Take Your Time (Coming Home)
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Character(s)/Pairing: Kirk/Spock, Winona
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1641
Summary: The first time Winona meets Spock, she terrifies him and makes him tea. For Winona, it's a study in trying not to fall apart.
Notes: Title is a song by Fun. Cut text from the song "Barlights," also by Fun.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you're going I'm going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.
We're after the same rainbow's end--
--"Moon River"
“I used to sit here a lot,” she says, bare feet tapping a perfect military rhythm on the dry, old wood. Something you never forget, like the way Spock stands in stiff, regulation parade rest on the porch. When she reaches him, she leans on the railing with ease she spent years trying to remember. There was a time, once, she would have swung skinny, tanned legs over the railing and sat there, staring out over the desert back in Arizona in a pair of aviators and cut off jeans. It’s been years since she’s moved without thinking about it.
The sun is setting over the cornfields, casting small fingers of light onto the road that runs up to the farmhouse. The wind teases hair Winona still isn’t used to leaving loose.
Spock looks at her for a moment with inscrutable eyes. That’s a good word for him: inscrutable. He has emotions; he must. It would be impossible to deal with Jim if he didn’t. But Winona’s been a Starfleet officer for going on thirty years now. She’s met aliens from planets you can’t even see from Earth. And still, she doesn’t know how to deal with this genius Vulcan kid with the big, Human eyes.
“I’d come home on leave,” Winona continues. She tries to ignore his eyes. “And I’d sit out here every night and wait till he got home.” She barks out a laugh, harsh and tired. “I guess it was… Penance, or something. I was never there for him, growing up, so least I could do was wait up for him. Ridiculous Humans, you don’t have to say it.”
“He has been… restless, lately,” Spock says, completely non sequitur. Winona doesn’t know his father well-didn’t really deal with Vulcans, and she wasn’t much for diplomacy anyway-but he’s definitely the son of an ambassador, that’s for sure. Problem is, Winona’s an engineer. She doesn’t know how to do delicate.
“I cannot blame him,” Spock continues. If he notices the way she’s avoiding his gaze, he’s doing a damn good job of ignoring it. She’s kind of grateful for that, in a way.
“Yeah,” Winona sighs, “That’s Jimmy, all right.”
Last time, it was mid-October, an Indian summer. She’d brought the heat back with her, all stored up after months in the black. Sam was gone by then, run off to San Fran and then off-planet to school. Frank was long gone. So it was just her, her and Jim. The wind was whipping over cornfields full of weeds, the sky big and open and inviting. Winona tried not to look at it. Just watched the road till 0330 when Jim came screeching up on his bike. He didn’t say anything, just a terse nod before he passed out on the sofa.
So yeah, she can’t really blame him for being restless. Even now.
“Indeed. He does not seem to understand the concept of stillness.” Spock’s eyebrow twitches up. Winona doesn’t think he even notices.
“That’s not news,” she says dryly. “He’s been like that since he was born. I swear, I almost put a security system on his crib.” It’s not an exaggeration. There were blueprints.
If he were Human, Spock would be laughing, Winona thinks. His eyebrow quirks, and when his eyes flick to hers there’s a knowing look there. “I have considered taking similar steps myself,” he says. “Perhaps you would care to take a look at my schematics?”
But Winona is Human, and she’s an engineer-she’s as loud and obnoxious as they come. So she laughs, head thrown back and letting loose for the first time in a long time. “I like you,” she gasps between bouts of laughter. She doesn’t say now I understand what he sees in you-even she knows that’s a can of worms she probably doesn’t want to be opening-but she thinks it.
Look, Spock isn’t the easiest guy to get along with (granted, neither is Winona-or Jim, actually). But Winona’s coming around. She’s trying. The sense of humor helps. She imagines he might be thinking the same thing about her. Maybe not the sense of humor part. She’s not sure he even realizes he has one. Jim must be having a field day.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Spock says. And suddenly Winona’s flashing back to being fifteen and pulling up in front of her girlfriend’s house on her motorcycle and praying that Lara’s parents wouldn’t hate her for the holes in her jeans and the-tiny, really, honestly tiny-motor oil stain on her t-shirt. Then again, Vulcans probably don’t expect the father in the living room cleaning his shotgun.
Still.
“You think I’ve got any say?” she asks, swallowing back a laugh. “Seriously, Vulcan society must be all sorts of fucked up. I haven’t had a say in Jim’s love life since he was fourteen fucking years old.”
Spock doesn’t say anything. He just watches the corn blown into waves by the wind and the dust ghosting up off the road. Winona has a pang of homesickness, then, and it’s weird, how this Vulcan kid can make her miss Arizona; she hasn’t thought of it as home since she was twelve.
“Hey, Spock,” Winona says. He still doesn’t look at her. “I’ll go make us some tea.”
He nods, stiff, and it might be gratitude. Respite. She knows a thing or two about Vulcan meditation-shrinks don’t really get her, and there was something about PTSD which you’d think someone would have found a way to deal with in the centuries since humanity admitted its existence-but she wonders exactly how much silence he’s had the pleasure of experiencing in the past four years.
So she watches him through the kitchen window as she waits for the water to boil. The house isn’t so old that there’s no replicator, but Winona has a religious devotion to coffee, and you just don’t drink that shit replicated. Jim understands this; his addiction may or may not be her fault. She’ll blame genetics.
Winona thinks she must be getting old. It’s a strange feeling-sometimes, she wakes up from nightmares cocooned in the quilt George’s mother made her and she has the urge to get out, to throw on her leather jacket and just go. The way she did in Arizona, when she had nothing to lose.
But here she is, taking tea bags and mugs out of her cupboards, and she never drank tea before Jim left.
Spock is still standing in the same position on the porch, but maybe it’s a little more relaxed. The interview is over. Winona remembers the vetting process. Well, no one actually called it that. No one until George’s mother, Calphurnia, with her homemade donuts and her t-shirts with ridiculous sayings and her straightforward hands.
“Well,” she’d said, wiping a bit of flour off her Peace, Love, Shakespeare t-shirt, “Do try not to break his heart, dear.” And that had been the end of it.
Probably, she isn’t making quite the same impression.
Well, she isn’t Calphurnia. And she sure as hell isn’t anything like Amanda Grayson was. That woman was a force of nature. Winona contemplates telling Spock that. To normal people, she thinks, it might not be too comforting.
The kettle whistles.
Winona pours water out over the tea bags. They bob up to the surface, coloring the water a warm, brownish color. Burnt sienna, she thinks it would be called. She used to be an artist, once. Colors and lines and shapes were always easier to mold than words. Words are heavy. They don’t weld with heat the way metal does. Don’t fit easily like the parts of an engine.
Spock is good with words, she imagines. Like Jim, except Spock is more precise. Jim is chaotic, all over the place, and you have to search to get his genius. Spock is just right there on the surface, only so, so not. Inscrutable. Jim wears his heart on his sleeve, only there are too many-it’s so hard to find the right one. Testing, maybe. Searching.
Like the way a sudden light cuts through the window, the sound of gravel crunching under motorcycle wheels and combat boots. Jim clomps up the porch stairs and stops. Winona glances out the window-she doesn’t want to pry, wants to leave them their moments, but when you’ve loved someone enough they leave a black hole in your chest, you can’t really look away.
Still, she tries. She’s old; those kinds of stories aren’t for her anymore. She pulls on the string of the tea bags, tosses them in the disposal.
When she looks up again, Jim and Spock are talking, Spock no longer at parade rest, speaking in careful gestures. Jim leans on the porch railing, completely relaxed in a way that isn’t feigned at all. Winona misses the days she could do that.
She imagines Spock saying, “I waited for you.”
She imagines Jim knowing what that means.
She imagines him remembering that the next time he’s cornered, the next near-death experience he has, that there’s someone waiting for him, and fighting, scratching and biting and all the dirty tricks she ever taught him.
She imagines that, when the time comes, because it will, it always does, stories like these don’t have happy endings for anyone, not really, it will be enough. Even though it never was.
Jim grins, the one that’s all her, crooked. Spock leans in to taste it. Jim grabs at the back of Spock’s shirt like he doesn’t know why they haven’t just fused together yet.
Metal welds with heat; in Winona’s experience, nothing else does.
So she goes into the living room and picks up the newest issue of the engineering journal she’s been reading. She leaves the tea steaming on the counter.
Character(s)/Pairing: Kirk/Spock, Winona
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1641
Summary: The first time Winona meets Spock, she terrifies him and makes him tea. For Winona, it's a study in trying not to fall apart.
Notes: Title is a song by Fun. Cut text from the song "Barlights," also by Fun.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you're going I'm going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.
We're after the same rainbow's end--
--"Moon River"
“I used to sit here a lot,” she says, bare feet tapping a perfect military rhythm on the dry, old wood. Something you never forget, like the way Spock stands in stiff, regulation parade rest on the porch. When she reaches him, she leans on the railing with ease she spent years trying to remember. There was a time, once, she would have swung skinny, tanned legs over the railing and sat there, staring out over the desert back in Arizona in a pair of aviators and cut off jeans. It’s been years since she’s moved without thinking about it.
The sun is setting over the cornfields, casting small fingers of light onto the road that runs up to the farmhouse. The wind teases hair Winona still isn’t used to leaving loose.
Spock looks at her for a moment with inscrutable eyes. That’s a good word for him: inscrutable. He has emotions; he must. It would be impossible to deal with Jim if he didn’t. But Winona’s been a Starfleet officer for going on thirty years now. She’s met aliens from planets you can’t even see from Earth. And still, she doesn’t know how to deal with this genius Vulcan kid with the big, Human eyes.
“I’d come home on leave,” Winona continues. She tries to ignore his eyes. “And I’d sit out here every night and wait till he got home.” She barks out a laugh, harsh and tired. “I guess it was… Penance, or something. I was never there for him, growing up, so least I could do was wait up for him. Ridiculous Humans, you don’t have to say it.”
“He has been… restless, lately,” Spock says, completely non sequitur. Winona doesn’t know his father well-didn’t really deal with Vulcans, and she wasn’t much for diplomacy anyway-but he’s definitely the son of an ambassador, that’s for sure. Problem is, Winona’s an engineer. She doesn’t know how to do delicate.
“I cannot blame him,” Spock continues. If he notices the way she’s avoiding his gaze, he’s doing a damn good job of ignoring it. She’s kind of grateful for that, in a way.
“Yeah,” Winona sighs, “That’s Jimmy, all right.”
Last time, it was mid-October, an Indian summer. She’d brought the heat back with her, all stored up after months in the black. Sam was gone by then, run off to San Fran and then off-planet to school. Frank was long gone. So it was just her, her and Jim. The wind was whipping over cornfields full of weeds, the sky big and open and inviting. Winona tried not to look at it. Just watched the road till 0330 when Jim came screeching up on his bike. He didn’t say anything, just a terse nod before he passed out on the sofa.
So yeah, she can’t really blame him for being restless. Even now.
“Indeed. He does not seem to understand the concept of stillness.” Spock’s eyebrow twitches up. Winona doesn’t think he even notices.
“That’s not news,” she says dryly. “He’s been like that since he was born. I swear, I almost put a security system on his crib.” It’s not an exaggeration. There were blueprints.
If he were Human, Spock would be laughing, Winona thinks. His eyebrow quirks, and when his eyes flick to hers there’s a knowing look there. “I have considered taking similar steps myself,” he says. “Perhaps you would care to take a look at my schematics?”
But Winona is Human, and she’s an engineer-she’s as loud and obnoxious as they come. So she laughs, head thrown back and letting loose for the first time in a long time. “I like you,” she gasps between bouts of laughter. She doesn’t say now I understand what he sees in you-even she knows that’s a can of worms she probably doesn’t want to be opening-but she thinks it.
Look, Spock isn’t the easiest guy to get along with (granted, neither is Winona-or Jim, actually). But Winona’s coming around. She’s trying. The sense of humor helps. She imagines he might be thinking the same thing about her. Maybe not the sense of humor part. She’s not sure he even realizes he has one. Jim must be having a field day.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Spock says. And suddenly Winona’s flashing back to being fifteen and pulling up in front of her girlfriend’s house on her motorcycle and praying that Lara’s parents wouldn’t hate her for the holes in her jeans and the-tiny, really, honestly tiny-motor oil stain on her t-shirt. Then again, Vulcans probably don’t expect the father in the living room cleaning his shotgun.
Still.
“You think I’ve got any say?” she asks, swallowing back a laugh. “Seriously, Vulcan society must be all sorts of fucked up. I haven’t had a say in Jim’s love life since he was fourteen fucking years old.”
Spock doesn’t say anything. He just watches the corn blown into waves by the wind and the dust ghosting up off the road. Winona has a pang of homesickness, then, and it’s weird, how this Vulcan kid can make her miss Arizona; she hasn’t thought of it as home since she was twelve.
“Hey, Spock,” Winona says. He still doesn’t look at her. “I’ll go make us some tea.”
He nods, stiff, and it might be gratitude. Respite. She knows a thing or two about Vulcan meditation-shrinks don’t really get her, and there was something about PTSD which you’d think someone would have found a way to deal with in the centuries since humanity admitted its existence-but she wonders exactly how much silence he’s had the pleasure of experiencing in the past four years.
So she watches him through the kitchen window as she waits for the water to boil. The house isn’t so old that there’s no replicator, but Winona has a religious devotion to coffee, and you just don’t drink that shit replicated. Jim understands this; his addiction may or may not be her fault. She’ll blame genetics.
Winona thinks she must be getting old. It’s a strange feeling-sometimes, she wakes up from nightmares cocooned in the quilt George’s mother made her and she has the urge to get out, to throw on her leather jacket and just go. The way she did in Arizona, when she had nothing to lose.
But here she is, taking tea bags and mugs out of her cupboards, and she never drank tea before Jim left.
Spock is still standing in the same position on the porch, but maybe it’s a little more relaxed. The interview is over. Winona remembers the vetting process. Well, no one actually called it that. No one until George’s mother, Calphurnia, with her homemade donuts and her t-shirts with ridiculous sayings and her straightforward hands.
“Well,” she’d said, wiping a bit of flour off her Peace, Love, Shakespeare t-shirt, “Do try not to break his heart, dear.” And that had been the end of it.
Probably, she isn’t making quite the same impression.
Well, she isn’t Calphurnia. And she sure as hell isn’t anything like Amanda Grayson was. That woman was a force of nature. Winona contemplates telling Spock that. To normal people, she thinks, it might not be too comforting.
The kettle whistles.
Winona pours water out over the tea bags. They bob up to the surface, coloring the water a warm, brownish color. Burnt sienna, she thinks it would be called. She used to be an artist, once. Colors and lines and shapes were always easier to mold than words. Words are heavy. They don’t weld with heat the way metal does. Don’t fit easily like the parts of an engine.
Spock is good with words, she imagines. Like Jim, except Spock is more precise. Jim is chaotic, all over the place, and you have to search to get his genius. Spock is just right there on the surface, only so, so not. Inscrutable. Jim wears his heart on his sleeve, only there are too many-it’s so hard to find the right one. Testing, maybe. Searching.
Like the way a sudden light cuts through the window, the sound of gravel crunching under motorcycle wheels and combat boots. Jim clomps up the porch stairs and stops. Winona glances out the window-she doesn’t want to pry, wants to leave them their moments, but when you’ve loved someone enough they leave a black hole in your chest, you can’t really look away.
Still, she tries. She’s old; those kinds of stories aren’t for her anymore. She pulls on the string of the tea bags, tosses them in the disposal.
When she looks up again, Jim and Spock are talking, Spock no longer at parade rest, speaking in careful gestures. Jim leans on the porch railing, completely relaxed in a way that isn’t feigned at all. Winona misses the days she could do that.
She imagines Spock saying, “I waited for you.”
She imagines Jim knowing what that means.
She imagines him remembering that the next time he’s cornered, the next near-death experience he has, that there’s someone waiting for him, and fighting, scratching and biting and all the dirty tricks she ever taught him.
She imagines that, when the time comes, because it will, it always does, stories like these don’t have happy endings for anyone, not really, it will be enough. Even though it never was.
Jim grins, the one that’s all her, crooked. Spock leans in to taste it. Jim grabs at the back of Spock’s shirt like he doesn’t know why they haven’t just fused together yet.
Metal welds with heat; in Winona’s experience, nothing else does.
So she goes into the living room and picks up the newest issue of the engineering journal she’s been reading. She leaves the tea steaming on the counter.