his sweet face

Both were equally afraid of seeing the other again, by the end of it. Spock had thought he'd killed his captain, and Kirk had thought the pon farr would have, in some twisted-up backwards way, made Spock kill himself.

Had this happened just one year prior, they might never have recovered. They, as a unit: Spock and Jim, Jim and Spock. If Spock had rounded on McCoy in such a way...well. There'd be no coming back from that, Kirk had to assume. No surprise that he wondered about it; how else to make the next step? He had to convince himself that Spock still nurtured their trust.

(Spock did, which was why he volunteered immediate resignation of his commission. Because there was no going on without Jim, the heartbeat of the Enterprise but also of the link between command and exploration, moreover.)

And, too, while Spock's violence and single-mindedness, the beast behind the burden, had been of all things tremendously unexpected, unimaginable, it was his smile that had given Kirk the greatest pause. Of course, his smile. Of course, the shivers, and the wonderful nervous energy; the sheer humanity of it all.

Spock had not been, in and of himself, angry. He had been wild, stormy, volatile and frightening, but not on an emotional level, even though pon farr was, supposedly, meant to be the encapsulated disposal of all the bottled-up emotion. Regardless. Now, completely restored and whole-minded, of his truest individual nature, Spock was happy.

And Kirk, Jim, who routinely found himself feeling what humans usually called happy, as a matter of humdrum, if pleasant, course, was ecstatic, swooning, over the moon.

There was no obvious need to explain, to justify, to rationalize - as if Spock would even expect it! He didn't shrink down the corners of his leaping lips with anything less than ashamed, awkward self-awareness. Still, in order to keep pattern, to keep things just as they always had been, even if they knew, privately, more, Jim would have to say...something about it.

However unfortunate, Spock didn't walk around with chips on shoulders nor incidents kept in mind. Jim was afraid of bursting, though.

He could only handle so much additional vulnerability, so it was chess. He paid only enough mind to the board so as not to be obvious in his distraction - in other words, Spock knew he was slipping, but purposefully made no comment of it.

He tried a few jokes. Some plain ones, math and science puns that Uhura told him had gotten a mischievous brow. Some oblique references to an extended relative he may or may not have actually had. And some that were entirely too bold.

It didn't only take Spock's full toothy grin to set Jim's heart aflutter - yes, literally. Sometimes the smallest faintly pleased look, at such close quarters, was enough.

None of the puns got the brow, but a shoddy cover-up of a sharp inhalation with the proposal that "Oh, it's nothing - probably just some leftover sand in my pants getting somewhere it shouldn't..." definitely did.

A lame, contrived excuse. Spock was usually more elegant with his, when he needed them, and Jim swore one day, when his hair was gray and curly, he'd be just as adept a stonewaller. He'd learn right at the master's hand, trading witty banter and more of those calming smiles, and-

"Jim."

Oh-oh. Starting right out with the first name. It was, definitionally, a diminutive, but damn it, did it really need to sound like some ethereal and indefinable combination of an everlasting endearment and a plainclothes identifier, just because? Jim. Jim! Jim...

"Yes, Spock?" Jim feigned, and then not only, more distraction.

"Are you sure the excess sand hasn't gotten caught in your throat?"

In his bare-faced shock at his shoddy bait being taken, by whatever token or strategy, Jim coughed, and then coughed again. If there was a worst way to successfully bungle his way into his intended "confession", well, this was it.

Spock's look was still inquiring, and not exactly entirely concerned.

"Spock, when I see you smile, my heart clenches up - it seizes, like it's swooning. It's the best thing I've ever felt in my whole life."

Out of place though the description might have seemed, given that Spock, again, had not outright smiled for the duration of their visit in Jim's quarters, it needed no additional anchoring; Spock remembered. The Vulcan, in response, cast his eyes briefly downward before cocking his head the slightest bit to one side. "That does not sound agreeable."

No additional anchoring. Now was time to be unmoored.

"Can I show you?"

Such a breathless question as James T. Kirk had never asked, not ever before. Nothing had ever mattered so much, before.

Before Vulcan. Before plak tow. Before pon farr, bringing them closer together than they had ever been even as it didn't quite matter (well, not quite...) that their bodies wrestled on the sand while Spock's mind lingered figurative parsecs away.

Again, Spock made the curious motion, and for a moment Jim was terrified he'd have to make an assumption of assent, or else drop it once and for all, but then Spock responded, lips also parted, breatheless...: "That...would be agreeable."

It was without another thought, save some spare stumbling up around the side of the desk, that Jim shucked off his uniform shirt. Only once a strip of skin above his waistband had begun to show itself beneath the departing black t-shirt underlayer did he pause and re-account for Spock's presence.

"Oh...I'm sorry, I don't know why I did that. It just seemed natural," he offered apologetically.

"It is no issue," Spock assured him. "Through multiple layers of clothing, the ability of humanoids to perceive others' heartbeats is limited by a factor of approximately thirty percent."

"You're saying it's only logical?"

"Not only. But the condition is sufficient, even if not necessary."

Jim nodded, feeling his eyes soften and the corners of his lips perk. Just what he'd been thinking, wasn't it? Their silly, silly conditions.

"Thank you, Mr. Spock. Your capacity to elucidate such situations never fails to amaze me."

Later, it occurred to Jim to ask after the fourth corner of their strange, so logically idiosyncrasied square (necessity, sufficiency, correlation, causation): there was Spock's smile, his reaction, Spock's reaction to his reaction, and...

"Spock?"

"Yes, Jim?"

Comforting. Gravelly. Content.

"What about my smile?"

Spock didn't beg useless clarification. "It is quite pleasing."

"No, no. Back when you saw me alive again."

A pause. A careful, tender, loving consideration.

"Words could scarcely attempt to describe it."

"Different from usual, then?"

"No."

Oh?

"Not at first."

"And then?"

Spock turned, looked Jim in the eyes. "It seems we inspire one another."