Archive of Our Own

Kirk felt, among other things, a throbbing headache begin to burn in a spot right at the root of his neck. It was all because of those damned Cuspidians. Meek and useless creatures, they didn't understand Standard or any other language stored in the memory of the universal translator. They possessed no physical gifts worth mentioning, and were in fact quite miserable-looking; they just stood there staring at you, resembling little greenish sprouts, their skin porous and their eyes insect-like. Or so the ISS Enterprise team had assumed on the basis of remote observations. 

However, when they had descended to the planet with the intention of raiding the local mineral reserves, they had discovered a more interesting detail. Cuspidian females, when exposed to a certain amount of pressure, had the delightful habit of turning a deeper green, and, oh, literally exploding out of their own bodies, blossoming into a thorny gargantuan creature.

There was this lady at least eight feet tall, her head well concealed by a series of hooked lianas that began at her neck and waved like the tentacles of an octopus, who had taken a liking to Kirk. At that moment she held him suspended in midair like a freshly caught baby goat, a liana tightly wrapped around his wrists so that the thorns protruding from that would penetrate his flesh properly. Kirk cursed her, swinging his legs uselessly. With his luck, it was likely that the cursed beast was also considerably stuffed with poison; at least, that was the hypothesis Kirk had come to after considering the bodies of the fallen red shirts. Not far from him, the only other surviving crewman was engaged in a struggle against another Cuspidian: inevitably, it was Mr. Spock. Kirk still hadn't figured out what it would take to take Spock out; over time, the chilling assumption that the Vulcan was without weakness had formed in him. However, at that moment that thick skin and that cold, computerised mind of his might have come in handy.

"Spock, be ready!" barked Kirk, beginning to oscillate as if he were on a swing.

Spock gave no sign of having heard him, and continued to push his opponent back.

"Spock!" shouted Kirk, planting his heels against the stomach (but was it really a stomach?) of his Cuspidian. Spock must have heard him, yet he did not even grant him a nod of agreement. Kirk uttered a guttural exclamation, the spikes sinking deeper and deeper into his wrists and palms, hot blood running down his arms. Ah, so that was it? The time had finally come when Spock had decided to betray him. Spock had probably intended to escape his adversary and then leave Kirk to his fate. Kirk was not surprised, just annoyed. Although he liked the idea of dying by a woman's hand, that wasn't exactly the scenario he had pictured when pondering his ultimate downfall - something you had to do often if you were the captain of the ISS Enterprise.

Kirk rolled his eyes. He wriggled one last time, took a deep breath and at the same time rotated his wrists and pushed the Cuspidian away with his feet, causing his body to twist. The sound of his own torn flesh was something distant and blurred. When the soles of his boots hit the ground, Kirk even managed to overcome the revolting nausea and turn off the little white lights fogging his vision... until he saw the second Cuspidian fall like a felled tree. That's when Spock turned (he always did everything when he wanted to and never a moment before, damn him), his hollowed eyes barely widening... Then, a hot, unbearable blade pierced Kirk's side, and he only had time to think, "What a shitty way to die."

He awoke suddenly with the sensation of two murderous, inhumanly cold hands pressed upon him: one on his hip, treacherously close to the wound, the other on his shoulder. Mr. Spock was holding Kirk down, his usual non-expressive expression, his eyes dark as beetles; Spock had managed to emerge in one piece from his confrontation with his monster, then. His beard, short and well-groomed, was, however, mottled with dried green blood in several places, while a bottle-green rivulet ran down one temple and dripped to his chin. Kirk stretched his fingers towards Spock's temple - then realised that his hands hurt like hell and aborted the gesture. A gasp made him press his head against the hard rock beneath him. "You didn't leave me there," he said.

Spock's grip on his shoulder grew obnoxiously intense.

"So you really want to make sure I die, you son of a bitch," Kirk muttered. This was a scenario he had pictured for himself many times, Spock holding him down as he did things to him - and sometimes they were pleasant little scenes, sometimes much less so. Either way, dying at the hands of his first officer was marginally better than being taken out by a lowly monster.

At least Spock was a first-rate foe with a fine brain and fearsome abilities. Who knew for how long Spock had waited silently and patiently for that moment... Kirk felt his body float, but it was not an unpleasant sensation. There was something comforting about falling for such an adversary. After all, even Spock must have considered Kirk a powerful enemy if he had waited so long to get rid of him, enduring his presence at close quarters all that time. Kirk had never had anyone by his side all that time, really. Spock had been the first. It was even-

"I am going to count to three," Spock said, his voice seeming to come from cavernous depths.

Ignoring the tearing pangs, Kirk slithered his hand across the damp earth until he could find Spock's arm, his wrist, his fingers pressing against Kirk's bleeding wound. Kirk brushed them with his own, his eyes closed. He liked the idea of going to hell holding Mr. Spock. Maybe he would be able to drag him down with him. 

"One-" And then the son of a bitch went no further, and Kirk felt such a pull that he screamed as he had never screamed since the day he had come into the world. 

For a moment he lost consciousness. When he recovered he found himself doubled over in pain, his vision painfully blurred. Beside him, Spock was placing  with inexplicable delicacy a huge spike completely covered with dark liquid on the ground.

His blood, Kirk thought. That dreadful thing was, until a moment before, stuck inside him. This time Kirk could barely suppress a gag. He didn't understand where he was, nor was he entirely sure of what was happening in general. The removal of that talon had exhausted his body and mind. All he knew was that his nostrils were filled with the smell of iron and mould and pewter. He hated that filthy place and all that damned nature, he wanted his ship, the coldness of that metal and steel armour, the comforting hum of its blue fire core.

He noticed that Spock was getting up and taking off his jacket. Kirk - Kirk didn't want to croak even like this, lost in the middle of the wilderness, damn it!

"You're leaving me here to bleed to death?" he groaned.

Spock rolled up his jacket and then did a curious thing. He took Kirk's hand, somehow avoiding the excised and torn areas, slapped the jacket hard against his wound causing him to curse, and then pressed Kirk's hand over it again.

" I am confident you know how to perform a compression, Captain," he said, that damned measured, deep voice of his just scratched at the corners.

Kirk saw Spock's back turn away. all tight in the blue science uniform. Kirk's body contracted into a whimper and he thought senselessly, "He'll be cold without his jacket, the weather on this planet is shit." Then, finally and all at once, came the daze, and Kirk fell prey to it. For an indefinite period of time he could only keep his eyes closed, and perhaps he fainted again. He opened his eyes again when a damned drop of moisture fell right in the middle of his forehead. He realised he was inside a cave. He quickly questioned his own body and discovered that he was panting, and that his jacket, suspiciously sticky, had been placed under his head. There had been interesting changes: his hands, lying on his chest, were all wrapped in the large leaves of the giant plants that grew on Cuspis. The wound in his side, though it hurt like a bitch, was soothed by a mysterious feeling of coolness, as if there was some kind of gel underneath the leaf that now covered it. 

Besides, Spock was back. He was back, and was kneeling on the bare floor beside him, intent on stepping on a greenish mixture with a stone.

"What is this stuff? You want to poison me?" said Kirk, in a whistling voice unworthy of him.

Spock's hand stopped for a moment and the stone remained suspended in midair. "You are already poisoned," he said in a perfectly neutral and detached tone, returning to work on his mixture. His shoulders were a perfect straight line, everything about him radiated cool, calm, concentration - in short, he was the usual, unreachable, impenetrable Spock. Except when he added: "And despite the constancy with which you declare me thirsty for your life, Captain, I am actually trying to save it." 

Kirk coughed and, had he not been intimately aware that he was already half a foot in the grave, he would have said he was choking on Spock's words. "Why would you?" he managed to throw out through sheer stubbornness.

Spock came even closer to him. Clearly he didn't give a damn about dignifying Kirk with an answer, as he was the most loyal of insubordinates. "You must swallow," he said instead. In the palm of his hand was that little pile of woody moss and - oh, no, absolutely not.

Kirk groaned and turned his head away. It was embarrassing enough to have let Spock handle and treat him like a helpless infant, to have allowed Spock control of his own body while he was unconscious, disgustingly useless, apocalyptically weak. He would not have been fed that crap, whether it was poison or not; he would not have succumbed like an invalid and, above all, he would not have allowed Spock to see him die in that condition - pathetic as a worm. Showing himself to be insignificant had always been unacceptable to Kirk, but for Spock to be the one to watch him fall like that... No, Kirk would have preferred to kill himself with his own hands, if only they hadn't been hurting him like hell.

But apparently someone else disagreed. 

Spock grabbed him by the chin and made him turn his head, bringing the mush closer to Kirk's mouth. Kirk felt Spock's thumb press under his lower lip, and so he clamped his lips shut with his last remaining strength. Too bad those last strengths were about as good as an insect's, so Kirk found himself completely at Spock's mercy, and this time it was worse because he was fully conscious. If at least Spock had given him a whack on the head it would have been more bearable. Instead Kirk felt inch by inch the slow, methodical invasion of his mouth operated by two fingers. 

Kirk emitted a contrite groan. Suffocated to death, and just in the reversal of that filthy little fantasy of fingers in his mouth that had sometimes secretly tormented him in the middle of the night? No way! Kirk sank his teeth into Spock's flesh, but Spock continued pressing on his tongue and thrusting, and eventually Kirk was forced to open his mouth wide, panting. Spock shoved some of the mixture down his throat, and then again and again, until Kirk closed his eyes, surrendering himself to the rhythm, his tongue welcoming the pressure of Spock's fingers. He felt his head whirling, perhaps because the act had something disturbingly erotic about it, or perhaps, and this was the more likely hypothesis, because not enough oxygen was getting to his brain. Maybe he had even moaned a little, but he was dying, so he indulged himself. He felt Spock solicitously massaging his throat to make him swallow, and that sensation was mixed with the immediate wave of fresh stickiness that descended to his stomach. He realised he must have been burning with fever up to that point; the medicine and Spock's hands were as cool and stinging as snow on a glacier. 

"That's the worst thing I've ever swallowed, and I've swallowed some really terrible stuff," he muttered, his eyes still closed. But he was already feeling miraculously better.

He felt Spock's thumb rub his lips, hasty but not cruel, once and then again. Kirk's lips barely parted and his chest sagged in a sigh. 

Hmm. Maybe he had drooled a little and Spock was cleaning him up.

"I gather you have not lost your sense of taste yet, Captain." 

Clenching his teeth against the pain in his hand, Kirk grabbed Spock's wrist with two fingers and forced it to stay there, Spock's thumb still at the corner of Kirk's mouth, his other icy fingertips barely resting on Kirk's neck. "Could that happen?" Kirk said, being shaken by a chill. Spock's skin was so fresh and Kirk was so tired, his heart was thumping and it felt like his mouth was too empty now. Damn fucked up alien physiognomy.

Spock pulled his hand out of his grasp. "I do not possess sufficient data regarding the loss of the five senses caused by Cuspidian venom," he said, ever pragmatic.

Kirk would have liked to grab him by that perfectly symmetrical fringe and shatter his algid composure, but he didn't have enough spirit to even tell him to go to hell. He told himself that he had now surrendered himself to Spock in such a dramatically compromising way that he could send his dignity on holiday for a while longer; so Kirk made himself comfortable and took a nap. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept in the presence of someone else, usually he didn-

Kirk suddenly jolted awake, alarmed by a stray thought. "You took that shit too, didn't you?" he said, rising up on his elbows. "You're wounded."

Spock was still kneeling beside him. The blood on his face had dried completely into dark scabs, and he was generally not looking well. The line of his mouth was tense and - Kirk hated to admit it, but Spock's face hadn't really been imperturbable to him for so long, and that millimetric crease in his eyebrows could only be a sign of discomfort. If something happened to Spock- 

"If anything happened to you, my chances of survival would be slashed in half," Kirk said.

Spock looked at him in silence for a moment. He wasn't so much as looking for something on Kirk's face, he was doing a fucking archaeological dig, his gaze hard and scarred and steady. "Everything has been arranged for the best," he said softly.

Kirk fell back with a snort. He felt suddenly lucid. "Yeah, even without this mush you'd still recover. You have no weak points."

Of the other silence. Spock lay down beside him, stiff like a mummy. "What made you come to that conclusion?" He seemed genuinely curious to know, perhaps even... amused.

"The fact that you have survived so far as my science officer, for one thing," Kirk replied. "Then, the dozens of attacks against your person that you foiled... the other dozens against my person that you foiled, paying the consequences." Spock had been stitched up by McCoy for taking a hit directed at Kirk about eighteen times, but who was keeping count? "Nothing hurts you, nothing upsets you. You're the perfect machine."

Spock made a tiny movement that caught Kirk's attention. They turned their heads at the same time and ended up eyes to eyes, only a few inches separating them, Kirk's breathing still a little quickened, Spock's slow but lopsided.

"I have my weakness," Spock said slowly, carefully. He said it as if he were making the daily report of the ship's condition: it was all true, limpid, an objective fact impossible to dispute. No escape, no sentimentality, it was just the way it was.

Kirk stopped breathing. One of Spock's eyebrows rose, slowly. Oh, fuck it.

"Me?" said Kirk, outraged. He felt himself blush furiously, and the scorn at that display of weakness made him heat up even more. It was as if a small nuclear explosion had taken place inside him, stirring everything up.

How could Spock confess such a thing? Had he gone nuts? He... Kirk? Him?! 

Kirk crossed his arms over his chest, exasperated, and as he did so the lesions on his hands squealed in protest, making him curse. A drop fell to his forehead again, but it was welcome. At least then he would cool down a little. He would not speak to Spock again until they had boarded the ship, he would-

Spock's chest rose and fell slowly in the highest expression of feeling granted to a Vulcan.

Kirk licked his lips. Knowing that Spock considered him his weakness made him feel even more in danger than before. What does one do with his weaknesses? But of course, one buries them or tries to eradicate and eliminate them. He would do that, and he expected the same from Spock. And that would have happened, without any doubt - without any doubt…

Kirk had to pull himself together. He felt his blood boiling. His senses were on alert, his body ready to snap, caught in the mix of the feverish frenzy and that new revelation. A new eagerness, combined with the throbbing of his wounds and the tingling of pain that stimulated his senses. His nerves were singing. Did Spock really want him? 

"So, what's the plan?" he tossed out to test the waters. He knew very well what had to be done in such cases. He was not the first rookie to pass by, he was the fucking captain of a flagship. But he wanted to hear Spock's voice, to study it once more. He yearned to sense a small uncertainty, a surge of subterranean, dark, vibrant desire that mirrored his own. He waited for it like a lurking animal.

"We must wait for the antidote to take effect, Captain. When we have regained some strength, we will reach the teleportation point." Reading a shopping list would have been more exciting.

"And what exactly is this antidote?" asked Kirk, annoyed.

"A plant grows on this planet that contains a gel capable of stimulating cellular regeneration, Captain. It is only suitable for repairing damage caused by Cuspidian venom, claws and appendages. I drew my own conclusions already aboard the ISS Enterprise by comparing the collected data with those in the datab-"

Kirk emitted a barely audible low chuckle, delighted.

"Do you find the subject amusing, Captain?"

"No, but I find it amusing that, even half dead, my cock reacts this way to hearing you speak in the language that is most congenial to you." Well, he had always known he wasn't all right in the head. The stuff he had ingested must certainly have had hallucinogenic and stimulating effects as well. All that eagerness he felt inside had been directed from his brain to his nether regions: Kirk felt himself quivering; he was a tightrope.

Spock's gaze slid deliberately between Kirk's legs. "You are not half dead, I assure you. As for the rest... it is a pleasant discovery."

Ah! So there was something.

Kirk held back a triumphant expression. His body commanded him that it was time to seduce, and that was a terrain on which he felt comfortable. "So you're telling me I'm not dying, Spock, are you?" he asked, lifting a thigh, well aware that Spock would follow his movement. "That I am not risking my life, so vulnerable in the presence of the ship's second highest ranking officer?"

Spock rolled gracefully onto his side and sighed. "You will not die in the foreseeable future, Captain. Not while I am around to prevent it."

Damn it! Wasn't he supposed to be the one seducing Spock? Kirk's heart was racing, as if he were a schoolboy on his first crush. He tried to calculate how long it had been since he had sex. Unfulfilled libido and the side effects of that damn green shit, that's what had fried his brain.

Kirk flashed the most seductive smile in his repertoire. "So you want my well-being, Spock."

"Having you in an optimal psychophysical condition is for me..." Spock pursed his lips briefly. "... Optimal."

Oh, where had his elegant eloquence gone? Kirk felt powerful, vibrant, a sun ready to burn. He was alive, and what better way to celebrate life than a good, rejuvenating orgasm? "Well, Spock, apparently my hands are reduced to a colander. If you are so enamoured of me, you won't mind attending to your captain's needs," he said with a grin. And, to make himself even clearer, he spread his thighs, exposing the bulge of his erection.

On Spock's face appeared the expression of one who realises he has just been framed. He seemed to ponder the matter, and finally conceded, without elaborating too much: "As you wish."

Without wasting time on small talk or foreplay, since he was a man of science, yes, but also of action, Spock stood over Kirk and went to pull down Kirk's trousers. The first contact of his icy fingers on the bare skin of Kirk's hips was a shock. Kirk lifted his bottom for Spock to pull down his pants, but his first officer pressed a palm, large and manly, below Kirk's navel.

"No, Captain. You are to stand still," Spock ordered quietly, and he was so confident and in control of the moment that Kirk lost all desire to answer him in a vulgar or mischievous or witty way. He just nodded.

Spock looked at him for a moment with those intense eyes of his, perhaps judging him. But he couldn't think himself so superior to Kirk, as a moment later he had his face pressed into Kirk's pale hairs and was rubbing his nose against Kirk's skin, going down. Kirk gasped - stand still, as if. He felt himself burning up, his fever must have skyrocketed, his back kept arching. Spock went for it like an admiral in battle, and without a shadow of hesitation took Kirk's cock in his mouth in one thrust. Kirk cursed, his breath split in two in his lungs, but Spock gave him no rest; as if Kirk had been a territory to conquer, he proceeded to take and release his cock in a punishing rhythm.

Was this written in Surak's teachings? Kirk turned his head to the side to stifle a laugh, but the thing that took away any desire to joke was the unexpected turn in Spock's actions. 

Spock released Kirk's cock, ignoring his protests. First he traced the circumference of Kirk's balls with the tip of his tongue, and then parted his lips on them in a kiss. Kirk uttered a surprised cry and stiffened. He had expected Spock to suck him off for a while, and that was more than fine with him; it was a show of submission and obedience, and his virility would not be harmed. But then Spock continued to descend, slipping his hands under Kirk's ass to lift him without him moving, and finally he landed on Kirk's opening, his hot breath crashing down between Kirk's buttocks. 

"Not there, I'm not..." stammered Kirk.

And then he felt Spock's breathing alter for the first time, as if he had missed a tempo or run a thousand-year marathon. Had Kirk ever before sensed even the slightest sign of uncertainty in Spock?

His first officer, ever distinguished and measured, perfect in everything, always at his side, far too upstanding for his ship, for his life... Kirk stood motionless, panting, feeling exposed and terrified as never before. It was all supposed to be an amusing game, a mocking provocation aimed at Spock to make him surrender first, to shame him into admitting his weakness for Kirk to Kirk, to keep him in his grasp - to hold him close... no, no! Kirk had not asked Spock to reveal more, he had not asked for intimacy, he didn't want to know, and he didn't want Spock to know. But why then, why were his limbs all like a rope waiting to be pulled? 

And then Spock's measure suddenly collapsed with a yearning, longing breath, and he wrapped his lips around Kirk's opening, again and again.

Kirk cried out, shocked that Spock was kissing him like that, that he wanted to see and taste that part of him. Kirk's vision was clouded, his head spinning. This was too much, no one had ever touched him there like that. He felt the tip of Spock's tongue slither inside him, working its way in greedily. 

"Ah, no, not like that," Kirk murmured, his voice a whisper, and closed his legs around Spock's head, riding a hot pulse. He heard Spock let out a groan, a clean, vibrating sound he would never have imagined produced by Spock's vocal cords, and he groaned too, crawling the soles of his feet to the floor. Spock was not disturbed by the grip of Kirk's legs; in fact, it seemed he would not have preferred to be anywhere else. One of his hands flew around one of Kirk's thighs and squeezed it hard to pull Kirk closer to him. His tongue lapped around Kirk's opening and then went back to stroking inside his walls insistently. Finally, as he had done before taking Kirk's cock at once, he claimed him with a deep, determined thrust, and Kirk saw stars. He tried to kick Spock, but he swung Kirk's thigh over his shoulder and continued to thrust his tongue at a point inside Kirk, because he was a damn clever bastard and he understood perfectly well that he had checkmated Kirk. 

The pressure of Spock's pointed ear on his inner thigh drove Kirk mad, Spock's wet breath between his legs drove Kirk mad, his shiny black head bobbing on him drove Kirk mad. Reduced to the brink of delirium, Kirk reached forward and impetuously grabbed Spock's hair. But instead of pushing him away, as his head commanded, he pressed Spock even harder into him, eager to feel his tongue sink deeper inside. In the worst display of insubordination ever, Spock resisted and pulled away, leaving Kirk's opening clenching for more.

"Off with your hands, Captain," he whispered, his voice cracking, the words suffused with a strange feeling.

A sob escaped Kirk. He didn't give a damn about feelings, he could have choked Spock. "No! Don't you dare!" he protested, not knowing what he was really ordering him not to do, and now he was little more than a capricious kid, but he didn't care about that either.

Spock squeezed Kirk's leg firmly, his fingers leaving a furrow in the already strained skin, returning to that trace like a reassurance, pain and pleasure blended deliciously together. 

"Shh, t'hy'la, you have me at your mercy," Spock said, reverently kissing the heated skin between Kirk's leg and buttock.

Kirk's heart clenched in his chest. "Then show me," he commanded with a growl, because he was afraid it would sound like a plea otherwise. 

Spock sank his teeth into his skin like a dog and rubbed his cheek against Kirk's leg, watching him pant in silence. How different Spock was now, how different he had suddenly become from his immovable first officer, always icy and aloof, calm and unreachable. Now his eyes were two coals of fire and there was something primal in him. A need that had finally emerged showing the animal Kirk had always known was hidden beneath the Vulcan. And Kirk realised that he was not afraid, because between two animals one could understand each other well. 

He wanted to hold his hand, to intertwine their fingers. He knew those little Vulcans freaks kissed each other with their hands. "Give me," he said senselessly, "take me, whatever, I don't care - just do something. Ah! Do something, damn you, don't you see I'm all yours?" 

Spock closed his eyes, his lips parting. "As I am yours, t'hy'la, in my entirety," he said, as if reciting a sacred oath. "But your wounds are still fresh." 

However, contradicting his own intentions, Spock stroked Kirk's opening with his thumb. Almost as if he was doing it without realising it, attracted by the thought of taking Kirk in any way.

Kirk didn't even suppress the shudder that shook him. "I don't give a shit about my injuries."

"This disposition of yours is not my concern, Captain."

Still, Kirk felt a fingertip press into the centre of his opening, and his swollen erection reacted to the stimulus by tapping on Kirk's thigh. Without thinking, Kirk brought his hand to his mouth, biting his index finger, and flinched. He couldn't look away from Spock, who was as if lit by an inner desire, his expression dark and throbbing, his hair in disarray for the first time. They were both out of their minds with lust.

Spock gently moved Kirk's hand from his mouth and then said darkly, "You are going to hurt yourself. You must control yourself." He seemed to be reminding that to himself as well, and this sent Kirk completely over the edge.

"Fuck control," he grunted, and then began firing all the worst insults he could think of at him, eager to undermine Spock, to move him, to elicit a reaction from him. "You soulless bastard, you son of a bitch, traitor to your country, mutinous worm - mmph!" 

At last, at last, Spock pressed his palm to Kirk's mouth, that hand of his that was his deadliest weapon, those alien, lethal fingers mere millimetres from Kirk's meld points. Kirk could have exulted. He immediately licked Spock's palm and felt him tremble in surprise; then he lifted his chin and moved his face until he could take a finger in his mouth, and began to suck eagerly. He knew about Vulcans' little perversions - and it was a fortuitous coincidence that they matched his own on that point. He had always thought that sucking on Spock's fingers would be a bit like giving him a good blow job, and judging by the look on his first officer's face he hadn't gone that far. Spock hadn't reopened his eyes or moved his finger from Kirk's opening; he seemed completely lost in the moment and had begun to push his phalanx into him. An extreme satisfaction took control of Kirk's head, heart, and body; he was certainly shaking all of Spock's sensory receptors stimulating that way his very sensitive fingers on two fronts. 

Thrilled by the regained advantage, Kirk released Spock's finger to whisper a string of aroused nonsense. "Do you find me very hot? Wet? You like that, don't you?"

Spock pressed Kirk's lower lip with his index finger, pulling it down, and Kirk stuck out his tongue and stroked at the intersection of Spock's index and middle fingers, making him hiss. Spock's finger sank completely inside Kirk's ass up to the knuckle, eliciting a long, high moan from Kirk.

"Yes, there! Like that, there!"

"Ah, Jim..." Spock followed a second finger to the first and began to fuck Kirk in earnest. 

That burning friction was all Kirk had ever wanted, and Spock kept hitting the same spot over and over again, as if he possessed complete knowledge and mastery of Kirk's body. Kirk couldn't take it anymore. He bit down hard on Spock's middle finger and allowed himself to climax, loosening his grip only when he felt the taste of copper in his mouth. He stroked the bruised area with his tongue, and when he felt Spock push his finger down his throat without any regard for Kirk, he knew Spock was coming too. Kirk proudly dominated the gag reflex and then, stunned and satisfied, held Spock's finger in his mouth a little longer, just to stimulate him a little more than was bearable. 

Spock hissed again; he pulled out of Kirk and knelt at his side in one go. The sudden total lack of physical contact after having him so close was disorienting for Kirk. He stopped himself just in time before doing something absurd like extending his arm to call Spock to him. They stood in silence to catch their breath, both shaken, separated. A vague feeling of discomfort and coldness was beginning to creep up on Kirk. Although it seemed that the activity had not reopened his wounds, the bandages had shifted and the injuries were itchy. The places where Spock had bitten him throbbed painfully, and he felt an uncomfortable burning between his legs. But what burned most was the memory of the absurd words he had spoken out loud. 

Spock's eyes were still closed. He seemed to be meditating and Kirk found that ridiculous. He waited for him to say something, to acknowledge what had happened - he was more than ready to defend himself if he was denigrated. After all, when people had sex, they said a lot of rubbish, didn't they? But when Spock continued to show no signs of being alive, demonstrating instead that he was back in his usual shell of distance, indifference and restraint, Kirk lost his patience. 

"Now let's rest," he ordered.

"Yes, Captain," said Spock at once, lying down mechanically and turning his back on Kirk. 

Ah, so the son of a bitch still had a tongue! Kirk turned his head away, controlling the erratic beating of his stupid heart. "I'd like to make one thing clear," he said after a few moments, because he could never shut his mouth even if his life depended on it. "You said a word earlier."

The silence in the cave was so tense that Kirk knew immediately he had hit the right spot. He wasn't the only one who'd been too exposed and made a shitload of mistakes, then. He gloated to himself and continued, in all seriousness: 

"You said t'hy'la. Is that some Vulcan predestination bullshit? Because you know what I think."

Sometimes, when they'd happened to be alone on a mission, or in Kirk's quarters, they'd mysteriously found themselves talking about things Kirk didn't feel like listening to as much as Spock didn't feel like talking about. And yet, it had happened anyway. 

Spock remained silent for so long that Kirk believed an answer would never come. He would have to be content with humiliating him, and generally that would make Kirk happy. Why couldn't he feel better now, though? 

"It was inevitable to become t'hy'la, Captain," Spock finally said, his voice an unexpected crackle against the cave walls that immediately quickened Kirk's pulse. "But we became it of our own free will, building it piece by piece together."

Kirk was too tired to put up with that cryptic bullshit that reeked vaguely and frighteningly of cheesiness. He'd almost died, dammit! First from the venom of an unlikely monster and then from the threat of not being dutifully fucked by his first officer after a lifetime of poorly concealed mutual innuendo. Now he just wanted to sleep, and so he did.

Kirk hadn't felt so refreshed in a lifetime. His wounds had miraculously healed, courtesy of the hallucinogenic gel. Even the fever had been overcome. His muscles were relaxed, and if he looked in the mirror Kirk was sure he would see a beautiful rosy complexion on his shining face. Spock, on the other hand, was sluggish in a peculiar way. Not only had he not woken up before Kirk, which was a rarity in itself, but he hadn't heard Kirk wake up either. 

Kirk gave him a kick on the shoulder with his boot, and Spock rose all at once like a reanimated corpse. 

"It's time we got out of this place," Kirk said, giving him a shifty look. Spock nodded, his greenish face matching the atmosphere of Cuspis. 

Kirk headed for the exit without waiting for him. The time of mental fog was over. It had been a nice moment and Kirk had felt good, but it was time to wake up. "As soon as we set foot on board, I'll order nuclear torpedoes to be dropped on the heads of these damn sunflower seeds, mineral reserves be damned-"

From behind him came a small thud and Kirk spun around. Spock was holding on to the cave wall, half slumped on the ground. Kirk stood petrified for a moment, trying to interpret the scene. "What the fuck does that mean," he then said.

Spock's head was falling forward, and he seemed to be able to pull it up to meet Kirk's eyes with an immense effort. "It is the poison, Captain," he said softly, his hands sliding over the rock. He ended up on his knees, almost bent in two. His shoulders rose and fell slowly.

"The poison?" said Kirk, dazed. And then the rage came all at once pressing into his forehead as if Kirk had been a whistling teapot full of boiling water: "The fucking poison?"

He ran to Spock, grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and pulled him up, and how fucking heavy could a Vulcan be?, it was madness. "What does that mean?" he barked, shaking his first officer. "Speak!"

Spock's knees thought it was time to give way and he sagged like an empty sack on Kirk, just to make it better. Spock was freezing, more than the normal coldness of a Vulcan body - he was a piece of ice, he looked like a dead thing.

"If you don't give me an explanation now," Kirk said, sepulchral, "it's mutiny, Spock, I mean it."

Spock pressed his forehead into the crook of Kirk's neck. He took a shuddering breath, as if he had to work up the courage to break away from him, but then he did so with all the dignity he had.

"You didn't take the antidote," Kirk said, a dangerous edge in his voice.

Spock spoke as if he were delivering a recorded message. "The plant is present in this area in modest quantities sufficient for a single dose. The chances of us both being able to save ourselves were higher if you had taken the antidote. If I had done so, given the severity of your injuries, you would without a doubt have died before we reached the beaming point. Since my Vulcan metabolism is more resistant-" 

"You said everything had been taken care of!" exploded Kirk, setting straight again Spock, who was sagging to the side.

"I took a calculated risk," Spock whispered. "However, I had estimated a larger window of time for-" 

"You really calculated that risk like shit, Spock, let me tell you," Kirk muttered. He crouched down and slung Spock over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, looped one of Spock's arms around his own neck and held him by one leg and one hand. Kirk started to run, and thought it was kinda appropriate to dedicate a series of nice little sentences to Spock to let him know what he thought of him.

"How could you do this to me, you filthy alien? I always knew you were a double-crosser ready to sink a knife in my back as soon as I looked away. You're worse than poison, worse than that filthy Cuspidian thorn, you're a traitorous bastard and I swear I'll spit on your ashes if-" His breath caught in his throat. He thought he spotted two twinkling eyes in the midst of the trees, but that was not quite the fucking moment for it. "Whoever you are, if you jump out of your bush now, I swear I will disintegrate you before you can explode from your wretched seed, you vegetable sewer rat!"

The Cuspidians did not understand Standard, but that one evidently understood the universal language of one who had reached his fucking limit.

"Captain," groaned Spock, an unsteady edge to his voice, "I do not think it is wise to shout... It will attract-"

"You shut up, Spock, damn it! You shut up!" yelled Kirk, and narrowly missed tripping over a lousy vine. "If you are still conscious enough to contest my saving you, then follow my orders: you must-"

Spock's side pressed against Kirk's ear, and there where his heart was beating the sound was so faint...

"Don't leave me, asshole, do you hear me?" Kirk didn't even have a free hand to wipe the mucus dripping from his nose, damn it! "If you leave me, I will die. If you leave me, I die. T'hy'la. Do you really want me to die?"

"No, Captain," Spock croaked, his fingers loosely twining around Kirk's. "Never."

"Then stay with me, you hear me? Stay with me!" And he did indeed stumble into a vine. "Emperor help me, how much I hate you!”

Spock awoke when Kirk had long since put away his dignity and desire to give a damn. After kicking everyone out of sickbay, Kirk lay down next to his first officer, one leg thrown over Spock's hips, his arm up on the pillow to encircle Spock's head. That way Spock couldn't move even if he wanted to - which didn't mean he didn't try. Spock was clever, though, and after the first attempt, noting Kirk's murderous expression, he lay back down quietly.

"Cuspis?" he inquired, polite and dry.

"Wiped out," Kirk said with satisfaction.  

"My conditions-"

"Perfectly within your fucked-up Vulcan standards. First we had a team go down and retrieve the plant, then we swept up the rest."

Spock pondered for a moment. "I thought you were crying , Captain." 

"Did I mention the hallucinogenic properties of the plant?"

Spock exhaled a tiny sigh, which in his language amounted to a blatant scoff at Kirk. Kirk kept his other hand on Spock's collarbone; he could have strangled him, but instead he contented himself with slipping two fingers under Spock's collar. 

"You also uttered a word, Captain," Spock observed after a while they had stood like that, together breathing softly. "T'hy'la. Do you understand what that means?"

"I got the idea," Kirk said, pressing his nose to that shiny black hair. "It means you're mine and there's no escape." And the other way around, he thought.

Spock seemed to assess that fact with extreme seriousness. "That is a surprisingly accurate description," he finally decreed. He certainly had it clear in his mind as well the "the other way around". He seemed to have taken it with a certain class, as if, after all, he had arrived at it long before Kirk.

Kirk clicked his tongue on his palate, annoyed at being outsmarted like that. Seeing that this was the way things had gone and there was nothing he could do about it, he snuggled - no, he didn't snuggle. Kirk clutched his first officer roughly. He had to admit, he was a little tried. After all, in the last few hours, his head had been bombarded with constant scenarios of his demise. Fortunately, however, he had managed to survive this time as well, and there would be plenty of time to see if he would eventually perish in the worst way he could imagine. 

Even more fortunate was that Spock could not read his mind.

"Rest assured, Captain. I will avoid by all means possible having you die alone away from me, and when your time comes, I will make sure you are not far from my arms, as you instead fear."

Oh, well, fuck it.

Kirk took Spock's hand in his own and proceeded to cover it with gross, lurid, sappy Vulcan kisses. "The worst thorn in my side I've ever had, Mr. Spock, is you."

And Spock, the piece of shit, didn't even move a muscle and continued to stand there getting his hands and face kissed, and he couldn't have been more blissful if he was himself Kirk's weak spot - which, in fact, he really was. 

"This is an honour for me, Captain," he said.