Work Text:
Fifteen point two minutes ago would designate when Spock first stepped into the fresher, standing, face blank, before the door of the sonic.
The lights are bright within the small space, banishing the shadows from every corner of this room and throwing his angular reflection into sharp relief against the silver door. Silently, Spock strips and his clothes fold to the floor.
Inside, he does not look at the vivid green lines of freshly made bruises down the left side of his body, nor does he take notice of the weight he’s lost since his last physical. He is too tired, too exhausted, and instead, simply takes a breath and lets the door slide closed behind him.
Spock rarely chooses the option of a shower with actual water. Being raised on Vulcan, surrounded by its dry air and red deserts, he considers water a precious resource, scarce across the planet’s sandy surface, just as it is now in space.
But standing nude inside the cubicle, looking down at his choices while warm air leaves him with every second, Spock selects it with a small admission there is very little logic guiding him when— after seven point three days fighting for his life, after he had been captured on their last away mission, after he had been beaten and starved and tortured before he is rescued and treated for his injuries—he is exhausted beyond measure.
Spock sets the temperature to scalding, allowing the water to hit him in the face, to flow into his eyes and creep between his lips. It would be tasteless if not for the faint flavor of metal tubing mingled within its molecules and smoothly, he bows his head to discard it. He lets it cascade down his back and follow the lines of his ears down the planes of his chest to the drain recess at his feet. Quickly, the room fills with steam and he settles inside the fog for warmth, dense bone and wiry muscle requiring much needed respite.
After his skin has been numbed by drumming water, Spock shuts off the valve. He listens to the last drops patter from the points of his elbows and his fingers onto the tile like fading rain and attempts to think of his remaining tasks for the evening. There are still reports to file, messages to check or acknowledge, requisitions to approve or deny. He should eat something.
Except, for all he should, Spock cannot find reason to care. The dim lights of his cabin and the smell of incense, the fire burning from his asenoi, call to him from the opposite end of his quarters. Perhaps, tomorrow, he thinks. Perhaps, those things can wait.
Spock hits the latch and the door slides open to release him. He reaches for his towel, fisting the thick cotton into his hands. He dries his face, his chest, his arms and legs before taking a step outside the cubicle. He’s only just wrapped the towel around his waist when he pauses, frozen and staring across the room. His brows crease.
There is something on the glass above the sink. Spock stares at a familiar shape, the split in the lines of a hand carved into the condensation on its surface, as it stares back at him in the mirror.
Jim.
Confusion knots his eyes together. Inside the shape of the hand, Spock can see the pale pallor of his own skin, the angles of his hip, and the way the last rung of his ribs protrudes slightly in the space above his heart—an unnamed and favored place a bit lower, also in the cutout of that same hand.
How clever.
With no one to accuse him, does his eyebrow rise and his lips twitch. In this, he realizes Jim must have been quite focused to ensure Spock would not hear him and subsequently, pleased in his success to that fact. But it is perhaps, he was truly too tired to notice. He imagines the look of Jim’s face regardless, the smile etched into Jim’s lips, bright and radiant like the sun; the thought is amusing.
A moment passes and Spock collects his clothing from the floor to vacate to his quarters. He leaves the hand print to fade, even if it never leaves his mind for several hours or possibly ever. As, pleasant (or endearing, he admits) as the notion is, Spock cannot help the twinge of disappointment that settles beside it and may need to share with Jim at a later point.
He would have preferred the Captain had joined him instead.