I guess this is it for now. I'm actually kind of sad. Or really sad.

So yeah, a break, and I don't know how long it will be, but I do know that when I come back to this, I want to have written the rest of this story and post chapters more regularly than I have been, so that could be a while. I also know that it would probably be impossible for me to completely take a break from writing because I just love it too much, so in the couple of hours each week or each month that I have, I'll spend it working ahead on this story, and also polishing up the half dozen nearly finished stories on my computer that I want to get out there, so you might see some of those floating around while I continue to work on this one in the background. Those are almost easier, because they're smaller than this behemoth I've created and easier to work on in fits and starts. When I do start publishing this WIP again, it'll be in this document so put this story (or me) on your author alerts/subscriptions, or follow me on tumblr, or just check back here once in a while to see what's what and if this is going again, or if I've put something else up.

And most importantly, thank you for reading this and reviewing it and giving it kudos/favorites and leaving me notes on tumblr because it's just awesome to know that you all care, what with the time it takes me to not just create and write the story, but the harder slog of editing and getting it good enough to put out there, and also, thanks for the kind words, which sounds funny because I don't know you and you don't know me, but all the well wishes definitely mean something.

So I guess that's that. Thanks for reading and I hope that when I do start again some of you will still be here for the rest of the ride! And I hope you enjoy this last bit!

…

The next morning, Nyota volunteered to go get bagels for breakfast because in the swirl of preparations nobody had bought milk, the replicator couldn't handle feeding the number of relatives that packed into the house, and it was just easier that way, giving her an excuse to bring Spock with her. To help carry them back, she told her sister, and also, please leave us alone.

"So," she said as they left the house, as her hand found his and their fingers tangled together. They walked slowly down the street, not bothering to take her parent's car because they could be out of the house longer this way, and it gave more time to wander through the streets in the stillness of the early morning, the sun just peeking above the buildings. They didn't speak, just enjoyed the quiet contentment that passed between their fingers, the way it made her whole hand and arm warm with little sparks of heat every time she brushed her fingers over his.

"Two of them for here," Nyota told the cashier after placing the order, and sat with SPocks at a table by the window, spending breakfast nudging his foot with her own.

The house was barely controlled chaos when they returned and she opened the door to reveal Makena searching for her shoes, Reid screaming and crying, Annette nearly crying as she tried to calm him down, her father and Kamau setting up chairs, or tables, or chairs and tables.

"I'll take him," Nyota offered, but the baby got handed to Spock instead as Makena dragged her upstairs, demanding to know the location of her shoes and when was the last time Nyota had seen them and whether she had moved them and where the hell they were.

The rest of the morning was barely calmer, their cousins tearing through the house until two of their uncles gathered everyone up and made them go outside, where they promptly got sent in again so that they couldn't mess up the backyard. Her father spent the morning arguing with Kamau over how to fix something until Spock walked in, Reid soundly asleep against his chest, and pointed out that they were missing a part. It prompted a trip to three different stores and finally resulted in a copious amount of duct tape, while Nyota and Annette agreed they seriously hoped this wasn't standard Starfleet procedure, even as Spock tore off another piece.

"Lunch?" Kamau asked, sitting back on his heels when they were done.

"You two had better get out of here if you want a chance to eat," their father told him and Spock. "Bring something back for the rest of us. Go, go, go, while you still can."

Spock brought her a salad and she ate it leaning against the counter next to him, focusing far more on his hand on her back, his hip pressed against hers, the brief flicker of his consciousness when his fingers brushed over the nape of her neck, than on what she was eating.

And then Makena walked in, groaned at the sight of them, and told Nyota that she was seriously rethinking how she was going to do her hair.

"No," Nyota sighed. "We've been over this."

"I don't know what to do!" Makena moaned.

Nyota felt Spock squeeze the back of her neck, kiss the top of her head and step away even as Makena paused in her crisis to roll her eyes at them.

She saw him later when he was helping Kamau pin his medals onto his uniform in straight rows, both of them standing in the hall in their dress slacks and socks, and those black undershirts that she had never, ever noticed so viscerally before, no matter how many times she had seen officers in them when the weather warmed up, or when meetings let out, and now couldn't possibly take her eyes off of.

"Hey," she said, letting her hand find the small of Spock's back, watching his hands work over the tiny fasteners. The fabric of his shirt was warm from his body and she traced over the smooth, rigid muscles of his back, the dip of his spine, up to brush her fingers across the hard edges of his shoulder blades, and back down to his slim waist, resting her hand there.

"Hey yourself," Kamau said. "Stop touching him."

"No."

"Stop it."

"Nope," she said, leaning her cheek against Spock's arm and grinning at her brother.

"It's weird."

"That's too bad for you."

"Come on."

Spock just finished the last pin, handed her brother's jacket back to him, and arched an eyebrow. "Would it perhaps be more comfortable for you and appease your sense of propriety if we chose a more private place?"

"Yes," Kam said with a nod. "Wait. No. Not at all. Just… I don't want to think about it, Spock! That's my sister!"

"Then do not think about it."

"Stop it. Stop touching. Stop it right now. God, you two just…" he grumbled, walking back into his room and firmly shutting the door.

"There seems to be a wide disparity between how enthusiastic your family is regarding the abstract idea of a relationship between us and the practical reality," Spock said. "This is far more complicated than it would be on Vulcan."

"Let's talk more about the practical reality," Nyota murmured, standing on her toes to kiss him.

"The wedding is beginning in forty three minutes," he said softly, after a long moment, breaking their kiss to lean his forehead on hers.

"I think there's a joke in here about you not being a teenager anymore," she whispered back, enjoying his look of confusion and then smiling at the slightly green tinge his cheeks took on. She kissed him again, quickly, before making herself step away so that she could find her sister and see if she needed help, and to get ready herself.

"You look great," she told her sister twice, and then again, checking her own dress in the mirror while Makena frowned at herself.

"I don't know."

"It's perfect. All of it. Gabe won't know what hit him."

"I'm not sure."

"You're beautiful. Calm down."

"I'm going to go get Mom."

Nyota just sighed and set down the handful of hairpins Makena had made her hold.

"You're already dressed and ready and everyone's here and-"

"Mom!"

She sighed again as Makena left the room, only to hear a soft knock on the door a moment later. Spock stepped in and she felt herself flush when his eyes raked over her, and felt it deepen, felt her stomach flip flop when he shut the door and stepped towards her.

"Hi," she said, moving to him on bare feet, admiring the clean lines of his dress jacket, perfectly pressed and creased in a way that made him seem taller than normal. She smiled, traced her fingers over the medals on his chest and tipped her face up to be kissed.

"I was sent to find Makena," he said, pulling back from her mouth to look at her again, his finger drawing a line on her back at the edge of her dress. She watched his eyes drop from hers and trace down her body before he bent down and softly kissed her cheek. "You look very beautiful."

"Thank you," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and craning to comfortably kiss him. "You're too tall," she said against his mouth. "Wait right there, don't move."

"That is a very practical solution," he said as she stepped back long enough to find her heels and slide them on. He kissed her again and then again, his hands finding her waist before slipping lower.

"I have to say that you are very, very distracting in that uniform," she whispered, smoothing her hands across his chest.

"Oh gross," she heard Makena say as she came back into the room, as Spock's hands quickly found her waist again. "You two are ridiculous. Is this what it's going to be like now?"

"Your father would like to know if you are ready," Spock said.

"I want to mess with you two," Makena sighed. "So much. But I want to get married more."

"Wow," Nyota said, enjoying the warmth and strength of Spock as she relaxed into him. "Must be true love."

Makena shrugged, took one last look at herself in the mirror and nodded. "Must be."

…

Nyota couldn't decide on the best part of the wedding, whether it was watching her sister get married, the way Makena cried during her vows, Makena who was so brash and loud and audacious wiping at her eyes while Gabe blinked furiously.

She wasn't sure if it was that or whether it was Spock's hand in hers for the entire ceremony, his face so much more stoic than what rolled across their touch, his arm against hers where they sat with her family.

It might have been the fact that Spock actually sighed when Makena finally cajoled him into dancing, told her to hold her hand still on his, and then danced with her for two songs with all of his normal composure and grace. It might have been his hand on her own right after that, pulling her out of her chair, his other finding the small of her back as he drew her against him at the edge of the dance floor. It might have been the way she couldn't have named that song or the next one, or the one after that because she was too focused on how it felt to be held by him, their bodies brushing together as they slowly moved to the music.

It might have been that when she rested her cheek against his shoulder, he kissed her temple and whispered to her that his mother had called him, which was apparently prompted by a message from Nyota's mother that Amanda should get in touch with her son.

"Can you imagine if our parents didn't know each other?" Nyota whispered back. "We'd have so much privacy."

"Yes," he said and she pulled back enough to watch him glance around the party, her father dancing with Annette, Makena with her college friends, Gabe and Kamau and Gabe's brother chatting at the bar, and her mother surrounded by her own sisters. "However, I find that I prefer that they do."

She nodded, leaning into him again and squeezing his fingers.

It might have been that Spock, because he was Spock, went to check on Reid so that Annette and Kamau could continue to enjoy the party. It might have been following him into the house, getting pressed against a wall once they determined Reid was soundly sleeping, and being kissed carefully, slowly, until she was out of breath.

It might have been standing at edge of the party when they wandered back and her father speaking to Spock as he always had, asking for his advice about this, telling him about that, clapping him on the arm as he was called away by some cousin or aunt or uncle. It might have been Kamau, finishing a drink and reaching for another, admitting he was thrilled at the idea of the two of them being together and hugging Spock until he reluctantly hugged him back.

The best part might have been her immediate family, afterwards, after most of the guests had left and everyone was yawning, the quiet that settled over the house as Kamau had another slice of cake, Annette had a mug of tea, and her parents surveyed the disaster their house had become in the space of a few hours and shrugged, her father's arm around her mother's shoulders.

It also might have been – and probably was – when she whispered to Spock that they should get out of there and he nodded, both of them going upstairs to change.

"Have her home by 2200, Spock," her dad called from the kitchen when they came back downstairs, her hand wrapped around his as she pulled him towards the door. She groaned and tried to ignore her father and her brother grinning at them.

"It is 2346," Spock said carefully. "I am unclear as to exactly-"

"Very funny, Dad," she said, tugging Spock behind her.

"That's my sister," Kamau yelled but she was already shutting the door.

"Is there a reason he continues to repeat that?" Spock asked, getting into her parent's car when she pointed to it.

"Rampant, unmitigated obnoxiousness," she said, getting in the driver's seat but not buckling in right away. Instead, she leaned over and kissed him once, thoroughly, long enough that he drew her closer, long enough that they were both breathless when they pulled apart and she couldn't help but smile at him as he tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

They drove and drove until the lights of the city faded behind them, until the night grew still and dark, until signs of civilization gave way to scrubby bushes, rocks strewn along the edge of the desert where it shifted to sand as far as they could see in the starlight. She pulled over, then, and he squeezed her leg where his hand had been resting. They both got out of the car, standing for a long moment in the warm night before she smiled at him and walked around the car to press a soft kiss to his lips. She rooted through the trunk until she found the blanket her parents kept there, spreading it near a boulder and drawing him down with her to lean against it.

She let her shoulder fall against his, let her knee rest on his own, and reached for his hand, already missing the warmth, the quiet, steady stream of his emotions, glimpses of his thoughts that came across intermittently, like he was so used to controlling them, holding that back, that he kept forgetting that he didn't need to anymore.

They sat there for a long time, wrapped in the silence and warmth of the night, looking out at the horizon, over the expanse of the desert before them, and at the stars, bright and glittering,

"What'd your mom say when you talked to her?" she asked, eventually, quietly so as not to disturb the particular peace of his presence next to her, the stillness and calm of the moment.

"She was pleased," he said, then quickly corrected himself. "I believe, in the interest of accuracy, to say she was pleased is perhaps an understatement."

"I am horrified at the thought of your mom and my mom on the comm together when the wedding's over."

"I agree that the notion fills me with some trepidation," he said and she grinned, since what coming across his hand wasn't trepidation at all, just gentle amusement.

"Do you think if our parents hadn't known each other we'd still have ended up together?"

He was silent for a long moment, his thumb rubbing back and forth across hers, her impression of his mind becoming muted as his thoughts turned away from her, to whatever he was considering.

"I cannot quantify the degree to which my decision to join Starfleet was influenced by the example of your brother having done so already," he said finally. "Nor can I answer whether or not being so familiar with Terran customs through my exposure to your family did or did not account for my choice to join a human dominated career path when I decided that a Vulcan one would not be a tenable solution."

"I almost didn't go to the Academy. And Gaila didn't either. I don't really know much about it, she just said once that she didn't think it was going to work out until she actually got to Earth, and even then. I don't think it was in Kirk's plan, at all, he said he decided the morning he enlisted, and McCoy more than once has said that he half wishes he was back home and would be if it wasn't for his ex. And yet, here we all are."

He nodded and when he looked at her, she grinned.

"Maybe you would have just been that hot professor, if I hadn't known you before Starfleet, and I would have gotten this huge crush on you over the semester."

"Would you have joined the myriad of cadets who populate my office hours?"

"They are all ridiculous. But I would have brought actual questions, you know, because I would have wanted to you to notice me."

"To think otherwise would be impossible," he murmured, stroking his fingers more firmly over hers so that a deep heat jumped from his hand and shot up her arm.

She sighed, happy, smiling at the image of them bumbling their way through getting to know each other with no background together, none of the familial ties that had drawn them together, again and again.

"Think I would have still worked for you?"

"I cannot imagine a scenario in which you were not the most qualified cadet for the position."

She smiled again and leaned over to kiss his cheek.

"And then?" she asked, kissing his cheek again.

"And then I suppose that we might have found ourselves in a similar experience as we are in now, though perhaps with far more privacy and fewer disturbances."

She laughed softly and rested her cheek on his shoulder. "Do they bother you? You seem so comfortable around them with all of this."

"While they have a… peculiar way of demonstrating such, which is quite contradictory to their true meaning, I appreciate that their actions stem from affection and approval. Beyond that, they only disturb me to the degree to which they disturb you."

"I can take it."

"You are, indeed, quite resilient."

"Years of practice with those two. Years."

He was quiet again, looking off into the distance as she rubbed her cheek on the fabric of his shirt and traced her fingers over the back of his hand, his wrist, up his forearm and back down. She felt something from him other than his quiet happiness, something laced with trepidation, or maybe the echo of that, something that had by now turned into relief.

"Were you nervous that they wouldn't like the idea of us together?"

"You are quite adept at understanding that which is communicated through touch telepathy despite such limited practice."

"Thanks. And answer the question."

He didn't right away, staring down at the their hands. "I questioned whether or not I would be a logical choice for a human family to accept for one of their children, though I empirically understood that the situation was perhaps different with your own family due to our shared past."

"Which might have made it worse? If they hadn't been so encouraging, since they already know you so well?" she asked softly, imagining a scenario where Kamau and Makena had been quiet, hadn't had as much fun messing with them, a scenario with no teasing, none of the baiting and goading that had happened over the last few days. It made her incredibly sad, deeply upset at the idea of them not caring for the idea of her and Spock together, the idea her siblings would have done anything other than pick on them, that her parents had done anything other than smile and tell them how happy they were for them.

He didn't answer, just nodded and went back to staring off into the desert and she thought about the fact that her family loved him so much, thought about his parent's reaction, his mother's, and thought about the fact that whoever he ended up with, on any planet, it would mean an interspecies relationship for him, a family who would be accepting that he was half something else, half alien, half other.

"Well, you know, it is nice that they are so in favor of the idea, but regardless, even if they weren't, I kind of have a thing for half-Vulcans and I hear there's only one of them around."

He looked at her and then leaned down and kissed her forehead so gently that her throat tightened with the weight of it.

"It is fortunate that we found each other, no matter what circumstances brought us together," he said, kissing her cheek this time, her lips just once, softly.

She looked down at their hands twined together on her thigh, that gentle contentment and joy lapping at the edge of her mind again, warming her whole body, and slipped her other hand from where she had been caressing the inside of his elbow to hold his hand in both of hers.

"I like this," she said quietly, tightening her hands over his. "Being able to feel you like that."

He didn't speak for a long moment and she could feel his thoughts withdraw slightly until she felt something shaky from him, something slightly tremulous and uncomfortable.

"You are the only one I have ever found who does," he finally said, not quite looking at her.

"Spock…"

"I have been told it is intrusive and invasive, overly intimate," he said, looking away from her, his mind pulling back farther.

"It's just another language, one I'd like to learn."

"I do not believe I fully understood what I was asking from you all those years ago, without you having been exposed to the same biological and cultural background that I was," he said quietly and she could still feel him thinking about a different day, a different desert and different rocks, the sun high in the sky and his fingers finding her face.

"I know, I didn't either. But it doesn't logically follow that a lack of information would mean it was unwelcome."

"It was not?" he asked and she could feel the sharp pang of his surprise.

"No… I kind of thought it was nice," she said, thinking back. "It was… you kind of checked to make sure I was ok. I always remembered that."

"I admittedly had a distinct lack of prior experience concerning our actions and believed it prudent to confirm your own frame of mind," he said, sounding more like himself, but she didn't get the sense he was quite comfortable yet, not from his hand in hers, and not from the set of his shoulders.

"You know," she said, sitting up straighter and trying to catch his eye. "I was never mad about it and it had nothing to do with all those years when we didn't talk, after all that."

He didn't answer, just let his eyes slide away from hers and back into the desert night.

"And then you were back at the Academy and I was… I owe you an apology, certainly, Spock."

"It was of no-"

"Stop," she said, laying her hand on his chest. "It was of some consequence, or a lot of consequence. I should know, Gaila yelled at me. Repeatedly. For so long I just didn't know what to say to you and I thought I had changed, and that we were too different as adults to be friends and I was really wrong about that. And I just sometimes think about how much you mean to me now and… last year was confusing and hard and it didn't feel good, not for me and probably not for you and I'm sorry. And I think that maybe we did change, or maybe we just grew up, but I made that a lot, a lot worse in the mean time than if I had just…"

She trailed off, remembering what it was like the year before, what it was like to see his name on her list of instructors for the semester, to know that she would be seeing him so much, and even just the memory of that made her stomach jump. But maybe, she thought, not with nerves. Maybe with something else, something she hadn't had a word for and had chosen to believe was anxiety, tension over the idea of being in a professional environment with someone she had been so intimate with, with those years of silence hanging between them.

"I think I had quite the reaction to you being there," she finally said. "And I didn't understand it and I didn't face up to it and if you're mad, and if I hurt you, and if you're upset, I understand and I'm really very, very sorry."

"I am not," he said evenly and when she leaned over to kiss his cheek, he found her mouth with his own, his free hand coming up to cup her jaw.

"Were you?" she whispered when he finally drew back.

"I will admit to a certain degree of confusion."

"Kind of a ringing endorsement for touch telepathy," she said lightly. "Not having to puzzle your way through all of that."

"It does have certain advantages."

She watched him stare off in to the distance, stroking her fingers over his until he returned the gesture, their fingers tracing over each other's in the quiet of the night.

"It's important to you," she said and he looked sideways at her. "Really important. Mind-melding, being together like that."

"It is not necessary."

"But you would like to."

After a long moment, he nodded.

"You are quite perceptive."

"Do you want to now? Or want to wait? Some other time when we've been together longer?"

He didn't answer, but the look he gave her, the heat rushing and pounding up her hand at her suggestion, the way that even in the starlight she could see his eyes darken, was answer enough.

"I want to, too," she whispered, feeling herself shiver at his response. She rose on her knees and pushed his legs apart so that she could kneel between his thighs. She traced her fingers over his cheeks, down his jaw to his mouth, where he kissed her thumb, then kissed her when she leaned forward. She smoothed her hands down his chest and let them rest on top of his thighs as she sat back on her heels and smiled at him.

He looked at her for a long time before moving, cupping her shoulder in one hand and brushing his fingers across her cheekbone, her forehead with the other. When he spread his hand on her face it was shaking slightly.

There was nothing at first, just the light pressure of his fingers, and then there was everything, his thoughts like carefully arranged, sequenced columns, his mind ticking through whether she was ok, flicking at a rapid pace through the consideration of if she liked it, if he should stop, if it was too much to ask, too soon, too different, too alien and strange and unnatural, all of that mixed with how happy he was, how the feel of another's thoughts, her thoughts, unwound something in him, eased an ache, a loneliness he had carried with him for so long, and did he ever feel, she thought, his emotions pounding through her with a fervency that surprised her, deeper and more distinct than her own, carrying a weight she couldn't have imagined until he showed her. He let her feel them, let her feel his mind against hers and it felt… nice like a good conversation felt nice, or a hug felt nice, or looking at someone and knowing they were on the same page, understood the same things in life was nice, nice like looking at him and knowing that they were here, together, doing this and had come so far and found themselves in this place and it was good she thought, completely right and wonderful and as it should be, and then he was thinking the same thing, and they were thinking it together, and one of them thought finally and she laughed out loud, hearing it through his perception as well, feeling his amusement like a deep tickle and his curiosity regarding her laughter, how it made him flush warm when she was happy.

Finally, she repeated to him, or he did to her, and then it was his crystal clear memories, and her own, muddled with time, details lost and forgotten and blurred at the edges that he filled in for her, so that they were watching themselves scramble through the Forge, play with I-Chaya, eat lunch at his parent's kitchen table, at her parent's as he tried a peanut butter and jelly and then she was laughing again at the memory of that day. And then it was so much more, them on his couch with work spread between them, the peculiar quiet of his office when the rest of the building was empty, how she looked to him the last night of the semester when she had turned back around in his hallway, how he had been suddenly, horribly unsure whether or not he could control his response to her, to follow what logic dictated, and his relief and annoyance when Kamau had appeared, and then how she had looked walking down the stairs when he had arrived at her parent's house, and she remembered that with him, and then it changed again to the day before in the garden, their shared, unspoken anxiety evaporating in a few words and a kiss, and then that morning at breakfast, alone with him at the cafe as the sun rose and the day started around them, and then the drive to the desert, how much more they wanted to say to each other and how close they were sitting and she was suddenly aware of how her thoughts against his made his blood race, made his breath shorten, made his hand slip from her shoulder down to her waist and then down to the curve of her hip. She could feel him aware of her so near to him and how that made him ache, made him want to reach for her and drag her down against him, and she could feel heat course through him, through them both.

I want you, she thought, or he thought, but it didn't matter because then it was just their mouths, impatient and eager. She slid her hands under his shirt, seeking the hard heat of his body and found it, skating her hands across his taut stomach and up his chest as he grabbed at her, wrapped his arm around her hips, ground her down onto him, all of those sensations shared, echoed back on each other until it felt like her thoughts were spinning.

His hand slipping from her face was an unfortunate side effect of wrestling his shirt off of him and the connection between their minds dulled slightly. She could still feel him at the edge of her consciousness, like they had simply stepped into different rooms but could still see and hear each other. It gave her space to take a deep breath, enough focus to push him onto his back like she wanted to. She crawled over him, kissing his chest, his neck, trailing her lips along his jaw and breathing against his ear as his hands worked their way under her shirt, and left trails of heat over her back, her waist.

"Guess we've done all this before," she whispered as she kissed his ear, as he shivered and tugged at her shirt until she raised her arms and skimmed it off over her head.

"That is not entirely accurate," he said and she laughed when she found herself on her back, found his hands slipping beneath her to unhook her bra, sliding down to her hips to pull off the rest of her clothes. He knelt between her knees, looking down at her for a long time before he started pressing long, slow kisses to her neck, her breastbone, bending to worry at her nipple with his tongue.

"God," she groaned, her back rising off the blanket as he swept his thumb across her other breast, his hands curling around her ribs, fingers light on her back and he held her like that until she was squirming against him. He moved lower, then, mouthing down her stomach, kissing her thighs, sweeping agile fingers down to her ankles and back up as he pressed her legs apart.

She tried to watch him, wanted to watch him as his mouth found her, but it was too much, her thoughts were hazy and blurry, unfocused beyond what he was doing to her with his tongue. Instead, she closed her eyes and when she couldn't keep her hands still anymore, dug her nails into his shoulders, and when she couldn't keep from shuddering, twisting, felt him curl a warm hand over her thigh and press her into him. It was too much, too good, his mouth gentle and soft, licking inside of her, teasing at her and then firmer again, over and over, so that the tension built and built. She could hear her breath, ragged, could feel herself squirming against him, wanting to both drag his head harder against her, to get more pressure from his mouth, and wanting to crawl away, the throbbing heat that was mounting low in her stomach almost too intense to bear. She felt sick with it, dizzy from pleasure, his mouth working until she couldn't breathe, could only cry out and push against him as heat coiled inside her and suddenly flared outward, leaving her limp and boneless in its wake.

She could feel his thoughts prodding gently at hers, could see him watch her come back down after that and could feel him feel it, just as sure as she felt the gentle kisses he pressed to her stomach as her breathing started to slow.

She at once felt completely sated, her entire body slack and loose, and at the same time could feel his blood pounding through him, could feel how hungry he was for her, could feel the way he barely held himself back, was already imagining being inside her, until all of that echoed in her own thoughts and she was reaching for him, drawing him over her, helping him shove his pants down his hips and off. She slid her knees up his sides, tangled her fingers in his hair and watched him as he pushed into her, his expression tightening slightly, his breath catching, thrusting slowly, shallowly as they stared at each other in the starlight. She rocked her hips into his as their rhythm grew firmer, more sure, his body hard and thick in hers and paid attention to the subtle shifts in his breathing, watched his gaze become more distant until his eyes closed. She felt him bury his face in her neck when the way they moved together became almost too much for him to bear, and then it was too much for him, heat washing through his body as his hips worked faster, building and building until it broke, his mind going hot and white and blank as his breath hitched and he tensed, pleasure bleeding into her in hot, deep pulses.

This time, when he had relaxed into her, when he had caught his breath and his thoughts had cleared from the daze that had over taken them, when he raised his head to look at her, she knew what to say, but this time, he beat her to it.

"Would you like to go back before someone misses us?" he asked with a smile, a small one but a real one. It was what she was going to tease him with and she laughed into his neck, kissed him there, his collarbone, his shoulder as she smiled and shook her head.

"No," she whispered, holding him tight so that he couldn't move away. "I want to stay right here."

"I agree," he said against her jaw, leaving slow, hot kisses down her neck.

"Think we'll ever do this in a bed?" she asked sweeping her fingers through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead and pressing her lips there.

He rested his chin on her breastbone and smiled again, nodding.

"I like it when you smile," she said, tracing his mouth with a finger, feeling his contentment and lazy, soft joy through the link that still arched between them.

"I find that you make me quite happy," he said, kissing at her fingers.

She smiled, at a loss for what to say to something like that from him and settled for thumbing his cheek, teasing, "are you sure it's not because you just got laid?"

"I do not know," he murmured, crawling back up her body to kiss her again. "I believe future trials will be necessary in order to reach a more complete understanding."

"We can arrange that," she whispered, kissing him back, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and letting him lean into her, warm and heavy and solid.

They stayed that way for a long time, their minds lightly pressed together, their skin sticky and damp, until they started to slowly reach for their clothes as the night cooled. She immediately missed the press of his skin, his body against hers, and once dressed, she got into his lap, leaning back against his chest as he leaned against the rock. She twisted once, twice, to kiss him, soft and slow, before resting her head on his shoulder and staring at the stars with him, their fingers entwined.

She woke up like that, wrapped in his arms and tucked under his chin as the sky started to lighten in the east. She felt him stir slightly, felt him squeeze her, felt him press a soft kiss into her hair and slip his hands under her shirt to spread on her stomach. She yawned, stretched, pulled her sleeves over her own hands to warm them and yawned again into her cuff.

"Good morning," she mumbled and nuzzled her face into his shoulder. She felt him pull her into him as if they could even get closer, could be more tangled in each other.

She didn't know if it was still, or again, but she could feel the dim echo of his mind in hers and she relaxed into it, thoroughly enveloped in him, blinking blearily as the sky turned from black to deep blue, as the stars started to fade and pinks and oranges and golds started to streak across the sky,

"You love me?" he asked, plucked from her mind to his and she smiled, nodded, rubbed her check on his chest.

"Yeah," she whispered, ducking her hands under her shirt to find his, to lace their fingers together so that their minds drew even closer, a muted impression of him solidifying into clearer thoughts as she stroked her fingers over his. "I do. A lot."

She could feel his mind churning, could actually feel the thought processes that resulted in his fierce look of concentration she had seen so many times. She knew it was there now without turning around but she did anyway, twisting in his arms to look up at him with a smile.

"What?"

"I am attempting to determine a way to put what I feel for you into applicable language, for human ones are proving insufficient," he said, softly kissing her temple. "You have only one word for love and I find that it is rather inadequate."

She laughed and wrapped his arms around her tighter, felt him kiss her forehead.

"You sure you don't want to come back to teach in the xenolinguistics department?"

"I do not," he murmured. "It interferes with another, far more significant pursuit I plan to undertake."

"Excellent," she said, snuggling into him.

He kissed her cheek, her hair, bent down and whispered into her ear in Bjoran, and then in Organian, and then in Trill, and then in Klingon which made her laugh again, and then finally in Vulcan, which made her squeeze his hands and blink against how her eyes grew damp and pricked with tears. They spent the morning like that, their fingers tangled, their thoughts entwined, completely surrounded by each other as they watched the sun rise, watched it climb higher and higher in the sky.