completely irrelevant question of the day

[laurajv]

So what IS with the backrub scene in "Shore Leave", anyway?

Also, someone give me commentfic prompts. FIVE someones.

Comments

[laurajv]

"Nyota--" Spock stopped, abruptly, when she narrowed her eyes at him from her seat on the bed.

"Don't tell me I'm being illogical," she said. "This isn't about logic at all."

His fingers moved slightly towards her, as if he wished to touch her but was unsure of his welcome. Slowly, he crouched in front of her and looked up into her face. "Nyota," he said, again.

She met his eyes steadily. "I knew so many things, Spock, when you asked me to marry you. First, that you would want children. Second, that you loved me for myself, and enough to overcome that those children would be only one-quarter Vulcan, when there are so few--" She stopped, tried to draw a deep breath without it becoming a sob. "Third, that of course those children would have to be...engineered. I knew all these things. What I didn't know..." She was unsure how to continue, and let her voice trail into silence.

He ran a finger along the line of her thigh; it seemed more thoughtful than sexual. "You did not anticipate the difficulties of maintaining an emotional relationship with me over the timespan of a lifetime, and you are concerned about difficulties our children will face doing so."

She let out her breath. "Yes."

"You did not know how much you wished to create your children within your body--" (his hand has come to rest with his fingers under the hem of her skirt) --"in, as you say, the old-fashioned way."

"Yes." She thinks of how hard she has worked to learn to read his face, and how hard he has worked to learn her moods. How they have had to be a kind of support for the other, and a comfort for the other, for which nothing in their lives before Nero had prepared them.

He remains perfectly still. She knows he is watching her, that he is wondering if she will ask him, once more, to delay the appointment with the geneticist. Suddenly, and fiercely, she wants to pretend: to open to him, lock him between her thighs, and when he comes within her, to feel the thrill of maybe. But his hand does not move, and she cannot bring herself to move against it. Instead, she leans forward and presses her forehead to his.

"It will be all right," she says. "I'm not going to not do it. I just need to let go of some old dreams, first."

His breath is hot between them. "Nyota."

"It will be all right," she repeats. "New dreams will come."

[zvi]

Oh, that's heartbreaking, and not, at the same time. Thanks!

[laurajv]

I'm glad you liked it!