"Love's Language Lost?", Fic, Kirk/Uhura
Title: Love’s Language Lost?
Author: hypatia_82
Word count: ~ 4470
Pairing: Kirk/Uhura
Rating: Light R? Nothing graphic.
Feedback: Encouraged and appreciated.
Warnings: Brief mentions of masturbation, UST in epic amounts, occasional use of the f-word. Does language kink merit a warning?
Disclaimer: I always put them on my list of what I want for Christmas, but I still haven’t gotten them. *pouts* If you recognize it, it doesn’t belong to me. If you don’t recognize it, it does. I’m poor and I’m not making money off this, so suing me would be pointless.
A/N: With sincere apologies to W. Shakespeare for the appalling abuse of the title of one of his great works.
Summary: What Jim Kirk needs is a plan. A good one. One that will permanently and irrevocably level the playing field between him and one Cadet N. Uhura.
He’s been at the Academy for six months by the time he realizes he has to do something. Because the situation is getting out of hand. It’s slipping out of his control, and if there’s one thing he can’t abide, it’s not being at least a little in control of a situation. Unless the whole point is losing control, but that isn’t the point with this, so that’s irrelevant.
To say it’s been a difficult change to start at the Academy would be a gross understatement. From one day to the other, he’d had to shape up and get his shit together enough to actually go to every class, to do all assignments, to live up to the challenge and the responsibility he’s taken on. The academic challenges aren’t insurmountable, and he’s doing more than just well in all his classes. In fact, he’s pretty much excelling at everything. He still gets the urge to act out sometimes, still goes to bars and gets unreasonably drunk, still gets into fights and still picks up random girls. Within the first two weeks, he’s already earned himself a reputation that will stay with him for many years to come, but he’s okay with that. Let people think he’s just a uncouth troublemaker and a womanizer. It’ll just be that much easier to blow them clean out of the water if he ever needs to. He’s found a good friend and a good roommate in Bones, and maybe it’s because the both have a lot of baggage they’re running from.
All in all, he’s pretty damn happy with the way things are going. There’s nothing wrong with that part of his life, that isn’t the situation that’s making him edgy and spurring him into action now. No, the situation that’s gotten under his skin relates directly to one Cadet Nyota Uhura. He’d hacked into the Academy records within the first month to find out her first name. He knows, but he never lets on that he knows. Because he wants to hear her give her name to him, wants her to grant him permission to use it. Wants that vital little piece of her.
Unfortunately - and this is really the only downside to the reputation he’s made for himself - she won’t give him the time of day. Each time he addresses her, she gives him a slightly exasperated look, tilts up her chin with just a hint of arrogance and answers him in that cool, slightly condescending tone of hers. It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull, it’s an open challenge, a dare to better himself, and it annoys the fuck out of him. He’s never had to work so hard to gain a woman’s affection, or at least access to her bed, and it needs to stop. Right the fuck now.
That’s how he rationalizes this to himself anyway. She’s a challenge, and he’s going to succeed at her. He’s going to replace all haughtiness and condescension on her face with mindless pleasure as he drives himself into her until neither of them is able to think straight. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it, under pain of torture.
Which is how he’s ended here. In his bed, on a Friday night were he really should be out raising hell at some bar, staring at the ceiling and trying to come up with a plan. Every successful offensive maneuver needs a good plan. He doesn’t need Tactics 101 to tell him that, he’s always known it. But she’s pushed him just a little too far this time, and it’s time for Serious Action. He’d met her in the cafeteria at lunch and, as always, had approached her with a confident grin and a suggestive comment on just what he’d like to do with her and the strawberries on her tray. She had, as always, rolled her eyes and asked him cooly if he wasn’t more familiar with corn cobs than strawberries, and proceeded to state that his favorite sheep must be missing the sight of him bent over for it. To which, of course, he’d replied that with her talent for recreating sounds, he’d bet she could baa just as prettily as Daisy back on the farm, if she’d only let him bend her over.
All in all, the event had been nothing unusual for them, and perhaps that was what had finally been the last drop that made his proverbial cup of frustration run over. He had to find a way to get to her, to respond to him in something other than those cool, indifferent tones. To level the playing field, so to speak. But he needed a plan she’d never see through to do it.
What he needs is to find a way to make her say things in ways that will leave her no choice but to use a different tone with him. What he needs is to manipulate her into wrapping her lips around other sounds, other diphthongs without her knowing why he’s doing it, or what the point of it is. What he needs is a language. One that will serve his purpose of making her use that smart, talented mouth of hers in a way that’s as close to erotic as can be without ever actually engaging in something sexual. And he’ll know every time she speaks it that he’s won this round, that he’s beaten her at her own game, that he’s succeeding at the challenge she poses every time she looks at him.
But to find a language that will do all that, he needs access to the xenolinguistics lab. Needs access to every sample of alien language on record. Unfortunately, Command track students don’t have access to those, and he can’t repeatedly hack into the database without it being too obvious. He smiles to himself as a plan begins to form in his head and the more he thinks about it, the more perfect it seems. And it has the nice little bonus that it will drive her up a wall when he implements it. He can already picture the fiery, scathing look she’ll give him. With that settled, his life back in the order he wants it to be, he gets off his bed, puts on his jacket and leaves to go raise a little hell. It’s Friday night, after all, and he has a reputation to maintain.
He sets things in motion after they return from winter break. Turning up at the first meeting of the Xen-ling club in the new semester, he smiles sweetly at her as he calmly sips his coffee and fills a paper napkin with cookies. Uhura looks beyond annoyed with him, and he can see the way her grip on her coffee cup tightens a little. And this is probably going to be one of the most entertaining nights he’s had ever since he enlisted.
As president, she gives the opening speech, and he makes a point of either crunching down on a cookie or slurping his coffee loudly every few minutes. The muscles in her jaw start jumping a little after the first five minutes, and after the next five, she’s practically seething with rage. And she’s never looked more beautiful to him than when she meets his eyes and he sees the fire in the deep, brown depths of hers, the slight flush of anger on her cheeks. If he can’t get her all hot and bothered in other ways, he’ll happily settle for this.
The meeting goes on, and he doesn’t really pay much attention to what’s being said until it’s time to elect a president, a vice-president and a treasurer. Uhura, of course, is elected president again, and he’s not after that post anyway. It’s too much work and he does have better things to do than drive her crazy. But when it’s time to elect a vice-president, he stands and this is where six months of Command track come in handy. With a posture and deportment that would impress even Komack and Archer, he stands and takes the floor.
Uhura’s eyes widen almost comically, and it’s really a testament to her self control that she doesn’t splutter. He’s memorized his little speech, and when he’s done the other members of the club actually applaud him. Such is the beauty of good rhetoric. He’s elected with twenty-seven votes for and one against. Phase one of his plan is a roaring success and he’s now gained access to every record and audio sample in the lab.
Of course, she stops him as he’s just about to leave, hissing out a whisper and her cool tone is gone, but she’s still not making the sounds he wants her to. She asks him just what the hell he thinks he’s doing, and he pats her cheek and smiles infuriatingly at her. She very nearly growls at him when he tells her he’s merely indulging his hobby of learning new and interesting ways to use his tongue, that she really should be grateful he hadn’t staged a coup against her, and that he’s looking forward to a very close and truly gratifying partnership with her. That he’s really looking forward to doing his best work under her, and that he feels they need to work long and hard to elevate the club to the really epic heights he knows it can reach. The only reason that she doesn’t slap him, he thinks, is that they’re still in public. And she hates losing her composure in public.
Phase two of his truly brilliant plan takes a lot longer than he’d expected. This is partially due to the increased course load of the second semester, and partly because it takes longer than he’d anticipated to find the perfect language for her. Still, he enjoys surreptitiously antagonizing her at each meeting, enjoys how her jaw starts twitching if he even so much as reaches for a cookie after the first two months, enjoys the way he ignites the fire in her eyes.
At least four nights a week, he spends two hours listening to language samples he’s copied from the lab onto datacards. Bones thinks he’s listening to music as he studies, and Jim makes no move to correct the false assumption. And if he falls asleep those nights imagining Uhura’s lips reproducing all the sounds he’s heard, well… It’s just a part of his research. He already knows how her lips will move when he finds the right language, has spent many joyous and satisfying moments in the shower imagining it, creating a perfect image of the sounds falling from her lips, and it gets him off faster than just about any other erotic fantasy he has. Well, except for the one where he’s giving a speech to the club and she’s on her knees, hidden by the podium and sucking him off. But that one is only used in emergencies.
It takes him three months to find the perfect language, and he smiles so widely at his discovery that Bones arches an eyebrow at him and asks if he’s just discovered the meaning of life. Jim kind of thinks he has, at least a little part of it, but doesn’t really answer Bones, just replays the sample over and over again. Ferrisian. The instrument that will ensure his victory, the thing that will make all his hard work come to fruition is Ferrisian. The drawn-out vowels, the sharp consonants, the abundance of ‘o’ sounds… It’s perfect. The perfect language for Nyota Uhura is Ferrisian. It’s time to implement Phase three.
Phase three also poses unexpected challenges. It turns out that Ferrisian is a rather obscure language, there aren’t many text books on it, and it’s mostly deemed unimportant since the Federation has very few dealings with the Ferrisians. Something about them being a manipulative race and wanting to breed humans for nefarious purposes. Unimportant details really in the grand scheme of things.
He uses his position as vice-president of the Xen-ling. club to covertly pull a few strings, calling in a few favors from connections he’s nourished in the months he’s been in the club. Charms a few people, goes on dates with a few more or less interesting women who have an almost unnatural obsession with obscure alien languages, and fortunately for Jim, with listening to him talk shop and throw linguistic terminology at them. He never thought anyone actually got off on him reciting phonetic theory at them, but hey, you learn something new every day, and there’s a certain beautiful irony in how he reduces their vocabularies to simple, moaned vowels and stuttered consonants when he fucks them. And if he occasionally imagines doing the same to Uhura while he’s at it, and if that makes him all the more enthusiastic, well… Who can blame him, really? He deserves to after going through all this trouble.
He finally gathers enough material to be able to actually sit himself down and start learning how to speak Ferrisian, but once more, his plan is impeded by end of semester exams and Phase four is postponed until they break for the summer.
It turns out to be a blessing in disguise as Bones goes back to Georgia to see his kid, and Jim thus has their dorm room all to himself. He doesn’t go back to Iowa, he doesn’t know what the hell he should go there for, there’s nothing there that he wants to go back to. So he has more than an adequate amount of time to teach himself to hold up a conversation in Ferrisian. It also keeps boredom at bay, and he once more applauds himself for his brilliance and foresight in thinking all this up. And each time he reads a sentence out loud, he imagines Uhura’s voice reciting it, pictures her lips forming the words and how she’d make every sound drip eloquently from her tongue like molasses, thick, dark and sweet.
When the new semester starts, he’s reasonably confident in his abilities to start and uphold a conversation about most common subjects. The Xen-ling. club reconvenes, and he’s reelected as vice president since he did such an admirable job last semester. Uhura still fumes a little when he reaches for the cookies, but it seems she’s resigned herself to the reality of his continued presence in her life. She’s gotten comfortable around him and that just won’t do. Because he so enjoys riling her up and making her eyes sparkle and come alive as they debate. It’s time for the fifth and final phase of his plan. The one that will make all his hard work worthwhile.
They’re working on the club’s agenda for the upcoming semester and she, of course, disagrees with the list of languages he suggests they should promote and increase awareness of. A little thrill runs through him, making electricity crackle off every nerve ending in his body, and he slowly takes a sip of his coffee to hide his complacent grin.
His eyes lock with hers and he waits a beat before suggesting Ferrisian as their main focus this semester. Her eyes briefly widen with something he’s tempted to call unanticipated respect, but then it’s gone and she arches an unimpressed eyebrow.
“Ferrisian, Uhura,” he calmly repeats, then moves in for the kill, all his efforts for the last many months finally about to pay off, and he slowly and carefully lets the Ferrisian sounds flow from his lips. “It’s a beautiful language. Don’t you speak it? It’s not very well known, so I don’t blame you if you’re not familiar with it, but I think it deserves closer scrutiny.”
This time, there’s definitely respect in her eyes however reluctant she is to show it. A second ticks by, then another and another, and his pulse speeds up, adrenaline beginning to course through his veins as he keeps his eyes fixed on her lips.
She licks them reflexively, blinks a few times, and then… Then she answers, and it’s worth every single second of hard work. “Of course I do, Kirk. You really need to learn not to underestimate me. Let me guess, you’re fascinated with their obsession with human procreation. I should have figured you’d find a way to work sex into the agenda.”
His brain might be processing the words, translating them to Standard so he can understand the irritated rebuke, but all he’s aware of is the way her lips round almost obscenely, how her tongue curls and flicks over the consonants, how the long o’s almost sound like breathless little moans.
He swallows thickly and tries to make his brain remember how to make his lungs work, because he’s actually stopped breathing. And okay, he really hadn’t foreseen that his plan would backfire this way, that just hearing her speak one sentence in Ferrisian would have this effect on him. Hadn’t anticipated that the experience would make him hard faster than anything he can remember ever. And thank fuck they’re sitting down, because all his brain is currently supplying him with are images of her lips around his dick, about how this might be close to how she’d sound if he was moving achingly slowly in her, slow rolls of his hips against hers, how he’d swallow each perfect sound, each incredible little moan with his lips just to taste her voice.
“Kirk!” She snaps her fingers in front of his face and he starts a little at the abrupt end to his train of thought. He clears his throat and tears his gaze away from his lips, mumbling out some lame excuse, and he’s really very thankful that they’re in his room because that means he doesn’t have to get up to leave. She seems to accept whatever it was he came up with, she must because she lets out an agitated sigh and gathers her things before rebuking him sharply about not double booking himself on her way out the door.
It’s not until he hears it whoosh shut that he breathes again, and a long, drawn out groan falls from his lips. Bones is thankfully not home, and he moves unsteadily to his bed. Uhura’s voice is echoing in his ears, the sight of her lips moving around the Ferrisian playing on repeat behind his eyes, and it only takes about a dozen strokes of his dick before he comes with a shout he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of stifling.
As he lies panting and staring up at the ceiling again, he wonders how the hell his brilliant plan to simply feel more like her equal turned into this burning need for her. How somewhere along the way it became less about being one up on her and more about just being with her. How he’s learned little things about her along the way. Things like how she likes her coffee, the exact curve of her smile when he says something truly ridiculous that she can’t help but laugh at. How he maybe says all those ridiculous things just to see that smile.
He cleans himself up and goes to take a long shower. As the water rains down on him, he rests his head against the cool tile and realizes just how very, very screwed he is. Because Nyota Uhura will never be his. He dries off, goes to bed and pretends to be asleep when Bones comes back from his shift at the hospital. He doesn’t sleep at all that night, he’s too busy compartmentalizing and repressing every single little shred of what he felt when he heard the beautiful, melodious words fall from her lips. And not for the first time, he appreciates just how very, very good he is at suppressing things until he can’t remember they were ever really there.
She has to take him up on his suggestion though, and he spends the rest of the semester repressing and hiding the fact that he still gets hard if she speaks even a word of Ferrisian. It’s an immense relief when the semester ends and there’s no reason for her to speak the language ever again. It makes it a whole lot easier for him to be around her, and it makes it a whole lot easier for him to keep up their usual banter. A year later, he’s all but forgotten about it except for the few times he allows himself to remember. Six months after that, he can even teasingly speak to her in Ferrisian again, and he thinks he might just have become a little bit addicted to hearing her reply to him in kind.
Time passes, things change as they’re wont to do, and almost three years after they met at that bar in Riverside, he can actually look at her without imagining the two of them in very x-rated situations.
The Narada happens, and he finds out she’s actually seeing Spock. But by then, he’s too busy saving the world, and after, he’s too busy first dealing with the emotional backlash of that one, then with preparing for his captaincy to notice how it might just kill him a little that she’s with someone else. He never speaks a word of Ferrisian to her again, because somehow, it feels like making her cheat on Spock, even if she wouldn’t be aware of doing so.
The time passes, he settles into his captaincy and then he’s too busy loving every damn second of his job to let his mind take trips down memory lane and recall evenings with coffee and her lips forming sounds that send warm, slow threads of desire weaving up and down his spine.
He even almost forgets the language itself. It’s only natural when he never uses it anymore, and he has so many other things to remember. Then one day, he finds out that she and Spock have broken it off, and he admires her a little more for how she remains a consummate professional on the bridge. She never falters, never lets it affect her duty, even if he sees the sadness in her eyes. That too passes with time, and they slowly but surely develop something like a friendship, but maybe they started that a long time ago. She still twitches a little when he makes a show of reaching for a cookie, and he still smirks and makes inane and obvious innuendo at her. But they never speak a word of Ferrisian, and he knows he’s the only one who ever imbued the language with any special significance.
And then one day, he looks down at her as she’s trailing kisses down his stomach, sighing softly against his skin, and he’s waited for this for so long he’s not sure he’ll be able to endure all the ways he’s making his dream come true. They’ve only recently begun this game, only recently added this to the ways they challenge each other to constantly better themselves, only recently begun sharing all the secret little places of their hearts. There’s a dark bruise on her left breast that he very carefully and thoroughly sucked into her skin not long before this, and his arms and upper body is littered with the evidence of her staking her claim of him.
His breath catches in his throat and his heart flutters in something akin to panic in his chest as he comes to the terrifying realization that he kind of really loves her, and he’s kind of loved her for a very long time, he just hasn’t let himself ever acknowledge or accept it. Because this is too good, too wonderful and so much more than he ever thought he’d have.
A slightly self-conscious smile tugs up the corner of his lips as he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hey, Nyota?” he says softly, his voice a little rough with both arousal and emotion because she hasn’t done this to him before, he hasn’t let her do this before. A man only gets his dreams fulfilled for the first time once, and he’s made them both wait for the perfect moment. “Say something in Ferrisian.”
There’s obvious confusion on her face, but she complies and as always, his eyes are drawn almost magnetically to her lips as she speaks. “Why do you want me to speak Ferrisian, Jim?” she asks, then notices where his gaze is fixed. “You like the way my mouth moves.” Realization slowly begins to dawn on her and he gently caresses her cheek with his thumb.
The sounds and movements her mouth makes as she speaks the language he found for her, the language he’s always thought was perfect for her, makes it impossible to deny the effect it has on him. His pupils dilate and his annoyingly treacherous dick bounces enthusiastically, his whole body rejoicing in finally being allowed to react freely to the stimulus.
And so he recalls a language he hasn’t allowed himself to even think about in years, and he softly uses it to recount the story of how he came to learn a language he’d never knew existed, how he learned it just to see her speak it and how he had to hide how hard it made him every time she even uttered a word of it.
And while his words are simply telling a story, the story itself, the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes can be boiled down to one message. I love you. I’ve loved you for so long and with such intensity I found a language that’s only for you. And I love you enough to never speak it with anyone else, and to never tell you it was my gift to you. I’ve only ever loved you.
Author: hypatia_82
Word count: ~ 4470
Pairing: Kirk/Uhura
Rating: Light R? Nothing graphic.
Feedback: Encouraged and appreciated.
Warnings: Brief mentions of masturbation, UST in epic amounts, occasional use of the f-word. Does language kink merit a warning?
Disclaimer: I always put them on my list of what I want for Christmas, but I still haven’t gotten them. *pouts* If you recognize it, it doesn’t belong to me. If you don’t recognize it, it does. I’m poor and I’m not making money off this, so suing me would be pointless.
A/N: With sincere apologies to W. Shakespeare for the appalling abuse of the title of one of his great works.
Summary: What Jim Kirk needs is a plan. A good one. One that will permanently and irrevocably level the playing field between him and one Cadet N. Uhura.
He’s been at the Academy for six months by the time he realizes he has to do something. Because the situation is getting out of hand. It’s slipping out of his control, and if there’s one thing he can’t abide, it’s not being at least a little in control of a situation. Unless the whole point is losing control, but that isn’t the point with this, so that’s irrelevant.
To say it’s been a difficult change to start at the Academy would be a gross understatement. From one day to the other, he’d had to shape up and get his shit together enough to actually go to every class, to do all assignments, to live up to the challenge and the responsibility he’s taken on. The academic challenges aren’t insurmountable, and he’s doing more than just well in all his classes. In fact, he’s pretty much excelling at everything. He still gets the urge to act out sometimes, still goes to bars and gets unreasonably drunk, still gets into fights and still picks up random girls. Within the first two weeks, he’s already earned himself a reputation that will stay with him for many years to come, but he’s okay with that. Let people think he’s just a uncouth troublemaker and a womanizer. It’ll just be that much easier to blow them clean out of the water if he ever needs to. He’s found a good friend and a good roommate in Bones, and maybe it’s because the both have a lot of baggage they’re running from.
All in all, he’s pretty damn happy with the way things are going. There’s nothing wrong with that part of his life, that isn’t the situation that’s making him edgy and spurring him into action now. No, the situation that’s gotten under his skin relates directly to one Cadet Nyota Uhura. He’d hacked into the Academy records within the first month to find out her first name. He knows, but he never lets on that he knows. Because he wants to hear her give her name to him, wants her to grant him permission to use it. Wants that vital little piece of her.
Unfortunately - and this is really the only downside to the reputation he’s made for himself - she won’t give him the time of day. Each time he addresses her, she gives him a slightly exasperated look, tilts up her chin with just a hint of arrogance and answers him in that cool, slightly condescending tone of hers. It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull, it’s an open challenge, a dare to better himself, and it annoys the fuck out of him. He’s never had to work so hard to gain a woman’s affection, or at least access to her bed, and it needs to stop. Right the fuck now.
That’s how he rationalizes this to himself anyway. She’s a challenge, and he’s going to succeed at her. He’s going to replace all haughtiness and condescension on her face with mindless pleasure as he drives himself into her until neither of them is able to think straight. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it, under pain of torture.
Which is how he’s ended here. In his bed, on a Friday night were he really should be out raising hell at some bar, staring at the ceiling and trying to come up with a plan. Every successful offensive maneuver needs a good plan. He doesn’t need Tactics 101 to tell him that, he’s always known it. But she’s pushed him just a little too far this time, and it’s time for Serious Action. He’d met her in the cafeteria at lunch and, as always, had approached her with a confident grin and a suggestive comment on just what he’d like to do with her and the strawberries on her tray. She had, as always, rolled her eyes and asked him cooly if he wasn’t more familiar with corn cobs than strawberries, and proceeded to state that his favorite sheep must be missing the sight of him bent over for it. To which, of course, he’d replied that with her talent for recreating sounds, he’d bet she could baa just as prettily as Daisy back on the farm, if she’d only let him bend her over.
All in all, the event had been nothing unusual for them, and perhaps that was what had finally been the last drop that made his proverbial cup of frustration run over. He had to find a way to get to her, to respond to him in something other than those cool, indifferent tones. To level the playing field, so to speak. But he needed a plan she’d never see through to do it.
What he needs is to find a way to make her say things in ways that will leave her no choice but to use a different tone with him. What he needs is to manipulate her into wrapping her lips around other sounds, other diphthongs without her knowing why he’s doing it, or what the point of it is. What he needs is a language. One that will serve his purpose of making her use that smart, talented mouth of hers in a way that’s as close to erotic as can be without ever actually engaging in something sexual. And he’ll know every time she speaks it that he’s won this round, that he’s beaten her at her own game, that he’s succeeding at the challenge she poses every time she looks at him.
But to find a language that will do all that, he needs access to the xenolinguistics lab. Needs access to every sample of alien language on record. Unfortunately, Command track students don’t have access to those, and he can’t repeatedly hack into the database without it being too obvious. He smiles to himself as a plan begins to form in his head and the more he thinks about it, the more perfect it seems. And it has the nice little bonus that it will drive her up a wall when he implements it. He can already picture the fiery, scathing look she’ll give him. With that settled, his life back in the order he wants it to be, he gets off his bed, puts on his jacket and leaves to go raise a little hell. It’s Friday night, after all, and he has a reputation to maintain.
He sets things in motion after they return from winter break. Turning up at the first meeting of the Xen-ling club in the new semester, he smiles sweetly at her as he calmly sips his coffee and fills a paper napkin with cookies. Uhura looks beyond annoyed with him, and he can see the way her grip on her coffee cup tightens a little. And this is probably going to be one of the most entertaining nights he’s had ever since he enlisted.
As president, she gives the opening speech, and he makes a point of either crunching down on a cookie or slurping his coffee loudly every few minutes. The muscles in her jaw start jumping a little after the first five minutes, and after the next five, she’s practically seething with rage. And she’s never looked more beautiful to him than when she meets his eyes and he sees the fire in the deep, brown depths of hers, the slight flush of anger on her cheeks. If he can’t get her all hot and bothered in other ways, he’ll happily settle for this.
The meeting goes on, and he doesn’t really pay much attention to what’s being said until it’s time to elect a president, a vice-president and a treasurer. Uhura, of course, is elected president again, and he’s not after that post anyway. It’s too much work and he does have better things to do than drive her crazy. But when it’s time to elect a vice-president, he stands and this is where six months of Command track come in handy. With a posture and deportment that would impress even Komack and Archer, he stands and takes the floor.
Uhura’s eyes widen almost comically, and it’s really a testament to her self control that she doesn’t splutter. He’s memorized his little speech, and when he’s done the other members of the club actually applaud him. Such is the beauty of good rhetoric. He’s elected with twenty-seven votes for and one against. Phase one of his plan is a roaring success and he’s now gained access to every record and audio sample in the lab.
Of course, she stops him as he’s just about to leave, hissing out a whisper and her cool tone is gone, but she’s still not making the sounds he wants her to. She asks him just what the hell he thinks he’s doing, and he pats her cheek and smiles infuriatingly at her. She very nearly growls at him when he tells her he’s merely indulging his hobby of learning new and interesting ways to use his tongue, that she really should be grateful he hadn’t staged a coup against her, and that he’s looking forward to a very close and truly gratifying partnership with her. That he’s really looking forward to doing his best work under her, and that he feels they need to work long and hard to elevate the club to the really epic heights he knows it can reach. The only reason that she doesn’t slap him, he thinks, is that they’re still in public. And she hates losing her composure in public.
Phase two of his truly brilliant plan takes a lot longer than he’d expected. This is partially due to the increased course load of the second semester, and partly because it takes longer than he’d anticipated to find the perfect language for her. Still, he enjoys surreptitiously antagonizing her at each meeting, enjoys how her jaw starts twitching if he even so much as reaches for a cookie after the first two months, enjoys the way he ignites the fire in her eyes.
At least four nights a week, he spends two hours listening to language samples he’s copied from the lab onto datacards. Bones thinks he’s listening to music as he studies, and Jim makes no move to correct the false assumption. And if he falls asleep those nights imagining Uhura’s lips reproducing all the sounds he’s heard, well… It’s just a part of his research. He already knows how her lips will move when he finds the right language, has spent many joyous and satisfying moments in the shower imagining it, creating a perfect image of the sounds falling from her lips, and it gets him off faster than just about any other erotic fantasy he has. Well, except for the one where he’s giving a speech to the club and she’s on her knees, hidden by the podium and sucking him off. But that one is only used in emergencies.
It takes him three months to find the perfect language, and he smiles so widely at his discovery that Bones arches an eyebrow at him and asks if he’s just discovered the meaning of life. Jim kind of thinks he has, at least a little part of it, but doesn’t really answer Bones, just replays the sample over and over again. Ferrisian. The instrument that will ensure his victory, the thing that will make all his hard work come to fruition is Ferrisian. The drawn-out vowels, the sharp consonants, the abundance of ‘o’ sounds… It’s perfect. The perfect language for Nyota Uhura is Ferrisian. It’s time to implement Phase three.
Phase three also poses unexpected challenges. It turns out that Ferrisian is a rather obscure language, there aren’t many text books on it, and it’s mostly deemed unimportant since the Federation has very few dealings with the Ferrisians. Something about them being a manipulative race and wanting to breed humans for nefarious purposes. Unimportant details really in the grand scheme of things.
He uses his position as vice-president of the Xen-ling. club to covertly pull a few strings, calling in a few favors from connections he’s nourished in the months he’s been in the club. Charms a few people, goes on dates with a few more or less interesting women who have an almost unnatural obsession with obscure alien languages, and fortunately for Jim, with listening to him talk shop and throw linguistic terminology at them. He never thought anyone actually got off on him reciting phonetic theory at them, but hey, you learn something new every day, and there’s a certain beautiful irony in how he reduces their vocabularies to simple, moaned vowels and stuttered consonants when he fucks them. And if he occasionally imagines doing the same to Uhura while he’s at it, and if that makes him all the more enthusiastic, well… Who can blame him, really? He deserves to after going through all this trouble.
He finally gathers enough material to be able to actually sit himself down and start learning how to speak Ferrisian, but once more, his plan is impeded by end of semester exams and Phase four is postponed until they break for the summer.
It turns out to be a blessing in disguise as Bones goes back to Georgia to see his kid, and Jim thus has their dorm room all to himself. He doesn’t go back to Iowa, he doesn’t know what the hell he should go there for, there’s nothing there that he wants to go back to. So he has more than an adequate amount of time to teach himself to hold up a conversation in Ferrisian. It also keeps boredom at bay, and he once more applauds himself for his brilliance and foresight in thinking all this up. And each time he reads a sentence out loud, he imagines Uhura’s voice reciting it, pictures her lips forming the words and how she’d make every sound drip eloquently from her tongue like molasses, thick, dark and sweet.
When the new semester starts, he’s reasonably confident in his abilities to start and uphold a conversation about most common subjects. The Xen-ling. club reconvenes, and he’s reelected as vice president since he did such an admirable job last semester. Uhura still fumes a little when he reaches for the cookies, but it seems she’s resigned herself to the reality of his continued presence in her life. She’s gotten comfortable around him and that just won’t do. Because he so enjoys riling her up and making her eyes sparkle and come alive as they debate. It’s time for the fifth and final phase of his plan. The one that will make all his hard work worthwhile.
They’re working on the club’s agenda for the upcoming semester and she, of course, disagrees with the list of languages he suggests they should promote and increase awareness of. A little thrill runs through him, making electricity crackle off every nerve ending in his body, and he slowly takes a sip of his coffee to hide his complacent grin.
His eyes lock with hers and he waits a beat before suggesting Ferrisian as their main focus this semester. Her eyes briefly widen with something he’s tempted to call unanticipated respect, but then it’s gone and she arches an unimpressed eyebrow.
“Ferrisian, Uhura,” he calmly repeats, then moves in for the kill, all his efforts for the last many months finally about to pay off, and he slowly and carefully lets the Ferrisian sounds flow from his lips. “It’s a beautiful language. Don’t you speak it? It’s not very well known, so I don’t blame you if you’re not familiar with it, but I think it deserves closer scrutiny.”
This time, there’s definitely respect in her eyes however reluctant she is to show it. A second ticks by, then another and another, and his pulse speeds up, adrenaline beginning to course through his veins as he keeps his eyes fixed on her lips.
She licks them reflexively, blinks a few times, and then… Then she answers, and it’s worth every single second of hard work. “Of course I do, Kirk. You really need to learn not to underestimate me. Let me guess, you’re fascinated with their obsession with human procreation. I should have figured you’d find a way to work sex into the agenda.”
His brain might be processing the words, translating them to Standard so he can understand the irritated rebuke, but all he’s aware of is the way her lips round almost obscenely, how her tongue curls and flicks over the consonants, how the long o’s almost sound like breathless little moans.
He swallows thickly and tries to make his brain remember how to make his lungs work, because he’s actually stopped breathing. And okay, he really hadn’t foreseen that his plan would backfire this way, that just hearing her speak one sentence in Ferrisian would have this effect on him. Hadn’t anticipated that the experience would make him hard faster than anything he can remember ever. And thank fuck they’re sitting down, because all his brain is currently supplying him with are images of her lips around his dick, about how this might be close to how she’d sound if he was moving achingly slowly in her, slow rolls of his hips against hers, how he’d swallow each perfect sound, each incredible little moan with his lips just to taste her voice.
“Kirk!” She snaps her fingers in front of his face and he starts a little at the abrupt end to his train of thought. He clears his throat and tears his gaze away from his lips, mumbling out some lame excuse, and he’s really very thankful that they’re in his room because that means he doesn’t have to get up to leave. She seems to accept whatever it was he came up with, she must because she lets out an agitated sigh and gathers her things before rebuking him sharply about not double booking himself on her way out the door.
It’s not until he hears it whoosh shut that he breathes again, and a long, drawn out groan falls from his lips. Bones is thankfully not home, and he moves unsteadily to his bed. Uhura’s voice is echoing in his ears, the sight of her lips moving around the Ferrisian playing on repeat behind his eyes, and it only takes about a dozen strokes of his dick before he comes with a shout he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of stifling.
As he lies panting and staring up at the ceiling again, he wonders how the hell his brilliant plan to simply feel more like her equal turned into this burning need for her. How somewhere along the way it became less about being one up on her and more about just being with her. How he’s learned little things about her along the way. Things like how she likes her coffee, the exact curve of her smile when he says something truly ridiculous that she can’t help but laugh at. How he maybe says all those ridiculous things just to see that smile.
He cleans himself up and goes to take a long shower. As the water rains down on him, he rests his head against the cool tile and realizes just how very, very screwed he is. Because Nyota Uhura will never be his. He dries off, goes to bed and pretends to be asleep when Bones comes back from his shift at the hospital. He doesn’t sleep at all that night, he’s too busy compartmentalizing and repressing every single little shred of what he felt when he heard the beautiful, melodious words fall from her lips. And not for the first time, he appreciates just how very, very good he is at suppressing things until he can’t remember they were ever really there.
She has to take him up on his suggestion though, and he spends the rest of the semester repressing and hiding the fact that he still gets hard if she speaks even a word of Ferrisian. It’s an immense relief when the semester ends and there’s no reason for her to speak the language ever again. It makes it a whole lot easier for him to be around her, and it makes it a whole lot easier for him to keep up their usual banter. A year later, he’s all but forgotten about it except for the few times he allows himself to remember. Six months after that, he can even teasingly speak to her in Ferrisian again, and he thinks he might just have become a little bit addicted to hearing her reply to him in kind.
Time passes, things change as they’re wont to do, and almost three years after they met at that bar in Riverside, he can actually look at her without imagining the two of them in very x-rated situations.
The Narada happens, and he finds out she’s actually seeing Spock. But by then, he’s too busy saving the world, and after, he’s too busy first dealing with the emotional backlash of that one, then with preparing for his captaincy to notice how it might just kill him a little that she’s with someone else. He never speaks a word of Ferrisian to her again, because somehow, it feels like making her cheat on Spock, even if she wouldn’t be aware of doing so.
The time passes, he settles into his captaincy and then he’s too busy loving every damn second of his job to let his mind take trips down memory lane and recall evenings with coffee and her lips forming sounds that send warm, slow threads of desire weaving up and down his spine.
He even almost forgets the language itself. It’s only natural when he never uses it anymore, and he has so many other things to remember. Then one day, he finds out that she and Spock have broken it off, and he admires her a little more for how she remains a consummate professional on the bridge. She never falters, never lets it affect her duty, even if he sees the sadness in her eyes. That too passes with time, and they slowly but surely develop something like a friendship, but maybe they started that a long time ago. She still twitches a little when he makes a show of reaching for a cookie, and he still smirks and makes inane and obvious innuendo at her. But they never speak a word of Ferrisian, and he knows he’s the only one who ever imbued the language with any special significance.
And then one day, he looks down at her as she’s trailing kisses down his stomach, sighing softly against his skin, and he’s waited for this for so long he’s not sure he’ll be able to endure all the ways he’s making his dream come true. They’ve only recently begun this game, only recently added this to the ways they challenge each other to constantly better themselves, only recently begun sharing all the secret little places of their hearts. There’s a dark bruise on her left breast that he very carefully and thoroughly sucked into her skin not long before this, and his arms and upper body is littered with the evidence of her staking her claim of him.
His breath catches in his throat and his heart flutters in something akin to panic in his chest as he comes to the terrifying realization that he kind of really loves her, and he’s kind of loved her for a very long time, he just hasn’t let himself ever acknowledge or accept it. Because this is too good, too wonderful and so much more than he ever thought he’d have.
A slightly self-conscious smile tugs up the corner of his lips as he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hey, Nyota?” he says softly, his voice a little rough with both arousal and emotion because she hasn’t done this to him before, he hasn’t let her do this before. A man only gets his dreams fulfilled for the first time once, and he’s made them both wait for the perfect moment. “Say something in Ferrisian.”
There’s obvious confusion on her face, but she complies and as always, his eyes are drawn almost magnetically to her lips as she speaks. “Why do you want me to speak Ferrisian, Jim?” she asks, then notices where his gaze is fixed. “You like the way my mouth moves.” Realization slowly begins to dawn on her and he gently caresses her cheek with his thumb.
The sounds and movements her mouth makes as she speaks the language he found for her, the language he’s always thought was perfect for her, makes it impossible to deny the effect it has on him. His pupils dilate and his annoyingly treacherous dick bounces enthusiastically, his whole body rejoicing in finally being allowed to react freely to the stimulus.
And so he recalls a language he hasn’t allowed himself to even think about in years, and he softly uses it to recount the story of how he came to learn a language he’d never knew existed, how he learned it just to see her speak it and how he had to hide how hard it made him every time she even uttered a word of it.
And while his words are simply telling a story, the story itself, the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes can be boiled down to one message. I love you. I’ve loved you for so long and with such intensity I found a language that’s only for you. And I love you enough to never speak it with anyone else, and to never tell you it was my gift to you. I’ve only ever loved you.