smooches

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After a time, considerably far into their five-year mission aboard the Enterprise, Spock began to consider that he disliked being so predictably perturbable that any minor interpersonal incident was likely to leave him reeling enough so much as to necessitate that he meditate, and thus he also began to consider alternative methods of dealing with the situations, as they arose.

Moreover: sometimes Spock was too proud to let his pride get the best of him. And sometimes, therefore, he found himself prone instead to subtle (or, unfortunately, unsubtle) displays of conventional humanoid emotion. And all of these times, in conclusion, his captain and friend and perhaps more, Jim, noticed.

When James T. Kirk noticed a problem, he endeavored with all immediacy to effect a solution. It was less about the prevention of waste, and more about the base inability to see another being, especially one of his crew, come to any amount of harm. If those came down to the same underlying survival logic in the end, then of course either motivation was equally deserving of commendation and consideration.

References to anything "base" usually implied a sneering disregard for the entire surrounding circumstance. On the contrary; Spock did find this quality of Jim's of the utmost, in terms of its admirability.

He only wished that its effectuation would not so frequently come down upon him.

So he blinked back his confounding, quasi-unprovoked tears as best as he could, and willed that, just this once, the captain keep himself far away from his first officer in his time of the most embarrassing and most unremarkable need.

Just this once, if you can hack it. I don't need to tell you that Vulcans are very particular about and with their pride.

Proceeded to the point of scenario: the space, of whatever variety and distinction, had been emptied of all but Kirk and Spock, and each was looking on with their own version of anxious anticipation.

"Spock," Jim probably said, creating an echoing pocket of rich light as the single, proud syllable cleft itself in tantalizing two.

"Jim, please," Spock definitely said back, trying but failing to shut the light out where it stood, orbited.

"Can I try something?"

What Spock thought was a round, even "I hardly think this is an appropriate time for experiments, Captain." Of course. Logically. A purely scientific measure of automatic trepidation.

What Spock said was a thin, cracked "By all means," with any form of titular address foregone completely. Of course. Logically. A purely automatic measure of scientific intrepidity.

And what genre of experiment? What brand of untested novelty? What form of amelioration to Spock's current condition, if that was indeed the suit of Jim's tentative and tentatively forecasted next action?

(Or was it bold? Perhaps it was bold. Surely, it was bold. It was Jim. It was bold.)

Perhaps a pressure applied to his shoulders or his ears, by careful hands or fingers. Something slightly north of clinical, something not quite actually scientific even if quite physical indeed, something appropriately historical, something very, very Jim...

Lips, warm and indeed quite round and even, pressed to his cheek. Just below the crest of the high, high bones, just below the apple (the apple, the apple, how he'd hated the events pursuant to the predictably outside-in conflict on that conventionally inside-out planet); in the place devoid of bone, soft and...not pliant, but yielding.

Like Jim. So there was the answer, wasn't there?

(He had been right, but where normally he might have derived no small measure of perfectly logical satisfaction from that observation, now he wasn't sure if he could attribute any measures of experienced satisfaction to anything, anyone, but Jim himself.)

The lips were not exploratory, but neither were they either deep or deepthless. They nudged themselves carefully but firmly into the open space, rolling slightly outward and away from each other to expose the barest bit of moisture from the meeting point between.

As he analyzed the contact, Spock was thorougly conscious of just how erroneous it was to cast this action as just that clinical - at all, not even vaguely, slightly misaligned to it. For one thing, this was a kiss. Just as Vulcans' touch was intimate no matter whether the hand of the one was met directly by the hand of the other or not, Humans' kiss was expressing of some affection no matter whether or not it was met lips to lips.

You also just couldn't be very clinical about any action that came accompanied by an audible mwah sound.

"Jim?" Spock attempted.

"Mmh," said Jim, unrevealingly, and seemed to smile against Spock (cheek and all, yes, but crucially not just cheek).

"You kissed me."

"That's right."

The smile grew.

"But I find that this was...different to other such displays we have shared."

Making some sort of curious contented noise, Jim pulled back. It was just far enough for Spock to meet and search his twinkling eyes, pleasantly if not pleasingly crinkled at the corners, but not far enough for much of anything else.

(As if there was anything else...ever.)

"Yes, I suppose it must have been. I've never done that to you before."

Done that to you...it sounded as an attack, a discipline. Spock found that he did not like that phrasing. Not at all. He expounded further:

"It was manifestly less passionate. More...comforting."

Jim, still with his arms loosely roped around Spock's neck, nodded and returned, "Oh, well that's good."

"Yes...I would be inclined to agree."

If his arms were not inhibited from movement by Jim's own, Spock would have lifted careful fingers to the affected area on his cheek to ascertain as much, but he found himself gripped by a curious impulse not to make the slightest motion, lest he disturb the lovingly curated peace which he currently had the privilege of enjoying.

"I think they'd call this a smooch, Mr. Spock."

"A smooch, Captain?"

"Yes, that's right...all the rage in Earth societies of about three centuries ago."

All the rage. A nonsensical expression, at least in this context, because this device seemed contrived to deliver the exact opposite of rage. In any case, it was not logical to work oneself into a frenzy over that which was evaluated as beneficial. No one ever said that wars were all the rage.

"But we are not living in an Earth society of three centuries ago, approximately or otherwise," Spock very helpfully pointed out, in lieu of any semantic correction. It wasn't as if the captain wasn't prone to historical flights of fancy when permitted the time and the space. Just there, he had proven his proclivity for the mundanely arcane.

It was...not fascinating, no. It was something to be expected, by this point. Instead, it was endearing - and that, surely, was a safe word that Spock, as a Vulcan, could use to describe his captain, without observably undue expression of emotion.

Jim was endearing. Spock was endeared. Quite a logical arrangement - and reciprocal, and all.

"I suppose we're not," Jim said after a moment of considering the near corner of the room and working a gently slackened jaw.

"So..." Spock found himself leading the question he himself felt would be too close in approach to a outright ingratitude to ask.

"Why did I do it?" Again, the jaw let itself loose, studying and stalling with all broadly cavalier yet boundingly chivalrous amusement.

That jaw was the arrangement of muscles that had kissed him, so tenderly and so insistently, on his cheek. As would have been an entirely natural reaction, he had probably blushed, a color it pleased him in a minute capacity to note was still within the bounds of the human idiom regarding tomatoes; have you never seen an heirloom, that gorgeous starset yellow?

(Was the satisfaction due to the fact that they remained unaware of the idiovisual aptitude, or due to the fact that the correspondence existed at all? Impossible to tell from a glance, and Spock would never reveal it so, either way.)

But, of course, back to the matter at hand.

To cheek. At cheek. To hand.

"Yes, Jim. I must admit that I am curious." Scientifically so, as well as otherwise. Perhaps principally otherwise.

Jim shrugged. That either meant that he felt the conclusion obvious or that he felt the question unimportant. Judging from every prior interaction Spock had had with his captain, he doubted very much that Jim would regard any interaction with Spock, let alone any such solemn conversation as this was, as unimportant.

Was it really so obvious? Even to Spock? Of course Jim well knew the audience he was addressing, better than almost anyone else in Starfleet.

Almost? Assuredly. Indeed.

Spock stood ready and attentive to learn.

"Because you didn't seem to be feeling your best. I thought a...smooch might help to cheer you up."

Jim's hands were still, despite it all (despite what, though? no grand ordeal or endeavor, had it been?), locked palm over wrist around the level of Spock's collar, and his right thumb brushed casually against the base of the dark hair beveling down to the nape of the Vulcan's neck.

Clearly, according to his own most recent admission, Jim's almost impulsive action regarding the smooch had in fact been intentional. There had been no false pretense of medical guise taken on a swift turn with the introduction of the affectionate kiss. These idle digits, however?

Peculiarly inert, when it came to telegraphing the captain's exact individual parse of the situation.

Unfortunately for Spock, there really wasn't any sort of helpful little voice in his head telling him to stop skirting (and/or flirting) and start being straightforward about the whole thing; there never had been, and there never would be.

Jim's had already done its job, and it had ended him up rather well, all things considered.

Still, Spock's response was immediate, and again automatic, in the frame of the conversation, as was his slight and recreationally impossible stiffening.

"I am a Vulcan. I do not require-"

"Are you really sure about that? Not that I mean to challenge you, Spock, but are you really going to stand here and tell me that you aren't feeling even the tiniest bit better?"

What Spock thought was a thin, cracked "Not at all."

What Spock said was a round, even "It helped more than I can say, Jim."

Now, at last, Jim seemed to be satisfied, deeper than any perpetual aura of self-satisfaction when things were going, generally, well.

In plain terms, he was happy because Spock was happy, and likely also because Spock didn't even feel in any strong position to debate him on that supposition - indeed, that fact.

Jim grinned, and his nose wrinkled most endearingly of all. "Good. Would you like another?"