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Everyone on Omicron Ceti III had bright, unnatural eyes. What Spock assumed was their happy color had the saturation boosted.
Leila’s eyes were so yellow they almost glowed.
An illogical thought. But as Spock felt the spores take over, he didn’t think he cared.
Spock blinked. He could feel the blue coloring his eyes even through his contacts.
He’d never felt like this before.
He was happy.
Leila kissed him. He kissed her back.
He smiled. Everything was wonderful.
-----
Jim stared. Spock’s eyes were bright blue. Neon, electric blue. His smile was wide and joyful and playful and incredibly un-Spock-like.
Jim didn’t like it. It wasn’t right.
Jim turned to Bones, laughing nervously. “Hahaha, um, Bones, his eyes are blue. His eyes are blue, Bones, what’s wrong with him?”
Bones just kinda stared at Spock, his own eyes dark blue for concern. Bones’s eyes were often blue; his anger color was bright teal, his mildly annoyed color was light blue (he yelled about that one a lot), and his his fond color was baby blue. Those combined with doctorly concern pretty much comprised the majority of Bones’s day-to-day emotions.
Bones’s eyes had never been neon like Spock’s. Hell, Spock’s eyes had never been neon like Spock’s! Seeing Spock’s normally cool gray eyes become such an unnatural color was deeply unsettling.
“I have no idea, Jim,” Bones said slowly.
Something was very, very wrong.
-----
Jim did his best to scowl at Spock. “All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerized half-breed, we'll see about you deserting my ship.”
“The term half-breed is somewhat applicable, but computerized is inaccurate,” Spock said calmly. His eyes were still that unnatural blue. “A machine can be computerized, not a man.”
“What makes you think you're a man? You're an overgrown jackrabbit, an elf with a hyperactive thyroid,” he pushed.
“Jim, I don't understand,” said Spock, and a tiny flicker of red invaded the blue. Jim strengthened his resolve. It was working.
“Of course you don't understand,” he yelled. “You don't have the brains to understand. All you have is printed circuits!”
Spock walked towards the control panel, pressing a few buttons. “Captain, if you'll excuse me.”
“What can you expect from a simpering, devil-eared freak whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia?” Jim blocked Spock’s way to the transporter pad.
“My mother was a teacher,” said Spock, eyebrows drawing together. “My father an ambassador.”
“Your father was a computer, like his son! An ambassador from a planet of traitors. A Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity!”
“Captain, please don't--”
“You're a traitor from a race of traitors! Disloyal to the core, rotten like the rest of your subhuman race, and you've got the gall to make love to that girl!”
“That's enough.”
“Does she know what she's getting, Spock?” he hissed. Spock turned his back. “A carcass full of memory banks who should be squatting in a mushroom, instead of passing himself off as a man? You belong in a circus, Spock, not a starship. Right next to the dog-faced boy.”
Spock turned around and fucking walloped Jim.
And right before he was about to whap Jim with a chair, something clicked.
Spock’s eyes turned bright red for half a second before returning to normal.
Jim made eye contact with Spock. Gray eyes blinked hard.
“You did that to me deliberately,” Spock realized, breathing heavily.
“Believe me, Mister Spock,” Kirk joked, rolling his shoulder, “it was painful in more ways than one.”
“The spores. They're gone,” Spock breathed. “I don't belong anymore.”
Jim wondered what red meant.
-----
(Jim didn’t think about the fact that Spock’s happy color was the same as his own love color. Spock wasn’t his soulmate. He couldn’t be.
It was just a coincidence. Lots of people had coincidental little things like that. There were only so many colors that existed, after all. It was the rest of the colors that made the difference.
There was just no way.)
-----
Leila hugged him. Spock could feel her happiness through the contact. He didn’t respond.
Leile pulled away, looking up, bright yellow eyes becoming tinted by blue, her sad color. Spock had seen it before. “You're no longer with us, are you?” she said. “I felt something was wrong.”
“It was necessary,” he said, unable to look her in the eye.
“Come back to the planet with me,” she pleaded. “You can belong again. Come back with me, please.”
Belong.
Spock had never really belonged. Even when the spores controlled him.
“I can't,” he said. Her eyes filled with more blue, and purple made itself known as well, her love color. Spock had seen that one before, too. She had never seen his.
“I love you,” she said. “I said that six years ago, and I can't seem to stop repeating myself. On Earth, you couldn't give anything of yourself. You couldn't even put your arms around me. We couldn't have anything together there. We couldn't have anything together anyplace else. We're happy here.” Leila was crying. Spock didn’t move. “I can't lose you now, Mister Spock. I can't.”
“I have a responsibility to this ship, to that man on the Bridge.” Jim. He had a responsibility to Jim. And Leila’s eyes widened, became more more blue, more purple. “I am what I am, Leila, and if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else's.”
“I have lost you, haven't I?” she realized. “And not only you, I've lost all of it. The spores. I've lost them, too.” The yellow was gone, replaced by tears. Replaced by blue, by her sadness, by Spock.
She wasn’t happy anymore.
“The Captain discovered that strong emotions and needs destroy the spore’s influence,” he said, calmly, logically, ignoring the way Leila’s sad blue eyes made him feel, the way the purple told him it was his fault. He had never been good for her.
He had never loved her.
-----
“We haven't heard much from you about Omicron Ceti III, Mister Spock,” Kirk probed.
“I have little to say about it, Captain,” Spock said, “except that for the first time in my life, I was happy.”