Moonlighting (Star Trek: TOS story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Moonlighting
Author(s):	Wendy Rathbone
Date(s):	1986
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
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Moonlighting is a K/S story by Wendy Rathbone.

It was published in the print zine Daring Attempt #5.

Reactions and Reviews

1997

Moonlighting is a good example of a story written by an accomplished author that doesn't quite work. Interesting, but ultimately forgettable.

The story revolves around a central idea; there's an artist who is able to capture the essence of an individual on canvas. While they are on leave on a planet, attending a breathtaking exhibition of this man's art, Spock is asked by the artist to pose for him. Our private Vulcan declines, so later the artist asks Kirk if he'd pose, but with his first officer. Because they'll be paid 5,000 credits each, Kirk is eager to do it, and so Spock, despite some misgivings, agrees.

They only pose for one afternoon. Spock is totally nude, Kirk keeps his pants on (perhaps this is irony?), and the artist asks that they look at one another. For hours. They gaze into each other's eyes, finding truth and long-hidden attraction, and when they are released from the studio, the inevitable occurs. They decide to spend their hard-earned credits on a luxury hotel, and in the shared Jacuzzi they make love. Why didn't this story work for me? The pivot of the story is when the two men are looking at one another, and this was handled awkwardly. I discerned embarrassment between them, but not the electric intimacy that I believe the author meant to convey. Here's an example of prose that tells and doesn't show, that keeps the reader at a distance, uninvolved with the emotions the characters are experiencing. Essentially we're being told what is happening, within the essential scene of the story, and within a structure that demands we experience the emotional awakening. "... The longer they stared, the more intimate he felt they became. Walls vanished, inhibitions surfaced and threatened to make him look away again and again. Sometimes Kirk felt like melting in those dark, gentle eyes. Other times he felt frozen by them, limbs caught in cubes of ice. It was difficult to keep up his Captain's pose, his facade of often unfelt strength and pride. With eyes alone, Spock was slowly conquering him." I think it would be easy to beat a scene like this to death, and I'm probably guilty as a writer of doing so with my own work, but I think this paragraph, this scene should have been written quite differently. Describe the feeling of intimacy overcoming Kirk, don't just say it happened. What walls vanished? Which inhibitions surfaced? How did this sharing of a gaze with Spock make the Captain's pose difficult to maintain?

While I'm the type of reader who actually likes the somewhat reticent Spock, this story took the innocence too far for me. Spock's decision not to pose initially seemed to be based on sheer emotional panic, despite his protestations to the contrary, and that's a characterization of the fleet's best first officer that's hard to take.

This author has written many wonderful K/S stories that are exquisitely memorable. Moonlighting doesn't happen to be one of them.