Author's website: http://www.dementia.org/~jacquez/writing/

Many thanks to Debra Fran Baker for the beta, and for the original inspiration, years and years ago.

Sequel to *Inclination*, an AU in the *Star Trek* universe.
http://852prospect.org/archive/archive/1_2000_au/inclination.html
If you haven't read *Inclination*, this will probably not make very much sense.
This story is a sequel to: http://Inclination

It was the scent that woke Ellison in the middle of ship's night, though he didn't realize it at first. He was asleep, and then he was awake, his body thrumming with awareness, heat and knots chasing each other in his stomach. Telar, beside him, did not move.

Ellison listened, but heard nothing beyond the normal hum of the ship around him; he looked down at his bondmate; studied the lines in Telar's outflung palm; followed the whorls of his fingerprints around in spirals back down to sleep.

He woke again, less than an hour later, his heart hammering in his chest. Rather than wake Telar (though it was odd that Telar, a bonded empath, had not woken), Ellison ran through his sensory checks: sight, check; hearing, check; scent -- he inhaled deeply, and there it was, just on the edge of his Sentinel-enhanced perception: a sharp, smoky burn over Telar's adult-deepening scent.

It had been a month since he'd noticed Telar holding himself apart from others; a month since the first time Telar had surged beneath him, lost in climax; a month since Telar had denied wanting any other (any woman, Ellison thought, since he denied wanting Connor).

He'd read everything he could find on pon farr shortly after bonding with Telar, who'd been a subadult at the time. He'd also grilled Telar about it, but found that beyond the bare facts, Vulcans -- or at least, Telar's hakausu'lar caste -- left everything up to individual experience. He supposed, since so many hakausu'lar males committed suicide before their first pon farr, education was not a high priority.

They'd only been able to guess when the full force of pon farr would hit. "At some time," Telar had said, "I may be unfit for duty. When that occurs, we should obtain one standard week's isolation, which should be sufficient to resolve the difficulty."

He ran his hand down Telar's back, over the silk of his sleep-shirt; Telar did not wake but shuddered, heat and scent rising from his skin. Ellison felt desire twisting through him -- his own, and Telar's hazy dream-bright desire -- and pulled away; he slipped out of bed and sent the messages he'd recorded weeks ago: one for Connor, giving her command of the ship; one for the official Starfleet records of the non-recallable absence from duty due to Vulcans and their spouses.

Telar slept still, though his breathing had changed, coming more quickly. Ellison shivered, then stripped out of his nightclothes and slid back into bed, pressing himself against Telar's back -- Telar, who was burning hot to the touch, who smelled deeply, richly sexual in a way he never had before. Ellison buried his face in Telar's hair and closed his eyes, letting the scent and their bond draw him in, draw him down, drag him down to a sleep wound through with desire and erotic dreams.

The dreams were nothing like his own. The colors were not quite alien enough to pain his mind's eye, but alien enough to jar; he saw his own face in ecstasy and felt his own hands, cool and firm, against his shoulders, for in some of the dreams, he and Telar were one.

In some of the dreams, there were women, with shining red-black hair and straight Vulcan brows; Ellison had slept with women a few times, mostly because it seemed like it would be fun, but Telar never had and the dreams were abortive blurs of breasts and softness and the scent of Vulcan amber, drowned out by the return of Ellison's own face and hands and flat-planed chest and the urgent striving of their bodies: the only sex Telar had ever known.

Ellison woke for the third time that night when Telar twisted in his arms and slid his erection against Ellison's hip, digging his fingers into Ellison's shoulder and trembling. "Telar," Ellison said, half-asleep still, twining his fingers into Telar's. "Telar, wake up."

Telar opened his eyes, and Ellison kissed him; Telar cried out into his mouth and shuddered in orgasm.

When Telar had stilled, Ellison rolled him to the side and slid his palms down Telar's legs, then pressed a kiss to the inside of each calf. Telar shook him off and sat up, stripping out of his sleep-shirt and hauling Ellison back up beside him with one arm. He ran his hands over Ellison's body, shaking, his erection slick and shining in the dim light. He spoke in broken phrases, some in Standard, some in the Vulcan Ellison knew, some in his mother-tongue of Golic. In all of it, Ellison heard his own name, over and over: Jim, Jim, Jim.

Ellison had had only a few partners who could match his own physical power; he thought Telar might be the only man he'd ever been with who could have beaten him in raw strength. And while he'd had his share of wild sex, he'd never felt a partner tremble on the knife-edge of sanity before; it was unnerving.

Over the past month, they'd become something approaching lovers, as the approach of pon farr fired Telar's sexuality. But this -- this was madness, and Telar barely seemed present, despite the heat of his body and the roil of his emotions through the bond. He had stopped speaking and only keened wordlessly, unhinged by desires not his in any meaningful sense, driven out of himself by his own biology.

"Hey," Ellison said. "Hey. Lover. Stay with me."

Telar shuddered against him; gripped Ellison's arms, his fingers white from the pressure. "Jim," he said, just once, just one final time. It was all Ellison needed; he flexed upwards against Telar and wrapped one leg around his waist for purchase, feeling the slippery sweat between them and Telar's erection hot against his own.

"C'mon," he said. "Yes."

Telar's eyes were lost again, looking inward at something only he could see; Ellison thought that he tried to speak, but no words emerged. The plak tow, the blood fever, burned away the power of speech as it burned away reason. Ellison kissed Telar, tasting the fruit and salt flavor of him, deepening with musk now by Telar's sexual maturity. Telar's hand pressed at the meld points on Ellison's face, and Ellison felt the rising frustration and rage within him at the inability to meld. He tugged Telar's hand away from his face and held it between their chests.

"That won't work for us," he murmured, against Telar's mouth. "Make this work for us. I know you're in there. Hang on. We'll get this right." Telar's emotions were unchecked, and Ellison fought to keep hold of himself in the heat of them.

Telar raised himself on his free hand and Ellison caught his breath; Telar was sweat-slick and burning beneath his skin, his hair coming free of its normal knot and the earrings that marked his caste glinting as he breathed. He was both Telar and not-Telar, some alien glorious thing in Telar's body, sexual in a way that Telar's combination of careful study, bond-bound affection, and physical innocence had never allowed him to be. The Telar who fiercely refused to allow Ellison beneath him was nowhere to be found; in his place was this avid, knife-edged stranger, desperate with need, but willing to listen, if only just.

Ellison reached out and placed Telar's hand on the nightstand. "Lubricant," he said, and Telar fumbled it out of the drawer and opened it, shakily coating his fingers before sliding them into Ellison, who hooked one leg over Telar's shoulder and raised himself off the bed, waiting, wanting, knowing what was coming. Telar drew back and slid his hands down the backs of Ellison's thighs before pulling them into his chest; he pressed deep into him, his breathing ragged and his eyes glazed. Ellison arced into the motion and Telar rocked with him, speeding up, heedless for once of Ellison's pleasure, heedless of anything but the seeking of his own body -- not that it mattered, with the empathic bond set between them magnifying for each the pleasure of the other until they flew apart together and reformed, chilled and shuddering, sweat drying on their bodies.

When Telar withdrew and stretched out beside him, Ellison looked down and raised an eyebrow at the finger-bruises on his hips. He supposed he'd better get used to that, for a week, at least. Telar shivered and looked up at him, his blue eyes troubled. "Hey. Can you talk again?" Ellison asked.

"Temporarily. The plak tow will return."

"How do you feel?"

Telar turned his face away. "Ashamed. Afraid I have hurt you."

"I'm fine." Ellison kissed him on the tip of his ear, and Telar flushed faintly green.

"Truly?"

"Truly."

"You cannot have known, when you agreed to join with me, what this would entail. If you wish to sever--"

"Telar?"

"Yes, Jim?"

"Does pon farr cause brain damage?"

Telar stared at him for a long moment, then relaxed. "Perhaps," he said, running his hand down Ellison's side, shifting their bodies closer together and sliding one of Ellison's thighs between his own. "When it is over, you shall have to administer an aptitude test."

"I'll be sure to do that," Ellison said, and tucked his head into Telar's shoulder, drawing them both down into sleep.

"Perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the color of sin; but there is always the scent of a god about it." -- Olive Schreiner

End

Exhalation by Laura JV: jacquez@gmail.com
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