Star Trek fic
Title: Bad Company
Summary: Christopher Pike just wanted to figure Jim Kirk out. So he asked him out for a drink. By the end of the night he was no closer to understanding.
Rating: R-ish?
Pairing: Jim Kirk/Christopher Pike
Christopher had known it was a bad idea since the moment it popped into his head, but he was hungry for information that the other teachers couldn't tell him. He didn't need to know that Jim's grades were perfect, that he was challenging their ideas and authority in class or that he was one of the best fucks they'd ever had. He could find out all of that from one of Jim's class mates.
No, what Christopher wants to know is what's happening in that brain, behind those pretty eyes and prettier face. There's no way he's going to get anything out of Jim on campus, where the two of them dance to the rhythm of the rules - Christopher wants to keep his ship and Jim wants to get a ship and anything they do on campus will compromise everything.
So despite the screaming in his head that this is a bad idea, Christopher makes his way over to the dorms, knocks on the door of Jim's room and asks if he wants to go have a drink at a bar everyone knows is far from the ears of the bigwigs at the Academy. Jim nods like he'd known the invitation would come eventually and accepts and they both ignore the sharp eyes of Jim's roommate, a man old enough to make Christopher wonder if Jim chose to surround himself with people who should be father-figures and instead were fuckbuddies, or whether it was coincidence.
Of course, Christopher hasn't touched Jim (he has a feeling he'd remember if he had) but Jim seems determined to change that. As soon as Christopher plunks the two bottles down on the table, Jim flicks pretty blue eyes up at him and asks if he should blow Christopher to pay him back. Christopher tries to cover his unease by sliding into the seat across the table but he has a feeling Jim has picked up on it already. Kid's a goddamn predator.
But Christopher's not the ideal prey and drawls out that Jim can buy the next round. Jim nods like this is fair and the matter is settled but it's far from over. So Christopher reaches for his drink but doesn't bring it anywhere his lips. He knows Jim's going to strike again and he doesn't want to choke or spray beer across the table or anything pathetic like that.
And Jim can see he's not just going to roll over and show his stomach but he speaks anyway. "I could blow you, any way," he says and he almost looks sincere - almost like he wants to. Enough to make the instinctual, self-deprecating laugh die in Christopher's throat. He stares at Jim for a moment but Jim evades him by taking a mouthful of beer and now Christopher has no idea whether Jim would suck him off or not. He decides to not leave himself vulnerable, just in case. Christopher is many things and he believes self-aware is one of them (but it's not). He can't see anything that Jim would want in himself.
Christopher scoffs, skeptical and suddenly he has those brilliant blue eyes on him, studying him far too intently for comfort. He wonders what they're seeing, wonders if Jim is seeing a man he wants to fuck or a man he's just toying with for his own entertainment or if he's looking at Christopher's entire life and how it got him here. Being propositioned by a subordinate who he stupidly - so fucking stupid, Chris - asked out for a drink. Should have known Jim Kirk would wiggle into a gap just to rip it open and let everything in.
The thought makes him uncomfortable because suddenly he's realising something he should have known the first time he walked away from Jim. He'd made the challenge just to see which way the kid would jump, then ended up praying it would towards Starfleet.
Towards him.
Jesus Christ. Should have known that night, striding away from the bar with his heart pounding against his ribs just from the possibility that Jim would join Starfleet, that Jim was wriggling under his skin and making himself comfortable. He can't walk away now and he's suddenly terrified. Never know just from looking at Christopher, but he feels safest when he knows he can just walk away. He never has, but there's always been the option.
Not an option now, not from this brilliant, beautiful boy staring at him Christopher's a puzzle just starting to fall into place.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck shit.
Kid's gonna be great at diplomacy. He'll piss everyone off and get the shit beat out of him, but his doctor fuckbuddy will fix him up and he'll go and stare them down until he gets what he wants. Stare them down like he's doing to Christopher now.
The weight of that look is too much for one man to handle, so Christopher lifts his beer to his lips and takes a decent gulp, lets his gaze drift around the bar while he swallows. He's going for nonchalant, unrattled but he's not fooling anyone. He tries anyway.
Jim's still looking at him when his gaze swings back round but it's gone in an instant. Christopher's impressed despite himself - kid's an excellent bullshitter. Just looking at him now, casually lifting his bottle to his (cocksucking) lips and drinking smoothly while eyeing up a pair of - Christopher has to admit - fine looking legs...Well, it's easy to understand why people think Jim is just another pretty boy, sleeping with his teachers for marks.
There's only a two people who know better and Christopher is one of them. He's the only person who knows Jim's slept with his teachers anyway - not for marks, just for the hell of it. And the challenge, possibly - up until Jim, Marcus had been the most stubbornly celibrate person Christopher knew. Idly he wonders how Jim knew that Christopher knew about him and Marcus (and Julia and Mar'kanyt and so many others) before chalking it down to Jim assuming teachers talk (which they do).
Of course Jim's still reading him like a book. Nothing written in the past hundred years or so, but a paperback classic with a stained cover and crumbling pages. He would feel insecure and old and pathetic but only feels old. He's seen Jim when he thinks no one's watching, curled up somewhere warm and quiet with a book older than the two of them combined. Jim handles the pages like they'll fall apart at his touch. It's then that Christopher sees what's underneath all the bullshit and sexuality. It's vulnerable and sweet and no wonder Jim covers it up.
"You know Jucarna? The Vinnesahn xenobiology teacher?" Christopher thinks for a moment, tries to connect the name with someone with purple hair, fangs and a fingers that are more claws than anything. Finally he remembers her. He's never heard her speak but knows it would come out like a rumble - she just sits and listens to everyone talking around her.
He nods.
A smug smile spreads over Jim's face, slow and easy.
"Well, once you've got fingers in her, she'll tell you anything you want to know."
At first it's just a crude phrasing that makes him pause. Then he realises the big picture here: Jim's just given away the opportunity to learn what Christopher says about him behind closed doors. He hasn't said anything of importance to the other teachers and now he never will, especially not in front of a Vinnesahn who sits and listens and remembers everything she hears. He wonders if Jim realises all of this then mentally chastises himself.
Of course Jim knows and the look in his eye says it was deliberate and Christopher wonders why he'd pass up such a golden opportunity. Then he realises: Jim respects him, not in the way Starfleet would want him to, but in a way that's far too meaningful and fragile and his heart breaks, just a little. Before he can help it his face softens in pity and Jim's defenses come slamming up again. He leans back, all casual elegance and drinks languidly.
By the time Jim puts the bottle down his face is calm and he's smirking.
"I think you'd like Jucarna. She has a thing for authority."
And there's plenty of things Christopher could do, things to maybe cobble together the pieces of this fucked up man. But that's not something he wants to do because as one man, he'll fail and all it will do scare Jim away so badly he'll never come back. Christopher spares a moment to pray that once Jim has his own ship and crew (and there's no if about it, not with Jim) they can fix him, then shoves the whole affair to the back of his mind.
"A woman after your own heart then," he says dryly and relief flashes through Jim's eyes.
"You tempted?" Jim asks, voice low and rasping and Christopher's dick certainly is. His brain is too, if the way it ponders what he would be like having Jim on his knees, but Christopher hasn't even finished his first beer of the evening. He's still stone-cold sober and when he's stone-cold sober he thinks fucking a subordinate, let alone one like Jim is a Very Bad Idea.
"I'm nineteen years older than you," he says flatly and watches Jim work out his age. He gets the answer almost immediately and that brain will never cease to amaze Christopher.
"Hey, some guys are into the whole guy-old-enough-to-be-their-father thing," Jim says. There is a range of responses Christopher could make for that statement and all of them are trouble.
So instead he says, "I was nineteen when you were born," and both of them try to ignore what he could have said without changing the meaning, just the result: when your father died. If he had said that he knows Jim would have walked away without a second look. Thank God he didn't, because Jim fascinates him and even everything he's learned tonight is just scratching the surface. So they both edge around the elephant in the room and carry on.
"So?" Jim says and Christopher wonders how many how many girls Jim had fucked by the time he was nineteen. That was a bad move because now he's imagining how Jim would look fucking a girl. Maybe that one he had eyed up earlier. She looked like she could go for a one night stand and those legs would look nice over Jim's broad shoulders and -
fuck
- he's half hard under the table now.
"Didn't think you'd have a thing for daddies," he says in an attempt to ignore his erection. He wasn't intending to but the comment startles a laugh out of Jim. It's loud and completely honest and for that brief moment he's the most beautiful thing Christopher's ever seen. Then Jim settles back into who is for everything else: someone who likes sex and knows how easily he can get it.
He tilts his chin up slightly in what be seen as defiance by anyone else. But Christopher, who understands this side of Jim, knows there's no emotion behind the gesture; Jim just knows what flatters him. His eyes go heavy-lidded so he can still watch Christopher and shadows form on the skin stretched over the rim of his eye sockets and he looks like he should be a photograph - not something in a family album, no, not unless you're planning on killing Grandma with a heart attack. One that you'd hang on a wall somewhere so everyone can see and somehow fucking Jim seems like the best idea Christopher's ever had, ranking just behind asking Jim out for a drink in the first place. But there's still that nagging, insistent part of him that's trying to remind him why it would be a bad idea.
That part becomes quieter every time Jim moves, every time he breathes. Jim practically breathes sexuality and he knows it.
"You're my subordinate." Christopher's running out of reasons and they both know it. He's expecting another careless, 'so' with a shrug that's too casual to be unplanned. Jim shrugs like it's effortless and a complete coincidence that his thin t-shirt slides over the muscles in his chest and the swell of a nipple. He should know not to expect anything of Jim, that when you expect him to zig, he'll zag.
That's what he's done before. Christopher had prayed he'd join Starfleet but hadn't expected it; he'd seen the spark at his challenge, the instinctual need to prove people wrong that still got Christopher today. But no true interest - Jim looked like he been satisfied pulling that same shit for the rest of his life. His surprise when he saw Jim the day after had been genuine and Jim had proven him wrong again. Christopher had expected a smug smirk. Instead he got a dark look, his eyes clearly saying, 'fuck you and fuck your expectations'.
"Can you honestly say that matters to you?" Jim asks curiously with curious heat in his eyes. Christopher goes to answer but Jim blindsides him once again; he starts to rubs his index finger of the rim of his beer in a gesture that screams of intent. It's not a beautiful finger, nor is it attached to a beautiful hand. Jim's hands are big and strong and you can read his entire life in them. The toughened skin on the knuckles and the callouses on his fingers and palms each tell a story. If Christopher were a better man he would want to hear these stories, would want Jim to trust him enough to tell him, but he's not that man. No, right now, all Christopher is considering is how fucking fantastic that hand would feel around his dick.
His dick likes that plan but he doesn't need his dick right now. Christopher needs his brain for this, to try and gain some kind of foothold on the situation. Because he knows if Jim asks one more time - let me blow you - Christopher will say yes. He might even say please and he can't afford to give Jim that power over him. So even though it physically hurts to do so, Christopher calms himself down and gets his blood-flow redirected back to his head.
"Starfleet obliges me to say no," he says and it comes out easy as anything. He let Jim chew that over for a moment and swallows down the dregs of his beer. When he looks back at Jim he looks him straight in the eye, makes it known that they're no longer playing. Jim's eyes narrow slightly in thought and Christopher would give anything to know what that thought is.
There's a tense moment where Christopher worries he's just fucked everything up, that Jim was just playing after all. Then the tightness in Jim's face eases and he smiles, slow and slick like he goddamn well should. No one's ever gotten under Christopher's skin like this and made him do idiotic things. Things like accepting a sub-ordinate's - the son of a fucking hero, fuck, he's too old for this shit - offer to suck him off.
Not right now, though. Christopher wants a free round of beer and good company and he knows how to get it.
"However, it's known that beer makes a man honest," he drawls with a pointed flick of his eyes at his empty bottle. Jim sculls the rest of his own and stands, heading for the bar without protest. As he swaggers past Christopher there's the ghost of a touch at his wrist and the words Jim whispers stay with him for years.
and stupid.
Fuck.
Still not enough to stop him.
xxxXxxx
Plus bonus drabble!
"So, one a scale from one to ten, how awkward does this become when you factor in the fact that you were my father's subordinate?"
Christopher slams his lips back over Jim's because a scale from one to ten is way too fucking small to sum up how awkward this is. Jim laughs through the assault, knowing he's opened that gap in Christopher's defenses just s little bit more, made him just that little bit more vulnerable. Kid's going to be the best fucking Captain ever - he's already got bullshitting, manipulating, taking a beating and getting what he wants down to a fine art.
Not placing any particular value on sex helps too.
Summary: Christopher Pike just wanted to figure Jim Kirk out. So he asked him out for a drink. By the end of the night he was no closer to understanding.
Rating: R-ish?
Pairing: Jim Kirk/Christopher Pike
Christopher had known it was a bad idea since the moment it popped into his head, but he was hungry for information that the other teachers couldn't tell him. He didn't need to know that Jim's grades were perfect, that he was challenging their ideas and authority in class or that he was one of the best fucks they'd ever had. He could find out all of that from one of Jim's class mates.
No, what Christopher wants to know is what's happening in that brain, behind those pretty eyes and prettier face. There's no way he's going to get anything out of Jim on campus, where the two of them dance to the rhythm of the rules - Christopher wants to keep his ship and Jim wants to get a ship and anything they do on campus will compromise everything.
So despite the screaming in his head that this is a bad idea, Christopher makes his way over to the dorms, knocks on the door of Jim's room and asks if he wants to go have a drink at a bar everyone knows is far from the ears of the bigwigs at the Academy. Jim nods like he'd known the invitation would come eventually and accepts and they both ignore the sharp eyes of Jim's roommate, a man old enough to make Christopher wonder if Jim chose to surround himself with people who should be father-figures and instead were fuckbuddies, or whether it was coincidence.
Of course, Christopher hasn't touched Jim (he has a feeling he'd remember if he had) but Jim seems determined to change that. As soon as Christopher plunks the two bottles down on the table, Jim flicks pretty blue eyes up at him and asks if he should blow Christopher to pay him back. Christopher tries to cover his unease by sliding into the seat across the table but he has a feeling Jim has picked up on it already. Kid's a goddamn predator.
But Christopher's not the ideal prey and drawls out that Jim can buy the next round. Jim nods like this is fair and the matter is settled but it's far from over. So Christopher reaches for his drink but doesn't bring it anywhere his lips. He knows Jim's going to strike again and he doesn't want to choke or spray beer across the table or anything pathetic like that.
And Jim can see he's not just going to roll over and show his stomach but he speaks anyway. "I could blow you, any way," he says and he almost looks sincere - almost like he wants to. Enough to make the instinctual, self-deprecating laugh die in Christopher's throat. He stares at Jim for a moment but Jim evades him by taking a mouthful of beer and now Christopher has no idea whether Jim would suck him off or not. He decides to not leave himself vulnerable, just in case. Christopher is many things and he believes self-aware is one of them (but it's not). He can't see anything that Jim would want in himself.
Christopher scoffs, skeptical and suddenly he has those brilliant blue eyes on him, studying him far too intently for comfort. He wonders what they're seeing, wonders if Jim is seeing a man he wants to fuck or a man he's just toying with for his own entertainment or if he's looking at Christopher's entire life and how it got him here. Being propositioned by a subordinate who he stupidly - so fucking stupid, Chris - asked out for a drink. Should have known Jim Kirk would wiggle into a gap just to rip it open and let everything in.
The thought makes him uncomfortable because suddenly he's realising something he should have known the first time he walked away from Jim. He'd made the challenge just to see which way the kid would jump, then ended up praying it would towards Starfleet.
Towards him.
Jesus Christ. Should have known that night, striding away from the bar with his heart pounding against his ribs just from the possibility that Jim would join Starfleet, that Jim was wriggling under his skin and making himself comfortable. He can't walk away now and he's suddenly terrified. Never know just from looking at Christopher, but he feels safest when he knows he can just walk away. He never has, but there's always been the option.
Not an option now, not from this brilliant, beautiful boy staring at him Christopher's a puzzle just starting to fall into place.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck shit.
Kid's gonna be great at diplomacy. He'll piss everyone off and get the shit beat out of him, but his doctor fuckbuddy will fix him up and he'll go and stare them down until he gets what he wants. Stare them down like he's doing to Christopher now.
The weight of that look is too much for one man to handle, so Christopher lifts his beer to his lips and takes a decent gulp, lets his gaze drift around the bar while he swallows. He's going for nonchalant, unrattled but he's not fooling anyone. He tries anyway.
Jim's still looking at him when his gaze swings back round but it's gone in an instant. Christopher's impressed despite himself - kid's an excellent bullshitter. Just looking at him now, casually lifting his bottle to his (cocksucking) lips and drinking smoothly while eyeing up a pair of - Christopher has to admit - fine looking legs...Well, it's easy to understand why people think Jim is just another pretty boy, sleeping with his teachers for marks.
There's only a two people who know better and Christopher is one of them. He's the only person who knows Jim's slept with his teachers anyway - not for marks, just for the hell of it. And the challenge, possibly - up until Jim, Marcus had been the most stubbornly celibrate person Christopher knew. Idly he wonders how Jim knew that Christopher knew about him and Marcus (and Julia and Mar'kanyt and so many others) before chalking it down to Jim assuming teachers talk (which they do).
Of course Jim's still reading him like a book. Nothing written in the past hundred years or so, but a paperback classic with a stained cover and crumbling pages. He would feel insecure and old and pathetic but only feels old. He's seen Jim when he thinks no one's watching, curled up somewhere warm and quiet with a book older than the two of them combined. Jim handles the pages like they'll fall apart at his touch. It's then that Christopher sees what's underneath all the bullshit and sexuality. It's vulnerable and sweet and no wonder Jim covers it up.
"You know Jucarna? The Vinnesahn xenobiology teacher?" Christopher thinks for a moment, tries to connect the name with someone with purple hair, fangs and a fingers that are more claws than anything. Finally he remembers her. He's never heard her speak but knows it would come out like a rumble - she just sits and listens to everyone talking around her.
He nods.
A smug smile spreads over Jim's face, slow and easy.
"Well, once you've got fingers in her, she'll tell you anything you want to know."
At first it's just a crude phrasing that makes him pause. Then he realises the big picture here: Jim's just given away the opportunity to learn what Christopher says about him behind closed doors. He hasn't said anything of importance to the other teachers and now he never will, especially not in front of a Vinnesahn who sits and listens and remembers everything she hears. He wonders if Jim realises all of this then mentally chastises himself.
Of course Jim knows and the look in his eye says it was deliberate and Christopher wonders why he'd pass up such a golden opportunity. Then he realises: Jim respects him, not in the way Starfleet would want him to, but in a way that's far too meaningful and fragile and his heart breaks, just a little. Before he can help it his face softens in pity and Jim's defenses come slamming up again. He leans back, all casual elegance and drinks languidly.
By the time Jim puts the bottle down his face is calm and he's smirking.
"I think you'd like Jucarna. She has a thing for authority."
And there's plenty of things Christopher could do, things to maybe cobble together the pieces of this fucked up man. But that's not something he wants to do because as one man, he'll fail and all it will do scare Jim away so badly he'll never come back. Christopher spares a moment to pray that once Jim has his own ship and crew (and there's no if about it, not with Jim) they can fix him, then shoves the whole affair to the back of his mind.
"A woman after your own heart then," he says dryly and relief flashes through Jim's eyes.
"You tempted?" Jim asks, voice low and rasping and Christopher's dick certainly is. His brain is too, if the way it ponders what he would be like having Jim on his knees, but Christopher hasn't even finished his first beer of the evening. He's still stone-cold sober and when he's stone-cold sober he thinks fucking a subordinate, let alone one like Jim is a Very Bad Idea.
"I'm nineteen years older than you," he says flatly and watches Jim work out his age. He gets the answer almost immediately and that brain will never cease to amaze Christopher.
"Hey, some guys are into the whole guy-old-enough-to-be-their-father thing," Jim says. There is a range of responses Christopher could make for that statement and all of them are trouble.
So instead he says, "I was nineteen when you were born," and both of them try to ignore what he could have said without changing the meaning, just the result: when your father died. If he had said that he knows Jim would have walked away without a second look. Thank God he didn't, because Jim fascinates him and even everything he's learned tonight is just scratching the surface. So they both edge around the elephant in the room and carry on.
"So?" Jim says and Christopher wonders how many how many girls Jim had fucked by the time he was nineteen. That was a bad move because now he's imagining how Jim would look fucking a girl. Maybe that one he had eyed up earlier. She looked like she could go for a one night stand and those legs would look nice over Jim's broad shoulders and -
fuck
- he's half hard under the table now.
"Didn't think you'd have a thing for daddies," he says in an attempt to ignore his erection. He wasn't intending to but the comment startles a laugh out of Jim. It's loud and completely honest and for that brief moment he's the most beautiful thing Christopher's ever seen. Then Jim settles back into who is for everything else: someone who likes sex and knows how easily he can get it.
He tilts his chin up slightly in what be seen as defiance by anyone else. But Christopher, who understands this side of Jim, knows there's no emotion behind the gesture; Jim just knows what flatters him. His eyes go heavy-lidded so he can still watch Christopher and shadows form on the skin stretched over the rim of his eye sockets and he looks like he should be a photograph - not something in a family album, no, not unless you're planning on killing Grandma with a heart attack. One that you'd hang on a wall somewhere so everyone can see and somehow fucking Jim seems like the best idea Christopher's ever had, ranking just behind asking Jim out for a drink in the first place. But there's still that nagging, insistent part of him that's trying to remind him why it would be a bad idea.
That part becomes quieter every time Jim moves, every time he breathes. Jim practically breathes sexuality and he knows it.
"You're my subordinate." Christopher's running out of reasons and they both know it. He's expecting another careless, 'so' with a shrug that's too casual to be unplanned. Jim shrugs like it's effortless and a complete coincidence that his thin t-shirt slides over the muscles in his chest and the swell of a nipple. He should know not to expect anything of Jim, that when you expect him to zig, he'll zag.
That's what he's done before. Christopher had prayed he'd join Starfleet but hadn't expected it; he'd seen the spark at his challenge, the instinctual need to prove people wrong that still got Christopher today. But no true interest - Jim looked like he been satisfied pulling that same shit for the rest of his life. His surprise when he saw Jim the day after had been genuine and Jim had proven him wrong again. Christopher had expected a smug smirk. Instead he got a dark look, his eyes clearly saying, 'fuck you and fuck your expectations'.
"Can you honestly say that matters to you?" Jim asks curiously with curious heat in his eyes. Christopher goes to answer but Jim blindsides him once again; he starts to rubs his index finger of the rim of his beer in a gesture that screams of intent. It's not a beautiful finger, nor is it attached to a beautiful hand. Jim's hands are big and strong and you can read his entire life in them. The toughened skin on the knuckles and the callouses on his fingers and palms each tell a story. If Christopher were a better man he would want to hear these stories, would want Jim to trust him enough to tell him, but he's not that man. No, right now, all Christopher is considering is how fucking fantastic that hand would feel around his dick.
His dick likes that plan but he doesn't need his dick right now. Christopher needs his brain for this, to try and gain some kind of foothold on the situation. Because he knows if Jim asks one more time - let me blow you - Christopher will say yes. He might even say please and he can't afford to give Jim that power over him. So even though it physically hurts to do so, Christopher calms himself down and gets his blood-flow redirected back to his head.
"Starfleet obliges me to say no," he says and it comes out easy as anything. He let Jim chew that over for a moment and swallows down the dregs of his beer. When he looks back at Jim he looks him straight in the eye, makes it known that they're no longer playing. Jim's eyes narrow slightly in thought and Christopher would give anything to know what that thought is.
There's a tense moment where Christopher worries he's just fucked everything up, that Jim was just playing after all. Then the tightness in Jim's face eases and he smiles, slow and slick like he goddamn well should. No one's ever gotten under Christopher's skin like this and made him do idiotic things. Things like accepting a sub-ordinate's - the son of a fucking hero, fuck, he's too old for this shit - offer to suck him off.
Not right now, though. Christopher wants a free round of beer and good company and he knows how to get it.
"However, it's known that beer makes a man honest," he drawls with a pointed flick of his eyes at his empty bottle. Jim sculls the rest of his own and stands, heading for the bar without protest. As he swaggers past Christopher there's the ghost of a touch at his wrist and the words Jim whispers stay with him for years.
and stupid.
Fuck.
Still not enough to stop him.
xxxXxxx
Plus bonus drabble!
"So, one a scale from one to ten, how awkward does this become when you factor in the fact that you were my father's subordinate?"
Christopher slams his lips back over Jim's because a scale from one to ten is way too fucking small to sum up how awkward this is. Jim laughs through the assault, knowing he's opened that gap in Christopher's defenses just s little bit more, made him just that little bit more vulnerable. Kid's going to be the best fucking Captain ever - he's already got bullshitting, manipulating, taking a beating and getting what he wants down to a fine art.
Not placing any particular value on sex helps too.