FIC: Outlier
Title: Outlier
Characters/Pairings: Sarek/Amanda
Rating/Warnings: R, no warnings
Summary: There is no word in his language for a woman one makes love to who is not one's wife. Written for the where_no_woman new year drabblefest.
Author's note: igrockspock wrote a beautiful response to prompt #21 for Sarek and Amanda, from Sarek's point of view. This isn't a remix of her story, but it arose from the process of steeping in her beautiful words and ideas overnight.
This is a response to prompts 17 & 21:
17. You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
21. You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.
The first time, Amanda has no expectation of success. She's fairly certain, in fact, that none is possible, that the question of what she will be to Sarek has already been answered, long before they met. Sarek is a scholar of Vulcan culture; no doubt he could point out exactly where the prohibition lies, if she were to ask so bluntly.
But he offers no such information. He simply asks her to dinner, then to the theater, then to a series of receptions at the embassy, where as Ambassador to Earth his choice of guests requires no explanation.
Tonight it was the opera, and afterward drinks, glasses of sweet Andorian wine in the plush lounge of a hotel overlooking the bay. The amber glow of the lamp threw his features into relief as he described to her the Vulcan tradition of epic song, the performances that last for days, at the end of which there is no applause.
"The performers are aware that their efforts are sufficient," he says. But she detects a wry note in his voice, and when she laughs he glances up at her, seemingly pleased.
Now in her tiny apartment, still flushed from the wine, Amanda returns from hanging her coat to find him standing at the window. She chose this apartment for its view, and she's noticed his fascination with it, with the millions of tiny lights laid out in grids and curves, all reaching like eager arms toward the dark expanse of the water.
Sarek turns when she enters. The word that comes into her mind is beautiful. He is, in that way that something strong and immovable is beautiful.
Maybe that's why she does what she does. Or maybe it's the memory of that note in his voice, accompanied by the slight quirk of his mouth that told her there is more to this story that I cannot say. She sees him, suddenly, not in his dignity and privilege, but as a man, solitary, whose life is described by boundaries that bear no more relationship to the real shape of his being than a compass circle drawn on a map describes a country.
His mouth, when she kisses him, opens against hers with a readiness she doesn't expect. When she presses him, a little dizzy with her sudden success, he moves, backing up the few feet to the bed, and when there is no more room, he sits.
He looks up at her, the expression in his dark eyes unreadable. It may be passion, or fear, or a compound of every Vulcan warning, every belief about the dangers of impulsiveness, of acting without logic, of giving in to desire. If she asks, he will tell her, and the moment will be broken. So instead she cups his face in her hands, her fingertips tracing the delicate points of his ears, and when his hands leave the mattress to rest tentatively on her hips she kisses him again, and feels him tremble.
It occurs to her, dimly, that Sarek has no wife. Not in the way it's occurred to her before, when she was considering whether to date him; but in all its implications for him, as a proper Vulcan male. How long can it have been since he touched a woman, or was touched in this way, with tenderness and desire?
His adherence to Vulcan propriety is not an act, she knows. He believes sincerely in the values and traditions of his people. Yet the fact that at this moment he is sitting on her bed allowing her--a woman to whom he is not married or even betrothed--to kiss him in a manner that clearly promises the fulfillment of carnal desire does not, somehow, strike her as contradictory. Not even when he hooks his fingers in the backs of her knees and pulls her onto his lap, kissing her back with a heated urgency that leaves no room for doubt about his intent to reciprocate.
He is here. He has sought her, come looking for her--she whose humanness alone already places her at the perimeter, so far from the civilized center of his world that one little alteration could put her right outside of it. Taking her to the opera is just permissible enough. Taking her to bed is a headlong plunge across the boundary and into the wilderness.
And yet. He looks up at her with eyes both dark and lit with fire, and she knows he's not leaving.
There is no word in his language for a woman one makes love to who is not one's wife. There is no word for the sensation of a human mind when touched by a Vulcan one at the moment of physical joining; nor for the sound he makes when he surrenders himself to her, a cry that is both ecstatic and bereft.
He is purely Vulcan in all his parts. Even in this he is Vulcan; and her heart aches in sympathy for the pain the contradiction must cause him. There is no word in his language for the way a boundary can be drawn wrongly--how something beloved or necessary might by chance be left outside it, and need to be fought for, and retrieved.
It doesn't matter. The universe is vast, and she's a linguist, after all. She cradles the precious warmth of his body, and welcomes him to the new world.
Characters/Pairings: Sarek/Amanda
Rating/Warnings: R, no warnings
Summary: There is no word in his language for a woman one makes love to who is not one's wife. Written for the where_no_woman new year drabblefest.
Author's note: igrockspock wrote a beautiful response to prompt #21 for Sarek and Amanda, from Sarek's point of view. This isn't a remix of her story, but it arose from the process of steeping in her beautiful words and ideas overnight.
This is a response to prompts 17 & 21:
17. You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
21. You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.
The first time, Amanda has no expectation of success. She's fairly certain, in fact, that none is possible, that the question of what she will be to Sarek has already been answered, long before they met. Sarek is a scholar of Vulcan culture; no doubt he could point out exactly where the prohibition lies, if she were to ask so bluntly.
But he offers no such information. He simply asks her to dinner, then to the theater, then to a series of receptions at the embassy, where as Ambassador to Earth his choice of guests requires no explanation.
Tonight it was the opera, and afterward drinks, glasses of sweet Andorian wine in the plush lounge of a hotel overlooking the bay. The amber glow of the lamp threw his features into relief as he described to her the Vulcan tradition of epic song, the performances that last for days, at the end of which there is no applause.
"The performers are aware that their efforts are sufficient," he says. But she detects a wry note in his voice, and when she laughs he glances up at her, seemingly pleased.
Now in her tiny apartment, still flushed from the wine, Amanda returns from hanging her coat to find him standing at the window. She chose this apartment for its view, and she's noticed his fascination with it, with the millions of tiny lights laid out in grids and curves, all reaching like eager arms toward the dark expanse of the water.
Sarek turns when she enters. The word that comes into her mind is beautiful. He is, in that way that something strong and immovable is beautiful.
Maybe that's why she does what she does. Or maybe it's the memory of that note in his voice, accompanied by the slight quirk of his mouth that told her there is more to this story that I cannot say. She sees him, suddenly, not in his dignity and privilege, but as a man, solitary, whose life is described by boundaries that bear no more relationship to the real shape of his being than a compass circle drawn on a map describes a country.
His mouth, when she kisses him, opens against hers with a readiness she doesn't expect. When she presses him, a little dizzy with her sudden success, he moves, backing up the few feet to the bed, and when there is no more room, he sits.
He looks up at her, the expression in his dark eyes unreadable. It may be passion, or fear, or a compound of every Vulcan warning, every belief about the dangers of impulsiveness, of acting without logic, of giving in to desire. If she asks, he will tell her, and the moment will be broken. So instead she cups his face in her hands, her fingertips tracing the delicate points of his ears, and when his hands leave the mattress to rest tentatively on her hips she kisses him again, and feels him tremble.
It occurs to her, dimly, that Sarek has no wife. Not in the way it's occurred to her before, when she was considering whether to date him; but in all its implications for him, as a proper Vulcan male. How long can it have been since he touched a woman, or was touched in this way, with tenderness and desire?
His adherence to Vulcan propriety is not an act, she knows. He believes sincerely in the values and traditions of his people. Yet the fact that at this moment he is sitting on her bed allowing her--a woman to whom he is not married or even betrothed--to kiss him in a manner that clearly promises the fulfillment of carnal desire does not, somehow, strike her as contradictory. Not even when he hooks his fingers in the backs of her knees and pulls her onto his lap, kissing her back with a heated urgency that leaves no room for doubt about his intent to reciprocate.
He is here. He has sought her, come looking for her--she whose humanness alone already places her at the perimeter, so far from the civilized center of his world that one little alteration could put her right outside of it. Taking her to the opera is just permissible enough. Taking her to bed is a headlong plunge across the boundary and into the wilderness.
And yet. He looks up at her with eyes both dark and lit with fire, and she knows he's not leaving.
There is no word in his language for a woman one makes love to who is not one's wife. There is no word for the sensation of a human mind when touched by a Vulcan one at the moment of physical joining; nor for the sound he makes when he surrenders himself to her, a cry that is both ecstatic and bereft.
He is purely Vulcan in all his parts. Even in this he is Vulcan; and her heart aches in sympathy for the pain the contradiction must cause him. There is no word in his language for the way a boundary can be drawn wrongly--how something beloved or necessary might by chance be left outside it, and need to be fought for, and retrieved.
It doesn't matter. The universe is vast, and she's a linguist, after all. She cradles the precious warmth of his body, and welcomes him to the new world.