igrab
in
grabi_hands
Life is But a Dream [Shatnoy, Pinto, 2/?]
Title: Life is But a Dream [2/?]
Author: igrab
Pairings: Shatnoy, Pinto
Written For: obstinatrix
Rating: PG-13 this part
Word Count: 2,463
Notes: big props to screamlet and admantius_art, for all your input and listening ears.
~ I gave my life to another lover ~
Leonard was expecting the intrusion, so he didn't look up from the script when the door flew open and Bill barreled in. He always seemed so much larger than himself - as if he was surrounded by a perpetual cloud of sound and life and energy. Leonard could feel it, hear the jangle of his presence even before the rush of breath and the too-close hovering as he came around and sat on the makeup table.
It was worse, today, the aura shot through with crimped nerves and a humming sort of tension. It was easy to deduce why. Leonard suspected that he'd be tense himself, if he wasn't so far in character already that he didn't even feel it. It was remarkable, what Spock was capable of dealing with.
Leonard watched out of the corner of his eye as Bill slapped the script on his thigh, fidgeted, clearly searching for the right words to say. He wasn't sure there were any.
"...This has to be a joke," was what he came up with, and Leonard allowed himself a private inner smile. Surely you can do better than that, Bill, he told himself.
"I doubt it," he said evenly, still dragging dark eyes over the damning lines. He never would've thought they could possibly air this on television, but they'd said that about Uhura, too. Didn't stop them in the slightest. "...Have you read the rest of the script? It's all quite preposterous."
"Yes, but..." Bill fidgeted, and Leonard resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow. It would've been far too easy for Bill to get sidetracked from the discussion, and Leonard found he was quite interested in what he had to say.
However, Bill trailed off, and Leonard had to fish for a prompt. "But what, Bill? They're acting under coersion."
"I know," he said, and it was the exasperation and flippancy that caught at him - well, if he wasn't complaining that it was out of character, then what?
Now he raised the eyebrow, and to all his astonishment, Bill flushed.
There was something between them. He would've been blind not to see it, and sometimes he wondered if Bill was, or if he just pretended for the sake of decency. Leonard had previously been inclined to the former. But he wondered, sometimes, when Kirk stood a little too close or smiled in That Way and Leonard felt his insides turn to liquid. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Spock was completely, totally in love with his captain. He tried to suppress it, of course - Vulcans did not love, and yet, Spock was developing as a character far beyond what Leonard himself ever would've thought possible. He strongly suspected that most of it had to do with Bill.
Kirk, not Bill. Bill barely even knew what he was doing, he came on set, he read his lines, he flashed his smiles, but he didn't see the big picture, and Leonard hated that. He was nothing that Leonard wanted, he was superficial and charismatic and he rarely ever thought things through. And he was proud of it.
So... this wasn't happening. They weren't having this conversation, and Bill wasn't thinking about Kirk's thought processes, because Bill never did that. Obviously, Leonard must be going crazy.
"...It shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't be something ridiculous, under duress - it shouldn't be something they're ashamed of." He wouldn't meet Leonard's eyes, and he finds himself obsessed with this small detail - like if he was able to see them, then all of this would make sense. It kept him from focusing on Bill's words, and more importantly, what those words meant.
But he continued blithely, still looking down, with no idea of the thoughts flashing like lightning through his friend's mind. "It's the 23rd century, and - that's the point of Star Trek, that there's a world out there that doesn't discriminate. It's our hope for the future."
He'd thought about this. Leonard's mind was completely blown. When had Bill suddenly become okay with this? Everyone knew he was just fine with the occasional brush with homosexuality, though no one ever mentioned it aloud. But they knew his resume. Hell, George had said he'd seen it, at a local film festival. Leonard had been mortified.
But Bill, no, Bill was someone who prided himself on his manly charm. Bill shoved his tongue down girls' throats on a regular basis. Frankly, it was pretty disgusting, and Leonard sincerely hoped that he didn't try that on him. In character or not, that would only serve to get him punched.
"Bill, get to the point," he finally said, completely offbalanced by this conversation in general - i.e., them having it. And of course this is when Bill looks up, fixing him with the eyes Leonard had never been able to resist. On another person, it might have been feigned innocence, imploring, a deliberate attempt to get what he wanted. With Bill, he was simply pure.
"If I'm going to be kissing my First Officer, I'd like it to be for real."
And that was the problem, really. Spock loved Kirk, and Leonard had this awful feeling that he was falling for Bill because of it.
"Captain," he murmured, playing along. "If you mean to suggest that this will be the only chance we have... you are quite mistaken."
~ I gave my love, and all, and all ~
"I don't know what to do."
Karl was considerably better-prepared this time. After three nights of trying to dream of De (and instead dreaming of Star Wars, Paradise Lost, and John Barrowman), he finally gave up trying and stayed up playing Patapon until he'd passed out, fully clothed, on Simon Pegg's couch.
Then he dreamt of De.
He was on his hands and knees in the garden, pulling up weeds. Karl watched as the ubiquitous turtle sunned itself in the birdbath.
"I told you what to do," De muttered, and on anyone else it might've sounded cross. But DeForest Kelley was somewhere beyond minor life dramas, it seemed.
"I mean - " Karl fumbled for words, and found himself sinking down to help before he even had a chance to think. God knows how he knew what to do; he'd never weeded a garden before in his life. But the work was soothing, and soon enough the words came to him.
"I've been thinking things over. Thinking about what they say and what they don't say, and if I didn't know better I'd be half convinced I didn't need to do anything at all, but - " He paused, to yank up a particularly stubborn bit of flora. " - But the problem is, I just... don't know how to do it."
De glanced up then, and leveled him with one of those Looks. "You know your boys better'n I do," he pointed out, which made Karl flush a little from the truth of it.
"...But if you want to know what I did, well. That? I can help you with."
~ but over a dream the past will hover ~
Bill couldn't concentrate. He couldn't think, kept dropping his lines and having to retake everything. Everyone was getting frustrated, but Bill didn't give a damn. he was already frustrated, in too many ways, and he couldn't decide if he wanted to get this scene over with or put it off as long as possible. The indecision was just making it worse.
And Leonard, oh, Leonard was as cool as a goddamn cucumber, he wasn't having any trouble being... unemotional. Damn him. Damn him for being able to separate himself from Spock so... thoroughly.
Bill didn't really know who he was. Not really. He pretended, sometimes, to be an image of a person, but he said things he didn't believe, did things he didn't want to do, and all the while he could never tell if it was him or his character that disapproved. There wasn't any sort of guidelines to this sort of thing. No one had ever told him 'Billy, this is who you are, and this is who Captain Kirk is. They're two totally different people and when you're on the set, you're one and not the other.' And, even if they had, he wouldn't've known how to go about doing so.
So when he was out of sorts, Kirk was. When he was grieving for the death of his father, Kirk looked like his world was crumbling, watching with crinkled, emotional eyes as Spock bravely protected him. And now, with his nerves all ajitter and half dreading, half anticipating the culmination of this scene - he was just a wreck.
"Cut!" The director shouted, for what must've been the millionth time. "Bill, for the love of god. Pull it together! Five minutes, everyone."
Bill stormed off to his trailer, boots stomping up dust everywhere and wardrobe was going to kill him (again) but he didn't care. Why couldn't he just let it go and get on with it?
Kiss Leonard, and get on with his life?
"Bill."
Leonard was behind him. He could feel it, a crackle in the air, and he should've been used to it by now. The way he could feel every inch between them in little electric dances under his skin. "Leonard, don't take this the wrong way, but you're the last person I want to see right now."
His mouth was quiet and calm, though Bill knew he was smiling on the inside. Goddamn... Vulcan. "I wasn't aware there was a 'right' way to take that."
He sighed, explosively, and leaned face-first against the trailer, his hands unattractively splayed before his chest. He must've looked ridiculous but he was just beyond caring. "Go away."
"No." Leonard folded his arms, and Bill could hear the rustle-slide of fabric catching on Leonard's skin. He swallowed. "I thought you said you were okay with this."
"I've told you why I'm not okay with this," Bill pointed out, despairing of ever getting a second's privacy. He was going to need it, unless Captain Kirk had a precedent for getting turned on by telepathic mindcontrol. Which... wouldn't actually be that much of a stretch.
"That's not enough to make you this upset. Not like this." Damn, but Leonard knew him too well, and that in itself was terrifying. Bill wondered if, by some stretch of cosmic injustice, he already knew - knew everything, knew how much Bill wanted this, wanted him, and how scared he was that the only reason he did was because of Jim Kirk.
"...I've never kissed a guy before." He tried to go for lighthearted, but the awkward position he was in, added to the very serious nature of this conversation, made it sound flimsy and transparent. Like he was trying to change the subject, only this was the subject he wanted to avoid, and he prayed without hope that Leonard wouldn't understand that.
He should've known better. Leonard didn't even dignify that with words, or maybe he just thoughts words were unnecessary. So first it was his thumb, slipping into the hollow of Bill's shoulder, and when he put pressure on it, to turn him gently around, Bill did not resist. He couldn't. He couldn't resist Leonard anything.
His eyes had a curious light to them, a dancing kind of humor, and it was so very Leonard and so very not Spock that Bill found his breath catching, in his throat. He was like a teenage girl on prom night - his brain was whispering to him, yes yes yes please yes and he reached up, put a hand on Leonard's chest.
He stopped. He didn't raise an eyebrow, and Bill was painfully glad of that, but he could tell he wanted to. Leonard waited, understanding.
Bill leaned forward, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet, and wound his hand in the fabric of Spock's shirt - wardrobe was going to kill him twice - to anchor himself. To this, to reality, he didn't know what.
And Leonard waited, patiently, until Bill reached up and pressed their lips together, and that's when the world might've ended.
Because, honestly, Bill wouldn't've noticed a thing.
Leonard's lips were warm and a little damp - maybe he'd been thinking about this, too, licking his lips behind the cameras and that thought was absolutely mindblowing. His hands were strong and steady on Bill's shoulders, and he kissed back like chocolate, rich and smooth. Bill felt his knees go weak.
They parted without a sound at all, except the rushing in Bill's ears and the frantic pace of his heart. No. No no no. They can't stop now, they can't just let this go, he can't just kiss Leonard and get on with his life.
Then the hands at his shoulders pushed, and before he could blink he was up against the trailer wall, Leonard's lips on his with bruising force, and it was everything he'd ever wanted. He bucked, and moaned, and he knew for the first time that it wasn't about Captain Kirk, and it wasn't about Star Trek - it was about Bill and Leonard and it didn't matter whether they shot the scene or didn't shoot the scene or whether Kirk and Spock were meant to be.
He wasn't the only one who refused to let this go.
~ out of a dream the past will call ~
Karl had exactly seven days, eight hours, and twenty-four minutes to convince J.J. Abrams that this was a good idea.
He was going to need to call in the cavalry.
Author: igrab
Pairings: Shatnoy, Pinto
Written For: obstinatrix
Rating: PG-13 this part
Word Count: 2,463
Notes: big props to screamlet and admantius_art, for all your input and listening ears.
~ I gave my life to another lover ~
Leonard was expecting the intrusion, so he didn't look up from the script when the door flew open and Bill barreled in. He always seemed so much larger than himself - as if he was surrounded by a perpetual cloud of sound and life and energy. Leonard could feel it, hear the jangle of his presence even before the rush of breath and the too-close hovering as he came around and sat on the makeup table.
It was worse, today, the aura shot through with crimped nerves and a humming sort of tension. It was easy to deduce why. Leonard suspected that he'd be tense himself, if he wasn't so far in character already that he didn't even feel it. It was remarkable, what Spock was capable of dealing with.
Leonard watched out of the corner of his eye as Bill slapped the script on his thigh, fidgeted, clearly searching for the right words to say. He wasn't sure there were any.
"...This has to be a joke," was what he came up with, and Leonard allowed himself a private inner smile. Surely you can do better than that, Bill, he told himself.
"I doubt it," he said evenly, still dragging dark eyes over the damning lines. He never would've thought they could possibly air this on television, but they'd said that about Uhura, too. Didn't stop them in the slightest. "...Have you read the rest of the script? It's all quite preposterous."
"Yes, but..." Bill fidgeted, and Leonard resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow. It would've been far too easy for Bill to get sidetracked from the discussion, and Leonard found he was quite interested in what he had to say.
However, Bill trailed off, and Leonard had to fish for a prompt. "But what, Bill? They're acting under coersion."
"I know," he said, and it was the exasperation and flippancy that caught at him - well, if he wasn't complaining that it was out of character, then what?
Now he raised the eyebrow, and to all his astonishment, Bill flushed.
There was something between them. He would've been blind not to see it, and sometimes he wondered if Bill was, or if he just pretended for the sake of decency. Leonard had previously been inclined to the former. But he wondered, sometimes, when Kirk stood a little too close or smiled in That Way and Leonard felt his insides turn to liquid. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Spock was completely, totally in love with his captain. He tried to suppress it, of course - Vulcans did not love, and yet, Spock was developing as a character far beyond what Leonard himself ever would've thought possible. He strongly suspected that most of it had to do with Bill.
Kirk, not Bill. Bill barely even knew what he was doing, he came on set, he read his lines, he flashed his smiles, but he didn't see the big picture, and Leonard hated that. He was nothing that Leonard wanted, he was superficial and charismatic and he rarely ever thought things through. And he was proud of it.
So... this wasn't happening. They weren't having this conversation, and Bill wasn't thinking about Kirk's thought processes, because Bill never did that. Obviously, Leonard must be going crazy.
"...It shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't be something ridiculous, under duress - it shouldn't be something they're ashamed of." He wouldn't meet Leonard's eyes, and he finds himself obsessed with this small detail - like if he was able to see them, then all of this would make sense. It kept him from focusing on Bill's words, and more importantly, what those words meant.
But he continued blithely, still looking down, with no idea of the thoughts flashing like lightning through his friend's mind. "It's the 23rd century, and - that's the point of Star Trek, that there's a world out there that doesn't discriminate. It's our hope for the future."
He'd thought about this. Leonard's mind was completely blown. When had Bill suddenly become okay with this? Everyone knew he was just fine with the occasional brush with homosexuality, though no one ever mentioned it aloud. But they knew his resume. Hell, George had said he'd seen it, at a local film festival. Leonard had been mortified.
But Bill, no, Bill was someone who prided himself on his manly charm. Bill shoved his tongue down girls' throats on a regular basis. Frankly, it was pretty disgusting, and Leonard sincerely hoped that he didn't try that on him. In character or not, that would only serve to get him punched.
"Bill, get to the point," he finally said, completely offbalanced by this conversation in general - i.e., them having it. And of course this is when Bill looks up, fixing him with the eyes Leonard had never been able to resist. On another person, it might have been feigned innocence, imploring, a deliberate attempt to get what he wanted. With Bill, he was simply pure.
"If I'm going to be kissing my First Officer, I'd like it to be for real."
And that was the problem, really. Spock loved Kirk, and Leonard had this awful feeling that he was falling for Bill because of it.
"Captain," he murmured, playing along. "If you mean to suggest that this will be the only chance we have... you are quite mistaken."
~ I gave my love, and all, and all ~
"I don't know what to do."
Karl was considerably better-prepared this time. After three nights of trying to dream of De (and instead dreaming of Star Wars, Paradise Lost, and John Barrowman), he finally gave up trying and stayed up playing Patapon until he'd passed out, fully clothed, on Simon Pegg's couch.
Then he dreamt of De.
He was on his hands and knees in the garden, pulling up weeds. Karl watched as the ubiquitous turtle sunned itself in the birdbath.
"I told you what to do," De muttered, and on anyone else it might've sounded cross. But DeForest Kelley was somewhere beyond minor life dramas, it seemed.
"I mean - " Karl fumbled for words, and found himself sinking down to help before he even had a chance to think. God knows how he knew what to do; he'd never weeded a garden before in his life. But the work was soothing, and soon enough the words came to him.
"I've been thinking things over. Thinking about what they say and what they don't say, and if I didn't know better I'd be half convinced I didn't need to do anything at all, but - " He paused, to yank up a particularly stubborn bit of flora. " - But the problem is, I just... don't know how to do it."
De glanced up then, and leveled him with one of those Looks. "You know your boys better'n I do," he pointed out, which made Karl flush a little from the truth of it.
"...But if you want to know what I did, well. That? I can help you with."
~ but over a dream the past will hover ~
Bill couldn't concentrate. He couldn't think, kept dropping his lines and having to retake everything. Everyone was getting frustrated, but Bill didn't give a damn. he was already frustrated, in too many ways, and he couldn't decide if he wanted to get this scene over with or put it off as long as possible. The indecision was just making it worse.
And Leonard, oh, Leonard was as cool as a goddamn cucumber, he wasn't having any trouble being... unemotional. Damn him. Damn him for being able to separate himself from Spock so... thoroughly.
Bill didn't really know who he was. Not really. He pretended, sometimes, to be an image of a person, but he said things he didn't believe, did things he didn't want to do, and all the while he could never tell if it was him or his character that disapproved. There wasn't any sort of guidelines to this sort of thing. No one had ever told him 'Billy, this is who you are, and this is who Captain Kirk is. They're two totally different people and when you're on the set, you're one and not the other.' And, even if they had, he wouldn't've known how to go about doing so.
So when he was out of sorts, Kirk was. When he was grieving for the death of his father, Kirk looked like his world was crumbling, watching with crinkled, emotional eyes as Spock bravely protected him. And now, with his nerves all ajitter and half dreading, half anticipating the culmination of this scene - he was just a wreck.
"Cut!" The director shouted, for what must've been the millionth time. "Bill, for the love of god. Pull it together! Five minutes, everyone."
Bill stormed off to his trailer, boots stomping up dust everywhere and wardrobe was going to kill him (again) but he didn't care. Why couldn't he just let it go and get on with it?
Kiss Leonard, and get on with his life?
"Bill."
Leonard was behind him. He could feel it, a crackle in the air, and he should've been used to it by now. The way he could feel every inch between them in little electric dances under his skin. "Leonard, don't take this the wrong way, but you're the last person I want to see right now."
His mouth was quiet and calm, though Bill knew he was smiling on the inside. Goddamn... Vulcan. "I wasn't aware there was a 'right' way to take that."
He sighed, explosively, and leaned face-first against the trailer, his hands unattractively splayed before his chest. He must've looked ridiculous but he was just beyond caring. "Go away."
"No." Leonard folded his arms, and Bill could hear the rustle-slide of fabric catching on Leonard's skin. He swallowed. "I thought you said you were okay with this."
"I've told you why I'm not okay with this," Bill pointed out, despairing of ever getting a second's privacy. He was going to need it, unless Captain Kirk had a precedent for getting turned on by telepathic mindcontrol. Which... wouldn't actually be that much of a stretch.
"That's not enough to make you this upset. Not like this." Damn, but Leonard knew him too well, and that in itself was terrifying. Bill wondered if, by some stretch of cosmic injustice, he already knew - knew everything, knew how much Bill wanted this, wanted him, and how scared he was that the only reason he did was because of Jim Kirk.
"...I've never kissed a guy before." He tried to go for lighthearted, but the awkward position he was in, added to the very serious nature of this conversation, made it sound flimsy and transparent. Like he was trying to change the subject, only this was the subject he wanted to avoid, and he prayed without hope that Leonard wouldn't understand that.
He should've known better. Leonard didn't even dignify that with words, or maybe he just thoughts words were unnecessary. So first it was his thumb, slipping into the hollow of Bill's shoulder, and when he put pressure on it, to turn him gently around, Bill did not resist. He couldn't. He couldn't resist Leonard anything.
His eyes had a curious light to them, a dancing kind of humor, and it was so very Leonard and so very not Spock that Bill found his breath catching, in his throat. He was like a teenage girl on prom night - his brain was whispering to him, yes yes yes please yes and he reached up, put a hand on Leonard's chest.
He stopped. He didn't raise an eyebrow, and Bill was painfully glad of that, but he could tell he wanted to. Leonard waited, understanding.
Bill leaned forward, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet, and wound his hand in the fabric of Spock's shirt - wardrobe was going to kill him twice - to anchor himself. To this, to reality, he didn't know what.
And Leonard waited, patiently, until Bill reached up and pressed their lips together, and that's when the world might've ended.
Because, honestly, Bill wouldn't've noticed a thing.
Leonard's lips were warm and a little damp - maybe he'd been thinking about this, too, licking his lips behind the cameras and that thought was absolutely mindblowing. His hands were strong and steady on Bill's shoulders, and he kissed back like chocolate, rich and smooth. Bill felt his knees go weak.
They parted without a sound at all, except the rushing in Bill's ears and the frantic pace of his heart. No. No no no. They can't stop now, they can't just let this go, he can't just kiss Leonard and get on with his life.
Then the hands at his shoulders pushed, and before he could blink he was up against the trailer wall, Leonard's lips on his with bruising force, and it was everything he'd ever wanted. He bucked, and moaned, and he knew for the first time that it wasn't about Captain Kirk, and it wasn't about Star Trek - it was about Bill and Leonard and it didn't matter whether they shot the scene or didn't shoot the scene or whether Kirk and Spock were meant to be.
He wasn't the only one who refused to let this go.
~ out of a dream the past will call ~
Karl had exactly seven days, eight hours, and twenty-four minutes to convince J.J. Abrams that this was a good idea.
He was going to need to call in the cavalry.