The limitations imposed by basic physics meant the first exchange of genetic material happened with most of their clothes on. An awkward and frustrating manipulation of fabric, her suggestion that he "just tear them already" after which they somehow slot together and minutes later, come hard and fast.
"Anything?" she asks with her face smushed into the pillow.
"No," he replies. He cups his hand as he pulls out, catching the overspill as best he can and immediately retreats to the head to dispose of it. Pragmatic and efficient. Decidedly unsexy. Not the promise of those first few minutes of tender carnality.
When he returns, she's shed her boots, uniform, shredded tights and is in the process of removing her bra. She pulls the sheet up to cover her breasts, but he seems not to notice. Sits on the edge of the bed, penis tucked back into his pants, black undershirt showing no signs of her earlier amorous attention.
She wonders, is he thinking this is a bad idea, a delusional idea, illogical, self-serving—
"Have you considered asking the captain to provide you with more command opportunities?"
Her mind stutters, shifts tracks. "Um… not sure I'm suited for it."
"You appear quite comfortable giving orders."
Ah, a back-handed compliment. She tries to keep the hurt out of her voice. "You don't seem bothered."
"I am quite comfortable taking orders." True enough. He'd encouraged her from the start to tell him what she wanted him to do.
None of her "requests" have been framed as such, however. Not suggestions or instructions, not even commands – demands really. Which isn't her normal modus operandi in the boudoir, come to think of it.
Yet another indication that nothing about this is normal.
"Well, then, I'm ordering you to take off your pants."
He looks a little surprised. "You are willing to try again?"
"What about my being naked leads you to suspect otherwise?"
"I did not wish to presume."
"I'm naked."
Kirk considered that maybe he'd jumped to an erroneous conclusion. Maybe Spock and Uhura weren't off to "get busy." Maybe they'd gone to one the science labs and were, at this very moment, exchanging DNA via perfectly innocent cheek swabs. Having convinced himself of the possibility he made a detour to the most likely science lab in the hopes it was so.
It was not.
"Captain?" Through the glass partition of the CSO's office, a lieutenant with a greying buzz cut and a slightly overhanging gut rose from Spock's desk and stepped out to greet his superior. "May I help you?"
He clearly thought his captain had taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Just beyond the lieutenant, confused lab technicians looked up from their scientific absorptions and scrambled to half-assed attention.
"At ease everyone." Kirk plastered on his best "at ease" smile, rifling his brain to recall the lieutenant's name. Barlow? Barney?
"Was there something you needed, sir?" the man asked in a tone both obsequious and weirdly confrontational.
Kirk's "at ease" smile was replaced by a scowl of displeasure. He knew all departments had a tendency to get territorial, but...
But it's my damned ship.
"I'm making the rounds, Lieutenant. Thought I'd drop in, see what's got scientific minds excited these days."
"We are currently engaged in a deep-dive toxicology assay regarding the chemicals to which Mr. Spock and Lt. Uhura were exposed."
Vulcan-like grammatical precision must be a job-requirement.
"Any new insights?"
There was a brief exchange of sideways looks from the lab techs, and a slow blink and gulping sound from Bartow/Barney. Expressions much like Spock's own on those occasions when he knew his captain wouldn't understand the information requested but was obligated by duty to impart it anyway.
"Know what? Never mind," Kirk said. "I'll let you get back to it."
He beat a hasty retreat to the transporter room and his meeting with Himli Sabanci.
Everything about Uhura has become fascinating.
The pierced holes in her earlobes, one slightly larger than the other. The flickers of amber in the brown of her pupils. The jagged-edged nail of a big toe that keeps scraping his haunch. The small birthmark just above the lateral malleolus of her right ankle, a ruffled oval shape, ebony dark.
This is a problem.
His mind should be open and receptive to the truth they hope revealed, not cataloguing all the tiny marvels of her person—
the subtle shift in coloration between labia majora and labia minora,
the rosy hued glistening of the inner, the petal velvet softness of the outer,
the fluid pull of vaginal walls as his penis pushes in,
the sounds she makes, songs in stutters, sighs and sobbing, wordless devotionals, new words for God.
the way her breasts move in lazy circles with each thrust in and out, nipples pointed up, waiting to be lapped by his tongue, caught in his teeth.
He knows he must find the metaphorical key to turn in the lock, to open his mind to the facts he was so certain would be illuminated in an exchange of bodily fluids. But he can only focus on sensual details. He will hide these details from himself later, in that part of his mind reserved for sentiment – jewels in a bank vault, treasured but lacking practical value.
It's both riveting and alarming to be the sole focus of Spock's sexual attention.
If she were thinking clearly (and she is not) she'd consider how this plan to copulate their way to enlightenment was doomed before it began – an excuse to indulge base urges dressed up in fancy empirical science. It's their third go at it. Odds are they'll uncover nothing of practical value this time either.
These are the kinds of thoughts he should be having. He's the logical one. She can only feel right now. The in and out, the mucus squelch, the perfume of his flesh, the rhythmic slap of their bodies, the soft thud of her head bumping into the wall. Which usually doesn't happen to her in in this position, nose to the mattress, ass in the air.
He tugs her back down only to drive her right back up a minute later – bam bam bam bam. She feels him everywhere, in every place their bodies touch and in the air between. She feels him inside places he shouldn't be able to fit. Which is—
Impossible. Utter nonsense. Just endorphin-fueled romanticizing of penis in vagina. A function of reproductive biology he'd tell her if he wasn't so busy. He pulls out and flips her onto her back, pushes her knees apart and up and dives back in. An embarrassing squeal comes out of her mouth. And words. All the words for sexual intercourse in thirty of the thirty-seven languages she knows, each thrust another word, a mantra of the holy fuck.
Hands slip down between their rocking bodies, her right, his left. Fingers split in matching gestures, vee around where they're conjoined. They rub and rub and rub, pulling up and smearing moisture, fingertips and knuckles bump against each other, vying for dominance. She laughs, breathless, sultry delight because the Vulcan gesture for peace and long life is rubbing her clit to a frenzy.
He snatches his hand back, like she doesn't deserve it, leaves her to the business of pleasuring herself. Plants both hands on either side of her head, braced above her, peering down. The muscles in his arms twitch and jerk. The hotwire of adrenaline. Or whatever's analogous in him that's evoking this thrill of anticipation in her.
He locks his eyes onto her face, his expression one of grim, vehement determination. And it all comes down to this:
He will prove his hypothesis and make it a theory supported by data.
"Uh oh," she whispers.
"What am I looking at?" Kirk squinted at the fractured pixels. There was a whole bank of screens in the security offices of the chancellery building, but only one of interest.
Sabanci, standing behind him, gripped the back of the chair and leaned forward, his finger drawing a circle around a coalescing image. Kirk shifted sideways to avoid contact with the man's unshaven jaw. Unsuccessfully.
"It's coming up," Sabanci murmured too close to his ear.
Nice of the guy to offer the only chair with lumbar support, but this looming at his back and pushing into his personal space was starting to feel like a badly timed come-on. Or some lame-ass show of dominance.
Yeah, we get it, you're the sexy big dog here.
Sabanci straightened abruptly, cleared his throat. Kirk glanced up. Shit. Had he said that out loud? Instead of a finger, Sabanci pointed his chin at the screen. "There it is. Everything my people have managed to piece together so far. Right there."
White jigsaw patches wriggled amidst a wavering field of colors. The image gathered itself on the grid, revealing a person, apparently rising from a hole in the paving, wearing what looked like a prom tuxedo in pajama form, but otherwise pretty much as Spock described. What Spock had failed to describe was the undercurrent of rage in that panicked expression.
"Do you know what - who that is?"
"I've never seen the species before, though I believe I've heard of them," Sabanci started to lean past Kirk's shoulders then glanced sideways as if asking permission to encroach. Embarrassed and pissed off about being embarrassed, Kirk gave his permission with a vague wave of faux nonchalance.
"Frankly, I thought they were made up." Sabanci tapped at a button on the screen to hurry the vid along. "Bogeymen invented by merchant spacers and privateers to scare off competition. I mean this could always be an aberration of a known species…" The image bloomed. "But the Klingons call this particular bogeyman Fayreengagh."
Certain Sabanci had mangled the pronunciation Kirk made a mental note to ask Uhura. The picture elements began to wink out—
"Wait, go back. Can you freeze that? That. That." Now he was pointing. "What's that in its hand? See it?"
"Oh. Yeah. Looks like a shiny softball."
"My first officer thought it was a bomb."
"Interesting. Your first officer and Lt. Uhura were accused of threatening the chancellery with an incendiary device."
"What? I didn't know that. By whom?"
"We're still interviewing the arresting officers. But we found no evidence of a bomb. And no evidence of whatever that is in its hand either."
"Would you mind if I had my people search the alley? Not stepping on any toes here, but we have technology at our disposal you likely don't."
"My team would need to be there."
Kirk nodded, his gaze caught by the alien whose image shifted jaggedly, picture elements frozen in the process of decay. Then he opened his communicator to call the ship.
McCoy passed his scanner over the dregs in the cup of Spock's favorite tea, an idle-hands kind of move as he tried to organize the pertinent facts in his head. The results and the element in question confused him for a moment. He asked the yeoman who brought the tea and discovered it was an herbal blend from Vulcan. He contacted the galley chief.
"Does anybody besides Commander Spock drink this blend?"
"Lt. Uhura. Don't ask me how, but she says it reminds her of home."
On his lap, she leans back to give his tongue easy access to her breasts. His cock slips in farther, grazing her cervix. He has one hand splayed across the curve of her spine, keeping her from falling. The other flicks a thumb over her clitoris. Orgasm feels like an endless series of tiny seismic events.
They have not thought once about pressing their mouths together.