igrab
in
grabi_hands
Remember When It Rained [Spock/Kirk]
Title: Remember When It Rained
Author: igrab
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,507
Summary: Spock and Kirk are stranded on an unexplored planet, and Spock meditates in the rain.
Notes: notes on vulcan anatomy. I didn't make it up, I swear. And the song is "Remember When It Rained", by Josh Groban.
AND this wonderful, wonderful artwork was drawn for me, by admantius_art: Survival Technique in reponse to this fic. ILU, ada.
Wash away the thoughts inside
That keep my mind away from you.
No more love and no more pride
And thoughts are all I have to do.
They had been down here for nearly three weeks, now. The transporters on the Enterprise had malfunctioned, stranding them both just in time to be told in no uncertain terms that the Enterprise was being used on a shuttle rescue mission, with or without its captain.
Kirk told them it was okay; Sulu was in charge while they were gone, and he trusted him to see to it that they fixed the transporters and came back as soon as possible.
It would have been a lot nicer, if it hadn't been so dry.
Spock was used to it. Kirk was not. It was natural, then, that Spock gave the majority of the water rations to his more-easily dehydrated captain, while the Vulcan relied on the natural biological advantages he had. It had been three weeks, though, and in all the distance they'd traveled in a radius around their camp, they had not yet found a source of drinkable water, though sources showed that the life on this planet required it. The situation was getting slightly dire.
But, aside from that, it had been... peaceful. Unexpectedly so, considering how often the First Officer and Captain butted heads. But here, on this gentle and extraordinarily beautiful planet, they had come to a mutual agreement to cast aside their roles, for the time being, and live a little, with each other.
Spock had never felt so... free.
He stood at the entrance of their cave, his arms crossed, looking out over the red-orange hills and the fading purple sky. It really was beautiful here. It reminded him of home.
He heard something like a rustling, far into the distance. His brows furrowed slightly, then - he shut his eyes, to better open up his auditory sense.
Behind him, the soft, even breathing as Jim slept. Small noises of desert life, scuttling about underground.
And there - in the distance. A rustling - no, a pattering - getting louder by the minute.
Spock sucked in a soft breath. He knew what was coming, he knew that sound. And now, as his eyes opened and he focused hard on the horizon, he could see building steel-colored bulkheads, hiding behind the violet hues in the sky.
Rain.
He moved further into the cave, and crouched soundlessly down next to the sleeping figure of James Kirk. He watched him in sleep for a moment, watched the rise and fall of his chest and twitch of his eyelids that meant he was dreaming. His friend's lips were dry and cracked, red from the dry winds that periodically swept the surface. This rainstorm was welcome indeed.
The sound was getting closer, and the closer it got, the more it sounded like a rush. This was no drizzle, this was a pouring, drenching, soaking sort of storm.
He stood, as he heard the water hitting the ground outside. He'd let Kirk sleep, for now. There was a high probability that he would wake himself, in time, from the unusual noise and the change in air pressure. Spock straightened to standing, contemplated for a moment. Though really, it was not much of a decision.
In prehistoric times, Vulcans would stand naked in the rain, on those rare occurrences, to maximize absorption of moisture in their skin. The concept was still taught, especially to those few Vulcans who were planning to go offworld - and it was for this reason precisely, that in case they were stranded on a similarly dry planet, they could utilize their bodies to their fullest extent. Spock knew this very well.
He took his boots off and lined them up at the side of the cave. Then, his pants, and those were neatly folded, followed by his Starfleet tunic and standard-issue microfiber shorts. He glanced over his shoulder once at the sleeping captain before he stepped outside, into the blissfully cool rain.
It slicked his hair to the top of his head, flowed down his absorbent skin in little rivulets, carving patterns that defined muscles growing ever stronger from his time in space. More accurately, from his time aboard Jim Kirk's Starship Enterprise, where no day was a dull one.
It was like an oasis in a Federation desert - an endless sea of ordinary people, good people, but ordinary, faceless, unchanging.
Spock had watched him sprawled in the captain's chair of the Kobayashi Maru and known that he was in the presence of a genius. A madman genius, who humiliated him and completely diregarded the purpose for which the test was created, but a genius nonetheless.
It had taken him a little longer to fully understand the meaning of that word as it related to Jim Kirk. An appropriate metaphor would be a grain of sand to a mountain, or a raindrop to a waterfall. Jim Kirk defied meaning. He defied logic. He defied those things in life that Spock had always taken for granted, and it wasn't until he stood in the transporter room, dazed and amazed, having fully expected to crush to death from an implosion of red matter that he understood this simple truth.
Jim Kirk had beaten the Kobayashi Maru. For him, there was no such thing as a no-win situation.
The rain came down in torrents, and as he watched, his eyes sheathed by a clear third lid he rarely used, the desert came to life - strange plants that had seemed so withered and dead were awoken, and he watched them unfurl and stretch their leaves to the sky, drinking in the delicious wetness. Spock tilted his head back, letting the rain sweep his hair back from his forehead, and opened his mouth - smiled as the rain caressed his tongue, touched his body, filled him up like heady perfume from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. It was beautiful, watching the bluish-gray clouds rumble and release their fury of water, almost the way McCoy administered his medicine - giving life but acting as though he was taking it away.
They argued so much on the bridge, even in small matters, that Spock had fully expected it to continue. He had come to the conclusion that Kirk simply liked a good argument, that it kept him on his toes, and Spock was by no means an unskilled player. In fact, he felt the same way.
But it had been peaceful. They'd moved in tandem, exploring, and shared stories and thoughts about the different circumstances that had brought them to Starfleet. Spock had never spoken about his life on Vulcan, and though it made him sad, it felt better to talk to someone - someone who really, truly cared about listening.
It had only taken Jim two weeks in his new, official captaincy to learn the names of all eight hundred of his crew members. It was a staggering feat, but he'd pulled it off effortlessly, and to Spock's surprise, it did not seem like rote memorization - he seemed to know everyone personally, from his bridge officers and engineers down to the security grunts and the janitors. It had given Spock an odd feeling, in the pit of his stomach, when he'd been faced with the proof of just how much Kirk cared about his crew - for all his carefree attitude.
So he'd talked about Vulcan, and his mother, and how he'd never made any lasting friendship connections because of the hovering shame of his heritage. It had never made him love Vulcan any less, but when it came time to decide where he would go in his life, he realized he could not stay in such a closed-minded atmosphere. He would go to Starfleet, and take his Vulcan history with him, and he would choose what that meant for him.
Jim's story, though in a different place at a different time in a different world, carried the same echoes of loneliness and a need to get away - though, their family situations were admittedly drastically dissimilar. Jim only had stories of his father to look up to, and his mother was a broken woman, unable to understand the needs of her child and even less able to fill them. He'd raised himself, and it had been by his own hand that he cut himself off from everyone else, kept his heart locked away and sold his body to the world to protect himself.
Spock could not logically understand the drive to pursue sex without actually wanting to be in a relationship. Kirk said it wasn't logical and it didn't make him feel any better, but he had a bad habit of doing things he shouldn't. Plus, he said with a grin that could have coaxed a response out of anyone, there were a lot of hot people in the world and he didn't feel like he should limit himself.
No limits, Spock thought. It had a ring of truth to it. Almost logical.
Have you ever had intercourse with someone you really liked? Kirk had laughed at the clinical words, even if his tone had been less so.
...No, was his response. I don't think I've ever really liked someone like that. And if I did... well. I guess I'd be afraid of ruining it.
Ruining it? Spock had raised an eyebrow. How would engaging in sexual activities with someone you cared for 'ruin' it?
He remembered the look Kirk had given him, full of disbelief and incredulity but mostly, laughter. You really don't know?
He really didn't know. Kirk explained, but it didn't quite sit right with him. But then, perhaps he was looking too far into things. He had grown up with deep, monogamous relationships that were a direct result of a strong mental bond. When he realized that Nyota did not wish to give herself up like that, he...
He would never understand humans.
The rain soaked into his skin, deeper and deeper until it felt like it was touching his soul. His heart pulsed in his abdomen, lungs expanded fit to make his ribcage creak and he shivered with the chill of so much moisture, running low on his body's resources and high on heat in the past few weeks. It had been a long time since he'd let his thoughts wander so freely, but then, what did he have to hide?
They'd moved together with a partnership that should have spoken of years of easy friendship. In truth, it had only been months, but both had been told in no uncertain terms that, were they to put a little effort into it, take that leap of faith, they would not regret it. Spock felt that, while he did not understand humans, he was beginning to understand Jim Kirk.
He heard a noise behind him, in the background of the sound of a world being reborn. He knew what it was - knew that if he turned, he would see him, his ice-colored eyes fixed on the naked body of a Vulcan in the rain, arms thrown out, head tilted back to look at the sky. He was certain that Jim would be debating, licking his dry lips and knowing just how much they needed this. Perhaps he would even put the pieces together, understand that this was something Spock was made to do, from his arid culture.
He heard the quiet sounds of Kirk taking his clothes off. He knew, without a doubt, that he would not fold them.
The first touch was between the jut of his shoulder blades. He heard a soft intake of breath over the rain, and knew it must have been different - he could feel it himself, moist, pliant, soft like wet velveteen beneath the rough pads of Kirk's human fingers. He moved closer, and Spock could feel a warm breath on the back of his neck as those hands stroked further down, making trails in the chilly stream of rainwater. It was intoxicating, to feel a presence so close by that was not several degrees cooler, for once. He was the cold one this time.
Kirk's lips were hot when they touched at the base of Spock's neck, and he did not attempt to hold back the shiver that resulted. The hands at the base of his spine swirled, and where they pressed, he could feel water squeezed from the porous layers of his skin - it was such a unique sensation, intimate and bordering on sensual. As the hands shifted around the sides to his hips, it leaned more towards the latter, as his fingers were leaving hot wet trails on his skin. Spock closed his eyes, stretched his arms out farther until he could pull the other close, sealing their slick bodies together and sharing warmth.
"I thought you didn't encourage dalliances with friends," Spock murmured, breaking the silence but not shattering it. Kirk grinned, lips buried in the crook of his neck.
"I trust you," he said, and the statement in itself was so simple, so pure, that Spock did not - and could not, had he any inclination to try - attempt to refute it.
After all, Jim Kirk had firmly established, at their first meeting, that he believed in the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. Rules were only guidelines, easily tossed to the wayside when his heart told him differently.
No limits.
They kissed in the rain for what felt like forever, all tongues and slippery surfaces and wet heat pooling between them. They slid together, voices hushed in breathy moans, drinking in air and water and each other and tasting sultry heat, intoxicating and liquid through the layer of oversaturated skin. Kirk palmed their pleasures simultaneously, and Spock leaned his head down on his shoulder, feeling moisture drip off his eyelashes as he shuddered from the sensation. He was good at this, and perhaps he was beginning to understand, what had drawn his illogical human back to the extortion of his body, again and again.
But then, maybe not. For if this had been anyone else, anyone but Jim Kirk standing in the rain with him, naked, he would have been embarrassed and flushed Vulcan green to the tips of his ears and none of this would have happened, in the first place.
Spock drew in a deep gasp when Kirk swirled his hand, and his toes curled.
They would not lose this. He was determined not to lose this, because the planet-shaped hole in his heart was slowly being filled with Kirk and companionship and rainwater, and he did not wish to return to the Enterprise and find that he could not speak his mind, could not smile, could not look into his captain's eyes and see anyone but the fascinating person he'd dedicated himself to.
I trust you, Kirk had said.
And that was really all that needed to be said.
Author: igrab
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,507
Summary: Spock and Kirk are stranded on an unexplored planet, and Spock meditates in the rain.
Notes: notes on vulcan anatomy. I didn't make it up, I swear. And the song is "Remember When It Rained", by Josh Groban.
AND this wonderful, wonderful artwork was drawn for me, by admantius_art: Survival Technique in reponse to this fic. ILU, ada.
Wash away the thoughts inside
That keep my mind away from you.
No more love and no more pride
And thoughts are all I have to do.
They had been down here for nearly three weeks, now. The transporters on the Enterprise had malfunctioned, stranding them both just in time to be told in no uncertain terms that the Enterprise was being used on a shuttle rescue mission, with or without its captain.
Kirk told them it was okay; Sulu was in charge while they were gone, and he trusted him to see to it that they fixed the transporters and came back as soon as possible.
It would have been a lot nicer, if it hadn't been so dry.
Spock was used to it. Kirk was not. It was natural, then, that Spock gave the majority of the water rations to his more-easily dehydrated captain, while the Vulcan relied on the natural biological advantages he had. It had been three weeks, though, and in all the distance they'd traveled in a radius around their camp, they had not yet found a source of drinkable water, though sources showed that the life on this planet required it. The situation was getting slightly dire.
But, aside from that, it had been... peaceful. Unexpectedly so, considering how often the First Officer and Captain butted heads. But here, on this gentle and extraordinarily beautiful planet, they had come to a mutual agreement to cast aside their roles, for the time being, and live a little, with each other.
Spock had never felt so... free.
He stood at the entrance of their cave, his arms crossed, looking out over the red-orange hills and the fading purple sky. It really was beautiful here. It reminded him of home.
He heard something like a rustling, far into the distance. His brows furrowed slightly, then - he shut his eyes, to better open up his auditory sense.
Behind him, the soft, even breathing as Jim slept. Small noises of desert life, scuttling about underground.
And there - in the distance. A rustling - no, a pattering - getting louder by the minute.
Spock sucked in a soft breath. He knew what was coming, he knew that sound. And now, as his eyes opened and he focused hard on the horizon, he could see building steel-colored bulkheads, hiding behind the violet hues in the sky.
Rain.
He moved further into the cave, and crouched soundlessly down next to the sleeping figure of James Kirk. He watched him in sleep for a moment, watched the rise and fall of his chest and twitch of his eyelids that meant he was dreaming. His friend's lips were dry and cracked, red from the dry winds that periodically swept the surface. This rainstorm was welcome indeed.
The sound was getting closer, and the closer it got, the more it sounded like a rush. This was no drizzle, this was a pouring, drenching, soaking sort of storm.
He stood, as he heard the water hitting the ground outside. He'd let Kirk sleep, for now. There was a high probability that he would wake himself, in time, from the unusual noise and the change in air pressure. Spock straightened to standing, contemplated for a moment. Though really, it was not much of a decision.
In prehistoric times, Vulcans would stand naked in the rain, on those rare occurrences, to maximize absorption of moisture in their skin. The concept was still taught, especially to those few Vulcans who were planning to go offworld - and it was for this reason precisely, that in case they were stranded on a similarly dry planet, they could utilize their bodies to their fullest extent. Spock knew this very well.
He took his boots off and lined them up at the side of the cave. Then, his pants, and those were neatly folded, followed by his Starfleet tunic and standard-issue microfiber shorts. He glanced over his shoulder once at the sleeping captain before he stepped outside, into the blissfully cool rain.
It slicked his hair to the top of his head, flowed down his absorbent skin in little rivulets, carving patterns that defined muscles growing ever stronger from his time in space. More accurately, from his time aboard Jim Kirk's Starship Enterprise, where no day was a dull one.
It was like an oasis in a Federation desert - an endless sea of ordinary people, good people, but ordinary, faceless, unchanging.
Spock had watched him sprawled in the captain's chair of the Kobayashi Maru and known that he was in the presence of a genius. A madman genius, who humiliated him and completely diregarded the purpose for which the test was created, but a genius nonetheless.
It had taken him a little longer to fully understand the meaning of that word as it related to Jim Kirk. An appropriate metaphor would be a grain of sand to a mountain, or a raindrop to a waterfall. Jim Kirk defied meaning. He defied logic. He defied those things in life that Spock had always taken for granted, and it wasn't until he stood in the transporter room, dazed and amazed, having fully expected to crush to death from an implosion of red matter that he understood this simple truth.
Jim Kirk had beaten the Kobayashi Maru. For him, there was no such thing as a no-win situation.
The rain came down in torrents, and as he watched, his eyes sheathed by a clear third lid he rarely used, the desert came to life - strange plants that had seemed so withered and dead were awoken, and he watched them unfurl and stretch their leaves to the sky, drinking in the delicious wetness. Spock tilted his head back, letting the rain sweep his hair back from his forehead, and opened his mouth - smiled as the rain caressed his tongue, touched his body, filled him up like heady perfume from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. It was beautiful, watching the bluish-gray clouds rumble and release their fury of water, almost the way McCoy administered his medicine - giving life but acting as though he was taking it away.
They argued so much on the bridge, even in small matters, that Spock had fully expected it to continue. He had come to the conclusion that Kirk simply liked a good argument, that it kept him on his toes, and Spock was by no means an unskilled player. In fact, he felt the same way.
But it had been peaceful. They'd moved in tandem, exploring, and shared stories and thoughts about the different circumstances that had brought them to Starfleet. Spock had never spoken about his life on Vulcan, and though it made him sad, it felt better to talk to someone - someone who really, truly cared about listening.
It had only taken Jim two weeks in his new, official captaincy to learn the names of all eight hundred of his crew members. It was a staggering feat, but he'd pulled it off effortlessly, and to Spock's surprise, it did not seem like rote memorization - he seemed to know everyone personally, from his bridge officers and engineers down to the security grunts and the janitors. It had given Spock an odd feeling, in the pit of his stomach, when he'd been faced with the proof of just how much Kirk cared about his crew - for all his carefree attitude.
So he'd talked about Vulcan, and his mother, and how he'd never made any lasting friendship connections because of the hovering shame of his heritage. It had never made him love Vulcan any less, but when it came time to decide where he would go in his life, he realized he could not stay in such a closed-minded atmosphere. He would go to Starfleet, and take his Vulcan history with him, and he would choose what that meant for him.
Jim's story, though in a different place at a different time in a different world, carried the same echoes of loneliness and a need to get away - though, their family situations were admittedly drastically dissimilar. Jim only had stories of his father to look up to, and his mother was a broken woman, unable to understand the needs of her child and even less able to fill them. He'd raised himself, and it had been by his own hand that he cut himself off from everyone else, kept his heart locked away and sold his body to the world to protect himself.
Spock could not logically understand the drive to pursue sex without actually wanting to be in a relationship. Kirk said it wasn't logical and it didn't make him feel any better, but he had a bad habit of doing things he shouldn't. Plus, he said with a grin that could have coaxed a response out of anyone, there were a lot of hot people in the world and he didn't feel like he should limit himself.
No limits, Spock thought. It had a ring of truth to it. Almost logical.
Have you ever had intercourse with someone you really liked? Kirk had laughed at the clinical words, even if his tone had been less so.
...No, was his response. I don't think I've ever really liked someone like that. And if I did... well. I guess I'd be afraid of ruining it.
Ruining it? Spock had raised an eyebrow. How would engaging in sexual activities with someone you cared for 'ruin' it?
He remembered the look Kirk had given him, full of disbelief and incredulity but mostly, laughter. You really don't know?
He really didn't know. Kirk explained, but it didn't quite sit right with him. But then, perhaps he was looking too far into things. He had grown up with deep, monogamous relationships that were a direct result of a strong mental bond. When he realized that Nyota did not wish to give herself up like that, he...
He would never understand humans.
The rain soaked into his skin, deeper and deeper until it felt like it was touching his soul. His heart pulsed in his abdomen, lungs expanded fit to make his ribcage creak and he shivered with the chill of so much moisture, running low on his body's resources and high on heat in the past few weeks. It had been a long time since he'd let his thoughts wander so freely, but then, what did he have to hide?
They'd moved together with a partnership that should have spoken of years of easy friendship. In truth, it had only been months, but both had been told in no uncertain terms that, were they to put a little effort into it, take that leap of faith, they would not regret it. Spock felt that, while he did not understand humans, he was beginning to understand Jim Kirk.
He heard a noise behind him, in the background of the sound of a world being reborn. He knew what it was - knew that if he turned, he would see him, his ice-colored eyes fixed on the naked body of a Vulcan in the rain, arms thrown out, head tilted back to look at the sky. He was certain that Jim would be debating, licking his dry lips and knowing just how much they needed this. Perhaps he would even put the pieces together, understand that this was something Spock was made to do, from his arid culture.
He heard the quiet sounds of Kirk taking his clothes off. He knew, without a doubt, that he would not fold them.
The first touch was between the jut of his shoulder blades. He heard a soft intake of breath over the rain, and knew it must have been different - he could feel it himself, moist, pliant, soft like wet velveteen beneath the rough pads of Kirk's human fingers. He moved closer, and Spock could feel a warm breath on the back of his neck as those hands stroked further down, making trails in the chilly stream of rainwater. It was intoxicating, to feel a presence so close by that was not several degrees cooler, for once. He was the cold one this time.
Kirk's lips were hot when they touched at the base of Spock's neck, and he did not attempt to hold back the shiver that resulted. The hands at the base of his spine swirled, and where they pressed, he could feel water squeezed from the porous layers of his skin - it was such a unique sensation, intimate and bordering on sensual. As the hands shifted around the sides to his hips, it leaned more towards the latter, as his fingers were leaving hot wet trails on his skin. Spock closed his eyes, stretched his arms out farther until he could pull the other close, sealing their slick bodies together and sharing warmth.
"I thought you didn't encourage dalliances with friends," Spock murmured, breaking the silence but not shattering it. Kirk grinned, lips buried in the crook of his neck.
"I trust you," he said, and the statement in itself was so simple, so pure, that Spock did not - and could not, had he any inclination to try - attempt to refute it.
After all, Jim Kirk had firmly established, at their first meeting, that he believed in the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. Rules were only guidelines, easily tossed to the wayside when his heart told him differently.
No limits.
They kissed in the rain for what felt like forever, all tongues and slippery surfaces and wet heat pooling between them. They slid together, voices hushed in breathy moans, drinking in air and water and each other and tasting sultry heat, intoxicating and liquid through the layer of oversaturated skin. Kirk palmed their pleasures simultaneously, and Spock leaned his head down on his shoulder, feeling moisture drip off his eyelashes as he shuddered from the sensation. He was good at this, and perhaps he was beginning to understand, what had drawn his illogical human back to the extortion of his body, again and again.
But then, maybe not. For if this had been anyone else, anyone but Jim Kirk standing in the rain with him, naked, he would have been embarrassed and flushed Vulcan green to the tips of his ears and none of this would have happened, in the first place.
Spock drew in a deep gasp when Kirk swirled his hand, and his toes curled.
They would not lose this. He was determined not to lose this, because the planet-shaped hole in his heart was slowly being filled with Kirk and companionship and rainwater, and he did not wish to return to the Enterprise and find that he could not speak his mind, could not smile, could not look into his captain's eyes and see anyone but the fascinating person he'd dedicated himself to.
I trust you, Kirk had said.
And that was really all that needed to be said.