Dealers in Kevas and Trillium

K/S Fanfiction
Title:	Dealers in Kevas and Trillium
Author(s):	K.S. T'Lan
Date(s):	1983
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Star Trek: The Original Series
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Dealers in Kevas and Trillium is a Kirk/Spock story by K.S. T'Lan.

It was published in the print zine T'hy'la #3 and won a 1984 K/Star Award for Best Short Story.

Part of a Series

• Deva
• Dealer's Choice
• Dealers in Kevas and Trillium

Summary

"A/U: Bored with his duties at the Vulcan Science Academy, Spock joins up with the independant trader, Kirk."

Reactions and Reviews

I have always really liked this rich, poetic title. I had assumed the story was based on the Organian episode, but it's an A/U story. It's well written, with a clear Spock POV and interesting but not irrelevant or intrusive details, about life on Vulcan, etc. Some Briticisms: daft, bloody, and one I'd not heard before, "keen" for turned on (as in, he was so keen he was about to come in his pants).

You have to like Spock as a total innocent. unsophisticated even, to like this. I liked it fine. He lives a rather provincial life, works at VSA, and Kirk's a dashing dealer who whirls into his life with stories of far-flung worlds; and Spock is never the same again. I like Kirk's background—that after being in Starfleet 15 years, it was a desk-job or out, so he chose out. He won his freighter gambling with Harry Mudd.

Kirk and Spock end up being partners in this venture, and the present time of the story is three years later. This has such a wonderful Spock perspective, his self-awareness. Excellent Spockian sensibilities.

It seems Kirk's always fucking around on planet-falls, sometimes with men, Spock learns, so Spock decides to learn about sex. I always find it unlikely that it would take so long, three years in this case, of living in such close quarters for them to finally get close. If Kirk likes men, and is by his own admission so homy all the time, and Spock is an attractive man, which he is, why hasnt he yet considered Spock?

In any event. Spock offers himself. It is a very painful moment when Kirk has a laughing fit at that suggestion. Kirk's character throughout the story is very flippant and such, so it's not as jarringly out of character as it sounds, but still. I just ached for Spock and thought Kirk such a callous asshole. It turns out Kirk thought Spock was joking, thaf s why he laughed. (It was probably really a nervous reaction, laughing to keep from lusting.) Then he is so touched, he's so contrite, and comes on so sweetly to Spock. And Spock wants it, eagerly. Nice, nice sex.

This is one of the best alternate universe stories I've ever read. It doesn't involve slaves, rape, or war. It is believable from beginning to end and can truly be called a love story. This is a classic and deserves to be.

I've always liked K S TLan's writing, and consider her one of the best of the Brits, whether she wrote gen or K/S; and I think it was a great loss to Trek fandom when, for several reasons, she first moved over to Professionals fandom and then virtually gave up writing altogether.

This particular story is one that when I first read it, I liked enough to do a sequel to, though sometimes I wonder what sort of sequel she would have done had she actually written one. It doesn't quite come into the 'Plot? What plot?' category, but it's not far removed from it.

It's set in an alternative universe where Spock never joined Starfleet. Kirk has served 15 years in space, after which he either moved to a desk job or left Starfleet; he chose to leave Starfleet and having won a small spacecraft from Harry Mudd (in a poker game) set up as a trader landing on Vulcan in order to obtain a supply of trillium, he met Spock... who joined him as his partner After a while, exasperated by Kirk's frequent late returns to the ship on their various planetfalls, Spock offers himself as a sexual partner so that Kirk no longer has to "catch up" on his sexual needs when in port.

K S TLan keeps the two men well in character, and has some neatly worded one-liners; I think my favorite has to be when Spock. having bought five sex tapes (to advance his sexual knowledge) 'found four of them redundant" because there were limits to what two bodies could achieve. Kirk's initial reaction to Spock's offer is cruel, but not deliberately so, and this makes his eventual realisation that Spock was serious far more effective than it might otherwise have been, leading to a beautifully gentle, beautifully tender, joining.

In some ways, having just reread it after a gap of some years, I now think the story is slightly incomplete (my sequel was also incomplete in exactly the same way). Although references are made to "a friendly Scots engineer" and "Bones", Kirk never tells Spock anything about who they were or about his life in Starfleet and although the story is about Kirk and Spock on a trading vessel and their eventual finding of each other, it might have been nice, and wouldn't have lengthened the story by more than a few paragraphs, if at some point they had met up with some of Kirk's Starfleet crew and/or a Starfleet vessel captained by someone who knew Kirk. This "lack", however, doesn't diminish the effectiveness of the story, which does exactly what it sets out to do -- bring Kirk and Spock together 10 out of 10.

Enjoyable story. No matter what canon tells, I can’t see Kirk earthbound, promoted to a ground post. This is a very acceptable alternative.