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Star Trek
Rating: NC-17 Kirk/Spock Summary: In his admiralty days on Earth, with Spock on Vulcan, Kirk begins to have disturbing dreams. Other strangeness follows. Disclaimer: All things Trek belong to Paramount/Viacom. This simple tale belongs to me. This simple tale belongs to me. If anyone were to sue me, all they'd get would be a collection of early 70s sci-fi paperbacks, a mangy old cat, and my allergies that make such a great combination with the cat hair and the dust-collecting books. Warning: SEX!!! OK, that was your cue to press <back> or whatever if you're under 18. If you're offended by the idea of m/m sex, then may I suggest that you're going to have a lot of trouble coping in this big, bad world of ours, that it might be time for a change, and that slash fiction is one of the best ways in which to expand your world-view. If, on the other hand, m/m sex is simply not your thing, then I wish you luck in finding something to read which is. This story originally appeared (in a slightly different form) in 1998 in the zine KaleidoScope 8. If you can get your hands on a copy, you really should, because it was wonderfully illustrated (not by me. By a person with artistic talent.) For those who might be wondering: This story is free-standing, but it does exist in the same universe as my other K/S stories. Words in Vulcan and Vulcan cultural concepts are borrowed with the utmost respect from Diane Duane's marvellous novel Spock's World. University educated
hack writer works for feedback: janestclair15@hotmail.com
Iowa
That summer, James Kirk found he couldn't sleep. Too many times rising on the fringes of the night to pace the rooms of his San Francisco apartment. The mornings found him seated before the windows, staring at the vanishing stars and gripping the arms of his chair so that his hands wouldn't shake. He had ceased to notice the tremors that marked the rest of his body. He dressed each morning from a closet full of grey and white tunics, scarred by his admiral's insignia and colourlessly painted with his restlessness. Exhaustion made him edgy. Once too often he snarled at a junior officer for some middling offence that he shouldn't have taken notice of. He was living on caffeine and wandering the city like a zombie, radiating a hostility that drove people away. No one at Command would talk to him. It was barely July when his dreams began to fragment. When he found odd moments of sleep, disconnected pieces of them merged, disturbing his subconsciousness and breaking his rest. Other shards found him in the day, and reality would shatter. For half a second, in the halls of Starfleet Command, he was among the rocks on an alien planet. Buried in the shadows at their base. He had been searching in those crevices for some small creature to eat, but others had come and he found the roles reversed so that he was the hunted. Ready to kill them to defend himself. Unwilling to emerge from these rocks into the blazing heat of the day. So hot just beyond this patch of darkness . . . "Admiral Kirk?" Diffident hands on his arm. Was he all right? The padds he had been carrying were scattered across the corridor, creating a terrazzo pattern in combination with the last rays of sunlight cutting through the windows. "I'm fine." leave me alone I want to be alone "Take these back to my office. I'll deal with them tomorrow." Kirk bolted down the corridor, vanished around a curve and locked himself in the washroom. Sat alone in the dark, running hot hands over his face, then soaking them under the cold water tap and repeating the process until he shuddered at the iciness of his own touch. Losing it. Shaking. So tired. He shook himself and left, surprised that beyond the plasteel windows it was already dark. He went to Los Angeles. The technology made it too easy. The moments-long journey by transporter did nothing for his peace of mind. He changed out of his uniform in the sterile silver washroom, not thinking until he was dressed again, anonymously, no longer the Starfleet Admiral. Outside the civilian station, he rented a groundcar and drove into the city. Los Angeles was almost real. Grubbier than San Fran, at least, more like people lived there. More primitive. He didn't even realize he was in Hollywood until he was pulled up to the curb and a face appeared at his mirrored passenger window. Four hundred years of the city and you could still find boys on Sunset Boulevard. So he ended up with a hustler in the car with him before his horror had time to even surface. And they were halfway out of Hollywood before his hands began to shake again and he wanted to throw up. The hustler was a dark-haired boy with a rough-hewn, Slavic face that was too familiar for Kirk's own comfort. He couldn't do this. It was awful. Bought the kid supper at a Thai restaurant on a back street and threw more credits at him than the boy could possibly have expected for the trick. Brown, too-human eyes stared at him under street lamps. "Why?" because you are not him not mine not my mate leavemealone He gave him the Kirk grin. Still almost boyish, not as old as he felt. "Why not? Go on." Until the boy was gone and then he got back in the car and started to drive. He called Admiral Nogura from a public communications centre in the suburbs. "I need some time off." Nogura shouldn't have been in his office, but he was. Working late again. Kirk felt a pang of guilt for the work he'd left behind. Nogura had iron-grey hair and black eyes that drooped a little with tiredness. It was after midnight, almost oh-two hundred. "Restless, Jim?" "Something like that." Tight smile. "Go on. Get out of here. Come back when you're sane." It was not entirely a joke. He got back in the car and drove until the sun came up. North and east. By dawn, he was somewhere in Utah, watching light break over the desert and mountains. Closer to home. Every little town
with a bar had a hotel to house it. Still, he must have got some strange
looks when he checked into that one. No one slept in those places, really;
they were just excuses for the bars. Perfect. Smelling of dust, the curtains
permanently drawn. The semi-darkness took him down, weighing him with exhaustion
until he fell asleep full clothed, fetal on the ancient box-spring bed.
For ten seconds
he is in darkness, a cut-stone meditation chamber without windows. Firepot
beast in the corner. Heat from its coals merging with heat in the air and
the unspeakable chill of the stone. All but naked, stretched back against
the wall to feel the cold coming out of the earth. Striving for control
that eludes him like gossamer cobwebs and tears when he clutches at it
too tightly.
The desert was all around them. Five sunrises past, they had left the oasis with skins of water on their hips and all they owned loaded on their backs. The ones at the oasis had regarded them with suspicion and driven them to sleep beyond the perimeter of the protected camp. That was only to be expected; the stranger is the one who comes to take your water and your hunting grounds. Before they left, his mate had traded with the oasis-dwellers for the water and food. He himself had remained with their possessions, watching. So calm, that one, his beloved. Fierce bone structure that might have been carved out of the planet's centre, impenetrable calm shielding his warrior nature. His mate's dark colouring stood in contrast to his own fair hair that lurked beneath the dust-layers that had accreted in it since they began this journey, already three seasons past. His mate had returned with the things they needed and they had departed before the sun could rise too high in the sky. Before highsun, they had needed to conceal themselves again. Now, days afterwards at sunfall, they erected their canvas shelter at the edge of a stand of rocks and found the small, moist creatures that lived in the crevices. The skins they wore formed a single bed for both. The desert so cold in the night. Sleeping close together. Warm skin on the arms wrapped around his shoulders. His lover gave the slight urging that brought him deep into the embrace. They fit so close together, their bodies accommodating one another's curves and the hard ridges of bone. Just before sleep, his mate's mind touched his own, flashing images of a day's travel and the dreamings that passed through a conscious mind in that time. sand rock almost golden colourofthesky taste of water touch of your skin to mine almost golden colourofyoureyes your beauty I love you world of dust and wind and sky hard ground rim of the Forge sound of yourvoicelikesand grating off my ears so close to my own I need you this is where the world starts I know it we must be nearly there Flashes of images,
moments of telepathic lovemaking before sleep.
He offers the half-understood
image of himself in this room now dark with the nearly-ended day. Small
sounds of the world outside a hotel room. Water pooling in the sink and
dust in the corners where it accreted on his shoes and slowly crumbled
off while he sleeps. Then blankness as he sleeps again and through the
night.
He kept driving. By mid-afternoon, Kirk already couldn't remember the name of the hotel or even the name of the town that he'd stayed in the previous night. All around the road were mountains and desert-dry highlands where the grass crackled at a touch. There was dust in the air, raised by the groundcar's wheels. He pulled onto a gravel road, stopped, and got out. He knew he was up high and that the air should be cold, but his skin was blazing. Rocks jutted up from the ground, providing shade. He was drawn towards them. He started climbing. . . . hunters at the edge of the rocks looking for him. The red sun hot against his flesh that was bare except for the skins wrapped around his waist. Knife in his hand. Calling across the bond for his mate to help him help him, help him now before they killed him, oh gods he was so hot. Whirling vision of a red sky and mountains seen through the thin air. Disconnected fragments of a ravaged country of volcanoes and deep meditation. His heart beating fast against his side. Blazing hands ran over his ribs and settled against his ass. Touch of lips to his. He let himself fall into that touch, let himself moan when the long fingers slipped between his legs and pressed into him and stroked him, so hot against the thin skin too tightly stretched over his cock . . . A raven croaked somewhere back and over his shoulder and there were rocks under his hands. Blue sky behind the thinnest layer of cloud and a yellow sun. Damn it. Oh, he was losing it. Kirk let himself slide down the rocks and rest in their shade. Some part of his brain told him he must be feverish, but its voice was quiet enough to be lost in the dream fragments and fractured arousal coursing through his head. He let the heels of his hands press into his thighs until the pressure brought him back together and he was able to stand. And then he got back in the car. That night, he didn't bother to stop. For safety's sake, he locked a travel plan into the onboard computer and gave up driving. He didn't want to think. He stared out the window, seeing half a landscape in the car's running lights and his own reflection in the clear plasteel. A slightly heavier face than he had worn at thirty, and creased around the mouth and eyes. At some point, his hair had gotten darker. Though fair, he wasn't blond anymore. He was shading into middle age. He'd spent too many nights like this, unable to sleep or think or concentrate enough to read. Someone had said it was like this after you got divorced. Stupid. He wasn't divorced. At the back of his mind, almost totally silent, the bond was still there. There was no ceremony or legal process that could divorce that. But he was alone. At dawn, he was halfway across Nebraska. He hadn't slept yet. Pulled off and bought coffee at a restaurant in a tiny connector town. The waitress in the restaurant asked if he wanted anything to eat and he was halfway into ordering bacon and eggs before something in him revolted at the idea of eating animal flesh. He ordered toast. Strawberry jam. Ate it and paid for it and left, leaving a five-credit coin on the table as a tip for the waitress who had given him the oddest look when he interrupted himself in the middle of ordering. By mid-afternoon, he was home. Or as close to it as he intended to get. He took back control of the car and pulled into a place called Winterset, Iowa. A hundred or so kilometres northeast of him, his mother still lived on the farm, and at this time of year his nephew Peter would be home from college. He didn't want to see them. Didn't want to see Peter, the living ghost of Sam who was dead. He didn't want to see anyone. He checked into a motel at the edge of town and buried himself in the dark of his room. He'd been awake thirty hours, so of course he couldn't sleep. As soon as he stretched out, his brain kicked into overdrive, images flashing through him fast as television. Finally gave up in disgust and left the motel room, wandered through the streets until he found a pharmacy and a bottle of over-the-counter sleep-aids. The girl at the counter smiled at him like he looked like he needed them. Back in his room,
he stripped and showered. The first three pills kicked in.
Hard, dry lips kiss
him, bruise him, press into him so hot they must leave marks behind them
like brands on his bare skin.
The mountain had loomed above them for days before they reached it. Its sides were faceted, already carved like jewels. There was water there, dampening the stone, cold to the touch. They drank. And that night they slept beside the mountain. Waking in the night. The ground had shifted, subtly, in their sleep. His mate crept from the tent, blade in hand, only to return for him and lead him outside with an expression that was only wonder. Outside was the a'kweth, an ancient dweller from under the sand spoken of in myth with the same reverence reserved for the mountain. It touched their minds. Flashes of ancient wanderers stumbling on the Underliers, the beginning of speech, the understanding like ecstasy touching that face millennia dead. They saw the first traveller, heard the first word. Heya, mountain. The a'kweth before them swayed like a stone oracle. know that the
universe is concerned with origins as well as outcomes
Then its voice, whispers like stone on stone, or sand blowing. ". . . heat . . . death . . ." It was so hot. Flaming
even at night, body heat indistinguishable from the heat of air and stone.
Outside, Gol and
Vulcan's Forge beyond it are incomparably beautiful, but his body is burning
and he can't be bothered to look. The stone room echoes his breathing back
to him as a mass of noise. The air stinks faintly of the sulphur from far-off
volcanoes.
The thing was, he didn't really understand whether Spock had left him. The five-year mission had ended, Kirk had been declared Chief of Fleet Operations and re-posted to earth. At the time, almost eighteen months before, he hadn't even really understood what was wrong with that move. He'd only felt a vague uneasiness. Instincts for his ship had kept him aboard long after everyone else had disembarked and there was only a skeleton crew in Engineering to keep the Enterprise company in spacedock. He'd stayed on, putting off requests for meetings and walking the empty halls. Touching panels, feeling cold metal and the contradictory textures of a starship. Finally he came to the bridge. The area lights had been out, the room illuminated by half-activated displays that let him see shape but not colour. He'd walked the perimeter of that space, then sunk into his chair, in medias res, at the centre of things, and called for screen on. Gentle automation had given him an interior view of spacedock. Grey metal and flood lights and vacuum. Ships hanging in the night. And he'd stayed there a long time, trying to evaluate the cold emptiness that had settled beneath his breastbone and spread through his limbs. He hadn't known that Spock had come back to the ship, but he felt the other's mind in the instant before Spock stepped onto the darkened bridge. It was a telepathic caress, barely words, unfinished. what is this cold in you "I don't know," he'd whispered. Spock had come up behind him so simply and stood there, hands folded, gazing at the viewscreen. Kirk had been able to feel the heat radiating from his lover's alien-warm body. "What have I done, Spock?" Silence. "I've ruined it. I've lost the Enterprise. I'll never get her back." Silence. A flash of warmth had warned him the moment before Spock's palms came to rest on his shoulders, and something like comfort had come to him through those hands. He'd relaxed into the touch, slumped bonelessly back in the captain's chair. A moment of Vulcan lips against his hair, then Spock had withdrawn. The low, grating voice ran through his bones when Spock answered him. "You have made a decision, Jim. You will change your life and adapt as you always do." And the silent response, know you know you are afraid you will adapt survive live you are James Kirk are my beloved you will do what you have to do Kirk had turned then, met those reserved, Vulcan eyes that were shielding something from him, if only he could fathom what it was. But it had been so much easier at that moment to step down from the chair and wrap his arms around that hard, angular body and feel the warmth of an alien life against him. To tilt his head and claim those dry lips that hesitated a moment before they pressed back against his own. thank you love you Hot body against his own, tracing Spock's narrow mouth using only the very tip of his tongue. Feeling through the bond the sensation of cooling as his mouth left dampened portions of Spock's face behind. Then Spock had kissed him back. Vulcan lips had massaged his, bruised and comforted small portions of skin. He could have fallen into that mouth and disappeared. Wrapped around one another, easing into a single pattern of thought. After the first deep kiss, there had only been small ones. Spock's Vulcan body was so naturally dry; his kisses suggested the desert, dropping on Kirk's face and neck and burning him. Holding and rocking one another in the almost-dark. He didn't know after when it stopped being comfort and started being need. He had been so angry, though not at Spock. Someone's else's damned fault. His hands had fumbled up and under the other's shirt. He'd struggled the garment to chest height before warm, dry hands had gently removed him and efficiently disrobed. Efficiently and unabashedly erotically. Spock's pale skin, made paler by years in space, had appeared too slowly; clothes had danced around the lean body and vanished into the shadows behind the command chair. Flash of desire, flash of rage, and Spock had been at him and undressing him too. Words had come through by touch, his thoughts or Spock's he was never able afterwards to determine. you have been
my lover time out of mind
He would have liked for them to lie down together and make love gently over many hours in the semi-darkness of the bridge, but that wasn't in any way possible. Even if they had had the hours, he would have broken the moment those arms came around him. He had surfaced again from the contact to find himself naked and the air cool. Spock had stood with his face in Kirk's hair, unmoving, possibly still absorbed in the bond. It wouldn't have been the first time he had lingered there after Kirk had removed himself. Spock saw things Kirk didn't want to see in himself, that he didn't want to know. He hadn't wanted to analyse why he was angry, he'd just wanted to be angry. He had wrenched himself back from Spock and then pulled the Vulcan in to kiss him hard. There had never been a question of consensuality when he took the initiative. Kirk faced an alien strength that could have driven him into the wall and into submission, that could easily push him back if his lover refused. But Spock had only yielded to the kiss and then knelt, searching in the darkness and reemerging with slick hands to coat Kirk's aching erection. The touch of a tongue to his scrotum, a kiss on his thigh, and the other rose, turned, and bent over the command chair. Even raging, Kirk had moved as he always did. Strange to find it wasn't at all routine, only instinct-guided, led by the will not to hurt. He had grasped Spock's hands and taken the lubricant onto his own fingers, then slid a single digit between his lover's buttocks and deep inside. While he twisted it and listened to Spock gasp and occasionally hiss his name, he'd kissed patterns onto the hot, pale skin in front of him. I love you like
my life
He'd had three fingers buried deep inside when Spock had finally demanded. It wasn't a moan or a hiss but a growl that his beloved offered him. "Jim. Now." Two syllables stretched into many. What choice could he possibly have had, even if he hadn't wanted this so much? His cock had been so hard; he could feel his own heartbeat as the veins pressed tightly against the skin. Consciously, he never understood how they were able to kiss in that position, but Spock's lips had been so close and then had been open around his. When they broke the contact, he'd kissed his way across Spock's shoulder blades and spine. He'd felt the cool touch across the bond as if it were his own skin he were touching. He'd been able to feel the head of his cock pressed against Spock's opening, threatening to enter and then refusing. "Jim, please." His cheek had rested against Spock's back, feeling both cool and hot, his hands on the other's hips, and he had thrust in. Long moment of acclimatization to penetration in the excruciatingly tight passage, and then they were working together for this, thrusting and bucking to deepen the contact. He'd thought afterwards that it should have seemed rough and desperate, but it hadn't at the time. There had been, as there always was in their lovemaking, an understanding of the feelings between them, an acknowledgement of the desperation, a shared need. He had needed this, and, on some level, so had Spock. Enough for Spock to relay his deepening pleasure into Kirk's mind, even enough for Spock to vocalize it. "Oh by any gods, t'hy'la, please, yes, oh yes . . ." Kirk hadn't himself been in enough control to form words, but his ragged breathing had formed the single rhythm of "I love you." And he had still been there, pressing against Spock's back, one hand gripping the prominent hipbone. The other hand he had drawn around his lover's body to grip the hard, blazing-hot cock and pump it in rhythm with his breaths. Screaming love you through that touch. He hadn't been in control by then. He'd come with a sob without breaking his rhythm, screaming against the friction even as it pushed him farther, waiting for Spock to join him. And when he finally did, Kirk felt the orgasm in all the muscles pressed against his body and in his mind as a howl and a sudden tight gripping of the bond that maintained that Spock would never let him go. It was only then that they had collapsed to the floor and Kirk found that he'd been right. The moment they twisted into an embrace, all the mental fortifications he'd been bracing collapsed. And he'd cried, horrible, wracking sobs that echoed off the bridge walls and denied whatever dignity he still possessed. oh beloved what have I done what have I done whathaveIdone I gave up my ship I could have fought for her but I didn't I was so weak so stupid what will I do what have I done The words he would have expected from a human lover had been conspicuously absent. There hadn't been any "there, there," or "don't cry," or even "it's all right." Just Spock's calm I know. The acknowledgement of Kirk's wretchedness and his need to cry. And all the time Spock's hands had roamed over his shoulders and tangled in his hair and Spock's thoughts had touched his and kept him from true hysteria. In fact, they had lain there virtually all night. It had taken a long time for Kirk to cry himself out. Afterwards, there had been no energy left in either of them to move, and they'd only been able to bury themselves in their clothes to keep the room's chill from Spock's body, and sleep. It had been something on the order of oh-four hundred hours when Kirk had woken. He'd felt good, better. Spock had left their embrace, dressed, and moved away to stand on the bridge's upper level. He hadn't been in uniform. He'd been wearing those wonderful Vulcan travelling clothes, uniformly black and soft, impossible to wrinkle. Oh, he'd been beautiful. Sharp, aristocratic features defined by the shadows in the still-darkened bridge, hard body, graceful, watchful stance, perfectly balanced. It was so easy to lie there and watch him that Kirk hadn't noticed for long minutes that the bond was silent. "I must apologize," Spock had said softly, finally. "I did not mean when I came seeking you for us to come together like that. It was inappropriate. It was unfair to you." He'd almost laughed. He'd wanted it, all of it. How could they still have these instants of misunderstanding after years together? "Spock . . ." "Let me finish, Jim." The dark eyes hadn't quite met his, then or ever that morning. "You have made a decision to accept the rank of admiral and the position of Chief of Starfleet Operations. I too have made a decision." Then it had been unreal, the words coming over too great a distance. Kirk had already sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees; he'd needed that steadying posture. ". . . resigned my Starfleet commission as of fifteen hundred hours yesterday. I am returning to Vulcan." Unreal. "How can I explain this to you so that you may understand? I have felt a lack within myself, for over a standard year now. I seek to fill that emptiness. I have declared my intention to travel to Gol to undergo the Kolinahr, the purgation of emotion, the final attainment of logic." Spock's face had been unreadable, even to Kirk. Not even the slightest change of muscular arrangement that he had learned to recognize as easily as human expressions. "This has nothing to do with you. It is something I must do for myself. "I must go." I am so sorry Jim Not "t'hy'la," not
"beloved." Jim. The public form of address. And then the bond had been
silent and Spock had turned and left, and Kirk had been left sitting there,
in the darkness of his bridge, until he could pull himself together and
dress.
Iowa by day presented him with colours that he had not seen in years. Space had been monochromatic, defined by the absence of light between stars. San Francisco was brown and blue and silver, the gleaming city sandwiched between the chaparral hills and the ocean. Iowa outside Winterset was a study in greens that hurt his eyes. Bright grass, dark trees, shading into one another maddeningly, like a scene painted in heavy acrylics. Unrelieved colour. It overwhelmed him, penetrated his sinuses and made him want to scream. The distraction was welcome. He'd slept through much of the afternoon and the night in a drugged stupor, not dreaming at all. When sunlight penetrated the room's heavy curtains, he'd risen, showered, and walked across the highway to eat in one of the town's small restaurants. This time, he'd been cautious and ordered pancakes. No part of him had objected, and he'd been able to eat them. On the way out, he'd arranged to buy a litre of coffee with cream and sugar in an insulated container. He'd taken it with him in the car and gone driving. He didn't have anything like a destination this time, he just wanted to move. Gods, he was restless. He found gravel roads and dirt roads that he knew would wreak havoc on the groundcar's delicate systems and followed them anyway. Kirk stopped when he found water. A couple of hundred yards off a road that probably didn't merit the name, there was a pond and trees. So much colour, he thought it must be in the air, that it must penetrate his body. Easy enough to pull off the road and hike across a pasture to the water. Easier still in the heat and humidity of the day to strip and wade in, washing himself with small splashings of his hands. The pond bottom was muddy; he burrowed his toes down into it. Used the traction then to launch himself forward and swim. The rhythm of it felt easy to him. Arm over, face down. Arm over, face up and breathe. Kick. Then turn and swim back to shore, climb out and sit naked on the grass. Small insects shimmered through the air and landed briefly on his shoulders and thighs. Microscopic feet touched and caressed him and departed again. Iowa, yes. He was looking for something here that he hadn't yet defined. It wasn't this, but this felt good, and it might be part of it. Trees, grass, water, insects. Water. Gods, it was all around him, it was in the air. It heightened the colours. When he sweated, nothing evaporated off him. When he'd walked across the pasture to this place, passing through the air had felt like parting curtains of water. Kirk knew he should like it; he'd spent too many years on a starship where the air was dry enough to rip the moisture out of his skin. He wished he knew whether he liked this new humidity or not. Wind cut suddenly through the steamy air and ruffled the trees. A shower of dry leaves and delicate seed pods came down over him, settling into the slight curls of his hair and lodging there. Kirk laughed and shook himself, then went to the pond to wash the rest of them off. He plunged his head into the water, . . . pulled his head out of the shallow pool and shook his long, loose hair out over his shoulders like a pleasured animal. They were lucky to find such a place unfouled and still giving water. Or perhaps it was giving water again after a long spell as a dry oasis deep in the desert. The day was at its hottest, flashing against his skin with heavy red light. It was their first stop since leaving the a'kweth at the foot of the heya, the single mountain embracing the wasteland. His beloved had staggered on their journey, was so terribly hot all the time. His beloved hung back near the rocks and watched him at the water. They had been silent a long time, communicating only in thoughts and gestures. He gathered water in his two hands and offered it to the beloved's lips. The two dry lines parted and allowed the liquid in before it spilled. Almost instantly, his lover's colour began to restore itself, and he was so grateful he could have wept, even in the water-stealing heat of the sun. He was startled when his lover's tongue lashed out to catch his damp fingers and draw them inside the mouth. This wasn't even a kiss, only a fierce devouring, a sharing of the body's heat. An expression of desire. They travelled no farther that day. In the night, they lay in their tent between the rocks and he cradled his beloved's head against his chest. The desert had stolen away its heat at nightfall; they should have been terribly cold. Just the same, his beloved's skin remained blisteringly hot. Their bond had been silent this day, but he could feel a frantic undercurrent to it, and he recognized that it ignited echoes within his own body. Understanding surfaced gradually, a leisurely movement between water and rock. "It is your burning time." His own voice, but in a whisper. His lover nodded, a motion more felt than seen. Even in the cold, sweat ran over him like . . . tiny floods of pond water that streamed over his naked shoulders and body and pooled on the ground. The day was hot, the air was humid, the colours spoke of Iowa. Oh he was most certainly losing his mind. Having waking visions now. Desire was in his body all the time. For a long time
afterwards Kirk sat staring at the water. Somewhere in his mind he knew
that his fair skin must be reddening in the too-dense sunlight. When the
sun was low enough to carve elongated shadows on the bank, he got dressed
and walked back to the car.
In the early evening, Kirk lay on the bed in his motel room and watched television. The BBC news, having retained its form and name through three and a half centuries of broadcasting and the dissolution of Great Britain as a political entity, recited political episodes from a half-dozen worlds. Off to one side, the season's popular drama played out soundlessly. Two other marginal shots seemed to run only commercials. The images ran together enough that he didn't have to think about them. Eventually, he turned the volume down to nothing and let the small sounds of the road outside fill his room. For the first time
in weeks, suddenly, he was sleepy. He waved the television off, threw the
paper carton he'd eaten supper out of in the recycler, and stripped. Too
hot. He pushed the blankets onto the floor and buried himself in just the
sheets.
The transition nearly
instantaneous, there is only a half-second of two rooms on different planets
blurred together.
They faced each other across the narrow tent and did not touch for several minutes. When he reached out to touch his mate, it was as though he were bridging an enormous distance. The other's hand rose up reflexively and only the tips of their fingers touched. Hot skin in the cold air. Their minds brushed across the narrow point of contact. He began the ritually slow, two-fingered caress, up his mate's hand, down his arm, feeling the narrow tendons shift under the skin. Then he was stilled by strong hands and the touch was inverted, tracing him over and defining him. He could feel awareness growing from his fingertips, expanding to each place his lover touched until he gained arms, shoulders, a body, legs. It was only after that that they kissed. His beloved's mouth covered his almost desperately, afraid he might be a ghost summoned by the desert to taunt a burning man and then vanish. Fiery at the back of his skull, the bond crackled. He clung to it while his body expanded and ignited and wanted the other. love you love you will not leave you I am here I promise I will never leave you He threw the thought out and heard it echoed in his beloved's mind. They were kissing all the time now. His hands fumbled against that hard, olive-toned body, stripping the clothing away and spreading the skins out into their bed with movements made awkward by his arousal. The hides brushed his cock on their way down and made him hiss into his mate's kisses. He couldn't believe they had been wearing clothes at all. How could they have needed them? He was so hot he was burning and still his mate's skin scalded him. Their bodies must be shedding layers of heat strong enough to distort night images into fever dreams. He found himself undressed and held against the skins by the full mass of his lover's body. His lover's urgency in kissing him and stripping them both seemed to have been sated for a moment, because he seemed content to layer small, sucking kisses across the fair skin offered up to him. Then withdrew and smiled. An odd expression that, he knew vaguely, and one he had not often seen before. Green-tinged lips brushed his, then travelled around the side of his head. His lover's tongue grazed his ear in the instant before those lips wrapped fully about its rounded edges and the mouth sucked hard. He exhaled from the back of his throat, giving near-voice to the electrified nerve impulses coursing through his body and centring in his cock. oh yes oh t'hy'la oh never stop There was the sudden need to touch his mate more intimately; he couldn't tolerate his own passivity. He arched his back and rolled up, straddling the other's thighs and rubbing their erections together, then driving his weight forward to bear them both down, this time with him on top. For a moment, he tensed his inner thighs and felt as much as heard his lover howl at the stimulation. Then he withdrew a little and studied the one under him. His mate was, by any standards he could remember, powerful and exotic. He was not yet old, but the desert had cut deep creases into that long face, creating down-drawn lines that contrasted to the flaring cheekbones. The normally pale skin was flushed bronze with arousal, green under the surface with only the barest hint of an alien scarlet. Long-fingered hands still clutched at his wrists, a gesture he mirrored to give them an unbroken connection. He lowered himself slowly to that hard body and tasted it at the juncture of neck and shoulder. With his tongue, he isolated the nerve on which the slightest pressure would render his lover unconscious. He moved slowly down the body, kissing open but dry-mouthed against the skin. Surely whatever moisture he had not lost to the desert had burned away already. His barely damp tongue pictured ribs and skin and the hard bone of an unpadded hip. Kissed his way along that ridge. I know your body like my own The body under him writhed, sought the contact. It burned. His hands were immobilized, trapped at hip-level by his lover's and held numbingly tight. He worked without them. Dark hair traced the hard, narrow body under him from chest to groin. He kissed his way along that path and dragged his nose through the dark fur, seeking both scent and sensation, stopping only when his lover's blistering erection caught at his jaw. It was so easy to rub his cheek against that too-thin skin and press his face into the pubis until he felt the pulse and bone. Trying in his own mind to define that smell, of days of sand, of hard, sharp air, of the cinnamon and ginger that made his eyes water. Drawing on the deepest corners of his mouth to wet his own lips. Only then lowering his mouth onto that cock, feeling his lover's fingernails bite into his wrists, driving himself to swallow before he choked. The first words in longer than he could remember clamoured in his ears. "Oh, Jim, yes!!!" His jaw already ached from holding his teeth away from the hypersensitive member around which his tongue was wrapped. Fervent hands guided his own to the hinge of his jaw and massaged the juncture until he relaxed. Less painfully now, he sucked at the cock in his mouth, pulling at the skin and feeling the blood rushing through the twinned veins along the sides. He could breathe, still, and feel a moisture in his mouth that the desert could not touch, he could grip his lover and hold him. Once, he withdrew until only the double-ridged head still remained in his mouth and, raising his eyes to meet his beloved's, he flicked his tongue over and into the tip of that cock until the other's parched gasps became howls again. oh please t'hy'la no more you touch me so deeply feels so good how could I not love you please beloved oh please Then back down, not into his throat, but as much as he could take in his mouth. He gained the release of one hand; the other was so tightly twined in his lover's that he could not remember which fingers were his own. With the fingers that he knew were his, he brushed the tightened scrotum and ran down the perineum until he found the entrance to his lover's body. Reluctant to enter with dry, air-seared fingertips, he pressed the broader pad of his finger against the opening, at the same time wailed I love you into the bond. His lover screamed,
a ragged-throated sound as if he were very far away, and came. His mouth
was suddenly full and he was tasting the ejaculate like smoke and swallowing
frantically before he lost it to the desert air. He was so intent on his
action that it was another moment before his lover's orgasm hit him fully
and he felt the shock run through him, fragmenting the dream.
There is a confusion
of images in which neither knows where he is.
Kirk woke with semen-taste in his mouth and the scream still in his mind. Iowa, nighttime, brilliant moonlight beyond the loosely woven motel room curtains. The bond pulsed frantically against his thoughts. He was naked and the air was damp and it was so cold, this couldn't be his homeworld. The sense of Spock, a dozen or more light years away on Vulcan was so immediate that they couldn't possibly not be in the same room. Gods he wanted him, so badly his body ached. Spock's hands covered his, lean arms wrapped around his body, warming him and driving away the water in the air. It was unthinkable that he should do something other than press back against that touch. Spock was around him, deepening the embrace, guiding them both down to the bed, Kirk face down and exulting in the sensation of the other against his skin. He was blind now; he didn't care. Forget. Let him carry you through this. Even in the added warmth, he could feel the heat of Spock's body. Those hands spread his thighs wide enough to edge into pain as he pushed against the limits of his body. Those long fingers defined each muscle in Kirk's shoulders and back, calligraphing names and symbols deep into his flesh. Palms stroked him, willing his frightened, tired muscles to relax and accept the contact. In the instant after that, he felt deep moisture and hard flesh against the entrance to his body. Kirk's anus throbbed as if he had been stretched impossibly wide and then abandoned. The penetration came simultaneously with a whisper, so absolutely Spock's voice, "I love you like my life." Oh gods, that cock was inside him and pushing deeper, entirely lubricated and still feeling like the desert, pushing so hard against the tight confines of his body that he knew he should be screaming, but he couldn't generate any sound beyond his own breath. There was an interval of contact while they rested with Spock's hot body stretched over Kirk's. Spock's arms were locked around his shoulders; he couldn't believe how close they were together. Inside, he was burning. The moment exploded into motion. Kirk felt the other body raise up from his back and the cock begin to pump in and out of his ass. The friction was incredible; it hurt like hell and he wouldn't have traded it for anything. The violence of the thrusts jolted him out of rational thought and all at once he was pushing back, daring the other to pound him into the ground, to take him apart and let him disappear. Screaming, "Oh yes, oh yes, yes please oh gods Spock . . ." And then only screaming, not caring if anyone could hear him. Kirk's own cock was trapped under his body, pressed into the bed, and he was coming before he realized that neither of them had put a hand to it. He wrenched his face out of the pillow and shrieked Spock's name, the whole, ancient one of unnumbered syllables, naming a thing that was part of his bones. Calling the other one closer to him and losing the hot spurts of his lover's orgasm in the complexity of his own voice. His heartbeat eased only slowly, and he became dimly aware that the wind was blowing outside, moving the air into alien patterns and stirring the water out of it until the country became livable again. The kiss on the back of his neck was only a ghost. Kirk rolled onto his side and stared through the gaps in the curtains at the night outside, feeling its energy prickle across his skin. Gods he was cold. He freed himself from the tangle of sheets and retrieved the bedspread from where he had thrown it on the floor. In bed, he wrapped it around himself, the insular habit of a man sleeping alone. Spock? Spock? Silence. His bedroom filled with the slight, aching sounds of an aging motel shifting in the gale. Isolated muscles in his body still twitched with the stray impulses set moving by sex. He couldn't possibly be alone in this place. Spock? it's all right Jim you will understand must know I love you sleep now beloved I am closer than you know The hands on his
body were only breaths, but he was exhausted, and it was so easy to slip
deeper until he lost the continuity of the moment.
The place in which Kirk finds himself is not dream, precisely. He is asleep, only vaguely aware of it, as though buried deep within his own mind. Through the warmth and the darkness come glimpses Vulcan and the sensations of Spock's body in the cut-stone chamber of a postulate to the Kolinahr. Jim . you must recognize I love you . . . please t'hy'la you were never there I was no this is the deep meditation undergone to control the ponn farr I did not mean in the beginning to cling to you so tightly why because I love you you were prepared to give me up never love you still and always . . . love you though
it cripple me
! came here seeking
myself
it cannot be
the name you found the one you called
the ship will
still be there you are defined by it
I love you Spock I miss you I know you are my mate my beautiful boy I will still be part of you when you wake There are other
visions afterwards, of a motel room in Iowa and of water in the air and
the sounds of rising and falling winds. The words you have been my
lover time out of mind drift vaguely across his thoughts, but they
fade, buried under exhaustion and the fragments of other dreams.
He woke to colder air. In his sleep, he had clutched the blanket so tightly around him that it took him several moments to get free. Naked, he padded to the high, horizontal window and eased one curtain back. Grey clouds had blown in and sucked the moisture into higher levels of the atmosphere. They reduced the size of the sky a little. The wind was still strong enough to scream occasionally through the uninhabited streets at the edge of town, bending trees and throwing bits of paper into a chain-link fence. Without the brilliant light, the colours had muted themselves to bearable tones. He let the curtain fall. To his surprise, the bed sheets were marked with blood. His body felt raw. He stripped the bed himself and pitched the damaged coverings in the recycler before making his way into the shower. In the bathroom mirror, he made out faint bruises, as of fingerprints, on his shoulders and hips, but they were already fading. In this early morning, he felt disinclined to question which aspects of his life were reality. After his shower, the mirror was fogged and he didn't have to examine the details of himself. James Kirk sat in the motel chair with a towel wrapped around his waist and stared out his window. He knew on some level that there were things he should be doing, but he wasn't prepared for them yet. He was still hyper-aware of his own body, of the chair upholstery against his legs and of the small bones beneath the skin of his hand. In the drawer he found a pen and paper, archaic writing instruments, and a padd with the same book on it that existed in every hotel room in which he had ever rested. It had been years;
his lettering was awkward at first, then easier as he fell back into the
familiar patterns of writing. The ink in the pen was comfortingly black.
He was going to send a letter, force a Federation built on ethereal data
to deliver it for him to another planet.
19 July 2267
Spock, I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my brother, my love, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night. (Song of Solomon 5:2) I miss you.
On the folded and sealed envelope, he wrote Spock's name in Vulcan characters. The wind was still
blowing outside, stirring the water and the air, and soon it was going
to rain. Before he could go home, he was going to have to put himself back
together.
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