The Morning After the Earthquake
Title: The Morning After the Earthquake
Author: ladyblahblah
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, implied Spock/Uhura
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own nothing, am making no profit. And I'm really, really sorry.
Summary: Granted, he doesn't have much experience with weddings, but Jim Kirk is still fairly sure that you're not supposed to wake up, five hours before you're due at the altar, in bed with your best man.
A/N: Another bit of comment!fic from Ship Wars. To paraphrase my friend: know that in my mind, Kirk and Spock always work things out and live long, happy lives completely devoted to each other. They use bridge shifts and away missions and Klingon battles as forms of extended foreplay, and everything ends happy ever after. I just occasionally . . . stop writing before that part happens. That's all.
Granted, he doesn't have much experience with weddings, but Jim Kirk is still fairly sure that you're not supposed to wake up, five hours before you're due at the altar, in bed with your best man.
Spock is like a furnace next to him, and it's all he can do to keep from burrowing closer to that warmth. The feel of his friend stirring helps to quash the urge. He's aware of the exact moment that Spock comes fully awake, and has just enough time to realize that he's never actually seen the other man asleep before. Then the bed creaks as Spock sits bolt upright, and dark brown eyes take in the rumpled sheets and his own naked body before turning, almost reluctantly, to look at him.
"Jim."
He looks quietly horrified, in that Vulcan way that means he doesn't really look like anything, but Jim knows. He knows without asking that Spock's mind is going at Warp 8, trying to piece together bed and Jim and naked in any coherent way. Jim looks away. Spock's formal robes are hanging on the back of the door, neat and trim and black and Jim's heart aches.
He might not have much experience with this particular scenario, but he's an old hand at awkward mornings-after, in a general sense. The polite thing, the proper etiquette, is to pretend not to remember. He wants to. He wants so badly to be able to do that for Spock, to pretend that maybe they lost their clothes in a freak accident; that they fell into bed together in all innocence and simply slept, two friends who have bunked down together under worse and stranger circumstances. Because it's Spock's wedding day, and he hasn't asked for anything, and Jim would give this to him if he could.
He can't.
"Spock! Spock, man, what the hell are you doing out here?" Jim stumbles into the courtyard, dodging a plant with wicked-looking spines and already sweating three steps outside of the Embassy's controlled climate. "You've gotta get back inside; they're gonna mutiny if you don't."
Spock turns to look at him. His movements are every bit as graceful as always, but just a hair slower than usual. "Jim," he says, and then pauses as though he's unsure what he meant to say beyond the simple fact of his friend's name. "I required air," he says at last.
"Is that what you call this?" Jim teases. "Shit, I can barely breath out here. So this is what Vulcan was like, huh?"
"It is . . . similar. Not the same, but adequate." He takes a deep breath. "I believe Mr. Scott has been trying to get me drunk."
Jim laughs and hops up onto the low stone wall. The first moon is rising, bathing the desert in cool blues and deep, fathomless shadows. "Yeah. Just a funny little Human custom. Get the groom trashed on his last night of freedom. Mostly Terrans crewing our lady."
Spock's eyebrow lifts. "A fact that has, somehow, not escaped my attention."
Jim grins, unrepentant. "So Scotty's been working on getting you hammered, huh? How would you qualify his success?"
"Alcohol is metabolized differently by the Vulcan body," is the answer. "It has no noticeable effect on me, and I have discovered that I do not much care for the taste."
"That's because you're letting him feed you that crap from the still in Engineering we're not supposed to know about. But I get your point." He eyes Spock, the way his cheeks seem just a shade darker than usual. "You look a little wobbly, though, for someone who's abstaining."
Spock straightens, wounded Vulcan pride wrapped around him like a cloak. "Vulcans do not wobble." He blinks, and his eyes stay shut just a fraction of a second too long. "It is possible," he admits, "that Mr. Chekov introduced the possibility of chocolate when Mr. Scott became frustrated with my persistent state of sobriety."
"Chocolate? Really?" Jim's delighted. "I thought that was just an old wives' tale." Spock arches an eyebrow again. "Ah . . . myth. Not factually relevant," he smirks.
"I see. It is, unfortunately, quite factually relevant. At this particular moment." Spock braces himself on the wall next to Jim and leans until their shoulders are nearly touching. "I was, of course, aware that planets commit a rotation of a full three-hundred and sixty degrees in the course of a day. However, I believe that this is the first time that I have been able to feel it."
"Got the spins, huh? Breathe deep; they'll pass. Just try not to move too much." Spock's hair is glossy in the moonlight. It makes Jim think of obsidian, of ravens' wings, of a thousand stupid cliched things, and he looks away before he can give in to the urge to touch. "So." He clears his throat. "Will you and Uhura be staying here the whole week, or do you have a trip planned? I'm not exactly up on Vulcan honeymoon traditions; fill me in."
"We plan to remain at the Embassy," Spock confirms. "Perhaps if this were Vulcan . . . but I am not acquainted enough with this planet to have any particular wish for one locale over another."
"Right. Sensible." It was so hot; he was finding it difficult to think past the weight of the air and the thin burn in his lungs. "We'll be glad to have you back. The Enterprise won't be the same without you."
"I am certain that the ship will continue to function adequately."
"Yeah, of course it will. But it won't be the same." He chances a glance at Spock. "Any chance of getting a chess game in sometime in the next couple of weeks? I know you and Uhura will be doing that whole newlyweds thing, but--"
"Jim." There's mild reprimand in Spock's voice, and it makes Jim's heart try to beat faster. "Nyota recognizes and respects our friendship. She will have no objections to our relationship continuing as it has been."
"Good. That's good."
It is good, Jim assures himself. Spock's frienship means the world to him; it's more than he ever thought he'd have, once, and he sees now what the other, older Spock was talking about. The relationship Jim has with his Spock, it's more than friendship. It's bedrock, the solid foundation that the rest of Kirk's life rests on, the support for everything that makes him who he is. It's been offered generously, selflessly, and he cherishes it as the wonder that it is.
If a part of him--a jealous, selfish part--wishes that it could be more, that Spock could truly be his Spock in more than just a timeline, universal sense . . . he ignores it. He's had practice.
But it's hard to ignore the warmth of his friend's body, discernible even in this sweltering heat. Hard to ignore the scent of him, the pale expanse of skin tinged cool and distant by the moonlight but still so real. So close. He can't look; he can't look away.
Spock's fingers are lifting to skim across Jim's cheek. Light, that touch, and soothing. Or meant to be, Jim assures himself as his heart tries to escape straight through his chest.
"You will not lose me, Jim," he says, his voice soft. "I will not allow it."
Jim doesn't know how it happens, how Spock's lips find his, but he suspects it might have something to do with the faint trace of chocolate that tingles against his tongue. And Jim is drunk, but he's not this drunk, not enough to be opening his mouth and pulling Spock closer until he's nestled between his legs. Except that apparently he is. Drunk enough to let his hands tangle in Spock's hair; sober enough to feel the rocky press of the wall beneath him and recognize the slow spin of his head as oxygen deprivation and blinding, earth-shattering need.
It's a bad idea to leave the courtyard, to skirt the edge of the party still raging inside and slip up to the suites they've been assigned. A bad idea to pick Spock's, because it's closer and because they can't wait, waited too long already, waited years and it's all finally too much. A bad idea to forget about everything, about duty and friendship and loyalty in the face of so much need, and the rush of skin against skin, and heat, heat, so much, so fierce as to consume them both.
Jim is experienced with sex, but not with this, whatever this is. A merging, a settling in bone and blood and sinew that never knew it was out of place until now. They fit together like they were made for it, like all their lives and the lives that created them were only ever leading here, to this, to this moment.
And then Spock's fingers find his face, and at the first tentative brush of minds Jim feels like crying. Because yes, this, this, finally, and how can he possibly give this up now that he's found it?
He's aware, in a vague, distant sort of way, that their bodies are still moving together, that he's coming and taking Spock with him. Physical release registers, is forgotten as their minds sink deeper into each other. It's union, communion, and Jim lets go as the ground shakes with the force of it.
"We should get up," he says, because one of them has to speak. A pause, only a few heartbeats long as he waits for Spock to say something. To voice an opinion, to ask a question.
To choose him.
There's only silence, and Jim eases out of bed, careful not to let his skin touch Spock's. He doesn't want to share this; not now, not today.
He wonders if Uhura will know, when she and Spock have bonded. If she'll be able to sense him there, find some trace of Jim that he's left behind. The telepathic equivalent of perfume on Spock's skin. Mental lipstick on his collar. There's a small, petty part of him that hopes she can, even as the rest of him recoils.
Shame is like a living thing inside of him, coiled sick and heavy in his stomach. The shaking earth has put a crack in the foundation, and he has to patch it.
Someday, he thinks as he watches his friend, someday he might find someone himself. Someone who will be . . . not the same, but adequate. It's the best he can hope for. For now he turns to Spock and breathes deep, because he thinks that he can give him this, after all. It is, at the moment, all that he has.
"Come on," he says with a smile. "Let's get you ready."