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Jun. 8th, 2009 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iceminkTitle: Someday, and the Rest of Your Life
Paring: Spock/Uhura
Summary: When the Enterprise receives a distress call from a Vulcan rescue vessel, Spock finds himself confronted by his past, and he must choose whether to uphold Vulcan traditions or find his own way.
A/N: Thanks to![[info]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ida_pea for betaing this chapter for me.
Rating: NC-17
Previous chapters can be found here.
"Caterpillar?" Spock asked as the turbo lift doors closed, giving himself and Nyota some privacy.
"It was the first unrelated word that popped into my head,” She explained. “Or did you really want me to translate for Kirk.” She paused for a moment, thinking through what she was pretty sure Kirk had been trying to say. "You never told me you had a brother."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "I don't know which impressed me more, that you could decider the Captain's attempt at Vulcan, or that you have correctly surmised the context.”
Nyota sighed with confusion. "Spock, what's going on?"
The turbo lift doors opened up. "Come with me," he told her. They walked quickly to Spock's quarters.
"Much has happened," Spock began once they had some privacy. “I spoke with T'Pring yesterday. We were in agreement not to continue with our marriage.”
Nyota felt her heart skip a hopeful beat, but something in Spock’s general demeanor told her there was a ‘but’ coming.
“My father,” Spock continued. “And others of the Vulcan High Command feel that it is imperative under current conditions that our marriage be completed.”
“It’s not like they can force you to get married, is it?” she asked.
“Under normal circumstances T’Pring would have the right of kal’i’fee,” Spock told her.
“Challenge?” Nyota translated. “What does that mean.”
Spock sat down, “These are not things we often talk about with outsiders.” She was about to protest, we he gestured for her to sit down to. “I only tell you this so that you will understand that I am brining you into my confidence.” She nodded and sat down. “The kal’i’fee is indeed a challenge. The female has the right to choose another male. The two men then participate in a battle to the death.”
It took everything in Nyota to keep from saying, ‘You’re kidding me.’ A fight to the death didn’t at all seem like something the normally pacifistic Vulcans would do. “And this happens often?” she asked instead.
“Almost never,” he told her. “Most Vulcans are satisfied with the mate chosen for them at childhood. And so the law remains, or it did.”
“Not very logical to have fights to the death, when there are so few of you left, I guess.” Nyota normally considered herself open to other cultures, in fact she had often admired the Vulcans. But this was hard to understand.
“Indeed,” Spock agreed. “So T’Pring has chosen to challenge the marriage on another front. She has invoked her right as a Vulcan for judgement by the High Command. Her argument is that I am without logic. Not a true Vulcan, and therefore not subject to Vulcan law.”
“What does that mean?” Nyota asked. “I mean if she wins, proves her point, what does that mean for you?”
“It means that I will be an outcast. That I will not be allowed contact with any Vulcan, and that it would be their duty to shun me.”
“They can’t really do that?” she burst out. “I mean, you are logical. How can she prove that you’re not.”
“T’Pring, cannot prove it,” Spock agreed.
“Then what’s the point?” she asked. “If she can’t win, why is she doing this. Why be so hurtful?”
Spock closed his eyes. “An interesting choice of words, for I do not wish to hurt you any further, and yet I believe that you have a right to know the full truth of the matter.”
This was it, Nyota thought. The heaviness she had felt in the air. The real thing that was troubling Spock. This was it. And she had to know what it was, even if it did hurt. She needed to understand how her life had gone so far off course.
“Tell me,” she asked softly.
He drew in a deep breath, before looking at her. “There is only one way for T’Pring to win, and it is not through logic, or any argument that she can make. As long as I maintain that I strive to find the logical path, to follow the way set out for us by Surak, there can be no argument. It is enough that I try, even if I fail. She may only win if I choose to renounce logic. That is her gamble, that I will choose you over my people, and over the discipline I have spent a lifetime trying to master.”
Nyota took a long deep breath of her own, letting his words sink in, and trying to figure out what to say. She wanted Spock, wanted to be with him, but how could she ask him to give up so much? To give up any contact with his father’s people and his heritage as a Vulcan.
Before she could find the words to say, he continued. “I can not make that choice. As much as I . . .” he paused, swallowed. “I love you,” he managed to whisper. “I can not make that choice. I can’t-”
“It’s okay,” she interrupted. She felt like she was reeling from his words. The words he had never spoken, the ones she had felt, but never thought she would hear; I love you.
“You must understand-” he began again.
“No,” she interrupted. She wanted out of here. She wanted to escape the room, to escape all of this. She wanted to be small and petty, to beg him to stay with her, and she was afraid that she would do that if this went on much longer. She stood up, about to leave.
“Please,” he begged. “You do not know. As you said, you did not know I had a brother.”
That stopped her, and she sat back down, too curious now to leave.
“My mother, was not my father’s first mate, and I am not his first son,” Spock began. “I never knew Sybok’s mother, indeed my father did not even know of Sybok’s existence until his mother’s death. That is when he came to live with us. He was brilliant. He was expected to be one of the greatest minds on Vulcan. But Sybok, did not choose that path. He rejected logic, began a series of heretical teachings on Vulcan. And eventually he was exiled.”
Spock paused, “The choices Sybok made took a great toll on my father, and were I to make the same choice, were I to follow Sybok into exile so soon after my mother’s death. I do not know what that would do to him.”
Nyota realized that in the last few minutes, Spock had told her more about his family and his childhood than he had in the last few years she had known him. And she felt like she was still trying to catch up.
“Ri kup pak-tor nash-veh wuh’ashiv sa-fu,” she repeated the phrase that Kirk must have heard. And just as if it were an exercise back at the Academy, she took it apart, examining it for the full range of meaning. “Nash’veh,” she repeated. “He said ‘I’. That’s unusual in Vulcan. Usually the personal pronouns are dropped in favor of efficiency. I think your father’s made it pretty clear how he would be effected.”
He nodded, and they were both silent. Nyota turned it over and over in her head and kept coming back to the same place. If Spock did chose her, if he renounced logic and turned his back on his people, what chance would they have? Over time would he grow to hate her? There was no way she could take the place of everything he had lost. And she didn’t have to give up anything. Her family, her home, hell, her whole planet were safely waiting for her only few days warp away.
“Thank you for telling me,” was all she could think of to say. It was after all, not Spock’s nature to share such things. And then practicality began to set in. “You mentioned something about testifying. What should I say?”
“Only the truth Nyota,” he told her. “That is all that is required.”
The truth was that she loved him. The truth was that she wanted to hit the Vulcan High Command over the head until they started to see reason. But that didn’t seem to be a practical solution.
“All right,” she said.
This time when she stood up, he didn’t try to stop her. She left his quarters in a daze, as if she was waiting for the universe to start making sense again. It wasn’t until the doors had closed behind her that she realized that what she wanted was to run back in there. To beg him for one last night. To take whatever was left to them and hold on to it and cherish it.
But it seemed too late. As if in walking out of his quarters she had passed some invisible threshold that could never be crossed again. If he had wanted her to stay, he would have asked.
Except he wouldn’t.
He was Spock.
And if he thought he was hurting her, that what she wanted was distance, then he would respect that. It was part of what she loved about him. You couldn’t play games in a relationship with a Vulcan, you couldn’t play hard to get.
That decided her, and even though she felt ridiculous, she turned back around and walked into his quarters.
He had not moved from his chair, but he looked up as she came back in.
”Do you want me to stay?” she asked simply.
“I do not want you to do anything that causes you more pain,” he told her. She had learned a long time ago that Spock had a lot of way of saying yes.
She wanted to kiss him to hold him but she chose a more Vulcan method instead. She stood next to him and held out her hand, index finger and forefinger extended. He mirrored her action and their fingers crossed in what she had come to think of as a Vulcan kiss. The spark she felt was almost physical. His normal calm was gone, and she could feel the maelstrom of her emotions press against her.
He breathed deeply and began to run his fingers along hers, strengthening and nurturing the connection between them.
He paused, looked up at her and shook his head sadly. “We cannot be.”
“If you can’t have everything you want, isn’t it logical to take what little you can have?” she asked him.
His answer was to stand up, pull her close and kiss her. His fingers still explored hers, tracing the back of her hand, her palm until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She pulled her hand away to grip the back of neck, to run her fingers through the short neatly trimmed hair that stopped just above the collar of his tunic.
And then they were moving backward. Her legs hit the bed, and she let him guide her down onto it. For a while they simply lay there, pressing against each other, letting their mouths greedily devour each other.
Then Spock pulled back, kneeling between her legs. He lifted one of them and began to unzip her boots one at a time, letting his fingers run down the back of her leg as he did so. He began to remove his tunic, and then she pulled him back down, insisting on undressing him. The struggled and rolled against each other until all their clothes were gone and they were nothing but flesh pressed against flesh.
Spock buried his face in her neck, letting his fingers roam up and down her body. Then he began to kiss his way down her body as if he was memorizing her. Making an image in his mind to last a lifetime.
When she first felt his cheek again her thigh she gasped, the sharp intake of breath causing her throat to burn a little. She didn’t car. She embraced the pain, as if helped to make her more his equal even if only in the smallest way.
Her fingers gripped the sheets as he began to explore her. His tongue tracing familiar patterns on her clit. She twisted and writhed giving up her control bit by bit, until her whole body was under his control. Responding to his every kiss and touch with reckless abandon until she let go of it all and there was nothing left of her.
In the aftermath, she lay panting, trying to put it all back together. And then moved on top of her, laying himself above her. She could feel the hard tip of his cock rubbing against her entrance and she became focused on him. She reached down, to guide him inside of her, to pull him as close as they could be.
She could feel his breathe against her throat, and his moans vibrate through his entire chest as he began to move inside of her. He started with his normal deliberate pace, but she could feel the desperation in side of him, and she moved against him, urging him onto to a quick pace, telling him with her touches to take what he needed.
Her fingers gripped his shoulder, and her nails dug into his skin. He moved faster and faster within her until he threw back his head and cried out with a primal scream.
It felt like a long time before either of them did more than settle into a more comfortable resting position, his arms around her, her head on his chest. She her let her fingers trace the contours of his chest, making patters she had no names for.
But finally she had to speak, “What are you thinking?” she asked.
“The Doctor was right,” Spock said simply.
She looked up at him, confused. “Should I be offended you’re thinking of McCoy right about now,” she teased.
“He called this, a Kobayashi Maru,” Spock continued. “And he was right, for I have never been afraid until now.” He looked down at her. “I am afraid that I can not continue, and never know this again.” His fingers traced the side of her face, and she knew that he meant something beyond the sex. The intimacy, as he usually called it, that they shared. “And I am afraid I will let you go, and I am afraid of what would happen if I did what was required to keep you.”
She had no answers for him. So instead she pressed her forehead against his, and placed her hand on his cheek. “Shh, it’ll be okay,” she told him.
It worried her, when he didn’t bother to point out the illogic of that statement.
Paring: Spock/Uhura
Summary: When the Enterprise receives a distress call from a Vulcan rescue vessel, Spock finds himself confronted by his past, and he must choose whether to uphold Vulcan traditions or find his own way.
A/N: Thanks to
ida_pea for betaing this chapter for me.Rating: NC-17
Previous chapters can be found here.
"Caterpillar?" Spock asked as the turbo lift doors closed, giving himself and Nyota some privacy.
"It was the first unrelated word that popped into my head,” She explained. “Or did you really want me to translate for Kirk.” She paused for a moment, thinking through what she was pretty sure Kirk had been trying to say. "You never told me you had a brother."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "I don't know which impressed me more, that you could decider the Captain's attempt at Vulcan, or that you have correctly surmised the context.”
Nyota sighed with confusion. "Spock, what's going on?"
The turbo lift doors opened up. "Come with me," he told her. They walked quickly to Spock's quarters.
"Much has happened," Spock began once they had some privacy. “I spoke with T'Pring yesterday. We were in agreement not to continue with our marriage.”
Nyota felt her heart skip a hopeful beat, but something in Spock’s general demeanor told her there was a ‘but’ coming.
“My father,” Spock continued. “And others of the Vulcan High Command feel that it is imperative under current conditions that our marriage be completed.”
“It’s not like they can force you to get married, is it?” she asked.
“Under normal circumstances T’Pring would have the right of kal’i’fee,” Spock told her.
“Challenge?” Nyota translated. “What does that mean.”
Spock sat down, “These are not things we often talk about with outsiders.” She was about to protest, we he gestured for her to sit down to. “I only tell you this so that you will understand that I am brining you into my confidence.” She nodded and sat down. “The kal’i’fee is indeed a challenge. The female has the right to choose another male. The two men then participate in a battle to the death.”
It took everything in Nyota to keep from saying, ‘You’re kidding me.’ A fight to the death didn’t at all seem like something the normally pacifistic Vulcans would do. “And this happens often?” she asked instead.
“Almost never,” he told her. “Most Vulcans are satisfied with the mate chosen for them at childhood. And so the law remains, or it did.”
“Not very logical to have fights to the death, when there are so few of you left, I guess.” Nyota normally considered herself open to other cultures, in fact she had often admired the Vulcans. But this was hard to understand.
“Indeed,” Spock agreed. “So T’Pring has chosen to challenge the marriage on another front. She has invoked her right as a Vulcan for judgement by the High Command. Her argument is that I am without logic. Not a true Vulcan, and therefore not subject to Vulcan law.”
“What does that mean?” Nyota asked. “I mean if she wins, proves her point, what does that mean for you?”
“It means that I will be an outcast. That I will not be allowed contact with any Vulcan, and that it would be their duty to shun me.”
“They can’t really do that?” she burst out. “I mean, you are logical. How can she prove that you’re not.”
“T’Pring, cannot prove it,” Spock agreed.
“Then what’s the point?” she asked. “If she can’t win, why is she doing this. Why be so hurtful?”
Spock closed his eyes. “An interesting choice of words, for I do not wish to hurt you any further, and yet I believe that you have a right to know the full truth of the matter.”
This was it, Nyota thought. The heaviness she had felt in the air. The real thing that was troubling Spock. This was it. And she had to know what it was, even if it did hurt. She needed to understand how her life had gone so far off course.
“Tell me,” she asked softly.
He drew in a deep breath, before looking at her. “There is only one way for T’Pring to win, and it is not through logic, or any argument that she can make. As long as I maintain that I strive to find the logical path, to follow the way set out for us by Surak, there can be no argument. It is enough that I try, even if I fail. She may only win if I choose to renounce logic. That is her gamble, that I will choose you over my people, and over the discipline I have spent a lifetime trying to master.”
Nyota took a long deep breath of her own, letting his words sink in, and trying to figure out what to say. She wanted Spock, wanted to be with him, but how could she ask him to give up so much? To give up any contact with his father’s people and his heritage as a Vulcan.
Before she could find the words to say, he continued. “I can not make that choice. As much as I . . .” he paused, swallowed. “I love you,” he managed to whisper. “I can not make that choice. I can’t-”
“It’s okay,” she interrupted. She felt like she was reeling from his words. The words he had never spoken, the ones she had felt, but never thought she would hear; I love you.
“You must understand-” he began again.
“No,” she interrupted. She wanted out of here. She wanted to escape the room, to escape all of this. She wanted to be small and petty, to beg him to stay with her, and she was afraid that she would do that if this went on much longer. She stood up, about to leave.
“Please,” he begged. “You do not know. As you said, you did not know I had a brother.”
That stopped her, and she sat back down, too curious now to leave.
“My mother, was not my father’s first mate, and I am not his first son,” Spock began. “I never knew Sybok’s mother, indeed my father did not even know of Sybok’s existence until his mother’s death. That is when he came to live with us. He was brilliant. He was expected to be one of the greatest minds on Vulcan. But Sybok, did not choose that path. He rejected logic, began a series of heretical teachings on Vulcan. And eventually he was exiled.”
Spock paused, “The choices Sybok made took a great toll on my father, and were I to make the same choice, were I to follow Sybok into exile so soon after my mother’s death. I do not know what that would do to him.”
Nyota realized that in the last few minutes, Spock had told her more about his family and his childhood than he had in the last few years she had known him. And she felt like she was still trying to catch up.
“Ri kup pak-tor nash-veh wuh’ashiv sa-fu,” she repeated the phrase that Kirk must have heard. And just as if it were an exercise back at the Academy, she took it apart, examining it for the full range of meaning. “Nash’veh,” she repeated. “He said ‘I’. That’s unusual in Vulcan. Usually the personal pronouns are dropped in favor of efficiency. I think your father’s made it pretty clear how he would be effected.”
He nodded, and they were both silent. Nyota turned it over and over in her head and kept coming back to the same place. If Spock did chose her, if he renounced logic and turned his back on his people, what chance would they have? Over time would he grow to hate her? There was no way she could take the place of everything he had lost. And she didn’t have to give up anything. Her family, her home, hell, her whole planet were safely waiting for her only few days warp away.
“Thank you for telling me,” was all she could think of to say. It was after all, not Spock’s nature to share such things. And then practicality began to set in. “You mentioned something about testifying. What should I say?”
“Only the truth Nyota,” he told her. “That is all that is required.”
The truth was that she loved him. The truth was that she wanted to hit the Vulcan High Command over the head until they started to see reason. But that didn’t seem to be a practical solution.
“All right,” she said.
This time when she stood up, he didn’t try to stop her. She left his quarters in a daze, as if she was waiting for the universe to start making sense again. It wasn’t until the doors had closed behind her that she realized that what she wanted was to run back in there. To beg him for one last night. To take whatever was left to them and hold on to it and cherish it.
But it seemed too late. As if in walking out of his quarters she had passed some invisible threshold that could never be crossed again. If he had wanted her to stay, he would have asked.
Except he wouldn’t.
He was Spock.
And if he thought he was hurting her, that what she wanted was distance, then he would respect that. It was part of what she loved about him. You couldn’t play games in a relationship with a Vulcan, you couldn’t play hard to get.
That decided her, and even though she felt ridiculous, she turned back around and walked into his quarters.
He had not moved from his chair, but he looked up as she came back in.
”Do you want me to stay?” she asked simply.
“I do not want you to do anything that causes you more pain,” he told her. She had learned a long time ago that Spock had a lot of way of saying yes.
She wanted to kiss him to hold him but she chose a more Vulcan method instead. She stood next to him and held out her hand, index finger and forefinger extended. He mirrored her action and their fingers crossed in what she had come to think of as a Vulcan kiss. The spark she felt was almost physical. His normal calm was gone, and she could feel the maelstrom of her emotions press against her.
He breathed deeply and began to run his fingers along hers, strengthening and nurturing the connection between them.
He paused, looked up at her and shook his head sadly. “We cannot be.”
“If you can’t have everything you want, isn’t it logical to take what little you can have?” she asked him.
His answer was to stand up, pull her close and kiss her. His fingers still explored hers, tracing the back of her hand, her palm until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She pulled her hand away to grip the back of neck, to run her fingers through the short neatly trimmed hair that stopped just above the collar of his tunic.
And then they were moving backward. Her legs hit the bed, and she let him guide her down onto it. For a while they simply lay there, pressing against each other, letting their mouths greedily devour each other.
Then Spock pulled back, kneeling between her legs. He lifted one of them and began to unzip her boots one at a time, letting his fingers run down the back of her leg as he did so. He began to remove his tunic, and then she pulled him back down, insisting on undressing him. The struggled and rolled against each other until all their clothes were gone and they were nothing but flesh pressed against flesh.
Spock buried his face in her neck, letting his fingers roam up and down her body. Then he began to kiss his way down her body as if he was memorizing her. Making an image in his mind to last a lifetime.
When she first felt his cheek again her thigh she gasped, the sharp intake of breath causing her throat to burn a little. She didn’t car. She embraced the pain, as if helped to make her more his equal even if only in the smallest way.
Her fingers gripped the sheets as he began to explore her. His tongue tracing familiar patterns on her clit. She twisted and writhed giving up her control bit by bit, until her whole body was under his control. Responding to his every kiss and touch with reckless abandon until she let go of it all and there was nothing left of her.
In the aftermath, she lay panting, trying to put it all back together. And then moved on top of her, laying himself above her. She could feel the hard tip of his cock rubbing against her entrance and she became focused on him. She reached down, to guide him inside of her, to pull him as close as they could be.
She could feel his breathe against her throat, and his moans vibrate through his entire chest as he began to move inside of her. He started with his normal deliberate pace, but she could feel the desperation in side of him, and she moved against him, urging him onto to a quick pace, telling him with her touches to take what he needed.
Her fingers gripped his shoulder, and her nails dug into his skin. He moved faster and faster within her until he threw back his head and cried out with a primal scream.
It felt like a long time before either of them did more than settle into a more comfortable resting position, his arms around her, her head on his chest. She her let her fingers trace the contours of his chest, making patters she had no names for.
But finally she had to speak, “What are you thinking?” she asked.
“The Doctor was right,” Spock said simply.
She looked up at him, confused. “Should I be offended you’re thinking of McCoy right about now,” she teased.
“He called this, a Kobayashi Maru,” Spock continued. “And he was right, for I have never been afraid until now.” He looked down at her. “I am afraid that I can not continue, and never know this again.” His fingers traced the side of her face, and she knew that he meant something beyond the sex. The intimacy, as he usually called it, that they shared. “And I am afraid I will let you go, and I am afraid of what would happen if I did what was required to keep you.”
She had no answers for him. So instead she pressed her forehead against his, and placed her hand on his cheek. “Shh, it’ll be okay,” she told him.
It worried her, when he didn’t bother to point out the illogic of that statement.
