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neil mccormick

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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."

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"Dude, seriously?" I say to the checkout kid, slipping in behind Spock and putting my shopping basket on the fold-out table he's got his register set up on.

"Just ring up his vegetables, man, he's not interested."

With Spock's super strength and alien metabolism or whatever, for all I know he'd have to smoke a fuckin' pound of weed before he'd feel a thing.

"Neil," Spock replies on hearing the other man, confusion the strongest note in his voice, but accompanied by something almost pleasant in the face of Neil's familiarity. Plicking two of the brighter red peppers out of the small pile, he adds them to what he already has selected in a basket and hands them over to the cashier. His attention is not on the task, though, but on Neil.

"I am unclear whether or not I am interested. Curious that you seem to have such a strong opinion, as they are not your groceries."

"He's tryin' to sell you weed. It's probably good shit, so if you wanna get high, be my guest," I say, smirking at the cashier and then turning back to look at Spock.

"Now, I can imagine Jim as a stoner, but you... I dunno," I grin crookedly. It's been a long time since I've spent any time at all with Jim Kirk, and even then we weren't great friends or anything, but he was in the kitchen at the Winchester enough for me to know that he's a guy who knows how to have a good time.

With a blink, a shrug, and a sniff of suit-yourself, the cashier accepts Spock's money and passes the change back, paper bagging as Spock folds the money back into a barely-touched-looking wallet and conveys his considerable attention solely on Neil again.

"I am from more than three-hundred years in your relative future. Please explain. Using fewer colloquialisms. A weed is an unwanted native plant species. A stoner is ... I am not certain it is anything at all."

"He's tryin' to sell you drugs. You smoke 'em, they alter your state of being," I say, glancing down at his pristine wallet, the precise way his hands move as he slips his neatly folded money back into it.

I can't deny it'd be pretty fuckin' awesome to see him ruffled, blissed out on weed and not giving a fuck, if it's even possible. Somehow, I kinda doubt it.

"Drugs." Spock repeats, tone flat and face tight in consideration, as he collates, running through his memories of what he's learned - of the past, and the present. Cross-referencing eventually provides some answer.

"It's marijuana. It's medication."

"Recreational, mostly," I say, handing over my own wad of cash when the guy finally rings me up. "I used to grow. I had a pretty awesome crop, but I don't have the room for it, here."

"You misunderstand," Spock says, bags shuffled into the grocery sack he carried and over his soldier-straight shoulder. "It is medicine, only medicine, in my time period, available as capsules. Primarily, I suspect, because there are simply other, more appealing options available for ... recreation." The idea, he understands, is common with Terran human individuals, but not so to Vulcan sensibilities.

Spock's view of recreation is, frankly, limited. And he is quite satisfied with it being so. So far as he understands it.

"I am uncertain of its legality in Darrow, however," he adds.

"Yeah, well, I know plenty of folks that claim they're smokin' medicinal marijuana and they're just doin' it to get high," I say, taking my own bags and stepping away from the register.

"They sell it outta this shop downtown. You don't need a prescription or anything, but the price's jacked way the fuck up. Taxes, I guess. I seriously fuckin' doubt these little organic farmers are splittin' their profits with the government."

Neil's first statement gets a brow raise from Spock, but no comment, as focused as he is on the second half of what the other man has to say.

"As conflicted as I am to admit this, I am not sure that I find anything wrong in tax-dodging in this place. Darrow's entire nature seems to be artificial, not a naturally occurring society. Speaking in generalizations, the only incentive to not break a law, if the crime is victimless, would be to personally avoid jail time."

Coughing out a laugh, I admit, "If I had the room for it, I'd still be growin'. I miss it."

If I'm honest, there's a lot I miss about the island. There was a freedom in it that we just don't have, here. But there are things about this place that are monumentally better, and not just Mike being alive.

"You think it'd even do anything for you?" I ask, arching a brow.

Spock gives a soft sigh through his nose at Neil's admittance. He only has a problem with it in theory. In practice, he sees no point in being faithful to a tax system in Darrow.

His attention is quickly intrigued by Neil's question. "I've never had the dubious benefit of attempting to discover whether it does or does not. It isn't the fashion of my people to use mind-altering substances."

Grinning a little wider at that look on his face, one that seems more interested than appalled, I say, "You wanna find out?"

I don't need to buy from the hippie organic farmer. I've already got a joint of my own, all rolled up neat in my pocket.

Spock can think of at least a dozen reasons for which he should not be interested in Neil's offer, and at least one for which he can't refuse. Simply put, Neil is correct. He would like to find out.

"Yes," he says, surorising himself. But he'd said it becuse it was the truth. "But I am not certain that we should always get what we want."

"Not always," I shrug, looking at him sideways as we move further away from the produce stand. Wordlessly, I turn in the direction of our building, 'cause I figure he's probably heading that way, too.

"I know there's a reason you don't, but I think it'd be kinda cool to see you loosen up for a little while."

Edited 2013-09-11 23:11 (UTC)

That is, of course, part of the problem -- Spock doesn't like the idea of loosening up. But curiosity is as strong as it's ever been for him,

He allows himself a small sigh, keeping pace with Neil. There are times when he does not understand why he tolerates the other man as well as he does, except for perhaps knowing that he can learn a great deal from people who are very different from himself.

"I've heard that it can inspire creativity," he admits. "And I am beginning to wonder whether or not that would be a bad thing, if it led to more ideas about the nature of this place." The idea is still uncomfortable. "Neither Jim nor I have been able to come to any truly useful conclusions. It frustrates him."

He shifts eyes to Neil. "Though it seems to satisfy you."

Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, I say, "It's not really that simple. This place frustrates the fuck outta me, but I've been doin' this for seven years. You and Jim have lives you wanna go back to. I kinda don't."

The only life I've got any interest in is with Mike and the twins, and right now, that life is here.

"Asking too many questions about it kinda seems like pokin' at a bear, you know?"

I kinda don't sticks with Spock, enough that he falls quiet, deep thought obvious in the single furrow that splits his brow as he stares at Neil.

"Poking at the bear?" he asks, before parsing his way through Neil's words. "You are concerned that there may be consequences if you refuse to take your life here for granted? This life is preferable to you, regardless of the artificial circumstances?"

"I know that none of this is real. That I've got no fuckin' control over it, and if I look behind the curtain, I might not like what I find," I answer, stopping for traffic so we can cross the road, the apartments just a block over.

"I'm real, Mike's real, you're real. My daughters? I don't know. They've only ever existed in places like this. I just... I don't like being fucked with, I'm not crazy, but I don't know, man."

The truth is, the only life I've ever had that was worth fuck all is the one I built on the island, the one I brought with me here. But we're on a fucking crosswalk on a busy street, and it feels weird just blurting something like that out.

Something about I don't like being fucked with resonates with Spock, whether or not he would ever admit to it. He gives Neil an incisive look for a moment as he turns sideways to let a couple pass on the sidewalk, carefully juggling his groceries.

Despite his own feelings to the contrary, there is a kind of logic in what Neil has to say. "Whether or not it's real, your experience of it makes it so. You would rather have a satisfying life rather than one of ultimate truth, at all times. I admit, I do not entirely disagree with your outlook. Only, I wish I could do the same. I do not feel like I am making much of a difference in the lives of others, here."

"If it's any consolation, I like havin' you here," I say with a crooked grin, but I understand what he really means. "The first... two years that I spent in a place like this, I didn't do shit. I sat around, complaining and fighting with my boyfriend and fucking. It took me a while to find my feet, you know?"

And now I run a sex shop. I'm not sure everybody'd agree that's a worthy service that makes a difference in people's lives.

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