"two thirds of the universe" A Star Trek fanfiction
“Two Thirds of The Universe”
Fandom: StarTrekIX
Pairing: established Kirk/Spock/Uhura, but Kirk-Uhura centric
Summary: Sequel to “heat.” When Spock has to spend shore leave away from his lovers, they question what their relationship to each other is without him. One shot.
Inspired by this prompt on the kink-meme I am interested in exploring the dynamics of two members of a threesome when one of the members is away. My favorite threesomes are the classic OT3 Spock / Kirk / McCoy, or Spock / Uhura / Kirk. To flesh this out a bit -- the background could be something like this........Spock and Uhura are a couple, add Kirk, then they are a threesome for awhile and get used to always doing things together (both in and out of bed). They even get into a bit of a rut. Since they are always a threesome, the couple relationships between Kirk and Spock / Kirk and Uhura never get developed. One of the members of the original couple (Spock or Uhura) has to go away on assignment for awhile, perhaps a few months. How do the remaining two adjust? Perhaps they take the opportunity to explore new interests / kinks that their third partner didn't like. Emotionally, what do they discover about each other? Are there ways they fit together well as a couple, or ways that they clash without their third partner there? It is OK if they really miss their third partner -- it can be bittersweet -- and OK if the third partner envies them being able to be together. However, please no major jealousy / possessiveness / third partner being controlling from afar.....
I took some liberties with the prompt. Well, the prompt's two years old so I don't know if OP is still on LJ...but if you are, I hope you like it.
()()()
"Two Thirds of the Universe"
Jim woke first.
Careful not to stir the bed, he untangled himself from her arms. Velvet-toed, he crept into the kitchen without bothering to pull on clothes. His feet steamed hot against cold floor boards. The May sun ebbed soft green through the blinds and hued the kitchen teal.
Breathing rustled from a farther room. All through the corners of the apartment, an eerie melancholy lingered. On the Enterprise, their lives were measured out by star date stamps. This fit them. They were in an arranged but committed marriage with the Enterprise and lived a passionate love affair with eachother; a love affair that suited them better than cohabitation.
Intimacy fit Jim like complacency. Which is to say, not at all.
“It's especially weird” he reflected, as the copper tea pot bottom sizzled against the stove eye “when it's just us two.”
Nyota's footsteps padded soft behind him. With hungry eyes, he soaked in the luscious curve of her thighs, her hips. Her nipples were twin beads upon her supple breasts, hinted at through the sheet she drew to her collarbone. In the morning, free of makeup, her fine-boned face was stark and simply lovely, framed by coarse dense curls. Nothing about her was so enthralling, so open, as her morning smile.
His fingertips claimed each hip as she stood on tip-toe to kiss him.
“Good morning,” she breathed into his collarbone.
He kissed her in return.
For a moment, they simply stared at another.
“Okay, this is awkward,” Nyota said bluntly. Her voice rang loud in the morning calm.
“Yup. Awkward as hell,” Jim echoed equally bluntly.
It's their favorite thing about each other, their no-bullshit bluntness. In a triad polyamorous relationship, honesty is air.
Nyota dragged a squeaking chair out from under the breakfast table and sat, sheet still clutched around her.
“I miss him.”
“Me too.”
“It's just not the same. Of all the weeks for him to have to attend that stupid science conference...”
“It's part of his duties as science officer aboard my ship. And professionally, shore leave is the best time to do it.”
Nyota nodded. She took the Enterprise as seriously as Jim. But when all they had together was snatches now and then, eagerly seized nights when all three are off-duty, the prospect of spending an entire week on shore leave alone together was like an oasis in a desert of random. The best laid plans of mice and men....
Nyota accepted the cup of tea Jim poured for her with a murmur of thanks. Still naked, he flopped in the chair opposite her, setting his elbows on the table as he hunched forward to stare her baldly in the face with all the forwardness of command.
“I think we need to have a conversation.” He said seriously. “That was the agreement the three of us made when we decided on this kind of relationship. That we would be totally open with each other.”
She nodded at him to continue. Briefly, uncharacteristic awkwardness squirmed in his face. His voice hitched a fraction, likening him less to a captain and more to a gangly teenager on his first date.
“I'm...not very good at being honest and open.”
“I know you're not,” Nyota said emphatically. Gods, did she know. Of the three, she was the only one in touch with her emotions. The gods only knew what those two stubborn, hard-headed men would do without her...
“We got together because we are both in love with Spock. And he loves us both...but in different ways.”
“And Spock and I need you because he's mostly gay with the exception of me, and you need me because you're mostly straight with the exception of him,” Nyota filled in. They knew this story by heart. They also knew better than to more deeply plunge the lines.
“I know that he's only going to be gone for a few days, and when he gets back we'll have all sorts of kinky threesome sex, but until then...”
“This shouldn't be all about sex.”
“It isn't.”
“Then what are we without him?”
Jim had no answer for her.
()()()
He spent most of the morning rattling restless about the apartment, now dressed but barefoot, itching for something to do.
“You're driving me crazy,” Nyota entoned dangerously from over her PADD. “I'm trying to read.”
“Sorry,” Jim stopped in mid-act of crumbling up bits of paper and shooting them into a trashcan across the room. He felt distinctly reprimanded. Why did she always start reminding him of his mother when Spock wasn't around? That one was a little too weird even for him...
Yawning and stretching, Jim ambled into the kitchen, his stomach rumbling for lunch. He was halfway through the first BLT sandwhich when Nyota appeared in the doorway, startling him with her swift silence.
“Want one?” he offered her half his sandwich, his cheek bulging with half-chewed food.
Her eyes were sad and serious. Sometimes she could have eyes warm and pure as twin planets in spring, other times, as walled as mirrors.
“Do you love me?” she asked. There is no desperation in her question. Just grave curiosity.
He swallowed deeply. The food passed rough as rocks.
“I...think so...”
Unfooled, she shook her head, eying him intensely. Nyota's face was always as open as a book and she read him easily as Romulan. Her eyes were like mirrors and he saw himself in them, flipped into a clearer shape.
“I know you love me. But I'm starting to wonder if you're in love with me.”
Jim sighed and leaned back into the counter when he answers her, secretly glad they can talk so calmly, so plainly.
“Not like Spock.” He paused. “You're like my sister...who I like to have sex with.”
Okay, that was even weirder than the mother thing going on earlier. Maybe Bones was right and he did need a shrink.
“I do love having sex with you,” he added quickly. “Even if Spock isn't involved.”
“You'd have sex with the Horta.”
“My standards aren't that low. But point taken.” Shrewdly, he turns the question on her.
“And you? What do you think of me?”
“Don't deflect.”
“What? You mean I have to answer the question but I can't ask it?”
“You didn't answer.”
“Yeah I did.”
“No, you didn't. You just made a tasteless incest joke. You're deflecting.”
“And now you're deflecting.”
“You answer me, I'll answer you.”
“It's okay, Nyota. I know you're not in love with me,” Jim said simply.
She blinked, taken aback. Her answer came out almost as if in spite herself.
“I do love you, Jim. You're like the protective big brother and the annoying little brother I never had wrapped into one. And without you...”
“Without me, you and Spock don't work.” Jim said flatly.
“Yes.”
“You tried it, but it doesn't fly with just the two of you. You need another element in your dynamic or you'd just fall apart.” His voice softened. “And you don't want to fall apart from him again.”
Nyota whispered “No.”
“So, basically, we are both in love with the same man and we love him enough to be friends with benefits with each other so he won't feel guilty for being in love with us both. ” She laid it out plainly. He hadn't realized how fucked up the situation was until she brought home the real to him. "...so...what do we have we can only have together?"
She said nothing.
“Shit. That's kinda fucked up even for me.”
“I think it's kinda pathetic, honestly.”
His face smarted hot red. He forgot how much she annoyed him with that superior, haughty little curve of her lips, the same curve that adorned her face their first conversation in the Iowa bar, the night they first met. That night was on Nyota's mind, too. You could see it in her face.
“I mean, I guess I figured it was this way all along,” Jim preoffered. “It took me three years to get your name. And even that was only because of Spock.”
“Don't be like that, Jim.”
With a wry and bitter smirk, he quipped.
“Well, maybe when Spock gets back we can go back to merely sharing him without each other. I call dibs on Wednesdays. Wanna arm wrestle for Friday nights?”
Nyota snatched a ripe tomato from the counter and threw it at Jim's face. Bright orange pulp exploded on his forehead with a satisfactory pop. His jaw popped out of hinge.
“You just did something immature!” he exclaimed delightedly, anger instantly dissolved. His glee caused her iron jaw to tense harder in her face already aquiver with righteous fury. “Nyota! I can't believe you just did that.”
“Me neither,” her jaw unbunched slightly. She elevated her head in dignity and pride, gracefully recomposing herself. “I refuse to further sink to your leve...”
A wallop of mayonnaise hit her smack in the nose. Quickly, he darted beneath the counter as she tossed his uneaten sandwich at his head.
For over a minute, food fsoared over the kitchen island like bullets over a trench. Jim and Nyota bent on either side, popping up like moles to snatch food without getting hit. They had to time it so they surfaced up at the same time to nail each other and reclaim ammunition. Grinning ear to ear and dripping with tomato juice, Jim rounded the corner and pounced on her.
“No fair! Cheater!” she squealed as he tickled her, digging gently into her delicate ribs.
“It's not cheating if the test is unfair,” he yelled over her giggles. Finally, they both collapsed breathless on the floor, still laughing, shuddering to ride out the adrenaline. The tile was slick and cool on her back as she gazed up into his eyes. Grinning, he leaned down and licked a mayonnaise freckle from her nose. She stared at him with eyes like summer.
Nyota craned up her head to kiss him.
“We'll make this work.” A whispered promise. He sealed it with a nod.
Dusty with fragments of bread, lettuce, and tomato, they clambered up to sitting position, still panting and laughing at the absurdity.
“What do you think Spock is going to make of our newest food kink?” Jim grinned mischievously. Both sniggered at the mental image of Spock plastered in food, sleek hair on end and face rigid in mortification.
“There's chocolate icing in the pantry...”
“I think,” Nyota laughed, nestling herself more tightly into the crook of his arm. “That we'd better keep this particular kink to when it's just the two of us.”
And there was a “just the two of them.” And always would be. Maybe it was only two/thirds of this world, Jim reflected to himself, but at least it wasn't left than half. And (he thought smirking, as she pulled him to his feet, a minxish glint in her eyes) it wasn't at all half bad.
Author's note:
* I know this isn't one of my better fics. I kinda churned it out quick to satisfy a prompt on the kink-meme and decided to keep it short and simple.
* I was always hesitant about the Kirk/Spock/Uhura ship because even though I like both Kirk/Spock and Spock/Uhura, I don't ship Kirk/Uhura AT ALL (even though I love friendship fics about them.) But I got over it because I realized imperfect relationships (where the parties have conflicts and not everything is okay, but they love eachother enough to work through it) are more fun to write than perfect relationships where everything is happy and perfect all the time. I feel that way about monogamous pairings, too. I couldn't make myself write a pure Kirk/Uhura het scene, though, it just doesn't feel right to me. I hope if the original OP is reading this they don't mind too much I cut the sex and wrote them more as bffls who love each other than lovers who are also bffls (which is how I see Kirk and Spock.)