[fic] The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn (Lessons in Loving a Vulcan)
I made something! I feel as if my first fic in years should perhaps be more exciting, and have swordfights or space pirates or something, but well, it doesn't. More like a series of monologue-type observations, but it is what it is. Frankly I just like that it's in no way related to my dissertation, though the 2000 words would probably have been more useful there.
The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn (or, Lessons in Loving a Vulcan)
Fandom: Star Trek reboot
Vital stats: Kirk/Spock with a short visit by Uhura; frank talk about sex but none actually occuring
Includes chess, vowel shifts, and more character study than plot.
Jim likes to be on top. The thing is, Spock does too. He’s just not as vocal about what he wants as Jim is, and has this thing where he tries not to lose control, so they do it Jim’s way more often. When they switch, it’s because he’s managed to push Spock completely over the fucking edge, which is hot and amazing and therefore totally worth it-Jim likes it, he’s just not going to suggest it the rest of the time.
What limited research on the subject Jim had ever been able to do had led him to believe this was simply not how things worked, or at least that it was the kind of thing the universe would just always make sure worked out-two guys, one top, one bottom. It is a bit vexing, but not really surprising, that the universe is not inclined to make their lives that easy. What it really drives home, though, is how it’s not as important as he thought it would be. Maybe it would matter if he were just in it for the sex, but he’s not, so it doesn’t. There are plenty of other things to do, and Jim knows most of them. So they can keep satisfied for months before it ever turns into an issue anyway, and that, he supposes, is why they’re both willing to let the other one go for it sometimes.
Besides, Jim once slept with an alien-er, aliens, technically-with tentacles. Plus one shapeshifter and one non-corporeal gaseous being. Letting the person he cares about more than basically anybody else in the universe fuck him on occasion is not exactly beyond the pale. It’s just interesting. Because Spock’s his first officer, not his sidekick, and is capable and professional and would have been captain of the Enterprise if his own future self hadn’t intervened-and Jim wonders sometimes what that means, if it means that Spock sees himself as a commanding officer or not. You get two alpha types together, and there are going to be fireworks. There always have been, even back when they hated each other.
Jim likes fireworks, and these are better than most.
----
He’s learned a lot about chess. It’s Spock’s favourite game, and this doesn’t really surprise Jim at all. Chess is contained, subdued, logical, all those things that Spock finds important. He says it develops cognitive skills for things like seeing the whole picture, strategising, thinking in something other than a line.
Jim prefers poker. It’s not just the element of luck, though he likes that too. Some of it’s the risk, that there’s so much to lose, sure, but the pot is pretty sweet if you win. And it’s that dealing with the luck takes balls and smarts and a hell of a poker face. He’s better at the last than people think-which works out for him, because people don’t look. Back at the casino in Riverside the guys always got a look at the smirk and the bluster and the swagger and thought he’d be easy to read, but Jim can look like the same arrogant asshole whether he’s got a good hand or not, and they’d always figure that out too late.
There’s a lot of bluffing in his relationship with Spock, and a lot of strategy too. You’d think that after getting as far as they have they could just sit down and talk like normal people, but that’s not how it works. Then there’s keeping it from the rest of the crew, which is harder than it should be and probably ultimately futile, but necessary until they figure out what the hell they’re doing. There are all kinds of strategies for how to get Spock to admit he wants anything, or doesn’t want anything, or even grasps the pitiful human concept of ‘want’, and it sort of exhausts Jim’s creative engines to have to come up with a new one every week.
But he does, because it’s worth it. Jim is capable of pursuing something relentlessly when he wants it, whether it’s a bet he can’t win, or the Kobayashi Maru, or breaking down the emotional barricade of his first officer. He doesn’t back down, he doesn’t give up, and sometimes he just irrationally refuses to accept the possibility of any outcome other than the one he’s decided on.
And really, it’s probably good for Spock that Jim’s good at poker. Because it’s not just bluffing, it’s reading, too. Spock thinks he’s great at hiding what he thinks, and with people who aren’t Jim, he probably is. But maybe it’s the aftereffects of a mind-meld with his future self and maybe it’s just something Jim’s picking up, but being able to read Spock means not making him say what he’s thinking, which is something Spock should appreciate.
But it’s still chess they play together, because they both like it, and it’s a relatively easy and painless way to spend time together without worrying about what to say next. They talk while they play, but not about anything important. (Important things they save for just after sex, when they’re too worn out and content for anything but total honesty, and the knowledge that they are actually really good together is still fresh in their minds. Jim even made Spock laugh once, in one of those times, and he’s decided he’s going to make it happen again if it kills him.) By watching Spock play, Jim learns him. He’s actually good at it himself, better than he lets on, because if there was ever a guy who was good at looking the wrong way around at things, it’s Jim Kirk. He plays a little differently every time, which he suspects kind of drives Spock crazy, but it’s how he collects the pieces, assembles them with all the other little habits and details into a picture he thinks he can usually figure out how to react to.
And then, every now and then, he stops paying attention to all that and gets caught up in the game. Those times, as often as not, he wins.
----
You don’t marry the boy you’re in love with when you’re twelve. Everybody knows that. It’s just one of those things, like how you outgrow sleeping with the light on and eventually figure out that your parents did not send your sick dog away to live on a farm. So it’s not a big disappointment. It’s expected.
You don’t always marry the boy you’re in love with at eighteen, either. Oh, some people do, but Nyota had always thought of them as young, perhaps perpetually; they had small hopeful weddings with their high school sweethearts and went on to have scrunched-face little babies and mommy’s meetings and soccer games and day care problems. Which is fine, if that’s what you want, but Nyota doesn’t really like babies and has bigger plans for herself. Her high school boyfriend called her a ‘driven career woman’ when she broke up with him, and she doesn’t like how he managed to make it sound so insulting, even if it’s basically true.
And it is true, she knows that-hell, she’s proud of it. Nyota is damn good at her job. She likes most things about Starfleet-not so much following orders, but it’s part of the life and she deals with it, because she gets to explore space and see things nobody else has, and because she gets to not only learn new languages but examine them. She is aware that most people do not lose themselves for hours charting the evolution of Romulan vowel shifts from Vulcan, and that’s fine because she doesn’t really want to share with most people anyway.
She had, however, liked to share with Spock. He’s always been one of the things about Starfleet that she likes. When they first got together, she was excited by the idea of going out with somebody who understood how high she could get off translating and learning and delving into words, and he, apparently, found her ‘fascinating.’ (Spock finds lots of things fascinating, but he doesn’t say the word the same way all the time, and she, having shown an exceptional aural sensitivity, didn’t take too long figuring out the differences.)
It was a good relationship. She didn’t push for more because she didn’t need it-they were what they were, and it was good. She loved him. She’s pretty sure she still does, that it’s not the kind of thing that goes away. He loved her, too; he didn’t say it much but she knew it. (Kirk told her once, when they were being very honest with each other, that he knew it too. That he’d cut Spock off actually saying it, back on the Narada when there was a good chance they were about to die, because it felt too much like giving up and Kirk doesn’t give up, not ever. It’s one of those things that drove Nyota nuts about him when he wasn’t giving up hitting on her, but that in a captain, she’s starting to appreciate.)
So she was there and it was good, and maybe in the end she didn’t push enough. Kirk pushes, because Kirk doesn’t really believe in boundaries, and Spock pushes back and sometimes they meet in the middle and it really does make both of them better. Nyota can see it, and sometimes she misses what she had, but it’s okay. She knows she was a little too comfortable, didn’t force things or push the edges when he needed it. But it wasn’t her way, and she wasn’t going to change who she was just because it wasn’t quite what he needed anymore. You don’t marry the boy you love when you’re eighteen because you’re still growing up, and so is he. For a while you grow together, and then you grow apart. You stop fitting together, and maybe you fit better with someone else.
It’s just growing up, really, and Nyota’s okay with it because that’s a kind of learning, too.
---
Jim once made a joke that he doesn’t think Spock could be in love with him because he wouldn’t even know what a Vulcan in love looked like. This is a lie. He knows exactly what it looks like.
It looks like recognition surrounded by ice and cold stone, and the widening eyes of a man who never thought he’d see that face again. It sounds like wonder, and pride, and knowing. It feels like the gentle brush of fingers across his face and his mind, and quiet, secure love in the dusty back corners of someone else’s consciousness, old memories kept safe like antiques, out of sight but not completely ever out of mind.
He knows now what it feels like to have someone love him, even if it doesn’t quite fit right, even if it isn’t really him. Nobody’s ever looked at him like that before in his life, and he hadn’t realised before that he even wanted someone to. He knows he has to put in the time, and it chafes a bit because Jim Kirk is really not a patient guy. And yeah, he’s pretty sure he and Spock would have gone on hating each other if his future, alternate, whatever self hadn’t been shoving them at each other.
Then again, if he’s still ready to shove them after a hundred and fifty years, they must have been good, right? So Jim is patient, he moves slowly, he learns when to push and when to keep his mouth shut and how to read a hundred different meanings for one raised eyebrow. He learns how to be a captain, how to be an officer, how to be an explorer, and how to be a lover without ever actually suggesting he might be in love.
Not that he’d even know what Jim Kirk in love would look like.
The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn (or, Lessons in Loving a Vulcan)
Fandom: Star Trek reboot
Vital stats: Kirk/Spock with a short visit by Uhura; frank talk about sex but none actually occuring
Includes chess, vowel shifts, and more character study than plot.
Jim likes to be on top. The thing is, Spock does too. He’s just not as vocal about what he wants as Jim is, and has this thing where he tries not to lose control, so they do it Jim’s way more often. When they switch, it’s because he’s managed to push Spock completely over the fucking edge, which is hot and amazing and therefore totally worth it-Jim likes it, he’s just not going to suggest it the rest of the time.
What limited research on the subject Jim had ever been able to do had led him to believe this was simply not how things worked, or at least that it was the kind of thing the universe would just always make sure worked out-two guys, one top, one bottom. It is a bit vexing, but not really surprising, that the universe is not inclined to make their lives that easy. What it really drives home, though, is how it’s not as important as he thought it would be. Maybe it would matter if he were just in it for the sex, but he’s not, so it doesn’t. There are plenty of other things to do, and Jim knows most of them. So they can keep satisfied for months before it ever turns into an issue anyway, and that, he supposes, is why they’re both willing to let the other one go for it sometimes.
Besides, Jim once slept with an alien-er, aliens, technically-with tentacles. Plus one shapeshifter and one non-corporeal gaseous being. Letting the person he cares about more than basically anybody else in the universe fuck him on occasion is not exactly beyond the pale. It’s just interesting. Because Spock’s his first officer, not his sidekick, and is capable and professional and would have been captain of the Enterprise if his own future self hadn’t intervened-and Jim wonders sometimes what that means, if it means that Spock sees himself as a commanding officer or not. You get two alpha types together, and there are going to be fireworks. There always have been, even back when they hated each other.
Jim likes fireworks, and these are better than most.
----
He’s learned a lot about chess. It’s Spock’s favourite game, and this doesn’t really surprise Jim at all. Chess is contained, subdued, logical, all those things that Spock finds important. He says it develops cognitive skills for things like seeing the whole picture, strategising, thinking in something other than a line.
Jim prefers poker. It’s not just the element of luck, though he likes that too. Some of it’s the risk, that there’s so much to lose, sure, but the pot is pretty sweet if you win. And it’s that dealing with the luck takes balls and smarts and a hell of a poker face. He’s better at the last than people think-which works out for him, because people don’t look. Back at the casino in Riverside the guys always got a look at the smirk and the bluster and the swagger and thought he’d be easy to read, but Jim can look like the same arrogant asshole whether he’s got a good hand or not, and they’d always figure that out too late.
There’s a lot of bluffing in his relationship with Spock, and a lot of strategy too. You’d think that after getting as far as they have they could just sit down and talk like normal people, but that’s not how it works. Then there’s keeping it from the rest of the crew, which is harder than it should be and probably ultimately futile, but necessary until they figure out what the hell they’re doing. There are all kinds of strategies for how to get Spock to admit he wants anything, or doesn’t want anything, or even grasps the pitiful human concept of ‘want’, and it sort of exhausts Jim’s creative engines to have to come up with a new one every week.
But he does, because it’s worth it. Jim is capable of pursuing something relentlessly when he wants it, whether it’s a bet he can’t win, or the Kobayashi Maru, or breaking down the emotional barricade of his first officer. He doesn’t back down, he doesn’t give up, and sometimes he just irrationally refuses to accept the possibility of any outcome other than the one he’s decided on.
And really, it’s probably good for Spock that Jim’s good at poker. Because it’s not just bluffing, it’s reading, too. Spock thinks he’s great at hiding what he thinks, and with people who aren’t Jim, he probably is. But maybe it’s the aftereffects of a mind-meld with his future self and maybe it’s just something Jim’s picking up, but being able to read Spock means not making him say what he’s thinking, which is something Spock should appreciate.
But it’s still chess they play together, because they both like it, and it’s a relatively easy and painless way to spend time together without worrying about what to say next. They talk while they play, but not about anything important. (Important things they save for just after sex, when they’re too worn out and content for anything but total honesty, and the knowledge that they are actually really good together is still fresh in their minds. Jim even made Spock laugh once, in one of those times, and he’s decided he’s going to make it happen again if it kills him.) By watching Spock play, Jim learns him. He’s actually good at it himself, better than he lets on, because if there was ever a guy who was good at looking the wrong way around at things, it’s Jim Kirk. He plays a little differently every time, which he suspects kind of drives Spock crazy, but it’s how he collects the pieces, assembles them with all the other little habits and details into a picture he thinks he can usually figure out how to react to.
And then, every now and then, he stops paying attention to all that and gets caught up in the game. Those times, as often as not, he wins.
----
You don’t marry the boy you’re in love with when you’re twelve. Everybody knows that. It’s just one of those things, like how you outgrow sleeping with the light on and eventually figure out that your parents did not send your sick dog away to live on a farm. So it’s not a big disappointment. It’s expected.
You don’t always marry the boy you’re in love with at eighteen, either. Oh, some people do, but Nyota had always thought of them as young, perhaps perpetually; they had small hopeful weddings with their high school sweethearts and went on to have scrunched-face little babies and mommy’s meetings and soccer games and day care problems. Which is fine, if that’s what you want, but Nyota doesn’t really like babies and has bigger plans for herself. Her high school boyfriend called her a ‘driven career woman’ when she broke up with him, and she doesn’t like how he managed to make it sound so insulting, even if it’s basically true.
And it is true, she knows that-hell, she’s proud of it. Nyota is damn good at her job. She likes most things about Starfleet-not so much following orders, but it’s part of the life and she deals with it, because she gets to explore space and see things nobody else has, and because she gets to not only learn new languages but examine them. She is aware that most people do not lose themselves for hours charting the evolution of Romulan vowel shifts from Vulcan, and that’s fine because she doesn’t really want to share with most people anyway.
She had, however, liked to share with Spock. He’s always been one of the things about Starfleet that she likes. When they first got together, she was excited by the idea of going out with somebody who understood how high she could get off translating and learning and delving into words, and he, apparently, found her ‘fascinating.’ (Spock finds lots of things fascinating, but he doesn’t say the word the same way all the time, and she, having shown an exceptional aural sensitivity, didn’t take too long figuring out the differences.)
It was a good relationship. She didn’t push for more because she didn’t need it-they were what they were, and it was good. She loved him. She’s pretty sure she still does, that it’s not the kind of thing that goes away. He loved her, too; he didn’t say it much but she knew it. (Kirk told her once, when they were being very honest with each other, that he knew it too. That he’d cut Spock off actually saying it, back on the Narada when there was a good chance they were about to die, because it felt too much like giving up and Kirk doesn’t give up, not ever. It’s one of those things that drove Nyota nuts about him when he wasn’t giving up hitting on her, but that in a captain, she’s starting to appreciate.)
So she was there and it was good, and maybe in the end she didn’t push enough. Kirk pushes, because Kirk doesn’t really believe in boundaries, and Spock pushes back and sometimes they meet in the middle and it really does make both of them better. Nyota can see it, and sometimes she misses what she had, but it’s okay. She knows she was a little too comfortable, didn’t force things or push the edges when he needed it. But it wasn’t her way, and she wasn’t going to change who she was just because it wasn’t quite what he needed anymore. You don’t marry the boy you love when you’re eighteen because you’re still growing up, and so is he. For a while you grow together, and then you grow apart. You stop fitting together, and maybe you fit better with someone else.
It’s just growing up, really, and Nyota’s okay with it because that’s a kind of learning, too.
---
Jim once made a joke that he doesn’t think Spock could be in love with him because he wouldn’t even know what a Vulcan in love looked like. This is a lie. He knows exactly what it looks like.
It looks like recognition surrounded by ice and cold stone, and the widening eyes of a man who never thought he’d see that face again. It sounds like wonder, and pride, and knowing. It feels like the gentle brush of fingers across his face and his mind, and quiet, secure love in the dusty back corners of someone else’s consciousness, old memories kept safe like antiques, out of sight but not completely ever out of mind.
He knows now what it feels like to have someone love him, even if it doesn’t quite fit right, even if it isn’t really him. Nobody’s ever looked at him like that before in his life, and he hadn’t realised before that he even wanted someone to. He knows he has to put in the time, and it chafes a bit because Jim Kirk is really not a patient guy. And yeah, he’s pretty sure he and Spock would have gone on hating each other if his future, alternate, whatever self hadn’t been shoving them at each other.
Then again, if he’s still ready to shove them after a hundred and fifty years, they must have been good, right? So Jim is patient, he moves slowly, he learns when to push and when to keep his mouth shut and how to read a hundred different meanings for one raised eyebrow. He learns how to be a captain, how to be an officer, how to be an explorer, and how to be a lover without ever actually suggesting he might be in love.
Not that he’d even know what Jim Kirk in love would look like.