -- for him, nearly out of the blue -- where he stood in the middle of the kitchen with his hands resting lightly on his hips. He didn't add one of the myriad, unhelpful, petty things he might have, at the end of the sentence. He only looked at Jim expectantly for ideas about what to do for dinner, if not make it in the kitchen. Their home was now not a negligible distance away from the city proper.

Nobody would deliver that far.

Attending open houses has been ... more work than Spock had anticipated, on all fronts. He'd never had the experience before, having grown up in his father's home, ancestral property which had been handed, in turn, down from his father's father, and so on, ad nauseum. That home did not exist anymore. Vulcan did not exist anymore, not in Spock's particular reality.

And now, for the time being, in this particular reality, nor did the Starship, Enterprise.

Jim Kirk is here, however, which, though he would never put it into so many words, certainly not in front of those he was not truly close to, means that Spock has a home Regardless..

Physical walls, an address, notwithstanding, so long as Jim Kirk was nearby, Spock knew that he had a home, in one manner or another. Though Jim, perhaps, could have picked a more convenient time to have an unfortunate, rushed lab accident. Though Spock is impossibly grateful that Jim was not injured permanently, in ways that the technology in Darrow was not as prepared to heal, there was still, maybe, a modicum of humor to be found.

Winter was a terrible time to be looking for a home.

They had already gone through multiple real estate magazines, attended multiple open houses, but still here they found themselves. Spock moved back to the table that Jim sat at in the small, warm cafe with two paper cups in his hands. One for Jim, and one for himself, which he slid across to Jim as he took his seat, folding long limbs onto a stool suited for them.

"I apologize," he tells Jim. "I don't want a swimming pool, so it was a dealbreaker." He lifts his eyes to search for Jim's bright blue, apologetic and fondly warm. There is something to be said for the tender amusement that the entire situation, strangely, fills him with.

Spock finds Flavia's apartment easily enough, but stands outside her door, uncharacteristically, titivating with the sleeves of his sweater for a few lengthy, thoughtful pauses before he reaches out to rap on the door with his knuckles three times crisply.

It isn't that he's uncertain about what he plans to do. He's very certain of that. Aware that his liberal relationship with the use of his abilities is a minority among his people, especially now in Darrow, he has difficulty not viewing it to some degree as an ethical requirement to use them. Wisely. But to give a young girl inspiration is certainly wise.

He doesn't want to hear otherwise.

He isn't certain she lives alone, and lifts his voice, leaning closer to the door. "Flavia de Luce? This is Spock."

By the time that Jim manages the both of them into the hospital and straight past the complaining triage nurse, it is, almost undoubtedly, a good thing that Spock is leaning more than a little of his weight on Jim's shoulder, feeling unsteady in the knees, with twitching and cramping in his toes. The cab-ride there had not been long, but long enough for Spock's fever to rise. Enough to tip the scales on an already unbalanced mind.

He barely has the prescience to ask for the man he's come to see - the only man in Darrow General he will allow to see him, whom he trusts for good reason. That, he manages. That, and little else.

The past three minutes have been a hazy string of arguments, one-sided, between Spock and Jim, and Spock and random passersby, such that it may even have been ideal for Jim to have stunned Spock. Except that Spock is still the best account of what might be wrong with Spock. The words he's managed in Standard since being half-dragged through the sliding glass doors are few and far between.

Ripping away from Jim's arms, he grabs a passing male nurse by a shirtful of his scrubs, pulling him near with anxious, fearful eyes.

"Tsi-veh OChase re? Re?" He gives the man a small shake. "Doctor Chase re?"

Spock stopped by the edge of a sidewalk bazaar to look at stacks of books, neatly bound and smelling lightly of the acidic treated paper. Jim was more a fan of paper books than he was, charmed, Spock thinks, by their material presence, the way they could be experienced with senses, rather than just read on a screen. He doesn't completely understand, or agree, but he does know that not everything is available here as an electronic document. And that a book would make a decent standard gift for Jim, although there is no particular occasion for a gift.

He knows the other man would simply feel gratified that he'd been on Spock's mind.

Absorbed as he is in his task of looking for an appropriate one, he doesn't immediately notice when a young man in a wool cap slips close to snatch his satchel off of his shoulder. He's stolen Spock's belongings.

The idea is so absurd to someone born and raised on Vulcan that it is nearly fifteen seconds before Spock is able to respond at all, feeling caught up in the surreal feel of it all.

He starts off after the man an impulse later, knowing that he can't afford to lose his things. The one truly valuable item that came with him from his reality is in there, his PADD. He can hardly imagine the worst that might result in its theft.

Spock's been patronizing a local grower for the entirety of the spring and summer, an organic grower who sets up show in a small number of locations in the city. Today it is the young man with the long honey-brown hair behind the register, which is stationed just outside of the city park.

As Spock reaches out for a red bell pepper that's caught his attention, considering the possibility of a stir fry, the cashier stops him.

"You buy this stuff a lot," the man, almost a boy really, says in a drawn-out drawl of a voice.

"Because I eat 'this stuff' on a daily basis," Spock replies.

The boy raises both hands, almost mockingly defensive. "S'alright, I didn't mean nothin'. You're a good customer, is all. Hey--" he says, leaning closer to Spock's puzzled, straight face from behind the rows of celery and cucumbers. "You're a real good customer. Think you'd be interested in a more special product? 'Cause you seem hella discreet and stuff."

"Special?" Spock asks, more dismissive than actually curious.

"Special. For you, I got Blackberry Kush, Pineapple Express. It's all great stuff, it'd help a dude like you out in serious ways."

"I didn't know that you sold fruits."

He cannot tell Jim.

There is not much, anymore, which moves Spock quite so strongly to that decision. There is not much, anymore, which he would keep private from James T. Kirk. Not much is not nothing at all.

But someone must be told.

Kuchiki Rukia, it comes down to, and Spock seeks her out across town, finding her apartment listed along with the others -- he would be more uncomfortable with all of the databases available in the city if it were not plainly true that those which they might most want to keep that information from are those which would not be affected by any petty and strong-minded attempts to obfuscate it by removing, by hiding, by keeping on the move.

He sighs, outright, pausing outside of Rukia's door for a lengthy moment of reconsideration, before Spock acknowledges that the reconsideration is only nervousness, perhaps fear, and he knocks. There is no reason to compromise the situation because of emotion that he, by right, ought not to be allowing himself to acknowledge, and he swallows it.

His knuckles rap on the wood of Rukia's door with a steady rhythm, and Spock waits patiently in front of it for signs of life form within, tucking the lapels of his jacket closer around his neck in the hallway and hoping to avoid much attention.

He had watched Jim enter the building with the girl through the window of his apartment some time ago, but had chosen not to make it his business - and even now, he was interested more on a professional level than personal - until he had seen by pure chance the same child leaving with another person some time before dark.

Even then, Spock only crosses the way to the building next to his own after all of the streetlights have come on, and the chill of night has started to set in outside the jacket and scarf he's pulled on.

Reaching the familiar door, he knocks once. There is no answer from inside the apartment, but he can hear Jim Kirk making small noises to himself, the sort of noises he finds that humans often make when they do not think that they will be heard - ones which connote emotion, frustration. He can see the way that shadows from inside move beneath the door, a body moving back and forth in front of a source of light. Jim pacing on silent, bare feet.

It's the pacing that sends Spock all but barging in without an answer, opening the door with the copy of Jim's apartment key he had recently had made. The entry is abrupt, and certainly rude, by Spock's standards.

He shuts the door behind himself (not slammed, certainly, but with a noteworthy, pointed click of the lock closing again) and watches from where he stands with a pair of somber and reservedly curious dark eyes as he peels his gloves from his hands.

"This is not, of course, a complaint ... but if you would care to illuminate me, Captain, I should like to listen to whatever you think I may need to know."

So far as Spock is aware, Jim alone has yet to be over this late into the night.

In combination with Leonard McCoy, on a few occasions, for a variety of reasons, but Spock cannot recall Jim Kirk alone having spent so many hours in Spock's company, at such a late hour - and he certainly never had spent so many of them curled on Spock's sofa. Which is, perhaps unexpectedly, large, deep, and soft enough to encourage restful sleep but not so much as to be difficult to stand from once you've sat on the cushions.

It's a bad habit, but Spock does not always find his way back to the bed once he's started working on something at the sofa.

Jim has been in the small apartment for long enough that Spock eventually puts aside his stubbornness to retreat to the bathroom to change into a pair of dark, flannel pyjamas and brush his teeth.

When he returns, whatever space he had managed to find for himself on the sofa before standing has disappeared somewhere beneath Jim's legs. He nudges one of Jim's knees with the back of his hand.

"At this hour, I would be more comfortable if you would stay until the morning. Or was this simply the plan all along, and I had not yet been duly informed?"

Spock is not having a case of the nerves.

Because Spock does not get nerves, and he does not second-guess himself, and both of these things are in fact largely untrue, but Spock also has a duty to himself to believe them of himself, for half the power of an idea is in the consistent belief of it. Failure often rides on a single doubt.

So he is not having a case of the nerves, he's only cleaned his apartment double spotless and worn the least casual outfit that he owns in his wardrobe because giving a good impression of oneself at a social gathering where one's own home is concerned is only logical. One's living space represents oneself, and so it should represent most the self that one wishes most to be.

All of the necessary ingredients that they have purchased are now neatly organized and available, on the counter, in the refrigerator, for easy and sensible access, so that McCoy has no need to go searching around unnecessarily for much. Spock has already laid out all of the utensils he presumes will be needed for cookery, and has just finished setting three neat places at the small kitchen's even smaller table.

Which he sits at, drinking a glass of very cold water, and mostly staring at words on a page of a book as he waits to hear a knock at his apartment door.

He's read this last sentence three times already and knits his brows at it.

A trip to the grocer with Captain James T. Kirk has been an eye-opener for Spock, though perhaps his eyes have not been opened in the directions he would consider helpful or appropriate. 21st century eating habits are, frankly, disturbing - not merely in comparison to a philosophically Vulcan diet, but simply because he could not wrap his head around how so many people could feed themselves so much poison with so little thought.

And he is gradually becoming curious about turkeys. Standing in the meat section for just a moment too long had given him the chance to stare and be concerned by the iterations that it apparently came in - turkey ham, turkey sausage, turkey wieners, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. What is wrong with a food as it is that it can't just be itself, instead of a version of itself rendered and filled with nitrites?

Odious.

The preoccupation with processed meats has, at the very least, ended since they've entered the lobby of the small building in the Ocean View Apartments complex that Spock resides in. He shifts most of the canvas bags full of groceries from one wrist to the other to reach out and jab the appropriate button for the elevator. And begin the wait. Usually, he dislikes pointless waiting enough to take the stairs. But it seems like the correct decision, with as many heavy bags as they're both holding. Even though he did his best to quickly distribute the weight between them, one with a few too many cans seems dangerously close to losing a handle.

The logistics of daily living still leave something to be desired.

"Today more than any other day it becomes plain to me that the vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings are quarantined from one another until they possess sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to safely travel between stars. I do not think this society yet reaches the criteria for lifting that primal quarantine."

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness [...] two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

[...] this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. [...] He would not bleach his blood, for he knows that his blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both [...] without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face."

-W.E.B. DuBois

A large part of Spock's characterization is informed by a struggle with a multi-faceted conception of self. This was exacerbated by being torn from a homeland and being forced to struggle to choose how to define himself. He is a member of a largely human Starfleet but he is not always treated the same.

As a member of a largely human organization and crew, he must define himself not only through his own eyes but through the eyes of a human other; thus, a constant awareness of how much his own sense of identity - from being raised chiefly Vulcan - conflicts with his own human sense of identity and value which is now being imposed on him by his peers.

He must struggle for his psycho-social world to yield a true self-consciousness, so that he can see himself beyond the revelation of being both an outsider and an insider at once.

His behavior is often over-compensating and Vulcan more often than human because he was raised on Vulcan, but he is still looking at each side of himself through the eyes of the other. The human Spock views the Vulcan Spock with contempt, and the Vulcan Spock views the human Spock with pity. Each is often distorted by the negative cultural image of the other race.

Because he seeks normative judgement in his own thinking so heavily, he measures either side of his soul with the tape of the other.

Three days of Hell on Earth - and somehow the hours of the morning after the world is calm again have moved Spock to more frustration than any of it. The insistence of his memory to forget between one day and the next that 'computer, lights on' does not function nearly as well without a computer. The insistence of the building's boiler to always run out of hot water during the very middle of his shower, despite an intentional variance of 0.15 hours every day since arriving in order to determine the best time to schedule it for the early morning. Running out of food and having no great desire to steal more knowing that he has no intentions - out of a lack of present ability - to replace what he takes.

Most would be happy to be alive. Spock finds it easier to be annoyed in very small ways, rather than elated in large ones. Easier to let what concerns him be flat, normal, sterile. To be neither angry about what's happened nor relieved for what can continue.

Flat, normal, sterile boredom draws him down the stairwell and into Jim Kirk's building at no later than eight in the morning, knocking sharply at the door with his knuckles. He waits. The other man is in there, and when Spock knocks, he expects an answer, with the same stubbornness of a child. So he waits.

"Captain," he says, only once.

His sling, a write-off after the anomaly, no longer supports the cast on his nearly-healed arm. In his hand, he grips a box, found incidentally at an antiques shop nearly a week ago during a search for a piercing saw. A wooden tangram puzzle.

It doesn't occur to him that Jim Kirk might not be in any mood for a puzzle.