The most intoxicating scent washes over Spock as he enters the small farmhouse, catching him unaware as he removes his shoes. He is frozen for a moment, bent precariously with one hand gripping the back of his shoe. The scent is vaguely familiar to him – perhaps something he encountered in childhood – but attempts to identify it fail one after another.
He is aware of his mother stepping out of her shoes beside him, and before she can realize his behavior, he works himself out of his own. He takes a moment longer than he requires to ensure that they are straight and not blocking the doorway, and then he straightens his back and glances to his mother.
If she had noticed his unusual behavior, she isn’t letting on. Her eyes are fixed on a delicate-looking blonde woman, paler than her and propping visibly calloused hands on her ample hips. Both women smile, teeth flashing, and then his mother is moving forward to wrap her arms around the woman he assumes to be Winona-from-college.
“God, you look so great!” presumably Winona says, tones high and openly gleeful. Spock is reminded briefly of his mother’s Terran music, of songs with lyrics that are sung, not chanted. He is out of place. Winona ignores him. “Are you tired? You must be tired. Come in; I’ll make some tea!”
His mother nods, still smiling, and turns back to Spock. “Come on in,” she encourages him, although it is unnecessary to invite him in to a home he’s already entered. “I’ll introduce you to Winona and Jamie. No need to worry – I told them about your diet before we came here. They can accommodate you fine.”
Ah, yes. He had been hungry before they’d entered the house, and he had mentioned it to her. The scent has clouded all bodily needs, and he estimates his pulse has accelerated by at least four percent. How very unusual.
He follows his mother into the kitchen, and the scent only grows stronger as he gets closer. He scarcely notices Winona bustling about in the kitchen, muttering to herself. “I always forget where I put that goddamn steeper,” he hears her say, but it means very little to him. There are other sounds coming from a door next to the refresher, and he allows himself to be ushered into a chair by his mother.
“Found it!” a younger, clearer voice calls, and he watches a young human female emerge, hands wrapped around a mesh ball. Winona lets out a victorious sound and takes it from her immediately, turning to the counter. The girl bounces on her heels momentarily, then her eyes light on Spock.
She is not completely unlike a Vulcan woman – she is slim, with slender hands and a long neck. Unlike most post-pubescent women on Vulcan, however, she has very little body fat. Her breasts are hardly defined, each no more than a wrinkle in her low-cut tank, and her rear may actually be smaller than Spock’s. Her face is open, expressive – he recognizes a look of curiosity on her face for a long second before a grin takes over her face.
“So you’re Spock,” she says. Spock bites back a comment that indeed, there are no other Vulcan individuals in the vicinity – her sense of the obvious is plain to see. She moves to stand in front of him, hands on her hips and posture imitating Winona’s from earlier.
“I presume you must be Jamie,” he returns instead. She lets out a laugh.
“Well, there aren’t any other teenage girls around here,” she says, and Spock balks. Humans are not telepathic – she couldn’t have picked up on his thoughts. “You have a keen sense of the obvious, Mr. Grayson.”
His mother turns to her abruptly. “Actually, Jamie, his last name isn’t Grayson,” she corrects, and the girl raises an eyebrow. “Spock is the only part of his name you’re going to be able to say.”
Jamie grins again. “Try me.”
Spock is sorely tempted to do just that – to give her his full name and watch her lips fumble around the unfamiliar phonemes. Before he can do so, the scent washes over him again, stronger than before – almost intoxicating. And he realizes with a start that the scent is coming from the girl before him. With the realization comes a flood of physiological reactions – his hands clench, his pulse accelerates again, and his ears burn at the tips.
Fascinating.
“Perhaps another time,” he manages to say, voice level. Mild, perhaps. Jamie frowns, but she doesn’t contest it, instead throwing herself back into the chair next to his and stretching one bare calf over her thigh.
“So, you’re going to be staying for a couple days,” she says, clearly seeking conversation. Spock believes he is in control enough to interact with her, though he is uncertain what these physiological reactions will result in. He nods in confirmation. “Cool. You ever been on Earth before?”
“I have not,” he responds. Jamie brings a hand up to play with her messy ponytail, and he is briefly transfixed by the inside of her delicate wrist. “My mother assures me that it is ‘blasphemous’ that I am half-human and have not visited her home world, and as such she arranged for us to stay on Earth for the duration of my father’s duties on-planet.”
Jamie nods back. “And since our moms went to college together, this was the logical place to stay?”
Spock feels his pulse stabilize. Good. “My mother wished to reconnect with Winona in-person,” he explains. In the kitchen, Winona lets out a stream of profanity. Spock doesn’t look at what she’s done. “She also felt I would benefit from meeting a human my age.”
Jamie lets out a snort, and it takes Spock a moment to realize she is expressing amusement. “Oh yeah, lots of benefits to being around me,” she smirks. “I’m not a very stellar example of a good human girl.”
His mother shakes her head. Winona finally approaches, placing four mugs of tea on the table. She hands Jamie a hypospray, and the teenager grimaces. She places it against her neck and injects herself anyway. When she catches Spock staring, she shrugs her shoulders.
“Allergic to everything you can imagine. And some things you can’t,” she says, tone final. Spock decides not to question. Winona seats herself across from her daughter and finally turns her attention to Spock.
“So you’re Amanda’s boy,” she observes. Spock nods, wondering at the human proclivity to vocalize the obvious. “You’ve got her eyes. Nice to meet you, by the way. I’m Winona.”
Spock inclines his head. “It is agreeable to make your acquaintance,” he returns, accepting one of the mugs. The scent of the tea is unfamiliar to him, but the taste is acceptable. Next to him, Jamie is liberally spooning honey into her own mug, stirring with vigor.
Her scent baffles him. It seems to grow stronger every minute, to the point where he’s certain even other humans must be capable of detecting it. Neither Winona nor his mother appears to be affected, and he knows that humans are not adept at hiding physiological reactions. He concludes that her scent must either only be detectable by males or by species with greater olfactory strength.
It makes very little sense.
“You know, Karen moved in down the road,” Winona informs his mother. His mother’s eyes widen, and he recognizes a look of surprise on her face. The blonde woman smiles widely, showing her pointed canines. “I don’t suppose you’d want to go surprise her, would you?”
His mother smiles back, and Spock recalls that Karen-from-college often appeared in the stories she told of her time with Winona-from-college. He determines the aforementioned Karen must be the same individual. “First thing in the morning, maybe,” she says. “She makes the best pancakes, if I remember. Might as well charm some out of her!”
“I like the sound of that,” Winona agrees. She traces one finger over the rim of her mug, turning her attention to Jamie. “Maybe you can show Spock around the farm tomorrow. I know you’re not sold on Karen yet.”
Jamie nods, then tips her head back to swallow the last of her tea. Spock watches her throat work the liquid down.
This is going to be a long two months.
--------------------------
When he wakes the next morning, it is to the sound of the front door slamming shut and the open laughter of two human women. He makes it to the window in time to see his mother, arms linked with Winona, begin down the dirt road, throwing her head back with mirth. He cannot recall her ever expressing so much emotion on Vulcan, and wonders if this trip may prove more beneficial to her than him.
The thought is pushed from his mind as he takes a long breath and is nearly overwhelmed by the potency of Jamie’s scent. For a moment, he believes she must be in the room, perhaps hidden and watching for his reaction, waiting for him to—to—
To what?
His muscles have tensed, he realizes, and his chest feels like it’s being compressed. He cannot breathe enough of this scent. He hears the clattering of dishes downstairs and, with some degree of surprise, he hears Jamie curse. She is nowhere near this room.
Her scent has become so much stronger.
Before he can help himself, he is making his way downstairs. His sleepwear clings to his skin, and he wants nothing more than to simply tear it off his body. As he makes it down the stairway and the kitchen comes into view, his mind clears slightly, and he freezes. Jamie continues bustling around the kitchen, unaware that he is there.
He wonders what it is he wants from her. His body seems to be in control of him, overtaking his mind – and he needs to think this through.
He hasn’t even known her for more than a day, and yet the attachment – the attraction - he feels towards her is powerful. He knows, though he cannot fathom how, that they are compatible. Already he feels closer to her than anyone he’s ever known, and he has no doubt that were he to enter her mind, he would find acceptance – perhaps even a perfect match.
But for now, he doesn’t need to enter her mind.
With a surge of adrenalin (and various other hormones he doesn’t care to identify at this moment), he realizes exactly what he wants.
It is primal, certainly. But Vulcans were once controlled completely by their baser urges, and his blood is burning in its own right. Her scent has induced something in him that perhaps a full Vulcan would not experience, and he imagines it to be similar to Pon Farr. He is overwhelmed by the urge to touch her, claim her, mate her.
He needs to enter her body.
This is unacceptable. He cannot subject her to this, and he cannot give in to his base instincts so—
But he wouldn’t have these instincts if they didn’t serve a logical purpose, correct?
No. His mind is grasping, and he realizes how distant his control is. He needs to reign himself back in. He eases himself into a sitting position on the stairwell, breathing deeply and attempting to ignore Jamie’s overpowering scent. He needs to regain his control, and one way or another he is going to do so. He does not trust himself to make it back to his room without turning back to return to the young woman’s vicinity.
He meditates lightly, aware that he will need to do so again and again over the course of his stay here. Slowly, his mind returns to him, though his blood still smolders in his veins. It will begin to burn again soon.
Perhaps he will need to distance himself from her.
When Spock completes this light meditation, he opens his eyes to find the source of this conflict staring directly at him. She is standing at the base of the stairs, her eyes precisely level with Spock’s. One hand is on her hip; the other holds a tricorder.
“I heard you stop on the stairs and saw you go all green,” she explains, neither hastily nor leisurely. Her head tilts to the side. “I thought you might be sick, so I grabbed this. The only problem is I have no idea what normal Vulcan readings are, let alone hybridized ones. So I’m just going to ask. Are you okay?”
He is not. Not one minute has passed since he finished meditating, and already he has returned to the state he had been beforehand.
“I am not ill,” he says, reasoning that it isn’t precisely a lie. Jamie moves up two steps, kneeling between his legs and reaching for his face. His mind blanks as she lays her hand on his forehead.
“I don’t know. Even for a Vulcan, your temperature is pretty high,” she says, and then she freezes. He feels it too – her confusion, attraction, concern, and the sudden, inexplicable urge that has gripped both of them. Her face colors pink, and he is transfixed by the exotic hue. And he knows that he isn’t the only one fighting a base instinct.
With every bit of self-control he has, Spock reaches for her hand, carefully removing it from his forehead and standing. Her blue eyes are so wide, and for a moment his control sways. But he releases her, carefully clasping his hands behind his back as he mentally recites a desperate mantra to regain some measure of restraint. For a moment, the only movement is the gentle tremble of Jamie’s shoulders as she watches him watch her, and he forces himself to take a step back.
He is achingly aroused.
“I need to attend to my studies,” he says with haste, and it is not a lie. At some point in this vacation, he does need to return to his studies. He capitalizes upon the human proclivity to assume, however, and appropriately Jamie nods. He takes another step back. “I would appreciate privacy.”
The girl nods again. “I can just head to Carol’s for the day,” she says, sounding nearly dazed. Spock ignores her tone. “Uh, have fun.”
Spock inclines his head before turning on his heel and slowly walking back up the stairs. It is almost painful to remove himself from her presence, and in many ways he wishes to be beside her. However, with every breath, her scent robs him of that much more control, and he knows better than to trust his basest instincts in this instance.
He makes it to the room he’s been assigned and shuts the door behind him. He simply cannot escape her scent, no matter what he tries. Removing himself from her physically is really his only choice.
Barely a minute passes before he hears the creak of the screen door, and from his window he watches her mount a bicycle and pedal down the road. An irrational part of him wishes to follow her, to snatch her from the seat and bring her back to this bed.
But he cannot.
Will not.
He arranges himself on the mattress and breathes, emptying his mind and resigning himself to a day of meditation.