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“Christine.”
She hates the way it makes her feel, when he says her name like that. She feels her body stand at attention reflexively, her back still to him as he stands just inside the door of the lab as it closes behind him.
She hates how weak she feels right now. Right when the whole ship needs her, and she wishes Joseph was here, so she could just bounce ideas off him.
Her instincts are telling her to not give in, not to settle back into this. That her and Spock left on the terms that they had for a reason. That they'll only hurt each other again.
But then, they have somehow found themselves here again.
“Hey,” she replies to him, turning to face him and trying to give him a small smile despite how worn-down she feels. Spock's been put in charge of xenobiology as head of the science department, of stepping into Sam's shoes and-
“Spock,” she says, moving closer to him, and reaching for his arm, putting her hand on his wrist briefly as she holds the padd in her other hand to her chest. “How are you holding up?”
His eyes stare down at where her hand was. “I came here to ask you the same,” he said, his eyes flicking back up to hers.
Of course he has, she thinks, as she searches his eyes. She needs to be careful this time. “I just keep thinking, they're still alive. I have to.”
They're all alive. Erica and Joseph and La'an-
She sees him frown as he studies her expression, then he slowly nods. “Yes,” he says, reassuringly. She doesn't think he believes that, but simply that he has agreed to understand she needs to. “His brother...Jim...contacted me.”
“Bad news travels fast, I guess?” she replied to him, feeling a lump in her throat. “How did he take it?”
He blinks for a moment as he thinks about this, a puzzled look clouding his features. “I am not sure. He told me he would prefer to be the one to tell his family.”
She hadn't even had time to worry about that, and Spock was already having to deal with the fallout of their mission going wrong. The away team and the colonists had only been gone two days. They weren't dead. Marie wasn't dead, she was just in the pattern buffer, and she didn't want-
Spock's hand had reached out and touched her shoulder, surprising her, as she stepped closer, and leaned slowly into him, pressing her face into his shoulder, refusing to let herself cry as his arm slipped around her loosely.
“Thanks, I needed that,” she said to him, when she felt the anxiety drain out of her, dabbing a little at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, looking past him for a moment, fighting the feelings all brimming there below the surface.
“I did not intend to upset you further-” he said to her evenly, breaking the quiet between them, letting go and stepping back from her.
She realized that she was frowning and stopped herself.
“No,” she said defiantly, focusing back on him, shaking her head. “No, I needed that. I need you.”
He froze in front of her, remaining composed, except for the flash of his eyes widening momentarily. The sudden hitch in his breathing.
She closed hers and swallowed, determine to try again. “We need each other,” she clarified, opening her eyes to look at him. “I don't want to go through this alone.”
A small sigh escaped his lips, his hands going behind his back as he looked straight ahead. “Nor do I.”
“I'll be careful,” she told him, unfurling the padd away from her chest.
“Careful?” he asked dubiously, his eyes shifting over to hers.
“Considerate,” she answered him, with a slight tilt to her head, watching one of his eyebrows rise amiably, and his hands relaxed back at his sides.
“I am unlikely to promise to be either of those things,” he told her, after thinking it over. “When faced with the possibility of either of us dying, it all seems to be rather-”
He stops speaking and watches her reaction. Her setting the padd down on the table behind her and bracing her arms behind her on the lab station.
“Seems fair,” she says to him, watching. Waiting. “All things considered.”
“Christine.”
He has closed the distance between them, the sound of her name still hanging in the air, just like he had said it when he had first entered the room.
Only now, she's not sure how to describe this. Him throwing caution away, kissing her this time, in the lab of all places. She's not sure what to make of him being so unprofessional, really, but she also doesn't really care right now, the way their bodies mold together familiarly, less unsure now even than before they had started drifting apart.
He is kissing her like he has never let go, like they have somehow grown closer despite the distance between them. All her feelings awake and alive again.
When his mouth pulls away from hers, she touches her fingertip to his bottom lip, feels his hand still threaded through her hair at the nape of her neck, as it slips free, and she shifts to stand up straight again.
“Now that we have settled some things,” he said to her in a low voice, his breathing controlled. “I am in need of your lab results, Nurse Chapel.”
“Of course, Mister Spock,” she says, reaching around behind her to grab the padd from the table, and then handing it to him between them, as their fingers brush against each other's.
“The results,” he asked her, glancing down at the screen, scanning them as the muscles in his jaw twitch.
“Inconclusive,” she replies, watching his eyes stare up into hers again.
"Then, another attempt is in order," he says.