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The night he stayed in Rooweh’s house, Solek dreamed of a memory. It was a dark night- darker than Quhool ever got with the sun always reflecting off the rings. He remembered fire- flames, tearing at his skin, like the stabbing of knives- he felt his blood boiling. There was a fireplace- and he was wrapped in blankets and only a thin robe, chest heaving.
He needed to stay by the fire. He needed to stay by the fire. He could not remember why anymore- he just knew he needed to. His eyes felt sore and dry- but he stared into the flames, gasping in pain, watching them dance. The meditation was failing.
Solek needed to leave. But where would he go?
Home. His body thrummed- Home, home, home, home!
Elonat. His consciousness whispered. He could barely feel his bondmate in his mind, even though his katra had been tearing and ripping at the link between them. He needed- he needed. Needed what?
“Elonat…” His throat ached to say it- and the sound that escaped some abyssal, burning maw was not his own voice but that of a behemoth. It was deep, rasping, and filled with emotion. Was he…? Filled with emotion? He felt it thrum under his skin- felt the heatwave travel down his gut and simmer between his legs. He needed. There was a bond in his skull- so why wouldn’t it open up? Why did Elonat not reach for him? Could she feel him? Did his mate not desire him?
A sick feeling sludged down his spine, I do not want to feel this way!
Perhaps she had abandoned him to die. After all, Solek had attended her new bonding ceremony. The promises of children were obsolete.
Solek hung his head deep between his shoulder blades- he deserved to be abandoned. It was a wonder the Vulcan race continued to exist when they were plagued by such a time. He saw images in his head he had never seen before- thoughts that had only ever disgusted him before now- the shame and the fear and the unknown- He felt as if they held food in front of his thin starving body, he was ravenous and he needed, he needed, he needed!
He could not focus here. With a pitiful cry of determination, Solek rose and ran out into the snow.
“Solek!” A voice bellowed, not far behind, “Solek, no!”
But he was already out the door. The cold felt so good. It soothed his burning skin in an instant- and as his bare feet sunk into the ice he felt his trembling body go lax. He collapsed into it, each breath a pleased whine. A shadow fell over him-
“Solek, get up must you. The snow is too cold for you.”
What now! After he had finally found some peace- Solek growled deep and threatening in his throat, “ I will not.”
A face loomed over his- and he recognized it… Somehow… from somewhere. His anger cleared away. There was an emotion pinched between the furrowed brows, concern…? There was upset in the tight pull of his mouth downwards. Solek raised a shaking hand to stroke the soft hairs of his snout, “… Rooweh, is that you? What’s wrong?”
A sigh, “A friend of mine is very ill, but listen to me won’t he. Very worried about him, am I.” Rooweh smiled at him, but even in his fever-addled mind Solek knew it was not whole- that this was truly troubling his friend.
The fever surged, and Solek gasped as his body flooded sensation all over itself. He could not hold up his head, so he laid his ear down to the snow with his eyes pressed shut. He could not untense himself and yet could not move either- it was as if his body was determined to stay as it was until… Until…?
“Come, my friend.” Rooweh said gently- and oh how it stabbed through something in Solek’s heart. It made his fingers twitch amongst the white nothingness- he wanted- there was a crying, shuddering need- But for what? For what? Solek did not have to think on it much longer. Rooweh lifted him from the snow in two great paws, holding Soleks pathetic, fevered body to his chest.
“ No… No you mustn’t- “ Solek felt as if his voice were only a strained murmur- he could not shout, his lungs were too sore, his head spinning- vertigo was the word he would have used, had his vocabulary not been smoldering away in the fire. “ No… I need- I require the cold- Th… The flames-“
Rooweh hushed him. They were within the warmth in a second, and Rooweh took Solek past the fire and into his room. This , Solek thought, must be what death feels like. To be lain down, shivering and weak, with nothing in mind but regrets and shame and a need that you knew from the start could never be met. The fire raged within him and he clenched his jaw tight over the pitiful moan it tore from him. A falling star, he thought himself, for he had flown far from home only to crash here, burning.
Something blessedly cold pressed against his forehead, and another sound was coaxed from him- pleasure, relief. He strained to open his eyes- when had he closed them?- and saw above him his friend yet again. Rooweh gently moved aside the edges of his thin robe, and placed more cold in his armpits. Then another bar of it across his lower stomach- and Solek felt something under his skin writhe.
Shame fell over him in a sobering, clearing wave. Rooweh could not be here when the flames caught up to the next part of his control. It was already taking everything in him to pull- and bear down with his muscles, press his legs together- the thin robe would not cover it if he could not!-
“Rooweh!” Solek grabbed for his friend- and his hand connected with a furry wrist.
Rooweh looked at him, leaning down, “What is it, my friend?”
Solek’s mind fumbled for a moment, for he could feel Rooweh’s consciousness under his fur and it was easier by leagues to communicate telepathically. He stared at his friend desperately, imploringly, as he begged him to leave. Solek had just remembered to find words when Rooweh leaned closer. He looked… He felt … Sorrowful.
“Solek, dearest friend of mine are you. Told me, have you, about this time and what happens to you. Know only what is permitted for outsiders, do I… But there is no fear in me. So ashamed are you… Feel it can I, causes great sadness within me does it to see such suffering come to you. But there is no need for shame between us.” He pressed his cool, leathery nose to Solek’s wretched skin, “Never feel shame with me, my friend, Solek, there is nothing that would cause me to leave you. On the decision and will of my own, nothing could make me leave you.”
And oh, oh,
If Rooweh had not been here- had not existed at this exact time and place to meet Solek at this very point in time… If fate or destiny or luck or any of the things that Logic did not waste time on had not brought them here, together. If Rooweh did not step out one night on a whim and catch a falling star in his paws, then this coming experience never would have happened. Never again in his adult life did Solek grab onto someone with such need - with such unbridled want… And sob into their chest.
Sob. Not cry, it was not a small dotting of tears in his eyes. Not wail, he did not use his voice but in the ugly gasping and quiet whimpering his body forced of him.
But sobbing.
Solek had been unable to sit up and had thus pulled Rooweh down onto him- the crushing weight of his friend held aloft by the startled placement of a paw on each side of his chest. Solek’s mind was drowning in shame and self hatred, he could not sink within it any further and yet he felt worse for doing such a thing to his friend- for doing such a thing to Vulcan, every move he made for the last three days had done nothing but disgrace his people, his home. He would return in the shuttle tomorrow, humiliated and glanced at out of the corners of eyes. There would be no hiding it from them all- he felt mangled and disfigured as the salmon of earth became- blotched red and misshapen , bodies horrifically bulbus and swollen wrong for all to see this thing that he had become.
But all of Vulcan was not here now.
No, as his awareness cleared, no it was not. It was he and Rooweh alone within these curved wooden walls, the high window displaying the needle-leaf trees and the stars… And Rooweh, soft, and sturdy as a mountain against him. The tears were their own kind of release. They would not save him from the fire nor would they even spare him clairity, but whatever had been holding them was broken. The fire closed in on him- he should be violent, angered! The emotions of pon farr were supposed to be forceful and assertive! …But Solek simply cried. Sobbed. He had found something precious here on this ice planet- on this antithesis of his home, how could he feel rageful? He did not want to destroy. The fire had done that enough. He let the sobs slow themselves, blinked the still-flowing tears from his eyes, and stroked his hands through Rooweh’s grey fur until he found his face.
His friend sat up, a dark mass lit by no sun, no moon or rings- only dappled in starlight. Solek let his hands fall easily, gently, ghosted his fingertips over his friend's face into the most familiar position. One they had been built to take.
No, Solek did not wish to destroy. He wanted to create.
It took Rooweh only a second to realize what Solek was doing, and he shifted his entire weight to the right, resting on an elbow locked against Solek’s side. He placed his other paw on Solek’s chest with a serious expression, “…Solek. Ill, are you. Is this… what want you? Think, must you. In the past, to consider is a favor always given to me from you.”
Touching his friend in this way- barely clothed, positioned for a meld, Solek could feel all that he conveyed. Rooweh’s mind was alight with earnestness, with worry, care and despair and confusion and hope and the wish to-
to love.
Rooweh wished to love him…
Maybe it would have scared him. If Solek were in his right mind a week, or a year before, perhaps he would have been afraid of the revelation… The realization that two minds were in play- that controlling his own feelings could not stop another’s, that there was no control in this-
But for now… For now Solek closed his eyes and saw
nothing but the white fire of the stars above them. Felt nothing but the fever heat of his skin answered by the all consuming pressure of his friend atop him. Nothing but that shimmering, shivering feeling when Rooweh had slid himself aside… Nothing.
Yes. Solek told him, yes, yes.
He felt something smooth slide over his cheek, and curiosity made him glance down. Rooweh had reached a single, black claw up to Solek’s eyes, and wiped away the tears. His low voice was reverential, open as Solek had never quite heard it, “Say aloud it, Solek. Have to hear it, do I…”
Solek heaved another breath from his burning lungs. The rest of him had burned to ash.
“ Yes .”
Rooweh’s eyes flicked between Solek’s own, before he closed them, and his first tears made tracks in his fur. He pressed his nose to Solek’s forehead once again, “ Alright.”
The first thought Solek heard from Rooweh’s mind was quiet, and said in łihhwoo.
His shuttle comes tomorrow morning. I will keep him safe until then. Oh finally, finally… He is letting me help him.