hello-ello-ello

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"Spock...can I tell you I love you?" Jim blinks. "I love you."

Spock blinks as well, because to him it had been plain that the question was quite removed from being rhetorical. Jim had wanted to wait. Hadn't he?

The erratic, possibly errant surrounding data are discarded - summarily, anyway. He simply replies, "Indeed, Captain, you can, as evidenced by the fact that you just have."

Jim scowls. "I didn't mean to."

"You didn't mean it?"

"Not like that."

The eyebrow is, as ever, indulgent.

"I don't know. I'm sorry." His tone is far too apologetic for the incandescent joy he radiates. "It just...gets on the tip of my tongue, and I can't seem to stop saying it."

There's a pause.

"Spock..." He's winding up. Spock purses his lips - it may appear as disapproval or exasperation to any other, but Jim sees that he's just trying to keep back a defiant smile. "I love you."

There's another pause, shorter and palpably cut short at that. The key of the unconsciousness, if you will. Will you?

"I love you. I love you. I love you."

Between each pair of phrases is wrapped a juddering stilt, a stopping that is by its very nature a starting again. Charming, of course, but not altogether unconcerning. Spock thinks to himself how grateful he is that his difficulties, those of any similar sort of nature, are by their definition much stiller, passive things; since adolescence he has not been troubled so much by outward displays, instead maintaining all those inward signals of what is not right, and the accompanying frustration that there is no immediate passkey to order.

And if he were Jim, would he truly attempt to curtail these impulses among close company?

If he were Jim, he wouldn't be Spock, so no, in fact, he wouldn't. But Jim is constantly keeping them back on duty every day, after day, after day.

He'll sometimes straighten Spock's data tapes, select one whose case's color has dulled and frown before shuffling it to the end of the array. Then he'll move it back, nominate a new rainbow, examine the contents and make his own semantic ordering. He knows Spock remembers which is which, knows he doesn't mind (not terribly, anyway), if one's obsessive impulse has to win out over the other's, knows that Spock is thinking at him with all fondness, Jim, what consequence is it to you if my tapes are out of your order? And would you prefer if I put them in your order for you? I wouldn't like that, because then you would never move to my side to rearrange them.

Even a century this far removed from material maximalism presents its own unique challenges to a Jim Kirk who sometimes needs quite desperately to dump out a desk drawer and recruit Spock for the erstwhile contents' supervisory, superfluous sorting.

The captain shakes himself to attention, the sudden and furious motion stuttering on itself slightly as well, and places his hands behind his back. Spock isn't sure whether he hears the knuckles cracking in real time or only imagines an echo of nervousnesses past. The notion that the sound is regular enough, comforting enough, to his own particular sensibilities is quite...logical indeed.

"Shall we walk on, Mr. Spock?" Shall we?

The next morning, when Spock wakes up, Jim is lightly snoring there next to him, so the logical course of action seems to be the making of a light unintrusion with two fingers laid along his temple. Touch is more effective - specifically efficacious - than speech. What point is there in denying it? The fact, that is. Merely the fact. No less. No more.

Moreover, it is that way (correct, right, true) in this situation because only brutes, inconsiderate, make repetition of unsolicited touch to get what they seek. There is no objective to doing the same with speech, one way or the other. Not for Jim, anyway. Not usually.

Spock, at this moment, simply doesn't feel like whispering Jim's name over and over again; it's not his way. Every thing he does is meant to be perfectly effective as designed. He is not so tired, so early.

So he touches, briefly. Jim's temple is at once cool and warm. Oil from the night has made the skin soft, the pores mild.

Jim starts awake.

Blink once, twice, thrice, slowing minutely each time. More repetition.

"Hi, Spock." His very tone is a cat's warmpleased grin, both toothy and toothless at the same time. "I love you."

"You have made me very aware of that fact," Spock replies fondly, for what else could it be other than the wholecloth truth? Even pathological liars do not bear this heavy of a repetition upon their fabrications.

(Almost by accident, it seems, has he made the analogical connection yet again.)

"Is that so?" Jim flutters his lashes. He is a grown man, but wearing no shirt and a blanket of affection, there is naught to recontextualize the slight coquettish childishness. "I should do it again, just to be sure. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you."

When the strong, successive pattern of gentle words comes to a halt, it seems to owe its inertia to a conscious effort.

"Is it difficult for you to stop that?" As if I would ever begrudge you the absence of, the lifting of, burden.

"Stop that..." Jim murmurs gently, as if it's an instruction he's been given, or maybe as if it's an instruction he's giving himself.

"Is it a tic?" Spock inquires, just as gently. Again, a question designed for a purpose, and not for awkward, useless steps. Spock's voice reads out its own scientifically-inflected "I love you" purely by accident.

"Something like that. I really am sorry. Sorry." His voice - Jim's, that is - deepens, edges around its roughness and takes it into useful account. The day, and the captaincy, and the requisite restraint, is soon, but not yet.

"You are not," says Spock.

(And you do not need to be, thinks Spock, but I will not mind if it takes you some time futher to become more fully acquainted, acquiescent, and comfortable with that fact, Jim. Doubtless you have already realized that your voice is one of those sounds most welcome to and in my own mind.)

Jim hums absently, decidedly not tuneless, next to him, his tone muffled by the mindless press of his own cool knuckles against his lips, philtrum and nose. Spock relishes in the moment of coy superiority; he has never been gladder to be - to feel so - right.