this special touch
There's warmth in Ms. Uhura's hands. Honeysuckle pocket lotion, shea butter and wrinkles, thumb pad to palm mound, soft skin and kitty nails. Where Vulcans use their hands as interfaces to intuit, to delve and retrieve, to receive more principally than to transmit, the Enterprise's communications officer has as instruments two roots of giving, giving, giving; it is by giving that she receives.
Not the nurturing woman stood under a stolid man, either. It's about her. It's about the star, roving, that she is, beyond so many and before so many more.
She knows so many people. She knows everyone, in her own special way. She presses affection through her palms, from her wrist to her fingertips, and she is self-possessed, the anima to Spock's animus (and yes, those two are backwards; the pneumatic, in this case, has a semantic component).
Spock is only Spock, which is to say that Spock is more of a puzzle than anyone else, but no more uninherently special of a challenge. About her, but also about him; a precious deign of interreliance.
Let's make it altogether clear: they are not only curiosities nor earthly and unearthly panaceas to each other. As two stars occupy space near each other, they imprecludably begin to impact one another. Their dust and aurae intermingle, both beings irrevocable - back to the way they once were.
Uhura is all about impacts. Gentle, graceful, loving; slow-burning, knees-hugging, but impacts.
Vulcans, usually, try to avoid such things.
Stretched space-thin and universe-wide, Mr. Spock speaks of significance. He affirms to Ms. Uhura that she can do what she thinks she can do, which is much appreciated, but perhaps not necessary (it's very necessary, and aren't you a dear), and he says without saying - a rarity and a commonality - that at times, all on the ship are fools, but her and he.
Compressed into a single glance, without touching, Mr. Spock can say an incredible quanitity and diversity of wonderful things. Ms. Uhura can certainly hear them. She can certainly interpret. She can certainly treasure what he has meant and does mean. It's all there in the framework; just there, just there.
It's almost a little too obvious.
To dance without impact; without touching, with only grace. It's not wrong, necessarily. It's not lonely, necessarily. It's not cold, necessarily.
But it's also just left of right; just long of integrated; just shy of warm.
One trace, with the remarkable region lingering just between fingertip and nailbed, over the arching shell of the pointed ear. Not gratuitously, and not when circumstances require that one bend down or the other tiptoe. Not when others are talking - that's not the way to their own special world.
Perhaps he's playing. Perhaps she's singing. It's even most probable that the current setting includes - requires, stipulates - both of those things. Appreciative, and cherishing, selecting a sly step into the dance, Uhura admires, and Spock flicks those dangerous, querulous, catlike eyes to one side to see her smile, dreamy-cheeked with contentment.
Two fingers, gracing at odd but precise angle the corresponding ridges of knuckle on Uhura's left hand, before she lifts it to her ear and earpiece.
She's working. He's observing, supervising. This special touch is neither irrelevant nor essential to their efficient, correct, highly professional work.
Spock isn't learning anything more than he could already observe from his partner at that bank of switches; she's much too focused to be hiding any such thing. Standing straight-backed to one side, he might bring an air of disquiet, of dissatisfaction, of intimidation. With reassurances laid, both know quite intimately what they're about.
Three knots on Spock's spine, which Uhura determinedly presses at, one by one, when she's standing by him, waiting for him to clear his consoles and retire for the day. Upright though he is, her posture's better, and he falls victim to back pains after tense extended shifts more often than he'd prefer to admit (the number is zero).
Uhura will freely admit that it's ridiculous. But, she'd probably never consider it for anyone else, which is why, she suspects, she gets away with it. Even the mysterious beast that is Spock can't be a perfect computer all the time!
Four limbs, once awkward and unsure but now confident and comfortable, intertwine, enclose, enfold; Spock and Uhura embrace. Not forever - not even always for a while - but in trust and in affection.
Is her life less complicated than his? Perhaps. Are her needs more illogical than his? Perhaps. Is his tendency to reach out for her still remarkably shuttered? Almost certainly.
But they are learning, through not just enacting but exchanging these gestures, what it is to bring certainty to something nebulous within that bright ethereality; a love only just too peculiar to hold in the palm of your hand.