Work Text:
He spent all day grumbling over the fact. Finally after months of scheduling conflicts he was able to get his defense scheduled. “Sometime in February,” they said.
Some day should not mean Valentines. He was supposed to go on a date.
“What assholes would schedule a thesis defense on V Day?”
He pulled out his phone and looked up the names. As per university guidelines, the review board had to have at least two professors outside of his program. One of them he was able to choose. Figured. Someone was probably trying to fuck with him. Both very legitimate hypotheses.
“Oh hey, you actually answered the fucking phone. Er about that thesis defense…”
A sigh on the other end.
“It wasn’t me. You’re gonna have to talk to the quantum mechanics dude.”
Jim frowned. “Why’s a guy from the physics department dictating when an arts and humanities review board is happening?”
“I dunno, maybe because it’s just the way the universe is.”
“Fuck you Bones.” Jim kicked at the grass. “I’ll see you at home,” he added.
Spock wasn’t particularly thrilled with sitting on the review board committee. Then again he wasn’t particularly thrilled with anything. He spent most of his life traversing through it with little expression.
Yet on his fourth thesis he was skimming through (he rarely read everything fully on the first glance), his attention piqued. More or less he felt more emotion travel through his brain than he’d felt in years. He was tired of lazy writing. Lazy predictable writing that one always finds in academia. Spock was guilty of it too, then again 200 hours of research brought one’s mental faculties to a standstill some days. So he understood where it came from. But he still hated it.
He made himself tea and lounged back on his couch; 400 pages of paper in hand. Spock started from the beginning.
Page 1.
Page 8.
Page 100.
Page 349.
Hours felt like minutes to him. Every word that intrigued him he listed on a notepad that sat atop his knee.
Texts went unread. Multiple emails unanswered. The clock ticked away on the wall…
Five in the morning he was still on his couch. His eyes watery, not from staying up all night, but from this wild stream of emotion. It was gut wrenching fear and despair.
Did he just read a tragic love story disguised as an academic thesis?
Spock sat the papers down next to his laptop. He turned it on and sent an email detailing his wishes to review this student’s work.
That was four months ago. Back then Spock was really only interested in his own field. He was newly tenured and felt as though he had to prove himself to the rest of the staff. Young and intelligent. Perhaps too young to already have a tenured position.
After that October evening, Spock sought out information on this James Kirk. Two published novels. Three anthologies of short stories. A book of poetry. He had a slate of historical fiction and non-fiction. Spock wanted to read it all. But mostly, he wanted to get to know the author.
With every word he read, Spock was starting to fall more in love with him.
Or at least his mind.
He sat in his office reviewing data when the knock came. Spock barely had time to straighten out his desk before the person came in.
James Kirk.
Spock stared up at him. The author that whisked his mind away to beautiful worlds of despair and hell was glaring at him. His eyes were more beautiful in person.
“May I help you,” Spock managed to rasp out.
“Reschedule my defense. Right now.”
Those eyes could murder.
“I don’t—“
“Seriously dude.” Jim spread his hands on the desk. “Valentine’s Day? Where the hell is your mind at?”
In your prose.
Jim backed off and sighed. He pulled out his phone from the side pocket of his backpack. “Look, I have a slew of dates and times that I’m available. Pick from those.” He held the phone out in front of him.
“I apologize. I didn’t consider what day or even what month it is?”
“Too busy? Too lost in your little quarks to pay attention to anything bigger?”
Spock stayed silent. He was lost Jim’s face. The slightly red nose from a walk out in the cold air. Soft lips. The streak of pores he could point out on his left cheekbone.
“That was a joke,” Jim ran a hand through his hair.
“I know.”
Jim groaned.
“So are you gonna accept my request to move my defense or not?”
For a man who could write such beautiful prose he was not entirely spatially aware, Spock thought. Most anyone would notice he’s being stared at.
“R-right. Rescheduling. I’m not opposed.”
“Great! Now choose a day already!”
The student frowned. He placed his phone on Spock’s desk. “What are you staring at me like that for?”
About time.
“Interesting to finally see and hear the man to whom I’ve been reading from diligently.”
“Uh, what?”
“You’re not wrong about my being out of touch. I wasn’t obsessing over quarks, though. Despite how charming they are. I was familiarizing myself with your body of work.”
Jim blushed. “What now?”
“I’ve been told I lack empathy. Perhaps I do. Or perhaps it takes a lot for me to feel it. I read your thesis and it had me in tears. It must have been a fluke. So I looked you up and found your other pieces. Every single one of them I connected with.”
Spock refused to tear his eyes away from Jim’s. He could feel the tension between the two, like a string pulling tightly between them both. They were always equally distanced, not him or Jim were tugging harder than the other.
“Forgive me,” he continued. “There’s something about your diction, your voice, the use of your knowledge that strikes me. I might have fallen deeply in love with your writing. Again forgive me. I’m a bit thrown off by your appearance in my office.”
It was a deep compliment. One that Jim hardly heard from anyone other than his mom. Yes his friends would enjoy the latest poem he penned or muse over the short story he submitted to the university’s magazine. But this deep connection he heard Spock going on about was genuinely humbling. He could feel something in the air, that tension between them, but he wanted to dismiss it. When it rained it got humid in these old buildings.
But he couldn’t dismiss it.
“D-do you want to uh get some coffee or something? I’m working on something right now. I’ll let you read it.”
Spock nodded. He didn’t miss a beat while grabbing his rain jacket.
They spent hours discussing literature. What used to be a normal topic at home for Spock had been replaced with science as he grew older. Yet the love for literature that his mother instilled in him never left. He picked it back up like he hadn’t ignored it for the past 20 years.
Jim was so engaged in the conversation by the time the two had to part ways he completely forgot about rescheduling his review. He lied in bed cursing himself, knowing his date would curse him if he didn’t reschedule the stupid thing.
But the longer Jim lied in bed staring at the ceiling he wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to go on that date.
Fuck.
He couldn’t get the image out of his memory. Those nimble fingers tracing the words written down on paper. Spock asked to see his notes, and Jim couldn’t resist showing his writing process. If anything the two could bond over was applying the scientific method to Jim’s compositions. And Spock asked him so many questions, so many that Jim never even considered.
What colors helped him write the best?
Where was his favorite writing spot?
Did he have any physical stimulations that helped him write sentences?
Jim’s mind drifted to lying in the grass, the blades prickling his skin. Those nimble fingers on his arm.
Fuck.
He reached over to his bedside table and grabbed his phone. Jim might as well give in and research Spock.
That morning Jim waited outside the classroom Spock was in. When they were at the cafe, he was quiet and composed. It was silly, but he thought Spock would be the same way while teaching. He was still composed, but Jim could hear the genuine connection he was making with the class.
“Now, why couldn’t my science classes have been taught by him,” Jim muttered.
He glanced at his phone. That class would be let out in 60 seconds. He had 60 seconds to gather up all his courage.
The students filed out of the room into the hallway that was slowly filling up with other exiting classes. Jim pushed his way through the stragglers at the door, intending to walk right up to him. But when he saw the professor packing up his laptop and a couple of books, he stopped. His heart rose to his throat, thumping loudly.
“Er, Profess—“
He looked up. Eyes widening. Then he realized what Jim must have been there for.
“Spock. You’re more than welcome to call me Spock.” A glance down at his phone. “Shit. Rescheduling. We didn’t do that yesterday.”
Jim shook his head looking back at the floor. The tiles could use some polishing.
“James?”
“Jim.” He smiled. “You can call me Jim.”
They stared at each other for what felt like hours. Spock in his perfectly fitted suit with his perfectly shined shoes (It wasn’t overboard he reasoned with himself, he had a meeting with the provost later that day). Jim was grasping tightly at the straps of his backpack, feeling claustrophobic in his leather jacket.
“Spock?”
“Yes?”
He inched closer, the space between the two dwindling. There was only the lab table between them now.
“Uh, this is weird.” He blushed. “Can I kiss you?”
Spock closed the gap between them. Their lips hovering centimeters away. “Please do.”
Jim wasn’t sure how to proceed. He thought about thousands of different scenarios earlier that morning. Many of them just involved Jim walking right up to Spock without a word and pressing him up against the wall for a kiss. The others were in his office. Some of them outside. Most all of them were spontaneous. Yet Jim determined in this room merely seconds ago that Spock was too delicate a mind to spontaneously express physical attraction. He had to ask. He had to treat this beautiful being with all the care he reserved for his words.
Spock was overwhelmed with the delicacy Jim chose to proceed. His soft lips closed on his while a cold strong hand gently tilted his head for a better angle. If only the kiss could last forever, but they were in a science lab for fucks sake. He didn’t have the courage to resort to that any time soon.
He let Jim pull away and opened his eyes. The man before him was hazy with attraction, like the old movies from the fifties. A beautiful light shown down on those beautiful eyes.
“So, are we going to reschedule?”
Jim laughed. He was breathless. “I rescheduled my date. Um, actually…” He wrung his hands together. “I kept my dinner reservations but I want a different person to come with.”
Spock felt nauseous. It was a flutter of nervousness coalescing in his stomach. “So? Uhm. Are we going to reschedule,” he asked again. He was hardly believing what Jim was implying.
“I want you to sit on my review board. Discuss my thesis, criticize my defense. Grade me. Decide my future.”
Jim closed in again.
“And then I would love it if you went back home and dressed in your best outfit and joined me for dinner.”
“On Valentine’s Day.”
He smiled.
“On Valentine’s Day.”