Title: The No-Win Scenario (Young Men's Fancies #5)
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: jat_sapphire@yahoo.com
Rating: [NC-17]
Codes: K/MitchellSummary: Kirk's adventures, senior year at Starfleet Academy. Jim Kirk gets another chance at the scenario he'd like to win.
Archive: Yes, please. Keep headings and disclaimers and what-not.
Disclaimer: Star Trek and most of the characters here are Paramount's. I invented a few cadets in the background, and the library, and made up a whole lot of stuff for them to do there and elsewhere. I don't make money at this.
Series Notes:
This is a series of stories about Kirk's early sexual and emotional life; he's bisexual, and as sexually active as I can make him. Previous installments are "That Fairness Thing," "Rain Check," "Party Like It's '99," and"The Trouble With Gary."
Young Men's Fancies
#5: The No-Win Scenario
*****
May, Jim's Senior Year
***Back at the Academy, Gary and Jim were both busy, and anyway the gap between senior and sophomore made their friendship hard to pursue. They ran into each other sometimes, left messages a lot . . . they sat at the same lunch table twice. Jim had to drop the card games they and a few other cadets had played every other Friday night. He was studying too hard. All his classes were gearing up for the big exams. And he had just taken the Kobayashi Maru test for the second time, gotten a "good" assessment (not good enough!), and was trying hard to find somebody or some file that would explain what the heck he was supposed to be doing differently.
One night, and it had to be the tenth time he’d been through the tapes of his own trials in the simulation lab, slow-motion, 3-D, multi-POV, feverishly trying to see the test anew, Jim looked at the clock on the projector and realized it had been - well, he wasn’t sure how many hours - since he’d eaten. He couldn't keep going indefinitely on coffee from the basement lounge. He left the booth he'd been using, still logged-in and password-locked, and made his way out of the library.
It was almost empty and only half-lit. At this time of year it was open all night, but between 2200 and 500 hours there were no live librarians, just security staff, and not everything was powered up. Jim went a little out of his direct route so he could walk through the Historical Documents section, his favorite part of the library. The very oldest and rarest books were in vacuum cases, but books bound during the last century were on the shelves, interspersed with tapes and disks. The overhead fixtures were mostly off, so just a few cones of yellow light poured to the scuffed glass-block floor, and elsewhere a faint glow pervaded the glass and the rows of vacuum cases, like harvest moonlight.
Jim went through the stacks and ran his fingers over the bumps of the old spines. There was nothing like the feel of a real book. Gary laughed at his liking for solid hard copy, called him a stack of books with legs, but of course when he cared to do it, Gary could study with the best of them.
Just as he thought of Gary, Jim heard his voice. The sound was soft, not close by, and he wasn't sure it was even real, but just as he was telling himself that fatigue and sexual frustration excused a lot but that he could not allow himself to actually hallucinate, he heard another voice speaking, more distinctly, though he still couldn't hear much.
" . . . say no? . . . point of paying . . . "
Jim walked toward the sound and heard what was definitely Gary's voice murmuring in reply. Then the other again.
" . . . like you belong . . . "
The tone was so vicious that Jim stopped in his tracks for a moment, and then moved again in a rush. But either he made more noise than he realized or what he'd heard was a parting shot, because when he found the study table in the corner with its green-shaded lamps, Gary was alone there.
In front of him an open book and a padd lay on the table, but Jim didn't think for a moment that he'd overheard a study session. Gary was staring down at the page, though, so Jim slid into a chair and waited.
Gary looked up warily and Jim wanted, quite simply, to kill whoever had made him feel like that. Whatever Gary had gotten himself into (and what was it?), Jim wanted to protect him from it, so fiercely that he couldn't immediately think of anything to say but "Tell me," and heard the words come out of his mouth with horror, knowing that Gary would not and fearing how he would react.
Actually Gary didn't get angry. He just looked for a long moment, his expression slowly shifting from wariness to something Jim couldn't quite read. Then Gary shrugged one shoulder and looked back down at the book. He must have guessed that Jim had not heard much.
Eventually, Jim tried again. "I've been in the sim lab since," Jim tried to pinpoint it, "uh . . . "
"Since uh?" Gary asked with a little smile. "If you can't remember, Jim, it's really pathetic."
"Low blood sugar," Jim said. "I'm on my way to get something to eat. Come along?"
"I'd better. I'm not sure you can find the mess hall." Gary closed the book and stood up.
"Very funny, Mr. I'm About To Leave My Padd Behind."
At the door to the mess, Gary paused, and then went in nonchalantly. Actually, the room was empty except for Jorgenson, who did all her studying there and had better be looking for an assignment without stringent physical requirements, and Ren Mori and Tia Chavez, definitely not studying in a corner. Jim programmed a chicken sandwich with a side of those little soysnack cubes in bright colors, and a glass of milk. Gary got himself soysnacks and coffee. They sat away from the others, near a dark window, and Jim ate in silence as Gary chatted brightly about underclassmen Jim knew and on-campus events and so forth, popping the cubes in his mouth. A phantom Gary mocked Jim from the window pane. The real one seemed no more touchable than the reflection.
Jim knew he was being glum but couldn't seem to come up with anything to say. Gary watched him eat two or three soysnacks and then said, "So what were you doing in the sim lab?"
"It's the Kobayashi Maru. You know there's that big secrecy thing, so I can't talk about it."
"Are you telling me," Gary smiled over the edge of his coffee cup, "that the Academy star, Midshipman Lieutenant James Kirk, did less than perfectly on a command simulation?"
"Not good enough."
"OK, what are you going to do differently next time?"
Jim shook his head. "I can't think of anything," he said. "That's the trouble. I've watched every damn frame, I've found tiny errors the bridge crew made, I've picked up six design flaws in the simulation - the lights in Ops are the wrong color, on the lower right-hand display -" Gary rolled his eyes, and Jim grinned reluctantly. "Yes, I know, that's not useful! I just mean I've really looked. I just don't see any way I could have - given different commands. Won."
"Maybe you can't win."
Jim looked up, and Gary swept a hand across the air between them. "No, uh-uh, of course I didn't mean you couldn't win, because of anything you did. I mean, maybe it's a no-win situation."
"How can it be?" Jim asked.
"Jim, for god's sake, of course it can. The universe is full of no-win situations." Gary's eyes had gone dark again, or maybe it was more that he pulled in his chin and shadows fell over them, but when he looked like that Jim knew he was thinking something he wouldn't share. "Full of them. Yeah. Even for you."
Jim himself was thinking of the voice he'd heard from the darkness of the Historical Documents stacks. He knew that if he raised the issue again he still wouldn't get any answers, and might provoke Gary into anger or withdrawal, so to keep himself from asking he picked out three of his favorite soysnacks, the green ones, and looked at them for a moment before putting the first one in his mouth. By the time he'd swallowed it, he'd thought of a remark. "I don't believe in a no-win situation."
Gary was watching him. His slow, sexy smile distracted Jim completely.
"Then," Gary said, his voice low, "you'll have to change the rules."
Jim sat, not breathing, the snacks still in his hand.
"Change. The. Rules." Gary took the second snack from Jim's fingers and ate it. Jim reached out and Gary guided his hand and Jim's fingertips were in Gary's mouth and he ate the third snack, teeth just grazing Jim's middle finger, the wet inside of his lips so warm it sent a shock wave up Jim's arm and throughout his body.
"Gary," said Jim hoarsely.
"Mmm." Gary closed his mouth on Jim's fingers and ran his tongue across the tips.
"Gary," Jim said.
Gary pulled Jim's wrist down and Jim clutched at Gary's hand and said, "Damn you, don't tease me this way."
"I'm changing the rules."
"Then change them."
"All right." Gary extracted his hand, and stood up, and pulled his food tray to the edge of the table, bending over and pitching his voice low. "We get rid of this junk. We go back to the library, to that locked sim booth. I fuck you. Those are the new rules."
Jim stood too. "We'll see who fucks who."
"Isn't it whom?"
"I'm changing that rule."
Gary laughed. "Oh, go right ahead, Jim. You wild rebel. Change the grammar rules."
Jim smiled, took a step closer, around the corner of the table. "OK," he said, "now 'Gary fucks Jim' means that Gary gets on his hands and knees and takes Jim's cock up his ass." Another step. He took the tray from Gary's hands and put it back on the table. "How's that for a new grammar rule?"
Gary asked in a breathless voice, "What does 'Jim causes gossip' mean?"
"This," said Jim and grabbed Gary's shoulders and pulled him in for a kiss.
It wasn't like the kiss in the attic. Jim was conscious all the time that they weren't alone. Gary gave him some tongue and Jim just closed his teeth on it, gently, teasing the end with his own. The kiss tasted like soysnack. Gary started to laugh into Jim's mouth.
Jim pulled back. "Yes, well, we can do better than that," he said.
"Oh, yeah," said Gary. "So let's get the hell out of here and do better."
As they ditched the trays, Jim wondered whether they really had caused gossip. He didn't care - at the moment he would have fucked Gary in the middle of the common at noon - and it wasn't like there was a regulation against sex among cadets. But Jorgenson's nose was still buried in her book and Tia and Ren were gazing at each other, and Jim just wondered. He'd know eventually, though, and meanwhile he was going to have sex with Gary. After all this time. He could hardly take it in.
He grabbed Gary's hand as they left the building, still in the half-circle of light around the doors, and pulled him to the side where there was a bench in the shadow, but they didn't even sit down before they were kissing again. The concrete bench pressed its cold rough surface into Jim's calves and Gary's tongue pressed into his mouth, not still now, and his own slid around it. Gary's hands pulled through Jim's hair, grabbed his neck, slid over his shoulders and down his back. Jim's hands cupped Gary's ass, that beautiful, beautiful thing he'd looked at so many times and had to see naked. Had to. He wasn't getting enough air. And Gary's nose was pushed sideways under Jim's cheekbone. They broke away from the kiss, gasping and aching and laughing like fools, bodies still so clamped together that their erections couldn't even rise.
Jim squeezed Gary's ass again. "Why are we going all the way to the library when there's a wall right here?" he asked.
"Because - " Gary was still gulping in air and wheezing with laughter - "if I don't see you naked - I'm going to lose my mind. And. It's too cold."
"My room then."
"Too far away."
"Fuck you, Mitchell, you're teasing again."
Gary leaned in, took Jim's lower lip between his teeth, and ground them gently, the lower teeth moving in a little circle, and then let go, and Jim pushed into the contact but Gary grabbed his head and held it away, only an inch or so. "I thought fucking me was the plan," he said very softly, the air from his mouth puffing against Jim's. "How long do you want to wait?"
Jim closed his eyes and groaned. "Oh, yeah," said Gary, and Jim felt fingers stroking around his ears and along his jaw and up his cheeks and across his eyelids, and he was shaking and couldn't seem to open his eyes. "Yeah, Jim, yeah, you're so ready, you're showing me now," and his thumbs were circling just at the corners of Jim's eyes, and Jim felt as if he were falling, as if he were burning up in short repeated flashes, as if he were going to explode right there, his balls were tightening and in a second it would be over. He grabbed Gary's wrists and pulled the hands away and hauled his eyes open. Jim pushed his knuckles against Gary's shoulders, and Gary took one step back, hands loose in the air, still smiling.
Jim opened his mouth and nothing came out. He swallowed and croaked, "Library."
It was still too long, too far away. Jim didn't trust himself even to touch Gary, even to look at him, and they walked beside each other but about a meter apart, the wind blowing between them.
One of them had to go through the revolving door first, though, and Jim quickened his pace - and so did Gary - so it was a kind of race. Jim won this one. Into the dim space of the lobby, up the wide shadow-filled staircase, round the landing, up again - all too long. This time, there was no detour through Historical Docs. Jim looked at the floor ahead, at the end of the corridor, at the doors to the sim lab. At Gary's hand reaching for the bar or the handle. Jim swallowed.
His booth wasn't the one nearest the door, though at least it wasn't way at the back of the lab. Jim's hands were shaking as he keyed in his password. The booth door seemed to slide open in slow motion. He stepped inside; Gary did; the door shut.
And now Jim could look. And now Gary pulled off the shiny cadet tunic, and under it was skin Jim had seen in Iowa, but without the towel and with the nipples drawn tight, a pinkish caramel color that made Jim's mouth water. Jim reached but Gary grabbed his wrist and blocked him.
"You strip too," Gary said. So Jim's view of Gary taking off his boots was momentarily blocked, but fortunately the tunic was over his head by the time Gary's hands were at the fly of his pants, and again Jim was frozen, staring helplessly as Gary slid the black cloth over his hips. Either he wasn't wearing underwear or he peeled them down with the pants. His pubic hair was a darker cocoa brown than the hair on his head, and his cock stood up thick and solid and uncircumcised, and Jim got his own pants down in record time, the elastic of his briefs dragging painfully over his own cock and the legs of his pants still tangled with the tops of his boots. He pushed at the top of one boot, stepped out of the tangled mess on that side and then the other and finally, finally, finally felt Gary all along his body, like one of his fantasies.
"Jim, oh boy, Jim," said Gary, and they clutched each other, and Jim was making some sort of noise too but he wasn't sure if it was Gary's name. He had waited so long for this he could hardly feel it. He was so hard he didn't know what to do about it. They hardly moved, didn't even kiss, just stood pressed together feeling each other's warmth and breathing for a while.
Then their hands began to move, almost at the same time, brushing and stroking and kneading each other's skin. Jim raised his hands to dig his fingers into Gary's thick short hair, pressed into his scalp, dragged down to trace his hairline, wanting to touch every part of that body he had been staring at for so long. He traced the rims of Gary's ears, fingered the small lobes, and he pinched the right one while his left hand dropped to rub up and down the big vein in Gary's neck. Gary put his cheek on Jim's hair and Jim rubbed the tendon and the collar bone and his other hand was at the edge of Gary's shoulder blade, and then he lost track of the touching-everywhere plan and both hands just slid irresistibly down to Gary's ass. Cupped it, not grabbing, so he could feel the hair ruffle as he moved his hands, up and down. Gary slid his face against Jim's without ever lifting his head, pushing hard against Jim like a cat, and his mouth was open and his ass was pressing back into Jim's palms and his cock moved against Jim's - then they did kiss again. Their mouths were open so far that Jim's jaw ached a little, but that was nothing next to his cock, and then Gary moved back just far enough to slide his hands in between their bodies, fingertips and knuckles across the tops of Jim's thighs and then in behind his sac - "Oh!" said Jim, and then even louder as Gary moved his fingers and Jim's knees gave and they dropped down to the floor, "OH!" His shoulders and the back of his head brushed the carpet but his back was arched so hard he pulled himself up to a half-sitting position, Gary bending over him and hissing, "Ssh, Jim, ssssh, the security guard," and Gary's hand covered Jim's mouth while the other still teased his balls, and he bit Gary's palm and grunted into it as he came.
Jim collapsed, back flat on the floor. He licked Gary's hand where he had bitten it. Gary's eyes were glazed, his face was beaded with sweat, and he was still hard. He brushed his wet palm up to Jim's hair and his other hand stroked Jim's now-limp cock, rubbing sticky wetness from Jim's skin onto his own.
"Your rules," Jim said, his voice thready, and Gary smiled or bared his teeth and moved his handful of semen farther down between Jim's legs until he found Jim's asshole. Jim squirmed helplessly as he felt Gary's wet fingers work their way toward it, and he spread his legs but that wouldn't make him any less new to this. It felt scary, it felt ticklish, it felt so good and full already and he knew it was just the beginning, Gary only had the very tip of one finger in. Pressing outward, round and round, pressing in, and there was the knuckle, goddamn, was this what women felt? He could feel everything, the hardness of Gary's nail and his other fingers pressing around the opening and his palm flat against the skin under Jim's sac. All Jim's joints were loose and his muscles were only responding to the jolts of sensation from his ass. Gary slid the finger all the way in and then all the way out, and Jim made a sort of "uuuooooh" noise, pleasure and then disappointment. Then two fingertips were pressing in together and Jim moved his hips uneasily and Gary said, "Relax, come on, Jim," so he let go on purpose, concentrating what was left of his mind. First one nail and callused fingertip and then the other, then both the first knuckles, were going in and stretching him sideways, farther in and scissoring open and shut. Jim was hardly breathing, grabbing air between the movements of Gary's fingers but never much at a time, trying to say his name, "G- Gar-" and stretching his legs so far apart that he felt the pull across his thigh muscles.
"Ssh, Jim, take it easy," Gary said, and his voice was unsteady too. His lips brushed the side of Jim's knee and then lower down along the thigh, and Jim moved that foot awkwardly, bumped Gary's side and slid across his ribs, wanting every inch of contact he could get.
"All right," Gary whispered and took his fingers all the way out and put his cock there instead. Pushed in, agonizingly slowly, leaned forward, pressing Jim's legs up and back until his knees were almost touching his shoulders, and it was a strain but Jim wanted to hold this position all night long. Gary pulled out and pushed in, out and in harder, and the slick friction was already inflaming, firmer and softer at once than his fingers, but then Gary shifted his grip and pushed in harder again and hit a spot that made Jim nova. He felt a sound happen in his throat, if he could have called it feeling next to the explosion inside him, but literally did not hear himself, and then Gary kissed him and kept pounding that fiery bursting spot, and all Jim could do was suckle Gary's tongue and try to hear his own whimpers, try to be in contact with the earth, try to get some sensation from his back against the carpet, his hands clutching Gary, and his cock being rubbed between their stomachs, because surely there was something wrong with losing his mind so completely. "Jim, Jim," Gary whispered against his lips. Jim felt him shaking, thrusting faster, and then an odd soft gushing pressure and Gary put his forehead against Jim's chest.
For a little while neither of them moved at all. Then Jim took what felt like his first real breath since they came into the sim booth, and pushed his thighs against Gary's confining arms. Gary dragged back and Jim lowered his legs, which he thought would probably hurt like hell in a few minutes, not to mention tomorrow, and his ass hurt now. He knew he could not sit up yet, but he reached for Gary, grazed his cheek, grasped weakly at the side of his head, and Gary came back to lie on top of him.
With an enormous effort, Jim rolled onto his side and held Gary to him when he tried to move away. "Just want to breathe," he said, or meant to, but the words were slurred. He swallowed, licked his lips, and tried again. "Don't go anywhere." There, that was even recognizable Standard. Any time now he might even get his own voice back.
"No," said Gary, and his voice sounded choked. Jim moved his hand, vaguely at first but with growing control, stroking the side of Gary's face and his hair, and kissed between his eyebrows, his forehead, his eyelid. The lashes seemed wet, and he licked Gary's eye tenderly before he pulled back to look. Gary stared back gravely, his full mouth held in a slight pout like a child, and Jim kissed him there too, even more gently, little tiny kisses with his lips barely open. Gary took a deep, shaky breath and then another, closed his eyes, and every part of his body seemed loose and soft. Jim kissed his forehead again.
"Jim," Gary whispered like a sigh.
"Yes."
"You never did this before."
"No, not this." Kissed Gary's eyebrow, brushed the hair the wrong way for the pleasure of its tickling against his lips.
A sharp exhalation, which Jim thought was meant to be a laugh. "I think . . . there must be a rule against corrupting innocent cadets."
"No, don't think so. But," he smiled when Gary opened his eyes curiously, "I'm sure there is . . . about making a big funky mess . . . in the sim booths."
"Yeah." Another half-laugh. "Yeah."
But they lay for some time not doing anything about it. When Gary moved to get up at last, Jim reached out and caught his wrist. Suddenly he had to know: "You wanted me in Iowa? Didn't you? Say it."
"Yeah." Gary smiled. "I did. I'm not blind. Sure."
"Then why not?"
"That farm is your territory. Sim booths . . . sim booths are mine."
It was like the time Jim broke his arm and, for a moment, didn't feel anything. It was like the dream symbols he'd learned about in Psych Self-Exams, which would eventually speak their meanings if the dreamer let them. The voice in Historical Docs had been ready to pay for something. Sim booths were Gary's territory.
He realized by the look on Gary's face that he hadn't intended to say so much. That meant a good deal, but at the moment Jim felt such a wave of helpless outrage against the no-win scenarios of the universe that he couldn't feel comforted. He sat up so fast that he didn't notice his own pains and Gary, though he flinched away, couldn't escape, and Jim caught him around the waist and held on as hard as he could, face buried in Gary's side.
"Oh," said Gary softly, and let his hands fall to Jim's head and shoulder, just resting there.
Later, Jim would remember this as the moment that he knew, in the back of his mind, that he would reprogram the Kobayashi Maru. And win it.
**end of "The No-Win Scenario"**
Continued in "Flowers for Ruth"