perform_admirably | personality is the product of a clash between two opposing forces

Entry tags:

ic,
jim kirk

personality is the product of a clash between two opposing forces

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Water hurts? Water is the only way to get clean, but Spock has given Kirk fair warning. There is no need to make a further point of the fact that the entire room smells of male underarm odor and stale sweat. Eyebrow raised in defense, Spock visits a look down both ends of the hallway before entering and moving immediately toward the kitchen appliance in center-stage. He doesn't want coffee, but it won't stop him from fiddling with the little black machine.

He sets the puzzle box down on the counter. "No, thank you. Do you have any tea?"

Spock quickly finds the 'pod' and 'puts it in.' "A decently obvious user interface," he admits. Then turns to face Kirk over his shoulder, eyes drifting with unsympathetic thoroughness over every inch of exposed skin and splotchy dark mark made visible by the lack of clothing cover. "I wanted a word, Captain."

Edited 2012-05-31 01:19 (UTC)

"Guess I should be glad you waited 'til eight," says Jim, watching the coffee begin to drip with one eye cracked. "I think there was tea when I moved in, actually," he adds, pointing at the top shelf. "Green kind with flowers in it. Jasmine."

With that, he begins ambling back to his bedroom, retrieving a half-disassembled scanner from the foot of his bed. Frankly Jim's just impressed he had the presence of mind to take the thing with him when he'd finally done more yawning than breathing around three a.m. He'd still managed to fall asleep half on top of it, which would explain the odd creasing on his cheek. "You bring your scanner?" he asks as he reemerges, then, "What's up, anyway?"

"A green kind with flowers in it is acceptable," Spock says, equitable. He's used all that he'd found in his cupboards already and, having run out, had decided to go without rather than find more. He slips it out of the cupboard before looking with mild confusion around the kitchen for a place to get hot water from. He never ate in his quarters on the ship - he never ate in his room at the Academy, for as little time as he ever spent in either.

He stares after Kirk's retreating form. "I wouldn't have come sooner. There wouldn't be benefit in my disturbing your rest before you'd had sufficient. I chose this time deliberately." As Spock speaks, he sets the tea down next to the puzzle box and reaches to the small bulge beneath the ribbed turtleneck he has on, producing his scanner. As Kirk had predicted, he never left without it, as regular as a security blanket.

He quite purposely does not hand it over to the other man yet. "Ambassador Spock. The rest, I think, is implied."

Hand already outstretched to take the scanner, Jim lets it fall with something approaching a scowl. "Coffee before conversation," he says, moving towards the device and yanking out the pot to stick a cup directly below the drip. "Or crankiness will be more than implied."

He watches the coffee drip, hair standing up a bit under the weight of Spock's imagined stare. "Put some water in a cup, pop it in that thing over there called Microwave," he grunts. "You'll like it, it warms food or liquids by exciting the polarized molecules. Not bad for twentieth century tech."

Not conversation after coffee - conversation now. Unaware of how bothered he truly is with the subject at hand, Spock's nostrils flare for a moment.

"I know what microwaves are and how they function." There is a touch of impatience to the answer. With a last strong, sticky look at Kirk's back, Spock rolls away smoothly enough to fill his cup and head toward the microwave oven, assuming that's what it is based on the power readings on the corner of the black box. Why is everything a black box in this century, he wonders. A curious aesthetic.

"You never mentioned that he performed a mind-meld with you. You are avoiding the topic. Do you find it intrusive?" There is a curl that Spock adds to the last word which suggests that he believes that he's been the one intruded upon somehow - but he dares not say so more directly. There is no logical reason that it should make him uncomfortable.

"As I recall, Spock," says Jim, grip tightening in increments around his coffee cup, "You're the one who specified that we need not speak of the meld again."

He's hot, Jim realizes, more of the sweat Spock apparently finds so distasteful forming finely along his brow. More than hot, he's getting pissed. It's not like he'd asked to be melded with in the first place, he was just there and then it was happening, so why is Spock acting like Jim caught him in his skivvies? "Or is that little courtesy only meant to extend to your own personal experience?"

Kirk's last words deflate Spock as quickly and efficiently as a needle, drawing him so abruptly into cruel self-awareness that his own cup falls out of his grip. Seamlessly snatched back out of the air after half a second's drop, but enough that the water slips over the side to wet Spock's scraped and scabbed knuckles.

Knowing that Jim Kirk has been inside Ambassador Spock's head should have no bearing on anything - He is being entirely selfish, entirely self-absorbed. Entirely human. And to catch himself thinking this way, acting this way ... he feels robbed of privacy and embarrassed, this is why he had come to make Kirk explain. Spock feels his own privacy has been stepped over, but Spock is Vulcan. He can scarcely imagine what Jim Kirk, in turn, must think and feel about the situation that they've been entered into.

No more of this.

"No, I shame myself," Spock murmurs. "I would apologize, Captain, but one cannot apologize for something so fundamental. I am simply at a loss as to how to comprehend that person, who is myself, but a myself which does not agree with my self-conceptions. A decorous mean between respect and intimacy. Gravity and playfulness. That is not who I determined myself to be. That is not who I desire to be. I cannot comprehend becoming that person. Yet he is 'here' and so I find myself placing myself under his shadow as I have been ever under the shadow of different expectation."

"Spock." Jim had started forward for the first splash from the cup, but he stills, attentive, almost deferential for the torrent of what follows from Spock's mouth.

"Spock," he says again, quiet when the other man falls silent. "Look, I can't imagine what it's like to be you, the rigid culture you grew up in, and god knows you have every good reason in the world to want to uphold that." To be those expectations, when so few Vulcans are left to try. "But you don't have to be any of it. Not your dad or your elders, and least of all that other Spock. I've been running in the face of expectation my whole life, believe me when I say, you're going to be happier picking your own destiny. Whether it's what you started out wanting, or where your older self ended up. But Spock."

Jim shrugs. "He wasn't a bad guy, either. There's nothing wrong with either of you."

Spock breathes. A moment ago, under the sudden, flaring, visceral anger of the man across from him, he'd been small, fearful, proud. Now that Kirk's anger has drained, for whatever reason, Spock is once again silently awed and respectful of Jim Kirk. He would never have said so aloud, scarcely really could even form ideas about why it was that Jim moved him. But there was a sweet innocence to an otherwise rough man, who was human, who not only could be happy or angry, but could be not only happy or angry - who was, in his very nature, being able to be both broken and whole at the same time.

It clicks. It clicks because it is the very same thing about the Ambassador - who was one and the same and yet unique, who shared the same origin, who shared the same door, who shared a mother - that Spock found himself silently respectful of.

Spock leans his weight backward against the counter-top at his hips, losing the parade-stiff shoulders. Just the two of them, behind a door, the rest of the world without. Spock blinks again, searching across the room for Jim's blue eyes. "Picking my own destiny ... I hear this often lately. But I don't understand ... I cannot, will not, abandon the philosophy, no matter what I might gain, individually. The philosophy exists for a reason. It is beneficial." It is logical.

"He was very ... human."

Edited 2012-05-31 04:13 (UTC)

"Well," says Jim, marshaling a small smile. "I hear his best friend was a bad influence. C'mon." Stepping forward, he collects the cup from Spock's hands, fills it with fresh water and puts it into the microwave.

"You don't have to abandon anything," he says over the machine's hum. "You're young, right? Especially for a Vulcan. You have your whole life to decide who you want to be, and I'm not going to hold some other version of you against you. We don't pick our family, but we pick our friends, don't we?"

The microwave dings, and Jim pulls out the cup, plops a tea bag into its depths. "And a captain picks his crew. Don't get me wrong - I'm intrigued by what the other Spock told me, but you're the one I terrorized into joining my crew. So if you think I want something distinctly Vulcan from you, I don't. Hell, I don't even know what that means, half the time. I want...a First Officer with balls enough to write an unbeatable test. Who'd fly a ship into the heart of the Narada on the chance that it could save a planet."

Though he traces Jim back and forth across the room with dark eyes beneath heavy lids, quietude returns to Spock, who stands silent until Jim is finished, running the tips of his fingers across the curve of his bottom lip. Many thoughts, or perhaps none at all, the expression gives no clues in return for the little, warm smile.

"What it means? Something Vulcan. To compose ourselves is our duty, and to win, not battles but order and tranquility. To serve appropriately in the place which we are best able to serve, which is where our gifts and qualities find the most fertile soil to grow responsibly. I require something Vulcan of myself, Captain."

Setting the scanner finally down on the counter beside himself, he holds out his arm to accept Kirk's cup from him again, lifts his head up from where it's been slouched forward. Meeting Kirk's eye again, oddly galvanized. "What you require is a First Officer ... who no longer believes in a no-win scenario." Or, perhaps, only that he should not be afraid of one.

Spock quiets again, as if suddenly looking at the man apart from him as a man, not so apart from him after all. "How bad is your pain?"

Edited 2012-05-31 05:53 (UTC)

"It's fine, Spock," says Jim, settling the cup of tea in front of him. "Trust me, I've had worse wounds than from a poor man's sword happy Minotaur."

He seats himself at the little table with which his apartment had been furnished. "Look. Be what you need to be, Spock. It's probably the crazy human in me, but I trust you. Whatever the right choice is, I think you'll make it. So."

Jim steeples his fingers around his own cup. "You want to talk about the meld? Maybe without acting like I peed in your early morning protein flakes this time?"

"Colorful, as usual." Spock takes his own cup in one hand and holds it up to his face, letting the humid steam clear into his sinuses as he peers at the other man across the lip. A man who calls him friend. His friend.

Though he is not sure just yet that he would be able to speak the word. He could keep attempting. Indefinitely.

"Talk about it?" Delicate brows raise slightly. There is a light that comes to his face, however small and tremulous, a sort of defiance he's worn only rarely. This time he wears it not against the world, but for his friend. For Jim Kirk. "Language is one more layer of symbolism in a system of communication which is essentially fallible. It is error-prone. If I said that you could always show me, it might be the logical decision."

Edited 2012-05-31 06:30 (UTC)

"That's kind of what he said," says Jim, leaning back with an expression that isn't quite wary, so much as it is...not as open. As much as he'd opened himself to the meld at the time, he hadn't chosen it. It had merely happened, and through the necessity he could feel bleeding through all points of the bond, Jim had let it.

"I guess it's...a way for your people to share an experience," Jim ventures. "Not a recollection of it, but the actual experience."

'That's kind of what he said' ought to be surprising to Spock, after what he's admitted about feeling under the shadow of his own strange older iteration. Perhaps it's the inherent truth of it that leaves him ... positively unsurprised to hear Jim say as much.

Immediately, Spock cuts in with a very plain, "It would make me a liar if I were to say that a part of me didn't want to share that experience with you. In a way, I consider it as belonging to me as well. Which is not a very charitable way of thinking." He holds up a quick hand. "It does not. And there are times when, foolishly, it does not occur to me that you know so little, that I have allowed you to know so little, I ... "

Pausing, lengthy, Spock tilts the cup to his lips. He finds his words. "Did not intend to make you uncomfortable, but I wish to make it obvious. I am trying to get to know you, Jim. And over time, I would like for you to get to know more of me ... as well."

The look that Spock levies on him this time desires to make it just as obvious - Jim Kirk has found himself in the position of a privileged person. That this conversation is meant for him alone, would not be occurring outside this small apartment. That he wants more than a superior officer out of this person and has determined not to be ashamed of what is more than simply a weak-minded, sentimental whim.

"You'll get to know me, Spock," says Jim with a sip from his cup. "It's kind of inevitable, I am, as you and others have said." He smiles. "Colorful. I assume that's a nice way of saying flexibly raised. But look."

Leaning back in his chair, Jim spreads his hands. "I want to know whatever about you you want me to know. I think you're interesting. Fascinating, as you might say, and I don't get you even half the time." Jim shrugs, artless and wincing immediately after for his bruises. "I just think you might make me better."

"Your attitude is seldom parochial, this is very true." Kirk earns a particular half-twitch of an eyebrow which is quickly becoming devoted to the fondly dry commentary that the man inspires. Spock is half caught-up in his own concerns even as he slips the joke in. Sentimentality was a basking in ideals that in reality one did not take seriously enough to make the slightest sacrifice to or ever translate into action.

He had done both. For Nyota. For Jim. And for his mother, he had hunted Nero down behind this man he speaks with now as a friend. If he must have feelings at all ... he has damned well earned these ones.

"All that I want you to know for the moment is that you are not required to 'get' me to keep me. I, for one, appreciate that you have no use for starry-eyed sycophantic group-think. It provides me very excellent job security."

"No," Jim agrees with a chuckle, no he would not accuse Spock of group think, propensity towards mindmelding aside. And as much as he'd like to set the other man's mind at ease on that point, when it comes to sharing the experience in that way, Jim will steadfastly refuse. Emotional transference is one thing - reliving the destruction of one's home planet through their eyes, feeling that old heart break as surely as if it'd been lodged in his own side - Jim's not doing that again. And what's more, he's not inflicting it on Spock, either. Once is surely enough to experience that kind of devastation.

Jim shifts, taking another drink from his cup as he tries to think of something else. "How's the arm?"

The chuckle pleases Spock, expression warming half a degree again to something more at-ease. There is not much that separates this face from the face of a moment ago. There rarely is, though Kirk seems to be able to scrape meaning enough from Spock's stares to hold a lengthy conversation.

He doesn't know what it is that Kirk lived through on Delta-Vega. Only that Kirk's roundabout answer is no. And the subject is ultimately ... inessential. With that between them, Spock drops the topic most permanently. Wheedling is simply not who Spock is. Fruitless, desperate is not who Spock is.

"Healing," he says, sedate. "I believe I will find the doctor and request that he remove the cast after the end of this next week." Which will no doubt cause an argument, but Spock uses his words very precisely, and request to Spock is a little more imperative than it might be to others. He wants the cast off already, regardless of McCoy's medical opinion.

"Speaking of injuries." He raises his cup slightly to Jim. "You shared an aphorism of your mother's with me. My own mother used to say something along the lines of, 'one could get clean in a teacup if one had to.'" A polite reminder that Jim still needs his morning hygiene. "I also came here to discuss some new ideas that I have concerning the greater situation. And to ask you ... if you would be amenable to participating in a game with me."

Edited 2012-05-31 21:09 (UTC)

Jim's face is thoroughly buried in one hand by the time Spock stops speaking. "Okay," he says, pushing back his chair. "I am going to take a quick shower before your nose and my feelings start fighting over who's the more offended. You stay here. Drink your tea."

Without waiting for argument, Jim departs back through his bedroom door, shedding his shirt as he goes. He hardly waits at all for the water to get hot, eager to find out what this game might be, and, he realizes, standing under the spray, to hear Spock's new ideas. Rinsing the soap away, he makes a half-assed attempt at his hair before giving up, steps out of the shower and redresses with as much haste as his aching body will allow.

"Tip," says Jim when he reenters the kitchen, picking up the conversation as though whole minutes haven't passed. "Don't make this suggestion to Bones in a room with anything throwable. He has startling accuracy for a man who's never taken a marksmanship course."

Spock gives a small shrug as Jim stands to leave, doing what he's told. "I had planned to stay here and to drink my tea," he follows after Jim.

And he does. So that when the man comes back out, Spock has an empty cup, a bored expression, a partially-dismantled Keurig, and a pair of hands steepled thoughtfully on Jim Kirk's small kitchen table. He does not look up at the sound of Kirk's voice, having heard the sounds of the shower turning off and busy shuffling from across the apartment.

"Point of fact: The Human benchmark median reaction time is 215 milliseconds. The Vulcan benchmark median reaction time is 120 milliseconds. Make inferences."

Spock for: Bones wishes.

Between Spock's commentary and the dismembered coffeemaker Jim was most certainly not done using, he swiftly resolves to be there when Bones loses it and hypos the Vulcan unconscious.

"Unless you plan on making that thing more efficient," he says, pointing at the Keurig, "I'm going to need you to put that back together. I need at least four cups before noon, and caffeine withdrawal is an ugly process." He smiles sweetly. "Make inferences."

"There is still half a carafe of coffee left. There's no need to become distressed." The brow twitches again. But Spock makes his inferences from that saccharine expression on the other man's full lips. The sort of inferences that suggest an apology, even if he might not otherwise. "I was concerned that it might not have a filter. I'll put it back together - sit down, have more if you supposedly need it."

There is a pause just short enough to seem unforgiving. "My present belief is that we may be trapped in some form of generated warp bubble, by means, technological or otherwise, vastly different in theory and practice than our own, and of deeply concerning lack of ethic. Nevertheless, you may want to approach your equations from such a hypothetical standpoint and see what yields."

"A warp bubble travelling not only through spacetime, but through all possible versions of spacetime," says Jim, morbidly impressed at the scale of that, should it prove true.

It's enough to distract him from his insufficiently caffeinated headache, at least until Jim spies the pot Spock has so helpfully pointed out. He pours another cup and returns to the table. "You know the amount of energy it takes to power a single warp drive. How rare the dilithium crystals are that make regulating that much electromagnetic radiation possible." Jim's expression darkens as his thoughts move from science to conjecture. "What the hell could be powerful enough to sustain a warp bubble for this long, with enough...finesse to bring select people into it at will?"

Gingerly, Jim tests the stretch of his arm against the bruises pulling tight across his shoulders. "What could layer another nightmarish reality on top of the first one so seamlessly, then poof it away again just as fast?"

"We both understand the relation between matter and energy, Captain. An object at once traveling through infinite time and space would require infinite energy." It was, of course, one of the major restrictions of the top reaches of faster-than-light travel. On this scale, conjecture is all that they have. Rather than suggest an answer to Jim's question, Spock stays pointedly silent. The answer, of course, is nothing, but as they are observably here in reality, the answer is not nothing.

"Would you give me your arm? You will need it to play. If something isn't done, you won't stop complaining, and complaining is not a very efficient way to enjoy recreation." And although Spock is the one to make the request, he reaches his good arm slightly forward, hesitant, practically nervous. On Vulcan, it might be a business-like matter of course, part of their medicine, what Spock intends to do. This is not Vulcan - it is Jim's kitchen.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject