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[perform_admirably]

So far as Spock is aware, Jim alone has yet to be over this late into the night.

In combination with Leonard McCoy, on a few occasions, for a variety of reasons, but Spock cannot recall Jim Kirk alone having spent so many hours in Spock's company, at such a late hour - and he certainly never had spent so many of them curled on Spock's sofa. Which is, perhaps unexpectedly, large, deep, and soft enough to encourage restful sleep but not so much as to be difficult to stand from once you've sat on the cushions.

It's a bad habit, but Spock does not always find his way back to the bed once he's started working on something at the sofa.

Jim has been in the small apartment for long enough that Spock eventually puts aside his stubbornness to retreat to the bathroom to change into a pair of dark, flannel pyjamas and brush his teeth.

When he returns, whatever space he had managed to find for himself on the sofa before standing has disappeared somewhere beneath Jim's legs. He nudges one of Jim's knees with the back of his hand.

"At this hour, I would be more comfortable if you would stay until the morning. Or was this simply the plan all along, and I had not yet been duly informed?"

Comments

[to_boldly]

To its credit, the movie about plants had actually been pretty interesting. Jim's never thought about it before, what it might take to live in hostile conditions, in sun and in snow, on mountains or far beneath the sea. Plants are tenacious little bastards, and Jim can get behind them.

If he'd begun nodding off around hour three, it's only due to the late hour. He doesn't even realize he's dozing until Spock is suddenly before him, freshly scrubbed and in the most adorable set of pajamas Jim has ever seen. His eyes widen, then narrow around a large, innocent smile.

"Have you ever known me to be so nefarious?" he asks, and naturally is well aware that in two versions of the universe, Spock absolutely has. The one standing before him has yet to learn quite so directly, but Jim's willing to believe Spock's made some logical leaps by now. "How late is it, anyway?"

[perform_admirably]

"Yes, I have," Spock answers, without qualms as to the truth of it, though certainly also not concerned about that particular trait of Jim Kirk's. He simply raises both brows before gently sliding Jim's legs out of a spot large enough to seat himself in.

Jim may be captain in Spock's every esteem, but it's Spock's sofa.

"And it is seventeen past one in the morning. They turned most of the outdoor lighting off seventeen minutes ago. It would be more safe to sleep here."

[to_boldly]

"You think I can't point a phaser past midnight?" Jim grins, but he's entirely amenable to staying the night if Spock is offering. Just as Spock suspected, that's been, if not Jim's design, his hope, and he's already been rewarded with the sight of Vulcan pjs.

"Speaking of sleeping," he adds with a small squirm, "This is a better couch than I'd have pegged you for, but I'm not sure about sleeping on it." However much he might have been lightly snoring on it only moments before. "I've got lower back issues."

[perform_admirably]

"Lower back issues," Spock sounds back with a short nod of his head in a sort of facetious agreement. "Certainly I would not want to cause you any discomfort so soon after your personal ordeal, Captain Kirk."

And it is, until this point, that Spock has been teasing, in his own way. But now, his voice grows into a strange uncertainty, as if suddenly taking two steps back from an unfamiliar animal. If there is something that he would like to avoid in anything, it is to be presumptuous.

Spock leans backward against the back of the deep sofa, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. "I have no compunctions against your taking the bed - it would be rude of me to offer anything less, after making the strong suggestion that you stay to begin with."

Or, they could both take the bed.

[to_boldly]

Jim watches him sink into the couch with a smile that's somehow predatory and smitten all at once. "I'm not all that concerned with what's rude and what's polite," he says, still lounging, yet somehow more in Spock's space. "Unless we're talking about my ass taking up your whole couch, when it's clearly meant for two."

Fingers spread wide and warm against Spock's knee, Jim continues, "Your bed, too. Seems a waste, me taking up the whole thing."

[perform_admirably]

He needs the encouragement; encouragement that Jim seems to naturally offer when it's needed the most. Not moving from where he is, or even dropping his head to look at where the heat of Jim's hand touches him, he responds visibly only with a sharper rise of his brow, and the brief flare of his nose.

"When the bed is clearly meant to be taken up by two, you seem to be suggesting. I've always found it curious, your habit of speaking in generals about specifics. I can't promise that I am very skilled at sharing one. As I have only done so with one other individual. But you very clearly seem to want to try."

He gives a nod, finally, toward the dark-eyed, hunting expression that Jim wears on his handsome face.

[to_boldly]

"I do," says Jim, because he does, he wants to try, but Spock is right, he does tend to couch these desires in general terms. And it is curious, when Jim is, in all other circumstances, direct. "I'm trying to give you an out, Spock. Like you said, and I kind of figured, you've only shared a bed with one other person, whereas I..."

Jim trails off with a sheepish, if not entirely apologetic smile. "I have not, which isn't necessarily something to brag about, I just. I already know my limits, and I don't have many. But I don't yours, and I worry that if I open my mouth and tell you exactly what I want to do to you, you'll run screaming." Jim pauses. "For a Vulcan quality of screams, at least."

[perform_admirably]

"I do not require 'an out,'" comes the reply, in a voice far calmer, much more certain, than the long sigh of determination that leaves Spock's lips a breath later, as he lifts himself from the cradle of the sofa and turns to slide his long fingers under the hem of Jim's shirt.

He is not certain that he likes the blushful, smiling tone that Jim's taken about his personal behavior - it has never bothered Spock what the other man does with his personal life; only his professional one. And outside of the terms of job and continuing education, he truthfully finds only mild amusement in how thoroughly free that Jim Kirk is with himself.

To hold him to an alien standard would be ... not particularly logical.

"If you are concerned that I do not already intellectually have an understanding of the variety of things that may be involved in a physical relationship, then may your concerns be alleviated. I am an adult. But the further that relationship progresses, the more I become concerned that I may be committing you to something that you may develop regret for. More simply, the situation is contextually strange in this location, and I would not want you to develop buyer's remorse upon your hopeful return to your position on your ship."

[to_boldly]

Jim exhales a laugh for that turn of phrase, skin leaping beneath the unexpected press of Spock's fingers. Taking him by the wrist, Jim's guides Spock's hand further beneath his shirt, holds it splayed against his ribs.

"Okay, how about we decide to let me worry about that - and seriously, I don't expect it to be a problem, I could recite all the reasons why but let's save that for a time when we're stroking egos instead of other things - and I'll let you worry about how much is too much. You'll just tell me, right?" Jim asks, easing closer, hand lifted to skirt along one of Spock's tapered brows. "I trust you."

[perform_admirably]

Even picking up, the heartbeat under his fingertips seems sluggish in a way that is inexplicably arousing, and his hand beneath Jim's shirt explores slowly, readily, sliding over the round of the muscle of Jim's shoulder before sinking low again to map out, with curiosity, the planes of his torso.

Everywhere his fingers touch, he can draw from Jim's trust, which seems not to have faltered since the moment it developed, seemingly out of nowhere, following Spock into the belly of an alien ship. Even when Spock's attitude had become its very poorest in Darrow, that trust still seemed to be foundational, a part of Jim.

That there is desire now too, and easy understanding, only reinforce what has been there for some time.

"A fair point. Speaking about the bed is not getting us any closer to it, figuratively or literally. And I would be a poor host indeed if I kept my guest away from bed later into the night than he would like."

Maybe it is not always a terrible thing to speak in generals of specifics.

[to_boldly]

Jim is quiet, content to be explored by that relatively cool hand, eyes on Spock's face and thinking that he might not be a touch telepath himself, but he's learning to read him. There's focus in Spock's eyes, an interest that isn't at all clinical, and a small but growing hunger beneath that makes Jim's heart beat quicker still.

"C'mon," he murmurs, standing and pulling his shirt over his head, lest Spock actually be contemplating sleep. Barechested now, Jim reaches for Spock's hand and pulls him up, walking backwards towards the bedroom and not quite able to squash the thought that he's got a hell of a prize in tow.

[perform_admirably]

Allowing himself to be led off of the warmth of the couch cushions, he realizes that it is the first time that Jim has ever shed a piece of clothing in quite this context - the first time that nudity was inherently sexual between the two of them.

He had certainly never imagined that he would want this with Jim Kirk - had never imagined that he would press for it so easily, allow himself to see it as simply a way to get closer to an individual who enriches Spock's own experience in ways that language is woefully inadequate in communicating.

Spock lets the quiet noise of the television stay on in the background, wrapping his hand around the knob to the bedroom door to shut it behind them as they pass under the doorway. Turning both of their bodies around, navigating the familiar number of steps to the edge of the bed, he settles himself down onto the corner of it until he is seated on the rich purples and browns of the bedspread.

Burying both hands beneath the waist of Jim's pants, he gives a pointed tug downward with his thumbs. The movement is small, harsh - restraint compelling eager curiosity into a question, and a desire to get Jim naked as efficiently as possible now that he has started the process himself.

"Should I tell you that you are, as a specimen, quite exemplary?"

[to_boldly]

Jim chuckles, hands gripping Spock's shoulders to steady himself against a sudden rush of lust. "I think that if I'm a specimen, you should get to examining," he says, and undoes the button of his jeans with his thumb, pulling the zipper down, but not wriggling out of them just yet. With Spock's hands knuckle deep in them already, he figures maybe Spock wants to do the actual divesting.

It hasn't escaped him that he's about to be naked, with Spock still dressed from ankles to the top most button of his soft flannel shirt. It should feel dirty, like he's about to defile something pure and earnest, but mostly it just feels exciting, and Jim resolves not to rip Spock out of his pajamas for a moment longer. Having spent so many hours imagining what's underneath, he's no longer sure he'll be able to control himself around the real thing. "Go ahead, Spock."

[perform_admirably]

Receiving an unequivocal go-ahead as he watches Jim's hand stray from his own narrow shoulder to the closure of his pants, Spock's brows narrow in a strange, mild parody of determination and he folds the waist of the pants over, peeling them downward an inch at a time, until they are no longer held up by a pair of well-formed thighs and fall to pool just around Jim's knees, leaving Spock to press his palms against the soft skin there, with its bare scatter of gold hair, and the heat that grows the closer that Spock's fingers get to the join of Jim's legs to his hips.

The hands leap away, almost as if in surprise, when one of his wrists brushes against what's beneath the thin fabric of Jim's underwear, and Spock stands again, littering brushes and rubs along the flat of Jim's abdomen as he rises, until he can meet the other man's eyes with his own, betraying the brief touch of his cool hands with the brown swamped to a thin ring next to heavy black pupils.

He steals an equally cool kiss before saying, "You're going to have to step out of those."

[to_boldly]

"Yeah," Jim breathes, as addled for Spock's blown eyes as he is for every touch, each one of them startlingly cooler than he expects. He wonders if he feels hot to the touch in turn, and hopes, as he steps out of his jeans and kicks them away, that it reminds Spock a little of his warm planet, of home.

He wants to touch him, wants to stand back and let Spock look, wants to grab his hands and show him where he likes to be touched and how - Jim wants so many things that for a moment, he can't even begin, then he shakes himself and surges forward, clasping Spock's sharp cheekbones inside his hands to kiss him hard.

[perform_admirably]

The roughness of the kiss seems to slip directly down Spock's throat and into his belly, filling it with coiling, liquid tension, a buzzing that needs to be gotten rid of, that his body knows by instinct the way around. It was not Jim's body that he was attracted to, not initially - and he had not in turn been attracted to Jim with his own body.

But they had gotten there for whatever reasons, and now that they were certain that they both wanted it, it seemed not something to deny or fight against. Not when the arousal that he felt looking at, touching Jim's body, was so organic, unmeditated.

Without tearing away from the kiss, taking the breath he needs in a ragged pant when and where he can between their mouths, Spock's hands drop down the length of Jim's back, strong and lean, to find the handhold that they want, greedily slipping beneath the curve of his ass to press Jim against his own body, to overbalance them backward, to move them onto the bed, rolling, to place Jim's feverish body below his own.

[to_boldly]

It's startling, how easily Spock can maneuver him, Jim's few attempts to wrest back control so summarily dismissed that he's grinning by the time his back hits the bed. "Pushy," he says, but he's all but radiating satisfaction. Human strength isn't Jim's only virtue, after all, and he's never balked at fighting dirty.

Spock had once praised him for his humanity, for being frightful and surprising, and Jim is armed with more than attitude. Reaching between them now, Jim palms Spock's dick over his adorable pajamas, licks the tip of his pointed ear and says, "Never underestimate a human with a big stick."

[perform_admirably]

The blood rushing through Spock's veins feels like ice-water next to the warmth of Jim's palm, even through the fabric of his clothing, and when it closes around him, the flesh wakes as easily as if it had known that self-certain touch for ages, though they have never been this intimate with one another.

Pressing into the heat from below him with canted hips, he moves forward toward his goal despite the sensation, all but pressing Jim's face away from his own, and the thin skin of the taper of his ear, to press Jim's lips apart with his thumb, seeking entrance past white teeth with the same even determination that had been on display from the moment Jim had leaned into him on the sofa.

Spock's free hand moves, distracted, to attempt its very best at unfastening the number of buttons down the length of his shirt.

"I neither under nor over-estimate you," he says, voice, for the first time, shopworn at the edges.

[to_boldly]

With a vested interest in seeing that shirt come off himself, Jim would help, but Spock's getting hard beneath his hand, warmer as the blood rushes in, and Jim has to close his eyes around a groan. His lips feel swollen, puffy with kisses, but they wrap around Spock's finger eagerly enough, his cheeks hollowing as he sucks. Behind closed lids, it's easy to get confused, to imagine it's not Spock's thumb he's wrapped his tongue around but the steadily hardening length in his hand.

"C'mon," Jim says, eyes hot when he opens them, watching Spock's fingers at his buttons. "Get it the hell off, wanna see you."

[perform_admirably]

The language is skirting the edges of crass, the rasp of Jim's tongue wet and too much against the sensitive pad of Spock's thumb, and Spock fights for a suspended moment, breath stuttering before he gives in to the urge to rub himself against the unfamiliar feel of another man's hand against the growing hardness of his groin.

It would not have mattered had Jim had his lips pressed around him there, for as overwhelming as it is to touch Jim, fingering the contour of his lips, dragging hands damp with the other man's saliva across the line of his chin and the scratch of unshaven stubble to drag his nails along the shorn hair at the base of the round of Jim's skull.

Ah, Jim is all that he manages, quiet and riding a sharp breath, Spock still distracted by the need to feel that hot mouth on him again. As obediently as if it were an order, Spock hooks a finger into the gap of his shirt to pull the rest of the way down, dragging the buttons apart, stretching the strings that attach them, but the pajama top comes off, and Spock slides one arm out of it to press it up over one white shoulder.

[to_boldly]

He's pale, and with what rational thoughts Jim has left to him he marvels at it, that a desert creature could be so white. But Spock's been in space, and then beneath the gray skies of Darrow, cold and covered, and - Jim notes with a short intake of breath - flushing green across his chest and shoulders. Then he opens his mouth around Jim's name, and Jim flushes, too, bright and hot and too caught up to wonder how he must look, all mottled next to Spock's near marble flesh.

"Yeah?" he questions, teasing, emboldened enough to slip his hand inside Spock's smart boxer briefs and take hold of him, skin on skin. He's warm, not hot, but it isn't strange so much as fascinating, and Jim reaches with his free hand, skirting fingers along a cool ribcage to tweak a pale green nipple.

[perform_admirably]

Now that he is less occupied by the feel of Jim's hot tongue curled around the pad of his thumb, he steadies his breathing again, pulls together his mind and senses enough to focus only enough to grit his teeth around a deep, growling noise of pleasure which he holds in as Jim slips into his pants and takes him against his palm, searing.

The shirt is forgotten, in favor of the pants and briefs, which Spock slides down the length of himself with snake-like efficiency before finding the nearest pieces of Jim Kirk that he can to wrap fingers around, to pull from the sensation of that hand still wrapped around him, large and rough, playing his body with the skill of musician, in a way so different from any of the lovemaking of his past - slow, caring, but lacking a certain energy that right now has Spock shutting his eyes tightly as he speaks.

"What are you going to do to me?"

[to_boldly]

"Ideally?" Jim asks, catching Spock's hand in his and thinking hard and wild - Spock beneath him, panting for breath, on top of him, eyes rolling back in his head as Jim takes both their cocks in hand, on his back and stunned for the feel of Jim moving deep within him, hovering over him, Jim's own legs hanging haphazard over his shoulders.

"Everything, Spock," Jim replies, stroking him and cursing himself his own still clad boxers. "I want to do everything."

[perform_admirably]

It slams into Spock as quickly and sharply as a fist to the gut, what he sees through the connection of their fingers, and he squeezes Jim's hand in his own with a tightness enough to mark the skin under his fingers with the white half-moon of his perfectly-trimmed fingernails.

He feels the length of him twitch in Jim's own grip before he loosens his grasp, running his fingers along the insides of Jim's own, up and down the valleys between them, along the lines of his palm, until Spock knows that he is as heavy and hard against Jim's palm as he will get.

Spock had not needed his eyes to be open to know the expression on Jim's face, but they slide open again as he leans forward to press permission against Jim's red, wet lips with his own.

"Please," he says, voice faltering again in its usual modulation, distracted. "But let us start with one thing."

Letting go and moving down the length of Jim's body, supple muscle and delightful, even proportions, he finds first the start of the thin scattering of hair that leads down to Jim's cock, and then the waistband of his underwear, which Spock draws down with a sharp snap of his arms, dragging sharp knuckles against Jim as he frees the man below him from the last piece of clothing between Spock and his own wandering curiosities.

[to_boldly]

Jim closes his eyes and curses, feeling cool air that's certainly real and Spock's gaze that only might be gathering at the base of his cock. "One thing," he repeats, trying to decide, but his body knows, ratcheting him up at the waist to take Spock's pale shoulders in his hands and lever him beneath.

"I want to fuck you, Spock," he says, touching his mouth to the full weight of Spock's bottom lip. "You don't have to let me. Now or ever. But I want to."