perform_admirably | i'm to blame, burden of my dreams

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.

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Spock switches his gaze to take in the dining room next to the kitchen, empty but for a white bucket of tools in the corner. He sucks in a breath softly through his nose before answering. He should be considering why he is having the reaction that he is having, rather than reacting, and he knows this -- at least, half-consciously.

"Not in perpetuity," he says. He considers stepping over to place a kiss against Jim's lips, in case it needs to be made explicit that he does not hold Jim in any odium for the state of things, such that they are. He doesn't. Not because it isn't wholly true, but because Jim needs a shower after the work he's been doing.

"The dust is irritating my sinuses." He could request that they stop for the day, but what for? The longer the remodels take, the longer that the situation drags on. "We should stop and eat, but .. not here. Out of the house."

"Fuck," Jim exhales. They've worked around Spock's unique sensitivities as much as they can, up to and including synthesizing a completely unique paint compound, but it's not enough until it dries. Jim knows this, but he still can't help the guilty twist in his gut. They're geniuses from two hundred years in the future, they ought to be able to accommodate Vulcan noses using only their wits and Home Depot, for fuck's sake.

He looks around, approaching the kitchen with a new dust cloud for every step. "There's not a lot close by." There's a budding garden outside, but..."I don't think we can eat those tomatoes yet. Not without entering into a weird Southern movie vibe circa the early nineteen nineties."

At the sound of Jim's invective, Spock gave a long sigh, but otherwise said nothing. He crossed the short distance to Jim, and though he kept his lips to himself, he did lift a hand to fold it gently around Jim's dirtied elbow. He was, admittedly, handsome after a hard day of work, and even moreso when he was actively engaged in it, but Spock had a definition of a 'home' in his head that was difficult to reform to include this kind of chaotic atmosphere for so long.

"I don't understand the reference, but only the early spring vegetables are ready. Ramps and asparagus. Leftovers are fine, so long as we take them out of here and eat them in the yard."

He considered that idea for a moment, before speaking up again, a hunting light in dark eyes. "How do you feel about assembling a picnic table?"

Jim closes his gritty eyes, wishing, not for the first time, that he'd caved to the idea of goggles. "Splintery?" he ventures after a moment. He's tired, but pleasantly so, and more than ready for a meal now that Spock has mentioned one.

"We've got the wood for it, though," he says. And between the two of them, they won't need anything as pedestrian as a blueprint. "We can throw one up, sure. Under that big tree out front?"

"I didn't require that it be made now," Spock points out, but lifts his eyes to meet Jim's qith quiet fondness, and a degree of weathered exasperation. He is not about to put much argument into telling Jim not to do it, either, if he is willing. Spock does want a picnic table, would still want it eventually, and if Jim is willing there is no reason to tell him to put it off.

"But under the tree sounds ideal." He punctuates by slipping open one of the kitchen drawers, taking out a pair of gloves that he usually uses for gardening. If they are going to do this, he is going to help. Not that he doesn't trust Jim to get the job done, but because Spock sees some reward in doing the activity as a pair.

Spock slips the gloves over his hands neatly.

"All go for project picnic, then," says Jim, brows lifted as he observes the gloves, but building the thing was already a foregone conclusion. The absence of crew and mission has left Jim free to embrace his feelings for Spock wholesale, and Jim blew past emotionally compromised in favor of smitten long ago. He'd probably build a treehouse before dinner if Spock demanded it, but Jim at least tries to demure.

"But I get a beer after," he says, leading Spock with a sway of his hips rather than a touch out the door, where he stops by the woodpile. "And you're doing the heavy lifting."

"You can have two, if that's what makes you happy," Spock says, voice filled with dry amusement as he follows Jim out of the house, eyes on the broad, strong stretch of his shoulders. He certainly doesn't need help with the heavy lifting, but Spock is willing to indulge him in this, at least, if only because it gives him the chance to point out his own superiority in the area. It's irony, at this point. A going through the motions which speaks more to his affection and comfort around Jim, than any real belief that there is any gap between their abilities.

"We have twelve pieces to spare. If we think about our cuts before we make them, less than ten should be more than enough." He leans slightly to meet Jim's eyes, giving him a look that isn't quite an accusation. He knows that Jim doesn't need to plan ahead on where to make his cuts. Only because Jim possesses intuition; which was not a feeling at all, but simply high-speed reasoning. An expert had intuition. Jim was an expert in many areas.

Jim hums his agreement. It won't take long to throw up a basic one, but the mundanity chafes. He thinks a moment more, mentally rifling through all that they could do.

"When the house is done I'm totally building one like this," he says, touching Spock's arm to show him. "Or one like this, with a firepit in the middle. That'd be good for you in winter. Plus." Jim grins. "Vegetables on a stick over a fire will taste awesome."

Everything does over fire.

Although he should not be, Spock is still surprised and silently moved -- a feeling of warmth in the center of his stomach -- that Jim would do what he'd done, carefully envision what he sees himself creating and dropping the image into Spock's mind. It isn't the first time and won't be the last, but it strikes Spock more deeply than it has in some time. It is efficient, but the pure efficiency is surely not why Jim does it, and is not, in turn, what Spock most appreciates about it.

He moves his arm as they walk, slipping Jim's hand down the length of his own until Spock can thread their fingers together loosely, squinting across the lawn at the pile of wood by the side of the house.

The grass is just starting to become truly green again. Although Spock preferred something organic to the manicured lawns of seed grass that are popular amongst the people of Darrow as they had been the people of Earth, he did like the deep green color of it And was waiting for summer with no small anticipation, though he would not let such a thing show

"I don't know about vegetables on sticks," he says, pulling Jim along and squinting across at him in the sunlight. "It seems strange. Then again, you could marinate them before they went on the sticks."

i'm to blame, burden of my dreams

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