Fic: Two Summers, 1-4
The thing he misses most about Spock is his smell. Jim never paid much attention to it, but he finds himself in Spock’s quarters inhaling deeply, trying to recapture Spock’s scent. There’s nothing of it left in the room. The ventilation systems haven’t stopped since Spock’s death. They keep sucking out the old air and blowing in the new. It’s not even arid dry hot in Spock’s quarters. Someone made the decision to turn off environmental controls and just let things run on minimal energy. Maybe Spock would appreciate that logic. Dead people don’t need environmental controls.
The bed has nothing of Spock’s odor on it. He rarely used the bed, since Vulcans hardly ever sleep. Jim approaches Spock’s closet and drawers, which to his knowledge, no one has touched. He’s seen the insides before. For some reason, this is different.
Jim opens the drawers carefully. Folded neatly inside are Spock’s uniform shirts, pants, undershirts, underpants, socks. Jim fingers the blue material of the science uniform. He carefully pulls it out, the folds coming undone as he lifts it to his nose.
Nothing.
These were all washed dried pressed folded by the yeomen. It smells like standard Starfleet detergent. His hands shake as he refolds the shirt and carefully tucks it back into the drawer. Jim’s fingers reach for the underpants, then draw back. Then he takes one at random, remembering missions gone wrong when he undressed Spock in the darkness of a cavern, times after missions when Spock shoved him against the wall of his quarters and kissed him, tore off his pants and stripped down to his underwear, times during diplomatic missions when Jim could do nothing but think about peeling off that dress uniform, that one time Jim seriously thought that Spock went commando. He inhales into the cloth, wanting to catch the scent of semen and skin and sex but there’s nothing.
His chest feels so hollow.
The drawer below that is empty. It used to hold Spock’s Vulcan robes, but they put his body in that for all three funerals, delivered him back to his home planet wrapped in the clothes that marked him as Vulcan’s own. Jim inhales and there’s a faint whiff of the scent of the thick cloth that used to lie here, but it’s not Spock. Still, he’ll take what he can get.
The last drawer has a few articles of clothing. Jim’s Starfleet sweatshirt-he’d forgotten about that. Technically, he wondered where it disappeared, then decided he didn’t really care. Jim picks it up carefully, but it smells like him, not Spock. Suddenly the thought slams into him that Spock did, at one point in time, exactly the same thing that Jim’s doing right now. He can name right now one of the fifty thousand times he’s been at death’s door, or missing in space for so many shifts, and what must’ve it been like for Spock? The thing reeks of sweat. Jim used to wear it when he worked out. But that’s exactly what he wants from Spock, to be overwhelmed by his scent, to find some way to remember and bring his lover back to life, if only for a moment.
There’s a piece of cloth, like a veil. It looks like something a woman would wear. Jim smells it and that’s definitely not Spock, though some deep part of him identifies it as Vulcan. Jealousy leaps to the forefront, then leaves as quickly as it came. Amanda Grayson. Something inside Jim breaks as he puts the veil scarf thing back. He closes the drawer and steps back, shaken.
There’s nothing in Spock’s closet except the dress uniform, a coat, and his boots. Jim takes out the uniform. He hugs the cloth to him, imagining that it’s full of a body. Spock. His eye picks out details he never noticed before. There’s a repair near the collar-that time when an ambassador’s bodyguard turned out to be an assassin and Spock decided to play the hero and get hit instead. A tiny scuff mark at the elbow. From their last diplomatic mission together, somehow Spock’s uniform got caught on a table corner. The yeoman must’ve missed the spot. The decorations denoting rank, commendations, honors. Jim inhales deeply, but again, nothing. He thinks vaguely that Starfleet’s perfected the art of dry cleaning, to suck out someone’s essence that completely. They should consider opening dry cleaning branches around the Alpha Quadrant.
It’s the boots that finally get to him. Battered, creased, completely broken in, the boots were never cleaned and Jim thinks that despite the black, he can still see some bloodstains on them. And they smell.
Jim and Spock, every member of the Enterprise, go through pairs upon pairs of boots. Jim hates breaking in new boots each time his old ones are far gone and completely mucked up. It looks like Spock was about due for some new boots, but then he died. These escaped the Starfleet cleaning machine. They smell.
On the outside, they smell of mud and dirt and sand, they smell of the Enterprise’s waxed corridors. Blood, boot polish, rubber. Inside, they smell of Spock’s feet. It’s not like human sweat, and Jim has no way to describe it except that it brings to mind a lazy morning when he woke up and out of pure impulse, took Spock’s long and lean foot in his hands and licked and sucked from heel to toe. Spock moaned in response because apparently, Vulcan feet have some very little telepathic capability, though not to the extent of their hands. It’s another fun erogenous zone and after that Jim made full use of it, teasing Spock about having an Achilles heel. Foot massages were never the same again.
Jim fingers the laces, then clenches his fist. All the little pieces of Spock and memories he’s not ready to deal with crowd him. His heart clinches with panic and he can feel his chest heaving with gasping inhales.
He has what he wants. If he stays in Spock’s quarters any longer, he’ll go crazy. Jim grabs the boots, stuffs the underwear in his pocket, and leaves. He locks the bulkheads with Spock’s private code.
When he gets back to his quarters, he’s exhausted. Jim falls asleep with the boots on the floor beside his bed, underpants wrapped around his fingers. And for the first time in so many weeks, his heart beats steadily through the night.