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Seventy hours, twelve minutes, and fourteen seconds in sickbay, under full observation, is an excessive length of time for a Vulcan given their normally exceptional skills at healing. It is the middle of first shift and personnel seeking minor care, personnel obtaining medical clearances, and lab technicians running samples pass regularly in and out of the bay.
Spock dislikes appearing weak even more than he dislikes being weak. His pride is worn thin, even as his body, still tainted by a mutating digestive cocktail of alien origin, is grudgingly healing without the intervention of deep meditation.
Nurse Chapel finishes dressing a wound on crewmember Harron and as they re-don their uniform Chapel watches Spock from across the room. She has never hid her unwarranted affection, and Spock has never returned anything more than strictly professional responses. Yet, this has not dissuaded her emotions. If anything, it seems, by some illogical twist of human psychology, to have encouraged it to grow into something overwrought and martyrish.
She approaches, ticking the pen repeatedly on the medical tablet, distractedly marking something with this grating sound. She goes through the motions of comparing the display to the overhead monitor. The same overhead monitor Spock is deathly tired of having broadcast every subtlety of his physical self to anyone nearby.
“Can I get you anything, Mr. Spock?” she asks.
The question, on the face of it, is valid, kind, and fully in keeping with her role. But Spock finds it bothersome and is uncertain if his reply will be unduly sharp.
He speaks softly to avoid giving power to any negative tones. “No, thank you, Nurse.”
“Are you sure? I can get you a better meal from the synthesizers. I have worked out programs for a number of Vulcan favorites. Or I can even cook you something, if you’d like. I notice you’re only eating the basic rations.”
Spock considers the overhead. He considers with some curiosity why it is that affection from Chapel is burdensomely irksome and affection from Kirk is distractedly welcome. Logically, since they both spring from the same mysterious well of excessive human feeling, either both should be unacceptable or neither should be.
But this is not the case and Spock cannot pretend otherwise or he’ll commit an additional logical error.
“It is quite all right, Nurse. I am focussing on healing, not on my need for a gourmet experience.”
She bites her lips then becomes professional again. “That was. Almost. Humor.”
“I assure you that it was not.” Indeed, it was a wry, less biting version of what his impatient mental state wants to express.
“Well, if you insist.”
She moves off to replenish the medical carts now that a kit has been used. She will invent every conceivable task to remain in sickbay proper.
The door to sickbay whispers open and Kirk enters.
“Nurse Chapel, leave us, please, if you would. If you don’t have immediate duties here, that is.”
And that easily, the two of them are alone.
Kirk pulls a stool over from the wall and perches on it. “Do you want company for a while?”
“It is a poor use of your time.”
Kirk smiles with puckish affection. “In what universe?”
“Logically, in the universe of Starfleet and, more specifically, the universe of her highest rated heavy starship and her captain.”
Kirk props his boots up on the stool rung and crosses his arms. “You must be feeling better talking like that.”
“Physically, yes.”
Kirk grows serious as though a veil has passed before him. “You okay?”
“I apologize, Captain. I am short on patience for my situation, though it is out of your control.”
“The only thing stopping you from a healing trance right now is the toxins on the injury site, right? McCoy said.”
“Yes.” Spock nods even though it is redundant. “I am otherwise capable of a trance. That is not a concern.”
“Well, I’m pleased that you’re eager to return to duty. I’m eager to have you. But your underlings, usually outshone by you, are stepping up in ways I think is good for their development. So, while sciences is less efficient, I’m happy with how things are going. But perhaps that’s not the area sparking your impatience.”
Spock considers how to reply. He is pleased that Kirk’s stress over his condition has lowered and that Spock is likely not a command distraction any longer. That is progress.
Kirk sighs.
Spock tries to ignore the way the breathy sound of it resonates somewhere in the animal part of his brain. He continues to discover additional ways he is attuned to this being.
Kirk’s voice lowers to soothing, and while it undermines Spock to do so, he fixates on the tone as much as the words.
“I know you deeply dislike being less than full strength, and worse yet, being forced to be cared for. Being less than perfect.” Kirk pauses as if to let that land and settle. “I know Bones and M’Benga understand that too, even if they are often too distracted to act like they do. I assure you that everyone on this ship is still in awe of you and will be in awe of you when you are back to full strength.”
Spock turns away. Illogically, he is flushing at these words.
“Sorry,” Kirk says. Too perceptive, as usual.
Kirk resettles his crossed arms, he is apparently in no hurry to depart. And Spock is in no hurry to return to his previous morass of internal distraction.
“I came down for a report from McCoy, but I assume he’s in the lab.”
“Affirmative.”
“Up to filling me in on this morning’s progress with your treatment? No problem if you’d rather rest.”
Spock wonders again why Kirk’s gestures of caring are so easily accepted. More than that, missed if absent. Or even longed for in some awkward hungry way if Spock’s control is less than perfect.
“Actually,” Kirk says. “Why don’t you tell me about you. We have a little time here to talk.”
Spock centers himself before he speaks. “I have, it seems, readily adapted to you in ways that are not purely logical. This has not occurred previously despite interacting with others in the past, under similar circumstances.”
“I see.” Kirk’s tone is careful. “Adapted in ways that are unwelcome to you?”
“What is unwelcome is my inability to properly understand my own mind.” Even this is too much of an admission. The monitor rises.
Kirk is polite enough not to look up at it. “I don’t ever want to make you feel less than your whole self.”
“It is not your doing. It is entirely my own.”
“Are you sure? I’m not exactly shy at trying to draw you out in ways you hopefully can be comfortable with.”
Spock considers this, listens to the monitor reporting on his vitals. He finally speaks. “I expect that is the key. You have already adapted to me. I am inexperienced with that being done so skillfully.”
Perhaps that is the bulk of the explanation for the difference in Spock’s reactions to Kirk’s affections versus others’. With anyone else, vulnerable interaction would be cause for alarm. With Kirk there will be nothing but unselfish respect.
“This question never works with you,” Kirk says, “But can I do anything for you right now?”
Spock has one hundred percent certainty that Kirk asks this for Spock’s sake, not for his own. He has absolute faith in Kirk’s intentions and his unusually high self-control to back them up.
So the curious difference in Spock’s reactions is, in the end, easily comprehended. Spock’s growing attentiveness and emotional reactions to Kirk are not. But perhaps this trusted space Kirk provides is the explanation for that as well. Emotions are, in the end, simply another kind of vulnerability Spock previously considered unacceptable.
Kirk uncrosses his arms and rubs his jaw. His eyes have grown pained and concerned.
Spock clears his throat. “Your company is pleasing, Jim. As much as I believe it an inefficiency, I am in gratitude that you are providing it. That is all I require at this time.”
The sympathetic pain slips away from Kirk’s gaze.
“Are you up for a chess match or will medical come in and yell at me for straining you?”
Spock raises a brow. “You are insufferably self-confident, Captain.”
Kirk grins broadly and Spock experiences a pleasing warmth for causing it. No Vulcan should do so.
Kirk stands up. “I’ll fetch the board over. But promise me you’ll let me know if you want to stop and rest.”
“I will do so.”
Kirk bends over setting up the pieces with a child-like cast to his face. Then he sits relaxed on the stool again.
“You can have white,” he says, still overly pleased with himself.
Spock experiences emotional warmth he should not. It stands in such contrast to his state before Kirk’s arrival that it causes discomfort to resonant alongside it. He distracts himself by adjusting the head of the bed upward fourteen degrees.
Spock reaches awkwardly sideways and moves a white knight up a level and over two.
Kirk settles his mind over the board, reaches for a piece.
“Thank you for this, Spock. I needed it.”
And Spock realizes something else he should have understood concretely long before now. The implication of it makes him falter. He has responsibilities he has not been acknowledging, let alone maintaining.
Everything Kirk is for him right now, he is for Kirk. With no difference in intensity.
Kirk glances at him in concern.
Before Kirk can speak, Spock says, “I am quite all right, Captain.”
A weight visibly lifts from Kirk. “I’m glad to hear it.”