Work Text:
5.
Jim sighed with relief as Spock released the manacles from his hands and feet. Then he frowned. Hadn't Spock been confined in much the same way? Jim wasn't sure, because it was very dark in here, but surely it didn't make any sense to tie them up differently?
"Not complaining, Spock, but how did you get free?"
He was quite sure Spock raised an eyebrow, even though he couldn’t see it.
"I pilfered the unlocking device from the guard when he crouched to set down this morning's unpalatable gruel. It took me some minutes to understand the mechanism."
And he showed Jim an odd purple plastic box thing that conveniently glowed in the dark. Jim was only distracted for a moment, however.
"And just how did you manage that, if your arms and legs were bound?"
Spock did not answer. Nor would he meet Jim's gaze until long after they had made good their escape and returned to the safety and sanity of the ship.
4.
“Just what the hell is the problem, Lieutenant?” Jim demanded, his patience with this crap long exhausted, when Uhura returned from her latest envoy to the weird cephalopod aliens in the corner of their dank little prison. “You’ve got the UT. Surely you understand at least a little of their weird tentacle language?”
Uhura swiped a hand across her brow and slouched unhappily against the nearest bit of rock wall. “Understanding isn’t the problem, Captain. According to the database, these people can’t hear, they don’t have any form of written language, they can’t be taught Morse code or the deafblind alphabet or any other system we use to communicate. Even telepathy can’t get through to them. We simply have to meet them on their level.”
Jim frowned and this time accepted the hip flask from Bones when it was offered. He was starting to wish they’d all taken the opportunity afforded by the need to dress in the long, yellow, ridiculously warm robes favoured by the inhabitants of this planet (not the tentacle guys, they seemed to be visitors, but the green-skinned bunch with the horns up on the surface) to squirrel away useful things like authentic Kentucky bourbon. Or, you know, prison-escaping type gear.
“Hang on,” he said, returning the flask, “I’ve studied ASL, there was this girl—” Uhura gave him a look “—not important, moving on. Humans aren’t basically incompatible with gesture-based systems of communication. What’s the problem?”
Uhura’s expression suggested that he’d just performed another of those Herculean feats whereby he managed to make her forget that he was, in fact, a genuine genius who thought genius-level thoughts and understood shit pretty the fuck well thank you. “What do you need, in order to communicate meaningfully with someone via ASL, Captain?”
Ooh, I know this, I know this. “Light, so the other guy can see what’s going on. Also, he needs to be able to see, so eyes or functional equivalent thereof. Hands, and the rest of the body helps, too, because—” Hang on, hands. He glanced back at their cell-mates, huddled together waving their tentacles mournfully at one another. “Are you saying that the sole reason you can’t talk to them is that you don’t have tentacles?”
Uhura raised her hands in what would probably have been a gesture offensive in many cultures if she’d finished it. “That’s right,” she said then, almost calmly. She sent an oddly meaningful look Spock’s way. “Arms, fingers, toes, they don’t have the necessary flexibility. Stiffness of the tentacle, restricted motion, is a sign of hostility, and they seem to find elbows and other joints exceedingly rude indeed. I can manage a few words, heavily accented, with my tongue, but that’s about it. All they can really do is ask yes or no questions, which is no way to plot a jailbreak.”
Jim surveyed his people without much hope that anyone would come up with a brilliant idea. Scotty muttered something about giving him a workshop and he’d build a robot with as many tentacles as you could wish and the ability to play the bagpipes, the Scots kind not the Irish, if you please. Bones had the wistful expression of someone who probably could have solved this problem with a bit of hardcore hypo action if only his equipment hadn’t been briskly confiscated by the exact same captors who’d failed to notice his hip flask. They’d already exhausted the possibilities of using Uhura’s UT padd to hack the local computer system; whatever kind of wacky space computer these folks used to run their cities, it was too alien to be compatible with FleetOS 12.4.
Deciding that a pointless act of rebellion might make him feel better, Jim stripped off and flung down his yellow robes, tucked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans, and leaned insolently back against the wall with his legs spread just enough to make Uhura give him that look that—oh yes, there it was.
It was quiet in here with the four of them not talking and the score or so of tentacle blobs continuing to make no sound as they lamented over their imprisonment, or planned to eat their tasty human cell-mates, or debated moral philosophy, or whatever it was they were doing with all those oddly hypnotic anemone impressions (hypnotic anemone, good name for a rock band). So quiet that the three of them all heard Spock sigh.
“Very well,” Spock said, stepping forward to pluck the padd out of Uhura’s hands. “What do you advise me to say?”
Uhura answered him in her businesslike way. Spock reviewed the padd for a couple of minutes. Then he turned away, crossed the cavern to the sign language squids or whatever they were, and shed his robes. He wore his full uniform beneath and, as they watched, he lowered his pants. Now there was an ass Jim’d like to get his hands on. Or maybe his mouth. Anyway, Scotty’s expression was also priceless. There was something fundamentally hilarious about a guy who barely blinked when introduced to an ancient Vulcan from the future being all slack-jawed and speechless at a mere inter-species chat.
They stood and watched Spock’s back and Spock’s buttocks for several minutes, no one quite sure what to say. Eventually, Spock restored his dignity and returned to them, though he left the awful robes where they’d fallen. Guess even Spock could tell yellow so wasn’t his colour.
“Captain,” Spock said, and was it Jim’s imagination or was he looking a bit greener than usual? “I believe we have devised a workable strategy for exiting this facility without loss of life or limb.”
They discussed it. It made sense. It would work, or his name wasn’t James T. Kirk. He looked around to see that everyone was on the same page.
Scotty was staring at Spock. “You…” he muttered weakly, “with your…”
Jim couldn’t honestly remember anyone having rendered Scotty tongue-tied before. Definitely a day to be recorded for posterity in Jim’s secret journal.
When they eventually made it safely back to the ship (which had been rendered more difficult by the lead octopus’s insistence on being permitted to take Spock for his bride) there was a great deal of not-looking-directly-at-Spock going on among the bridge crew. And a fair bit of gossip and ogling among the lower ranks. Spock delivered a marvellous performance of not noticing anything out of the ordinary. Jim and Bones got completely plastered and attempted to requisition a case of Kentucky Bourbon from Starbase 12, where they were expected in a matter of days. Uhura requested and received permission to start work with the Enterprise engineering team on the development of a prototype motorised prosthetic tentacle to facilitate communication with the octopodes and other tentacled beings in future. Jim imagined she’d have a job persuading Mister Scott that the prosthetic need not be attached in the region of the human groin.
3.
Relief flooded Jim when he saw what their quarry was up to. They could do this, he knew it now.
“See that, Spock? They’re playing cards.”
“Captain.” Spock didn’t groan, but you could hear that he wanted to. “If you propose to engage in another game of ‘Fizzbin’, a game I believe you invented for the express purpose—”
“It worked last time, didn’t it?”
Spock’s eyebrow had begun trembling in its efforts to rise further up his forehead than was physically possible. Jim spared him his discomfort.
“Nah. They’re playing poker. I figure either I keep playing until he adds the communicator into the pot, or…” He couldn’t help it. His gaze travelled down Spock’s really rather fetching outfit of studded black leather (hey, gotta blend in with the locals!), to alight speculatively at his crotch. “Think you can pick a pocket with that thing?”
Spock, bless him, looked actually affronted beneath the hat (said hat, while screaming ‘gay biker’, did the trick and covered up those tell-tale ear tips). He recovered quickly, though. “Perhaps I should join the game, while you try your luck as a cutpurse.”
“Spock, Spock, Spock. I’m sorry, man, but I gotta tell you—you may’ve had years of practice at the whole poker face thing, but you suck at cards. And we have to get that communicator back or, you know, ancient admirals in shiny uniforms come down hard on my ass. Do you want ancient shiny admirals anywhere near my ass?”
Someone was gonna start shooting at them any minute, because clearly Jim was enjoying this altogether too much. Spock looked as if a bit of shooting would suit him very well right now. But he went along with the plan.
Half an hour later, Jim found it very, very difficult to concentrate on keeping the thugs around the table entirely occupied with trying to spot his tells when Spock draped himself seductively over their target (who’d folded the last three rounds) and distracted him with an apparently suggestive whisper. Jim could just make out, from the corner of his eye, an odd sort of commotion in Spock’s pants, hopefully hidden from the other players by the curve of the table. Something was snaking up past the waistband—Jim shook himself mentally, allowed his mouth a tiny twitch that ought to read as uncertainty (he had a straight) and raised.
***
“Well,” Jim said, tossing the recovered communicator from hand to hand as he stepped down off the transporter pad, “that’s that! Crisis averted, Prime Directive observed, pre-warp civilisation preserved, and I think we’ll spare Edwards the awful and perhaps career-ending tedium of writing up a report on his idiocy. You did well. Was it difficult?”
“I have no comment on the matter,” Spock replied, with an air of wounded hauteur. “If you’ll excuse me…”
2.
Jim was obsessed, he’d freely admit that. Well, in the privacy of his own head, anyway. He’d read everything he could find about Vulcan groin ferrets—which wasn’t much, a bit in the notes on the best toilet designs for multi-species use, a bit in the Starfleet quartermasters’ guide about tailoring requirements for specific species (B’Saari: accommodation of lower-limb-mounted mating claws required; Tellarites: only fabrics with excellent heat-retaining properties to be used, average Tellarite is stout so special attention to seam integrity is recommended, zipped cuffs may be required even on stretch fabrics owing to unusual hand configuration; Vulcans: long, lean body types predominate, non-animal-derived thermal fabrics are preferred, most Vulcans prefer a close fit for garments to be worn during physically active tasks), but there didn’t seem to be anything concrete where he’d expect it, in the medical database. Though Vulcans were a tight-lipped bunch; perhaps it was under lock and key, for physicians on a need-to-know only?
Curiosity was something that gnawed at Jim, and this was no different from any of his other obsessions over the years (model airplanes, girls, space, girls, stray animals, motorbikes, girls, getting as far away from Frank as possible, learning Deltan, finest kind holovid porn, handsome strangers with big dicks, girls, bar fights, girls, more girls, more big dicks, Starfleet, the Enterprise, space…). He didn’t know much, but he was pretty well convinced that his first officer had some kind of prehensile cock. In his imagination, it was something like a monkey’s tail, only, you know, smooth and not furry and with several interesting features that—
“Captain, I really must protest.”
“Yeah, Spock,” Jim replied absently, trying to get back his train of thought, “you do that.” He’d been about to chastise himself for the daydreams, that was it, because he’d been daydreaming about missions they might go on, excuses that might arise for him to require Spock to get out his schlong. Because there was something there, something in one of those fantasies, some kernel of an idea that might just get them out of—
“It is inappropriate for you to look at a subordinate in such a provoc—”
“How big is it? I mean how wide?”
Not a polite question, it occurred to him after he’d said it. If Spock had been human, Jim realised, the thin ice he was madly running across would have broken. But Spock, of course, merely went even more stony-faced than before.
They didn’t have time for this.
“Look, if my calculations are right, we have just enough juice in our phasers to punch a small hole in this dome. Maybe only enough to weaken a small area that will then be worth our time pounding with our fists. The control box for this dome is on the outside, just over there. Destroying it won’t do us any good, but if we can get to it, hit the button, raise the dome, we’ll be in clover. Do you catch my drift?”
Spock’s shoulders appeared to slump just a little. “I believe that is a viable course of action.” He’d never sounded so unhappy about a break in the usual steady stream of human illogic around him.
“I’m thinking that the hole—if we can make one at all—won’t be much wider than maybe four, five centimetres? Not enough to get a communicator through, and they’d be no use with just a corner poked through to the outside, so if we can’t open the dome we’re stuck here. And a finger won’t do it, because the button itself sticks out too much, so even if we get the hole pretty close… Let’s not think about that. Can you do it?”
Spock’s eyelids slid briefly closed. “I believe so.”
“How confident?”
“86.45 percent.”
“Excellent. Your phaser, please.”
Later, back in his familiar bunk with the day saved and the planet safe, Jim told himself he really shouldn’t masturbate over the image of Spock’s awesome, slithery, graspy penis poking out through that hole and curving elegantly sideways to depress the magic button while Jim obediently supported his weight at the optimum height for penis-hole alignment. Nor was it appropriate to imagine the sounds his first officer might make if he had been fucking that dome wall.
Somehow, he didn’t think knowing it was Very Very Wrong was going to stop him, though.
1.
“I was hiding it, okay? Look, it’s not much, but it’s what I used to use to, um, relieve people of their more mobile property at times during my genius-level repeat offender phase. I can certainly use it to open that door, and it’ll put out a weak signal that Uhura might catch if she’s really on her game. And, you know, if the ship’s still in orbit, ha ha. So do you want it, or not?”
Not for the first time, Spock did an excellent impression of being greatly put-upon while cunningly appearing not to have changed his expression one iota. “It is only logical that I accede to your request. Please undress.”
Jim did, and positioned himself helpfully on his side on the makeshift cell’s surprisingly decorative and unsurprisingly uncomfortable wooden bench. Spock licked his fingers and inserted one with exquisite care into Jim’s rectum. And reported exactly what Jim’d feared: the item had migrated too far north for fingers to reach, even someone else’s long, slender, alien fingers.
“When we get out of here, Captain, we’ll agree this did not take place.”
“Okay,” Jim squeaked, because he’d just heard the sound of Spock’s zipper lowering.
They didn’t speak of it afterwards. Jim didn't particularly want to revisit the fact that he’d got just a little aroused while having a lost item of high-tech equipment removed from his rectum by a Vulcan’s monkey-tail penis. Well, that’s what he told himself. For something so embarrassing, he sure dreamed about it one hell of a lot. In exuberant, visceral, and ultimately sticky detail.
+1.
It had taken Spock and Uhura parting amicably, and Christine Chapel promptly pouncing on him, and then that woman from the past trying to seduce poor Spock with animal flesh and inconsolable loneliness, and then that babe in the impossible dress nattering all over him about the supreme importance of art and attempting to nibble his ears when his captain wasn’t looking, but Jim had eventually got the message that it wasn’t just Spock’s ramrod he was interested in.
So, Jim being Jim, and a grown up, and a mature contributing member of society, and past all that game-playing crap, he simply marched down the hall to Spock’s quarters and was perched on the edge of the chess table mere seconds after being invited in.
“So, Spock. I think we should have sex. A lot of sex. And possibly fall in love and get married and have babies, but the sex first. Always the sex first, otherwise you’ll break my heart, that’s how it always goes. What do you say?”
“Fascinating.”
“Would it just be wishful thinking if I said that didn’t sound like Spock for ‘get the fuck out and never say such repulsive things to me again you pathetic loser’?”
Spock’s hands disappeared behind his back, presumably into the classic Spock clasp. “It would not. However, I must inform you that others on board have indicated their interest in pursuing a romantic relationship with me, if I should desire one.”
That didn’t surprise Jim in the slightest. “I wouldn’t want you to have misread my weird human behaviour and not realised you had the option of, well, me. And a pretty spectacular option it is, too. Gotta have all the options set before you if you’re gonna make the most logical decision, right?”
Spock conceded with an elegant nod that it was so.
“So, how about it?”
Spock picked him up, crossed the room, and dropped him face-down on the bed. Jim figured that was answer enough.
***END***