i'm to blame, burden of my dreams

[perform_admirably]

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.

Comments

[to_boldly]

"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."

[perform_admirably]

"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.

[to_boldly]

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.

[perform_admirably]

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."