Chapter Text
Spock felt no sorrow, leaving that apartment in New York.
By the time they drove away, it was deep into the night, but the heat radiated off of the hard urban landscape, left over from the stark glare of the late summer sun. Still, despite the occasional siren, the streets were quieter and easier to navigate; it was as close to peaceful as it could ever be, and eventually they had managed to work their way out of the city and out of the suburbs, the night air cooling notably as they crossed into Connecticut and drove further north.
It was the first time Spock had been out of the boroughs of New York since arriving in this time; with all of his emotions floating on the surface of his consciousness like a mat of seaweed, he couldn’t stifle the sigh of relief when they finally reached a stretch of interstate hemmed in by trees instead of concrete.
The sound was taken away by the open driver's side window; thankfully, he didn’t have to explain it. Though, in truth, he likely would not have had to anyway.
New York had been his home -- in a loose and poor sense of the word -- for well over a year, but only for an immediate lack of better options. He had been able to bundle up in winter and spend time outside, unpleasant as the temperatures were for him, but it took fairly time-consuming measures to cover the green cast of his skin and the tips of his ears, so trips out during warmer weather were often short and rarely during the day. Beyond that, despite his faked identification and credentials, his only contribution to their shared dependency was to draw a limited wage from Edith's nonprofit by helping her write grant proposals.
Queens was not really a place for a Vulcan scientist, though he tried to help where he could.
The decision to go north with Scott was not difficult to make. Spock had not yet committed to anything more than a chance to get out of the city and the offering of a private space to make some choices -- “I’m usually out for work before it’s even mornin’ twilight, so sleepin’ on the couch won’t bother me.” -- but even in the turbulent discomfort of hair-trigger emotions, he was grateful for it.
He would not have called Scott, no, but there was relief to be found in the knowledge that whatever he ultimately chose, he would not have to live with it, or die with it, in that apartment.
The man in question -- and at the heart of several questions -- was mostly focused on the road, left arm resting on the open window frame, steering with the other, thumb tapping the wheel with the rhythm of the song playing on the radio. His sunglasses were in a soft case on the dash; without them on the top of his head, the wind from the window buffeted his hair freely.
He had helped Spock carry everything downstairs and had secured it in the bed of the rusty, blue-over-silver pickup, taking advantage of the rope and tarp he had in the scarred up bedbox; unsurprisingly, he had been quick and efficient about it.
Spock had said his own goodbyes then, and had listened as Scott did the same right after, struggling with the surge of emotion that accompanied both of those things. It would be the last time Spock would ever see that side-street in Queens, though he didn’t know that then.
“Take care of him,” Nyota had said, softly, both arms wrapped tight around the engineer, her tears in her voice.
“I’ll try, lass,” Scott had answered, with his characteristic honesty.
“And let him take care of you, too,” she had added, and to that, there had been no reply.
Before they parted, Scott reiterated an invitation for her to call him, should she ever want out of the city; notably, he did not extend the same to McCoy. And while McCoy had reeled himself back in and had been considerably more kind since that night in December when Scott left, Spock didn't feel he would miss the doctor. Certainly not the way he would miss Nyota, who spoke with him in his own language often and who had maintained a determined optimism even in the face of a daunting existence where her very skin still marked her as a target for discrimination and potential violence.
As Spock contemplated all of that -- Nyota, McCoy, Scott's lack of a response to the suggestion he allow Spock to reciprocate care -- Scott glanced over and caught him watching. “I don’t honestly have much in,” he said, apologetically. “I mean, I’ve got some tinned veg and some vegetable soup, but I’m usually only home to shower and sleep, so if ye have any requests--?”
Right now, Spock had no desire to eat; he wouldn’t until the blood fever was past, if he survived that long. But for the sake of a response, he roused himself out of his inward facing thoughts. “I may,” he said, frustrated deeply with the struggle of speech.
“There’s a pen in the glove box.” Scott gestured over to it. “Should also be an old phone bill or two, too, ye can just write whatever ye need on the back and I’ll run out, get it for ye when the shops open.” Then he hesitated for a moment, before asking, “If that works, Mister Spock? I mean--”
There had not been much discussion beyond Scott’s offer, back in the apartment. Spock’s first, kneejerk instinct was to reject it, feeling that there was no way that Scott could realize what he was volunteering for, but even with the heat singing in his nerves and licking like flames at the corners of his mind, some other and not insignificant part of himself urged agreement, which-- was unexpected.
He did want to live, but that could not account for all of it.
"I am not in immediate danger," he said; indeed, if he did take Scott up on that offer, he would instead become the immediate danger, after a fashion. "I suggest you take us to your house; while you're sleeping, I will make a list."
He half expected an argument, but after a long moment, Scott answered, "All right. But if ye need me to run and get ye somethin' and I'm not up, will ye get me up?"
"If I require something more important than your resting, I shall." Spock tucked his arms tighter around himself, against the heat stoked inside of his skin, intent on resisting it as long as possible. "However, now might be an appropriate time to discard the honorifics."
That got a little huff of a laugh; Spock didn't examine his own tickle of pleasure at provoking it. "Just Spock, then?" Scott asked. "Ye might have to put up with my forgettin' a few times, but I can try."
You won't forget, Spock thought, though immediately chastised himself internally for it. He had not agreed to anything yet. “Your preferred address?”
“Scott, Scotty,” Scott answered, with a shrug, quirking his eyebrows. “Same as it’s been since I was a teenager.”
“Not Montgomery?” Spock asked, the curiosity a welcome reprieve from what was going on inside of him. Outside, there was no moon and only the occasional artificial light when they passed some manner of populated area; in the truck, only the dash lights offered a scant illumination. At least the conversation was something other.
“No. Well, to my uncles, aye, to my sister, to my niece and maybe someday to my nephew on that side o’ the world, but not really to anyone else. And I dinna prefer it, anyway. I’ve gone by Scott since I was sixteen; my squadmates in Basic tagged me with Scotty when I was eighteen, and I haven’t really looked back since.”
Then something clearly occurred to him, because Scott shook his head and heaved out a tired-sounding sigh. “But-- I’m not Montgomery even to them, now, either. Nor anyone.”
A reminder of their losses. Spock hummed back a rough note of acknowledgment and commiseration; rare was the day he didn’t think of his mother and father. Even for as long as it had been since he had spoken with his father, the realization that he now never would -- never could -- caught against ill-healed wounds left over from his too-short goodbye with Michael. And even though he had never stopped communicating with his mother, the knowledge that he never would again was-- difficult to live with.
Not because she had aged to a gentle death, the kindest possible end for a remarkable woman. But because a man here, their captain, fell in love with another remarkable woman and could not make himself let history play out as it must, and so sacrificed the future.
Sometimes it occurred to Spock that he and Scott were just as culpable, being unable to pull the trigger themselves, but perhaps if he was able to contact the Vulcans he knew to be on Earth in this time--
He discarded that thought before he could go any further into it. He had been constructing a subspace communicator from their tricorder, taking care not to render the tricorder unsalvageable, but many of the components needed to be manufactured by hand from difficult to obtain materials. And while Spock was more than equal to the task, the expense proved to be a hurtle. At least part of the money Scott sent him had been dedicated to that project, but even that could only stretch so far.
And all of that would be a moot point if he was consumed by the chemical imbalance making his existence especially unpleasant right now.
It was difficult trying to look at Scott as a potential mate; still, it was not as difficult as it would have been had Spock not already wondered in the past if there was something to be gained by seducing the engineer, back when they were both over a decade younger. And he would not have wondered that if he hadn’t already found the man aesthetically pleasing and intellectually stimulating even before that; he remembered with the clarity of a Vulcan their first brush past one another, though he doubted Scott did.
But it was on the shuttle to board the Enterprise for their first assignment with her; Spock had kept mostly to himself, as was his tendency, and had watched Scott flitting around between the viewports, wide-eyed, gazing at the ship they were both assigned to in-- perhaps awe, perhaps wonder. Perhaps something deeper.
There were a number of future crewmates on that shuttle; only one had stood out to Spock.
Scott had weathered notably well since that first encounter, almost two decades back, but the stress of the summer and fall of the prior year had whittled him down sharp and withdrawn -- “Like a coyote,” McCoy had said once, “‘bout as friendly, too.” -- and getting out from under it had apparently allowed him to bounce back since the last time Spock had seen him in December. His efforts in New Bedford had left him sun-touched and toned across the shoulders; even if Spock had not been contemplating him as a potential mate, he would have noted the improvement.
It was difficult, but no, not anywhere as difficult as it could -- perhaps should -- have been.
“I have been attempting to build a subspace communicator using components of the tricorder,” he finally said, as something of a distraction for them both to latch onto; him from the coursing heat in his blood and the potential of the man driving to alleviate it, Scott from thoughts of his lost kin. “I believe, should I do that, I will be able to signal the observers stationed here.”
The words served exactly the purpose he intended them to; Scott shot an intrigued look over at him, eyebrows up. “Aye? Thinkin’ o’ usin’ the data storage crystal as a subspace resonance tuner, o’ sorts?”
Spock hummed an affirmative, then said, “The tricorder’s instrumentation and controls are sufficient to find the low-band subspace frequency the Vulcans would be using, but its power source is insufficient and my ability to regulate something stronger in a compatible manner requires rare earth minerals and delicate equipment that is-- difficult to acquire in this time.”
“Difficult, maybe, but not impossible,” Scott said, then grinned a little. “I was wonderin’ what was in that box. It had the weight o’ potential.”
Spock raised his eyebrow, pouncing on the opening, and asked loftily, “And what, exactly, is the measured weight of potential? Is it quantifiable? I insist upon numbers, engineer, if you insist upon using such figurative language.”
He ignored his own increase in pleasure at the laugh he earned for that.
Barely.
The rest of the ride back to Fairhaven was-- kind. In a word.
Not easy, but kind.
They batted ideas back and forth across the cab of the pickup, in terms of the subspace communications project, but the conversation ranged beyond that, too; once they had gotten started, they fell into a rhythm that they had refined over the past seventeen years of working together. Be it on recreating music from hand-written notes or studying potentially ground-breaking manipulations of the warp field.
It was a language that was both direct and sideways, including a gentle deference to one another’s inherently private natures, and a more straight-forward challenge to each other’s professional blind spots. And if the underlying circumstances had changed, the work they had done to build the language they relied upon now was intact even then.
But oddly, it was not the discussion on subspace communications which turned into the most enjoyable part of the drive for Spock.
It was during a relatively comfortable lull in the conversation, the gray light of dawn rising as they got closer to their destination -- having had to pause for fuel, though only once, thanks to the pickup’s dual fuel tanks -- that Scott had absently sang along with the radio to one of the songs even Spock had heard played recently.
It had been music which had originally tipped Spock from aesthetic appreciation of the man to an attraction notable enough to contemplate acting on it; the first instance was when he was delivering the composition he himself had put together from sheet music Scott had sourced from a writer’s museum and Scott answered the door in his shorts and socks and a t-shirt.
His aesthetic appeal was not harmed in the least by him wearing fewer clothes.
The cementing of it, though, was getting the finished song back a couple of weeks later: In addition to being pleasing to the eye, Scott could sing. Hearing his singing voice added to the music Spock had painstakingly put together had been a genuine enough pleasure that Spock had spent some time after wondering if seducing the engineer would be feasible.
His ultimate conclusion was a reluctant acknowledgment that it would be a worthy effort -- a lover who was an intellectual partner, enjoyable to look at, possessed of a few unexpected talents, present to share a life with -- but that the potential complications were too high to pursue it anyway.
So, Spock had set aside the thought and from there on out kept Scott in mind as a colleague only, though he did manage to find and gift Scott the majority of a discography from a Scottish band that had been saved in the Observation Archives from Earth -- saved because it was sociologically relevant in the leadup to World War III, the lyricist and lead singer having committed suicide in 2018, and now given to another Scot two-hundred and forty years later -- and in turn eventually did get that duet he had been chasing, him playing his lute and Scott playing the bagpipes he had taught himself to play specifically because Spock had suggested it.
Now -- in 1990, many years before that relatively young singer would lose a battle with depression, but eight years after his music was given to his countryman -- Spock waited until the song on the radio ended before commenting, “Not your usual fare, but sang with your usual artistry.”
Scott had started, apparently either having not realized he was being listened to, or perhaps even that he’d been singing, then flushed. “In my defense, Phil Collins gets surprisingly deep sometimes. But-- no, he’s usually a wee bit too easy listenin’ for my tastes.”
Spock raised his eyebrow, unable and ultimately unwilling to stop the very corners of his mouth from tipping upwards in a smirk. “And that song?”
“Not very deep,” Scott said, half-reluctantly; he was still red, but then he chuckled, “But ye have to admit, pretty catchy.”
Spock did not have to admit any such thing.
(But he privately agreed.)
The delicate pinks and violets of dawn reminded Spock of ShiKahr in such an instantly visceral way that it took him several moments to identify the feeling as longing.
They arrived in Fairhaven, down adjacent to the Fort Phoenix State Reservation, just before sunrise. Spock had intended to help unload the pickup, but had instead been caught by the colors painting the sky, standing there longing for a city sixteen and a half lightyears away.
He had left there so long ago, and so thoroughly, that it came as a surprise that he was capable of feeling that way, now as removed as he was. But as the fresh salt breeze ruffled his hair and circulated deep into his lungs, it was a considerably more arid landscape that he found himself missing. His memory allowed him to recreate the city, a thin layer of the mind’s eye over the current patchy grass and sandy ground and low trees.
He stayed long enough for the color to climb in intensity; from pink to scarlet, shades of orange, more akin to fire. Down the narrow, cracked, one-lane road that dead-ended on Buzzards Bay, the sounds of movement from other dwellings roused him from his homesickness and back into the present, here on Earth.
This world was also beautiful. Spock had found it so many times; his mother’s childhood region in Washington State, Seattle and beyond. The beaches of Hawai'i. The shores of Aotearoa. The mountains and plateaus of Sichuan. Despite his choice to follow the Vulcan path in life, half of him had come from Earth; despite his green blood, the iron core of this world pulled him with the same gravity as it had all of his ancestors on his mother’s side of the family.
“Feels almost indecent, payin’ rent on bayfront property when I’m not really in much to appreciate it,” Scott said, looking across the water with an expression Spock couldn’t quite read. “There are cheaper places over in New Bedford, but...”
He trailed off there, then shook his head.
A glance to the bed of the pickup revealed that Scott had already unloaded it while Spock was lost in thought and the brightening day. A further look around revealed the two-seated car the pickup was parked next to; its body was in very debatable shape, but Spock would assume its mechanicals were sound, given the owner.
The Massachusetts license plate on the back read: SEA WLF
“Sea wolf? A reference to the novel?” Spock asked, cocking his head at it.
Scott huffed, though it didn’t quite sound like humor. “Sort of. If not the most direct one.” He glanced over at Spock; in the natural morning light, his tiredness was apparent. “Ye’re welcome to stay out here, there’s a deck out the other side where people’d only be able to really spy on ye from the water. Will ye wake me if ye need me?”
“I will. Rest well, in the meantime,” Spock said, before turning back to the pickup truck, getting into the glove box so he might write that list as he had said he would.
It didn’t fail to occur to Spock that, even with the evermore insistent tug of pon farr, he was better able to control himself here than he had been in New York. As if a certain type of pressure had been lifted, making it easier for him to focus his energy on maintaining something akin to internal discipline. It didn’t last indefinitely, it couldn’t, but it gave him a number of hours of calm.
Some of it was doubtless being away from that apartment, shifting venues to a place where the air smelled of brine and seaweed and not smog; where the cries of gulls and the water lapping at the shore was the ambient background noise, rather than sirens and traffic.
Where he could be outside, unfettered. He did indeed take the recommendation of the deck; it was as good a place as any to contemplate the list he was making.
The implications of the list.
It was a problem better suited for Schrödinger: Spock currently occupied something of a quantum superposition, if not literally (impossible given variables), then metaphorically. Psychologically. He didn’t know if he would be alive to require some of the objects on the list. It also supposed that he would take Scott up on the offer, and he had not yet committed to that.
Therefore, as he wrote it, he was both alive and dead. Which might have been why it took hours to complete.
When he did finally go into the house, it was with the flames again singing against the insides of every blood vessel, a tingling heat and need that T’Pring, in their own time, would have sated. Would have been obligated to sate, unless she challenged him.
By then, the sun was overhead; the inside of the house, though, was cool enough that it felt like it should have offered him relief and yet did not.
Spock had no real opinions on the nature of the house or the décor aside an appreciation for its location; inside, there was a wood stove, a television. The couch, which Scott was occupying. There was no major delineation beyond a counter between the kitchen and living room. It was larger than the apartment in actual size, though it only had one bedroom, and that was upstairs.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, just inside the door out to the deck, but it was long enough to catch himself tracing the line of Scott’s back with his gaze, from wind-blown black hair down, and long enough to become aware of the shift in his own body and mind from a more generalized need to something that was starting to whisper, insistently, mine.
The possessiveness was unnerving. Even in its initial phases, it was so much more present than the required biology lessons and the study of Vulcan physiology could convey. But despite his efforts to shove it back out of his mind, to silence it, to remind himself that nothing was guaranteed, it remained at the edges of his thoughts, curling them black.
Consuming.
Mine.
He was only slowing it down. And then only barely.
He looked down and forced his fist to unclench; the envelope the list was written on was still readable, thankfully. Then he pushed himself forward, giving Scott a light jostle from the ankle, where blue jeans kept their skin from touching. “It has been approximately six hours,” he said, aware of the imprecision of the words, aware of the rough edge his voice had taken on again.
Scott jumped a little, turning away from the back of the couch to look at him drowsily. But whatever he must have seen on Spock’s face caused his gaze to sharpen quickly, as he stilled there.
Alert. Watchful. Not afraid, though.
The well of affection Spock felt for him there did nothing to dissipate the heat, but it was wholly genuine; it was something that belonged to him, not to the pon farr. “I have your list,” Spock said, offering the crumbled envelope over.
After another moment of that stillness, Scott pushed himself up and took the list, rubbing at his eyes for a moment before reading it over.
If he had any opinions about what was on it, he didn’t reveal them; after reading over it once, then twice, he nodded and set the list aside to pull his boots back on. “All right. Shouldna take me more’n a couple hours.” He looked up there, then, raising his eyebrows. “Will ye be all right until then?”
“I will.” Spock kept reminding himself that he had not yet committed.
That he had not yet agreed. That the list was merely a possibility, not a certainty.
That he had no claim yet on Scott, and therefore he could not and would not reach out and physically keep the man there. That Spock would not give into the rapid drumbeat of mine against the insides of his ribs; that their long association -- whatever one might call it -- before this deserved a certain amount of consideration even in this.
Still, his fingers ached. His nerves burned.
And once the man was out the door and the sound of the pickup had gone, Spock dropped to a meditation pose and fought for every centimeter of his ability to reason against the rising inferno.
Later, with his control restored, mind cooled and body sated, he would be able to look back and realize that every step had been a choice, not just the final one. From telling Scott to come into the bedroom, to leaving New York, to the list, to standing in the kitchen as the thunder rumbled quietly outside on the horizon.
That he had been giving himself permission.
Clouds had rolled in; had darkened the sky and turned the bay outside from blue to slate-gray and green. The sea grasses past the yard bent, flashing pale gold; the air hummed, charged, both inside and out.
“Have ye decided, then?” Scott asked, standing with that same watchful stillness in the dim kitchen; Spock could recall many times when he had adopted the same stance. Sharpness; a state of being, perhaps, rather than a feeling. Or perhaps it was both.
Spock would find out from the inside out. If they were in accord.
“You will need to call off from work,” he said, voice rough enough now that it felt like every word was scraping his throat on the way out.
“For how long?” Scott asked back.
“It varies, but I would not recommend less than six days.”
Scott’s eyebrows jumped briefly in surprise, one a fraction higher than the other, then a little hint of a dry grin crossed his mouth, though his gaze remained as alert as ever. “That in business days, Spock, or--?”
“Seven days, then,” Spock said, stepping closer, the fire in his blood surging at that brief slide into humor. Pleasure. Mine. “An even week.”
The phone call was brief; Scott claimed a family emergency that required a flight to Scotland. His boss clearly was not happy, given the tinny sound of grumbling, but agreed readily enough.
By the time he hung up, Spock had narrowed the distance between them to negligible; he knew, even as he did, that Scott was wholly aware of their relative positions, because his spine had straightened, stretched, and he drew himself up like potential energy a moment from becoming kinetic. When he hung the phone up, his hand lingered on it for a moment; by then, Spock was nearly close enough that even breathing more deeply could bring them into contact.
Spock put his hand to the wall; hemmed Scott in between that and the end of the kitchen counter and his own body, able to clearly feel the human heat of the man radiating, reflecting.
And close enough to feel his own burn hotter in response.
A tableau, as thunder rolled across the sky.
“I will not have you as a war,” Spock murmured, bending his head, nearly speaking in Scott's ear; despite how close they were, he didn’t completely block an escape, even if every last cell of him demanded he do. To close the gap. To take. “As ground to be conquered.”
Scott managed to turn and put his back to the wall, chin up, though it didn’t buy him much room. “I wouldn’t have volunteered if I thought that was how it was gonna go,” he said back; even without being inside of his mind, Spock knew that defiance was not intended to be contradictory to the statement, but a complement of it.
Spock hummed back an acknowledgment, low; he took his hand off the wall and skimmed the backs of his knuckles up the side of the Scott’s neck, barely making contact. Skin against heated skin. Even just that sent a shiver up his own spine, the graze of mind to mind. Feeling, transmitted; thought, if still indistinct.
Sharpness. Both, then. A feeling, and a state of being. There was no other word for it.
His own need and want were transmitted back, only a fraction of those; enough to back away from, if needed. Even just as a fraction, though, Scott pulled in a quick, stuttered breath from it; getting to feel as well as see the shift in his expression was intoxicating.
Surprise. Still sharpness. Nervousness, too, now. Heat.
But still no fear.
“There will be no secret you would be able to keep from me. All of these masks you’ve so carefully woven; you will never again be able to face me with one successfully,” Spock said, quietly, hand drifting up until his thumb was pressed lightly to the dip under Scott’s bottom lip, fingers framing his rough, unshaved jaw, barely there.
As hard as it was holding onto his own self-control, especially now in contact, he did for both their sakes. “I will be as gentle as I can be for as long as I can be, but the plak tow will set in. Withdrawing your consent will become difficult, if not impossible, when that happens.”
“I’m not fragile,” Scott said, certainly; some of Spock’s words had his jaw knotting, his heart beating faster still, a frisson of fight or flight, but there was no hint of denial there, either.
Spock did not agree nor disagree; everyone was, or could be, where their pressure points rested, where the vulnerability of the heart met the reality of endurance. Human. Vulcan. In that, they were not so different. “I don’t want to hurt you; any suffering I cause you will come back to me, but the blood fever is all-consuming and I have never experienced it before.”
Mental contact of this kind forced honesty to both sides; Spock’s sincerity, even amidst the blaze growing by the minute, must have been clear enough. The sharpness faded, a heavy contemplation setting in for a long moment while they breathed in unison, despite the offset beats of their hearts.
“I saw a few whales, while I was out at sea,” Scott said at length, voice soft, eyes sliding closed; the depth of both his joy and grief at the memory echoed to the bottom of Spock’s heart for a moment before he gently pushed Spock’s hand away, perhaps the last request he would make for the privacy of his own thoughts. “They’re all gone in our time, from the climate changin’ or the wars or our short-sighted carelessness. I’ve never had a shore address more’n a few kilometers from salt water, but I never even thought o’ the lack. And-- my brother, who loves the sea, who’s talked about them, has never gotten to see a whale.”
There was a beat, and then he said, “Loved. Had never. And now would never.” Scott opened his eyes again, resting his head back against the wall; he bared his throat and looked at Spock steadily and finished, “I know what I’m offerin’ and why. I hope that’s answer enough.”
If what Spock felt there wasn’t love, then it could not have been more than a single step from it.
He drew back only a little bit and offered his forefingers; offered to allow Scott to touch that feeling, at least for now on his terms.
And when Scott matched the gesture, and Spock let instinct start directing the weaving of the bond between them, it was with no less being offered back to him.