14.

I have never liked Earth’s winters.

They are cold and damp and utterly foreign to me. Even in places where it does not usually snow, the air temperature becomes cooler and the rainfall increases – which is still much too different from Vulcan’s dust and dry heat.

But Vulcan is gone, and the colony is light-years away. So, when the Enterprise docked for maintenance on Stardate 2267.18, the middle of the Earth-month of January, and James suggested that we spend our three day shore leave at his old family home in rural Iowa, I acquiesced. Even though winter in Iowa involves snow and wind and subzero temperatures.

You see, I may dislike winter, but I am rather fond of James Tiberius Kirk.

And James Tiberius Kirk is rather fond of winter.

He talks at length about it at times, particularly when he is worn and weary and secretly nursing a case of homesickness. He speaks quietly of ice skating and skiing, of hot cocoa and holly trees laden with berries.

And of the activity that he is currently pursuing: whiling the evening away with a good book, stretched placidly out in front of the fireplace’s glowing warmth.

For a high-intensity risk-taker with a ‘type A’ personality, James is often surprisingly mundane in his choice of leisure activities (not that I have ever minded this propensity, of course). He has, for instance, a most peculiar affection for antique books, and enjoys passing hours absorbed in the words, feel, and smell of their old, torn paper pages.

At the moment, he is particularly engrossed in the pages of A Tale of Two Cities, sprawled out on a patchwork quilt in front of the fireplace, his skin hued with the golden orange of its flames. A half-emptied glass of whiskey sits off to the side, shining brilliant amber in the dim glow. Just next to it sits a small ashtray, and thin wisps of richly scented smoke rise off the last embers of a cigar that James discarded there just moments previous.

I look at him a long time, watching him and thinking. He is slowing down, becoming comfortable with himself and with aging. He is thirty-four now, and time is just beginning to show on his face – still shying from the strong, angular lines of his jaw and cheekbones, but sneaking in around the corners of his lips and eyes.

We, too, have grown comfortable with one another over the years, each contented simply to be in the other’s presence, to age together.

The minutes slip by languidly, placidly. Time seems to move at a gentler pace here, and my body appreciates this, physically taxed by months of space travel. My eyelids grow heavy, and my thoughts become increasingly garbled. I shift, choosing to curl up rather indecorously in the armchair that I have been sitting on. I could go to bed, but I do not want to leave James, and I rather like the thought of falling asleep to the steady rhythm of his relaxed breathing and the soft swish of his fingers turning the paper pages of his antique book. I watch him just a little longer, and then give in completely to my body’s need for rest.

I wake up a few hours later to the soft warmth of James’ lips pressed lightly against my forehead. I blink, trying to shake away my grogginess.

“James?” I murmur, my voice still thick with sleep.

He pulls back and frowns, looking decidedly displeased with himself. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he states apologetically.

“Do not concern yourself with it,” I assure him, “I should not have fallen asleep out here.”

He smiles. “Well, I’m sorry anyway. But hey, since you’re awake now, I might as well invite you to come along.”

I sit up, my muscles stiff and cramped from the awkward position in which I had slept. I am more alert now, and my curiosity has been peaked. “Where are you going? And what time is it, James?”

“It’s about midnight,” he replies, “And I’m going outside.”

“Outside?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“It is midnight?” I offer.

He scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah, I forgot—past your bedtime. C’mon Spock, come with me.” He grins widely. “It’s snowing and I haven’t seen snow in ages.”

“But there is snow all over the ground,” I state, now genuinely perplexed, “About 43 centimeters of it, in fact.”

“Well, yeah, but I haven’t seen snow fall in ages.”

“So you’re fascinated by the act of precipitation rather than by the precipitation itself?”

“Yeah. Wait, what? No.” He is starting to look a little exasperated. “Just come outside with me.” His eyes have that pleading look in them, the one that means that I am being difficult about something that he sincerely wants to share with me.

“James,” I reply levelly, not wanting to acquiesce, but also not wanting to start anything, “You know that I am not fond of—”

“And you know,” he counters, “that avoiding something just because you do not personally enjoy it isn’t exactly logical.”

I cave.

“Alright, alright,” I say, “I will accompany you. But only for a moment.”

He grins.

“I knew I’d win in the end,” he whispers, ghosting a kiss across the side of my face. “Now c’mon, let’s find you some warm clothes.”

Eleven minutes, thirty-nine seconds later, I am outside, wearing one of James’ old hand-knit sweaters underneath a large, somewhat musty-smelling winter coat that he dug out of the closet in his brother’s old bedroom. My hands are covered with the scratchy fabric of thick woolen mittens and my feet are crammed into too-small winter boots.

And still, I am shivering.

James is trying to coax me off the covered front porch of the old farm house and into the gently falling snow, and I am protesting, insisting that sitting on the steps will be perfectly adequate.

But James has never been good at taking ‘no’ for answer, and he wraps his bright blue scarf around me, tucking it across my chattering jaw and laughing as he presses his lips against the side of my nose. He pulls the wrinkled, fur-trimmed hood of my jacket over my head and tugs me down off the steps.

“See,” he offers, still acting as though I am a small child, “Not so bad.”

“I estimate that the current temperature is close to minus ten degrees Celsius, approximately fifty-five degrees cooler than the optimal air temperature for Vulcans. Which is hardly what I would term ‘not so bad.’”

Mostly, I am just being difficult out of habit. Just to, as James would call it, ‘get a rise’ out of him.

I do not, however, achieve this aim. James just rolls his eyes and walks out into the snow covered yard, his face and palms turned up to the large white flakes that float slowly down from the clouds above.

So I try again.

Holding my breath, I press my hands into the wet, heavy snow at my feet, wincing as the cold sneaks in through the relatively loose weave of my mittens. I pick up a handful of the crystallized water and press it into a ball. I have only ever seen this in movies, but I think I have the technique down rather well.

I fight back the smile that has started to tug at the corners of my mouth, and hurl the snowball at James, hitting him square in the back.

He spins around, shocked. And then he looks a little bewildered, looking from me, to my mittens, to the snow, and then back to me. And then he almost looks angry. And then he laughs, quietly at first, but then louder, tears forming at the corners of his bright blue eyes and a broad, genuine smile spreading across his face.

“You green-blooded hobgoblin! You—you hate the snow! You’re not supposed to—to—you know—throw it!” He’s grinning madly now, the happiest I have seen him in a long time. He bends to form a snowball of his own, and while he does so, I hit him with another one, this time on the shoulder.

“You’ve gone nutters, Spock!” he laughs, abandoning his original tactic and taking a running leap at me instead, tackling me into the snow.

We fall backwards, a tangle of limbs and scarves and drawstrings. We are both panting – him from exhilaration, me from having the wind knocked from my lungs, and both from the desire that this sudden closeness stirs up within us.

“That’ll teach yah,” he mutters playfully, “Cold now?”

I nod, and then capture his lips in a kiss, deepening it as he leans into it. The connection between us buzzes to life and seems to crackle in the air around us.

He pulls back after a few moments, pressing his hand to my cheek and whispering, his voice hoarse with need. “We’re forever, you know” he says, his eyes glistening almost wildly, “You and me.”

I stare at him blankly, not knowing what to say. I want us to be forever. But forever is irrational, illogical, impossible. I cannot promise him forever. I can promise him tonight; maybe tomorrow. But beyond that – after this – all manner of things could happen. We are, after all, in a dangerous line of work. And we are from two different worlds, he and I.

“I am afraid, James, that the concept of ‘forever’ is rather nonsensical,” I finally respond, my voice even and carefully distanced.

He grins at me with that warm, unflappable grin of his. “Not with you it’s not,” he murmurs, his breath warm and moist, his lips brushing over the hollow of my exposed neck. A familiar heat stirs deep within me, and my body starts to ache for my lover, suddenly intensely aware of his every moment – of every small touch, of the tenseness of every muscle.

“And what makes me any different,” I press, daunted but for some inexplicable reason not willing to let this go just yet.

“You’re you,” he says, closing his lips over mine. He tastes like whiskey and cigars and snowflakes. “And I love you.”

His voice is husky in my ear, and his mouth is all rough lips and soft kisses.

I close my eyes, relishing in his touch, and suddenly, I do not want to be difficult over this one. Because I want the same thing, however illogical or irrational or impossible it may be.

I cup his face in my mittened hand and press my forehead to his. “Forever then,” I promise.

He kisses me hard, almost desperately, and as he does so, I think of the golden hue of his skin in the firelight, of his peaceful, even breathing, and of cigar smoke and glasses of glowing amber whiskey. Of the way he stretched out his bare hands to catch the falling snow just moments previous, and of the snowflakes that are currently clinging to his eyelashes. Of the way he feels against me now – his warmth pressing away the chill of the air around me and the snow beneath me, and the wet heat of his mouth trailing kisses down the frozen skin of my collarbone, his fingers unzipping my coat and eagerly pushing the fabric of my sweater to the side.

Of him and me and forever.

And I decide that winter is not really that disagreeable after all.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the wait guys! (I seem to say that a lot, eh?) Moving's a bitch. And also, sorry for the terribly self-indulgent fluff that is this chapter. I usually shy away from pure fluff but I was in some sort of freak mood the day I wrote this. Hearts and hugs for all.