Chapter Text
“All I really need to know,” said Nyota, some time into their discussion, “is whether you can’t, or whether you won’t.”
“Specify,” said Spock, stalling for time.
She waved her hand around helplessly, indicating him, herself, the open box sitting next to her on the bed, the entire situation. “All of this! Everything I’ve asked you to do that you won’t do. Feeling. Feeling anything. For me.”
“I have done everything you asked me to do,” said Spock. “When you asked me to kiss you more often, I scheduled three kisses per day. When you wished me to romanticize your birthday, Valentine's Day, and our anniversary, I planned special dinners and gave you gifts. When you said I was insufficiently expressive of my affection for you, I made a point of giving you frequent compliments.”
“And not one of those things,” said Nyota, tears starting in her eyes, “was really what I was asking for.”
This was the ninth true argument in their relationship, discounting minor disagreements which were resolved within a few sentences. Though the topics were superficially different, all of them centered around essentially the same issue, including this one.
In 55.6% of the disagreements, Nyota had shed tears at some point. This would be concerning enough, but the frequency of the arguments and the likelihood of crying had both increased steadily the past few months, which passed concerning all the way to troubling.
Spock said, “I have done my best.”
“See, that’s what I thought,” said Nyota. “I have cut you a lot of slack because you claimed to be trying. I know we’re from very different cultures and I don’t expect everything to be on my terms.”
Spock recognized this as the pacifying first statement of an utterance which will then be followed by the word “but.”
“But I don’t think this is your culture talking,” she said, proving Spock’s theory. “This is all you, Spock. I’ve met a lot of Vulcans since we started dating and they are not like you.”
Spock did not react, but he took a moment to reinforce his emotional control.
“I don’t mean like that,” she blurted quickly. “I think they’re more emotional than you. You’re insecure about how Vulcan you are, so you try to out-Vulcan everybody else.”
This was not accurate, but Spock chose to focus his response on a previous point. “In what way do they display more emotion than I do?”
“They have sex outside pon farr, for one thing,” said Nyota, returning back to the original cause of the argument. “I’ve been researching it. Most Vulcans do.”
“I am one of those who does not,” said Spock. “But I attempted to solve the problem in my own way.” He gestured at the open box. He had come to her quarters to give it to her, in the perhaps overly optimistic expectation that it would solve the problem she had brought up in their previous argument, namely, that she was sexually frustrated since they had been together for several years without having consummated their relationship.
“When somebody says they’d like to have sex with you,” Nyota said, her voice becoming a furious hiss, “you don’t give them a fucking vibrator!” She took out the item in question and shook it at him.
“I do not understand why not,” said Spock. “I understand they are a popular remedy for sexual frustration in humans, especially women.”
“But I wanted to do it with you,” she repeated. “Are you offering to join me? Is that it?”
“I am not,” said Spock. “I can obtain a picture of myself for you, if you like. I believe it is common to use photographic aids as a—”
“I don’t want to rub one out while looking at a picture of you, Spock.” Her voice became less angry, more tired. She dropped his gift back into its box. “I already have one of these. It’s in my bedside table. I use it whenever I want to. But I don’t want to.”
“Then I do not understand—”
“Stop playing this game, Spock. You do understand. You understand perfectly well. You skate by really well on the bridge with the ‘I’m just an ignorant Vulcan who learned about humanity five minutes ago’ routine. It’s not gonna work on me.”
He was silent for 16 seconds. “I do not think it is reasonable,” he said at last, “to demand sexual intimacy from someone who does not want it.”
She looked embarrassed for a moment, but then she pulled her shoulders back again and lifted her chin. “If I was with someone who genuinely couldn’t have sex. Or who couldn’t enjoy it with me. I’d say fine, if you can’t you can’t, let’s do other things to show our love for each other. But what I’m asking is whether that’s what this is. Is it can’t or won’t. I need to know.”
“I do not mean to suggest I am not physically capable—”
“Do you think you would hate it? It would be literally impossible that you might enjoy it?” She gave him a hard look, as if she knew the answer to that question already and it proved her point.
She had him trapped, the way Jim would pin his king in a corner until he had to admit defeat. But what would defeat even mean in this case? He could not provide what she wanted. “You do not understand.”
“Okay. I definitely don’t. Enlighten me.” She leaned back, reaching her arms behind her for stability.
“Sexual intercourse is inherently emotional. I cannot be emotional.”
She looked up at the ceiling, exasperated, as if the answer to her frustrations might be written there. “You know, when I met you, I thought you were kind of like a puzzle box. A challenge to get into, but when you put in the effort, you’d get to see what was inside. I wanted to be one of the few special people who got to see your feelings. Or someone you cared about enough that I made you feel something.”
“I understand, then, why you are disappointed.” He had understood for some time. He persisted on the chance that he might still manage to build a relationship with her that could make her happy. But from the evidence available, his odds of success decreased day by day. “The prize inside the puzzle box does not exist.”
“But it does, Spock. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen you express emotion. I know it’s there.”
“Both times you saw me express emotion, I committed acts of violence.”
“I’m not saying those emotions specifically—
“Those are the emotions that there are,” he interrupted. “I do not have a human’s good nature. I do not have a Vulcan’s ability to control. I have a disturbing capacity for violence and I do not believe I am capable of controlling my emotions piecemeal, or part time. Do you truly not understand that it is because I care for you that I hold this back from you? I refuse to subject you to all that I could be without control.”
“So that’s it then. You’re never gonna love me. You’re capable, but you’re scared to.”
“Taluhk nash-veh k'du,” said Spock reflexively.
“You cherish me. Yeah. I know. It’s not the same as love. I’ve been trying to make it be the same for a very long time and I can’t. I want you to want me. I want you to be attracted to me and show it. I want you to kiss me because you feel like doing it, give me presents out of nowhere just because you thought of me, have sex with me because you just can’t resist anymore. And that’s not something you can give me, is it? Or something you want to give me, anyway.”
“Cannot,” said Spock. “With the limitations in place, it has never been a choice for me.”
“Tell me one thing, though, Spock. Were feelings any part of why you ended up with me in the first place?”
“I chose you because of your intelligence, personality, sensitivity toward my culture—”
“None of those are feelings. If you let your feelings choose. If you were guided by any emotion at all. Would you have picked me?”
Spock had been ramrod straight and very still during this whole conversation. But he became even more still, searching for an answer that would satisfy her, trying to find a way to make it true.
In the end, he chose honesty. It was the Vulcan way.
“No. I do not believe I would have.”
In lieu of an answer, she went over to a corner of her room, dumped a pile of scarves out of a box, and started moving around the room, collecting items and putting them in the box. Spock realized they were items he had given her. The vibrator went in last, balanced on top.
She pushed the box into his chest, so he was forced to unclasp his hands and take it. “Please go, Spock,” she said. “I need to cry and I don’t want to do it in front of you.”
He was some distance down the hall before he put the evidence together and discovered that their relationship was over.
When he had first been promoted to captain, Jim had felt like a massive phony. Like a toddler wearing his dad’s shoes. His father had gone through the ranks like a normal person, collecting experience and life wisdom, before his very brief command. Jim had been given the entire Enterprise with the only command experience of his life being a very chaotic few days not at all characteristic of what it was like to actually run the Enterprise.
“It’s not a competition, Jim,” his mother had said, except that it absolutely was. If his father had lived, he could have made it his life goal to make him proud. And if Pike had never shown up to Riverside, he could have continued on with the goal of distinguishing himself so much from his father that no one would have thought to compare him. Was Jim Kirk a better part-time bartender than George Kirk had been acting captain? Maybe he was, who could say?
But Pike had challenged him to do better than his father had, and so he had tried. His father had saved eight hundred people in twelve minutes, whereas Jim had saved the Earth in a couple days. That was better, the math checked out, and yet it still hadn’t felt like it counted. Because George had died. You can’t beat “gave his life for his ship” and still be around to feel good about it.
Except that, a year ago, Jim had.
It almost made him angry that it had been so easy. After all those years of feeling inferior, it was that simple? Giving your life for your ship was like falling off a log. Once you’ve made the decision to let yourself fall, it doesn’t matter if you lose courage halfway through. It happens anyway. About thirty seconds of courage was all you really needed to see it through. If you had second thoughts, it was too late to back out.
Sometimes Jim wondered if, after the last lifepod had left, George Kirk had panicked, had wished he’d gone with Winona, had wanted to run away. Jim liked to think so. He’d have liked to kick back with his dad, have a beer, and say, “When you died for your ship, did you—”
And his dad would say, “Nobody else gets it, do they, Jim? Just you and me.”
The hard part had been getting up again. After all he’d been through, there would be no martyrdom, no angel wings on the back of his mother’s pickup truck, just getting up again and going on, when his body and mind both seemed to think they belonged in the ground. It had taken him six weeks to walk again. Twelve before his memory quite worked.
But now, he was back in the center seat, and for the first time, it didn’t feel too big for him. Not because he’d really earned it any more than he had before. He hadn’t done the time, put in the years it would have taken. But death had a way of giving you perspective. What was a chair, compared to a warp chamber filled with radiation? What was anything to that?
And there was Spock. Somehow, their animosity had turned into teamwork, and their teamwork into friendship. There had been a time when Jim could barely give an order without his eyes darting to the science station to check up on Spock’s current disapproval level. Now Spock believed in him. The two of them were like a well-oiled machine, the way they charged at danger together and had each other’s backs.
When they weren’t in danger, it didn’t always go so well. Spock alternated between warm and amused, and cold and aloof. Jim could never figure out what triggered the changes, so he walked on eggshells around the man.
Bones said it wasn’t worth the effort. He should just be himself and Spock could get on board with that or not. But Jim needed Spock in a way Bones couldn’t understand.
His eyes rested on the sleek black head, bent over the science console as always. He couldn’t explain how the inconsistent friendship of an undemonstrative man managed to give him emotional security. But it did, and he would accept whatever crumbs of it Spock would give him.
It didn’t stop Jim from wanting more, but that was neither here nor there.
“Are you okay, Spock?”
Kirk’s first officer gave a startled twitch across the dinner table. “Have I given the impression that I am upset?”
That was the kind of trick question that would make Spock unbelievably huffy if he answered honestly. So instead he said, “No, you just seem . . . distracted.”
“That would not be an inaccurate assessment,” said Spock. Score one for Jim’s improving interacting-with-a-Vulcan skills.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“What could I possibly do with a penny?” There was Spock’s quirked eyebrow, showing he was at least not so upset he couldn’t still play this game.
“I’m not gonna push you or anything,” said Jim, “but if you don’t mind, I’d like to know what’s eating—what’s got you so distracted.”
Spock blinked and gave a considering head tilt. “Very well,” he said at last. “I am thinking about Lieutenant Commander Uhura.”
Well, he’d walked right into that one. Probably he should be pleased that Spock was opening up at all, even if it was about the relationship he was having with somebody else. “Planning how you’ll spend shore leave together?”
“No. Contemplating the recent end of our relationship.”
“End?” Jim exclaimed, trying to sound sympathetic rather than hopeful. “What happened?”
“She concluded it on the grounds that I do not express enough emotion toward her.”
Spock never seemed that unemotional to Jim. But he couldn’t possibly say that. Instead he scoffed. “Why’d she date a Vulcan if that was what she wanted? She knew what she was getting. And you have so much to offer besides that.”
“Such has been my argument,” said Spock. “But it was ultimately futile. I cannot blame her for searching elsewhere if that was what she needed.”
“You’re being more gracious than I would be.” Jim contemplated what to say, how to comfort a person who would never in a million years admit he was capable of being sad. “I’m really sorry. She’s missing out.”
“That is kind of you to say, Captain,” said Spock, eyes on his plate as he chased a piece of plomeek with his fork. “However, perhaps she was ultimately correct. Perhaps it is impossible for a human and a Vulcan to truly have their needs met in a relationship together.”
“I wouldn’t say that!” said Jim hastily. “Not if the person knew how to appreciate you.”
“I had hoped Ny—Lieutenant Uhura might ultimately be the partner of my life. Now I am considering asking my father to make enquiries about a suitable Vulcan mate. I am, perhaps, not what Vulcan women are looking for in their efforts to repopulate the race. However, as I understand it, the gender disparity among the survivors is such as to make me optimistic someone may be willing to settle for a half-Vulcan mate.”
Jim blinked twice. Well, there went his (very short lived) hopes. Spock wanted a Vulcan. He wanted a woman. Even if she was settling.
“You don’t have to rush to replace her,” said Jim. “You could take some time for yourself.”
There was a brief silence. “In fact, I do,” said Spock at last. “It is not appropriate for a Vulcan of my age to be unattached.”
“It is for a human,” Jim ventured. “And perhaps the human way might work better for you in this case?”
Stony silence. Yet again, Jim had trodden on the minefield that was Spock’s one thousand and one sensitive topics. “In this regard, I do not consider myself human,” he said coldly. “I intend to follow the Vulcan way.”
Jim nodded. “Of course, I didn’t mean—”
But Spock was rising to his feet, lifting his almost-empty tray. “Good evening, Captain.”