A response to a challenge on Tumblr. It's been so long since I did a Star Trek fic. I just HAD to share it.
For bowtiesonbakerstreet.
The bow was in a very pleasant shade of red. It matched the colour of the book's leather binding.
Spock already owned Collected Works of Shakespeare, but his copy was falling apart. This was a thoughtful gift.
In a world, where written word was just data flashing on PADDs and could be discarded by a single tap on the screen, books felt like solid comfort from the times long gone.
He enjoyed the scent of the dusty paper and print dye, delighted in the feeling of coarse cellulose under his fingers and the dull sound of rustling pages. Books created a little bubble he alone inhabited. Something that digital text could never replicate.
Spock stroked the spine of the book and opened it in the middle. Strained glue cracked and tiny specks of dust rose in the air.
Meditation could wait, he decided. He could center himself by reading. Indulgence every now and then was not a bad thing at all.
He deliberately stopped taking notice of the time. In his bubble, he was simultaneously enjoying the mastery of words, was compelled by the story and was analysing the plot, taking into the account socio-political aspects of the setting and the time the play was written.
Data, data everywhere!
So busy he was, he only noticed a presence of another, when a puff of breath tickled his ear.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;"
Jim's voice tickled his ear even more.
"Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;"
The kiss just below his earlobe did not tickle. It was more akin to that time the Enterprise passed through an Ion storm and his scanning equipment zapped him when he tried to touch it.
"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;"
Spock liked those moments when Jim touched him and for the briefest of seconds he had a glimpse of the other man's feelings. Like right now, when Jim was nuzzling his ear and Spock felt his neat, compartmentalised thoughts go haywire and turn into a vortex quite difficult to handle.
"I find your choice of sonnet apt," Spock said. "It was written for the Fair Youth, after all."
"You're hardly fair, Mister Spock," Jim whispered. There was mirth in his voice. "But that's fine. I like your hair, it's so shiny."
Jim proved his preference for Spock dark hair by kissing the nape of his neck.
The kiss was pleasant and Spock quite clearly heard Jim's thoughts through the touch of his lips.
"Do me, Jim?" Spock said, cocking his eyebrow. "Your vocabulary devolved significantly."
"Shut up and kiss me, Spock. That's an order."
"Yes, Captain."