Haiiling - S T A R S P E A K E R .

❛ i wish i could say i’m making a difference, but i don’t know. ❜ - from mccoy

𝑈𝑁𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑆𝑇𝐴𝑁𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑃𝑈𝑅𝑃𝑂𝑆𝐸 𝑂𝐹 𝑂𝑁𝐸’𝑆 𝑆𝐸𝐿𝐹 and stacking it against the great and varied needs of which that purpose serves is, at its very best, a lesson in futility; then compounded by the fact that the type of individual Lenoard McCoy was, choosing to serve inside the field he did – there is the potential to habitually feel every effort was not enough. Though, in the very humble opinion of this Comms Officer, was that so many of them [ herself included ] had McCoy to thank for the very air in their lungs, because without him nearly half the crew of the Enterprise wouldn’t be alive to draw breath. The varying instances when it was McCoy alone, whose knowledge in xenobiology - she felt - often surpassed her own knowledge in xenolinguistics [ a point of pride she did not relinquish easily or to just anyone ], was the very difference between Commander Spock being amongst the living and amongst the – not.

It was late evening, both of them having come off the end of their Beta shifts, and the mess hall was thinly populated; a few late diners from Alpha shift finishing their meals, a table of cadets consumed in some deep gossip circulating the lower decks, and then McCoy and Uhura at their happily removed little table; present enough to seem normalized to the cadet class, but a area small enough to deter more company. Nyota’s hand cradled overtop of McCoy’s, and a smile ripped the seam of her mouth;

“Bones — ” her voice, warm like a smooth whisky, said the nickname most favored by their Captain; rarely did Uhura use the moniker unless very specifically trying to convey the gentle and intentional place she spoke from, “ — the difference you’ve made for some of these people is the difference between having their lives or being memory in an eulogy. At the end of it all, the only thing we can give is all that we have, and of anyone on this ship Lenoard ; I have seen you give everything when you didn’t have anything else left but those goddamn brilliant hands of yours.”

Fondly, Nyota’s hand squeezed his, “ — best in the fleet, am I right?”

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

a controversial statement ( maybe? ) but robin curtis was a better saavik than kristie alley. i don’t know what to say - i feel what i feel 🤷‍♀️🖖

⸻ 𝐻𝐴𝐼𝐿𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝐹𝑅𝐸𝑄𝑈𝐸𝑁𝐶𝐼𝐸𝑆 𝑂𝑃𝐸𝑁.

𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘵 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯 ／ 𝘰𝘤 ＆ 𝘥𝘶𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘺 ／ 𝘢𝘶 ＆ 𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴 ／ 21+

@fasciinating

That's it, that's the post.

@wcrpbubble [ also tagging brandy! ] AHHHHHH, MY GUY, MY LOVE, JL

Happy Pi(card) Day!

Thank you @frogayyyy for the inspiration :') he's glorious

BUT THIS IS EVERYTHING! Listen, I’ll die on the hill of Spock and Uhura, but man - Uhotty is like the hill right behind that one and imma connect them with a bridge. LOVE THIS. ♥️🩵♥️🩵♥️✨

“I don’t want to kiss and tell, but we ruined my dresser during intercourse. Will you go to old San Fran and find one with me?”

@fasciinating

Teacher, Student Teacher, & Their Favorite Student

@ensnchekov & @cosmiicheskaya

Uhura and Chekov (and Tribble)

                      ⸻ LIVE LONG & PROSPER.