Priority One, Kirk/Spock
Title: Priority One
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Word Count: ~2,000
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Written for a very, very old prompt on the st_xi_kink_meme , here. "So um Captcha just gave me the phrase "and Chapped" which makes me totally want chapped-lip porn. Just roughened, chapped lips dragging over smooth, tender flesh, I don't care whose. Please, anon! I need it like burning."
Or, yet again I write ST fic to avoid doing work. Barely edited, apologies for any mistakes or typos.
Summary: After a week in the desert, Kirk's lips are terribly chapped. Spock finds this curious.
Warnings: I don't even know, I think this is rather OOC and also it has no genre, it just meanders about with my mood. Also, warning for no porn. Gratuitous snogging, but no sexing.
Disclaimer: For fun, not profit. I do not own.
“You go on a five year mission and you think you plan everything just right, think you've packed everything you could possible pack, right? You think, extra socks, favorite books...a plant, so you have something green to look at and whatever you forget you can always pick up on a space station or one of any number of planets, right? But no. Because nowhere in the entire galaxy has chapstick Spock, did you know this?”
Spock sits silently through his Captain's rant, as Kirk searches through his drawers and the compartments of his desk like a crazed man.
“Bones doesn't have any either, you know? Which is weird, you'd think he would, he's a doctor.”
“I do not believe that taking care of chapped lips is one of the Doctor's main priorities,” Spock observes.
The Captain gives him a look like he'd forgotten Spock was even in the room.
“Well it should be. New Captain's orders: the health of my lips is priority one.”
“You are being unreasonable-”
“If you knew how my lips felt you'd understand,” Kirk says rather sharply, and dumps a pile of socks on the floor. “A week on a desert, Spock, a hot and waterless desert but I managed, and I'm not about to pass out from dehydration anymore but my lips, my goddamn lips-”
“With all due respect, Captain, I believe there is an Earth expression that is applicable to this situation, and that is, ‘Grow up.’”
Kirk gives him a look, an exasperated and put out look that is more suitable to a child than to a man nearing thirty, but he doesn't answer right away, which Spock takes as a confirmation that he's right. They just stare at each other for a few moments. Then Kirk drops himself down on his bed, limp and tired suddenly, he looks as boneless as a doll, and Spock starts to feel a twinge of sympathy for him. He had enjoyed their week on the planet immensely. But he knew it had taken its toll on his Captain.
He stands up, then, and moves to sit next to Jim.
“I know I'm making a big deal out of nothing,” Kirk says finally. “I used to get chapped lips all the time back home. This is just-urgh,” and he rubs a little at a spot just below his bottom lip, “really annoying. You know?”
“I do not.”
“You've never gotten chapped lips before?” Kirk asks. He makes this sound like something quite impossible and bizarre.
“No.”
“Never once?”
“No, never once.”
Kirk looks as if he's about to ask again, but doesn't. Instead, he clears his throat. He settles differently on the bed; he fidgets. After a moment, he says, “Well,” and then nothing more.
Spock has absolutely no idea what this means and he is just about to ask, curious, when he feels the Captain shift next to him again and then-then a subtle touch of lips to his cheek. It's over before he quite realizes what is happening.
When he turns to look at the Captain again (it takes a few moments, because he'll admit he's a bit shocked), Kirk is sitting there like he didn't do a thing.
So Spock pretends he didn't.
Kirk clears his throat again and asks, “So can you tell?”
“Can I tell what?”
“That my lips are chapped? That they're...scratchy?”
Spock turns to give his Captain a true gaze and answers, “I believe more contact will be necessary to give a proper response, Captain.”
He raises one eyebrow, and Jim’s lips upturn into a smile. Even looking at them, Spock can see where they are cracked and breaking, darker pink, almost red, lines against the natural pink of his mouth.
“Well I think it's rather necessary that you understand this phenomenon, Spock. At whatever cost.”
“I admit I am quite curious.”
Spock has given his permission, given his encouragement, and he and the Captain both know it but still, for several moments, neither moves. Spock’s eyebrow lowers. The Captain’s smile falters, becomes just a slight, almost forced, almost nervous, uptick of his lips, and then fades.
Jim’s eyes are a clear, intense blue.
Spock almost does not realize that he’s moving closer, Jim, that he’s carefully, subtly leaning in, until he feels lips pressed gently against his own.
He doesn’t pull away but for a moment he’s just still, letting himself become accustomed to this new sensation, this strange new thing. Jim is patient, doesn’t move either, waits until Spock starts to kiss him back. Jim shifts closer. He puts his arms around Spock. Spock doesn’t know what to do. But he’s calm. He slips his own arms up and over Jim’s shoulders, hands at his back. It starts to feel right.
Jim’s mouth is as he had warned Spock it would be: rough, almost unpleasant. He can feel the breaking skin of Jim’s lips, now opening against his, tongue soft and slick in comparison, twining with Spock’s, slipping around his mouth.
Jim is making small, low, moaning noises into Spock’s mouth.
He is pushing his body againt Spock’s.
Spock pulls his own body closer, chest against chest, almost sitting in each other’s laps now and one of his hands steadying the back of Jim’s head, touching the cool human skin at the back of his neck. He pulls his mouth away, just the slightest, kisses Jim again, and once more, teasing rub of his own lips against that cracked skin, and then he gently, tries to be gentle, takes Jim’s bottom lip between his teeth and pulls.
“Ow,” Jim whispers, but there’s the sound of laughter in his voice, and he’s smiling that certain half-smile that only humans have. Spock pulls back but just a little, shifts to curl one hand steadyingly around Jim’s bicep. He touches their noses in apology.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No…it’s fine.” His words slide into each other, more breath than words, puffs of air against Spock’s lips. “Probably….shouldn’t be doing this.”
Jim’s eyes are closed. Spock closes his too, and breathes deep.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not you. Really. It’s my lips-I think they might be starting to bleed.”
His breath is something unsteady, perhaps almost like laughter, halfhearted and unsure.
Spock presses his eyes tightly closed, as tight as he can. There’s a hard knot in his stomach. Completely illogical. This is just an experiment. This is nothing.
This is the way he can feel his Captain’s chest rise and fall against his own as he breathes. This is the way his fingers wrap perfectly around his Captain’s arm. This is the way Jim is holding him, the thumb of one hand moving back and forth agianst his shirt, just at his spine, up and down.
“Do you really wish to stop?” Spock asks.
“No.”
Something in his voice is desperate, beautifully desperate, and Spock’s heart beats harder in his side.
They do not stop. They kiss again, tenative, careful. Spock swipes his tongue gently over Jim’s lips, tastes the bitter copper of his human blood.
Jim pushes him back, gentle but no argument in his gesture, no compromise, and Spock is on his back on the Captain’s bed, Jim’s hands running under his blue science shirt and skimming it up off his body and to the floor. He repeats the gesture with Spock’s undershirt, eyes locked to Spock’s as he does, please and I want you and you’re lovely and please, please, please, all perfectly visible, perfectly clear on his face. Spock runs his hands up Jim’s sides, fingers just barely touching but Jim moves with the touch, moving as he moves. Then he is on top of Spock again, body over his body.
Jim kisses him with his cracked and uneven lips, he swipes his tongue through Spock’s mouth, he moans into Spock’s mouth. Almost words. Almost yes, almost I want you, almost Spock’s name, breathy and sweet.
Jim’s mouth moves slowly from Spock’s lips, slipping down to his chin, down his neck. His chapped lips catch on Spock’s smooth skin. It is a curious sensation. Not unpleasant. New. Jim bites gently at Spock’s neck, he tongues the skin, and then he kisses, the fragments of his skin dragging, maddening, wonderful. He drags his lips down Spock’s chest. He leaves faint trails of blood on Spock’s skin and then he licks a clean strip over the spot. He kisses in strange patterns. Sometimes quickly, a series of small touches of lips agains skin, and sometimes slowly, tonguing at one spot just at Spock’s heart or at the base of his rib cage, marking him with his teeth. Spock tries to stay in control. He tries to hold on to Jim, hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt, but what he wants is just to run his hands up and down listlessly, to lose himself.
Jim is kissing at his hips now, the sensitive skin of his waist-the hard edge of his teeth after the impossible scratching of his lips is brutal-Spock writhes his body under this touch. He can feel the upturn of Jim’s lips smiling into his side.
“Do not stop,” he pleads.
Jim laughs softly. Even his breath against Spock’s skin makes Spock squirm.
This is just a pause, certainly just a pause, except that Jim does not move. Spock opens his eyes, lifts his head just enough to see their positions. He is on his back on the bed, but his feet are still on the floor, and in his movements Jim has left the bed entirely. He is kneeling on the floor, running his hands up and down Spock’s legs absently, head in Spock’s lap. “You are…” he breathes. Spock almost doesn’t hear him. He is not sure he is meant to. “You are amazing.”
Spock closes his eyes again.
He lets Jim stay just where he is, does not move because Jim does not move, waits because Jim seems to be waiting. He’s slipped too far away, now; Spock cannot touch him, he keeps his hands still at his sides on the bed.
Eventually, Jim moves to lie down next to Spock again. He settles on his side and rests his head on his hand, and he looks down at Spock lying next to him. His free hand moves to Spock’s chest, wanders from faint mark to faint mark, ghosts across his nipples absently, briefly, and then down, across his stomach, tracing teasingly just above the waistline of his trousers. Slowly. Lightly. His eyes never leave Spock’s own.
Spock has spent many years learning human expressions, learning to read the faces of the people who surround him, and he is proud of his progress. But he cannot read the expression on his Captain’s face now. It is, it seems to be, curious. Serious. The expression of someone trying to figure something out, to solve a problem, to read a difficult text. It is also, perhaps, one might say-it is adoring.
“I’m sorry,” Jim says suddenly, and breaks Spock’s gaze.
“Why are you apologizing?”
Jim is staring, now, somewhere at Spock’s throat. He shrugs, an awkward movement in his current position.
“Feel like I might have gotten carried away.”
His voice, too, is unreadable. Distant, but purposefully so, carefully nonchalent. Spock mirrors the tone.
"I believe I could say the same thing about myself,” he says.
Do not stop.
Jim’s hand has stopped its movements, resting now at Spock’s far side, his arm across Spock’s stomach and his fingers still against his skin. Spock cannot help staring. His own body, his own familiar body, feels different when Jim is near.
He chances a look at Jim’s face and sees, it is not the first thing he sees but after a moment he notices, a drop of red in the middle of his bottom lip.
“You are bleeding,” he says, much quieter than he intended-Jim smiles at the softness of his voice-and then without a thought he maneouvers his arm between them and gently swipes the tip of his thumb across the spot.
He cannot stop looking at Jim’s eyes. He is still staring right into those eyes that stare unflinchingly back at him, as Jim takes Spock’s hand in his and runs his tongue across his thumb, licking it clean. His lips are upturned devilishly. He doesn’t say anything. But Spock hears him.
end