Title: Starry-Eyed
Author: ExcentrykeMuse
Pairing: Nero/Kirk
Summary: He wasn’t quite certain, all these years later, how it happened, but somehow between rescuing a young Jim Kirk from Tarsus IV and their wedding day, Nero had fallen in love with Jim.
Prompt: st_xi_meme: I crave not-apeshit-crazy Nero banging his hot hubby. Don’t care who that is: Kirk, Chekov, Pike, Ayel – just give me an AU of any kind where Nero is married to one of the male characters and indulges in a clichee married sex, filled with “I love you”s and gentle touches and eyes filled with adoration and all that clishee shit I love so much.
Warnings: underage relationship (by human standards), slash, sweet lemonade
Nero sat in his quarters, gazing out at the ion clouds that sparked purple and gold about him, a small smile on his face. It had been so many years, he had almost thought that he would never feel—never love—again, and now it was his wedding night.
He wasn’t quite certain, all these years later, how it happened. He could remember his thought process, his obsession with waiting in the shadows of the galaxy as he waited for Spock to be dragged through the wormhole. He’d taken to monitoring Earth and Romulan communications, watching history unfold day by day, year by year, just a little bit different than how it might have been if the Nerada hadn’t arrived. In his free hours, he poured over old files, important biographies, and that’s when he had found it.
It had been a simple photograph of a boy with blond hair and blue eyes, so thin that Nero could see the bones on his wrists and the hopelessness in his eyes. Stardate 2798. Tarsus IV.
He’d spent years hardening his heart against the loss of his beautiful wife, of their unborn child, and yet just looking at a young James T. Kirk, his resolve melted just a little bit.
As time moved slowly along, he found himself watching the years pass and then, a month before the genocide began, he heard himself give the order to leave the ionic clouds that were their current home and setting a course to Tarsus IV. Ayel had looked at him in confusion, but Nero had not deemed to answer his unasked question.
The door slid open, drawing him from his thoughts, and he turned to the figure that entered, a smile on his face. “You’re late,” he quipped.
Blue eyes sparkled back at him. “I thought I’d increase your anticipation,” Jim answered back. The Romulan was slightly accented, but it sent a shiver of desire through Nero.
“You have not brought your belongings,” Nero noted, his eyes raking over his husband’s bare chest and black slacks. He really shouldn’t be wandering around the ship like that. Not when he now officially belonged to the captain.
Romulans were considered men at the age of thirteen standard years. Ayel had had to remind him on Jim’s twelfth birthday that Terrans did not come of age until they were eighteen.
Nero thought it was generous of himself to compromise at sixteen standard years.
A flash of lust shone out of Jim’s young eyes before it was masked. “I thought I’d do that tomorrow,” he murmured.
The Jim Kirk of history had always been brash, outspoken, a born leader. When Nero had taken a shuttle down to the starving world of Tarsus, just before the genocide, he had found a frightened, starving boy. It had been selfish of him by human standards, Nero knew, by Romulan standards even. He brought down a bag of food and gave it to Jim’s uncle, on the condition that he be permitted to take Jim off-world. Sitting at that dusty table, his Romulan features carefully hidden through surgery and a hat that was supposed to be Terran in origin, he’d promised that he would give Jim food, that he would never want for anything, that he needed an heir and that he had known George Kirk.
It was almost true. He had been the one to kill him.
At the hungry look in Jim’s eyes, the uncle had callously agreed. Nero had left, leaving a false name. He noticed a year later, when monitoring transmissions, that despite the food, Jim’s relatives—and Jim himself—were listed among the dead.
This Jim, though, his Jim, was still in many ways the hungry eleven year old, even after all these years. He was quiet and strong, but he never spoke, never asked for anything, never expected it, too afraid to offend in fear that the first affection he’d ever had in his life would be taken away from him—even after five years.
Nero, despite himself, had fallen in love with the young man and his expressive, bright blue eyes.
“Tomorrow,” Nero agreed, a smirk now twisting his lips as his dark eyes trailed across Jim’s young frame, “or the next day.”
Jim’s eyes widened. “You’re captain.”
“Yes,” Nero agreed, rising from the chair and slowly stalking toward his husband. The ceremony had been simple, an oath witnessed by the crew, sealed with a knife across their palms and hot, smoldering kisses. “And since I am captain and it is my wedding night, we will not be disturbed unless there’s an emergency.”
He hooked an arm around Jim’s waist and pulled him closer, lips capturing lips in a lingering kiss. It was sweet, like their first when Jim was only fourteen years old and Kirk asked him if he knew how his father died as no one had ever seen fit to tell him on Earth or Tarsus—a kiss had been easier than the truth.
Tentatively, Jim’s mouth opened at no prodding from Nero, and the kiss deepened. Bodies on bodies, hands stroking and tongues twining around each other in a moment of affection and not lust.
A few moments later and Jim was lying on the bed, his starry eyes looking up at Nero with such devotion, that Nero’s heart almost broke.
He was beautiful. His hair had grown over the years and upon entering Romulan manhood, Ayel had taken him to have the first tattoos placed on his arms. Earlier that week, a band of precious gold dye had been tattooed around his right upper arm, showing that he was married to a Romulan captain, that he was claimed, that he belonged.
Nero growled as his fingers pressed against the mark and claimed Jim’s lips once again, resting on top of him. “Love you,” he murmured. “Love you more than anyone.”
A smile lit up Jim’s eyes at the words, the unspoken declaration hanging between them. Nero loved Jim more than revenge, more than the world he had lost, more than his dead wife and his unborn child. All of it had been forced to become secondary as he taught one small boy Romulan, as he taught him how to eat again, how to love, how to forget a world that would never once again be his.
“I love you,” Jim whispered in English. It was accented, inhuman, almost as if he had forgotten how to form vowels that weren’t Romulan, and found the words of his childhood foreign—the first time he had spoken it to Nero’s knowledge in years. “More than the stars in the galaxy.”
“More than the words in our language,” Nero teased before he claimed sweet, young lips again. He felt Jim’s hands pushing up his shirt and he pulled away briefly, tugging at the garment until it was thrown on the floor.
Chest against chest, his lips traces Jim’s cheekbones, eyelashes, the line of nose. His hands clasped Jim’s hips possessively, the first and only hands to touch the human, Nero silently promised himself, and he ground himself against his husband, Jim keening upward.
“Nero,” he gasped, pink lips swollen with Nero’s kisses.
Hands skated across Nero’s bare scalp sending a shiver down his spine. He never thought he’d love again—that he would love a boy—that he would crave the young man that Jim was becoming. A quiet, pensive man who spoke with his eyes and not his sinful lips that were put to better use kissing.
Nero had found himself indulging Jim, even going so far as to take a shuttle to Romulus and having a priest formally adopt him to the Romulan way of life, money changing hands privately.
Still, Nero called him Jim, when the rest of the crew called him Terran, a nod to his ancestry and his Romulan name. It had been Nero’s affectionate nickname for Jim as a child, and somehow had taken hold with the rest of the crew, even their doctor who was training him as his assistant.
Pants were slowly drawn off and Nero found himself kissing a flat stomach, his nose tickling Jim so that he laughed quietly in their affectionate love-making, before once again Jim was drawing him up for a searing kiss, hips thrust against each other, until Jim whispered the one small word, so much trust on his innocent and loving face: “Please.”
Words fell from their lips as Nero quietly made love to his husband, a gentle rocking motion as he held the young human in his arms, his thumb tracing the gold tattoo that bound them together. Not even Starfleet, if they managed to discover the Narada now, could tear them apart. Marriage was sacred on Romulus and Jim—Terran—was a Romulan citizen and adult in a consensual union. He might still be a child on earth, married to the man who murdered his father, but Nero had long been forgiven for that transgression. “I forgive you,” were the last words, until that night, that Jim had spoken in English.
“I love you,” Nero promised at the look of longing on Jim’s flushed face, kissing him gently again. “Forever and a day—until the stars fade.”
As ecstasy overtook them both, Jim called out his name and Nero clutched him closer, promising himself he would never let go. Jim was too precious. And nothing—not the Federation, or Spock when he came through that wormhole—would ever pull them apart.
Excentryke's Musings 