Title: Shangri-La
Rating: R
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Word Count: 1,111
Summary: Returning to the scene of the crime; or, sex on the Observation Deck, overlooking Titan. For the
cliche_bingo Prompt - Episode Tags and Missing Scenes. Sister-story to
Xanadu. Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009).
Prompt Table:
HereDisclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: The result of my haphazard attempt at most decidedly not writing dirty sex (and instead ending up with the other tonal extreme). For what it’s worth, I wrote Xanadu before Shangri-La, though chronologically, Shangri-La comes first.
Shangri-La
If time meant anything in the present moment, Jim might note the significance of where they are, when they are. That their lives were so different then, their very being in danger mere months before, hovering precariously above this moon, this same heavenly body, so vivid in its lights and darks. But they live on borrowed time amongst the stars, and all that matters now is a different heavenly body that’s hovering over him, because their lives were different ten minutes ago, ten seconds ago, and his world is always in jeopardy, no moment guaranteed.
Bones doesn’t push into him so much as he sinks, as he falls, sheathed to the hilt, and Jim can’t quite remember how to breathe as the swell, the heat of his lover cuts through him without prelude or relent, vicious and ruthless and perfect. Jim chokes on a moan as Bones thrusts, slips into the space that only he knows how to fill - and for all his varied conquests, Jim’s never found a better fit.
Their knees knock, an accidental caress as Bones rocks into him, cants against his hips and draws them in, magnetic, delving deeper, the length of him throbbing in Jim like a second heartbeat, and Jim’s too dizzy to tell which one belongs to him, to understand if there’s a difference. His chest aches against the chill of transparent aluminum, against the desperate rhythm that tears him, soothes him, tears him again as he feels his muscles give against the view, clench against the heat, and he longs to simply fall into oblivion - to sink into the dark that looms beyond, the caverns of desert oceans, vessels left unfilled - if only to escape the overwhelming sensation of being an extension of someone else, of being so connected that he cannot find where he ends.
Jim feels the tension growing in between his thighs, the strain of capillaries and the swell of blood, and this; Jim can’t put a word to this, can’t call it familiar, because while he knows the dance, the steps have changed, and this isn’t soft or tender or loud or rough, this isn’t about life and death, about possession and desire and affirmation of things that neither of them will admit to but both of them need - no, this is something else entirely. This is anger and fear and something that sears through him like the touch of a brand, leaving him scarred and trembling in its wake; this is the only Eden he will ever deserve, the only hell he’ll live to see, and it is torture and bliss because it’s everything he wants, in the dark parts of himself; everything he wants, but doesn’t have the balls to call his own.
The weight of Bones within him grows thick and heavy, choking and driving and tugging and so fucking needy that Jim wants to run, wants to give into it until it’s satisfied, until Jim is an empty shell and everything he is and ever could be is sacrificed at the altar of this insatiable, god-fearing want. The tight press of him rolling against the curve of Jim’s ass is like ecstasy and sin and the worst kind of high, and there’s a sob in Jim’s throat that holds steady where his pulse runs wild. He shudders soundlessly as Bones draws out, surges forward and retreats, inches in and nips behind his ear, and the gasp that escapes him is the sound of a dying man. His hands clench against themselves, fingerprinting the heels of his palms, and this is his darkest secret, his brightest light; it is his hidden shame that this simple, nameless thing between them is his everything - what gives the stars their wonder, what gives the night its still. And behind his own eyes, Jim holds to this with everything he is, wraps his soul around it and clings to its vital hum, so that even though no one will ever know it, he can remember the pitch and let it thrum in his veins when he feels like the last man on the face of existence.
Because this is the secret that no one can know, this thing he keeps hidden in the deepest corners of his heart; because people have done their best to break him his entire life, done their best to tear him from himself and make him heavy, weightless, shapeless and formless and easily ground into nothing. People often tried to break him, but they didn’t, couldn’t, because no matter what they took away, he always had warm arms and a strong chest and the soft breath of constant, reassuring life to come back to, to remind him that when all the king’s horses and all the king’s men had turned on him, had fallen in battle, he had something infinitely more precious piecing him back together, bit by shattered bit, collecting the shards and making him whole. And if ever he were to lose that, he doesn’t have to wonder whether or not he’d fall apart - it’s written in the constellations, a fundamental truth of the universe; he doesn’t have to wonder because he already knows.
Jim comes apart without warning, though it’s long overdue, and it’s the mist of his breath and the smear of his come and the inexplicable daze behind his eyes that makes everything blurry, everything faint, and the depths underneath him, outside of him don’t seem so vast now compared to the ones around him, within him, holding on until it hurts. He tastes the air, brackish against his tongue, and he’s not sure if it’s sweat, or tears, or just the ether of sex still clinging to the air; he’s even less sure if it matters one way or the other. All that matters is that there are hands against his chest, pressed against him as if to make certain he survives this endeavor, that he lives to breathe anew in a world he’s never thought to want; and suddenly, he knows what this is.
This is eternity in the blink of an eye, this is birth and death, and Jim Kirk doesn’t exist in this moment; he is this moment, and he holds that knowledge close because whatever it is that’s surging, sparking like electricity through the very blood in his veins, it will not last forever.
He fractures, splinters, cracks against the promise of the impossible, the inevitable, and he prays to everything and nothing that those hands won’t let him fall.