fic: the subtle grace of gravity (st xi)
kirk/gaila, pg-13, ~1200
allusions to sexual slavery and child abuse; standalone (see notes)
At the Academy, they met before the test through their hand-to-hand classes.
Before he knew her, he was demanding she be able to hurt him the way he constantly demands it of everyone around him. She already knows a hundred things that most people don’t, doesn’t hesitate the way people who never learn not to falter in those fragile seconds always do, but he throws her to the mat until she can throw him right back down, twists her arm until she can twist him to the ground with his own.
“Use everything you have,” he tells them all too many times while McCoy looks frustrated and too caring on the other side of the gym. “Nails, teeth, don’t stop until you have whoever it is down and you can get the hell out of dodge. And don’t let Starfleet stop you, they can’t always save you.”
She already knows all of this but she’s glad to have somebody training them who knows it just as well as she and the other Orion girls do.
Janice takes it seriously before anybody else does.
Confronts her in the ready room barely two minutes before Jim gets there and stares her down like only an old victim can.
“If you hurt him,” abuse him, “I’ll hurt you.” Rand doesn’t smile, doesn’t hesitate, and different people carry their burdens differently. “If you ever need me to kick his ass, I’ll help you, but he’s dedicated to you and if you use that-” A moment of silence, the woman working to stay in control in the face of too much emotion. “I’d tell Leonard the same thing if he ever got his head out of his ass and I know you know I mean it.” Gaila does, has the greatest respect for the woman who keeps Kirk’s signatures steady and Jim’s oldest pain anchored. And Janice must see it, because some of the tension leaves her arms. “Good,” she says too easily, fully willing to dismiss the moment now that it’s over, “now what do you want in your coffee?”
When Jim gets there a second later, he takes one look at Janice’s face and opens his mouth to sputter but Spock’s right behind him and then McCoy and Nyota get there before he can get a word out and that’s that, Rand’s done what she needed to do.
(Any asshole that may have a less than positive feeling towards a Starfleet captain having an Orion as a partner is found out and quickly straight-armed off the ship with the speed that only the yeomen are capable of encouraging in any sane individual.)
Two days after Janice Rand lays down her own law, Ensign Chekov happens to be locked in the turbolift with Captain Kirk.
After dropping a comment regarding the fact that Lieutenant Uhura is the only one that knows where they are, he feels the need to inform the captain of the fact that he “loves Gaila very much” and that he hopes the captain is smart enough to be aware of what this means, if you know what this means, sir. As well, he hopes that the captain is aware of the fact that they all love Gaila very much, sir, and that if anyone were capable of eliminating evidence, it would be the finest of Starfleet.
The captain informs his navigator that he is well aware of how close his senior staff is, Jim is entirely too pleased with the fact that this is his crew, and then goes down on Gaila ten minutes later before their second shift starts and shares the story as they’re dressing afterwards.
Later, Gaila informs Pavel that she can take care of herself (but loves him and Uhura for defending her so completely) and Jim finally manages to corner Janice in the ready room to whine about how he can totally handle himself so stop it and hey, where that’s damn gold polish, Gaila wants to try it for herself.
Jim refuses to be ashamed of his sexuality.
Gaila adores him for it.
Oh, he shies away sometimes when a touch comes too close to what he’d always waited for and never got (skitters at times because vulnerability is frightening) but that’s psychological, a brother too wounded to protect him and a mother who taught him to survive the truly brutal pain while she struggled to survive her own.
This is politically correct but not always popular with people on Terra that don’t have the same amount of contact with other species that members of Starfleet do: he truly is openly sexual. Even as few people now blink at his refusal to be restrained by sex or gender, he fearlessly shows public interest to individuals always legally protected but not always accepted as Starfleet struggles through their growth and losses. And even with members of Starfleet, they’re both fully aware that certain things are maintained in theory right up until they’re not just a philosophy.
Neither of them lets this stop them.
They both snort at “whore” the rare moments the word is quietly uttered (sexuality is not disgusting and slavery is not so simple a concept as people want to pretend it is) and when silent glances try to paint her as an “Orion sympathizer,” she almost laughs in their faces until she cries. (If she’s always too edgy after those moments of utter stupidity from people who don’t understand, responds to even poor Nyota a little harder than she ever ever does, Jim never blinks and lets her curl close until the haze of bitter awareness eases.)
Admiral Stiles tries to work up a frenzy but Pike says, “Fuck them” and Nogura bears his teeth without hesitation and despite some things, Gaila is even more fiercely loyal to Starfleet than Jim.
Because there are more than a dozen Orion women besides her serving as officers and dozens of others living safe in the Federation (more escape each day now, Nyota hears through her mother’s ties and passes the information to Gaila) and none of the women are letting anyone stop them now that they’ve seen the stars.
Their bed is under the window in their quarters, always open and always clear, and they sleep where they can see the stars scattered through the glass if they simply look.
Gaila wakes up often to find Jim’s curled close to her front while he sleeps, line of his spine sharply defined under her palm after he’s tucked his head securely under her chin. He breathes slow and steady into her neck and seems moderately sure that she’ll do all of what she’s bluntly told him she would for him and she grins a bit at the easy vulnerability, smoothes her fingers at his nape as he lays content.
Other nights, fear is carried longer than scars that fade away and in the dark he demands (pleads) to be protected from things that his captaincy cannot save him from.
Those nights Gaila mutters quietly at the soft skin at his temple and doesn’t hide her tenderness until he tosses an arm around her middle and muzzles her neck, puffs out a ragged little sigh of, “You’re fine, I got you” and drifts off into his familiar heavy sleep. She usually stays awake for a while after Jim quiets those nights, wide-awake and relaxed, as the ship hums and murmurs around her, metal and glass and hundreds of lives and nothing like the ship where she was born.
The stars are bright through the glass when she finally falls asleep, and they’re still lighting the dark when she wakes with Jim relaxed at her side.
allusions to sexual slavery and child abuse; standalone (see notes)
At the Academy, they met before the test through their hand-to-hand classes.
Before he knew her, he was demanding she be able to hurt him the way he constantly demands it of everyone around him. She already knows a hundred things that most people don’t, doesn’t hesitate the way people who never learn not to falter in those fragile seconds always do, but he throws her to the mat until she can throw him right back down, twists her arm until she can twist him to the ground with his own.
“Use everything you have,” he tells them all too many times while McCoy looks frustrated and too caring on the other side of the gym. “Nails, teeth, don’t stop until you have whoever it is down and you can get the hell out of dodge. And don’t let Starfleet stop you, they can’t always save you.”
She already knows all of this but she’s glad to have somebody training them who knows it just as well as she and the other Orion girls do.
Janice takes it seriously before anybody else does.
Confronts her in the ready room barely two minutes before Jim gets there and stares her down like only an old victim can.
“If you hurt him,” abuse him, “I’ll hurt you.” Rand doesn’t smile, doesn’t hesitate, and different people carry their burdens differently. “If you ever need me to kick his ass, I’ll help you, but he’s dedicated to you and if you use that-” A moment of silence, the woman working to stay in control in the face of too much emotion. “I’d tell Leonard the same thing if he ever got his head out of his ass and I know you know I mean it.” Gaila does, has the greatest respect for the woman who keeps Kirk’s signatures steady and Jim’s oldest pain anchored. And Janice must see it, because some of the tension leaves her arms. “Good,” she says too easily, fully willing to dismiss the moment now that it’s over, “now what do you want in your coffee?”
When Jim gets there a second later, he takes one look at Janice’s face and opens his mouth to sputter but Spock’s right behind him and then McCoy and Nyota get there before he can get a word out and that’s that, Rand’s done what she needed to do.
(Any asshole that may have a less than positive feeling towards a Starfleet captain having an Orion as a partner is found out and quickly straight-armed off the ship with the speed that only the yeomen are capable of encouraging in any sane individual.)
Two days after Janice Rand lays down her own law, Ensign Chekov happens to be locked in the turbolift with Captain Kirk.
After dropping a comment regarding the fact that Lieutenant Uhura is the only one that knows where they are, he feels the need to inform the captain of the fact that he “loves Gaila very much” and that he hopes the captain is smart enough to be aware of what this means, if you know what this means, sir. As well, he hopes that the captain is aware of the fact that they all love Gaila very much, sir, and that if anyone were capable of eliminating evidence, it would be the finest of Starfleet.
The captain informs his navigator that he is well aware of how close his senior staff is, Jim is entirely too pleased with the fact that this is his crew, and then goes down on Gaila ten minutes later before their second shift starts and shares the story as they’re dressing afterwards.
Later, Gaila informs Pavel that she can take care of herself (but loves him and Uhura for defending her so completely) and Jim finally manages to corner Janice in the ready room to whine about how he can totally handle himself so stop it and hey, where that’s damn gold polish, Gaila wants to try it for herself.
Jim refuses to be ashamed of his sexuality.
Gaila adores him for it.
Oh, he shies away sometimes when a touch comes too close to what he’d always waited for and never got (skitters at times because vulnerability is frightening) but that’s psychological, a brother too wounded to protect him and a mother who taught him to survive the truly brutal pain while she struggled to survive her own.
This is politically correct but not always popular with people on Terra that don’t have the same amount of contact with other species that members of Starfleet do: he truly is openly sexual. Even as few people now blink at his refusal to be restrained by sex or gender, he fearlessly shows public interest to individuals always legally protected but not always accepted as Starfleet struggles through their growth and losses. And even with members of Starfleet, they’re both fully aware that certain things are maintained in theory right up until they’re not just a philosophy.
Neither of them lets this stop them.
They both snort at “whore” the rare moments the word is quietly uttered (sexuality is not disgusting and slavery is not so simple a concept as people want to pretend it is) and when silent glances try to paint her as an “Orion sympathizer,” she almost laughs in their faces until she cries. (If she’s always too edgy after those moments of utter stupidity from people who don’t understand, responds to even poor Nyota a little harder than she ever ever does, Jim never blinks and lets her curl close until the haze of bitter awareness eases.)
Admiral Stiles tries to work up a frenzy but Pike says, “Fuck them” and Nogura bears his teeth without hesitation and despite some things, Gaila is even more fiercely loyal to Starfleet than Jim.
Because there are more than a dozen Orion women besides her serving as officers and dozens of others living safe in the Federation (more escape each day now, Nyota hears through her mother’s ties and passes the information to Gaila) and none of the women are letting anyone stop them now that they’ve seen the stars.
Their bed is under the window in their quarters, always open and always clear, and they sleep where they can see the stars scattered through the glass if they simply look.
Gaila wakes up often to find Jim’s curled close to her front while he sleeps, line of his spine sharply defined under her palm after he’s tucked his head securely under her chin. He breathes slow and steady into her neck and seems moderately sure that she’ll do all of what she’s bluntly told him she would for him and she grins a bit at the easy vulnerability, smoothes her fingers at his nape as he lays content.
Other nights, fear is carried longer than scars that fade away and in the dark he demands (pleads) to be protected from things that his captaincy cannot save him from.
Those nights Gaila mutters quietly at the soft skin at his temple and doesn’t hide her tenderness until he tosses an arm around her middle and muzzles her neck, puffs out a ragged little sigh of, “You’re fine, I got you” and drifts off into his familiar heavy sleep. She usually stays awake for a while after Jim quiets those nights, wide-awake and relaxed, as the ship hums and murmurs around her, metal and glass and hundreds of lives and nothing like the ship where she was born.
The stars are bright through the glass when she finally falls asleep, and they’re still lighting the dark when she wakes with Jim relaxed at her side.