obstinatrix | Fic: Adam's Rib (PG)

Title: Adam's Rib
Pairing: Kirk/android Kirk (ish)
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Property of Paramount, who did not venture into this territory, for reasons best known to themselves, during What Little Girls Are Made Of.
Notes/Summary: This is for

my_daroga, in response to a prompt at

st_tos_kink for some form of doubled Kirk. This got rather angstier and more contemplative than I intended, somehow.

He had always imagined that, if androids had any real advantage over humankind, it must surely be that they were born perfect. Created, rather: sinless, descentless and pure, like the first-created men and women in so many ancient Terran myths. Oh, yes, their intelligence was artificial only, unaccompanied by anything that might be called a soul, but at least - to Jim's mind - it came also free of guilt; devoid of uncomfortable racial memory.

So when his other self turned his hands outwards, palms to the sky, in a gesture of - what? Helplessness? Friendship? - Jim noticed the fine scar on the left palm right away. He remembered only too well how that scar had come to be: a sunny day on Tarsus IV, before Kodos, a long, empty road, and a boy who could not run so fast as his brother, but made the attempt anyway. Glass on the gravel. Jim Kirk had cut open his left palm there when he was twelve years old, and the small wound, healing, had left a white pucker behind it, like a stitch of silk, a reminder.

The android had not fallen. The android had not sustained his injury in competition with his brother; did not, in fact, have a brother at all. But he had this fault, Jim's fault, woven into the flesh that yielded in so human a way to Jim's exploratory touch. It didn't seem fair, he thought - as he reached for that hand, stroked his thumb very curiously over the scar that was, here, a birthmark - that his other self should have the consciousness of his counterpart, but not the enduring part of him, without even the compensation Jim had previously assumed for him. It wasn't fair.

Strange this, too; his own face, watching him curiously, with a quirk to its mouth that Jim knew too well. The feeling welling in the back of Jim's throat: affection, sympathy...love. Was that ridiculous? He wanted to comfort this being, this other-Jim, for a misfortune of which he could not possibly be aware. He knew, also, instinctively, innately, that other-Jim would welcome such comfort. He had, after all, not only Jim's face, but his fancies, his foibles. Or so it seemed.

When he slid his hand to other-Jim's nape, the android leaned towards him without a word, slipping easily, beautifully into Jim's arms. Jim kissed him, without the hesitation or the coaxing that might have been afforded to any other such encounter, only pressing his mouth against the other until it opened against him, tasting of himself and so of nothing. Jim ran his hands through brown-gold hair; felt those same hands, doubled, on the small of his back, exactly where he liked to be held. The other kissed him deftly, thoroughly; even with a degree of what Jim could only perceive as love.

It was ridiculous, of course, that thought. He was an android. He could not love. But then, again, he was Jim, with Jim's memories. He thought Jim's past was his own. If he thought he loved Jim, was Jim, was that any different to the reality?

Jim ached for him, and that was ridiculous, too, but nonetheless, he felt it.

He pressed his body back against its mirrored self, fitting their forms together, line for line and curve for curve. It seemed the only possible course of action.

His other self - of course, but also thankfully - agreed.