Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Star Trek: TOS story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Author(s):	Lynna Bright
Date(s):	1983
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a Kirk/Spock story by Lynna Bright.

It was published in the print zine The Final Frontier #2.

Summary

"A complicated Fuck or Die story, features a brass bed; Kirk and Spock are captured after following a terrorist from a diplomatic function and forced to have sex with each other."

Art by Suzan Lovett

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  from issue "Final Frontier" #2, Suzan Lovett

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  from issue "Final Frontier" #2, Suzan Lovett

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  from issue "Final Frontier" #2, Suzan Lovett

Reactions and Reviews

1983

You know how one line of a story will stay with you long after you read it? I read [this story] in Final Frontier II and the line about Spock crouching over Kirk like a cat was particularly vivid. Whoo! That story is different, too, in that it dealt with one of the never-mentioned aspects of stories -- for once Kirk and Spock did not have the galaxy's best bladders. The other unmentionable is shit. All that ass fucking, and nobody mentions shit.

1997

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is one of my all time favorite K/S stories. At 49 pages it’s substantial enough to satisfy the appetite for an evening of K/S reading. For me, it also falls into the category of “Why do I like this story so much?” but what the heck. We can’t always exactly predict what pulls our strings in this fandom, can we?

Kirk and Spock are showing the Federation flag for a week on a neutral planet, Memothe, a “provincial backwater” that is near the Neutral Zone. They are talking to reporters, attending diplomatic receptions, not particularly liking what they are doing because the planet is caught in the fight for influence between the Federation and the Romulans, and there is inevitable political unrest with some terrorist actions taking place while they are there.

While at a reception, Kirk spots one of the leaders of the terrorists, in disguise, and he and Spock follow the man, against Spock’s advice. But the Vulcan is willing as always to follow his captain despite his impetuous actions, and so they sneak off, just before the bomb the man planted explodes, effectively preventing anyone from knowing that Kirk and Spock were not caught in the blast. Dorna leads them to a warehouse where he and three of his followers catch the Starfleet officers and tie them up, with the intent to use them as hostages. The four activists are dangerous men, realistically written by the author with motivations with which a reader can sympathize without condoning the actions springing from them. They are also not quite... sane, with a suggestion of unbalanced behavior established from the very beginning that grows steadily with each passing scene.

There is a definite air of danger as Kirk and Spock are tied up for the night on a big brass bed in a little corner of a room in the warehouse. Kirk is sorry that he has once again led his Vulcan into danger, yet he still thinks the risk was worth it and some good might come from their actions; Spock is supportive and calm. Characterizations throughout this story are right on.

A great tension reliever (for both characters and reader!) comes the following morning when Kirk and Spock wake up in their bonds and Kirk really has to go to the bathroom. Spock, of course, being Vulcan, could hold it forever. But Kirk can’t, not just reclining there on the bed with nothing else to think of, and eventually Spock suggests “It would be better to simply release it, Jim.” Kirk replies that he could live without the humiliation of wetting the bed, then Spock says, “Would it be better, if they found that we both had done it?” In an amusing yet realistic portrayal of the ultimate in loyalty, both men do.

But the humorous respite is short-lived. Dorna leaves Kirk and Spock in the hands of his subordinate Kurtiz, the most unbalanced of the four, and he has a taste for humiliation of a more serious kind. He orders the officers to disrobe, threatening to shoot Spock when Kirk hesitates. The other two men are there, threatening with weapons, watching, backing up that demand and the one that follows. That Kirk “let himself be used... as a woman.” They want Spock to fuck Kirk in front of them.

Put so baldly, it sounds a little ridiculous, and certainly a somewhat cliché’d way to get our guys together. But believe me, the author does a wonderful job of setting up atmosphere and motivation here, and chills never fail to go up my spine as they guys look at one another and realize what they will have to do.

What follows is just a fantastic sex scene of a very different sort. There had been no hint earlier through the story that there was any sort of sexual attraction between our heroes, and we learn that Spock is actually a virgin. But as they go through the extremely difficult procedure of achieving arousal and some semblance of sexual activity for the benefit of the men who will kill them if they do not, an unexpected transformation takes place for both of them. The temptation here is to quote from the story, but the scene is so much “of a piece” that I don’t think I can do it justice by taking just a few sentences here and there. But both Kirk and Spock find something, there in the space that they create between themselves, in the presence of their enemies in a sordid warehouse, something unexpected and surprising that springs naturally from all that they had shared before. I consider this to be one of the best-written, as well as erotic, sex scenes in our fandom.

I won’t tell you how our guys escape afterwards, but they do, and without any time to consider what has really happened to them, they find themselves on the Enterprise once again doing their duty. Trying to come to terms with their new knowledge, not knowing what to do next. Three weeks later, McCoy recommends they each take leave for a day or two at a Starbase they are visiting. Trying to act as if they don’t care, each man discovers the other is staying at the same hotel. Casually, they arrange to meet for dinner that first night. The way they finally talk, finally come together again in “freedom and affection, and delight and privacy,” is delightfully ordinary and almost filled with as much tension, though innocent, as the time in the warehouse.

This is a beautifully crafted story with great structure and a slowly building tension that gets to me every time I read it, despite the fact that I know what’s on every page. I’ve never come across any other story by this author, and that’s really a shame. If someone had described the sex scene to me in isolation, I doubt that I would have been interested, but the author catches me up in her tale, in the emotions of the two men, and I am hooked. It’s also great how she sets up the basis for a sexual relationship between them without ever once mentioning an attraction. But the fertile soil is there in her story without being obvious at all. She does what the Classic Series did on the small screen, present us with the existing friendship; then when she presents us with the sex, it seems unforced and natural, just as the whole K/S concept comes into being for us in the same way.

One of my all-time favorite Suzie Lovett pictures accompanies the story (there’s three in all). On page 54, Kirk and Spock are kissing during their leave on the Starbase. I’ve heard artists say that a kiss is really hard to draw, and I suppose this picture isn’t perfect, but the emotion in it, the desperation, the need is so obvious, I can’t look beyond that. And Spock’s hands are exactly where I bet he loves them to be, in whatever incarnation we find him. I wish Suzie Lovett hadn’t practiced her craft in K/S and then gone on to present her perfection in other fandoms!