igrab
in
grabi_hands
Relevance [Kirk/Spock, PG]
Title: Relevance
Author: igrab
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Written For: this prompt at 1297's Second Chances meme
Rating: PG
Word Count: 729
Notes: This could be taken as either reboot or TOS, so.
He's drowning and he does not know how to swim. Logically, it should be a simple concept, but he's lost track of where the surface is, and his lungs are tightening, tightening. He cannot breathe.
Vulcans do not dream, Spock tells himself, as he pulls on his blue Starfleet shirt and pets his hair until it settles. It cannot be a dream.
He has never experienced drowning before. It cannot be a memory.
He draws diagrams in his head, creates ordered lists and sorts his thoughts by relevance. Drowning is hardly relevant. He brings up what is, his work, his tasklists. The three hundred and twenty-four things Jim expects Spock to remember for him. The five hundred and sixty things he remembers without being expected. He focuses on these things, puts the dream and the water far from his mind.
He can still feel the weight on his chest as he steps from the turbolift, but he doesn't notice that it's there. He's spent so long ignoring it that it's become a part of him. Tight. Heavy. He expands his lungs to take in more air, but it never feels like enough.
His captain is an impossible thing. An unstoppable force, perhaps, though logically, Spock knows that such a thing cannot be proven to exist. There is always the possibility of the unknown.
He watches his hands, and the pressure feels unbearable.
But no.
Relevance. He examines these thoughts, finds them to be without basis. There is nothing about Jim's hands that could make him feel short of breath. These nightmares shouldn't belong to him - they should be the other way around, this fear is unbased.
He pushes, and pushes, and it builds under the surface, like M-class magma building under a thin veneer of necessity. Focus. Relevance. Control.
The eruption is inevitable.
Jim's hands pry like crowbars, and Spock has no defenses. That voice catches and binds and his breath freezes in his chest, because he's known it would come to this.
Spock cannot say no to him.
He dances to the left with well-placed words, and Jim parries, wrenching him back with blunt syllables that Spock has no answer for. He slides to the right - avoidance tactic, but Jim knows him too well and he fears nothing. This battle has already been lost, from the first time that the captain opened his mouth and said, "What's wrong?"
There are too many people here, and Spock is drowning. He has to tell him with his black eyes, desperate, he cannot let them see this. He cannot let Jim see this either - but in that he has no choice. He has already made his decisions, already given up his whole self into the keeping of another. It is logical, to put your faith in that which you believe in.
It isn't until they're alone that Spock begins to understand. The pressure in his chest hasn't eased, the weight in his heart hasn't lifted. He knows what it is to drown, for he went under the first time he'd looked into Jim's eyes. He'd just been sorting, sorting, pushing it further and further away, because drowning was irrelevant.
I love him. I love him. I love him. I love him.
The voices inside one's head are a concept that no Vulcan has ever been taught to understand. Spock turned off his inner ears, and overlaid their cries with lists, figures, and the endless sorting.
Jim waits. He knows. Spock knows that he knows, and knows that he knows that he knows. There is a great deal of knowing in the space between them.
Spock visualizes the image of an open box. He folds his words, his reactions, his nightly dreamscapes, and the dryness in his throat when Jim looks at him too hard. He lines them up together, padding the spaces with rolled-up memories of touches that lingered too long, and words that anchored too deep.
He closes the box, and locks it. The imaginary key is tucked away, as a shield over the breath in his lungs. It flows so easily now.
'Jim,' the box reads, and Spock places it carefully on a shelf, of thoughts sorted by relevance.
"It is nothing," he says.
Author: igrab
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Written For: this prompt at 1297's Second Chances meme
Rating: PG
Word Count: 729
Notes: This could be taken as either reboot or TOS, so.
He's drowning and he does not know how to swim. Logically, it should be a simple concept, but he's lost track of where the surface is, and his lungs are tightening, tightening. He cannot breathe.
Vulcans do not dream, Spock tells himself, as he pulls on his blue Starfleet shirt and pets his hair until it settles. It cannot be a dream.
He has never experienced drowning before. It cannot be a memory.
He draws diagrams in his head, creates ordered lists and sorts his thoughts by relevance. Drowning is hardly relevant. He brings up what is, his work, his tasklists. The three hundred and twenty-four things Jim expects Spock to remember for him. The five hundred and sixty things he remembers without being expected. He focuses on these things, puts the dream and the water far from his mind.
He can still feel the weight on his chest as he steps from the turbolift, but he doesn't notice that it's there. He's spent so long ignoring it that it's become a part of him. Tight. Heavy. He expands his lungs to take in more air, but it never feels like enough.
His captain is an impossible thing. An unstoppable force, perhaps, though logically, Spock knows that such a thing cannot be proven to exist. There is always the possibility of the unknown.
He watches his hands, and the pressure feels unbearable.
But no.
Relevance. He examines these thoughts, finds them to be without basis. There is nothing about Jim's hands that could make him feel short of breath. These nightmares shouldn't belong to him - they should be the other way around, this fear is unbased.
He pushes, and pushes, and it builds under the surface, like M-class magma building under a thin veneer of necessity. Focus. Relevance. Control.
The eruption is inevitable.
Jim's hands pry like crowbars, and Spock has no defenses. That voice catches and binds and his breath freezes in his chest, because he's known it would come to this.
Spock cannot say no to him.
He dances to the left with well-placed words, and Jim parries, wrenching him back with blunt syllables that Spock has no answer for. He slides to the right - avoidance tactic, but Jim knows him too well and he fears nothing. This battle has already been lost, from the first time that the captain opened his mouth and said, "What's wrong?"
There are too many people here, and Spock is drowning. He has to tell him with his black eyes, desperate, he cannot let them see this. He cannot let Jim see this either - but in that he has no choice. He has already made his decisions, already given up his whole self into the keeping of another. It is logical, to put your faith in that which you believe in.
It isn't until they're alone that Spock begins to understand. The pressure in his chest hasn't eased, the weight in his heart hasn't lifted. He knows what it is to drown, for he went under the first time he'd looked into Jim's eyes. He'd just been sorting, sorting, pushing it further and further away, because drowning was irrelevant.
I love him. I love him. I love him. I love him.
The voices inside one's head are a concept that no Vulcan has ever been taught to understand. Spock turned off his inner ears, and overlaid their cries with lists, figures, and the endless sorting.
Jim waits. He knows. Spock knows that he knows, and knows that he knows that he knows. There is a great deal of knowing in the space between them.
Spock visualizes the image of an open box. He folds his words, his reactions, his nightly dreamscapes, and the dryness in his throat when Jim looks at him too hard. He lines them up together, padding the spaces with rolled-up memories of touches that lingered too long, and words that anchored too deep.
He closes the box, and locks it. The imaginary key is tucked away, as a shield over the breath in his lungs. It flows so easily now.
'Jim,' the box reads, and Spock places it carefully on a shelf, of thoughts sorted by relevance.
"It is nothing," he says.