kiss long and prosper

"And...thumb out?"

Spock dutifully offered the ta'al again in demonstration, and it held approximately at chin height, so Jim didn't have to divert his own eyes very far to take it in.

"Right, right, thumb out," he murmured, hands working with each other to form the appropriate finger shapes well below either of their fields of vision as he stepped matter-of-factly in Spock's direction, closer and closer until his lips hit the center of Spock's palm.

Hastily, Spock pulled back his hand, then dropped it in a cramped semicircular arc back down to his side with the requisite awkwardness born of his sudden lack of personal space. A passing thought gave him something about the inherent superior flexibility of Vulcan rotator cuffs, for and from this feline ancestry or that, but he soon dismissed it; it hadn't helped, after all.

"Captain..."

Jim's smile was less guilty, more shameless. Rather, it was quite guilty, and quite apologetic, altogether and all together, but not...indeed, not regretful in the least. And who could even be sorrowful? Being smiled at by that face, that bright, sunny face...

"Well, you have such nice hands..."

Spock considered this. While undue vanity was not a logical indulgence, he knew that his hands were among those attributes of him most objectively well-formed and useful. He did not object to Jim's statement, nor did he entirely object to its specific use in context as justification for wanton affectionate behavior, regardless of appropriate location therefor.

He held out two fingers. He did not say "I prefer yours" because he did not, generally, prefer Jim's hands for any reason other than that they were Jim's; as the limited attraction he felt and allowed himself to feel went, once again, it was the dextrousness of slender digits which performed calculations and operated consoles that he admired. He liked Jim's hands for their differentness, and for their warmth as they brushed against his.

"Is that all I get?" Jim cajoled gently, teasingly. Spock moved the fingers to lie diagonally over his lips as a direct device of silencing (not just shushing, you see), and the captain spontaneously acquired a pair of mischievous dimples.

"Well, this is nice," he said around the offending fingers, pointedly not kissing them, "but really, Spock, I thought you wanted me to live long and prosper. How can I prosper if my husband won't let me give him a kiss?"

The sight of his hands gesturing with all their usual vociferousness while his head stayed remarkably still was beyond adorably comical - in Spock's measured, even estimation. "You Vulcans know all about needs, and weighing, and what's good for getting on with it, right?"

Impeccable logic. Spock acknowledged it with raised right brow and tilted chin, as ever. If he had meant to give a rejoinder, however, he was startled out of it by Jim's slow grasp of his wrist, moving his hand to the side where Jim turned to kiss the palm again.

Quite fascinating, indeed. Jim spoke of all he would "get" as if it were not he who was delivering these kisses, depositing them anywhere on Spock he could manage.

If Jim were telepathic, he'd probably laugh lightly at Spock's semantic disquietude, say something about how he's glad to be the one swinging for free, pause to turn up his brows and process the sudden sheer magnitude of his regard for the other man...

But Jim was not telepathic. He was merely empathetic, sympathetic, compassionate. As a result, he took Spock's bemused expression as a cue that he should launch a maneuver especially designed to smudge Spock's lipstick and eyeshadow all over his blush, both natural and applied.

Spock imagined he would experience simultaneous irksome difficulty and sublime ease whenever offering the ta'al from now on.