&. 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟐 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

D I S C O V E R. THIS WAS A WORD WHICH INCITED from her fathomless ambition; Nyota Uhura had always wanted to be an explorer for the sake of brilliant and beautiful – discovery. And yet there are things that perhaps needn’t be discovered or explored; but should serve as caution to the rest. The consequence of going too far; to toe along the edges of where lingers the apotheosis of fear. The eldritch things that live in the dark parts between the stars – were such nightmares meant to be found? How far can malevolence be explored? And to what end? Nyota drew herself closer, chasing the warmth from him, again finding comfort in that familiar darkness, face pressed into the crook of his neck; clinging far tighter than what would be her conventional grip into his skin. In hushed, slow inhales and exhales she sidestepped Spock’s sentiment about discovery as the idea felt strange and tight in her chest, a concept that did not belong. Instead she followed the invisible equations he drew into her body, a great many she could not guess their beginnings, middles or ends, but she did catch patterns, numbers and the occasional order of operation; it was the secret she kept with his hands, had yet to ever say aloud her hypothesis to what he left etched into her skin. Briefly smiling into his neck, Nyota drew her leg high, sliding slowly through the middle of his – smooth skin against soft, black hair.

It was a feeling she wanted to chase.

But fear is insidious.

It bleeds.

Her hand, that was soft snaking a delicate line up his neck to the tip of his ear and back down again, finally stopped to rest against his chest, smoothing the hair idly with her fingers.

Fear bleeds – bleeding into the familiar darkness she found in the comfort of Spock. The dark of a vacant rip in the cosmos, a singularity of darkness - unquantifiable fear.

“Spock–” his name trembled in her mouth, “ . . . do you think fear is tangible? If it’s observable and quantifiable - couldn’t it be tangible? A sentient thing?”

The question itself sounded like nonsense, she knew it to be true, but there was a context that she couldn’t explain. It was how she knew fear was tangible; it was a cold hand that held sense at the back of her esophagus and reached down and polluted the air in her lungs with which to speak it.

Maybe Spock might draw an equation of numbers with which to unlock the words trapped in her throat.

@fasciinating

“ 𝑾𝑯𝑨𝑻 𝑫𝑶 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑵𝑬𝑬𝑫 ? ”

AN ANSWER FAILED HER or at least one that seemed like it would produce any sensical clarity to either of them. The question held an answer so large Nyota wasn’t sure how to respond for several long minutes. In that time, the dark from the room mirrored the darkness that lingered at the edges of her thoughts, a puzzle to carry with her from birth, to this moment, to seemingly the rest of her days.

Uhura did this from on occasion; in these private, silent, intimate spaces she held with him where her mind wandered to the end of the galaxy, gently pulling his hand along behind her, only to stop right at the edge where infinite darkness began.

Back inside of Spock’s quarters, in a far more familiar darkness; that darkness that held no pretense, just as the man of whom she laid her body against. The resolute and unrelenting heat from all of her radiated deep into his skin as Nyota made a brief ascent upward where her head came to rest under the point of his chin.

When the words finally came to her, they came packaged inside of a query; “Spock – what do you think is out there . . . beyond the galactic wall?”

This had not the first instance in which Nyota came to her mate with this question; and very nearly each time the way in which it is asked, the hour of day and circumstance - all different. Going so far to appear as though a non-sequitur - as it did now. Though there was hardly anything random in this question, a question she thought on almost every day of her life from youth.

Not untoward for scientists and explorers, to pose such quandaries and wonder grand and mysterious things; it was that her tone never implied Uhura was asking for the purposes of science or exploration.

It was a secret thing she asked him — with no expectation of a specific answer, leaving it to be little more than a rhetorical question, but far from direct or specific.

@fasciinating

“Please don’t mistake my measured professional tone for calmness, as I am filled with waters of rage.”

@fasciinating

hozier lyrics, hozier (expanded edition)

❛  i should've worshipped them sooner. ❜

❛  we were born sick. ❜

❛  the only heaven i'll be sent to is when i'm alone with you. ❜

❛  i'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies. ❜

❛  good god, let me give you my life. ❜

❛  there is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin. ❜

❛  it's toying somewhere between love and abuse. ❜

❛  no more alone or myself i could be. ❜

❛  [i/you] lurched like a stray to the arms that were open. ❜

❛  i lay my heart down with the rest at [your/their] feet. ❜

❛  i wonder if it's better now having survived. ❜

❛  i'm so tired trying to see from behind the red in my eyes. ❜

❛  no better version of me i could pretend to be tonight. ❜

❛  [they/you] found me just in time. ❜

❛  cause with my mid-youth crisis all said and done, i need to be youthfully felt cause i never felt young. ❜

❛  it'd be great to find a place we could escape sometimes. ❜

❛  we tried the world and it wasn't for us. ❜

❛  you knew who i was with every step that i ran to you. ❜

❛  would things be easier if there was a right way? ❜

❛  honey, there is no right way. ❜

❛  i fall in love just a little bit every day with someone new. ❜

❛  there's an art to life's distractions. ❜

❛  love with every stranger, the stranger the better. ❜

❛  all i've ever done is hide. ❜

❛  when you kill the lights and kiss my eyes, i feel ike a person for a moment of my life. ❜

❛  but you don't know what the hell you put me through. ❜

❛  it feels good to be alone with you. ❜

❛  there are questions i can't ask. ❜

❛  now, at last, the worst is over. ❜

❛  i know that you hate this place. ❜

❛  there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree? ❜

❛  there's something lonesome about you, something so wholesome about you. ❜

❛  innocence died screaming. ask me, i should know. ❜

❛  there's something broken about this but i might be hoping about this. ❜

❛  we'll lay here for years or for hours, your hand in my hand. so still and discreet. ❜

❛  i'd be home with you. ❜

❛  any way to distract and sedate. ❜

❛  i'm somewhere outside my life. i keep scratching but somehow i can't get in. ❜

❛  don't you stand there watching me, won't you? ❜

❛  don't you join in, you're supposed to drag me away from it. ❜

❛  i'm so full of love, i could barely eat. ❜

❛  [they/you] are sweet as can be. [they/you] give me toothaches just from kissing me. ❜

❛  no grave can hold my body down, i'll crawl home to [them/you]. ❜

❛  you never asked me once about the wrong i did. ❜

❛  [you/they] would never fret none about what my hands and my body done. ❜

❛  if the lord don't forgive me, i'd still have you and you would have me. ❜

❛  why were you digging? what did you bury? ❜

❛  i will not ask you where you came from. i will not ask and neither should you. ❜

❛  just put your sweet lips on my lips. we should just kiss like real people do. ❜

❛  i know that look, eyes always seeking. ❜

❛  i will not ask you why you were creeping. in some sad way, i already know. ❜

❛  you know better than to smile at me like that. ❜

❛  i know who i am when i'm alone. ❜

❛  you don't understand. you should never know how easy you are to need. ❜

❛  don't let me in with no intention to keep me. ❜

❛  it can't be unlearned. i've known the warmth of your doorways. ❜

❛  i'll find my way back to you. ❜

❛  my heart is heavy with the hate of some other man's beliefs. ❜

❛  screaming the name of a foreigner's good is the purest expression of grief. ❜

❛  i feel no control of my body. i feel no safety in [your/their] arms. ❜

❛  all that i've been taught and every word i've got is foreign to me. ❜

❛  it looks ugly but it's clean. ❜

❛  your fight and fury is fiery. ❜

❛  it's worth it, it's divine. i have this some of the time. ❜

❛  you called my name til the fever broke. ❜

❛  i heard a scream in the woods somewhere. ❜

❛  i turned and ran to save a life i didn't have. ❜

❛  i need you to run to me. run to me! ❜

❛  when i was a child, i heard voices. some would sing and some would scream. ❜

❛  don't you ever tame your demons but always keep them on a leash. ❜

❛  you've done me wrong for a long, long time. ❜

❛  after all you've done, i never changed my mind. ❜

❛  please, try to love me. ❜

❛  my love will never die. ❜

Nyota Uhura stood over a drawer, her face twisted into an expression that settled between annoyed and a general readying for war.

The drawer in question was normally filled with random odds and ends, bits and baubles, scissors that were missing a handle but were entirely adequate for curling ribbons on gifts, blank thank you cards, three broke styluses, hair ties, bobby pins, clips, bands, papers; it was a junk drawer as beautiful as it was random with it’s contents.

But now . . .

Now it was — organized.

The styluses and single handed scissors were gone, her hair ties neatly bound together with some of the loose string (loose strings that had no business holding hair ties together) and a lot of hallmark clues that someone was in here with their goddamn Vulcan fingers that shouldn’t have been.

Nyota swept the long, silvery white main of hair over her shoulder, eyes narrowing and drawing together fine lines of crow’s feet at their orbital corners. Pensively she sipped her tea and the drawer slammed shut.

Her steps were barefooted and silent as she could hear the gentle conversation between Jim and the Old Man. She didn’t care what they were talking about as Uhura stood in the doorway of Jim’s study, a game of chess setting between them.

It was subtle the way she crept over to him, almost affectionate the way her arm slinked around his shoulders, idly smoothing down gun metal silver hair that was already smoother than the surface of still water.

Gracefully, one could say, was the way she leaned over and at random plucked four pieces from the game set, standing back upright and looking down at her Vulcan husband;

“Why,” Nyota tossed a knight at his right shoulder, “— is all my junk,” then cast a rook at his chest, “— out of,” another thrown at the left shoulder, “ — the JUNK drawer?” And the last she lobbed (though to be fair, her softest) against his left cheek.

@fasciinating

WHAT HE SAID WAS LOST INTO THE DESERT with The Maker while Uhura was lost inside of Spock's proximity – the way it was sudden, but simultaneously time elongated. No one sat this close; Uhura rarely permitted it of anyone. But she dreamt of him. She dreamt of his closeness. She dreamt of it as recently as that morning. For long years Uhura entertained dreamless sleeps, a blank void where exhaustion went to die and be remade into something useful in time for her to meet the sun. Uhura’s slumbers, just as her days, were functional, purposeful and planned; scarcely did she award herself frivolity. She loved her people, her Sietch; her whole, short and brutal nineteen years of life were committed to their betterment, their prosperity and defense – to their survival. Uhura could hear their laughter below echoing up from the Sietch – she wanted to turn her head, to briefly escape the weight of this intimacy. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. A fear lingered that if she broke this moment, if she looked away - it would slip through her fingers like spice on hot winds rolling up from the south. The moons were alight, reflected in vivid detail against the inky dark of his eyes; and if she trained her eyes against his enough, there mirrored in his she could even make out each finger of The Hand of God. Uhura could feel his breath against her lips, his air rolling over her tongue when she breathed in – breathing him into her lungs, into her blood. Uhura pressed their hands hard against her stomach, sliding her free hand overtop, pushing harder into her abdomen creating a natural lean-in, shaving away at the liminal space between their mouths. This pervasive kind of intimacy, fresh and new, like golden sun rising over the dunes - all the same it wasn’t natural to how she connected with people. With anyone at all. Not like this. But few things can survive, whole and joyful, on Arrakis; even in the secret places held by the heart. Because here she felt a stab of what felt like grief, but a grief she had not yet felt, followed with indecent haste by grief’s familiar bedfellow: Dread. What was this feeling? Harder she pressed their hands against the sinewy muscle of her belly, nails digging into his skin. She didn't dare to move. She let grief and dread wrestle against her bones, letting the breath in her throat paralyze while she fell headlong into the endless black of his eyes – there was something ill fated screaming from the expanse of a future she couldn’t dream. Instead rose the heat of her heart, an organ of brimstone promising ruin to anything that dared seek it’s favor. Uhura’s heart was an inhospitable place – molten fire flowed where there should have been blood; it was a place where only dragons could go.  A place where only dragons could stay. “ D’rachanya, ” repeating the word with barely a breath, heady in the way it came from her like a spell or conjuration. She closed the final piece of space between them. Would they burn the other if their lips touch?

Not outwardly. Rather it burned inwardly, where the point of origin was the center of her stomach, the place where Uhura still held fast to his hand with both of hers. Deeper she pushed into him, committing the details of his mouth to sacred memory. The swirling movement of her jaw, her lips, had slowed – slowing until finally she stopped and pulled away, but only just far enough she could level her eyes to his again. “ If you were to become a dragon – would you still come to Arrakis and find me in the desert? ”

@fasciinating

She ran two, slow fingers against the underside of his index and middle fingers. It was a custom entirely alien to her, but Uhura liked the rush of warmth in her chest incited by listening to the way his breath would change, albeit almost imperceptibly. They sat on the ridge of a particularly steep dune, the sun having melted into the horizon hours ago, where Uhura held his hand in hers, like some delicate, invaluable treasure unearthed from the deep desert, idling together in contented silence - broken by the onset of a sudden thought-turned-spoken query. “ Hayalit, ” she began, though the scathing she once married to this term had dissolved bit-by-bit, leaving behind the suggestions of deep affection she had yet to speak aloud between them. An affection that still only lived by touch and sight; in dreams.  “ – I once heard a man in Arrakeen say that long ago dragons ruled your distant, red deserts. Is that true ? ” Uhura’s fingers idly remained against the underside of his, with a slow and steady back and forth as she moved her own. “Could you find them, Mahdi ? ” But a smirk pushed itself in the corner of her mouth. She didn’t necessarily believe Spock to be the Lisan al-Gaib, and from time to time she reminded him of that but the cavalier way she would use all those holy names her people had assigned him.

HE RESISTS A SHUDDER ON THE plains of Arrakis. The sun is gone, bright gold away from the sea of red flecks and shimmering heat. Spock can still see it as it rises from the sands, a contradiction to the sensations she gives him, the cool touch of her fingertips. It is almost reverent, the hiss and curl of a slow-burning fire. But Spock is not so foolish as to consider what she does, the things she says to him, with anything else but teasing. He watches them nonetheless, partially distracted until Uhura calls him by the name given to him by the desert and its people. Hayalit, followed by others, other words that skitter, demanding things, against his skin and the curves of his ears.

It means to change, creature of the deep crimson sand with mutating scales. Spock stares nowhere, everywhere all at once, eyes dark when they pin somewhere between the ravines of her fingers. How can he change for the good of the many, never the few?

Never the one.

Spock cannot pretend to know; he loathes the answer. It seeks him regardless.

—fire and glass, a red flag streaming across a battlefield with the symbol of his father's house.

" Dragons? " Spock raises a brow. " D'rachanya, " he explains, Vuhlkansu knife-like where it sears off his tongue and he twitches his chin, sharp and an observant like a bird, " So they say. "

His hand fists, gripping hers, flexing and immediately stilling, as though aghast of its own involuntary movement. Spock shakes his head, " I have no wish to. " He cannot, calculating; despite its strangeness, there are greater possibilities than such a discovery. He leans, mouth quirking slightly above hers. " It would be more likely to become one. "

@haiiling

us, amongst the stars

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Not fucking @tangleweave coming at me full force with my love, my light - goddamn Doctor Julian Bashir. CHEF’S KISS 🤌 ♥️🩵♥️🩵

Were you expecting resistance? 🤣

@fasciinating

He is risen

the idea behind the japanese art of kintsugi is that cracks in an object are part of its history. you know, those bowls that break & then the cracks get filled with gold so then they're even more beautiful ? we've all been damaged, but it's good damage because it makes us more who we are.