Characters: Spock, Kirk
Rating: PG-13, now. NC-17, later.
Warnings: ...Angst!?
Notes: Jim confuses himself. And me. A lot. What the fuck, brain? This gets deeply confusing and really bizarre, and again, I warn that I am not telling the story you expect to hear.

"Delicate love, precious and pale
Tempted and torn
Broken and failed"
-- Econoline Crush, 'The Devil You Know'

"Don't thank me for stating facts, Spock," Jim said, leaning in to plant a light kiss on Spock's forehead. "It's illogical."

Spock's eyebrow arced up, and he poked Jim firmly in the shoulder. "I believe the correct response to that is 'fuck you', Jim. I will not stop thanking you; you are being exceptionally kind to me. It is ... unusual."

Thumb caressing Spock's cheek, Jim leaned down again, this time to steal a kiss from Spock's lips. He grunted in pleasurable surprise as Spock's relatively short nails scraped down his back, over the Federation standard black undershirt. One of them needed to be wearing something, still, he knew, and since Spock did not wear underclothing, as he had mentioned, it was up to Jim to maintain that balance. That was acceptable. For once, he didn't really want to look at his own scars, and he really didn't want Spock looking -- there were too many memories under that shirt.

Years, I have waited to do this, he thought, and now that I have you as I have always wanted you, I'm afraid to touch you, too much. I'm afraid I'll change your mind with my hands. I'm terrified that I'm not clean enough. I'm afraid that I'm not worthy of your acceptance. I'm afraid I'll dirty you. I'm afraid I'll ruin everything we've shared.

And then Spock's hands were on him again, pulling him all the way down for a heatedly passionate kiss. Jim wanted this. He wanted it so very badly, and it felt so wrong. He was not Spock's lover. They were friends -- friends who kissed, when no one unimportant was looking. He wanted it to be more, but that wasn't what this was. This was just a game. Just a gift. Something that would never repeat. And as he let the passion take him, let his hands play across Spock's bare chest, carefully down to cup a hip in his palm, he could feel himself coming apart, almost physically -- with every touch, another few square inches of his body went numb, as though they'd floated away, in chunks. This, then, was what it felt like to break one's own heart, slowly and deliberately, in the arms of one's greatest desire.

"You," Jim whispered into Spock's ear. "I lust for you."

"I was afraid, for a moment, that you would say something else. Something we might both regret." Spock commented dryly, hands caressing Jim's body, over the undergarments he still wore.

"I do love you, Spock. Just not, you know, like that," Jim lied, easily, and the backs of his hands went numb. When had this happened? He'd never let himself look too closely at his feelings for Spock -- writing them off as a lust for the unobtainable. And even now, he couldn't swear that wasn't the truth. He was Jim fucking Kirk, and he threw his heart into everything he did. It was part of what had made him not only a good captain, but a great man.

He tried to turn off the rational threads in his mind, and just let his hands and his lips wander, taking in the perfection of Spock. Some things, he knew, should have been turn-offs -- should have stopped his ability to desire, as suddenly and solidly as a parking brake -- but, on Spock, these were just simple parts of the man. He despised chest hair -- this, he knew intellectually, as he buried his face in Spock's, rubbing his cheek against the man's softly furred chest. It didn't matter in the least. His lips tightened against unwanted confessions of the madness that ran through the back of his mind, and he moved down, pressing a heartfelt kiss to Spock's hip, as yet another piece of skin went dull. He wondered if the parts he couldn't feel couldn't be felt, either. Vulcans were, after all, touch telepaths, to some degree. He also wondered if that wasn't part of why he still wore some clothing, but that thought was unsettling -- betrayed a distrust he hadn't known he felt. He pushed the thought from his mind, roughly, and dragged himself back up the bed, to press another kiss to Spock's lips -- a kiss eagerly accepted.

And Jim was more than happy to stay there, hands and lips engaged with Spock's body, his dear friend's hands full of Jim's body, lips gently but tightly fixed to his own. It was an incredible pleasure, uneventful and simple, but intoxicating in its purity. Spock had been so open with him, was still so open to him, but not open enough. He just wanted to be able to stop lying, and not risk losing everything. But, at the same time, he still wasn't certain that he was lying. It was all so sudden, and while he wasn't that drunk, he'd been awake enough hours that his mind might well be confusing the lust and the deep friendship into something it wasn't, and that was most definitely not something to lose one of his two best friends over.