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Star Trek: Into Darkness. Dir. J.J. Abrams. Perf. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, et al. Paramount, 2013. Film.
A/N: Written for the 'nightmare' square on my dark fantasy bingo card on livejournal, and because animegirl1129 requested this pairing. Characterization based on the latest Star Trek movies. Slashy fluff, with a side dish of angst. Contains semi-spoilers for Star Trek Into Darkness.
Jim wakes with a start, gasping at air, fingers tugging at the blankets. He can't breathe for what feels like an eternity, and the darkness is absolute. His heart thunders in his chest, and for a minute, he thinks he's back there, back to where Khan's messing with his head, and he's dying, or dead.
The sheets shift and pull away, leaving Jim's chest exposed, and he scrabbles at the sheets, terrified, for some inexplicable reason, of being naked. The mattress dips and shakes as a bed partner that Jim doesn't remember falling asleep with flips over.
He shouldn't be alarmed, not with how many people (aliens) he's slept with over the years. He's no stranger to one-night stands, or waking up with zero recollection of who he's taken to bed with him the night before.
For some reason, this feels different, and he struggles to get his breathing and racing heart under control. Jim stills and strains his ears, listening for some clue as to who the hell his latest sexual conquest was. He thinks back to the night before or at least tries to, but it's all a blank – there's nothing where something should be.
"Jim?" a sleep-muffled, and very masculine voice, asks, and Jim's heart leaps to his throat.
When an equally masculine arm drops heavily across his chest and settles there, as though they've been doing this – waking up together – for years now, rather than just one night, Jim fights the urge to push the arm away and jump out of bed. It feels like his lungs are burning, and he can't draw enough oxygen into them. He's struggling to breathe, to get his yammering heart under control and to listen to the steady, familiar voice of the man in his bed.
Visions of Khan from the nightmare that woke him in the first place – torturing him, torturing Spock – assail him, and he can't separate dream from reality. Can't determine what's real – the arm lying across his chest, now curling around him, pulling him close into a warm embrace – and what's dream – Khan laughing madly as he twists and breaks Spock's neck like he's twisting the head off a Ken doll.
"Jim! Captain!"
The use of his title, in combination with an almost panicked voice that is clearly Spock's (illogical though that is), works like a cube of ice down his back, and Jim blinks away the cobwebs of the nightmare. He ignores the salt from tears that he hadn't realized he was crying, swiping at them with the butt of his hand.
"Jim?" Spock's voice is concerned, and Jim laughs at the absurdity of Spock, lying in his bed, worried about him. It's a choked-off sound, more of a sob than anything else, and it's embarrassing.
Spock, and it really is Spock, pushes himself up on an elbow, and suddenly, Jim is pierced with a look so intense that it makes him feel small and exposed, and like Spock can see right through him, into his very heart and soul.
The half-Vulcan's perfectly sculpted eyebrows are scrunched together, marring Spock's normally smooth face with worry, and Jim reaches up to smooth the furrowed brow. His hand shakes, and Jim swallows, and he pulls his hand back, letting it fall to his side.
Spock's eyes search his, and his mouth turns downward in a frown at whatever he sees reflected in Jim's eyes. It isn't a look that Jim's accustomed to seeing his second in command wearing, and it scares him.
Spock keeps his emotions under firm lock and key, controlling them to a point that unnerves Jim, and often makes him want to provoke his friend into losing the ever present calm that the half-Vulcan seems to exude, even in situations that are seriously fucked up. To see Spock lose his calm and cool exterior while in such close proximity is unsettling.
"You've forgotten, haven't you?" the question is asked so quietly that Jim isn't sure he's heard it correctly at first.
Spock's eyes rake over Jim's face, and then the half-Vulcan bites his lower lip, and looks at Jim through the fringe of his eyelashes. It's such an open, vulnerable facial expression that it momentarily steals Jim's breath, makes his gut clench in a myriad of emotions that Jim can't even begin to catalogue.
Jim wants to tell Spock that he hasn't forgotten whatever it is that he clearly has forgotten, if only to make Spock stop looking like his proverbial puppy's just been run over by a lawnmower. But, he doesn't.
Jim opens his mouth to answer, confirming what Spock no doubt already knows to be true – he's forgotten something, that, even though he doesn't remember, he wishes he hadn't forgotten. An almost guttural moan leaves his mouth instead of the, 'no,' that he'd meant to say, and Jim shakes his head instead. He feels shame, and fear, and a mounting panic that makes his skin prickle with heat.
Spock smiles. It's a tight, sad and worn expression, more than a happy one, but it eases some of the panic that Jim's feeling, and he reaches palsied fingers up to touch. Spock's lips are warm and soft, and – safe-home-inviting.
Jim holds his breath when Spock lowers his mouth and kisses him. It's slow, the pressure light and non-threatening. Through their connection, Jim can feel Spock's heart beating against the half-human's ribcage like the fluttering wings of a bird taking to flight.
"Oh," Jim breathes out when Spock releases his lips.
He draws in a shuddery breath, and searches Spock's face for clues – the what's, why's, when's, and how's. But, Spock's eyes are downcast, and he's sucking his bottom lip in between his teeth – the very picture of vulnerability. It makes Jim's stomach do a funny little flip-flop.
"Help me remember?" Jim asks.
The smile that Spock gives him in return is nothing like the small, hesitant, hurt smile from earlier. It's wide and welcome, and when Spock dips his head, presses his lips to Jim's collarbone and then kisses a heated path along Jim's jaw, and up to his mouth, Jim wonders how he ever forgot any of this. Whatever this is.
Spock pauses to take a breath, and there's a look in his eyes that Jim can't quite name. Playful? Challenging? Love?
"Always, Jim," Spock says. He quirks his eyebrow, and his lips twist upward in a half-smile, and Jim gets the impression that this isn't the first time he's forgotten what he and Spock have.
Jim half-hopes, as Spock once more claims his lips, that he'll forget again, if it will lead to something like this – Spock's lips locked on his, tongue invading his mouth, hip-to-hip, hands slip sliding over sweat slick skin.
"Always?" Jim questions when he's able to reclaim the use of his mouth.
They're both breathing hard, and Jim's got just the faintest recollection of when this all started – sometime shortly after Khan entered the picture and turned their lives upside down. Apparently Jim's death had shaken Spock more than either of them had realized.
"Yes, Jim," Spock says, with a just a hint of his typical irritation. "Always."
His raised eyebrow is accompanied by a frown, and Jim wonders what the alternate universe's Spock would have to say about all of this. More than likely it would involve logic, and something mind-boggling, and Jim doesn't really want to spend the rest of his nightmare-interrupted night thinking about another, older, perhaps wiser Spock, not when he's lying in bed with his very own.
"It is the only logical recourse of action," Spock says, and Jim doesn't bother to stifle a groan. He rolls his eyes, and then laughs when Spock gives him an indignant look. "Feeling better?" the sardonic question only makes Jim laugh harder.
Sobering, Jim nods, and then closes the small space between them with a kiss. He likes this – kissing Spock.
Kissing soon gives way to gentle caresses, and then to other things which spark Jim's memory in a way that perhaps nothing else ever could. Jim sleeps, and dreams, not of Khan and death, but of countless nights spent with Spock's arm looped around him, clutching him tightly, his dark hair spread out across Jim's chest. It's a dream that Jim doesn't want to wake from, because, somehow, waking up alone in bed, or lying next to some nameless babe of the week would be like waking to a nightmare. And that's one nightmare that Jim doesn't think he could survive waking from.
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