The Wedding Gift

K/S Fanfiction
Title:	The Wedding Gift
Author(s):	Jungle Kitty
Date(s):	1997
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Star Trek: The Original Series
External Links:	The Wedding Gift
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The Wedding Gift is a Kirk/Spock story by Jungle Kitty. It was her first fanfic.

It was published in the K/S slash anthology Th'y'la #20.

Summary

"Kirk's conversation with a fellow passenger while on his way back to the Enterprise gives him the incentive to confess his feelings to Spock."

Author's Comments

From Writers and Writing:

I have mixed feelings about my earliest stories. I'm proud that I finally wrote them down while simultaneously embarrassed at the quality. When I sat down to write my first story ("The Wedding Gift"), I thought I was going to write what turned out to be my second story ("The Edge.") I'm still not sure why I wrote "The Wedding Gift" instead, except I did want to write Kirk with a woman, even though the story eventually segued into K/S. See, I was already terrified of the term "Mary Sue" and I'd only been into fanfic for about two weeks. <g>

I'm embarrassed by how derivative and imitative my first couple of stories are. I know I was consciously writing what I thought would be liked and accepted according to what I knew of the fandom at the time. I didn't really start to come into my own "voice" until I started writing things that I was pretty sure would jar some expectations. And although the aftermath of that was sometimes most discomfiting (mostly because once I started working on those stories, I lost sight of my original foreknowledge of how they would be received), the experience itself was very freeing.

Reactions and Reviews

Lovely little story of Kirk meeting a woman ot a telepathic race who discovers, through a kiss, that Kirk loves Spock. She urges him to tell Spock and later. Kirk finds out that she had given him the gift of courage. I loved the structure of this story—short breaks of time between passages. Quite beautifully done.

One of our number had suggested this story for us all to read; It had certainly made an impression on her, although she couldn't recall exactly why. Perhaps one of the first that she read? These always make a powerful impression.... It begins with Kirk receiving a communication from the Besrali Embassy, then flashes back, as he remembers meeting a Besrali woman on a long passenger flight, and the impression she'd made on him. He knew already that this race are a telepathic species, with a short lifespan, compared to humans. (Reminded me of the Ocampa, and Kes, in Voyager: An interesting idea that may have been Jungle Kitty's first!)

Jim and Kayla Ma sat together, due to a sweet little ploy of hers to encourage him to speak to her, and he encourages her to ask questions. Actually, Kirk's behaviour isn't always appealing here, but the story goes some way to compensate for this when he acknowledges his own petulance, and, of course, that he's not at his best when not on the Enterprise! At her request, for educational purposes of course, he's persuaded to kiss her, which is not a great success for either of them.... The scene that really affected us all, though, came when Kayla tells Jim that he's in love with his 'friend Spock, but you haven't...' as something she'd seen when she'd touched him. That unfinished sentence is poignant in what it almost says. But the best is yet to come: Kirk doesn't deny his feelings, but gives her all the reasons he's come up with for NOT telling Spock how he feels. She demolishes these with a simple 'has he ever touched you?' And of course, he has... Kayla claims that feelings of love are near the surface of the mind. We all wondered about this: would Spock 'pick up' on feelings through touch, or does he shield constantly when touching others? I suppose it depends on how you see his telepathy.

The story ends, of course, back where it began, with Kirk reading her last message to him, and we gradually realise that Spock is with him, REALLY with him, in his bed! They talk a little, make love, and there's a tiny echo of the late Kayla Ma in his mind at this point, who may or may not have eased the way for Spock's call and Jim's response to meet. I'm not sure I understood this, but it doesn't affect things too much. An interesting, if fairly short story, worth a look. It prompted quite a discussion about touch telepathy!

A death-bed message from Kayla, of the short-lived and telepathic Besrali race, who had encountered Kirk a few years before, experimented with kissing (nice except the tongue), revealed the "superficial" readings she got as a result - such as that he is in love with Spock, and shamed him into declaring himself to Spock - who thinks the tongue part is just fine.