Title: Things that Never Happened I: Blue
Author: Nemo the Everbeing
oOo oOo oOo
Chapter 4: And In a Wide Sea of Eyes, I See One Pair that I Recognize
Cleaned and shaved. When was the last time he felt so well-scrubbed? Len lies down on his blanket and thinks back, but won't go any further back than the collapse. Those memories are off-limits.
Never in the permitted memories has he been so clean. He feels wrong, stretched too tight over his bones. There's nothing between Len and the outside world, and even under his uniform, he feels exposed.
Len will give up his uniform tomorrow. It will be given to the resistance, his name, rank, and serial number written upon the dirty fabric, and it will be held by the leaders of the resistence, awaiting his return, or, barring that, to be held as a trophy, as a symbol to show when the war finally ends. Len tries to picture his dirty clothes in a museum, being marveled over by school children. He finds the idea humorous.
Flash. A sort of soothing comfort, or at least as near to soothing as Spock can come under the circumstances. Spock thinks he's on the edge of a breakdown. Might be right. Might be on the edge of a breakthrough instead, but neither of them can think of the difference.
It's the first flash Len's gotten since he realized he was in love with Spock. He's had a few hours to mull it over, and now he's suspicious of his love. After all, he doesn't have anything to test the affection against. He's been years without love, without attraction. Maybe emotions have built up to the point where they'll transfer to anyone, most especially to the man who has been with him for so long.
Len's not sure. He doesn't trust his own mind. If he were brave, he would ask for Spock's opinion which he trusts infinitely more than his own, but Len is no longer brave. He can't afford it.
Flash. Oh, God. Spock's had days to build up emotions, and with all the stress he needs catharsis. Either that or he knows that Len is hiding something. Sneaky bastard. The one offer he knows Len will never refuse. Not with the possibility of blue on the table.
Len looks at Spock, but the Vulcan gives him nothing. No expression, no subsequent flash. He merely looks Len in the eye and waits. Len feels his face pinch in indecision, but he's a doctor, isn't he? He's supposed to ease suffering, even if just in the limited capacity he possesses now. He should do this, personal feelings aside. He really has to do this.
He shifts toward Spock, inching across the ground in little scoots. Forcing a body to move against its will.
Spock shifts, too. Little glides forward. They're snails inching together. Fingers twitch and reach and pull back. Spock cocks his head at Len's hesitance and waits. This move is Len's, if he can make it.
He has to jerk the rest of the way, hand pressing palm-down to the side of Spock's face, smooth and delicate without the grit and dirt. A thin membrane stretched out over the insides, over the reality that is Spock. He has to move his fingers to get them to the right spots, and they run over skin with a secret delight. God, but this man is beautiful. Most perfect thing in Len's shrunken universe.
Spock's fingers press into his face, little molten pricks of something running through his veins. Something hot and real and blue. Len lets his fingers tighten. A few more seconds and all his secrets will be laid bare. A few more seconds and he'll have an answer.
The link hits him harder than it ever has. He's not aware of his body's response, or if he even has a body anymore. This is the last time, they both know. The last time their minds will come together in this way. The last time they'll truly know.
Spock's misery is acute, deep and funereal. Imminent death isn't pain to Spock, it's release. Still, he mourns the loss of one he has known so well and so long. He does not know if Len can follow where Spock will go once death comes.
Len's resolve to spare Spock the pain of knowing crumbles in the face of such intense communion, and consciousness bleeds desperately into Spock's. He opens, letting the Vulcan know everything: his love, his loss, his fear, his cowardice. Everything Len has become since the collapse pours into this moment, this necessity, and then pours back, amplified by blue.
Oh, God, blue is more intense and brilliant than it ever was before. Len doesn't care about the pain, it's his now anyway. There are no boundaries between them and they share everything. Blue permeates everything within Len and shakes him apart.
And he's back in his own body in their hovel underground. He's not so much melding anymore as cupping Spock's cheek in his hand, head tilted, mouth so close he can smell the bread on Spock's breath.
"Spock," he whispers. It's a secret moment, meant for just them, to narrow their universes even further until nothing stands between them but this reality. They stay like this longer than Len can count, until things seem right and real and normal again. Until they forget when and where they are, who they've become. Until nothing matters because they've got each other and damned if they don't have blue as well.
The kiss, when it comes, is as surprising as it is awkward. They don't fit. Their insides and their outsides can't quite agree on a plan of action, and Len catches at Spock's lips in a sort of wiggle-push-almost-there.
Five years. More. Over seven years since he's touched anyone like this, and Len's out of practice. Hands reach and flap and don't know where to go. Lips are as unsure as hands, and grasp without really clinging. Len feels his gut clench. He wanted this to be perfect. Wanted it to be something magical, something outside reality, above it. He wanted this kiss to be blue.
Spock hears his thoughts. Len feels desert-hot hands come up and frame his face, holding him still and planning the sequence of events. And oh, right there. Spock, who's really had less experience at this sort of thing than Len, just seems to know what to do.
The kiss is warm and wet, the sort of thing that slides through Len like hot soup. He squirms closer, wanting to vanish within Spock, find the blue and live his life out right there. Not alone.
Len opens his mouth, deepening the kiss. No, wrong word. Connection. Yeah, connection. "Kiss" is too trite, too commonplace for this gesture. Spock likes connection, too, and reciprocates, licking at Len's tongue with a sort of contained urgency. Len presses closer and shivers when Spock licks at the roof of his mouth, a hundred nerve endings waking up.
Len is sinking in all conceivable ways. His back hits the ground and his head is swimming, and he's clinging harder to Spock than he's ever clung in his life. Spock, for his part, is reaching down and pushing Len's shirt up.
Connection is about need, and this feels like something they've needed for an age. They are not graceful in this. They don't slip into need and connection so easily as that. They do manage to get the job done, though. Len's shirt is off and they're both scrambling to get out of the rest of their clothes.
Skin brushes and then rubs with more confidence and Len is melting, everything he has been or known sloughing away. He wonders if this is what Pacifist forgetfulness is like, but dismisses the idea as unbecoming.
Their coupling is both simple and labyrinthine. Physically, it's merely two bodies and a good deal of friction, but everything else about this act is spiraling out of control. Len shuts his eyes and lets sensation wash over him. He trembles under this deluge of feeling, his body flushed, needing what it has been denied.
Climax is utterly silent. Len jerks up into Spock and Spock freezes up and then kisses the side of Len's neck. They lay tangled up on the ground and Len keeps his eyes shut, truly warm for the first time in years. His body is still tingling and he reaches up to kiss Spock again.
Spock's gone. Just pulls back and looks at Len with a sort of realization, and Len stares back, mouth hanging a little open. This is him laid bare like he's never been before. He remembers the first time he had sex. He was seventeen and all arms and legs, and he'd gotten naked and thought he might die as the girl . . . what was her name? . . . stared at him in a sort of shock.
Now here he is in his forties and he feels even more exposed, even more mortified. Spock blinks at him, like Len's some data that isn't quite computing the way it should. Like everything that just happened from catharsis to afterglow was some aberration in the system. Nothing earth-shattering, but bothersome, nonetheless.
Spock gets up, dresses, and leaves their hut, giving a quick flash of wanting some time alone. When he closes the cloth flap that serves as their door, Len gathers up his own clothes. He doesn't dress. He just leaves the clothes in a heap across his lap and stares at his hands.
This time tomorrow, he thinks, they'll both be dead.