Spock/Uhura - Episode I
Uhura's mild look of confused concern masked a wave of feeling and urgent instinctive microreactions. The point of control that had kept her expression fixed watched Spock and assessed herself.
A flash of denial, the safety of retreat, was discounted almost instantaneously. She trusted Spock, she respected him. She could choose to deal with him openly. She knew that whatever happened he would be able to handle it, she knew he could give and keep his word. These qualities of his were part of what calmed her thrill of panic, but it was herself that she felt keenly. She began to exult in the feeling of bareness, and feel her power to become naked before his mind, and she wanted him to see her. She suddenly felt her ability to attract Spock's intensity and focus, parts of him that deeply provoked her. She saw herself, as she had held herself back to watch him from the dark, entranced. She suddenly had a new sense that all these nights she had been predator and prey - they both were. This thought came to her clearly and unbidden. Everything she wanted was both possible and impossible, or not even known. In this cascade, the feeling that if she let him, Spock could see the woman she was, the hidden and the open, exhilarated her. She felt every part of herself and knew she had maintained her outward composure. Uhura decided to continue to stalk, to hunt and be hunted, a little longer.
"Well, Spock, we're very different, you and I. I know about you. You probably have no idea how I spend my time. You work on the bridge, you eat in the Officer's mess, and you sleep in your quarters. You don't socialise with the senior officers unless there's a reason, except the Captain of course. You use your holodeck allowance. You have a lot of time for the junior officers if we need your help. The system survey is a big job, so you're at the bridge if you aren't eating or sleeping. You probably still have a pretty impressive set up in your quarters, for admin, projects, little things, but for a survey like Dagema, you'd cloister yourself up here and use your science station. Your logic can make you easy to predict"
"And your logic would appear both sound and valid... but that isn't how you came to be here. You knew I would be here tonight because you've been coming up to the main bridge and standing in that exact spot, sometimes for hours, whenever we are both off shift for at least a month, probably closer to two, since the Dagema survey was prioritised and we entered warp. My logic and habits aren't quite so transparent, unless someone was watching quite closely, and I know more about how you spend your time than you seem to think."
"Haha Spock! You do surprise me. Begs the question..." She regarded him, smirking, her eyebrows raised. His expression had changed too. He probably thought he looked mildly intellectually satisfied, to most people, human people, he probably did. Uhura had a deep sense of Vulcan psychology. She knew that every Vulcan fought a daily war with their savage self, Spock more than most. She knew ego when she saw it. There was turbulence and passion and lust there, he would be suppressing himself at this very moment. She wondered how much he had really changed since the Academy.
"Nyota, you know that self control is indispensible to me. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for me to be carried by the desire that surged through me when I first realised that I could feel you in the room. But if you could watch and remain apart, so could I. I stand in restraint, observing the diversity of effect in a universe of infinite causal combination. I work, I feel your eyes on me, catch your scent on the air and hear you breathe when I choose to. I wondered if you would be standing there when my work, which was made possible by your own, was concluded. Here we both are. Is it a coincidence that I have only a few months until pon farr is upon me?"
"Wait Spock, I still can't believe you knew I was here and did nothing. We were watching each other this whole time. I wasn't trying to force anything. I was "standing in restraint" myself. Why are you asking me about pon farr? Are you serious? Your pon farr is coming?"
"You know that I did not complete the ceremony that would have enabled more complete control of my emotional self. You know that I have scheduled a leave of absence from my duties, and you also know that I have been working to complete the survey with much urgency. But I do not believe that your intention was to take advantage of me"
"I wasn't, I would never. Spock... I didn't realise that was why you were going back to Vulcan. I promise. It's just me wanting to feel close to you, needing it but trying to stay right. You know how I feel about you"
"It is as difficult sometimes for me to follow your mind as it is for you to follow mine, Nyota. I am not human, my mother is, but I am not. I feel, but I do not feel like you or the Captain feels. I am fascinated by you. I find you beautiful beyond words. I would become completely arrested and intoxicated by you if my discipline failed. I can say without hyperbole that I would willingly sacrifice my life for your wellbeing. I would give you anything you ask of me that I can give. I will always hold my part of the connection which exists between us. I accept you. I accept us. Translated into your terms, does that approach how you...feel...about me?"
"You become more Vulcan every day Spock. Yes. It does. I do have something to ask you. You used to kiss me, you felt it, can't you let me hear how that felt, when you felt it? Can't you give me that, even just as a memory?"
"No, that is beyond my strength to recontain. If I live another century, I could one day develop the discipline it would take to talk to you the way you mean, about our time together before I became a realised Vulcan"
But he stepped into her space and she felt the closeness of him as heat that seeped into her. Something came over her thoughts like a gentle mist that makes the world simpler by blurring the horizon, the skyline. Her surprise, her reaction, the realisation that Spock had known all along and her process of dealing with that, all disappeared in the overpowering presence they shared. No one else could beat into the rhythm of her body like that.
In seeming contradiction of himself, his left arm held her beneath her shoulderblades and his right hand was between her hip and the small of her back. He had instinctively found pivots of her centre of balance and he drew her weight just off her feet. He held her as they drifted through space together and allowed her soft lips to cover his impassive face.
Kissing him at once soothed her and drove her into a frenzy. She was desperately thirsty for him, and she drank him wildly. The calm, passive way he received her lips on him was maddening, spurring her on even as she slowly felt her satisfaction grow and spread. She was kissing deep into his mouth now, and he had imperceptibly taken her up into his arms, the palm of his hand was rough on the back of her neck. They stared into each other's eyes as they ebbed and flowed together. She hadn't fully realised yet what was happening, not until she had slowed down would she allow herself to catch her breath. She was fully in the moment, but part of him still stood apart from himself, and that kiss confirmed what he had already suspected.
During their time on the Enterprise something had grown and deepened between them. The storm inside her was an echo of the struggle for control inside Spock himself, the struggle she had reawakened. Each was magnifying and balancing the other in a millenia old dance that had once threatened and ultimately saved an entire planet, Spock's ability to sense her presence on the bridge so distinctly, the pull they exerted on one another, had only been the prelude to the symphony that Uhura was beginning to play, the tuning of his ear. They were joining, Vulcans call it "Kali-farr" - "Bond with her". It would have been biologically possible for them to safely sever the connection at this point, but she would not, he would not. The choice had been made. Some things would always remain beyond consciousness and logic.
The next day Spock would request that his leave be brought forward to coincide with the ship's arrival at Dagema-3. He would begin redrafting an away team mission brief he would no longer lead. His carefully laid plans on Vulcan would be cancelled. The Captain would understand. The Captain would have to understand.
Pon farr would come early, he could feel it.
Spock/Uhura - Episode III