perform_admirably | as long as we know we're trapped, we still have a chance to escape

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as long as we know we're trapped, we still have a chance to escape

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."

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"Well, we can amend it," Jim replies, "But I'm not sure you'll be impressed. Half my favorite foods are made from the component parts we've just bought, and the rest can be summarized as containing meat, salt, and cheese."

Distantly, he wonders if Spock's knees hurt, perched so long like that as he is. Jim couldn't do it, one bum knee courtesy of a training exercise his first year as a cadet and the other an Orion pleasure bar. When it comes to long minutes spent on one's knees, this, as with arm wrestling, Jim will have to concede to Spock. "If it's a heart attack stuffed between two pieces of bread, I probably want to eat it."

"Why should I have to be impressed by what is your favorite? As I have been made well aware of, I am not your attending personal care physician." He pauses, before shuffling forward, until his legs brush against the bottom of Jim's shoe, to start dutifully unpacking the reusable grocery bags to organize the food by necessary temperature - and then further, by shelf-stable and perishable.

"As much as you may believe otherwise, I respect your life choices as an individual. I believe that I have already said so, but I reiterate that I look forward to seeing your enjoyment of Doctor McCoy's meal, and appreciate that the two of you have made leeway in your usual relationship for me." He pauses, before admitting. "I have never invited anyone over for anything of the sort before. As you can imagine, I do not often make or hold an acquaintance for long since becoming a part of Starfleet. And the blame is not on the humans that make up the majority of Starfleet's body of membership. Vulcan culture has been too self-satisfied to remain very little more than a collection of charming miscomprehensions in the minds of others. Interesting, then, that you seem so determined to press past that. You are a good man, Jim. You would have to do little else to impress me."

Edited 2012-07-01 06:45 (UTC)

Jim's smile, wide for the pass Spock takes at Bones' temper, gradually gentles, becoming something almost fragile as Spock continues to speak. He's working steadily, systematically, arranging the items that combined make some of Jim's favorite dishes in any world with care. Jim has room to draw his legs back, to give Spock more room in the little car. Finding that he likes the faint pressure against his foot as Spock works, Jim doesn't.

He's quiet as he listens. Most people don't speak to Jim like this, buying into his bluster and bravado as thoroughly as Jim sells it. Seeing no need in Jim for reassurance, most offer none. He, too, Jim is startled to realize, is also a collection of miscomprehensions in the minds of others. But not Spock's. Not Pike's mind either, or Bones', all of them exceptionally good men. And Spock counts him among them.

"I, uh," he says, suddenly at a loss for how to follow that, the verbal translation of the comfortable warmth in his gut too embarrassing to give voice to. "What do you think? Any of the perishables going to live?"

"I'm not an expert in food safety in the twenty-first century," Spock replies in comfortable monotone as he wedges butter and milk and yogurt and ... roast beef ... into a tetris-like vision of geometric efficiency. "But I should think that even after six hours, if the food isn't a raw ingredient, it should still be safe for consumption if it is heated to a safe temperature during preparation."

Reconsidering the roast beef, he takes it back out and holds it out toward Jim with a questioning eyebrow.

"Also. Captain. As it would be somewhat highly irresponsible of me as your First Officer to allow you to enter a future situation of casual diplomacy under-informed in such a way as to undermine your competency, I should have you know that hand-holding is a highly inappropriate topic to fold into conversation with a Vulcan with whom you are not deeply familiar with ... as such things in our culture are quite commensurable to what your culture would refer to colloquially as: kissing, with tongues."

Jim has the decency to flush, but it's less for his blunder than for his sudden awareness of Spock's hands, still holding that chunk of roast beef in offering. He's looked at them many times over the months, both here and on the Enterprise, felt them in anger and in support, but he's never really looked. His fingers are long, faintly green at the knuckles and the tips, strong in a way that's not intimidating so much as it is...fascinating. And Spock uses them for kissing.

"You started it," he hears himself say, rallying with a clear of his throat. He doesn't know what it is, exactly, that moves him to lift an eyebrow as he reaches for the meat. Spock himself, perhaps, or Jim's general need to let no conversation run its course in peace. "My earlier statement stands."

"Did I?" He asks as if he has no recollection of supposedly having started anything, and hands off the most perishable of the food before he sits back comfortably on his heels again, having been contented by the methodical re-arranging of food, possibly in the same way that Jim was comforted by games, or so he claimed.

"I don't recall." He pauses before adding, apparently not content to simply let the conversation move smoothly on, for whatever reason. Maybe the brow that Jim has arched in his direction. "Your face is very pink. Are you well? I suppose the air might be becoming a little too under-circulated but I don't foresee it causing any serious issue."

"M'fine," says Jim with a small, rueful smile, willing all that hot, red blood to drain away. "Just human." He looks down at his arms, now full of meat and cheese. There's no reason to let it go to waste, and no graceful way to eat it while seated on an elevator floor, but Jim hasn't spent too much of his life on grace.

He tears open the roast beef with his teeth, looking up at Spock after. Fucker knows damn well he'd been the one to mention a game comprised entirely of holding hands. "It's not going to make you sick, is it?" he asks. "Roast beef's got a pretty strong smell, and this is a little car."

"Sick?" Spock asks, truthfully puzzled for a few seconds, before putting together what Jim is suggesting. Finally moving from his fairly formal seating position, he slips back onto his rear to gather his knees in front of himself, resting his wrists across them and peering intently across at Jim. The expression on his face does not change, in particular, but amusement does relax it.

"The smell does not bother me. It isn't entirely pleasant, but it isn't entirely unappetizing either. We don't, as a matter of strong philosophical and ethical belief, consume animal flesh. That does not mean that we as a species are not adapted to enjoy it. We abstain because we cannot imagine not doing so. We abstain from many things. Principled restraint is a tree of contentment which also calm and peace bears to fruit."

"If I find contentment in a wellmade sandwich, what does that say about me?" Jim asks, tearing off a chunk of the deli meat with a smile that only broadens when it hits his tongue. It's a fair impression of a man who's not fascinated by the Vulcan precepts that frequently leave Spock's mouth, but an impression is all it is.

"When you say stuff like that," he asks, genuinely curious, "is it to remind yourself? Like a chant or an affirmation or something? Or are you trying to teach me?" Tearing off another chunk, Jim continues like a freight train, "What else do you abstain from to be content?"

Watching the other man's enjoyment contently, Spock has a ready answer for much of what he asks, even if he asks in quick succession. That Jim asks at all pleases Spock to such a point that the curve of his lips becomes not a smile, but certainly less of one thing, more of another.

"Every humanoid culture that the Federation has contact with, so far as I am aware, possesses a set of moral aphorisms. They are short, concise, often pithy, and this is because they are necessary to remind ourselves of. And easy to remember. An idea is only information. It will not do us any great personal good until we fully accept it as a perception of truth in our minds. A belief. I'm not trying to teach you anything that you don't wish to learn. I have no desire in my life to proselytize."

Spock's face gives its tiny quirk again. "I also should think that you already know much of what you ask for. I abstain from emotion ... when it clouds logic, when possible. From over-indulgence in anything ... but from unnecessary miserliness as well. From thoughtless gossip. From lying or hiding from truths, however unpleasant. From most mind-altering substances. From anonymous sex and further from indiscriminate affection. None of these things will provide me with contentment. And their absence, therefore, causes me no distress."

Swallowing the deli meat, Jim moves on to the cheese, tearing off a hunk and holding it up in offering in case Spock would like some, too. "You know," he says, "I'm not sure I had any hard and fast beliefs before Starfleet. I had a compass, I guess, I know what I feel is right and what's wrong, but no aphorisms. My stepdaddy wasn't really one for, well. Morals in general," he adds with a roll of his eyes.

"But Starfleet, the Prime Directive, our duties and goals, I could recite that all day and night, I love it. It feels important, you know? It's like somebody put to words the feeling I had stuck inside of me my whole life, what I wanted and where I wanted to go, what I needed to do."

Jim smiles, a little wistful, before cocking his head. "What the hell does indiscriminate affection mean?"

Spock holds a palm out to refuse the food - he isn't particularly hungry, so he doesn't eat. He hopes that Jim realizes that this is the reason, rather than anything more personal. He doesn't desire to offend anyone, least not Jim Kirk, but he doesn't dote on the feelings of others, either. Spock doesn't walk on eggshells any more than any other Vulcan; he thinks this of himself, at any rate.

"Having a moral compass is what makes you a good man," Spock observes, as if what Jim claims proves Spock's own point. "I told you once before that you are uniquely suited to the work that you've found your way to, and perhaps that is part of why you've found your way to it. Depending on whether or not one chooses to believe in destiny."

Spock does not claim one way or another, for himself, or elaborate on his own thoughts on what is important, and how he feels about the fleet and her duties and goals. Instead, he moves his head to the side in the opposite direction of Jim's, mirroring the small movement, if not the wistful expression.

"'Indiscriminate' meaning, not marked by careful distinction. 'Affection' meaning, fondness or liking, or the physical expression of these. If you require an FSE dictionary, they sell something close enough in this city." It's a tease, one that doesn't manage to not express a little of the affection that Spock has declared to require much discrimination. Nevertheless, he considers his answer carefully.

"It is a matter of intimacy. Real intimacy is what a Vulcan might consider a sacred experience. For instance, a mother and daughter would never expose the secret trust and belonging of the family to the voyeuristic eye of the public. Real intimacy is of the soul, and the Vulcan soul is reserved."

"You keep the real thing close," says Jim, supposing that he understands, even if he could never be like that, not completely. "I guess that makes it more special, knowing it's just for you and the person who's sharing it."

He's speculating, of course. He'd meant what he said in their earlier game, he loves the Enterprise, is head right over fucking heels for her, but there's never been a person Jim could say that he's been in love with. He cares for people, and deeply, has spent scattered, fervent moments passionately obsessed with every member of his crew, but never romantically. There'd even been a month where Jim was convinced he was in love with Bones, but the relationship proved too complicated to untangle into any one thing, and in the end, Jim had shied away from a form of it that could one day be broken.

He's quiet. He has been for a while now, Jim realizes, and he picks at the cheese, pulling a smaller hunk of it into his mouth. "So, no Vulcan PDA. I guess even the kind we'd think of as innocent on Earth is kind of impossible, now that I know holding hands is basically Frenching."

"More or less," Spock replies - words that are, tellingly, not particularly Vulcan. But the things that have influenced his beliefs in the area of relationships are not, more or less, completely Vulcan. He doesn't always wish this to be true, but he knows that he is - knows for how fervently it had meant something to hear his father admit that he loved his mother.

He could not have wished for more, except that, perhaps, his father had not needed to say so in the past tense. And, perhaps, that he would have been able to have the same courage as Sarek, and say the same words to those who deserve them.

Now, Spock is here, whatever that may mean for anything.

And he's been too thoughtfully quiet for too long.

"Further, if it isn't real, it has no point." Spock shrugs sharp shoulders gently from above where he has himself hunched over his own knees in the little elevator car. "Innocence is a curious word to use," he observes, but continues without further comment. "Kissing in the way that humans do holds an evolutionary purpose. As our evolution is different, different things serve different purposes. My touch transfers a great deal more information than yours would - if I allow it. Then again, it could not."

He settles a thoughtful look on Jim, before turning his head toward the roof of the elevator car. Someone has, at least, showed up to start working on getting the thing in working order again.

Jim, too, looks up, eyebrows raising. "Oh good," he notes. "I was hoping the problem would be something involving the cables and statistically more likely to result in our swift decent downward."

He grins and helps himself to another hunk of cheese, but Jim is...disappointed. There'd been a moment when he realized what was happening that he'd wanted to stand and bang on the elevator car roof until the interlopers went away, which is just stupid when they've been waiting for rescue all along.

"Do Vulcans kiss with mouths?" The question bursts out of him before Jim can consider it, but there's something in him, some primal, petulant thing that wants Spock's attention back, any way that he can get it. "What information do you transfer kissing, anyway? I'm not thinking when I kiss. I'm feeling, you know?" Jim raises both brows. "In the moment."

The joke is so unfunny that it manages to pluck at Spock's sense of humor enough that he gives a soft exhale of breath that isn't sure if it's meant to stand in for a snort or a laugh but is far too reserved to be really either. But what follows the joke gets a stare of almost chastening directness. Isn't that a little private?

No, not really. Not for Jim's standard. Spock unfolds himself from the position that he'd been seated in just a little awkwardly, back on his knees with one ear searching for any signs of progress from outside of the little space they share.

"I should think you already know the answer to your first question. Based on the amount of obvious staring you were doing when ... " He finds he can't finish the sentence out loud, doesn't really want to spill the truth of it out into the world between them. He had kissed Lieutenant Uhura goodbye when he'd thought they may never see one another again. He hadn't been ashamed of doing so in front of three other men. He refuses to allow himself to be so now.

It would be a disservice to Nyota, and to himself. Perhaps, somehow, to Jim Kirk as well. His brows knit in consideration and thought, trying to produce the most succinct explanation for Jim out of an over-complicated jumble of available knowledge.

"One can exchange information without doing so thoughtfully. The skin around human noses and mouths is covered by oils and sweat, which along with breath and saliva, carry chemicals which through smell and taste, broadcast a wealth of information about whether an individual is healthy or sick, an individual's mood, whether or not a female is ovulating. Chemosensory cues." Spock presses his lips together to wet them before continuing.

"In turn, when you become, as you've described, 'in the moment' as you engage in the physical act, your brain is being flooded with oxytocin - a hormone which increases feelings of love, trust and sociability in humans. You are bonding. In different ways, the same is achieved by my father's people through purposeful touch."

Pinning Jim's face with another lengthy stare, searching for any reaction that might suggest stopping - he often wonders whether he ought to stop a conversation with this man, as they even more often take themselves to unexpected places, such that Spock feels entirely that he has little control over what his own mouth is saying - but finds nothing recognizable. And so, why not speak.

"A Vulcan does not have the same physiology as a human. The brain has more structured anatomical and neurological compartmentalization. Autonomic systems are not so autonomic as you might experience. A Vulcan does not produce or respond to the same chemosensory cues as a human might. Indeed, with training, much of this is purposely repressed. Unless he or she chooses for it to not be. For instance, where a human body would flood itself with adrenalin through instinct, a Vulcan might choose to do so through need."

Any more and Spock wonders if he won't have gotten off the initial topic. He adds, pointedly, "I am, of course, not entirely Vulcan. I find that others find this justifiably easy to forget."

Edited 2012-07-04 07:23 (UTC)

"I was just surprised," says Jim, defending a statement from so long ago that he almost hopes the ludicrous delay will be the stupid part, and not the look on his face. "Nyota, just - nevermind."

He closes his mouth, crown of his head pushed back against the elevator wall. He's too hot again, and it's stupid, it's so. It's illogical, which is not normally something that bothers him, but somehow, listening to Spock describe these intimate acts in such clinical terms, in such depth and at such length, it bothers him. As Bones would say, he's hot and bothered, and Jim squirms, brain skipping like a record as he searches for something in the greath wealth that Spock has given him to seize upon and speak in equally logical, not-susceptible-to-blushing terms.

People shouldn't be able to talk like that, measured and even and rhythmic in a way that shoots right under Jim's skin, makes him want to take every neat and ordered thing in the immediate area and muss it to high hell. It's indecent, or maybe Jim's reaction is indecent. Either way, he wonders if Spock knows.

"So you," he says, licking the sweat from his top lip, "You just choose to flood your brain with oxytocin at will? Or, most Vulcans do? Wouldn't that mean you can just feel a bond with anyone you want to? That's not very - and yes, I realize most Vulcans wouldn't care, but that's not very romantic, Spock."

"Surprised," Spock says banally, leaving the word there with little context and walking away mercilessly - or mercifully - from the topic of times since passed and far out of reach.

"Indeed, it would be very logical to assume that most Vulcans would not care for the expressive and pleasurable feeling derived from an emotional attraction to another person associated with a passionate love," he offers at length, having spent far too long simply staring across at the way that Jim shifts almost uncomfortably against the elevator wall (only tearing his gaze away at the appearance of the pink, pointed tip of the other man's tongue) as small noises and indistinct voices echo in the larger space of the shaft they are both suspended in.

"And on the subject of 'just' feeling something, one could do so, and perhaps there are even situations in which such a thing would be advisable. In point of fact, there are disciplines, difficult ones, that one such as myself could pursue in order to remove those very same attachments. That option, however difficult, has always been an option for any of us. It would even be considered a great honor to have one who has completed this training as a member of one's immediate family."

Standing and stretching subtly, stony-faced, he nevertheless leans over Kirk with one palm held outward receptively to help his Captain up from the seat that he's held for a bit too long.

"I determined some time ago that I have no desire to adhere to such a discipline at this current stage in my personal and professional development."

Edited 2012-07-05 05:43 (UTC)

Jim looks at that hand and finds himself nervous. He's been nervous for a while now, but the fingers now hovering at eye level seem to be an amalgamation of sorts, an all too poignant symbol for everything Jim's just learned - chemical responses invoked by touch, purposeful bonding for which Spock has declared himself unwilling, an equivalent of kissing with tongues that Spock has also rejected, but thus far only in public.

Knowing, of course, that Spock is only offering to help him up does nothing to settle Jim's nerves, because now he knows, understands, on some novice level, all the things that a Vulcan might do with his hands. And he won't be able to forget.

"Freedom is at hand, huh?" he asks, rolling his eyes upwards to the ceiling on which the workers stand, and takes Spock's hand, knowing full well that his own reeks of roast beef and cheese and human feelings.

It isn't the first time that he's taken Jim Kirk's hand - or, for that matter, many other parts of him. The circumstances are different, lack a certain dire quality that might be provided by phaser fire or bodily injury. They are both fine. The situation is ... under control. And timing, as always, is everything.

It is a simple grasp, and a tug upward to help Jim get his feet under him in the small and awkward space, but it is steady and true as starlight. And before the touch breaks, Spock allows himself barely more than a second to reach out to the other man, to show Jim just what information could transfer between a touch. It isn't a very strong feeling, he would never have burdened Jim who he still felt he barely knew with what drowning force passed for strong feeling in Spock, but it is a feeling. Of curious, long-suffering, but tractable fondness.

The grip ends and Spock brushes the grease of Jim's meal off of his palm onto the inside of the sleeve of his sweater without a hitch in a very straight-faced expression. If all went well with repairs, the car should be lowering to let them out safely soon enough.

"Jim. You are exceptional at thinking around a problem. But speaking purely as a scientist, you could better remember that the very essence of science is to be unwilling to accept what we hear from anyone without, if possible, trying it oneself, even if that information comes from a credible source. A theory is only as good as its next prediction."

It is, not purely, teasing. It is also an invitation that Spock neither fully understands that he is making, nor perhaps the extent thereof and further why, but he wants to say something to explain all or any of this. And so he does.

Spock's grip is sure, its duration short, and yet there's a moment when Jim feels exactly as he does at the tail end of Bones' quick boom of a laugh, exasperation and affection in the sound all at once, feels just as he does when Pike grins at him and shakes his head, despairing of ever keeping Jim in check and at the same time, not minding nearly as much as he should.

Jim sucks in a breath, startled, impressed, maybe even a little affronted, but only in a way that makes him want to hold Spock against the wall until he's told Jim everything, every last thing he's capable of, and them showed him, too.

Spock is talking. Teasing. Jim shakes the water from his ears and listens. "I can only experience it so much," he says, reasonable, he thinks, given that his thoughts have run in all directions. "Only from one side of it. I guess," he says, as the elevator lurches slowly into motion. "I'll have to rely on you to fill in the gaps."

"If you are interested in learning," Spock says, as calm and unaffected as if they had not just had a strangely intimate conversation in the stuffy confines of a tiny closet of an elevator car while waiting for rescue. He bends to pull a little more than his fair share of the bagging onto each wrist, but leaves two - the lightest, and the one with the unfortunate broken strap - for the other man. When he stands again, it is close enough that their shoulders, of a height, nearly brush one another. But don't quite.

"Then teaching will be easy. By nature communication between your species and Vulcans has been difficult and, in a word, imprecise. However, in this respect. On the subject of bridging this and other portions of the natural communication barrier between the two species." Spock arches his back slightly in amusement, rolling very, very faintly on his heels. "I was raised by an extremely skilled role model."

"You are," Jim concedes, plucking the bag that isn't dangling precariously so much as snugly from Spock's fingers and sliding it onto his own wrist, and maybe he feels like giving a little back when he says, "Uniquely suited to teaching me."

They'll be on the ground floor when the doors open, for all that they'd meant to go up. Jim should be pissed, but mostly, he's glad for the prolonged journey. The doors open with a solid ding, and Jim gestures with the mere two bags clutched in his left hand. "After you."

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as long as we know we're trapped, we still have a chance to escape

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