Okay: If I pretend that I didn't write this, and you all pretend that you don't know I'm supposed to be writing nano, then all shall be well, right?
Title: To See You as I Do Today
Fandom: Star Trek: Reboot
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Rating: PG-13 I think (kink and sexual implication, but all with clothes on)
Length: 1,900 words
Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to Paramount and Gene Roddenberry
Spoilers: General movie.
Warnings: Cross-dressing for erotic effect, make-up.
Summary: Jim thinks that Spock seems to be missing the point of cross-dressing.
AN: This appears to be mostly-fluffy pg-13 kink-fic. *sighs* Sometimes I amaze even myself.
Spock doesn’t really get cross-dressing, Jim reflects. He frowns and watches his first officer smooth his hands over the slight flare in his skirt.
There are two main reasons for a guy to put on a dress. Or so Jim thinks anyway. Okay, so there are more than that. There’s disguise and spying and personal preference and a whole lot of other things he’s not concerned with right now. There are two main reasons for a guy who generally wouldn’t put on a dress, to do so for entirely personal reasons.
There are the late high-school/early college exercises in drunken denial-laden homoeroticism. Short skirts and fishnet tights over football-player legs; too much lipstick; pigtails; something hilarious and probably inflatable shoved down the front of the shirt. It’s vitally important that you find this hysterical but are not seen to be actually enjoying the experience in any way. Jim suspects Cupcake and his friends on the security team used to play at this version quite a lot.
The other type is cross-dressing for erotic effect. Jim likes this one. More subtle make-up but slightly too much lipstick; glitter or other shiny things; shaved legs if you can get away with it (he can); messed-up hair; tight clothes with maybe a little padding just to keep the top where it should be. Boundaries blurred all over the place - magnetic to men and women with a little give. Which is what he’s looking for, on a night like that.
And yet Spock, mostly, looks like himself with a dress on. It’s not funny, because Spock can pull off elegant and unruffled even while naked, and so the challenge of a skirt isn’t anything for him to be troubled over. It’s still not any more erotic than Spock usually is. Beautiful but not sexy unless you’re looking for that.
Jim, thankfully, has a long and profitable history of finding sex in the ordinary. Spock tugs, a little fretfully, at the hem of the skirt. Jim swallows.
“Spock,” Jim says, “it’s already below your knee. I didn’t even know they came that long.”
“Please explain to me once more why the female uniform with trousers would have been insufficient?”
Jim is briefly distracted by the unfamiliar pleasure of Spock asking him to explain anything. He recovers. “Because it’s the same fucking uniform as the men’s!”
“The sleeves-”
Jim cuts in before Spock can begin a blow-by-blow account of every small variation in the male and female standard uniform. “It has to be a skirt. Don’t ask me to explain this, Spock, it’s just the rules. Skirt. Legs showing. And make-up, for God’s sake. It’s like you’ve never lost a bet before.”
Spock raises an eyebrow. Jim laughs. “Okay.”
“What do you suggest?” Spock asks.
Jim looks at him. Like he’d said - Spock in a dress. Blue dress over a black undershirt, all the way down to his bare knees. “Pantyhose,” he says. “Unless you’re going to budge on the whole shaving issue.” He asks that question over his shoulder, on his way to find black hose. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
He keeps looking while Spock slides the slippery material up his legs. Jim says, “If we had time, I’d get you boots with better heels. You should be working that. They call ‘em fuck me heels for a reason, you know.”
Spock straightens up (he’s mostly ignoring Jim’s commentary by this point) and that’s better. That’s- Spock is all lines. Swept-down barely-curves that drive Jim a little nutty at the best of times. There’s something about losing that usual break between chest and ass - where Spock should have a shirt hem over black pants, there is just one stretch of blue fabric from shoulders to thighs. Jim tugs at his itty-bitty command-gold dress.
“Captain?” Spock asks.
“No rank on these,” Jim points out. “Which is weird, right?” He would suspect that Uhura only wears the dress as some kind of a fuck-you to Starfleet Command, if that wasn’t both horribly unlike her, and also sending some message he can’t figure out. It could just be a fuck-you to Jim, but that would be too petty for a woman like her.
“Yes,” Spock says and it takes Jim a moment to figure out that’s meant to be an answer to his question. Spock asks, “Is there anything else? We are already late.”
“Sit down,” Jim says. “There’s one more part.” He spreads out the little brushes and tubes on the table. Spock sits on the edge of the bed and looks apprehensive.
Jim crouches down in front of Spock, his bare knees rubbing on the floor. He’s probably exposing himself - the dress feels pushed up oddly - but there’s only Spock to see. Jim’s done himself already: brown-gold eye shadow and black liner, hot pink lipstick. He takes more time with Spock.
Spock breathes on Jim’s hand while the cream is being dragged over his eyelids. It’s a smoke blue that Jim picked out personally. Then more dark eyeliner smudged at the corners. No need for mascara on those lashes.
Lipstick is last. It’s a dark plum red; Jim pulls it carefully over the perfect, barely broken line of Spock’s mouth. Jim shuffles backwards.
Spock looks like something else. Something dark and bedroom yielding. Spock stands up and Jim stops him before he can reach the mirror. “One more thing.” Spock parts his lips in what might be a sigh of frustration. “You need to blot it,” Jim says. “The lipstick.” Spock tilts his head in query.
Jim gives up. He grabs Spock by the upper arms and presses their lips together. He runs his fingers through Spock’s hair and grinds against him. Open mouths and wet tongues; when they break apart, their lipstick is blended together on both their mouths.
Spock stands there in front of Jim for a count of three, dismisses the question he has formulated, and goes to look at himself in the mirror. He stands there for longer.
Jim sighs. “Give me the cloth.”
“I’m sorry?”
“There’s no point in going out if you’re going to be miserable all night.”
“I don’t look-”
“Like yourself, I know. You look fucked-out and that’s not really a public Vulcan look, is it?” He says, “I’m not sure it’s even a private Vulcan look, actually,” mostly to himself. Then: “So give me the cloth.”
“Jim.”
Jim finds the cloth and the lotion that’s supposed to take this stuff off. He wipes it over Spock’s cheeks, and his eyelids, and finally his lips. Jim looks at them both in the mirror then. They don’t look like they belong in the same frame.
“Ready?” Jim asks. When Spock nods, Jim reapplies his own lipstick and opens the door.
Halfway along the corridor he stops to straighten Spock’s hair with his fingertips. It’s not quite as it was before, but it’s closer to it. It cracks the façade less obviously.
The noise when they enter the rec room is astounding. There’s a long stunned silence, followed immediately by the cacophony of laughter and shrieks and catcalls.
Bones reaches them first. He shakes his head. “How exactly does he,” he looks at Spock, “end up looking like a starship captain in a skirt and you,” apparently Jim, “look like his three credit hooker on the side?”
Jim grins at him. “Natural talent. Hey there, Uhura.”
“Captain.” She nods. She’s smiling and it looks better than the times she’s just amused to see him fall down. Her gaze flicks from Jim to Spock and back again. She addresses Spock, “I really can’t believe you went along with this.”
Jim agrees. “Neither can I. What the hell happened that night that you-?”
Spock interrupts him. “At the time the alternative option appeared to be helping you begin an interstellar conflict for the sake of a transport ship filled with fruit. This seemed a better solution.”
“I was drugged!”
“True.”
“I wouldn’t have held you to the war thing.”
Spock looks at him oddly. “But you were quite content to hold me to the terms of your wager with Dr McCoy. Made under the same strained circumstances.”
Bones re-enters the conversation. “Yeah, Spock, I’d get used to that. Jim’s got no goddamn compunction about betting with the time, reputation and sanity of his nearest and dearest. He only just about draws the line at gunplay.”
Jim laughs. “On that note…” He raises his voice. “If I can have everyone’s attention. As you can see, I don’t renege on a bet. Congratulations to Bones, who managed to successfully pick the over-under on enforced medical stays for myself and Commander Spock combined. You better laugh now, buddy, as I seem to recall another bet.”
Bones’ face turns a really interesting colour.
Jim continues. “We’re heading back to Starfleet exactly on time. My baby wasn’t sent home early, we didn’t blow her up, and we didn’t break her any more than Scotty could fix.”
“Stop calling the ship your baby,” Bones says.
Jim ignores him. “So again, I say: I didn’t back out of mine, Bones.”
Bones covers his eyes with his hand. Jim cackles and walks away.
Scotty’s the only one brave enough to wolf-whistle right at him, but Jim is definitely getting looks. It’s only them, it doesn’t matter. Jim gets a drink or two in and spins across the room with the skirt. It twirls.
Spock catches him. Spock isn’t twirling. Spock pulls him speedily across the room and right out to the corridor.
“What?” Jim asks.
“You believed that I would ‘renege’ on your bet?”
“Well, like you say, Spock - it was my bet. You just agreed to stop me blowing shit up.”
Another quirked eyebrow. “And yet you were the one who prevented my arrival in full… costume.”
“Yeah. And? Look, Spock, I’m honestly not trying to humiliate you. I know we’ve had a few missions where it might seem like I’m not avoiding putting us in some pretty weird situations but mostly I just want you and me to-”
Spock doesn’t push Jim around much any more. He just moves and somehow Jim’s back is against the wall and Spock is crowding into him. Spock kisses Jim very carefully. Close-mouthed, lips-to-lips. When he pulls back, there is a perfect pink stain on his mouth. Almost like he’d planned it.
“Uh, Spock?” Jim says, reaching up to wipe the lipstick away.
Spock catches his hand. “I do not break my word.”
Jim looks at the ceiling. “You know it wasn’t really about the fruit shipment, right?” Jim barely remembers making the bet, let alone the three days of chaos and betrayal and failed diplomacy that preceded it. He remembers Bones laughing with a voice that cracked and saying that Jim couldn’t bet with anything he hadn’t earned. Spock had looked between the two of them and quietly agreed to match Jim’s stake. He hadn’t understood it then and doesn’t understand it now, even in his right mind.
Spock says, “Yes, I know.”
This kiss messes up Spock’s hair all over again and presses an even darker mark onto his lips. He looks caught between the two versions of himself Jim saw tonight. Like he might go back into the rec room and permit Jim to stand beside him and make jokes with the crew. Or equally well he might slide his long fingers underneath the hem of Jim’s dress and stroke the soft skin of his inner thighs. He might say, “We could return to your quarters.”
It’s a knife-edge of a moment, the kind that cuts one world into many. Jim leans forward from his heels to his toes. This close he can’t see the dress but he catches the material in his fist. Spock allows himself to be pulled even closer. Jim mouths yet another mark on the curve of Spock’s neck and waits. Spock’s hand moves.
FIN.