fanfic, Star Trek XI: Itia Monstrum [Part I]
Title: Itia Monstrum
Author: little_laugh writing journal spider_anansi
Pairings: Kirk/Spock
Rating/Warnings: eventual NC-17
Summary: Kirk didn't escape from the Delta Vega ice monster completely unscathed, and all the changes are driving him a little crazy - but not nearly so crazy as his sudden possessiveness over Spock
Author's note: Um, sex, swear words, and dub-con (though there is a happy ending in the works, promise). Oh, also eventual mpreg. It's a st_xi_kink meme fill for this prompt.
Shame? What shame?
It was a tiny thing; a scratch, really, and with Kirk's record, scratches like this one didn't really register anymore, and if they did, he didn't care. It was a scratch, hardly breaking the surface. Okay, there was a little bit of blood, but Jim never even noticed that until almost a full day or more after defeating Nero, destroying the Narada, and saving Earth. And by that point, he was covered in blood and bruises from several other instances (not to mention his broken ribs from all the jumping around he did in that fight with Nero and his fucked-up second in command Ayel), and all those other injuries were a helluva lot more important (they hurt more, too).
So Jim ignored the little scratch on his ankle from where the ice-beast had almost eaten him. And really, in the fervor over everything that had happened (and it was almost too much, for just a day to contain it all) and all the recovery required, who could blame him?
+++++
It was months before anything was noticed:
First to say anything was Sulu.
"Captain, are you... taller?" he asked one day after fencing practice (Sulu had taken to teaching Jim the finer points of fencing after watching the Captain take one too many fists to the face).
"What?" Kirk blinked, a bit nonplussed. "Taller? I don't know; why?"
"Well," Sulu said, rubbing his chin as he regarded Kirk, "it's just that I've been having to readjust a number of my strikes and blocks with you; I keep needing to bring my blows higher for the overheads and your downswings have become a bit more powerful, which would make sense if you were getting taller. Plus, your pants and shirtsleeves have been getting shorter."
"Huh," Kirk replied, draping his towel behind his neck. "Let's find out?" he offered, turning to head for the showers. "Bones'll probably be able to tell us."
After the shower, when they get to Sickbay, Bones grouses at them for a few minutes before complying.
"And while you're here you're getting that damn check-up you skipped last month," the CMO said, pointing threateningly at Jim with one hand while fiddling with a tricorder in the other.
"Aww, Bones!" Jim half-whined. "C'mon, can't I do that later?" All he got in reply was a flat stare from Bones and stifled chuckles from Sulu. "Fine, fine," Jim grumped over the beeping of the tricorder.
"Well Jim," McCoy said a few moments later, "Sulu was right, and you should start replicating new uniforms. You've grown six inches, at least."
"Six inches?" Jim blinked. "Really?"
"That's some growth spurt," Sulu said in some admiration.
"Yeah," Jim agreed. "Well, that's taken care of, back to work!" And he scampered out of Sickbay before McCoy could stop him.
"Dammit, Jim!"
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
It's another two months (and Jim grows another inch, making him very noticeably taller than Spock now; which is actually rather disconcerting to some of the crew) before anybody notices the next bit, and that's only because Jim manages to return form an away mission not bruised or bloody or beaten in other ways. It's Ensign Abendroth who tells the crew what happened, as McCoy has Kirk sequestered away in the Sickbay running all the tests he can, because God knows that the day James Tiberius Kirk comes back from a dangerous away mission is the day that all should be very, very careful.
And according to Abendroth it was indeed a rather dangerous time down on the planet's surface, and seeing as there were two other red shirts that went with them and didn't come back (which was normal for away missions with Kirk), this was not disputed, no matter the Captain's miraculously unscathed survival.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
The planet didn't look that dangerous, really it didn't. Who would ever suspect small, fluffy, rabbit-like animals?
Though, if they'd known that the 'rabbits' had teeth like beavers, a mean streak a mile wide, and a taste for meat (and especially human necks), well then! Everything would have turned out differently now, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, none of the away team had known any of this until the first red shirt (Ensign Abasi) went down, victim to what looked like a white and gray spotted mini-lop. A British Giant look-a-like took down the other red shirt, Ensign Vinci.
It was a brown Dwarf that headed with unnatural speed and a high pitched cry (just like the other two that took down Vinci and Abasi) toward Abendroth, so quickly that he could only hear the thing coming at him and he knew, he knew, that this was going to be it and why oh why had he volunteered to go on an away mission with the Captain? Captain Kirk was a wonderful man and an admirable Captain, but he was hell on the Security personnel and really, on anybody who went planet-side with him.
So when Abendroth didn't feel the sharp, beaver-like teeth sinking into his neck, his eyes popped open, and the sight before him... well, it was unexpected, to say the least. Captain Kirk stood in front of Abendroth, in a firm, steady defensive stance, left arm extended away from his body as if it had struck something, and the carnivorous brown Dwarf rabbit-creature was... about sixteen feet to the left of them, which led Abendroth to believe that Kirk had... well, smacked the creature away with his bare hands.
But... the rabbit things are... How's the Captain that bloody fast? Abendroth wondered absently, still not quite believing that he was alive, and saved by Captain Kirk, trouble magnet of the Universe.
"Kirk to Enterprise! Beam us up now!"
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"So yeah," Abendroth concludes to his rather rapt audience, "carnivorous rabbits with super-speed and the Captain's just as fast and I tell you I will never see anything weirder in my life."
Once in Sickbay, Bones pounced.
"What the hell happened down there, Jim?" Bones growled as he went over his Captain and best friend with the determination of a man actively looking for injury. "Two ensigns dead and you unscathed? Abendroth is saying you're the only reason he got out of there alive!"
"I dunno, Bones," Jim replied, oddly subdued, and McCoy latches onto this. "I just... I dunno."
"What's going on, Jim," McCoy said calmly, his voice low and gravelly in his concern, but also professional in its crisp decisiveness to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. "No offense, but it's usually you being saved on away missions, not you doing the saving. And from what I've heard from Abendroth and you, those rabbit-creatures were damn fast."
"Yeah. But so am I."
Bones studied the subdued man before him for several moments. "Okay, yeah, that's weird," he said finally. "But not unwelcome, in this case, and especially if you can keep it up and use it in other situations."
"Bones..."
And there it is, the tone that McCoy has never heard from Jim except maybe twice, and all his senses are on alert now, because suddenly this is even more serious than it was before - Jim sounded worried.
"I'm stronger, too," Jim continued, still looking at his knees where they bent over the edge of the biobed, leaving his legs to dangle in the air between bed and floor. "I tested it out, and I can bench press over a thousand pounds."
Bones stared in disbelief.
"One thousand... over one thousand? With your bare hands? Dammit, Jim!" At a loss for anything else to say, Bones repeated, "One thousand pounds?" then continued with, "Jim, that's... that's the same as the twenty-first century world record, and it hasn't been topped since except by a couple pounds. How much exactly can you lift?"
"With one hand or two?"
"Two hands."
"One thousand six hundred and seventy-two pounds."
Silence. Then,
"Dammit, Jim." Another pause, during which Jim still refused to raise his eyes and McCoy continued to stare down at his best friend. "... how the hell can you lift that much without your heart giving out? You don't have the physique to lift that kind of weight."
"I don't know, Bones."
"I hear an 'and' in there. What else has happened?" Bones demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm your CMO, and your friend, dammit. Tell me!"
"You mean about other than being freakishly fast or super strong?"
"Yes, Jim, other than that."
Jim mumbled something after several seconds, and as experienced a doctor as he was, even McCoy couldn't interpret it.
"Say again?" Bones prompted calmly, quietly, determined to wait as long as necessary to hear whatever it was his Captain had been hiding.
Jim was silent a few moments longer, before taking a deep breath and saying, "I... I smell things better. Like, everything's almost too strong. I can..." And here Jim blushes, and McCoy stared in fascination because Jim Kirk never blushes, "I can even smell, y'know, body stuff."
"'Body stuff'... You mean like - ?"
"Yeah," Jim said with a nod. "And my hearing's better, and my sight and I'm more sensitive to touching things and tasting things and..."
"Your senses have been heightened?" Bones asked finally, after another several moments of silence. This was... he had no words to describe the medical impossibilities going on here. Then again, it was James Tiberius Kirk, and God knows that the Universe loved throwing impossibilities at the one man who would make them all possible and real.
"Yeah," Jim said, nodding. "All of 'em, and sometimes..." Here he paused, and looked up at Bones through thick blond eyelashes.
"The headaches three months ago, and since," McCoy said with dawning insight. "Your senses were too strong, and it gave you those headaches that we thought were a reaction to the vegetation from Gielbhert." Jim nodded in reply. "You never do anything by halves, do you, Jim?" McCoy asked in almost affectionate exasperation. Jim grinned wryly, finally looking up from his knees.
"Guess not," he joked dryly. "Diagnosis, doc?"
Bones snorted. "You need a drink," he said succinctly, reaching into a nearby cabinet to pull out two glasses. A bottle of Saurian brandy appeared out of a different drawer, and was generously poured into the two glasses.
"To the Superman of the Enterprise," McCoy toasted dryly, raising his glass.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Bones let the crew - and Commander Spock - know that the Captain really was perfectly fine before he and Jim got too soused to be good for anything. It was over the course of their drinking that the details of these changes began to come out.
"So, Chekov, he smells like vodka, right? But he smells like snow, too, y'know?" Jim told Bones after the second brandy. He's not drunk yet, he just feels the need to talk because he knows this is never going to go any farther than this room, than Bones' office right here.
"Snow and vodka, huh?" Bones said into his glass.
"Yeah. Sulu smells like weed, sometimes, but mostly it's just gingko. Scotty, it's grease, sweat, sandwiches, and Chekov, actually." Bones sputtered at that. "And yeah, I can smell that, too," Jim continued blithely. "But mostly Scotty smells like heather and wide open spaces. Uhura's got this musty scent, but it's nice; like a library." Jim fell silent then, staring into his brandy before taking a huge sip.
"You smell like peaches," Jim said finally. "Peaches and thunderstorms," he adds before McCoy can sputter and growl about how emasculating it is to smell like peaches. "You smell like medicine, too, and sometimes you smell sterile." Jim paused a moment. "I hate that," he said, almost vehemently. "I hate it when you smell sterilized and don't have a scent. 'S not right."
And he is a little drunk now, but neither of them minds, not really. After a few more moments of silence, McCoy finally asked,
"What does Spock smell like?"
And Jim is quiet, again, but there's a different sense to this quiet, a sense that Bones would have caught onto much more easily had he been sober; he would have caught on and realized that something was changing right here, and right now. Something important.
"Sand," Jim said, almost in a growl. "Hot sand, like a desert, and steel. Sharp, tangy..." The word Alien hovered between them, but Jim silently added Exotic, and McCoy couldn't hear that one.
"What about you?"
Jim shrugged. "Can't smell myself," he muttered, downing the last of his third (or was it fourth?) brandy. "Hear my heart and breathing, though. Hear everyone else's, too, an' if I look close I can see their pulse." He reached out, poured himself another, and took a swallow. "'S crazy, man."
Bones nodded in agreement, then sighed and reached into a drawer for alco-block hypos. He took one and pressed it to his own neck, depressing the trigger with the familiar hiss and click. The blocker took effect quickly, blocking any more alcohol from being absorbed into his system and clearing out any that had been, sobering him up relatively quickly.
"Come on, Jim," McCoy said heavily, pulling out another alco-block, "you need that physical exam, now."
Author: little_laugh writing journal spider_anansi
Pairings: Kirk/Spock
Rating/Warnings: eventual NC-17
Summary: Kirk didn't escape from the Delta Vega ice monster completely unscathed, and all the changes are driving him a little crazy - but not nearly so crazy as his sudden possessiveness over Spock
Author's note: Um, sex, swear words, and dub-con (though there is a happy ending in the works, promise). Oh, also eventual mpreg. It's a st_xi_kink meme fill for this prompt.
Shame? What shame?
It was a tiny thing; a scratch, really, and with Kirk's record, scratches like this one didn't really register anymore, and if they did, he didn't care. It was a scratch, hardly breaking the surface. Okay, there was a little bit of blood, but Jim never even noticed that until almost a full day or more after defeating Nero, destroying the Narada, and saving Earth. And by that point, he was covered in blood and bruises from several other instances (not to mention his broken ribs from all the jumping around he did in that fight with Nero and his fucked-up second in command Ayel), and all those other injuries were a helluva lot more important (they hurt more, too).
So Jim ignored the little scratch on his ankle from where the ice-beast had almost eaten him. And really, in the fervor over everything that had happened (and it was almost too much, for just a day to contain it all) and all the recovery required, who could blame him?
+++++
It was months before anything was noticed:
First to say anything was Sulu.
"Captain, are you... taller?" he asked one day after fencing practice (Sulu had taken to teaching Jim the finer points of fencing after watching the Captain take one too many fists to the face).
"What?" Kirk blinked, a bit nonplussed. "Taller? I don't know; why?"
"Well," Sulu said, rubbing his chin as he regarded Kirk, "it's just that I've been having to readjust a number of my strikes and blocks with you; I keep needing to bring my blows higher for the overheads and your downswings have become a bit more powerful, which would make sense if you were getting taller. Plus, your pants and shirtsleeves have been getting shorter."
"Huh," Kirk replied, draping his towel behind his neck. "Let's find out?" he offered, turning to head for the showers. "Bones'll probably be able to tell us."
After the shower, when they get to Sickbay, Bones grouses at them for a few minutes before complying.
"And while you're here you're getting that damn check-up you skipped last month," the CMO said, pointing threateningly at Jim with one hand while fiddling with a tricorder in the other.
"Aww, Bones!" Jim half-whined. "C'mon, can't I do that later?" All he got in reply was a flat stare from Bones and stifled chuckles from Sulu. "Fine, fine," Jim grumped over the beeping of the tricorder.
"Well Jim," McCoy said a few moments later, "Sulu was right, and you should start replicating new uniforms. You've grown six inches, at least."
"Six inches?" Jim blinked. "Really?"
"That's some growth spurt," Sulu said in some admiration.
"Yeah," Jim agreed. "Well, that's taken care of, back to work!" And he scampered out of Sickbay before McCoy could stop him.
"Dammit, Jim!"
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
It's another two months (and Jim grows another inch, making him very noticeably taller than Spock now; which is actually rather disconcerting to some of the crew) before anybody notices the next bit, and that's only because Jim manages to return form an away mission not bruised or bloody or beaten in other ways. It's Ensign Abendroth who tells the crew what happened, as McCoy has Kirk sequestered away in the Sickbay running all the tests he can, because God knows that the day James Tiberius Kirk comes back from a dangerous away mission is the day that all should be very, very careful.
And according to Abendroth it was indeed a rather dangerous time down on the planet's surface, and seeing as there were two other red shirts that went with them and didn't come back (which was normal for away missions with Kirk), this was not disputed, no matter the Captain's miraculously unscathed survival.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
The planet didn't look that dangerous, really it didn't. Who would ever suspect small, fluffy, rabbit-like animals?
Though, if they'd known that the 'rabbits' had teeth like beavers, a mean streak a mile wide, and a taste for meat (and especially human necks), well then! Everything would have turned out differently now, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, none of the away team had known any of this until the first red shirt (Ensign Abasi) went down, victim to what looked like a white and gray spotted mini-lop. A British Giant look-a-like took down the other red shirt, Ensign Vinci.
It was a brown Dwarf that headed with unnatural speed and a high pitched cry (just like the other two that took down Vinci and Abasi) toward Abendroth, so quickly that he could only hear the thing coming at him and he knew, he knew, that this was going to be it and why oh why had he volunteered to go on an away mission with the Captain? Captain Kirk was a wonderful man and an admirable Captain, but he was hell on the Security personnel and really, on anybody who went planet-side with him.
So when Abendroth didn't feel the sharp, beaver-like teeth sinking into his neck, his eyes popped open, and the sight before him... well, it was unexpected, to say the least. Captain Kirk stood in front of Abendroth, in a firm, steady defensive stance, left arm extended away from his body as if it had struck something, and the carnivorous brown Dwarf rabbit-creature was... about sixteen feet to the left of them, which led Abendroth to believe that Kirk had... well, smacked the creature away with his bare hands.
But... the rabbit things are... How's the Captain that bloody fast? Abendroth wondered absently, still not quite believing that he was alive, and saved by Captain Kirk, trouble magnet of the Universe.
"Kirk to Enterprise! Beam us up now!"
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"So yeah," Abendroth concludes to his rather rapt audience, "carnivorous rabbits with super-speed and the Captain's just as fast and I tell you I will never see anything weirder in my life."
Once in Sickbay, Bones pounced.
"What the hell happened down there, Jim?" Bones growled as he went over his Captain and best friend with the determination of a man actively looking for injury. "Two ensigns dead and you unscathed? Abendroth is saying you're the only reason he got out of there alive!"
"I dunno, Bones," Jim replied, oddly subdued, and McCoy latches onto this. "I just... I dunno."
"What's going on, Jim," McCoy said calmly, his voice low and gravelly in his concern, but also professional in its crisp decisiveness to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. "No offense, but it's usually you being saved on away missions, not you doing the saving. And from what I've heard from Abendroth and you, those rabbit-creatures were damn fast."
"Yeah. But so am I."
Bones studied the subdued man before him for several moments. "Okay, yeah, that's weird," he said finally. "But not unwelcome, in this case, and especially if you can keep it up and use it in other situations."
"Bones..."
And there it is, the tone that McCoy has never heard from Jim except maybe twice, and all his senses are on alert now, because suddenly this is even more serious than it was before - Jim sounded worried.
"I'm stronger, too," Jim continued, still looking at his knees where they bent over the edge of the biobed, leaving his legs to dangle in the air between bed and floor. "I tested it out, and I can bench press over a thousand pounds."
Bones stared in disbelief.
"One thousand... over one thousand? With your bare hands? Dammit, Jim!" At a loss for anything else to say, Bones repeated, "One thousand pounds?" then continued with, "Jim, that's... that's the same as the twenty-first century world record, and it hasn't been topped since except by a couple pounds. How much exactly can you lift?"
"With one hand or two?"
"Two hands."
"One thousand six hundred and seventy-two pounds."
Silence. Then,
"Dammit, Jim." Another pause, during which Jim still refused to raise his eyes and McCoy continued to stare down at his best friend. "... how the hell can you lift that much without your heart giving out? You don't have the physique to lift that kind of weight."
"I don't know, Bones."
"I hear an 'and' in there. What else has happened?" Bones demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm your CMO, and your friend, dammit. Tell me!"
"You mean about other than being freakishly fast or super strong?"
"Yes, Jim, other than that."
Jim mumbled something after several seconds, and as experienced a doctor as he was, even McCoy couldn't interpret it.
"Say again?" Bones prompted calmly, quietly, determined to wait as long as necessary to hear whatever it was his Captain had been hiding.
Jim was silent a few moments longer, before taking a deep breath and saying, "I... I smell things better. Like, everything's almost too strong. I can..." And here Jim blushes, and McCoy stared in fascination because Jim Kirk never blushes, "I can even smell, y'know, body stuff."
"'Body stuff'... You mean like - ?"
"Yeah," Jim said with a nod. "And my hearing's better, and my sight and I'm more sensitive to touching things and tasting things and..."
"Your senses have been heightened?" Bones asked finally, after another several moments of silence. This was... he had no words to describe the medical impossibilities going on here. Then again, it was James Tiberius Kirk, and God knows that the Universe loved throwing impossibilities at the one man who would make them all possible and real.
"Yeah," Jim said, nodding. "All of 'em, and sometimes..." Here he paused, and looked up at Bones through thick blond eyelashes.
"The headaches three months ago, and since," McCoy said with dawning insight. "Your senses were too strong, and it gave you those headaches that we thought were a reaction to the vegetation from Gielbhert." Jim nodded in reply. "You never do anything by halves, do you, Jim?" McCoy asked in almost affectionate exasperation. Jim grinned wryly, finally looking up from his knees.
"Guess not," he joked dryly. "Diagnosis, doc?"
Bones snorted. "You need a drink," he said succinctly, reaching into a nearby cabinet to pull out two glasses. A bottle of Saurian brandy appeared out of a different drawer, and was generously poured into the two glasses.
"To the Superman of the Enterprise," McCoy toasted dryly, raising his glass.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Bones let the crew - and Commander Spock - know that the Captain really was perfectly fine before he and Jim got too soused to be good for anything. It was over the course of their drinking that the details of these changes began to come out.
"So, Chekov, he smells like vodka, right? But he smells like snow, too, y'know?" Jim told Bones after the second brandy. He's not drunk yet, he just feels the need to talk because he knows this is never going to go any farther than this room, than Bones' office right here.
"Snow and vodka, huh?" Bones said into his glass.
"Yeah. Sulu smells like weed, sometimes, but mostly it's just gingko. Scotty, it's grease, sweat, sandwiches, and Chekov, actually." Bones sputtered at that. "And yeah, I can smell that, too," Jim continued blithely. "But mostly Scotty smells like heather and wide open spaces. Uhura's got this musty scent, but it's nice; like a library." Jim fell silent then, staring into his brandy before taking a huge sip.
"You smell like peaches," Jim said finally. "Peaches and thunderstorms," he adds before McCoy can sputter and growl about how emasculating it is to smell like peaches. "You smell like medicine, too, and sometimes you smell sterile." Jim paused a moment. "I hate that," he said, almost vehemently. "I hate it when you smell sterilized and don't have a scent. 'S not right."
And he is a little drunk now, but neither of them minds, not really. After a few more moments of silence, McCoy finally asked,
"What does Spock smell like?"
And Jim is quiet, again, but there's a different sense to this quiet, a sense that Bones would have caught onto much more easily had he been sober; he would have caught on and realized that something was changing right here, and right now. Something important.
"Sand," Jim said, almost in a growl. "Hot sand, like a desert, and steel. Sharp, tangy..." The word Alien hovered between them, but Jim silently added Exotic, and McCoy couldn't hear that one.
"What about you?"
Jim shrugged. "Can't smell myself," he muttered, downing the last of his third (or was it fourth?) brandy. "Hear my heart and breathing, though. Hear everyone else's, too, an' if I look close I can see their pulse." He reached out, poured himself another, and took a swallow. "'S crazy, man."
Bones nodded in agreement, then sighed and reached into a drawer for alco-block hypos. He took one and pressed it to his own neck, depressing the trigger with the familiar hiss and click. The blocker took effect quickly, blocking any more alcohol from being absorbed into his system and clearing out any that had been, sobering him up relatively quickly.
"Come on, Jim," McCoy said heavily, pulling out another alco-block, "you need that physical exam, now."