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Jim Kirk can divide her life into two neat sections: before George Kirk dies, and after. Before doesn’t really count, except as a perpetual source of bitterness, mourning the baby who could have been an ordinary ‘Fleet brat if, minutes after her birth, her father hadn’t up and gallantly sacrificed himself for the sake of his damn crew, leaving her mother a shell of a woman everywhere except at her post and turning infant Jim Kirk into the poster child for Starfleet sob stories. And after…
“It’s Jim,” she snaps at Jacob Serrano, a boy two years her senior, when he pulls her hair and makes kissy faces in the fifth grade. “Not Jane, not Jamie, Jim.” Then she socks him in the nose and gets sent home to her stepfather, who snorts and says he won’t tell her mother because this is the third time it’s happened this month and honestly, Winona probably doesn’t give a shit about what her offspring get up to anyway. She’s always off-world, always being a shining Starfleet engineer and a stellar space widow, and her response to the academic awards Sam racks up is exactly the same as her response to her delinquent daughter’s growing rap sheet: absolutely nothing.
Considering her mother is a genius and her father was a hero, everyone expects Jim to be some kind of amazing, especially when Sam turns out to be something of a biological studies prodigy, good enough to be out of their stepfather’s house and off to whatever science institutions Starfleet hasn’t gotten their hands on by the time Jim turns six. Jim’s amazing, alright, but not in the way anyone expected. That’s fine with her, better in fact, because Jim has dedicated her life to not being what people expected, starting with the doctor who delivered her. Jim doesn’t blame the doctor – crisis situation and all, and it’s kind of funny besides – but by the time Winona Kirk figured out she had a daughter, not a son, George was already dead and Jim was named, and considering they’re talking about a woman who ordered laser eye surgery for a child, supposedly to correct an abnormality that would force Jim to wear reading glasses in her senior years – oh the horror – but, let’s face it, to keep those George Kirk shining blue peepers from turning their predestined hazel, a little thing like gender wasn’t going to stop Winona from confirming the birth certificate. Jim keeps the name not because she’s married to it, but because if she’s going to be crushed under the legacy of a man she doesn’t know, she’s going to take everything he gave her, from her name to her eyes, and make damn certain that she uses them to be amazing in ways no Starfleet hero or their sycophants would approve of.
Which is what she does in the twelfth grade, when she bats her eyes at Jacob Serrano and makes him say “oh, fuck, Jim, you’re amazing” when she goes down on him, blowing her way out of yet another misdemeanor write-up. Her rap sheet is a real one now, and it’s only half as long as it should be, because Jacob is the junior officer around Riverside, Iowa and ever since he graduated high school and joined the force two years ago, Jim has worked out that getting on her knees will strike just about anything from the record, from carjacking to joyriding to truancy to fist-fights.
High school is boring and it’s for suckers. Even without her oral skills, Jim can run rings around any teacher she gets, regardless of the rumors, and if Rachel Martins wants to pitch a fit over Jim flirting with her boyfriend, Jim has no problem hitting back.
Jacob’s hips jerk forward off his cruiser, into her mouth, and Jim pins them down harder, because she hates deep-throating – hates blowjobs, really, but they’re a means to an end so what-fucking-ever – and he comes down her throat groaning, “god, Jim, so fucking good.”
She pulls off and spits out his cum – gross, semen in her mouth is gross, why do people like this shit – then stands, straightening her shirt and swiping her sleeve over her lips. She cocks her hip out and looks up at Jacob from under her lashes, voice intentionally coy. “So, am I good, officer?”
He laughs at the smirk under her words. “I think we’re good here, Jim.”
“I was fantastic here.”
He tucks his cock back into his uniform pants, movements all lazy satisfaction. “You always are. I’d tell you to stay out of trouble but…”
She winks. “But you know me too well.” Also, he’d be out a regular source of blowjobs, and she has yet to meet a twenty-year-old male who’d turn that down.
Jacob snorts. “See you around, Jim.”
He takes off, and Jim lets the easy, flirtatious smile fall from her face, replaced by a grimace as she scrapes at her tongue. God, that’s nasty. Plus, her knees are now grass-stained; behind the soccer field bleachers hurts less than highway asphalt, but Rachel had gotten in a few good swipes and between the torn clothes and her knees, Jim knows Frank is going to give her all kinds of shit when she gets home.
He does, glancing up from his seemingly-perpetual state of being planted on the sofa and throwing his head back with a groan when she bangs through the screen door. “Fucking dammit, Jim. Again?”
Jim raises her chin in defiance. “Rachel Martins started it.” As if Jim hadn’t intentionally flirted with her boyfriend in front of Rachel. As if she didn’t goad Rachel into it by telling her how much he likes Jim’s mouth, because Tony will do the homework Jim doesn’t feel like expending effort to turn in and Rachel isn’t putting out, so it’s an easy trade. Rachel should have decked her instead of that wimpy-ass clawing, and Jacob had broken it up before Jim could decide if she was going to do more than give Rachel a black eye.
“I don’t give a fuck who started it,” Frank huffs. “For fuck’s sake, Jim, I’ve heard of daddy issues, but you need to fucking get over yourself. Are you really planning on fucking and fighting your way through the rest of your life?”
“Maybe I am,” Jim snaps, and storms up the stairs, slamming the door to her room hard enough to make the whole farmhouse shake. She throws herself down onto her bed, frame creaking in protest, and curls up on top of the covers.
Sex was the one part of this she didn’t ask for. The fighting and everything, sure, and that had gotten her through the first thirteen years of her life. But then she grew tits at fourteen, and suddenly boys didn’t want to punch her back. At first, Jim hadn’t known what to do with that, but then she’d been fifteen and Denny Hayes had told her she had cocksucking lips, and everyone knew she was trying to disappoint her dead daddy, and maybe if she blew him George Kirk’s ghost would roll over in his space grave, and anyway he’d give her the answers to tomorrow’s test if she did. Jim didn’t need answers to ace the test, but she liked the idea of not having to think about it and she liked the idea of, if not disappointing her father, then having one more way to not live up to the good, upstanding moral fiber he stood for. Anyway, girls were starting to giggle in the bathrooms, exchanging stories about touching dicks, and how they looked kind of weird or kind of hot, and how much more interesting and exciting sex was than health class made it out to be. So Jim figured, what the hell.
Blowjobs sucked, pun intended, but Jim sticks to that because she figured out pretty quick that guys got sulky if you suggested a handjob instead of blowing them, and given how little she likes dick in her mouth, she highly doubts any other holes would be more exciting. Besides, this way there was no chance of ending up pregnant. The bar is pretty high, but Jim’s confident she’d surpass Winona for the Shitty Mother Award if given half the chance to prove it.
She feels a little bad about Rachel. It’s not her fault Jim is self-destructive. That’s the thing about bombs. They take everything around them down with them.
***
She’s twenty-two when the next man marches in to carve her life into sections, and fuck Christopher Pike for making her feel like shit when she does like being the only genius-level offender in the Midwest. The Starfleet bar was just asking for trouble, but some cadets get a kick out of being blown by the Jim Kirk, even if her notoriety is mostly local and Starfleet hasn’t hauled out her holophotos for soppy remembrance stories since her first arrest, and she likes proving just how easy it is to get these so-called Best and Brightest to give in to nasty things. The fist-fight was good too; she’d had to throw the first punch, but these guys all have combat training and clearly some kind of instinct had kicked in. And then Pike had marched in and broken it up, and he’s not Jacob, she’s pretty sure she can’t blow her way out of this problem – and he’s a lot older than she’s willing to go for, anyway – and he sits her down and calls her by name and challenges her to be more than bar fights and blowjobs – okay, so she hadn’t blown him, but she’d made a couple comments to test the waters – and on top of all that, just to really ruin Jim’s day, he tells her something that guts her, right to the core.
“You think you’re being defiant,” he says, like they’re eating brunch instead of sitting in a half-demolished bar. “You think you’re messing up your father’s legacy, but you’re not. You’re acting like a child, and maybe you can recite quantum mechanics with your eyes closed, but you’re still exactly what you look like, Jim Kirk. People look at you and see a lost kid, acting out because daddy’s gone. Now, I know you could be more than that. The question is, do you?”
The most fucked up part is, he’s right. He’s so goddam right that Jim wants to hurl something. Somewhere along the way, Jim forgot the whole ‘fucking up expectations’ thing she always swore she’d live by. Because the thing about expectations is, once you don’t live up to the first set, then people start to make a second. She’s not being rebellious anymore. She’s just exactly what people think she is.
Okay then. Time to move on.
She can’t call it Before Pike and After Pike, because that’s simplistic, and she meets Bones all of three minutes later, and he’s the bigger deal in the end, so there’s really no point. Instead, the first couple minutes are Before George Kirk Dies and years zero to twenty-two are Before Starfleet. Also simplistic, but containing multitudes. Kind of like Jim.
She means that euphemistically, because she has a reputation now, and she has to work out how to counter it without also turning into the goody-two-shoes Starfleet is probably praying she’ll finally evolve into. Bones will be invaluable in that respect, but she’ll get to that in a minute.
She throws herself into coursework, overloading her schedule to cram four years’ worth of lessons into three, and for about the first four months she doesn’t suck anyone’s dick at all. It’s the longest she’s gone without doing it pretty much since she sucked her first. In a lot of ways, it’s a relief. Then she meets Gary Mitchell, and things spiral downhill from there.
Gary is cool, and he’s funny, and he immediately makes a joke when he meets her, but it’s not about George Kirk and it’s not about how hot she is or what her tits look like in her cadet reds, so Jim is instantly down for finding out if this relationship thing she’s heard about is worth its salt. She tells him she can’t go out much, because of her studies, and Gary promises he’s cool with that. They hang out in his dorm room, since his roommate is usually out, and it takes about a week before he tries to get her hand down his pants.
“Come on,” he whines when she smacks him, not as hard as she ought to. “It’s not like I’m asking you to blow me.”
It’s a good point, Jim guesses. So she goes with it. Handjobs don’t suck, as it turns out. It’s easier, and it doesn’t come with the downsides of choking or taste, and she kind of likes watching Gary gasp and groan and come all over his stomach. He ruins it the next time by sticking his tongue down her throat while she jacks him off, and kissing is gross, making out is especially gross, and Jim could go a long time without ever having anyone’s tongue in her mouth again. She compromises; she likes using her hands, and Gary likes her mouth, so she fondles his balls and explores the juncture of hips and thighs, twisting her hand around the base of his cock while she sucks at the tip, and she lets him come on her face because he calls it “so hot, Jim, you have no idea” and as long as she keeps her mouth shut, she’s into it. When she doesn’t have to taste it, cum is kind of hot.
Jim breaks up with him when he suggests they fuck for real. Her course load is getting too intense to focus on anything else – she had to drop chess club, and she’s pissed about it – and she doesn’t have time to fend off his constant griping every time she explains that she doesn’t want to do that. Apparently, in Gary’s words, a slut like Jim, so obviously gagging for it, should be ready to up the ante. Apparently, blowjobs get stale after a couple months. Jim doesn’t retort that Jacob Serrano never complained, and she doesn’t bother trying to explain to Gary that if she doesn’t want it in her mouth, she doesn’t want it in her cunt, or her ass, or wherever else he wants to stick it, and she doesn’t want anyone’s fingers up there either, not even “just to try.” Starfleet has her on birth control – everyone gets access it, regardless of gender, and even without intent Jim isn’t turning that down – but she’s not ready to chance it. Besides, Gary turns out to be functionally incapable of giving her an orgasm. Jim knows she can do it herself. It’s not like the parts don’t work. It takes a long time, though, and Gary doesn’t have the ability to pay attention to her clit for that long, so why does she need to take time out of her schedule for a manchild? Besides, he gets pissy about the fact that even at her most turned on, Jim never gets all that wet, like she’s personally offending him with her biology.
Bones, who had grumbled when she started dating Gary, tells her he’s glad she dumped him, and that she could do a lot better. She bats her eyes and asks if he means himself, and she’s honestly joking, but Bones looks so offended at the suggestion that she nearly dies laughing. “Jim, I say this with all love and respect,” he tells her, “but there’s no way in the Sam Hell I’d ever go out with a woman like you.”
“Love you too, Bones,” she says.
It’s kind of a relief to have a friend; her first, really, because Bones is as acerbic as Jim is, without the veneer of coquettishness Jim likes to put on, and when she snarks, he snarks back, and somehow that never comes to blows. It makes them friends, and Jim is too relieved by that to more than idly consider trying to turn that into a romantic relationship, or a sexual one, and Bones never makes advances and is generally, hysterically, a prude, which suits her just fine. That’s one of the ways he ends up being invaluable to her. It’s not all. She’ll get there.
After Gary, she decides to get around to her female experiment, which she’s been putting off since high school. Girls are hot, and Jim’s indiscriminate about finding different genders attractive. Also, statistically fewer of them have dicks, and the ones that do are probably less pushy about making her suck them – at least, she figures. She hasn’t taken a survey, but most of the women she’s met are less pushy about sex in general. Or maybe she just thinks that because she’s never tried. Either way, it’s high time she found out.
Her first try, Janice Lester, is a massive mistake, worse than Gary. Janice is the first person to try to go down on her, and when Jim decides that nope, she doesn’t like that either, feels awkward and uncomfortable and unsure what to do with herself, Janice – who had been at least somewhat understanding of Jim’s unwillingness for kissing or penetration, if obviously disappointed – bites out that she didn’t want to lick something that had touched dick anyway. Jim is too stunned to protest – they’re in the twenty-third century, really? – and lets Janice call her a whore and walk out the door. Part of Jim thinks that’s funny, being called a whore because she won’t have pretty much any kind of sex, but mostly she feels sick. She throws herself back into her coursework and shrugs Bones off when he asks her if she’s alright.
She’s well into year two before she gets back in the saddle, and she’s still smoking hot and kind of a flirt and Gary Mitchell has a big fat mouth, so now her reputation is a brilliant student and a terrible cocktease. Her professors love her, and she finds herself actually enjoying her classes, but study groups are hell. She eats alone in the mess hall and finds a corner of the library and parks herself there for hours on end, until Bones drags her out to get some rest, because “dammit, Jim, moderation” and sometimes he sounds enough like Frank that she hates him, and then he’ll smooth back her hair and say, “you gotta take better care of yourself, darlin’,” in that charming Georgia accent, and all is forgiven. Reason number two that Bones is invaluable; he takes care of Jim when she can’t be bothered to do it herself.
Carol Marcus is the first girl not to buy into the rumors – there are still fucking rumors, that Jim is blowing her teachers and stealing boyfriends and all the shit she hasn’t done since she dedicated herself to Starfleet. Carol asks her if they’re true, and Jim says no, and Carol decides that’s that. Jim’s cautious with this one; when Carol first asks her out, Jim says that she doesn’t do sex or kissing, and is that okay? Carol shrugs, and that’s that too.
They’re both busy, especially Jim, so they don’t get to spend much time together, and it takes months before they make it into bed. Jim instigates, because Carol actually respects her boundaries, and it turns out that Jim’s preference for using her hands does extend to fingering. She maps every inch of Carol’s body and fucks her with hands and toys and generally feels thrilled to be getting someone off without it turning into something. Carol asks if she can touch Jim too, and Jim tells her it’s fine, and Carol doesn’t try to finger her but she does manage to make Jim orgasm – the first time under someone else’s hand. It still takes forever, and they need a lot of lube to avoid chafing, and Jim apologizes after. Carol admits it’s not ideal; her hands cramp easily, and they’re both busy, so it’s not like they have hours to dedicate to making Jim come. But she doesn’t make Jim feel like shit about it either. She never gets like Gary, either, asking Jim to escalate, to give things Jim doesn’t want to. They’re in love, and this could work, Jim thinks. It could really work.
It doesn’t. Carol doesn’t ask Jim for anything, but Jim’s still not enough. “It’s not just the sex,” Carol tells her. “I mean, I’m not thrilled about the sex. I’d prefer someone I was more sexually compatible with, but I could have been fine.” It’s everything else, Jim’s schedule and her struggle to interact with people like a normal fucking human being and the knowledge that Jim is brilliant and is going to captain a starship someday, come hell or high water, and that’s not what Carol wants for herself. They were never going to work long-term, Carol says, and when Jim tries to kiss her – she doesn’t want to, she’s desperate, and this is what people do, you kiss them and they stay – she pushes Jim away, a little sadly, and leaves anyway.
And this is the third way Bones becomes invaluable. Jim takes a week to drown herself in liquor. She skips classes, hangs out in bars, gives out blowjobs like fucking candy because that’s what she was good at, and why didn’t she stick to being the novelty toy in backwoods Iowa, why did she have to put her heart on the line proving a goddamn thing to…she doesn’t even know to who. The universe, maybe. The universe can fuck itself. It wants to fuck her badly enough.
Bones finds her on the fifth day, so drunk he’s blurry, and when she wakes up in his bed, she has a vague memory of trying to get on her knees for him and calling him a bastard when he just picked her up and hauled her back to campus. She pushes herself upright, then has to collapse or risk all the bile in her stomach splattering across his dorm room floor. A cool rag drapes itself over her forehead, and a hypospray depresses into her arm.
“What happened, darlin’?” Bones askes when the headache clears, and Jim brings it back when she starts crying, tears prickling at her stupid blue eyes and spilling all over her cheeks. She sobs, and shoves herself into his lap, and he only goes tense until he realizes she’s not going for his dick, and then he holds her and strokes her hair until the shaking subsides.
“Carol broke up with me,” she finally manages. She sniffles. It’s ugly. Maybe for the first time in her life, she feels genuinely hideous.
“Sorry to hear that,” Bones says.
“I loved her.”
“I know.”
“I loved her,” Jim repeats, and turns it into a howl. She claws at her chest, hiccupping, trying to suck in air through the straw that is now her throat. “I loved her and she left.”
“People do that sometimes,” Bones says. It’s not judgmental, just honest, and Jim remembers that Bones was married. His wife left him, and took their daughter with her. He squeezes her shoulder. “It’s gonna hurt, but we’ll get you through it.”
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Jim gasps. She gets herself upright, scrubbing at her eyes until she can look at Bones without blinking back tears. “I’ve tried it every way I can think of, and I keep getting it wrong.”
“Jim-“
“The only person who sticks around is the only person who doesn’t want to fuck me, Bones.” It makes him flinch, and it’s not fair, but Jim fights dirty. She always has. “If you actually wanted to stick your dick in me, you’d be long gone by now. The only reason you’re still here is because your type isn’t slut.”
Bones doesn’t just flinch; the jerk back would be comical, his eyes saucer-wide, if it wasn’t accompanied by a snarl. “Now hang on a minute.”
For a terrible second, Jim thinks he’s going to hit her. Frank did, a few times, until he realized that wasn’t going to make her stop either.
But Bones just crosses his arms. “Now, I don’t remember us ever having a conversation about what my type is, but let me tell you something right now, Jim. The reason I don’t want in your pants has nothing to do with who else has or hasn’t been down there. You are crazy and stubborn and brilliant and the reason we don’t work like that is because there is too damn much cynicism between the two of us to make that work longer than a minute. And there is nothing, nothing wrong with liking sex, as long as you’re not being an idiot about it.” When she goes tense, he clarifies, “That means being safe, being smart, and making sure you’ve got a partner, or partners doing the same.”
It’s sweet, but it’s the wrong end of the stick. She’s never talked about her actual sex life with Bones – they joke, but they don’t do this – and she’s quiet when she says, “And what if you don’t like sex?”
It catches Bones off-guard, his eyebrows raising. It takes him a minute, but eventually he says, nice and soft, “Then that’s fine too.”
“I don’t.”
“And that’s okay.”
“No, I mean I really don’t.” She tucks her knees to her chest. “I mean, parts of it I like. But apparently, I make it so damn difficult for everyone else that it’s not worth it.”
“Well,” Bones says. “I’m not looking to be nosy. But having boundaries ain’t a bad thing, Jim. If people can’t respect that, they’re not the right people for you anyway. There’s lots of ways to have sex, and not everyone’s gonna be a good fit.”
She leans heavily into him, closing her eyes. “I just want one of them to be.”
Bones wraps his arm around her. “Then maybe you keep trying.”
She tells him then, everything. Not just Carol, but Janice and Gary and Jacob and Denny. Everything, and Bones looks like he wants to throttle someone, but he holds her gently, firm and warm as he presses kisses into her hair. “You gotta take care of yourself, darlin’,” he says, that magical fucking phrase. “You can’t do that shit if it’s hurting you.”
“I know.”
“Promise me?”
“I promise.”
She thinks she means it this time. Losing Carol nearly killed her, and Jim would have broken all her boundaries to get her to stay. But that’s not sustainable. That path leads to Gary Mitchell, who Jim will probably resent to the end of her days. She doesn’t want to end up there with someone she loves.
Anyway, she’s twenty-three. Almost twenty-four. She’s getting ready to get on a starship. She doesn’t need to be worried about love.
***
Jim kind of wants to divide her life into Before and After Bones. She can’t do it; they’ve been friends too long and the conversation changes her, but even as a catalyst it can’t be a bench-marker, because Bones doesn’t go anywhere and their relationship doesn’t actually change. So Jim’s real Before and After, the last one before she turns twenty-five, ends up being Gaila.
Gaila is the first engineer Jim meets who doesn’t remind her of her mother, which is probably good, because that would make it weird when she has sex with her. Gaila is brilliant, sharp as a tack and funny and witty and she genuinely likes Jim even before they decide that a casual friends with benefits thing works perfectly into their schedules. She’s also friends and roommates with Uhura, which after the flirting in the bar all those years ago, Jim loves to no end, because Uhura’s dislike of her is nice and solid and petty, and Jim can respect petty. It’s one more place she can keep defying expectations.
Gaila is a lot of firsts for Jim. She’s the first alien Jim sleeps with, for one. Orions are really open about sexuality, which makes it easy to discuss what exactly she and Jim want from each other, and Gaila has her own boundaries too, and her own fair share of horror stories. Jim considers decking several cadets who really shouldn’t be in Starfleet if they think someone’s species is an open invitation to do whatever you want. She doesn’t, but she does hack into their files to leave large, glaring notes about xenophobia.
Gaila also has the patience to make Jim orgasm. Gaila comes a lot faster and a lot more often, but she loves the whole act of sex, rather than treating orgasm as a goal, which makes it so much less stressful for Jim to think about. She’s also the first person to make Jim consider penetration.
It happens months into their relationship, after Jim has gotten comfortable enough to explain her particular issues beyond the vague “don’t do this” she’d initially given. Gaila listens thoughtfully, and tells her that oral and vaginal penetration don’t really feel that much alike, and that there’s no pressure, but if Jim ever wants to explore that part of sex, Gaila is more than happy to be her guide.
Jim takes some time to consider it, and then comes back and says, “Okay.”
As it turns out, Jim fucking loves vaginal penetration. It’s not a sexy phrase, but it feels so fucking good that Jim would call it literally anything and still love it. They start out slow, Gaila walking Jim through doing it on her own, and very quickly jump to warp speed when Jim figures out that she likes big and she likes deep and she likes textures – that last one because Gaila has so many dildos and strapons and Jim can’t help but experiment. The only downside is that there’s no replacement, no matter how good the technology gets, for the feel of a warm body inside her. She loves Gaila’s fingers for that, but they aren’t as satisfying as the toys. She doesn’t come any faster when Gaila fucks her, but she comes so much harder, and Jim is kind of pissed that she didn’t try this sooner.
Also relieved, because with any of her past partners, barring maybe Carol, she can think of how badly this could have gone, and then she’d be turned off from this part of sex too, and she doesn’t have time for that when it quickly becomes one of her favorite things about it. The amount of lube they go through is astronomical.
She’d kiss Gaila for this, if kissing wasn’t still phenomenally gross. She does, out of pure curiosity, finally try going down on Gaila, which lasts for all of a minute before Jim decides that no, getting her mouth on anything below the shoulders is still disgusting. Chaste kisses above that – or, hell, Gaila bites her neck at one point and Jim is shocked at how much of a turn-on that is – are fine with her, as long as there’s no lip-lock, but there’s sweat and fluids and Jim’s palate is extremely picky, so she doesn’t need to spend sex gagging when there’s other things they could be doing.
When Gaila says she thinks she loves Jim, it almost ruins everything. Not because Jim doesn’t care about her, but because the last time Jim loved someone she ended up nearly throwing her Starfleet career down the toilet, and she can’t go through that again. She doesn’t know that she loves Gaila, at least as anything other than a friend. They’d decided on casual for a reason.
Then she tricks Gaila into helping her cheat on the Kobayashi Maru, and then just about everyone on the Farragut dies – not just the Farragut, but swathes of Starfleet and so much of Vulcan, planet included – and Jim’s having nightmares and Gaila needs all kinds of physical therapy before she can get back into the engine room and they agree that friends, sans benefits, is all they can be. Jim goes back to masturbation and doesn’t try fucking anyone else, secure in the knowledge that she can, if she ever wants to. She’s got the Enterprise. Right now, she doesn’t need more than that.
***
Before George Kirk Dies, Before Starfleet, Before Gaila. Minutes, years, and some truly amazing months, but Jim’s still a couple weeks away from twenty-five when the biggest Before happens, and this one she just knows, instinctively, from the get-go.
She doesn’t know how, exactly, but Jim Kirk knows, from the minute he walks down and plants himself at the opposite podium at her academic disciplinary hearing, that Before Spock is going to be a damn big bench-marker indeed.
The opinion gets solidified on Delta Vega, first because this is now her enemy, and oh boy, is she going to kick his ass someday, and then because the universe is fucking crazy and apparently Jim is supposed to have a “life-defining friendship” with the Vulcan bastard, according to Spock’s future self. Come on, universe. Give her a break. He’s also surprised to find out she’s a woman, so go her, continuing to defy expectations on so many levels. She’s pretty proud of that one.
Then Spock beats the shit out of her, at her instigation, and Jim kind of forgot how much she loves a good fight. He also backs down, looking genuinely shaken, and even though Jim drove him to it, she finds herself torn between genuinely regretting trying to hurt someone already in so much pain, and also deeply turned on. As Bones would say, consent is fucking necessary, but it’s also sexy as hell when Jim’s had to fight so much for it even within herself, and based on the way Spock falls so easily into step with her after that, Jim would bet anything that boundaries are big with him too.
Just, you know, not when she intentionally makes him break them.
There are two downsides to the fact that Jim is certain Spock would be absolutely amazing to get in her bed. The first is that she sees him kissing Uhura, and she is never again going to be the person who steals another girl’s boyfriend. Also, the kissing thing, which Jim still hates. The other downside is Gaila and Starfleet and Vulcan, and the fact that Jim doesn’t know how long it’ll be before she can have anyone in her bed, not when everything feels upside down, the universe full of a loss too big to comprehend. She’s not ready to navigate a relationship right now, even if Spock were single.
She contents herself with making him her first officer – insists on it, in fact, because she’s not letting anyone else take her genius half-Vulcan XO, not when they’ve been through so much together and it’s obvious that they make an incredible team. Also, life-defining friendship. Jim’s got Bones, and she’s got Gaila, but she’ll take some more of that, please.
She gets it, in many forms. Sulu is hysterical. Scotty is a madman. She drinks them both under the table and comes out laughing at Bones’s pinched expression about her life choices. Whiz kid Chekov is adorable, so young and naïve but a goddamn genius too; he’s what Jim probably would have been if…well, she doesn’t dwell on that. Even Uhura warms up to her, thawing when it becomes obvious that Jim takes captaincy seriously. Jim’s got a whole crew to make her family, and she loves them all.
When Nyota informs her that she and Spock have broken up, Jim doesn’t know what to say. “We weren’t right for each other,” Nyota tells her, seeming remarkably casual about the whole thing. Gaila aside, Jim hasn’t had a casual breakup in her life. Not that that was casual, considering the massive fucking circumstances, but it was mutual and calm, at least. Now on the Enterprise, Gaila has taken to hanging around sickbay, even when she doesn’t need to, and Jim’s waiting with grinning anticipation for the day that Bones realizes who that scant uniform is actually for. Jim prefers the pants, herself, but she appreciates Gaila’s game.
Jim doesn’t ask Nyota for details about Spock. She doesn’t want to know what happened. Spock doesn’t tell her over their regular chess matches, or when they eat meals together in the mess, or hang out in each other’s quarters to go over reports, and it’s only after a month of her avoiding eye contact with Nyota on the bridge that her communications officer yanks her aside and says, “Stop looking so goddam guilty, Jim. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Jim still feels like she did something wrong. She’s not sure what. They spend time together, but she doesn’t flirt with Spock. She doesn’t make suggestive comments at him. When on missions where they get mistaken for a couple – some planets still have way too much trouble with the female captain thing for Jim’s taste – she either corrects them firmly and politely or, where diplomacy is at stake, maintains her professionality as much as possible and apologizes to Spock after the fact in case she crossed any boundaries. She’s being good, dammit. They’re close, but that’s normal where captains and first officers are concerned. It’s better that they’re friends. Spock challenges her, and she challenges him, and it’s like with Bones, Jim tells herself, except that Spock isn’t jaded or cynical, Spock has seen so much shit and continues to believe in the best in the universe and who is she kidding, she would jump him in a heartbeat. A Vulcan one, even, which is so much faster than her own.
Not just jump him, a voice in her head reminds her often. Spock slots into a hole in Jim’s life she didn’t realize was empty. She wants him there, forever. The life-defining thing she wants from him isn’t just friendship, and it isn’t just fucking. Spock isn’t Carol Marcus. Spock wants the same things.
She can’t reach out for that, only to lose him. She can’t. This time, it really would break her, and no amount of comforting from Bones would dig her out of that spiral.
So, over a year into their mission and months after the breakup, when they’re in Jim’s quarters and Jim tips over Spock’s king on a truly fantastic checkmate and looks up to see unmistakable hunger in Spock’s eyes, her heart thuds in her chest and her lungs tighten and she’s saying “no” the instant Spock opens his mouth.
Spock blinks. The hunger dissipates, not into confusion but curiosity. His eyebrow lifts. “No?”
“Whatever you’re about to say-“
“As you are psi-null, it seems improbable that you could predict that.”
“-I can’t do it, Spock. I just can’t.”
“I see.” He doesn’t look like a kicked puppy at the rejection, but Jim would have preferred that to the coolly logical acceptance on his face, those gorgeous emotions closing off in true Vulcan fashion. He reaches for the chessboard, resetting the pieces, and Jim’s gut clenches. Against her better judgement, she closes her fingers around his wrist, stilling him.
“I like you,” she says softly, and Spock’s eyes meet hers. “I like you a lot, and that’s why we have to be this, why we can’t be anything else.”
“Your statement is illogical.”
“It’s really not.”
“Then perhaps an explanation is needed.”
His pulse is racing under her fingertips, but she doesn’t know if it’s elevated or not. “More than anything,” she says, “I can’t afford to lose you. As a friend, as a first officer…I need you in my life.”
“And our forming a romantic relationship would preclude that goal?”
He says it like it’s an absurdity, and Jim smiles sadly. She squeezes his wrist. “Yeah, it would.”
“May I ask how you drew this conclusion?”
“Let’s just say my romantic relationships have a habit of ending badly. I’m…not good at being what people want.” She’s too difficult.
“You are what I want,” Spock says. It’s the same voice he uses quoting universal constants. Gravity, physics. Apparently, love. Spock likes difficult. She drives him up the wall with her illogical human impulses, and he loves her for it.
“I don’t kiss,” she says bluntly. “I hate it. I think it’s gross.”
Spock blinks at her. He pulls his hand away, and for a brief second Jim’s heart squeezes so hard she feels it in her throat, wants to gasp and sob, but then Spock is taking her hand and rearranging the fingers, index and middle finger pressed together and extended, the rest of the hand curled in. He mirrors the gesture, pressing their fingertips together, and Jim gasps because oh.
“W-what is that?” she stammers. It’s like electricity crackling out, racing under her skin. “I can feel…”
Spock gives a faint Vulcan smile. “It is called the ozh’esta. It is not precisely equivalent to the human variety, but in Vulcan culture it would be likened to a kiss, or an embrace.” His voice lowers on the end of the sentence, and Jim shivers. “What you are feeling is a telepathic response. Vulcan hands are psi-points. It is what makes them so sensitive.”
“You just said I’m psi-null.” She’s finding it hard to think at all, especially when Spock shifts the gesture to the back of her outstretched fingers, running the pads back and forth from tip to knuckle. It goes straight through her, heat building in the pit of her stomach, her body tense with want and her attempts to hold it back.
“Psi-neutral races like humans can still experience physiological responses to telepathic intervention.” Spock’s voice trembles, just a little. Jim bites her lip and chances a look at him; his eyes are dark and hungry again, his jaw tight with restraint. “I am maintaining shields, but if I lowered them, I would be able to sense your emotions.” His fingers still, and Jim nearly whines. “This gesture is acceptable to you?”
“It feels so good,” Jim gasps out. “Like, ridiculously good. If you lower your shields, trust me, all you’d be getting is incredible amounts of horny.” It’s not just the finger kissing, which yeah, would be nice on its own, but Jim’s got absurd amounts of tension built up where her first officer is concerned, and that makes it feel so much better.
Spock makes a pleased rumble in the back of his throat, and okay, that’s really hot too. “With Nyota, I engaged in human kissing because it was her preference. Our minds were not compatible, and as such, the ozh’esta did not affect her strongly. It was a central marker in our decision to separate. However, in spite of my human heritage, I do prefer the Vulcan ways. If this is the only way you wish to kiss me, that will be more than acceptable.”
Jim’s resistance crumbles. She needs Spock in her bed now, yesterday, a year ago. She laces their fingers together and grips, and there’s no Vulcan finesse but Spock’s body jerks, his mouth falling open and his eyes squeezing shut, panting in surprise. She drags him by the hand, gets him out of the chair and through into her bedroom, pushing him onto the mattress and straddling his thighs. He’s tenting his uniform trousers and a flush coats his skin from ears to neck and Jim is greedy for it, drinking in the sight. She lets go of his hand in favor of shoving his shirt up, stripping him out of his science blues and throwing the bundle of fabric hard enough it hits the bulkhead with a soft but audible thud. “Gorgeous,” she whispers, and Spock whines, low in his throat.
“Jim,” he breathes when she traces two fingers over the curve of his ear. He catches her hand, presses it briefly to his lips before letting it go, and Jim flares her fingers over his chest, painting down his ribcage until she finds his heartbeat, fluttering in his side. She ducks down, rubbing her cheek against the rough scratch of his chest hair, forehead pressing into him when she traces her nose around the indent of his belly button, inhaling the strangely spicy, deeply masculine scent of him. Spock’s hands tighten on her, and when he says her name again, this time it sounds more like “wait.”
She sits back, eyes wide. The words come from habit and impulse. “I’m sorry.”
He sits up, one hand wrapping around her back, keeping her close. “You did nothing wrong.” But he sounds hesitant, and worry lances through Jim, because she knew she should have talked about this, that’s what makes sex work, and if she’s ruined it already…
“I can feel your discontent,” Spock murmurs. He presses his temple against hers, and Jim closes her eyes. She can feel his free hand on her thigh, spread in the gesture usually reserved for the ta’al, but petting at her now, tracing patterns over the fabric of her pants. “You are intoxicating.”
She grins in spite of herself. “That’s good, right? I thought Vulcans didn’t go in for that sort of thing.”
He growls at her, and she laughs, choking into a gasp when he bites at the shell of her ear. “Just because we prefer privacy does not mean we are not a passionate people.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that.” She barely gets the words out. There’s not enough air, and she’s more than okay with that. “So why’d you stop me?”
Spock sighs. He pulls away enough to look at her. “You…your actions indicated you were considering oral sex.”
It’s Jim’s turn to blink in surprise. She gets the logic easily – getting her face and nose all over Spock, heading in the direction of his pants, yeah, those are pretty typical cues. But she doesn’t get why he sounds hesitant about it. “I wasn’t going to,” she says. It comes out awkward.
He tilts his head. “No?” And why is that relief in his voice? Even Gaila, who was fine with it, didn’t sound relieved when Jim vetoed oral, and guys always sounded disappointed. It doesn’t make sense.
“No,” she says. “I don’t like that, either. Doing it, or having it done to me.”
She physically feels the tension unwind from his body. “That is…pleasing to hear.”
“It is?”
When Spock blushes, it isn’t a sexy one, but clearly laced with embarrassment. It’s still pretty hot. “In Vulcan culture, it is considered unseemly to perform oral acts on organs intended for copulation and excrement expulsion. It is…not unheard of, but might be likened to fetishistic, on par with urophilia in human cultures.”
“And you’re not that kinky.” It’s half tease, half wonder in her voice.
“I am not,” Spock confirms.
“You’re incredible.” Jim cups his cheek, running her two fingers over it. He closes his eyes and leans into the touch. She traces her thumb over his lips, curious, and watches as he parts them for her. “What about this?”
He licks his lips, apparently instinctually. It wets the pad of her thumb. She’s never tried this before, never contemplated it, but Spock’s face…if Vulcan hands are sensitive, this is the next logical place for her brain to go. Slowly, Spock opens his eyes, pulling her hand away but holding it against his chest. His blush deepens, and Jim wants to make him do that on the bridge, wants to take a picture and paste it on every viewscreen on the ship so she can never not be looking at it. “It is still considered fetishistic,” he says, “but significantly less so.”
“So, something to think about.”
Spock sucks in a steadying breath. “If you are not opposed to it, considerably so.”
She’s going to have so much fun with him later, but for now: “And how do Vulcans feel about good old-fashioned fucking?”
“If you are referring to vaginal penetration, it is considered the standard.”
“But do you like it?” Please say yes, please say yes, Jim doesn’t care what Spock’s dick looks like, she can see he has one and she needs it inside of her. The heat between her legs pulses, aching and needy.
“I do,” he says, and his voice is low and deep and hungry, even as his expression is still searching, his hands reading her, and Jim projects her want as strongly as she can. Spock shudders, and it’s beautiful.
“Take my clothes off,” she says, with just a hint of her captain’s voice. Spock tears her shirt in his haste to get it off her, but it’s fine, Jim’s clothes rip too easily anyway, and she’s more focused on getting her pants off too, shucking them onto the floor and leaving her in just a bra and her underwear – briefs, because she hadn’t been expected to get laid and panties ride up uncomfortably under the uniform. The way Spock looks at her, she might as well be sporting Orion’s most erotic lingerie. A growl rumbles deep in his chest, and Jim laughs, kissing his forehead. Into his pointed ear, she whispers, “Who’d have guessed that Vulcans are so feral in bed?”
Tension ripples through the muscles where she’s gripping his arm – Spock’s biceps are no joke – and he tucks his face into her neck, mouthing at the skin. “I do not wish to hurt you.”
Unexpected tears prick Jim’s eyes. She inhales sharply. “You won’t.” Then she clears her throat, pitching her voice towards joking. “Now take your pants off, Commander. That’s an order.”
His hands go to the clasp automatically, and then hesitate. He looks up at her. “Jim…”
“What’s wrong?”
“The human body is…not necessarily compatible with Vulcan physiology.”
Jim stares at him. “Oh?” she says carefully. Spock’s got a human mom, so obvious copulation is possible. Assuming Spock wasn’t made in a petri dish, which, she’s not going to ask.
“With Nyota, our actions were more constrained, or I would be on the receiving end, which we both enjoyed. She said I was too big to take with comfort.”
The heat in Jim’s cunt pulses again at those magic words, and this time her voice is flirtatious. “Oh?”
“Statistically, Vulcan organs outsize human ones. There are many ways my physiologically has been unfortunately influenced by my humanity, but this area is not one of them.”
He sounds so morose for someone who is telling her he’s got a big dick and that he’s down for her to peg him. Jim is going to rock his world. “Do me a favor?” she says, and he looks up at her, so eager to please. “Stop comparing me to Nyota, okay? I don’t know about Vulcans, but human girls can get a complex about that kind of things.”
“I apologize-“
“It’s okay.” She reaches for him, meets his fingertips with hers in the ozh’esta again. “Now, why don’t you let me see you, and then let me decide if it’s something I can take.” Someday, she’s definitely going to peg him. Today, she’s getting dicked down. She can feel it in her soul.
“That…does seem logical.”
She grins. “I’m a very logical woman, Mr. Spock.”
The look he gives her is scathing, or it would be, if not for the mirth. Just for that, she nips the tip of his nose. “I believe I said pants off, Commander. Or am I going to have to write you up for insubordination?”
“I see determining your fetishes will be fairly straightforward, Captain.” But he does it, and Jim scoots back to watch, wetting her lips hungrily. He takes his pants and undergarments off in the same movement, and when he works them over his hips, his cock springs up, falling heavy against his stomach with its own weight, and Jim’s mouth falls open because oh.
He doesn’t catch her staring until he’s naked, his clothes pushed onto the floor. She’s going to tease him for not folding them later, but right now her brain is short-circuiting, enraptured by him in all his naked glory.
He wasn’t kidding about being big. To say he was as thick as her fist would be exaggeration, but it wouldn’t be hyperbole, and Jim’s always been excellent at calculating spatial dimensions in her head, so she can say with certainty that he’s packing at least ten inches, maybe eleven. Her respect for Amanda Grayson, always present, ratchets up several points, because Jim gets why Uhura wouldn’t want to take that and if Spock’s this big, Jim can only imagine how massive his full-Vulcan dad would be. She’s going to feel him in her cervix before he’s halfway in – okay, that’s an exaggeration, when she’s horny she can take a lot, but he’ll definitely reach that deep – and a lot of girls don’t like that but Jim does. It’s alien, too, in the most obvious of ways: turgid and pulsing, his green blood doesn’t turn it the reddish-purple human guys get, but a rich, mossy emerald. The head is a little more tapered than mushroomed, and there are two thick ridges along the shaft, evenly spaced. She doesn’t want to suck it, but her mouth still waters, and she clenches her thighs together against the throb that echoes inside her.
Spock looks to her, uncertainty etched into his features. Jim flexes her fingers. “Can I touch?”
He nods, and Jim doesn’t need further invitation. She doesn’t go for the shaft straight-away; instead, she runs her fingers over the smooth space beneath, looking up at him in question.
In answer, he takes her hand and presses it to his lower back, until Jim can feel a slight swelling. “They are called chenesi. It is rather illogical for a species to develop testicles external to the body.”
Jim snorts. She can’t help it; he’s got a point. Balls look kind of ridiculous anyway, so Jim’s not complaining that she doesn’t have to see them. She massages her fingers down, gently, and watches with interest when it makes Spock squirm. “Sensitive?”
“Very much so.”
“So getting kicked in the back-“
“Is equally unpleasant to being kicked in the groin, yes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she teases. It’s novel, joking in bed like this. She and Gaila were friendly in bed, but it wasn’t outright joking. Jim likes it. She likes being mostly naked with Spock, laughing over the ridiculousness of biology. “You still want to fuck me, right? Because I really want you to fuck me.”
He makes a sort of keening sound, guttural and animal. “Yes,” he says, so enthusiastic that Jim nearly laughs again.
“What’s the pregnancy risk here?” she asks. “Are we talking condoms, or…?” Spock is half-human, half-Vulcan, and isn’t there something about infertility in mixed species? Is that relevant here?
“Vulcan-human genetics are similar enough that the offspring are not infertile; feasibly, intermixing could continue for several generations.” Spock hesitates, “However, I was tested several times as a child, and my personal virility is somewhat low. Between that and the fact that we are both on regulation birth control, further protection is not necessary, and therefore a matter of preference.”
Jim considers that. They’re both clean; officers get check-ups on a regular basis, and Bones is big on griping about space STDs in particular, especially when both Jim and Spock are in earshot, so that’s not an issue. “No condoms,” she decides. She wants to know what it feels like when Spock comes inside her. She’s never done that before, but she’s betting it’ll be hot. “If that’s alright with you?”
“I am amenable.”
“Great!” Jim says. “Let me grab the lube, and we can get this show on the road.”
“Not necessary,” Spock says. He pulls her back down to him when she attempts to get up, nuzzling along her shoulder. Jim frowns, pushing him away.
“Very necessary.” She’s as wet as she’s ever been, her body eager and on board, but it’s barely enough to take a single finger with comfort, much less what Spock’s packing. This isn’t a fight she wants to have, an ugly upset settling in her gut as she says, “Look, I don’t know what you’re used to, but I don’t get that wet, so we’re really going to need a little help in that department.”
When Spock makes an unhappy noise, there’s a moment where she can’t tell if he’s being a dick like Gary Mitchell, or if he’s responding to her discomfort. “My intent was not to imply a failing on your part,” Spock says, “nor impart any expectations.” He tucks her closer to him, clearly unwilling to give up any of the skin contact. “Vulcans are self-lubricating. That process should be sufficient.”
Jim blinks, then looks down at Spock’s dick. It’s hard and proud, bobbing with his pulse, but the shaft is as dry as a Vulcan desert. She raises her eyebrows at him, and Spock smiles. “It would be wasteful to produce fluids unnecessarily. Stimulation is required for the function to begin.” He demonstrates, wrapping his long fingers around the member – Jim’s pulse jumps at the picture – and gives himself a few leisurely strokes before pulling his hand away, palm slick. Beads of wetness well up under the ridges, rolling down his dick, and okay. Vulcan biology is pretty fucking cool. There’s a lot of it, too, especially when Jim gets her hand on him, reveling in the fact that her fingers don’t touch, even when she squeezes, and Spock groans as she pumps him, his forehead thunking against her shoulder, his teeth worrying at her collarbone. His wetness soaks the front of her underwear, and she ruts down against his thigh, panting as she releases him to shove at the offending garment, needing to be naked.
She yelps as the world spins, Spock flipping her onto her back, his hands divesting her of the briefs and her bra. He takes a moment to fondle her breasts, fingers curious as they circle her nipples, gauging her reaction. Jim’s not super sensitive there, but it doesn’t feel bad, so she hums approvingly, getting one leg over Spock’s thigh and dragging him down to meet her. His cock slots between her legs and Jim arches up against it, the ridges catching against her skin, his precum slicking her thighs. He shudders, lacing their fingers together again, and the electricity is back, arcing through Jim’s body, and she gasps and groans and cries as Spock pushes his emotions, want and love and need, through her hand and into her flesh, lighting her on fire.
Spock gasps, yanking himself away, an apology visibly on his lips. Jim isn’t having any of it; she grabs him, pulls him back, bites down on his ear and groans, “You’re so fucking hot, Jesus Christ.”
“Jim.”
“Baby, you gotta get something into me, right now.” His hips jerk against hers, and she laughs. “Your fingers, Mr. Spock. I don’t care how pre-lubed you come, you need to stretch me first, m’kay?”
Spock’s voice shakes when he answers, “I may need your assistance. My control is…” He shudders, eyes closing before opening again, staring up at her in desperation.
“I’ve got you,” Jim murmurs. She takes their joined hands and guides them down, ghosting his fingers over her clit. Spock hisses, as if he’s the one who’s been touched, and Jim’s legs fall wider on instinct. “Two fingers,” she decides, because she’s probably going to need four and she doesn’t have the patience to start with just one. She layers her index finger with his, leading him to her entrance and pushing.
The flesh gives way so easily. Spock groans and Jim realizes exactly what he meant by loss of control – sensitive fingers, buried inside her, where she’s hot and wet and clenching around him. It’s probably almost as good for him as getting his dick inside. “You like that?” she whispers. She nuzzles against his temple, rubs her cheek against his hair. “You can move them, come on.”
Spock takes the cue, pumping the digits in and out of her body, stretching the entrance to accommodate. She almost complains when he pulls out, but it’s only to wrap a hand around his cock, gathering more slick, before he plunges in again, even easier than before. He pants, gets his forehead pressed against her shoulder and stays there, working fingers into her with desperation, quiet except for the sounds he makes, moaning and grunting, hot enough to offset the awkward squish of penetration. When she says “another, baby, go for it,” he presses his middle finger in alongside the other two, and Jim startles when he bites back what sounds like a scream. “Spock?”
“I…Jim…”
He’s trembling, his voice a gasp, words broken. Jim cards her fingers into his hair, pulls his head back to look at her, and his eyes are wild, full-blown with black. “One more,” she says, even though she’s not ready for it, even though it’ll be so tight, because he’s stunning like this, and Jim doesn’t want to wait, needs him as badly as he needs her, and she doesn’t know if those are her feelings or his or both and she doesn’t care.
The fourth finger hurts, but only distantly, in the too-stretched, burning kind of way that fades with slickness into just plain friction. She is tight, can barely fit it, but it feels so good. Spock is crying, she realizes in shock, actual tears dripping on her chest, rolling down the hollow between her breasts and pooling around her belly button, and when she whispers, “Is this okay?” he nods frantically, pumps his fingers harder, faster, and Jim swallows a groan, body stringing tight. She’s nowhere near orgasm, but she’s closer than she’s ever been this soon, and she hungers.
“Come here,” she says desperately, pulls him out of her, pulls him up. She thinks about taking his hand into her mouth, but it’s slick and gross and now’s not the time, so she just grips him tight, wrapping her legs around him. “I want you in me, now.”
Spock inhales. He’s fighting something, forehead creased, eyes shut. “Jim, I should warn you-“
She laughs, absolutely feral. “Spock-“
“Jim,” he insists, and he’s looking at her now, eyes locking, so intense Jim thinks she’s drowning. “Vulcan stamina…”
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long are you going to fuck me?” She bites his jaw, feels the scrape of stubble he must shave every morning. “Once you get that gorgeous cock into me, how long are you going to pound me into the mattress before you come?”
“I- Too long, Jim, I-“ He sucks in a breath. “I may not be able to stop.”
If she comes, she realizes. He’s saying that if she comes first, if she’s too sensitive, he might not be able to stop himself. He’ll keep going, sating his need in her body. It’s all manner of hot, mostly because Jim seriously doubts it’ll be an issue.
“I’m okay with that,” she says. It’s gentler, sweeter. His hair is in disarray – Vulcans don’t sweat much, but apparently Spock’s worked up enough for that – and she brushes a lock of it back behind his ear. How he makes the bowl cut sexy, she will never know. She touches her forehead against his, rubbing their noses together. “Come inside. Please.”
The sound he makes is almost a sob. Jim kisses his temple, reaches down between them to grip his cock, and he lets her, angles his hips when she guides him to press against her entrance. The tapered head slides in easily; the first ridge, less so. Jim inhales sharply, head falling back against the pillow as she fights to relax enough to let it in. To let him in. Spock gets a hand on her hip, increasing the pressure as he rocks forward, and then her body swallows the first ridge and Jim gasps out, back arching, mouth open as the thickness rubs at her walls, forcing her open. Spock stills, and she breathes, “Keep going.”
He obliges, and the second ridge is a little easier. He’s so slick, so coated in fluids that Jim feels like she’s wet herself. He keeps going, thick and hard and hot, he’s so hot, burning like a firebrand against her skin, inside her cunt as he pushes deeper, deeper, forcing himself into her, carving out space.
She’s going to feel so empty when he pulls out, Jim thinks hysterically. She clamps down around him, and Spock freezes, then pets at her hip. “Jim.”
Just her name, but it’s so much. She breathes with him, and he asks, “Is this too much?”
She has no idea how deep he’s in, only that it’s not enough. “All of it,” she says. “I want every inch. Everything you can give me.”
“Taluhk,” he murmurs, “nash-veh k’dular. Ashaya, ashayam. K’diwa, ket’lio nash-veh k’dular.”
Amusement rolls through her, bubbling and bright. She whispers in his ear, “I have no idea what that means.” It makes him grin, and he rolls his hips again, pushing even deeper. She can feel the resistance when his cock hits it, the firmer edge of her cervix, and she thinks there still must be a couple inches of him to go, but he stops again anyway.
“I asked for all of it,” she says.
Spock noses along her jawline, placating. “The rest may hurt.”
“I want it anyway.”
“Stubborn,” he murmurs, chastising, but it’s accompanied by two-fingered kisses along her throat.
“Always,” she tells him, and rocks up against him. “I want it all.”
When he bottoms out, she can feel it, his hips coming to rest flush with hers. He breathes deeply, as if in meditation, and pushes up on one hand, bracketing her against the bed. He reaches up with the other, hesitating. “I wish to feel you.”
A mind-meld. She nods. “Yeah. Of course.”
His fingers reach the psi-points on her face, the words murmured and reverent, and it’s even easier than with his counterpart, Spock sinking into her mind like he belongs there. She hears him gasp and feels it on her own lips, the tightness of her own body clenched around him; she’s cooler to the touch than he is, and the temperature differential makes him shudder. There’s desperation, there’s want, and there’s so much love Jim chokes on it. She can’t stay afloat, and Spock’s voice inside her head murmurs, Breathe, ashayam and suddenly she can. She clings to him, thinks holy shit and feels his laughter without hearing it, rumbling in her chest.
“Fuck me,” she says aloud. “Spock, baby, you have to fuck me.”
He growls his approval, draws his hips back and snaps them in, and Jim cries out as he sets a hard, fast pace, pounding into her cunt with abandon, eager for release. Jim can feel it in her stomach, he’s so deep, thinks she can feel it in her chest, her throat, but maybe that’s just Spock, the overwhelming pleasure shared back and forth as he thrusts over and over, his cock hitting every nerve ending she has and then some, the ridges thick and rubbing, textured, her favorite, and Spock catches the tail end of a memory about one of Gaila’s toys and snarls, pinning her down harder and slamming in. “Mine.”
“Fuck.” He’s vicious with it, and she pants, “Yours, baby, fuck.” He’s so much better than a toy, hot and hard, soft flesh made firm, made stone, wrecking her open. “Don’t stop.”
He has no intentions to; she doesn’t need to feel it to know, but she does, she can feel him inside her head, just how much he’s enjoying this. She clenches down just to feel him growl, digs her heels into the small of his back to hear him groan. He shoves her legs up farther, fucks in even deeper, and Jim is going to be so sore tomorrow but she doesn’t care, only care about Spock and his frankly ridiculous cock and the burning in her veins, electricity in her cunt as he fucks her and fucks her and fucks.
When she catches the edges of her orgasm, she’s so ready for it, and Spock feels it in her. She wants him to touch her, but that would mean breaking the meld, so she shoves her own hand, grinding her thumb against her clit, chest heaving, fighting for breath as he redoubles his efforts, screws his hip the way she likes and bites bruises behind her ear, his breath hot and panting and close. She comes on his cock, his name punched from her throat, and he doesn’t stop, she can feel the franticness beneath the surface, the sudden war of too much for her and burning, need, wet and tight and good and everything is sensitive, everything is fire, but Jim gasps out, “Don’t stop, baby, you’re good, so good” and pushes everything she can into their connection, the love and want and proof that it’s okay, that he can fuck her until he comes too, pictures everything she wants to do to him, his fingers in her mouth and her fucking him and him fucking her tits, her thighs, every kind of sex she’s yet to try and suddenly wants to do with him, and only him, and always him.
It doesn’t take long; a couple more thrusts, and then Spock is keening, hips still pumping as he fills her, and it feels like there are gallons of it, forced so deep Jim thinks it has to catch, that there’s no way it can’t knock her up. The ridges keep it locked inside, firm even when he begins to soften, and Jim pants, stroking Spock’s back when he collapses against her, utterly spent. His hand falls from her face, leaving her mind bereft, but when she traces two fingers over his cheek, she can feel him, just a little, his shields blown wide and open for her.
“Holy shit,” she says, and feels his laugh against her chest.
He lifts his head, searching. “Are you alright?”
She flicks his ear. “I’m fine. Ruined for anyone else, but fine.”
His hands tighten on her. “No one else.”
“You’re cute when you’re possessive.” She squirms, and Spock gets the hint, lifting himself off her and pulling out carefully. Jim was wrong: she doesn’t feel empty, because even when his cock slides free, even when his cum starts to gush out, soaking her sheets, there’s still so much of it inside her. She presses down on her stomach experimentally, feels the bulge of his seed still in there. “Holy shit,” she says again.
“I would apologize,” he says, “but you seemed to enjoy it.”
She smacks him for that. “Give a girl an orgasm, and suddenly he’s Mr. Smug.”
“That is not my name.”
She smacks him again, then pushes him down into the wet spot, bracing herself against him. “You’re perfect, you know that?”
He raises his eyebrows, but she presses. “I mean it. You were tailor-made for me.”
“That statement implies you believe in predestination.”
She drums her fingers against his – frankly amazing – furred chest. “You don’t?”
“Vulcans tend to be skeptical of ideas such as fate, yes.”
Jim wants to be too. Part of her still wants to say “fuck the universe,” she’ll make her own destiny. She doesn’t have to be her father’s daughter. She doesn’t have to be any other universe’s James Kirk either. But she can’t help thinking that everything has been leading her up to this. Everything Before Spock was just preparation for what was really important.
“Maybe,” she says. “But you have to admit, it’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“Coincidences happen every day,” Spock says. He hesitates, and although it isn’t the full openness, she can feel his contentment, his joy, in the edges of his smile. “However, I will allow that we are suited to one another. Perfectly.”
“He says that now,” Jim teases. “But wait until the next time I run headfirst into danger.”
“I, as always, will follow.”
“Charmer.” Jim settles herself against his chest. She closes her eyes. She’s had enough of Befores, she thinks. She’s ready to start thinking about Afters.
“We should clean up,” she murmurs after a while. “Change the sheets, at least.”
He rumbles an agreement, but doesn’t move. Jim nudges him, and he sighs, heavy and fond, and strips the sheets while she pees and does her best to get most of his cum out of her, and when she comes back the bed is remade and his clothes are folded and he has pajamas for her to wear. She rejects them, cranking up the heat to Vulcan-comfortable against his protests and crawling back into bed with him, tucking herself against his side and humming in contentment when he wraps his arms around her. They can do this, she thinks. Perfect. Together.
The sleep she gets is the best night of her life.