Kemetimeti
by templemarker
Notes: A ficlet for affectlingly. Spock/Uhura, PG13.
***
“These are curious beings,” Spock notes, allowing one of the fireflies to land on the tip of his index finger so he might examine it more closely. The smile Uhura shoots him is but the barest twitch of her lips, and Spock knows, intimately, that she learned such an expression from him. He restraints the shudder that would wreck through him, and instead pushes the small insect from its perch.
“In Kenya,” she continues, accepting his silence as it is intended–to listen–“we would spend all of our summer nights outside, and the sky would be filled with fireflies. We call them kimetimeti,” she says carefully, and he notes the pronunciation that he might speak it to her satisfaction later.
She says, “When I was a child, I would look at the stars, and be confused because some of them would move. And when I put my hand to the sky, the stars would land on my fingers and blink at me. I always wanted to go there, even then.”
Spock says nothing, for there is nothing to say that might convey his gratitude; she shares these things so freely with him, these moments that defined her life, as if they are not of the gravest importance. He has learned more of her identity through anecdotes she deems small than through the thousand beautiful things she has left unsaid.
When Nyota looks at him, fireflies wink in the space between their bodies, and though he keeps the desire to pull her close to him pulled back in the ordered recesses of his mind, he knows she sees it anyway. She brushes fireflies away from his brow, and there is no mindmeld that could convey as much affection.
***