Note: Spock is a bit OOC in this. It's a bit of a drabble/experiment I came up with after seeing the movie again today and really paying attention to Spock. There is some M content, but it's mild.

Live long and prosper.

******

"Spock," Uhura says quietly in the otherwise-empty, softly-beeping bridge. "When are we home?"

Spock raises a slanted eyebrow, dark eyes watching her. "I am not sure what you infer by 'home', Lieutenant."

"Stop, Spock," she replies, on the edge of exasperation. "Just stop."

"I believe you asked me a question?"

Uhura is too tired, too bone-weary to reply. She's been on the Enterprise for five years; five years without a real day off, five years without the sun, five years without real ground beneath her feet, five years without sunrises or sunsets. They are at warp, returning at last to Earth, and all she wants to know was when and why did he have to be such a goddamned ass about it?

"Uhura?" He was suddenly behind her, a hand on her shoulder.

"Spock," she says, defeated. "I just want to go home."

"I..." He pauses, not wanting to rouse her ire again. "Where is home?"

She glances up at him, expecting a mechanical measure of time, not his gentle query. "Africa," she replies after a long moment. "Home, home, at least; my country."

"I see," he muses. "Do—you wish to return there?"

"Eventually. I have few fond memories of home."

Spock takes his hand off of her shoulder. "Yet you still call it 'home'?"

"I suppose I have no choice. I feel... unbalanced, like I have no home."

"Like I do not," he whispers, so quietly he thought she could not hear.

"Oh, Spock," she says, heart aching. They've been fighting; well, as much as a Vulcan ever fights. Her mind has steeled against him for now, but her heart has no such defense. Slowly, she stands, and reaches for his hand; he looks down at where they are joined and slowly finds her face, his eyes clouded. "Oh, Spock."

"Uhura," he replies, voice almost shaken. "This is... not logical."

She drops his hand like a firebrand and steps back. She fights to keep her voice down; it would do no good to lure security, but all she wants to do is shout, to scream, to yell and cry and hurt. "For crying out loud! To hell with logic! Haven't you gotten it already? Five years, Spock, more than that, and you still hold your hobgoblin logic closer than my heart?"

Spock does not falter when Bones hisses that word, nor when Jim tosses it towards him in casual conversation; but when Uhura, his Uhura, says it, and so bitterly, he feels the wound, feels it bleed. She knows she struck him.

"Uhura, I am..." Spock closes his eyes and turns away from her. She knows he is hiding from her. "I am who I am. I am Vulcan as much as I am human. I am half logical, half emotional—you brought that out of me after I spent my life, my life, trying to become... someone I am only partly." He spins around and looks at her, eyes screaming his pain, jaw clenched against it. "I fight. Every day of my life is a fight. I fight to maintain camaraderie with Jim, to be commander to the others, to be Vulcan for my father, to be human for my mother. I fight to love you, Nyota. I fight to think of my future on a planet I do not know, to be first officer on a ship I know better than a world, now—"

Uhura has stopped listening. She could hear his pain, but the only thing she hears now of his tirade was one phrase; one six-word phrase. "I fight to love you, Nyota." It repeats, like a malfunctioning con message, over and over. She is looking down when she realizes Spock is no longer speaking. "Nyota?"

She looks up at him, eyes bright. "Spock—I—you—you love me?"

He closes his eyes for a long moment, then looks at her softly with those eyes she so adores. "I thought you knew." She tightens her mouth, settles for a half nod, half shake, and shrugs. She doesn't know what she feels. She doesn't know if her voice can be trusted, if her breath can be trusted. "Oh, Nyota," he murmurs and steps towards her, hesitant if she will accept him now. She can see in his shoulders that he wants to hold her, and she closes her eyes and nods, the tiniest nod, and Spock holds her, holds her so tightly she never wants him to let go.

He feels. He feels her; he feels her pain, his pain, her need, his need, her humanity, his tumultuous being, but her love; her love is overwhelming. He feels so much he feels numb. He feels until he feels nothing at all, until all of the feel is like pain that fades as long as he doesn't move; so he doesn't, holding his Nyota, nose buried in her hair, her fists gripping his shirt. They stand that way until the numbness fades and he feels again: feels dampness against his shirt, feels her breath hiccup against his arms.

"Nyota? My love?" he whispers, so softly he can hardly hear; but she, his xenolinguistics expert, his student, his lieutenant, his Uhura, his Nyota, his love, can hear. He knows she can hear because he feels her heart stammer against his chest.

"Spock," she mumbles against his chest. "Oh, Spock."

It is all she can say for some time as he tips her chin up from her listening of his heartbeat and kisses every tear off her cheeks, her chin, her nose, her lips, where they've run down her neck. She does not return his kisses at first; but he knows the overwhelming numbness and waits for her to come to him, understanding now, and she attacks his mouth with her own with a fury he did not know she possessed.

Kirk looks in the bridge from the officer's lounge where he has been napping, smiles, then closes all doors to the bridge and lets them have their peace.

Spock cushions her fall as she slides down against him, giving in to her exhaustion, her countless nights spent by herself, alone, so, so alone without her angled eyebrows to trace and pointy ears to caress, and so when he gently suggests their impropriety by slipping one hand from her knee to hip, she finds herself reaching for him. When he gets the necessary fabric shifted, she realizes his fingers are questing for her pleasure; one set held firmly in her hand, the other teasing over her skin on the floor just in front of Kirk's beloved chair.

When she begs with her eyes, he pauses. She begins to ask why. Suddenly, she sees what he is doing; he is trying for her—trying so hard to feel.

Slowly, they couple, alone in the otherwise-empty, softly-beeping bridge; for the first time he lets himself experience her reactions and lets her learn his. He does not stifle his murmured groan as she envelops him; he does not calm his breath. When she begins to clutch his arms, his shoulders, trying to bring his lips to hers, he kisses her roughly, bruising. He is not the quiet, almost dutiful lovemaker she has seen before.

Suddenly, he pauses, sucking in air through his nose, nostrils flaring as he wrestles with something. "Nyota?" he says finally, hesitantly. Spock is not hesitant. "May I?" He reaches out with one hand towards the left side of her face, a finger by her chin and the rest along her cheek and forehead. She knows what he wants.

Nodding, she lets him touch her in the pattern required, and suddenly he is with her in her mind. He begins to rock again, in her body and in her mind, and the overwhelming doubles—no, quadruples, for she feels his too—and sends her away from the bridge, somewhere else; before she warps away, she feels his need for her. Now—immediately—but forever, too, and there it is. A stray thought he quickly tugs away, but she's seen it, and she's amazed as she floats inside her blood.

He buries his face in her shoulder to pillow his cries, knowing she is too far gone to hear him anyway, and when she finally looks at him coherently again, he knows she saw. They straighten up; almost off-duty, they don't care. Not anymore.

Kirk does, however, from his hiding place in the officer's lounge. He knows the sounds of sex too well to ignore it. There is no way out of the lounge but through. He retreats to a couch and begins thinking of every non-arousing thing he can... and then decides to wait.

"Spock?" Nyota has finished with the remaining transmissions and she looks up at her commander, her teacher, her Spock, her love, in the otherwise-empty, softly-beeping bridge. "When are we home?"

"Three-point-seven hours, my sweet," he replies, the endearment a whisper. It's a new one; he feels it's justified, likes how it rolls off his tongue, how it feels when her brilliant return smile rumbles in his chest. He does not raise a slanted eyebrow at her query. Now he knows; now he understands.

"Where are you going when we get there?"

He takes a deep breath; for once illogical, he takes a chance. "I wish to go where you go, Nyota." He pauses; she waits too. "My home... it is with you."

She lets a smile tug at her lips, still rough from his kisses, and stands, reaches for his hands; holds them close to her chest and to his. She thinks of what she saw, looks down at their twenty combined fingers, lets one stray finger brush over the third on his left hand. He rests his forehead against hers and does the same, not even pausing to consider the Earth custom that it was. He knows, now, what she'll say when he inevitably asks; all the important questions, still left unsaid, were answered without a word. When Kirk clears his throat uncomfortably behind them, she throws her arms around her Spock's neck and kisses him, lingering.

"Can I have my chair back?"

Spock lets her lips go, looks at his captain, but it is Uhura who says quietly, "Yes, Jim. Are we relieved?"

"Yes," he replies, taking in the gravity of what else happened. "And I am too. Go home."

Spock and Uhura look at each other again. She knows; she understands. "I am home," she murmurs softly, and Spock smiles; then Jim smiles; then Nyota smiles, and as the pair of fools stroll out of the bridge, Jim watches them go and returns his mind to the last three-point-five hours of the life he's known.

Jim smiles again, and in the otherwise-empty, softly-beeping bridge, he relishes the knowledge that he, too, will be able to finally go home.