Spice - Chapter 51
Title: Spice
Author: eimeo
Beta: miloowen
Universe/Series: TOS
Rating: NC-17
Relationship status: Slash
Chapter: 51/54
Pairings: Kirk/Spock
Additional Pairings: Kirk/Lori
Summary: It’s a question of biology. Vulcan biology.
The problem with falling in love with a member of an insanely private species is that it just might take you the best part of a five year mission to work out that the feelings are requited. And then you might discover that he’s already decided that the two of you can never be together.
And what are you supposed to do if he won’t tell you why?
~*~
A/N: Please accept the usual abject apologies for the lateness of this chapter. There's no reason that it should have given me such trouble, but it really, really did.
~*~
Chapter 51
Their last day in the Rockies, Spock wakes up late to the sound of birdsong in the trees and the comfortable weight of one sleeping Human head on his chest. They fell asleep like this last night, more than three hours after they tumbled into bed together, and, it seems, they have not moved in the intervening hours.
He finds this… gratifying. His left arm is numb where the blood flow has been restricted by the angle of Jim’s shoulder, and his fingers are unresponsive to basic commands, but he finds himself unwilling to wake his sleeping lover by moving to a more comfortable position. Comfort is relative, after all. He could relieve the pressure on his protesting joints, but then they would be absent Jim.
The room is cool, air fractured by a thousand mobile drafts that creep in beneath the curtains and around the door, and he pulls the comforter up a little higher, turns into the warmth of Jim’s chest. His friend’s resting body temperature has dropped a little as the night has retreated, but he’s warmer than Spock, and a lazy arm curls around his waist as Spock burrows them further beneath the blankets, pulling him closer and into a rapidly shrinking circle of heat.
“Cold,” mutters Jim into the hairs of Spock’s chest, and the word is sufficiently buried in pectoral muscles that it’s impossible to tell if it’s a statement or inflected in the interrogative, so Spock elects to interpret it as best suits his inclinations. He runs his hands gently along the chilled surface of Jim’s arm, where it has been exposed to the cool morning air, feeling the mottling of goosebumps beneath his fingers, interrupting the smoothness of Jim’s skin; feeling the trickle of psi-energy that follows his line of motion, neither strong nor focused enough to be a true connection: nothing more than a ghost of a presence at the back of his skull. Blunt, square fingers curl around the angle of Spock’s pelvic bone and he closes his eyes, breathes his contentment into the cool, empty air above Jim’s head.
The bed is a wreck once again. They changed the sheets before retiring last night, bundling armfuls of stiffened cotton into the cycler and replacing them with warm, lavender-scented linens from the hall closet, and, within fifteen minutes of collapsing on the mattress in a tangle of arms and legs and mouths and skin, the entire enterprise was rendered moot. The brush of rough fibers beneath his left buttock tells Spock that he has fallen asleep on the wet patch, but, in truth, the bed is approximately fifty percent wet patch this morning, and the bits that are not covered in bodily fluids are covered in streaks of the coconut-perfumed oil that Jim uncovered yesterday, with a look of unmitigated triumph, in a bottle in his mother’s side of the bathroom vanity cabinet after their second shower of the evening.
They gave up on ablutions after the third.
Jim’s hand has settled into a sleepy circular motion across Spock’s hip, in the manner of a man hovering on the edge of consciousness, though the circumference is widening with every revolution, and it’s beginning to dip close enough to his inner thigh that the blood flow towards the area of his groin is shifting in response. Spock makes no effort to suppress it; in truth, he’s not certain he has passed sufficient time in meditation, these past few days, to ensure that his controls remain active, and he certainly hasn’t tested them since his arrival in Idaho. Jim is sliding into wakefulness-Spock can feel it in the changing cadence of his breath, the mobile psi-currents beneath his fingers, the intermittent flickers of activity in his quiescent genitals-and so there is nothing to be lost, now, in shifting slightly so that the weight on his arm is transferred more fully onto his chest. Blood rushes freely along the reopened channels, surging into his fingers in a torrent of heat and protesting nerves, and he can feel the stickiness now that clings to his palm and beneath his nails, and he can’t tell if it’s his own fluids or the oil they used to lubricate a path for his fingers into the heat and constriction of Jim’s body last night.
Jim says nothing, makes no sound of protest, but, with drowsy lips, starts pressing kisses to Spock’s nipples. Spock sucks in a breath, and moves his tingling hand up to card through Jim’s hair, to grip at his scalp as Jim’s hand circles backwards across Spock’s hip and over his buttock. It slides to a halt where Spock’s skin meets the ruined sheet, worries the gap wider between buttock and bed, and Spock obliges by tilting his hip sideways so that Jim’s hand can find the access it requires. The sensitivity of his anus is entirely unexpected, but the discovery appears to be satisfactory to both parties, judging by the attention Jim has paid this area since the previous evening. It’s not that Spock has rejected the notion in the past, it’s more that he’s never really given it any serious consideration, prior to his decision to visit Idaho, and then his thoughts had inclined more towards the functionality of the action, and its sanitary implications. Jim, he knows, has had male lovers in the past-it does not take any great skills in the art of interpersonal discourse to determine that the tension that existed between the captain and Lieutenant Mitchell was primarily sexual in nature, nor to discern the undercurrent of attraction that colored Jim’s interactions with Captain Christopher-and his enjoyment of manual stimulation of the prostate was not, therefore, unexpected, though the gland proved more difficult to locate than Spock had anticipated from his perusal of Starfleet’s medical databanks after dinner last night. And yet, as those skilled fingers find their way once more to the ring of muscle that guards the entrance to his body, as Jim shifts and reaches over him for their rapidly diminishing supply of lubricant, he feels his body respond as easily, as instinctively, as if it had been accepting the casual invasion of another man’s flesh for the entirety of Spock’s adult life.
Jim rolls him, and Spock allows himself to be rolled. They discovered this last night-a maneuver that has, to date, claimed 1.6 hours’ sleep deficit that Spock cannot bring himself to regret-and it is the primary cause of the unfamiliar sensation of oil and palpated skin between his upper thighs. Jim’s arousal presses into the small of Spock’s back as he slicks himself with one hand, the other gently working its way inside Spock’s body, and Spock hears himself groan, push backwards into the touch. Jim’s breath catches at the sound, and Spock closes his legs together, tightening the muscles of his quads as Jim’s erection nudges its way between his thighs. Teeth close gently on the cord of muscle at Spock’s shoulder, one practiced finger working the sensitive skin of his anal walls, and a hand snakes below Spock’s body to grip the solid length of his penis with a rhythm that matches the motion of Jim’s hips.
It is difficult, sometimes, to believe that they have been lovers for scarcely thirty-six Terran hours. It is difficult to remember, now, why he fought this for so long.
Birds sing outside the window, sunlight streams through the pale fabric of the drapes, and Jim suckles at the skin of Spock’s throat as they make love on sheets already stained by a night largely given over to passion. It is their last full day of indolence: tomorrow, they will return to the lives they’ve left behind, and they will find a way to fold together these new selves that they have discovered in the cradle of the mountain with the men they used to be. The fires burn again behind Jim’s eyes, and the emptiness that has hollowed Spock’s belly for so many years has left him; this was always the way that this would be. Kaiidth: there was nothing to be gained by denying it, and everything to be won by letting go.
Jim achieves climax first, and, though he’s angled down and away from Spock’s groin, still some of his ejaculate lands on the sensitive skin at the base of Spock’s penis and he feels it hot and slick against his flesh. The motion of Jim’s hands stutters slightly as his body spasms, but, by this stage in proceedings, it scarcely matters. Spock links his hand through Jim’s and supplements his activities with a little of his own undepleted energy, and feels his orgasm rush him without warning, erupting from his abdomen and his psi-centers with force enough to level him. Jim’s hands work him from inside and out, wringing pleasure from every corner of his body, and Spock releases himself to it, allows it to claim him, in the knowledge that this momentary fragmentation, this loss of control, is fleeting, transitory: an even exchange.
His breath is ragged, his heart hammers at his flanks, and his blood thunders in his ears. Dimly, he registers Jim’s withdrawal from his body, the touch of a warm hand on his hip, the press of lips against his shoulder blade.
“Good morning,” says Jim, and his voice is hoarse and a little unsteady. “How did you sleep?”
“Adequately,” says Spock, and it’s only partly a lie. He does not recall ever feeling so sleep-deprived as he has felt since he arrived at Jim’s cabin in the mountains, but, conversely-and illogically-nor has he ever felt so rested.
~*~
After breakfast, they strip the bed again, and there’s an air of transgression in the smile that Jim hides behind his eyes that Spock thinks he recognizes: it feels remarkably similar to the experience of attempting to disguise from his childhood tutors his failure to master the tvi-sochya at the prescribed level for the requisite period of time, only without the associated fog of shame and confusion. The birdsong outside the window has become a chorus, and, noting Spock’s interest as he crosses to the sill to peer out through the condensation-frosted panes, Jim identifies a cardinal and a sparrow among the voices, though he shrugs his shoulders when Spock asks about the provenance of a more complex melody that underpins the refrain.
“There’s a book or two downstairs, I think,” he says, slipping his arms around Spock’s waist and pressing his chest along the length of Spock’s spine, which has the usual effect. Spock lets it happen; arousal is his default state right now, and, in any case, he’s learning quickly there’s no need to act upon each and every erection that stirs the fabric of his pants. For every spark of desire that he allows to mellow and disperse, there is always another to follow when the moment presents itself. “Sam tried to teach me a few of local birdcalls when we were boys, but I wasn’t much of a student, I’m afraid.”
It never ceases to amaze Spock that a man so accomplished as James Kirk can continue to find fault with his own expertise, but, he suspects, the comment is less self-reproof and more reminiscence. He says, “Your brother was gifted in the study of local fauna?”
A gentle laugh agitates the fine hair behind Spock’s ear. “Sam was gifted in the study of all fauna. I can see the attraction, I guess, but it has always been people that have interested me.” The arms tighten across Spock’s belly. “In all their great diversity.”
This much, Spock knows to be true: it is both the source of Jim’s success as a commander and a diplomat, and also, he suspects, the reason that it has proved so comprehensively impossible to avoid falling in love with him. Still, he supposes that there’s little enough reason for self-reproach: Spock stood at his right hand for five years while they traveled the galaxy together; the evidence suggests that, of all the diverse and multifarious varieties of sentient life in this corner of the universe, there are few enough who’ve proved themselves immune to the charm offensive of James T Kirk.
He raises his hands to cover Jim’s where they rest against his stomach, and allows his fingers to open suggestively as they slide into place, in a manner that he knows Jim will recognize as lascivious. A small noise of approval, pressed into Spock’s neck with the faintest of kisses, indicates that the gesture has been received as intended, though he suspects that Jim is as loathe as Spock to disarray an un-made bed. The mouth at Spock’s throat is mobile and increasingly insistent; Jim’s fingers link through his and contract against his stomach, begin their inevitable move downward; and Spock’s thoughts have just begun to turn to a lazy contemplation of the logistics of copulating on the pile of soiled linens by the bedroom door, when a chirp from one of the communicators on the bedside table abruptly belays a reprise of the morning’s activities.
Jim huffs a quiet laugh into the tendon that links Spock’s jaw to his shoulder and removes his hand from the waistline of Spock’s pants. “Mine, I think,” he says.
He is correct, of course: Spock’s commission may have been reinstated, but his status within Starfleet is, as yet, poorly defined; he has not precisely been overloaded with communications since his return to Earth. Given the Human proclivity towards sentimentalism and nostalgia, this is not a state of affairs that gives him any great pause, though he could wish that Jim’s communicator were similarly inactive.
He turns with his friend as he crosses the bedroom to the bed, folding his hands at his waist and reconsidering at the last moment when he realizes that additional stimulation in that area is inadvisable at present. Jim turns a grin over his shoulder that telegraphs a clear understanding of Spock’s line of reasoning, and rearranges his own stance into something a little more comfortable as he picks up his communicator and flicks it open.
“Kirk here,” he says, and, though his eyes are tired and his shoulders slack, though his cheeks are flushed and his arousal is plainly visible at the front of his pants, his voice is even, steady, and polished by command.
This does nothing to mitigate Spock’s condition.
“Jim?” says a familiar southern drawl. “That you?”
Delight creases the corners of his friend’s eyes. It is sufficiently gratifying that Spock could almost overlook the encroach upon what had promised to be another successful exercise in scientific evaluation. Almost. Because it turns out that, though he is accustomed to experiencing the joy and happiness of James Kirk as though it were his own, this ability comes linked to a couple of hitherto unsuspected provisos.
Jim grins, pivots on one heel so that his he’s free to turn the full warmth of his pleasure on Spock. “I should hope so,” he says. “It’s my communicator, after all, Bones.”
“Well.” A heavy note of irritation fails to mask the undercurrent of warm amusement in the doctor’s voice. “The way you up and disappeared from civilization, Jim, a man can be forgiven for wanting to be sure. That doesn’t sound much like San Francisco I hear in the background.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of anything you hear in the background,” says Jim. “There’s a whole lot of silence out here in the mountains. I’m on vacation, Bones.”
“I remember,” says the doctor amiably. “Just never known you to take three days together away from your desk without chaining you to a biobed and standing two guards outside your office door. Must be a hell of a spot, out there.”
Jim’s smile is so wide and warm that it feels, illogically, as though it takes the chill off the drafty air. “It has its attractions,” he says.
“Idaho, huh?” The voice is light, but there’s an air of frank skepticism behind it. “Guess maybe there’s some hidden beauty in frostbite and white-out blizzards that’s lost on this old country doctor.”
“No doubt the freezing rains of Beta Auraculi were much more agreeable to your Georgian sensibilities,” says Jim cheerfully. “Still. It’ll soon be academic, anyway. I’ll be back in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon.”
“So I hear,” says McCoy. “Damned holos can’t seem to talk about anything else. The amount of times I’ve seen your face grinning up at me out of a terminal screen this past week, Jim, it’s like you never even left. Spock too; can’t manage get away from his warm smile and cheerful demeanour no matter where I look. Say-did that green-blooded hobgoblin ever show up out your way?”
Jim’s grin does not falter, but his eyes widen in sudden alarm as the question manifestly catches him completely off-guard. He meets Spock’s gaze, hesitates, and offers a helpless shrug.
“In… Idaho?” he says, and though, as answers go, this one is clearly prevarication, there is at least no hint in his voice of the indecision on his face.
“Yeah,” says the doctor easily-too easily, Spock thinks. McCoy has never asked an innocent question in all his life, and Jim certainly knows this. “Came by my digs a few days back, all bowed up about something, asking where you’d got to. Didn’t see any harm in telling him; not after our conversation Tuesday night.”
Spock feels an eyebrow arch as Jim purses his lips around a hasty, chagrinned smile and drops his eyes in a manner that indicates the likely thematic content of the discussion in question. Interesting. No doubt there is a productive and mutually illuminating conversation looming large in their near future, although Spock has an idea that he may be in no position to occupy any kind of discretionary high ground himself, by the time they manage to persuade the doctor to vacate the airwaves. But for now, it seems, there is little alternative but to submit to McCoy’s unapologetic information-gathering endeavor, while it remains possible to retain at least some semblance of autonomy in the matter.
So he straightens his spine, adjusts his stance to ameliorate the uncomfortable manner in which his tunic has settled itself around his abdomen, and fixes his eyes away from Jim, whose grin widens conspicuously as he understands, abruptly, what’s about to happen.
“I am unfamiliar with the term, Doctor,” says Spock evenly, and takes care to ignore the increasingly disordered amusement emanating from his distracted lover. “However, extrapolating from your usual colloquial phraseology, I find it unlikely that I was ‘bowed up’ in any manner when I visited you at your lodgings.”
There is a long, startled silence. Jim lowers himself onto the mattress and bites down on his fist as he manifestly stifles an inconvenient urge to laugh. And then, from the communicator, a heavy, contemplative breath, slowly released, ripples the hush in the cool air of the bedroom.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” says the doctor slowly, and Jim gives up. His laughter is light, effervescent-like sparking sunlight on the ripples of a clear-water pool-and it breaks a tension in the air that Spock had not noticed until it was gone.
“Mr Spock,” says Jim, “it looks like you’ve finally managed to leave our CMO at a loss for words. Better make a note for the logs when we get back aboard, as I’m certain it’s not something we’ll see again any time soon.”
“You’re damned right,” says McCoy, and, though he’s clearly aiming for his habitual air of acerbic irritability, his tone barely achieves mildly peeved. “Never thought you had it in you, Spock.”
There are at least two potential, and equally viable, meanings to his words. Given the choice, Spock would prefer to adopt the superficial reading, but, he thinks, as Jim grins up at him from the mattress and extends an out-turned palm in invitation, there is no pressing need to make any conclusive decision. McCoy’s presence in the room is sufficiently pronounced that he cannot unreservedly accept the hand that is offered, but he crosses to the bed of his own accord and lowers himself into place at his captain’s side, and the open smile that Jim turns on him tells him that the gesture has been received as it was intended.
“As ever, Doctor,” he says, “I am gratified at my ability to confound your expectations.”
A beat. And then, unexpectedly, McCoy chuckles.
“Well, Mr Spock,” he says, “I guess that goes double for me.”
~*~
“I was simply aware,” says Jim, one hand gripping the lightning-seared branch of an ancient hardwood as he levers himself up onto a rocky outcrop that bisects their path, “that it might be unwise, under the circumstances, to leave San Francisco without a word to anyone.”
The sun is bright in the cloudless sky, but a thin layer of snow still blankets the ground. The trail they’ve chosen runs deep beneath a pine and aspen forest as it winds its way along the foothills of a low-lying peak, and the elevation, along with the south-facing aspect, has mitigated against the worst excesses of the recent blizzards, though Spock remains thankful for his newly purchased boots and the several warm sweaters that Jim thought to supply before they left the house. His core temperature has stabilized as they’ve walked, to a point where he now feels comparatively comfortable, and he finds, now that the creeping chill has left his bones, that he is enjoying the hike. The mountains are, as anticipated, geologically compelling, and there is an esthetic splendor to their environmental diversity that some part of his mother’s blood remembers, but, more than that, Jim’s cheeks are flushed and his eyes, where they sweep his surroundings, are alight with a simple joy that Spock cannot help but echo each time they fall on him.
His friend grins and reaches down a gloved hand towards him. Spock is unquestionably capable of managing the ascent on his own, but, nevertheless, he accepts it without hesitation and fails to relinquish his hold for several seconds after he finds his balance once more.
“I do not dispute your reasoning, Jim,” he says mildly. “Nor do I deny its efficacy or convenience.”
Spock has not tested the security clearance associated with his reactivated commission, but he suspects that, regardless, it would take relatively little effort to determine, at least to the nearest settlement, the location of the Kirk family holiday home. All things being equal, it would be the work of perhaps three hours’ concerted, focused searching through publicly accessible documentation, and would certainly have obviated any incriminating and potentially revealing conversations with members of the medical corps not known for their ability to restrain the free expression of their opinion and will. He wonders, briefly, why the notion did not occur to him upon his arrival in San Francisco, and abandons the query when the implications become uncomfortable. He would prefer not to consider the possibility that Thursday’s interview with Dr McCoy had less to do with the pursuit of information and more to do with a hitherto unsuspected need for external validation of his probabilities for success.
This is one line of enquiry, he feels, that does not need to proceed to its logical conclusion.
Kirk ducks below a low-hanging bough, and pushes it back to allow Spock to pass. His eyes are dancing. “Nevertheless,” he says, “I can’t help but notice that we’re fifteen minutes into our hike, and we’re still talking about Bones.”
This is unquestionably true. And, phrased like that, it does begin to seem… excessive.
“Perhaps,” says Spock, “you could expound upon the glacial geomorphology of the bouldering that we passed a few yards back….”
Jim grins. “You know perfectly well that I can’t,” he says. “And don’t change the subject.”
“It simply seems incongruous with the surrounding terrain….”
“And no doubt the explanation is fascinating, and I’ll be delighted to debate it with you to the very limits of my geographical knowledge, which is minimal.” Jim tests the frozen surface of a spreading puddle with the toe of his boot and finds it firm. He edges forward, bracing himself against Spock’s offered hand. “But we’ve got the best part of half a mile to clear before we circle back to the car, my friend, so before we get swept away with a spirited discussion of igneous rock formations, how about we put a couple of things to bed so we don’t spend the entire afternoon talking about our absent CMO?”
Spock allows himself to be guided in turn over the sleek skin of ice, and pushes down on a recalcitrant train of thought that is attempting to forge a morphological connection between the ground beneath his feet and the properties of coconut-perfumed oil. He says, “As I recall, the choice of conversational material was yours, Jim.”
It’s not likely to win him any points. He understands this even as Jim’s soft laughter mists the air in front of him. “Touché,” concedes his friend. “But only because you were thinking it.”
Which is also true, though, absent a direct meld, there is no way for Jim to prove as much. But Spock has known his captain for far too many years to make the mistake of protesting. Nor is there any point in attempting to obscure the truth: for a man born of a species so sorely lacking in psionic abilities, James Kirk has always possessed the disquieting capacity to read his contemporaries more accurately than any telepath.
“I will not deny,” he says slowly, testing his words carefully against what is known, what can be established, and what is pure conjecture, “that the content of the doctor’s communication this morning was somewhat disconcerting.”
“And you’re wondering if I’ve been… indiscreet,” says Kirk. He does not look around this time. “Is that it?”
“No,” says Spock without hesitation. It is the truth: Jim’s discretion is beyond question. “I simply wish to determine the extent of Dr McCoy’s… knowledge.”
A glance back over his shoulder shows an unreadable expression on Jim’s face. “He has no knowledge, as such,” he says. “Nothing more substantive, anyway, than what he’s been able to glean from his own observations across the years.” A beat. “We… may have been less… uh… circumspect than we might have imagined, you and I.”
Spock is acutely aware that his past week’s adventures include an incident in sickbay, in full view of Doctors Chapel and McCoy, that leaves little room for interpretative ambiguity, and is obliged to reflect upon the accuracy of this statement. “I see,” he says.
The tree cover is thinning as the path winds upwards, and the temperature is dropping. The shale beneath his feet has crispened beneath its thin blanket of snow, and the wind is picking up strength. “Just a little further,” says Jim. “It’s worth it, I promise. And don’t worry about Bones, Spock. Whatever else he may be, he’s a good friend, and loyal to his core. For all that you’ve both had your differences, I know you know that.”
This is at least partly true. Commander Leonard McCoy, MD, is a man in whom illogic runs abyssal, and his life’s work, this past decade, has included the accumulation of an encyclopedic familiarity with Vulcan temperamental tolerances, but there is no question but that Spock would trust the man with his dying breath. He’s simply never considered the fact that the ferocious blanket of protection that the doctor has cast around his captain’s shoulders might extend, in any measure, to Spock himself.
This certainly clarifies a number of points of confusion.
Fascinating.
“You know how he is,” says Jim now, as they round a jagged, rocky spur. “He gets an idea in his head and he won’t let go until he’s resolved it to his own satisfaction.”
An unwelcome sense-memory calls forth the chill surface of a biobed beneath skin warmed by the approach of plak-tau, and Spock finds himself inclined to agree. But McCoy’s relentless interference in matters firmly marked as none of his concern almost certainly saved Spock’s life on that occasion, and, he finds himself reflecting, though he’s not generally given to hyperbole or poetic overstatement, perhaps, in some small manner, the same can be said of this.
“Besides,” says Jim now, with a half-smile thrown over his shoulder, “whatever ideas Bones has in his head right now, I suspect you’re as much to blame for them as I am. Look,” he adds, before Spock can so much as draw breath to voice the beginnings of a rebuttal that will be, at best, nominal, “right ahead, through those low branches. We’re here.”
There is, perhaps, some instruction to be taken from a personality so undeniable that the geographical arrangement of the planet beneath Jim’s feet can be relied upon to interject at a tactically appropriate moment. However, it’s not as though this is new information, and, in any case, Spock doubts he’ll emerge unscathed from any attempt to protest his innocence in this matter, the circumstances of his departure from San Francisco being what they are. And, besides, as Jim pushes back a low bough that sweeps the narrow path at chest height and they emerge from the tree-cover into the pale, snow-bleached sunlight of a February mid-morning in the Idaho Rockies, the view that opens out into the valley below is of an order that discourages any further debate.
It is, quite simply, one of the most breathtaking sights that Spock has yet observed on the planet of his mother’s birth.
Below them, shrouded beneath a thick blanket of white, a wide, clear circle of untouched snow marks the boundaries of what must be a small lake. Here and there, the wind has blown stripes in the drift, exposing ribbons of pearlescent ice that sparkle in the weak sunlight in all the shades of sky and cloud. The banks are fringed in high conifers, flashes of green peering through their winter mantle, that climb sharply with the peaks that surround them on three sides, and, on the fourth, mark the precipitous drop towards an unseen, lower valley beyond, where white-purple ridges shadow the sky and disappear into filmy wisps of cirrus. And everywhere he looks, stretching from horizon to horizon, from the banked snow of the lake to the delicate azure blue of the sky, there is nothing but stillness and complete, absolute, silence.
Strange, that he could spend so many years of his childhood and his early adult life on this water-rich world, and still have no real conception of the beauty that it holds. Strange that he’s never thought to look for it before.
It’s only when he feels Jim fall into place at his side, feels gloved fingers lace, wordlessly, through his own, that Spock realizes that he’s been lost in observation for more moments than he can count. “Told you it was worth it,” says Jim softly, and exhales gently, steam curling on the air in front of them on a wave of body heat and contentment.
“It is…” says Spock, and finds himself at a loss for a sufficiently momentous close to that sentence. A number of adjectives in Vulcan and Terran Standard line up to present themselves for his consideration, but none of them exactly fit the sensation he’s attempting to describe, and this, he suspects, is one more manifestation of the changes wrought by melding with a consciousness greater than the sum of the universe itself: two weeks ago, he would not have struggled to describe the curious sense of hollowness-almost a sadness-that pierces his chest as he attempts to assimilate the staggering beauty of a snow-bound lake in the mountains, but this is because, two weeks ago, he would have observed the scene with another man’s eyes and seen only the constituent parts, never the whole. All things considered, he reflects, a minor semantic failure at this juncture is a price worth the reward. “…Striking,” he finishes at last, and, if he’s not satisfied with his selection, neither is he particularly inclined to belabor the effort. Striking will suffice. Jim will understand.
Jim does understand. Spock’s eyes are fixed on the vista, so it’s instinct rather than, strictly speaking, perception that tells him that his lover’s gaze has slid sideways in search of Spock’s, and he’s not wrong: he meets the scrutiny and finds it warm and waiting for him. And it’s easy now, easier with every attempt, to reach for the connection; to peel his scarf away from his mouth and lean in, past the limits of protocol and decorum, past the boundaries of personal space and command distance; to tilt his head towards Jim’s when the moment demands it, press his lips to the lips that are always ready to meet Spock’s. Jim’s arms close easily around Spock’s shoulders and pull him in, hard and close, and Spock wraps his gloved hands around Jim’s head and the small of his back, fingers fisting in hair and thick fabric. Their lips crush together, their mouths open and their teeth and tongues collide, and he can feel the possessiveness in the power of Jim’s kiss, as much as he can feel it in his own.
There is nowhere for it to go, of course. The sun streaks the mirador in bright buttercup-yellow from an unmarked sky above, but the air is sharp and cold and their clothes are a solid wall of fabric between them. Jim’s hands snake down to cup Spock’s buttocks through the layers that blanket him from the mountain’s extremes, and the touch registers as the faintest of pressure; enough, more than enough, to cause his cock to fill and harden; not nearly sufficient to address the desire it provokes. Spock can feel Jim’s answering frustration in the hunger of his kiss, the way he grips Spock’s hips and pulls them tightly against his own, and he shifts his angle, cants his pelvic bone for better access, and succeeds only in lining up his erection against the inner seam of a zipper. Fortunately, there is adequate padding between his sensitive scrotal skin and the teeth of the fastening that it registers as little more than an abrupt shock, an unfamiliar but not quite unpleasant sensation that causes him to jerk hastily out of the way, but which is cushioned enough by layers of wool that it stops short of being painful. But, then again, that’s part of the problem.
Jim breaks their kiss as Spock’s hips flex involuntarily out of contact with his groin, inasmuch as separation by three inches of cloth could constitute any form of meaningful connection. His hands remain in place at Spock’s buttocks, but his head drops forward to rest against Spock’s forehead, and a brief laugh frosts the air between them.
“Well,” he says. “So much for that idea.” His voice is unsteady, his breathing uneven, but his tone is warm, amused. “I guess some activities are better suited to the summer months.”
His hands remain in place at Spock’s buttocks, and the skin buried several centimeters beneath their touch is protesting the relative lack of motion with some very pointed dermal memories involving three blunt, square fingers, and an erection that’s ninety percent of the way to painful. Spock draws a cleansing breath.
“Might I enquire,” he asks slowly, “as to the expected duration of the remainder of our walk?”
“Ten minutes if the going is fair,” says Jim. “Twenty at most. Why-are you in a hurry to get back?”
Spock considers his reply. “Somewhat,” he says at last.
Jim laughs, raises his lips to press them, gently and chastely, against Spock’s. “What say we walk it off?” he says. “Divert the mind from the prison of the body, as it were.” A wide, artless grin fails entirely to temper the amusement in his eyes, and he adds, “I’m told the glacial geomorphology is quite spectacular as the path descends.”
It would need to be exceptionally impressive, Spock feels, to mitigate against the sensation of an engorged penis chafing at homespun Vulcan cotton, however well lubricated the skin. And Jim’s hands, inconveniently arranged above the cleft that guards the entrance to Spock’s body, are doing nothing to alleviate the pressure at his groin, which is, as of twelve hours previously, now primed to expect careful and solicitous attention to his prostate, as per the scheduled progression of his arousal. He lifts a gloved hand to Jim’s face, cups it around his cheek, draws him in for a reprise of their earlier embrace in a different key: soft, temperate and tender. Jim’s eyebrow quirks in surprise, but he allows himself to be drawn, and his lips, when they meet Spock’s, are turned upwards in a faint smile.
The idea has been growing on Spock that, along with his inadequately populated data set, there is an aspect of procedural methodology that he has neglected to examine in full. He is uncertain as to how the oversight has been allowed to persist, given its clear divergence from the archetypal arrangement from which his thesis has proceeded, but, he supposes, much of the endeavor, up until this week’s revelations, has been severely undermined by perceptual bias, so perhaps it’s not so surprising that it has taken him this long to understand the extended implications of their revised model.
He suspects that it only really became clear last night, when Jim’s fingertip circled the ring of his anal sphincter; when the universe focused itself into one very specific point and there was suddenly nothing more important than that Jim’s fingertip be buried deep inside him. It certainly felt like an epiphany at the time-or, at least, it did afterwards, once Spock was able to think again. Yes: in retrospect, and on the balance of probabilities, this was most likely the moment he understood.
Jim’s hands fall away from their gluteal perch, sliding around and down to link with Spock’s. “I’d say we could make it in a little under fifteen minutes if we set a brisk pace,” he says. “I suspect it’s a question of motivation, Mr. Spock.”
“Indeed,” says Spock, and inclines his head. Yes, he thinks, his methodological construct has been sorely lacking, but all is far from lost. The beauty of an evolving experimental procedure is its adaptability in line with sudden moments of revelation, whether they be prompted by an unexpected polynomial variable or a powerful, paradigm-shattering orgasm: the key is to restructure according to the revised data set and proceed as appropriate.
It remains only to find the words to make the case to Jim. But they have a long walk ahead of them: there will be time enough to consider his approach.
The air is cool, the path is frozen, and the drop towards the lake is precipitous. Undue haste would be inappropriate. But, as they strike off down the trail, Spock’s left hand folded firmly and unassailably through Jim’s right, he understands that the nature of undue, as with so many things, may be redefined according to operational necessity. And, in the end, it takes them fourteen minutes and twelve seconds to return to the car, and another nineteen beyond this to get back to the cabin, not counting the time it takes to slam the door behind them.
Chapter 50
Chapter 52
Author: eimeo
Beta: miloowen
Universe/Series: TOS
Rating: NC-17
Relationship status: Slash
Chapter: 51/54
Pairings: Kirk/Spock
Additional Pairings: Kirk/Lori
Summary: It’s a question of biology. Vulcan biology.
The problem with falling in love with a member of an insanely private species is that it just might take you the best part of a five year mission to work out that the feelings are requited. And then you might discover that he’s already decided that the two of you can never be together.
And what are you supposed to do if he won’t tell you why?
~*~
A/N: Please accept the usual abject apologies for the lateness of this chapter. There's no reason that it should have given me such trouble, but it really, really did.
~*~
Chapter 51
Their last day in the Rockies, Spock wakes up late to the sound of birdsong in the trees and the comfortable weight of one sleeping Human head on his chest. They fell asleep like this last night, more than three hours after they tumbled into bed together, and, it seems, they have not moved in the intervening hours.
He finds this… gratifying. His left arm is numb where the blood flow has been restricted by the angle of Jim’s shoulder, and his fingers are unresponsive to basic commands, but he finds himself unwilling to wake his sleeping lover by moving to a more comfortable position. Comfort is relative, after all. He could relieve the pressure on his protesting joints, but then they would be absent Jim.
The room is cool, air fractured by a thousand mobile drafts that creep in beneath the curtains and around the door, and he pulls the comforter up a little higher, turns into the warmth of Jim’s chest. His friend’s resting body temperature has dropped a little as the night has retreated, but he’s warmer than Spock, and a lazy arm curls around his waist as Spock burrows them further beneath the blankets, pulling him closer and into a rapidly shrinking circle of heat.
“Cold,” mutters Jim into the hairs of Spock’s chest, and the word is sufficiently buried in pectoral muscles that it’s impossible to tell if it’s a statement or inflected in the interrogative, so Spock elects to interpret it as best suits his inclinations. He runs his hands gently along the chilled surface of Jim’s arm, where it has been exposed to the cool morning air, feeling the mottling of goosebumps beneath his fingers, interrupting the smoothness of Jim’s skin; feeling the trickle of psi-energy that follows his line of motion, neither strong nor focused enough to be a true connection: nothing more than a ghost of a presence at the back of his skull. Blunt, square fingers curl around the angle of Spock’s pelvic bone and he closes his eyes, breathes his contentment into the cool, empty air above Jim’s head.
The bed is a wreck once again. They changed the sheets before retiring last night, bundling armfuls of stiffened cotton into the cycler and replacing them with warm, lavender-scented linens from the hall closet, and, within fifteen minutes of collapsing on the mattress in a tangle of arms and legs and mouths and skin, the entire enterprise was rendered moot. The brush of rough fibers beneath his left buttock tells Spock that he has fallen asleep on the wet patch, but, in truth, the bed is approximately fifty percent wet patch this morning, and the bits that are not covered in bodily fluids are covered in streaks of the coconut-perfumed oil that Jim uncovered yesterday, with a look of unmitigated triumph, in a bottle in his mother’s side of the bathroom vanity cabinet after their second shower of the evening.
They gave up on ablutions after the third.
Jim’s hand has settled into a sleepy circular motion across Spock’s hip, in the manner of a man hovering on the edge of consciousness, though the circumference is widening with every revolution, and it’s beginning to dip close enough to his inner thigh that the blood flow towards the area of his groin is shifting in response. Spock makes no effort to suppress it; in truth, he’s not certain he has passed sufficient time in meditation, these past few days, to ensure that his controls remain active, and he certainly hasn’t tested them since his arrival in Idaho. Jim is sliding into wakefulness-Spock can feel it in the changing cadence of his breath, the mobile psi-currents beneath his fingers, the intermittent flickers of activity in his quiescent genitals-and so there is nothing to be lost, now, in shifting slightly so that the weight on his arm is transferred more fully onto his chest. Blood rushes freely along the reopened channels, surging into his fingers in a torrent of heat and protesting nerves, and he can feel the stickiness now that clings to his palm and beneath his nails, and he can’t tell if it’s his own fluids or the oil they used to lubricate a path for his fingers into the heat and constriction of Jim’s body last night.
Jim says nothing, makes no sound of protest, but, with drowsy lips, starts pressing kisses to Spock’s nipples. Spock sucks in a breath, and moves his tingling hand up to card through Jim’s hair, to grip at his scalp as Jim’s hand circles backwards across Spock’s hip and over his buttock. It slides to a halt where Spock’s skin meets the ruined sheet, worries the gap wider between buttock and bed, and Spock obliges by tilting his hip sideways so that Jim’s hand can find the access it requires. The sensitivity of his anus is entirely unexpected, but the discovery appears to be satisfactory to both parties, judging by the attention Jim has paid this area since the previous evening. It’s not that Spock has rejected the notion in the past, it’s more that he’s never really given it any serious consideration, prior to his decision to visit Idaho, and then his thoughts had inclined more towards the functionality of the action, and its sanitary implications. Jim, he knows, has had male lovers in the past-it does not take any great skills in the art of interpersonal discourse to determine that the tension that existed between the captain and Lieutenant Mitchell was primarily sexual in nature, nor to discern the undercurrent of attraction that colored Jim’s interactions with Captain Christopher-and his enjoyment of manual stimulation of the prostate was not, therefore, unexpected, though the gland proved more difficult to locate than Spock had anticipated from his perusal of Starfleet’s medical databanks after dinner last night. And yet, as those skilled fingers find their way once more to the ring of muscle that guards the entrance to his body, as Jim shifts and reaches over him for their rapidly diminishing supply of lubricant, he feels his body respond as easily, as instinctively, as if it had been accepting the casual invasion of another man’s flesh for the entirety of Spock’s adult life.
Jim rolls him, and Spock allows himself to be rolled. They discovered this last night-a maneuver that has, to date, claimed 1.6 hours’ sleep deficit that Spock cannot bring himself to regret-and it is the primary cause of the unfamiliar sensation of oil and palpated skin between his upper thighs. Jim’s arousal presses into the small of Spock’s back as he slicks himself with one hand, the other gently working its way inside Spock’s body, and Spock hears himself groan, push backwards into the touch. Jim’s breath catches at the sound, and Spock closes his legs together, tightening the muscles of his quads as Jim’s erection nudges its way between his thighs. Teeth close gently on the cord of muscle at Spock’s shoulder, one practiced finger working the sensitive skin of his anal walls, and a hand snakes below Spock’s body to grip the solid length of his penis with a rhythm that matches the motion of Jim’s hips.
It is difficult, sometimes, to believe that they have been lovers for scarcely thirty-six Terran hours. It is difficult to remember, now, why he fought this for so long.
Birds sing outside the window, sunlight streams through the pale fabric of the drapes, and Jim suckles at the skin of Spock’s throat as they make love on sheets already stained by a night largely given over to passion. It is their last full day of indolence: tomorrow, they will return to the lives they’ve left behind, and they will find a way to fold together these new selves that they have discovered in the cradle of the mountain with the men they used to be. The fires burn again behind Jim’s eyes, and the emptiness that has hollowed Spock’s belly for so many years has left him; this was always the way that this would be. Kaiidth: there was nothing to be gained by denying it, and everything to be won by letting go.
Jim achieves climax first, and, though he’s angled down and away from Spock’s groin, still some of his ejaculate lands on the sensitive skin at the base of Spock’s penis and he feels it hot and slick against his flesh. The motion of Jim’s hands stutters slightly as his body spasms, but, by this stage in proceedings, it scarcely matters. Spock links his hand through Jim’s and supplements his activities with a little of his own undepleted energy, and feels his orgasm rush him without warning, erupting from his abdomen and his psi-centers with force enough to level him. Jim’s hands work him from inside and out, wringing pleasure from every corner of his body, and Spock releases himself to it, allows it to claim him, in the knowledge that this momentary fragmentation, this loss of control, is fleeting, transitory: an even exchange.
His breath is ragged, his heart hammers at his flanks, and his blood thunders in his ears. Dimly, he registers Jim’s withdrawal from his body, the touch of a warm hand on his hip, the press of lips against his shoulder blade.
“Good morning,” says Jim, and his voice is hoarse and a little unsteady. “How did you sleep?”
“Adequately,” says Spock, and it’s only partly a lie. He does not recall ever feeling so sleep-deprived as he has felt since he arrived at Jim’s cabin in the mountains, but, conversely-and illogically-nor has he ever felt so rested.
~*~
After breakfast, they strip the bed again, and there’s an air of transgression in the smile that Jim hides behind his eyes that Spock thinks he recognizes: it feels remarkably similar to the experience of attempting to disguise from his childhood tutors his failure to master the tvi-sochya at the prescribed level for the requisite period of time, only without the associated fog of shame and confusion. The birdsong outside the window has become a chorus, and, noting Spock’s interest as he crosses to the sill to peer out through the condensation-frosted panes, Jim identifies a cardinal and a sparrow among the voices, though he shrugs his shoulders when Spock asks about the provenance of a more complex melody that underpins the refrain.
“There’s a book or two downstairs, I think,” he says, slipping his arms around Spock’s waist and pressing his chest along the length of Spock’s spine, which has the usual effect. Spock lets it happen; arousal is his default state right now, and, in any case, he’s learning quickly there’s no need to act upon each and every erection that stirs the fabric of his pants. For every spark of desire that he allows to mellow and disperse, there is always another to follow when the moment presents itself. “Sam tried to teach me a few of local birdcalls when we were boys, but I wasn’t much of a student, I’m afraid.”
It never ceases to amaze Spock that a man so accomplished as James Kirk can continue to find fault with his own expertise, but, he suspects, the comment is less self-reproof and more reminiscence. He says, “Your brother was gifted in the study of local fauna?”
A gentle laugh agitates the fine hair behind Spock’s ear. “Sam was gifted in the study of all fauna. I can see the attraction, I guess, but it has always been people that have interested me.” The arms tighten across Spock’s belly. “In all their great diversity.”
This much, Spock knows to be true: it is both the source of Jim’s success as a commander and a diplomat, and also, he suspects, the reason that it has proved so comprehensively impossible to avoid falling in love with him. Still, he supposes that there’s little enough reason for self-reproach: Spock stood at his right hand for five years while they traveled the galaxy together; the evidence suggests that, of all the diverse and multifarious varieties of sentient life in this corner of the universe, there are few enough who’ve proved themselves immune to the charm offensive of James T Kirk.
He raises his hands to cover Jim’s where they rest against his stomach, and allows his fingers to open suggestively as they slide into place, in a manner that he knows Jim will recognize as lascivious. A small noise of approval, pressed into Spock’s neck with the faintest of kisses, indicates that the gesture has been received as intended, though he suspects that Jim is as loathe as Spock to disarray an un-made bed. The mouth at Spock’s throat is mobile and increasingly insistent; Jim’s fingers link through his and contract against his stomach, begin their inevitable move downward; and Spock’s thoughts have just begun to turn to a lazy contemplation of the logistics of copulating on the pile of soiled linens by the bedroom door, when a chirp from one of the communicators on the bedside table abruptly belays a reprise of the morning’s activities.
Jim huffs a quiet laugh into the tendon that links Spock’s jaw to his shoulder and removes his hand from the waistline of Spock’s pants. “Mine, I think,” he says.
He is correct, of course: Spock’s commission may have been reinstated, but his status within Starfleet is, as yet, poorly defined; he has not precisely been overloaded with communications since his return to Earth. Given the Human proclivity towards sentimentalism and nostalgia, this is not a state of affairs that gives him any great pause, though he could wish that Jim’s communicator were similarly inactive.
He turns with his friend as he crosses the bedroom to the bed, folding his hands at his waist and reconsidering at the last moment when he realizes that additional stimulation in that area is inadvisable at present. Jim turns a grin over his shoulder that telegraphs a clear understanding of Spock’s line of reasoning, and rearranges his own stance into something a little more comfortable as he picks up his communicator and flicks it open.
“Kirk here,” he says, and, though his eyes are tired and his shoulders slack, though his cheeks are flushed and his arousal is plainly visible at the front of his pants, his voice is even, steady, and polished by command.
This does nothing to mitigate Spock’s condition.
“Jim?” says a familiar southern drawl. “That you?”
Delight creases the corners of his friend’s eyes. It is sufficiently gratifying that Spock could almost overlook the encroach upon what had promised to be another successful exercise in scientific evaluation. Almost. Because it turns out that, though he is accustomed to experiencing the joy and happiness of James Kirk as though it were his own, this ability comes linked to a couple of hitherto unsuspected provisos.
Jim grins, pivots on one heel so that his he’s free to turn the full warmth of his pleasure on Spock. “I should hope so,” he says. “It’s my communicator, after all, Bones.”
“Well.” A heavy note of irritation fails to mask the undercurrent of warm amusement in the doctor’s voice. “The way you up and disappeared from civilization, Jim, a man can be forgiven for wanting to be sure. That doesn’t sound much like San Francisco I hear in the background.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of anything you hear in the background,” says Jim. “There’s a whole lot of silence out here in the mountains. I’m on vacation, Bones.”
“I remember,” says the doctor amiably. “Just never known you to take three days together away from your desk without chaining you to a biobed and standing two guards outside your office door. Must be a hell of a spot, out there.”
Jim’s smile is so wide and warm that it feels, illogically, as though it takes the chill off the drafty air. “It has its attractions,” he says.
“Idaho, huh?” The voice is light, but there’s an air of frank skepticism behind it. “Guess maybe there’s some hidden beauty in frostbite and white-out blizzards that’s lost on this old country doctor.”
“No doubt the freezing rains of Beta Auraculi were much more agreeable to your Georgian sensibilities,” says Jim cheerfully. “Still. It’ll soon be academic, anyway. I’ll be back in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon.”
“So I hear,” says McCoy. “Damned holos can’t seem to talk about anything else. The amount of times I’ve seen your face grinning up at me out of a terminal screen this past week, Jim, it’s like you never even left. Spock too; can’t manage get away from his warm smile and cheerful demeanour no matter where I look. Say-did that green-blooded hobgoblin ever show up out your way?”
Jim’s grin does not falter, but his eyes widen in sudden alarm as the question manifestly catches him completely off-guard. He meets Spock’s gaze, hesitates, and offers a helpless shrug.
“In… Idaho?” he says, and though, as answers go, this one is clearly prevarication, there is at least no hint in his voice of the indecision on his face.
“Yeah,” says the doctor easily-too easily, Spock thinks. McCoy has never asked an innocent question in all his life, and Jim certainly knows this. “Came by my digs a few days back, all bowed up about something, asking where you’d got to. Didn’t see any harm in telling him; not after our conversation Tuesday night.”
Spock feels an eyebrow arch as Jim purses his lips around a hasty, chagrinned smile and drops his eyes in a manner that indicates the likely thematic content of the discussion in question. Interesting. No doubt there is a productive and mutually illuminating conversation looming large in their near future, although Spock has an idea that he may be in no position to occupy any kind of discretionary high ground himself, by the time they manage to persuade the doctor to vacate the airwaves. But for now, it seems, there is little alternative but to submit to McCoy’s unapologetic information-gathering endeavor, while it remains possible to retain at least some semblance of autonomy in the matter.
So he straightens his spine, adjusts his stance to ameliorate the uncomfortable manner in which his tunic has settled itself around his abdomen, and fixes his eyes away from Jim, whose grin widens conspicuously as he understands, abruptly, what’s about to happen.
“I am unfamiliar with the term, Doctor,” says Spock evenly, and takes care to ignore the increasingly disordered amusement emanating from his distracted lover. “However, extrapolating from your usual colloquial phraseology, I find it unlikely that I was ‘bowed up’ in any manner when I visited you at your lodgings.”
There is a long, startled silence. Jim lowers himself onto the mattress and bites down on his fist as he manifestly stifles an inconvenient urge to laugh. And then, from the communicator, a heavy, contemplative breath, slowly released, ripples the hush in the cool air of the bedroom.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” says the doctor slowly, and Jim gives up. His laughter is light, effervescent-like sparking sunlight on the ripples of a clear-water pool-and it breaks a tension in the air that Spock had not noticed until it was gone.
“Mr Spock,” says Jim, “it looks like you’ve finally managed to leave our CMO at a loss for words. Better make a note for the logs when we get back aboard, as I’m certain it’s not something we’ll see again any time soon.”
“You’re damned right,” says McCoy, and, though he’s clearly aiming for his habitual air of acerbic irritability, his tone barely achieves mildly peeved. “Never thought you had it in you, Spock.”
There are at least two potential, and equally viable, meanings to his words. Given the choice, Spock would prefer to adopt the superficial reading, but, he thinks, as Jim grins up at him from the mattress and extends an out-turned palm in invitation, there is no pressing need to make any conclusive decision. McCoy’s presence in the room is sufficiently pronounced that he cannot unreservedly accept the hand that is offered, but he crosses to the bed of his own accord and lowers himself into place at his captain’s side, and the open smile that Jim turns on him tells him that the gesture has been received as it was intended.
“As ever, Doctor,” he says, “I am gratified at my ability to confound your expectations.”
A beat. And then, unexpectedly, McCoy chuckles.
“Well, Mr Spock,” he says, “I guess that goes double for me.”
~*~
“I was simply aware,” says Jim, one hand gripping the lightning-seared branch of an ancient hardwood as he levers himself up onto a rocky outcrop that bisects their path, “that it might be unwise, under the circumstances, to leave San Francisco without a word to anyone.”
The sun is bright in the cloudless sky, but a thin layer of snow still blankets the ground. The trail they’ve chosen runs deep beneath a pine and aspen forest as it winds its way along the foothills of a low-lying peak, and the elevation, along with the south-facing aspect, has mitigated against the worst excesses of the recent blizzards, though Spock remains thankful for his newly purchased boots and the several warm sweaters that Jim thought to supply before they left the house. His core temperature has stabilized as they’ve walked, to a point where he now feels comparatively comfortable, and he finds, now that the creeping chill has left his bones, that he is enjoying the hike. The mountains are, as anticipated, geologically compelling, and there is an esthetic splendor to their environmental diversity that some part of his mother’s blood remembers, but, more than that, Jim’s cheeks are flushed and his eyes, where they sweep his surroundings, are alight with a simple joy that Spock cannot help but echo each time they fall on him.
His friend grins and reaches down a gloved hand towards him. Spock is unquestionably capable of managing the ascent on his own, but, nevertheless, he accepts it without hesitation and fails to relinquish his hold for several seconds after he finds his balance once more.
“I do not dispute your reasoning, Jim,” he says mildly. “Nor do I deny its efficacy or convenience.”
Spock has not tested the security clearance associated with his reactivated commission, but he suspects that, regardless, it would take relatively little effort to determine, at least to the nearest settlement, the location of the Kirk family holiday home. All things being equal, it would be the work of perhaps three hours’ concerted, focused searching through publicly accessible documentation, and would certainly have obviated any incriminating and potentially revealing conversations with members of the medical corps not known for their ability to restrain the free expression of their opinion and will. He wonders, briefly, why the notion did not occur to him upon his arrival in San Francisco, and abandons the query when the implications become uncomfortable. He would prefer not to consider the possibility that Thursday’s interview with Dr McCoy had less to do with the pursuit of information and more to do with a hitherto unsuspected need for external validation of his probabilities for success.
This is one line of enquiry, he feels, that does not need to proceed to its logical conclusion.
Kirk ducks below a low-hanging bough, and pushes it back to allow Spock to pass. His eyes are dancing. “Nevertheless,” he says, “I can’t help but notice that we’re fifteen minutes into our hike, and we’re still talking about Bones.”
This is unquestionably true. And, phrased like that, it does begin to seem… excessive.
“Perhaps,” says Spock, “you could expound upon the glacial geomorphology of the bouldering that we passed a few yards back….”
Jim grins. “You know perfectly well that I can’t,” he says. “And don’t change the subject.”
“It simply seems incongruous with the surrounding terrain….”
“And no doubt the explanation is fascinating, and I’ll be delighted to debate it with you to the very limits of my geographical knowledge, which is minimal.” Jim tests the frozen surface of a spreading puddle with the toe of his boot and finds it firm. He edges forward, bracing himself against Spock’s offered hand. “But we’ve got the best part of half a mile to clear before we circle back to the car, my friend, so before we get swept away with a spirited discussion of igneous rock formations, how about we put a couple of things to bed so we don’t spend the entire afternoon talking about our absent CMO?”
Spock allows himself to be guided in turn over the sleek skin of ice, and pushes down on a recalcitrant train of thought that is attempting to forge a morphological connection between the ground beneath his feet and the properties of coconut-perfumed oil. He says, “As I recall, the choice of conversational material was yours, Jim.”
It’s not likely to win him any points. He understands this even as Jim’s soft laughter mists the air in front of him. “Touché,” concedes his friend. “But only because you were thinking it.”
Which is also true, though, absent a direct meld, there is no way for Jim to prove as much. But Spock has known his captain for far too many years to make the mistake of protesting. Nor is there any point in attempting to obscure the truth: for a man born of a species so sorely lacking in psionic abilities, James Kirk has always possessed the disquieting capacity to read his contemporaries more accurately than any telepath.
“I will not deny,” he says slowly, testing his words carefully against what is known, what can be established, and what is pure conjecture, “that the content of the doctor’s communication this morning was somewhat disconcerting.”
“And you’re wondering if I’ve been… indiscreet,” says Kirk. He does not look around this time. “Is that it?”
“No,” says Spock without hesitation. It is the truth: Jim’s discretion is beyond question. “I simply wish to determine the extent of Dr McCoy’s… knowledge.”
A glance back over his shoulder shows an unreadable expression on Jim’s face. “He has no knowledge, as such,” he says. “Nothing more substantive, anyway, than what he’s been able to glean from his own observations across the years.” A beat. “We… may have been less… uh… circumspect than we might have imagined, you and I.”
Spock is acutely aware that his past week’s adventures include an incident in sickbay, in full view of Doctors Chapel and McCoy, that leaves little room for interpretative ambiguity, and is obliged to reflect upon the accuracy of this statement. “I see,” he says.
The tree cover is thinning as the path winds upwards, and the temperature is dropping. The shale beneath his feet has crispened beneath its thin blanket of snow, and the wind is picking up strength. “Just a little further,” says Jim. “It’s worth it, I promise. And don’t worry about Bones, Spock. Whatever else he may be, he’s a good friend, and loyal to his core. For all that you’ve both had your differences, I know you know that.”
This is at least partly true. Commander Leonard McCoy, MD, is a man in whom illogic runs abyssal, and his life’s work, this past decade, has included the accumulation of an encyclopedic familiarity with Vulcan temperamental tolerances, but there is no question but that Spock would trust the man with his dying breath. He’s simply never considered the fact that the ferocious blanket of protection that the doctor has cast around his captain’s shoulders might extend, in any measure, to Spock himself.
This certainly clarifies a number of points of confusion.
Fascinating.
“You know how he is,” says Jim now, as they round a jagged, rocky spur. “He gets an idea in his head and he won’t let go until he’s resolved it to his own satisfaction.”
An unwelcome sense-memory calls forth the chill surface of a biobed beneath skin warmed by the approach of plak-tau, and Spock finds himself inclined to agree. But McCoy’s relentless interference in matters firmly marked as none of his concern almost certainly saved Spock’s life on that occasion, and, he finds himself reflecting, though he’s not generally given to hyperbole or poetic overstatement, perhaps, in some small manner, the same can be said of this.
“Besides,” says Jim now, with a half-smile thrown over his shoulder, “whatever ideas Bones has in his head right now, I suspect you’re as much to blame for them as I am. Look,” he adds, before Spock can so much as draw breath to voice the beginnings of a rebuttal that will be, at best, nominal, “right ahead, through those low branches. We’re here.”
There is, perhaps, some instruction to be taken from a personality so undeniable that the geographical arrangement of the planet beneath Jim’s feet can be relied upon to interject at a tactically appropriate moment. However, it’s not as though this is new information, and, in any case, Spock doubts he’ll emerge unscathed from any attempt to protest his innocence in this matter, the circumstances of his departure from San Francisco being what they are. And, besides, as Jim pushes back a low bough that sweeps the narrow path at chest height and they emerge from the tree-cover into the pale, snow-bleached sunlight of a February mid-morning in the Idaho Rockies, the view that opens out into the valley below is of an order that discourages any further debate.
It is, quite simply, one of the most breathtaking sights that Spock has yet observed on the planet of his mother’s birth.
Below them, shrouded beneath a thick blanket of white, a wide, clear circle of untouched snow marks the boundaries of what must be a small lake. Here and there, the wind has blown stripes in the drift, exposing ribbons of pearlescent ice that sparkle in the weak sunlight in all the shades of sky and cloud. The banks are fringed in high conifers, flashes of green peering through their winter mantle, that climb sharply with the peaks that surround them on three sides, and, on the fourth, mark the precipitous drop towards an unseen, lower valley beyond, where white-purple ridges shadow the sky and disappear into filmy wisps of cirrus. And everywhere he looks, stretching from horizon to horizon, from the banked snow of the lake to the delicate azure blue of the sky, there is nothing but stillness and complete, absolute, silence.
Strange, that he could spend so many years of his childhood and his early adult life on this water-rich world, and still have no real conception of the beauty that it holds. Strange that he’s never thought to look for it before.
It’s only when he feels Jim fall into place at his side, feels gloved fingers lace, wordlessly, through his own, that Spock realizes that he’s been lost in observation for more moments than he can count. “Told you it was worth it,” says Jim softly, and exhales gently, steam curling on the air in front of them on a wave of body heat and contentment.
“It is…” says Spock, and finds himself at a loss for a sufficiently momentous close to that sentence. A number of adjectives in Vulcan and Terran Standard line up to present themselves for his consideration, but none of them exactly fit the sensation he’s attempting to describe, and this, he suspects, is one more manifestation of the changes wrought by melding with a consciousness greater than the sum of the universe itself: two weeks ago, he would not have struggled to describe the curious sense of hollowness-almost a sadness-that pierces his chest as he attempts to assimilate the staggering beauty of a snow-bound lake in the mountains, but this is because, two weeks ago, he would have observed the scene with another man’s eyes and seen only the constituent parts, never the whole. All things considered, he reflects, a minor semantic failure at this juncture is a price worth the reward. “…Striking,” he finishes at last, and, if he’s not satisfied with his selection, neither is he particularly inclined to belabor the effort. Striking will suffice. Jim will understand.
Jim does understand. Spock’s eyes are fixed on the vista, so it’s instinct rather than, strictly speaking, perception that tells him that his lover’s gaze has slid sideways in search of Spock’s, and he’s not wrong: he meets the scrutiny and finds it warm and waiting for him. And it’s easy now, easier with every attempt, to reach for the connection; to peel his scarf away from his mouth and lean in, past the limits of protocol and decorum, past the boundaries of personal space and command distance; to tilt his head towards Jim’s when the moment demands it, press his lips to the lips that are always ready to meet Spock’s. Jim’s arms close easily around Spock’s shoulders and pull him in, hard and close, and Spock wraps his gloved hands around Jim’s head and the small of his back, fingers fisting in hair and thick fabric. Their lips crush together, their mouths open and their teeth and tongues collide, and he can feel the possessiveness in the power of Jim’s kiss, as much as he can feel it in his own.
There is nowhere for it to go, of course. The sun streaks the mirador in bright buttercup-yellow from an unmarked sky above, but the air is sharp and cold and their clothes are a solid wall of fabric between them. Jim’s hands snake down to cup Spock’s buttocks through the layers that blanket him from the mountain’s extremes, and the touch registers as the faintest of pressure; enough, more than enough, to cause his cock to fill and harden; not nearly sufficient to address the desire it provokes. Spock can feel Jim’s answering frustration in the hunger of his kiss, the way he grips Spock’s hips and pulls them tightly against his own, and he shifts his angle, cants his pelvic bone for better access, and succeeds only in lining up his erection against the inner seam of a zipper. Fortunately, there is adequate padding between his sensitive scrotal skin and the teeth of the fastening that it registers as little more than an abrupt shock, an unfamiliar but not quite unpleasant sensation that causes him to jerk hastily out of the way, but which is cushioned enough by layers of wool that it stops short of being painful. But, then again, that’s part of the problem.
Jim breaks their kiss as Spock’s hips flex involuntarily out of contact with his groin, inasmuch as separation by three inches of cloth could constitute any form of meaningful connection. His hands remain in place at Spock’s buttocks, but his head drops forward to rest against Spock’s forehead, and a brief laugh frosts the air between them.
“Well,” he says. “So much for that idea.” His voice is unsteady, his breathing uneven, but his tone is warm, amused. “I guess some activities are better suited to the summer months.”
His hands remain in place at Spock’s buttocks, and the skin buried several centimeters beneath their touch is protesting the relative lack of motion with some very pointed dermal memories involving three blunt, square fingers, and an erection that’s ninety percent of the way to painful. Spock draws a cleansing breath.
“Might I enquire,” he asks slowly, “as to the expected duration of the remainder of our walk?”
“Ten minutes if the going is fair,” says Jim. “Twenty at most. Why-are you in a hurry to get back?”
Spock considers his reply. “Somewhat,” he says at last.
Jim laughs, raises his lips to press them, gently and chastely, against Spock’s. “What say we walk it off?” he says. “Divert the mind from the prison of the body, as it were.” A wide, artless grin fails entirely to temper the amusement in his eyes, and he adds, “I’m told the glacial geomorphology is quite spectacular as the path descends.”
It would need to be exceptionally impressive, Spock feels, to mitigate against the sensation of an engorged penis chafing at homespun Vulcan cotton, however well lubricated the skin. And Jim’s hands, inconveniently arranged above the cleft that guards the entrance to Spock’s body, are doing nothing to alleviate the pressure at his groin, which is, as of twelve hours previously, now primed to expect careful and solicitous attention to his prostate, as per the scheduled progression of his arousal. He lifts a gloved hand to Jim’s face, cups it around his cheek, draws him in for a reprise of their earlier embrace in a different key: soft, temperate and tender. Jim’s eyebrow quirks in surprise, but he allows himself to be drawn, and his lips, when they meet Spock’s, are turned upwards in a faint smile.
The idea has been growing on Spock that, along with his inadequately populated data set, there is an aspect of procedural methodology that he has neglected to examine in full. He is uncertain as to how the oversight has been allowed to persist, given its clear divergence from the archetypal arrangement from which his thesis has proceeded, but, he supposes, much of the endeavor, up until this week’s revelations, has been severely undermined by perceptual bias, so perhaps it’s not so surprising that it has taken him this long to understand the extended implications of their revised model.
He suspects that it only really became clear last night, when Jim’s fingertip circled the ring of his anal sphincter; when the universe focused itself into one very specific point and there was suddenly nothing more important than that Jim’s fingertip be buried deep inside him. It certainly felt like an epiphany at the time-or, at least, it did afterwards, once Spock was able to think again. Yes: in retrospect, and on the balance of probabilities, this was most likely the moment he understood.
Jim’s hands fall away from their gluteal perch, sliding around and down to link with Spock’s. “I’d say we could make it in a little under fifteen minutes if we set a brisk pace,” he says. “I suspect it’s a question of motivation, Mr. Spock.”
“Indeed,” says Spock, and inclines his head. Yes, he thinks, his methodological construct has been sorely lacking, but all is far from lost. The beauty of an evolving experimental procedure is its adaptability in line with sudden moments of revelation, whether they be prompted by an unexpected polynomial variable or a powerful, paradigm-shattering orgasm: the key is to restructure according to the revised data set and proceed as appropriate.
It remains only to find the words to make the case to Jim. But they have a long walk ahead of them: there will be time enough to consider his approach.
The air is cool, the path is frozen, and the drop towards the lake is precipitous. Undue haste would be inappropriate. But, as they strike off down the trail, Spock’s left hand folded firmly and unassailably through Jim’s right, he understands that the nature of undue, as with so many things, may be redefined according to operational necessity. And, in the end, it takes them fourteen minutes and twelve seconds to return to the car, and another nineteen beyond this to get back to the cabin, not counting the time it takes to slam the door behind them.
Chapter 50
Chapter 52