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Fanworks: Fics: Trek: Savage-Wild
Savage-Wild
Author's Note:
This story came from a premise that I've seen a handful of K/S fics mention in passing, but never seen described in detail: "In Amok Time, Spock survived the pon farr because all that contact with Kirk in the fight kept bringing him to orgasm."
For some reason, I guess I wanted to be the one kinky weirdo who does write that scene in detail. It's the story I was planning out when I made the video "Starfleet Pants and Starfleet Shirts," and it turned out MUCH more serious and dramatic than that silly video.
But then, silly/serious isn't such a clear line. I've found over the years that there are at least four elements to my enjoyment of a story: Logic (it all fits together and makes sense), Emotion (the characters have powerful and relatable feelings), Humor (cleverness and nonsense to make me laugh), and Smut (often to a downright depraved level). Also, I guess, an all-pervading fifth element of Writing Style (to make the others effective). Of course a story doesn't NEED to have all those elements, to appeal to me. But, if it does, that can be the kind of story that fucking blows me away.
Which is why I don't categorize my favorite stories into boxes labeled Porn and Plot and Jokes and Drama, because my absolute favorites have ALL of it. Because that's what life is. And yeah, art doesn't have to imitate life exactly, but it sure helps it have an impact if it's at least got enough of the parts.
Now I'm not claiming that THIS weird-as-hell, filthy-as-fuck story counts among those masterpieces. You can form your own opinion on it. I still don't even know what mine is. Just saying this sort of multifaceted mishmash is what I relate to, as a writer and as a reader-- so if you can't decide what kind of fic this is, or how to feel about it, that's probably to be expected.
Like how I'm fascinated with the theme of "Spock wrestling with abject shame about loss of control over his wild insatiable sex drive," to a degree that borders on humiliation kink, and it can be hard to define exactly where that border even is (in this case an apparent border between the elements of Emotion and Smut). But I suspect isn't even a border, just two parts of the same thing.
Ah well. I am a messed-up person. But Amok Time made me this way.
Story includes embedded gifs from the same scene I used for the video.
(Thanks to Folger.edu's searchable database for the Shakespeare quotations.)
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Savage-Wild
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Red sky. Hot glittering sand. Dark jade-green stone. Jangling silver bells and flame, flame, flame.
His body knows that he is home.
Home on Vulcan, where the ancient drive has brought him: the place that his Vulcan blood calls home, even if his mind has rarely felt it so. For the first time in years, there are Vulcans all around him. Minds who understand every nuance... who know, in intimate detail, what is happening to him.
In the moments of lull in the storm of his own mind, when thoughts become anything approaching clear, he struggles between relief that they understand... and horrified shame that they know.
And when those moments of coherence burn away again, he thinks nothing more; feels only urge and heat.
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Time.
It is a concept understood, and misunderstood, in so many different ways. A fact of nature whose absence is difficult even to imagine. The word "time" appears in idioms in every language Spock has encountered.
In no other does it have the oddly specific, and secretly provocative, connotations that it can have for a Vulcan.
The time. His time. My time.
Vulcans have been heard to assert that euphemisms are illogical.
They mean, of course, the euphemisms of humans-- particularly the metaphorical, literally untrue ones, in which death is the long sleep, or sex is the beast with two backs. For the most part, Vulcans avoid thinking of their own euphemisms.
Vulcan language is indeed rife with them, though it leans toward the type that are vague, incomplete, rather than metaphorical. The type that may perhaps be defended... in many cases, it is logical to be vague, to offer the minimum of information, withholding that which is not truly needed.
There is a phrase, in Spock's language, which can be translated into Standard as "run out of time." It is one of several that can convey that meaning. But this one is never spoken or written by modern Vulcans, except perhaps in very private moments. It has been used as euphemism long enough to become synonymous, equally scandalous, with its hidden meaning... like a cloak worn too threadbare to provide modesty.
Only in the most ancient texts can one see it in an ordinary sense-- to describe, perhaps, a warlord running out of time to reply to his enemy's ultimatum, or a village that ran out of time to prepare for a great drought.
In texts that are less ancient but still old, it always appears euphemistically. And if a human asks a Vulcan what it means, when these old writings say "he ran out of time," the reply will be "It means that he died."
True, yes. Precise, no. There is only one cause of death for which that euphemism applies.
In the progressive tense --"he is running out of time"-- it describes, with blush-inducing nuance that only a Vulcan can understand, the desperation of Spock's current physical and mental state.
But Spock is incapable of thinking about any of this, right now.
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Red sky. Hot sand. Dark stone, bells, flame. Slashing blades.
Moments of killing rage, moments of fiery lust, moments of nothing. Sand-gold curls of hair, tousled around a soft human face that Spock's body alternately urges him to kiss, to ejaculate on, and to slash in half with a lirpa blade.
Jim.
Gold shirt that he has already slashed in half, gaping across the chest. Red human blood, beading along a hairline cut, trickling into the gold.
Madness. Too mad even to consider the thought of what utter madness it all is.
But the first blow that the captain lands against him-- an indirect, almost hesitant push with the lirpa's blunt end, which just manages to catch Spock off-balance and send him sprawling, half-prone, half on his side, to the hot ground--
...this, now... this is a new kind of moment.
The force of impact reverberates through him, and this time leaves neither mindfulness nor mindless swirling need.
Just a sudden sort of... clarity.
Something sharp. Something on the bladed spectrum from pleasure to pain.
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No thoughts form, yet. Only a shift in the current of his need.
He gasps. The erection that has been a dull ache for days suddenly pulses with an urgency that draws the focus of all nerves to that central point... His head arches back, teeth slightly bared, eyes shut tight beneath upswept brows. No thoughts. Only the turbulent flux of energy within.
And now, as he rises back up into fighting stance... now, at last, a fractured sort of thought does begin to return.
Awareness forms, in a vague, patchy way, of the clash within him. Of the drives that have been warring for control of his body. The fight response-- the urge that has just brought him back to his feet and readied the weapon in his hands-- has been as much a background to his mind as breathing, so far out of his control that he has not been conscious of it at all.
Not until this moment... as awareness pieces itself together, as it forms a picture just clear enough to start a cold slide of terror creeping through him. Terror. His breathing stops, for a moment, entirely. The sight of his own limbs like parasitic creatures... moving, striking, without permission from his thoughts...
And why is he even becoming conscious of this now? Is it because of that other urge-- the hot one, wrestling underneath it all, screaming in polar opposition to the drives of violence...?
The one that brings this strange, sharp clarity... this tingle of desire in the pain from the lirpa-strike... this pulse of excitement at being thrown to the ground...
His eyes close again for a moment, nostrils flaring with a rapid intake of breath.
Pleasure, ache, itching frustration... while this new urge strains to drive his body to a new goal, but cannot seize the reins away, yet, from its violent brother. He watches, helpless. Watches his arms slash out at Jim with the blade, again and again-- uncoordinated swipes with little chance of hitting their target, but still constricting his heart in horror at their savagery.
Jim. Captain. Friend.
A single short-term memory becomes accessible for a second: This is the man he begged T'Pau not to let him fight. "Not with him! His blood does not burn. He is my friend..."
But he does not think "friend" could ever encompass all of what he feels now, as his eyes follow his friend's bleeding and terrified body in despair, as his own hands lash out in a bid to cut that body to pieces.
"Friend" surely does not cover the fantasy that he finds himself yearning beyond all reason to put in place of this reality. Hands caressing. Minds mingling. Mouth between torn folds of gold cloth, tongue on the strip of bare flesh, begging forgiveness for the cut. Whispering apology in lines from half-forgotten poetry. ("...To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss....")
Spock feels his throat make a breathy, desperate sound.
How can the shock of arousal from that image be anything other than the sole force driving his actions right now? How can these combat reflexes-- stab, slash, parry-- be anywhere near strong enough to hold back the reflex that consumes his entire mind?
He is excruciatingly hard, every heartbeat a jolt of heat between his legs. Every movement making him slide in exquisite agony against fabric so slick and wet already with his leaking desire that he can almost, almost, imagine a mouth there instead...
Jim.
The whimper that breaks free from his own mouth would be impossible for anyone to ignore, if it weren't for the sound of the breaking gong at the same instant: lirpa colliding with resonant stone that cracks and falls to the sand. Why can his voice express some trace of what he feels, while his body still aches and yearns but cannot move except to keep wreaking destruction? Why can't--
And Jim has found another opening, and his second blow of the fight is more confident. Harder.
The heavy butt-end of the lirpa rams into Spock's lower abdomen, another crash of that sharp, clear sensation that drives out all his breath at once.
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If the muscles there had not been clenched so tight already, perhaps the impact would have overwhelmed him for a second with pain and sickness. But instead, he falls to his knees in desperate arousal.
The force of the blow shudders through his tense abdominal muscles and then mercilessly through his groin, where it becomes nothing but the absolute value of sensation, its power irrelevant to which side of the pleasure-pain border it falls on. The fever cannot tell the difference; it devours sensation, craves it, indiscriminately. Greedy for whatever touch it can take. He hears himself cry out, and cannot tell if it sounds more like a cry of pain or one of desperate sexual need.
And then he throws his head back in a near-silent gasp as he jerks hard against the lubricated wetness of his undergarments, spilling enough pre-ejaculate that he wonders, for a split second, if it shows through the black uniform fabric. If Jim can see how badly he needs. If Jim could realize what he needs... overpower him, hold him down, shove his thigh between... press up hard against that wet patch of shame and make him--
Scrambling on hands and knees, his skin begging for the pressure of Jim's hands and hips-- he instead feels pressure on the back of his neck: the shaft of Jim's lirpa.
And, for once, he is not sure which one of his warring instincts drives him to turn around against it.
To forget his own weapon, to wrap his hands around the metal bar at both spots where Jim grasps it-- as Jim uses it to pin him-- as Jim holds him down, on his back, against the stone steps.
Is it still the fight response trying to push Jim away? Or do his hands merely seek these points where they can press flesh to flesh against the sides of Jim's fists-- craving, hungry for the touch of hands on hands, for the caressing fingers of Vulcan intimacy?
Or is he just grasping for anything to hold onto-- anything at all, in the firestorm that follows Jim's body?
Jim, who covers Spock as if mounting a mate...
Jim, who shoves him down onto his back, until hot stone burns pleasure and pain into tender flesh at his lower spine...
Jim who pushes the lirpa to his chest and holds him there, overpowered, helpless, so many points of contact, so tantalizingly close.
Spock's entire skin flashes hot, his legs parting, a reflex from nowhere near the fight instinct. A reaction to the pounding of his blood crying out in eager heat, at being so suddenly granted the dream he was dreaming seconds ago--
--almost, almost, but not quite.
Jim's eyes are fear, worry, not seduction. There's no gentle knowing glance at the juncture of Spock's legs to acknowledge the damp strain of need there. No soft human thigh pushed up between them and offered, for him to ride to relief...
But Spock has been trembling on this precipice for so long that it doesn't seem to matter.
Just the feel of Jim over him like this. Just the brush of skin between their hands, breath on his face... just the very idea of how near Jim's thighs and hips are to his, how close the position is to what his body pleads for...
Pressed against stone, his spine barely arches.
Out of breath, his throat makes barely a sound.
He feels himself blush fire-hot all over, at the tingling build of pressure that surges up in him. Although his thoughts are half-gone and half-chaos, his body knows, in the depths of blood and bone, exactly what is building, exactly how powerless he is to hold it back.
The scream that tries to escape his tight throat vanishes into some inaudible shade of the sound spectrum. His head tips back by no more than a few degrees. His mouth just barely falls open. He is bound, restrained, by whatever force is also releasing him-- and the paradox burns away the last of his mind.
The storm gathers fast, builds like static charge all through the muscles of his legs and his stomach, more and more and more until the electrified sensation becomes near-unbearable and then finally it breaks loose-- churning, spiraling unstoppable into the center, furious as a cyclone, to burst into lightning, to jolt hard and merciless through the entire taut bow of his body as it takes him.
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He can only ride it out, hands clasped tight around the lirpa shaft, whole body rigid as crushing waves reverberate through him and converge... again, again... on the pounding rhythm that pulses, hot and slick, between his parted thighs.
Even in the midst of it, he sobs out silently in anguish at his lack of control. And yet, in this mad moment, it is somehow not an anguish of shame. Not the humiliation of coming like this, uncontrollably, in his uniform, pinned underneath his captain in front of a whole arena of spectators...
Nothing but some inexplicable, wild, aching frustration. Frustration, that he cannot move-- that most of his body still pretends he is stuck in some tense moment of standoff in a fight-- still refuses to respond to the truth.
Frustration, that he cannot control his body enough to thrust, to moan-- to make his pleasure even more wantonly obvious. Cannot buck his hips in a desperate chase after more touch. Cannot shove himself harder and harder into the slippery press of fabric to wring all possible relief from what Jim's proximity has allowed him.
He can only ride it out and... feel.
Can only let the subtle, rhythmic shivers course through him. Can take only what friction those small movements give him. Can only hang on, helpless, and wait, until the next spasm of release makes another burst of wetness spread, hot and stimulating, across more area of the clothing that touches him...
When the tremors finally fade, Spock feels that he has been teased more than relieved.
He is still so painfully hard. Still strains tight in his pants against the torturous slide of what he has managed to spill, although it is not nearly enough; he can feel much more of it pent-up inside him and begging for release.
Still out of control of his violent body, madness still burning at the edges of his vision as he looks up into Jim's eyes...
And Jim's eyes... the intake of breath, the sudden shift in Jim's look of concern... the flush that colors Jim's cheeks as his soft lips open... it all hits Spock with the same pleasure-pain clarity as a strike from the lirpa.
Again his thoughts sharpen, again they fracture into bright awareness of the conflict within him.
Jim knows.
It is so clear from his eyes, his blush, the change in the tension of his muscles. Jim knows. Knows what just happened-- what he has just caused to happen-- to Spock's body.
It doesn't matter how he knows; whether he recognized the subtle arch and quiver beneath him, or saw it in Spock's eyes, or sensed it from his mind through the contact of their hands, or even, as in the fantasy, glanced down and saw Spock's release spreading across the front of the black uniform pants from where he strains the cloth tight with his need.
It doesn't matter. Jim knows.
And Jim does not recoil from it. There is no fear, no anger, no disgust. If Spock can detect a single emotion from the frantic look in Jim's eyes, it is... hope.
It is the look that always breaks sun-like across Jim's clouded countenance, along with his flashes of inspiration, in those moments when he realizes how to solve the crisis, save the day...
A ripple of something between thought and emotion tingles at the sides of Spock's hands where they rest against Jim's. It is not quite words, but it carries the shape of an idea... an idea that perhaps could find a clearer shape in words, and if so, might choose something like... Let me help.
And Spock cries out, a soft anguished cry.
He still burns, trembles, clings so hard to the lirpa because letting go might send him crashing into Jim as if drawn by his own gravity. Everything in him yearns toward Jim. He cannot close his eyes without being overtaken by erotic hallucinations so very close to reality, in which the body over him lowers by a mere handful of centimeters, the distance between agony and ecstasy.
And yet a part of him-- for now, just as strong-- hangs on for dear life, clawing at the fragile edge of control in an animalistic fear, desperate to hold himself back from this whirlpool of need.
A frantic terror at the very thought of giving in, to his body, his fever, and now to Jim, whose mind he knows is tasting and examining and considering this dangerous idea...
I will do... what I must..
but not... with him...
I plead with thee... I beg...
He cannot. Cannot. Because, here, today, in this crisis, Spock himself is the killer who threatens Jim's life. He is the danger that Jim has just discovered how to fight. He is the enemy, the villain--
--whose attacks Jim is now preparing to counter, with a valiant act of self-sacrifice that only Jim is brave enough to give.
Spock's face contorts in panic.
Not with him!
His blood does not burn!
He is my friend!
What he has already just done... this... use he has just made of Jim's body, with no thought for Jim's consent... it is unforgivable. He deserves death already, for this. His chest feels wracked with silent sobs that cannot escape.
Jim, Jim, I am so, so, sorry...
He must resist it. Must fight. Must not allow himself the barest hint of temptation even to think of it again. Waves of despair, as he realizes such self-control cannot be anywhere near possible, not in his condition, but those waves still crash on rock-solid determination to fight this inner demon for as long as humanly or Vulcanly possible, or die trying.
Jim!
He crashes the lirpa against the pillar; feels and hears the blade shatter into metal fragments. Shoves Jim away from him, as hard as he can, with a kick, before throwing the broken weapon aside, seizing the still-intact one that fell from his hands before when Jim pushed him down.
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It is still the fighting instinct in control. But now, joining forces with that dark violence, it is suddenly also the fierce and fearful surge of his friendship. His protective love... now urging on the fighting instinct, to push, to threaten, to drive Jim away, to any safety that may exist, anywhere.
("...be gone and live... or stay and die...")
He is the beast, the predator, hungry, on his feet, pursuing. Slashing out again and again with the blade and barely leaving milliseconds for his prey to dodge. The two drives-- Kill! Protect!-- grip control of his movements together now, a tense and fragile alliance.
The beast wants only to destroy, to strike, rip and cut. The lover and friend hangs on, like one trying to ride a tiger, hoping a reckless hope that maybe, if the beast is allowed just enough of a rampage, it will convince Jim finally to see reason, to flee this danger, to save himself.
And not-- please, please not-- to lay himself out as a sacrifice of flesh for his friend to violate... a temptation that intoxicates Spock's burning blood with the very imagining of it, but at the same time, to that same maddened heart, feels terrible, terrible, a fate worse than death for both of them--
In the chaos of blade-strikes, Spock loses awareness again, just enough for Jim to see a third opportunity for attack. An assault of hands, this time, that seize his lirpa to flip his whole body to the ground-- and this time, the sharpness of that impact jolts him even harder.
Spock doesn't know which hits first, the collision against the hot dry sand, or the shockwave of visceral pleasure that reverberates through him just as hard, twisting his hips and forcing vibrant stimulation through the skin and veins of his still-aching arousal until it convulses, again, ejaculating new heat into what has begun to cool on the fabric. Even more than last time, more than the cloth can soak up, sliding down his shaft and between his thighs.
Enough to burn him with shame... but still, not nearly enough.
As the fight response pulls him again to his feet and back into combat, his eyes skim over the front of his own pants-- and react with something like indignation, at seeing that the stain does not even show, after all. For all the flimsiness of Starfleet-issued shirts (...his gaze moves back up to stare again, hungry, at the torn cloth across Jim's chest...) the uniform trousers are sturdy and discreet to the point of ludicrousness. Fabric so dense that barely any fluid seeps through, and the exact shade of black to conceal what does. A cut and design that's tailored to make it difficult to see his erection at all.
He should, by all logic, be relieved. But instead, in this deranged state of mind, he is angry-- as if his own clothes are mocking him, conspiring to belittle his suffering.
It is anger that lashes out, swings the blunt end of the lirpa, catching Jim a sudden high blow that lands him on his back--
And Spock feels it.
The force of the fall, hard and fast enough against his spine to knock the wind out of him. Spock feels it, slamming into him, at the same moment Jim does.
It is complete overwhelm. Too much. He cannot focus upon one thing for his mind to address. Too much. The clear sharp sensation of the pain, having its perverse way with him, again. Forcing him into yet another orgasm that trembles through him as he stands over his fallen captain. Shaking, gasping, coming-- his face burning in shame and need.
His legs do not want to support him. The fire through his nerves, the bursts of sliding wet heat, make him crave nothing more than to lie down on top of that human body, touching, rubbing. But the beast, the death-demon within him, holds him steady. Forces him to stay in this stance, in the shape of the killing device it wants him to be.
And at the same time... he can feel that the same sensations are happening to Jim.
Sensory echoes, feedback loops, coursing back and forth between them. He can even see it, in the glazed expression of the human face, the uncoordinated tremors of arms and legs as the captain lies there, helpless-- unable to understand why, in this impossibly wrong moment, he cannot stop shaking with pleasure, jerking, spasming, spilling uncontrollably into the tight press of the Starfleet pants, from flesh that was not even erect a moment ago.
Spock's breath heaves as he watches, balanced on a knife-edge between two mortal dangers to his control. Jim lying there, confused and aroused, soft and vulnerable, on the ground... it tempts one of Spock's inner demons to murder and the other to possess him carnally, and both pull much harder than whatever scrap remains of his conscience and his reason. Yet that fragment of him still strains so hard just to understand; to wrap his mind around the significance of this. To grasp what it means that something, somehow, has tied the two of them together... has forced their bodies into this synchrony...
...but no, he cannot, cannot, cannot focus.
Frustration. Panic. Anger. Violence, lashing out, again. ("...The time and my intents are savage-wild...")
Fevered eyes holding the fire-edged image of Jim as he lies frozen in half-panic, half-afterglow. Manic swing with the bladed end of the lirpa, arcing up over Spock's head and down--
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"Spock! No!"
He hears Doctor McCoy's voice like some faint recording. It feels even less real than the mechanics of this disconnected body that's driving the blade down toward Jim-- and nowhere near as real as the churn of lust and fear and rage and panic and absolute despair that cry out in response, unseen and unheard, within him.
Jim recovers from glazed shock, barely in time to roll out of the way of the blade as it bites into the dirt, deep enough to hold it standing.
And an instant later Jim recovers just enough more to aim a kick at Spock's groin-- and Spock falls, again, on his back.
And shudders in climax, again-- jerking helplessly between the pain where the kick connected and the pain where he hit the ground. Responding to pain yet again in this primal way, as if it were indistinguishable from pleasure-- making him come, hot rhythmic shivers from each burst of sensation-- yet still not permitting him to arch and scream his release as his body yearns to. Exhausted, frustrated... still utterly without control.
More than anything, unable to control the torture of the predator within him... which will not permit him even a moment to rest afterwards. Without mercy it yanks him to his feet, to fighting readiness, yet again-- while all his oversensitized flesh is still twitching in what is, still, nowhere near true release...
"Kroykah!"
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And that is a voice that can still sound real, even through fever haze.
The psychic force of T'Pau's authority is a power that commands-- that can take charge of anything she wishes, even the brain-stem of a Vulcan in the depths of plak-tow.
Spock goes completely still.
The command holds him fixed in the same fighting crouch that the beast brought him into. And yet, stillness, even in this position, feels like a sort of relief. His heart and breathing are permitted to slow, his muscles to rest, at least a little.
He is allowed to take solace in the fact that his violence is captive under a power that can control it, for now. That his captain, his friend, is granted this moment of safety...
A moment in which he can choose what to do next. Please, please, please let him--
Let him what? cry the feuding urges within. Let him run away to the ship and leave you here to die? Let him rush back into the fight, all clumsy and confused, and throw himself on your blade?
Or... let him come to you with bedroom eyes and flushed lips, and lie down before you, spreading his legs...
Spock, immobile, watches the kneeling figure of Jim just meters away. Watches him panting in the thin air, watches blood-trails stream downward from the cut across his chest.
Watches, enduring the jealous rage of the fever, as McCoy approaches and kneels beside Jim, looks him over, administers some injection...
And then, at last: T'Pau's voice strikes sharp and clear through the desert air again, bringing in its wake the renewed rhythm of drumbeats and bells.
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His limbs sag, freed from the hold of the command, settling into as relaxed a stance as he is capable of right now. And the helmeted attendants approach him, unwrapping purple satin to present the ahn-woon.
For a few moments after they press that simple weighted strip of material into his grasp, Spock just paces back and forth, dazed. He should be preparing for the next round of the fight. Should be readying the ahn-woon to use as his weapon.
But thoughts and sensations keep interrupting him, distracting his focus onto a mind that is not his.
Jim's thoughts. Warm, bright human mind, darting in and out of Spock's mind as easily as if they were in a meld, and Spock cannot and does not want to think what that means, and all he can even do anyway is listen and feel the thoughts, their touch like warm sunbeams or cool splashes of water.
Mostly just small, inarticulate half-questions, at this moment. What is...? How can...?
The sense of the same weapon Spock holds, but unfamiliar, soft, heavy, in other hands that do not know it. Confusion. Apprehension. Trying to make sense of it.
Trying, too, to make sense of the alien arousal that still vibrates through his human flesh. Embarrassed perplexity, as the human mind remembers being thrown to the ground and then, out of nowhere, forced into climax.
Why did...?
Wonder, at being hard already, again. Discomfort, at the damp area on his clothes, cooling and drying much faster than it would for a Vulcan.
Jim has not evolved for this. The relentless days of mating that can occur in pon farr require semen that functions as a near-perfect long-lasting lubricant, even in the driest climate.
Spock has evolved for this, and would gladly help him. Would give him more than enough of that fluid from himself-- would straddle Jim and grind against him and come onto him, again and again, cover him in hot slickness until every part of that sweet pliant human body was lubricated and ready for his pleasure...
...and Spock gasps, his eyes shut tight as a hot blush climbs his neck and cheeks. But that was the voice of the mating instinct. And the fight instinct is taking over now, responding to the feel of this new weapon.
Which brings a different flavor to that urge.
The ahn-woon is made for fighting at very close range. Restraining, choking, sometimes whipping. Always a fighting style where one could, at any moment, be in sudden full-body contact...
In ancient times, he has read, this second phase of the kal-if-fee would sometimes signal a change in the fight's trajectory. Rivals who had both survived the lirpa, proving themselves well-matched enough to spar for a long time before either could gain the upper hand... long enough, sometimes, for the fight response to exhaust itself, to leave only the mating drive and two wrestling bodies...
But none of these thoughts put themselves into words, right now. Only impressions, flashes of image and feeling from warrior legends that he half-remembers, half-imagines. Primal memories from somewhere in the base of his brain that still, somehow, connect to a savage Vulcan past. He is losing thought again. Sinking back into burning haze, "rage, pain, kill" mixed in equal parts with "mate, lust, capture, tie down, claim, MINE..."
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Muscles move in a well-practiced swing, though he cannot remember the last time he actually practiced with this form of weapon.
The weights on the ahn-woon swing around once... twice... drawing the tether of the strap out farther each time, a satellite circling into fast orbit around him--
And catching, at last, on Jim's legs-- spinning force transfered abruptly to the weighted ends that now lash themselves up around ankles and calves, faster and faster, like constricting serpents-- and before they can begin to loosen again, Spock pulls, all his arm strength yanking on the makeshift lasso, until Jim falls, hard, on his back and buttocks, gasping breath as he looks up with eyes more hurt, more anguished than Spock has ever seen.
The beast in control of Spock's body now charges, drawing the ahn-woon up into his hands as fast as it falls loose from Jim's legs. The part of him that still burns to fight, to kill... it lashes out now, swinging a weighted end at Jim like a whip...
And Jim... Jim reaches up, dodges around the angry lash as if it were nothing-- to clasp both of Spock's hands, tight, warm, in both of his.
His hands.
His hands.
All Spock's universe is a fire that spreads from that handclasp.
Spock knows he is crying out through his constricted throat, as Jim pulls hard, using the handclasp to bring himself to his feet. Small desperate cries, breaking past hopeless efforts to hold them back. Barely audible to human ears. But their tone and rhythm are utterly pornographic, to anyone who might actually be listening.
Oh gods, the feeling of it. Spock cannot remember, right now, if anyone has ever touched him like this, or anything close, ever in his life. The betrothal ceremony in his childhood involved a ritual touch of two fingers, lasting only seconds. He has seen his parents touch each other's fingers as well, in the same way that humans offer a brief kiss in greeting. Those touches are nothing to the sensation of this-- like a distant planet drowned to invisibility by the searing light of its sun.
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*****
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*****
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This is... scandal. Unthinkable. The most shamefully explicit act of intimacy he could have imagined happening here, today, in this public arena in front of what would have been his wedding party, and yet he cannot find it in himself to care.
Hot, sweet crush of pleasure. Clasp of hands, all the rough humid texture, all the living warmth of all ten of Jim's fingers, wrapped fully around all of Spock's, gripping him, with full strength.
Spock is stronger, in theory, but that fact seems like another faint recording, a line from some old story he can barely recall. Right now he is weak, melting. Surrendering himself in urgent, delicious need for the press of those hands around him. The ahn-woon strap that he still holds within his palm feels hard in contrast to his own skin. It rubs against his fists from inside, while Jim's dominating grip slides against them from outside.
Lubricated with sweat, dragging with just enough friction across his knuckles, across the sensitized tendons of the backs of his hands, and a maddening and tantalizing brush, here and there, against the very tips of his fingers. ("And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss...") Pleasure builds up and compounds with each centimeter of motion. Oh gods, he cannot bear it.
The swell of Spock's hardness, still pressed against his body by too-tight clothing, now rubs, urgent, with the cant of his hips. Back and forth as hard and fast as he can manage, in the slide of his previous releases-- somehow both not enough and already too much to bring the friction he is desperate for.
But it does not matter at all anymore what physical sensations his own movements can bring to him. The sensation of Jim possessing him with that handclasp is everything, everything-- it has claimed his whole body; he is helpless against it.
Hot prickling fire climbs his wrists and arms in a fast wave. It allows just barely time for the blood to rise burning in his face, for a small whimper of shame, for his eyes to clench shut at the realization that his body is about to lose all control of itself, yet again.
Just that breathless instant, before it crests and crashes down into the rest of him, destroying him, all at once.
It rips through him, wracks him with spasms of need and pleasure and --yes, even relief now, a taste of it, like water in the desert, like the oasis of his ejaculation, a bursting dam, one torrent after another through his undergarments and down his legs, in rhythm with the shuddering convulsions that vibrate again and again through his whole nervous system, from what Jim is doing... to... his.. hands...
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*****
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Spock is hazily aware that he's swaying in one direction and then another, still upright but very close to collapse. Jim has used the handclasp to pull himself up, but now Jim is struggling not to be pulled back down again.
Spock is heavy, weak-kneed, helpless through the spasms, rapidly losing his balance, careening and spiraling into a slow fall that pulls Jim off balance too, their contact impossible to hold any longer...
Jim's hands, at last, begin to slip.
One last delicious, hard pull of his palms over Spock's tight-clenched fists, sending one last shudder of ecstasy through Spock's body... and then the handclasp is broken, Jim's grip sliding down the strap of the ahn-woon and then losing hold altogether.
Spock falls on his side... rolls... gains his footing again, only to stagger and lean his back against the pillar... chest heaving, both hands still afire.
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*****
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There is that sharpness, again, that clarity.
This time, shame crests to the surface first. Shame for what he cannot stop doing to his captain, to his friend. Shame, too, at how utterly ruined and debauched he is while committing these atrocities-- reeking of sex and desperation. Shame, because all the Vulcans around him must be fully aware of both his unforgivable crimes against his captain and the absolute humiliating mess he has been making of himself.
All Vulcans go through their Time. Few have ever made such a scandal of it, such an obscene spectacle. He thinks of every Vulcan who has reprimanded him for having a human's passions, a human's lack of mastery and control... Spock shuts his eyes tight, almost hearing the smugness of their thoughts now, almost seeing their disdainful raised brows.
And then, in the wake of all that, comes a new sense of... simple awareness, of observation.
He still burns and burns. Still wants, with a wild urgency that he knows will soon overwhelm his brain function once more. But, overlaid upon the fire, something cool and clear has begun to shine through this moment.
He pulls the ahn-woon strap through his clenched fists... most of his body still desperate for the sensation, for anything to bring back what he was just feeling.
Opens his eyes, to see Jim drop to his knees and gather up his own ahn-woon, hands fumbling with it.
If Spock watches him with enough focus, he can begin to pick up feelings again... snatches of emotion and sensation.
Tastes of Jim's mind, for which he still desperately hungers. He loses himself, for a moment, in just this.
Jim... is a mass of conflicted feeling.
We...? How did I...?
Confusion, panic, triumph, desire. Hope, again, because again Jim knows very well that he's just brought Spock to another release-- Jim's own body is still shaking from the echo of it-- and he knows, this time, it felt somewhere nearer to real satisfaction.
And Jim seems to be catching echoes, too, of those warrior legends that keep flashing through Spock's mind. Nameless figures, struggling on the sand. Violence, melting into passion.
They did...? We can...!
If it's true that these fights, in ancient tradition, sometimes resolved themselves in mating instead of death... then Jim will do anything to steer it down that path.
Hope.
Because-- and Spock realizes this with a painful pang of affection, as he perceives this new determination from Jim's thoughts--
Because this is who Jim is.
As skilled as Jim is at fighting, he would rather make love than war. He tries for a peaceful resolution whenever he can. And right now, he's just struggling his way back to hope-- after the crash of despair that nearly destroyed him at the beginning of the combat, when it seemed that all hope was lost, that there could be no peaceful resolution this time.
When we needed it most! Of all the times in our lives! When I'd given up my future so you could live-- and then they told me I have to give my life as well, or else you'll still die!
That moment of despair still bleeds like a fresh wound in Jim's memory, traced with thoughts forming into words, like warning signs to section it off, like spells to drive it away. Can't. Can't let it happen. No!
Spock's heart aches at the chaotic beauty of Jim's mind; at the profanity of this being the way he is permitted to see that beauty.
Of course Jim is now grasping onto any hope that maybe it doesn't have to be this way. Just as he grasps clumsily at the ahn-woon, as if it symbolizes that hope, as if it must be part of the key to those warrior legends, to any chance of finding that same resolution for himself and for Spock--
Spock's eyes clench shut in anguish.
No... no... not with him... his blood... does not burn... he is... my friend...
The mantra means less and less, each time it chants through Spock's mind. He is powerless. Jim's blood and Jim's friendship are irrelevant to what will happen. Spock has no control, and Jim is now setting his whole mind to this endeavor of... peaceful resolution.
Which of course means sacrifice.
A seduction, in Jim's impossible-to-resist technique, breaking down Spock's defenses touch by touch until he is nothing but surrender and desire. But at the same time a sacrifice, because Jim does not burn, because Jim is his friend... not his mate, but a friend who loves him with the love of a friend, offering himself out of pity and friendship for Spock to use...
Spock's face flares hot with misery. At the purity of Jim's intentions. At how the depravity of the pon farr is already using them.
And yet...
...if this fails, then Spock will murder Jim, slake his thirst upon T'Pring, and then live whatever life remains to him in an agony of despair...
...or else Spock will die, and then...
He feels it stab into his mind through the link. And then, Jim will live on in similar agony.
And his own mind, now, resonates in the same panic he felt from Jim. Bleeding pain. Words of denial, bursting up like error messages around it. No. No. It cannot happen. No.
The alternative Jim offers is still... terrible. Spock's mind is sure of that, in this moment of clarity, even though his body aches in lust for it. And yet, at the same time, he understands now that... it is the least terrible of his options.
This final thought, accepting that knowledge, feels like a surrender to the fever. In the wake of it, he... lets go. Awareness begins to evaporate away. Madness and fire return to claim him. Desert air tingles on flushed skin as his head tosses back, his breath hisses through clenched teeth, his nostrils flare with the scent of his mate...
Sensory awareness of Jim, bent over in the sand, is now just a stab of animal need. It takes over Spock entirely. He is a predator crashing down onto his prey, a beast mounting his mate, or both at the same time, he doesn't even know. The pleasure of finally, finally letting his whole body land on top of Jim-- heavy, hard, chest to chest, hips to hips, legs and arms wrapping around-- he does not know if it feels more like satisfying hunger or lust.
Only that it feels so, so good. Yes. YES. A blaze of relief, a tsunami of it, drowning and crushing him, all so perfectly, perfectly what he needs-- and he cannot stop, can no longer even think of stopping, just making this go on and on and on.
More. More. More.
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*****
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*****
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Time.
It can be understood and misunderstood in so many different ways, even by the same mind in the same moment.
This segment of time, here and now, defies all understanding.
In memories afterwards, Spock will know it cannot have been more than a few minutes. He knows that in normal circumstances he would have been able to say how many... even how many seconds, to two decimal places or more.
But right here, right now, time loses all semblance of meaning.
These moments last both forever and no time at all. There is no comprehending how they are able to contain the number of ways his life is transformed within them.
Waves of glorious fire resonate from the full-body impact, but he has not even drawn breath to cry out his pleasure when Jim's response hits him like a warp core breach. In a motion so forceful that both their bodies leave the ground for an instant, Jim flips them over... lands on top of him, just as heavy and hard, touching everywhere, with the same triumphant nova of relief and Spock cannot even tell whose mind it originates from, if not both in perfect simultaneity. The impact hurts, it burns, it drives all his breath from him and...
...and he can't stand how mind-crushingly good it is. Oh. He arches and groans and cannot breathe and does not need to-- this sensation is his body's only need-- he cannot imagine any other--
Jim lands straddling Spock's right thigh, and waits for exactly no time at all before pushing his own thigh tight between, pressed up hard against the fire of Vulcan arousal. Fulfilling that fever dream in two long, sensuous thrusts that drag Spock's back against hot sand, as he's shoved along under the pressure of human strength just as needy, just as eager as his own.
"Yes." Humid human breath against his neck, leaving trails of tingling sensation that branch out into waves of blush to conquer Spock's entire skin. Jim's voice, a hot and husky flavor of that voice that Spock knows only his lovers have heard... "Want you-- Yes--" Jim's mouth is at his neck, tongue and lips and teeth, hot, urgent, not even trying to be gentle, and the thigh between his legs pushes once more, where he still swells and leaks with the burning ache of need, and Spock is lost. His hands clench in the gold fabric of Jim's ruined shirt, clutching him against his chest as if he's the only solid thing in the vacuum of space, and he arches up, face aflame, groaning through clenched and bared teeth, rutting hard into Jim's thigh as he grips it bruisingly tight between his own.
Yes. YES. There's no time for movement, for friction. This blissful split-second of pressure, of thick, soft-firm muscle with Jim's life energy coursing within it, pushing against him exactly as hard as Jim knows he needs it-- is enough. Delicious, perfect, finally, yes-- His hands clutch Jim's back and shoulders, his mouth finds Jim's neck, wet and needy and gasping, as he rocks himself back into that blessed pressure and comes.
*****
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Again he can only hang on through it, cling with hands and legs and mouth, ride it out-- but this time, yes, gods yes, this time it's finally beginning to feel like enough.
His whole body locks up, motionless except for the shivers that wrack him, that vibrate rough and violent through his flesh, one after another, with his ragged breaths, from where the back of his neck burns against the sand, all the way through him to where his toes curl tight in the Starfleet boots.
Convulsions of heat converge between his legs, bursting, erupting, each one forcing a helpless little rough scream from his throat. In his clutching hands he feels the back of Jim's shirt begin to rip a little at the seams. Jim moves his thigh infinitesimally, just to increase pressure, and Spock knows it's a response to the scalding spread of slick that's overflowing Spock's uniform to soak his captain's, and oh gods yes it is so, so fucking unbearably good--
--he pushes up again, surrendering himself to another crash of hot release, feeling the sensation reverberate back and forth between their minds like another growing tremor--
--feeling Jim's legs grip his thigh now in response, Jim's own scream as his own urgent hardness jerks and spills, wet and warm, against Spock's thigh, helpless to resist the energy jolting through the mind-link. Their mouths against each other's necks and shoulders groan in synchrony, yes, YES, one more pulse of moist vibration, one more note in a symphony of pleasure.
"Yes," he feels Jim breathe against his neck again--
--and this time his own voice is able to reciprocate, low and rough, groaning "Yes" and then, lower, rougher, "Jim."
It feels more like genuine relief than anything yet in days. And at the same time, the taste of relief still leaves him wanting more-- awakens him to the reality of how much more he'll need before this can end.
In its indiscriminate hunger the fever still screams for more than pleasure-- it wants all the sensation possible, on both sides of that dangerous border. He feels the urge soak from him into Jim, as hot and needy as the stain of his release that soaks between their clothes.
They are one. Jim knows what Spock needs, and instantly needs it too. Spock does not have to moan the plea aloud between gasping breaths, "Hurt me!..." but he still does; cannot hold it back. And he feels how Jim responds, down to each breath and shiver, the sensations of every nerve in his body.
All of them. Each feeling. The increase in pressure as Jim rears back and raises his right hand. Jim's upper body no longer resting upon Spock's chest; his entire weight now centering on legs and hips and pushing him down, hard, thighs and desperate arousal crushed together by Vulcan gravity--
--sparks of pleasure shivering already through the unbearable slippery tightness, careening upwards like a firework soaring toward the sky as Jim brings his hand down to strike Spock hard across the chest--
The burst of that firework, violent, sparkling, as the impact shudders through the sensitivity of his tense pectoral muscles, stimulating his tightened nipples and every hair and every centimeter of his skin, across his clenched stomach, a tingling fire that swirls tornado-like down between his legs--
--into a climax that makes him throw his head back and scream. Makes his legs and hips jerk fully off the ground from the force of a single uncontrollable thrust. Up against that whole-body explosion of pleasure, of pain, of the merging of both those sensations that his burning blood intimately knows, craves, but cannot name.
*****
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He does not know how he manages to stay conscious through it all. Or how his body even retains enough coordination to move in anything but spasm and tremor, as the second blow from Jim's hand connects with his shoulder, sending one more shockwave of stimulation all over him, and from there, amid the second blossoming wave of pleasure-pain, begins a sudden gentling transformation into a caress.
But Spock, somehow, does feel his own hands moving in something like coordination, pushing through all the shivers and gasps and groans of each movement of their two bodies... oh yes, somehow his hands still know how to follow the movements of Jim through all of it, with the ahn-woon now grasped in both fists. Looping it over the back of Jim's neck and pulling him down, the fever still chanting claim and bind and MINE as it pulls Jim's face against his, with all the force of Vulcan strength and the tough strap of the restraint.
"rrh-- y-yes-- Jim--"
It's barely a kiss, both mouths panting and gasping too hard to focus much on guiding the contact, but that does not make it any less inflammatory. Burn of lips and tongue meeting in a slide that tingles in the mixed sensations of breath and moans, air-rush and vibration breaking up each touch and taste before it can feel like anywhere near enough. Spock pulls in frustration, harder, as if he can force the feelings to be enough just by binding Jim tight enough to him with the ahn-woon-- His hands ache from the grip; he feels Jim's neck begin to ache, too, as the strap pulls harder...
"Spock-- mnhh-- yesyesyes--"
And a new sensation blindsides him from Jim's side of the link-- as sharp and bright in Jim's mind as in his own, startling them both. "Ah!" The pressure on the sides of Jim's neck-- somehow-- has compressed nerves and blood vessels and tightened his airways just so, altering the flow of oxygen to his brain just enough that, in some strange convergence of human biology, the constriction transmutes into a sudden rush of dizzy ecstasy.
The shock is overwhelming, making fire climb Spock's neck and ears, making every muscle seize up in rigid desire too intense to even move, and Spock can barely process the fact that this time the orgasm begins within Jim's body, milliseconds before it crashes through them both as one. There's a new feeling in it, a flying, soaring giddiness and Spock feels Jim's breathlessness as a sense of his own, an ecstatic new flavor of pleasure-pain, even as he fails to recognize the danger of it.
Something screams between their minds, more erotically inflaming than the moans and gasps that have been feeding each other's urgency up until now-- a telepathic scream of pleasure, forced by the feeling of suffocation that has begun to hold back the sounds of their mouths, and it's a more visceral expression of lust than any noise either of them has managed to make yet. It's so good. Even the mental sound of it feels like a physical release-- it's like nothing Spock has ever felt before, fire and clench and burning storming perfection, and Jim's mind pleads with him for more, more constriction, more tightness, at the same moment that Spock's own mind and body are pleading for it himself--
His hands have no choice, no control. They pull tighter. Oh yes yes fuck yes, more, more, still not tight enough--
--He finds himself staggering to his feet, Jim hanging from his grasp, because the movements that push him there are the only movements he can find that keep the tightness of the ahn-woon steadily increasing, cutting off more and more circulation, causing more and more of this swooning, lightheaded alien pleasure to course between their minds and through their nerves--
Madness. Bliss. Perfect. Spock has no idea what this is. But he needs it, Jim needs it, their bodies are begging each other for more of it, and so the fever leaves them no choice but to give each other more and more and more.
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*****
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Spock is swaying now, too weak to keep tightening the strap any more; too weak to keep holding up Jim's entire weight, and so he lowers him to rest on the edge of the fire-pit. Feels the scorching heat of the coals on his own back.
Yes.
It's a masochistic echo of the burn that's enough to drive him to the edge of climax yet again, at the same moment that the pressure of the ahn-woon lets up just enough to allow a rush of oxygenated blood through Jim's tipped-back head--
"Ah...!!"
--The brief return of breath is as much a rush of sensation as its departure. Sparks of physical pleasure whirl through Spock's body, reflected in stars of dizziness dancing before his eyes amid the too-real sparkles of sand and fire--
--Jim's hands won't stop moving. Up and down Spock's arms-- sometimes pressing at his shoulders through the sweat-drenched blue fabric, sometimes caressing down his biceps and forearms to clasp, hungry and hot and damp, around his fingers-- to make rivers of desire rush through both their bodies--
"--nngh!"
--Unable to stay in one place, unable to decide which exact mixture of fire-pain and choking-pain and delicious handclasp-pleasure is exactly what their blood fever craves.
But no matter how the feelings blend and churn together, they cannot help building toward the inevitable--
("...one fire burns out another's burning...")
--It happens as inexorably as the motions of planets--
("...one pain is lessened by another's anguish...")
The firestorm crashes through them, forcing out any remaining trace of thought. Jim's head and shoulders fall back against the hot coals. Welcoming the pain of the fire. Embracing the strangulation of the ahn-woon.
His legs rise up to wrap around Spock's hips, and Spock surrenders with a soul-deep groan and falls forward between them-- one hard and helpless thrust into hot slick impact-- into a release that whites out his senses so completely that he knows nothing at all for a second or two.
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*****
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He comes back to himself lying on the ground... his own back burning, with the heat of the sand superimposed on the echo of Jim's back still scorched from the firepit.
Jim is on top of him now... they still cling to each other, and Spock feels faint, with a sense of...
...Something ebbing away from him. Something.
He still aches with desire, but is not sure for what.
His hands still hold the strap tight around Jim's neck, but at the same time he arches his own neck between Jim's hands-- as Jim's hands try to reciprocate the choking motion around Spock's own throat.
He is not sure if Jim is choosing to do this, or if Spock has coaxed him into it by the force of his own desire.
He only knows that Jim's touch, Jim's pressure around his throat, is still not enough for whatever Spock needs now... and that the only way he can think to increase it is to tighten his own hold around Jim's neck above him.
Because Jim's throat is his own. Jim's hands are his own.
Their bodies are one. Their minds are one.
It is complete.
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*****
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*****
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That last thought whispers through his mind, not quite in words, either Vulcan or Standard, but almost, almost both. It carries a hint of meaning, which... somehow... without words and without any clear understanding... still somehow slots perfectly into Spock's sense of the connection here, between them...
Complete.
And then, in one single rush like the escape of atmosphere through an airlock-- whatever Spock has felt ebbing away... is gone.
Gone. Vanished. Swallowed by void.
And whatever he has just completed, or imagined he did... that, too, is gone now. No trace of it remains. Sucked away into nothingness.
("...Art thou gone so? Love, lord, ay husband, friend!...")
Spock's mind disintegrates into a single, all-consuming psychic scream.
Jim.
Jim.
*****
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...This is how it feels to be in shock.
The fever is gone. All sensation, all desire, is gone. He is empty. A shell that somehow still moves, still speaks.
There is no room in the wasteland of grief for any warmer feelings. It is surreal, this bleakness in which even physical humiliation means nothing. The evidence of his repeated pleasure clings to him, its cloying scent in his nostrils, its slide in his clothing still as wet as if he had emptied bottles of lubricant into his briefs. To face an arena full of Vulcan almost-strangers, looking and smelling like this... it ought to feel like a nightmare, one he'd be ashamed even to record in a private dream-journal.
He is aware of the state he's in, but feels nothing about it whatsoever. His mind is drawn neither to the ecstasy that caused it, nor to the scandalized Vulcan stares of distaste, all around him, that it is now causing. It is insignificant. He is insignificant. There is no imaginable event that could degrade him any more than the death of Jim already has. Nothing about him is worth one single feeling.
The fever is gone... but this is similar, in a way. Like being the puppet of some outside force, watching one's body do things one cannot understand. Following reflexes that seem lightyears away from one's own thoughts and wishes.
Except, now, the puppet motions are nothing but meaningless banality.
Like tying up the details of what this means for his betrothal, his marriage. Collecting from T'Pring the explanation for her choice. Admitting its logic. For which, even in his anguish, he cannot fault her.
His thoughts, analyzing what is spoken, feel as distant as his body.
T'Pring, too, must have been suffering some degree of the fever, though she has controlled it far better than Spock. All Vulcans experience it, male or female, to greater or lesser extents individually. And the link was meant, after all, to draw them both to Koon-ut-kal-if-fee. She cannot have been immune to the ancient drives.
But T'Pring, too, had found her mating urge displaced onto another. (Had probably been satisfying it with him, for some time... this would help explain her superior self-control, as well as Stonn's.) So of course it would be near-unthinkable for her to choose her lover as champion. Near-impossible for her to risk the life of the mate she truly wants. The pon farr would force her to take almost any other option that might present itself.
She, after all, is a true Vulcan. Spock is an abomination. He burned for another and then choked the life from him.
If Spock possessed anywhere near the level of control T'Pring has... he could never have permitted Jim to face danger, not while burning for him. He hates, hates beyond all words, what T'Pring has done. But he would have done the same, if he could.
And, even in admitting that her desire has turned away from him... T'Pring is still more gracious than Spock expected.
Not at first, of course. "You would free me," she explains, "because I had dared to challenge. And again I would have Stonn..." Beneath these words is the part that's neither gracious nor surprising: she cannot hold back a veiled comment upon Spock's recovery.
His mind, in its own self-hatred, translates her subtlety into clearer words, all the better to ridicule him: I can see that you've satiated yourself against your captain, over and over like an untrained sehlat in rut. Enough times to kill him; evidently enough times to break your fever as well. As far as I can observe, you now have the option to free me, because you no longer need to claim what you have won. But make no mistake: I know that this return to sanity is due to your having debased yourself in the most obscene and public way. Do not imagine that I failed to notice.
"But, if you did not free me," she continues, "it would be the same. For you would be gone, and I would have your name and your property, and Stonn would still be there."
And here, the translation starts to change tone. I may, however, be wrong. I acknowledge a possibility that you do still burn. I will not resist you, if that is the case. I would not be so heartless as to wish that suffering on you, regardless of your appalling behavior. Nor will I resist if you claim me out of some sense of obligation, to satisfy your honor by going through with the marriage. I have considered these as acceptable outcomes with their own advantages. So I shall submit to them, without protest... just as long as you understand that, afterwards, you are to leave. And that, once alone with Stonn, I shall continue to follow my own motivations.
Spock is not of her world, and does not belong here. But today, she will tolerate whatever he needs and takes.
And not because her duty demands it... but, for the most part, simply because she pities him.
Spock's mind whispers its own retort: Don't be a fool. Jim pitied me, offered himself to me, and look how I repaid him... And T'Pring's offer comes not even from friendship, but from some impersonal ethical code of hers, in which one simply does not leave such a pathetic creature to suffer if one has the means to help.
This is how his homeworld views him now.
And underneath the offer, of course, she could not help hiding another cruel barb: the implication that she could still carry on with Stonn, even if Spock chose to take her in marriage. That Spock is such a failure of a Vulcan that he would not even be able to form a marriage bond strong enough to bind her desire solely to him. (Or, perhaps, the implication that he could not do so because his own desires lie so obviously elsewhere.)
It is meant to sting, and it does.
But still, he cannot be angry at her. It is more than Spock could have expected. And more than he deserves.
He does not think the pon farr still threatens his life, for now. But, even if it did, his life is not worth enough to trouble her with it.
Through the insulated distance of his grief, he watches himself commend her logic. Watches himself decline her silent offer, and pronounce her free to choose the consort she desires. There would be no logic in denying her that fulfillment, simply because he has ruined any chance to have it for himself.
He watches himself turn away, then, toward the next meaningless chore: taking his leave of T'Pau with the traditional words.
As if he cares now whether she lives long or prospers. He follows the motions, like a man whose life is over. ("...Live, and be prosperous, and farewell, good fellow...") But her life is nothing to him.
T'Pau, who could have stopped the fight with a word, could have kept Jim safe, could have kept the violence of pon farr where it belonged, between Spock and the mate and rival he cared nothing for. She who drew back in astonishment that he was able to force words through the rising fever-- and then mocked the plea so urgent that it had given him the strength to speak those words.
She who mocks him, now, by speaking the words of the traditional farewell back to him. As if they hold any meaning to him, when the vibrant mindlink that he'd just begun to recognize as a part of himself is now dead and silent.
His automaton voice, watched at a distance from inside his mind, at least knows enough to tell her what he thinks of that.
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*****
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*****
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The return to the ship is another dull series of motions.
Clothes stripped away, methodically, efficiently. Disposal of the garments as quickly as possible, directly down the trash chute to the incinerator. Intense focus on suppressing any and all thoughts about what happened to this body, these clothes.
A shower, the longest and most thorough washing he has allowed himself in years. A full half-hour of hot water followed by another half-hour of sonics. Not because he deserves the cleanliness or the comfort, but because every trace of the abomination that has occurred today deserves to be erased.
Including him. Eventually.
A fresh uniform. A few minutes expended on forcing his appearance into something presentable, to face the desolate future.
He will surrender himself at once. Confined for the rest of his days, he will not live much more than seven years (he hopes, bleakly, that his cycle will be irregular; will err on the quicker side). And he will be held back from endangering anyone else when it happens. He should ask for maximum-security prison; for solitary confinement.
He deserves the end that he is destined for. The most agonizing death a Vulcan may face.
The one that even T'Pring was willing to spare him, no matter how badly his touch disgusted her.
The death so terrible it can only be whispered of in euphemism.
To run out of time.
Perhaps it will be even sooner. Perhaps he did not violate Jim enough times to burn away the fever entirely. Perhaps it is still there, ready to take hold of him at any moment.
He certainly does not feel well. He is dizzy, aching, sick... he cannot help but feel, now, that madness is clouding his perceptions.
Psychic hallucination, certainly. His thoughts are taunting him again with the sense of Jim's mind. Bright familiar little sensations: joy, love, pleasure. Life. The mind that he murdered, now whispering to him don't worry, it's all right...
A cruel tease. But exactly what he deserves. It would feel real enough to believe, were it not for the power of his despair.
He holds back the urge to sob, to succumb to the catharsis of tears. He does not deserve that either.
If he is going mad again, he must act as quickly as possible. He will not allow himself to harm anyone else. Shoving down every inhibition he feels about going to Sickbay, he forces himself there, step by step.
As punishment, as much as necessity.
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*****
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And there, it all melts into bright wonder.
Jim's face, alive and playful, breaking like sun through clouds into the grim recitation of Spock's plans in the aftermath of Jim's death...
The sunburst of relief, too powerful for logic to hold back.
Jim, solid and real, in his arms.
The smile that feels so unfamiliar, spreading across his face, that he barely realizes what it is.
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*****
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*****
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The brightness of the responses all around him, as Spock recovers from his outburst of joy-- clumsily drawing logic and dignity up around him, again, like a cat grooming away the embarrassment of a failed pounce.
And getting just as much ridicule for it. And not even caring.
"He slipped in a neural paralyzer," Jim explains. "Knocked me out. Simulated death."
And Spock listens and nods through his faltering composure: "...Indeed?"
Of course, that would explain it, scientifically speaking. Under that type of sedation Jim would have been clinically dead, in a sense, and his mind quite inactive...
Yet, how could Spock have disbelieved his own mind? How could he have dismissed that sparking touch as hallucination, at that moment when he felt Jim come to life again? How could he ever have felt so hopeless, so deep in grief as to deny the realness of Jim's life, as he feels it now-- gold and warm and shining all through him?
Spock basks in the presence of Jim, drunk on his smile, on his voice... while inside his heart, joy sings and sings and sings.
Jim is alive.
At this moment, that is all that matters.
All that is.
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*****
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"....Let's go mind the store."
In the corridor, the captain stays closer to Spock than he has ever walked before. And speaks, with all that playful confidence suddenly pushed aside... fast, quiet, more vulnerable than Spock can remember him ever sounding.
"I waited in there," he says. "From the moment I woke up. To the moment you walked in. Terrified that maybe I'd guessed wrong, that you wouldn't go there first..."
"What," Spock intones slowly, "were you afraid that I would do?"
Jim's eyes turn towards him-- haunted agony. "You had been quoting Romeo and Juliet, all day."
Spock does not ask how Jim could possibly know that, when he has never voiced the quotations aloud.
Instead he draws himself up and affects a dignified, affronted tone... because he knows this is a game Jim enjoys, to watch Spock's pretense of emotionless austerity and try to tease him into revealing that the thing concealed beneath it is humor. And right now Spock feels a strong need to create a spark of amusement for Jim to feel, something to lighten the sorrow in his eyes.
"I am not Romeo," he says, one brow arching with all the elegant dignity he can manage.
And the sparkle in those soulful eyes rewards him.
"Well. I suppose I'm not quite Juliet, either." A small smile lights Jim's face a bit more. "And Bones is no Friar Lawrence. He had the common sense to stick around and keep an eye on us."
Unspoken hangs the thought: if not for that common sense, Romeo and Juliet they might well have been.
"You know that something... happened between us," Jim says slowly, after a moment has passed.
Spock blushes to the tips of his ears.
"I don't mean the obvious." Jim has the decency to blush as well. "I mean, our minds. Some sort of... connection. Not that it's completely new, though. There's been something there for a long time. That intuition we've always had for each other's state of mind... You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"
Spock nods. "I had felt it, too. For a long time, yes. I should have realized. That this was the beginning of a... mating link." His eyes lower. "I was... led astray by the knowledge that I already had such a link with T'Pring. It did not occur to me that another could form spontaneously."
One forcedly slow breath. "...Or... that the new link could prove to be the stronger of the two. That it could be the one to grow into a-- a marriage bond, during the consummation of my Time."
Jim is silent for a while, although Spock can see his lips faintly forming the words to himself: Marriage bond. Consummation.
"Is that why the madness ended?" Jim asks finally. "Because you fulfilled all of it, didn't you. Took a mate, in every sense."
The facts of what has happened today are settling now, heavy, around Spock and onto his shoulders.
"I... cannot undo the harm I have done," he whispers, as the enormity of it suddenly, all at once, like the drop of an enormous leaden weight, sinks in.
Everything dims now, swallowing up that foolish bright joy from minutes ago. Jim is alive, yes, and the relief of that fact can never be erased-- but, how to imagine, now, any future for both or either of them? Spock feels, suddenly, almost too exhausted to keep standing...
But he pushes through the weariness, keeps walking slowly onward, by Jim's side, a place he simply cannot imagine ever leaving, however grim the outlook.
"I know, too well, what it is to be forced into marriage against my will," he says, almost inaudibly. "That I could inflict the same on you is... abhorrent." He takes a rough, faltering breath. "I am... so sorry, Jim. And... so afraid. I confess that I do not know, right now, how our lives can move on from this."
But Jim reaches out, inexplicably smiling-- in a spontaneous little fast movement to clasp Spock's hand in his.
"You didn't," he says. "Didn't force me. We both rushed into it together. ...Oh, yes, all right, I suppose we had no choice. But, Spock--if something did force us, it was just love."
Spock breathes in and out, slowly.
Marshaling his newfound sanity to control his response to the feeling of the handclasp... while also struggling to understand Jim's words. Love?
"I thought of it as friendship, up until today," Jim admits. "I'm still not entirely sure where to draw the borders of those definitions. I suppose definitions are a thing of logic, so... perhaps trying to define emotions will always be a bit of a fool's errand."
Jim's own bright laugh seems to surprise him as it ripples through his throat. "But, Spock, what I felt for you... Well, whatever I called it, it was enough to make me give up everything else I cared about when you were in danger. Without a second thought. And that felt perfectly natural to me. So, I suppose maybe I shouldn't be surprised, to discover that... all of this... also felt so perfectly natural." He shakes his head, smiling. "To spend a day in each other's arms, giving each other pleasure, over and over..."
"Pleasure!" ...Perhaps Spock shouldn't be so startled that this is how Jim remembers it. And yet...
Jim's head tilts. "Of course. That's what it was. Even when it was pain, or erotic asphyxiation... I'm not sure how much you've studied human sexuality, but we can find pleasure in many different things. I'll be happy to show you more of them." He chuckles ruefully. "We'll be much more careful about it from now on, though. You could use an entire course in safe sex, Spock-- I don't deny that some of what you tried out on me down there could have killed me, if we'd been less lucky." A bafflingly happy-sounding sigh. "But what a way to go!"
Spock stands ramrod straight, eyebrows disappearing into his hair, too scandalized to speak. He can sense that all of Jim's feelings are still the strangest and most beautiful golden rush of happiness and affection, and he cannot understand why, after all that has occurred, but...
"... But that doesn't change the feeling of what we did today. A day of giving each other love and pleasure. That's what did happen-- regardless of what else could have. And then to find out that we're married, telepathically bonded! It all did feel perfectly natural to me, Spock-- perfectly right. Felt like the only possible outcome. Not just the lesser evil, but the only good. The place that our... friendship... was always meant to go."
Their eyes meet, his smile still bright as sunlight, and his hand tightens on Spock's. "Please tell me that's how you feel as well." Spoken without fear, as if deep down he already knows.
A blush climbs Spock's cheekbones once more. "If... if I did not feel so, at the time, it was only because I feared that I was forcing upon you something that you did not wish. I... I still do not think I can forgive myself..."
"Shh. You had no choice. And neither did I. Letting you die, or making you live with having killed me-- those weren't choices. I couldn't have. Spock, I-- I think love is just as much a biological imperative as pon farr."
He brings their clasped hands up against his heart. "I suppose we were Romeo and Juliet, in a way. At least, we certainly weren't Juliet and Paris. That was what your family tried to do to you and T'Pring. A forced, loveless marriage?" He bows his head for a second, pressing a kiss to Spock's fingers. "I won't have you comparing us to that."
Spock still wants to protest, because there is still no excuse for the crime of which he is guilty, the things he has done to Jim that could not possibly have allowed him any room to choose.
And yet, with the bond so wide open to him now, with Jim laying bare every sunlit feeling for him to know, and with every one of those feelings giving nothing at all but thanks and joy... it seems ludicrous to make any attempt at argument.
It is then that Jim, finally, turns his attention to the thrumming energy under his touch, the full-body tremble of Spock still clinging tight to the handclasp.
"Is the madness really over?" Jim asks.
"The madness, yes." Spock nods, but still trembles. "What we did was-- sufficient to recover from it. My survival and sanity are no longer in danger. The remaining-- symptoms-- will abate, with time."
"I don't suppose that would be pleasant for you, waiting it out alone." There is just enough of the right intonation to turn the words into an offer. At least, to ears that are listening for one.
"It would not." Spock's breath falters through the reply. "It would be... far easier for me, if..."
The next second, they are in each other's arms like a planet crashing into a sun.
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*****
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If there is a store that needed minding, that goal has been forgotten.
There exists a quite simple direct route from Sickbay to the bridge. The captain and first officer have not followed it. Their trail more closely resembles the footprints of a somewhat intoxicated insect, if it were plucked from the jungle and dropped among the circuits inside a computer chassis.
Between them now is something savage-wild, alien to the layout and routines of anything as formal and proper as a starship.
They've given little thought to a destination. Far more they have focused upon the effort of holding themselves back, as they traverse the corridors, from the temptation to push each other up against the nearest bulkhead for frantic sessions of kissing-- and, on more than one occasion, they have failed for several minutes to manage even that amount of restraint.
Their journey from Sickbay has meandered. It has slid down obscure less-traveled hallways, has taken heated delays in secluded corners, and by now has brought them much nearer to both their quarters than to any place dedicated to official ship's business.
Their quarters being next-door neighbors with a shared lavatory, Jim and Spock are unconcerned, by the time they arrive there, with the question of whose room to enter. It ends up being Spock's, by pure chance; only the dry heat of the climate setting causes him to be faintly aware of this.
A different heat, decidedly not dry, occupies all the rest of his awareness as the door latches behind them. Jim's mouth, wet against his neck as Spock submits, weak-kneed, to the frenzy of his captain's body shoving him up against the very first available wall. Spock's arousal, insistent, aching as badly as during the first days of the pon farr, eagerly lubricating itself in the manner of Vulcan biology, and all too ready to ruin one more pair of Starfleet pants-- along with one more Starfleet shirt, if his hands continue to claw at Jim's back and shoulders like this, which they have absolutely no desire to stop.
Or so he thinks, until Jim's hand finds his right shoulder and begins to trace his arm downward-- and then the mission of sabotaging the command uniform becomes a solitary one, because his right hand commits immediate desertion, fingers entangled in the most obscene way with Jim's, impossible jolts of pleasure tingling through every touch of skin on skin, while their mouths, too, find one another, sinking into a human kiss as frantically lustful as the Vulcan one between their hands.
"Jim, yes." Spock is melting, supported now entirely by the bulkhead behind him and the insistent strength of his captain crushing him against it. Their bodies press close, everywhere, Spock's legs parting so Jim can settle in even closer. There is a lightning flash of thoughts and memories and desires from earlier-- held down, dominated, Jim's leg pushed between his, eager arms and mouth touching him, everywhere, spurring him on to straddle the offered thigh and rut to completion...
It is obvious from Jim's sharp inhaled breath, and the sudden clutch of his hand on Spock's, just how vividly he saw that image through the mind link.
"I should warn you," he breathes, chuckling. "If we keep going like this, it is extremely likely that something very much like that is going to happen. Soon."
Spock's rapid breath and the answering clench of his hand, of his thighs, are the only answer.
"And," Jim continues between gasps, "now may be the ideal time to decide whether we would like to have clothes on when that happens, or not."
Spock stills for a moment. The thought of the latter option makes itself known to his visual and sensory imagination-- and he barely holds back a groan. For the first time in a while, he manages to let his focus widen beyond imminent pleasure. Just enough to acknowledge the tenderness of his flesh: a soreness that has been building throughout this long, long day, the result of far too much damp friction against fabric.
With a sigh, he pulls back from the embrace.
"That is... wise," he admits. "I believe that I have had, for today, quite enough of the... clothed variation on this activity."
Jim laughs delightedly. "Well said." Eager hands are already helping Spock out of his shirt, soothing him as he cries out at the momentary loss of contact with his fingers. "Shh. Almost there."
The blue shirt falls crumpled on the floor. The gold one, miraculously, manages to land on top of it without suffering detectable damage. Control fails again for a minute or two, as it becomes too powerful a temptation to embrace with nothing between their naked chests.
Hands and mouths make love to each other again for long moments, while arcs of new stimulation shiver back and forth with the press and drag of unclothed skin on hardened nipples and the sensitive roots of chest hairs... until the pressure in their remaining clothing becomes too much to bear, and hands break contact once more to fumble hurriedly at the fly of one pair of black slacks and then the other.
"Jim." Spock's head tips back and collides with the wall, hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to draw away any of his focus from the eager human hands that have pushed his trousers and briefs halfway down his thighs already. He has barely managed to open Jim's pants, he is trembling with need too intense to do anything now except clutch hard at Jim's buttocks and shove his hips forward again and again--
"Just a moment. Hold still, just a--" Jim moans, and through the mind-link Spock feels him barely hold back orgasm, stilling for a second to gain tenuous control of himself, before he devotes the last of his attention to wrestling Spock's boots off his feet. Spock collapses to the floor, for a moment, wholly overwhelmed, and Jim takes the opportunity to drag the pants off over Spock's still-stockinged feet and throw them across the room. In the time of four and a half more breaths that burn ragged through Spock's throat, Jim has stood up and done the same to his own pants and boots and now the two of them are naked together, all but their socks, and they've just barreled far past the limit of caring about that.
Spock, still sprawled on the floor, reaches up both hands to his still-standing captain, some giddy part of his mind finding it poetic, a reversal of that moment in the sand. And, just like that moment, their hands entwine, gripping hard, hot, sweat-dampened, to pull Spock to his feet.
Ands although the handclasp sends heated shivers through them both, it's no longer enough to obliterate all physical control as it did at the peak of the fever. Both stay standing, shaky, but able to maneuver each other, step by step, toward the bed.
Jim makes it there first; falls gasping into a seated position with legs spread wide and draped off the edge of the mattress-- and, with an arch of his back and a ragged groan of relief, clasps Spock against him, allows him to collapse shuddering into his lap. "Yes."
"Yes. Jim." Spock heaves one breath after another, right hand still tangled in Jim's fingers, left hand clutching his shoulder. Both hands trembling uncontrollably, overloaded with the sensation of where he is now-- astride Jim's naked thigh, his own flesh naked as well, painfully aroused, and yes, very tender from all the abuse of this day, but still finding nothing but blessed soothing relief, in being pressed now against the soft warm skin of Jim's abdomen.
Jim presses back into him, making him hotly aware that Jim is also aroused --and just as sore as Spock, but finding this new contact just as blissfully healing-- and with a wave of pleasure felt all through both bodies, he is already tightening thighs around Spock to grind up against his hip. "Yes... Spock... Fuck..."
It is perhaps the second or third time in his life that Spock has heard Jim speak that word aloud, and never before in this voice, and it destroys him. He nearly comes right then. And although he holds back the climax, he cannot restrain himself from a frantic undulation of hips, and a rough groan so loud that he fears it may be audible in the corridor.
He is so hard he feels insane. As hard as... he cannot finish the thought, because nothing else is hard in quite the same way as an erection, particularly from the viewpoint of the one who suffers it. Spock knows that this is among the things which drive humans poetic, which send them scurrying in search of metaphor and simile. But often they begin with stone or iron, substances known for hardness that far exceeds that of flesh, turning the comparison into one that Spock views as near-comic hyperbole. Often, too, they think of wood, which at least is living or once-living, with a hardness closer to what is meant... but still not truly close.
None of their images capture this... complexity of textures. The gradient between the soft vulnerability of skin and the firm pressure of a center tight with pulsing blood and barely-held ejaculate. They do not capture what it is like to cradle and soothe those urgent small movements, to feel the spread of humid heat into one's hand...
Spock's hand, the one not currently occupied in the handclasp, has found its way between them to bestow just those touches on Jim, and it is... beyond all description. No human idiom, nor any of those vague Vulcan euphemisms, could ever begin to emulate how it feels to hold Jim warm and heavy in his curled fingers, to spread the beading fluid over the tip and feel Jim buck and quiver against his body and hear the sounds he makes-- soft, anguished, pure need.
Most of all, none of those comparisons can even begin to trace the outline of the senses that ride along on those sensations. Mental echoes of the burn and stroke; of the feeling of wetness being caressed over him; of cries that vibrate warm through one's throat; of the urge to thrust, and the breathless thankful love for the one who touches... all that seeps through telepathically from the mind above. To be hard, to feel Jim being hard, is a heady rush of pleasure and pain, warmth and heartbeat, desire and ache that burns Spock's mind away. It does not have or need analogy.
"Yes yes more..." Jim's voice cracks, becomes almost a sob, and he begins to grind so fast that Spock's hand cannot keep up with him. Spock gives up the attempt and moves his left hand to grip Jim from behind and simply pull their bodies together as hard as possible, both erections pressed and sliding in the tightness between. He feels Jim quivering with how close he is, dribbling nearly enough pre-ejaculate to equal the Vulcan lubrication that streams down Spock's shaft-- Spock finds himself echoing Jim's moans and clumsy thrusts, to build the urgency in the wet heat clasped pulsing and needy between them, every motion straining to feed this new fire until it consumes them, because this is perfect, perfect, everything he has always needed.
"Jim. Jim!" His right hand slides in sensuous caresses around and between Jim's fingers; their mouths meet and taste each other again and again; their minds mirror each touch with telepathic caresses that have no description in language at all. Thighs clench around each other and press in against slick hardness to offer deeper stimulation, hips stutter and quake in response-- and Spock rides his captain and friend into a release that burns out all sensation like a white-hot exploding star.
Time. It means everything and nothing at all. This moment may last forever and it may vanish in an instant, or more probably both, and Spock does not care if that thought makes any sense because everything he wants is here in this moment, now, as he erupts in pleasure against Jim and feels each emotion and sensation of it reverberating, cascading into more and more feedback loops as Jim follows him into that supernova of relief.
They fall back on the bed together, gasping in the wake of it. Spock drapes across Jim, their legs still dangling off the end, making no attempt to count the seconds it takes for breaths and heartbeats to slow back to resting rate. It may go on for years, for all Spock cares.
Jim laughs beneath him, as soon as his breath has calmed just enough for it. "I love you like this." He kisses Spock's chest. "I love you always and everywhere, of course. But this is new, so I have to say it, because I've found something new about you to love."
Spock smiles, a smile as real as the one that shocked them both in Sickbay. "What part, in particular? The fact that I can lose track of time, when I am... like this?" It is the aspect that first occurs to him, because it is the most recent thought he had, and he knows the thoughts are flowing between them so freely, right now, that it must also be Jim's latest thought.
"For you, that does feel positively wild." Jim's hand is still entangled in his. The fingers spasm and twitch softly, echoing the other flesh that's still pressed between them and finally coming down from the high of their climax. "I love this mindlink. I love feeling your thoughts. We'll be able to do this any time?"
"Share thoughts? Yes, whenever we wish. And shield, too, any time we wish privacy. But yes. The bond will always be there for us to open at will."
"I love this." Jim strokes his other hand up Spock's side. "Could even be useful. It is faster-than-light communication, isn't it?"
"Indeed. Faster than all levels of warp speed, as well. As far as the Vulcan Science Academy has been able to determine, it is instantaneous."
"I love this," Jim repeats, punctuating his words with kisses on Spock's fingers. "Love's heralds should be thoughts... Which ten times faster glide... Than the sun's beams..."
Spock draws himself up into an expression of pure, austere dignity... though he realizes, as he does it, that this game they play has gained a new layer from the knowledge that Jim can feel the playfulness underneath. "An incorrect calculation," he still replies, still deadpan on the surface. "Ten is not the factor by which instantaneous communication exceeds the speed of light. Nor is any other number, as deducing such a factor would require division by zero..."
And he lets the words trail off, as he senses Jim himself realizing the new layer of play and dissolving into dizzy laughter from it-- which is far too contagious, through the bond, to allow Spock to keep a straight face. He feels himself laughing softly in response, actually laughing, rough and low under his breath.
"Moreover..." he manages to add, through the unfamiliar spasms of his throat, "I have no further interest in quotations comparing us to star-crossed lovers."
"Well, the stars can't cross us anyway," Jim murmurs, beaming in satisfaction, as he starts to drift to sleep under the warmth of Spock's sated body. "Let them try. We'll just keep crossing them, together."
And Spock allows himself, in this perfect moment, to believe that this is true.
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*****
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Fanworks: Fics: Trek: Savage-Wild
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