Dah-yel
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Series: None
Summary: Vulcan, Translation to Terran English: Binary star, Definition: a double star whose members have a revolution round their common center of gravity. This, when it comes to Kirk and Spock, is disturbingly accurate.
Catharsis: {Origin: Terran Greek to English} The purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.
If asked, Spock will simply claim that he does not understand its meaning. It will be another word added to the litany of the untranslatable, those things that keep him eternally held at arms' length by almost everyone he knows. Almost everyone.
James Kirk has always been the exception. Before he met Spock, he was the exception. To what rule, Spock is still unaware, but he is certain there is one. There must be one, if only because Kirk has been in violation of Newton's third law of motion for far too long. It is unsustainable; Spock had previously been under the assumption that it was impossible.
However, when one lives and works in close quarters with James Kirk, the impossible begins to seem merely improbable, before it rapidly fades into negligibility. Once, this had been an annoyance. Yet, Spock does possess a measure of self-preservation, though he is sure Kirk will disagree-vehemently. At any rate, Spock is glad for this ability to bend circumstances as Kirk does. It has kept them all alive.
And yet, the third law of motion states that for any action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. Karma, Nyota would call it. Has called it, in the past, in the exhausted aftermath of yet another disaster averted by Jim Kirk's illogical genius.
Kirk spent most of his life pushing angrily against nothing, and subsequently against everything. Nothing is on his level; he is much too… big for any of it. He was angry. Spock felt that anger the day of the Kobayashi Maru hearing. It was a terrifying, ravenous thing.
Massive stars, in their death, push against nothing. They expand into the vast vacuum of space until they simply collapse, unable to survive under their own mass. They become black holes, then. The issue comes when Spock is unsure whether to be worried about Kirk's impending supernova or that he is already a black hole. It is not idle speculation.
The catharsis comes, then, with something to push against. Kirk is this something, this equal and opposite force. There are times when Spock wonders if the force of supernova would be enough to destroy him, too. There are times when he wonders if he will destroy himself in this way. He finds it matters little.
It is a slow destruction, and if Spock were given to metaphor he would perhaps find it poetic that it is Kirk, the supernova, the black hole, destroying him, a symbol of Vulcan, of her own death.
Spock is not suicidal. He has had the psychological evaluations; he has been told this. He does not trust himself to make such judgments on his own. It is, possibly, a fear of what answers he will discover should he seek them. But that is not a foregone conclusion.
Instead, Spock finds he wishes his hypotheses to remain without answer, though he cannot stop himself from testing them, every time he is within Kirk's orbit.
The man has an inescapable gravity.
This is not the reason Nyota terminates their relationship. Spock is positive she does not know how deeply this has affected him. She sees causes and effects, but she does not see the right ones. Spock wants desperately to be able to reveal them to her, but he does not know how.
He has no connections. He is in free fall, and he has only this.
Kirk's eyes are molten, and he circles Spock, allowing his eyes to roam as they will with no thought spared to Spock's discomfort. Nevertheless, Spock is forced to admit that such discomfort is hardly logical; it was he, after all, who choked Kirk, on the bridge no less. At least here they are alone, without the presence of intrusive eyes.
This is not comforting in the slightest. It all feels much too intimate, too much, and Spock is blinded by the force of James Kirk, reflecting off of everything around him, his intensity focused on Spock alone.
Spock has never been weak, but he feels himself involuntarily slipping into Kirk's shadow. He feels the pressure of ten thousand remaining Vulcans, of the elders, of even those who have died, of all the eyes that have ever regarded him and found him wanting.
They might very well kill each other here. Spock has no illusions. This is about dominance, about the inevitable collision of equal and opposing forces, of two wills that define Catch-22, even though one does not believe in them.
And then suddenly, Kirk is laughing. The web of tension that held them together is gone. Spock almost finds himself missing it, if only because it is contact, something to assure himself that he is still functioning, in some small capacity. He has been seeking, without previous awareness, proof of his sanity. He grasps at it, vaguely, could possibly prove it logically, but all of that shrinks under the force of this.
And Kirk just stands there, laughing, while Spock takes a moment, the space of one deep breath, to wonder how it is that this man is capable of eliciting in him some sort of existential crisis. It is, to say the least, infuriating. And Kirk won't stop laughing.
"This," he gasps, "Is such a clusterfuck."
Spock cannot help but agree. Despite the vulgar terminology, but that is par for the course with Kirk.
And yet, this is not what he wants, this bleeding, this letting go. He refused it once, before the ministers of the Science Academy. Had he desired to let go, to become a being of pure logic, he would have done so. And his ambiguous shame at his human side notwithstanding, Spock does desire to feel. His nature as the embodiment of paradox does not escape him. He wonders if Kirk knows this. He must not, for his laughter has only now subsided, and Spock can see the way it bubbles up, ready to burst forth at any moment.
This is not what Spock wants. He wants catharsis; he wants the emotions to rip out of him, leaving him blank and raw. He is fully aware of the inherit illogic in this. He knows what his father would say. He knows the look his mother would give him. He takes it in, allows it room to move, to settle, to be a part of him.
And then, he steps forward.
Kirk freezes, his eyes locked on Spock, waiting, almost predatory. Spock can see the way his muscles go taut, ready… For what, Spock does not know. He is aware of Kirk's readiness for reaction without knowing what his own action will be to cause it. The absurdity of it all hits him, and Spock clamps down on the desire to laugh himself.
"It is," he says, breathy, and Kirk flinches. It is not what Kirk had expected, and this prompts a feeling in Spock that is too akin to smugness for his comfort.
And then, Kirk is stepping closer, and Spock wonders when this became their lives. It's a game, a dance, a push-pull of intimacy and personality. It is electrical forces, attracting and repelling, and Spock doesn't know how to stop it or when it became this powerful.
What he does know is that this is what he wants, though he does not yet have a proper definition of what "this" is. Perhaps it is better that way.
Also, perhaps this is a psychotic break. It is not impossible.
Especially when Spock finds himself kissing Kirk. He does not know how this happened; there is not a logical progression in any fashion. It simply is.
It is, and it hurts, and Spock is aware, dimly, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he is pressing too hard, but that Kirk is laughing, still laughing, and pulling Spock impossibly closer. And Spock wants to ask why, ask how Kirk is capable of this, of being this. But he doubts there is an answer. And if there is, he doubts he will be any more willing to hear it than Kirk is to give it.
Kirk pulls away, for a moment, and Spock feels the loss of contact like flame on every inch of him. Kirk's eyes are dilated, and Spock is reminded of black holes again, of gravity too strong to resist. So he doesn't.
This is catharsis. There is no word in Vulcan for this. It is Kolinahr in reverse, the emotions bubbling up within Spock and Kirk taking them, taking all of it and transferring it back in the press of fingers, of lips, of skin to skin. And laughing, laughing and begging for more.