Hot and Dirty
Summary: Jim crash lands on a miserably hot, mucky swamp planet. His encounter with a local life form is unusual, even for him... Kirk/OTMC
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek. I do, however, own an air-conditioner. At the moment, I can be happy with just that.
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Hot. Hot, roasting, sweltering, sitting-in-a-frying-pan-would-be-more-comfortable Hot!
Kirk leaned against a tree and tried to breath air so humid it felt like inhaling a jacuzzi - one that hadn't been cleaned in months. Landing in this steaming, fetid swamp had been better than crashing into the system's sun, but not by much.
Wiping sweat from his eyes, he scanned the murky waters. There'd been some suspicious-looking ripples trailing him and winding up as swamp monster chow was not how James T. Kirk intended to go out. He squinted toward the sun, now low on the horizon. It would be a really bad idea to still be out here come nightfall. If whatever was hiding in the water didn't get him, the insects that were already nibbling at every bit of exposed skin would probably eat him alive.
Despite the heat, he pushed himself onward. There was a Federation outpost about 50 kilometers west (poor bastards - being stationed in this place made a posting on Delta Vega look like a reward). Hopefully they'd heard his distress signal, or at least noticed something making an unscheduled plummet to the planet's surface, and sent out a search party. Preferably in a nice, cool, air-conditioned shuttle.
That's where Jim would be if his shuttle hadn't sunk into the depths of the swamp. Or if he could use the Force to lift the damned thing out. Why was it that he never ran into anyone like Yoda? Jim looked around just in case. This planet certainly resembled Dagobah...
Kirk sighed. The heat was obviously cooking his brain. "This is your brain. This is your brain fried in a nasty, febrile swamp..."
Yeah. He was starting to lose it.
A loud 'plop' accompanied by a wet slurping noise came from the water just behind him and Jim suddenly found the energy to sprint. He might be losing it, but he was not losing it to whatever was hiding down there!
Sparing a glance backward, he spotted an eye-stalk cutting through the water and gulped air, forcing his body to - THWUNK! Jim crashed to a damp mat of vegetation and scrambled to get back on his feet. Before he could get his legs under him, a tentacle wrapped around his ankle, yanking his foot out and slapping him back to the ground.
Oof. Kirk gasped as the impact slammed the air out of his lungs. Damn - as if breathing in this place wasn't hard enough.
As he tried to recover, the tentacle snaked farther up his leg and started dragging him toward the water's edge. Jim rolled onto his back, reaching for his phaser...which wasn't there. Frak. He twisted, hands groping for wherever the weapon had fallen, while desperately kicking at the tentacle with his free foot.
"Rrrruurp!" the thing in the water objected. It grabbed the offending foot, pulling it away and lifting.
Jim wound up flat on his back with his legs spread in the air. Not a good position. He tried to kick free, but the tentacles held like bands of duranium. Pushing onto his elbows, he struggled for leverage as he was yanked toward the mire. His hand hit an elevated root and he slipped his arm under it, wrapping it in the crook of his elbow.
The tentacles pulled. Kirk locked his hands together and held on for dear life, using the root as an anchor. Water lapped against the bottom of his trousers, proof that the creature winning this tug-of-war.
"No!" Jim clenched his muscles and yelled - not in terror, but defiance. There was no such thing as a no-win scenario, especially one where losing meant being swallowed by a swamp squid.
Amazingly, the pulling stopped. The tentacles that held his legs maintained their grip, but they were no longer trying to drag him into the murky depths. Jim held his breath, and the root, waiting for what the creature would do next.
A third tentacle snaked out of the water and he braced himself, flattening to the ground as much as possible to prevent it from wrapping around his torso. The appendage hovered above him and then end dropped to the center of his chest. Stale, greenish water stained his shirt as it felt along his abdomen and Kirk steeled himself to bite the disgusting thing if it came toward his face.
It didn't. Instead, the tentacle trailed across his crotch, and seeming to find the parts there of some interest, began poking and stroking in a slow, detailed exploration. As a fourth tentacle emerged and found his waistband, forcing a slimy tip under the edge, Jim came to a horrifying realization.
For years, there had been whispered stories floating around the Academy about encounters with 'tentacle monsters'. They had always dismissed as apocryphal since (a) there was no actual documentation, and (b) every story involved over-the-top sexual escapades that sounded more like the fantasy section of Galactic Penthouse than any sort of plausible contact with alien life. Still, Jim had listened with interest - after all, a good fantasy was a good fantasy, and a super-flexible being whose only interest in humans was determining how many orgasms it could stimulate made for a pretty good fantasy. He'd be lying if he said that he hadn't secretly hoped that there was some truth to the stories and that he'd get to experience it firsthand someday.
Be careful what you wish for...
The Academy tentacle monster tales always involved warm, crystal lagoons or cool, pristine lakes. Nowhere in the whole damn genre had there been even the slightest suggestion that the tentacles involved might come dripping with stinky swamp-goo.
Jim pushed his stomach out against his waistband, trying to impede the scummy feeler worming its way into his briefs. Yuck. There were sexual adventures that even Jim Kirk was not interested in having and being molested by a scum-covered tentacle monster in a miserably hot swamp had just moved to the top of the list.
"I don't know if you can understand me," Kirk shouted, bucking to dislodge the tentacle prodding at his zipper. "But I'm really not into this!"
The tentacles unexpectedly stopped moving. Three eye-stalks rose, peering at him with a confused look.
"Er, no offense," Jim offered hastily. "I'm just...not attracted to you in that way."
"Rruurpp?" It quivered, sending brownish bubbles to the surface.
"I mean, I'm sure you're a really great...whatever you are..." Jim scooched back to sit up a little so he could apply his baby-blues. "Really. It's not you; it's me."
The eye-stalks sagged, wilting like week-old roses.
Great. He'd hurt its feelings. Extensive experience with break-ups and the fact that those tentacles could probably split him like a wishbone, suggested that that was probably a bad thing.
Jim put on his most ingratiating smile. "Maybe if we took things slow? Got to know each other first...?"
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McCoy set a half empty glass on his desk and fixed Kirk with a leery glare. "You're lying, Jim."
"I swear, Bones." Jim held a hand up in a gesture of solemn oath-taking. "It's the honest-to-God truth."
"You really expect me to believe that not only did you turn down sex with a tentacle monster, but you sweet-talked the thing into giving you a ride to the outpost?"
"It was a female tentacle monster." Jim flashed a trademark grin. "The guys at the outpost call her Gertie - she's actually got a very nice personality."
"Uh-huh." McCoy puffed a breath. "So maybe the sweet-talking I believe, but turning down tentacle-monster-sex?" He settled back in his chair, eyebrows raised in a expression that said 'Go ahead, pull the other one'.
Jim gave him a wounded look. "Bones, what kind of pervert do you think I am?"
Bones arched an eyebrow and just looked at him.
"Alright, maybe I have a history of experimenting a little..."
"A little?"
"Okay. A lot," Jim conceded with a far-from-repentant smile. "But this time, things were just too hot and dirty even for me."
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AN: The beginning of this fic was inspired by the oppressively hot weather we've been having, but I really didn't intend it to turn out this way. As with many of my fics, I started writing one idea, then story took a jump to the left, and then a step to the right...
Well, you get the idea. Gertie the swamp-dwelling tentacle monster lifted her head from the mire and decided that Jim looked yummy in a completely different way than I had originally intended.
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