Title: Flowers for Ruth (Young Men's Fancies #6)
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: jat_sapphire@yahoo.com
Series: pre-TOS
Rating: [NC-17]
Codes: K/RuthSummary: Kirk's adventures, senior year at Starfleet Academy. Ruth reappears.
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 crowd of rowdy and nameless cadets, the buffet at the party, and a reason (sort of) for those damn flowers. 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," "The Trouble With Gary," and"The No-Win Scenario."
Young Men's Fancies
#6: Flowers for Ruth
*****
May, Jim's Senior Year, Again
***Between reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru, beating it, and being called on the carpet (and then commended) for it, Jim was busy for a solid week, and had no time to spend with Gary. In fact, he'd only gotten one message from him in that week, and Jim had tried hard to believe Gary was studying, or knew Jim was studying, or ... well, it didn't matter any more, because they were both here in the campus pub tonight. Jim leaned on the bar, with a beer at his elbow, looking into Gary's cola-color eyes and pitching his voice to cut through the noise of the cadets around them.
But suddenly Gary was distracted, and Jim followed his gaze to the door. People were streaming in, and one of them was blond and broad-shouldered and loud in a red Security or Engineering uniform, his Irish accent too lilting to be true. Jim had always suspected Finnegan of putting that accent on. In fact, he'd said so, once, to another cadet. That was back when he was too new to know how gossip traveled or that Finnegan considered "plebes" fair game. Then Finnegan heard about it, tracked Jim down, and beat him up, slowly and with a great show of condescension - as if, at twenty, he was doing 15-year-old Jim some favor. After that, Jim had kept his ideas of authentic ethnicity to himself. And spent a lot of time trying to evade and cleaning up after Finnegan's ideas of reprisal. Jim had also found out, around the same time, that Finnegan's father was the Admiral in authority over the training cruises for the Academy, certainly not someone he wanted to offend.
But surely Gary hadn't come to the Academy until Finnegan had already graduated? So who was he looking at? And then Jim saw another blonde head, a complex arrangement of curls and braid, and the head turned and it was Ruth. Ruth, with Finnegan! Here!
She didn't look as if she were having a good time - or, frankly, as if she had chosen to come here. For one thing, in this mob of cadet uniforms and jumpsuits, short kimono and jeans, singlets and sweats, shorts, tunics and T-shirts, she was in a long formal gown. It had white lace on one side and black on the other with some sort of orange frill, and she was even wearing long earrings. Jim shook his head, glad not to have to dwell on it or go on feeling the slight pang it still gave him to look at her. Gary was right here, with him, and he went back to his interrupted invitation.
"Anyway, Gary?" - and Gary turned back to Jim - "So there's this two-week break after the end of exams and before the big training cruise, for me anyway - a few people are still taking Kobayashi Marus and so forth, but I'm free, and I thought I'd go home. Say goodbye to people, see Mom, but mostly bum around. Want to come along?"
"Oh, no, Jim baby, Gary can't do that," said that detestable Irish lilt. Damn, Finnegan always could sneak up on him. Jim turned in confused irritation and found both of them, Finnegan and Ruth, like ghosts come to haunt him. "Can ya, Gary?" Finnegan asked, and Jim looked at Gary's miserable expression and knew the main answer, but still not why. For once, Finnegan didn't keep him waiting. "'Cause he'll be with us in the Finnegan household, home 'n' dry, like usual. Gary here's practically me adopted brother, didn't ya know, Jimmy? Me father's taken him under the fam'ly wing. Admiral Finnegan's proto-jay, here," and Finnegan patted Gary's arm, and Jim felt absolutely ill. Gary knew Finnegan. And had never said so, though Jim had talked about the pranks and the beating. Gary knew Finnegan well. How well?
Gary said nothing at all. For a dreadful moment, the roar of talk around them swept past and left them stranded, looking at each other.
"I didn't know that," Jim forced out at last.
"Ob-viously not, Jimmy me boy," Finnegan gloated, and Jim knew he was being irrational, but he was seconds away from slugging him right in his grinning mouth.
Gary turned his back on all of them and grabbed his beer, gulping from the mug.
"Jim," said Ruth in her soft voice, "is there an old jukebox here or not? I heard there was, but Mick didn't seem to know about it."
This was not possible for anyone who'd ever been to the pub before, and Jim was certain that Mick Finnegan had been one of its best customers and maybe still was, but this was no time to look a gift excuse in the mouth. "I'll show you," Jim said and took Ruth's elbow, and they twisted through the talking, laughing crowd.
The jukebox was an antique, all right, a good 250 years old, and had been elaborately rebuilt around a modern musicvendor, so it still played. Ruth prompted Jim to tell her everything he knew about it, and under her tact he gradually relaxed a little. She picked out a favorite song and paid for it, and since it was one they had often danced to, Jim pulled her into his arms when it began, and they swayed together to its beat.
"Oh, Ruth," he said after a while. The bittersweet irony of this situation nearly overwhelmed him. She looked up gravely, and he tried to make a joke of it. "Fancy meeting you here."
She smiled sadly.
"You know," he brushed her jaw with the tips of his fingers, "you look beautiful, but I have to ask - why are you dressed this way?"
"Mick," she answered, and it was enough, but she went on, "Mick told me we were going to a formal reception and dance. Even when he picked me up, I didn't get it . . . he's in uniform, after all . . . "
Jim's mouth was actually open to say that Finnegan was and always had been a mean bastard, but at the last moment he realized she might feel obliged to defend him, and the last thing he wanted to do was quarrel with Ruth. "Oh, Ruth," he said again.
She put her head on his shoulder and the dance became a straightforward hug. It occurred to Jim that this tableau might well be Finnegan's plan for Gary, but he didn't care enough at the moment to stop. Let Gary see. Let him feel some of the confused bitterness Jim felt now.
"Jim, when we came in . . . I mean, are you with Gary now?"
"I don't know," he said, the absolute truth of it frightening him. "It's all confused. Oh, Ruth, with you it was so simple, why isn't it simple now?"
"I don't know either, Jim," she said.
He made a decision. He cradled the back of her head in his hand, lightly, feeling the carefully-arranged curls in his palm. "Ruth," he said tenderly, "let's have one more simple night. OK? Wouldn't it make you feel good? Oh, Ruth, it'd feel so good to me." He held her shoulders and pulled her back to look at her face, and she didn't look as if she were planning to say no. "We could really go dancing," he coaxed, and they both smiled.
"All right, Jim."
"Call me darling again, sweet Ruth? Just for tonight?"
"All right, Jim darling."
They didn't run into either Gary or Finnegan on their way out.
Of course, it wasn't as simple as it had been. The two who were not there were in both their minds, and the limits of their single night stood like walls around them. Yet Jim did take comfort in being with Ruth, and he thought she enjoyed herself too.
They went to the reception, after stopping at Jim's dorm so he could change into his dress uniform and pick up his invitation - actually, this event was primarily for graduating cadets, but Jim hadn't intended to go because underclassmen were not invited - and they danced, and ate hors d'oeuvres at a table decorated with orange flowers, real but looking almost exactly like the fabric ones appliqued to Ruth's dress. Jim scooped one out of the bowl of water where it lay and blotted it on the tablecloth and gave it to Ruth, who laughed and raised it to her face. Its scent, pleasantly sharp like a marigold but stronger, stayed on Jim's hands.
She held it until they danced again, and then returned it to the bowl. This was a slow song, and they moved to hold each other as if the past eight months had never happened, and they were still lovers, and Jim was only waiting for the right moment to ask her to think about marrying him. Her body warmed through the close-fitting lace. Actually the outfit was more pantsuit than skirt, Jim realized as the dance pressed them together and their steps intertwined. Jim felt her legs around one of his, her inseam rubbing against his upper thigh. He tightened his arm around her waist. Her breasts were soft against his chest. She lifted her face to his and he kissed her, just a light pressure.
It was a relief to be able to just assume, not to have to change the rules. "Where should we go?" he asked her, certain that she understood exactly what he meant and would answer.
"I want another dance," she said quietly. "Then . . . my apartment, if you want."
She hadn't really called him 'Jim darling' since he'd asked her to.
The next number was faster-paced, and when he swung Ruth out he could see her nipples erect against the lace, and when they moved around the dance floor he noticed how many other reception guests also saw how beautiful and sexy she was. And she danced well; he'd forgotten how much fun it was, dancing with her. Actually they had two more dances because the next one was slow again and he just gathered her close and rocked her. So warm and lovely. "Babe, sweet Ruth," he murmured, and she snuggled closer.
"Mick calls me that," she said thoughtfully.
"I guess he's a baseball-history fan too," said Jim, thinking how strange it was to have anything at all in common with Finnegan. Much less a girlfriend.
And much less Gary.
No use thinking about that right now.
He buried his face in Ruth's hairdo and kissed the top of her head. The music was ending. "Ready to go?" he murmured, and she nodded.
There was a rank of autocabs outside the door and they got in the nearest one. Ruth keyed in her address. Then they settled into the seat and each other's arms.
There was such familiarity in these kisses that Jim fell into them without thought or comparison. Ruth didn't like the fierce invasion of his tongue; she lapped and nibbled and sucked at his lips but always pulled back if he moved in too hard. When she paused, he rubbed his cheek against hers and trailed little, gently-sucking kisses over her jaw and down her neck, brushing aside the wires of her earring, to the inch-wide cloth on her shoulder. Meanwhile his hands too had been roving, the yielding roughness of the lace a tactile game he enjoyed so much he almost didn't regret that it separated him from her skin.
He slid his tongue under one strap while his fingers teased at the other, and as she arched her back and neck, he licked down the edge of her neckline to its lowest point, between her breasts but too far above them. Then over the lace again, and she was leaning back in the corner of the seat as he circled one nipple with his fingertips and the other with his tongue.
"Oh, yes, Jim," sighed Ruth, "use the lace, it feels so good."
So he pinched and licked upward a little more, making sure to move the lace against her tightening skin, and then he switched so that his mouth was on her other breast and the cloth he rubbed with his palm was wet. She moaned. It seemed forever since he'd done this and it was as easy and satisfying as if he'd never stopped.
Lace down her side, lace on her round hip, lace in the soft hollow that fluttered with her shallow gasps as he found her navel, so he shifted back into the other corner of the seat and leaned down and used his tongue there too, while his hands moved out and in around her thighs. The folds of material were a nuisance now, and though he loved brushing the dampness of her lace-covered crotch and hearing someone other than himself say "oh," so helplessly, he wasn't really sorry when the cab stopped and he knew that soon she'd take the lace off and then they'd fuck.
He sat up but so did she and in a moment she had tightened her legs around him and pulled herself into his lap. He heard the lace scrape across the cloth of his trousers and felt her fitting herself around the hard lump of his cock. She squirmed a little and he thrust uncontrollably, his own head back and his eyes half-closed.
Then she laid her hands flat on his chest and lunged up, off him, past him and out of the cab. She stood then, visibly shaking, on rain-dark pavement spattered with blue and green from the lights on her building's exoskeleton, while he recovered, sat up, and put a credit chip through the feebox, his own hands unsteady.
He got out, turned to her and put an arm round her waist, and they were as near as they could be and still walk up the little staircase to her door.
"When did it rain?" he asked, but she just shook her head, unlocking the door with a swipe of a key card that still reminded him of a little plastic tongue, only flatter.
The building was really more a boarding house than an apartment complex, and the foyer was furnished with a rug, a coatrack and a little table. Further down the hall was a ceiling light that edged the objects on the table but gave little sense of what exactly they were, even if Jim had been interested. Ruth paused, looking, but turned back right away and took his hand, and they went up the stairs to her rooms.
Again she used the key card, and then the old-fashioned knob like the ones at home in Iowa; she reached back to the wall to turn on the light manually. Her bed was still covered with a puffy down comforter and six pillows, and she still had scented candles on the dresser and the windowsill and the table. She moved to light them and Jim said "Ruth -" in protest at the delay, but she just looked puzzled and he didn't want to argue with her now any more than he had in the pub.
So she lit them while he sat on the edge of the bed. Then she turned the overhead light off. "This outfit is complicated to get out of," she said, "and I'd rather not have an audience. I'll be right back . . . darling," and she smiled over her shoulder, just enough to bring out her dimples in the shifting candlelight, and went into the bathroom.
Jim took a long breath of the mingled floral odors of the candles, and then got up and began to undress methodically. The little armchair with the flowers on it was still in the nearest corner and he draped his uniform pants and tunic over the back, and dropped his socks and briefs in the seat, and his boots in front of it. Ruth hated a mess and this was more or less tidy. Then he went back to the bed and rolled down the comforter and the blanket, and after looking around a little and not seeing a better place, he put that mass of bedding on the chair too. Then he went back and sat on the bed again. After about ten seconds he got up and resettled, back against the heap of pillows at the headboard, displaying himself a bit, touching himself a bit more.
And then she did come out of the bathroom, and the light behind her made her seem to glow. She was still wearing lace, but this time a short white negligee that he remembered was tied down the front with little ribbon bows. She had taken her hair down, so it flowed around her shoulders. "Oh, Jim," she said with humor and desire plain in her voice, "Are you showing off?"
"Aren't you?" he asked. "Come here, Ruth."
The lace had been fun before but now he wanted her skin, and so he moved to the edge of the bed and, hands on her waist, positioned her between his legs, and kissed the base of her throat, down the channel of her breastbone where the skin was smooth and sweet as milk, down to the first bow, which he untied with his teeth. She pulled his head up and fed on his lips as she had in the cab, and for a while he let her, gathering her closer and holding her warmth to him. Then she slid her hands down to his chest and pushed a little, so he sat back, and wetting her lips she slowly pulled the second bow apart. He smiled. She untied the third bow and shrugged out of the negligee, and he saw she hadn't even bothered to put on the matching panties.
He had to have her on the bed now. He leaned forward, braced his foot against the bedframe, wrapped his arms around her and lifted her clear of the floor, and she squealed, an unlikely sound but a funny one, and they were both laughing as they rolled over into the pillows.
In a way they were starting all over; they'd both cooled off a lot since the cab. But he'd been thinking about her naked body since they danced together at the reception, if not before, and he had a whole mental list of places he wanted to reacquaint himself with. Her breasts, the right one a little smaller than the left, and the nipple, he remembered, more sensitive - he sucked it now and she writhed under him and he smiled against her skin. She had a mole up high on her inner arm and he turned her elbow outward to find it and nibbled there too; that didn't please her as much but he enjoyed it. Her scent was sharper there, he could smell her sweat under her perfume, and he licked the arm and then the side of her breast to try and get that scent into his mouth and keep it. She felt for his head and brought it back to the nipple and he suckled again, happy enough there to stay for a while and listen to her little pleased murmurs. Actually he preferred what he was doing with his hand on the other breast, a rhythmic squeezing motion that reminded him how really soft she was. She pushed up on his ribs and they shifted around so she could be on top, and she straddled him and leaned her breasts down to his mouth again. Yes, all right, he could do this for a while more, and she ran one hand up and down his side, lightly and then more firmly and farther up into his armpit, then over onto his chest. That did feel good. And better when she pinched one of his nipples, and better still when she wormed her hand between them down to the thicker hair below his waist.
Now he pushed up on her shoulders and she sat up, looking at him as if she didn't know why. "Don't tease," he said, and she grinned a little and then grasped his cock with her little thin fingers, her breast glistening in the candlelight where he'd sucked it and her face gone grave and attentive. He stroked up and down her back and flank and she moved her other hand absently on his chest as she grasped and pulled and milked him into complete hardness. Then she levered up to lick the tip, just the tip, and he stroked between her ass cheeks and forward into the wetness of her pubic hair, tangling his fingers there and just brushing her labia, which he knew she liked. One finger farther forward, yes, there - she started and he knew he'd found it, so he backed up and snaked his finger forward again, another little nudge, another, and she almost collapsed across his hips. Then she sat up in a rush and turned and straddled him, rubbed herself against him and he could feel her wetness on his skin, and he took her by the waist and turned them both on their sides.
"No, let me, let me," she said and rolled them back, knelt up over him and reached for his cock and opened herself over it with the other hand, and there, the wet folds of her touched him, and there, his hands were on her waist and she was settling down on him, and now she was moving forward and back, up and down, side to side, all over, holding his forearms. He almost laughed at her wild gyrations, but couldn't because he was groaning and thrusting as far up as he could against the yielding bed. "Oh, oh, oh, o-o-o-o-oh!" she said, her sweet voice rising as he'd heard it so many times before, and then as she always did she announced, "Now, Jim! Now!" and was still except for little slow shudders that gripped him and sent him over the edge too, and they were climaxing together, something they'd rarely managed. She rocked forward again, pressing her clit against him, he guessed, and he pulled her down to suck her breast again and she shook a little more. And then relaxed, as bonelessly as if she were out cold though he knew she wasn't. He let her nipple slip out of his mouth and rubbed his cheek against it.
They lay still for a few moments, until he began to wonder if she'd given up asking little goofy questions out of the blue, and then she said, "Why baseball history?"
Baseball history. He had to think for a moment, as usual. Oh, yes, "Baby - 'babe' is like baby, right? So there was this baseball player, back in the 20th century sometime, named Ruth, called Babe Ruth."
"Was she famous?"
"No, sweetheart, it was a man. Ruth was his last name."
"Oh." She was quiet for a few seconds, maybe thinking, but apparently still had trouble with it. "A man."
"You're much sexier than he was," Jim said, smiling.
Another pause. "If I think about this for a while, will it make sense to me?" she asked.
"Probably not, it's just a tiny joke. For me, anyway, it happened by mistake, and then I noticed it and thought it was kind of funny, and then I got used to calling you that and didn't think about it any more."
"Do you really think that's who Mick is thinking about too, when he calls me Babe?"
There was something he hadn't really wanted to be reminded of. "Don't know, Ruth," he said, sighing. "I never have understood how Finnegan thinks."
Now, though, he *had* been reminded, and he began to feel that this interlude was nearly over, and to wish for his own bed and his own things around him, and fresher air than this sex-laden flowery smoke. He stirred, and she pushed herself up onto one elbow and looked down at him. "You're thinking of going," she said without reproach.
"A little. It's nice here," he said, stroking her.
"It was nice, tonight, with you," she said, and kissed him lightly. "But if you need to go, I understand."
He took another deep breath, not sure what he really did need. But she was right, he couldn't really stay until morning.
"Well . . . " he said, and she laughed a little and kissed his chin once more.
"Want to shower first?"
"Mmm, no, not a shower."
"Well, use what you want," she said. "The green towels are fresh."
So he did get up, and she rolled back into the bed, seeming perfectly contented.
He didn't shower, which would take too long, and was somehow too domestic. But he did clean himself up with a damp washcloth and splash cold water on his face to wake himself up, and he wet down his hair and combed it back.
Then he came out and dressed under her eyes, which felt awkward, but his clothes were on the chair so there was no help for it. He put the covers back on the bed, too, while she lay there, and that amused them both. Then he was ready; she sat up, and he perched on the edge of the bed and took her face between his hands. "Ruth, you are too sweet," he said. "You were wonderful to me tonight." He kissed her forehead. "Make Mick treat you better."
"I can take care of myself, Jim. And I didn't do this tonight just for you."
"Good, I'm glad you enjoyed it."
"Couldn't you tell, Jim? Jim darling?" And they were both smiling and Jim's heart was hurting, but he did have to leave eventually. He kissed her one last time.
"Ruth," he said, heard the longing in his own voice, and stopped. He thought she'd understand why he didn't say goodbye. He left the room without looking back, and closed the door behind him in the dark hallway, and the air smelled sharp and lonely. He took a deep breath of it and went down the stairs.
Then something else, something familiar, teased his nose just as he was at the front door, and with its handle in his hand, he turned back curiously. Light came in through the crack in the door and fell gently on the table in the foyer, where one of the same orange flowers lay that he had seen at the reception, and had given Ruth as a joke - but surely she had left that bloom behind? Yes, he knew she had: she couldn't have had a flower with her in the cab without his noticing. Where had this one come from?
He looked more closely and noticed a sheet of paper nearby. "Good girl," it said in big black letters, and then initials that were too tangled for Jim to read, like a monogram.
Jim felt ashamed of himself. Reading someone else’s notes. He turned away and went through the door, pulling it closed behind him. He knew the way to the nearest muni stop. He felt empty and out of place here, and he wanted to get back to the Academy grounds and sleep.
**end of "Flowers for Ruth"**
Continued in "Almost Honest"