Their meetings are surreptitious, intense. As soon as door slide close, they are on each other, hands demanding, mouths locked, bodies pushing together. The Vulcan feels as if he is drowning. It's not his Time, but he cannot get enough of this man, this alien, who has moved into his heart, his life, his soul. Sometimes he believes he will not be able to think rationally again. He casts glances at the human when they are together on the bridge, when he is monitoring displays, calibrating instruments, collecting data and interpreting the constant streams, ready to present at a moment's notice if or when needed.

A part of him thinks he is utterly insane. Another part doesn't care. At night on the occasions he is alone, or when he takes time in front of his Watcher for the meditation he must continue to do, he knows why Surak proscribed love. It's an insanity of sorts, but having tasted of its fruits, he is unwilling to forgo the intoxication of them. It's different than when he had been on Omicron Ceti III; the spores' influence had been restful but inhibited deep emotion which destroyed them. He had not really experienced love at all. Just a sort of euphoria, a blissful state which he had been more than ready to file away as an experience he did not need repeated.

This love is a drowning, an intensity of feeling that he never thought to feel outside his Time. Somehow it does not inhibit his ability to be rational in the ordinary course of the day. But once he and this alien are alone, they cannot keep apart. It's as if a force greater than gravity melds them together, bodies attempting to become one in the only way they know how. They rock together in all the ways they can. Sometimes their joining is gentle, a slow dance of courtship conducted behind the doors and walls that shield their privacy. Then they take much time for what humans call foreplay, kissing and nibbling the pathways of skin and muscle and nerve and blood vessels until unable to wait any longer, they merge.

Sometimes it is his mouth that devours the alien organs he has come to love. Loves how they nestle quiescently, pink and soft in the curls that adorn the junction of thigh and belly, and how under his relentless tongue and quick and careful nibbles of sharp teeth they move, balls roiling in their sac, shaft of cock engorging and growing so hard, steel under the silkiness of skin, so tender, so sensitive. When at last he takes it fully into his mouth, swallowing the head as it jerks, the responsiveness of his lover makes his own cock respond. When he looks up at hazel eyes, intent on his own, as he works the shaft deeper into his mouth and throat, Vulcan control suppressing gag reflex, it is sometimes then enough to make them come even before the formal meld.

Sometimes it is the alien's cool mouth on his organ, working it until its sheath folds back, disappears, and it emerges, slick and wet, and fully engorges, making it difficult for the cool mouth to take it in, but somehow, he does it, wanting its fullness against his throat, wanting to drink him in. He tries to suppress the flaring of his ridges, but eventually cannot, and their fingers lace together as his human lover works to take it in, sometimes swallowing in a way that drives the Vulcan control to an edge, and he goes willingly over the precipice.

Sometimes they have each other in the shower. The first time, his human lover turned his back to him and offered himself, slick and wet under the hot spray. The Vulcan wrapped his arm around his lover's waist then, that first time, massaging the cock already wanting touch, until moans and unspoken pleadings told him to part the cheeks he was rubbing against and plunge within, his own slickness making it possible with minimal pain. Unable to contain himself, he thrust so hard he was afraid he'd split the cool body, but found the human was less fragile than he thought, and just as needy as he. Since then they merge often under the spray, and it is as often his hands bracing himself against the cool tile as he is filled again and again, his hair plastered against his forehead, his mouth open as he tries not to breathe in the steamy water that bathes them both, their urgency not allowing them time to finish cleaning themselves before they have to merge.

Sometimes he bends over the desk, his trousers undone and pushed aside as he opens himself to his lover, whose need is so urgent he cannot wait until alpha shift is over and who simply says to him, "I need you," and the crew assume they are conferencing, as indeed they are, in some sense. Sometimes they simply hold each other in those instances and he bends to the neck of his lover and breathes in his essence. Somehow this sustains him through the next crisis and the next, before they pull apart, gaze at each other intently, and go back to the bridge, having each taken from the other what they needed for that moment.

Always, he is afraid that somehow he will lose this amazing gift he's been given, and this fantasy that he feels as if he is living in will somehow shred and fall apart. That there will be a time when he will have to retreat again to the desert he once inhabited, the barren soul he was before this man, this alien, this extraordinary being came to him and reduced his walls to paper, and then tore it asunder. Then he attempts to stay remote for a time, attempts to control himself, holding back, retreating again.

His lover seems to understand, to grant him the time he needs, and then takes him back, without reservation or resentment, when he has arrived at the logic of this bond and the insurmountable essence of it. This is when Spock loves him the most, he thinks. Somehow this man, this alien, always accepts him for what he is, not what he thinks he can mold him into being. Somehow he looks deep within the soul of who he is, the Vulcan who never felt quite Vulcan enough, the man who has never quite resolved his place in the world, the child who felt rejected by his peers, and the still questing adult who is still attempting to define himself, and sees him for what he is, and loves him anyway.

Then it is that their joining becomes a celebration, a defining, a safe place. A joyous thing, and momentous because Spock never thought to feel joy, and feeling it, sustain it. It is then he realizes one more thing about his lover--that he is a safe haven, a home, where Spock can continue to grow in his own kind of wisdom and give the same gift to Jim. That no matter what happens, even if their hazardous careers separate them, each one of them will be the stronger for what they have shared.

Surak, he thinks, may have gotten some things wrong.

Click here to return to the SBS #19 Main Menu