the system functions as intended

Sometimes he has dreams about it.

But only sometimes.

Spock is there, so that's good. He can't quite see Spock's face, so that's bad.

And even for a dream - no, especially for a dream - he feels far, far too overstimulated.

At first the rhythm he feels is horribly physical (especially for a dream, especially for a dream), all surfaces of his...subsurface area coming into contact with the foreign matter, with no room, space or time, for respite.

It's almost like a probe.

The thought is disgusting. Funny, in a way, ironic and theme-appropriate, but mostly disgusting.

He's being probed. He is quite conscious of the fact that Spock is there because Jim asked him to be, because they mutually agreed on this activity, and while he's quite concerned with Spock's enjoyment he also knows that Spock's enjoyment is terribly, terribly contingent upon his own.

He has not been coerced. He is not hesitant, necessarily. As far as enjoyment, he just doesn't have any. He'd hoped to...but he doesn't.

So the probe seems to retract.

Maybe he said something. Maybe he didn't. He'd like to think that some communication occurred, and that his dreams do not contain a puppet Spock which complies to a logic Jim never has to reveal, but given the peculiar string of guarantees his unconscious brain has decided to afford him thus far, he can't really be choosy one way or the other.

It's just a thing. He recognizes that it belongs to Spock, but it is just a thing nevertheless. Its eventual resting state becomes movement just outside of Jim's vagina, a sort of perpetual thumping curve that he reciprocates but only just barely by ghosting his own genitals over the implied presence of Spock's.

It's the strangest edging he's ever conceived of. It's better, sure, but he wouldn't go so far as to say that he likes it.

If it were hands passing into that gentle night, he'd be glowing at the very thought, the incandescent promise. This activity leaves him decidedly more neutral.

It's this odd, opaque subconscious compromise that shows to him that he really doesn't want the sex for the sex, for the penetration, or even for the touching. Spock is careful, almost scientific, but not so stiff one hundred percent of the time. Sometimes he touches a little too much, and Jim never has the heart to stop him in his adorable, wondering exploration.

What he likes most is lying with Spock, heavy and set into the give of the bed, occasionally looping lazy fingers over trunks of ears and tips of noses. Spock tries to kiss his ears, right over the center of the canal, and he knows with absolution that at one point in time the action gave him euphoria, but now he's settled with himself and with Spock, and...nothing.

He'll let his love feel his way around for what he needs, but he doesn't like not responding. Not really.

(Not always, anyway. Sometimes it's nice to be lazy, to be a little bit smugly inert.)

Maybe that connects back to how they'd found themselves falling together in the first place. In the Vulcan sands, he'd been thrilled by the idea of arousal surging against his thigh, his crotch, his stomach, caused, if indirectly, by him.

That had been, he finds, the most sex he'd ever wanted to have.

So when he wakes up, and spends the day thinking of Spock, and spends the evening courting him, he decides to put a triumphant transparency on it:

"You know, I don't really think I care for sex."

And the eyebrow, and the indulgent, overwhelmingly generous posture of devotion, and the "Indeed, Captain?"

They are that same erotic pressure he'd courted in the sands, completely devoid of biological motive. But Spock does need to be close to him. He is a scientist; he'll think of other ways.

That's romance, Jim Kirk thinks. Moreover, that's sensuality. And what I feel is...

"No, I don't think so. How do you feel about just lying on top of me?"

Spock nods, smartly and quite handsomely. "I can think of nothing more gratifying."

He's not lying. The tired guide of Jim's hand on the back of his neck, when he hasn't nestled his searching head down, is as much an integral, exploratory part of the act as anything. It is its own consummation.

So making love has many different definitions. Couldn't exactly be so many-splendored if it didn't.

Jim is awake, but his eyes are lidded. His mind takes slow sips of ambrosia that taste like Spock's constant presence.

Jim Kirk is asexual. He has never been more satisfied.