Spock looked back down at his hand again. He hadn’t been able to stop looking at it, to stop stroking over his palm with his other thumb and consider what it had felt like to shake Kirk’s hand. He’d touched other people, familiar pats with Pike and Ortegas’ arm around his shoulders and Chapel’s hands at his face, but no one had grabbed his hand like that except T’Pring.
Maybe that was why Uhura kept watching him. He had behaved abnormally and she was trying to figure out why. Perhaps she knew the significance of the gesture for Vulcans and was shocked by the display.
But Kirk had held a hand out like he expected it. He had looked at Spock like it was a challenge. And Spock, newly experimenting with what it meant to feel, had decided to rise to it.
Source: The Sicilian Defence, by probablynotadalek – Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (TV) [Archive of Our Own]
Another lovely post-“Lost in Translation” fic, because it’s such a great SNW!Spock POV. Also, chess!