Fic: Xanadu (1/1)
Title: Xanadu
Rating: R
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Word Count: 1,067
Summary: Nothing is real, nothing is sacred, and nothing, absolutely nothing lasts; or, relishing the comedown. For the cliche_bingo Prompt - Getting Physical: Touching, Hugging and Cuddling. Sister-story to Shangri-La. Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009).
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: Really just an experiment with literary impressionism that got way out of hand.
Xanadu
The warmth, the friction between them condenses on the aluminum - clear like water, still as the dead - and their fingerprints smear at strange counterpoints, testaments to their very existence in that exquisite moment in which nothing is real, nothing is sacred, and nothing, absolutely nothing lasts.
Pressed into the viewport, Jim’s hands slip against the surface, and it’s without thinking, instinctive, that he reaches out to fold his fingers over those clinging, desperate hands and runs rough, but sure thumbs across Jim’s knuckles. His palms are soft, limp in Leonard’s own, and they yield where Jim as a whole never does, never could, and that in itself is a gift, he thinks; a temptation and a blessing and a taste of the Forbidden-fucking-Fruit, the give of those hands. The soft valley of his skin, just in the dip of his spine, is still innocent, somehow - still pure, and Leonard presses himself against it, molds himself into that ridge, running his tongue against the soft pull of vertebrae, the tug of the bone from below, sucking joyous life from that fleshy Pool of Bethesda, brimming with sweat and surrender, like wine against his lips.
He stares out at the moon below as he trails his mouth along the line of Jim’s jaw, watching the subtle glow play along their wasted frames, bodies so drained, like white dwarfs turning black, like hearts just waiting to give out. He breathes, lungs trembling as his thighs, slick with both their seed, cling to Jim’s, stinging at the pull of skin on skin, like punishment for even thinking to let go. The heat between them starts to dissipate, and they gravitate just that bit closer, the space of a breath, and his eyes flutter closed as his chest caves into the shape of Jim’s body - gives where his curves and makes up the difference.
And Leonard believes, in that singular moment, that he and Jim are those valleys, those plateaus in the surface below, shifting to accommodate, to complement, to bend around in time - they are the light and the dark staring up at them, just as helpless and twice as profound; as sure as he’s breathing, he knows that it’s them. And Leonard surrenders to it, to that dichotomous passion play that sketches doom and hope across the stars in equal measure, and he tries not to cringe as he waits it out, watches as it fades, because he needs to see this through to its end, has to see it die to know that it ever really lived.
The shiver that passes through them both is like the touch of ice against their chests, and it trembles through their blood like the echoing of infinity, the boundless call of forever, and when his eyes snap open, the soft brushstrokes of the cosmos are gone, dull in the periphery, and all he can see is the reflection of eyes so blue, so fierce and full; like the heart and soul of the whole fucking ocean, of every ocean, suspended in the black of everlasting night, catching the flicker of its own raucous light. They’re the same eyes that watched him from beneath the shadow of a shuttle, yearning in perfect synchrony with the ache in Leonard’s chest at the very thought of leaving those baby blues behind. Something visceral, pervasive within him clenches at the memory, at the selfish desire that had ultimately placed an unruly cadet onboard the Enterprise that fateful day, and he wonders idly if the world will ever know that it was love that saved them, just love - because while the word hasn’t passed between them yet (and likely never will), it’s a battle Leonard has long since lost to keep it from coloring his thoughts, from shaping his lips against that supple skin.
He wonders sometimes, in moments like these, how it came to this; how he came to this. How, when feeling had forever been too much for him, in everything, he arrived without intending to in a place where he simply couldn’t seem to feel enough. He thinks about the variables, the small changes in himself, in the world around him, the infinite possibilities in which this doesn’t exist, in which the judge ruled a day later, in which he hadn’t drank that second bottle of Jack and slept through the first recruitment shuttle of the month; in which he’d never sat next to a bloodstained farm boy, and he’d never ended up pressed against this feverish warmth, sated and sure as they breathe out of tandem, out of sync. There are times he finds that he can’t breathe around the thought that this might never have happened; there are times when he can’t breathe around the thought that it has. All he knows is that he isn’t entirely sure he remembers how to be without the man curved against him - hard and soft, somehow, at the very same time.
He lets his lips close around the base of Jim’s skull, each breath a hidden whisper, and when Jim shudders beneath the touch, Leonard knows what it means to hope in this life, what it means to reject possibility and fly without wings and damn the consequences, even as you fall. With a sigh like the shrug of Atlas, he slips out of Jim, who slumps - not forward, but back - like he knows that he’ll be caught, and all the things he can never say, the words he will never make his own don’t seem to matter any more, don’t seem to forge a gap so wide. He moves with the shifting of the world on its axis, of the man in his arms, bracing Jim’s weight against him, and the frantic quiver of the heart slides against his palm, shaking through the skin, is the most exquisite thing that Leonard’s ever known.
The dust settles and the storm clears, and even so, that beat remains - and Jim’s chin scrapes the space between Leonard’s fingers, and Jim’s breath skids across his skin like an oil slick, a pirouette; Jim’s chest heaves with the weight of the world and the promise of the dawn against all odds; and by god, that beat remains.
Rating: R
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Word Count: 1,067
Summary: Nothing is real, nothing is sacred, and nothing, absolutely nothing lasts; or, relishing the comedown. For the cliche_bingo Prompt - Getting Physical: Touching, Hugging and Cuddling. Sister-story to Shangri-La. Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009).
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: Really just an experiment with literary impressionism that got way out of hand.
Xanadu
The warmth, the friction between them condenses on the aluminum - clear like water, still as the dead - and their fingerprints smear at strange counterpoints, testaments to their very existence in that exquisite moment in which nothing is real, nothing is sacred, and nothing, absolutely nothing lasts.
Pressed into the viewport, Jim’s hands slip against the surface, and it’s without thinking, instinctive, that he reaches out to fold his fingers over those clinging, desperate hands and runs rough, but sure thumbs across Jim’s knuckles. His palms are soft, limp in Leonard’s own, and they yield where Jim as a whole never does, never could, and that in itself is a gift, he thinks; a temptation and a blessing and a taste of the Forbidden-fucking-Fruit, the give of those hands. The soft valley of his skin, just in the dip of his spine, is still innocent, somehow - still pure, and Leonard presses himself against it, molds himself into that ridge, running his tongue against the soft pull of vertebrae, the tug of the bone from below, sucking joyous life from that fleshy Pool of Bethesda, brimming with sweat and surrender, like wine against his lips.
He stares out at the moon below as he trails his mouth along the line of Jim’s jaw, watching the subtle glow play along their wasted frames, bodies so drained, like white dwarfs turning black, like hearts just waiting to give out. He breathes, lungs trembling as his thighs, slick with both their seed, cling to Jim’s, stinging at the pull of skin on skin, like punishment for even thinking to let go. The heat between them starts to dissipate, and they gravitate just that bit closer, the space of a breath, and his eyes flutter closed as his chest caves into the shape of Jim’s body - gives where his curves and makes up the difference.
And Leonard believes, in that singular moment, that he and Jim are those valleys, those plateaus in the surface below, shifting to accommodate, to complement, to bend around in time - they are the light and the dark staring up at them, just as helpless and twice as profound; as sure as he’s breathing, he knows that it’s them. And Leonard surrenders to it, to that dichotomous passion play that sketches doom and hope across the stars in equal measure, and he tries not to cringe as he waits it out, watches as it fades, because he needs to see this through to its end, has to see it die to know that it ever really lived.
The shiver that passes through them both is like the touch of ice against their chests, and it trembles through their blood like the echoing of infinity, the boundless call of forever, and when his eyes snap open, the soft brushstrokes of the cosmos are gone, dull in the periphery, and all he can see is the reflection of eyes so blue, so fierce and full; like the heart and soul of the whole fucking ocean, of every ocean, suspended in the black of everlasting night, catching the flicker of its own raucous light. They’re the same eyes that watched him from beneath the shadow of a shuttle, yearning in perfect synchrony with the ache in Leonard’s chest at the very thought of leaving those baby blues behind. Something visceral, pervasive within him clenches at the memory, at the selfish desire that had ultimately placed an unruly cadet onboard the Enterprise that fateful day, and he wonders idly if the world will ever know that it was love that saved them, just love - because while the word hasn’t passed between them yet (and likely never will), it’s a battle Leonard has long since lost to keep it from coloring his thoughts, from shaping his lips against that supple skin.
He wonders sometimes, in moments like these, how it came to this; how he came to this. How, when feeling had forever been too much for him, in everything, he arrived without intending to in a place where he simply couldn’t seem to feel enough. He thinks about the variables, the small changes in himself, in the world around him, the infinite possibilities in which this doesn’t exist, in which the judge ruled a day later, in which he hadn’t drank that second bottle of Jack and slept through the first recruitment shuttle of the month; in which he’d never sat next to a bloodstained farm boy, and he’d never ended up pressed against this feverish warmth, sated and sure as they breathe out of tandem, out of sync. There are times he finds that he can’t breathe around the thought that this might never have happened; there are times when he can’t breathe around the thought that it has. All he knows is that he isn’t entirely sure he remembers how to be without the man curved against him - hard and soft, somehow, at the very same time.
He lets his lips close around the base of Jim’s skull, each breath a hidden whisper, and when Jim shudders beneath the touch, Leonard knows what it means to hope in this life, what it means to reject possibility and fly without wings and damn the consequences, even as you fall. With a sigh like the shrug of Atlas, he slips out of Jim, who slumps - not forward, but back - like he knows that he’ll be caught, and all the things he can never say, the words he will never make his own don’t seem to matter any more, don’t seem to forge a gap so wide. He moves with the shifting of the world on its axis, of the man in his arms, bracing Jim’s weight against him, and the frantic quiver of the heart slides against his palm, shaking through the skin, is the most exquisite thing that Leonard’s ever known.
The dust settles and the storm clears, and even so, that beat remains - and Jim’s chin scrapes the space between Leonard’s fingers, and Jim’s breath skids across his skin like an oil slick, a pirouette; Jim’s chest heaves with the weight of the world and the promise of the dawn against all odds; and by god, that beat remains.