On Restless Pinions, Part III
It was cold. Ship’s night, ship’s day - Spock had no sense of time. His skin felt as though it might fall away. He wanted to sleep, sleep for always. He could hear everything, so loud it became a deafening nothing, so loud it stole his vision, blanked his tongue. He couldn’t remember what the Mandelbrot set was. He was-
“Spock. Spock, I’ve got you, it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay. Thirteen hours. It’s gonna be okay.”
Arms around him, a tight hold to steady the shaking. A tight hold to keep him inside himself.
-
When Spock next became aware of himself, he lay in a dimly lit healers’ chamber and his father sat in a chair beside his cot, legs crossed, hands linked atop his knees. At the prickle of Spock’s consciousness reentering the atmosphere, Sarek’s head turned and he peered into Spock’s face.
“Greetings, Spock,” he said, raising his hand to present the ta’al. “Give me an assessment of your well-being.”
Spock’s mouth was parched and his mind slow, but he took an inventory of his bodily systems. With difficulty he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
“Bad,” he grated out. Sarek frowned at him.
“I suppose that is one way of putting it,” he said. “I will get the healer.”
Sarek stood to leave, but Spock asked, “Jim?” and Sarek turned around.
“A most fervent and loyal friend, Spock,” Sarek said. “You would do well to keep him. He is in the waiting chamber, worrying quite loudly, for all that his mouth remains closed.”
Sarek left him with that image, and Spock subsided back into his pillows. Time passed - he did not know how much - and an aged Vulcan woman in healing robes glided in. She stood over his bed and laid the tip of her middle finger between his eyebrows. He could not feel her presence in his mind; whether due to her skill or to his own degeneration, he did not know
“Spock, son of Sarek,” she said. “My name is T’Venna. Your bonding cortex is in acute distress.”
“I know that,” Spock managed to snap. T’Venna removed her finger and flattened her mouth. “Apologies. I am… not myself.”
“No, you would not be. Your case was almost beyond our capabilities here. I employed a powerful suppressant to ease the firing of the synapses in your bonding cortex. As it stands, your former bondmate is on her way to do her part in the healing process, and even that is time we cannot spare.”
Spock did his best to raise an eyebrow. “Why must she be present?”
T’Venna returned her fingertip to Spock’s forehead to assess him, but when she spoke, it was aloud.
“It is her mistake which has brought you here. It is her absence which is the open wound. Likewise, your mind is familiar with the touch of hers, and will likely not reject a deeper touch from her in its fragile state, as it did mine at my first attempt. T’Pring, with guidance from me, will be the one to ease your plight, son of Sarek.”
“I see, Healer. Thank you.”
T’Venna inclined her head and dropped her hand to her side. “I must venture a query of a rather personal nature.”
“Proceed.”
“Do you plan to bond with another while you are on Uzh-Ah’rak?”
Spock closed his eyes. The idea of another presence in his mind was tempting, as tempting as the promise of rain during a drought, but he could not imagine the intimate touch of someone who was not Jim, or even T’Pring. She, while no longer his chosen, was warm and familiar and comfortable, a known quantity.
“No,” he said. He cleared his throat when his voice came out tremulous. “No.”
“I recommend that you bond at your earliest convenience, Spock. Pon farr waits for no Vulcan.”
“I have human heritage.”
One of T’Venna’s eyebrows arched impressively. “You look Vulcan to me, son of Sarek.” With that, she swept from the room in a flourish of robes.
On the bedside table there was a glass of water. Spock propped himself up to reach for it. He drank it greedily, and its final drops came too soon. But then, like a cloud making way for the sun, the door opened and Jim stood in the jamb, glass of water in hand. He grinned to see Spock awake and was at his side in two long strides.
“Jim,” Spock said.
“Hey, Spock. Hey.” Jim watched him drink from the glass as if the sight were a most enthralling holofilm. Spock handed the glass back to him when he was finished and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Jim just gazed into his face like a man starved. “I was so afraid, Spock. You don’t even know.” Jim sat where Sarek had been and pulled his chair as close as it was possible to get to Spock’s cot. “You really - you looked dead, Spock. I couldn’t even find your pulse.”
At the memory, Jim dipped his chin into his chest to stare at the floor. Spock, unable to contain himself, struck out and locked his hand around Jim’s wrist, squeezed it until the bones ground together beneath the skin. Blue eyes flashed and color suffused Jim’s cheeks as he met Spock’s gaze.
“I thought you were gone,” he said, his voice a broken whisper. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’m here, Jim,” Spock said. “I’m still here.”
Jim’s breath came as ragged pants. His face was very close, now. If Spock leaned ever so slightly more forward-
Jim’s forehead came to rest against Spock’s. They closed their eyes; Spock could feel the feathered brush of Jim’s eyelashes. He was breathing Jim’s air, holding Jim’s wrist. Though his telepathy had been dampened by drugs, and he could read none of Jim’s emotions, he felt fortified by the contact, serene. For the first time in almost two weeks, Spock felt strong.
The slide of the door and the patter of footsteps broke them apart, and Jim turned away from him to face the interlopers: T’Venna and T’Pring, both of them unfazed at the sight that met them.
“Leave us, Captain Kirk,” T’Venna said. “We do not have the luxury of time.”
Jim glanced at Spock and gently twisted free of his grip. Spock swallowed, parted his mouth to speak. But Jim rose, favored him with a small smile, and left the room.
T’Pring approached his cot. She looked, as ever, like a vision from a dream. T’Venna came up behind her.
“Forgive me, Spock,” T’Pring said. “I did not intend such an ordeal.”
“T’Pring is not a healer, son of Sarek, merely a counselor,” T’Venna added. Spock saw T’Pring’s dark eyes go flinty, but she held her tongue and bowed her head. T’Venna’s hand closed over T’Pring’s face. “Do as instructed; nothing more, nothing less.”
Spock tipped his face up and closed his eyes. He felt T’Pring’s tapered fingertips settle on his meldpoints, and then she was there, smooth and fragrant and such a relief, T’Pring, telsu.
Shh, he heard her soothe him, though it was a rebuke. We both have someone else now, someone better. Allow me to right what I have wronged so that we may return to them.
You are forgiven, T’Pring, Spock told her, and he led her to the desolate tatters of his bonding cortex.
Horror. Spock…
Forgiven, Spock reiterated, and he felt a wash of red gratitude not his own. T’Pring paused as if listening to something in the distance, then Spock felt warm, living energy pulse around the ruin of his bonding cortex. It was stitching back together, a new growth, tender but strong, fresh, green, alive. T’Pring receded from Spock’s mind, and then Spock’s eyes opened and T’Pring stepped away from him. Spock kept her gaze, even as T’Venna excused herself and closed the door behind her.
“You care for him, as I care for Stonn,” she said.
Spock took a breath and lowered his eyes. “It is fact, like planets orbiting suns.”
T’Pring touched two fingertips to the knuckles on Spock’s fore- and middle fingers. She leant close to his ear.
“Then I wish you the full measure of happiness,” she said, “and the courage to allow it full rein during private moments with your chosen.”
A flutter of her gauzy dress, and T’Pring was gone.
-
Spock’s mind had been nothing like T’Pring remembered. It seemed dry, brittle, grey, even as electrical sparks burst through at irregular intervals to rain down light and pain. To be inside such a mind was painful, more so even than her previous experience when it had been a healthy vista of bright colors. And his bonding cortex… it bore no dwelling upon; she would put it from her mind. She was responsible for its poor state, but she was also responsible for its restoration. Kaadith - she and Spock were free of one another now, free to make their own choices, and free, even, to be as friends. Time and circumstance had given them that. Nonetheless, the ordeal had made her long for the clean ordered lines and harmony of Stonn’s mind. She hoped that tonight they could come together that way, mind knit to mind in perfect communion.
When T’Pring arrived at home, Stonn greeted her with a touch to her hand and led her to the living space.
“How fares the son of Sarek?” he asked.
T’Pring pulled her bare feet up on the sofa and tucked them to her side. Beside her, Stonn stretched out one arm and accepted her into the resulting crook of his body.
“He was in grave peril,” T’Pring told him. “Worse than I had believed when the healers commed us. I did not realize what I had done - it was hubris, Stonn.”
“But you rectified your misstep?”
“Affirmative. He will be fully recovered in a matter of days. I am gratified.”
Stonn’s hand stroked through her hair, picking out her pins and clips. Lock by lock her hair tumbled past her shoulders.
“Is he much changed from the boy you knew?”
T’Pring shifted enough to peer at Stonn’s profile. Green eyes flickered before staring resolutely ahead. A curious sensation bled from his skin into hers.
“You are… jealous?” she asked.
Stonn sighed and turned his head away.
“Illogical,” he grumbled.
“And yet it is so.”
Stonn turned his body enough to face her fully.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “I cannot compete with a genius from the House of Surak, half-blooded or not. I have always known this and boggled at my fortune.”
“And me, Stonn? You think me so fickle as to change men like I might my jewelry?” Anger, ruthlessly controlled, tucked low in the innermost parts of herself. But not before Stonn felt it heat her blood for a fraction of a second. It spiraled into him, set off a moment’s panic.
“No, no, ko-eik-te’krusu, I think no such thing.” He clasped her hands in his, pulled them up to press his mouth to them. “Forgive me. I am but a flawed man before a goddess.”
“Spock is honorable and good,” T’Pring said. “He shares an accord with his captain.”
Relief, cool and calming. Stonn’s control was not what it could be, but his failings were integral components of his character.
“Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise? Is he not a male of his species?”
“Do not be so provincial, Stonn,” T’Pring said. “He will make a worthy mate for Spock, and I wished them happiness.”
Stonn frowned. “Happiness?”
“Happiness,” she repeated firmly. She rested her head against Stonn’s and he squeezed her to himself.
“I received news today,” he said after a pause. “I have been commissioned to sculpt a bust of Surak for display in the fountain before the New Vulcan Science Academy. They want it to be three and a half times larger than life-size.”
“This is a great honor,” T’Pring said. “We must prepare a celebratory meal for this evening.”
Stonn let a cautious sense of pride flow from himself into her. He knotted their fingers together. His palm was hot and rough against the softness of hers. In the space between their hands she felt their pulses match and keep time.
-
After Spock took six hours to meditate, he spent 2.6 additional hours being examined by T’Venna and two other healers at the crisis center. Apparently, he was the oldest patient with a case of improper bond breaking they had ever seen. Inwardly, Spock was impatient with the proceedings; with his strength and control restored, he wished to hasten his return to the Enterprise, but he submitted to examinations nonetheless. When he was finally left alone and permitted to don his tunic and trousers again, he met his father in the waiting chambers. There was no sign of Jim.
Sarek stood.
“You shall remain at my house for two days.” He raised a quelling hand before Spock could even begin to mount a protest. “I have already made arrangements with your captain, whom I persuaded to take some rest upon news of your full recovery. He was much fatigued, so I placed him in the guest quarters of the north wing.”
Spock’s wing. The wing he would belong in, should he ever come take his place on Uzh’Ah’rak. Spock stood taller, squared off the habitual stoop of his shoulders, and met Sarek’s eyes.
“You… do not disapprove?” he ventured.
There was a moment’s hesitation, but Sarek’s hand came to rest on Spock’s shoulder. It was the first time Spock could recall his father touching him since before his kahs-wan.
“I know that I have been… a hard man, my son,” he said. He dropped his hand and turned to lead them out of the center and to his air car. “Come along.”
-
Spock slung his pack into a chair when he arrived in his own chambers in the north wing. Despite the entire wing being his own, he had, in fact, rarely stepped foot in it. The colony was thriving, and in the 2.2 years since the onset of the mission, the Enterprise had had occasion to provide aid and show solidarity only three times, and the first time, construction on Sarek’s house was not yet finished. Spock was grateful to have a place in his father’s house - but it was not his own, and would not be for the foreseeable future.
Spock wished to seek out Jim, to resume their interaction where it had been interrupted, to determine if all of his most illogical hopes had root in a reality wherein Jim returned his regard. But here, outside the healers’ chambers, alone in quarters that were his in name alone, Spock doubted himself - and, without his telepathy to rely upon, doubted the motives for Jim’s actions. It could have been purely platonic; Jim was forever going on about ‘being buddies’ and ‘hanging out,’ as he might for Mr. Scott or Dr. McCoy or Mr. Sulu. Spock was not certain he was ‘buddy’ material. Likewise, Spock was not certain he could hide his esteem any longer; he did not wish to contemplate the impact this would have on his position on the Enterprise.
In fact, the entire idea that Jim might hold him in a romantic light now seemed preposterous. When had he ever expressed sexual interest in another male? Never. When had he ever expressed a desire to share more than a passing liaison with any of his conquests? Never. Jim’s actions were not outside the bounds of typical human male friendship. Spock was a fool. A naïve fool, awash in mortification. Spock clenched his hands.
He would meditate. He would regain control of himself and his baser feelings. He would wear down his ill-advised favor for his captain until it was nothing more than a hard black nub he would call ‘duty’ and ‘honor.’ He would not disgrace himself, nor give Jim cause for embarrassment. He would be the perfect Vulcan first officer.
Spock rifled through the drawers to find incense. He lit some, placed it on the bedside table. He rolled a meditation mat flat on the floor in the empty center of the room and arranged himself on top of it, legs knotted into lotus, spine upright.
There was only breath. Deep, from the diaphragm, cool in his lungs, measured from his nose. He was breath.
Then, fingertips. Not his own, at the base of his throat. Spock’s eyes snapped open to find Jim kneeling beside him, hand splayed on his collarbone, radiating affection, lust, admiration.
“So I know it’s crazy impolite to be all up on someone when they’re meditating, but I’ve been waiting for you all day, Spock. Or night. Or, you know, mission.”
“Jim.”
Jim’s lips turned upward. His eyes were warm, and the hand on his chest swept upward to cup his cheek. There was doubt in that touch, and a lingering thread of worry.
“Tell me I haven’t gotten this wrong,” Jim said. The tip of his nose touched the tip of Spock’s.
“Jim, I require… specificity. To what do you refer when you say ‘this?’” Spock’s hand crept up to rest on the small of Jim’s back.
Jim’s laugh came as a puff of air across Spock’s lips and he wrapped his arms around Spock’s waist. A dip of his head and they were kissing, a slow, soft sweetness, lips just parted, hesitant swipes of the tips of tongues. When Jim pulled back, his breath was labored.
“That specific enough for you?”
“I believe so.”
“Cool. Because I need to get up; this floor is hell on the knees.” With that, Jim stood and stretched, making a pained grunting sound. Spock’s heightened hearing caught the cracking of his knees.
Spock rose and gathered up the meditation mat, rolled it up and placed it back in the closet. When he turned back around, Jim was perched at the foot of his bed, grinning.
“So. I’m way prettier than T’Pring,” he said with a wink. Spock rolled his eyes.
“You are both uniquely attractive beings, Jim.”
“I definitely have a sweeter ass.”
Spock cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, considering, and Jim laughed out loud, a joyous, raucous sound that bounced off the walls and multiplied.
When he quieted, Jim pulled Spock down by the sleeves to sit beside him.
“I gotta say, Spock, I thought you were letting me down easy, all that blowing me off for chess and shore leave and stuff. But I couldn’t quite keep myself from trying to get you to quit it.”
Spock pulled one of Jim’s hands into his lap. He placed it palm-up into his left hand, and with his right he explored that palm, committing to memory each long line, each scar, each callus, each ragged cuticle, each knuckle. Jim’s breath came quicker.
“I believed you did not return my regard,” Spock said. “More, that you were incapable of doing so, the fact of my gender among the chief reasons. My reticence was… a gesture of self-protection. Forgive me, Jim.”
Jim turned his hand in Spock’s and tangled their fingers, palm pressed tight against palm. He rubbed his thumb into the back of Spock’s hand. When Spock lifted his eyes from their joined hands, he found Jim gazing at him, sober.
“I overcompensate. And I usually-” Jim heaved a great sigh. “-don’t actually sleep with the women I pick up. I just do it to prove I can. Or to make you insane with jealousy. Psych 101, Spock - I thought you’d be all over that.”
Spock swallowed and gave a shake of his head. “When it comes to you, Jim, I am never sure of my footing.”
“I was being an asshole anyway. Who does that to someone they care about?” The side of Jim’s mouth came up in a small smile. “How’s this: you and me, together, for as long as… well. As long as one of us doesn’t get sick of the other and punt off to have a bunch of logical Vulcan babies.”
“One of us?” Spock arched a brow. Jim shrugged, cheeks going a dull pink.
“I’m in deep, Spock,” he said. “But I… I would try to understand. If you needed to do… whatever.”
“Your commitment to vague language is most vexing.”
“Spock. I’m serious. I know that you’ll be all pon farr-y someday. I know… I know I can’t keep you.”
“I see.” Jim was unwilling to perform the duties of a bondmate during the time of mating. Spock understood that, even if it pained him.
“Wow. We should have had sex before bringing on the downer portion of the evening.”
Spock stood and turned his back to Jim. He opened the closet doors with great purpose, but he just stared at the neat line of tunics that hung from the rail.
“Spock?”
“I would try not to harm you,” Spock blurted into the closet. “If… if we did not let the blood fever go on for too long. If we… performed the necessary acts at the first symptoms.” He turned back around to face Jim’s bewildered expression. “And it may never occur anyway, Jim - I am human, after all.”
“Wait wait wait.” A flurry of hands. “I think we’ve got our wires crossed here. You’re saying you can survive pon farr with me? Even though I’m a dude?”
Spock’s jaw snapped shut and he pursed his mouth. His brows drew downward.
“Yes, of course. What does gender have to do with weathering pon farr?”
Jim gaped at him. “Oh! I mean… you used female pronouns for the bondmate when you were explaining all that mating stuff to me. And… what that healer said to me after she finished fixing you.”
“T’Venna spoke to you? What did she say?”
“Weird Vulcan double speak, I guess,” Jim said. “She was all ‘it would be best if Spock son of Sarek bonded on this planet, in the presence of healers’ and ‘perhaps you could shed light on the kind of mate he would prefer.’ And she looked so severe. I thought she was telling me off. Oh my God, I am such an ass.” He slapped a hand over his eyes.
Spock felt lighter, positively buoyant. He stepped forward and lifted Jim’s hand from his face. Blue eyes shone up at him, full of a helpless sort of devotion that Spock could now read with ease.
“While I would welcome a bond with you at some point, Jim, I believe it would be unwisely precipitous to initiate one before we have truly tested our compatibility in a romantic and sexual context. It would be like… getting married before going on our first date?”
Jim laughed and tugged Spock down. Spock let himself lose his balance and together they tumbled onto the bed. Jim’s mouth sought Spock’s and Spock opened to its ministrations. He let his own weight bear down on Jim, who moaned and writhed beneath him as if Spock were a delicacy all his own to cherish. Spock started when he felt Jim’s hands slide down his sides and squeeze at his buttocks.
“Let’s pretend the past two years were our first couple dates,” Jim said. “I should probably put out about now.”
“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Spock said. “Please continue touching me.”
Jim laughed and obliged by flipping up the back of Spock’s tunic and pushing his hands down the waistband of his trousers to grab handfuls of his bare backside. Jim’s legs fell open and he pulled his knees up close to Spock’s body. Spock thrust helplessly into the cradle of Jim’s thighs. He could feel the column of Jim’s penis firming up against his own. The promise of it sent a thrill up Spock’s spine.
Jim insinuated a hand between them in an effort to undo both their pants, but Spock stilled his progress with a touch to his wrist.
“Jim - I am not experienced in these matters.” It seemed important that he know, suddenly. There had been no one since T’Pring more than thirteen years ago, and his passing interest in Lieutenant Uhura had been consumed by poor timing and debilitating grief.
Jim drew his hand back and looked Spock in the eye.
“Do you want this? We can stop.”
“I do not wish to stop,” Spock said. “I merely… had to tell you.”
“Okay. Okay.” Jim brushed Spock’s overgrown fringe from his forehead. He had not been able to groom it in his condition. Jim’s fingertips trailed over Spock’s brows and the bony orbits of his eyes, down his nose, across his cheekbones, along his jawline. His thumbs came to rest of the swell of Spock’s lower lip. “Tell me what you want.”
Spock shifted half on his side, legs still tangled with Jim’s. Jim ran a hand down Spock’s back, slipped a hand beneath his tunic and caressed his hip.
“I wish to taste you,” Spock said. Jim clutched at him, pushed their hips together.
“Yeah?”
Spock nodded, emboldened. “And I want… I want to ejaculate in your mouth.”
Jim let out a low whimper and threw his weight to the side enough to roll them both, and then he was astride Spock and peeling off his t-shirt, flinging it off into a corner.
“Off, off,” he muttered, and Spock found himself roughly divested of his tunic, his nipples tweaked, his chest hair raked through with short nails. Then Jim’s hands were at his waistband and Spock was kicking off his trousers and underwear and Jim had somehow slithered neatly from his jeans , and then- “Oh my God, it’s a sea anemone!”
Spock looked down at his engorged penis, green villi flushed and stiff, standing at attention, quivering slightly. Spock supposed it did look a bit like certain species of that endangered Earth sea creature, but he was not certain Jim should crow with such delight over it.
“It’s a normal Vulcan penis,” Spock said, and perhaps a light petulance had crept into his tone. Why did he keep having to tell his partners this? Jim only grinned at him and arranged his knees to frame Spock’s hips before he leaned forward to inspect Spock’s genitals.
“Whatever, it’s totally awesome and I want it in my mouth.” And, without further warning, Jim swallowed Spock almost half way, and Spock’s voice was silenced, caught in his throat as he choked on the surreal sensation of Jim sucking him with hearty abandon, slurping and groaning around the length of him like a starving man at a feast. Spock’s eyes rolled back in his head when Jim inserted his tongue beneath the hood of his foreskin and lapped at his glans. One of Jim’s hands pumped the base of his shaft, and each swipe over his villi, of hand and mouth, sent Spock soaring to unfamiliar heights. Masturbation proved woefully pale in comparison. Spock looked down at that happily bobbing head and could not decide if he wished to feel the quality of that hair or of those broad shoulders; he settled for a hand on each, and then let his head drop back into the pillows and his eyes close.
Jim’s other hand crept beneath him and pressed into Spock’s testicles. When he removed his mouth from Spock’s penis, Spock began to protest until he applied that mouth to the delicate sac and lower. He was aware of a strangled, choked off sound coming from his person, but he found there was nothing he could do to stop it when he felt Jim’s tongue flicker over the tight knot of his anus. His hand tightened in Jim’s hair and he rocked down into the contact. Jim’s laugh was a vibration against his perineum.
“Like that, Mr. Spock?”
Spock only pushed further into Jim’s tongue. Jim laved him until he was slick and filthy, sucked the muscle until it gave beneath his seeking tongue, and then he stopped and rose up. Spock groaned in disappointment and forced his eyes open.
“Hold on,” Jim said, stroking through the light dusting of hair Spock’s splayed inner thigh. “This’ll feel good, I promise.” He encouraged Spock to tip his pelvis upward, and then, slowly, he inserted his middle finger into Spock’s body. Spock gasped and held his breath. Jim’s eyes flicked to his. “Okay?”
The sensation was alien and strange, but somehow relieving. He nodded, and Jim resumed his movements. The finger filled him gently, prodded along his sensitized walls, and it suddenly felt as if Spock had been empty before Jim and this maddening finger had come along. Jim thrust it shallowly in and out, and alternated with a gentle circling motion. Then, he bent and closed his mouth over Spock’s aching penis again.
Spock’s villi were oozing copiously, slicking Jim’s face, but Jim kept at his task, fusing suction with acrobatic tongue work and a clever hand that had already sussed out just how to tug at his villi to drive him to the brink of orgasm. And then Jim crooked the finger embedded in Spock’s anus.
Without warning Spock’s climax consumed his entire body. He lurched upward and scrabbled at Jim’s shoulders as he emptied himself down that waiting throat, and though his mouth was poised for shouting, there seemed to be no sound forthcoming. When his orgasm finally abated, Spock fell back into the bed and gasped for breath. Behind his eyelids, supernovas.
Spock felt Jim extricate himself from the grip of his body. He laid sloppy kisses up Spock’s stomach, over his chest, on his throat. Spock gathered himself and pushed Jim down on his back.
“God, Spock,” Jim panted. “The way you look, the way you taste.”
“I believe it is, as they say on your planet, ‘my turn,’ Jim.” After all, Spock had still not fulfilled the first desire he’d expressed.
“Oh God.”
Spock licked down Jim’s near-perfect torso until he reached the thatch of brown pubic hair. Jim’s penis rose thick and rosy to loll on his tight abdominal muscles, and his scrotum drew tight against his body, the testicles within firm and swollen. Spock nosed about in Jim’s curls, breathing deeply of Jim’s dizzying pheromones, and he felt Jim’s hand in his hair, heard Jim’s low groans. Beside his ears, Jim’s thighs were clenching and quivering.
Spock took just the head of Jim’s penis into his mouth; his skill would grow with practice, but for now, he simply wished to give Jim pleasure without the awkward learning curve. With his hands he pumped Jim’s shaft and with his lips and tongue he worked Jim’s eager red glans. Jim’s flavor was a dark, earthy musk, and Spock worked at sucking it all from Jim’s body.
Jim gave a sharp tug at Spock’s hair - unintentional, but Spock felt a spark of arousal light his testicles nonetheless - and with a single agonized grunt, he ejaculated into Spock’s mouth. There was more semen than expected and before he could stop it, it had dribbled back down Jim’s penis. Spock lapped it all back up, but once it was in his mouth, he was not certain it was a precisely pleasant substance. Slimy.
Jim’s chest had gone a mottled pink and he languished in the pillows with his eyes half open. When Spock rose from his task, Jim opened his arms and Spock settled at his shoulder, arm across Jim’s waist. Contentment and satiation bloomed between them, mingled; Spock was unsure whose it was he could feel.
“We need to do that all the time,” Jim said.
“I will schedule it into our duty rosters,” Spock replied.
Jim chuckled, the sound like heavy thunder in Spock’s ears. He rolled onto his side, facing Spock.
“Better keep us busy, First Officer. Can’t have an idle command team.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Jim pressed his grinning mouth to the relaxed line of Spock’s, and Spock let him in. They kissed for long, slick moments, and when Jim pulled away, he looked at Spock in awe.
“I just had this insane out of body experience.”
Spock quirked an eyebrow. “Really, Jim. My vanity.”
“Ha ha, Spock.” Jim scowled. He inched closer and closed his arms around Spock. “No seriously. It was this flash, like I was just not here anymore but there, just for a second. It was us, on the Enterprise, but we were way old, like sixty, and the uniforms were totally awful. And I looked at you and you did that thing where you smile at me but not really because that would not be logical. And the stars were zooming past us and I could feel you in my brain like the best hug and I knew everything was just how it was supposed to be. You and me and our girl, perfect.”
Spock laid his hand on Jim’s jaw.
“Perfect,” he echoed.
-
As they waited in the hall before council chambers, T’Kafna finished pinning T’Pring’s long hair to her head in an elaborate coiffure.
“This is most aesthetically pleasing,” T’Kafna said. “Your bondmate must strive to be worthy of such beauty.”
“Surely he completed his kahs-wan already? Mother?” T’Pring knew it must be true - these were the rules of the traditional bonding. This was how children became true Vulcans. Her bondmate would have proven himself in the heat of The Forge, as she had. He would be worthy.
“Of course, daughter,” her mother replied. “Do not ask tiresome questions to which you already know the answers.”
T’Pring dipped her head to stare down at the floor. Her feet dangled over it, a reminder of her short stature. She was going to be betrothed today - she would be named a woman in the house of her fathers, and she could not reach the floor from her seat. She found this incongruous, illogical. She stretched her legs, pointed her toes, grazed the floor just barely.
“Sit straight,” T’Kafna said, and as T’Pring complied, the doors at the end of the hall parted and two male figures emerged tall and slender. Her father and, if she made the correct assumption, the father of her bondmate. Trailing behind them, a slight woman, a human woman, T’Pring realized, held the hand of a small, rather stout boy whose left arm was encased in a cast and lashed to his body with a sling. Their shoes clicked as they neared, and T’Pring felt her mother’s hand at her back, urging her to stand.
As the adults introduced themselves with parted hands, T’Pring stared frankly at her intended, and he gazed back steadily. His eyes were large, a lighted brown of surprising depth. He pulled his hand from his mother’s grip, rummaged in the roomy pocket of his tunic, and stepped closer to her. The conversation taking place over their heads stopped as he held out his uninjured hand. A lush flower, the bloom of a cactus, rested in his palm.
“A token,” he said.
T’Pring reached forward and plucked it from his hand. At the touch of her fingertips, electricity. They both drew back. T’Pring hazarded a glance at her bondmate’s mother; she was gazing at Spock with an expression foreign to T’Pring, who could suddenly see all of her pearly human teeth in the open crescent of her mouth.
“There now,” said her bondmate’s mother. “Introduce yourself.”
He glanced up at his mother before turning back to T’Pring and raising his hand in greeting.
“I am Spock, son of Sarek of the House of Surak. I am honored to bond with you today.”
Beside her, T’Pring could see her father nodding his encouragement. She parted her fingers.
“I am T’Pring, daughter of Sofal of the House of Skor. The honor is mine.”
Those shiny human teeth flashed at her again, and she felt the weight of her father’s hand on her shoulder. She craned her neck to look up at him.
“Acquaint yourself with your intended, daughter,” he said. “Your mother and I must enter council chambers with Sarek and Amanda before your link is established.”
The three Vulcans stepped away, but the human, Amanda, did a curious thing. She knelt before T’Pring’s bondmate and cupped his full cheeks. She pressed that expressive mouth to his forehead.
“I’m so proud of you,” T’Pring heard her say. She could see the fascinating rounded shell of her ear peek out from beneath her headscarf. “Just be yourself, Spock. I love you.”
“Mother,” Spock whispered.
“I know. Okay. I’ll go.” Her lips met Spock’s forehead again, and when she stood, she met T’Pring’s eyes and gave her a nod before joining the other adults. The doors to council chambers parted and they disappeared behind them.
T’Pring sat back down on the bench and Spock joined her. She held his gift in her lap. She noted that his feet dangled even higher than hers. After 2.3 minutes passed in silence, she turned to him.
“Is it odd, being half human?”
He turned to face her. His eyes held such warmth, such unfamiliar warmth. She leaned in closer to him.
“My mother instructs me to think of myself as a whole rather than in fractions.”
“Her logic must be inferior to that of a Vulcan’s.”
Spock turned away, and without that gaze there was suddenly an emptiness. T’Pring was bereft.
“And yet I cannot fault it,” Spock said. “I am here, functional and not defective, my katra greater than the sum of my parts.”
T’Pring sat quietly beside him contemplating his words.
“That is sound logic,” she said at last, and she placed the flower back in his possession. “You may put this in my hair.”
She turned her back to him and felt him shift until the heat of him seeped into her. With one hand, he found a place for the flower and secured it. When T’Pring turned back around, those large eyes shone with wonder.
“It would please me to do this for you always,” he said.
T’Pring held out two hesitant fingers. Spock stared at them before he tapped them with his own. At the touch, they both turned back to face straight forward, backs upright.
“How did you injure yourself?” T’Pring asked.
“On the final night of the kahs-wan, I was attacked by a le-matya,” Spock told her.
T’Pring could not help herself; her mouth parted in shock. Quickly she sealed her lips and wiped the expression from her face.
“Truly you possess great valor,” she said. “Tell me of your kahs-wan and I will tell you of mine.”
Behind the doors to the council chambers, two sets of parents, the council of elders, and a team of healers were negotiating a future for Spock and T’Pring. But on a bench in the hallway, feet swaying inches above the ground, they found themselves capable of securing that future for themselves.
End
Part I | Part II | Part III
“Spock. Spock, I’ve got you, it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay. Thirteen hours. It’s gonna be okay.”
Arms around him, a tight hold to steady the shaking. A tight hold to keep him inside himself.
-
When Spock next became aware of himself, he lay in a dimly lit healers’ chamber and his father sat in a chair beside his cot, legs crossed, hands linked atop his knees. At the prickle of Spock’s consciousness reentering the atmosphere, Sarek’s head turned and he peered into Spock’s face.
“Greetings, Spock,” he said, raising his hand to present the ta’al. “Give me an assessment of your well-being.”
Spock’s mouth was parched and his mind slow, but he took an inventory of his bodily systems. With difficulty he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
“Bad,” he grated out. Sarek frowned at him.
“I suppose that is one way of putting it,” he said. “I will get the healer.”
Sarek stood to leave, but Spock asked, “Jim?” and Sarek turned around.
“A most fervent and loyal friend, Spock,” Sarek said. “You would do well to keep him. He is in the waiting chamber, worrying quite loudly, for all that his mouth remains closed.”
Sarek left him with that image, and Spock subsided back into his pillows. Time passed - he did not know how much - and an aged Vulcan woman in healing robes glided in. She stood over his bed and laid the tip of her middle finger between his eyebrows. He could not feel her presence in his mind; whether due to her skill or to his own degeneration, he did not know
“Spock, son of Sarek,” she said. “My name is T’Venna. Your bonding cortex is in acute distress.”
“I know that,” Spock managed to snap. T’Venna removed her finger and flattened her mouth. “Apologies. I am… not myself.”
“No, you would not be. Your case was almost beyond our capabilities here. I employed a powerful suppressant to ease the firing of the synapses in your bonding cortex. As it stands, your former bondmate is on her way to do her part in the healing process, and even that is time we cannot spare.”
Spock did his best to raise an eyebrow. “Why must she be present?”
T’Venna returned her fingertip to Spock’s forehead to assess him, but when she spoke, it was aloud.
“It is her mistake which has brought you here. It is her absence which is the open wound. Likewise, your mind is familiar with the touch of hers, and will likely not reject a deeper touch from her in its fragile state, as it did mine at my first attempt. T’Pring, with guidance from me, will be the one to ease your plight, son of Sarek.”
“I see, Healer. Thank you.”
T’Venna inclined her head and dropped her hand to her side. “I must venture a query of a rather personal nature.”
“Proceed.”
“Do you plan to bond with another while you are on Uzh-Ah’rak?”
Spock closed his eyes. The idea of another presence in his mind was tempting, as tempting as the promise of rain during a drought, but he could not imagine the intimate touch of someone who was not Jim, or even T’Pring. She, while no longer his chosen, was warm and familiar and comfortable, a known quantity.
“No,” he said. He cleared his throat when his voice came out tremulous. “No.”
“I recommend that you bond at your earliest convenience, Spock. Pon farr waits for no Vulcan.”
“I have human heritage.”
One of T’Venna’s eyebrows arched impressively. “You look Vulcan to me, son of Sarek.” With that, she swept from the room in a flourish of robes.
On the bedside table there was a glass of water. Spock propped himself up to reach for it. He drank it greedily, and its final drops came too soon. But then, like a cloud making way for the sun, the door opened and Jim stood in the jamb, glass of water in hand. He grinned to see Spock awake and was at his side in two long strides.
“Jim,” Spock said.
“Hey, Spock. Hey.” Jim watched him drink from the glass as if the sight were a most enthralling holofilm. Spock handed the glass back to him when he was finished and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Jim just gazed into his face like a man starved. “I was so afraid, Spock. You don’t even know.” Jim sat where Sarek had been and pulled his chair as close as it was possible to get to Spock’s cot. “You really - you looked dead, Spock. I couldn’t even find your pulse.”
At the memory, Jim dipped his chin into his chest to stare at the floor. Spock, unable to contain himself, struck out and locked his hand around Jim’s wrist, squeezed it until the bones ground together beneath the skin. Blue eyes flashed and color suffused Jim’s cheeks as he met Spock’s gaze.
“I thought you were gone,” he said, his voice a broken whisper. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’m here, Jim,” Spock said. “I’m still here.”
Jim’s breath came as ragged pants. His face was very close, now. If Spock leaned ever so slightly more forward-
Jim’s forehead came to rest against Spock’s. They closed their eyes; Spock could feel the feathered brush of Jim’s eyelashes. He was breathing Jim’s air, holding Jim’s wrist. Though his telepathy had been dampened by drugs, and he could read none of Jim’s emotions, he felt fortified by the contact, serene. For the first time in almost two weeks, Spock felt strong.
The slide of the door and the patter of footsteps broke them apart, and Jim turned away from him to face the interlopers: T’Venna and T’Pring, both of them unfazed at the sight that met them.
“Leave us, Captain Kirk,” T’Venna said. “We do not have the luxury of time.”
Jim glanced at Spock and gently twisted free of his grip. Spock swallowed, parted his mouth to speak. But Jim rose, favored him with a small smile, and left the room.
T’Pring approached his cot. She looked, as ever, like a vision from a dream. T’Venna came up behind her.
“Forgive me, Spock,” T’Pring said. “I did not intend such an ordeal.”
“T’Pring is not a healer, son of Sarek, merely a counselor,” T’Venna added. Spock saw T’Pring’s dark eyes go flinty, but she held her tongue and bowed her head. T’Venna’s hand closed over T’Pring’s face. “Do as instructed; nothing more, nothing less.”
Spock tipped his face up and closed his eyes. He felt T’Pring’s tapered fingertips settle on his meldpoints, and then she was there, smooth and fragrant and such a relief, T’Pring, telsu.
Shh, he heard her soothe him, though it was a rebuke. We both have someone else now, someone better. Allow me to right what I have wronged so that we may return to them.
You are forgiven, T’Pring, Spock told her, and he led her to the desolate tatters of his bonding cortex.
Horror. Spock…
Forgiven, Spock reiterated, and he felt a wash of red gratitude not his own. T’Pring paused as if listening to something in the distance, then Spock felt warm, living energy pulse around the ruin of his bonding cortex. It was stitching back together, a new growth, tender but strong, fresh, green, alive. T’Pring receded from Spock’s mind, and then Spock’s eyes opened and T’Pring stepped away from him. Spock kept her gaze, even as T’Venna excused herself and closed the door behind her.
“You care for him, as I care for Stonn,” she said.
Spock took a breath and lowered his eyes. “It is fact, like planets orbiting suns.”
T’Pring touched two fingertips to the knuckles on Spock’s fore- and middle fingers. She leant close to his ear.
“Then I wish you the full measure of happiness,” she said, “and the courage to allow it full rein during private moments with your chosen.”
A flutter of her gauzy dress, and T’Pring was gone.
-
Spock’s mind had been nothing like T’Pring remembered. It seemed dry, brittle, grey, even as electrical sparks burst through at irregular intervals to rain down light and pain. To be inside such a mind was painful, more so even than her previous experience when it had been a healthy vista of bright colors. And his bonding cortex… it bore no dwelling upon; she would put it from her mind. She was responsible for its poor state, but she was also responsible for its restoration. Kaadith - she and Spock were free of one another now, free to make their own choices, and free, even, to be as friends. Time and circumstance had given them that. Nonetheless, the ordeal had made her long for the clean ordered lines and harmony of Stonn’s mind. She hoped that tonight they could come together that way, mind knit to mind in perfect communion.
When T’Pring arrived at home, Stonn greeted her with a touch to her hand and led her to the living space.
“How fares the son of Sarek?” he asked.
T’Pring pulled her bare feet up on the sofa and tucked them to her side. Beside her, Stonn stretched out one arm and accepted her into the resulting crook of his body.
“He was in grave peril,” T’Pring told him. “Worse than I had believed when the healers commed us. I did not realize what I had done - it was hubris, Stonn.”
“But you rectified your misstep?”
“Affirmative. He will be fully recovered in a matter of days. I am gratified.”
Stonn’s hand stroked through her hair, picking out her pins and clips. Lock by lock her hair tumbled past her shoulders.
“Is he much changed from the boy you knew?”
T’Pring shifted enough to peer at Stonn’s profile. Green eyes flickered before staring resolutely ahead. A curious sensation bled from his skin into hers.
“You are… jealous?” she asked.
Stonn sighed and turned his head away.
“Illogical,” he grumbled.
“And yet it is so.”
Stonn turned his body enough to face her fully.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “I cannot compete with a genius from the House of Surak, half-blooded or not. I have always known this and boggled at my fortune.”
“And me, Stonn? You think me so fickle as to change men like I might my jewelry?” Anger, ruthlessly controlled, tucked low in the innermost parts of herself. But not before Stonn felt it heat her blood for a fraction of a second. It spiraled into him, set off a moment’s panic.
“No, no, ko-eik-te’krusu, I think no such thing.” He clasped her hands in his, pulled them up to press his mouth to them. “Forgive me. I am but a flawed man before a goddess.”
“Spock is honorable and good,” T’Pring said. “He shares an accord with his captain.”
Relief, cool and calming. Stonn’s control was not what it could be, but his failings were integral components of his character.
“Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise? Is he not a male of his species?”
“Do not be so provincial, Stonn,” T’Pring said. “He will make a worthy mate for Spock, and I wished them happiness.”
Stonn frowned. “Happiness?”
“Happiness,” she repeated firmly. She rested her head against Stonn’s and he squeezed her to himself.
“I received news today,” he said after a pause. “I have been commissioned to sculpt a bust of Surak for display in the fountain before the New Vulcan Science Academy. They want it to be three and a half times larger than life-size.”
“This is a great honor,” T’Pring said. “We must prepare a celebratory meal for this evening.”
Stonn let a cautious sense of pride flow from himself into her. He knotted their fingers together. His palm was hot and rough against the softness of hers. In the space between their hands she felt their pulses match and keep time.
-
After Spock took six hours to meditate, he spent 2.6 additional hours being examined by T’Venna and two other healers at the crisis center. Apparently, he was the oldest patient with a case of improper bond breaking they had ever seen. Inwardly, Spock was impatient with the proceedings; with his strength and control restored, he wished to hasten his return to the Enterprise, but he submitted to examinations nonetheless. When he was finally left alone and permitted to don his tunic and trousers again, he met his father in the waiting chambers. There was no sign of Jim.
Sarek stood.
“You shall remain at my house for two days.” He raised a quelling hand before Spock could even begin to mount a protest. “I have already made arrangements with your captain, whom I persuaded to take some rest upon news of your full recovery. He was much fatigued, so I placed him in the guest quarters of the north wing.”
Spock’s wing. The wing he would belong in, should he ever come take his place on Uzh’Ah’rak. Spock stood taller, squared off the habitual stoop of his shoulders, and met Sarek’s eyes.
“You… do not disapprove?” he ventured.
There was a moment’s hesitation, but Sarek’s hand came to rest on Spock’s shoulder. It was the first time Spock could recall his father touching him since before his kahs-wan.
“I know that I have been… a hard man, my son,” he said. He dropped his hand and turned to lead them out of the center and to his air car. “Come along.”
-
Spock slung his pack into a chair when he arrived in his own chambers in the north wing. Despite the entire wing being his own, he had, in fact, rarely stepped foot in it. The colony was thriving, and in the 2.2 years since the onset of the mission, the Enterprise had had occasion to provide aid and show solidarity only three times, and the first time, construction on Sarek’s house was not yet finished. Spock was grateful to have a place in his father’s house - but it was not his own, and would not be for the foreseeable future.
Spock wished to seek out Jim, to resume their interaction where it had been interrupted, to determine if all of his most illogical hopes had root in a reality wherein Jim returned his regard. But here, outside the healers’ chambers, alone in quarters that were his in name alone, Spock doubted himself - and, without his telepathy to rely upon, doubted the motives for Jim’s actions. It could have been purely platonic; Jim was forever going on about ‘being buddies’ and ‘hanging out,’ as he might for Mr. Scott or Dr. McCoy or Mr. Sulu. Spock was not certain he was ‘buddy’ material. Likewise, Spock was not certain he could hide his esteem any longer; he did not wish to contemplate the impact this would have on his position on the Enterprise.
In fact, the entire idea that Jim might hold him in a romantic light now seemed preposterous. When had he ever expressed sexual interest in another male? Never. When had he ever expressed a desire to share more than a passing liaison with any of his conquests? Never. Jim’s actions were not outside the bounds of typical human male friendship. Spock was a fool. A naïve fool, awash in mortification. Spock clenched his hands.
He would meditate. He would regain control of himself and his baser feelings. He would wear down his ill-advised favor for his captain until it was nothing more than a hard black nub he would call ‘duty’ and ‘honor.’ He would not disgrace himself, nor give Jim cause for embarrassment. He would be the perfect Vulcan first officer.
Spock rifled through the drawers to find incense. He lit some, placed it on the bedside table. He rolled a meditation mat flat on the floor in the empty center of the room and arranged himself on top of it, legs knotted into lotus, spine upright.
There was only breath. Deep, from the diaphragm, cool in his lungs, measured from his nose. He was breath.
Then, fingertips. Not his own, at the base of his throat. Spock’s eyes snapped open to find Jim kneeling beside him, hand splayed on his collarbone, radiating affection, lust, admiration.
“So I know it’s crazy impolite to be all up on someone when they’re meditating, but I’ve been waiting for you all day, Spock. Or night. Or, you know, mission.”
“Jim.”
Jim’s lips turned upward. His eyes were warm, and the hand on his chest swept upward to cup his cheek. There was doubt in that touch, and a lingering thread of worry.
“Tell me I haven’t gotten this wrong,” Jim said. The tip of his nose touched the tip of Spock’s.
“Jim, I require… specificity. To what do you refer when you say ‘this?’” Spock’s hand crept up to rest on the small of Jim’s back.
Jim’s laugh came as a puff of air across Spock’s lips and he wrapped his arms around Spock’s waist. A dip of his head and they were kissing, a slow, soft sweetness, lips just parted, hesitant swipes of the tips of tongues. When Jim pulled back, his breath was labored.
“That specific enough for you?”
“I believe so.”
“Cool. Because I need to get up; this floor is hell on the knees.” With that, Jim stood and stretched, making a pained grunting sound. Spock’s heightened hearing caught the cracking of his knees.
Spock rose and gathered up the meditation mat, rolled it up and placed it back in the closet. When he turned back around, Jim was perched at the foot of his bed, grinning.
“So. I’m way prettier than T’Pring,” he said with a wink. Spock rolled his eyes.
“You are both uniquely attractive beings, Jim.”
“I definitely have a sweeter ass.”
Spock cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, considering, and Jim laughed out loud, a joyous, raucous sound that bounced off the walls and multiplied.
When he quieted, Jim pulled Spock down by the sleeves to sit beside him.
“I gotta say, Spock, I thought you were letting me down easy, all that blowing me off for chess and shore leave and stuff. But I couldn’t quite keep myself from trying to get you to quit it.”
Spock pulled one of Jim’s hands into his lap. He placed it palm-up into his left hand, and with his right he explored that palm, committing to memory each long line, each scar, each callus, each ragged cuticle, each knuckle. Jim’s breath came quicker.
“I believed you did not return my regard,” Spock said. “More, that you were incapable of doing so, the fact of my gender among the chief reasons. My reticence was… a gesture of self-protection. Forgive me, Jim.”
Jim turned his hand in Spock’s and tangled their fingers, palm pressed tight against palm. He rubbed his thumb into the back of Spock’s hand. When Spock lifted his eyes from their joined hands, he found Jim gazing at him, sober.
“I overcompensate. And I usually-” Jim heaved a great sigh. “-don’t actually sleep with the women I pick up. I just do it to prove I can. Or to make you insane with jealousy. Psych 101, Spock - I thought you’d be all over that.”
Spock swallowed and gave a shake of his head. “When it comes to you, Jim, I am never sure of my footing.”
“I was being an asshole anyway. Who does that to someone they care about?” The side of Jim’s mouth came up in a small smile. “How’s this: you and me, together, for as long as… well. As long as one of us doesn’t get sick of the other and punt off to have a bunch of logical Vulcan babies.”
“One of us?” Spock arched a brow. Jim shrugged, cheeks going a dull pink.
“I’m in deep, Spock,” he said. “But I… I would try to understand. If you needed to do… whatever.”
“Your commitment to vague language is most vexing.”
“Spock. I’m serious. I know that you’ll be all pon farr-y someday. I know… I know I can’t keep you.”
“I see.” Jim was unwilling to perform the duties of a bondmate during the time of mating. Spock understood that, even if it pained him.
“Wow. We should have had sex before bringing on the downer portion of the evening.”
Spock stood and turned his back to Jim. He opened the closet doors with great purpose, but he just stared at the neat line of tunics that hung from the rail.
“Spock?”
“I would try not to harm you,” Spock blurted into the closet. “If… if we did not let the blood fever go on for too long. If we… performed the necessary acts at the first symptoms.” He turned back around to face Jim’s bewildered expression. “And it may never occur anyway, Jim - I am human, after all.”
“Wait wait wait.” A flurry of hands. “I think we’ve got our wires crossed here. You’re saying you can survive pon farr with me? Even though I’m a dude?”
Spock’s jaw snapped shut and he pursed his mouth. His brows drew downward.
“Yes, of course. What does gender have to do with weathering pon farr?”
Jim gaped at him. “Oh! I mean… you used female pronouns for the bondmate when you were explaining all that mating stuff to me. And… what that healer said to me after she finished fixing you.”
“T’Venna spoke to you? What did she say?”
“Weird Vulcan double speak, I guess,” Jim said. “She was all ‘it would be best if Spock son of Sarek bonded on this planet, in the presence of healers’ and ‘perhaps you could shed light on the kind of mate he would prefer.’ And she looked so severe. I thought she was telling me off. Oh my God, I am such an ass.” He slapped a hand over his eyes.
Spock felt lighter, positively buoyant. He stepped forward and lifted Jim’s hand from his face. Blue eyes shone up at him, full of a helpless sort of devotion that Spock could now read with ease.
“While I would welcome a bond with you at some point, Jim, I believe it would be unwisely precipitous to initiate one before we have truly tested our compatibility in a romantic and sexual context. It would be like… getting married before going on our first date?”
Jim laughed and tugged Spock down. Spock let himself lose his balance and together they tumbled onto the bed. Jim’s mouth sought Spock’s and Spock opened to its ministrations. He let his own weight bear down on Jim, who moaned and writhed beneath him as if Spock were a delicacy all his own to cherish. Spock started when he felt Jim’s hands slide down his sides and squeeze at his buttocks.
“Let’s pretend the past two years were our first couple dates,” Jim said. “I should probably put out about now.”
“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Spock said. “Please continue touching me.”
Jim laughed and obliged by flipping up the back of Spock’s tunic and pushing his hands down the waistband of his trousers to grab handfuls of his bare backside. Jim’s legs fell open and he pulled his knees up close to Spock’s body. Spock thrust helplessly into the cradle of Jim’s thighs. He could feel the column of Jim’s penis firming up against his own. The promise of it sent a thrill up Spock’s spine.
Jim insinuated a hand between them in an effort to undo both their pants, but Spock stilled his progress with a touch to his wrist.
“Jim - I am not experienced in these matters.” It seemed important that he know, suddenly. There had been no one since T’Pring more than thirteen years ago, and his passing interest in Lieutenant Uhura had been consumed by poor timing and debilitating grief.
Jim drew his hand back and looked Spock in the eye.
“Do you want this? We can stop.”
“I do not wish to stop,” Spock said. “I merely… had to tell you.”
“Okay. Okay.” Jim brushed Spock’s overgrown fringe from his forehead. He had not been able to groom it in his condition. Jim’s fingertips trailed over Spock’s brows and the bony orbits of his eyes, down his nose, across his cheekbones, along his jawline. His thumbs came to rest of the swell of Spock’s lower lip. “Tell me what you want.”
Spock shifted half on his side, legs still tangled with Jim’s. Jim ran a hand down Spock’s back, slipped a hand beneath his tunic and caressed his hip.
“I wish to taste you,” Spock said. Jim clutched at him, pushed their hips together.
“Yeah?”
Spock nodded, emboldened. “And I want… I want to ejaculate in your mouth.”
Jim let out a low whimper and threw his weight to the side enough to roll them both, and then he was astride Spock and peeling off his t-shirt, flinging it off into a corner.
“Off, off,” he muttered, and Spock found himself roughly divested of his tunic, his nipples tweaked, his chest hair raked through with short nails. Then Jim’s hands were at his waistband and Spock was kicking off his trousers and underwear and Jim had somehow slithered neatly from his jeans , and then- “Oh my God, it’s a sea anemone!”
Spock looked down at his engorged penis, green villi flushed and stiff, standing at attention, quivering slightly. Spock supposed it did look a bit like certain species of that endangered Earth sea creature, but he was not certain Jim should crow with such delight over it.
“It’s a normal Vulcan penis,” Spock said, and perhaps a light petulance had crept into his tone. Why did he keep having to tell his partners this? Jim only grinned at him and arranged his knees to frame Spock’s hips before he leaned forward to inspect Spock’s genitals.
“Whatever, it’s totally awesome and I want it in my mouth.” And, without further warning, Jim swallowed Spock almost half way, and Spock’s voice was silenced, caught in his throat as he choked on the surreal sensation of Jim sucking him with hearty abandon, slurping and groaning around the length of him like a starving man at a feast. Spock’s eyes rolled back in his head when Jim inserted his tongue beneath the hood of his foreskin and lapped at his glans. One of Jim’s hands pumped the base of his shaft, and each swipe over his villi, of hand and mouth, sent Spock soaring to unfamiliar heights. Masturbation proved woefully pale in comparison. Spock looked down at that happily bobbing head and could not decide if he wished to feel the quality of that hair or of those broad shoulders; he settled for a hand on each, and then let his head drop back into the pillows and his eyes close.
Jim’s other hand crept beneath him and pressed into Spock’s testicles. When he removed his mouth from Spock’s penis, Spock began to protest until he applied that mouth to the delicate sac and lower. He was aware of a strangled, choked off sound coming from his person, but he found there was nothing he could do to stop it when he felt Jim’s tongue flicker over the tight knot of his anus. His hand tightened in Jim’s hair and he rocked down into the contact. Jim’s laugh was a vibration against his perineum.
“Like that, Mr. Spock?”
Spock only pushed further into Jim’s tongue. Jim laved him until he was slick and filthy, sucked the muscle until it gave beneath his seeking tongue, and then he stopped and rose up. Spock groaned in disappointment and forced his eyes open.
“Hold on,” Jim said, stroking through the light dusting of hair Spock’s splayed inner thigh. “This’ll feel good, I promise.” He encouraged Spock to tip his pelvis upward, and then, slowly, he inserted his middle finger into Spock’s body. Spock gasped and held his breath. Jim’s eyes flicked to his. “Okay?”
The sensation was alien and strange, but somehow relieving. He nodded, and Jim resumed his movements. The finger filled him gently, prodded along his sensitized walls, and it suddenly felt as if Spock had been empty before Jim and this maddening finger had come along. Jim thrust it shallowly in and out, and alternated with a gentle circling motion. Then, he bent and closed his mouth over Spock’s aching penis again.
Spock’s villi were oozing copiously, slicking Jim’s face, but Jim kept at his task, fusing suction with acrobatic tongue work and a clever hand that had already sussed out just how to tug at his villi to drive him to the brink of orgasm. And then Jim crooked the finger embedded in Spock’s anus.
Without warning Spock’s climax consumed his entire body. He lurched upward and scrabbled at Jim’s shoulders as he emptied himself down that waiting throat, and though his mouth was poised for shouting, there seemed to be no sound forthcoming. When his orgasm finally abated, Spock fell back into the bed and gasped for breath. Behind his eyelids, supernovas.
Spock felt Jim extricate himself from the grip of his body. He laid sloppy kisses up Spock’s stomach, over his chest, on his throat. Spock gathered himself and pushed Jim down on his back.
“God, Spock,” Jim panted. “The way you look, the way you taste.”
“I believe it is, as they say on your planet, ‘my turn,’ Jim.” After all, Spock had still not fulfilled the first desire he’d expressed.
“Oh God.”
Spock licked down Jim’s near-perfect torso until he reached the thatch of brown pubic hair. Jim’s penis rose thick and rosy to loll on his tight abdominal muscles, and his scrotum drew tight against his body, the testicles within firm and swollen. Spock nosed about in Jim’s curls, breathing deeply of Jim’s dizzying pheromones, and he felt Jim’s hand in his hair, heard Jim’s low groans. Beside his ears, Jim’s thighs were clenching and quivering.
Spock took just the head of Jim’s penis into his mouth; his skill would grow with practice, but for now, he simply wished to give Jim pleasure without the awkward learning curve. With his hands he pumped Jim’s shaft and with his lips and tongue he worked Jim’s eager red glans. Jim’s flavor was a dark, earthy musk, and Spock worked at sucking it all from Jim’s body.
Jim gave a sharp tug at Spock’s hair - unintentional, but Spock felt a spark of arousal light his testicles nonetheless - and with a single agonized grunt, he ejaculated into Spock’s mouth. There was more semen than expected and before he could stop it, it had dribbled back down Jim’s penis. Spock lapped it all back up, but once it was in his mouth, he was not certain it was a precisely pleasant substance. Slimy.
Jim’s chest had gone a mottled pink and he languished in the pillows with his eyes half open. When Spock rose from his task, Jim opened his arms and Spock settled at his shoulder, arm across Jim’s waist. Contentment and satiation bloomed between them, mingled; Spock was unsure whose it was he could feel.
“We need to do that all the time,” Jim said.
“I will schedule it into our duty rosters,” Spock replied.
Jim chuckled, the sound like heavy thunder in Spock’s ears. He rolled onto his side, facing Spock.
“Better keep us busy, First Officer. Can’t have an idle command team.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Jim pressed his grinning mouth to the relaxed line of Spock’s, and Spock let him in. They kissed for long, slick moments, and when Jim pulled away, he looked at Spock in awe.
“I just had this insane out of body experience.”
Spock quirked an eyebrow. “Really, Jim. My vanity.”
“Ha ha, Spock.” Jim scowled. He inched closer and closed his arms around Spock. “No seriously. It was this flash, like I was just not here anymore but there, just for a second. It was us, on the Enterprise, but we were way old, like sixty, and the uniforms were totally awful. And I looked at you and you did that thing where you smile at me but not really because that would not be logical. And the stars were zooming past us and I could feel you in my brain like the best hug and I knew everything was just how it was supposed to be. You and me and our girl, perfect.”
Spock laid his hand on Jim’s jaw.
“Perfect,” he echoed.
-
As they waited in the hall before council chambers, T’Kafna finished pinning T’Pring’s long hair to her head in an elaborate coiffure.
“This is most aesthetically pleasing,” T’Kafna said. “Your bondmate must strive to be worthy of such beauty.”
“Surely he completed his kahs-wan already? Mother?” T’Pring knew it must be true - these were the rules of the traditional bonding. This was how children became true Vulcans. Her bondmate would have proven himself in the heat of The Forge, as she had. He would be worthy.
“Of course, daughter,” her mother replied. “Do not ask tiresome questions to which you already know the answers.”
T’Pring dipped her head to stare down at the floor. Her feet dangled over it, a reminder of her short stature. She was going to be betrothed today - she would be named a woman in the house of her fathers, and she could not reach the floor from her seat. She found this incongruous, illogical. She stretched her legs, pointed her toes, grazed the floor just barely.
“Sit straight,” T’Kafna said, and as T’Pring complied, the doors at the end of the hall parted and two male figures emerged tall and slender. Her father and, if she made the correct assumption, the father of her bondmate. Trailing behind them, a slight woman, a human woman, T’Pring realized, held the hand of a small, rather stout boy whose left arm was encased in a cast and lashed to his body with a sling. Their shoes clicked as they neared, and T’Pring felt her mother’s hand at her back, urging her to stand.
As the adults introduced themselves with parted hands, T’Pring stared frankly at her intended, and he gazed back steadily. His eyes were large, a lighted brown of surprising depth. He pulled his hand from his mother’s grip, rummaged in the roomy pocket of his tunic, and stepped closer to her. The conversation taking place over their heads stopped as he held out his uninjured hand. A lush flower, the bloom of a cactus, rested in his palm.
“A token,” he said.
T’Pring reached forward and plucked it from his hand. At the touch of her fingertips, electricity. They both drew back. T’Pring hazarded a glance at her bondmate’s mother; she was gazing at Spock with an expression foreign to T’Pring, who could suddenly see all of her pearly human teeth in the open crescent of her mouth.
“There now,” said her bondmate’s mother. “Introduce yourself.”
He glanced up at his mother before turning back to T’Pring and raising his hand in greeting.
“I am Spock, son of Sarek of the House of Surak. I am honored to bond with you today.”
Beside her, T’Pring could see her father nodding his encouragement. She parted her fingers.
“I am T’Pring, daughter of Sofal of the House of Skor. The honor is mine.”
Those shiny human teeth flashed at her again, and she felt the weight of her father’s hand on her shoulder. She craned her neck to look up at him.
“Acquaint yourself with your intended, daughter,” he said. “Your mother and I must enter council chambers with Sarek and Amanda before your link is established.”
The three Vulcans stepped away, but the human, Amanda, did a curious thing. She knelt before T’Pring’s bondmate and cupped his full cheeks. She pressed that expressive mouth to his forehead.
“I’m so proud of you,” T’Pring heard her say. She could see the fascinating rounded shell of her ear peek out from beneath her headscarf. “Just be yourself, Spock. I love you.”
“Mother,” Spock whispered.
“I know. Okay. I’ll go.” Her lips met Spock’s forehead again, and when she stood, she met T’Pring’s eyes and gave her a nod before joining the other adults. The doors to council chambers parted and they disappeared behind them.
T’Pring sat back down on the bench and Spock joined her. She held his gift in her lap. She noted that his feet dangled even higher than hers. After 2.3 minutes passed in silence, she turned to him.
“Is it odd, being half human?”
He turned to face her. His eyes held such warmth, such unfamiliar warmth. She leaned in closer to him.
“My mother instructs me to think of myself as a whole rather than in fractions.”
“Her logic must be inferior to that of a Vulcan’s.”
Spock turned away, and without that gaze there was suddenly an emptiness. T’Pring was bereft.
“And yet I cannot fault it,” Spock said. “I am here, functional and not defective, my katra greater than the sum of my parts.”
T’Pring sat quietly beside him contemplating his words.
“That is sound logic,” she said at last, and she placed the flower back in his possession. “You may put this in my hair.”
She turned her back to him and felt him shift until the heat of him seeped into her. With one hand, he found a place for the flower and secured it. When T’Pring turned back around, those large eyes shone with wonder.
“It would please me to do this for you always,” he said.
T’Pring held out two hesitant fingers. Spock stared at them before he tapped them with his own. At the touch, they both turned back to face straight forward, backs upright.
“How did you injure yourself?” T’Pring asked.
“On the final night of the kahs-wan, I was attacked by a le-matya,” Spock told her.
T’Pring could not help herself; her mouth parted in shock. Quickly she sealed her lips and wiped the expression from her face.
“Truly you possess great valor,” she said. “Tell me of your kahs-wan and I will tell you of mine.”
Behind the doors to the council chambers, two sets of parents, the council of elders, and a team of healers were negotiating a future for Spock and T’Pring. But on a bench in the hallway, feet swaying inches above the ground, they found themselves capable of securing that future for themselves.
End
Part I | Part II | Part III